Are you a virgin?
You may be surprised to note that I sent that text rather than received it. Curiosity may have killed the cat, as Blaine frequently liked to remind me, but it hadn't killed me yet, and Blaine had a very... cavalier attitude towards sex- oh, for Pete's sake, Rachel, you don't have to flinch when I say that. Anyway, I was quite expecting the answer I got.
No.
Care to elaborate?
Why, Mr. Hummel! What exactly do you want to know? ;)
I don't mean... I just... Why do you do this to me?
Because it's fun, and I know you're blushing right now. And to answer your question, no, I do not care to elaborate.
Is there a reason why?
Kurt...
Okay, okay, I'm sorry, I'm sorry. Patience and indifference. I can manage that.
I highly doubt that.
Are you?
Am I what?
A virgin.
I'm surprised you have to ask.
I'll take that as a no then.
Blaine, you were my first kiss. How would it logically make sense that I hadn't kissed anyone, but I had slept with someone?
It's possible.
The excuse Blaine made up following that slightly revealing statement was so lame I don't even want you to read it, but the point was that this was yet another subject in a long list that he wanted to avoid talking about, and all of my questions were beginning to eat at me. How did all of these things fit together and explain the enigma that is my boyfriend? Well, was my boyfriend. Maybe.
Anyway, I was sitting in Spanish the next day when I received a text from Blaine. He knew that this was a class safe to text me in (his teacher didn't care, and Mr. Schuester has always been lenient with the New Directions), and he sent me a rather surprising text.
This is going to sound completely like a booty call, but I promise it's really not. Will you meet me in the supply closet by Miss Pillsbury's office during lunch?
It was our first covert meet-up, and I was kind of thrilled about it. I quickly texted back in the affirmative (because while Mr. Schuester is nice, if I get him angry during Spanish he'll take it out on me during Glee club) and spent the next twenty minutes, all that remained between me and lunch, tapping my foot and hating the Spanish-speaking world.
There is no non-sketchy way to enter a supply closet, was the conclusion I came to as I paced back and forth in front of it, drawing some concerned looks from Miss Pillsbury. I had no idea if Blaine was already in there, or what he was planning, or if there was a possibility that there was someone else in there, or multiple someone elses, and... okay, I was thinking about it far too much. The most irrational things about my relationship with Blaine made me nervous.
When I finally opened the door to the supply closet, I was pleased to discover that Blaine was the only occupant, lounging against a set of shelves with a mysterious tote bag in his hands. I cleared my throat to alert him to my presence (he was off in his own little world) and my insides melted when his face lighted up in a smile.
"Hey!" he greeted me enthusiastically, giving me a soft kiss that felt completely, wonderfully casual. "I have a surprise for you."
"I can see that," I said, looking at the tote bag and raising my eyebrows. I had no idea what was in the bag and could think of no motive for Blaine giving me a present. I was stumped.
"This," he said, flourishing the bag about and almost hitting me with it in his usual, graceful way, "is the present I planned to give you on our mensiversary, which we actually spent fighting and pseudo-breaking-up. So, I thought I'd give it to you now. It's a little late but," Blaine shrugged, "no time like the present." He grinned at his pun and I rolled my eyes.
I reached for the tote bag and he batted my hand away. "Uh-uh, one thing at a time." At first I thought that meant Blaine also had something else he wanted to talk about, but then Blaine handed me the first object in the bag, a wrapped CD case. I held it, unsure about un-wrapping it, but Blaine stared at me expectantly until I started to.
"A mix tape," I said when I finally opened it and saw a plain, burnable CD with a track list written on it in Blaine's impeccable cursive. "How cliche," I said with a smile, and Blaine ignored me.
"There's a bunch of Cheerios stuff on there too," he said a little bashfully, but it was very sweet, and I told him so. "Next," he announced, handing me a wrapped box. This one I started opening immediately, but he stopped me. "That thing is wrapped like Fort Knox," he said, a little bit proudly, "so I feel free to inform you that it's that Marc Jacobs cologne you love."
