Chapter Text
Sebastian sits on the warm sand on the shore of a beach in Biarritz, looking on at the orange sky and sighing to himself. He feels that he did everything he was needed to do; he was married for fourteen years, he brought up two beautiful daughters he adores before deciding that he needed to be free. Bachelorhood was fun, for eight years, but after a while ― he started to feel empty. He never expected to meet someone, the one, but it happened suddenly. And this boy is much younger than him.
-
Seeing him for the first time felt like a breath of fresh air after swimming underwater for a long time. Everything seemed clearer and something about the way the boy was leaning on the terrace of the hotel balcony ― smoking all graceful and lean muscles under glistening pale skin made Sebastian sure that he needed to at least know the boy’s name.
Kurt was his name and he was a model from Italy who walked almost every show in four countries’ Fashion Week who was on a much needed vacation on the South of France as a reward to himself for a job well done. Sebastian found out that Kurt was scouted at fifteen on his way home from school and had been working nonstop ever since. He also learnt that Kurt has the bluest blue for eyes that shifts from sea green to a steely gray depending on what he is talking about. Sebastian was enthralled.
What’s better was Kurt seemed to not know who Sebastian was ― that he was a celebrated and decorated actor of the French cinema, that a movie he starred in won the Academy Award for Best International film just a year prior.
Kurt would go on the record to say that their acquaintance did not differ from millions of others;
They were just two people caught at the right moment, at the same place at the same time, who turned out to be attractive to each other and wanted to know the other more. This is one of those surprises that happen in life.
Just as the sky was turning a mellower afternoon yellow, they would realize that they had been talking under an umbrella for over two hours, Kurt would ask; outright, but with a blush pinking his cheeks.
“How old are you, Sebastian?”
Sebastian would just honestly answer. “I’m forty-eight.”
He would never miss the absent way Kurt licked his lower lip. “I’m turning eighteen in two months.”
Seventeen. Sebastian knew from afar that there would be significant age difference but seventeen? Kurt was not even legally allowed to purchase alcohol in Europe yet.
“Does it bother you?” Kurt would quietly ask after a minute of silence.
“Only if you would not bring me to Verona to meet your father.” Sebastian would say, listening to his gut that compels him to want to be with Kurt. To need to be with Kurt.
Kurt would nod, his eyes sparkling as he light another cigarette.
-
“My mother is the typical Italian mother: soft spoken, dotting, wears dresses all her life, cooks up a storm whenever I’m home.” Kurt smiles wistfully, taking a peak at the blue beach as they walk to a café they were having lunch in. “My father is strict but fair. I go to him when I need advice about absolutely anything. He’s the most hardworking person I know. The only flaw in his character is he still calls us Italians as Romans and I could see now how he would be like the grandpas in our trattoria whining about the loss of the glory of the Roman Empire.”
Sebastian chuckles with a shake of his head as he walks side by side with Kurt. “How long have they been married for?”
“Thirty-two years.” he hears Kurt say proudly. “They’re my role model in relationships. My mother had me in her early thirties. Far later than any typical married woman in that little town in Verona and it did cause quite a scandal because as soon as she turned eighteen she moved out and they got married.” Kurt says with a laugh.
Sebastian could only nod with a smile.
“So, Sebastian, aside for knowing where the best croissants are found in the whole South of France. You hear me wax poetic about my life all afternoon yesterday and again this morning today ― I don’t know much about you and you’ll be meeting my father in three days.”
“Only to ask for his approval to spend time with you.”
“And why is that?”
“Partly because I don’t know what I’m doing but I have this strong sense of urge to be with you, Kurt.” Sebastian smiles softly as Kurt trained those ceaseless eyes of his Sebastian’s way.
“And I have no say in the matter?” Kurt would say as his eyes glitters with mirth and something akin to wonderment. “But I think I have a strong sense of urge to be with you, too.”
“That’s ― I’m glad to hear it.”
Kurt did his thing where he turns red and breaks eye contact with Sebastian and bites his lower lip to fight a smile; Sebastian feels the need to fight a groan whenever Kurt did that.
“So, partly?”
“And partly because I have twin daughters turning seventeen in four short years and when I find out one of them is seeing a man just a shy year twice her age behind my back I will lock my daughter in an ivory tower and I will hunt that man till the ends of this earth until I cut both his hands and feet off.”
Kurt looks up at Sebastian in surprise for some painful seconds before folding in on himself in laughter.
-
“What are their names?”
“Katya and Tanya.”
“They sound like the coolest Russian Bond villain duo waiting to happen.” Kurt says after the second and last croissant he is still glaring at Sebastian for. “Appropriate for the father who always plays the villain in movies.”
