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rmTitle: A Little Bit Ruined
Rating: NC-17
Pairings/Characters: Kurt/Blaine, Rachel
Spoilers (if any): None.
Warnings (if any): None.
Word Count: ~2,900
Summary: Rachel comes to visit.
Author's notes: This was begun at the end of S2. Some things in canon have changed since then. When we get new info in S3 that I can incorporate into this universe without contradicting what I've already done here, I will use it, but otherwise, I'm just ignoring lots of things. No overt S3 spoilers at present, but I am thinking about S3 content as I write forward, even if this isn't compliant with large chunks of it.
Song Notes: Kurt's nasty song for bachelorette parties is Emilie Autumn's "Marry Me." What Kurt means by "werewolves" is the Echo's Children version of "Least of My Kind" which I could only find as part of this fan vid. For the odd number of readers I have who actually don't watch Glee, the mashup that Kurt and Rachel sing is here. Finally, the ridiculous bullfighting song is Marc Almond's "Torreador in the Rain".
The series so far:
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 | Tales of Minor Gods
Rachel calls on a Tuesday evening when Kurt's unhappily serving drinks to a bachelorette party that keeps telling him he's adorable and beseeching him to sing “something gay.”
The tour, she says – her van, Kurt thinks a little viciously – is headed to Richmond, and after, they have a whole forty-nine hours off.
“Can I come stay with you? I mean, I'm not supposed to, but they're all planning all sorts of irresponsibility, and if I'm getting fired from this tour, I'd far rather it be for visiting you than for not stopping them from having a drunken orgy in the costumes.”
“Rachel,” Kurt says firmly. “I have my own unpleasant alcoholics to deal with right now. Can I call you back?”
“I just need to get away,” she whines.
“Fine,” Kurt snaps. “Work it out with Blaine,” he says, shoving his phone at his boyfriend as his swings his hips past the Kurt Hummel cheering section, plunks his tray down on the bar and heads to the mic armed with the vicious little song he sings for all the bachelorettes.
He used to feel bad about the self-indulgence of it, but that was before Blaine pointed out that straight people insisting on performances in congratulations of something the performers can't actually do is rude.
*
“So, Rachel's coming to stay,” Blaine says as he starts the car to drive them home.
“I didn't think you'd tell her no.”
“Is this going to make you crazy?”
“I can't imagine why you'd think that. She's going to weep about her tour, hog our piano and upstage me at work. Honestly, it sounds perfect,” Kurt says with less bite than he could.
“So you're braced then?” Blaine chuckles.
“So braced.”
*
As Kurt sits in their car waiting for Rachel at the bus station Friday afternoon, he drums his hands on the steering wheel and thinks about all the times Blaine has sucked him off in this parking lot in the dark. It looks different in the light, more sordid and less desperate, and Kurt has one of those moments where his chest aches with how much love he's in.
Of course, Rachel, in jeans and a sweatshirt and carrying a hiker's backpack, interrupts by knocking on his window. Kurt hits the button to roll it down.
“Running away from home, little girl?” he asks, cracking himself up as he does it.
“Only with you,” she says.
*
When Blaine gets home, Rachel's sprawled across their couch and Kurt is sitting at the piano, randomly plonking away. There's a melody there, but he seems to be only playing every third phrase of it; Blaine chalks that up both to Rachel's presence and Kurt's general lack of love for the piano as anything but a tool. He always, always, prefers to have someone else play for him, and Blaine has always been happy to oblige.
“What are you working on?” he asks, as he sets his bag down and gives Kurt a kiss.
“I'm not, really. But werewolves, vaguely.”
“Ah, werewolves,” Blaine says. Halloween, like bachelorette parties, is another one of those things that piano bars apparently just have to be prepared for.
“Life,” Rachel says, announces as she stares at the ceiling, having completely ignored their exchange.
“How's that going?”
“I've run away from a children's theater tour in Richmond, Virginia to sleep on your couch, how do you think?”
“She's just bitter because I'm not willing to sit up all night braiding her hair and talking about boys,” Kurt says.
“You can, if you want.”
“You just want to know what we'd say about you,” Rachel teases.
“Yeah, pretty much,” Blaine says cheerfully. “So are we cooking or is this a takeout thing?”
*
“I don't want to go back,” Rachel says five hours later as the three of them sit on the floor surrounded by a sea of Chinese food containers. Blaine is painting her nails the required tour baby pink, and Kurt's just watching the whole thing incredulously. Occasionally the variety of modes to Blaine's homosexuality still surprises him.
“That would be a very, very stupid life choice,” Kurt says.
“You don't understand --”
“I understand Equity card, Rachel.”
“It wasn't supposed to be like this! And everyone in my van --”
“Your tour,” he corrects.
“My van,” she snaps back, “hates me.”
“Kurt isn't supposed to be living in DC, either,” Blaine says softly, setting down her left hand as he finishes it and picks up her right.
“That's different,” she says sullenly.
“Really, how's that?” Kurt asks, full of assumptions and preemptively angry.
Blaine shifts back slightly so that when they start inevitably yelling at each other and someone has a diva storm-out he doesn't accidentally wind up with nail polish all over his jeans.
“You have a reason to wait,” Rachel says, “I don't.”
Blaine doesn't look up from her nails, continuing to brush the color gently over them like she's really the child she's playing in her show.
