Scene Three
"Yoo-hoo, Jacob!" Rachel called, waving frantically as she spotted a familiar afro entering the lunch room. He scurried over so quickly that if Blaine had blinked, he would have missed it. "Where's my lunch?"
"My bad, Rachel," Jacob apologized. "I'll go get that now."
As Blaine watched the boy scurry off, he wrinkled his nose in disgust and shot Rachel a disdainful look. Thankfully, neither she nor Kurt had noticed him standing only a few feet off.
Kurt sighed. "Honestly, Rach," he chided, "You've got to stop promising that boy that you'll let him touch your boobs just so he'll cater to your every whim. Not only are you the biggest virgin in like, ever, but what happens when Finn finds out?"
She scoffed. "As long as you're not keeping secrets, you're a virgin too," she accused. "And trust me, Finn won't find out. He's always ten minutes late since he has to shower after gym. Even then I can make up a convincing lie. Finn's not the smartest."
"Whatever."
"Kurt!"
His head spun around instantly. "I- Blaine! Hi," he greeted, obviously shocked to see Blaine at their lunch table, of all places. "What are you doing here?"
"Yes," Rachel added haughtily, "What are you doing here?"
Blaine's eyes narrowed. "I came to talk to you about our project," he said, "unless you're too busy for that, of course," he snapped.
Kurt pursed his lips, clearly hiding a retort. Instead, he settled for a calm, "No, I'm not. What do you want to talk about?"
Blaine slid into the seat opposite to Kurt and next to Rachel, who scooted away. "What days do you want to work on our project? We've only got the rest of the week left to do it." He paused and watched as Jacob Ben Israel slide Rachel her lunch tray, followed by a wink. The boy froze when he saw Blaine there and quickly turned away, muttering. Blaine thought he heard something along the lines of "blog" and "filmgeek" and "out of place." Ignoring it, he continued, "I thought I'd ask you now, since you weren't there at French this morning."
"Oh, right. Well, I've got rehearsal for the musical today, Wednesday, and Friday," Kurt said loftily. "You could stay and watch if you want. Other than that, my afternoons this week are completely free. I made sure not to plan anything, so we could get our work done."
"Alright," Blaine muttered. "I can't stay today, but..." he stopped to dig around in his bag, and after a minute of rummaging he produced a crinkled slip of paper, "here's my number. I figure we can text each other later and make some official plans?"
Kurt nodded. "Alright," he said. He quickly tapped the number into his phone, and judging by the soft vibrating in Blaine's back pocket, sent him a text.
"Blaine, you should probably go," Rachel spoke up, glaring at him. Even though Blaine was taller than she was, he still felt like he was being looked down on. "That is Finn's seat and he should be here any minute."
Blaine returned the glare and muttered, "Fine," as he got up, slinging his bag over his shoulder and stomping back to his usual table with Mike, right where he belonged.
The previous night Kurt and Blaine had agreed via-text message to meet in the school library after last period on Tuesday. It was open an hour after school to help upkeep the school's academic standards, Kurt had explained. As he entered the room, Blaine was surprised that he and Kurt weren't going to be the only ones there that afternoon; actually, there were several groups of students there.
He picked a random table and sat down, dropping his bag in the open chair next to him, and waited. He wanted to say he was shocked when Kurt ended up being a good half hour late for their session, but he wasn't. It was just the type of thing he would expect from him. At least I had time to work on some Calculus homework, he thought as he placed the papers back in his folder.
"I'm sorry," Kurt muttered halfheartedly as he took the seat across from Blaine.
"Your tone says otherwise," Blaine retorted. Kurt didn't respond.
There was a brief silence while Kurt pulled his French folder from his messenger bag. He dropped it on the desktop, causing a loud slap to echo throughout the library. Both Blaine and the librarian glared.
"Well," Kurt bit back, "I guess there's no use in pretending. Now, I wrote an outline for the thesis statement for the essay. I figured you could do the translations, since you need the practice." Before Blaine could shoot him another nasty look, he hastily added, "It's only the truth, Blaine. Anyways, you should work on that and I'll outline the rest of the essay. Once we're done we can both check over each other's work. You know, to make sure we did it correctly. Then we can write the essay together."
"Um, yeah. I guess that works," Blaine muttered. He hadn't expected Kurt to be this prepared; Blaine figured he would be the one doing most of the work, but he quickly realized that would have been near impossible considering Kurt's fluency in the subject. Still, he thought he would have put forth most of the effort, but clearly, that wasn't the case, and he had underestimated Kurt.
After digging out the project rubric and the other papers he needed, Blaine set to work. Due to the fact that they were early off in the school year, the translations were relatively easy. Still, however, Blaine struggled with some of them. Apparently it was obvious, as Kurt took a quick glance at his paper and gave him the correct translation every time his brow knit in concentration.
