I Will Love You Inside Out

by define-serenity

[Sebastian/Blaine] When is a monster not a monster? Oh, when you love it. (BEAUTY AND THE BEAST AU)

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& I WILL LOVE YOU INSIDE OUT

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When is a monster not a monster?

Oh, when you love it.

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He comes to in a dim room.

Straining through the fog in his head he can make out thick curtains in an otherwise darkened room, crisp clean walls, and two columns of a four-poster bed. How did he get here? More to the point, where is he? Last he remembers he'd been on his way home after picking up some last-minute groceries; he'd taken a short-cut through an alley when–

That's right. The robber.

He sits up, the springs in the bed creaking ominously, his left knee bandaged. His hands are raw where they scraped over the asphalt, a bump on his head from–

From–

"You shouldn't try to move," a deep disturbing voice vibrates across the room, his heart bruising the inside of his ribcage.

"Who said that?" His eyes narrow on the corner the voice came from, but even as his eyes slowly adjust to the dark it's impossible to distinguish a body. "Who– who are you?" he asks, and then considers the possibility that he hadn't been robbed at all. Maybe he'd been kidnapped. He pulls his legs up to his chest. "Please, don't hurt me."

"I won't."

Something in the man's voice –a soft all encompassing sadness– convinces him that he's safe here. His wounds have been tended to, he's still wearing all of his clothes, and the man remains at a safe distance. There's a purpose to that distance, he suspects. Come to think, he hadn't been alone in that alley, had he? The gunman had come out of nowhere, threatening his life if he didn't surrender what he asked for, but someone– something– jumped out of the shadows and came to his aid. Had this stranger saved him?

He tries to peer through the darkness again. "Who are you?"

"That's not important," answers the voice. "You should rest. I'll bring you some food."

The bedroom door opens, but allows no more light inside than there'd been already, and closes again. His skin crawling he finds the light switch for the lamp on the bedside table, the room soon bathed in a soft glow. It isn't heavily furnished; there's the bed, modern with sleek straight lines, a single matching bedside table, and a chair in the corner. There are no pictures, no paintings, nothing personal at all. Maybe it's a guest room.

The small bag of groceries he'd bought sits at the foot of the bed, his jacket on the chair in the corner, his shoes on the floor next to it. Someone tore one leg of his chinos from his foot up to his knee, probably to access his wound, but a fresh pair of sweats lies folded next to him on the bed, his phone placed neatly on top of it. As if any of that hadn't been thoughtful enough, he finds a glass of water on the bedside table, a bottle of aspirin, and a tube of Neosporin next to it. For his hands, no doubt.

What sort of world had he fallen into? He tries to lift the bandage around his knee a little to assess the damage, but judging by the painful throb in his kneecap, he'd hurt it pretty bad. He throws his legs over one side of the bed, and –slightly dizzy– adds some weight to his left leg, grabbing back for support. He takes two tablets of aspirin, and hops towards the door, opening it about an inch; a long wide hallway stretches to a staircase at the back, dipping down into the ground floor.

Voices drift up from downstairs.

"Why do you have someone in your room?"

A woman's voice.

"Couldn't very well take him to the hospital," the deep voice again, standing up the hairs at the back of his neck.

"Did he see you?"

"No, he didn't."

"I'm not helping you."

"Quinn, please."

"I do enough around here. I don't need this. I have a life too, Sebastian. And if you weren't so afraid of living yours we'd be done with all this."

"It's not that easy."

"No, it is that easy. I'm not helping you."

A few moments later a door slams shut, a glass shatters on the floor, and a terrible coughing starts, one he fears might actually do his host in. A cough, then a terrible wail, before silence falls once more. He closes the door and hops back over to the bed, where he hugs a pillow tight to his body.

What on earth has he gotten himself into?

And– Sebastian? Did he know a Sebastian?

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When he wakes up half an hour later there's a bowl of chicken soup by the side of the bed, steam licking along the porcelain rim. The room doesn't spin once he sits up, but someone turned off the lights again; what could be so terrible that he wasn't allowed to see who saved him?

"Are– are you here?" he asks carefully, his eyes unadjusted to the dark, the room covered in a dead silence. He can't decide if there's danger in that quiet or not, if his fight-or-flight instinct hasn't been severely compromised by the bump on his head. It doesn't feel dangerous, in fact there's languorous warmth in the bare room that hadn't been there before, a subtlety, an unpretentious piety. He can't explain, but he expects the voice that swells through the dark.

"Yes," comes Sebastian's reply, whoever that might be, his voice a little lighter than before. "I'm sorry. I want to make sure you're not concussed."

He grabs the bowl of soup and cups it between his hands, heat soothing as it seeps into his abraded skin. His stomach rumbles; he's hungrier than he thought. "I'm not dizzy anymore."

"That's good."

Sipping right from the bowl he drinks a few greedy gulps, the fresh soup slowly unwinding a fright he hadn't noticed set in his chest. Mysterious savior or not, someone tried to mug him at gunpoint tonight. He could have died or been left for dead if Sebastian hadn't come along. Who knows what that guy would have done – he's safe here, in this strangely empty house with this evasive stranger. Though he's not sure how he knows that.

He lowers the bowl to his lap, eyes guessing at where Sebastian stands, struggling to see through the dark. "Thank you for saving me."

"You still got hurt."

His knee throbs, skin scraping along the bandage every time he moves, and his hands burn despite the layer of ointment he treated them with. But Sebastian must see things could have been a lot worse.

"Why didn't you take me to the hospital?" he asks the dark, and the dark goes quiet. Sebastian wouldn't need to take care of him at the hospital; they could've bound his wound and helped his hands, and monitored him a lot more closely without any need for all this cloak and dagger. Why won't Sebastian show his face?

"You ask too many questions."

"I'm–" –the door opens and closes before the sound even registers,– "–sorry."

Cold creeps back into the room, the same sterile abandonment, and if he weren't currently incapacitated he would run, straight for Sebastian. At least he knows to find some kind of warmth there.

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He makes sure to leave his dad a voice mail message; he works long nights at the hospital, so he probably won't see the message until morning, but he wouldn't want him to worry either. With any luck he'll be home in a few hours, and he won't need to mention an armed mugger. His dad would never let him leave the house again.

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Another hour passes, an almost supernatural hush fallen over the house, wind howling like wolves, rain dabbing the window at irregular intervals. He fails to catch anymore sleep, afraid that if he were to close his eyes he'd wake up to a monster skulking over him. Or missing a kidney. He doubts Sebastian means him any harm after saving his life, tending to his leg, keeping an undeterminable distance, but there has to be a reason Sebastian avoided the hospital. He couldn't know his dad worked there, could he?

He gets out of the bed again, steadier on both his legs this time, and skips towards the window. It's well past midnight, moonlight stretched over rooftops he barely recognizes. In the distance he makes out the water tower he walks by on his way to school. So then this must be–

Why had Sebastian brought him here?

Neighborhood kids wouldn't call the house haunted, it's too well kept for that –flawless front lawn, meticulous driveway with a beautiful fountain near the front door– but anyone only ever went near it when they had to, or when their friends dared them to. Once it had been the home of a rich and wealthy family, the founders of their town, but economic shifts and a more lucrative job offer had relocated the latest generation of Smythes to New York. The house soon fell into disrepair, the shutters rotted, the trees and grounds grew wild and unkempt –he'd seen pictures in any case–; if it had ever been considered haunted it would've been years ago, because about eighteen months ago a new tenant had taken up residence. That's when the real stories started.

The house transformed back to its former glory, the windows replaced with double-plated glass, the shutters replaced and repainted, any and all rotting wood removed from inside the house; the town had been aflutter with construction workers for weeks. Until everything went silent. No one knew who'd moved in, the lights inside were barely used, the front door didn't open and no mail got delivered. He'd never seen the house up close; he lived in town and had no reason to venture this far north, or this close to the woods. Now a stranger brought him here, a–

Of course. He has heard of a Sebastian before.

It's strange how no one knows about him.

He changes into the pair of sweats, literally cutting off his chinos, much too tight to shimmy down his leg without wrecking his bandage, puts on his shoes, and ventures out into the hallway. Kids at school weren't joking when they said the house had a chill to it; the central heating must not be on, or malfunctioning. Either way, he can't imagine anyone being comfortable living here. His fingers caress the length of the hallway wall, as much for support as trying to find some warmth, but it's gone missing from every nook and cranny. At the end of the hallway he descends down the stairs, one slow step at a time, reaching the bottom after what seems an age.

A clock ticks somewhere in the distance.

Not a single light burns, no candles or smaller lamps, his only guide the moonlight falling through the floor to ceiling paned windows. He finds Sebastian in the living room, stripped bare of any furniture but a single fauteuil facing the window. No television. No pictures. Nothing personal to indicate anyone lives here. Behind him lays a dining room, equally bare save for a large winged piano, a stool to seat two. How can anyone live like this? Confined to this icebox, this emptiness. It's enough to drive any person mad.

Oak floorboards gleam in the moonlight, chasing Sebastian's heels, his head and torso hidden in the shadows. It could be him, he thinks, the boy he's heard rumors about, the boy who seemingly fled his family home to come live alone at the edge of town, never glimpsed, never a trace of him anywhere. They must be around the same age.

"You're Sebastian Smythe," he says, tracking a careful step forward, making out Sebastian's shoulders for the first time. Dressed in black from head to toe, Sebastian stands hunched forward, like there's a kink in his back preventing him from standing upright. Why won't he let him see him?

"Am I now?"

"I heard about you at school."