“He's not waiting,” he says firmly before she and Kurt can start in on a vicious rehash of high school. “If he got a tour, he'd go. If he got a gig in New York, he'd go. He wouldn't be running himself into the ground the way he is if we weren't prepared for him to take opportunity when it comes.”
“But how can you do that?” she asks.
“We know what we signed up for,” Kurt says, his voice firm and harsh, because he and Blaine have never, actually discussed this before. It's been understood, of course, but it feels different, in that great and terrible way people generally use for god, to hear it.
“I'm sorry that you're lonely, Rachel,” Blaine says softly.
“Don't cry,” Kurt says as she's about to. “You'll start trembling, and he'll mess your nails”
“It's true,” he admits congenially. “Less practice.”
*
“Well, that felt like my good deed for the year,” Blaine says softly when they're in bed, Kurt in his nicest pajamas because they have a guest lurking in their living room.
“I'm worried about her,” Kurt says.
“Yeah, well. She's having a time of it right now.”
“I don't think she's been happy since home.”
“That's because she hasn't found another one,” Blaine says, snuggling into Kurt's arms.
Kurt chuckles and runs his fingers through his curls. “What would you do, really, if I got a can't say no sort of something?”
“I survived Rome,” Blaine says a little defensively.
“You also survived Shanghai,” Kurt teases.
“I think... I think I do better when I'm the one staying.”
“Okay,” Kurt says. “Because I'd worry. Not about us. But you. I see it, you know.”
“What?”
“The way you hold your breath in the face of pretty much everything.”
“It's getting better.”
“That is also true,” Kurt says, kissing the top of his head.
“There's no way you're willing to have sex with her in the other room is there?” Blaine asks, partly as a diversionary tactic and partly because he just feels like he needs the closeness and obliteration of it.
“Not on your life.”
*
When Kurt gets up in the night, he finds Rachel on the couch, staring into the dark.
“Are you okay?” she asks.
He shrugs. “Blaine sleeps like the dead. I don't,” he says, padding into the kitchen to heat up some milk.
“What woke you up?” she asks, and Kurt wonders if she, in typical Rachel fashion, somehow thinks it was her.
“Blaine snores a little, you know?” he says, not sure why he's talking about it. “And his breath catches sometimes, like... he just stops. For a moment. It wakes me up.”
“Oh.”
“Yeah. Oh. Did you want milk?”
“Does that actually help?”
“Not really, but it gives me something to do.”
*
They wind up sitting on the couch, each of them leaning back against an arm and facing each other, having what Kurt thinks is the most intimate conversation he's ever had with her. He doesn't know what to do with the fact that she's never checked to see if someone is still breathing in the night, and she wonders (aloud, to him, finally) if he finds it weird to think that he'll never sleep with anyone other than Blaine.
“Mostly I'm just very, very grateful,” he says.
“You should be.”
“Not just because he's him.”
She makes a face at him to go on, knowing he already intends to tell.
“I find people very hard, like I could poison most of them by touching. I've never really gotten over that. And I'm not sure I can.”
“You never worried about touching me.”
“You were already poisoned.”
*
“What's going on?” Blaine asks sleepily as he leans in the bedroom door and startles the both.”
“Go back to sleep, sweetie,” Kurt says. “Rachel and I are chatting; I'll be in soon, okay?”
“Okay,” he says, nodding and scrubbing at his face before turning and closing the door behind him.
“That's adorable,” Rachel says.
Kurt shrugs. “I feel bad. Me not being there is really the only thing that gets him up in the night.”
“God,” she says.
“What?”
“Finn was always like, 'You're too warm, get away; oh wait, boobs.'”
“Wow, I never needed to know that.”
*
“You okay?” Blaine murmurs when Kurt gets back in bed.
“Nothing other than the usual,” Kurt says as Blaine shifts into his side and lays a hand on his chest.
Kurt takes it in his own and slips it up under his pajama top, pressing it over bare skin.
“Invitation?” Blaine asks.
Kurt makes a non-committal sound. “Rachel's still in the next room. And you're half asleep.”
“Nothing she'll hear then,” he says and drags his hand down, pausing at the waistband of Kurt's pajamas.
Normally he would just say no, but Kurt's heart feels a little raw and so he gives up and shoves his pajama bottoms down; he seriously doubts Blaine's awake enough to be of any real help beyond the obvious.
“Come're,” he murmurs then, pulling Blaine's dick out of his boxers and taking it in hand with his own.
“God,” Blaine rasps.
“Shhhhhh,” Kurt reminds him.
“I really needed this,” he says.
“I know. Me too. Quiet now,”
It's awkward and dry and Kurt's half holding his breath because Rachel, but Blaine comes first and fast and then wakes up enough to finish off him off, the pads of his fingers twisting over the head of Kurt's cock in a ridiculously overwhelming way.
“Shit,” Kurt breathes as he spurts over Blaine's hand, his boyfriend laughing at him warmly.
“Tell me you have the energy to clean us up,” Kurt, now laughing himself, gasps. “Because I do not.”
“Sorry,” Blaine says, shaking his head. “But you're going to have to sleep in pornographic filth.”
*
In the morning, they take Rachel, who makes no indication she heard anything in the night, to breakfast. Her smile doesn't even seem forced when Kurt informs her she'll be joining his motley crew of assorted fans and hangers on at the bar that evening.
“Truly,” Kurt says, and explains not about George, but about how he pretty much destroyed Blaine's chances of having any appropriate grad school friendships.
