#this is what we get for starting my remade seb blog with stabbing ]

[antielevator]

In the long seconds of his death, Sebastian doesn't compute anything. He doesn't feel the black tendrils that weave through his blood, nor the sharp sensation of needles as thousands of microscopic threads pull the layers of his wound shut. His body is gone, so something else has to put it back together again: something that pulses in him, something that sends flares of information to nerve endings that no longer respond. Over and over this thing makes up for what he's lost-- litres of blood are replaced with black liquid, electric synapses are turned to tiny explosions of spores, and then Sebastian's heart beats, and beats, and beats again.

Wake the fuck up for me, Ethan begs, and that single command makes spores explode at the stem of Sebastian's brain and jolt all his systems back into motion.

His eyes open first, and his lashes flutter delicately. Then his lungs catch up, and he ends up coughing hard. There is nothing delicate there, nothing soft or gentle as he hacks up invisible intruders. The change may have woken him, but the instincts in his subconscious mind panic; he coughs, and coughs, and coughs until his eyes are wet, and should Ethan help him in any way he'll turn to his side and wheeze miserably.

All over his body there's that pinpricking sensation of blood (corruption) flowing back where it shouldn't. Sebastian shuts his eyes tight against the discomfort, and then outright sobs when he suddenly becomes aware of the tightness of his chest. His heart is beating too fast, too hard, and he clenches his fist and slams it into the floor with a wordless wheeze.

It hurts... The black in his veins is going to burn him from the inside out, it feels like, and with this level of contamination every weapon in his immune system's arsenal is fired one after the other. He's feverish and sweating, there's blood coming from his nose, and he's just barely keeping himself from gagging. In a panicked craze, Sebastian curls into himself and starts clawing at his own shirt. It hurts-- it hurts-- get it out of me, get it out of me, get it out--!

He fails to realise that none of this is spoken out loud. He barely hears his own desperate, mindless snarling as he rips the buttons to his shirt apart and digs his blunt nails into flesh (he doesn't notice the knife scar by his heart has healed completely and left his flesh smooth).

At this rate, the overstimulation might drive him mad.

ethan doesn’t know what he’s doing. he doesn’t know what to do, whether or not what he’s hoping for will even work — but he has to try. it’s his own mistakes, his own bout of insanity, that brought this on, and if there’s even a chance to fix it, he’s going to take it.

it isn’t necessarily a conscious act, but instead more of a feeling. a thought that ethan hopes he’s somehow willing into existence. fix him, fix him, fix him : words thought over and over again, a mantra, silently commanding the decay that lingers beneath the skin to make itself useful. to put sebastian back together, to keep him alive. to worm its way inside his ribcage and make itself at home inside him.

as his hands remain on sebastian, face streaked with his own tears, ethan knows there is risk involved in this. there’s a small part of him that knows that it may go wrong as it did with so many of those taken by the bakers ; there is a small part of him that wonders if he’s being selfish by even trying. but when sebastian whispers his name, when his eyes flicker closed and his body goes slack against him, ethan knows it doesn’t matter. none of those risks are important in comparison to fixing this shit.

he still does not move away from sebastian’s body, even once he’s ceased breathing. he does not quit touching him, thumb stroking along his jaw. it feels somehow important that he stays close, and that’s an instinct that ethan won’t argue with.

he’s dead, silly, that little voice in the back of his head laughs, girlish and airy. he’s dead and you killed him!

she’s right, and yet she isn’t.

seb is dead. ethan did kill him.

but somewhere deep down, as ethan stares at his best friend’s seemingly lifeless form, there’s a feeling of connection.

a flutter. a tug on a string connecting him to the man beneath him. it is sensed by some crucial part of him, almost as if it is in the fibre of his very being, and ethan knows that it’s worked in some way or another.

how well though, he isn’t sure.

sitting here watching and waiting for sebastian’s eyes to open, to see the rise and fall of his chest, feels like an eternity of torment. “ wake up, you bastard, ” ethan murmurs, tone bordering on something close to pleading. “ i know you, seb : you’re stubborn. you’re a fighter. you can do this — just wake the fuck up for me … ”