Warnings: None
A/N: This story idea came from our friend Becca, who's our anchor even thousands of miles away.
Summary: AU on the Michael episode. Sebastian hits Kurt, not Blaine, with the slushie, and there's more than rock salt buried in it. What can New Directions do to make him understand how wrong that is?
.***.
"I want to go to a college that isn't a FEMA trailer or a prison yard, so let's take the high road." Santana
It was supposed to just be a sing-off between kind-of friends, almost-rivals. One of those things that you talk about and laugh about but doesn't mean anything, not really. Sure, it decided who would do MJ, which is one of those things that is important at the time but doesn't really matter a year later.
It should have just been another one of their West Side Story snap-offs. It should have just been singing and dancing, and then both groups ending up at Breadsticks because in the end New Directions and the Warblers had too much in common to really hate each other.
But then they introduced Sebastian Smythe to the mix, and he changed things.
First of all, a defense for the poor guy: he comes in at the beginning of the year and all anybody can talk about is the fact that their shooting star (who was, what, a sophomore the year before? What the hell?) had defected to to the other team (not that other team. The show choir kind) and had left them in a bad place.
And, yeah, it wasn't easy to go around all day and hear "Blaine" this and "Anderson" that, and it's hard to break into a group that's mourning someone you never knew. But he tried his best.
And then he actually met Blaine. And he was smitten. And he met Kurt. And he didn't get it.
Kurt Hummel has nothing on Sebastian Smythe. Not the looks, or the attitude, or the voice, and yet he had this amazing guy falling all over him. What the fuck?
If their paths didn't cross so often, it wouldn't be as bad. And it's not that he lived at the coffee shop, it's just that he didn't have anywhere else to go in the long hours between school and show choir, when everyone else was with their families or their friends or their significant other. Sebastian didn't really have any of that. Which is why he hung around the smell of coffee with old books, trying to remember Paris where things made sense.
Also not helping: the fact that Blaine would call him or text him once or three times a week, saying hey, checking in, whatever. And Sebastian grabbed at this as friendship. And, yeah, so he heard they were doing Michael and convinced the Warblers to do him, too. And, okay, maybe because he wanted to see Blaine outside of the coffee shop. So he stole their artist, told them about it, and then arranged the dance off.
And Kurt had been staring at him with that cheeky I have something you want grin. And he knew he needed to get Kurt out of the way.
He'd read enough, been around enough, manipulated enough people to know that if he hurt Blaine's boyfriend, there was a good chance any feelings Mr. Sings-Like-a-Dream had for him would disappear. Because violence isn't cool. Apparently. He knew this, but he went ahead with the slushie plan anyway.
The other Warblers knew about the slushie, and didn't like it even before they found out about the broken glass. "We're not supposed to do that to each other." Trent said, frowning. "That's what other people do to them. Zero-tolerance policy on bullying, Sebastian. Why don't we just stick to singing?"
"It won't hurt him!" Sebastian said, smiling that winning smile that was so sweet it was nearly sour. "Just a reminder that this is a competition."
Trent frowned, shaking his head. "We're friends with New Directions, Sebastian. I don't want to ruin that."
"In the end, there are no friends. There's just winners and losers." God, when had he started sounding like his father?
In the end, Trent had backed down and so had the others. How could they not? Sebastian was the alpha now, and besides...it was just a slushie.
Afterwards, Sebastian would never be able to explain the broken glass, even to himself. At first he'd thought about rock salt - scratchy, a little painful, but not hurting, not really. But something had made him punch the mirror on his wall instead, pick out the tiny shards of glass and drop them in.
...He was thinking about how Kurt looked at Blaine. No, more than that - how Blaine looked at Kurt. As if he was the only thing in the whole world. And Sebastian wanted that so much his stomach clenched at the thought.
...He was thinking about his last school (no, not Paris, before Paris...Korea? Or Wyoming?) Military brats didn't get the best welcome. A gay military brat? Forget it. School was hell for that sixteen months. He'd been punched, kicked, beaten, taunted, thrown in trashcans, and, yes, slushied more times than he could count. It's not an excuse, but it's a statistic. The cycle of abuse?
...He was thinking that he'd never had a relationship that lasted more than a short song and a shorter fuck and then the long period of guilt and disbelief that followed. And he didn't want to do that anymore.
...Most of all, he was thinking that Blaine Anderson needed to be his, or else he might just explode. And desperate times call for desperate measures.
