I do believe I have too much time on my hands.
Title: Never Letting Go ( actual worst title ever ).
Pairing(s): Finn/Kurt.
Warnings: Lots of fluff interspersed with angst and more fluff.
Spoiler(s): No.
Word count: ~16,000.
Rating: PG-13.
Summary: AU, where Finn and Kurt didn't know each other in high school. Finn works in a coffee shop. Kurt sings there.
Author's Notes: This fic grew a life of it's own and ran away with my brain for a holiday to let's-write-a-huge-long-fic land. It is the longest one shot I've written - by 8,000 words - and...yeah. It's mostly fluff. With little bits of angst and then more fluff. With many thanks to the long suffering Muffin - aka woodsgal - for encouraging me even - and especially - when she shouldn't, and for being awesome and beta-ing the fluff that comes from my head. Also, for helping me with the outfits, as I am fashion backwards. ILY, Muffin.
“I tell ya,
Cellophane,
Mister Cellophane,
Shoulda been my name,
Mister Cellophane,
'Cause you can look right through me,
Walk right by me,
And never even know I'm there.”
Actually, he was the last person Finn could imagine walking past without noticing. It wasn’t exactly like he blended in, even in the Big Apple.
He was small - well, everyone looked small compared to him, so maybe he wasn’t that small in reality - and slender and pale, with chestnut hair and blue-green eyes. Wholly unremarkable at first glance, perhaps, until you clocked his outfit.
He never wore anything that wasn’t designer or from the current line. He seemingly had an outfit for every day of the year, whereas Finn had one for every day of the week.
He also had possibly the most incredible voice Finn had ever heard, and he went by the name of Kurt Hummel.
He sang in the coffee shop where Finn worked. He had been doing for about a month now. It had become a regular thing after it became clear he was a hit. Kurt came in once a week on a Friday evening and sang and he had a bit of a following now, even though he was gay - not that anyone knew that. He was good at what he did, though, and interacted incredibly with his audience.
The song came to an end and Kurt stepped delicately from the stage, smiling at the girls who went rushing to him. He wasn’t much younger than Finn, who, at twenty five, really shouldn’t be still working the coffee shop where he’d been working since he’d moved to New York, but he still was. Kurt was just two years younger than him, but in terms of experience he was decades behind - he’d only been in NYC for six months now, and had been singing in the coffee shop for two.
“Hey, Finn. Could I have-”
“Cappuccino. Here,” Finn smiled, presenting it to Kurt with a little flourish. Kurt laughed, pushing some hair back from his forehead.
“Thank you, Finn Hudson,” he smiled, before retreating to his usual table in the window of the coffee shop.
Finn watched him for a moment, then shook his head and went back to work, cleaning behind the counter until the next customer came in.
Kurt cracked open his book but, as always, didn’t read it, instead watching Finn over the top of it.
Finn Hudson. He worked in the coffee shop, that was all. He was relatively dim, very attractive, and ridiculously tall. Ever since the first time they had met the first day Kurt had come into the coffee shop for his daily cappuccino, he had been unable to stop thinking about him.
It wasn’t even really a conscious thing. He’d be doing something totally innocuous, like ironing his socks or something, and suddenly a picture of Finn, smiling as he handed him is after show cappuccino, would pop into his head and before he knew it, he had a burnt up pair of socks. Well, one burnt up sock - Kurt had lost more pairs of socks in the last five months since he’d met Finn that he ever thought possible.
It wasn’t something that Kurt would ever tell Finn. No, telling the object of your affections that you got a hard on thinking about them while ironing your socks probably wasn’t the way to get them to kiss you. And it wasn’t like Kurt had any experience. He’d had all of one boyfriend - a guy named Sam - and that had lasted six months, before Sam had moved to the other side of the country, leaving Kurt on his own. Kurt had moved to New York two months later.
At twenty four, that was really a very pathetic score.
For the sake of appearances, Kurt turned a page in his book - it was a good job he all but had it memorised or he’d be missing out on all the integral bits of the plot. But Finn was much more interesting, in his lumbering way, wandering inelegantly between the tables, collecting up all the empties. Kurt glanced at his own and drained it, placing it down lightly and catching Finn’s eye.
“Hey, all finished?” he asked, smiling. Kurt nodded. “Are you having another today?”
Kurt thought about it. He often did stay for a second coffee, but it was only so that he could spend more time watching Finn. Which was clearly not mentally stable, and so he forced himself to shake his head, slide his bookmark into his book and stand.
“Not today, Finn. I’ll see you tomorrow,” Kurt smiled, and Finn smiled back, causing Kurt’s heart to skip a beat, or something else equally corny like that which he would never actually admit to.
“See you tomorrow, Kurt!” Finn said brightly, giving him a dorky little wave as he left. It took all of Kurt’s carefully cultivated self control not to give Finn a dorky little wave back.
Kurt smiled all the way home, and then proceeded to burn his socks.
----
Quinn came in when Kurt was there the next day.
Kurt was more than aware that Finn was straight. He was even aware that his girlfriend, Quinn - blonde and prettier than Kurt could ever hope to be - was pregnant with his child. Finn had introduced them, in fact, the first time Quinn had come in to find them chatting on Finn’s break.
“This is Kurt. He sings,” Finn had said lamely.
“Oh?” Quinn had asked, baby blues interested
“Yeah. I sing here once a week. On a Saturday,” Kurt had explained. Quinn had nodded.
“Finn raves about you - I hear you are really very good,” Quinn had said. Kurt had blushed - both at the compliment and the thought that Finn talked about him to his pretty girlfriend.
And she was in again now, with a guy with a Mohawk trailing behind her. A rather good looking guy with a Mohawk, but he was straight. They all were. And he was eyeing up Finn’s co-worker’s breasts, which gave the game away.
“Hey, I’ll be with you in a minute. Just got to collect the empties,” Finn said, grinning at them.
Kurt quickly emptied his cup and pretended to be engrossed in his book. Finn reached him and beamed. It made him look especially dim and endearing.
“Hey, Kurt. You having another?” he asked. Kurt looked up, chewing his lower lip thoughtfully and nodded.
“Please,” he said softly. Finn nodded and went to pour him one.
“I thought you only needed to collect the empties?” Mohawk guy asked. Finn just looked at him.
“I need to get Kurt another. He’s awesome. Have you met him?” Finn asked. Mohawk guy just shook his head. Quinn nodded faintly.
“Once, briefly,” she murmured. “I’ll be right back - I need to use the bathroom.”
Both guys nodded, not wanting her to elaborate, and Mohawk guy followed Finn over to Kurt’s table.
“Kurt, this is Puck, my best friend. Puck, this is Kurt. He sings here on a Saturday,” Finn said, putting Kurt’s cappuccino down gently. Puck eyed Kurt speculatively.
“So you are the guy who brings all the money into this place, huh? He doesn’t look like much,” Puck informed Finn. Finn frowned.
“He’s got a great voice, though! Isn’t that right, Kurt?” Finn asked. Kurt smiled faintly at him.
“Yes, I’ve got a good voice,” Kurt agreed. Puck blinked at him.
“Dude. You’re a fag,” he stated. Kurt flinched.
“Puck! Not cool!” Finn cried, embarrassed on Kurt’s behalf over Puck’s outburst.