Rachel cackles through the whole tale because it's a good story and Kurt tells it well, but Blaine can see the way she's pained in the creases by her eyes, and when Kurt excuses himself to the restroom, he tells her as much.
“Kurt's always had a sense of humor about ruining things,” she says.
“Maybe Kurt just knows they were already a little bit ruined before he got there.”
She wonders if she should tell Blaine about the poison.
*
“Tonight is a very special occasion,” Kurt says, leaning into the mic and bouncing on his toes at the opening of his first three song set. “My best friend in the whole world is here on leave without absence from a children's theater tour.”
There's a gasp from a table in the back left. Kurt points at them. “Professional actors?” he asks, and gets a nod, which he returns enthusiastically.
“Professional actors,” he confirms for the room. “They know. They're not gasping because my friend ran away; they're gasping because she has just run away from hell. Tragically, however, we have to send her back in the morning. But! One day she's going to belong to Broadway, and all of you – and a significant minority of eight-year-olds on the eastern seaboard – will have heard her first. Rachel, get your booty up here.”
There are whoops and catcalls for her as she goes. Some of it, of course, comes from their friends, but some of it is just the product of a rowdy bar on a Saturday night.
“Hi,” she says sheepishly into the mic. “Kurt and I went to high school together.”
“Rachel has two dads,” Kurt explains.
“And his voice is the only real competition I've ever had.”
“You think you remember this?” he asks her after nodding to the pianist to start.
“You did warn me!” she says indignantly.
Kurt sighs and tsks into the microphone. “She's not used to the patter yet,” he says, before taking a breath and beginning his part. When Rachel comes in, under and then over him, flawless and gentle, he knows they've sold it and so he sings every note just for the pure round pleasure of it.
When the applause comes, his friends banging on their table and cheering, Kurt smirks, so pleased with himself. “Rachel Berry, everyone. When she becomes a star, remember you heard her here first.”
Rachel goes up on her toes, throws her arms around his neck, and picks one foot off the floor, the whole hug an expression of happiness clearly learned from movies.
Kurt kisses her forehead. “Go sit. I have to sing a ridiculous bullfighting song now. You can fight with the rest of our fine patrons for more mic time when I'm done.”
*
When Kurt finally has a moment to drop down at their table near the end of what has proved to be a very busy and he thinks lucrative night, George is braiding Rachel's hair and Rachel is insisting that Henry must be bisexual.
“Well this is awkward,” Kurt declares as he settles himself onto Blaine's lap.
“You should have seen it earlier,” Seanna notes.
“I don't want to know.”
“Just because no one can resist Lizzy's charms doesn't mean I want to suck his dick.”
“Oh. My. God,” Kurt says.
Kate pats his shoulder sympathetically.
“Can't I just have friends,” Kurt asks, his voice far more tinged with hysteria than he means it to be, “without it being about what I do and don't do to them?”
Blaine tightens his arms around his waist.
“You do,” Henry says, reaching for Kurt's hand. “You totally do.”
“Thank you,” he says.
“Sorry, Kurt, I didn't mean --” Rachel starts.
He lets go of Henry's hands and waves her apology away. “You never do,” he says, before leaning over to kiss the tip of her nose. “Poison too,” he whispers at her when her face is just millimeters from his.
Blessedly, she smiles.
*
In the morning, Kurt takes her and her runaway pack back to the bus station.
“Blaine always drops me off here, when I go up to New York,” he says.
“That's sweet of him,” she says, her voice awkward in anticipation of whatever point Kurt is trying to make.
“It screws up his sleep schedule and makes me feel guilty. When he first started doing it, I thought it was because he was terrified I wouldn't come back.”
“Isn't he?”
“Yeah. He probably is. But eventually, I figured out that he also does it so that when I finally get a yes, I will absolutely know that he was the last person to see me as I once was.”
Rachel smiles at him, full of wonder.
Kurt nods at her and then kisses her cheek. “All right, go get your bus. You don't want to be late, Rachel Berry.”
“My fans are waiting?” she teases, but Kurt just nods.
“They are,” he says. “They are.”
*
When he gets home, Blaine's sitting up in bed reading.
“What's this?” Kurt asks.
“I knew you wanted to come back to bed, but I figured that meant with me in it.”
Kurt shakes his head, but shucks off his shirt and then climbs in next to him.
“Thanks for being so good with Rachel this weekend.”
“She was kind of intense,” Blaine admits.
“Did you expect something different?” Kurt asks, honestly curious.
“I expected it to have less meaning.”
“Yeah. I get that.”
“You still jealous?” Blaine asks turning onto his side.
“Of her Equity card? Sure. Would I trade places with her? Not for a second.”
“You would never get a yes and not tell me, right?” Blaine asks after a long silence.
Kurt peers at him curiously, fascinated that anyone could have that much faith and fear in him. “Of course not,” he says, still startled. It doesn't help that it's a little bit harder to say than he anticipated.
But Blaine just gives him an easy grin and a gentle kiss. “Good,” he says. Good, and Kurt feels like he's taking his first breath.
Rating: NC-17
Pairings/Characters: Kurt/Blaine, Rachel
Spoilers (if any): None.
Warnings (if any): None.
Word Count: ~2,900
Summary: Rachel comes to visit.
Author's notes: This was begun at the end of S2. Some things in canon have changed since then. When we get new info in S3 that I can incorporate into this universe without contradicting what I've already done here, I will use it, but otherwise, I'm just ignoring lots of things. No overt S3 spoilers at present, but I am thinking about S3 content as I write forward, even if this isn't compliant with large chunks of it.
