A/N: So I finally wrote some fanfiction. It's kinda inspired by Darren's recent comments about the future of Klaine's relationship, kinda inspired by my sudden desire to make Blaine suffer. Anyway this is my first attempt at this so please be kind!
It was precisely 6:12 in the evening, which meant it was 7:12 in New York, which meant it was the perfect time to Skype Kurt. They'd mentioned skyping when they'd talked the other day, "Friday, around seven," Kurt had said flippantly.
Calling at seven would have been overtly desperate. After a quarter hour, Kurt might have thought Blaine was blowing him off. Blaine had spent his entire History lesson debating the pros and cons of the 6:05-6:10 and the 6:10-6:15 time slots before finally settling on 6:09, but had forced himself to wait a few extra minutes for getting so worked up about it. It was just a phone call, to Kurt, it was supposed to be easy. They were friends now after all, or at least attempting to be friends. But after months of not speaking at all, Blaine found himself getting both overly excited at the prospect of hearing from Kurt and terrified that Kurt might change his mind and they'd return to the static silence of the months that had followed the "incident".
He adjusted himself hastily as the shrill ringtone sounded from his tinny speakers, flattening his already slick hair and examining himself carefully in the small box on his laptop. His heart sank after a few moments passed and the screen remained persistently blank. He was just worrying that Kurt had changed his mind after all when he suddenly appeared on the screen.
"Hi? Hi! I'm here. Sorry!"
Blaine worked quickly to disguise his disappointment as Kurt vanished from the screen and he was left staring at Kurt's dimly lit apartment.
"Hey," he said quickly, aiming for nonchalance. "Where are you?"
"Right here," Kurt replied breathlessly, waving a hand into the frame for a second before withdrawing it. "Sorry! I'm just trying to find something to wear for tonight. Something that says young, hot, hip, casual professional, which of course is nearly everything I own, but none of it is fresh enough."
"And why do we need to look like a young, hot, hip, casual professional tonight?" Blaine asked, smiling fondly at the small mountain of clothing strewn across Kurt's bed.
"Oh," Kurt muttered and the flurry of activity on the edge of the screen came to a halt. Kurt stepped into the frame with a look of slight trepidation on his face.
"Friends can tell friends they've got a date tonight, right?"
Blaine felt a tremor of panic run through him and physically shook as some higher function thankfully forced him to answer, "Um. Yes, definitely," even as every particle of his body scream no.
They passed a few awkward moments silently staring, Kurt's eyes searching his curiously, while Blaine tried to stop blinking so suspiciously.
"Good. Well then, I've got a date tonight," Kurt said brightly, stepping away from his laptop and allowing Blaine to drop his ridiculous grin.
Kurt continued to fuss with his clothes while Blaine sat, stock still, as if he could stop this from happening by refusing to move ever again. Blaine was dimly aware that his continued silence was making things awkward, but he had no idea what to say. It's not like he hadn't been expecting something like this to happen. He'd known this coming eventually, even last year, when they'd still been together and happy at McKinley. He'd known that Kurt would go to New York, where he would be completely free to be himself, and some other guy (lots of other guys) would notice how amazing he was and sweep him off his feet. Kurt was never going to be his forever, but knowing that didn't stop him from feeling like the world was crashing down around him.
"Blaine are you there?" Kurt asked, looking at him expectantly from hundreds of miles away.
"Yeah, sorry," he laughed. Nothing was funny. "What'd you say?"
Kurt smiled indulgently, before spreading his arms and repeating, "How do I look?"
"Stunning," Blaine replied slightly breathless. The revelation that the ex-boyfriend he was still madly in love with was going on a date was enough to knock the air out of him, without having said ex-boyfriend standing before him looking every bit as perfect as he remembered. His normally rosy cheeks were flushed even further with excitement, eyes bright and green to rival his forest colored blazer, the perfect, pale expanse of his neck exposed and begging to be bruised.
"Maybe a scarf?" Blaine suggested innocently.
"Hmm.." Kurt intoned, tilting his head slightly and staring at himself on his laptop. "Maybe," he said before jetting out of the screen again.
"Where'd you meet this guy?" Blaine asked, trying and failing to make this seem like a question of no real importance. It was certainly the least important of the questions swarming around in his head, but it seemed inappropriate to ask "Why are you going out with some guy when I'm sitting here, alone, completely in love with you?"
Besides, he already knew the answer to that question.
Kurt, in his pursuit of the perfect scarf, thankfully missed the quivering heartbreak stubbornly lingering in Blaine's voice.
"You know that shoot I was at last week in Central Park?"
"Yeah. The one that went until like 3 in the morning?"
They'd already discussed the adventures of riding the J train into Bushwick at that time, but to Blaine's knowledge there'd been no mention of any romantic prospects.
"Right, well I met him there," Kurt answered, his voice slightly distorted as he continued to shout from between piles of clothes.
"Oh. You didn't mention-," Blaine started working hard to keep it from sounding like an accusation.
