Kurtbastian one-shot - "You Do, I Don't" (Rated PG)
Summary:
Kurt is acting strange, and Sebastian is worried. After checking his location using Google, Sebastian finds his fiancé in the oddest place - at a church, watching an old friend tie the knot. (2006 words)
Read on AO3.
"Christ on a motorbike! A wedding can really destroy a Saturday afternoon, huh?"
Kurt takes a deep breath, holds it for a slow five count, then sighs.
Fifteen minutes.
That's a new record.
But Kurt had known from the moment his sneakers hit the concrete that it was only a matter of time before Sebastian found him out. He'll never admit it, but it's comforting to know the man he loves checks up on him from time to time. Still, Kurt should be upset on principle.
Honestly, he's more embarrassed.
"I thought we promised not to abuse the power of location sharing," Kurt replies.
"A-ha. And I thought you were going to Whole Foods to buy a jar of tahini."
Kurt doesn't waste words addressing his nosy fiance's accusation. He simply raises his left hand, clutching the handles of his Whole Foods reusable tote with a jar of tahini weighing down one corner.
Sebastian nods. "Fair enough. But, I don't see it as abuse," he continues, seeing no reason to lower his voice while the couple at the altar recite their vows, even when he receives several sharp looks from onlookers nearby. "More like dubious consent."
"Sounds about right," Kurt grumbles.
Sebastian reclines in the stiff wooden pew, trying to find ease in an uncomfortable situation. He's not sure exactly what's going on, not sure why his staunchly anti-religion fiance would be in a church of all places, watching the man he called his soulmate back in high school marry someone else.
It's the expression on Kurt's face that has Sebastian concerned.
It started at the dining room table while they ate their eggs and drank their coffee, then grew and grew until Kurt rose to his feet, breakfast unfinished, and left their penthouse, tossing over his shoulder his intent to run some bogus errand.
Minus that expression, Sebastian had no reason to worry.
Kurt often springs off spontaneously to go shopping or meet up with friends. That expression was the only reason Sebastian decided to peek at Kurt's location on Google in the first place.
Kurt had looked like his entire world was ending.
"So," Sebastian asks, trying to maintain an air of calm in the face of whatever this is, "what are we doing here?"
"I like torturing myself."
Sebastian blows out his frustration in a single breath. It's going to be one of those conversations, the kind where pulling Kurt's teeth from his skull using chopsticks would be an easier task by a mile. "You know, when we started dating, I told you that if you wanted to go back to Captain Gel Helmet, the door was always open."
"You did."
"Tell you the truth, I didn't think you'd take me up on it." Sebastian rocks his weight from hip to hip when his tailbone goes numb. Dammit, but it's hard to look breezily nonplussed in a church pew. "Especially not on his wedding day of all days."
Kurt side-eyes his fiance's position change and slides back in his seat as well - not ready to be touched, but needing a bit more closeness to the man he loves. "That's not what this is about, okay?"
Sebastian clues into Kurt's body language and hooks his arm behind him, caressing the air around his shoulders. "Then what is it about?"
"You're going to think it's stupid."
"Probably."
"You're going to make fun of me."
Sebastian tilts his head Kurt's way and catches his eyes. Something is bothering him about all of this, but it isn't the obvious. If it isn't Blaine getting married, what on earth could it be? "I won't. I promise."
"Really?" Kurt smiles a hair.
"Pinky promise," Sebastian says. "I'll just...judge you silently in my head. But I won't say a word."
Kurt rolls his eyes, but he continues against his better judgment. "When we were in high school, Blaine and I, we...we planned our wedding."
"Well, everyone knew that," Sebastian kids and Kurt's hidden smile makes another brief appearance.
"We had a book of ideas. It was like the ultimate scrapbook, years in the making. There were venues for different seasons, anniversary options, coordinating honeymoon locales. When we broke up and moved out of the loft, our belongings were scattered everywhere in the mad dash to move. A few things got misplaced. I never saw that book again. Part of me thought that maybe Blaine tossed it. But a few months ago, I heard through the grapevine..."
Sebastian snickers. "Grapevine?"
Kurt snickers, too, despite himself, and now they're both getting looks. Yeah, his attempts at cloak-and-dagger are a bit ridiculous, but he tries to be mysterious when he can.
Make Sebastian believe that Kurt has a life outside of him.
"Santana, alright? She stopped by Vogue for lunch a few months ago and said she saw him with it."
Sebastian raises an eyebrow. "Where? I can't imagine the two of them run in the same circles anymore."
"They don't." Kurt relaxes, leans back the remaining two feet, and meets the comfort of his fiance's arm. "Santana and Brittany were checking out a restaurant for their reception. Blaine happened to be there at the same time."
"Ah. So you wanted to know if he used any of your ideas?"
Kurt chews his bottom lip. "Maybe..."
"Would it matter if he did?"
"No," Kurt says quickly, but Sebastian knows that's a lie. He remembers how bent out of shape Kurt got when he thought Rachel had swiped his design for a Thanksgiving centerpiece. Factions arose. Wars nearly broke out.
"Yes...no..."
"Yes."
"Yes!" Kurt says it louder than he means to, and now they are actively getting shushed. "Those were our ideas! Together! That book represented our wedding! It represented part of me! What I brought to our relationship! How I wanted to express my love for him!"
"And...did he?"
Kurt doesn't answer. But he doesn't need to. His heavy swallow and watery eyes are the yes Sebastian expected.
"So Blaine absorbed something important and irreplaceable to you and repurposed it to elevate himself."
"I guess you can put it that way."
"Sounds like him," Sebastian says with a frustrated sigh and a shake of his head. "Now you know. If there was any doubt at all that he is an irrepressible douche canoe, you got your answer. Along with the knowledge that you ended up with the cleaner, better-looking end of the stick."
Kurt's brow wrinkles. "How?"
"Because you're engaged to me, you dry rye toast."
Kurt snorts. "That's a new one. No vulgarity?"
"We are in a church."
"That's the weirdest thing you have ever said to me.
Sebastian gives Kurt a look. "Are you sure about that?"
"No. But I don't have the bandwidth at the moment to care otherwise."
Sebastian gives Kurt a reassuring squeeze. "Do you feel any better?"
Kurt's shoulders slump. "No. Sorry. I'm pissed. Blaine gets away Scot-free, as always, and he doesn't know that I know what he did, the intellectual thievery that he wrought. And he's going to go off with his husband on a fabulous honeymoon that I probably planned, with no worries, no doubts, no thorns stuck in either of their sides. Just wedded bliss and not a care in the world."
"Yeah. That does suck," Sebastian breathes, eyes shifting from Kurt's face to the main aisle of the church, up to the altar where a man who might be a priest or a dance teacher declares Blaine and his beau 'husband and husband'. Sebastian stares at them a little too long without a snappy, sarcastic remark, and now it's Kurt's turn to find Sebastian's expression worrying. Because Kurt has seen that look before.
Sebastian isn't staring.
He's planning.
The guests rise without any further peeps from Sebastian. Kurt sighs, relieved. They'll be able to slip out unnoticed, and Kurt can forget that any of this ever happened. He shouldn't have come here. It's ridiculous to be upset over the color of a suit (Serenity, which was Pantone's Color of the Year in 2016 and would have had to have been specially ordered), a spray of baby's breath (specifically Million Stars baby's breath, each cluster of flowers hand painted in ombre water color and speckled with biodegradable glitter), and some tulle (pastel sienna silk tulle that Blaine could have only gotten his hands on in this city during Fashion Week by dropping Kurt's name).
See? Ridiculous.
The organ - a constant low hum during these proceedings, playing The Beatles Blackbird in the background (yet another of Kurt's ideas) - swells, and the wedding party starts their procession down the aisle. Kurt turns, hoping to quickly exit out the side before anyone notices them, assuming Sebastian won't be far behind.
But Sebastian has other ideas.
He grabs Kurt's arm and starts pulling him towards the aisle before Blaine and his husband reach them.
"Sebastian? Wha--...what are you doing?" Kurt asks, afraid he might already know.
"Oh...nothing. We're just going to wish the newly married couple well."
Kurt's eyebrows fly up so far they nearly leave his face. "What? Why would we do that?"
"It's only polite for them to know we dropped by to celebrate their blessed union. Don't you think?"
"We can send them a card!" Kurt counters, fighting to tug his arm out of his fiance's grasp. But Sebastian has a hold of Kurt's cuff, and Kurt is going to kick himself if he pops seams over this.
"Meh. A card is so temporary."
"We can add a check!"
"Kurt! We're Blaine's oldest friends in the universe! We're going to give him and his shiny new hubby something to think about on their way to Bora Bora."
Kurt's blood runs cold. "Sebastian? What are you going to do? Sebastian? Sebastian?? Sebastian!" Kurt's voice echoes as Sebastian launches them into the aisle, directly in the path of the happy duo.
After that, everything goes silent with epic speed.
Blaine stops in his tracks. He stares at Sebastian as if he's seeing a ghost, leaning forward to get a better look. His expression seems stuck between a grin and confusion, his complexion oddly pale. "Sebastian? What are you...what are you doing here?"
"That's Sebastian?" Blaine's new husband seethes. Kurt wonders what Blaine has told the man to garner that reaction, and why it doesn't seem to extend to Kurt standing behind Sebastian, clearly visible.
Everyone gathered is stuck-on-stupid, shocked by this turn of events, except for Sebastian, who was apparently waiting for this moment.
"Blaine." Sebastian sighs for dramatic emphasis. "I apologize for the interruption, but..." He steals a look around, soaking in the faces of the audience he has captivated.
"But...but what?" Blaine asks.
"Yeah. But what?" his husband snaps.
"I wanted you to know that..." Sebastian gulps audibly. "I love you."
Another loud gasp rounds the room, people pressing forward for a better view.
"I still love you. After all this time."
Blaine's face goes completely white.
Kurt's jaw drops. Not because he thinks Sebastian is honestly declaring secret love for the man, but still...what the heck!?
"Wh-what? What are you...?" Blaine stammers as his husband steps in front of him, preparing to fight Sebastian for the rights to Blaine.
"It's not too late for us. There's still a chance." Sebastian puts a hand to his chest, over his heart, as if he's trying to hold back tears.
The congregation holds their breath, and Kurt knows Sebastian is loving this. Why was Blaine considered Dalton's darling when this incredible bullshitter was living in their midsts?
Sebastian waits a beat, waits for a reaction, braces to dodge a punch, which seems sure to come when Blaine's husband clenches both fists. But then, with no warning, Sebastian turns and sprints toward the doors.
Kurt watches him go, completely aware that Sebastian has ditched him and left him exposed, yet no one seems to care that he's there. "Sebastian!?"
"Run!" Sebastian jogs back, grabs Kurt's hand, and bolts, dragging his fiance behind him. "My God, man! Book it! His husband is wearing comfortable shoes!"
Summary: Blaine and Kurt plan a gender reveal that knocks Sebastian off his feet...literally. (1821 words)
Part 72 of Outside Edge
Read on AO3.
"I can't believe you're making me do this," Sebastian grumbles, pacing back and forth on the ice, his blades slicing an inch shy of an oversized puck sitting in front of him, waiting. Like the crowd of their friends and family gathered around Kurt's pond, waiting.
Waiting for Sebastian to slap the puck with his hockey stick.
Sebastian stops pacing, knocking the heel of his stick within an inch of the puck while the crowd holds their breath. But after a beat, he continues pacing, and the crowd exhales in frustration. Aside from the anticipation of the moment, they've been out there for close to an hour.
Everyone is freezing to death.
"When you said gender reveal, I thought maybe a cake filled with colored icing. Or a confetti cannon. But..." Sebastian peeks up, eyes scanning the shore and the faces gathered around them, everyone beaming, eager to share this moment with them. Their friends are so supportive. Always have been. It should warm his heart.
But all Sebastian feels is the cold seeping in through the zipper of his coat.
"I didn't imagine anything like this."
"Technically, he's making you do this." Kurt gestures towards Blaine, unashamedly throwing his best friend under the bus while standing a safe distance away from Sebastian's stick. "I just went along with it."
Sebastian glares at Blaine. Blaine smies at them like a buffoon, completely unaware of the grousing going on.
Or that he's at fault.
"Sounds about right."
"There is cake," Kurt assures Sebastian. "I made it myself. And the sooner you hit that puck, the sooner we get to enjoy it."
"Come on, Bas!" Blaine calls from the other side of the pond, jumping up and down on his toe picks. "Hit the puck! The world needs to know if I'm going to be an uncle or an aunt!"
Sebastian straightens, staring at Blaine in disbelief. "Dude! Do you even get how words work?"
"I do. I was trying to inject levity." Blaine rolls his eyes, his effervescence dimming a hair. "Jeez, tough crowd."
"Come on, Sebastian." Kurt kneads his husband's shoulders. "Gear down. This is supposed to be fun."
Sebastian deflates under his husband's touch, staring down the length of his hockey stick to the puck between his blades. It's not a regulation puck. It's a puck piñata that Blaine special ordered. It's filled with biodegradable cornstarch dyed pink or blue.
None of them knows.
Quinn, their surrogate, a close family friend, had asked her doctor to write the gender on a slip of paper at her last appointment. He'd handed it to her in a sealed envelope. She gave it to Kurt, Kurt gave it to Blaine, and Blaine took it straight to a shop that specializes in all this gender reveal crap. He swore he didn't peek.
