Let's just pretend that Sue's weird weeklong suspension at the end of the last episode just... went away. We hear nothing about it here, and the timeline remains unchanged (in the previous episode, someone mentioned that they have six weeks until Nationals. And Nationals do, indeed, happen six episodes later. Disregarding the random Christmas episode since that's not part of the season 5 timeline). Okay? Okay. :)
This is a fun episode for Kurt and Blaine. Their story doesn't move much, but they're both pretty adorable. So, I like it!
(I do not own Glee or any of the characters, dialogue, or songs from the show. It's all just for fun!)
BLAINE
The floors throughout McKinley were scheduled for professional cleaning and waxing over the weekend, so Blaine volunteered to stay after school on Friday and clear the choir room floor. The big things, like the piano, would be taken care of by the cleaning crew, but Blaine needed to move the chairs and music stands and other small pieces of furniture.
Blaine put on his headphones and danced around the choir room as he cleaned, enjoying the alone time and the chance to dance with no choreography or purpose.
He was twerking by the piano when he suddenly heard Tina's voice.
"Blaine," she laughed from the doorway, "what are you doing?"
She was filming him on her phone.
"Tina!" Blaine cried, tugging his headphones off his head and rushing toward her, horrified. "Tina, get out! Get out! Get out of here!"
She ran away, shrieking with laughter, and Blaine buried his face in his hands and knew that he was going to be the laughing stock of New Directions.
He was right. On Monday afternoon in glee club, all of New Directions – and Mr. Schu – gathered around Tina to watch the video over and over and over. Most of them had seen it over the weekend (Blaine was not speaking to Tina for the foreseeable future), but they were all eager to watch it again.
"Blaine, this is nothing to be embarrassed about!" Mr. Schu tried to reassure him as the group roared with laughter.
"Yes, it is!" Sam laughed.
"That's a twerk fail gawker nightmare," Blaine whined, folding his arms across his chest.
"No," Mr. Schu disagreed as he walked over and sat down beside Blaine. "No, this is a revelation."
"If this is turning into what I think it's turning into," Artie declared, "I just want to say that it's physically impossible for me to twerk."
"I beg to differ," Kitty commented.
The other students laughed and ohhhh'd at the innuendo.
"Look how you're all riveted by that video," Mr. Schu analyzed the situation as he stepped down off the risers to stand in front of the group. Ryder rushed over to sit beside Blaine and wrapped a teasing, protective arm around his shoulders.
"That's the kind of reaction we need from the judges if we're gonna one-up Throat Explosion at Nationals," Mr. Schu decided. "We need to edge up our America's Sweetheart image a little bit. Show the judges that we're not afraid to rebel."
"Mr. Schu?" Marley stood up. "What if some of us don't know how to twerk?"
"Have no fear," Mr. Schu reassured her, "your twerk-torial is here! And, if you can all dance like Blaine did in that video, we are gonna need a bigger trophy case."
Blaine shook his head and waved his hands, no, no, no, but he knew it was too late. He had to embrace the video and the fact that he had, inadvertently, inspired this week's lesson.
All the students who knew how to twerk, Blaine included, got out of their seats and started demonstrating the dance, laughing and teasing Marley and the others who didn't know how. Then, they went to the auditorium and had a lesson on how to twerk from Kitty and Jake.
Okay, Blaine texted Kurt as he walked to his car after rehearsal, I have to know. Have you seen the video?
What video? Kurt replied.
Blaine realized he didn't actually have access to it. Thankfully, Tina had not uploaded it to the Internet; she had just messaged it to all of their friends. But, apparently, not Kurt.
Hold on, he said to Kurt. Then, he texted Tina and asked her to send the video to Kurt's phone. (Ok! she replied.)
KURT
Kurt had that afternoon off from the diner and Vogue dot com, so he went home after his final class and sprawled out on the couch to watch TV and eat junk food. It was his favorite day-off ritual. Alone in his home with some delicious food and mindless television.
The texts from Blaine (and the video from Tina) were the most exciting thing to happen to him all afternoon.
He hadn't laughed so hard in a long time. It took him a couple minutes to get control of himself so he could call Blaine back instead of texting him.
