A/N: For the anon prompt - "Sebastian has trouble saying 'I love you'" (Futurefic, AU, angst, hurt/comfort, emotional hurt/comfort. Warnings for mention of sex, language)
"God, Hummel…your ass is fantastic…"
Kurt shivers at the compliment, lowering his torso further to the mattress and arching his back, guiding Sebastian right where he needs him.
"Hmm…that's it…" Sebastian moans. "That's it…you're so gorgeous like this, have I ever told you that?"
"You may have mentioned it once or twice," Kurt manages, going completely still as the sinful assault on his sweet spot continues. He can feel Sebastian's hips start to stutter, and Kurt swallows hard, finding it difficult to lose himself to the wonderful sensation of Sebastian owning his body, giving him pleasure, when he knows what's going to happen after – or more to the point, what's not going to happen after. But no amount of mounting dread can stem the tide of his orgasm as it washes through him, erasing, for one blissful second, everything else.
"Je-jesus," Sebastian grunts, gripping on to Kurt's hips tight, marking up pale flesh with his nails, curling them into Kurt's skin. Kurt collapses onto the bed beneath his lover, allowing euphoria to convince him that maybe, maybe things will be different this time around.
"Holy and shit," Sebastian mutters, wrapping an arm around Kurt's sweaty torso and holding him close as he lays his own exhausted body carefully over him, trying not to crush him. "Does that get even more and more amazing, or am I just that good?"
Kurt rolls his eyes and Sebastian laughs into Kurt's shoulder, not having to see the gesture to know that Kurt is silently judging him.
"Come on, Kurt," Sebastian teases, nibbling across the line of Kurt's shoulder, "you know you love it."
Kurt bristles at the word.
"Say it," Sebastian continues, oblivious to the way Kurt's insides are churning violently, turning ice cold. "Tell me you love it. You love me fucking you."
Kurt turns his head slightly, takes a deep breath, and hopes for the best.
"I love you," he says, and then waits quietly for whatever Sebastian can think of to say. When Sebastian stalls a minute too long, Kurt huffs and slithers out from beneath his body.
"Kurt…" Sebastian starts, preparing for an argument. "Kurt, don't leave."
"Why can't you say it?" Kurt grabs for his clothes and dresses quickly. "I mean, I've heard you say you love your Porsche, you love your apartment, you love your grandmother's apple pie…"
"It's good pie," Sebastian argues. He knows he sounds ridiculous, but he's grasping at straws.
"So, you care about me less than your car, your apartment, and a slice of pie?" Kurt groans in disgust.
"No, Kurt, that's not what…you're putting words in my…" Sebastian stops short, trying to think of the right way to explain how he feels without setting Kurt off, but they've had this argument so many times before that he's running out of ways to express it. In the end, he sighs, dropping his shoulders in defeat. "I don't know what you want me to say."
"I want you to tell me that you love me," Kurt answers simply, concentrating on doing up the buttons of his shirt so he doesn't burst into tears. "I want you to tell me I haven't been wasting my time for the last year and a half, that you haven't just been fucking me, that you see a future for us."
"Kurt…" Sebastian crawls off the bed, catching Kurt before he bolts out the door, "you haven't been wasting your time, we don't just fuck, and yes, I see a future for us."
Kurt's head snaps up and he locks eyes with his reluctant boyfriend.
"Then tell me you love me."
Sebastian opens his mouth, but shuts it again.
"That's not fair," Sebastian says flatly.
"You're right," Kurt answers back in the same monotone, "this isn't fair."
"I'm sorry, Kurt…" Sebastian rolls his head on his neck, grumbling in frustration. "You don't understand."
"Then, explain it to me," Kurt pleads.
Sebastian hedges, shaking his head.
"I can't…"
"Ugh!" Kurt exclaims. "This is so cliché! It's like a fucking Michael Bay movie!"
"Wh…what does that even mean?" Sebastian asks in exasperation.
Kurt raises his eyebrows with contempt, as if the explanation is so completely obvious that Sebastian is a fool for not catching on.
"The 'good guy can't say I love you' cliché," Kurt says, angrily emphasizing the words with his fingers mimicking air quotes.
"Kurt, you're not letting me finish." Sebastian grabs Kurt around the waist, trying to bring his struggling boyfriend into his arms but not having much luck, "don't go. Let's…"
"Let's what?" Kurt bites out. "Let's fuck some more so I forget to be angry? Geez…" Kurt breaks free of Sebastian's grasp and rushes for the door.
