A/N: This is a follow up to 'Never Have I Ever'; the one shot for the prompt drunk where Kurt calls a male escort on Valentine's Day and ends up with Sebastian Smythe. This one-shot takes place the next day when Kurt takes up Sebastian on his offer to go out for a drink.

Kurt stared with bleary eyes at his phone, the number on the screen shifting in and out of focus intermittently, adding to his almost blinding headache. It took Kurt a few minutes to gather his thoughts after Sebastian had kissed him and left. He didn't know why, but the moment the door shut behind him Kurt felt alone…no, not just alone, painfully bereft, like the dawn of something new and exciting had gone, leaving him to wallow once again in the mire of his life as it stood thus far.

The worst part was he had let him go without an argument. Just stood stupidly and watched him walk away.

Sebastian left so many unanswered questions. They all swam around in Kurt's brain and that, mixed with way too much tequila, made his head pound like a badly executed timpani solo. It forced him to retreat into the cool, dark, soothing cave of his bedroom. Kurt climbed beneath his comforter, intent on letting the wash of inebriation drag him under and drown him for the night, but no matter how hard he tried to simply relax into unconsciousness he couldn't help thinking about that kiss.

Sebastian's lips claimed his. There was nothing chaste or sweet about it. It was hungry, desperate, almost proving a point.

And that revelation - he had wanted to make love to Kurt? When was that exactly? When he was drooling over Blaine, making moves to steal him away, or when he was planning to throw a rock salt filled Slushie in his face? Or how about all of that time when they barely spoke a word to each other? When exactly in the midst of all this was Sebastian pining over him?

He should just let it lie he told himself. Things were just fine before tonight, before Sebastian Smythe showed up and threw a wrench into Kurt's perfectly ordered loneliness. The wounds Blaine left behind were barely scarred over. Was he really going to let someone come into his life and tear those wounds open again?

Kurt hedged, typing out a message and then erasing it again, deciding again to take the initiative and suss out the bullshit in Sebastian's great admission of unrequited desire, then canceling it in favor of leaving well-enough alone. Exhaustion tugged on his eyelids, forcing them shut, and Kurt let them, holding his phone in his hand, his thumb still paused above the send button on the touch screen. With barely anything else running through his mind making any kind of sense, he told himself that a relationship with Sebastian Smythe was just asking for trouble. It would end in heartbreak even before it began. He was sure of it. So he curled around his pillow, unable to find the strength to do much more than abandon all thoughts of Sebastian until a later date yet to be determined. He drifted off to sleep, adjusting his arms beneath his pillow to keep his head elevated, tightening his grip on his phone, and accidentally pressing the send button.

When Kurt woke nearly eight hours later, his phone was vibrating gently in his hand. He pulled it out from under the pillow, the screen glowing astronomically bright to his squinting, photophobic eyes. Again his head throbbed, but he honed in on the words dancing in and out of his view, and his heart leapt into his throat.

From: Sebastian

'Eight o'clock at Whiskey Park. Gotcha. It's a date.'

Kurt groaned, and then winced when the sound echoed in his head like a loud, hollow bell.

Why did he have to say 'date'?

Sebastian was already there; already waiting at a low, wooden table when Kurt walked into the bar. Their eyes met and to Kurt's surprise Sebastian stood, offering him a hand and helping him into his seat.

"When did you turn into such a gentleman?" Kurt infused his voice with all the embitterment built up over the years of teasing, taunting, and scheming, but to his own dismay he sounded more intrigued…if not even just a little enchanted.

"Never," Sebastian said, quirking an eyebrow. He pushed Kurt's seat in and then returned to his own. "But I didn't really give you your money's worth the other night, so I thought I could make up for it."

"Well, if you remember, you gave me my money back," Kurt said flatly. "Besides, I thought this was a date."

"It is," Sebastian agreed with a nod. "I ordered you a club soda, by the way."

Sebastian slid the drink over to Kurt with a smirk, knowing that the extremely bland soda acted as a silent jab towards his all too quick intoxication of the night before.

"Thanks," Kurt said, decidedly ignoring the drink with a roll of his eyes, sweeping them over the traditional, old school, 1950s men's club atmosphere of the lounge where they sat. "This is an…interesting place. Do you meet many clients here?"