“It’s okay, Finn. I’m used to it. You know, just because my voice is the way it is does not make me gay,” Kurt said calmly. Puck edged away slowly.
“Right, I’m off, Finn,” he stated, and strode over to the counter to wait for Quinn. Finn sighed and ran a hand through his hair. It made him look like a hedgehog had nested on his head and Kurt had to bite back the urge to call him Sonic.
“I’m sorry about him, Kurt,” he said. Kurt took a sip of his coffee and smiled.
“It’s fine. Like I said, I’m used to it. And I’ve suffered far worse, trust me,” he said gently.
For some reason, this angered Finn beyond all reason. He clenched his hands into tight fists, and an urge to scoop Kurt up and protect him from all harm took over. But he resisted it, and instead merely nodded.
“Well, my shift is over, so I’ll see you tomorrow,” he said instead. Kurt nodded.
“See you tomorrow, Finn.”
Kurt watched a little sadly as Finn walked away with Puck and Quinn. He left the money for his drink on the table and left the coffee shop, his still full cup left untouched.
He didn’t burn any socks that night, but he did get tear stains on his favourite silk shirt.
----
Kurt turned up the next day towards the end of Finn’s shift. He just hadn’t been able to force himself to go before then - not after yesterday. But he needed his daily coffee fix, and though there were many other coffee shops in the city, Kurt knew he’d never set foot in any of them, because only this one had Finn.
The man in question was leaning on the counter, looking depressed. There was a sad frown creasing between his eyebrows, and his big, puppy dog brown eyes were sad. Kurt stopped in front of him and Finn looked up, presenting him with the most pathetic excuse for a smile Kurt had ever seen.
“What happened?” Kurt asked gently. Finn just looked at him.
“Nothing,” he said softly, his voice low and sad. Kurt raised an eyebrow.
“If you don’t tell me, I can’t help,” he stated. Finn sighed.
“Quinn’s baby. It’s not mine. It’s Puck’s,” Finn said sadly. Kurt gasped faintly.
“When do you get off?” he asked. Finn shrugged.
“Five minutes.”
“I am taking you out for ice cream.”
Finn looked at Kurt, at this slender young man in the designer clothes, and tried to imagine him in an ice cream parlour. He found that he couldn’t.
“I never had you pegged as an ice cream type,” Finn said. Kurt smiled.
“Yes, well. It seems like right now you could do with some ice cream.”
----
Kurt took Finn to the best ice cream parlor he’d ever been to. It wasn’t nearly as fancy as he would have expected, but it was lovely and Kurt told him order what it was that he wanted. Finn felt back about it, but Kurt insisted, so Finn ordered the biggest, most extravagant thing on the menu. Kurt ordered a simple vanilla cone.
Finn’s concoction had to be made, so they took a seat and Finn watched absently as Kurt’s small, wet pink tongue darted out to lick at the ice cream, both hands holding cautiously onto the cone as if worried he’d drop it. He looked about ten years younger than normal. Finn liked it.
Kurt laughed when Finn’s ice cream arrived. It was a huge thing, ice cream and cream and wafers and bananas and strawberries and so many sauces Finn couldn’t count were piled high, and he actually had to move his head to the side to see Kurt past it. One of Kurt’s hands still held the cone, but the other was clamped to his mouth, trying to stifle to helpless laughter that was spilling from it.
“I wish you could have seen your face. You looked terrified and euphoric all at once,” Kurt chuckled, using his free hand to wipe at his eyes, were tears of mirth had gathered, glistening brightly.
“Youwhatic?” Finn asked intelligently, a spoon in his hand, staring at the mountain of stuff in front of him and wondering just where, exactly, he was meant to start.
“Incredibly happy,” Kurt said, and Finn understood what that meant, at least.
Finn sat for a few long moments, while Kurt clutched at his cone again with both hands, little pink tongue licking away. He stared at the huge pile of dessert in front of him and then tentatively lifted the spoon and dug it in. He put the mixture into his mouth and then grinned at Kurt.
“Is it good?” Kurt asked, one eyebrow raised slightly.
“Very,” Finn said, diving in for another bite.
Kurt was finished before Finn was even a quarter of the way through his mountain.
By the time Finn was two thirds of the way through, he was feeling sick, but determined to finish.
“Help me?” he pleaded of Kurt. Kurt eyed what was left of Finn’s ice cream, clearly mentally calculating how many calories there were in it - too many - but sighed and picked up a spoon anyway, putting some into his mouth and getting a bit of cream on the end of his nose in the process, which he quickly rubbed off. Finn wished he hadn’t - it had made him look incredibly cute.
They dug to the bottom of the huge bowl together, having a spoon fight over the last bit of cream and sauce which Kurt won. He then proceeded to flick it at Finn. It landed in the middle of his face and splattered out over it.
“Kurt!” Finn cried, blinking it surprise. There were even little bits of cream clinging at his eyelashes. Kurt burst into peals of helpless laughter.
Finn wiped off the cream from his face and marvelled in the glow Kurt cast when he really let himself go like that. His laughter was free and wild and Finn thought that Kurt was probably a little embarrassed about it, but he lit up the entire ice cream parlour with his laughter, bright and bubbling. His eyes were squeezed shut and little tears of joy leaked from the corners of them, trailing down over Kurt’s soft cheeks, leaving shiny trails in their tracks. He brought his left hand up to hold it sideways in front of his mouth, palm towards himself, as the laughter started to really get the better of him, entire body joining in as he laughed. He eventually managed to gain control over his runaway chuckles and looked at Finn with bright eyes, wiping away the last of the tears teetering on his eyelashes.
Finn thought that Kurt should laugh like that more often. He didn’t think he had seen anyone look more beautiful.
----
Afterwards, when they’d left and were walking along the street, Kurt shivered. It wasn’t surprising, really - he was only wearing a thin jacket over his shirt, and it was November. Finn frowned at him and slid his own jacket off, draping it gently over Kurt’s shoulders.
“Finn! But you’ll get cold!” Kurt protested. Finn just shook his head.
“No, I’m always warm. See?” he asked, clasping both Kurt’s hands in his own.
Kurt’s hands were tiny and soft and freezing, and Finn held them in his own - much larger and warmer - for a few moments before finally letting go. In the hazy light from the street lamps, he couldn’t see Kurt’s blush, but he could feel his own.
“We should be getting home,” Finn said, shoving his hands deep into the pockets of his jeans. Kurt nodded and hugged Finn’s too large jacket tighter around his slender frame. Finn couldn’t help but stare at him, dwarfed as he was by Finn’s jacket. It fit Finn fine, but it was enormous on Kurt. It made Finn’s protective instinct flare up like he’d never known it to see Kurt look so small and fragile.
“Where do you live?” Kurt asked softly. Finn frowned.
“Well. Nowhere, I suppose. I shared an apartment with Quinn, but we aren’t together and her parents paid for it so…I don’t know. I don’t have my things. I have enough money to get a hotel room for a night or two. Maybe I’ll have to go back to Lima,” Finn said thoughtfully. He didn’t like that idea.
It seemed that Kurt didn’t either.
“I have a spare room,” he said before he could stop himself.
