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These are the moments Sebastian lives for.
In the cosy dark of his basement bedroom, tucked under his bedsheets beside the softly-humming radiator, his face rests in the dip of Sam's chest. There's a hand in his hair, fingers tangled up where they froze after minutes of idle combing; sugar grains sifting through a lattice of black. The other hand lays beside them on the bed, arm splayed out like he's reaching for something. Sebastian's own hand crawls towards it, but it doesn't quite reach, instead settling meekly in the crease of his elbow.
The room is quiet. It's just the radiator's dull humming, and Sam's rhythmic breathing rolling through the air in lazy cycles. Hushed and steady; the whistle of a flute, only a little more timid. There are flickers of a TV screen on the absolute perimeter of Sebastian's vision, where long lines of names ascend from one end of a bottomless black void to the other. The TV in question has long been silent. Sebastian pushed the mute button as soon as he noticed Sam dozing off, which was not even half an hour into the movie.
Sebastian couldn't even blame him. It was some shitty horror title from the 80s from Robin's old collection, which has been tradition to raid for the past thirteen Spirit's Eves. They knew it would be bad, but the hope was for it to be laughably bad. Instead, this one had just been mind-numbingly boring. Sebastian might have fallen asleep too, if he were any less enamoured. Instead, he's been paralysed for Yoba-knows-how-long, just… staring.
How the hell Sam manages to look so pretty, even in sleep, is beyond Sebastian. His eyes are very lightly closed, light enough to flutter, like tiny butterfly wings idly twitching. There are golden threads wound all around his face, the absence of his usual stiff hair gel allowing all those loose, natural strands to fall at will — from the soft curls cradling his ears to the single sweeping lock that tapers off just behind the bridge of his nose. His mouth is halfway open, and the tiny accumulation of drool at the corner should probably be off-putting, but fuck, every little detail compounds to paint the most endearing picture Sebastian has ever seen.
The minute Sam wakes up, Sebastian will make fun of him for it. That much is a given. It's how they work; one of them does something innocuous that vaguely deviates from their plans, the other one never lets them hear the end of it. Sebastian will tease Sam for falling asleep in the middle of the movie, Sam will ask if he missed anything, and Sebastian will tell him yep, you missed this huge crazy plot twist and now it's over, such a shame! Sam will probably laugh and go yeah, right, you're so full of shit, which Sebastian will neither confirm nor deny, and after a long stretch of silence, Sam will quietly go, wait, really? And the look in his eye will be so devastatingly earnest, so infallibly trusting, that Sebastian will fall for him all over again.
For now, he basks in this quiet indulgence. Their default displays of affection might boil down to playful heckling, but that doesn't mean he can't just lay still and appreciate Sam from time to time, especially when there's minimal risk of him hopping up at any given moment and ruining the moment with some stupid joke (which Sebastian would inevitably pretend to be annoyed by; he'll never admit to enjoying Sam's humour).
It seems, in all honesty, absurd to Sebastian that he should get to have Sam in this capacity. That he should get to call Sam his. Thirteen years of friendship; thirteen years of living a short hike away from each other; thirteen years of Spirit's Eve movie marathons; thirteen years of being side-by-side in everything; and not once did it ever occur to Sebastian that Sam might have hoped for more. Sebastian had hoped for more, because of course he had. Sam was the sun. He was impossible not to fall in love with. But Sam falling in love with him? The prospect seemed downright ludicrous.
And yet here he is, asleep on Sebastian's bed, hand static in his hair. There's so much warmth in Sebastian's chest, he doesn't really know what to do with it all but stare and ponder. He's not used to being loved so openly, with so much at stake if things were to blow up someday. It's overwhelming. It's terrifying. It scares the absolute, ever-living shit out of him.
He wouldn't give it up for the world.
Right as the roll of credits bleeds back into the DVD's grainy title screen, Sam stirs. His hand slips out of Sebastian's hair. Newly freed from his confines, Sebastian props himself up on his elbows.
"Morning, sleepyhead," he says.
Sam slurs something barely-comprehensible. Thankfully, Sebastian is fluent enough in Sam to make out the sentence: "Did I miss anything?"
Perfectly on cue. All of Sebastian's energy is channelled away from his musings, and redirected into the task of keeping his expression neutral.
"Oh, nothing," he says. "Only the most insane plot twist I've seen in a horror movie, possibly ever. One that even I didn't see coming. But it's no big deal."
Sam stares at him, face blank, eyes endearingly dopey. "You're bullshitting me."
Sebastian tries to tamp down the tiny flicker of a smirk threatening to bend the corner of his mouth.
"Nah," he says. "It was crazy. I can't believe you slept through it."
Sam blinks, processing. Debating whether to believe him. He seems unconvinced, at first, until the very faint shadow of doubt pulls his lips down at the edges.
"Really?" he asks, voice small.
An arrow spears itself straight through Sebastian's heart.
He falls in love all over again.