A/N: On his way to work, Sebastian starts getting obscure (and somewhat disturbing) text messages from an unknown number that he assumes are from his boyfriend…until he realizes they aren't, and that his boyfriend might actually be in danger.
I got a sort of obscure message in my ask from an anon - Brittany. I wasn't sure if that was a prompt or not, so I decided it was. FutureFic AU that assumes Kurt didn't know Brittany or Santana in high school, and didn't meet Dani in New York. Also, not necessarily Blaine/Klaine friendly. Warning: for overall creepiness and mention of death (not Kurt or Sebastian), also mention of blood and a minor injury. Also includes a sort-of disturbed Brittany.
You have such a beautiful boyfriend, Sebastian.
It was the most random text message Sebastian had ever gotten. He thought for a moment that it was from the man himself, reminding Sebastian for the thousandth time how fucking lucky he was that he had left Blaine once and for all to live a life of sin in New York with him, but this text came from an unknown and blocked phone number.
Sebastian quickly typed a reply.
Yeah, I know. So what of it, creeper?
Maybe it was Blaine, sore and licking his wounds, deciding to be an immature dick. But he also hoped Kurt hadn't bought himself a new iPhone and was texting him from it. It would be a lonely night on the sofa for Sebastian if he had just called Kurt a creeper.
He waited for a response to his message, hoping for a clue to the mystery texter's identity.
He didn't have to wait long for the creepy texts to continue.
He has such gorgeous blue eyes.
Sebastian smirked as he raced for the subway before the doors closed.
His skin is soft, like the petals of a rose.
Sebastian furrowed his brow. It had to be Kurt. Sebastian had just sent him roses that morning…three dozen sterling roses, Kurt's favorites. He suddenly felt completely and uncomfortably aroused, wedged in between an older, Japanese lady, and a young, athletic college student inside the confines of the cramped train car. Yes, Kurt's skin was soft like rose petals. Sebastian always told him exactly that. The thought of running his fingers over Kurt's skin had him fully hard and wondering if he could get to their apartment for a quickie then back to work before the end his lunch break.
Probably not, but it would be worth canceling his afternoon appointments for.
Yes, beautiful. Tell me how soft your skin is. Are you touching yourself now?
He waited for Kurt's answer, waited for Kurt to tell him that yes, he was touching himself. That he was naked in their bed, wrapped in the Egyptian cotton sheets, palming himself through the fabric, moaning like a whore…moaning Sebastian's name.
His hair is fluffy…like the fur of a cat.
Sebastian jerked back away from the screen, as if the ridiculous words had slapped him in the face. He re-read the text again to be sure he read it right. No…that wasn't Kurt. That didn't sound like Kurt at all. Kurt hated cats, for one. And fluffy? Sebastian couldn't recall Kurt ever using the word fluffy.
Someone was messing with him.
Okay…I'm done with this now. Who the fuck is this?
Sebastian tapped his foot as he waited for an answer. He didn't have time for this shit. He had three meetings this morning and he was already running ten minutes late.
Those were beautiful roses you sent. Beautiful roses for your beautiful boyfriend.
That message made Sebastian go cold, his mind detaching from his body, separating his rational mind from the emotions that started spiraling chaotically through him. If Kurt didn't send that message, who else knew about the roses? The florist, of course, but Sebastian had been using the same place for years, and they'd never given him any trouble. Physically he stood frozen, making no move to blink or breathe, even as his subconscious acknowledged that he had missed his stop. His mind screamed to make sense of these stupid texts, to find the sender and throttle them for this asinine prank.
Another message came in and his heart stopped, squeezed to a halt by the fingers of dread.
So beautiful to look at. So beautiful on the outside. Do you think he's just as beautiful inside?
Sebastian looked around him, for some crazy reason expecting someone on the train to have the answers, to tell him exactly what was going on. Sebastian composed a text, but to Kurt's phone number.
Hey, Kurt. Just wondering how you're doing. Could you send me a text back?
At the next stop, Sebastian jumped off the train, crossed the tracks, and waited on the platform for a train that would take him back out of the city towards home. He stared at his iPhone screen, willing Kurt to text him back and tell him everything was alright.
Sebastian relaxed when a text from Kurt's phone flashed on his screen.
