A/N: Written for the Kurtoberfest prompt 'pumpkins'.
I don't have a timeline for this. Obviously, Blaine's already cheated on Kurt. They're still broken up, with their friends suspecting they're trying to work things out. Kurt and Rachel live together in the loft. Blaine, attending NYU, meets Sebastian while at school. There.
Warning for minor mention of blood.
"Coming, coming," Kurt mutters, heading for the door to the loft before anyone even knocks. His small gang of friends is far from quiet. He could hear them on the street down below before they entered the building. More than anything, he recognizes Sam doing his Bane impression (in honor of Halloween, probably) and Santana's witch-like cackle anywhere.
"Welcome," Kurt says, sliding the door aside just as Tina walks up with Artie rolling behind her. "Welcome everyone to the Kurt Hummel/Rachel Berry First Annual Pumpkin Carving Bonan-what the hell?" Kurt stops in the midst of hanging up Sam's coat when he sees the vile creature approach. "Why the hell are you here? Why is he here?" He directs his last question to Blaine, hanging up his own coat since Kurt doesn't make a move to reach for it. Kurt knows that this stray came with Blaine. He can hang up his own damn coat.
"Stunning to see you, too, princess," Sebastian says, shoving his coat in Kurt's arms. Kurt promptly turns to the side and drops it to the floor.
"Did he tell you where you were going?" Kurt asks, slamming the door shut behind them. He shoots Blaine an odd look when he rushes to pick up and hang Sebastian's discarded coat.
"Do you think I'd be here if they did?"
"Now, Kurt," Blaine says, cutting in before the argument escalates, "he's a friend."
"Your friend," Kurt stresses. "You know, I know you guys bumped in to each other at NYU, and it was like good times again, but why does that mean you have to inflict him on the rest of us?"
"Yeah," Artie agrees. "You guys may have mended fences and all, and I respect that, but he's not exactly my favorite person."
"Guys," Sebastian whines, putting a hand up to his chest and looking hurt, "I'm injured. Seriously. I feel a pain…right here…" Sebastian pounds lightly with his fist over his heart, then opens his mouth and lets fly with a loud, wet belch, looking supremely satisfied when the majority of the room groans and takes huge steps away. "Oh, wait," he says. "I guess it was just gas. I'm good."
"Yuck!" Kurt exclaims, disgusted, waving a hand in front of his nose. "Can you at least pretend you attended a prestigious private school?"
"Well, I thought I'd act like I attended public school and fit in," Sebastian quips. "Because I soooo want to fit in with your friends, Kurt. Really, I do."
"I don't mind him hanging around," Santana says with a shrug.
"Santana!" Tina scolds.
"What? We're here to carve pumpkins, for crying out loud. It's going to be boring as horse meat. At least with him here, we'll have some entertainment." Santana gestures from Sebastian to Kurt, and Kurt knows she's referring to the eventual all-out catfight that's definitely going to ensue.
"No," Blaine says, condescendingly. "We're all going to be civil and play nice. Right, Sebastian?"
Sebastian looks at Blaine, at the rest of them, then at a scowling Kurt, and rolls his eyes.
"Sure." Sebastian grins deviously. "Of course I'm going to play nice. There's going to be knives here, right? And alcohol?"
"God," Kurt groans, "just…go out on the fire escape and, you know, close the window."
Kurt turns his back on him and heads for the kitchen just as Sebastian pulls a face.
"Come on, guys," Rachel says, trying to get their soiree started regardless of Kurt and Sebastian waging their war, "head to the kitchen. We've got hard apple cider and some Mead we picked up at South Street Seaport. These pumpkins aren't going to carve themselves."
"I get the big one," Tina calls, eager to break the tension and have the fun banter back.
"Nu-uh," Sam says. "I already called it."
"Did not," Tina argues.
"Did so."
"How? You didn't say anything."
"I called it with my mind."
"Affirmative action, yo," Artie says, rolling up to the table and snagging the spot with the largest pumpkin while Tina and Sam wrestle in the living room. "I get the big one." Blaine and Sebastian tag behind, talking close together while they take a spot at the table, choosing their pumpkins and starting to carve. Rachel storms over to Santana, still standing by the front door, watching everyone pumpkin up - Kurt at one end of the table, the space to his right left open for Rachel (already marked with a glittery gold star on the pumpkin she chose earlier), Tina and Artie, another space left for Santana, Sebastian occupying the end of the table opposite Kurt, Blaine to his right, and next to Blaine, Sam.