"So," Blaine said after fifteen minutes of working. Though Kurt wasn't the ideal person, he really needed a quick break from French translations to have an actual conversation. "Why weren't you there this morning? At French?"
Kurt raised and eyebrow. He stopped writing and he looked at Blaine through half-lidded eyes, his eyelashes fanning over his cheeks. Blaine's chest clinched painfully. That one single look had sent one word coursing through his mind: attractive.
"Didn't think you cared," Kurt said, snapping Blaine out of his thoughts. He proceeded, "To answer your question, though, my alarm went off later than it was supposed to. Of course then I have to shower and moisturize, which adds another forty-five minutes to the routine."
Blaine shook his head and put his elbows on the tabletop, resting his chin in his hands. "Gosh, Kurt," he muttered, "you're so..."
"Gay?" Kurt guessed.
Blaine was taken aback by the word. He looked at Kurt, only to find that his face had fallen and he looked ready to snap his neck. Blaine shook his head and stammered, "I- no! No. I was going to say conceited or stuck up, not... not gay."
"Hm." Kurt's eyes were trained steadily on his paper. "Well, excuse me if caring about my skin is too conceited for you."
They didn't speak another word to each other for the remainder of the hour. Finally the librarian called for everyone to leave so she could close up. The two boys gathered their papers and put everything away, stealing glances at each other while they did, the same way they had for the thirty or so minutes that passed after their spout.
"You're coming to rehearsal tomorrow, aren't you?" Kurt questioned.
"I guess so," Blaine replied. "The library won't be open then though, will it?"
Kurt shook his head. "No," he said. "I'd offer for it to be at my place, but my dad and my step-mom will both be working. Finn's riding home with his friend, Puck."
Blaine sighed internally; this meant it was going to have to be at his house, and his mother and father were always nagging him about "being a good host," meaning he would have to bite his tongue if Kurt said or did anything that offended him, which wouldn't be an easy task. "We'll work on it at my house, I guess. My mom can pick us up."
Kurt nodded, slipping his phone out of his pocket when it buzzed. "My ride is here," he said. "I'll see you later, Blaine."
Blaine flashed the librarian a smile as he walked out and into the parking lot. It took only a minute to spot his mom's shiny silver car parked in one of the first few spaces. He walked over and climbed in, taking a moment to watch as Kurt slipped into his father's red truck and drove off.
See you later, he added silently.
"Cooper called today."
Blaine looked up from his dinner, pausing midway through cutting his steak. "And?" Cooper usually called everyday, though Blaine rarely ever got a chance with him on the phone. His mother was the one usually talking to him, and when she wasn't she was transferring the calls to his dad's office.
"He says he's going to catch a flight here for Thanksgiving," she beamed. She took a sip of her drink and asked, "Isn't that great?"
"Yeah," Blaine said with a small, unconvincing smile. He tried to keep the sarcasm from dripping out of his voice. While he loved his big brother, he liked the long distance now that they left Coop back in California. It meant that it was only him for his parents to pay attention to, only him for his mom to coddle over, and only him for his father to watch football with while his mom made butterscotch cookies that Cooper couldn't hog.
"So, how did your studying go today?"
Blaine swallowed his food and shrugged. "Good. We still have a lot to get done. By the way, he's going to have to come over here on Wednesday, since the library closes and he has rehearsal," he ventured.
She nodded. "That's fine with me, you know I'm never too busy," she assured. The conversation was replaced shortly by the sound of Blaine's knife scraping against his plate as he cut his steak, until Mrs. Anderson asked, "Was he the boy who got into the red truck?"
"Yeah," Blaine answered. "Why?"
She waved her hand in a vague gesture. "Nothing. He just seemed a bit fruity, that's all. His clothes were gorgeous, though. I'd hire him as a fashion consultant any day!"
Blaine was silent. Fruity, the word echoed in his head, and another voice that sounded suspiciously like Kurt repeated, Gay.
He pushed his chair back abruptly and stood, grabbing his plate. "I've got some other homework to work on," he excused. "Call me down when dad gets home. That is, unless he gets back at midnight again. Then you can spare me the sleep."
After dropping his dirty plates off in the kitchen sink, he climbed the stairs and walked down the hall into his bedroom. Flopping down on his bed with his book bag, he pulled out the Calculus pages he had been working on earlier and buried himself in his homework. At least this way he could keep his mind off of other things, like Cooper's impending visit and what he was supposed to do about Kurt.
A/N: Updates! This was actually supposed to get to all of you yesterday but I ended up at a friend's place, so I actually kinda kept up with the Wednesday update things. I don't even know why I'm talking about this.
As usual, CAStonehouse is wonderful and amazing and super fast and totally awesome and deserves all of the thanks! And you guys, too! All of this positive support is awesome.
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