Fic: For Better or for Worse (3/4)
Title: For Better or for Worse (3/4)
Fandom: Glee
Rating: PG, this and first two parts; R for the last
Characters: Kurt Hummel/Blaine Anderson, Tina Cohen-Chang, Sam Evans, Artie Abrams, Noah Puckerman, Sugar Motta, Santana Lopez, Quinn Fabray, Mike Chang, every single glee kid (some are cameos and/or won't appear until the final part)
Count: 5630 words, this part
Summary: Kurt is an up-and-coming New York City wedding planner working on the biggest wedding of his career, and Blaine is the frontman of an unfortunately-named band from New Jersey. Booking an untested band with a distracting lead singer is either going to be the best or the worst decision that Kurt has ever made. He's not sure which, just yet.
Warnings: Homophobia, this part.
Notes: For![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
unicorndust. I promise I have stopped changing the number of parts now. ♥
* * *
When Kurt flies into the shop, he finds himself facing a state of absolute chaos.
Sam and Artie are laughing, wearing their own pants (jeans for Sam; some sort of Dockers for Artie) with matching maroon crushed velvet suit jackets. Sugar is strutting around the showroom in an oversized men's suit, fedora hanging low over her eyes, looking like nothing so much as a five-year-old in her father's clothing and mother's shoes. Puck is standing on the short platform in front of the mirrors, wearing a heinous powder blue suit and making obscene thrusting movements over the head of the oblivious tailor crouched at his feet, her hands in the hem of his trousers.
Out of breath from his bolt through the freezing rain from the bus stop three blocks down, Kurt says, "Puck" sharply enough that he stops doing the horrible thing that he's doing, and then he allows himself to sag there in the doorway. One day, Hummel Event Design is going to be successful enough (and he is so close now) that cab rides or even car hires are more than a once-in-a-blue-moon special treat. But for now, he's keeping expenses low in every possible arena while trying to make it with a small business that requires excess during the worst economic recession since the Great Depression, and that means that when he isn't with clients, he scrambles along New York City streets with his arms full of design books and fabric swatches and centerpiece mock-ups.
His bag is heavy on his shoulder, and he has come straight from a bridal expo that required an unbelievable amount of networking and smiling and gushing over potential brides, and he's tired. Kurt is so tired. His head is swimming from the smell of thousands of flowers and cloying perfumes, and he's hot and dizzy after the mad dash from Flushing, and his phone has been blowing up with text notifications for the last hour, probably from Patrick Tucker, which he can't bring himself to look at right now.
Ordinarily, Kurt loves his job with the fierceitude of a thousand RuPaul's Drag Race contestants, but the only activity that sounds good right now is getting on the Q, going home, crawling under his eider-down duvet, and not emerging until he has slept for at least three days straight.
And then Blaine walks in from the dressing room wearing a boxy suit jacket with absurdly high-waisted sack-cloth trousers, the hems so long that the fabric flops uselessly with every step that he takes, and that is it. Kurt has absolutely had it.
"Noah Puckerman," Kurt snaps, and Puck guiltily freezes (he'd been making lewd gestures down at the tailor again) and then shoots Kurt an incredulous look. "That's right; I know your name. Get down, get back in the dressing room, and take off that hideous eighties-prom throwback right now. Sugar, you're a musician, not a five-foot-three Don Draper in hooker shoes. Put your own clothes back on; even they're an improvement over this." She pulls an offended moue at him. Kurt is way too far gone to pay it any mind. "You two--" Artie had been laughing silently at Kurt's treatment of his bandmates, but he shuts up now that he's facing Kurt's accusing pointer finger. "This is fashion, not a game. Put the Austin Powers costumes back where you found them."
Blaine started out wide-eyed and a little amused, and is frowning now. Kurt stares at those awful pants for a long moment, and then shakes his head and says, "I can't speak to you while you're wearing that."
"Okay," Blaine says slowly, like he's trying to placate him, which just makes Kurt all the madder. "What do you want us to do?"
"Put everything back, get in the dressing rooms, and wait for me, like I asked you to," Kurt snaps.
Artie is the first to finally turn and head toward the dressing rooms, one of his wheelchair's wheels squeaking in the otherwise total silence. "Wow," he says. "That is some serious power-tripping." The others follow, Sugar muttering something that Kurt blocks out, leaving Blaine to look at Kurt for a few more seconds before he goes, too.
Kurt slowly breathes in and out, and then flashes a tight smile at the graying man who has just come into the showroom from the back and is walking toward him. "Mr. Delsolio, hello. I trust that you have what we discussed?"
* * *
After an awkward half an hour of fittings (which went very well in terms of actual progress, thanks to Kurt's instinctive eye for sizing and for fabric), Kurt slips out and leaves the tailors to marking their minor alterations, and the musicians to trying not to squirm as the tailors stick pins here, there, and everywhere. He perches on the employee-only steps behind the storefront, leaning against the rail and staring at the dumpster. It's blessedly cold on his hot face out here by the loading dock, and he draws his knees up and lets his forehead rest on them.
When he hears cautious footsteps approach, he knows very well who it is.
"I'm sorry," Kurt says to his knees.
"No," Blaine says firmly, sitting down beside him. "Kurt, no. We were goofing around; you had every right to put us in our place." Kurt decides to go along with the false pretense that Blaine was joking around, too, and that he hadn't thought that his suit was a valid contender. Kurt would ordinarily feel magnanimous about allowing Blaine his lie of omission, but he feels too guilty about the way that he just took his bad day out on the artists formerly known as Yo Mama.
"I said Sugar was wearing hooker shoes." He doesn't raise his head. "They weren't hooker shoes; I actually almost like them. They have a certain awful charm."
"Kurt." Blaine lays his hand on his shoulder, careful, and when Kurt doesn't try to shake him off, he squeezes. "You should hear some of the stuff we say to each other sometimes; that wasn't even in the same weight class. They're going to forgive you."
"Rachel makes pretty amazing 'I'm sorry' cookies, if you ignore that they're vegan," Kurt says. "Maybe I'll commission a few dozen to speed up the process." Blaine laughs softly, and doesn't move his hand. Kurt imagines that he can feel its warmth even through his coat and three layers of shirts, even though he knows he really can't.
"We're all suckers for cookies," Blaine says. "I think that would probably do it."
He smiles faintly and finally sits up straight. Blaine is sitting very close, still wearing his wedding performance suit (which looks just as incredible on him as Kurt had thought it would) and watching him with obvious concern. "Please don't take this the wrong way," he starts, and Kurt preemptively sighs, "but you look terrible."
"Why thank you, Blaine," Kurt deadpans. "I have no idea of any wrong way in which I could take that."
"Kurt, I'm serious. Are you feeling okay?"
"It's just been a long week," Kurt says. "I'll go home and catch up on America's Next Top Model and get some sleep tonight, and I'll feel fine in the morning."
He shoots him a patently dubious look, but instead of voicing his clear disbelief, he says, "Do you want to come back inside?"
"I think I could stand to eat some crow," Kurt says, and he accepts the hand up that Blaine offers him.
The fitting ends much more harmoniously than it started; Kurt's regrets are accepted, and even Puck apologizes, in his own Puck-ish way ("Whatever, dude. I guess I could have not pretended to bang the sewing lady"), and the suits -- and Sugar's dress -- are another item that Kurt can tick off of his to-do list. It doesn't do much for how hard it's becoming to stand upright without swaying, but it does make him feel a little bit better in terms of stress points.