Finn looked at him, at Kurt, slender and fashionable and wrapped up in a coat that clearly did not match his outfit - even fashioned challenged Finn could see that - and looking up at Finn gently.
“You’d let me stay with you?” Finn asked slowly. Kurt paused, bit his lower lip, and nodded.
“Of course. You’re my friend. And friends help each other out,” Kurt said. Finn blinked.
“Friends? Is that what we are?” he asked wonderingly. Kurt’s eyes widened in alarm.
“I mean…only if you wanted to be friends,” he said, cursing his inability to act like a mature adult when he was worried he’d offended someone.
But a moment later, when Finn turned to look at him and smiled a smile so bright that it pierced the darkness of the night and lit up Kurt’s entire world, he wasn’t worried anymore.
“I’d like nothing more,” Finn said.
----
Finn’s jacket smelt like him.
It was a warm smell. It smelt like coffee and deodorant and boy sweat, contrasting with the air around them which smelt like the snow the sky was pregnant with. Kurt huddled deeper into the jacket, nuzzling his nose against the collar and marvelling at his own good fortune.
Finn Hudson, object of his affections, was going to be staying at his apartment. Finn Hudson had said he’d like nothing more than being friends with Kurt. Finn Hudson had leant Kurt his jacket to keep him from being cold. Finn Hudson had held his hands.
It wasn’t a declaration of love, but as Kurt hung Finn’s jacket on a hook in the cupboard, where it was going to be living for the foreseeable future, and bade his new flat mate good night as he vanished into the spare room, Kurt thought it was enough.
----
Living with Kurt Hummel was, if nothing else, interesting. There was only one bathroom in his apartment - which was large, airy and spacious - and Kurt, it seemed, needed to spend a lot of time in there every morning. Finn had no idea just what, exactly, Kurt did in there, and he wasn’t sure he wanted to know - Kurt’s bathroom cabinet was filled with creams, many of which Finn had never heard the name of before, and Kurt had warned him that, above all else, he was not allowed to touch any of them.
Kurt had an internship at a fashion magazine. This wasn’t a surprise to Finn, but what had been a surprise was what Kurt had actually moved to New York for.
They were in the coffee shop. Kurt had just finished for the day, and Finn was on his last break, so they were having a quick coffee and a chat, like girls or French people or something.
“What did you move to New York for?” Finn asked, sipping at his coffee - black, no sugar. Kurt had pulled a face at that one but said nothing.
“I wanted to sing. On Broadway. That’s why I moved here. I guess…it just didn’t happen. And the internship came up and it was too good an opportunity to pass by, so I took it,” Kurt explained, spooning the froth off his cappuccino expertly and sliding the spoon between his lips without making it look like something that wasn’t polite, which was what it looked like if anyone else did it.
“Huh. That’s what I moved here for, too,” Finn mused. Kurt blinked at him over the rim of his cup.
“You moved to New York to sing?” he asked. Finn nodded.
“Yeah. It’s something I’ve always liked, and I was in the Glee club at my school. It was great. I really loved it, you know? And I decided that’s what I wanted to do. But it was hard work, and I needed some money and…well. I couldn’t land a role so I got a job instead. I’ve been here ever since,” he explain, waving a hand to indicate that here meant the coffee shop. Kurt nodded.
“I’ve not landed a role, either. But I keep trying. It’s what I really want, so I keep trying. I’ll never know if I don’t,” Kurt said. Finn sighed.
“I wanted to. But I liked the money. I talked with Quinn about it and when you came along and I saw you singing, I thought I’d go back to it. I’d been thinking about it for some time then, but I got serious about it seeing you singing. But she got pregnant and things changed. I needed to support her. And so I took on more hours here, and I threw away all the scripts I’d been looking at,” Finn said sadly. Kurt nodded.
“It must have been hard,” he murmured.
“It was. But I thought…I thought that her baby was mine, and I felt that it was my job to support her and make sure that our baby grew up well, so I just went with what I had. I don’t hate this job - far from it, it’s quite fun. I like meeting people and stuff. But…it’s not ideal. And it’s not what I want to be doing for the rest of my life, you know?”
“I know. You could audition some more. I know I am.”
“I don’t know. I can’t help but wonder if I never got a role because I’m simply no good.”
Kurt frowned at him.
“I am sure that is not the case, but if you have a negative attitude then it certainly won’t help. I can’t help you with learning scripts and singing. I’m good at it, Finn - you know that I am.”
Finn looked at Kurt, who had put his cup down and was looking at Finn very seriously. He meant every word he said, Finn knew that.
“Why are you so willing to help me, Kurt?”
Kurt smiled softly, and Finn felt his frown melt into a matching smile.
“Because I have the same dream, Finn. And I don’t want to see yours crushed because your girlfriend cheated on you and you are feeling vulnerable and not good enough. We can achieve our dream together,” Kurt informed him. Finn beamed at him.
“Thank you, Kurt.”
“What for?”
“For being my friend. For putting a roof over my head. For offering to help me. For everything.”
“Oh.”
They shared a silence for a moment.
“I should get back to work,” Finn said, draining his cup and getting up to do just that.
“Finn?” Kurt’s voice stopped Finn in his tracks and he looked over his shoulder at his friend.
“Yeah?”
“You’re welcome.”
Finn smiled and floated around for the rest of his shift on a cloud of happiness the likes of which he hadn’t known he could achieve.
----
The days passed. It got closer and closer to Thanksgiving and Christmas and Finn couldn’t help but wonder what Kurt was going to be doing for the holidays. He hadn’t mentioned any plans, but then, neither had Finn. It wasn’t until Finn arrived back at the apartment one day in early December to find Kurt setting up a slightly dismal looking tree.
“But…we aren’t going to be here for the holidays,” Finn stated, unwinding his scarf and putting it, along with his coat, into the cupboard - a habit that Kurt had drilled into him. Kurt looked at him, smiling sadly.
“No, we won’t. But I will be,” he said, and turned back to trailing some silver tinsel over the branches of the artificial tree.
“What do you mean?” Finn asked intelligently. Kurt sighed and turned away from the tree to look at him, hands clasped awkwardly in front of him. Finn had never seen Kurt look anything other than utterly confident in everything he did, so this awkward, unsure Kurt threw Finn.
“I mean, Finn, that you are going to go home to Lima to be with your mother and I am going to stay here,” Kurt explained patiently.
“Don’t you have any family?”
“Not any left alive.”
Finn stared at Kurt, dumbstruck.
“You mean…”
“They’re dead, yes.”
“Kurt…I…I’m sorry.”
“It’s okay, Finn. My mother died when I was young, and my father died about a year before I moved here. So, you see, this is my home. I’m not going home for the holidays because I am home.”
Finn cast his gaze around the apartment. It was nice, it was lovely, but it was no way to spend the holidays. Alone in a big apartment in a big city. No, the holidays was a time for family and friends and laughter and too much food and copious amounts of alcohol. It was not a time to spend alone in a big airy apartment with no one to share it with.
“Come home with me.”
The words had left Finn’s mouth before he even had time to register he was saying them. Kurt looked at him, eyes big and bright. It took Finn a moment to realise that it was because his friend was on the verge of tears.
“You want me to go home with you for the holidays?” Kurt asked in a voice that wobbled dangerously. Finn didn’t even have to think about the answer.
