ELLIOTT
Elliott entered the Spotlight Diner and saw Kurt almost right away. He was wiping down a table in an empty section of the restaurant. Elliott waited for him to look up and then waved. Kurt nodded, glanced over his shoulder at the bar, then picked up a menu and headed his way.
"Hello, welcome to Spotlight. I am Kurt, I'll be your chorus boy waiter today," he said loudly, and then added quietly "Sorry, I can't take an intermission so soon after starting my shift. Are you okay? Your text didn't say much, it got me kinda worried."
Elliott grimaced. "I'm okay. I just really need to talk to you."
Kurt cocked his head. "So your text said. Come on." He lead Elliott to a quiet corner table away from the other customers and put the menu down in front of him.
"I'm gonna do the ketchups!" he yelled towards the bar, and went over to the table he had been cleaning to pick up a tray with a dozen or so ketchup bottles on it. He brought the tray back to Elliott's side of the diner and put them down on the table behind him. Elliott watched for a moment as Kurt unscrewed the tops, put a funnel into one of the bottles, and refilled it with the contents of another bottle.
"That's...kind of gross," Elliott remarked.
Kurt shrugged. "It's not the grossest thing around here. And we go through so much ketchup, this stuff is never much older than a week anyway. But better not have any, just to be safe." He put the empty bottle down and picked up another one to look busy. "So what's this about?"
"It's Blaine," Elliott said. "He came to my place."
Kurt stopped what he was doing and looked at him. "When? Just now?"
"Yeah. I was just cooking when he knocked. Well, pounded, actually, like he was trying to break my door down."
"Oh god. He must have come directly from the loft…" Kurt let out. "We sort of had a fight."
Elliott nodded. "I figured as much. He was pretty upset. When I opened the door, he just walzed in without saying anything, with like, steam coming from his ears."
Kurt rolled his eyes and offered Elliott an apologetic look.
"So, at first I was afraid he was going to announce he was moving in, you know, Rachel-style, because you kids from Ohio tend to do that-" he chuckled, "but it turned out he wanted to talk to me about you."
"We need to talk," Blaine announced angrily. Before Elliott could say anything, Blaine continued. "I don't have your number and I don't have your email, and we're not friends on facebook, because I made it a point to wait for YOU to friend me-"
Elliott tried to speak up again, but Blaine plowed on.
"-which you never did by the way, so here I am, face to face…. And I just wanna hear you admit it."
"Admit what?" Elliott asked, a little baffled. What on earth had he done- well, lately anyway- to offend Blaine?
Blaine was making an impatient gesture with his hands. "That you're trying to steal Kurt away from me, Starchild Gilbert!" He spat out Elliott's stage name like it was a bad fruit.
Elliott frowned. "What what are you talking about?" he asked, snorting a little.
"Oh puh-lease," Blaine let out affectedly, "I was on to you the second I saw that weird cinnamon roll selfie you took months ago that you guys posted. You remember that? With you slobbering over my fiancé?"
"It was a friendly peck on the-" Elliott tried to counter.
"And then I get to New York and all of the sudden it's 'Elliott thinks this and Elliott thinks that and Elliott's hair is so full and thick it doesn't have to rely on hair gel-"
Despite the situation, Kurt let out a yelp of a laugh, covering his mouth with his hand quickly and checking the counter to see if his employer had heard him. No one was paying them any notice. "He said that?" Kurt whispered.
"I know, weird right?"
"Well, I do love your hair," Kurt mused, but then shook his head a little as if to clear it. "Go on. Then what?"
"Then, Blaine got really weird…" Elliott said.
"I may not be a cool steampunk glitterrock vampire with, like, tats and guyliner, but you know what? I love Kurt. I love him. He is MY fiance, not yours, so back off!"
Kurt was watching Elliott with a frown on his face. Elliott wasn't sure how to interpret his expression. He struggled to explain. "I know it sounds kind of sweet, but you should have seen the way he said it. Man, he was like….a maniac or something. You know, like he had you chained up on his basement or in a dry well somewhere and I was snooping around too much."
Kurt smirked at that last comparison, but his smile faded rather fast. "I know what you mean."
Elliott's stomach dropped a little. "You do? Is he like that often?" He hesitated. Kurt had told him a lot about Blaine, but he never said anything about him being so aggressive. "He hasn't hurt you, has he?"
Kurt quickly shook his head and started refilling ketchup bottles again. "No, of course not." He was quiet for a moment. "What did you say to him?"
Elliott sighed. "Well, I tried to calm him down, and I told him that we're just friends. You know, that you're amazing and cute, but that I don't think of you like that."
