A/N: Full title - 'What Happens at FurCon Doesn't Always Stay at FurCon'. Written for the Kurtoberfest prompt 'costumes', and inspired by a personal experience (which I don't want to talk about). A little bit of angst, but mostly fluff and humor.
Body's twisting together.
Chests shuddering, racked by shallow breaths.
Voices mingle – so many voices - singing in pleasure.
Grunting.
Sniffing.
Meowing.
Kurt is getting hot – way too hot. A heat he can't escape from. Sweat collecting at his brow, pouring down his back, slipping beneath the waist band of his underwear. He feels hemmed in, trapped. What started as dancing turned into something thick, and primal. The people around him are down to see this through to the end, but Kurt can't take it. He needs release. He has to get out.
He breaks free of the tangle of bodies, limbs tightening around him as he moves, sensing his intention to leave, reaching out to pull him back in, but his determination is stronger. He stumbles, his body cumbersome, feet and legs almost useless, but he struggles, pushing past bodies and hands…and paws and tails.
Kurt makes his way to the far wall by the convention room door and yanks off the head to his costume. He takes a deep breath, fills his starved lungs, but there's so much heat and b.o. around him, he can barely breathe.
"That's it!" he mutters, putting his head on the ground. "I've had enough! How the fuck did I get wrangled into this!?"
"Oh…my…God!" From close by, a muffled laugh rises above the loud music and smacks Kurt right in the stomach – the same way that exact voice did over a decade ago. "If it isn't Princess Hummel."
Kurt's stomach clenches, but he has to be mistaken. Of all the places in the world, he can't be here. But for a second, he's back in high school, in The Lima Bean, being told that he has a gay face and is wearing old lady clothes. Kurt looks left and right, but sees only a rather tall lamb beside him, and a short, husky cat, crouching close to the floor, grooming itself. Kurt shakes his head, shakes the voice out of his mind, until the six foot something lamb pulls off his head. Then Kurt's eyes nearly explode.
"No," Kurt gasps, unable to believe his lousy luck, that when (socially) he couldn't get much lower than being caught not dead at a furry convention at the Best Western, he runs into none other than Sebastian Smythe – respected son of a retired state's attorney, valedictorian of his senior class at Dalton, graduate of the Harvard School of Business, and perfectly poised to, yet again, ruin Kurt's life.
But being a bit older, a bit wiser, and a heck of a lot more bitter than he was at seventeen, he realizes that, duh! he's at a furry convention at the Best Western talking to a six-foot-something lamb named Sebastian Smythe. Suddenly, he feels that in some cosmic way, the karmic tide of the world has changed. As a soon as he gets away from here and back to the real world, he's going to have to call Artie and tell him that yes, it does get better, and then elaborate on how.
"A-ha!" Kurt crows with a snap (or an attempted snap considering his massive paws). "I always knew you were some kind of pervert!"
"Right!" Sebastian chuckles. "Says the man wearing the raccoon costume."
Kurt frowns, annoyed that uncovering Sebastian's secret identity doesn't ruffle his feathers more. Then he comes up with a masterful idea.
"Wait a minute." Kurt pulls his arm inside his costume and locates the pocket of his shorts. He brings his iPhone up through the collar of his costume, quickly snapping Sebastian's picture. Sebastian sees the flash, and his grin does a Houdini right off his face.
"Wait, wait, wait," he says, taking a step forward, blinded momentarily by another bright white flash. "Wh-what are you doing?"
"I'm living out a teenage dream – exacting revenge on you!" Kurt says, fumbling a bit with his phone in his sweaty grasp. "I'm going to put these pictures up on every social media site I belong to! I'm going to blog them! I'm going to email them to my boss at Vogue! To the Dalton Academy Alumni Association! To Harvard!"
"Okay, okay, come on," Sebastian says, putting his hands up, trying to fend off Kurt's persistent camera app. "Put that away, Tex. Believe it or don't, this isn't what it looks like."
"Really?" Kurt says, getting five more pictures that look decently clear and in focus before he tucks his phone safely into his costume where Sebastian can't snatch it. "Because it looks like the notorious Sebastian Smythe dressed up like Lamb Chop! I mean, look!" Kurt chokes on a laugh. "You've even got a pretty pink bow!"
Sebastian bites his lower lip. He knew that was going to come back to haunt him.
"Can you let me explain?" Sebastian asks. "From one furry victim to another."
That comment sticks Kurt. Sebastian obviously knows that Kurt doesn't want to be here. Otherwise, finding him here wouldn't be as amusing. But it looks like Sebastian might be in the same boat. Granted, it's funnier with Sebastian as the punchline, but Kurt's willing to listen. What else is he going to do? Throw his head back on and waddle back out on the dance floor with about three hundred furry frea—…uh…enthusiasts?
"You have fifteen seconds," Kurt says, awkwardly crossing his arms.
Sebastian's mouth drops open. He didn't think Kurt would actually let him explain, and now he has to figure out what to say in his fifteen seconds.
"I'm…okay…there's a client…of my uncle's company where I work, that I'm supposed to be schmoozing," Sebastian says. "It's a test to see if I can handle being partner."
Kurt rolls his head on his neck
"Five, four…"
"He's some big important guy," Sebastian hurries, especially when Kurt's hand disappears into his costume again, Sebastian figures, to get to his iPhone. "My uncle told me to do anything to win him over, and long story short, we ended up here."
Sebastian waits, holding his breath. Kurt's arm returns to the sleeve of his costume, and Sebastian sighs with relief.
