Title: Not A Bad Thing
Author: an-alternate-world
Rating: K
Characters/Pairing: Blaine Anderson/Sebastian Smythe, a side of Blaine Anderson/Kurt Hummel (although Kurt isn't seen)
Word Count: 3,668
Summary: He couldn't tell you when he first realised he regretted his words and actions that had led to this point, but he had a pretty good idea that it had everything to do with the moment that rose petals were falling from the top of the spiral staircase in the main entry and he was fighting against the urge to revisit his breakfast.
Warnings/Spoilers: It huuuuuuurts and then it gets better I promise.
Disclaimer: I am in no way associated with Glee, FOX, Ryan Murphy or anything else related to the FOX universe.
I asked for Seblaine prompts on Tumblr and Carmen (sebastiansaurusrex) prompted a fic because she'd been listening to Justin Timberlake's 'Not A Bad Thing' a lot. You're welcome. (I think.)
He couldn't tell you when he first realised he regretted his words and actions that had led to this point, but he had a pretty good idea that it had everything to do with the moment that rose petals were falling from the top of the spiral staircase in the main entry and he was fighting against the urge to revisit his breakfast. The fact he'd ever allowed himself to hope, allowed himself to feel, allowed himself to lo-
No.
He really needed to stop thinking like that now.
He'd seen Blaine brim with honest smiles and glitteringly happy eyes and his entire view of 'love at first sight' being a load of crap had turned upside down. He'd seen him confidently shake hands and pat backs and hop-skip through a routine he shouldn't have known. He'd seen him poised and strong, willing and capable, confident and alluring.
His ass hadn't been so bad to see either.
He'd seen Blaine's eyes brim with tears and his bottom lip wobble before it was caught between teeth to steady it. He'd seen Blaine's hands tremble as he'd reached up to smear away the traces of tears and falter in the middle of steps they'd been practising for hours. He'd seen him broken and wilted, defeated and empty, unwilling and unable.
He'd do anything to take it all away.
He wouldn't say that he'd spent a lot of time with Blaine after the break-up but he'd like to think that dragging the boy out for coffee at the Lima Bean twice a week constituted something, even if the constitution of the coffee had weakened with the latest wave of jobseeking junior high kids attempting to brew something decent. He'd helped Blaine with homework, he'd helped Blaine plan a dance, he'd helped Blaine with phrasing a response to Cohen-Chang's advances.
He'd helped Blaine after sleeping with his ex at a disaster of a non-wedding, even though he wanted to gouge out Hummel's eyes and make him eat them along with ensuring he truly was a eunuch.
He'd spent hours texting Blaine on the days they didn't see each other and hours talking to him on the phone at night when the other boy was stressed and feeling lonely. He'd crushed his emotions into a compactor, crumpling them into nothing because – despite knowing from Nick and Jeff that Blaine was pretty oblivious about the feelings of others – Blaine was wholeheartedly focused on salvaging his relationship with Hummel.
He'd made promises and reassurances to Blaine and he'd made bargains and plans to himself. He'd clutched Blaine to his chest when the lockdown of the school had finally been relaxed and the boy had run from the gates and toppled into his arms. He'd breathed the boy in, holding him steady when he could feel the rattling of his bones, whispering even more promises and assurances until some of the terrified sobs had slowed. He'd driven Blaine home and held him on the couch until the Andersons had gotten home and allowed the family the opportunity to fall apart and heal without his awkward observing.
He'd listened to Nick and Jeff try to offer him advice on how to approach the other boy about how he felt, knowing that denying his feelings to these two meddlers was useless. He heard them retell the epic moment Blaine had awoken to his feelings about Hummel but he had absolutely no intention of singing a song about a dead bird – or any other sort of dead creature for that matter – to gain Blaine's attention. Hell, he barely had any interest in singing at all after they'd all gotten kicked out of Regionals and he wasn't entirely disappointed when their meddling ways were bundled out of his room because of curfew.
He'd seen the sparkling light start to flicker back to life in Blaine's eyes and he'd contented himself with the feeling that the boy was finally starting to heal, starting to recover, starting to move on.
Of course he had to help his friend propose to his douchebag of an ex.
After all, if he didn't, he would have been the worst friend in the world.
He'd been so fucking deluded.
Swaying in the background while your heart was carved out of your chest was surprisingly easy. He could feel Nick and Jeff's eyes on him, as if they were obsessed with watching his slow, painful, bloody disembowelling and when it was over – when there'd been that disgustingly high-pitched and breathless "Yes!" followed by a kiss that never ended – he'd turned away and walked.
And walked and walked and walked.
