Work Text:
→ and i'm falling
There was snow on the ground.
Sebastian watched it, the steady drifting piles building up against postboxes and lampposts, like shifting dunes in the desert. The swaying tracks of people fighting against the wind littered the sidewalk in grey-brown dashes which were swallowed up by the time the next person came, all of them indistinguishable beneath their heavy coats and knit caps. All the same, but not a sound between them ...
A memory rose up, of dance class when he was thirteen, the music’s beat the only guide they needed as they performed for the instructor. Sebastian was perfect: foot ahead, foot behind, the dip of his shoulders, and when they spun in time he could see his instructor nod. Sebastian’s heart beat fast, spelling out pride against his ribs. He had choreographed this. She was approving of him.
Then somebody next to him misstepped, stumbling into their neighbour. Sebastian couldn’t remember a thing about them, except that he grabbed their shirt collar mid-performance to yell in their face. Useless! The instructor sent him out of the room; A consummate performer rolls with mistakes, Sebastian -- You’re talented but that attitude -- This is unacceptable -- even now, having a hell of a lot more to regret, Sebastian couldn’t bring himself to complete that memory.
A consummate performer rolls with mistakes.
There was somebody walking by now, a man with neat dark hair, small and lonely looking as he pushed through the flurries. Sebastian’s breath caught in his throat, and it was silly, no, god, it was stupid. He’d been in a dance class with that kid for two years and he couldn’t remember a damn thing, but Blaine Anderson --
Sebastian turned away from the window, going to the bed and his brandy and lay down, staring at the TV which was muted on some Razzie-worthy Christmas special, which seemed pointless as the twenty-fifth had already passed. Sebastian had called his parents, friends, ordered nice room service, and dropped a hundred into the cup of every homeless guy he saw. He heard Blaine’s hit Christmas song no less than three times that day alone --
And with the snow chasing us around
And your smile caught up in my arms
Oh I’ve forgotten my way around town
(What the hell did that even mean, Anderson, he wanted to text him but even though he had the number he’d never used it.)
-- and as far as holidays went, it wasn’t bad. It was fine. Sebastian was fine. He’d had a guy with a beard and the brightest eyes just an hour ago, who had left him to be maudlin and drunk and alone --
Sebastian downed his brandy, and grabbed his phone. There was Blaine, top of his contacts list, a secret passed along by helpful friends in common who probably bombarded Blaine every day in hopes of sharing that spotlight. Sebastian snorted as he tapped it. Not the first time he'd done that, but the desire to step out into that empty white was tugging insistently at him. Would this make him more genuine, having waited for so long? Could Blaine heard it before? Could Blaine have trusted him if it had gone like --
{You are cordially invited to the Anderson-Hummel wedding.}
Sebastian Smythe, RSVPing: Chicken dinner, don’t seat me with single women, and oh yeah, I love you, Blaine.
Now that would have been a laugh. Of course, he wasn’t sure he would have called it that, back then. He had waited for Blaine without even realizing it, convinced he’d moved on. But he’d kept seats and beds open and his heart closed, turning away countless offers of something more with a great many great men. Like he was one of those pathetic people you saw in restaurants who didn’t realize they’d been stood up. Oh, he’ll be here soon, I’ll just have water. Now, verging on thirty, he’d let others stay with him for a time, but never been quite able to call for the bill.
His fingers hovered over the screen, not sure what he wanted to say. All that? No, that was too much. He glanced at the TV screen (the ghost of Christmas past was lecturing around a fake leg of lamb) then back again, resolve filling him alongside half a bottle of brandy as he tapped out:
Sent.
&&**
Blaine didn’t reply. Sebastian resolutely did not check his phone more than usual. He boarded a plane instead, and left Chicago for L.A. where he argued and made money and walked along the beach like it was the middle of summer. The New Year was coming up and he could afford a few days off, go anywhere he damn well liked anytime he pleased. So he went drinking at nine, did too many shots and picked up a twink, and then nearly choked on dick when he saw lyrics from Blaine’s infamous breakup album in uneven black across a sharp hipbone:
The sky is deeper now, and I can own it all
Afterwards, party buzz killed, Sebastian collapsed into a cab and propped his feet up against the window, the blur of lights past his toes like warm fingers against his spinning head. That attitude, his instructor had said, so many people had said. That attitude. Sebastian had been smug when trashy gossip rags and respected publications alike had screamed:
HOLLYWOOD’S OUT IT COUPLE ON THE OUTS
As if that wasn’t a friend of his, as if he hadn’t helped plan their proposal, as if he hadn’t -- as if he hadn’t learned, three weeks after the fact, that they’d gotten married after finally separating and fuck it. He hated Facebook. He’d deleted his not long after. It was selfish, maybe, but ...
