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[Glee fic] On the Throwing of Stones, Kurt/Blaine, R
Title: On the Throwing of Stones
Rating: R
Pairings/Characters: Kurt/Blaine
Word Count: ~3,100
Summary: In which California is a disaster.
Warnings: Animal character death; judgmental stuff around the sexual choices of others.
Other notes: Sorry I was gone so long! I was on the road, and then there was my show, and life's just been busy and complex. Future updates should be much swifter (ideally every other week).
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 | A Little Bit Ruined | The Numbers Held by Ghosts | Weights and Measures | Anamnesis | Hello, I Must Be Going | And I Have Heard You Speaking | More Honored Than the Other Animals | Melissa, Mellonia, or Deborah
Blaine breaks up with his therapist after she suggests that proposing to Kurt is merely an attempt at a temporary fix to his insecurities.
Because as fucked up as he is – and with Kurt away, Blaine has a pretty vivid sense of just how fucked up he is – marrying Kurt has never been about fixing anything.
Also? So not temporary.
*
They find a new rhythm with each other and the distance after the proposal, even if Kurt feels impelled to constantly rewrite the matter in his head.
Because while it was a proposal, now it’s an engagement, and it is, he thinks, very important to be precise. He does an excited little shimmy every time he thinks on it, even if no one is there to see.
Blaine is clearly, obviously, pleased too, although Kurt knows he doesn’t shimmy. His joy is there instead in the lack of sad and mostly silent late night phone calls, and in an influx of sweet, funny, dirty text messages, as if Blaine trusts Kurt with desire now, as if every want isn’t the perfect end of the world.
Kurt thinks it feels like when they first started dating, before Blaine’s parents had sent them into giddy and miserable exile.
*
The benefits of an impending marriage are myriad and odd.
From the moment Rachel calls to congratulate him, Blaine and she form a weird friendship around the engagement.
“You’re supposed to offer best wishes,” he tells her. “Never congratulations; congratulations implies you think I’m lucky to have found someone who would actually want me.”
“But aren’t you?” she asks, and giggles, high and nervous and so, so young. Then, “Isn’t anyone?”
He smiles.
“I can hear you,” she says.
“What?”
“Smiling.”
He is so proud, and, weirdly, she is the only one who understands.
*
Perhaps even more weirdly, Santana calls Kurt to torment him about Blaine’s bachelor party.
“Oh my god, I’m on the road, and we haven’t even set a date yet, what is wrong with you?” he hollers into the phone.
And although he is laughing, he is not insincere in his rage.
Did you ask Santana to be your best man? he texts Blaine as soon as he’s rid of her.
No, Blaine texts back, frowning at the screen; that’s going to be a series of really awkward conversations.
Because he would like Wes to stand up for him; because he would like Wes to give him away.
He imagines his parents will mind the fact of it far more than they will mind that it’s not them. Besides, they already gave him away at barely eighteen.
*
Maybe it’s the way he treats Santana, but after her, Kurt doesn’t get nearly as many celebratory calls as he thinks he should. But he does, slowly and carefully, receive a series of lovely emails, full of gentle and quiet respect. Even Puck possesses a strange eloquence in text.
It is Tina who explains, writing that she would have called, But I hate summoning you back from wherever it is that you go.
What do you mean? Kurt asks in reply, although he knows. And thank you, he adds, because it is a pleasure to be seen.
*
“What’s up, buttercup?” Blaine says when Kurt calls him.
“You are ridiculous.”
“Well, yes,” he says, and Kurt has to laugh.
“Tina called me today.”
“Oh?” Blaine says, nonchalant, even though the things Kurt says without preamble are usually fairly significant.
“She explained my secret worlds to me.”
Blaine has no idea what he’s supposed to say to that. “How did that go?”
“Better than the call with Santana?”
“I love you both, but that has to be a terrible basis for comparison.”
“My point.”
“So am I there with you?” Blaine asks after a long silence.
“Where?”
“Your secret worlds.”
“Oh, you know,” Kurt says with a theatrical, falsely casual drawl as he waves a hand about even though his boyfriend can’t see it.