"I don't want to talk about it," Blaine said in lieu of a greeting when he answered the phone.
"You're so cute, though!" Kurt said, failing completely at his plan not to laugh.
"I don't want to be cute, Kurt," Blaine pouted. "It's not cute."
"Okay, well, it's hot. Or sexy. Or whatever you want to call it," Kurt allowed. "Those pants..."
"I didn't know anyone was filming me!" Blaine whined. "This isn't right."
"That's why it's so cu– uh, sexy," Kurt told him. "Because it's just you. Uninhibited."
Blaine exhaled heavily. "I guess," he said.
When they ended the call a few minutes later ("I'm going to hold a grudge about you laughing at me, Kurt. I love you.") and Kurt put his phone down on the table in front of him, he fell over onto his side on the couch and laughed until he cried.
He was calm again, flipping through the channels on their television and finishing off a carton of ice cream, when Rachel arrived home after her Funny Girl rehearsal. He barely glanced at the door as she slid the door open and announced, "I just had the most incredible experience of my life!" as she walked into the room.
But, as Kurt's glaze flitted away from her, his brain caught up to what his eyes had just seen and he snapped his attention back to his best friend.
Her usually-long hair was short, cut into a blunt bob.
"Oh my god," Kurt gasped. "Did you cut your hair?"
"I was feeling stuck," Rachel explained, a happy spring in her step as she walked toward him.
Kurt struggled to decide what to say, but then Rachel reached up and peeled off the wig, revealing her long hair tied up underneath.
"Oh," Kurt huffed out a laugh.
"You know," Rachel explained, walking over to sit in a chair near Kurt, "Rupert's amazing, but he has such specific views on everything. And it's not like I don't trust his vision, but I felt like I needed to just rebel a little bit in order to have more room to play."
"So, he doesn't know that you were wearing a wig?" Kurt worried about Rachel lying to Funny Girl's director.
"Not at first," Rachel clarified, "but then I told him after rehearsal and he really loved it and I might get to wear it in the show!"
She pulled a wig stand out of her bag and started shaking out her wig so it would lie properly.
"What if he got mad about you lying to him?" Kurt scolded. "Or what if he saw that you cut your hair and sent you packing?"
"Okay," Rachel scolded gently in return as she fit her wig over the wig stand, "you know what, Kurt? You've become boring. You go to class and then you come home and you watch your stories and you eat all this food and you Skype with Blaine. And it's not even sexy Skyping, I know this because you just go to sleep! Same thing, every day."
"I change up my afternoon smoothie occasionally," Kurt pouted, not bothering to tell her that obviously he wasn't going to have Skype sex with Blaine with her or Santana in the loft. Even if he used headphones so they couldn't hear Blaine, they'd still be able to hear him.
"You know, it felt so good taking a risk with this wig," Rachel told him as she started pulling the pins out of her hair to let it down after being under the wig all day. "It's like I just... I felt so alive. And I know I could've messed everything up, but I didn't even care! It's like I just wanted to risk it all."
"What's gotten into you?" Kurt wondered as he ate some popcorn.
"I don't know," Rachel admitted. "But you remember in high school how everything felt so urgent? Like if we didn't just go for it we'd lose our chance forever?"
"Yes," Kurt recalled, "it was very stressful."
"I want to feel that way again," Rachel admitted, her voice suddenly a little bit gentler.
Kurt watched her shake her hair out, back to normal.
"Does this have something to do with Finn?" he asked.
Rachel paused to consider the idea. "You know, if part of my grieving process is just diving head first into life," she said, running a brush through her hair, "then... maybe."
Kurt thought about Finn and all the things Finn would never have the chance to experience. Maybe the best thing he could do to honor his brother was to remember to enjoy the spontaneity of life.
"Alright, Rachel Berry," he decided, "you got me."
He put his food down on the coffee table in front of him and stood up.
"Let's go out and do something crazy," he suggested.
Rachel gasped happily and jumped to her feet. "Like what?" she inquired.
"Let's go use flash photography at the Met!" Kurt bounced briefly in place.
