Inspired by the Klaine advent drabble prompt "balance".
The first evening in their new house becomes a long, exhaustive dance of unpacking cleaning in preparation for the movers to arrive in the morning. What, in the past, would have been an upbeat tango of flirting in the hallways while dragging in suitcases, punctuated by the occasional stop, dip, and smooch, is a formal, boxy waltz, with Sebastian giving Kurt a wide-berth whenever he hears his husband coming, and Kurt pausing in doorways, eyes cast down, when Sebastian passes by.
The rush to clear the dirt away and make things suitable for the moderate amount of furniture they chose to bring with them affords Kurt ample opportunities to send Sebastian on a host of errands, ensuring him stretches of time that he can spend alone to reflect and think.
Consider the past and plan for the future.
They had decided not to bring everything from the penthouse with them Upstate. They weren't selling the place. Keeping it furnished for the odd trip back seemed like the practical thing to do, so they only packed those few things that they absolutely couldn't live without; personal items that couldn't be replaced.
Except for the furniture from Grace's room. That Kurt donated to the Salvation Army, with the exception of one lamp – a Winnie the Pooh lamp that Kurt had found in mint condition, ironically, at the Salvation Army, on the day that he and Sebastian found out that their surrogate was pregnant. It's ceramic, hand painted, with Christopher Robin and Winnie the Pooh as the base, sitting back to back with one another, each of them holding a handful of balloons. One oversized red balloon contains the bulb, the colored plastic lending a faint, rosy tint to the lamp's glow. Along the bottom edge is written the words, "If there ever comes a day when we can't be together, keep me in your heart, I'll stay there forever."
Kurt's mother had read him Winnie the Pooh books his entire childhood. He could recite most of A. A. Milne's writings by the time he turned eight … the year his mother passed away.
He read those same books to his daughter.
She'd almost had them memorized, too.
Seven hours of scrubbing, sanitizing, and, for Sebastian, racing around town, wipe the two them out to the point where falling asleep is simply a matter of inflating an air mattress and putting heads down on pillows. They had picked one up, a Queen size one, at a JCPenney's along the way. It's nowhere near as luxurious as the custom-made, King size bed currently stuck in the back of an Allied Moving Truck, waiting to take a journey on the 495. This mattress is a tighter fit than they're used to. It doesn't help that the thing sinks in the middle whenever one of them rolls over. With the both of them measuring six-foot-plus tall, they have to lie in the fetal position to fit comfortably, which should require them to spoon, but Kurt finds a way to keep himself out of his husband's arms.
The material the mattress is made out of seems perpetually ice cold, not warming up a touch with their combined body heat, which Kurt didn't anticipate. Even with the gas and electricity switched on, there's something wrong with the central heating. They don't have the requisite amount of blankets to keep from freezing, which adds to the misery. Despite being pissed at Sebastian, Kurt doesn't have the heart to send him out at one a.m. to the 24 hour WalMart, so he closes his eyes and resigns himself to suffering until dawn.
For the next five hours, Kurt's mind remains blank – darkness, nothing. No noise, no dreams, and no flashbacks, thank God. It's not entirely restful, but it's the best he could have hoped for. The last half a year hasn't been conducive to dreaming. The nightmares keep coming, one after the other, the next one worse than the last, shaking him to his core until he jars awake with a pain in his chest like someone had tried, in steel boots, to stomp him into the dirt. But waking up doesn't solve the problem. He doesn't know what he hates worse – waking up weeping in his husband's arms, or waking up weeping alone.
Kurt's feelings for Sebastian are complicated when he thinks they shouldn't be. Kurt should either love him and forgive him, or hate him and move on. But he loves him and hates him. His hands itch to hold him, but a second later, he wants to shove him away. He wants to go, but he can't imagine leaving.
Kurt can't imagine living without him.
Regardless of that fact that should tie up all the loose ends, mend the hurts and cool the hate, it doesn't, because Kurt can't find a way to forgive him.
