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

Interludes (2012-2013)

A/N: Montage time! 

Kurt's senior spring and graduation and their summer together burn out too fast, and before he knows it he's on a plane to New York. When he isn't blissfully happy, Kurt is frightened out of his mind about leaving Sebastian behind with his doubts—or even, deep, dark inside, about himself forgetting their relationship in the rush of Big Apple glamor and newness.

And long-distance is hard. Being apart is hard. Whoever says it isn't is a fucking liar.

Sometimes he misses Sebastian so much he does stupid things like smell the shirt he stole out of Sebastian's closet. Sometimes he's too busy to think about Sebastian at all, flirting back at one of the many many gay and cute boys out of sheer horniness while calls to Seb go unmade, before he remembers in a rush of shame—and those moments are somehow the most terrible of all.

It gets easier, once they set a predictable schedule of Skype dates and calls and visits, but never easy.

"Kurt!" Sebastian yells, standing with his windswept hair in a crowd of suitcases, and Kurt goes.

He crashes into Sebastian and reclaims his mouth, hard. When he pulls back—just a little—Sebastian looks dazed.

He gathers himself quickly enough though, and smirks at Kurt as he says, "You taste like toothpaste. What, came down the airplane prepared?"

"Yeah," Kurt murmurs into his ear, "That's not the only thing I prepared."

He pulls away as Sebastian goes still.

And then Seb is pulling him and his luggage swiftly out of the airport and into Seb's car with its tinted windows—"What, bathrooms here not good enough?" Kurt laughs, as Sebastian pushes him back against the leather seats. Seb answers, seriously, "You'd bitch about all the germs, and I wouldn't even get the thrill of the mile high club out of it"—and they get down to reacquainting themselves with each other.

Thirty delirious minutes later, they finally start rolling down the highway back to Kurt's home. The long flight and ridiculous Thanksgiving crowd was worth it for this, Sebastian warm next to him, Kurt thinks, feeling so languid he can't even keep his eyes open long enough to respond to the insistent texts coming in from New Directions.

Shockingly, his dad and Rachel become their greatest supporters.

His dad reminds him gruffly Sebastian is welcome to come for Christmas, and to "bring that car of his so it can get the maintenance it deserves, the way that engine sounds is a damn shame."

"I'll help you the next time I'm down, how's that?" Kurt says cheekily, to cover up the emotions rising in his throat.

Rachel pulls him away from whoever is flirting with him with a thoughtless air; drinks his drinks when he's getting carried away; makes mock sympathetic noises when he sobs into her shoulder some time halfway through the year when Sebastian tells him he's started to make trips to Scandals again.

It's... more touching in context.

"Wake up princess, we're here. Your dad and Carole are waiting."

As if on cue, his dad and Carole burst out the door, followed by Finn. Out of their group, Finn is the only one who elected to stay near home, and Kurt used to be angry at him about that. But looking at the lack of tension in Finn's shoulders—though no one has trained him out of not hunching, as if it actually hid his bulk—he's reminded that as many people have told him, different strokes for different people.