A/N: Written for the Kurtoberfest prompt 'zombies', Warning for angst, anxiety, mention of minor character death, not Blaine or Klaine friendly.
"Look at it, Sebastian. Just look at it. I still can't believe it," Kurt says, smiling at the vial of green fluid in his hands like it's his newborn baby. It might as well be. Kurt developed the serum himself – spending long, grueling nights sitting in makeshift labs, most of which had to be evacuated at a moment's notice when a new wave of walkers hit. That's what mainstream media called them before the news stations went down. Walkers, or rotters - a more p.c. version of the term 'zombies', and because of the popularity of The Walking Dead series, it caught on fast. Most people believed that nothing could be done for them, that after the infection took hold, they weren't people anymore. There were stages, of course – jaundice in the eyes, no interest in food, skin turning black as cells died, the undeniable stink of decay. Speech was lost, then fine motor skills, and so was self-control, which led to the constant, restless walking about.
Without knowing the full extent of the disease, the infected victims were gathered up and kept in hospitals, treated for their symptoms until the CDC could develop a cure. That's before medical science discovered that the final stage of the disease was blood lust, and with it came an insatiable appetite for living flesh – man and animal.
Once they reached this point, the general consensus was that they couldn't be saved.
After a third of the planet's population was devastated by the 'Walker Disease' (as it was called), the general consensus became that anyone who showed even a slightest sign of the disease was a lost cause. They were tossed out on the streets to join their "kind" – men, women, even children and infants. No one felt any remorse about condemning these people to the sort of horrifying death they would inevitably experience. By this point of panic, these beliefs were held as scientific fact, even if there wasn't enough evidence to confirm or deny them.
Sebastian went along with it, even though, as an innovator in plasma radiation and laser technology, medicine and biology wasn't his area of expertise. Who was he to buck the system? Now wasn't the time for those types of heroics. As a respected man in his field, people listened to him. He became one of the first to side with the government's plan to evacuate an essential group of people to a safe underground bunker, and then nuke the surface of the planet. His being a part of that group probably helped sway his vote. He wasn't proud, but he wasn't about to die in one nightmarish way or another for a planet full of people that he didn't know and couldn't save.
The only holdout, as luck would have it, was Kurt Hummel, back from the dead, in Sebastian's opinion, since he had written him off years ago. Kurt was certain there was a way out of this for most of the infected people. He had a plan, and even though scientifically his theory was sound, Sebastian was determined to do everything possible (on principle) to shoot it down. It might have been petty. This definitely wasn't the time to dig up old rivalries, but what did it actually matter? Kurt's plan was well on its way to the dumpster, without any help from Sebastian.
That tide changed rapidly when the youngest daughter of the president became infected with the disease. He knew that if news of her illness became widely known, there would be a public outcry. Those who were left would demand that she be tossed to the walkers, sent to be with her own kind, just like the others.
At once, everyone rallied in support of Kurt's (still considered crazy) plan to cure the walkers. Sebastian supported it, too, simply for the satisfaction of seeing Kurt fail astoundingly.
But here he is, sitting beside Kurt in a military chopper, headed back to the wreckage that is Lima, OH - the first place the government granted Kurt permission to cure after he proved that his treatment would work.
So, in essence, that vial in his hands is his baby, but it's not just that. It's his hope, his belief, and his own self-sacrifice, seeing as the infected he used as test subjects for the serum were among his own family. Out of nine people, including his father, his stepmother, his stepbrother, and a host of his best friends – Rachel Berry, Mercedes Jones, and Sam Evans to name a few - only his stepbrother survived.
The rest, in the end, required euthanization.
But their deaths will not be in vain, not while Kurt and Sebastian are on the way to saving hundreds of infected people. And after that, the rest of the world.
Sebastian was sure that Kurt was going to pick New York City when they gave him the choice. When he chose Lima, Sebastian figured it was out of nostalgia, a need to fix things back at home.
