Sebastian tosses in bed, shuffling back and forth restlessly to a symphony of his iPhone ring tone going off over and over. He has to turn it off…or throw it out the window. He can always buy a new one. Twelve more if this continues again tomorrow. He pokes his head out from where he has it shoved underneath his pillow, but before he spots his phone he catches the time on his desk clock.
3:14 a.m.
He groans as he reaches for the phone, intent on just ignoring the call and going back to sleep, but when he notices the number calling him is labeled restricted, his curiosity peaks.
He's already awake. He might as well rip someone a new hole.
He unlocks his phone and picks up the call.
"Somebody'd better be dead," he grumbles before his mystery caller has a chance to say hello.
"S-Sebastian?" a shaky voice mutters. "Oh please tell me this is the right number. I-I dialed it from memory."
Sebastian's eyes widen to the size of hubcaps.
He has to still be dreaming. There's no way…
"Kurt?" Sebastian asks, silently hoping he's right. "Kurt, is that you?"
"Uh…yeah," Kurt answers awkwardly.
"How did you even get this number?" Sebastian scrubs a hand over his face, rubbing the sleep from his eyes, wanting to remember every minute of what promises to be an amusing conversation.
"I, uh…saw it on Blaine's phone?" Kurt's response sounds like a question, as if he's asking Sebastian if it's okay that he knows his number.
"A-ha," Sebastian says. "So, what do you need? Tell me quickly so I can say no and go back to sleep."
"I…uh…"
There's a murmur of distant conversation on Kurt's end, and Sebastian hears Kurt gulp so loudly that it sounds painful.
"Spit it out, princess," Sebastian barks, trying to move things along. Sebastian likes to tease, but he gets bored quickly.
"Shhh!" Kurt scolds, sounding panicked. "Don't say that too loudly! Someone will hear you!"
"Call you what?" Sebastian asks, playing clueless while a sly grin pulls up the right corner of his mouth. "Princess?"
"Shhh!" Kurt shushes again, and this time Sebastian hears whistling in the background, accompanied by indecipherable catcalling. Sebastian hears crude voices grunt the words faggot and twink. Sebastian rarely gets those kinds of slurs tossed at him, but he imagines that Kurt hears them a lot.
And these voices calling them out sound genuinely frightening.
"Kurt, where are you?" Sebastian asks, sobering up from his sleep drunkenness and sitting up in bed.
"I'm…kind of…" Kurt takes a deep breath in before he speaks, "I'minjailandIneedyoutobailmeout."
Sebastian blinks, absorbing the single, eleven syllable word Kurt vomited out, realizing that it was actually an entire sentence.
"You're in jail?" Sebastian yells through the phone. Part of him wants to laugh out loud and tease Kurt ruthlessly; another part wants to reach through the phone and throttle him. He's also dying to make a fashion felony joke, but another unknown bystander calls Kurt a cockslut, and that sets Sebastian on edge.
That's one slur Sebastian has had tossed at him.
Suddenly, he's picturing Kurt in his Dalton uniform - with the sweater, not the blazer - standing in a filthy jail cell, surrounded by grungy biker types, hungry stares from bloodshot eyes aimed his way. "Why the fuck are you in jail?"
"I…" Kurt's voice shakes again and Sebastian knows that whatever it is, it has to be really bad if Kurt called him and not Blaine, "I was…"
Kurt's voice drops right when a group of people scream, the passing din swallowing up Kurt's confession.
"What was that?" Sebastian asks. "I didn't catch it."
"I was…" This time when Kurt's voice shakes, he sounds more embarrassed than scared. "I was arrested for prostitution."
Sebastian doesn't mean to laugh, but in his still slightly sleepy state, that image of poor, shivering Kurt in his Dalton uniform transforms to Kurt dressed in thigh high black vinyl boots, a micro mini skirt, a corset, and enough make-up to shame a French whore.
He can't control his laughter with that image stuck in his head.
The hard-on it brings about, however, is disturbing.
"You were hooking?" Sebastian asks. This time, he's going to rib Kurt a little. He'd be an idiot not to. "Oh, babe, if you needed the money so badly, you could have just blown me. I'll make it rain for you."
"Sucking you off is not worth any amount of money, Smythe. And don't call me babe," Kurt snaps. Sebastian smiles. That's the Kurt he knows and…well, the Kurt he knows. That Kurt has a better chance of handling himself until Sebastian can get there. He stands up and pulls off his pajama pants, tossing them to the floor and grabbing his jeans. "And no, I was not hooking," Kurt emphasizes loudly, apparently no longer concerned with the men jeering at him than he was before. "I was performing in a drag revue." Kurt's sentence stops short. Apparently, he hadn't meant to reveal that tidbit of information.
"Oh dear God," Sebastian says, almost dropping his jeans. "Please tell me that you're not in costume right now."
"If I wasn't in costume," Kurt asks, the words punctuated and edgy, grinding them out through clenched teeth, "why would they arrest me?"
Sebastian wants to revisit that fashion felony comment again when he hears another scream, a loud bang, and Kurt gasp.
That gasp does something to Sebastian that makes his chest hurt.
"Please, Sebastian," Kurt pleads. "I promise I'll pay you back. You're the only one I trust to do this."
"What about your dad?" Sebastian asks, not letting on that he's already dressed and heading out the door.
"Well he…he's had some problems with his heart and…"
"What about all of your Scooby Gang friends?" Sebastian interrupts, changing the topic of conversation so that Kurt doesn't have to relive that memory.
"Yeah, I trust them," Kurt says, "but they're so…judgmental."
Sebastian chuckles, lowering his voice as he hurries down the hall that leads out of the dorms.
"And I'm not judgmental?" Sebastian asks.
"Yeah, you are," Kurt agrees with a laugh, "but I also know that you're an asshole. You don't give a shit."
Kurt laughs again, but Sebastian stumbles a step. Sebastian's an asshole. Sebastian doesn't care. He's got his keys in hand, ready to race down to the police station at close to four in the morning to bail Kurt out, and he doesn't care?
Sebastian doesn't know why that comment affects him, why it makes him bitter. It's the absolute truth – he'd have said it himself - but it still does.
Kurt trusts Sebastian to help him in this one instance because Sebastian is an asshole, and he doesn't care.
"Sebastian?" he hears from his phone, and Sebastian realizes he's stopped walking, standing stuck twenty feet from the double doors, completely silent.
"Right," Sebastian says, picking the conversation back up. "I don't care. I'll see you in twenty minutes."
"Thanks, Sebastian," Kurt says with a sigh of relief that does nothing to erase the sour taste in Sebastian's mouth. "I owe you one."
"Yes, you do," Sebastian says, disconnecting the call as he gets to his car. And I'm thinking cell phone pictures and Facebook.