***Okay, a few notes. I had originally written this for the kurtoberfest prompt 'dark and stormy night', but it's not scary. That said, before anyone mentions it in the comments, yes, neither of these guys is better than the other. All three of them are selfish. But they're young. And young people are allowed to be selfish. Blaine cheated and Sebastian was an ass. In this setting, we are supposed to see them both as not necessarily the greatest, but not entirely irredeemable. That's why Kurt's loyalty sways. This can be considered Klaine or Kurtbastian, depending on how you, the reader, perceive it. I sat on putting it up because I really just foresaw people being rude about it. It's also written in reverse. We see the aftermath (kind of) first, and then we see what happened before it. Takes place during the 'Pumpin' Blood' portion of the episode "Opening Night" and assumes that Hunter never took over as captain of the Warblers.

Rare pair: Kurtbastian…but also Klaine

Warnings for mention of Blaine cheating, could be considered slightly Klaine unfriendly, could also be considered Kurt-centric.

"So, we're really going to do this again?" Kurt asked, tagging along behind as Rachel, Santana, and Tina led the way. They'd decided to ditch their usual Saturday Sondheim Karaoke Night at Callbacks to try something entirely new – new scene, new part of the city, even a new night. The nightclub they took three trains and two buses to get to on this ridiculously dark and stormy Friday night, Santana had heard about from a friend. For Kurt, holding on to Blaine's hand as they weeded through the crowd, felt like déjà vu – not just the venue, but that question. It seemed like Kurt had been asking himself that a lot lately with regard to his life, but especially his relationship with Blaine, everything having circled back around to the start to give him a second chance.

But sometimes Kurt felt so closed in by everything, shoved in one direction without an opportunity to experiment, to explore, that he wasn't entirely sure whether or not he'd made the right decision in taking it.

"Well, you did say you wanted to be my gay bar superstar."

Kurt rolled his eyes. He wasn't ever going to live that one down. "True, but I think after my last disastrous attempt that maybe that ship has sailed."

Blaine stopped walking and pulled Kurt aside, out of the walkway so that people could pass, taking advantage of the privacy provided by a recess in a nearby wall.

"Then how about you just dance with me?" Blaine asked, his voice twining around the words, lips sealing them with a kiss before sending them to Kurt's ear. "I miss watching you move."

Kurt swallowed that sentence when Blaine leaned in for a quick bite on his lower lip – marking him dominantly.

Since they'd moved to New York, Blaine had started sounding less like the drifting, insecure boy who had graduated McKinley, and more like the self-assured, confident, captain of the Warblers that Kurt had met back on the staircase at Dalton. Kurt loved all of Blaine, every version of him, from the dapper man in the blue blazer and striped tie who once advised Kurt to do his best to blend in when he himself couldn't stand out more if he tried; to the straight-A student in bow ties and cardigans who walked the halls of McKinley with his head down most days, trying to lose himself in the crowd. But Kurt had to admit that Dalton Blaine was the one he'd always favored, and not because of everything that went along with the alpha-male persona he'd projected.

It was that version of Blaine that Kurt first fell in love with. The one that always looked out for him. The one that wanted to protect him. The one that stood behind him when he needed it most.

It was the version that held the highest place of honor in Kurt's heart.

It was also the one that Kurt thought could never hurt him.

Maybe if Blaine had just stayed at Dalton…maybe if he'd never transferred to McKinley…

Maybe if I had never left for New York…

"I think I can do that," Kurt said, sliding his tongue over his bitten lower lip.

"Good." Blaine had Kurt trapped, a hand to each side of his head, his body shielding Kurt's body from view. "Because I want to see my sexy fiancé cut loose."

"And why's that?" Kurt asked, prolonging this closeness as long as he possibly could before they were missed and a search party came looking.

Blaine's words were soft, simple, but with the power to make Kurt's heart pound like a jackhammer. "Because I'm really looking forward to going back to the loft and making mad, passionate love to you…but that starts here."

"How does it start here?"