A well-meaning Facebook friend had told Kurt over Messenger that the problem was Kurt's pride had been hurt by Sebastian cheating. Push the pride aside and get over it. Ultimately, the marriage is more important.
Then he said something about Kurt putting on his "big boy" pants, mentioned God, and quoted the Bible.
A minute later, Kurt blocked him.
That's another blessing of moving away, leaving behind the "get over it already" crowd. He probably hates them more than the forever sorry folks. The people who tell him to move on, to get over it, to put it behind him don't really care about him; they just want him to stop complaining, as if they're somehow obligated to follow him on social media, and that puts the burden on him, in turn, to make them feel comfortable.
Maybe some of them do care, but not enough to put themselves in his shoes and understand that it's just not that easy. Being on the outside of the swamp and looking in at a man who's drowning, yelling at him to grab a branch and pull himself free, is different than being that man stuck hip-deep in mud that feels like cement and losing a fight that's beyond his control.
And sometimes, as a matter of self-preservation, you simply give up.
Kurt doesn't know who Sebastian slept with. He has his suspicions, but he doesn't know for sure, and Sebastian won't confirm. He says it's because he wants to put it behind him, forget it ever happened, and that infuriates Kurt. If sleeping with another man was something Sebastian would need to "put behind him", then why even do it? Or (and Kurt hates himself for thinking like this), if Sebastian didn't want Kurt to dwell on it, why not take steps to ensure that Kurt wouldn't find out? Sebastian, of all people, should have known that this would eat Kurt up inside. It's the kind of thing that he'd never let go. Yes, Kurt would be devastated if he discovered the cheating and the cover up years after the fact, but at least he'd be in a better place to mourn his marriage separate from having to mourn his daughter.
What Sebastian did was selfish on so many levels.
Kurt knows that sex isn't love, but he wonders – was there a moment in the middle of all of it, caught up in the kissing and the fucking, where it felt like love?
Kurt met Sebastian in high school. Kurt wasn't just a virgin back then. He created his own, brand new category of virgin for which he could have had a cape and costume made – Captain Super Prude. Sex was a taboo topic for him, so much so that his high school's chastity club hated him. Apparently, he set the bar too high. As much as he wanted a special someone who would someday sweep him off his feet, gently usher him into losing his virginity by making soulful but passionate love to him, he preferred to not think about it too often or too in depth.
"The talk" between him and his father was a mortifying experience.
There were pamphlets involved. He still has some of them.
When it came to finding a boyfriend, Sebastian wasn't what Kurt had planned on at all. Where Kurt was attracted to debonair, old school gentlemanly types a few years older than himself, Sebastian was crass, rude, downright explicit, and a year younger. On top of that, he was (to coin a phrase stolen from one of Kurt's best friends, Quinn) the biggest French whore of them all. Sebastian didn't care for romance, and he didn't attach emotions to sex, but he definitely had a way of making other men fall in love with him.
Kurt Hummel and Sebastian Smythe were the two people in the world least likely to fall in love with one another.
But according to Sebastian, he fell in love with Kurt long before Kurt fell in love with him.
Sebastian claimed that Kurt was the first man he ever fell in love with - at first sight, no less.
He whispered those words in Kurt's ear the first time they made love.
He said those exact words during his toast at their wedding.
He wrote them in every birthday, Christmas, and anniversary card he ever gave to Kurt.
He said them over Grace's crib the night they brought her home.
("Look at this little thing, Kurt." Sebastian sighed, reaching out to gently stroke Grace's cheek. "Our daughter. Is it ridiculous that I've only known her for two days and I'm already in love with her?
"Technically, nine months and two days," Kurt teased. "But, no. It's not ridiculous."
"God, Kurt. I never thought I could fall so fast in love with another human being before I met you."
"Really?" Kurt said, because he always did.
"A-ha," Sebastian replied, smiling when Grace yawned, her whole mouth moving in a complete circle before she settled down again. "I fell in love with you the second I laid eyes on you. And then … well … it was all over for me.")
