A/N: Here is a follow up to the Vampire storyline that ended with 'Time Enough to Forgive'. Here we get to see if Sebastian really turned Kurt, and how Kurt reacts. Warnings for talk of intense pain, drinking blood, and starvation.
Death doesn't hurt.
Well, provided that you're not being flattened in a compactor or eaten piece by piece by a wild tiger, death shouldn't hurt.
It's as effortless as blinking.
As easy as falling asleep.
It's not a thought or a decision.
It's an outcome.
Or so Kurt has been told. Countless doctors, oncologists, and death preparation counselors all assure him that death is nothing to be afraid of. It's natural, inevitable, and they promise him that with the amount of medication they keep him on in the final stages as cancer eats away at his body – painless.
Kurt passes away quietly, cradled in Sebastian's arms, and the last thing he sees before his heavy eyelids drop forever is the gorgeous grass green of Sebastian's eyes.
The last thing he sees before he dies is a lie.
Apparently, it isn't the only one.
Because death is painful.
Agonizingly painful.
It sears his body, every inch, heat surging through his veins, starting from a point somewhere behind his neck and filling him with fire. He wants to scream but he can't move. His mouth doesn't open, his limbs useless, and he waits in agony for it all to end.
But there seems to be no end. For hours he simply burns, inside, outside, never ending…
He hears a rushing through his ears like wind battering his face and he wonders if he's falling. For the hundredth time he thinks, "Here it is. The end. Now it will be over."
Through the swishing and the wooshing he hears snippets of voices calling to him.
No…one voice calling to him.
Reaching out to him in the dark.
Cutting through the pain.
The roaring in his ears stops and the pain finally ends. It dissolves completely without an echo of it anywhere to be felt, but where Kurt expects to be absorbed by the oblivion that is the universe, he's still consciously aware.
He hears the pattering of cockroaches racing through the apartment walls.
He smells hot dogs cooking at Gray's Papya – ten miles away.
He feels the individually twined fibers of his cashmere sweater cocooned around his skin.
But it's the thirst – the overwhelming thirst engrained into every dehydrated cell of his body that forces him to open his eyes.
Countless signals assault his brain – too sharp, too bright, too much detail – and he shuts his eyes again. He whimpers; the sound of his voice so foreign to his acute ears that he bites his lip to silence himself.
"It's okay," a voice whispers, but the sound rings out like a bell with the clapper slicing into his ears.
"No," Kurt moans, raising his hands to cover his head, curling his body into a ball. "No, no, no."
"Shhh," Sebastian soothes, running a gentle hand down Kurt's back. "It'll be okay. You'll get used to it. It'll be fine."
Kurt rocks back and forth, trying to ignore the fabric that's insanely too soft for his skin, trying to push aside the pungent smell of cooking meat which is now revolting to him, and every single noise that's trying to worm its way into his brain – he needs to find a way to block them all out before he goes completely mad.
The thirst, though, refuses to be ignored.
Bit by bit he comes to his senses.
He's dead. He's supposed to be dead. So is this hell? What's happening to him?
"Just concentrate on my voice," Sebastian whispers. "Listen to my voice and shut out the rest."
"I can't," Kurt moans, red tears slipping down his cheeks. "I can't…it's too much…"
Sebastian remembers this. It's a fainter memory now than it was, but he can recall the fear, the sensory overload bordering on the brink of torture. When it happened to Sebastian he was alone. The man who had bitten him left him. Laughing, he left him in the shady hotel room Sebastian had rented for the night. Sebastian didn't know if the man had ever intended on coming back for him, but once his skin started to prickle with the rising of the sun his instincts took over and he buried himself deep within the earth where he stayed, screaming through his insanity, choking on loose soil as it filled his mouth. It pressed down on him until he realized that it wouldn't kill him because he was already dead.
"It won't get any better until you learn to ignore it."
Sebastian tries to help him, but Kurt isn't listening. He's so thirsty he feels like he'll dry up and split in two. Sebastian knows it's there and tries to think of any way to relieve it so that Kurt can cope; bide until the thirst strikes again.