Blaine leaned in further, bodies pressed, noses touching, drawing in a breath from Kurt's mouth before he spoke. "Foreplay."

The word left his lips the second an infuriatingly ill-timed Tina Cohen-Chang made an appearance, grabbing both their hands and dragging them out on to the dance floor. She started spouting on and on about something that Kurt wasn't quite catching, lost in that last word from Blaine's lips.

Foreplay. And the multitude of definitions thereof.

They had made an agreement before they came down here to mingle, break free, open themselves up to new possibilities. That mainly had to do with dancing, but it crossed boundaries into neighboring territories. They could get caught up with whomever they wanted, carried away, but within limits. Flirting, holding, even kissing was okay, but no French kissing, no below the equator touching, and no leading anybody on. Kurt felt nervous, but Blaine didn't seem to be. He'd admitted he thought it would be hot to see his sexy man grind up against another handsome guy, as long as Kurt was going home with Blaine.

Kurt suspected that this might be part of Blaine's plan to try to make it up to him for cheating. During one of their long conversations-slash-fights, Kurt had mentioned (or, more to the point, accused) Blaine of "opening" himself up to other men when Kurt had only opened himself up to Blaine. And not just sexually, but emotionally. Knowing that Blaine had slept with Eli stung every day, but so did the men he had confided in – Sam, who Blaine had had a crush on (still had a crush on, in Kurt's opinion), and Sebastian (fucking Sebastian!). It was easy for Blaine to go to them; as easy as it had been for Blaine to block Kurt out…when he was practicing what it would be like to live without him.

Kurt had softened the blow by saying that he didn't regret only being with Blaine, but in light of new information, he might have resented it. There were other people, opportunities that had presented themselves to Kurt, people he would have seriously considered.

There was Adam – a nice, older guy from school who seemed to really like Kurt, who was flirty and flattering and unendingly polite.

Xander from Kurt's stage fighting class.

Pretty much everyone in his stage fighting class, if he was being honest.

Chase from work.

Chandler.

And, he hated to say it, Sebastian Smythe. Why? Why Sebastian? Kurt had asked himself that same question numerous times when the thought had popped into his head. And the answer was always because Kurt wanted to know what the big deal was. He wanted to know why it was that, even after Kurt talked to Blaine until he turned several shades of blue, that Blaine couldn't let his friendship go. What was so great about Sebastian frickin' Smythe?

Why was he so difficult for Blaine to ignore?

But long after the drama had settled, Kurt had made his own judgments about Sebastian, and he had to admit, it wasn't about that anymore.

For the longest time, Kurt could only see Sebastian as the villain, and as far as he was concerned, that was never going to change. He was the boy who made Conservative Republicans seem misunderstood by comparison. The boy who once told Kurt outright that he had every intention of taking away everything good that Kurt had, his hopes and his boyfriend, threatened to have one of his friends imprisoned, and leak vulgar photos of his stepbrother. When Sebastian apologized to him, Blaine, and the New Directions for everything he had done, Kurt believed it was all an act. Another way to pull one over on them. Even when Sebastian and the Warblers dedicated their Regionals performance to Dave Karofsky, and used that platform to collect money for the Born This Way Foundation, Kurt wasn't convinced.

It was a good first step, but it didn't win him over.

It took weeks of uncomfortable run-ins at The Lima Bean, assigned sitting next to each other at a Warbler reunion dinner that Blaine dragged Kurt to, and constantly reading on the Dalton Academy Facebook page (which Kurt could never bring himself to unfollow) about how Sebastian Smythe, the innovative new captain of the Warblers, was leading the popular a cappella group outside the safety of their hallowed halls to make changes for the better in the school's surrounding community, before Kurt realized that Sebastian had definitively changed.

If Sebastian was reformed, Kurt could definitely see the merits of a one-night stand with him.

Kurt hadn't named names for Blaine. It seemed too cruel.

