Okay, so, once again, vague summary is vague. I had written this for the kurtoberfest, combining the prompts nightmare, zombie, and grim reaper. I did it as a writing exercise, trying to come up with something that combined the ambiguity and themes of 'Waiting for Godot' with the Sartre-esque despair of 'No Exit'. Then I realized how pretentious that all sounded and hated myself immediately. Ergo, this piece was forgotten. But, as it's done, I figured why the heck not?
Warnings for angst, mention of illness, mention of B/laine (but no B/laine bashing), mention of drinking, and mention of death. Fun, right?
"One s-s-step…two s-s-step…red s-s-step…blue s-s-step…" Sebastian sings softly. He weaves as he walks, making his way through the sliding door from the passenger car to the sleeper car, barely avoiding a misstep into the gap between the two. His feet drag along the floor, his legs trying to pull him back, turn him away from the two-person roomette and lead him off the train. He visualizes himself watching from the platform as the train pulls out of the Amtrak station with his fate locked inside, but he can't this time. He can't turn and run. He's been running too long and it hurts too much. If this is the end, he'd rather march in and meet it head on.
The slightly more than half a bottle of Jack Daniels he drank before he bought his ticket doesn't hurt either. Poetic types like to call alcohol liquid courage, but for the moment it's simply the fuel that keeps his body going without him having to think too long or too hard about the consequences.
There are twelve doors down this corridor, six on each side. They all appear exactly the same, with no window to show him what's waiting inside. But his heart and his head know exactly which room he's looking for. He lingers outside with his hand caressing the door handle like he's taking the hand of someone he knows…intimately.
"It's now or never," he mutters, and though his cold feet want him to choose never, his hand opens the door. He takes one step. His toe catches on the carpet and he tumbles inside, landing face first into a denim clad lap. The door slams shut behind him. The quiet of the small room envelopes him, but for a second, all he can think is, 'At least he sprang for the luxury ticket.'
"You're late," Kurt snaps, his tongue landing on the t like a gun shot, setting off a disastrous ricochet inside Sebastian's skull.
"Fuck you, sweetheart. I'm not even supposed to be on this train." Sebastian slides through the sentence, hitting all the s's at once and letting the rest dangle like drool off his tongue.
"Ugh! And you're drunk!" Kurt sniffs disdainfully in through his nose, double checking with a sense other than sight to be sure.
"I thought it appropriate considering the circumstances," Sebastian slurs, crawling backward away from Kurt's crotch - the part of Kurt's body that Sebastian has been addressing for the past three minutes. He tries rising to his feet, not getting too far past a crouch since the bright lights of the compartment skewering his brain seem determined to keep him on his knees, and falls into the seat beside Kurt. His backside overshoots by a foot and he slips down, his tailbone slamming against the edge. The seat is cushioned, which helps, but only a bit, as the impact still results in a magnificent shower of nail-driving pain pinballing up and down his spine.
Kurt rolls his eyes so hard they almost leave his head, but he helps an inebriated Sebastian into the seat.
"And what did you intend on doing? Hmm?" he asks, scolding Sebastian to conceal any evidence that he might care. "Jump on a plane to California? Or to France perhaps?"
"The thought had crossed my mind," Sebastian mumbles, becoming distracted when Kurt starts straightening his wrinkled clothes and fixing his lopsided collar, going so far as to pull a handkerchief out of his pocket to clean Sebastian's face.
"Well, it wouldn't have been any use," Kurt declares in a condescending and maternal tone. "I would have caught up to you eventually. I always do."
"But you've already let me slip by a few times," Sebastian accuses, sobering up quickly, unfortunately. "Why?"
Kurt hitches his right shoulder in a semi-shrug. "Because I didn't think it was right. I didn't feel you were ready."
Sebastian laughs, but it's more like a cough. "And now I am?"
Kurt hedges around giving him an answer. For all of his determination to be brave and look Sebastian in the eyes when he breaks the news to him, he can't do it. He shifts his gaze out the window, to the darkness outside that neither of them can see in to, stretching as if it has no end in that direction.
"It wasn't my choice," Kurt says finally. "I would have given you longer. I fought to give you longer. But the decision has been taken out of my hands." Kurt forces himself to turn back as he finishes. "I'm sorry."
"And why would you do that?" Sebastian asks. It probably isn't the most pertinent question at the present time. A lot of others jump up at the last minute to try and take its place. But it's the one that Sebastian needs an answer to the most. "Why did you fight so hard for me?"
"You know the answer," Kurt says, his guilt becoming shame.
"No, I don't. You never liked me."
Kurt huffs sadly and crosses his arms, protecting himself from whatever arrows Sebastian decides to sling his way.
"You're right," Kurt agrees. "I didn't."
