Anywhere But Home
Chapter 7
Part One
On the fifth day of the trip, at exactly 3:24 in the afternoon, they can be found at a restaurant in Wyoming, drinking coffee and enjoying comforting silence.
Kurt is sipping his coffee while waiting for his meal to come, and Sebastian is reding the newspapers he bought on a kiosk this morning.
„Kurt!", Kurt hears a female, farmiliar voice from behind.
„Kuuurt."
The voice is high and excited and scarily farmiliar. Kurt doesn't have to think twice to realize who the person behind him is.
He turns aroud slowly, praying to god that the voice is just in his head, or that this is some bizarre dream.
Of course, he somehow expected to have an encounter with Rachel Berry in future, but nothing could have made him think that it would be at thirty to four at a restaurant in Vaeoming.
Sure, he missed Rachel a lot. He missed her loud laugh, perfect singing voice and amazing way of turning all of the attention to herself anywhere she was. One of the worst things of the whole two first months of the summer was the whole ending of his friendship with Rachel.
As he turns around, he sees Rachel in a white sundress that perfectly brings aout her tan and is so different than any of the clothes Rachel used to wear but still so Rachel.
Her hair is curled slightly, and shows some of the blonde highlights she obviously made recently.
In a three words – she looks gorgeous.
„Hello Rachel.", he says slowly, pausing between the words carefully.
He turns to Sebastian, giving him a panicked look, not knowing what to do and just seeking for help from him in some way.
Sebastian just shrugs helplessly, lips pressed in a tight line and looking apologetic.
He looks at Rachel again, and – scarily – she's still there.
„Hi Kurt", she smiles at him again, obviously enchanted to see him, „long time no see."
He presses his lips together and brings himself to smile.
„Yeah, I know.", he nods, „You look great."
Rachel honest to god blushes and smiles fiendly at him. „I could say the same to you, you know."
Kurt grins at her, because really, he has missed that girl.
But still, his curiosity wins over the first hand excitement, so he says: „What are you doing here?", trying not to sound rude.
She gives him a shaky smile, obviously afraid of his reaction.
She looks at her feet and then quickly up at Kurt, still avoiding his gaze.
„I'm here with a friend.", she says plainly, like that makes anything clearer to him now.
Kurt simply raises his eyebrows in question, knowing that Rachel will understand the movement.
She nods in understanding and clears her throat, a gesture that would seem insecure but instead Kurt knows that Rachel is preparing for a speech.
„Me and my... friend decided to go on a trip in west America by car, which is, of course, a long ride. We were preparing that trip for a while, and one week, I went in town to buy some new clothes", she gestures towards her dress to indicate her change of style, „I met your dad there, and we got talking. He obviously knew the state between us two, but was still really nice to me. I asked him about you, and he told me that you went on a trip. I asked him where did you go, and he told me somewhere in the States."
Kurt still didn't know where this was going, but anyway continued to listen, a confused look on his face.
Sebastian also listened, and, though he certanly wasn't in a good relationship with Rachel, he decided to listen to her story, because, knowing Kurt, they will probably be seeing her again on this trip, and he wanted to at least understand what was going on while she and her friend were here.
„I wanted to know where were you off to, because belive it or not, I miss you more than anyone in my life, so I asked a person you talked to since going where you were."
Kurt closed his eyes and took a deep breath, trying to steady himself. He only talked to one person since he left, and god he's going to kill Quinn.
"She told us where you were at the time, and that you're moving slowly – stopping often and sleeping at motels almost every night. So, we decided to try finding you."
Kurt is mostly just confused, so he doesn't bother rolling his eyes or attacking her.
"But how did you know that we're right here?", Sebastian says from behind him.
She takes a deep breath. "We didn't."
Kurt arches an eyebrow disbelievingly.
She shrugs and lets out the breath she's been holding. "We really didn't."
Kurt huffs a frustrated breath, not believing her yet.
"Yeah, right."
Rachel gives him 'the look', pouting her lips slightly and making some weird thing with her eyes wide open.
"And how the hell were we supposed to know?", she scoffs, crossing her arms on her chest.
Kurt opens his mouth to argue, but nothing comes out, instead he takes a deep breath and closes them again.
"You couldn't.", he hears Sebastian's voice and wants to yell at him for not being on his side.
Rachel looks at Sebastian pointedly and nods frantically, saying: "Exactly."
Kurt rolls his eyes at that, asking himself where the hell this conversation is going and praying for god it won't end in disaster.
Apparently at that thought his face expression changed, because next thing he knows, Rachel's face softens and she sits on an empty chair beside him, taking his and in hers. She looks at his face and then down at their fingers, looking somehow sad.
"I miss you, you know.", she says, still not moving her gaze from their hands and looking and sounding like she's about to cry or something.
he then lifts her gaze and smiles at him sadly.
Fuck, Kurt thinks as he smiles at her too.
"I miss you too.", he says, and then realizes that his voice is full of choked tears.
"Oh god", Sebastian says across from them, killing the whole moment.
Kurt turns his head to him, clenching his jaw to keep himself from yelling at him.
Instead, he says: "You're such a jackass I don't think there's even a word for that."
Sebastian just grins at him, while Rachel rolls her eyes, obviously irritated.
"So, are you two like, together. Or something.", she asks and makes them turn in her direction to stare at her dumbly.
Sebastian recovers first and shakes his head frantically.
"Sorry", he laughs, "I'm not a masochist."
Kurt glares at him. "And everyone knows I have a good taste so they wouldn't find me with you in bed."
"Yeah, if you would be any good in the sack."
"Oh, you don't know how good I can be.", Kurt says narrowing his eyes in Sebastian's direction.
Sebastian raises his eyebrows. "I somehow doubt that."
"Okay.", suddenly Rachel cuts in, stopping them for having more arguments (and probably, after a few minutes – yelling at each other). "I get it."
Kurt takes a deep breath to calm himself and Sebastian just looks amused. Somehow Kurt loses patience so quickly in Sebastian's presence that he wants to bang his head against a wall. If you can handle Finn and Rachel at the same time, you can handle him, he usually says to himself in moments like these to stop himself from going on a killing spree.
Sebastian can be such a childish asshole, and apparently can go like this forever non-stop.
But Kurt isn't going to give him a luxury of seeing him lose his head.
Instead, Kurt takes exactly five deep breaths – his eyes closed – and then opens them, putting a blinding smile on his face and looking directly at Rachel.
"So, who's your friend?", he says, trying to move the whole conversation from the point of him and Sebastian.
Rachel presses her lips together in a line and takes a breath through her nose.
"Um", she starts, playing with her hair behind her left ear, "you kind of know her."
A/N: Sorry for the late update guys! I hope you liked it!
xxx