But that discussion seemed linked to this new fascination on Blaine's part with watching his fiancé experience other people, as long as it remained PG-13, and as long as Blaine was present to supervise. That was the compromise, and even though Kurt wouldn't admit it out loud, it rubbed him the wrong way. In the end, Blaine still got one up on him. Not that Kurt would cheat on Blaine. It wasn't about that.

Kurt didn't even know what it was about frankly, and since he didn't know, he couldn't put it into words.

Once they reached the dance floor, the three of them separated, fanning out into the crowd but staying in relatively close proximity. Blaine joined Rachel and Santana on a raised platform in the center of the dance floor. Kurt laughed out loud watching Blaine grind between them to the hooting and hollering of the spectators.

His fiancé, ever the performer.

Kurt found himself the center of attention before too long, and when he did, every other thought aside from the pulsating rhythm and the swaying bodies surrounding him dripped steadily away. He dripped away with it, cell by cell, becoming one with the music and the heat and the tension hanging thick in the air. Kurt loved nights like this, when the stars aligned and everyone was in the same mood. The music was hot, and he felt sexy and carefree - no inhibitions to tie him down, no assholes trying to keep him in line. Dancing and music – they were the only way he could truly feel free.

Across the distance of a few feet and over the heads of a dozen people, Kurt and Blaine's eyes locked. A hand rested on Kurt's stomach – a first touch. Something within Blaine's eyes fired and that's when it began. Whatever foreplay Blaine was hoping for.

From that moment on, he couldn't take his eyes off Kurt.

Men touched him. Women touched him, too, and Kurt rolled with it, letting the magic in the music and the heat of the night take him wherever it led, and why not? It felt good to be touched, to believe he was desired. But of the pair of them, that was something Kurt had attributed solely to Blaine – the lust of strangers eying him from across a crowded room. Kurt got to have a taste of it, too, but it seemed that Blaine, whose moves had become clumsy from paying more attention to Kurt than to his feet, was the one soaking it in.

It felt attenuated. It didn't belong to him. It belonged to Blaine.

As the beat of the music escalated, making way for a switch in tempo, the mass of dancers surged towards the stage and then away, carrying everyone a few feet to the right, and Kurt lost sight of Blaine.

It was at that moment that a new player to the game appeared behind him, winding an arm around his waist.

"Hello, handsome. May I have this dance?"

It was more of an exhale than spoken words, but then again, the man didn't exactly wait for an answer, sliding against Kurt, luring Kurt to do the same.

"Yes," Kurt whispered over his shoulder. The pressed his chin beside Kurt's temple, keeping him from turning around. "Yes, you may."

It didn't matter to Kurt that he couldn't see the man. This man wanted to dance with Kurt, so Kurt let him. It'd already happened a dozen times before. But this man's touch felt different. It was raw, urgent in a way that bordered on apprehension. It felt more steeped with pure desire than any other touch of the evening…even with regard to Blaine. Other people approached them, and even though Kurt couldn't see the man behind him, pelvis drawn close to his ass and grinding against him, the expressions on the people who stopped within a foot of them, faces going blank, then walking away, told Kurt that for the remainder of this song, however long it lasted, Kurt belonged to this man.

And it surprised him a little how that suited him just fine.

"I have to say…" the man began, low, almost toneless, but with a smooth, taboo quality that made Kurt tingle, "that I have been waiting to dance with you for a long time. A long time…" Those words repeating with a flutter against Kurt's neck.

"Do I know you?" Kurt asked, sure that this was part of a seduction that he had no intention of falling for. It was a game. Everything here was a game. And Kurt was willing to play.

"You do…and you don't."

Kurt had expected a vague response like that, but he was intrigued. He tried again to turn around, but the arm around his waist held him tighter.

"Nuh-uh," the man said with a condescending chuckle, "no looking. Just dance with me…and listen."

"Okay." Kurt wasn't allowed to look, so he decided to up the ante. This guy obviously wanted to make Kurt believe he knew him. If he didn't get to see for himself, he was going to play dirty. He put his hand over the arm around his waist, and shamelessly rutted his ass over the erection digging into the seam of his pants. "Then talk."

