A/N: Written for the Kurtbastian Hiatus Project prompt first 'I love you'.
Kurt looks inside his messenger bag, making sure he has everything he needs for the journey home.
"Wallet, keys, bus ticket…"
Ugh. He didn't want to resort to taking the bus, but he missed the train by minutes, and there wouldn't be another one to Ohio from New York till the morning. Besides, riding the Greyhound Bus seems like an artistically appropriate way to leave a relationship.
Late at night, seedy bus terminal, all sorts of salt-of-the-earth types roaming around with their own tragic backstories, staring vacantly ahead while they wait for the bus that will take them home, take them away from an abusive relationship, take them to God only knows where.
It's almost like a retro music video remake of Journey's Don't Stop Believing.
Kurt can definitely appreciate the drama of it.
Kurt double checks his bus ticket , reading all the fine print over to make sure (for the 80th time) that he's going to the right place, when he hears the odious squeal of Pirelli tires blowing through the red light and screeching into the bus station parking lot.
Kurt rolls his eyes.
Speaking of drama…
How did Sebastian figure out that he would be at a bus station, of all places? Though how the hell Sebastian found him is a little less impressive to Kurt at the moment than the fact that Kurt can pinpoint the telltale sound of Sebastian's Mustang peeling onto the pavement over anyone else's car.
Kurt used to think that was a sure sign that they were meant to be together – the romantic cliché of I would know the sound of your heart beating over anyone's. I would know that you were there, even in the dark.
Those ideologies used to be Kurt's raison d'etre.
Now he knows they are just pathetic excuses he made to justify keeping them together - for staying with a conceited, asshole prick who can't even admit that he loves Kurt.
Maybe that's because he never really did.
Kurt keeps his single piece of Louis Vuitton luggage close, trying to blend in with the late night rabble, though it's kind of hard for a man in a vintage grey Vivienne Westwood suit to hide in a line of people that consists of three emo teenagers dressed entirely in black, an elderly man in a 1960s era goldenrod flannel shirt and faded blue jeans, and a pregnant Puerto Rican lady with a toddler girl clinging to her leg, yawning and hiding behind her.
Maybe if I stand perfectly still, he'll walk right by me, Kurt thinks, keeping his head bowed over his ticket and focusing on his shoes.
When did I get that scuff on the toe? I didn't see…
"Kurt!?"
It's not just a call or a cry.
It's an honest to God bellow.
Cross traffic stops.
People turn and look.
Somewhere in the distance, a lonely dog barks.
Kurt wants to sink into the asphalt and die.
"Kurt!?" the yelling of his name continues. "Kurt!? Where the fuck are you, Kurt!?"
Ah, he's a modern day Romeo, Kurt thinks with a giggle, and this is our balcony scene.
"Kurt!"
Kurt hears the Eureka! I found him! tone in Sebastian's voice, and he knows he's been discovered.
"Kurt! Thank God I found you!" Sebastian's standing right in front him, but Kurt chooses to ignore him, re-reading the words on his ticket over and over.
It's a coping mechanism, one he's had to resort to before when bullies used to pick on him in high school.
Focus on something unimportant.
Empty your mind and disappear.
"What the hell are you doing here?" Sebastian continues with no encouragement from Kurt. He stares at his stoic boyfriend and shakes his head. "It doesn't matter. I found you, and that's all that matters. Now, let me get this suitcase so we can go home and talk."
"Unless you're asking for my forwarding address, we have nothing to talk about," Kurt says without looking up from his ticket.
"What the fuck's that supposed to mean?" Sebastian sputters, apparently unaware that there are other people in the world, and that they have all begun to stare for lack of anything better to do.
"It means I'm leaving you," Kurt says, finally looking up, focusing on the bus driver checking tickets and getting everyone ready to board.
"What?" Sebastian asks, wide-eyed with a cartoon look of shock.
Kurt leans forward, almost close enough to kiss his boyfriend, but he won't give him the satisfaction of a good-bye kiss.
"I'm…leeaavviinngg…yooouuu," Kurt drawls, voice dripping with condescension. He stands back straight and hands the bus driver his ticket, pointedly ignoring Sebastian again.
"I…heeeeaaaarrrrdddd…yyyyoooouuuu," Sebastian drawls obnoxiously back. One member of the emo group snickers. Kurt glares at them. Emo girl catches his bitch glare and sticks out her tongue, while the members of her entourage laugh.
Kurt shakes his head.
Fucking Twilight vampire wannabes.
Kurt is too distracted to notice Sebastian picking up his suitcase, but when he feels it brush against his leg, he reaches down and grabs it quickly, moving it to the opposite side of his body and away from Sebastian's grasp.
"Oh, come on, Kurt," Sebastian groans. "Be reasonable."