Nope…you're talking to me, handsome, not your pretty boyfriend. ;)
Sebastian felt his knees wobble as he re-read the message.
"Fuck, fuck, fuck!" Sebastian roared, looking down the tracks for the train. He glanced around and found a pillar with the train schedule posted on it. He read the schedule and cursed again when he saw he had ten minutes till the next one.
Sebastian read the text over and decided he couldn't wait. He abandoned the platform, raced down the stairs, and barreled up the street.
Do you think he's just as beautiful inside?
What did that mean? What the fuck did that mean? Why would someone who had access to Kurt's phone be asking Sebastian that question?
Sebastian tried not to think about it as he rushed back uptown.
Brittany loved looking at the beautiful unicorn. His shimmering blue eyes, like the clear summer sky, opened wide with surprise as they focused on her. Her fingers brushed his hand and she felt how heavenly soft and smooth his skin was. His hair, chestnut brown with golden highlights, reminded her of her best friend, her favorite cat, her only constant and true companion all throughout her childhood. She nearly lost it when he died a year and a half ago, having overdosed in the night. She couldn't believe it, not after he had worked so hard to successfully kick his Ecstasy addiction. But she had seen the signs. He had stopped eating, slept too much, sputtered about madly sometimes, then lay completely still with a glassy stare, his chest barely moving when he breathed. She should have done something, should have found him help sooner. Now he was gone and she had nothing left. Nothing at all.
Maybe this unicorn could be her new friend, or even better, her new pet.
She twirled a strand of her long blonde hair around her finger as she toyed with the unicorn's boyfriend. At first, she complimented him, but his boyfriend called her a creeper, and that made her angry.
Angrier than the day the WB canceled One Tree Hill.
Angrier than when she lost the election for student body president.
Angrier than when her girlfriend left her for some singing waitress.
She had just been to see them. She smiled at the memory.
The amount of blood in two human bodies astounded her.
Showering and finding something clean to wear almost made her late for this delivery.
She looked Kurt over from head to toe, imagining what it would be like to take him home with her. She had a collar she thought would fit him fine. It was brown leather and covered with rhinestones. It would accentuate the highlights in his hair and set off his porcelain skin perfectly.
She sighed.
Kurt.
The unicorn's name was Kurt.
It said so on the card in the flowers.
Just looking at Kurt made her feel happy. Unicorns possessed magic. They made the world more beautiful. With Kurt as her pet, there would be no limits to what Brittany could do.
Brittany giggled as she rinsed the blades of the kitchen shears. Calculating in her head, she figured Sebastian wouldn't be back for over an hour after her last text message from Kurt's phone.
It was time to see if Kurt was as magical as he seemed.
Sebastian tasted copper in his mouth as his feet pounded the pavement. He dodged buses, leapt from cab to cab, had been cursed at in more languages than he had ever heard in his life. He texted Kurt's phone feverishly as he ran, spending more time with his head bent over his screen than actually looking where he was going. He collided head on with a parked car and flipped completely onto his back in the street. A crowd of onlookers tried to help him, but he shoved them aside and sped away.
"Kurt!" he screamed at his phone. "Kurt! Answer your fucking phone, Kurt! Answer the God damned fucking phone, you stupid son of a bitch!"
Kurt didn't answer, and the creepy texter didn't send any more messages.
Sebastian begged for something, needed something. He had already spent too much time not knowing what was going on.
"Fucking fuck, Kurt! Pick up your phone, you…you…"
Sebastian couldn't curse Kurt out anymore, not even in anger. He didn't hate Kurt. He loved Kurt. He loved Kurt more than he could admit, even to himself.
He hated himself for not saying it.
He hated himself for being an ass.
He hated how proud he was that he managed to convince Kurt to break up with Blaine, but he wouldn't change a thing.
He wanted Kurt.
He needed Kurt.
"Kurt, where the fuck are you!?"
Streets turned into sidewalks and sidewalks turned into stairs. Down a carpeted hallway, Sebastian flew, straight into the elevator and stopped. He tried to slow his frantic breathing, bordering on the verge of passing out, but nothing worked. His body wouldn't obey. His mind swirled with a hundred possibilities.
