Work Text:
here they were, in the basement. although they probably wouldn't admit it to many others if prompted, "welcome to the black parade" was playing at half-volume. everyone in the house was sleeping, and sam just so happened to be knocked out on sebastian's bed. he played guitar like a rocker, but couldn't match sebastian or abigail's ungodly sleeping schedule. with both of them sitting at sebastian's desk, hunched over a computer, they shared a bowl of microwaved fries. to accentuate the rich flavor of the soggy frozen-aisle delicacy, a layer of half-melted shredded cheese and a bottle of cheap hot sauce accompanied everything, and some joja cola, of course. the dark room, with abigail having dragged a blanket out from under sam to hold over herself, the bags under their eyes, and the smell of barely-thawed {but somehow partially burnt} french fries, all of it set the scene for some late-night web surfing. having already fallen into a rabbit hole about obscure dating simulators, the youtube algorithm had the grace and majesty to recommend to them a few different fan-work retrospectives... and then...
"who wrote my immortal?"
abigail mumbled from the desk chair. she set the video to "watch later", sebastian protesting and popping a fry in his mouth.
"abi, you know my recommended's gonna be full of that shit now, right?"
abigail rolled her blue eyes at the protest, opening a new tab, and searching the name up.
"wait, my immortal-- isn't that a song?"
maybe the sleep deprivation fried his brain, but sebastian didn't get it just yet. abigail didn't say much of anything, some malicious little smirk on her pale face, and clicked on a link. immediately after opening it, there was a disclaimer. the original work had been removed from fanfiction.net a while ago, somewhere around the 2000s.
"hey, sebastian, has anyone ever told you you've got eyes like limpid tears? you kinda look like amy lee."
sebastian's nose scrunched slightly in confusion, and it only clicked when abigail was stifling snorted laughter through one of her hands, the familiar white screen pulled up on the computer... sebastian decided to play along, cringing a little after reading the author's note.
an: special fangz {get it, coz im goffik} 2 my gf {ew not in that way} raven, bloodytearz666 4 helpin me wif da story and spelling. u rok! justin ur da luv of my deprzzing life u rok 2! mcr rox!
he automatically filtered out the aliases in his mind. memories of badly-drawn eyeliner wings-- watching abi window shop at hot topic-- my chemical romance-- it all came back to him tenfold. most of all, he remembered the endless hours on different "goth-ified" webpages.
"my name's not sebastian, i'm not a prep-- or a poser."
he smirked, fully aware that they'd probably do a dramatic reading of "my immortal" until an argument about who had to go get more fries arose. abigail started, unprompted, perfectly in sync with sebastian. unfortunately, sam would be subjected to out-of-context references from the fanfiction for a little while after this-- after sebastian and abi got up from their poorly-timed sleep, of course.
"hi, my name is ebony dark'ness dementia raven way, and i have long ebony black hair, that's how i got my name, with purple streaks and red tips that reaches my mid-back, and icy blue eyes like limpid tears, and a lot of people tell me i look like amy lee-- author's note, if you don't know who she is, get "da" hell out of here!"
sebastian had never noticed how much inflection abigail could push into her voice before this, and shushed her with an elbow to the side. he'd rather die than have to explain "my immortal" to his mother-- and probably the other middle aged "prep" moms of the town, with the way sebastian's mom liked to congregate with them. he snickered at the thought.
but, hey, at least he wasn't doing "run the gauntlet" again.