AN: New chapter and I've finally put Magicalplaylist's image as cover - visit her tumblr (her nickname is the name of the blog) to see the big, shiny version of it and Kurt's and Blaine's cards!
Chapter 7
House of Joy
Blaine thought at first that Kurt was kidding about the birthday party.
"Uh, I'm not joking."
"But... I can't believe that I'm going to take over your place as the nagging one, but we need to do something! You said you wanted to contact your dad before the Magician would conjure something – isn't it more important that a stupid birthday party?"
"Birthdays are imported and Detective Burt Hummel won't let anyone push him around," Kurt opposed, but paused for a beat. "So there is a way to get a message to my dad? I mean – we are not even technically in the same shop."
"It's tricky, but there are... things that are in both shops."
"Like what?"
"Like who."
Kurt closed his eyes and wrinkled his nose in disgust. "Of course. So what are we going to do? Write a message and pin it to the Magician's back?"
Blaine thought for a moment. While impossible to pull off in that form, the idea itself actually made sense. If Burt Hummel were to return it would be to talk with the Magician, so the message had to be close by all the time. Something that only Burt would catch on...
"We'll need to get your dad's attention – something that only he could recognize."
Kurt nodded. "Leave that to me as soon as we figure out how we send the message and what we write... dark or white chocolate?"
"White- what?!" Blaine groaned. "Why are you doing it?"
Kurt shrugged and actually looked shy at the moment. "I bet you never celebrated your birthday here, right?"
"But we already missed it!"
"Only few days. And a party now will do us good."
Blaine frowned. "That sounded ominous."
Kurt stood up, looking angrier than he should be. "If you don't like the idea, you can pretend it's not your birthday party."
Blaine held up his hands in a surrendering gesture. The pale boy was going to be a death of him one day.
"Okay, we are having the party."
"And you will be happy about it," Kurt added firmly.
"It seems I have no choice, but to be happy about it," Blaine confirmed with a teasing smirk, but his agreement was enough for the pale boy.
"Great. Now, I need you to not enter the kitchen under any circumstance until we let you in – is that clear?"
"Yep... but who are 'we'?"
"Me, Rachel, Jake, Marley... might add Puck as well, although it will be risky. The Unholy Trinity would be useless in cooking and decorating with their long nails and Kitty... She would try to poison us just for kicks."
"Do they know they are helping you?"
Kurt looked at Blaine and the shorter boy for the first time saw Kurt's 'bitch, please' face. He was sure that expression wasn't supposed to be 'attractive', but it was. Very.
"I won't give them a choice, obviously."
With few hours to spend being blocked from the kitchen Blaine decided to start thinking of ways to contact Kurt's father. He recalled the gruff voice, massive silhouette... everything shouted 'redneck father', but from Kurt's stories it was clear that under the tough-looking exterior was hidden a person that loved his only son deeply. Would he be enough to find a way to help them all?
What Burt could do was out of his hands, but he was their only chance and they had to find a fool-proof way to contact him. It would be difficult with the Magician around and Blaine doubted that Burt would feel like venturing further into the shop than the front desk.
The front desk... Of course – the easiest way to receive something from the shop was to buy it and there were some of the smaller, popular products placed by the cash register. Of course, Burt didn't look interested at all in the magic props displayed which could turn out to be a challenge. Blaine decided to leave that bit to Kurt – if the detective's son wouldn't know how what bait to prepare to catch his own father's attention, no one would.
He had more pressing problem to solve himself– how to plant the object on the table. The really only choice would it be to plant it during the evening 'conversation' with the shop owner, but there were several problems with it.
Firstly – Blaine was rarely chosen recently. With all these new people the Magician preferred to have Blaine take it easy and that night when he stepped in instead of Kurt was already a rarity.
Blaine rubbed the bridge of his nose. The only way to guarantee a 'talk' was to do something outrageous, pissing the Magician off. That might be an easy feat for Kurt or Santana, but the shop owner had developed over the years a soft spot for him – not 'soft' enough to let him go, obviously – and would probably forgive a lot. Maybe Kurt would do this – one scathing remark and he would have an evening reserved right away...
