originally found on Tumblr at thisisforficiswear

Penny

Sebastian is 31, and he's standing in the city center, looking at people as they walk by. They are chatting on cell phones, walking in groups, rushing back and forth and living and Sebastian is standing. Still. Everything passes by.

It feels like he stands there forever, as the crowds still and slow and people go home, or out to bars and laughter and Sebastian stands there and is so very numb. He cannot think, he cannot move. He's standing in the city center and he isn't angry or afraid or upset. He is alone, and he cannot feel a thing.

A long time ago, when he was so small his mother still pulled him into her lap and cooed over his wheat blond hair, counted his freckles and pretended to eat him up like a gingerbread man, they would go walking in cities like this one. She would hold his hand and he would swing back and forth on it. He remembers laughing.

"Soon you'll be too big for me to swing around," she would say, and jump so he bounced higher and squealed with delight.

"Never will I ever!" he always told her, big eyed and serious and outraged at the idea that he would ever be too big for his mother.

"You will!" she would tease. "Maybe I'll swing on your arm, then."

"Nonono," he told her.

He was right.

He is 31, and he thinks about calling her, but she doesn't answer, not anymore. Mothers are fickle, when their brains attack them and convince them there are monsters in the dark. Mothers reach for knives and bleed the demons out their own veins. Mothers stare at you and ask, very quietly, 'have you seen my son? He's only a baby, and I can't find him anywhere."

Sebastian does not call her.

When he was 8, he threw a coin into a fountain. "I wish I way I wish I might have this wish I wish tonight," he said, very serious, and threw in a penny he had found on the ground, tarnished and dirty and stuck with gum. The coin fell into the water with a plunk, and at 8 he knew this wish would come true.

The coins were from him father, not his mother, and maybe that's why they didn't work. Now, Dad is tired eyes and an office door, shut for days. A long time ago, Dad would say, "Penny in the fountain buys a wish, but it has to be a used penny, one full of life and experience." Shiny new pennies didn't have anything to offer. Sebastian would collect the messy pennies off the street, throw them in fountains and run and tell Dad what he wished for: ice cream, games, a later bed time. Dad would scoop him up and tickle him until he shrieked and ask, "Is that what you wasted a wish on, kiddo?"

Maybe those were wasted wishes.

At 31, he finally manages to move, takes a step, then another, until he reaches the center of the square. There are stone benches and trees and a statue at each corner of the plaza. Sebastian moves and his bones creak from disuse, his joints stress and scream and he feels like he might break as he sits on the lip of the fountain that is the center of the plaza. It is the first he has felt in hours, but he wishes he felt nothing at all.

The water is a little green. There are hundreds of pennies at the bottom, and Sebastian thinks, 'how many wishes are here, how many failures, how many broken dreams.' He reaches out and touches the water, and it is so cold he snatches back his hand and buries it in his lap. Sebastian wonders if his mother gets cold, if she still sings a doll to sleep at night, if his father will come to his funeral.

When he was 15, he met a stupidly pretty boy with big eyes and a sweet smile. Blaine was kind to him in a way he had not allowed for years. Blaine answered the phone at 3 in the morning, when he was drunk and angry and cruel, and reached through the darkness to hold his hand. He would be waiting outside a bar, in a city too much and too little like this one, and then Blaine would arrive and wrap a Burberry scarf around his neck.

"Hey, you," Blaine would greet him, tucking in the ends of the scarf so he stayed warm. Winter nights were cold. Blaine was always warm like sunshine in summer, and Blaine had taken such care with him that sometimes he had thought, maybe. "Why aren't you waiting inside?" Blaine used to ask. Blaine never asked, 'why are you drunk, why aren't you home, can't you try not to be a disappointment?'

"I hate this city," he would say to Blaine, while Blaine helped him into the car and buckled his seatbelt. "I hate this city and the weather and the people, Jesus, all the people here are so stupid. I hate everything."

Blaine would smooth the hair off his forehead and brush a kiss against his temple. "Okay," Blaine told him. "It's okay, I've got you."

Sebastian had no idea how Blaine knew that was the right thing to say.

