A/N: Similar warnings as before for anxiety, for passing mentions of things that happened to Kurt during his time as a slave, and a vague discussion about religion.
Someone slips into bed behind Kurt and wraps their arms around him, and for the first time in his life, he's not afraid, not repulsed, not disgusted at himself or his life or the things he's about to do. The man kisses Kurt's neck, and Kurt gains a profound sense of calm from it. A touch follows – gentle and feather-light along his shoulder, pausing at one spot in particular, then down his arm to his hand, lacing their fingers together. The touches are lazy, undemanding; they seem as if they're there for Kurt's comfort, and not solely for someone else's pleasure. This man, he doesn't pry Kurt open, doesn't force himself inside Kurt's body, doesn't rip Kurt apart. He kisses Kurt continuously, brushing warm lips down the back of his neck to his spine, and Kurt does something he's never willingly, honestly done before.
He moans.
The man behind Kurt smiles. Kurt can feel it on his neck.
Kurt clears his mind of his fears, his anxiety, and becomes absolutely submissive – absorbing this man's touch, welcoming it, arching his body to beg for more.
Callused hands – not the overly soft, featureless hands he's used to – slide over his skin, caressing every subtle curve of his body, tracing his figure as if those hands have known him forever.
A husky voice, jagged to start but with a finish as smooth as double-malt whiskey, whispers a chant of his name.
"Kurt…oh, Kurt…Kurt..."
"Yes," Kurt sighs. That voice bleeds into him, finding his cracks, his crevices, and filling them in, enveloping him from the inside with its warmth. It's a warmth that he's only recently become acquainted with, and comes at him in a form he's never known.
He could be mistaken, but it feels like love.
There's no doubt in Kurt's mind that the man behind him desires him, adores him.
But loves him? It's too much to hope for, but Kurt still hopes yes. He's tried not to be a romantic when it comes to sex and intimacy, but he can't help imagining that it would be a magical experience if it came with love attached. If he had a taste of it, then he might understand why people yearn for love, why people fight for it. Why people are willing to die for it.
Why some people can't let go of it, even when it's gone.
Whatever it is, he wants more. He needs more.
Kurt's fingers tighten within the hand holding his. His body moves on its own, in rhythm with a force inside him, drawing from him, feeding off him, gasp after gasp, moan after moan. Whatever has been missing from his existence, whatever he has been searching for, he finds it here in the arms of this faceless lover. It's liberating, finally setting his body free this way, giving himself permission to enjoy, but in some ways, he doesn't want it to be real. He doesn't want his life, his identity, to rely on any man. But this man is different. Kurt knows he is. Even without seeing him, Kurt knows. The man holds Kurt in his arms and breathes against his skin.
"Kurt…Kurt…oh Kurt…"
A sense of completion washes through Kurt so rapidly, he has no way to predict the onslaught. It happens before he knows it, before he slips from the dream and recognizes what his body is doing.
"Oh, no…" Kurt shudders, reaching down his body with trembling hands. He doesn't need to, though, to feel the wetness in the front of his pants. "Oh no, oh no, oh please no."
"Kurt?" Sebastian murmurs sleepily from his place behind Kurt, wrapping his arms tighter around Kurt's body as Kurt pushes away. "Kurt? Are you 'kay? You having 'nother (yawn) nightmare?"
Kurt springs out of Sebastian's arms, wriggling free like a frightened rabbit, his wide eyes locking on Sebastian's. Through heavy lids, Sebastian sees Kurt's terrified face. His attention drawn to the way Kurt's arms cradle his stomach, Sebastian's eyes travel down Kurt's body. Kurt scuttles backward and leaps from the buckboard before Sebastian's gaze reaches the offending spot.
"Kurt…" Sebastian sits up, reaching out for him. "Are you alright? Are you hurt?"
"No, I…" Kurt steps back, bent over the arms wrapped around his waist, hiding his shame. "I'm sorry, but I have to…I have to go…for a second…to wash up…"
Kurt races off in the direction of the watering hole, tears of humiliation falling from his eyes, coupled with agitated cries. He should be happy. He was thinking of this the other day, of his body returning to a sense of normalcy, the way most people enjoy - the way Sebastian enjoys. But why now? And why didn't he wake up before it was too late to stop it, the way he had been trained to?
