Final one-shot (part two)

R1+R6+Rbunchwithoutnames(yet)+R5,971+R0

The blackness engulfed him and Seb fell through something cold and sharp, but it didn't cut his skin. Nothingness made his heart beat faster before he fell through the sharpiebits again. The tingle of the nothingness slowly left his body while Sebastian opened his eyes and became aware of his surroundings. He took a deep breath and got overthrown by the scent of hot chocolate, the warmth of a cozy fire and it's reassuring crackle. Seb blinked and frowned and the illusion of his childhood disappeared. Instead, he was sitting on a plane, an arm slung around his body and his head on a warm shoulder. It felt nice. He must have fainted somewhere in the paddock and Lewis must have taken him to the airport, he guessed. Ignoring the weird falling feelings from before -must have been a dream-, he cuddled in closer and buried his head in the crook of the other man's neck.

Wait a minute.

Where was Lewis' braided hair, that always fell into his neck when he had them loose when travelling?

Seb lifted his head and looked at the man who was softly snoring beside him. His heart tripled its speed in his chest because it was Kimi who was sitting next to him, not his boyfriend. Seb's hands flew to his neck, but all he felt was slightly damp skin. While he started to panic, he patted his whole neck, searching for the necklace Kimi had given him in that weird dream a while ago. It wasn't here. He had never taken it off and Lewis knew also not to. Had customs taken it off and didn't gave it back? How had he gone through customs anyway? Seb sat a bit more upright and peered over the seats to the other passengers. His eyes locked with Valtteri and he saw the Fin stiffen. What was happening here?

Seb looked around once more, but everyone was just relaxing in their seats. Everyone except a man with piercing blue eyes who stood up, and slowly began to walk through the aisle, not once leaving Seb's gaze. Seb searched for his seatbelts but he couldn't find them. He turned away from the man, who had only a few steps to go before he would arrive at Seb's row of seats. Then he saw Valtteri coming towards him through the aisle on his left and felt stuck in a corner, even though he was sitting on a seat in the middle of an airplane. He turned form Valtteri in front of him, to the man behind him and back while his breath sped up. Valtteri had a frightened spark in his eyes, which frightened Seb a bit, but it was the man, with his maniacal grin and slightly enlarged pupils, who made Sebastian shiver with fear. The man and Valtteri had reached their destination, which was Seb and Kimi's seat, at the same time and they both tried to grab his arms. Seb jerked away from the man, trusting his fellow racer above this strange fellow. When Valtteri's hands touched his arm, blackness engulfed him for the second time that day.

☲

After he had fallen through the cold sharpiebits, the nothingness and sharpiebits again, he woke up with the crisp air of cold mornings in his hair, the warm wood from his veranda under his hands and the chirping of countless birds in his ears. An almost overwhelming feeling of homesickness hit him and he was panting from it when he became aware of his surroundings and the illusion of his home in Switzerland had faded.

He was on an airplane again, but now slightly more to the back, and in the right row instead of the middle one. A warm body was slumped against him and a quick glance aside proved that he had the right boyfriend again. Seb peered around, although a bit more discrete this time and found that this smaller plane was filled with all the drivers of last season. That was weird. Seb knew they all had to go to different locations. He frowned and counted the drivers. He saw Alex and Callum, even though they weren't drivers this year and every other driver except for Nikita. When Seb spotted Daniel, slumped against a widely grinning Max, he sagged. This wasn't right either. Daniel was going to his family in Australia after the race, he had told him that at least five times this weekend. The Daniel Seb knew had said that, not this one who was flying with them to... Well, to where exactly? Seb searched for an information screen, but when that failed, he glanced along Lewis through the little window. He could vaguely make up some mountains beneath the clouds so that didn't help much. Seb sighed and rested his head at the headrest. He wanted to cry. He wanted to wake up from this dream as soon as possible.

"Seb!" a voice whispered urgently behind him. Seb shot upright and turned around in his seat after carefully directing Lewis' weight from his to Lewis' own seat.

"What?!" Seb whisper-shouted back to Valtteri, rage surrounding the word.

"I'm sorry, but you need to help me," Valtteri said softly.