Sebastian stares past the fountain into the night. He can hear nothing but the roar of the jets, the sound of the water crashing down, the rumble as it runs through pipes, the splash at it drains back into the city sewers. It sounds like drums and cymbals and drowns out all the other sounds of the night. It should make his own thoughts echo loud in his head, but he does not know what he is thinking, other than he wishes someone would wrap a scarf around his neck and keep him warm.

His hand is still so cold.

At 16, he went crazy, trying to impress Blaine. First he tried to be cruel, and then he tried to be kind, and he finally drove Blaine away with careless, driven malice. Blaine stopped answering his texts and stopped picking up the phone, and he almost threw a penny into a fountain and wished he may and wished he might. He didn't. He'd learned better. He watched as Blaine walked into someone else's arms, and Sebastian put the penny back in his pocket. As a child, people had talked about love like it was a force of nature, like it could make or break you, and he understood what they meant at 16. He knew his father a little more, then.

The moon is full and bright above him. The entire square is lit up and beautiful in the light, and the water crashes like music in the background, and Sebastian tries to appreciate it. His bones still ache, and his cold fingers still search for warmth. It will teach him the pointlessness of nostalgia, he thinks, and tries to stand. His knees hold him, his back straightens, and he should call a taxi to go back to his hotel. Walking seems too hard.

Something flashes in his vision, and he turns his head to see nothing there.

"There is something there," Sebastian says out loud. He doesn't imagine things, and he stoops down to find whatever was on the ground because his eyes weren't playing tricks.

It is a penny.

At 20, he started college. Starting right after high school would have meant limiting his options, and he didn't want that. He packed up an old Burberry scarf and went to Europe, instead, and fucked his way across the continent. At 20, he looked in the mirror and wanted to die because no one had saved him. That thought had saved him. He had never needed to be rescued, he never would need to be rescued, he told himself, and he went back home and enrolled in school and graduated Suma Cum Laude.

There had been 3 men from the time he enrolled until the time he passed the bar. He remembers their names, but he won't admit it out loud. None of them were Blaine, and maybe that's why it never worked out. The last one left screaming, throwing things at him and wrecking their apartment. The first one left with a kiss on the cheek and a promise to call once he reached Medina. The one in the middle cried and begged him not to go.

The penny is old, minted before he was born and dark with dirt in his hand. Sebastian wonders how he managed to see it, and doesn't think that maybe the penny is the coincidence and the light was something else. He rubs his thumb over the head, and he'll need to wash his hands when he gets back to the room. Maybe he should drop the penny. No point in keeping it; it's not even worth the time it took him to pick it up.

There is a fountain just a few steps away, though.

He quit law at 29, because he hated it, because it was miserable, because the thrill of winning a case wasn't enough to cover the sick feeling of doing his job well, and helping people get away with murder. One night, he slid down the wall of his bedroom because he had just found the detail that would unravel the prosecution's case and get an abusive monster off. He put his head in his hands and saw that stupid scarf folded up on the shelf of his bedside table. The fabric was soft, and warm, and smelled faintly of raspberries. When he bunched the scarf in his hands, he could hear the sound of Blaine whispering it was okay, someone was there.

He handed in his resignation the next morning, and called and told Dad as he cleared out his office. Dad hadn't seemed surprised, or upset, and it hurt, because he had done law to make Dad proud. No one told him it was okay. Without a job and angry again, angry like he'd been at 15, he'd written everything down and thought about selling the book.

When he reread the book, he realized that it would take more than a grungy penny to get it published.

And now he's in a city he barely knows, holding a damn penny like it has some kind of meaning, and thinking about throwing pennies and wishes and how everything gets fucked up along the way. It isn't regret, not really, except for how it is. Sebastian's fist clenches around the penny and then he throws it hard, aiming for the opposite side of the fountain, where it will tumble onto the concrete. Maybe a kid will find it tomorrow, make a wish, and find out fairytales are lies.

Except it drops short, his cold hand spasming, and falls into the water with a plunk that might be memory.

For just a moment, he hopes.

It was so sunny and bright at Dalton that Blaine felt like he was finally able to breathe again. He had forgotten what it meant to belong, and when the Warblers lit up at the sight of him and pulled him into their number, he felt muscles relax that he had not even realized were tense.

