Payment

It’s stupid not to just tell everyone. It really is. Because if the witch suddenly shows up back in town looking for trouble or worse yet, if everything works out and suddenly he and Dawn are bizarrely, ridiculously, sickeningly in love again, then what?
Either way, the group’s going to find out sooner or later so there’s no reason to keep quiet about their plans. There’s no reason for Seb to panic and stuff his research books under his homework whenever Sean drops by his room. There’s no reason to suddenly start flinching away from contact with Dawn in public or avoid the group’s questioning looks or stammer out excuses that there’s no way Sean or Maya will buy for half a second anyway.
For some reason, he can’t bring himself to admit to this. To wanting this.
To wanting to have his love back.
Even inside his head, the words twist around and feel like something wrong. He gets shaky at the thought of it, the sight of Dawn suddenly sparking feelings inside of him for the first time in over eight months. Now all at once Dawn’s face is frustration, is nervousness, is guilt, is anger.
Dawn's face is jealousy.
Because Seb wants what Dawn has. He wants to feel things he barely remembers feeling. He wants to want someone in a way that isn’t casual and isn’t just physical… And he’s starting to seriously feel like he’ll never be able to have it at all if he doesn’t fix this. No matter who else he’s gone out with, where else he’s tried to focus his attention, everything’s always come back to the same place. It’s Dawn or nothing.
And the most ridiculous thing? He doesn’t even fucking like her.
He doesn’t, ok?
How can he? And how can he look forward to loving someone who means nothing to him?
Dawn can barely meet his eyes anymore; the few times Seb has turned his head at the wrong instant and caught her staring, it’s like Dawn’s eyes are bleeding desperation and maybe doubt or fear or something else that falls on Seb like a heavy weight… until it’s swiftly swept away, walled up, and replaced with a stony glare that’s as close as Dawn’s able to get to blankness.
The love of Seb’s life, ladies and gentlemen. Sometimes he seriously finds himself questioning his pre-cursed self’s taste level because… hot, broody, and emotionally stunted? Definite turn on, yeah. But falling in love material?
The group knows something’s wrong. Knows it’s something between him and Dawn. But Seb feigns ignorance when they question him, because what is he supposed to say? How can he say that he wants feelings he barely remembers having? How can he say that he wants to love her out of a selfish need to remember what loving is, at the same time that he wants to love her so he doesn’t have to feel selfish for sleeping with him anymore? How can he say that he resents his friends, every one of them, for making him feel guilty about not feeling guilty, for making it impossible to just take what he wants and enjoy it?
He doesn’t even know if he’ll want Dawn when this is all over, after all the time that’s passed and everything that’s happened. He doesn’t know if he’s romanticizing what he felt, if it just was a passing crush or if he’s just at too different a place from where he was then for them to make sense anymore.
And if he tells the group, they’ll all expect a fairy tale.
Seb has never believed in fairy tales, even back when he felt love. He doesn’t see this thing with Dawn ending happily ever after, and his doubts grow as they days go on. But he wants… he deserves the chance to choose for himself.
…And yeah, Dawn deserves to know too. Closure if nothing else, right?
Seb doesn’t talk to her anymore, not really. Not exactly the most romantic way to start his quest to get back his love, but that’s why fairy tales are crap, right?
This is his life now.
.-
Until he comes back from football practice one day. Until he steps into his room and tosses his gear in a corner, and sees Dawn at the edge of his bed, elbows on her knees, hands clasped, an open book at her side.
She’s still not looking at Seb but her jaw isn’t doing that tight-angry-defensive thing either. She looks… uncomfortable, maybe, or uneasy.
Seb stops in the doorway. His dad’s still at work, won’t be back until well after dinner. He doesn’t need to worry about pitching his voice low or pulling the door shut behind him before announcing, “Something tells me you’re not here to give the rising athlete a well-earned blow job.”
Something in Dawn’s eyes flutters – a little heat, a little tension. Her jaw starts to clench.
Seb just rolls his eyes, strips his shirt off and tosses it into a corner, digging a fresh one out of his drawer. He still stinks of sweat, but it’s a little better now. He’ll shower once Dawn leaves.
“What’s with the book? Find something useful?”
“I found a way to stop feeling.”
Seb stops with the shirt over one arm, turns slowly and ends up dropping it to the ground beside the first instead.
“You… what?”
Her eyes are shifting over the floor restlessly, hands rubbing against each other like she’s trying to scrub some sort of stain out of them.
“It’s just as good a solution. Some might say better.” She draws in a quick breath like she’s gathering courage, and manages to drag her eyes to his for one searching second before she’s looking down again. “This is only a mess right now because I care and you don’t. If I don’t care either everything will be fine. Balanced.”
