Chapter Text
Sebastian
“We could do a different show?” Trent suggested.
Nick kicked back, putting his feet on the table in the middle of the room, earning himself a scowl from Wes. “I don’t see why we should have to change our show. We’re the ones who have to clear everything with the Dalton board of directors, as well as the board for Crawford Country so we can have a girl Maria. We got the go-ahead to do this last year. We did all that fu- frickin’ paperwork. Let them change theirshow.”
“It’s all right.” David put his hand on Nick’s shoulder. “I know it feels as though they are starting the competition early with us, but there are simply a limited number of school musicals that parents will be okay with in a conservative area.”
The other boys nodded in agreement as David spoke. He continued: “Furthermore, I remember Kurt talking about how their show got shut down last year, and collapsed on itself the year before. They probably want a safe choice, just to make sure they don’t have to close before they open again.”
“Their show last year was Rocky Horror,” Wes said tersely. “It was a poor decision to begin with.”
“Yeah, but...” Trent shrugged. “That wasn’t their decision. That was their director’s choice. This time, Kurt and Rachel chose the musical. And Kurt left before we’d put in our plans to do West Side Story. He wouldn’t do this to us on purpose.”
“I’m not saying he did,” Nick said a bit irritably. “But Blaine didn’t officially leave until the first week this semester. He knows exactly what we planned to do for our fall musical, and our spring musical, and our set lists for our invitational, sectionals, and regional performances. His abandoning us, especially after promising that he wasn’t going to, has really fucked us over.”
Wes gave Nick a look, and Nick rolled his eyes.
“Sorry. He really fricked us.”
Sebastian crossed one leg over the other and rubbed his upper lip slowly with his index finger. When the Warblers had called this emergency meeting, Sebastian had wondered first if the group pulled their members out of class often (he had a GPA to maintain here) and second, whether histrionics were common among their members. While this did seem like a troubling development for them competitively speaking, it was hardly insurmountable to change up their set lists within the amount of time they had before their first real competition. As for the invitational, who cared? It wasn’t a competition. They didn’t have to be the most original, just intimidating to any rivals who had the gall to show up and check them out.
Still... If their group was this raucously unstable now, Sebastian wondered if it would truly be the best use of his time to be a mere member of the group. At least, not without some changes made.
“I just can’t believe he’d do this to us,” Trent muttered. A few other boys groused around him.
“Is a high school musical really such a dire circumstance?” Sebastian asked, his voice carrying through the room. The others turned, likely not expecting his input. He had spent the first few weeks of the semester gauging their skill and how they worked as a group. That meant being on his best behavior, even if it galled him to do so.
“It isn’t,” David agreed evenly. “But we considered Blaine...” He tilted his head to the side. “We had arranged all of our performances for this year around him as a lead. We were counting on him.”
“He betrayed us,” Trent said. “For Kurt. The musical is just... on top of all everything.”
“No… He wants to go to Nationals,” Nick said, shaking his head. “We did everything we could to keep him, but he knows the New Directions have a better chance of winning.”
“Even so.” Trent’s shoulders slumped over. “He could’ve told Kurt what we were doing and gotten him to do something else. Kurt would do anything Blaine asked.”
“Well, that sounds like a boring relationship,” Sebastian drawled.
Nick chuckled and shook his head. A few others looked scandalized. Sebastian shrugged.
“If they have all this intel on us, I move that we get some on them. You have tapes of former competitions, I trust? And it wouldn’t be hard for us to send a few of our members to check out what they’ve got going on with regards to talent this year.” Sebastian spread his hands. “We have set lists to revise, and they are going to be holding auditions sometime soon. My bet is that their top players will be showing their stuff for the play.”
“They did start the whole espionage thing,” David said, flashing a warm smile at Wes. Wes, who had seemed grumpy during the whole meeting-- well... since Sebastian had met him-- smiled as though they were sharing an inside joke.
“They would recognize us, though,” Nick pointed out.
