"It's a mad house over here."

"I'd bet." Kurt smiles into the phone. "What i—"

"Hey, hey!" Sebastian's suddenly calling. "Big brother in the room! Not cool!"

"Ces and I were here first; we're just trying to watch a movie." Kurt can hear Asher protest in the background, and pictures the wide smile on his face. In the background, he can hear Frankie laughing.

"No, you're 'just trying' to make babies in front of me."

Kurt laughs at that, and Sebastian scoffs. A door closes, and then Sebastian's voice is back.

"Sorry about that. Ash keeps trying to defile my sister." He can practically hear Sebastian rolling his eyes. "You were saying?"

"Nothing important. I was going to ask what was going on over there, but I think you just answered my question."

"Ah."

"Mhm." Kurt sips his coffee – it was eight o'clock, and he should have been at school, but Sebastian had talked him into skipping to come help set up for the party while Audrey was still at school. "When should I get there to help?"

"As soon as possible." Sebastian groans into the phone. "I mean it. I'm literally begging you. I can't bear to be around these two by myself anymore. They're so sappy I want to throw up."

"Says the guy that's never been in love." Kurt rolls his eyes.

"That's not true." Sebastian replies, his voice suddenly much more serious. "Rian. Hello."

"Oh." Kurt says stupidly, blinking. Well, if that didn't make him feel like an idiot, he didn't know what would. He hadn't even considered that Sebastian could have been in love with Rian, not really, but now that he thinks about it, he doesn't know why. Sebastian never hesitates to make the fact that he's into guys very, very clear, but was it possible that he was into girls, too?

Kurt thinks back, and he can't recall a time where Sebastian ever actually said that he was completely gay.

He doesn't know why that scares him.

"Hey." Sebastian whistles. "Yo, earth to Kurt."

"Hu—s-sorry." Kurt shakes his head. "Sorry. What was I saying?"

"'Oh.'" Sebastian repeats him, chuckling.

"Oh. Oh, right. 'Oh.'" Kurt swallows. "I didn't … you know, know that."

"Yeah, well." Sebastian mumbles. "Rian's something special. She's been my best friend my whole life, and ... well, like in every chick flick I've ever seen, I was the best friend that fell in love with her." He laughs. "There was my destiny. I was pretty much screwed from the start."

"That's kind of adorable, though." Kurt stresses the word, grinning.

"Oh, God. Not you, too." Sebastian groans. "Could you just try and be a guy, for like, two seconds, here? I'm talking about girls for once in my life and you call it adorable. You're such a girl."

For once in my life. The words swirl around in Kurt's head, but it only adds onto his confusion. Why did Sebastian keep throwing out all these mixed signals about his sexuality? Or was it just Kurt, making things up in his head?

"At least I look relatively human, as opposed to your scarily successful impersonation of Timon from the Lion King."

"You wound me, sweetheart." Sebastian chuckles. "But seriously. You should get over here. Now."

"Eager to decorate?" Kurt steps into his shoes.

"Eager to get a distraction from my asshole of a best friend that refuses to stop sucking on my baby sister's neck."

Kurt tsks for a moment, and then nods to himself. "I'll be there soon." He says, and then hangs up and walks out the door.

-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-

With every passing moment after Kurt steps into Sebastian's house that day, he begins to further appreciate he words 'mad house.'

Three girls of whom Kurt doesn't recognize are here now, two of which are completely identical (the memory of Sebastian saying 'of the trouble twins' rings through his head) and the third is completely different. She can't be more than sixteen, Kurt can tell, but she looks much older than that. As Asher walks into the halls right by her and jabs her in the side momentarily before running off (leaving her yelling at him about what an asshole he was), Kurt makes the connection and remembers Sebastian mentioning Asher's sister.

As the girl screams after her brother, the twins are laughing loudly at a joke Kurt didn't catch, talking over each other loudly and their mouths running a mile a minute. That isn't all – Kurt can hear crashing in the distance, loud enough to make him jump, and then he hears Sebastian's cursing and Rian's laughter ringing through the halls.

"Uh." He hears himself say, and then three heads whip around to look at him.

