Sebastian was fourteen the first time he went to a gay bar. It was the October after he moved to Paris to spend time with his father, who he hadn't seen since his parents' divorce when he was nine. He had finally made his first friend in Paris, a short boy with unruly dark curls in his physical education class. His name was Louis.

They met when Louis ran headlong into Sebastian on the lacrosse field, bowling him over, all elbows and knees and Sebastian was lying flat out on the grass with the wind knocked out of him and a heavy warm boy on top of him grinning down and asking, "Ça va?"

After that they were friends, but Sebastian couldn't shake the fuzzy tingling feeling he got in his stomach whenever Louis smiled at him or wrestled him into a hug. Sebastian had figured out by that time that he wasn't interested in the (many) girls who had thrown themselves at him, but it was the first time he had understood, fully: I am gay and I want to date a boy. Specifically, Louis.

Still too shy to ask outright, Sebastian was left for weeks wondering if Louis might have the same feelings, might also be interested in garçons instead of les femmes. Then, on a warm sunny day when they were lounging under a tree in the Buttes-Chaumont park, Louis had inclined his head toward Sebastian and asked very casually in his incredibly gorgeous accented English, "Do you want to go to Club 79 with me?"

Sebastian's heart had started pounding. Club 79 was a gay bar in the Champs Elysées neighborhood, which he knew from his careful Internet searching from when he first moved to Paris and became desperate for any kind of human interaction that wasn't sitting quietly in the morning across from his father over croissants and coffee.

"Ouais," he had said to Louis, trying not to sound too eager, and it was settled. They set the date for the following Friday night, and Louis arranged to get Sebastian a fake ID. Louis already had one for himself.

Friday came and Sebastian spent hours in front of his full-length mirror, trying different combinations of trousers and shirts and ties and shoes and finally deciding on something flattering for his frame, something that would call attention to the slimness of his waist and hips without over-exaggerating his height. He met Louis at the metro stop closest to Club 79, and they walked together the rest of the way.

Sebastian was pure nerves, trembling and giddy in the night air. He let his arm dangle down at his side, his hand open and ready in case Louis should decide to take it. Louis was too distracted by the bright lights of the clubs and the various people wandering from bar to bar, some already dead-drunk and stumbling. They arrived outside Club 79 and waited in line. Louis gave Sebastian his fake ID, and in twenty minutes they were inside.

It was dark and hot and loud and crowded. Sebastian could feel the pounding of the music in his bones, and he scanned the dance floor with interest. It was what he had hoped: couples paired off, hands on each other, hips close, most of them attached at the mouth, moving together to the beat. His mouth went dry at the thought of doing that with Louis.

He looked around and saw Louis at the bar getting them drinks. He came back with something bright blue and shoved it into Sebastian's hand.

"You will like that, I think!" Louis shouted over the music. He smirked at Sebastian and then downed his own blue drink in one shot.

Sebastian followed suit, the alcohol like fire on the back of his throat, but the quick buzz that came with it incredibly welcome. Louis set their glasses on the bar and then tugged Sebastian by the wrist out onto the dance floor.

They set into an easy rhythm, Sebastian's arms around Louis's neck, tentative at first but quickly uninhibited when Louis put his hands on Sebastian's hips and rocked him back and forth. Sebastian was gleeful at how easy and simple it was. He was wanted and desired, and for the first time that he could remember he felt like he mattered to someone who mattered to him. Louis liked him back. Paris had never seemed so beautiful as it did in that moment in Club 79.

Three songs later and he was working up the nerve to kiss Louis. Nearly everyone around them was already lip-locked, and he thought, If this is where I get my first kiss, and this is who I get my first kiss with, that's fine by me.

Before Sebastian could make his move, Louis tipped his head forward toward Sebastian's face and it was as if the entire floor tilted for a second as Sebastian readied himself for his first kiss with the boy he had fallen in love with and then Louis put his mouth next to Sebastian's ear and said,

"I'll see you later."

Sebastian thought he had misheard, but then Louis pulled back and slid slowly past Sebastian. Sebastian whipped his head around and watched as Louis prowled through the crowd until he came up to a tall pale boy with perfectly-coiffed hair. He watched as Louis leaned up to say something into the boy's ear, and he saw the way the boy blushed but nodded at whatever Louis had said to him. Then Sebastian was sliding his hand into the boy's and bringing him back to the dance floor. Sebastian wondered for one confused but desperate second if Louis had taken pity on the boy and invited him to dance with them, but no—Louis put his hands on the boy in a completely different way than he had put them on Sebastian, and they were dancing close and hot together and Sebastian had to look away, feeling sick.