"Kurt!" Sebastian calls after him with such intensity that Kurt spins on his heel and stops short of reaching for the doorknob.
"What?" Kurt growls.
Sebastian stares at Kurt, sorrow and regret forming a dark cloud in his eyes.
"Don't…don't forget your coat," he says, discontent souring his voice. "It's cold outside."
Kurt gasps, dumbfounded. Sebastian isn't going to stop him. Kurt nearly tears his coat off the stand by the wall and runs out the door.
It's one in the morning in Manhattan, and the whole city is still wide awake, but there's nowhere that Kurt wants to go. He doesn't want to be alone. He doesn't want to go to the loft and get a lecture from Rachel. She wasn't particularly supportive of his decision to date Sebastian in the first place. This little tidbit would just be fuel for the 'I told you so' fire. His brain switches to autopilot while he walks down several city blocks, thinking over his last conversation with Sebastian, wondering if it should be their last, and ends up standing outside a bar that he knows better than he'd like to admit. In his defense, his knowledge of it is only because Santana works there part time on the weekends as a favor to a friend. He normally would walk right by, but this time he ducks in, finding he desperately needs an overpriced Shirley Temple and the comfort of a familiar face.
"Hey, Porcelain," he hears Santana call out to him when he's barely a foot through the door. Sometimes he thinks that she has a tracking device inserted under his skin somewhere since her ability to sense his presence seems to border on the paranormal. He laughs at the thought of Santana sneaking through his privacy curtain at night to inject a tiny GPS transmitter into his body. It wouldn't be the strangest thing he's caught her doing in the middle of the night.
Kurt raises a hand and waves politely. He scans the patrons seated at the bar and finds Brittany. She sticks out like a sore thumb among the slumped over, sullen-looking men and women slouching in their barstools, steadily sliding into their drinks. She has her blonde hair pulled tight to the top of her head in a ponytail, which bobs in time to the music playing from some old school relic jukebox in the corner. She taps her toes against the metal ring at the base of the stool and mouths the words to the current song filling the air – Madonna's Into the Groove - while eating gherkins from a wooden bowl.
"You know, those are for the martinis," Kurt says, sliding onto the stool beside her. "They're not appetizers."
"Santana says I can eat whatever I want as long as I eat it out of one of these little bowls," Brittany informs him, sticking another sickly green mini-pickle in her mouth. Kurt turns his head before his queasy stomach gets any ideas. He's never been very fond of pickles. He motions to the bartender.
"A Shirley Temple, please," he says, trying to avoid watching Brittany stick the last of the pickles into her mouth.
"And can I have another chocolate egg cream?" Brittany asks when the bartender brings Kurt his drink, smiling blithely when the exhausted man behind the counter grunts in reply.
"You're the only person I know who orders chocolate egg creams at a bar," Kurt comments, taking a sip of his drink through a thinner-than-feasible red straw.
"And you're the only person I know who goes out to a bar when you have sexy meerkat waiting for you at home," she retorts, poking Kurt in the arm with one long, manicured fingernail. "Aren't you two supposed to be on a date?"
"Yeah, well, that didn't go so well." Kurt stabs at a cherry with his straw, dunking the fruit into the carbonated drink and watching it float back up to the surface.
The bartender slides Brittany's egg cream across the bar. She wraps her fingers around the glass with a cheery nod, focusing on the frothy drink so as not to intrude on Kurt's thoughts.
"Did you…maybe want to talk about?" Brittany slurps at her drink, licking off the resulting foamy moustache from her upper lip.
Kurt weighs his choices. The great thing about talking to Brittany is that barely anything she says makes sense. He was really hoping to be regaled by stories of Lord Tubbington's latest trip to rehab or something else equally inane to take his mind off his troubles. Talking his issues out would definitely be the better way to tackle them...but with Brittany?
Still, she offered, and what did he really have to lose? At worse, she would tell him a story about how Lord Tubbington overcame a similar obstacle through chain smoking and cheese fondue, so in essence he will have accomplished his original goal.
"Sebastian...won't tell me that he loves me." Kurt winces hearing it out loud. It sounds an awful lot like 'I'm breaking up with my boyfriend'.
"Not yet?" Brittany says in surprise. "But you guys have been going out for, like, a year."
