Time

The clock on the nightstand read 11:43. A pickup truck with a faulty muffler rumbled down the street in front of the house. The whirring of an overhead fan blanketed the undulating silence. The occasional ruffle of sheets caused no one to stir. An endless, laborious day of mechanic work left three males deep in slumber, the singular woman of the household joining them easily.

It came as an unwelcome shock, therefore, when the iPhone charging on top of the bedside table buzzed vexatiously upon the wood. A glasz eye creaked open, iris immediately contracting painfully in the sudden light emanating from the device. A lethargic hand snaked its way from under one thin sheet, fumbling for the phone. It lifted the gadget, and the tired eye read the contents of the blue box shining prominently from the center of the screen.

Blaine
Go to your window. LTT

Kurt's slow brain took a long moment to process this request. Blaine...wanted him...to go to his window? This made little sense to his languid mind, but he swung his legs inch by inch onto the floor. He stood and shuffled to the window like a zombie, lifting the frame as quietly as he cared to move. His wild brown locks preceded his hand outside.

"Hiya, Kurt!" Kurt merely blinked in response to Blaine's jubilant, albeit soft, outburst. "Um...can you let me in?"

After an awkward, pregnant pause, Kurt finally spoke. "Blaine, do you have any idea what time it is?"

"Of course I do! It's..." The younger boy consulted the rather expensive watch on his left wrist. "...eleven fifty-one. We need to hurry up—it might go live soon!"

Kurt desperately wanted the conversation to be over so he could return to sleep. With a sigh, he pinched the bridge of his nose and asked, "What is going live?"

It was Blaine's turn to sigh—but where Kurt's was frustrated and tired, Blaine's was exasperated and impatient." "Pottermore, Kurt! Now let me in! Please?"

There were so many questions Kurt wanted to ask—What is Pottermore? What do you mean go live? Why the hell am I awake right now?—but he merely nodded once and retracted his head from the window, which he shut behind him. He slid his leaded feet into silk slippers and scuffed from his room downstairs, careful to make as little noise as possible. He was starting to really wake now, and could appreciate the fact that he was about to sneak his boyfriend into his house in the middle of the night right under his father's overprotective nose. He knew that they wouldn't do anything exceptionally libidinous, but the excitement of breaking such a fundamental rule as no sleepovers without permission both frightened and exhilarated him. By the time he reached the door, he was fully coherent, and thus wrenched it open with silent enthusiasm.

With a wink, Blaine ducked inside, closing the door slowly behind him. Before Kurt could inquire into Blaine's presence in his house at such a late hour, the younger boy grabbed the older by the hand and led him swiftly upstairs, his computer bag dangling heavily from his right shoulder, shutting the door behind them. He charged over to Kurt's tousled bed and jumped atop it, simultaneously sliding his laptop from its case.

Kurt still stood by the door, once more thoroughly confused. "Um...babe...?"

Blaine's sickeningly excited face glanced up from the glow of the Dell. "Yeah?"

Kurt bit his lip. "It's not like I'm not glad to see you or anything, but...what the hell are you doing here?"

With a sigh, Blaine finished typing in his password and turned his attention fully to his sleep-deprived boyfriend. "Okay, I was going to talk to you about this, but I figured you wouldn't care, so I was going to do it with Wes and David, but Wes got in yesterday, and David's great-aunt just died, so he had to go to Cincy unexpectedly Saturday night, so I was going to do it by myself, but that's so depressing, so I thought maybe you'd still be up moisturizing or something, so I came—"

"Blaine!" Kurt barely kept his voice in a low register. Though exasperated, he couldn't help but feel amused by the puppy-dog expression that graced Blaine's face. He made his way to the bed and perched next to Blaine upon it. "Okay, what in the name of Gaga are you talking about?"

Choking back a frustrated groan, Blaine replied, "I'm talking about Pottermore, Kurt. It's an interactive online Harry Potter reading experience, and registration is open for one week, starting yesterday, for beta testers—special fans who complete a quest and can then gain access to the site to tweak it and such."