“Of course. I don’t want you spending it alone, Kurt. Come home with me. I’d love you to come, and I know my mom would too. She’d love to meet you.”
With a wordless cry, Finn suddenly found himself with his arms full of Kurt. His friend was sobbing softly, holding Finn tight. Finn smiled and wrapped his arms around Kurt, resting his cheek on top of Kurt’s soft hair.
“You want me to go home and share your family with you?” Kurt sniffed. Finn nodded against his hair, and for once Kurt said nothing about it getting messed up.
“You’ve shared your home with me. It is time I repaid the favor.”
----
Kurt often finished after Finn did, but this particular day Kurt was home when Finn got in. He knew because there was a note on the cupboard door telling him to go to the kitchen in Kurt’s small, neat calligraphy.
Clutching the note in one hand, Finn ambled to the kitchen. He found Kurt with a myriad of ingredients and contraptions that he could only imagine were for torture of some sort.
“Wha…”
“We are going to bake,” Kurt said, looking pleased with himself.
“Bake,” Finn said the word slowly, rolling it off his tongue like it was foreign.
“Yes, Finn, bake. I am not going to someone else’s home without bringing something. And my mother used to bake with me - she made the best apple and cinnamon pie. Do you like that? Does your mom? Because if she doesn’t, we can do pecan or pumpkin or something. It’s just that is my favorite and what me and my mom used to make at this time of year and…”
Kurt trailed off, tears prickling precariously at the corners of his eyes.
“No, Kurt, apple cinnamon is great. I love it and so does my mom. But…she’ll make pie. Lots of it,” Finn said, flailing his hands about in a vain attempt to make Kurt stop crying - it made Finn’s chest ache whenever he saw his friend cry.
“I know. But I want to make her something for allowing me into her home. Trust me, Finn. This is something I need to do. And you are going to help me.”
Finn just stared at Kurt for a long moment.
“Kurt,” he said slowly, “I can’t cook.”
And it was true. If it didn’t involve a toaster or a microwave, Finn was utterly hopeless. Kurt, however, just looked at him.
“Which is exactly why you must learn,” Kurt stated.
He lead Finn to the side and started explaining about flour and such. All Finn could think about was that it looked kind of like snow, and he was hit with a childish, overwhelming urge to throw some.
“Hey, Kurt?” he asked innocently. Kurt looked at him.
“Yes, Finn?”
Instead of replying, Finn just picked up some flour and threw it at Kurt. It exploded with a tiny puff and spread out it’s limbs on Kurt’s shirt.
“Finn! This shirt is Marc Jacobs! It cost me two hundred dollars! It’s the new line!” Kurt cried.
“It’ll wash,” Finn chuckled. Kurt paused mid rant and then smiled. It was a very dangerous type of a smile, and Finn shifted uncomfortably.
“So will this,” Kurt said, and then he lifted the bowl with the flour it up, stood on tiptoe and upended it all over Finn’s head.
Finn spluttered as a cascade of white obscured his vision. Kurt was giggling merrily away to himself, clearly pleased at his work, and Finn grabbed a handful of flour from the bag and threw it at Kurt.
They proceeded to have the most ridiculous and gratifying fight of Finn’s life. Flour was everywhere - in his hair, in Kurt’s hair, all over their clothes, all under their clothes, dusting every patch of exposed skin that it came into contact with, and many more besides. The kitchen, too, was almost completely white - it looked like a flour bomb had gone off, and the powdery white stuff was everywhere. Kurt sighed as he looked around the kitchen.
“You take the first shower, Finn. I’ll take longer and besides, I want to clean this mess up without getting flour on myself again when I’m clean,” Kurt said, getting out some cleaning things and setting to work.
As Finn showered, he marvelled that the most fun he’d had in months had been throwing some flour around a kitchen with someone he never would have thought he’d become close friends with.
Life was just funny like that, he supposed.
----
They ended up taking two pies with them, one apple cinnamon - that Finn had watched Kurt make, since he knew it was something Kurt had done with his mother - and one pecan, which Finn had made all by himself. It was as little burnt at the edges and had a dip in the center, but Finn had made it himself, and he was very proud of his creation.
Finn drew up outside his mother’s house and glanced at Kurt. It was the same house that he had grown up in - small, cosy, and nowhere near as grand as Kurt’s apartment, but roughly the same size. But Kurt merely grinned, eyes sparkling as he took in the fairy lights draped in all the windows.
“It’s lovely,” he said softly.
“It’s…I grew up here. It’s nothing to shout about, really, but I like it,” Finn said. Kurt smiled.
Finn’s mother met them at the door, cooing appreciatively over the pies and telling them that they shouldn’t have, her eyes shining with pride as Finn presented her with the one he had made. Kurt watched them as they hugged and laughed, and his eyes shone for a very different reason, and he missed his own mother more than ever.
“And you must be Kurt!” Finn’s mother said as she finally let go of her son and looked at him. Kurt smiled at her.
“Hello, Mrs. Hudson. I made an apple cinnamon pie for you,” he said, indicating the pie and holding out a hand for her to shake.
“Oh, come here!” she said, and she pulled Kurt roughly to her in a hug. “And call me Carole.”
Kurt blinked and slowly wrapped his arms around Finn’s mother - Carole. She was soft and mom scented, like cookies and perfume and that special smell only mother’s had. Kurt hummed, a soft, contended little hum, and buried his face into Finn’s mother’s - Carole’s - shoulder. He had missed this more than he cared to admit - the loving embrace of a mother. It was something he hadn’t experienced for too long now.
He let go awkwardly when Carole did, smiling shyly at her, embarrassed. Carole merely smiled at him warmly and stroked some hair back from his face.
“Finn has told me a lot about you. He said you don’t have any family left,” she said. Kurt bit his lower lip and shook his head slowly.
“No. My parents are both dead,” he whispered. Carole made a sympathetic noise.
“Oh, you poor baby. Come on. You are more than welcome here, okay? Here, let me show you to the spare room.”
Finn helped Kurt cart his bags up the stairs to the spare room and thanked everyone God he could think of and some he made up that his mother was accepting and understanding. Kurt seemed more relaxed than he ever had before, and that was why Finn had asked him to come here.
----
Kurt had thought that going and invading someone else’s house over the holidays would be terribly awkward, but it was anything but. Carole was a lovely woman, very caring and welcoming, and she had just opened her arms and accepted Kurt into her home. He was part of the family, almost, in the way she just accepted him. Finn was pleased, and Kurt felt at home and at peace for the first time in years.
They had Thanksgiving dinner together and ate the pies that Finn and Kurt had brought with them. The food was all delicious, and Kurt made sure to let Carole know. She had laughed and said they were old family recipes but, if he kept complimenting her like he did, she might let him sneak a peak. Then she’d winked at him.
Kurt liked Carole Hudson, and he liked her a lot.
The topic of Kurt’s love life - or lack thereof - came up one night as Finn and Kurt were taking a walk outside. The wind was brisk and cold, the sky black and decorated with a fine dusting and twinkling stars.
“Kurt, do you have a girlfriend?” Finn asked. Kurt almost choked on his own spit in surprise at the question, both because it had broken the silence and because it was a topic previously untouched.
