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Sebastian was used to the way Ominis didn’t look at him.
Used to the way his head tilted, slightly angled toward the sound of Sebastian’s voice, but never quite facing him. Used to the way Ominis’ eyes drifted off somewhere just to his left, past his shoulder, past the wall, toward nothing at all. It didn’t bother Sebastian; it never had.
Other people found it strange. He’d overheard some Hufflepuffs whispering about it once, saying it gave them chills. As if the absence of eye contact made Ominis less present, or less of a human.
Idiots.
Sebastian thought it was just how Ominis was. It made sense. Why should he bother facing people if he couldn’t see them? What mattered was that he was listening. Really listening. Ominis was always attentive, always vigilant. He heard more than most saw.
So no, Sebastian didn’t need eye contact.
Which is why, when it did happen, it nearly gave him a heart attack.
It started in the library. Sebastian was mid-ramble about their History of Magic essay — some tangent about goblin rebellions and parchment length — and Ominis sat beside him, nodding along, wand in one hand and a closed book in the other.
And then, just as Sebastian was complaining about Binns assigning them two inches more than last time, Ominis turned in his seat and looked at him. Not toward him. But full eye contact, his gaze sharp, pinpointing Sebastian's face with unnerving precision. And his eyes ...
Grey and startling. Sharp as flint. No cloudiness, no vague unfocus like most people assumed. Just clear, pale irises pointed squarely, unflinchingly, at him.
Sebastian trailed off mid-word.
He forgot how to finish his sentence. Forgot what he was talking about. Forgot, for a split second, that Ominis was blind.
“…What are you doing?” he asked, a little too loudly.
Ominis blinked, eyes wide. “Hm?”
“You’re—” Sebastian swallowed. “You’re looking at me.”
“Oh.” Ominis sounded casually curious. “Yes. I heard some students find it off-putting when I don’t look at them while speaking. So I’ve been practicing the illusion of eye contact. Is it working?”
Sebastian had to bite the inside of his cheek to keep from blurting something ridiculous like you’re going to kill me if you keep doing that.
Instead, he made a strangled sound that might’ve been uh-huh and accidentally knocked the book off the table.
It didn’t stop there. In class the next day, Professor Sharp called on him to recite the correct incantation for a brewing stabilizer. It should have been asy. Sebastian knew this one backwards and forwards. He opened his mouth to answer—
And next to him, chin resting in the palm of his hand, elbow on their shared desk, Ominis turned his head. Those eerie, intent eyes found him again. Fixed on his face with unsettling precision. One eyebrow slightly arched, waiting for Sebastian's answer. There was no way he could see Sebastian, of course. But it felt like he could. Like he was boring into Sebastian’s very soul, peeling back layers, pinning him like a frog under a scalpel.
Sebastian blinked. His mouth was open, but no sound came out.
Sharp raised an eyebrow. “Mr. Sallow?”
“I—er—um,” Sebastian stammered, cheeks heating. Damn. It was impossible to think clearly, when he had that steely, almost tangible gaze locked on him.
Ominis tilted his head, expression unreadable. Sebastian blurted the wrong incantation. Sharp corrected him with thinly veiled disappointment, and Sebastian spent the rest of the lesson in confused, vaguely aroused shame.
They were practicing a new dueling technique in the Undercroft. Ominis was listening to Sebastian explain the motions, nodding occasionally, twirling his wand loosely between his fingers. Then, as Sebastian began to demonstrate, Ominis turned again. Right toward him. It wasn’t the tilt of the head this time. It was head-on. Chin level. Eyes pointed straight at Sebastian’s chest like he was reading his thoughts off his robes.
Sebastian faltered
His feet tangled and his wand arm twitched. He cast the spell about half a second too late, and the knockback charm he’d meant to send flying into a stack of crates instead rebounded off a pillar and hit him squarely in the shin.
He yelped, hopped in a circle and clutching his calf, where the sparks had burnt a hole through his socks. Ominis made an innocent noise of concern.
“Are you alright?”
“No thanks to you,” Sebastian snapped, wobbling. “You can’t just do that!”
“Do what?”
“The eyes! You know what you’re doing!”
“I assure you,” Ominis said dryly, “I have no idea what my eyes are doing.”
Sebastian narrowed his own at him, half-suspecting malice. But Ominis’ tone was smooth as ever, mild and curious.
"You make eye contact with other, actually seeing people, all the time," Ominis reminded him, quite unhelpfully. "Why am I any different? When I can't even see you?"
Because you have always been able to see me clearer than anyone else, Sebastian thought bitterly. He didn't say it, though. Of course not. Instead, he muttered:
"I'm not used to it. It ... throws me off a little."
Ominis arched one eyebrow and made a humming noise, clearly not believing him. But he didn't press any further.