Sebastian smiles as he runs a hand on his four days old salt and pepper beard. “Thank you. That’s what I was going for naming them.” he jokes.
“So…” Kurt starts before taking a cigarette and a small lighter from the box conveniently kept on the front pocket of the loose white button up he was wearing. “Why did you become an actor?”
“Well.” Sebastian starts, turning to his right to watch the graceful picture beside him that Kurt makes when smoking. “I guess I became an actor because my parents were actors, you know. I grew up watching them on sets, on stage, my mother in particular had so much fun with what she was doing that for me, it was only natural to become one.”
“Do you like it?”
Sebastian smiles as he exhaled. “I love my work and I really love the moment between action and cut. The moment where you create.” he pauses. “But the rest? I’m not crazy about it. The waiting, the press, everything that goes with it especially if there are interviews. It becomes work. Making the movie, the within, that moment is about passion but who am I kidding? The only thing I wait for when I’m shooting is the end of the movie so I can be free again.”
Kurt nods turning on his chair to face him, reaching out to put the cigarette he’s smoking between Sebastian’s lips ― and Sebastian inhaled the smoke feeling it fill his lungs, watching Kurt smile at him softly as he exhaled.
-
The afternoon was spent under the shade of another huge beach umbrella with both men sharing a single beach chaise ― Kurt laying tucked between Sebastian’s legs and the older man playing with his hair as they talk about past loves.
“What’s it like being married to a girl for so many years?”
“We were happy until three years after the twins were born. The girls go to a school near my parents’ since Quinn and I work a lot. She’s an actress too and she took those three years of the girls’ formative years to parent full time while I work. I guess she expected to get back to her career just as she left it ― mains for her, endorsements here and there but being a mother changes your body and god ― there were lots of opportunity for her but I don’t know. She wanted what she had before the girls so she started getting bitter, blaming me for destroying her career; because I wanted kids.” Sebastian closes his eyes as he felt Kurt run his fingers comfortingly on one of Sebastian’s arms draped across the younger man’s chest.
“She started cheating on me and I knew she was doing it. I didn’t call her out because for obvious reasons she gets less bitter and much happier. It went on for two years and I had my best friend back. It was back to us just being friends before expectations complicated things. The girls had their doting mother back.”
“One day she just sat me down, admitted to cheating on me and saying that she fell in love with the guy who was a professor of Ecology in London and I just smiled and said I knew and I congratulated her. I have never seen her so happy until then like after the twins were born, you know?” Sebastian smiles wistfully. “And then she asked me what the fuck was I doing holding on to a broken marriage with a girl when I could have any man in the world I would like.”
“As soon as she said that this is not a metaphor but it seemed like everything sparkled.” Sebastian pauses to laugh as he heard Kurt snort. “And we just started crying and hugging each other. Apparently as far as girls I only ever notice Quinn and I stare at men a lot.”
“So there I was: forty years old, about to get a divorce from my best friend who outed me to myself. I came out to my daughters when we sat them down to talk about the divorce ― I was shit nervous but god I lucked out on the kids department. They were nothing but understanding and loving. Same goes for my parents and funnily enough all my mom said was that she knew all along.”
“I came out publicly after the divorce was finalized since what do I have to lose? My family accepted me and I’ve never been one to listen to public opinion but they’re going to know eventually. At least I got plenty of dates out of it.” Sebastian chuckles.
“I’m glad everything worked out in the end.”
“Me too.” Sebastian says, pulling the young man tighter to his front as he inhales the scent of smoke and vanilla from Kurt’s hair.
-
“Tell me about the first time you fell in love? Or the first time you smoked?”
“Those are two exclusively different things, Sebastian.” Kurt chuckles. “I picked up smoking two months into modeling. When you’re fifteen and away from your parents with an ocean between you, you latch on the first person who’s equally as ambitious as you are and who shows you an inch of kindness and that’s Santana and her girlfriend Brittany. They’re together, sickeningly in love. Santana’s a model like me and Brittany’s a dancer. They adopted me into their fold ― the pale fifteen years old Italian kid.”
“The first month I moved to New York you could say I had a culture shock. Everything was bigger and more. I was from Verona not from somewhere in the Midwest, I speak English fluently, and was obsessed with American pop culture but it still felt different. I gained a little foodie weight and my modeling management warned me that I needed to watch my weight to fit into sample sizes you know? So I was grumbling about it to Santana on our dingy fire escape in Bushwick then she made me smoke her cigarette telling me it helps when she’s craving for food. And it did. It’s a bad habit but it helps.” Kurt shrugs.
“So you smoke when you’re hungry?” Sebastian asks heartbreak evident on his voice.