I was kind of shocked. "Blaine, this stuff is really expensive..."
"Don't worry about it," Blaine said with a shrug. "I'm the spoiled, rich delinquent, remember?" he asked with a smile, and for a moment I found myself feeling almost nostalgic about the days when I thought he was a scary, reform-school transfer. They seemed so long ago.
"I still don't want you spending money on me," I argued, but Blaine (very maturely) stuck his tongue out at me.
"I ordered it online, and it's non-refundable, so you might just have to deal with it," Blaine said, handing me the next object in his mystery bag.
"A picture frame?" I asked, because although it was wrapped, it was very clearly a picture frame.
"Open it," he urged, and I did so without questioning his random decisions on what I should open and what I shouldn't. When I ripped the paper off, I let out a dreamy sigh before I could help it. It was a picture of us at Charlie's on our first 'date', when neither of us really wanted to be there, but it was obviously later in the night, because we were both smiling and our plates were mostly empty. "Apparently, Charlie was being creepier than we realized," Blaine said as I stared.
"He really is an excellent matchmaker," I said as I put the picture aside. "We should thank him."
"I already have," he assured me. "About a million times." I kissed him softly, kind of reveling in the fact that I could do so casually. I kissed him because he was being sweet, and also kind of because I really enjoy kissing him, and I was very surprised when he stopped me after a few seconds.
"Wha-" I started to ask.
"As much as I would like to continue this, there's just one more thing in the bag, I promise," he said, digging around and obviously looking for an object at the bottom. I was surprised when he pulled out a plain white envelope and handed it to me. I had barely begun to tear up one side when he stopped me. "Open that one later," he said cryptically.
"So, it's open, don't, open, don't?" I asked, and he grinned.
"It wasn't intentional, I promise. Just... open that one later, okay?"
"Why don't you want me to open it?"
"You can open it if you really want to," Blaine said, but his tone kind of suggested I would be happier with the contents if I opened it later, so I placed it on top of all of my other presents. Blaine was excellent at putting just the right emphasis to twist his words to mean all sorts of things. It was very irking, and one of the things that makes him an excellent Cheerio.
I stared at my little pile, resting on one of the empty shelves. The first present was the obvious one, the cliche, the second unnecessarily expensive, the kind of gift inexperienced guys tended to buy for anniversaries, the third was sentimental, the kind experienced guys bought, and the fourth one was a mystery. These gifts told me a lot about our relationship, but only made me even more confused about Blaine.
Speaking of Blaine, he had been talking. "Earth to Kurt," he teased once he realized I hadn't really been paying attention to him at all. "Come in, Kurt."
"Sorry, I was just..."
"Spacing?" Blaine completed my sentence as usual.
"Yes, I'm sorry. I'm also sorry to report that I don't have my present for you with me," or at all, but that was beside the point. "You should really give me advanced warnings about ambushing me with gift-giving during lunch." Blaine just smiled at me.
"It's all right," Blaine said gently, and this time he kissed me. It was very... how do I put this? This kiss was much deeper and hornier than our usual kisses, and very... French. Stop judging me. The point is, Blaine's kisses kind of made my world tilt on his axis, and I could very much understand why people made stupid decisions in the kind of position I was in. The song Heat of the Moment made much more sense because, wow, it was heated in that supply closet.
"We," I was eventually the one who pulled away, and the bell for next period had already rung by the time I did, "we should get to class. We wouldn't want to be l-late." I almost managed to get all the way through my sentence without tripping over my own tongue. Almost.
Blaine looked just as winded as I felt, his lips red and shiny, his perfectly-gelled hair mussed, and his Cheerios uniform a little... ruffled. I don't even want to think about what I must have looked like in that moment. "I think we already are," Blaine replied, "but you're right. You can go first, if you want. Just so it doesn't look like we were..." he trailed off uncertainly.
