A/N: This is a one-shot I wrote for the Kurtbastian hiatus project prompt 'sweaters'. It's short and angsty with no warnings except for the angst.
There hasn't been a day – not so far as Sebastian can remember – that his morning ritual of coffee while reading The New York Times hasn't brought him comfort. It has always reminded him that the start of a new day means anything is possible.
Except for today.
Partially because he's not drinking his normal Bavarian roast. He's having a weak ass thin-as-all-get-out non-fat mocha.
And he's not reading The New York Times; he's reading Variety, with a headline that punches him in the heart every time he reads it – and he reads it over and over.
'Broadway's Newest Up-and-Comer Heads Out on World Tour'
The break-up had been a bad one, but it was necessary. Not because he and Kurt didn't love each other. They had more love than anything else in their relationship (besides sex, of course. They had TONS of sex.). It was because they were in different places in their lives, neither one able to compromise, neither one willing to bend – one wanting to settle down, one wanting to travel the world; one fine with obscurity, the other longing to be a big star.
But they are young. If they're meant to be, then they would find each other again.
At least, that's what Sebastian hopes.
Sebastian wraps his arms across his chest as he reads the article again, this time taking a deep breath of the one thing he managed to pilfer from Kurt's bag before he left the penthouse.
Kurt's sweater.
It wasn't necessarily Kurt's favorite sweater – just a tattered old Dalton hoodie from way back when, but he wore it a lot, so much so that it still smelled like him (not his cologne, but him) regardless of hundreds of runs through the washer. Even with his eye for high fashion and his need for couture, on his rare dress down days or when the heater broke in the loft and he had to go to bed in eight layers to stay warm, this was his go-to sweater.
Kurt and this sweater had a lot of history.
Sebastian remembers when Kurt bought it. He didn't want to buy it – it was a purchase bred of need, on a day during the winter of their senior year when they were on lockdown for the weekend and the rest of Kurt's warm clothes just weren't doing it for him. Sebastian caught him in the Dalton student store and had offered to share his bed with him – naked, of course, so that they could share body heat – and with a disgusted huff, Kurt bought the sweater.
Sebastian always thought of it as the sweater that brought them together, because even as mortified as Kurt had been by Sebastian's offer, it had brought a smile to his face, and after the thaw, they went on their first real date.
Kurt wore this sweater, Sebastian remembers, on the long nights he spent by his father's bedside in the hospital after he had his stroke.
Kurt also wore it the night they first made love – again, on another insufferable cold New York winter night.
There is so much nostalgia and melancholy wrapped up in this sweater, Sebastian can almost feel the bittersweet seep into his skin from the thinning fabric.
Sebastian hopes Kurt remembers that – when his tour with the musical Kinky Boots is over and he returns to his home base in New York – he left his sweater behind.
And maybe, when he realizes how badly he misses it, he'll come back for it.