Title: Illuminate the Darkest Nights
Summary: There's a reason for everything but Sebastian's got secrets he doesn't want to be unravelled. However Kurt, naturally, is not of the same mind.
Disclaimer: Don't know, don't own, don't sue.
A/N: Warnings for future abuse. I might change the rating due to that.
This has been in the works for about a month, so I'm glad I finally got around to posting it. This chapter is more like a prologue into Sebastian's background, so don't worry, Kurt comes in in the next chapter :)
I love this pairing a ridiculous amount, and I hope you enjoy!
Nowhere doesn't exist. This is a fact Sebastian learns very early on. If you think about nowhere long enough it becomes somewhere and just because no one's there doesn't mean it doesn't exist, and if it exists it must be somewhere. No matter how much you wish for nowhere to come, to surround you, to envelope you in nothingness, it never does.
An untouchable place is a pointless thing to wish for, but he wishes for it nonetheless.
"Do you want to see a trick, Sebby?" his mother asks him, reaching out a hand to pull him onto her knee and tucking her arms around him. Out of the corner of his eye he can see a flicker of fire red as her hair brushes against his cheek, and it looks like the cigarette she's always holding between her teeth, and he thinks maybe that's why she smokes, because it can't be the smell that's laced in all her clothes, smothering and nasty, that keeps her inhaling them, and it can't be the taste, because he tried one once, rolled it round his mouth without lighting it, and all he got was bitterness as he made the filter soggy, so it must be the colour, bright and sharp, like her. She holds half a pack of cards in front of him and tells him to pick one.
"No," he says, "you can see. It's not magic if you cheat!"
She laughs softly and he can feel her smile resting on his cheek. She tells him he doesn't have to point to it but she'll close her eyes anyway so he can if he wants to, and he twists his head to check if her eyes really are shut, even though he believes her because she never lies to him.
Once he's picked it, the king of hearts, he nudges her with his elbow so she knows she can open her eyes. Her breath, tight and warm and full of smoke, tickles his skin and ruffles his hair as she hands him the pack of cards and tells him he can split it. He does, and not in the centre so he can throw her off, and then he watches her shuffle the deck, quick and skilful and practised, her fingers connoisseurs of the suits, fast and trained and so very remarkable (he likes that word, he heard his father mention it at breakfast while he read the paper, "it's remarkable how stupid these bastards are, as if they can control us, what a fucking scam..."). When she's done she runs her fingers along the fanned out cards, gentle and brief, as if they are valuable, and he wonders if they really are valuable to her. The pictures are pretty and he knows she likes pretty things. After a moment she chooses and pulls one out.
"Is this your card?" she asks and he grins because it's the ace of spades and that means he's still one step ahead of the magic.
"No," he smiles.
"No?" she says, shocked.
"No!" he giggles and shakes his head.
She picks another, "I'll get it this time", and waves it before him with a flourish.
"Is this your card?" she asks, and his laughter increases because it's the seven of clubs now and he's beaten the magic again. "No? Well, how is this happening? This has never happened before. Have you outwitted my magic trick, Sebby?"
He nods and she gives a long sigh, squeezing him closer to her so he squirms, and smiles another tangible smile.
"I might as well give up then, no? The master of magic has beaten me. I bow down, good sir."
"No, no, no!" he implores, eyes wide, "Don't stop the magic! Don't give up on the magic." He is so worried she'll stop that he reaches up and grabs her hair in his hand, tugging at it lightly so she'll listen and won't leave him halfway through one of his favourite tricks. He hears her laugh, and thinks maybe laughing is her job because she does it so well, except when her and father argue late at night, and he hides under the duvet so he doesn't have to hear the yells and cracks. Her laugh is wild and tame and controlled and free, like the cigarettes she balances on her lips, and that sound is the best part of the day.
"Okay, okay," she caves, "is this your card?" and he bounces in excitement and claps as there in her hands is the king of hearts and there's the magic that she works and here comes her laugh again, she's always laughing, and "oh Sebby, have I found it?"
"Yes," he says happily, and snuggles into her and her smoky warmth as he clutches the card to his chest. "King of Hearts, King of Hearts, King of Hearts..."
He falls asleep in her arms and dreams of everything and nowhere and smiles because his mother is magic and everyone is remarkable and he's the King of Hearts who only gets caught when he wants to.
