Payment

It comes out nearly three months later.

The group is relaxing together at the loft, eating takeout and enjoying a rare, low-key night in. All’s well until Kara stumbles over a stray patch of nothing and spills her sesame chicken straight onto Dawn’s chest.

It’s not exactly unexpected. How the girl can have the grace of a ballerina but still can’t cross a room without stumbling over her own feet has been a source of many a raised eyebrow and more than one joke about her having literally emerged from an anime. So Dawn just rolls her eyes, shrugging off her repeated apologies, and heads for the stairs, stripping her shirt as he goes.

“If I was still in love with her I’d be having such a silent freak-out right now.”

Dawn nearly trips over nothing.

As one, the group does a slow-turn toward Seb, who’s dropping his drink down onto the table and wincing.

“Shit. I did not mean to say that.” And he sends an embarrassed half-shrug Dawn's way, and looks back down at his noodles like that ends the conversation.

Eyes flit from Seb to Dawn, who stands, body taut with tension, nerves fluttering between shock and does she seriously and doubt and wait, what? Sean, maybe the most used to his friend’s random proclamations, recovers first, laughing nervously.

“Wait, dude. When did you have a crush on Dawn?”

Seb pokes at his noodles for a few more seconds and then looks back up, shrugging.

“It wasn’t a crush, it was more like… Ok, I guess it really doesn’t matter now anyway. It was more like this whole life-altering, all consuming love thing.” And then he smirks. Smirks. Like his words aren’t tearing rapidly fraying holes in the fabric of Dawn’s reality.

He shrugs at Dawn again, like it’s a small joke they can laugh about together.

“Sorry, man. Awkward. But it’s a total non-issue now. Like, beyond not even being an issue.”

She feels strangely exposed even though Seb is the one talking, finds herself dragging the stained shirt back over her shoulders.

“How is it a non-issue?”

Something like that, something ‘all-consuming…’ He’s a teenager; he’s exaggerating. Or maybe the whole thing’s a joke. That would explain how Seb is so calm, so blasé talking about it.

It’s a hollow thought. She feels her cheeks going hot.

Lily’s mind is clearly going in a completely different direction, though. She breathes, sharp and startled: “Seb, you didn’t…”

The ironic smile flits from Dawn to Lily.

“You guys knew I gave up something.”

It’s been nearly three months, and it doesn’t take any of them more than a second to clue in. Kara’s hand claps over her mouth. Sean makes a half-choked, whimpering sound.

Dawn’s not sure what she does, but it makes Lily’s eyes go soft and pained when she shoots a glance her way.

Seb glances between them, brows crawling high up his forehead.

“Guys, stop looking like someone died. It’s cool, seriously. Feelings nixed, no crazy aftereffects. I’m fine.”

“You gave up your love?” Kara breathes.

Love.

The word hits Dawn so hard she feels it rock inside him like a physical force. The thing that Seb had given up three months back... he hadn’t gotten to choose what it would be. He hadn’t gotten to sort through his feelings and pick out the one that wasn’t that important, that he wouldn’t miss. The witch had demanded the most powerful emotion inside of him.

The most powerful emotion inside of him had been love. For Dawn.

And somehow, when Seb turns his gaze back to Dawn without a hint of hesitation or tension, when he grins and rolls his eyes, expression asking really, what’s wrong with these people? it ends up being the last straw.

Dawn’s in front of him in a second, grabbing his shirt and jerking him forward. Takeout noodles and chopsticks clatter across the floor. Sean makes another sharp sound but doesn’t intervene and Seb stares at her, face inches away, startled and plainly baffled… and nothing else.

Something’s been missing for months, and she hasn’t been able to pinpoint it.

I’m better off without it anyway, he’d said.

Dawn resists the urge to shake him, to rattle that bland look right off of his face. Her voice comes out ragged.

“Was caring for me really that horrible?”

This is where the indignance would usually flash in those eyes, where he’d pull away or jab his finger into Dawn’s chest, or lean in so close Dawn could feel the warm puff of air as his breathing picked up, his heart pounding and his cheeks flushing.

Now he just sighs.