“I do,” Blaine acknowledges, and when Kurt says nothing, prods him for more. “So…?”
“Sometimes,” Kurt says. “But you’re doing better than anyone else, and I am trying.”
“I know,” Blaine says, and for the first time in a long time, he really does.
That weekend, he gets on a plane for Florida, – who knew retirees liked vampires – and Kurt asks him to come to the theater before the show.
*
“I wear it pinned inside my costume usually,” he says quietly, when he fastens the bee onto Blaine’s jacket as they stand outside by the stage door. “But you’re here, so I’d rather it was with you,” he says, hooking the fine chain that serves as its safety clasp closed.
“You’re getting better at the people thing before you go on.”
“I’m trying,” Kurt says, brightly; it’s what he’s always saying. He sighs. “But just for you,” he adds, dragging the side of his face along Blaine’s before turning to kiss him on the mouth, silly and sloppy.
“I love you,” Blaine says then, because he really, really does.
Kurt smiles, and brushes their noses together for a moment. “There’s tickets for you at the box office, meet me after?”
“Here or hotel?”
“Oh, here,” he says. Because they’re leaving for the West Coast soon, he needs every second he can get of Blaine right now, even if he doesn’t trust himself to endure it.
Jay has told him that California is going to be terrible.
*
At the hotel that night, piled into Jay’s room, Kurt sits on Blaine’s lap as Blaine reaches around to pin the bee back on him in front of everyone.
No one notices particularly – not Sandra, braiding her hair, nor Nick, making a pot of tea; Carl is busy annoying everyone by flipping channels on the television; and Damian is whining because no one wants to play poker, and he is sick, always, of having to settle for gin.
But Jay gives Kurt a look. The bee is valuable and easier to steal than a ring. He’s already said something to Kurt about flaunting it, twice, and Kurt wonders a little bit if Jay is a gun, waiting to go off in the third act.
But mostly he thinks Jay just doesn’t understand. And it’s not, actually, because Jay’s slept with at least three people on the tour and that Kurt is judging him. Although Kurt is totally judging him, because at least one of those people is way more invested than he should be, and Jay’s still sleeping with him.
But other people’s inconsiderate choices aside, Kurt has realized most people simply don’t understand him and Blaine. The where and when of their lives has been extraordinary, albeit in very small ways: Neither of them tried to kill themselves in high school, and neither of them left the other when forced to play house as children.
At twenty-four, Kurt realizes that they are children now and that these were near things. Sometimes, he wonders if Blaine knows.
*
“I’m not going to be able to see you as much in California,” Kurt says as he unbuttons Blaine’s shirt after they abandon Jay’s room for their own.
Blaine shakes his head. “No. It’s –“
“I know. The flight’s too long and too expensive and –“
“People do it, you know. All the time. Work the time difference,” he says, playing devil’s advocate for a choice he knows they’re not going to make.
“We can’t,” Kurt insists, mouth against his neck.
Blaine sighs and fights the urge to step back. “So this the part we’re completely not prepared for because I keep getting on planes, huh?” he says as Kurt slips the shift from his shoulders.
“Yup.”
“Oh,” Blaine says, sheepish and young. “Sorry.”
Kurt smiles and trails his fingers over Blaine’s chest.
“When I do terrible things,” he says, his voice small and quiet and not really for anyone but himself, “when I say terrible things and go cold and live in my head and smile at the loss… I do those things for a reason. Not because I’m mean or overwhelmed or don’t understand what other people are. This was always going to be hard.”
“And then I opted out of the endurance training.”
Kurt startles at the reply, so affable and easy, so he laughs.
“At least you signed up for therapy,” he says good-naturedly, stepping back, clear on the heat being lost for a moment and pulling out of his own clothes instead.
“I fired her,” Blaine admits, watching him.
“Oh.”
“Not the idea of it, just her. I’ll get a new one.”
“Let me guess, she didn’t like me,” Kurt teases, but he’s not joking, and it feels sharp and brittle in his chest as he shoves his pants down over his ass and onto the floor.
