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rmTitle: Tales of Minor Gods
Rating: R (barely)
Pairings: Kurt/Blaine
Spoilers (if any): None.
Warnings (if any): None.
Word Count: ~3,800
Summary: Kurt finally gets cast in something. It's not exactly the relief he thought it would be.
Song Notes: The song that Blaine thinks the reviewer is referencing in regard to Kurt is Sinead O'Connor's "Just Like U Said It Would B." I originally wanted to have Kurt sing it in one of these stories, and decided that he would never sing something that used the word "lover" so many times. For anyone not actually familiar with Oklahoma: "Surrey with the Fringe on Top"
Author Notes: A big thank you to![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
wordsofastory, who is not a Glee fan but helped come up with Kurt's catch phrases about the show he finds himself cast in the course of this story.
Boston: Following Home | These Thousand Names for Gratitude | All the Honesty of Politics | Circles as the Dark Winds Down | The Distance Between Ohio and Boston | All the Pretty Little Horses | Languages You Don't Even Know | Fauna and Flora | Where Water Doesn't Speak | Under Glass We Are Expected to Blossom | You Were Someone Else Before We Came Here
D.C.: Strategies and Tactics | The Many Shades of Sugar | When Sea Levels Rise | The History of Sand
Two weeks after they get back from the beach, Rachel calls, crying. She's been cast in a tour and so Kurt assumes the tears are happy ones.
They aren't.
“It's children's theater, Kurt. Three months, playing an eight-year-old, driving around with six people in a van. I will, of course, bring excellence and a certain remarkable je ne sais quoi to the role, but I'm going to hate every single minute of it.”
“But it's real professional theater --”
“Of course.”
“And you get to sing.”
“I'm the lead.”
“And your card?”
“Yup.”
“Then congratulations, Rachel,” Kurt says stiffly. “I'm very happy for you.”
*
When Blaine walks through their door that night, Kurt says, without preamble, “Rachel got a tour.”
Blaine's jaw dropping into a grin. “Oh my god.”
Kurt feels terrible that he isn't the same sort of happy for her. “It's children's theater,” he adds, with a vicious little thrill.
Blaine freezes, his whole demeanor shifting and tensing like he's trying not to say something terrible. “Really?”
“She was in tears when she called.”
“Happy tears?”
“Oh no.”
“Oh my,” Blaine says, putting his bag down and cautiously sitting next to Kurt on the couch. “How do you feel about it?” He brushes his fingers through Kurt's hair as he asks.
“I wish I'd been nicer on the phone, but mostly I'm trying not to feel anything at all.”
*
Kurt cannot believe Blaine thinks a combined audition for the Fringe Fest is somehow the answer to Rachel getting her fucking Equity card before he does.
“I just feel like everything I try for is a step back from the previous thing, and I'm still not getting it anyway and I don't even....” He breaks off with a noise of frustration. It's taken him a day to freak out about this, but now that he has, he can't stop.
Blaine resists the urge to tell Kurt to calm down, knowing it won't end well. Instead, he tries “You're so funny,” fondly, which isn't better and is possibly worse.
“Thank you, Blaine. That's an incredibly helpful expression of support,” Kurt snaps.
Blaine sighs. “Just listen to me for a second. You're rational about everything from your dance skills to our --”
“Don't say it; we are not engaged -- ”
“And yet you still want your first job to be on Broadway, and I don't get it. You're already working as a performer; but you have a nearly blank resume, which doesn't, by the way, say “discover me,” to a casting director.”
“Like you would know,” Kurt spits out viciously.
They each reel back from it, Kurt flailing his hands and trying to apologize almost instantly.
“I didn't mean --”
Blaine scratches at the back of his neck for a moment and then holds up his hand. “No, you did. And I can either defend my choices or point out that my resume is still longer than yours, but mostly I want to not fucking fight with you and not have to watch your talent stay hidden because you keep chasing after the wrong things.”
“But what if I want to fight with you?”
“Yeah, well,” Blaine says, levering himself off the couch and yanking off the tie Kurt had looped around that morning. “Me too. But, unlike you, I know I can't always get what I want.” He goes out onto their deck because he made a promise once never to storm out of the house again; it doesn't stop him from slamming the door.
*
That night, Blaine goes to bed early. When Kurt joins him, he slips an arm around his boyfriend's waist, pressing his face into the space between his shoulder blades. Kurt is still terrible at apologies, but this is, for him, what passes as one.
“Here's what you don't understand,” Blaine says covering Kurt's hand on his belly with his own. “When you sing, especially lately, you are terrifying and miraculous. And when I sing, it makes people smile. I'm a good performer, Kurt, but it's not the most important thing I can do. So I need you to stop acting like that's a betrayal.”
“Is that easier to say when you're not looking at me?”
“Yes.”
“Making people smile matters,” Kurt mumbles into Blaine's back, as if he's embarrassed.
“Sure. But not enough.”
“It saved my life.”
Blaine smiles wanly and squeezes Kurt's hand. “I will always sing with you, anywhere and anywhen you want. But that's about you now, and not the world. I need you to start forgiving me for that.”