"Small potatoes," Rachel disagreed. "How about we break out that bottle of limoncello you've been saving up?"
"What for?" Kurt asked, intrigued.
"Anesthesia," Rachel grinned deviously.
Kurt raised an eyebrow.
"Let's get tattoos!" Rachel exclaimed.
"Tattoos?" Kurt repeated, shocked.
"Tonight is about living on the edge, Kurt," Rachel encouraged. "About conquering our fears and going for it!"
"Tattoos are permanent," Kurt fretted.
"Well, that's why you choose carefully," Rachel reassured him. "You've just got to pick something that really means something to you. I mean, what about Blaine?" she suggested. "You could get a tattoo of–"
"No," Kurt cut her off. "No. All I can think about is, like, some kind of horrible headline: 'Man gets tattoo of fiancé's name; relationship cursed'."
Rachel shot him a glance that said you're insane.
Kurt was silent, thinking. What could he get tattooed on his body that he wouldn't regret in ten years?
The answer came to him as soon as he asked himself the question.
It gets better.
It was a personal statement; the story of his past and his present and the promise of his future. And, in a small way, it did honor Blaine and his contributions to Kurt's life. In addition, it was a slogan linked to a movement that Kurt was passionate about. It meant something to him and to others.
Plus, it was simple and short and could be tattooed on his body in a location and font size that would be easily covered up if he ever needed to be tattoo-less for a role.
He texted Blaine. Rain check on our Skype date tonight? Rachel wants to go out, a last minute thing.
Sure, Blaine replied. Maybe reschedule for Wednesday?
Perfect, Kurt agreed. I love you.
Goodnight, Blaine said. Have fun with Rachel! Love you.
Rachel clutched Kurt's arm the whole way to the tattoo parlor ("I texted Dani," Rachel assured him, "and this is where she got her tattoos so we know it's good!").
"Are we actually gonna do this?" Kurt panicked as they walked through the door into the shop.
"I've always wanted one," Rachel said, rushing forward to look at a book of design ideas that was sitting on a countertop.
"Do you think Blaine's gonna be mad?" Kurt worried. He didn't feel like he needed Blaine's permission to get a tattoo, but he was worried that maybe it would be the polite thing to do to talk to his fiancé before he permanently altered his body.
"Well, isn't he, like, obsessed with Adam Levine?" Rachel recalled.
Kurt thought about it for another second. She was right; Blaine had a thing for Adam Levine, both his music and his look. He would be okay with Kurt getting a small tattoo on his back. Maybe more than okay.
Maybe Blaine would love it. The idea gave him a surge of courage.
"You're right," Kurt said to Rachel. "You're right about everything. I just need to wake up and come out of myself."
"Yes!" Rachel cheered.
"You know, I mean, I'm an artist!" Kurt tried to pump himself up to combat his nerves. "I should start acting like one! Would Andy Warhol be standing here worrying? No, he wouldn't!"
Rachel pulled the bottle of limoncello out of her bag.
"To rebellion," she said as she uncorked the bottle, "in all of its forms."
"Okay, oh!" Kurt watched her take a drink straight from the bottle. "Chug, chug, oh!"
"Whew, I don't like," Rachel squeaked as she handed the bottle to Kurt.
Kurt drank some and had the same reaction. "Oh god, it tastes like lemons and gasoline," he complained as he handed Rachel the bottle. "It's the worst,"
"It's the worst," Rachel agreed, returning the bottle to her bag as she continued to look through the book of design ideas.
"What're you going to get?" Kurt asked her.
"I don't know," Rachel said. "Let's surprise each other!"
"Okay," Kurt agreed.
"A cute kitty cat," Rachel pointed out one of the designs in the book as a man with lots of tattoos and a serious look on his face walked up to them.
"So, who's first?" he asked.
Kurt and Rachel looked at each other, both trying to pretend that they weren't panicking, and Kurt decided he would rather get it over with than sit and wait.
"I'll go first," he said with a brisk nod of his head.
The tattoo artist took him behind a curtain, away from Rachel, and Kurt went for it. He got a tattoo on the back of his right shoulder.