Sebastian's disappearance from New York had been big news. He'd never seen him before, never met any of the other Smythes either, –they moved away over ten years ago– but an old town told old tales, and it held onto the past. So he heard the story every day for about a week; the butcher's wife, the baker, the manager at the bookstore, they all had a different version to tell. One thing remained constant in all the rumors. There had been a terrible accident.

Sebastian turns in the shadows. "How's your leg?"

A chill traces up his spine. "It's okay."

"Then I suggest you leave," Sebastian's voice deepens as he falls a step forward, the waxing moon finally revealing his facial features and he–

Sebastian's face–

The shocked gasp that follows can't possibly be his own, yet he's tripped a step back and his heart's in his throat and– no, it's too horrible.

Sebastian plummets to the floor on all fours and all he hears is the screech of his shoes on the floor as he kicks off running, a sharp left marking a straight line to the front door. He has to get away. Why did he think he was safe? How could he possibly have been so stupid? He scrambles for the door handle and it starts again, a monstrous coughing coming from the living room, Sebastian incapacitated while he manages to open the door, pushes through it, and trips down the three big steps leading down the driveway.

He twists on his heels and looks up at the house, lightning searing shadows into the white stone like claws. His imagination. Must be. Barky coughing sounds through the open doorway, but he can't go back inside, he won't risk getting trapped again, stuck with that–

What was that?

He gathers all his courage and limps down the driveway, back into town, so tightly wound he ends up throwing up in someone's garbage on the way home, haunted by a single image.

Sebastian's face; scar tissue down his cheeks, eyes pitch black, lips all but gone, his skull disfigured in odd bumps barely disguised by his hair.

A monster.

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His dad insists on redressing his leg in the morning despite his assurances that he cleaned the wound thoroughly, and his dad has to admit he did a great job after he peels back the thin layers of gauze. Even he can see that whoever bound his leg did so with the utmost care and precision, something he could scarcely imagine Sebastian doing– but those thoughts are tainted by what he saw, that terrible visage of a man, scarred beyond recognition. What kind of accident could do that to a person? A fire?

After a few more hours of sleep he heads out to the library; his leg protests a little but nothing he can't bite through, and he can't stand not having any books on hand to read. Small as the local library may be, there are always more books to read and Miss Pillsbury, the kind bambi-eyed librarian, never fails to recommend the best ones – she's the only other person in town who reads as much as he does. Or she is now, anyway. This close to Halloween he usually rereads one of his favorites, an adventure tale about a peasant boy who meets a prince in disguise, who takes him to faraway places and shows him the world–

But he can't read it again. Not this year. Maybe not ever.

One more year and he can get out of this provincial town. He can't wait for the day he'll get to pack his bags and leave for college. Part of him wants to dive in straight away, start classes and deadlines and meet new people, learn new skills, broaden his horizons. But part of him wanted to disappear for a year or two and travel everywhere he could possibly go, like his mom had. He hates the thought of leaving his dad, but neither his mom nor dad would forgive him if he didn't take every opportunity he got. People called him a dreamer, a boy with his head in the clouds, but if he was he inherited that from both his parents.

"Blaine!" a voice startles him from the pages of the book he'd been perusing, two strong hands at his shoulders stopping him in his tracks.

"Oh, sorry, Hunter. I was–"

"Reading." Hunter beams. "I know. You're always reading."

His cheeks warm up, the way they often do when Hunter Clarington tries his utmost to make him blush. He's not into Hunter, but he's not used to being flirted with either. "I guess I am."

"Maybe you can make it up to me." Hunter pushes his hands and book down, trapping him with hot eyes that promise nothing but mischief. They might actually work on him if he was looking to date anyone. "Go to the Halloween dance with me?"

"We've talked about this."

"I'm still hoping you'll change your mind one day." Hunter winks. "Catch you, later."

There were definitely times he entertained the thought of taking Hunter up on his offer, if just to find out what all the fuss was about, but he doesn't want to be the target of Hunter's affections simply because he's the only other gay boy at school. He deserves more than that, he deserves someone who cares, someone he can really care about, and selfishly he wants that someone to be out there in the vast world waiting for him, not anyone here in town who knows his entire life's story.

His eyes are drawn north, where he'd run from an outsider not half a day ago, where he'd judged Sebastian purely on his looks and reacted in the most insulting way anyone could to a facial deformity. What kind of person does that? Hadn't he been taught kindness and compassion? He can say all he wants about being the kind of person his parents could be proud of, but he didn't do himself proud. He's ashamed of what he did.

He has to apologize to Sebastian.

The walk to the house takes him past the water tower, past the bike shop and the mechanics, well past what passes as suburbia around here: two parallel rows of houses at odd angles, the first trees popping up in between, and then, at the end of a small cul-de-sac, Smythe manor. Big and imposing the white brick now looks glum in the gray fall weather, offset against the dark of the forest. It's half an hour from his house, yet early this morning it'd seemed like hours as he ran. Ran for safety. Ran out of fear.

He refuses to be afraid this time.

He tries the doorbell, echoing somewhere deep in the house while a chill traces up the back of his neck like an icy finger – he shivers, shoulders too small for his coat, but he won't back down, he won't be intimidated by his own deepest fears. Sebastian isn't a monster. Monsters aren't real.

A good five minutes pass before he rings the doorbell again, but silence follows in its wake. "Sebastian!" he calls, and bangs his fist against the door, determined to do what he came here to do. Sebastian didn't leave the house, so why won't he see him?

Then, the coughing starts again.

His hand grabs hold of the doorknob and turns it, the door opening into a short hallway, the stairs directly behind it. "Sebastian?" he calls again, taking a hesitant step inside, closing the door behind him.

Here he is. Again.

Talk to him. A whisper from another room. A scratchy scuttle of paws.

"Se– Sebastian?" He swallows down any fear the house invokes, though he's undecided whether it's actually the house and not in fact Sebastian causing the drop in temperature. "I feel bad about–" He steps into the living room, and there he is, at the other end of the room, Sebastian Smythe. "–the way I reacted."

Shadows don't quite cover up Sebastian the way they had earlier, he can make out black sweats and a black turtleneck, black gloves, his face the way he remembered. Scarred. Lumps on his skin. Skull deformed. But now that he sees Sebastian hesitant in a corner of the room, the only one the sunlight can't reach, hunched forward like he carries the weight of the world, he couldn't say why he ran.

"No different than anyone else," Sebastian says. "I'm a monster."

"No, it was wrong, I know that. You saved my life, I shouldn't–"

"Judge me on my looks?" Sebastian prompts, and steps into the light. It truly is a terrible thing to behold, the pale taut skin, crooked nose and the thin lips, grayish hair that's fallen out in places. Nausea stirs in his stomach as he fights his instinct to look elsewhere.

He grits his teeth together. He can do this. "Can I ask what happened?"

Sebastian faces away. "Get out, Blaine."

"But–"

"I don't want you here."

He steps forward. "You don't have to hide from me."

"Get out!" Sebastian shouts and doubles over, grabbing for the wall for support.

He startles a step back, but it's only that. He won't run scared like he did last time. He'll respect Sebastian's wishes and leave, but not because Sebastian thinks he's a monster that can chase everyone away. Sebastian does scare him, but not his face, not the cold – it's the anger that scares him.

Footsteps follow the scrape of a chair in another room, followed by a woman's voice, "Sebastian?" In comes the same young woman he assumes Sebastian argued with last night. Quinn, was it? Tall and blonde, light on her feet, she's the total opposite of Sebastian in almost every physical aspect. She kneels down by Sebastian's side. "What happened?"

With great difficulty Sebastian stretches out his arm and points a gloved finger at him, choking out, "I want him gone."

Tears sting the corners of his eyes. He only meant to do good. He only wanted to show Sebastian kindness. Clearly that was his mistake. "I'm sorry I ran this morning," he mutters, "I won't bother you again."

This time, he doesn't run for the front door. But he leaves all the same.

.

Days pass and he tries to put the whole ordeal behind him. He's beyond grateful for what Sebastian did but he clearly didn't want him around, and he won't be the masochist who desperately tried to get to know him. Despite his best effort, though, Sebastian haunts the pages of every book he reads, like a subliminal message implanted in his mind's eye. What kind of accident was Sebastian in? What had made him so angry, or fearful to have people around? Why was Quinn exempt the same treatment? Was she his caretaker? His nurse? His girlfriend? Few of the scenarios he toyed with seemed plausible; someone would have seen her around town if she lived in the house –she had no reason to hide–, and she wouldn't have used such harsh words to talk to Sebastian if she was meant to take care of him.

He told himself to let it go, to move on from a boy who didn't want him in his life, yet he gets stuck on the same question time and again: how had Sebastian known his name?

"You okay, son?"

Startled, he sits up on his bed, finding his dad in the doorway nursing a large cup of coffee; he'd been asleep most of the day preparing for his night shift.

"Hmm." He nods, picking at one of the pages in a book he got from the library earlier this week.

His dad wanders over and sits down, the mattress dipping underneath his weight. "Things will get better."

He's been hearing that a lot from a lot of different people. He's not sure he believes it. It's something people are meant to say after a tragedy, after someone dies, they're words he's sure he's used too on occasion, but since they became directed at him many of them had lost their meaning. His dad tries his best, but his job keeps him going and supports their small family of two, and their schedules don't allow for much father-son time. He doesn't blame his dad for that. He actually sort of prefers it this way.

"Dad, did you know any of the Smythes?" he asks, his curiosity a flame that might burn a hole through him should it go untempered. There must be something he can find out without seeing Sebastian. Without tempting another death rattle out of him.

"Everyone knew the Smythes when they lived here," his dad says. "They were very good to this town. Your mom knew the family."

He gnaws at his lip. "Sebastian moved back."

"You've seen him?"