Could he have been able to stop it? Would his body have listened to him?
Kurt stumbles up to the old well and slides into the water, pants and all. He pulls them off, fighting the water as the material clings to him, and starts to scrub at them furiously even though he hasn't a lick of soap on him. His tears dry but his cries continue, his cheeks burning red. He nearly scrubs a hole straight through the fabric, but his focus is no longer on the stain.
What is Sebastian going to say? Kurt is certain Sebastian won't hurt him. He's gotten over that fear…mostly.
But what if Sebastian doesn't want to deal with this, for all the kisses he's given him?
Kurt hears the snapping of twigs and a crunching of dry dirt as footsteps approach, and he quiets his cries. He deposits the soaked and beaten pants onto the rock ledge of the watering hole. Sebastian stops at the edge, standing still, giving Kurt time to become comfortable in his presence again. Kurt stays in the water, unmoving, his back turned, his head bowed.
"You didn't eat your dinner from last night," Sebastian says first.
Kurt doesn't speak, but nods in response. Sebastian wants to say something about it, about how important it is for Kurt to eat the food he's given, but he lets it slide.
"I brought you a towel, your shoes, some dry clothes…" Sebastian puts the shoes down by the water's edge, then hangs the other items in order – shirt first, pants next, then towel - over the branch of a nearby tree. "I didn't think you'd want to be running back to the camp in your altogether."
"Thanks," Kurt mumbles. Kurt doesn't turn to face him. He can't. And yet, he doesn't want Sebastian to go, either. Ultimately, Kurt would like to turn back time and start this morning over, move on from where they left off yesterday and not from his body's embarrassing reaction to his dream.
Such a glorious dream.
"I also found you a hat of your own," Sebastian says, followed by an easy laugh to blow things over. "You know, I think I might be getting a wicked sunburn on my scalp from lending you mine."
"I'm…I'm sorry."
"No reason to be sorry. Better me than you, with your fair skin and all." Kurt hears Sebastian shuffling his feet in the dirt, sort of marching in place, unsure whether he should stay or go. "Oh, and I found that book I promised you. You can read it on the trail if you'd like, seeing as there's not much else to do, nothing really to look at."
Kurt nods his head.
"Thank you."
Kurt's taciturn behavior makes Sebastian's mind up for him, and he settles for sitting on a nearby rock.
"Do you want to talk about it?" Sebastian asks. He isn't about to ask Kurt outright about his dream, which means he might already know what it was about, and Kurt wants to die – sink into the water and drown. It seems epically unfair that that isn't even an option, with the unusual water feeding the well keeping him afloat.
"No, not really, if it's all the same to you," Kurt answers, turning to face Sebastian but with his eyes fixed elsewhere.
"You know, you don't have to be ashamed," Sebastian says. "It happens to everyone."
"I know," Kurt says quickly, hoping that Sebastian won't feel a need to explain any further. Not now. Kurt's not ready. "But, I've spent so much of my life repressing that. I just don't understand…why now?"
"Well, I expect your body's adjusting to your new life," Sebastian explains, wringing his hands in discomfort. "No more rules, no more restrictions."
"Is that what you're doing? Adjusting?" The question comes out snappish, and dances dangerously close to revealing the fact that Kurt had caught Sebastian bathing in the watering hole the night before – bathing and fantasizing about his husband.
Sebastian's jaw tightens, his eyes harden, and Kurt thinks that Sebastian might already know. Sebastian shifts his gaze to stare directly into Kurt's eyes and he smirks.
"It seems you might have a sharp tongue on you yet, little one," he says, dropping to his knees and crawling over to the ledge of the well. "Why don't you come over here and let me see?" Kurt inches over, drifting in the small pool of water, willing to follow almost any order of Sebastian's if it leads to this. Sebastian moves in for a kiss, then he stops, the teasing expression lost on his face. "Or maybe I shouldn't. Maybe I'm taking too many liberties as far as you're concerned."