He feels his tongue drag out across his lips, a rush of heat flooding over him because… fuck, it would be, wouldn’t it? They could screw when they wanted, not worry about it when they didn’t, and neither of them would care. He could have everything he wants from her and lose everything he doesn’t, and no one could say he was being selfish anymore because he wouldn’t be hurting her by doing it.
He clears his throat.
“That’s… not what we agreed to.”
And now she’s looking at him, actually looking at him. Steady gaze and carefully closed off expression.
“Is it what you want?” A beat, three, seven, while Seb tries to work his way around his squirming not-feelings. The feelings he’s pretty sure he should be feeling, a phantom-limb of giving a damn that sounds weirdly like Ewan McGregor telling him that love is a many splendored thing and he should be fighting for it, not salivating over the idea of Dawn stripping her own feelings away too.
“It’s not what we agreed to,” he manages again. “How did you even find a spell for that?”
“You’re obviously not thrilled about... You haven’t told anyone, and you’re acting like… Look, if you don’t want it, that’s…” She chokes over the word fine. It’s obviously not fine, thus the apathy spell. “Just tell me, ok? Don’t feel like you’re obligated to do anything. Just tell me.”
Seb licks his lips, crosses the room slowly. Dawn flinches a little when he starts to reach out, but he just goes for the book, squinting over the outdated English.
“This isn’t anywhere near as refined as what the witch did. She took my love for you, specifically you. This looks more like it’ll…” Seb grimaces, “…numb your ability to love at all. Romantically, at least.”
Dawn shrugs, head ducking further.
“Like I said. Might be better that way.”
And it really might. He finds himself turning away, walking toward his desk, bookmarking the page before sliding it shut.
“I still want to fix things.”
Something snaps. That something is Dawn.
“Why?” She's pushing herself to her feet, her hands clenching at her sides, trembling. “If you don’t care about me, if I don’t mean anything to you, why would you want to…” Her teeth grit. She looks like she wants to shove Seb, or run.
The love of my life, he thinks again, sighing. He has such an easy out from this train wreck. Really, why is he trying to fight it?
“Because it’s not about you, Dawn. Seriously, this is a hundred-and-fifty percent about me. I'm stuck in this whole screwed up ‘you’re hot and I should love you because I remember loving you and everyone’s telling me I should love you’ cycle and I just… I need to know what I want. I need to be able to feel what I want, make that decision for myself. Do you get that?”
She stares at him way too long after that, long enough that Seb rolls his eyes and turns to drag his backpack over to his desk, kick his dirty laundry into a slightly more sensible pile in his corner.
Dawn’s voice floats over, a little thin, almost a full minute later.
“The apathy spell’s a backup then. In case we can’t…”
Can’t find the witch, convince her to help. In case it’s impossible to get the feeling back at all anyway.
“Sounds like a plan,” he grits out. Dawn’s gone when he turns.
A second later he’s pulling the book back open, ripping out the apathy spell and shredding it.
.-
“Are you serious, dude?”
He tells Sean the next day. Dawn’s right; it’s weird that he hasn’t. It’s also just as weird as he thought it would be to explain any of this out loud. Which is one of the few things none of them have actually seen at this point.
“I mean… you are serious, right? Because if you say something like that and you’re not serious, it’s gonna—”
“Kill Dawn, I know.” He rolls his eyes. “Remember back when you were my best friend?”
“I am your best friend,” Sean says, soft-eyed and serious. “And part of that’s looking after the things you care about, especially when you can’t.”
.-
A figure steps out of a stray patch of shadow. Seb was on the way out from the restaurant station after bringing his dad dinner, making his way up the street to where he’d parked his Jeep. It's an average night; a strangely average night, honestly. He should’ve expected something like this to happen.
He doesn't get "average" that often in his life.
So when the figure shifts out into the light of the street lamp Seb stops short, stares for way too long, and then bursts out laughing.
“You know what? Honestly, I’m not even surprised.”
Dawn’s Uncle, Pete, smiles.
He’s standing casually, hands clasped behind his back, his hair longer than it was the last time he saw him. That time when he’d ran.
That really should’ve been their first clue, huh? Never trust anything when it comes to Pete.
“So what was your grand plan this time, huh?”
“No grand plan,” he answers, voice light and hushed and far too pleased with himself. His teeth gleam white and a touch too sharp as he grins. “I just needed to get away. Realized the whole fathering thing wasn’t really for me after all.”
Seb snorts. Like anyone ever couldn’t have told him he wasn't dad material. Still.
“You’re an incredible bastard, you know that? After all the effort you put into finding her?”
He shrugs, pacing a step toward Seb, coming up alongside his Jeep.
“Well, try anything once.”
It’s so pointedly nonchalant that Seb finds his hands clenching, finds himself digging around for something else to try and dig a reaction from him.
