About a Boy (Kurtbastian)

About a Fictional Mason Smythe

“Come on, Q. The night is young and I’m itching to get out of here. There is this new bar that opened up-”

“Bas,” Quinn interrupted swiftly. “Come on. It’s a Tuesday night. The twins have school tomorrow.”

“Right, yeah, I knew that,” Sebastian mumbled, disgruntled.

He got this excuse on a daily basis. Quinn had three kids, two toddlers and a baby, and she spent nearly all her time bringing them to sports events or appointments or school. There was always something. Sebastian liked the kids, sure. Quinn had been his best friend since high school, so it would be downright cruel for him to dislike her family and offspring. But Sebastian would be lying if he said he didn’t miss the way his friendship with Quinn was before she got pregnant with the twins. The days where they would go out dancing until the early hours of the morning were long gone, picking up a few men along the way. Those were his glory days.

“How are the little buggers, anyway?”

“Maybe you’d know if you’d made more of an effort to be a part of their lives,” came Quinn’s response. Sebastian cringed at the bitterness in her voice.

“Hey, now. I make an effort.”

“Bas, I’m not even sure that you know their names.”

Even through the phone, Sebastian knew Quinn was giving him a questioning glare.

“Of course I know their names!”

“Really?” Quinn challenged. “What are they?”

“Mason,” Sebastian answered, not missing a beat.

“You only knew that because you pretended he was your son to get into a stranger’s pants.”

“And it worked. Briefly, but it worked.”

“One down, two to go.”

Despite the fact that Sebastian was quick to defend himself at Quinn’s accusation, he was definitely having to rack his brain to remember this one. He knew Quinn’s kids. He was at least partially confident that if you were to line them up with a bunch of other children, he would be able to pick out the ones that belonged to Quinn. And he had heard their names plenty of times. Quinn wouldn’t shut up about them. However, Sebastian normally chose those times to zone out, so the names were a bit fuzzy in his mind.

“...Bess. And... C-... Carl? Conner? Calvin, that’s it. Beth and Calvin.”

“Beth and Cam. Jesus, Sebastian...”

“I just... haven’t had the time to hang out with your kids,” Sebastian said, but as the words left his mouth, he knew that it didn’t even sound a little bit like the truth. This was something that both Sebastian and Quinn knew very well.

“Sebastian Smythe. That isn’t even remotely true,” Quinn said harshly, clearly with much more to say. Sebastian exhaled as he braced himself for what was sure to come. “You don’t have a job. You don’t plan on getting a job any time soon. You have absolutely no life trajectory planned out, and with all this free time of yours, you choose to do nothing productive whatsoever. You spend all of your time playing video games, eating junk food, and sleeping with men.”

Sebastian had no real response to offer her. “Guilty as charged.”

“You just don’t like children.”

“Also true,” Sebastian replied. “I hate children. They’re disgusting.”

Quinn sighed. “Don’t you want to settle down someday, Bas? Find a husband, start a family?”