author's notes: written for Seblaine Week 2016, day 3: inspired by another TV show. title taken from Without by Years & Years. i'm not sure this will make sense to anyone who hasn't watched the show, but hey, kudos to anyone who humours my insanity.
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How Could I Have Known, You're a Universe?
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People say Sebastian Smythe is a man who lost his faith.
As a man of science he never put much stock in those kinds of beliefs; God is a reassurance to those who need comforting, nothing but a figment of a hopeful mind, and while he has nothing against God or religion, he couldn't say why losing that faith should define a man so staunchly.
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They arrive in town quiet and prepared, headed out to the Bazaar with Puck and Santana.
It's a breath of fresh air, being away from the ship, still knowing Rachel's perfectly safe in Marley's and Quinn's care.
For once, they're here for legitimate business, and Sebastian asks him to tag along to buy medical supplies severely lacking in their infirmary these past few weeks. He sticks close to Sebastian's side, the Bazaar a blooming bustle of shops and stalls, owners calling out to them to taste their wares, though he figures more than a few of them would steal the clothes off his back if it could earn them a profit.
"Stand out like a sore thumb, Doc," Sebastian quips with an easy smile. "All done up as y'are."
He draws a hand down his jacket self-consciously; he's heard it said often enough.
"Not to worry," Sebastian adds, winking, "I'll protect you."
He doubts he hides the blush in his cheeks as successfully as he likes to believe—Sebastian's had that effect on him since he stepped up his game in this whole flirtatious routine they've allowed between them. It's novel, but still nowhere near to what he'd want with Sebastian.
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The first time Blaine meets the man's eyes, colored red by his bifocals, he doesn't know what to make of him, feeling uncharacteristically small in the man's presence.
"Captain, this is Blaine," Marley introduces them with a cute smile, the kind that shines and invites, as was intended, he guesses; he doubts this rust bucket of a ship capable of much.
"Blaine, this is Captain Smythe."
Despite the haphazard clothing and suspenders, the gun holstered to his hip, the overall discomposed look of him, Captain Sebastian Smythe seems put together by some unseen force he hasn't met in many men.
He nods. "Captain."
Sebastian looks at him a few ticks too long, as if sizing up his worth; he can tell from those few seconds alone there wouldn't be many like him Captain Smythe doesn't look down on.
"Welcome aboard," Sebastian says, before grumbling, "'s all we got?" to Marley.
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"You rich kids," Sebastian sneers, "you think your lives are the only things that matter. What'd you do? Kill your folks for the family fortune?"
"I don't kill people." He shudders, because this crew found out his secret far too soon—they're still hours away from Boros and if they're really scavengers there's no guarantee they won't hand him in to the authorities for the bounty on his head. His head, and his sister's.
"No," Sebastian agrees, and marches steadfast into the cargo bay, towards the crate where he'd placed Rachel in cryogenic stasis—it was safer travelling that way; the Alliance looked for two fugitives, not a boy and a box.
"Please, don't!" he shouts, but the big brute, Puck, grabs him around the arms and holds him back. Sebastian can't do this, Rachel isn't meant to wake up yet, the shock won't be good for her already frail mind, he can't—
"Let's see what a man like you would kill for," Sebastian says, and releases his sister from her cold prison.
"No, don't!" He struggles against Puck's hold on him but can't budge. "I need to check on her vitals."
"Is that what they're calling it these days?"
"She's not supposed to wake up for another week," he says, and fights harder, all in the hopes of getting closer to Rachel, to check, to fix, to— "the shock of—"
"The shock of what?" Sebastian's eyes narrow. "Finding out she's been sold to some border world Baron?"
It's only a godless man who's capable of such thinking. Slavery? That's what Sebastian thinks this is? What kind of skewed worldview must a man have to jump to those kinds of conclusions?
Rachel shoots up screaming out of her tiny box, scaring back the entire crew, and crawls out on all fours naked, completely disoriented—he wrangles free and approaches her, heart beating in his throat. It took ages to convince her to go into stasis. He hopes he didn't cause her more harm than she'd already endured.
"Rachel," he says softly, kneeling down by his sister's side. "It's okay."