The man growled at Kurt grinding against him, and it took him a moment before he spoke again. "You're probably the sexiest man I've ever seen," the man whispered. "I didn't use to think so, but I was stupid, and adolescent, and messed up."

"But…not anymore?" Kurt asked carefully, not wanting to scare this man off before he found out who he was…and why he sounded so damn familiar.

"Well, maybe I am," the man admitted. "Everyone is a bit messed up. But I'm not adolescent, and I'm definitely not stupid. Not when it comes to you."

"And why do you say that?"

"Because I can see you for who you really are. Who you've always been."

"And what's that?"

"Hot," the man said with a brush of lips to Kurt's jaw. "And talented…unique…special…"

The compliments continued along with the kisses until Kurt stopped wondering who this man was and just enjoyed his attention. This was what Kurt wanted, the thing he couldn't put into words. Not to cheat on his fiancé, but to know that he could, as rotten as that sounded. That someone else in the world wanted him. Kurt knew that a lot of the people at this club, pawing and petting him, were more persuaded by the music and whatever they'd been swallowing or smoking than by him. But this man had been watching him dance…maybe heard him sing? He mentioned something about Kurt's voice as his lips traveled down to Kurt's collar. Was he telling the truth? Did he know Kurt outside of this club? This should all creep Kurt out, but amazingly it didn't. Where could he have met this man? At Callbacks? At NYADA? Where had he been hiding that he didn't just approach him one day and say, "Kurt Hummel…I want you"?

Kurt was in the middle of deciding whether or not he wanted to ask when he heard the stranger's voice hitch in his throat, and felt his body stiffen. The song hadn't finished yet, but the man began to back off.

"Thanks for the dance," he panted in Kurt's ear, breathless and heavy and full of unconsummated want. But he also sounded frustrated and tense. And now, as the husky veil lifted, the voice was too familiar – in its tone, in its cadence, in its embedded teasing. It triggered a memory that rumbled deep inside Kurt's gut and summoned ice to the surface. But the breath that had been heating the sweat on his skin melted that ice, brought it to a boil.

"You're…welcome?" It came out a question, because Kurt didn't understand why the tone of their encounter had changed. As soon as the man's arms were gone, Kurt was eager to turn around and uncover the identity of his mysterious dance partner…but he didn't have to. Blaine arrived back from wherever it was he had ended up after the tide of dancers swept Kurt away, wiping his brow with a napkin, his energetic smile giddy and loose. But when he reached Kurt, he pulled up short, his smile dropping at the corners as if he had just caught Kurt French kissing his brother.

"Se—Sebastian?" Blaine gave a single confused and disbelieving chuckle. "What are…what are you doing here?"

Suddenly, the churning in Kurt's belly made sense, but everything else, not so much. Blaine did say Sebastian, right? Sebastian Smythe? Kurt gulped hard. Why would he, of all people, show up out of the blue in this crowded bar and approach Kurt…just for a dance? Kurt spun around to get a look for himself, but all he saw was the back of a head as a man who could be mistaken for Sebastian Smythe hurried out the door.

One hour earlier…

Sitting on a stool at a far, dark corner of the bar - one that patrons normally avoided because it's not close enough to the action on the dance floor - Sebastian Smythe sipped his beer and tried his best to disappear. He usually avoided college hangouts whenever he could. College bars were a lot like high school cafeterias with their cliques and their school yard politics, and he really had no desire to go back to any of that. He'd like to think that he'd aged out of those ridiculous clichés, the popularity food chain and the unnecessary drama…even if he instigated a great deal of that drama to begin with.

During his senior year of high school, it didn't take Sebastian very long to realize what an asshole he had been since arriving at Dalton. But owing to the way hindsight worked, it wasn't until he had lost a chance at something genuinely special that it finally registered.

He was kind of a loser.

And who was he kidding? He never had a chance.