"A year and a half," he corrects her.
She looks thoughtful as she stirs her drink.
"Do you think that he loves you?"
"Yes," Kurt replies confidently; then immediately, doubt creeps in to his brain. "I guess. I don't know."
"I think he does." Brittany hops a little on her bar stool to readjust her seat and dives back into her egg cream.
"I do, too," Kurt says with more conviction, "it's just, his motivations are kind of difficult to understand some times." Kurt chuckles at that excuse. "He's difficult to understand some times."
"So are you," Brittany says. "Especially when you get angry, you talk really fast and get all high pitchy…"
"I got it, I got it," Kurt says, returning bitterly to his drink.
Brittany stares blankly off into the reflection of the mirror behind the bar, and for a second Kurt is sure he has lost her altogether. He sighs and picks up his glass, sipping the sugary concoction.
"Santana isn't much for saying 'I love you, either'," she confesses suddenly in a voice so unlike her that it makes Kurt instantly stop and take notice. He turns to find her still staring into the reflection of the mirror, but he realizes he's watching her girlfriend bounce from table to table behind them, delivering drinks and taking orders, snapping at some poor man about his paltry tip.
"Really?" Kurt says, knowing it sounds lame but not able to think of anything else to say.
"Yeah," Brittany says, finally turning her attention to Kurt. "It kind of started when her grandma disowned her."
"I remember that." Kurt leans in, genuinely interested. "Whatever happened with that?"
Brittany shrugs, stirring her drink and smiling when the ice hits the side of the glass with a gentle clink.
"She doesn't talk about it, so I don't ask, but I don't think her grandma ever forgave her."
"Not that there was anything to forgive," Kurt reminds her.
Brittany nods.
"I know, but that's the way her grandma saw it." Brittany stops stirring to take a sip before she speaks again. "Anyway, I think she feels that those words don't mean anything. I mean, her grandma used to tell her she loved her all the time. If she loved her so much, how could she just cut her out of her life the way she did?"
Kurt stares, mouth agape, surprised by how much of what Brittany said makes sense.
"So…" Kurt encourages, wanting her to continue.
"So, maybe Sebastian has something like that in his life," she deduces. "Maybe someone important turned their back on him and made those words meaningless."
Kurt thinks about that, watching as Brittany's eyes drift back to the mirror to look at Santana. Santana turns and catches her gaze, smiling and winking back.
"So, how do you know?" Kurt asks.
"How do I know what?" Brittany pulls a face in the mirror, and Kurt hears Santana laugh from somewhere behind his right shoulder.
"How do you know that Santana loves you?" Kurt rolls his eyes.
"Oh, well, because she makes me breakfast, she buys me little gifts, she makes sure I have my jacket when it's cold out…"
That last one hits a nerve as Kurt remembers the last thing Sebastian yelled out to him as he stormed out of the apartment.
"Don't…don't forget your coat…"
"That's how you know?" Kurt mutters in disbelief.
"Sure," Brittany chirps. "There's a million ways to tell someone you love them, you just have to learn to hear them."
Kurt feels an unexpectedly strong hand clamp down on his shoulder, and he jumps, turning on his stool to face a smirking Santana. Her usually taunting eyes gaze at him softly, as if she had somehow heard every word of his and Brittany's conversation, but other than that, she lets on nothing.
"If you don't mind, Lady Face," Santana interrupts, wrapping an arm around Brittany's waist and pulling her off her barstool, "I'm on my break, and I needs to get my lady kisses on."
Kurt rolls his eyes and shoos the two away with a wave of his hand. He watches them stumble arm-in-arm out the back entrance, giggling and whispering with temples pressed close together. Brittany rests her head against Santana's shoulder and they disappear into the alley. Kurt watches them until the door shuts behind them. He sighs.
He misses his boyfriend.
A rather large, rather unpleasant smelling gentleman occupies the now vacant stool, smiling at Kurt dopily with a disturbing, gapped-tooth grin; Kurt's clue to find a new place to sit. He picks up his drink and heads for one of the empty tables in a more secluded corner. He sets his drink down and sits carefully in the questionable-looking chair. He rests his head in his hands and turns his attention back to his drink, contemplating the cherries floating in the glass in front of him with Brittany's words bouncing back and forth in his head.