"Blaine," Rachel screeches, "they hurt me, they—"
"They're gone!" His voice shakes, his heart beating to the sound of his own fear—what have they done to his perfect little sister? What have these vicious men been stirring inside her brain? Would that he had an army at his disposal—Sebastian would see exactly what he's capable of for his sister. "I promise, we're safe now."
"What the hell is this?" Sebastian asks, some of his confidence knocked.
"This is my sister," he says, filling with dread as his arms shake around his sister's shoulders. He's at this man's mercy, but he hates everything he stands for; his lack of propriety and eloquence, his shameless condemnation of Quinn's profession, the hard edges of him that surface each time he raises a gun at someone.
Any moment now this faithless man will throw him and Rachel into the vacuum of space.
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He spins the crew his story, how the government had taken his sister under the guise of giving her a top notch education, but mangled her into something of their own making, for their own profits; how they'd tinkered with her brain, split her open, imposed their own will and for what? He has no idea.
It silences them all, this raucous group of people, even though he's heaped them with a world of trouble. Sebastian's right, none of them will ever be safe if the Alliance links them together.
He casts down his eyes. "I didn't think—"
"No, I don't imagine you thought," Sebastian derides.
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It's clear for all to see the Captain doesn't think highly of him, but he hardly requires him to. All that matters is Rachel, and getting as far away as he can from planets under Alliance rule—he'll leave behind the universe itself, his hopes and dreams and ambitions, if it means he can keep Rachel safe.
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And yet.
"Where do you plan on dumping us?" he asks, joining Sebastian on the bridge while Rachel sleeps safely in the infirmary. He's made himself no delusions over this—he's ended up on a ship of scavengers, criminals by any definition, like he meant to, and he never believed for a moment he'd get this far.
He lucked out, in a way, even though Sebastian's still likely to shoot him.
"There's places you might be safe," Sebastian says, tinkering with some controls on the flight panels. "Want the truth though, you're probably safer on the move."
He never planned on staying put once they landed on Boros. He lacks money and resources, but he figured he could find a job, get by until the next transport can get them to another planet further out.
"And we never stop moving."
He frowns. "I'm confused."
"May have become apparent to you that the ship could use a medic." Sebastian turns in his chair, his biceps straining against the messy bandage he'd bound around his arm himself—he'd refused treatment. "You ain't weak. Don't know how bright y'are, top 3 percent and all, but you ain't weak, and that's not nothing."
This is hardly the time to doubt, to change the plans he'd spent months laboring on—then again, his accounts have been frozen and his parents won't help him; his father made that all too clear last time he saw him. Serenity never stops moving, and Sebastian seems equally keen on avoiding the Alliance. Sebastian knows this universe in ways he doesn't, even though the captain's views on it might be more pessimistic than most—
If he stays it could be beneficial to both of them.
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(Sebastian's a man of principles in an ungoverned world.)
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All hell breaks loose.
"Bas!" Puck yells through the entire bazaar, alerting more people that Sebastian would like to their presence—legitimate business or not Sebastian prefers avoiding any attention. "We got Reavers!"
All color drains from Sebastian's face as surely as his heart implodes. Reavers? No. Not again. Not after everything they've already endured—when will they be rid of these things once and for all?
"Back to the ship!" Sebastian shouts at no one in particular, but Santana and Puck get the message loud and clear. They have to get as far away from here as possible as fast as they possibly can, run and not fight, just run so they might have a chance.
An general alarm sounds, and it sends everyone into a panic.
Soon, he and Sebastian are enveloped by a horde of terrified people, all trying to get somewhere with no clear destination in mind—nowhere's safe; they all know that.
Sebastian pushes at his back and shoulders and kicks at his legs to get him in gear, to get him moving, to separate them from the crowd and head into the woods. The forest whips at him like razorblades, unrelenting and violently like everything else this part of the galaxy.
"Blaine!" Sebastian shouts behind him, "Keep running!" and he knows what's on their heels, closing in with the loud growl of aggression. "Don't look back, RUN!"
