AN: So...this chapter took forever. I've been working on it on and off for a month, and it just would not go the way I wanted it to. For anyone still interested in this story (firstly, thank you) and also, sorry for the long delay, especially since I thought this chapter would be done in, like, a week after the last one. I hope you guys enjoy it, though, and as always, reviews are greatly appreciated :)

Chapter 5: Suddenly, I'm Not Half the Man I Used To Be

"Screw, marry, kill. News anchor edition. Anderson Cooper, Brian Williams, Meredith Viera."

Sebastian could see by the look on Dave's face that he had no idea who any of those people were, but felt little inclination to help him out. Instead, he leaned against the table the four of them had ended up at (that Sebastian had ended up at, actually, and the rest had joined after dancing) and sadly sipped his water.

"Uh…" Dave screwed up his face in concentration at Hummel's challenge. He was sitting beside Sebastian, directly across from Hummel, and Blaine was leaning his head against Hummel's shoulder. Even though Sebastian had done his best to keep Blaine from alcohol, it seemed like he'd still managed to scavenge it off of unsuspecting patrons.

"Well, I guess I'll kill…the first one, and marry the second, and, uh,…screw the third?" Dave's words ended as a question.

Hummel gave him a look of surprise. "You'd sleep with Meredith? Instead of Anderson? Really?" He paused, as if trying to picture it, and then shrugged unconcernedly. "Okay, I guess. Your turn."

"Uh, okay, so, screw, marry, kill…um, Peyton Manning, Rob Gronkowski, Antonio Brown."

Now it was Hummel's turn to look confused, Sebastian noted disinterestedly.

"David, I don't know who any of those people are."

"Screw Peyton Manning. Kill Antonio Brown. Marry Rob Gronkowski." Blaine had pushed his head off of Hummel's shoulder and was looking at Dave with a proud smile. "Final answer."

Dave smiled back at him. "Same here."

"Sebastian, it's your turn," Hummel said, and – oh, look, suddenly he existed again.

"I'll pass," Sebastian said dully. He'd shrugged off his jacket a good half hour ago, and was now doing his best attempt at sulking without looking like he was (because as it turned out, sulking wasn't attractive on anyone).

Sebastian had had plenty of time to think while the rest of the Scooby gang had gone off to dance, and instead of calming himself down, he'd been spiraling, deeper and deeper, into a dark internal abyss of his own making, filled with unpleasant thoughts that were mostly centered on Hummel, on how the world, against the laws of physics and reason, always seemed to revolve around him.

How did Hummel get away with it?

He was every bit as bitchy as Sebastian, every bit as selfish, but was he trying to become a better person? No. If Sebastian said so much as a word, he was a fucking villain, but if Hummel pulled an insult from his usual kitsch-bitch repertoire, he was just being camp. Not to mention he had two – count them, two – guys who were currently in puppy-love with him.

What a fucking disaster of a night. Why had Sebastian wanted to dress up again? He couldn't remember, because now he felt overdressed and tacky and desperate, and he just wanted to get home and shrug out of all these damn, uncomfortably tight clothes. He had no idea how Hummel regularly wore jeans that painfully tight, except for the possibility that he was Ken-smooth down there.

"That's not how this game works, Gossip Girl," Hummel said, breaking him out of his dark spiral. Sebastian looked up to see Hummel giving him a teasing smile, and – bless him, he was actually trying to be friendly with Sebastian.

He sighed, pushing himself into a seated position.

Fine.

Fine, that wasn't how the game worked? He'd show them how the game worked. He'd invented the fucking game.

"Okay, this one's for you, Princess." Hummel's smile wavered, perhaps put off by the red-flashing danger in Sebastian's tone.

"Screw, marry, kill. Me, Dave, Blaine."

There, he'd said it, and now he couldn't unsay it, and all three of them were looking at him with horrified expressions.

"That's not funny, Sebastian," Hummel said quietly.

"It wasn't meant to be," Sebastian said. "It was meant to be a trick question. Because here's the thing, Hummel, you're so fucking nice you'll never answer it. You're so fucking nice when it comes to just about everything that Gandhi must write 'Dear Abby' letters to you. And therein lies the mystery – how can someone be so fucking nice when in actuality, they're kind of a selfish bitch?"

Hummel stared at him, and Sebastian could almost literally see the layers of protection crashing back into place, one after the other.

"I think," he finally said, in a tight, strained voice, "that I'm going to get another drink." And then he gingerly untangled himself from Blaine's form and pushed himself out of his seat.