Song Notes: Kurt's nasty song for bachelorette parties is Emilie Autumn's "Marry Me." What Kurt means by "werewolves" is the Echo's Children version of "Least of My Kind" which I could only find as part of this fan vid. For the odd number of readers I have who actually don't watch Glee, the mashup that Kurt and Rachel sing is here. Finally, the ridiculous bullfighting song is Marc Almond's "Torreador in the Rain".
The series so far:
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 | Tales of Minor Gods
Rachel calls on a Tuesday evening when Kurt's unhappily serving drinks to a bachelorette party that keeps telling him he's adorable and beseeching him to sing “something gay.”
The tour, she says – her van, Kurt thinks a little viciously – is headed to Richmond, and after, they have a whole forty-nine hours off.
“Can I come stay with you? I mean, I'm not supposed to, but they're all planning all sorts of irresponsibility, and if I'm getting fired from this tour, I'd far rather it be for visiting you than for not stopping them from having a drunken orgy in the costumes.”
“Rachel,” Kurt says firmly. “I have my own unpleasant alcoholics to deal with right now. Can I call you back?”
“I just need to get away,” she whines.
“Fine,” Kurt snaps. “Work it out with Blaine,” he says, shoving his phone at his boyfriend as his swings his hips past the Kurt Hummel cheering section, plunks his tray down on the bar and heads to the mic armed with the vicious little song he sings for all the bachelorettes.
He used to feel bad about the self-indulgence of it, but that was before Blaine pointed out that straight people insisting on performances in congratulations of something the performers can't actually do is rude.
*
“So, Rachel's coming to stay,” Blaine says as he starts the car to drive them home.
“I didn't think you'd tell her no.”
“Is this going to make you crazy?”
“I can't imagine why you'd think that. She's going to weep about her tour, hog our piano and upstage me at work. Honestly, it sounds perfect,” Kurt says with less bite than he could.
“So you're braced then?” Blaine chuckles.
“So braced.”
*
As Kurt sits in their car waiting for Rachel at the bus station Friday afternoon, he drums his hands on the steering wheel and thinks about all the times Blaine has sucked him off in this parking lot in the dark. It looks different in the light, more sordid and less desperate, and Kurt has one of those moments where his chest aches with how much love he's in.
Of course, Rachel, in jeans and a sweatshirt and carrying a hiker's backpack, interrupts by knocking on his window. Kurt hits the button to roll it down.
“Running away from home, little girl?” he asks, cracking himself up as he does it.
“Only with you,” she says.
*
When Blaine gets home, Rachel's sprawled across their couch and Kurt is sitting at the piano, randomly plonking away. There's a melody there, but he seems to be only playing every third phrase of it; Blaine chalks that up both to Rachel's presence and Kurt's general lack of love for the piano as anything but a tool. He always, always, prefers to have someone else play for him, and Blaine has always been happy to oblige.
“What are you working on?” he asks, as he sets his bag down and gives Kurt a kiss.
“I'm not, really. But werewolves, vaguely.”
“Ah, werewolves,” Blaine says. Halloween, like bachelorette parties, is another one of those things that piano bars apparently just have to be prepared for.
“Life,” Rachel says, announces as she stares at the ceiling, having completely ignored their exchange.
“How's that going?”
“I've run away from a children's theater tour in Richmond, Virginia to sleep on your couch, how do you think?”
“She's just bitter because I'm not willing to sit up all night braiding her hair and talking about boys,” Kurt says.
“You can, if you want.”
“You just want to know what we'd say about you,” Rachel teases.
“Yeah, pretty much,” Blaine says cheerfully. “So are we cooking or is this a takeout thing?”
*
“I don't want to go back,” Rachel says five hours later as the three of them sit on the floor surrounded by a sea of Chinese food containers. Blaine is painting her nails the required tour baby pink, and Kurt's just watching the whole thing incredulously. Occasionally the variety of modes to Blaine's homosexuality still surprises him.
“That would be a very, very stupid life choice,” Kurt says.
“You don't understand --”
“I understand Equity card, Rachel.”
“It wasn't supposed to be like this! And everyone in my van --”
“Your tour,” he corrects.
“My van,” she snaps back, “hates me.”
“Kurt isn't supposed to be living in DC, either,” Blaine says softly, setting down her left hand as he finishes it and picks up her right.
“That's different,” she says sullenly.
“Really, how's that?” Kurt asks, full of assumptions and preemptively angry.
Blaine shifts back slightly so that when they start inevitably yelling at each other and someone has a diva storm-out he doesn't accidentally wind up with nail polish all over his jeans.
“You have a reason to wait,” Rachel says, “I don't.”
Blaine doesn't look up from her nails, continuing to brush the color gently over them like she's really the child she's playing in her show.
“He's not waiting,” he says firmly before she and Kurt can start in on a vicious rehash of high school. “If he got a tour, he'd go. If he got a gig in New York, he'd go. He wouldn't be running himself into the ground the way he is if we weren't prepared for him to take opportunity when it comes.”
“But how can you do that?” she asks.
“We know what we signed up for,” Kurt says, his voice firm and harsh, because he and Blaine have never, actually discussed this before. It's been understood, of course, but it feels different, in that great and terrible way people generally use for god, to hear it.