Sebastian has an idea but he doesn't have the time to explain it; and even if he could make Kurt understand he's not sure Kurt would leave the safety of the apartment and go outside where the noise gets louder and louder. Sebastian scoops him up in his arms and carries him to the fire escape. Kurt, too distracted to argue, doesn't notice when Sebastian bounds up the metal ladder and leaps across the alley, jumping from rooftop to rooftop. Sebastian uses his senses to guide him, relying on his supernatural hearing and smell to tell him where he needs to go.
Kurt isn't like him. He wouldn't kill someone to feed his own thirst, so Sebastian needs to find the next best thing.
Sebastian lands on the helipad of a hospital and stops, taking a deep breath in to make sure he's found the right place. He finds a grate in the wall and breaks into the ventilation system. Awkwardly, he carries Kurt down to the lower level, where the morgue and blood storage is located. Sebastian manages to find an exhaust vent that leads straight into the cooler.
Kurt's reaction to a room full of refrigerated blood is instantaneous.
He stops weeping, relaxing in Sebastian's arms as the scent of blood compels him. In the blink of an eye Kurt is out Sebastian's arms and on his feet, about to tear through the cooler doors.
"Hold on now," Sebastian says, sneaking in front of Kurt and undoing the bolt before Kurt can rip the doors off its hinges. "If you destroy the place we'll never be able to come back."
Sebastian watches Kurt feed, sucking through pint after pint of blood, not leaving a single drop behind in the plastic pouches. He takes more than his fill but Sebastian doesn't stop him. Why should he? The more Kurt eats the more he'll be able to stave off the thirst.
In minutes Kurt is sated, sighing with relief, relaxing back in on himself with a beautiful smile on his blood stained lips as if he's already forgotten what he is and what he had been doing.
"How do you feel?" Sebastian asks.
Kurt glances around him at the emptied plastic husks that were once full of human blood. The smile on his face fades, and he rises to his feet.
"Empty," Kurt says. "I feel empty."
Sebastian locks the coolers door and Kurt pitches the plastic pouches into the nearest biohazard container. They make their way back up the ventilation system, cleaning up any trace that they had been in the room; not too hard since Kurt didn't spill a single drop of blood. They climb back up through the vents, the scent of the putrid night air, cluttered with pollution and exhaust, guiding them up onto the roof. They crawl out through the opening and Sebastian fixes the grate back into place.
They walk across the rooftop towards the edge. Sebastian stops at the guard rail, but Kurt ducks under and walks out onto the ledge, right to the very end. He crouches low, wind whipping his hair around his perfect, porcelain skin, and looks out onto the city down below.
"How did you do it?" Kurt mutters, his voice flat, emotionless. "How did you control it?"
"You never control it," Sebastian says sadly. "You learn to ignore it."
"But how?" The desperate sound in Kurt's voice manages to reach a place in Sebastian that he thought no longer existed.
"I had you as my anchor," Sebastian confesses. "I can be your anchor, too."
"You had my blood," Kurt accuses, throwing his hands up over his ears to block out his own booming voice. "I don't have yours. I don't have an anchor. I have nothing!"
"You have me," Sebastian pleads. "We have each other!"
"But I didn't want any of this!" Kurt cries, bloody tears returning, following the tracks of already dried tears, tinging his cheeks a darker, grotesque red.
"I didn't have a choice!" Sebastian insists. "You were dying! Right in my arms, you were dying!"
"Then you should have let me die!"
Kurt's voice is breathless and broken. He spins around on the ledge, searching for a way out. Sebastian reaches out for him, but Kurt puts a hand up to stop him.
"No!" Kurt says, turning to look down at the busy street below. "No! Leave me alone. I want to be alone."
"Where are you going?" Sebastian asks, panic seeping into him at the prospect of Kurt leaving him to go meet the dawn.
"I need some time," Kurt says. "I need to think."
Sebastian takes a step forward, and Kurt leaps. Sebastian runs to the ledge, looking out, up and down, all around the street below. He tries to listen for the sound of Kurt's footsteps landing anywhere in the city, but it's too late.
Kurt is gone.
Sebastian tries to track him, tries to catch any hint of his scent in an attempt to catch up with him but Kurt is surprisingly fast.
