Notes: Sebastian's attempt to help his son take care of his class pet over Spring Break has some pretty disastrous consequences … for Kurt.
"You know this is your fault," Kurt mumbles for the sixteenth time, shuddering as he sweeps a handful of tiny, tawny-colored insects into a smaller-than-necessary paper cup. Being the size of his pinkie nail, baby mantises are not the easiest things to see. And they're delicate – a fact Kurt discovered when he tried to brush them up with a dust pan and broom. Thomas is at a friend's house for the afternoon – a plan Sebastian came up with so he could welcome his husband home from his latest business trip properly.
Needless to say, cleaning up baby insects isn't what he'd had planned.
If Kurt sucks them up with the vacuum, his sensitive son would never know about the senseless carnage that will have taken place.
Kurt respects all life. He truly does. Just not when it infiltrates his house uninvited.
But the thought of those first dozen mangled creatures stuck to his hands, crippled and wriggling, still haunts him. He can't have that on his conscious.
But cleaning them up this way has become nightmare fuel. At this point, he doesn't just feel their feather-light legs crawling all over his exposed skin. He knows they're there, creeping underneath the collar of his dress shirt, which he hadn't gotten the chance to change out of before they'd discovered this mess. Sebastian had said, "Fuck it," and tried to convince Kurt to leave it for the time being and go to a hotel.
The look of horror on Kurt's face alone told Sebastian that his plans for a naked homecoming were canceled pretty much indefinitely.
"Not everything's my fault, you know." Sebastian takes the nearly filled Dixie cup from his husband, empties it carefully out the kitchen window, and then trades off, doing his part to clean baby mantises off the kitchen counter.
"No," Kurt agrees, removing his suit jacket and shaking out the sleeves when he feels a bead of sweat run up his arm – never a good sign where insects are concerned. "Just the things that are."
"Like everything?"
"You said it, not me."
"Actually, this time, it's entirely not my fault."
"And how do you figure?"
Sebastian looks up at his husband, who's crossing his arms carefully over his chest so as not to accidentally squish anything, and swallows hard. With a single blink of Kurt's cold, blue eyes, the Queen has arrived.
"Uh …" Sebastian clears his cup full of mantises out the window while he reassembles his argument "… well, first, who picks a caterpillar as a class pet? How come they couldn't get a goldfish? Or a guinea pig?"
"Because Mrs. Hiddleston wanted the class to watch metamorphosis in action," Kurt explains. "The class voted on frog or butterfly, and butterfly won. Unfortunately, the one they got turned out to be a late bloomer. And since they're having the school fumigated over break, it couldn't stay in the classroom."
"Fine." Sebastian switches from sweeping to plucking when he discovers a cluster of mantises in the bouquet of flowers he'd bought before he went to pick up Kurt. "But who volunteered us to take the stupid thing over Spring Break? And then left for a business trip the day after?"
"The trip came out of the blue, Bas! I told you! It's not like I planned to go away over one of the first school breaks of the year! Besides, it was one tiny caterpillar. All you had to do was change out its mulberry leaves and take a few pictures to chronicle its progress. Who decided the caterpillar needed friends, hmm?"
"That was Thomas," Sebastian points out with a raised finger, flinching when he discovers a mantis clinging to it.
"Who didn't do their research?" Kurt asks, sneering at his husband tossing their poor, sweet boy under the bus. "Who bought a whole horde of caterpillars that turned out to be cannibalistic?"
"They were on clearance on the science website, Kurt! You're always complaining that I'm not thrifty enough, that I throw money around when I don't need to! I was trying to be fiscally responsible in your eyes for once!"
"And then," Kurt presses, determined not to let up, especially since he knows his husband well enough to smell his bullshit a mile away, "who had the brilliant idea to replace that one caterpillar not with another caterpillar, but with praying mantises?"
"Because praying mantises are cool, Kurt! They've got the big eyes, and the … and the pincer thingies …" Sebastian stops collecting to demonstrate, succeeding in tossing half the cup of his rescued brood Kurt's way. Kurt takes a step back and shakes his head, if not at having insects thrown at him, then at hearing his Ivy League graduate husband use the term 'pincer thingies'. "And they eat other insects! A praying mantis is way cooler than a butterfly!"
"But three dozen!?"
"I didn't buy three dozen," a sheepish Sebastian mutters like a child as he dejectedly returns to his gathering. "I bought three egg cases. I thought that meant three praying mantises. But when they didn't hatch, I thought they were duds."
"So you left them on the kitchen counter …" Kurt sighs, putting a hand to his head, attempting to knead away the mounting tension in his brow "… by the window … in indirect sunlight."
"Who knew the heat would bring them out of hibernation?"
Without looking, Kurt picks up a slip of paper he'd found on the kitchen table and waves it as his husband. "The company, Bas. It says it right here in the hatching instructions. It says it at length."
"Meh. Who reads instructions?" Sebastian says, dumping another load out the window. "They're just insects."
"A-ha. And they're all over my kitchen, thanks to you."
"You know, you're trying to make me out to be the bad guy in this scenario, but you're forgetting the huge role you played in all of this."
Kurt's reaction to this statement – his sharp intake of breath, his muscles going rigid, the tightening in his voice - is instantaneous.
"Oh? And what role it that, may I ask?"
Regardless of Kurt bristling at his husband's presence, Sebastian leans in and boldly kisses him on the cheek, surreptitiously brushing away a baby mantis on Kurt's shoulder that's affecting a very similar pose as his irritated husband. "You left me unsupervised."