Sebastian rubbed his leg and refused to even look in Ominis’ direction for the rest of the afternoon.
It kept happening.
In the common room. At breakfast. Even in the hallway outside Transfiguration, when Sebastian casually mentioned he thought Professor Weasley was going easier on Ravenclaw lately, Ominis turned to respond ... and looked at him again.
It felt less like conversation and more like being skewered.
Sebastian started avoiding it — or at least trying to. He began speaking from odd angles, turning his body away while he talked, hoping Ominis wouldn’t bother with the whole illusion of eye contact nonsense if he wasn’t directly in front of him.
It didn’t work.
Sometimes he’d glance up and Ominis would be facing perfectly forward, head tilted just so, eyes eerily locked where Sebastian’s were meant to be.
It shouldn’t have mattered. Ominis was blind. He literally couldn’t see the crimson colour spread to the tips of Sebastian’s ears, or the light sheen of sweat that broke out on his forehead every time Ominis' eyes flickedred to meet Sebastian's.
And yet.
And yet Sebastian was spiraling.
It happened, again, in the Undercroft.
Sebastian had hoped the corridor incident — where Ominis turned to look at Sebastian mid-stride, and Sebastian promptly walked straight into a suit of armor — would be the last of it. That maybe Ominis had gotten bored of his little “illusion of eye contact” experiment. That he’d go back to facing vaguely left while Sebastian talked and not pointing those soul-piercing, too-knowing eyes right at him like he was being interrogated by an angel.
But no. Of course not.
Sebastian was pacing, wand in hand, rambling about something, he didn’t even remember what anymore. A theory about a defensive charm, maybe. And Ominis was sitting calmly on the edge of the old stone bench, nodding occasionally.
And then he did it.
He looked at him.
Sharp and precise. Eyes lifted, pale grey and deadly serious. His face angled just so. Like he wasn’t just listening, but like he was watching, somehow. Like he was seeing Sebastian, from the stain on his trousers he hadn’t bothered cleaning, to his crooked tie and disheveled hair.
And Sebastian, resolve already brittle from days of Ominis' searching, pointed eyes on him, snapped.
“Why do you keep doing that?!”
Ominis tilted his head slightly. “Doing what?”
“That!” Sebastian flailed. “That ... eye-contact thingy! With your eyes! At me!”
There was a long pause. Ominis’ brow furrowed, his mouth drawn into something genuinely perplexed. “Am I doing it wrong?”
Sebastian made a noise like a kettle boiling over. “No , you’re doing it too right!”
That stopped Ominis.
He went quiet for a beat, hands folded in his lap, wand tapping absently against one knee. Sebastian, meanwhile, was trying to remember how to breathe and also how to live with himself after saying the words “too right” out loud in a sentence about someone’s eyes.
Ominis was still looking at him.
Still doing it.
Sebastian threw both hands in the air. “Merlin’s balls, stop doing it while we’re talking about it!”
“I didn’t realize it affected you that much,” Ominis said, voice neutral.
“It doesn’t!”
“Clearly.”
Sebastian started pacing again, trying to outrun the heat crawling up his neck. “You’ve never done it before. Not with me. Not like that. You used to just ... tilt your head. Listen. I liked that! That was fine. Normal.”
“And this isn’t?”
“It’s — it’s intense!"
“I see,” Ominis said mildly. “So you’d prefer if I went back to not looking at you?”
Sebastian stopped pacing. Slowly turned to him.
Then he said, with genuine despair: “I don’t know.”
Ominis made a soft sound, something suspiciously close to a laugh, and Sebastian realized with dawning horror that the bastard knew exactly what he was doing now.
“You like it,” Ominis said.
Sebastian groaned. “I didn’t say that.”
“You didn’t have to.”
Ominis stood up. Took a careful step forward, the red glow of his wand almost the same shade as Sebastian’s cheeks. He stopped when he was just in front of Sebastian — close enough that Sebastian could feel the warmth of him — and tucked the wand into his sleeve. The red glow dimmed, and Sebastian was thankful for how Ominis’ eyes were no longer illuminated by it.
“I didn’t mean to… upset you,” Ominis said more softly now, head tilted toward his voice. “I was just trying to be polite.”
“Yeah, well,” Sebastian muttered, “your version of polite is a bit lethal.”
Ominis was silent for a moment, and then arched one eyebrow. “It really gets to you?”
Sebastian looked away. “Shut up.”
“Merlin,” Ominis said, amused now. “To think I have never understood the appeal of eyes, and have never even seen my own, and yet they apparently hold so much power. How come? Are they too intense? Or is it the idea of me looking at you?”
Sebastian turned back, cheeks pink. “Ominis—”
“I think it’s the idea,” Ominis said thoughtfully. “You keep talking like I can see you. Like I’m actually watching.”
“Well, you’re bloody acting like it!”
