December 27th – part 2
Klaine advent word: Nest
"Blaine, will you answer that?" Cooper hollers from the kitchen at the sound of the doorbell by the gate.
Blaine sighs, because he is comfortable and feeling a bit lazy today, but willingly crawls up to answer the buzzer.
"Yes, how may I help you?" he answers automatically and neutrally, because he knows his brother doesn't like to give away his name recklessly; there are some weirdo stalkers out there who doesn't need confirmation about where he lives. He then looks at the small screen of the security camera, and beams.
"Hi, this is Kurt. Hummel. The neighbour's son," Kurt stutters, and Blaine almost coos at how adorably awkward he looks in front of the camera. As if he had needed to introduce himself; Blaine instantly recognized his voice, even if he hadn't already seen him in the camera.
"Kurt, don't be silly, you know the security code, you can come up to the door." After all, he's been over a couple of times already, both to bring Egot back and to gift them with Christmas cookies.
"I don't want to intrude without good cause," Kurt says with a small smile.
"You could never intrude. I'm buzzing you in now, okay?"
"Thank you!"
"See you soon!" Blaine beams, and almost groans, because that sounded just dorky. He can even hear Cooper laugh at him. Oh well. He turns to check his hair and bowtie in the mirror, adjusts his vest, and unlocks the door. And then he opens the door, because it isn't that far to walk up Coop's driveway, Kurt should be here any second. He leans against the doorframe, hoping he looks cool, chill, and maybe even smooth and attractive. He likes to think that he seems taller if he's tilted, because then it's more difficult to assess his exact height.
"Hi!" he grins when he spots Kurt approaching, and waves like the dork he tries not to be. Kurt smiles back and gives him a little wave with his fingers in front of his chest. He walks up the five steps of the stairs. "This is a pleasant surprise," Blaine says, and wonders if he can hug him.
"I'm a fountain of surprises," Kurt preens, locks eyes with him, waits for half a second, and leans in for a quick hug. Blaine doesn't have time for more than a brief hand to Kurt's waist before he's leaned back, but that was without doubt skin on skin-contact, and it tingles not just on his cheek! "I hope I'm not interrupting anything?"
"Of course not," Cooper smirks, and slings an arm around Blaine's shoulders. "I'm on my way out, and now you can make sure Blainers here doesn't have to be afraid to be home alone."
"Seriously?" Blaine rolls his eyes.
"Well, we wouldn't want him to experience any trauma," Kurt nods gravely.
"I knew you'd understand," Cooper reaches out a hand to ruffle Kurt's hair, but Kurt quickly ducks away.
"If you want to keep those hands…"
"Truce!" Cooper laughs, holding his hands up in front of himself. "Okay, I'm out of here; you kids have fun." And with that, Cooper is off.
"Let me take your coat," Blaine offers. "May I offer you something to drink?"
Kurt unbuttons his coat, Blaine hangs it up while Kurt removes his shoes, and they both head to the kitchen to prepare some coffee with Cooper's fancy machine.
"What is this?" Kurt laughs happily, when they move to the living room.
"Umm…" Blaine hesitates bashfully. "My nest?"
Kurt walks closer to the carefully arranged cuddle-pile of blankets, pillows and bedcover under the coffee table, with a large tablecloth usually intended for the dining table hanging to the floor on three sides.
"So where are your tail-feathers?" Kurt winks, and acts as if he tries to look behind Blaine. Blaine blushes, and can't but feel joyful at Kurt's attention, even if he's also a bit embarrassed to be caught like this.
"As a kid I wasn't allowed to make those huge pillow forts or forts out of sheets with the furniture, so this was a compromise," Blaine shrugs, swallowing down the tainted childhood memory. "Actually, Cooper suggested it to our father. We'd both rest there, Cooper would read me books, or we'd watch cartoons upside down."
Blaine stops there, not elaborating on how their dad put the foot down and denied any more cuddle-nests after he caught Blaine drawing with a crayon on the underside of the table. But Cooper picked up the tradition again whenever Blaine visited him in his own apartment, and it was something Blaine would sometimes do in his previous home when Sebastian was out. He never dared to share this with him, afraid he would find it immature.
"It looks lovely," Kurt says. "Will you invite me in?" he says shyly.
"Of course!" Blaine splutters. He places his mug on top of the table, and lifts the tablecloth, gesturing for Kurt to enter. "I'll hold your mug," he offers.
Kurt smiles sweetly at him, hands him the mug, and drops to his knees to crawl under the table. Blaine pays careful attention to his breathing and locks his eyes on the mug. He must not spill a drop of Kurt's coffee. Who knows what might happen and startle him; a sudden earthquake or a rhino running repeatedly against the door?
