Archive of Our Own

“I think I like you?” you ask the floor.

It just comes out. You’re sitting cross-legged on Sebastian’s rug while he types away at his computer, finishing up the next stage of some high-pressure, looming-deadline programming project, and the words just spill. Like the wasted splashes of milk the first time you tried to use one of the cheese presses, like drops of homemade wine you had next to no experience bottling. You didn’t even mean to say them. You didn’t even know you wanted to.

And maybe you shouldn’t have. These sorts of things are supposed to be treated with care. With consideration. Hell, even accompanied by one of those bouquets Pierre mailed you promotional material about. (Did everyone get that? Or was he trying to be some kind of capitalist wingman or something?)

You shouldn’t have done it like this. Not in your overworked boots and weathering denim overalls, waiting for him to read out faulty code to you because you’ve offered on a handful of occasions to be the rubber duck. Not while you’re turning a frozen tear over and over in your hand and wondering how it manages to never melt. Not blurted out when the quiet goes on for too long because you can’t find it in yourself to hold onto them anymore. In fact, the only thing you probably got right is that you managed to do it on his birthday, and even that might be a mistake in the long run.

Maybe he didn’t hear you. Or maybe he has the sense to pretend not to hear you so you can actually do it properly.

Sebastian blinks a few times, his chair creaking as he sits back in it. “What?”

It’s hard to tell if he’s saying it because he actually didn’t hear you, or because he’s in disbelief. You swallow thickly, pressing the point of the frozen tear into the callused pad of your thumb. It’s cold, and it hurts. “Nothin’,” you say. It’s the most reality you’ll allow yourself to have right now.

To be honest, Sebastian isn’t exactly the type of guy you usually go for. Not that you thought you had a type, exactly. But you never ran into guys like Sebastian in the city. At work they were all pressed shirts and coffee stains and monogrammed pens, pretending to be cordial because that was what fattened the checks. And everywhere else they were chatter and expectations and wireless headphones—if they even bothered to use headphones—so loud and so everywhere, assuming that everyone else was meant to fit to them instead of it being, you know, a group effort, that it was easier to navigate around them than with them.

(Maybe that’s why you haven’t had a boyfriend since college.)

But Sebastian isn’t like that. Never has been, as far as you’ve known him. He’s quiet, solitude, striped scarves and leather and the smell of motor oil swirling with summer heat, hoodies in all kinds of weather and nails as black as the hair that keeps falling in his face. He doesn’t put himself in your space, never acts like someone to be worked around; on the contrary, he holes himself away more often than not, and you’d bet money that he actually disliked you when you first took over the farm. As far as you’re concerned, the only reason the two of you are even friends is because you ran into him enough times by the mountain lake and at the saloon pool table that he decided it wouldn’t be so bad to have you around sometimes.

And then, because you listened to him talk about his job. And his motorcycle. And his game. And the frogs. (Yoba almighty, does this guy love frogs.) And the more Sebastian talked to you, the more he let you in. And the more he let you in, the more of him you saw. And the more of him you saw, the more of him you wanted to see. The more you looked for those frozen tears and obsidian in the mines. The more you read up on the different scenarios in Solarion Chronicles. The more you tried to see what was so great about sashimi.

That’s what liking is, you think. That’s why you say, I think.

Sebastian squints. Probably at a wayward semicolon that kept breaking the whole damn program. He rubs his eyes, pulls his hands away from his keyboard. “Did you say you like me?”

Shit.

Your stomach drops. If only his rug would swallow you up right here and now. (Maybe you ought to talk to the old wizard in the forest about that. He might know a thing or two.) What are you supposed to do? Deny it? Tell him he must be tired from staring at screens for too long, must be hearing things?

Instead you glance at the upside-down graphic novel mere feet away, because it’s easier than making eye contact, and you say, “I think so?”

“You think you said it, or you think you like me?”

“Can we just pretend,” you mumble, “that I didn’t say it?”

Sebastian goes quiet for a moment. Pushes back from his desk. He’s not looking at you, either. “I don’t want to,” he says.

“Huh?”

He turns in his chair; when you look up, his gaze is half-molten. Entranced, almost. “Say it again.”