And as much as Sebastian hates to say it, he believes Blaine.
Since Sebastian can't torture Blaine for the information, which would be vastly more enjoyable, he is dying to crack open this puck and find out.
"I...I know it is," Sebastian mutters. "But everyone's looking at us, Kurt. Looking at me. And I'm not a big fan of being the center of attention."
Kurt chortles. It shoots out of him like a bark. "Bullshit!"
His husband's snorty laugh brings a smile to Sebastian's face, but he struggles to remain stoic. "You know what I mean."
Kurt steps into Sebastian's space, slipping inside Sebastian's coat the way he always does and wrapping his arms around him. "Yeah. Yeah, I do."
"I thought, you know, finding out the gender of our kid would be more private. Intimate. Like over dinner with your folks."
As it is, Kurt's mother and father have to watch this ceremony from the house, since Kurt's mom woke up under the weather that morning, and no one wanted to put her at risk of pneumonia. Blaine had offered to postpone, but Elizabeth knew how much work he'd put into this. She and Burt are bundled in their living room, watching via live stream, thanks to the iPhone work of Coach Beiste. Quinn also opted to watch from the comfort of her sofa instead of trekking her six-month pregnant butt through the ice and snow.
"You mean you didn't want to find out the gender of your baby in front of every friend we have?" Kurt kids.
"It wasn't on the top of my list, no."
Kurt sighs. "I'm sorry about all this. Blaine and I were so excited, we didn't think it would be a big deal putting on a little show for our favorite people. I mean, it's kind of what we do."
"I'm surprised you didn't make me wear the inflatable snowman costume."
Kurt smirks as memories of Sebastian spinning center ice, dressed as a giant inflatable snowman, flood his mind...and a handful of other times that costume made an appearance. "It was discussed."
"I'm sure it was."
"I admit we should have asked you how you felt about the whole thing. I'm sorry I didn't."
Sebastian leans his forehead against Kurt's, close enough to feel the warmth of his husband's breath against his lips. "I appreciate that."
"Do you want me to send everyone away? I'm sure they'll understand."
Kurt's offer fills Sebastian with relief. He wants to jump at it, but he hears the disappointment in Kurt's voice, and he can't do it.
He can't do that to Blaine, either, but he refuses to admit that plays any part in his decision.
He plants a kiss on the top of Kurt's head. "Nah. We dragged everyone out here. Let's get this over with before they become popsicles."
"Great!" Kurt swizzles away and gives his husband a robust slap on the rear. "Now give it a hit. One quick hit and this will all be over. Then we can go eat cake."
"Just one hit," Sebastian says under his breath, focusing on the puck. He's done this hundreds of times, in front of bigger audiences than this. He can do it again. "One hit, and then...cake..."
The crowd on the bank sees Sebastian focus on the puck and gets excited. They start to chant, "Go! Go! Go! Go!" in the hopes that this time will be it.
Sebastian rears back.
The crowd gasps.
He brings his stick down.
The crowd gasps louder.
He hits the puck with a resounding thwack! And then...
Nothing.
According to Blaine, it should explode on impact.
It doesn't.
But what happens next is a comedy of errors.
Instead of exploding into a colorful cloud, the puck flies far and fast, stopping when it hits a snow dune and becomes lodged inside.
The crowd waits for blue snow to appear. Or pink.
But it doesn't.
Sebastian stares at it.
Kurt, mid clap, stares at it.
The crowd, bug-eyed and awestruck, stares at it.
"Uh...that's okay," Blaine says, his voice shaking when Sebastian's unblinking eyes shift menacingly his way. "I...I have a backup." He reaches inside his jacket and pulls out a thin tube. "The lady at the shop gave me this smoke cannon, just in case." Blaine groans, skating Sebastian's way while he wrestles with the thing. "I can fix this!"
And to his benefit, he tries.
But luck does not seem to be on their side today.
"Oh, give me strength!" Sebastian snaps. While Blaine fights with the cannon, Sebastian skates over to the snow dune with the puck nestled inside, intent on retrieving the thing and tearing it to shreds.
Somewhere along the way, Blaine thinks he has things figured out. There are instructions on the cannon, but they are written in the smallest font known to man...and possibly German. So he tries brute force. He points the cannon towards the sky and twists the end. The cap, which should have been removed prior, explodes from the cannon with a bang so loud that snow falls off the branches of the trees nearby. It flies straight up until it is nothing but a speck of dark against a white sky, but on its way down, it seems to zero in on Sebastian and smacks him squarely on the head. Sebastian stops in his tracks, blinks in shock, then keels over and falls flat on his back. A pink cloud descends upon Blaine, leaving a blush stain everywhere it lands.
Their friends, wide-eyed and holding their breaths to the point of giddiness, don't realize what has happened right away.
Not until Blaine crows: "It's a girl!"
Then applause rises up all around.
Kurt gets caught up in the excitement for only a second before he notices that his husband isn't moving.
He's not sure that he's even breathing.
"Sebastian? Sebastian!? Honey?" Kurt races to his side and drops to his knees beside him. "Are you okay? Speak to me!"
Sebastian blinks up at the double exposure of his husband's face and moans in agony. "Stop...with all...the yelling. I'm right here."
"That was quite the fall," Kurt says, peering into Sebastian's eyes, checking for signs of a possible concussion.
"Yeah, well, your bestie shot me in the head with a cannon."
Kurt is concerned. But confident that his husband will live for a bit at least, he grabs Sebastian's hand and squeezes, eyes welling with tears. "Sebastian! Did you hear? It's a girl!"
"That...that's great," Sebastian mumbles, a goose egg starting on his scalp. "Amazing."
"It is."
"I can't wait."
"I'm so glad."
"I'm going to be a girl-dad."
"Yes, you are."
"Elizabeth." Sebastian sighs. "We're going to have our Elizabeth."
Kurt's breath catches. "Elizabeth?"
They'd talked about names before at length. There were other legacy contenders. For the boys, they would either name him after Kurt's dad or Sebastian's uncle. For the girls, Kurt's mother and Sebastian's grandmother. Kurt didn't think they'd actually settled yet. They had considered waiting until the baby was born to see which name would suit them.
But here, lying on the ice, staring up at the grey-blue sky, unconsciousness threatening, Sebastian knows for certain. He might not have met Kurt if his mother's cancer treatments hadn't forced them to go to the Westerville rink as opposed to the one closer to Kurt's house. It's because of her that they bonded.
That they became KurtandSebastian.
"Elizabeth," Sebastian repeats.
"Elizabeth," Kurt says, a lump forming in his throat so big he can barely breathe around it.
Sebastian gazes up at his husband with a loopy smile, lazy eyes drifting left and right. "Hey, Kurt," he slurs. "Can you do me a favor? Two, actually."
"Of course. What?"
"First..." Sebastian tries to sit up, but a stab of pain and a wave of nausea force him back. "Call an ambulance."
"Absolutely. And number two?"
"Kill Blaine."
Kurt laughs through tears. That's his Sebastian. "I can't do that to the guy!" he says, fishing his phone out of his jacket pocket and dialing 9-1-1. "He's going to be an aunt!"
Sebastian was raised to throw money at his problems. But Kurt wants more effort than that from his boyfriend. Sebastian finds a way to solve this problem in an unlikely place - TikTok.
Notes:
I started writing this back in 2021, which is when the TikTok trend mentioned was happening. Then I disappeared for four years XD But I love this and have always wanted to finish it. (3,464 words)
Read on AO3.
Kurt's phone buzzes in his pocket, but he ignores it.
Vehemently ignores it.
He doesn't need to check it.
He knows who it is.
He knows what the messages, piling up like the snow outside on the sidewalk, say.
Sebastian has been blowing up his phone for the past half hour, which is obnoxious as hell since they are sitting roughly thirty feet apart with only a door between them.
Kurt's phone buzzes again. And again. And again. He considers silencing it. Admittedly, turning it off would be better. But he's working from home today, so he needs to be available in case Isabelle wants to get a hold of him. Sebastian knows this. It's a loophole that he is exploiting.
Because Sebastian loves loopholes.
Of course, it's 3:17, and Isabelle leaves the office around four. Maybe Kurt could get away with it. As long as no fashion lines drop unexpectedly, or there aren't any "What color is this dress?" controversies brewing.
The bedroom door flies open, and Sebastian's head pops out.
“Kurt! Dammit! Look at your phone!”
“We're in the same apartment! If you want to talk, come out here and talk!”
"No! I need you to look at your phone!"
"Why?"
"Because I'm trying to apologize!"
"Then come out here and apologize!"
"But...but..." Sebastian sputters, "That'll negate the apology I sent you! And I put effort into it! Remember effort? The thing you say I don't give enough of because I solve everything with my wallet?"
Kurt's burgeoning tirade stops short, leaving him mouth agape. He does say that. Quite a lot, actually, where their relationship is concerned. But that's because, for the past few years, it's been true. Sebastian forgets an anniversary? A blue box from Tiffany's shows up on Kurt's desk. They get into a fight, and Sebastian says something heinous? A new McQueen scarf gets added to Kurt's collection. Sebastian discovers at the last minute that he has a dinner meeting scheduled for the one night Kurt's friends are coming to town for drinks? A new pair of Jimmy Choos magically appears on the passenger seat of Kurt's SUV. And whereas Kurt isn't opposed to material displays of affection, the one thing all these lack is Sebastian himself.
"Fair," Kurt admits. "But why do I need to look at my phone?"
"It's sort of a multi-media event."
"Multi-media event?" Kurt rolls his eyes. God, Sebastian can be so precious sometimes. And not in a good way. "Fine. I'll look," he promises. But he doesn't. Not right away.
And Sebastian glares at him.
"Now, Kurt. Now. Look at your phone right now."
Kurt huffs, followed by another dramatic "Fine!" He grabs his phone, throttling it like it owes him money. He unlocks it as slowly as humanly possible. Sebastian, watching from the doorway, begins to tap his toe against the floor. Then he drums his finger on the door jamb. And when Kurt still hasn't reached his messaging app, he knocks his forehead against the wall.
"Kuuurrrttt!"
"I'm getting there, I'm getting there!"
"Urgh!" Sebastian gives up his surveilling and retreats back into the bedroom.
Kurt opens his messaging app and groans. "127 missed messages? Are you kidding me right now?"
"No, I'm not!" Sebastian bellows, and Kurt can't help snickering. Sebastian might be annoying, but never let it be said that the man is unamusing. Kurt clears his throat and scrolls down to missing message number one. He opens it and reads it out loud.
-You say I don't open up to you.
-That in the seven years we've been together, you know me less now than you did in high school.
-I don't know how that's possible, but I'm not going to debate that with you.
-Instead, I'm going to admit that you might be right.
-But I have my reasons for not opening up.
-It's not because I don't trust you.
-It's because I have more baggage than your Louis Vuitton weekender set, and I didn't want to burden you with it.
Kurt pauses, rereading that last message a few more times. A twinge of guilt tightens his shoulders and ratchets straight up through his neck. He knows that Sebastian has baggage.
Kurt has met his family.
They have so many expectations that Kurt is surprised Sebastian's head didn't explode sometime before high school. Sebastian graduated from Dalton with honors and a perfect 5.0 GPA. He was accepted to all the Ivy Leagues as well as a few prestigious international schools. He worked at an internship right out of high school, and it wasn't for anyone his family had direct connections to. But as much as the Smythes treat Sebastian like an investment they are making grand returns off of, nothing he does is ever good enough.
Surprisingly, they don't have any problem with their commodity being gay. Sebastian's family loves Kurt. Either that, or they are all tremendous actors. But in genuine extended family fashion, they keep asking when the two of them are going to buckle down, get married, and find an equally well-connected surrogate to give them some grandkids.
After witnessing all that, Kurt has to admit it would be difficult to be a branch growing on the Smythe family tree and not want to yeet yourself into a wood chipper.
-I wanted a clean slate. Put my privileged past behind me.
-Ugh. Poor little rich kid, I know.
-I made myself nauseous just then.
-My childhood was fucked up.
-I'm not the best conversationalist.
-When things get too serious, I default to crude jokes and petty insults.
-I know I can't do that anymore.
-I can't hide things from you.
-And I have been. Our entire relationship.
-I've tried to brush it off by saying it's because I had a dysfunctional childhood.
-You counter back with, "Everyone did."
-And you're right.
-But you don't understand.
-When you grow up with the kind of wealth my family has, concepts like dysfunctional take on a whole different meaning.
-You say I never break it down for you, try to help you understand.
-But it's not that easy.
-And I'm so used to using humor as a cover, any explanation I can give you comes out as sarcasm and vitriol.
-You think I'm making fun of you. Which I'm not trying to do.
-Not anymore.
-So, to prove that I want to move forward with you, I'm doing a complete 180 and putting it all out there, tearing off the BandAid in the most irrelevant way possible.
-I jumped on a TikTok trend.
“You have a TikTok account,” Kurt mumbles.
The phone buzzes in his hand. A new message pops up.
-Yes, I have a TikTok account.
Kurt seethes. The bastard won’t come out and talk to him, man to man, but he’ll listen to Kurt through their security cameras and then text him? How asinine is that!?