Blaine let go of that idea – he knew from the beginning that if their plan would need a risky part to play out he would be the one to do it.
He left that part for later and looked back at the Magician's front desk. To plant an extra object there he would need to actually hand it to the Magician and made him to place it in the 'real' shop without noticing the charade...
Blaine sighed – he knew what would be the easiest way to distract the Magician enough to create a situation to mix the message in with other products and to not cause any suspicions. He also knew he didn't want to do it if he could help it.
Leaving the unpleasant details for later he took out a piece of paper and a pen and started making the list and series of drawings of what was laid out on the front desk. The objects were tacky and small, but they had to work with what they were offered. Blaine hoped that at least one of these would be the one to that could be their way out.
Later, when his steps brought him back to the kitchen, he heard excited voices from within. Kurt's idea with the party still completely boggled him – of all things to concentrate on from their discussion earlier, Kurt chose his birthday, which had already been and was irrelevant due to the fact that none of them truly aged here. What was that infuriatingly stubborn boy thinking?
Kurt had plenty of reasons to plan a 'twenty-fourth slash seventeenth' birthday party for Blaine – the main one was that he was internally freaking out. Remembering his surname and his father's identity opened a lot of closed doors to his memories – both the good ones and the bad. On top of that it had turned out that Blaine was practicing magic himself and was way older than he looked.
And then there was the fact that the Magician who played this nice uncle and was supposed to not want them any harm had actually killed at least two of his prisoners before.
He needed to process everything while busying himself with something normal like baking, cooking and organising a fun party.
There was also a very, very selfish reason – Kurt just wanted to do something for Blaine. The pale boy wouldn't normally forgive someone for keeping such important secrets to themselves easily, but... it was Blaine. By now Kurt knew what was his 'type' – it was a someone older and younger than him at the same time, magically charming and looked good from behind- errr... from every angle. Yes – Kurt Hummel found out that he was quite picky about boys.
"Happy Belated Birthday!"
Instead of a champagne cork opening, the collective shout was accompanied by Puck and Jake's exploding confetti rackets – fortunately they made them smaller this time by Kurt's instructions.
Blaine's protests that 'it was completely unnecessary you guys' were drowned in everyone's enthusiasm. For a moment there, Kurt felt that it was a stupid thing to do after all, but was soon encouraged when he met Blaine's sparkly gold eyes and was rewarded with an amused smile.
"This is crazy, Kurt," the curly-haired boy – grown up man? - said, but sounded impressed. Adding to Kurt's happiness he chose to sit next to him – it was a minor detail, really, but recently Kurt was really attuned to details like that.
The party itself didn't work out as exactly as Kurt planned out - Rachel did managed to burn the salad, which was actually quite an achievement as all the ingredients were raw and Puck's disco lamps didn't survive switching the power on – but everyone still had fun. Well - mostly.
Santana was sulking and sitting as far away from Brittany as possible, throwing scathing insults at everyone – especially Marley and Jake for some unknown reasons.
At the same time the usual royally calm Quinn would tear up every time someone would say the word 'birthday'.
"Forgetting the names was the worst," she sobbed when Kurt had finally taken her to the bathroom to cry it out. "That was the only name I got to create and now I don't remember it!"
"Whose name?" Kurt asked, somehow knowing he might later regret asking.
"My daughter's," Quinn all but wailed. "I had her with some stupid jock ex-boyfriend and I didn't want her when she was born - and now I feel like I'm being punished for that."
Kurt didn't know what to say – processing that the ice queen Quinn of all people was pregnant in her high school years was difficult enough. He felt tempted to tell her how he did it - connect the dots and got back his memories of his dad – but it wouldn't help Quinn much. He awkwardly rubbed her shoulder.
"I'm never going to see her again, am I," she spoke again, with a slight hiccup.
