"maybe"

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tw// mentions of self harm, sexual assault, eating disorder. i do not intend to place warnings at the beginnings of parts due to the fact that these topics are important to the plot itself, and will be brought up continuously. please be cautious and do not read on if you believe this may affect your mental state<3

{to help with the experience, play the piece where the asterisk (*) is placed)

delilah's doors were open.

sebastian walked through them slowly, wondering why delilah would have allowed the door to stay ajar instead of yelling for a patron to shut it. he made his way across the dusty hardwood floors that were scuffed by years of stools constantly being scooted, tables being rearranged, and bottles being dropped and their shattered pieces left in the spaces where the boards didn't quite meet.

"dee?" sebastian yelled, raising his voice over the din of men and women in the beginning stages of drunkenness, stopping behind the bar to pour a shot of peach tequila for his tea he had brought with him. he took a sip and grimaced before he heard a muffled reply.

"get your ass over to the piano, seb. that's what you're here for, isn't it?" delilah's response came with a cheerful tone. however hard she tried to show otherwise, she loved hearing harry play. most people did.

sebastian smiled into his mug, finishing the last sip and dumping it in the deep sink. he made his way through the people to the piano in the more or less empty back corner of the room. not much of the light from the front reached to where sebastian normally occupied, and the lamp that stood next to the large instrument had burned out years ago.

the piano bench creaked as sebastian made himself comfortable, stretching his fingers while looking fixedly away as he did so.

he loved the piano. the simplicity of its tone contrasting with the amount of emotion it could evoke. he liked that it gave him something to do with his hands that made others happy, instead of the hatred he felt whenever he saw them. he liked that it was so easy to create a melody from nothing, expanding a single note at a time until he had played an entire masterpiece. he liked to please others, and playing piano was a healthy way to do so.

the whole time sebastian played, he was unaware of the bird-like stranger that came in to watch him. he entered just after sebastian started playing and left just before he finished, every night. he watched him perform avidly, his eyes trained on sebastian's face, his fingers, his wrists. he didn't order anything besides one green tea to drink for the entirety of sebastian's playing.

sebastian's hands coursed over the keys with practiced ease, urging the feeling of nostalgia and whimsical beauty from the instrument that always welcomed him with open arms.

"do you work here?" came a quiet voice from directly in front of him. he didn't look up from where his fingers weaved over and under each other, a blur of tan on the ebony and ivory keys. he watched them dance, only half-listening to what he was playing, with disgust. his fingers were long, longer than average, and every time he looked at them he felt like he needed something from them, or for them, or something because they were ugly and frail and couldn't ever break—

"hello?" the voice came again, louder this time, and a delicate hand waved itself vigorously in front of where sebastian was playing. this hand, unlike sebastian's, was small, with thin fingers that looked deathly pale in the dark setting. slight traceries of blue veins wound their way to a dainty wrist that poked out of the sleeve of a worn-looking, oversized  flannel.

sebastian, intrigued, looked up to meet the eyes of the aggressively waving hand and felt his stomach lurch uncomfortably. sebastian had continued his playing throughout his analysis of what he was sure had to be the prettiest hands he had ever seen, but his fingers stopped abruptly in the middle of a new melody when he first looked into those electric blue eyes.