Authors Note: I wrote this back in October (my writing was bad then) with the idea that this was going to be a one shot. I had no idea I was going to turn into the Seblaine shipper I am today and I had no idea this was going to be the story I wanted to continue with.
Originally, it was called "You always hurt the ones you love," but the larger fic itself is now called Cannonball after the Damien Rice song of the same title.
This is the prologue that sets everything in motion for when the fic start.
The warm air of the apartment met his face as he opened the door. It was dark, but he hadn't expected Sebastian to be awake at this time. The green digital numbers of their clock on the kitchen wall read 2:30 am, and although at this time the two of them would still be out dancing, Sebastian had promised him when they moved in together that he would never go to a bar without him. It was part of their agreement, part of the main reason they were trying so hard to make this work.
But Blaine smiled lightly to himself as he put his keys down in the glass bowl, the soft clang of metal filling the otherwise silent apartment. Because he knew that they were doing this right. He knew that the word trying wasn't at all what they were doing at this point. Blaine and Sebastian were making this work, and it had become effortless. He no longer woke up in the morning alone and panicked because Sebastian had left him again. He no longer waited all night long for him to come to him all drunk and begging for sex only to find out that he had already had another guy, knowing from the way the smell of sex would ooze off of him. He trusted him. He loved him.
He hummed to himself as he walked into the kitchen, opening the fridge and reaching in for a water bottle. His fingers ached from playing piano all day, but Blaine was aware that he was going to have to deal with it if he wanted to continue on with his masters. Opening and closing his right hand to stretch his fingers, Blaine sighed and took a long drink from the bottle, letting the cold liquid travel down his throat.
Then he heard it. The distant, small grunt coming from somewhere to his left, somewhere near his and Sebastian's bedroom in their medium sized apartment. His triangular eyebrows scrunched together as he capped the bottle, slowly making his way there. He found himself reassuring himself that it was just Sebastian. He was probably having a bad dream, or maybe having a dream about Blaine, or possibly even just jerking off because Blaine wasn't around and he was horny. That lost thought made Blaine smile lightly, almost fondly, as he pictured his beautiful, but extremely horny boyfriend touching himself to the thought of him in their bed when he didn't think he was home.
The floor boards squeaked under his dark beige loafers, and Blaine took a deep breath before whispering as he pushed the heavy bedroom door open, "Sebby?"
The image that meets him as the door slowly opens tears his heart apart. All the hopes, all plans; gone.
Even in the darkness of the room he can see. The curtain is pulled and the lights of New York flood into the room, allowing Blaine to make the faint outline of Sebastian's lean body pressed up against someone else. Their legs are over his shoulder's, feet up in the air, Sebastian firmly in between him, inside him, relentlessly thrusting into him. The man underneath him is writhing, and Blaine wants to throw up with every whimper that escapes his lips as. Sebastian, his Sebastian, continues to prod into him, his grunting unmistakable to Blaine's familiar and trained ear.
It's the man under him that realizes he's at the door. Their eyes meet, and the man lets out a yelp, before placing his hands on Sebastian's hips to stop him. Blaine watches as his boyfriend takes a while to understand what's going on, trying to continue and not even wondering why the man wants him to stop. It's his ego, Blaine knows, and hates himself for knowing.
There are no words exchanged as Sebastian twists his head around, sweaty face turning to meet Blaine's shocked one. His mouth hangs open for a moment, and Blaine waits for him to say something, but realizes there's nothing to say. He doesn't shake his head. He doesn't say anything. Blaine lowered his eyes and turned around, walking out of the room and out of the apartment calmly although his feet feel like iron and his chest burns.
6 months earlier
"Stop that," Blaine laughed, flipping the page in his book of sheet music to read the measure he had written the other day.
Sebastian's lips were warm against his cold back, placing kisses onto his skin as an indicative that he had finally woken up. Blaine sighed as his lips touched the small of his back, closing his eyes as he felt them begin to make their way up the swell of his ass.
"But you're just so sexy laying there on your stomach," he replied, his words slightly slurred as he barely bothered to stop kissing his skin as he answered.
Blaine let out a quiet chuckle, before twisting his head around to meet his boyfriend's eyes. The green in them shone in the daylight that flooded their nearly empty apartment, the boxes crowded in their living room. One of these days, they would get out of their bed long enough to start properly moving in, but as of now they had spent their day and a half of living there officially in bed, in the mattress on the floor.
He groaned lightly as Sebastian kissed his cheek, his hands now caressing his ass as he shifted from lying on his side to lying in between Blaine's spread out legs. Biting down on his lip, Blaine smiled as he said, half meaning it, "I'm trying to do my homework. You're being very distracting."
But that only made Sebastian laugh, and Blaine's heart fluttered as the sound filled the room. He twisted his head back to his sheet music, trying not to smile too wide, but failing. Fiddling with the pencil in his hand, Blaine took a deep breath and tried to write a note down, before he felt Sebastian start shifting from his spot in between Blaine's leg, his head having lain cushioned on Blaine's ass just a moment ago.
