"Kurt, remember when you said your family was going to be here at five? Make it two. Oh, and if something is burned, like, just a bit on the bottom—is that tragically bad?"Certain the shrill tone coming from the phone in his hand has probably permanently damaged his hearing, but is also making dogs within a five mile radius whimper in pain, Blaine brings the mobile back to his ear, before continuing.
"No, I…Yeah, the 's only a little bit scorched on the very bottom. Kurt, something CAN only be a little bit scorched—I…it's like a…dark-ish brown…maybe wet cardboard coloured?"
With a dramatic sigh, Blaine leans against the kitchen counter—warped, god-awful green laminate pressing into his lower back painfully. This is not going to end particularly well, he thinks.
"Can't I just gently take the top layer off, and move it into a different pan or something?" No, I didn't taste it. It's probably not burn-y flavoured. Kurt, I said probably, I don't actually know. Fine, okay…wait a sec."
Considering that their kitchen is the size of a small closet, Blaine doesn't have to look very far for a utensil to tentatively dip into the offending pan. Grabbing a slotted spoon which is only sort of coated with some kind of mystery matter, and awkwardly cradling the phone between his cheek and shoulder, he scoops out a bit of stuffing—and chews thoughtfully.
Ew. Okay. No, fucking ew. I'm a dead man.
"Kurt? Honey? It's…burned. And, I'm so….please don't actually YELL at me…it's stale bread, Kurt—not a ruined batch of the magical cure for cancer…Oh, okay. I'll toss it. Listen, I'll scrounge some money…LISTEN, I'll scrounge some money up and go out to that Kosher place across the street, they're doing Thanksgiving sides..it won't have meat in it though…"
Blaine had thought that maybe, just maybe, adding a "honey" to the news might help. He should've known that no term of endearment was going to be enough to talk his, frankly, holiday-hysterical boyfriend off of the proverbial ledge of despair.
"I'm sure it will be fine, Kurt. We can wing it."
Yes, because Kurt is a master of winging it, only not. Smooth, Blaine. Extra-smooth.
Listening intently for Kurt's reply, Blaine can't help but smile. He can literallyhear Kurt working to calm himself, to come back down to a vaguely reasonable place. He can picture Kurt in his mind—fluttering hands, eyebrows raised in tense panic—eyes rolling so far back into his head in frustration.
This day. Their first Thanksgiving living together. "Living the dream" they liked to say to one another. But, really? They are living the dream. It's not perfect by any stretch of the imagination—but they are together. Perhaps at this juncture? A little bit more likely to strangle each other, but all in, a team.
Blaine knows that is a really big deal that Kurt has entrusted him to cook at all—hell, to be let alone with foodstuff in the first place, never mind be expected to assemble something edible out of multiple ingredients.
Realising he's been staring off into space, not listening for any sound on the other end of the call, Blaine startles back to reality.
"Um, sorry, sweetie, I was…I know you weren't really yelling AT me, more yelling at my genetic cooking deficiencies?"
Kurt's smiling now, he thinks. Probably a thin-lipped, not meeting his eyes and heart entirely one, but it's there-he can sense it. Blaine's heart does a little double-time beat then. It still blows his mind that this highly-strung, complex, and lovely man takes his breath away—and that Blaine does the same to him.
Four years. Four years they've been together. Days and months that have gone by in an undefinable blur of forever and in a blink. Grown-ups. Well, theoretically anyway. Blaine is pretty sure that the entire notion of "adulthood" is a myth. One that was created for people aging to be able to grab on to something—something to cling to as life gets bigger, more intense—responsibility, bills, and other people; lovers, friends, family, ripping a person out of a tiny sphere of "just me."
"Hey, this is so random…but what the hell kind of masochistic program has workshops on Thanksgiving, anyway? You gonna be home…soon-ish? Please?"
Suddenly, the acrid stench of burning that has pervaded the kitchen—the fact that Blaine has globs of something foodlike in his hair, stops mattering. He just wants Kurt here. Here with him in the chaos—the perfect chaos that is theirs.
"Besides my little stuffing brain fart, everything else is okay. I'm, like, 99% certain. You left me perhaps the most detailed instructions ever—the multiple coloured hightlights really drove key points home."
The day looks up then. As if on cue from some super-cheesy romantic comedy—the grey skies outside the grimy window in the room lighten. Sunbeams flooding in, brightness just shy of blinding. Though their apartment is situated in a dark corner of the building, and has a fetching view of an abandoned, garbage-littered lot below-the Universe seems to buck probability for a time—and the resulting warmth mirrors the bloom of content in Blaine's stomach.
Picking up the pot full of disgusting, not-fit-for-human-consumption DOOM, Blaine holds it over the garbage pail, watching it fwump in one massive glob into the white plastic bag.
Glancing up at the clock over the stove, he winces when he notices the time displayed. Best not draw Kurt's attention to the hour, he thinks. Running a messy hand over his face, he sighs deeply, and clasps the phone tightly to his ear then—as if pressing it close can magically bring Kurt back sooner.
"Okay, Kurt? It's getting…well, just a little bit late. Ish. Late-ish, I said. Keep breathing. Deep. Slow. We've got this. It's gonna be…"
It's going to be OURS. Crazy and god only knows what's next, but ours, Blaine thinks.
"Get on the train. Get closer to me, okay? I'm going. Breathe, Hummel. BREATHE. I love you."
Kurt disconnects then, his breathy, "Love You too" lingers in Blaine's ears as he steels himself for whatever happens next. Crazily, he muses to himself that he can't fucking wait for whatever is next.
Next.