All through the night Sebastian searches for Kurt, putting off feeding to give him more time before sunrise. He returns to the apartment, barely making it before the first morning rays of light singe his skin. He hides in the dark apartment, the long daylight hours ticking by slowly, the oppressive sunlight keeping him penned in, unable to do anything but lie still and hope that Kurt is safe beneath the earth, that he didn't surrender to the light.
Long weeks pass, and every day is the same. Sebastian leaves the moment the sun sets in search of Kurt, returning before the dawn to hide out during the day, hoping each time that Kurt will be there waiting for him.
Almost a month passes and Kurt has yet to return.
Eventually Sebastian stops looking. He stays in Kurt's bed, buried beneath the sheets that still smell like beautiful, delicate, human Kurt. He feels his body shriveling from dehydration but he doesn't care. The thirst dies down to a numbing ache that no longer drives his existence.
He has nothing to exist for. Sebastian made a mistake – a horrible, terrible, heinous mistake. Kurt didn't want to be a vampire, but Sebastian didn't listen, and now his arrogance is his undoing.
Kurt will never forgive him.
Kurt is not coming back. He has most likely seen his last sunrise.
Now he's lost everything.
Kurt was a stronger man than Sebastian ever was.
Sebastian always swore he would follow Kurt into death but he waits a few days more, not for the love of his life who he knows is gone but trying to find the courage to end his own suffering.
Sebastian feels the sun dip down below the horizon. He crawls out from beneath the blankets and watches as the shadows in the bedroom start to lengthen. With his head on Kurt's pillow, he watches the last rays of sunset paint the sky, and then disappear completely.
He has lain awake all day planning out his last night as a vampire. He will travel to all the places that were special to Kurt – his childhood home, the bank of the Auglaize River where they shared their first kiss, Breadstix where the ate dinner every Saturday night, even McKinley High School. Finally he'll find a nice place to rest outside the Smythe family crypt in Westerville and let the light of day take him, leaving him a scorch of ash on the grass-covered earth.
His legs are weak, but he stumbles toward the window, confident he can make it to Ohio before his strength gives out completely, but when he reaches it he sees an angel blocking his exit; an angel wild and terrible, with wide red eyes, skin deceptively pure and white, strong hands gripping the frame of the window, staring down at him.
Sebastian knows he's hallucinating. The ethereal creature that looks so much like his Kurt can't be real, but he steps back anyway. The angel rushes in and follows him, catching him before he trips and falls.
"Sebastian!" Kurt cries with worry and surprise, carrying Sebastian's body to the bed and laying him down. Sebastian sighs in defeat, what remained of his energy gone. "What happened to you?"
"I thought you weren't coming back," Sebastian says, his throat dry, his voice raspy from disuse. "I thought you went away to…end it."
Kurt shakes his head slowly, a sad smile ghosting over his lips.
"I wouldn't do that without saying good-bye."
Sebastian licks his lips, trying to find any moisture in his mouth to help him talk.
"Is that why you came back?" he asks. "To say good-bye?"
Kurt chuckles and pulls Sebastian close.
"No," Kurt says.
"Why not?" Sebastian asks, genuinely confused. "I thought you were angry with me."
"I was," Kurt admits. "But I had some time to think…"
Sebastian laughs sarcastically.
"Maybe I took a little longer than I expected." Kurt looks guilty; as guilty as a soulless monster can look, and Sebastian wraps his arms around him.
"But you're back now?" Sebastian asks, hopeful.
"Yes." Kurt pulls back to look into Sebastian's eyes, the red flame that once burned so brightly now so close to going out. "I'm not saying good-bye to you."
Kurt gathers Sebastian up in his arms the way Sebastian did on that first night and walks with him to the window.
"We're going to get you better," Kurt says, laying out his plan for the sad specter cradled in his arms. "And then we're going to travel the world together. Do everything and anything we could ever dream of, and then when we're done, we're going to do it all over again."
"And sex," Sebastian squeaks out with what's left of his voice. "We're going to have lots of sex."
Kurt rolls his eyes.
"I guess we can find time to do that."
Kurt stops on the fire escape and places a gentle kiss on Sebastian's dried, chapped lips.
"We have an eternity," Sebastian whispers against Kurt's lips.
Kurt smiles and shakes his head, leaning close enough to brush his lips over Sebastian's cold cheek, trailing kisses down to his chin.
"An eternity isn't going to be enough."