Most of it was a blur in his mind by the time he woke up the next morning, back in the loft, safe and warm in his bed like any other day.
Except that his head was pounding like he had spent the night at a frat party instead of a tattoo parlor.
"Good morning, sunshine!" Rachel said brightly as Kurt emerged from his room in his pajama pants and a robe. She was standing at the stove.
"Two shots of limoncello and I feel like I got hit by a bus," Kurt whined. "I'm the worst rebel in the world."
"Well, I made pancakes!" Rachel informed him as Kurt sat down at the table.
"Ow!" he jumped when he sat back and his shoulder hit the back of the chair. "Oh, I forgot that was there for a moment."
He had a tattoo on his back. It was hard to believe. And a little hard to remember. The combination of the small dose of alcohol and his panic had muddled Kurt's memory of exactly what had happened after he left Rachel standing at the counter.
"I didn't want a tramp stamp," Kurt explained as Rachel walked over, eager to see his new body art, "and I thought if I got one on my arm then I wouldn't be able to go sleeveless again."
"Let me see!" Rachel urged.
"Okay, so, when we decided that we were doing it, I knew exactly what I wanted," Kurt explained, standing up so he could untie his robe. "I even printed it out in a font that I liked so the tattoo guy knew exactly what to do."
"Okay," Rachel said.
"It's both personal and political," Kurt said proudly, "just like me."
He dropped his robe into a chair and twisted around so Rachel could see his back. "Ta-da!"
"Aw, Kurt!" Rachel approved. "'It gets better', that's so swe–"
She stopped talking so abruptly that Kurt's heart lurched in his chest.
"Wh– is it infected?" he worried, regretting for a moment the fact that he had chosen to put the tattoo on his back where he couldn't see it without a mirror.
"No," Rachel said, "it just... it says 'it's get better', not 'it gets better'. They misspelled it."
Kurt hated himself in that moment. Why had he agreed to get a tattoo? This was why tattoos were a terrible idea! He rushed to a mirror on the wall nearby and twisted around to look at the words written on his back.
"Oh my god," he gasped, "I have absolute nonsense written on me permanently!"
"Okay, you– you have to get it removed," Rachel suggested.
"Of course I do!" Kurt turned away from the mirror to face her. "What if I run into Dan Savage in the steam room at the gym? I mean, I'll be humiliated!"
"Don't worry, they do a really good job at removing tattoos these days!" Rachel reassured him.
"Yeah, for tens of thousands of dollars!" Kurt panicked. "Which I don't have!"
"Okay, then, we're going to go back to the tattoo parlor and we're going to have them fix it," Rachel suggested.
"Just show me yours," Kurt requested, "because maybe he spelled Streisand wrong and– and we can be maimed together."
"You know what, I..." Rachel backed away slightly, "I didn't go through with it."
"Are you kidding me?" Kurt asked in disbelief. The whole thing had been Rachel's idea.
"I was thinking about all of my favorite idols," Rachel explained herself. "Barbra, Patti, and Carole King... and none of them have tattoos!"
"I cannot believe you backed out without telling me!" Kurt scolded.
"I went! I was gonna go through with it," Rachel told him, "but you were halfway through yours and I just... look, I'm really sorry, okay? I'll... I'll go back with you and we can get your money back."
"No," Kurt disagreed, "what I want back, I can't get! My innocence, my pride, and my unblemished alabaster skin!"
"Kurt..." Rachel said as he snatched his robe off the chair and rushed back to his bedroom. He ignored her.
What was he going to do? He paced around his room, trying to release some of his frustration with Rachel and his horror about his disastrous tattoo. He wanted to call Blaine, but he was too embarrassed. What was he going to say? "Hi, honey, guess what? I permanently maimed my skin last night, on purpose! Whoops!"
Instead, Kurt decided to give himself a day to think about it. A day-long delay so that he wouldn't make another rash decision.
He got dressed and went to class, then to work at the diner, and then home to have dinner and call Blaine.
He didn't tell him about the tattoo.
Instead, they talked about the twerking fiasco happening at McKinley. Sue had seen New Directions having their twerk lessons in the auditorium the day before and had made the dance move the subject of her Sue's Corner segment on the local news that evening.