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It doesn't take him long to see that the people Sebastian surrounds himself with aren't any of them a coincidence, but carefully chosen actors in a life lived on the raggedy edge. A few weeks aboard Serenity and he learns how lonely the black can be, how vast and cold and endless, yet not inside the safe airtight walls of the tiny Firefly.
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"Why's the ship called Serenity?" he asks in the too tight space of the engine room, though Marley still managed to fit a hammock and some of her personal belongings—it's a wonder she still sees her bunk the way their journeys whip the reins.
"After the Battle of Serenity Valley," Marley answers. "Capt'n and Santana fought in the war together."
The name rings a bell, writ somewhere in the many textbooks he poured through at school—a war between the central Alliance and the savage outer planets, though 'savage' has since proved to mean something a lot closer to 'free' to him. Funny, that.
"Capt'n got a Medal of Valor."
"But the Independents lost."
Marley's eyes pin him down, loathe with judgment. "Don't mean he ain't valor-some."
She shrugs nonchalantly, defending her captain at all costs. It's a thing he admires in Marley, her ability to see the positive side of things no matter how grim the situation, her absolute faith in a man as damaged as Sebastian. "He don't like talking about it, but he believed in things once."
He crosses his arms over his chest. "Hard to imagine, 's all."
Marley smiles to herself, tilting her head, fiddling with the gears on one of the control panels. "He ain't an easy man to love," she says, a fondness in her voice that tells him she decided long ago she was going to love Sebastian whether he wanted her to or not.
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Rachel doesn't get much choice in that matter either; he never questioned it, freeing Rachel from that monstrous place, and he wouldn't take it back knowing what he knows now.
"I took you away from home," Rachel laments, in one of her rare moments of clarity—she's calm now, restful, and he should enjoy these moments to the fullest. He still hasn't figured out what the scientists in that place did to her.
"Don't say that."
Home is no longer definable, not after everything that's happened. They don't need one if they have each other.
"You gave up everything you had to find me." Rachel's eyes fill with tears. "And you found me broken."
"Meimei," he hushes, his hands framing her face. "Everything I have is right here."
He means her, he means his incredibly clever and bratty little sister he sacrificed everything for—he'd always believed Rachel to be lost without her big brother but it turned out he's nothing without her. So he chose her, very consciously, and hasn't looked back once. He's driven by the things that keep her safe, hidden, away from the Alliance, and that strangely includes this crew.
Even if it means keeping his head low all the same, stay out of the Captain's sights, do the job expected of him.
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Even if it means enduring the more than occasional amount of contempt.
"That's what space trash does, you know," Puck says, waving his gun in his face as if it's a toy. "Kinda latches on to the first big something stops long enough."
"Hey"—Puck sidles a step closer—"you know, that'd be a bit like you and your sister, wouldn't it?"
For once Puck has a point, surprisingly; he doesn't know why he's allowed to stay. Not for his skills, that's for sure, though he's patched up the crew plenty, but for some unseen reason Sebastian wills it so.
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"This isn't home," Rachel cries, woken from one of her endless nightmares.
"No," he whispers, haunted by his own fair share of nightmares, filled with the trumpet of boots and holding cells. "We can't go home."
"Do you think they miss us?" Rachel asks, tucking into his arms for shelter, still shaking.
He breathes in deep, but hasn't the heart to tell Rachel their parents never believed she was in danger—they'd thought her coded letters a game she played as a child, unable to see how fast Rachel had been forced to grow up in that place they signed her up for.
Sometimes, in his own darkest pessimistic bouts of depression, he wonders if his parents had known.
"If we go home they'll find you and send you back," he says, and kisses Rachel's forehead. "This is safe for now."
By 'this' he means this cold metal thing that's had trouble breaking orbit on more than a few occasions, this tin box that rattles and breaks down yet fools him all the same—it's a home to these strangers around him, and he should show it some respect.
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"I wish—" he stutters, shaken to the core by all that's happened, all that yet stands to happen—the Alliance could be anywhere at anytime and he never thought it'd feel so suffocating.
"You're lost in the woods," Quinn says, her voice a soothing balm on wounds he couldn't fix if he tried. "We all are. Even the Captain. The only difference is he likes it that way."