It turned out, Kurt had a different reason – a more personal reason - in mind.
"Now remember," the officer sitting beside Kurt says, "we have intel that there are only about fifty walk-" The officer stops short when Kurt glares. "Infected people," he amends, "left in Lima. They all seem to be congregated in and around a high school. We'll send you in with an outfit of thirty soldiers, plus another convoy to collect the cured. You will lead the team" - He points at Sebastian – "that will set the charges. Once we're certain there's no one left, we'll detonate the charges."
Kurt looks at Sebastian proudly, giving him a thumbs up, and Sebastian gives him a wink in return.
That is Sebastian's contribution. He isolated the markers of the disease, not inside the hosts - Kurt had done that – but in other places that it lives. By piggybacking off of Kurt's research, Sebastian determined that the virus isn't airborne, but can exist on surfaces, and would remain viable for decades. The sun won't burn it off, as many doctors suspected, and the elements have no effect on it. Only a specific combination of extremely volatile radiation would destroy it. But the materials are dangerous to work with, and the disease needs to be attacked quick and hard, or else some of it might survive. It might even mutate. They can't risk that happening. Sebastian developed a way to contain the radiation in plasma charges that, when detonated, would release a shielding mechanism and keep the radiation focused long enough to do its job.
It would also trap anything caught inside it, unable to escape, so they have to make sure everyone is off the ground first.
While Kurt's team will be busy triaging the infected and administering the serum (some victims will, unfortunately, be deemed incurable and need to be put down on sight), Sebastian's team will set the charges. It's delicate work, which is why Sebastian and Kurt need to oversee it personally.
After they make it to a safe distance from Lima, the charges will be detonated, and then the menace will be over.
Sebastian prays that his science is as sound as Kurt's, or he might fuck up entirely and create a super bug.
Sebastian puts a hand on Kurt's arm and squeezes. Kurt looks up at him and smiles.
Sebastian can pretend that that smile is for him, but he knows better. All of this – the excitement of finding a cure, the anxiety of being on this mission – is overshadowed by one other thing.
"Maybe we'll find him," Kurt sniffles, hopeful to a fault. "Maybe Blaine is okay."
"Yeah," Sebastian says, the crack in his voice not obvious over the thwump-thwump-thwump of the chopper blades slicing the air above them. "Maybe."
Sebastian swallows down his pain and his dignity, and offers what comfort he can in this rescue endeavor of Kurt's, but inside, it's tearing him apart.
He never thought he'd ever have these feelings for Kurt Hummel.
He definitely didn't start out liking him this way – or any way.
Back to their beginnings, way back in high school, when Sebastian was a hotshot state attorney's son, and Kurt was just an annoying twink – the gay-faced son of a middle-class auto mechanic (turned politician, but that came later, and unimpressively, according to younger Sebastian), Sebastian and Kurt loathed each other.
When Kurt left Dalton Academy, he took the one thing with him that Sebastian thought he wanted – Blaine Anderson. He would have been the conquest to end all conquests. Kurt didn't deserve Blaine as far as Sebastian was concerned. Blaine and Sebastian were alike. He had wealth, privilege, talent, debonair good looks. The two of them were the same breed. They belonged together.
In the end, Sebastian didn't win Blaine, and that seemed all for the best. Where Sebastian might have been an asshole, Blaine apparently couldn't keep it in his pants for longer than a few days away from his "soul mate". Sebastian had standards. He might have been a creep, but he considered himself a loyal creep. Cheating, in his book, was unacceptable.
Sebastian forgot all about Kurt and Blaine after graduation, but that was fine since he had epic problems of his own.
Namely embezzlement.
No, not him – his dad – but what they say about 'the sins of the father' is painfully true, and Sebastian's well-crafted path for a career in politics was ruined.
And so was his father, so he put a gun in his mouth.
Sebastian's trust fund was seized, along with every other asset his parents had, and he was left on his own, fending for himself. He managed to swing a full scholarship to NYU Medical School, but he had to do something to pay the bills, put food in his stomach, etc., etc.