The sky had been deeper, since he met Blaine. Things had been clearer. He might not have always liked what he saw, the ugly truths everyone had to face, but he’d come out better for it.
He was allowed to be a little selfish. He was allowed to let Blaine know:
Sent.
&&**
Sebastian was in Paris for New Years. He had gotten hundreds of texts, several phone calls, some naked selfies, all to mark the coming year. Not a peep from Blaine though, and Sebastian decided to make his resolution to either own up to what he was doing or stop torturing himself. If you want him …
“If.” Like there was a question. Sebastian brought his umbrella down at a sharper angle, blocking out the harsh shove of the rain. He was starting to miss the snow of Chicago; at least there, he didn’t have to worry about his tux being drenched, just keep to his pretty hotel with pretty people and burrow his face into a scarf if he had to go outside, only the soft snow on his eyelashes and the squelch of slush beneath car tires out on the street accompanying him.
When he reached the ballroom where he’d be spending his evening, he caught the look others gave him for arriving with wet ankles, and looked back with a toothy smile. I’m a tacky American, he told them with his eyes, because that’s what he always was in Europe.
Blaine had thought him very worldly, at first. Sebastian had been, compared to him. And yet he’d always felt like he had to push himself further. God, he’d been an idiot. Preening and flirting and pushing and probing, always trying to get more than he was technically allowed. Sebastian could forget himself easily, when Blaine looked at him a certain way, or said something to make him laugh, or shook his hand with an understanding look that said:
I forgive you.
Sebastian had held onto that a long time, especially when they’d met again and Blaine had been so prickly, yet another mess up from his former friends to deal with. Sebastian had vowed on at least three separate New Years to be better that coming year. Of course, New Years resolutions were impossible to keep up, but eventually something had stuck.
Sebastian was happy with himself, now. Happy and threading his way through an exclusive party that countless people would kill to be at, chiming his champagne glass with friends and feeling both blissfully alive and calmly disconnected as he danced and drank and laughed, loud and unapologetic, when he saw that Blaine was trending worldwide:
#BLAINENYC
Because of course Blaine was performing at the ball drop, of course he looked devastatingly handsome as he did so, and of course he dedicated the song to “All the love in the world, and all its lovers.”
Blaine had definitely received Sebastian’s texts. So it was with a double-dog-dare attitude and only three glasses of champagne in that he texted:
Sent.
&&**
No reply.
&&**
Sebastian travelled to Amsterdam and London, dropping in on friends and giving expensive little presents to their kids so he could brag that they liked him better; attending a show on the West End and made sure to be overheard saying “The Broadway production was better …” to watch stiff upper lips twitch in annoyance. Of course, it was a bullshit claim as he’d never been, but undoubtedly very true since Blaine had starred in it with his fellow firecracker of talent, Berry.
(And though Sebastian had been carrying a torch, feeling it drop sparks all along his forearms to leave him with a constellation of tiny regrets and remembrances, he wasn’t quite pathetic enough to turn up at Blaine’s shows and watch him from the audience.
He knew that, if they ever met again, he would be all-exclusive backstage. Sebastian had done enough waiting in the cheap seats.)
He saw his mother who said, as she always did, “You’re so handsome?” as if she had forgotten what he looked like in the past few months. Sebastian took her out for dinner and squeezed her hand like a good son and asked for love advice.
“Screw his brains out,” she said, the picture of elegance.
“I think he needs to acknowledge my presence first.”
“Oh, he’s acknowledged it.” She tickled his palm. “Who couldn’t! But some people, you need to give them space, time to think.”
That was his father; Sebastian had taken so much after his mother, he’d always stood out in that silent house he shared with his father. A good man, but his eyes belied long essays that never crossed his lips. He was the only parent who had actually met Blaine.
