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SEBASTIAN POV (2)

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(day 1665)

Turns out the total sum of his risk, of seeing Blaine again, proves his complete undoing.

Are you happy? the beautifully naïve boy had asked not a week ago and for five days straight that phrase haunted his every waking moment — what was it about him that Blaine read so easily? Had he unwittingly showed Blaine secrets he didn't even know he had?

No one ever asks, they all assumed his fame and fortune guaranteed the foregone conclusion and maybe, somehow, he'd done the same. His days on set he's exactly where he wants to be, whether he's studying his lines in his trailer or giving it his all in front of a camera, but all the moments in between, when the spotlights dim and the attention fades and he tries to fill his loneliest moments with his own company... he fails. So he tried to fill those moments with Biff McIntosh and Elliott 'Starchild' Gilbert, most recently with Adam Crawford, and while that worked, while their bodies and even the quiet conversations they shared helped ease the bite of loneliness, it never healed the wounds.

Blaine was right. He's not happy.

He's not sure he has been at any moment over the past four years. Turning eighteen wasn't an exciting rite of passage, not something he had ever looked forward to, especially not after he fell in love with Nick. But had it been love? Had Nick left behind the distinct impression of home, the way that Blaine's innocent lips had done twice now? Or had he made that up in the wake of his heartbreak, of his disillusionment, of the sting of a fresh tattoo that stamped him like any other fool on this planet? They had some good times, he'd spelled 'I love you' in all the spaces their lips and bodies connected more times and ways than he could count, and when he closed his eyes, if he stared into Nick's long enough, he accepted it; he'd changed his mind on the notion of love in all the days he spent with Nick, laughing, dancing, loving. Maybe it was out there for him after all.

But ever since the days following Nick's eighteenth birthday — he'd made up his mind. Nick chose Jeff, and why wouldn't he? Why would he ignore the name etched in his skin? Why would he sacrifice true love for the solid thing they'd been building for three years?

In some world that must've made sense.

So he'd made up his mind. No one would find him, no one would set his world right, no soulmate, fake or otherwise, and he sure as hell wouldn't fall in love. Not again. If he'd ever really had in the first place.

When Santana first told him about Blaine, resident of Lima, Ohio, the name hadn't registered — others had gone before him, dozens if not hundreds of fans who had staked their claim, some of them going to great lengths to prove it, each of them dispelled by the cunning and guile of his publicist. Some were more cunning than others; there'd been this one kid back in Texas who'd gotten a real tattoo and waited for it to heal, slowly dispersed the information from one local newspaper to the other until the heavy hitters got hold of the story—the whole ordeal went on for months, the eighteen-year old (Burt? Dirk?) featured on talk shows and giving away interviews left and right, until Hunter, his new publicist, tracked down the tattoo artist.

His relief hadn't so much as come as a shock than as a distinct disinterest.

He knew better, after all.

Once it became clear that Blaine was in fact the real deal, didn't seem to have any interest in his fame, his fortune, or getting his fifteen minutes, his world slowly started fraying at the seams. The ground beneath his feet grew unsteady, and felt ready to cave in at any moment. That feeling persisted throughout the past three weeks, through their long lunches, their lengthy conversations that came unforced, through their fight on the beach where he'd hoped to push Blaine away, even after Blaine left for home, like he believed he wanted.

He doesn't know why, why Blaine challenges everything he believes in, everything about this whole soulmate-thing he chose to ignore, everything he—

"Mom?" he stutters over the line, legs pulled up to his chest to make himself as small as possible, still in the exact same spot on the floor where he sank down an hour ago, when Adam, too, had left him with a few things to think about. He hasn't slept much this past week; both Nick and Blaine haunted his dreams, Nick's lips cold while Blaine's beckoned him closer, a pull below his sternum that urged him nearer, closer, more intimately wanton for Blaine's gorgeous smile. He tossed and turned and called out names he hadn't in years, longed for his mother's advice while he feared it at the same time. Because his mother made up her mind when she was his age — and her convictions hadn't waned since.

Sometimes he envied her the strength of those beliefs.

Other times he hated her for condemning his.

"Sebastian?"

His mother's voice soothes the way it usually does, a song in the distance spanning his own naïve childhood and the forced reprisal of adulthood. When he was younger his mom would sing to him whenever he fell ill, sit by his bedside sketching, running her fingers through his hair every so often. He misses that more than he's willing to say. "What's wrong?"

His mom was in Paris now, celebrating twenty-six years of marriage.

He covers a hand over his eyes to shut it all out; his name on Blaine's skin, the taste of Blaine's on his, all his mistakes and the ones he's yet to make — he can't see his path anymore, can't tell up from down, right from wrong. Where does he go from here? Does he go back to work like Blaine never existed at all? That hardly seemed possible, with Blaine so clearly imprinted over all his secrets.

"I fucked up."

His voice breaks in all the places Blaine touched, whether he was conscious of it or not, that same question – Are you happy? – burning holes through his diaphragm. Tears swell behind his eyes at the uncontainable painful weight on his chest, ever heavier the longer he goes without admitting how out of control everything has gotten.

"I messed up so bad."

"It's Blaine, isn't it?" his mom asks softly, her voice piercing right down to the truth of things — Blaine has become everything, he's become too much, his fears personified, his admiration won, his respect earned, and perhaps the most fearful thing of all: hope that things might change. Because who has he fooled? Certainly not Adam or Blaine. Of course he wants what everyone else wants. Someone to share a life with. Whether that be a soulmate, or a best friend, or someone who simply gets him.

