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lunarmoves · 2 months ago

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who i see, looking back at me (ch1)

pairing: sebastian solace x reader

mentions: post-urbanshade fic, no use of y/n or pronouns, u are his partner <3, hallucinations, grief/mourning, hurt/comfort, ooc sebastian probably, i took creative liberties with his mom and siblings, check masterlist for fic summary

a/n: this is something i decided to write after scouring ao3 and tumblr for anything like it and finding nothing. i was just- (thanos voice) "fine i'll do it myself." hope you guys enjoy! i cant believe im simping for a roblox fish man in the year 2024, literally who am i.

word count: 9.5k+

masterlist

ao3 link

When your husband was executed for a crime he did not commit, you decided to move out to the seaside.

It was a way to just… get away from everything. Start fresh. His face was plastered all over the news after his death sentence. Everywhere you went, it felt as though people were staring at you. Judging you. Hushed whispers followed you just as much as the haunted look on Sebastian’s face when he’d taken his mugshot. It was—unbearable. You needed to get out and away from all the people who only saw you as the partner to a murderer.

His presence lingered everywhere, back at your tiny apartment in the city. From the framed pictures on the wall, to the green toothbrush next to yours, and the faint smell of cinnamon attached to your bedsheets. It was—overwhelming, in more ways than one. You itched and itched with the urge to get out. You stayed only as long as you needed to after his death to go through the process of moving out. It took a couple of weeks. The you from the future would applaud you for lasting longer than a few days, you were certain.

You didn’t know what to do with all of his things. You sold his expensive belongings unclaimed by his family, like his laptop, electric guitar, and gaming system. The more materialistic items were packed into bins to donate to charity—his old textbooks, binders of sheet music, clothes he seldom wore. The rest you separated into two boxes. One had some things you figured would be appreciated by his mother. The album of his family he kept tucked away in his desk. A small teddy bear he’d had since he was a toddler. Some of his favorite shirts and jewelry he’d been gifted from his siblings.

The other had things you could not bring yourself to part with.

You spent a while hovered over that box, tracing the worn edges of a red and black flannel that he always wore around your apartment. There was a small panda plushie that you won at an amusement park on one of your dates and decided to give to him when he said it was ugly-looking. A sketchbook he doodled in from time to time that you didn’t have the heart to open, but knew you would regret giving away. A crumpled piece of paper with hastily scribbled vows on them. Each and every item in the box held some amount of sentimental value—you wondered if it would ever haunt you, keeping them. Part of you already knew the answer.

When you dropped off Sebastian’s things at his mother’s house, you couldn’t help the way your heart sank deep into your chest when she opened the door. Maria was a beautiful woman, and you saw traces of Sebastian in her every time you saw her. The warm honey of her skin, the crinkle of her blue eyes, even the way she smiled. It made your eyes sting and ache with something fierce. Agonizing, even now. Especially now.

She looked at you with a sad smile, gratefully accepting the small box you offered her. “Gracias, sweetie,” she said, hands tightening on the edges of the cardboard. “I appreciate you coming out all this way.”

“It was no problem,” you told her, shifting slightly on your feet. You hadn’t seen her since—well… You cleared your throat, doing your best to ignore a pang of guilt and this ever so tightening feeling in your chest. “How are you doing?”

She hummed, a weary thing that matched the dark circles under her eyes and the new streaks of gray in her hair. She looked down at the box. “No muy bien,” she murmured, “but who would after losing a child so wrongfully? I can only hope it gets better to handle with time.” Her gaze lifted up to meet your own. “What about you, hm? Almost done packing?”

Blue eyes the same shade as his. You looked away, staring down at your shoes and her slippered feet. “Yeah,” you said quietly. “Just gotta put a few more boxes into the car.”

“I do not blame you for wanting to get away,” she chuckled. “I would too, if I could.”

As though on cue, there was the sound of a crash somewhere behind her, immediately followed by raised voices. Sebastian’s siblings causing havoc, no doubt. Maria whipped around to shout into her house. “Isidora! Lucas! ¡Comportense!” After she got two distant apologies, she turned back to give you a look. “See what I mean?”

You could only manage a stiff nod, not quite trusting your voice. That feeling in your chest was growing by the second, and you were not sure how long you would last. Maria didn’t deserve this, but you couldn’t help it. You felt like you were being stifled under a large, unforgiving pillow.

You could feel the way she watched you—that same probing stare that Sebastian often wore when he could sense you weren’t feeling well. You continued to stare resolutely at the ground, not wanting her to crack you open like a book to see the way you just couldn’t stand being here right now. She sighed, and you had to suppress a wince.

“Well, don’t let me keep you,” she finally said, turning slightly to head back inside. “No eres una desconocida, you hear? You are always welcome here.”

“Right,” you whispered, and when you finally managed to pull your gaze back up to her face, she only gave you a small, melancholy smile before gently closing the door. You stood there for a moment more, heart beating in your throat as you cursed yourself for being a coward.

The drive down to the seaside was only a few hours. It was relaxing, in its own way, as you passed by concrete buildings that slowly melted away into wide, open fields. Rolling hills and staggering cliffs. You could almost taste the change in the air the closer you got. The stale, musty scent of the city was replaced by a fresh, salty breeze. If you listened close enough, you could hear the distant roar of the ocean as its waves crashed against rock. And once you arrived at what would be your new home for a long, long time, you took a moment to just stand outside and breathe.

One breath in, one breath out. The seaside air felt cool on your heated face. Out here, you felt like everything could be put behind you. A breath of fresh air to chase away the way you hurt inside. You could finally shed the layer of muddled emotions and thoughts that had surrounded you for weeks.

If only it was that easy. Still… Baby steps, you reminded yourself.

The cottage you were moving into was a quaint thing, with just enough space for you to live comfortably on your own. It was more than a steal, and you were thankful that you’d managed to snatch it up before anyone else could—and at a reasonable price, too. It sat near the top of a small cove, overlooking miles and miles of open water. If you walked down to the shore—away from the cove—there was a small dock that jutted out into the sea like a pirate’s plank. It was old, though, covered in mold and made of rotting wood that creaked ominously in the breeze. You didn’t dare risk venturing out on it.

It took you most of the rest of the day to bring all your belongings inside and unpack everything. You stood in what would be your living room, a mess of boxes scattered all around you, and felt a mixture of emotions that you couldn’t make heads nor tails of. Your eyes landed on that small box of Sebastian’s things, and you turned away with this twisting sensation worsening in your gut.

Getting properly settled in and starting your new job in the nearby town’s clinic took up most of your time. Your energy and thoughts. But at night, when it was just you laying in a too small bed in a too small room, your mind wandered. The moon peering through the small, curtained window into your bedroom bore witness to the way you stared and stared and stared—unblinking at the popcorn texture of the ceiling. Always twisting the gold band that remained on your finger in absentmindedness.

There was a gnawing ache in your chest that waxed and waned, but it never truly disappeared.

You thought about those final days a lot. They didn’t let you see him. All you got was a single phone call, sometime before his scheduled execution. The contents of that call would follow you no matter how far you tried to run from them. How hard you tried to forget.

(The phone felt locked in your grip—your fingers tight and stiff. There was a silence that was broken by your name spoken on the tailend of a choked breath. Your teeth clenched so hard you felt a muscle spasm in your jaw.

“I-I didn’t—” Sebastian’s voice stuttered thickly, hushed into the microphone. Something sank down to the soles of your feet, then continued on in an endless spiral. “I didn’t do it. I didn’t.”

There was something so devastatingly helpless about talking to him like this. Divided across miles and miles, nothing but a thin connection between you and him. Your words his only comfort.

“I know, baby,” you told him miserably, raising a hand to palm at your wet eyes. “I know.”)

You couldn’t even host a proper funeral for him. His body was never released to his family—for what reason, you were unsure. It felt as though you never had any proper closure. You could scream and cry about the injustice of it all, but… no one would listen. It was done. It was over. There was no getting him back. It was a grim thought that you grappled with on the daily, always present at the back of your mind. At the front of your mind. Suffocated you in gallons and gallons of grief. You did your best to work through it all over time, but sometimes it felt like your best just wasn’t enough.

And then… a couple of years after his death… you got a call.

You were lounging around in your little living room after a long shift at work, a book splayed out on your lap as you relaxed. Your phone was sitting right by your legs, just out of sight. So when it buzzed with an incoming call, you did not bother to glance at the screen before you answered it.

It was Maria.

The tremble of her voice made you instantly freeze.

You couldn’t understand what she was saying—so rushed and stifled through choked sobs. You sat up, both your hands gripping at your phone.

“Maria— wh-what—” you stuttered out, a sinking feeling slowly making itself present in your gut. You stood up, barely registering your book falling off your lap and onto the floor. “What’s—”

“They— they were wrong,” she hiccuped out, breathless and hysterical. “We knew they were and they— they—”

“What are you—” You tried to make sense of her words, but she quickly dissolved into more incoherent crying. You swallowed thickly, a cold sweat erupting along your back.

It took you a few minutes to calm her down enough so that she could strangle out a “Check the news.” Your eyes snapped to the darkened television sitting against the wall across from you.

Your throat felt drier than a desert. The remote was wedged between the cushions on your couch, and you fumbled around for it before finally managing to press the power button. Channel twenty-one, the news. You punched it into the remote.

There was a picture of Sebastian on the screen. His mugshot, actually—black hair messily scattered across honeyed skin, dark eyes that glistened in the dim lighting, thin lips downturned into an unsteady frown. A ringing sound erupted deep within your ears, drowning out all else as your gaze narrowed in on the bold headline.

Innocent man wrongfully convicted for murder of nine.

A short, disbelieving laugh escaped from your lips. This was how you found out? They didn’t bother to contact you first? You almost couldn’t believe it. Two years after he’d already been imprisoned. Two years after they’d decided he should die via electric chair. You laughed again, and your phone slipped right from your fingers as you dropped onto your knees. You barely felt the impact—barely heard Maria’s questioning sniffle above the racing of your heart.

You laughed and you laughed and you laughed and you laughed because wasn’t that just the funniest fucking thing? They found out the truth after what had been done to him could never be taken back. After you and his family had fought so desperately to prove his innocence.

Funny! It was funny!

You bit at your bottom lip to suppress the way it violently quivered.

Years passed and you continued to live on without Sebastian.

You thought time would help you heal—would dull the ache you experienced at every waking moment of the day and night. But there were times where you just felt infinitely worse. It was awful. It was so utterly miserable, and you were tired. You were just… tired. You couldn’t think about him for too long before you’d feel that familiar sting to your eyes. So you tried not to think about him at all.

It didn’t work.

You were plagued by him. Awake or asleep—it did not matter.

“You’re still up,” he murmured into your ear at night as you laid curled up on your side. Like this, you could face the window of your room—where the moonlight filtered gently through your thin curtains to brush against the walls like the hand of a ghost.

You hummed in response, face partially buried in your pillow. You tried in vain to ignore the presence you felt at your back. Making the hairs prickle on your nape. If you closed your eyes, you could almost feel light breaths against the side of your face.

“You’ve got work in a few hours, you know,” he said, matter-of-fact. His voice lowered, gentle and calm. “What’s bothering you?”

There was a pause. Distantly, you could hear the waves of the ocean as the tide rose and fell along the shore. A constant source of white noise.

“Nothing,” you eventually whispered back, closing your eyes momentarily to breathe in the faint smell of cinnamon. “Nothing at all.”

It wasn’t real, you told yourself. Over and over and over again. He wasn’t real. He wasn’t.

He didn’t stop there.

He sat across from you at your little dining table in the kitchen, grinning at you as you forked spoonfuls of pitiful dinner after dinner into your mouth. He was in the bathroom, sitting on the lid of the toilet as you showered or brushed your teeth. He was in the living room, sprawled across the floor in front of you as he gazed at you with his face propped atop his palm.

He accompanied you to work, a pair of blue eyes staring at you in the rearview mirror of your car as you drove. He lingered over your shoulder as you pushed paperwork or chatted to other nurses. Close enough to touch, yet never crossing that line. Always present. Sometimes silent, sometimes not. You weren’t sure which was better.

He was haunting you, and you could do nothing about it.

The only place where you seemed to have any kind of reprieve was down by the little cove or the shore. You liked taking walks along it—when the walls of your cottage seemed to loom too close for comfort. It was refreshing, being able to just… breathe in the sea air and take in the rolling waves from the sand. A healing balm for your enervated soul. It became a habit no matter the weather, every evening after work. Soaking in the sun, basking in the mist, watching dark clouds grow closer on the horizon. You were oftentimes alone, but occasionally you’d pass a few people also enjoying the fresh air. They never bothered you, so you never bothered them.

Once you returned home, however, he would be waiting for you at the door—all warm smiles and crinkled eyes that made your insides ache like they never have before.

You contemplated going to grief counseling many times. But something held you back. You just… didn’t have the energy to pick yourself up and go. Didn’t want to come to proper terms with it all, you supposed. Or maybe you were desperately holding on—afraid of letting go completely when you could look in a mirror and see him standing somewhere behind you. It hurt. It soothed. It was a push and pull that you learned to deal with as time went on.

You often caught yourself staring at the tiny closet in your room—where you’d buried that small box of Sebastian’s things so deeply, it would never see the light of day again. Most of the time, you could drag yourself away from it, pushing it to the back of your mind once more. But one night… you couldn’t help yourself. You caved. You just… needed to.

You pulled the box out from the depths of your closet and sat on the floor, eyeing it warily as you clutched a pair of scissors in your hand. It was just as you’d left it—flaps tightly sealed with packing tape. You hadn’t bothered to label it. You knew what was in there and that was enough.

You took in a deep breath and stabbed the point of the scissors into the box’s top to pry it open. Then, you stared down at its insides.

It simultaneously felt like you’d packed his things away in this box just yesterday and a hundred years ago. In any case, the tender ache at seeing it all still persisted.

The panda plushie, which you picked up gingerly and ran your fingers over its short fuzz before setting it off to your side. It used to sit on a shelf, back at your shared apartment, picked up only occasionally when he wanted to throw it at you to bother you.

(“Sebastian!” you shouted, startled out of your focus on your book when that goddamn panda nailed you directly on your face. You glared at him, setting your book to the side to snatch up the plushie when he laughed hard enough that he doubled over.

“Oh my god, your face!” he wheezed, swiping a finger under his eyes to wipe away an imaginary tear. “Come on, you didn’t see that coming? You’re losing your game here, babe.”

“Shut up, you ass! I was reading!” you fumed and stood up to pelt the plushie at him. It smacked him right on the arm, and he only laughed even harder.)

The sketchbook, rarely ever seen by your eyes because he was so protective over it. Abashed, more like, you came to realize a while ago. And for a good reason, you supposed, your lips twitching as you flipped open the thick cover.

There were some landscape drawings at the start—places you recognized at your old university. The café near the library, the statue at the center of the main quad. A few students walking around or sitting outside on benches. Some components from his engineering projects—designs with their associated dimensions, fluid mechanics calculations, free-body diagrams. You saw a handful of drawings of Lucas and Isidora, either fighting or sleeping against each other—gaping mouths and all.

And then… once you hit a certain point in the book, there were drawings of you.

He’d been so embarrassed when you caught him sketching you one day, though he’d tried to play it off. It was before he’d asked you out, you remembered. You’d thought it was flattering—at least what you could glimpse on the open pages. He’d slammed the book shut pretty quickly once he’d realized you were peeking over his shoulder.

It wasn’t until years later that he’d finally let you flip through the sketchbook properly.

Doodles of you sitting around campus, doing homework or looking at your phone. A sketch of you walking down the street or staring out a window. Upper body shots of you smiling, or laughing, or talking to one of your friends. The level of detail always blew you away—he managed to capture details about you that you never quite paid attention to yourself. The crinkle of your eyes or the pull of your lips.

You gently brushed a finger over a rough doodle of you and him—sitting back-to-back as you did your respective work—then closed the sketchbook to set down next to your legs.

Next was the crumpled, smudged paper of his vows—that you lingered over for a moment, reading it briefly with a small smile.