"If you can consider my dad a client," Sebastian scoffed, his tight smile obscured by his tumbler when he took a sip of his whiskey. "This is where I used to meet him for drinks every Saturday night."

Kurt nodded, wondering why the past tense. As far as Kurt knew Sebastian's father was still alive. He didn't know much about Sebastian's relationship with his father. In fact, Kurt didn't know much of anything about Sebastian, but he was surprised to realize how very much he wanted to learn, starting with his current mode of employment.

"So, what happened to Sebastian Smythe's rumored gigantic…uh…trust fund?" Kurt jumped in with both feet, not content to pussy foot around with false pleasantries.

"Excuse me?" Sebastian sputtered around the sip he was currently choking on.

"Did your dad disown you or something?" Kurt rephrased. "I mean, why the job?"

"Wow, you don't beat around the bush, do you, Hummel?" Sebastian dabbed at his mouth and the front of his shirt with a napkin. He scowled slightly at the liquid which threatened to stain, but he couldn't help sounding impressed by Kurt's straightforwardness. His eyes fell on Kurt's glass of club soda. Kurt pushed the glass towards him.

"Be my guest," Kurt offered, watching Sebastian saturate his napkin and press the wet cloth to the spreading stain. Sebastian seemed unnecessarily focused on his task, and Kurt suspected he was searching for the right way to answer the question.

"I wasn't like you in high school, Kurt," Sebastian started off uneasily, not looking up to meet Kurt's eyes even when he folded his napkin and placed it back on the table.

"Yeah, I know," Kurt grumbled, "and every opportunity you had you rubbed my 'gay' face in it." Kurt raised his hands and made air-quotes for emphasis, referring to the jeer Sebastian had made when Kurt told him to lay off of Blaine all those years ago back at the Lima Bean.

Sebastian sighed. This wasn't starting out well.

"No, I mean…I didn't have friends like you did." Sebastian rested his hands around his glass, dragging his fingers through the condensation as a means to distract himself from his own words. "I didn't have anyone I could consider close…like a family."

Sebastian's eyes flicked up quickly, as if he expected Kurt to garner an ultimate answer from just those few clues. Kurt shrugged.

"I don't get it," he admitted. "What about the Warblers? And Dalton? Blaine said you were super popular there. Weren't you captain of the lacrosse team or something?"

"Yeah, but, there wasn't anyone I was really close to." Sebastian stirred the ice in his glass with his index finger. "I mean, the whole time I was a member of the Warblers, all I heard was how great you and Blaine were, and how much they missed you. It didn't matter how hard I worked really, I was just standing in your guys' shadow."

Kurt narrowed his eyes skeptically as Sebastian spoke. It sounded too much like something the old Sebastian would have said to manipulate him, to make him think he was the good guy and then turn around and prove him wrong. But what did he have to gain by lying to Kurt? In the past, Blaine seemed like the likely prize. Kurt couldn't imagine that Sebastian would want in his pants enough to lie to him to this extent. After all, he was an escort for Christ's sake.

"And I wasn't all that close to the guys on the lacrosse team," he continued. "They were pretty much out for themselves."

Silence greeted Kurt once again, another expectant pause as if Sebastian was pulling him down a seemingly obvious path by his teeth.

Sebastian's green eyes finally met Kurt's, the sincerity in their depths startling him. It transformed his whole face, made him seem new, different, like Kurt was meeting him for the first time but without that annoying aura of superiority that seemed to travel everywhere with him. Here in this bar he was just Sebastian, a man Kurt's age who could have been his friend if things had been different; if they had been different.

"I wanted to be like you guys," Sebastian admitted.

"Fabulously well-dressed?" Kurt joked.

"Disgustingly in love," Sebastian countered with a cheeky grin.

"You wanted Blaine," Kurt stated to squash all argument, finally finding his bitterness.

"I wanted what Blaine had," Sebastian corrected, leaning forward over the table.

"What was that exactly?"

Kurt started opening the wounds himself, to finally let Sebastian see the raw and jagged edges of his pain, some of which he had caused. "Talent? Popularity? Friends?"

"Yeah, somewhat," Sebastian swallowed back a few choice words he wasn't too sure about.

