A/N: Sebastian has to comfort Kurt when he ends up having a bad hair day on one of the biggest nights of his life. Inspired by the prompt 'bad hair day'. Warning for language.
Sebastian fumbles his keys, stabbing blindly for the key hole. On the third try he somehow manages to unlock and open the door to the house. He has no idea how seeing as his arms are full of crap - the evidence of a day's worth of running errands. Thomas and Hepburn crowd at his heels, trying to push past him. Sebastian moves a hip to let them through, losing his grip on his key ring and sending it crashing to the floor.
"Take Heppy into your room and get started on your homework," Sebastian says, kicking his keys into the house and then tapping the distracted boy gently on the rump with the toe of his shoe. "Remember, your uncle Wes is coming over tonight to babysit you, so I want you showered before he comes."
"Alright, daddy," the little boy calls back, letting his Labradoodle drag him through the living room and into his bedroom.
"Kurt!" Sebastian calls, attempting to locate his husband from behind a small mountain of groceries. "Kurt, where are you?" He kicks the front door shut, lays out their dry cleaning on the sofa, and carries the bags full of groceries and a handful of mail into the kitchen. "Kurt, come on, babe," Sebastian yells throughout the house. "We're burning daylight. We've got to get our asses in gear if we're going to make it to your shindig on time."
Sebastian reaches their master bathroom and is stopped by a locked door.
"Kurt?" Sebastian calls through the door. A tiny whimper answers him. Sebastian half-expected this – Kurt Hummel and his infamous stage fright. The amount of vomiting he did when he first snagged the role of Sweeny Todd on Broadway was almost legendary. He must have lost about ten pounds within the space of the first ten performances. The gossip rags had a field day with that, but Kurt rose above it all.
Of course, that was years ago. Sebastian smirks at the thought of his gorgeous husband bent over the porcelain throne over an elementary school fundraiser, finding it adorable that after all these years he would still get so nervous before an event – any event. Though, to be fair, Sebastian has to admit that this isn't just any event. When Kurt took over as head of the Kaplan School's annual Las Vegas Night Fundraiser, he pulled out all the stops, called in every favor he could from the names in his little black book. Through a lot of hard work and persuasion, Kurt had managed to perform miracles. Big names had already RSVP'd – designers, musicians, network celebrities.
Kurt had a reason to be nervous, but a lot more reason to be proud.
Sebastian raps lightly on the door with his knuckles, and the whimpering from inside the bathroom intensifies.
"Come on, Kurt," he pleads. "I was really looking forward to a quickie before tonight. What do you say? It'll help you relax."
"I…something horrible happened, Sebastian."
Sebastian feels his stomach drop. That's not exactly the thing he wants to hear when his husband is crying in a locked bathroom.
"Kurt," Sebastian says, "what happened? Let me in."
Sebastian hears a sniffle, some shuffling, and then the door unlock. He turns the knob and pushes the door in, immediately spotting his husband curled up on the bathroom floor.
His husband…with a head full of bright orange hair.
Sebastian stares, at a complete and utter loss for words, knowing that a single snicker might end up being the death of him, so he opts for a blank, shocked expression.
But somewhere inside, he's dying to burst out laughing.
"Oh…my…God…" Sebastian says, breathing deep after each word to keep from breaking down unintentionally. "Babe, pray tell, why did you choose tonight of all nights to go punk rock?"
"I…I didn't do this on purpose!" Kurt wails, pulling a handful of toilet paper from the roll, not even tearing it off before he blows his nose into it. "I just wanted a few highlights. You know, like I had when I interned at Vogue? All those people coming tonight – they know me, and I didn't want them to think I let myself go now that we live out in the sticks…"
"Mm-hmm," Sebastian says with a nod, trying to be serious and supportive while he nearly bites his tongue in two to keep from saying something he'll regret.
"But I couldn't get an appointment with Carlos in time for the fundraiser tonight," Kurt continues, hiccupping at every pause, "so I thought I'd buy some box color and try it myself." Kurt reaches up and pulls down a lock to look at it, then immediately dissolves into tears.
Sebastian's brow furrows.
"So, did you specifically choose orange…"
"I don't know what happened!" Kurt interrupts, crying furiously, blowing his red nose into his crumpled toilet tissue. "It's a tone on tone colorant. It was just supposed to give me subtle highlights…" He grabs the box and shakes it at Sebastian, trying to prove his point, not that Sebastian can read the words on the box with the way Kurt is flinging it back and forth, "but instead I got this!" He jabs an index finger in the direction of his head.
"Well, whose tone were you trying for?" Sebastian asks, grabbing for the box to look at the instructions. "The Great Pumpkin?"
Kurt shakes his head, yanking the toilet paper until the roll starts spinning like mad.
"What the hell am I supposed to do, Sebastian?" Kurt whines through his tears. "We have to be at the benefit in an hour!"
"Maybe we can just call and tell them your aunt died and you can't make it?" Sebastian suggests, grasping at hypothetical straws.
"I'm chairing the fundraiser!" Kurt bellows. "I can't just cancel. I have to be there!"
"Well, do you want me to run to the store and get you another box of color so you can dye it back to brown?" Sebastian slides down the wall, sitting beside his husband on the bathroom floor.
"My hair is not brown," Kurt mumbles in disgust, blowing his nose. "It's Autumn Chestnut, and I don't want to over-process my hair. Besides, there's no time."
Sebastian nods his head, trying to come up with a feasible plan to help.
"Do you want to try shoe polish?"
Kurt looks up at Sebastian, eyebrows raised, and for a moment he looks like he might actually laugh.
His face crumbles, and he cries harder instead. The sound makes Sebastian's entire body hurt.
"This is ridiculous!" Sebastian says, rising to his knees in front of his husband and shaking him lightly by the shoulders. "What are you doing? You are Kurt Hummel-Smythe. You don't let little things like neon-colored hair derail you."
Kurt pulls some clean toilet tissue from the roll and dabs under his eyes, nodding in agreement.
"You want to know what you're going to do?" Sebastian continues his pep talk. "I'm going to tell you what you're going to do. You are going to hold your head up high…" He puts a finger beneath Kurt's chin and raises his gaze, "and go to that event, orange hair be damned. And if anyone there can't handle it, then fuck them! Fuck them right up the ass because they don't matter."
Kurt chuckles brokenly, looking up at Sebastian with watery eyes and a smile on his wavering lips.
"Do…do you still think I'm beautiful?" Kurt asks, shamelessly fishing for a compliment before he pulls himself together and gets back to the business of getting ready.
"Of course, you're still beautiful," Sebastian says, baby talking Kurt a little to humor him and pressing a kiss to his forehead. "You will always be the most handsome man I have ever seen."
Kurt nods as he leans into his husband's arms, taking a deep breath in and letting it out slowly. Sebastian plants another kiss onto the top of Kurt's head, his eyes glancing down at the carrot-colored nest of hair tickling his nose.
"Thank you, Sebastian," Kurt mutters, bringing his tissue to his nose and blowing it one last time.
"Hey," Sebastian says, taking a longer, closer look at Kurt's demolished do, "for you, anything. I just have one question." Sebastian holds Kurt tighter.
"Yes?" Kurt asks calmly, his voice muffled by Sebastian's shirt.
"You're not going to sit anywhere near me, are you?"