"Nope," comes Sebastian's answer, casually strolling into one of the ship's shuttles. "Only difference is the woods are the only place I can see a clear path."
Of course, he thinks, Sebastian prescribes to a kind of logic he hasn't been able to make heads or tails of so far—he follows his nose, his instincts, despite the fact that the black doesn't adhere to a clear set of rules. It's a lot like Sebastian too, in that way.
"What's your business here?" Sebastian asks him.
"It's my business," Quinn answers. "What are you doing in my shuttle?"
"It's my shuttle," Sebastian says, "you rent it."
"Then when I'm behind on the rent, you can enter unasked."
Quinn and the Captain have this thing they do where they ignore exactly how similar they are, blinded by arrogance, pride, whatever you want to call it—they also do this thing where they ignore each other's feelings for one another, but that runs different for both of them, he suspects.
As a licensed Companion, paid to tell men what they want, Quinn won't attach herself to anyone unless they ask, and Sebastian never will—it's not his way.
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("I spent so much time ignoring anything I wanted for myself—"
Sebastian kisses him hard, the way his edges are prone to do, yet deep, his tongue melting along his in a single sweep. He's lost track of time since they made their way down here.
"Talk too much, Doc," Sebastian mutters to his lips. "All that matters is right now. No point livin' in the past."
Sebastian doesn't say it, and he probably never will, but he's used to his captain's ways.)
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He can see it, how Sebastian collected his crew like prized treasure, perhaps unaware that's what he was doing all along. But Marley possesses a kindness and charity that stretches the far outreaches of the known galaxy, while Quinn challenges him every which way.
And if Mercedes is Sebastian's long lost faith, Brittany his excessively quirky humor and Santana his unquenchable capacity for love, he can't help but question, what about him?
What the hell is he doing here?
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Before Serenity Reavers weren't real, they were the boogeymen from stories told around campfires about men gone savage on the edge of space, killing, raping, eating people alive.
Only his time with this crew taught them they were real, the Reavers, the stories, down to the most gruesome detail; and Miranda taught them where they came from—their government, once again, reaching back to the belief that they can make people better.
Things created by the Alliance are chasing them and if that weren't reason enough to run his previous encounters with them add a speed to his feet even Sebastian can't keep up with.
They're hiding now, like fish in a net that's slowly closing in around them. It won't be long before they're found, and it won't matter however few Reavers there are left; they'll still end up in an endless hell of torture there's no escaping from—their skins peeled off and worn as masks, their flesh desecrated over and over until they can't take any more, and that still won't be the end of it.
"Doc," Sebastian calls, shaking at his shoulder when his first few attempts at catching his attention fail.
"You can't go out there," he whispers, his voice fled. "That's suicide."
"Well, I'm liking our odds." Sebastian smiles, but it's the kind he recognizes too easily to be a lie—he does that, his Captain, lie to his crew in order to reassure, to make sure they know he's still in control and won't go out without a fight. "Trust me, we'll stand a much better chance of running if we thin them out some."
His worst fears come to life in front of his eyes; him, all alone in this desolate place, Sebastian dead in his arms, ready to put a bullet through his own brain. Reavers won't touch him if he's dead.
"What if you get killed?"
"None too worried about that," Sebastian says, cocking his gun. "They'll eat me 'fore they kill me."
"Captain." He grabs around Sebastian's arm, a panic seized around his arms and limbs and sense of propriety—this can't be the end.
"Blaine"—Sebastian lays his gun down on the ground, and cups his face between two hands that have never before touched him, not without violence in them—"I know my job."
It's not what he wants to hear; it's not even remotely close to what he needs to hear, but he'll take it. He's come to trust Sebastian with his safety.
"'s What I do," Sebastian mutters, and leaves the safety of their hiding place to fight off monsters.
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In most ways they're two opposites ends of a spectrum, or two sides of the same coin, like a Mobius strip, non-orientable objects moving in the same space. In so many confounding ways they're exactly the same—they come about the same thing from different angles.
Sebastian would do anything for his crew. Wrong in all the right ways.
There's no power in the 'verse that could stop him from protecting his sister.