Kurt couldn't – just couldn't - not try to cheer her up. "We'll manage to get out, I promise."
Quinn looked at him with a mix of hope and suspicion. "What do you mean? Did you find a way out?"
"N-no," Kurt wished he had bitten his tongue. "We'll figure something out eventually, though."
Quinn deflated at that answer, but she also calmed down enough to let Kurt take her back to the party. She managed to put a watery smile on her face at some point.
"So... how did it go on your side?" Kurt asked Blaine quietly on the side, after he had returned to his seat.
"Quite okay. I have a list of the shop products that I need you to go through, though, before we proceed with my plan."
Kurt raised his eyebrows, intrigued. "Good to see you used your free time wisely and made a plan. Can't wait to hear it – I hope you have an exciting part for me in it as well."
Blaine looked away to scoop more of the strawberry-cream cake with his fork. "Each of us will do what we do best in it," he said cryptically.
Even after two helpings Blaine couldn't help stuffing his finger in the remnants of the cake's cream and licking it clean.
"I don't know what I did to deserve this creamy heaven made by Chief Hummel," he said.
"You were supposed to be helping me cleaning up," Kurt complained while shuffling the food bits from the plates to the bin.
Blaine lifted the cake tray. "I am! Few more licks and it will be squeaky clean! Maybe you could help me with that? You barely ate anything yourself."
"Not everyone here has a metabolism of an oven. Each spoon filled with cream is a new unnecessary fold on my hips."
Blaine's eyes wandered to Kurt's waist. "Nothing wrong with that – aren't they called 'love handles' after all?
Kurt rolled his eyes. "You know what? You convinced me – I hope you'll feel guilty when I start looking like a pear." He walked to the table, scooped a cream blob and lapped it up swiftly with his tongue. "Happy?"
Blaine beamed. "Yes – I'll consider this as another birthday gift."
"Speaking of gifts... Are you ever going to open this one?" Kurt waved at the cylindrical package from Puck. It was supposed to be a no-gifts party, but the Mohawk teen insisted on giving it with a mischievous smile on his face.
"No," Blaine decided. "I have a few ideas what it might be and I don't like any of the options."
Nodding, Kurt leaned over the table pressing his palms to its surface for support.
"Something's troubling you, Kurt?" Blaine asked and when the taller boy frowned at him, he pointed at his face. "You are gnawing on your bottom lip."
Absentmindedly, Kurt smoothed his lip with the tip of the finger. "No... Yes. I wanted to give you another gift, but I'm not sure..."
"You shouldn't bother... but I'm definitely going to love it," Blaine exclaimed.
Kurt winced. "Uh... It's really stupid." He took a deep breath. "I just hope it won't change your mind about helping me." He took the few steps around the table to stand in front of the shorter boy.
Blaine smiled nervously and glanced at Kurt's empty hands. "Where is it then?"
Kurt lifted his hands and pressed them to Blaine's shoulders. Ohgodohgod... I'm doing it, I'm close...I'm so stupid, but it's too late... his mind was hysterical.
He leaned forward and took great care to not look into Blaine's eyes so as to not see a rejection in them. Inches apart, he paused to give Blaine a way out and his heart hammered when he wasn't pushed away. However, just as the distance was closing between his and Blaine's lips Kurt, the face of the shorter man tilted and Kurt landed a peck on Blaine's cheek- just by the corner of his lips.
When Kurt retreated – humiliated - and dared to look at Blaine's face he wasn't sure what to expect, but certainly not the expression of guilt and fear. The taller boy momentarily let go of Blaine's shoulders.
"I'm so sorry, I-" And then he realized that Blaine wasn't looking at him. He was looking at the door.
Kurt froze as a cold drop of sweat ran down his spine. "Blaine... tell me it's not hi-"
"Kurt." Blaine interrupted him sharply and then changed his tone to an amiable monotone as he looked in the door direction. "Is there something you need? You don't usually come here."