"Yeah, well I didn't really think anything would come of it at the time," Kurt cut in, finally picking up his laptop from its perch and settling carefully into the seat next to his bed. "We just talked for a bit and I gave him my number, but he's a model. I figured he must meet guys all the time and-"
"Wait! He's a what?" Blaine asked incredulously.
"A model," Kurt answered, sighing deeply, a smile playing at the edges of his lips. "Hold on! I'll send you a picture."
Blaine couldn't think of anything he wanted less than photographic proof of how unworthy he was of Kurt's attention, but Kurt didn't seem to notice his horror as he searched his laptop for the right file, chatting away.
"He's 27, which I mean, is older, but not old. More...mature, worldly, which is perfect. I'm sending the picture through now. Anyway, he won't tell me where we're going, which is kind of exciting, but really problematic. I've been trying to piece together the perfect ensemble for the past three hours. I mean he's a model, I have to look-"
Blaine lost track of the conversation as he opened the picture from his email. He hadn't been expecting anything, except maybe that the guy would look just like him. That maybe Kurt would have unknowingly picked a suitor that so resembled his ex-boyfriend that everyone would point it out and Kurt would have to realize that he was still in love with him. But other than that, he hadn't been expecting anything.
There wasn't a single thing about the guy Blaine was looking at that reminded him of himself. The man was long, spread out across a bench, his body seemed improbably lengthy, like he had grown several inches taller than necessary just to piss Blaine off. For some unknown reason, he was shirtless, despite the several inches of snow that seemed to cover everything except him and the bench. His entire body was chiseled perfection, not bulky, but ridiculously defined and completely firm. He was also entirely hairless, which was just creepy and weird, except for the thick, blond, perfectly sculpted hair that sat like a crown on his obnoxiously gorgeous head.
He was undeniably beautiful. He was the guy you'd dream of leaving your homophobic hometown and finding, falling desperately in love with, and living happily ever after. He was the guy you hid under your bed and lusted after every spare moment you were alone. He was the guy taking the love of Blaine's life to dinner tonight.
"You got it?" Kurt asked, smiling at the shocked expression on Blaine's face.
"Wow," Blaine whispered, hoping it was an appropriate response.
"I know! I know. He's very attractive," Kurt sighed. "But he's intelligent too. He graduated from Columbia with a degree in Marine Biology, so he's not just some pretty face. He's just doing the modeling thing for now because...I mean, how could he not?"
"Wow," Blaine repeated and Kurt laughed.
"So now that you've seen that. Do I still look okay? Do I look like I have any right to be standing next to something so magnificent?" he said with a laugh that didn't quite mask the genuine insecurity in his eyes.
"You look stunning," Blaine replied honestly. "You're going to blow him away."
He paused. "You guys are going to make an insanely attractive couple," he muttered, proud that he still maintain some control over his wavering vocal chords.
"Arrgh. Don't jinx it! It's just a date," Kurt yelled, looking delighted and missing the tears welling in Blaine's eyes as he turned his glance to his watch.
Blaine felt like he could suddenly see their entire future plainly and it was not at all like he had been picturing, even just hours before. Kurt was not going to take him back. Kurt wasn't even contemplating it. Kurt was going to go off and spend the rest of his life with someone else, if not this beautiful moron, then some other down the line. And Blaine would have to smile and be supportive and help Kurt pick out a tux. He'd have to pretend that they'd been less then they were, that he wasn't always going to be hopelessly in love with Kurt, that he wasn't irrevocably broken from having lost the only person to ever make him truly happy.
"Anyway, I've got to go! He'll be here any minute," Kurt said anxiously, jumping up from his seating and resting his laptop carefully back on the dresser.
Blaine felt an impenetrable wall of misery coming up to claim him and fought to control it so he could end this conversation with some dignity.
"Right. Okay, well have fun," Blaine bit out, with a pained grimace that only a preoccupied Kurt could take as a smile.
"I'll call you tomorrow and let you know how it went," Kurt said with a wink before quickly ending the call.
Blaine wasn't sure how long he stared at the blank screen, tears silently streaming down his face, wishing Kurt would reappear and tell him the whole thing had been a sick joke. But by 7:29, Blaine realized that Kurt was probably on his date already, being wooed by some sleazy, vaguely pedophilic Adonis.
He hadn't realized how much he'd clung to the hope that if he just waited patiently, he and Kurt would find their way back to each other. Kurt had said he'd forgiven him and Blaine had thought it was just a matter of time before they were both back where they belonged. But Kurt obviously wasn't sitting around agonizing over their separation, he was out meeting models and living a glamorous life that no longer featured Blaine.
Blaine finally closed his laptop as a call from Sam came in. He had no interest in facing anyone in this state, or facing anyone ever again for that matter. He rolled his chair over to his bed and slumped face forward into the downy, cocooning himself in his comforter to block out the light he couldn't be bothered to turn off, trying to block out a future that seemed impossibly bleak.