She makes me breakfast…she buys me little gifts…she makes sure I have my jacket when it's cold out…
Kurt mulls over the day…the last few days…the last few months, and all the things Sebastian does for him; things that he's ashamed to admit he often takes for granted.
Sebastian picks up Kurt's dry cleaning every Tuesday afternoon after work without being asked. He makes brunch every Sunday. He buys sterling roses for Kurt's loft every week. He says it's to take the smell of poverty out of the place, but he also knows they happen to be Kurt's favorites. Sterling roses are not an easy flower to find, even in the city. When Kurt's sick, he brings him soup and watches Moulin Rouge with Kurt. Granted, Sebastian usually falls asleep long before Christian and Satine ever make it to the elephant for the first time, but that doesn't really matter.
The more Kurt thinks about it, the more he realizes that those are just the top block of a pyramid that extends past the day when they first decided to officially become boyfriends. It includes dinners at restaurants Kurt could only ever dream of going to, late nights lying out on a blanket on the roof of Sebastian's apartment so that Kurt could see the stars (pretty much the only thing he missed about Lima, Ohio), Skype calls that lasted for hours, arguments over what movie they were going to watch with Kurt winning out more times than not, and more unsolicited non-fat mochas than Kurt can count.
"Hey," a tentative voice weeds its way into Kurt's thoughts. Kurt smiles to himself at the sound of the one voice he wanted to hear more than anything else.
"How did you know I was here?"
"An obnoxious friend sent me a text message when you got here," Sebastian says, searching the bar quickly for the friend in question.
"Ahh." Kurt taps at a cherry, watching it bob up and down.
"I would have been here earlier, but I thought I'd give you some space."
Kurt chews on the inside of his cheek as he thinks of a way to respond.
"Is this seat taken, or are you waiting for someone?"
Kurt turns his head to look at Sebastian, hovering by the chair with questioning, hopeful eyes.
"I was kind of hoping that this guy I know would show up," Kurt says. "I was a jerk to him earlier, and…"
"No…" Sebastian sits, taking Kurt's hand in both of his. "Kurt, I…"
"Shh…" Kurt puts a hand up to Sebastian's lips to stop him, sliding onto his lap and wrapping an arm around him. "You don't have to say anything. I'm sorry I overreacted."
"No, babe…" Sebastian shakes his head, taking Kurt's hand with the fingertips still pressed against his lips and kissing them gently. "You're right. I owe you…"
"You don't owe me anything," Kurt persists, but Sebastian continues to shake his head.
"Please, let me explain," Sebastian pleads, looking up at Kurt with the saddest expression of remorse Kurt has ever seen, and he nods.
"My mom and dad…they used to say 'I love you' a lot," Sebastian begins. "Especially my dad…"
Kurt can't help the confused and maybe slightly annoyed expression that takes over his face. Kurt was expecting emotional neglect, a lifetime of disdain. Considering everything Brittany said, all those reasons that made so much sense, Sebastian's admission definitely wasn't what he was expecting.
"Then why…"
"But, it didn't mean anything," Sebastian rushes to continue. "My dad would cheat on my mom, and he would say 'I love you' to make it all better. My mom would ridicule my dad, and she would say 'I love you', and that was supposed to fix everything. They both missed out on everything – lacrosse games, choir competitions, graduation…"
Kurt feels his heart crush as he listens. Kurt's dad went to everything – ballet recitals, all his football games, every choir competition he could. Nothing short of death would have kept Burt Hummel from his son's graduation, and even that might have been negotiable.
"I learned at a very young age that saying 'I love you' to another human being wasn't the powerful, magical, meaningful words that fairytales and romance novels make you believe they are." Sebastian takes a deep breath and kisses Kurt's fingers one more time. "It's just a way to get what you want."
Kurt follows the path of Sebastian's eyes as they travel down to Kurt's hand on his lap.
"H-have you ever told another man you loved him?" Kurt asks.
"Yes," Sebastian answers sheepishly, not looking up to see the hurt in Kurt's eyes, "but not because I meant it."
"Then why?"
"Because I knew it would get me what I wanted," Sebastian runs his fingers lightly over the material of Kurt's jeans.
"And did it?" Kurt's voice gets smaller with every question he asks.
Sebastian sweeps his eyes away toward the table, Kurt's drink, the other patrons in the bar.
"Yes," he says, staring off in the direction of the bar. "Yes, it did."
Kurt blinks away the hurt, wanting to be more supportive.