He ended up getting a job performing oil changes at a Jiffy Lube part-time.
Kind of ironic.
But somehow, being humbled that way - carrying and fighting the stigma of his father's shame, which made every road he chose bumpier - didn't make him any less of an conceited jerk, possibly because he needed that his whole life to keep going on, to never quit.
Being reacquainted with Kurt over this tragic epidemic brought that old history back for Sebastian, and he pretty much despised Kurt the second he looked at him.
Projection, thy name is Sebastian Smythe.
He had always thought that Kurt was destined for a career on Broadway, or in fashion, or something equally ridiculous and feminine to go along with his ridiculous and feminine face. But apparently, after his father developed a rare side-effect to medication he was taking for his blood pressure – a side-effect no one could seem to battle successfully – Kurt diverted his path to medical school instead.
The one thing Sebastian seemed to have forgotten, or perhaps he never knew, was how much of a force Kurt was to be reckoned with. His fire, his passion, it wasn't just impressive, it was infectious, and in only a few hours of talking about his master plan to destroy the virus that had overnight turned a world's population into the stuff of nightmares, Sebastian began to see a solution in their midst. A cure in his lifetime.
Kurt and Sebastian worked closely together, long hours, days on end. Their first conversations were strained, mostly bland, work-related discussions about pathogens and viral genetics, but then it shifted to books, music…high school. A lot of air was cleaned. Pasts were drudged up, and apologies made. Once that was dealt with, they developed a relationship that was about the two of them – their combined likes and dislikes, their hopes, where they saw themselves after this was over.
Sebastian had started seeing himself with Kurt.
Kurt seemed to agree, but unfortunately, he had a caveat to that plan.
Even being the asshole Blaine had been, Kurt is still in love with him. Before this epidemic erupted, Kurt had been on his way back to Lima to try and find Blaine, and make amends. It's true that Kurt and Sebastian have become very close, and Blaine's chances of having survived are a long shot, but Kurt felt he owed it to himself and Blaine to give it one more shot.
On the outside, Sebastian supports that plan, but in his heart, he's making plans of his own.
"Remember, you gentleman will only have thirty minutes to gather up as many of the infected as you can."
The shouting from the officer as the chopper descends doesn't give Sebastian the chance to rethink his plan, and he takes that as a sign.
Last Kurt knew, Blaine had gone back to Lima to run the Glee Club at their old high school, but Kurt's information was incorrect. Recently, Blaine had taken a job in Westerville - faculty advisor to the Warblers at Dalton while teaching a class in Music Theory. Kurt didn't know they were going to the wrong place to find Blaine, and Sebastian didn't tell him.
This is a new world they're living in, thanks to this virus. A new time. Only the strong are going to survive, and it's time for Sebastian to be strong.
"Every minute past thirty, the charges will become too unstable to keep the chopper on the ground. We must be in the air before then."
"Gotcha," Kurt says, biting his lower lip, brimming with excitement. Sebastian has learned most of Kurt's tells. He knows what he's thinking. Like a scene from an old romantic movie, he'll be down on the surface, helping to resurrect this section of rural Ohio. He'll turn a corner, and there he'll be – Blaine Anderson, the one true love of his life. Kurt will deliver him from zombie hell, nurse him back to health, and then they'll pick up where they left off.
Pick up from when Kurt called off their wedding, before Blaine ran off to Lima and moved in with the man that bullied Kurt endlessly for almost a year in high school, who frightened him so mercilessly with constant violence and the threat of death that Kurt developed an eating disorder.
Yeah, no one saw that plot twist coming.
"Sebastian!" Kurt yells, backing away from the chopper. "Get your ass moving! The clock's ticking!"
Sebastian watches a smiling Kurt take off like a shot, right in the direction of a throng of infected people milling around the parking lot of the high school, and Sebastian shakes his head. He has to keep his mind in this. He has to do his work and save the worrying about other stuff for later.
