Sebastian Flyte

Thunderstorm

Charles cheered when Sebastian came back in and quickly made room for him to sit closer by the fire, so he could get warm again. He himself was warm enough now. Even his hair was almost entirely dry. “Get it open!” he said, handing Sebastian the bottle. He couldn’t wait to drink. Drinking with Sebastian was one of his favourite things. It was always so lovely.

† —— Sebastian took the bottle and immediately set to open it. It went a bit difficult with trembling hands, and so he held the bottle out to Charles, who'd no doubtfully be quicker.

"Cold isn't so bad," Sebastian said, "when it doesn't come from inside."

Revisiting Brideshead

Charles looked down at the mention of Kurt and he nodded. “I am truly sorry about what happened to him… Cordelia informed me at the time,” he explained, although only felt struck by guilt at showing Sebastian that he’d known, yet hadn’t done anything to reach out to him. The truth remained that he had never been quite sure where Sebastian was, but that was hardly an excuse.

"It seemed to be my duty," he then spoke, to take the topic away from the past and closer to the present. "I have done my painting, shown what I can do and now… I guess I must serve my country. It seemed like the right thing to do," he spoke. A good way to live with himself, a good way to move on.

† —— "I think it's all a bit of silliness from you Charles," Sebastian replied honestly. He too, didn't continue the topic of Kurt. He hadn't known that Charles had known, but he did not think it should change anything. He did not expect anything from anyone. Besides, he was at the end of his live and he did not want to clog it up with anymore sins. It was only natural to forgive Charles.

"I should like to see what you have done since. I heard about your architectural work. I have only my imagination to fill in what it might look like. You were always so wonderfully precise. Old fashioned Charles."

Revisiting Brideshead

"You’re a friend, Sebastian, even if we might not have seemed much like them in the last few years," he spoke. It seemed more than what he had wanted to say and it made his heart ache slightly. There was little he could say to tone down the weight of his words and perhaps he didn’t need to. Sebastian would know what he meant, he hoped.

Charles had never really understood loyalty. He had always been way too selfish for that, but he knew this; helping his dying friend, his first friend, up the stairs was loyalty. It was loyalty and care… one that would not disappear, just because the one that should be receiving it did.

They reached the top of the stairs and he turned right, to where his father had stayed. It was a strange place to be and he hadn’t visited it yet since, but it was alright. He was visiting it with Sebastian, who hadn’t seen the state in which his father had occurred, the state in which he would occur himself in not too long. “I hope I will be able to see you often.”

† —— "I would hope so," Sebastian said, as if he'd expected to see Charles here all along and had taken it into account that he would have Charles here while he died. He had been given nothing over a year and that was generous, they'd said. Don't expect anything good to happen... Don't expect remarkable recovery. He'd been through that once, but he'd wasted his health by drinking himself ill once more.

"I do wish you wouldn't have joined the army, Charles. After what happened to Kurt you must understand I do not think highly of it."

Thunderstorm

Charles chuckled and sat back down as he took the bottle from Sebastian, watching him pace quickly towards the front doors, in which the glass rattled with the strong wind and the loud bangs. “Don’t get swallowed up out there,” he joked. He looked ever so silly in that blanket draped over him like that, though yet, strangely beautiful.

He eyed the bottle, before watching the fire as he waited for Sebastian to come back.

† —— He was as quick as he could be. He dragged the trousers inside, then felt in the pocket for the corkscrew. He came back trembling, but smiling nonetheless. The fire, Charles and the wine would soon warm him. "Here." He held out the corkscrew so Charles could do the work.

That he'd be so lucky as to spend a night here with Charles, without them possibly going anywhere.

Revisiting Brideshead

Charles nodded, though the idea of Sebastian, even like this, still desiring the cellar saddened him. Alcohol was such a wicked thing when offered to the vulnerable in such quantities. “If he isn’t, I just might,” he spoke. He couldn’t change Sebastian now. He was on his deathbed and he didn’t have much time. He might as well spend is at pleasantly as he possibly could.

"Let me help you up the stairs," he spoke, moving his hand out to Sebastian’s forearm. It would be the first time he’d touched him in so long, after all the times that he’d walked through Oxford arm in arm, only to be laughed at, frowned at, to be called sodomites, to be shamed. Those times were long gone, but he still held Sebastian’s arm in the same way he had, as he walked towards the stairs.

† —— Getting help from Charles was probably more damaging than the trip up the stairs would've been without him, as Sebastian felt the sting in his eyes. No tears fell, but he could feel them clearly, as if they should've been there, but weren't by a lack of energy.

He first didn't dare lean heavily on Charles' arm, if at all, but the journey, along with the trip up the stairs was wearing him out and soon he found he didn't have the strength to refrain from the offered help.

"You're still so kind. No winter seems to freeze you."

Thunderstorm

Charles laughed and nodded. “I swear never to fight with you,” he said, holding out his right hand. “An oath.”

His eyes went to the bottle, which was when he realised they had no glasses here. They were on the edge of the fountain, getting filled with rain and spilling over, over and over again. Perhaps one had fallen into the fountain, or into the grass. “Will we drink from the bottle, or are there glasses you keep here too?” Charles asked, moving to get up slowly.