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"Do you understand what I have gone through to keep Rachel away from the Alliance?" he asks, chasing after Sebastian on his way down to the cargo bay. After eight months he thought he'd earned his keep, his and his sister's—he thought he understood his place in all this.
"I do." Sebastian nods. "In fact, we here have been courteous enough to keep to our own selves."
"Are you threatening to—"
"I look out for me and mine." Sebastian turns in a single breath, and he knocks into him from the sheer shock of it. "That don't include you unless I conjure it does."
Sebastian's eyes trace over his mouth, and his lips part, but it never goes any further than that. Maybe that's because he's not Quinn, maybe it's because it's not Sebastian's way.
Maybe it's because Sebastian decided a long time ago it wasn't something he would have.
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"Dear God, make me a stone," Rachel chants and closes her eyes.
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There are things they never say, things they keep to themselves, and things they never should. The universe might not be able to take it.
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"See, this is the part I see you're uncomprehending on," Sebastian says. "Everyone on this ship, even a legitimate businesswoman like her, their lives can be snatched away because of that fed."
The fed. The Lawman that tracked him to Persephone, snuck on board this ship same as he and Rachel had—two years of planning and it wasn't worth a damn thing. How can he keep Rachel safe if he can't even keep them from being followed?
"You got a solution for that?" Sebastian asks. "You got a way around?"
"I don't."
He never will. He doesn't think like that, like any of the people on this boat—Marley calls him 'appropriate', but if he can't hold onto that what will be left of him?
A horrible thought occurs then: is that why Sebastian let them stay? To use them as bargaining chips, as a way around should the Alliance ever catch up to them?
No, that's not right, or maybe it is, because a man so anxious to fly under Alliance radar housing two known fugitives doesn't make a lick of sense—and not many men would, especially not criminals out to make a pretty dime.
He starts to wonder if even Sebastian knows why he's keeping them around.
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"When I took you in deal was you keep your sister in check." Sebastian encroaches on his personal space to make his point, while this indefinable burn sets in the chambers of his heart. It shouldn't, not right now, because no hour ago Rachel got hold of a knife and planted it across Puck's chest for no good reason and the red on Rachel's skin will prove new material for his nightmares.
"You can't hold up your end of the bargain we're gonna have to revise the deal."
He nods, the corners of his mouth pulling down—he can't make any promises here. He'd hoped it would be simple, that he'd find a cause to Rachel's paranoid behavior but the Alliance rooted so callously around in her brain there's no telling what might help her.
So he understands. A man like Sebastian can't continue to risk keeping them on board, not at the potential cost to his gathered family.
Sebastian backs off slowly, once he's certain he got the message—he doesn't need to spell this out, his staying on Serenity has always been contingent on his worth to its crew.
Then, Sebastian tracks back a step and looks him square in the eye. "She's getting worse, isn't she?"
His eyes fill with tears. "Yes."
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At the end of the day, Sebastian cares.
And that confounds him most of all.
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(He wonders if it tears Sebastian up inside, this constant struggle between allowing him to stay on board, knowing they'd probably all get killed should the Alliance get a hold of them, and this cat-and-mouse game he enjoys to play, because governments are made to get in a man's way, so any chance Sebastian gets to step on the Alliance's toes he takes.)
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It's half an hour of gunfire before Sebastian stumbles back bleeding, a hole ripped through his side—he sees red, all red, as they find shelter in a nearby cave, and starts work on Sebastian's wounds with what few supplies he has. There isn't much, they had to drop what they had and his medical kit's back on Serenity.
"Blaine, if I don't—" Sebastian chokes out, crying out as he applies pressure to the wound, shrugged out of his jacket for want of bandages. He can fix this, he can, he has to; even if Sebastian hadn't come to mean the world to him there's no way he'll make it off this planet alive. And he doesn't plan on dying today.
"Don't talk like that. You'll be perfectly fine."
"If I don't make it—" Sebastian tries again.
He shakes his head, no, he won't die, not on his watch, not under his care, not on this forsaken planet of all places. "Far too pretty to die, Captain."
"Gorrammit Blaine, let me speak my piece!"