One thing at a time.
He jumps off the chopper and hustles out from underneath the blades. As soon as he's free to stand up straight, he surveys the area. Without thinking, he breathes in deep, and retches, dangerously close to losing his lunch. He doesn't know how Kurt could just leap from the chopper and throw himself into the fray the way he did. The first thing that hits Sebastian when he's away from the fresh air of the circulating chopper blades is the smell - a wave of pungent, hot putrescent assailing his sinuses, making him want to run back inside the chopper.
Sebastian attempts to ignore it, but he might have better luck learning to live without breathing. He funnels his focus into leading his team, setting the charges in places where the radiation from the explosion will wipe out the virus on the streets, the sidewalks, street lights and buildings. The radiation will fry solid surfaces, leaving everything charred. It will rip through soft tissue, disintegrating anything organic caught in its wake, but that won't compare to the countless numbers that will be saved by Kurt's serum.
Sebastian is confronted by about half-a-dozen infected people during the course of his work – all deemed curable by Kurt's standards – and Sebastian personally administers Kurt's serum to every single one. He can't wait to tell Kurt, can't wait to see the light in his eyes knowing that Sebastian was on his side - that he believed in his cause. Down to his last charges and with time to spare, he starts looking for more infected to save. Kurt's team would have gotten them for sure, but Sebastian needs this on his side. He needs something to weigh against the blind wonder that is Blaine Anderson.
Sebastian didn't expect to find him here, didn't expect to turn a corner (like in Kurt's fantasy) and boom, there he'd be. But that's exactly how it happens, and when it does, it feels like the universe has reached a hand down through the clouds and smacked him in the face. Why he's hanging out in Lima instead of up in Westerville, Sebastian doesn't know, but a part of him does. Blaine, in whatever form – before exposure, after exposure – must have come to Lima looking for Kurt.
Fuck! Blaine does love him, or whatever it is that Blaine calls it. It doesn't seem much like love to Sebastian, but then, he's learned over time that people's definitions of love can vary.
Blaine's isn't the best definition, but it might, in some way, jibe with Kurt's. They might not fit together perfectly, there may be gaps between the giving end and the receiving end, but they could fuse together enough that it would still be hard to separate them.
And maybe, that's enough for Kurt.
But Sebastian doesn't think it should be. Kurt deserves the real deal – a piece that fits him perfectly…or, at least, better. One that doesn't have huge holes in it. One that won't cheat. One that won't lie. One that won't make their own light shine brighter by dulling his.
Sebastian looks at Blaine, walking toward him in that slow, stumbling, lock-kneed way that the infected people do, but with an arm outstretched and a look on his face like he might know Sebastian. He might recognize him.
Blaine didn't turn out too worse for the wear. Compared to some of the others, he's barely been affected – aside from the jaundiced eyes, some patches of skin on his face, neck, and arms that have decayed and will need grafting. He might be missing a finger or two. But otherwise, he's fine.
Definitely curable.
Fucking shit!
Sebastian's hands are tied. He has a duty. He made a promise. And honestly, his promise to Kurt holds more weight than his duty as a doctor – to do no harm.
To do no harm.
Is that actually what he'd be upholding if he gives the serum to Blaine?
If he cures Blaine, he and Kurt will probably get back together. Oh, Kurt will adore Sebastian every day of his life for being the one to bring Blaine back to him, if things work out. Looking at their track record, Sebastian isn't entirely sure that's the outcome they'd end up with. Blaine will cheat. He's already done it once. There's nothing to say he won't do it again.
He'll railroad Kurt, make him give up things he loves – his friends, possibly even his job. He'll downplay his accomplishments, and this, curing the world of a tremendous disease, is a definite accomplishment. But in the AnderHummel household, it'll be swept under the rug, Nobel Prizes and other prestigious awards moved off the mantel to make way for whatever meager bit of recognition Blaine manages to earn.
