"It's huge, isn't it?", a man asks.
Kurt freezes for a second, maybe two. The voice didn't belong to anyone he knew. Why would it? He didn't come here with anyone.
He was aiming for total solitude. The final call of being left alone. Voluntarily, of course.
He had enough of his roommate's whining. The temperature was never right. It was either too hot or too cold. Too wet or too windy. The traffic was never right. It was either too loud or uncomfortably quiet. Kurt was never right. College was apparently the reincarnation of hell. Alcohol was the devil's work, though why he would think that and still drink himself senseless every weekend was beyond Kurt's imagination.
In a desperate attempt of getting away, Kurt seeked the company of a thousand dead animals. The nature historic museum. Or the mammal section, to be specific. There was nothing that said 'leave me alone' than a building filled with the preserved carcasses of dead animals. Or so he thought.
"It makes you feel so insignificant", the voice said again, boring it's way through Kurt's frozen state as he snapped back into reality. He quickly realised that he was staring at a huge mammoth that was at least four times his height.
"But it's nice to know that it's dead. I mean.. woah! I wouldn't want that running after me", the voice continued in a bubbly tone, and Kurt couldn't help but wince at the cheery note that did not match his current state of emotions.
He turned his head towards the man, looking at him for the first time. The man was young and Kurt thought his voice matched his appearance perfectly. He had curly hair that Kurt wanted to run his hand through just to see whether it was as bouncy as it looked. His honey brown eyes were framed in black glasses that gave him a nerdy look. Figures, as he is hanging out in a museum, Kurt thought. He wore a plaid shirt with a red and blue polka-dotted bowtie that made Kurt want to laugh, but instead he masked his amusement with a slight arch of his eyebrows. Kurt lowered his gaze to find the man wearing fairly normal navy jeans, but what really boggled his mind was the lack of socks in his shoes, emphasized by his pants that stopped at ankle-length. He wanted to take hold of the boy and shake him senseless. He wanted to elaborate on just how wrong his clothes were, even for a museum patron.
Kurt abruptly realised that he was staring and looked away.
"Do you come here often?", the man asked, taking Kurt's staring as a sign of interest.
Forcing back the urge to roll his eyes, Kurt replied.
"Do you often speak to strangers?"
The man's face broke into a grin and a chuckle escaped his lips.
"Sometimes. I mean, it's fun… Not talking to creepy people in dark back roads because based on experience tend to try to sell you drugs or sex or both".
Kurt wasn't surprised that the man had tried to talk to people in shady places. He looked like the overly trusting type.
"…But", the man continued. "Like in places like cafes and museums you can find the most interesting people. Often people who share your interests. Like you for example. You are probably interested in nature science or history stuff, I guess?", the man replied, straightening his glasses.
Kurt pursed his lips and shook his head.
"Then you better find someone else as I'm neither interesting nor interested in.. nature history.. stuff..", he said, turning towards the giant mammoth that made even him feel short in comparison.
"You are in the nature historic museum, aren't you?", the man asked in confusion.
Kurt bit his tongue and sighed. He just couldn't get right of this guy, could he? Well, at least he could amuse himself by answering the man's questions.
"Yeah, I'm only here because my roommate isn't. I'm hiding"
This made the curly-haired man laugh.
"It's a weird place to hide"
"Did you just call me weird?", Kurt arched a neatly plucked eyebrow.
The man shook his head and his curls bounced with him.
"No, I said hiding in a museum is weird. One weird action doesn't make you weird", he replied cheerfully.
"Oh okay", Kurt sighed and looked pointedly at the huge mammoth that he wasn't even interested in anymore, but he pretended to be captivated by, hoping that the man would leave him alone. He just wanted to escape from Timothy for a few hours. Ever since his roommate got dumped by his girlfriend he had done nothing but lay around the dorm room moping and Kurt was fed up.
"I'm sure you're not uninteresting either", the voice made its presence clear again. This time Kurt rolled his eyes visibly and glared at the man.
"Could you please leave me alone? I'm trying to enjoy the company of a woolly mammal that does not speak!"
The man blinked a couple of times.
"It's extinct"
"Exactly", Kurt drawled.
"Fine", the man had a look of defeat on his face. When Kurt didn't stop glaring at him, he back off and vanished to the bird section. Kurt made a mental note to not go in there later.
Finally, he thought. He could enjoy the silence and think about how lucky he was who was not a polar bear and trapped in here forever. Kurt wandered along rhinoceros', donkeys, horses, marsupials, bats and finally stopped before a Bengal tiger. The glass case was in the far end of a dimly lighted room with a metre of space between the case and the wall.
Sitting down cross-legged by the head of the tiger was the man from before. He had a sketchpad in his left hand and sturdy black coal pensil in his right. On the visible page of the pad, Kurt could see the outline of the tiger's head where half the head was filled in. A tiny gasp escaped Kurt's lips. The amount of detail put into the raw sketch was breathtaking. Even though only half the head was filled in, he could make out every single flawless line, every sinew and visible crease in the face. It was almost as though the half-head would jump out of the paper and pounce on him.
His tiny gasp, echoed by the tall walls gave the sound a magnitude he hadn't expected, and the other boy didn't seem to fail to notice that he wasn't alone anymore. The curly-haired man turned his head to find out who it was who disturbed his peace and Kurt felt like a dear caught in headlights. It particularly annoyed him that he didn't know the person's name, forcing him to refer to him as 'the man' in his mind all the time.
Suddenly the roles were reversed and he felt like the one interrupting the other. Before he could make up a lie or walk away, the other man spoke.
"Couldn't stay away, huh?", he asked with a grin that he was able to find immediately, as though he was forgetting Kurt for his previous rudeness.
Kurt wasn't sure what to say, so he placed his hands in his pocket and looked at the tiger. The real, stuffed one in the cage.
"It was coincidental", he said nonchalantly, masking his interest in the drawing in the man's hand. How bad could a person be if they could draw like that? Maybe he had been too hasty with his decision to shun the other man.
"Or maybe it was destiny", the man said, getting to his feet.
"I don't believe in destiny", Kurt replied, biting his lip as the curly-haired man came closer.
He could feel his heart pump faster and hear the blood coursing through his veins, leaving him with the feeling of simply living.
"Do you believe in coffee with a stranger you met at a museum?", the man asked, his face suddenly serious.
Kurt's mouth opened to gasp, but no sound came up. Instead he pressed his lips together and simply nodded.
The man's face broke into a grin and he reached out a hand for Kurt to take.
"I'm Blaine", he said.
Blaine, Kurt thought as he shook his hand. Now I have a name to the face.
"Kurt"