Closed: A Different Morning After; Reid
There were so few ways this day could go worse. The day after the full moon tended to be almost as bad as the full moon itself. At least Sebastian got to stay human, which was the only plus. Not that be felt human at all. Unless pain made you human? That was a little too deep for his throbbing head and aching body
( Read more... )
Another of the few consistencies in his life was that mistakes were usually his, especially regarding this particular secret. He held onto it like a lifeline, this thing that divided him from almost the entire rest of the world. He'd been so wrapped up in fear and hatred surrounding it for so long that everything else was coated in the paranoia it created.
When Reid touched him, Sebastian winced before he could help it. For all Reid was a scratcher and biter in other contexts, Sebastian seriously doubted there was much he could do that would actually get him hit. If the situation ever called for it, though, it would be this one. It wouldn't even be the worst reaction he could have. Sebastian still reached out, fingers tangling in the hem of Reid's shirt both to keep from falling over - he was pretty accurate on expecting that to be on the agenda - and an unwillingness to let go.
His head was all over the place.
"Look. You don't have to do this." Fuck, his voice didn't even sound the same to his own ears. He always sounded worn down and hoarse after the change, but there was a different quality to it now. It wasn't even defensive. If anything, it was empty.
Reply
And between the way Sebastian's hand tangled into his shirt, and the sight of that beyond-done expression, and the way he sounded so decidedly worn out and half-dead and done- well, long night aside, there was really only so much he could to do-
"Just- shut up- c'mon-" He didn't quite dare to pressure him with any more physically contact than was necessary, but Reid's hand still slipped from Sebastian's shoulder down to his lower back, gingerly nudging him toward the adjacent sitting room and its couches.
Reply
It seemed to take forever, but Sebastian ended up falling back onto one of the sofas, luckily the one that vaguely overstuffed. As soft as it may have been, his breath hitched and he may have whined just a touch.
Now that they were here, he didn't know what to do with himself when the silence felt so heavy. He pressed his fingers against his eyes, hard enough to see spots and vague starbursts.
He dropped his hands, eyes feeling dry and itchy, and looked up at Reid, properly for the first time that morning. He looked as exhausted as Sebastian felt. At least that was better than seeing fear on his face. "I'm sorry."
Reply
"Shut up-" he muttered again, closer to a whisper this time, the tightness of confounding, wrestling emotions squeezing out the width of his breath and leaving him with little more than alternating gasps and clipped, huffed breaths.
He really did want nothing more than for things to slow down, to pause and settle and be quiet. As eerily frozen as things had been overnight, it was all still entirely too rushed and jumbled-
But no. This was it, this was where he was, and it all made no sense and entirely too much of it all at once-
And still, beyond the way that the tug at the pit of his stomach was strong and sharp enough to have the corners of his eyes itching in a way he was decidedly wary of, he found himself wishing that it could all slyly, quietly wash away-
"Just- shut up," Reid whispered once more. Any hint of harshness or bite was gone, however, as he leaned his chin in against the edge of the couch, not quite yet daring to meet Sebastian's gaze straight on even as the pull of his instincts drew his hand up, barely just reaching to lightly thread through Sebastian's hair.
As familiar as this situation might seem, there was a very obvious difference injected by that added bit of knowledge, that forced understanding, that hadn't been there the last time they had found themselves in this situation. Still, he didn't stand much of a chance where that damned face (that entirely family, as it turned out) was concerned-
Reply
He was so close to the edge of it already. His sister had looked at him with so much hatred - there wasn't another word he could think of - in her eyes and pointed out that he was nothing more than the pack he was always railing against. Keeping secrets from people that mattered very nearly could have gotten Reid killed. Sooner or later, that was going to catch up and Reid was going to be the one saying it. With Reid settled so close and that kind of guilt rolling through his mind, Sebastian's breath stuttered in his chest, the bottom dropping out of his stomach and making him want to curl in on himself except that would hurt more so it was easier to settle for pressing a hand over his eyes and trying to shut everything but the irregular sound of Reid's breathing that Sebastian felt powerless to even try to comfort away.
In all the years he'd spent hating being the same kind of monster that had destroyed everything he cared about, Sebastian had never hated everything about himself so much. If there was any way to just ... stop being Sebastian Daley for a while - even a minute - he'd have jumped at the opportunity. He was so. Fucking. Done.
