Kurt was not happy. This wasn't at all how his date with George was supposed to go.
That is to say, everything was going beautifully. Their phone call to set things up had been shorter than he'd hoped it would be but, he told himself, you couldn't really judge anything by that; some people just didn't like talking on the phone. And once George had appeared on Kurt's doorstep Friday night everything had been perfect. He hadn't brought flowers or any other tacky gift-like thing (the half-dozen roses that Josh - the boy from two months ago - had brought had made Carole sneeze and made Kurt want to ask him how it was possible that his carefully selected skin-tight jeans had managed to lead Josh to the conclusion that he was anything but a boy) and when Burt had appeared behind Kurt to inquire about their evening, George had interrupted Kurt's flustered "Dad!" with a firm handshake, a "George Deming, pleased to meet you, sir," and a promise to have Kurt home before twelve. Burt looked positively smitten.
Their chit-chat in the car on the way to the movie theater had been much more satisfying than their earlier phone conversation and Kurt found himself laughing easily along with George's stories about life at Lima Community College. He even told a few anecdotes of his own about the pitfalls of being in a high school glee club, striking just the right tone between self-deprecating and humorously above-it-all, and George was charming and relaxed and pointedly did not try to hold the car door for Kurt.
The theater was packed, which was kind of a relief since it meant that there was no need to worry about whether or how much physical contact would be acceptable. With no empty seats around them even hand-holding was out of the question, and Kurt decided it was much better to want to be holding hands but not actually doing it than to be holding hands and worrying about some Neanderthal in the row behind them getting wise and deciding to bust some (gay) heads.
All in all Kurt should have been having a wonderful time. And he was. He really was.
Except he couldn't stop thinking about Sebastian.
Even with George's obviously muscular forearm pressed against his on the armrest between them, even with George's soft laughter indicating that he got all the right jokes and his occasional whispered comment in Kurt's ear, all of which were smart and funny and just the thing Kurt himself was thinking at the moment, Kurt couldn't stop thinking about Sebastian.
If he was being honest with himself, he really hadn't stopped thinking about Sebastian since their encounter at Dalton when he'd fixed Mercedes' car.
It was his eyes, Kurt had decided. Kurt was used to insults, he was used to people, even his friends sometimes, insinuating that he was more girl than boy. He was certainly used to ignorant jocks and closeted self-hating gays (who were sometimes one and the same) calling him names and trying every trick in the book to make him feel ashamed of who he was. Yes, it hurt that someone actually openly gay would use the same tactics against him, but other than that there really should have been nothing remarkable about Sebastian Smythe's clever little attacks.
But Kurt had stared hate in the face most of his life and he understood what it looked like. It looked like anger and fear and disgust. It looked likeI'm-better-than-you and run-while-you-can. It looked like the assumption that whatever happened to him next would be all his own fault, simply because he dared to exist outside of what was "acceptable." But though most of the words were the same, that was not at all what he'd seen in Sebastian Smythe's eyes.
What he'd seen had looked much more like - challenge.
That was what Kurt couldn't figure out. And try as he might he couldn't get the image out of his head: those green eyes looking back at him, just looking, like there was some vital piece of information they were missing to completely draw his character. Those eyes were so at odds with the words coming out of Sebastian's pretty mouth (No! Not pretty. Where the hell had that come from?) that Kurt found himself pondering the riddle of Sebastian even as he sat next to the handsome, blue-eyed college boy who'd flirted shamelessly with him, and asked him out, and was now moving his leg just enough so that their knees brushed together every time one of them shifted position even the tiniest bit.
By the time the credits rolled, the thought uppermost in Kurt's mind wasn't whether there'd be a goodnight kiss or who should call whom for a second date. No, what he wanted most was to get to a Starbucks and somehow get George to spill the story about Sebastian that he'd hinted at when they were talking at Sugar's party. Which really only made him angrier with Sebastian.
"So, you seemed a little distracted. Didn't you like the movie?" George asked when they were settled in cushy armchairs with their steaming lattes.
Crap. "No," Kurt jumped to reassure him. "What's not to like, right? I mean, Ryan Gosling, come on. No, I'm just fidgety. I can't really sit still no matter what." Kurt shifted in his chair to make his point.
George just smiled. "That's weird, because you seem like the type of person who's really good at being still. Watching, you know?"
That was so on point that it made Kurt a little uncomfortable. He didn't like that he was apparently so easy to read.
"Okay," he admitted, changing tactics, "I guess I am a little nervous. There's something I want to ask you about, but I'm not sure if I should."
"About Sebastian?"
It was a little unnerving that George was so direct about it and instead of grabbing the opening Kurt found himself saying, " No. I mean, yes, but only sort of."
George looked amused. "Sort of?"
"Well, see, my friend is dating one of his friends, and there's going to be a party tomorrow, and I really want to invite you but I'm not sure if I should since he'll probably be there, and I'm sure you don't want to see him especially after the way he acted at Sugar's party and you should really tell me to shut up now . . ."
"Shut up." But George was smiling and he reached for Kurt's hand as he spoke so maybe the babbling hadn't been such a bad idea. A tiny thrill ran up Kurt's arm as George's warm fingers enclosed his own. "I'll tell you whatever you want to know. It was years ago and I'm really okay with talking about it. But, I mean, if he's a friend of yours then I don't want to . . ."
"Oh God no!" Kurt interrupted vehemently. "No, I can't stand him, actually, and honestly none of us can understand why someone like David is friends with him."
George's brow furrowed for a moment. "Do you mean David Marsh?" When Kurt nodded he continued, "Yeah I remember him. He seemed nice. But I didn't really spend that much time with Sebastian's friends." He was still holding Kurt's hand, and he didn't let go as he spoke. "Okay, well it was my senior year; Sebastian was a freshman."
