Started my daily ficlets to make the hiatus pass, then decided to keep going with a 2nd cycle, and then a 3rd, 4th, etc through 74th cycle. Now cycle 75!
"Step Seventy-Four, Know a Friend"
(Brittany/Santana,) Kurt, Blaine, Jude (OC), & Harry (OC)
Paper Heart series
(all series now listed under the communities tab in my profile)
They had not hung out since before Christmas. Both of them had been busy on their own, but then one day Blaine had called to catch up, and as he and Brittany were already set to take Harry to a doctor's appointment after lunch, Kurt offered for them to meet up after. Brittany would be headed to her parents' house, while Kurt took Harry back to his house to get his things together and head there himself, as his turn had come to stay there.
When he arrived at his house, Blaine was waiting outside. He came up to the car, offering to take up Harry so Kurt could get his things out.
"How did it go?" he asked.
"He cried the entire time," Kurt frowned. "It's normal for babies not to like doctors though, I guess."
"He looks alright now," Blaine smiled at the boy in his arms.
"That's because we just rode in the car. He likes that part. My dad jokes maybe cars run in the family."
Once inside, Kurt had put the baby down in his crib before starting to pack up both of their things for the transfer to Brittany's. It didn't usually take so much time, seeing as they had both split a lot of their belongings between their two homes, but then they had to plan ahead and see what they might want to bring over that they would not have access to otherwise. For Kurt and Brittany both, the first thing they had to make sure not to leave behind were school books.
"Is it hard, having to live in two places?" Blaine asked, standing by the crib as Kurt moved around and picked up a shirt here, a stuffed bear there.
"Not really now," Kurt shrugged. "At first it was, a bit," he admitted. "But it's been months now, so it's just routine. Sometimes I'll miss my dad, but he's just a phone call or car ride away, and I know that when Brittany's staying with us she misses her parents, too. But it's better this way than if we just lived on our own and had to split our time with Harry." As he spoke his son's name, his eyes would go to him on reflex, seeing that he was still as he should be.
"What happens when you guys graduate? You'll move out eventually, right?"
"We've talked about it, not a lot, but we've started. Whatever we do, we're going to think about Harry, obviously. We've done our best for him to have both his mother and father in the same place, we're not going to stop that now. Then there's Santana, and I know one day I'll…" He paused, a blue-eyed face flashing through his thoughts and making his words get stuck in his throat.
"One day you'll…?" Blaine had picked up on it though, and Kurt turned back to him. "Does this have to do with the guy I saw you talking to at Sectionals?" Again, Kurt hesitated, but Blaine just smiled. "What's his name?"
"Jude, he… his name is Jude," he finally replied.
"As in…"
"Yeah," Kurt had to shake his head in amusement. That's what I said, too.
"Do you like him?" Blaine asked. Kurt thought of the book, of last Christmas, of everything else between now and then. "You should ask him out then." Kurt blinked, touching his own face, wondering what Blaine had seen in it while he was lost in thought.
"I don't know, it's…" he absently looked to Harry again.
"Look, I know how much your son means to you, and that you want to make sure to take care of him, and that's something I really admire about you. But, as your friend, all I can say is you are going to regret letting him go if you don't do something," Blaine told him, and Kurt knew he was right about that.
"He did introduce me to his family," he revealed.
"He did?"
"At Christmas, when I went there to thank him for the present he sent me, and to give him the one I had for him," Kurt explained.
"Kurt, he's into you, too," Blaine chuckled. "What are you waiting for?"
"You're starting to sound like Santana," Kurt got back to packing.
"Well she's right, too, then. You're being all shy and happy just talking about him, I can see it. How often do you think about him?" Every day.
"Sometimes," he was vague instead.
"Do you ever think about him at the worst possible times and just not care? About kissing him, about…"
"Alright, alright, I get the picture, yes, alright? Yes," he confessed. Sometimes I space out for an entire period wondering what his lips taste like.
Blaine had finally let the subject go, and after Kurt had finished packing up his and Harry's things, they'd sat and talked about school and Glee Club and whatever was going on in their respective lives. Kurt had dropped him off on the way to Brittany's house. Harry had slept the entire ride, which left Kurt the rest of the ride afterward to think about other things on his mind.
As much as he'd try and skirt around the subject, he had no doubt that, if he were to ask Jude out, Jude would say yes. But his hitch was the same one as it had always been and, he had a feeling, it tied into why Jude had probably not done the asking himself. Once they embarked on all of this, there would still be Harry in the middle, and even though his son was still just a baby, he was learning now, forming attachments very easily. For his son's sake, Kurt was finding a lot of his decisions to be made through erring on the side of caution.
But then what kind of lesson would he be teaching his son in the process? To never take risks? What kind of life was that?
They came up to the intersection, and as the lights were changing around him, Kurt made the decision, so suddenly that he went from knowing he was heading to Brittany's house to knowing he was actually heading somewhere else entirely. He signalled the turn, and with his son asleep and unaware in the back, they made for the Abernathy house.
He could have called, but he'd been thinking about the blond boy so much in the last hour, he needed to see his face when he did this. He parked the car, pulled out his phone and dialled up the contact with a picture of the Beatles.
"Kurt, hey…"
"Look out your window," he opened the car door and stepped out. When he spotted him at the window, he waved. "I can't stay long, can you come out for a second?"
Half a minute later, Jude appeared, jogging over to the driveway. He was smiling, which Kurt took as a good head start. "Is everything alright?" he asked, dipping his head so to see inside the car and confirm that Harry was inside.
"Yeah, I was actually on my way to Brittany's, it's my turn to stay there," he explained. "But there was something I needed to do first."
"What's that?" Jude asked.
"I needed to see you, to ask you if you would like to go out, with me, on a uh… on a date, I mean, I…"
"Yes," Jude held up his hands with a smile to stop him and put him out of his misery. "Yes," he repeated, just in case. Even then, Kurt stood still for a moment, letting that one syllable sink all the way down to his toes. Jude had said yes, to a date, with him.
"Good… Excellent… Okay," he finally allowed himself to smile, hoping against all odds that he wasn't tomato red in the face at the moment. "I should go, they'll be waiting and… Friday night?"
"Sounds good," Jude nodded. Kurt nodded silently. "Are you okay?"
"If I told you my legs feel like jelly right now so I can't drive yet, will that be too much?" Jude laughed.
"Want me to stay with you while you wait?"
"Oh, you don't have to…"
"Hey, if I had any trouble spending more time with you, would I have said yes before?" he pointed out, and Kurt slowly nodded.
"Fair enough."
THE END
A/N: This is a one-shot ficlet, which means that signing up for story alert will not bring you any alerts.
In the event of a sequel, the story will be separate from this one. And as chapter stories go, they are
always clearly indicated as such [ex: "Days 204-210" in the summary] Thank you!