To all of you who reviewed; Thanks! I try to reply to most reviews, the longer the review, the longer my reply. I'm still quite new to this thing, but I'm working my tail off to get each chapter up here. I thought I'd have gotten "The Diamond Planet; Chapter Two" up here much sooner, but I'm a sophomore in high school, and we had insane assignments the past two weeks. Sorry!
They'd been heading for ninety-eight clicks through the luster of Midnight, although the passengers hadn't yet seen the splendor outside. It seemed to the hostess that they'd almost forgotten, really, that they were not chatting at a cozy neighborhood block party, but were, in fact, plundering through x-tonic sunlight and colorless zircon. Her thin lips turned up a little at the corners in a slight smile at the sight of them. She'd been working on this tour for almost two years, and she'd never before seen so many strangers so enticed with each other, listening to what their companion had to say, and sharing in the conversation together. It was a bit odd, but charming, to see the passengers actually interacting with one another for once. Each passenger had their own quirks, but they resembled a group of misfits that had begun to enjoy each others' company.
The Doctor, Kurt, Blaine, Finn and Rachel had moved to new seats in the center of the bus. They looked as if they were joining in a campfire circle, but Kurt had gently told the Doctor that an actual campfire might not please the officials back at Crusader Tours, much to the Time Lord's disappointment. Sam, Quinn and the hostess were the only ones who weren't engaged in conversation. Allowing his eyelids to droop as he leaned against the headrest, Sam had his headphones in his ears, although the Doctor knew for a fact that they weren't on. When all of the entertainment systems had been shut off earlier, that had included all entertainment systems. The Doctor simply rolled his eyes, and let Sam continue sulking in the back of the shuttle.
Quinn hadn't moved much, and she still sat quietly in the front of the shuttle. Her eyes were locked on the ink pages of her novel, but occasionally, the Doctor would sneak a look back towards her. Their eyes would meet, and she'd casually return to her book. Only Kurt seemed to notice the Doctor's blushing every time he'd turn around. Meanwhile, it was only the Doctor himself who acknowledged Kurt's timid smiles and eyelash bats whenever Blaine would brush his fingers over Kurt's hand by chance.
Shy flirting aside, all attention was on Finn and Rachel. Kurt and Blaine sat on the edges of their seats across the aisle, while the Doctor was propped up backwards on his chair. His gangly legs dangled off the cushion, and his arms rested on the top, crossed in front of him as he leaned into the couple before him.
"So Rachel said, 'I'm going to see Barbra!'" Finn laughed, waving his hands in front of him in a meaningless type of sign language.
"Oh, I was all ready. Pen and Hello Dolly poster and everything! My home-made Funny Girl t-shirt on!" cackled Rachel, face starting to get red with embarrassment for what was coming.
Finn's grin was enormous as he looked over at Rachel. He placed his massive hand on her small knee, rubbing it as he spoke. "She had this children's size t-shirt, you should've seen her-"
Rachel glanced at Finn, smiling hesitantly at his features. Her expression softened a bit when he squeezed her thigh slightly. Carrying on with her story, "So I went marching up to the security guard, and he was a native Eskimo, you know, the big wooly hair?"
Finn pointed with his other hand to his mess of russet brown hair, as if he were emphasizing its fluff. "Great big wooly hair!"
"So I said," giggled Rachel, "'Where's Barbra?' And he said-"
Finn and Rachel both hooted in sync, "'Barbra...is an impersonator!'"
Uproar of laughter from the Doctor, Blaine, and Kurt rang throughout the cabin. From the back, the hostess even cracked a chuckle. The Doctor caught a glance at Sam, and saw the fake blonde muster a grudging smile. Oh, look who's interested in us now, he mused, beguiled.
Tears had started to run down Rachel cheeks, blue mascara making paths. "It wasn't really Barbra!"
"It was an actress!" exclaimed Finn, slapping his hand to his knee, as if he were mocking his own stupidity.
Rachel shook her head, hardly able to speak from fretting so much. "She wasn't real!" she cried out, wiping her wrist underneath her eye as she split her sides.
"And you were wearing the t-shirt!" the Doctor chortled.
Rachel mimed sucking in her stomach, like she was constrained in a shirt six sizes too small. "I was like this!" she imitated, eyes bulging out of her head as her neck strained, looking back and forth with an imaginary pen in her hand.
The entire shuttle erupted in howls. Finn and Rachel gazed at each other giddily as she nuzzled into his shoulder, and he wrapped his long arm around her torso.