"And then what happened?" he asks, finding his voice again.
Sebastian bites his lip and finds the strength to look at Kurt full in the face.
"Afterward I felt horrible," Sebastian admits with a mirthless laugh. "Repulsive, actually."
"What did you do about it?"
Kurt rests his forehead against Sebastian's, much in the same way Brittany and Santana did when they left the bar, catching Sebastian's gaze so he wouldn't look away.
"I fessed up. Broke it off with him. Never spoke to him again."
Kurt feels Sebastian's hand tighten around his, and Kurt lifts it to his lips to kiss his knuckles. They sit, huddled together, wrapped around each other, regardless of a few jeers aimed their way.
"Do you believe that I love you?" Sebastian says so softly, it's almost a whisper.
Kurt bobs his head up and down, reluctant to move away from Sebastian to answer.
"Yeah…" he says finally, unconvincingly. "I'd like to think you do."
"Oh, Kurt, I do." Sebastian throws his arms around Kurt's waist and holds him tight. "Of course, I do. You know I do." Sebastian looks at Kurt's face and frowns. "No…I guess you don't know, huh?"
"Yeah, I do. You show me all the time."
"But that's not enough," Sebastian says, dropping his head. "You deserve someone who can say the words, whenever you want them to. You deserve to hear it."
Kurt toys with an idea in his head, something he remembers from an old television show he and his dad used to watch after his mother died, when 'I love you' became almost tired from overuse, but had to be said constantly because they never knew which day would be the last.
"Maybe we can come up with our own words," Kurt suggests. "You know, like a secret code that only we know."
Sebastian flicks his eyes up and smirks, his whole face lighting up with the familiar half-smile that Kurt loves.
"Should we get secret decoder rings, too?" Sebastian teases, pinching Kurt on the knee.
"I'm serious," Kurt says, kissing Sebastian on the tip of his nose when his smile threatens to fall. "We don't have to say 'I love you'. We can come up with something all our own."
"Like what?" Sebastian runs his hands up Kurt's legs, sliding one hand in between his thighs, making Kurt squirm in his lap.
"I don't know…" Kurt closes his eyes and bites his lip when Sebastian's fingers travel further up his leg. "You pick something. Make it something that only we'll understand."
"Okay…" Sebastian pecks a few well-placed kisses down Kurt's neck, feeling the desired effect beneath his fingertips, "how about, 'Do you have Prince Albert in a can?'"
Kurt throws his head back and laughs, but when he looks back at Sebastian, his boyfriend only wiggles his eyebrows.
"You're serious?" Kurt asks. Sebastian nods once, massaging Kurt's thigh with firm strokes of his strong fingers.
"Okay then," Kurt agrees. "'Do you have Prince Albert in a can?' it is."
"Hey, lovebirds," Brittany giggles, dragging Santana over, balancing one-handed a tray full of cocktails that she sets on the table.
"Okay, bitches…" Santana pulls out a chair for Brittany who sits daintily in it with a soft 'thank you', "if you're done fondling each other over here, can we talk about what we're going to do with the rest of the evening?"
"Evening?" Kurt objects, glancing down at his watch for the time. "It's nearly three in the morning!"
"Yes," Santana drawls, sitting beside Brittany and draping an arm over her girlfriend's shoulder, "I just got off my shift and I'm ready to gets my party on, so what are we going to do now? And before you even say a word, meerkat, we're not going to that dive with the perma-foam on the dance floor."
"What do you have against a little foam?" Sebastian asks, squeezing Kurt tight.
"Nothing, except it's just an excuse for you and your boy-toy here to have sex in public."
"That's what they were doing?" Brittany asks, looking from one face to the other. Sebastian snickers into Kurt's shoulder at the blank look on Brittany's face.
Kurt shakes his head and turns to his laughing boyfriend. Sebastian stops laughing when he feels Kurt's intense gaze on him. Kurt fixes Sebastian with the most seductive smolder he can muster.
"Do you have Prince Albert in a can?" he says smoothly, as if it's the most normal comment in the world.
Sebastian smiles.
"I do," Sebastian whispers back. "Do you?"
"I do," Kurt says, leaning in to plant a small, delicate kiss to Sebastian's lips. "I totally do."
Santana crinkles her nose, supremely confused, but Brittany puts a hand on her girlfriend's knee and sighs, leaning into her side.
"They are so in love."