There were the silly ones, where he promised to be the best pain in the ass you could ever ask for. To make fun of you for being shorter than him or annoy you to smithereens everyday because he loved the face you made when you were mad.

Then there were the sincere ones, promising to always love you unconditionally. To take care of you whenever you were sick, or encourage you to be the best version of yourself you could possibly be. To hold your hand whenever you were scared. To always be by your side, no matter what.

You wiped at your eyes with your sleeve, sniffling slightly, and let the piece of paper flutter down to the ground.

And finally… you picked up the flannel.

Even after all this time, the material was still soft in your hold. You squeezed it between your fingers, tracing over the lines where patches of black met patches of red. If you closed your eyes and imagined hard enough, you could almost feel a warmth coming from it—like it had just been shucked off a warm body. Raising it up to your face to take a deep breath, you could faintly smell that familiar cinnamon. A comfort. A heartache.

“You know,” Sebastian started, and you lifted your gaze briefly to glance up at him standing a ways in front of you. “I’ve always liked how you looked in my clothes.” He wore a sharp grin that made his cheek dimple on his right. He winked down at you. “Always liked how you looked outta them too, but that’s neither here nor there. Go on, put it on.”

You rolled your eyes, but found yourself complying anyway. You stood up and slipped the flannel over your arms, fixing it properly over your shirt. Closing your eyes, you wrapped your arms around yourself.

You could almost imagine him embracing you. Something in your stomach twinged.

“There you go,” he whispered, a breath of air just barely out of reach in the fragile twilight of your room. “Just look at you.”

You only smiled sadly at the ground and hugged yourself tighter.

In recent years, the small dock by the shore was stripped down and built anew.

You saw them doing construction from your cottage’s window when the project was first launched and spent many nights fantasizing about dipping your feet into the water from the dock’s edge. And once it was finally complete—after months and months of waiting and watching—you did just that.

Your evenings were kept mostly the same with your walks along the shore or within the cove. But now you could trudge out onto the now sturdy dock and embrace the ocean in its entirety. You could let the tips of your shoes protrude off the far end of the dock as you breathed in and out. Salty air. The hint of rain in the distance. The spray of water against your face as the waves ebbed to and fro. It was refreshing. The perfect way to let the incessant buzz of your mind die down in preparation for a quiet night.

The dock, from what you could see whenever you were at home, was mostly used during the bright hours of day. A couple of fishermen during the afternoon. Teens from the town who wanted to jump off and swim to the shore. Either way, by the time the hush of evening fell as people prepared for bed, the dock was empty and perfect for some alone time.

It was nice, being able to sit down and soak your feet in the cool water when the weather was warmer. You liked watching the sun as it sank beneath the horizon, painting the sky in shades of burnt mandarin and dusty magenta. The last vestiges of gold light would make way for inky darkness that sparkled with hundreds and hundreds of stars. You were never able to appreciate the night sky in the city—so you took every chance you could to sit and stare up at it. Trying your best to identify constellations or just admiring it all until you got too cold to stay out for much longer.

Sometimes you ate your dinner out on the dock while you chatted with Isidora or Maria on the phone. Sometimes you brought along a book or sketchpad. You missed listening to Sebastian strum away at his electric guitar at times—always filling your apartment with music—so you impulse bought a ukulele and sat by the sea plucking awkwardly at its strings. The dock became a place to pass time. It became a habit that you stuck to for many years.

You were familiar with it all after spending evening after evening after evening out on its wooden platform. You could count the number of planks it was made of, the number of nails you could feel under your hands. You learned how to read the sea—when it hinted at an oncoming storm or calm night. In a way, it became a safe space for you, away from the stifling walls of your cottage.

So naturally, when something disrupted it, you noticed almost immediately.

You were sitting on the dock, half a sandwich on your lap that you’d scrounged up for a late dinner. Your feet idly swished through the water, cool against your heated skin. The dock was high enough that it only submerged your feet up to your ankles, but you did not mind.

You took another bite of your sandwich, then felt an odd prickling sensation on the back of your neck. Pausing, you noticed the hairs on your arms were standing straight up. It… felt like you were being watched. You glanced around—at the wide ocean before you, then the sandy shore behind you. There were a few stragglers in the distance, but they were far enough that you were sure they were not the cause for your sudden unease.

You swallowed your bite and decided it was probably nothing.

The following evening, however, it happened again. Then the next evening. And the next.

Like clockwork, almost, every time you sat down on the dock to relax after your shifts at work. It did not matter what you were doing, or how late you were there. Even for how long. You would always feel that prickle along your nape, and it would not leave until you walked back down the dock to make your way home. Sometimes it followed you up until you shut the door to your cottage.

You tried testing to see if you would still feel this way walking along the shore, or lounging on the sand of the cove. But even if you completely avoided the dock, you would still feel that familiar prickle of your hairs standing on end. It was… stupefying. You wondered if you were being paranoid. Or maybe you were losing it, just a little.

“If it’s any consolation,” Sebastian said one night, watching you with half-lidded eyes as you both sat at your tiny kitchen table. “You might have already lost it, sweetheart.” He only grinned at you when you told him to shut up.

After weeks of enduring this strange sensation, you decided it was best to just pretend it wasn’t there. You could ignore a little unease if it meant your routine would remain undisrupted. So you sat at the dock and minded your own business. Stared out at the rolling waves, read a book, laid back to stargaze. You were able to find peace again.

Then, one night, you noticed something.

It was by chance, really. You were staring out at the sea, watching as the waves crashed against an outcropping of rocks in the far distance. It was dark, the only lighting coming from the moon and the stars. It caused the waters to turn black—void-like, almost, if not for the gentle moonlight. Maybe that was what had ultimately allowed you to see it.

There, just behind the rocks jutting up from the sea like a jagged line of teeth, was this teal glow above the water.

It hugged along the wall of rock, barely visible from your vantage point. You paused and found yourself squinting at it, trying to make out what the hell it could possibly be. The moment you stared at it for a second too long, however, it ducked under the water before disappearing out of sight.

You were confused, yes, but you brushed it off as some sort of reflection. Maybe even a marine animal or bioluminescent plant of sorts, though you weren’t sure what.

You saw it again some nights later, this time just under the surface of the calm waters by the outcropping. It was oddly hypnotizing, in a way, even muted under the deep, navy waves. A constant presence, throughout the entirety of your time on the dock. You could even see it from your cottage window if you squinted.

The underwater glow became another upset in your routine that puzzled you to no end. You tried to ignore it like you ignored the prickle along your nape, but it was almost impossible to do so when it was so blatantly present in the water. No matter where you looked, the glow always lingered in your periphery. And it wasn’t like it stayed in the same place either. Some nights, it stayed near the rocks. During others, it seemed to draw closer. Farther. Closer. Closer. Farther.

Definitely not a plant, you concluded one night as you warily eyed the teal glow as it lingered several meters away. A trick of light? You cast a glance up at the vantablack sky dusted with twinkling white. But no, that would be impossible. It showed up no matter if the night sky was clear or cloudy.

Maybe you were imagining it after being on your own for so long. You grimaced as you thought about your cottage and the inhabitant waiting for you to return to it. Him. As real as your mind could make him.

In any case, the glow was not a priority. Not with the way the days cycled on—a twisting, gnawing feeling soon growing in your chest that you were well acquainted with by now. Though you wished desperately that you weren’t.

You woke up tired.

Not atypical for you, by any means. But this was a different kind of tired—that lingered deep within your muscles and tissue, even your very soul. It made every single motion feel as though you were lugging along hundred pound weights. You were slow in getting out of bed for this reason, taking a few moments to blink wearily up at your ceiling and rub at your temples in a vain attempt to ease the headache you could feel trying to manifest. Already you were not off to a good start.

Steadily, you sat up and immediately spotted Sebastian looming in the far corner of your room. Smiling at you with his hands shoved into his pockets. He opened his mouth to say something, but you lifted up a hand to stop him. Your throat felt like it was lined with cotton.

“Not today,” you told him, voice barely over a whisper. You closed your eyes, then reopened them to give him a weary look. “Just… Not today.”

He only closed his mouth and continued to smile at you.

Once you picked yourself up and trudged over to your bathroom, you took a second to regard your reflection in the small mirror. Dark circles that lined the area under your eyes. A small wrinkle between your creased eyebrows. A dullness to your complexion and a hollowness to your cheeks. You rubbed an eye and sighed, a deep thing that didn’t make you feel any better. The day must go on, as much as you didn’t want it to.

Your coworkers knew not to pester you too much once they saw you arrive at the clinic, so you were granted the relief of a somewhat quiet day. But that did not make things any easier for you—forcing you to be with the overwhelming spiral of your thoughts. You kept yourself busy with work around the clinic, but by the end of your shift, you somehow felt even worse than you had before.

On the drive home, you stopped by a store to pick up a couple of groceries you needed. And once you returned home and unpacked everything into their proper places, you whipped up a quick dinner and spent some time sitting at your little table poking at it sluggishly. You weren’t all that hungry, despite only having some crackers and water earlier. Your stomach churned, your chest ached. You feared if you ate too much, you would just end up throwing it all up.

It was quiet. You took your time to clean up and shower. Procrastinating, you registered faintly at the back of your mind. You slipped on some comfy clothes, then snagged Sebastian’s flannel that you’d never had the heart to pack away back into the box with the rest of his things. It hung on a hook on the back of your bedroom door, next to your towel. Forever a haunting presence in the corner of your world that you grew accustomed to with time. You slipped it on, the sleeves lolling past your hands.

Making your way back to the kitchen, you glanced out the window over your sink at the steadily approaching sunset. You’d gotten home slightly later than usual, but it was fine. You shuffled over to your fridge to grab a small, two-pack container of cupcakes and pried it open to take one out. You rummaged around in a nearby drawer for a few things, then slipped out your front door to make your way down to the dock.

It was a bit colder today, especially with the sun dipping closer down to the horizon to make way for night. You took a moment to stand at the edge of the dock and breathe. The fresh air helped, if only a little. The swell of the waves eased some of the tension lining your shoulders. You sat down, crossing your legs, and set the cupcake atop the small space in front of you.

Leaning back onto your palms, you watched as dusk bled across the sky until it was overtaken completely by night. The moon painted the waves in a milky glow that highlighted their crests and shadowed their troughs. You could faintly register an ache behind your eyes that worsened bit by bit every time you blinked. You leaned forward and rubbed your cold hands along your upper arms before deciding it was time.

From your pockets, you pulled out a single candle and a lighter. You stuck the candle into the top of the cupcake, then—with a flick of your finger—used the lighter to set it aflame. The tiny, orange bud of fire flickered in the gentle wind and washed its soft glow along your hands and legs. Your wedding ring glinted in its light. You stuffed the lighter back into your pocket and sank into a slouch as you stared at the cupcake.

Faintly, you could smell cinnamon.

Deep breath in, deep breath out. Your eyes stung, unblinking as they were. You swallowed and it was like choking down a bucket full of thorns.

He would have been thirty-three today, you thought miserably to yourself as you stared and stared and stared. The fact settled over you like a particularly suffocating blanket. That fatigue you'd felt earlier came back full force, accompanied by a wrenching feeling in the pit of your gut.

Thirty-three. Your face felt hot and cold all at once. You rubbed at your cheek and your fingers came away wet. You exhaled a shuddering breath.

All those years of missed opportunities and moments. No waking up to his slumbering face or to his gentle kisses on your eyelids. No playful teasing or hugs that stole the breath right out of your lungs with how tightly he squeezed. No midnight dances in your little kitchen, swaying back and forth to an imaginary tune. No being loved by him.

Your heart ached.

“Happy birthday, my love,” you whispered out into the still air, closing your eyes momentarily as your jaw trembled. “I miss you. So, so much.”

You leaned forward and blew out the candle.

Then, you buried your face in your palms. And you cried.

You weren’t sure how long you stayed there, hiccuping into your hands. It hurt, god, it hurt so much. It always did. You were sure even years down the line, you’d find yourself trapped in the same wallowing pit of despair. The pain dulled, yes, but ever so sharp and present when the time lined up perfectly—as much as you dreaded it. Your chest hurt with the way you suppressed your pain.

When you finally managed to pull the shaking pieces of yourself together, everything felt numb with cold. Your head was stuffy, your eyes were bleary. You sniffed and had to choke back another sob. It truly never got easier, even after all this time. You needed some painkillers and a long, long rest.

Sighing, you plucked the cold candle from the cupcake along with its paper wrapping to toss into your trash later. You stood up and hugged yourself, giving the lone dessert another long glance before turning on your heel to head back into the warmth of your cottage. Come morning, the birds will have eradicated all traces of the cupcake from the dock, as they tended to do.

As you walked, the back of your neck prickled all the way up to your door.

In the following days, you noticed the teal glow you’d been seeing underwater was growing closer and closer—even moreso than it had been before.

This would not have alarmed you too heavily—after all, it wasn’t like it hadn’t been going back and forth in terms of distance for a while—but it was getting to the point where it was only a few meters away. You could slip into the water and swim over easily, you mused, as you warily eyed the glow. Just in case, you decided to avoid sticking your feet into the water for now.

You couldn’t kid yourself anymore. It was weird—really weird. Pair up the glow with the ever present prickle along your nape and Sebastian’s haunting presence at home, and you had a recipe spelling out… well… mental disaster. It was all you could do to hang on. There really wasn’t much you could do about it anyways, you figured. These days you were just too tired to care.

Currently, you were sitting cross-legged in your usual spot on the dock, aimlessly scrolling through your phone’s notifications as you enjoyed the night air. You had a couple of messages from Maria to respond to—you’d been trying to get better at maintaining contact with her every so often. It was a work in progress, but at least texts were easier for you to deal with than phone calls.

You thumbed through the rest of your notifications. Lucas had sent you a meme around one in the morning last night that you’d missed. He was in his last year in university, you mulled. How time has flown. You remembered when he was still an annoying preteen, bugging Sebastian to use his no doubtfully expensive guitar. It was difficult to get Sebastian to ever part with it. The thought made you smile slightly to yourself, then you sobered upon remembering you’d had to sell it. In hindsight, Lucas’ guitar phase hadn’t lasted all too long—or maybe he hadn’t wanted something that reminded him of his older brother so much. Sweet memories turned sour after the execution. You sighed and sent him a meme back after liking the one he’d sent. Something about weird-looking cats.

Oh, one of your coworkers wanted to grab dinner in a couple of days. Hmm. You checked your calendar, then sent off a response text in agreement. The distance you were from the nearby town was not large by any means, but it was enough that you rarely sought exchanges outside of work. You really needed to get out more. Most of your other interactions were online, especially after moving from the city and away from everyone and everything. It certainly was not doing you any favors.

As you typed up a comment on one of your older friend’s social media posts, you noticed something.

Just over the top of your phone screen—reflected in the dark water of the ocean. You paused and lowered your phone to stare at it.

It was the teal glow, brighter and closer than it had ever been before. You eyed it for a moment, apprehension taking root in the pit of your stomach. But there was also this sense of tentative curiosity. You leaned forward just enough to peer down at it beyond the dock’s edge, submerged as it was beneath the gentle waves. It was almost underneath you, oddly hypnotizing as you tilted your head at it. You felt as though you could be sucked right into it, lulled into a trance as the glow encompassed all that you were.

Brighter and brighter the glow grew. There was the distant thought in the back of your mind that maybe you should be more wary—maybe you should lean back or stand up to gain some distance. But all you could hear were your steady breaths, feel the way your grip tightened on your phone. Maybe you could see if what you were seeing was really an animal of sorts or just some figment of—

There was a head. Sticking out of the water.

You froze immediately, breath caught in your lungs.

For a moment, you couldn’t process what exactly you were looking at. But then you realized you were staring at a gray-blue face framed by raven hair stuck to its sides. A rather large face, in fact, nowhere near the size of a regular human’s. A… mermaid? You weren’t entirely certain, and even then, there was a lot to unpack with this realization that you were in no way prepared to do.

There was some sort of lure attached to the top of the creature’s head that drooped down into the water in front of it. Two—no, three, you noticed—eyes were trained intently in your direction, pupils indiscernible in a way that made it difficult to tell where precisely it was looking at. The back of your neck prickled.