"Kurt!" He hears Asher call, and he almost lets out a sigh of relief when the boy pokes his head around a doorway, allowing Kurt to look somewhere else than the three girls staring at him.

"Hi, Ash." He greets, smiling when Ash comes towards him.

The boy slings an arm around him, immediately driving him away and towards the source of the crashing. "We've been waiting for you, man. You missed half the fun."

"Half the—" Kurt starts to question him, but then Ash gives him a push and he's stumbling into the living room, where he almost blushes at what he sees.

Sebastian and Rian look up from where they're tangled on the couch – Sebastian's on his back with Rian on top of him, their legs intertwined, and they're both covered in … streamers?

Kurt blinks, and a sudden discomfort engulf him, making him feel like he's intruding on something private. "Oh." He says on instinct. "Sorry, I can go, I didn't mean—"

"No, it's fine." Rian laughs, pushing herself off of him. "We were just attempting to decorate."

"'Attempting' being the operative word." Sebastian says, his eyes back to Rian. He's absolutely beaming up at her, and again, Kurt shifts. God, he thinks, why does that sting?

"Mhm." Rian rolls her eyes and grabs his hand, pulling him up. She pulls the streamers off of him, unwrapping them from around his shoulders and waist and forehead. "There." She says when she's done, laughing.

Sebastian's still grinning wide when he turns to Kurt, shoving his hands into his pockets. "You missed the other arrivals."

"The downside of living two hours away." Kurt rubs at his arm, laughing a little.

"Right." Sebastian flashes the (damn) canine. "Come on, let's get started. We managed to get the place cleaned up," he keeps talking as he gathers the streamers strewn about the floor, and Kurt helps to pick up some along his feet, "and I said that we should wait for the only true decorator we know to come along," he throws a wink at Kurt, "but, of course, Rian was insistent." He sighs, gathering the streamers in one arm. "Gotta love her, though."

"Yeah. Gotta." Kurt repeats, and hands off the last of the streamers to Sebastian, they hands just barely grazing as Sebastian takes them from her.

For a moment, they just stand there. For once there isn't tension, or loathing, or laughter, or anything. Nothing to distract them, or to occupy their thoughts. They only stare.

Eventually, Sebastian's the one who breaks it with a smile. "Come on." He places a warm hand on Kurt's back and leads him through the kitchen and dining room and back outside, up front. Once there, he hands Kurt half the streamers.

"What are we doing with them?" Kurt asks, brow furrowed.

Sebastian grins widely, an there's a sparkle in his eyes like nothing Kurt's seen on him before – it's childish, almost, but not in the annoying, immature way Kurt would expect. It's mischievous, and fun. "This." Sebastian finally says, and then pulls an arm back and throws it forward.

Kurt watches as the streamers flies through the air, winces a little as it hits a window, and then blinks when it rolls along the window sills, balconies and flower pots, looking ... fun. Messy, and almost careless, but fun nonetheless, and even kind of pretty.

"Try it." Sebastian encourages, not looking at him as he throws another streamer at the opposite side of the house.

Kurt does, and though he doesn't have as good of an arm as Sebastian does, it still lands in a reasonable spot and has the same effect that Sebastian's first throw did.

He finds himself laughing.

For a good ten minutes they decorate the outside of the house with streamers, laughing and pushing each other and trying to overlap the other's work. When they go inside they're both wearing goofy grins, and Asher, who's in the kitchen with Frankie, raises an eyebrow at Sebastian. The two share a secret look that Kurt doesn't quite understand, but it's gone as soon as it's there, and then Ash is smiling and tossing an arm around Sebastian's shoulders.

"Feel like baking a cake?" He asks, grinning charmingly in a way that Kurt knows is his attempt to persuade Sebastian into doing it.

Sebastian rolls his eyes and turns to Kurt. "I don't suppose your stereotyped personality is any accepting to baking."

This time, Kurt rolls his eyes. "You are such a boy." He says, moving past them to the counter.

Out of his peripheral he can see Asher fist-pumping, and Sebastian shoving his shoulder.