He stood alone on the dance floor for too long, unsure what to do with himself. He looked down at the floor, his gaze focusing distractedly on the symmetry in the pattern of the mosaic tiles. He tried to think of something to do with his hands, with his feet, but he couldn't break out of the moment, couldn't stop thinking what just happened what just happened and wondering what he could have done differently to stop his chest from caving in on itself like it currently was, collapsed by total emotional devastation.

Then a couple of guys misguidedly trying to start a conga line jostled him from behind and he snapped out of it, eyes up and feet working again. He side-stepped to avoid the oncoming collision and slipped through the crowd, finally making it back to the bar. He bought himself another drink and nursed it for a while, feeling like his heart had just been kicked into a corner and left to gather dust. He blamed himself for misreading Louis so utterly, for even considering the idea that Louis could be interested in him in that way. Sebastian was just a lonely, gangly American, a novelty for Louis.

He was about to get another drink when he felt the heat of someone next to him, then the gentle touch of fingers staying his hand from calling the bartender. Sebastian looked up and was met by confident, interested eyes set in the handsome tan face of an older boy with spiked dark hair.

Sebastian blinked a few times and asked, "Can I help you?"

The boy smiled widely at Sebastian. "Ah, you are English?"

"American," Sebastian replied.

"Ah, oui. Would you, er, want to dance avec moi?"

Sebastian sucked in a breath. He was a little dizzy, overwhelmed by the alcohol and noise of the club, but he also felt the stirring of something not in his stomach but lower, and before he had considered it too deeply he was nodding and taking the hand of the older boy, letting himself be pulled back onto the dance floor.

His entire body felt light and when the boy wrapped his hands low around Sebastian's waist and grinded up close to him, a tingle went through him from his toes to his head. The other boy was as tall as Sebastian was, and he laid his forehead on Sebastian's shoulder as they moved together. Sebastian gasped but it wasn't an unwelcome touch. He wasn't sure what to do with his hands at first, but as he had with Louis, he found himself wrapping them around the boy's neck, and the motion brought their bodies a little tighter together.

Sebastian closed his eyes and lost himself in the music. It felt nice to have a body up close to his, and the warm buzz that had filled his head and body made him happy. He hummed a little and let his head drop down onto the other boy's shoulder. He was sweaty, but so was Sebastian, and the smell of the boy's cologne mixed with the sweat was twisting a knot in Sebastian's loins that he hadn't felt before. Sebastian's lips parted as he panted a little from the exertion of constant dancing mixed with the heat of the club.

The tempo of the music changed and the other boy shifted the angle of his body, moving one leg forward just barely between Sebastian's. Suddenly, their hips were up close together and Sebastian's eyes flew open when he realized he could feel that the other boy was hard against him. He leaned back a little to look into the boy's eyes, and they looked at each other for a few seconds before—and when he remembered it, Sebastian was never positive who initiated it—they were kissing, mouths smashed together, tongue sliding against tongue, hands gripping tighter around each other, and Sebastian involuntarily let out a moan at the way the boy slid his thigh closer to his groin and ground it up into him.

Sebastian's heart was pounding and he got hard in seconds, gasping in the brief breaks between kisses every time the boy rolled his hips into Sebastian's, creating friction that Sebastian so urgently craved. Wave after wave of heat passed through Sebastian, shooting from his lips to his chest to his stomach to his cock and then back again. He was almost whimpering at the sensation, and then the boy broke off the kiss completely and leaned back a little, looking full on into Sebastian's face, flushed and eyes wide.

"Shall we…?" he asked Sebastian, inclining his head toward the bathroom. Sebastian couldn't come up with a coherent vocal answer, but the tension in his cock wouldn't let him say no. He nodded quickly, and followed the boy off the dance floor.

They went into the bathroom. Sebastian could hear in one of the stalls that someone else had had the same idea. In the back of his mind, he thought he should feel embarrassed from hearing those moans, but in the next second he was being pushed into a stall himself and the boy was kissing a path from the corner of his jaw down to his clavicle and the next moans were his own.