Ah, you thought faintly as teal light gently washed across the nearly black surface of the water from the creature’s eyes. That’s what that was.

You weren’t sure how long you and the… mermaid… stayed there, staring at each other, but eventually something had to give. You were just surprised it wasn’t you first.

The mermaid’s jaw seemed to tense. It regarded you with an unreadable gaze that you could feel flicking over your face. Then, it parted thin lips to say a quiet “Hey.”

It was like getting punched in the gut—harsh and utterly unforgiving.

It sounded— It sounded just like Sebastian. Raspier, maybe. A little lower in timbre. But unequivocally him. It was unmistakable—his voice so deeply cemented into your mind when you lived day by day listening to him speak over your shoulder. You felt like you couldn’t move a muscle, couldn’t force the air you so desperately needed into your lungs.

He seemed to take in your silence, appraising you for a moment before speaking again.

“I know this has gotta be… weird as shit…” he said slowly, voice stiff and slightly stilted. “But I”—he swallowed thickly—“I can explain.”

You weren’t sure what expression you were making, but you saw the way the skin above his eyes seemed to crease together. You wanted to force yourself to spit out something, anything, but you could not hear yourself think over the rapid ba-dump ba-dump ba-dump of your heart in your ears. The vice-like grip on your insides with how much this mermaid sounded like Sebastian. How it made you hurt. How it made you ache.

What the hell was going on right now?

“You—” you eventually choked out, your eyes taking in what was before you. A membranous fin at the side of his head flicked slightly at the sound of your voice. “You— I—”

He said your name quietly, and it was like another vicious twist of your gut. The sounds of the sea became white noise, distant and weak. “It’s me. Sebastian. You know? Love of your life?” His face scrunched up, sharp mouth turning into a strained grin as he stared at you with wide, imploring eyes. “Come on babe, don’t tell me you’ve forgotten already?”

Just like him. He talked just like him.

But that couldn’t be right. That couldn’t be right. He was dead. He was—

Something suddenly clicked in the far recesses of your mind.

“Ah.” The syllable dropped from your lips like a rock from a high place. You slumped like you’d been cut from a few taut strings struggling to hold you up. “I get it now.” You exhaled deeply, willing yourself to gain control of your mind and your heart. You knew exactly what was going on here.

No need to panic. You were in control.

“...Do you really?” he asked warily after a minute or two. You ignored him to focus on yourself.

Deep breath in, deep breath out. You released the tight hold you had on your phone—line etched into your palm from the pressure—and shoved it into your pocket so you could lift your hands up to rub at your temples.

You were tired. Of this, of everything.

“I thought this was supposed to be a safe space,” you grumbled under your breath, your eyes closing in a vain attempt to stave off the building headache you were experiencing. “You had to follow me out here too?”

Sebastian made a sound—a questioning, confused little thing that made you open your eyes to gaze down at him. He looked hurt, almost. “I— What?”

Your hands dropped from your temples, and you leaned back onto your palms so you could look out at the calm sea. A few clouds passed over the moon from above, temporarily casting a shadow over you and him. You eyed him after a moment of letting yourself relax from the previous adrenaline spike.

“You’ve never looked like this before,” you eventually mused as your eyes traced over the shadowed line of his nonexistent nose. The way his skin glistened in the dim lighting. “Did something change from yesterday?” You didn’t think you were capable of imagining him like this. Inhuman. No honeyed skin or rough scar bridging his nose. You wondered why it was happening now, of all times. If maybe it was the result of staying by the sea for so long, alone to deal with everything that had happened.

He opened his mouth as though to respond. But then he closed it and just… stared at you. Observing you. Analyzing you for something you were not privy to. A probing gaze that made something under your skin itch. You watched him back, then found you could not hold his gaze for much longer. You looked away and cleared your throat.

“I’m thinking pasta for dinner,” you remarked casually to fill the silence, eyes shifting skywards in thought. “The alfredo we made last week was pretty good. I got the sauce on sale at the grocery store.”

Another pause. Another moment where your skin prickled with the sensation of being picked apart, piece by piece.

And when he spoke, his voice was barely over a murmur—a grim realization to his tone. “You… You’ve really lost it after all this time, huh?”

You made a sound somewhere between a scoff and a laugh. “Don’t be mean. I’m— well…” You gave him a smile, something melancholy lining your lips. “Doing just fine.” The words were bitter across your tongue. He only gave you a look like he didn’t quite believe you, something indecipherable in his gaze.

“Right,” he snorted. “Like I’m gonna believe that after whatever the hell you just said.” A hand lifted from the water to gesture at you, gray-blue just like his face.

Rolling your eyes, you shifted on your feet and stood up, brushing off your pants as you shoved your hands into your pockets. You hadn’t realized, but there was this twinge building in your stomach with every minute that ticked by. You needed to sleep this off… whatever this was. You sighed, long and weary. “I should not be entertaining you.” But it was so hard to resist—has been, for years now.

“I can’t believe this is happening,” Sebastian muttered to himself, pinching at the bridge of his nonexistent nose with two large fingers. When you only raised an eyebrow at him and took a step in the direction of your cottage, intending to head back to get started on dinner, he lurched forwards in the water. “Wait. Where are you going? Y-You’re leaving?”

You didn’t intend on answering him, so accustomed to ignoring him in your cottage whenever he spoke into the air. But when this Sebastian snapped out your name in a warning tone, you gave him a look. “I’m not leaving, silly. I’ll see you inside, won’t I?”

“God, do you even hear yourself right now?” he rasped out, voice betraying a certain incredulity as he lifted himself up in the water just enough that you could see what looked like a waterlogged scarf wrapped loosely around his neck. “Listen to me. I’m here. I’m real.”

Real, huh?

You closed your eyes and thought about a figure standing in the corner of your living room, watching you with a small grin. You thought about the endless nights of him standing near your bed or hovering just beyond your shoulder, whispering at you to close your eyes and sleep. You thought about a lot. You thought about nothing.

And so you hummed, a distant thing that you did not quite register as you started to turn away, unwilling as you were to continue this. But before you could make it even a couple of steps back down the dock, Sebastian made a noise—ragged and disbelieving. There was the sound of rushing water directly behind you. The roar of a small waterfall, almost. It made you turn back and blink in surprise as your head craned back.

The wood beneath you creaked and groaned in an ominous manner.

“We are not done talking,” Sebastian growled as he loomed over you. Like this, you could take him in his entirety—from the brown jacket covering his torso that was dark with seawater, to the three arms he had that held himself up atop the dock’s surface. The shirt he had on was translucent enough to appear gray in color. If you looked close enough at the sliver of his unclothed body before it disappeared beneath the dock’s edge, you could just barely make out the shine of scales.

This was—like nothing you have ever seen before.

Your lips parted when a drop of water landed on your cheek, startling you for a moment. A glance up at the sky showed clear skies above you. Maybe you’d imagined it. You shook your head slightly and focused back on Sebastian.

Water continued to run down his body, each drop soaking into the wooden planks of the dock, before it eventually eased into a trickle.

“What is there to talk about?” you asked lightly after contemplating his words.

His grip tightened on the dock, enough that you could almost hear something splinter. “Much, in case you were not aware.” He surveyed your open face with narrowed eyes, a soft teal glow dusting across your features. It was like you were being held open like a book, all of your innards exposed for him to analyze. You weren’t sure what he found there, but it made him suddenly soften like butter atop a warm stove.

“I just…” He sighed, something long-suffering that came from deep within his chest. “This wasn’t how I’d imagined things would go, believe it or not.”

You cocked your head at him and watched him slouch from his rigid position. Still dripping water. Still with that raven hair plastered to his face. There was a sort of exhaustion to him that you’d never noticed before. It made something pang in your chest—caused you to clench your hands into fists in a vain attempt to focus on anything else.

There was the pungent smell of fish, raw and metallic.

Not real. This was not real.

Sebastian shifted, and the hand attached to his torso—smaller in size and covered sloppily in stained bandages—raised as though it was going to reach towards you. Your heart nearly skipped a beat at the motion. But then he stopped, staring down at his palm. Big and gray and consisting of four thick fingers with sharp ends. There was the glint of something gold around his fourth finger. Your own hand twitched inside your pocket.

Always just out of reach. Never crossing a line.

His hand clenched into a fist, and he lowered it back to the dock with a quiet thud.

He said your name. “I know this is difficult to hear, but… It’s me,” he whispered, voice strained like it was on the precipice of breaking. “It’s really, really me.”

You swallowed heavily, feeling as though the world was unraveling by the seams beneath your feet.

This was not him. It couldn’t be.

Why would you ever imagine him like this?

“No, it’s not,” you eventually said bitterly, breaking eye contact so you could glance back at your cottage. You closed your eyes, then reopened them as you turned your back to him. And when you spoke again, your voice teetered like you were one step away from falling into a never ending pit. “You’re dead.”

And then you walked away.

Each step you took felt like eternity, something heavy weighing you down. He called out your name. First so quietly you almost didn’t hear it, a tinge of something fragile to it. Then again with frustration lining his voice—louder and aggrieved. There was a sharp crack of something behind you, but you were determined in your march back home.

Deep breath in, deep breath out. Your jaw clenched to suppress the tremble you could feel working its way throughout your body. You refused to look behind you, and you succeeded right up until you stood before the door to your cottage. With one hand on the metal knob, you twisted around to look back at the shore—the dock you could see a ways behind you.

It was vacant, not a soul in sight.

Your lips pursed together, and you opened the door to slip inside with a heavy, grim feeling taking root in your stomach.

Sebastian was waiting for you already, sprawled atop your couch as he grinned at you wide enough that you saw each and every one of his white teeth.

“You look like you’ve seen a ghost,” he said amusedly, one of his hands raking through the wavy mess of hair on his head. His voice lowered, gentle and sincere. “Maybe take a break from the dock, yeah?”

You only slowly shook your head and moved past him, suddenly feeling queasy and lightheaded and so frazzled that you couldn’t bear being awake for much longer.

Your thoughts lingered on the shore. Teal eyes and the sound of breaking wood that felt so real in that instance. You forced yourself to breathe.

It was fine. It was fine.

You would deal with it as you always have.

part two

#i didnt take spanish since middle school so i had to use google translate for it LOL sorry for any inaccuracies !#shay scribbles daydreams #sebastian solace x reader #sebastian solace x you #roblox pressure x reader #pressure x reader #who i see au #edit: fixed the spanish ty to ataga on ao3 for helping me with it LOL

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party-snake · 3 months ago

Note

hi…. could i perhaps request a small one shot in which sebastian immediately develops a crush on some poor diver who just crawled through his vent? and he’s like all shy and shit? thank you :)

Certainly! Thanks for requesting :)

Cupid's arrow

Sebastian x Fem! Reader

Tw: The request and reponse will serve as your warning. Idiots in love.

❀--❀--❀--❀--❀--❀--❀--❀--❀--❀--❀--❀--❀--❀

oh... oh no. Sebastian promised himself he wouldn't get attached to any expendables. They're just prisoners. Some of them annoying pests who just want to flash him with that damn light beacon.

But you. You were different. The moment you stepped in his shop, you never flashed him. You even bought all his items. You never dared to say anything mean or degrading to him.

He chuckles as he slides the file over to you. "That wasn't exactly a staring contest. What were you doing?" The chair creaks as you slump foward, putting your head in your hands and pouting. "I wanted to look at the pretty shark." That made his heart skip a beat.

He scoffs and leans foward, tapping a claw on the bit of text. "Are you just ignoring the part where she is hostile to all humans?" You huff. "But I wanna look at her!" He rolls his eyes at that. "Look. Don't tell anyone this, but i'll give you a freebie."

You look taken aback for a moment before he frowns. "Take it before I change my mind." You nod quickly and were gone as soon as you came. he takes the moment as a second to breathe. 'Holy shit. So cute.' Thoughts race through his head, mostly of you.

A few minutes pass and he's back in his shop, adjusting his items. "Hi Seb." You say suddenly, catching him off guard. "Jesus- don't scare me like that. How'd you... you were so quiet." You simply nod. He straightens out, weaving his hands together. "Well, uh. What are you here for?" Browsing his wares, you spot a blacklight.

"Blacklight?" You ask. The shopkeeper nods. "Not many of those left. It doesn't anger the squiddles." You make a 'ohhh' face and pick it up, examining it. He chuckles at your cute face and just kinda... stares at you.

He snaps out of it when you wave your hand infront of him. "Seb? You okay?" He shakes his head. "Huh? Wha- Yup." He stutters horribly, cursing at himself. You smirk. "You sure?" You put your hands behind your back and step foward. He puts his hand over his face to block you out.

"Yup. T-Totally fine." You decide to drop it. "How much?" He looks down at you. "Huh?" You snicker and point at the blacklight in your hand. "For this." He looks dumbfounded for a few seconds before responding. "How about... 250. A discount, just for y-you."

"Really?" Stars form in your eyes and his brain stutters for a moment. "Yup." You fork over the data and stuff the blacklight in your bag. "Thanks Seb!" The only sound left in the shop was the thumps from the vent as you made your way out. He puts a clawed hand over his face as breathes, trying to calm his racing heart.

Your laughs, Your manners, the way you didn't immediately try and insult him. It meant more than you thought. He takes a deep breath and sighs, running his hand through his hair. He promised himself he wouldn't get attached, wouldn't grow crushes. But everytime he thinks of you, he smiles like an idiot in love. Oh well...

Sorry this is really short! (at least to my standards) my brain refuses to work apparently, so I forced it. Also sorry if it's shit. I'm tired. 😔

#pressure sebastian x reader #sebastian solace x reader #pressure sebastian #roblox pressure x reader #sebastian solace #sebastian pressure #idiots in love #fluff #tooth rotting fluff

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satori-runa · 1 month ago

Text

—A while in eternity

Summary: You reunite with your husband but Sebastian believes it's just another hallucination and gets frustrated.

Tags: Established Relationship, slight angst, fluff, comfort

Words: 2,1k

⊹₊ ˚‧︵‿₊୨୧₊‿︵‧ ˚ ₊⊹

Time lost all meaning in the depths of the Hadal Blacksite. Your diving suit was torn, exposing your skin to the freezing water that clung to you like a second skin. Cuts marred your arms and legs, the saltwater biting into them with every movement. Yet, you kept moving, slinking through the narrow corridors like a desperate creature in search of survival.

Numbness crept through your limbs, and exhaustion clouded your mind. You cursed yourself for ever accepting Urbanshade's deal—it had seemed like the only option, but now it felt like a death sentence you couldn’t escape all over again.

Three days had passed, or so you thought, though time had become a blur of endless, grueling moments. You’d tried to rest once in a side room, but the lurking threats made it impossible to stay put. The Blacksite was alive with danger, and pausing for too long invited it to find you. So, despite the agony coursing through your body and the weight of fatigue dragging at your thoughts, you pushed forward. There was no stopping. Not yet.

You pressed your hand to the cold, damp wall, wincing at the sharp pain in your side. Each step felt heavier than the last, but you knew you had to keep moving. The Blacksite was an unforgiving place—if the environment didn’t kill you, Urbanshade’s forces would.

Every now and then, distant sounds reached your ears—footsteps, the low hum of machinery, the occasional drip of water. Each sound made your pulse race, a reminder of the threats constantly stalking the halls. You replayed Urbanshade’s offer in your mind, the deal you’d made to come here. It had seemed like a lifeline at the time, a desperate chance for survival. Now, it felt like a trap.

But you couldn’t give up. Not when you were this close.

As you rounded a corner, your blurred vision caught a flicker of movement. You froze, holding your breath as you tried to make out if it was a threat. The movement was subtle—a faint shift in the shadows ahead. Then, a soft metallic clink reached your ears, and your tense muscles relaxed slightly. It wasn’t an enemy, not in the way you’d feared.

A vent cover had come loose, hanging open. Curiosity sparked through your tired mind. There was a chance it could lead somewhere—a way out, or at least a temporary refuge. You approached cautiously, sliding the vent door fully open. The passage beyond was tight, but manageable. Crawling through, you ignored the sharp edges of the metal as they scraped against your already battered suit.