Kurt is tempted to turn off his phone, work be damned, and set it aside, but he takes a deep breath and counts to ten. He made a promise to hear Sebastian out.
He's not going to break it because his boyfriend is acting like a goober.
He gets another message. This time, it's a link.
-Please take a moment to go to the account I made and watch as I expose myself.
-And before you ask, yes, I kept my clothes on.
-I reserve nude confessions for my OnlyFans.
-Love, Sebastian
"You have an OnlyFans?" Kurt says louder, knowing the walls have ears.
-Would you subscribe if I did?
"No."
-Prude.
"Man whore." Kurt brings up the apps on his phone and searches for TikTok.
Nope.
No TikTok.
He vaguely remembers uninstalling it the minute he got his phone.
Even as an uber-popular social media platform among designer types, he figured he would never use it.
Welp.
Now he has to download it and make an account.
After entering his info, selecting the categories he's interested in, and answering no to linking his contacts, he clicks the link Sebastian sent him and goes to his account. Sebastian's account is public, but the post in question is unavailable. Kurt friends him, and Sebastian friends him right back.
Kurt shakes his head at how adolescent this all is. But he's intrigued.
And he doesn't hate it.
Sebastian gets a 10 out of 10 for originality.
He clicks on the post, one of two available, but the person who appears on the screen isn't Sebastian.
The post is a stitch with another creator. The face of a young woman fills the screen. She's wearing no-makeup makeup and the most trying-not-to-look-expensive-but-still-expensive Versace tee Kurt has ever seen. A tag in the caption says #richtok. She smiles at her camera and says, "What's the most insane actual rich person behavior you've ever experienced? I'll go first..."
The woman disappears, and Sebastian's face fills the screen, way too close to the camera. When he takes a step back to better fill the frame, Kurt sees that he is also dressed in a super expensive tee.
Kurt snorts.
"I'm cheating on this one because they're all about me," Sebastian says. "Strap in because it's a long one." He clears his throat and inhales deep as if he's about to say a lot in a single breath. Then he fires away. "My parents hosted my first sleepover when I was in the third grade. Every friend that came brought their own butler or valet and, in some cases, a chef who also spent the night. This one kid, Trevor, had his chef making gluten-free cupcakes at three in the morning. My house is so big that another one of my friends got lost on the way to the downstairs bathroom, and we didn't find him for a week. No joke."
"Oh...my God..." Kurt mutters. When he had asked Sebastian for full disclosure about his upbringing, wanting more insight into why his boyfriend is the way he is, Kurt thought he'd hear more about his parents' unreasonable expectations, some first kiss awkwardness, self-doubt during his scrawny middle school phase (Kurt has seen pictures), or maybe some bullying about his hair. He definitely did not expect this. "That's not...that can't be real..."
"And why, you may ask?" video Sebastian continues. "Because we have catacombs on the property. That's right. Down in the wine cellar, past the casques, we have honest-to-God catacombs. It's not exactly legal, so I can't tell you where they are. Sorry, not sorry."
Kurt's eyes pop.
Kurt could tell them. He's been there.
In Sebastian's childhood home.
Kurt has even been to the wine cellar with Sebastian to get a bottle of merlot.
They had sex down there.
Oh God...
"Here's a picture of them, though. That boy in the middle? That's me. The skeleton to my right? Uncle Avery. My parents paid for my friend's therapy for over a decade, out of pocket and in cash, so no one would make the connection. Because imagine the headline on that one: Senator's son traumatized by time spent lost in attorney's illegal catacombs." Sebastian barks a laugh, but it dies quickly. "Moving on."
"There's...there's more?" Kurt asks, astonished. He expects Sebastian to answer from the bedroom, but he guesses Sebastian is letting the video do all the explaining for the time being.
"My dad is an attorney. He used to be a state attorney until he discovered that the real money was in defending other filthy rich people. Rich people who were worse morally than my parents. And because of it, for the longest time, my dad, my mom, and I were in danger for our lives. When I got my learner's permit, he bought me a Lambo." Sebastian leans toward the screen and cackles. "I learned how to drive in a Lambo. Talk about pretentious as fuck! Then, my dad bought two identical Lambos and hired drivers to drive them. They'd follow me around anytime I went out so that no one ever knew which car I was in. So I only had a one in three chance of ending up dead whenever I went for a drive. Well, higher when you consider I was a lousy driver."
"What the...?" Kurt shoots a look at the bedroom door, contemplating storming in and confronting Sebastian about why? Why did his parents do these things? And how did his father get away with all of this? But that's the point Sebastian is trying to make.
His dad is rich—unfathomably rich. Sebastian was raised among the unfathomably rich, and they threw money at any problem that arose.
That's where Sebastian learned it from.
"My dad took us to Milan for the weekend because he wanted authentic Italian food and felt our chef wasn't cutting it. But that's not all. He dragged the poor man to Italy so he could watch us eat 'authentic Italian' to prove the point that the man was slacking. Plot twist, Our chef WAS Italian. Tenth generation. No lie. His grandfather founded two of the most famous cooking schools in Europe. Our chef's whole family has worked for my family since forever, except for one cousin who works for the mob."
"Oh my God!" Kurt shrieks. It's unintentional, but he can't help it! He feels like he's watching an episode of The True Housewives of Westerville, except every character is Sebastian's dad. How can one person be so horrific? Kurt has suffered humiliating things in his life, but he can't put himself in that chef's shoes at all.
Sebastian's father did all of that to make a point? And how much did that cost? Kurt has had his share of revenge fantasies, but he can't picture spending a small fortune solely to make someone feel like shit.
But incredibly, Sebastian isn't done, and Kurt starts to wonder: Where does it end?
How awful can one man be?
"One of the reasons my family is so rich? My father’s side hustle is gentrifying neighborhoods. Loads of them. In nearly every city in the country."
Ah. That awful, apparently.
"In wealthy circles, I am considered a catch. Not because of who I am, mind you. No one is clamoring to date me because of my sparkling personality. But because of my family's net worth. Seven celebrities have offered to buy my sperm. I was thirteen at the time, and my dad almost said yes. By the way, that's not as uncommon as you would think. If you're a kid from a super wealthy family, your parents have probably been approached once or twice for your eggs or sperm."
If Kurt's eyes were bugging out before, that confession almost jettisons them from his skull.
"No one ever showed me true affection, so all I know how to do is throw money at things. And that's going to be important in a moment. Follow for part two."
The screen freezes, and so does Kurt. He sits on the sofa, frozen in place, staring into his boyfriend's unmoving face, stunned into silence.
"I...what...what did I just watch?"
Kurt's phone vibrates, and a message notification pops up. He clicks on it.
-It's not over yet. Have you watched part 2?
Kurt frowns. Why is Sebastian asking? "You know I haven't. You've been watching me this whole time!"
-I know. It just seemed rude to assume.
"You're going to have to give me a moment to digest what I just saw."
-You're right. You're absolutely right.
-You have two minutes.
-Digest.
"Catacombs, Sebastian? Catacombs!?"
-Yeah. Weird. Go to part 2.
"I've slept in that house, Seb! We had sex in that wine cellar!"
-Yup. We have trauma in common. We'll bond over that later. Go to part 2.
"And selling your sperm? I mean, I knew your parents were messed up, but I didn't realize they were underage paternity fraud messed up!"
-I tried to tell you. Go to part 2. Now. Right now.
"But...you just told the whole world about your dad's shady deals! If he ever sees this, he's going to disown you! And if what you said is true, hire someone to bury you under the house!"
-Yeah, well, I wouldn't be the first. Ba-dum-bum.
"Sebastian!"
-Relax, babe. That's why this video is set to 'friends only'. And you're my only friend, so...go to part 2.
"You mean - you did all this, signed up for a TikTok account, and recorded this video - for an audience of one?"
Kurt hears a frustrated sigh, and the bedroom door opens.
"Yes! Effort, remember? I fucking love you! You're special to me! Now go to part 2! Now!"
"Alright, alright!" Kurt fires back. "Fine! I fucking love you, too!"
"Fantastic!" The bedroom door slams shut, and Kurt returns to Sebastian's account. He finds the second part of the video and presses play. It starts with the same young woman saying her spiel and then splits off to Sebastian.
"Part 2! Now, this is the ring I bought for my boyfriend. I've been holding on to it for a while now." Sebastian holds a blue box up to the camera.
Tiffany's.
Of course.
He opens it, turning the platinum band set with sapphires and diamonds to face the camera. Kurt's heart sinks. It's the most gorgeous thing he's ever laid his eyes on.
But there's his apology, right?
"I haven't given it to him yet because a lot of my apologies come in blue boxes, and I didn't want the love of my life to think this was another attempt to buy his forgiveness." Sebastian looks at the ring in the box and sighs. No-he deflates. Because he was thinking the same thing Kurt was. He is becoming self-aware.
And that gives Kurt hope.
"What I'm hoping it will do is show him that I do listen. I'm hoping it will prove the lengths I am willing to go to make sure he wears something on his finger that he will love. Because when someone gives you an engagement ring..."
"...it should be the kind of thing you never want to take off. This one has everything he loves: platinum band and equally matched sapphires and diamonds. Plus, it was designed by Jay Z for Tiffany's. It's one of a kind." Sebastian inches close to the camera and stage whispers, "It costs three and a half million dollars."
Kurt stares at the ring, wide-eyed and speechless.
"Now, don't get me wrong," Sebastian says. "I didn't get it for him to force his hand. Money is a part of my life. It always has been and always will be. And I love to spend money on my boyfriend. But if he wants me to return this ring and get something less showy, I'm all for that. It's meant for him. I'll get him a Ring Pop if that's what he wants. I just want him to be my husband. And I'm not proposing to force his hand either. I swear, I'm not. If he's not ready for this step, I'm okay to wait. I'm okay with us being boyfriends for the rest of our lives. And I promise, from this day forward, no more secrets, Kurt. No more blowing you off when things get uncomfortable. And no more throwing money at problems instead of talking them out. I am sorry. I am so sorry I didn't give you the one thing you have been asking for for so long. And that's me. All of me. My truth, my feelings, my effort. From the depths of my soul and the bottom of my heart, I apologize. So...will you? Will you marry me?"
That last part Kurt hears behind his ear accompanied by a warm breath that makes him shiver. Sebastian reaches over Kurt's shoulder and presents him with the open box, ring exposed. Sebastian's other arm wraps around Kurt's shoulders from behind and holds him close. "So...did I do good? With the whole talking about my issues thing? Opening up?"
"Yes?" Kurt half-asks, dumbstruck, as Sebastian slides into the seat beside him on the couch and pulls Kurt into his lap. This is...so much. So much to unpack and so much to absorb. It is safe to say that Kurt didn't know any of that. He couldn't have guessed it if he'd tried. But in the end, the most important thing he got from that was Sebastian- his effort, a sincere apology, a promise to change.
And a want to go forward.
Together.
"But I am going to recommend therapy."
"Do you think we could make it couples therapy? I hear that's an important step for two tortured drama queens planning on getting married."
Kurt looks at Sebastian, eyes shimmering as his obnoxious boyfriend - no, fiance - slips the incredible ring on his finger. "I do."
After one of Kurt's skaters suffers from a horrific accident during competition, Kurt contemplates whether or not they should allow their daughter to continue with the sport. (1861 words)
Notes:
So everything in this one-shot has happened to us as skaters personally, people that we know, and at a rink we go to XD There is a mention of an implied bone break but there is nothing graphic. Blaine friendly.
Part 71 in the Outside Edge series
Read on AO3.
"How is Dorothy doing?" Kurt asks, putting dishes in the cabinet and wiping down counters, giving his hands something to do other than wringing one another to oblivion. He nods to himself as Dorothy's mother fills him in from the hospital waiting room, phone wedged between his ear and shoulder as he paces the tile floor. "What did the surgeon say? A-ha...a-ha...oh...oh that's...that sounds awful. I'm so sorry."
Sebastian looks up from his phone screen when he hears his husband's tone change. As concerned as Sebastian is for the welfare of Kurt's skaters, this one time, he doesn't want a seat at the table.
After his own sordid history of skating-related injuries, it's unfathomable to think about that bright, bubbly girl experiencing that level of pain.
But Kurt sounds like his heart is breaking, and unfathomable or not, Sebastian wants to be there for his husband.
Kurt takes a seat at the table across from Sebastian and puts a hand to his forehead. "If there's anything we can do to help, anything at all, please, let us know." Kurt nods a few more times before bidding Dorothy's mom goodbye and hanging up his phone.
"Poor Dorothy." Sebastian doesn't know the details, but his imagination works overtime filling in the blanks. "How is she?"
"Good, physically," Kurt relays, putting his phone down and pushing it aside, subconsciously needing to separate himself from the situation for now. He can't imagine how Dorothy's mom feels. Hanging up the phone and shoving it aside, even hiding it under a pillow, won't give her a breather from what's ahead for her and her daughter. "The doctor says that Dorothy is strong. With time and therapy, she should make a near-full recovery. But she's pretty depressed." He shakes his head in disbelief. "She's out for the whole season. And possibly part of next season, too, which, let's face it, means she's out for that season as well. This was just the second competition of the year! I feel so bad for her!"
"That was a pretty bad break. I was in the dance room above the rink when she fell. I could hear it from up there."