† —— He took Charles' hand and shook it. He didn't have any doubt that they would keep to their oath or that it was in itself unnecessary to make. It wasn't a war he feared, it was distance, but he did not want to think of such things while secured in the garden house with Charles all to himself.

"We shall be savages!" Sebastian spoke up, while he sat up to reach for the bottle. It had warmed up since he'd taken it from the windowsill. He handed the bottle to Charles, before he realized he had to get the clothes anyway, to grab the corkscrew from his trousers pockets. "I better be quick."

Revisiting Brideshead

Charles didn’t want to respond to Sebastian’s words, but that would be the furthest from courageous that he could possibly come. “Yes, that was unfortunate,” he responded, so at least he’d spoken of it. He didn’t want to speak of the past, nor the future, nor did he want to speak of now. He had settled what had happened as unfortunate events, brightened with love and desire in places, yet always doomed to end in heartbreak and this was the biggest opportunity he’d had to move on from all of that. He had forgiven all that had hurt him and hoped they’d forgiven him too in turn. It was a thought that had come to be after realising he would never lay eyes on any of the Flytes again, and yet here Sebastian was, the first Flyte he’d fallen for.

"I don’t think anyone is as brave or as good as they like to think they are," he stated simply, while turning towards Sebastian where he entered the mansion. "I don’t think many people are anything like what they think they are," he added, but it was something of a whole other philosophy and not something you could talk about upon a meeting like this. "Are you staying upstairs?"

#Revisiting Brideshead #charlesthepainter #sebastianthesinner

† —— "Is that why you're here, fighting in the army, when you could've been excluded from it all, by giving your true occupation priority?" Sebastian asked, but he did not want an answer. He didn't really need one. This was far more important than a trivial thought of courage. He did not need Charles to be courageous. He just needed Charles alive.

"I shall have to stay upstairs," he replied. "I suppose it's for the best. Further away from the cellar, although I'm quite certain Wilcox will be happy to make the trip for me."

Thunderstorm

"The first peaceful one," he stated, eyes blurring as they stared into the fire, before turning them to Sebastian to give him a smile. "I quite like storms. I like the noise of them. A natural violence, the only ones not inflicted by people." He liked that idea a lot, for he hated violence and arguments. He hated the entire idea of picking fights for the sole purpose of not getting along. So many people didn’t. It wasn’t worth a fight.

"We should take in our clothes soon, hang them up to dry, before they ruin."

† —— Sebastian smiled. He loved it when Charles finished a thought even before Sebastian had had the time to have it. "Yes, a peaceful one," he confirmed. The rain on the roof was far louder than the crackling of fire in the fireplace, but the flickering of the fire managed to brighten up the room, regardless of the dark storm outside.

"Let's swear never to fight," he said, looking at Charles humorously. He did not believe they would ever fight. It seemed impossible.

"Oh let them ruin!" he spoke out then. "This is far too comfortable to get up for a pair of drenched clothes. They were never my favourite anyway, why do you reckon I was so keen to take them off?"

Revisiting Brideshead

He hadn’t wanted to hear Sebastian’s latter words. They sickened him, saddened him. They were unnecessary and they showed that, despite all Sebastian had gone through, he was still the same, sorry person he had always been, begging God for forgiveness. It wasn’t his fault and Charles knew that. Charles knew that it had never been Julia’s either, but that didn’t mean that he could live with her, knowing that that was who she was, even if, truly, she wasn’t.

"Don’t. It’s a waste of time," he stated bluntly, not looking at Sebastian as he said so. There were many things they left unspoken between the two of them, and that had always been for the better… but there was urgency, now Sebastian was dying and the truth told him that there would be no other time to speak the words he perhaps wanted to speak to him. "What good and bad days do you think I have?" It sounded far from kind, but not quite bitter. It wasn’t a tone that suited him well, but he wasn’t good at handling the confrontation of religion, not since turning his back on Julia and what his life at that point had supposed to be. All religion had ever done was disappoint him and that was all it would do, right until his last breath.

† —— There were many things that were a waste of time. Sebastian wasn't sure whether anything he'd ever done in his life could be regarded as anything else. Perhaps that one summer, which wasn't a waste of time for the very reason of purposely being one. They'd been so happy wasting time that Sebastian might have thought it possible never to do anything in his life without caring much about it; what he left behind. He didn't have any paintings people could look at, he didn't have stories or letters he wrote that were of any value. It would be as if he had never been there at all. Such troubles he should leave to atheists or agnostics, but he could not put it out of his mind entirely, not ever. And such was the curse of not fitting in either way.

"I know you were set up to marry Julia," Sebastian spoke. He had to suck in air again, wait a moment, before continuing. "I know how it ended, how she ended up. Not quite the courage either... We weren't raised to be brave, just to be good. It's such a shame we can be neither, don't you think?" These topics were getting rather too heavy on him and he took another step towards the doors and the hallways that lay ahead. He had already been informed that he would have to seek homage on the second floor, which meant having to walk those endless steps day in day out. He could call for a nurse, but he feared he could receive one as strict as some of the nurses that had treated him in Morocco.