Current music:	The Taylor Hanson Band - Hey (From Underneath Acoustic)
Entry tags:	happiness is

Chapter Twenty-Nine - Hunting

Plaything

Title: Hunting (29/??)
Author: tumbling_down
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 2100
Genre: Hancest



Zac

Taylor ate a lot of pancakes. So many that I was a little bit worried that he was going to be ill, but as soon as he was finished he bounded off into the living room with Tabitha. Isaac gave me a questioning glance and I shrugged my shoulders. "I guess he was hungry or something?" I said, collecting all of the plates up and carrying them to the sink.

Isaac helped me rinse off the dishes and put them into the washer. "So...Ben?" he asked skeptically, fitting a handful of utensils into the silverware rack.

"Ugh," I groaned. "Don't get me started."

"I don't get why you even have an issue with him. It's not like he has a chance."

"It's not that he has a chance it's the fact that if he did have one he would totally take it. And he's so obvious about it. It's pathetic and really, really annoying," I informed him, handing him the last of the plates to fit into the racks.

"But Taylor doesn't notice," he said, closing the washer and leaning against the counter.

I snorted and shook my head. "Taylor wouldn't notice flirting if it poked him in the ass."

Isaac made a face. "I don't want to hear about anything poking Taylor in the butt."

"Whatever. Ben's just foul. I have no doubt that he wouldn't try to, like, give Taylor drugs and take advantage of him, or something," I grumbled, pushing myself away from the sink and sitting down at the breakfast bar. In the living room, I could see Tabitha curled up next to Taylor while they watched something on television that involved puppets or stuffed animals.

"Really?"

I shrugged. "He's been trying to get in his pants for eight years."

"You're very angry about this," he pointed out, sitting across from me.

"It's just old. I thought I wouldn't have to deal with it anymore, when he moved, but now he's back and he'll probably stay back because it seems like everybody does and. For some reason Taylor likes to hang out with him."

"Maybe you should tell Taylor you don't want him to?"

"I'm just not the kind of person who can dictate who he's allowed to be friends with, Ike," I sighed, picking at a piece of food stuck to the counter. "I'll just try to make sure he's not, like, alone with him."

"Do you really think he'd try something? If he likes Taylor, wouldn't that be kind of stupid?"

"I don't know. Maybe he'd figure that's all he could get."

"I think you're paranoid," he informed me, heading into the living room with a shake of his head.

I made a face at his retreating back, but followed him into the room, anyway. I watched him pull a very unhappy Tabitha away from Taylor and then we said our goodbyes, promising Isaac that we'd call him if we picked out a place so he could come check it out. He swore that there was no way Taylor and I could pick out a house that wasn't going to fall apart within two days of us moving in. The faith he had in us was inspiring, really.

* * * * * * * * * *

We drove down the long driveway to the house and Taylor was clutching his seatbelt, staring out at the property as we went. "Look," he said, pointing out his window. "There's a vegetable garden."

I smiled and gripped his knee. "We'd need to get a plow or something," I commented. "I'm not going to shovel half a mile of driveway."

"We could get a thingy for the Ranger," he said with a shrug. "Or something, whatever, it'd be worth it if the house is as nice as it looked in the pictures."

"And the privacy is good," I said, thinking about the gate at the entrance with the keypad and security camera with voice box. From the street, you couldn't see anything but what looked like a forest. Once we had driven a little bit and gone around a curve of the drive, it had cleared into a very large yard with tons of room for all sorts of different things - like vegetable gardens and swing sets.

When we reached the house, I was a little surprised by how big it was. The picture of it and the description hadn't made it seem quite so huge and there was no mention of how many rooms it held. "Wow," I said, climbing out of my car. "I...was expecting it to be smaller."

"It's pretty, though," he said and I knew he liked all the windows and the big stones that made up the siding. Plus, there was no way that Taylor Hanson was going to be able to look away from the huge double doors or the flowers lined up perfectly along the edge of the path that lead to the porch. "I already love it," he informed me.

"Well, let's not get too excited, huh? We don't even know what they're asking and we haven't been inside."

"I just have a really good feeling about it," he informed me, hooking his arm with mine.

We stayed like that until we made our way to the door, then we dropped arms and rang the bell. Taylor grinned at me when it played a song rather than just making an obnoxious buzzer noise and I could tell that we were probably going to be calling the place home fairly soon. A woman in a business suit answered the door and introduced herself as "Joan the Realtor" which made Taylor smile even more. She said, "Just take a look around. I'll be in the kitchen - I've got some paperwork I've got to finish - so please just come and ask me if you have any questions." Then she walked away and Taylor beamed.

"She's fun," he said, taking my hand and pulling me through the entryway. The entryway in itself was nice, with two closets and plenty of room for shoes and coats and random other things. It had three hallways branching off of it. We went straight down the first hallway and into the living room and dining room. The kitchen was also attached and we could see Joan seated at the table, scribbling away at some paper. She had gone down the hallway to the left, so at least we knew where that led.

