ACITW AU CH26C
“Please, guys, continue,” Julian says, his eyes shining with self-satisfied amusement, his grin burning, its flame fanned by Sebastian’s expression of rage. “Don’t stop on my account. Wait a second…let me get a little more comfortable so I have a better view…” His face becomes nearly 70% his this-is-funnier-than-hell grin as Julian makes a big show of readjusting his seat on the sofa, reclining back on the arm, and propping his right ankle up on his left knee. His gaze shifts between Sebastian and Kurt, and it’s obvious that he’s more than pleased with himself.
Sebastian always goes on about Julian being a fucking voyeur. Man, he wasn’t kidding.
In the silence that grows around them, pregnant with tension and carrying with it a history of something that Kurt hasn’t fully been debriefed on, Julian stares at them, and the two boys, standing up against the wall, stare back. Julian makes a gesture with his hands, clearly meant to convey What’s the hold up? I’m waiting.
“What are you doing here, Julian?” Sebastian grates out, the question made up of less actual words and more a guttural noise that comes as a result of his jaw clenching tight. Kurt hears Sebastian’s teeth scrape together, the unnerving sound a symptom of his unrest, poking down Kurt’s spine like ice cold fingers.
“Why, Sebby,” Julian teases, smiling with the satisfaction that he’s pushing Sebastian’s buttons, “aren’t you happy to see your big brother?”
“Julian…”
Julian has yet to explain himself, and Sebastian does not have the patience at this moment to accept his brother’s usual jokes-at-his-expense as an excuse.
“After all, I drove nine hours straight,” Julian says with mock sincerity.
“Julian…”
The emphasis on the name sounds like a warning. Sebastian is not going to put up with Julian’s evasive commentary much longer.
“Kurt,” Julian says, unruffled by Sebastian’s menacing attitude and turning his lightning blue eyes Kurt’s way, “may I say that you look simply dashing in this classically stylish ensemble you’ve chosen, even with the addition of my brother attached like a remora.”
“Thanks,” Kurt grumbles, turning his face away from Julian’s blinding smile and dropping his forehead onto Sebastian’s chest.
“And you, Sebastian,” Julian says, moving quickly back to taunting his brother. “You look pretty debonair yourself, considering your pants are falling down around your ass.”
Kurt can’t stop his snicker at that. He had unbuttoned Sebastian’s jeans on the way in and well, they had had other plans before finding Julian sitting on the sofa, awaiting their arrival. Sebastian doesn’t remove his eyes from his brother’s face, and spares only one arm from where he has Kurt crowded to tug his jeans up.
“Why…are…you…here?” Sebastian repeats in a low growl.
“I came here to warn you that the rest of the flock will descend on your little love nest the day after tomorrow,” Julian explains, “so I personally wanted to make sure that the two of you were…respectable.”
“Information that you could have relayed by phone, you realize,” Sebastian says, his expression murderous, which seems to make Julian smile brighter every second it’s directed at him.
“Yes, but again, I missed you guys so very much,” Julian says with a fake, syrupy whine.
Kurt feels Sebastian shake - tremors of repressed anger circulating under his skin like a serpent trying to find a way to strike - and Kurt wraps his arms around his boyfriend’s waist, trying to hold him together.
Kurt understands Sebastian’s anger as much as he doesn’t understand it. Trading verbal barbs with Julian seems to be par for the course, and yes, Julian disrupted what was about to be a beautiful, long-awaited moment - one they’ve been building up to these past few days that they’ve spent alone, piece by piece, like a puzzle that’s all one color, with no clue where to go, no hint as to how they need to proceed. In essence, wasn’t that what Julian had wanted? Wasn’t that the favor he had originally asked of Kurt, to give his brother a chance? Julian probably doesn’t know exactly what he’s walked in on, the significance of it. He most likely thinks they’ve been going at it hot and heavy for days.
But Sebastian’s body has launched into a state of high-alert as he stares down his brother, and it takes some retrospection before Kurt realizes what’s actually bothering him.
It’s not that Julian showed up. The entire Smythe clan is set to arrive soon anyway. They knew that the privacy of their sojourn would only be temporary. It’s the fact that Julian showed up unannounced. Sebastian feels vulnerable, somewhat, with his brother around, especially at this pivotal point between him and Kurt. It’s amplified here in this place that holds history for them, the same way Kurt’s house - heck, all of Ohio - holds history for him and Blaine…which is why they left in the first place, why they drove nearly twelve hours to go somewhere as far removed from that history as possible to work through their remaining differences.
Julian might be a dick, but he wasn’t intentionally being a bastard. By the way the thick silence around them holds taut, not slacking an inch, and how Julian’s smile begins to slip, Kurt is sure that Julian realizes he stepped into something he should have stayed away from for at least one more day.
But right now, Kurt’s job is to alleviate Sebastian’s anxiety, not scold Julian over his disastrous timing.
“Has your brother always been this much of a shit,” Kurt asks quietly, “or am I just noticing it now?”
Sebastian doesn’t react right away, almost as if he’s forgotten that he has Kurt pinned against the wall, but then he chuckles, and Kurt is glad to hear some genuine humor in it.
“You’re the one who had a hard-on for him the first day you two met,” Sebastian mutters in reply.
“Yeah, well, it’s worn off,” Kurt mutters back. Sebastian shakes his head, his eyes not meeting Kurt’s as Kurt looks affectionately up at him from where he’s trapped between Sebastian’s arms - lips still swollen from kisses that relayed in no uncertain terms how badly Sebastian wanted him, chest heaving with breaths that had yet to even out around a heart still beating way too fast. “Incidentally,” Kurt adds, “in case you think I had a choice somewhere along the line, I fell in love with the right brother.”
Sebastian still doesn’t look down at Kurt, hiding the thread of insecurity he knows is unraveling behind his eyes, but the smile that starts to replace his frown is encouraging.
The fact that Julian is watching them becomes entirely unimportant to Kurt as he starts to kiss Sebastian’s neck. If Julian wants to watch them make-out so much, let him. Kurt is going to give him a great big eyeful. Sebastian’s eyelids flutter shut and he lifts his chin, sighing into the air at the touch of Kurt’s lips against his skin. Kurt feels Sebastian’s pulse racing, too. It’s not over. His desire is still there, beating against his lips, pressed against his thigh, reconciled by the arms sliding down the wall to wind their way around Kurt’s body, hands smoothing down Kurt’s back to palm over his ass. Kurt smiles into his next kiss, nibbling lightly on Sebastian’s pulse point, pulling a moan from his throat.
Maybe they can salvage this moment - intrusion or no.
A small, not remotely understated cough makes Kurt think not, and he breaks off his kisses when Sebastian sighs in frustration.
“Well the kissing between the two of you is much improved, I must say,” Julian pipes up, “but as much as I like a good soft porno, I do actually have a matter I wanted to discuss with Kurt, and I wanted to do it in person.”
Sebastian rolls his eyes and Kurt hugs him tighter. Kurt turns on Julian, whose smile has softened considerably despite his remark, and Kurt gets the impression that whatever he came to say might actually be important.
“Come,” Julian says, beckoning them over with both hands, sitting up to make room on the sofa for them. “Sit.”
Sebastian’s head falls forward and he knocks his forehead against the wall.
Bang…bang…bang…bang…pounding out the driving rhythm of his aggravation.
“Come on, Bas,” Kurt whispers, hoping that the addition of the nickname he knows Sebastian likes so much will help soothe him, “maybe the faster we hear him out, the faster he’ll leave? Go to a hotel?”
“Drop off a cliff into the ocean and be eaten by Great white sharks?” Sebastian offers, taking Kurt’s hand and letting Kurt lead him to the living room.
“There’s always that,” Kurt agrees, relaxing as Sebastian’s temper begins to subside.