"He's the one who helped me with my leg," he confesses, reluctant to let secrets come between them any more than the accident already had. Secrets won't help mend their relationship. Neither will pushing each other away, but they have to start somewhere. "His face, it's– the accident must have been really bad."

"He's been living up there on his own?"

He nods. He's thought about it too. It must be a lonely life.

The doorbell rings.

His father gets up and heads downstairs, while he considers the past few days again. Did Sebastian know his name because his mom had known his family? Had his mom spent time at the house before the Smythes moved? He remembers the piano in the dining room, and–

No. He can't. It's too painful.

"Blaine?" his dad calls. "Can you come down here, please?"

Of all the things he'd prepared to find downstairs, two men shoving a piano through their front door wasn't one of them. His heartbeat fills his ears, and confusion laces through his veins: had his dad bought a new piano? What for? His dad didn't play and he hadn't touched one since–

"Special delivery for Blaine Anderson." His dad offers him an envelope, his name penned with blue ink on the outside. Who on earth would get him a piano?

The card inside the envelope reads, 'I'm sorry.'

Signed, 'Sebastian.'

"You must have made an impression," his dad says, directing the two men from the delivery service to the living room, where the piano soon fills up the empty spot where his mom's used to be. And– no. They sold it for a reason a few months ago. They got rid of it hoping it might take some of the more terrible memories with it. What is he supposed to do with this?

His heart beats dully as the room slows around him, time reverts back to a time when music lived inside these walls, and a tear runs uncontrollably down his cheeks. Why would Sebastian do this to him? Doesn't he know what happened to his mom? Doesn't he realize that he and his dad haven't so much as mentioned her in almost a year? That it's so hard thinking about her that sometimes he's afraid he'll hit the ground in a thousand pieces and never become whole again?

"Blaine–"

He shakes his head, "I have to go", and storms out the door without thinking, without a coat or anything on his feet but his slippers. He runs. He runs as fast as his legs will let him, past the water tower and the bike shop, past the mechanics and through suburbia, right up to the house he told himself he wouldn't visit again. He shouldn't visit again.

Thunder roars beyond the forest identical to the one in his chest, and the day slowly makes way for night. The run dried his tears but started a crawling beneath his skin that's there every time he thinks about his mom and the fact that she's gone, that he won't ever get to hold her or tell her how much he loves her. She's gone, and she won't come back, no matter how hard he prays and hopes, or cries.

He paces up and down the driveway, the envelope crumpled in a tight ball in his hand. Sebastian's apology should mean something, it should show an effort on Sebastian's part and make him feel less– coddled. Yes, that's what this is; Sebastian saved his life, took care of him, and now he deems to give him presents that hold some kind of meaning.

Behind him, suburbia comes to life. Kids leave the house in costume in groups of two or three, empty buckets or bags they hope to fill with candy by night's end. Right. He forgot. It's Halloween.

He enters the house unsure about whether or not it's a good idea. He's wound up and he doesn't make good decisions when he's like this, but he has to tell Sebastian not to send him any more gifts, remorse or not. Much like a few days ago darkness reigns the house, and his footsteps comes like those of a giant's disturbing a strange eerie calm.

"Wondered how long it'd take you to come in," Sebastian grates from the living room, lounged back in the large fauteuil, all relaxed and long-limbed, a small dog in his lap. What had seemed so scary about this house a few days ago? Sebastian may be hiding, he may be a recluse, but he's not the beast locked up in a castle for want of company. Sebastian pushes people away, but that didn't mean people didn't care for him. "Toby and I had a bet going and everything."

Liquid sloshes in a bottle hanging loosely in Sebastian's grip, the scent and amber hue suggesting a drink much stronger than beer.

"I don't want your charity," he says, voice tearing through the room like an echo in a dungeon, like an unappreciative cry for help.

"Can't really un-save you, killer." Sebastian snickers. "And you're the one who keeps coming back."

"No, I mean the piano." He frowns. Sebastian had signed the card, surely he's not that drunk not to realize what he's talking about. "Did you not–?"

In the dark, Sebastian turns his head, but he can't quite make out his features, and the longer he stares, the more he gets the sense that he made a terrible mistake. Because if Sebastian hadn't sent the piano then he's not sorry, and he still won't want him here. But if not Sebastian, then who?

"It's my old piano," Sebastian says at long last, raising a hand, his fingers broken and crooked, misaligned at the knuckles. "Can't play anymore."

Slowly, as if a voice emerging from a deep no mortal should go, Sebastian starts laughing, laughs so hard Toby whines and scurries off, the liquor bottle drops to the floor, thundering over the floorboards, and his bones coil around the same distinct cold he can't ever seem to shake inside this house. Tears fill his eyes for the second time that night, more tears than he's allowed himself for a long time and he can't say why Sebastian stirs his grief so strongly. There's something torturously tragic about this boy. Something he recognizes.

Then, a cry in the laughter. A low wail of a cry that soon turns into sobs, wrecking through Sebastian's body. He pulls closer instinctually, crouching down by Sebastian's side, and draws a hand down his back, body as lumpy as his face. What he finds there is more terrifying than anything else. Sebastian is warm. How can anyone so warm demand so much bitterness? Drunk or not Sebastian has lost himself in his solitude. It's an easy thing to do, when you feel alone in the world.

His eyes fall to Sebastian's hand, and, quite involuntarily, he runs a finger over the knuckles, skin wrinkled and dry. An old man's hand. No accident could have caused this.

"Are you sick?"

"Cursed," Sebastian spits, "Insulted the wrong witch."

So they are real. His mother told him the stories as a little boy, of witches and demons, of forces as benign as they are malignant at the center of their world, things that lived in between the space of this reality and the next. Rarely seen. Barely known. Dangerous when trifled with. A curse could explain a lot of the strange things in this house; Sebastian's face, his old hands, the way the warmth drains from the room, even why it's so hard to look at him sometimes. It even explains Sebastian's sudden disappearance from society.

An egg smashes against one of the windows, quickly followed by two more, the egg white and yolk smearing down the glass. He runs up to the window, but all he catches is the moonlight nipping at the perpetrators' heels. He wouldn't be surprised if it was Hunter's idiot little brother, Dante.

"I should've gone out," Sebastian says behind him. "No one would've looked at me twice."

In that second within a moment he means to apologize for all the cruelties of the world, say he's sorry that Sebastian's never been shown kindness by a great many people, sorry for the kind of kids that egg supposed haunted houses. Like Sebastian he's seen the darkness of the world, it touched him a year ago and hasn't left him. He hasn't really tried shaking it since.

"All monsters tonight."

"You're not a monster."

Sebastian snorts, "Whatever you say," and grabs for the bottle on the floor, but misses and hurtles face first onto the floor instead, his laughter soon ripping through the room again. He pulls down and closer, urged by whatever part of his upbringing that did teach him kindness, hesitantly carding his fingers through Sebastian's thin hair. It takes long agonizing moments, but Sebastian quiets underneath his touch and draws closer, laying his head down in his lap. Distaste rips through his bones but he fights it; Sebastian needs him right now.

"You're not wearing a costume," Sebastian says, voice softer than it's so far sounded.

His fingers rest along Sebastian's temple. "I forgot it was Halloween."

Their broken conversation makes way for a silence he's become intimately familiar with over the past year, now shared with a boy in a similar prison. It lightens the load somehow, he and Sebastian, bound by tragedy.

He couldn't say how long they sat like that; long enough to lose sensation in his toes, long enough for the laughter and cheer from outside to fade. Hours, probably.

He helps Sebastian up the stairs and into his bedroom, helps him out of his shoes before he settles on top of the sheets. More than half of him wants to stay and nurse Sebastian through the worst of this, all too aware that might take a long time. Weeks. Months. Even years. He would make the effort should Sebastian ask, though he's none too sure why. Maybe it's the thought of Sebastian being as alone as he is. Maybe it's the coughing fits that have stayed away all night. Maybe he's wondered if he got cursed too. His mom gone. His dad incommunicative. No friends to turn to.

He's lost, too. He hadn't realized until now just how much.

Sebastian's hand slides warm down the length of his arm as he steps away, stirring an odd pressure at the base of his spine, before Sebastian's fingers squeeze around his wrist.

"Stay," Sebastian whispers, so low he wonders if he heard it at all. "Please."

It takes the single word to convince him.

.

In the morning he wakes up in the same position he went to sleep in: on his side facing Sebastian. For a house so devoid of any warmth the morning sun still sets it alight, playing daintily over Sebastian's features as if trying to remedy the curse that ails him. The light tricks his eyes, Sebastian's hair thicker, his lips fuller, almost peaceful in his slumber. Sebastian breathes evenly and calm, and as his head turns he'd swear the lump on his head got smaller, skin less pale than it had been.

He hadn't feared falling asleep next to him, felt his body heat warming whatever part of him that threatened to go cold, felt secure in the thought that Sebastian wanted him here as much as he found he wanted to be here. It's crazy how one moment his flight instinct means to kick in, yet the second he's close enough, the moment he can see beyond Sebastian's appearance, all he wants to do is cocoon closer. Almost like some kind of magic was involved.

Now, many hours after Sebastian asked him to stay, he fears he'll think it a mistake, that the drink from last night mellowed him to his company and once he's sober he'll reject him again. He's not sure what he'll do, if his heart could take it, should that be the case.

He leaves the bed for a short bathroom break, and when he returns the bed is empty.

Music carries up the stairs.

That's odd. He could've sworn Sebastian told him he couldn't play the piano anymore.

He wanders downstairs at an even pace, familiar with the notes and bars from Bartok, the sad and melancholy tone, the slow ache of a masterpiece, and soon locates Sebastian behind the grande piano, his hands moving expertly over the keys. But his fingers–

"You stayed," Sebastian says before his confusion can reach any further.