Everything inside him falls silent, his thoughts, his heart. His pride. It all means so little around Sebastian.
"If I don't make it... make sure Santana don't sell the ship."
"Don't worry"—He can't help the laugh that escapes, echoing coarse and dry against the white wet stones—"I'll fight for her."
Tears fill up his eyes.
"And tell Blaine—" Sebastian breathes, his eyes falling shut.
His heart lurches. "Captain, I'm right here."
Sebastian doesn't stir—it's too large a risk to let him sleep, or fall unconscious—he might never wake up again. So he touches a hand to Sebastian's cheek, a touch he's never been allowed before, a touch that's ruled his dreams in between the nightmares, and it takes all his strength not to wake him with a kiss.
"Sebastian," he whispers.
With great difficulty, Sebastian opens his eyes. "Should stop calling me Captain."
He nods, "Okay," despite Sebastian's deteriorating sense of things.
"There's one thing I regret in all this."
"What's that?"
"Never letting you know—" Sebastian's green eyes find his, fading with the dying of the light.
There are things they never say, things they keep to themselves, and things they never should say—things all on the tip of his tongue now.
"Forget it." Sebastian coughs. "Too late for regretfulness now."
.
He and Sebastian have a well defined before and after, (that becomes muddles more often than not in their hectic lives confined to this ship.)
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"Ouch!" Sebastian squeals as the needle penetrates his skin. "Careful with that."
"You're sedated, Captain."
"Well"—Sebastian purses his lips—"Yeah."
He focuses on the task at hand, the deep gash near Sebastian's shoulder, but can't help the small smile that slinks traitorously to a corner of his mouth.
"Quick thinking," Sebastian says, "doping up Puck before he could do any damage."
"Is that a compliment, Captain?"
He looks up to find Sebastian smiling, both musing over the thought that Puck's still down in the cargo bay, where the rest of the crew had tried to carry him as far as the infirmary—but Puck proved too heavy.
"Can't say you made a friend for life."
He finishes up the stitches, placing a strip of clean gauze over the wound. "I'll deal with him."
"Yeah"—Sebastian clears his throat—"I'm not too worried about you."
For a moment or two he can't hear anything but his own heartbeat, though he feels Sebastian's trapped underneath the pads of his fingers where they linger over an artery—it's moments like these he realizes he hasn't given up all his hopes, not all his dreams, not the small pleasures he'd been too awkward to chase back home. Serenity has stripped him down to his bare bones, but he's come to accept that—everything on the border moons is rough and dirty and abrasive, eye opening. Like Sebastian.
(Before Miranda.)
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"Thank you," he throws softly into the room, even though Sebastian's the only one around to hear it. The others have sought shelter on the bridge, or in the mess, because any moment now they're raining hell down on the Alliance and they all have to deal with that by themselves.
"Don't thank me, Doc," Sebastian says, and his eyes pin him down with the same conviction he'd shown back on Miranda, when he'd called on each of them to do the right thing, for Rachel, for everyone dead on that forgotten planet, for every person ever changed in the name of all that's deemed good and proper by an unseen mover.
"I had an out." Sebastian shakes his head. "I had every reason in the 'verse to leave Rachel laying and haul anchor."
Back on Beaumont. He's well aware Sebastian could've left them there. It's strange he never doubted he wouldn't.
"You didn't," he says. "You have a way."
He knows what Sebastian must be thinking, how his way just got one of his crew killed, got all their friends killed, the Abrams and the Hudsons and everyone back on Haven, so it's hard to think of anything meaningful to say.
So he doesn't say anything.
"That's what Mercedes said." Sebastian snickers, a new deafening sound. "She told me to believe."
Believe? A godless man like Sebastian?
Sebastian looks at him, utterly lost and broken, in a different measure as Rachel but not by much—he never assigned any worth to those kinds of beliefs but that was before Serenity. That was before Sebastian. There are endless supplies of things to believe in from here to the edge of space, and beyond. There are endless supplies of things to believe in right here on this small boat.
And he gets it. He's grateful.
In the end, when it mattered, Sebastian chose Rachel too.
(After Miranda.)
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Serenity finds them.
