Title: Worth Fighting For
Author: an-alternate-world
Rating: M
Characters/Pairing: Sebastian Smythe/Blaine Anderson
Word Count: 3,351
Summary: Sebastian knows something is wrong with the way Blaine is glowering at him over the rim of his mug of eggnog. Once he discovers the reason why, he makes resolutions to plan something special with the help of some old friends. **Close to Nothing sequel**
Warnings/Spoilers: As a 'Close to Nothing' sequel, THIS CHAPTER WILL SPOIL MAJOR PLOT POINTS FOR THAT FIC IF YOU HAVEN'T READ IT so you should really go and do that now because it'll just add more weight to the universe that this is set in. Also, I've needed tissues every time with this chapter so you might want to prepare yourself. There is also embedded art in this chapter, which you can view on AO3 or my Tumblr.
Disclaimer: I am in no way associated with Glee, FOX, Ryan Murphy, or anything else related to the FOX universe.

The discord between them fades and though Sebastian starts to feel like every moment is more measured – like Blaine anticipates he'll fall to one knee without warning any time that they're together – they're no longer avoiding each other and he doesn't fret quite so much that he'd monumentally screwed up over Christmas. He can't shake that he's still uncertain and he can't hide that some nights he clings to Blaine a little tighter, a little closer, a little longer.

He wonders if he's really made any progress with this 'grieving' thing at all.

A few days after New Year, Blaine leaves to have lunch with Rachel because she has a day off from rehearsals. Left alone and disinterested in watching a movie, reading a book or aimlessly wandering the streets, Sebastian retreats to the spare room to go through his box of memories again. He knows there are tears on his cheeks before he's even removed the lid of the box, but he's somewhat grateful to his past self for leaving the pale green manila folder on top which contains their letters. One time, he'd opened the box and the first thing he'd seen was an assortment of photos that left him curled up and sobbing.

Opening the box, going through the contents, isn't something he's at peace with yet. It's almost a form of torture because he finds that on days when he's overcome by melancholia, but unable to really feel or process emotions, making himself cry helps. And it doesn't take much of the box before he's hurting again but also grieving and accepting.

Sometimes it's the wedding photos, increasingly crinkled and tearstained, that set him off. Andy had looked so handsome, his dark hair contrasting with the pale grey suit, and the look of love on his face was one Sebastian vividly remembers and wishes he could see again.

Sometimes it's the notes they'd passed back and forth during tutorials, or hastily scribbled plans, or gossip they'd shared during a lecture when they couldn't talk, or love notes he'd kept because it was his first real relationship and he was a giddy teenager. He's traced his finger around Andy's looping handwriting more times than he knows, faint whispers of Andy's voice circling his ears.

In reality, he knows he's not haunted by the ghost of Andy's memory anymore, and he knows he's not betraying his relationship with Andy by being with Blaine, but sometimes… Sometimes going through the box hurts so much that he feels breathless, like his ribcage is shrinking around his vital organs and trapping air in his burning throat. It always has the desired effect of shattering his emptiness so he doesn't become icy and closed off and he's pretty sure it's not healthy but at least he always has Blaine after he goes through the box.

This time, he sits against the wall of the spare room beside the closet. The knot of anguish in his chest and throat grows as he skims through the letters and notes in a hodgepodge mess of their handwriting. He knows all the words by heart, from the nonsense note-passing about their thoughts on a tutorial or teacher Sebastian strains to recall, to a gig Andy wanted to take him to but Sebastian thought they needed to work on a paper, to the creased copies of their vows that Andy had insisted they keep and laugh about when they got old or read when they got angry with each other and wanted a separation. Of all the times he's gone through the box, he's never read their vows. The pale white pages of his vows and the pale blue pages of Andy's are things he's never been able to bring himself to unfold and read again. Besides, he remembers them – even now – without looking.

He's only faintly aware of the tiny, half-gasped sobs he releases as he ensures the vows remain safely tucked away at the back of the manila folder.

