I was meant to be posting a chapter of Something New today, but that isn't ready yet, so I thought I'd post this instead.
Honestly, this feels eerily like an introduction to a series of oneshots... but don't go getting any ideas! I just finished one set of drabbles and I am not about start another.
And Klaine cookies to anyone who picks up on the Sesame Street reference!
Disclaimer: I am neither R, nor I, nor B. 'Tis sad :(
For workisfun, who was the 250th reviewer for You Had Me At 'Sesame Street'.
Her prompt for me was 'Item #2: Write the teenage boy code'.
This is what eventuated.
In Blaine's opinion, it is entirely Kurt's fault. Or perhaps Kurt's parents' fault. Or perhaps Blaine's parents' fault. Or perhaps the fault of Blaine's 4th grade teacher who, when he had asked her if he could do a 5th grade maths problem, had answered with a steely, "No," thus preventing him from ever having the academic ability to skip forward a year and hence graduate at the same time as Kurt.
The point is that it is certainly not Blaine's fault that he and his boyfriend of more than two wonderful years haven't spent more than 40 consecutive hours together in almost six months. 40 hours that occurred 2 months and 18 days ago and were spent mostly in Blaine's bedroom because his parents had been away for the weekend (thank God) and were only interrupted for a necessary 6 hours when Kurt spent an afternoon with his family.
Because the thing is that long-distance relationships suck. And not in a good way.
They are painful and merciless and inconvenient, and although Kurt and Blaine were always going to make it through because they're perfect, that doesn't mean that it wasn't tough. Not only because there's only so much you can do via web-cam – and because web-cams (and privacy) aren't always available – but also because there's a strange sort of emotional closeness that comes with physical closeness, and losing that was more difficult than Blaine had ever anticipated.
He didn't like not being able to reach out and just freaking touch Kurt – whether it was when he was sobbing or shouting or blushing or... anything else. He didn't like how much he missed the hugs, the kisses, the hand-holding. He didn't like the cold feeling down his side - the sense that no one was was there where someone should have been - when he lay back on his bed in the dark silence of night, laptop beside him, and looked into the eyes of the boy he loved.
And now that they're back together, sitting in an empty New York apartment in a comfortable, blissfully tired state (because, yeah, they've been here for almost two days now and this is the first time they've left the bedroom), Blaine can touch and it's fantastic but it's also sort of... normal.
The long-distance relationship was abnormal. It was temporary and had a foreseeable end, which meant that, even though it was far from easy, it was conquerable, beatable. But now- now they're staring down the barrel of a gun at forever, which is much less conquerable. Much less beatable.
This is permanent.
Blaine looks around at this apartment – the boxes that Finn helped him to unload from his car yesterday while Rachel loaded her boxes in, preparing to move to her new place with her new boyfriend (and yeah, that would probably have been kind of awkward if Blaine had actually noticed instead of making eyes at Kurt the whole time) – and it hits him that in five, ten, twenty years he could still be right here and he'd be just fine with that. Really, he'd be happy with that. He'd be ecstatic with that.
But the problem, the thing that Blaine is blaming absolutely everyone but himself for, is the fact that he and Kurt don't quite know what to do with forever. The fact that they have spent their whole relationship anticipating this time apart, readying themselves for a year of greedily snatching every moment of solitude. And, before that, Blaine had spent a lifetime of trying desperately to gather up every iota of love. But suddenly he now has forever to bask in those very two things, and doesn't quite know what to do with that.
The problem is that Blaine doesn't know what to do next. Both immediately, and in the long term. Although immediately is really the more pressing of the problems.
Because yeah, there's sex, which would be great if they hadn't already done it, like, fifty times (and okay, so maybe that's a bit of an exaggeration) since saying hurried goodbyes to Finn and Rachel. And yeah, there's TV, but nothing good is on except Big Bang Theory but it's an episode that Kurt's already seen and even though he tolerates it he really doesn't enjoy the show and Blaine doesn't want to force it upon him. And yeah, there's going for an exploratory walk around the neighbourhood and auditioning for ridiculously dodgy theatres and grocery shopping, but all of those activities involve moving, and if Blaine's going to move he may as well do it for sex, which (as covered before) he's too tired to have another go at right at this moment.
Which is why Blaine, in a desperate attempt at finding a source of entertainment, reaches into his pocket (of the jeans that Kurt had made a valiant effort to prevent him from putting back on when they finally got off his bed - their bed, now) and pulls out a slip of paper. It's old, with dark, fuzzy creases where it has been folded again and again over the past year, and the messy title at the top has been traced over so many times in so many different pens and pencils that it's a surprise that it's only torn through the paper in a couple of places.