*
When the time comes, Kurt calls Blaine unexpectedly from the airport as he waits to board his flight to San Francisco.
“Did you ever want to be a movie star?” he asks, not even bothering with a greeting.
“I’m a boy in America who doesn’t like himself very much,” Blaine says. “Of course I wanted to be a movie star.”
Kurt laughs, but it sounds watery. “I’m scared.”
“Of what?”
“What if I like it? What if I want those dreams? I swear half the cast is plotting to get off this boat in L.A.….”
“What’s going on? Is there drama?”
“No. But the instant stardom and sextacular casting couch fantasies are getting a little epic.”
“You’re not in L.A. for another month.”
“Yes, well. Actors.”
“Do want to audition? When you’re there….”
“That’s not the point.”
“But if you do….”
“You’re the offer I can’t refuse, you idiot.”
“I’m just saying that if you want to be a movie star,” Blaine says, well aware that the conversation has taken a turn for the ridiculous. “We’ll make it work.”
“I don’t,” Kurt says firmly, even if he sounds a little sad. “Not really.”
“Oh. Well, see? You always were the one with the self-esteem.”
*
When the plane lands he has five voicemail messages, all from Brittany. Lord Tubbington is in the hospital and wants to see him.
When Blaine texts to ask how the flight was all Kurt can do is text back about the cat, shove his luggage at Jay to bring back to the hotel for him, and stalk off on his own to catch a cab.
Because Brittany S. Pierce is not Kurt’s best friend, but, once, she kissed him, and it is a blood debt.
*
At the cat hospital, Brittany is much calmer than Kurt expects. She’s sitting on a footstool, leaning against what’s essentially a bookcase full of stacked rooms for sick cats. The door to Lord Tubbington’s is open, and she’s petting him while singing a song he knows Santana used to sing to her.
It’s that, really, that makes him a little bit sad; he’s never been close to the cat.
“Hi,” he says, leaning against the wall of cats.
“Hi, Kurt.” She doesn’t look up from what she’s doing.
“How is he?”
“His liver’s enlarged. Like the rest of him,” she says.
Kurt tries not to laugh, but does anyway, and he’s glad when she turns her face up to him and smiles.
He asks her to lunch then, because Lord Tubbington needs his rest.
*
Lord Tubbington dies.
Absurdly, Kurt gets the call backstage at the Orpheum from Blaine.
“I know you’re in the middle of a show, but Tubtub just died and I just spent forty-seven minutes on the phone trying to calm Brittany down and she wants to book you as a funeral singer, by the way.”
Kurt blinks. He hardly knows where to start. “Tubtub?”
*
The next morning, he finds himself staring at the shoebox that can’t quite be closed properly around Tubtub’s girth. It is wet now with condensation.
“I thought the services would be after cremation,” Kurt says, kneeling in the damp sand. Death is a natural process, and he is not revolted by it, but he does not think it should be so small or haphazard or defined by damp cardboard and food-storage refrigeration.
“But then he wouldn’t be able to hear you,” Brittany says so much like Kurt’s forgotten something important he is suddenly sure he has.
Distantly, Kurt can’t quite believe that his first view of the Pacific Ocean, his first toe-touch into that cold water is happening at a cat funeral, but his life has been relentlessly peculiar for a long time.
As sad as Brittany is, this is far from the worst thing, and so he takes a deep breath and starts to sing, because the sooner he’s done, the sooner Lord Tubbington’s remains can be tended to by a far more adequate actual professional than Kurt himself.
Kurt suspects that if one day someone asks him to talk about what tour life is really like to prepare young artists for the horror, he will tell the story of this day.
And that’s before Jay invites him to a sex party.
*
Not that Jay tells him it’s a sex party. Which is how he winds up there with two girls and a boy from the chorus who are either in on the joke or just don’t care, as he mutters to no one in particular that he would be furious if he weren’t so weirdly unsurprised.
Jay is an asshole.
Kurt knows he should leave. But he also knows he will endure more abuse from Jay on that score than he can stand if he does. And he’s not sure he shouldn’t be the responsible adult for the people with them. Stefan is barely even of age.
