For anyone wondering, this is a re-write. Inspiration for this comes from Chris Colfer's revelation that he sometimes sleep shops. This assumes that Kurt and Blaine didn't meet in high school, but later as adults.
Kurt never slept well when Blaine went away on promotional gigs or when his shows toured. Kurt knew these trips came with the territory for an up-and-coming theatrical producer, but that didn't mean he had to like them. He didn't like being alone in their apartment. He didn't like eating alone. He didn't like showering alone. But mostly, he didn't like sleeping alone. He detested it to the point that he couldn't even sleep in their bed without his boyfriend. It was too cold without him. Blaine generated heat like a furnace and Kurt loved it. It eliminated the need for pesky pajamas, even during the winter. Without Blaine's body heat, Kurt had to resort to flannel sleep pants and sweaters (mainly Blaine's so that he could wrap himself up in his scent).
There were also too many pillows without his boyfriend there to steal them from underneath Kurt's head in the middle of the night. He tried sleeping in the bed for the first night that Blaine was away, but no matter how he twisted or turned, how many different angles he tried, no matter what combination of pillows/blankets/comforters he used, he couldn't seem to find a comfortable position. Out of desperation, he even broke out Bruce, his old boyfriend pillow, but that didn't help. (Kurt imagined that Bruce still resented him for tossing him aside for a real man. They had been exclusive, after all.)
So Kurt resorted to sleeping in the living room on the sofa while Blaine was away. He would watch late night television and sip hot cocoa with peppermint, waiting for Blaine to call. After they talked, sometimes into the early morning, Kurt would take an Ambien to help him knock out for a couple of hours.
This was how Kurt Hummel survived his boyfriend being gone.
Blaine's most recent trip, however, promised to be a nightmare for Kurt, Ambien or no. He was meeting with a handful of prospective backers - big names in the theater world - who were based out of London and preferred to meet there regardless of the fact that they had a penthouse in Manhattan. Between hobnobbing, luncheons, a photo shoot, and making the general rounds at workshops and universities to promote his show, he would be gone for almost a month.
There wasn't enough late night television and cocoa in the world to make not having Blaine with him for a whole month okay.
Kurt didn't let his misery show, and Blaine didn't let on that he knew. They just enjoyed each other to the fullest for the three days before his flight. When Blaine finally left, Kurt watched from the living room window as the car service drove his boyfriend away.
Then he sat on the floor and cried.
The days without Blaine weren't the hard part. Kurt had plenty to occupy his time. He was busy designing a new line and preparing for Fashion Week. He had scored a spot as a featured designer at one of the many exclusive preview shows. His new onslaught of responsibilities involved plenty of PR at Vogue, which meant quality time spent with his ex-fairy Godmother, Isabelle Wright.
He enjoyed that immensely.
But it was the nights Kurt found difficult to handle. He fell into a routine of watching America's Next Top Model re-runs until Blaine called, then, after some explicit phone sex, he took a hot shower and an Ambien to see him through till morning when he got up and started the cycle all over again. He was pretty productive during the moments in between, storing his tablet beneath his pillow on the couch and sketching new ideas when they popped into his head. Ambien had the side-effect of giving him massively crazy and intense dreams. After seeing a couple of his more eye-opening designs – a lot of them more suited for the bedroom than anywhere else – he felt he might have a new hook on something he hadn't tried to design before.
Lingerie. Specifically, leather lingerie.
Other than being a little hazy first thing in the morning, he felt he was handling things fairly well.
A few days before Blaine was scheduled to come home, boxes started to arrive. At first, Kurt thought they were from Blaine – presents his boyfriend had sent ahead so he wouldn't have to struggle with them at customs. But the box Kurt signed for had a return address label from HSN. Kurt scrunched his nose when he read it, his brow furrowing when he noticed that the next three boxes – each one bigger than the previous one – were also from HSN.
Kurt was definitely no stranger to The Home Shopping Network, but he swore it off after his last purchase - the entire Richard Simmons Sweatin' to the Oldies Collection. He hadn't bought anything else since.
Kurt was determined that the purchases had to be a mistake, that someone must have gotten a hold of his credit card number and ordered a bunch of stuff, but then why would it come to their apartment?
Unless this was some stupid practical joke.
He didn't have the time to deal with this mystery right away, even though he knew that identity theft was a serious crime and that he should cancel his credit cards immediately. But with his new line nearly finished and Blaine coming home, he had too many other things to worry about.
