A/N: Okay guys! Here's that happy ending I promised you :)
The voice had said, "Paint it."
Now, Sebastian just had to remember what he wanted to paint.
An ending.
That's what he had thought right before he heard that silent command.
He wanted it all to end.
So that was the secret, then. He would paint an ending to it all – his ending. How this all plays out, starting with Kurt dying, and then…well, however Sebastian thought to do himself in. He hadn't really given it any thought.
Sebastian returned to his easel. He tossed the ruined canvas aside and replaced it with a longer one, one with enough room to paint a multiple panel work. He collected up his pallet, not even worrying about the mess of paint on the floor, satisfied enough with the state of the acrylics that were left. He picked up a brush, not particularly concerned with whether it was camel hair or synthetic, medium tip or broad, and held it poised over the swirling sea of tacky paint. He had to choose the color that would tie in the overall theme, which he figured would be relatively easy.
He was painting a triptych of his own death. He would start with black or red.
But when he tried to dip the brush into one of those two colors, he found the brush called somewhere else. He gritted his teeth and tried again with the same frustrating result. He moved to swirl the dry bristles into the red, but the brush was pulled to the blue.
"Fine," he growled, pulling up a huge dollop of Ultramarine Blue and hurled it at the canvas, letting the paint drop carelessly with an obscene sounding sploitch, watching as the hulking mass crawled down the canvas.
"Well, that's mature," Kurt said, watching as Sebastian put the finishing touches on his latest painting. "I don't think the gallery is going to want that one."
"I don't care," Sebastian returned, not bothering to look at his husband standing by his side. "It makes me feel better."
"A painting of us barbecuing the neighbor's dog?" Kurt asked, tilting his head to the side to take in the vivid imagery of a smug Sebastian, dressed in a toque and a gingham apron that said "Kiss the Cook" across the front, tongs raised triumphantly, and in its metal grip, the charred leg of Roy and Sylvia Harding's Airedale Terrier.
"You know, I would think you would have more sympathy. The motherfucker bit me," Sebastian griped, indicating his bandaged hand.
"You bit him back!" Kurt chuckled. "I think that makes you even."
"I don't," Sebastian moaned quietly.
Kurt inched closer to the painting, appreciating quietly all the detail Sebastian had put in – the grain in the wood of the red washed picnic table; the springy hair on the carcass of the dead dog; even Kurt's own ensemble of capris pants and a tailored Marc Jacobs shirt, with his signature hippo broach attached to the collar.
Sebastian watched his husband's eyes as they traveled over the artwork, his lip pinched between his teeth, his brow furrowed in concentration. Kurt turned his head suddenly, blushing at being caught admiring his husband's handiwork on such a gruesome painting.
Owing to love, knowledge, and familiarity, added with a dash of the fact that after so many years of sharing the same heart and the same mind they often thought alike, both men moved in at the exact same time for the kiss that seemed to linger in the air waiting for them to experience it.
Kurt gave a sidelong look at the painting and chuckled when he noticed how close his face was to a screaming and horrified Sylvia Harding, rending her clothes in an expression of her grief.
"Okay, I've got to get away from this thing," Kurt said. His ducked his head and caught a glimpse of Sebastian's bandaged hand, a spot of red blossoming on the wrapping.
"Oh, sweetheart," he cooed, taking Sebastian's hand in his and starting to undo the gauze. "We have to rewrap this so it doesn't get infected." Kurt tutted disapprovingly. "I wish you would just let me take you to the hospital."
"Why?" Sebastian asked, putting down his pallet and wrapping an arm around Kurt's waist, pulling him close, "When I've got you here to play nurse?"
Sebastian wiggled his eyebrows suggestively while Kurt pulled a face of mock horror.
"Come on, Kurt," Sebastian whispered. "I think I need to undress so you can take my vitals."
Kurt threw his head back and laughed. Then he kissed Sebastian on the mouth, chuckling when his husband released him to undo the buttons of his shirt one-handed.
"You know," Kurt chuckled against Sebastian's lips, "it really is an excellent painting."
