stupidly easy / / sebastien & elena.

sebastien salazar.

He sat on the porch, cigarette between the index of his fingers, throwing his moral compass into the bushes. 

It's funny how it all works, how quickly you cave when you're promised one sweet thing; imagine it with two. Slowly their numbers dwindled until it were just Valentino & Sebastien himself- he couldn't even say if his mother supported his father in this situation. Ever as it comes, Elena runs to Jacinta, and Sebastien blames it on a growing addiction that he's back again. Just as the love letters to Stella Blakesley are -- he's started addressing her as simply Stella. 

Miss Stella, if he were nasty. The clipboard sat on his lap, head resting on the neighboring empty house's door next to Jacinta's. A last name unattached, she was something traitorous, forbidden in a house of snakes, but they're all aware of how that goes. The apple shining in arms reach and for Bash, that found itself materialized in the cardboard carton of nicotine and wraps. He started just for the hell of it, to pretend to be badass. Seeing his Uncle Luciano smoking and the wafts that billowed from the back end of a porcelain pipe. 

These weren't as elegant, sure, but they got the job done. 

And he could throw them away after, just like stupid love letters. Just like his gaze at Mackenzie's door, a bird would fly by or an eyelash sticks out of place, and he looks, near hopeful. He hates how hopeful it is that Angel would come out -- to excite things just a little. That boy was 0-1 on a cigarette count only Sebastien kept up, leverage kept people around in your life. Sebastien learned that from his father; Jacinta won, and she didn't need them anymore. 

So she left. 

And took Elena with her. And Violetta, in a way he knew he couldn't blame her for. 

He told Jacinta he'd be in the village by midnight, after his parents fell asleep. Of everything, through everything, Sebastien had never been able to hate them. Cruel and cold, monsters the both of them, but he spent too long wanting to be just like them. Fill his father's shoes and hold the gun to Angel de Costa's heart, pull the trigger. Kill somebody so important like it would make them be kinder towards him. 

Treat him, how Angel had. Maybe that's why Sebastien dropped the paper at Mackenzie's door, notepad to his hip and "sup zombie, - s.s." with a shoddy brain scribble on a ripped sheet. Torn at the seams, it fit Angel! A hot mess, emphasis on hot. And mess. Just a lot of emphasis on the entirety of that boy. He didn't want to be friends with him when the sun shined, because he didn't pull that trigger and Valentino would. Sebastien knew some things, like that Jezebel Zodiia went missing not even a week after Jacinta trade spots with her. 

You're a Salazar until you die, little serpent boy, and you'll never be anything else. One day, he'd marry Miss Stella, the one woman he could put his interest into, and he would have successful children with a successful, beautiful woman, and their kids would be named Luciano and Esmerelda, and they would have shitty lives. It's how the world works, how seven and twelve work, and everything in between. A boy so desperate to become his father, he stares the precipice down in the way he sees Elena Salazar entering the village. 

Well, goddamn. He was surprised, and then surprised that he was so. 

She had Marley Cost and Jacinta in this village, and Sebastien had to remind himself he had nobody, not even her. Elena didn't even have the choice to leave him behind, and she still begged to- isn't that something? Something painful, evil in the way she would scold their father for being, and maybe they're all just wicked. Wrapped up in their DNA and he held his left hand in his corduroy jacket as she practically skipped along; was he supposed to hate her too? 

Like how she must have hated him, enough to leave him in the mansion alone. Would he hate her for doing the same? The notepad cuts into his hip, cigarette still afloat in its sail. Like it was the only thing keeping him above water -- that's how addiction works, after all. He had to stop complicating things, the answer was in the way Elena carried herself. There were the Salazars, and there were the others: Jacinta, Mackenzie, Marley, Angel de Costa.  

And if Elena wanted to be with them, so be it; he was just here for the cigarettes. 

That's all, that's everything. 

Sebastien sits on the porch, going through lies and excuses and there was something true in there anyways: the cigarette. A different habit than her's, sure, but it kept both of them coming back. He stuffs the note back into his pocket, realizing in all the ways that Angel de Costa shouldn't exist in his mind. Back pressed to the porch, slinking in the shadows wishing he had never even considered coming. Now he understands why it's so important he does the right thing. 

Jacinta would never take him in like she did Elena. It was Salazar or bust and he only has Valentino.

"Sup, sis," he says it in a smirk, watching the way she dies a little under her own skin. He learned two things from his mother: that he wasn't shit, and that you can pass off anything lie. Sebastien takes a step off the porch, squeezing the note in the fist of his jacket pocket. "Figured you go to Jaci's first, but hey," he perks his eyebrows, "here we sure are."