“No, I don’t. Why?” he asked.
“I just wondered. I never see you with anyone, and with me living in your flat I don’t suppose you’ll be taking anyone home. Is there…anyone you are interested in?” Finn asked. Kurt sighed and glanced at Finn from the corner of his eye.
“Yeah,” he breathed softly, “yeah, there is someone I’m interested in. I just…they aren’t interested back.”
“Oh, that’s a shame,” Finn murmured. Kurt sighed.
“I’ve never had a girlfriend,” he said, deciding he might as well get it out of the way now. Finn spluttered.
“But you’re twenty four! How can you not have had a girlfriend?!”
“Because I had a boyfriend instead.”
Silence roared between them as Finn stared at him, taking this new piece of information in.
“You…you’re gay?”
“Yes. And I understand if that makes you uncomfortable or if you want to move out - I get it, it’s fine. I just…I should have told you earlier,” Kurt said, turning his face away. He was dreading Finn saying he’d want to move out, but Kurt couldn’t blame him. He just had to cling to the desperate hope that their friendship would pull through.
“Hey, Kurt, it’s fine. I don’t mind. Honestly. It’s cool. So…this boyfriend of yours…”
Kurt beamed at Finn and then told him about Sam and how they’d met and how they’d been and how they’d broke up.
“When he left, I guess that was when I realised there wasn’t really anything left for me. So I sold my house - my childhood home! - and bought my apartment in New York. I think that my dad would have been proud. It was a big step for me, but there was nothing left for me there, so I moved somewhere new. It was the best thing I ever did.”
Finn watched Kurt. The moonlight bathed his face and took the colour away. His hair looked a dark grey, his eyes silver, his face porcelain. Kurt turned his silver-moonlight eyes to Finn, and smiled softly.
“What about you and Quinn?” he asked.
“Well…” Finn started, trying not to gaze for too long into Kurt’s shining silver eyes for fear of getting lost and not being able to get back out again.
They spent the rest of the time talking about Quinn and Finn and Puck, about their childhood together, about all the things they did. Kurt sat enraptured, learning more than he had ever dared hope about Finn.
They stayed out all night, just talking, and as the sun began to peek tentatively over the horizon, Kurt felt hope creeping into his heart.
----
Kurt was sad to leave Lima. He had grown up in Dundee in Michigan. It was bigger than Lima but smaller - as most places were - than New York. Staying a small town in Ohio was different to everything Kurt had know, and it was nice to walk around with Finn and see him get stopped every ten minutes by someone he had known growing up. Kurt had never known that. Mostly, he knew, because almost everyone had bullied him for being gay.
But leave they had to. They both had jobs to do, and so they went back home two days before New Year’s Eve, leaving Carole to see the new year in with her friends. Kurt would miss Carole, and she had told him that he was welcome to visit any time, “without this great oaf,” she’d laughed, jerking her thumb towards Finn, who had gasped in mock offence.
“She likes you,” Finn informed him. “She’s never said that to Puck.”
Kurt smiled warmly at that thought.
“I like her, too. She’s very nice. You’re lucky to have her.”
Finn beamed, but I faded slightly as he thought of Kurt.
“I know. I’m sorry if it made you upset.”
“What, you having a mother? It didn’t upset me, Finn. I miss my mother, of course I do, but life goes on. And your mother seems to think of me as her second son anyway. I’m lucky too, Finn. I’m very lucky.” Because I have you, was the thought that Kurt didn’t add onto the end.
----
“Finn, what are you doing for New Year?”
Kurt asked this as Finn was about to leave for work. He paused in the doorway and looked at his friend, in black silk pyjamas a with some kind of ludicrous cream all over his face, a frown creasing between his eyebrows.
“Nothin’. Was going to go out or stay in. Not sure yet. Why?” Finn asked, eloquent as ever.
“There is a party at work. We are allowed to bring guests. I just wondered if you’d like to come? I mean, it’s probably not your scene. It’s at the Waldorf. You’ll have to wear a suit. But, y’know. I thought you might like to get out, and I know Puck and Quinn are out of town.”
Finn beamed at Kurt - positively beamed at him, his face almost splitting with the force of it.
“Yeah. Yeah, I’d love to.”
----
New Year’s Eve rolled around and Finn found himself standing in front of the mirror in Kurt’s hall, fighting for dominance over his bow tie. He had a tuxedo on and already he felt uncomfortable in it, but he was determined to pull it off, and to get his stupid bow tie done up.
“Here, let me do it.”
Kurt batted it hands away and Finn turned to him obediently, watching with wide eyes as Kurt did his bow tie up with quick, practiced movements.
“There. Well, Finn Hudson, you don’t clean up so bad,” Kurt said, taking a step back and looking him over, smiling.
“You look good, too,” Finn said.
And he did. Kurt wasn’t dressed in a suit, but instead was wearing a white shirt with a cream waistcoat over it, and around his neck was a silk cravat - was that the word? Finn wasn’t entirely sure, though he had heard Kurt mention he was wearing one a couple of times - of a soft gold color. His pants, too, were cream, and his shows were a soft brown color. It would have looked utterly ridiculous on Finn, but Kurt, as always, managed to pull it off.
“I know I do,” was all Kurt said in reply to the compliment. Finn huffed a laugh and Kurt smirked at him. “But thank you for telling me so.”
“You’re welcome. Thanks for saying I look good. I feel stupid.”
“I know you do. You look uncomfortable, too. But after a few glasses of champagne, you’ll be fine,” Kurt said airily. Finn laughed.
“Won’t you get stains all over your clothes?” he asked. Kurt just looked at him.
“No. I’ve had a lot of practice in not spilling things down myself,” he stated. Finn grinned.
“Okay. Are we going then?”
“Yes. Go hail a cab - I’ll be down momentarily.”
Finn nodded and ambled happily off down Kurt’s stairs, still feeling awkward in his tux but pleased, at least, to be going out in New Year’s Eve with a friend where they would be free alcohol available. Although champagne went straight to his head - it was the bubbles, Finn swore down - and he wondered if there would be anything else. From Kurt’s stories of his work, he highly doubted it.
----
Finn had been right - the only alcohol on offer was champagne. Pink champagne, at that. Well, that and some truly awful red wine that Kurt had told him was murderously expensive. Finn just thought it tasted disgusting, so he stuck to the champagne. At least that tasted alright, if Finn already felt pleasantly hazy on only two glasses of the stuff.
“Kurt! It’s great to see you here!”
This came from a skinny, well dressed guy with a shock of crisp black curls and very, very blue eyes. Finn blinked in surprise at just how blue they were.
“Oh. And who is this?” he asked after he and Kurt had exchanged hugs. Finn had his suspicions that this man was gay, but even while slightly tipsy he wasn’t likely to ask that one.
“This is Finn. Finn, this is Jasper. He’s another intern. And Jasper, don’t bother - Finn is off the market,” Kurt laughed, sipping at his own - third? Fourth? Finn couldn’t remember how many Kurt had had, only that he had just finished his third - champagne.
“Taken?” Jasper asked, looking disappointed.
“Straight,” Kurt said. Jasper sighed dramatically.
“All the best ones are,” he said. Kurt laughed again.
“What about me?”
