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Sebastian had his eyes.
Or, his eyes had Sebastian.
It wasn’t the kind of resemblance to hit you across the face. It was more subtle than that. Stefano hadn’t noticed it at first; it had been such a long, long time since that sight had graced his. It took time to develop to clarity, but once seen, it could not be unseen.
Fire. Theodore thought he knew it, thought he commanded it when all he really was, was a husk for power, a front behind something no one could control no matter how hard they tried. There was an art to harboring hatred so intense it would melt down the defenses of others and leave them at mercy to your whims, your desires. Oh yes, that was an art, and it in, Sebastian Castellanos was a master. He had that rage. He had that fire. Amber fire set in weathered skin. The kind that ignites within you something so primitive and covetous that you wish it was amber so you could grab it and carry it with you always. But people are so ephemeral. Blood rots. Bodies rot. Eyes fade from their original light and shrivel up, dead and gone.
He’d been dead for years now, many years. They were such long years with long lonely nights filled with a desire beyond simple explanation. Stefano’s only wish was to capture it, that one last look that said more than words ever could.
I love you .
That didn’t come from Sebastian’s lips. Stefano was sure it never would. Sebastian was not a man for sympathy and Stefano, well, wasn’t one to speak openly about his past. Its wretched acts were written across the skin on his face; how much more blatant could it get? He’d been through hell, survived hell. He’d come out the other side with a mark that would never leave him, one that went deeper than the physical and ached long after the sedatives lulled the pain away.
I love you.
Those weren’t the last words he’d spoken but Stefano liked to think they were. It was easier to remember than the long string of profanity spat out through bleeding lips bubbling blood. A confession like that, a confession of love, made everything seem more real, more solid. Grounded. Kovacs had been a pilot. No one had even had the decency to scatter his ashes to the wind, where he would have wanted them. No, they gathered him up and tossed him in a grave with three other people. They’d covered it up with mud. Stefano had helped. It seemed like the right thing to do.
Everybody has a fear of the dead. It’s because everybody is afraid of death. Stefano wasn’t everybody in the least bit. He was beyond their petty desires and baseless terrors. Death was beautiful and painful like the rough grip of a lover, a kiss of teeth scraping over skin. Most understand this. Kovacs did. Some called it gallows humor, a way of coping with what a fragile human mind wasn’t meant to see. Stefano wasn’t fragile. If he was anything, it wasn’t fragile.
Sebastian was the same, different in methodology but not in principle. He wasn’t military, but he was a detective. He knew that beauty and it showed in his bones, or the bones of others, how he moved through a sea of death and decay without blinking.
That was the first time Stefano noticed it, within the depths of STEM.
He’d noticed it so much more since then.
There were times when words would tumble out of Sebastian’s mouth and Stefano would freeze. He’d turn and look at the man and whatever he was doing, scrape his sight across Sebastian’s frame just to make sure he was still there, and then try to forget the incident even happened, because that was really all he could do. He never did, though. That amber fire stayed with him well into the night where he’d perch and wait, sleeplessly, for the sunrise.
The instances were few, in the beginning. Stefano noted them with indifference and wrote them off as his own sentimentality (which seemed to be growing the longer he remained with Sebastian). At first he was able to push the memories away, those ugly things which reared up according to circumstance. It took a sight, a sound, or a word to drag him back into that hell and at the beginning he managed to drag himself out of it. Stefano wasn’t inexperienced in the art of pain, physical or mental. He knew his own weaknesses and his own strengths. (He remembered too well those long lonely nights hunched over a bath of hydroquinone, just waiting to see it .) Denial was easier than acceptance (as Theodore had proved help was a utopian, useless concept). He’d been able to manage thus far, homicidal tendencies aside. Stefano managed… until Sebastian. And then it was all history, history, history brought back by another hell and another uncompromisable soul. Stefano hid that history quite well, but history tends to be cyclical.
It is both a blessing and a curse to notice things the majority of people overlook; Stefano knew this better than most. And it was the small things which had the largest impact on him, like the way Sebastian would stare out the window some nights, shoulders weary but posture straight, unapologetic. It was the way he’d quirk his lips at something half-amusing but not amusing enough to laugh. Other times it was how Sebastian would string words together, long lines of curses and obscenities that made no sense but got the point across and how that was so similar to Kovacs’s last mangled words. Or, how he’d stare into the mirror just before shaving, searching for a truth he thought he’d find written on his face. He’d scowl, then, with the razor in one hand, because all he saw staring back at him were a few more gray hairs and a few more wrinkles.
And Stefano couldn’t help but wonder, if it had all gone differently, would Kovacs now, all these years later, be doing the same?