"No," Kurt says quickly, his voice edged with panic, splashing Sebastian unintentionally as he attempts to bring Sebastian back. "Please? Don't…"
Sebastian kisses Kurt, smiling so Kurt can feel it, so Kurt knows he's only teasing, and once Kurt realizes it, once his heart stops beating unevenly in his chest, he smiles back. Sebastian doesn't kiss him deeply – not yet. He doesn't think it's right. Regardless of Kurt's objections, Sebastian still feels he's overstepping boundaries, taking advantage, or maybe giving Kurt false hopes.
But it's really hard to save yourself from drowning when the water's already over your head.
Sebastian pushes away from Kurt, and Kurt looks at him, concern wrinkling his brow.
"Is it adjusting?" he asks innocently. "You didn't answer my question."
Sebastian thinks Kurt's question over. Even though his choice doesn't require much deliberation, he struggles to decide what answer is the best to give.
"I'm coping," he says.
Kurt's brow wrinkles further.
"My being here…does it help…or does it hurt?"
Sebastian smiles, a touch of guilt in the creases at the corners of his mouth, and kisses Kurt on the forehead.
"It helps more than it hurts." Sebastian sighs, regaining his feet, needing, as he often does, distance from this too-tempting boy. "Why don't you finish up and you can have a bite to eat? I've got the camp packed up and I've already broken my fast. We need to hit the trail, so you can eat on the road, if that's alright."
"That'll be fine," Kurt says, sad that he lost his chance to eat with Sebastian. Kurt has started to cherish those moments, such as they are. It brings back memories of eating at home, around the wood table his father built and meticulously carved. Kurt always sat beside his mother, across from his father. Meal times were sacred in the Hummel household. Sometimes, when there was much to talk about, a single meal might last close to an hour, even if there were chores around the farm to get done. It was like time stopped while they sat together at that table, sharing food and ideas and love.
Love.
Kurt wants to feel that again, more desperately than he ever thought he would, and sitting across from Sebastian, talking or not talking over a plate of food, has been as close to that feeling as he's had in forever.
Kurt watches Sebastian walk away, back strong and tall the way it always is, like a man who knows the path to his own destiny, only this time with a slight slog to his step, as if something is holding him back, as if he really doesn't want to get into the buckboard and ride out of camp. For the few days they've been together, the subjects of their talks have been general – the trip, the trail, the weather, or about Kurt, how he's getting along in the world - but so much of Sebastian remains an enigma. Kurt feels he could live a hundred lifetimes and never truly understand him.
But he hopes Sebastian will give him the chance.
Kurt climbs out of the water once Sebastian has gone. He dries off and dresses. He walks back to camp mostly clothed, his sopping wet pants wrapped in the towel he used to dry himself with, his shirt draped over his arm. When Sebastian sees him approach, fiddling with his shirt one-handed, trying to put it on, Sebastian pounces on him with the clay pot of ointment, uncorking it to spread the medicine over the mark on Kurt's shoulder.
"So, how's it looking?" Kurt asks. "Is it healing up like you thought it would?"
"It's only been a couple of days, Kurt," Sebastian says, smoothing the ointment into Kurt's skin. "Give it time. Have faith."
Kurt scoffs, perhaps unintentionally, but it brings a smile to Sebastian's face. Maybe there's more to this boy than he originally thought.
Of course there is, he scolds himself. He has to face the fact. Kurt is flesh and blood. He has a mind. He's intelligent, a force of his own to be reckoned with, a survivor.
He's young…and beautiful – so, so beautiful.
He can't be Sebastian's surrogate Aaron for long. It's not fair to Kurt, or to Sebastian. They'll come a time when Sebastian is going to have to forgive himself for a past he cannot change. If he keeps opening his wounds, if he keeps poking around inside, he's going to hollow himself out, spend the rest of his years as the walking corpse of Sebastian Smythe.
Aaron would never forgive Sebastian if he did that.
But could Aaron forgive him for taking up with this boy?
Sebastian shakes that question off, lets it fall to the ground like the dust off his shoes. He grabs Kurt's wet clothes from the boy's arm and tosses them into the back of the buckboard. He snatches the dry shirt with a mischievous wink and helps Kurt into it. He takes Kurt's hand and leads him to the buckboard. There's an ease to the way they move around each other. Sebastian seems to fall in step with Kurt being there, and Kurt feels no need to tiptoe around Sebastian.
