Warm.

Sebastian blinks his eyes open, glances around, clutches with a half-clenched hand at the wall behind him. The air feels warm, now, and he’s in a freezer and oh god fuck.

He brings a hand up to his face, sucks in a breath.

His hand is white; he bends his wrist up, the motion as fluid as ever, but now he can see tiny cracks where his veins should be and-

Calm down.

Sebastian pauses, feeling his heart pause, shivers stuttering down his spine in the ice-air. He lays a hand on the wall behind him, stares at it, can’t stop staring at it.

It’s ice, and it feels warm.

Sebastian grits his teeth, clenches his eyes shut.

What have you done to me?

Think of it as an upgrade.

Sebastian scoffs, attempts to stand up, slumps back on the wall. Glances back at his hand.

Upgrade? I’m a freak of nature.

Congratulations.

Sebastian stumbles forward, places his hand against the still-closed freezer door.

Concentrate.

On what?

A moment passes, and suddenly Sebastian’s hand flattens against the door, pushing and pushing and freezing and cold-burning and-

The door shatters.

Ice splits, slides as it hits the ground, and Sebastian withdraws his hands. A small tick sounds from the ground behind him, and Sebastian swings his head around, looks down.

The ice is moving.

Sebastian yells, jumps back in fright-shock as the ice joins another piece, and another, and melds and melts together until it’s roughly the size of his fist, continues shaping into legs and body and a head and stalactite-sharp dagger-teeth and oh god it’s breathing.

It’s not going to attack you.

Sebastian laughs, loud and clear, echoes it off the walls. His voice cracks as the thing moves closer, and his feet seem frozen.  He’s frozen.

What is it?

He doesn’t hear a reply in his head, but he feels an itching at the bottom of his spine, feels another laugh, a genuine one, genuine amusement cascading up and spilling out and-

It’s ours.

Sebastian kneels down, holds his hands out to the creature, a sudden confidence snapping through his veins. The creature moves it’s head up, and Sebastian can’t see any eyes but he can just feel it looking at him, surveying all-cautious, and it occurs to him that maybe it’s more scared than he is.

The creature walks forward, towards Sebastian, and nuzzles it’s ice-head against his wrist.

It feels warm.

Sebastian stands, walks out of the freezer, and the creature follows close behind; he gets about three steps before he remembers why he was in the freezer in the first place.

“You don’t need anything, okay?”

pleasehELpgodchOkingcan’tBReathedYiNG

“I need this-”

movingangryfuckshe’sfast, toofast, fuckfuckfUCK

Sebastian coughs, suddenly, feeling the urge to breathe even though he’s already breathing.

A new memory snaps through him, and his spine straightens a second before it enters his mind.

“I’m not obligated to do anything for you, Sebastian.”

Sebastian feels a new, fire-rage-hot anger bleed through him, and the creature behind him growls. He growls.

You could do anything.

And Sebastian moves as realization slides through him, enters his bloodstream and he’s at the door in less than a second, and it’s open and he’s walking and running and for once, he knows where he’s going.

*

It’s dark, and the entire room smells like whiskey. Victor Smythe is half-passed out in his desk chair, and Sebastian can hear his blood. Smell it, feel it from the other side of the office.

It’s too easy.

Sebastian crosses the room in a quarter-second, and Victor slumps down a little more, and snores, and Sebastian’s hand is an icicle, knife-sharp, butcher-knife-sharp. Victor moves, eyes glinting in their narrow-openness, and Sebastian swings his hand into his stomach. He smiles as Victor’s eyes snap open, and he can feel the white-hot blood swelling and swimming around his hand. He snap-slides it out, and Victor slumps back in his chair and opens his mouth and then Sebastian reaches down, clenches around his neck and everything’s so hot and then Victor’s up against the wall, and Sebastian can feel the voice in his head hissing.

-gonna kill gonna rip out your heart and finish him off-

Sebastian freezes, and his hand freezes, and his father’s neck is ice-white. He smiles again, and drops his hand.

He moves back through the house, lets the sound of his father’s desperate-chokes echo through with no intention of stopping them as he wanders to the kitchen, snaps his hand down on the tiled floor and reaches down and pulls out a tiny, silver vial of white liquid and hears the voice in his blood screech in approval.

We can do anything.