Those words, the memory of that happiness, continually breaks Kurt's heart. Could it be possible that, after close to twenty years of marriage, after reciting those words so many times, that they didn't mean anything anymore? Had Sebastian found someone else that he could fall in love with?
Sebastian won't answer that question. He says it's insulting.
But maybe he can't because he knows that Kurt couldn't handle the answer.
Every time Kurt looks at his husband, he sees touches on his skin that don't belong to Kurt, kisses on his lips that Kurt didn't put there.
Kurt doesn't know how to make himself see past them.
So instead, he looks away.
The second Kurt feels sunlight on his face, he's up out of bed, grabbing his messenger bag and padding down the hall into his studio before Sebastian can stir.
The room looks different with rays of blurry morning sun coming through the windows. Kurt didn't put any black out curtains up, so the sheer curtains that came with the house let fingers of light poke through, bouncing off the wallpaper and brightening up the floor. The floor is a mess, the wood warped and worn, as if this room were a main thoroughfare and not a bedroom. The wood had been varnished at one time. Spots of resin dot the floor like oily puddles. The wood itself – some variety of walnut, Kurt suspects - has blackened to a morbid pitch with age. It sucks up the light and gives little back.
"Oh, yeah," Kurt murmurs, pressing around the brittle edge of one spot with his toe. "This floor has to be completely redone."
He's stuck on the idea that this room could have been his daughter's room if she were still alive. He and Sebastian had talked about raising Grace in a more suburban environment, but Kurt leaned heavily on the side of staying in the city. Some of his motives were selfish. He loved New York City. He loved Manhattan. It had been his lifelong dream to end up there. He wanted his daughter to grow up with all of the things he didn't have – culture, diversity, theaters and libraries and museums a train ride away. He didn't want her raised around the closed, narrow minds of a small town. He wanted her to be an independent thinker – liberated, rational, intelligent. But he also wanted her to be compassionate and kind. He wanted her to know the world, its wonders and its failings, the way it truly was, not the way it looked on a movie screen, and long to change it for the better. They participated in fundraisers, gathered donations for the homeless, and volunteered in soup kitchens.
Grace was a pure light, a driving force that, at her age, Kurt didn't get the chance to be.
So in honor of her, he wants his workroom to be bright and colorful - a mixture of his vintage aesthetic and her fun-loving personality. He'll paint the walls her favorite colors, put homages to her in the details, pick out the furnishings she would have preferred.
Since this will be the room he spends most of his time in, he wants it to be everything about his daughter that he adored.
He opens his bag and pulls out his phone, checking the time. 6:08. The movers are supposed to arrive between eight a.m. and ten, but movers, electricians, plumbers, and cable guys never arrive on time. He fishes out his sketchbook. He sits on the floor and gets to work jotting down a layout – where his drafting table will go, where he'll store his bolts, where he'll put his sewing machine, a spot for a work chair, marking places here and there for something personal like his mother's vanity, his first ever dress form, a few of his awards ...
… and photographs. Lots and lots of photographs.
He didn't keep photographs in his studio at Vogue. He had an obsession with keeping his private life private, which he doesn't apologize for. Since he met clients there, he liked to keep that space impersonal – nothing to get in the way of the job at hand. Unlike Sebastian, who had candid snapshots and some of the most Godawful photographs from their high school and college years stuffed into collage frames and hung on every single wall of his office, squeezing things like his degrees and his diplomas into far corners so that those pictures could be prominently displayed. He always said that people knew the Smythes by name and reputation. If anyone wanted to see his credentials, then they could Google them. But when people walked into his office, he wanted them to know that first and foremost, he was a family man.
Besides, Sebastian had always known, from childhood, that he would become a lawyer. He never dreamed that he would be a father … or a husband.
Those were the two accomplishments he seemed the proudest of.
Kurt regrets not having more pictures of Grace hanging on his studio walls, her smiling face to look at every hour of every day, watching his meetings and overseeing his every stitch. She was his good-luck charm, his soothing balm, his missing puzzle piece. She deserved a place of honor.