Kurt flinches. He knows what Sebastian means. When it happened, he thought a piece of equipment overhead had fallen onto the ice. It was that loud, that pronounced. More than anything, he remembers the shock on Dorothy's face before the pain registered, when she scrambled to get to her feet but couldn't get her leg to move.
The rink was stunned into silence. Everyone was stuck on stupid. No one did a thing to help for a good ten seconds. It's frowned upon for a coach to enter the ice for any reason during a competition, but Kurt did. He has never skated across a sheet of ice that fast before, not even for his daughter. "She's landed that jump a hundred times. Double Lutz? It's not even hard for her. She could do it in her sleep."
"That's usually the way it goes, though, isn't it?" Sebastian says. "You can spend all day trying to land a quad, fall on your ass every time, and limp away with one hell of a bruise but nothing else. But you decide to go for a nice leisurely skate, trip over your toepick, slow-mo land on your arm, and boom - compound fracture."
"Yeah," Kurt mumbles, recalling the accident his husband is referring to and how it ended the career of one of Sebastian's best students. Brad went on to be a gold-star coach, but he never returned to competing. Sad, too, because he could have been an Olympian. He had the guts, the talent, and the ambition.
One small stumble took it all away.
Sebastian watches his husband, lines creasing his forehead as he concentrates too hard for 10 a.m. on a Sunday, especially when they have the house to themselves for the first time in months. Blaine, who had come down specifically to watch Elizabeth compete, was nice enough to squirrel her away while Kurt dealt with things. Kurt and Sebastian had been getting pictures of their escapades all morning. "What's going through your head over there?"
"You mean besides feeling incredibly responsible?"
"Which is ridiculous because you did nothing wrong."
Kurt pauses, chewing on his cheek and picking through his thoughts, shaking his head as if trying to convince himself not to say them out loud. But he's troubled. And if there's anyone he should discuss his troubles with, it's his husband. Sebastian would never judge him.
At least Kurt prays he won't.
"Should we let Elizabeth continue in figure skating?" Kurt asks softly as if he's hoping his husband won't hear.
"I don't worry about her too much." Sebastian waves Kurt's anxiety away with false confidence, unwilling to admit that he has had the same thought every day since their daughter tied on a pair of skates, lept on the ice, and immediately took her first big fall, bouncing right off her chin. She bled so much, Sebastian was convinced she'd bitten the tip of her tongue off. "She knows how to fall. She gets a ton of practice."
"So does Dorothy! That's the point! And Dorothy is a much more accomplished skater than Elizabeth is!"
"Yeah, but Dorothy lands hard, collapses her posture, and doesn't recover well. That makes a difference." Sebastian gets up and starts brewing himself a cup of coffee, having caught Kurt's anxiety and restless legs. He didn't plan on having this conversation today. He wants to spend the day easing Kurt's worries, not exposing his own. "Add the soft ice from that old rink, and you have a recipe for injury. They were basically competing in a barn. The ice by the zam door was nearly melted halfway through. Dorothy wasn't the only skater who got injured during that competition. If you ask me, her parents have grounds for a lawsuit."
"Unfortunately, that's what waivers are for. And her mom definitely signed one. You can't pay for a competition until you do. Safe Sport." Kurt huffs. "Ironic."
"We're not obligated to let our daughter be a figure skater because we were figure skaters."
"True, but it was inevitable, don't you think? Neither of us could stay away from the ice if we tried, so she was going to want to do it sooner or later. You have your own rink, for crying out loud! We weren't going to melt your ice and turn it into a giant bouncy castle!"
"No, but that does sound awesome," Sebastian teases.
"Seb!"
"Kurt, listen to me." Sebastian returns to the table with his mug. He sits beside Kurt and takes his hand. It trembles slightly in Sebastian's grasp and he gives it a reassuring squeeze. "Safety isn't guaranteed. Not anywhere. Lizzie could give up skating tomorrow, take up soccer, get clobbered blocking a goal, and end up with a concussion. Or she could give up sports altogether, start sewing costumes like you, and lose a few fingers. Those machines are dangerous. You said so yourself. Especially that industrial one you have."
Kurt scowls at his husband. "Jesus Christ! You are really awful at pep talks, do you know that?"
"So I've been told. But what I'm saying is," Sebastian keeps on, not wanting to admit the amount of thought he has put into these scenarios, "all we can do is hope for the best while expecting the worst. I mean, you remember Kevin Mercer?"
Kurt barks a laugh even though he shouldn't.
"Defense," Sebastian continues, in case Kurt doesn't recall. "Best player in the league since birth. Probably fell on his face, got body checked, and tossed over the boards more than any hockey player I know. I don't think most of his teeth were his own. He was unstoppable...until he stepped on a Lego BB8, rolled his ankle, and landed face first..."
Kurt puts up a hand to stop him. "Let's not go into the rest."
"Accidents happen, on and off the ice."
"Maybe it's time to bring back the pads," Kurt suggests. "She only recently got rid of her crash helmet and elbow pads. We could encourage her to put them back on. Maybe use Dorothy's fall as an example."
"That sounds like manipulation."
"We're her parents. We'd be acting in her best interest."
"You say tomato, I say emotional damage." Sebastian takes a sip of his coffee and makes a face. He hates black coffee. Actually, he hates coffee in general. Kurt has no notion as to why he made himself a mug except he's commiserating with his husband. If Kurt is suffering, they'll suffer together. "Besides, pads are just measures. They don't ensure her safety. Plenty of people break bones because of their pads, not despite them."
"I guess you're right." Kurt sighs. It's long and heavy and sounds like defeat.
Sebastian watches his husband sink into his worry, his feelings of helplessness. Kurt doesn't know what to do, and Sebastian isn't exactly helping. Sebastian doesn't want to villainize Kurt for voicing the same concerns Sebastian has. At least Kurt has the courage to admit them. Sebastian has kept his feelings close to his chest for years, not wanting to sound like the overprotective parent, which he is, in sharp contrast to his own parents who left for a fundraiser in Milan when he was around five and rarely came home after.
Sebastian loves being a parent. He has tried his best to be the parent he needed growing up. It's easy when you have hindsight to guide you, as well as a loving, compassionate, intelligent partner like Kurt, who happened to be raised by the greatest parents on the planet.
Now the greatest grandparents on the planet.
"We can figure something out," Sebastian says. "Make safety feel like fun, not a punishment."
Kurt smiles sadly. He is not going to stick his daughter back in pads after she'd been so proud to graduate out of them. There are alternatives - mature alternatives. The pads the professionals wear. And better ways of framing it. For good or bad, comparing Elizabeth to another skater is not the way to go. "We could roll her in bubble wrap," Kurt jokes, intent on dragging himself out of his funk. "Hose her down with high-impact foam."
"Or dress her up as an inflatable snowman."
Kurt raises an eyebrow at his suddenly sour husband pouring more than an acceptable amount of sugar into his coffee. Sebastian's dry delivery of that sentence zaps the moisture from Kurt's mouth. "You are never going to let that go, are you?"
Sebastian gives his concoction a stir. "No. No, I am not. Not when you made Blaine Prince Eric that same year."
"We kept that stupid costume forever," Kurt chuckles. His expression darkens, and he lowers his voice as if someone might overhear them in their empty house. "Still the best sex we ever had though, right?"
"Yeah." Sebastian rises from his seat. He takes Kurt's hand and tugs him to his feet, eager to recreate that experience sans costume. "But let's leave that part out when we suggest it to Lizzie."
Kurtbastian one-shot - “Text-ual Healing” (Rated M)
Summary: A slight misunderstanding leads to a spectacular revelation. (1438 words)
Warning: implied past relationship angst with a certain curly-haired someone...
Read on AO3.
I fucking love you.
The words don't register with Kurt right away as he fumbles his phone, juggling his coffee in the same hand and adjusting the straps on his mask with the other. He'd gotten to NYADA with minutes to spare when his phone buzzed in his pocket.
He'd lollygagged checking it because he knew it was Sebastian.
Kurt had left his boyfriend's bed, mouth, everything only a half-hour before. So, the man was texting him to gloat.
Remind Kurt why he was late to school today.
And why he was limping despite opting to bottom for the past six months.
It had nothing to do with power and everything to do with intensity.
Duration.
Kurt glances at the words on his screen and fondly rolls his eyes.
"Oh, Sebastian. My eloquent boyfriend," he chuckles. "I fucking love... " Kurt's heart races as the words he'd scanned assemble in his brain, their meaning ticking loudly like the last ten seconds of a countdown.
Oh my God. Did Sebastian just tell him...?
Kurt swallows hard enough to hurt, but it doesn't break him from his stupor.
Why? Why would he do that? Why would he tell him he loves him for the first time like this? Through text message!? The bastard!
Though this is honestly very much on-brand for Sebastian: wait until after a night of epic sex, after he has sucked and fucked his boyfriend to the brink of insanity, let him go on his way to somewhere important, then mind-wipe him with an outrageous confession.
This way, Kurt would never forget it.
Are they at this point, though? Ignoring the ridiculousness of his timing and execution, are they at the I love you stage?
Kurt thinks so. He has for a while, but that could be the hopeless romantic in him. The amount of time it took Kurt to go from, "This is just sex. I will never fall in love with Sebastian Smythe," to, "I can't believe I'm in love with Sebastian Smythe!" was embarrassingly short. Considering the relationship that preceded their nightly dinner dates and bed gymnastics, he was convinced his affliction would be one-sided for as long as this lasted.
According to this message - apparently not.
Kurt should be jumping for joy, but he's terrified. He's been in love once before. It didn't turn out too well for him. That one relationship rolled him through the twelve-step program of relationship red flags: deception, gaslighting, jealousy, codependency, isolation... He doesn't believe Sebastian would do any of that to him, but is he ready to take the chance?
The clock in the lobby chirps loudly, and Kurt takes a much-needed breath. It's eight a.m. - ten minutes since Sebastian sent that text message. As Kurt stares at his reflection in his phone screen gone black, he becomes aware of several things.
One - he's late for class. He's missing a test. It's worth a quarter of his grade.
Two - at some point, he'd dropped his coffee cup. It was mostly empty, but what was left has stained his suede Oxfords.
Well, Sebastian's suede Oxfords.
Three - he has stalled replying to Sebastian for a length of time that could be interpreted as Thank you, and not I love you, too.
And Sebastian deserves an I love you. He absolutely does.
The man has changed. He's put in the work. No longer the pernicious butthole from high school, he's matured into a man Kurt has been proud to call his.
Kurt has loved Sebastian for months now, too afraid to say the words out loud for fear they'd be the end of their relationship. The happiest, healthiest relationship he's had in a long time.
Maybe this could be a first step towards something new. Something exciting. Sebastian has already extended his hand. All that's left is for Kurt to take it.
Now seems like a good time.
Swiping his finger across the screen, Kurt brings his phone out of hibernation. He glances at Sebastian's text, gaze landing on it long enough to confirm it still exists. Kurt's heart skyrockets as he takes the plunge and types I fucking love you, too, Sebastian Smythe.
He tacks Sebastian's name on the end so that he'll know Kurt means this message for him without question.
Kurt presses send, then leans against a wall and waits. No reason to rush to class. He's too late to attend now anyway. He can beg for forgiveness later.
This is more important.
Kurt's hands shake as he waits nervously for a reply. But Sebastian doesn't text back. He sends a voice message instead. Kurt presses play the second it pops on his screen, heart thrumming so hard it moves his entire body away from the wall with every beat. He expects a quippy response, something along the lines of: "Well, you don't have to get all mushy about it," in that boyish, shy voice Sebastian gets when the real him peeks through the cracks of that worn-out facade he wore through high school. Kurt contemplates running out the doors, jumping on the subway, and heading back to Sebastian's place for a PornHub ending to this Hallmark moment when the message starts playing and he hears: Wait... what?
The tone of Sebastian's voice, that comical confusion, makes Kurt's blood run cold. Did he not expect Kurt to say it back? Did he not think he felt that way? After six months of kisses and cuddles and movie marathons and naked confessions?
Or did he not...?
Oh dear God...
Kurt looks at Sebastian's text, double-checking that the message said what he thought it did. His racing heart slams against his ribcage then plummets to his stomach.
It doesn't say I fucking love you.
It says I love fucking you.
Kurt's world stops spinning. He knows it has because he can't breathe. He slides down the wall, landing on his butt on the cold floor.
Oh my God.
Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God...
OH MY GOD!!
Kurt starts frantically texting. Maybe he can get Sebastian to think it's a joke. A cruel, horrible, disgusting joke, but still. A joke. Sebastian would understand a joke, right?
RIGHT!?
Not able to keep his thoughts in order, he gets halfway through a sentence before sending it and starting a new one, each more desperate than the ones before.
Wait!
Sebastian?
I misspoke!
I mean, I miss typed!
I didn't...
It was a...
Grrr! He can't say joke. He can't. Dammit!
He's in the middle of typing, "Please, don't hate me!" when Sebastian interrupts with another voice message. Then another. And another.
Two short, one long.
Kurt's heart sinks further.
Oh, God.
Please be, "It's okay."
Forget about it.
No big deal.
Water under the bridge.
I knew you were joking.
Don't be, "It's over."
Please?
