A/N: Lovejoybliss had requested a re-do of the Klaine elevator scene, but with Kurt and Adam, and not coerced, just a technical malfunction. One was already written (sorry that I can't find the original prompt or a link to that one-shot) but I made mine different by setting it back when Kurt and Adam first met. I'm still a little hazy about my portrayal of Adam, but I hope you enjoy. Warning for angst, anxiety, and a blink-and-you'll-miss-it mention of Kurt's past relationship with no outright mention of any people or events involved.
Kurt gives the rack of costumes he's rolling a push, then a shove, jumping the divide between the floor and the elevator, kicking the rack hard once he's gotten it in.
Kurt hates Thursdays.
When he originally got his class schedule and found out he had been put into Advanced Costume Design, he was elated. Finally, that sketch book he'd been puttering around in for the last few years had paid off. His professor even commented that his portfolio was one of the best he'd scene at NYADA. When Kurt discovered he was the only underclassman in the class, he went from elated to euphoric. He thought it said a lot for his abilities that he could manage his way into a class with people far more advanced than he, students who had worked behind-the-scenes on off-Broadway productions, students he could learn a thing or two from.
Of course, it's an accomplishment he would have liked to share with someone special.
But he has to get better at shoving those feelings aside.
That doesn't exist for him right now.
What no one clued him in on is that by being the only underclassman, he is automatically responsible for taking the rack of costumes back down to the basement before he can go to his next class, which happens to be dance, which also means he's consistently five minutes late, and Cassie July frowns on tardiness in a big way.
It doesn't matter. It isn't like he's her star pupil anyway. He'll more than likely make it up over the summer. It's a shame. He always says that every leading man needs to know how to do a proper plié.
Kurt presses the floor button with the black B in the center and leans back against the wall, watching the doors shudder, and then slide slowly closed.
Kurt doesn't understand why a recently renovated school like NYADA had an elevator older than Christ. He would think that one of their lofty alumni could shell out enough money to upgrade it, but then again, if it's not broken, why fix it, especially when they desperately need another forty pairs of character shoes before the spring revival of South Pacific.
Wow, he thinks, smirking to himself, the sass is strong with him today.
"Hold up!" he hears a voice call over the combined din of students in the hallway and the thud-thud-thud of the elevator doors struggling to come together. "Hold the lift!"
Kurt rolls his eyes. He can't hear the voice clearly, but he knows there are a few contemporary theater majors who have just returned from a two-week theater tour abroad that have taken to adopting English mannerisms, as if it's going to make them sound more sophisticated to call the elevator a lift and the bathroom the loo.
Or it could be Adam. Kurt's heart speeds up a bit at the thought that he could get stuck in this elevator with sweet, sophisticated, older theater student Adam.
Yeah, right - like he has that kind of luck.
Kurt considers not holding the elevator. It's taken a minute and a half for the doors to get 86% closed. If he stops it now, it'll take two minutes to open, a full two minutes pause before it decides to close, and then two more minutes to actually start closing again. That doesn't even factor in how long it takes the thing to chug its way down to the basement.
"Wait!" the voice calls out urgently and Kurt huffs. He can't do it. What if it was Artie calling out for the elevator? He'd feel like a heel not waiting for a disabled person.
Kurt sticks his arm in between the doors. They close on his forearm and then bounce back open, shuddering and sliding and wasting more of his time, but at least, for one afternoon, Kurt Hummel behaved like a decent human being.
"Thanks loads for this," the voice says as a familiar olive drab duffel and red knit cap bounces into the elevator, and a long finger presses the already lit B button. "Oh, hello, Kurt."
Kurt looks up through his lashes as the doors shudder to a close, his gaze met by the same warm smile and beguiling blue eyes that Kurt has been trying to pluck up the courage to ask out for coffee ever since they'd met at the Adam's Apples sign-up sheet.
"Hey, Adam," Kurt says, nodding over the rack of clothes. "Fancy seeing you here."
"Yes…let me guess…" Adam looks at the costumes, then at Kurt's disgruntled expression. "It's about 12:15, and these are the costumes from Antigone…and you're a freshman…so I'm going to say Advanced Costume Design with Greg Pierson?"
"You guess correct," Kurt says, patting the rack and wincing when a puff of dust rises from the less loved costumes on the far end.