"Doing exactly what we were?" I asked, my face heating up.
"Exactly." At the time, I didn't realize exactly why Blaine didn't want to stand up (and I still can't remember exactly how he ended up sitting down on that sports equipment chest). Now it makes a lot more sense.
I'm still not entirely convinced that a mensiversary is a real thing, but my dilemma at that point was what to get Blaine in return. It was kind of nice to have already opened his presents so I knew at least what kind of gifts to get him... in theory. In reality, Blaine's gift were ridiculously sweet, incredibly confusing, and had still left me completely stymied. We had set a date by text to meet for coffee that Saturday, and I had to have my gift by then, but I had no idea what to get him. So, I asked the only resource that wouldn't tell the world I was asking. No offense.
"What do you get a guy for your anniversary?" I asked Tina on Wednesday, sliding up next to her in the hallway. She appeared to contemplate for a moment before answering me.
"Well, besides the obvious, I have a very odd system," she admitted, and I waited for her to reveal it. "Something old, something new, something borrowed, something blue."
"Isn't that what a bride's supposed to wear to her wedding?" I asked, thoroughly confused.
"That's where the expression comes from, yes, but I've found it works just as well for guys. Something old, meaning something with sentimental or nostalgic value. Something new, some sort of superficial gift, like a video game or something. Something borrowed, meaning something that leaves you open a door. Like, tickets to a show, or something else that would prompt a date. And as for something blue, it always pays to listen to Emily Griffin and get him something a little bit sappy. He'll like it more than he admits." It was very good advice, even if it did sound a little odd at first.
"Just one last question," I promised.
"And then I get to ask you a few?" she asked with a smile.
"Not a chance," I said, shutting down her hopes of asking me why I was asking. "What did you mean by 'besides the obvious'?" I know, I should have known what she meant, but I hadn't really thought about... that yet. Tina gave me a look, and the answer to my own question clicked.
"Oh," I said, trying not to blush and feeling like a little bit of an idiot.
"If you're there," she said with a smile, and thankfully, she didn't ask.
"We're not... there." She, thankfully, didn't keep prodding. I wouldn't have had answers if she had.
When I arrived at the Lima Bean on Saturday, I was the one carrying the mysterious tote bag and Blaine was the one raising his eyebrows. "You're copying my mystery," he said casually, seated with two coffees at the table. I just smiled, sitting across from him and taking a sip of my coffee, almost choking on it. Almost immediately, Blaine was around the side of the table, patting my back. "You all right?"
"You remembered my coffee order," I said, surprised, and Blaine gawked at me.
"You really almost choked to death on hot liquid because I actually remembered what to get you?" he asked, and when he put it like that, I kind of sounded like an idiot, but I nodded anyway. Blaine just smiled fondly. "Of course you did," he said as he returned to his side of the table. "So what's in the bag?"
Something old. I pulled the first item out, handing it over. "A mix tape," he said, looking at the CD. "How cliche," he quoted me. "Where are the artists?" I had listed the names of the songs on the disc, but hadn't put the original artist's name.
"You're sitting across from him," I said with a shrug, and Blaine looked completely surprised. "You mentioned you snuck into Glee to hear me sing, so I thought you could go a little less James Bond next time and just listen to that."
"I... wow," Blaine said, smiling. "Point Hummel." I wasn't making this into a competition, so I hoped he was joking.
Something new. I pulled out a plain-looking brown book and handed it to him. "Soon to Be a Major Motion Picture," he read off the front, brow furrowed. "By... Jonathan Keates, with an extra 'e'. You remembered."
"Of course I did." Our blind date had been a little over six weeks ago at that point, but as you're obviously very aware, I could still remember everything.
"Impressive," he said, smiling. "And this is one of the ones I haven't read either. Thank you."
"No problem," I said, reaching into my bag again.
Something borrowed. I pulled out a white envelope and handed it to him. "I'm nice, so you can actually open my envelope." Blaine chuckled at that.
