author's notes: written for Seblaine Week 2017, Day One: (arranged) marriage. title taken from Immortals by Fall Out Boy.

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They Say We Are What We Are

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"Don't be nervous," his mother hushes, and wipes a non-existent piece of lint off his shoulder, all in the hopes of making him seem cleaner, taller, better. He looked no less proper than any day gone before, and he'd look like this for every day to come, yet his mom had to fuss no matter what, always trying to make him into something other than what the Administration labelled him.

There were times he hated her for that, because it meant she saw him as someone imperfect and not the son she'd prayed for; but there were times he couldn't, when he tried to do the same — be better, be different, do anything he could to be the most productive member of society. It's how all children in his Caste were raised and he scarcely proved any different.

That's why he's here today as well, for the most part; to do what's expected, what's proper, what will lighten the yoke weighted across his shoulders.

Today he marries Blaine Anderson.

"I'd hardly call this nervous, mother."

He brushes off his mother's touch, shoulders rolling, and localizes his lies metastasized throughout several areas of his body. There's a quiver in his knees and an uptick in his heartbeat thinking about this day has brought on for years, even though there's nothing for him to worry about. They've always known this day was coming. The ceremony was merely a formality at this point.

"The Andersons and I have been waiting for this day a long time, Sebastian." His mom offers him her signature stern stare, making him feel in his proper place in every way possible. "Ever since—"

His shoulders tighten.

Since the day of his conception.

A few mere molecules in size doctors drew a microscopic drop of his genetic material and subjected it to what the Administration hailed as the innovation that would save mankind.

They called it EDRIS.

Enhanced DNA and RNA Identity Screening.

Every foetus subjected to the screening, which was fast becoming over 95% of the continent's population, would become a productive member of society, determined by whatever aptitudes the test identified. Diseases and birth defects were weeded out before a foetus could develop, aborted within the first few weeks of gestation, and no one called it eugenics because they deemed that a forgotten term from an obsolete age.

He supposes he got lucky; the test revealed no genetic defects but rather his father's strong looks, an aptitude for sports and an affinity for debate. Like his father, he entered the Ministry as a low-level clerk and has in previous years been afforded the opportunity to climb the ranks.

Blaine, too, would grow up a healthy young man, both generous and caring, smart as a tack, and entered the Educational Branch as early as the age of sixteen.

But both of them carried in all their potential one abnormality that would decide their future for them — though not an insurmountable obstacle, the fact that they were gay pigeonholed them further.

The terrible truth of their age was that the human race wouldn't have survived as long as it had without the screenings, the Caste system, or all the rules it entailed, and fact of the matter was that gay people, asexuals, or others deemed lacking did not contribute to the propagation of the species.

So it came to pass, a mere three decades ago, arranged marriages were implemented for all those unable to produce offspring — it was considered a kindness, a service provided for those otherwise aimless in their pursuit of happiness, because if the future couldn't revolve around having children what was there to live for?

He and Blaine were matched at birth by Caste and bloodtype, a choiceless commitment, but their parents made sure they had every reason to stick together; they moved to the suburbs in adjacent housing, and did everything within their power to stimulate a friendship between their two young sons.

For the most part, their efforts proved fruitful.

Since it was very clear they were given limited options regarding who they befriended, and they were children who –at that time– didn't know any better, they naturally gravitated towards each other. They played together, walked to school together, sat together at lunch and shared food, and were generally considered inseparable.

For their fifth birthday party, which they celebrated together, they played pretend wedding; Blaine had it all planned out, from one of their friends playing Reverend, down to the gum wrapper rings. They exchanged their 'I do's' in front of their family and friends under modest applause, and it was the happiest day of their lives.

They got caught fighting from time to time, over toys and playing with other kids, but most of their neighbors and teachers agreed: they were the cutest Match most of them had ever seen.

It wouldn't be until many years later that both of them learned the true meaning of that word, Match, and it came to mean something different to them both.

He thought it a natural part of life.

Blaine considered it a crime.

"You look so handsome," his mom coos, and draws her hands along his shoulders again.

This is the day they make their parents proud with their most public –though not their first– act of conformation, showing everyone their kind that the system worked, that there was a place for them and that happiness was something achievable. In time, they might even adopt, giving an orphan the home it deserves.