"You need to explain what is happening to me," Seb shot back a little bit too loudly, because he got a weird glance from Este on the row behind the Fin.

"I'm sorry, but HIM is following you and this was the only way I could speak to you in private." Seb scoffed, because of both the grammatical error as the lack of privacy in this plane.

"But what is 'this'?" Seb breezed. He got a surprised look from Valtteri in return.

"We hop realities?" he asked as if Seb surely knew that.

"We do what?! Who's we?" Seb said, but he felt not nearly as surprised as he seemed. It actually made sense. It didn't, but he could change into a Pegasus so reality-hopping? Yeah, sure.

"We leave our bodies in our reality and create a tunnel to the next one, where we use the bodies of the 'us' in this reality. And the 'we' is, the Henkitäimeksi, Spirit-to-Animals or just Spirits, people who can change form into one animal. Or in this case you and me." Valtteri said and Seb blinked in confusion. That was a lot of information at once.

"Who was that man?" Seb asked, deciding he would mull over the previous burst of information at a later time.

"That was HIM. I don't know his name, but he signs his papers with these initials H, I, M, so I call him HIM."

"That isn't confusing at all," Seb said and a small smile crept upon his face. If he couldn't make sense of this situation, he just had to wing it. Becoming angry wasn't of any use.

"Why did HIM walk to me?" Seb asked but Valtteri started and his eyes grew big.

"I thought we would have more time," he mumbled and then he grinned to Seb before grabbing his arm.

"I'm sorry," he said before black engulfed Seb again.

☲

Cold, harsh, the scent of blood, fear.

☲

Dogs?

☲

The sweet scent of coffee, background noise of cheerful chattering.

☲

Echoes of big halls, light reflecting in countless shiny objects, something heavy on his head.

☲

Simmering electricity, salty water, heavy secrets laying in his stomach, adrenaline.

☲

The scent of dust filled his nose, but the dust had lifted, something had moved this boring world with something exciting, something unexpected. Seb opened his eyes and saw the world had turned ninety degrees. A hand came into view and Seb accepted it to get to stand upright again. He nodded thanks to the Fin beside him and glanced around.

"Where are we?" he asked.

"Reality 5,971, Abu Dhabi, paddock. I don't know what room this is but this was the first of many realities in which we were standing together so I thought we could stop here."

"How did you get to see if we were standing together or not? All I could do was feeling-"

"Each reality has its own feeling. You get used to it. In the beginning it engulfed me entirely but now it's just a background feeling, I fall immediately in my body," Valtteri explained while patting Seb's shoulder reassuringly.

"Ah, ok." That made sense. "Dogs though?"

"That one is kinda weird. It's cute though. Feels like distant comfort for me. Logical off course because you two are the ones, oh never mind, it doesn't matter," Valtteri explained and Seb chose to not ask further. He would find out for himself later.

"Can I hop realities as well?" Seb asked while Valtteri got a folder out of his jacket. The brown folder was filled to the brim with papers, some written, some printed.

"Off course you can. Close your eyes and search for your link with the in-between, by that you can go through the glass wall of your reality. If you want to go to a specific reality, just think about the feeling according to that reality, if you want to go to a random reality, just search one and push through the glass wall of it. The walls are the easiest to go through near an energy supply, but you'll see yourself when you get there someday," Valtteri said while he ruffled through the papers, nodding to himself.

"Thanks?" Seb said with question mark heavily attached to it.

"You're welcome." Valtteri said, oblivious to the question mark. Then he gave the map to Seb.

"Here, please, when we go back to our reality, read it and save me," Valtteri pleaded so Seb shoved it into his jacket but then the Fin's eyes went big.

"Ei!"

Seb turned around and the last thing he saw were two piercing, blue eyes.

☲

He fell. Now he could distinguish their journey in four parts: falling through the sharpiebits of one reality, the nothingness, falling through the sharpiebits of another reality, the feeling of that reality and then all over again when they hopped to another and another and another. Seb knew they were travelling through other realities than Valtteri had done, but that was all. He felt slightly sick by the quick hopping and his head started to pound heavily. HIM had his arm in a firm grip and it hurt a little. When they were in between the umptieth and umptieth-and-one reality, something bumped into Seb's back and the man let go of his arm. Seb tried to open his eyes, but before he could find the strength to do so, something pushed him aside.

