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Sebastian had already had a thoroughly miserable morning. He’d overslept, because apparently he’d set his alarm for the right time but the wrong day. He was out of both teabags and coffee filters when he, still half-asleep, rummaged through the cupboard in search of anything caffeinated. Even though he was already running late, he still ducked into the little café round the corner; there was no way he could face the day without coffee.
With a warm cup in hand, he made for the tube only to realise, far too late, that he’d forgotten his Oyster card and had to buy a new ticket at the station. Naturally, the carriage was packed, and he spent twelve excruciating minutes standing with his nose buried in someone else’s foul-smelling hair. By the time he finally got off and headed towards campus, he stepped straight into a puddle and soaked his shoe completely.
Now Sebastian was usually patient, mature, and perfectly respectful, but after the morning he’d had — and with a lecture from Professor Sharp looming — he was not in the best of moods. So when he rounded the corner of the lunch building and collided full-on with someone, sending him straight onto his backside and his precious coffee spilling pathetically across the pavement, he snapped:
“Ow! Can’t you watch where you—”
The words died in his throat. The bloke he’d crashed into lifted a perfectly straight, dark brown eyebrow. He looked like he belonged at a debate club or a seminar on pure-blood ideology.
“No,” he said pointedly, and Sebastian stared in horror as the man tightened his grip on the long red-and-white cane, navigating around Sebastian without so much as a blink.
Sebastian stayed where he’d fallen, bag gaping open, coffee puddling at his feet, and watched as the bloke strode away, messenger bag slung over one shoulder, cane tapping ahead of him.
What a brilliant day this was turning out to be.
He shook his head, scrambled upright, muttered a quick prayer to survive the rest of the day without caffeine, and hurried off to his lecture.
“I don’t understand this map.”
Sebastian liked Garreth. So far, he was the only real friend he’d made on his course. Bold, inventive, easy-going. But he was just as hopeless as Sebastian when it came to reading maps. The two of them were now standing in front of the big, glass-covered campus map on the wall, squinting at it while trying to figure out where their next lecture was.
“I’m telling you, it’s this building.” Sebastian pointed. “If that one’s Building A, then this has to be Building B.”
Garreth frowned. “Are you sure they organise them in that order?”
Sebastian rolled his eyes. “Garreth, please. You’d have to be blind not to be able to read a map—”
Garreth gave a pointed little cough. Sebastian frowned — then realised. He hadn’t noticed, but the guy from yesterday had appeared behind them. He was holding what looked like a braille map, white and red cane tucked under one arm as his fingers traced along the raised markings. Today, he’d left his hair loose, falling in an infuriatingly attractive sweep across his forehead. His light grey vest and white shirt looked like they cost more than Sebastian’s monthly rent. The sharp cheekbones seemed to catch the hallway light as he flashed a blade-thin smile and said:
“Yes, one really must be blind if you can’t read a map. Lucky that’s not the case for me.”
With that, he slipped the map into his pocket, turned on his heel, and walked off.
Sebastian made a noise not entirely unlike a deflating tyre.
Lunch in the cafeteria was usually chaotic, but today it had reached a new level. Every table was full, trays clattered, and Garreth was rambling about some experiment he’d nearly blown up that morning. Sebastian was halfway through an increasingly soggy panini when the lights above them flickered once… twice… and then died completely.
The room was swallowed by pitch-black darkness.
The noise level shot up instantly: cutlery clattering to the floor, chairs scraping, people swearing, someone somewhere dropping what sounded like an entire bowl of soup. Sebastian froze, blinking uselessly into the void.
“Brilliant,” Garreth muttered.
A few minutes later, a harried voice echoed from the back of the room.
“Alright, folks! We’re working on it. Shouldn’t be too long! Just… try to keep eating and sit tight!”
Sebastian snorted. “Try to keep eating? It’s so bloody dark, I can’t see a thing.”
The second the words left his mouth, he regretted them. Because, of course, from somewhere to his left came a voice he recognised far too well:
“Oh no, what a nightmare.”
