Sebastian spots it first thing when he walks through the door.
A rose.
A perfect, white, flawless rose, only partially open, perched on the corner of his desk.
It makes Sebastian want to punch a wall.
He storms over and picks it up, crushing the stem in his hand, ignoring the pricks from the small, sharp thorns. They dig into his palm, a couple breaking the skin, but soon he has the window open and he tosses the repulsive flower out to join its five brothers in the ornamental bushes below. Sebastian has never loathed a flower so much as he does those stupid white roses. They're not even his. They belong to his roommate, Kurt - gifts from his recently acquired boyfriend, Blaine - and every single one of them impales him like a steel rod through his chest.
The worst part about it is that Sebastian has no one to blame but himself. It's his fault, right? Because he didn't move fast enough. He didn't speak up when he had the chance. He didn't let his walls down. He talked with his head, not his heart…and his head can be a mighty bastard when he wants to avoid anything remotely resembling feelings. He hid behind jabs, sarcastic remarks, and over-the-top suggestive comments. He didn't show the real him, and now he may have lost out on a good thing.
Sebastian admits to doing all of this, but he doesn't need to be reminded. Seeing the two of them together all the time - at lunch, between classes, during Warbler practice - is enough. He doesn't need to have these trophies left on his desk to rub in his face how much of a loser he is.
Tomorrow is Valentine's Day, and Sebastian just knows that those roses are going to pop up again. They're probably going to multiply. Sebastian can picture a whole bouquet of them cluttering up the corner of his desk with a sappy card peeking out the top.
And Kurt deserves it, too. He deserves a nice boy who gives him flowers and buys him coffee, who carries his books and takes him out to dinner.
Sebastian wanted that boy to be him so badly. He swore to himself that he'd give that to Kurt, but he apparently didn't move fast enough.
Sebastian can't handle it – not even for one more day. He may have lost out on Kurt to young Elvis, but that doesn't mean he has to lose his sanity, too.
Sebastian drops his book bag on the floor and heads back out of the room. It's after school, four o'clock, which means Kurt and Blaine are probably studying in the senior commons before Warbler practice at five. Sebastian is going to go down there and have it out with the two of them once and for all.
Then he will have to consider getting himself a new room, a single room, something on a different floor, because after this Kurt will never speak to him again, and that's almost as bad as losing Kurt to the gel helmet crooner.
No. It's worse.
But that knowledge doesn't seem to make his stride any shorter or the fuse on his temper any longer. It doesn't keep him from rushing down the marble hallway, footsteps echoing around him, announcing his arrival.
It doesn't stop him from doing something monumentally stupid.
Sebastian sees them together, sitting at a table visible from the open door, bodies turned in toward one another. They each have a cup of coffee (and as it's Friday, Sebastian knows it was Blaine's turn to treat, though Blaine rarely lets Kurt pay any day). On the table in front of them, textbooks and notebooks lay open, layered one over the other, papers scattered in a haphazard, unorganized mess, but that doesn't matter. They're not looking at them, not reading them, not studying at all. They're whispering together – laughing and whispering. Blaine says something and Kurt chuckles, smiling wide until the smile reaches his eyes and then giggling with his hand covering his mouth. Kurt laughs with his whole body, his chest trembling as he does, slapping a hand on his knee as he throws his head back.
Sebastian has poked fun at it before, but that's because he has yet to make Kurt laugh that way.
Kurt has shared a few smiles with Sebastian that he could have sworn were flirty, but not that full body laugh.
That laugh and how easily Blaine can coax it out of Kurt is the last log on the fire of Sebastian's anger.
"Kurt!" Sebastian barks the name when he walks through the door and Kurt's laughter stops. His eyes open wide, and even though he's alarmed by the way Sebastian chose to get his attention, there's the start of an expectant glimmer in his eyes, like he's waiting for something specific to happen.
Sebastian chooses to overlook it.
"Can you please do me a favor and keep your boyfriend's retched roses off my fucking desk?"
All talk, all sound, all activity screeches to a halt. The planet may have even stopped spinning – Sebastian can't tell. Blaine doesn't blink - hazel eyes blank and staring - and Kurt doesn't breathe.
Of course, Kurt, Blaine, and Sebastian aren't the only three occupants of the room. The senior commons, a popular place to hang-out after the final bell, has other boys in it, sitting at tables, working on homework, drinking coffee, shooting the shit, and they, too, become completely quiet. If a pin had dropped at that exact moment, it would have sounded like a nuclear explosion going off within the four walls. Multiple heads and sets of eyes turn to watch the outcome of this confrontation.