"What is it?" Blaine asked, blinking as he looked back to Sebastian only to find the pencil taken out of his hands and himself being flipped onto his back. Blaine looked up at Sebastian, who wore nothing but a smirk on his face. His lean body was straddling his, and although he did have to get back to working, Blaine placed his hands on Sebastian's thighs as he smiled back up at him. He was already half hard just looking at his boyfriend, his cock still slightly red from their long night as it pressed down against Blaine's own. It took everything in him not to thrust up and increase the friction.
Leaning down over Blaine, Sebastian began trailing kisses down his chest lovingly, capturing his nipple in between his teeth and pulling, biting it playfully. Their eyes met as Sebastian licked it better when Blaine let out a small scream. They laughed at each other, and Sebastian straightened up only to fall into Blaine's chest and flip them over so that Blaine was the one laying against his chest.
He let himself be moved, and nuzzled his head into the crook of Sebastian's neck. Blaine closed his eyes and let out a soft sigh as he felt his hands move slowly down his back, rubbing softly. As a teenager, he never would have imagined himself laying here with Sebastian. He never would have imagined the man who had been eye-fucking him since the moment they met to be so affectionate.
Blaine pressed a kiss to his collar bone and whispered, "I'm so happy you agreed to move in."
He began humming into his skin, before he felt hands underneath his chin. Blaine scrunched his eyebrows in question before looking up at Sebastian, who lowered his head to place a delicate kiss against Blaine's lips. He sighed into the kiss, and smiled softly.
Sebastian looked at Blaine for a while, before smiling back at him. He placed a kiss against Blaine's curls, happy that they weren't pulled back by the gel he still insisted on wearing. Whispering into his hair, Sebastian explained, "I've wanted nothing but this since I saw the way you looked at Kurt years ago. I thought I just wanted in your pants, but this is actually a lot better. I love you."
After months of going out with the fellow ex Warbler, Blaine couldn't believe those words were coming out of Sebastian's mouth. Let alone to him, and that they weren't just being used to get into his pants. Sebastian meant them, and Blaine felt that in every kiss.
7 months ahead
His fingers trembled as he touched the things Blaine had marked with a post it note, the dark letters in black marker staring back at him as he sighed. 'Mine', they read, indicating everything Blaine had explained in his letter that he wanted given back to him. It had taken Sebastian a moment to read the note, staring at Blaine's beautiful writing and wondering if this was going to be the last time he would ever really see it.
He was living with Kurt and his fiancée at the moment, but was looking for a place for himself. He said he was fine, and that he didn't want to hear him apologize and that he would actually prefer if Sebastian didn't bring it up if they saw each other again, which he mentioned he wouldn't mind, implying that it was okay if Sebastian was the one who delivered his things.
That was so Blaine. The boy couldn't hold a grudge, and although he knew Blaine was angry by the clear terse language of the letter, he knew just how much Blaine was trying to keep things normal. He had never been one to welcome change, and if there was anyone he put first, it wasn't himself. Even as Sebastian remembered the broken look on Blaine's face as he had seen in with the other man, whose name he couldn't even remember, it broke his heart to realize how much Blaine was thinking of him at the same time.
Sebastian had been trying to justify what he had done since the moment Blaine had left and he had slipped out of the man, instantly soft. He'd told him to wait a minute before leaving, but get dressed as he took a shower. There was no way he wanted Blaine to see the man as he walked out of the building, and threatened that if he stole anything he would find him and personally put him in a hospital bed.
But there was nothing to justify what he had done. There was nothing to put what he had done into a light that made it any less…wrong. The more he thought about it in the month since Blaine had walked out; Sebastian had come to the conclusion that it was because he was terrified. He was scared that he was becoming too comfortable. Every morning he had woken up to Blaine's calm, sleeping face, to him nuzzled against his chest, or his arm over his as they spooned. Every day Blaine got home and crawled onto Sebastian's lap on the couch, bribing the taller man to make dinner because he had made it the other night. Every single day he watched Blaine's smile grow wider, unaware how it was possible for anyone to be so beautiful and sexy at the same time.
And he was scared because he was happy. He was perfectly happy waking up next to Blaine, he was perfectly content making dinner every other night, he was incredibly happy looking at the amazing ex Warbler look so gleeful and knowing that it was his fault. Sebastian had never planned to be happy with someone. His idea of happiness was doing what he wanted, which was men. Men being plural. He was scared of the Sebastian that had become happy with just one man.
Or perhaps he was scared of becoming his father. He was scared of being a married man with a little kid who had ruined his marriage and family by sleeping with someone else. He hadn't wanted to hurt Blaine one day when he was his husband and not his boyfriend. Sebastian figured the hurt was easier this way. The hurt was quicker, and he would be able to get past this.
His fingers touched the old record player they had found while at a thrift store. Blaine had smiled like an excited puppy and bought it instantly, glad to finally have someplace to play all his records. It had become their favorite little thing to indulge in, buying records on the streets whenever they were out together, bringing home records whenever they could. But Blaine had marked that too with a post it.