While the others are getting their things together and putting their coats on, Blaine takes Kurt by the elbows and walks him into a chair, almost tripping over the shoelaces that he hasn't bothered to re-tie yet after changing back into his own clothes. "You're sick," he says bluntly. "You shouldn't be here."
In all honesty, Kurt gave up on trying being in denial about his own illness several hours ago, when he nearly coughed right in the face of a potential client at the expo. He doesn't bother trying to talk his way out of it. "I have things that I need to do this afternoon," he says, vague but determined. "I'm going to do them."
Blaine presses the back of his hand to Kurt's forehead. "You're burning up."
"Then I'll burn," Kurt tells him. "I still have to meet with the photographer for our wedding, and look at two venues for another one." Later, he thinks, he is probably going to cringe at the fact that he called it 'our wedding'; Blaine doesn't so much as blink, though.
"Just call and tell them you're sick; I'm sure you can reschedule."
That's adorable. "I have way too much to do, and I can't show any weakness." Kurt stares up at him from the chair. "This is a cutthroat business; they'll be all over me if they smell blood in the water."
"The cutthroat business of helping to create the happiest day of people's lives," Blaine says doubtfully.
"Love hurts, Blaine," he says, as serious as he has ever been.
"Okay," Blaine says, finally. "Then here's what we're going to do."
* * *
"Quinn, Blaine; Blaine, Quinn," Kurt says with an offhand gesture as they blow into Quinn's tiny studio like a hurricane. "He's assisting me on a trial basis today."
"Wow," Quinn says, looking up from the table of photographs that she is bent over and glancing at Blaine with calculated interest. "An assistant? You're moving up in the world."
"Assistant?" scoffs a new voice, and a stranger comes down the stairs, killer heels and long tanned legs first. "What a new and fascinating way to say butt buddy." She smiles at them, bright and sharp-edged and smug; she's beautiful, and also, Kurt thinks from the look on her face, probably the devil.
Kurt blinks dully and is aware of Blaine tensing up beside him. God, this isn't fair. He is definitely sick, and it is definitely turning all of his best insults into a quagmire of exhaustion and loss of critical thinking capacity.
Quinn glares at the wall behind Kurt's head for a long second. "This is Santana," she says, her voice professional and faux-sweet. "She'll be my second shooter for the Tucker-Gantry job, and she would not still be working for me if her shots weren't some of the best in the business."
"I don't work for you, Fabray," Santana says. "I'm an independent contractor; I goes where I wants."
"Whatever," Kurt breaks in. "I don't care, just as long as you don't say anything about butt buddies within 15 miles of June 12th." He shoots Quinn a long look.
Quinn steadily meets his gaze. "She's a tactless lesbian, not a homophobe," she says, unruffled. "It'll be fine."
"Hey!" Santana barks. "I'm standing right here, you clowns."
Ignoring her definitely seems like the best possible strategy, both for getting in and out of here quickly, and for annoying her like she's annoying Kurt. He maintains focus on Quinn. "She's good?"
She shrugs; a what can you do? gesture. "She's the best."
"Okay." Kurt tugs his iPad out of the bag and powers it up, stepping away from the safety of Blaine's side and crossing to the table. "Then let's talk shot lists."
* * *
After an hour of discussing essential photographs and equipment with Quinn, complete with less-than-useless interjections by Santana, Kurt downs two ibuprofen and half a mocha while wedged into a two-person seat on a bus, and then relies on Blaine to be his legs while doing walk-throughs of a hotel ballroom and a stunning, well-lit wine cellar. It's a lot easier than he would have expected; Blaine is incredible at surreptitiously steering him around, though Kurt is fairly sure that it isn't just the fever that's keeping his face hot when Blaine lightly touches his elbow or the small of his back. With Blaine making sure that Kurt walks in the correct direction and doesn't trip, Kurt is free to focus on talking design and logistics and not letting on that he feels like he is about to float up into the clouds.
In the end, the bride and groom go the road less traveled and pick the architecturally-fascinating wine cellar as the reception venue, which Kurt loves and is going to be very excited to plan once he isn't juggling nine weddings at once and once he feels less like he's going to die, and they all part with pleasant handshakes on the pavement outside the restaurant.
Then Kurt crumbles, because he doesn't have to be on anymore, and lets himself sink against Blaine and give him mumbled directions for how to get home.
Once they're up the stairs and through the front door of the apartment in Astoria, Kurt leans against the wall. "I'm sorry." He is sorry, more than he can say; Blaine gave up his entire afternoon to be Kurt's seeing-foot-dog just because Kurt is hopefully-endearingly-but-probably-irritatingly stubborn.
"Don't be sorry," Blaine says, closing the door behind them and putting Kurt's keys on the kitchen island. "I kind of thought you were Superman for a while, and as amazing as that was, this is a lot less intimidating."
"If my brain were less full of cotton wool, I would probably have a serious problem with what you just said," Kurt says woozily.
He looks endearingly guilty as he carefully strips Kurt out of his coat. "It's not -- I don't mean it like that; I just-- I have bad days all the time, and it's kind of nice to know that you do too sometimes, you know?" He stops, hands still on the scarf that he's unwinding from around Kurt's neck, and grimaces. "That's not any better, is it?"
"No, not really." Kurt leans in, as if to tell him a secret: "But I like you anyway."
"You're adorable when you're a little delirious," Blaine tells him, smiling. "I think it's adorable. I think you're adorable. All the time, but still."
"You think it's adorable when I'm a little delirious all the time?" Kurt asks doubtfully, staggering away from him.
"You know what I mean," Blaine calls, taking off his coat and ridiculous beanie hat while Kurt carefully pours himself a glass of water. And then Blaine is there again, taking the glass out of his hand and gently asking which room is his, and leading him over. He finds a pair of silk pajamas and diplomatically leaves the room so that Kurt can slowly, carefully change and hang up his skinny jeans and prized Dior blazer.
(He offered to help Kurt change his clothes, but the force of Kurt's steady, silent stare drove him back out into the kitchen.)
Blaine comes back with Tylenol and a box of tissues and a trash can while Kurt is crawling into the incredible cocoon that is his bed.
"This is embarrassing," Kurt informs him, while Blaine tucks him in.
"It's not embarrassing to need a little help once in a while," Blaine says, which sounds strangely reasonable when Blaine says it. "I can have a breakdown of some kind in the next month, if it will make you feel any better."
"Only if you promise," he says drowsily.
Blaine lays a hand over his own heart. "Kurt, I promise I'll suffer a meltdown and you'll have to take care of me sometime in the near future."
"Good," Kurt says, and he passes out with the vague idea that someone is stroking his hair.
* * *
"Apparently, he left just long enough to go to the Safeway on the corner, made chicken soup, and stayed until Finn got home from school," Kurt says into his hands, his elbows on the counter.
"Kurt," Tina crows. "That's the sweetest thing I've ever heard!" She pauses. "Does he have a straight and/or bisexual brother?"
"Yes," Kurt says immediately. "His name is Victor and he's 35 and looks like a male model, and he's married with a frightening number of children." He looks at her. "His sister is single."