After what felt like an eternity, you emerged into a small room. Your knees buckled as you dropped down, landing hard on the floor. Blinking against the dim light, you took in your surroundings. It was a storage room, but something about it felt different. Shelves lined the walls, cluttered with supplies and broken devices. It looked more like a makeshift shop than a mere storage space, hidden away in the labyrinth of the Blacksite.

You moved cautiously, scanning the room for danger. Then you saw him.

For a moment, you thought exhaustion had finally driven you mad. But as your eyes locked onto the tall fish-like figure hunched over a workbench, everything else faded away. His familiar dark hair fell over his face, obscuring his features, but there was no mistaking him. Despite all the…new…parts, you could still recognize the man you loved the most.

Sebastian. Your husband.

Your breath caught in your throat, disbelief hitting you like a wave. You had grieved him, convinced he was dead, killed by human hands after his arrest. But here he was—alive.

You took a shaky step forward, your voice barely a whisper. “Sebastian?”

He froze, his body going rigid at the sound of your voice. Slowly, he turned to face you, but his expression wasn’t one of relief or joy. His now fluorescent eyes, glowing and filled with exhaustion, were twisted with irritation and anger. There was no recognition in them—only frustration.

“Not again,” he growled, his voice rough. He snatched a small tool from the table and hurled it toward you. You flinched as it clattered against the wall behind you, missing you by inches. “You’re not real! I know you’re not real!” His voice cracked with desperation, his hands shaking as he clenched them into fists. “You think I’ll fall for it again? You think I don’t know how this place messes with my head?”

He looked like he hadn’t slept in weeks, his gaze darting wildly between you and the corners of the room, as if expecting the illusion to unravel at any moment. “It’s not you.” He cried, his voice raw. “You’re not here. You’re gone. I won’t fall for it.”

Your heart twisted painfully at the sight of him—this broken, haunted version of the man you loved. He had been alone here for too long, tormented by the isolation and the tricks his mind played on him. You wanted to reach out, to tell him it was really you, but words felt useless in the face of his anguish.

Instead, you stepped forward, wordlessly closing the distance between you. He barely noticed, lost in his own torment. When you reached him, you gently placed your hand on his arm.

Sebastian flinched at the touch, his breath catching. His wide, frantic eyes snapped to where your hand rested on him, disbelief flooding his expression. For a moment, he just stared, frozen. Then, slowly, something shifted in his gaze. The wild panic faded, replaced by confusion and, finally, recognition.

“It’s… really you?” His voice was small, trembling with the weight of his uncertainty. His fingers hovered near your hand, too afraid to believe.

You nodded, tears filling your eyes as you finally found your voice. “I’m here, Sebastian. I’m real.”

The fight drained from him all at once. His form buckled, and he collapsed against you, his head falling to your chest as his hands clung to you as if you might disappear. His shoulders shook with silent sobs, the dam of his loneliness and grief finally breaking.

“I thought I lost you.” He whispered, his voice breaking with every word. “I thought I was alone.”

You held him tightly, your own tears falling as you whispered, “You’re not alone anymore.”

Your arms wrapped instinctively around Sebastian as he collapsed into you, his body trembling with the force of everything he'd kept locked away. His breath hitched against your chest, ragged and broken, and you felt his tears soaking into your torn suit.

For a moment, you just held him, your fingers gently threading through his hair, your own tears slipping silently down your cheeks. The realization that he was here—alive, breathing, and real—settled in like a shock to your system. You had lost hope, convinced that the cruel people had taken him from you forever. But here he was, the warmth of him in your arms dispelling the icy grip of the Blacksite’s horrors.

Sebastian’s grip on you tightened as if he feared you might vanish if he let go. “I tried,” he choked out, his voice barely a whisper. “I tried to find you, but I thought... I thought it was over. I thought I lost you for good.”

You held him tighter, your own voice still too shaky to form words. You had your questions—how he survived, what happened—but none of it mattered in this moment. Right now, the only thing that mattered was that he was here. Alive.

“It’s me,” you finally managed to whisper, your voice thick with emotion. “I’m here, Sebastian. I’m right here.”

He pulled back slightly, just enough to meet your gaze, his tear-filled eyes searching your face as if still needing to convince himself that you were real. His fingers brushed against your cheek, a soft, tentative touch. “I thought I was going insane.” He muttered, his voice wavering. “I thought it was just another hallucination.”

You shook your head slowly, pressing his hand closer to your face. “It’s not. I’m real, Sebastian. I’m here, and I’m not going anywhere.”

For the first time since you’d seen him, a flicker of hope passed through his exhausted features. His hand cupped your face fully now, his thumb brushing away a tear. He swallowed hard, trying to gather himself, but the emotion was too raw, too overwhelming.

“I don’t know how you found me,” he whispered, “but I’m so damn glad you did.”

For a moment, you just held him, your fingers gently threading through his hair, your own tears slipping silently down your cheeks. The realization that he was here—alive, breathing, and real—settled in like a shock to your system. You had lost hope, convinced that the cruel waters had taken him from you forever. But here he was, the warmth of him in your arms dispelling the icy grip of the Blacksite’s horrors.

“It’s me,” you finally managed to whisper, your voice thick with emotion. “I’m here, Sebastian. I’m right here.”

He pulled back slightly, just enough to meet your gaze, his tear-filled eyes searching your face as if still needing to convince himself that you were real. His fingers brushed against your cheek, a soft, tentative touch. “I thought I was going insane,” he muttered, his voice wavering. “I thought it was just another hallucination.”

You shook your head slowly, pressing his hand closer to your face. “It’s not. I’m real, Sebastian. I’m here, and I’m not going anywhere.”

“I don’t know how you found me,” he whispered, “but I’m so damn glad you did.”

You didn’t respond with words, instead, you pulled him closer again, feeling the warmth of his larger body against yours. You could sense the weight of his fear and loneliness beginning to lift, replaced by a sense of safety in your embrace.

As you sank to the ground, you drew him down with you, resting against the cool wall of the small storage room. His head nestled against your shoulder, and you wrapped your arms tightly around him, wanting to shield him from everything that had tormented him.

“I missed this.” He murmured, his voice muffled against your fabric. “I missed you... so much.” He began to cry again, soft sobs that reverberated in your chest, each one a release of all the anguish he had endured. “I missed your touch, your smile... everything.”

You stroked his hair gently, your heart aching at his words. “I missed you too, Sebastian. I never stopped thinking about you. I was lost without you.”

He pulled back slightly to meet your gaze, his tear-streaked face showing a mixture of pain and longing. “I thought I’d never feel your warmth again. I thought... I thought I’d have to go through this alone.”

“You’re not alone anymore.” You promised, leaning forward to press a soft kiss to his forehead. “I’m here, and I won’t let you go again. We’ll figure this out together.”

Sebastian closed his eyes for a moment, inhaling deeply as if committing your presence to memory. “Just hold me a little longer.” He whispered, his voice trembling.

You nodded, adjusting your hold so he could nestle closer. As you both sat there in the dim light of the storage room, the horrors of the Blacksite faded away, replaced by the warmth of each other’s presence. The outside world ceased to exist, and for that moment, all that mattered was the gentle rise and fall of each other’s breaths.

“I’ll always be here,” you promised, wrapping him in your arms as you both found comfort in each other. “No matter what happens, we’ll face it together.”

Sebastian’s grip on you tightened, and you could feel the steady rhythm of his heartbeat against your chest. It was a soothing melody, one that brought you both peace amid the chaos of the Blacksite. As you held him close, you knew that no matter what lay ahead, you had each other—and that was enough.

#Roblox Pressure #Roblox #Pressure #Pressure x Reader #Roblox Pressure x Reader #Roblox x reader #Sebastian x Reader #sebastian solace #Sebastian solace x reader #sebastian solace fanfiction #⊹₊⟡⋆satori.speaks #⊹₊⟡⋆writings

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hiddenpng0 · 1 month ago

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if we get out of here together..maybe,

We can draw together?

...

But not here.

Maybe in another..universe.

[Oh no, P.AI.nter got too attached to one of the expandables!

Expandable:💥🔫👈/jk I'm sorry yall :(( ]

#hiddenpng0 #my art #artists on tumblr #digital art #digital artist #objectum #p.ai.nter fanart #p.ai.nter pressure #p.ai.nter x reader #roblox pressure x reader #pressure x reader #pressure roblox #p.ai.nter #tw: blood #and implied Yknow..#expandable pressure #this is why P.AI.nter doesn't get attached to an expandable #painter x reader

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starlitiris · 6 days ago

Note

MORE POLYAMAROUS HEADCANONS NEOW!!!! /lh /nf

GULP. SIR YES SIR!!!!! o7

More Sebastian x Reader x Painter Headcanons

To feed the hungry fish & puter smoochers

And its actually headcanons this time instead of a fanfic of how you started dating! Forgive me if this is little rushed :,)

I was gonna add my shitty divider again but i’ll spare you this time

Living Arrangements:

So. It’s probably worth mentioning that in this silly little au, you and your significant others share a nice house near the ocean. It’s a safe house, hours and HOURS away from the nearest town. You get food sent to you every couple weeks courtesy of Innovation Inc, and they keep your utilities and such running as well. All of those assets you three provided to them were very appreciated and was enough in their eyes to warrant such a freedom (even though you guys deserved it anyway), but they still asked that you do some work for them. It’s mostly all remote work that you three do from home, but it keeps you all busy.

With that boring stuff out of the way, though- you guys love visiting the beach! It smells amazing, it looks beautiful, and with all of you being there together… it’s just perfect. You try to mostly go after the sun starts to set for the sake of Sebastian’s eyes. Especially with all the bright ass sand all over the beach, the daylight is BLINDING. But the sunsets on the beach are beautiful, and it never gets too cold out there.

Sebastian likes to just soak in the water. It’s cozy. Sometimes you’ll go out and swim with him, but for the most part, you and him try to stay on the shore or in the shallow end of the water. Painter isn’t waterproof. He cannot swim 😔. You guys are thinking about asking Innovation Inc if they could maybe fix that.

Your house has two bedrooms, one bathroom, a big living room, and nice kitchen, another room you guys turned into an office, and a big and beautiful back porch with an amazing view and a nice awning that covers it. Sebastian loves the porch because he can fit on it, and he loves the awning because owie ouch the sun it burns his eyes. The bedrooms aren’t really used since, well… you only would’ve needed one anyway, but Sebastian doesn’t exactly fit in either of them – comfortably, that is. So one of the bedrooms became Painter’s are studio, and you all turn the living room into your bedroom at night. Which leads me into other more specific (and hopefully shorter) headcanons.

Sleeping Arrangements:

You all sleep within the coils of Sebastian’s tail. You and Painter are always cuddling, and Sebastian will be either snuggling into one of your guys’ sides, or he’ll just lay down with his large upper body laid out on top of the both of you. Sebastian doesn’t often find himself in need of blankets or pillows, but if you and Painter are using them, then so is he. He likes to be under the blankies on top of u two to leech off of urs and Painter’s body heat :)

As for pillows… well obviously you guys are his pillows duhh

And you would think with Painter being a clunky robot that he wouldn’t be that comfy to snuggle with, but his snuggles are actually pretty cozy. He’s warm because of his running machinery, but he usually doesn’t get too hot. As long as he isn’t covered in a heavy blanket while the house is warm or whatever.

If you’re the type that loves weighted blankets then I’m sure you LOVE this sleeping arrangement. Sebastian’s size and weight is the perfect amount of crushing and Painter is always latched onto you like you’re his lifeline. If you’re opposed to this, then… well. You can try to shimmy out of the suffocation and maybe make some compromises with your significant others, but those two are too clingy to let you escape. I’m sorry. This is your life now.

Love Languages:

I can’t speak for you on what your love language is obviously, but I will happily explain the other two!

When it comes to expressing love, I imagine that Painter’s love languages are mainly acts of service and gift giving. He loves to do things for you and Sebastian and see you guys smile and be happy about it!! It fills him with so so much joy. He even took up cooking because he wanted to find other ways he could do nice things for you two. Thankfully him being a silly puter makes him decent at cooking. He did a ridiculous amount of research to make sure he would do it right. And of course he paints for you guys!

As for receiving, words of affirmation and quality time really show him that you guys love him dearly. ESPECIALLY words of affirmation. Please tell him you love him and cherish him and appreciate everything he is everyday it makes him feel so very loved.

Sebastian’s love language when it comes to expressing is mainly quality time. Just being in yours and Painter’s presence is enough for him most days. Whether you’re sitting in silence doing your own things, chatting his ear off, chatting with him, or doing anything together, it’s how he shows that he loves you. Sometimes he’ll follow you and Painter around the house like a lost puppy. To be fair, Painter does that with both of you too on occasion, but I think it’s safe to say that Sebastian does it the most.

Sebastian is a little distant. He isn’t one to ask for affection, he rarely opens up about things when he should, and overall he’s still trying to get used to… everything. Freedom, safety, some semblance of a domestic life, and having people around that love him and that he can be himself around. He’s still trying to learn that he doesn’t have to fight to stay alive anymore. So he’s distant. He knows he is. He tries to make up for it by doing things with you and Painter that he knows you both enjoy, and being around you as much as he can. Though, the following you around like a lost puppy thing is moreso him being clingy and traumatized and not wanting you out of his sight for too long. He loves you both and loves seeing you and watching you do things.

Anyway, when it comes to receiving, Sebastian’s love language is probably also quality time. And, on occasion, physical affection. He can be iffy about touch sometimes, understandably so – but there are moments where he’ll let you and Painter touch him, and it feels

Safe.

It feels safe, and right, and okay, and he won’t want it to end. He is severely touch starved and knows you and Painter would never hurt him.

I’m sorry I didn’t mean for this to get a little sad but I’m The Angst Author™️ and I can’t help myself LMFAO

Jealousy:

It’s okay to have jealousy arise in poly relationships. We are human (Painter is human enough in my book and Sebastian still counts) and jealousy is normal. What’s important is how you go about it. I just felt the need to say that before continuing with my fictional poly headcanons. Anyway!

Just like with the love languages section, I cannot speak for you and how jealous you get or how you deal with it. But the other two teehee

Painter gets jealous the most. It’s mostly when he sees you and Sebastian being affectionate with each other or having a good time without him. When he does get jealous, he doesn’t really… communicate about it so much as he comically inserts himself into whatever you and Sebastian have going on.

“Dooon’t mind me, just gonna squeeze in here!” He’ll say as he wedges himself between you and Sebastian wherever you’re cuddling or whatever

It’s cute. You don’t need Painter to say that he’s jealous for you two to know when he’s feeling that way. He’s a little obvious. So, whenever you guys see that he’s feeling jealous, you make sure to shower him in love to make him feel better and let him know that he’s always welcome to be included. :)!!

Sebastian is the exact opposite of Painter. He’s quiet about it. He tries not to let on that he’s jealous. But he also becomes a little more reserved when he gets jealous, so you and Painter can usually tell something is up. It took a little while for you and Painter to get him to start admitting to getting a little jealous sometimes, and during that conversation Sebastian said he knew how stupid it was that he ever gets jealous at all – but of course, because you and Painter are amazing partners, you were quick to reassure him that it was okay and showered him in love <33. The both of you eventually learned how to catch on to when Sebastian gets jealous, even if it’s a little hard to notice sometimes. But the more time goes on and you and Painter reassure him that you’ll never leave him behind, the easier it gets for him to open up about it, or not feel jealous at all.

And then there’s you. As I said, I can’t speak for you and how you get jealous, BUT. If you ever do get jealous and Sebastian and Painter catch on, they’ll be sure to drag you into whatever they’re doing and remind you how much they love and adore you. And they’ll be annoying about it, too. They’ll get excessively corny and affectionate on purpose and tell you how you’re the most beautiful person in the world and don’t know WHAT they would do without u ☹️!!!! Ur just so perfect and they’re soo lucky that an angel like U!!!! Loves THEM!!!!! And ur just so great and amazing and adorable and attractive!!!!!

“Sebastian, I can’t breATHE-” You would shout while your fish boyfriend is crushing you to death with his body weight.

