A/N: Here's a third part that started with my 'Bash' reaction fic 'What Would It Take?' where Sebastian hears about Kurt in the hospital and tries to go see him. It continued on to 'What Wouldn't I Do?', where Sebastian tries to find a way to show Kurt that he's there to support him. Now Kurt wants to find out why Sebastian keeps following him. Will Sebastian jump at the opportunity to tell Kurt how he feels? (Warning for mention of Klaine)
Kurt weeds his way through the crowd, dodging the occasional preoccupied on-comer, too busy and too wrapped up in their own issues to worry about whether they trip over him or not, but with every step he takes he feels the footsteps of the man behind him as if they are his own. They keep the same pace, the same cadence, only a step or two behind. Kurt knows when he's there without having to turn around. Kurt has gotten used to Sebastian following him most days on his way to and from school; Kurt has become so accustomed to the subtle click of Sebastian's shoes against the pavement that he can pick out the sound amid the rumble of the bustling crowd. He doesn't understand why Sebastian's always there, but he has been doing it for the better part of a week. It's confusing and reassuring all at the same time, which is why Kurt knows he needs to put a stop to it.
It doesn't bother Kurt, but he's begun to depend on it, that presence lingering behind him as he makes his way around the city. Sebastian is turning into Kurt's own personal safety net, and Kurt needs to know what that means to him. If there's one thing that Kurt is certain of, it's that he can't depend on Sebastian. Regardless of whatever this sudden change means, Sebastian isn't part of his life, has never been a part of his life.
Apparently no one has told this to Sebastian yet.
Kurt slows down and then stops short. He hears a huffed curse behind his left ear and bites his lip hard to keep from laughing.
"Do you want to get some coffee?" Kurt asks without turning around. "My treat."
There's a moment of silence, and then a long, drawn out sigh.
"Sure," Sebastian's patently annoyed voice answers. Kurt chuckles to himself. He has a peculiar urge to turn around and take Sebastian's hand, but he doesn't. Instead, he nods to a mom and pop coffee spot across the way and they walk side-by-side, separate but together, jaywalking across the busy street. When they get to the door Sebastian reaches past Kurt and grabs the handle, opening the door wide for Kurt.
Kurt pauses for a second and looks at the door, at the hand holding it open, at the tense look on Sebastian's face as he waits for Kurt to make up his mind and walk inside. Kurt smiles somewhat awkwardly and mutters a soft, "Thanks," taking advantage of the chivalrous gesture before Sebastian can change his mind and let the door swing shut in his face.
They don't speak while they stand in line, and Sebastian doesn't look at Kurt, which Kurt finds baffling. Kurt really wants answers, but he doesn't pry. He can tell Sebastian feels uncomfortable. He stands rigidly, moves stiffly as they advance towards the counter, his entire body taut as if he's preparing for a fight. Kurt can tell by the anxious glances of a few customers near them that Sebastian's intense posture comes across as at least a little intimidating, but Kurt finds it unexpectedly endearing. This guarded attitude is such a departure from the cocky Sebastian that Kurt met at the Lima Bean, the privileged prep school boy, always quick with his wit, a step ahead of everyone with regard to his nefarious plans. This Sebastian standing beside Kurt in line has none of those old snarky walls in place. This Sebastian is holding back, and for the first time ever Kurt is worried about the possibility of hurting his feelings.
They get their coffees and find a table with low, plush armchairs situated near the window. Reclining in the comfortable chair seems too informal for this particular conversation, so Kurt struggles to sit up straight, poised on the slanted edge. His legs knock together at the knees with the strain of keeping his body upright.
Why can't anything be easy?
Sebastian twirls his paper coffee cup in his hands, staring down at the white plastic lid, waiting.
Quite obviously waiting, so Kurt decides to cut to the chase.
"Why do you keep following me?" he asks.
Now it's his turn to wait.
Sebastian sighs and stops twirling his cup.
"Because I want to make sure you're alright."
Kurt's first instinct is to bring up the fact that Sebastian doesn't need to make sure he's alright because they're not technically friends, but the tight set of Sebastian's mouth, the way his eyes stay glued to his cup and the table and anything that will keep him from looking into Kurt's eyes, changes his mind.
"Don't worry about me," Kurt says, waving a hand in front of his face as if that simple dismissive movement can wipe away all of Sebastian's concerns. "I have more than my fair share of people keeping an eye on me."