She ignores him. "Are you sure you and Blaine aren't dating?" Tina says, arranging a stunningly simple bouquet of sunflowers as they talk. He has no idea where she got sunflowers at this time of year; she's amazing. Her parents may have built this shop, but it's Tina, with her creativity and determination and head for business, who has sent it exploding into the stratosphere of New York's elite. Kurt is extraordinarily lucky that they met when he was first entering the scene and her parents had just retired, and they bonded over being the new kids on the event planning block. He would never be able to get in the door for her incredibly popular arrangements and bouquets now, if they weren't friends.
"We're not dating," Kurt says. "I would know if we were dating."
"I seriously think you're dating." Tina eyes the bouquet with a practiced eye, then reaches for the drawer under the counter and pulls out several spools of grosgrain ribbon. "You know all about each others' families. He made you boyfriend soup!"
"He made me 'very weird friend with very weird boundaries' soup," Kurt protests, and he stops peering through his fingers and shuts his eyes again.
A gentle hand on his wrist pries first one hand away from his face and then the other. He doesn't really fight it; it doesn't matter that much, and he's still weak from the two-day flu that Blaine saw the beginning stages of. Besides, Tina is nothing if not determined once she sets her mind on a course of action. "Kurt," Tina says. "He gave up his entire day to help you finish yours, and you guys flirt constantly, and he told you you're adorable, and he made you soup."
He narrows his eyes at her. "You're really stuck on the soup."
"God, I'm so hungry," she says. "Do you want to order from Bangkok Heights?"
"You're a terrible influence," Kurt informs her. Beat. "Yes."
Over pad thai, Tina single-mindedly brings the subject right back to Blaine again, despite Kurt's attempts to talk business about the three weddings of his that she's currently working out flower arrangements for. "Have you guys talked since Monday?" she asks.
Kurt's involuntarily-guilty look apparently speaks volumes, because she says, "Kurt!"
"I was struggling to lift my head off the pillow, much less to write texts that are the perfect balance between flirtatious and friendly!" Kurt defends. "I've been busy!"
"I seriously do not understand you."
"It was embarrassing." He knows it's a weak argument, but it's the truth: he is very, very embarrassed about the total breakdown in self-sufficiency that Blaine witnessed.
"Not as embarrassing as you're being right now," Tina challenges. "Kurt Hummel, if you don't call him, I'm going to make all of your orders pink carnations with baby's breath."
He gasps, scandalized. "You wouldn't."
Tina lifts her eyebrows at him.
Kurt calls Blaine and makes his apologies about having been difficult to get in touch with.
* * *
"Hi," Blaine says softly, the next time that they come face to face.
Kurt is fully aware that the quiet smile that blooms across his own face is fully ridiculous, but he can't do a thing about it. "Hi."
"Are you feeling better?"
"Yes," Kurt says. "Definitely. Thank you." He shoots a sidelong glance at Blaine as they fall into step side by side. "I suspect that the key to my recovery may have been this incredibly delicious soup that magically appeared in my apartment."
"Really?" Blaine says, and Kurt hears the grin in his voice. "It sounds like you have some kind of soup fairy, who's probably kind of awesome."
"I have some sort of fairy," Kurt says before he can quite stop himself, and Blaine's startled laughter is worth it. He holds the door so that Blaine can pass through with his keyboard under his arm, and they're both laughing -- and suddenly in a dance studio with Kurt's clients. Who are early.
Kurt likes to think that he recovers nicely. "Patrick, Robyn," he says, letting his smile slip into the professional place. "Right on time. Robyn, this is Blaine Anderson from the band; Patrick, you remember Blaine."
"Hi, it's really nice to meet you," Blaine says, and shifts his keyboard up so that he can shake Robyn's hand.
Robyn looks bemused as anything at the picture of earnesty in front of him, but he says, "Charmed, Mr. Anderson." Patrick regularly makes Kurt wish that his apartment was soundproofed so that he could scream in frustration, but he adores Robyn, who is quick-witted and funny and judgmental and intimidating, the outgoing bitchy cheer to Patrick's stoic reservation. He's the one who wanted to give Kurt a chance in the first place. Unfortunately, he also doesn't seem to care about the little details as much as Patrick does, and seems content to let Patrick steadfastly harangue the hell out of Kurt.
Kurt, frankly, doesn't get them as a couple, at all, but they've been together for 30 years, so they must be doing something right.
"You and the band will be our accompaniment today?"
"We thought it might be a good idea if you guys got used to dancing to exactly what you'll be hearing at the reception," Blaine explains. "I mean -- Kurt and I thought so."
"Did you?" Robyn asks, his amused, cat-caught-the-canary expression only broadening as he looks between Blaine and Kurt, and Kurt determinedly doesn't react. It isn't necessarily forbidden for him to have an unspoken flirtation with the lead singer of the band that he hired to play the reception, but he doesn't think it's exactly a shining statement about his professionalism, either, and he's going to play it close to the vest. The metaphorical and literal vest; he's wearing a plum brocade waistcoat today.
"Yes," Kurt says, giving Blaine an unsubtle shove toward where Sugar is setting up her drum kit against the far wall. "We did, while conferring over the set list and sartorial choices for the band."
Blaine, thankfully, is capable of taking a hint. He nods and says, "Uh! Yes! We're very excited to play for you," and then gets the hell out of dodge with his keyboard.
"While I have you two, I have a few bills and flower arrangement concepts for you to look over," Kurt says matter of factly, opening his satchel to grab his Gantry-Tucker folder.
"Uh huh," says Robyn, grinning, but he doesn't comment; just slips his reading glasses on his nose while Patrick takes the crisp papers that Kurt hands over. Robyn leans over his shoulder to read, and Kurt is about to launch into the routine explanation when someone says, "Excuse me, I'm looking for Kurt Hummel."
"That's me," Kurt trills cheerfully, because he can hear Sam and Sugar and Blaine laughing, and he feels 100% energized and ready to go, and for once, Patrick isn't saying boo about the (on-budget, thank you very much) bills that Kurt has put in front of him. He turns around and finds a man with a dreadful toupee, dressed in jeans and a leather jacket that are about 15 years too young for him, looking at them all strangely from his spot standing in the door. He looks nothing like the pictures on his website, which were clearly not taken recently, but Kurt recognizes him all the same. Nicolas Morrison was an astounding catch on his part; a dance instructor who Kurt has never worked with before, but who has a list of credentials a mile long, including four years dancing leading roles with the Royal Ballet in London and another six touring with the Kirov Ballet. "You have perfect timing."
Kurt knows that something isn't right when there's a pause before the man says, "A word?" and jerks his head toward the door.
Kurt says, "Certainly," and leaves the grooms to a quiet, foul-mouthed argument about lilies of the valley.
Morrison doesn't beat around the bush, once he has Kurt in front of him. Voice lowered, he asks, "Where is the bride?"
Fuck, Kurt thinks, very distinctly, somewhere far away. He smiles, brittle and tight. "There isn't one."
"I don't understand," says Morrison flatly. "In your emails, you said that the bride and groom's names were Patrick and Robyn."
"Their names are Patrick and Robyn," Kurt says, letting his hand tighten, white-knuckled and steady, on the strap of his bag. "The grooms' names. I thought that that was understood."
"Robyn with a y. That's a woman's name."
"It's a personal preference in spelling," he says, icy and quiet and cutting. "You will want to stop, right now, and think about what you're saying and who you're saying it to, and about the contract that you signed."
The man actually has the gall to snort. "Listen, kid," he says. "I'm sure you're the queen of the gays and everything, but I don't really care if your feelings are hurt here. I'm not helping you people use marriage as some social experiment. It's more important than that."