"You asked."

A smile kisses the air.

"I didn't think you should be alone."

"Most would disagree."

It would be easy for him to claim he's not like most people, when he too ran away from Sebastian not a week ago. Thing is no one should be alone in this state. Sebastian's like an exposed nerve, raw and vulnerable; he could flinch at the slightest touch, lash out unintended, and without anyone near he'll become his own greatest enemy, loathing of who he is and what he looks like. If that hasn't happened already.

He doesn't owe Sebastian, not even after being saved, but he owes himself the humanity. Things would be different for both of them if they had someone to show a little understanding.

So he sits down next to Sebastian behind the piano. "I just– want to be here."

He can feel Sebastian's eyes on him, but he's too preoccupied with his fingers, dancing over the keys. A young man's perfect hands.

These are not the same hands he'd seen up close last night.

Was he losing his mind?

"I'm sorry if my present insulted you," Sebastian says, launching into a new classical piece, a little more upbeat, one his fingers had never been fast enough to play. Music hasn't been a part of his life for such a long time it's odd to see it light up this house, make every room sing, heat up this barren place. As if it could stop this cold curse dead in its tracks should Sebastian play long enough.

His mother had that same gift. The piano had been her life, therefor it had been a big part of his – his lessons began at three years old, his legs too short to reach the floor or the pedals so he kicked them back and forth, content to let his mom take care of that part. Sometimes he'd sit in his mother's lap, watch her long fingers spin out the most intricate melodies; he'd drink in the utter joy in her face when she played, like she could do just that for the rest of her life and be perfectly content. It was the same joy in her eyes whenever she looked at him, called him her beautiful boy, and kissed his forehead.

A tear slips down his cheek. God, he misses her. He can't touch a piano without breaking, and he knew at the sight of the piano yesterday he wouldn't do well being in the same room as one.

"Your mom taught me how to play it."

A breath catches in his throat.

"You knew my mom?" he whispers, too softly to be a real question.

His mom was– here? Here? In this house, with this boy who– who she taught how to play the piano too? How did he never hear about this? His mom had students all over town, but he never thought–

He never could've–

His breath catches again and he gasps for air, up on his feet before he realizes, turning his back on Sebastian. "I should go. My dad will worry."

"I'm sorry." Sebastian's fingers slip off the keys, music escaping from the room like a frightened specter. "I didn't mean to–"

"It's okay," he chokes out, even though it's not. It's really not. His lies spill down his cheeks and his lungs burn, fighting an onslaught of pain he hasn't felt since the funeral. He hasn't let it in, he hasn't let himself feel it. It's too much for one person to bear. "I just have to go."

But he stops after only a few steps, a sob ripping through his chest, incapacitated where he stands. He can't keep running from this, he can't keep hoping things will magically get better and the heap of broken pieces he already is inside will magically mend. His mom's not coming back. It's time to face that, however hard that may be.

"She died."

It's the first time he's said it out loud. It doesn't undo him like he thought it would.

"I'm sorry. I didn't know."

"A year ago."

He'd been upstairs doing his homework when he heard the voices, police officers talking to his dad in the living room, asking to talk to both of them. The worst day of his life.

"What happened?"

"A car accident," he says, weight divided between both his feet, else he might tip over and shatter like glass, leave Sebastian to clean up the pieces, pick the splinters from between the floorboards. "The roads were slippery and she– She lost control of the car."

Even then it had seemed so casual. So inconsequential. Car accidents happened to other people, in other towns, far away from their small provincial life.

"She was a good teacher," Sebastian says. "Never lost her patience with me."

He smiles through his tears. That sounds like his mom all right.

He wipes at his cheeks and turns back around, closing his distance to Sebastian to a few inches as he settles on the bench again. He sniffles. "Do people often lose their patience around you?"

Sebastian laughs. "You wouldn't believe some of the stories I have."

Sunlight streams into the room, and for the first time since they met he gets a decent look at Sebastian's eyes, gleaming bright and green, like emeralds. Eyes that trap. Eyes that enchanted.

"Maybe you can tell me sometime."

Sebastian's lips part. "You don't think I'm a monster?"

"I think you're lonely."

Which is okay. He's lonely too.

Sebastian casts down his eyes, and underneath all that terrific horror he can see a boy in disguise, as tormented as he's been. He means to know this boy, the way his mom once did, in every way no one else ever has. Then maybe he can be a whole boy again too some day.

"You can come back tomorrow."

Sebastian faces away, tempted back into the shadows by a curse he didn't choose.

"If you like."

.

That Monday he goes around the back of the house as instructed. School let out half an hour ago and he'd all but run here after his brief run-in with Hunter.

"Blaine," Hunter had called, falling into step beside him, everyone staring at the most popular guy in school talking to what most would describe an outcast. That wasn't news. He'd always been a little different. For the most part, he'd always liked being a little different. "I missed you at the party."

He'd shrugged, casting down his eyes. "I didn't feel like partying."

Hunter knew as well as anyone he wasn't much for parties; he'd attended one or two over the past few years at his mom's urging, even though she assured him that what passed for parties around here wouldn't be the kind of parties he would find at college. His hometown didn't have a nightclub, barely even a bar, so any party took place in the small rec center near the town hall – no alcohol or loud music allowed. Few teenagers ever had a good time. So he's at a loss what Hunter thinks would've been different at Halloween.

"You can't stop living your life, Blaine."

His eyes had shot up in between two beats of his heart, Hunter's green eyes devoid any flirting but the mild accusation that he'd foregone things he owed himself all the same. He owed it to his mom's memory to live every moment to the fullest. How could Hunter say that to him though?

He'd turned on his heels.

"Blaine!" Hunter had called. "Don't be like that!"

But Hunter's words had struck too deep, too close to a truth he'd buried beneath layers and layers of pain, plastered over with the satisfaction that as long as no one disturbed it, he could go on fooling everyone. Himself included. As long as no one pressed their footprints over the plaster he could hide, he could go on the way he's been.

So he did what he's been doing for a while now. He ran.

All day he couldn't think about anything else but see Sebastian again, witness the miracles of magic made flesh in his skin, talk to him about everything and nothing and all the things in between. For the first time in a long time the prospect of making a friend doesn't shut him down. Following in his mom's footsteps doesn't tear another hole through him. Maybe it's wrong to hang all those hopes on a boy as desperately out of touch as he is, maybe Sebastian wouldn't want him near should he find out what he's doing, but his mom would've wanted him to try.

If Hunter wants him to start living again it'll be around Sebastian, or another complete stranger. Not someone who could never understand what he's going through.

The beginning of the forest runs the gamut of the back of the house, ancient poplars and pines with trunks the size of small cars, at enough distance to each other for the sun to gleam through, for its beams to make the house appear golden and heat the large greenhouse out back.

A backdoor leads into the kitchen; he knocks before entering to be polite, but the door hasn't opened a few inches or a stark contrast settles over him. The scent of freshly baked pastries knits in his chest like home, the flour dusted over a rolling pin and chopping board, some on Quinn's cheek where she must've brushed her hand over her face.

"You must be Blaine." She smiles wide, with a warmth he scarce thinks Sebastian possesses– quite a feat, all things considered. "I'm Quinn."

There's a case of fresh vegetables on top of the fridge, what he quickly identifies as pumpkin soup boiling on the stove, and a small tray with three bowls ready on the kitchen island. It's a pocket of domesticity inside a house foreign to the word itself, and it fills him to his toes with hope. Because this warmth lives inside Sebastian, and there's bound to be a way to release that.

Sebastian's coughing startles him.

"He's not in a very good mood today, I'm afraid."

That's when he realizes. "He didn't send me the piano, did he?"

Quinn smiles knowingly, but admits to nothing, flour dancing in the sun as she brushes her hands together. At least someone wants him here. "Go ahead inside."

Nerves trickle down to his stomach as he enters the living room, none too sure how he'll be received now that he's been invited. His nerves turn out to be unfounded when, besides the lone fauteuil that had graced the room up until now, there's now a two-seater too.

"You got a couch."

"Parents did actually buy me a complete set," Sebastian grumbles and sits down on the new burgundy couch. "Haven't needed it up until now. Kind of– empty no matter what I put in here."

Some of it must be true then, the cold that blankets the house comes tied to Sebastian's curse, bleeds out some of the home Sebastian has tried to make. That seems unnecessarily cruel. Why had Sebastian been cursed? What sort of wrong had he done to be punished in such a way?

He shuffles back and forth, unsure in ways he's rarely been. "Is Quinn–"

"My stepsister," Sebastian says, picking at his nails. "She's taken it upon herself to make my pitiful existence more livable. I don't really let her."

"You should."

He lowers himself down on the couch, sinking in the cushions, aware of Sebastian's eyes on him. The furniture doesn't feel the way it's supposed to, like it's still in the warehouse, sitting dissembled inside its box.

"It's cold in here."

"That's my fault, I'm afraid."

He finds Sebastian's eyes, now green specked with black. It's worse again.

"You must have noticed by now."

"But the kitchen–"

"All Quinn, I'm afraid."

Pressing his lips together he tries to take it all in; Sebastian cursed to look different, draining the life from all the inanimate objects around him, his face compelling others to face away – why though? Why would a witch not want others to see Sebastian if it was a curse meant to break him down? Wouldn't most people react the way he initially had when they saw him? Wouldn't anyone recoil at the sight of him? What purpose does it serve to make people look away?

Then he remembers his own situation, how people talking around his mom's death actually accentuates it further, that someone's gone from his life that he's meant to miss, meant to mourn, meant to hurt over. The reminders make it hurt more.