"Why?" Kurt asks with a bitter laugh. "Why do I always have to be reasonable? When we argue about something you care about, you end up winning. When it's something I care about, we compromise. Be reasonable, Kurt. Meet me half way, Kurt. But in the end it's still you winning. Well, I'm tired of being a loser, Sebastian!"
The line of people picks up their things and starts to move. Kurt grabs the handle of his bag and picks it up, but Sebastian reaches over him in another attempt to take it.
"Come on, babe," Sebastian says. "It's not that bad."
Babe, Kurt thinks, even his inner voice sounding spiteful. He's bringing out the big guns now.
"Of course, you would think that," Kurt says, wrenching his suitcase free again, "you always win."
"What did I win?" Sebastian asks, chuckling with the frustration of feeling kept in the dark. "What super important point did I argue my way out of? What compromise of ours screwed you over?"
Kurt stares at his boyfriend with one eyebrow raised.
Sebastian catches on immediately.
"Are we still talking about that?" Sebastian throws his head back and moans dramatically into the open air.
"Yes, we're still talking about that," Kurt tosses back in his face.
"Come on, Kurt," Sebastian pleads. "I already told you I do."
"No!" Kurt jumps on his boyfriend's comment quickly. "No, you don't say it. I say it, and then you say something lame and pithy like me to you, too or ditto. I say I love you, and you're just an echo. I'm not looking for an echo, Sebastian. I'm looking for I love you."
"Sir?" the bus driver says, reaching out to tap Kurt on the shoulder, but then dropping his hand back to his side when he decides it's safer not to risk it. "Sir, we're just about to board, so if you want to put your luggage…"
Kurt snaps his head to address the burly man interrupting his rant, and then looks over to where he's pointing – to the exposed bowel of the bus where other people are stacking their bags willy-nilly in the filthy looking cargo bay. Kurt grimaces at the thought of shoving his Louis Vuitton bag in that hold with all those other suitcases and bags. Some of them aren't even bags – some of them are oversized Tupperware containers or cardboard boxes wrapped in bungees cords, cracking along the corners or ripping at the seams, threatening to spill their bargain-basement contents everywhere.
Ugh.
It's almost worth going back with Sebastian - returning to his penthouse and a loveless relationship - to avoid sacrificing his $1300 piece of rolling luggage to the depths of baggage hell.
"Come on, Kurt," Sebastian says, softening his tone and shelving the drama, "you know you don't want to do this."
"How do you know…" Kurt starts, but Sebastian stops him with an arm around his waist.
Kurt crosses his arms across his chest, making himself rigid and unyielding in Sebastian's arm.
"I know you're angry at me, baby," Sebastian whispers, "and I know what to do to make it all better."
Sebastian runs his hand up and down Kurt's back, gently running his fingertips along the ridges of his spine.
"I'm not having sex with you," Kurt demands, holding his ground.
Sebastian smiles.
"I'm not talking about that," he says, reaching into his pocket with his free hand and pulling out and folded piece of paper. "I wrote you a note." Sebastian leans in, speaking against Kurt's lips, trying to get Kurt to cave.
Kurt tries to appear unimpressed, but he's also intrigued.
"A note?" Kurt repeats. "Like a love letter?"
"Well, you'll have to open it up and see," Sebastian says, tempting Kurt with his breath ghosting over his skin.
Kurt takes the folded note in his hands and opens it, eager to see what it says.
It's a simple note, just three words, but then again, Sebastian is a simple man at heart. Showy and flowery displays of affection aren't necessarily his thing.
But it doesn't have to be flowery. It doesn't necessarily have to be eloquent, either, as long as it says what Kurt hopes it says.
Those three words they'd been fighting over for the last year of their three year relationship.
He reads the note over once, his eyes lighting up in the dark, his mind jumping to conclusions, all the while realizing there is something a little off about the words on the paper. It looks like Sebastian wrote it while driving but other than that, when he reads it again, its message is blaringly clear.
"You loathe me!" Kurt pushes Sebastian hard on the chest, breaking free of his embrace. He crumples up the paper and tosses it, hitting Sebastian square in the face. "You son of a bitch!"
"No!" Sebastian says with a ridiculous look of surprise. "I didn't…" Sebastian opens up the crumpled page and reads it. "Damn, my handwriting sucks."
"Yeah, well, you can say that again," Kurt says. "Actually, say it to my back as I get on this bus."
Kurt hastily stows his luggage in the compartment beneath the bus and hands his ticket to the bus driver. He refuses to turn around. He refuses to let Sebastian's eyes lure him back to his Mustang and his penthouse with no promises other than the day to day they've been living for the past three years with no hope of a future.
Kurt's tired of being stagnant.
He's going back to Ohio. He's going to take a few days to clear his head and then figure out his game plan from there.
And this time, there's not a thing that Sebastian can do or say to stop him.
"I love you."
Kurt's foot hovers over the first step onto the bus – the first step to moving on. He doesn't chance a glance over at his soon-to-be ex-boyfriend.