Sebastian froze, sandwich halfway to his mouth. He considered, very seriously, burying his face in said sandwich and suffocating quietly. Garreth let out a small, strangled wheeze of laughter.
“I’m just going to … shut up,” Sebastian muttered, taking a large bite of his sandwich before he could make another accidentally ableist comment.
Sebastian squinted at his phone. No matter how much he zoomed in on the photo, he still couldn’t make out which pages the lecturer had written on the board. He was standing off to one side of the corridor, out of the main flow of students trudging past on their way to or from classes, but it didn’t help his concentration one bit.
“How’s it going, mate?” Garreth appeared at his side and gave him a friendly clap on the shoulder.
Sebastian groaned. “I can’t read what it says, Garreth. I think I’m actually going blind.”
As if summoned by fate itself, the blond guy strolled past at that exact moment, cane extended in front of him. He didn’t even break stride as he calmly said: “Oh dear. Do let me know if you ever need to talk to someone — I’m rather good with all this blind business.”
Garreth slapped a hand over his mouth to stifle the explosion of laughter threatening to escape, shoulders shaking violently. Sebastian, meanwhile, went completely rigid. His jaw clenched, his soul ascended, and he silently regretted every single decision in his life that had led to this moment.
The blond bloke continued down the corridor without so much as a backward glance, the click of his cane echoing in Sebastian’s ears. He could only stare after him, mortified, while Garreth wheezed beside him.
“Mate,” Garreth choked out at last, “he’s going to think you’re obsessed with making blind jokes.”
Sebastian buried his face in his hands. “I’m never speaking again.”
Sebastian was elbow-deep in his rucksack, frantically rummaging through textbooks, loose papers, and what might have been a half-eaten granola bar.
“It was just here,” he muttered, panic edging into his voice. “Garreth, have you seen my student ID? Please tell me you’ve seen it. Please.”
Garreth leaned against the wall, sipping a canned energy drink which had the same colour of that radioactive slime Sebastian’s teacher had brought for their science project when he was 9. “Haven’t seen it, mate. Check the front pocket again.”
“I’ve checked the front pocket!” Sebastian hissed, checking it anyway. “And the side pocket. And all the little useless pockets no one ever uses. It’s gone. I’ve actually lost it. Brilliant.”
Footsteps slowed beside them.
“I’ll keep an eye out and tell you if I spot it.”
Relief flooded through Sebastian so quickly he didn’t even think. “Oh, thank you, that would—”
He looked up.
It was him. The blind guy. Passing by them, today in a light brown jumper that made him look unfairly soft, pressed trousers and his ever-present cane in his hand. One eyebrow arched in silent, wicked amusement.
Sebastian closed his eyes and sighed.
Professor Sharp swept down the aisle like a bird of prey, dropping handouts on each desk with military precision. Paper slid in front of Sebastian and Garreth. Flow diagrams, arrows, chemical symbols, boxes upon boxes.
Sebastian stared at the sheet. Then leaned closer. Then even closer.
“What in the…” he muttered, tilting the page. “Is this meant to be a process or modern art?”
Garreth squinted. “I think that’s… a beaker?”
“That’s not a beaker, that’s a depressed jellyfish.” Sebastian jabbed at the mysterious shape with his pen. “This diagram is so confusing you’d think the illustrator drew it with their eyes closed.”
There was a brief pause, before a smooth voice spoke up behind him.
“Some of us do excellent work that way.”
Sebastian didn’t even bother to turn around this time; just sighed, pinched the bridge of his nose, and slid down in his seat.
Later that week, they were in class, meant to be creating a flow chart for some group assignment. Sebastian stared despairingly at his laptop screen and held it up for Garreth to see.
“This doesn’t even look like a flow chart! The bubbles are all uneven, the lines are crooked, and why is the font doing… that?”
Garreth shrugged. “Maybe Professor Weasley thinks it’s fine anyways?”
“Hardly. She nitpicks anything I do,” Sebastian muttered.