Sebastian stepped back to view his work, but once again what had started out as one thing changed into another. He had painted several paintings within a painting – an image of Sebastian standing and staring at a painting with Kurt by his side, staring at a painting of Sebastian staring at the same painting with Kurt by his side, standing and staring at the same painting on and on for infinity. In the painting, Sebastian wore the same clothes he did now, his hair sticking up at all angles, his pallet dangling from his hand with the paint swirled together in a blotchy mess. Sebastian regarded the painting closely, his heart suddenly racing. If Kurt was standing just a bit behind him and to the right in all these paintings, could that possible mean…
Sebastian jumped at the feeling of a hand on his shoulder. He turned just as a face closed in on his; cool, soft lips pressing gently against his mouth. Sebastian's heart stopped when the face pulled away and Sebastian caught sight of those blue eyes that he missed more with every passing day.
Kurt was perfect, his ethereal beauty completely intact, just as Sebastian remembered. Kurt smiled, a brief hint of sorrow shifting his features.
"It really is an excellent painting," he said, motioning to the artwork with a nod of his chin.
Sebastian looked back at the image, the two of them together, stretching on into the future for what seemed like an eternity, and Sebastian smiled. He turned back to Kurt, excited to impart what might just be a revelation…but Kurt was gone.
Sebastian spent the next three days at his easel. He barely ate, he didn't sleep. All he did was paint. He started back from the beginning, when he and Kurt first met, petty high school students bickering over the same boy. Sebastian painted the way Kurt's eyes met his, and the smug grin that spread like wildfire over his own features when he thought ruffling his feathers by stealing his pretty boyfriend would be so much fun.
He painted a young Kurt performing at Regionals, and those say something hips that never failed to capture Sebastian's imagination.
He painted the phone call they shared after Blaine cheated on Kurt, Kurt on one side of the country and Sebastian on the other. He painted every phone call after, on a large wall-sized canvas in multiple panels, changing their features as each other changed and grew, and on their respective ring fingers, faint at first but becoming darker as time passed by and they fell in love, a single red thread that connected them, one to the other.
During the course of the next few days, Sebastian went through all of his acrylics, and had to call in a favor to another local artist to get more. While he waited for his shipment to arrive, he sketched. He went through sketch pad after sketch pad, finally resorting to paper from his printer, and after that, recycled newspapers. He painted and sketched their entire life together, and when he was done, when the final painting was set aside to dry, he waited for something to happen. Anything. A voice. A giggle.
Another kiss.
Sebastian climbed into bed, his muscles sore and aching, his eyes crossed from exhaustion. He fell asleep waiting, and awoke the next morning to the sun warming his face, his skin and clothes thoroughly stained, and his husband nowhere to be seen.
He felt like a fool. He had made it all up in his mind. He had indulged in this fantasy for far too long, missed his deadline, and pushed aside his plans.
Well, not any more.
Sebastian knew what he needed to do. He had a bottle of Xanax, a bottle of Halcion, and two bottles of vodka.
With any luck, it would be quick and easy and painless.
He stumbled into the living room, littered literally from floor to ceiling with pictures of Kurt, paintings of Kurt, charcoal sketches on every possible surface, moving to the walls when he ran out of paper and his replacement paints and canvases had not yet arrived. There were so many images of Kurt throughout the room that Sebastian almost missed him, wandering through the paintings, fingers hovering over the drawings, tracing over the outlines of his own face. Sebastian stopped just inches from him on his way to the kitchen, but stopped short at the intense look in his shimmering blue eyes.
Kurt still looked ethereal, but he also looked real.
"They're beautiful," Kurt gasped, looking around him in awe. "Every single one is just beautiful."
Sebastian felt himself choke. This had to be a dream, because the reality was too fantastic to believe. But Kurt's eyes looked sad, and Sebastian didn't understand why.
"Are you really here?" Sebastian asked. "Or are you just going to haunt me forever?"
"Do you want me to?" Kurt asked, eyebrow quirked as he waited patiently for an answer.
Sebastian nodded even before an answer could make its way past his lips.
"I want you here," Sebastian said. "I need you, Kurt. I need you. I need you to come back to me."
Kurt turned and looked at the paintings, looked at the drawings and smiled.
"You painted my past, Sebastian," Kurt said, reaching out with trembling fingers to brush across the image of Kurt and Sebastian together, locked in an embrace, eyes closed as they kissed, caught up in their own little world as parents with children and park vendors raced by, eager to get out of the sudden torrential downpour. Even Sebastian had to admit that it looked so real, he could almost see the people move, the children struggling to be free, the way Kurt's lips moved against his.
It was one of his greatest masterpieces.
It was an epic kiss.
Their first kiss.
"Paint my future," Kurt explained, his image already beginning to fade, "and you can have me."