“But you know I’m not.”
“That doesn’t matter!”
It echoed in the Undercroft, and it made the following silence all the more tangible. Then Ominis said, voice gentler than before, “Why?”
Sebastian opened his mouth. Closed it. Fidgeted.
And then — quietly, pointedly not looking at him — muttered: “Because it feels like you can see right through me.”
Ominis stilled.
Sebastian cursed himself a thousand times over. He hadn’t meant to say that. Hadn’t meant to admit it. But now it was out there, echoing in the low-ceilinged Undercroft, undeniable.
Ominis was silent for several moments. When he spoke, his voice had changed—lower, uncertain. “And what am I seeing, then?”
Sebastian shifted. Swallowed. “Everything,” he said, voice thick. “My … my dark thoughts. My fears. My insecurities.” He hesitated, and then, barely above a whisper: “My feelings.”
There. It was out now. Said out loud, impossible to take back. He could feel the words hanging in the air between them.
Ominis exhaled, slow and shallow. For once, his relentless gaze flickered, drifted to the left of Sebastian, like it had used to do when he was deep in thought.
“Oh.”
Sebastian risked a glance up.
Ominis’ gaze flickered back, eyes locked on him. But his expression had changed. It was lighter. Amused. And … smug.
“Oh?” Sebastian echoed, suspicious.
“Oh,” Ominis said again, a slow smile blooming. “That’s what this is.”
Sebastian’s stomach dropped. “Don’t.”
“I’m not teasing.”
“You are. ”
“I’m not!” Ominis insisted. “Not really. Just ... well, it’s nice to finally have an explanation.”
“For what?”
“For why you’ve been knocking over bookshelves, stammering in class, tripping over your own feet—”
“I have not!”
“—and breathing like you’ve been cursed every time I so much as tilt my head.”
Sebastian glared. “You have no proof of that.”
“I am the proof.”
Sebastian made a wounded sound and pressed a hand over his face. What he wouldn’t give for the ground to swallow him whole now.
“You could’ve just told me,” Ominis said gently, voice surprisingly soft.
Sebastian peeked through his fingers. “…Told you what?”
“That you fancied me.”
Sebastian went very still.
“…I didn’t say that,” he tried.
“You didn’t need to.”
Sebastian dropped his hand. “So what now, you just ... mock me for the rest of time?”
“Actually,” Ominis said, stepping close again, “I was going to kiss you. Any objections?”
Sebastian blinked. “What?”
“Well,” Ominis said, and Sebastian could hear the smirk, “if it helps ... the only time I truly ever wished for sight was the first time I met you.”
Sebastian blinked again.
And then, before he could overthink it, he stepped forward, grabbed the front of Ominis’ robes, and kissed him.
It was awkward at first. Sebastian was too desperate, Ominis too amused — but then it evened out. Ominis’ hands slid up to Sebastian’s shoulders, then higher, fingers brushing the side of his neck. His eyes, those damned, cursed, beautiful eyes, fluttered shut.
When they broke apart, both of them a little breathless, Ominis tilted his head.
“…Still too intense?” he asked innocently.
Sebastian groaned, dropped his head to Ominis’ shoulder, and muttered:
“I hate you.”
“No, you don’t.”
And Sebastian, face burning, mumbled into his robes:
“…No. I really don’t.”
They didn’t leave the Undercroft for a long time.
At some point, Sebastian found himself pressed back against the stone wall, breath stolen right out of his lungs, hands tangled in the collar of Ominis’ robes.
Kissing Ominis was … insane.
It was slow, then fast, then maddening. Every time Sebastian thought he has the upper hand, Ominis did something awful, like hum against his mouth or nip at his bottom lip or, worst of all, pull back slightly and let his eyes linger just so.
Sebastian was discovering things. Dangerous, humiliating things. Like the fact that he was obsessed with Ominis’ eyes now. Ruined by them.
There was something utterly gorgeous about the way Ominis’ lashes fluttered when he was flustered. How his pale eyes softened and went half-lidded when Sebastian kissed down the side of his neck. The way they drooped to thin slits, unfocused in the haze of it all, until Ominis let out a soft, pleased breath right against Sebastian’s mouth.
It was too much.
It was perfect.
Then they were kissing again, slow and heated, all mouths and wandering hands, when Ominis pulled back just enough to breathe, then did it.
Tilted his head. Lifted his chin. And pinned Sebastian with a steely, direct stare.
It shouldn’t work. It shouldn’t work — Ominis was still blind, still couldn’t see him. But that sharp, focused look, paired with the ghost of a smirk, sliced right through Sebastian’s spine like a hot blade.
Ominis whispered, low and smug: “Still too much for you?”
And Sebastian, red-faced, blinking, already halfway undone — muttered, “Shut up,” and dragged him in for another kiss.