“Do you have any idea what you did to Dawn?”
And the frustration in his tone doesn't even need to be forced, because that’s when this whole mess really started. Sure, the price had been paid before that, and Dawn and the others had learned what Seb had given up by then, but it wasn’t until Pete’s disappearance that Dawn had been vulnerable enough to act on it.
Pete’s eyes are dancing in the darkness.
“Oh, it seemed like you were handling my niece well enough in my absence.”
Seb mimes a gag.
“That sounded unbelievably creepy, you know that?”
Everything the bastard says sounds creepy. Or syrupy-sweet and mocking, which is what he switches over to now.
“And is that caring I hear for dear Dawn? Have you been cured of the witch’s evil curse in my absence? Are you both free to resume your nauseating saga of will they, won’t they and stolen glances?”
It makes him grimace.
“…Not yet.”
Pete’s brow quirks.
“Yet? But you want to.”
“Did you really come back from the dead to chat about my love life? Shouldn’t we be talking about, I don’t know, how you’re here or something?”
“I was owed a favor,” he says like it’s nothing. "But now I come back to town and find that you’re thinking about changing your situation. Even though you have the easiest out imaginable, with a heroic sacrifice backing you and everything. No one can possibly blame you, and you can go on living your life without the heartache and misery sure to come from loving a Dawn.”
Seb stares at him for a long second, then twists his body, looking left and right like he’s trying to see something just out of view. Pete frowns.
“What are you doing?”
“Oh, just trying to find the angel on my other shoulder. Pretty sure you guys are supposed to come in pairs.”
“You’ve considered this already.”
“What, am I an idiot? Don’t answer that. Of course I’ve considered it. And it seems like an awesome idea like five-sixths of the time.”
“And yet you’re still hunting the witch.”
“That one-sixth is a pretty persistent bitch to shake.”
Pete watches him silently, and Seb had forgotten that narrow-eyed, searching look was a family trait. He shifts under it, starts to scowl until…
“Well, alright, then.”
And Pete crosses the last step over to Seb’s Jeep, pulls the door open and drags a woman out by the nape.
Her hands are bound, her mouth gagged. She’s unconscious.
They’re twenty yards from the freaking police station and Pete’s brought a hostage and stuck it in his Jeep.
About two seconds later, after that shock wears off, he realizes what he probably should’ve noticed in the first place: the hostage is the witch.
She’s younger than his memory made her out to be: no hideous warts, crow’s feet or cackling.
Seb stares until Pete, smiling, shoves her back into the car. When he looks up, he’s feeling shaky.
“That was a test?”
“And you performed admirably. Consider this an early wedding present for you and my dear niece.”
The mocking tone’s enough to keep Seb from flinching at the words. Pete doesn’t believe in fairy tales either. But he still thinks it's worth it to break the spell.
“But how did you…”
“Find her? Simple. Well… no. Let’s not downplay my heroics. It was nearly impossible. It turns out witches aren’t exactly fans of being hunted any more than the rest of us are. I narrowly avoided being turned into a spotted toad several times, I’m sure.”
“Why?”
He shrugs, lips tugging while Seb gapes.
“My niece’s always been led by her emotions. It’s a tiresome trait and, honestly, you’d think she’d have learned better by now. But she’s got her sights set on you, and I knew she’d become more insufferable than usual until you two cemented your sappy love story, so…”
“You care.” Seb stares for a second, then barks out a laugh. “Ha, I knew you cared.”
Pete’s eyes roll.
“I owed her a happy ending or two. Let’s say my debt’s paid.”
He shoves the car door shut, falls back a step. Like he’s just planning on walking away now that his deliveries been made.
“Wait,” Seb follows him forward. “So are you back now?”
“I think not. This town is a tether I need to break free of. And once you’re cured I’m sure it will become even more unbearable than before.”
Seb snorts.
“Aw, you think I’m bearable.”
“Decidedly more so than when you end up with hearts in your eyes and start changing all your passwords to ‘Dawn’.”
His grin falls away, gut twisting nervously. That’s not going to happen, is it? He’s still going to be him.
“So I guess you want this to stay our little secret, then. You don’t want me telling the others you’re alive.”
“You aren’t exactly free if your tethers come looking for you.”
He nods again. Hears himself say, faint and hesitant: “You don’t have to break free, you know. You could have a place here.”
Pete only laughs.
“Touching, Seb. Save some of that passion for my niece , alright? And... be careful. You might find that caring's as much of a curse as what you have now.”
His hand lifts, he sinks back into the nearest shadow, and just like that he’s gone. Seb stares at the empty street for nearly a full minute, then turns to look at the bound, unconscious witch.
“Did that seriously just happen?”