Oh gosh, this is so cute. <3 I just came back from an emergency vet visit, so this is just a little something. But I hope it scratches your itch, leipnau!
"Marry Me" Is A Declaration of Intent
WC: 1,028 | Pairing: Sebastian x Reader | Rating: E/SFW | Spice: 🌶︎/5
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You're minding your own business, nose in a book, when it happens.
It’s a nice spring day. The leaves are leafing, the birds are singing, the bees are buzzing, and everything feels fresh, bright, and new. You’ve found a sunny spot beneath some trees at the far edge of the castle’s back gardens, not far from the Beasts classroom and pens. The end of the school year is fast approaching, and the professor who took over Magical Theory from Professor Fig is...well, a bit of a hard-ass, really. Her exams have been brutal all year, and the worst one is only a week away. You’re determined to do well in that class, though, so you’ve spent every spare moment focused on steady (if panicked) studying.
But the bright April day proves too much to resist. You justify being outside by bringing your Magical Theory textbooks (yes, plural) along with you…though you’re halfway to dozing. Your heart isn’t in it. Not today.
And then he shows up. Comes out of absolutely nowhere - like he does - around the curve of the tree and plops down beside you. You side-eye his tousled brown hair, his loosened tie, and his slightly rumpled waistcoat. Honestly, Sebastian looks like he’s just rolled off some horizontal surface after a good nap, himself.
He grins at you, brown eyes full of mischief. You breathe through your nose, sort of softly snorting at him. He’s been in rare form lately. Something’s up, you’re sure of it…but it’s none of your business, and you’ve never been one to pry, even when it’s clear he wants you to.
“Sebastian,” you say calmly, then look back down at your book. That’s when you realize you’ve got it upside down.
He surprises you by putting his chin on your shoulder; his breath tickles your cheek, and for a moment, you’re entirely flustered. You and Sebastian are close, certainly. But this is a new and unannounced level of in-your-space, and it sets your heart pounding in your chest in a sharp spike of what-the-fuck. Matters are not helped by the fact that, slowly, inevitably, and unwillingly over the past year, you’ve started…daydreaming. About Sebastian, specifically. Ever since that stupid Quidditch match, when you’d stomped past the boys’ lockers after a particularly stinging defeat and caught Sebastian peeling off his damp undershirt in full view of the door as Ominis pushed it open to congratulate his House’s team…
Your eyes locked - yours and Sebastian’s. He never said a damn thing all year long…but he’d grinned at you something fierce in that split second of open door and bare skin, and you’d spent a fortnight avoiding him at all possible costs.
“What do you want, Sebastian?” you ask aloud, forcing your voice to stay steady.
“I’m going to marry you one day,” he says so matter-of-factly - so…so casually - that for several awful seconds, you’re certain you’ve misheard him.
“I-I beg your pardon?” You freeze for half a second. Then, annoyed at his utter cheek, you shrug up to dislodge his chin. When that doesn’t work, you lean away and pull your shoulder out from under his jaw.
His cheek had been more or less pressed against yours. That’s when you realize, with a flutter of something hot and wholly new moving through your body, that Sebastian is surely shaving now. He has stubble. How on earth have you never noticed? Visually noticed…that is…
You snap your upside-down book shut and brandish it for a moment as if you’re going to smack him in the face with it. (Which isn’t entirely out of the realm of possibility.)
“I said,” Sebastian’s eyes sparkle as he sits up straight and grins at you, “that I’m going to marry you.”
He nods, self-assured and smug as always. “Indeed I am.”
“And do I get any say in the matter?” You narrow your eyes at him - smacking him across the nose with your book becomes more tempting by the second.
He shrugs. “You’ll come around to the idea.”
“Oh, will I?” You decide at the last minute he doesn’t quite deserve a smack to the face, so you swing your book solidly against his chest.
He just laughs and grabs your hand, trapping it and the book against his body. Your face heats. You’ve leaned forward into his space to smack him…and now your faces are entirely too close together.
“I owe you for everything,” he says softly, and the sudden sincerity in his eyes catches you off guard. “And you know everything…everything I did wrong last year…and you covered me. Stuck with me and had my back, in spite of it all.”
“So did Ominis,” you say, throwing up a layer of surface irritability to mask your flustered response. “Are you going to marry him, too?”
“Oh, we’d kill each other inside of a month,” Sebastian snorts.
He just smiles sweetly at you…and you catch the moment his eyes drop to your mouth. For one breathless instant, you forget how to breathe entirely. You’ve…well, you may or may not have started wondering what it would be like to kiss Sebastian Sallow in the last few months…
“Well,” he says, his voice lower now, deeper - and for half a second, you hear a glimpse of what he’ll sound like all the time once the last lingering flushes of puberty are behind him. “We’d at least have fun trying, I think.”
And with that…he leaves. Just grins at you, winks, hauls himself to his feet with a grunt, and disappears around the curve of the tree from whence he came.
You, for your part, will never, ever admit that it takes you a good two minutes to close your mouth after it drops open in disbelief. Later, you wonder if you dreamed it, if you’d simply dozed off beneath the trees. But the hooded, knowing look Sebastian shoots you as you pass him on your way into the Great Hall for dinner assures you that no…that definitely happened.
When Sebastian Sallow sets a goal, he pursues it, all right. Because, damn it all…
In the end, he does, in fact, marry you.