"And then," Blaine said dramatically, "she decided to ban twerking at school, which is absolutely ridiculous, by the way. So, Mr. Schu set up a protest, and we twerked all over the school and– well, we did that Blurred Lines song, but I don't even think Mr. Schu understands what it's about."
"Ew," Kurt grimaced.
"Yeah. Anyway," Blaine continued, "Sue called him into her office and fired him, but he's refusing to leave."
"Did she call the police?" Kurt hoped.
"I don't think so," Blaine said. "I guess he left the building at that point, when she fired him, but he's taking the issue to the school board tomorrow night. We're gonna do a little demonstration about dance through the years to show them that new dances have always scandalized a few people... so what?"
"All of this because you got caught twerking all alone in the choir room," Kurt couldn't resist teasing him.
Blaine laughed. "Whoops," he joked.
They both laughed at that, and then Blaine asked, "What's new with you? How was your night out with Rachel last night?"
"It was fine," Kurt tried not to directly lie about what he and Rachel had been up to. "Finally tried that bottle of limoncello I surreptitiously acquired last month. Please learn from my mistake and never drink that stuff; it was horrifying."
"Alright," Blaine agreed. "I'll take your word for it."
"Speaking of, uh, alcohol," Kurt tried to steer the conversation away from his activities the night before, "I'm looking forward to going out with you next week when you're here for your NYADA audition."
"I don't think our fake IDs will pass inspection in a place like New York," Blaine doubted.
"Right," Kurt agreed, "the alcohol thing just, uh, reminded me of our plan to try that bar I heard about the other week. You can get in when you're eighteen; you just can't drink."
"I can't believe it's next week," Blaine said. "I can't wait to see you."
"Happy circumstances, this time," Kurt agreed. "Do you know what you're going to sing for your audition?"
"Not yet," Blaine confessed.
"Well," Kurt reassured him, "you've got so many songs in your repertoire, so don't worry. Whatever you decide to sing will be amazing."
"Thanks," Blaine said, and Kurt could hear the smile in his voice.
They said goodnight not long after that, and Kurt crawled into bed (slowly and carefully; his shoulder was swollen and tender), hoping that the answer to the question of what he should do about his tattoo would be clear in the morning.
KURT
The next evening, Kurt went back to the tattoo parlor.
"Are you dyslexic?" he marched over to the artist who had done his tattoo two days earlier. "Or illiterate? Or a charlatan? You completely messed up my tattoo! I am scarred!"
"Let me see," the man – Kurt was pretty sure his name was Louis – said calmly. Kurt tugged his shirt off his shoulder and showed Louis his tattoo, and the artist said, "That is exactly what you told me to write,"
"No," Kurt disagreed firmly, "I wanted a message of hope. Something to represent my strides I've made as an individual and the political sea change."
"Well, you should'a put 'it gets better' on there," Louis suggested.
"I did!" Kurt replied indignantly.
"Nah, you didn't," Louis disagreed, unfazed. He stood up from his chair and grabbed a sheet of paper that was in a stack under the counter. He handed it to Kurt. "This is what you gave me to write. I don't ask questions because I don't wanna hear everybody's bull crap story about what their tattoo means."
It was the printout Kurt had made on the parlor's computer two nights before to show Louis exactly what he wanted his tattoo to look like.
The paper didn't say "It gets better".
It said "It's get better", exactly like the tattoo on his back.
Embarrassment flooded through Kurt.
"I must've screwed it up when I was typing it," he realized. His nerves and the limoncello must've been enough to distract him from making sure that the words were correct. All he could remember focusing on was the font. He had wanted the font to be perfect.
"Yeah," Louis confirmed, snatching the paper out of Kurt's hands.
Kurt sighed unhappily. The tattoo disaster was his fault. What was he going to do?
"Let me ask you something," Louis said. "What are you even doing here? You don't seem like the tattoo type."
"I wanted to rebel and shake off my doldrums," Kurt confessed. He turned and walked over to sit down in an empty chair. "My path has been different and exciting, considering my background. But, considering who I think I am and how I see myself, it's like I've taken the streetcar named predictability. I guess this is the price I pay when I try to surprise myself," he added unhappily.