"What's wrong?" Sebastian asks. "You look more miserable than I do."

He pictures his mom here, sitting next to a young Sebastian at the piano the way she sat by his side at home – she'd have the opposite effect for him, she'd make a place more like home than anywhere else. Mom was home. Dad was home. Not any house or place. He wonders what Sebastian's home looks like.

"Hey," Sebastian calls softly, forcing him to look up. His eyes all green again, light brown around the edges. How is that possible?

"Something someone said to me today," he confesses. "That I can't stop living my life because of what happened to my mom."

"You can't."

He throws Sebastian the exact same look Hunter tossed him half an hour ago. Because Sebastian hasn't exactly been living his life either; he's been holed up in this huge house for eighteen months, alone like him, sad like him, struggling with the concept of what life should be without certain things in it.

Sebastian raises his hands in surrender. "I'm not about to get on any high horse here," he says, body making a half turn towards him, eyes pinning him down. "But, Blaine, you can't. That's how you get stuck. Is that what you want?"

No, he supposes he doesn't.

.

On Tuesday he has dinner with Sebastian and Quinn in the kitchen, a little chillier with Sebastian there. His dad got an early start at the hospital so he won't be missed, and it beats eating alone in front of the television. He can't remember the last time he joined anyone for dinner, and even though he and Quinn do most of the talking, the thought that he might have gained not one but two friends, makes all the effort worth it.

He quickly learns that Quinn's mom married Sebastian's father six years ago, and they have a baby sister Addie back in New York; Quinn attends Brown University, hoping to one day become a speech therapist, or something in the field should another subject pique her interest. Any free time she finds she tries to spend with Sebastian.

Sebastian grunts a few times over a few embarrassing stories Quinn shares to lighten the mood, but overall they have a pleasant meal – they finish the pumpkin soup Quinn made, thick and silky on his tongue, then a simple meatloaf and mash main course. He makes a mental note to find some way to repay Quinn for this.

"What about you?" Quinn asks. "What do you want to do?"

It's the first time someone in this town asks him, even though Quinn's not technically a townie. People here would rather assume no one ever leaves, they're surprised when someone willingly wants to. His mom told him to get out if he could, see the world, put college on hold if he needed to, have adventures on his own or with a special someone. He's never contemplated staying before.

"World's overrated," Sebastian mutters, pushing what's left of his food around on his plate.

"Sebastian," Quinn scolds.

Sebastian's knife drops to the table, and his chair screeches over the floor as he gets up and leaves. He can't imagine Sebastian as someone who hasn't seen his fair share of the world; surely he must have seen something worth his while. Maybe he shouldn't have said anything about wanting to leave town.

And it seems wrong for part of him to rejoice at that.

"I'm sorry," Quinn says. "He can be so intolerable sometimes."

"It gets worse when he's in a bad mood."

Quinn bites the inside of her cheek. "It's tied to how he sees himself."

He blinks up into Quinn's hazel eyes, and a whole world opens up to him. All the times he's heard Sebastian cough, wail, or cry, both times Sebastian chased him away and he'd doubled over in pain – all because of how he perceived himself? He'd thought it was his fault, that he'd upset Sebastian, but this was the curse's doing too.

Someone wanted Sebastian to learn to love himself.

.

The week that follows is much the same. They talk, mostly about his life, or his day, or about things that don't matter at all; Quinn's new boyfriend who she never stops talking about; a card Addie drew for Sebastian of their reassembled family, a scribbly 'We miss you' in a corner of the paper; about the people in town and their gossip; Sebastian's first five years living here. He can't remember that far back, and even so it's doubtful they crossed paths, but from time to time, when Sebastian falls silent, he imagines them walking hand in hand as toddlers, best of friends, no secrets or curses between them.

Sebastian helps him with his homework too; he has a knack for chemistry and physics, though he suspects Sebastian excels at a lot of things should he put his mind to them. Apparently Sebastian's stepmom had suggested homeschooling by a tutor, but Sebastian had resolutely refused that idea.

"Est-ce que je peux vous aider?" Sebastian reads from his textbook.

He looks up from his notes. "Your French is fluent."

"I lived in Paris for a few years." Sebastian shrugs. "With my mom."

Here he thought the world was 'overrated.' There are so many things he wants to know about Sebastian, so many questions that didn't exclusively entail his curse, but he's so guarded, so shielded, so incredibly frightened to give away anything that he's afraid to ask. What if Sebastian gets worse? What if one of his questions triggers another fit?

"What was it like?"

Much to his surprise, a smile plays around Sebastian's mouth, his lips red and fuller, skin less tight and pink. "C'est magique," Sebastian muses, and he longs to kiss the magic of those lips. It's a thought that occurs more often than not whenever some of Sebastian's veil lifts, whenever their eyes catch in a moment of inattention and the pressure to his spine intensifies. He could love this boy and all his scars and be perfectly content doing just that for the rest of his life.

.

That same night, he runs into Hunter outside the grocery store; he plans on making his dad dinner –or rather, breakfast– when he wakes up for his shift. Quinn showed him how to make eggs in a basket and he's eager to try. He's tempted to ignore Hunter altogether, make him feel how his words hurt him and he has no business pretending to know him, but it's late, and he has no fight left. He's kind of cold, away from Sebastian.

"I'm sorry about what I said." Hunter stops him outside, hands in his pockets, trying his hardest to add a little pout to his lip that might just make him sway. "I'd just hate to see you go through your senior year without having some fun."

"That's– sweet, Hunter." He ducks his head, smiling. "But I have to do that in my own time."

"Of course." Hunter nods. "Maybe we can have dinner when that time comes."

He tilts his head, equal parts annoyed and equal parts charmed by Hunter's insistence. Hunter isn't a bad guy; he likes to be the center of attention but that's not hard to do at their small high school as captain of the football team. Like him, Hunter dreams of other places, where there might be a bigger pool of gay boys to choose from, but where there are a lot more opportunities than their fair town offers too. He can relate to at least some of that.

"Sorry. Force of habit." –Hunter takes a step back, but still smiles smugly– "I hear you've been hanging at the Smythe house a lot."

He blinks. He told his dad and no one else; he wouldn't have– "Who told you that?"

"My brother saw you go inside."

A breath unknots in his chest. "Sebastian moved back."

"Smythe?" Hunter eyes widen.

He nods, and lies, "He wanted piano lessons," because that's about the only skill he'd have to offer around here. His counselor at school suggested a few months ago that he could take on some of his mom's students, but that had directly resulted in selling his mom's piano. It didn't have any sentimental value, it came second-hand after their previous one gave up, and having it out of sight eased his guilt over not practicing anymore.

"Should I be jealous?"

"I don't know, Hunter." He sighs. He should have seen this coming. "Should you?"

"No need to get so defensive."

"I've told you," he says. "I'm not interested in dating you. We've known each other since we were kids. You know everything about me, and I know everything about you. And that's not– You're not who I want."

It's the first time he hears himself say it. It's the first time he thinks the thought even reaches his conscious mind, but he– he wants someone like Sebastian. Someone he can get to know. Someone he can take care of. Above all, someone who understands him.

"You're into this Sebastian kid," Hunter says, like it's the most unbelievable thing in the world.

"I'm–"

He is.

"Figures." Hunter huffs. "A rich boy comes to town and Blaine Anderson goes googly eyes."

Hunter's harsh tone startles him so hard his heart nearly jumps out of his mouth. "What?"

"I heard he doesn't even look right." Hunter spits. "This is bullshit."

Unlike two days ago he doesn't get the chance to walk away; Hunter shakes his head at him and leaves, stomping down the street like a petulant child.

.

One Friday in the middle of November Sebastian watches him do his homework, stretched out on his stomach on the couch. He'd already read Mary Shelley's Frankenstein about four times before school assigned him the book, so he doesn't reread it as he tries to draft his essay. His eyes skip to Sebastian every so often, sitting on the floor facing the couch leafing through his copy, long fingers drawing up and down the page before leafing to the next one.

He likes that they don't have to talk, that as long as he remains close enough the cold can't affect him because Sebastian's warmth overflowed once he pushed through. If warmth can return whenever Quinn stops by it isn't gone forever, and it can come back.

"'Hateful day when I received life!' I exclaimed in agony." Sebastian reads aloud, finally landed on a page he seems to have been looking for. "'Accursed creator! Why did you form a monster so hideous that even you turned from me in disgust? God, in pity, made man beautiful and alluring, after his own image; but my form is a filthy type of yours, more horrid even from the very resemblance. Satan had his companions, fellow-devils, to admire and encourage him; but I am solitary and abhorred.'"

Lowering his pen to his notebook he regards Sebastian closely, the way his eyes pin down the passage, the corners of his mouth drooping, and the most distinct kind of ache sets in his sternum. In a way, circumstances cursed Frankenstein's monster too.

"You know you're not a monster."

"I know," Sebastian says softly, though little conviction sounds through. "Frankenstein was the monster."

The person who cursed Sebastian must have been a monster, evil and mean-spirited. Nothing warrants punishment like this – Sebastian's ailments make him self-conscious and insecure, turn him inwards and disconnect him from the world, which has in turn made the world give up on him save for a few people. It's a vicious circle he hopes Sebastian manages to break free from, because he fears the outcome should Sebastian's condition ever take another turn for the worse.

Sebastian turns around on the floor and sits back against the couch, concealing any emotions his face might show. He reaches out and runs a hand through Sebastian's hair, thicker still and regained some of its chestnut hue.

He's beyond grateful Sebastian leans into the touch.

.

Fall soon moves into winter, the first snows coaxing children and their parents outside. Roads turn slippery and the holiday spirit starts slowly invading local shops, everyone charged with the fresh energy a new season brings along.

