A/N: Okay, vague summary is vague, but I want this to unveil itself as it's read so I can't be more descriptive. This is inspired by a scene in the movie The Royal Tenenbaums, between the characters Margot and Ritchie. You don't need to know the movie or watch it to understand this, I'm just telling you where the inspiration comes from. But in the movie, Margot is a talented playwright, so I made this read in a very dramatic way, with a lot of visuals and symbolism. Also, their relationship isn't entirely healthy. I do recognize that. It wasn't meant to showcase a super healthy relationship, but a messy, angsty, heartbreaking one. I think this is really good. Please read it and tell me what you think. :)
Warning for angst, smoking, mention of self-harm injuries, unhealthy relationships, mention of Blaine, Blaine friendly, mention of Kurt and an unnamed other man.
Knock knock knock
Pregnant pause.
Knock knock knock
A punctuated question in the form of Kurt's knuckles rapping against the wooden floor.
"Sebastian? Are you in there?" Silence. "Sebastian, I need to talk to you."
The sound of someone breathing. The sizzle of paper turning to ashes. The smell of cigarette smoke. These are the only answers Kurt gets.
Knock knock knock
"Sebastian!" Kurt, weighed down by defeat, starts sinking toward the floor. "Please…"
"Who's there?" Sebastian says coolly, sucking on the end of his cigarette.
"You know who it is," Kurt gripes, anxiously waiting at the entrance of the tent – their tent, their old secret clubhouse (conspicuously set up in the hallway between their bedrooms, but by virtue of a sign, faded and written in red crayon, it was Kurt and Sebastian's Super Secret Best Friends Clubhouse).
"No, I don't," Sebastian answers, blowing out a lungful of smoke that wafts gradually out through the half-zipped tent flap. "You knock differently now."
"Well, you hear my voice, so you know who it is," Kurt says, irritated, but more with the situation than with Sebastian.
Though he is still pretty irritated with Sebastian.
"So let me in."
Sebastian takes a leisurely drag off his cigarette before he answers again, not particularly impressed by Kurt's urgency, and covering up the fact that his stomach is bound up in over-pulled square knots. Even though Kurt is chomping to talk to Sebastian, Sebastian isn't necessarily looking forward to talking with Kurt.
"Not until you knock the right way."
"Seb!"
"Hey, this is a secret clubhouse," Sebastian answers, changing his position from sitting to lying on his stomach on the air mattress inside the tent. "And it's not even my rule. It's your rule, remember? You made up the stupid secret knock."
"Sebastian!"
"Violators will be punished, and forced to wear polyester and cheap cologne," Sebastian continues on. "Your exact words."
"I was seven!" Kurt yells.
"Yeah," Sebastian says, hiding his smile behind another drag, "but your logic was sound."
Kurt has his hands balled into fists, ready to pound the tent down, but he knows that won't accomplish anything. It'll only add to the tension that started to build long before he showed up.
Tension that's partially his fault.
"Urgh! Fine!" Kurt groans. He takes a knee and knocks on the floor again.
Knock, knockknockknock, knock knock, knock knock
Another silence. More smoke. A cigarette butt gets crushed out on the wood floor, scorching the finish, and another one lit.
"Come in," Sebastian says, knowing he's put Kurt off long enough.
He doesn't turn around when he hears the flaps unzip. He doesn't turn when he hears a panting Kurt crawl inside. As much as Sebastian missed him, and as much as he's glad Kurt's there, he doesn't want to look at him.
"Is Blaine telling the truth?" Kurt asks, pleasantries be damned in the face of his stopped heart on standby, waiting to see if it's okay to start beating again. "Did you do it? Did you really do it?" Kurt's voice wavers when he asks. He sounds like he might start crying. It sounds like he already has been.
Sebastian still doesn't turn around.
"Well, hello, Kurt," he says, pulling on his new cigarette. "Nice to see you, too. What's it been? A month? Two?"
"Sebastian…"
"It must have been a fabulous few months," Sebastian says, not giving him the space to respond. "You even forgot how to use the phone."
Kurt swallows, a mouthful of cigarette smoke flooding his chest, but he doesn't cough. He's used to it by now – used to the ways Sebastian slowly tries to kill him – with cigarette smoke and stupid stunts and sarcasm and worry.
Sebastian doesn't move, smoking his cigarette as if it's the only thing keeping him alive and breathing.
"Sh-show me," Kurt commands in an unsteady voice.