A voice drifted lazily from behind them.
“I think it looks great.”
Sebastian brightened instantly. “Thank you—!”
He turned around.
Of course.
The blind guy lounged in the row behind, one Airpod popped in, and one corner of his mouth lifting as though he knew exactly what he’d done.
Sebastian stared at him.
“Why did you feel the need to do that?”
The guy shrugged.
”I like to motivate my classmates.”
Sebastian turned around again, and muttered to himself: ”You like to terrorise your classmates.”
”Heard that,” the guy chimed behind him. ”I’m blind, not deaf.”
”I’ve noticed that too,” Sebastian grumbled.
“I’m telling you,” Sebastian said, jabbing his finger at his phone so hard the screen trembled, “it says the seminar is on Wednesday at one o’clock.”
Garreth leaned in and squinted as though the phone were trying to deceive him personally.
“It says it’s on Wednesday at four o’clock.”
Sebastian whipped the phone back around and stared at the photo he’d taken of Professor Ronen’s board, affronted.
“No, it doesn’t.”
“Yes, it does. I saw Ronen scribble the same thing on the board as you did.”
“Yes,” Sebastian said pointedly, turning the phone back toward Garreth and tapping the screen with renewed vigour, “and he scribbled the number one. This is number one.”
Garreth shook his head, utterly unfazed by Sebastian’s rising temper.
“I swear he said four o’clock.”
Sebastian threw his hands up, nearly flinging the phone into the wall behind him.
“Who the fuck holds a seminar at four o’clock?”
Garreth shrugged helplessly. “Professor Ronen?”
Sebastian shook his head furiously, frustrated beyond reason.
“Garreth, for fuck’s sake. I’m telling you it’s one o’clock. It says right here, on the photo.” He jabbed the screen again. “Are you fucking blind or something?”
The words were barely out of his mouth before he froze. Not the panicked freeze of earlier encounters, but the bone-deep, exhausted resignation of a man who knew exactly what fate had done to him.
“He’s behind me, isn’t he?”
“He is,” said a very familiar, cool voice. “And I’m frankly impressed by the fact that you have sight, yet poorer situational awareness than I do.”
Garreth made an apologetic little shrug — what could I do? — before pretending great interest in the fire extinguisher on the wall. Sebastian closed his eyes.
“By the way,” the blind guy continued, utterly composed, “the seminar is at four o’clock. Unless you’re hoping to be a teacher’s pet and show up three hours early.”
Sebastian gritted his teeth, steadfastly refusing to turn around.
“Don’t you have people to bump into with your cane, or a poorly adapted PDF to try and decipher with your screen reader?”
“As a matter of fact, I do. Thank you for the reminder,” the guy said lightly. And then — smack.
“Ow!” Sebastian yelped, hopping on one leg and clutching his shin. “What the hell—?”
When he looked up, the guy was already flicking his cane back into its folded state with a neat little flourish, smirking.
“Now I only have the PDF left. See you around.”
This time Sebastian couldn’t stop himself. He spun around and watched the irritatingly perfect sweep of blond hair receding down the hall.
“No you won’t!” he called.
The guy only lifted a hand in a lazy wave without slowing.
Sebastian glared at the back of him, cheeks warm, heart doing something traitorous and fluttery.
Garreth took a long sip of his drink.
“Well,” he said, “at least now we know it’s four o’clock.”
The party was already too loud, too hot, and too crowded for Sebastian’s liking, but Garreth had insisted it would be “good for his social life”. But not good for his blood pressure.
They were squeezed into someone’s tiny flat, standing in a corner near the kitchen counter, talking about nothing in particular when someone yelled, “Group photo!” A cluster of people stumbled together in the middle of the room.
Sebastian barely had time to turn his head before the camera went off with a blinding flash straight across the crowd. White exploded behind his eyes.
“Bloody hell,” he hissed, blinking furiously. “I’m blind now.”
There was a tiny pause, just long enough for fate to clear its throat.
“Welcome to the club.”