"What else was there?" Kurt huffed in frustration. "His questionable taste in sunglasses and his gel-helmet hair?"

Sebastian rolled his head on his neck, staring at the ceiling, muttering under his breath.

"Please don't make me say it," Kurt heard him mumble. Sebastian balled his hands into fists and pounded the table gently, letting out a long breath.

"He had you, Kurt."

Kurt let himself feel shocked for only a second before he became furious.

"And how does that work?" Kurt asked. "When you spent all your time tormenting me and flirting with Blaine, trying to pull us apart?"

"I didn't want Blaine," Sebastian growled, trying to keep his temper. "I didn't want him to have you."

"But if you broke us up, I wouldn't have gone out with you anyway!" Kurt said, being the one to lose his temper first, a little confused as to what this all had to do with Sebastian having once wanted him, or becoming a male escort.

"It didn't matter anyway since you would have never given me a chance," Sebastian concluded. "Even if I was the nicest, sweetest, most charming guy in the world; even if I put the incredible Blaine Anderson to shame."

Kurt shook his head and looked down at his shoes. Silently he denied it although deep inside he knew it was the truth.

Kurt had labored under the illusion that he and Blaine were soulmates for so long; even going so far as to believe that maybe, just maybe, he was divinely favored. It had given him faith for the first time in his life that something larger, some greater purpose, might actually exist out there in the universe.

That's why Blaine's betrayal had been so devastating.

"None of this explains why you became a male escort," Kurt pointed out.

"I never fell in love like you did," Sebastian said, fidgeting with his glass again. "I never really had a serious boyfriend."

"Yeah, well, it's not all it's cracked up to be." Kurt watched Sebastian scrupulously, waiting for one of his signature barbs about Kurt's relationship with his ex, but it never came.

"You can say that," Sebastian answered quietly. "You had it at least."

Kurt bit his lip. It never dawned on him that Sebastian might want to fall in love, that having a first love might mean something to him.

"I took this job," Sebastian continued, "because I thought I could capture a little bit of that, but what I do…it's just empty."

Kurt heard a high-pitched chirp, and both men reached in their pockets for their phones.

"It's mine," Sebastian said, wiggling his phone in the air. He looked at the screen and frowned.

"Would you be pissed if we cut tonight short?" Sebastian asked without looking up from his screen.

"Why?" Kurt asked agog. "Is that work? Are you seriously telling me you're going to cut our date short so you can go fuck someone else?"

Sebastian's mouth dropped.

"Uh…"

"Sebastian…" Kurt placed his hands firmly on the table in front of him and stared, stared until his own pain was visible on his face, stared until it became almost uncomfortable for Sebastian to look at him, "…why am I here?"

"Because you asked me out." Sebastian tried to recapture some of his sass, but the effort was weak.

"You said you wanted me. You dropped that little nugget of information on me last night, and then you left. You kissed me like you needed me, and you left. Why? Why even tell me? Do you even want to try having a relationship with me, or is this just another stupid game?"

Sebastian at least had the decency to look properly ashamed.

"I did," he said. "I do. I would, it's just…"

"Just what?"

"Kurt…" Sebastian couldn't meet Kurt's gaze this time, "you become addicted to empty when it's all you've ever had. What if we don't work out?"

"You're such a fucking hypocrite," Kurt laughed cruelly, pushing away from the table and standing. "You tell me you turned into this because I would have never given you a chance, and now you won't give me one."

Kurt had half expected it, but he didn't think it would bother him so much. He didn't really assume that he would start a relationship with Sebastian tonight, but now he felt like he was losing his only chance at one.

"If you're really serious about wanting to give this a shot…about wanting to give us a shot, then I can't be worried about competing with nameless, faceless strangers. I don't want dates together and evenings alone to end like this." Kurt gestured vaguely around them. "I need to be your one and only."

The blank look on Sebastian's face wasn't too encouraging.

Kurt sighed. He reached into his back pocket and pulled out his wallet. Sebastian watched as Kurt pulled out a bill and placed it on the table beside his cup overflowing with club soda now that the ice had melted.

"Thanks for meeting me," Kurt said, staring down at his shoes to avoid looking at Sebastian's vacant expression. Kurt paused, hopeful, bordering on sitting back down and trying again, but he realized that Sebastian wasn't going to make a move to stop him, so he turned and left.

