Kurt sipped his coffee, shrinking slightly beneath the weight of Sebastian's eyes as they followed Kurt's every move. Sebastian seemed absolutely fascinated by Kurt. He mimicked every gesture. Sebastian licked his lips when Kurt did, swallowed when Kurt swallowed, tilted his head at the same time. It was almost like looking into a mirror.
Almost.
"So, was there something that you wanted to know…about me?" Kurt asked. He felt exposed, like a specimen in a glass jar…something novel and interesting for Sebastian to look at.
"Yes. Yes, I do, as a matter of fact," Sebastian replied, managing to sound both distant and interested at the same time. "Tell me everything about yourself."
Kurt's eyes bugged slightly. He looked down at his watch and sighed.
"Everything?" Kurt asked. "Seriously?"
"Yes, seriously." Sebastian smiled. Kurt noticed Sebastian's hands working on the surface of the table - flexing, fidgeting, crawling slightly as if Sebastian wanted to take Kurt's hand, but then returning to their place, fingers thrumming on the Formica surface.
"Well…" Kurt spun his coffee cup in his hands. He focused on the plastic lid, trying to think of something interesting to say. He felt pressured to live up to some sort of magical, super-human status. "I'm from Ohio…"
Three words spoken and Sebastian's eyes practically glowed, his hand slapping down on the table unexpectedly.
"So am I!" he said. "Westerville. You?"
"Lima." Kurt chuckled, trying hard to hold back the small tremor of excitement that shot through him. "I lived there my entire life with my dad…my mom died when I was eight…"
Sebastian's face softened. This time his hand found Kurt's and held it gently.
"I'm so sorry," he said.
Kurt flinched involuntarily at the unsolicited contact.
"I'm sorry," Sebastian said, pulling his hand back slowly. "Do I make you nervous?"
"More than you can possibly comprehend," Kurt replied, with only slight sarcasm.
Sebastian smirked.
"Why is that?" Sebastian asked earnestly, finally taking a sip of his neglected coffee.
"Well, if you must know," Kurt started, feeling unexpectedly vulnerable, "it's the way you stare at me."
Sebastian looked up from his coffee with a flirty smile.
"I imagine people stare at you all the time."
Kurt scowled, the truth of Sebastian's comment driving every other thought out of his head. His suspicions about Sebastian's motives turned to anger - utterly irrational anger.
"What? Is that some kind of joke?" Kurt barked.
"Wh-what are you talking about?" Sebastian's smile slipped as confusion took over.
"Is this some really elaborate prank?" Kurt couldn't help the sound of hurt in his voice. He only had himself to blame. He should have known better. Can't see faces? What the fuck is that!? That girl in class could have been in on it. That would explain her strange, impish grin.
"Do people stare at me?" Kurt muttered, taking out his wallet and dropping a couple of wrinkled dollars on the table to pay for his coffee. "Only all the time, you dumb fuck, but you know that, don't you?"
"Kurt?" Sebastian reached out for Kurt's hand, but Kurt pulled it away. "Kurt, I don't know…do people stare at you? Is there something I'm missing?"
"I don't think you do miss it!" Kurt started yelling. "I think you see it crystal clear."
Kurt stood and bolted from the coffee shop. Sebastian grabbed his bag and followed, getting more and more flustered with each step.
"Kurt…I have no idea…would you please wait!"
Kurt stopped. He didn't know why. He didn't have a reason to. He didn't owe this man anything, but Kurt still held on to the hope that everything Sebastian claimed was true, that he couldn't see Kurt's face and his awful scar, and that maybe, maybe he really wanted to get to know Kurt.
"Could you please tell me what the hell is going on?" Sebastian pleaded, "Because believe it or not, I don't have a clue."
Kurt took a deep breath, filling his lungs to overflowing with the cool, fall air. He got as close to Sebastian as he dared, until they were nearly touching noses. Kurt squinted into Sebastian's eyes, which stared back at him bewildered. Sebastian didn't flinch at Kurt's closeness. He didn't seem disgusted by the fact that Kurt's face came so close to touching his.
Could it all be true, or was Sebastian just one hell of an actor?
Kurt still wasn't sure.
"What do you see?" Kurt asked.
"What?" Sebastian didn't move away from Kurt, even as Kurt inched even closer.
"When you look at my face…what do you see?"
Sebastian breathed a sigh of relief, his entire face relaxing back into that charming, smooth and easy smile that had started to tie Kurt's stomach into tiny knots.
"I see your smile…" he said softly, holding Kurt's gaze captive with his own as he spoke, "…and I see your beautiful blue eyes…I see your perfect, porcelain skin…"
Kurt recoiled at the mention of his skin.