By now, Sebastian was so accustomed to it, he didn’t even tense up. Just sighed, and turned his head expectantly. Sure enough: there he was, leaning against the wall a few feet away. The blond guy, looking absolutely edible in a black silk shirt, with an amused tilt to his mouth as if this were all tremendously entertaining.
Sebastian covered his face with one hand. “Why are you everywhere?” he muttered.
“Good timing, I suppose,” the guy said mildly. “Or bad, depending on your perspective.”
Sebastian wasn’t sure if he wanted to argue, apologise, or spontaneously evaporate.
“Look,” he said, raising his voice to speak over the music. “I’m really … sorry, for all the insensitive comments. I swear I’m not usually a jerk. Well, maybe except for that first day.” He cringed at the memory. “But otherwise, I swear it’s just … bad phrasing.”
The guy’s teasing smile softened. He pushed away from the wall, stepping a bit closer.
“It’s fine,” he said, head tilting slightly. “Honestly, I find it pretty funny. And a bit refreshing. Most people trip over themselves trying to apologise, or get weirdly cautious with their wording around me, like they’re terrified of speaking normally.”
Sebastian felt momentarily wrong-footed. He was used to this guy delivering sharp, perfectly timed one-liners, not… genuine conversation. He wasn’t sure what to do with it.
“Um, yeah.” He coughed. “I suppose so. I mean, it’s not right, either; you’re just a normal bloke, and deserve to be treated normally. I mean, of course people shouldn’t be ableist either, like I … might have been.” He deflated a little.
Now the guy was grinning again.
“What’s your name?”
Thrown a little by the sudden shift, Sebastian answered automatically, “Sebastian.”
The guy nodded. “I’m Ominis.” He held out his hand, slightly off-angle, and Sebastian quickly reached to shake it.
“Nice to meet you.”
“Likewise.”
For a moment, the handshake lingered, and Sebastian took him in properly for the first time. Ominis’ eyes were a pale, glassy grey, no visible pupil, but striking all the same. They seemed almost uncannily directed towards him, as if he knew exactly where Sebastian’s face was despite everything. His mouth curved in a soft, annoyingly attractive smile, and Sebastian couldn’t help but notice the small birthmark just beneath his nose.
“So, Sebastian,” Ominis said as he withdrew his hand, “what do you do in your free time? Apart from insulting Professor Sharp’s diagramming skills, making the occasional ableist remark, and knocking over pedestrians?”
Sebastian rolled his eyes. “Ha ha,” he said dryly. “Really funny. I don’t do much at the moment. I just moved here and am still packing up my flat and trying not to drown in coursework or get lost on my way to class.”
“Ah. You’ve found building B by now, then?” The amusement was unmistakable. Sebastian glared at him.
“Just so you know, I’m glaring at you. And yes, I’ve found it. Not with Garreth’s help, though, even if he tried. Talk about the blind leading the blind.”
He slapped a hand over his mouth, horrified.
“Oh my god. I’m so sorry. I don’t know how these things just come out.”
To his relief, Ominis first pursed his lips, then broke out in a soft laughter.
“Me neither,” he admitted, still chuckling, “but please, keep them coming. They make my day.”
“Oh yeah?” Sebastian felt a pleased, fluttering thrill zip down his spine. If there was one thing he was good at recognising, despite otherwise lacking situational awareness, it was flirting. “You wake up every day thinking, ‘How am I going to make that one douche in class flustered with his blind jokes today’?”
Ominis’ teeth glinted in the low, flashing disco lights when he said: “I do.”
Sebastian sucked in a sharp breath.
“Oh.” Then, he didn't know what to say.
Usually, flirting came easily to him; winks, cheeky remarks, playful teasing. He was used to delivering the smooth lines, towering over someone and watching them get flustered. Being on the receiving end of bold flirting was… unfamiliar territory. And now, without visual cues like eye contact or a wink to rely on, he wasn’t entirely sure how to flirt back.