It's a tight fit under the coffee table. It was crowded even before Kurt came over, but after a little shuffling and rearranging of the pillows they end up resting on their sides, face to face, with their legs sticking out from their knees and down. The sight must be hilarious if someone walked in unprepared, Blaine muses. He's rolled up his bedcovers as a long pillow, and their heads are resting on it. They quickly discarded their coffees, deciding this nest wasn't exactly suitable for such manoeuvres.
"This is nice," Blaine says dumbly, because nice doesn't even begin to cover it.
"Are you afraid of being home alone?" Kurt asks softly.
"What? No, no, that was just Cooper being… Cooper. Please excuse him. This is just… A childhood memory and a silly brotherly tradition. Cooper was here with me earlier; we have had some good talks like this. It's comfortable, and Christmas makes me a little nostalgic, and… I know it's silly, I should try to act my age."
"No!" Kurt instantly objects, and briefly rests a hand on his shoulder. "This is lovely. It's sweet that you have that kind of relationship with your brother. And it's important to be comfortable. Aren't holidays invented for relaxation?"
"Some might argue there," Blaine laughs.
"True," Kurt shrugs, and moves to rest on his back. Blaine follows his action to avoid feeling like a watching creep. "You didn't tell me this was also an art gallery," Kurt gasps, and knocks his knee against Blaine's.
"What?"
Kurt looks pointedly up at the ceiling above them, also known as the underside of the table. Where Cooper convinced Blaine to pick up his habit of doodling. It's not as if anyone will ever see it, but we'll know, he'd said, and finally convinced Blaine to let go with crayons, glitter glue and watercolour paint. Something Cooper just so happened to have a stash of, quite coincidentally, for sure. Blaine doesn't always understand his brother, but he doesn't doubt his love for him.
"Maybe I'm a fountain of surprises too," Blaine shrugs. He's far from an artist, his creative talent has always been music, so the art is immature. But it's colourful and whimsical, and it's made throughout several years in Cooper's different apartments and homes. Cooper decided they had to have a rainbow theme, so the table is mostly covered in different varieties of the rainbow colours, weaving around in different patterns, made from different material. Some of the glitter has suffered from the laws of gravity and disappeared, but the beauty of this is that they can always add more glitter later. There can never be enough glitter, was obviously Cooper's mantra as an artist.
"I love it!" Kurt enthuses. "It's whimsical, but it seems happy and bright. It makes me smile," Kurt says, and proves it.
"I'm sure that if you offer the right price, Cooper will saw off the legs and let you have the table to put up on your wall back in New York," Blaine tries to say seriously, but he's too giddy to succeed.
"And it comes already framed," Kurt says gravely, and knocks a hand against the wood.
"Of course, courtesy by the artists."
Kurt giggles, and Blaine easily joins him. Then they are silent for a long moment, and Blaine just listens to him breathe. He's been thinking about kissing him, but he's not ready. He doesn't want to screw this up, he doesn't want to move too fast, and he also has a little performance anxiety. What if he isn't a good kisser? He can wait one more day.
"So, I actually came over for a reason," Kurt starts to say.
"You're not here to buy art or test my embarrassing cuddle-nest?"
"For a cuddle-nest, it hasn't been an awful lot of cuddles," Kurt says haughtily. "But no, I didn't come for the art, although it might be what makes me stay," he says teasingly. "Anyway, I wanted to ask you something, suggest something for you. I didn't imagine this conversation lying down, but that's okay. We're too tall to sit up properly here, and it really is a comfortable nest, it would be a shame to crawl out just for a question…"
"Kurt, are you rambling?" Blaine asks surprised. Kurt always seems so confident and collected, while now he's anything but.
"…Yes," Kurt finally admits, staring at the rainbow-ceiling.
"You're adorable…" Blaine blurts out.
"Thank you," Kurt murmurs, and shifts so he's resting more on his side. Blaine copies his action. "I have a proposal for you. It may be too soon, it may be the wrong thing for you, but I wanted to suggest it, and maybe encourage you to go for it."
"I'm intrigued," Blaine says giddily.
"Good. Great!" Kurt nods. "So, you've said you want to work with music, become a singer, have a more creative work outlet."
Blaine nods, but doesn't say anything that might interrupt Kurt. This is obviously difficult for him to say, he's usually more direct in his approach.
"There's this tradition in this part of Washington. Maybe you've heard of it? For as long as I can remember since dad started working here there's a concert in the park we went to, every 30th of December. The organizers invite locals and other interested to contribute, instead of inviting one headliner. It's an effort to gather the neighbourhood and also to give lesser known voices a platform. You could call it a potluck concert? Everybody performs for free, and the tickets are sold at a reasonable price, but the profit goes to charity. There's usually some companies who donate money to pay for stage equipment and stuff, to increase the profit."
Blaine hasn't heard of the concert concept, but Cooper hasn't been living here for that long either. It sounds great, though. Going to a concert with Kurt is a wonderful date! If it is a date?
"You want us to go?" Blaine asks, too eager to have more patience and let Kurt speak.
"No," Kurt shakes his head. "I want us to perform there."