Things were good. Hunter was feeling better about where he was at than he had in a while, Sebastian pulling him out of his rut and making even doing something as ordinary as just eating dinner and chatting seem almost exciting.

But then, just as quickly as their friendship bloomed, it seemed to be quickly slipping out of Hunter's hands.

It started with Sebastian cancelling on him one Thursday evening, citing a super busy week and just needing to relax. Hunter didn't think too much of it at the time, but then it kept happening.

Sebastian couldn't hang out on Saturday afternoon because one of his friends needed him to help her move.

He was busy on Tuesday because apparently his sister had some sort of crisis that he needed to help her get through over the phone.

Friday was a no-go for him, too, because another one of his friends was having a party that he'd feel rude skipping out on (and Hunter was too polite when he received this excuse to even attempt to just invite himself along).

He did show up the following Thursday, but all the while it was like he wasn't even there. He seemed kind of distracted or distant, and when Hunter tried to ask him about it, his only explanation was just that they had gotten to some of his favorite parts of the series so he was more invested in watching.

It wasn't like he thought that everything was perfect in his newfound friendship with Sebastian. He would be lying if he said anything to that effect.

Yes, they got along well, but the fact of the matter was still that they had both lived fairly different lives that had led them to become two very different people. After a few conversations early on had turned into arguments, they agreed that politics was a subject they should steer clear of, and when more liberal topics came up on Parks and Recreation, they tended to gracefully steer clear of saying anything of their views on the matters at hand.

Sebastian was a much more carefree person than he was. Though it was likely hyperbole to say so, but the best way that Hunter could think to put it was that he seemed to thrive on chaos, in a way that made him nervous to see what Sebastian's apartment would look like (though, to be fair, he had once reamed Hunter out over the fact that he still needed a friend's help to do laundry, saying that it was not cute for a guy to not know how to do basic things necessary for everyday life, and that he "needs to get over himself and his antiquated gender roles," so there was clearly some level of ability that Sebastian had when it came to homemaking).

Over time he had worn Hunter down on the topic of him putting his feet up on the table, and he frequently attempted to give some of whatever he was eating to Tesla. And speaking of eating, when they would use plates, he didn't mind leaving them sitting and not once did he offer to clean up after them.

He was way too blasé about things like his future career and any possible bodily harm. This probably wasn't really a big deal, but Hunter cared enough about the guy that it was frustrating to have him make jokes about making a special request for the "sketchiest, murderiest Uber driver available" when he didn't feel like taking the Metro home.

In short, he was a bit infuriating. He was a clear antithesis to Hunter's constant need for control, how he needed everything in order to feel completely at ease.

But still, he didn't think that anything was that wrong with them. Sure, they had their differences, but for the most part they got along really well, and what they had in common made up for where they didn't see eye to eye. There certainly had been no fight or disagreement that he could think of, nothing to explain them going from near constant contact and frequent meetings to barely speaking or seeing each other for a couple of weeks.

For a bit, Hunter tried to make himself relax about it. He tried to be a reasonable, non-paranoid person and convince himself that no, Sebastian wasn't avoiding him and no, Sebastian didn't dislike him, and yes, Sebastian was probably just a busy person who, unlike him, had plenty of friends and a lot going on in his life that meant he wasn't always going to be able to hang out when Hunter wanted to.

But eventually he really couldn't convince himself of that any longer, and he knew that he needed to do something.

To Sebastian: 'Hey, are you busy right now?'

It was a baby step, yes. It wasn't like he hadn't reached out to Sebastian earlier on – he had sent plenty of messages, some invitations to hang out and some just random attempts at conversation starters, but as the days passed the number of these messages that would sit without replies grew larger. But the difference with this message, of course, was that he wasn't going to just let it go this time.

Twenty minutes went by and he got no reply.

To Sebastian: 'Should I take that as a yes?'

In spite of his better judgement, he was willing to be a bit annoying here. Though he wouldn't really admit it, he had grown attached enough to Sebastian that at this point he was a bit terrified of losing him, as tacky and touchy-feely as that felt (he could already hear the other man making fun of him for it in his head).