“Neither can I when I’m around u” He’ll say dramatically, with a very dramatic and very fake sad look on his face.

Painter is also contributing to flattening you like a cute little pancake.

“Get OFF” you demand.

“We can’t!!! We just love you SOOO much, separating from you would be too unbearable!!” Painter says. Dramatically. While nuzzling you with his screen.

“Urgh- at least turn down your brightness, your screen is burning my eyes!” You complain.

Painter complies. “Oh, I’m so sorry honeybunches, I didn’t mean to!! How could I do such a thing to your beautiful gorgeous eyes :(!!!!” DRAMA QUEEN!!!

“You did not just call me ‘honeybunches’,” you say.

“He did,” Sebastian confirms.

“I did,” Painter also confirms.

“I hate you both,” you sigh.

“Nuh uh,” Painter retorts.

“You love usss,” Sebastian teases.

They’re a pain in the ass.

But they’re your pains in the ass, and you’re not actually as bothered by these situations as you let on.

They know that. That’s why they keep doing it.

#sebastian x y/n x p.ai.nter #sebastian x you x p.ai.nter #sebastian x reader x p.ai.nter #sebastian solace x y/n #sebastian solace x you #sebastian solace x reader #p.ai.nter x you #p.ai.nter x y/n #p.ai.nter x reader #roblox pressure headcanons #pressure x reader #roblox pressure x reader

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feastingonyoureyes · 2 months ago

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Synopsis; How THEY treat you as their (—) lover

Pairing: EYEFESTATION x (Scientist/Mutant) Reader

CW; OOC on Eyefestations' lore, Spoilers, both Eyefestation and reader are GN, rush×not proofread.

How THEY would treat you as their lover, if you were one of the scientists:

Well for starters you and them must've gotten along way before they were experimented on. Possibly even knowing them before it had all even started, or were just one of the few who're nice to them when they were still considered a "human."

Typically, if you were the only one nice to them, they'd be very clingy to be by your side at all cost; becoming restless when you weren't in the sams team of scientists that came to examine them. Throwing a fit and becoming enraged.

If you were on the same team though, then they'd be a lot more docile. Your team urging you to be the one carrying out the more physical examinations that require you to be up and personal in Z-317 space since, well, it's clear there's some sort of attachment it has to you.

In regards to being attached though, you'd most definitely be under careful watch by Urbanshade; to make sure you weren't planning on also getting attached to Z-317 and consider breaking them out. That, would be far too risky for the company to let slip.

So while you and Z-317 might've bonded, it wouldn't — or moreso, couldn't, become a romantic relationship. Unless you want Urbanshade to ... "take you out," whether it's literal or not.

Or you might just end up being experimented on as well.

How THEY would treat you as their lover, if you were one of the mutants/experiments:

(continuation from ^) Let's say you do end up risking it all for love. Causing Urbanshade too many problems to handle, so they had you personally dealt with; separating both you and Z-317 during this period.

While you were absent from Z-317, your lack of presence might've caused them to lash out even more. Thrashing against their glass tank and causing more deaths that weren't ideal whatsoever to Urbanshade. Probably soon was going to be dealt with as well but... Then the lockdown occured.

Sebation setting Eyefestation free from their confinement and while they were given the opportunity to escape from this place, they chose to stay. 1. to take revenge on the humans for what they've done, and 2. was to well... look for you.

No matter how different you look now from how you did back then, Z-317 would definitely recognize you. After all, your presence was the most comforting feeling they've felt in a long while — so they should be able to connect dots son enough.

Again, they'd be a lot more docile when you're with them. (Either walking in the hallway while they swam, or you both swimming together.)

But end up also being hostile as well, far more when you're with them. like y'know how when painter traps you into a room and Eyefestation is immediately red? Well it's something like that, but forthe scenario in mind where Z-317 is being protective; they'd be blue. Trailing and edging close to the window in the next few rooms afterwards, chasing the poor expendable.

#pressure x reader #roblox pressure x reader #roblox #roblox pressure #pressure eyefestation #pressure eyefestation x reader #roblox pressure x eyefestation #roblox pressure eyefestation #x reader #roblox x reader

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aventurineswife · 1 month ago

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Player, admiring a sleeping Sebestian: You’re so cute.

Sebestian , sleepily: I could beat your ass.

Player, lovingly: I know.

#sebastian solace x reader #roblox pressure x reader #roblox pressure #sebastian x reader #pressure roblox #with how the fandom is #I had to #Incorrect quotes

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clanwarrior-tumbly · 4 months ago

Note

What about the Doors/Pressure shopkeepers trying to pretend they aren't giving their crush special treatment when in groups. Like, special inventory, discreet discounts, all that jazz

Jeff (Doors)

"Oye, I see what you're doin', Jeff. Thought you weren't one for giving out freebies."

*shrug*

"Don't play dumb! I saw you sneak the skeleton key into their bag! Even Bob's a witness!"

No matter what El Goblino says, Jeff will just wave off any accusations of him giving you "special treatment" whenever you stopped by the shop with your group.

While none of them donated to the tip jar, you were the only one who ever did...and even when you came back again and again, it was always you who showed him charity.

The rest of your group would just argue over what to spend their money on, try to rush ahead, mess with his radio, etc. etc.

But you trust Jeff, and he trusts you <3

So you get small discounts on his wares, and despite him not being able to speak, you could tell he's only looking after you.

The goblin jokes about Jeff's little "crush" on you...then he sees the entity's eyes widen and realizes "wait amigo,,I wasn't being serious do you actually like them?????"

He just shoos him away and will deny it to kingdom come, but it is true.

The moment you realized his feelings for you was when Rush attacked the shop once, and you thought you were done for-

When Jeff instinctively pulled you behind the counter and slammed the shutter down, keeping you uncomfortably close (yet somehow you've never felt safer).

When it's all over, he blushes and lets you go free.

You thank him with a small kiss on the forehead(?) and promise to see him again soon.

The next time you get duped by Dupe, or attacked by Eyes, Timothy, Screech, or a snare and need to heal...you discover a few bandaids in your pocket that weren't there previously...

Huh.

Wonder who gave you those?

Sebastian (Pressure)

Normally, Sebastian doesn't care to make personal connections with any of the expendables.

He's just there as their supplier before seeing them off on their journey, hoping they're putting his resources to good use.

But recently he's been seeing you more often, coming by with a new group or by yourself, trying your best to survive long enough to reach him.

Ofc, you've died to stupid things before (or maybe you're just trying to get all the monster documents..in which he's convinced you're some masochist), but you did have the most common sense out of your group and didn't try to annoy him.

The others just waste flash beacon charges on trying to blind the poor guy and stick the keycard in a medkit they couldn't afford...and for what?

Why do your "friends" do that? Are they stupid or something?

You tell them to stop, and it's...actually kinda nice to hear somebody willing to defend him.

People usually don't give a shit about the giant scary fish's feelings, yet for some reason you do.

Of course, Sebastian was reasonably suspicious about it.

"Are you acting this way just to get a freebie?" He assumes. "Because if you are, then you're definitely as stupid as-"

"No, I'd never do that to you." You shake your head. "You're here, helping us survive out there, risking a lot to get us those supplies...is it wrong for me to appreciate that?"

"......"

He goes quiet for a minute, but after the rest of your group leaves, he asks you to stay for a moment.

"You were looking at this Necrobloxicon for a while...you must reeeeally want it, huh?" He grins, flicking his tail where the book was strapped. "It's a rarity."

"I...can't afford that. I'm fine with this dingy flashlight-"

"It's yours for 70% off. Take it or leave it."

You do a double take. "Wait, wha-"

"70% off. Take it. Or leave it." He says through gritted teeth, impatient, only to smile when you accept the deal without further question. "Good. Now don't go telling anyone I'm offering discounts. That's your only one unless I feel generous. Capiche?"

"Gotcha. Thank you, Seb. This means a lot. I hope to see you again soon." You smile back, holding the spooky book tightly, and leave him alone with his thoughts.

And a warm and fuzzy feeling in his chest-

Wait.

"Oh no....what the fuck am I doing????? That's it! NO more discounts for anyone, Sebastian!" He scolds himself.

Little does he know, he's gonna keep giving them out, but only for you.

#wholesome shopkeeper time <3 #clanask #anonymous #roblox x reader #roblox doors x reader #doors x reader #doors jeff #pressure x reader #roblox pressure x reader #sebastian solace #sebastian solace x reader #headcanons #fluff

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zombiec4ke · 3 months ago

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Can't take my eyes off you....(Part 1)

eyefestation x hard of seeing reader... summary (I suck at making these): as you were charged of a crime that you didn't do you were sent to ###### high security prison on a death row, but you were given a chance to live free of charge if you retrieved a crystal. How was you supposed to know that it would be better to just die? warnings: some swears here and there nothing too bad...yet...

a/n: uhhh so yeah...I made it...yippe?

(Ps y/n is hard of seeing in this fic, not entirely blind they have glasses but without their glasses they're as good as blind, also gn pronouns)

##-##-20##.

you are an inmate of ###### high security prison..

your crimes are irrelevant.

whether or not you were falsely charged is irrelevant.

you have served 93 days of your # year sentence.

Today, three men from Urbanshade Corporation, being escorted by heavily armed guards, arrived at the prison.

They were searching for volunteers to help them retrieve a crystal of sorts, a highly important asset they were unable to secure during a major security breach in one of their facilities.

they stated the risk of death was high but whoever could retrieve the asset return to them would be pardoned release with cleared record and receive ##### in cash

many of your fellow inmates signed up....

you signed up as well

you are expendable....

You are not expected to return...

the submarine hummed softly in the depths, the sound echoing throughout its small surface area

you were the only inmate on the sub, the others....well, uh let's just say they couldn't make it.

So the sub was eerily quiet without the usual chatter and arguing from your cellmates. You leaned your head on the wall letting the cold metal cool the back of your head.

The sub began to ascend, and soon enough it came to a stop, and you heard the creak of a hatch opening, you lifted your head off the wall and headed to the open hatch

as you stepped onto the concrete (?) floor you heard a man from urbshade on a speaker talk about retrieving the crystal blah blah blah ect you didn't really care to listen to the low quality pre recorded message.

you crouched under some boxes and got a key card that goes to the first door and made your way to insert the key card, when a 'click' noise is heard the doors open and shows a room that is very plain besides a few drawers here and there. you walked across the room to door 2.

the next 10 doors nothing really happened...unless you count spending 10 minutes trying to find a damn key card then stuff happened.

door 12 opened to show a hallway like any other but what was different was that the lights started flickering...that confused you, at first you just thought it was electrical problems but then you heard a high pitch scream so you dove in a locker just in time before a...how do you even describe that horrible monster you saw go past from the crack of the locker....

After the coast was clear you walked out the locker and tried to steady your queasy legs that felt like they were going to give out any second...

"What the hell was that...?" you mumble to yourself even though there was no one there besides yourself and maybe 5 cameras pointed at you from all angles

the next 5 doors were the same as through the occasional flicker of lights, although you found the monster to be a bit easier to hide from the more you met it.

it felt weird calling it an 'it' but you didn't want to call it a he if it's actually a she but then again maybe it's nonbinary...do monsters even have genders?!...*cough* ok enough rambling...

*30 doors later ig; I'm already tired and I don't think you wanna hear me talking about going through more doors*

you stood in front of room 47...you felt tired and hungry...when was the last time you ate? slept?? (it's only been 7 hours)

if the monsters didn't kill you then the exhaustion sure will...you took in a deep breath and put the key card in waiting a bit before the door opened annnnddd..

Pitch. Fucking Black.

You sure are glad you found a lantern! Surely there are no monsters that hate light and will hurt you if you flash them with light!

so rather than trying you go through the door just straight through without needing a light you choose to use a your lantern, luck be told there was a damn Squiddle and it lunged at you knocking your glasses off your face

"fuck" you hissed under your breath as you took a step back not noticing you stepped on your glasses until you hear the crunch of glass

"goddammit..." you say as you try and see but the world is a blurry mess...also you're still in the dark-

well this is gonna be fun... a/n: sorry if it's not long I'm going to make a part 2 where stuff really happens so think of this as a prologue or smth like that

#eyefestation #eyefestation x reader #x reader #roblox pressure x reader #roblox pressure #roblox #gn reader #gn #Uhhh..#I really suck at tagging #part 1 #part 2 is coming ig #I'm tired #but Im always tired #Sooo...yeah :D #let me know if theres any mistakes #kill the sqiddles #I hate them sm

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solacefished · 3 months ago

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he purrs. he absolutely purrs. you cup his chin and scratch in just the right spot and he'll let out the softest sounds you'd ever heard. his ear fins droop and his light flickers slightly. he's never felt safer.

#sebastian solace x reader #sebastian solace x you #sebastian solace #roblox pressure #roblox pressure x reader #please accept me into the fandom i will graciously offer more i promise

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lunarmoves · 1 month ago

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who i see, looking back at me (ch2)

pairing: sebastian solace x reader

mentions: post-urbanshade fic, no use of y/n or pronouns, u are his partner <3, hallucinations, grief/mourning, non-sexual intimacy, touch aversion, hurt/comfort, ooc sebastian probably, again taking creative liberties with his mom and siblings, tentative reconnecting :)

a/n: so this fic is now 4 chapters instead of 2. what happened, u ask? i have no idea. i blame sebastian. also, i made some minor edits to ch1- nothing too major, i just changed sebastian's age from 32 to 33 LOL. i found out pressure takes place in 2025 when he's 32, so i nudged it up a lil. not that telling u guys this makes a difference dsjfhj. i used the urbanshade wiki for a lot of his info btw. anyways, hope u guys enjoy, bon apple teeth!

word count: 11k+

masterlist | part one

ao3 link

In the following days, a storm swept its way down the coast, confining you to your cottage when you weren’t at work.

You sat at the window in your living room overlooking the sea, watching the way rain drummed against the glass. You could hear the way the wind battered the walls of your cottage, a low whistling echoing from a window you likely didn’t close properly. The sky was swollen with dark, heavy clouds that lit up with the occasional fork of white lightning. The rumbles of thunder that followed were loud enough for you to feel in your chest, and you enjoyed sipping at a warm drink as you read a book in the evenings before bed.

After watching the way the waves crashed viciously against the sand and rocks of the shore—following the push and pull of the storm—you wondered if you should be worried about possible flooding. You’d think you’d be used to it after living by the sea for so long. But no, the water was not agitated enough to reach your little cottage at the top of the cove, so you did not think too much about it.

What you did have to worry about, however, were leaks.

“Ah, shit,” you hissed as you toed a bucket under a steadily dripping wet spot on your ceiling. You’d never had to deal with them before, but then again, the winds of this storm were certainly strong. They could’ve knocked something loose. Your cottage was old enough that you wouldn’t be surprised.

“Least there aren’t too many,” Sebastian remarked as he stood next to another bucket. He stared up at the point of leakage, a drop falling every few seconds. “Either deal with them every storm or bust out some tools to fix them, shouldn’t be too difficult, even for you.”

You hummed out something of an agreement, ignoring the little jab at the end. You’d never been the one to do the tinkering or fixing around the house, preferring to observe him instead as he worked. You had to learn things yourself, over the years. It didn’t make it any less painful.

(“Put that engineering degree to work,” you told him as you always did each and every time, then grinned when he gave you that same squinted glare.

“Mechanical engineering is not equal to fixing a pipe,” he grumbled back at you, pointing the wrench in his hand in your direction as you hovered by the bathroom doorway. He lifted his head just enough from the cupboard of the sink to meet your gaze in the mirror in front of him. “Neither is hanging a painting on the wall. Or swapping out lightbulbs, for that matter.”

You just smiled at him, not bothering to hide the way your gaze trailed along the muscles of his back and shoulders—forming shadows along the black tank top he wore. He made a face at you that had you biting your tongue to hold back a laugh.

“It is to me,” you replied in amusement. His groan only made your lips stretch wider. “Chop chop, nerd.”)

You sighed, a weary thing that you felt deep in your chest, and frowned out at your living room with its couple of buckets collecting water. Sebastian lifted his palm just under the leak he stood by. You watched him for a moment before turning away as another drop fell towards his hand.