"How do you survive?" Kurt asks, though it's primarily an acid-tongued rhetorical question. "I didn't think there was such a creature as a homophobic dance instructor in New York City."
"You really wanna talk about creatures?"
It's been a while since Kurt heard words like those, in a tone like that. Not as long as it's been since he left Ohio, because there isn't a tolerance paradise anywhere in the world like the fictional version of New York that he'd built up in his head as a teenager, but a while; enough that it almost startles him.
Kurt draws himself up and feels a certain cold pleasure at being the taller and more imposing of the two. "Please, as you leave, do enjoy the knowledge that you'll never land a lucrative private booking in New York again, and that you're wearing the least convincing dead cat of a toupee that I've ever seen in my life."
The guy takes a step toward him (which is a first; Kurt can safely say that a dance instructor has never tried to physically intimidate him before), and he's distantly aware that someone says, "Whoa," and someone else says, "Hey!" and that there's movement behind him. His attention, though, is on the small-minded little man in front of him, and on watching him with a long, unflinching look.
A tense half a second passes, and then Morrison grabs his duffel bag from where he'd set it down and storms out of the studio.
Kurt watches him go, and then he settles his face into something less incredulously icy and furious, and turns around. Everyone is watching him. Sam and Blaine are standing halfway across the studio, clearly having started toward him and Morrison when the guy got up in his face, and Puck isn't far behind. Kurt actively avoids looking at Blaine's face. Patrick is inscrutable as ever but Robyn looks resigned, and that's so much worse than anything else. That expression says everything about what he and Patrick have had to endure in 30 years together, and comes closer to unhinging Kurt's controlled, glacial fury than anything else.
"Well," Kurt says, into the silence. "I may need a few hours to track down a less vile dance instructor." He's going to start apologizing, for clearly not having done his due diligence, momentarily; he just-- he needs a minute. He is so angry that his hands are subtly shaking at his sides.
And, then to his eternal shock, Blaine's voice says, "I might have an idea, if you don't have someone immediately in mind."
Kurt turns to stare at him. Blaine looks steadily back at him, as, behind him, Sugar claps her hands together and says dreamily, "I love watching Mike dance."
* * *
It turns out that "Mike" is Blaine's six-foot-tall, impossibly-sweet, body-of-a-Greek-god Asian roommate. Patrick takes to him immediately. Kurt watches in no small amount of awe and shock as Mike -- who Patrick insists on calling Michael -- diplomatically guides Robyn and Patrick through the potentially-stormy waters of figuring out who's going to take which dancing position, then starts to teach them the steps.
"I don't understand," Kurt says, staring. "Patrick doesn't hate him. Patrick hates everyone."
"Mike's just kind of like that," Blaine says, smiling alongside him as Mike demonstrates the first steps of a waltz, which he apparently doesn't want musical accompaniment for just yet. "He gets along with everybody."
Kurt snorts, and sees Blaine toss him a quizzical look out of the corner of his eye. "You two," he says. "How do you ever decide on anything?" Blaine turns to face him more fully, looking confused now, and Kurt studies him shrewdly. "Everything is 'you first, I insist'; 'no, I insist,' isn't it?"
Blaine opens his mouth -- then closes it. "We might have argued for 10 minutes last night over who was going to pick what kind of takeout we ordered," he mumbles.
"And while most people would be arguing the merits of sushi vs. pizza, the two of you were both trying to let the other one decide, weren't you?" Blaine's face is a dead giveaway; Kurt lifts an eyebrow. "And how was the argument of the century settled?"
He looks sheepish. "Matt got sick of it and ordered from the diner down the street."
Kurt laughs softly, and watches Patrick Tucker give a faint smile as Robyn spins him, and listens to Blaine breathe beside him, and he knows what he's going to do.
* * *
Patrick and Robyn are the first to leave, very important schedules (Kurt is 85% sure that he heard Robyn say something about "drinks with Elton, that asshole," and then he shut his brain down for the sake of not having a Moment while talking to his clients) calling. They've readily agreed to another pre-wedding session with Mike and the band, since Robyn's main point of actually-giving-a-shit about the reception seems to be that they have a stellar first dance, and Robyn meets Kurt's eyes and smirks as he sweeps out of the studio.
The band packs up next, and Kurt makes phone calls to deal with as much of the afternoon's business as possible while they load their disgusting van and Sugar sits parked in a loading zone and honks the horn in new and fascinating rhythms. Blaine is on his way out the studio's front door with a final bag of guitar cables when Kurt grabs his arm and says, "Why don't you leave that to Mike."
Mike wiggles his eyebrows, smiling. He takes the bag from Blaine as he passes, clapping Blaine on the shoulder, and doesn't say a single word about it.
Mike is quite possibly Kurt's new favorite person ever.
"Kurt?" Blaine asks, looking between Kurt and the van idling outside. Kurt knows -- because he has become That Person, the one who talks to someone so often that he has memorized their work schedule -- that Blaine doesn't have anywhere that he has to be for the rest of the day, and he leans out the studio's open front door and makes a very obvious gesture for them to leave.
Artie's wolf whistle is clearly audible thanks to the open passenger side window, and Sugar gives them an obnoxious thumbs-up and pulls away from the curb and out into traffic.
The lilting strains of classical violins tumble down from upstairs, along with the soft-shoe muffled stomp of tiny ballet slippers on the floor. Blaine is standing in front of him in the cramped entryway, looking up, his lashes long as he blinks. It's cold with the door open but sunny, dust motes drifting down slowly through the light.
"Thank you," Kurt says, and he leans in and kisses Blaine, who freezes for barely a split second before clutching at Kurt's arms and reciprocating. "Thank you," and they kiss again, hot and hard, two months of longing and want and dancing around each other crammed into this one moment, "thank you--" and he grabs Blaine's face and holds him right there, right in the best place to kiss the living hell out of him.
By the time they finally take a break, Blaine's face is pink right up to his hairline and his lips are shiny and puffy and his hair is comically wild. "Kurt," he gasps, and Kurt tries to reel him in again but Blaine holds him off. "Wait, wait, Kurt, hold on a second." He's laughing so it can't be bad news; Kurt gives him a moment to compose himself. "This -- I don't want this to just be because--"
"Oh my god," Kurt says. "Don't be asinine," and they make out in the foyer until two teenage ballerinas practically trip over them and then back away giggling.
They take a cab back to Queens (fuck it, Kurt has decided; just fuck it, fuck all of it) and it's a good cool-down period, thirty minutes spent holding hands across the backseat and memorizing the way that Blaine's thumb strokes the skin between Kurt's thumb and forefinger, and the way that he smiles like Kurt has just handed him the moon.
"I'm crazy about you," Blaine murmurs, and Kurt squeezes his hand so tight that it has to hurt, but Blaine doesn't complain.
"You move me," Kurt says, just as quiet, and it has the potential to sound stupid but he's pretty sure that Blaine gets it.
Fandom: Glee
Rating: PG, this and first two parts; R for the last
Characters: Kurt Hummel/Blaine Anderson, Tina Cohen-Chang, Sam Evans, Artie Abrams, Noah Puckerman, Sugar Motta, Santana Lopez, Quinn Fabray, Mike Chang, every single glee kid (some are cameos and/or won't appear until the final part)
Count: 5630 words, this part
Summary: Kurt is an up-and-coming New York City wedding planner working on the biggest wedding of his career, and Blaine is the frontman of an unfortunately-named band from New Jersey. Booking an untested band with a distracting lead singer is either going to be the best or the worst decision that Kurt has ever made. He's not sure which, just yet.
