Notes:
This is a re-write.
Being a New Yorker isn't for the weak-hearted. Living here is rough.
And as the days go by, it doesn't get any easier.
The city can be cruel. But it's exciting, too. Blaine loves living here. He may be a small town boy, but he can't imagine living anywhere else. But he'd be lying if he said it wasn't overwhelming.
Back home in Ohio, people wore their hearts on their sleeves. That made it easier for him to survive as the token gay kid at his high school. From bigots to allies, he pretty much knew where everyone stood from the start. But in New York, everyone has their own unique brand of armor, forged through the give and take necessary to thrive in a diverse metropolis. It's harder to tell from the outset who's truly on his side and who's faking it.
When Blaine first moved to New York, he stumbled into a few hornet's nests. He learned a valuable lesson, but now he has a habit of being super-cautious about everyone, over-analyzing behavior, picking actions and conversations apart in search of clues.
It keeps him safe, but it also leaves him lonely.
He feels the weight of that as his butt falls asleep on the hard-as-a-rock barstool he's monopolizing, stirring the watered-down rum and coke he's been nursing for over an hour. He doesn't actually like rum and coke too much. He'll drink it, but it's not his preferred choice overall. If he wasn't so concerned about looks, he'd order a strawberry daiquiri. But a tall curvy glass filled with pastel pink drink and topped with a colorful umbrella isn't the impression he's trying to give off. He's afraid it might scream flaming gay. A rum and coke always struck him as a man's drink, probably because that's what his dad used to order. And if there was a man's man anywhere out there in the world, it was definitely his dad.
But Blaine, sighing in the solitude that is his corner of the bar, really wants a daiquiri.
He runs a hand over his tired face and up into his hair, mussing what was once a helmet of meticulously plastered curls, though he figures that the way he looks far from matters now. If not a single man looked him up and down when he was fresh faced and crisp as a brand new hundred dollar bill, then no one's going to look at him now.
Not anyone who'd want to spend more than one night with him anyway. And even then, he's giving them too much credit. More like fifteen minutes in the bathroom. And as much as Blaine has had fun in his fair share of bathrooms, he's really looking for something deeper. Something more.
Of course, this bar that he's scored most of the ass he's tapped since he's lived in New York probably isn't the smartest place to go looking for it.
But his choices are limited. He's a creature of habit, and this bar happens to be a block away from his apartment. Aside from that, he's a certifiable workaholic, and he doesn't like to shop at work. He's a producer and a songwriter, currently slumming the orchestra pit down at the Lyceum Theater as a favor for a friend, and even though Broadway is rife with gay men, the ones he's hooked up with have mostly been social climbers, warming his bed, hoping for the opportunity to snag something better than chorus line.
Blaine Anderson is no one's stepping stone.
He takes a sip of his drink, checking to see if it's any more salvageable than it was five minutes ago, and since the answer is no, he reaches into his back pocket for his wallet, preparing to settle his tab and head out. Who knows? Maybe if he hits Whole Foods on the way home, he might stumble across a nice, eligible bachelor in the organic produce department.
And this is where his imagination runs wild.
They'll both reach for the same Asian pear. They'll brush fingers, giggle bashfully. Blaine will offer it to him, but the man will insist Blaine take it instead. Small talk will ensue. They'll find out they have tons of stuff in common. They'll go for coffee and end up talking till five in the morning because time will fly by. And as the sun peeks over the horizon, they'll share Blaine's pear, along with a few sweet kisses …
It's the rom-com variety meet-cute New York City is known for.
The romantic in him says it's worth a shot.
The realist in him says don't hold your breath.
He puts a tenner on the bar and tells the bartender to keep the change.
High-pitched laughter cuts through the murmur of drunken conversation, stopping Blaine cold, half-standing with his hand thrust awkwardly down the back pocket of his pants. He doesn't understand why he has such an extreme reaction to it, but it calls to him, goes through him – in his ears and around his brain like a silk sheet, sliding down his throat like a rich mouthful of hot chocolate and settling in his belly. He's never had that reaction to a laugh before. It's almost ludicrous. He waits for it to continue, but it doesn't, and the heat in his belly begins to cool.