The dance was fun, even though he felt half a step off the entire time, trying to guess and mimic a routine they had obviously practiced a dozen times. People in the Warblers made room for him, forecast their next movements, helped him keep up, and Blaine loved it. He remembered it from when he had joined the Warblers years before, his leg and hip still healing, and Wes had slowed down the dance without even considering other options. The Warblers had been Blaine's team, and they supported him when he needed help. This dance was faster than usual Warbler dances, but he found the rhythm, and it felt good.

Which is why he was not expecting the sudden weight to drop onto his shoulder, and so he stumbled and almost fell when someone collapsed against him. He managed to recover, throwing his arms around the fallen boy and locking his knees to keep from ending tangled up on the floor. He waited for the boy to get up, but he stayed slumped in Blaine's arms.

"Sebastian? Are you alright?" Jeff asked.

Blaine looked around to find all the Warblers crowded and uncertain. He missed Wes, who would have known what to do when one of their members fainted.

Not that it was hard to figure out what to do when someone fainted, Blaine scolded himself. "Does he have any medical problems?" he asked, hobbling toward the closest sofa with the boy leaning heavier against him every step. Sebastian, Jeff had called him, and he must have been a freshman or a transfer student, because Blaine had never met him before. He definitely would have remembered a Warbler that tall, and confident enough to pull other boys into carefully choreographed routines. Blaine adjusted his grip and dropped them as gracefully onto the sofa as he could. Sebastian slumped against his shoulder, and his eyes were open but unfocused, staring at nothing.

"Should we get the nurse?" Thad asked hesitantly.

"Please –" Blaine started to say, when Sebastian stirred.

"No," Sebastian said. "I'm – I'm fine. Where am – I was in Boston?"

Blaine looked at Thad, and then at Sebastian as best he could, and then mouthed 'get the nurse' to Thad. Thad nodded, and ran out of the room. The rest of the Warblers were crowding around them, milling uncertainly and talking over each other so fast Blaine could only make out snatches: Sebastian's name, worry, concern someone was sick, what was happening? He began to ask them to calm down, but Sebastian stirred against him, and Blaine's attention shifted.

Sebastian sat up straighter, but kept his arm around Blaine's shoulder. He was very tall; half a head or more taller than Blaine, and his arm was warm about his shoulder. Sebastian looked around, his eyes slowly focusing on the room, on the crowded Warblers, and then on Blaine.

"Maybe you should lie down," Blaine suggested, staring up into Sebastian's eyes. "Are you dizzy?"

"I'm… okay," Sebastian said. "I'm … confused. What's happening?"

"You fainted," Blaine explained.

Sebastian said, "I don't faint!" as though he were scandalized by the very thought,

"I'm sorry," Blaine said. "You collapsed against my shoulder in a very manly fashion."

Sebastian surprised Blaine by laughing. "Yeah, okay," he said. "It was very manly, you say?"

"The manliest," Blaine assured.

"Sassy," Sebastian said. "No one does patronizing like Blaine Anderson." Sebastian said Blaine's name, slow and stiff, like he had not spoken for a long time, though he tried to be playful. Blaine felt the emotion behind the sound in his bones, and it made him shiver. No one had ever said his name like that.

"Do I know you?" Blaine asked, though he had been certain they had never met. How did Sebastian even know his name?

Sebastian said, "I – no. I think – was I dreaming?" He looked around the room again, and Blaine saw that his eyes were very green, very bright, and a little dazed.

Blaine cupped Sebastian's cheek with his free hand, the other wrapped around Sebastian's shoulders, and Sebastian turned his head into Blaine's palm. Blaine faltered, but continued to move his hand up so he could feel for a temperature.

"I'm tired," Sebastian said, quieter, and Blaine thought he was the only one who heard him.

"Why don't you lie down?" Blaine asked, shifting his weight in preparation of moving. Sebastian only tightened his grip on Blaine.

"I don't want you to go," Sebastian said. "I don't want to wake up."

Blaine swallowed. "It's okay," he told Sebastian. "Lay down. I won't go anywhere." He slid forward onto his knees beside the sofa, and helped Sebastian lie down and put his feet up. Sebastian had to curl up on the sofa, far too tall for the furniture, and he looked very young. Blaine reached up and took his hand. "It's okay," he repeated. "It's okay, I've got you. I promise."