It takes two missed coffee dates.
It takes nineteen attempts by Nick and Jeff to break open his door.
It takes thirty-two missed calls.
It takes fifty-seven unreturned text messages.
It takes seven days.
Only then does the door get thrown open.
Trent unapologetically holds up his RA keys as he hurriedly retreats and a fiery pocket-rocket of gelled down hair and too-bright yellow bow tie enters.
"What the fuck?"
It takes him a moment too long to realise that the words weren't said by him but by him. He carefully removes his glasses and places them delicately on his desk like the wood might somehow crack them the same way his heart feels cracked in half. He turns his head to the side and runs a hand through his hair, haphazardly arranging the strands that have been haphazard for a week from his new unhappy habit.
"What the fuck, Sebastian?" Blaine repeats, shutting the door behind him, his arms folding over his chest. The dark blue polo he's wearing accentuates the swell of his biceps and the inward curve of his waist and it's only because Sebastian is fairly familiar with the variety of Blaine's attire – which veers between painfully attractive and clown-like – that he no longer has any visceral reaction to it.
He's not sure when that happened either.
"You might need to clarify since I'm not-"
Blaine's eyes belong to someone he barely recognises. They flare with such anger, such rage, that his words dry up in his mouth and he runs a hand through his hair again.
"I thought we were past the mindgames and the bullshit and the avoidance of questions?" Blaine snaps, the side of his jaw popping as he grits his teeth together.
He considers pointing out that all three of Blaine's suggestions could be considered part of the same larger picture, but he's fairly sure that would just get him sworn at again. And while hearing a little bit of Blaine's filthy mouth show is a bit of a turn-on, and he enjoys that the honey-eyed boy has blossomed into a confident man again, he's not exactly a fan of being the target of such fury.
For seven days, he's avoided the pitying eyes of Nick and Jeff – and even Trent. He's avoided Warbler rehearsals and he's avoided sitting with them at meals. He's avoided anything social outside of attending class, showing up to lacrosse practice in an attempt to shed some of his pain, and then retreating into the inner sanctum of his private dorm room again.
At some point, he'd politely thank his father for the opportunity not to have someone prying into his personal business every five seconds.
He realises he feels broken and defeated, completely unwilling to engage in a fight. He's tired, he's exhausted, he's worn out.
He has nothing left.
"Why are you here, Blaine?" he says, trying to appear casual as he props his head in one palm against the desk. He tries to look unaffected and aloof, confident and calm and capable of steering this conversation in whatever direction Blaine chooses to go.
Mostly, he's trying to hide how he feels like an Aztec ruin.
"Why are you avoiding me?" Blaine retorts, like he's the centre of the fucking universe that Sebastian's entire existence revolved around.
It's not as if he'd been the sun and the moon and the starts and the planets and the-
"Don't flatter yourself. I'm avoiding everyone."
Something shutters closed in Blaine's eyes, some of the anger squeezing out and being replaced with something else entirely. He thinks it's confusion. He's good at recognising when Blaine's feelings change, but he's always been hopeless at understanding what he sees.
"Since when?"
Something clenches in his chest – quite apart from the slow constricting he feels around his heart – and a voice in his head chirps, He knows.
"In case it escaped your notice, I've never been a social butterfly like yourself."
It's distant and cold and he knows how much it stings when he hears Blaine's bitter laugh and watches the boy turn away from him. His back is still straight, his shoulders are still stiff, but there's something in the way that he fixes his gazes on a line of trophies and books on a shelf that he knows is Blaine working to conceal his reaction. He'd seen it when Blaine had confessed to cheating, when Blaine had demanded answers about the steroid program, when Blaine had confessed to sleeping with Hummel on Valentine's Day. He knows Blaine can't maintain eye contact when something is tearing parts of his heart apart the same way that he can.
"You sleep with anything that has a pulse," Blaine says finally, his voice softer. It's less demanding and yet no less cruel. They know each other better now, inside and out – of the non-physical, non-sexual variety anyway – and they know the precise words to say to inflict agony on the other.
"And you sleep with something that hasn't got one. Does that make us even?"
An inhale passes Blaine's lips, sharp and – if he'd listened closely enough, which he hadn't – faintly unsteady. "That's what this is about, isn't it? Kurt?"
The name – the fact Blaine can even say his first name after months of crying any time he'd tried to say it – fills the air with something toxic enough to burn holes in his lungs. He drops any attempt at watching Blaine and looks back down at his History paper which he's managed to write a few complex sentences for and little coherent argument. It feels like a mirror of this conversation, the way they can cut each other with words and yet it's what is unspoken that holds everything together. Anyone listening wouldn't understand but they do.