There were those who ran, who refused to conform and disappeared into the deserted wastelands of Texas or Nevada, never to be heard from again. He never could make up his mind whether they were braver than him, or dumber, or simply viewed their world from a perspective other than the one they were taught. It's a thought that set uneasy in his lungs regardless of how he tried to breathe around it, maybe because he couldn't think past this framework of a life he grew up in, or maybe, because he knew Blaine could.

Careful footfalls draw his attention away from dreadful thoughts, but his breath stilts nonetheless.

Because, to no one's greater surprise than his own, he had fallen in love.

It'd been slow and inconspicuous, in between a few futile acts of rebellion that'd ended up setting him straight, and Blaine's growing sense of self. Somewhere in there his friendship blossomed into something more, something other, something many had said he would never experience; not for the boy he got told to love.

But falling for Blaine seemed to happen wholly against his will all the same.

There was a sense of irony to it, how, out of the two of them, Blaine was considered the romantic and he was generally more cynical, but he hadn't been able to resist. Blaine's passion came with a magnetic pull reflected in his eyes, his smile infectious, and the way Blaine pulled towards him for everything — they may have been raised together to soften the transition to marriage, but they shared everything in spite of that; sadness, happiness, pride over their achievements.

He leaves his mom's side and closes the distance between him and Blaine one inch by agonizing inch, goosebumps pushing up against the inside of his sweater. He knows not to expect much from this forced union, yet there's a part of him that prays in time Blaine will come to see him the same way, that he'll have to learn to catch his breath whenever he walked into a room, and wonder in the quiet hours of the night if EDRIS somehow predicted this. If his DNA somehow held his love for Blaine too.

He stifles the smile that travels to a corner of his mouth. "Hey, you," he says, while his eyes take Blaine in from head to toe — the matching gray sweater and black slacks, dark hair styled back to tame his curls, and the same sensation coils near the bottom of his stomach, the same one he can never seem to control around Blaine. The sense that his pursuit has ended.

"Hey." Blaine tries on a smile, but there's something defeatist and stiff about it. In Blaine's eyes he fails to detect any hint of happiness, rather a raging fear that puts his anxiety to shame.

"Your parents couldn't make it?"

"I..." a fearful breath escapes Blaine, "... asked them not to come."

A crushing weight joins the yoke he'd hoped to rid himself of, and he swallows uncomfortably around the sour taste in his mouth. Had Blaine considered not coming? Had he thought about running?

Without him?

His vision blurs with the tears stinging at the corners of his eyes, the minute sense of panic so indelicate it brings to mind the last time Blaine made him feel this way, however unintended it'd been.

The Ministry had just delivered their wedding rings, picked from a modest drop-down menu online — Blaine wanted them to match so they'd chosen together, sifting through pages and pages of information on each ring; forced marriage or not, Blaine had a keen eye for fashionable things, and he wouldn't be stopped from choosing the ring that was right for him.

But when the rings arrived and they'd tried them on, Blaine's mood shifted at the sight of the mid-weight platinum wedding band around his left ring finger. He imagined the ring felt as heavy to Blaine as it did to him, and the thought that soon they'd be wearing them for the rest of their lives didn't help. He wanted nothing more than for Blaine to feel their potential down to the marrow of his bones, to realize their lives didn't end the moment they exchanged their 'I do's'; they didn't have to succumb to society's suppositions but rather they could defy the odds.

He'd folded both hands around Blaine's left, the one where a ring would soon find a permanent home, and hushed, "It'll be okay. We were raised to fall in love, right?" with a little too much hope in both his heart as well as his voice.

"No," Blaine scoffed, his tough and sassy rebuke undercut by the clear tears in his voice, "we were raised to be the most efficient members of society to make up for our shortcomings."

A tear runs down his cheek.

That's the stark difference between them still — where the system had enticed him to make a few mistakes, Blaine found conviction.

Whenever he slept over Blaine would stay up reading late, books from the old days that detailed their history and causes, the rights they'd lost and gained, then lost again. Books like those were forbidden, but somehow Blaine got his hands on them, and in them found a kinship he longed for in everyday life; the freedom to be himself, to make his own choices, to choose who he loved.

He knew that history too, to its last painstaking detail, but he didn't ache for it the way Blaine did.

Maybe that's because he's not brave.

But the truth is he thinks he had as little choice in falling in love as he did everything else in life.

"Are—" he chokes out, the word sticking like cough syrup to the back of his throat. What's the point of this if Blaine's not sure? If this is not what he wants? What are they doing here?