Kurt pulls a reluctant Sebastian along - a Sebastian whose eyes are trained on Julian, trying his level best to irradiate him molecule by molecule until he’s nothing but dust. Sebastian drops down onto the cushions of the sofa first, pulling Kurt along with him, mostly into his lap.
Julian sighs, reaching out to take Kurt’s hand in his, but Sebastian intercepts it, weaving their fingers together and holding his hands clasped around Kurt’s waist. It’s an overtly possessive display of Sebastian marking his territory. It’s something that Kurt turned his nose up at the beginning of the summer.
Now, it turns him on, his head buzzing with dizziness as blood in his brain reroutes elsewhere, making this interlude with Julian that much more agonizing.
Julian looks at them, at their two hands joined together, and the corner of his mouth quirks.
“Kurt,” Julian says, and this time, he’s not teasing, “I wanted to invite someone to come out here and spend the summer, too, but I needed to make sure that his presence wouldn’t be too uncomfortable for you in particular.”
Kurt’s mind and his expression go blank. Wrapped up as he is in this new thing he has with Sebastian, he kind of forgets that other people exist in the world, people with wants and desires like him…people that are a bit rough around the edges and broken, too.
He forgot that there’s another heartbroken Smythe brother in the world.
Kurt narrows his eyes and Sebastian tightens his grip, both of them coming to the same conclusion at the same time but only Kurt vocalizing it.
“Cooper?” Kurt asks.
Julian nods, biting his lower lip, which dulls his smile, but his eyes show the full breadth of his excitement. He looks young again, but not in that defeated way he did when he saw Cooper at the gala - before that horrible moment when Cooper spilled the beans about the true nature of Kurt and Sebastian’s relationship.
“When did that happen?” Sebastian asks, but instead of sounding royally pissed, he sounds concerned.
“After you guys left,” Julian says, defensively. “We went out for coffee, talked a few things over…”
“Talked?” Sebastian interrupts, skeptical about the accuracy of his brother’s word choice.
“Yes, we talked,” Julian says, nodding his head back and forth as if his body physically rejects the half-truth he’s telling “… mostly.”
Kurt feels Sebastian chuckle behind him, and even though his grip on Kurt’s hands doesn’t loosen, it seems that he’s on the road to forgiving Julian’s recent indiscretion.
“Mostly…” Sebastian prods, trying to lead Julian into revealing more than he’s telling.
“A story for another time,” Julian says, waving the subject away and fixing his gaze on Kurt again, “but what I need to know is if Cooper being here is going to be…”
“No,” Kurt cuts Julian off, answering too adamantly, shaking his head too vigorously. “No, it’ll be fine. It’ll be great.”
It’s a tiny lie and Julian probably knows it, but he has such a look of hope in his eyes, a look similar to the one Kurt has been seeing in Sebastian’s eyes the last few days, Kurt can’t bring himself to snuff it out in any way.
“He’s still sworn to secrecy, of course,” Julian continues. “Anything that happens here stays here. He’s just coming here to see me, not report on you guys. I promise.”
Kurt feels Sebastian drop a kiss in his hair and Kurt relaxes back against his body.
“Thank you,” Kurt says with a smile. "Thank you for discussing this with me in person. I actually really appreciate it.”
“Yeah,” Sebastian agrees, “that was really cool of you. Now do you mind getting the fuck out?”
Julian waggles a finger at Sebastian, tsk-tsking him condescendingly.
“Quid pro quo, little brother,” Julian reprimands, doing his best Hannibal Lecter impression (and doing it rather well, to be honest), “quid pro quo.”
“Ugh!” Sebastian groans, burying his face in Kurt’s hair. “What do you want?”
“Testy,” Julian quips, back to enjoying his brother’s sulking. “I think that my driving all the way out here entitles me to a bit of hospitality. What do you say?”
Sebastian doesn’t answer, and Kurt can sympathize - God, can he sympathize - but seeing as Julian came out there to do something nice for him, he can’t despise Julian completely.
A little, but not completely.
“What did you have in mind?” Kurt ventures, maintaining his poker face when Sebastian squeezes him so hard he thinks he might vomit his appendix.
Julian claps his hands, rubbing them together with a glint in his eyes that’s both endearing and kind of frightening.
“I want you guys to go get changed, because Sebby here’s taking us out to dinner, and then…”
Julian’s eyebrows wiggle suggestively, and Kurt is sure he’s going to request a threesome, but Sebastian apparently knows what Julian is really referring to. He groans oh God, kill me now as his head slides onto Kurt’s shoulder and sinks into his neck.
“Why?” Kurt asks, looking as best he can at Sebastian, and then back at Julian with eyes that silently beg please don’t say threesome, please don’t say threesome, please don’t say threesome...
Not that he’d agree to one, but Kurt still doesn’t want the offer extended.
“Karaoke,” Julian finishes.
“Karaoke!?” Kurt gasps, thrilled and relieved beyond measure.
“Oh, God,” Sebastian groans, holding his breath, hoping for someone to come along and put him out of his misery.
“How do you not like karaoke?” Kurt sounds offended as he asks the question. “I mean, you sing...and you don’t just sing, you sing really well…” They head off to Sebastian’s bedroom to change and to…frankly, to put some distance between themselves and Julian for a while since they’re pretty sure he’s about to become a permanent fixture of their evening.
Preoccupied and a bit bewildered from their talk, the boys leave Julian to his own devices while they recover from their afternoon (they kept their hot air balloon excursion a secret since Julian didn’t ask about their day and neither of them felt he needed to know). Apparently Julian had arrived only minutes before they returned and had parked his car on the opposite side of the carport. Kurt and Sebastian were so occupied with tearing each other’s clothes off that they hadn’t registered the presence of another vehicle parked not too far from where Sebastian usually parked his Mustang.
“I know I sing,” Sebastian says, ducking his head down and away to hide the blush that starts from Kurt’s unsolicited compliment, “I’m just not the kind of person for whom singing to drunk strangers at a bar is a thing.”
Sebastian stops suddenly in the hallway, turns Kurt into his embrace, and kisses him. He kisses him hard enough that Kurt can’t object, but with soft caresses from his lips, savoring more than taking, though Kurt can feel that he is taking - he’s taking strength and solace from Kurt, and Kurt willingly gives it.
“Tell me you love me,” Sebastian whispers his plea against Kurt’s mouth. “Tell me that nothing’s changed.”
Kurt feels a surge of Sebastian’s anxiety hit him like the waves down on the beach, waves he can hear from Sebastian’s open bedroom door, pounding the shore. Kurt looks up into Sebastian’s eyes, raises a hand to cup his cheek, and smiles.
“I love you,” Kurt says. “Nothing’s changed in the last twenty minutes. I still love you.”
Sebastian closes his eyes and nods, visibly relaxing.
“Kiss me?” he asks with eyes still closed.
“With pleasure,” Kurt says, leaning into Sebastian’s body, pressing their lips together, putting arms around him and holding Sebastian, hugging him tight, hugging him so they can exist as one person for a while instead of two separate souls - one briefly more crippled than the other.
Kurt kisses Sebastian until he feels his boyfriend pull away, opening his eyes, finally back from wherever it was he ran away to. In a flash of green eyes and a cocky smile (one that has a lower wattage than normal but is a more comfortable place for Sebastian to hide), Kurt’s boyfriend is back.
“You go on ahead,” Sebastian says. “I have to use the bathroom.”
Kurt raises an eyebrow.
“Are you sure you’re not making me wait in the bedroom so you don’t have any witnesses to your brother’s murder?” Kurt jokes, culling this version of Sebastian out further and further to help him recover.
“I make no promises,” Sebastian says, taking a backward step away, “but if things go wrong, the rendezvous point is seventy miles due east from here.”
“You are so weird,” Kurt laughs, walking off through the bedroom door, hearing the bathroom door close down the hallway behind him.