"I know you don't like him but-"
"He's only going to hurt you again," he interrupts, not wanting to hear Blaine's attempt – again – to explain his feelings for someone else, someone he'll never like or accept as influencing Blaine's life so thoroughly. "He's thrown his disinterest in your face before. He hasn't forgiven you for cheating. He sucks the life and light out of you but you're too fucking blind to realise that there's more to life than being a yo-yo to your first love."
His heart hammers loudly in his ears, a quick staccato that turns into an uneasy, unsteady ostinato. His handwriting blurs in front of his face as everything around him gets sharpened into acute focus.
"He agreed to marry me," Blaine says, his tone desperate – as if an engagement somehow mends the broken strands of their relationship, as if a ring builds a bridge above the hell that still burns below.
"Then I guess you don't need anyone else in your life anymore," he replies, his fingers curling around his glasses in an attempt at normality. "You can see yourself out."
He waits.
And waits.
And waits.
The door doesn't open.
Blaine doesn't leave.
"Why the hell are you still-" He stops speaking when he turns to look for Blaine, finding the boy in a huddle on the floor by his bookshelf. There's a book across his lap and even though he'd been listening out for Blaine to leave rather than focusing on his work, he hadn't heard any of it.
Blaine traces his fingers over the faces and letters in the book and even though his glasses are for reading rather than distance, he can see the way Blaine's hand trembles as it reacquaints itself with familiar layouts of shapes and colours in the scrapbook.
"I never really knew if you liked this or not," Blaine says, evidently feeling his gaze. His voice is so quiet, so sad, like it had been months ago when he'd tried to explain over the phone why he wanted to stay at McKinley rather than return to Dalton, why he was rejecting Clarington's offer, why he was rejecting the olive branch that he kept extending to the other boy. "I can see you've added to it."
He discards his glasses to the wood of his desk again and tries not to fall into Blaine's trap of confessing more than he's comfortable with. Accepting the scrapbook at Christmas had been a difficult exercise in restraining a confession of his feelings. "I figured there were photos that were missing."
Blaine looks up at him, his eyebrows scrunched together and his forehead wrinkled. "Then why are there so many of me?"
That same chirpy voice speaks up again, He doesn't know because he's so fucking oblivious.
"Once a Warbler, always a Warbler," he says, as dismissively as he can while pushing away from the desk. The window offers a pretty spectacular view of the grounds and he can see the soccer team running drills on the field in the distance. The expanse of green, the cheer of the sunlight, helps to keep him distracted.
He hears the book snap closed behind him and then the sound of it being pressed back to the shelf. He can hear the pop of Blaine's knee when he stands – an injury from the attack that had never properly healed – and the quietness of Blaine's breathing. He can only hear it because he's pretty sure he stopped breathing so that he can focus as intently as possible on what he can't see behind him.
It's probably why he startles so badly when a hand touches the side of his arm, fingers trailing down his rolled up shirt sleeves to settle against the curve of his elbow. They're warm but he can detect the faint shake as Blaine presses up behind him, his temple fitting between his shoulder blades.
"Sebastian, please…"
He watches one boy, probably Josh, kick ball after ball at the goals while another, Aiden darts around trying to stop them. He feels like he needs Aiden here to stop Blaine sinking into his skin and ripping him apart from the inside.
"Bastian."
The worst part is that he can feel his defences crumbling and he knows he's utterly powerless to stop it. Blaine's left arm loops around his waist and his palm spreads, comforting and comfortably, against his belly. Maybe it's meant to be something to give him support and strength, but mostly he finds it causes more problems in his fight to keep Blaine at a figurative arm's length. Blaine's tactility had always been something he'd struggled with due to the fire it lit beneath his desire for the other boy.
"How come you can return to him, love him, after everything he's done to you?" he says quietly, feeling Blaine's stomach expand and contract against the small of his back and trying to use that as a means of keeping his own breathing steady. He has a feeling that's the reason for Blaine's hand against him, a way to measure his heart beat and his breathing. If only Blaine could sense the twisting pain that has infiltrated his gut the past week.
"Loving him isn't such a bad thing," Blaine replies, equally quiet and, he thinks, faintly uncertain.
He closes his eyes, the dancing of the trees casting dappled light against his eyelids. "Even if someone else might, one day, love you more?"
"He'll forgive me eventually. He can grow to love me again." He knows Blaine isn't convinced by what he says. They've talked about how Hummel would never be capable of truly trusting him again. It's probably why the proposal had been so unexpected, and thoroughly heart wrenching.
