Work Text:
Happier times.
More than twenty years ago now.
Dunking each other in the creek, throwing fistfuls of mud and leaves at Luke, teasing Ellie and Gretchen - it was never mean, always a little flirty, or at least the nothingness he knew of flirting back then.
Happier times.
Camping out on the plateau - just him and Ellie and Gretchen and Luke. Little campfires, burning dry eucalyptus leaves to keep the mozzies away. Dumb games, kids games, drinking a little too much.
Lying out under the stars, so bright away from the lights of the town - though they weren’t that dim there either.
He’d gone to Melbourne a bunch as a kid, had found it tall and too loud and the air too wet, with almost all of the stars gone from the sky. It was alien, too bright, too distance, too wrong.
It was the bush that had been his home. Nights in high school, eating junk food and good food out there in the dusk.
With Gretchen and Ellie and Luke.
He probably could have loved them all, if he’d tried.
Too late now.