Kurt selects the first message. It's five seconds long, and it's a chuckle. Good chuckle? Bad chuckle? It isn't long enough for Kurt to tell.
Kurt selects the second message, also five seconds long. It's a pause, then a single sniff. An angry sniff? Angry at Kurt for making their relationship more than it is? Or a sad sniff? Sad because Kurt screwed up, caught too many feelings, and now what they have is over? Again, it's not long enough to tell.
Kurt's finger hovers over the play button on the third message, but he can't get himself to press it. He doesn't want to hear it. At close to thirty seconds long, this is the one. This is the message that changes everything. He feels it - deep in his heart that hasn't started up yet.
He closes his eyes and sits there, waiting for fate to take over, waiting for something to happen.
Waiting for someone from admin to see him sitting on the floor and tell him to get up and leave.
Or waiting for his arm to get tired and gravity to do its thing.
He sits there, still as stone for what feels like an hour.
The door beside him opens. A breeze spirals in, slipping underneath the hem of Kurt's jacket and sending a shiver up his spine. His finger falls. It lands on the screen. With his eyes shut, Kurt isn't sure where exactly it lands, isn't sure his phone hasn't gone to sleep. Sebastian's hoarse voice comes from the speaker, and Kurt knows his finger hit its mark. Sebastian sniffles, on the verge of tears from the sounds of it. He stutters, stumbles over a word or two, laughs out loud. Then he says:
Hey, D. It's been a horrible few weeks, and I haven't read anything from you in so long. Do you have any funny Kurtbastian rolling around that you can post (no pressure)?
Hey, nonnie :) I'm sorry it's been horrible. Same for me. So this isn't the best I have to offer. But I hope it'll do until I get something else up <3
Under the Table
Summary: When Kurt bets his boyfriend that he can't drink him under the table, the outcome isn't exactly what he expects.
Read on AO3
"Mmmph... Kurt? Hurry up. I need to... gangway, Kurt!"
Kurt hops aside, clearing a path to the first stall for his lime-faced boyfriend. He stands guard in the open doorway, eyes glued to the mirror over the sink. He doesn't need to watch Sebastian drop to his knees and pay homage to the toilet. This bar is cleaner than most on the Lower East Side. Still, as with most public toilets, Kurt suspects much gonorrhea has been spread here. But the real tragedy?
Sebastian is ruining a gorgeous pair of Gucci jeans.
Hooooork!
Kurt stares sympathetically at his own reflection and sighs.
He looks incredible tonight. He really does. He went all out for this date (with the help of the Vogue in-house salon): highlights, a trim, a saltwater facial, a brand new shirt to go with the floral-print corduroys he borrowed from Elliott three years ago and conveniently forgot to return.
Sebastian looked incredible, too - in his tightest fitting pair of indigo jeans and the scarlet button-down Kurt had gotten him for Christmas. That was until roughly five minutes ago.
Pity.
Now, Kurt will have to burn that outfit the second they get home and soak Sebastian in ammonia to boot.
Hork! Hooork!
Kurt scrunches his nose, forehead creasing with disgust. Kurt had intended on getting Sebastian on his knees eventually, possibly even in a bathroom. But not like this.
Kurt needs to plan his sexual escapades better.
Hork! Hoooork!
He winces when Sebastian heaves harder, his whole body straining before relinquishing the remaining contents of his stomach into the bowl.
"You know, when I bet you you couldn't drink me under the table, I thought that at least we'd end in a tie."
Sebastian sniffles, then grotesquely spits. "S-sorry to disappoint you."
"A-ha. What about that b.s. you spewed back in high school about drinking Courvoisier like it was mother's milk?"
Sebastian snorts at Kurt's on-the-nose word selection. "Didn't I tell you?"
"Tell me what?"
"I'm lactose intolerant. Hork!"
Kurt steps away from the stall, needing to put some distance between himself and his retching boyfriend before he gets struck with a wave of second-hand nausea. Kurt loves Sebastian. He's not going to leave him to suffer the slings and arrows of too many tequila shots alone. But it would be nice if there was something else in this tiny lavatory for him to focus on besides Sebastian turning his stomach inside-out.
A particularly wet splat starts Kurt inching towards the door. "Jesus Christmas."
"Wh--what was that?" Sebastian groans, his voice sounding painfully raw.
"I said there-there... " Kurt lies, distracted by his phone vibrating in his pocket. He pulls it out, reads the message on the screen, then sighs with relief. "Thank God. That's your Uber. Come on. You can finish your projectile puking in the comfort of your own home."
The toilet flushes, accompanied by a loud creak as Sebastian latches onto the toilet paper dispenser for support. He falls back to one knee when it proves an unreliable assistant. "You called an Uber?"
"Yessir."
"But we drove here in your Navigator."
"Hence why I said your Uber," Kurt replies, helping Sebastian to his feet, several paper towels from a roll on the sink keeping their palms apart.
"You're leaving your SUV here?"
"No, no, no. I would never do that." Kurt holds Sebastian by the shoulders and leads him towards the door, careful to walk as far back as his arms will extend, in case Sebastian's stomach isn't empty yet. "I'm driving my baby home. I put my Navigator through so much in high school. I'm not putting it through this."
Summary: After the death of their daughter Grace, Kurt and Sebastian drift apart. Kurt wraps himself up in his grief so tightly he starts to push Sebastian away, and Sebastian, feeling himself shoved aside when he needs Kurt most, cheats. They make the decision to start over, to leave New York City and their pain behind, and start over again in a house Upstate. Sebastian buys Kurt a "fixer upper" and gives him free reign. While redecorating the room that will be his studio, Kurt comes across something interesting underneath the wallpaper. It starts to become an obsession for Kurt - an obsession that begins to replace Kurt's love for his husband, which Sebastian is holding on to by a thread. Can Kurt and Sebastian break through the pain and the hurt and find a way to fall in love again?
Read on AO3.
Chapter 3 (4753 words)
Kurt stares out his studio window at the neighborhood below. It’s 10:15 a.m. and a Tuesday, so it isn’t as if the place is teeming with activity. Everyone living on Colony Lane seems content to stick to their own spaces, abide by their own schedules, and go about their lives without much interference from the world outside.
Kurt hates to hand it to Sebastian, but that’s what he wants as well. Isolation in a quaint fixer-upper is precisely what he needs.
Another point for Sebastian.
Damn.
He seems to be racking them up lately, while Kurt…
Kurt can admit that he’s not trying as hard as he should be, but he’s giving himself permission to be selfish. There shouldn’t be a timetable for bouncing back from loss, and Kurt got the double-whammy.
Sebastian gave him betrayal to get over, too.
Kurt knows that he should deem repairing his marriage a priority, but he also needs to do what’s right for him.
He hasn’t figured out what that is yet, but it'll come to him.
Underlying childhood guilt has him believing that he should introduce himself to the neighbors. Etiquette and all that. It’s what his mother would do. Every time his family moved, and there had been a handful of times, Kurt’s mother would bake a batch of cookies for the neighbors. She'd put a baker's dozen into colorful cellophane bags, tie the tops with curled ribbon, and take them door to door to say hello. She wouldn’t wait for people to show up on their doorstep with a casserole and a smile. She believed in being proactive. She would tell him, “New neighborhood, new life. Go out and be a part of it.”
But Kurt doesn’t want to, and the neighbors seem fine with that.
It’s been three days, and Kurt and Sebastian have only gotten one visitor – the technician who came to fix the heating. Of course, the neighbors could be waiting for them to get settled. Then they’ll pounce over with perfectly iced Gingerbread Bundt cakes and Chicken Kievs, church invites, and Girl Scout cookie order forms, like a swarm of Stepford Wives.
Kurt doesn’t care about being proactive, and his mother isn’t around to scold him for behaving like a hermit.
That may sound harsh, but it's true.
The clouds pulling together in the sky overhead, threatening rain, give Kurt an excuse to shut himself away and work on the house - an excuse he can ply without the assistance of a tragic backstory. With his laptop open on the floor in front of him, he browses those websites that feed his design fetishes: Ethan Allen, Neiman Marcus, Anthropologie.
But he's not the least bit inspired.
He’d decided to start small, take things room by room instead of attacking everything at once. But he gets stumped, staring at the screen in front of him, unsure whether the chair he’s been mulling over for the past half hour is gorgeous or gaudy.
He should focus on bringing the living room together since it’s where they do the bulk of their entertaining, provided they ever start entertaining again. And he should do something about the master bedroom, which, for the moment, houses a bed, a TV, and a dresser within the confines of four ashy walls.
Opinions on the topic vary, but Kurt has always felt that the bedrooms are the heart of the home. They’re sanctuaries where dreaming, planning, and affirmation happen. He only has the one to worry about, so he should put extra effort into making it comforting, relaxing, sensual on the off chance he ever plans on touching his husband again.
The jury is still out on that one, unfortunately.
The kitchen, he’s not looking forward to decorating. Aside from his studio, he and Grace spent much of their time together in the kitchen. They baked daily: cakes, cookies, bread, and anything else they could slop onto a baking sheet and shove into the oven. They also made jam, pickled fruit, and taught themselves (using YouTube videos mainly) to prepare various types of cuisine. Some were a hit, others a miss, but it was always an adventure.
Kurt had done something similar with his mother and her collection of vintage cookbooks, congregating around the kitchen island in the afternoons to shed the angst of public school, and spread the wings of his stifled creativity. He and his mother discussed everything in the kitchen while sifting flour and creaming butter. It was a tradition he had so looked forward to continuing.
Now, he’d rather not be bothered going into the kitchen again.
He could pick a page out of the IKEA catalog and recreate it. That should offend him. It did when Sebastian suggested it the first time Kurt redecorated their penthouse. But Kurt hardly cares. It doesn’t matter as much as it did. He can’t remember the last time he stepped into the kitchen and prepared anything more elaborate than toast and coffee, maybe dry scrambled eggs. Sebastian took over cooking duties after Grace died, which, nine times out of ten, means ordering out, if for no other reason than he gets to leave the house to pick up the food.
He knows Kurt appreciates the time alone more than he does a home-cooked meal.
Then there’s Sebastian’s office, which Kurt is decorating for the first time. He has tried to start a shopping cart for it numerous times, but, unlike the windfall of ideas he had for his studio, he can’t get into a groove. He remembers a time when thinking about decorating Sebastian’s office put a hundred ideas into his head.
Currently, he has only one.
The cheap, vomit-worthy, knock-off furnishings of the no-tell hotel room he pictures whenever he thinks of Sebastian sleeping with another man.
Kurt shivers in disgust. He wouldn't wish that on his worst enemy.
The room or the infidelity.
But how would Sebastian react if Kurt decorated his office to look like the business suite at the Marriott?
Kurt snickers, envisioning the sitcom-worthy shock that would erupt on Sebastian's face if he presented that to him.
"As you can see," Kurt would say, strolling through the room with his head held high atop the straightest spine pettiness can deliver, "I have chosen the most flame-retardant carpet available in subtle hues of tan and beige, a color combination well suited for concealing cum stains. This ergonomic, curved leather loveseat, for when you want to get adventurous with your afternoon romps, which, at your age, requires plenty of lumbar support. Plus, it cleans up in a snap with just a Clorox wipe, so that's a useful feature. Faux fireplace, faux aquarium, faux chandelier... are we sensing a theme? And in the corner, I've provided you a foldout of your own, for when you bring... ahem... work home."
The grin on Kurt's lips slides when Sebastian, wearing a gutted expression, pops to mind. It's an expression that Kurt didn't believe possible for Sebastian till their daughter died. He's only seen it once. He doesn't want to bring it back.
He sighs.
Revenge-dreaming isn't helping.
It isn't as satisfying as he thought it would be.
He’s not breaking through his creative block anytime soon. He puts his plans for the other rooms on the back burner and decides to spend time picking out furniture for his studio. With the exception of his sewing machines, he didn’t bring anything from his penthouse studio here, so he’s starting over fresh. He switches tabs and starts filling his online shopping cart with the basics: a new drafting table, a cabinet, a chair he’ll have to custom-upholster, a bolt of drapery fabric he can repurpose to make a bedspread (if he goes through with his plans for a foldout), and a few other miscellaneous odds and ends, nothing worth wasting too much brain-power over.
The clunk-clunk of Sebastian stacking cans in the kitchen cabinets reaches Kurt upstairs, as does the water running in the sink while he washes dishes and the squeak of the sticky pantry door when he fixes it. Kurt plans on redoing the kitchen and giving the entire room a facelift. Sebastian knows that. But repairing the door gives Sebastian something to do.
Sebastian has been considerate enough to let Kurt do his thing undisturbed for the morning. Kurt’s reluctance to talk to anyone extends to Sebastian, which Sebastian understands. He’s keeping his distance. But it’s nice to hear him puttering around the house. It gives Kurt comfort, the same way listening to his father snore in the middle of the night helped Kurt feel less alone after his mother died.
He may want to be left alone, but it’s nice to know that he’s not alone.
Especially not today.
Today did not start out good for Kurt.
Kurt woke up later than he’d intended, and when he did, he couldn’t remember where he was. Sebastian had woken up and gotten out of bed hours earlier, leaving Kurt alone to sleep in. Kurt climbed out of bed and wandered around frightened, hands crawling along the walls, searching for something familiar. Footsteps passed somewhere underneath him, and he froze. He didn’t want to venture downstairs because he didn’t know who could be there. Maybe someone had broken in, or worse - this was somebody else’s house, and Kurt was the intruder.