"So, what class are you going to be late for?" Adam asks.
"How did you know?" Kurt answers with a question, chuckling in comradery.
Adam raises a hand.
"I did it, too," he admits, "but my sophomore year. Almost got an F in Intro to Mime second semester."
"That sounds…positively awful," Kurt says with a slow shake of his head.
"I didn't get an F," Adam assures him.
"I mean…Intro to Mime…sounds awful," Kurt clarifies with the start of am uncontrollable blush and a shy grin.
"Well, you'll get to tell me how you like," Adam says, reaching across the racks to pat Kurt on the shoulder. "You'll have to take it in a few months."
"I can't wait," Kurt chuckles, though the thought of having to take a class in mime has him considering a leave of absence for one semester.
The elevator lurches and they're finally off, creeping slowly down to the basement. The metal hangers on the rack clatter loudly as the elevator shakes between floors, and dust from the costumes fills the air around them.
Somewhere between the second and the third floor the small metal box they're traveling in stutters, makes an unsettling noise, and then grinds to a sudden halt.
"Uh…what's going on?" Kurt asks, looking up at the ceiling above them, waiting for something to happen.
"Don't worry. This elevator is ancient," Adam says. "It does this from time to time. It should start right back up in a sec."
They stand in silence staring up at the ceiling, waiting for the elevator to spring to life again. They hear a grrrrr-owling like the gears above their heads trying to move, followed by a louder metallic grinding noise and something that sounds disturbingly like a snap.
From the corner of his eye, Kurt sees Adam pat his pockets.
"Um, do you have your phone on you?" he asks. "I seem to have left mine."
"Yeah, I…" Kurt fishes through the pocket of his jeans and grabs his phone, staring with dismay at the screen, "oh, it's at 4%…" Kurt watches the battery alert flash, and then go out with a beep-beep. "And now it's dead."
"No worries," Adam says, accidentally bumping the clothing rack and waving the consequent flurry of dust out of his face. "We probably can't get any reception in here anyway."
"That's reassuring," Kurt mutters, slipping his phone back in his pocket. Kurt looks around them, noticing for the first time just how small this elevator is, especially with a six-foot rolling rack overflowing with costumes taking up the bulk of the space, no visible vents, no air circulation of any kind, and two grown men breathing in all the available oxygen. "Is it…is it getting hot in here?" he asks, tugging at his collar.
Adam looks at him and raises an eyebrow, an expression that seems condescending but Adam only appears concerned.
"Kurt…do you a have a thing for enclosed spaces?"
"Uh…no," Kurt says, unbuttoning the top button of his shirt and putting his messenger bag on to the floor. "I just…I'm not fond of elevators, and the thought of being suspended in mid-air in a faulty one kind of bothers me, but enclosed spaces? No, I'm good with that."
"Come on," Adam says. "Why don't we sit down and wait for the custodian to arrive?"
Kurt looks at the brown linoleum tile, the pattern of faux wood worn down till each tile is the same, flat, dull square of mud beige with new looking edges, debating whether or not he's willing to sacrifice his Citizens of Humanity jeans to sit on the filthy floor. Adam, sitting cross-legged, looks up at Kurt, gesturing to where he's laid out his flannel shirt for Kurt to sit. He smiles, and that makes up Kurt's mind for him.
"Alright," Kurt says, dropping down onto the flannel shirt, trying not to step on it with his shoes, "so what should we do while we wait?"
"Well, we might be in here for a few hours, unfortunately," Adam says. "Why don't we get to know each other a little better? We can play 20 Questions."
Kurt chomps down on his tongue to keep from grinning like an idiot.
Stuck in an elevator with Adam and playing 20 Questions, his suggestion to get to know one another better…well, it's not coffee, but it's a start.
"Okay," Kurt agrees, "but you go first."
An hour later…
"So, I'm rushing into the dining room," Adam says, stopping when he can't talk past laughing, "with the bird on a tray in my arms, and it's perfect, I mean, just picture perfect, and everybody's starving, and I think, I might actually pull this off…"
Adam pauses, his face turning a shade of red amidst an attack of giggles that Kurt has never seen on a human being.