Kurt kicks off his shoes and falls down onto the bed, lying on his back and staring up at the ceiling, letting the last half-hour drain away - out through the tips of his fingers, his mouth and nose when he breathes, his skin where it touches the air. There’s a part of him - a tiny nugget embedded deep in his stomach where he hopes it disintegrates away - that’s as mad as Sebastian was, one that resents Julian for showing up right when he did, bringing with him news of Cooper.
Because thoughts of Cooper always bring up thoughts of…
Nope. Kurt can’t do that. He forces his mind to screech to a halt and make a U-turn. Back up. Go down the same way he came, remember all the things that happened today that made him incandescently happy (to borrow from Mrs. Elizabeth Darcy, née Miss Lizzy Bennet). To do that, he pulls out his phone and brings up his photo gallery full of pictures he took today - pictures of KurtandSebastian.
Kurt sits up, crosses his legs to lean his elbows on his knees, and swipes his finger across the screen, flipping through the photos, picture after picture taken from the air: panoramic landscape shots, clear blue sky, a green meadow dotted with wildflowers and trees stretching out for miles, more than a dozen selfies that he and Sebastian posed for together, some with other balloons in the background, one that they forced Roland to take with them. But his favorite, by far, is one that Roland managed to take on the sly and upload to his company’s website (Up, Up, and Away - Kurt thought the name was cuter than necessary when he saw it on their sign, but it still made him smile). Roland emailed Kurt and Sebastian a copy; Kurt received the picture when they were back on the ground and he saved it immediately.
It was a picture of him and Sebastian kissing, which they had done a lot of during their flight.
He’s usually not a fan of the gratuitous, candid, face-sucking photographs that businesses who pander to the romantic tend to litter all over their advertising materials, but this picture has him captivated. Kurt has never seen Sebastian kiss anyone (which his inner diva is immensely grateful for), or himself, for that matter. The two of them fit together so well. Many times he’s felt that way, but this is the first time he’s actually gotten to see it with his own eyes, from an outsider’s perspective.
In the picture, Sebastian is holding his head, commanding this kiss, and Kurt is letting him. Sebastian has always been a good kisser, even when Kurt couldn’t stand him and they locked lips for show, but more and more Sebastian kisses him differently. He kisses Kurt like he wants to kiss him. Sebastian kisses Kurt less like he’s trying to convince him that there’s something there, and instead enjoys what is there.
And what’s been there for some time is love.
Love.
Kurt bites his lower lip giddily and hops a little on the mattress.
He goes back over the photographs and starts uploading them, forgoing writing captions in order to get them up on his Facebook wall as quickly as he can, though here and there he sprinkles a few gems like Romance at 2,000 feet, Don’t look down!, or Wave hi to Roland everybody! Isn’t he darling? (He makes sure to tag that one with Roland’s name for Up, Up, and Away’s Facebook page.)
When he comes back to the picture of him and Sebastian kissing, he knows he can’t leave it blank. He has to write something. He has to find a way to memorialize this moment, to share a fraction of what it means to him with the people who are going to see it.
He stares at it, waiting for something to come to him. He looks over the fine details of the photograph - the way Sebastian’s closed eyes crinkle in the corners, the way Sebastian’s hand cups his head so tenderly, the way their lips line up and move together.
He looks at the sky backdrop, the woven basket, the metal rods that fasten it to the balloon above their heads, and the perfect caption hits him.
Defying Gravity, in homage to one of his favorite songs from one of his all-time favorite musicals - Wicked. That song meant so much to him on his journey to where he is now - the strong, independent, openly-gay man that he can claim to be. A man that makes his own decisions, stands by his own choices, in charge of his own destiny.
That song also marks a huge turning point in his life, a time when he learned about fighting for what he wants, about how he wants to be seen, and figuring out what in his life is most important. In high school he sang that song, auditioning for a solo, and threw the last note to save his father the embarrassment of his son performing a song meant to be sung by a woman.
Of course, the death threat his father received on his behalf helped in that, too.
Kurt knew he could hit that note. He could hit it in his sleep - still can. He could sing it right now if he wanted to, even with a dry, un-warmed up throat.
Throwing it was his decision.
But this time, admitting he loves Sebastian up in that balloon, he didn’t just hit the perfect note, he nailed it. He reads the caption under the photo again and realizes it doesn’t entirely fit. With a smile on his lips, he changes it to Love Defies Gravity, and then hits the upload button.
That description comes closer to the truth. This love that he and Sebastian share doesn’t only defy gravity. It defies so much more than that - stereotypes, expectations, a rocky past.
Before he’s done, he changes his relationship status. Admitting to it straightforward with a name attached makes Kurt tipsy, like the aftereffects of going on a rollercoaster too many times - flushed and exhilarated, ready to ride it again, but still with an urge to throw up.
It’s all good - every last bit of it.
There he thinks, reviewing his Facebook page with pride. He’s left more evidence of his and Sebastian’s relationship to go along with that early morning selfie on the porch. With excitement and a grain of stomach-twisting dread, he’ll sit back and see how his friends react.
Satisfied by the overwhelming amount of vacation SPAM on his timeline, he closes out of his photo gallery and moves to pocket his phone, but something else nags at him, and instead he switches over to his bucket list.
It’s time for him to start marking off some items.
He scrolls down through the list until he spots something they’ve done.
#86 Go to school in a hot air balloon.
So, he didn’t go to school in the balloon, but meh. Semantics. The details don’t matter.
#89 Attend a circuit party.
Check.
#93 Visit a bee farm. Learn how to make honey - which is right above #94 Take dad to the Indianapolis 500. He had added these two items to his bucket list while sitting by his father’s bedside in the hospital, after he had suffered his heart attack. In the sterile room, listening to the monitors beep and the IV drip, Kurt had felt nostalgic about his mother and worried about his father.
Selfishly, he had also worried about himself - about being left alone.
As his dad lay unconscious, with no one able to tell Kurt when he would wake up or if he would wake up, Kurt spent evening on end talking to him. Kurt cried to him, pleaded with him, he even yelled at him once or twice. Eventually, Kurt entered the negotiating stage, promising his dad dozens of outlandish things if he would just come back to him. Kurt swore he would take his dad anywhere he wanted to go - The Canton Classic Car Museum, Dollywood, he even contemplated the Bacon Fest at the Fraze Pavillion (though that seemed like defeating the purpose). After an hour long conversation where he was the only contributing participant, Kurt came up with the idea to take his dad to the Indy 500.
When his father opened his eyes and could speak again, Kurt asked his dad about that conversation, but he didn’t seem to remember.
Technically Kurt figured he could void that entry, but doing that felt like lying - or breaking a promise. He couldn’t in good conscience do that, even if the outcome meant wasting most of a day inhaling unadvisable levels of toxic car exhaust and risking premature aging to his skin. Kurt might be a car enthusiast, but car races tend to become monotonous when the only job the driver has is to turn left. Going to the Indy 500 would be boring beyond belief for Kurt.
But Kurt would be bored beyond belief with his father by his side, and that’s all that counted, so he left it.
Kurt scrolls down the rest of his list, smirking at some of the items that jump out at him that Sebastian could have chosen - drive a motorcycle, learn to properly prepare Fugu, go skydiving, snowblowing…
Mmm, snowblowing. That might be doable on this trip.
Kurt feels the bed beside him dip without hearing Sebastian walk into the room, engrossed as he was with the idea of dragging Sebastian onto the sand, taking Sebastian’s cock down his throat until he came, and then the lengthy make-out session that would follow…
“Whatcha doing?” Sebastian asks, looking over Kurt’s shoulder as he exits his bucket list.
“I was actually wondering…” Kurt says, shrewdly watching Sebastian’s expression, “what’s your relationship status on Facebook? I mean, how did you get away with lying to your folks this whole time?”
“My parents don’t follow me on Facebook.” Sebastian scoffs when he answers, as if the idea of his parents tracking him via social media is laughable.