He took one last look at Sebastian, and beneath the reapplied armor, he could see the hurt-hurt-hurt, and then Hummel turned on his heel and strutted away, chin pushed into the air.

Sebastian pushed himself up as well. "Going to the bathroom," he half-growled, and stalked towards the back of Scandals, away from Blaine's and Dave's stares.

When he was inside the bathroom, he wrenched the faucet tap open, splashing cold water from his face, trying to literally cool himself down.

He felt like absolute shit.

It was always a bad sign when you didn't know if you were angrier at the person you'd just snapped at or yourself – hell, who was he kidding? He knew it was himself. Was it possible, he wondered, to make things ten times worse than they were while trying to make them just a little bit better? Was trying to be a good person kind of like trying to give up an addiction, where you managed to go cold turkey for a month or two, and then ended up in the back of some 7-Eleven stuffing as many cigarette packs into the basket as you could fit?

Because he'd fucked up. There had always been a certain line, a certain clear, sharpie-black line, that he and Hummel had known to never cross, that they had, on mutual agreement, always toed but never touched. Apparently that all changed tonight, though, because he was pretty fucking sure he'd just crossed it – as a matter of fact, he was pretty sure he'd just face-planted hard completely on the wrong side of it.

And now his conscience wasn't anywhere in sight – no, it was, actually, but for once, it was completely silent, just staring at him with that hurt-hurt-hurt expression, and it was all he could see when he closed his eyes.

"What the fuck was that?"

Dave had slammed the restroom door open, letting it thud shut behind him. Sebastian pushed himself straight, turning off the faucet with a robotic motion.

He might as well get this over with.

"I don't know, Dave," he said, and his voice didn't come across nearly as apologetic as it had sounded in his head. "He was getting on my nerves."

"Getting on your – this was about getting him to like me, Smythe! Forget about your nerves, this was my chance to – I was actually getting somewhere, and then you – "

"Well, what's stopping you?" Sebastian spat, shoving his hands into his pockets, because at this point of digging himself into a hole, it seemed easiest to just keep going down. "I don't see that you need me anymore, Dave! So why don't you just go? Wouldn't want to keep you, not when you're so busy kissing the ground he fucking walks on."

"What is wrong with you?" Dave said slowly, his voice thick with resentment and disbelief. And that really was the kicker, wasn't it, because if Sebastian could answer that question, he'd probably have the Nobel Prize in Cognitive Science.

"He's fucking disappeared!" Dave shouted. "You made him run off!"

Sebastian paused from whatever half-formulated acid he was about to throw back at him. "What do you mean, run off?"

"He said he was going to get a drink, but he's not at the bar, and I've been looking all over Scandals, and - " Dave's face was scrunched again, and his breathing was harsh. "I swear to God, Smythe, if something fucking happens to him, that – " Dave jabbed a finger into Sebastian's chest "- that is on you."

In the end, Sebastian found him in the least imaginative place possible, and he had to wonder about Dave's eyesight if he hadn't spotted Hummel's rainbow display against the dark brick of Scandals' back alley.

"They're looking for you."

Hummel didn't respond. His head was resting on the brick, and his eyes were trained down, and Sebastian figured he wouldn't have been so comfortable leaning on that wall if he knew what Scandals patrons usually did against it (hell, what he'd done against it a couple of times when the stalls had been taken).

"I said – "

"I heard you!" Hummel snapped. He looked up at Sebastian, eyes brimming with unshed tears, lips literally quivering with the effort of holding them back. Sebastian thought Hummel was waiting for him to say something, but then he started speaking himself.

"Why are you doing this? Why are you hanging out with David?"

It took Sebastian a moment to readjust to the unexpected gear shift in their conversation. He looked down at the floor, littered with used condoms and beer cans, and then leaned against the wall a few feet away from Hummel.

"You know why."

"Tell me."

"Because I fucked up with him. Because I'm trying to be a better person," he started, rattling off the words in an emotionless voice, and even to him it all sounded a little too rehearsed. "Because I – "

Hummel gave a harsh, hollow laugh that cut him off. "Bullshit," he murmured, and then, looking directly at Sebastian, eyes blazing, "Bull. Shit. You're not trying to be a better person, you're a spoiled little brat looking for entertainment, and in another week, you're just going to move on to the next attraction!"

And just like that, Sebastian felt his temper flare again. If he was the lighter, Hummel was the oxygen.

"Oh, I'm the hypocritical one? Really? So, you hanging around Dave, encouraging him, knowing how he fucking feels, that's just charity work, is it?"