But I didn't just imagine it! he thinks as the sensation drifts away. It was clear as day!
He turns his head, eyes sweeping the dingy bar for whoever made that sound, pausing at the front door as traffic flows in and out. A thin stream of average, uninteresting faces make an appearance but nothing that fits that voice. A few faces later, Blaine decides to go with his first instinct and leave, but he stops for a second time when a gorgeous, almost otherworldly man with pale skin and impossibly blue eyes walks into view. He turns to the bartender as he passes Blaine, not even sparing a glance for the man staring numbly like a dumbstruck teenager. When the stranger speaks, his voice sounds even more magical than before.
"Shirley Temple, extra cherries if you please, Ronnie."
Ronnie, a surly manticore of a man with a handle-bar moustache and bright red suspenders, raises a hand to acknowledge his order.
"Sure thing," he says, his gruff, smoker's voice sounding happier now that he – whoever he is – has arrived. Other patrons at the bar turn to welcome him with a wave or a smile. Blaine notices that the overall atmosphere of the bar has become lighter, less depressing, as if whoever this man is swept in and cleansed the aura of the room.
Or maybe the rum, weak though it is, is finally hitting him.
Either way, this man, taking a seat at a table not too far from him – this ethereally handsome, fashion-forward man with the sea blue eyes, and (Blaine can't help noticing) incredible ass stuffed into ridiculously tight jeans - convinces Blaine to sit back down and hang out a little while longer.
Whoa, those jeans are tight! he thinks. I mean, I guess I can't talk. My pants are pretty tight, too. But those look dangerously tight. Like … health endangering tight.
The man sits up straight and runs his hands down his thighs, stopping briefly at his knees, then continuing back up to his hips again. Blaine leans forward at the sight of this man touching himself, stroking the dark denim pulled tight over trim legs, and nearly falls straight off his stool.
Blaine pinches his lips together tight before he can accidentally moan out loud and make a fool out of himself.
N-not that I'm complaining. If you've got it, flaunt it. And you definitely got it. I mean, have it. And that voice … are you a singer? I think I would have heard of you if you were a singer. You'd have Broadway wrapped around your finger if you were …
The man bites his bottom lip, holding back a smile, eyes searching the bar, looking for someone. His hand trails up the buttons of his shirt, fidgeting with his open collar, touching his neck lightly with his fingertips.
He must be waiting for someone special. Probably a lover with a reaction like that.
Looks like I don't stand a chance, huh?
Blaine watches his fingertips move, envisioning opening the man's shirt, button by button, following with a kiss to every newly revealed patch of skin, ending at his long neck, tracing a path up to his ear with the tip of his tongue. Blaine blinks his eyes, snapping back to reality.
Okay … I don't know where that came from …
The man looks distracted as he peers off into the crowd and swallows hard, his Adam's apple bouncing when he does. A waitress comes up to his table with a tray carrying a single drink – a bubbly beverage overflowing with crayon red maraschino cherries. The man's eyes flick up to the waitress and he smiles, the distracted look dissolving with his enigmatic grin. The waitress sets a napkin down in front of him, and then the drink on top of that. The man nods and watches the waitress walk away before he regards his drink.
Blaine has become positively fascinated with this man, every minute detail of him, even though apart from being inconceivably sexy he has yet to do anything more extraordinary than smile and sip his drink.
But that smile.
It has more character, more personality than the half dozen men he's tried talking up this week.
The man reaches into his pocket and pulls out a folded piece of paper. He opens it up on the table in front of him and looks at it intently, reaching for his drink again and forgoing the straw this time to take a healthy sip.
That's an awful lot of cherries for one poor drink, Blaine muses. And here I was, stressing over a daiquiri …
The man looks up from his paper (list? letter? Blaine can't tell from where he's sitting …) and chuckles. He pauses for a moment, as if he's expecting something to happen, gaze shifting left and right, and then returns to the words on the page. The smile on the man's face drops an inch, than an inch more, until none of it remains.
