After the death of their daughter Grace, Kurt and Sebastian drift apart. Kurt wraps himself up in his grief so tightly he starts to push Sebastian away, and Sebastian, feeling himself shoved aside when he needs Kurt most, cheats. They make the decision to start over, to leave New York City and their pain behind, and start over again in a house Upstate. Sebastian buys Kurt a "fixer upper" and gives him free reign. While redecorating the room that will be his studio, Kurt comes across something interesting underneath the wallpaper. It starts to become an obsession for Kurt - an obsession that begins to replace Kurt's love for his husband, which Sebastian is holding on to by a thread. Can Kurt and Sebastian break through the pain and the hurt and find a way to fall in love again?
I wrote this story two years ago, using the Klaine advent drabble prompts as my guide. I finished it, but never published it. It was supposed to be my KHBB fic for this year, but I withdrew. I'll either post regularly, or just throw the whole thing up and be done with it. I haven't decided. It's super angsty, so I'm warning you ahead of time. It's 24 chapters total.
Warning for the story overall for angst, mention of death of a child, mention of infidelity, minor self-harm, and sexual content. Also includes mention of Blaine Anderson and Hunter Clarington, but in no relation to Kurt and Sebastian.
Inspired by the Klaine advent drabble prompt "ache".
"God, that traffic was insane, wasn't it?" Sebastian complains, pulling off the highway and on to the less congested main road that leads to the heart of Manhasset.
"Mm-hmm," Kurt mutters in agreement, his head glued to the glass of the passenger seat window. Honestly, he barely even noticed the traffic, his eyes pointed skyward, watching the clouds pass by, the trees streaking overhead, the birds flitting off to warmer climes, flying far, far away.
Away from here, the way Kurt wishes he could.
"I called ahead to turn the gas on, and the electricity," Sebastian mentions. He's been rambling for the whole hour and forty-five minute drive about nothing in particular, filling the tense air of the SUV with non-stop verbal static. "We're gonna want to air the place out for a few hours. The realtor told me it smells like mildew, but don't worry. There isn't any actual mildew in the house. Though, to tell you the truth, the man struck me as kind of insane. I mean, you should have seen him, Kurt! He was wearing a green paisley tie and brown loafers with a grey suit. Jesus Christ!" He laughs a nervous laugh. "I didn't say anything, but it would have been nice if you were there to subtly give him some pointers. Or not so subtly. You know how much I love seeing you in action. Anyway, I'm thinking of having a second independent appraiser …"
"Are we there yet?" Kurt interrupts, focused more on how the changing leaves of the trees mute the skyline than on a single word coming out of his husband's mouth. Not that he could catch a one the way they're sprinting off his tongue like lemmings off a cliff. But the trees are soothing. They aren't like this in the city, lined up in rows, displaying their fall colors, blending one into the other like an ever-changing river - red tree, yellow tree, brown tree, gold tree … Their daughter Grace would call out the colors on their long car rides Upstate. He can hear the names roll through his head in her singsong voice, trying to make rhymes where there were none.
Green tree … lean tree!
Kurt smiles. He almost laughs.
"Just … uh … just a few more blocks," Sebastian replies, his attempt at chitchat cut short by his husband's impatient tone. Kurt, with his infinitely expressive voice, only uses three tones nowadays – angry, impatient, and indifferent. Sebastian hasn't learned how to avoid any of them, but he hates Kurt's indifferent tone the most by far. "Not too far."
"Good," Kurt says. "Because I'm tired of sitting in this stupid seat."
That's what Kurt said, but what he means is, "I'm tired of being locked in here with you," and Sebastian knows it.
Sebastian turns down two streets that spiral together until Kurt and Sebastian are completely locked in to this neighborhood where they're now living - Colony Lane – the same way Kurt is locked in to this decision to move here.
"And … here it is." Sebastian pulls up to the curb before it turns into a cul-de-sac.
Kurt sits up straight slowly to accommodate his stiff spine and ass. He looks around, sighing in frustration. "Here what is? There are five house on this block. Which one is it?"
"Guess." When Kurt sighs again, Sebastian says, "I'll give you a hint – it's one of these three," and gestures to the houses on Kurt's right.
Kurt rolls his eyes and looks at the three houses closest. All three of them appear relatively identical – the same three-floor townhouse with a pointed roof and a square porch, reminiscent of a gingerbread house. They probably all had basements – a huge selling point for houses in this vicinity. But they don't call them basements Upstate. They call them "cellars". Somehow, the word "cellar" is more refined, and therefore more acceptable than just having a dull, old, run-of-the-mill, cold and drafty basement.