He's never shown Blaine the box, although the other man knows it exists. About four years ago, he'd finally shown Blaine a photo of Andy and he'd felt and heard Blaine's breath empty his lungs as he'd held the photo in delicate fingers, knowing how precious it was to finally put a face to the person that had been Sebastian's entire world for far too brief a time.

"This is him?" Blaine had whispered unnecessarily. Sebastian had leaned his head against Blaine's shoulder and nodded, looking at the photo fondly. He could remember taking it and he knew Andy had been annoyed about something but he couldn't remember the precise details now. "He's…cute."

Sebastian had snorted, pinching the photo from Blaine's grasp. It was slightly easier to look at photos now without being reminded of that final image he had of Andy's mangled face, but it was still difficult.

"It's okay, you're allowed to be jealous of how hot he is," he'd teased and Blaine had grumbled and folded an arm around his shoulders.

"He looks tall, like he could be a model," Blaine said and he'd nodded, running his index finger over the curve of Andy's shoulder up to his chin and jawline.

"He was my height, so that makes him a giant next to you."

Blaine had poked his bicep and he managed a small smile, the joking helping keep the pain to a minimum.

"You can't really see that his eyes were like…this mixture of blue and green but so pale they looked almost silver sometimes. It was unnerving, how his eyes could follow you around with such sharpness that it made you shiver. They were piercing and he would've made a fierce lawyer because witnesses and clients would've felt compelled to tell the truth under that gaze. But I… Well, I couldn't look away once I saw him and neither could he, though I don't think my eyes are nearly so interesting," he'd mused and Blaine had kissed the top of his head and listened to him talk for probably an hour about what he'd liked about Andy and how he was so different to Blaine, and yet in so many ways they were similar. It was something he both consciously and unconsciously did, where any discussion of Andy didn't devolve into sounding like Blaine meant nothing to him or was a replacement. Somehow his storytelling always meandered towards the recognition that Andy was gone but Blaine wasn't a substitute.

He's never shown Blaine any of their wedding photos and as he turns the pages of the album now, he's struck by how young he and Andy look. He knows they'd only been hedging the beginning of their twenties but he's hyper-critical of himself and how gangly he looks in his suit, like a kid playing dress-up, and it surprises him that he's filled out his frame since then. By no means is he nursing a beer gut like Blaine's father nor does he have the softness that has settled on Cooper's hips in recent years since Freya was born, but the face he sees in the mirror now is lined with age around his eyes and mouth compared to this photographic version of himself who looks little more than an elongated child.

He digs his teeth into his lower lip and reaches for his phone. It doesn't take him long to find the contact he was looking for and when he hears the first ring, he squeezes his eyes shut because already he can feel the tickle of tears on his cheeks.

"Hello, this is Caroline speaking."

He exhales shakily and swallows around the lump in his throat. "Hey, Carol," he says, his voice wavering with the tears he's trying to hold back as he uses the nickname he'd always used because Andy had told him she preferred family call her Carol.

"Sebastian? My darling! How lovely to hear your voice!" Caroline says, warmth and excitement bleeding into her tone. "How are you?"

"I'm… I'm good," he says, and though he's mostly honest, the shakiness of his words makes her huff and he fights a small, watery smile at how she's always called him out on his bullshit and lies. "Just… Y'know. Going through old photos. Being affected by some dust allergies and stuff."

"Dust allergies, huh?" Caroline teases and he finds that the lump in his throat isn't quite so huge now that he's finally called. Life would be so much easier if his anxiety about poor outcomes didn't get in the way all the time. "And here I thought maybe you'd just missed talking to me that much."

A small bubble of laughter escapes him and he can practically hear her smile over the phone. "I'm sorry it's been so long."

"Sebastian, sweetheart, you know it doesn't matter how long it's been. I, we, will always answer your call and talk to you," she soothes and he draws his knees towards his chest with his favourite photo of Andy, the one he'd shown Blaine, by his foot. He can't compare how attractive he finds Blaine to Andy, but his husband really was stunning.

"Thank you," he whispers and she hums her acknowledgement.

"So you've got some dust allergies and you missed talking to me more than you're willing to admit. What else can I do for you, darling?"