It was after Blaine had come to his house to yell at him, on Valentine’s Day of all days, his (ridiculous) (cute) (guilt-inducing) heart-shaped eyepatch inciting Sebastian to snap right back. Did I invite you over? -- Go away, do I look like I care? -- (“Yes,” Blaine had volleyed back, and Sebastian had jumped tracks fast as possible to avoid that incoming train, “What’s wrong with you, this isn’t --!”) This is me, why don’t you go watch the fucking Home and Garden network with Hummel if you have a hard-on for fixer uppers, because that isn’t me, not my fault if you’re just realizing that, Christ -- Get out of my house, I won’t say it again -- and after Blaine had stormed off his dad had come up and hovered in the doorway, then left without saying a word.
Sebastian had left in a towering bad mood, then spent the next week determinedly uncaring and fun-loving at Scandals, and then someone nearly died and well --
He’d devoted at least three New Years to things like that. He didn’t need to add another to the list; Sebastian hadn’t wasted his life yet, he had no intention of starting now. So waiting for his flight back to the States to be called in Heathrow, he sent off another text:
Sent.
&&**
Texting Blaine like this was sort of like having a very silent pen pal. Or a diary. Which ...
Sebastian was turning twenty-eight that year and was wearing a three thousand dollar suit and every minute of his time worth more than that, and he basically had a trapper keeper about a heartthrob that more than a few speckly teens out there sighed about on their blogs. Sebastian lay in his Cincinnati hotel room and laughed about it, figuring Blaine would be teasing him if he was there.
The great Sebastian Smythe … he would say, plush mouth quirked and bright eyes dancing. Oh, how he’d wanted to kiss that mouth, and he’d never been a big kisser. Boring. Kind of gross. But with Blaine, fuck if with Blaine he wouldn’t have kissed until they could feel their heartbeats in their lips.
Sebastian’s eyelids fluttered at the thought, and he settled down further in his chaise lounge, the warmth of his hotel room’s electric fireplace washing over him in gentle waves, the windows painting white as the heat met the crackling shine of ice from the bone-dry wind outside, and it was miserable out there but he’d walk it if Blaine was waiting for him elsewhere.
He would walk it, and he would kiss Blaine, slide his fingers under those bright red suspenders Blaine had worn to some teeny bop award show, snap them and then tug them off over those strong shoulders, hear the catch in Blaine’s throat as they slid down his arms, his sure hands on Sebastian’s hips, drawing him in as Sebastian kissed the corner of his mouth and slipped a hand into Blaine’s opened pants and into those tight briefs he wore to wrap a hand around his cock (and god, it had to be a nice one, had always looked so thick in those hip-hugging capris) and jerk him off with these long, slow strokes that said You’re right where I want you or wait I love that sound you make (he could only imagine, maybe breathy and high and wide pupil-blown gold staring up at him, or lower, cut off sighs and bitten lips and Blaine digging his fingers into Sebastian so tightly so they could never lose each other again) or maybe just an I love you, Blaine’s suspender-strapped arms rising best as they could to grasp Sebastian’s shirt and pull him into a deep kiss, Blaine needing him like Sebastian needed him, all of him, the hot pulse and slide of hard flesh and blood-flushed mouths and cheeks and fingernails gone white from clinging so hard, the spaces between them only drawing a hot line of attention down their spines to where they were connected, pulses fluttering and sweat pooling and hypersensitive prickles sweeping down bare skin that begged take me, take me, take me --
Sebastian came with a jerk of his hips, working his fist over his dick as he came down, rubbing a thumb to catch his come and wipe it off on the chaise. Little pieces of awareness came back to him like the kisses he could lay down Blaine’s skin; the artificial crackle of the fire, the bluster of the wind, and how he was fever-hot flushed. Sebastian sat up, stripping off his dress shirt, tossing it aside, before sitting back down and grabbing his phone from his suit jacket, already long-since discarded.
He found Blaine’s name. He figured he could clarify once and for all. Blaine wasn’t just his first; it wasn’t just an always; it was very much a current thing, in all respects. That the years were only paper ghosts compared to the reality of what a hint of Blaine could do to him; that Sebastian was well and truly fucked.