Now he'll give her one.
His stomach growls as he works. A smell from somewhere tickles his nose and he groans. Just a few more seconds of sketching on the hard ground and he'll grab a bite to eat … maybe. With his ass becoming numb, he doesn't see a reason to get up, and bedsides, he's on a roll. The sharp sounds of car doors opening and closing, and constant banging echo in, and he winces, his head throbbing from lack of sleep. Dammit, if he could just get it to stop! It's hard enough to concentrate as it is. He hopes this is a one-time only thing. He'd hate to wake up to that cacophony every morning. If he ever decides to go outside and meet the neighbors, he'll have to find a polite way of asking them not to do whatever that is before he has his morning coffee.
Of course, soundproofing is also a feasible option.
"Kurt? Kurt, are you …?"
Kurt shifts his legs underneath him. He lifts a hand to massage his shoulders. That mattress must have killed his back. His arms ache something fierce. Sitting on this floor doesn't help, the uneven boards digging in to his legs, but it's not an impetus for him to stop.
Just one more minute. One more minute of sketching out this room and then he'll join the world. One more minute to get his thoughts straight. One more minute to brush aside the things that like to torture him. Forget that his mother died when he was eight, his stepbrother when he was 18. That his father passed away three years ago, and his daughter six months ago.
Not too long after, his husband cheated.
Five. That was the number of things that he had loved in this world more than himself.
Those are the things that he'd lost.
They were the things he needed to forget in order to make it through till the evening.
He'll replace the insulation and the drywall, smother everything in a noiseproofing compound, then paint the walls in swirls of pink and gold. He'll do the ceiling in varying shades of blue, indigo, and violet, like the sky at night, and cover it in crystals to represent stars the way Grace had wanted to do with her bedroom. Kurt had promised her that, the second everything was over, when they could risk her being around the debris and the fumes, he would do that for her.
He had never broken a promise to Grace. He wasn't about to start.
He scribbles those notes in sloppy script in the margin of his paper, sniffles and wipes his tears with the back of his shaking hand. He tries to focus on specifics to bring himself back from the brink of a breakdown. He needs a good cry, but he doesn't want the comforting that will go with it if Sebastian hears him. He just can't right now. Many times, Sebastian comforting Kurt turns into Kurt comforting him back, and Kurt only has the strength to handle one outburst.
"Kurt? Did you want to …?"
Kurt waves a hand to shoo away the buzzing beside his ear, relieved when it doesn't take much more than that.
In order to paint the walls, he'll have to take the wallpaper down.
That immediately brings to mind the corner of torn paper over by the window, and the word written underneath.
Darling.
That corner offends him. Kurt had entertained the idea that that word had nothing to do with Sebastian; that there was another layer of wallpaper underneath, probably festooned with line art of flowers, along with quotes from various love poems sprinkled throughout, circa 1800s. But then that would make that one tear and that one word an amazing coincidence, since darling is the pet name that Sebastian has called Kurt since day one. When he started doing it, every time he said it, Kurt had an incredible urge to sock him on the jaw.
He was a pain in the ass, even back then.
Did Sebastian actually think Kurt would fall for writing darling on the wall? After the things he said? After what he did?
Kurt's hand trembles so badly, he smudges the ink on his page. He stops writing. He takes a deep breath and counts to ten. He closes his eyes and concentrates on the sun warming his face. It's gone now when it was there just a second ago, which is disconcerting, but he has to ignore that and calm down. He has to relax. He'd promised he'd give this marriage a chance; that he'd try to make this work. And Sebastian, so far, has held up his part of the bargain. He's given Kurt space. He's listened to him vent uncontested. He's let Kurt keep tabs on him – where he goes, when he'll be back, with photo texts in between to prove that he is where he said he would be. Kurt has to give him the benefit of the doubt. If Sebastian extends an olive branch, Kurt should take it.
But did he want to?
"I didn't hear you when you got up this morning."
