Written for Seblaine Spring Fling 2016. Prompts are bolded.
.
Renegades;;
.
.
For one summer, right before college, Sebastian asks the world of him. Sebastian has always been unpredictable—not fickle, but the unexpected personified—and he agrees, yes, they should get away before life scatters them cross-country.
It should scare him senseless, letting this sense of the surreal muck up his carefully outlined plans for the time to come.
But Sebastian's an inconstant, a thunder storm in a shot glass, and he's been so hopelessly drawn to that for such a long time the thought of going without near suffocates him.
Sebastian says, "Run away with me," and he doesn't hesitate.
.
Somehow Sebastian gets his mom to lend them her car—it's a light blue convertible that's seen better days, but it'll get them around.
"A remnant from her wilder years"—Sebastian smirks, before popping the trunk to see what kind of space they're working with.
"How long will we be gone?" he asks, because four weeks is an awful lot of outfits, few of which will fit this car.
"We'll have to use a Laundromat." Sebastian snorts. "Talk about expanding our horizons."
Like that his anxiety dissipates. His life is in Sebastian's hands, and there are none he trusts more.
.
It's raining the morning they're set to leave.
He decides not to see it as a bad omen before their trip has even started.
Sebastian honks as he pulls up to the driveway and sticks a hand out to wave.
"Can you believe this?!" Sebastian points, and he follows that finger across the horizon, where four distinct streaks of color mark their path.
"That's a good sign, killer!"
He giggles and walks over and there's no doubt in his mind; they'll be chasing the pot of gold at the end of that rainbow all the way to the interstate, fast.
.
They meet on a playground at age four.
He skins his knee playing tag with some of the other kids, and bites the inside of his cheek to stop from crying.
"It's okay to cry, you know," a voice sounds somewhere above him. "My mom says that's okay for boys to do."
He looks up to see a tiny giant hovering over him, holding out a hand.
"Come on," the boy says, "I hear the nurse has dinosaur band-aids."
He stands and sniffles, his knee sore and bleeding.
"I'm Sebastian Smythe," the boy says.
"Blaine Anderson," he offers in return.
.
He falls in love, unaware of it for three months, during the summer between his fifteenth and Sebastian's sixteenth birthday.
Their friends invite them to the beach, and for hours they run back and forth between the water and where their towels have been laid out in a neat line; they toss around a Frisbee and drink lukewarm wine coolers one of their friends stole from home.
He digs his feet barefoot in the sand and thinks he has all the answers—he likes boys, and that's okay. Sebastian, his best friend, likes boys too, but not the same ones.
.
Sebastian hits another growth spurt that same summer and while it's imperceptible, his eyes slip down Sebastian's chest during those hot beach days—running track keeps Sebastian in shape and the tease of hipbones through his skin, the trail of freckles everywhere, and the pronounced bulge in Sebastian's swim trunks when he gets them wet leave little to his imagination.
His dreams fill with his best friend's face and body and lips, whispering things he can't make out.
In the morning, his hand slips underneath his sheets and he closes his eyes, images of Sebastian helping him stain the linens.
.
Now, they're eighteen and nineteen, watching a little league baseball game on the edge of town, eating stale corndogs and drinking warm lemonade. Neither of them knows either of the teams playing.
He can't tell what Sebastian's thinking, or why they had to undertake this trip now—they don't have a plan, neither of them wants to go far, and they only seem to be in it for each other's company.
That's why he'd said yes.
He secretly hopes that when Sebastian said, "Run away with me," what he really meant was simply, "Be with me. In every way. Always."
.
"What's the plan?"
"There is no plan, killer. It's just the road, the wide-open sky, and us. We can go anywhere and do anything we want. There are no rules."
"Why?"
"Why?"
"Yeah, why? Neither of us even likes camping."
"Yeah, that's what motels are for."
"I'm serious, Bas."
"Do we need a reason?"
"We can't drive around aimlessly."
"Why not?"
"Why not?"
"Yeah, why not? We've never been on vacation together. Anything we want, killer. It's ours."
"Okay. Then, I—want to see something amazing."
"Alright, killer, let's go find you something amazing."
"Can I drive?"
"Not a chance."
.
When he said 'amazing' a luxury suite at the Gervasi Vineyard wasn't what he had in mind—but he can't complain about the Queen bed, the walk-in shower, or the Italian-style continental breakfast.
They're a mere two hours from home, and the man at check-in scrutinizes both their IDs, their driver's licenses, and still calls his supervisor for advice before he accepts Sebastian's credit card.
Sebastian, being Sebastian, flashes the man a smile, grabs the room key, and carries both their bags towards their room.
He, on his part, has to bite his lip to keep from laughing too much.
.
"Did you know the largest bobbin lace is located in Portugal?" Sebastian asks as he exits the bathroom, wrapped in a thick robe they might both have a mind to steal.
Sebastian's staring intently at his phone's screen.
"Why are you reading about lace?"
Sebastian shrugs. "I'm trying to find your something amazing."