Need to build that wine cellar so that we can have the most expensive cabernet on the market on hand in case we need to break it open and judge Sally Jones's newest highlight fiasco.
"She should have gone with lowlights, Sharon. (sip) Haven't I been saying that, Kayla? (sip) Haven't I been saying that she should have stuck with lowlights? But only around her face. (sip) Ha-ha-ha-ha! Please, pass the brie."
Kurt spent a good portion of his life in a basement bedroom, so he's not above the word. But he can still remember a time back in high school when he thought that that was the person he was going to grow up to be. He'd start out as one of the New York elite, then become an Upstate snob. When the kids (two of them – a boy and a girl) were grown and gone, he'd start an artists' colony and retire to a lighthouse, isolate himself in obscurity while being ironically jaded at the world.
Well, he was nearing forty, and he was jaded, but for entirely different reasons.
The house at the curve in the cul-de-sac is painted a sea green shade that Kurt isn't too thrilled with. That could be remedied with a bucket of paint and some elbow grease. But from its position, it probably gets the bulk of the high-noon sun. There goes his electric bill in the summer (which Kurt knows Sebastian doesn't care about, but just because they have money to spend doesn't mean that Kurt ever stopped being frugal), and there goes his fair skin, which will freckle endlessly while he sits at the kitchen table.
No thank you.
The one beside it is in a better position, slanted away from direct sunlight, but it's painted a slate blue that comes across as a bit too harsh considering the neighborhood's neutral color scheme. Sebastian should know better than to see that house and say, "Yes. That's it. That's the one," unless the inside looks like the Palace of Versailles.
The last house is also blue, but this blue borders on pale grey, almost exactly the same shade as his father's house in Lima. There's a maple tree growing though the pavement in front of it, shading it, and shedding its red and gold leaves all over the front porch. And on the porch, there hangs a swing, like the one he and Sebastian used to talk about having on the porch of the house they wanted to someday retire to. Kurt used to picture himself sitting on their swing in the early mornings, sipping a mug of coffee while watching the sun light the sky.
Sebastian always talked about having sex on it and scaring the neighbors.
Kurt breathes a long sigh.
"It's this one," he guesses finally. "The one with the porch swing. Isn't it?"
"Well, don't sound too excited," Sebastian jokes, but he's wary, afraid of what the fallout may be if Kurt doesn't like it. The staircase Sebastian has been climbing to make his husband happy is tenuous. One misstep can have him plummeting back to the bottom, with no certainty that Kurt will let him try to climb up again. It's his own damn fault, Sebastian reminds himself as he gets out of the vehicle. He did this to them, so he'll let Kurt lash out. He'll let Kurt bare his teeth and his claws, let him dig in with both hands.
He deserves it.
Sebastian leads Kurt up the walkway, past the tree and the swing, and through the front door. The house is different in feel and configuration to the penthouse they've been living in since college – a little cramped around the corners, a lot more shadows, a lot less noise, and no artificial light. But Sebastian likes that better. He's an Ohio native, the same as Kurt. But unlike Kurt, he considers himself a country boy at heart. He could have bought Kurt any house he wanted, but when a contact told him that the owner of this house – a house that Sebastian had had has his eye on for a while – was finally selling this quaint parcel of equity, it seemed too perfect, especially considering the timing, and Sebastian bent over backwards to rescue it from escrow.
Kurt hadn't wanted to leave the city, but it was full of too many memories, too many friends and acquaintances who had yet to hear the news, and those who constantly offered their condolences. Few people greeted him without their faces immediately dropping into a sorrowful frown and the words, "I'm so sorry," coming out of their mouths. It made his head, his heart, and his soul ache.
Kurt loved New York City, but there was nothing left for him there - nothing but the constant hollow thud he felt whenever he saw something that reminded him of their angel Grace. School would be starting soon. All of her friends would be moving on to the fifth grade. But his daughter – life ended for her, far too soon.
"Here." Sebastian reaches for Kurt's hand, but Kurt reflexively pulls his hand away. Sebastian watches Kurt slip his hands into his pockets to cover for his flinching from Sebastian's touch. Sebastian, should be used to it by now, but he isn't. "Uh … let me show you why I think you're going to love this house."
Sebastian jogs up the stairs to the next level. Kurt follows a few steps behind, not walking too close. He sees three doors immediately when he reaches the top. They pass the first two without mention, and Sebastian opens the last.
"Here." He walks in, crosses to the opposite side, and throws open one of two windows, filling the musty space with the crisp bite of autumn air. "This room can be your new studio."
