Title: A Synchronicity Of Opposites
Author: an-alternate-world
Rating: T
Characters/Pairing: Hunter Clarington/Sebastian Smythe
Word Count: 401
Summary: A collection of Huntbastian drabbles prompted via Tumblr.
Warnings/Spoilers: None in particular for this drabble.
Disclaimer: I am in no way associated with Glee, FOX, Ryan Murphy or anything else related to the FOX universe.
Julia (huntbastian) prompted a fic which included the sentence: "Please, don't leave."
"Please, don't leave."
Hunter stills at the door to the Senior Commons, the handle gripped between his fingers. The voice is soft, like he's not meant to have heard it, like it's a ghost slinking in the shadows.
But he knows he was meant to have heard it because if he wasn't, then he wouldn't have heard it.
"You know I don't have a choice," he says, throwing open the door and entering the abandoned space that once housed so much pride for Dalton Academy. Ruined, the board of governors had declared, because the new leader valued winning over pride. He'd hung his head in shame, listening to their bitter words that what he'd done was a scandal far more destructive than the almost-blinding of a former teammate or how he'd besmirched the reputation worse than when the former leader had been careless enough to contribute to a gay teen's suicide attempt. Details he'd known, details he'd heard, but details he'd never thought would be a lesser evil than what he'd done.
"Hunter-"
"Don't make this harder than it already is, Smythe," he says, knowing that his only defence is coldness, is distance, is removing the part of his heart which ached so fiercely before he turned into a mess. Beneath the layers of armour, he's still only a teenage boy - a teenage boy on his way to a new military school.
"This isn't what I wanted," Sebastian says, his voice close but not too close, keeping his distance even as his words steal into Hunter's soul. A clean break would do everyone good. Sebastian is far from pure and innocent but Hunter knows the former captain has been trying to be a better man this year. He needn't soil more reputations than he already has.
"You knew what the outcomes could be," he says, taking in the Commons one last time before turning, his eyes falling over Sebastian's uniform that, despite everything, he wore with such pride. Hunter's black t-shirt and jeans seem too casual, too simple, for a goodbye with this much gravity. "You know I have to leave."
Sebastian watches him, the rim of his eyes red but his expression otherwise guarded. A chasm opens between them, an endless list of things that could be said and done, and re-said and re-done, but Hunter knows, they both do, that there's no point saying or doing anything. There's not enough time. There's only heartbreak if they do.
He approaches Sebastian, pausing, taking him in, breathing him in. Maybe, in another lifetime, things will be different and they'll find each other again.
"Goodbye, Seb," he whispers, pressing a kiss to Sebastian's cheek and walking past him, out the door, without looking back. He walks with a heaviness in his stomach that makes it difficult to keep his shoulders straight but he knows it's not his heart in his gut - he'd left that with the boy in the Senior Commons.
~FIN~
Author's Note: The following drabble (Chapter 5) is a follow-up of sorts to this drabble.