It felt like ages before you finally found yourself waking up to a sliver of bright, warm sunshine through your curtained window. You could finally pack away the buckets scattered around your home, lazily eyeing the spots on the ceiling where the water had dripped through. You’d need to borrow a ladder from someone so you could inspect the roof. You would deal with that later, you decided.

You opened your front door to breathe in the fresh air of a storm long gone—the earthy smell accompanied by a salty seabreeze that promised better days. Clear skies with feathery wisps of clouds accompanied you all the way to work, where you and your coworker made plans to reschedule that dinner you both had meant to grab before the storm reared its ugly head and sent everything awry.

And once you got back home after a long shift, you took some time to pick your way down the shore to walk alongside the lazy ebbing of the tide.

The storm had washed up quite a few things. Bits of driftwood and seaweed, mostly. But occasionally a glimmer of something shiny would catch your eye, buried partially within the sand. You ended up wandering around for a bit, digging up seashells or small rocks that caught the light in just the right way when you held them up in front of your face.

Eventually, as the sun danced along the horizon and sent its golden light to caress the planes of the earth, you ended up on the dock. Your pockets clicked and clacked with your findings as you walked down its length, the wood only mildly damp now from the days of endless rainfall. The boards creaked under each of your steps, and when you finally stopped at the dock’s edge, you paused for a moment to peer down at it.

It—looked utterly ruined. Splintered pieces of wood that still held on through the storm poked out along the damaged planks. You frowned as you squinted at it. The edge was broken in a way that alluded to three separate points of destruction—the wood cracked and jagged like the maw of a hungry beast. Your lips pursed. Damage from the storm, no doubt. Maybe the vicious waves. Either way, it looked like you couldn’t sit here anymore until it was flagged and repaired. A shame, really. You glanced around at the rest of the undamaged dock.

You supposed you could simply… sit elsewhere upon it. But… You grimaced to yourself as you swept your gaze across the calm waters. No prickle of your skin. No teal glow. No familiar rasp of a voice that made something in your chest ache. That did not mean it would not happen again, however. You were wary. Your own home you could not escape from him, but the dock you certainly could.

Maybe you should spend your evenings somewhere else for a bit.

And that was how you found yourself down in the cove in the days that followed. It was not a place you frequented as often as the dock when you just wanted to lounge around—you needed to scale quite a few rocks to make it to the little beach within it—but it was just as gorgeous. Calm. Quiet. You could sit on the sand and watch the tide rise lazily to brush against your feet.

Here, you felt protected—the cove curving in such a way where you were surrounded on almost all sides by rock apart from the section of the sea in front of you. Not many people ventured over here, preferring to stick by the wider—more open—stretch of the beach. You didn’t mind. All the more peace for you.

You were feeling reminiscent, one particular evening, and decided to bring out that ukulele you’d purchased so long ago. It mostly sat in a corner of your room, collecting dust. But occasionally, you felt the urge to strum a couple of chords in some resemblance of a song—as clumsy and out-of-tune as they were.

You sat cross-legged in the cove, far enough from the water’s edge that it could not reach you for a couple of feet. The sun had long started its descent, making the water sparkle like gems were littered under its surface. A few seagulls cawed overhead, close enough that you occasionally glanced upwards to watch them circle about in the air.

Ukulele balanced partially on your lap, you squinted down at the card that came with it that had the finger positions for some chords drawn out. The card rested on the sand in front of your shin, and you frowned at it as you strummed out a rough-sounding G-chord.

“That’s not right,” you muttered to yourself as you adjusted your fingers on the fretboard. You gave another strum. It sounded clearer—if marginally. “There we go.”

Now to switch to an F-chord. You repositioned your fingers and strummed again. Not bad. Definitely better sounding than your G, that was for sure. The pads of your fingers were starting to ache with how hard you pressed down onto the strings. Your wrist too, for that matter.

After learning a few more chords, you started to idly strum away, searching for a tune. A lot of songs could be played just by using the C-, G-, and F-chords, you noted. Between your mindless down and up motions along the strings, you caught a faint glimpse of an old song you used to hear in your youth. And so, you chased after it, murmuring the words under your breath.

“No, that’s not…” You trailed off as you switched between a G and C, fingers moving slowly. Ah, the order did not sound right to your ears. Maybe an F should follow the G instead. You gave it a try and scrunched your nose when it sounded odd again. “Ah… man.”

A voice suddenly spoke up from somewhere in front of you—low and musing. “Ukulele, huh? When’d you pick it up?”

A brief glance upwards revealed exactly who you’d expected, even as something sank to the soles of your feet. Sebastian lounged stomach-down in the low shallows of the water, head propped up atop his hands as he watched you with half-lidded, squinted eyes. Close, yet not too close that he reached the point where the water’s edge kissed the beach.

The distance, however, was not your main focus.

Behind his upper body, you could see the stretch of a long, thick tail as it trailed towards the sea. Massive, in its entirety, and resembling a snake of sorts. Its posterior side glistened with gray-blue scales that caught the light in a nearly mesmerizing way. There were these black straps that criss-crossed along his tail all the way up to the base of large, whale-like flukes that were arched out of the water. Why the straps were there, you did not know.

He was much larger than you’d thought he was.

You averted your gaze and looked back down at your instrument. Truly, you did not know why he looked so different out here. You didn’t like the way it made you feel. Were you losing your grip on him—his memory? The last fragments of him that you had? No. No.

You didn’t like that at all.

“Helloooo?” Sebastian called, voice pitching upwards. “I asked you a question. Gonna just leave me hanging here?”

You huffed through your nose. He should know this. “Not too long ago,” you told him anyway, squinting slightly at him.

His eyes crinkled into upturned crescents at your response—short as it was. “There, was that so hard now?” His voice dripped with condescension. One of his ear fins gave a little flick. “So, have you realized that it’s actually me, yet?”

You didn’t answer, turning your attention back to your ukulele.

He sighed like he was holding the weight of the world on his shoulders. “That’s what I thought.”

He was quiet as you spent some time strumming away. You were determined to figure out the right chords for this vague song, but you were severely lacking the knowledge of what they might be. You switched back to learning more finger positions from the chord card. Maybe it would fill in some gaps.

“Your thumb is too high on the neck,” Sebastian suddenly said after a while, earning him a quick glance from you. He pointed at your hand. “You’re gonna hurt your wrist like that, babe. It’s also restricting your movements. Lower it some more so that it’s not sticking above the fretboard.” He paused for a second, then added, “Also the strum zone is a little higher than that.”

You mulled over his words for a bit, then adjusted your hold. Playing a few different chords, you realized that yes, it was easier to switch your finger positions now. Sounded much smoother as well. You hummed to yourself.

“You really think if I wasn’t real that I’d be able to give you advice like that?” he asked pointedly, eyes falling into a half-lidded gaze. “Tell you shit you didn’t know about?”

You pursed your lips. You… guessed so. But you had done some online research when you’d first bought the ukulele to learn more about it, being a novice and all. You were certain you’d read about correct positioning before—maybe you forgot but some level of your mind stored the information. You weren’t well versed in the workings of the human brain, particularly when it came to your… situation. You only offered Sebastian a shrug. He sighed deeply and grumbled something under his breath that you couldn’t quite make out.

You went back to trying to figure out the song you’d distantly caught onto before. C-chord, followed by an E minor, G—wait no, an A minor actually—then an F. You were making some progress, as small as it was.

The discordant notes from your ukulele mixed in with the steady swelling of the waves. Somewhere above, there was the caw of a seagull—sharp and piercing. Occasionally, there would be a small splash out in the distance, either from a fish jumping out of the water or a bird diving for a meal. You breathed in and—

Splat!

You made a surprised, strangled noise, something immensely cold and wet and slimy landing directly on your face. You couldn’t even really process what was happening before you felt it slide down and land on your lap. Your face scrunched up, disgusted, then you jumped slightly when laughter erupted from somewhere in front of you.

“Oh my fucking god,” Sebastian wheezed, and your gaze shot towards him to see him practically curled up in a shaking ball. His tail slapped at the water, once, then twice when he rolled around to clutch at his stomach. “H-Holy shit that was funnier than I’d expected it to be oh my god your face! I think I’m gonna piss.” He lifted himself up just enough to look at you, then he burst out into cackles again.

“Hwhuh?” you said, still stunned. He laughed even harder, and you took the time to look down at your lap at your assailant. You blinked at it and felt your lips pull back in some strange grimace.

It was a wad of seaweed—fishy-smelling and gross and goddamnit it was soaking into your clothes and got all over your ukulele—

“Oh man, I missed doing that so much.” Sebastian wiped a tear from one of his teal eyes and grinned sharply at you. “Never change, babe. Never change.”

You only made another sound, picking up the seaweed with one of your hands and flinging it off to the side. You could still feel the residue, well, everywhere. Coating your cheeks and your eyelids and your mouth. It was foul. You swiped your hand down your face in an attempt to get rid of it. You were not all too successful.

Sebastian chortled, then leaned back down with his head propped atop his palm, fixing you with a suddenly calculating stare. The tide swept up and around his body. “So? Would I have been able to do that if I wasn’t real, hm?”

For a moment, you just watched him. His nonchalant pose. His gaze firmly trained on your own. The way his third arm did a little finger wave at you, a gold ring glinting on its fourth finger. You stared, and you stared. Then, you turned to look at the clump of seaweed. After a beat or two, you looked up at the inky sky—where those seagulls still circled overhead. Sebastian followed your gaze.

He paused.

“Wait. Don’t tell me”—he let out a laugh, incredulous, almost—“you think that was the birds?”

A scoff escaped your lips. “What else would it be?” you grumbled, mostly to yourself. You needed a shower, and you needed it immediately. You stood up to dust the sand off your clothes with one hand, the other occupied with holding your poor ukulele.

“Babe,” he groaned, one of his hands raking down his face. His lips trembled, minute. “You’re gonna feel real stupid once you realize I’m actually here, you know.”

You only huffed and wiped at your face again, eye twitching ever so slightly.

And that was how the next few days went.

He would show up whenever you were in the cove at night. Always making these remarks at you to get you to think that he wasn’t just some illusion you’d cooked up. Making you think that the splashes of water you felt on your legs or arms were from him and not the tide. When you moved back to the dock in an attempt to evade him, he followed you there too, and did the same thing again and again and again.

And all the while, he looked as though he was battling something internally. What that was, you were uncertain. But it didn’t matter, did it? He was just an extension of your own thoughts, your own mind.

Ignore, just ignore him like you always do, you told yourself repeatedly. He would eventually stop talking. He would eventually go away. But he never did.

And one night you just couldn’t take it anymore.

“Did you ever want to start a family?” he mused at you one evening in the cove, tail flicking idly behind him. You felt like you’d been doused in icy cold water as you stared down at the book in your lap. Eyes stuck on one word, but not truly seeing it. “We never really talked about it, did we?”

Your jaw tensed. No. No you didn’t.

“Ah, we were so young,” he continued in a quiet voice. “I’d say time has flown, but it didn’t. Not to me.” You did not need to look at him to know he was staring directly at you. The back of your neck prickled. “You’re what, thirty-four, now?” He chuckled. “You look just as I’d remembered.”

The way it was said—soft, tender, like an admission murmured in the darkness of night—added fuel to the way something wrenched itself fiercely in your gut. Paralyzed you on the ground. Your grip on your book tightened. Your gaze landed on your wedding ring, still bright and vivid even after all these years with the care you used to handle it.

It was quiet.

“I’m sorry, you know?” A confession, whispered so gently you almost thought you didn’t hear it. “I’m sorry I was gone. Not that either of us could’ve done anything about it at this point. But I’m sorry I left you for so long, for what it’s worth. Maybe if I hadn’t been…” He trailed off, the implication of his words settling around your neck like a noose. “Well. I wonder sometimes about what could’ve been if all this shit didn’t happen.”

It was never ending, this pain. That you carried on a day-by-day basis, heavy like you wore chains around your ankles and wrists. Your heart. It would be easier to let yourself sink into the ocean, you think. Maybe it would be better than the endless hollowness you felt everywhere in your body.

Sometimes it felt like time did not aid you in healing. You were unsure if it ever truly would.

“I thought about you every day,” he whispered, voice thick with emotions you could not bear to decipher. “Every. Single. Day.”

Something deep inside you cracked like porcelain set too roughly atop a surface. You didn’t want to hear this, you didn’t want to hear this anymore.

“Stop— just stop,” you moaned out, wrenching your grip from your book so you could claw at your head. Your eyes squeezed shut. A dull ache throbbed beneath your fingers. “Leave me alone.”

“No,” he instead said firmly, low cadence to his tone. “I’m not gonna do that. Not now. You finally listening to me?”

You shook your head and covered your face with your hands that shook like you were one step away from being unbalanced. This Sebastian was persistent and talkative in a way that your Sebastian in your cottage was not.

And it hurt. More than anything in this world, it hurt.

“I can’t do this anymore,” you choked out, a fierce stinging making itself present behind your eyes. “I-I can’t. I can’t.”

You thought about your cottage—that had seemed small, at first. But when you stood in the space of your living room and looked around at the vacant couch, listened to the eerie stillness that came with being alone, it was all too large just for you.

Your heart ached.

“It’s not fair,” you sobbed, voice breaking on the tailend of your sentence. “It’s not fair. It hurts too much, I can’t— I can’t do this.”

You were so, so tired.

Of feeling this way. Of waking up to his face and falling asleep with it etched into your eyelids. Of going to work with him over your shoulder. Of finding no escape even in the one place you thought you would be at ease. It was exhausting. You were exhausted.

Sebastian was quiet as you sat there, attempting in vain to wipe away the wetness spilling across your cheeks. The chill of night was starting to set in. You could feel its cold hands snaking up your bare arms. You sniffed and scrubbed at your eyes. Distantly, there was a steady shifting sound. Sand being displaced. The drips and drops of water falling into a puddle.

There was a touch against your knee—featherlight and hesitant.

You froze. And slowly, ever so slowly, you lowered your hands.

A gray-blue hand—large enough to cover the entirety of your knee—brushed lightly against the thin material of your pants. The pads of its wet fingers traced a small circle around it, mindful of the sharp claws attached to its ends. You felt as though you couldn’t breathe, couldn’t tear your gaze away from what you were seeing until the hand drew slightly away.

You looked up through wet lashes to see Sebastian—closer to the point where his shadow covered the entirety of your body. His head was bent towards you, angler’s lure falling into the space between your faces. The twilight that painted the sky in fragile light made his eyes glow softly, lowered as they were to take in your expression. Searching, maybe, though for what you were uncertain.

You swallowed, your gaze darting down to his curled hand, then back up at his unreadable face. A static encompassed your mind, leaving no room for coherent thought.

He seemed to be waiting for something. But when you only stared wide-eyed at him, he eventually sighed.

“It won’t be enough, I know,” he murmured, tail shifting somewhere behind him in the sand. “It will take the both of us. Here.”

He extended his arm before you—bending it in a way where his forearm oriented itself horizontally in front of you. He nodded down at it. “Go on.” It did not take a genius to figure out what he wanted you to do.

Could you do it? You didn’t know. You didn’t even know if you wanted to, for that matter. But one glance up at Sebastian’s face revealed an expectant sort of look to it. Nervous, you might say. Even grim. It did not make you feel any better. If anything, it made your muddled mix of emotions and thoughts even more messed up.

Time… Did you go through enough time?

You stared down at his arm—that looked so real, in this instance. Attached to a body that you could not even fathom in your dreams. You closed your eyes for a moment and could almost feel that phantom touch against your knee. The wetness that seeped into your pants from it. Reopening your eyes, you trailed your gaze from the clenched fist of his thick fingers, to the sharp jut of his clothed elbow. The space between you and it. A grim sort of feeling was beginning to take root in your stomach.

Always at a distance. Never crossing a line.

You took a deep breath.

And then you reached out your hand.

Your fingers sank into the wet material of his jacket. You inhaled sharply through your nose and found you could not pull yourself away for the life of you.

“…What?” you murmured, lightly brushing over his arm. Over and over and over again. Soggy and stiff and so utterly there. You were trapped in a free fall, plummeting down to the earth. “What? No. No, no, no no no.”