"Perfect?" Kurt whispered in disbelief. "Perfect?" Kurt didn't know if he wanted to cry or scream. "Why are you being so cruel? You don't even know me."
Sebastian threw his hands up in frustration.
"I don't understand!" he exclaimed. "I wish you would just tell me what you're talking about, because I promise you I don't know!"
Kurt grabbed one of Sebastian's hands, placing just his fingertips to the right side of his face. Sebastian traced down the embedded marks and ridges on Kurt's skin gently. The feeling of Sebastian's fingers touching his face tenderly filled Kurt with a strange, unfamiliar feeling. His heart sped in his chest, his eyes grew wide. He felt fire rush through his blood. He held his breath, praying Sebastian didn't notice.
Kurt watched Sebastian's face for any change, any sign of revulsion or disgust. Sebastian's brow furrowed, his eyes searching Kurt's face, trying to make sense of what he felt in contrast to what he saw. Kurt felt his righteous indignation start to dissolve. Suddenly Kurt wanted those fingertips all over his body. He wanted them creeping beneath his shirt, exploring over his skin. He never wanted anyone's touch so much. Kurt backed away. Sebastian's hand hovered in the air for a moment.
"What…what was that?" Sebastian asked.
"It's a scar. A burn. I got it when I was little. It destroyed the right side of my face."
"Oh," Sebastian said, his confused eyes soft and sympathetic. "I'm so sorry."
Kurt nodded, waiting for the inevitable. Now Sebastian knew the truth. He could let Kurt down easy. He would realize his mistake, walk away, and go on with the rest of his life. Kurt could go home alone and file this moment away so he could look back on it and remember the feeling of Sebastian's fingers on his skin, and that look of absolute wonder in Sebastian's perfect green eyes when he first looked at Kurt's face.
But Sebastian didn't say a word, and he didn't turn to leave. He simply waited for Kurt to say something. If Sebastian's staring was unnerving, his silence was almost unbearable. Kurt looked left and right, needing a way out.
"What is it that you want, Sebastian?" Kurt sounded exasperated. He wanted to run. Run away from this God-forsaken coffee shop, and the strangers who started to stare their way.
He wanted to run away from the possibility of getting his heart broken.
"Honestly, I want to see you again."
Kurt laughed at the irony.
Sebastian sighed with a tired chuckle of his own.
"Ok, my staring bothers you. I accept that. I'll stop." Sebastian ran a hand through his hair while he tried to think of a solution.
"How about this," he suggested finally, "I'll close my eyes for a full minute, and you get to decide how you want to move forward. We can shake hands and say good-bye as friends, or maybe, just maybe, you can be open-minded and give me a chance."
Kurt didn't answer. He couldn't convince his mouth to make words. Was this man for real? Did he really want to ask Kurt out again…after all of this?
Sebastian closed his eyes.
Kurt looked at Sebastian's face, eyes closed, lips relaxed into a sly grin, waiting for Kurt to make his move.
Kurt imagined for a second that Sebastian maybe even wanted Kurt to kiss him.
Sebastian waited, counting quietly in his head, hoping for anything…a touch…a whisper…a kiss? Would Kurt be that bold? But the longer he waited, the more he began to think that Kurt might not even like him.
A breath ghosted over Sebastian's ear like the light touch of a feather gliding over his skin.
"I don't know what you're waiting for, gorgeous," a silky voice said, "but your hideous friend just split."
Sebastian's eyes snapped open. His eyes swept over the sidewalk, the chairs filled with faceless customers sitting at tables, sipping their drinks. He looked up and down the street in vain. Kurt had run off.
"Thanks," he said in a monotone to the hopeful barista, "and fuck you very much."
"So, you just left him there?" the fiery blonde therapist asked with a scowl on her face. "In the doorway to Starbucks, practically begging you to kiss him?"
Kurt rolled his eyes. He stood from the straight backed arm chair and started pacing the small office.
"Yes, alright, Jane!" Kurt groaned, feeling the full weight of his guilt barreling through him. "I left him there. I left him standing there with his eyes closed, and yes, I think he wanted me to kiss him. But…"
"But, what?" Jane propped her feet up on her desk. Kurt cringed at the sight of her thirty dollar sensible shoes scuffing the rich mahogany desk top. "Be prepared, sweet cheeks. He might not want to speak to you ever again."
Kurt sighed, dropping back down into the stiff chair. That's what he was afraid of. He hadn't really thought about it when he took off, but he had his reasons, and they were good reasons…weren't they?
"I just…I don't…" Kurt cradled his head in his hands. "Why me?"