Kurt might agree. His father doesn’t follow him on Facebook, either, but not due to any objection from Kurt. His dad got the account while he was running for congress, to give his constituents the ability to contact him more easily. He didn’t feel the need to allow the public access to aspects of his private life - namely his wife and sons.
“Understandable,” Kurt concedes, “but Julian and Olivia must follow you, so you’d still have to cover. So, what is it?”
“It’s the same thing it’s been since my freshman year of high school,” Sebastian says, acting jokingly aloof. Kurt glowers, wondering how Sebastian would react if Kurt pointed out how much like Julian he is acting right now.
Kurt knows he wouldn’t take it well, so he shelves it.
“And that’s…” he continues to tug, trying to pull the answer from Sebastian.
“It’s complicated,” Sebastian answers, making his fingers into air quotes when he says it so that Kurt knows that’s his status and not an ironic, smartass reply. “Why? What’s yours?”
Kurt grins, toying coyly with his phone in his hands.
“Well,” he starts with a cocky grin on his face to rival Julian’s, “as of five minutes ago, it says in a relationship with Sebastian Smythe.”
Sebastian’s face goes completely blank at first, and then a blush starts on his cheeks as he laughs with disbelief.
“You’re shitting me!” Sebastian reaches out for Kurt’s phone, which Kurt hands over, flicking the screen lock and hitting the blue Facebook icon before he does.
“Not shitting you,” Kurt says, “except it’s not all that convincing seeing as you don’t follow me.”
“Well, you don’t follow me, either…” Sebastian says, but without a hint of sarcasm, “or at least, you didn’t until five minutes ago.”
“So, maybe you should fix that?” Kurt suggests, folding his hands beneath his chin and batting his eyelashes innocently.
The suggestion takes a moment to register as Sebastian scrolls through a few of Kurt’s recent entries to his timeline.
“Oh…right. Hold on.” Sebastian hands Kurt back his phone and pulls out his own, bringing up his Facebook account. The first alert that comes up has Sebastian biting his lip, the flush to his cheeks becoming a shade darker. “You sent me a friend request.”
“Yeah, well,” Kurt says, leaning his head against Sebastian’s shoulder, “I wanted to make it easy for you.”
Kurt doesn’t look over Sebastian’s shoulder as he changes his relationship status, accepts Kurt’s friend request, then scrolls through his new timeline to see the inclusion of updates from Kurt’s timeline.
“Done,” he says. “I see you took the liberty of uploading the pictures you took today.”
“Yup,” Kurt says, feeling explicitly smug, his face so tight from smiling that his cheeks begin to cramp.
“Love defies gravity?” Sebastian questions quietly, but it’s not a question he’s looking for Kurt to answer. He makes a slight noise, a breathless laugh…a happy laugh.
“Yup,” Kurt says, kissing Sebastian’s arm gently.
He feels Sebastian’s breathing stutter.
“When did you take this?”
“Hmm?” Kurt raises his head to look at the phone faced his way. Kurt swallows hard when he sees the picture filling the screen. Sebastian’s more expensive phone shows the photograph at a higher definition than Kurt’s phone does, displaying with sharper clarity every line, every freckle on Sebastian’s skin, every muscle of his back - his exposed back while he slept.
It’s the picture from this morning, the one he took of a sleeping Sebastian in secret. Kurt’s mind sweeps through the events from earlier. How could that picture have uploaded? He didn’t upload it? He took the picture, he was staring at it when he grabbed his coffee cup to go outside, he put the phone under his chin to open the porch door…
Fuck!
That must have done it. Holding it beneath his chin, he must have uploaded it somehow by accident and…
Fuuuuuck!!!
“Oh…” Kurt chokes, looking from Sebastian’s hard to interpret expression to the picture on the screen, his cheeks flaming red, “I’m so sorry. I’ll take it down. I ---“
Kurt sees Sebastian toss his phone aside, and that’s the last thing he sees before Sebastian’s lips collide with his, hands secure on his back, lifting his body up and carrying him to the head of the bed. Kurt’s breath leaves him, but it’s replaced by Sebastian’s. He breathes in as Sebastian breathes out, and Kurt’s mind nearly leaves him, floating along above him on an incredible high.
“So, I take it you’re not upset?” Kurt giggles as Sebastian’s mouth leaves his lips to find a spot on Kurt’s neck to make his mark.
“Upset?” Sebastian laughs. “Why in the fucking hell would I be upset?” Sebastian raises his head from the indigo bruise he’s perfecting to look Kurt in the face. “You just told your whole world, every friend you have, that not only are we together…”
Sebastian leaves the sentence open-ended, keeping his eyes locked on Kurt’s, trying to insinuate with his silence the more that should follow the end of that statement.
Kurt’s eyes open wide when he gets it, so wide that a single sneeze might shoot them straight out of their sockets, and Sebastian, awaiting Kurt’s reaction, starts to chuckle with the onset of nerves.
With that one photograph, Kurt had announced to his closest friends as well as some people he didn’t know that well - all 221 members of the Twilight Support Group and General Crying over Team Jacob Facebook group, some miscellaneous fans of his fanfic, the open forum for National Show Choir Champions which included Vocal Adrenaline, a few NYADA blogs, and everyone else that he’s forgetting as his brain starts to shut down - that not only are he and Sebastian exclusive, but at the very least, they’ve been intimate.
“Kurt…” Sebastian says when he notices Kurt’s lower lip tremble, notices the way his eyes don’t seem to stop getting bigger and bigger. “Kurt…it’s okay. You can take the picture down. I won’t be offended.”
Kurt’s eyes snap back into focus. They see a boy in front of him struggling with his own feelings of minor rejection to soothe Kurt during this meltdown…
…a meltdown over what he assumes Kurt perceives as a colossal mistake.
Kurt sees Sebastian’s face fill his vision, feels the shadow of Sebastian’s lips still kissing his, and he grins, repeating a sentiment of Sebastian’s from earlier that appropriately fits the way Kurt feels about taking that gorgeous photograph down.
“Not a chance,” he says.
Kurt feels Sebastian’s smile on his lips, having only glimpsed it for a second before Sebastian kisses him again.
“I love you,” Sebastian mouths. The words aren’t spoken, but Kurt can feel them, like Sebastian’s lips tattooing them into his skin transmits them straight to Kurt’s brain. Kurt leans back against the pillows and tugs at Sebastian’s shoulder, rolling his boyfriend onto his body on the bed.
“But, I’ll wrinkle your mmph…”
Kurt grabs the back of Sebastian’s head and pulls him down onto his body, craning his neck to meet Sebastian’s mouth, muffling the last part of his sentence. Kurt is touched by his boyfriend’s concern but gives Sebastian permission to put his full weight on top of him.
“Shhh,” Kurt hushes him, lightly petting Sebastian’s hair, “just don’t…don’t say it out loud.”
Sebastian laughs with his lips pressed to Kurt’s neck, fingers unbuttoning Kurt’s shirt, and Kurt wipes Sebastian’s comment from his mind.
If he couldn’t remember to hang up his clothes when he got there, Sebastian lying on top of him is not going to matter, not when he’s doing that thing with his tongue on the hollow of Kurt’s throat that makes every last drop of blood in his head gather in other places.
Sebastian has Kurt’s shirt completely unbuttoned and his t-shirt untucked and pushed up to his collarbone, his mouth moving down his chest, his hand palming over his cock, fingering along the outline of it over his slacks. He traces circles over the head with his index finger and Kurt’s eyes roll to the back of his skull, the words God damn hitting the air in small gasps.
“God damn is right,” a smooth voice invades their privacy, yet again, from the doorway - the door hanging wide open since both Sebastian and Kurt had conveniently forgotten that Julian was in the house. He leans with his shoulder against the jamb, his arms over his chest, legs crossed at the ankles. He leers at them, but at Kurt especially, and Sebastian positions himself protectively between his brother’s inappropriate gaze and Kurt’s half-dressed and aroused body. “But really boys, you’re not ready yet?” Julian asks, clapping his hands obnoxiously to hurry them along. “Let’s get going. We’re losing daylight.”