"I don't believe in love," Freddie Marshall declares, his face dirty and his tone even murkier. Sebastian smiles and Freddie glares, and it just makes the whole thing even funnier.
"Why not?" he asks, curiosity layered on top of his anticipation of beating this argument to the ground with logic, truth and facts. Freddie pulls a face, disgusted and condescending, if he knew what that was, and gestures around him at the field full of students, running, screaming, talking, happiness like a burn to his eyes. Sebastian would laugh but he'd probably be hit for it, and the ridiculous air around his mud-streaked, obstinate friend isn't worth a bruise.
"Because it's pointless."
"How is it pointless?"
Freddie straightens up, squaring his shoulders and tilting his head, authority in posture.
"If it exists, why do people fight? Why do we have wars?"
He smirks at Sebastian, like he's got him, like that's proof, and for a moment he has, as Seb just pulls his hands out of his pockets and plays with the frayed hem of his shirt. But then he thinks over what has just been said and remembers his argument, the truth, and straightens up himself too.
"So are you saying it's pointless, or it doesn't exist?"
Freddie frowns and rubs his face.
"Both."
"Well it can't be both. If it doesn't exist then it can't be pointless. It'd just be nothing."
Sebastian allows himself a momentary victory as Freddie looks stumped and has to splutter back a defensive reply, and isn't defence the symptom of losing?
"Fine then, it just doesn't exist." Freddie gives him a sideways glance, his expression sly, like he's got a winning point coming up, and Seb braces himself because that expression means he's going to have to give up unless he wants to lose his shoes or rip his jumper or be force fed worms, which is gross. "If love existed, and stuff, if everyone could love, then why would there be murders? Why would there be fights? Why would there be hate?"
Sebastian laughs in relief, this he has an answer for, circling like a mantra in his head, memorised from his mother's words.
"Why would hate exist if not for love? If no one loved anything what would there be to fight over? Who would there be to fight with over?"
Freddie gives him a disbelieving glance, closes his face up for a moment then breathes out, gives him a regretful grin.
"Man, you're going to get beaten up when you're older," and Sebastian blinks so he carries on, "really, what is that? Who taught you that rubbish?"
"My mother," Sebastian replies proudly.
"Right," Freddie sits down on the grass, wiggling around, grass stains unimportant and beckons Seb to do the same, which he does, if slightly begrudgingly, "but girls are disgusting."
Seb lies down, looks at the sky, catches the strands of grass in his fists, smiles.
"Yeah," he replies, "totally."
Je t'aimerai jusqu'à la fin des temps.
He can hear her crying upstairs; can hear her soft sobs like she's next to him. For a second he pauses, she cries so often nowadays and he never knows how to help, she just gives him a mask of a face and whispers "ignore me, Sebby, I'm happy really", even though he knows she's not. She lies to him but he doesn't blame her because she'll have a reason, a good one, she always does. This time, however, he can hear thumps, movement processed by the notes being played between the floors, so he creeps upstairs and pushes open her door. There's a slight haze, the smoke she loves so, but there's her figure, standing there. She turns to him and she looks small, hunched, like she's trying to disappear within herself, which is so unlike her, she's never tried to not be there before.
"Mom?" he asks, his voice small like her stance.
She gazes at him for a while, as if she's trying to figure him out, and now he looks at her properly he sees something he didn't see before. There's a shadow on her face, blooming and nasty, creeping along her cheek and engulfing her eye, and there's a shadow on her neck, dull and threatening and ringing her like a necklace, like a tag, like a warning to whoever views her. He swallows and stands there, waits for her to talk.
Eventually she does, summoning him in with the curve of her fingers, her magicians hands, and sits on the bed, pulling him up next to her. He stares at her, her painted mouth and sad eyes, so so sad. She looks regretful, resigned, and he waits for a why.
"I'm sorry, Sebby," is all she says and sorry is all he seems to be hearing these days, sorry about your father, it's a bad time, sorry about not being able to pick you up, I promise I will be there tomorrow, sorry I have to go out tonight, there's food in the fridge, sorry, sorry, sorry. Sebastian reaches out with his hand to touch her face because her face seems to be telling what her words are not, but she stops him, clasps her fingers around his wrist and holds it there.
"What's wrong?" he asks, begs, and he feels her fingers increase the pressure slightly, press into his pulse harder. "What happened to you, mom?"
She scrunches up her face suddenly and bites her cracked lips and in the half-light streaming through the window her hair looks less like fire and more like blood. She coughs, then relaxes her expression and looks him straight in the eyes.