Sebastian shook his head, exhaustion and desperation turning to anger. He had painted for three days straight just to have Kurt, and now here he was, disappearing again because he hadn't done enough.
"No," Sebastian said stubbornly. "Do you know what you've already put me through?"
Sebastian was screaming, even though he really didn't mean to. He was lost and lonely, and felt like he was going crazy. He was standing in the center of what could easily be labeled the creepiest memorial to his dead husband ever, arguing with a ghost. But none of that mattered, because Sebastian was tired of waiting; tired of being tested and taunted. He had a future planned for him and Kurt, and he was ready to get back to it.
"You're here now, and all I want is you. I don't care if I never paint again. I don't want to paint. All I want is you."
Kurt shook his head, backing away, his body becoming more and more faint with every step.
Sebastian panicked. He rushed over to Kurt with purpose and determination set in his blood-shot green eyes, jaw clenched, ready to claim back his life and his husband, but just as Sebastian reached Kurt, he dissolved before Sebastian's eyes. Sebastian stood alone in the mid-morning air, listening as the rest of the world sprang to life outside – birds singing, insects chirping - not realizing that for the moment Kurt was there everything had been quiet, like time had stopped. But now it marched back on with absolutely no concern at all for Sebastian's frustration and pain.
"Fine," Sebastian said, a scowl darkening his features. "If that's the way you're going to be about it, princess, then we'll play this game your way."
Sebastian put a blank canvas on his easel and grabbed a different pallet. This pallet contained various bright oils – a medium he wasn't all too fond of, but he didn't want to waste time rummaging through his acrylics for the colors he needed when this one was so readily available. Besides, Sebastian considered oils a bitch to work with. It seemed only fitting.
Sebastian didn't even take a moment to regard the canvas, to try and search out the painting hiding within. He knew what he wanted. He wanted Kurt, in his bed, gloriously naked and panting with want, skin flushed with desire, writhing against the sheets as he dreamed of Sebastian joining him beneath the covers and relieving him of his agony.
Sebastian attacked the canvas, and not just with a brush. He moved through the paint with his fingers as he defined the muscular lines of Kurt's arms. He cut through the oil with his pallet knife, giving depth and dimension to the comforter on the bed. He touched and sliced, moved and manipulated, the colors blending till what he had once intended to be a simple portrait of his husband lying in bed became the culmination of all his passions, bleeding through his pores, coursing from his fingertips, burning in his eyes. Unlike his other paintings which sometimes took a matter of hours, this one he worked on all day. He never noticed when the sun began to sink into the horizon, and the room became dark. He knew Kurt's body so well he could paint it with his eyes closed.
And the image was perfect – Kurt's alabaster skin glowing against a frame of red satin sheets, plump lips parted, hooded eyes searching, his arm outstretched, pointing to where Sebastian stood beside his masterpiece.
Sebastian stared at the painting, and the more he looked, the more he could swear that Kurt's image was actually breathing.
Sebastian set his pallet down and ran a grimy hand through his hair, spreading paint along with it over the chocolate-colored strands. He was worn out…breathless…almost completely spent, but one word from Kurt, his beautiful Kurt, would have sent him running to their bed.
If Kurt were really there.
If Kurt was still alive.
He touched the frame of the canvas just as a breeze spiraled through the room, carrying with it the most incredible sound.
"Sebastian," a voice called to him. "Sebastian, when are you coming to bed?"
Sebastian wasn't breathing. He couldn't. A single noise, a single move, and the voice on the wind might be scared away.
But he needed to know.
"K-Kurt?" Sebastian stammered, sure that only the silence of the house would answer him.
"Sebastian," the voice, so light, so fair, so enticing and heartbreaking and miraculous answered instead. "Please, stop painting and come to bed. You have all day to paint. We only have the night to spend together."
Sebastian backed away from the painting, reverently gazing at it, expecting it to do something other-worldly…or maybe just disappear. But it didn't. The painting remained, and so did Kurt.
"Sebastian Smythe! I am going to count to five and if I…"
Sebastian made it to him in three seconds, and that night, while making love to the man he thought he'd never see again, he realized something so incredible, he felt no reason to try and explain it.
He could spend the rest of his life with his husband, as long as he painted it that way.
"Oh, Sebastian!" Kurt whispered, clutching tightly to his husband's arm. "They're gorgeous! Every single one of them is your best work."