Cackling like a hyena, Julian barely makes it out of the doorway before two pillows fly through the air toward his face.
Sebastian always goes on about Julian being a fucking voyeur. Man, he wasn’t kidding.
In the silence that grows around them, pregnant with tension and carrying with it a history of something that Kurt hasn’t fully been debriefed on, Julian stares at them, and the two boys, standing up against the wall, stare back. Julian makes a gesture with his hands, clearly meant to convey What’s the hold up? I’m waiting.
“What are you doing here, Julian?” Sebastian grates out, the question made up of less actual words and more a guttural noise that comes as a result of his jaw clenching tight. Kurt hears Sebastian’s teeth scrape together, the unnerving sound a symptom of his unrest, poking down Kurt’s spine like ice cold fingers.
“Why, Sebby,” Julian teases, smiling with the satisfaction that he’s pushing Sebastian’s buttons, “aren’t you happy to see your big brother?”
“Julian…”
Julian has yet to explain himself, and Sebastian does not have the patience at this moment to accept his brother’s usual jokes-at-his-expense as an excuse.
“After all, I drove nine hours straight,” Julian says with mock sincerity.
“Julian…”
The emphasis on the name sounds like a warning. Sebastian is not going to put up with Julian’s evasive commentary much longer.
“Kurt,” Julian says, unruffled by Sebastian’s menacing attitude and turning his lightning blue eyes Kurt’s way, “may I say that you look simply dashing in this classically stylish ensemble you’ve chosen, even with the addition of my brother attached like a remora.”
“Thanks,” Kurt grumbles, turning his face away from Julian’s blinding smile and dropping his forehead onto Sebastian’s chest.
“And you, Sebastian,” Julian says, moving quickly back to taunting his brother. “You look pretty debonair yourself, considering your pants are falling down around your ass.”
Kurt can’t stop his snicker at that. He had unbuttoned Sebastian’s jeans on the way in and well, they had had other plans before finding Julian sitting on the sofa, awaiting their arrival. Sebastian doesn’t remove his eyes from his brother’s face, and spares only one arm from where he has Kurt crowded to tug his jeans up.
“Why…are…you…here?” Sebastian repeats in a low growl.
“I came here to warn you that the rest of the flock will descend on your little love nest the day after tomorrow,” Julian explains, “so I personally wanted to make sure that the two of you were…respectable.”
“Information that you could have relayed by phone, you realize,” Sebastian says, his expression murderous, which seems to make Julian smile brighter every second it’s directed at him.
“Yes, but again, I missed you guys so very much,” Julian says with a fake, syrupy whine.
Kurt feels Sebastian shake - tremors of repressed anger circulating under his skin like a serpent trying to find a way to strike - and Kurt wraps his arms around his boyfriend’s waist, trying to hold him together.
Kurt understands Sebastian’s anger as much as he doesn’t understand it. Trading verbal barbs with Julian seems to be par for the course, and yes, Julian disrupted what was about to be a beautiful, long-awaited moment - one they’ve been building up to these past few days that they’ve spent alone, piece by piece, like a puzzle that’s all one color, with no clue where to go, no hint as to how they need to proceed. In essence, wasn’t that what Julian had wanted? Wasn’t that the favor he had originally asked of Kurt, to give his brother a chance? Julian probably doesn’t know exactly what he’s walked in on, the significance of it. He most likely thinks they’ve been going at it hot and heavy for days.
But Sebastian’s body has launched into a state of high-alert as he stares down his brother, and it takes some retrospection before Kurt realizes what’s actually bothering him.
It’s not that Julian showed up. The entire Smythe clan is set to arrive soon anyway. They knew that the privacy of their sojourn would only be temporary. It’s the fact that Julian showed up unannounced. Sebastian feels vulnerable, somewhat, with his brother around, especially at this pivotal point between him and Kurt. It’s amplified here in this place that holds history for them, the same way Kurt’s house - heck, all of Ohio - holds history for him and Blaine…which is why they left in the first place, why they drove nearly twelve hours to go somewhere as far removed from that history as possible to work through their remaining differences.
Julian might be a dick, but he wasn’t intentionally being a bastard. By the way the thick silence around them holds taut, not slacking an inch, and how Julian’s smile begins to slip, Kurt is sure that Julian realizes he stepped into something he should have stayed away from for at least one more day.
But right now, Kurt’s job is to alleviate Sebastian’s anxiety, not scold Julian over his disastrous timing.
“Has your brother always been this much of a shit,” Kurt asks quietly, “or am I just noticing it now?”
Sebastian doesn’t react right away, almost as if he’s forgotten that he has Kurt pinned against the wall, but then he chuckles, and Kurt is glad to hear some genuine humor in it.
“You’re the one who had a hard-on for him the first day you two met,” Sebastian mutters in reply.
“Yeah, well, it’s worn off,” Kurt mutters back. Sebastian shakes his head, his eyes not meeting Kurt’s as Kurt looks affectionately up at him from where he’s trapped between Sebastian’s arms - lips still swollen from kisses that relayed in no uncertain terms how badly Sebastian wanted him, chest heaving with breaths that had yet to even out around a heart still beating way too fast. “Incidentally,” Kurt adds, “in case you think I had a choice somewhere along the line, I fell in love with the right brother.”
Sebastian still doesn’t look down at Kurt, hiding the thread of insecurity he knows is unraveling behind his eyes, but the smile that starts to replace his frown is encouraging.
The fact that Julian is watching them becomes entirely unimportant to Kurt as he starts to kiss Sebastian’s neck. If Julian wants to watch them make-out so much, let him. Kurt is going to give him a great big eyeful. Sebastian’s eyelids flutter shut and he lifts his chin, sighing into the air at the touch of Kurt’s lips against his skin. Kurt feels Sebastian’s pulse racing, too. It’s not over. His desire is still there, beating against his lips, pressed against his thigh, reconciled by the arms sliding down the wall to wind their way around Kurt’s body, hands smoothing down Kurt’s back to palm over his ass. Kurt smiles into his next kiss, nibbling lightly on Sebastian’s pulse point, pulling a moan from his throat.
Maybe they can salvage this moment - intrusion or no.
A small, not remotely understated cough makes Kurt think not, and he breaks off his kisses when Sebastian sighs in frustration.
“Well the kissing between the two of you is much improved, I must say,” Julian pipes up, “but as much as I like a good soft porno, I do actually have a matter I wanted to discuss with Kurt, and I wanted to do it in person.”
Sebastian rolls his eyes and Kurt hugs him tighter. Kurt turns on Julian, whose smile has softened considerably despite his remark, and Kurt gets the impression that whatever he came to say might actually be important.
“Come,” Julian says, beckoning them over with both hands, sitting up to make room on the sofa for them. “Sit.”
Sebastian’s head falls forward and he knocks his forehead against the wall.
Bang…bang…bang…bang…pounding out the driving rhythm of his aggravation.
“Come on, Bas,” Kurt whispers, hoping that the addition of the nickname he knows Sebastian likes so much will help soothe him, “maybe the faster we hear him out, the faster he’ll leave? Go to a hotel?”
“Drop off a cliff into the ocean and be eaten by Great white sharks?” Sebastian offers, taking Kurt’s hand and letting Kurt lead him to the living room.
“There’s always that,” Kurt agrees, relaxing as Sebastian’s temper begins to subside.
Kurt pulls a reluctant Sebastian along - a Sebastian whose eyes are trained on Julian, trying his level best to irradiate him molecule by molecule until he’s nothing but dust. Sebastian drops down onto the cushions of the sofa first, pulling Kurt along with him, mostly into his lap.