Rather, Rachel finds them in that way she has and the rest of the crew helps, finding them huddled together in an otherwise empty cave, dead Reavers leading a path to them.
Sebastian's out for two days, and he's vigilant by his bedside for all that time, foregoing sleep altogether. He would've given up food too if it weren't for Santana bringing him whatever was left over from the kitchen—the crew watches him as closely as he watches Sebastian and it's a quiet unspoken reassurance. They're all there for each other, come what may.
When Sebastian finally stirs awake, half the crew's there with a relieved sigh.
"Is it my birthday, or something?"
"You'll be okay, Capt'n." Marley laughs, and kisses Sebastian's cheek. "Blaine took real good care of you."
"Blaine—" Sebastian croaks, swallowing with great difficulty.
He winds a hand around Sebastian's wrist. "I know my job too, Captain."
Sebastian grants him a lopsided smile. "Better than most, if I'm being truthsome."
The others back out of the room, attuned these days to their moments of privacy.
Sebastian tries to sit up.
"You shouldn't move," he protests, but helps Sebastian sit up anyway—too stubborn for his own good, this man. "You'll pull your stitches."
"Ain't happenin'. Got me a medic right here that'd sooner put me out."
More than a few moments pass between them, all the things they never said stirring below the surface of their skins—haven't they danced this dance long enough, denied themselves the simpler pleasures, the easy joys, the temperaments of loving a man so starkly different than themselves.
Sebastian casts down his eyes. "I'm a mean old man, Blaine, I don't—"
His hand's on Sebastian's cheek before he can finish the thought, before he can retreat back behind walls of his own making and sit safely alone there. He'll knock them down with his bare hands if he has to—they'll always be in some sort of danger, they'll never be truly safe in this life, but he can't keep putting everything on hold for a future that might never be.
"You're just a hard man to love," he whispers.
At that, Sebastian laughs, a most welcome sound in the oppressively small room. "Ain't much can change that I'm afraid."
They're close now, closer than they've ever been, and all their vulnerabilities show—Sebastian thinks himself undeserving, and he can't take rejection—they're an odd pair, atypical, but when has that ever stopped either of them?
"I think I'll take my chances," he says, and falls forward to meet Sebastian's lips—it's as inelegant as it is discomposed, the way their mouths bump together before they find a calmer rhythm. Sebastian sighs as he steps in between his legs and the kiss that follows encompasses most of the known universe; Serenity's stripped him down to his bare bones, showed him the kind of man he can be, pushed him to his limits, and the same goes for Sebastian—his captain's lewd and abrasive, broken and ineloquent.
But he likes that about him.
"Now get some sleep."
Sebastian slips off the bed and stands.
"What did I just tell you about moving?!" he shouts disconcerted, folding an arm around Sebastian's waist to make sure he's balanced. "Get back in the bed, Sebastian."
"Quit your hollering," Sebastian says. "Perfectly nice bed in my bunk. And this don't fit two."
It takes a shamefully long time for him to catch Sebastian's meaning.
"Is that an order?"
"Can most definitively make it one."
.
When a man can't walk he crawls and when he can't do that,
he finds someone to carry him.
.
(He's a man of principles in an ungoverned world.)
.
"Captain, why did you come back for us?" he asks softly, afraid that should his voice sound any louder it might undo this kindness altogether. Sebastian could've left Rachel and him stranded, could've rid himself of a heap of trouble that wasn't his to take on in the first place.
Sebastian's answer comes as easy as it comes unexpected. "You're on my crew."
"But you don't even like me."
It's been only a few weeks and Sebastian's made his contempt for him clear as day; he's the rich kid who never had to work for anything, doesn't know how to fight or defend himself, and while he has his uses treating bullet holes and laser burns, he sure as hell isn't considered part of the crew.
"Why'd you come back?" he demands again.
"You're on my crew." Sebastian shrugs. "Why are we still talking about this?"
He still doesn't get it, can't fathom Sebastian's train of thought. Maybe he had a good day; maybe he simply caught the captain in a good mood. Maybe Sebastian doesn't know a damn thing.
(Before Miranda.)
.