Kurt can almost fool himself into believing that they were meant to find one another. His father would say that everything happens for a reason, that there were no accidents. But then that would mean that Kurt's time at the regent's house wasn't a mistake, that he was meant to be there, meant to be tortured, meant to suffer, meant to lose his mother, and Kurt cannot live with that belief.
Like Sebastian said, he has the camp packed and a breakfast laid out for Kurt in the back of the buckboard. Kurt smiles when he sees it – a royal blue cloth set out in place of the red, the jar re-filled with fresh wildflowers, and a plate heaped high with bread smothered in nut butter, dried fruit and fish, and a single egg.
"You expect me to eat all that?" Kurt asks, moved by Sebastian's effort enough to forgive the man for giving him this impossible task.
"I expect you to try," Sebastian says, patting Kurt on the rear to get him into the buckboard.
"And…if I eat all of this, do I earn another kiss?" Kurt blinks over his shoulder at Sebastian with a shy smile on his lips.
"There won't be earning any more kisses around here," Sebastian says sternly, climbing into the buckboard behind Kurt and over the bench into the driver's seat. Kurt looks down at his plate, his face crestfallen, completely uninclined to touch a drop of his food. Sebastian leans over the bench, grabs Kurt by the arm, and pulls the boy to him. He kisses Kurt on the mouth, as passionately as he had before, if not a little rougher. Kurt starts giggling before Sebastian stops. "If you want a kiss around here, you just have to ask for it, darling." Sebastian runs a finger along Kurt's soft cheek, stroking lightly up and down. "I'm sorry I made it something you felt like you had to earn." Kurt smiles, biting his lip, and Sebastian pinches his chin. "Now eat up."
Kurt sits down in front of his plate, legs crossed, and starts immediately in on his food. Sebastian watches Kurt attack his breakfast, then clicks his tongue for his horse to start on their way. Kurt finishes his breakfast, every last bite. He's amazed at how hungry he is. Back at the regent's house, he had gotten use to missing meals. He could go a few days without eating, no problem, filling up on water and the scraps of bread he squirreled away in between. But now he has to stop himself from wolfing down his food and potentially making himself vomit. Adjusting. His body's adjusting. He just hopes that means he'll fill up, not out.
He doesn't want to become unattractive in Sebastian's eyes.
Kurt tidies his plate as best he can, knocking the crumbs over the side for the birds to eat and wiping it clean with the cloth. He finds a safe place for the flowers, tucking them and their jar in a corner of the trunk with Sebastian's clothes. When he's done, he grabs the book Sebastian gave him and climbs onto the bench. Sebastian watches Kurt sit and gives him a smile, and Kurt returns it, proud that Sebastian seems happy with him for finishing his meal. The sun has risen higher, the air around them hotter, losing much of its cool morning breeze. Even the cart cutting through doesn't seem to move the air one bit. Kurt puts the hat Sebastian found for him on his head. He cracks open the cover of the book and starts to read. He finds comfort in the worn leather cover resting against his hands. He can picture Sebastian holding this book in his hands, reading it as he rides along the trail. Maybe he read it to his husband and his son. Maybe the book belonged to Aaron, or maybe it was passed down to him. Kurt's mother had a book like this one, but with a floral cover she embroidered herself instead of a black leather one. She wrote things in it, in the margins of the pages and on the inside cover – names and dates of births and deaths, so that it bore not only the word of her God, but also a history of their entire family. Maybe Sebastian did the same in his book. Kurt wants to peek at the cover, but Sebastian's eyes track his progress. He doesn't want Sebastian to catch him snooping into his personal affairs, even if Sebastian did, in essence, hand them to him.