Julian sighs, reaching out to take Kurt’s hand in his, but Sebastian intercepts it, weaving their fingers together and holding his hands clasped around Kurt’s waist. It’s an overtly possessive display of Sebastian marking his territory. It’s something that Kurt turned his nose up at the beginning of the summer.
Now, it turns him on, his head buzzing with dizziness as blood in his brain reroutes elsewhere, making this interlude with Julian that much more agonizing.
Julian looks at them, at their two hands joined together, and the corner of his mouth quirks.
“Kurt,” Julian says, and this time, he’s not teasing, “I wanted to invite someone to come out here and spend the summer, too, but I needed to make sure that his presence wouldn’t be too uncomfortable for you in particular.”
Kurt’s mind and his expression go blank. Wrapped up as he is in this new thing he has with Sebastian, he kind of forgets that other people exist in the world, people with wants and desires like him…people that are a bit rough around the edges and broken, too.
He forgot that there’s another heartbroken Smythe brother in the world.
Kurt narrows his eyes and Sebastian tightens his grip, both of them coming to the same conclusion at the same time but only Kurt vocalizing it.
“Cooper?” Kurt asks.
Julian nods, biting his lower lip, which dulls his smile, but his eyes show the full breadth of his excitement. He looks young again, but not in that defeated way he did when he saw Cooper at the gala - before that horrible moment when Cooper spilled the beans about the true nature of Kurt and Sebastian’s relationship.
“When did that happen?” Sebastian asks, but instead of sounding royally pissed, he sounds concerned.
“After you guys left,” Julian says, defensively. “We went out for coffee, talked a few things over…”
“Talked?” Sebastian interrupts, skeptical about the accuracy of his brother’s word choice.
“Yes, we talked,” Julian says, nodding his head back and forth as if his body physically rejects the half-truth he’s telling “… mostly.”
Kurt feels Sebastian chuckle behind him, and even though his grip on Kurt’s hands doesn’t loosen, it seems that he’s on the road to forgiving Julian’s recent indiscretion.
“Mostly…” Sebastian prods, trying to lead Julian into revealing more than he’s telling.
“A story for another time,” Julian says, waving the subject away and fixing his gaze on Kurt again, “but what I need to know is if Cooper being here is going to be…”
“No,” Kurt cuts Julian off, answering too adamantly, shaking his head too vigorously. “No, it’ll be fine. It’ll be great.”
It’s a tiny lie and Julian probably knows it, but he has such a look of hope in his eyes, a look similar to the one Kurt has been seeing in Sebastian’s eyes the last few days, Kurt can’t bring himself to snuff it out in any way.
“He’s still sworn to secrecy, of course,” Julian continues. “Anything that happens here stays here. He’s just coming here to see me, not report on you guys. I promise.”
Kurt feels Sebastian drop a kiss in his hair and Kurt relaxes back against his body.
“Thank you,” Kurt says with a smile. "Thank you for discussing this with me in person. I actually really appreciate it.”
“Yeah,” Sebastian agrees, “that was really cool of you. Now do you mind getting the fuck out?”
Julian waggles a finger at Sebastian, tsk-tsking him condescendingly.
“Quid pro quo, little brother,” Julian reprimands, doing his best Hannibal Lecter impression (and doing it rather well, to be honest), “quid pro quo.”
“Ugh!” Sebastian groans, burying his face in Kurt’s hair. “What do you want?”
“Testy,” Julian quips, back to enjoying his brother’s sulking. “I think that my driving all the way out here entitles me to a bit of hospitality. What do you say?”
Sebastian doesn’t answer, and Kurt can sympathize - God, can he sympathize - but seeing as Julian came out there to do something nice for him, he can’t despise Julian completely.
A little, but not completely.
“What did you have in mind?” Kurt ventures, maintaining his poker face when Sebastian squeezes him so hard he thinks he might vomit his appendix.
Julian claps his hands, rubbing them together with a glint in his eyes that’s both endearing and kind of frightening.
“I want you guys to go get changed, because Sebby here’s taking us out to dinner, and then…”
Julian’s eyebrows wiggle suggestively, and Kurt is sure he’s going to request a threesome, but Sebastian apparently knows what Julian is really referring to. He groans oh God, kill me now as his head slides onto Kurt’s shoulder and sinks into his neck.
“Why?” Kurt asks, looking as best he can at Sebastian, and then back at Julian with eyes that silently beg please don’t say threesome, please don’t say threesome, please don’t say threesome...
Not that he’d agree to one, but Kurt still doesn’t want the offer extended.
“Karaoke,” Julian finishes.
“Karaoke!?” Kurt gasps, thrilled and relieved beyond measure.
“Oh, God,” Sebastian groans, holding his breath, hoping for someone to come along and put him out of his misery.
“How do you not like karaoke?” Kurt sounds offended as he asks the question. “I mean, you sing...and you don’t just sing, you sing really well…” They head off to Sebastian’s bedroom to change and to…frankly, to put some distance between themselves and Julian for a while since they’re pretty sure he’s about to become a permanent fixture of their evening.
Preoccupied and a bit bewildered from their talk, the boys leave Julian to his own devices while they recover from their afternoon (they kept their hot air balloon excursion a secret since Julian didn’t ask about their day and neither of them felt he needed to know). Apparently Julian had arrived only minutes before they returned and had parked his car on the opposite side of the carport. Kurt and Sebastian were so occupied with tearing each other’s clothes off that they hadn’t registered the presence of another vehicle parked not too far from where Sebastian usually parked his Mustang.
“I know I sing,” Sebastian says, ducking his head down and away to hide the blush that starts from Kurt’s unsolicited compliment, “I’m just not the kind of person for whom singing to drunk strangers at a bar is a thing.”
Sebastian stops suddenly in the hallway, turns Kurt into his embrace, and kisses him. He kisses him hard enough that Kurt can’t object, but with soft caresses from his lips, savoring more than taking, though Kurt can feel that he is taking - he’s taking strength and solace from Kurt, and Kurt willingly gives it.
“Tell me you love me,” Sebastian whispers his plea against Kurt’s mouth. “Tell me that nothing’s changed.”
Kurt feels a surge of Sebastian’s anxiety hit him like the waves down on the beach, waves he can hear from Sebastian’s open bedroom door, pounding the shore. Kurt looks up into Sebastian’s eyes, raises a hand to cup his cheek, and smiles.
“I love you,” Kurt says. “Nothing’s changed in the last twenty minutes. I still love you.”
Sebastian closes his eyes and nods, visibly relaxing.
“Kiss me?” he asks with eyes still closed.
“With pleasure,” Kurt says, leaning into Sebastian’s body, pressing their lips together, putting arms around him and holding Sebastian, hugging him tight, hugging him so they can exist as one person for a while instead of two separate souls - one briefly more crippled than the other.
Kurt kisses Sebastian until he feels his boyfriend pull away, opening his eyes, finally back from wherever it was he ran away to. In a flash of green eyes and a cocky smile (one that has a lower wattage than normal but is a more comfortable place for Sebastian to hide), Kurt’s boyfriend is back.
“You go on ahead,” Sebastian says. “I have to use the bathroom.”
Kurt raises an eyebrow.
“Are you sure you’re not making me wait in the bedroom so you don’t have any witnesses to your brother’s murder?” Kurt jokes, culling this version of Sebastian out further and further to help him recover.
“I make no promises,” Sebastian says, taking a backward step away, “but if things go wrong, the rendezvous point is seventy miles due east from here.”
“You are so weird,” Kurt laughs, walking off through the bedroom door, hearing the bathroom door close down the hallway behind him.
Kurt kicks off his shoes and falls down onto the bed, lying on his back and staring up at the ceiling, letting the last half-hour drain away - out through the tips of his fingers, his mouth and nose when he breathes, his skin where it touches the air. There’s a part of him - a tiny nugget embedded deep in his stomach where he hopes it disintegrates away - that’s as mad as Sebastian was, one that resents Julian for showing up right when he did, bringing with him news of Cooper.
