I'll Be Your Levy
Companion piece to Trade Mistakes (Hence why it's another P!ATD lyric)
Sebastian's perspective of Thad's emotional spiral from chapter 1 of Trade Mistakes
Sebastian never expected things with Thad to go the way they had.
It was meant to be casual. Thad was nowhere near ready for a fully committed relationship, and the whole 'boyfriend' thing had never been Sebastian's cup of tea anyway. 'Boyfriends' was the term he used to piss his mildly homophobic dad off when introducing him to a boy that had managed to last more than a week. It was never serious.
So, being Thad's fuck buddy was the way to go. He wasn't getting sex anywhere else, and Thad was a fucking minx once he got into it.
And then Blaine happened.
He was attracted to Thad. The kid was smoking hot. But Blaine had a weird sort of quality, an innocence that made him that much more delectable because, unlike Thad, it was so easily stripped away to reveal something animal underneath. Thad, at least for a while, had an innocence that ran bone deep. It was a massive cock block in the form of puppy eyes and pouts.
He'd figured he could go after Blaine. Thad had put their… Thing so firmly in the 'casual' category that it was glued there. He figured he could just shag Blaine stupid for a bit, mainly to see the look on Hummel's face, and then it would all be hunky dory.
Wrong.
Thad had exploded. Screamed and shouted and Sebastian had shouted right back. Hell, he'd hit him. Hard enough to bruise. And when he'd vanished after that night, hidden out in his mom's empty house until West Side Story, he'd reflected. For a while he really just wanted to blame Thad for having a temper and being pissy.
But Sebastian's a smart kid. He has to be to make it at Dalton. And even he knows that Thad's got the temper of a nun from The Sound of Music. He'd never explode for no reason.
So Sebastian had thought. He'd remembered the words Thad had shouted at him.
"Because you told me you wouldn't go for Blaine! You said you wouldn't because of me…"
"You seemed to remember pretty well once sex was involved! As much as this has been a fun ride did you ever take one second to respect me the way I've respected you since middle school? NO!"
"To you it's always been about getting me into bed. Hasn't it? That's what you're always about. Me, Blaine, all you ever want is another NOTCH IN YOUR BEDPOST!"
And then he realised it.
The way Thad trusted him, not to go after Blaine because Thad's already lost him once, and he won't lose him again. The way he didn't think Sebastian respected him, like it was only ever about sex.
Thad didn't think Sebastian would want him for anything else.
Which is crazy, because Sebastian does. Sure, it's nothing concrete and it's all going to end when they graduate because Sebastian's going back to France if he can and Thad's parents are shoving him off to England, but he still likes to think they're friends. They hate each other a lot of the time, and the only thing that really holds them together is the physical side of things, but they still know each other's coffee orders and what their houses look like and what their hopes and dreams are. They do actually talk and Sebastian thinks that's why he'd hit Thad. That the shorter boy could just take everything they'd managed to build up in middle school and make it seem like Sebastian never even cared.
Thad was one of his first friends, of course he cares.
But at the same time, Sebastian knows he's not going to give up on Blaine.
Blaine's a mystery. A deceptive little ball of attractive and the fact his Mega-Gay boyfriend was so violently against it made it so deliciously taboo that he can't not go after him.
But he doesn't want to hurt Thad any more than he has.
Which is why he lies. Why he braves the cold night air after West Side Story and watches as Thad gets ready for rejection. Thad's so ready to believe that he means nothing that he doesn't even consider that Sebastian would stay with him.
"You're really doing that? For me?"
The innocence. The heart-breaking hope in his voice makes a part of Sebastian really hate himself, and he's glad Thad didn't turn around a second earlier or he might have seen the doubt and guilt that flashed across his face.
But then he does turn and half of his face is the wrong colour. A mark, perfectly hand shaped, black in the centre, then violent purple, then tinted green and yellow around the edges, where is smudges against Thad's lips and jaw line. Sebastian brushed his fingers along it, the skin hot and raised, and he feels sick to his stomach that Thad was even still talking to him after he'd inflicted that sort of pain on him.
"You hit hard."
Thad said it as a joke. Like Sebastian had accidentally elbowed him in a hallway.
That's when Sebastian can really see the cracks. The dapper, put together shell that Thad had used his whole life, was covered in spider-web cracks that had started to grow. Slivers of the lonely little boy were breaking through.
And now lying about Blaine wasn't just about covering his tracks or staying on Thad's good side. It was about trying to keep him together. One of Sebastian's oldest friends is suddenly fragile and weak and he has a gut urge to defend him. To keep him safe against the world.
