A/N: I had writer's block, and sent out a plea on tumblr for some quick prompts just to get my mind working again. I got the first response, sat down to write a nice little drabble and... well... 2,000 words later I had this. It just seemed too long not to post here, so here it is! Just some Engaged!Klaine fluff for you all as both a Christmas present and an apology for not having updated anything for a while. I hope you enjoy it!
Easy As Pie
by Padfoot
...
It was an apple pie. Make pastry, prepare apples, insert apples into pastry, cook. Not exactly a difficult recipe to follow. At least not on a normal day. But today...
Today, everything that could go wrong had gone wrong, starting with the pastry refusing to make a compromise between being too dry and too moist and finishing with the apples burning in their pan on the stove. It didn't help that the apple situation had arisen because of the bloody pastry and its stupid inability to just freaking work! Not that Kurt was getting mad or anything. He was fine. Cool, calm and collected.
BZZT!
The sound of his phone made Kurt jump and then curse as the rolling-pin slipped out of his flour-coated hands and onto the floor. It landed on his toes with a BANG and then skittered off under the fridge, where it came to a halt amidst the spider webs and god knows what else that existed there.
Still swearing under his breath as his toes began to throb, Kurt wiped his right hand on his apron and reached into his pocket, taking great care to extract his phone without getting a spot of pastry residue on his jeans.
At store now - do you need green apples or red apples?
Kurt surveyed the mess that had formerly been the kitchen bench, wondering, not for the first time, whether it would really just be safer to give up on making this stupid pie and just ask Blaine to buy one. If he admitted defeat now, he would be saving himself another half hour at least of fighting against every implement known to man to produce what was shaping up to be a very mediocre pie. It would really be much, much easier to just give up now.
But Kurt Hummel wasn't the type to admit defeat.
Red apples, he texted back, his thumb striking the keys as if they had personally offended him. When his phone's autocorrect offered up red spools he decided that yes, it had personally offended him, and felt much less guilty about back-spacing out the error and carefully re-typing his response, before punching 'send' with such vigour that his hand spasmed and his phone went falling to the floor too. Kurt glared at it for a moment before kicking it under the fridge to join its fellow deserter, basking in the sound of it scratching over the tiles. It could rot under there for all he cared.
Returning his attention to the pastry, Kurt found a good outlet for his anger as he punched more flour into it, feeling a sense of vindictive satisfaction as it finally began to obey his wishes, smoothing out to the perfect texture and consistency. Of course, there was far too much flour in this for it to taste any good, but by this point Kurt was so far past caring that he gratefully snagged a new rolling pin from the drawer and shot daggers at the one still hiding under the fridge as this second one slowly but surely fulfilled its role.
"See," he muttered to the offensive implement as he finished rolling the pastry, lifting up the sheet to place it in the pie dish. "That wouldn't have so bad if you'd just stuck around for long enough to give it a go."
The rolling pin remained (mercifully, because this was definitely not the time to get into an argument with a rolling pin) silent and Kurt gave it one last sneer before looking away.
With the usual pan discarded in the sink, still smelling vaguely of burnt sugar and apples - or toffee, as Blaine had helpfully tried to label it before he had been sent to the store to think about what he'd done - Kurt fetched a new one from the cupboard, propping it on the stove and then pausing to sigh at the mess that surrounded it.
Why did this have to be so difficult? All Kurt had wanted to do was make a pie to take to Blaine's boss's house for dinner. A freaking apple pie. It should not have been this hard to do. And of course they hadn't been asked to bring anything (thank God), so it wasn't like this had to be perfect, but pie had never been a difficult thing to make and Blaine had been so excited about Kurt impressing his boss with his wonderful cooking skills and now he'd let Blaine down completely and that... that wasn't good.
The sound of Blaine's keys in the door made Kurt turn away from the bench, moving to the kitchen door to watch as his fiancée deposited his wallet on the coffee table before grinning up at Kurt and presenting him with a bag of apples. Green apples.
"Blaine..."
The word was almost a whine, because Kurt was so far past caring that he couldn't even manage to be angry at this.
Slowly, Blaine's grin disappeared, falling into a concerned expression as he asked, "What? Did I do something wrong?"
"I said red apples. Not green. Didn't you get my text?"
Blaine shook his head, staying by the kitchen door as Kurt sighed and grabbed the bag, emptying the apples into the sink and turning on the tap.
"Urgh. Stupid phone with its stupid autocorrect. What did I say to you if it wasn't 'red apples'? God, I did send the text to you didn't I? Otherwise someone else on my contacts list is probably really confused right now..."
Still shaking his head, Blaine followed Kurt into the kitchen, instantly reaching for the pan on the stove and moving to put it in the sink too.
"No!"
