A/N: This one took me a while to write and had me crying at the end, so be warned. Written from a prompt from '642 Things to Write About' - a houseplant is dying. Tell it why it needs to live'; with a little personal inspiration thrown in. Sebastian comes home from work to find Kurt home early from promoting his fashion tour, desperately begging a dying African violet to spring back to life. Futurefic, angst, emotional hurt/comfort. Warnings for anxiety and talk of impending character death.

Sebastian's whole body feels like one giant knot; every muscle tightening together to form a single taut band. He sighs, trying to work out the stress and tension with massages from his own impotent fingers, lamenting the fact that the owner of the most talented fingers he knows is gallivanting across the country introducing his new fall couture line.

Sebastian groans, giving up on his useless attempts to relieve his agony. Kurt has been gone for over two weeks, and Sebastian's shoulders aren't the only part of his body in need of a good massage.

When he unlocks his apartment door and steps inside, he's greeted by the soft yellow light in the hallway that he knows he didn't leave on when he left for work in the morning, and a very welcome piece of Burberry luggage that he wasn't expecting to see again until early next week.

Aside from the appearance of the luggage and the light, nothing else seems different. No one appears to be home.

"Kurt?" Sebastian calls into the emptiness, hoping to lure his husband out of hiding.

Of course, there is another option.

Maybe Kurt is waiting for him in bed already…naked…

The image that pops into his head is enough for Sebastian to sprint towards the master bedroom despite his screaming muscles and the intense pounding in his head from a day spent dodging stupid interns and their inane questions. If a person spends a hundred some odd thousand dollars on a college education, Sebastian felt that at least they should remember the moronically easy shit and stop bothering him every five seconds. Then again, there was always Sebastian's favorite solution to this particular problem: intern cage match battle to the death. There's only ever one job spot open at the company anyway. Better to win it via hand to hand combat than the daily dance these barely out of college students are trying to perfect of sucking up and bad flirting.

Further into the apartment, Sebastian starts to hear a low murmur that blooms into a sorrowful voice pleading, "Please…please, no! Don't be dead! You can't! Just…just come back…please…"

Sebastian softly pads into the bedroom, careful not to disturb his husband, narrowed eyes assessing the current state of the usually perfectly composed man that Sebastian calls his one and only. At this moment he looks worn down in places – flawless coif pulled askew with a few traitorous hairs hanging down into Kurt's eyes, the top few buttons of his hand tailored dress shirt undone, suit jacket rumpled along the back as if he spent all night asleep in a high back chair.

The creak of the wood floor beneath Sebastian's feet gives him away and Kurt stops muttering, head popping up like a scared rabbit, except instead of running he turns on his pursuer. Sebastian almost takes a step back when he sees Kurt's face – pale skin red and splotchy, eyes blood shot and frantic, dried trails of tears starting from his eyes and blending together into a single waterfall down his cheeks.

"What is this?" Kurt snarls between bared white teeth, the tears that had collected along the contours of his lips breaking loose and continuing the journey around his mouth and down to his jawline. Kurt thrusts his hands forward and cradled in them Sebastian recognizes a pot with some dried, crumbly dirt, and the shriveled remains of a long dead flower.

"Ugh…" Sebastian makes a face as he stares at the poor, desiccated thing. "That's one really dead plant."

"Yes, it is," Kurt agrees, his voice shaky yet still highly venomous. "A really dead plant that you were responsible for taking care of."

Sebastian's face doesn't improve as he mulls over Kurt's words, trying hard to remember exactly when he had made a vow to insure the safety and well-being of this pathetic piece of decorative flora. Kurt shakes the pot in Sebastian's face as if closer proximity to the ashen leaves and skeletal purple flowers will help jar his memory, but Sebastian only shakes his head, a hand reaching unconsciously up to his own shoulders, once again trying futilely to massage the tightening mass of knots.

"I'm sorry, Kurt, I just don't remember." Sebastian shrugs, going for apologetic but coming off as condescending instead.

"You know, I asked you for one thing," Kurt says, his sudden calm unnerving, "one thing, and you couldn't even manage that." Kurt advances on Sebastian, shuffling along the floor, his Fratelli Rossetti wingtips scraping along the high polished shellac beneath their feet.

"I said I was sorry," Sebastian says in his retreat, "I was busy with work and I guess I forgot."

"You forgot?" Kurt stops walking forward and the quaking in his limbs seems to intensify. "It's a plant, Sebastian! It's a fairly simple thing to take care of. But look at it!" Kurt thrusts it forward again, causing a few crispy leaves and petals to shed and flutter to the floor. "What did you do? Give it bleach?"

Sebastian, flummoxed by his husband's anger over such a trivial thing, feels his ire rising. With everything he has been dealing with at the office since Kurt left on his trip to rub elbows and hobnob with fashion's elite, how was he supposed to dedicate so much unexpendable time and effort to a plant whose days were probably numbered even before Kurt left?