Sebastian crushes out this cigarette in the same spot as the first, burning a deeper hole, and lights another. Kurt moves an inch forward and sees a pile of butts collected there, by Sebastian's left elbow, about three packs deep. Which means he's been in here chain smoking, day and night. The way his hand shakes, he probably hasn't gotten much sleep, and nothing to eat.
Kurt's heart hasn't started back up yet. He's not sure it ever will.
"No," Sebastian answers with finality, as if he was actually thinking it over.
"Why not?" Kurt asks with a slight unintended whine.
"It's too personal."
"What? How the fuck is it too personal!?" Kurt argues, disbelief and hurt causing a strange, inappropriate laugh to bubble from his throat. "We were raised together! We've spent practically every day of our lives together! You gave me my first cigarette, my first sip of beer, my first kiss, my first fuck…"
"Yeah, but none of that means anything, does it?" Sebastian snaps, cutting Kurt off so viciously, Kurt can feel it in his knees.
Kurt gasps.
Sebastian almost turns to face him.
Almost.
But he settles back into his groove on the air mattress, and does nothing.
Kurt opens his mouth to object. It stays open, but nothing comes out. He can't defend himself against that, even if Sebastian isn't correct. Not correct at all. It's not that those things mean nothing.
It's because they mean everything. That's why he couldn't call.
"Why did you do it?" Kurt asks. The answer's kind of obvious. Kurt's already pinned the blame to his own chest like a fucking blue ribbon. He just needs to hear Sebastian say it out loud so he can hate himself completely.
"Why did you go back to him?"
Kurt frowns. "Answer my question first."
"Answer my question first."
Kurt scoffs. This childish back and forth is getting absurd. "Why should I?"
"Because you owe me."
Along with Kurt's stopped heart, the breath in his body suddenly disappears. Another point for Sebastian. He's not wrong. Kurt nods and shrugs, even though Sebastian isn't looking.
"I thought I missed him."
Sebastian sucks on his lower lip thoughtfully, flicking the butt of his cigarette with his thumb. It's then that Kurt notices Sebastian hasn't taken a drag during their last few minutes of talking. A cylinder of ash breaks free from the tip of his cigarette and floats to the floor.
"And did you?" Sebastian asks.
"Parts of him, maybe," Kurt says, dropping to his knees and crawling carefully across the mattress. "But then I rediscovered all the things I didn't miss. Things I kind of hated."
Kurt lays flat on his stomach the way Sebastian is. The mattress bulges and wobbles, air redistributing to accommodate the both of them, causing Kurt to roll Sebastian's way. He half-expects Sebastian to roll away, but he doesn't, and Kurt's heart gives a single, hopeful thump.
"Like what?" Sebastian asks, crushing out his cigarette and starting to light another. Kurt reaches Sebastian's lighter before he does and flicks it on, a small orange flame jumping to life in the well. Sebastian's eyes shift Kurt's way, looking at his hand holding the lighter, not shaking the way Sebastian's hand with the cigarette does, then at Kurt's face, blue eyes staring back at him, full of guilt and sorrow, but not a hint of pity. Sebastian rewards Kurt for that by letting Kurt light his cigarette.
Pity would have gotten Kurt kicked out of the tent.
"Well, he snores," Kurt says, flicking off the lighter once Sebastian has his end lit. A second thump, and Kurt starts breathing again.
"Really?" Sebastian chuckles – rough since his throat has dried out from a constant air of cigarette smoke. "You never told me that."
"Yeah, well, at the time I thought it would make me seem shallow," Kurt says, looking at the lighter in his hand – a blue plastic BIC lighter, fluid nearly gone – and chances a smile. "But apparently, I'd forgotten."
"So, how bad was it?"
"Not too bad," Kurt says. Sebastian shoots a glance to his left and sees that Kurt's eyes tell a different story. "I barely heard it. We had a big fight about it, so he spent most of his time sleeping elsewhere."
"Like the couch?"
Kurt takes the cigarette from Sebastian's fingers before he can bring it to his lips and takes a drag. Sebastian's eyes go wide, staring at Kurt's mouth.
Kurt rarely smokes, but when he does, it's hot beyond belief – his angel, sucking nicotine into his body, sharing in one of Sebastian's favorite taboos, has always turned Sebastian on.
"Like his other boyfriend's house," Kurt says, blowing out the smoke between words. "The boyfriend he didn't tell me about."
Sebastian's expression pinches on his face as Kurt takes another puff.
"Ouch," he says. On one hand, it serves Kurt right, but Sebastian doesn't have it in him to gloat. Neither is he in the position to.
