Chapter Text
He’s five minutes late to the end of Seb’s rehearsal.
Carlos decides that Ricky can take all the blame for that – he realised he forgot to ask Seb when he should drive up to the school, and when he had asked Ricky what time Seb’s classes usually ended, he only got Seb’s phone number as a reply.
It took an hour of wheedling Big Red until he got the time without having to text Seb directly. In the end, Ricky had offered to drive him, but Ricky always had a knack for arriving late.
But Carlos is here, now. Ricky had driven away already, and there’s no turning back.
He had forced himself into the school building before he could run away again – he has to stop running.
Running was what got him into this mess in the first place. He had run away from the fact that Seb had stood him up for Homecoming, but now –
Now if everything goes wrong here, he knows he’ll at least have tried to get some closure. And even if things went south, he’d always have Gina and Ashlyn and E.J. back in New York.
He takes a deep breath.
The school’s hallways are different now. They’ve changed the tiles into brighter patterns, the flickering light by the entrance has been replaced – but it’s still one left turn, down the stairs at the end of the hallway, and two right turns to get to the bomb shelter.
Loud posters crowd up the announcement boards, and he tries his best not to think of the posters he used to make together with Seb – the color guard posters that Seb had helped him draw, paint fights leaving rainbows splashed across Seb’s cheek and tinting Seb’s blond hair purple and pink for days on end.
When he reaches the bomb shelter, the door is slightly ajar, the chatter of students floating out into the hallway. There’s no music – they must have finished rehearsals early, but there is laughter.
He lets his footsteps slow.
For a moment, he tricks himself into being ten years younger. It’s easy to blur the lines of memory, to fool himself into thinking that he’s walking towards the bomb shelter, excited to see Seb, to see his best friend. He can even picture it: Seb waiting for him on the piano bench, purple music binder splayed open and a smile ready to make Carlos’ afternoon brighter.
Shaking his head, Carlos closes his eyes.
He opens them again to peer through the gap in the door.
Seb has a gold binder clutched to his chest, and he’s standing by the mirrored walls, speaking to one of his students. The student is strumming a guitar, picking listlessly at the strings, but they smile up at Seb anyway.
Whatever advice Seb was giving, it must’ve been good. He’s had Seb talk him through enough of his fears that he knows how easily Seb’s unwavering faith – freely given and fiercely held – could soothe away even his darkest doubts.
It’s only after Seb waves the student goodbye that he looks up – and through the mirror, spots Carlos.
For a second, Carlos’ chest feels tight.
How many times had they spotted each other like this? In between stolen moments and locker doors, before Carlos had ever known the weight of love.
Even then, though, he’d known the reflection of it, had known the comfort of being seen and understood.
There might be too many years between them to ever hope for anything more than closure, but light once seen was memory, and beyond all the hurt, he sees a glitter of it reflected back in Seb’s smile.
It’s a small thing, hardly as wide as Carlos used to see Seb smile – as he used to make Seb smile – but it’s there, and Carlos smiles back in greeting.
They end up sitting in a car parked outside Slices.
Somehow, the stilted silence between them had turned into singing – Seb had plugged his phone into the car, and an Anastasia song burst from the radio. It was June, Seb had started humming, I was ten –
I still think of that day, Carlos had joined in, more softly, now and then –
It must have been one of the songs that Seb was teaching the students for the Christmas play, and it can’t mean any more than that. But the lyrics twist and turn – then a boy, caught my eye – and it’s hard not to look at Seb.
He steals a glance at him through the rearview mirror, just as Seb flicks on the turn signal to park.
The car stops.
The music ends, abrupt.
Carlos swallows. Hanging from the rearview mirror is a small crocheted cow, with a little crown of flowers on its head.
“You’re, uh,” he clears his throat, needing to break the silence. For a moment, he’s not Carlos Rodriguez, a famous Broadway choreographer. He’s not Carlos, a lonely twenty-five-year-old boy still as lost as he once was. He’s just Carlito, young and looking at his first friend. “Your students. They love you.”
“I’m not the best teacher,” Seb stares out the windshield, “I’m just – a farmboy.”
Carlos shakes his head. He’s not sure what he’s trying to say, but it spills from him anyway. “I know people on Broadway with half your talent – you could’ve been – you still could be a star.”
“I – ” It’s Seb’s turn to shake his head, “I went to New York.”
“What?”
“My sister was visiting a friend, four years ago and she took me with her.”
He stares at Seb, openly this time.
“Oh.”
“I looked you up,” Seb twists the car key out from under the steering wheel, knees bouncing nervously, “you’re pretty famous, you know? Saw that dance video you posted on your website – probably hit repeat on it a few hundred times.”
“Seb – ”
“I found your studio there, on thirty-seventh street.”