"No," Louis disagreed, "I think your motives were true. It's just that, you know, when you go off road, man, weird stuff is gonna happen. Check this out."
He walked over to Kurt and adjusted his shirt so Kurt could see a demon tattoo on his chest.
"That demon looks like John Davidson," Kurt realized.
"I got that in Hong Kong," Louis explained. "I was trashed, right? And I asked this guy for a Harley Davidson tattoo. And I guess something got lost in translation 'cause, when I woke up, I had the host of That's Incredible! on my freaking chest. Eh, turned him into a demon. Lame-ass goes to badass. Two hours, tops. My body's covered with mistake ink. You can fix damn near anything."
"How can you fix this?" Kurt wondered, pointing to his shoulder.
"Why don't you give me another shot at it?" Louis suggested. "I'm, uh, starting to get a sense of who you are. Why don't you hop back up on the table and I'll see what I can do?"
Kurt was extremely hesitant.
"No charge," Louis told him. "I'll even throw in a tongue piercing, no cost to you."
Kurt breathed out a disbelieving laugh as Louis turned to walk away, assuming Kurt would follow him. "Why would I want to do that?"
"Look," Louis said, turning around and walking back to Kurt. He was very serious. "You step back now, you will never take another risk again. You will have given up on the whole concept of going nuts. What you gotta do is you gotta go more nuts. Have a positive experience. And then you'll realize that that is where you find the juice of life."
"Come on," Louis smacked Kurt on his right arm, causing Kurt to flinch in pain, and walked away.
"Okay," Kurt said quietly to himself as he stood up, "juice of life..."
"You into Bette Midler?" Louis asked as Kurt took his shirt off and prepared to let the artist fix his tattoo.
"What?" Kurt didn't understand why that was relevant.
"How do you feel about Bette Midler?" Louis rephrased the question.
"I love Bette Midler," Kurt acknowledged.
"I thought so," Louis said. "Alright, get on the table."
Kurt obeyed. "What... are you going to do?" he asked nervously.
"I'm going to ask you to trust me," Louis said calmly. "Let's turn this mistake into something worthy of a young artist like yourself."
Kurt swallowed his fear – worst case scenario: Kurt would ask him to cover the whole thing with a tattoo of a solid black ribbon or something – and let Louis do his work. When he was finished, Louis took a photo of the tattoo with Kurt's phone so Kurt could see it properly.
It said "It's got Bette Midler".
"Sometimes," Louis said as Kurt stared at the photo of his new tattoo, "the best part of an ink mishap is the story of how the final product came to be. The rest of your body tells a story, right? A scar here, a wrinkle there. The only thing different about a tattoo is that you put it there on purpose, to tell your own story. And now this particular tattoo," he gestured at Kurt's shoulder, "has a story of its own."
Kurt loved it.
At first glance, it was nonsensical, but it felt like a poem had been etched into his skin.
"Now," Louis said seriously, motioning at a chair, "we're going to pierce your tongue."
"I'm..." Kurt tried to think of a way to get out of it.
"Look," Louis said, "worst case scenario? You hate it and you can take it out. Your tongue'll heal up."
Kurt took a deep breath.
"Okay," he agreed.
It was an adrenaline rush. The pain (which wasn't as intense as Kurt had feared) and the knowledge that he had just pierced his tongue filled Kurt with a feeling of being alive that he hadn't realized he was missing.
He couldn't wait to show Blaine.
But first, he had to tell Rachel.
"Hey, where've you been?" Rachel asked as he entered their apartment. She was relaxing against her headboard, writing something. Kurt walked over to stand near her bed and hesitated briefly. He sounded so weird with the piercing in his tongue.
"Look," Rachel said, misinterpreting his silence, "I know that you're upset with me about the tattoo and everything, but this silent treatment? It's a little immature."
"It's kinda hard to talk," Kurt explained, motioning to his mouth to explain his sudden lisp.
"Are you eating something?" Rachel asked. "Did you get a pretzel from the guy down the street? Because I thought we were diet partners."