Your heartbeat was loud in your ears.

“Didn’t I tell you?” he asked, an unsteady frown overtaking his lips. His voice lowered, barely above a whisper. “I’m right here.”

“No,” was all you could choke out, fingers still feeling at his jacket. Slowly making their way to his elbow, then up his upper arm. Your lips trembled. “No. You—“

Your gaze shot up to his face and suddenly all you could see was him. Honeyed skin and blue eyes and rough scar across his nose. Looking at you so sadly, you almost felt your heart break all over again. An urge, so immense and paralyzing, swept its way throughout the entirety of your body and sank deeply into your very soul. It was all you could do to willingly follow it. You reached up towards his face, stomach twinging, and—

And he flinched away.

“No!” Sebastian suddenly snapped, teeth bared in a sharp snarl.

Your heart skipped a beat. Your entire body jerked back in surprise, your hands retreating towards your chest. He softened almost immediately. A pained grimace overtook his features, and he let out another long sigh.

“I just… Not yet,” he mumbled, shifting away from you so he could wrap his arms around his torso. His gaze lowered to the sand. “Not yet.”

Wide-eyed, you stared at him. You took him in—really took him in. Ear fins that flicked and twitched at the sides of his head. Gray-blue scales that were soaked in the dewy light of the rising moon. Massive tail supporting an equally massive torso. Three arms that tightened and gripped at the folds of his jacket.

This was him. This was really, really him.

And you could not comprehend it.

“I-I—” you stammered, pushing yourself up to your feet. You felt unsteady. Your chest hurt. It was like you couldn’t even think properly with how your head felt like it was stuffed with cotton. You clutched at your book as though it was your only lifeline. Maybe it was, at this moment. You took a shaky step back, sand crunching under your shoes. “I need… I need a moment.”

Just to yourself. Just to breathe and process.

The waves ebbed back and forth beyond the cove—the only sound for a few terse minutes.

“It’s okay,” Sebastian told you gently, though he couldn’t quite meet your eyes. His lips pressed together as his head turned away to look out at the sea. “I can wait.”

The next day passed by in a thick haze.

You’d gone to bed feeling completely and utterly spent. Your dreams were filled with muddled images of teal eyes and sharp teeth, this accompanying sense of dread so deep that you woke up still feeling its stifling presence. It felt like you constantly had something pressing down onto your chest. You pulled yourself out of bed and stood in front of the mirror in your bathroom, frowning at your reflection as you rubbed idly at your sternum.

Behind you, reflected in the glass, was your Sebastian. He didn’t say a word. Just stood there and smiled. You lowered your gaze down to your sink and felt your frown deepen.

You went through work feeling oddly detached from your body, your mind swirling constantly with thoughts of the previous evening. If you stared down at your hand—the one you’d used to caress his arm—you could almost feel the sensation of his jacket against your fingertips. The coldness. The wetness. The realness.

God, the realness. You had to cover your face with a hand so you could giggle hysterically into your palm. He was right. You felt stupid. But beyond that, it felt like you were still trapped in some kind of fog. Maybe you’d finally lost it after all this time.

But no, no, this was real. This was happening. You’d felt it yourself.

…Didn’t you want this? Didn’t you spend countless nights thinking about him? How much you missed him. How you would give anything for him to come back to you. The things you would do. The things you would say. It had all evaporated into thin air—was replaced with this hollow feeling that you could not decipher for the life of you.

You’d wanted him back, right?

Your Sebastian, with his— his…

Something in your stomach writhed endlessly.

“Hellooo? You still there?” a voice asked in your ear.

You blinked back to awareness, your phone clutched in your hand. The breakroom of your workplace was empty apart from you sitting at its little table. You cleared your throat. “Yeah, sorry. Zoned out a bit. What were you saying?”

There was a small pause. Then, “Are you… okay?” Isidora asked hesitantly. You could practically hear the frown in her voice. “It’s just… You seem out of it.”

You rubbed a hand across your face. Truthfully, no, but you weren’t about to tell her that. “I’m fine. Work’s just been… work. You know how it is.”

She made a small noise in understanding. “Oh boy, yeah I get it. Just last week I had a 10-hour shift. I swear, some of my coworkers are so incompetent.” She huffed, then her voice softened. “Well, if you’re sure you’re okay, I won’t press you about it. Just make sure you’re getting enough sleep, yeah?”

You blew a raspberry at her, your voice taking on a slightly teasing lilt. “What are you, my mom? I’ll be fine.” You paused for a moment, then added, “Speaking of, how’s Maria?”

“She’s fine. Recently took up knitting actually,” Isidora told you. “I think she’s working on a blanket right now. She tried beanies first, but they didn’t turn out all too well.” She snickered.

“Never thought I’d see the day where she’d take up knitting,” you mused.

“I know right? She used to say she’d never get into any ‘old lady hobbies’ and now look at her!”

“She’s not working full-time anymore, right? She’s probably bored.”

“Oh for sure, especially with Lucas not home to cause trouble.”

“Yeah? When’s his spring break?” you asked, glancing over to the wall in the breakroom that had a small calendar hung up on it. It was nearing March.

“Not until next month. We still have some peace and quiet. A little too much, if you ask me.” She sighed, then her voice brightened. “Oh! Actually, Mama and I started going through some old albums the other day. Hang on, there were some pics I wanted to send you...”

You hummed. “She did make a hobby out of album making a while ago, didn’t she?” You thought back to that album of family photos Sebastian kept in his desk—that you ultimately ended up returning. You frowned to yourself.

“Yeah, holy shit you should’ve seen the number of boxes we sorted through,” Isidora said, her voice slightly fainter like she’d removed her phone from her ear. There were a few tapping sounds. “It was nice seeing all our baby pictures. I almost forgot Lucas used to look so cute when he was a toddler.”

You snorted, then removed your phone from your ear when it gave a little buzz of an incoming message. You clicked on the notification banner from Isidora.

Instantly, you could feel the smile fade from your lips.

The first picture was of Sebastian—chubby-faced and missing one of his front teeth as he grinned up at the camera. He was kneeling on a wooden floor as he petted the back of a fluffy, brown cat. There was a bandaid across the bridge of his nose where you knew a rough scar would form, but it didn’t obscure the way his eyes crinkled in delight.

(Teal eyes. Fingers like knives.)

The second picture was of you, Sebastian, and his siblings right before you went out Trick or Treating one year. You remembered this. Isidora spent so long trying to help Lucas with his Bumblebee costume—it came with so many different parts. You could barely see the peek of Lucas’ blue eyes past the yellow helmet. Isidora herself dressed up as the girl from The Ring, her long, black hair framing her face in shadows as she stared monotonously forward.

Your gaze lingered on Sebastian, his teeth bared at the camera to show off the two fangs he bought for cheap at a store. Fake blood ran down his chin from the corners of his mouth. His arm was wrapped around your shoulder, where you were posing like you were about to bite into his neck. Both of you had black makeup smudged around your eyes and long, flowing capes that you remembered had been a pain to deal with as they dragged along the ground outside.

(Teal eyes. Fingers like knives. Body covered in scales.)

The last picture—

You felt your mouth turn dry like cotton had just been forced into your throat.

Deep breath in, deep breath out.

The last picture was of you and him. Dancing in the middle of a small wedding hall. The photographer had caught you mid-laugh. What Sebastian had told you, you didn’t remember now. But you lingered on the way he smiled down at you, cheek dimpling slightly. The warmth of his gaze. The familiar crinkle of his eyes. The way your hands were intertwined tightly together, gold bands glinting on each of your fingers.

(Teal eyes. Fingers like knives. Body covered in scales. Pungent smell of—)

All of them were taken in a way where it was clear they were pictures of the pictures already printed out in their designated albums. God, you had no idea Maria had kept some of these. You could feel a cold sort of feeling spreading throughout your body, numbing everything it came in touch with.

There was a reason why you didn’t keep the pictures you’d had back at your apartment.

And that reason was currently swimming around in the depths of the ocean instead of the bottom of a casket like you’d originally thought.

“I thought you’d want to see them, it’s been so long since”—Isidora’s voice broke off and she cleared her throat—“well, y’know.”

You didn’t even know what to say. “I— yeah.” You blinked, once, then twice. Forcing back the stinging you felt at the corners of your eyes. “Thanks.”

He’s alive, you wanted to tell her. He’s alive he’s alive he’s alive and he’s here and he’s so much different than you or I could have ever possibly imagined.

But… you couldn’t say all that. Not when everything was still so disconcerting for you. Not when you were still struggling to come to terms with it yourself. Not when you knew she would never believe you.

“We still have some more albums to go through. I’ll send you more pictures if I come across them!” Isidora said eagerly. “It’s just… nice to have them, y’know?”

“Yeah,” you forced out, even as it felt like someone had grabbed a fistful of your insides and ruthlessly twisted. “It… It really is.”

That same evening you found yourself pacing relentlessly in your living room.

You could see Sebastian from the corner of your eye as he sat on your couch, his head moving side to side as he followed your movements.

“You’re gonna wear a hole in the carpet at that rate,” he told you, idly tugging at the cartilage piercing on his upper ear. “Relax.”

You ignored him.

Glancing out the front window, you could see the sun’s last vestiges of light disappear under the horizon, making way for a cool, dark night. You couldn’t see a wink of moonlight anywhere. Either a cloud was blocking it or it was a new moon, you weren’t sure. It didn’t matter though. Your insides felt like you’d swallowed a jar of jittering bees.

You were procrastinating, you knew. But part of you reasoned it was better to go under the cover of an almost vantablack night, the stars your only light. Your gaze darted to Sebastian, one of his feet jiggling slightly from where it was crossed over his knee. You worried your bottom lip between your teeth and turned back to stare out at the black, rolling sea.

Every time you closed your eyes you could see his face—inhuman and unfamiliar.

Did you want him back like this?

Something had happened to him. Something bad. The way he drew away from you was telling—the way he couldn’t quite look you in the eye. You wanted to ask him what happened, how he ended up like… like that. But you were scared of what his response would be.

All this time, he had been alive, somewhere, and you were none the wiser. You were none the wiser. It was as heartbreaking as it was utterly devastating.

You sighed and scrubbed your hands along your face. This wasn’t about you. This was about him—likely waiting for you by the shore. It was time to get a move on.

You patted yourself down and did a final sweep of your living room to make sure you’d packed everything neatly away. Then, you slipped out the front door, the moon finally making its presence known as the clouds parted overhead. Slowly, you made your way to the cove, carefully picking down a few steep rocks until your shoes came into contact with sand. There was a slight chill to the air as you trudged over to your usual spot and stood there, staring out at the sea.

You did not need to wait long.

“You’re here later than normal,” a smooth voice called out pointedly once his head broke through the waves. He swam closer leisurely—the teal glow of his eyes bouncing off the water in front of him—then lounged on his stomach a short distance away. Eyes fell into a half-lidded look. “Was beginning to think you weren’t gonna show up.”

You shifted on your feet, looking away from him to stare at the ground. “No I… I was just waiting for it to get darker.”

Sebastian hummed like he didn’t quite believe you. “Right. Well?” He seemed to brace himself. “I’m sure you have… questions.”

You did. You really, really did—brimming as they were on the tip of your tongue. But you swallowed them down, just for a moment.

“I do,” you told him, “but…” You hesitated.

He picked up on it right away, drawling out a “Buuut?”

You fidgeted with your fingers, rotating your ring around. “Do you… want to come in? First?”

There was a pregnant pause. You grimaced to yourself.

“You mean…?” His head flicked up towards the top of the cove, where your cottage stood idly waiting. The lights were still on inside, making the windows glow a warm, welcoming orange.

You nodded, then flapped your hands around nervously when his expression flattened out—unreadable. “Ah, I mean— I just thought it might be better? Than being out here, you know? But— But if you don’t wanna, we can stay outside, I don’t mi—“

He cut across your fumbling words. “Yeah, we can go. I just…” He trailed off, avoiding your gaze. “Didn’t expect you to offer, really.”

There was… honestly a lot to unpack there. But you could do that later.

“Alright, c’mon.” You lingered in place for a moment, then turned on your heel to make your way back over to the edge of the cove. You glanced over your shoulder when there was the sound of rushing water—thousands of droplets trailing down Sebastian’s torso as he lifted himself up from the tide and slid his way towards you.

It was… oddly captivating, watching him move. The anterior side of his body did not have scales like you’d assumed—there were scutes, instead, that helped him move easily across the sand. The thick muscles of his tail undulated side to side, displacing sand to leave a trail. You watched as the grains were pushed out of the way. The water that fell from his body and darkened the ground.

Shaking your head slightly, you turned to the rocks to begin your steady ascent.

The quiet of the climb was interrupted only by the occasional sound of waves forming and collapsing in the distance. You swept your gaze around the bit of the shore and dock you could see just in case there was anyone wandering about for a late night stroll. Luckily there wasn’t, but even if there was, you didn’t think they would be able to make out anything in the dark.

If you strained your ears hard enough, you could hear the steady slithering of Sebastian’s body as he followed somewhere behind you. It made the hairs on your arms stand up straight, the piercing feeling of being watched weighing heavily on your form. You peeked at him from time to time, watching the way he slipped easily over rock and grass. His long, thick tail extended far behind him and blended into the navy-blue shadows.

You… didn’t have much to say. Neither did he, apparently. But that was okay.

You shuffled up the last bit of the climb and rolled your shoulders once your feet found flat earth. Grass tickled at the exposed parts of your ankles as you tread over to your cottage to wait by the door. You couldn’t rid yourself of the prickling along your body.

He took his time to meet you there. You had a feeling that he could be much faster if he wanted.

He came to a stop by your side, his eyes slightly squinted as his tail pushed himself up much higher over you. And the two of you stood there for a moment. You, looking up at him. Him, looking down at you.

Neither of you said a word. Waiting for the other, you realized.

You cleared your throat, eyeing his taller—wider—form, then the front door’s frame. You… believed he would fit. Probably. You set your hand on the doorknob.

“Well,” you said in what you hoped was a casual manner, cracking the door open so that the inside light could spill forth across the shadowed ground. “Here’s home.”

You stepped inside, your body cutting through the light to cast a long shadow behind you. Sebastian hummed, and you looked at him to see he was lingering just out of reach of the light. Your head tilted at him.

“Mind turning the lights off?” he asked, grimacing slightly once the words left his mouth.

Oh. You paused and turned his request over in your head. You supposed you never did see him in broad daylight—it was always during the evening, when the sun had already turned in for the night.

You nodded and shucked your shoes off to the side before walking over to the wall that had your living room light switch on it. You flipped it off, darkness immediately dousing everything within its vicinity. You blinked, waiting for your eyesight to adjust. Moonlight through your open-curtained windows allowed you to just barely make out Sebastian’s form as he slowly moved his head and torso through the doorway. His teal eyes pierced through the shadows to land on you.

He shifted a little. “Wanna see a cool trick?”

“...Sure?” Confusion lined your voice.

The shadow of one of his arms reached up to pull on something and before you knew it, a warm, golden glow washed gently along the walls and floor of your cottage. You squinted slightly at the angler’s lure that curved down from the top of his head, breathtakingly luminescent. Hypnotizing, almost. Your stomach churned.

“S’better on my eyes than regular bulbs,” he explained in your silence, shifting further into the living room. “Easier to handle than the artificial light or whatever. Though darkness is, mh, ideal.”

Ah. “That makes sense.” You watched as his head turned this way and that while he took everything in. Your couch. Your sparse decorations. The small coffee table with books stacked atop it. The fluffy carpet on the floor. It made you feel awfully self-conscious. You rubbed your upper arm.

Exhaling lightly, you stepped back towards the front door once the last bit of his tail slipped inside and closed it gently. And once you turned around, you spent a moment to just… take everything in.

It felt like there wasn’t enough space to hold all of him, curled up as he was in your living room. His long, serpentine tail wrapped around your couch so that the wide flukes at its end rested heavily near your coffee table. And even then, he was still coiled in a way where his tail supported him up, his head nearly brushing the wood of your ceiling where he was tucked in a corner of the room.