Because thoughts of Cooper always bring up thoughts of…
Nope. Kurt can’t do that. He forces his mind to screech to a halt and make a U-turn. Back up. Go down the same way he came, remember all the things that happened today that made him incandescently happy (to borrow from Mrs. Elizabeth Darcy, née Miss Lizzy Bennet). To do that, he pulls out his phone and brings up his photo gallery full of pictures he took today - pictures of KurtandSebastian.
Kurt sits up, crosses his legs to lean his elbows on his knees, and swipes his finger across the screen, flipping through the photos, picture after picture taken from the air: panoramic landscape shots, clear blue sky, a green meadow dotted with wildflowers and trees stretching out for miles, more than a dozen selfies that he and Sebastian posed for together, some with other balloons in the background, one that they forced Roland to take with them. But his favorite, by far, is one that Roland managed to take on the sly and upload to his company’s website (Up, Up, and Away - Kurt thought the name was cuter than necessary when he saw it on their sign, but it still made him smile). Roland emailed Kurt and Sebastian a copy; Kurt received the picture when they were back on the ground and he saved it immediately.
It was a picture of him and Sebastian kissing, which they had done a lot of during their flight.
He’s usually not a fan of the gratuitous, candid, face-sucking photographs that businesses who pander to the romantic tend to litter all over their advertising materials, but this picture has him captivated. Kurt has never seen Sebastian kiss anyone (which his inner diva is immensely grateful for), or himself, for that matter. The two of them fit together so well. Many times he’s felt that way, but this is the first time he’s actually gotten to see it with his own eyes, from an outsider’s perspective.
In the picture, Sebastian is holding his head, commanding this kiss, and Kurt is letting him. Sebastian has always been a good kisser, even when Kurt couldn’t stand him and they locked lips for show, but more and more Sebastian kisses him differently. He kisses Kurt like he wants to kiss him. Sebastian kisses Kurt less like he’s trying to convince him that there’s something there, and instead enjoys what is there.
And what’s been there for some time is love.
Love.
Kurt bites his lower lip giddily and hops a little on the mattress.
He goes back over the photographs and starts uploading them, forgoing writing captions in order to get them up on his Facebook wall as quickly as he can, though here and there he sprinkles a few gems like Romance at 2,000 feet, Don’t look down!, or Wave hi to Roland everybody! Isn’t he darling? (He makes sure to tag that one with Roland’s name for Up, Up, and Away’s Facebook page.)
When he comes back to the picture of him and Sebastian kissing, he knows he can’t leave it blank. He has to write something. He has to find a way to memorialize this moment, to share a fraction of what it means to him with the people who are going to see it.
He stares at it, waiting for something to come to him. He looks over the fine details of the photograph - the way Sebastian’s closed eyes crinkle in the corners, the way Sebastian’s hand cups his head so tenderly, the way their lips line up and move together.
He looks at the sky backdrop, the woven basket, the metal rods that fasten it to the balloon above their heads, and the perfect caption hits him.
Defying Gravity, in homage to one of his favorite songs from one of his all-time favorite musicals - Wicked. That song meant so much to him on his journey to where he is now - the strong, independent, openly-gay man that he can claim to be. A man that makes his own decisions, stands by his own choices, in charge of his own destiny.
That song also marks a huge turning point in his life, a time when he learned about fighting for what he wants, about how he wants to be seen, and figuring out what in his life is most important. In high school he sang that song, auditioning for a solo, and threw the last note to save his father the embarrassment of his son performing a song meant to be sung by a woman.
Of course, the death threat his father received on his behalf helped in that, too.
Kurt knew he could hit that note. He could hit it in his sleep - still can. He could sing it right now if he wanted to, even with a dry, un-warmed up throat.
Throwing it was his decision.
But this time, admitting he loves Sebastian up in that balloon, he didn’t just hit the perfect note, he nailed it. He reads the caption under the photo again and realizes it doesn’t entirely fit. With a smile on his lips, he changes it to Love Defies Gravity, and then hits the upload button.
That description comes closer to the truth. This love that he and Sebastian share doesn’t only defy gravity. It defies so much more than that - stereotypes, expectations, a rocky past.
Before he’s done, he changes his relationship status. Admitting to it straightforward with a name attached makes Kurt tipsy, like the aftereffects of going on a rollercoaster too many times - flushed and exhilarated, ready to ride it again, but still with an urge to throw up.
It’s all good - every last bit of it.
There he thinks, reviewing his Facebook page with pride. He’s left more evidence of his and Sebastian’s relationship to go along with that early morning selfie on the porch. With excitement and a grain of stomach-twisting dread, he’ll sit back and see how his friends react.
Satisfied by the overwhelming amount of vacation SPAM on his timeline, he closes out of his photo gallery and moves to pocket his phone, but something else nags at him, and instead he switches over to his bucket list.
It’s time for him to start marking off some items.
He scrolls down through the list until he spots something they’ve done.
#86 Go to school in a hot air balloon.
So, he didn’t go to school in the balloon, but meh. Semantics. The details don’t matter.
#89 Attend a circuit party.
Check.
#93 Visit a bee farm. Learn how to make honey - which is right above #94 Take dad to the Indianapolis 500. He had added these two items to his bucket list while sitting by his father’s bedside in the hospital, after he had suffered his heart attack. In the sterile room, listening to the monitors beep and the IV drip, Kurt had felt nostalgic about his mother and worried about his father.
Selfishly, he had also worried about himself - about being left alone.
As his dad lay unconscious, with no one able to tell Kurt when he would wake up or if he would wake up, Kurt spent evening on end talking to him. Kurt cried to him, pleaded with him, he even yelled at him once or twice. Eventually, Kurt entered the negotiating stage, promising his dad dozens of outlandish things if he would just come back to him. Kurt swore he would take his dad anywhere he wanted to go - The Canton Classic Car Museum, Dollywood, he even contemplated the Bacon Fest at the Fraze Pavillion (though that seemed like defeating the purpose). After an hour long conversation where he was the only contributing participant, Kurt came up with the idea to take his dad to the Indy 500.
When his father opened his eyes and could speak again, Kurt asked his dad about that conversation, but he didn’t seem to remember.
Technically Kurt figured he could void that entry, but doing that felt like lying - or breaking a promise. He couldn’t in good conscience do that, even if the outcome meant wasting most of a day inhaling unadvisable levels of toxic car exhaust and risking premature aging to his skin. Kurt might be a car enthusiast, but car races tend to become monotonous when the only job the driver has is to turn left. Going to the Indy 500 would be boring beyond belief for Kurt.
But Kurt would be bored beyond belief with his father by his side, and that’s all that counted, so he left it.
Kurt scrolls down the rest of his list, smirking at some of the items that jump out at him that Sebastian could have chosen - drive a motorcycle, learn to properly prepare Fugu, go skydiving, snowblowing…
Mmm, snowblowing. That might be doable on this trip.
Kurt feels the bed beside him dip without hearing Sebastian walk into the room, engrossed as he was with the idea of dragging Sebastian onto the sand, taking Sebastian’s cock down his throat until he came, and then the lengthy make-out session that would follow…
“Whatcha doing?” Sebastian asks, looking over Kurt’s shoulder as he exits his bucket list.
“I was actually wondering…” Kurt says, shrewdly watching Sebastian’s expression, “what’s your relationship status on Facebook? I mean, how did you get away with lying to your folks this whole time?”
“My parents don’t follow me on Facebook.” Sebastian scoffs when he answers, as if the idea of his parents tracking him via social media is laughable.
Kurt might agree. His father doesn’t follow him on Facebook, either, but not due to any objection from Kurt. His dad got the account while he was running for congress, to give his constituents the ability to contact him more easily. He didn’t feel the need to allow the public access to aspects of his private life - namely his wife and sons.
“Understandable,” Kurt concedes, “but Julian and Olivia must follow you, so you’d still have to cover. So, what is it?”