That all adds up to why Sebastian thew the slushie at the end of the song. And then all hell broke loose.
.***.
"Kurt!" It was Blaine and Finn on the ground, not even knowing where to start, or what happened. The red of the slushie was nothing, nothing compared to the red blood that was flowing, flowing from the cuts on Kurt's face. Blaine's brain wasn't working. What had happened? Five seconds ago he was singing, dancing, looking over at Kurt to see him looking over his shoulder at...
"Puck, no!" This from Finn, who'd looked up from his brother to find his best friend on top of Sebastian, fists flying. It was Dalton vs. McKinley from there, and it wasn't pretty.
Blaine moved, half-stood so he was shielding Kurt from further harm. When shifted Kurt moaned. "Don't leave me..."
"Wouldn't think of it, baby. It's okay. You'll be okay. We're calling an ambulence now." Blaine looked up at Finn, whose mouth was slightly open as he gazed at his brother. "Right? Finn? Ambulence?"
"Huh? Oh. Yeah. 9-1-1." Finn's hands were shaking and he dropped his phone once, twice. Blaine put a hand on his wrist. "Breathe. Kurt needs you to do this. Breathe." A tinny voice from the phone 9-1-1, what's your emergancy? "And talk. Explain what happened?"
"What did happen?" Finn asked, staring at Kurt...his face, so many cuts. One big one so close to his eye. Another splitting his cheek open. One under his chin. And more, so many more. "Blaine, I don't...what happened?"
The fight had pettered out by then. One of the Warblers, a thin black guy, was kneeling next to Artie, apologizing because even in street fighting knocking a cripple out of his chair was taboo. You don't even begin to go there. Puck had Sebastian on the ground and had an arm around his throat. Not choking, but not making it easy to breathe, either.
"You put fucking glass in that slushie?" Puck hissed, and Blaine turned away and bent over Kurt, clucking soothing words and smoothing his hair. Puck's voice, with so much venom in it, so much righteous hatred, made every nerve stand on end. "What the fuck's wrong with you?"
"Is he hurt badly?" Another Warbler asked, looking genuinely worried. "Blaine? We didn't know, honest. Is Kurt hurt? Will he be all right?"
"He's fine, Dave. Maybe you guys should go. It'd look weird if the ambulence pulls up and sees twenty teenagers hanging around." He shot a glance over at Puck. "Let him up, Puck. Let him go."
"Blaine, are you sure?" Mike asked, "He could have killed Kurt."
Finn was still on the phone with 9-1-1, but he told Blaine with his eyes that he'd go along with whatever Blaine decided to do here.
And Blaine wanted to see this smarmy-ass kid pay for his boyfriend's blood spilling out into the street...except...
Oh, Blaine wasn't dumb. He knew he was good-looking, and before he came out so many girls had had crushes on him he didn't know what to do with himself. Never interested, he'd tried to be nice. But sometimes nice wasn't enough, and they'd get weird and violent, or clingy and whiny. It had started again at Dalton, though boys were a different entity all together. Tripping over themselves to make him happy. Doing anything, anything at all, to get his attention. Always with this expression on their faces, as if Blaine could do no wrong.
And that was the expression Sebastian was wearing now. Behind the fear of being choked to death by Puck was a lust, a craving, that Blaine had seen too many times before to not recognize. And he felt bad, because he knew that he'd contributed to it. A boy had told him once that he was a tease. And maybe he was.
"I know what he could have done." Of course he did. Kurt's eyes were closed, but he was tense with anxiety, and Blaine could feel that under his hands. "Let him go, Puck. You know he's not cut out for juvie."
None of the members of New Directions looked happy when Puck let Sebastian up. "You'll pay." Puck said, eerily calm where a moment before he'd been red-hot with rage. "We're not all as nice as Blaine. Did you know what Kurt was Finn's brother? Or that Finn's the quarterback? You'll pay, kid. Now scram, so I can kill you before the cops get to you."
Finn finally got off the phone. "An ambulance should be here in four minutes." He bent over Kurt, pushed a lock of hair behind Kurt's ear so, so gently that Blaine felt his heart break a little for this pair who had just begun to be like brothers. "You okay, Kurt?"
"Can you call my dad?" Kurt's voice was so small, so scared, that Blaine felt his heart break again. There'd be no more of his heart left at this rate. "And dont' freak him out, Finn. You know how he is."