"It wasn't weird that he was so much younger than you?"
"Actually, it was only two years. He was fifteen when we started dating, and I was seventeen. But even at fifteen he was still Sebastian, you know? Still hot and so sure of himself - but I honestly figured he'd be an easy conquest. I mean, what freshman wouldn't want attention from a senior? I never even saw him coming."
He paused and took a long swig of his coffee, and when he put it back on the table his free hand, still warm from the cup, joined the other playing with Kurt's fingers. Tiny movements that sent stabs of excitement through Kurt's belly even as he tried to concentrate on the story.
"So you asked him out..." Kurt prompted, if only to keep himself on track.
"Oh, he positioned me right where he wanted me. I asked him out, of course I did, but he told me he couldn't. He wasn't really out yet and he was afraid that if his parents found out they'd, I don't know, take away the car he was still too young to drive or something. So he said we had to keep it a secret. He'd come to my room and we'd fool around for hours, making out," George shrugged and looked down at their hands on the table, "grinding, whatever. He'd give just enough to always keep me wanting more. We didn't actually have sex until close to the end of the year, right before...well, in any case, he said I was his first."
"But you didn't believe him?" Kurt asked, still trying to focus on George's words and not what his fingers were doing to Kurt's body.
"He seemed to know what he was doing," George shrugged, "and then right after we did it for the first time he told me he needed me to help him with something important." He paused for a moment, took a deep breath, then raised his eyes to Kurt's once more. "He needed me to get a test for him."
"I don't understand." It was information overload, and Kurt's brain was struggling to keep up with the abrupt 90-degree turn the story had just taken.
"I was on the spring dance committee. He knew that. So I spent a lot of time in the office - it's where we'd meet after school to plan and we had to run everything by the headmaster . . . he told me that he was failing Algebra and that he needed me to get into the office, use one of the computers there to access his teacher's resource page and print out the final exam for him. He said if he failed his parents would pull him out of Dalton and I'd never be able to see him."
Kurt was shocked. He didn't know Sebastian at all, really, and he certainly didn't like him, but using sex to persuade George to cheat for him? When he was only fifteen? That was definitely out there. "You didn't agree to do it?" he asked.
George looked back down at the table and color rose in his cheeks. "What was I supposed to do? I thought I was in love with him." He looked back up and Kurt could see how upset he was. "He cried, Kurt. Real tears. How was I supposed to tell him no? And, to be honest, I wanted to do it. I wanted to be his hero."
"I'm sorry," Kurt said in the face of George's obvious distress. "You don't have to tell me any more. I know it must be painful..."
"No, it's good, actually. Kind of therapeutic. I've never really told anyone the whole story before." George smiled a little and his hand tightened on Kurt's.
"So what happened?"
"I got caught. I didn't know they had ways of monitoring computer activity and the secretary remembered going to the restroom and leaving me alone at the time the test was printed, so they had me cold, you know? But they couldn't figure out why I would steal a test for a class I wasn't even in."
"Did you tell them?" There had to be a happy ending, Kurt thought, the bad guy couldn't win. Maybe that was how his stories always ended, but that couldn't possibly be the case for handsome perfect George, could it?
George shook his head. "I couldn't. I didn't. I kept hoping that Sebastian would come forward. I think they might have gone a little easier on me if they'd known the whole story. I mean, I was still responsible for my own actions, of course, but -" he sighed. "I don't know. I guess I deserved what I got. I was stupid, you know? They put a report in my permanent record and, well, remember I said before that he was the reason I was at LCC?"
Kurt nodded, almost afraid to hear what was coming next.
"I was a finalist for a scholarship from this architectural foundation. But after they marked my record, I was taken out of contention." He smiled sheepishly. "So no scholarship and no OSU."
Kurt tried to process everything he had just heard, his hand still sandwiched between George's long fingers, staring into oh-so-sincere blue eyes. He struggled to think of the right thing to say. "I just . . . well, I guess maybe coming to a Warbler party is kind of the last thing you'd want to do, huh?"
George finally let go of Kurt's hand and pushed himself up straighter in his chair. "No. You know what? I will come to the party. Sebastian can find a way to avoid me, if he feels like he needs to, but I'm not going to let him scare me off from the chance to dance all night with you." He flashed Kurt a genuine smile, all white teeth and sparkling blue eyes.
Kurt grinned back. "Well alright then," he replied as they gathered up their trash and headed out to the car.
On the ride home they talked about anything but Sebastian. The movie (what Kurt could remember of it), Kurt's hectic glee club practice schedule, the relative merits of Ryans Gosling and Reynolds. By the time they arrived back at Kurt's house everything was easy again, and George seemed to have completely recovered from any distress brought on by telling his story. He pulled up in front of the house, got out, and waited for Kurt to come around to his side of the car.
"Well, thank you," Kurt began awkwardly, "I had a really good time."
George snagged his hand and pulled him closer to where he was leaning against the car door. "Text me about the party, okay? I'll pick you up."
Kurt nodded, and George tugged a little more, and then they were kissing, soft and gentle, Kurt's arm stealing around George's trim waist and George's tongue teasing just a little at Kurt's bottom lip. When they broke apart all Kurt could see were warm blue eyes under curling blonde hair.
His euphoria lasted all the way up to his room, where he peeked out the window and waved to George, who had stayed by the car just for that apparently. Everything was perfect. He really liked George, and they were going to the Warbler party together, and, really, he had no reason not to be perfectly happy.
But that night his dreams were haunted by a sharp, mocking laugh and challenging green eyes.