Chapter Text
The moment Sebastian couldn't say “I love you” to Kimi was possibly the worst.
Of course. The entire process of turning into an animal slowly with no known cure was the worst of the worst. But Sebastian would take the bloodied nails as his fingers grew claws that tore out of the beds of his cuticles, he would take the knee joints that were slowly coming out of their sockets (as wouldn't you know a wolf’s knees are backward and wouldn't it be fun for his to snap like that?), and he would take the alien feeling of his spine sometimes coming out of his damn back as it moved around and the feel of his organs shifting around inside as he slowly turned from a bipedal to a quadrupedal.
But he couldn't take this.
His vocal chords had been shredding for a while. Some days he had woken up feeling unable to breathe and he would try to claw for lungfuls of air. Sometimes he had thought this part of the process would kill him and it would have been a relief. But it doesn't and over time his voice had gone from its usual cadence to low and growly. It had felt like being a teenager all over again. But worse.
The curse would soon be fully complete and soon he wouldn't even be human anymore. There was no turning under a full moon and coming back human in the morning. This curse would make him into a monster permanently.
And now? His voice was so ruined. So broken by his forcibly changing body that he couldn't even tell the man he loved that he did love him.
Kimi is with him when he tries to speak and the worry and the heartbreak in the man's eyes is almost too much to bear. Sebastian doesn't know how the man can bare to look at his disfigured, changing body. How Kimi could stand there and still love him. It didn't make sense.
When nothing comes out of Sebastian’s mouth, Kimi lightly touches his shoulder. His voice is hushed as he tells him that it's okay. To not try to cause anymore pain by trying to talk.
But it's not okay. It's anything but okay. His last vestige of his humanity has been taken away and the way his arms and legs ached every single day it won't be long before he can't walk either. He doesn't know how he's going to survive when it's over.
Kimi seems to see Sebastian’s spiraling thoughts and he touches his shoulder again. Signing to Sebastian the words I love you. It had been something Kimi's mother had taught him long ago.
Sebastian tries to follow but his shrinking fingers don't have the range of movement anymore capable of even that. So all Kimi does is take his mangled changing hand and uses the tip of a bloodied claw to trace a heart against his chest. Another way of saying it.
Sebastian sees his blood on Kimi's shirt shaped like a heart and privately thinks that all this will end in blood anyway.