He felt something shatter all around him. His eyes shot open and he got blinded by multicolored light that got reflected into hundreds of thousands little shards of glass shiny as oil, and with a shimmer of the rainbow on top of it. As quick as the shards had been formed, they also disappeared and Seb floated a little.

He took a deep breath, confused that he could. He should be frightened, but the space around him calmed him somehow. He peered around and since the blinding light of a few moments ago had faded, he could make out some more. It was beautiful. Spherelike forms floated through a space, as big as worlds. He has never felt so tiny before. The space itself could be described as empty, because all you could see was blackness, but it felt like it was filled with excitement that bubbled and played and occasionally bumped into Seb. It felt like as if tiny toothpicks were softly caressing his skin and it wasn't uncomfortable at all.

The spheres itself were not really spheres, more like the mathematical 3D polygons with the most difficult name someone could make up. However, closer inspection told him they weren't mathematically perfect polygons because at some place the number of angles was bigger than at other places so that the surfaces of the glass the polygons were made off some times as big as a building and sometimes as small as a Nokia or even smaller. Without doing something but thinking, Seb could float to the nearest polygon. He peered through the nearest flat space and saw a family watching a movie cozily seated on their sofa. The window beside it showed a group of friends playing some sort of board game, clearly enjoying themselves. Seb peered through many windows but never stayed long, feeling an intruder in many happy moments, although there were some sad ones as well.

In between the flat spaces/windows, some light seeped out, dripping and flowing like a liquid but dissolving into the space around them like a gas. Seb laid his hand on a crack and he felt the number of toothpicks grow. This space was like nothing Seb had ever seen or could have ever imagined. He took some distance again from the polygon and looked at the whole cacophony of moments and people. The light from the cracks was at some places stronger than others. These were usually the spaces with the tiniest windows, but sometimes not. At these places, the light of all the cracks came together before dissolving into the nothingness, looking like a thread made of tinier threads that got slung into the vast space. Suddenly Seb remembered that Valtteri had said about energy supplies or something like that. Maybe these treads of light were those energy supplies?

Seb floated to one of those treads and pushed carefully against the glass surrounding it. The windows folded inwards and the cracks between them enlarged, before they comprised his hands. He felt the sharpiebits, now understanding what those were, but they were more present than when he had hopped realities before. Seb pulled his hands back however. This was not his reality, and he thought it would be time to return to his own. He didn't know the feeling of his own reality, but his own body emitted a bit of energy as well, forming a tiny tread that ran away into the in-between. Seb followed the tread, zipping past a few realities, some bigger than others. He didn't stop but for a very tiny reality. It was like a football in comparison with other realities surrounding it. It also contained few windows and few angles and wasn't leaking energy. Instead, the energy from the in-between leaked back into it! Seb floated closer to inspect it. When he came nearer, the polygon was still almost thrice as big as him, but still very tiny in comparison to the others.

Through the windows he saw the F1-drivers! All of them in it seemed like the same house. He saw Lando and Carlos cuddling on the sofa while Mick and Callum were sitting on two beanbags and avidly watching something on the television. Other drivers were dotted around the room as well. Suddenly the door opened and Sebastian came out. Seb watched the other him walking inside with a big tray filled with mugs with what appeared to be hot chocolate and whipped cream. The other drivers reacted happily on the treat and huddled around the other him. Seb smiled and left his counterpart and that Seb's drivers to follow the thread from his body to, hopefully, his own reality with his own friends and lovers.

He zipped past a few other realities but finally arrived by one where the thread went in instead of past. He came closer and saw Lewis through one of the windows, luckily near an energy supply, sitting with Seb's own body limp on his lap. A few drivers were standing or sitting in the same room, but Seb had no time to look who they were, because he was already pushing through the glass wall.

When he was back in his own body, fell on him. Like a puzzle piece that had sat just wrong inside him for all this time had fallen back into place. He was home at last.

Now what had Valtteri said again? Save me?