“You know what? Yeah, Dawn. It was.”

The hand drops off Seb’s chest. Dawn takes a small step back, her heart grinding and clenching against the pressure of that casual indifference.

Seb brushes a stray noodle from his shirt.

“I was a wreck. I mean, I was embarrassed for me. Every time you were in trouble or hurt, I’d feel like the ground was being ripped out from under me. You left town for a couple months and I literally went crazy.” He laughs. “I’d replay every stupid conversation we had for days afterward. I’d pick out clothes wondering if you’d like them, even if I didn’t think I was seeing you that day. Like… seriously. Remember when you said my shirt looked decent that one time and my entire wardrobe suddenly turned plaid?”

He’s barely worn flannel in the past three months.

He continues, cool and toneless.

“And I’d have these extended fantasies about you… and I’m not just talking about the Not Safe For Work kind. I’d think about just like… what it would feel like to hold your hand. How I could convince you to let me hold your hand. And… like, whether you’d be a total grump in the mornings, all scowling and squinting against the sunlight. But I always imagined you’d be a morning person. You’d wake up ridiculously early to watch the sunlight and have these awesome omelets waiting for me when I finally dragged my ass out of bed. ‘Cause I could so tell you love cooking. I mean your loft is practically empty but you’ve got a spice rack, really? Or… Jesus, I’d wonder whether you’d want kids someday or whether your past made you too scared to ever want a family.”

Dawn flinches, and Seb rubs his forehead. The rest of the group stands frozen around them, like they could fade away by just staying still long enough. Or maybe they feel like Dawn: too numb, too shocked to think about moving.

Seb looks like he’s embarrassed again now, like that’s the only feeling he’s capable of having when it comes to Dawn. Maybe it is.

“I’m sorry, I just…” He laughs again, and the sound cuts through the air like sharp claws. “Can you even picture that? Do you have any idea what it feels like to be so totally gone on someone you know is never gonna feel the same way?”

She shouldn’t say anything. She can’t say anything. But it was not saying anything that had brought this about in the first place. Dawn’s voice drags out, raw and broken.

“…I do now.”

.-

She flees the loft. She doesn’t care if it makes her a coward. She doesn’t come back until she knows that it’s empty, and then she doesn’t let anyone in for five days.

Every member of the pack comes by at least once. Lily starts out sympathetic and quickly turns to threatening before storming off, clipping her $400 heels at a volume Dawn’s sure is designed to dig straight into her brain, a petty form of payback for locking her out. Kara leaves honest to god groceries outside her door, along with boxes of homemade cookies and containers of soup like she has the flu and isn’t just dying inside. Maya talks about how Seb is a really such great guy, Dawn should try not to be mad at him.

And Sean doesn’t bother saying anything, just sits against the door and lets Dawn sink down against the opposite side. They find respite in each other’s heartbeats, silently commiserating over how oblivious they’d been, about how much had been sacrificed without either of them noticing.

The group is there for Dawn, but she can’t bring herself to face them. She’d failed Seb. She’d failed herself. And, apparently, she’d been so impossible to care for that Seb had chosen to surrender his feelings instead of actually talking to Dawn about them.

How the hell is she supposed to face anyone again after that?

.-

“Let me in. Seriously, Dawn, I’ll camp outside this door. You know I will.”

The door swings open just as Seb is settling himself for a good long lean against it; he stumbles straight past Dawn into the loft before catching himself.

“Why?” There’s no give in the tone, just bitterness.

Seb had done that. He’d put that there.

He sighs tiredly.

“There are so many ways you could be going with that question, Dawn.”

“Why would you wait out there? Why are you here?” Dawn’s words are stiff and indignant, her stance closed. Seb rakes a hand through his hair.

“Don’t turn it into that, ok? I still care.”

Her brows lift. Do you?

Of course he does.

“You’re still my friend.”

He’d chosen those words carefully, thinking they would help, thinking they would make the distance between them easier. Friends are everything to Dawn. It isn’t until he says it out loud that he realizes how much like “let’s just be friends” it sounds.