Kurt reads straight through the morning and into the afternoon. He starts with his finger on the page, tracing underneath the sentences to keep his place. His lips move as he reads. He sounds out certain words aloud – first thou, then smite, then charity. Kurt reads for hours. He reads as the sun changes positions in the sky. He reads while Sebastian shares with him their lunch. He reads when Sebastian stops to water his horse. As the sun starts to sink, still hours away from sunset, Kurt is almost halfway through the book. As impressed as Sebastian is with Kurt's progress, with the devout way he's taken to the words that Sebastian holds so dear, he wishes that Kurt would put the damned book down for a minute.
He'd like to talk to Kurt. He misses hearing Kurt's voice.
"How's that book treating you?" Sebastian asks, breaking off a hunk of dried meat between his teeth and handing Kurt the rest.
"Hmm?" Kurt reaches out a hand to take the offered food when he glimpses it being waved in his peripheral vision, but otherwise doesn't move his eyes from the page.
"The book. What do you think of it so far?"
"The language is a little hard to get used to," Kurt says, flipping back through the pages. "I think I read the first nine pages over a dozen times."
Sebastian nods. It was the same when he first started reading it, but he was nine then. The teacher at the school he attended made them read it out loud, smacking them across the knuckles with a hard wooden ruler when they got any of the words wrong.
"Anything else?"
"Well…" Kurt takes a bite of the dried meat and starts to chew, "there's a lot of rules."
Sebastian chuckles to himself at Kurt talking with his mouth full. It borders on being rude, and Sebastian likes it.
"Yeah," Sebastian agrees. "That there are."
"I think I've broken most of them," Kurt says with an honest frown. "If there is a heaven up in the sky, I don't think I'm gettin' in."
"Not everybody follows the rules all the time." Sebastian says it to reassure Kurt, though Sebastian can't deny he's had the same doubts about himself. "There's a lot of, shall we say, grey areas."
Kurt closes the book over his hand to mark his place and looks up.
"Like what grey areas?"
Sebastian shifts in his seat. He's not comfortable discussing religion, but he doesn't want to brush Kurt off. Kurt has such a genuine curiosity, a naïve interest, the way he does with most things. How anyone can fool themselves into believing that he's grown is beyond Sebastian's comprehension, but then bitterness fills his mouth when he realizes that's part of Kurt's appeal. He's been raised to do adult things, but not to necessarily think in adult ways.
"Well, like the no killing rule," Sebastian says, feeling that's a safe enough distance from most of Kurt's "sins" to start. "What if you're being chased by a man and he has a knife, and he's going to kill you, or someone you love, but you find a gun so you kill him first?"
Kurt feels he should object. His mother taught him that there's no excuse for taking a life, that every soul is sacred. But she probably never thought that someone would savagely murder her and steal her only son away. His mother didn't deserve to die, but did the man who killed her deserve death then? Does Kurt have the authority to decide? Kurt bites his lip as he gives the matter thought.
"I guess that makes sense," he says slowly.
Sebastian swallows and turns his eyes away.
"And the stuff you've done," he says, clearing his throat to get past the bile flooding his mouth, "you were…forced…weren't you?"
"Yeah," Kurt replies, shifting his eyes away. "Most of it, I suppose."
"Most of it?" Sebastian asks, startled, suddenly burning with too much curiosity at Kurt's chosen distinction to consider what he's asking.
"Well…" Kurt's heel knocks at the wood beneath his feet while he puts his thoughts into words, "the regent's men, the masters, they're really good at making it seem like the things you do you want to do. Like, they make you suck someone off…"
Kurt pauses and Sebastian coughs. He didn't expect Kurt to say anything like that, didn't expect that vulgar phrase to pass through his lips. It isn't the crassness of the remark that bothers Sebastian, though. It's the way his body reacts to it.
It's the immediate and almost complete way it makes him hot.
"…and maybe you don't like it, but it's required," Kurt continues, not noticing any change in Sebastian's demeanor – how his hands have tightened around the leather reins or how he's pulled himself forward on the narrow bench in an effort to will away his arousal. "Later on, though, they give you a choice – you can either do it and earn your dinner, or you can refuse and starve."
Sebastian looks at Kurt's physique, at how muscular yet slight he is for a boy of his age, and wonders how many times Kurt refused.
But Kurt was the regent's favorite. Sebastian doesn't understand. The whole juxtaposition of being favored and still being abused so horridly makes Sebastian's head hurt.