Kurt doesn't say anything for a long time. “I'm not angry at you,” he says softly.
“Then what happened earlier?”
Kurt rolls onto his back, unsure of how to explain himself. “What's your first language?” he asks, abruptly.
“Kurt –”
“Singing. Singing is my first language. And I always want to think it's yours too, Blaine, so the idea of you giving that up is wrong and creepy and terrifying and makes me think of the worst of this shit with your dad. It's how you speak; it's how you speak to me, and I can't....”
Blaine shushes him, turning over to gather him up. It's so strange, because Kurt isn't only taller than him, but broader across the shoulders despite all his willowy grace; it's been so long since he's crumbled like this. “I'm right here.”
“I just....”
“I know. Just breathe with me for a little bit.”
Eventually, Kurt quiets, the trembling that never quite gets to tears subsiding, and into the dark and silence Blaine says, “It isn't.”
“What?” Kurt asks.
“My first language. Singing. It's not –”
“Then what?”
“Pleasing people,” Blaine says softly, like he's a little bit ashamed. “When I was a baby, I never cried when my parents took me restaurants, apparently. My mother says I never wanted to upset anyone.”
“So well mannered,” Kurt snarks, trying for humor only because he is deeply unnerved.
“Do you think it's possible to worry about disappointing people at six-months-old? I've always thought my father hated it, that I didn't wail to show the world how strong his son was.”
Kurt hugs Blaine tightly. Before they'd met, he would have said no.
*
The hangover from that conversation lasts for two days, until Kurt fucks Blaine in the too early morning hard enough that their headboard actually bangs against the wall, stuttering a laugh out of him even as Kurt's buried inside him.
In the afterglow, Kurt tugs on Blaine's lower lip with his fingers until he convinces him to call in sick to his internship. When he complies, they stay in bed until noon, Kurt finally rolling out from between their filthy sheets to go to the audition he doesn't really care about but that Blaine seems invested in on his behalf.
*
Only a fraction of the shows are anything resembling musicals at all. But after he sings his standard sixteen bars of cheerful Broadway, one of the auditors, and there are a lot of auditors, says, “Okay, now sing something unsettling.”
Kurt stops himself from rolling his eyes, takes a deep breath, and tries to think as little as possible before launching into “Cosmic Love” because Henry and Blaine have both said he should. He's shaking by the time he's done, and on his way to work at the bar calls Alex in Rome and sings it to her softly.
*
“Callback!” Kurt squeals when he gets home that night, waving his phone where the email is still up on his screen at Blaine.
“I knew it!”
“Fine, yes, you are right about everything. Ask me what it is,” Kurt says, vibrating as he practically sings out the words.
“What is it?”
“Musical adaptation of Orpheus and Eurydice! I am going to get this, Blaine, I am so going to get this.”
Blaine gives him a besotted smile, and Kurt wants to point out that this, keeping them both happy, is why his success means everything.
*
At his call-back time, Kurt's the only boy there, and smugly he thinks he's already been cast as Orpheus and is just there to find his Eurydice, until the director pulls him aside. He tells him he's actually being auditioned for Persephone, and assures him that if he does cast him, it won't be a drag role, just Kurt as he is, all shoulders and slim hips, playing a girl once stolen and risen low.
Kurt wants to scream in frustration, and when he and the women he is competing against are asked to improvise first vocally and then with movement, Kurt does not hesitate to invade their space. It is, he knows, probably rude and unprofessional, but it's what he would have done in New Directions, and if he's honest, it feels good, even if only one of them really understands that for all Kurt's barely concealed anger, nothing he's doing is anything but play.
*
He gets the part, announcing it to Blaine when he finds out by calling him at work and saying, “I'm the Queen of Hell!”
“Best interruption to a policy briefing, EVER,” Blaine whispers into his phone in response, slouching in his chair at the back of the room.
*
Blaine's giddy for him, until their celebratory dinner, when he goes off on a tangent about the lack of powerful roles for women in the theater and how it's sort of fucked up that the only person his director thought was powerful enough to play a woman is a man.
Kurt, in response, sets down his glass primly and tries not to smile as he scolds him. “Blaine, I no longer have an empty resume, so this is Not the Time.
Blaine chuckles to himself and nods, and Kurt reaches across the table, taking his hand and squeezing into it a hundred types of love.
*
As rehearsals start, Kurt quickly determines a number of things.
First the show is terrible. Truly awful, in a way that would be hilarious to spork with Blaine if he weren't trapped in the middle of it.
Second, the girl playing Eurydice hates him.
And third, he really, really has to stop his parents from coming to see it, but Blaine seems to be in some sort of conspiracy with them about it, and he just doesn't know how to intercede without making everyone feel bad.
*
“What? Are they making you show your ass?” his father asks when Kurt insists, yet again, that he and Carole, really, really don't need to come out for it.
“Only metaphorically,” Kurt breathes, but it's not enough to deter his father who survived tea parties and New Directions and Pip Pip Hooray, and maybe it won't be so bad.
Blaine tries to reassure him that his single song is good and interesting, and there's a certain charm in being able to say I'm the Queen of Hell, and hey, at least it's not children's theater.