For some people their soulmate is all those things. Lucky bastards.

"He asked if I was happy. And I–"

He pulls his legs tighter to his chest, pushing fingers back against his eyes even though tears stream down his face, sobs ripping through his chest.

"And then Adam, he–"

Somehow, Adam had found him in the midst of all of this, all his unhappiness, all the out-of-control-ness his life had ineffably twisted into since his move to Hollywood, and Adam had held him together through all of it. His relationship with Biff had been destroyed by the media, his private life with Elliott had been smeared over the front page of every tabloid in town, and after that ended he'd resigned never to date again — love wasn't for him, nor was this soulmate thing, so dating might as well get scratched off the menu too.

Then came Adam. He'd been working as his stylist for a few months before they got to talking, and if anyone were to ask he wouldn't be able to say who broke the ice — for a little over a year now Adam has simply been there. And yes, some of their meetings included nothing more than getting each other off, but Adam never demanded things. Nick needed someone to tie him over until his eighteenth birthday, Biff wanted secrecy, Elliott meant to share his spotlight. Adam never expected anything more than what he gave, and never gave more than what he wanted — they talked and joked around, watched movies at the house, cooked meals together. They always had a good time.

He wasn't in love with Adam, but that was okay. Adam wasn't in love with him either. In Adam's mind they were two guys sharing time until one of their soulmates showed up.

Maybe that meant he shouldn't have called Adam after Blaine came into his life. He couldn't help it though. Blaine left and all of a sudden a hole fell into his life, something precious chased away in the culmination of all the choices that led him there; the rotten truth of his parents' love spun throughout his childhood and Broadway career, the stark realization that their choices sealed his fate, his hope lost in a broken heart that might still cut anyone who got to close to the pieces. Was that his terrible truth now? Has he become toxic to people like Blaine, who believed in love above everything else?

"I didn't think I'd hear from you again," Adam said a few hours ago, retracing his own past footsteps into the living room. The assumption had hit him much harder than Adam probably intended, the words echoing a question he'd been desperate to forget when he texted Adam to drop by.

Instead of their usual business he'd stuttered, "What do you mean? We– We're friends, right?" in between a few irregular heartbeats, his knees left a little weak in the wake of what must've kept Adam away for the past three weeks. No need for a lover when the love of your waking moments walks into your life. He, of course, hadn't thought of it that way; Adam was a friend, and why not call on a friend when his world felt like it could fall to pieces any moment?

"Of course we are, darling," Adam had answered, but it was no use; he'd already dispelled one man's romantic notions earlier that week and he wasn't about to tell Adam what had happened, to argue about values and morals and beliefs again. He just needed someone to listen and understand.

So he'd called his mom.

"If you feel something for this boy," his mom says, and he can guess what's coming — the same advice that went along with Nick and Biff and Elliott, how no feeling can ever be too small if it's there, nothing should be ignored when it comes to love, and above all, knowing himself would make all the difference in a relationship. Knowing himself didn't matter with Nick, it weren't his choices that drove them apart, nor did they in any of his other relationships — Biff couldn't take the exposure, Elliott couldn't do long-distance when he filmed out of town.

"Something real,"

How does anyone know it's real? Was it real when the outside world couldn't touch what he had with Nick? Was it real when Biff accepted who he was and decided to give their relationship a try? Or was love only ever real when it hurt?

"Even if it's the smallest thing–"

A sob wrenches at the back of his throat and stays there, air trapped in his lungs as he recalls drawing closer to Blaine, his breath tickling along his mouth, their fingers intertwining, the frantic rhythm of his heart drumming identically in Blaine's chest — and then all of Blaine Anderson's sweet and smooth edges, his fingers through his hair, the oddest sense of—

How could home ever be considered a small thing?

"You owe it to yourself to pursue it."

"And what do I say to him?"

He sniffles, running a hand back and forth through his hair, tears dripping from his chin into his shirt. Shame trips along his shoulder blades, along with guilt over what he's put Blaine through — their big small thing extinguished before it ever started.

"That I–"

He swallows back the truth lest he choked on it.

"You could try the truth."

"The truth?" he calls, his voice echoing all through the empty house. How can his mother even entertain that thought? Surely she remembers the six months following his break-up with Nick he stopped speaking to her or his dad. It felt like an eternity and still wasn't enough; deep down in the darkest center of his heart he hated his parents for the choices they made. A choice they never truly considered the consequences of. "That I'm an abomination?"

"He woke up with your name on his wrist, baby," his mom argues. "Your name. It's real, and you deserve this. Just as much as anyone else in the world."

He often wished his mother's undying hope lived inside him too.

"It's too late, mom. He's gone."

"Darling, it's never too late."

If he closes his eyes, when he tries hard enough, he can picture his mom by his side right there in the hallway, one hand drawing through his hair while the other occupied itself with a random sketch. He loves his mom and his dad, he truly does, but sometimes he hates them too. What good would chasing after Blaine do now? Even if he didn't have to head to Boston for a new movie, he burnt his bridges that day on the beach. He messed everything up, told too many lies, kept too many secrets.

Blaine would never forgive him for what he said.

He's even less likely to forgive him for the truth.

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