"Yeah," Sebastian says around a wry chuckle. "I've seen how concerned they are. By the way, how is Blaine handling the 'Freshman Fifteen'? How is Rachel dealing with the boredom of getting the one thing she's always wanted? And what about those Wookie orgies I've heard so much about?"
Kurt doesn't know whether to run to his friends' defense or to laugh at Sebastian's insane accuracy. On the one hand, Sebastian just insulted his closest friends and his fiancé, and accurate or not he really doesn't have any right. Sebastian isn't a part of Kurt's inner circle. In fact, this whole conversation bordered on the ridiculous considering everything Sebastian has ever done to Kurt. Where did he get off being so judgmental about people who had stood by Kurt's side for years?
On the other hand, another part of Kurt can't help but agree. He expected to be handled with kid gloves when he got out of the hospital, but what he didn't expect was for everyone to get over it so quickly and pretty much ignore him, hoping that whatever problem still remained with Kurt would resolve itself.
Kurt is a big boy. He doesn't need someone to hold his hand everywhere he goes, but it would be nice if once in a while someone asked him what he needed.
Blaine's reaction to the whole situation confounds Kurt the most; Blaine who's been bullied and who had the shit beaten out of him for being gay. For heaven's sake, he had to change schools because of it. Blaine should understand on a deeper level than anyone the pain that Kurt is still going through.
Blaine had been moody and emotional for a couple of days. He slept with Kurt in his bed at the hospital. He sang to him. He held his hand.
Now, nothing. Kurt's scars hadn't yet faded and the main focus in their lives had veered back to worrying about Blaine's weight gain and other ever blooming aspects of his dwindling self-esteem.
The pain hasn't gone away yet for Kurt, but it's definitely done for Blaine.
A year after Blaine was beaten at Sadie Hawkins he almost didn't have the courage to join Kurt at Prom.
Is Kurt expected to get over being put in the hospital by bullies in a few short weeks?
"They're doing their best," is all Kurt can come up with to say. It might not be entirely true, but it is noncommittal on his part. He feels no need to condemn or condone the actions of his friends to Sebastian.
"Really?" Sebastian replies, his voice dripping enough sarcasm in that single word to freeze the whole of the Hudson River.
Kurt runs a hand through his hair. He didn't invite Sebastian out for coffee to fight, and if he has to be honest with himself he doesn't have the energy to defend people he's in no mood to defend.
"Look, tearing down my friends for what you perceive as faults does not explain why you feel the need to follow me around all over like a creeper, making sure I'm alright."
Kurt doesn't mean to snap, but he doesn't think it will matter. Sebastian is pretty much bulletproof in Kurt's eyes, so he indulges in doling out a pot shot of his own.
He immediately regrets it when he sees Sebastian flinch; barely noticeable, mostly around his eyes.
Years ago that would have felt like a victory.
Right now it feels hollow.
Sebastian sighs again, and Kurt thinks he's about to get up and leave, but instead he looks up from his cup, fixing Kurt with green eyes that seem pleading and slightly lost.
He swallows hard before he begins.
"Kurt, I've been living fine without you," he starts. "Not seeing you every day, not really talking to you, I've been okay. Great actually."
"Wow," Kurt deadpans, feeling strangely slighted. "Thanks."
Sebastian shakes his head, reconfiguring his thoughts, afraid of failing right out of the gate.
"That's because I knew you were safe," he continues quickly. "I thought you were happy, and if I believed that I could be content, even if you and I…" Sebastian stops; the thoughts he contemplates showing clear on his face, and Kurt catches them. His jaw drops, the color escaping his face before Sebastian begins again. "…even if you and I couldn't be together. But when I got that text from Blaine, when I found out you'd been hurt…my entire world stopped spinning."
Kurt holds his breath, unable to think of a word to say.
"Kurt," Sebastian says more softly, "I don't…this isn't easy…"
Sebastian grunts in frustration, hitting the table with his fist and pushing back in his chair.
This time Kurt leans forward and takes Sebastian's hand where it rests next to his cup. Sebastian's wary eyes stare at Kurt's hand in his, holding onto him lightly. Sebastian sits up straight and breathes in, trying to steady every urge his body has – to break free and leave, to hold Kurt's hand tighter, to pull him close.
He decides to go for broke and finish what he has to say, because if he doesn't when he has this chance, he'll find a thousand reasons not to tell him ever.
"So many times…" Sebastian begins again in a tone Kurt has never heard from him before. It's reserved and emotional; vaguely affectionate. "I wanted to tell you so many times exactly how I felt. I wanted to apologize for being an ass. I wanted to beg you to give me a chance."