“I'm sorry that you're lonely, Rachel,” Blaine says softly.
“Don't cry,” Kurt says as she's about to. “You'll start trembling, and he'll mess your nails”
“It's true,” he admits congenially. “Less practice.”
*
“Well, that felt like my good deed for the year,” Blaine says softly when they're in bed, Kurt in his nicest pajamas because they have a guest lurking in their living room.
“I'm worried about her,” Kurt says.
“Yeah, well. She's having a time of it right now.”
“I don't think she's been happy since home.”
“That's because she hasn't found another one,” Blaine says, snuggling into Kurt's arms.
Kurt chuckles and runs his fingers through his curls. “What would you do, really, if I got a can't say no sort of something?”
“I survived Rome,” Blaine says a little defensively.
“You also survived Shanghai,” Kurt teases.
“I think... I think I do better when I'm the one staying.”
“Okay,” Kurt says. “Because I'd worry. Not about us. But you. I see it, you know.”
“What?”
“The way you hold your breath in the face of pretty much everything.”
“It's getting better.”
“That is also true,” Kurt says, kissing the top of his head.
“There's no way you're willing to have sex with her in the other room is there?” Blaine asks, partly as a diversionary tactic and partly because he just feels like he needs the closeness and obliteration of it.
“Not on your life.”
*
When Kurt gets up in the night, he finds Rachel on the couch, staring into the dark.
“Are you okay?” she asks.
He shrugs. “Blaine sleeps like the dead. I don't,” he says, padding into the kitchen to heat up some milk.
“What woke you up?” she asks, and Kurt wonders if she, in typical Rachel fashion, somehow thinks it was her.
“Blaine snores a little, you know?” he says, not sure why he's talking about it. “And his breath catches sometimes, like... he just stops. For a moment. It wakes me up.”
“Oh.”
“Yeah. Oh. Did you want milk?”
“Does that actually help?”
“Not really, but it gives me something to do.”
*
They wind up sitting on the couch, each of them leaning back against an arm and facing each other, having what Kurt thinks is the most intimate conversation he's ever had with her. He doesn't know what to do with the fact that she's never checked to see if someone is still breathing in the night, and she wonders (aloud, to him, finally) if he finds it weird to think that he'll never sleep with anyone other than Blaine.
“Mostly I'm just very, very grateful,” he says.
“You should be.”
“Not just because he's him.”
She makes a face at him to go on, knowing he already intends to tell.
“I find people very hard, like I could poison most of them by touching. I've never really gotten over that. And I'm not sure I can.”
“You never worried about touching me.”
“You were already poisoned.”
*
“What's going on?” Blaine asks sleepily as he leans in the bedroom door and startles the both.”
“Go back to sleep, sweetie,” Kurt says. “Rachel and I are chatting; I'll be in soon, okay?”
“Okay,” he says, nodding and scrubbing at his face before turning and closing the door behind him.
“That's adorable,” Rachel says.
Kurt shrugs. “I feel bad. Me not being there is really the only thing that gets him up in the night.”
“God,” she says.
“What?”
“Finn was always like, 'You're too warm, get away; oh wait, boobs.'”
“Wow, I never needed to know that.”
*
“You okay?” Blaine murmurs when Kurt gets back in bed.
“Nothing other than the usual,” Kurt says as Blaine shifts into his side and lays a hand on his chest.
Kurt takes it in his own and slips it up under his pajama top, pressing it over bare skin.
“Invitation?” Blaine asks.
Kurt makes a non-committal sound. “Rachel's still in the next room. And you're half asleep.”
“Nothing she'll hear then,” he says and drags his hand down, pausing at the waistband of Kurt's pajamas.
Normally he would just say no, but Kurt's heart feels a little raw and so he gives up and shoves his pajama bottoms down; he seriously doubts Blaine's awake enough to be of any real help beyond the obvious.
“Come're,” he murmurs then, pulling Blaine's dick out of his boxers and taking it in hand with his own.
“God,” Blaine rasps.
“Shhhhhh,” Kurt reminds him.
“I really needed this,” he says.
“I know. Me too. Quiet now,”
It's awkward and dry and Kurt's half holding his breath because Rachel, but Blaine comes first and fast and then wakes up enough to finish off him off, the pads of his fingers twisting over the head of Kurt's cock in a ridiculously overwhelming way.
“Shit,” Kurt breathes as he spurts over Blaine's hand, his boyfriend laughing at him warmly.
“Tell me you have the energy to clean us up,” Kurt, now laughing himself, gasps. “Because I do not.”
“Sorry,” Blaine says, shaking his head. “But you're going to have to sleep in pornographic filth.”
*
In the morning, they take Rachel, who makes no indication she heard anything in the night, to breakfast. Her smile doesn't even seem forced when Kurt informs her she'll be joining his motley crew of assorted fans and hangers on at the bar that evening.
“Truly,” Kurt says, and explains not about George, but about how he pretty much destroyed Blaine's chances of having any appropriate grad school friendships.
Rachel cackles through the whole tale because it's a good story and Kurt tells it well, but Blaine can see the way she's pained in the creases by her eyes, and when Kurt excuses himself to the restroom, he tells her as much.
“Kurt's always had a sense of humor about ruining things,” she says.
“Maybe Kurt just knows they were already a little bit ruined before he got there.”
She wonders if she should tell Blaine about the poison.