“Apart from you, sweet cheeks, apart from you. Oh, if you’d excuse me, I do believe that some male models just arrived and they are demanding my attention. Arrivederci, ma chéri!” Jasper said, pecking Kurt’s cheek and wiggling his fingers at Finn before scurrying over to the male models.
“He seems…uh…”
Kurt laughed at Finn’s ineloquence.
“Yeah. Jasper takes some getting used to, I know. But he’s a good guy, really.”
“You like him? Is he the guy you like who you don’t think is interested? Because he seemed interested,” Finn said. Kurt smiled.
“No, he’s not the guy I’m interested in. I mean, I wouldn’t say no, but Jasper isn’t exactly one for long term relationships, you see. And…I don’t know. I know that he tends to have more than one guy on the go at once, and I know it sounds old fashioned, but I prefer to be the sole recipient of someone’s affections.”
Finn wasn’t entirely sure what some of Kurt had said actually meant, but he understood the basics, and he nodded.
“I don’t think that it is old fashioned at all. I’m the same way. Let’s drink to mono…single…mono…mono…whatsit.”
“Monogamy?”
“That too.”
Kurt laughed and raised his glass.
“To monogamy!”
“To monogamy and finding the right person!”
They clinked their glasses together and drained them. The bubbles tickled Finn’s tongue playfully and slid sweetly down his throat. He grinned at Kurt.
“Another?” he asked. Kurt grinned back.
“Maybe just the one,” he said.
----
By the time midnight neared, both Finn and Kurt were sufficiently inebriated. Finn’s bow tie had come undone and was hanging loosely around his neck, and Kurt’s cravat had been loosened. His hair was also in a disarray - though not as much as Finn’s, though of course that was little different to how it was normally. He looked wonderfully dishevelled, and Finn found that he liked his friend that way. For once, Kurt looked imperfect. It was nice to see that he wasn’t so flawless all the time.
“Ten!”
People started chanting around them and Kurt clung giddily to Finn’s arm.
“Nine!”
They both joined in on that one.
“Eight! Seven! Six!”
Kurt giggled, his eyes scrunching up adorably as he slurred over the S’s.
“Five! Four! Three! Two! One!”
Finn looked down at Kurt through drunken, heavily lidded eyes.
“Happy New Year!”
And then he bent his head to kiss his friend.
----
Finn regretted every moment of it the next morning, and none of it at all.
His head was pounding, and incessant pounding that really was terrible. He cracked his eyes open and sat up slowly, groaning, holding a hand against his clammy forehead.
He frowned as he tried to remember the previous night. All he knew was that he was currently clad in his boxers and one shoe. He cast his mind around, searching through fuzzy memories of the previous night in an attempt to find something.
He remembered…dancing. Bad dancing, because he was drunk. And he remembered Kurt dancing, his cravat hanging low and loose around his neck, laughing and doing dancing not really all that much better than his, despite the fact that Finn had the disability of his height. The alcohol had made Kurt more free than Finn had ever seen him before, and Finn couldn’t help but think Kurt should be that free more often.
He remembered champagne. Pink champagne, and lots of it. Lots and lots of champagne, flowing from a fountain…or, wait, was that chocolate? Or water? Finn couldn’t remember - but there had been a fountain somewhere. And a guy with dark hair who had called Kurt sweet cheeks - and Kurt hadn’t hit him for it, probably because he’d be a little tipsy at the time - whose name escaped him.
Finn scrunched his nose up in concentration. Midnight. What had happened at midnight?
Slowly, the memory surfaced.
Finn bent his head. He meant to just give Kurt a friendly peck on the cheek, but at the last moment Kurt turned his head to say something and Finn’s lips covered his.
It lasted ten, fifteen seconds at the outside. Kurt’s lips were soft but still beneath his. Finn pulled away and straightened up. Kurt was staring at him, eyes wide and startled.
“I meant it to be on the cheek,” Finn said. Kurt blinked.
“I figured as he much,” he said softly. Finn nodded.
“I’m sorry?”
“It’s fine. Look, balloons.”
Finn looked. As the clock had struck midnight, it seemed, a huge net had been dropped, releasing thousands of gold balloons which floated down towards them in fat, lazy arcs, like over sized autumn leaves. Between them fell gold stars.
Or maybe that was just the alcohol talking.
“Hey, Kurt?”
“Yeah, Finn?”
“Happy New Year.”
Kurt smiled at him.
“Happy New Year.”
“They say that what you’ll be doing at the same time next year is the same, right?”
“I believe it is the person you are with.”
“Oh,” Finn said softly. “Oh.”
“Yeah. I’m sure you don’t want to be with me this time next year.”
Finn frowned at Kurt.
“That’s where you are wrong. I’ve had more fun this year than any other year. Promise me, Kurt, that even if we both have partners, we’ll spend next New Year’s together.”
Kurt looked at him, seemingly confused, then his face broke out into the brightest smile Finn had ever seen on anyone, ever.
“Yeah, okay. I promise.”
Finn groaned softly. He had kissed Kurt. Kurt, his friend, who was gay. But hey, it was okay, it had only been short and it hadn’t happened again. And it wouldn’t happen again. Because Finn was straight, and Kurt wasn’t interested in him. Everything would be fine and would go back to normal.
With a sigh, Finn kicked off his shoe and tugged his sock off, then padded into the kitchen to make some coffee.
He was just pouring his second cup of the blackest coffee he’d ever made when Kurt appeared. He was in another pair of silk pyjamas - blue this time - and his hair was stuck up all over his head like a halo. Finn blinked at him. He looked like a dandelion puff.
“You look like a dandelion puff,” Finn said, then cursed his lack of control from brain to mouth before his morning caffeine fix had kicked in.
Kurt gaped at him, then squeaked in alarm and ran to the nearest mirror, nearly tripping over the hem of his pyjama bottoms - they were slightly too long for him - and running his fingers desperately through his hair to try and get it to lie flat. he groaned as his head pounded in disapproval of his sudden movements, and Finn chucked softly, putting his cup down and going over.
“You are such a girl,” he said softly. “Here, let me help.”
He reached up and started to stroke Kurt’s hair gently, smoothing it back into place. Kurt sighed happily and leant into the touch. Finn paused, and Kurt leant his head back to peer up at him.
“My mom used to do this when I was sad,” he breathed, and that fact alone made Finn start moving his fingers again.
When he was done and Kurt’s hair was presentable again, Finn wrapped his arms around his friend’s waist and gave him a brief squeeze.
“Your mom,” he said gently, “from what you’ve said, she sounds nice.”
“She was. I miss her a lot. I miss my dad, too.”
“I’m sorry.”
“It…it’s fine. Do you…do you have anymore of that coffee?”
Finn frowned at Kurt. The pauses between his words betrayed his sadness, but he nodded, deciding that if Kurt didn’t want to talk about it Finn wasn’t going to push him.
“Yeah. Come on through.”
Between them, they drank the remainder of the coffee and Finn let Kurt go shower first, then went for one himself, which woke him up considerably. Since there was nothing to do, Finn suggested they watch a movie.
“Yes, but what? I don’t know if it has escaped your notice, Finn, but we have very different tastes in just about everything.”
“I know! But I figured that, y’know. We could come to some sort of agreement.”