“It’s the same thing it’s been since my freshman year of high school,” Sebastian says, acting jokingly aloof. Kurt glowers, wondering how Sebastian would react if Kurt pointed out how much like Julian he is acting right now.
Kurt knows he wouldn’t take it well, so he shelves it.
“And that’s…” he continues to tug, trying to pull the answer from Sebastian.
“It’s complicated,” Sebastian answers, making his fingers into air quotes when he says it so that Kurt knows that’s his status and not an ironic, smartass reply. “Why? What’s yours?”
Kurt grins, toying coyly with his phone in his hands.
“Well,” he starts with a cocky grin on his face to rival Julian’s, “as of five minutes ago, it says in a relationship with Sebastian Smythe.”
Sebastian’s face goes completely blank at first, and then a blush starts on his cheeks as he laughs with disbelief.
“You’re shitting me!” Sebastian reaches out for Kurt’s phone, which Kurt hands over, flicking the screen lock and hitting the blue Facebook icon before he does.
“Not shitting you,” Kurt says, “except it’s not all that convincing seeing as you don’t follow me.”
“Well, you don’t follow me, either…” Sebastian says, but without a hint of sarcasm, “or at least, you didn’t until five minutes ago.”
“So, maybe you should fix that?” Kurt suggests, folding his hands beneath his chin and batting his eyelashes innocently.
The suggestion takes a moment to register as Sebastian scrolls through a few of Kurt’s recent entries to his timeline.
“Oh…right. Hold on.” Sebastian hands Kurt back his phone and pulls out his own, bringing up his Facebook account. The first alert that comes up has Sebastian biting his lip, the flush to his cheeks becoming a shade darker. “You sent me a friend request.”
“Yeah, well,” Kurt says, leaning his head against Sebastian’s shoulder, “I wanted to make it easy for you.”
Kurt doesn’t look over Sebastian’s shoulder as he changes his relationship status, accepts Kurt’s friend request, then scrolls through his new timeline to see the inclusion of updates from Kurt’s timeline.
“Done,” he says. “I see you took the liberty of uploading the pictures you took today.”
“Yup,” Kurt says, feeling explicitly smug, his face so tight from smiling that his cheeks begin to cramp.
“Love defies gravity?” Sebastian questions quietly, but it’s not a question he’s looking for Kurt to answer. He makes a slight noise, a breathless laugh…a happy laugh.
“Yup,” Kurt says, kissing Sebastian’s arm gently.
He feels Sebastian’s breathing stutter.
“When did you take this?”
“Hmm?” Kurt raises his head to look at the phone faced his way. Kurt swallows hard when he sees the picture filling the screen. Sebastian’s more expensive phone shows the photograph at a higher definition than Kurt’s phone does, displaying with sharper clarity every line, every freckle on Sebastian’s skin, every muscle of his back - his exposed back while he slept.
It’s the picture from this morning, the one he took of a sleeping Sebastian in secret. Kurt’s mind sweeps through the events from earlier. How could that picture have uploaded? He didn’t upload it? He took the picture, he was staring at it when he grabbed his coffee cup to go outside, he put the phone under his chin to open the porch door…
Fuck!
That must have done it. Holding it beneath his chin, he must have uploaded it somehow by accident and…
Fuuuuuck!!!
“Oh…” Kurt chokes, looking from Sebastian’s hard to interpret expression to the picture on the screen, his cheeks flaming red, “I’m so sorry. I’ll take it down. I ---“
Kurt sees Sebastian toss his phone aside, and that’s the last thing he sees before Sebastian’s lips collide with his, hands secure on his back, lifting his body up and carrying him to the head of the bed. Kurt’s breath leaves him, but it’s replaced by Sebastian’s. He breathes in as Sebastian breathes out, and Kurt’s mind nearly leaves him, floating along above him on an incredible high.
“So, I take it you’re not upset?” Kurt giggles as Sebastian’s mouth leaves his lips to find a spot on Kurt’s neck to make his mark.
“Upset?” Sebastian laughs. “Why in the fucking hell would I be upset?” Sebastian raises his head from the indigo bruise he’s perfecting to look Kurt in the face. “You just told your whole world, every friend you have, that not only are we together…”
Sebastian leaves the sentence open-ended, keeping his eyes locked on Kurt’s, trying to insinuate with his silence the more that should follow the end of that statement.
Kurt’s eyes open wide when he gets it, so wide that a single sneeze might shoot them straight out of their sockets, and Sebastian, awaiting Kurt’s reaction, starts to chuckle with the onset of nerves.
With that one photograph, Kurt had announced to his closest friends as well as some people he didn’t know that well - all 221 members of the Twilight Support Group and General Crying over Team Jacob Facebook group, some miscellaneous fans of his fanfic, the open forum for National Show Choir Champions which included Vocal Adrenaline, a few NYADA blogs, and everyone else that he’s forgetting as his brain starts to shut down - that not only are he and Sebastian exclusive, but at the very least, they’ve been intimate.
“Kurt…” Sebastian says when he notices Kurt’s lower lip tremble, notices the way his eyes don’t seem to stop getting bigger and bigger. “Kurt…it’s okay. You can take the picture down. I won’t be offended.”
Kurt’s eyes snap back into focus. They see a boy in front of him struggling with his own feelings of minor rejection to soothe Kurt during this meltdown…
…a meltdown over what he assumes Kurt perceives as a colossal mistake.
Kurt sees Sebastian’s face fill his vision, feels the shadow of Sebastian’s lips still kissing his, and he grins, repeating a sentiment of Sebastian’s from earlier that appropriately fits the way Kurt feels about taking that gorgeous photograph down.
“Not a chance,” he says.
Kurt feels Sebastian’s smile on his lips, having only glimpsed it for a second before Sebastian kisses him again.
“I love you,” Sebastian mouths. The words aren’t spoken, but Kurt can feel them, like Sebastian’s lips tattooing them into his skin transmits them straight to Kurt’s brain. Kurt leans back against the pillows and tugs at Sebastian’s shoulder, rolling his boyfriend onto his body on the bed.
“But, I’ll wrinkle your mmph…”
Kurt grabs the back of Sebastian’s head and pulls him down onto his body, craning his neck to meet Sebastian’s mouth, muffling the last part of his sentence. Kurt is touched by his boyfriend’s concern but gives Sebastian permission to put his full weight on top of him.
“Shhh,” Kurt hushes him, lightly petting Sebastian’s hair, “just don’t…don’t say it out loud.”
Sebastian laughs with his lips pressed to Kurt’s neck, fingers unbuttoning Kurt’s shirt, and Kurt wipes Sebastian’s comment from his mind.
If he couldn’t remember to hang up his clothes when he got there, Sebastian lying on top of him is not going to matter, not when he’s doing that thing with his tongue on the hollow of Kurt’s throat that makes every last drop of blood in his head gather in other places.
Sebastian has Kurt’s shirt completely unbuttoned and his t-shirt untucked and pushed up to his collarbone, his mouth moving down his chest, his hand palming over his cock, fingering along the outline of it over his slacks. He traces circles over the head with his index finger and Kurt’s eyes roll to the back of his skull, the words God damn hitting the air in small gasps.
“God damn is right,” a smooth voice invades their privacy, yet again, from the doorway - the door hanging wide open since both Sebastian and Kurt had conveniently forgotten that Julian was in the house. He leans with his shoulder against the jamb, his arms over his chest, legs crossed at the ankles. He leers at them, but at Kurt especially, and Sebastian positions himself protectively between his brother’s inappropriate gaze and Kurt’s half-dressed and aroused body. “But really boys, you’re not ready yet?” Julian asks, clapping his hands obnoxiously to hurry them along. “Let’s get going. We’re losing daylight.”
Cackling like a hyena, Julian barely makes it out of the doorway before two pillows fly through the air toward his face.