"To BreadstiX?" he asked, waving around the gift card. "Is that a suggestion, Mr. Hummel?"
"Maybe," I replied to his teasing tone, pulling out the last item.
Something blue. This object was another envelope, blue just for the sake of following Tina's rules. "Another?" he asked, accepting the envelope.
"Yes, and this is the one you can't open until I tell you to," I teased. The contents of that envelope were intended for a bit later, but I'll get to that. I promise.
"Fair enough," Blaine said, placing the unopened envelope on top of the opened one and then reaching to take my hand on top of the table. "Thank you," he said, his hazel eyes smoldering, and I was admittedly the one glancing around to see if anyone noticed that time. He didn't seem to care.
"You're welcome," I said, squeezing his hand, and Blaine finally stopped staring.
"So, have you opened my envelope yet?" he asked casually, taking a sip of his coffee with his free hand.
"Was I supposed to?" I asked, and Blaine shrugged. "No, I haven't opened it yet."
"Well, then, I guess there goes my topic of conversation," Blaine said with a smile, and I frowned when I saw him glancing up. It was killing me that I had no idea what was going on in his head, and why he acted the way he did about almost everything. "I hate to say this, but I really should go. I have practice in ten minutes, and I need to get back to the school." Blaine had been looking at the clock. That explained his open glance, but still didn't change anything.
"Blaine," I said softly, half-hoping he wouldn't hear me, as he let go of my hand and stood up, gathering his coffee cup and bag. Fate was against me (or for me, depending on how you look at it) that day, and Blaine looked at me with a raised eyebrow, obviously having heard my murmur. "I think we should talk." I knew the words were a cliche, but I didn't realize how it would sound until all the blood drained out of Blaine's face almost instantaneously. "No, no, no, I'm not... I don't want to break up," I blurted out. "I mean, a conversation." I took a deep breath. "A serious one," I continued, hoping he would know what I meant.
Oddly, Blaine just smiled at me, placing his bag over his shoulder. "You really should open that envelope," he replied as he walked to throw his coffee cup away. "It might help with your objective." He walked back over to give me a quick kiss on the cheek, and then he left.
I have to admit, the envelope hadn't been at the forefront of my mind as I had been picking out Blaine's present. I hadn't the faintest clue what was in there, but my curiosity had been so focused around Blaine's secrets that I hadn't really pondered the contents of the mystery gift. Now I was dying to know what that envelope contained. That night, I opened it, pulling out a slip of glossy paper, that had the following, typed advertisement on it.
One awful-homophobic-parent-free weekend at la casa de Anderson, designed for us to spend some alone time together, in which we can do anything we want. Except watch chick flicks. That's just... no. :)
The coupon was obviously homemade, and kind of sweet. I giggled when I read the fine print at the bottom.
Reading over this, I realize how ridiculously salacious it sounds. I apologize, this is definitely not intended to sound suggestive or pressurey-ish.
The comment was so Blaine, it was adorable, and it made me sad that I had to ruin what should be a perfect, romantic weekend. I had to know what Blaine's secrets were, and why he seemed to be so sensitive about... everything, really, and I had the feeling he was ready to tell me. That was what it seemed like when he told me to open the envelope.
I texted him the next day.
So how do I cash in this coupon?
You opened the envelope?
Yes, sir.
Good. :) And my parents are out of town this weekend, if you want to come over in a totally chaste way.
'Totally chaste'? That doesn't sound very fun.
You know what I mean.
And I would love to spend the weekend at your house. Hmm... what lie shall I tell my father?
Oh, you mean telling him that you are going over to a strange boy's house while his parents are away wouldn't end well?
It certainly wouldn't end well for you.
90 West College Avenue. Are you coming to the pep rally tomorrow?
Should I?
I would like it if you did :)
I'll be there.
I'm not entirely sure if you were at that pep rally. Everyone in Glee club was busy losing their minds over Sectionals and class elections. I was nervous about the presidential race, I'll admit, but I was more nervous about my relationship with Blaine.