(Serenity, he learns, is very much like the Captain; capable of a lot more than people give her credit for, an old model the war had made obsolete but she still had a whole lot of fight left in her. She broke down from time to time, but with the right people taking care of her she ran faster and harder than anyone would expect.
A hard uneven exterior with the occasional hole punched through the hull.
Much bigger on the inside once you managed to break through her walls.)
.
"Look at you." Sebastian laughs, sat back on the couch in the common area, one of the only things their crash landing on the blue moon hadn't wrangled free. "All banged up."
"You're one to talk," he says, eyes cataloguing all the damage—the hemorrhage in Sebastian's left eye, face bruised and battered, the stab wound the doctors stitched up while others had mended the bullet hole in his own side.
Serenity's in much the same state, though her repairs won't take quite so long.
"What, this?" Sebastian points at his face. "Should see the other guy."
He smiles and wanders over.
"You okay?" Sebastian asks.
"No," he admits freely, and the confession pours out of him not unlike a dead weight he's been carrying around for months—none of this is okay; what they did to Rachel, what they sent after them, what the Alliance did to this crew, and on Miranda, the truths they hid. None of it is justifiable.
He sits down next to Sebastian, their thighs touching.
"We're still flying," Sebastian says.
"That's not much."
Sebastian breathes in shallowly, as far as his lungs allow; his head sinks down to Sebastian's shoulder, and he closes his eyes, for the first time in all those months.
"It's something," Sebastian says softly, his lips pushing against his hair.
(After Miranda.)
.
(It's like Santana said: she's torn plenty. But she'll fly true.
Same goes for Sebastian.)
.
(He's a man of honor in a den of thieves.)
.
On their way to Sebastian's bunk, they run into Santana, coming down from the bridge, even though it's been a space she's taken to avoiding—only Sebastian and Rachel go up there now to pilot the ship, and Marley, for the occasional repair. There are too many memories up there for all of them, yet they haven't moved a single one of Brittany's belongings.
Santana looks them up and down, stumbling down the hallway like they are. "Thought he weren't meant to move."
"He's decided his own bed is more comfortable."
"I'm right here," Sebastian says.
"Lord help ya, Doc." Santana shakes her head, her long ponytail near whipping him in the face as she turns towards Sebastian, raising a finger in warning. "You hurt that boy and you and I gonna have words," she says, before adding a thoughtful, "Sir" to her reprimand.
Sebastian rolls his eyes. "Ship's yours until I'm fully functional-wise again."
Santana salutes. "Understood, sir."
.
"She loves this ship," he says, watching Rachel follow Sebastian around the cargo hold, much to the captain's dismay. "I think it's more home to her than any place she's been."
"What about you?" Marley asks.
His eyes fall down to his hands. "I thought the hospital was home."
For a long time, home became a foreign concept—his family torn a galaxy apart because of the Alliance, he and Rachel wanted fugitives that might as well sign their own death warrants should they return to Osiris, and the distance grew not only physically but emotionally. Their parents wouldn't come for them even if he asked, and he decided Rachel was all the family he needed. All the home he needed.
"I was making a difference there, I could've—"
Then the damp walls of this tiny ship closing around them, months spent hid away in her bowels whenever the Alliance breathed too close; yet this haphazardly thrown together family proved not altogether unappealing. No one else would've put up with him or Rachel.
"I would be there right now if she hadn't—" He takes a deep breath; no, none of this had been Rachel's fault. All she'd wanted to do was learn. "If they had just left her alone."
He glances down into the cargo bay, where Rachel's taken to mimicking every one of Sebastian's moves—it's not an unwelcome sight, his sister and his captain, getting along.
Marley bumps her shoulder against his. "Is it so bad here?"
He smiles. No. Oddly, there's plenty on this ship to be glad of.
.
Sebastian may be a man who lost his faith—which one of them hasn't in recent weeks—but it hasn't turned him into anything lesser, anything abominable. Anything impossible to love.
He lies down in Sebastian's arms, and, quite involuntarily, remembers something someone told him on Jiangyin.
Journeys end when and where they want to, and that's where you make your home.
He thinks he'll go ahead and do that, then.
.
.
fin
.