"Yeah." Finn obviously didn't want to make another phone call, didn't want to leave Kurt when he was (oh my God, he's bleeding everywhere, so much blood, so cut up. He'll scar, this kid who would spend an hour each night working on his skin...) so hurt. But he did, and he looked wearily at the New Directions. Suddenly he felt very old.
"Finn?" Rachel was by his side, fitting in the space under his arm like she'd been made to be there. God, it felt good to have her. "What can we do?"
"Leave." Even though he'd never wanted to hold Rachel so much in his life, just so he could cry with someone else and not feel like Atlas holding the fucking world on his shoulders. "Really, guys. We'll call you as soon as we hear anything, but it'd be best if we didn't have twelve people hanging around." He caught Puck's arm, lowered his voice, "Don't do anything to Sebastian tonight. Not without me."
"And me," said Blaine, never taking his eyes off Kurt.
"And me," said Mike, Sam, Rory, even Artie, Santana, Mercedes.
Finn smiled a little, the ghost of a smile. It was hard to smile when all he could see was Kurt's cut-up face, when his hands were warm with his brother's blood. Rachel stood on her tip-toes and even then could only brush a kiss against his throat. "I wish I could stay here with you."
"I want you here, too." He kissed her, hard. "You know why I'm doing this?"
"Call me when you hear anything." She went over to Kurt, knelt down. "You've had to be so strong already, Kurt. I know it's unfair, but you have to be just a little bit stronger. You'll be okay. Blaine won't let anything happen to you."
Blaine nodded tightly, and they all left. A minute before they heard the sirens in the distance, it was only Blaine and Finn kneeling over Kurt's body.
"I didn't see it," Blaine said helplessly, hand petting Kurt's hair as if he couldn't stop. "The slushie. I didn't see it at all...I was right there, I could have done something..."
"So not even close to being your fault." Finn said, "And Kurt doesn't need you to feel guilty right now. He just needs you." Finn, who had been using his shirt to dab away some of the blood, lowered his voice until it was soft, gentle, pleading, "Kurt? Hey bro, I need you to open your eye. Can you see okay?"
"It hurts..." Kurt said. And then he did what was easiest. He used his good eye to get one last glimpse of Blaine, then he let himself sink into the blissfully pain-free darkness.
.***.
"I know a way we can just make him disappear." Santana said. She was sitting on a desk, filing her nails as if thirty seconds ago she hadn't been on her feet, crowding around Blaine and Finn to ask how Kurt was (he would bear small white scars for life, but he'd regain vision in his eye. Probably.) "Honestly, there's this store in Lima Heights..."
"I say we just pummel him." Puck said. He was pacing, a lion trapped in a too-small cage. "Teach him a lesson."
"Well, the best lesson would be to do to him what he did to us." Artie said, "You know, scare him by hurting someone he loves. But I don't think he loves anybody."
"He has a little sister." Santana supplied, "My cousin goes to school with her. Apparently she's not a terrible human being."
"I don't think I'd be down with hurting a little girl." Finn said, frowning. "And I'm pretty sure there's some saying about taking an eye for an eye..."
"We are not turning the other cheek this time, Finn!" Artie shouted, slapping the arm of his chair.
Finn turned to him, "You'd be okay with hurting a little girl to teach Sebastian a lesson?"
"I like being the good guys," Rory said quietly. The kid was so good at blending into the background that Finn often forgot he was there. And then he'd say things like this: "But I think what Sebastian did was barbaric, and so wrong. We don't have to hurt the little girl. BUt the worst part is being afraid, you know? What if we just made him afraid? Just for a little while? Would that be fair?"
Everyone nodded, Puck more slowly than the others. "Can we beat him up, too? I think the kid deserves a couple of bruises."
"For putting glass in a slushie, I think that would be fair." Finn said. He blinked rapidly,not even daring to look at Blaine. He'd lose it if he looked at this guy who looked so sad and lost, so guilty over involving the Warblers, over something he couldn't control. But they could control this. They'd have the final word.
.***.
An eye for an eye when you're one of the good guys: Kurt ends up in the hospital, needing plastic surgery so he wouldn't look like Frankestein. Sebastian gets a call at his school, during class.
No one had spoken to Sebastian since the incident in the parking garage. Even those not in the Warblers were glaring at him: Kurt had been popular in his brief time at Dalton, and word gets around. So he was left sitting my himself in a corner of his Latin classroom, trying to decline nouns while people glared holes into the back of his head.
