Have
"Fancy joining us?" Ominis asked her with a small smile, his arm linked with Sebastian, who stood stock-still as the girl before them shook her head bashfully.
"Maybe next time. Thank you, Ominis."
Sebastian wanted to ask her to stay. Ask her to link her arm with his as well. Ask her to take Ominis' place. Ask her to get out of his mind.
"It's just the two of us," Ominis let out a short chuckle as she left, his pale blue eyes oblivious to the way Sebastian's brown ones followed her with a longing he had never shown him in three years. "I suppose we can call it a date."
Ominis' saccharine talk would have felt like a blessing to anyone who appreciated the boy as he deserved. And Sebastian neither appreciated it, nor deserved it.
"I suppose," he replied, and forced his arm to stay still in Ominis', not letting the steel chafe his wrists just yet.
And a date it was, alright.
Sebastian struggled to hold the chains just a bit looser, hoping that if his heart had more space to thump when he was with Ominis, it would beat as one with his again. But he knew it couldn't, because as soon as the lock came off, Sebastian was sure his blood would burn only for her.
He strived to go back to how things were, when Ominis could make his body float and light and make him fall just as heavily, down, down until he hit the ground so harshly he could only piece himself back together at his presence again — and yet now the mere thought of her lips, red as the scent of Carnation of her hair, was enough for Sebastian to bounce back from the surface, unscathed and whole and willing to break himself for her at his own hands.
"About Friday night…" began Ominis, and Sebastian was forced out of his reverie.
"Friday night?" he asked, and suddenly the world was much too bright and much too real, and he released his arm from its scorching grip, pretending to fix his shoe. Ominis didn't seem to mind.
"Not this Friday," he punctuated with a small smile. "There's a rumour around Hogwarts that Samantha Dale is hosting a party for her upcoming birthday in about a month," he continued, his arm still slightly distant from his body, awaiting for Sebastian’s to slide back in. "Some people have even gone far enough to call it a ball." He chuckled and shook his head.
Sebastian wasn't sure what he was getting at. Was it an invite? Was it mere gossip? "Do you think we should attend? I haven't received an invite."
"Oh, no, that wasn't my suggestion." Ominis let a small smile play on his lips. "I have no intention to wound my poor ears with that shrill torture they call music, however…" He turned back to Sebastian, who was growing more confused by the second. "Our friend is going to attend, and you know how she can become. She doesn't know her limits, does she? Would you do me — and her — a favour and pick her up at a reasonable hour?"
Sebastian's heart immediately sped up — just for a second, enough for a rather worrying rush of blood to hit the front of his head and make him feel much too unreal again.
"Sure," he croaked out, straining his lungs to breathe.
"Thank you."
And Sebastian was forced back in the cage as his arm joined Ominis' again.
Sebastian had rehearsed it for a week, pacing in front of the mirror, looping his head around the words of betrayal that were about to spill from his mouth. And yet, once Ominis had arrived at the meeting he had set, proper and well-kept and with a small but excited smile on his face, those words fell down like dead flies.
Only two remained uptight.
"I can't…"
Ominis' face morphed to confusion, his lips turning down in a frown. "Can't what?"
"Be with you anymore."
And then was silence — the kind of tension that could be cut with a knife. And yet Sebastian felt like all the knives in the world were laying on his hands as his now-ex boyfriend bled to death.
Because indeed it felt like a stab in the back. A stab in those three years in which Ominis had given him all of himself. And yet a stab at a new, possible future. One with her .
He had never seen Ominis look so heartbroken: not when he cast the Cruciatus Curse, not when he murdered Solomon.
"Why not — h-have I done something?"
The desperation in his voice broke Sebastian's heart, and yet his traitorous brain could only think about her, and how she could piece it back together for him with a smile, and a smile only.
And a traitor it was. "I'm sorry, I… I don't think it's love anymore."
Questions and tears broke the perpetual silence. A 'How long?' Sebastian didn't know the answer to, and a 'Is there someone else?' Sebastian couldn't acknowledge the answer of, were the main ones.
And then Ominis ripped the chains from Sebastian's heart so harshly that they permanently severed it.
"She doesn't love you," said Ominis through tears. "You know that, right?"
He did.