All of those cryptic messages turned into words that he could hear taunting him in his head.
You have such a beautiful boyfriend, Sebastian.
He has such gorgeous blue eyes.
His skin is soft, like the petals of a rose.
Do you think he's just as beautiful inside?
He fumbled with his keys, forcing them into the key hole, kicking at the door with his foot.
"Kurt!" Sebastian screamed. "Kurt, open this door! Kurt!"
The door swung open.
It was never locked.
Sebastian stood still in the quiet apartment.
A quiet and empty apartment.
Sebastian slowly stepped inside.
He heard something crunch beneath his feet.
He looked down and saw the hardwood floor littered with broken glass. Roses lay scattered everywhere – on the floor, on the kitchen counter, in the sink.
Sebastian walked over to the counter. A half-full vase sat beside a pair of kitchen shears and Kurt's iPhone…the screen shattered, stained with a sticky substance that looked like cough syrup, maybe? Or blood…
Suddenly, Sebastian noticed blood everywhere – drops on the floor, drops on the counter, drops on the petals of the roses and trailing into the sink.
Sebastian wanted to scream.
At some point, his body finally caught up with his head and he was screaming. He cried and screamed, grabbing the shears in his hands and wringing them in his fists, unsure of what might have happened here.
Where the hell was Kurt!?
"Kurt!" he screamed, his voice broken, his body shaking, his mind and heart shattering. "Kurt!"
"Sebastian?" a sing-song voice called out from the bathroom. "Sebastian? Are you home already?"
Sebastian's screaming came to a full stop. He spun around, holding the shears defensively. He watched the bathroom door open and Kurt stepped out, his hand wrapped with white gauze.
"Sebastian? Honey?" Kurt approached Sebastian, slowly when he noticed the shears in his hands. His usually well put-together boyfriend was a wreck – eyes wide and red, hair sticking straight out all over, cheeks flushed. He looked like he'd gone mad, holding the kitchen shears in one hand as if ready to strike anyone who came close to him.
Sebastian focused on Kurt, alive and well, eyes full of confusion and concern. The shears tumbled from Sebastian's hands, falling to the floor with a loud clunk.
"Kurt?" Sebastian whispered through quivering lips. His knees gave out and he crumpled to the floor, eyes still locked on Kurt's face.
Kurt threw himself at his panic-stricken boyfriend, curling into his embrace, wrapping his arms around his trembling body.
"Kurt?" Sebastian repeated. "Kurt? Wh-what happened? Where were you?" Sebastian rambled, asking questions as soon as he thought of them. "You didn't answer your phone. Why didn't…"
Sebastian's mouth worked around the words, but no sound came out.
"I'm so sorry," Kurt said, cradling Sebastian's head in his hands. "Your gorgeous roses arrived and like a fool I dropped them. I tried to clean up the glass, but I cut my hand." Kurt raised his wrapped hand to show Sebastian. Sebastian eyed the bandage, reaching out to touch Kurt for the first time, needing to feel him, to know he was real. He bunched his hands into Kurt's shirt and pulled his boyfriend on top of him.
"Oomph!" Kurt chuckled as he shifted against Sebastian to make himself more comfortable. "Anyway, I dropped my phone, and then I stepped on it. It still works, but the screen is ruined. The delivery girl was helping me with the roses while I bandaged my hand. Didn't she tell you?"
Sebastian shook his head. It sounded innocent enough, but none of it made sense.
"What…what delivery girl?" Sebastian asked.
Kurt raised his head and searched the kitchen, then turned to look at the living room.
"She was here a minute ago. Didn't you see her?"
"No," Sebastian muttered, feeling himself slip in and out of shock. "No, there was no one here when I got home."
Kurt shrugged it off nonchalantly, but Sebastian felt sick.
"I guess she left," Kurt reasoned. "She was kind of depressed. She mentioned something about seeing her ex-girlfriend with a new woman."
"Oh, yeah?" Sebastian asked, not particularly concerned with the delivery girl's love life but needing to hear Kurt talk to him.
"Yeah," Kurt continued. "We talked for a good long time. I guess she didn't have any other deliveries to make or something. Or maybe she didn't care. Anyway, she said I made her feel better about the whole thing." Kurt chuckled. "She called me magical."