On their way home from the tattoo parlor the night Kurt had gotten the misspelled tattoo, they had made an agreement to start eating healthier. If they were really going to start living their lives to the fullest, they wanted to do it right.
"I pierced my tongue," Kurt told her, sticking his tongue out at the end of the sentence to show her.
"You pierced your tongue?" Rachel wailed. "Oh my god! That is so gross, put that away! I don't want to look at it. Does it hurt?"
"Eh, it's not that bad, actually," Kurt explained. "Louis did it for free when he fixed my tattoo."
"You fixed it?" Rachel asked. "What did he do?"
Kurt turned around and started to unbutton his shirt. "He got a little creative with the phrasing – one might say poetic – but, you know, I really do think he captured my essence, given the circumstances."
"Let me see," Rachel encouraged as Kurt slipped his shirt off of his shoulder so she could read his new tattoo.
"'It's got Bette Midler'," she read the words aloud. "'It's got Bette Midler'... oh my god, that is genius and it makes absolutely no sense!"
"But it makes perfect sense," Kurt said as he turned back to face Rachel and buttoned up his shirt, "and I honestly kind of love it."
"So, uh, what about the tongue stud?" Rachel asked.
"Um..." Kurt sat down near her on the edge of her bed, "I think I was in the same boat as you," he admitted. "Ever since Finn died, I've been going about my business, but I've also kinda been in a trance. And I guess I just needed to be shocked back to life. And... there's something about having a metal stud go through your tongue that does the trick."
Rachel laughed softly.
"So, are you going to talk like that forever?" she asked.
"No, it should go down after a couple days," Kurt said. "You should totally get one of these," he teased her, motioning to his mouth.
"Oh, yeah, totally," Rachel played along.
"Yeah, or rethink that tattoo," Kurt said, more seriously. He wasn't sure if he would keep his tongue piercing, but he loved his new tattoo.
"I– I don't, I just... I don't think there's anything that I would, like, love enough that I would want to get on my body for the next fifty years," Rachel told him, "so..."
"Well, suit yourself," Kurt said as he stood up. "Meanwhile, I'm gonna go Skype with Blaine and show him my new tat and piercing. Maybe if I play a little Maroon 5, I'll get cyber-lucky."
He winked dramatically and walked away to his room for his Skype date with Blaine.
BLAINE
"Hey!" Blaine smiled as Kurt's image appeared on his screen.
Kurt smiled, but didn't say anything. Instead, his smile turned slightly shy as he started to unbutton his bright red shirt.
Blaine blinked a few times and swallowed heavily, not sure what Kurt was doing. "Um...?" he started to ask, but Kurt held up a hand to stop him before quickly tugging off his shirt and scarf. Then, he winked at Blaine and scooted around so he was facing away from the camera.
There was something on the upper right side of his back. A little string of letters.
A rush of heat flooded into Blaine's face as Kurt turned his head to glance at Blaine.
"Is that a tattoo?" Blaine asked, trying to keep his voice even.
"Yup!" Kurt confirmed happily as he shifted around until he was lying on the bed on his stomach, facing Blaine again. He put his chin on his hands.
"You... when did you...?" Blaine asked.
"There's something else," Kurt said, and his voice sounded strange. Like he had something in his mouth.
"Okay," Blaine encouraged him to continue.
Kurt laughed and buried his face in his hands briefly before lifting his head again and sticking out his tongue.
His tongue was pierced.
For a moment, all Blaine could do was pray that his face didn't look as red as it felt.
"Do you want to hear the story or do you need a minute?" Kurt teased.
Blaine huffed out a soft laugh and shifted in his desk chair. "I want to hear the story," he said.
Kurt's eyes lit up, and he launched quickly into the tale. By the time he finished with a breathless "and I'm hoping you're not upset, because I kind of love the tattoo and I've got to let the swelling go down before I make a final decision about the tongue piercing but I'm surprisingly not traumatized by it", Blaine had recovered slightly, but the lisp in Kurt's voice made it difficult to look anywhere but at his lips.
"You look so hot," he said before he could stop himself.
For a moment Kurt's face shone with joy, and then he leaned closer to the webcam.