Kurt's more relieved that's it's not a tour. The worst part of being jealous of Rachel means acknowledging that he's willing to leave home. Or worse, wants to. And Blaine needs him so much.
*
“They want me to be in the maenad scene!” Kurt calls as he kicks the front door open, full of disgust two weeks before opening. “I'm the Queen of Hell, why do I have to be in the maenad scene? The maenad scene is awful.”
“I'm sorry,” Blaine says, not knowing what else to do.
“It's not your fault.”
“Somebody died sorry,” Blaine clarifies.
“Oh. Well, that's all right then,” Kurt says and settles himself onto Blaine's lap, willing to be kissed.
*
The show opens in a flurry of false optimism and exhaustion. They are not the hot ticket of the festival and Kurt only sends postcards announcing the performance to a few casting directors in New York who have been moderately interested in him because he knows they won't come see it.
Rachel, pissed at him for not having had time to go up to New York and see her off the week before, sends him a passive-aggressive text message from a three-day stop at a school system in southern New Jersey.
Then Blaine calls an hour-and-a-half before curtain to say that while his parents' plane has arrived safely, their luggage hasn't, and they'll be there as soon as he can.
“Oh my god,” Kurt whispers frantically into the phone. “That's divine. Stall them.”
*
Kurt is jangly before he goes on stage and tries to brace himself for the experience by thinking of Henry's advice to him in email the night before: Screw fitting in to your terrible show. Do what you have to do for you.
Kurt had nodded reading it then, and nods thinking of it now. As he enters, the lights are warm on his face and he thinks of them as a remembrance of the world not off the the stage, but outside the lands of hell. It hurts to think of only being able to rule in dark places.
*
The maenad scene is still terrible, the boy playing Orpheus completely misses a climatic high note, and the severed head special effect provokes barely restrained titters from the audience, but when Kurt steps forward for his solo bow, the audience roars, and it feels real, like more than just Blaine and his father and Carole putting on a brave face for him.
He smiles, and fondly thinks Fuck you, Rachel Berry.
*
They wait in the shitty lobby of the shitty black box theater for Kurt, Blaine holding a giant bouquet of flowers, Burt wringing his hat in his hands and Carole beaming in a way that suggests she's more in touch with the absurdity of it all than any of the men around her.
When Kurt finally comes out, Blaine can tell he's nervous. Part of it is the blush under the faint sheen of glitter that's still high on his cheeks, but mostly it's the body language. He looks smaller, younger, and twists his fingers together in the same manner that Burt is abusing his hat.
“Oh did you guys actually see that?” he asks with an awkward wince as he smoothes a hand over his surprisingly uncooperative hair.
“We did,” Carole assures him.
“I was hoping the plane would be late.”
“You were incredible,” Blaine says, thrusting the flowers at him before gathering Kurt up in a hug that crushes them between their bodies.
Kurt smiles sheepishly at his dad over Blaine's shoulder and then closes his eyes.
“Was I okay?” he whispers to his boyfriend.
“A revelation in a sea of chaos,” Blaine says, before stepping back.
“Dad, hi,” he says, laughing awkwardly then. “Please don't view my aspirations in light of --”
“I have no idea what that was,” Burt says, “but Blaine swears I wasn't supposed to. You were great, kid. Whole audience held its breath. I'm glad I could see it.”
It's this praise, more than any of the rest of it, that convinces Kurt that it really will be okay, and he hugs his father as if he has just returned to the surface of the world.
*
“It's so weird having you here,” Kurt gushes as he shows them around Georgetown, Dupont Circle and the Mall.
His father asks if he is happy when he points out the building with the apartment they couldn't afford on the block he loved.
“I... it's complicated.” Kurt admits, although he tries not to.
“But you and Blaine...,” his father pushes.
“Also hard,” Kurt says, wondering if he should laugh nervously and blush at the accidental double entendre, if that's what it takes to make this conversation he doesn't want to have easier.
“Do you want to talk about it?” Carole asks.
Kurt shakes his head. “I'm struggling a little bit with being here; and he's really ready to be done with school. We'll get through it, and then we'll move to New York and live happily ever after. We've both waited through worse.”
“Ohio,” Burt says, and there's some tinge of anger or guilt there that Kurt can't let himself look at too closely.
“Mmmmmhmmmm,” he agrees with a false, catty and oh so gay smile. “Besides, I love him, and this too will pass. Now where should we eat while I give you two the briefing on the fact that I really, really do work at a bar?”
*
“Best behavior,” Kurt reminds Seanna again, squeezing her shoulders after he sets down drinks for her and Henry, the unavoidable George, and his parents.
“Tell George, not me,” she says.
“You're babysitting,” Kurt says, pointing at her, before dropping his tray at the bar and trotting up to the mic.
“Now,” he declares, “if anyone was looking for something dark and moody from me today? You're out of luck. My parents are here, and I'm busy being the Queen of Hell over at the Fringe, so light and airy's all I got in me right now. Can we survive that?”
The late-afternoon crowd makes some obligatory noises of agreement, spurred on by his friends and Carole.