"How could you say that you're okay with Sebastian being here?" Rachel whisper scolds. "I mean, Blaine had the gall to bring him here, like the two of them are on a date or something. And I know that Kurt's been trying to get back together with him. That's just rude."
"I don't think they are," Santana says vaguely.
"What do you mean?" Rachel asks, needing clarification. "That Sebastian and Blaine aren't on a date, or that Kurt isn't trying to get back together with Blaine?"
"Both," Santana says.
Rachel turns on her with a confused look. "What are you talking about?"
"Well, okay, Captain Bowtie might think they're on a date, but I don't know." Santana nibbles on the knuckle of her index finger while she thinks. "I kind of think there's something going on between the two of them."
"The two of who?" Rachel asks, following her eye line, her gaze bouncing between Kurt and Sebastian. "Kurt and Sebastian? How can that be even remotely true? Have you seen them together? I should have bought pumpkin cutters instead of putting out knives. They might actually kill each other before the night's over."
"Yeah, that's the point," Santana says. "They seem to go out of their way to get in to fights with each other. I mean, if they hate each other so much, why even talk to each other?"
Santana and Rachel turn back to the congregation in the kitchen just as Sebastian says, "I want to give my pumpkin a face that will be truly terrifying. You know, one that will make kids drop their candy when they see it, and give them nightmares until they're eighteen." He glances around the table. "Get over here, Kurt, so I can see you better. I need you to model for me."
"Why don't I get you a mirror instead?" Kurt volleys back without even looking up.
As the group carving their pumpkins hoot at Kurt's comeback, Santana and Rachel share a look.
"Call it my psychic Mexican third eye, but I'm pretty sure the two of them are up to something."
"Okay," Rachel agrees, even though it still makes no sense "Up to what then?"
Santana sees Sebastian sneer at Kurt while no one else is watching, and Kurt sneers back.
"Foreplay," she says definitively, and Rachel chokes.
"I'm sorry," Rachel says, fingertips patting her lips, "I threw up a little in my mouth."
"I'm serious," Santana says. "You can cut the tension between them with a chainsaw. It's kinda hot."
"How could you even want that for Kurt?" Rachel argues. "After all the horrible things Sebastian did to him? He made his life miserable."
"And Blaine hasn't?" Santana says. "At the very least, Sebastian showed us upfront that he was an asshole. Blaine was a little too good at hiding it, in my opinion." Rachel turns back to the table and watches her best friend. She couldn't exactly argue that with Santana. Maybe Sebastian had been a jackass, to Kurt, to her, to Finn, to all of them, but Sebastian never gave them any impression that he was anything other than a conniving jerk. But everything Blaine did devastated Kurt. The difference is that Blaine loves Kurt. That makes up for it in the end…right? "Besides," Santana continues, "what's so bad about Sebastian?"
"Do you need the list?" Rachel scoffs.
"He says he's reformed," Santana says. "He apparently got a full ride to NYU, so we know he's smart. He's sexy." Rachel glowers at her. "If nothing else, Kurt can do worse than to tap a little of that."
"Okay," Rachel says, putting her hands up to stop the conversation, "I can't listen to this anymore. Maybe something is going on, but I'm certain it can't be that. I mean, Kurt has standards. And taste."
"I don't know," Santana says, tapping her toe, "but I'm going to find out."
"Hey, guys, what do you think?" Sam says, turning his pumpkin around to show it off to everyone.
"Sam," Blaine says, chuckling at the distorted, mutant-esque face of his friend's pumpkin, "that's really scary!" He pats an oddly gloomy looking Sam on the shoulder. "Good job! Uh…what kind of monster exactly is it supposed to be?"
Sam looks from his pumpkin up at Blaine.
"It's you," Sam says.
Sebastian peeks over and snickers. "You may want to lay off of the cider there, chuckles," he remarks.
Blaine's face turns bright red, his mouth forming a perfect 'o'.
"Oh," he says, tilting his head to see the pumpkin from different angles. "It's very…creative…I can definitely see a resemblance?" Blaine turns to Sebastian. "Help me out here?"
"No way," Sebastian says, hacking out a piece of pumpkin and nudging it to the floor. "You're on your own with that one there, tiger."
"Well, it's not pasta," Sam says, reassessing his work in profile. "That's the medium I work best in. I'm not really good at cutting things open."