Somewhere between emailing a revised itinerary to Isabelle and putting the final touches on Blaine's coming home dinner (smoked salmon, roasted fingerling potatoes with red peppers, and a chocolate mousse for dessert), Kurt remembered the boxes forming a pyramid in the corner of the bedroom. Blaine would be home in a little under two hours and Kurt didn't want them cluttering up the space. Everything had to be perfect, and brown cardboard boxes took away from the romantic ambience he was trying to achieve. Besides, he was far too curious to know what was actually in them. He grabbed a small-ish one and sat down on the end of the bed. He sliced through the tape and was greeted by a flurry of packing peanuts. He huffed at HSN's overuse of environmentally unsound polystyrene material, and silently praised himself for his decision to cut all ties with the company.
Digging through the mess, he found an invoice for what was hidden inside, with the words HSN After Dark written in large, cursive font at the top.
"After Dark?" His eyelids narrowed with curiosity. "What does that mean?"
The header was followed by his name and address, along with the last four digits of his credit card number. Under the contents section were the words 'Mighty Max', and some numbers that meant nothing to him … except for the price - $119.95.
"Hmm," Kurt muttered, grimacing when a tidal wave of packing peanuts fell onto the floor, "sounds like it might be a blender maybe …"
Kurt located a blister package and lifted it from the box. His eyes went wide.
It was definitely not a blender.
What he held in his hands was the largest dildo he had ever laid eyes on - blue and translucent, with frightening ribs and ridges. At the top, the package cheerfully exclaimed 'With thirteen settings from low to turbo for your pleasure!'
All around, it just screamed Hold on to your butt because this is going to hurt!
Kurt yelped, shoving the toy back in its box and reaching for another one. He sliced the box open quickly, not caring about the mess the packing material made on the carpet. He overlooked the invoice and pulled out the contents one at a time – another dildo, a vibrating butt plug, and about half a dozen mesh jock straps, each in a different color.
"What the heck!?"
For a second, Kurt entertained the idea that this was an elaborate prank by Blaine, but none of the items seemed his style – okay, maybe the studded leather collar, but not the testicle cuffs he found in the next box. No, none of this struck Kurt as anything Blaine would buy. So before he called his boyfriend and tried to come up with a subtle way of asking Did you purchase hundreds of dollars in sex toys recently with my credit card? he would try his claws out on HSN for possibly approving these purchases without his permission.
Kurt moved to the living room and sat down on the sofa with invoice in hand, ready to hand some poor customer service representative their ass. He entered the number into his cell phone and pressed send with all the righteous indignation he could muster, but immediately the number came up from his contacts with the name 'Home Shopping Network' already programmed in. Kurt immediately disconnected the call, confused as to why he would have this particular number programmed into his cell. He didn't even own this iPhone when he'd made his last HSN purchase, so there's no reason why it should be in there.
Out of curiosity, he checked his phone log, and his mouth dropped. Between the hours of ten-thirty p.m. and three a.m. he saw literally dozens of calls to the Home Shopping Network. Kurt's heart started to pound. This had happened to him before during college when he took Ambien because he was so stressed out over finals he couldn't sleep. He would make 'Ambien purchases', buying stuff while he was slightly conscious but loopy, not remembering a thing the next morning. Weeks later, he'd get boxes in the mail filled with the most asinine and random stuff, like a portrait of Marie Antoinette, and corkscrews in the shape of men posed in suggestive positions.
Kurt raced to the bedroom and tore through the remaining boxes, each one filled with dildos and vibrators, butt plugs of all shapes and sizes, and a variety of fetish-style clothing – ass-less chaps, mesh muscle shirts, chain halter tops, even a few pairs of liquid-look thigh high stockings.
"Oh dear God," Kurt whimpered, holding up a string of extra-large anal beads in his shaking hands. "Oh dear sweet non-existent God!"
Beyond the trembling anal beads, Kurt realized he was standing amidst a mass of Styrofoam peanuts and sex paraphernalia. Panic stricken by the mess, he glanced over to the digital clock on the table by his side of the bed.
11:25
Blaine would be home soon, and believe it or not, this was not the kind of homecoming Kurt had planned. Yes, they had been dating for over a year now, and yes, Blaine had seen most of Kurt's freak flags fly, but this … this was more than a flag.
This was a thirty-foot tall banner in flames!
It was going to be a little difficult to explain.
He had to clean this up tout de suite, but morbid curiosity drew him back to the living room and the flat-screen TV. Those calls were made between 10:30 and 3:00, which meant the program was on now.