"This is so fucking like you!"

"What's so fucking like me?"

"It is so fucking like you to make this all about yourself! You didn't even know David!"

All of a sudden, Sebastian felt like he'd been unfairly backed into a corner. He'd come out here ready to argue with Hummel about a bad temper and a bad choice of words, maybe even offer something close to an apology, but now they were suddenly yelling at each other about Dave, and it all felt a little too close to home for his liking.

"You barely even met him," Hummel continued without pause, words pouring out of him like an avalanche. "You say what, like, ten words to him and suddenly you think you're the entire reason for all of his million and one problems? You are a droplet – a droplet – in the shit storm that was swirling around him at the time." And suddenly Hummel was taking a gasp for air, and it took Sebastian a second to realize it was a sob, and that the tears had finally begun their escape down his cheeks.

"You didn't even fucking know him! So, what gives you the right? What gives you the right to act like this is your problem, like this is your fault? You don't get to take responsibility, you don't get to be the one to fix him. You're nothing in all of this!" Hummel stomped his foot in frustration, and the sheer sincerity behind it prevented it from looking comical.

Sebastian felt his cheeks blazing with a defensiveness and uncertainty he'd only ever felt around Hummel. "So what? So, you rejected him, and that means you get rights to all the blame?"

"That's not why I – Jesus!" Hummel threw his hands up, as if he was imploring divine assistance. Finally, perhaps because none came, he dropped his hands to his side, face scrunched in defiance.

"You say I'm full of bullshit?" Sebastian asked when Hummel just glared at him. "Well, guess what? I'm calling you out on yours. You pretend like you're so much better than all of us, like you're the fucking Queen, but you're just like the rest of us. You're exactly like me! You're selfish, and arrogant, and bad-tempered, and the only difference between you and me is that I don't fucking hide what I am!"

His voice had built up to a hoarse yell by the end, and his last shouted words cut off into a resounding silence, where even the disco music coming from inside Scandals seemed to dim itself. It was so intensely quiet that Sebastian could hear himself breathing. He could definitely hear Hummel's miniature sobs, his tiny gulps of air as tear tracks paved pathways down his cheeks.

"I would have given anything to trade places with him that day," Hummel finally whispered into the silence.

And as much as Sebastian's heart was still thrashing with anger, as much as he wanted to believe that Hummel didn't really mean that, he couldn't quite convince himself of it while staring into his broken-glass eyes.

"Seven," Hummel continued, still in a whisper, as if the quiet between them was some incantation he didn't dare break, as if Sebastian was the only one this secret was meant for. "Seven times he called me that afternoon. Seven chances I had to stop him, to talk him off of the ledge. All I had to do was pick up the phone. But I didn't. And I can never, ever forgive myself for that." His voice cracked at the end, and Sebastian absentmindedly watched a tear roll slowly down his cheek, getting caught in the cupid's bow of his lip.

And suddenly Sebastian didn't want to look at him anymore, because Kurt Hummel was many things, but helpless wasn't supposed to be one of them.

Now do you understand? his conscience whispered lowly into his ear.

And Sebastian did. Because it was true that most days, everything that came out of Kurt's mouth was different flavors of bitchy, haughty, and insulting, but beneath the mask, beneath the façade of frost, Kurt actually cared. He actually felt, and loved, and wanted to be better, and no amount of putting on a mask or bitching at strangers would change that.

Meanwhile, Sebastian could preach kindness and forgiveness until his face turned blue, but underneath it all, he would always be stuck as the same selfish, ugly portrait – he was a goddamn Dorian Gray.

And fuck it, deep down, he'd known that already.

Why else would Sebastian have made Kurt the voice of his own fucking conscience?

"Did you ever think…" and even to Sebastian (was he the one speaking? God, why was he speaking?) his voice sounded awkward and stilted, "did you ever think that maybe he was just calling to say good-bye?"

The silence still hung around them, shrouding them, and Sebastian couldn't really move, and it seemed like Kurt couldn't either, and both of them just stood there, frozen, staring at each other, with Kurt's eyebrows furrowed as he hiccupped through his sobs.

He realized Kurt was waiting for him to continue.

Oh, God.

"Did you ever think - that no matter what you'd said on the phone, you wouldn't have been able to talk him out of it? That the moment he said what he'd wanted to say, he would have just…he would have just done it? And that if you'd picked up, he would have done it a half hour earlier, and his father would have had to come home to - "

Sebastian cut himself off abruptly. He didn't need to finish that sentence. He could live his entire life and not need to finish that sentence.