“Fabulous,” Kurt says, and launches into “Surry with the Fringe on Top.”
“Sometimes, it's almost weird hearing him sing boy songs,” Burt notes.
“Oh, you haven't heard weird until you hear Blaine's song choices,” Henry says.
Burt laughs. “Oh, I know all about Blaine's terrible song choices. Did he ever tell you what he did to the boy he was chasing before Kurt?”
*
Sometime after seven, Blaine comes bounding into the bar from his internship, waving to Kurt, kissing Carole on the cheek, and slapping a several pieces of paper down in the center of their table.
“Reviews!” he says, giddy.
“Wait,” George drawls. “Kurt said we weren't allowed to come see the show because it's embarrassingly terrible, but you're allowed to bring reviews? I feel confusion and the need for more gin.”
“The show is terrible, but Kurt is amazing and the reviews agree,” Blaine says, slightly breathless.
“Wait, were you just totally at work late because you were vanity Googling your boyfriend?” Seanna asks.
“No, I have an alert set up.”
“Because that isn't creepy,” Henry says under his breath.
“Don't start,” Blaine says, pointing at him.
Henry holds his hands up in mock defense. “If Lizzy doesn't care, I certainly don't.”
“Lizzy?” Burt mouths to Carole, who just pats him on the arm.
*
“'While I kept waiting, in vain it turns out, for this theatrical atrocity to descend to a level of kitsch that could at least provide some Rocky Horror-esque joy, there was one bright spot: Kurt Hummel in a brief, and admittedly inexplicable, turn as Persephone. With a remarkable range and a stage presence that's both terrifying and oddly vulnerable, Hummel graces the show with its only moments not only of adequacy, but of transcendence,'” Blaine reads once Kurt has a moment to stop by their table.
“Oh my god,” he says, and drops into a chair.
“Wait, wait, you have to hear the other one,” Blaine says, still giddy.
“They're all going to hate me,” Kurt wails.
“What?”
“Everyone in the show! How am I going to face them? Oh my god.”
Blaine doesn't know what to say, and so continues onto the next review. “'If you did buy the all show pass, however, you may want to sit through these 102 minutes of horror if only to experience seven minutes in heaven from Kurt Hummel as Persephone. He sounds like a late-80s Sinead O'Connor filtered through the golden age of Broadway.'”
“I don't even know what that means,” Kurt moans. “And I could have done without the closet make-out game reference. How is this even happening?” He grabs the printouts from Blaine. “How are these real?”
“Do you need a drink?” George asks.
Kurt rolls his eyes. “George?”
“Yes?”
“Shut up.”
“Look, can we come see the show now?” Seanna asks.
“Yes, I guess, I mean... it'll be good to have a house at least,” he says to her before turning to Blaine. “What the fuck do I do?”
“Pretend you haven't seen them; talk about how grateful you are for the opportunity if it comes up; make sure everyone you've ever auditioned for in New York knows.”
“Okay,” he says taking a deep breath. “Okay. I can do this. And I'm at work, and we don't have another show for two days, and there's nothing I can do about it now anyway.”
Blaine nods at him and takes his hand. “Exactly.”
Kurt grabs his face and kisses him hard. “I love you,” he murmurs against his boyfriend's lips. “I couldn't do this without you.”
“You don't have to,” Blaine says softly. “Go sling drinks.”
“Okay.”
“We can do a duet later, if you want?”
Kurt closes his eyes and nods. “Yeah. Good. Thank you,” he says and then he's gone.
Burt gives him an appraising look. “You sure know how to make an entrance, Blaine.”
*
After Kurt's shift, Blaine takes Burt, Carole and him to a late dinner. He orders a bottle of wine, which Kurt feels awkward about in the face of working in a bar, George's drinking, and every uncomfortable dinner he's ever had with Blaine's parents.
But when Blaine raises his glass to him, pausing long enough before he speaks for Kurt's eyes to flit around the low-lit room, it allow him to pretend they are in New York, having dinner while he's jubilantly sweaty and miserable after a show. He shivers.
“Someone walk over your grave?” Carole asks.
Kurt shakes his head and laughs, even though it's a superstition he hates.
“No,” he says, feeling around for words for the sensation. “Maybe someone just walked under my marquee.”
*
“I noticed you haven't paged Rachel, yet,” Blaine says, after they've dropped Burt and Carole off at their hotel and are strolling hand in hand towards the metro.
Kurt shrugs. “It didn't seem important.”
“I thought it was going to.”
“She has her ordeal. I have mine.”
Blaine squeezes his hand. “You should listen to the song I think they were referencing.”
“You know I'm worried if it's in your music collection, right?”
Blaine laughs. “I used to listen to her stuff all the time, before I met you, before Dalton. Lots of want and fear.”
“How'd you find it?”
“I don't even remember anymore.”
Kurt smiles and swings their clasped hands. “These next two years are going to be unbearable,” he says, his voice oddly light.
“It'll be fine,” Blaine says with a chuckle. “Just pretend you're Persephone.”