Sent.
&&**
More than a week passed since another -- he couldn’t say piece, that made it sound like he was giving things away, and that wasn’t how this made him feel at all -- another etching of his heart was sent out into the great big nether.
(He was thinking of his New Year’s resolution. Speak now, or forever hold your peace.)
Sebastian, stuck in an airport due to a storm delaying his flight, kicked back at the liquored coffee stand and watched hopeless tourists, harried business types, and families back from holiday mill around. More than a few of his friends didn’t understand how he could fly so much, as if airports were some huge mystery, plane rides any worse than driving for more than an hour. At least in planes he could afford first class and stretch out his legs.
Truthfully, one of Sebastian’s favourite places in the world was airports in the very early morning -- three am, four am, the little coffee bars coming to life with bright, mechanical efficiency only matched by their workers. Claiming a good seat, listening to the floor cleaner come by, watching as people filtered in and settled down to wait. The announcements coming faster and faster until you tuned them out as the useless background noise they were. It was like watching a dragon wake up from a long nap, but airports never really slept. They were never -- empty.
Sebastian sighed. “Shot of tequila,” he told the bartender/barista, who didn’t bat an eyelash and point out it was seven am. She poured it, and Sebastian knocked it back.
One of the flatscreens set high into the bar was showing music videos, and Ms. Jones’ video faded out into one of Blaine’s. Sebastian ordered a coffee, then sat back, watching the close ups of Blaine’s elegant fingers coaxing the piano keys. One of his slower songs, and Sebastian could fill in the blank of the TV’s silence -- That little lost space we keep falling into -- only to laugh into his coffee a minute later when the speakers started to play a different song of Blaine’s, more upbeat -- Oh, oh, oh! Turn that around, turn it around -- and Sebastian tapped his foot against the bottom bars of his stool.
Blaine was breathtaking.
“I know him,” he told the worker, nodding to the screen; she smiled politely and nodded without looking. Sebastian knew his claim wouldn’t be in the top thirty of insane things she’d hear that day. Airports had that effect on people, especially when all you could see outside was white, white, white and the occasional flashes of red and orange, peeking out from the clouds come to ground. Maybe that pushed him to continue, the solid expanse outside matched only by the string of I-miss-you greys on his phone. “We talked a lot. Enough. Then about five years ago, it stopped. I think I was the one who stopped it.”
“Why?”
“Well it wasn’t a conscious choice, I’m not an idiot.” Sebastian drummed his fingers against his coffee, watching as Blaine’s video came to an end with a shot of him alone, framed by a large emptiness. “He’s just as great as they say. But back then he was married with his star on the rise, and so was mine, and well. I thought I didn’t need him anymore.”
“Huh.”
“I remember thinking, I’ll reply to this email later and by the time I did he had a booked-out tour and didn’t get back to me.” Sebastian took a sip. “Mm. You know this is better than usual airport crap, it’s nice.” She shrugged. “Anyways. Blaine was good about keeping in touch, if he cared. I don’t think he did with me, probably because I was an ass.”
About Hummel. About threats of self-sabotage. About deleted Facebooks and the angry kid who threw slushies and didn’t know how to roll with the punches, that attitude, and all the things he wished he could say changed overnight but hadn’t really.
Being nice didn’t suck anymore. Being nice wasn’t even a goal. Being comfortable with himself was. They just happened to align, generally.
“That’s why I’m hoping to cut his liver out if we ever meet again.” He grinned at the worker, who stared at him, wide-eyed. He might have just made her top thirty. “I’ll have another shot, kid.”
He tipped her generously when the storm finally died down enough for boarding, but long before that, when he was finishing off his second shot, he decided to text Blaine again:
Sent.
&&**
He wondered if Blaine checked the messages once, then ignored them.
Or if he kept checking back, fingers hovering over the keypad, not sure what to send back.
Or if he just ignored Sebastian completely.
(He wasn’t sure if he was evolved enough for that last one to not hurt.)
&&**
Nearly the end of the month. A brief thaw in the weather down in the States, but Sebastian was in Toronto, leaning against the chilly floor-to-ceiling windows of his hotel while some guy sucked his cock like there was a judge’s panel off to the side. Sebastian tipped his head back, moaning and sliding his hand into curly brown hair, muttering some half-hearted dirty talk -- he didn’t think the guy needed or heard it.