Warnings: Homophobia, this part.
Notes: For
unicorndust. I promise I have stopped changing the number of parts now. ♥* * *
When Kurt flies into the shop, he finds himself facing a state of absolute chaos.
Sam and Artie are laughing, wearing their own pants (jeans for Sam; some sort of Dockers for Artie) with matching maroon crushed velvet suit jackets. Sugar is strutting around the showroom in an oversized men's suit, fedora hanging low over her eyes, looking like nothing so much as a five-year-old in her father's clothing and mother's shoes. Puck is standing on the short platform in front of the mirrors, wearing a heinous powder blue suit and making obscene thrusting movements over the head of the oblivious tailor crouched at his feet, her hands in the hem of his trousers.
Out of breath from his bolt through the freezing rain from the bus stop three blocks down, Kurt says, "Puck" sharply enough that he stops doing the horrible thing that he's doing, and then he allows himself to sag there in the doorway. One day, Hummel Event Design is going to be successful enough (and he is so close now) that cab rides or even car hires are more than a once-in-a-blue-moon special treat. But for now, he's keeping expenses low in every possible arena while trying to make it with a small business that requires excess during the worst economic recession since the Great Depression, and that means that when he isn't with clients, he scrambles along New York City streets with his arms full of design books and fabric swatches and centerpiece mock-ups.
His bag is heavy on his shoulder, and he has come straight from a bridal expo that required an unbelievable amount of networking and smiling and gushing over potential brides, and he's tired. Kurt is so tired. His head is swimming from the smell of thousands of flowers and cloying perfumes, and he's hot and dizzy after the mad dash from Flushing, and his phone has been blowing up with text notifications for the last hour, probably from Patrick Tucker, which he can't bring himself to look at right now.
Ordinarily, Kurt loves his job with the fierceitude of a thousand RuPaul's Drag Race contestants, but the only activity that sounds good right now is getting on the Q, going home, crawling under his eider-down duvet, and not emerging until he has slept for at least three days straight.
And then Blaine walks in from the dressing room wearing a boxy suit jacket with absurdly high-waisted sack-cloth trousers, the hems so long that the fabric flops uselessly with every step that he takes, and that is it. Kurt has absolutely had it.
"Noah Puckerman," Kurt snaps, and Puck guiltily freezes (he'd been making lewd gestures down at the tailor again) and then shoots Kurt an incredulous look. "That's right; I know your name. Get down, get back in the dressing room, and take off that hideous eighties-prom throwback right now. Sugar, you're a musician, not a five-foot-three Don Draper in hooker shoes. Put your own clothes back on; even they're an improvement over this." She pulls an offended moue at him. Kurt is way too far gone to pay it any mind. "You two--" Artie had been laughing silently at Kurt's treatment of his bandmates, but he shuts up now that he's facing Kurt's accusing pointer finger. "This is fashion, not a game. Put the Austin Powers costumes back where you found them."
Blaine started out wide-eyed and a little amused, and is frowning now. Kurt stares at those awful pants for a long moment, and then shakes his head and says, "I can't speak to you while you're wearing that."
"Okay," Blaine says slowly, like he's trying to placate him, which just makes Kurt all the madder. "What do you want us to do?"
"Put everything back, get in the dressing rooms, and wait for me, like I asked you to," Kurt snaps.
Artie is the first to finally turn and head toward the dressing rooms, one of his wheelchair's wheels squeaking in the otherwise total silence. "Wow," he says. "That is some serious power-tripping." The others follow, Sugar muttering something that Kurt blocks out, leaving Blaine to look at Kurt for a few more seconds before he goes, too.
Kurt slowly breathes in and out, and then flashes a tight smile at the graying man who has just come into the showroom from the back and is walking toward him. "Mr. Delsolio, hello. I trust that you have what we discussed?"
* * *
After an awkward half an hour of fittings (which went very well in terms of actual progress, thanks to Kurt's instinctive eye for sizing and for fabric), Kurt slips out and leaves the tailors to marking their minor alterations, and the musicians to trying not to squirm as the tailors stick pins here, there, and everywhere. He perches on the employee-only steps behind the storefront, leaning against the rail and staring at the dumpster. It's blessedly cold on his hot face out here by the loading dock, and he draws his knees up and lets his forehead rest on them.
When he hears cautious footsteps approach, he knows very well who it is.
"I'm sorry," Kurt says to his knees.
"No," Blaine says firmly, sitting down beside him. "Kurt, no. We were goofing around; you had every right to put us in our place." Kurt decides to go along with the false pretense that Blaine was joking around, too, and that he hadn't thought that his suit was a valid contender. Kurt would ordinarily feel magnanimous about allowing Blaine his lie of omission, but he feels too guilty about the way that he just took his bad day out on the artists formerly known as Yo Mama.
"I said Sugar was wearing hooker shoes." He doesn't raise his head. "They weren't hooker shoes; I actually almost like them. They have a certain awful charm."
"Kurt." Blaine lays his hand on his shoulder, careful, and when Kurt doesn't try to shake him off, he squeezes. "You should hear some of the stuff we say to each other sometimes; that wasn't even in the same weight class. They're going to forgive you."
"Rachel makes pretty amazing 'I'm sorry' cookies, if you ignore that they're vegan," Kurt says. "Maybe I'll commission a few dozen to speed up the process." Blaine laughs softly, and doesn't move his hand. Kurt imagines that he can feel its warmth even through his coat and three layers of shirts, even though he knows he really can't.
"We're all suckers for cookies," Blaine says. "I think that would probably do it."
He smiles faintly and finally sits up straight. Blaine is sitting very close, still wearing his wedding performance suit (which looks just as incredible on him as Kurt had thought it would) and watching him with obvious concern. "Please don't take this the wrong way," he starts, and Kurt preemptively sighs, "but you look terrible."
"Why thank you, Blaine," Kurt deadpans. "I have no idea of any wrong way in which I could take that."
"Kurt, I'm serious. Are you feeling okay?"
"It's just been a long week," Kurt says. "I'll go home and catch up on America's Next Top Model and get some sleep tonight, and I'll feel fine in the morning."
He shoots him a patently dubious look, but instead of voicing his clear disbelief, he says, "Do you want to come back inside?"
"I think I could stand to eat some crow," Kurt says, and he accepts the hand up that Blaine offers him.
The fitting ends much more harmoniously than it started; Kurt's regrets are accepted, and even Puck apologizes, in his own Puck-ish way ("Whatever, dude. I guess I could have not pretended to bang the sewing lady"), and the suits -- and Sugar's dress -- are another item that Kurt can tick off of his to-do list. It doesn't do much for how hard it's becoming to stand upright without swaying, but it does make him feel a little bit better in terms of stress points.
While the others are getting their things together and putting their coats on, Blaine takes Kurt by the elbows and walks him into a chair, almost tripping over the shoelaces that he hasn't bothered to re-tie yet after changing back into his own clothes. "You're sick," he says bluntly. "You shouldn't be here."
In all honesty, Kurt gave up on trying being in denial about his own illness several hours ago, when he nearly coughed right in the face of a potential client at the expo. He doesn't bother trying to talk his way out of it. "I have things that I need to do this afternoon," he says, vague but determined. "I'm going to do them."