--
Next: A Little Bit Ruined
Rating: R (barely)
Pairings: Kurt/Blaine
Spoilers (if any): None.
Warnings (if any): None.
Word Count: ~3,800
Summary: Kurt finally gets cast in something. It's not exactly the relief he thought it would be.
Song Notes: The song that Blaine thinks the reviewer is referencing in regard to Kurt is Sinead O'Connor's "Just Like U Said It Would B." I originally wanted to have Kurt sing it in one of these stories, and decided that he would never sing something that used the word "lover" so many times. For anyone not actually familiar with Oklahoma: "Surrey with the Fringe on Top"
Author Notes: A big thank you to
wordsofastory, who is not a Glee fan but helped come up with Kurt's catch phrases about the show he finds himself cast in the course of this story.Boston: Following Home | These Thousand Names for Gratitude | All the Honesty of Politics | Circles as the Dark Winds Down | The Distance Between Ohio and Boston | All the Pretty Little Horses | Languages You Don't Even Know | Fauna and Flora | Where Water Doesn't Speak | Under Glass We Are Expected to Blossom | You Were Someone Else Before We Came Here
D.C.: Strategies and Tactics | The Many Shades of Sugar | When Sea Levels Rise | The History of Sand
Two weeks after they get back from the beach, Rachel calls, crying. She's been cast in a tour and so Kurt assumes the tears are happy ones.
They aren't.
“It's children's theater, Kurt. Three months, playing an eight-year-old, driving around with six people in a van. I will, of course, bring excellence and a certain remarkable je ne sais quoi to the role, but I'm going to hate every single minute of it.”
“But it's real professional theater --”
“Of course.”
“And you get to sing.”
“I'm the lead.”
“And your card?”
“Yup.”
“Then congratulations, Rachel,” Kurt says stiffly. “I'm very happy for you.”
*
When Blaine walks through their door that night, Kurt says, without preamble, “Rachel got a tour.”
Blaine's jaw dropping into a grin. “Oh my god.”
Kurt feels terrible that he isn't the same sort of happy for her. “It's children's theater,” he adds, with a vicious little thrill.
Blaine freezes, his whole demeanor shifting and tensing like he's trying not to say something terrible. “Really?”
“She was in tears when she called.”
“Happy tears?”
“Oh no.”
“Oh my,” Blaine says, putting his bag down and cautiously sitting next to Kurt on the couch. “How do you feel about it?” He brushes his fingers through Kurt's hair as he asks.
“I wish I'd been nicer on the phone, but mostly I'm trying not to feel anything at all.”
*
Kurt cannot believe Blaine thinks a combined audition for the Fringe Fest is somehow the answer to Rachel getting her fucking Equity card before he does.
“I just feel like everything I try for is a step back from the previous thing, and I'm still not getting it anyway and I don't even....” He breaks off with a noise of frustration. It's taken him a day to freak out about this, but now that he has, he can't stop.
Blaine resists the urge to tell Kurt to calm down, knowing it won't end well. Instead, he tries “You're so funny,” fondly, which isn't better and is possibly worse.
“Thank you, Blaine. That's an incredibly helpful expression of support,” Kurt snaps.
Blaine sighs. “Just listen to me for a second. You're rational about everything from your dance skills to our --”
“Don't say it; we are not engaged -- ”
“And yet you still want your first job to be on Broadway, and I don't get it. You're already working as a performer; but you have a nearly blank resume, which doesn't, by the way, say “discover me,” to a casting director.”
“Like you would know,” Kurt spits out viciously.
They each reel back from it, Kurt flailing his hands and trying to apologize almost instantly.
“I didn't mean --”
Blaine scratches at the back of his neck for a moment and then holds up his hand. “No, you did. And I can either defend my choices or point out that my resume is still longer than yours, but mostly I want to not fucking fight with you and not have to watch your talent stay hidden because you keep chasing after the wrong things.”
“But what if I want to fight with you?”
“Yeah, well,” Blaine says, levering himself off the couch and yanking off the tie Kurt had looped around that morning. “Me too. But, unlike you, I know I can't always get what I want.” He goes out onto their deck because he made a promise once never to storm out of the house again; it doesn't stop him from slamming the door.
*
That night, Blaine goes to bed early. When Kurt joins him, he slips an arm around his boyfriend's waist, pressing his face into the space between his shoulder blades. Kurt is still terrible at apologies, but this is, for him, what passes as one.
“Here's what you don't understand,” Blaine says covering Kurt's hand on his belly with his own. “When you sing, especially lately, you are terrifying and miraculous. And when I sing, it makes people smile. I'm a good performer, Kurt, but it's not the most important thing I can do. So I need you to stop acting like that's a betrayal.”
“Is that easier to say when you're not looking at me?”
“Yes.”
“Making people smile matters,” Kurt mumbles into Blaine's back, as if he's embarrassed.
“Sure. But not enough.”
“It saved my life.”
Blaine smiles wanly and squeezes Kurt's hand. “I will always sing with you, anywhere and anywhen you want. But that's about you now, and not the world. I need you to start forgiving me for that.”
Kurt doesn't say anything for a long time. “I'm not angry at you,” he says softly.