A little too large. A little too out of place.

How in the world were you supposed to deal with this? How in the world was any of this real? You were still having difficulty wrapping your head around it.

Sebastian hummed, two of his hands clasping at each other while the third reached out to run its fingers across one of the cushions on your couch. “Cozy.” His gaze landed on you. “How long have you been out here for?”

You shrugged as you shuffled closer, stopping right by the curve of his tail. You stared vacantly down at it. “A while,” you told him. “After everything happened.”

“Not a fan of the city anymore, hm?”

You slowly shook your head. “No. It was just… too much.”

He nodded, a motion that made his lure bob slightly in place. The reach of it caused the room to be partially bathed in both light and shadow that shifted with even the smallest of movements. But you could still see the sopping wetness of his jacket. The way his waterlogged scarf hung heavily from around his neck, and his hair was plastered to the sides of his face. You frowned.

“Do you want a change of clothes or something?” you asked him, the words leaving your mouth before you could really process them. Your gaze trailed along his tail. Even the straps attached to it were still wet. That couldn’t be comfortable for him. Right? “Maybe a towel?”

He waved you off lazily with his third arm. You followed the gesture with your eyes, latched onto the bandages wrapped around his forearm. Those were wet as well. “Nah. I’m fine. Don’t you worry your sweet little head about me.”

Your frown deepened. It felt like all you could do was worry, now.

You fixed him with a stare. “Sebastian, you’re sopping wet. At least dry off. Or let me toss your clothes into the wash.” You pondered it for a moment. “Actually that might be better.” You’d only ever seen him in those clothes, after all—even if most of the time you’d thought he was well, not real.

He only grinned mischievously down at you, mouth full of sharp teeth that made something in your stomach lurch. “Already trying to get me out of my clothes?” he purred, eyes lowering into low crescents. “You rascal. Take a guy out to dinner first.”

You squinted at him. There was an air of forcefulness to his words that you were only just able to pick up on. Bravado. A facade. He was deflecting. And you were not about to be fooled by it.

“You’re making my floor wet,” you said flatly. His smile twitched slightly at the corners. “I’ll go see what I have. Though I don’t think there’s anything that’ll fit you, really.” You eyed his upper torso. “I think I have a large blanket, that might work.”

“I really must decline,” he said cooly, but you were already gone—stepping around his tail to head over to your bedroom. He called out your name in exasperation. “Are you listening to me? I said I’m fine.”

“Right, right,” you replied idly, opening your bedroom door so you could shuffle over to your closet in the dark. There were various linens stacked up on a shelf, and you pulled out a towel and a decently-sized blanket that you used occasionally when it was chillier. This would have to do. The thought saddened you.

Bundling them up in your arms, you shut the door with your heel and turned to make your way back to the living room.

Sebastian loomed in the doorway, the light from his lure gently lighting up the corners of your room. One of his hands braced against the top of the frame as he peered at you. “Awfully persistent, aren’t you?”

You rolled your eyes. “Come now,” you said as you approached him. He moved out of the way so you could step through the frame and look up at him. “Surely you don’t want to keep those on?” You held up the towel. “Here.”

“I assure you, I am more than a little used to some wet clothes,” he drawled as he reached out to carefully take it from your grasp. In his hold, it looked much smaller. He clutched it in a fist.

“Well, you don’t have to be”—you jabbed a thumb over your shoulder in the general direction of where your washer and dryer were tucked away—“It wouldn’t take too lon—”

He growled—a sound that made your hairs stand straight up on your nape. The room darkened fractionally. “I said no.” Eyes narrowing, he set you with a firm look. “You’ll quit asking if you know what’s good for you.”

There was a moment where you just watched him. Observed him, your eyes flicking over his face. The hair partially shielding his eyes. The way his lips pressed together in a thin line. This was not a battle you would win. And that was okay. Baby steps.

You took a deep breath. And then you exhaled it all out.

“Okay, okay,” you relented softly, averting your gaze to walk over to your couch. You dumped the blanket over it, then sat down wearily. “You win, for now. I don’t suppose you happen to have anything else to wear?” It was futile to ask, but you had to anyway.

“This was what I was given,” he said dryly, shifting on his tail so that he sat coiled upon it somewhere in front of you. He fidgeted with the towel. “You learn to make do.”

And wasn’t that a sobering thought.

You bit at your bottom lip, your fingers wringing together as you watched him use the towel to carefully dry his hair. You burned and burned with the number of questions that lingered bitterly on your tongue. You swallowed, and one of his ear fins twitched slightly.

Quietly, you asked, “What… happened?”

He stilled, staring down at the towel gripped between his fingers. And after what felt like a long, long time, he sighed.

“Better get comfortable,” he mumbled wearily and closed his eyes for a brief moment. “It’s a long story.”

You were woefully unprepared for a single thing that left his mouth.

A fake execution report. An experiment to give humans gills. Being trapped in an underwater facility for years. It all sounded like something straight out of fiction. You were beyond stupefied. In hindsight, thinking he was a hallucination wasn’t even the worst of it all, but it certainly didn’t make it easier to get rid of your own struggles with him actually being here right now. Part of you wondered if he was lying to you to avoid talking about something unfathomably worse—if such a thing even existed.

But he wasn’t. You saw it in the way his jaw tensed from time to time. The way he flexed his fingers and his tone changed into something much cooler. And even if what he was saying didn’t sound possible… it made sense. It made sense.

You didn’t know what to do with all of it. Didn’t know how to react, really. There was this gnawing pit in your chest that worsened with every word that left his mouth. You… couldn’t even begin to imagine what he had gone through. And even then, there were things he certainly wasn’t telling you. Call it intuition but… you could sense it. He didn’t tell you everything. And you were not sure how to feel about that. Still…

All this time… All this time.

And you’d been none the wiser.

“So how did you… escape?” you asked as you rubbed your fingers into your temples to stave off a growing headache.

Sebastian grinned, a sharp thing that showed the dark gums of his teeth. “They let their guard down.” The grin turned into more of a baring of teeth. “I stole a keycard, caused a sitewide lockdown. Liaised with one of Urbanshade’s competitors and they got me out in exchange for selling them data.”

You blinked at him. There it was again, that feeling that he was purposely leaving out details. You didn’t call him out on it. “And then you came… here?”

He made a noise, his shoulders shrugging. “Sure.”

“How did you even find—?”

He cut you off with a snort. “The power of corporations, babe. It was easy for them to find your location. Made my life easier when it turned out you were living on the coast now, too.”

You weren’t even going to deliberate that too deeply. “They just let you come here?” you asked dubiously.

“Mmmmyep.” He scratched slightly at the side of his face. “Don’t be mistaken, I’m still in contact with them. For ah, other business purposes.”

“Other business purposes,” you repeated warily.

Sebastian gave you a close-mouthed smile, his eyes crinkling shut. “Don’t you worry about it.”

Right, this again. It felt like you’d just aged fifty years in one sitting. You sighed and leaned back into the couch, your arms crossing over your chest. Chewing on the inside of your cheek, you wrestled internally with all that you had learned. A weight had been placed upon your shoulders. But you knew it was nothing compared to the one he carried on his own. You frowned, pinching at the bridge of your nose.

You felt sick. So, utterly, sick.

Sebastian was quiet now that he’d said his piece. He wrung the towel still in his hands together as he glanced around your cottage again. Eyes jumping from one thing to the other, though you had no idea what he was searching for specifically. Eventually, though, he spoke once more.

“...You never remarried.” It was said more as a statement than a question, like he knew even before saying it. You supposed if he’d been watching you all this time, it would have become apparent that you lived by yourself. You watched him carefully.

“No,” you replied simply. You showed him the ring still on your finger, the gold glinting up at him. “See?”

His gaze flicked down to look at your hand. His head tilted slightly, the light on his lure brightening minutely.

“Aww,” he cooed, “I knew you were still madly in love with me.”

You gave him a look—stricken as you were by his words. “Of course,” you said quietly, looking off to the side. “Always.”

He seemed to sober up at your words. He cleared his throat and looked away. But you still continued to gaze at him, your eyes flicking down to his third arm where you could see that glint of a band around his fourth finger. You hesitated, then steeled yourself for what you were about to ask of him.

“Sebastian,” you murmured. His ear fin flicked, but he didn’t meet your gaze. “Give me your hand.” Then, after a pause, you added, “Please.”

You think the request caught him off guard, just a little. He opened his mouth, but before a single word could escape, he glanced at your face and closed it abruptly. You wondered what he saw there. You waited as he seemed to mull your request over in his head. Then, he shifted closer to the couch—his larger body looming over your own and painting you in gentle, soothing light.

You reached out a hand, patient. He eyed it, then slowly, so slowly, he extended one of his arms.

You shook your head. “No, not that one.” You pointed to his third arm. “That one.”

He seemed taken aback. “You…” he trailed off, then shook his head with a sigh. “Alright.”

He lifted his arm up and reached towards you. Leaning forward, you met him halfway. But before you could touch him, you flicked your gaze up to his face. He watched you. Quiet. Intent. Not a single breath being taken between the two of you.

Your hands grasped at his own. Real, real, real, real. It was… strange. Different. You couldn’t help the way your insides writhed and writhed and writhed. Inhuman. Unfamiliar. His hand, even one that was starkly smaller than his other two, was so much larger than yours, now. Thicker. Colder. Harder. It felt like he had a shell of some sort encasing his fingers. And the tips of them were sharp like the end of a blade—carefully curled away from you as they were. You held onto one of his fingers and pondered upon the distinctness. Lost yourself in the feeling. His finger twitched under your grip.

(“Hey.” Sebastian nudged you with his foot, forcing you to tear your gaze away from your notes to raise an eyebrow at him. He was sitting on the other side of the couch, his back pressed against its arm. “Let me see your hand for a sec?”

“What for?” you asked warily, yet still extended your hand out to him. He gave you a small grin, then took your palm with a contemplative hum.

His free hand went up to his chin in thought as he twisted your own this way and that. “Ah. Just as I thought.”

“What?” you pressed him, not liking the glint in his blue eyes.

“You’re missing something,” he told you. “Something so important that I fear you might die if you don’t get it soon. Shit’s fatal, you know.”

You lowered your eyelids at him, not believing him for a second. “And that is?”

Sebastian hummed, nodding slightly to himself, before he laced your fingers together. Your palms pressed against one another, the sensation of warm skin encompassing your own. “There. You’re cured. You're welcome, by the way.”

You puffed out a laugh and tried to fruitlessly yank your hand away. His grip tightened. “Sebastian, how are we going to get any work done like this, huh?”

“Not my problem. I can work just fine with one hand.” He wiggled the fingers of his free hand at you, the black polish on his nails slightly chipped at the tips.

You rolled your eyes and stuck your tongue out at him. “Your hand’s all sweaty.”

“Rude. My hands aren’t sweaty, yours are.”

You gave him the stink eye. “No you.”

He mirrored your expression back at you. “Alright, get over here you little—” With a swift yank, he tugged you over to him. Yelping, you felt yourself get dragged across the couch until you found yourself trapped within his arms. They tightened around your body, and for extra measure, you felt one of his legs hook around the back of your own.

You gave a halfhearted wiggle, your cheek pressed against his chest. “This doesn’t help either of our productivities.” Your voice was muffled a bit. If you inhaled even just a little bit, you could smell his musk covered by the sweet scent of cinnamon. “You stink.”

He tightened his hold. You could feel his head lower to rest atop your own. “Think about what you��ve done and maybe I’ll let you go,” he murmured into your ear. You could practically hear the devious grin in his voice.

You only sighed in resignation and hid your smile in his shirt.)

You shook your head slightly, pushing down the ugly feelings crawling up your throat. Focus on the here and now. Peering closely at his fourth finger, you observed the gold band.

“That’s—a big ring,” you said slowly, squinting at it. There was no way that was the same one you both had exchanged at your wedding. It was much bigger, for one. And simpler. “What happened to the one I gave you?”

“Broke,” he replied with a forced casualness that you could smell from a mile away. His tail shifted behind him.

You raised an eyebrow. “Broke?”

He cleared his throat. “Yeah. Y’know, when the whole”—he gestured to his body loosely with a hand, making it seem like it wasn’t as big of a deal—“happened.”

“I see.” You cocked your head, running your thumb over the large ring. Once, then twice, then thrice. “So you found a new one?”

He grumbled something low under his breath. You glanced up at him to find him pressing the towel into the lower part of his face, not quite able to look at you anymore. “Yeah,” he begrudgingly admitted. There was a warmth in your stomach, somewhere, fed by the rosiness that you could see on his cheeks. You willed the feeling to chase away all the others that simmered under your skin.

You gave him a small, teasing smile. “Hmm. I knew you were still madly in love with me.”

He sniffed and tugged his hand away from your grip—incensed now that you threw his own words back at him. You let him go willingly, your smile turning into a grin. Your hands tingled in the aftermath of holding his own. “Shuddup, weirdo.”

You chuckled and spent a quiet, peaceful moment just sitting together in your cottage. Listening to the vague ticking of the clock that rested somewhere on a wall. You breathed in, then out, willing your mind to cease its incessant buzzing.

“...What now?” you quietly asked, your question lingering in the finite space of your living room.

Sebastian only watched you, his eyes a gentle glow. “I don’t know.”

You exhaled through your nose and glanced outside at the darkened sky. You could feel a specific kind of fatigue itching at your eyes. It was late, and the events of this evening had been so utterly exhausting. Still were, honestly. Rubbing a hand down your face, you stood up and stretched out your arms.

“It’s getting late,” you said, rolling your shoulders. “I need to sleep, I have work in the morning.”

He blinked, seeming to startle out of thought, and flicked his eyes over your face. His lips pursed. “Right, yeah,” he grumbled, shifting as he straightened up and turned towards your front door. “I’ll get outta your hair then—”

Instantly, your heart leapt up in your chest. You stopped him with a gentle touch on his arm. He jerked slightly before he turned to give you a questioning look. Pulling away, you held your hands in front of your sternum. “You’re leaving?” You did not want to admit to the vulnerability that coated your voice.

“...Duh?” He hesitated. “Don’t you… want me to?”

“Not at all,” you told him, stepping back to give him some space. “You can stay.” Then, timidly, you added, “For as long as you want.” You… thought it was a given that he could.

Sebastian stared. He stared and he stared and he stared until finally he slouched forward and released a long, long breath. “...Thanks.” One of his hands scrubbed at his face. He looked so tired. Your eyebrows furrowed.

“Make yourself comfortable.” You gestured at the living room, the blanket still piled upon your couch. “I’ll grab you a pillow, one sec.” You took a step back towards your room, then paused and turned back around. “Oh, I can take the towel too.”

He didn’t seem much for conversation anymore. He only nodded and handed back the towel to you, damp as it was from mopping up the water from his body. You could feel his eyes on you as you scurried back into your bedroom to sling the towel into your laundry hamper and grab an extra pillow from your bed.

“Here you are,” you said as you reentered the living room and tossed the pillow in his direction. You hoped it didn’t have any of your hair on it. He grabbed it out of the air with one hand, something contemplative to his gaze. “Help yourself to anything in the kitchen if you’re hungry. I think I have leftovers.” You shifted, pointing your thumb behind you at your bedroom. Was this okay? “I’ll… just be in there if you need me.”

And there it was again. That look on his face like he was battling something mentally. Like there was something just barely on the tip of his tongue that he wanted to say. He held onto himself, hands gripping at the folds of his jacket. Gazing at you so— so….

You hesitated, wondering if this was the right thing to do. You both were not the same as you’d been all those years ago. It made the air thick with something that went unacknowledged.

You broke the silence with a gentle clear of your throat. Baby steps, you reminded yourself. “Well… good night.” “...Good night,” he whispered, still watching you with this look in his eyes as you stepped into your room and finally closed your bedroom door with a quiet click.

part three

#icb i let this fic beat me up in an alleyway like this #shay scribbles daydreams #sebastian solace x reader #sebastian solace x you #pressure x reader #roblox pressure x reader #<- still takes me out #who i see au #if u guys saw that lactose intolerant fact ignore it i was wrong LMFAOO

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