Kurt rushed to grab the pan out of Blaine's hands and replace it on the stove, then want back to the sink, turned off the tap and scooped out the apples. He lifted the bottom of his apron to make a basket for the apples and dropped them in, rubbing them dry absent-mindedly as he searched for the de-corer.
Blaine stepped back out of the way as Kurt pushed past, heading for the chopping board, and both winced at the sound of the pie-dish clattering across the bench. Kurt squeezed his eyes shut and waited for the CRASH of it falling to the floor.
"Got it!" Blaine called.
Glancing back, Kurt tried not to groan at Blaine's hold on the dish, three fingers over the edge, pressing into the newly flattened pastry.
"Thanks," Kurt managed to get out, noisily depositing the apples and starting to peel them vigorously.
It's not Blaine's fault, it's not Blaine's fault, it's not Blaine's fault.
The words were like a mantra, a rhythm along to which Kurt added the melodic (although slightly atonal) sound of apple peel being scraped off and falling to the board. Sensing the beginnings of a song, Blaine started tapping his foot along to the beat, and Kurt sped up his tempo, chanting the mantra in double-time to make sure it was adequately reinforced.
Once the apples were peeled, cored and cut, Kurt turned on the stove, keeping one eye on the butter and sugar melting in the pan and the other on the apples, which Blaine was eyeing hungrily. He watched as his fiancée meandered over to the chopping board and made a faux-casual swipe at a slice of apple.
"If you touch one slice of that apple I promise you will not live to see another day."
The eerie calmness of Kurt's tone was enough to still Blaine's hand, fingers twitching just inches from a freshly cut slice of sweet-smelling apple.
"Just one piece?" he asked, looking beseechingly between the tempting fruit and his fiancée's strict expression.
"I am not a religious man, Blaine," Kurt said, turning back to poke at the butter as it sizzled in the pan. "But I know of a story somewhere in the Bible, explaining what happens when people eat apples that they're not suppose to eat. The details are a little rusty, I'll admit, but Original Sin, damning mankind for eternity, yada yada yada - does it ring a bell?"
Blaine rolled his eyes, "That was completely different. 'Adam and Eve' wasn't about stealing apples, it was about giving in to temptation. Besides, there was a snake involved in that story. I see no snakes here."
"And you won't be seeing any 'snakes' for a long time to come if you don't move away from the apples."
The words, laden with innuendo, were muttered under Kurt's breath, but Blaine heard them loud and clear. He was gaping in mock outrage as Kurt reached around him and picked up a handful of apple slices, dropping them into the pan and reaching back for the rest with one hand as the other began pushing them around with a wooden spoon, coating them in the sugar-butter mixture.
For a while, Kurt ignored the man standing statue-still in the middle of the kitchen, but then the apples were ready and he shoved past with exaggerated force as he moved back to the pie-dish. Blaine stumbled into the fridge, sending a shower of magnets falling to the floor.
"I know, I know - I'm picking them up," Blaine mumbled before Kurt could comment, bending down to reach them.
Kurt carefully poured the filling into the pie, turning the dish around so that he couldn't see where Blaine had flattened the pastry. Out of sight, out of mind. He'd make a mark on the crust there and be sure to give Blaine that slice. Serve him right for messing up the pie.
It was as Kurt placed the last piece of pastry on the top of the pie that Blaine stood up, Kurt's phone and the run-away rolling pin each held in a hand. He lowered the hand holding the pin to his side as he spun around to ask about the phone, but Kurt chose that moment to crouch down and open the oven, clutching the pie loosely as he adjusted his grip so he could put it in to bake.
"Kurt, where're you-?"
Blaine, not having noticed that Kurt was near the oven, wasted a precious second glancing around the kitchen in confusion, before stepping forward. That was when he broke off. Because he'd walked straight into Kurt. And hit him in the arm with the rolling pin. And sent the pie falling spectacularly to the ground.
Thankfully, Kurt was low down enough that the pie dish didn't break, but instead landed on its side, wavered indecisively between falling forwards and backwards, then decided on the former and deposited its contents with a sick sort of splat onto the tiles. Beside where Kurt had fallen into a sitting position, clutching his arm. Next to the still-open oven, which was blasting cloying hot air at both Kurt and his ruined pie.
Blaine was still standing near the fridge, eyes wide as he looked down at the scene he had a terrible feeling he might have caused.
"Sorry?" he ventured after what felt like a hundred years of silence.
A hundred more years passed as Kurt's gaze slowly - slowly - clambered up Blaine's calves, over his thighs, past his stomach and chest, lingered on his chin, mouth, nose, and then came to a halt on his eyes. It wasn't a happy gaze.
"You hit me with a rolling pin," Kurt finally said, breaking the silence.
"I didn't mean to."
"You ruined the pie."