Didn't, Sebastian picks out. Not don't. Not that that distinction means anything for him right now. It won't get him off this train, though his being on it is entirely Sebastian's doing anyhow. The second he paid for his ticket he knew what he had a 50/50 chance of getting himself in to. He starts rapidly scrolling through the five stages of grief, his brain lingering on some while his heart clings hard to others.
"So, how is this going to go down?" Sebastian asks, changing topics since he knows he's making this harder on the both of them than it already is. Whether Sebastian is bitter about this turn of events or not, Kurt has been more than accommodating. But like all public servants, there are higher ups he answers to. Sebastian has to wonder what insane hoops he had to jump thru just to get them to agree to let Kurt be the one to break the news.
"Do you really want to know?" Kurt asks, voice thin.
"Yes," Sebastian lies. He doesn't really want to know, but at this point it's inevitable, so there's nothing he can do to stop it. Besides, he hates surprises.
The train whistle blows, partially drowning out his reply. The car hiccups, then begins to slog forward, and his heart takes a sluggish lurch with it. Whatever timer had been set and re-set in Sebastian's favor has officially started to count down.
"The train we're on will make it one hundred thirty-seven point two miles outside of the city" – Kurt starts off clinically, but he has a difficult time staying that way. He pauses. He blinks. He swallows – "where it will hit another train head on, diverted on to our tracks by accident. The other train is traveling faster so our train flips. Three people in total die…including you."
"Those other people…are they collateral damage, or…?" It's important for Sebastian to know that he's not taking innocent people with him when he goes. That the circumstances behind his death didn't demand some sort of sacrifice.
"No," Kurt reassures him. "It's their time. This is being calculated very carefully for efficacy. That's why it's a relatively minor accident, all things considered." Kurt looks at Sebastian, cheeks wet. "It'll be quick," he promises.
"Quick." Sebastian scoffs. "That's reassuring."
He's acting like an ungrateful lout, but it's in his nature, bred from a lifetime of having decisions made for him and being expected to be thankful for it. But in this instance, he should be saying thank you, because the powers that be could have made this so much slower, so much more agonizing. Sebastian wasn't always the best of men. He doesn't necessarily deserve quick.
However this course of action was decided, Sebastian realizes that Kurt's quick thinking and sharp verbal gymnastics more than likely had a hand in that.
"Quicker than dying from cancer would be," Kurt reminds him. "Less excruciating, too."
A surge of raw pain rips through Sebastian at Kurt's words, white hot and intense, starting in his stomach and shooting out through his lymph nodes, into every nook his cancer has spread. Sebastian doubles over in his seat, arms clenched to his stomach, so wrapped up in agony that he almost misses Kurt's hand rubbing circles into his lower back to ease his suffering. Kurt's comforting touch is almost worth the pain, but damn him and his voice, summoning those symptoms to life! He always had the ability to bring memories to the surface, good and bad. Especially, it seemed, the things that Sebastian tried so hard to forget. It's part of what Kurt is now, this skill he has to make Sebastian see his life flash before his eyes. Sebastian sees some of that life now, images rolling in reverse, as if he's being pulled back through time.
Waking up yesterday morning to a pillowcase soaked in his own blood.
A year earlier when he discovered he was no longer in remission.
Two years earlier when the doctors started him on chemo.
Three years earlier when he was finally diagnosed after months of his doctors flip-flopping over a cause for his varied and incongruous symptoms.
Four years earlier when he saw Kurt again for the first time.
Five years earlier when Sebastian went back home to Ohio to visit his parents at Thanksgiving and ended up at Memorial Park Cemetery, paying his respects at Kurt's funeral.
Birthdays and Christmases, graduations and weddings, those insignificant markers of time passing that become more and more depressing to celebrate as time grows short.
Those days when he used to stake out The Lima Bean in the hopes of flirting with Kurt's boyfriend Blaine and ruffling Kurt's feathers. One time stands out vividly in Sebastian's mind. After Sebastian had apologized for all of the trouble he'd caused, he and Kurt met for coffee alone. Sebastian had reached out to Kurt because he felt he needed to make amends to him particularly. Though Kurt accepted his apology, it was simply an act of closure. Sebastian could tell throughout their entire conversation that he just wanted to put Sebastian behind him and go on with his life. And Sebastian couldn't blame him. He'd crossed too many lines, done the unthinkable too often – from blackmailing Kurt's stepbrother to unintentionally blinding the boy Kurt loved. Sebastian didn't deserve Kurt's forgiveness even though Kurt had given it, but that had nothing to do with Sebastian's miraculous change of heart.
It was because Kurt was a genuinely good person.
