#and not to mention there were rumors that chiara fell in love with someone and wanted to leave cosimo for them

[thedeadthree]

shouting from the rooftops because this song is FITTING for chiara/marc and im yelling. and taylor swift did it again and made a song that fits them as well why am i crying.

[akfanficlove]

“Double Feature” - #SeblaineWeek2020

Written for Seblaine Week 2020 – Power Couple

Check out all of my other Seblaine-stories here at AO3 :)

Blaine getting his first feature on Broadway.com and Sebastian being part of the interview. Also, since Santana was one of my favorite characters on Glee and Naya Riveras sudden death and the thought of her baby boy really breaks my heart, in honor of Naya I gave her character a special place in this fic. I hope she feels the love.

“Sebastian, I can’t find my other shoe! Have you seen my other shoe?” Sebastian sighs and puts his phone down. He has been ready for a good 15 minutes, waiting for Blaine to get dressed.

“Sebastian!”

He gets up to go their bedroom where he finds Blaine frantically searching through his closet, shirt still unbuttoned and halfway tucked into his pants. And right there, next to their bed, the missing shoe. He goes over and bends down, grabbing the shoe and handing it to Blaine. There is a nervous energy bouncing from his boyfriend that he hasn’t seen since they moved in with each other six months ago, a year after he came back from Paris.

“B, it’s only an interview, you’ve done this before, remember?” He sees Blaine’s eyes widen in shock.

“Excuse you, it’s not only an interview, Sebastian! It’s my very first feature for Broadway.com, it is huge to get this at my age!”

Sebastian holds up his hands in surrender. “I didn’t mean it like that, I know it’s a big deal. But didn’t you say you talked to the journalist on the phone and she seemed rather nice? Isn’t she even kind of a fan?”

Blaine frowns. “She seemed very nice. Very familiar and impressed with my work, yes. But she’s not a fan, I think if she was, she would not be allowed to do that interview in the first place. Some kind of journalistic standards or something…”

“Makes sense”, Sebastian agrees. “You ready now?”

“Yes!”, Blaine beams at him and starts to make his was down the corridor while he buttons up his shirt. “What are you waiting for? Let’s go, we have an interview to give, Seb!”

  When they arrive at the hotel, there are a few fans outside. They still have a few minutes and Blaine usually goes out of his way to take care of his fans – signs t-shirts and Playbills, smiles for pictures and accepts compliments with a shy smile. Sebastian is usually pretty annoyed when strangers approach him. He doesn’t get as much attention as Blaine, his bit of modeling for fashion magazines more a hobby he gets paid for than a career path he wants to follow full-time. No, he is really happy with his position at the advertisement agency he started with Hunter and Beat four months ago. It had taken a while to get everything worked out, their personalities clashing in more than one way, but in the end they each found their places in the general construct of their firm.

Still, Blaine always seems to have a soft spot for his admirers, his smile big, his eyes sparkling with gratitude and awe that someone recognizes him and likes him enough to want to talk to him.

After the small group of people seems satisfied for the moment, Blaine makes his excuses, turns around and grabs Sebastian’s hand. Together, they enter the hotel and look around. On a table in a quieter area of the lobby two women, one of them with short brown hair, olive skin and a camera bag in her lap. The other woman has long, dark red hair and silver rimmed glasses, pen and paper sitting in front of her on the table. As if she feels Sebastian’s gaze, she looks up and her face breaks out in a genuine smile. He pulls Blaine closer to the table when he sees the redhead get up and take a few steps in their direction.

 “Blaine Anderson! It’s so good to finally meet you, I really am happy that we could both make this work”, she says shaking Blaine’s hand. Then she looks at Sebastian. “And you must be Sebastian Smythe, right? I loved your latest shooting for Vogue, you look very great in black and white – or, well”, she looks him up and down, “in color, too, obviously.” She smiles at him. A little superficial, Sebastian thinks, but he’s not one to turn down a compliment.

“I’m Alexandra – Alex is fine – and this is Chiara, my photographer. Please, sit down, guys!”

They both sit down on the table as Chiara gets up to adjust the setting for the pictures later.