"You know when I play cards with you?" He nods and she continues, "I teach you how to keep control, to stop what is truly happening in your hand be known?" He nods again. "And you know how every game is not foreseeable, that it's unpredictable? A risk?"
"Yes," he says, watching her, eyes wide.
"Life is like that, Sebby. Things don't always happen…as planned. People aren't always…safe. Life is a gamble," her voice breaks and so does her face, tiny little splinters in her calm masquerade giving her away, her fear. Her fingers on his wrist tighten even more but he doesn't tell her she's hurting him.
It doesn't matter because she lets go, blinks, covers herself again with a smile and a hand smoothing down her skirt. Almost imperceptibly she glances to the side where on the floor there's a suitcase, half empty and full of implications. Sebastian follows her gaze and doesn't speak. What can he do? Wherever she's going, she'll have a reason, she'll come back and it'll all be better, no more arguments, no more late nights, no more crying. She stands up, goes to the wardrobe and with her back to him speaks again.
"Don't tell your father. Protect him for me."
Her voice is open and young, vulnerable and more different than ever before. She bows her head as she takes out more clothes, reaches for her hairbrush on the dresser, grabs some papers and tucks it all into her bag. Sebastian isn't sure what she wants him to hide from his father but he won't find it hard, whatever it is. There's a love in his father's eyes, clear when he talks to his mother, when they talk and don't yell, and there's an admiration when he sees him with those men, his friends, who shake his hand and drink together, and even a submissive respect when he's with those men, definitely not his friends, who make demands and crack their knuckles, but none of those things reside in him when he's with his son. Dismissive acceptance, yes. Irritation, always. He loves you, his mother's always told him, and he believes her, really he does, but it doesn't change the fact that it's apparent the room is better empty than occupied to his father. Hiding something simply means acting as usual.
Sebastian stands up and walks behind her to the bedside table and reaches into the drawer there. He takes out two packs, her third and fourth loves, she constantly tells him, after himself and his father, and goes to her, where she takes them, trembles, then loses the façade completely and falls to her knees, embracing him. He can feel her crying again, the rocking of her shoulders and the dampness caressing his cheek and frowns, pulling back and wiping her face.
"Don't cry, mommy," he mumbles, "I didn't mean to make you cry."
She holds him closer and laughs through her tears.
"These are good tears, darling. Sebby, you know me so well. It makes me sad…to leave you. Sad to not be able to see you every day."
He clings onto her, suddenly terrified. Don't go, he pleads, don't leave me. Why do you have to go?
"Look after yourself," she says, not a request, an order, "look after your father, stay together, okay? Can you do that for me?"
Sebastian nods, buries his head in her neck, shakes.
"Good boy. I love you, don't forget it."
"When are you coming back?"
He feels her pause and prays for her response to be soon, next week, tomorrow, I'm not going at all. She sighs, long and deep and he feels her breath in his hair, warm and smoky and comforting.
"We'll see each other again, I promise. I love you," she repeats the last sentence, reiterating its importance so he understands that he can't forget it, it's the most significant thing in the world to her, he's the most significant thing.
"I love you too."
She lets him go and slips the packs into the top of her bag, cigarettes, that old love, and cards, the magic they share, and gives him a smile that shines through her colourful face, a smile that he'll never let slip from his memory. She touches his hair, strokes it like she used to when he was a baby and smiles, just smiles.
"Goodbye, Sebby," she says.
She kisses his forehead, brushes away the tears he hadn't realised were there and walks out. He runs to the window and watches her walk down the path, out onto the street, until she disappears from view around the corner. He stays there for hours, watching the street, left only with a smile and a promise that he'll see her again.
She never lies, not really.
His father is angry. Angrier than he's ever seen him before, the sort of angry that breaks glasses and slashes cloth and smashes the television in. Sebastian just stands there, back against the wall and answers whatever question is flung his way, if it seems safe enough to speak.
"Where's your mother?"
"I don't know."
"All her stuff's gone. Where is she?"
"She left a few hours ago."
"Why? Answer me, for God's sake, answer me."
"I don't know."
I don't know is an honest answer, almost, because she said life is a gamble and people aren't always safe is enough of a dangerous sentence already for him to realise that replying with it to his father would be entirely stupid and extremely daring, and with his father that's kind of the same thing.