Either way, if you were or weren't at that pep rally, you certainly weren't there from my perspective, and it's like watching a Disney movie once you're a teenager. When you know what everything that's going on actually means, it's much more interesting.
The night before the pep rally, I looked up Blaine's address on Google Maps, and was pleased to find that he lived in a reasonably-sized (though still very nice) house near Otterbein College, and that Westerville looked like most of Ohio and wasn't a ridiculous town filled with wealthy people.
The day of the pep rally I crowded into the gym with the rest of the over-excited masses. Most of the people there were the kind that tended to pick on me, the jocks and the popular girls who wanted to be associated with the Cheerios. I took a seat as close to the band as possible, and waited for Coach Sylvester's attempts to build the tension to be over. Soon enough, the Cheerios emerged on stage, Blaine at the head with his usual smug smirk. Before, I had found that facial expression quite irritating. Now... it's kind of sexy, to be quite honest.
As any other spectator, I would have thought he was looking out over the crowds to take in the sight of his adoring fans, now I was very suspicious that he was looking for me as the techno beat began. I hadn't noticed before, distracted by my boyfriend, but the Cheerios were wearing slightly modified versions of their normal uniforms. Their skirts were a metallic silver instead of red, the color also making an appearance in their pom-poms, and the white on their tops had been replaced by it. All the red on Blaine's uniform had been replaced by the same silver, leaving him black, white, and silver. It actually looked pretty cool.
The Cheerios began dancing to the beat as Blaine pulled a silver accented microphone out of nowhere, locked eyes with me (I'm not actually sure today that he had spotted me, but at that moment I would have sworn the only people in the room were him), and began singing in a remarkably low voice that send shivers down my spine.
When did your name change from a word to a charm?
No other sound makes the hair stand up on the back of my arm
All of the letters push to the front of my mouth
And saying your name is somewhere between a prayer and a shout
And I can't get it out
When did your name change from language to magic?
I'd write it again on the back of my hand,
And I know it sounds tragic
Had Blaine chosen the song, or was it coincidence that Coach Sylvester had picked it and Blaine had asked me to come for this very reason? The song made a lot of sense when it was applied to our relationship. Somehow, things had changed between us, from two people that barely acknowledged each others' existence to romantic interests to boyfriends, and even thought it had realistically taken a while, it felt like a whirlwind, and I never quite knew where I stood with Blaine. At that moment, I thought I knew. Boy, was I wrong.
Now that your name
Pumps like the blood in my veins
Pulse through my body, igniting my mind
It's like MDMA and that's OK
Your name's like a drug
And I can't get enough
And it fits like a glove
I'm addicted to your love
The song had gone on while I was musing, staring at Blaine, and he had turned to join in on the dance, breaking the connection I had so cherished for the beginning, but this was almost better. I got to watch him dance. He might be a little bit clumsy in normal life, but the boy could move, and Cheerios routines suddenly became one thousand percent more compelling when I was observing exactly what the choreography did for Blaine... but I won't bore you with that.
I need this exchange
I don't care if you think that I'm strange
Something happens to me when I hear your voice
Something happens to me and I have no choice
I need to hear your name
Everything feels so strange
I'm ready to take this chance
I need to dance
Feels like a drug
And I can't get enough
And it fits like a glove
I'm addicted to your love
The song fit perfectly. For some reason, we needed each other to keep ourselves sane, and that was okay. We could be all alone in our own little world, wanting only each other, and keep everything else at bay for now. I just wasn't sure how long that philosophy could last, but it didn't matter. We had fallen for each other, and fallen hard.
A/N: Nice little filler chapter. Yes, the event of the story takes place during this weekend at Blaine's house! Are you guys excited? I am!
Songs used/mentioned:
'Heat of the Moment' by Asia (mentioned)
'I'm Addicted' by Madonna
Review are Love.