When Sebastian Smythe's name came up at future reunions of Warblers, they'd probably laugh and fondly recall how he had (so very proudly) been immune to love.
That wasn't true.
The fact of the matter was this: Sebastian had, for a long time, been the king of the hump and dump. He earned the reputation he had and he was fairly proud of it. Until, of course, Hunter fucking Clarington came along.
After a few weeks of constant glaring and bickering and yelling and overall bullshittery that made everyone in the general vicinity fearful that they might move from verbal to physical at any moment, they quietly became friends. No one was really sure how it happened, and most people didn't question it, grateful to have some peace in the hallways.
(There were a few rumors of Sebastian and Hunter fucking out their tension, allowing for a friendship to develop between them, which was the most common belief, though truth be told it was something much simpler than that: Hunter happened to walk by Sebastian's room as he was playing music from a band they both liked, and the realization for both of them that the other wasn't one hundred percent awful opened the gate for more calm, friendly communication.)
Once he and Hunter were friends, they were practically inseparable. That wasn't to say that they didn't still fight, because they did. So much. But it wasn't anything that was worthwhile, because, as it turned out, they agreed on just about anything that did matter (and generally most things that didn't, either, like whatever shows they liked and characters from those shows). But there were little things that they would still bicker about, and sometimes it seemed to others like they were fighting just for the sake of fighting, maybe because they didn't feel right without it.
Sebastian quickly ended up on a slippery slope into falling in love with him. He didn't recognize it for what it was at first, just thinking that they were friends (not that Sebastian didn't have friends to know what the difference was, of course). But eventually the feeling in his gut when he was looking forward to seeing Hunter couldn't be ignored anymore, and he had to call a spade a spade. It had finally happened. He'd fallen in love.
It didn't help that Hunter, for all that he was vocal about his sexuality and his ex-girlfriends, was extremely flirty. That was just who he was, Sebastian figured, since it wasn't like he was only like that with him, but there was still the fact that he was especially flirty with him. It wasn't like that didn't make sense, after all; they were close friends, so of course the boundary between what was acceptable and what was unacceptable was bound to be further out for them.
There were nights, several nights, where they would lay on their sides facing each other in Hunter's bed or Sebastian's, and they talked. They talked about anything that came to mind, everything and nothing, and there were moments where one of them would lean in a bit and it just felt like there was something there under the surface, some inevitable something that there was an unidentified countdown they were working on, if Sebastian could just wait a bit longer.
Sebastian stopped going out as much. Hunter had at one point implied that he didn't like it when he went out and got drunk, and besides, there was something kind of lackluster now about going out when instead he could have nights in the quiet dark of Hunter's room. It sounded lame and he knew it, but at the same time he couldn't bring himself to care, though he joked with Hunter that nobody else in the school could know that he was getting boring. Hunter promised to keep his secret.
But still, no matter how flirty things got between them, no matter how many I'm sure he was about to kiss me moments there were, nothing happened.
They were best friends for about two years, and nothing more.
They tried to keep in touch in the first year or two after they graduated, but it just didn't work out. Hunter went off to some military school, making communication all but impossible for the first year unless they were willing to take pen to paper (which Sebastian was, because of course he was, but it took away from the experience of talking to him), and even once he was no longer a freshman rat, they just didn't keep up. Their schedules never really worked out for them to meet up, and for his part Sebastian was doing a lot of traveling, the time differences making phone and Skype calls more difficult than they were worth sometimes.
So eventually Sebastian stopped trying. He told himself that it was for the best, because holding onto the memory of someone long gone wasn't healthy, especially when what he was holding onto was a hybrid of both belief in something that never was and hope for something that never was going to be.
There were moments when he convinced himself that he resented Hunter for it; for losing touch, for making him fall in love and not doing anything about it, for making him believe in a future for them. There had been times when they were friends that he had let his guard slip, allowing Hunter to see his heart plainly laid out on his sleeve. They never said anything about it, but Sebastian felt fairly certain that between them was the unspoken understanding that Sebastian was in this far, far too deep. Knowing that made it easy, sometimes, to feel like a victim. To pretend for a little bit that Hunter had done this all on purpose, had taken Sebastian's heart and played with it for a while, all the while being perfectly straight and uninterested and detached. Being angry always tended to make things easier; it was safer than admitting to having feelings that had largely been pushed down.