Red is the colour of the evening, pulsing and furious and fatal. All Sebastian wants to do is to go to his room and hide, pretend this hasn't happened, pretend he's at school arguing with his best friend and he can just come home to the sanctuary of his mother, but every time he goes to leave his father stops him, growls and demands more answers that he cannot give. It is tiring, so so tiring and Sebastian can see this is the future. He's young but he's not naïve, not now. Exhaustion. Apathy. Anger.
Please stop, he thinks numbly. Please let me go. I'll bring her back, I will. Just stop yelling.
In the end, as the night has worn them down and his father has poured himself a glass or two of a lethal painkiller, slumped over the table, he raises his eyes to meet his sons and smiles. Nasty, broken, such a horrifically lost smile that Sebastian looks down. The sight may go but the sound doesn't, the clink against the wood as loud as a crash, the slurred coarse tone of his father's words.
"We're leaving too, Sebby," he says unevenly.
Don't call me that, Sebastian thinks, but says,
"Where?"
"Away from here. Far away…France." His father seems to be making it up as he speaks and Sebastian looks back up uneasily. His red eyes are closed, his mouth slightly slack as he smiles again, this time with a stretch of genuinity. Sebastian swallows, feeling very small and helpless.
"Why?" he asks, he has to. He doesn't understand.
"Because it isn't safe here."
Sebastian feels his throat tighten at these words. Did he repeat what his mother said by accident? Did he mention the cards? No, he thinks, I didn't. Safe, he thinks, why do I keep hearing that? Where, he thinks, is everyone running to?
What are they running from?
His father won't give him an answer, passed out over his alcohol, a million miles away. His mother can't tell him, can't explain in her soft voice, with all the right words and her magic, because she's gone too, left him alone, here with everything.
This is the first time Sebastian wants to be elsewhere, where nobody can touch him, where nobody can abandon him, where nothing is dangerous. This is the first time he wants to be nowhere.
He slides to the floor, tucks his knees under his chin and let's himself cry, even though Freddie's always telling him boys don't cry. Freddie's not here. No one is.
His father is as good as his word and before they know it they're on a transatlantic flight, everything packed and locked away in the hold, Sebastian watching the only country he's ever known disappearing beneath him, falling away like he was never there. He thinks of his home, the clouded, scented extravagant wallpaper his mother insisted on, his bedroom filled with scribbly drawings and books he couldn't wait to understand, the magenta front door that his father always said gave him a headache to look at. Then he looks over at the man next to him, his eyes closed even though it's a day flight so there's no way Seb will get any sleep.
"Don't disrupt me," his father mutters out of the corner of his mouth. He doesn't even twist his head to look at his son, so Sebastian turns away himself and looks out the window. He obeys his father and doesn't talk to him the whole flight. There's nothing to talk about. Already the memories of home are being lost. Not forgotten, no, just pushed to the back of his mind. What use are they to him now?
A few hours into the journey, a few hours further away from America and a few hours closer to the unknown, Sebastian stops seeing the white swirl of the clouds below him and instead sees an expanse of blue. The gap in the clouds, rare at thirty thousand feet, enables him to view the vast, endless expanse of the North Atlantic Ocean, wide and graceful and rough and beautiful. He looks at it, so powerful, shaping countries and separating lives and imagines drowning, letting the water drag him in. Away from the closed in, cloying economy class cabin he's in, away from the danger he's escaping that he just can't see. Down, down into the dark, the depths, the numb.
Sebastian leans his forehead against the cold window and feels the pressure of the sea. The water is everywhere and nowhere at once and he likes that. Take me with you, he thinks, and he's not sure if it's to his mother or the ocean but either way it's true. All he wants is to run away, or drown, or both.
And it will steal your innocence but it will not steal your substance.
The clouds come back again, obscure his view and he sighs. Nothing lasts forever.
A/N: Je t'aimerai jusqu'à la fin des temps. (I will love you until the end of time.) - Moulin Rouge
And it will steal your innocence but it will not steal your substance. - "Timshel" by Mumford & Sons
Title from the song "Like a Million Lights" by This Love.
This is actually a fill for a prompt on the kink meme but I can't for the life of me find it again. So if anyone knows of a prompt that sounds vaguely like this (and that's unlikely because I've deviated away from the point a bit, even I can't remember the exact prompt) it'd be really useful. I'd like to thank them, I love this fandom so much. I don't know how it happened but it crept up on me and I'm glad it did!