*
“Tonight is a very special occasion,” Kurt says, leaning into the mic and bouncing on his toes at the opening of his first three song set. “My best friend in the whole world is here on leave without absence from a children's theater tour.”
There's a gasp from a table in the back left. Kurt points at them. “Professional actors?” he asks, and gets a nod, which he returns enthusiastically.
“Professional actors,” he confirms for the room. “They know. They're not gasping because my friend ran away; they're gasping because she has just run away from hell. Tragically, however, we have to send her back in the morning. But! One day she's going to belong to Broadway, and all of you – and a significant minority of eight-year-olds on the eastern seaboard – will have heard her first. Rachel, get your booty up here.”
There are whoops and catcalls for her as she goes. Some of it, of course, comes from their friends, but some of it is just the product of a rowdy bar on a Saturday night.
“Hi,” she says sheepishly into the mic. “Kurt and I went to high school together.”
“Rachel has two dads,” Kurt explains.
“And his voice is the only real competition I've ever had.”
“You think you remember this?” he asks her after nodding to the pianist to start.
“You did warn me!” she says indignantly.
Kurt sighs and tsks into the microphone. “She's not used to the patter yet,” he says, before taking a breath and beginning his part. When Rachel comes in, under and then over him, flawless and gentle, he knows they've sold it and so he sings every note just for the pure round pleasure of it.
When the applause comes, his friends banging on their table and cheering, Kurt smirks, so pleased with himself. “Rachel Berry, everyone. When she becomes a star, remember you heard her here first.”
Rachel goes up on her toes, throws her arms around his neck, and picks one foot off the floor, the whole hug an expression of happiness clearly learned from movies.
Kurt kisses her forehead. “Go sit. I have to sing a ridiculous bullfighting song now. You can fight with the rest of our fine patrons for more mic time when I'm done.”
*
When Kurt finally has a moment to drop down at their table near the end of what has proved to be a very busy and he thinks lucrative night, George is braiding Rachel's hair and Rachel is insisting that Henry must be bisexual.
“Well this is awkward,” Kurt declares as he settles himself onto Blaine's lap.
“You should have seen it earlier,” Seanna notes.
“I don't want to know.”
“Just because no one can resist Lizzy's charms doesn't mean I want to suck his dick.”
“Oh. My. God,” Kurt says.
Kate pats his shoulder sympathetically.
“Can't I just have friends,” Kurt asks, his voice far more tinged with hysteria than he means it to be, “without it being about what I do and don't do to them?”
Blaine tightens his arms around his waist.
“You do,” Henry says, reaching for Kurt's hand. “You totally do.”
“Thank you,” he says.
“Sorry, Kurt, I didn't mean --” Rachel starts.
He lets go of Henry's hands and waves her apology away. “You never do,” he says, before leaning over to kiss the tip of her nose. “Poison too,” he whispers at her when her face is just millimeters from his.
Blessedly, she smiles.
*
In the morning, Kurt takes her and her runaway pack back to the bus station.
“Blaine always drops me off here, when I go up to New York,” he says.
“That's sweet of him,” she says, her voice awkward in anticipation of whatever point Kurt is trying to make.
“It screws up his sleep schedule and makes me feel guilty. When he first started doing it, I thought it was because he was terrified I wouldn't come back.”
“Isn't he?”
“Yeah. He probably is. But eventually, I figured out that he also does it so that when I finally get a yes, I will absolutely know that he was the last person to see me as I once was.”
Rachel smiles at him, full of wonder.
Kurt nods at her and then kisses her cheek. “All right, go get your bus. You don't want to be late, Rachel Berry.”
“My fans are waiting?” she teases, but Kurt just nods.
“They are,” he says. “They are.”
*
When he gets home, Blaine's sitting up in bed reading.
“What's this?” Kurt asks.
“I knew you wanted to come back to bed, but I figured that meant with me in it.”
Kurt shakes his head, but shucks off his shirt and then climbs in next to him.
“Thanks for being so good with Rachel this weekend.”
“She was kind of intense,” Blaine admits.
“Did you expect something different?” Kurt asks, honestly curious.
“I expected it to have less meaning.”
“Yeah. I get that.”
“You still jealous?” Blaine asks turning onto his side.
“Of her Equity card? Sure. Would I trade places with her? Not for a second.”
“You would never get a yes and not tell me, right?” Blaine asks after a long silence.
Kurt peers at him curiously, fascinated that anyone could have that much faith and fear in him. “Of course not,” he says, still startled. It doesn't help that it's a little bit harder to say than he anticipated.
But Blaine just gives him an easy grin and a gentle kiss. “Good,” he says. Good, and Kurt feels like he's taking his first breath.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
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Date: 2011-10-05 01:22 am (UTC)Blaine was the ultimate gentleman of course - and SO adorable that he only wakes up when Kurt's not in his bed!
Do I sense some foreshadowing at the end with Blaine's question about whether Kurt would tell him if he got a yes?
I really enjoyed this. Thanks :)
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Date: 2011-10-06 10:26 am (UTC)And a lot of things are changing, soon soon soon, yes!
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Date: 2011-10-05 01:28 am (UTC)no subject
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Date: 2011-10-05 01:42 am (UTC)Another great chapter. I always find it fascinating how after all this time, Blaine and Kurt are still getting to know each other.
Great job.
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Date: 2011-10-06 10:28 am (UTC)And they are. A lot of it is youth and fear and a certain caginess they both have always had, but I also think, honestly, that's how you keep a relationship fresh. THey don't do it constantly, but their genuine curiosity about each other helps a lot.