Kurt eyed him speculatively.
“Okay,” he said cautiously.
In the end, they watched The Lion King, because it was the only film they could find in Kurt’s apartment that neither of them objected to.
As Simba was trying desperately to awaken his father, a feeling Finn knew all too much about, he noticed that Kurt was shaking. When he looked closer, he realised it was because he was crying, and suddenly Finn didn’t feel as self conscious about the tears sparkling in his own eyes.
“Hey, come here,” Finn murmured throatily, lifting his arm in invitation. Kurt looked at him and gave him a watery smile, and moved gratefully over to him, resting his head against Finn’s chest, wiping away the tears in his eyes. Finn, remembering what Kurt had said about his mom, started to stroke his hair softly. Kurt sighed happily.
“Thank you,” he breathed.
“What for?” Finn asked, bemused.
“Taking care of me.”
“Oh. That. You’re welcome, Kurt. I mean, what are friends for?”
Kurt sighed.
“Yeah. Friends,” he’d whispered, so softly that Finn couldn’t hear him.
Part two.
Pairing(s): Finn/Kurt.
Warnings: Lots of fluff interspersed with angst and more fluff.
Spoiler(s): No.
Word count: ~16,000.
Rating: PG-13.
Summary: AU, where Finn and Kurt didn't know each other in high school. Finn works in a coffee shop. Kurt sings there.
Author's Notes: This fic grew a life of it's own and ran away with my brain for a holiday to let's-write-a-huge-long-fic land. It is the longest one shot I've written - by 8,000 words - and...yeah. It's mostly fluff. With little bits of angst and then more fluff. With many thanks to the long suffering Muffin - aka woodsgal - for encouraging me even - and especially - when she shouldn't, and for being awesome and beta-ing the fluff that comes from my head. Also, for helping me with the outfits, as I am fashion backwards. ILY, Muffin.
“I tell ya,
Cellophane,
Mister Cellophane,
Shoulda been my name,
Mister Cellophane,
'Cause you can look right through me,
Walk right by me,
And never even know I'm there.”
Actually, he was the last person Finn could imagine walking past without noticing. It wasn’t exactly like he blended in, even in the Big Apple.
He was small - well, everyone looked small compared to him, so maybe he wasn’t that small in reality - and slender and pale, with chestnut hair and blue-green eyes. Wholly unremarkable at first glance, perhaps, until you clocked his outfit.
He never wore anything that wasn’t designer or from the current line. He seemingly had an outfit for every day of the year, whereas Finn had one for every day of the week.
He also had possibly the most incredible voice Finn had ever heard, and he went by the name of Kurt Hummel.
He sang in the coffee shop where Finn worked. He had been doing for about a month now. It had become a regular thing after it became clear he was a hit. Kurt came in once a week on a Friday evening and sang and he had a bit of a following now, even though he was gay - not that anyone knew that. He was good at what he did, though, and interacted incredibly with his audience.
The song came to an end and Kurt stepped delicately from the stage, smiling at the girls who went rushing to him. He wasn’t much younger than Finn, who, at twenty five, really shouldn’t be still working the coffee shop where he’d been working since he’d moved to New York, but he still was. Kurt was just two years younger than him, but in terms of experience he was decades behind - he’d only been in NYC for six months now, and had been singing in the coffee shop for two.
“Hey, Finn. Could I have-”
“Cappuccino. Here,” Finn smiled, presenting it to Kurt with a little flourish. Kurt laughed, pushing some hair back from his forehead.
“Thank you, Finn Hudson,” he smiled, before retreating to his usual table in the window of the coffee shop.
Finn watched him for a moment, then shook his head and went back to work, cleaning behind the counter until the next customer came in.
Kurt cracked open his book but, as always, didn’t read it, instead watching Finn over the top of it.
Finn Hudson. He worked in the coffee shop, that was all. He was relatively dim, very attractive, and ridiculously tall. Ever since the first time they had met the first day Kurt had come into the coffee shop for his daily cappuccino, he had been unable to stop thinking about him.
It wasn’t even really a conscious thing. He’d be doing something totally innocuous, like ironing his socks or something, and suddenly a picture of Finn, smiling as he handed him is after show cappuccino, would pop into his head and before he knew it, he had a burnt up pair of socks. Well, one burnt up sock - Kurt had lost more pairs of socks in the last five months since he’d met Finn that he ever thought possible.
It wasn’t something that Kurt would ever tell Finn. No, telling the object of your affections that you got a hard on thinking about them while ironing your socks probably wasn’t the way to get them to kiss you. And it wasn’t like Kurt had any experience. He’d had all of one boyfriend - a guy named Sam - and that had lasted six months, before Sam had moved to the other side of the country, leaving Kurt on his own. Kurt had moved to New York two months later.
At twenty four, that was really a very pathetic score.
For the sake of appearances, Kurt turned a page in his book - it was a good job he all but had it memorised or he’d be missing out on all the integral bits of the plot. But Finn was much more interesting, in his lumbering way, wandering inelegantly between the tables, collecting up all the empties. Kurt glanced at his own and drained it, placing it down lightly and catching Finn’s eye.
“Hey, all finished?” he asked, smiling. Kurt nodded. “Are you having another today?”
Kurt thought about it. He often did stay for a second coffee, but it was only so that he could spend more time watching Finn. Which was clearly not mentally stable, and so he forced himself to shake his head, slide his bookmark into his book and stand.
“Not today, Finn. I’ll see you tomorrow,” Kurt smiled, and Finn smiled back, causing Kurt’s heart to skip a beat, or something else equally corny like that which he would never actually admit to.
“See you tomorrow, Kurt!” Finn said brightly, giving him a dorky little wave as he left. It took all of Kurt’s carefully cultivated self control not to give Finn a dorky little wave back.
Kurt smiled all the way home, and then proceeded to burn his socks.
----
Quinn came in when Kurt was there the next day.
Kurt was more than aware that Finn was straight. He was even aware that his girlfriend, Quinn - blonde and prettier than Kurt could ever hope to be - was pregnant with his child. Finn had introduced them, in fact, the first time Quinn had come in to find them chatting on Finn’s break.
“This is Kurt. He sings,” Finn had said lamely.
“Oh?” Quinn had asked, baby blues interested
“Yeah. I sing here once a week. On a Saturday,” Kurt had explained. Quinn had nodded.
“Finn raves about you - I hear you are really very good,” Quinn had said. Kurt had blushed - both at the compliment and the thought that Finn talked about him to his pretty girlfriend.
And she was in again now, with a guy with a Mohawk trailing behind her. A rather good looking guy with a Mohawk, but he was straight. They all were. And he was eyeing up Finn’s co-worker’s breasts, which gave the game away.
“Hey, I’ll be with you in a minute. Just got to collect the empties,” Finn said, grinning at them.
Kurt quickly emptied his cup and pretended to be engrossed in his book. Finn reached him and beamed. It made him look especially dim and endearing.
“Hey, Kurt. You having another?” he asked. Kurt looked up, chewing his lower lip thoughtfully and nodded.
“Please,” he said softly. Finn nodded and went to pour him one.
“I thought you only needed to collect the empties?” Mohawk guy asked. Finn just looked at him.