“I eat small meals and smoke in between. I’m seventeen, Sebastian. It could be worse. Half of my colleagues have eating disorders and I don’t.” Kurt smiles gently at the ocean. “I’ll stop eventually when I’m thirty and ugly and can’t fit into sample sizes.”
“You may not fit into sample sizes forever but you’ll never get ugly. It’s impossible.”
“You should stop saying things like that if you want to stay celibate until you meet my father.” Kurt says and Sebastian laughs as he felt a small pinch on his thighs. He can’t see Kurt’s face but he knows those cheeks are tinged red. “Do you want to hear the story or not?”
“Please.”
“I was thirteen and wanted to try and learn something new so I joined the photography club. Turns out I was good at it and according to my adviser ‘had the eye for the unseen, the overlooked perspective’. So she encouraged me to submit some of my photographs to a student exhibition show in Rome and if my reel was chosen then the art gallery would exhibit my photographs. My mom encouraged me because really what have I got to lose but a roll of film? Then it was chosen. Five out of the fourteen photographs I submitted were chosen and I get to go to Roma without parents’ supervision.”
“It was a four nights and five days affair with talks and tours and mixers for the student participant on the evening on the hotel ballroom. I was minding my own business, taking photographs of the venue on my digital camera when this fifteen year old British boy tapped me on the shoulder. His name was Adam and he goes to this fancy international school in Rome. We talked a lot about photography and Romeo and Giulietta because I’m from Verona and he escorted me back to my room by midnight before asking if I could have breakfast with him.”
“By the last night he asked me to walk the short distance from the hotel to the Trevi and right after we threw our coins and made wishes, he asked me if he could kiss me and I said yes. It was the most romantic week of my young life.”
“You never saw each other again?”
“We did. We were together for two years. My infatuated self once escaped Verona on a bus to Rome alone once I turned fourteen much to both my mother’s horror and delight. He did that too ran away for a few hours to Verona to see me. Two times on the same exhibition again where I lost my virginity to him until I had to drop out of high school to move to New York.”
“How teary was the goodbye?” Sebastian kids.
“Shut up.” Kurt chuckles. “The goodbye was surprisingly mature. Adam is romantic but practical. I also wasn’t dumb enough to think that we could last forever and a modeling career in the States was my ticket out of Verona. It’s not like I was dreaming about becoming a doctor or even engineer. I was on that age where I was feeling that there is something bigger and better for me once I moved out. I had never been a fan of school. I love to read everything but maths I have no patience for. I had to beg and cry my way for a week before my parents caved once Holly, that’s my manager ― vowed that she’d take care of me and keep me safe.”
“What were your first weeks like?”
“Terrible.” Kurt chuckles, Sebastian felt Kurt sink in his embrace further. “I was living on a loft with twelve other models and the only privacy we had were curtained partitions for two months before Santana adopted me. The city streets were noisy at night with the sirens blaring and alarms going off in the middle of the night and I couldn’t sleep and my jetlag lasting for a month didn’t help either since I insisted on talking to my mom and dad eight hours a day. I used to live in an Italian village far enough from the tourist trap where everyone knows me since I was a baby so the constant buzzing of New York ― it was a lot.”
“What was the thing you missed the most about home?”
“Honestly? My mother’s cooking. It’s probably the reason why I gained all that weight the first few months. I scoured every Italian restaurant and ate every pizza Margherita I could find just to feel closer to home. Every grandmother in Little Italy knows me and I carry that with pride.” Kurt says with a chuckle.
“You’re so brave.”
Kurt hums noncommittally.
“You are.” Sebastian insists with a squeeze. “Uprooting your life like that and starting out young into the unknown.”
“You did that too.”
“I was forty, Kurt.”
“But no. You had more to lose and that didn’t stop you.”
There was silence as both of them watch the constant way the wave crashes on the shore. “So you can tell me where the best Italian foods are in New York?”
“I’m not much off a local yet but give me another four years of feeling like a New Yorker first and I think I just might know enough then.” Kurt says. “You up for that?”
Sebastian smiles at the beach arms tightening around the younger man. “Kurt, I think I just might follow you anywhere from now on.”
-
“Can I ask you a question?”
“Anything.”
“Why haven’t you kissed me yet?”
“Why haven’t you kissed me yet?”
Flushed cheeks and an arched eyebrow. “I’m waiting for you to kiss me.”
“I really really really want to kiss you. Believe me, in my eight years of experience in kissing men, I have never wanted to kiss someone so bad. But I’m trying to do it right and want to meet your parents first before anything else. So please, please Kurt, have pity on an old man and stop looking at me like that?”
Kurt throws his head back as he laughs delightedly; Sebastian on the other hand could just smile crinkly eyed with wander as he stares at Kurt: hanging on his arms at the edge of the pool, wet hair pushed away from his face, graceful neck on display.