"That sucks," Kurt says, more sympathetic than he chooses to show. He always imagined Sebastian Smythe after high school, trekking around the world by way of his enormous trust fund, with a bottle of Cristal in one hand and some buff model/porn star on a leash in the other. Who knew that he would end up a working schlub like the rest of them, schmoozing clients to get ahead, even if his uncle does own the company?
"What about you?" Sebastian asks miserably. "How did you end up in Beany Baby hell?"
Kurt's head drops slightly, his eyes focused down, suddenly quite fascinated with the laminate flooring.
"I'm sort of…" Kurt starts, his voice petering off, "kind of…on a blind date."
He braces himself for Sebastian's howl of laughter, for the dozens of raunchy jeers his quick wit can conceive, but they never come.
"Really?" Sebastian says, amazed. "But I thought you were…"
"No," Kurt cuts him off before he can bring up all of the past heartaches that he's worked so hard to repress. "All you need to know about this…" Kurt says, gesturing at his overstuffed body with huge, fluffy hands, "is that I was told that we were going to a costume party, but instead I ended up dressed like a raccoon with the Fantastic Mr. Fox over there."
Sebastian peers through the throng of bodies on the packed dance floor and chuckles.
"You mean, the guy grinding all over that weasel thing?"
"What?" Kurt's head snaps around, making a twisted, disgruntled bark when he sees them. "He…he came here with me! How rude!"
Sebastian laughs. Hearing it a second time, it doesn't sound anything like Kurt remembers it. This laugh is warm, mature, and maybe a little teasing, but not in a cruel way. Not in a way that makes Kurt steel his insides, throwing up walls and waiting for the hits to come.
"Well, how about if he doesn't leave with you?" Sebastian asks when he stops laughing.
Kurt wipes his sweaty forehead on the back of his matted paw and gives Sebastian a quizzical look.
"What do you mean?" Kurt asks. "I have to leave with him. He's my ride." Kurt cringes when he says it. His father always told him that if he ever agreed to go on a blind date, to always drive himself. Don't give someone else the power to take him off the beaten path, or leave him stranded. He should have heeded that advice. If he had, he would have been gone an hour ago.
"Well, that client of my uncle's?" Sebastian says.
"Yeah?" Kurt asks, wondering what this has to do with him finally getting out of here.
"He's the weasel thing," Sebastian says seriously.
Kurt gawks. Then he sputters. "Are you kidding me?" He doesn't know whether to be amused or offended. Sure, his costume is a bit too big on him, it bunches around the knees and ankles, and the belly hangs around his hips, but the raccoon he chose from the selection the vendors had available to rent is much more attractive than that ratty old ferret-looking thing.
That's the moment Kurt realizes he has to get out of there…and fast.
"Not kidding at all," Sebastian says. "And he's not even that good a client, either. I'm pretty sure that when my uncle hears about…this" – Sebastian's eyes sweep the room when more people in costume join the fray – "he'll want to cut ties."
"Wow," Kurt says. He has no other comment. He might not be into this, but being into this doesn't sound like the kind of thing that should destroy a business partnership. But that's the power of free enterprise. Of course, Kurt works in fashion design, not business, so it's not really his area of expertise.
"Yeah, well, my uncle's old school," Sebastian says, sounding like he might not be too thrilled with it either. "Really concerned about appearances and stuff. You know."
Kurt nods.
"So, you're offering to rescue me from all of this?" Kurt asks, bringing the conversation back to the important topic of getting Kurt the hell out of here.
"Yes," Sebastian says, "I'm offering to rescue you from all of this."
Kurt cocks an eyebrow, unsure whether he should trust Sebastian right away, not with the history they have between them. Leaving this convention hall with Sebastian, wearing a raccoon costume, is still kind of begging to be blackmailed, but other than getting an inset picture published in a magazine he's already been in several times before, what else does he have to lose? Besides, he's in fashion. Being caught doing something quirky like this might raise his face value come Fashion Week.
"Are you…this isn't a joke, right?" Kurt asks. "Some kind of revenge is best served cold thing?
"No," Sebastian says sincerely. "No revenge. In fact, you could consider it a…date, if you want. I mean, seeing as you're already on one." The unexpected nervous thread in his voice sets a kaleidoscope of butterflies loose in Kurt's stomach.
"You're not going to just ditch me, are you?"
"No," Sebastian says with another laugh and a hint of remorse. "Why don't we just chalk this up toI might have been an ass ten years ago and I'd really like to make it up to you. There's a few things that" – Sebastian swallows, ducking his eyes subconsciously – "I see a little better now."
Kurt jerks back an inch.
"Might have been an ass?" he repeats incredulously.
"I've got a room at a hotel not too far from here," Sebastian says, rolling his eyes and overlooking Kurt's remark. "We can shower, change, ditch our costumes at the front desk, and then" - Sebastian shrugs – "whatever you want." He leans in and adds with a wink, "It's on my uncle's tab. Let's go nuts."
Kurt waits a second longer, looks for the loophole, how Sebastian's going to turn this to his advantage at the last moment, but he can't see one. Not one that's obvious, anyway. From the look on his face, open and perhaps, yes, a little sorry, Kurt doesn't see what he could be scheming. It's been ten years. Everyone grows and changes in ten years.
Maybe even Sebastian Smythe?
Kurt's willing to give it a shot. It might be fun to start this "relationship" over, and see what pans out.
An obscure voice calling from the direction of the dance floor cinches the deal.
"Kurt? Oh, Kurt? Where has my little raccoon gone?"
"Sounds like an excellent idea," Kurt says, latching on to a laughing Sebastian's arm and hustling him towards the door. "Let's get out of here. Where did you say you parked? Move your furry ass, Lamb Chop! Move!"