Wistfulness. It wasn’t a word Stefano ever thought he’d use in relation to Sebastian Castellanos. Rage, yes. Wistfulness, no. The more he looked for it, however, the more he found it. It was there in the way Sebastian’s eyes would catch on the color of Stefano’s scarf and linger, lost in the hue. It was in the way he drummed his fingers against the soda can, or coffee mug, or beer bottle. It was there when Sebastian would pace the room at night when he couldn’t sleep and end up throwing the curtains open as if awaiting an answer from the heavens. Of course, he never got it.
It pained Stefano to notice these things. They weren’t fitting, and yet, they made perfect sense. Sebastian was haunted but still somehow faithful. Stefano didn’t know where his faith lay or where it came from, but it was there, as heavy as an extra person in the room. It was like that too, with… him. Stefano wasn’t a stranger to the name and face of God, though that God seemed to think little of him. Kovacs had worn a silver cross on his neck (and it had landed on Stefano’s chest, cool and blunt when Kovacs pinned him down for a kiss). He’d thought it blasphemous. He still did. But of those choice words of Kovacs’s, Stefano remembered these: blasphemous? Sure it is. So is breathing. We sin with every breath.
And it was at this point that Stefano would glower and berate himself for letting those memories in. They didn’t do any good. They just made him feel… they just made him feel.
When Sebastian asked him the question the first time, it didn’t come as a surprise. Stefano had been scrutinizing him for a while, the curve of his shoulders as he sat on the windowsill so achingly familiar.
“You’ve been staring at me a lot. Y’ok?”
Stefano had rehearsed his response a thousand times but the dismissal he wanted to give fell flat on his lips and he was left caught in Sebastian’s gaze for far longer than he was comfortable with.
“Yes. Fine. Your hair is out of place. Right side.”
Stefano kicked himself the rest of the day. Sebastian wasn’t dumb (as much as Stefano taunted him he was), and he knew there was something Stefano was hiding. In such close quarters, it was inevitable Stefano would have to tell him at one point. That didn’t mean he had to look forward to it.
The second time came when Sebastian stumbled into the room, winded from a run. He was bent over at the waist, hands clasped on his knees, and when he looked up, the world flickered, just a bit, shockingly fast. But what Stefano saw was the face of a dead man on a live man and his expression must have conveyed his torture because Sebastian stood, frowning.
“What’s the matter?” He asked. He landed heavily on the bed and Stefano’s attention was drawn to the spread of pink splattered across his cheeks. He looked away, down. Anywhere but Sebastian’s face.
“Nothing. You startled me.”
“You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”
Stefano scoffed at that but the sound came out mangled. He choked and drew away but Sebastian was not a man to wait patiently for answers. He grabbed Stefano’s shoulder and held him there, captive. Kovacs had been like that too, impulsive, covetous of information. Stefano sighed. He’d known this was coming.
“Would you… like to hear a story?”
“A story?” Sebastian balked, taken aback. “What kind of story?”
“A tragedy.”
There was a long stretch of silence before Stefano dared to glance at Sebastian. There was a quizzical look on the ex-detective’s face and he removed his hand from Stefano’s shoulder. But he didn’t smirk or joke or get up and walk away. That in itself was endearing and Stefano shifted on the mattress to better face him.
“I, erm, sure. Yeah, sure.”
There was hesitation in his words, true, but Sebastian didn’t break Stefano’s gaze even as he ran a hand through his hair, the long strands bending, twirling around his fingers. Sebastian’s honesty didn’t make it any easier to begin. For a moment Stefano was silent, studying the seams of his gloves, wondering, hoping he could disappear into nothingness rather than recount that time in his life. When Sebastian nudged him with his elbow, Stefano knew he’d dug his own grave. So with a deep breath, he began his tale.
---
“What the fuck are you here to take pictures of, anyway? Does the U.N. think we’re fucking shit up for no reason?”
“I’m just here to document your activities.”
Silence. The soldier shifted his weight from side to side. He nursed a cigarette caught between the double-red of his lips. He chuckled and moved nearer, held out his hand.
“Lieutenant Aidan Kovacs.” He smiled.
The photographer glanced up, camera forgotten in his lap.
“Stefano Valentini.”
“So you, uh, gonna take a picture of me? I’ve been told I’m pretty photogenic.”
“I’m supposed to take pictures of outcomes, not personell.”
“Ah, ok. I’ll wait. You can get me in an action shot, then.”
“That’s not what I--”
“I know, Mr. Valentine, I know.”
“It’s Valentini.”
“If you say so. You’re going to be here in February, though, aren’t you?”
“I’m on a six month tour, so yes. Why?”
“Because maybe you can be my valentine, Mr. Valentini.”
The photographer coughed a laugh into his hand.
“That’s horrible, you know.”
“That’s what I was going for.”
“It’s hard to see how anyone would like you with lines like that.”
“Ouch. I’ll have you know everyone around here likes me. And…” The soldier plucked the cigarette from his lips triumphantly, deep, amber brown eyes crinkling at the edges. “I’m sure you’ll like me too.”