“Then what happened earlier?”
Kurt rolls onto his back, unsure of how to explain himself. “What's your first language?” he asks, abruptly.
“Kurt –”
“Singing. Singing is my first language. And I always want to think it's yours too, Blaine, so the idea of you giving that up is wrong and creepy and terrifying and makes me think of the worst of this shit with your dad. It's how you speak; it's how you speak to me, and I can't....”
Blaine shushes him, turning over to gather him up. It's so strange, because Kurt isn't only taller than him, but broader across the shoulders despite all his willowy grace; it's been so long since he's crumbled like this. “I'm right here.”
“I just....”
“I know. Just breathe with me for a little bit.”
Eventually, Kurt quiets, the trembling that never quite gets to tears subsiding, and into the dark and silence Blaine says, “It isn't.”
“What?” Kurt asks.
“My first language. Singing. It's not –”
“Then what?”
“Pleasing people,” Blaine says softly, like he's a little bit ashamed. “When I was a baby, I never cried when my parents took me restaurants, apparently. My mother says I never wanted to upset anyone.”
“So well mannered,” Kurt snarks, trying for humor only because he is deeply unnerved.
“Do you think it's possible to worry about disappointing people at six-months-old? I've always thought my father hated it, that I didn't wail to show the world how strong his son was.”
Kurt hugs Blaine tightly. Before they'd met, he would have said no.
*
The hangover from that conversation lasts for two days, until Kurt fucks Blaine in the too early morning hard enough that their headboard actually bangs against the wall, stuttering a laugh out of him even as Kurt's buried inside him.
In the afterglow, Kurt tugs on Blaine's lower lip with his fingers until he convinces him to call in sick to his internship. When he complies, they stay in bed until noon, Kurt finally rolling out from between their filthy sheets to go to the audition he doesn't really care about but that Blaine seems invested in on his behalf.
*
Only a fraction of the shows are anything resembling musicals at all. But after he sings his standard sixteen bars of cheerful Broadway, one of the auditors, and there are a lot of auditors, says, “Okay, now sing something unsettling.”
Kurt stops himself from rolling his eyes, takes a deep breath, and tries to think as little as possible before launching into “Cosmic Love” because Henry and Blaine have both said he should. He's shaking by the time he's done, and on his way to work at the bar calls Alex in Rome and sings it to her softly.
*
“Callback!” Kurt squeals when he gets home that night, waving his phone where the email is still up on his screen at Blaine.
“I knew it!”
“Fine, yes, you are right about everything. Ask me what it is,” Kurt says, vibrating as he practically sings out the words.
“What is it?”
“Musical adaptation of Orpheus and Eurydice! I am going to get this, Blaine, I am so going to get this.”
Blaine gives him a besotted smile, and Kurt wants to point out that this, keeping them both happy, is why his success means everything.
*
At his call-back time, Kurt's the only boy there, and smugly he thinks he's already been cast as Orpheus and is just there to find his Eurydice, until the director pulls him aside. He tells him he's actually being auditioned for Persephone, and assures him that if he does cast him, it won't be a drag role, just Kurt as he is, all shoulders and slim hips, playing a girl once stolen and risen low.
Kurt wants to scream in frustration, and when he and the women he is competing against are asked to improvise first vocally and then with movement, Kurt does not hesitate to invade their space. It is, he knows, probably rude and unprofessional, but it's what he would have done in New Directions, and if he's honest, it feels good, even if only one of them really understands that for all Kurt's barely concealed anger, nothing he's doing is anything but play.
*
He gets the part, announcing it to Blaine when he finds out by calling him at work and saying, “I'm the Queen of Hell!”
“Best interruption to a policy briefing, EVER,” Blaine whispers into his phone in response, slouching in his chair at the back of the room.
*
Blaine's giddy for him, until their celebratory dinner, when he goes off on a tangent about the lack of powerful roles for women in the theater and how it's sort of fucked up that the only person his director thought was powerful enough to play a woman is a man.
Kurt, in response, sets down his glass primly and tries not to smile as he scolds him. “Blaine, I no longer have an empty resume, so this is Not the Time.
Blaine chuckles to himself and nods, and Kurt reaches across the table, taking his hand and squeezing into it a hundred types of love.
*
As rehearsals start, Kurt quickly determines a number of things.
First the show is terrible. Truly awful, in a way that would be hilarious to spork with Blaine if he weren't trapped in the middle of it.
Second, the girl playing Eurydice hates him.
And third, he really, really has to stop his parents from coming to see it, but Blaine seems to be in some sort of conspiracy with them about it, and he just doesn't know how to intercede without making everyone feel bad.
*
“What? Are they making you show your ass?” his father asks when Kurt insists, yet again, that he and Carole, really, really don't need to come out for it.
“Only metaphorically,” Kurt breathes, but it's not enough to deter his father who survived tea parties and New Directions and Pip Pip Hooray, and maybe it won't be so bad.
Blaine tries to reassure him that his single song is good and interesting, and there's a certain charm in being able to say I'm the Queen of Hell, and hey, at least it's not children's theater.