"Then what?" Kurt asks, laughing so hard at Adam's recount of his first Thanksgiving in America that he has tears in his eyes.
"Everyone's looking at me, and I'm feeling pretty good about myself, but then I trip over the damn dog…"
Kurt breaks down completely, imagining a slightly younger, slightly less confident leader of Adam's Apples tripping over a partially blind and paralyzed 16-year-old Pekingese.
"And what happened to the turkey?" Kurt squeaks out, doubled over as he laughs into his hands.
"Right out the window," Adam finishes, barely able to get the words out as the vision of an 18-pound roasted and stuffed tom turkey dropping out a ten-story window replays in his mind.
Kurt can't breathe, laughing harder than he has in weeks with the stress of school, and home, and…well, people at home.
"What did your host family do?" Kurt asks when he finally calms down enough to speak in his normal register. He catches a glimpse of Adam, who looks back at him with a proud smile, like making Kurt laugh is the best thing he's done all day.
"Well, after we all vowed that we'd never talk about that day, especially after the police left…"
"Oh my God!" Kurt giggles.
"It was just a minor car crash," Adam says with a shake of his head. "No one got hurt."
Kurt reaches into his pocket for a tissue to wipe his eyes, but Adam already has a hand outstretched, offering him a napkin.
"Thanks," Kurt says, taking the tissue and patting his eyes dry.
"We ordered a pizza, and pizza has been our traditional Thanksgiving meal ever since."
"That…that's…" Kurt says, struggling to find the right thing to say. He would probably say that's the funniest story he's ever heard. Who can flub an entrance that badly? But what he wants to say is thanks. Thanks for taking his mind off his problems, and not just the problem of being stuck in the elevator. But before he can come out with an appropriate comment, his stomach answers for him, grumbling loudly.
"Sounds like somebody's hungry," Adam comments, looking at his watch, "and no wonder. Well, you've missed your dance class…and lunch it looks like."
"Well, I can't say I'm too sorry about missing dance class," Kurt says, "but I was looking forward to trying that new café down the block. Sorrentos?"
"I've heard nothing but good things about that place," Adam says. "We should hit it up…"
We…Adam said we…and Kurt wonders if that was an honest slip-up or a subtle way of asking him out to lunch.
"But, until then, I have some food left over from breakfast."
Kurt watches Adam open his duffel and dig through it, pulling out small brown paper bag after small brown paper bag, opening them up, appraising the contents, and then either putting them away or offering them to Kurt.
"Man, you pack a lot," Kurt comments, peeking into the bags, picking out one bag of green grapes, another bag of kettle chips, and a third bag with half a turkey sandwich.
"I always do on Thursdays," Adam says, picking a bag for himself that has carrot spears in it. "I stay late to help out with one of the beginning acting classes. You know, the ones NYADA offers to the community?"
Kurt stops mid-chew.
"You're involved in that?" he asks. Adam nods. "Is that a special project you're doing for school or…"
"No," Adam says with a casual shrug of his shoulders, "I just enjoy it."
Kurt looks at Adam in awe and Adam looks away, his cheeks turning a light pink that Kurt finds adorable.
They hear a banging above their heads that makes them both jump – not one of the odd, erratic thumps they've been hearing for the last hour, but a definite knocking sound, with a person on the other end.
"Hey," a gruff voice calls through the ceiling, "is there anybody in here?"
"Yeah," Kurt calls up. "There're two of us stuck in here."
"Alright guys," the man says. "We'll have you out in a jiffy."
"Take your time," Kurt says, chuckling at the last remnants of Adam's story that linger in his brain. When he looks up, Adam is watching him in a new way – a way that makes Kurt's stomach flutter.
"Yeah," Adam agrees, reaching out his bag of chips and offering Kurt one. "We're all good in here."
They hear footsteps on the ceiling, and then something that sounds like an electric screwdriver, but Kurt ignores it, even drowning out his irrational fear of plummeting to his death in favor of whatever question Adam has thought up to ask him. He reaches into the bag in front of him for a grape, frowning when he sees it's the last one.
"I'm so sorry I'm eating all of your food," Kurt says. "You've been a lifesaver, really."
"It's my pleasure," Adam answers. "Besides, when we get out of here, you can make it up to me." He winks at a flustered Kurt. "We can start at Sorrentos."