Kurt has also, never, seen so much flesh. Not that there is any shortage of it on tour, but close quarters and the casualness of performers is something else entirely. When dancers are naked, or nearly so, Kurt thinks of their bodies as tools and weapons that live lives quite deliberately chosen for them.
But sex isn’t that control; it’s the opposite, a thing that the body can’t help but do.
That’s what scared him about it at sixteen, when he was sure it would betray him in the same fashion as his voice and his supposedly pear-shaped hips. With Blaine, he has come to know that the betrayal is the point, and that is something he will never say aloud because he knows it would make Blaine sad.
*
“Don’t freak out,” Kurt says in a rush when Blaine answers the phone.
“I hate that preamble.”
“I’m at a sex party.”
“Um… not getting more comfortable, here.”
“It’s Jay’s fault.”
“Definitely not making this better,” Blaine manages, but his gut is tight with it.
“Would I be calling you from a sex party if you had anything to be uncomfortable about?” Kurt hollers into the phone loudly enough that someone near by actually looks up from giving head.
“Sex party with Jay, do I need something more to feel uncomfortable about?”
“Are you jealous?”
“Yes?”
“Oh my god. I don’t even know where he went!”
“So you’re wandering around in a sea of –“
“BLAINE ANDERSON, STOP WHATEVER ORGY HORROR FANTASY MOMENT YOU ARE HAVING RIGHT THERE AND CALM THE FUCK DOWN; I’M STILL PRACTICALLY IN THE VESTIBULE.”
Blaine takes a deep breath. Then two more. “Right. Question. Also, who the fuck says vestibule?” he says.
Kurt ignores that last part. “Yes?”
“If you called me from a sex party because you were freaked out –“
“I am freaked out, and frankly, I needed something to do with my hands so other people would stop making suggestions –“
“Oh my god.”
“Yeah.”
“—then why am I the one being told to calm down?”
“Because I love you, Blaine Anderson, and you are an idiot.”
“We were about to have an awesome fight there, weren’t we?”
“Yup.”
“So you’re really at a sex party?”
“Apparently. I totally interrupted some oral sex by hollering at you.”
“Wow. That’s sort of awesome. So… is it hot?”
“Blaine.”
“Yes?”
“Now you’re not making me more comfortable!”
“I just….”
“Yes?”
“There’s a whole world waiting for us, you know?”
“What? Of sex parties?” Kurt asks, horrified, even as he knows Blaine is probably halfway sincere.
“I don’t know, maybe.”
“Okay, I am hanging up, and we are talking later.”
“But what are you going to do with your hands?” Blaine whines.
“What the hell do you think I’m going to do with my hands? Find my wayward dancers who shouldn’t be here either and hail a damn cab!”
*
“Don’t touch me,” Kurt says, skittish when he finds a fully-clothed Jay towards the back of the space. He’s talking to Stefan, whose shirt is unbuttoned. Kurt wants to tell Jay not to touch him either, but it’s not his place.
“Don’t worry, I haven’t done anything yet; Stefan and I were talking. I won’t sully you.”
Kurt gives him a dirty look.
“I’m leaving. I just wanted to let you know. Stefan, you’re welcome to share a cab with me if you’re so inclined, although –“
“I’m not a child,” he says, placidly.
“Right,” Kurt says, snapping his jaw shut holding his hands up. He has no energy for this. “I’m bad at touring, and I don’t like you,” he says, turning back to Jay. “So please stop pretending to be my friend.”
“I’m not pretending just because I don’t care for your youth and naïveté.”
“You’re jealous of my youth, and you wish I were naïve,” Kurt says simply before turning on his heel to go.
“I’m flying to LA tomorrow,” Jay calls after him.
It’s their day off, and it means only one thing. Jay has an audition.
Kurt desperately wants to cry; he hates Jay right now, yet the thought of being abandoned by him is a horror.
When he gets back to the hotel without Stefan or the girls from the chorus, Kurt calls Blaine as he steps into the elevator and speaks without preamble, always without preamble now.