Kurt's more relieved that's it's not a tour. The worst part of being jealous of Rachel means acknowledging that he's willing to leave home. Or worse, wants to. And Blaine needs him so much.
*
“They want me to be in the maenad scene!” Kurt calls as he kicks the front door open, full of disgust two weeks before opening. “I'm the Queen of Hell, why do I have to be in the maenad scene? The maenad scene is awful.”
“I'm sorry,” Blaine says, not knowing what else to do.
“It's not your fault.”
“Somebody died sorry,” Blaine clarifies.
“Oh. Well, that's all right then,” Kurt says and settles himself onto Blaine's lap, willing to be kissed.
*
The show opens in a flurry of false optimism and exhaustion. They are not the hot ticket of the festival and Kurt only sends postcards announcing the performance to a few casting directors in New York who have been moderately interested in him because he knows they won't come see it.
Rachel, pissed at him for not having had time to go up to New York and see her off the week before, sends him a passive-aggressive text message from a three-day stop at a school system in southern New Jersey.
Then Blaine calls an hour-and-a-half before curtain to say that while his parents' plane has arrived safely, their luggage hasn't, and they'll be there as soon as he can.
“Oh my god,” Kurt whispers frantically into the phone. “That's divine. Stall them.”
*
Kurt is jangly before he goes on stage and tries to brace himself for the experience by thinking of Henry's advice to him in email the night before: Screw fitting in to your terrible show. Do what you have to do for you.
Kurt had nodded reading it then, and nods thinking of it now. As he enters, the lights are warm on his face and he thinks of them as a remembrance of the world not off the the stage, but outside the lands of hell. It hurts to think of only being able to rule in dark places.
*
The maenad scene is still terrible, the boy playing Orpheus completely misses a climatic high note, and the severed head special effect provokes barely restrained titters from the audience, but when Kurt steps forward for his solo bow, the audience roars, and it feels real, like more than just Blaine and his father and Carole putting on a brave face for him.
He smiles, and fondly thinks Fuck you, Rachel Berry.
*
They wait in the shitty lobby of the shitty black box theater for Kurt, Blaine holding a giant bouquet of flowers, Burt wringing his hat in his hands and Carole beaming in a way that suggests she's more in touch with the absurdity of it all than any of the men around her.
When Kurt finally comes out, Blaine can tell he's nervous. Part of it is the blush under the faint sheen of glitter that's still high on his cheeks, but mostly it's the body language. He looks smaller, younger, and twists his fingers together in the same manner that Burt is abusing his hat.
“Oh did you guys actually see that?” he asks with an awkward wince as he smoothes a hand over his surprisingly uncooperative hair.
“We did,” Carole assures him.
“I was hoping the plane would be late.”
“You were incredible,” Blaine says, thrusting the flowers at him before gathering Kurt up in a hug that crushes them between their bodies.
Kurt smiles sheepishly at his dad over Blaine's shoulder and then closes his eyes.
“Was I okay?” he whispers to his boyfriend.
“A revelation in a sea of chaos,” Blaine says, before stepping back.
“Dad, hi,” he says, laughing awkwardly then. “Please don't view my aspirations in light of --”
“I have no idea what that was,” Burt says, “but Blaine swears I wasn't supposed to. You were great, kid. Whole audience held its breath. I'm glad I could see it.”
It's this praise, more than any of the rest of it, that convinces Kurt that it really will be okay, and he hugs his father as if he has just returned to the surface of the world.
*
“It's so weird having you here,” Kurt gushes as he shows them around Georgetown, Dupont Circle and the Mall.
His father asks if he is happy when he points out the building with the apartment they couldn't afford on the block he loved.
“I... it's complicated.” Kurt admits, although he tries not to.
“But you and Blaine...,” his father pushes.
“Also hard,” Kurt says, wondering if he should laugh nervously and blush at the accidental double entendre, if that's what it takes to make this conversation he doesn't want to have easier.
“Do you want to talk about it?” Carole asks.
Kurt shakes his head. “I'm struggling a little bit with being here; and he's really ready to be done with school. We'll get through it, and then we'll move to New York and live happily ever after. We've both waited through worse.”
“Ohio,” Burt says, and there's some tinge of anger or guilt there that Kurt can't let himself look at too closely.
“Mmmmmhmmmm,” he agrees with a false, catty and oh so gay smile. “Besides, I love him, and this too will pass. Now where should we eat while I give you two the briefing on the fact that I really, really do work at a bar?”
*
“Best behavior,” Kurt reminds Seanna again, squeezing her shoulders after he sets down drinks for her and Henry, the unavoidable George, and his parents.
“Tell George, not me,” she says.
“You're babysitting,” Kurt says, pointing at her, before dropping his tray at the bar and trotting up to the mic.
“Now,” he declares, “if anyone was looking for something dark and moody from me today? You're out of luck. My parents are here, and I'm busy being the Queen of Hell over at the Fringe, so light and airy's all I got in me right now. Can we survive that?”
The late-afternoon crowd makes some obligatory noises of agreement, spurred on by his friends and Carole.