When Kurt left The Lima Bean that day, Sebastian let it go. He had done what he could. They wouldn't be friends, but they were no longer rivals, and Sebastian could live with that. Forgiveness is what you get out of it. It doesn't necessarily make friends out of foes, or build bridges that would have never existed to begin with. It never dawned on Sebastian that anything involving Kurt would ever bother him again until the day he found out that Kurt had died.
That's when the nightmares began.
They weren't nightmares in the sense that they were scary or gory. There were no images of a zombie Kurt chasing Sebastian down a dark alley, trying to exact revenge. His nightmares were simply a replay of every interaction they'd had - every insult that Sebastian had thrown at him; every time he had called or texted Blaine in the hopes of pulling them apart; every attempt at blackmail, coercion, and that God dammed fucking rock salt Slushie, meant to destroy Kurt's Marc Jacobs shirt, but which ended up scratching the cornea of Blaine's eye. When Sebastian dreamt about that moment, the red ice and salt mixture slapping Blaine in the face, it wasn't Blaine's pinched face he saw, or his wail of pain that Sebastian heard. It was Kurt's face – the shock and devastation, knowing that that Slushie was meant for him but not knowing honestly how it was meant. It was Kurt's cry of, "Blaine!" that Sebastian heard, that high-pitched whine he thought would be so amusing to listen to while it whimpered over his ruined shirt pleading with his friends and with the Warblers, "Someone call 9-1-1! Hurry! He's hurt!"
Sebastian began to carry those images and hear those cries as he went about his life. Traveling the streets of New York from his penthouse to work, they haunted him every time someone called out, or a taxi cab driver laid on their horn, or a car came screeching to a halt. Sebastian didn't hear any of that noise. All he heard was Kurt crying out, "Blaine!" Because until then, Kurt had only seen Sebastian as a nuisance. The occasional thorn that he would encounter, cropping up in the roses he thought he was safe to pick, but could pluck out of his palm and toss in the trash. Aside from that, Sebastian meant nothing to him. He didn't have to think about him. He could stop going to The Lima Bean altogether and never have to worry about him again. But after that, Kurt saw Sebastian for the cruel son-of-a-bitch that even Sebastian didn't know he was.
That's why, when Sebastian saw Kurt again, sitting in Sebastian's favorite café in New York, waiting at Sebastian's usual table as if it were the most normal thing in the world a year after his death, Sebastian started to question his own sanity. Sebastian had turned around and bolted, went straight home in the middle of the afternoon and drunk himself to sleep to silence the screaming in his head. He went to a different café the next day, but it wasn't any use. Kurt was there, waiting for him. Sebastian knew he couldn't run. If this vision of Kurt was in his head, it would follow him everywhere. He figured if he was having hallucinations about Kurt, he needed to confront them and find out why. Maybe if he did, the dreams and the voices would finally stop.
He assumed that as he approached Kurt, the vision/hallucination/whatever would evaporate away, but it seemed to only get clearer. When he reached him, Kurt looked up at Sebastian with sad eyes and smiled.
"May I sit here?" Sebastian asked, his voice softer than normal, feeling slightly stupid for asking permission to sit from a hallucination. But Kurt gestured to the chair and said, "You may."
At that point, Sebastian didn't realize he was sick, not until Kurt told him that he needed to get tested, and what specifically he needed to be tested for. This was Kurt's first time disregarding "the rules" he explained vaguely. He wasn't supposed to show up until after Sebastian got his diagnosis, but Kurt couldn't wait. Kurt knew that Sebastian's fate was written, but he had to try and change things for Sebastian if he could. Sebastian had asked him why? Why try to save him after everything he had done? Why break the rules for him when he'd never liked him?
Kurt said that after he saw Sebastian standing over his grave in the rain with honest to God tears in his eyes that that apology from years before had to have been true. Something inside Sebastian was redeemable, and Kurt was going to help rescue it if he could. Give Sebastian a chance to do some good in the world. Hence the warning.
That's all Kurt had intended to do. He could have gone then and not returned until he was supposed to, but he didn't. He would pop up out of the blue until they started having regular coffee dates every afternoon. Then came the talks, the admissions, the confessions, the laughs, a friendship that began over shots of espresso and a grande nonfat mocha that sat symbolically in front of the chair where Kurt sat, even though no one else but Sebastian could see him. And even if most people would say (in fact, his neurologist did say) that this relationship was all in his head, it had become one of the most important relationships of his life.
Kurt was there for everything – for Sebastian's diagnosis, the chemo, his remission, the discovery that the cancer had returned. When Sebastian got that news, he could see in Kurt's eyes that his time was growing short.
The next day, Sebastian didn't show up for their coffee date at all, and Kurt didn't come looking for him.