His heart raced. He started hyperventilating. He went from room to room, trying to figure out where he was and why he was there. It wasn’t until the second time he went into his studio that he began to remember. He saw his bag on the floor and, beside it, his sketchbook. He remembered sitting in there the day before, making plans. He remembered the wood grain of the floor, the dusty glass, the tree outside, the wallpaper, and that ripped corner by the window, which Kurt refuses to acknowledge any more than he has to.
He feels it behind him, like the sun on his back, trying to get him to turn his face to it, but he refuses. Of all the things he needs to deal with, that ripped corner and the word beneath it don’t make the list. It isn't doing the palpitations in his chest any favors.
It confuses him.
It angers him.
It saddens him.
It makes him consider what could have been, forces him to face everything he's lost. He didn't succeed in running away from his problems. He ran headlong into brand new ones.
But this is his house. He has to get used to it.
These episodes aren’t uncommon. They crop up whenever Kurt needs to adapt to change. They’re unexpected, like mines in fields he discovers he’s been running through when a second ago he was picking flowers in the park or strolling down the street.
It's their unpredictability that is the true torture.
They show up even on his good days.
His life for the last ten years revolved around his daughter. When she was a baby, he adjusted his work schedule to match her sleep schedule. They had the money to afford the best nurses in New York, but Kurt didn’t want that. He didn’t want his daughter raised by a governess. He was as hands-on a parent as there ever was.
As Grace grew, her schedule changed, and Kurt adjusted: daycare, Gymboree, kindergarten, ballet, elementary school. He dropped her off in the mornings, then picked her up in the afternoons. They spent the rest of the day going over her homework until it was time to make dinner, which they did together.
That was the great thing about being a designer and freelance editor. Kurt could work from anywhere, and, aside from doing consultations at Vogue, he could work any time.
When Grace became sick, her doctor visits and her medication regimen dictated Kurt's schedule, then her chemo.
Towards the end, there was only one item written in Kurt’s schedule - lie beside his daughter in her bed, holding on to her for dear life.
And not just her life.
His, too.
In sickness and in health, Grace kept Kurt’s life regulated.
Things flipped drastically when she died.
He felt adrift. Detached from the life he had gotten used to, he didn’t know what to latch on to. His internal clock would wake him up at six to get Grace ready for the day, only to find himself walking into a vacant bedroom. At the supermarket, he would grab her favorite cereal out of habit and put it in his cart, even though it wasn’t on the list. He would jolt when he'd come across a song he thought she’d like or saw an advertisement for a movie he thought she’d enjoy.
He has yet to stop the automatic deposits from his bank account to hers, her weekly allowance piling up on top of birthday and Christmas money. She had earmarked it for college (her decision, not his). Now it waits to be donated to the children’s hospital that took such incredible care of her. He doesn’t have the heart to empty it. She was so proud of it.
He doesn’t know what it will do to him to see the balance at zero.
But the worst moment of all, the absolute worst, was when he tried to go back to work right after they lost her.
There are many moments after Grace’s death, during Kurt’s own struggle for acceptance, that blur together, but this one he remembers so vividly, it brings a lump to his throat and tears to his eyes.
He was in the middle of a brainstorming session with his team. His boss Isabelle was there. She had dropped by with a box of cronuts and a grande nonfat mocha. Kurt hadn’t been eating. Everyone could tell. But Kurt overlooked the signs – the sharper than normal angle to his cheekbones and chin, his collarbone that showed through his skin a little too much, his hands that never stopped shaking. He had waved the food away when she offered.
An hour later, he was on his third one.
The tension of his presence in the office so soon after his daughter’s death slowly dissipated, making way for the familiar, though attenuated, back and forth banter he had so missed. Without knowing it, he was paving the way for a potential comeback. He wouldn’t have a line up for a while, and he would need to keep an eye on fashion trends as they came and went in his absence. But this, this felt so natural, so normal, it almost seemed like it was. He got caught up in the rhythm of this impromptu jam session. He smiled, he laughed.
He felt alive again.
Somewhere in the middle of outlining a rough schedule, he glanced down at the time on his phone. Mid-sentence, he got up from his chair and walked over to get his coat off the hook by the door.
“Alright,” he said with a chuckle over Chase’s last clap back at a jab from his boyfriend Ian, “thanks for everything, you guys, but I’ve gotta run. We’ll talk about this more when I come in tomorrow.”
The room went pin-drop silent. Kurt didn’t notice.
“Where are you going?” Isabelle asked, getting up from her seat on the corner of his desk and approaching, knowing that he would need her in a second, the way she always knew. Kurt has referred to Isabelle as his Fairy Godmother ever since he first walked into Vogue fresh out of high school and trying to find a foothold in the hectic Gulf Stream that is New York City. She became his pillar of support, a sympathetic ear, and a clear head whenever he needed one. She had thrown his bachelor party. Hers was the condo he stayed in the night before his wedding. She’d hosted Grace’s baby shower.
Also, Grace’s wake.
She didn’t have children of her own and didn't plan on it, but she loved Grace as much as anyone.
And hers was the shoulder Kurt cried on when he found out Sebastian had cheated.
Kurt looked at her, confused, wondering why it was that everyone around him seemed to be holding their breath. “I just… have to go pick up Grace. From school. I’m going… I’m going to be late.”
Isabelle shook her head and put a hand on his. “Sweetie… ”
It took Kurt a second.
Even after one person gasped and another sniffled, with Isabelle’s sorrowful eyes staring at him, begging him to remember so she wouldn’t have to say it, he didn’t catch on.
When he did, it hit him like an electric shock straight through his body, rendering his muscles useless, and he crumbled to the floor. Isabelle held him for over an hour in that spot until Sebastian arrived. Kurt didn’t want to leave. He didn’t want to go to their empty penthouse and face the truth about his empty life. He wanted to stay at Vogue with Isabelle and live in that moment where everything was alright again for one shimmering second, even if it wasn’t real.
But he had to go. He had to leave with Sebastian, who had hurt him, back to his home, even if it killed him because even though he felt like his life was over, everything else continued on. People lived, and people died. The sun set in the evening, but in the morning, it would rise again.
He just didn’t want to be a part of it anymore.
Not without his Grace.
He was cried out by the time Sebastian got him home. Sebastian undressed him, helped him with his cleaning and moisturizing routine, and then put him to bed. It was Friday evening when Kurt shut his eyes and went to sleep. He lived that horrible moment at his office over again a hundred times before he opened his eyes. And when he did, it was Sunday morning.
Like this morning, but to a greater extent, when these attacks happen, locked in his own brain, sifting through the pieces to find one big enough and sturdy enough to hold on to, Kurt loses time.
In a blink, hours go by, sometimes a day. He’ll climb in the shower in the morning, turn the water on hot, and by the time he realizes it’s cold, it’s close to noon. He has sat at the dining room table for breakfast, staring at a bowl of oatmeal, and when he found the will to pick up the spoon, the oatmeal was old and stiff, and it was dinner time. He’s gone to bed on Monday and stared at the black behind his eyelids till Wednesday.
As far as Kurt knows, it’s only around lunchtime, but he glances at the clock in the corner of his screen to make sure.
12:45.
He breathes a sigh of relief. He double-checks the date to make sure he has a reason to and sighs again.
Still Tuesday.
Kurt switches back to the IKEA tab he’d been laboring long but not hard on earlier. He looks at the shopping cart he’s been steadily filling, scrolls through his selections of personality bereft, assembly line furniture, and groans. This isn’t him. This house, this blank slate, should be an endless fount of motivation.
But he's numb.
Maybe he's rushing into this. He should give this house and the neighborhood time to grow on him before he sentences it to the mundane.
He needs a break. (Kurt Hummel need a break from shopping? Since when?) He flips to a new page in his sketchbook. For shits and giggles, he tries drawing a sketch for his husband’s office. He starts with the easy part – Sebastian’s desk. Sebastian didn’t leave that in the penthouse, so Kurt will make it the linchpin and design around it.
Things flow surprisingly easily from there once he gets started, with a pencil in his hand writing on paper instead of working on a screen: an ornamental rug, a matching leather chair, burgundy velvet curtains, a chainmail style Tiffany desk lamp, 1930s art deco décor with a soupcon of Persian flair. But he doesn’t want the room to be too dark. No. Kurt wants nothing in their house to be dark. He adds a Salento chandelier over the open portion of the room and a sweep of color – one wall, opposite a window, a lighter shade than the rest. He doesn’t know what Sebastian’s office looks like, but there has to be a wall in there that will fit the bill.
An enamel and copper vase, a Khatam inlaid photo frame, a few Negar Gari…
Kurt stops.
Would Sebastian want that? The softer elements countering the strict lines of the art deco pieces, what could be described as feminine influences, are Kurt’s signature touch. But might Sebastian prefer the art deco without Kurt’s fingerprints all over it? Isn’t that what Sebastian meant by Kurt being heavy-handed with the pastels?
Back in high school, Kurt had decorated his bedroom so that he and his stepbrother could share it. He'd skipped school so he could complete it in one day. He’d worked hard on it, trying to fuse a masculine air with his theatrical influence. What he thought was an eclectic representation of the masculine and the feminine turned into a Moroccan-themed disaster.
The word his stepbrother chose to use at the time was faggy, but there were ulterior motives behind it.
Sebastian made jabs in high school about Kurt not wearing boy clothes, comments that adult Kurt recognizes as the teenage boy equivalent of pulling Kurt’s pigtails. But at the time, they stung. Sebastian wouldn’t have made those comments if there weren’t a grain of truth to them, would he?
Sebastian has never retracted those statements, so as far as Kurt is concerned, they stand.
Kurt flips his pencil over and starts erasing. He’ll pare down the extras – trade the Tiffany lamp for a banker’s lamp, replace the rug with something more Brooks Brothers than Pier 1.
Maybe he should just opt for another IKEA recreation, but that feels like copping out, going back on his word.
He could always ask Sebastian. He swears his husband has passed by a few times, his footsteps rising and falling outside his door, but Kurt didn’t think anything of it. He figures Sebastian is passing through on his way to get something from the bedroom that he needs downstairs. Kurt doesn’t imagine the man is pacing the hallway, even if he is, trying to find a way to tell Kurt that lunch is ready. Little things like lunch, innocuous things, have become huge divides over the past few months. With anyone else, Sebastian has a history of railroading over them, hurt feelings be damned.
But Sebastian has learned his lesson. He paid a hefty price learning it, too.
Contemplating between clearing his throat so that Kurt knows he’s there and letting another meal go cold, he sees Kurt’s head lift up. It seems like an opening. Whether or not it is, Sebastian takes it.
“Lunch is ready.”
“Mm-hmm,” Kurt mumbles, brushing eraser shavings aside.
“Are you… are you coming downstairs?”
Kurt erases again, then pencils something on a sheet of paper that Sebastian can’t see. “Hmm… mmm?”
It sounds like a question and an answer, but since Kurt doesn’t follow it up with anything, it most likely means that Kurt will be skipping lunch… again. Sebastian knocks idly on the door frame, giving Kurt a second longer to tell him for sure.
“Alright.” Disappointed, he turns to leave. “I guess I’ll come back up at dinner then.”
Kurt doesn’t know why the thought returns when he wasn’t even thinking about it, why it decided to nag at his brain when he had been able to ignore it for this long, but that’s the way his brain works now. His thoughts don’t always travel straight paths. They twist and turn, taking one thing and linking it to something unrelated. Erasing the ideas he’d sketched out, removing every inch of himself from Sebastian’s office, made him think about how eager he was to be rid of that word darling from above the window, and that ripped corner returns to his mind with a vengeance.
Well, as long as Sebastian is there, he might as well ask.
“Sebastian?”
Sebastian pauses in the doorway, not daring to move. “Yes?”
“When was the last time you were here?” Kurt raised an eyebrow at the idea when it originally came to him. When would Sebastian have come to this house that Kurt didn’t know? They traveled Upstate once a year, but they always did it together as a family. And while they were here, Sebastian rarely ventured out alone. Sebastian isn’t the kind of person who would buy a house sight unseen.
Unless he had found it during one of his outings with Grace. Which would mean that Grace had seen the inside.
Grace would have seen this room and thought it would be hers, thought that they would someday live here, and Sebastian hid that word darling by the window for her and not Kurt.
The thought is so painful, it makes Kurt want to tear his nails out with his teeth so he’ll stop thinking about it.
Sebastian keeps his eyes locked to Kurt’s profile so he won’t miss the moment Kurt decides to look at him instead of the floor, the wall, or the ceiling.
“I found this house online. It wasn’t even on the market when I stumbled on it. To be honest, I’d only driven by it once. I hadn’t been inside until we moved in.”
“But you saw the inside,” Kurt asks. “Otherwise, how would you know about this room?”
“I took a virtual tour,” Sebastian admits sheepishly, “but it was extremely thorough. I’ve seen the blueprints, gone over the permits and the zoning. I had Tristan from the office look over the place when he came up to visit his folks. He facetimed me while he was here.” Sebastian furrows his brow. “Why? Is something wrong?”
Kurt’s heart beats regular again. Grace hadn’t seen it.
Thank God.