The music bumping overhead transitioned from one monotonous, synthesized beat to a predictably similar monotonous, synthesized beat. Not that it mattered. Sebastian had stopped trying to determine which song was which a while ago. But a nearby table full of girls in matching pink sorority sweaters went wild, screaming something about this new song being their jam. They departed en masse to the dance floor, and Sebastian returned to his beer, glad to be rid of their screech-punctuated and inane tipsy chatter. Sebastian despised the music in these places more than he despised the people. He didn't like techno. He loathed house music. He hated the mashed-up/mixed/sampled/trendy bullshit the DJ blasted non-stop. And why did they even have a DJ here? Did they really need an Abercrombie and Fitch model wannabe spinning discs instead of trusting that responsibility to a sound system? What was his actual purpose besides flashing cheesy smiles at both men and women, making them question his sexuality, and collecting phone numbers he'd never call?

But Sebastian wasn't there for the music. Or the people. Or for the beer, he thought, as he shoved his warm, half-drunk Miller aside. It was more foam head than actual beer anyway. (You would think that being able to call yourself a bartender meant that you could actually pour a beer.)

No. Sebastian was there because of him.

It was fortuitous that Sebastian found him again, though he narrowed the odds considerably by attending a university seven blocks away from where he knew Kurt was going to school. Still, he never honestly expected to run into him, city of eight million people and all. Sebastian had been such a coward back in Ohio, behaving like the royalist of jerks instead of having the courage to let his insecurities show. He acknowledged it, came to grips with it, and yet he felt helpless to do anything about it. There were so many factors keeping him from revealing his feelings, obstacles barring him from explaining the sordid, vicious things going on in his head, the most daunting of which, ironically, being the man that Sebastian had once referred to as sex-on-a-stick-and-sings-like-a-dream.

Wanting Blaine had kept Sebastian from seeing the wonderful things there were to see about Kurt.

Kurt and Blaine staying together despite Sebastian's best efforts to break them up succeeded in keeping Sebastian from getting to know Kurt better firsthand, even as friends.

Sebastian didn't just burn that bridge. He blew it up and napalmed the remains.

So Sebastian got to know Kurt on the sly. Originally viewing Kurt as an adversary, he did everything possible to learn Kurt's secrets, find weaknesses he could exploit. He had already gotten a head start learning about Blaine. Blaine was easy, an open book, and he was also fairly naïve. He gave Sebastian his phone number the first day they met, and, from what Sebastian heard, even after Kurt voiced a strong objection to the two of them being friends, Blaine continued with their relationship. Sebastian figured Blaine was curious, and that he liked the attention. Sebastian initially saw that curiosity as his way into Blaine's pants.

But in reality, Blaine was kind of…bland. Don't get him wrong, Blaine was still handsome, still had an amazing ass, and an incredible talent to boot. He had a pedigree that made the majority of the Dalton student body pea green with envy, while still managing to be the boy everyone drooled over. He was the pride of Dalton Academy – captain of the Warblers his sophomore year, a feat no other Warbler had ever accomplished; captain of the Speech and Debate Team; co-captain of the fencing club, the boxing club, the Model U.N. If he hadn't transferred to McKinley, they would have put his face on the cover of the God dammed brochure, probably for life.

In fact, rumor had it that the Dean of Students considered putting Blaine's credentials in the Dalton promotional materials regardless of the fact that he was no longer a student there.

Because Blaine was that one-in-a-million variety lucky genetic mutation that was equally good looking as talented without even trying; the socially popular form of attractive and well-groomed that neither challenged convention nor had to demand a place at the table. Blaine never really had to fight for acceptance.

Not like Kurt.

Sure, being bullied in a public high school was the reason Blaine transferred to Dalton, and in that, Kurt and Blaine had something in common that Sebastian would never have. Sebastian didn't get bullied by anyone. People either kissed his ass or kept their distance. And yes, Blaine fought. But Kurt fought longer, he fought harder. He didn't pack it in at the first sign of trouble. He stood up for himself, and then, when it came down to a choice between being bullied or being himself, he chose to be himself. He left the safety of Dalton Academy and went back into the lion's den.