At the hesitant touch to his hair, something seemed to shake loose. Every negative emotion he'd ever had hitting him all at once. He didn't know how to process any of it, not with anyone around, not even Reid where lines no longer existed after the last day after, Skylar's kidnapping, and last night. His breathing felt short and hard, aching in his lungs, but he forced his hand away, eyes locking on Reid and tracing the freckles on his face as he slid his arm out in stilted motions to run two fingers carefully over the curve of his cheek like he suddenly wasn't allowed to touch and was bracing for the inevitable denial.
Reply
Reid's eyebrows hitched together slightly, eyes fluttering shut as his face instinctively turned against Sebastian's hand, a shaky sigh passing his lips.
His hand more firmly (gently, still) worked its way through Sebastian's hair, his free hand coming to rest lightly atop the one that grazed his cheek as he forced his eyes open again, catching sight of those damned bright, hypnotizing eyes.
"I- you- I'm- fuck, I don't even know what to say to you right now. I hope you fucking appreciate that." Entirely edgeless, that was, made that much more so by the way Reid (so very rarely speechless as he was) tilted his head to nuzzle against Sebastian's palm, the knot at the back of his throat properly lodging itself in as he tried to swallow against the pulsing reminder of it, that slight edge of unexpected fear still lingering at the back of his mind.
Reply
His thumb stroked lightly against Reid's cheekbone, chest aching at the way their touches got slowly more present, more surely there. His lips quirked a little, a weary half-smile offered up as he tried to work out what he was seeing in Reid's eyes. Reid was usually so expressive and, for all the words he - until now - rarely stopped saying, he said enough to fill novels with facial expressions alone. He thought he'd been getting a hang of that, deciphering the million minute changes in looks, but there seemed to be too many happening for him to separate them out at the moment. Sebastian shouldn't even try since he knew he'd latch onto anything negative right now. Reid deserved more than that, but Sebastian was weak and attached and a little overwhelmed with the need to give Reid literally anything he wanted right then.
"Well, now I've done the impossible. Gold star." The quip happened so fast, Sebastian hadn't even meant to say it. Second-nature kicked in, and snark just happened. That's the kind of thing that happened when Sebastian got too preoccupied with Reid; it was something he'd been slowly getting used to.
Reply
"Yeah, no, nice try, but you definitely don't get any of those today," he shot back with a generous dose of automatic sarcasm, a hint of a smirk pulling at his lips for a moment before the implications of his words properly clicked, drew him back to the reality of the situation and the facts that had led to this aftermath.
The smile slowly slid back off his face, a downward twitch tugging at the corner of his mouth as his eyebrows scrunched up again, eyes narrowing slightly and flicking almost searchingly over Sebastian's face, letting the silence linger for a moment.
"Jemma knows, doesn't she?" he finally asked (though it rang out as more of a statement than an actual question), his voice barely just above a whisper.
Among all the things that had been rushing through his mind all night, this was one of the first he had managed to latch on to once the initial blinding surge of panic had abated. Her then-vague replies to his prodding questions from the month before suddenly made sense, fell into place along with the rest of the pieces that had started lining up.
Reply
"She figured it out." Sebastian shook his head, so careful not to pull away from the fingers still in his hair. "She had information she shouldn't have before I even actually met her." He could have left it at that; it was true, after all, but Sebastian owed Reid a lot of honesty right now.
He might get by on lies of omission, but that was with people he didn't bother to think about twice. If nothing else had become blatantly obvious to him in the past 16 hours, it was that he had to stop being an island of secrecy so often.
"I still nearly passed out when I told her. Which I wasn't going to do, except I didn't leave when I planned to."
Reply
Of course Jemma had figured it out. That woman never went into anything half blind, she would have likely found a way to gather up a detailed history of Sebastian's life from every address he had ever held to his OWLS scores before thinking of meeting him, let alone hire him. As mysterious as he was, there were no secrets to be kept from Jemma Dorny when she decided to start digging.
But he had still told her, had come out and respected her and trusted her enough to willingly divulge what was quite obviously the biggest secret he carried. As much as Reid wanted to rationalize that it wasn't his place to know, that Jemma was Sebastian's boss and friend while he was just, well, who even knew what sort of label they were meant to have settled on- the fact that he'd been left the clueless idiot in the dark still twisted some kind of knife at the pit of his stomach.
"Would you ever have told me? If I didn't apparently have some kind of fucked up skill for dropping in at all the wrong times?" He regretted asking before the words had even fully left him, hated the pathetic note of desperation that weighed on his tone and the way he had to drop his gaze and the lump that formed at the back of his throat, but there it was, whether he really wanted to know the answer or not-
Reply
Sebastian was floundering too much to have any idea what sort of response would do that, though, so he had to stick purely with honesty.