“I am very, very bad at this, and I want to come home.”
Rating: R
Pairings/Characters: Kurt/Blaine
Word Count: ~3,100
Summary: In which California is a disaster.
Warnings: Animal character death; judgmental stuff around the sexual choices of others.
Other notes: Sorry I was gone so long! I was on the road, and then there was my show, and life's just been busy and complex. Future updates should be much swifter (ideally every other week).
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 | A Little Bit Ruined | The Numbers Held by Ghosts | Weights and Measures | Anamnesis | Hello, I Must Be Going | And I Have Heard You Speaking | More Honored Than the Other Animals | Melissa, Mellonia, or Deborah
Blaine breaks up with his therapist after she suggests that proposing to Kurt is merely an attempt at a temporary fix to his insecurities.
Because as fucked up as he is – and with Kurt away, Blaine has a pretty vivid sense of just how fucked up he is – marrying Kurt has never been about fixing anything.
Also? So not temporary.
*
They find a new rhythm with each other and the distance after the proposal, even if Kurt feels impelled to constantly rewrite the matter in his head.
Because while it was a proposal, now it’s an engagement, and it is, he thinks, very important to be precise. He does an excited little shimmy every time he thinks on it, even if no one is there to see.
Blaine is clearly, obviously, pleased too, although Kurt knows he doesn’t shimmy. His joy is there instead in the lack of sad and mostly silent late night phone calls, and in an influx of sweet, funny, dirty text messages, as if Blaine trusts Kurt with desire now, as if every want isn’t the perfect end of the world.
Kurt thinks it feels like when they first started dating, before Blaine’s parents had sent them into giddy and miserable exile.
*
The benefits of an impending marriage are myriad and odd.
From the moment Rachel calls to congratulate him, Blaine and she form a weird friendship around the engagement.
“You’re supposed to offer best wishes,” he tells her. “Never congratulations; congratulations implies you think I’m lucky to have found someone who would actually want me.”
“But aren’t you?” she asks, and giggles, high and nervous and so, so young. Then, “Isn’t anyone?”
He smiles.
“I can hear you,” she says.
“What?”
“Smiling.”
He is so proud, and, weirdly, she is the only one who understands.
*
Perhaps even more weirdly, Santana calls Kurt to torment him about Blaine’s bachelor party.
“Oh my god, I’m on the road, and we haven’t even set a date yet, what is wrong with you?” he hollers into the phone.
And although he is laughing, he is not insincere in his rage.
Did you ask Santana to be your best man? he texts Blaine as soon as he’s rid of her.
No, Blaine texts back, frowning at the screen; that’s going to be a series of really awkward conversations.
Because he would like Wes to stand up for him; because he would like Wes to give him away.
He imagines his parents will mind the fact of it far more than they will mind that it’s not them. Besides, they already gave him away at barely eighteen.
*
Maybe it’s the way he treats Santana, but after her, Kurt doesn’t get nearly as many celebratory calls as he thinks he should. But he does, slowly and carefully, receive a series of lovely emails, full of gentle and quiet respect. Even Puck possesses a strange eloquence in text.
It is Tina who explains, writing that she would have called, But I hate summoning you back from wherever it is that you go.
What do you mean? Kurt asks in reply, although he knows. And thank you, he adds, because it is a pleasure to be seen.
*
“What’s up, buttercup?” Blaine says when Kurt calls him.
“You are ridiculous.”
“Well, yes,” he says, and Kurt has to laugh.
“Tina called me today.”
“Oh?” Blaine says, nonchalant, even though the things Kurt says without preamble are usually fairly significant.
“She explained my secret worlds to me.”
Blaine has no idea what he’s supposed to say to that. “How did that go?”
“Better than the call with Santana?”
“I love you both, but that has to be a terrible basis for comparison.”
“My point.”
“So am I there with you?” Blaine asks after a long silence.
“Where?”
“Your secret worlds.”
“Oh, you know,” Kurt says with a theatrical, falsely casual drawl as he waves a hand about even though his boyfriend can’t see it.
