"I'm so nervous," Kurt whispered to Blaine as they arrived at the Warblers meeting.
"Relax, you'll be fine," Blaine smiled, looking at him. "We are gonna kill this."
Feeling mildly reassured, Kurt sat down with Blaine in their normal seats, smiling hellos to Stefan and Hugo.
"You okay?" Huge asked Kurt anxiously.
"Just nerves," Kurt explained, and Hugo nodded understandingly.
Wes stood up and called the meeting to order. "Okay, everyone, settle down," he said loudly. "First order of business: Kurt," he looked at Kurt expectantly, "how is Pavarotti?"
Kurt's stomach calmed its somersaults slightly. Ever since he had been taking care of the Warblers' private songbird, no-one had asked him about it. He smiled. "He's great," he answered. "He seems to be enjoying my bedroom."
A few Warblers smiled and laughed, and Wes nodded approvingly. "Maybe you could manage to bring him to rehearsals a couple of times? He does brighten up the room." Murmurs of agreement, and Kurt vowed to do so.
Wes clapped loudly. "Great!" he announced. "Moving on: Christmas fête auditions!" Everyone seemed to be very excited by that. Wes ran through the list of everyone auditioning, and then asked, "do we have any dual auditions?"
Kurt and Blaine were the only people to raise their hands, and everyone looked intrigued. "The floor is yours, then," Wes said brightly, and Kurt hurried to the CD player – today by the window – fumbling to get the disc out of his pocket. He wasn't sure why he was so nervous and wondered if it could be because this was the first time he and Blaine had sung together in front of anyone. He breathed deeply, tried to swallow his nerves, and started the CD.
The song went spectacularly well, with the Warblers being an extremely attentive audience. After a while Kurt almost forgot they were there at all; it was just him and Blaine, singing their song, managing – despite the sheer number of Warblers in the room – to pull of the mild choreography they'd organised last night. When the music ended, the boys around them erupted in cheers and applause and Blaine gave Kurt a quick hug. Kurt realised his hands were still shaking as the two of them sat back down.
Wes thanked them for their audition, and began calling out the list of names, but the auditions flew by: Kurt was barely listening. But he realised that he did feel threatened by the other auditions – the Warblers were all amazing, they were just very humble about it. Kurt hoped that the duet he'd done with Blaine would be enough to get not only him, but Blaine too, a spot presenting the Christmas fête show. Until then, though, he thought, sighing, he should just enjoy the auditions.
At the end of the last audition, the Warblers all applauded again (though, Kurt noticed, not as loudly as they had for him and Blaine) and Wes started passing round small sheets of paper. "Time to vote!" he announced.
"Vote?" Kurt asked Blaine, surprised. "I thought the council decided who got the solos."
Blaine smiled. "They do, when it's for show choir championships. For other less important events, we vote."
Kurt wasn't sure whether to be more or less nervous, but he took paper from Stefan and wrote on it as neatly as his still shaking hands could.
Kurt Hummel + Blaine Anderson
He glanced at Blaine and saw he had written the same thing. Blaine caught his eye and smiled at him.
As the Warblers filed out, Wes collected the sheets in a little box at the door, promising to reveal the results at lunchtime the following day. A couple of people came over to congratulate Kurt and Blaine on their performance, and, as they reached the door, Blaine hugged Kurt tightly.
"Well done," he whispered in Kurt's ear.
"You too," Kurt murmured, squeezing him back.
Blaine finally let go of Kurt and walked away, reshouldering his rucksack as he went. Kurt leant his head on the wall and watched him go, before heading out the door.