He sent a few more messages that went unanswered before something occurred to him: the key to Sebastian's apartment. Though he had never used it and he had, in fact, never even been to Sebastian's apartment, the fact was that he still had it. He had his address and all it would take was a train ride across town to find him where he couldn't ignore him.

And so he did. It took a little bit of navigating and looking clueless and asking strangers where exactly he was, but he ended up at Sebastian's door. He knocked on the door at first, figuring that that might be a bit more polite than just barging in, if he could help it.

When there was no answer, he knocked again.

Nothing.

He sighed to himself, hoping that all that meant was that Sebastian simply wasn't home at the moment, nothing more sinister than that – if he could be as little paranoid in this whole situation as possible, that would probably be ideal.

Sure enough, when he fished the key from his pocket and let himself into the apartment, it appeared that he was the only one there. He closed the door behind him and looked around, taking in the sight of the place. It was neater than he would have expected it to be, though there was also a notable lack of much of anything in the apartment. He had enough furniture and everything so that it was livable and also good enough to have guests, but it fell somewhere short of what Hunter would typically call a home. Still, though, it felt right for Sebastian. A few papers scattered on whatever surface was available, but not in a way that felt like a mess. It was the kind of organized chaos that Sebastian injected into his life, and Hunter felt certain that if he were to need anything, he'd know exactly where to find it.

He still felt a bit wrong being here without Sebastian, especially never having been here before, but, well, Sebastian had given him his key, so Hunter felt like it was alright to remind himself that he wasn't really doing anything wrong. Even if Sebastian hadn't said much of anything about him coming to visit his apartment since giving him the key, there still had to be some kind of unspoken invitation, right?

Still, though, he wasn't about to make himself too comfortable. As curious as he could be sometimes about Sebastian and his life (especially in the most recent days where he suddenly seemed to want little to do with him), he wasn't about to go poking around in his things, or venture anywhere deeper in his apartment than he needed to. So he just sat down on his couch, settling in to wait.

He pulled out his phone to check and make sure that he hadn't missed a message from Sebastian while he had been running around trying to get here; if he had received a message, after all, he might want to leave in order to save face. Sure enough, though, nothing. He spent a little while, he wasn't sure how long exactly, sitting there on the couch, doing nothing in particular on his phone, just needing something to kill the time. Until, finally, the door opened, signaling Sebastian's arrival.

He looked up to see Sebastian walking in, and he was… He was not alone. In fact, the guy walking in with him barely got through the door before kissing Sebastian again, and suddenly Hunter very much wished that he had not come here after all.

For a moment, Hunter almost thought that he might be able to sit there and then get out undetected – the two men before him appear to be pretty well focused on each other, Sebastian guiding them in the direction of what Hunter assumed had to be the bedroom. It took a few moments of loud, sloppy kissing before either of them noticed that they were not quite alone, the guy pulling away from Sebastian and looking over in Hunter's direction. He pointed over at him, asking, "Who's that? You said you lived alone."

It took a long moment for Sebastian to realize what was going on, blinking at the guy with a confused expression for a few seconds before turning and looking in the direction he was pointing. At that point, his face went from mildly confused to almost overwhelmingly perplexed. "I do live alone," he said slowly, looking at Hunter with a deep set frown.

"Then who is he?" the guy asked.

Sebastian shook his head slightly. It had become abundantly clear to Hunter that he was drunk, something in his expression, in his mannerisms, calling back to the night when they had first met. It seemed odd to Hunter that he would be this level of intoxicated (and also apparently having found a partner) when it was still light out, but then again he had never been much of a drinker anyways. "Hunter?" he asked after a pause, taking a couple of steps towards him. "What are you doing here?"

"I'm…" he started and then trailed off, feeling for a moment about as confused as Sebastian looked. Now that he was here in this situation, having come over here and, especially, having set up camp in Sebastian's living room felt ridiculous. There had to have been another way to go about this. Sure, nothing had worked up to that point, but still. This had clearly been a bad idea. "I don't know, I just… I wanted to talk to you."

Sebastian rubbed a hand over his face, letting out a long breath. "You shouldn't…" He didn't finish the sentence, but Hunter could think of plenty of ways it could have gone, and Sebastian was right; he shouldn't have.

"I know, I'm sorry," he said, shaking his head and getting to his feet.