Your brow furrows; you think you’re doing it to fight off the way your chest goes suddenly, pleasantly tight. “This isn’t some like, Daddy Dom thing you’re doing, is it?”

You definitely couldn’t have made a joke like that back in the spring. He definitely wouldn’t have laughed at it back in the spring. But he does now. It’s not loud, or too much, because nothing about him ever is. He covers it with the back of his hand, and when it dies down he’s a healthy shade of pink, sporting a lazy grin. It’s the closest he’s ever gotten to smitten. It looks nice on him. Really nice. You could stand to see it more often. Much more often. “Just say it again,” he says, “so I don’t think I’m hallucinating or something.”

“Okay,” you say. The frozen tear is still blistering cold in your hands. “I think I like you.”

Sebastian raises an eyebrow, still smiling. “You ‘think?’”

“Look, are you gonna say it back, or are you just gonna tease me about every word that comes out of my mouth?” Honestly, if he’s going to reject you, he can just get it over with. Sure, it’ll make visiting Robin for buildings and upgrades just that little bit more awkward, but at least you’ll have ripped the bandaid, and no one will be the wiser.

He chews his lip, stops long enough to say, “You should go check the fridge.”

You look at him incredulously. “Sebastian, what the fuck?”

“Just do it,” he says, and his voice is so soft that it sounds like he’s secretly saying, Just trust me.

So you do, haltingly, because you have no idea how you’re going to explain to his mom or his step-dad that you need to look inside their entire refrigerator. Each step upstairs creaks under your weight and thuds under your boots, and whatever explanation you manage to sputter out at the front desk, Robin seems to accept. Why her smile is so knowing, you have no clue.

At least, not until you yank the refrigerator door open to find a bouquet of brightly colored flowers nestled on the bottom shelf.

When you bowl back down the stairs and throw Sebastian’s bedroom door open, he’s back to coding. Perfectly normal. He nods toward the couch, eyes glinting with the light from the screen, and it isn’t until you take a seat that he says, “So what are you doing Saturday night?”

———

“I think I love you,” you murmur to the inky black sea.

Word travels fast in Pelican Town, and that’s exactly why no one else outside the little house in the mountains knew you and Sebastian were dating until the Flower Festival the following spring. Not even Sam. Not even Abigail.

(Maybe it’s a good thing Abigail didn’t know. She probably would have killed you. But then, she’ll probably end up killing you both because you didn’t tell her.)

It was Sebastian’s idea; it was bad enough that his mom kept asking questions at dinner, he said while they were laying out presents under the Tree of the Winter Star in the town square, and if she made one more comment about how her little Sebby is finally growing up he might actually make good on his plans to skip town and make it in Zuzu City.

“Would you actually?” you asked him under your breath.

His face faltered. You didn’t think it would. He seemed so committed to the idea until now. Told you about it every Saturday morning when he worked on his bike. “I, uh.” He coughed awkwardly into his scarf, the tops of his cheeks bright pink. “I dunno. Maybe not.”

You didn’t mind keeping it secret. Truthfully, you didn’t talk to many other of your neighbors except to deliver on any requests they pinned up on the bulletin boards next to the General Store or by the river, or to hand off something jarred or canned or bottled that you thought they might like, or even to swing by the saloon on a Friday night and catch up on the latest news. The only hard part about it was coming up with reasons why you were suddenly swinging by the mountain house every day, even when you didn’t have a carpentry project on the docket. (“Oh, Sebastian was telling me about this game he’s been working on, and I used to do computer stuff back in the city, so I figured I’d help a little.”) Or why Sebastian started taking the back way—the one that suspiciously cut through the farmland—on his way to the beach on rainy days. Or why, on those Friday nights, all it took was a glance toward the saloon door for you to join him on his smoke breaks outside. (“Sorry, it’s just a little loud in here. I’ll be back in ten.”)

You don’t even smoke. You’ve never even liked it, no matter how much it smells like your childhood. But Sebastian smokes the menthol ones, so it’s halfway tolerable. Besides, he looks kind of good with his hand covering his mouth and the cigarette between his fingers when he breathes in, and he even mentioned between drags that he’s been trying to quit for months and maybe you’re the push he needs.

