Author's Note:

Snarky Kurt is coming out to play... Ooh, Blaine, you picked the wrong person to anger!

Chapter 4: Called Out

"There is a stubbornness about me that never can bear to be frightened at the will of others. My courage always rises at every attempt to intimidate me."

(An excerpt from Pride and Prejudice, by Jane Austen)

Kurt was quick to welcome their guest of honor, who'd apparently brought his BROTHER to the wedding -hmm… Did that mean he was single at the moment?

One quick look confirmed that Mr. Anderson was still the handsomest man in all of North America. And if the rumors were true, he dated men as well as women, so Kurt actually stood a chance with him. Therefore, he made sure to mention he was single and very available while bringing him to the brides and officially introducing them.

Kurt adjusted his cravat and checked his coif while Mr. Anderson was congratulating the brides, and then graciously accepted Mr. Anderson's praise of the decorations as he steered him up the fire escape and towards the circle of chairs they'd set up for the ceremony.

"It's going to be pretty informal, as you can tell," Kurt said, "Santana didn't want to make a big production of it. Wanted nothing stiff or formulaic. That's just not them."

Mr. Anderson grinned. "I'll like it all the better for that."

Kurt shot him a quick smile and dashed off to Elliott to tell him to start the ceremony, sent Rachel over to Artie for the procession song, warned Tina to start taking pictures and then told bridesmaids Mercedes and Quinn as well as Britt and San to walk to their assigned spot.

As Rachel sang "The First Time I Saw Your Face", the brides walked into the circle hand in hand and smiling – Brittany widely and Santana tremulously. Tina's camera shutter clicked at a fierce pace, and Kurt stood there taking it all in for a moment, his throat thick with emotion.

Then he jumped back into action, taking the ring box out of his inside pocket and tying the rings around the necks of Lord and Lady Tubbington. Carrying their basket, he moved to stand next to Elliott.

Brittany and Santana's vows made Kurt tear up, and by the many sniffles in the audience, he knew he wasn't the only one affected.

Thankfully, the cats were as good as gold and stayed put throughout the ceremony, and when the right moment came, he held out Lady Tubbington to San for Brittany's ring and Lord Tubbington to Britt for Santana's ring.

After taking the ring off of his neck, Britt pulled Lord Tubbington closer and kissed his head.

"Oh, was that supposed to be the groom?" Elliott quipped. "Then we'll need to start over!"

The terrace rang with laughter, and Lord Tubbington wriggled out of Kurt's arms and fled. Lady Tubbington followed suit, but seeing as their task was fulfilled, it didn't matter much.

As soon as Brittany and Santana had shared their first kiss as wives, to loud applause, Kurt gestured to Rachel to follow him to the kitchen, where they arranged champagne glasses on trays and filled them with an excellent spumante Kurt had found in Little Italy. Kurt got out the first batch of hors d'oeuvres, too, and they went around the terrace with their offerings.

Mr. Billionaire Anderson did not seem snobbish in the least, eating Kurt's finger food with relish and complimenting him on the spumante, even asking to write down its name and where he got it.

When Kurt brought out his masterpiece, a three-tiered wedding cake decorated with rainbows and unicorns, as per Brittany's request, Mr. Anderson whooped and hollered the loudest of them all, and his moan when he started eating cake made the tips of Kurt's ears redden. He left only crumbs on his plate, and clamored for seconds, which Kurt hurried to give him, beaming.

Now that everyone was on their second piece of cake, Kurt took a minute to eat something himself. There wasn't much left of the hors d'oeuvres, but what there was, Kurt decimated in seconds, and he ate one of the marzipan unicorns as dessert.

He took a glass of spumante to wash everything down in style, and surveyed the party with satisfaction. Yes, he had done it once again. The wedding was a resounding success. Now there was only the first dance to go, but that was up to Britt and San themselves.

Kurt made another round to fill up the guests' glasses again, and then told the brides to get ready for their dance, Mercedes and Artie to sing, and Tina to catch all the magical moments on camera.

"Oh, I LOVE this part!" Rachel whispered loudly in his ear as she wound her arms around his waist.

Kurt kissed her head and hugged her back as they both watched their friends shine in their first dance.

"Look how happy they are," Rachel sniffled. "Ah, this is amazing!"

"It is," Kurt agreed. "Worth all the work and then some."

"True. Though I'm going to dance a bit before I start on clean-up duty."

"All right, then. Off you go, Miss Berry! But you will help me later!"

Laughing at her grimace, he pushed her towards the dance floor and then picked up the cake tray to wrap up what was left and put it in the fridge.

The party went on, and his friends took turns claiming the microphone for a song, until Santana took it to give a speech, thanking her wife for her promise of forever, thanking the guests for coming to witness their union, and thanking Kurt nicely for all his work organizing the wedding. He sent her an air kiss, and she half-laughed, half-sobbed, overcome with emotion.