Kurt sighs. "Well, you were dead to the world." Sebastian's voice starts Kurt's hand up again. He wants to look busy. He doesn't want to be caught in a position where he has to give his husband his full attention.
He hasn't forgotten everything yet.
"I'm just saying, see? You won't disturb me. You don't need to put a bed in here," he adds under his breath.
Kurt bobs his head back and forth, adding a place in his layout for a foldout out of spite. "We'll see. It's only been the one day."
"That's true," Sebastian says. It sounds like a challenge. A tired challenge, like Sebastian knows he's already lost. "So, you like the room, huh?"
"Yeah. I think I do."
"And what about the rest of the house?"
He doesn't know why Sebastian sounds like he's asking. It's a done deal. They both agreed on getting a new house. Sebastian found one he thought Kurt would like and bought it. What? Are they going to back out now and magically move somewhere else?
Will moving around from house to house solve what's wrong between them?
"It's fine, I guess." Kurt shrugs. "I don't know. I think it's hard for me to visualize without taking the grand tour. I'll be able to tell better when I get started decorating."
"Are you gonna hire that guru guy to help you with the yin and yang stuff?" Sebastian jokes cautiously. "That Kung Fu guy … what's his name …" Sebastian snaps his fingers as if he's seriously trying to remember.
"He was a Feng shui practitioner, and his name was Carl."
"His name was Carl?" Sebastian laughs. "No no no, his name was not Carl. Carl is the name of a dentist. He's not a guy you call to Wang Chung your house."
"Feng shui," Kurt corrects again. "I hired him to help me create balance in our home." Kurt chuckles despite the fact that he doesn't want to find what Sebastian said funny. He doesn't want Sebastian to affect him. But he's right. The man's name irked Kurt, too, when Isabelle referred him. "Ridiculous name or not, he seemed like a knowledgeable guy."
"Well, do you think that shaolin stuff could work here?"
The levity of the moment becomes saturated by the pain hanging in the room, and Kurt coils further into his sketch.
"That remains to be seen. But I think I'm going to try doing it for myself this time. Of course, the overall effect is going to be completely thrown to heck when you hire whoever never to decorate your office." Kurt throws a derisive scowl over his shoulder. It misses its mark when Kurt won't look Sebastian in the eyes.
Sebastian swallows Kurt's scowl without thinking of a comeback. They've had that argument before when Kurt redecorated their penthouse. Kurt felt the need to redecorate whenever something big happened in their lives, but Sebastian's office was off limits, so it stayed the same. Kurt tried to find one or two things to put into his design scheme that would bring a theme from Sebastian's office out so that the penthouse would blend, but whatever the thing he chose was – a print or a vase, an ottoman or a coffee table – it stuck out like a sore thumb, until Kurt tried less and less.
"Can't fight City Hall," he'd say, returning to the business of finishing the rest of the space.
Things changed around them, and yet, in Sebastian's carefully curated world, life stood still.
The last time Kurt redecorated was before Grace was born. Nothing in the penthouse matched Sebastian's office after that.
"I want you to do it," he says decisively.
Kurt stops scribbling. "Me?"
"Yeah."
Kurt stares at the paper in front of him, the surface more ink than white. He almost looks back to see if Sebastian is serious. "Are you … are you sure? You always said that we need our separate spaces."
"That's only because you're a little heavy handed with the pastels."
It's the opportunity Kurt has been waiting for their entire marriage – to decorate Sebastian's office. Once upon a time, he saw it as the ultimate gesture of trust.
Back when he was naïve, and apparently fairly stupid.
"I trust you," Sebastian says. "Just don't go making it all shabby chic."
"Don't worry. I won't." Kurt debates standing up and giving Sebastian a hug, or a handshake. This seems like a time that would warrant it. But when he rolls an inch to his knees, his entire body screams with pain. God, he feels old. How can he be this stiff after just half an hour?
