The Boy on the Swing

Warning: Vague mentions of abuse

As a boy often alone in a largely unfamiliar place, Sebastian Smythe had a tendency of running off to explore with little notice. He would slip out through a loose section of the fence enclosing the wild, barely-contained garden behind the little house and wander the streets. Sometimes he would drift to the middle of the little town up the road, a sleepy place that tourists mostly ignored in favor of the romance of Paris, and other days he would end up at the little playground outside of town. It was falling into disrepair and the weeds at the far end where the broken see-saws were grew as high as his chest, but the swings still worked and the monkey bars had an added thrill of danger.

His mother, as per parental obligation, often expressed to her son that it was dangerous for him to be on his own, and that someone could take him away at any time and she would never know about it; secretly, though, she was glad that Sebastian had such an adventurous nature. He took after his father.

Spring was just beginning to slip into summer when Sebastian found someone else in his playground. That was an odd enough occurrence to make him take notice, since Sebastian had never seen anyone else visit the place before, and the boy didn't seem inclined to talk, swaying morosely while staring at the line the toe of his shoe cut through the gravel. He had a flop of chestnut-colored hair and clothes that looked a little too nice for playing outside. Sebastian might have ignored the boy on the swing, but there weren't very many boys his age in the sleepy town and most of them were friends with each other and didn't have time for an outsider, so he had to take what he could get.

"I like your shirt," he told the boy as he sat in the swing next to him. It was a blatant lie - the light-blue, cotton shirt was buttoned all the way to the boy's throat and it looked like it might choke him, but the boy glanced up and smiled a little and Sebastian caught a glimpse of two brilliant eyes. He couldn't tell what color they were before the boy was staring at the ground again, so he kept talking to him.

Blue, Sebastian decided as he asked the boy questions. His name was Kurt, and he didn't speak much French. He'd just moved in with his grandparents not very far away, but he wasn't planning on staying long because as soon as his dad was feeling better he was going back to live with him again in the States. There was a flurry of different colors as the boy softly and hesitantly told Sebastian about himself, soft grays and deep greens, but mostly his eyes were a careful and honest blue, the sky after a storm or just before. His smile, when Sebastian coaxed it out of him, made them lighter. His voice was all bird-talk, high and sweet and musical, emerging in little chirps and sighs.

Sebastian spent more of his time at the park after that, and usually Kurt was there waiting on his swing by the time he arrived. They talked about things like where they'd live if they could live anywhere in the world and what they wanted to do when they grew up. Sebastian liked busy places with sun and things to do; Kurt had a dream of living in New York and singing onstage. After admitting that he liked to perform, Kurt had to fend off requests to sing – just a line, just a note – by a very curious Sebastian. They played adventurously on the monkey bars and wandered into town to the bakery where they could sometimes, through the combined force of childish, pleading faces, convince the baker's wife to give them each a petit four.

They fought too, sometimes. Sebastian called Kurt a girl once and Kurt promptly marched over to his swing and ignored Sebastian for the rest of the afternoon. He hadn't been at the playground the next day, and Sebastian worried that he wouldn't come back. Once, Kurt said that Sebastian's clothes were ugly and Sebastian pushed him, and by the end of the argument they both ended up covered in mud. They'd both been laughing and cheerful by the time they left for home, but Kurt hadn't come the next day then, either.

Mostly, though, they teased and talked and explored together. They became best friends with the ease and sincerity that seems inherent with most children. Kurt got annoyed when Sebastian always got to be the prince and he had to be the princess and Sebastian thought Kurt dressed funny. Kurt finally got to be the prince while Sebastian was a pirate instead and Kurt let Sebastian borrow his favorite scarf when the other boy talked about how soft it was. They shared old secrets and made new ones. Finally, Sebastian worked up the nerve to ask Kurt if he wanted to stay the night.

Kurt just shook his head. "My grandparents would never let me."

"How do you know? You haven't even asked them."

"They never let me go anywhere."

"They let you come to the park every day." Kurt just shrugged and pulled at the grass. Sebastian knew that Kurt didn't like to talk about his grandparents so he didn't push it. Kurt seemed to think that they didn't like him much even when Sebastian insisted that grandparents had to love their grandchildren; it was part of their job. Kurt had shrugged then, too.

Instead, Sebastian kept asking his new friend to come over to his house for the day even if he couldn't stay the night. His mom made the best cookies, and if Kurt liked the flowers that grew at the edge of the park he would love the garden in Sebastian's backyard. It wasn't all that far, and Kurt could leave for home whenever he wanted to.

Kurt finally gave in one day when the storm clouds that loomed from the time they met finally broke out into rain. They ran for the cover of the small Smythe house, and Adelaide Smythe welcomed them in with towels and good-natured laughter at their rumpled state. As promised, they spent the morning making cookies and since they couldn't go outside to the garden, they played hide-and-seek around the house and then watched movies together on the couch. It was almost dark by the time the rain stopped and Kurt went home. He insisted that he could walk. Adelaide left the porch light on until he rounded the corner, just in case.

Kurt didn't come to the park the day after that. Sebastian waited on the swing for three days, trekking out early in the morning and not leaving the playground until the sun was setting, but Kurt wouldn't come.

When he came back on the fourth day, he was very quiet.

"Are you okay?"

Sebastian's friend only shrugged.

"I was worried about you. You aren't mad at me, are you?"

Kurt shook his head and held Sebastian's hand really tightly. Sebastian wasn't sure what it meant, but he didn't let go.

The summer flew by in a dizzy haze of playful, laughing days, and rainy days inside. Looking back, Sebastian would remember those days as a series of moments, like pictures in an old album.