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Date: 2011-10-05 01:57 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-10-06 10:29 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-10-05 02:00 am (UTC)Favorite bit:
“You never worried about touching me.”
“You were already poisoned.”
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Date: 2011-10-06 10:30 am (UTC)Rachel and Kurt are soooooo much fun for me to write together because they both have this sort of otherwordly magic to their observations that fits in this really meaty, abrasive way.
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Date: 2011-10-05 02:14 am (UTC)You really wring so much out of me with each installment, it's the best kind of hurt and I cannot get enough of it.
Thank you.
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Date: 2011-10-06 10:32 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-10-05 02:43 am (UTC)I will never get enough of the way you write Kurt and Blaine and their relationship in this universe.
So many issues with themselves but offset always, ALWAYS by how much they love each other.
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Date: 2011-10-06 10:33 am (UTC)no subject
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Date: 2011-10-05 02:45 am (UTC)“We know what we signed up for,” Kurt says, his voice firm and harsh, because he and Blaine have never, actually discussed this before.
Argh, argh. They are both trying so hard to be good boyfriends. Also love the train wreck that is Kurt's bar job... especially in the light of the last piece with him the only one to get good reviews at the Fringe production. (didn't leave adoring comment on that one, but should've.)
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Date: 2011-10-06 03:39 pm (UTC)And yes, their efforts to do the right thing sometimes also result in them not communicating things that need to get communicated.
Kurt's job, while ideal for a performer in the stage of performance and struggle that he is, is totally a car crash. And Kurt, despite his various experiments with substances in the Boston portion of this arc, has never much loved drunk people that aren't in his inner circle and aren't behaving according to what Kurt wants. The job, and people's bad manners and crumpled napkins and half finished drinks, probably utterly revolts him more than a little.
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Date: 2011-10-05 03:06 am (UTC)But it's also so melancholy, because the thing that wakes up Kurt up is that one little moment, when -- just for a second, just for a heartbeat -- Blaine stops breathing. Blaine wakes up because Kurt's not there, Kurt wakes up because Blaine's not breathing . And Blaine does better when he's the one waiting at home (and Kurt sees the way he holds his breath in the face of pretty much everything) and "Kurt feels like he's taking his first breath" and so many other things that I can't even point out.
Lovely as always.
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Date: 2011-10-06 03:36 pm (UTC)You really hit on what I was doing with the breathing thing in a way no one else quite did. On the one hand, oh, Kurt wakes up for this very scary reason (for him) that's about the loss he's experiences. And oh, Blaine wakes up when his boyfriend's not there -- sweet, less scary/intense. Except that it is, because it equates Kurt's presence with air for Blaine, and that's true and indicative of his neediness there.
To me, Kurt is a man who will always find something to have insomnia about, but I think the particular pattern of it with Blaine is something that is a very private burden to him that he may not have articulated fully to Blaine and would probably do a lot of things to avoid having to explain.
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Date: 2011-10-05 03:07 am (UTC)Partially by how much I like them -- but that's really long been surpassed by how much I love how you're engaging with the difficult layers of reality that artists have access to, the doubling and trebling of narratives.
And lines like You were already poisoned.
I am, for the record, weirded out when I identify with Kurt. Mostly good weird.
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Date: 2011-10-06 03:33 pm (UTC)You, btw, have body language that is not dissimilar to Kurt's. Not in his hilarious queeny way, but in how he is simultaneously prim and languid in his motions.
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Date: 2011-10-05 03:16 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-10-06 02:32 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-10-05 03:25 am (UTC)“Kurt and I went to high school together.”
“Rachel has two dads,” Kurt explains.
Which shouldn't have to be there, and yet what other way would you encapsulate their friendship so neatly and easily? That's exactly the tidbit the audience needs to understand perfectly without hearing the metric ton of backstory.
And the Emilie Autumn was perfect and snarky and I could hear Kurt singing it. I need to better acquaint myself with her music.
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Date: 2011-10-05 03:26 am (UTC)(no subject)
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Date: 2011-10-05 03:25 am (UTC)All of this. Just. Great. <3<3<3
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Date: 2011-10-06 02:23 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-10-05 04:53 am (UTC)Anyway, this part, in particular, was my favorite of this installment. It's brilliant:
“I find people very hard, like I could poison most of them by touching. I've never really gotten over that. And I'm not sure I can.”
“You never worried about touching me.”
“You were already poisoned.”
... Oh, that is so me. That's kind of sad.
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Date: 2011-10-06 02:20 pm (UTC)And K&B work here because they are so young when they set out on this, if they don't commit to understanding how little they know about how to be together things would be stunted and fail all too quickly. Their intellectual curiosity about each other is what gives them a real chance.
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Date: 2011-10-05 05:42 am (UTC)Please tell me that people don't actually make requests like that. If so, I hope Kurt at least got to punch someone.
Kurt shrugs. “I feel bad. Me not being there is really the only thing that gets him up in the night.”
That's just so amazingly sweet. God, this ship is killing me with its adorableness. ;)
“You would never get a yes and not tell me, right?” Blaine asks after a long silence.
I'm really curious about what would happen if Kurt gets an offer before Blaine is finished grad school. Not totally convinced Kurt wouldn't have a hard time saying yes after the stressfulness of their previous separation. And, I think Kurt/Blaine are at a point in their relationship where they are willing to make career sacrifices for each other.