Actually, that wasn’t the hard part. The hard part was trying not to grab him by the wrist and drag him behind the nearest closed door. Because Sebastian is quiet and lonely and cautious but he’s bold, he suggests affection with a glint in his eyes across the bar or a hand at the small of your back when he needs to get past you, he locks doors and nudges you against them and tells you, with that same old lazy, smokey grin, that he’s been thinking about you all day, he curls fingers weary with coding and keyboards into the belt loops of your overalls or the roots of your hair, and makes sure that when he kisses you you’ll remember it for days. That you’ll be thinking about him for just as long. He’s so bold that he surprises even himself sometimes; you see the realization of what he’s done flash across his face every so often, and the first time he did it he was the one staring slack-jawed up at you. Like you’d been pulling the strings all along. Like he wasn’t the one who’d powered down his computer and told you come here and yanked you between his knees.

“I’ve never done that,” he confessed afterward, thumb swiping over his mouth.

It took you a second to find your words. “Kissed like that?”

“Kissed anyone.”

Your eyes went wide. “Well,” you said. “Was it, uh. Was it a good first kiss, at least?”

This time, Sebastian dug his fingers into the breast pocket of your overalls, tugged you back down like he couldn’t afford any more distance. “You tell me.”

(Look. It wasn’t the worst way you could find out Sebastian had a tongue piercing.)

So it goes, through the spring. He pokes his head out when it rains in the hopes of seeing a frog or two, and instead finds you gathering salmonberries while they’re still in season, and he tells you to come inside before you catch a cold. He swings by the farm when you need a new coop built because his mom could use an extra pair of hands, and you catch him giving you a dopey smile halfway through milking one of the goats, and when he stumbles you don’t know if you should laugh or scold him for not paying attention, so you do both. Scold, doubled over. You’re secret, and you become less secret, and by the end of the season everyone who’s anyone knows that the farmer managed to nab the shut-in carpenter’s son. Abigail gets over not getting to him first, and Sam gets over not being the first to know, and on Friday nights you’ve gotten down a decent pool rotation. Sebastian always wins out—such is the natural way of things, of course—but he always winks at you right before he pockets the eight ball, and Sam always rolls his eyes in good nature, and Abigail always groans, “Yoba, get a room.”

In the summer, you flourish. Sebastian goes back to working on his bike every Saturday morning, and he still slips out of the house when it rains. He murmurs, “Behind you,” every time he approaches you on the docks—even though you hear the unmistakable footfalls of combat boots among the ripples of the ocean—so that when his hands uncertainly find your waist out in the open you don’t jump and scare the tilapia or the tuna, or knock over the twin buckets of bait and prized catches. He brings an umbrella because you always forget one, never even know where to buy one, and he stands by proudly as you trade fish for gold in Willy’s shop, and when you slide your hand in his and mention you saw a frog or two on the way to the beach this morning, his whole face lights up.

That’s why you tell him. It’s always so nice to see the light in his eyes.

There isn’t much of it on the night of the Dance of the Moonlight Jellies. Actually, there isn’t much light anywhere—just whatever comes from the candles. But that’s the point, isn’t it? The jellies are the light. (Mayor Lewis would probably say something corny about how all of us in Pelican Town are the light, in the end; even thinking about it makes you roll your eyes.)

It’s warm, a little breezy by the ocean. A perfect summer evening. A perfect date evening. And here you are, sitting on the dock with your legs swinging back and forth, saying silly things again, right before Mayor Lewis launches the candle-boat.

Silly things you think you mean. Silly things you think you want Sebastian to hear.

Sebastian doesn’t say anything at first. It’s hard to tell what his reaction is, even when you’re sitting so close together that his thigh is pressed against yours. He draws one of his knees in toward his chest, sits back on his hand and glances at you. It floors you—all the little things he does tend to do that to you. A bump of his hand against yours on the walk back from the beach. The way he presses extra bandages or a spare package of cookies into your palm just before you slip into the mines. The little wrinkle in his nose when he smiles. How he still fumbles when you catch him staring for too long.

When the first of the jellies creep toward the docks, he whispers, “Say it again.”

The thing no one tells you is that these words are easier to say when you think no one is listening no matter how close they are. That it’s easier to be vulnerable when you’re alone because the only one to judge you is yourself. But the person who understands that best, out of everyone in Pelican Town, is sitting right next to you, and he’s giving you the kind of casual up-and-down that turns you to jelly, and he’s telling you to do it anyway. To do it even though it scares you, because it scares you, because every time he’s with you he is doing the same thing.

