October 2012
"I'm sorry. Did you just say opera?" Kurt made a tsking sound at the incredulity in Blaine's voice and shifted the phone to his other ear.
"Yes, Blaine. I'm auditioning for an opera. And what may I ask is so astonishing about that?"
"It's just. Wow. I mean, opera." Blaine paused. "Don't you have to be fat to do that?"
"Blaine, even putting your unbelievable immaturity aside, how uncultured you are just continues to astound me. Are you sure you don't play for the conventional team?"
"Huh?"
"Gay, Blaine. Are you sure you're even ... you know what, never mind. I'm obviously wasting my breath trying to broaden your tiny, tiny little blazer stifled horizons."
"Kurt, I'm just surprised is all. And now more than a little confused." Kurt rolled his eyes and discarded yet another possible audition outfit.
"Well yes, the daily bowties are a bit of a headscratcher."
"You like bowties. You wear them all the time." Blaine actually had the audacity to sound a little hurt. At fashion advice. From Kurt Hummel.
"No, Blaine, honey, you wear them all the time. I wear them when they actually complete the ensemble."
"Did you just call me honey?" Kurt flushed and quickly moved to cut him off.
"And anyway, you do remember that I'm a voice major. This is a very competitive program and they take opera very seriously here. I need to start making my mark on the directors as a freshman if I have any hopes of scoring the lead by my junior year so I can spend the summer before my senior year in a suitably fashionable internship in New York."
"Don't they still have musicals in eastern Ohio?" Kurt paused and pursed his lips. When he spoke it was with the voice one uses when speaking to an unusually dull small child. Or his stepbrother.
"Yes, Blaine, of course they have musicals here. But, well, it's a little frowned upon for conservatory students to take a part in them."
"You're kidding. Musicals are all about singing, you're there to better yourself in the craft. I'm failing to see the problem here."
"You wouldn't understand." Kurt spoke without thinking, and a cold silence greeted his words.
"You know, you've been saying that a lot lately."
"Well, you wouldn't." Kurt concluded rather lamely.
"Right. Little sheltered, stifled, bowtie wearing Blaine couldn't possibly understand anything that Kurt Hummel might be going through. It doesn't matter that he's Kurt Hummel's fucking best friend, because now while he's still in High School eating paste in the sandbox, Kurt Hummel gets to sing opera with the big boys." The sarcasm was thick enough to be cut with a knife. Or a sledgehammer. As Kurt's guilt grew so did his desire to lash out.
"Blaine. I wish you wouldn't act so petulant about this. You're making me regret calling you in the first place."
"Well, that makes two of us, honey." Kurt flushed again, but for decidedly different reasons than when Blaine said honey earlier in the conversation.
"Oh believe me, it isn't a mistake I'm going to be making again any time soon."
"Glad to hear it."
"Goodbye!" Kurt hung up before Blaine could get in any final words. He stood in front of his closet, gripping the doorframe hard enough for his fingers to turn white and waited for the spikes of anger to begin to cool. Far too quickly he felt his resentment towards Blaine drain out of him, only to be replaced with an empty, hollow feeling. When he first left for college he had felt something close to relief that Blaine had never reciprocated his feelings back in high school. As long as they weren't a couple, he reasoned, the distance couldn't break them up. Standing in front of his closet, staring blankly at a section of designer button downs and vests, he felt the first stirrings of the possibility that maybe he was wrong.
...
September 2013
"So where's your roommate?" The voice shouted over the pounding bass line that filled the 'sco*. Kurt squinted his eyes trying to remember the brunette's name. Janet? No, Jessie.
"All the dorms are having a freshman ice cream social tonight. Even though Blaine got permission to live in the Union Street apartments with me, he's still required to participate in all of the freshman activities. So he's an honorary member of Burton dormitory." Kurt smirked, an expression that Jessie returned.
"Burton? Poor guy. They fix that elevator yet?"
"Oh no, it still smells like burning plastic every time you try to go down." A tall blonde sauntered over to them, tilting only slightly to the left as she attempted to battle the copious amounts of alcohol currently running through her system. She slung her arm around Jessie's shoulders, although whether it was out of a feeling of camaraderie or merely to keep from toppling over is anyone's guess.
"I can tell you what else is going down in Burton's elevator, if you know what I mean." Kurt was continually impressed by Harper's ability to enunciate clearly while simultaneously looking like she's swimming through the air.
"If you're referring to you going down on Caleb freshman year, yes, I remember all too clearly." Either the acid in Kurt's voice was too thinly veiled or Harper was simply too drunk to care. For all his efforts he was rewarded with an entirely too lewd and sloppy grin.
"Caleb. I forgot all about that guy. Isn't he gay?"
"Yes."
"Ok, I must be actually drunk then. I have no memory of this. How on earth did I manage to get someone who plays for the other team to have sex with me in an elevator?" At this point Jessie started attempting to subtly edge out from under the blonde's arm but the drunken dead weight just moved with her. Kurt couldn't help but smile.
"He was experimenting. For a play."
"Come again?"