Grabbing his keys and a huge handful of change from the chipped blue jar on top of the apartment-sized mini fridge, he looks around, half fondly, and half dismayed at the disaster area he's caused on the countertop.
Shrugging on a jacket and making his way into the hallway, Blaine begins to hum as the metal door to their home clangs shut behind him.
Crammed into a space really not intended to fit an adult-sized male, Kurt Hummel stares out of the grubby, scratched safety glass in the window next to him . Blurred lights, blinking, sputtering by; almost like ghosts of memory. No view lasts long enough for him to latch onto.
Oh, Blaine, he thinks. The A train he's on taking far too damned long to make its way downtown, far downtown, toward his apartment, their apartment. Located on, quite possibly, the most shabby street that the Lower East Side has to offer. Kurt smiles ruefully to himself. NEW YORK, yes it had always been capitalized in his head. City of Wonder, of possibilities, of dreams possible—new lives, new loves. New starts.
He'd created such a world of excitement and wonder in his head about the city, that it took a really long time, and enumerable experiences being just another kid let loose on the big streets for him to settle into the reality of actually living there. Being smushed onto a plastic seat, left arm crushed painfully into his side by a strange man, looming, large, and quite frankly—not smelling of soap and clean even at all currently serves as a stark reminder.
It's a smelly, frenetic, exciting, place—this City. Kurt feels a thrum here, a personal connection to it. It has a rythym—a soul. An energy which can either be worked with, or railed against. It's not the place he'd fantasized about—eighteen-years-old, innocent and full of naivé, neon-tinted ideas. It is REAL and vital, however—a place that pulls no punches; tells you like it is. Home.
Lima, Ohio. Lima. When Kurt closes his eyes, and dreams at night? Fuzzy, sepia-tinted images of his childhood home make their way out on occasion. The actual place fading into something far less important to him than the people who make up his heart who reside there. He's found himself in New York City. Such a cliché—teen boy makes his way to the BIG CITY, but, for Kurt? It's undeniably true.
He's twenty-two years old—and his boyfriend is burning stuffing in a home they've built together.
How the hell did he burn the stuffing? All he had to do was...stir it on occasion. You can create entire musicals, cast them, produce them—be such a confident performer—but you can't stir bread, Blaine?, he wonders, more amused than angry—which surprises him a bit.
"I love you. Breathe. Breathe, Hummel." Blaine had said over the phone, just before Kurt had begun his descent into the subway tunnel. Well, he's working on it. In just a very few short hours, his Dad, Stepmom, and Stepbrother will be descending upon them. It's the first Thanksgiving they've ever hosted.
The decision to do so came with a fantastical amount of discussion and planning. Kurt's Dad is fond of calling their apartment, "your apartment" complete with scare quotes. Kurt used to try to retort with, "Dad, it's...warm, cozy...small."-but Burt would just smirk and roll his eyes, saying, "Small, my ass, kid. It's an insanely over-priced closet—you make it a freakin' NICE closet, but it's a closet."
His family have not actually been inside it yet, they've only seen pictures. Huddled over Blaine's laptop together, Kurt had tried so hard to present the nice bits, and Blaine had helpfully distracted them from the not-so-nice ones. Like the fact the wooden floorboards of the place are so warped, that a penny dropped in the middle of the bedroom floor rolls speedily into the small hallway. Then, there is the thing. The thing where all of the windows are either painted shut, or will only stay open if they employ creative propping skills.
Kurt snorts gently to himself, then—drawing a deeper scowl from Stinky Guy. When they'd first
moved in—the place was without a refrigerator. "Kurt, can that...I mean, is that even legal?", Blaine had asked. Kurt had not only NOT known the answer, but he remembers being very, very, close to tears—sweating, standing in the middle of an explosion of boxes and packing paper, the vision of his first apartment that, besides having Blaine in it—does not look even vaguely close to the one he'd envisioned.
It was autumn, the days getting cold—nights beginning to frost. Blaine's genius solution to the "no fridge" problem?
"We'll just hang the stuff that needs cooling out the window from the child safety grates! It'll work well enough—cream for coffee in the morning, anyway." he'd suggested, trying so hard—(Bless his optimistic soul, Kurt had thought fondly) to inject the barest hint of levity into a fairly grim scenario.
All had worked well with that plan, until the morning Kurt had shuffled into the kitchen, and found Blaine cowering against a wall, his curls crazy—hand pressed to his mouth, eyes wild and impossibly wide open.
"Blai..." Kurt began. Blaine shushed him, frantically.
"Shhhh, Kurt. Don't...don't move." he whispered. "Okay, c'mere." grabbing one of Kurt's hands and sliding over to pull him in close next to the wall, he continued, "I...I...just...creamed a family of Orthodox Jews."
"You. Creamed. A family of Orthodox...what the hell are you...?" Kurt had wondered.
Peering carefully out of the window, Blaine motioned for Kurt to follow his gaze. Five floors below—a group of people was pointing upward, gesturing toward the general direction of their apartment windows. In the middle of the group—splattered on the ground, like a strange crime scene outline? A crushed container of half-and-half.
"Oh my GOD, Blaine! How did you...I...what do we do? Kurt sputtered.
"The plastic bag broke, I tried to grab it...it just...fell. Shit, Kurt—what if they think it's a hate crime? Do I go downstairs and explain? I..." Blaine blathered.
"Um, sure. Yeah, hi—we are too poor to afford a refrigerator, and my genius boyfriend—oh, yes, we are homosexuals. We are big supporters of the Jewish people though, just ask my best friend who is Jewish, by the way—and her two very homosexual fathers...so, the cream..." Kurt suggested, giggling more intensely than he had in a very long while.