Kurt's face becomes immediately white, losing every last drop of color. Not even his usual slight blush stains his cheeks.
Sebastian expects Kurt to recover, stand up and roar at him in his signature queen diva fashion, but he stares like Blaine, except instead of being blank, his eyes look frozen.
"Uh…I don't understand…" Kurt stammers, looking from Sebastian standing over him to Blaine sitting beside him. Blaine shares Kurt's glance and shrugs, shaking his head, equally confused.
Sebastian huffs, dropping his head back on his shoulders in frustration.
"Don't play stupid with me, you two," Sebastian rails on. Something in Kurt's deer-in-headlights expression tells him that he's jumping to the wrong conclusion, but he can't make himself stop.
"I'm…I'm not…the roses are…" Kurt's mouth doesn't work, struggling with the explanations crowding around his useless tongue. He looks stricken, like he might vomit on his shoes or pass out at Sebastian's feet.
Sebastian has never seen Kurt at such a loss.
Blaine stands from his seat.
"Sebastian…"
"Can it, hobbit!" Sebastian snarls, though the fire brimming in his eyes – a fire that hasn't dimmed at all regardless of Kurt's unexpected case of paralysis - doesn't leave Kurt's face.
"Uh…I'm sorry, I…" Kurt looks around him at the boys staring on with fascination as he gets verbally torn apart. He stands up from his seat, knocking it with his hip, the sound of it scraping the floor adding to the tension in the room. Eye to eye with Sebastian, he can feel the full heat of his glare consuming his face, and he's helpless to defend himself against it.
So instead he backs away – turns and runs, not even taking his book bag with him.
Sebastian watches him rush off, spectators turning their heads as he runs by to follow his retreat. Sebastian stares after him, even after he's gone, entirely befuddled. He didn't expect this to go down that way. Why didn't Kurt defend himself? Why didn't he say something?
"What the hell did you yell at him like that for?" Blaine growls, grabbing up the books and papers off their table and throwing them into his bag.
"I'm sick and tired of the two of you shoving your perfect relationship down my throat every five fucking minutes, alright?" Sebastian snaps as Blaine shoulders his bulging bag, grabbing Kurt's along with it. "You won. You didn't necessarily deserve to win, but you got him. So do you think maybe, just maybe, you guys can keep the Goddamned field of roses in your room? I'm developing allergies from all your fucking lovey-dovey bullshit."
Blaine's jaw drops open and he shakes his head, his cheeks turning as red as Kurt's were pale.
"The roses weren't from me, you asshat," Blaine spits out. "They were from him."
Sebastian pulls himself up straight, his brow drawn, trying to make sense out of that sentence.
"He bought himself roses?" Sebastian asks. "Why would he do that?"
Blaine rolls his eyes.
"Think about it a little harder," Blaine says, "and when you figure it out, you can find Kurt and apologize." He turns on his heel with both book bags weighing down his shoulders and takes off after Kurt, leaving Sebastian in the common room, his face becoming hot as he starts to realize how much of an asshole he had been.
Kurt doesn't go back to his room. He can't. Sebastian might have gone there after his scene in the senior commons. Of course, there's a chance Sebastian still went to Warbler practice, and then Kurt would have an hour in their room alone to…do what, exactly?
Kurt can't take the risk. He can't face Sebastian. Not after that rant.
Kurt leaves the Dalton dorms and goes for a walk, avoiding all the places he usually likes to go, knowing that Blaine will most likely be looking for him. Kurt can't face him either. Blaine had warned Kurt this probably wouldn't go well, that Sebastian isn't the kind of guy that romantic gestures worked on (though how Blaine knew that, Kurt doesn't know for sure, and frankly, Kurt doesn't want to know). But the point is Kurt had been warned and he didn't listen. He had thought maybe, just maybe…
He sighs. That doesn't matter. Whatever he thought, from the times Sebastian had listened to him go on about his problems at McKinley to the nights he had helped him with his Calculus homework…or when he woke Kurt up from a nightmare he had about his mom and sat with him till he fell back to sleep…it was all an act. Or a trick. Or something. But really, this was all Kurt's own fault. He saw something that wasn't there and convinced himself that it meant something.
He doesn't know how he can face Sebastian now, but he does know he can't room with him anymore. He'll need to talk to student services about possibly getting moved to a new room, but that won't be till Monday. He needs to make arrangements to stay somewhere for the weekend.
He'll have to go home.
He won't even bother packing any of his things, none of his books, he'll just get in his Navigator and go.
There's only one problem with that plan, though.