Do it and earn your dinner… Those words stick inside Sebastian's skull. He feels his stomach flip, tying itself into knots, twisting tighter and tighter until the knots bunch up under his throat. He feels sicker than before that he ever thought to make Kurt earn a kiss from him, even if his intentions were passably noble. He'd stop the cart and kiss Kurt a hundred times if that might make up for his being an ignorant, thoughtless bastard.
"After a while, after you've gone to bed hungry a few times and you've been weak from it, you get in the habit of dropping to your knees and opening your mouth when you see them coming."
Kurt drops his head and leans back in his seat, curling in on himself, making himself small – small enough to disappear. Sebastian reaches out a hand and places it carefully on Kurt's knee.
"That's not the same as wanting it, darling," he says softly. He sees on Kurt's face that he doesn't entirely believe him. He's been trained not to believe it. "And even if it was the same, the point is you've got to be sorry for breaking the rules. Truly sorry. Then you tell God you're sorry, and he forgives you."
Kurt raises a hand to his cheek and brushes a tear away.
"That sounds too easy," Kurt decides. "It sounds like a trap. Like in the regent's house."
Sebastian squeezes Kurt's knee, then removes his hand to tap the cover of the book in Kurt's lap.
"This isn't like the regent's house."
"Yeah?" Kurt says, slipping his hand from the pages and letting the book close unmarked. "The punishments sound the same." Kurt turns and places the book over the side of the bench and into the buckboard, in the space that has unofficially been designated as his. "So, where are we headed?" Kurt asks, brushing his cheek again, making a spot on his dusty skin cleaner than the rest. "Another watering hole?"
"You can't see it from here," Sebastian says, relieved in the change of subject, "but there's a town over yonder, past those hills." Sebastian points, but Kurt already has his eyes glued to the hills ahead of them, as if he can see through them to the town beyond. "I've been mulling it over some, and I think we can get away with saying you're my boy. That way people'll be less inclined to harass you, ask you questions you mightn't want to answer."
Just like the regent's house, Kurt thinks. And just like the book – more rules, more dangers, more people trying to impose their lifestyles and beliefs on them.
"Does it have a name?" Kurt asks, eager to be there already, to get cleaned up and fall asleep in a real bed.
"Yup," Sebastian answers. "It's called Kennerstown."
The name strikes Kurt like a hot iron through the heart, but he doesn't know exactly why. Suddenly, out in the open air, it feels difficult to breathe.
"Ken-Kennerstown?"
"It's named after the lord there – Jared Kenner," Sebastian explains. "We're going to want to keep a low profile. They're a little wary of strangers."
Kennerstown.
Something about it kicks inside Kurt's brain like an ornery mule. It grabs him by the throat with teeth and claws, making him ache like he's being starved for breath. Kurt looks in the direction of the town beyond the hills, a great unseen black hole menacing him, wringing memories from his brain that, like the day he was kidnapped, his mind doesn't want him to remember. Kurt wants to turn around and go back, his feet tapping the wood boards, legs ready to leap from the buckboard and run if Sebastian doesn't agree to it. Sebastian's hand finds Kurt's knee and Kurt puts his hand over it, holding on tight.
"Kurt?" Sebastian turns to look at him, at Kurt's face becoming paler as the sun sets and the road winds beneath their wheels. "Is there something wrong?"
"I…I don't know," Kurt says, sliding along the bench closer to Sebastian, finding safety in the closeness. "I think I…could we, maybe, spend one more night out here?" Kurt stammers, his voice shaking. "I…I'm sorry. I know you have a schedule, but I…I don't think I'm ready for another town just yet." Kurt scoots toward Sebastian again. One more scoot closer and he'll be sitting in Sebastian's lap.
Sebastian watches Kurt's eyes, staring off, looking toward the growing hills, filled with unexplained fear.
"Sure," Sebastian says, pulling the buckboard off the main trail, guiding his horse around until they have their backs to their destination. He puts an arm around Kurt, holding him secure, Kurt's rigid body a tremor within Sebastian's embrace. "We'll camp out one more night, darling. Whatever you want."