It's Hard To Be The One Who Stays [Kurtbastian]

The Meerkat (Oct, 2010)

The first time he meets Sebastian, two things cross Kurt's mind immediately. The first is that he's a hateful cocky bastard, who makes up for his technically mediocre singing with dedicated practice, a hell of a lot of flashy charm as a vocalist, a lean body that dances like a dream, and all the charisma of a lead performer.

The second is that he as blatantly a jock as he is gay as he is hot.

And fuck, is he hot.

Kurt came from McKinley, where, except for a few very specific exceptions like Finn and Puck, all the jocks had been frightened enough of even a whisper of gayness or musical theatre that they bulled Kurt daily for one or the other, or both.

At McKinley, boys like Sebastian didn't exist.

No one who wandered into the music room flushed and sweaty from practice with his lacrosse team, who unabashedly commented on the relative attractiveness of his classmates while still holding onto his title as the team's rising star athlete.

No one who showed up with bags under his eyes because he'd gone to Scandals the night before with his fake ID (and how the hell had Sebastian gotten a fake ID after only two months at Dalton while Kurt still doesn't have one after over a year there?), then bags under his eyes the next night because he'd been up late practicing their new routine, and then bags under his eyes the night after that because of an away game.

No one who ridiculed Kurt's "gayface" and "girly clothes" while sporting polo shirts with double-popped collars and plaid shorts, and then without a missed beat regaled them all with conversations like:

"Oh, lots of things. My dad wanted me to go back to Ohio and graduate from his alma mater. Mama had been itching for 'freedom', and I sure as fuck didn't want to be around for her hippy stage. Not to mention that the guy I was sleeping with was getting a little too obvious."

And because Kurt was a virgin with shameless curiosity, he hadn't been able to hold himself back from prodding for more information.

"Like you have enough of a sense of shame to care about being obvious," he said.

He stared pointedly at their piano, on which just yesterday Sebastian and some Dalton boy's visiting brother had been sprawled all over, a sight Kurt and the rest of the Warblers had been unfortunate enough to walk in on. Kurt had shrieked shrilly enough that Sebastian had actually given in and wiped it down.

Kurt still wasn't going anywhere close to that thing in the near future.

No one needed to know that only half of that had to do with his neurotic germophobic tendencies, and the other half had to do with the shivery feelings he got whenever he looked at the piano. Every time he looked at the piano, his mind superimposed over it Sebastian's wrecked hair and open belt-buckle and the hickeys his ridiculous popped collars couldn't hide, and - Ugh, he was staying far away.

Sebastian looked amused, in the way that always made Kurt want to punch his Meerkat face in.

"Well, no, but if we were caught, people would've assumed I slept with the guy in order to get tips for the exams. And that's just insulting to my reputation, sexual and otherwise."

Kurt stared at him. Along with the rest of the Warblers, some of them cut off mid-note on their warm-up scales.

"You slept with your teacher?" Hunter crowed.

Sebastian gave a fake shudder. "Ugh. No. Three words: Wrinkly. Hairy. Balls. No, he was my TA—" Kurt stared at him incredulously, his gaze very obviously conveying how the hell does that make it better?—"Oh, put away your Puritan judgment, Kurt, we were close enough in age that even if we were caught he wouldn't have been charged as a sex offender."