He's pretty sure that like everything else, he's misunderstood.
"What?" Kurt asks, just in case.
"I said…" Sebastian takes a step forward, his arms open wide in front of him, "I love you."
A communal awww rises from the voices of people staring at them through the open bus windows, people who have been sitting around, annoyed at first by the delay, but becoming more and more invested as time goes on.
"Now, are you just saying that to keep me from leaving?" Kurt asks, not removing his foot from the step, "or do you really mean it?"
"I mean it," Sebastian admits, taking another step, "I do. And I'm sorry I didn't say it before, but I was just trying to find the right time…a romantic place…" Sebastian looks around at the dingy bus station, at the exhausted faces staring at them like they're performing dinner theater, "but I guess that this is as good a place as any."
"Yeah," Kurt admits, still sounding bitter, "in fact, any time and any place would have been fine."
"I know that now," Sebastian says, "but at the time, I wanted everything to be perfect."
"And what time was that, exactly?" Kurt asks, tapping the toe of his shoe on the stair.
"About a year ago," Sebastian confesses, his eyes darting left and right, sheepishly waiting for the backlash. The onlookers gasp and Kurt scoffs, his mouth dropping open wide.
"A year?" Kurt screeches. "Do you know what I've been going through for the past year? The waiting? The self-doubt? The wrinkles?"
Sebastian keeps stepping forward, and then he chuckles.
"What wrinkles?" he says with a fondly patronizing tone. "You don't have a wrinkle anywhere."
"Well, I thought I saw one…" Kurt mumbles as Sebastian wraps him up in his arms and pulls him away from the bus, "in the corner of my right eye."
"You mean, here?" Sebastian whispers, pressing his lips to the sensitive skin at the corner of Kurt's eye. "Because I don't see anything."
"Well, maybe it was the other eye," Kurt continues breathlessly. Sebastian's lips travel across the bridge of Kurt's nose to the same spot at the corner of the opposite eye.
"Here?" he murmurs. "Never. Not a wrinkle in sight."
"That still doesn't mean that I…"
"I love you, Kurt." Sebastian cuts Kurt's rambling short with another kiss, breathing him in as licks across the seam of his mouth. "I love you, I love you, I love you."
"Are you going to just keep repeating yourself?" Kurt smiles wider than he has in a long while. "Because, that could get annoying, you know."
"Well, I have a lot of fucked up time to make up for," Sebastian admits.
"Maybe you should toss in a few I'm sorrys for good measure then," Kurt says, kissing Sebastian back.
"Don't push your luck, Hummel." Sebastian pulls Kurt close, squeezing him hard, dipping him slowly back as he kisses him again.
Kurt is lost in this kiss, but unfortunately not lost enough that he can ignore the giggles and sighs of people he conveniently forgot were probably watching them throughout this entire ordeal. Still, he waits until Sebastian pulls away before he acknowledges the eyes focused on them.
"So, what do you think, guys?" Kurt says to the faces staring down at them from the windows. "Should I take him back?"
A roar of cheering and laughter rises up from the bus windows, where a crowd of passengers stare at them with different expressions of hope and joy for the battling couple.
"So, I take it you're…" the bus driver asks.
"I'm staying," Kurt says, capturing Sebastian's lips for another kiss.
The bus driver shakes his head, smiling to himself. They say if you want to find romance, you don't go to the movies or buy a book. You go to the airport, or train stations, or bus terminals. You got to hospital waiting rooms. You find all those places where people gather every day with their loved ones to say hello and good-bye.
This is a story he'll need to share with his wife when he gets home, the bus driver thinks, climbing into his seat, shutting the sliding doors, and firing the engine.
The passengers applaud as the bus pulls away, leaving Kurt and Sebastian to make-up in private.
"Fuck," Kurt sighs, breaking the kiss.
"I know, right?" Sebastian murmurs seductively with a nibble to Kurt's lower lip.
"No," Kurt says, more urgently, "fuck! As in, the bus is leaving!"
Sebastian stands up straight, staring at Kurt with his mouth open, both offended and confused.
"But…" Sebastian stammers, "but I thought saying I love you…"
"It does, you idiot!" Kurt yells, smacking him on the arm. "But, my bag!"
"Uhhh!" Sebastian groans. "Let it go! I'll buy you another one."
"Sebastian!" Kurt squeals, batting Sebastian away. "My sketchbook's in there! It's irreplaceable! And my computer! All my credit cards!"
"Alright!" Sebastian grabs Kurt's hand and runs for his Mustang. "We'll have to follow it to the next stop. Get your ass in the car." Sebastian pulls out his fob and unlocks the door so Kurt can jump inside.
"Thank you for this," Kurt says, sounding deeply apologetic.
"Shut it," Sebastian says, sliding into the driver's seat. "You're just lucky I love you."