“I do,” Blaine acknowledges, and when Kurt says nothing, prods him for more. “So…?”
“Sometimes,” Kurt says. “But you’re doing better than anyone else, and I am trying.”
“I know,” Blaine says, and for the first time in a long time, he really does.
That weekend, he gets on a plane for Florida, – who knew retirees liked vampires – and Kurt asks him to come to the theater before the show.
*
“I wear it pinned inside my costume usually,” he says quietly, when he fastens the bee onto Blaine’s jacket as they stand outside by the stage door. “But you’re here, so I’d rather it was with you,” he says, hooking the fine chain that serves as its safety clasp closed.
“You’re getting better at the people thing before you go on.”
“I’m trying,” Kurt says, brightly; it’s what he’s always saying. He sighs. “But just for you,” he adds, dragging the side of his face along Blaine’s before turning to kiss him on the mouth, silly and sloppy.
“I love you,” Blaine says then, because he really, really does.
Kurt smiles, and brushes their noses together for a moment. “There’s tickets for you at the box office, meet me after?”
“Here or hotel?”
“Oh, here,” he says. Because they’re leaving for the West Coast soon, he needs every second he can get of Blaine right now, even if he doesn’t trust himself to endure it.
Jay has told him that California is going to be terrible.
*
At the hotel that night, piled into Jay’s room, Kurt sits on Blaine’s lap as Blaine reaches around to pin the bee back on him in front of everyone.
No one notices particularly – not Sandra, braiding her hair, nor Nick, making a pot of tea; Carl is busy annoying everyone by flipping channels on the television; and Damian is whining because no one wants to play poker, and he is sick, always, of having to settle for gin.
But Jay gives Kurt a look. The bee is valuable and easier to steal than a ring. He’s already said something to Kurt about flaunting it, twice, and Kurt wonders a little bit if Jay is a gun, waiting to go off in the third act.
But mostly he thinks Jay just doesn’t understand. And it’s not, actually, because Jay’s slept with at least three people on the tour and that Kurt is judging him. Although Kurt is totally judging him, because at least one of those people is way more invested than he should be, and Jay’s still sleeping with him.
But other people’s inconsiderate choices aside, Kurt has realized most people simply don’t understand him and Blaine. The where and when of their lives has been extraordinary, albeit in very small ways: Neither of them tried to kill themselves in high school, and neither of them left the other when forced to play house as children.
At twenty-four, Kurt realizes that they are children now and that these were near things. Sometimes, he wonders if Blaine knows.
*
“I’m not going to be able to see you as much in California,” Kurt says as he unbuttons Blaine’s shirt after they abandon Jay’s room for their own.
Blaine shakes his head. “No. It’s –“
“I know. The flight’s too long and too expensive and –“
“People do it, you know. All the time. Work the time difference,” he says, playing devil’s advocate for a choice he knows they’re not going to make.
“We can’t,” Kurt insists, mouth against his neck.
Blaine sighs and fights the urge to step back. “So this the part we’re completely not prepared for because I keep getting on planes, huh?” he says as Kurt slips the shift from his shoulders.
“Yup.”
“Oh,” Blaine says, sheepish and young. “Sorry.”
Kurt smiles and trails his fingers over Blaine’s chest.
“When I do terrible things,” he says, his voice small and quiet and not really for anyone but himself, “when I say terrible things and go cold and live in my head and smile at the loss… I do those things for a reason. Not because I’m mean or overwhelmed or don’t understand what other people are. This was always going to be hard.”
“And then I opted out of the endurance training.”
Kurt startles at the reply, so affable and easy, so he laughs.
“At least you signed up for therapy,” he says good-naturedly, stepping back, clear on the heat being lost for a moment and pulling out of his own clothes instead.
“I fired her,” Blaine admits, watching him.
“Oh.”
“Not the idea of it, just her. I’ll get a new one.”
“Let me guess, she didn’t like me,” Kurt teases, but he’s not joking, and it feels sharp and brittle in his chest as he shoves his pants down over his ass and onto the floor.
