How to Make a... Future | Sebastian Sallow x F!OC| One Shot Collection

Lessons In Upholstery

A/N: Sebastian is needy. No explicit language but very sexually suggestive, mild mentions of nudity and sexual acts. Reader discretion is advised. Post-Hogwarts 18+ grown up Sebaura.

~x~

Upholstered in pale blue velvet, with matching embroidered silk pillows and ornately carved legs of polished mahogany, the tiny two-seater loveseat was clearly not designed for everyday use — yet every night, Sebastian found himself crammed between the armrests with a very satisfied redhead slotted awkwardly between his long legs. 

When Aurélie had found the sofa in a Muggle brocante in Toulouse, Sebastian had known immediately that there was no point in trying to talk her out of buying it. They didn't own a home to keep it in, and unless they bought a bloody chateau (which was highly improbable given that Sebastian was only a trainee Healer), it wasn't likely to suit any future home they ever lived in. But none of that mattered, because as soon as that little squeal of delight had left her lips, he knew they'd be leaving the antique market as proud owners of the most ridiculously ostentatious piece of furniture he'd ever laid eyes on.

Happily, he hadn't regretted that decision since. Even when his legs went numb with pins and needles and his back got a permanent crick in it, so long as she was tucked into him, her back pressed to his chest and her soft hair ticking the underside of his chin, Sebastian would never buy another sofa for as long as they lived. — Because there was no other way he ever wanted to sit unless it was with the small, warm weight of her in his lap.

A weight that was presently — and unbearably — absent as Aurélie busied herself in the tiny kitchen across the single-roomed cottage, humming under her breath as she chopped vegetables for their dinner. Sebastian watched her over the top of his book, his attention drawn, as it always was whenever she was near (or not near enough), away from the dry medical journal he was studying to the silky fall of her hair down her back, the soft shuffle of her bare feet over the kitchen rug, and the sheer summer dress that clung to her thighs, her waist: she'd regained some of the weight she'd lost after the horrors of their seventh year, and her hair had grown several inches over the summer, lightened to the colour of golden strawberries by the French sun.

Leaving the Highlands had done wonders for her health, but Sebastian liked to think that love had done that to her. His love. 

Tossing his book aside, he dropped his head back on the arm rest and let out a long, almighty groan. 

There was a unique ache that existed when she was out of reach — one that started as a small hole in his chest before spreading rapidly until his entire being felt hollow, an ache that demanded they share a too-small bed so they had to sleep tangled together, or eat at a too-small kitchen table so she had to take most of her meals sitting in his lap. 

Of course, he was self aware enough to know that his acute need for physical affection bordered on being a little… obsessive, and that owning too-small furniture was just a blatant way of enabling his insatiable desire to touch her — but he also knew how quickly love could be snatched away, and so he endeavoured to keep it close at all times: to see it in her eyes and hear it in her laugh, to taste it in her mouth and feel it shiver across her skin, to pour it into her until even her breath was saturated with it —

His love. 

His. 

Aurélie cast him an amused glance over her shoulder. ‘Hungry?’ she called, a teasing lilt in her delicious voice. 

‘Staaarving,’ he whined, reaching his arms out for her. 

Expecting her to argue about the virtues of patience, he was surprised when she immediately skipped across the room and climbed onto his lap, wrapping her arms and legs around him so tightly he struggled to breathe — just the way he liked it. Likely she'd heard the thinly veiled desperation in his voice, but in the short time they'd lived together, he'd come to learn that the empty awful ache of separation was a shared feeling.