Kurt was silent for a long moment, and Blaine grew nervous. Then, without warning, the taller boy doubled over in the quietest giggles he could manage. "So," he gasped, clutching his sides. "...you're telling...me...that this...freak out...is all about...oh Gaga...Harry Potter?"

Blaine's hazel eyes flashed in annoyance. "This is not a freak out, Kurt. This is very important. I have to get in, Kurt. I have to."

Once he had regained himself, Kurt leaned in and kissed a surprised Blaine full on the lips. "I love you, you absolutely insane nerd."


Twenty minutes later found Blaine and Kurt cuddled under a single sheet watching the pilot episode of the BBC hit The Adventures of Merlin. They took turns throwing pieces of the popcorn Kurt snuck downstairs to heat up into each other's mouths as Blaine explained things to Kurt.

"Okay, so that's Gaius," he said, pointing to an old man in tattered robes.

"And he's the physician?" Kurt inquired through a mouthful of popcorn.

"Oh, I'm so proud of you!" Blaine exclaimed, tousling Kurt's hair. Normally the older boy would have protested vehemently to such an act, affectionate or otherwise, but since he'd asleep less than an hour prior, there was no point in objecting. Blaine gestured to another character. "And he is...?"

Kurt inspected the thin young man with large ears and light, triangular eyebrows. "A-freaking-dorable, that's what he is." He squeaked when Blaine tossed a handful of popcorn into his face.

"Wrong answer," Blaine shot back. "That's Merlin."

"I know that," Kurt said with a roll of his eyes. That's when he noticed it. "Wait..." He looked back and forth from Blaine to Merlin. "His eyebrows..."

"Huh?" Blaine asked, furrowing his own.

"They're shaped just like yours! Only, you know, less bushy."

Blaine crossed his arms and sunk into a pout. "Stop making fun of my birth defect!"

"Now now," Kurt murmured. He leaned forward and placed a soft, tender kiss on each of Blaine's pointed eyebrows. "Your birth defect makes you perfect."

Rolling his eyes, Blaine muttered, "Cheeseball." Then he captured Kurt's lips with his own. Before things could get too heated, however, he took a peek at the time in the lower right-hand corner of the laptop screen. Then he leapt back with a quiet yelp. "Kurt! It's twelve fifty-three! The next clue might be up in a minute!" He nudged Kurt to the side as his hands flew to the keyboard.

Kurt fell back into the pillows, unable to believe he was just figuratively cockblocked by a website.


Within the hour, Kurt was fast asleep, his head lolling against Blaine's chest, the younger boy's arm around his shoulders. Blaine, too, as much as he hated to admit it, found his eyelids growing heavier and heavier. He kept himself preoccupied by scrolling through his Tumblr dashboard and reblogging the funniest Harry Potter and Starkid posts, fighting the fatigue that threatened to swallow him whole. Unfortunately, he could only battle with biology for so long before he, too, succumbed to sleep.

And two o'clock passed him by.

When he awoke again, the first thing he saw was the time: 3:44. "Crap!" He shot up, knocking Kurt sideways.

"Gah!" the sleeping boy squeaked, his bedhead even worse than it had been at the beginning of their evening. "Blaine, what the—?" He stopped when he noticed the state his boyfriend was in. His fingertips flew across the keyboard while his eyes, encased in black-rimmed glasses instead of contacts for once, zoomed every which way, desperate for information.

"I missed it," Blaine muttered insanely, almost like a mantra. "I missed it. I missed it."

"Oh sweetie." Kurt wrapped his arms around Blaine's waist and rested his chin on his shoulder. "You can always try against tomorrow—"

"Boo-yah!" Blaine erupted, causing Kurt's jaw to slam shut.

"Sh!" Kurt cautioned, massaging his face as he cast a furtive glance at the door. "What happened?"

Blaine turned to him, his eyes alight with excitement once more. "I was reading yesterday's post! I still have time!" That's when he looked at the clock. "Two minutes!"