Kurt continued staring at him with wide, glistening eyes, as if Sebastian had just started reciting Ancient Greek poetry.

Finally he un-pursed his lips. "But that – that might not be true."

Sebastian's breath was surprisingly steady for the precise surgical operation he was attempting. "I'm not saying it is. All I'm saying is, what's the fucking point of beating yourself up about it, when you don't know if you not answering the phone made it worse, better, or no different? He's alive. And all that really matters is how you act with him from now on."

Wow. That was actually kind of deep, his conscience finally piped up, wiping away an imaginary tear. Maybe you should take some of your own advice every once in a while.

Kurt seemed to be processing Sebastian's words, mouth slightly ajar, cheeks still streaked with drying tears, and Sebastian understood now.

He understood that Rolodex of emotions that crossed Kurt's face every time he heard Dave's name. It was a mixture of regret, and guilt, and hope of forgiveness, along with a healthy dose of self-loathing – and in that sense, he and Kurt were very much the same.

For the first time, Sebastian felt an immense pity for Dave, not just because of the suicide attempt, but because of the aftermath – the indignity of having everyone around him treat him like either a porcelain doll or a community service project.

Finally, Kurt shook his head numbly, eyes still trained on Sebastian.

"But you agree."

"Agree?"

"That I'm a bitch."

And again, words failed him, but he knew every second he didn't answer was like water slowly filling up a room, and if he waited too long neither of them would be able to breath anymore.

"Only…only if you agree that I'm one, too," he finally said. It was either the entirely wrong or entirely right thing to say, and he wasn't sure which.

Kurt seemed to be deciding as well, as he absentmindedly licked his lips and took a residual gulping sob.

For the life of him, Sebastian couldn't read him right now. Usually when he couldn't read people, it was because they hid their emotions too well, but with Kurt, it was almost exactly the opposite – there were so many emotions swirling in his eyes right now Sebastian had no idea how to untangle them.

Finally, Kurt took a steading hiccup, gently wiping at a tear track.

"Pot and kettle," he said softly, with the tiniest of smirks, and Sebastian knew there was hope for his sorry self yet.

"Jesus, where does he hide all that weight? He's so fucking short."

He and Dave were making a team effort of leading a drunk Blaine through the parking lot, both with an arm under one of his armpits, with Hummel walking a little ways in front of them.

As Sebastian half-dragged Blaine out of the way of a vomit pile, he tried to remember if Blaine had been this unattractively drunk last time they were at Scandals – probably, but Sebastian had likely been too busy trying to loosen his morals to notice.

"Hey, that's not very nice," Blaine slurred half-heartedly, trying to elbow Sebastian (and God, suddenly Sebastian was very turned off by boys who couldn't hold their liquor).

"Yogi doesn't think I'm short. Do you, Yogi?" Blaine craned his face up at Dave, who only looked down at him with indulgent amusement. Sebastian wasn't exactly sure at what point that night Blaine had christened the nickname for Dave, but he was sure glad he hadn't been there for it.

When Sebastian and Hummel had re-entered Scandals after their talk (reconciliation? truce?), Dave's expression upon seeing them had been a mixture of relief and unhappiness. Relief, that Kurt was back, and unhappiness, probably that Sebastian still existed.

Hummel had tried to make a beeline toward Dave, but Sebastian had held him off.

"How about I tell him you're not feeling well, and you can go to the bathroom for a few minutes?"

Kurt had only stared at him blankly, tear-swollen eyes blinking in confusion.

"You know, because you look like you just finished watching The Notebook while holding your dead hamster?"

Hummel had self-consciously run a hand against his water-marked cheeks, but the main damage of redness and puffiness still remained.

"Right," he'd muttered, and changed his direction to the bathroom, maneuvering around a few queens who'd been trying to invite them out to the floor.

"Come on, honeys, Whitney wants you to dance," one of them had said in a deep baritone, and then turned her head to watch Hummel's escape to the bathroom. "Where's your boyfriend going, sugar?"

Sebastian had ignored them, moving toward Dave, who was leaning up against the bar with an expression of mistrust and apprehension, while Blaine sat a few chairs away from him, flipping a tiny umbrella back and forth in his hands.

Seeing the squint in Dave's eyes, Sebastian felt a fresh wave of guilt crash over him. This night had been about Dave, and everything had gone from good to shit in a matter of a few words – Sebastian's words.