"I didn't mean to do that either."
"You bought the wrong apples."
"That wasn't my fault. I never got a text to say what the right apples were."
"Blaine, you hit me with a rolling pin!"
Blaine winced at the words, glancing guiltily away, and then back at Kurt, who now looked sort of pitiful more than angry. His gaze had taken on a helplessly defeated look, and to Blaine he suddenly seemed small - cowering on the floor, hair waving in the heat still emanating from the oven and clutching his hurt arm.
"I really am sorry about that."
"This is why Eve was told to stay away from the apples," Kurt grumbled to himself, finally finding the energy to release his sore arm and slam the oven shut. He straightened his legs to push himself across the floor so he could lean against the bench, but as he curled the toes of his left foot against the ground a shot of pain went through them and he remembered the first rolling pin injury from earlier.
"We're throwing out that rolling pin," he said, managing to move himself one-footed out of the middle of the floor.
"Okay," Blaine agreed. He threw the rolling pin at the rubbish bin for good measure. The pin hit the side of bin too hard, knocking it over and sending a cascade of trash onto the floor by the door.
Both men stared at it for a long moment, then back at each other. Blaine, for his part, looked terrified. Kurt, after taking in his fiancée's face, softened his own expression into a smile.
"Just another thing to go wrong," he sighed, pushing himself up so he could sit properly against the cupboards beneath the kitchen bench. "At least this will make a good story to tell your boss at the dinner tonight."
Blaine offered a small smile back, stepping around the carcass of the deceased pie to lower himself to the floor beside Kurt.
"This seems as good a time as any to tell you - my boss called while I was getting the apples. His wife has the flu. Dinner's cancelled."
Kurt's head fell forwards against his chest and he groaned out a string of curses, most aimed at the rolling pin, although a few choice words were spared for Blaine's boss and his wife. Blaine thought it was all a little unfair, seeing as the 'fat, ugly bitch with a poor constitution' had really done nothing wrong, but wisely chose to stay silent until Kurt had gotten it all out and finally lifted his head up to fix his eyes on Blaine.
"I'm sorry for being angry," he said.
"It seems like you had plenty of reasons to be."
"I just wanted this to go right. I mean, it's apple pie, Blaine. That's easy to make. How is it that I can make a perfect soufflé and yet apple pie turns into-" he gestured at the mess on the floor, still covered by the pie dish "-that."
The question didn't require an answer, and Kurt was glad that Blaine stayed silent, staring back with a sympathetic smile. He wordlessly held out Kurt's phone. Both saw the screen frozen on 'Message failed to send. Try again?' and again Blaine displayed his better judgement by neglecting to comment, instead throwing it decisively under the fridge, back to where he'd found it.
Kurt chuckled at the action, his grin reluctant but genuine as he muttered, "Thank you."
Blaine, still sure he hadn't quite redeemed himself yet (and kind of still nervous about Kurt's implied threat with the 'snake' innuendo from earlier), then ducked to the side a little to open a drawer above his head, fishing out two forks and closing the drawer. He offered one of the forks to Kurt, who accepted it, then carefully lifted the pie dish off it's splattered contents.
"We wouldn't want to waste it," he reasoned, grinning wider when Kurt shot him an 'are you serious?' look.
Breaking through the uncooked pie base, Blaine speared a piece of apple on his fork, biting into it and humming appreciatively at the taste.
"It's good," he assured Kurt, finishing off that slice and going in for another.
"You cannot honestly expect me to eat pie off the floor."
Blaine shrugged.
Kurt maintained a somewhat appalled expression as Blaine eagerly swallowed another slice of apple.
"I can't believe I'm marrying you," Kurt finally said, although his tone was affectionate. "You buy the wrong apples, hit me with rolling pins and eat off the floor. Where was this guy when I was dating the classy, dapper, private school boy with the hair-helmet?"
"Imprisoned. Trapped behind an impenetrable barrier of gel fumes. It's a miracle that he managed to escape alive."
Kurt stared with a perplexed expression for a long time. Blaine took another few forkfuls of pie while he waited for a response.
"You... are insane," Kurt finally announced. "You break things and drop things and hit people with blunt objects. Which I think makes me insane to think that, actually, I'm sort of looking forward to being your husband. Marrying you is going to be amazing. Being married to you is going to be amazing."
"Of course it is. We're perfect for each other, Kurt. Being together - me breaking things and you fixing them, me making a mess and you telling me off for it, me hitting you with blunt objects and you hitting me back - we're good at it. It's- it just works with us. It's easy as-" he broke off, biting his lip.
Kurt cocked his head to the side, feigning confusion.
"Easy as...?" he prompted.
Blaine glanced at the chaotic mess around them. And all just for a stupid, pointless, simple-
"Pie."