Sebastian looked through the basket filled with records until he found the one he was looking. It had been Blaine's favorite, having made Sebastian laugh at the fact that the man who called Katy Perry one of his idols, who was so into modern music, loved something as old and classic as 'The Mills Brothers'. He blew the dust off the record, and placed it on the deck. Picking up the needle, he let it fall onto the first track, letting the soft sound of the needle against the vinyl fill the quiet apartment as he started to put everything Blaine had labeled into boxes.
A few minutes went by, and Sebastian had reached their CD collection, (which Blaine had bothered to shift through to find every album that he either had bought himself or believed it belonged to him more than Sebastian.) working slowly as if wanting to keep Blaine there longer. He kept the music in the back of his head, before the opening lines of the song reached his ear.
'You always hurt, the one you love. The one you shouldn't hurt at all.'
His fingers stopped, and Sebastian looked up. He was looking at nothing now, and swallowed deeply as he listened, lost in the words.
'You always break the kindest hearts…So if I broke your heart last night, it's because I love you most of all'
In the month since Blaine had left, Sebastian hadn't cried. He'd kept going to work, kept smiling and winking at the guys he pitched marketing campaigns for. He hadn't let himself feel how empty he was without Blaine. But the words wrapped around his heart and tightened, making blood flow through his veins as he realized what he had done.
Blaine had been the reason he had made those promises. He hadn't meant to break them. Sebastian had told himself when he had moved in that Blaine was all he wanted, because that was the truth. But somewhere within the six months they had lived together, he had lost the Sebastian who had finally realized he had everything he ever wanted right in his arms.
His eyes slowly flooded with tears, and it took everything in him not to take his phone out of his pocket and dial the number listed under 'killer.'
3 months after
"Sebastian!"
The voice was familiar, and it made him jump and almost drop the hot dog he had just bought. Turning around after giving the man his money, Sebastian searched desperately for the voice, having missed it since the last time they had seen each other nearly three months ago when he had given him his things.
"Blaine," he choked out, hating that he was the only person who could make him feel 'nervous' and 'bashful'. Stepping forward, he looked at the shorter boy.
He'd gotten a haircut, he could tell, the curls shorter and closer to his head. They weren't gelled, and it made Sebastian wonder if that was for any reason. Had his current boyfriend asked him to stop? Was he running his hands through his hair every night, pulling those wonderful dark locks every time he thrust into him?
Sebastian thrust those feelings to the side, moving his eyes onto his scarf, which hung low on his chest, glad to see that it was finally almost spring and that Blaine was only wearing a blazer and a scarf instead of the pea coat he so often chose to wear during winter.
The boy smiled up at him, and Sebastian wanted to ask him how he could smile like that? How could he just smile after what he had done. "So, getting lunch?" Blaine asked, motioning at the hot dog in his hands.
He nodded, and wanted to hit himself with this little small talk. They had dated for a year and lived together for six months, and here they were, having small talk as Sebastian ate a hot dog in Central Park. "Yeah. You?"
Blaine shrugged, and that was his answer. Sebastian watched as he pressed his palms together and blew into his hands, wishing suddenly that he could take them in his and warm them. The air was still cold, and despite the fact that Blaine was from Ohio, Sebastian knew that without coffee, Blaine hated the cold.
They stood there, Blaine finally pushing his hands into his pockets while Sebastian took a bite of his hot dog. Around them, the throngs of New York moved, making their way back to their cubicles in their giant skyscraper buildings. Around them, the city yelled, but every time their eyes would meet, the world silenced a little bit.
Taking a deep breath, vapor coming out of his mouth as he opened it, Sebastian said, "I'm…"
But Blaine interrupted him. He shook his head and sighed, before smiling lightly up at the much taller man. "Don't. I meant when I said I didn't want an apology. Plus…I think I've somehow forgiven you. I pushed you into that living arrangement, didn't I?"
It was a question, but Sebastian knew Blaine didn't want an answer. He was trying to put the blame onto himself. He was trying to justify it although Sebastian knew what had really happened. Sebastian knew Blaine well enough to know he hadn't really forgiven him, but that he was just trying to understand what had happened. He didn't answer it, but looked at Blaine and shook his head, although he knew the dark haired man wasn't even looking at him anymore, head slightly cocked to the side.
Then Blaine did look at him, and nodded his head a bit. That smile was back, the puppy one that Sebastian had always laughed at. That smile that he had missed so much. "Hey, want to walk around for a bit while you eat? My next class isn't for another two hours." His voice was calm as he asked, and he seemed happy. He seemed like he actually wanted to spend time with Sebastian.
Nodding, he smiled that same smile he had given Blaine the first time they had met when he sang to him, and said yes. Together, the two men began walking, strides matching as they made their way into the cold, but not quite snow covered park.
He loved Blaine, he knew that. It had taken him years to come to terms with that. But he wasn't going to give up now. Once upon a time he had been able to show Blaine that he loved him, that he was capable of love. Now though, he had to show Blaine that he was capable of actually following that through. That he wasn't scared anymore and that waking up with Blaine every morning was the exact thing he wanted.
It would take a while, but he was willing to wait. Once upon a time, someone had said that Sebastian always got what he wanted, and it was true. And right now and forever, that something was Blaine.