His eyes find the torn section of wallpaper, but they don’t stay there. He doesn’t want to clue Sebastian in about it if Sebastian doesn’t already know. He wants to uncover this mystery on his own. If Sebastian gets to keep secrets, big ones at that, then Kurt wants this one for himself.
“No, no. Nothing’s wrong. I was just curious, you know. Wanted to understand your process. Why this house, why this neighborhood, that sort of thing.”
Kurt’s sentence comes out choppy. It’s odd how awkward talking has become for them. Sebastian used to think that the two things they had mastered were talking and fucking. They did both together with such ease. There were never any boundaries between them, emotionally or physically. Even when they were cutting each other down, which they did in the beginning, they did so with such finesse.
Not like now, when Sebastian is walking on eggshells and Kurt doesn’t want to hear half of what he has to say.
“If you come down for lunch, we can talk about my process. If you’re curious, that is.” Sebastian watches Kurt expectantly, waiting for an answer.
And while Sebastian does, Kurt looks at his sketch – Sebastian’s office, the same way Sebastian always has it decorated. This is Sebastian without him and Grace: bland and emotionless, no light, little color, and no joy. Nothing exciting, nothing nuanced, nothing to indicate that he and Sebastian are together.
Not even those snapshots he’s so proud of.
Kurt hasn’t decided whether that’s a bleak picture or not.
“Sure. I’ll be down in a sec,” Kurt decides because he does and doesn’t have an answer to that one. It changes as the day changes, and the days change too quickly.
“Alright. I’ll be waiting.” Sebastian walks away, or Kurt thinks he does. He checks the time on his clock. It’s closing in on 2.
Kurt glances up at the window, the dangling wallpaper bouncing with the breeze coming from a draft near the ceiling. It would be so easy to tear it down – grab an edge and rip, be done with it once and for all. It might even feel cathartic, exposing whatever is underneath it. But lunch is ready. He’s already left Sebastian waiting long enough.
After the death of their daughter Grace, Kurt and Sebastian drift apart. Kurt wraps himself up in his grief so tightly he starts to push Sebastian away, and Sebastian, feeling himself shoved aside when he needs Kurt most, cheats. They make the decision to start over, to leave New York City and their pain behind, and start over again in a house Upstate. Sebastian buys Kurt a "fixer upper" and gives him free reign. While redecorating the room that will be his studio, Kurt comes across something interesting underneath the wallpaper. It starts to become an obsession for Kurt - an obsession that begins to replace Kurt's love for his husband, which Sebastian is holding on to by a thread. Can Kurt and Sebastian break through the pain and the hurt and find a way to fall in love again?
Read on AO3
Chapter 2 (5061 words)
The first evening in their new house becomes a long, exhaustive dance of unpacking and cleaning in preparation for the movers to arrive in the morning. What, in the past, would have been an upbeat two-step of flirting in the hallways while lugging in suitcases, punctuated by the occasional stop, dip, and smooch, is now a formal, boxy waltz, with Sebastian giving Kurt a wide-berth whenever he hears his husband coming, and Kurt pausing in doorways, eyes darting elsewhere when Sebastian passes by.
The rush to clear the dirt away and make things suitable for the furniture they chose to bring with them affords Kurt ample opportunities to send Sebastian on a host of errands, ensuring him stretches of time that he can spend alone to reflect and think.
Consider the past and plan for the future.
Even after the furniture arrives, they should have tons of space left. They had decided not to bring everything they own with them. They aren’t selling their penthouse. Keeping it furnished for the odd trip back seems like the practical thing to do. So, they only packed those things that they absolutely could not live without.
They didn’t bring any of the furniture from Grace's room. That Kurt donated to the Salvation Army with the exception of one item – a Winnie the Pooh lamp that he had found in mint condition, ironically, at the Salvation Army, on the day he and Sebastian found out their surrogate was pregnant. It's ceramic, hand-painted, with Christopher Robin and Winnie the Pooh sitting back to back as the base, each holding a handful of balloons. One red balloon, larger than the rest, contains the bulb, the colored plastic lending a rosy tint to its glow. Along the bottom edge are written the words: “If there ever comes a day when we can’t be together, keep me in your heart, I’ll stay there forever.”
Kurt’s mother had read him Winnie the Pooh books his entire childhood. He could recite most of A. A. Milne’s writings by the time he turned eight.
The year his mother passed away.
He'd read those same books to his daughter. She’d had them mostly memorized, too.
Seven hours of scrubbing, sanitizing, and (for Sebastian) racing around town wipe the two of them out, to the point where falling asleep is simply a matter of inflating an air mattress and putting heads down on pillows. They had picked up a Queen size one at a JCPenney along the way. It’s nowhere near as luxurious as the custom-made King size bed currently stuck in the back of an Allied Moving Truck, waiting to take a journey on the 495. This mattress is a tighter fit than they’re used to. It doesn’t help that the thing sinks in the middle whenever one of them rolls over. With the both of them measuring six-foot-plus tall, they have to lie in the fetal position to fit comfortably, which would require them to spoon. But Kurt finds a way to keep himself out of his husband’s arms.
The material the mattress is made out of seems perpetually ice-cold, not warming up a touch with their combined body heat, which Kurt didn’t anticipate. They have the gas and electricity switched on, but there’s something wrong with the central heating. They don’t have the requisite amount of blankets to keep from freezing, which adds to the misery. Despite being pissed at Sebastian, Kurt doesn’t have the heart to send him out at one a.m. to the 24-hour Walmart, so he closes his eyes and resigns himself to suffering until dawn.
For the next five hours, Kurt’s mind stays blank. No noise, no dreams, and no flashbacks, thank God. It’s not restful, but it’s the best he could have hoped for. The last half a year has not been conducive to dreaming. The nightmares keep coming, one after the other, the next one worse than the last, shaking him to his core until he jars awake with a pain in his chest like someone had tried, in steel boots, to stomp him into the dirt. But waking up doesn’t solve the problem. He doesn’t know what he hates worse – waking up weeping in his husband’s arms or waking up weeping alone.
Kurt’s feelings for Sebastian are complicated when he thinks they shouldn’t be. Kurt should either love him and forgive him or hate him and move on. But he loves him and hates him. His hands itch to hold him, but a second later, he wants to shove him away. He wants to go, but he can’t imagine leaving.
As much as it sucks, Kurt can’t imagine living without him.
He would prefer to go back to being shamelessly and hopelessly in love with him. Hating him has become a crutch. But it’s enough to get him through. Regardless of that fact, which should tie up the loose ends, mend the hurts and cool the hate, it doesn’t, because Kurt can’t find a way to forgive him.
A well-meaning Facebook friend had told Kurt over Messenger that the problem was Kurt’s pride had been hurt by Sebastian cheating. Push the pride aside and get over it. Ultimately, the marriage is more important. Then he said something about Kurt putting on his “big boy” pants, mentioned God, and quoted the Bible.
A minute later, Kurt blocked him.
That’s another blessing of moving - leaving behind the get over it already crowd. He hates them more than the forever sorry folks. The people who tell him to move on, to get over it, to put it behind him, don’t really care about him. They want him to stop complaining, as if they’re obligated to follow him on social media, and that puts the burden on him, in turn, to make them feel comfortable.
Maybe some of them do care, but not enough to put themselves in his shoes and understand that it’s just not that easy. Being on the outside of the swamp and looking in at a man who’s drowning, yelling at him to grab a branch and pull himself free, is different than being the man stuck hip-deep in mud that feels like cement and losing a fight that’s beyond his control.
Sometimes, as a matter of self-preservation, you simply give up.
Kurt doesn’t know who Sebastian slept with. He has his suspicions, but he doesn’t know for sure, and Sebastian won’t confirm. He says it’s because he wants to put it behind him, forget it ever happened, and that infuriates Kurt. If sleeping with another man was something Sebastian would need to put behind him, why even do it? Or (and Kurt hates himself for thinking like this), if Sebastian didn’t want Kurt to dwell on it, why not take steps to ensure that Kurt wouldn’t find out? Sebastian, of all people, should have known that this would eat Kurt up inside. It’s the kind of thing he’d never let go of. Yes, Kurt would be devastated if he discovered the cheating and the cover-up years after the fact, but he’d be in a better place to mourn his marriage apart from mourning his daughter.
What Sebastian did was selfish on so many levels.
Kurt knows that sex isn’t love, but he can't help wondering – was there a moment in the middle of all of it, caught up in the kissing and the fucking, where it felt like love?
Kurt met Sebastian in high school. Kurt wasn’t just a virgin back then. Oh, no. He had created his own category of virgin for which he could have had a cape and costume custom made – Captain Super Prude. Sex was a taboo topic for him, so much so that his high school’s chastity club hated him.
Apparently, he set the bar too high, made them look loose in comparison.
As much as he had fantasized about finding a special someone who would sweep him off his feet, gently usher him into manhood by making soulful but passionate love to him, he preferred not to think about it too often or too in-depth. The "talk” between him and his father was a mortifying experience.
There were pamphlets involved.
He still has some of them.
When it came to finding a boyfriend, Sebastian wasn’t what Kurt had planned on at all. Where Kurt was attracted to debonair, old-school, gentlemanly types a few years older than himself, Sebastian was crass, rude, explicit, and a year younger. On top of that, he was (to coin a phrase stolen from one of Kurt’s best friends, Quinn) the biggest French whore of them all. Sebastian didn’t care for romance and he didn’t attach emotions to sex, but he definitely had a way of making men fall in love with him. Kurt Hummel and Sebastian Smythe were the two people in the world least likely to fall in love with one another. But according to Sebastian, he fell in love with Kurt long before Kurt fell in love with him.
Sebastian claimed that Kurt was the first man he had ever fallen in love with, and at first sight, no less.
He whispered those words in Kurt’s ear the first time they made love.
He said those exact words during his toast at their wedding.
He wrote them in every birthday, Christmas, and anniversary card he ever gave to Kurt.
He said them over Grace’s crib the night they brought her home.
“Look at this little thing, Kurt,” Sebastian had sighed, reaching out to stroke Grace’s cheek. “Our daughter. Is it ridiculous that I’ve only known her for two days and I’m already in love with her?
“Technically, nine months and two days. But, no. It’s not ridiculous.”
“I never thought I could fall so fast in love with another human being before I met you.”
“Really?”
“A-ha.” Sebastian smiled when Grace yawned, her whole mouth moving in a complete circle before she settled down again. “I fell in love with you the second I laid eyes on you. And then, well, it was all over for me.”
Those words, the memory of that happiness, breaks Kurt’s heart. Could it be possible that, after close to twenty years of marriage, after reciting those words so many times, they didn’t mean anything anymore? Had Sebastian found someone else he could fall in love with?
Kurt has asked, but Sebastian won’t answer that question. He says it’s insulting.
Whatever the answer, he probably thinks he’s doing his husband a kindness. What he’s really doing is prolonging the torture, not giving Kurt the information he needs to make a decision that he can stand behind. Every time Kurt looks at his husband, he sees touches on his skin that don’t belong to him, kisses on his lips that he didn’t put there.
Kurt doesn’t know how to make himself see past them.
Instead, he looks away.
The second Kurt feels sunlight on his face, he’s out of bed. He grabs his messenger bag and pads down the hall to his studio before Sebastian can stir.
The room looks different with blurry morning sunlight bleeding through the windows. Kurt didn’t put black-out curtains up, and the sheer curtains that came with the house let fingers of light poke through, bouncing off the wallpaper and brightening the floor.
Yikes.
Kurt examines the floor now that he sees it clearly. It’s a mess - the wood warped as if someone had paced it incessantly. It had been varnished at one time. Spots of resin dot the boards like oily puddles. The wood itself (some variety of walnut, Kurt suspects) has blackened to a morbid pitch with age. It sucks up the light and gives little back.
“Oh, yeah,” Kurt murmurs, pressing around the brittle edge of one spot with his toe, watching it crackle into shards. “This has to be completely redone.”
He gets stuck on the idea that this room could have been his daughter’s if she were still alive. He and Sebastian had talked about raising Grace in a suburban environment, and as much as he regrets not giving her a house with a yard and room to grow, Kurt leaned heavily on the side of staying in the city. Some of his motives were selfish. He loved Manhattan. It had been his lifelong dream to end up there. He wanted his daughter to grow up with all of the things he didn’t – culture, diversity, theaters and libraries and museums a train ride away. He didn’t want her raised around the closed, narrow minds of small-town folk. He wanted her to be an independent thinker – liberated, rational, intelligent. But he also wanted her to be compassionate and kind. He wanted her to know the world, its wonders and its failings, the way it truly was, not the way it looked on a movie screen, and long to change it for the better. They participated in fundraisers, gathered donations for the homeless, and volunteered in soup kitchens.
Grace was a pure light, a driving force that, at her age, Kurt didn’t get the chance to be.
So in honor of her, he wants his workroom to be bright and colorful - a mixture of his vintage aesthetic and her fun-loving personality. He’ll paint the walls her favorite colors, put homages to her in the details, choose the furnishings she would have preferred.
Since this will be the room he spends most of his time in, he wants it to be everything about his daughter that he adored.