Dawn’s brows come down in a hard scowl, and Seb almost senses an echo of a feeling, a memory of a feeling. He remembers loving Dawn’s indignant faces, trying to force them with jokes or jibes. Having a mental catalogue of everything from “I’m trying to look grumpy to hide how much you amuse me” to “on the verge of a murderous rampage; steer clear.” Remembers marveling at the way those heavy brows would reveal every emotion with just an arch or a twitch. Dawn’s face had been a masterpiece to him once.

And now… well, it’s not like he’s blind now. Dawn’s a pretty girl. But it’s all so distant, so abstract.

It’s such a bizarre feeling, to look at something that meant everything to you, and just not care.

“I love cooking,” Dawn says abruptly, like she’s been waiting five days to say it, and Seb feels some of the tension go out of the air. He grins.

“Knew it.”

But Dawn’s staring at the ground now, and Seb isn’t sure where to go from there. This should be easier for him – he’s the one who’s not invested. But somehow that just makes him feel wrong-footed. Robotic. How the hell can he have a proper heart to heart when his heart’s just not in it?

“…Why didn’t you ever tell me?”

That’s better. Questions, he can deal with. Especially such obvious ones.

“Come on. You were Dawn. You were this beautiful, intelligent, impossible fantasy for me. And you barely tolerated me, and you’d had these boyfriends… I know, I’m sorry, but you had. What were the chances of you ever being the slightest bit interested in this annoying teenage boy you barely even liked? I mean, I can handle the occasional gut-wrenching humiliation as well as anyone, but that? You rejecting me? That would have destroyed me.”

Dawn’s lips thin out, and she’s looking at Seb now with something like bitterness and something approaching self-loathing. Seb rubs at his neck, feeling awkward.

“But even knowing all that, I still wanted to be around you all the time. I couldn’t seriously think about being with anyone else because you were always there.”

“Past tense.”

Seb pauses, shaken out of his ramble.

“What?”

“Every time you talk about me it’s in the past tense.”

“Well… I guess you’re kind of past tense to me, dude.” And he winces at his own words, knows they come out cruel and callous and he doesn’t mean them that way. Dawn’s face does that thing where it tries to close off but there’s just too much emotion to hold in. Her jaw goes stiff, her eyes bleeding hurt and loss. And betrayal.

He’d had a mental catalogue for this too – the scale of Dawn’s stormy expressions from “make a casual joke and leave me alone for a while” to “I desperately need someone to hug me for six hours but I’ll probably kill anyone who tries to.”

Dawn’s eyes haven’t looked this vulnerable since Ben.

And Seb does care, even if he doesn’t care. Dawn’s still a friend.

So he doesn’t duck out, no matter how awkward he feels. He steps slowly forward and his hand goes up to brush Dawn’s cheek, an echo of a gesture he might’ve one time meant.

“I remember being so in love with you.”

Dawn’s eyes are open wounds. She takes a shuddering breath and leans in slow, and Seb lets himself be kissed. Lets soft lips brush against his, lets her graze his cheek as Dawn clutches his shirt and kisses harder, a desperate, longing whimper breaking in her throat. He squeezes his eyes shut and tries to remember that just three months ago this would’ve been something so much more than mildly pleasant, that three months ago that sound would have wrecked him.

His eyes open slowly as Dawn finally draws back, looking pale and choked and shaken, searching Seb's face for something he can’t provide.

“And where am I supposed to find a witch to take this from me?”

Seb draws a steady breath.

“Everyone was in danger, Dawn. The whole town was in danger, even you. Do you want me to say I regret it? I can’t regret it. I mean, I regret that it’s obviously hurting you now, and part of me’s sort of curious if we ever would’ve made this crazy thing work but…” he trails off, shaking his head. “Someone needed to do it, and I did, and I’m fine now.”

“You’re fine now,” Dawn echoes. It could have come out bitter or ironic, sarcastic or doubtful, but Seb senses that she’s actually taking solace in that knowledge.

…Damn.

Seb made the deal and Dawn’s paying the price, and she’s still worried about whether Seb is ok.

They could have been so in love.

It’s an abstract realization: numb, distant, intangible. And for the first time in nearly three months, Seb wonders if he really is fine after all.