Hi again! Sorry it's been so long! I am trying to do something, anything, on Prisoner right now, but my efforts are failing miserably. You know how demigods' minds are hard wired for Ancient Greek? Well, mine seems to be hard wired for Klaine.
Many, many thanks to Forever-Fangirl-PJO-HP for allowing me to take her great idea for "How We Could Have Met" and use it to further my obsession with this amazing ship.
Also thanks to Mancer for reading it through even though pretzels make her drool and I have a really severe case of sillyromanticitis, and giving me her honest opinion on the fact that I included two musicals in here!
If I owned these characters, I would be out frolicking with them in a field. Or...something.
4:34.
Ugh. He'd been standing in line for twenty minutes.
Blaine looked up from his watch and leaned around the petite blonde woman in front of him. There were only two people in front of him in line at this point, so it would probably only be a few minutes, but he could feel his stomach growling. The last time he'd eaten had been eight o'clock this morning, when he'd grabbed a banana on the way out of his apartment.
The woman in front of him shifted forward, and the bored-looking middle-aged man on the other side of the counter said, "Next!" Blaine shot him a bright smile (which he missed) and asked for a container of pretzel bites, half-cinnamon sugar, half-salt.
"I'm sorry, young man, but we can't do that. You'll have to choose," said the man, who was now picking at a loose bit on his rubber glove.
Blaine blinked. "I've been here several times before, sir, and always gotten the same thing."
"Well, maybe it's time to try a little variety," snapped the man, whose name tag read Sandy.
Blaine leaned forward, almost over the pretzel counter, ignoring the annoyed mutters of other customers behind him."Sir, there are an awful lot of loose variables in my life right now. Every day, something changes. But through it all, there are a few sacred constants I can always depend on, and one of those is mixed-flavor pretzel bites. Today has been a particularly head-spinning day in my life, one that may require the assistance of both Rent and Chicago to remedy. Could you please help me out here?"
"Sorry. I'm just following protocol," said Sandy with a cloyingly sweet smile. "Choose a flavor, please."
Blaine sighed and leaned back. He knew when he was beaten.
"If I may?" said an unfamiliar voice from behind him. Blaine turned around, ready to fend off an annoyed fellow customer, and met a pair of bright blue eyes, a gorgeous teal sweater, and a small smile.
"Hi," said the man, wiggling his fingers in a little wave. "I heard your, um...discussion. On most days, I'd be willing to engage and fight to the death on behalf of those of us who make the choice not to choose a flavor. However, as today is an off day for me, I'd like to propose an alternate idea." He glanced behind him, then lowered his voice to a whisper. "Also, I think the masses are beginning to descend into anarchy, so let's just make this quick."
Blaine almost had to shut his own mouth with his hand, but he managed to gain control of himself for long enough to smile and say, "Shoot."
The other man's smile widened. His eyes crinkled at the corners. "I'll get cinnamon sugar. You'll get salt. Then we'll share them."
Blaine blinked at him. "You'll get cinnamon sugar…"
"You'll get salt. Or the other way around," the man said brightly. "I'm flexible on that."
I bet you're flexible on other things, too, Blaune thought. Then he blushed. He was dapper! He was chivalrous! He didn't think about things like that! His friends were having a bad influence on him.
Blaine took a deep breath to exorcise the inappropriate thoughts, and the brilliance of the plot finally sank in. He turned back to Sandy, sure that the smile on his face was bordering on sadistic. "One small container of salted pretzel bites, please," he said, voice dripping with that charmingly dapper politeness that can only be gained from four years of prep school.
If 'outwitted' were a facial expression, it would look exactly like Sandy's face in that moment. Blaine shot a grateful expression back at the blue-eyed man, who stepped up to order the cinnamon-sugar pretzels with almost tangible glee, and was met with a mischievous sparkle in his eyes. It was then that Blaine decided: if he didn't manage to get this guy's number by the time they finished their pretzels, he didn't deserve to live.
He paid quickly, then claimed a table for two near the pretzel counter. A few moments later, the man dropped gracefully into the seat opposite him, crossing his legs and slinging his messenger bag across the back of the chair. He set the cup of pretzel bites on the table in front of him, then leaned forward towards Blaine. "Why do I suddenly feel like a drug dealer?"
"Because these are addictive and insanely hard to come by," Blaine said, taking a piece of pretzel from the cardboard cup with a smile that felt like it might stretch his mouth completely outside the parameters of his face.
The man looked at him thoughtfully, brushing a loose strand back into his otherwise-perfect upsweep of chestnut hair. Then he held out his hand. "Hi."
Blaine's breath caught in his throat for a second before he brushed the cinnamon sugar off his fingers onto his napkin and took the man's hand. "I'm Blaine."
"Kurt."
They shook. Kurt's hand was cool and very soft.
"God, now I really feel like a drug dealer," Kurt said, letting out a brief, slightly breathy laugh. Blaine realized the handshake had been going on for too long, but made the wise decision to say nothing.
"Wait," Kurt said, withdrawing his hand and snagging a bite from Blaine's cup. "You're not one, are you?"
"A drug dealer? No."
"Good. Because I have a very strict policy about people who might get me hooked on heroin."
Blaine raised an eyebrow, grabbing a salted pretzel bite. "What's that?"
Kurt reached over and plucked out a cinnamon-sugar one. "I don't date them."
Blaine's hand stilled over the cardboard cup, then pulled out a pretzel. "Any other criteria I should know about?"
"Nobody who's against musical theater, and nobody who has more than six cats."
Blaine held eye contact, still smiling. "I think I check out, then. How about Friday?"
Kurt looked down at the table, then poured the rest of Blaine's pretzel bites into his own cup. He pushed it to the center of the table and met Blaine's eyes again. "That'll definitely work."
For reference, small half-cinnamon sugar, half-salt bites are my pretzel order. In case any of you ever decides to buy me pretzels, just so I can say, "You know my pretzel order?"