*

“Wait, what?”

Brittany pauses. “And then I locked him in the freezer.”

Blaine sighs, knocks his head back against the wall.

“Is there any chance that he…” Santana trails off, and Brittany shrugs, eyes half-watered.

“He’s probably dead, yeah.”  Brittany says, blinking too-fast, hands sliding down her forearms.

“He might not be,” Blaine urges, trying to ignore the voice in the back of his head telling him that this is a good sign, “so we have to go check.”

Brittany narrows her lips. “You can if you want, but I highly doubt he’ll-“

“-Brittany, I doubted that I’d be alive right now-”

“-and that’s all because of him!” Brittany bursts out, suddenly, uncrossing her arms and storming over to Blaine. “Why are you so quick to defend him? Why the ever-loving fuck do you want to save him?”

Blaine glares, feels his palms burn. “Is it that hard to understand why I don’t want to be responsible for someone’s death, Brittany?” He scoffs.

“He doesn’t mind killing an innocent person,” she hisses, retracts her hands back to her forearms.

“Well apparently, neither do you.” Blaine spits, before he can stop himself.

Brittany freezes, staring at the wall behind him. “He tried to kill you. He tried to kill me.” She breathes, hands trembling.

Blaine hesitates, blood white-burning. “No-one deserves to die, Brittany.”

She lets out a sob as he turns away, heads for his door.

“Now,” he says, trying to keep his voice steady, “I’m going to go to the bakery.”

A moment passes.

“If either of you want to join me, then you’re welcome.”

He slams the door behind him, blots out the soft sound of Brittany’s crying.

*

“Sebastian?”

Blaine had kicked down the door; he didn’t really have time for etiquette. He glances around as quickly as he can, stepping inside, and oh.

Over in front of the freezer, what Blaine had previously thought to be just a block of ice seemed to be…breathing. It was in the shape of a small cat, purrs rumbling from what seemed to be it’s mouth every few seconds. Blaine goes to back away, reaching behind him, and a small, horrible moment passes where he hears a loud, too-familiar laugh from behind him, feels the chill of a knife at the base of his spine.

“You never learn, do you, Anderson?” It’s colder than Blaine expected.

“Sebastian,” Blaine breathes, carefully scanning through his brain as to what to say. “I thought you were dead.”

“Well, Blaine, we all know that’s your job, right?”

Blaine scoffs, even as a shiver runs down his spine. The pressure on his back increases, so he spins around and slams a blue-white-hot hand onto the knife and oh, it’s his hand.

Sebastian hisses, retracts his palm as Blaine back-steps, tries to find a way away.

“What do you want, Sebastian?”

Sebastian just laughs again, moving closer, and Blaine is forced to step backwards, towards the still-open freezer.

“Just everything that’s mine.” He hisses, still clutching onto his hand. He smiles, sudden and low, and whistles. Blaine hears a small meow from behind him, feels a sharp, stalactite-sting in his ankle, drops to one knee. Sebastian is there within the second, clenching his palm around Blaine’s face too-tight, and Blaine can feel the cold and then too-cold and ohgodjesusithurts cold and his jaw is frozen and his ankle is iced to the ground, too, and he can feel his blood boiling and screaming against the ice but there’s too much, too much-

-and then, it stops. Blaine still can’t move, but he can feel the ice melting away, and he can see the scene before him; Sebastian is on the other side of the room, up against the wall, choking like someone’s holding him up but there’s nobody there, at least, nobody that Blaine can see-

-the rest of the ice melts away, and Blaine swings himself up onto both feet, hands skitting over his throat and everywhere else they can reach, breathing slowly coming back into time.

Sebastian slumps to the floor, and a moment passes before Blaine hears a voice in his head.

You okay?

Blaine hesitates, shrugs. “Better than I expected.”

He hears a loud, deep laugh rumble from near Sebastian.

That’s good to know.

“Who are you?” Blaine asks, not sure exactly where to direct his words, feeling awfully stupid.

There’s silence, and Blaine’s heart skips a beat.

“A friend.”

And Blaine swears that he knows that voice, and it’s at the back of his mind and he’s reaching back but then the door slams open, and Blaine’s wait ambles halfway out and drops dead on the ice-ground, and the silence suddenly seems a lot lonelier.