"Yeah," Kurt says, handing the cigarette back over, but Sebastian puts a hand up, waving it away. Kurt needs it more than he does.
"I'm sorry," Sebastian says softly.
"Don't be. It's not losing him that I'm upset about." Kurt twiddles the cigarette between his index and middle finger. "It's almost losing you."
"Bullshit." Sebastian rolls onto his back, but doesn't move away.
Kurt's eyes meet Sebastian's, and even though it's uncomfortable, neither man looks away.
"Show me," Kurt says, this time stronger, much less a request.
Sebastian's hand twitches, reaching for the sleeve of his shirt with Kurt's eyes following it, but he stops, his fingers curled into the cuff.
"Tell me something first," Sebastian says when he sees how Kurt's eyes have started to change. "Are you going to pity me?"
Kurt shakes his head. "Never. I'd never pity you."
Sebastian's fingers curl tighter, fighting between pulling his sleeve up and pulling it down further, over the back of his hand.
"And if I never show you" - Sebastian's eyelids narrow - "what would you do? Would you leave? Would you get pissed off at me and go?"
"No," Kurt says without any hesitation. "I'm staying. I'd still stay…for good this time. It wouldn't matter."
Sebastian nods. He pulls up his left sleeve, working it slowly to avoid it getting snagged, all the way to his elbow, but an inch above his wrist, Kurt is already fighting tears.
A bridge of staples works its way up Sebastian's arm from his wrist to his inner elbow, some spots covered with butterfly bandages, their white skins dotted brown with old blood.
Kurt wants to be sick. He can't see straight. There's a dizzying mass of liquid silver floating through his vision, like he's on a Ferris Wheel set to high speed, and the controller's walking away. He got on of his own free will. The only way off would be to jump.
But jumping would mean leaving Sebastian, and Kurt is done running away from him.
He's been in love with Sebastian since the day they met, even if, on that day, Sebastian stole his turkey sandwich and punched him in the arm. Kurt found he didn't care. He even made black and blue his favorite colors.
"Oh God," Kurt whispers. There's no pity in his voice, but enough regret for him to choke on.
"You don't believe in God," Sebastian counters.
"Then I won't get in trouble for taking his fucking name in vain, will I?"
Sebastian starts pulling his sleeve back down, but Kurt catches his hand and stops him. Kurt wants to see it. He needs to burn it into his retinas. He wants to scald the image of these staples into his brain so the next time he thinks of doing something stupid, like indulging his own selfishness and walking away, this image will follow him everywhere. It'll nail his feet to the floor and bar every door.
So many staples. They make Kurt want to claw his own arm so he can feel them dig into his skin. They make him angry. They're vile and disgusting and they shouldn't be there. But they are there, and he's never going to forgive himself.
"Why?" Kurt asks, but again, the answer's obvious.
"I already answered that," Sebastian says, rolling on to his side and stealing Kurt's cigarette away.
"No, you didn't," Kurt says.
"I didn't?" Sebastian takes a drag then extinguishes the rest, this discarded body on the pile the longest one. He's done with cigarettes for now. He doesn't need this addiction when his favorite one is lying right beside him.
"You're stalling," Kurt says, moving closer when he sees Sebastian reach out an arm.
"Stalling?" Sebastian says with a smirk, sighing when Kurt's warmth bleeds through his shirt and into his skin.
"You asshole," Kurt sniffles. He won't give himself permission to cry. He doesn't deserve it. He'll blame his sniveling on the thick smog of cigarette smoke hanging in the air if Sebastian asks, and they'll both know it's a lie.
"Are you going to leave?" Sebastian asks.
"No." Kurt's eyes drift to the arm with the army of staples embedded into it, an arm that will always bear the story of Sebastian's heartbreak on his skin where anybody can see, a horrible invasion of his privacy.
Up until now, they'd only borne their misery in secret.
That privilege is over.
Kurt hears Sebastian swallow. With an ear pressed against his chest, Kurt can feel his heart quicken.
"I couldn't live without you," Sebastian says.
"Drama queen," Kurt chuckles, his voice cracking as he tries to laugh his pain away.
"Takes one to know one," Sebastian says, dropping kisses in Kurt's hair, letting him have his laugh. Sebastian knows it's not at his expense. "Tell me something else?"
Kurt nods before he answers, his voice not an easy thing to find.
"Sure."
"Why did you come back?"
Kurt whimpers. How could Sebastian not know? Or maybe, like Kurt, he just needs to hear it.
And like Sebastian said, Kurt owes him.
"I couldn't live without you, either."