"Well, that's an easy question to answer, isn't it?"
"And that's the problem!: Kurt exclaimed. "I don't want him to like me just because he can see me. I mean, it's fucked up that he has this crazy, rare disorder and all, but I don't think I'm strong enough to be his anchor…and I don't want to be a consolation prize."
Jane fixed Kurt with her piercing sky blue eyes.
"But, you didn't even give him a chance, did you?" Jane accused. "You're kind of a judgmental prick, do you know that?"
Kurt's jaw dropped.
"Excuse me?" he said defensively. "You know, I don't think I'm paying you to insult me."
"No, you're paying me so I can help you, and part of that is calling you out on your bullshit when I smell It and, whoa, if you aren't stinking up this office like a manure factory."
Kurt felt defeated. Jane was crude, but she was also right.
"Well, it doesn't matter now, seeing as he'll probably never speak to me again." Kurt picked at a stray string on the arm of the chair. "I don't even know why he can see me," Kurt mumbled.
"There I might be able to help you," Jane said. She leaned her chair back dangerously, pulling a stack of papers from her printer and passing them to Kurt. "When you called, I emailed a colleague of mine. A neurologist. He got in contact with a guy who deals in obscure neurological disorders, and emailed me all this crap."
Kurt took the papers and flipped through them. He counted almost thirty pages filled with words like visual input, mental representation, recognition memory, and a few others he felt he might be able to discern, but wedged between those were other words like positron emission topography, N-acetyl-aspartate depletion, and impaired semantic fluency that he was sure would give him a headache after only five minutes. Kurt shook his head in disbelief as he tried to digest a few of these sentences and failed.
"Uh…can I get the Cliffs Notes version?"
"No," Jane said sternly. "Partially because your penance for being an ass is to read that stack from top to bottom."
Kurt raised an eyebrow, peeking up at Jane from over the papers.
"And what's the other part?"
"The other part is I couldn't even begin to tell you what any of that means, but…"
Jane stood from her desk and walked over to where Kurt sat, flipping through the daunting pages with a look of exasperation on his face. She thumbed past a few pages until she reached a section that with a highlighted passage. She jabbed at the page a few times with her finger.
"This might answer your question as to why he can see you."
Kurt scanned the few sentences eagerly, but quickly became overwhelmed, throttling the pages in frustration.
"Basically," Jane explained, "it says that he can see your face because of your scar, but he's telling the truth. He can't see your scar."
"What?" The depths of Kurt's confusion became astronomical.
"His brain works on perception," Jane continued. "He's seen a face before, but because of whatever, he no longer perceives them. More than likely, he's never seen a scar like yours before, so his mind removes it and replaces it with what's familiar…your face."
"So, if he saw someone else with a scar…or a gigantic birthmark or something…"
"It might work the same way. Yes." Jane returned to her seat, propping her feet back up on her desk.
"So, I was right." Kurt shook his head. "I'm not special."
Jane sighed.
"God, are you infuriating!" she said. "It has nothing to do with that. Realistically, it has very little to do with you. For once in your sad, tragic little life, someone else has it slightly worse."
"Really?" Kurt scoffed. "How? He's gorgeous, smart, he could have anyone he wanted…"
"Yeah, except he can't, can he? He's lonely. He wanted a friend. After all these years, he finally found someone he could actually see and when he reached out to that person, they left him in a coffee shop without even a good-bye."
Kurt dropped his head in shame. He was so infuriated by the idea that Sebastian might be playing him, might have some cruel angle or intention, that he never considered that Sebastian might just be a lonely guy looking for a friend.
He was so busy being a victim, he didn't realize he was also a self-centered ass.
"What do I do?" Kurt asked.
Jane pointed at the pages in Kurt's hands.
"You read those, and on the off chance that Captain Perfect actually does talk to you, you apologize, and you offer to buy him a coffee."
"And if he yells at me?" Kurt met Jane's eyes.
"You let him," she said, "because you deserve it. Now get the hell out of my office, Skinny Jeans. Your hour's up."
Jane waved Kurt away with one dismissive, manicured hand.
If Sebastian felt Kurt staring at him, he didn't let on. He focused on the blackboard and did his work quickly, hoping to pack up his things and be out the door the moment class ended.
Kurt barely paid attention to anything Professor Evans said. He caught something about derivatives, and maybe something about integers. Frankly he could care less. He had passed Calculus BC before graduating high school. He was fairly sure missing out on the professor's riveting discussion about positive and negative numbers wouldn't kill his grade point average. He didn't even bother to take his book out of his bag. He wanted to be able to catch Sebastian before he had the chance to give him the slip.
