#plot roast

[mwebber]

2014.

Truthfully, Seb isn’t sure what the real problem is.

Mark is gone; has been gone for months, and the new season should be a welcome, fresh slate. Instead, Seb sits with his head between his hands after a disastrous third day of testing, cringing away from the data on the screen before him, barely listening to Christian as the man prattles on.

Across from him, Daniel says something unintelligible—honestly, after all these years, Seb still can’t understand Australian for the fucking life of him—and the tension in the conference room dissolves, just a little bit.

His voice is all wrong. The timbre of it is too deep, the articulation of every word too calculated, each vibration through the air reeking of an unhinged desperation. 

Relax, Seb wants to say. Everyone already likes you. But Daniel’s palpable insecurity seems to have teeth, and after five years of dealing with Mark, Seb is wary about dog bites. 

“Are you all right, Sebastian?”

Blinking, Seb turns to the source of the voice. Adrian offers him an encouraging smile. Or, it would be encouraging, if the circles around his eyes didn’t give his exhaustion away. 

The least he can do is offer his own grimace in return. “Yes,” he says. Are you? “Thank you.”

Christian carries on with the debrief. The words swim around, useless and limp in the face of the year’s upcoming challenges. 

If he was here, Mark would tap Seb’s foot with the tip of his shoe beneath the table. They’d exchange small bruises on their shins, if he was here. And if Rocky was in his old spot, he’d catch Seb’s eye and glare until they stopped. 

Hiding a sigh, Seb crosses his ankles under his chair.

[mwebber]

[mwebber]

this is so stupid. they pick fights over the smallest things. jenson walks by seb who's completely red in the face with his fists shaking by his side and mark who looks like he's two seconds away from strangling somebody and hears "it's just a pb&j sandwich you fucking psycho"

[mwebber]

obsessed w the idea of mark and seb on public transit like maybe in a busy subway car standing oh so close together… leaning in even closer to talk in each other’s ears and be heard over the rumble and white noise…. swaying against each other as they keep their balance… making eye contact and smiling before looking bashfully away… maybe they’re holding hands in mark’s coat pocket… maybe an errant city photographer captures the two of them cheek to cheek, seb’s face hidden away, but mark’s expression one of pure contentment…

[mwebber]

ghibli-esque magical realism au where teenage mark is cursed to transform into this loping beast of a dog after killing a forest spirit at the behest of his father and wanders the wilderness resigned to his fate when..

lo and behold, he meets another spirit (seb) who demands that he show them the world beyond the forest to search for their brother in exchange for finding the cure to his predicament

they embark on the journey together as hesitant partners, mark with a lingering distrust of spirits/magical beings, and seb with the humiliation that they need to shackle themselves to this useless lump of fur if they want to go beyond the boundaries of their home and find their lost sibling

they eventually become friends, with mark letting his walls down, and seb getting humbled by the great big world..

but gasp! it turns out seb never knew how to cure mark and they were just using him, even though they feel really bad about it bc now they have Feelings, and it's doubly troubling because seb needs a tether to mark's soul to survive outside the forest, but mark doesn't feel particularly inclined to help seb after getting betrayed............

uh oh! time is running out on the cure for mark's condition, and everything is going to shit for both of them, and mark leaves it to the very last possible second before he decides not to be a killer again, and he very reluctantly comes back to save seb at the cost of time he could have spent searching for a cure

seb is sooo relieved but when mark confesses why he saved them, the dots connect and seb wants to curse mark forever and ever for what he did

but the au is about breaking cycles of pain, so after an angsty and mostly silent journey home, seb and mark choose forgiveness before parting ways.....

mark goes to sleep at the edge of the forest as a beast and wakes up as a boy again. he can't perceive magic anymore in this form, but he can see seb bc they're still tied by their souls, and seb doesn't look like a weird talking tree shrub anymore, but a ghostly blonde kid who looks to be around mark's age, peering at him from just inside the treeline

when seb tries to step outside the border of the forest, they're stopped--not even their link to mark can make them manifest into something corporeal

but mark can enter the forest, and he can hug seb! he vows to love the forest and magical beings and reject his father's teachings

seb is like, love all magical beings equally?? or

and mark is like, no, well. i think i might like one magical being more than the rest

they share an innocent kiss and live happily ever

(mark eventually becomes a hermit of an old man living in a quaint cottage in the forest and taking care of the wildlife... when he passes away, a she-wolf gives birth to a pup in the very same forest near seb's tree. it opens its hazel-green eyes, and seb knows immediately that they and mark are tied forever <3)

[mwebber]

or in another house party vein: mark as a bad boy kinda guy, seb as the goody two shoes breaking out of his shell? jenson as mark's bestie dragging seb along to get him to let loose? mark spotting him across the room and immediately clocking his type, coming over and slipping him ecstasy via a kiss? mark being like, i'm going to give this kid the time of his life, and getting pleasantly surprised by seb who is nasty as fuck without his inhibitions? them joining the throng of horny college students grinding against each other in someone's living room?? if the fic goes the slow burn route, maybe seb has a bad comedown and mark takes care of him? if not then maybe they end the night with messy handjobs in a random closet?? is this literally anything

[mwebber]

vague punk au (maybe @theovertaketheoverbrake 's ecopunk au?) seb on mark's lap smoking and taking turns shotgunning and just. making out at a house party....... music blasting hard enough that the bass shakes the walls, room dark and crowded enough that they could probably get their dicks out and nobody else would notice a thing

[mwebber]

alternatively, a cheesy martian romcom where they’re going thru the divorce process but gradually learn that they really Don’t want to divorce, and the fic is told from their frustrated lawyer’s pov. the lawyer just wants to get the paperwork drawn and signed!! while she’s familiar with fighting couples, this particular one so stuck in denial about their own love and vehement about spiting each other that quite literally nothing is getting done.

also, the secretary started a secret betting pool on whether they’d go through with the divorce or get charged with public indecency after realizing their feelings. bertha from HR has $20 riding on the thought that they’ll have the couth to go home before they fuck about things. that’s how the lawyer knows the woman has never met the couple.