He tries to be more… Couple-y, he guesses. More hand holding and snuggling and just listening to music together. Show Thad that to Sebastian he was worth more than sex. That Sebastian valued him as a person and not some object, even if sometimes Thad thinks that's all he's good for.
He lies about how he's chasing Blaine because then Thad could build himself up again. He could reconstruct whatever they'd had before and then maybe he'd be okay. Maybe then Thad would go back to the wonderfully confident boy that he'd known for years and Sebastian could feel like he'd finally done something right.
He tries to keep Thad afloat.
But he can't.
He knows he can't.
The next hit comes at Sectionals. When Sam walks on stage and Sebastian can't stop his reactions. Can't stop feeling everything he'd squashed down and repressed for years come flooding back as Sam dances around stage like he was born to do it. It isn't until their back at the dorm that he even realises how Thad must have felt. He sees that Thad, once again, thinks that Sebastian's going to go running off into the arms of another boy and leave him in the dust.
"Wanna deliver the final punch face to face?"
Sebastian feels something in his chest twist because there they were. The cracks that had just started to heal. They were wider than before. Even with the front of annoyance he can see that Thad's prepared to die on the inside.
Sebastian tries to kiss it away. Tells Thad that he'd never go after Sam, tries to be logical and rational and a part of him wonders if this is how Thad felt about Blaine. The feeling that you'd give everything to be with them because you love them with all your heart but you can't because they're too busy loving someone else. He realises how much Thad had put up with for so long, because all Sebastian had done was bury it. Thad had lived it every single day of his life and suddenly Sebastian knows why Thad doesn't want to let him go, even if it's only ever going to be casual between them.
When did being casual get so fucking complicated?
He makes the stupid decision of thinking that Thad's sort of okay now. He'd been perfectly fine in the lead up to Christmas. So much so that Sebastian starts wondering if Thad was getting better. If he was actually starting to give himself real value and seeing things like he used to.
And then he's not fine. Sebastian just mentions a Torchwood marathon and suddenly it's like Thad can't breathe. He's clutching himself and his eyes are wide and it's like the panic attack he had when they'd first kissed but a million times worse because it's oddly frantic. Like it crept up on him.
Then Thad's trying to pull Sebastian's clothes off and it's all too much. Things are going too quickly and he has to stop it. He stops and makes Thad sit down and tell him what's wrong. And Thad's almost crying. He's desperate and sad and for the first time the cracks are open. Sebastian can see straight into the eyes of a broken boy who can't control himself, who doesn't know how to handle his own life.
Sebastian tries to make it go away. He tries to glue the pieces back together and hope that he's somehow doing it right. That doing what Thad wants will help him pull himself together, like this might just be a one-time thing on the road to being okay.
But it's not.
Afterwards Thad can't let him go, refuses to. He buries himself in Sebastian's chest and barely talks and for the first time Sebastian realises that he's holding Thad together. The fragile, easily broken glue that keeps Thad moving forward is him. And that feels like a kick in the stomach.
Because it was never meant to be like this.
It was meant to be casual, just them fucking wildly when they were stressed or horny. It was never meant to be Sebastian keeping Thad back from the precipice, holding him together so he doesn't lose himself over the edge and vanish forever. Sebastian wasn't cut out for that. He was flaky and secretly still going after the guy Thad loved, while in love with another guy himself. He was everything that could be wrong in a relationship and here he was.
Sebastian might just be the closest thing Thad will ever have to a boyfriend, because Sebastian's the only one that could keep him together now. They're in too deep.
Sebastian always assumed that he'd never had a boyfriend because he was easily bored. But lying there, singing a broken boy to sleep, he can't help but wonder if he's never had one because he never could. He could never surrender himself to someone like Thad surrendered to him because he was still foolishly after Sam, and he couldn't let go of that.
Thad had given up so much. He was an emotional wreck who held whatever they had so far beyond casual, even if he didn't realise it. And all Sebastian felt towards him was physical attraction and age-old friendship.
So he keeps trying. He keeps trying to make Thad feel like something other than a sex toy. He even stops going after Blaine as much (because as much as he hates himself for it, he could never skip out of a challenge when he saw one), because he thought that Thad even knew he was still doing it. The fact he never mentioned it just sort of cemented it in Sebastian's brain that Thad was so emotionally reliant on him he'd stopped caring about anything else.
He knows, deep in his heart, that the best thing for everyone might just be to leave Thad and stop fucking up his life.
But every time Thad looks at him, eyes wide and deep and so much more broken than when he first saw them, he knows he can't leave.