Luckily, Ominis continued:
“While it is hilarious to come up with new comebacks every time you make a blind joke, I am running out of witty one-liners. Would you maybe like to meet over a cup or something, and we can see if we manage to have a conversation that does not include casual ableism or roasting of one’s moral character?”
Sebastian wasn’t sure if it was the bass from the music or his heart that he could feel pounding in his chest. Just like every time Ominis had passed him and countered his accidental blind remark with a suave, cool comment, he now felt stripped bare, vulnerable, oddly hot. He licked his lips.
“Sure. I mean — that would be great. I’d love to.”
Ominis looked pleased. “Give me your number.”
Sebastian pulled up his phone and obediently rattled off his own number. After a few seconds his phone lit up with an incoming call.
”Just so there’s no mixup,” Ominis explained as he put his phone away.
”You realise you just lost your one chance of faking and getting out of this?” Sebastian grinned as he tucked away his own. Ominis shrugged.
“I’ve been at this party for almost two hours, getting stumbled into, being asked whether I went blind from moonshine, and being tripped over along with my cane — all because I was waiting for one particular moron to make an ableist remark.”
Sebastian groaned. ”You make me sound like such a jerk.” He paused, then frowned. ”I can’t believe you asked me on a date. You don’t even know me, other than my remarkable talent for making casually discriminatory comments at the worst moments possible.”
Ominis shrugged, a small smile tugging at his mouth. “That’s what makes it interesting, don’t you think? It’s like a blind date.”
The instant the words left his mouth, he froze. Sebastian slapped a hand over his own mouth in delight.
“Oh my god. That was a blind joke. You made a blind joke.”
Ominis looked visibly distressed.
“That just… it just slipped out,” he stammered, looking genuinely lost.
Sebastian barely held back a full clap of triumph.
“Now you know what it’s like! You literally can’t stop it!”
Ominis looked caught between righteous indignation and helpless laughter. Eventually, he let out a disbelieving snort, shaking his head slowly.
“Alright. You deserved those ten seconds of triumph,” he said, clearly fighting a smile.
Sebastian puffed up his chest, glowing with pride.
“I do, don’t I? Anyway, how about… next Friday?”
“Or,” Ominis said, arching a perfectly mocking eyebrow, “how about tomorrow?”
Sebastian’s brain stalled.
“Already?”
Ominis shrugged, that small smile returning.
“You’ve been making blind jokes for weeks now. I think it’s time I cashed in on all those remarks.”
Sebastian rolled his eyes. “I said I was sorry. I just can’t see them coming — oh for fuck’s sake.”
Ominis snickered, shaking his head. He pushed away from the wall, straightening. It was hard to tell in the dark, but he seemed to as tall as, maybe even taller than, Sebastian. He smiled, and Sebastian was struck by how pretty his smile was when he wasn't smirking, grinning with triumph, or scowling.
“It was nice meeting you, Sebastian. Properly. I wish I could stay and talk to you a bit more and see what other blind jokes appear, but I have to go."
Sebastian couldn’t stop the disappointed pang in his chest.
“Oh.” The disappointment must’ve been audible; Ominis smiled his little crooked grin again and said:
“My brother is picking me up. Parties aren’t really my thing, you see. I just came here because I heard you were here.”
Sebastian had no idea what he should do with that information. For now, he allowed it to settle in his stomach like a soft, warm cloud.
“Oh,” he said again. Apparently, around Ominis he was doomed to either single-syllable responses or accidental ableism.
“Anyway.” Ominis pulled out his cane from his pocket and flicked it out into its full length. “I look forward to our … date.”
“Likewise,” Sebastian croaked. He watched, almost in a trance, as Ominis turned to leave. Then -
“Wait!”
Ominis stopped mid-turn, turning back with an arched eyebrow.
“Yes?”
Sebastian fumbled for his words.
“Do you want to like … do you want me to describe to you what I look like?”
Ominis smiled that sharp, self-satisfied little smirk again.
“No, thank you. Considering how often you’ve reminded me I can’t see, I think it’s only fair I get to picture you however I want.”
And then he was gone.