“I’m well aware that you are kind of a pro by now in giving interviews but just let me talk you through how I do it: I have a colorful bunch of questions prepared for you but if you can’t answer one of the right away, take your time or let me rephrase it – this isn’t television and we are not daily business, we have a lot more time than my colleagues in the news usually do”, she says and smiles cheekily. “I try to take notes during our conversation, so there might be some pauses in between when I finish writing after you finished talking and I say this because it’s okay and it doesn’t have to feel awkward. It should take about an hour, then I’ll hand you to the very talented Chiara for some photos. As soon as we are done with the article and everything is approved by my bosses and ready to be printed – which should be in, I don’t know, 2 or 3 weeks, probably– I’ll e-mail you the quotes I used for fact checking. We have limited space to I’d be very grateful if you wouldn’t use that to rewrite the whole story”, she laughs, “but if there is something I didn’t get right or where you have the feeling I misunderstood when I tried to make sense of my thousands of pages of writings – please let me know. Oookay, that’s it, I guess. Any more questions before we begin?”

Alex looks at them expectantly. She has light blue eyes, framed long lashes that can be seen through her glasses and Sebastian thinks, maybe she really is different from all those more-paparazzi-than-journalists-bimbos that try to turn everything into a scandal who Sebastian meets occasionally.

“Okay, then. First of all, Blaine – wait, is it alright if I call you by your first name? Good, great. So, Blaine, your first big Broadway-show just came to an end for you – is there a way to describe how that feels?”

Blaine sits up a little straighter. His nerves might have calmed down when Alex explained how this things would go but Sebastian sees his fingers fidgeting with his sleeves. Sebastian grabs his right hand and slips his fingers through. He receives a thankful smile.

“It’s definitely hard to put it into words. I’m incredibly sad to leave the cast and I loved the role of Ryan. But there is also this side of me that wants to explore and try new things and is excited for what’s to come. Both sides are fighting a war inside of me, seriously, and the jury’s still out on who will win”, Blaine laughs nervously.

“Talking about new things: Rumor has it your newest project reunites you with one of your old friends from Ohio, TV-star Santana Lopez?”

“Yes! I guess, it’s official now, so I can finally talk about it. Santana and I will work together for a short film and she’ll actually come live with us for the 2 months which are planned for shooting. She usually lives in LA and we all know, New York rents are high, so we offered. It will be…” Blaine hesitates and shoots a look at Sebastian. “It will be interesting to live with her, I think.”

Alex’ head peaks up and she stops scribbling. “That was a very meaningful look there. What’s the story? Not so happy with your decision anymore?”

Sebastian smiles. “No, that’s not it. Santana is just a wild ride and some people – “ He looks at Blaine. “Some people might dare to say that we are very similar in certain ways and that together we can be quite a lot.”

Blaine sighs and grins. “Seriously, we both love her, she’s so much fun but Santana and Seb have a special kind of relationship founded on deep respect for each other’s wit and snotty remarks. And when they really start with their banter, they can be a lot to take in and you better get out of their way.”

“Yet”, Alex says, “you offered her to stay with you. So, there must be something you like in her?”

“Oh, there is so much I admire about her! I mean, she’s fierce, she doesn’t take crap from anyone and she really taught me to advocate for myself. When we went to school together, we weren’t extremely close but she was always there, you know? No matter what. Maybe with a loving insult on her lips but deep inside she really cared. I think, that’s probably why we stayed in touch even when I transferred back to my old school.” With each phrase Blaine had gotten more excited which ended with him now sitting on the edge of his chair, leaning in and supporting himself with his elbow on the table.

Alex seems amused by this sudden outburst but she doesn’t say anything. “Since we’re talking about your school life, you transferred three times in four years of high school, right?”

Blaine nods.

“That seems like a lot…”

Blaine blushes lightly but holds her gaze. “Yes, I guess it does when you see it written down on a paper. To be honest, I don’t think about it like that. For me, it was the right decision every single time I made it. I spend most of my high school time at Dalton Academy in Westerville, though, the same school Seb attended and the school were we fell in love with each other. After a lot of high school rivalry and Sebastian being a stupid brat – “, he smiles, “and me being stubborn and a little careless, maybe, but in the end, we found each other and that’s what matters.”

“A stupid brat, huh?” Alex laughs.