He remains mostly indoors, wrapped up in his favorite thick sweaters.

The real frost sets like rust around Sebastian's joints; he walks like an old man, one careful step at a time, hunched over, his fingers too painful to even play the piano. It's not a setback, but his months of inactivity coming back around. If at all possible the cold inside the mansion sharpens into the intolerable, so he helps Quinn clear the chimney in the living room. They're at it for a few hours, Sebastian reading in the corner, a blanket draped over him.

He and Quinn share a hot chocolate over some croissants he helped her bake, and their laughter echoes through the house like distant voices of the future, the fire unwinding tension the winter freeze brought on. Winter brings with it the pristine promise of renewal, world blanketed while underneath the earth prepares to grow new and exciting things. It's all within reach, Sebastian's getting better, and even though he might not entirely understand this curse, they're made to be broken. He's determined to find a way.

Perhaps his hope ran away with him.

He sits reading to Sebastian, legs tucked close, almost touching Sebastian's, when Sebastian speaks up, as if he hadn't been listening to a word he read, but rather sat contemplating how he would say what he's about to, "I don't think you should come here anymore."

His face falls as he glances up from the page. "Why not?" he asks, mind racing at a million miles an hour, searching for any kind of explanation. Had he done something wrong? Said the wrong thing?

"I'm better on my own."

"No, you're not." He casts the book aside and scoots a little closer, like he's learned to do, like it's a gesture his body once unlearned but his muscles never forgot, like Sebastian needs to know there are people who won't recoil the moment they see him. "You've been doing better."

But Sebastian faces the other way, face draped in shadow, his hands shaking as he hides them underneath the blanket. "There's no cure for what I am, Blaine."

"Curses can be broken."

Sebastian laughs, coughs, "Not what I meant."

He shoots up with the sudden urge to tower over Sebastian, to shake him until his brains dislodge so maybe this will all start making sense again. Why is Sebastian talking this way? Like he'll live out his days like this when clearly there are steps leading away from his horrid curse? Why is Sebastian giving up?

"But–" –much too vivid images flash in front of his eyes, a coffin being lowered into the cold hard ground, blank faces coming up to him to shake his hand, his dad's arm around him– "you'll die."

Sebastian will die. Like–

"Everything dies."

No. He can't lose someone else, he can't risk his heart breaking again because this time it will turn into dust, the wind will sweep it away and scatter it in all the places he'd hoped to travel. Ashes. That's all there'll be left of him. Smoke.

His grief carves a wet fault line down his cheek. "You'd– You'd leave me?"

"I'm sorry if my dying is a personal affront to you, Your Majesty, but–"

"Don't do that," –he grits his teeth together, fighting tears as best he can,– "You don't get to do that. You don't get to choose to leave!"

Where had this come from? They were doing so well, they were getting to know each other and Sebastian had never breathed so easily. Neither had he. He met Sebastian no four weeks ago but he couldn't stand to lose him, he couldn't stand the thought of Sebastian leaving him too, all alone in a small town where he carries his tragedy on his face like– like scars. It's not the same, it's nowhere near the same and he's ashamed to think it in the first place, but they're not so different. They're both hiding, and avoiding, doing everything in their power not to let people see their deepest wounds.

He thought they could share that. He thought they shared something special already.

Sebastian barks a heavy cough. "Please leave, Blaine."

Part of him screams to stay put, to make Sebastian see that his heart is poisoning his mind, clouding his judgment, making him believe that there's no other path but that of self-loathing. There's a wide world out there waiting for them and if Sebastian's patient, if he holds on a little longer, he might find he wants to see it again. Paris and Rome and beyond. They could see the world together.

Instead he does what he learned to do a while back.

He runs.

He covers a hand over his mouth and heads for the door, frantically grabbing for this coat and scarf, none too surprised to hear Quinn's boots stomping on the floor. "What are you doing?!" she raves, her voice above a whisper but enough to get her anger across. "He comes here for a reason, Sebastian."

"He can't save me, Quinn." Sebastian rumbles deeper again, followed by a rattly cough. "No one can."

"He could love you."

Yes, he thinks, he could love Sebastian to the ends of the Earth and back again. Why won't he let him? Was he cursed to lose the people he loved?

"He shouldn't."

He buries a whine into the palm of his hand, fissures opening beneath his ribs.

"Do you think I could stand to lose you?" Quinn asks.

Even he can't escape the horrific calm that follows.

.

As the story will be told in years to come by the villagers, that late winter night the locals could hear Sebastian's monstrous wails coming from the house in waves, one after the other rolling in along the streets, broken by the breaths he needed in between.

When telling the story most people agree that if it weren't for Quinn's care, Sebastian might have died that night.

.

As for him, he cries into his pillow all that night, losing his breath between every sob that ravages his body. He cries waterfalls until he runs out, until he passes out from exhaustion. Much like the night his mom died.

The worst day.

.

A week goes by and he doesn't hear from Sebastian. He doesn't know why he thought he would; they haven't exchanged phone numbers and Sebastian doesn't leave the house, and he's determined to respect Sebastian's wishes. He wants nothing more than to check on Sebastian, but he can't run the risk of Sebastian falling to pieces, or for Sebastian to try and break any more of his heart than he already has. Maybe Sebastian needs space and time to figure things out, even though he's tempted to accuse Sebastian of running away from his problems. Seems silly now. He might as well be talking to air. And he ran, again, all the same.

Routine is all that keeps him going; his dad comes home while he's having breakfast, they talk for a bit but not about anything important, and he goes to school; he sits alone at lunch, pays attention in class, and spends an hour or two in the library before going home. After a few days of this his dad makes an effort to have dinner with him almost every night, to make sure he doesn't shut down completely. They talk about Sebastian and his time there, about Quinn and her obvious care for her stepbrother, about Sebastian's curse even. Much to his surprise, his dad sides with him.

He sets the table for two, his mom's chair remaining untouched, and regards his dad curiously. "You don't think I should've left him on his own?"

"I don't think he's in the right state of mind to decide what's best for him," his dad answers in his doctor's voice. He likes that voice, it's filled with practiced comfort, and he could use some of that. He doesn't hate Sebastian for what he did, self-hatred can plant doubt in the strongest minds, but he wishes there was a way for him to show Sebastian there's no need to. He wishes Sebastian would hear him.

"Do you think I am?"

His dad's eyes, his own eyes in a lot of ways, mellow, and, taking a few steps towards him, his dad squeezes his shoulders. Closing his eyes he soaks up the strong grip, the memory of happier times it brings with it, like his dad lifting him into the air as a small boy, his mom and dad watching him unwrap his Christmas presents, his parents sharing a hug.

He misses being touched.

"I know this hasn't been easy," his dad says. "I know you're on your own a lot too– and that's my fault."

"Dad–"

He's never blamed his dad, not even in his darkest moments– his dad needs his work to survive, to face the world day in day out without breaking down. They both have different ways of coping, and while he often wonders if he'd be better already if they'd mourned together, he can hardly hold his coping mechanism against him.

"But you know yourself, Blaine," his dad says. "Your mom made sure you did. You have all the tools you need to become the man your mom knew you to be. And I trust your choices."

He falls forward into his dad's welcoming arms, hugged closer than he ever was as a boy, held tighter than he was at the funeral – his relationship with his dad was different than the one he shared with his mom; his mom knew him through and through, dressed up with him for Halloween, danced through the living room whenever he got into one of those moods. His mom was his best friend. His dad had always just been his dad.

.

Another few days and winter starts playing trick on him. With Sebastian no longer providing a constant source of heat he finds his body temperature plummets at the oddest times, though if he's being honest it happens in all the moments he misses Sebastian the most. It's in the quiet moments he tries to picture Sebastian alone in his house, as miserable as he gets, and Quinn desperately trying to make everything better.

Sometimes when he's outside past dark he gets the strangest sense he's being followed. He couldn't say how, but there's a trickle of something at the back of his neck, a crawling between his shoulder blades, and the regular coincidence of catching a figure from the corner of his eye. He's almost too afraid to think it could be Sebastian.

Then again, he'd been out the night he was attacked. Why was that? He hadn't seen Sebastian so much as exit the back of the house, let alone wander around town, jumping from shadow to shadow. What would be the point?

One night, snow thick but powdery on the sidewalks, he's startled by a loud bang in the alley he passes. He freezes on the spot, flashing back to the night he was almost robbed, a gun shoved in his face, and knocked out in the struggle that followed. This isn't the same though, there's a line of warmth in the winter freeze, and he dares ask, "Sebastian?" because who else could it be, how else could it be that in this barren season warmth chases him at night? Sebastian left the house once before that he knows of. It wouldn't be impossible.

The wind wheezes. A car drives through the slush. But no Sebastian.

"Are you there?" he asks, straining to make anything out in the pitch black of the alley. Maybe he's hearing things, feeling things, phantom pains weaved through the strands of his life Sebastian had affected. Parts Sebastian had left cold.

"Please, I'm not angry," he pleads, and shuffles a step forward, all in the hopes of finding Sebastian. If Sebastian's here, if Sebastian's been following him, maybe he'll come around. Maybe he can start coming by the house again. "Just say something."

Moments pass, minutes, stretched out between his icy breaths, the cold making his eyes water, and the quiet hope beyond all hope that he's not wrong. If Sebastian's here, if Sebastian left the house to look for him, then he's found him, and he's not going anywhere.

Then, the quiet shuffle of feet in the snow.

His heartbeat maddens as the footsteps approach, slow, careful, unsteady– a foot finds the light, and the other, before Sebastian dips completely into the streetlight. He wears a long black coat over his hoodie, the hood pulled up to hide his face, wrapped up warm against the cold. It's about the most relieving sight he's ever beheld; Sebastian came for him, and whether or not it was his intention to be discovered, he's not running away either.