Sebastian's eyes fluttered up to the ceiling and he bit back a shout when the boy slid his hand into the waistband of Sebastian's boxers and wrapped around his cock. Sebastian's fingers twisted into the boy's shirt, and he couldn't help the way his hips thrust up, pushing his cock into the tight heat of the boy's hand. The boy undid the button and zipper on Sebastian's jeans to make the movement easier, and then Sebastian heard another zip. He looked down and saw that the boy had undone his own pants before kissing up against Sebastian's neck again.

Sebastian realized he was supposed to do something about that, and he tentatively moved one of his hands down, slipping his fingers carefully down between the boy's skin and underwear until he was feeling, for the first time, the weight of another boy's cock in his hand. He felt the instinct to explore bubble up inside him, but there was no time as the boy twisted his hand and ran his thumb over the head of Sebastian's cock and Sebastian registered that he was close. He started pumping the other boy's cock as best he could at the angle, moaning when it made the rhythm of the boy's hand on his shaft stutter before gripping a little tighter.

They fell into the same beat, then, up-down, up-down, up-down—and Sebastian stopped breathing when the boy bit down onto his shoulder and came into Sebastian's hand. The hand on Sebastian's cock kept going, though, and he thrust up a few more times before he cried out and came, harder than he ever had before.

"Oh god," Sebastian moaned, sliding back against the wall of the stall, pulling his hand out of the boy's pants and looking curiously at the sticky white stuff coating it, the first he had seen that wasn't his.

The other boy slumped against the opposite wall, his eyes closed and breathing hard. He did up his pants and pulled his shirt up, rubbing the sweat off his face and neck. Sebastian grinned when the boy opened his eyes and looked at him. The boy smiled back and lifted his eyebrows, glancing down at Sebastian's still-undone fly and button.

Sebastian looked down and blushed, then quickly tucked himself into his boxers and zipped and buttoned his jeans. When he looked up again, the boy was leaning down, pulling toilet paper out of the roll and wiping his hands off. He dropped the paper into the toilet, then pulled out more and handed it to Sebastian, who took the hint and wiped off his hands, also depositing the paper in the toilet.

He was about to ask, Now what? when the boy took in a sharp breath, smiled brightly at Sebastian, and without a word opened the door to the stall and disappeared back out into the club. Sebastian stared after him, his mouth dropped open. He flushed the toilet and ran out of the bathroom, but the boy was gone. Sebastian scanned through the crowd frantically, but all he saw were unfamiliar faces. A wave of nausea hit him, and he turned to go back into the bathroom—

—Only to run into Louis on his way out. Sebastian furrowed his brow at the surprise appearance of Louis, who was looking up at him with a knowing grin on his face, but then he saw the tall pale boy with the coiffed hair cleaning up at the sink and realized. The moans he had heard in one of the stalls when he and the other boy had first gone into the bathroom—it was Louis.

Sebastian went cold. He stepped back and swallowed, looking at Louis carefully. He could feel an onslaught of desolation coming at him, about to tear through his heart and force him to tears, but he could not—could not—break down right now. So he pushed it aside, held the agony back and didn't let it touch him. He let, instead, the cold darkness of isolation wrap itself around his heart, and he put on a smirk for Louis and readjusted his posture to nonchalant instead of awkward.

Louis clapped him on the shoulder and shook him a little, congratulatory, and Sebastian just grinned back, his mind already distancing himself from the situation. He let things happen to him after that: let Louis buy him another drink, let himself dance on the floor carelessly, let another boy grind up against him, let himself forget what had happened, and when he and Louis finally left the club that night, staggering a little and holding on to each other for support, Sebastian had almost completely fooled himself into believing he didn't care at all.

After that it was easy. Sebastian and Louis became a team, wingmen for each other as they went out to all the best clubs in Paris every weekend. It became a game, who could pick up another guy the quickest, and after the first few times, Sebastian always won.

At Le Cud, Sebastian got his first blowjob from a boy named Armand with dark eyes and even darker hair, his mouth hot and wet around Sebastian's cock. Sebastian had come with a groan down the throat of the boy, his fingers twined in Armand's hair, pulling hard through his orgasm. He had pulled Armand up and kissed him sloppily, tasting his own come in his mouth and his lips curving into a smile when Armand trembled against him.