As the train moves faster, the darkness outside flying past him, so do the memories fly at him, but mainly the thoughts he had begun to have of Kurt, wishes he had no way of seeing to fruition, until the start of an unsettling unrest prickles beneath his skin. He can't see out the window, nothing in the glass but his own reflection, so he can't see what's in front of them, miles ahead. Another train, a larger train, a faster train, has launched in to their path. Sebastian hears it chugging, speeding up as if playing chicken with another train is specifically on its agenda. Even if Sebastian bolts from the room for an exit, that doesn't mean he'll make it to one in time. Even if he leaps from the train, that doesn't mean the train flipping off the tracks still won't hit him somehow. This is the end, and that darkness out the window might as well be his future, because that's where he's headed. He's always believed that.
But…if that's the truth, if that's how it all ends, then how does that explain Kurt?
He'd asked Kurt that once, but Kurt didn't have an answer for him.
"Some people move on," he'd said, "and some people don't."
"Who gets to decide?" Sebastian asked.
"I…I really don't know," Kurt answered.
"Well, the people who don't move on…where do they go? What happens to them?"
"I can't tell you that, either."
"You can't? Or you won't?"
"I can't," Kurt said sympathetically. "No one has ever told me."
"Then, what do I do?" Sebastian had asked, becoming panicked. "How do I make sure that I don't simply…disappear?" Because of all the things that Sebastian had ever been afraid of in his life, that was the ultimate. Blinking out of existence. Dissolving away.
"Live while you have the chance," Kurt had said, "and worry about tomorrow when it comes."
Sebastian hears a mournful whistle sounding in the night. It's the sound of tomorrow barreling towards him, coming fast.
"I'm glad they sent you," Sebastian says, eyes fixed straight ahead.
"They didn't send me," Kurt confesses. "They couldn't stop me from coming."
"But…why?" Sebastian regards Kurt out of the corner of his eye. Kurt is doing the same thing Sebastian was - staring straight forward, waiting for fate to intervene. "You never liked me."
"You already said that," Kurt points out.
"Because it's still true. Up till the day you died, you hated me."
Kurt smiles, but it's small and steeped in melancholy. "You're right."
"So…why did you come?"
"If you don't know why, I can't tell you," Kurt says. "It's not an easy question to answer."
"Because you don't know the answer?"
"Because I don't think I should tell you."
"Why not?"
"Because you're not going to believe me."
Sebastian hears the whistle again. This time, it sounds urgent, like a warning. Of course, it's a warning for the train that they're on. But it sounds like it could be meant for him as well. "What do you have to lose?"
Kurt succeeds in meeting Sebastian's gaze. "You, Sebastian. I could lose you."
Sebastian opens his mouth to reassure Kurt that he can't lose him. But then again, he never had him. They never had each other. They didn't become friends until after Kurt's death. Kurt had helped him, stood by him, but when Sebastian realized Kurt would come to reap him, instead of giving himself up willingly in appreciation for everything Kurt had done for him, he ran. "You're lying."
Kurt chooses to be disappointed instead of hurt. "I told you you wouldn't believe me."
"But, I don't understand. You didn't like me," Sebastian says for a third time, confusion and anxiety and denial leaving him lost for words.
"Not in life," Kurt admits. "But after death, yes. After talking to you, and learning you, and knowing you, I very much began to like you. And now…" Kurt inches forward, subconsciously reaching out to the man whose time has run out.
"And now…" Drawn in by the lure of Kurt's eyes and his mouth, Sebastian shifts forward in his seat. If this is going to be his last moment on earth, it might as well be a good one. But he feels like he's rushing this. There's so much that he wants to say that he'll never get to say, so much he's hoping Kurt will say that he'll never get to hear, but they don't have the time. Oh why didn't he hunt Kurt down and have this talk a while ago?
Because the end would have been the same. Hunting Kurt down would have meant agreeing to meet this fate. They'd have had the same amount of time…possibly less.
"I could have been your friend," Kurt admits with regret.
"I could have fallen in love with you," Sebastian admits with much of the same regret.
"Well then…we can talk about that when you get there." Kurt's words whisper across Sebastian's lips, and regardless of the worried voices rising up outside their door, it's the only thing that Sebastian hears.
"When I get where?" Sebastian asks, forgetting where they are as this moment, this more important moment, draws near.
"You know where."
"Oh." Sebastian nods, his focus entirely on Kurt's mouth. "Will I be going there?"
The tip of Kurt's nose slides across Sebastian's. "As far as I know…but I'm not 100% sure."
"And when does that happen?"
"Right about…" A chaotic flurry of whistles blare outside the train. Inside the train, passengers scream, running in the hall outside their compartment, looking for a place to hide where they'll be safe if the trains hit.
When they hit, Sebastian thinks, resigned to the fact that there is no place to hide. But that doesn't seem as devastating as it did a moment before.
Kurt's final word isn't swept away by the din. Sebastian hears it in his head when his and Kurt's mouths meet.
"…now."