Kurt's expression became a little guarded. Elliott noticed, but he knew he had to go on and get over the difficult part now.
"So he sat down and told me how hard it is for him to catch up with you here in New York and that he's trying so hard. I told him he's trying a little too hard," he offered Kurt a little smile, "and I tried to put it in his head that you need a little room to breathe." Elliott paused and braced himself. "Then, he tried to kiss me."
" What ?!"
Several customers were looking their way now, but Kurt ignored them. He was looking at Elliott with wide eyes, and his face had gone pale.
"I don't even know how it happened. He was talking and I was trying to be comforting and suddenly, he just scoots over, grabs my face and plants one on me," Elliott said, feeling his cheeks heat up. "I didn't encourage him or anything."
"Yeah. No… He does that," Kurt mumbled. "What did you do?"
"Well, I pushed him away and told him I didn't want him doing that, and he up and left. Without saying anything."
Kurt let out a long breath and stared at the ketchup bottles in front of him.
"There's more," Elliott admitted, and he could see Kurt's posture grow rigid. "I didn't think to tell you back then because I thought it had been some kind of misunderstanding, but- this is not the first time he hit on me."
"It's not," Kurt said flatly.
"I wasn't sure at the time," Elliott hurried to explain, "and I didn't want to make trouble between you two, but… when he came to visit you a few months ago, with Sam, when they were making plans to move here..."
Kurt didn't nod, nor indeed showed any indication that he had heard what his friend had said as he stared ahead, but Elliott figured he was listening anyway.
"You invited us all to that music bar, I forget what it's called-"
"Callbacks," Kurt said, then somberly added: "Why is it always Callbacks?"
Elliott wasn't sure what to say to that, so he continued.
"When you and Dani were singing, Blaine started asking me stuff like how long had I lived in New York, and if I knew my way around? I offered to take you two on a sightseeing tour, but he said he only asked because you were so busy that week and he was looking for some things to do on his own."
Kurt's head snapped up. "I skipped several classes to spend time with him! And I traded Dani for the breakfast shift here all week because he slept until eleven every day anyway!"
Elliott held up his hands in a defensive gesture, trying to remind Kurt he was just the messenger. Kurt mumbled an apology, but Elliott shook his head.
"Then what?" Kurt prompted again.
"Well, he kind of implied that the real sights he wanted to see were in the Village...with me. He said Sam might be interested in coming along too. It made me super-uncomfortable, so... I told him he should wait until you had time to go with him."
"He tends to make me uncomfortable when I come along, too," Kurt said grimly. He started loading the ketchup bottles back on the tray.
Elliott felt awful. "I'm sorry I didn't tell you sooner. I was really hoping it had been a misunderstanding."
Kurt nodded and continued his arrangement of the bottles. Elliott felt even worse now, knowing it meant his friend was retreating behind his shields.
"I hope you know I would never, ever, try to steal your man," he said, reaching over the back of his seat to put his hand on Kurt's arm.
Kurt froze. Elliott quickly let go.
"I know. It's not you, I'm just..." Kurt broke off and let out a shuddering breath. "I knew this was coming but I still kind of hoped it wouldn't, you know? There are only so many times you can forgive someone."
"So what are you gonna do?" Elliott asked.
"I don't know," Kurt said, picking up the tray. "But I have a whole shift to think about it."
Elliott left. He had offered to stay and take refills of diet soda until he could walk Kurt home, but Kurt said he preferred to be alone. It worried Elliott, but he knew that was the way Kurt dealt with things. Still, the way he took the news? Most people would probably get angry... Kurt just seemed to accept it as an inevitability. It was so messed up.
As he rode the subway, Elliott stared into the dark tunnel and wondered why Blaine - or anyone- would do something like that to Kurt. Especially after all the things Kurt had already let Blaine get away with. But maybe that's exactly why he did it. Because he could. Blaine had probably learned not to expect any serious consequences for his actions.
Kurt had told Elliott about high school, and the way Blaine had publicly accused him of cheating even though he had been the first to allow a flirty friendship to cross the lines, and how to this day Kurt wasn't even sure how far those lines had been crossed - but that Kurt eventually apologized to Blaine. Elliott also knew Blaine had cheated on Kurt when he was in Ohio and Kurt was in New York, but that Kurt still felt partially responsible for that. It was hard to understand why Kurt had accepted Blaine's proposal after everything, but then again, Elliott knew a thing or two about unhealthy relationships and being young. He looked at his own reflection in the glass and spent the rest of his way thinking about the time he was new in New York.