“They wouldn’t recognize me,” Sebastian countered. He looked at his nails and frowned, then back up at the rest of the club members. “And, unlike those try-hard public school glee clubbers, I have years of formal training. You can be sure I’ll pick out our most likely competition.”
---
Sebastian would regret his first power move for the Warblers before the end of the week. As it turned out, he was right about the auditions coming up soon, and it wasn’t hard to figure out where in the school they would be held, and at what time. The McKinley kids talked on Facebook about the club and their individual dramas constantly. And in between the new “Booty Camp” for their anemic dance skills and regular practices, they would be holding auditions.
To be perfectly honest (and Sebastian liked to be, loudly if possible), the showing at the auditions wasn’t particularly impressive. Most of the kids just stood there and sang. The girls trying out for Maria either parked it or pranced around the stage with an embarrassingly jaunty rendition of “I Feel Pretty.” The one girl who chose to do “Somewhere” started too big, leaving herself nowhere to go, until she was practically yelling the lyrics. And that was saying nothing about the ridiculous mugging she made through the song, scrunching her eyes closed and then then pretending to be surprised by her own loudness.
Clearly, at McKinley, loud equaled good, if the directors’ reactions were any indication. But their good wasn’t that good, and their emotional range was... lacking. They also, for the most part, didn’t seem to have any sense of how to choose a proper audition song. Either they chose something inappropriate for their character, or they chose a song from the musical itself and sang it wrong. Sebastian felt chagrined to be part of a group that had lost to this ragtag band of half-trained pretenders.
The things his ears suffered through for the sake of social mobility.
Up in the balcony area on the right side of the auditorium, Sebastian stretched his back, trying to avoid drawing attention to himself. Though, it was unlikely anyone could see him from the stage, given the lights, and the directors were facing away from him. The directors rose (with the boy carried by the big teacher), apparently taking a break, and Sebastian took the time to sit on the floor (ugh, so dirty) and scribble his notes for each audition. Really, so far, he’d not seen anyone worth being concerned about, and the Warblers’ golden boy hadn’t even performed yet.
He heard a screeching noise and lifted his head up to see three students carrying a large, metal scaffolding onto the stage.
“Lift it up a little more?” a tense, high voice asked.
One of the students was gigantically tall, another a heavyset but powerful looking girl with glasses, and the third, a boy clearly dressed as Tony. Sebastian could see his snug black pants and white shirt, and the little scarf (black, red, and... gold, perhaps?) tied around his neck reminiscent of the part. Granted, one shouldn’t dress as the character for an audition, but these directors were so unprofessional, and so many of the auditioners had gotten away with just singing songs from the show, that Sebastian doubted the directors would notice or care.
The scaffolding was interesting, though. What was he going to do with it? Sebastian looked again and noticed that he was also wearing some fingerless gloves. Fashion or function?
When the apparatus was in place, the boy thanked his two friends. The girl told him to kick some ass, and the tall boy hugged the smaller around the shoulders with one arm. His boyfriend, maybe? Sebastian frowned. Was this one overcompensating for lack of talent with gimmicks? Or was he going to use the scaffolding? Sebastian could imagine why a Jet would want to demonstrate a bit of gymnastic ability...
A few minutes later, the judges and the band returned, and the boy came back to the stage, placed his left hand on his hip, and, a little breathlessly, announced:
“Hello. I’m Kurt Hummel. And I’ll be auditioning for the role of Tony, the male lead.”
“That’s great Kurt!” said one of the directors. The perky one, perhaps a teacher?
“I’ll be performing the seminal, and in my case, semi-autobiographical Broadway classic, ‘The Greatest Star’ from Funny Girl.”
Sebastian snorted softly in amusement. Finally, a break from feeling “pretty,” and inappropriate pop auditions.
“Isn’t that a Streisand song?” another director asked.
Sebastian rolled his eyes at the teacher’s tone. This school had really scraped the bottom of all their rocks to dig up these teachers.
“I know what you’re thinking,” Kurt said, “But I got written permission from the woman herself, Ms. Rachel Berry.”