Sebastian felt normalcy returning. His heart sought out the pace of Kurt's and matched it, slowing back to a comfortable beat. He breathed in the scent of Kurt's shampoo, the sweet smell of vanilla soothing his senses, convincing him that everything was alright.
Kurt wasn't in any danger.
Those crazy texts had been a fluke. A horrible prank.
Sebastian and Kurt could get on with their lives.
"The flowers are beautiful, by the way," Kurt said, smoothly slipping the fingers of his un-bandaged hand between the buttons of Sebastian's shirt, letting his fingertips tease over his skin.
"Really?" Sebastian unbuttoned his shirt, giving Kurt more room to play.
"Yup, even if the delivery girl was a bit of a fruit loop." Kurt tugged Sebastian's shirt out from his pants, followed by his t-shirt, lifting both up over his abs so he could kiss Sebastian's chest.
Sebastian chuckled.
"Fruit loop?" he sighed when Kurt's tongue traced over his collarbone. "How?"
"Well…" Kurt murmured between kisses and licks, "she kept saying…that my hair…reminded her of her cat…"
Sebastian held his breath.
His hair is fluffy…like the fur of a cat.
Do you think he's just as beautiful inside?
Over the sounds of Kurt's humming and his lips kissing his skin, Sebastian heard heavy footsteps walking down the hall, getting closer.
He couldn't see the door, opened a jar, from where he sat on the floor with Kurt in his arms, but he could tell the footsteps stopped in front of their apartment.
Knock, knock.
Sebastian held Kurt's arms and moved him bodily to the side, further into the kitchen where he might be shielded from sight of the front door.
"Wha-" Kurt whimpered, his lips pursed, having been stopped mid-kiss, his eyes filling again with worry and surprise.
"Shhh," Sebastian hushed, staring into Kurt's eyes, hoping that he could tell from Sebastian's stern gaze that they needed to stay quiet.
Kurt didn't stop looking confused, but he nodded.
Sebastian rose up on his knees, trying to get a peek at the door.
Knock, knock.
The door swung open wider with each knock.
Sebastian reached for the shears and picked them up.
A face peeked hesitantly around the door. Blue eyes found both men huddled in the kitchen, on the floor.
The face, hidden beneath a silk-screened cap and framed by long, blond hair, smiled at them.
"Ever More Florist," the young man announced. Sebastian stood up, walking slowly toward the door with shears in hand to confront the delivery man. He was young, in his mid-twenties, smiling and obviously blissfully aware that Sebastian was armed. He wore a light blue shirt advertising the name of the florist that Sebastian had called. A spray of lavender buds bounced beneath the man's chin as he spoke. "I have a delivery for Mr. Kurt Hummel."
"A delivery?" Sebastian asked, looking around the apartment again to be sure the mess of roses and glass remained, that it hadn't been a hallucination. "What do you mean?"
"I'm sorry I'm late," the man said, his bright smile slipping, misinterpreting Sebastian's inscrutable glower as anger at him. "But someone broke into my truck, and unfortunately took your arrangement."
Sebastian stared at the flowers in the cut crystal vase the man held in his arms.
Do you think he's just as beautiful inside?
Sebastian heard Kurt rise to his feet in the kitchen.
"Sebastian?"
His voice was soft, sounding like Kurt only now registered some kind of danger.
Do you think he's just as beautiful inside?
Sebastian's gaze swept over the floor, taking in the broken glass, the bent roses, the drops of blood…
Do you think he's just as beautiful inside?
"We'd be more than willing to refund you the price of the arrangement," the man offered, his smile gone completely, his voice wary, "since it's my fault it's late."
Do you think he's just as beautiful inside?
Sebastian couldn't get those words out of his head. He couldn't erase them, not when he saw the blood, the glass, the shears…
Suddenly, he heard another voice in his head – a voice that told him to grab Kurt and run.
"Go pack a bag, Kurt," Sebastian commanded. He slammed the door in the startled delivery man's face, not even waiting for him to be clear of the doorway, the force of the door clipping the heads of one or two roses in the process. Sebastian threw the locks and bolts, keeping him and Kurt trapped inside for the few minutes they needed to get their things. "We're getting out of here now!"