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Date: 2011-10-06 10:37 am (UTC)And, yes, people totally make requests like that. In fact, there's a thing going around the Internet now about straight women demanding birthday shots at gay bars and why that's super annoying. Piano bars, of course, aren't inherently gay, but ones that are culturally so (and many are) totally see this shit all the time (I have witnessed a hen party getting thrown out of a gay piano bar for particularly egregious shit of this nature).
And yeah, I think Kurt and Blaine are hitting a point where they're in sync enough that a lot of their absolutes have faded. That makes certain potential outcomes less terrifying, but will require more communication for them to navigate.
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Date: 2011-10-05 06:05 am (UTC)no subject
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Date: 2011-10-05 09:16 am (UTC)“You would never get a yes and not tell me, right?” Blaine asks after a long silence.
Third to last line, dammit!!! Sigh. Stomach officially all twisty as I type this. Oh, Blaine. My little gay kindred spirit of neediness.
Rachel and the way she is in this was insanely prescient given what we saw of her tonight in 3.03. Like, scarily so. And I wonder how I would feel about this had I read it before watching tonight's episode. Because I am not happy with her after tonight's episode. And there's something a little bit despairing to me about the way that well into her 20s she is still largely oblivious. I love what you said in your post about her being the architect of her own pain. So much that.
I also loved the songs for this chapter. I particularly enjoy how fucking subversive Kurt is in his song choices. I just really really really love it. That "Marry Me" song is pure gold. Even the werewolf song. Just, yeah.
All told, I escaped this one relatively unscathed. So yay! :D
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Date: 2011-10-05 10:04 am (UTC)Choosing the songs is one of my most favorite things, and I spend a lot of time with it. I sort of have a pool I'm working from and I wind up having to reject a lot of stuff I'm sure Kurt does sing at work, because it's not plot relevant. When I finish the whole arc, or perhaps this phrase of Kurt's career, I'll probably do a mix people can download, because some of the stuff is hard to find.
And while "Marry Me" reads easily (I love how the menstruation thing cuts off in the song originally because of propriety of the character, but with Kurt singing it, it's a whole 'nother level of actually....), I'm so glad you got the werewolf thing. The character singing comes off as so fucking fragile and so fucking dangerous at once, and it just grabbed me immediately when Patty was playing it in the house the other day. Also, Kurt's ongoing relationship with death... which will be coming up with at least one more song choice relatively soon and is, of course, there in canon with his mom and Pavoratti, etc.
Rachel is the hardest character on the show for me to watch. Both for where the show succeeds and fails with her and where she succeeds and fails. But the fact that she's suffering is REALLY clear to me, and because she's fictional, she's easy for me to have compassion for. She needs to just subside and give herself up to something else for a while and _chill_ because ambition and success are never going to salve what's going on with her.
you get all the awards. seriously.
Date: 2011-10-05 11:23 am (UTC)also, holy hell. thank you for introducing me to emilie autumn.
Re: you get all the awards. seriously.
Date: 2011-10-06 02:16 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-10-05 11:27 am (UTC)Here's some disorganised wittering about Things What I Think You Did Really Well:
I love the juxtaposition (ooh, check me out) of The tour, she says – her van, Kurt thinks a little viciously and “It wasn't supposed to be like this! And everyone in my van --” / “Your tour,” he corrects. / “My van,” she snaps back, “hates me.” Kurt and Rachel are so similar that they inevitably think the same things and are jealous and hate and love each other with a remarkable intensity.
There's also the way Kurt's abrasive and rude almost on purpose, sort of resigned to the notion that he ruins everything close to him, and suspicious of people, and still less lonely than Rachel, who is annoying by accident and dying for people to like her.
I find the dynamics of the relationship between Kurt and Blaine really interesting, like the whole Milan/Shanghai thing. Kurt's the one destined for greatness and Blaine's role is more - supportive, I suppose. Kurt's success makes Blaine so, so happy, and he deals better with being someone to come home to than the one leaving, but Kurt's still the one with a ring on his finger. I think that's about equal parts Blaine still being a little afraid one day Kurt won't come back (even as he desperately needs to not hold him back, so a reminder more than a tether), and Kurt demonstrating that he's just as invested in the relationship.
I don't know, I have too many feelings and too little practice expressing them coherently. Just. ♥
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Date: 2011-10-06 02:15 pm (UTC)I must, however, giggle about Milan, because it was Rome, but I totally know why you typed that (which, actually, wasn't something I knew when I dumped Kurt in Rome, I was just crazing cheesecake and also, I know Rome well enough to write it.
It's interesting what you say about Blaine's role, because that's totally true, but he also has some very public ambitions, and when he finishes school they're going to come back into play, but unlike Kurt there's no smooth continuum between them and who he is in his private life, whereas for Kurt the performing isn't a face he puts on, but just a part of how he communicates with the world.
They are both, in mostly unspoken ways, spending a lot of energy on reassuring each other and themselves, but I think they are getting to the point where the logistics of being together are, for them, a practical reflex and not just an emotional one.
Kurt is so, so, so damaged. But he's also good at navigating it; when he's not singing the scars of it don't throb for him as they do for Blaine (everything, EVERYTHING comes out when Kurt's performing). Rachel, who has a lot of wisdom about other people, has almost none when it comes to other people as in relation to herself, and it's quite the mess.
Really, so grateful you give me a chance to noodle on about them EVEN MORE.
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