He gazes at the photo of Andy, almost wishing he didn't feel such a need to make this call, and releases a tremulous breath. "I… Um… So I've told you about Blaine, right?"

"I'm pretty sure you've mentioned him once or twice over the years," she agrees, even though he knows he's mentioned Blaine many more times than that.

"Well, he… Um… He… He thought I was going to…propose…at Christmas. Got all huffy about it too for a few days when I didn't," he says, picking at a loose thread on the carpet in an attempt to stay focused and not break into further tears that will almost certainly get stuck in his throat and strangle his ability to talk. "And I- I love him, Carol. I really do. But… But I'm… I'm so scared. I don't know how to do this again. And he's so patient and kind and gentle that he understood when I told him about Andy but… I'm so scared and I can't shake it."

"My sweet boy," Caroline hushes and he closes his eyes when the tears brim and blur his vision because she's always been so maternal, disregarding her own grief to listen to and care for him. Sebastian's mother had always struggled with what to say and how to look him in the eye after the accident. "You know Andrew would want you to move on, right? You've known that for an awfully long time."

"I know. I just- I can't… I can't lose Blaine too. It… It nearly destroyed me w-when-"

"I know, I remember," she says gently, and he nods and swallows the words he still struggles with saying aloud. "Andrew… He was so caring and sincere, and yet he was bold and determined to succeed and get justice. When I met you, I wasn't sure if it would work because you were both so alike that I thought you'd fight and clash all the time and I'd be left to pick pieces of his broken heart off my living room floor."

He tries to hide his sniffle and wipes his damp cheeks against his sweater because Caroline always has a way of reducing him to feeling like a small boy in need of a mother's love and hearing her perspective on Andy always hurt and healed his heart.

"But you just worked, you know you did, and I know it was only brief but it was brilliant and beautiful and I marvelled at the grace and composure you had when everything happened, even though I knew you were so broken on the inside that I didn't know what to do," she continues, the line hissing faintly with her sigh. "Sebastian... I didn't just lose one son that night. I lost both of you. For the longest time, I felt like I was watching you from another planet and I'd never be able to reach you again. I know John felt just as concerned. We spoke to your parents often in that first year, offering whatever ideas we could think of if they thought it would help you."

Sebastian frowns and his eyes flicker open because he'd never known that his parents and in-laws had spoken about him, let alone 'often'. How long had that been going on? Did they still talk? He's not sure he wants to know the answer from Caroline nor does he think he has the guts to ask his own parents. It's like a secretive piece of the worst year of his life had just been unearthed and he wonders what else he doesn't know.

"Sweetheart, if… If Andrew had lived that night, but he'd lost you, I know he would have struggled just as much to cope and move on. He'd never loved anyone like you. I could see it in his eyes when we visited you and I could hear it in his voice when we spoke on the phone and he only wanted to talk about you, not school or New York. Just you." Caroline's voice cracks and he feels awful for making her cry too. He wonders if the pain will ever truly fade away for either of them. "But I also think that, just like you and Blaine, he'd find love again. And he'd make this same sort of phone call, either to me or to your parents, because I think you need to hear that it's okay to love and to lose and to love again, don't you?"

A sob breaks free from the tight seal of his lips and all he can do is wordlessly nod. He knows it's pointless when they're on the phone but he thinks it's impossible to talk right now and he thinks Caroline hearing his sob is enough for her to know her thoughts are confirmed.

"John and I don't hate you for loving Blaine and we certainly won't resent you for marrying him, Sebastian," she says and there's strength and conviction in her words even though he can tell she's struggling with her emotions just as much as he is. "Andrew is a part of you and he always will be. He wrote a chapter in your story, maybe more than a chapter, but your life didn't end that night even though I know it's been an awfully long and painful journey to get to where you are now. Blaine is… By all accounts, Blaine sounds like a spectacular man and you deserve the happiness he brings you."