Frankie's sitting on the counter, her legs swinging and her chin in her hands, one of which a whisk is dangling from. As Kurt reaches for the egg carton, Asher moves between her legs, grasping her waist.

"Car je suis l'amoureuse, oui je suis l'amoureuse ..." He sings softly as he tugs her off of the counter, a small, secret smile on his lips, and a hot blush immediately rises to Frankie's cheeks. She ducks her face into her hands, making Asher laugh, and then turns to bury her face in his chest, instead. She looks up, cups his face in her hands and mumbles something Kurt can't hear, and then Sebastian tugs at his elbow.

"They're absolutely awful." Sebastian whispers in Kurt's ear, making the boy jump a little as his hand moves to the small of his back.

"I think they're cute." Kurt sticks his tongue out.

Sebastian's nose wrinkles. "Sure. Says the stereotype." He teases, and flicks flour into Kurt's face.

Kurt blinks in surprise, stepping back and gasping a little, and then scoffs and Sebastian starts laughing.

"And we're the awful ones?" Frankie asks, and her nose wrinkles similarly to the way Sebastian's does.

"Shut it, Franks, at least I'm not sucking his face off." Kurt blushes at the words, even though he knows there's nothing behind them.

Frankie raises a knowing eyebrow, but before she can say anything Asher is sneaking up behind her and cracking an egg over her head.

She gasps. "Ash!" And as both Asher and Sebastian laugh and Kurt tries to hold in a few giggles, she scoffs and turns away, seemingly going angrily back to work, looking offended. Just as Asher reaches out, an apologetic look on his face, she smirks, dips a finger into he bowl of frosting and then paints it across his nose, laughing loudly.

Kurt grins despite his surprise; the girl had seemed so quiet at first.

Sebastian catches his confusion, apparently, because he leans over and says, "She's way crazier than she comes off as," and Kurt laughs.

Suddenly there's something thick and wet weighing down Kurt's head, and his mouth drops open in surprise as chocolate cake batter drips down between his eyes.

"Sebastian!" He cries, in time with another one of Frankie's tiny 'oh my God!'s, and he looks over in time to see Asher and Frankie tossing flour and sugar at each other, running and chasing each other around the (ridiculously large) dining room.

"What?" Sebastian asks innocently, but a smirk is playing at his lips, and Kurt narrows his eyes and grabs a handful of cookie dough, smearing it on Sebastian's face and over the front of his shirt.

Sebastian looks up. "Oh, you're gonna get it." He grins evilly and grabs a bag of brown sugar, tearing it open and tipping it over and onto Kurt, making him yelp.

"No, you don't!" Asher laughs across the room, catching Frankie around the waist and overturning the bag of sugar on her, pouring it over her hair and down her shirt as she laughs uncontrollably, struggling against his hold.

Kurt doesn't notice, though, because he's picked up a bottle of chocolate sauce and is now shooting it at Sebastian, who's laughing and holding up a hand to shield himself.

"Truce, truce!" Frankie eventually calls out, her voice still shaking with laughter, and Sebastian and Kurt stop as well as Asher does, each of them laughing breathlessly. Frankie kisses Asher, then, right on the mouth, jumping to wrap her arms around his neck and hook her knees over his hips. "I love you so much." She says after a minute, and Asher returns it without missing a beat.

Sebastian shifts next to Kurt, and Kurt looks up immediately, wide-eyed and half expecting to be kissed (which would not be okay because Blaine and oh God Blaine what would be think of this he wouldn't want me here he wouldn't like this) but Sebastian's face is screwed up into a grimace, his eyes fixed on the couple.

Before he can say anything, though, Asher is leaning back, away from the kiss, and looking up.

"I think we should order a cake." He says breathlessly, and they all agree.

-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-

A/N: I think Asher and Frankie are my favorite couple here, which is a bit sad. But it also makes the heartbreak for the others so much easier to write in ...

Also, a thank you to the amazing Amanda, who I turn to for Frankie's lines and actions. Asher and Frankie are our characters from the Tumblr roleplay where we first met, and I don't know what I'd do without her. She's brilliant and wonderful, and I owe so much to her. Thank you, love.