"I wanted to tell you," Sebastian promised. His hand slipped from under Reid's to cup the side of his neck, not urging but encouraging Reid to look at him again. "I swear. But telling people? That's never gone well for me." Jemma aside, anyway. Sebastian hadn't even told her so much as admitted what she already knew so that had been a completely different type of situation.
"And I wasn't ready for you to look at me like you did last night." His voice caught in his throat, breath coming out in a shuddering rush when he couldn't get the rest of the words out.
Sebastian had been selfish and too scared to risk losing Reid even when they hadn't bothered defining what they were. All things considered, with this pull that was constantly bouncing between comforting and painful between then, Sebastian probably wouldn't have ever been ready to let Reid go, but with Sabrina around, he'd started admitting to himself that he was going to have to put this out there between them. He'd expected it to hurt, though, and couldn't deal with expected pain by running away the way he usually did.
Reply
But Sebastian hadn't wasted much time before telling him about Sabrina when she had returned from the dead out of the blue. If he had had (understandable) concerns about his reaction before, they should have been put to rest then-
The way Sebastian's voice caught as he rushed through that last sentence, however, had him looking up again, a pained twinge of guilt-wracked regret twisting up his stomach at the panic-blurred memory.
His fingers curled a bit more tightly through Sebastian's hair, and he bit at the inside of his lip with a tiny apologetic shake of his head.
"I'm sorry- I didn't mean- I just- panicked- you were- I just didn't know-"
Reply
"I know. I could smell fear all over you." If the words sounded stilted, it was because they were. Sebastian might have owned up to Jemma, but he couldn't remember a time - even recently with Sabrina - when he'd actually talked about what it was like to be a wolf for at least one night a month.
"It really is okay," he promised. "That's my fault, right? If I'd told you, you wouldn't have been here. Which was a huge fucking risk." Now that he'd started, he couldn't seem to get himself to stop. "Anything could have gone wrong. I could have gotten you killed, all because I didn't fucking tell you just in case you'd decide you done with me." It wasn't until his sore and dry throat caught up with him and he was coughing, ribs shooting out sharp pains with ever harsh sound, that he got himself to stop.
Reply
"M'kay, enough. You get some rest," he muttered quietly once he was sufficiently convinced that Sebastian wasn't about to croak or faint right then and there. "I'll yell at you later. Sorry to break it to you, but you didn't actually end up riping my throat out, so you're unfortunately still stuck with me for a while-"
Reply
He brought a hand up to cover Reid's against his chest, linking his fingers through Reid's before he could help it. This had gone far better than he could have expected, but he was still feeling more insecure and clingy than usual. Half of that probably had to do with Sabrina's tirade about destroying Dean's life and getting out before it backfired in her face.
"You realize I'm okay, right?"His voice was hoarse from a raw throat, but it wasn't anything likely to cause lasting damage. It was endearing, adorably so, how concerned Reid got when Sebastian was like this. Given that Reid actually knew the cause now, maybe it was more so.
"Ten years of full moons, it hasn't killed me yet." He might have begged for death more than once and spent more than a few of these days wondering why he'd been the one to make it out alive, but he'd never actually been close to dying.
Reply
"Yeah- I know," he said quietly, offering a mildly embarrassed but nonetheless unfazed sort of shrug. It was nothing new that he could fuss and worry like the best of them - Sebastian might have had his own obvious and relatively understandable paranoias, but Reid also had his. There was something about that look, that kind of flashing pain made obvious on someone's face even when (especially if) they tried to hide it, that set him on edge, tightened a vice grip on his stomach that didn't quite allow him to relax or let go. He had gotten his share of that look growing up, had gotten quite familiar with it, had seen it get progressively worst over the course of three slow and painful months until it simply wasn't anymore-
"Just- don't jinx it, okay?" He softly brushed his hand through Sebastian's hair, trailing his fingers down the side of his face to swipe a thumb across his cheek bone, not quite bothering to (entirely too exhausted to bother, really, it suddenly stuck him) try to temper the slight frown that still drew a line between his eyebrows, the quiet concern in his eye not something he could even try to hide at this point.
He let out a quiet sigh, the tiredness that had slowly been building up, a mix of overworked emotions and sleeplessness, suddenly bowling into him seemingly without any kind of warning.
"M'kay. Scooch," he mumbled, tipping his chin up to motion for Sebastian to clear the edge of the couch as he half-stood up, his grip on Sebastian's hand not loosening for a second as he made to roll up onto the narrow space of the cushiony couch.
Along with everything else he couldn't be bothered to care about right now, finding himself curled up on a couch in Sebastian's living room for the second time in as many months was high up on the list.
Reply
Leave a comment