Blaine presses the back of his hand to Kurt's forehead. "You're burning up."
"Then I'll burn," Kurt tells him. "I still have to meet with the photographer for our wedding, and look at two venues for another one." Later, he thinks, he is probably going to cringe at the fact that he called it 'our wedding'; Blaine doesn't so much as blink, though.
"Just call and tell them you're sick; I'm sure you can reschedule."
That's adorable. "I have way too much to do, and I can't show any weakness." Kurt stares up at him from the chair. "This is a cutthroat business; they'll be all over me if they smell blood in the water."
"The cutthroat business of helping to create the happiest day of people's lives," Blaine says doubtfully.
"Love hurts, Blaine," he says, as serious as he has ever been.
"Okay," Blaine says, finally. "Then here's what we're going to do."
* * *
"Quinn, Blaine; Blaine, Quinn," Kurt says with an offhand gesture as they blow into Quinn's tiny studio like a hurricane. "He's assisting me on a trial basis today."
"Wow," Quinn says, looking up from the table of photographs that she is bent over and glancing at Blaine with calculated interest. "An assistant? You're moving up in the world."
"Assistant?" scoffs a new voice, and a stranger comes down the stairs, killer heels and long tanned legs first. "What a new and fascinating way to say butt buddy." She smiles at them, bright and sharp-edged and smug; she's beautiful, and also, Kurt thinks from the look on her face, probably the devil.
Kurt blinks dully and is aware of Blaine tensing up beside him. God, this isn't fair. He is definitely sick, and it is definitely turning all of his best insults into a quagmire of exhaustion and loss of critical thinking capacity.
Quinn glares at the wall behind Kurt's head for a long second. "This is Santana," she says, her voice professional and faux-sweet. "She'll be my second shooter for the Tucker-Gantry job, and she would not still be working for me if her shots weren't some of the best in the business."
"I don't work for you, Fabray," Santana says. "I'm an independent contractor; I goes where I wants."
"Whatever," Kurt breaks in. "I don't care, just as long as you don't say anything about butt buddies within 15 miles of June 12th." He shoots Quinn a long look.
Quinn steadily meets his gaze. "She's a tactless lesbian, not a homophobe," she says, unruffled. "It'll be fine."
"Hey!" Santana barks. "I'm standing right here, you clowns."
Ignoring her definitely seems like the best possible strategy, both for getting in and out of here quickly, and for annoying her like she's annoying Kurt. He maintains focus on Quinn. "She's good?"
She shrugs; a what can you do? gesture. "She's the best."
"Okay." Kurt tugs his iPad out of the bag and powers it up, stepping away from the safety of Blaine's side and crossing to the table. "Then let's talk shot lists."
* * *
After an hour of discussing essential photographs and equipment with Quinn, complete with less-than-useless interjections by Santana, Kurt downs two ibuprofen and half a mocha while wedged into a two-person seat on a bus, and then relies on Blaine to be his legs while doing walk-throughs of a hotel ballroom and a stunning, well-lit wine cellar. It's a lot easier than he would have expected; Blaine is incredible at surreptitiously steering him around, though Kurt is fairly sure that it isn't just the fever that's keeping his face hot when Blaine lightly touches his elbow or the small of his back. With Blaine making sure that Kurt walks in the correct direction and doesn't trip, Kurt is free to focus on talking design and logistics and not letting on that he feels like he is about to float up into the clouds.
In the end, the bride and groom go the road less traveled and pick the architecturally-fascinating wine cellar as the reception venue, which Kurt loves and is going to be very excited to plan once he isn't juggling nine weddings at once and once he feels less like he's going to die, and they all part with pleasant handshakes on the pavement outside the restaurant.
Then Kurt crumbles, because he doesn't have to be on anymore, and lets himself sink against Blaine and give him mumbled directions for how to get home.
Once they're up the stairs and through the front door of the apartment in Astoria, Kurt leans against the wall. "I'm sorry." He is sorry, more than he can say; Blaine gave up his entire afternoon to be Kurt's seeing-foot-dog just because Kurt is hopefully-endearingly-but-probably-irritatingly stubborn.
"Don't be sorry," Blaine says, closing the door behind them and putting Kurt's keys on the kitchen island. "I kind of thought you were Superman for a while, and as amazing as that was, this is a lot less intimidating."
"If my brain were less full of cotton wool, I would probably have a serious problem with what you just said," Kurt says woozily.
He looks endearingly guilty as he carefully strips Kurt out of his coat. "It's not -- I don't mean it like that; I just-- I have bad days all the time, and it's kind of nice to know that you do too sometimes, you know?" He stops, hands still on the scarf that he's unwinding from around Kurt's neck, and grimaces. "That's not any better, is it?"
"No, not really." Kurt leans in, as if to tell him a secret: "But I like you anyway."
"You're adorable when you're a little delirious," Blaine tells him, smiling. "I think it's adorable. I think you're adorable. All the time, but still."
"You think it's adorable when I'm a little delirious all the time?" Kurt asks doubtfully, staggering away from him.
"You know what I mean," Blaine calls, taking off his coat and ridiculous beanie hat while Kurt carefully pours himself a glass of water. And then Blaine is there again, taking the glass out of his hand and gently asking which room is his, and leading him over. He finds a pair of silk pajamas and diplomatically leaves the room so that Kurt can slowly, carefully change and hang up his skinny jeans and prized Dior blazer.
(He offered to help Kurt change his clothes, but the force of Kurt's steady, silent stare drove him back out into the kitchen.)
Blaine comes back with Tylenol and a box of tissues and a trash can while Kurt is crawling into the incredible cocoon that is his bed.
"This is embarrassing," Kurt informs him, while Blaine tucks him in.
"It's not embarrassing to need a little help once in a while," Blaine says, which sounds strangely reasonable when Blaine says it. "I can have a breakdown of some kind in the next month, if it will make you feel any better."
"Only if you promise," he says drowsily.
Blaine lays a hand over his own heart. "Kurt, I promise I'll suffer a meltdown and you'll have to take care of me sometime in the near future."
"Good," Kurt says, and he passes out with the vague idea that someone is stroking his hair.
* * *
"Apparently, he left just long enough to go to the Safeway on the corner, made chicken soup, and stayed until Finn got home from school," Kurt says into his hands, his elbows on the counter.
"Kurt," Tina crows. "That's the sweetest thing I've ever heard!" She pauses. "Does he have a straight and/or bisexual brother?"
"Yes," Kurt says immediately. "His name is Victor and he's 35 and looks like a male model, and he's married with a frightening number of children." He looks at her. "His sister is single."
She ignores him. "Are you sure you and Blaine aren't dating?" Tina says, arranging a stunningly simple bouquet of sunflowers as they talk. He has no idea where she got sunflowers at this time of year; she's amazing. Her parents may have built this shop, but it's Tina, with her creativity and determination and head for business, who has sent it exploding into the stratosphere of New York's elite. Kurt is extraordinarily lucky that they met when he was first entering the scene and her parents had just retired, and they bonded over being the new kids on the event planning block. He would never be able to get in the door for her incredibly popular arrangements and bouquets now, if they weren't friends.
"We're not dating," Kurt says. "I would know if we were dating."
"I seriously think you're dating." Tina eyes the bouquet with a practiced eye, then reaches for the drawer under the counter and pulls out several spools of grosgrain ribbon. "You know all about each others' families. He made you boyfriend soup!"