Because he's in too deep.
He'll always be in too deep.
Sebastian's perspective of Thad's emotional spiral from chapter 1 of Trade Mistakes
Sebastian never expected things with Thad to go the way they had.
It was meant to be casual. Thad was nowhere near ready for a fully committed relationship, and the whole 'boyfriend' thing had never been Sebastian's cup of tea anyway. 'Boyfriends' was the term he used to piss his mildly homophobic dad off when introducing him to a boy that had managed to last more than a week. It was never serious.
So, being Thad's fuck buddy was the way to go. He wasn't getting sex anywhere else, and Thad was a fucking minx once he got into it.
And then Blaine happened.
He was attracted to Thad. The kid was smoking hot. But Blaine had a weird sort of quality, an innocence that made him that much more delectable because, unlike Thad, it was so easily stripped away to reveal something animal underneath. Thad, at least for a while, had an innocence that ran bone deep. It was a massive cock block in the form of puppy eyes and pouts.
He'd figured he could go after Blaine. Thad had put their… Thing so firmly in the 'casual' category that it was glued there. He figured he could just shag Blaine stupid for a bit, mainly to see the look on Hummel's face, and then it would all be hunky dory.
Wrong.
Thad had exploded. Screamed and shouted and Sebastian had shouted right back. Hell, he'd hit him. Hard enough to bruise. And when he'd vanished after that night, hidden out in his mom's empty house until West Side Story, he'd reflected. For a while he really just wanted to blame Thad for having a temper and being pissy.
But Sebastian's a smart kid. He has to be to make it at Dalton. And even he knows that Thad's got the temper of a nun from The Sound of Music. He'd never explode for no reason.
So Sebastian had thought. He'd remembered the words Thad had shouted at him.
"Because you told me you wouldn't go for Blaine! You said you wouldn't because of me…"
"You seemed to remember pretty well once sex was involved! As much as this has been a fun ride did you ever take one second to respect me the way I've respected you since middle school? NO!"
"To you it's always been about getting me into bed. Hasn't it? That's what you're always about. Me, Blaine, all you ever want is another NOTCH IN YOUR BEDPOST!"
And then he realised it.
The way Thad trusted him, not to go after Blaine because Thad's already lost him once, and he won't lose him again. The way he didn't think Sebastian respected him, like it was only ever about sex.
Thad didn't think Sebastian would want him for anything else.
Which is crazy, because Sebastian does. Sure, it's nothing concrete and it's all going to end when they graduate because Sebastian's going back to France if he can and Thad's parents are shoving him off to England, but he still likes to think they're friends. They hate each other a lot of the time, and the only thing that really holds them together is the physical side of things, but they still know each other's coffee orders and what their houses look like and what their hopes and dreams are. They do actually talk and Sebastian thinks that's why he'd hit Thad. That the shorter boy could just take everything they'd managed to build up in middle school and make it seem like Sebastian never even cared.
Thad was one of his first friends, of course he cares.
But at the same time, Sebastian knows he's not going to give up on Blaine.
Blaine's a mystery. A deceptive little ball of attractive and the fact his Mega-Gay boyfriend was so violently against it made it so deliciously taboo that he can't not go after him.
But he doesn't want to hurt Thad any more than he has.
Which is why he lies. Why he braves the cold night air after West Side Story and watches as Thad gets ready for rejection. Thad's so ready to believe that he means nothing that he doesn't even consider that Sebastian would stay with him.
"You're really doing that? For me?"
The innocence. The heart-breaking hope in his voice makes a part of Sebastian really hate himself, and he's glad Thad didn't turn around a second earlier or he might have seen the doubt and guilt that flashed across his face.
But then he does turn and half of his face is the wrong colour. A mark, perfectly hand shaped, black in the centre, then violent purple, then tinted green and yellow around the edges, where is smudges against Thad's lips and jaw line. Sebastian brushed his fingers along it, the skin hot and raised, and he feels sick to his stomach that Thad was even still talking to him after he'd inflicted that sort of pain on him.
"You hit hard."
Thad said it as a joke. Like Sebastian had accidentally elbowed him in a hallway.
That's when Sebastian can really see the cracks. The dapper, put together shell that Thad had used his whole life, was covered in spider-web cracks that had started to grow. Slivers of the lonely little boy were breaking through.
And now lying about Blaine wasn't just about covering his tracks or staying on Thad's good side. It was about trying to keep him together. One of Sebastian's oldest friends is suddenly fragile and weak and he has a gut urge to defend him. To keep him safe against the world.