You swallow thickly. Look him in the eyes. Speak even though the words shake. “I think I love you, okay? Sheesh.”

Something changes in him. Maybe it was always there, and the lapping of the ocean against the pier and the light from the jellies just makes it more obvious. His gaze flits around, here and there, like he’s checking to make sure no one’s looking. (They aren’t, of course. The jellies are a once-a-year opportunity.) And once he’s sure the moment belongs to no one else, he slides his hand over your jaw and brings your mouth to his. And Sebastian has done a lot of bold things, even romantic things, things that make you fold in a way that only he can tell, but this by far takes the cake.

You don’t even realize you’re chasing after him until he laughs against your lips and presses a hand to your chest. “Easy there,” he says. Like he wasn’t the one who started it.

But it’s probably better to stop, because you get the feeling that Vincent is staring at you both instead of at the rare green jellyfish he was hoping would show up, and because you ought to pay the jellies your respects while they’re still here. They’re glowing at your feet—you swear they’re waving among the dance, and when they recede you muse, “I wonder what it’s like out there.”

Sebastian’s watching you instead of the ocean. Steady. Half-molten. “I don’t.”

———

“I think I want you,” you whisper to the darkness of the secret cave.

The thing is that you don’t count your relationship in days or months or seasons. You count it in firsts. The first date, the first gifts, the first kiss, the first I love you. It’s not because you mourn how quickly they pass. It’s because you get to find out how many more you get to have together. And finding new firsts is part of what makes the whole thing worth doing.

And, of course, there’s one you think you’ve been sitting on for a while. And maybe he’s been sitting on it, too.

You don’t know when you started noticing how Sebastian’s t-shirt pulls at his body in all the right places, especially when it rains. Or when you started wondering what might be under it. Maybe it was one of those Saturday mornings, when he pushed himself back under his bike and the creeper board made his shirt ride up enough to show off the line of his hipbone. Or maybe it was one of those Friday night smoke breaks—they were few and far between these days—when he would put out the rest of his cigarette and say, “I’ll walk you home.” When the silence was far too charged, almost daring you to ask him to come inside, to stay the night.

Whenever it started, and whatever it’s doing to you, it had better stop, because the ducks are tired of leaving behind feathers you forget to pick up, and the bok choy is starting to over-ripen, and the crystalaria are starting to overflow. Stupid, forgetful, distracted brain.

Okay, to be fair, Sebastian kind of is a welcome distraction. Especially since now he swings by the farm even when it doesn’t rain, and he offers to help lighten the load as long as he doesn’t have to touch the bees, and when he walks the stone path you’ve been working on for ages he looks around like he’s appraising the place. Not judging. Wondering.

“What are you thinking about?” you ask him once, offering him a sun hat. He burns easily, even though he doesn’t want to admit it.

To your surprise, he takes it without a fuss. “Just thinking,” he says, bending down to gently scratch your cat behind the ears while he fills her water bowl. “It’s nice here.” He glances up at you out of the corner of his eye. “What’re you looking at me like that for?”

You clear your throat and opt to focus entirely too hard on the hoe in your hands instead of the fact that Sebastian looks really, really good on his knees. “Nothing! Nothing.”

Stupid, stupid brain.

You don’t even know if he looks at you like that. If he does, he’s incredibly good at hiding it. The most you’ve ever caught are those half-lidded smiles across the field or the bar, the kind that betray puppy love more than anything. And yeah, it’s nice to know that he still actively has a crush on you and hasn’t just dropped the act now that you’re his. But it’d be even nicer to know that whatever you’re feeling isn’t one-sided. That if you brought it up you wouldn’t feel like an idiot for feeling the way you do.

“So,” you say once the crops are watered and the honey’s been collected. You could probably do with cutting the grass before you shower and get ready for pool night; winter’s coming, after all, and the animals need their hay. “Uh. Spirit’s Eve tomorrow.”

“Mm.” Sebastian wouldn’t say he has a favorite festival in Pelican Town, but Spirit’s Eve is probably the one he dislikes the least. “I’ll pick you up at 9:30?”