"He made me 'very weird friend with very weird boundaries' soup," Kurt protests, and he stops peering through his fingers and shuts his eyes again.
A gentle hand on his wrist pries first one hand away from his face and then the other. He doesn't really fight it; it doesn't matter that much, and he's still weak from the two-day flu that Blaine saw the beginning stages of. Besides, Tina is nothing if not determined once she sets her mind on a course of action. "Kurt," Tina says. "He gave up his entire day to help you finish yours, and you guys flirt constantly, and he told you you're adorable, and he made you soup."
He narrows his eyes at her. "You're really stuck on the soup."
"God, I'm so hungry," she says. "Do you want to order from Bangkok Heights?"
"You're a terrible influence," Kurt informs her. Beat. "Yes."
Over pad thai, Tina single-mindedly brings the subject right back to Blaine again, despite Kurt's attempts to talk business about the three weddings of his that she's currently working out flower arrangements for. "Have you guys talked since Monday?" she asks.
Kurt's involuntarily-guilty look apparently speaks volumes, because she says, "Kurt!"
"I was struggling to lift my head off the pillow, much less to write texts that are the perfect balance between flirtatious and friendly!" Kurt defends. "I've been busy!"
"I seriously do not understand you."
"It was embarrassing." He knows it's a weak argument, but it's the truth: he is very, very embarrassed about the total breakdown in self-sufficiency that Blaine witnessed.
"Not as embarrassing as you're being right now," Tina challenges. "Kurt Hummel, if you don't call him, I'm going to make all of your orders pink carnations with baby's breath."
He gasps, scandalized. "You wouldn't."
Tina lifts her eyebrows at him.
Kurt calls Blaine and makes his apologies about having been difficult to get in touch with.
* * *
"Hi," Blaine says softly, the next time that they come face to face.
Kurt is fully aware that the quiet smile that blooms across his own face is fully ridiculous, but he can't do a thing about it. "Hi."
"Are you feeling better?"
"Yes," Kurt says. "Definitely. Thank you." He shoots a sidelong glance at Blaine as they fall into step side by side. "I suspect that the key to my recovery may have been this incredibly delicious soup that magically appeared in my apartment."
"Really?" Blaine says, and Kurt hears the grin in his voice. "It sounds like you have some kind of soup fairy, who's probably kind of awesome."
"I have some sort of fairy," Kurt says before he can quite stop himself, and Blaine's startled laughter is worth it. He holds the door so that Blaine can pass through with his keyboard under his arm, and they're both laughing -- and suddenly in a dance studio with Kurt's clients. Who are early.
Kurt likes to think that he recovers nicely. "Patrick, Robyn," he says, letting his smile slip into the professional place. "Right on time. Robyn, this is Blaine Anderson from the band; Patrick, you remember Blaine."
"Hi, it's really nice to meet you," Blaine says, and shifts his keyboard up so that he can shake Robyn's hand.
Robyn looks bemused as anything at the picture of earnesty in front of him, but he says, "Charmed, Mr. Anderson." Patrick regularly makes Kurt wish that his apartment was soundproofed so that he could scream in frustration, but he adores Robyn, who is quick-witted and funny and judgmental and intimidating, the outgoing bitchy cheer to Patrick's stoic reservation. He's the one who wanted to give Kurt a chance in the first place. Unfortunately, he also doesn't seem to care about the little details as much as Patrick does, and seems content to let Patrick steadfastly harangue the hell out of Kurt.
Kurt, frankly, doesn't get them as a couple, at all, but they've been together for 30 years, so they must be doing something right.
"You and the band will be our accompaniment today?"
"We thought it might be a good idea if you guys got used to dancing to exactly what you'll be hearing at the reception," Blaine explains. "I mean -- Kurt and I thought so."
"Did you?" Robyn asks, his amused, cat-caught-the-canary expression only broadening as he looks between Blaine and Kurt, and Kurt determinedly doesn't react. It isn't necessarily forbidden for him to have an unspoken flirtation with the lead singer of the band that he hired to play the reception, but he doesn't think it's exactly a shining statement about his professionalism, either, and he's going to play it close to the vest. The metaphorical and literal vest; he's wearing a plum brocade waistcoat today.
"Yes," Kurt says, giving Blaine an unsubtle shove toward where Sugar is setting up her drum kit against the far wall. "We did, while conferring over the set list and sartorial choices for the band."
Blaine, thankfully, is capable of taking a hint. He nods and says, "Uh! Yes! We're very excited to play for you," and then gets the hell out of dodge with his keyboard.
"While I have you two, I have a few bills and flower arrangement concepts for you to look over," Kurt says matter of factly, opening his satchel to grab his Gantry-Tucker folder.
"Uh huh," says Robyn, grinning, but he doesn't comment; just slips his reading glasses on his nose while Patrick takes the crisp papers that Kurt hands over. Robyn leans over his shoulder to read, and Kurt is about to launch into the routine explanation when someone says, "Excuse me, I'm looking for Kurt Hummel."
"That's me," Kurt trills cheerfully, because he can hear Sam and Sugar and Blaine laughing, and he feels 100% energized and ready to go, and for once, Patrick isn't saying boo about the (on-budget, thank you very much) bills that Kurt has put in front of him. He turns around and finds a man with a dreadful toupee, dressed in jeans and a leather jacket that are about 15 years too young for him, looking at them all strangely from his spot standing in the door. He looks nothing like the pictures on his website, which were clearly not taken recently, but Kurt recognizes him all the same. Nicolas Morrison was an astounding catch on his part; a dance instructor who Kurt has never worked with before, but who has a list of credentials a mile long, including four years dancing leading roles with the Royal Ballet in London and another six touring with the Kirov Ballet. "You have perfect timing."
Kurt knows that something isn't right when there's a pause before the man says, "A word?" and jerks his head toward the door.
Kurt says, "Certainly," and leaves the grooms to a quiet, foul-mouthed argument about lilies of the valley.
Morrison doesn't beat around the bush, once he has Kurt in front of him. Voice lowered, he asks, "Where is the bride?"
Fuck, Kurt thinks, very distinctly, somewhere far away. He smiles, brittle and tight. "There isn't one."
"I don't understand," says Morrison flatly. "In your emails, you said that the bride and groom's names were Patrick and Robyn."
"Their names are Patrick and Robyn," Kurt says, letting his hand tighten, white-knuckled and steady, on the strap of his bag. "The grooms' names. I thought that that was understood."
"Robyn with a y. That's a woman's name."
"It's a personal preference in spelling," he says, icy and quiet and cutting. "You will want to stop, right now, and think about what you're saying and who you're saying it to, and about the contract that you signed."
The man actually has the gall to snort. "Listen, kid," he says. "I'm sure you're the queen of the gays and everything, but I don't really care if your feelings are hurt here. I'm not helping you people use marriage as some social experiment. It's more important than that."
"How do you survive?" Kurt asks, though it's primarily an acid-tongued rhetorical question. "I didn't think there was such a creature as a homophobic dance instructor in New York City."
"You really wanna talk about creatures?"
It's been a while since Kurt heard words like those, in a tone like that. Not as long as it's been since he left Ohio, because there isn't a tolerance paradise anywhere in the world like the fictional version of New York that he'd built up in his head as a teenager, but a while; enough that it almost startles him.