All of a sudden, he's not sure of anything anymore.

Things have been like this between them for years; each time he thinks he knows where he stands, Blaine pulls the rug from under his feet.

Like that first kiss they shared as some kind of experiment to see if they'd like it, and he'd felt it like a homecoming, and Blaine secretly started kissing other boys afterwards. Or like that night Blaine came to him and asked for nothing but his body, and so he shared his in turn, and then Blaine vowed he'd never do it again, because someone else's choice for him could never be the right one.

Like that one fateful night after a mutual friend of theirs died, when they'd made love a second time with a desperation that would put any lovers to shame, fictional or otherwise, and lay gazing into each other's eyes until the early hours of the dawn.

Was that not love? Had he mistaken that for something else?

He thought himself selfish for wanting this despite of Blaine's convictions, but Blaine's the selfish one, playing constant mercenary with his heart.

Should this even be something he wants?

Mouth moving uneasy, it's Blaine who cancels out the silence with a hesitant, "We should go in."

He nods solemnly, blinking away tears.

Maybe this is what makes it coercion.

The room they step into isn't what he thought it would be; the lighting makes the walls come away bleak and gray and there are strange half orbs littered like braille all over them, like some kind of sickly attempt at sprucing up the decor. Gone is the green garden of their childhood, no friends or family or applause.

A shiver rushes up his spine.

No one even tried to make this room the least bit romantic. He's not sure what he expected, but it's not this, a cold formal room, sterile almost, lacking any hint of this supposed tolerant society they live in.

At the other end of the otherwise empty room stood the computer core, a solid white block of machinery, burdened in its circuits with the unions of all the ones that came before them.

He and Blaine wander over side by side, tripping to a standstill when two tiles light up beneath their feet, scanning them from head to toe.

A holographic message appears on the far wall.

SEBASTIAN SMYTHE

PLACE YOUR HAND ON THE SCANNER FOR DNA CONFIRMATION

Blaine wraps his arms around himself, bracing against each command that's about to follow, but nods once their eyes meet.

There's no going back anymore, if ever there was.

Either they leave this room married, or they don't leave at all.

Placing his hand over the scanner, the computer draws a drop of his blood, blinking green once the system identifies his DNA.

BLAINE ANDERSON

PLACE YOUR HAND ON THE SCANNER FOR DNA CONFIRMATION

Blaine follows the same instructions, and before long the next message appears.

AWAITING VOICE CONFIRMATION: SEBASTIAN SMYTHE

His breathing deepens, a sudden struggle to filter oxygen from the air surrounding them, because this is it, the moment of truth — once they're past the voice commands they'll cease to be best friends; they'll be husbands. There is no going back, and there aren't any other options, but, standing in the room now, chilled to the bone, for the first time he wishes there were.

Because if Blaine doesn't want this — what's the point? He can't make Blaine love him any more than the Administration could, so why bother? Why didn't Blaine run when he had the chance?

"Blaine—" His voice trembles, though he has no idea what he means to convey; an apology for things beyond his own control? Another speech about this being inevitable? Both their hands are tied and any moment now they'll be tied together, and—

"This isn't—" Blaine's voice comes away thick, like any moment he could burst into tears too, "It's not how it's supposed to be. It's not right."

For years he's pictured this day in his head, but it wasn't anything like this; there was no clinical room and there wasn't a pedestal where a Reverend should be, and every tear in his mind's eye was one of happiness. But those were notion he took away from Blaine's books all the same, of people like them marrying for love, not for the perceived betterment of humankind.

"This should be the happiest day of our lives," Blaine's words fall in line with his train of thought. "Our family should be here. Our friends. We should be celebrating our love for each other and I understand love isn't a choice, but—"

Ever since the day they were born, they've been made to feel like there was something wrong with them, that love wasn't achievable by any natural means but through the forced will of government.

How can this be right, even if he loves Blaine?

He shakes his head, voice thickening with the imperfect thought that at least some part of him considers this the happiest day of his life. "Neither is this."

It's imperfect because it isn't real; in a perfect world his love would be reciprocated, or he might've confessed it long ago, and they'd make this commitment on their own terms in their own time, and he can't stand to think about where this will lead them. He's not Blaine's choice, and that's the cruelest truth he's ever had to face.