Kurt watched as he navigated the Internet with renewed fervor. Instead of questioning his boyfriend's obsessive antics, he leaned back into his pillow, smiling indulgently.

"It's up!" Blaine read the clue aloud. "'What is the number of the chapter in which Professor McGonagall cancels the Quidditch match between Gryffindor and Hufflepuff? Multiply this number by forty-two.'" Without another word, he leaned down and removed a book from his bag: Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets.

"Seriously, Blaine?"

Blaine ignored his boyfriend's derisive inquiry and flipped madly through the pages. "Ah-hah," he breathed. He typed his answer at the end of a URL and finally found it—the coveted magical quill. With a shaky hand, he clicked on it once, and there it was: the Pottermore Beta Tester Registration screen. He breathlessly filled in his information, internally rolling his eyes when he was asked how many books he'd read and how many movies he'd seen—um, all of them? He chose one of the usernames provided—SickleOwl68—and clicked Enter.

It was done.

He was in.

"Kurt," he whispered. "Kurt, look—" He turned to celebrate with his boyfriend, but the other boy was nearly asleep. Instead, he surfed over to his email, reveling in the sight of his latest message, the confirmation from Pottermore—not quite like a letter from Hogwarts, but pretty damn close.

That's when he noticed his other new email.

"Ooh, look, a new chapter of one of my favorite FanFicitons!"

Kurt creaked an eye open. "Blaine?"

"Yeah?"

"What kind of dork reads FanFiction?"


Please don't hate me. I know it's been an eternity and a half since I've updated, and I'm really, truly, unbelievably sorry for that. My coursework has tripled in the past few weeks, and the stress has gotten so bad that, after bursting into tears during dinner last night, I was forced by my mother to take the day off of school today. So I took that time to give you this, not that that makes up for my horrible, inexcusable lack of updating in the past few weeks.

So, obviously, this chapter is about Pottermore. If you don't know what Pottermore is, I'm not going to explain it to you; I tried explaining it to the boys in ROTC, and it just didn't work. (I also tried explaining ships to them, but it was like talking to a wall.) SickleOwl68 is my Pottermore username, so feel free to friend me. There is a Joe Walker reference in here, and if you can find it, you get a super VBH for being as big of a Starkid fangirl as I am.

Okay, for those of you who have watched The Adventures of Merlin, have you noticed how triangular Colin Morgan's eyebrows are? They're just like Darren's! Then I figured, Colin Morgan is from Ireland, and Darren has Irish blood, and my eyebrows get really triangular when I raise them, and I have Irish blood, so I have deduced that triangular eyebrows is an Irish trait. And Eyerish trait.

I am so fucking clever.

Okay. So. "The First Time." I demand that each and every one of you PM me so that I can fangirl with you, because I have SO MUCH to say, but I don't want to say it here for those who haven't seen it yet. But I will say, without hyperbole, that I cried for an hour afterward. One. Whole. Fucking. Hour. Of course, it didn't help that I listened to "Chasing Cars" by Snow Patrol afterward, but no matter. Blaine and Kurt are my OTP, not just for Glee, but for every fandom EVER.

To those of you who are still waiting for me to write your prompts (cough Artist-Writer-Lover-Fighter! cough), fret not! I WILL write them...eventually... (Whoa...The Amanda Show flashbacks...) I will reiterate for you the time I DON'T have to be writing. I mean, I got to approximately fifty words before I gave up on NaNoWriMo, choosing instead to focus all of my limited writing mojo on this and TMWR. Well, really just this. (That reminds me...those of you waiting for an update of "The Moments We Remember"...don't hold your breath. You WILL die.)

I feel like I had more to say than this (probably because I mentally scripted a much longer apology, complete with begging and self-flagellation), but this is all I have. Feel free to check out my Tumblr, klainebowsandquirrelmort, for more of my crazy antics. (I spent over three hours on Tumblr today...so not healthy...)

I love you guys so much. Thank you for staying with me, and putting my with my inconsistency and my lunacy. I owe everything to you all. I'd never be the writer I am today without my support system here. Much love (and now tears).