Sucky news, huh? Blaine commiserates. I understand how that is. I hope that's not a Dear John letter. Blaine's mind drifts to thoughts of an envelope resting against his lamp on his bedside table, the letter inside months old but read so many times that creases from the folds in the paper are tearing.
But the edges are still sharp enough to sting.
Someone with gorgeous eyes like yours shouldn't have to read something like that, he thinks with a sigh.
The man sighs as well, eyes skimming the last few lines. His smile returns. He folds the letter back up and puts it in his pocket.
Guess not, huh? Well, good for you. A man like you deserves love letters … and poetry …
The man shakes his head, but this time he's staring straight ahead at someone approaching his table. Another unspectacular man from the bar - this one wearing a long, tan coat - walks right up to the only vacant chair at the table and sits down without being invited.
Rude, Blaine thinks. The man he's been watching for the last half-hour raises both eyebrows and nods his head once, as if he agrees. Blaine watches the second man closely, observing the way he sits, how his eyes bounce from face to face around him, how he keeps his hands folded in his lap, suspiciously close to his hip. The waitress comes up to take his order but the man waves her away, and Blaine gets it.
This second man is a cop.
Suddenly, this show he's been watching has just become way more interesting. His thin rum and coke forgotten along with all pretense of ever leaving this bar, Blaine focuses on the couple, no longer concerned whether they know he's watching them or not. He debates finding a chair closer to their table so he can hear what they're saying, anything to give him a clue as to what his mystery man is up to.
The cop monopolizes most of the conversation from what Blaine can see. He starts talking, low and calm at first, but then more and more animatedly, gesturing with one hand since he keeps the other pinned to his side, probably where his holster is. Blaine prides himself on the fact that he has watched enough episodes of Law and Order that he's well-versed in many aspects of police behavior by now. In fact, he's considered becoming a police officer. He thinks he'd be really good at it. He's athletic and smart (if he does say so himself). And he can be assertive. Only problem is he's not too keen on guns … or chasing after people … or getting shot at …
In the middle of the officer's speech, the man with the iridescent blue eyes starts to laugh, apparently at an inappropriate moment because the officer stares at the man with mouth agape and eyes wide, offense written in every line of his strained face. The blue-eyed man peeks up at his companion and waves a dismissive hand. It looks to Blaine like he's assuring the angered officer that he wasn't laughing at him or anything he said. He quiets down, gesturing for the officer to continue.
Blaine watches in silence as the two talk back and forth, concentrating on their lips to see if he can catch any snippets of conversation. He narrows his eyes until he gets a migraine, but the only words he thinks he can catch are 'lost' and 'help', and maybe 'dead', though it could have been 'den' or 'desk'. Blaine's eyes begin to cross, and more and more he's starting to wish that the police officer guy would just leave so he can go back to unraveling the mystery of this man with the prismatic blue eyes.
The man (Blaine has decided to call him 'Noel' since he bears a striking resemblance to a young Noel Coward) closes his eyes and puts his fingers to his temples, pressing and massaging tiny circles into his skin.
Is Captain Overbearing bothering you? Blaine thinks. Is he giving you a headache? I know people like that. They walk into the room and pow! My head throbs. I used to let them walk all over me, mostly because we'd been friends forever. It happens with my brother, too. I could tell them to eff off, but I guess I have a phobia of not having any friends. But now, being a New Yorker for the past decade, I opt for revenge. Not the big kind of revenge. I mean, I don't think I could hurt anyone, or ruin their lives, or anything. I have been known to slip a few drops of Visine into their soda. Gives them the poops for hours. That's fairly satisfying …
In the midst of massaging his temples, the man smiles. He opens his eyes, throws his head back and laughs, and again the officer looks entirely put off. The man shakes his head, leaning toward the man across the table, putting a hand up to either amplify his voice or shield his lips from view. Blaine pouts, feeling intentionally left out of the conversation. Even though his lip reading skills have so far gotten him nowhere, now he has no hope of finding out what's going on between Noel and his police officer friend.