"What's that?" Kurt asks from where he's sprawled at the other end of the couch, wrapped up in a sinfully fluffy bathrobe.
Blaine wordlessly hands the page to his boyfriend, watching his face carefully as Kurt stares at it and a smile slowly blooms on his lips.
"'Things To Do After Finishing High School'," he reads aloud, glancing up at Blaine with a grin and then back down at the piece of paper. "You still have this?"
Nodding, Blaine thinks back to last summer and the many frustrating times one of them would suddenly pull away right in the middle of doing something phenomenal and rush over to the dresser to grab the pen that sat there and scribble down another item.
At first the list had started out as a bit of joke, something that Blaine had sighed into Kurt's shoulder after collapsing on top of him after one particularly passionate evening, and Kurt had thought it was the funniest thing ever that that's what his boyfriend had been thinking about. So, with Blaine lying mortified on the bed, Kurt had grabbed a pen and paper and neatly jotted down the title and Item #1: Make sex last longer. Soon afterwards, when Kurt had gone into the bathroom to have a shower, Blaine had written down Item #2, and after that the list had slowly expanded, covering everything from Item #56: Swim at a nudist beach to Item #279: – which had been written by a crying Blaine with shaking hands as Kurt hugged his Dad goodbye at the airport – Get married (?). The (?) had since been scribbled out and the promise, I'll say yes, written neatly beside it.
"But you haven't added anything to it," Kurt chastises gently, flipping the paper over to see if there is anything on the other side. "A whole year has passed and you couldn't think of anything else you wanted to do before finishing school?"
Blaine shrugs noncommittally.
"All I've wanted to do for the past year is be with you," he replies, his tone earnest. "Besides, it's our list, not mine. It felt wrong to add anything to it without your approval."
"Well, you can get my approval now," Kurt points out, "Is there anything you want to add to it?"
"Not really. Although there are a few things we can cross off, if you want."
"Like...?"
Blaine holds his hand out and Kurt passes the piece of paper back, staring at his boyfriend as he scans the list.
"Like this one, number seventeen – make a phone call that lasts for more than three hours. And number thirty-three – be caught by parents in a compromising situation."
Kurt frowns, "That didn't happen to us."
"That's because we were Skyping and you were alone in here-" Blaine gestures to the apartment in general "-with your laptop. Whereas I was at home, taking a seriously prolonged 'bathroom break' from a family dinner. My Mum came into my room to check on me..." he trails off with a shudder.
"Well, if we're counting that, then number one can be crossed off too," Kurt says. "That time in March when there was a storm and the connection kept shutting off went on for at least 2 hours before we finally both-" he seems to be searching for a word, then delicately concludes with, "finished."
Blaine laughs at the memory and Kurt meets his eyes with a mischievous grin that goes straight to his crotch.
Breaking eye contact with a sigh, still not feeling up to anything too strenuous (and knowing that Kurt could convince him otherwise with one cocked eyebrow if he wanted), Blaine murmurs, "Honestly, I never wanted to add anything to the list after two seventy-nine. It felt like that was, you know, the end. The best. Nothing can beat that, right?"
A minute of silence passes, and Blaine wonders if he's said too much.
"I can think of something," Kurt admits. "Do you mind if I add it? Make it a neat 280?"
Curious, Blaine hands back the list.
With Blaine watching silently, Kurt stands up and searches the room for a pen, eventually fishing one out of a box on the top of the pile by the door.
"We should really get around to unpacking those," Kurt mutters as he sits back down on the couch.
Blaine nods absent-mindedly in agreement, shuffling close so he can peer over his boyfriend's shoulder. In tiny, cramped letters, squeezed into the space in the bottom right corner of the page, Kurt carefully writes, Item #280: Live together in New York forever (?).
"You like it?" Kurt asks, sounding almost nervous, as if he knows how much the words mean, as if he too can sense the weight in them.
Wordlessly, Blaine snatches the pen out of Kurt's hand to scribble out the (?).
"I do. But there's just one thing..."
Kurt shoots him a questioning look, which Blaine returns evenly, pointedly. Then, running the pen down the page, with the tip hovering above the paper, he crosses off Item #1, Item #17, Item #33 – all the things they'd thought of a year ago and have already experienced. He reaches the bottom right corner and pauses above Kurt's new addition – ink still sparkling wet. Smoothly, decisively, he crosses it off, glancing up at his boyfriend.
"Done," he murmurs.