Prompt: First five words must be: "On a cold rainy night"
Characters: Sugar Motta and Kurt Hummel
Words: 570
Date: October 3, 2012
Author's Note: So, I asked my best friend to give me the character for this prompt and to choose past, present or future. She gave me Sugar future. With all of the leaks and spoilers today, my heart needed a little bit of reassurance, so the prompt morphed a little bit into this. I'm sure it wasn't what she intended, but it's what I needed to write. So here goes.
On a cold rainy night, Kurt grabbed his umbrella and locked up his corner office at the headquarters of Vogue. Everyone else had left hours ago, but he'd had some last minute designs to flip through before heading home to Blaine. Finally though, his exhaustion overtook his drive and he rode the elevator down to the lobby, waved goodnight to the security guards, and stepped out onto the front stoop.
It was dark, but the lights of New York City reflected off the raindrops pouring down as he raised his umbrella. His eyes not quite adjusted, he nearly tripped over the woman sitting on the front stoop, shivering and dripping from head to toe. It took a moment before he realized it was Sugar…and that she was crying.
"Sugar," he exclaimed immediately worried. He whipped the umbrella over her head to shield her from the downpour and contemplated sitting beside her, but the thought of soaking his $500 designer slacks was less than appealing. "Sweetie, what's wrong? Everyone left hours ago."
She just cried into her hands, her mascara running. "I hate that I let you down, Kurt, after you gave me this chance. You believed in me and I just let you down," she sobbed.
Kurt sighed, planned a stop at the drycleaners in the morning, and sat down next to her. "Sugar, I don't know what you're talking about. How did you let me down?"
She looked up at him as if it should be obvious. "That board meeting earlier?" she reminded him. "The group hated my design."
Kurt chuckled, but tried to hide it, and took her hand. "Sweetie, they liked two out of four of the pieces in your collection. That's not letting me down at all!"
But his praise just made her cry harder. "Kurt, you don't understand. I've always been perfect, at everything I've done. My daddy told me for years that I'm perfect and that I can't do anything wrong. But they hated two of my designs!"
Kurt wrapped an arm around her and pulled her close. She allowed her head to rest on his shoulder. "Let me tell you something I learned a long time ago, just after I started my internship her," Kurt said quietly. "No one is perfect. We're human. We screw things up. Relationships, designs, business. We're always going to mess something up. What matters is how we deal with it."
Sugar sniffed and her crying slowed. "But you've always been perfect."
Kurt laughed aloud. "No, Sugar, I am about as far from perfect as it comes. I've had designs thrown in the trash because professors thought they were too gaudy or out there. I've had nearly finished pieces ripped apart to start over again. I've had board meetings where entire collections are rejected."
"But they love you here," she said surprised.
"Because it doesn't matter how you mess up," Kurt explained. "What matters is how you handle it. How you fix it. And that you keep believing in yourself. My Dad taught me that."
She looked up at him, her eyes sad but admiring. "Do you think you could teach me?" she asked.
"Definitely," Kurt said with a smile and he got up, reaching his hand out to her. "Come on. You're freezing. Let me take you out for coffee and I'll tell you a story about two people who are perfectly imperfect in nearly everything we do."