“A stupid brat. You may quote that”, Blaine confirms with a cheeky glance to Sebastian. Sebastian just huffs. He still feels uncomfortable when his asshole-actions of his lesser glory high school days are mentioned.

“So, what about the other two schools? When Dalton obviously seems to be so important to you.”

“It is. Well, I attended William McKinley High School in Lima between Dalton and Westerville Central High before I went to Dalton. It’s not easy for me to tell this but I transferred to Dalton after some stupid people decided that being openly gay in Ohio was obviously something that could be punched out of someone and they tried that theory on me, so to speak.” Blaine lowers his gaze. He sounds angry more than still hurt. Sebastian squeezes his hand and slides as close as he can in his chair.

Alex stops scribbling and looks at Blaine with wide eyes full of empathy like she understands what Blaine is admitting out of a sudden. She puts down her pen and paper. “Blaine, if you need a minute…? And remember, you can just say, you don’t want to answer and we’ll go on.” She looks genuinely sorry that she touched such a delicate subject by accident.

Blaine takes a deep breath and sits up straight again. “No, it’s okay. Please, I want to tell this story.” Alex takes her pen again and nods. “Okay. So, what do you mean when you say that someone tried to punch being gay out of you?”

Sebastian feels Blaine’s fingers tremble a little but his voice is strong when he tells Alex the story of the Sadie Hawkins dance.

It was one of the little secrets Blaine whispered to him years ago in the comfort of the dark when they were laying squeezed into his small bed in the Dalton dorms. Back then, he couldn’t see but feel the tears rolling down Blaine’s cheek silently when he told him about the flashbacks he kept having for weeks afterwards, how he flinched when anyone touched him and about Dalton’s strict bullying-police that made him feel secure for the first time in forever when he actually saw it executed 2 weeks after he started at the school. He told him about the Warblers, the brothers who took care of his fractured mind and heart after his broken bones were already healed, about Wes and David who Sebastian had never met, about confidence and unconditional support he was given when he finally started singing and playing piano again. And if Sebastian felt a little more shitty than the already did for how he used the grief and hurt of exactly those brothers after Blaine left, well, he tried to make up for it by tugging Blaine a little closer, holding him a little tighter and brushing away stray tears with his thumb.

Sebastian shakes his head to push the thoughts away just in time as he’s asked “And then you met Blaine and fell for him on first sight? Because, seriously, I could get that, I saw pictures of him in that cute navy blue uniform. Although, the hair, Blaine…?” Sebastian laughs and ruffles through Blaine’s curls with his right hand. Blaine dips his head and glares at him, trying to smooth it down again.

“Yeah, the hair was something. And in hindsight, you might be right, maybe I did fall for him the minute I saw him standing in that Dalton common room door. But to be honest, I wasn’t very fond with the idea of love back then and Blaine was ridiculously in love with someone else. So, as much as there may have been a certain spark or something, we weren’t really ready then. When Blaine came back to Dalton – per my insistence, I might add, there might have been an impromptu song accompanied by a not so impromptu performance – we started becoming friends again. But it took us months to finally admit that we were more than that, to be ready to be more than that.” Sebastian smiles at Blaine and when he sees that mushy expression on his boyfriend’s face he gets every single time when Sebastian tells the story on how they fell in love, he leans forward and kisses him softly. Wow, okay, that was a first, they’re usually never that affectionate in professional settings.

 “Gosh, you guys are too cute… Umm, talking about being ready and cute: We talked a lot about your past today, what about your future? Any romantic news?” Alex smiles sweetly and bats her eyes. It takes everything in Sebastian to not roll his.

“If you’re asking if there will be any wedding bands decorating or hands any time soon, I have to tell you… who knows, we’ll see.” Sebastian smirks at her and she smirks back: “That’s not a ‘No’, so I guess I’ll keep an eye out for any rings.”

Blaine intervenes. “What Sebastian means is that we are very happy how things are right now. Seb is starting his own business, I’m very lucky to be in that short movie with Santana and we’ll go from there. I mean… marriage is definitely on the agenda at some point, so sooner or later, yes, you’ll see wedding bands.”

Little does Blaine know about the small velvet box in Sebastian’s dresser, buried in socks and burning a whole in Sebastian’s mental pocket because, yes, there will be a proposal. He just has to work up the courage to actually ask.