Sebastian paused for a moment, then wrote, Other members defer to Berry, despite her poor technique. Pecking order? Rich parents?
“Oh! And I’d also like to thank Cassius from my dad’s tire shop-” Kurt bounced around a little as he spoke, then pointed to the metal structure beside him. “-for kindly constructing my audition scaffolding.”
Sebastian blinked, then wrote that down entirely. It was amusing, the oddity of a kid from greasemonkey origins singing Streisand. Who knew the backgrounds of most of these public school urchins. The likelihood that this kid had any training whatsoever was about nil, if the other members were as abysmal as they’d shown today.
“Start already,” Sebastian grumbled quietly.
“Okay, whenever you’re ready,” said the director in the middle. It seemed he also thought Kurt needed to zip it and just sing.
Kurt went over to the scaffolding and positioned himself on one of the lower rungs. Almost forgetting himself, Sebastian leaned forward to see what Kurt Hummel would do.
The music started lightly, and Kurt began to sing. “I’m! The greatest star! I am by far! But no one knooows it.”
At first, Sebastian’s instinct was to write down mocking notes about the pitch of Kurt’s voice, how he held his body, everything... But Kurt kept moving, and changing, and Sebastian got the impression that the moment he blinked he would miss something. Now pouting, now hanging on the scaffolding, now making a flute call, now pumping his fist by his side. This wasn’t the out of the gate belting that some of the more polished performers here preferred, or the lazy standard renditions. It was just... different.
It wasn’t strictly dance choreography either, but it was very well planned. Tony and the other Jets did tend to flip around on the scenery (especially Tony, in the balcony scene), and Kurt seemed perfectly comfortable climbing around, swinging to the side of the scaffolding, and moving to the opposite end, without taking a pause to breathe. Sebastian’s eyes widened as Kurt flipped upside down... and kept singing. Without a single hitch in his breath. Then he twisted his legs into another rung, hung off the side, and posed with one hand to his head, and dropped off the scaffolding to take center stage.
“When you’re gifted, then you’re gifted!” Kurt declared, emphasizing the point with his hands. “These are facts, I’ve got no axe to griiiiind!”
Kurt’s voice soared out through the auditorium as he literally reached for the sky, and Sebastian could feel his yearning. For the first time, Sebastian was starting to feel a little intimidated.
“Hey! Whattaya blind?! In all of the world so far! I’m the greatest star!”
Sebastian quickly scribbled, Watch out for Kurt!!
The music changed suddenly. Unlike some of the others, Kurt wasn’t using the full song. He walked downstage as the music began to build, and then turned and strolled toward them again, singing in a light, effortless tenor, “I’m the greatest staaar. I am by faaaar, and no one knows it...”
A shiver ran up Sebastian’s spine. He could barely make out the details of what Kurt looked like from here, but his voice. He hadn’t started like a powerhouse, but the longer he sang, the more Sebastian became wrapped up in Kurt’s boundless energy and clear, unique voice. He had no doubt that Kurt had already out-sung everyone who had auditioned so far-
But then Kurt began to move again, and blood rushed to Sebastian’s face as the tempo picked up and Kurt swung around the bars, singing and kicking in time to the music.
“I’ll light up like a light! Right up like a light! I’ll flicker and flare up!” He grabbed the bar above his head and began circling around. “Oh, the world’s gonna stare up!” He began to ascend the scaffolding. “Lookin’ down you’ll never see me! Try the sky-- That’ll be me!”
At the top of the scaffolding Kurt flung his arms out and caught himself in the nick of time. “I can make ‘em cry!” Shook himself. “I can make ‘em sigh!”
Then he dropped down, as his voice lowered into a deep, resonant tone. “Some day they’ll clamor for my draaam-er!”
Sebastian’s notepad dropped from his hand, and he felt a tight tug in his pants. “Christ,” he muttered, his heart surging in his chest.