Such a gentleman. You wish, as you nod and wave him off and tug the brim of your hat over the heat in your face, he’d be a little less of one.

Spirit’s Eve isn’t exactly something to dress up for, but a date is. Not that you have many date clothes, considering you’re doing way more farming than dating, but you manage to clean up all right. Enough for Sebastian, decked out in his trusty black hoodie, to just barely fold in the doorway of the farmhouse. To linger just a little too long on your legs despite the tights and shorts that cover them up, on the flannel that drapes over your collarbone. It’s the closest you’ll get to any confirmation that you might be on the same page, and until one of you decides to say something, you’ll take it.

“I could shank these guys right in the guts,” you tell him by the skeleton cage, even though you’re trembling as one of them approaches the bars of its enclosure. Which, you know, is totally the most charismatic thing to say to someone you’re thinking about sleeping with.

Sebastian snorts. “They don’t have guts, love,” he says, his hand finding the small of your back. “They’re skeletons.”

“You know what I mean.”

“Do I?”

“Okay.” You cross your arms. “Tomorrow after Sam’s, you and me, in the mines. We’ll see how tough you are then, Mr. ‘I Snuck Into The Caves Last Night And Got A Nasty Cut From A Rock Crab.’”

A smile tugs at the corner of his mouth as he hip checks you. “It’s a date.”

(Maybe you’ll concede on the rock crab thing. They always give you a little scare. Could they just not look so much like the other rocks?)

He’s staring again. And yeah, you want him to stare, but it feels like the kind he ought to do in private. Or maybe it’s the kind that makes you want to go somewhere private. He still hasn’t said anything, after all. And neither have you.

“So, uh.” You nod toward the maze behind him. “Wanna give it a go?”

Sebastian turns around, confused. “Didn’t you figure it out last year?”

“Yeah, but do I look like I’m going to skip out on a perfectly good golden pumpkin? Those things go for, like, twenty-five hundred gold. Unless…” This time you’re the one grinning, leaning in even though you have to stand on tiptoe to do it. “Unless you’re too chicken to go in.”

Sebastian turns pink. Looks down. Goes full scarlet. “I-I’m not a chicken.”

“I dunno. I am the farmer ‘round these parts. I think I know a chicken when I see one.”

“I’m not. Chicken.”

You raise an eyebrow. “Then prove it.”

Sebastian blinks. Once, twice. Like there’s something else he wants to prove. Eventually he curls his fingers around your wrist and tugs you toward the entrance of the maze, and even though you’re still smiling and teasing him to lead the way—since he’s so brave—there’s a warmth in your stomach that’s getting harder and harder to fight.

It’s kind of funny. He has no idea what he’s doing. He stumbles into hedge walls, grunts at all the dead ends no matter what little trinkets he finds, and when he’s mere feet away from the cave entrance you can’t help but stifle a laugh.

“Are you gonna help me or not?” he says. It’s kind of cute how he can hardly take what he dishes out.

“Nah. I’d say you’re doing pretty good on your own.” You study your nails, give him a little clap between the shoulder blades. “So brave.”

Sebastian rolls his eyes and curls his hand around your wrist. “Get in here,” he says under his breath, adds a little growl to it that makes you squirm as he tugs you into the dark.

He’s been fumbling around in the cave passage, cursing the lack of light for at least a couple of minutes when you say it. It has absolutely nothing to do with the maze, and maybe you haven’t made it as abundantly clear as you would have liked to before now. The dark makes you braver, you think. Makes you drop all the acts. Maybe it’s just another one of those spilling things.

Sebastian’s footsteps pause. “You… have me?”

You cross your arms again. Tighter. “That’s, um… not what I mean.”

“Oh,” he says. “Oh.”

“Yeah, uh.” You cough uncomfortably. “Sorry, about. That.”

Except then Sebastian is tugging you along for a different reason, out of the maze, and maybe you ought to have the Mayor arrange for the golden pumpkin to be delivered in the morning.