"He was cast in a show where his character was struggling with his sexuality. Having grown up in San Francisco, a community almost as depraved as this one, he had the least distressing coming out story I've ever heard. Apparently he popped out of his mother waving a gay pride flag and singing Evita." Kurt shrugged. "You were a result of his commitment to his craft." Kurt thought briefly that Harper might be disappointed at this news, but alcohol seemed to have infused her with a never-ending enthusiasm for life.
"That is just ... so deep." Kurt took notice of Jessie's plight and decided to step in.
"By the way, Harper, have you met Jessie?"
"Another gay actor who wants to have sex with me?" Kurt tried to ignore how hopeful she looked.
"No, no. Just the girl you've been drooling on for the last five minutes." Harper squinted blearily at him for a moment before suddenly swinging her head to the side as if she had forgotten there was anyone else there. Perhaps she had. However, the sudden movement proved to be a very bad idea as her drunken coordination left much to be desired. Kurt's attempts to rescue Jessie resulted in the two girls ending up in a very messy tangle of limbs on the floor. And this was not a floor Kurt would particularly want to sit on if he was wearing anything other than sweatpants. Not that he owned sweatpants.
"Well you two have truly hit it off spectacularly. I've obviously become the third wheel. I'll just leave you to your getting acquainted activities. Remember, no love without a glove." Kurt smirked and sauntered out of the club. This is really how every Thursday should go.
...
When Kurt got back to the apartment, Blaine was already asleep. Kurt paused in the doorway to take in how adorable he looked with his mouth hanging open and his curls sticking out in every direction. Kurt smiled and shook his head.
"I should really flush that hair gel." Kurt mused to himself. "Too bad that would constitute an environmental hazard."
...
On Friday Blaine spent some time wandering aimlessly around the quad. He had only been on campus for five days, but he still couldn't shake the feeling that college wasn't at all what he expected. His classes were, well, boring. He knew that the first day was really just to go over the syllabi, and no one really expected any truly scintillating conversations, but Blaine was not in a mood to be reasonable. He felt gypped. The way Kurt had talked about this place, it was as if merely breathing the air led to academic orgasms, that just walking in the buildings would lead to his brain being ripped open and knowledge greedily sucked in.
Instead, all he had learned was that books cost a fucking ton of money.
But if Blaine were to be honest with himself, it wasn't really the classes that had him so bent out of shape. It was Kurt. Last year had put a substantial strain on their friendship, but summer had seemed to erase all of that. Over the summer, Kurt was the same boy he met on the stairs years ago. The boy that he could impress just by knowing his coffee order.
The boy that was hopelessly infatuated with him.
Blaine knew it. He was maybe a little slow at times, but after that Gap debacle, when Kurt elucidated his feelings for him, part of Blaine realized that he had always known. That heady feeling he felt whenever Kurt looked at him was at least partly in response to the worship he saw in his eyes. Blaine had never been worshiped. Most of the time, he had never even been liked. Was it so wrong that he craved the attention? And it wasn't like he was using Kurt for the power rush. No, Kurt was an unbelievably intelligent, caring, and fiercely loyal friend, and Blaine couldn't imagine having survived high school without him.
But now, Kurt was ... independent. Strong. He had a life here that Blaine just wasn't part of. They lived together, but Blaine could count the number of minutes that had spent really together since they unpacked on one hand. And it was all completely understandable. Kurt had to go reserve a locker in the music building. And then he had to meet up with some friends he hadn't seen since last year. And then he met a professor for coffee (seriously? Kurt was that close to his teachers?). And then he promised another friend he'd take her to town for some last minute shopping (at least, Blaine thought it was a she. Kurt hadn't exactly been clear.) And one excuse after another, they all piled up until Blaine realized that he was spending his entire first week of college without his best friend.
And that was not how it was supposed to go.
...
Blaine was perusing Facebook when a stutus update on his news feed caught his eye.
Kurt Hummel:
I got cast in my first college show! I'm just part of the ensemble, but even a star as
large as myself has to start somewhere.
Rachel Berry, Mercedes Jones, and 7 other people like this.
Blaine hesitated before clicking into the comment box. He wrote about 6 variations of standard "congrats, Kurt. I always knew you could do it" messages before determining each one was too trite and impersonal and erasing it. Kurt was his best friend. It wasn't like they had never fought before. Blaine knew he just had to reach out to Kurt to make things better again. Tell Kurt how he really felt. How he didn't mean to get upset, he just missed him so much. How he never realized just how hard it would be to not have Kurt in his life every day. How the longer Kurt was away at school, the more he felt like part of him was missing.
How he loved him.
This was it. He just had to tell him. He clicked his mouse.
Kurt Hummel:
I got cast in my first college show! I'm just part of the ensemble, but even a star as
large as myself has to start somewhere.
Blaine Anderson, Rachel Berry, and 8 other people like this.
AN: In case anyone is wondering, yes, I am an Oberlin alum and most of the places/characteristics of the school that I'm referencing are accurate. That being said, I'm willing to let the story make the school what it needs it to be, so don't take anything I say as factually accurate.
* the 'sco is the on campus dance club/bar