Sebastian tried his hardest to make Kurt as inconspicuous as possible so he could accompany his husband to the gallery and see the new artwork first hand, hung and lighted, on display for a new public of inspired enthusiasts. Kurt was dressed in head to toe black, a gorgeous Vivienne Westwood inspired suit of Sebastian's design, his head covered in a stylish Asian-inspired silk scarf, and large Jackie O sunglasses obscuring his face. They stayed huddled close together, appearing like a normal couple to anyone who saw them. Speculation circulated quickly that Sebastian Smythe had found himself a new muse.
"You just say that because you're in every single one of them," Sebastian smirked.
Kurt bobbed his head from side to side as he thought.
"True, true. I do lend a certain…how do you say…sophistication to your art. I won't lie."
Sebastian laughed.
Sebastian walked Kurt from painting to painting, stopping long enough to examine each and every intricate detail of the individual pieces.
"How many are there?" Kurt asked, his voice exuding a healthy dose of wonder.
"Right now…about one-hundred and fifty."
Kurt snapped his head up to look into his husband's smug face, jaw dropped in disbelief.
"One-hundred and fifty?" Kurt smiled "That's almost five months we get to spend together."
"Try two and a half years," Sebastian corrected, preening with delight at the wide-eyed stare his revelation earned him.
"Two and a half..." Kurt repeated. "But…but how?"
Sebastian escorted Kurt through a set of double doors to a large room whose walls were painted white to better display the art. The huge room held easily eighteen wall sized murals, each with a multitude of different panels depicting Sebastian and Kurt vacationing in Paris, sitting in a gondola on the water, exploring the Grand Canyon, or just 'living' – washing dishes, walking a dog, shopping at the supermarket…and quite a few of them making love.
Kurt was quiet – for a long time standing and staring at the next few years of his life as Sebastian had planned them, and for a moment, Sebastian started to doubt that this was what Kurt really wanted.
"Kurt?" Sebastian felt an unnerving weight settle in his chest. He didn't want to lose Kurt. Not again. "Kurt? For the love of God, Kurt! Tell me…"
"I love them," Kurt sniffled, turning and throwing himself into Sebastian's arms. "I love it…all of it. Our life together. It's beautiful."
"You really like it?" Sebastian asked, a little overwhelmed by Kurt in his arms in a gallery surrounded by images of their future.
"I do," Kurt replied. Sebastian wasn't done holding him, but Kurt recovered quickly and pulled away, leading Sebastian farther in the room to examine those paintings as well.
"But, now we have to start planning farther ahead," Kurt insisted. "I mean, where are the paintings of me sewing and designing? I fully intend on working…"
"What?" Sebastian looked dumbfounded. "How do you…"
"We'll cross that bridge later," Kurt said, dismissing Sebastian's objection with the wave of his hand. "And if you get a dog, I want a cat. And I expect you to make me age gracefully…no premature balding or pot belly. I mean, you've seen my dad."
Sebastian rolled his eyes, but he listened carefully, setting all of Kurt's notes to memory.
"Of course, gorgeous," Sebastian said, placing a kiss to the top of Kurt's head, over the scarf, wishing it was Kurt's beautiful, walnut-colored hair tickling his nose with its sweet scent of jasmine and vanilla. "But, what would you like to do now? The show doesn't open till tomorrow. We have the whole day."
Kurt looked around at the paintings on the walls and his lips curled into a devilish grin. He walked toward the wall to a painting in muted, neutral shades of the two of them in bed, Sebastian hovering over Kurt's body, looking down at Kurt with lust blown eyes, occasional highlights of black and red suggesting exactly what moment of desire the painting portrayed.
"This one." Kurt's voice turned dark and silky, a wash of subtle seduction that made Sebastian burn to take his husband right there, right then. "I want this one."
"You just want to fuck," Sebastian teased, taking Kurt's arm.
Kurt's eyes twinkled as he pulled Sebastian to the door.
"There's nothing wrong with that," Kurt said, biting his lower lip, giving Sebastian the perfect inspiration for his next painting.
Notes:
I decided to write a little note at the end to clear up any confusion. I have had a lot of positive comments about this fic (thank you all by the way), but some people have been a little confused. Kurt wasn't just Sebastian's husband; he was also his muse. Kurt died, but as Sebastian's muse, as long as Sebastian creates works of art for Kurt, Kurt continues to live for Sebastian. That's why Sebastian painting Kurt's past didn't work. Sebastian needed to build him a future. I hope this clears things up a little bit. (So, no, Sebastian wasn't crazy :) Well, no more than artist's normally are. )