Ten out of freaking ten, and about as personal as picking up his drycleaning. Which was exactly what he needed right now.
“Nice, mm …” Sebastian trailed off, gaze drifting off over to how the ambient glow of the city refracted through spare snowflakes to curve over his luggage, which he hadn’t bothered to unpack. He wasn’t here long enough to care, and it had been a while since that had been any different. Sebastian Smythe didn’t do homesick (didn’t send romantic texts to someone who was probably entangled with his own lover right now, didn’t let himself wish for things that might not be reasonably within his grasp, didn’t pine) but he was feeling it now, wishing for his New York loft that he barely saw, the neighbours he hated, the godawful traffic and subpar transit.
The city he had been drawn to like some dozens of songs had said he would be, the rhythm of the streets, the only real culture in the American wasteland. The truth of it, that Blaine loved that city like he had slipped straight into bed with it and listening to him talk about it --
Sebastian,
You won’t believe the food here. For once, restaurants not owned by white people (I had actual Filipino food from someone who wasn’t my grandma?) Honest to god variety. And real Italian, I never have to eat Breadstix again. Even the hot dogs they supposedly put sewer rats into or whatever are amazing. Everything is amazing but the food especially --
-- well Sebastian had always thought Blaine had great taste in everything but men, so he let himself fall in love with a city on this side of the ocean. And he could see the little touches that sang Blaine’s name all across the city, the sort of things they had in common, the sort of things they’d learned about each other late-night texting. Blaine didn’t just exist in photoshopped billboards and magazine covers, but the rush lines for shows and quirky hole-in-the-wall piano lounges or the big, brassy gay bars with hot men and modern tracks, the food and the people (the weirder the better.) The history and the street musicians, the relief of knowing nobody was judging you because no one cared, but if you were bold enough, you could leave your mark all the same ...
Sebastian missed New York.
He finished up with the guy, sent him on his way with cab fare, then collapsed into bed with his phone. It was nearly five am but still night out, and Sebastian watched the multi-coloured lights on the nearby tower as he absentmindedly brought up Blaine’s name. He was trying for space -- time to think -- to the both of them, but he had so much to say and nowhere to put it except for his already-established safe void, and so:
Sent.
&&**
Sebastian had settled into bed and spent the day working through novels that he’d been collecting, and was now taking a break to rest his eyes by stare mindlessly at his bare walls. He should put pictures up; hotel rooms had more personality than this. Tomorrow, maybe, if it stopped hailing. He had gotten comfortable with the loud drumming bouncing off his windows, smacking onto the pavement with a resonance that echoed up several floors to reach him where he was buried under his snowy duvet.
Staying in bed, oh, we’re lost in the sheets …
“Shut up, Blaine,” Sebastian muttered, but he didn’t turn off his radio.
He was back in New York, but the homesickness lingered, snaking up through his gut to sink fangs into his heart. He knew what it was, tangled up in him. He had known since that hotel in Chicago, since he had watched that figure dart by. Honestly: earlier. New York to Paris and all the places in between where he could imagine Blaine’s bright smile, the strength of his grip, the hint of raspberry and the chance that it was now something else entirely. The boy he had fallen for, the men they had become and all the lies Sebastian had told himself about A love can’t grow into the breach. Stupid poetic things and little whiskey lullabies and countless men he’d fucked and all the joys, big and small, he had lived. The things that had pissed him off, and once okay, maybe once he had even cried, swearing into the Seine with a bottle of wine. He wanted to tell Blaine all of the things nobody else cared to know, and learn all the ways Blaine had changed and stayed the same, the private things that didn’t make it into interviews and panels.
Just give me a chance. The more things changed … Sebastian curled his duvet deeper around himself, wondering if he’d brought his phone to bed. He was too lazy to go get it, but maybe …
His thumbs would fall off if he tried to text Blaine everything he’d seen, done, felt. He would wear through his phone trying to make him understand that this was it for Sebastian. That he’d been a good boy and tried to move on, had lived his life, and tried to stop cycling back to some Ohio backwater where he’d met the first person to make him give a damn. Sebastian would type up novels that probably wouldn’t even make it to Blaine, lost in this space between them, trying to explain that sometimes you just knew.