A couple weeks after that, Sebastian and Louis went to Mix, a huge club and not terribly hip but with a plethora of attractive guys just waiting for them. Sebastian watched as Louis sidled over to a dark-skinned guy with incredible biceps, and then he looked for his own conquest. He saw a guy sitting at the bar, blond and tall, and for some reason—even though that was not his usual type—found himself compelled to walk over. He hit on him, telling him outright that he found him attractive, and the blond boy just stared at him, bug-eyed. Sebastian laughed at his face, said, "C'mon, good-looking, let's go somewhere more private," and pulled him off the barstool and toward the bathroom. Then Sebastian surprised himself by pushing the guy up against the wall of a stall and dropping to his knees, the guy's cock in his mouth before he had even thought about it.

Two months later at Les Bains Douches he was slipping a finger into another boy's hole for the first time, marveling at the tight heat. He made a mental note to start bringing lube whenever he went out, grateful that Dion, the boy he was about to fuck, had helpfully supplied his own. He watched his finger sliding in and out of Dion's hole and was mesmerized for a moment before the boy's moans snapped him out of his reverie. He lubed up another finger and slid it in next to the first one, working them experimentally in and out until he felt Dion start to open up around him. He waited for Dion's nod before he put in a third finger, and after a minute of that Dion was moaning and begging for his cock.

Sebastian didn't need to be told twice. He pulled his fingers out, tore open a condom (another mental note) and pushed it down over his cock. Then he breathed out sharply before lining himself up with Dion's hole and pushing slowly in. He moaned loudly at how tight Dion was, and when Dion moaned back Sebastian could feel the vibrations of it in his cock. He started thrusting up into Dion, wrapping one arm around his chest to hold him steady. He pressed his face into Dion's mass of dark curly hair to muffle his voice as he cried out with every push into him. Dion was tight and hot and perfect and in a few minutes Sebastian was coming hard. In the post-orgasm haze of his mind he thought Dion ought to get off too, so he twisted his other arm around to grasp at Dion's cock and jerk him off until he was coming.

Sebastian hadn't known what to say when they had both put their pants back on, but Dion showed him the way. "Merci, Sebastian," Dion said, then nodded once and left the bathroom.

Sebastian sat down on the toilet and rubbed his hands over his face a few times, then flushed the condom and toilet paper they had cleaned up with down and walked out to the sink. He splashed his face with water, washed his hands, and walked back out into the club. Louis met him with a smile, acknowledging Sebastian had won again. Sebastian always won.

Two years later, Sebastian hugged Louis goodbye and got on a plane to Ohio. He didn't cry, didn't say any of the things he would have when he was fourteen and naïve. He had decided to make the best of the new situation as soon as he had been informed by his father that it was time he moved back in with his mother in Westerville. Sebastian hadn't needed to be told his presence was unwelcome by his father's new girlfriend. He had just shrugged and put on a smile that never fully reached his eyes.

His new school, Dalton, was filled with boys in uniforms, and the first month or so Sebastian was excited about the prospects of being at a private boys' school. Then he realized boys moved a little slower in Ohio than they did in Paris, and he felt the unrelenting edge of sexual frustration creep up onto him until he was joining the glee club at the school just so he could watch guys dancing around and be reminded, faintly, of Paris.

Sebastian found a gay bar in West Lima and spent most of his weekends there, playing the same game he had played in Paris but not enjoying it as much without the competitiveness of playing against Louis. Scandals was exactly what he liked in a gay bar—hot, crowded, loud, vaguely sketchy—and for a while hooking up with guys in the bathroom satisfied his needs.

But then.

Sebastian was practicing with the Warblers, the glee club, at Dalton, when he saw a short boy with dark hair appear in the doorway. For a brief, overwhelming second, Sebastian thought it was Louis come to visit him, but then he saw that the dark hair was gelled back, and the boy's clothes were preppy, very schoolboy—nothing Louis would wear.

Sebastian sidled up to the boy and realized who it was. Nick had described Blaine Anderson to Sebastian one too many times for him not to recognize the former leader of his glee club when he saw him in the flesh. Sebastian sang a line of the song to Blaine and, encouraged by his reaction, pulled him into the room. He watched with interest as Blaine easily picked up the dance routine and supplied backing vocals. And he couldn't help but admire the narrowness of Blaine's waist, accentuated by the vest he was wearing.

Immediately, Sebastian fell into his routine. When they had all finished singing and the rest of the Warblers had gone to class, Sebastian kept Blaine behind and asked him all the same questions he asked any guy in a club who looked hesitant to jump right into a bathroom stall. Blaine answered Sebastian's questions honestly, but Sebastian could tell he was holding back, and he tried a new move:

"Do you want to get coffee?"