And what – what can Carlos say to that? There’s the slight drumming of Seb’s fingers against the steering wheel, and it’s only then that he notices the braided pink bracelet around Seb’s wrist.
“You did?” Carlos asks, needing and dreading whatever answer Seb had.
“I must’ve stood there for hours,” Seb’s hand on the steering wheel stills, too calm for comfort. “I saw dancers coming in and out, heard them talk about how strict you were, how hard you pushed them, and how – ” a pause, a chuckle, rueful and almost fond, “how you always caught them when they stumbled.”
Carlos lets out a slow breath.
He’d given Seb a braided bracelet once. Yellow, to match the color of the sun. To match the gold of his smile.
“And then I saw you, with a,” Seb goes on, eyes flicking down to the handle of the handbrake between them, “a woman on one arm, and a guy on the other, and you were laughing – and you were happy.”
“E.J.,” Carlos finally finds his voice again, chest still too tight. “That was – that had to be E.J., and Gina.”
Seb’s smile turns sharp. Brittle, but not bitter.
“I’m glad you found them,” he tells Carlos, warm as ever.
It isn’t jealousy, it’s – wistfulness?
Carlos frowns. “We’re not – we’re just friends.”
“Friends,” Seb chuckles, and now there was bitterness, tinged with a wry humor, “we both know that word isn’t so simple.”
Even now, Carlos thinks again, Seb could still make him laugh, no matter how twisted things were.
He snorts, amused.
“Gina’s dating E.J.,” he feels the need to say, “I’m not – not seeing anyone.”
“Hotshot choreographer like you?” Seb asks, half-teasing, the air between them lighter. “Can’t be that hard to find someone.”
“It’s –” Carlos finds a wry smile of his own, trying not to let it sting. “It’s not so easy to find the right partner.”
Seb hums. A short tune. There aren’t any pianos around, but Carlos finds he still understands it, finds he can still hear all the acceptance and regret warring between the notes. In the end –
“I’m glad at least,” Seb says, always the wiser of the two of them, “that you got your dream.”
You, Carlos thinks almost desperately. You were my dream. And if Carlos was more truthful, he’d admit that he still wants Seb. He wants to hear the end of the tune, the end of whatever song Seb chose to sing.
He wants to take the bitterness and regret and whisper a thousand apologies, just as much as he wants to scream, wants to hurl anything against a wall and watch it break, if only to know that he wasn’t the only one broken. That he wasn’t the only one aching.
But he can’t have Seb.
Not anymore.
So he deflects.
“What about yours?” he unclicks his seatbelt, more than ready to get out of the car. “Your dream of singing.”
“I have the farm,” Seb turns away, pocketing his keys. “It’s always been home, and I can’t ask for much more.”
They both step out of the car. The air is cold, the faint sounds of carollers singing down the road drifting towards them.
“How is,” Carlos gives Seb a quick nod of thanks when Seb holds open the door to Slices for him, the burst of warm air a welcome friend. “How are your parents? Your siblings?”
He wonders what happened to the old stocking he used to have on the Matthew-Smith fireplace, hung in a place of pride beside Seb’s stocking, and always stuffed as full with gifts as all the other Matthew-Smith children.
“They’re good. You met Sophie – I have three nephews now too.”
“And your cows?”
“Milky White is getting old,” Seb says, picking a booth in the corner for them. With the December holiday spirit coming in full swing, Slices is crowded with families laughing over a large pan of colorful pizzas. Big Red had spotted them right away, though, pointing them straight to the booth.
If there’s mistletoe hanging behind Seb, Carlos pretends not to notice it. Big Red always loved being cheesier than his pizzas, and not for the first time, Carlos thinks Ashlyn would fit right in, with her unabashed love for everything.
“I still remember trying to milk the cows,” Carlos deflects again.
Seb huffs. “I told you to wear the milking glasses.”
“I don’t like it when you’re right,” Carlos huffs back at him.
“Too bad,” Seb teases, “I like it when I’m right.”
They order. More precisely, Big Red comes to their tables to bring them two cups of soda, and promises to bring out the best pizza in the house. He leaves them both with a wink, and Carlos knows that Big Red will be texting Ricky in the kitchen.
Gossip always spread fast between them.
Seb hums some more, and they skirt around the topic until after Big Red comes back with the pizza, until after they’ve both managed to make their way through two slices of it.
He reaches for the parmesan cheese shaker between them, just as Seb reaches for his soda cup, their knuckles knocking against each other, and –
“I am sorry,” Carlos throws the words out, hands curled into an empty fist. “I’d change things, if I could.”
He’d fight his parents. He’d make it to that Homecoming dance. What did it matter that Seb never came to the Homecoming dance? That Carlos had to leave early? If the dance didn’t mean as much to Seb as it did to Carlos, surely their friendship meant more than a missed dance.