"I didn't mean to scare you."

"Don't leave me alone," he breathes.

Sebastian's shoulders droop. "You shouldn't want me around you."

"I'm not afraid."

"And that–" Sebastian laughs, a kind of incredulity to it, "–scares me senseless."

"Sebastian Smythe," –he cocks an eyebrow proudly, though his voice shakes– "scared of a boy?"

"A first, I admit."

He doesn't have to see Sebastian's smile to know it's there. It's kind of daunting, to think Sebastian's scared of him when most people would claim it should be the other way around, but who would be scared of Sebastian once they got to know him? According to Quinn he's gotten closer than anyone and there's nothing at all that could scare his feelings away.

"You're home alone tonight."

He shrugs. "I'm home alone most nights."

Sebastian stretches out his boney hand, worse again after a week's separation. "Come on," he urges, and he doesn't need to be asked twice. Maybe it's selfish, more than a little self-centered to think himself the only reason Sebastian's getting better, but Sebastian intertwined those the night he saved his life. For some reason Sebastian thought him worth saving; he could've dropped him at the hospital and walked away, but Sebastian took him home, let him see him, allowed him to get close.

Maybe Sebastian feels it too.

Sebastian throws an arm around him, as much for support as to keep him warm, and they head for the mansion together – Sebastian lights the fire while he makes some hot chocolate, and they settle in front of the fireplace with a few blankets. It's like part of him comes home again; not to a place, but a person.

They don't talk about what happened. In fact they don't talk at all. They don't need to. They stare at the flames licking at the wood, listen to the crackle of the fire. And simply are.

.

Few days or nights after that are lonely. He visits Sebastian when he can, for lunch, for dinner, most of his free time spent at the house, and his dad doesn't ask any questions. The thought that his dad respects and trusts his choices has opened their relationship up again, and while it's still hard to talk about his mom, sometimes they share random memories when they occur, just because.

Sebastian didn't just save his life that night. He has saved it a little every day since. He returns home with a piece of who he was restored, glued over the fragile framework of his heart slowly reassembling.

Sometimes thinking about his mom makes him cry. But sometimes it makes him smile too.

In bed he lies awake thinking about Sebastian, knowing, deep down, that Sebastian's thinking about him.

.

He reads Sebastian from his favorite book – he hasn't touched it in over a year, hadn't been able to look at his mom's chaotic handwriting on the title page, the worn pages, the small notes in the margins. She bought it for Christmas years ago, he forgets how many, and he's reread it all but one Halloween since. Last Halloween a tear or two had tainted every other page, traces visible throughout the book, like a history of his grief sunk salty into the copy. It might be a little late for Halloween now, but bravery doesn't demand a deadline.

"This is your favorite book?" Sebastian frowns. "Why?"

Last time he broached this subject Sebastian had fled from the room, and he refuses to let Sebastian think he'd ever run away again. His dreams never involved fleeing for the hills, rather they encompassed breaking free, from this town, from his own confinement, from the same old day with the same old people, and no one to talk to or understand him. These past few weeks, Sebastian has started featuring in them too.

"I like the idea of escaping your circumstances. Of seeing the world," he says, leaning sideways against the couch, where Sebastian sits curled up with a cup of coffee. "Arthur kind of reminds me of you."

"I'm not a prince, Blaine."

"So you claim."

Sebastian smiles. He might not be a prince, but he's his prince; Sebastian has helped him break free from his imprisonment and gave him the strength to finally start healing. If he helps Sebastian get better, Sebastian has given him just as much in return.

"You'd really leave?"

"You could come with me."

He stares out in front of him, waiting for the silence to set and stretch, for it to reach the confines of the living room and spread through the rest of the house like blight. Instead, Sebastian's fingers reach tentatively into his hair, trailing slowly back and forth through his curls. "I lied before," he says softly. "The world's worth seeing."

He closes his eyes and drowns in the touch, his heart spills like lava and a world they see together stretches his dreams wide open – maybe he could wait, watch Sebastian get better, let the curse disappear before he sets off, before he packs his bags and leaves this town. He will wait for Sebastian, however long it takes. If the world's worth seeing, surely sharing that with someone will have equal value.

"Your hands are better again."

"Kindness of the curse."

"Curses can be kind?"

Sebastian tugs at his curls a little. "Who knew."

He smiles. "What are you feeling now?"

That same precipitous silence falls again, but Sebastian doesn't wait long to answer this time.

"I'm happy."

The answer alone would've been enough, but as soon as he looks up he notices the lump in Sebastian's forehead gone, scars still raining crisscross down his cheeks but his nose straighter too, lips normal gentle curves. He's long since learned to see deeper than Sebastian's skin, but witnessing Sebastian's happiness so clearly makes him want to stay like this forever.

So he blurts out, "I want to stay with you tonight," without thinking, without consideration, without any other thought but his own needs. He likes to think Sebastian needs him too, but he's still insecure about the way he looks, still hides underneath actual layers. Last time they shared a bed Sebastian had been drunk, they hadn't touched; he doubts Sebastian even remembers much from that night. Maybe he asks too much.

"Sure," Sebastian answers softly. "If you're sure your dad won't mind."

He ducks away with a smile much bigger than he can contain. Sebastian won't push him away again.

.

That night he changes into one of Sebastian's PJs, the sleeves too long, the bottoms rolled up four times before he stops tripping over them – Sebastian's in stitches watching him fumble, but he could stand to make a fool of himself if it means Sebastian's laughter echoing through the house.

They get under the covers and lie down side by side, Sebastian urging him closer with a "Come here," and an outstretched arm. He's never slept with anyone like this, not with another boy in a bed not his own. He's never felt like this before either, like he could lie down in Sebastian's arms a thousand different times and it would be new on every single occasion. His heart starts racing, throat closing a little, but Sebastian takes his hand and guides it over his heart, where his beats fast too. So he cuddles closer, his head on Sebastian's shoulder, tugged in the crook of his body as best he can.

"When you close your eyes," Sebastian murmurs, "What do you dream about?"

"My mom."

They've changed over the months, his dreams, along with the seasons. He used to dream the accident never happened, that it'd all been a terrible case of mistaken identity and his mom hadn't died; it'd woken him in a cold sweat and taken him minutes to realize none of it was true. Sometimes he dreamt about coming into a room lit up by his mom's bright smile, yet somehow he could never quite reach her. He tried; he ran and ran and ran, but never closed that distance. He'd not slept at all for a few weeks over the summer, insomnia a kind reprieve from nightmares where he had no one in the world. Luckily the nightmares abated, and made way for more pleasant things.

Now, he dreams about Sebastian meeting his mom.

"You, sometimes."

"Me? Better-looking, I hope."

"You're fine the way you are," the words escape involuntarily, but they melt him into Sebastian's body, a perfect fit for his. He won't care if Sebastian stays like this forever, all he cares about is Sebastian finding the happiness in small moments, accepting that each day brings opportunity and that people love him for who he is, not what he looks like. He cares about Sebastian letting love into his heart, so it might sink into every part of him that hurts, that often hates, that sometimes wishes to stop existing.

Sebastian pushes his lips to his forehead, hesitant and brief. But it's a kiss nonetheless.

.

The next morning Sebastian's bones are less rusty.

.

The morning after that his spine has straightened and he can walk without hunching forward.

.

And every morning after, he wakes up safe and warm in Sebastian's arms, finding more and more of the boy and less of what Sebastian would claim the monster.

.

He does still sleep in his own bed. He has to go to school and finish his chores, and given how their relationship has changed over the past weeks, he wants to see his dad as much as he can. If he thought Sebastian any more comfortable around people he'd even invite his dad over to Sebastian's for dinner sometime. But they're not there yet. Some day they will be, and his heart spins around that hope like an intricate vine. He could never see this with Hunter, he's never thought about it much with anyone. It only goes to show that when you meet the right person everything changes.

"So is he your boyfriend, then?" his dad asks him one night while they're watching television.

"No." He blinks up and nearly drops the bowl of popcorn balancing precariously on his lap, his cheeks burning as if someone struck a match against them. "We're not," he stutters. "He's just–"

In the quiet shock that follows his confusion he can't find an answer: he and Sebastian are friends, he dares say best friends. They have some sort of a relationship but they're not dating. So Sebastian can't be. He can't be his boyfriend.

Can he?

.

"This witch that cursed me," Sebastian says one late night in early December, his voice so sudden it draws him back from the edge of sleep. They're curled together underneath thick sheets, his head over Sebastian's heart. It shouldn't be a comfortable position to sleep in, yet it is.

"I tried to seduce him."

The confession doesn't come as a shock; Sebastian has talked about his life before the curse, his affluent lifestyle, the parties and the booze, and the boys he picked up. It doesn't make him jealous; the boy Sebastian describes isn't the boy he knows now, not the boy he's falling in love with. He knows Sebastian's been with other people, but that doesn't make what they have any less special. Sebastian let him in at his most vulnerable, at his most insecure. That means something he can scarcely encompass with all his mind.

"When he rejected me I said some unforgiveable things. Things I didn't mean. Things I never should've–"

Sebastian shudders, choking around his words, and he holds on tighter, burrows closer into Sebastian's chest, closer to his heart if that were possible, ready to reach in and hold all his pieces together. "He told me that as long as I couldn't truly love myself I'd never find love. And he made my outsides match my insides."

"I don't believe that."

He tilts his head upward as Sebastian's fingers tick down his spine and settle at the small of his back, drawing small circles. He could live inside this intimacy and never want for anything, he could get stuck in this town forever but with Sebastian by his side that would be okay, they'd make it work, create a world of their own where no two days would ever be the same.