Sebastian’s already confessed to you a handful of times that he’s never had a girlfriend before, never even kissed anyone before. So when he tells you halfway up the stairs to your room that he’s still a virgin it doesn’t come as a surprise to you. It’s not really something you put a whole lot of stock in, anyway. But he does, sort of. That’s why he says it. The only thing you ask him is if he’s sure he wants this, really sure, because if it’s that important to him then you’re not just going to take it willy-nilly. All he does is squeeze your hand, fits ringed fingers between yours, and when the door closes behind him you tug him to bed and let him take as much of the lead as he wants.

“Say it again,” he murmurs from on top of you, half-nervous, your hands creeping up his sweater to pull it over his head. He’s warm—you didn’t expect him to be—and littered in all the tattoos he’s only ever told you about, never showed you. A bird and a cage, a sun and a moon and the stars. All the little things he secretly loves about Pelican Town, because if he ever decided to leave, he could at least take a piece of it with him. “Say you want me.”

“Seb,” you whisper into the air, shivering when he pulls you into him by the backs of your thighs. You don’t know how he knows what he’s doing—you can hazard a guess that you’ll laugh about later—but you won’t question it out loud, not now, not with his teeth in your neck and his hand in your hair. “Sebastian.”

His hips stutter. “Say it.”

“I want you.” His nails dig; he just might rip your tights, but you hardly care in the heat of the moment. “I want you.”

It’s all he needs to hear before he drags you to the edge of the bed, pulls off his rings and lets them clatter on the nightstand table, and sinks to his knees.

———

“I need you,” you tell Sebastian with your feet sinking into the wet seashore.

It has never been so difficult to wake up in the morning. Why should you have to? The only crops that need watering are the ones in the greenhouse, and you lucked out on enough iridium to get some decent sprinklers to do the job. There’s no honey to collect, the tree sap comes out slower with the cold, and the only things that need doing are filling the barns with hay and chopping wood for the fireplace. And that definitely doesn’t need to happen at 6:00 on the dot.

But it does need to happen. So on more mornings than not, you try to slither out of the warmth of Sebastian’s arms. And on more mornings than not, Sebastian tightens his grip and tries to pull you back to bed.

“Not yet,” he mumbles. Even with his eyes closed his mouth knows exactly where the dip in your back is. “Ten more minutes.”

“Gotta tend the babies,” you tell him in between yawns, pulling on some unflattering long underwear and your trusty overalls and wobbling into your boots. (You knew Sebastian was a fast learner, knew between band practice and programming his fingers would be good for something; you just didn’t realize how fast.) “And you’ve got that work deadline coming up.”

“Laptop.”

“Did you actually bring your laptop?”

Sebastian groans and rolls over.

You laugh, planting a kiss on his shoulder. “I’ll make you a coffee for the road.”

Sebastian never remembers his laptop. Which is probably for the best, because Robin would probably bring half the town down wondering where her son’s gone off to. At least, that’s what you’ve gathered. He seems to think otherwise. Says hardly anyone ever asks when he’s missing. Says it’d be a miracle if they even realized he was missing. If the dark is what gets you to tell the truth, the winter does the same for Sebastian.

Often, just before he leaves, you catch him looking around the kitchen, the whole house, with that same wondering expression from last month.

“What is it?” you ask him.

“Dunno,” he says with a shrug, leaning in to steal a kiss goodbye. “Just thinking, I guess.”

You think this time you know what he’s thinking.

It isn’t until after he leaves for home, after the lock clicks behind him, that you sigh and turn over the box in your pocket. The one with the pendant inside.

Truthfully you’ve had it for a while now. You wouldn’t have it if you didn’t know what to do with it. Wouldn’t have it if you weren’t thinking about giving it away, if you weren’t ready to. But you can’t just hand it off to him with a cup of coffee on his way out, and you can’t give it to him right after he’s vented about his family. And you’d at least like to be somewhat presentable when you give it to him, so you can’t be working on the farm, and you can’t have just finished working on the farm. And it’s such a private, intimate moment after all, so knock out Friday evenings, the ice fishing tournament, the Feast of the Winter Star.

Maybe it wouldn’t be so bad to give it to him first thing in the morning, or right before you fall asleep, the bookends of the day when the haze is in his eyes and it’s clear he really loves you. Maybe that would be the right time.

By all accounts, blurting it out at sunset on his birthday is the best you’ve done so far.