"Sure, Kurt," Sebastian bites back, "right after you left, I immediately came in here and started feeding it poisonous chemicals just so that I could enjoy this moment that we're sharing right now."

"No," Kurt retorts, shaking his head. "No, what you did was worse. You did nothing. You just didn't care. It was important to me, so it was unimportant to you. Is this how you're going to act when we finally have kids?"

The emphasis on the word 'finally' stung Sebastian, since they had been having this conversation about children for years. They both agreed that they wanted them, but that now wasn't the right time, so the discussion had waned and then finally gone cold.

"So, because I let one plant die, that means I'm going to be a shit father?" Sebastian growls.

"I didn't say it."

But Kurt sure as hell implied it.

Sebastian can feel the acidic scorch of a thousand hateful comments rise like bile in his throat, and a younger Sebastian would have let them fly. Instead, this more mature Sebastian takes a deep breath and swallows hard, pushing the words painfully back down into his chest. When he opens his mouth again his voice is tempered, maybe even comforting.

"I don't understand what the big deal is. I'll just buy you a new one."

For some inexplicable reason, this starts a torrent of tears falling down Kurt's cheeks, his lips twisting into a sickening grimace.

"I don't want a new one!" he screeches. "I want this one. You can't just let something die and then replace it. I like this African violet."

Sebastian's temporary calm starts to bleed away no matter how hard he tries to hold on to it.

"So, did you just come home early to badger me?" Sebastian barks. "You know, I had a horrible day, and stupid me, I was excited to see you home early! I thought maybe, just maybe you were here because you missed me!" Sebastian steps forward without even noticing, crowding Kurt backward against the wall, the doomed little plant still clutched in his cupped hands. "Well, excuse me, princess, if I was too busy working to care about some dumb shit plant that, by the way, you only like because your father gave it to you."

Sebastian gestures towards the plant, but he is so close he smacks the pot out of Kurt's hand, sending it flying into the wall, the brittle plastic cracking and shattering to a million pieces. Kurt grabs his hand away, stepping back as if Sebastian had intended on hitting him.

Kurt's eyes lock on the devastated plant and its fractured pot, and he crumbles, sliding down the wall, his mouth open in horror, wrapped around a silent sob.

Sebastian sees the look of ultimate and utter despair on his husband's face, but he's finding it hard to be sympathetic. After all, Sebastian works hard, too. And he missed Kurt so much he could barely find words to describe it. It was like a physical piece of him was missing, with only phantom remnants hanging around the apartment to torment him. But here he comes home early, and instead of falling into each other's arms, they were bickering over this stupid African violet. Of course, Burt had gotten it for Kurt and that made it special, Sebastian had to admit that, but…

That's when all the tumblers fit into place one at a time until the whole puzzle unlocked.

Home early.

Kurt never comes home from his tours early. He had bronchitis once during a show in Paris, and he slammed back antibiotics and suffered through.

Dead plant.

Dead plant his father gave him.

"Oh, God, Kurt," Sebastian says, reaching for Kurt with trembling hands. Kurt doesn't acknowledge the man wrapping his arms around him, but he doesn't resist either.

"Oh, Kurt," Sebastian repeats, unsure of what else there is in the world to say.

Sorry?

Over the course of their rollercoaster relationship, Sebastian has run out of 'sorry's. In fact, he's more than sure he holds IOU's to Kurt for more than a few.

"Is he really…? When did you find out?"

And without even having to hear the answer, Sebastian starts crying, too. Because this isn't just anyone they're talking about. It's Burt. Burt who could have objected to him and Kurt dating, especially after all the shit Sebastian pulled; after he tried to rock salt Kurt and tried to blackmail Finn. Burt could have said no when Sebastian asked for his blessing to marry Kurt. But Burt is the most fair-minded man Sebastian has ever met. He accepted Sebastian, taking him at face value once he saw just how much he loved his son. He always made Sebastian feel like a member of the family. He taught Sebastian to rebuild a transmission. He invited him to family dinners every Friday. They watched the Buckeyes play while Kurt read Vogue. They entered the bass fishing tournament at the Auglaize River every year.

Sebastian is proud to consider Burt his dad.

"C-carole c-alled me," Kurt chokes between sobs. "He's in a coma. There's really no hope, so basically they're just waiting…"

"For you?" Sebastian finishes quietly.

Kurt nods.

"And you," Kurt says. It sounds a little like a question, and it breaks Sebastian's heart that Kurt thinks he wouldn't drop everything to be at Burt's side.

"Of course," Sebastian says, squeezing Kurt tight, preparing to let go. "I'll just hop online and turn in our Jet-Blue vouchers…"

"Not...not just yet," Kurt says, curling further into Sebastian's chest. "Can we just sit here for a minute?"

"Sure," Sebastian says, relaxing into his husband's body and holding him infinitely tighter, because even though they're borrowing time, Sebastian knows that Kurt needs to breathe in deep and in their own private sanctuary take a moment to mourn the end of his African violets.