He'd just stepped towards San to give her a hug when another voice piped up. Mr. Anderson's brother. And for some reason, he was LIVID, accusing Britt and San of faking a wedding to swindle his brother out of an expensive gift, seeing as their family wasn't even there, ranting and raving at the fake brides for taking advantage of his brother that way, and taking advantage of their friend to organize the whole event, too. He dissed all of Kurt's careful wedding planning and hard work, pronouncing everything too cheap for an actual wedding.

Brittany shrank away from the venom in the guy's voice, and even Santana seemed tongue-tied for a moment. The rest of Kurt's friends, who had all been dancing and laughing a minute ago, now stood staring at the younger Mr. Anderson in shocked silence.

Kurt, however, felt his hackles rise. No way was this guy going to ruin everything at the eleventh hour. No way!

He fixed the man with a glare and gritted out, "Way to make snap judgments, Mr. Snob! For your information, Santana's family is homophobic. As in, they don't approve of her choice of spouse. They threw her out when she told them she was in love with Brittany, and are still expecting her to come to her senses and marry a man. Santana was crying this morning because her abuela wasn't going to attend her wedding, so thank you very much for opening that wound again."

The Andersons' eyes flitted to Santana, who swallowed with difficulty and looked down. Brittany put her head on Santana's shoulder and squeezed her hand in sympathy.

"And Brittany's parents told her only last week that they're getting a divorce," Kurt continued. "She was so mad at them that she uninvited them to the wedding. And she's the only child of two only children, and her grandparents are dead, so no other family. Any more questions?"

Mr. Snob rubbed his hand over his neck, his animosity all but gone. "I guess… I guess I just don't see why people would tie the knot when they're only twenty years old. That's something for when you're settled, not when you're barely starting out."

Kurt chuckled. "Believe me, I told them exactly the same thing when they came to me and asked if I'd plan their wedding. But they said they were sure of each other, and they didn't want to wait. So I agreed, and made it as fabulous a small, low-budget wedding as I possibly could."

"You did a wonderful job!" Mr. Anderson boomed, clapping Kurt on the shoulder. "This place looks like a dream, the brides are gorgeous, the ceremony was perfect, the music is lit, and I never had better hors d'oeuvres in my life. And the wedding cake! Beautiful AND scrumptious! If you ever plan a wedding again, do invite me, will you?"

Other guests chimed in with praise for Kurt as well, and soon they were all laughing and chatting and dancing again.

Kurt sent Mr. Anderson a small smile, grateful to him for defusing the tension, and then focused on Mr. Snob again. "Your assessment of me was spot-on, though, bravo. Yes, I'm the pathetic single gay who lives vicariously through his friends. Yes, I'd rather focus on their romance than fail at it myself. So far I've planned a wedding for my father and stepmother, for my show choir teacher and the school counselor, and now for Santana and Brittany. Because it made me happy to see them happy. And maybe that makes me a silly romantic, but it's certainly better than thinking yourself far above anyone and being sarcastic and mean."

Mr. Snob bit his lip and lowered his eyes for a moment, then looked Kurt straight in the eye and said, "You're right. I was in a bad mood, but I shouldn't have taken it out on all of you. I'm sorry."

Kurt nodded coolly. "Apology accepted."

Mr. Anderson put his arm around Kurt's shoulder. "Do you know, I wouldn't even have cared if this wedding were fake! Blaine can say what he wants, but you throw a damn good party, worth every cent of the gifts we brought! So, I'm serious, any event you're planning in the future, send me word of it and I'll be there."

Kurt smiled wider at him this time. "I promise I will."

Then he leaned in and whispered into Mr. Anderson's ear, "And if you want to help things along, encourage Sam to propose to Mercedes. He's been thinking and talking about it for ages, but he never makes a move. They're over there, both of them."

Kurt surreptitiously pointed to Sam and Mercedes so that Mr. Anderson would know whom he was talking about.

Mr. Anderson winked at Kurt and whispered back, "On it!" He sauntered back to the dance floor, bowed for Mercedes and swept her away in a quickstep.

Sam, who'd been dancing with his girlfriend until Mr. Anderson cut in, glared at his perceived rival.

Kurt grinned, and granted Mr. Snob (Blaine, apparently) only the merest glance before turning his back on him and starting to collect empty glasses and plates to take them to the kitchen. The guy was back to looking sullen, but Kurt didn't give a hoot about that. He could sulk the whole night through, as far as Kurt was concerned.

Only, he didn't. On his second run to the kitchen, laden with plates and trays, Kurt felt a presence behind him, and suddenly, his load was a lot lighter. Blaine had taken half of the stack and was carrying it to the sink.

"Where's your dishwasher?" Blaine asked.