He tries to be more… Couple-y, he guesses. More hand holding and snuggling and just listening to music together. Show Thad that to Sebastian he was worth more than sex. That Sebastian valued him as a person and not some object, even if sometimes Thad thinks that's all he's good for.
He lies about how he's chasing Blaine because then Thad could build himself up again. He could reconstruct whatever they'd had before and then maybe he'd be okay. Maybe then Thad would go back to the wonderfully confident boy that he'd known for years and Sebastian could feel like he'd finally done something right.
He tries to keep Thad afloat.
But he can't.
He knows he can't.
The next hit comes at Sectionals. When Sam walks on stage and Sebastian can't stop his reactions. Can't stop feeling everything he'd squashed down and repressed for years come flooding back as Sam dances around stage like he was born to do it. It isn't until their back at the dorm that he even realises how Thad must have felt. He sees that Thad, once again, thinks that Sebastian's going to go running off into the arms of another boy and leave him in the dust.
"Wanna deliver the final punch face to face?"
Sebastian feels something in his chest twist because there they were. The cracks that had just started to heal. They were wider than before. Even with the front of annoyance he can see that Thad's prepared to die on the inside.
Sebastian tries to kiss it away. Tells Thad that he'd never go after Sam, tries to be logical and rational and a part of him wonders if this is how Thad felt about Blaine. The feeling that you'd give everything to be with them because you love them with all your heart but you can't because they're too busy loving someone else. He realises how much Thad had put up with for so long, because all Sebastian had done was bury it. Thad had lived it every single day of his life and suddenly Sebastian knows why Thad doesn't want to let him go, even if it's only ever going to be casual between them.
When did being casual get so fucking complicated?
He makes the stupid decision of thinking that Thad's sort of okay now. He'd been perfectly fine in the lead up to Christmas. So much so that Sebastian starts wondering if Thad was getting better. If he was actually starting to give himself real value and seeing things like he used to.
And then he's not fine. Sebastian just mentions a Torchwood marathon and suddenly it's like Thad can't breathe. He's clutching himself and his eyes are wide and it's like the panic attack he had when they'd first kissed but a million times worse because it's oddly frantic. Like it crept up on him.
Then Thad's trying to pull Sebastian's clothes off and it's all too much. Things are going too quickly and he has to stop it. He stops and makes Thad sit down and tell him what's wrong. And Thad's almost crying. He's desperate and sad and for the first time the cracks are open. Sebastian can see straight into the eyes of a broken boy who can't control himself, who doesn't know how to handle his own life.
Sebastian tries to make it go away. He tries to glue the pieces back together and hope that he's somehow doing it right. That doing what Thad wants will help him pull himself together, like this might just be a one-time thing on the road to being okay.
But it's not.
Afterwards Thad can't let him go, refuses to. He buries himself in Sebastian's chest and barely talks and for the first time Sebastian realises that he's holding Thad together. The fragile, easily broken glue that keeps Thad moving forward is him. And that feels like a kick in the stomach.
Because it was never meant to be like this.
It was meant to be casual, just them fucking wildly when they were stressed or horny. It was never meant to be Sebastian keeping Thad back from the precipice, holding him together so he doesn't lose himself over the edge and vanish forever. Sebastian wasn't cut out for that. He was flaky and secretly still going after the guy Thad loved, while in love with another guy himself. He was everything that could be wrong in a relationship and here he was.
Sebastian might just be the closest thing Thad will ever have to a boyfriend, because Sebastian's the only one that could keep him together now. They're in too deep.
Sebastian always assumed that he'd never had a boyfriend because he was easily bored. But lying there, singing a broken boy to sleep, he can't help but wonder if he's never had one because he never could. He could never surrender himself to someone like Thad surrendered to him because he was still foolishly after Sam, and he couldn't let go of that.
Thad had given up so much. He was an emotional wreck who held whatever they had so far beyond casual, even if he didn't realise it. And all Sebastian felt towards him was physical attraction and age-old friendship.
So he keeps trying. He keeps trying to make Thad feel like something other than a sex toy. He even stops going after Blaine as much (because as much as he hates himself for it, he could never skip out of a challenge when he saw one), because he thought that Thad even knew he was still doing it. The fact he never mentioned it just sort of cemented it in Sebastian's brain that Thad was so emotionally reliant on him he'd stopped caring about anything else.
He knows, deep in his heart, that the best thing for everyone might just be to leave Thad and stop fucking up his life.
But every time Thad looks at him, eyes wide and deep and so much more broken than when he first saw them, he knows he can't leave.
Because he's in too deep.
He'll always be in too deep.