Sebastian convinced Kurt to go with him and his mother on a day trip to Paris and kissed him while they were walking by the river. It was just a peck and he wasn't sure why he did it, because he didn't know if boys were supposed to kiss other boys, but his mom was smiling when he glanced at her and Kurt held his hand after that, so he guessed it was okay.

He and Kurt sat underneath a tree and Kurt cried because he missed his mom and dad. He wanted his dad to get better. He wanted to go home.

"Is he really sick?"

Kurt shook his head. "He's not sick, he's just… lost."

"Did he run away or something?"

"No, he just… My Aunt Suzette said he's lost in his own head. He misses my mom a lot and it makes him forget things like when it's time to eat and to drop me off at school. She said he just needs some time, but I didn't think it would take this long." Kurt was still crying as he folded himself up into a little ball. "I just don't want him to forget about me," he whispered.

Kurt was running ahead of him down the street; when he tripped and fell, Sebastian thought he would start crying but he just got back up and grinned. Even with a scraped knee he still beat Sebastian to the bakery.

Kurt was quiet while they watched a movie inside, and Sebastian saw a bruise on his arm. They hadn't played in the park for days and Sebastian couldn't remember Kurt falling over or bumping into anything recently. When he asked what happened, Kurt just shrugged and pulled his sleeve down.

Sebastian's mom held the phone out to him. He knew who it was because only one person could make his mom that quiet. He shook his head and she sighed, putting the phone back to her ear. "He's playing outside with his friend. Could he talk to you later?" Sebastian was the one who was quiet that day. He thought about what Kurt said about his dad being lost in his own head, and he understood because Sebastian's dad was the same way.

Kurt sang something for Sebastian for the first time, a song his mom used to sing to him when he was little and scared of something; it was about a bird who learned to fly. He thought it was the prettiest thing he'd ever heard, until he heard Kurt laugh as he jumped from the swing; for a moment he was convinced that Kurt could fly.

Sebastian's mom cried in the bedroom when she thought he couldn't hear, because she missed his dad, too. Kurt never hid when he cried, but he always tried to hide the bruises. Sebastian wondered why people hid the things that hurt them – his mom and dad, Kurt, Kurt's dad. He wondered if it was because they were afraid they would be hurt more, or if it was because they were afraid of what would happen when they let the hurt go.

Adelaide saw Kurt's arm while they were making cookies. She paused and asked him quietly if he was okay. He told her that he was, but every so often she would remind him that he could always stay with them if he felt more comfortable that way. Kurt always went back to his grandparents' house.

Kurt fell asleep on Sebastian's shoulder on the drive home from Paris. Sebastian wanted to kiss him again and wondered if that would be okay and what it meant.

Kurt told him that his dad was better and that he was leaving in two days.

Sebastian's mom decided that it wouldn't do him any good to stay in his room for the rest of the summer like he had been for the past week and told Sebastian that he was going to stay with his father for a while; there was a nice private school there that he might want to attend in the fall.

He and Kurt were on the swings together and Kurt leaned over and pecked him on the cheek. Sebastian grinned at him and Kurt squirmed on the swing, like a little bird ruffling its feathers in satisfaction. "Promise you won't forget me, even when I go back home?" Sebastian had to say yes, because how could he forget the boy who was just like a bird?

Sebastian didn't forget. Even when childhood faded into an afterthought and he learned why boys didn't kiss other boys, even when his relationship with his father didn't magically become all he hoped for and his mother and father didn't remember that they loved each other, he remembered all of Kurt's smiles and secret conversations. He hid the things that hurt him and he thought of Kurt. He didn't see where it did him any good, but he preserved the memory because it was their last, dying gasp of childhood and there was something beautiful about it.

Sebastian considered looking for Kurt, but he didn't know the boy's last name or where his dad lived, so it was a lost cause before he even thought of starting. He found a swing set almost exactly like the one at the old playground in the overgrown park an ocean away, though, a block down the street from a coffee shop, and discovered that it was the best place for thinking. He would sip on a cup of coffee and sway listlessly back and forth, tracing a foot through the gravel. He felt closer to Kurt and to innocence in those moments.

Summer was just starting to slip into fall when Sebastian found someone else in his playground. He'd hoped to spend an hour or two alone, readjusting to life back in the States with his father after spending the summer in France and deliberately not thinking of the private school he was meant to transfer to in a week or two, when he saw someone sitting in his swing.

The boy wasn't dressed for a park, or anywhere in Ohio, with a fitted blue shirt and a pendent of a bird pinned over his heart. He had a flop of chestnut hair that had been styled up and away from his forehead. When Sebastian walked closer, a pair of startled, brilliant blue eyes glanced up at him.

"I like your shirt," Sebastian said, and Kurt smiled.

A/N: Okay wow, I hope I didn't confuse you guys. Kinda did something different with those memories and that has the potential to backfire in a big way, so I hope I didn't lose you. Anyway, this was based off of a prompt that I got for Strange Turn of Events in which my immediate thought was "BABY KURTBASTIAN IN FRANCE AWWWW" even though that had nothing to do with the prompt. So, um, sorry about that... but it's before season two so it's kinda what you asked for, right? Yeah, no, I destroyed the prompt, sorry. ^_^;

This also got a lot deeper than I thought I was gonna go. Oh well. (And also I'm working on the first chapter of Tiny Prayers for those of you waiting on that... There will be an update eventually, I promise!) Hope you guys enjoyed it; thanks for reading!

(Disclaimer: Glee belongs to FOX and Ryan Murphy. This story is for entertainment purposes only and not meant for profit.)