"Look," he said, pulling me towards the dining room area. "Wood floors and more than enough room for that table we got a few years ago that's in storage?"

"And a fireplace," I pointed out. "I don't like the carpet, though," I said, walking back into the living room. "It's pink."

"We can always get new carpet," he informed me. There was an indented area on one side of the living room that held two doors. Taylor went to them and opened them both, grinning when he found a bedroom or office and a full bathroom. "And there was a bathroom in the entry way," he informed me and I wondered how I had missed that.

I think Taylor's favorite thing about the living room was the high ceilings. Above us, there was an exposed hallway with railings and lots of doorways extending off of it, from what was visible. I watched him open a door to reveal a stair case leading up to the landing and he grinned at me.

"Let's see where going left in the entryway leads us, first," I said, grabbing his arm and pulling him back with a laugh. "Then we'll go upstairs."

The other hallway lead to a room that Taylor referred to as "the den" and informed me that I would build bookcases along the walls and we would use it as a library. "Or a study," he said after a moment of thought. "We could put a TV set in here, too."

"So...it'd be like a second living room," I suggested and he narrowed his eyes at me.

"Or the den," he said and I shrugged.

"Whatever."

There were two sets of stairs leading off of that room, one to go up and one to go down, and Taylor pulled me upstairs. I almost fell down but he somehow managed to keep us upright while we went. There was a side room that, when I looked, was visible from the living room and dining room, but I hadn't noticed it when we were down there. It was on one end of the hallway, right next to the master bedroom. "This is amazing," he said quietly, walking into the room and I could tell from how quickly his eyes were shifting that he was sizing up where we would put our bedroom set. "We'd have room left over for, like, all sorts of stuff," he said.

"The bathroom has two sinks," I said, peeking inside of it. "And uh..." I laughed, waving him over.

"Oh my god," he said, eyes widening when he saw the hot tub in the corner of the bathroom. "Are you serious? That's huge. We could have, like, five people in there."

"Five people?" I asked, tucking my hand into one of his back pockets.

"Or we could be really comfortable," he reconsidered. "And look," he said, opening the shower door. "This is more than big enough for both of us."

The rest of the upstairs had two more bathrooms and three decent sized bedrooms. Then we trekked down to the basement, which totally sold me on the place. The main area was set up to house another living room , with two areas kind of portioned off. One of them was painted mostly pink and the other blue. Little play areas. "Zac, seriously," Taylor said, looking at the murals in awe. "This is just...almost too perfect for words."

"It kind of is, isn't it?" I asked, taking in another bedroom or office and an area that could have been reserved for a home gym or turned into a small recording studio.

"You like it?" he asked me, gripping my hand tightly. "Because I think I love it."

"I do," I nodded. "I just...you're right, it almost seems too perfect."

"Sometimes that happens," he informed me with a light shove. "Let's go look at the kitchen and talk to Joan?"

The kitchen was beautiful, really. There was room for a double stove if we wanted one and more than enough cabinet space for any possible items we could have imagined. The island in the center and the counter space was conveniently laid out and there was a breakfast bar that connected with the dining room. We seriously loved our breakfast bar and I don't think I'd have been able to handle not having one. There was also adequate room for a smaller table if we wanted one. I think that my favorite part was that the floors were wood, not linoleum, and it felt so comfortable. The entire place felt so comfortable.

"So, what'd you two think?" Joan asked as soon as we walked into the room.

"It's amazing," Taylor said quietly with a smile. He had never been one for subtlety, that was for sure, and I knew that there was no way we were going to be bargaining a price any time soon.

"How many people have you had looking?" I asked.

"Honestly, you're the first and this is the second open house we've done. I think it's too back roads for most people. Especially since this is definitely a house for a family and the closest school is twenty minutes away."

"That's pretty much perfect for us," Taylor informed her.

"Are you two..." she trailed off, looking between us and I watched Taylor blush slightly when he realized what she was asking.

"We're brothers," I informed her. "But Taylor's going to be adopting soon so we're planning on moving out of the city."

"But I'm going to home school them," he said.

Joan nodded, blushing slightly. "Well normally I would say that you should jump and not let the house slip away, but honestly? You've got some time."

"We really need to go to the bank and maybe come back with our other brother so that he could take a look around?"

We left with an appointment for the next day to show Isaac the place. The price that they were asking was much lower than we had expected and Joan said that it had originally been almost $100,000 higher. I was pretty happy that we had decided to look at houses when we did rather than prior. Sure, we had money, but we would still have to take out a loan for almost all of it. It'd probably only take us five years to pay it off, but losing $100,000 off the price would certainly help. We'd probably have to spend it all on carpeting and furnishing, anyway, because Taylor would want all new stuff, I just knew it.

He was practically bouncing by the time we got into my car and I had to laugh and lean over the gear shift to give him a kiss. "I want to live here," he said. "I don't want to even look at anything else."

"You sure?"

"Yes," he nodded, squeezing my hand tightly. He was seriously almost glowing.

"Alright," I nodded with a grin. "We'll go to the bank tomorrow and see about taking out a loan after Isaac takes a look around."

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