"Why didn't you?" Kurt asks before he can lose his nerve.
Sebastian smiles sadly, daring to rub his thumb along Kurt's knuckles. Kurt stiffens, feeling that the polite thing to do would be to pull away, not to lead Sebastian on especially when he seems so vulnerable, but he doesn't want to. For reasons he can't explain, he wants to hold on longer.
"Because I was an asshole to you," Sebastian says, more to himself than to Kurt. "Because I didn't deserve a chance after the way I treated you. Because you were happy, and as much as I hated, I hated, I hated that you were happy with Blaine and not with me, I didn't want to destroy what you have."
Kurt waits to see if there's more, but Sebastian clenches his teeth, not as if he's finished, but as if he's holding back what else he has to say.
"So, why tell me now?" Kurt shrugs. "Why after I have a fiancé, plans to be married? Why after all this time?"
Sebastian hesitates; the fact that Kurt hasn't pulled his hand from his grasp gives him strength, but try as he might he can't convince his brain – his cynical, sardonic brain – to say what he needs to say, so he closes his eyes and lets his heart take over.
"There was a second when I imagined what could happen if you pull that fucking messed up stunt again, you run to someone's rescue, only the next time the guys in the alley have a knife or a gun and they kill you, and Kurt, something inside me…died."
Sebastian shook his head and Kurt realizes he's also shaking away tears. He shifts back and Kurt holds his hand tight, afraid he might pull it away.
"I'm a coward," Sebastian admits. "All these years I've been nothing but a fucking coward. I spent my life trying not to think about you, and when I couldn't stop, I would come all the way down here just to bump into you and I risked nothing. Nothing at all. That's the fucked up way I treat someone I care about. But you…" Sebastian squeezes Kurt's hand tighter, "…you risked everything for someone you didn't even know. So if I couldn't at least make sure that you were okay, if I couldn't come here and tell you how I felt, then I would hate myself even more than I do now, every day for the rest of my life."
Sebastian slowly slips his hand out of Kurt's, and Kurt lets him go. Kurt tries to come up with something appropriate to say, but the words that spring to mind sound empty and platitudinous. Sebastian takes a sip of his coffee for the first time since they sat down and he grimaces.
It's bitter on his tongue and nearly ice cold.
Kurt looks down at his own coffee cup and pushes it aside.
"I don't know what to say," Kurt says honestly.
Sebastian props his elbows on the table and drops his head in his hands.
"Then don't say anything. Really. I didn't mean to dump all my shit in your lap like this, and the last thing I want is for you to try and come up with a way to let me down easy."
Kurt drops back in his chair.
That's exactly what he was trying to do, but not for the reasons Sebastian must think, but if Kurt can't explain it to himself, how is he going to explain it to Sebastian?
"Look," Kurt says, sitting back up in his chair, "how about this. What if we sort of start over again…as friends this time?"
Sebastian doesn't look up from where he has his head cradled in his hands, but groans loudly. Kurt reaches across the table and smacks him hard on the arm, laughing when Sebastian's arm falls out from under him and his head drops forward, hitting the table.
"Ow! Christ, Hummel!" Sebastian hisses, rubbing his forehead with his fingers. "If that's how you treat your friends, I think I'll pass." But Sebastian is laughing, and when he looks at Kurt, he seems relaxed, like the weight of several years has been lifted from his shoulders.
"Come on," Kurt says, standing from the table and grabbing his cup, "I'm already late for class."
"Oh, I'm sure you can miss clown class or whatever you've got going."
Sebastian stands and grabs his cup as well. They pass by a trash can on their way out the door. Kurt pitches his undrunk coffee, but Sebastian keeps his, and Kurt grins. Sebastian holds the door open for Kurt again and they walk out onto the sidewalk, joining the crowd that swarms past.
"Are you going to keep following me around?" Kurt asks.
Sebastian shrugs, not meeting Kurt's eyes.
"Maybe," Sebastian says.
"You know you don't have to," Kurt says, stopping at the corner just as the light turns red. "I'll be fine."
"Maybe I'm not doing it for you." Sebastian presses the button for the light repeatedly, as if punching it over and over will make it change quicker. "Maybe I'm doing it for me."
Kurt nods. They cross against the light when a path clears and a swath of people make a break for the opposite side of the street.
"Okay," Kurt says. "Then instead why don't we walk together, since that seems like something friends would do. This way people won't think you're some kind of crazed stalker."
Sebastian rolls his eyes dramatically.