*
When the time comes, Kurt calls Blaine unexpectedly from the airport as he waits to board his flight to San Francisco.
“Did you ever want to be a movie star?” he asks, not even bothering with a greeting.
“I’m a boy in America who doesn’t like himself very much,” Blaine says. “Of course I wanted to be a movie star.”
Kurt laughs, but it sounds watery. “I’m scared.”
“Of what?”
“What if I like it? What if I want those dreams? I swear half the cast is plotting to get off this boat in L.A.….”
“What’s going on? Is there drama?”
“No. But the instant stardom and sextacular casting couch fantasies are getting a little epic.”
“You’re not in L.A. for another month.”
“Yes, well. Actors.”
“Do want to audition? When you’re there….”
“That’s not the point.”
“But if you do….”
“You’re the offer I can’t refuse, you idiot.”
“I’m just saying that if you want to be a movie star,” Blaine says, well aware that the conversation has taken a turn for the ridiculous. “We’ll make it work.”
“I don’t,” Kurt says firmly, even if he sounds a little sad. “Not really.”
“Oh. Well, see? You always were the one with the self-esteem.”
*
When the plane lands he has five voicemail messages, all from Brittany. Lord Tubbington is in the hospital and wants to see him.
When Blaine texts to ask how the flight was all Kurt can do is text back about the cat, shove his luggage at Jay to bring back to the hotel for him, and stalk off on his own to catch a cab.
Because Brittany S. Pierce is not Kurt’s best friend, but, once, she kissed him, and it is a blood debt.
*
At the cat hospital, Brittany is much calmer than Kurt expects. She’s sitting on a footstool, leaning against what’s essentially a bookcase full of stacked rooms for sick cats. The door to Lord Tubbington’s is open, and she’s petting him while singing a song he knows Santana used to sing to her.
It’s that, really, that makes him a little bit sad; he’s never been close to the cat.
“Hi,” he says, leaning against the wall of cats.
“Hi, Kurt.” She doesn’t look up from what she’s doing.
“How is he?”
“His liver’s enlarged. Like the rest of him,” she says.
Kurt tries not to laugh, but does anyway, and he’s glad when she turns her face up to him and smiles.
He asks her to lunch then, because Lord Tubbington needs his rest.
*
Lord Tubbington dies.
Absurdly, Kurt gets the call backstage at the Orpheum from Blaine.
“I know you’re in the middle of a show, but Tubtub just died and I just spent forty-seven minutes on the phone trying to calm Brittany down and she wants to book you as a funeral singer, by the way.”
Kurt blinks. He hardly knows where to start. “Tubtub?”
*
The next morning, he finds himself staring at the shoebox that can’t quite be closed properly around Tubtub’s girth. It is wet now with condensation.
“I thought the services would be after cremation,” Kurt says, kneeling in the damp sand. Death is a natural process, and he is not revolted by it, but he does not think it should be so small or haphazard or defined by damp cardboard and food-storage refrigeration.
“But then he wouldn’t be able to hear you,” Brittany says so much like Kurt’s forgotten something important he is suddenly sure he has.
Distantly, Kurt can’t quite believe that his first view of the Pacific Ocean, his first toe-touch into that cold water is happening at a cat funeral, but his life has been relentlessly peculiar for a long time.
As sad as Brittany is, this is far from the worst thing, and so he takes a deep breath and starts to sing, because the sooner he’s done, the sooner Lord Tubbington’s remains can be tended to by a far more adequate actual professional than Kurt himself.
Kurt suspects that if one day someone asks him to talk about what tour life is really like to prepare young artists for the horror, he will tell the story of this day.
And that’s before Jay invites him to a sex party.
*
Not that Jay tells him it’s a sex party. Which is how he winds up there with two girls and a boy from the chorus who are either in on the joke or just don’t care, as he mutters to no one in particular that he would be furious if he weren’t so weirdly unsurprised.
Jay is an asshole.
Kurt knows he should leave. But he also knows he will endure more abuse from Jay on that score than he can stand if he does. And he’s not sure he shouldn’t be the responsible adult for the people with them. Stefan is barely even of age.