"What are the other two rooms?" Kurt asks offhandedly. This room is perfect, of course. His husband knows him too well. Even at dusk, it's flooded with natural light, and looks out over the rooftops of the other houses, giving him a view of the surrounding forests and orchards, stretching way past the highway. With a little TLC, it could look just like his studio back in their penthouse in the city.
And Kurt knows what the other two rooms are. There's only two rooms they can be.
"A bathroom and the master bedroom," Sebastian answers, watching his husband as he strolls across the floor.
"So, this would have been …"
"This used to be … uh … another bedroom …"
It would have been Grace's bedroom if she were still with them, Kurt knows, subtly trying to get his husband to acknowledge the fact. Cruelly so. But if she were still with them, Sebastian wouldn't have cheated, their marriage wouldn't be falling apart, and they wouldn't be trying to run away from their problems.
"Yeah, well, I guess I could put a foldout bed in here," Kurt mumbles as he estimates the space.
"I guess you can if that's what you really want," Sebastian agrees with a sigh. "Or you're just saying that to hurt me, which, if you are, you'll be happy to know, it's working."
Kurt rolls his eyes. "I'm not saying that to hurt you," he eloquently lies. "I'm being practical. I'm not going to have easy access to the Vogue workshop if I live two hours away. If I expect to get a new line going again, I'm going to have to pull long hours."
Sebastian looks at his husband, who's doing his best to avoid looking at him, curiously. "You're … thinking of starting a new line? You didn't mention that."
Kurt shrugs. "Did I have to?"
"No. I mean, I just wasn't sure that you would go back to designing after … you know …" Sebastian means after the death of their daughter. Kurt practically spent every spare second he wasn't designing for work designing with her.
"Well, you're considering going back to working in the city after …" Kurt means after Sebastian cheated. One of the reasons Kurt agreed to move out of the city was to keep Sebastian away from the man he was convinced would become too big a temptation for Sebastian to resist the next time they got into any kind of argument, not matter how small. Granted, it took their daughter dying to get him to cheat, but Kurt figures it'll keep getting easier from now on. "Anyway, I won't want to wake you by crawling into bed at four in the morning, not when you have to be at work at six," Kurt finishes when he's let that dig soak in long enough.
"I'm not going back to work for a while, remember? That's what a leave of absence is. And even if I was, why would I mind you waking me?" Sebastian grins. "In fact, I was thinking that it might be nice to get back to what we used to do in the morning before work."
"This isn't all about you," Kurt reminds him, raising his eyes to the ceiling.
"I know, I know," Sebastian says softly. He waits for Kurt to look at him again. Kurt hasn't been able to look at him, really look at him, since he came home in a taxi, wrinkled and hungover, the morning after. Grace passed away six months ago, which means he's been waiting for a while. He's still waiting. "So…" He rubs his cold hands together, wishing he could stick them underneath his husband's thick, button-down sweater, press his ice-cold palms against Kurt's hot skin. A year ago, Kurt would have squealed and laughed and complained, "Bas! Your hands are freezing!" But he would have wrapped his arms around himself and held on tighter, would have let Sebastian lean in for a kiss, would have fallen for the line, "Now that my hands are warm, maybe you can help me warm up a few other things."
Then they'd have made love on the wood floor with the door still open.
He could do that, if only to make Kurt laugh the way he used to.
Then maybe Kurt would love him again.
But looking at his husband's expression, dreary as the grey sweater he held closed with one hand at the neck, Sebastian knows that now is not the time.
"Is this what you need to make you happy again?" he asks hopefully. If only it could be that easy. If only a house, or a car, or a vacation could turn back the clock and erase everything that happened.
Erase everything that Sebastian did, and bring their daughter back.
Kurt circles the room, step by step on the roughly finished wood floor, which brings a new detail to his eye – a torn corner of wallpaper above the open window that clearly showed a single, scripted word underneath: darling.
Kurt examines it from a distance, trying not to pay too much obvious attention to it in case Sebastian was behind it. He can't be too sure. It doesn't look like it was written recently. But leave it to Sebastian to try to woo his husband back with something syrupy like that. Something cloy and romantic.
Something he thinks Kurt will fall for.
"No," Kurt answers honestly, glancing again at the fading wallpaper; the scuffed floors; the peeling ceiling; briefly scanning his husband's face till his gaze settles on the dust-streaked windows. He stares outside at the sky, at the clouds, at the trees, at the birds flying away, wild and free. He's never going to be able to fly away like that, so he might as well accept the cage that he's in. "But it's a start."