He opens his bag and pulls out his phone, checking the time. 6:08. The movers are supposed to arrive between eight a.m. and ten. But movers, electricians, plumbers, and cable guys never arrive on time. He fishes out his sketchbook, sits on the floor, and gets to work jotting down a layout. First things first, he decides where his drafting table will go, where he’ll store his bolts, where he’ll put his sewing machine, a spot for a work chair, marking places here and there for personal touches like his mother’s vanity, his first-ever dress form, a few of his awards...
And photographs. Lots and lots of photographs.
He didn’t keep photographs in his studio at Vogue. He had an obsession with keeping his private life private, which he doesn’t apologize for. Since he met clients there, he liked to keep that space impersonal. Nothing to get in the way, spark a conversation that might derail the job at hand.
Unlike Sebastian, who hung candids galore. He stuffed the most Godawful photographs from their high school and college years into collage frames and nailed them to every wall of his office, squeezing things like his degrees and diplomas into far corners so that those pictures could be prominently displayed. He said that people knew the Smythes by name and reputation. If anyone wanted to see his credentials, they could Google them. But when people walked into his office, he wanted them to know that first and foremost, he was a family man.
Sebastian knew from childhood that he would become a lawyer. He never dreamed he would be a father.
Or a husband.
Those were the two accomplishments he seemed the proudest of.
Kurt regrets not having more pictures of Grace hanging on his studio walls, her smiling face to look at every hour of every day, watching his meetings, overseeing his layouts. She was his good-luck charm, his missing puzzle piece. She deserved a place of honor.
Now, he’ll give her one.
His stomach growls as he works. A smell from somewhere tickles his nose, and he groans. Just a few more seconds of sketching on the hard ground, and he’ll grab a bite to eat… maybe. With his ass numb, he doesn’t see a reason to get up, and bedsides, he’s on a roll. Car doors closing and constant banging echo in, and he winces, his head throbbing from lack of sleep. Dammit! If it would just stop till he finishes! It’s hard enough to concentrate as is! He hopes this is a one-time-only thing. He’d hate to wake up to that cacophony every morning. If he ever decides to go outside and meet the neighbors, he’ll have to find a polite way of asking them not to do whatever that is before he has his morning coffee.
Of course, soundproofing is also an option.
“Kurt? Kurt, are you… ?”
Kurt shifts his legs underneath him. He lifts a hand to massage his shoulders. That mattress must have killed his back. His arms ache something fierce. Sitting on this floor doesn’t help, the uneven boards digging into his legs, but it’s not an impetus for him to stop.
Just one more minute.
One more minute of sketching out this room, and he’ll join the world. One more minute to get his thoughts straight. One more minute to brush aside the things that like to torture him. Forget that his mother died when he was eight, his stepbrother when he was eighteen. Forget that his father passed away three years ago and his daughter six months ago.
Not too long after, his husband cheated.
Five.
That’s how many things he had loved in this world more than himself.
Those are the things that he’d lost.
They were the things he needed to forget in order to make it through till the evening.
He’ll replace the insulation and the drywall, smother everything in a noise-proofing compound, then paint the walls in swirls of pink and gold. He’ll do the ceiling in shades of blue, indigo, and violet, like the sky at night, and cover it in crystals to represent stars the way Grace had wanted to do with her bedroom. Kurt had promised her he would the second everything was over, when they could risk her being around the debris and the fumes.
He has never broken a promise to Grace. He isn’t about to start.
He scribbles those notes in sloppy script in the margin of his paper, wipes tears with the back of his shaking hand. He tries to focus on specifics to bring himself back from the brink of a breakdown. He needs a good cry, but he doesn’t want the comforting that will go with it if Sebastian hears him. He can’t right now. Sebastian comforting Kurt turns into Kurt comforting him back, and Kurt only has the strength to handle one outburst.
“Kurt? Did you want to… ?”
Kurt waves a hand to shoo away the buzzing beside his ear, relieved when it doesn’t take much more than that.
In order to paint the walls, he’ll have to take the wallpaper down.
That brings to mind the corner of torn paper over by the window and the word written underneath.
Darling.
That corner offends him. Kurt keeps entertaining the thought that that word has nothing to do with Sebastian, that there is another layer of wallpaper underneath festooned with line art of flowers, along with quotes from various love poems sprinkled throughout, circa 1800s. But then that would make that one tear and that one word an incredible coincidence since darling is the pet name Sebastian has called Kurt since day one. When he started doing it, every time he said it, Kurt had an urge to sock him on the jaw.
He was a pain in the ass, even back then.
Did Sebastian actually think Kurt would fall for writing darling on the wall? After the things he said? After what he did?
Kurt’s hand trembles so badly, he smudges the ink on his page. He stops writing, takes a deep breath, and counts to ten. He closes his eyes and concentrates on the sun warming his face. It’s gone now when it was there a second ago, which is disconcerting, but he has to ignore that and calm down.
He has to relax.
He promised he’d give this marriage a chance, that he’d try to make this work. Sebastian, so far, has held up his part of the bargain. He’s given Kurt space. He’s listened to him vent uncontested. He’s let Kurt keep tabs on him – where he goes, when he’ll be back, with photo texts in between to prove that he is where he said he would be. Kurt has to give him the benefit of the doubt. If Sebastian extends an olive branch, Kurt should take it.
But did he want to?
“I didn’t hear you when you got up this morning.” Sebastian’s voice starts Kurt’s hand up again. He wants to look busy. He doesn’t want to be caught in a position where he has to give his husband his full attention.
He hasn’t forgotten everything yet.
“Well, you were dead to the world,” Kurt replies, distracted.
“I’m just saying, see? You won’t disturb me. You don’t need to put a bed in here.”
Kurt bobs his head back and forth, adding a place in his layout for a foldout out of spite. “We’ll see. It’s only been the one day.”
“That’s true.” The way Sebastian says it, it sounds like a challenge. A tired challenge. Like Sebastian knows he’s already lost. “So, you like the room?”
“Yeah. I think I do.”
“And what about the rest of the house?”
He doesn’t know why Sebastian sounds like he’s asking. It’s a done deal. They both agreed on a new house. Sebastian found one he thought Kurt would like and bought it. What? Are they going to back out now and magically move somewhere else?
Will moving around from house to house solve what’s wrong between them?
“It’s fine, I guess. I don’t know. I think it’s hard for me to visualize without taking the grand tour. I’ll be able to tell better when I get started decorating.”
“Are you gonna hire that guru guy to help you with the yin and yang stuff?” Sebastian jokes cautiously. “That Kung Fu guy… what’s his name… ?” Sebastian snaps his fingers as if he’s seriously trying to remember.
“He’s a Feng shui practitioner, and his name is Carl.”
“His name's Carl?” Sebastian laughs. “No no no, his name is not Carl. Carl is the name of a dentist. He’s not a guy you call to Wang Chung your house.”
“Feng shui,” Kurt corrects again. “I hired him to help me create balance in our home.” He chuckles despite the fact he doesn’t want to find Sebastian funny. He doesn’t want Sebastian to affect him. But he’s right. The man’s name irked Kurt, too, when Isabelle referred him. “Ridiculous name or not, he seemed like a knowledgeable guy.”
“Do you think that Shaolin stuff could work here?”
Kurt pauses to give the matter some thought, and that kills the moment. The levity becomes saturated by the pain hanging in the room, and Kurt coils further into his sketch.
“That remains to be seen. But I think I’m going to try doing it for myself this time. Of course, the overall effect is going to be completely thrown to heck when you hire whoever never to decorate your office.” Kurt throws a derisive scowl over his shoulder. It misses its mark when Kurt won’t look Sebastian in the eyes.
Sebastian swallows Kurt’s scowl without thinking of a comeback. They’ve had that argument before when Kurt redecorated their penthouse. Kurt felt the need to redecorate whenever something big happened in their lives, but Sebastian’s office was off-limits, so it stayed the same. Kurt tried to find one or two things to put into his design scheme that would bring a theme from Sebastian’s office out so that the penthouse would blend, but whatever the thing he chose was – a print, a vase, an ottoman, or a coffee table – it stuck out like a sore thumb, until Kurt tried less and less.
“Can’t fight City Hall,” he’d say, returning to the business of finishing the rest of the space. Things changed around them, and yet, in Sebastian’s carefully curated world, life stood still. The last time Kurt redecorated was before Grace was born. Nothing in the penthouse matched Sebastian’s office after that.
“I want you to do it.”
Kurt stops scribbling. “Me?”
“Yeah.”
Kurt almost looks back to see if Sebastian is serious. He stares at the paper in front of him, the surface more ink than white. “Are you… are you sure? You always said that we need our separate spaces.”
“That’s only because you’re a little heavy-handed with the pastels. I trust you. Just don’t go making it all shabby chic.”
Kurt is speechless. This is the opportunity he has been waiting for their entire marriage – to decorate Sebastian’s office. Once upon a time, he saw it as the ultimate gesture of trust.
Back when he was naïve and fairly stupid.
“Don’t worry. I won’t.” Kurt debates standing up and giving Sebastian a hug or a handshake. This seems like a time that would warrant it. But when he rolls an inch to his knees, his entire body screams with pain. God, he feels old. How can he be this stiff after just half an hour?
Kurt returns to his planning. Even though he doesn’t feel prepared to leave his sanctuary, he fixes on that solid mask he’s been wearing for weeks around Sebastian. Just one more minute. One more minute, and he’ll go downstairs. He thinks he says it out loud. He expects Sebastian to go back to their room and get ready for the day, but he stays in place like a statue, watching Kurt draw, huddled over his sketchbook with his back turned to him and the door.
Kurt waits to hear the sound of footsteps retreat the way they came, but they don’t. His pencil stops above a square drawn in the corner meant to represent his stereo. He can’t continue his drawing with his husband watching, so he bites the bullet.
“Was there something else you needed?” he asks.
“They’ve… uh… got the bed in,” Sebastian says. “And the TV.”
Kurt scrunches his nose and lifts his head. What does he mean? The bed and the TV are on the moving truck. Kurt looks at his phone, resting on the floor by his knee.
“What are you talking about?” Kurt scoffs. “The movers haven’t even arrived yet. It’s only 7:15.”
“That’s right.” Sebastian speaks slowly, the way he does when he’s explaining something to Kurt that he thinks Kurt might explode over. He leans forward like he wants to come in but doesn’t without an invitation. “It is 7:15. In the evening.”
Kurt's head snaps up, eyes rolling because Sebastian is crazy.
There’s no way.
He's ready to object, but with his gaze away from his page, he notices something different about the light in the room. Instead of a soft, diffused blue, it has become a thicker yellow. Shadows stretch across the floor that weren’t there before. The room is warmer than he remembers, and the skin of his left shin, folded over his right, feels hot and irritated, like he might have gotten a sunburn.
“Evening?” Kurt shakes his head. “How can it… ? But… why didn’t you tell me? Why didn’t you come get me?”
“I tried. I told you when the movers arrived. I asked you what you wanted for lunch. I brought you the portable heater and put a lamp in here when it started to get dark.”
Kurt looks around. In the emptiness of the room, they’re easy to see - a plug-in heater behind him, and, in the corner of the room to the left of the door, standing straight and tall like a structural support beam, a brass lamp without a shade, filling the room with artificial light.
The first two pieces of furniture in his new studio, and Sebastian put them there.
Kurt doesn’t want them. He’d rather be cold and alone in the dark.
“We don’t have WiFi or cable yet, but I set up the Blu-ray player,” Sebastian continues. “I thought I could go get some take-out, and we could have a picnic dinner on the bed. Maybe watch a movie?”
Kurt does a 180 on his sore ass and looks at his husband (which is to say he looks at a spot over Sebastian’s head) with a mildly confused expression. He’s not really thinking about the bed or the movie or dinner at all. Even though he was hungry earlier, apparently hours earlier, he’s not hungry now. He couldn’t be less hungry. His desire to eat simply evaporated. It's been waning for weeks. Sometimes he forgets to eat until Sebastian sticks a sandwich in his face. Sebastian has become devoted to keeping Kurt's stomach full. He knows better than to comment on his weight loss, but he keeps a stock of temptable foods on hand.
He’s keeping Kurt on life support.
Sebastian stuck a spear into the heart of what they had together. Now he’s keeping Kurt alive to help him fix it.
Kurt hates that he didn’t see it that way until just now.
“Kurt? Please?”
Here’s the olive branch, Kurt thinks. He has to decide whether he’s going to take it or toss it aside.
He had promised Sebastian he’d try, and Kurt has never broken a promise to Sebastian.
No matter how much he hurts, he’s not going to start tonight.
His father always said that a man is only as good as his word.
Kurt closes his sketchbook. “Alright. I’m coming.” He tries to unfold his legs, but his knees lock up on him, and he rushes to massage the beginnings of a cramp. Sebastian looks like he’s about to spring in and help, but Kurt puts up a hand. “I’ll be a minute.”
Nodding, Sebastian takes a step back. Even with that rejection, he looks happier, more hopeful. He takes his phone out of his pocket and leaves the room. The grateful smile on his lips should fill Kurt with warmth. It used to.
But it doesn’t.
After a meal of Szechuan from a questionable establishment (not questionably clean, just questionably Chinese) and The Devil Wears Prada (a movie Sebastian swore up and down he’d never watch again), Sebastian falls asleep with his head on Kurt’s chest. And Kurt lets him, even if he himself barely gets a minute of peace.