They'd traveled one hundred and fifty clicks so far, and the ordering of refreshments had started. The Doctor and Kurt stood hip to hip at the back of the cabin, both pouring themselves Styrofoam cups of coffee. Blaine stood towards the very back, shoving useless "fun facts" down Sam's throat. Kurt smiled to himself as his traveling companion eagerly hunted down anyone who could possibly show any interest in his project. While Blaine was only a year above Kurt, he considered him his mentor in his studies.
They'd met through their university's musical arts theatre. It'd be a rough day for Kurt, cramming in studying for his Planetesimal finals. His overworked brain couldn't stand to look at one more diagram or graph of Jupiter or Perrot. Celestial bodies and astronomers had lost their distinction, somewhere in between the horrific week of mid-terms, and now.
He'd been crouching over his laptop, pounding his fingers on the keyboard obnoxiously. Spacewatch, Anderson Mesa, Trans-Neptunian objects, Apohele asteroids, retrograde rotation, Kuiper belt, accretion-powered pulsars, sub-brown dwarfs, New Worlds Mission, Helios, deuterium, International Astronomical Union, low-density gas giants, the Milky Way Galaxy, gravitational microlensing. Word after word, they all ran before Kurt's eyes as he stared at the screen. What even are these?, he thought to himself. Slamming his elbows down on the desk, he threw his face into the sweaty palms of his hand. Finals are in three days, Kurt. Three days. Sitting here, stressing over extrasolar planets and Kepler 10b, isn't helping. Sneaking a glance at the counter in front of him through his spindly fingers, he saw dozens of half-drunk coffee mugs and a weeks' worth of pencil stubs and empty takeout boxes. He groaned loudly, dropping his elbows and slumping his head on the keyboard, He had to get out of here, and relax. Otherwise, he'd never be able to concentrate.
The digital clock on the edge of his screen glowed "23:13". It was quite dark outside, he could tell by checking behind the curtains. The building across from his dorm illuminated softly through its windows, and a thought stuck Kurt's mind. Sprinting out of his desk chair to grab a jacket, he flew out his door to the theatre next door.
Kurt snuck over after-hours, hoping to steal an opportunity to sing on the auditorium stage while no one else was around. The theatre had been dimly lit with alarm lights, and on stage, it was been impossible to see anything past the first five rows.
The front door hadn't been locked, carelessly left open to the university's public. A long screech broke the silence in the dingy lobby as he cautiously stepped on foot onto the dusty velvet carpet. He breathed slowly, white particles in the air floating in his eyes. The theatre itself smelled dingy, although he was sure it was used daily by the arts department. The air felt damp, almost moldy. He slid in his other foot, and shut the door gently behind him. One foot after the other, he made his way across the velvet carpet to the entrance of the domain.
He wandered past row after row of seats, making his way onto the stage. A magnificent concert grand piano sat lonely at the back, its lid propped up already. Aged sheets of music drooped on the music rack gloomily. He plunked a few notes on the ivory piano keys, humming to himself. A chair about twenty rows back made a creak, as if someone had slowly sat out of it, catching him off guard for a second. He shook his head, brushing it off as the metal seat cooling in the night air, and began to sing a few notes.
No one was listening to him, so he didn't worry about sounding talented and sophisticated. Tapping the notes with his right hand, "Tale as old as time, true as it can be. Barely even friends, then somebody bends unexpectedly," he sang out, two octaves higher than the original. In his mind, he imagined an enormous string orchestra accompanying him, cellos pouring out their hearts in unison, violins sliding their bows across their strings beautifully. He could almost hear the plucks of the bass, the vibration of the clarinet, the longing of the flute. Admittedly, the farther he got into the song, the less concentrated he was in the melody, and the more he jumped across the stage in elaborate leaps and twirls. "Just a little change, small, to say the least. Both a little scared; neither one prepared. Beauty and the Beast."
"Certain as the sun rising in the East. Tale as old as time, song as old as rhyme. Beauty and the Beast," he finished, note hanging in the air resonantly. He didn't really quite know what he was doing, majoring in Planetesimal. His heart laid right here, singing and dancing to his own music. But he'd been studying the subject for ages, and it was only his second year at the college. What if he switched to the arts and it didn't work out? What if he made an enormous mistake, thinking he could? And it wasn't like he didn't love the workings of the universe as well. What if-
A slow clap carried from the back of the theatre. Kurt's eyes flew open, startled half to death, his body locking so that he couldn't move. "Bravo! Bravo!" rang a smooth tenor voice.
Kurt didn't move, like an idiot. He felt like a four year old, playing chameleon on a sofa. If I don't move, he can't see me. Clearly, the way that the tenor's footsteps sounded, carrying through the theatre, he definitely could.