It's unimaginable how they got here, what horrors they had to go through to find each other in this way, and maybe all the pain wasn't worth it, maybe losing a part of who they were shouldn't have led to something beautiful and just as fragile – yet here they are, their lives intricately threaded together.

Sebastian catches his eyes. "You wouldn't have liked who I was before."

"Doesn't matter." He touches his fingers over Sebastian's lips. "I like you now."

"You think people can change?"

He's never had to think about whether or not people can change, his world has been this town and his parents for almost eighteen years. He gets along with people because he has to, and it's not in him to be confrontational or judgmental. He's just been getting by getting along, and he never started questioning his place here until he lost his best friend.

"Would the old Sebastian have saved me?"

Sebastian stares up at the ceiling, unblinking. It must be an odd thing to contemplate, considering Sebastian only moved back because of his curse, but what if Sebastian had moved anyway, what if he'd met the suave rich kid from New York? Would he have felt the way he felt about Hunter? Would Sebastian have pursued him relentlessly? Or worse, would he have even looked at him twice?

"He would've taken you to the hospital," Sebastian answers at long last. "In it for the glory."

The past doesn't matter, he decides, they can't keep looking back to when tragedy struck because that's where they got stuck in the first place – they need to focus on the here and now, look ahead now and then, but what's more important than anything is that they both realize how far they've come, how unstuck they've gotten. How very much they could start living life again.

.

And then, all of it almost comes tumbling down again.

.

He drops by his house after school for supplies, some of his own PJs and his toothbrush, and the cake he made Quinn to surprise her. There's a drawer in Sebastian's bedroom now filled with his clothes, but he doesn't like to leave too many things behind. If Sebastian ever opens that discussion he'll share his two cents, about not wanting to impose in a life Sebastian's finally scraping together after all this time, about them not actually living together. Or being boyfriends for that matter. Are they boyfriends? It's a question that's plagued him since his father asked, since he warmed to the idea of being someone's boyfriend. Right now that's all still up in the air – does he know for sure Sebastian feels the same?

He's nearing the cul-de-sac when he takes note of a figure peering through one of the windows at the front of the house, and it doesn't take him long to identify Hunter. What would he be doing here? They haven't exchanged a word since Hunter accused him of only being interested in Sebastian for his money, and frankly he has no care to argue about that anymore. He knows why he's in love with Sebastian. No one else factors into that equation.

It's when Hunter marches to the front door and tries the handle without knocking that his panic spikes.

"Hunter!" he shouts and takes off, his footsteps dampened by the snow, hurtling towards the house as fast as his feet can possibly carry him. If Hunter hears him he chooses to ignore his pleas, because he pushes through the door. "Hunter, don't!"

Why would Hunter do this? Sebastian will freak out should he find a stranger in the house, he'll run for the hills and turn inward all over again, everything he's worked so hard for will be negated by a stranger all because of petty jealousy.

Nearly losing his footing on the driveway voices from inside draw his attention, Sebastian's panicked wail, Hunter's startled cry, not too dissimilar from his reaction that first night so many weeks ago. This can't be happening, he thinks, he can't lose Sebastian to this curse, he refuses to. He won't let the monster win.

He makes it past the entrance into the living room, where Sebastian has curled into a corner, the only one dipped in shadow, and no, no, he won't stand for this. Hunter can't waltz in here like he owns the place, can't force himself into this part of his life.

"What the hell?" Hunter says, recovered from the initial shock. "You actually like this freak?"

He grabs both hands around Hunter's arm and pulls at him with all his might; Hunter, still focused on Sebastian, comes easily. "He's not a freak," he hisses and gets in front of Hunter, shoving at his chest until he has him in the hallway, past the threshold again, out of the house.

"Look at him, Blaine," Hunter shouts, "He's hideous!"

"And you wonder why I could never go out with you." He shakes his head, his anger making way for despair. Is this how he'd made Sebastian feel that first night? Had he driven Sebastian into the shadows too? Made his condition worse? Even if Sebastian meant to scare him, meant to get him out of the house, running was the worst thing he could've possibly done.

"Leave," he grits, and slams the door in Hunter's face, leaning back heavily against it.

Somewhere upstairs, a door slams shut.

He takes a few moments to compose himself, catch his breath, but it isn't long before he sets off in search of Sebastian, to make sure he's alright, hoping that Hunter hasn't undone all the progress Sebastian has made – he stumbles up the stairs, finding Sebastian's bedroom locked. One hand around the door handle, he leans his forehead to the wood, and closes his eyes.

"Sebastian, please, open the door."

This is his fault. If he hadn't been so firm with Hunter he would never have come to the house; maybe if they'd spoken like people this could've been avoided, maybe– It's stupid, thinking Hunter would've been anyone other than the Hunter he's known, the Hunter who never not tried, the Hunter who took him by surprise. Hunter came here because of him.

"You don't belong here, Blaine," Sebastian cries, "You heard him, I'm–"

"No," he says, before Sebastian manages to invoke that word again. Sebastian isn't a monster. Monsters aren't real. They exist only in fairytales and people's active imagination. "You only think that because that's what people tell you. But I want to tell you you're not. You're–"

Sebastian is beautiful and he's kind, he's not at all the same boy who would take rejection the way he once had. They have taught each other so much, Sebastian has dug underneath his skin and made a home and he shakes with it, all that they've built so far, all they could yet achieve. He won't let Hunter tear that down. He won't let anyone tear that down.

"I'm in love with you," he breathes and pushes at the door, wills it out of the way so he might look at Sebastian, tell him face to face how much he's come to mean to him, how he couldn't be without him anymore. How he could never stand to lose him. "Exactly how you are. How you were. I don't care. Sebastian, please."

No truth will ever run deeper, no love will ever be greater – Sebastian's his prince in disguise who brought him back to life, and he's the peasant boy who saw beyond appearances.

The lock turns in the door.

He startles a step back but collects himself, walking into the room to find Sebastian curled up next to it on the floor, shaking his head, "How could anyone–"

"How could I not?" he whispers, falling to his knees. How could he not love Sebastian after everything he's come to mean? After all the nights spent in his arms dreaming of much brighter things than he thought possible, after sleepless nights wondering what this joy in his chest could mean, after realizing it was the same joy in his mother's eyes whenever she looked at him. It was love.

He leans in and presses a kiss next to Sebastian's lips, who chases his until their mouths meet in a kiss, a sweet tender peck before Sebastian twists away and breathes, "Blaine," but comes around for more. It's like nothing he's ever felt before, the itch tracing up his spine, the tingle in the tips of his ears when Sebastian runs his tongue over his lips, the hum that tumbles out of him once the kiss deepens.

Sebastian cups his face with both hands and rises on his knees too, their kissing a mad desperate chase for more, and more, and more. They'll always have this as long as they let the other in, as long as there are no secrets between them, as long as they're both willing to accept that a curse does not make a condemnation.

.

At Christmas, they dance. Sebastian lets him decorate some of the house, thick garlands in gold and ochre, a modest Christmas tree Quinn helps trim – they unearth a thick rug from the attic and another couch, a dining room table and cupboards that can line the room. A television to slowly let in some of the world. Sebastian plays Christmas tunes on the piano while he sets down a snow globe or two, and the homey scent of gingerbread diffuses through the house.

Come midnight on Christmas Eve, Sebastian asks him to dance – his feet are no longer too heavy, his spine straight as ever, his joints flexible like before. They sway from side to side, Sebastian's lips to his forehead, and he knows beyond the shadow of a doubt fate has led him here. Warmth radiates from Sebastian into every dark inch of this house.

"Once upon a time," Sebastian muses, bumping their noses together, "in a small provincial town, there lived a boy with magic in his eyes."

"His eyes?" he asks, while drowning in Sebastian's.

"How else could he have seen past the ogre's foul appearance?"

He smiles. "I thought you were a prince."

Sebastian steals a kiss from his lips. "You looked past my face," he says. "Past the monster. And you taught me how to do the same. Maybe you're the one with the real magic."

Falling into Sebastian they share a kiss under the mistletoe, a slow now practiced rhythm to their lips that doesn't just mend his heart, that doesn't just rid Sebastian of scar tissue, but knits their hearts together, drunk on love.

They had a snowball fight earlier, when he finally managed to coax Sebastian out of the house with a targeted, "Come on, Sebastian. Please? You can't suck the life out of snow."

Sebastian had shot up from the couch, said, "You're going to pay for that," and chased him out into the backyard, where they'd screamed and shivered when snow made its way past their collars, and come tumbling down on top of each other.

"I love you, Blaine Anderson," Sebastian had said, and his heart grew bigger than his chest could contain, his laughter unstoppable once Sebastian started tickling him, their love sinking into the snow and the ground below, cascading up into the woods and down into the house, cancelling out every shadow.

.

One morning in early February they both venture outside.

People stare, and people will talk, but when they kiss in the town's square they become a pocket world inside a much bigger one, it turns on its axis between every one of their smiles and every single one of their kisses. Time flies by unnoticed. They're untouchable.

.

That's how the story will be told. Sebastian Smythe and Blaine Anderson, two boys from different walks of life, fated together by tragedy and circumstance, their love strong enough to overcome the darkest magic.

Sebastian takes him to Paris.

To Rome.

To Venice.

They explore the world together, all the symphony orchestras and art galleries, the back alley raves, and each other.

And when they're done with all of that, when all that's left of Sebastian's curse is some scar tissue running over a corner of his mouth, they move to New York, where they live, happily ever after.

Because even though every curse leaves a mark, they are, after all, meant to be broken.

.

.

fin

.