No, curing Blaine would not be the same as 'doing no harm', because giving him back his life will mean taking away Kurt's.
It was a reach, but still, it was a good enough argument to bolster his decision.
Sebastian takes a step back. Then another.
"Hey, Bas," Kurt calls from around the corner. "Are you done over there?"
Sebastian sees the recognition in Blaine's eyes. He opens his maw to call out, but his voice – his signature smooth crooner voice – is gone. All he can manage is a feeble moan. Sebastian's stuck. If Kurt sees him, he'll cure him, and then what they have, what they've developed in this time that they've worked together, will be over.
"Bas! They've set the charges. If you're done over there, we've got to go!"
"Yeah," Sebastian says over his shoulder. "Yeah, I'm done." He turns back to Blaine, cow eyes wide with confusion, mouthing the words Kurt and Sebastian over and over until they look like one word – Kurtbastian. Sebastian's chest seizes up. He almost feels sorry for him. His mind scrambles for a way to hate this pathetic creature toddling towards him, pleading for help. He remembers everything Kurt told him about their relationship – how he convinced Kurt to go to New York, then cheated on him; how he used his own insecurities to sabotage him; how he took opportunities away from him; made decisions for them, and when they didn't work out, made them out to be Kurt's fault. All those things – all those awful, despicable things - made Sebastian's eyes burn, the vitriol of those actions filling up his soul. Blaine mouths the word one more time, and Sebastian shakes his head. "There's nothing worth saving over here."
Sebastian leaves Blaine behind, moaning, crying out, trying to waddle faster, eventually tripping over a curb and falling to the floor, scrambling to stand up again with hands that are breaking and legs that don't know how to support his weight anymore. Sebastian races around the corner of the building and joins Kurt, taking his arm as they both scurry into the waiting helicopter. They re-take their seats, and Kurt, overjoyed, looks at Sebastian.
"We did it!" Kurt says with a chuckle. "We actually did it, Sebastian. Oh, you should have been there when we cured all those people…"
"I know," Sebastian says, trying to feel smug, self-righteous, but he can't, "I managed to help a few myself."
Kurt's eyes glowed at him. "You did?" he whispers, but he doesn't wait for an answer, locking his arms around Sebastian's torso and hugging him tight. "Oh, Sebastian."
"Are we sure that's everyone?" the officer asks, gesturing to the pilot to get them into the air.
"Yes, sir," another officer says. "If your eyes confirmed it on the ground, that's all of the viable subjects collected."
"Good," the first office says, settling back into his seat. "Let's get as far as we can and detonate those charges. The smell around here is killing me."
"I didn't find him," Kurt says so only Sebastian can hear. "But…I'm not going to give up hope. He might be somewhere else. The other teams might pick him up."
"Sure," Sebastian says, suddenly haunted by the look on Blaine's face when he heard Kurt's voice - the relief, the hope, then the confusion when Sebastian started to back away. Blaine's brain, softened by the infection, would be like a child's brain now. It would only understand what a child knows. He'll never comprehend why Sebastian chose to leave him. He'll never know why Sebastian hated him so much.
They take off, and Sebastian's stomach lurches, but it's not from the copter lifting off the ground.
Kurt sighs.
"Or maybe he's just…gone."
The earth shakes, turbulence hitting the copter as the detonation from miles away takes place. A dull boom, a loud screech, and then…silence.
Sebastian swallows a heavy burn, guilt like acid scorching the inside of his throat.
"Yeah," Sebastian says. "Maybe he is."
Kurt tilts his head up. He'd started crying, his tear-filled gaze meeting Sebastian's eyes.
"I'm so glad we found each other in all of this," Kurt says. "I'm so glad that you're here with me, that we have this chance to start over."
Sebastian smiles, happy that he won, that he gets to have Kurt, but he feels sick inside.
Hundreds of zombies on the ground, and he might be the only real monster.
"So am I," he says softly, Kurt fitting underneath his arm and resting his head against his chest. "So am I."