When the text came he thought he knew what it was about: yet another person spitting anger at him on behalf of Kurt and Blaine, the cutest couple in history (gag). But no, this was from his father...
...Father? He read the text, then stood up and walked out of the classroom, nearly tripping over a chair on his way out. The teacher tried to ask him where he was going but he ignored her, kept walking. He needed to breathe, needed...
This couldn't be happening. But why would his father - his father who barely talked to him even when they were in the same room - send him a text unless it was the absolute truth? ARIANNA IN CAR ACCIDENT. LOOKS BAD. COME TO ST. ANDREW'S NOW.
"Sebastian?" It was Andy, a Frehsman who was apparently the only boy in school who cared that Sebastian Smythe was crying over a bathroom sink. "Are you okay? I know everyone's being awful, but it'll die down, it always does."
Sebastian had to work for several long seconds, hiccuping through his sobs so he could speak. "It's not that." He bit out the last word even as he thrust the phone to Andy. It was hard to talk around his closed-up throat. "It's my sister. She's dying."
Andy looked from the phone to Sebastian adn back again. Sebastian just stood over the sink and cried and cried. When he looked up Andy was gone, his phone laid carefully on the other sink. He was alone again.
.***.
How Brittney had gotten her hands on Mr. Smythes phone was a long story for another day, but suffice to say it had to do with her uncle's military clearence, a short skirt, and girl scout cookies. Even Brittney could put that story together.
How Sebastian got to the hospital to see his dying sister was a better story. Andy Tanner, a Freshman who knew all about sick little sisters (that was a long story for another day, too...) went back to the classroom and tapped Jeff on the shoulder. The blond looked at him and Andy beckoned him out of the room. Jeff was a nice guy. He followed.
The words were jumbled when Andy tried to get them out, mostly becuase Sebastian's dying sister Arianna kept getting mixed up with his own dying sister Emily (a story for another day) but Jeff seemed to be getting the point. "Where's Sebastian now?" Because no matter how much he thought Sebastian should die in a hole, a guy shouldn't be alone when their little sister was dying.
When he stepped into the bathroom and saw Sebastian there, crying without tears because he'd used them all up, he wondered how this boy - for he was only a boy - had ever managed an act of violence like the one he'd just performed against Kurt. Sebastian just looked sad, and alone, and so scared. "Come on. We'll go see her." Andy even went forward and took Sebastian's hand, who followed him numbly.
"Have you called your dad back?" Jeff asked, digging in his bag for his car keys.
"He won't pick up," Sebastian said, his voice crackly and blurred, "That's not unusual, though. It could mean anything."
"I don't even have words for how I feel about you hurting Kurt like you did." Jeff said, anger makign his words spiky and black, jagged lines against a clean sheet of paper, "And I don't understand Blaine for letting you get away with it," Sebastian cringed and sniffed loudly, looking so much younger than seventeen that Jeff lowered his voice, gentled it. "But I am sorry about your sister. Karma's a bitch, but I didn't expect it to work this fast."
"An eye for an eye and the whole world goes blind." Andy said absently from the back seat, and the other boys ignored him.
.***.
Obviously, when Sebastian got to the hospital, he couldn't find an Arianna Smythe anywhere. Santana's cousin had kept her away from her phone all day, so that a stray text wouldn't ruin the surprise. And Sebastian was surprised. And so, so relieved.
Of course, he did run into Kurt and Blaine and the other members of New Directions. Jeff and Andry sank into the background and Blaine and Finn tried to explain morals to a boy who'd put glass in a slushie to see what would happen next. It didn't sink in. Thinking his sister was dying? That had sunk in. Getting punched in the face by Puck, who just couldn't wait any longer? Well, that made it sink in a little more.
No one ever really knew if Sebastian was sorry for what he did. But he never put glass in another slushie again. And when he got home he hugged Ari so hard she mumbled something about crazy big brothers and went up to her room.
It wasn't a complete transformation, or even a partial one, really. But maybe it was a start.
.***.
1) sam's showing up next episode, right? we love that kid. 2) thanks to everyone for their story ideas. we're going through them, slowly. 3) more story ideas! just keep sending 'em, guys. anything goes. anything that can go wrong will. h/c to the max. 4) merry christmas. it's december, so we can officially say that. hope everyone had a great thanksgiving.
drop us a line if you want to talk about the story/talk to two interesting guys/talk about books, music, movies, tv, ect. just drop us a line.