What did HSN After Dark look like without the Ambien goggles?
Kurt sat on the sofa and reached for the remote. He switched on the TV and surprise of surprises, it was already on the HSN channel.
Suddenly, Kurt couldn't remember the last time he had watched anything else. Even though his normal reality show line-up was a part of his nighttime routine, he simply couldn't recall a single episode from the last week or so.
The segue screen had a black background filled with images of multi-colored vibrators, and in the foreground, a woman scantily clad in lace lingerie, with her head thrown back and her eyes shut, lips parted in a gasp of ecstasy. The words 'HSN After Dark' blinked in a neon-light font over the whole scene. That image slid away, cutting back to the program already in progress. After the current item up for sale - the 'Perfect Positioning Pillow' - dissolved into the background, a bubbly blonde woman in an incongruous baby pink pant suit came into view. She addressed the camera.
"So, that was sale number 150,000! That's 150,000 of that item sold, so please call in now to get your own Perfect Positioning Pillow while supplies last." The lady looked down at the gold watch on her wrist, and then beamed at the camera. "Well, it's about 11:30," she announced, smiling brightly with the insane look of a woman who's been hawking useless products on late-night TV for far too long, "and that's the time when HSN After Dark's favorite repeat customer usually gives us a call. So, Mr. Kurt Hummel of Manhattan, New York, give us a ring! We're waiting for you."
Kurt leapt at the sound of his name, switching off the television and tossing the remote to the opposite end of the couch for good measure.
"Oh my God!" he muttered, putting his hands to his head and grabbing fistfuls of his hair. "Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God …"
This was a disaster! It was worse than that! It was a catastrophe! No, it was worse than even that. (What's worse than a disaster and a catastrophe? he wondered. A disas-trophe? Was that a word?) Not only had he been sleep shopping and spending hundreds of dollars on raunchy sex toys from a cheesy, X-rated, after-hours home shopping show, they had just given him a shout-out on LIVE television!
How many people heard that? They had just sold 150,000 of those stupid pillows, so at least 150,000 people, right?
Shitshitshitshitshit!
"What if word gets out?" he argued with the empty air, needing to hear his thoughts out loud. "How many Kurt Hummels live in Manhattan, anyway? There has to be a few. They can't automatically pin this on me. What are the odds? I mean, I'm a designer, about to be featured for the first time in Michael Kors's New York Fashion Week Preview Show! I have a reputation to uphold! Why would I put all of that on the line by ohmyGodohmyGodohmyGodohmyGod!"
The reality of his situation began to cave in around him.
What if Isabelle found out?
Well, there he didn't really have a problem. She'd probably laugh like a hyena for about four hours and then tell him that it was hot.
His mind backpedaled to the mess in the bedroom.
Blaine would be home any minute!
He needed to act quickly.
He needed to box up those God forsaken toys before Blaine got home.
He had to hide them, and send them back first thing in the morning. Then he could flush the rest of his Ambien down the toilet and forget this whole thing ever happened.
But first, he had to run to the bathroom and throw up.
It was amazing how long it took Kurt to empty his stomach, but with every heave that kept him from his plan of hiding his illicit purchases, he reassured himself that it would be fine, everything would be fine, and proved it by focusing on the memory of packaging 115 Christmas presents in 32 boxes a good fifteen minutes before the UPS man arrived during what was affectionately labeled 'The Chrism-Apocalypse of 2013'.
By the time he was done vomiting, the overall plan was to just shove everything in the corner of the closet with a comforter over it until Blaine fell asleep, and then quietly dispose of it under the cover of darkness.
It would have worked, too. Kurt could have done that and been in the clear if Blaine's plane hadn't landed early, if the car service hadn't been sitting at the curb waiting for him, if traffic hadn't been light and they didn't catch every green the moment they entered the city.
But luck was entirely on Blaine's side.
Which meant, for Kurt, it was nowhere to be seen.
Kurt stumbled out of the bathroom, a little weak and woozy from being sick, and found Blaine grinning from ear to ear, looking through the contents of the boxes open on the bed and chuckling with each new revelation. He already had several of the vibrators, a few mesh jock straps, and a pair of leather shackles laid out on the mattress. He looked up as Kurt entered the room, holding a huge dildo covered in what the package described as 'stimulating and massaging bumps', a teasing and hungry glimmer in his gorgeous hazel eyes. Kurt stared at him, face pale, lips quivering, hands gripping on to the door jamb for dear life.
"Kurt," Blaine sang with an eyebrow raised, "you've got some explaining to do."