Kurt returns to his planning. Even though he doesn't feel prepared to leave his sanctuary, he affixes on that solid mask he's been wearing for weeks around Sebastian. Just one more minute. One more minute and he'll go downstairs. He thinks he says it out loud. He expects Sebastian to go back to their room and get ready for the day, but he stays in place like a statue, watching Kurt draw, huddled over his sketchbook with his back turned to him and the door.
Kurt waits to hear the sound of footsteps retreat the way they came, but they don't. Kurt's pencil stops above a square drawn in the corner meant to represent his stereo. He can't continue his drawing with his husband watching, so he bites the bullet.
"Was there something else you needed?" he asks.
"They've … uh … got the bed in," Sebastian says, "and the TV."
Kurt scrunches his nose. He lifts his head. What does he mean they've got…? The bed and the TV are on the moving truck. Kurt looks at his phone, resting on the floor by his knee.
"What are you talking about?" Kurt scoffs. "The movers haven't even arrived yet. It's only 7:15."
"That's right," Sebastian says, speaking slowly, the way he does when he's explaining something to Kurt that he thinks Kurt might explode over. He leans forward like he wants to come in, but doesn't without an invitation. "It's 7:15 in the evening."
Kurt snaps his head up, rolling his eyes as if Sebastian is crazy, ready to object. But with his gaze away from his page, he notices something different about the light in the room. Instead of a soft, diffused blue, it's become a thicker yellow. Shadows stretch across the floor that weren't there before. The room is warmer than he remembers, and the skin of his left shin, folded over his right, feels hot and irritated, like he might have gotten a sunburn.
"It's the evening?" Kurt asks, shaking his head. "How can it … but … why didn't you tell me? Why didn't you come get me?"
"I tried. I told you when the movers arrived. I asked you what you wanted for lunch. I brought you the portable heater, and put a lamp in here when it started to get dark so you'd have light."
Kurt looks around him. In the emptiness of the room, they're easy to see. There's a portable heater behind him, and in the corner of the room, to the left of the door, standing straight and tall like a structural support beam, is a brass lamp without a shade, filling the room with artificial light.
They're the first two pieces of furniture in his new studio, and Sebastian put them there.
Kurt doesn't want them there. He'd rather be cold and alone in the dark.
"We don't have WiFi or cable yet, but I set up the Blu-ray player," Sebastian continues. "I thought I could go get some take-out, and we could have a picnic dinner on the bed. Maybe … watch a movie?"
Kurt does a 180 on his sore ass and looks at his husband, which is to say that he looks at a spot over Sebastian's head, with a mildly confused expression. He's not really thinking about the bed or the movie or dinner at all. Even though he was hungry earlier, apparently hours earlier, he's not hungry now. He couldn't be less hungry. His desire to eat simply went away. His appetite has been waning off and on for weeks. Sometimes he forgets to eat until Sebastian sticks a sandwich in his face.
Sebastian stuck a spear into the heart of what they had together, and now he's keeping Kurt alive to help him fix it.
"Kurt? Please?"
Here's the olive branch, Kurt thinks. He has to decide whether he's going to take it, or toss it aside.
He promised Sebastian he'd try, and Kurt has never broken a promise to Sebastian.
He's not going to start tonight.
"Alright. I'm coming," Kurt says, closing his sketchbook. He tries to unfold his legs, but his knees lock up on him, and he rushes to massage the beginnings of a cramp. Sebastian looks like he's about to spring in and help, but Kurt puts up a hand. "I'll just be a minute."
Sebastian nods and takes a step back. Even with that rejection, Sebastian looks happier, more hopeful. He takes his phone out of his pocket and leaves the room. The grateful smile on Sebastian's lips should fill Kurt with warmth. It used to.
But it doesn't.
That night, after a meal of Szechuan from a questionable establishment (not questionably clean, just questionably Chinese), and The Devil Wears Prada (a movie that Sebastian swore up and down that he'd never watch again), Sebastian falls asleep with his head on Kurt's chest. And Kurt lets him, even if he himself barely gets a minute of peace.