Kurt has also, never, seen so much flesh. Not that there is any shortage of it on tour, but close quarters and the casualness of performers is something else entirely. When dancers are naked, or nearly so, Kurt thinks of their bodies as tools and weapons that live lives quite deliberately chosen for them.
But sex isn’t that control; it’s the opposite, a thing that the body can’t help but do.
That’s what scared him about it at sixteen, when he was sure it would betray him in the same fashion as his voice and his supposedly pear-shaped hips. With Blaine, he has come to know that the betrayal is the point, and that is something he will never say aloud because he knows it would make Blaine sad.
*
“Don’t freak out,” Kurt says in a rush when Blaine answers the phone.
“I hate that preamble.”
“I’m at a sex party.”
“Um… not getting more comfortable, here.”
“It’s Jay’s fault.”
“Definitely not making this better,” Blaine manages, but his gut is tight with it.
“Would I be calling you from a sex party if you had anything to be uncomfortable about?” Kurt hollers into the phone loudly enough that someone near by actually looks up from giving head.
“Sex party with Jay, do I need something more to feel uncomfortable about?”
“Are you jealous?”
“Yes?”
“Oh my god. I don’t even know where he went!”
“So you’re wandering around in a sea of –“
“BLAINE ANDERSON, STOP WHATEVER ORGY HORROR FANTASY MOMENT YOU ARE HAVING RIGHT THERE AND CALM THE FUCK DOWN; I’M STILL PRACTICALLY IN THE VESTIBULE.”
Blaine takes a deep breath. Then two more. “Right. Question. Also, who the fuck says vestibule?” he says.
Kurt ignores that last part. “Yes?”
“If you called me from a sex party because you were freaked out –“
“I am freaked out, and frankly, I needed something to do with my hands so other people would stop making suggestions –“
“Oh my god.”
“Yeah.”
“—then why am I the one being told to calm down?”
“Because I love you, Blaine Anderson, and you are an idiot.”
“We were about to have an awesome fight there, weren’t we?”
“Yup.”
“So you’re really at a sex party?”
“Apparently. I totally interrupted some oral sex by hollering at you.”
“Wow. That’s sort of awesome. So… is it hot?”
“Blaine.”
“Yes?”
“Now you’re not making me more comfortable!”
“I just….”
“Yes?”
“There’s a whole world waiting for us, you know?”
“What? Of sex parties?” Kurt asks, horrified, even as he knows Blaine is probably halfway sincere.
“I don’t know, maybe.”
“Okay, I am hanging up, and we are talking later.”
“But what are you going to do with your hands?” Blaine whines.
“What the hell do you think I’m going to do with my hands? Find my wayward dancers who shouldn’t be here either and hail a damn cab!”
*
“Don’t touch me,” Kurt says, skittish when he finds a fully-clothed Jay towards the back of the space. He’s talking to Stefan, whose shirt is unbuttoned. Kurt wants to tell Jay not to touch him either, but it’s not his place.
“Don’t worry, I haven’t done anything yet; Stefan and I were talking. I won’t sully you.”
Kurt gives him a dirty look.
“I’m leaving. I just wanted to let you know. Stefan, you’re welcome to share a cab with me if you’re so inclined, although –“
“I’m not a child,” he says, placidly.
“Right,” Kurt says, snapping his jaw shut holding his hands up. He has no energy for this. “I’m bad at touring, and I don’t like you,” he says, turning back to Jay. “So please stop pretending to be my friend.”
“I’m not pretending just because I don’t care for your youth and naïveté.”
“You’re jealous of my youth, and you wish I were naïve,” Kurt says simply before turning on his heel to go.
“I’m flying to LA tomorrow,” Jay calls after him.
It’s their day off, and it means only one thing. Jay has an audition.
Kurt desperately wants to cry; he hates Jay right now, yet the thought of being abandoned by him is a horror.
When he gets back to the hotel without Stefan or the girls from the chorus, Kurt calls Blaine as he steps into the elevator and speaks without preamble, always without preamble now.
“I am very, very bad at this, and I want to come home.”
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