Triumphantly, Kurt returned to the ground for his finale, and oh, what a finale it was. A boy walked by with a set of sai swords, which Kurt picked up and began twirling without missing a beat. And he continued twirling, faster and faster, one hand, then the other, and then both, as he finished out the song with an effortless high note.
Technically speaking, this was the strongest part of the number. Sebastian acknowledged that there were a few rough sections toward the beginning, but Kurt’s voice in the middle and the end of the song, as it moved away from the jokes and affectation that the beginning of the number required became a clear, powerful instrument that left Sebastian as breathless as Kurt had seemed to be at the beginning.
However, those nerves had been utterly unwarranted. And the way Kurt’s voice lowered... Sebastian needed to take a break. This one could be a threat to them. Sebastian slipped out of the auditorium where the directors were cheering and clapping, as well as a few of the band members now that they were done playing. He went to call Trent.
---
Sebastian’s heart still pounded a little when he thought back on that audition. There was no doubt in his mind now that Kurt Hummel would be McKinley’s Tony. Who else was going to get up on stage and not only prove that he had the vocal range to slay “Somewhere” and “Maria,” but also that he had the athletic ability to work the scenery and the skill with weapons to pull off the fight scenes? None of the other boys who had auditioned, that was for certain.
Sitting around the room with the Warblers, now that he’d seen the auditions, particularly that one, was almost uncomfortable.
“So as you can see from my notes,” Sebastian said as he handed the synopsis of his conclusions out to each member, “Even their strongest members use too many tricks and aren’t comfortable singing and performing at the same time. The ones who can dance don’t sing as well, particularly Mike Chang, who was flat for most of his performance, and Brittany Pierce, who has difficulty breathing like a singer instead of a dancer. Berry sings everything like Barbra Streisand, and I’m getting the impression that she never moves if she doesn’t have to-- she should be in their after school dance class, but isn’t-- and the other members bow to her. Santana Lopez has a middling talent we should keep an eye on, powered by some skill and mostly charisma, and Mercedes Jones has the best voice of everyone there, but didn’t make any effort for showmanship either, although her excellent breath control suggests she probably has more stamina than her size suggests.”
He paused to frown at his notes. “The one we’d better watch is Kurt Hummel. You’ll see my comments on the nature of his performance. The strengths, which were many, and the few weaknesses he still has, probably due to poor or nonexistent training from their director. If they feature him, we’d better be prepared to pull out all the stops.”
The others skimmed over the sheet as he talked, and then were quiet for a moment.
“Kurt? Really?” Nick said.
“I was going to say,” Jeff echoed. “I never got the impression he was much of a threat.”
“He can flip around like a spider monkey and handle weaponry without even a second of a hitch in his singing. He’s a tremendous multi-tasker on stage, and his range is incredible,” Sebastian said flatly. “He could use some work on his diction, and there’s an edge to his higher register-- I haven’t decided whether or not it’s pleasant, but... Of all the boys, he was the most impressive.”
“Isn’t he just a counter-tenor, though?” Wes asked. Trent frowned.
“There was nothing ‘just’ about his vocals,” Sebastian replied. This was a bit confusing. Hadn’t they had use of Hummel for their entire competition season the previous year? Hadn’t he been on their list of featured singers? “If you mean, does he only sing high? Well, no, he had some very impressive moments in his lower range as well, and he switches very smoothly between registers. I don’t think the competition judges will care that he talks like Mickey Mouse, since he won’t be introducing anyone.”
“That’s interesting,” David said. “I wish we’d been able to get the AV equipment in time for you to record the performances for us.”
Did they really not believe him?
“So what about Blaine? You barely mention him here,” Wes said. “He did ‘Something’s Coming’?”
Sebastian shrugged. “I don’t remember much from it. He was flat most of the time. Held his hands out a lot. No real dancing choreography to speak of. He did read for Tony afterward, but I got up to take a break.”
The other Warblers stared at Sebastian as though he had grown another head. And that head had lobsters coming out of its ears.
“What?”
“You didn’t like his performance?” Wes said, with a near laugh.
