they’d do it all over again once they arrived. They’d spend a week unpacking, then another week getting Sebastion’s office set up while the team he’d hired to advertise and get him new patients began setting up appointments.
And then life would get started again.
It might have only been an hour and a half from where they’d once been, but it felt like a new world, and the pain was the good kind.
Sebastion took Ivy into the back room to let her sniff around as he set up her dog bed and her toys. She let out a satisfied whuff as she dropped down with her little bunny, gnawing on the ear, and Sebastion wandered into the bathroom. Luca hadn’t said, but it had been the selling point for his husband. Luca indulged in a handful of things, and the massive garden tub with the jets and the shower with two showerheads were some of them. The floor had warming tiles and a mirror that stretched from one end of the far wall to the other.
Sebastion stared at himself—at the old man he was becoming. He wondered if he would outlive the ages of his parents. He wondered if he’d start to slip into a man he never wanted to be. Would his brain start to break down, would he start to get mean or fussy or apathetic?
He’d watched it happen to his parents who had never been particularly kind people, but all the progress they’d made had been stripped away slowly as they aged, and he didn’t understand how they could be the way they were at the end of their lives. So cold, so cruel. They didn’t care if he hurt, if he felt entirely alone.
It petrified him beyond reason that he could go that way, and he could only hope that Luca’s light kept him balanced though it.
Moving into the kitchen, he stared at the boxes on the counter. They only brought a few things with them in the car. Mostly the salt and pepper shakers Luca’s mother sent him every year for random holidays. He’d remarked once about how he loved salt and pepper shakers—it had been an off-hand, pointless comment when she displayed her new ones that looked like goats.
He hadn’t expected her to ever think of it again, but Christmas arrived that year, and there was a set just like hers nestled in tissue paper. Then his birthday came, and another set arrived—a little celery and carrot. After that were octopus and then cats and then owls. And on and on it went, and Luca thought it was hilarious that Sebastion refused to tell her it had been an empty compliment because he was petrified of ever hurting her feelings.
But Sebastion had so few people in his life who truly loved him without reason or expectation, and he held them close to his chest.
Usually, when he said that aloud, his husband just got soft around the eyes and kissed him for long slow moments. Sometimes he laughed and said they’d have to build on an addition for all the figurines because his mom was going to live a long, long time.
He dragged his finger across the top of the box and thought about all the things Xan never got to know about them both. Like how Luca never wore matching socks, but always tried to coordinate his boxers to his shoes. Or how Sebastion hummed when he shaved. Or how Luca bit his nails whenever they were watching romance movies and only calmed down after the first real kiss.
And he thought about all the things they didn’t know about Xan. All the things he’d kept carefully tucked away because his ex had been using those tender parts against him for years. And he felt a powerful shock of envy for the man who loved Xan enough, who was patient enough—who showed up at the right time—and managed to coax those things out of him.
He knew first-hand how freeing it was to be vulnerable with someone without fear of them using it against you. He knew what those first tears of freedom tasted like—and the ache behind those first kisses.
And he hated it couldn’t be them.
He wondered if he was worse than Luca in letting go, and the thought made him smile in spite of himself. He was an aging man who never quite felt like he’d ever be able to grow into the shape of his skin, but he wasn’t done trying.
He supposed he’d never