It took a while, but Sebastian eventually realized that, in all aspects, Kurt was the real prize.

And, okay, maybe Sebastian had an issue with Kurt's fashion sense, but that was the old, shallow Sebastian. This more mature, wiser Sebastian had no problem with the way Kurt dressed.

It didn't hurt that Kurt's tailored aubergine shirt and his McQueen pants clung to him like he was sewn into them, accentuating every muscle when he moved.

Kurt had been a year ahead of Sebastian, graduated and gone before it dawned on Sebastian to open his mouth and say something. And seeing as he knew that Kurt and Blaine had plans to live together after high school and continue their love affair, he didn't see himself having any sort of a chance. Better to lick his wounds and start over – find someone new to obsess over.

But for some reason, he couldn't let it go.

He'd done as much as he could, spun the chamber of college applications in his game of Russian Roulette and figured he'd let the universe pull the trigger. He thought the universe had when among his numerous acceptances, NYU was at the top of the pile – the only college anywhere near New York that he had applied to. Sebastian wasn't an idiot. He didn't say yes to NYU solely on the off chance that he'd run in to Kurt. NYU had been his top choice pick for a while.

But he was allowed to take it as a sign if he wanted to.

He'd heard through the grapevine of Warbler alums about what had happened between Kurt and Blaine, how Kurt had left for New York, how Blaine had cheated while he was gone, how they broke up…and then somehow got back together again. Sebastian was fighting an uphill battle from the start – not only his own history with Kurt, but the epic love story that was Kurt and Blaine, and just when he thought he saw a way to the top, he got kicked down to the bottom again.

That didn't mean he wasn't going to give it a shot. He'd gotten this far. He wasn't turning back now.

At least he could give Kurt the chance to slap him in the face if that was what Kurt wanted to do.

He'd only seen Kurt at one other place in the city – some hole in the wall that the theater students liked to go to called Callbacks. When Sebastian first found the place, cruising the city on a rare Saturday night alone, he almost didn't go in. He could smell the pretentiousness from the sidewalk, which normally wasn't a deal breaker for him. The nasally mezzo-soprano belting out an off-key rendition of The Simple Joys of Maidenhood was. But when he saw Kurt through the window, sitting alone at a small, round table, sipping what had to be a Shirley Temple since the cup of clear liquid was overflowing with cherries, Sebastian held his nose and took the plunge.

Sebastian sat only two tables over, but Kurt didn't seem to notice him. He looked like he was being distant to everyone the entire night, consigned to the audience while Blaine sang sad love songs until last call. Sebastian figured they were pretty much fresh from the break up at this point. It actually would have been the perfect time to swoop in, but Sebastian didn't feel like tearing open any wounds that hadn't completely healed.

That was weeks ago. The next time Sebastian went back, Kurt and party weren't there. He'd been combing the less-than-desirable college hangouts in the city ever since trying to track him down.

And apparently tonight was his lucky night.

Losing himself on the dance floor, Kurt looked like those wounds were finally beginning to suture, all patched up and ready to party. Maybe a few holes turned out to be a good thing. He was opened up and breathing deep, no more the uptight princess of his high school days.

It was nice to finally see Kurt let go.

And boy, did Kurt Hummel know how to let go.

Sebastian wished he could have some small part of that. It seemed like everybody else got a chance – a hand here, an arm there, and then a mouth on his neck that wasn't Blaine's…Jesus Christ! When did they decide that that was okay?

And if that was okay, why wasn't that Sebastian down there, licking the sweat from Kurt's skin?

This need to be with Kurt wasn't simply carnal. Sebastian longed to be near him, ached to touch him…and tonight seemed as good a time as any. The music was loud, the lights chaotic. Kurt's other friends didn't seem to be paying too much attention. He just had to wait until…a-ha.

He saw Blaine leave Kurt alone, hopping up on to a raised platform in the middle of the dance floor, and knew that it was now or never.