Blaine had once known. He was divorced now, and Sebastian had no idea how he felt. Had their positions completely reversed? And yet here he was, still endlessly chasing after a safe port in a storm he had never been allowed to have. That’s what this homesickness was. It was the kind no city on Earth could fix, and all he had was …
Sebastian rolled over, feeling his phone somewhere in his blankets, and drew it out. For the first time he was completely lost on what to say. He typed up paragraphs, and deleted them; he just tried I love you again, but that wasn’t wholly honest. So he went for what was, and typed:
Sent.
&&**
&&**
There was snow in his collar because he forgot a scarf in his rush, and his coffee cooled so rapidly he was practically drinking an iced latte. On his way there he fell on a patch of ice and nearly broke his hip, and he was thinking how to spin that anecdote into something charming so he could explain the wet spread all down his side. He leaned against the wall and hoped he wouldn’t be sore for much longer -- he had all these plans, some outrageous (immediately back to his apartment for sex) to cutesy (ice skating, who didn’t love ice skating?) to embarrassing (realizing he had no idea what to say once they were face-to-face, because he’d never been half as good with his words as he thought he was.)
The wind blew a couple down the street, clutching each other and giggling as they faced it head on. He burrowed deeper into his collar, huffing abruptly through his nose in hope of melting the snow.
Maybe he’d open with a straightforward You look good. (There was no doubt that he would look good.) Or a flirty-but-casual It’s been a while. (Five years since that last email, thereabouts?) Go the Grease route: Tell me about it, stud. Say my name. I’ve missed how you say my name. I’ve missed a lot about you; I want to see where this could go, because we kept stepping around each other and there’s no reason to anymore.
‘Can I see you?’ Directions to a streetcorner. The anonymity of winter, and blessed New York, where no one cared. God, he missed caring. Texting -- well, it was his way of saying he was ready to care again.
“Hello, handsome.”
He looked up, and there was Sebastian. Broader shoulders and a bigger smile, hair styled in a new way and half a dozen freckles he didn’t remember, but it was Sebastian. The way he looked at Blaine -- it had never really changed.
“Sebastian.”
“Sorry to keep you waiting. Call from Hong Kong.” Sebastian tilted his head toward a nearby coffee shop. “Can I buy you a new coffee?”
“I care about you,” Blaine blurted out. Sebastian’s eyes crinkled as he reached over to brush the snow off Blaine’s shoulder, letting him continue. “I’ve always cared. As friends, as a maybe. I’ve always cared.”
“A maybe.” Sebastian’s fingers slipped into his collar, taking care of the snow there too, palm sliding up against his skin. Blaine shivered. Sebastian ducked his head, smile turning sweeter. “I can live with that.”
“And I could live with more than that -- much more.” Blaine hesitated, not quite able to believe that the man standing before him said It’s always been you, and yet feeling in a steady exhale and sure gaze that it made perfect sense as well. “I care about you, and I missed you, and I’m hoping we can start with maybe and go forward.”
“I’m very good at going forward. Sideways. All sorts of exciting directions, actually.” Sebastian’s hand was still curled against his neck, thumb brushing the stubble on his jaw. “Can I kiss you?”
Blaine’s heart leaped up to pound against those gentle fingers, and he drew his attention from focused green eyes to Sebastian’s soft mouth with its wry angles. Blaine was up on his toes with his hands bracketing Sebastian’s jaw before he could blink, kissing him, easy and thorough and not at all frantic because Blaine wanted to remember every moment of this.
Sebastian kissed back like he felt the same, and it hit Blaine all at once that Sebastian did, he felt all that and more, and it should have been intimidating but things with Sebastian never had been before. More like: falling into step. Sebastian wanted him, and he wanted Sebastian, so they could kiss each other in the snow and go -- forward.
When they parted, Blaine back on his heels and Sebastian staring at him like he’d just seen the sun, Blaine murmured, “We were going to get coffee?”
“Yeah.” Sebastian took a last, lingering second to fix a wayward curl, then smiled. “C’mon, killer. We’ve got lots of catching up to do.”
fin.