"What if he doesn't?" he challenges, and he can feel the tension that settles in Blaine's arm, the way he lowers his head against his back. He knows that Blaine's probably spent a week trying to convince everyone else that they'll be happily married and grow old together.
He also knows that Blaine knows he will never be convinced so easily.
Blaine doesn't answer. He doesn't have to. It's clear that he isn't convinced himself of the longevity of his relationship, despite the proposal.
He opens his eyes slowly, watching a bird swoop down into the trees, watching it disappear for a few seconds before it darts back out with a second bird chasing after it. Just like him and Blaine, always chasing each other but never really catching up.
He shifts on his feet, turning around in Blaine's arms. The limbs fall away from him and he's left looking down at a boy who can barely meet his eyes, who has shoulders that quake just a little. He stands, uncertain for a moment, and then thinks that maybe he needs to stop chasing and let himself get caught.
His hands close around Blaine's wrists, assessing his pulse and the quiver, before he continues them upwards, tracing his fingertips over the lean line of muscle to the collar of his polo shirt. He slips the golden bow tie undone and lets it hang limply around Blaine's neck. He can see the increase in Blaine's breathing, the way his shoulders rise and fall a fraction faster, and when his fingers skim over the column of tan neck, can feel the noticeable shift in his heartbeat to something that seems to be fluttering like a butterfly's wings.
"What if he never truly forgives you?" he repeats, cradling Blaine's jaw in both hands and tilting up his head. Syrup-coloured eyes are rimmed by red, his bottom lip reddened from chewing it between white teeth. "Is loving someone else really such a bad thing?"
He watches those eyes flick up to his face, cautious and guarded and yet somehow the depths have been cracked wide open, so broken that he can see all the way to the schism of Blaine's soul. For all the months of helping Blaine heal, there are things that had stayed locked away and protected by fire-breathing dragons and stubbornly defensive boy with ridiculously over-gelled hair.
"No, it's not such a bad thing," Blaine whispers, the tips of his fingers grazing the cotton of his school shirt that sits on his waist before curling into it. They each exchange long, measured breaths and even longer stares as he watches something twist and click in Blaine's head, as the gears finally lock together into something else.
And then he starts wondering if maybe Blaine is saying that it's not such a bad thing to love him and maybe Blaine isn't the only one that's oblivious.
He leans in, hesitation thick on his breath as he takes his time and makes his intentions clear and waits for Blaine to pull away or push him into the windowsill in refusal.
But it never comes.
The rustle of the leaves in the breeze, the whistle of darting birds, the footsteps of boys in a high school dorm corridor, fade into nothing as the only thing he can focus on becomes Blaine's lips tentatively moving against his own. He angles Blaine's head to the side, drags his thumb over stiffened jaw, and with a nervous exhale, Blaine's lips part and his mouth tastes like cinnamon and coffee and mint when he dips his tongue experimentally inside. He can feel the tightening grip of his shirt, can feel his quickened breathing racing around his skull, and he can feel the vibrating of his heart which is so fast it seems to have lost rhythm.
The kiss could last for days but he's pretty sure it's merely a scant few minutes before he's brushing his lips against Blaine's in something soft and almost chaste – he only knows chaste by its definition and not by its action. Blaine takes a few more minutes before his eyes open and the gold is purer than he's ever seen it with clear green around the iris and flecks of copper scattered like an abstract piece of art.
"I broke up with him," Blaine says, unexpected and uncertain as they maintain eye contact. "He went back to New York four days ago and by yesterday, he already wasn't returning my calls and texts. I know I'm clingy but… I could see the whole thing happening again and I realised I'd made a huge mistake proposing to him."
His eyebrows draw together in confusion as he runs the pad of his thumb over Blaine's kiss-swollen lower lip. He doesn't understand why Blaine didn't just lead with that piece of information. He would have been far more willing to talk to him.
"So I called him this morning and I told him I couldn't do it and I switched off my phone. I went to the Lima Bean instead of school and when Brittany walked in saying that Santana was going to get rid of my dick with her fingernails if I didn't wake up to myself, I started driving here."
He still doesn't understand but Blaine's hands have settled against his chest and they aren't shaking anymore. Worse, Blaine can feel how his heart keeps skipping beats as it rattles around his ribcage.
"I was an idiot," Blaine confesses, a shy smile tilting up the edges of his lips. "Do you think you can handle that?"
He touches his lips to Blaine's again, like a dehydrated man discovering an oasis. "It's not such a bad thing," he whispers, drawing the shorter boy towards him and knowing he won't be foolish enough to let go.
~FIN~