"You're going to be here in less than a week," he reminded them both.
"Is... Rachel there?" Blaine had to ask.
Kurt sighed. "Yeah," he said, disappointed. "Let's call this a tease of things to come."
KURT
Blaine shifted in his chair again, and Kurt grinned at him before scooting back a little so he wasn't so close to his laptop screen.
"Can I change the subject?" Kurt asked.
"Please," Blaine urged.
"This is not going to sound as serious as I want it to because of ..." Kurt waved his hand at his mouth as he spoke with a heavy lisp, "but I want to apologize."
Blaine scrunched his face in confusion.
"Ever since Finn died," Kurt said, studying Blaine's face on the screen in front of him as he spoke, "I've been kind of... stuck. Not quite paralyzed, but not really myself."
"Is that why you got the tattoo and the piercing?" Blaine guessed.
"Rachel and I went, Monday night," Kurt confessed. "We were both feeling uninspired, and we wanted to live, you know?"
"Rachel got one, too?" Blaine asked, surprised.
"No," Kurt rolled his eyes. "She let me go back to get mine first and then chickened out."
Blaine laughed. "Oh my god."
"Anyway," Kurt returned to the point he was trying to make, "I just wanted to let you know that I... I guess I didn't even really realize that I was kind of out of it, but I'm starting to feel better."
"I haven't felt like you've been pulling away or anything, if that's what you mean," Blaine reassured him. "Is there anything I can do to help?"
"This might be the sappiest thing I've ever said," Kurt replied, "but, honestly? Just having you in my life helps."
Since their reconciliation, Kurt had discovered a new appreciation for their partnership. Even when they were hundreds of miles apart, they were together. They were always there for each other, in spirit. All day and all night.
"I'm glad," Blaine smiled at him, that smile that meant I love you so much. "I'm so excited to see you next week."
"And this?" Kurt stuck his tongue out, and then laughed, pleased, as Blaine buried his face in his hands to hide his blushing. "Don't worry; I won't take it out until you've had a chance to see it at least once."
BLAINE
The rest of the week passed quickly for Blaine. There was drama for some of his friends. Marley found out that Jake had cheated on her, and Blaine felt sick to his stomach that entire afternoon. Unique was forced to use a purple portable toilet that Sue had bolted to the choir room floor until Mr. Schu finally made a deal with Sue: no more twerking in exchange for a key for Unique so she could use the unisex staff bathroom. But, outside of his sympathy and very minor involvement with those issues, the final days of the week were pleasant for Blaine.
He had something to look forward to. He was counting down the days until his trip to New York, and the number was now a single digit.
Soon, he would be in New York, visiting Kurt and auditioning for NYADA and setting things in motion that would affect the rest of his life.
Mr. Schu asked for suggestions for New Directions' final song of the week – something "upbeat, optimistic, full of youth and hope" – and Blaine knew the perfect song. As they danced and sang The Royal Concept's On Our Way together in the auditorium, Blaine knew that this was the New Directions that could win Nationals.
They didn't need twerking. They didn't need to be edgy. They needed to be inspiring. They needed to inspire the judges the way they inspired each other: through songs. Songs that meant something.
"To your place, place, place. We're on our way, way, way. We're on our way, way, way. We're on our way, somehow. Hold me close, close, close. We're losing time, time, time. We're losing time, time, time. We're falling to the ground. We are young, we are one. Let us shine for what it's worth."
I don't have any tattoos at this point in my life and I've never had my tongue pierced. So, I apologize if anything about that stuff is inaccurate. I tried to just gloss over the exact details! Also, on the topic of tattoos... Kurt doesn't find out about it in this episode (or ever, I imagine), but Rachel's "Finn" tattoo? One of the sweetest things Glee has ever done.
Revisiting these early episodes now, after the season is over, is so nice. They're so enjoyable! The second half of the season – which, really, is season 5... this first part is a continuation of season 4 – is SO good that I sort of forgot that all of this was great, too! The song at the end of this episode is so GLEE. One of my favorite New Directions end-of-episode performances.
Up next... 5x06: Movin' Out!