“It was typical, and boring. And again, a bit out of tune. A lot of pointing. Little range, no creativity, and none of the emotional nuance you need for Tony. Not that many of the New Directions members had that, by the way. I’d say Jones and Hummel do. Lopez is intense, but unfocused. The level of anger was inappropriate for her song. Maybe she was bleeding that day.” Sebastian crossed his arms and shrugged. “I don’t think we need to be worried. By Regionals, we should have an entirely new set list, and if they survive Sectionals, we should be able to take care of them easily.”
There was a silence. And then:
“Did you really not like Blaine?” Trent asked. “He was practically our front man last year.”
Sebastian heaved a sigh and tried not to sprain his eyes rolling them. “He’s mediocre,” he snapped. “If he was your lead man last year, I’m not surprised that you lost. I’m ten times better than him. If those are your qualifications, you should make me your front man.”
Sebastian’s words had been flippant, but the other Warblers seemed to take him seriously, looking between each other and murmuring.
“But what about the Council?” said Elton, a boy with dreadlocks who spent his time in the back of the room.
“If we had a single captain, it wouldn’t take forever to get stuff passed through the administration,” Nick said. “We work up all these great songs, and then they tell us no, you can’t do Beyoncé, for some stupid reason. If we had one person just go up with one list for approval, that would make everything so much easier.”
“But this isn’t a dictatorship,” Wes argued.
“No, it’s a Wesocracy,” Nick muttered.
Wes turned to Nick with fire in his eyes. “Excuse me?”
“Oh, sorry, did you forget your gavel today?”
Sebastian raised his brows and watched the group unravel. He’d caused chaos before, and truth be told, some part of it was incredibly enjoyable, but it had never been this easy. Were they so unstable without their favorite to lead them? And Blaine Anderson, of all people... Sebastian barely remembered his audition. There were no highs or lows to the song, just this blunt (but weak) force hitting the whole song in the same way until he ramped up the volume at the end.
Sebastian remembered more how his attention had drifted as he saw the light flickering off of something in the other wing of the balcony. He couldn’t be sure at first, but it had been Kurt Hummel up there. His jacket had shiny studs on it, and although he had still been far away, from up there, Sebastian could see a firm jawline and cheekbones as high as the sky.
Is he really dating this snarling, flat-assed, out of tune whelp straining for his high note on the stage? Sebastian had wondered, captivated by the soft smile on Hummel’s face.
Then the directors asked Blaine to read for Tony, and that smile had faded, and Kurt slipped away. Sebastian had left then as well, not really wanting to hear any more. Blaine’s incapacity for pitch, and in all honesty, his utter blandness, had left a taste in Sebastian’s mouth as sour as the end of that final note.
As Sebastian returned his focus to the Warblers, he realized they were now all looking to him.
“So. You say you’re better than Blaine was?” Wes asked.
“Cookie Monster’s better than Blaine.” Sebastian slipped his hands into his pockets casually. “But I was trained by a world renowned vocal coach in my formative years, and I’ve played Baby John in West Side Story, as well as Kenickie in Grease andWarner in Legally Blonde, and have won a few singing competitions.”
“Then... sing for us,” Wes ordered.
“Pardon?” Sebastian tilted his head forward.
“Give us an audition piece that’s better than Blaine, and we’ll vote right now whether or not you’ll be our captain.”
Sebastian tried very hard not to be caught off guard at any point in his life. While he had intended to maneuver his way up the ranks here, he’d never imagined he’d have the chance to do so this quickly. He swallowed, nodded briefly, and then rose, trying to think of which audition piece to use. He’d auditioned during the first week of school, of course, but everyone had, and those pieces had been chosen for them to assess basic technical quality.
While his go-to audition wouldn’t be Streisand, Sebastian had quite a few Broadway numbers prepared that showcased his voice, the broadness of his tone, the depth of what he could portray. However, he suspected a group that worshipped Blaine Anderson would require a different approach.
He did a turn in place, stepped one leg out as he snapped his fingers, and lifted his chin.
“I’m bringin’ sexy back,” he sang.