“Fabulous,” Kurt says, and launches into “Surry with the Fringe on Top.”
“Sometimes, it's almost weird hearing him sing boy songs,” Burt notes.
“Oh, you haven't heard weird until you hear Blaine's song choices,” Henry says.
Burt laughs. “Oh, I know all about Blaine's terrible song choices. Did he ever tell you what he did to the boy he was chasing before Kurt?”
*
Sometime after seven, Blaine comes bounding into the bar from his internship, waving to Kurt, kissing Carole on the cheek, and slapping a several pieces of paper down in the center of their table.
“Reviews!” he says, giddy.
“Wait,” George drawls. “Kurt said we weren't allowed to come see the show because it's embarrassingly terrible, but you're allowed to bring reviews? I feel confusion and the need for more gin.”
“The show is terrible, but Kurt is amazing and the reviews agree,” Blaine says, slightly breathless.
“Wait, were you just totally at work late because you were vanity Googling your boyfriend?” Seanna asks.
“No, I have an alert set up.”
“Because that isn't creepy,” Henry says under his breath.
“Don't start,” Blaine says, pointing at him.
Henry holds his hands up in mock defense. “If Lizzy doesn't care, I certainly don't.”
“Lizzy?” Burt mouths to Carole, who just pats him on the arm.
*
“'While I kept waiting, in vain it turns out, for this theatrical atrocity to descend to a level of kitsch that could at least provide some Rocky Horror-esque joy, there was one bright spot: Kurt Hummel in a brief, and admittedly inexplicable, turn as Persephone. With a remarkable range and a stage presence that's both terrifying and oddly vulnerable, Hummel graces the show with its only moments not only of adequacy, but of transcendence,'” Blaine reads once Kurt has a moment to stop by their table.
“Oh my god,” he says, and drops into a chair.
“Wait, wait, you have to hear the other one,” Blaine says, still giddy.
“They're all going to hate me,” Kurt wails.
“What?”
“Everyone in the show! How am I going to face them? Oh my god.”
Blaine doesn't know what to say, and so continues onto the next review. “'If you did buy the all show pass, however, you may want to sit through these 102 minutes of horror if only to experience seven minutes in heaven from Kurt Hummel as Persephone. He sounds like a late-80s Sinead O'Connor filtered through the golden age of Broadway.'”
“I don't even know what that means,” Kurt moans. “And I could have done without the closet make-out game reference. How is this even happening?” He grabs the printouts from Blaine. “How are these real?”
“Do you need a drink?” George asks.
Kurt rolls his eyes. “George?”
“Yes?”
“Shut up.”
“Look, can we come see the show now?” Seanna asks.
“Yes, I guess, I mean... it'll be good to have a house at least,” he says to her before turning to Blaine. “What the fuck do I do?”
“Pretend you haven't seen them; talk about how grateful you are for the opportunity if it comes up; make sure everyone you've ever auditioned for in New York knows.”
“Okay,” he says taking a deep breath. “Okay. I can do this. And I'm at work, and we don't have another show for two days, and there's nothing I can do about it now anyway.”
Blaine nods at him and takes his hand. “Exactly.”
Kurt grabs his face and kisses him hard. “I love you,” he murmurs against his boyfriend's lips. “I couldn't do this without you.”
“You don't have to,” Blaine says softly. “Go sling drinks.”
“Okay.”
“We can do a duet later, if you want?”
Kurt closes his eyes and nods. “Yeah. Good. Thank you,” he says and then he's gone.
Burt gives him an appraising look. “You sure know how to make an entrance, Blaine.”
*
After Kurt's shift, Blaine takes Burt, Carole and him to a late dinner. He orders a bottle of wine, which Kurt feels awkward about in the face of working in a bar, George's drinking, and every uncomfortable dinner he's ever had with Blaine's parents.
But when Blaine raises his glass to him, pausing long enough before he speaks for Kurt's eyes to flit around the low-lit room, it allow him to pretend they are in New York, having dinner while he's jubilantly sweaty and miserable after a show. He shivers.
“Someone walk over your grave?” Carole asks.
Kurt shakes his head and laughs, even though it's a superstition he hates.
“No,” he says, feeling around for words for the sensation. “Maybe someone just walked under my marquee.”
*
“I noticed you haven't paged Rachel, yet,” Blaine says, after they've dropped Burt and Carole off at their hotel and are strolling hand in hand towards the metro.
Kurt shrugs. “It didn't seem important.”
“I thought it was going to.”
“She has her ordeal. I have mine.”
Blaine squeezes his hand. “You should listen to the song I think they were referencing.”
“You know I'm worried if it's in your music collection, right?”
Blaine laughs. “I used to listen to her stuff all the time, before I met you, before Dalton. Lots of want and fear.”
“How'd you find it?”
“I don't even remember anymore.”
Kurt smiles and swings their clasped hands. “These next two years are going to be unbearable,” he says, his voice oddly light.
“It'll be fine,” Blaine says with a chuckle. “Just pretend you're Persephone.”
--
Next: A Little Bit Ruined
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Date: 2011-09-23 10:00 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-10-09 07:55 am (UTC)