"B-But… But what if-"

"Darling, are you really allowing your life to be consumed by hypothetical scenarios?" she interrupts and it's so sharp, so much like Andy cutting off one of his worries, he nearly laughs. "Tell me, are you seriously terrified of something awful happening because you think your happiness is cursed, or are you using Andrew as an excuse because you're truly not sure you want to marry Blaine?"

"I love him, I really do," he says, sniffling and shaky but undeniably certain of his feelings. "It's not the same as with Andy, I don't think anything ever will be, but I just… I'm afraid of losing him. Did you know I knew Blaine before I knew Andy?"

She makes a little humming noise and he's not sure if she's acknowledging that he had or if it's a noise she makes to indicate he should continue.

"Anyway, I- Sometimes I think Andy taught me how to love so that when I met other people, then I'd know what to do." He pauses, hesitating for a moment before deciding he needs to tell Caroline what he was like before Andy, because sometimes it's hard to reconcile he met Blaine almost twenty years ago in the middle of a Warbler rehearsal. "You know, I was… I was kind of a huge dick to Blaine in high school and I did so much stupid shit that really hurt him and if he'd been reckless enough to return my interests as a teenager, we never would have gotten anywhere near this point because I wouldn't have known how to love him. So Andy… I wouldn't trade him for the world, I'd take back the accident every day if I could, I'd swap our lives so he could live if I could, but he… When Blaine started drawing me out of my grief, I knew how to fall in love with him because of Andy."

Caroline chuckles. "So what are you waiting for, Seb? If you're so sure you love him, don't let your feelings about a tragedy that happened in another lifetime take away that happiness you feel now."

It seems so simple and pure, the sort of state-the-obvious logic that Andy had used on him when he'd panic about completing his next series of assessments, or whether he could ever measure up to his parents' expectations, or when he wasn't sure that Andy liked him enough to stay once he found out that Sebastian had been a total prick in high school.

"I miss him, Carol," he admits and wipes his eyes and cheeks, his pain gradually receding like the ocean at low tide. He could feel traces of hurt carved across his chest like the jagged lines of sand left along the shore, but it's not so consuming that he felt like he was drowning. He just felt raw and tired.

"I miss him too, sweetheart," she replies with a sniffle before her tone brightens. "Hey, listen, you have to do me a favour though, okay?"

One of his eyebrows rise. "Yeah?"

"Send us an invitation to the wedding," she says and it takes his breath away because he never expected his mother-in-law would be able to handle seeing something like that. "I have to meet this Blaine fellow and thank him for sweeping you off your feet and I'm pretty sure John would want the same. We want to see you happy, Sebastian. That's all we'd ever want for our son."

He giggles breathlessly, pondering whether Blaine swept him off his feet as a teenager in the Dalton Common Room or on a random street in New York years ago. Is it possible to be swept off your feet twice by the same person?

"Thank you," he says and she shushes him.

"Thank you for calling, Sebastian. It's good to see you reaching out rather than bottling it up."

And that, he knows, is absolutely all Blaine's doing.

He's curled into a ball on the couch watching a really old, really cheesy movie when Blaine gets home from his lunch with Rachel. He can feel Blaine's eyes looking at him, wearing one of Blaine's ridiculously old hoodies that is so stretched and warped it fits Sebastian better now and hugging one of Blaine's pillows to his chest, and he knows, he knows, Blaine switches mental tracks from preparing to launch into the stories Rachel had told him to shifting him on the couch and spooning behind him. Sebastian can almost hear the tracks change.

Blaine slings an arm over his waist, lacing their fingers together and nuzzling into the back of Sebastian's neck like they've done countless times when Blaine's found him looking like a fractured mess on the couch.

"You okay?" Blaine whispers as Sebastian cuddles into the embrace, seeking safety and security and sanctuary.

"I will be," he says, gently squeezing Blaine's hand in a reassurance because no, he's not back-sliding into the worst pit of depression like the one he'd started crawling out of seven years ago. Blaine squeezes back and joins in with watching the movie even though he's missed half of it.

Chances are, he's seen it before anyway. Blaine's knowledge of movies was extensive, unfathomable and unbeatable at trivia nights.

~TBC~