"But, I guess—" Blaine mutters, and bites at his lip, hesitantly reaching for his hand.

Before long Blaine's hand curls around his, and he can't help but fit his fingers in between Blaine's; the ground beneath his feet grows less certain again, dreading whatever Blaine tells him next, what other selfish act he can yet commit inside this room — and he couldn't even blame him.

"—we don't have to be unhappy."

His lips part, and his head turns, and whatever tears he held back he watches stream down Blaine's face.

"Of course not," he breathes, drawn to Blaine's fears as if they're his own, as if it's coercion he fears rather than Blaine's indifference, yet this too lives inside him; the pursuit of happiness was a basic human right that the Administration stole from them. "No matter what happens, we're— We're friends."

Blaine sniffles, and he nods, crying, "I do love you, Sebastian," as he squeezes his hand tighter, eyes taking in the white altar in the center of the room. "I wish I told you sooner."

Any sensation he was yet capable of leaves him; he can't breathe, he can't think, he can't move, not at the risk of stopping Blaine short, of scaring him off and never hearing this truth. Choiceless all the same. But no less real.

"You're" –Blaine sniffles– "the only one who's ever understood. You've let me" –another sniffle follows– "come to this without pushing me, and that means so much to me."

However freeing Blaine's words, he can't help the weight that lands on his chest, the realization that perhaps Blaine has loved him all along, but consciously fought it like he tried to fight everything, like he stood up for his convictions, like he read and consumed everything of the past to compare it to this bleak irreverent future, yet found himself caught in its trappings all the same. He never stood to think what it was like; falling in love with the boy he was told to seemed inevitable, but maybe it wasn't like that for everyone.

Then, Blaine casts down his eyes. "I just wish—"

Maybe Blaine wanted to make him his choice, but couldn't find a way to do that without giving into the system he tried to fight.

Blaine pulls a step closer, then another, and yet another, until his nose bumps his collarbone and he nuzzles along his neck, and all he can do is wrap his arms around his best friend, his Match, the boy he loves.

"I know," he whispers, and pushes his lips to Blaine's hair.

Love's not a choice by any means, but to be stripped from it altogether erased any delusions they might've held onto about the kind of world they lived in; what kind of government demanded the pursuit of happiness?

AWAITING VOICE CONFIRMATION: SEBASTIAN SMYTHE

Pulling back, he gently wipes Blaine's tears away, and silently waits until he's ready.

A few quiet moments pass, accompanied by the quiet buzz of the computer core, before Blaine nods.

He reaches down for Blaine's left hand, and slips the simple platinum band around Blaine's finger.

"I do," he says, and finally, he's granted a small genuine smile. It travels from the tips of his toes up to his knees, making them quiver all over again.

AWAITING VOICE CONFIRMATION: BLAINE ANDERSON

"I do," Blaine echoes, and slides the other ring along his ring finger.

They both regard the rings for a moment, like they did the first time they tried them on, adjusting to their weight — he's certain they'll get used to them in due time, and they'll lighten the longer they wear them, but for now, right now, he can't help but think them shackles. Even though he loves Blaine, he thinks there needs to be a different word for this choice they made.

"We're married," Blaine whispers with a hint of disbelief, and he wonders if in Blaine's mind that means something closer to the books he reads; if it means equal partnership and devotion, if it means trust and honesty and open communication.

"You're stuck with me now."

Time would tell.

With a smile, Blaine looks up at him, and a laugh escapes him.

In a perfect world, all this would seem pretty ridiculous.

A final message appears on the wall, but neither of them take note of it, the way they're gazing into each other's eyes reminiscent of that last night they spent in each other's arms — he'd whispered something to Blaine's lips he'd been made to regret hours later, but it bears repeating now.

"Hey," he whispers, and brushes the tips of his fingers along Blaine's jawline. "We'll make the best of this."

He knows that now as surely as he knew it then.

There'll be no future for them at all if they don't at least try, if they don't try to upset everyone's expectations; the Administration didn't require love, it merely required their compliance, but if they can make this work despite all the odds being stacked against them — wouldn't that be reclaiming something they thought lost to them?

Wouldn't that be brave?

Blaine's brown eyes meet his. "Promise?"

He nods. "Promise."

Shortening the distance between them, Blaine rises on his toes, and when their lips meet that promise lies implicit in the gesture, a kiss the computer system doesn't require, their loudest act of rebellion.

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fin

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