"He…he felt a little sick. He said he'll be back in a few minutes." Sebastian shoved his hands uncomfortably into his jean pockets. He'd lost track of his jacket when he'd left the table, and he had a strong suspicion that one of the queens was currently tying it around her waist, but hell – it was just a jacket. It hadn't really been his style anyway.

Dave crossed his arms, eyebrows digging little V's into his forehead. "Oh," was all he said, and it hurt Sebastian to see how closed off he suddenly was. All the progress he'd been trying to make the past few weeks was gone, erased in mere seconds. Was there some fundamental law of physics explaining why things were so easy to fuck up but so difficult to fix? Sebastian felt like Newton or Einstein should have looked into that.

"I'm sorry," he said lamely, staring at a kink in Dave's collar. "I shouldn't have… Look, man, I guess I just – "

"He was just getting on your nerves, right? Because – "

"I wanted to help you with your mom," Sebastian broke in suddenly, because what the hell, what could he lose by being honest?

Dave's expression betrayed his surprise, and Sebastian decided to let it all out while he still had the breath to sustain him.

"But I can never figure out the right shit to say, and then Hummel came in like he's…like he's fucking Oprah, or something, and he just said all the right things, and I…" Sebastian trailed off with a weak shrug, chancing a look at Dave's face. He was staring at him, eyebrows still creased, looking deep in concentration.

"So – so you were…jealous?"

"I guess it felt like – like everything comes up fucking roses for the guy. But – "

But shimmering tears, seven chances, a pot and a kettle, memories in a box marked Forget…

"But he's got his own shit, too. We all do. And as for your mom, I – you know I agree with Hummel, right? With everything he said?" Sebastian had the sudden the urge to place a hand on Dave's arm, like Hummel had earlier, but he resisted.

Dave stared at his shoes, pushing a cigarette butt across the floor with the toe of his sneaker.

He mumbled something incoherently, and then looked up at Sebastian. "Do you ever not fuck stuff up?"

"Does Hummel ever leave the house without his moisturizer?"

He got the tiniest of smiles from Dave in return, and it wasn't forgiveness, not quite yet, but it was a start.

Now, however, they were in the parking lot, and Sebastian was realizing he was facing a bit of a problem. He'd been planning on letting Dave crash in his dorm room after drinking from the start, but he'd been counting on Blaine being somewhat sober, and from the way Hummel was still walking a touch unsteadily, it didn't seem like either of them was going to be driving home that night.

So, change of plans.

"I'm driving all of you," Sebastian announced, propping his half of Blaine up against his own car as he pulled out the keys from his back pocket.

Simultaneous responses came back at him.

"Road trip!"

"Wait, what?"

"No, Blaine and I will just sit in the car for a little."

Dave turned his protest from Sebastian to Hummel while letting go of Blaine, who made a valiant attempt to balance on his own. "Sitting in a deserted parking lot at 1:00 in the morning?" Dave said to Kurt. "That's a terrible idea."

Hummel looked like he was on the edge of arguing, almost out of habit, but after a moment of glaring, sighed in defeat instead. Apparently, alcohol made him a touch less stubborn.

"I blame you," Hummel finally said, voice dripping in disdain, turning to Sebastian. "This was all your idea."

"Blame me all you want, sweetheart, but you still need to get home, and last I checked, Jasmine never lent you that flying carpet."

"Yogi!" Blaine called as he leaned back against the side of the car. "They're fighting again. Why do they always fight?"

Dave smiled at him, with a patience that Sebastian found remarkable. "Don't worry. It's the only way Sebastian knows how to talk to people."

"Hey, now," Sebastian broke in. "I don't think I deserve all the blame. It takes two to tango." He paused to smirk tauntingly at Hummel. "And apparently, only one to shimmy."

All he received in response was a huff, as Hummel turned to stare at the few cars still left in the lot.

Sebastian pushed down a touch of disappointment. His tentative attempts at reigniting their back-and-forth was a kind of test, a probing of the newfound waters between them – Sebastian needed to see where things stood between them after tonight. Maybe, with any luck, the two of them could even return to normal (whatever the fuck that meant for them).

So far, however, Kurt wasn't really indicating anything one way or the other.

"I say we go to Sebastian's," Blaine said, sticking his arm in the air for an imaginary vote. "Yogi?"

Dave shrugged in resignation. "Well, my dad'll kill me if he smells beer on me. But he'll also kill me if I spend the night somewhere."

"Just tell him I wasn't feeling well at the movies, and you're staying the night with me to make sure I'm okay," Sebastian said, (not so) gently shoving Blaine away with his hip as he unlocked the backseat door.