The officer nods, his eyes performing a cursory glance of the bar one last time before he gets up and heads for the exit. The man at the table stands as well, reaching into his back pocket, squeezing his hand into the tight fit and pulling out his wallet. Blaine deflates when he sees the man pull out a bill along with some other thin piece of paper, something that looks suspiciously like a business card, from his wallet. He places the bill beside his half-drunk Shirley Temple on the table, and then turns on his heel. Blaine expects the man to head out the door after the police officer, but instead he looks straight at Blaine.
Blaine pivots his head left and right, then turns his head completely around and glances behind himself to be sure, and yes, he's the only one in Noel's sight line at present. He heads right for Blaine, eyes locked unnervingly on Blaine's face, and for a moment Blaine becomes confused and frightened all at once. The man is striking, but he also has an undeniable air of confidence and power that makes Blaine want to drop to beg for forgiveness and do whatever this man tells him to do. But why does Blaine feel so guilty? He hasn't said word one to the man! He'll admit, he has been staring, but that's all.
Maybe he should have just gone home when he'd planned. Now he's about to get into a fist fight in a bar.
Not really. Blaine has no intention of throwing a single punch.
The man stops before Blaine, hands resting on his hips, doing nothing but look at him, eyes going over his body from head to toe. A range of emotions pass over his face from amusement to sympathy to curious. He lands back on amusement and stays there. He holds the thin card out to him. When Blaine just stares at him, speechless, he leans forward and slips it neatly into the outer pocket of Blaine's button-down shirt.
"The name's Kurt," the man says, "not Noel, but I appreciate the compliment. Also, I appreciate your concern about the effects of my pants on my health, but I promise you, they're no tighter than I can handle."
Blaine leans against the bar, knocked out of his stupor by the man's opening line.
"Believe it or don't, I understand what it's like to feel alone in a city of 8 million people. We have that in common. And by the way," the man Blaine now knows is Kurt, not Noel, says, "I'm not a big fan of rum and coke, either. So when you take me out on Friday night, just order the damn daiquiri? Life's too short for shitty friends and crappy drinks."
Kurt pats Blaine's pocket where the card is safely tucked and winks, turning and heading toward the entrance where the police officer has ducked back in to wait for his companion to follow.
Blaine still hasn't said a word, stunned into silence as he watches Kurt leave. Kurt says something to the officer at the door, motioning vaguely in Blaine's direction. The officer's eyes find Blaine and the weary man smirks. He holds the door open for Kurt, who turns one last time to see Blaine stuck in the same position that he left him. He raises an arm and waves, blowing Blaine a kiss. He steps out the door with a satisfied grin, and like that, he's gone.
Blaine waits a moment longer after Kurt has gone, trying to wrap his mind around everything that happened. But try as he might, it's too surreal for him to comprehend. Noel – not Noel, as it turns out, but Kurt – had called him out on everything he'd thought while watching him. But how? How in the hell is that possible? Well, he works with a police officer. Is there a chance that maybe he … what?
What, Blaine? he asks himself. What on God's green earth could possibly explain all of that?
Remembering the card waiting for him in his pocket, he pulls it out carefully, not willing to lose it and the opportunity to contact that fascinating man. Blaine reads the words embossed on it, then he reads them again. He reads them over and over, close to a hundred times, and after their meaning sinks in fully, he's not sure if he should laugh or find the nearest rock and hide under it.
Blaine mentally goes over everything he saw tonight – every inflection Kurt made, every movement, every shift of his inquisitive eyes. Blaine has spent the past ten years of his life being a skeptic, constantly questioning everyone's intentions and emotions, feeling like no one he's met has truly understood him, nor has ever really wanted to. But after tonight, none of that matters.
This might be the beginning of a beautiful relationship.
Kurt E. Hummel
Medium
Psychic Investigator