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 69th cycle. Now cycle 70!

GLEEKATHON FOURTH ANNIVERSARY CYCLE - It's October again, which means another year of Gleekathon is about to wrap up! At the end of the month it will have been four years since I've started doing my daily stories! As always, I will be celebrating this with a special cycle of stories to touch on my favorite stories I've done throughout the year. There will be two installments each on Thursdays, Saturdays, Mondays, and Wednesdays. The remaining days will feature, as they have in the last several months, new chapters of the latest story in my Doctor Who/Glee crossover series. As far as the anniversary stories go, it will be as I've done before, taking those past stories and either doing a prequel, sequel, POV swap, genre swap, alternate ending, or additional scenes.

This story is a GENRE SWAP to "Step 67, Discover New Sides" a Paper Heart series story originally posted on August 26 2013.

(This is a shift day, which means there will be two stories posted today!)

"A Textile Affair"
Kurt/Jude (OC)
Paper Heart series extra
(all series now listed under the communities tab in my profile)

GENRE SWAP: Spy

As inconspicuous dead drop points went, this was a new one for him. He'd been given his instructions, along with his cover. Now he just needed to get into position and wait for his contact.

The baby backpack had been his idea. It was large enough to contain the item, easy to engineer the exchange through, and once they put in the doll, which was both too realistic and not realistic by far, he was in business. The worse he had to look forward to was a nosy grandma or two.

As he entered the fabric store, he could hear his team arguing through the earpiece, and he had to resist telling them to can it before they distracted him. He didn't want to be impaired in any way, seeing as he had never dealt with this contact before. He'd had dealings with another recently, but this one had revealed himself to be a double agent. He hadn't caught it in time, which had nearly cost them the entire operation and a handful of lives. He wouldn't make the same mistake again.

He was keeping a close eye on his surroundings, pretending to check out the various samples and rolls. From what he found, there weren't too many people around to worry him about the backpack drawing unwanted attention.

"Boy or girl?" a man's voice asked him. He'd spotted his reflection on one of the displays' silvery surface, but it had been mangled at best. He still knew, by the tone of his voice, that this was his man.

Turning to face him, the mangled reflection had done him zero justice, and he had to pause… because he knew him. Did he have it wrong? Unless…

"Boy," he answered, waiting for the sentence. If he didn't say it, then he was just there as a customer, and he could blow his cover.

"He's adorable. How many months?" Bingo. No one who looked close enough to decide whether the baby was adorable or not would be fooled by the doll.

"Since when are you on our side of the fence, Jude?"

"Oh, I climbed over long before you ever knew me."

Kurt had been with the agency for three years. He'd known Jude for five. He was a bartender when Kurt had known him, and they'd entertained what Kurt could only describe as 'a flirtation.' They had been friends, for nearly as long as they'd known one another, but that was all it had been, despite the fact Kurt had been attracted him from the first time he'd seen him, all except for one night, two years ago. It was Halloween, and there'd been a party at the bar. It was on that night that Kurt learned Jude was moving out of town, after he'd applied and been hired for a job that would 'finally make use of his college degree.'

The news had mulled over in his head throughout the night, as had a series of cocktails. He was just drunk enough to lower his inhibitions, and just sober enough that he would remember everything that happened next. And what happened next was him asking Jude if he wanted to go somewhere. Five minutes later, they were in the manager's office, and they wouldn't come out for over an hour. It was the best and craziest night of his life, but by the end of it, what had to happen happened. Jude left, and though they kept in touch for a few months, eventually they fell out of it. He hadn't seen him since that night in the bar, and he still remembered the look in his eyes, right before that first kiss…

But now he was here, doing the very thing he himself had forced himself to keep a secret from him back in the day, when all along he had already been involved. And he showed up like he wasn't surprised at all, and they were supposed to get on like this was no big deal. If that's the way you want it. He reached into his pocket, letting a pacifier drop from it.

"Oh, looks like the little guy dropped something. Can't just put it back in your mouth, can we?" Jude crouched to pick it up. "Do you have a clean one?"

"It's in the backpack," Kurt indicated. He had to stand still and wait, trying not to look too aggravated, while Jude went behind him and made to retrieve the new pacifier.

What he did instead was to open the bottom of the pack, let the item stashed there drop into his own bag and, as he was closing it up again, he slipped an envelope behind the 'baby' while sticking the pacifier in its mouth. The exchange was complete.

"There you go, fella," Jude nodded.

"Thank you," Kurt told him, meeting his eye, trying to see… something, anything. All he said was…

"Don't worry about it. Take care." And he was gone.

When he'd returned to the van, he'd almost thrown the backpack, baby doll and all, down to the ground, but he'd controlled himself. They had both moved on, Jude faster than him, by the looks of it.

He had reports to do back at the office before he could head home. When he did, he was just getting off the elevator when he saw him, standing at the other end of the hall, next to his apartment door. Kurt paused, wondering if he'd read him even more wrong than he thought.

"How'd you know where I l… Right, never mind. Why don't you do us all a favor and get out. I will throw you out myself if I have to."

"Kurt, I didn't want to go. You need to let me in so I can explain." His voice was what he had known it to be, back in the day, not what it was back in the fabric store. He might have been a mistake, but he let him in. If anything went sideways, he preferred to handle it where there wouldn't be any witnesses, or collateral. He kept a fair distance, where he could watch his every move.

"Talk."

"Two years ago, we got word of a cell we'd believed dead for years. I was chosen to head the team there, which meant I had to go. That last night, when I had to tell you, I didn't want it to be the last time I saw you, but I knew there was a chance it could be. I didn't plan for us to do… anything, but I… I wanted it too much," he admitted, and if he was lying, then he was the best one there. Kurt's heart had started pulling him forward. "I had to break ties with this place, and I couldn't do it at first, not with you. And then I had to go off the grid and…" he shook his head. "I never got to say I'm sorry."

"And now? You're… back on the grid?"

"I'm back in town," Jude nodded.

"Staying?"

"You haven't heard anything about a new agent coming in, have you?" he offered a side smile.

The impulse would have been to hurry up and kiss him. But he didn't, not on this night. They had a chance to have a real thing, finally, and they were going to do this right.

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!