He sits down on the edge of Sebastian's bed. "Why?"
"Again with the why." Sebastian sits up. "I want us to remember this trip forever. I want us to look back on this summer years from now and say 'I haven't had a trip like that since'."
.
Sebastian is an inconstant in a shot glass, but he's never known him to be aimless. They both have a brilliant future ahead of them; a degree and frat parties and new friends. So he can't make sense of this purposeless frustration.
"I want us to have fun"—Sebastian runs a hand back and forth through his hair.
"We don't have to be away from home to have a good time."
"That wasn't the point of this."
"What was, then?"
"You were," Sebastian says, and finds his eyes. "We were."
He blinks, but finds no words. His mouth runs dry.
.
He sits outside until he's cold, but he can't face Sebastian.
His mind races around words spoken days ago, and he knows that if he waits long enough, Sebastian will come to him.
"What did you mean?" he asks, once he hears Sebastian's footsteps. "You said we were the point of all this."
"Wishful thinking, on my part."
"Sebastian"—he sighs. It's no time for vague answers.
"I like you, Blaine," Sebastian says. "Didn't really know it until those letters came."
Eons pass. But he falls forward and touches his lips to his best friend's, like they were meant to.
.
They make out in the backseat of the convertible like it's a special talent.
Their initial plan was to park in a wide open field so they watch the stars, but they throw that plan out the window in favor of doing what they've been doing for days, hours within those days, and minutes without breathing within those hours.
They've driven aimlessly and without direction, back towards home, further away, without any intention of seeing anything else amazing.
He has his amazing. He has his extraordinary.
He's in love with his best friend and his best friend loves him back.
.
He realizes it when he's still fifteen years old, the moment Sebastian's lips lock with Adam's, a boy he's been seeing on and off for a few weeks since school started.
A flutter blooms and dies, a renewal, and a death, at the thought that Sebastian will never see him the way he sees Sebastian. It's okay; he doesn't need Sebastian to love him, not when it could mean trading away their friendship. He's happy when Sebastian's happy, and he'll wish him all the happiness in the world for as long as he's alive.
But that college letter proves freeing.
.
Sebastian throws an arm around his shoulders and pulls him close, planting a wet kiss to his temple.
He giggles.
There's that flutter in his stomach again, unquenched by any other boys this time, because he's the boy, the one Sebastian chose to love.
He reaches up and laces their fingers together, the way their lines of sight knit together every so often—Sebastian's brilliant green eyes won't leave his for minutes upon minutes, minutes that feel like pockets of forever they can spellbindingly share.
The stars shine above and the ground's firm below, and there's nothing they can't do.
.
There's a row of sun-kissed freckles along the bridge of Sebastian's nose, and he kisses them too, before he travels lower and captures Sebastian's lips.
"I thought we were leaving," Sebastian mutters.
They're two hours outside of Westerville, stopped at a diner for some pancakes, well on their way back home.
"Maybe we could use a few more days at a motel," he says, never allowing Sebastian's lips to stray far.
"I thought you hated roughing it."
He smiles. "This is not what I'd call roughing it."
"Really?" Sebastian pulls back. "Because that's the third time you're wearing that outfit."
.
College letters came in one after the other, and the more came, whether they were rejections or acceptances, it dawned on him that after the summer Sebastian wouldn't be down the street any longer. He wouldn't be able to go over and talk whenever he needed it, or even call whenever he liked and know Sebastian would be on the other end.
So much of their lives lay bound by a common geography and now they'd both be living half a state apart.
He'd lose his best friend. A boy he'd loved for years.
Maybe it was for the best.
.
Sebastian's jacket stretches large along his shoulders, but he likes that he drowns in Sebastian's clothes—he imagines wearing his sweaters, how they'd smell like him and how he'd steal one every time he visited him at college.
"Maybe I can transfer," Sebastian says, dragging fingers through his curls.
"I don't want you to do that for me." He cuddles close to Sebastian's body heat, the jacket somehow never enough. "We'll figure it out."
"You think so?"
He looks up to meet Sebastian's eyes, but his boyfriend is smiling.
"I do," he says, and meets Sebastian halfway for a kiss.
.
The touch of Sebastian's skin is unlike any sensation; whether it's his lips against his or travelling down his neck, down his chest, or in between his legs; or whether his hands worship every inch of his body, it's all new and exciting and he never wants this to end.
He rejects the notion that this summer will end, because it's been four weeks and so much has changed.
Sebastian whispers, "I'm in love with you," between every kiss and touch, and when they stain the sheets they hang onto each other like the whole world falls apart but them.
.
The pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, as it turns out, is them.
He and Sebastian.
Sebastian said, "Run away with me," and he said, "Yes," and they ran, aimlessly, without direction, side by side, towards each other.
This was easy, falling in love is easy; it's life and everything that follows that's hard. They decide to rise to the challenge together, support each other, long distance.
The day they leave in separate directions Sebastian whispers, "I love you," to his lips, and there it is, at the center of him, the quiet flutter of butterfly wings.
.
.
fin
.