Before he can get out any further apologies or excuse himself, the guy looks at them with a frown. "Who is he?" he repeated, sounding a bit like a petulant child that was being ignored, clearly just as drunk as Sebastian was, if not more so. "Is he going to join us? Sebastian…"

Hunter just shook his head to himself slightly, going towards the door. "I'm sorry, I shouldn't have come, I'll talk to you sometime later, Sebastian," he said. "Bye."

"Hunter…" he said slowly, his frown deepening and his brows furrowed like he wanted to protest, wanted to say something else but just couldn't find the right words.

"Bye, talk to you later," he repeated, though at this point part of him wasn't entirely sure whether or not that was true. Sebastian, and his friendship with him, was likely slipping out of his hands.

"Bye," Sebastian said back.

As he stepped out the door and reached to close it behind him, he could see that the stranger had approached Sebastian again and was kissing his neck, while Sebastian's eyes were still following Hunter right up until the moment the door fell shut.

Hunter didn't really expect to hear from Sebastian after the run-in at his apartment, especially not in the next few days after. It had been little more than an awkward reminder of how very different the two of them were; maybe Sebastian had realized that and felt too awkward to just say so. Maybe that was for the best.

It wasn't a fun realization to make, but he told himself that it was for the best that he acknowledged it and accepted it. Sure, it had been fun to hang out with Sebastian. Sure, they got along pretty well. Sure, they hadn't even finished watching Parks and Recreation together.

(He wasn't sure why, but that last fact almost hurt most of all.)

But the fact of the matter was that maybe they just weren't meant to work out in the long term, and maybe he had seen too much into the relationship to begin with.

So he tried to move on.

Netflix had now taken a spot on his browser's page of frequently visited sites. And even though just the existence of Netflix on his computer reminded him of Sebastian (especially considering the fact that the account they'd been using was Sebastian's, after all), he couldn't help but think that maybe that was the thing to do. Countless people he'd talked to or saw on Facebook talked about how great Netflix was, what a way to kill time it was. And while he'd never needed that before, always having plenty to do, he was now in a spot where he had a Sebastian-shaped void to fill.

As much as part of him was curious about what was going to happen in Parks and Rec, he couldn't really bring himself to watch that. So he spent the better part of an hour looking through what was on Netflix, eventually settling on Bob's Burgers.

In the next few days after that, he watched several things: a lot of Bob's Burgers, Rent, Legally Blonde, Breakfast at Tiffany's.

Until, eventually, his phone buzzed:

From Sebastian: 'the next time you log into netflix, you'll see that I set up a separate profile for you on the account. your shitty taste in movies is making my recommendations weird.'

It wasn't much. He knew that it wasn't much. In fact, it was an insult to his tastes, and depending on how he chose to read it, it could sound pretty cold. But he liked to think that he was pretty good at reading Sebastian (his recent difficulties aside), and so he decided the message had to be more playful than hurtful.

To Sebastian: 'Didn't think about that, my bad. But thank you.'

From Sebastian: 'no problem. but seriously? legally blonde? was the goal to make me want to make fun of you?'

To Sebastian: 'Hey, it's a good movie. And I'd think you'd be into it, Mr. Future Lawyer.'

From Sebastian: 'that's not how it works.'

To Sebastian: 'Still. It's a great movie.'

And the conversation ended there. Hunter kept waiting for a bit, expecting a reply, but eventually he came to the conclusion that that was the end of the conversation. Even though he'd wished that they'd talked longer, he couldn't bring himself to be too upset about it – it was a better conversation than they'd had in a bit now. It felt natural, the way things had gone between them earlier on in their friendship. And no matter how weird Sebastian was being about him, he wasn't going to take away from that.

At the end of the day, though, one good conversation could only amount to so much. He still found himself sitting on his couch with his laptop in front of him, watching Bob's Burgers alone as the evening wore away into nighttime.

Cutting into the relative silence of the living room came a small meow, followed by Tesla hopping up onto the couch. He looked at Hunter for a moment, wide eyes before moving to sit by his feet, rolling over onto his back.

He was fairly certain that it was a coincidence, but Tesla had ended up settling down right where Sebastian had usually sat when he came over.

"I know," he said, reaching over and scratching behind the cat's ear. "I miss him, too."