Dave stared at him. "How do you come up with stuff like that?"

"It's a gift, Dave. Try not to be too jealous." He yanked Blaine toward him, who protested incoherently, and then beckoned to the backseat. "In you go. And leave room for your beloved."

"You really like manhandling my boyfriend, don't you?" Kurt muttered, and as Sebastian looked back at him, he caught the standard glare, but this time, he could've sworn it had a hint of friendly teasing. If he was really indulging himself, Sebastian could even imagine that Kurt was the tiniest bit grateful - transporting his drunk Wonder Boy was no easy feat.

"There needs to be a little more manhood for it to be called manhandling," Sebastian replied as he watched Blaine clamber in clumsily, shoe getting stuck on the car edge for a few seconds before he wrenched it free and toppled the rest of the way in.

Dave gave an appreciative laugh, and Sebastian felt a sudden swell of relief - relief that he hadn't completely fucked over their relationship, and relief that he still had a chance to smooth things over.

Granted, he'd need a fuckton of sandpaper.

"And now you, Cinderella," Sebastian beckoned in, turning towards Kurt.

"You're a shitty fairy godmother," Hummel said drily, but this time Sebastian was certain he heard teasing, and the relief swelled even more.

"Do you want me to make the requisite wand joke, or are you going to take that one?"

"Turn back into a rodent," Kurt shot back as he slid into the backseat beside Blaine.

Sebastian was about to shut the door, but Hummel leaned toward him suddenly. "You lost your jacket."

Sebastian automatically looked down at himself to confirm something he already knew.

"How else will my prince find me?" he said, giving Hummel one of his standard dirty-flirty winks (also definitely automatic).

Hummel seemed appropriately unfazed by it. "That's a shame," he said loftily, turning to face forward. "It suited you."

Oh, now you admit it. The irrational part of him suddenly wanted that jacket back, because apparently it suited him, and apparently Hummel had noticed.

But the rational part of him knew that the mischievous glint in Kurt's eyes as he turned away meant he was screwing with him, probably because Sebastian had come off a little too 'I-feel-pretty-oh-so-pretty' with his outfit that night.

And then his conscience was reminding him to focus on more important matters (spoiled little brat?), and so he shut the car door without a reply, turning around.

"Ready to bounce…Yogi?"

"Shut up," Dave muttered, blushing siren-red. "He means it in a nice way."

"Sure. When I call people names, I mean it in a 'nice way', too," Sebastian said. "They just never seem to understand." He glanced back at his car, where Kurt was bent away from them, occupied in untwisting Blaine's tangled seatbelt.

"On the bright side," Sebastian said, a little more quietly, "it looks like you don't have much competition for the chivalry side of things. Don't get Lindsay-Lohan-drunk, and you're already exceeding standards."

"I don't – " Dave had a look of perplexity on his face. "I'm not doing this to make Blaine look bad, I just – "

"I know," Sebastian cut him off, patting him on the shoulder. "You're a good person, you just want to make Kurt happy."

Dave's shoulders seemed to relax a little, and Sebastian suddenly realized how tense he was himself, a tension of thin ice and of slowly backing away from a cliff he'd almost just gone over. All he wanted was for this seemingly endless, weepy, therapy-session of a night to finally be over, because looking back, it seemed clear that alcohol and romantically entangled boys were never going to be a good mix.

Then again, maybe it was himself without alcohol that had been the problem.

Suddenly, a slurred tenor was yell-singing, "I meeeeeet a booooy…in east L.A.!" and Hummel was knocking on the inside of the backseat window, gesturing the non-verbal equivalent of 'Are we going yet?'

"Bossy much?" Sebastian mouthed back at him, and Kurt rolled his eyes but didn't quite manage to smother the half-smile tugging at one corner of his mouth.

Dave opened the passenger door and ducked inside, turning around to say something to Kurt.

Sebastian crossed to the other side of the car and slid in to the driver's seat, starting up the car and letting the radio blast into life.

"Hey," Blaine said sleepily from Kurt's shoulder as Sebastian started pulling out of the parking spot. "We never finished our game of Fuck, Marry, Kill."

Sebastian wasn't really sure why – maybe it was the residual relief of stumbling his way through reconciliations with Kurt and Dave; maybe it was the resounding "Oomph!" Blaine made when Kurt's hand connected upside with the back of his head; or maybe it was the fact that Love Hurts chose that moment to start playing on the radio – but all of a sudden Sebastian found himself bursting into laughter.

And then, of course, because it was just one of those nights, Blaine threw up in his backseat.