Of course it’s raining again, and of course you forgot to bring your umbrella, and of course you did absolutely nothing to make any of this special besides ask him ahead of time if you could steal him away for at least some of the day. But Sebastian doesn’t ask for much. He likes the rain, and he thinks time spent with you is more than enough of a gift, and he never cares for fanfare anyway, and to him it’s a miracle that anyone would do anything for him on his birthday. Even if it is also, technically, his anniversary.

He leans in, gives you his ear. “What?”

For fuck’s sake. The one time you tell him directly, and the wind swallows it up.

Even a year later, right down to the day, he makes you nervous. All he does is look at you, lean in close to you, and your stomach is turning. Like you’re back in high school again. All these feelings and no idea what to do with them. “Seb,” you tell him with your fists in your pockets. “Marry me.”

His eyes go wide. “What…?”

“Look, I…” You’re fumbling with the box in your coat pocket, and when you press it into his palms you’re shaking. “I know some people just give it away, and some people have this whole fancy day, and make a big speech, but I—I don’t know, I just. I need you to know.”

Sebastian looks like you like there’s more you’re supposed to say. Maybe there is more you’re supposed to say.

Pulling your boots out of the wet sand is easier than figuring out what you’re supposed to say. So you don’t figure it out. You let it spill. Like always.

“I just.” You wring your hands, look down at your shoes, watch your words turn into clouds right before your eyes. “I see how you look at the farm and the house when you visit. Like you want to stay longer, maybe even forever, because maybe it feels like home, but you’re scared because all you’ve ever known about a home is how it’s broken. And that’s why you wanted to go to the city. That’s why you watch it from the cliff. It’s not that you hate Pelican Town, it’s that if you’re going to be alone then you might as well do it in a place where no one knows you. Because it’s easier than being alone in a place where everyone knows everyone but no one bothers to know you. And I—I just, you deserve all the things you want. You deserve a home, you deserve to be somewhere with someone who loves you, and it’s not that I want to tie you down or keep you somewhere you don’t want to be, it’s just, I love you, I want to know you, I want to be home for you. And—and I…”

It isn’t until you trail off that you realize you’ve been crying. That you’ve been speaking around a lump in your throat, that Sebastian goes blurry until you blink, and then for a moment he clears up. He’s still watching you. Still clutching the box with the mermaid pendant in it. He hasn’t put it on. Hasn’t even opened it.

Fuck.

You rub your eyes with the heel of your palm, terrified to speak. “Say something,” you tell him. Still shaking.

Sebastian looks at the box. Looks at you. “Yes,” he says.

Your stomach twists. “Yes…?”

“Yes.” It’s the last thing he says, the only thing he says, before he pockets the pendant and sweeps you up into a hug that sends chills to the roots of your hair, hits all the pressure points that have you melting in his arms. You’d wager it’s a mix of working on his bike and helping his mom that makes it so easy for him to pick you up, and you never pegged him as the sort of guy to swing you around, but he does it anyway. He’s a guy full of surprises, after all. And when he lets go he holds your face and kisses you so deeply that you almost melt into the sand, buries his face in your neck so that his scarf scratches your chin.

You wobble a little, where you stand. “Say it again.”

Sebastian sighs, sinks into you. If you pay close enough attention, you think you can feel everything he ever worried about lifting off from his shoulders. “Yes.”

“Again.”

He holds you tighter. “Yes.”

“Can I put it on you?” You reach for his coat pocket. “The, um. The pendant?”

Sebastian nods, and it isn’t until he unravels himself from you that you notice he’s been crying, too. He tries to make it a little less obvious, but it’s not as though you care. You know he does, though, so you help him with the leftover tears, and you untie his scarf with care, and when you reach behind him to fasten the pendant in place he makes it a game to see how many kisses he can steal while you do it. You try to hide the pendant under his clothes, but he shakes his head, lets it hang freely against the lapels of his leather jacket.

“Let ‘em see it,” he says. Let them know someone loves me.

On the way back to the mountains, you loop your arm around his. “Can I ask you something?”

If before his eyes betrayed puppy love, now they’re the entire dog. “Anything.”

“Can we, uh.” You scuff your heel against the ground. “Can we be engaged for like. More than three days.”

This time, when Sebastian laughs, he throws his head back and lets the whole town hear it.