Kurt snorted. "None of that here. We wash up by hand. And by that I mean I wash up, nine times out of ten. The girls only help out when I force them to."

"I'll help," Blaine offered.

Kurt quirked an eyebrow at him. "You're a guest. The snooty kind that finds fault with every detail of the wedding I planned. Why on earth would you help me out now?"

Blaine had the grace to blush. "Hey, I said I was sorry. I was out of line, and I'm trying to make up for it. Throw me a bone, would you?"

Kurt stared at him until he started to squirm, and only then did he say, "All right, then. You wash, I'll dry."

They worked together in companionable silence, Blaine softly singing to himself as he scrubbed and rinsed. Meanwhile, the party petered out around them, and one by one, Kurt's friends said their goodbyes and left.

Once the dishes were done, Kurt thanked his helper and offered him another piece of wedding cake as a reward. They sat down on the sofa and ate their cake.

Kurt felt his eyes droop, and hoped he wouldn't have to stay up much longer. He wanted to lie down and sleep for a week on end.

He woke abruptly, because he got jostled and his head lost its comfortable pillow all of a sudden.

"Uhm, wha?" said a voice very close to him.

Kurt blinked his eyes open and found that he had fallen asleep against Blaine, who had dozed off too, if his slow reaction and slurring speech were any indication.

"You coming, squirt?"

"Don't call me squirt," Blaine snapped, rubbing his eyes like a five-year-old.

"Aw, Blainey, why are you still tetchy? You just got to spend some time alone with a gorgeous guy."

Blaine rolled his eyes. "Washing the dishes."

"You know what Nana used to say."

"Yeah. 'Share your life with someone you like doing chores with.'"

"And did you like it?"

Blaine blushed and lowered his eyes. Oh, wow, he had beautiful long lashes. In his own way, he was quite as handsome as his brother. While washing the dishes, he'd been singing under his breath, and his voice was lovely. And he'd washed the dishes efficiently and without complaint. Pity he was such a curmudgeon.

Mr. Anderson waggled his eyebrows until Blaine let out a plaintive "Cooooop!"

"Blaaaaaaaine!"

"Okay, let's go before you embarrass me even more. And keep it down, will you. Don't wake Kurt. He must be exhausted."

Blaine's eyes swept from Coop to Kurt, and he visibly started when he saw that Kurt had woken up.

"Too late for that," Kurt drawled, sitting up. "But I can always go right back to sleep."

Blaine looked shocked. "You don't want to move to your bed?"

Kurt shook his head. "Nope. Whenever Britt stays over, she and San get my bed, and I sleep on the sofa. Usually, San sleeps here, but it doesn't fit two people. When Britt stops touring with Mercedes, San and Britt will look for their own place, but for now, this works."

Blaine bit his lip. "You know sleeping on a sofa is bad for your back, right?"

"Oh yeah. I don't know how San has dealt with it for so long. One night here and I'm stiff and aching all over for a week."

"So why don't you buy an extra bed? Or at least a decent sofa bed?"

Kurt shrugged. "It's on the list."

"What list?"

"The list of things we need to save up for."

Blaine raised an eyebrow. "Why did you ask for a 25K pet pavilion for your cats as a wedding gift when you can't even afford decent beds for yourself?"

There he went again, Sir Judgy McJudge-a-Lot! He did have a point, though.

Kurt grimaced. "The cat stuff was all Brittany's idea. We should never have let her compile the registry. We didn't notice what kind of silly stuff she'd asked for until after your brother had bought the pet pavilion. It's a stupid waste of money, I quite agree. If you'd like your money back, you can cancel that gift. Please do. We've been feeling awful about it."

Wasn't that the truth…

Blaine seemed slightly mollified, but still continued his questioning. "Also, if you have no money for something as basic as a bed, where did you get the dough to plan a wedding?"

Kurt flushed. Rude much? "I did a lot of it myself. I also called in a lot of favors, and borrowed stuff. And we all worked extra shifts."

Blaine nodded, seemingly accepting this explanation. Insufferable snob!

"Well, you did a wonderful job!" Mr. Anderson boomed. "I had a splendid time, so thank you very much! And Brittany can keep the pavilion for her lovely cats. Don't you worry your pretty heads about that!"

Kurt got up from the sofa and shook hands with Mr. Anderson. "Mr. Anderson, thank you for coming."

"Oh, please call me Cooper. Or Coop for short. I hope to see you again soon for another party. And it's ME who should thank YOU!"

Kurt smiled at Cooper, and then turned to Blaine. "Thank you for helping with the dishes."

"It was my pleasure," Blaine assured him. "And sorry again for my rant earlier. I was wrong."

His earnestly repentant face made Kurt feel a bit guilty.

The brothers left with a smile and a wave. Kurt pulled at the heavy door to close it and then sank down against it, whispering, "You weren't, though. You were absolutely right. We did it all for the presents."