Kurt draws himself up and feels a certain cold pleasure at being the taller and more imposing of the two. "Please, as you leave, do enjoy the knowledge that you'll never land a lucrative private booking in New York again, and that you're wearing the least convincing dead cat of a toupee that I've ever seen in my life."
The guy takes a step toward him (which is a first; Kurt can safely say that a dance instructor has never tried to physically intimidate him before), and he's distantly aware that someone says, "Whoa," and someone else says, "Hey!" and that there's movement behind him. His attention, though, is on the small-minded little man in front of him, and on watching him with a long, unflinching look.
A tense half a second passes, and then Morrison grabs his duffel bag from where he'd set it down and storms out of the studio.
Kurt watches him go, and then he settles his face into something less incredulously icy and furious, and turns around. Everyone is watching him. Sam and Blaine are standing halfway across the studio, clearly having started toward him and Morrison when the guy got up in his face, and Puck isn't far behind. Kurt actively avoids looking at Blaine's face. Patrick is inscrutable as ever but Robyn looks resigned, and that's so much worse than anything else. That expression says everything about what he and Patrick have had to endure in 30 years together, and comes closer to unhinging Kurt's controlled, glacial fury than anything else.
"Well," Kurt says, into the silence. "I may need a few hours to track down a less vile dance instructor." He's going to start apologizing, for clearly not having done his due diligence, momentarily; he just-- he needs a minute. He is so angry that his hands are subtly shaking at his sides.
And, then to his eternal shock, Blaine's voice says, "I might have an idea, if you don't have someone immediately in mind."
Kurt turns to stare at him. Blaine looks steadily back at him, as, behind him, Sugar claps her hands together and says dreamily, "I love watching Mike dance."
* * *
It turns out that "Mike" is Blaine's six-foot-tall, impossibly-sweet, body-of-a-Greek-god Asian roommate. Patrick takes to him immediately. Kurt watches in no small amount of awe and shock as Mike -- who Patrick insists on calling Michael -- diplomatically guides Robyn and Patrick through the potentially-stormy waters of figuring out who's going to take which dancing position, then starts to teach them the steps.
"I don't understand," Kurt says, staring. "Patrick doesn't hate him. Patrick hates everyone."
"Mike's just kind of like that," Blaine says, smiling alongside him as Mike demonstrates the first steps of a waltz, which he apparently doesn't want musical accompaniment for just yet. "He gets along with everybody."
Kurt snorts, and sees Blaine toss him a quizzical look out of the corner of his eye. "You two," he says. "How do you ever decide on anything?" Blaine turns to face him more fully, looking confused now, and Kurt studies him shrewdly. "Everything is 'you first, I insist'; 'no, I insist,' isn't it?"
Blaine opens his mouth -- then closes it. "We might have argued for 10 minutes last night over who was going to pick what kind of takeout we ordered," he mumbles.
"And while most people would be arguing the merits of sushi vs. pizza, the two of you were both trying to let the other one decide, weren't you?" Blaine's face is a dead giveaway; Kurt lifts an eyebrow. "And how was the argument of the century settled?"
He looks sheepish. "Matt got sick of it and ordered from the diner down the street."
Kurt laughs softly, and watches Patrick Tucker give a faint smile as Robyn spins him, and listens to Blaine breathe beside him, and he knows what he's going to do.
* * *
Patrick and Robyn are the first to leave, very important schedules (Kurt is 85% sure that he heard Robyn say something about "drinks with Elton, that asshole," and then he shut his brain down for the sake of not having a Moment while talking to his clients) calling. They've readily agreed to another pre-wedding session with Mike and the band, since Robyn's main point of actually-giving-a-shit about the reception seems to be that they have a stellar first dance, and Robyn meets Kurt's eyes and smirks as he sweeps out of the studio.
The band packs up next, and Kurt makes phone calls to deal with as much of the afternoon's business as possible while they load their disgusting van and Sugar sits parked in a loading zone and honks the horn in new and fascinating rhythms. Blaine is on his way out the studio's front door with a final bag of guitar cables when Kurt grabs his arm and says, "Why don't you leave that to Mike."
Mike wiggles his eyebrows, smiling. He takes the bag from Blaine as he passes, clapping Blaine on the shoulder, and doesn't say a single word about it.
Mike is quite possibly Kurt's new favorite person ever.
"Kurt?" Blaine asks, looking between Kurt and the van idling outside. Kurt knows -- because he has become That Person, the one who talks to someone so often that he has memorized their work schedule -- that Blaine doesn't have anywhere that he has to be for the rest of the day, and he leans out the studio's open front door and makes a very obvious gesture for them to leave.
Artie's wolf whistle is clearly audible thanks to the open passenger side window, and Sugar gives them an obnoxious thumbs-up and pulls away from the curb and out into traffic.
The lilting strains of classical violins tumble down from upstairs, along with the soft-shoe muffled stomp of tiny ballet slippers on the floor. Blaine is standing in front of him in the cramped entryway, looking up, his lashes long as he blinks. It's cold with the door open but sunny, dust motes drifting down slowly through the light.
"Thank you," Kurt says, and he leans in and kisses Blaine, who freezes for barely a split second before clutching at Kurt's arms and reciprocating. "Thank you," and they kiss again, hot and hard, two months of longing and want and dancing around each other crammed into this one moment, "thank you--" and he grabs Blaine's face and holds him right there, right in the best place to kiss the living hell out of him.
By the time they finally take a break, Blaine's face is pink right up to his hairline and his lips are shiny and puffy and his hair is comically wild. "Kurt," he gasps, and Kurt tries to reel him in again but Blaine holds him off. "Wait, wait, Kurt, hold on a second." He's laughing so it can't be bad news; Kurt gives him a moment to compose himself. "This -- I don't want this to just be because--"
"Oh my god," Kurt says. "Don't be asinine," and they make out in the foyer until two teenage ballerinas practically trip over them and then back away giggling.
They take a cab back to Queens (fuck it, Kurt has decided; just fuck it, fuck all of it) and it's a good cool-down period, thirty minutes spent holding hands across the backseat and memorizing the way that Blaine's thumb strokes the skin between Kurt's thumb and forefinger, and the way that he smiles like Kurt has just handed him the moon.
"I'm crazy about you," Blaine murmurs, and Kurt squeezes his hand so tight that it has to hurt, but Blaine doesn't complain.
"You move me," Kurt says, just as quiet, and it has the potential to sound stupid but he's pretty sure that Blaine gets it.
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*glee* Your characterizations are smashing. I can see and hear everybody, and everybody is hilarious and adorable -- except when Kurt is being dead sexy staring down the dance instructor.
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1) I looked up Sugar, but who's Matt? and who are Robyn and Patrick, who I am so, so into by the way? And also how do you (pretend to?) know so much about weddings an' stuff?
2) When Mike got mentioned, I said his name in a weird way like - so my roommate in the next room gchatted me -
Rosemary: was that noise you?!
me: ...?
Rosemary: there was a weird noise
it sounded like a dog crying
Sent at 11:54 PM on Sunday
YES. YES IT WAS. I AM UNASHAMED.
I don't even watch this show, what is it that you are doing to meee
I love the whole, no I insist! thing
and KURT TAKING CHARGE
and the end!
I don't think I've ever felt their very different personalities this distinctly until now - the AU setting really allows that to come through in a way that the weird show power dynamic skews
also wtf, who am i, i haven't seen this show since like the Single Ladies episode
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2) MIKE CHANG!
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