"God, you're clingy," Sebastian teases, but when he sees NYADA looming ahead of him, he frowns slightly. "But if you really want to, I guess we can."
"I would consider it a huge personal favor," Kurt teases back, shaking his head. He turns to the man looming beside him and Kurt considers the proper protocol for leaving now that Sebastian has revealed so much of himself. Should Kurt offer him a handshake? A hug? A pat on the back? Perform some complicated fist bump?
"Give me your phone," Sebastian says abruptly. Kurt startles but hands it over, burning with curiosity.
Sebastian takes the phone and starts punching in numbers. Kurt smirks at how long he takes.
"So, was this all just a ploy to get me to let you borrow my phone?" Kurt quips. Sebastian turns the phone back to him and Kurt takes it.
"That's my phone number," Sebastian says as Kurt reads the information on the screen, "my email, and the address to my apartment uptown. If you need anything…"
Sebastian lets the words drift away, but Kurt finishes for him.
"I'll call. I promise."
"Yeah," Sebastian says for lack of anything better. He backs away with a small wave.
"See ya later, Hummel," he says, and turns quickly on his heel.
Kurt watches Sebastian walk away until he's just another head of brown hair blending into the crowd, then looks back down at the screen, reading the information one more time before he locks his phone and puts it in his pocket. He heads to class and tries his best to push their conversation aside so he can concentrate on being a NYADA student.
Kurt works his way from his first class through to his last class completely on autopilot. He can't stop his mind from wandering back to his conversation with Sebastian. Everything he said replays in his mind like the scene of a play. He can't erase the memory of the emotions on Sebastian's face, how foreign and unsettling they were; or the way his voice almost cracked when he confessed to being an ass, to being scared…
…to wanting a chance with Kurt.
Kurt tries to replace those thoughts with images of Blaine. He tries to remember the last time he saw a similar look on Blaine's face, or the last time he heard that same desperate crack in his voice that comes with the thought of losing the one thing you want the most.
Aside from his recent trip to the hospital, Kurt's mind comes up completely blank.
Kurt can possibly admit it was there the day Blaine proposed to him, on the spiral staircase at Dalton, but Kurt often felt that speech sounded perfectly practiced, like he had said it hundreds of times to himself in the mirror, or maybe even in front of Sam, before he recited it to Kurt.
His morning with Sebastian occupies his thoughts all day long – sitting on the sofa watching The Notebook with Blaine, eating Thai takeout for dinner, listening to Rachel and Mercedes while they jabber on about Mercedes's burgeoning relationship with Sam. Nothing that goes on in the loft around him is enough of a distraction to wipe it away.
Lying in bed with Blaine, Kurt feels tremendously and overwhelmingly guilty because his mind has stopped focusing on all the words Sebastian said and has zeroed in entirely on the comforting warmth of Sebastian's hand holding his.
"Blaine," Kurt says, stroking down his fiance's back with his fingertips while he continues to sort through things in his mind, "what did you think when you heard I was in the hospital?"
"I didn't know what to think," Blaine answers quietly. "I didn't know what had happened to you, and they wouldn't tell me anything..."
"No," Kurt interrupts gently. "I mean, how did you feel? Were you scared, were you angry, were you frightened?"
Blaine lies silently with his head on Kurt's chest, mulling over his feelings in his mind.
"Well, I was scared," he says, raising a hand to trace patterns over Kurt's t-shirt lightly with his nails. "I didn't want anything to happen to you. I mean, I love you. You're such a huge part of my life. I can't picture a future without you." Blaine shakes his head, banishing the memory of sitting by Kurt's hospital bed, holding his hand, hating himself, hating the world for not leaving them in peace. "Everything would change." Blaine sniffles, turning his face up to look at Kurt's; his eyes wet with new, unshed tears. "I don't think I could stay in New York without you. It would remind me too much of you. It would tear me apart if anything like that happened to you again."
Blaine's voice wavers, and Kurt's heart sinks for him. He holds him close and rocks him gently.
"Alright," Kurt murmurs soothingly. "Shhhh. It's alright. Everything's going to be okay."
He kisses Blaine's curls and hugs him tight until the sniffles die down and the few tears that dampen his shirt dry away. Blaine drifts to sleep in Kurt's arms, but Kurt stays awake, listening to Blaine breathe in the dark, staring up at the ceiling, finally putting his jumbled thoughts in order.
Kurt likes Blaine's answer. It's a good answer. It's the answer Kurt expected.
It just wasn't as good as Sebastian's.