#plot roast

Truthfully, Seb isn’t sure what the real problem is.

Mark is gone; has been gone for months, and the new season should be a welcome, fresh slate. Instead, Seb sits with his head between his hands after a disastrous third day of testing, cringing away from the data on the screen before him, barely listening to Christian as the man prattles on.

Across from him, Daniel says something unintelligible—honestly, after all these years, Seb still can’t understand Australian for the fucking life of him—and the tension in the conference room dissolves, just a little bit.

His voice is all wrong. The timbre of it is too deep, the articulation of every word too calculated, each vibration through the air reeking of an unhinged desperation. 

Relax, Seb wants to say. Everyone already likes you. But Daniel’s palpable insecurity seems to have teeth, and after five years of dealing with Mark, Seb is wary about dog bites. 

“Are you all right, Sebastian?”

Blinking, Seb turns to the source of the voice. Adrian offers him an encouraging smile. Or, it would be encouraging, if the circles around his eyes didn’t give his exhaustion away. 

The least he can do is offer his own grimace in return. “Yes,” he says. Are you? “Thank you.”

Christian carries on with the debrief. The words swim around, useless and limp in the face of the year’s upcoming challenges. 

If he was here, Mark would tap Seb’s foot with the tip of his shoe beneath the table. They’d exchange small bruises on their shins, if he was here. And if Rocky was in his old spot, he’d catch Seb’s eye and glare until they stopped. 

lo and behold, he meets another spirit (seb) who demands that he show them the world beyond the forest to search for their brother in exchange for finding the cure to his predicament

they embark on the journey together as hesitant partners, mark with a lingering distrust of spirits/magical beings, and seb with the humiliation that they need to shackle themselves to this useless lump of fur if they want to go beyond the boundaries of their home and find their lost sibling

they eventually become friends, with mark letting his walls down, and seb getting humbled by the great big world..

but gasp! it turns out seb never knew how to cure mark and they were just using him, even though they feel really bad about it bc now they have Feelings, and it's doubly troubling because seb needs a tether to mark's soul to survive outside the forest, but mark doesn't feel particularly inclined to help seb after getting betrayed............

uh oh! time is running out on the cure for mark's condition, and everything is going to shit for both of them, and mark leaves it to the very last possible second before he decides not to be a killer again, and he very reluctantly comes back to save seb at the cost of time he could have spent searching for a cure

seb is sooo relieved but when mark confesses why he saved them, the dots connect and seb wants to curse mark forever and ever for what he did

but the au is about breaking cycles of pain, so after an angsty and mostly silent journey home, seb and mark choose forgiveness before parting ways.....

mark goes to sleep at the edge of the forest as a beast and wakes up as a boy again. he can't perceive magic anymore in this form, but he can see seb bc they're still tied by their souls, and seb doesn't look like a weird talking tree shrub anymore, but a ghostly blonde kid who looks to be around mark's age, peering at him from just inside the treeline

when seb tries to step outside the border of the forest, they're stopped--not even their link to mark can make them manifest into something corporeal

but mark can enter the forest, and he can hug seb! he vows to love the forest and magical beings and reject his father's teachings

seb is like, love all magical beings equally?? or

and mark is like, no, well. i think i might like one magical being more than the rest

they share an innocent kiss and live happily ever