"Usually there aren't any birthday parties going on here." The Magician's voice sounded on edge.
Kurt closed his eyes, not daring to turn around. Why is he here now? Is he suspecting we know that Burt Hummel is my dad? Or maybe he somehow knows that Blaine practices magic for the sole purpose of avenging his friends...
He now regretted that Blaine had told him the story about Sebastian and Hunter, because the knowledge that the Magician would hurt them if he wanted to terrified him.
The warm press over his heart startled Kurt at first, but as he saw it was Blaine's hand comfortingly resting on his chest, he calmed down a little. He was suddenly glad that technically Blaine was older than him and taking over the role of his protector in that moment.
"We thought it would bring us together, as a family," Blaine responded politely.
"Oh, yes, of course." The Magician's voice was lying thick the fake enthusiasm. "I'm happy that you all get on together so well. The family bonds are important – pure, unconditional..."
Blaine was silent, while Kurt felt realisation dawning on him. The Magician wasn't exactly keen on them getting closer to each other more than necessary. He never commented on their sexuality, so the problem must have been something else... What are you afraid of us doing? Kurt thought. Friendship is okay, but something more is not? Is it because you stopped understanding what is to cherish, desire someone and are jealous of others experiencing it?
"Kurt..." Hearing his name the taller boy jumped.
"Yes?" His voice squeaked.
"It's good to see you start finding your place here. It would be good for you, perhaps, to try to spend more time with others as well." Kurt could almost hear the silent 'And spend less time with the only other gay in the group.'
"I... I get on well with Rachel as well." Kurt quickly said. "We bake, sing together..."
"Good, very good," the Magician praised him. "I hope to see more of that attitude soon..." He paused, thinking about something.
Kurt half-expected him to get either him or Blaine for the next 'conversation' and today of all days he would actually welcome it, if only so he wouldn't need to address the almost-kiss that he had initiated.
"...Clean up and get some rest, boys," the Magician said instead. "I'm taking an early night myself."
Kurt lifted his head to see Blaine nod and then he looked away again. He didn't dare to move from his spot until he heard the 'staff office' door open and close behind him. Only then he exhaled loudly.
"This is bad – he never comes here," Blaine murmured with a wary expression on his face.
"He has never broken any routine?" Kurt asks, trying to keep his voice nonchalant.
"No... But I wasn't exactly causing him problems these few last years. He might soon realize that with so many new kids here there will be... complications."
"Like romance?" Kurt didn't really want to bring this topic up, but it bothered him.
"Yeah... I think he is already after Santana – no wonder she's in a bad mood and keeps Brittany at a distance – and it's just a matter of time until he notices Jake and Marley getting closer... or us."
Kurt was surprised he didn't faint on that exact moment. "Us?" His voice was embarrassingly pitchy and he wished he could just disappear until he saw that Blaine was blushing.
"Did I misunderstand?" The shorter boy rubbed his neck. "I thought... Sorry – my only experience on this matter has been trashy romance books and teenage couples making out hidden between shelves."
"They did what?!"
"My point is," Blaine ignored the interruption. "I think I would like to receive my last birthday gift again."
Kurt blinked innocently. "I think the last one was from Puck."
"Kurt..."
Out of nowhere there he was – Blaine stood very close by and it was exhilarating and so scary... It wasn't love – Kurt wasn't sure what he should call their strange bond in this strange place – but he wanted to say 'thank you for being you' and 'you brighten up my day every time I see you' and that seemed like a good way to do it.
Kurt allowed Blaine to keep his hands around his face and leaned forward again bowing his head lightly. Their lips met delicately and through their touch they told each other much more than they would be able with words.
"If we get out-" Blaine started after they had separated.
"When we get out," Kurt corrected.
"When we get out we need to do it again and see what we feel then."
Kurt nodded, warily.
"...But that doesn't mean we can't kiss at all before then," Blaine clarified, surging forward again.
next chapter: House of Revenge