"Oh, please tell me you're not going to medical school," Sebastian jokes, making a small show of looking past the group right at Kurt, putting up a thumb as if trying to check for scale, and then going back to viciously stabbing his pumpkin's face.
"Well, I think it's an amazing likeness," Santana says, raising a glass of Mead in a toast to his work. "The big mouth, the vacant eyes. I'm just not sure you've gutted it enough. His head should be way more empty than that."
Tina snaps her head in Santana's direction, glaring at her with narrowed eyelids.
"Be nice, Tana."
"Hey," Santana says, focusing on the inside of her own Jack-O-Lantern, "I just calls them like I sees them."
"Well, why don't you show us your perfect pumpkin, Santana," Tina says, defensive on behalf of her ex-crush and his ex-crush.
"It's not ready yet," Santana says, going in for another deliberate jab with her knife into the pumpkin's flesh.
"Too bad," Tina says. "If you're going to make fun of other people's creations, you have to show us yours."
Santana rolls her eyes.
"What are we? In kindergarten?"
"Come on, Santana," Rachel says, speaking up for the first time since she decided to re-create the likeness of Barbra Streisand onto her own gourd – a feat she won't let anyone see, and which Kurt suspects flopped.
"Fine," Santana says, grabbing the upper edge of her pumpkin and turning it around.
Tina, watching smugly, ready to rip Santana's efforts at pumpkin sculpture apart no matter what it looks like, throws her hands up to her mouth and gasps.
"Oh…oh my God, Santana!" she yells. "You're bleeding!"
"What?" Santana says, making a face. "No, I…"
"No, she's right," Sam says, peeking into Santana's pumpkin at her hand inside. "You are. Your hand. You cut your hand."
Santana lifts up the knife she's been using, the end coated in thick red liquid. She pulls her hand out of the pumpkin, and a collective gasp travels around the table. Her left hand, the one she had kept inside the pumpkin to hold it still while she carved the face, dripped blood - so much of it, Kurt can't even tell where exactly it's coming from.
"Jesus!" Kurt screams, backing away from the table. "Uh…oh God…" He already has a thing about blood, but with that much, he can't even function. He panics, unable to think entirely straight with two glasses of cider in his system. Flapping his hands anxiously, trying to come up with a way to help (It's his loft after all. Rachel lives there, too, but it's his name on the lease. If Santana dies there, he'll be liable.), he says the first thing that pops to his slightly slurry mind. "Sebastian! Do something!"
"Well, what the fuck do you expect me to do, Kurt?" Sebastian asks, caught a little off guard himself. A minor nick here and an abrasion there he can handle. That's what comes from about eight years on the lacrosse team. A busted nose? He can probably handle that, too. But blood is everywhere. It's overwhelming. "I'm not a paramedic!"
Kurt throws up his restless hands and groans.
"Go get the First Aid Kit, you useless walnut!"
"Oh! Oh, yeah! Right!" Sebastian races off to the bathroom, and a kitchen full of worried onlookers, including Santana, her hand supposedly bleeding profusely, stares with open mouths as Sebastian races for the bathroom to retrieve the First Aid Kit.
Tina leans in down to Artie.
"How does he even know…" Her question trails and Artie shakes his head.
"Got me," he says.
"Fuck, Kurt!" Sebastian yells in frustration. "You moved it again!"
"No, I didn't," Kurt says, heading to the bathroom to help in the search. "It's beneath the bathroom sink like it always is. Check behind the shampoo!"
"I already checked behind the shampoo!"
"Did you check…"
"Yeah, I checked the linen cabinet, and your shelf. What the fuck, man! Stop relocating your shit!"
"Like I said," Kurt growls, his voice getting pitchy with nerves over the crime scene in his kitchen, "I didn't move it!"
"Actually," Santana says "I moved it." She wipes off her hand with a paper towel, the red dye from the fake blood staining her skin. In front of Kurt and Sebastian's disbelieving eyes, she opens her fist and drops a handful of empty gelatin capsules. Standing side by side in front of the bathroom doorway, Kurt and Sebastian stare at the faces looking at them, matching expressions of shock on their faces, but none more than Blaine, who looks not only shocked and confused, but maybe a little offended.
And of course, Santana, with her I-thought-so grin plastered across her face.
"So," she says, the only one able to talk for the time being, "would you guys like to tell us what's going on between the two of you?"