"Uh—sure," Blaine said back, smiling hesitantly.

At the Lima Bean, apparently the only coffee shop Blaine would go to, Sebastian reverted back to his pattern: flattering him, appealing to the vanity Sebastian knew all guys had, and then outright propositioning him.

"Look, Sebastian, I have a boyfriend," Blaine said.

"Doesn't bother me if it doesn't bother you," Sebastian replied easily, but Blaine was insistent, and Sebastian narrowed his eyes a little, his grin widening as he felt the surge of adrenaline that accompanied a challenge. Blaine was attractive, and Sebastian wanted him. Blaine making it difficult would only make the payoff that more satisfying.

Then Blaine's boyfriend, Kurt, actually showed up, and Sebastian was caught off guard for a second. He didn't have a game-plan for this situation, and he was on unfamiliar ground in the coffee shop. So he did the first thing he thought of: invited them both to Scandals, knowing once he was back in his element he could pry Blaine away from his boyfriend. He had never failed at that before.

The next night, they were all there, already hot and sweaty after just ten minutes in the club. Sebastian bought the first round of drinks and the second. He was about to try to move them all out to the dance floor when suddenly he saw Blaine's boyfriend's attention caught by somebody down the bar.

"It's Dave," Sebastian heard him say to Blaine, and Blaine's eyes widened.

Sebastian wondered what their history was, but before he could ask, Kurt had left Blaine to go talk to the guy. Sebastian knew his cue. He smiled at Blaine and grabbed him by the wrist.

"C'mon, let's go dance," he said.

"But—" Blaine protested, looking back at Kurt.

"He's busy," Sebastian said. "He won't mind. It's just dancing."

It was always just dancing before Sebastian rolled his hips a certain way on the dance floor, and then—then it was foreplay. He pulled Blaine out onto the floor and swung his arms around his neck, moving in close enough so he knew Blaine could feel the heat of him even through all those layers he had on. For a minute, Sebastian was sure he had won. Blaine stopped looking at his boyfriend and kept his eyes on Sebastian, his hands moving uncertainly to Sebastian's waist.

Sebastian smirked at him and drew him in an infinitesimal amount closer, and was about to maneuver his hips against Blaine's when Blaine dropped his hands and stepped back from Sebastian two paces.

"Sebastian, no. I have a boyfriend, and I love him!" Blaine shouted over the music, his face anguished but resolute.

"What?" Sebastian called back, almost laughing in disbelief, but then he watched as Blaine made his way through the crowd to the tall pale boy with the perfectly-coiffed hair—to Kurt.

Sebastian stood on the dance floor, staring after Blaine, shoulders slumped and his face incredulous. He watched as Blaine reached Kurt and leaned up to say something into his ear. Kurt blushed and nodded, and then they were holding hands and Blaine led his boyfriend back out onto the dance floor, smiling tightly at Sebastian and then wrapping himself around Kurt.

Sebastian shook himself off and found another guy to dance with, but he couldn't keep his eyes off Blaine and Kurt. What the hell had just happened? Why hadn't all his moves worked? He was playing the game right. He was playing it perfectly. So why hadn't Blaine fallen for it?

He furrowed his brow, baffled at the way Blaine and Kurt were dancing. They obviously wanted each other, but there was a sweet intimacy there that Sebastian was completely and totally unfamiliar with. He watched them carefully constantly, waiting for any chance to make another move for Blaine, but nothing came up. Blaine, for all intents and purposes, belonged to Kurt.

When Sebastian saw them leave together out the side door of Scandals, laughing and holding each other, he stopped dancing and put a hand to his head. After considering it for a few minutes, he came to the conclusion that he wasn't angry or confused or even sad.

He was jealous—not of Kurt but of them. Of what they had. He wanted that too. So why shouldn't he have it? Sebastian balled up his fists and smiled slowly, taking in a deep breath and letting it out. It was a new game, that was all. A new game with new rules he would have to learn, but he would master them, and then he would get what he wanted.

His mind flashed back, fleetingly, to a warm sunny day in the Buttes-Chaumont, lying on the grass and laughing, and he felt a stab through his heart and recognized the creeping devastation he had kept at bay for years. Sebastian pushed it back again, furiously, and then turned to the dance floor, ready to play.