He doesn't have his keys.
He checks his pockets over three times, but he can't find them. He left them in his room, hanging from the hook on the wall over his desk.
Well, crap.
He sighs.
Fine. He'll go back. He'll walk in, grab his keys, then walk out and go home. He won't look at Sebastian. He won't talk to him. Whatever Sebastian has to say Kurt will ignore.
Kurt keeps walking the grounds, waiting till after sunset, not looking forward to going back. He sits in the grass, even though the dampness from the evening watering seeps through his wool trousers, and watches as the sun drops below the horizon, the sky shifting through shades of blue and rose to pink and gold, then from violet to indigo, and finally to black.
With the sun down, his time is up.
He pushes himself off the ground, regretting not finding a dry place to sit when his pants stick in wet patches against his skin and the chill from the cold stiffens his knees. He figures he looks awful as he makes his way back on campus, but he can't look any worse than he feels. When Kurt enters the dorms there's barely a student in sight, and he's glad that he can at least slink back to his room with his dignity intact. By Monday, he's going to be the subject of whispered conversations and subtly exchanged glances, but in the meantime he can go relatively unnoticed.
Kurt walks back to his room with as much sense of purpose as he can muster considering he has a huge wet spot on the seat of his pants. He straightens his blazer and squares his shoulders, preparing himself for whatever Sebastian Smythe has planned to say.
Except the room is empty, and what he sees sitting on Sebastian's desk throws him off completely.
There's a clear vase, obviously made from expensive diamond-cut crystal, and looks brand new, like Sebastian had just gone out and bought it, but inside is a morbid arrangement of dying, bent, and in some cases mutilated roses, petals browning, tops bent over, ready to snap off their stems. Kurt stares at the half dozen roses, his top lip curling.
"What the…"
Kurt reaches out a hand to touch one of the lesser decimated white blooms and he realizes what they are.
They're his roses, the roses he gave to Sebastian, the ones he left for Sebastian to find on the corner of his desk. Kurt didn't know what had happened to them and he had been too nervous to ask, but they were the stepping stones toward a larger plan – a dinner invitation, the details of which he had been discussing with Blaine when Sebastian stormed into the senior commons – so Kurt didn't ask about the fate of the roses once they disappeared. He had simply hoped for the best.
Now he sees in plain view just how naïve he'd been.
So, why are they back? Blaine must have told Sebastian about the roses. Sebastian has to know they're from him. Is this Sebastian's way of throwing in his face how repulsive the idea of going out with him is?
Kurt doesn't know and he doesn't care. He's not waiting around to find out. He grabs his keys off the wall and heads for the door, but it opens when he reaches for it.
"Kurt?" Sebastian opens the door, standing in the threshold of their room with one arm awkwardly twisted behind his back, his body tilted away so that Kurt can't make out for sure what he's hiding.
He probably brought a guy back here, Kurt thinks, rolling his eyes. Figures. That's why he looks so surprised that I'm here.
"Out of my way, Sebastian," Kurt says, trying to brush past him without looking in his eyes, not sure which of the several emotions that he feels will Sebastian see there. "I'm just trying to go home."
"No," Sebastian says, holding his ground, blocking the door. "No…don't go."
"What…why not?" Kurt asks, his eyes boiling over as he glares a bit to the left of Sebastian's face. "What do you care?"
"I…" Sebastian starts, but the question was rhetorical, and Kurt continues.
"And what the fuck is this about?" Kurt asks, gesturing toward the vase on Sebastian's desk with his arm, his hand brushing a dry bud and almost upending the whole lot.
"Don't!" Sebastian hurries forward, reaching out to steady the vase before it can tip over. "Those are mine!"
Kurt is about to let loose with a scathing and sarcastic remark, about to rip Sebastian a new one for obviously making fun of him with this macabre display, but his expression changes when Sebastian stumbles fully into the room and Kurt sees what he has hidden behind his back.
"Sebastian…" Kurt says, looking at the absolutely gigantic bouquet of white roses he's holding, still under the impression that he's keeping them hidden. "What is…what is that?"
Sebastian raises an eyebrow, trying to understand what Kurt is referring to, but then he stands up straight, and with a grin more sheepish than smug, presents the bouquet to Kurt, holding the overflowing bundle of fragrant white flowers up under his nose. Kurt takes it from Sebastian, fingers barely brushing Sebastian's as he relieves him of the flowers, the color long lost from his cheeks returning as he holds the bouquet to his chest.
"They're an apology," Sebastian explains, closing the bedroom door behind him. "I thought that's where we could start and work on from there."