Sebastian watched Kurt push past a few other patrons and walk out the door.

He watched Kurt leave, and he didn't do a thing to stop him.

Kurt felt stupid. Monumentally stupid. He didn't know what exactly he expected from Sebastian Smythe. A dozen red roses? An admission of undying love? Another deep, long awaited, toe-curling kiss?

Those over the top expressions of love were Blaine's forte, but Sebastian wasn't Blaine.

And there was a reason Kurt and Blaine didn't last.

Sebastian's passionate admission that he'd wanted to make love to Kurt the night before was worth all of Blaine's showy, over-the-top proposals.

But that didn't mean that Kurt and Sebastian had a shot simply because Sebastian wasn't Blaine.

Sebastian was his own special type of asshole, and Kurt was better off without him.

Right?

Maybe, but Kurt was tired of being alone. He had allowed himself to imagine himself in a relationship with Sebastian, and the more he thought about it, the more he wanted it; not just to fill a hole that he had left gaping for so long. He wanted to know Sebastian on a deeper level than just superficial taunts and jabs. He had pictured him and Sebastian together, learning to know each other, discussing their secrets, finding out the things they had in common, because a secret part of him had always wondered how things might have been different if he had met Sebastian the time he went to spy at Dalton instead of Blaine.

Kurt heard a knock on the door and he hurried to open it. He had called Chandler on the way back to his apartment and asked him to come over to help him polish off the rest of the tequila and a cheesecake he made earlier. Kurt had run into Chandler in Manhattan shortly after his fiasco break-up with Blaine, and after reassuring Kurt that there were no hard feelings they were able to pick up again as friends, pretty much right where they left off. Chandler was still an incurable, cheesy flirt who couldn't live without his phone which meant Kurt got a text from him at least 32 times a day. They were uplifting and sweet little messages that made the thought of growing old and dying a spinster not so bad if the two of them could manage to live in the same aging artists' retirement home, sipping mint juleps in side by side rocking chairs on the front porch, surrounded by their 17 cats, all named Brian.

Kurt groaned. Man but he put way too much thought into how he was going to spend his golden years.

Kurt threw the door open wide and was greeted by a bouquet of white roses. For the briefest second it was a daunting flashback to that fateful day when Blaine showed up on his doorstep out of the blue with a dozen red roses covering his smiling face only to admit later on that he had cheated. He grimaced. Chandler knew about that, but he probably didn't remember. Kurt would forgive him.

"They're beautiful," Kurt said gratefully, taking the bouquet in his arms. He held them to his nose and sniffed them appreciatively, smiling as he glanced up into his best friend's eyes.

Except it wasn't Chandler at his doorstep.

It was Sebastian.

"I'm sorry there are only eleven instead of twelve," Sebastian started as if Kurt had asked. "I ran into your friend in the hall. I sort of paid him off with one to get him to go away."

Kurt would have to double check that story with Chandler later and find out how Sebastian actually convinced him to leave. Ever since his painful breakup, Chandler has been very protective of Kurt, and he's also a queen diva bitch in his own right. One white rose wouldn't have been enough to shoo him away.

"Why are you here?" Kurt asked, letting his eyes drift back to the white petals of the fragrant flowers. They were so clean, so unblemished. Kurt had never seen such perfect roses before in his life. He couldn't think of which upscale florist in the city would be open at this hour that would have roses as immaculate as these. "I thought you had to work."

"About that," Sebastian inched closer, and Kurt felt an arm snake around his waist, low along his hips, drawing them close with the bouquet between them. "I just stopped by to see how you would feel about starting tonight over, except instead of going out on a date with a male escort, maybe you might consider just staying in with this unemployed bastard."

Kurt felt his heart stutter in his chest. He didn't want his whole face to light up when he started to smile, but there were just some things outside of his control.

"I think," Kurt said, extricating the bouquet from between their bodies and setting it on a small table by his front door, "that sounds like something I can do."

Sebastian smiled, wide and wolfish, and Kurt felt his body come alive, washing with heat when those devilish lips claimed his again, Sebastian's arms tightening around him and lifting him off the ground, never stopping even when he walked Kurt inside his apartment and shut the door behind them.