But he knew that wasn't fair. Everything that they said or did, when they said or did them, was entirely true and heartfelt at the time. Hunter never had any intention of hurting Sebastian when he went out on dates with girls, and he knew it. And even without knowing logically that Hunter was a good person and wouldn't do that, there was still the fact that he was too in love with him, still, to be upset with the memory of him for long.
Some days he still felt like he was drowning in it, stuck in quicksand that he had stumbled upon in high school and was still battling with. There were days when he barely thought about it, didn't spend a minute thinking about Hunter, but when he did, the more he tried to make himself stop thinking about him, the more he ended up thinking about him.
Sebastian had spent so much time trying to get over Hunter, and only after several years did he come to terms with the facts: there was nothing to get over. Every moment between them had been platonic, no matter how he read them, every bit of their "relationship" beyond friendship just made up in his head. And he wasn't going to get beyond it until he accepted that.
Still ages away from accepting that truth, the 'save the date' for Hunter's wedding felt like getting hit by a car. Of course time had passed and it only made sense for Hunter to not still be affected by Sebastian the way Sebastian was by him, and of course he was attractive and nice and funny so of course he was going to find a nice girl and get married eventually, but something about it still made Sebastian feel entirely off-kilter.
It just seemed wrong. Sure, he hadn't seen Hunter for so long, but… It just felt right that Hunter should have been somewhat lost, too, while he was there all alone missing Hunter and wishing that he would one day wake up and realize that he felt the same at least the tiniest bit. If such a huge part of Sebastian's heart belonged to Hunter, then why did none of Hunter's belong to him?
But still, he decided to go, if for no other reason than to see Hunter one last time.
When he walked up to him at the reception, Hunter smiled at him like no time had passed (though time definitely had, and it had been kind to him, somehow settling into being even more handsome than he had been years ago), and pulled him into a tight hug. They chatted for a bit, catching up on lost time, and he introduced him to his bride, a petite, bubbly woman by the name of Daisy.
Some part of him had quietly hoped that he would see himself in the new Mrs. Clarington. He had selfishly dreamed that maybe he would get a hint that Hunter had felt the same when the bride walked down the aisle and she was lanky and brunette and freckled and loud and sarcastic. Daisy was none of those things. She was tiny in stature, and though there was something lively about her, she was all positive energy, bright smiles and politeness.
But she hugged Sebastian as if he was an old friend too (having to get on her tiptoes to do so) and told him that Hunter had told her so much about him and he couldn't find it in himself to be bitter. She was a sweet girl and she had done nothing wrong just by being the person Hunter fell in love with.
When he turned to walk away, Hunter laid a hand on his arm and told him not to be a stranger. And Sebastian nodded and smiled politely, promising to be in touch.
When he went home that night, he pulled out his computer and opened up Facebook and did something he had done plenty of times before: he scrolled down in his profile to high school, looking at the posts and pictures between him and Hunter. He had done this so many times and spent so many hours doing this that he could probably describe each picture down to the clothes they were wearing and quote every status or wall post word for word, but there was still something about it that made him feel better.
Then, once he was done with that, he went ahead to Hunter's profile. A while back he had unsubscribed from Hunter's posts but kept him as a friend, wanting to be able to see his posts and keep up with him, but not have to see everything he was doing in the meantime.
It was clear from his profile how happy he was with Daisy. Sebastian remembered how it had used to be practically impossible to 1) get Hunter to allow you to take a picture and even more so 2) get him to smile in a picture. But that didn't seem to be the case anymore.
By the time he put his laptop away, he felt better.
It wasn't overnight. He wasn't able to get up the next morning and send off a message to Hunter (not that he would have anyways, seeing as he was sure to be heading off on his honeymoon). But ever so slowly, he was feeling more okay with the knowledge that he was never going to be with Hunter and that someone else was. Hunter was in good hands, and he knew it.
And so, six years after graduating, Sebastian was finally able to reach out to him again, to be his friend and, for the first time ever, be okay with the fact that it would never be anything but that.