A pair of hazel eyes he'd later learn to be fond of rested on him. "Nice choice, "Tale as Old as Time", Beauty and the Beast. Don't hear that very much anymore, really. But that's unimportant. You shouldn't be here, kiddo."
Kurt gulped loudly, cheekbones flushing in candy apple red. "I know, sir, I'll be on my way," he rushed frantically, stumbling his way onto his feet and brushing the dirt from his tan slacks. "My apologies, this won't happen again! Sorry!" Flustered, he wrapped himself in his cropped trench coat and started towards the doors.
A hand reached for his forearm, and Kurt turned around. "Hold up," the tenor chuckled. "I'm Blaine, Blaine Anderson. Sophomore, over in Kemper Hall. I'm not going to rat you out to the dean, don't worry," he chuckled, smirking slightly. "I'm not supposed to be here either, you know. Your secret's safe with me."
For the first time, Kurt paused a moment to do an once-over of his intruder. This Blaine had a sarcastic looking grin, but the gleam in his eyes was good-humored. Kurt found himself slightly drawn to it, from the over-gelled hair to the moist, but vaguely chapped, pair of lips above the dimple on his chin. For the second time that evening, Kurt gulped and blushed in rhythm, and smiled awkwardly at him. "Well, thanks," he managed, pushing a lock of silky caramel hair behind his pink pointed ear.
"Aren't you in my Fusor Astronomy class?" Blaine asked suddenly, cocking his head to the left and squinting his eyes vaguely, as if he were trying to pinpoint where he recognized the shy boy before him.
"I must be," he replied, shrugging his shoulders. "Not sure, I spend most of my time staring at the board and working on my finals paper."
"Oh? What's it on?" he questioned, seemingly honestly interested.
"Poosh's lost moon," Kurt admitted, smiling feebly. "You know, the one that went missing about a decade ago, during the-"
"Believe me; I'm quite informed on the topic. I'm actually working on a research paper about it," glowed Blaine. "It's quite rare to find someone else who shares the same interest in the missing. I'm impressed that I happened to find someone who even remembers what it is."
Kurt could feel his cheeks burning for the thousandth time that evening. Oh, God, Kurt! Quit it! Just because he happens to share your same passion, and is devilishly handsome, and appears to be brilliant, and sneaks into the theatre late at night, and has stunning hazel eyes, and-He stopped himself before he carried on too far. "Oh, yes. Most definitely," he stammered.
"Shall we walk and talk? I'd love to hear your opinion on the subject," Blaine offered, pointing his hand towards the entrance. Kurt swallowed, and nodded his head violently. "Wonderful. Now, on the topic of the pretenses in which the moon was taken…"
Kurt shook his head, forcing himself to stop reminiscing and continue his conversation with the Doctor. He'd asked why he'd been travelling with Blaine, and was looking hesitantly at Kurt. The sophomore wondered how long he'd been in his flashback for, and hoped it hadn't been too embarrassingly long.
"I'm just a second-year student," Kurt explained, wrapping his spider-like fingers around the cheap coffee cup, "but I wrote a paper on the Lost Moon of Poosh. Blaine read it, and he liked it, so he took me on as a researcher. Just for the holidays. Well, I say researcher," he chuckled, glancing over again at his travelling companion, who was currently looking over at him expectantly. He grabbed the other mug of espresso, "most of the time he's got me fetching and carrying. But it's all good experience!" And I get to spend five weeks with the most incredible, intelligent, witty, gorgeous man who's ever walked into my life, who happens to forget my existence unless he needs an opinion on heliocentric orbit or someone to reach the top shelf in the hotel room, he mused to himself.
"And did they ever find it?" the Doctor asked, pouring an absurd amount of cream into the coffee and stirring it with his pointer finger.
Kurt looked taken aback for a second, furrowing his eyebrows in confusion. "Find what?"
The Doctor lifted his finger out of the coffee and brought it to his mouth. He sucked off the steaming liquid, and wiped it on the pocket of his suit. "The Lost Moon of Poosh!" he said, as if the question was obvious.
Kurt laughed, feeling daft at his own perplexity. "Oh, no! Not yet!"
"Well, maybe that'll be your great discovery, one day," the Doctor quipped, raising his coffee in the air in a toast. "Here's to Poosh!"
Kurt flashed his perfect white teeth. He could see himself having a good time with this man on this trip. Certainly, if Blaine wasn't going to bother with confessing deep passionate feelings for him or anything today, Kurt could entertain himself with someone else. "Poosh!" he beamed as he clinked with the flimsy cup.
OH HAI. By the way, I'm changing my pen name pretty soon. Just keep that in mind, thanks! Review, pretty please winkyface.