Kurt felt like an 80s high school angst movie cliché, sitting on the edge of his seat, watching the second hand tick slowly around the face of the clock on the wall, ready to pounce when the bell rang. When the time came, Kurt's graceful and carefully planned approach failed spectacularly when his foot tangled in the straps of his backpack, and he crashed onto the ground bringing his desk down with him. Everyone stopped and stared. Professor Evans gaped at him from his spot in front of the blackboard. The girls in the desks behind him chittered like squirrels, giggling behind their hands and shaking their heads. Kurt didn't try to get up. He hoped that maybe Sebastian had seen this as his golden opportunity and left.
A strong hand grabbed Kurt's arm and pulled him to his feet.
"Yeah, thanks," Kurt muttered, not even turning to face whoever helped him.
"Yeah, well, I'm beginning to think being knocked on your ass is going to be a daily thing with you." Sebastian turned the desk over and rescued Kurt's traitorous backpack.
Kurt went cold. He hadn't seen this coming. He had practiced what he would say to Sebastian in his head over and over, and never once did that conversation start with Sebastian picking his sorry ass up off the floor.
Kurt decided to just go for it.
"Look," Kurt said, "about the other day…"
"Forget it," Sebastian interrupted, thrusting the backpack into Kurt's arms. "I think you made yourself pretty clear already. No harm, no foul."
Sebastian shifted uncomfortably on his feet, turning to leave. Kurt grasped at straws, trying to think of anything that would keep Sebastian from walking away.
I'm sorry.
I'm an idiot.
I didn't mean to run off. It was an accident.
"So…do you have apperceptive or associative visual agnosia?" Kurt blurted out.
Sebastian stopped short.
Shit!
"I'm sorry," Kurt followed up quickly. "Is that a personal question? I didn't mean…"
Sebastian turned and looked back at Kurt with a cryptic expression in his green eyes.
"Where did you…"
"My therapist," Kurt divulged. "She gave me some information…"
Kurt dug through his backpack, searching for the well-read and underlined sheets of paper cluttering his bag, trying to hide from Sebastian's hard-to-interpret look of scrutiny. Kurt pulled out a few of the pages from the mass and Sebastian took them, scanning the words and noting the notes scribbled into the margins.
"So, you know." Sebastian shrugged, handing the pages back to Kurt. "Now we're even."
Kurt zippered up his bag quickly, shooting out a hand to grab Sebastian's shoulder as he turned to walk away.
"You know, to be fair, you did come on a little strong," Kurt said, trying to defend himself. Sebastian smirked, shaking his head, but the comment made him pause.
"Please," Kurt said, holding Sebastian's shoulder. "Please, can't we just…start over?"
Sebastian glared at Kurt.
"Well, why don't you close your eyes for a minute, and we'll see what happens."
Kurt felt his heart twist in his chest at the cold, hurt look in Sebastian's eyes. Kurt sighed and shut his eyes, waiting, pretty sure that Sebastian would just walk off and leave him.
Sebastian had every right.
He almost did.
He barely took a step before he stopped. He looked at Kurt, eyes closed, waiting, the same way Sebastian waited for Kurt.
"I…I can't do that to you," Sebastian said.
Kurt opened his eyes slowly. Sebastian looked down at his shoes, scuffing the linoleum with his foot.
"I can't just leave you here."
"Why not?" Kurt asked.
Sebastian looked back up at Kurt's face.
"Because I wasn't lying," Sebastian said matter-of-factly. "I was telling the truth when I said I wanted to get to know you. I want to know everything about you. And not just because…" Sebastian raised a hand and unconsciously gestured to Kurt's face, "...because I can see you. It's because…I have a feeling that we have a lot in common."
"Yeah," Kurt said, dropping his own eyes to his white Doc Marten boots. "Like what?"
Sebastian moved closer, ducking his head to catch Kurt's gaze.
"Like maybe we can both use a friend."
Kurt was too ashamed to look at Sebastian, but Sebastian wouldn't let him look away.
"I have a place off campus," Sebastian offered. "Maybe you can come over and I can make us dinner?"
Kurt swallowed hard, letting his mind wander, entertaining the idea that maybe Sebastian had more than just dinner in mind, as ridiculous a thought as that may be.
"When?" Kurt asked, hoping his voice didn't sound as small and pathetic as he thought it did.
"What are you doing right now?"
Kurt smiled.
"Nothing important," he said.
Sebastian turned half-way, preparing to walk out of the classroom with Kurt following, but at the last moment he offered Kurt his hand. Kurt took it, suppressing a ridiculous giggle as he walked with Sebastian out the door.