And beneath all the years of want, of staring at Seb’s lips through locker mirrors and aching to hold Seb, they had been friends first. Before Carlos had realised he wanted to dance with Seb, before he realised he wanted to kiss Seb all those years ago in high school, he had realised he wanted to simply sit beside Seb. Wanted to hear about Seb’s cows and tell Seb about the new dances he learned because they were friends.
Maybe, Carlos thinks, maybe that’s why it hurt all the more.
Now, Seb only closes his eyes. “It’s all in the past.”
Is it? Carlos wants to press, wants to push. It’s irrational, childish even. Had it been so easy for Seb to push Carlos away? To box up all their memories and call it a day?
“It’s all in the past,” Carlos manages to echo.
If Gina was here, she’d roll her eyes at him –
“You know something I never told you?” Seb laughs instead, running a hand through his hair. It isn’t a happy laugh, hollow with all their unsaid words – and Carlos doesn’t dare look too closely at how he still knows each of Seb’s laughs, even after a decade apart.
Carlos swallows, wrapping his hand tight around his red Slices cup, not daring to let go, scared of trembling, of tumbling even more.
“What?” Carlos asks, a challenge.
He’s held on this long, made it this far. Whatever it was, he’ll leave it all behind soon enough. In two weeks, all his boxes would be shipped, his parents would sell the house and it would be like he’d never lived in Utah –
“Remember when we played that game in Nini’s treehouse?” Seb tips his gaze up, eyes skittering away from Carlos. “Spin the bottle, and we got seven minutes in heaven.”
They’d been fourteen then, knowing almost nothing of the world, still stuck in their castles in the sky.
Carlos nods.
Of course he remembers.
He remembers wanting so much to kiss Seb, but wanting to kiss Seb not because a silly game made them kiss.
If Seb kissed him, Carlos had wanted it to be because Seb wanted to kiss him. Because Seb wanted him.
He hadn’t thought he’d be able to bear it if it was a meaningless kiss for Seb, and he had asked Seb to not. Had asked Seb to lie to their friends.
Ricky still thinks Carlos kissed Seb in that treehouse, and Nini had carved Carlos and Seb’s names beside hers and Ricky’s – marking the walls with a fantasy, a prayer that their love might last.
Carlos had thought that Seb would’ve forgotten, had thought –
“I wanted to,” Seb looks back down, staring at the half-finished pizza between them, “I wanted to kiss you then.”
What?
Everything stutters to a stop.
Carlos stares at Seb, close to shattering.
He doesn’t think he can take another blow, another truth sending his world spinning impossibly fast.
He’s clawing to breathe, to find balance – he’s sitting down, but he thinks the ground beneath him might be slipping away because what if?
What if Carlos had been a little braver, a little more sure of himself –
“But you found your people in New York,” Seb continues, and he sounds so far away to Carlos, “so I guess – I guess everything turned out for the better.”
There’s a slight pinch to Seb’s voice that Carlos recognises.
Somehow, Carlos can still tell when Seb is lying.
“I – ” Carlos starts, trying to find his own words to tell Seb something, to give voice to the drumming of his heart beating too loud in his ears, “I guess it depends.” He forces himself to breathe, the words stiff on his tongue, “depends on how you look at it.”
Seb leans forward and plants an elbow on the table, chin resting on his hand. His sharp blue eyes study Carlos’ face, and this time, he’s no longer searching for something. No longer looking for the young boy that Carlos once was.
It’s almost scary to have Seb finally look at him.
To have Seb see the person he’s become, and some part of him shies away from the thought, the fear, that Seb might not like that person –
“Carlos?”
And Carlos can’t say anything – has never been able to say anything to Seb except –
“Yes?”
This time, when Seb smiles, it is gentler. More truthful. Without any of the hollowness or bitterness from before. Seb looks unflinchingly straight at Carlos’ eyes, and for a moment, Carlos doesn’t know Seb. Carlos loses him again – all the friendship they’d rekindled, all the familiar laughs that had sung of home, they fall away through the cracks of Carlos’ past mistakes.
Carlos finds himself drawn, held frozen by it. It’s too much, almost as painfully blinding as looking into the sun.
Seb’s gaze is brimming with something Carlos hasn’t ever seen before, all the brittleness of earlier turned into something soft and delicate – with none of the brightness that usually accompanied Seb’s smiles, but with all the simple acceptance, the openness that had always made Carlos feel safe.
This time, Carlos can’t tell what Seb is thinking of.
Seb swallows.
All the while, his eyes hold steady, no longer hiding, no longer looking away.
And when Seb speaks, his voice is as gentle as his eyes.
“I really am happy for you.”