“I need to get Kurt another. He’s awesome. Have you met him?” Finn asked. Mohawk guy just shook his head. Quinn nodded faintly.
“Once, briefly,” she murmured. “I’ll be right back - I need to use the bathroom.”
Both guys nodded, not wanting her to elaborate, and Mohawk guy followed Finn over to Kurt’s table.
“Kurt, this is Puck, my best friend. Puck, this is Kurt. He sings here on a Saturday,” Finn said, putting Kurt’s cappuccino down gently. Puck eyed Kurt speculatively.
“So you are the guy who brings all the money into this place, huh? He doesn’t look like much,” Puck informed Finn. Finn frowned.
“He’s got a great voice, though! Isn’t that right, Kurt?” Finn asked. Kurt smiled faintly at him.
“Yes, I’ve got a good voice,” Kurt agreed. Puck blinked at him.
“Dude. You’re a fag,” he stated. Kurt flinched.
“Puck! Not cool!” Finn cried, embarrassed on Kurt’s behalf over Puck’s outburst.
“It’s okay, Finn. I’m used to it. You know, just because my voice is the way it is does not make me gay,” Kurt said calmly. Puck edged away slowly.
“Right, I’m off, Finn,” he stated, and strode over to the counter to wait for Quinn. Finn sighed and ran a hand through his hair. It made him look like a hedgehog had nested on his head and Kurt had to bite back the urge to call him Sonic.
“I’m sorry about him, Kurt,” he said. Kurt took a sip of his coffee and smiled.
“It’s fine. Like I said, I’m used to it. And I’ve suffered far worse, trust me,” he said gently.
For some reason, this angered Finn beyond all reason. He clenched his hands into tight fists, and an urge to scoop Kurt up and protect him from all harm took over. But he resisted it, and instead merely nodded.
“Well, my shift is over, so I’ll see you tomorrow,” he said instead. Kurt nodded.
“See you tomorrow, Finn.”
Kurt watched a little sadly as Finn walked away with Puck and Quinn. He left the money for his drink on the table and left the coffee shop, his still full cup left untouched.
He didn’t burn any socks that night, but he did get tear stains on his favourite silk shirt.
----
Kurt turned up the next day towards the end of Finn’s shift. He just hadn’t been able to force himself to go before then - not after yesterday. But he needed his daily coffee fix, and though there were many other coffee shops in the city, Kurt knew he’d never set foot in any of them, because only this one had Finn.
The man in question was leaning on the counter, looking depressed. There was a sad frown creasing between his eyebrows, and his big, puppy dog brown eyes were sad. Kurt stopped in front of him and Finn looked up, presenting him with the most pathetic excuse for a smile Kurt had ever seen.
“What happened?” Kurt asked gently. Finn just looked at him.
“Nothing,” he said softly, his voice low and sad. Kurt raised an eyebrow.
“If you don’t tell me, I can’t help,” he stated. Finn sighed.
“Quinn’s baby. It’s not mine. It’s Puck’s,” Finn said sadly. Kurt gasped faintly.
“When do you get off?” he asked. Finn shrugged.
“Five minutes.”
“I am taking you out for ice cream.”
Finn looked at Kurt, at this slender young man in the designer clothes, and tried to imagine him in an ice cream parlour. He found that he couldn’t.
“I never had you pegged as an ice cream type,” Finn said. Kurt smiled.
“Yes, well. It seems like right now you could do with some ice cream.”
----
Kurt took Finn to the best ice cream parlor he’d ever been to. It wasn’t nearly as fancy as he would have expected, but it was lovely and Kurt told him order what it was that he wanted. Finn felt back about it, but Kurt insisted, so Finn ordered the biggest, most extravagant thing on the menu. Kurt ordered a simple vanilla cone.
Finn’s concoction had to be made, so they took a seat and Finn watched absently as Kurt’s small, wet pink tongue darted out to lick at the ice cream, both hands holding cautiously onto the cone as if worried he’d drop it. He looked about ten years younger than normal. Finn liked it.
Kurt laughed when Finn’s ice cream arrived. It was a huge thing, ice cream and cream and wafers and bananas and strawberries and so many sauces Finn couldn’t count were piled high, and he actually had to move his head to the side to see Kurt past it. One of Kurt’s hands still held the cone, but the other was clamped to his mouth, trying to stifle to helpless laughter that was spilling from it.
“I wish you could have seen your face. You looked terrified and euphoric all at once,” Kurt chuckled, using his free hand to wipe at his eyes, were tears of mirth had gathered, glistening brightly.
“Youwhatic?” Finn asked intelligently, a spoon in his hand, staring at the mountain of stuff in front of him and wondering just where, exactly, he was meant to start.
“Incredibly happy,” Kurt said, and Finn understood what that meant, at least.
Finn sat for a few long moments, while Kurt clutched at his cone again with both hands, little pink tongue licking away. He stared at the huge pile of dessert in front of him and then tentatively lifted the spoon and dug it in. He put the mixture into his mouth and then grinned at Kurt.
“Is it good?” Kurt asked, one eyebrow raised slightly.
“Very,” Finn said, diving in for another bite.
Kurt was finished before Finn was even a quarter of the way through his mountain.
By the time Finn was two thirds of the way through, he was feeling sick, but determined to finish.
“Help me?” he pleaded of Kurt. Kurt eyed what was left of Finn’s ice cream, clearly mentally calculating how many calories there were in it - too many - but sighed and picked up a spoon anyway, putting some into his mouth and getting a bit of cream on the end of his nose in the process, which he quickly rubbed off. Finn wished he hadn’t - it had made him look incredibly cute.
They dug to the bottom of the huge bowl together, having a spoon fight over the last bit of cream and sauce which Kurt won. He then proceeded to flick it at Finn. It landed in the middle of his face and splattered out over it.
“Kurt!” Finn cried, blinking it surprise. There were even little bits of cream clinging at his eyelashes. Kurt burst into peals of helpless laughter.
Finn wiped off the cream from his face and marvelled in the glow Kurt cast when he really let himself go like that. His laughter was free and wild and Finn thought that Kurt was probably a little embarrassed about it, but he lit up the entire ice cream parlour with his laughter, bright and bubbling. His eyes were squeezed shut and little tears of joy leaked from the corners of them, trailing down over Kurt’s soft cheeks, leaving shiny trails in their tracks. He brought his left hand up to hold it sideways in front of his mouth, palm towards himself, as the laughter started to really get the better of him, entire body joining in as he laughed. He eventually managed to gain control over his runaway chuckles and looked at Finn with bright eyes, wiping away the last of the tears teetering on his eyelashes.
Finn thought that Kurt should laugh like that more often. He didn’t think he had seen anyone look more beautiful.
----
Afterwards, when they’d left and were walking along the street, Kurt shivered. It wasn’t surprising, really - he was only wearing a thin jacket over his shirt, and it was November. Finn frowned at him and slid his own jacket off, draping it gently over Kurt’s shoulders.
“Finn! But you’ll get cold!” Kurt protested. Finn just shook his head.
“No, I’m always warm. See?” he asked, clasping both Kurt’s hands in his own.
Kurt’s hands were tiny and soft and freezing, and Finn held them in his own - much larger and warmer - for a few moments before finally letting go. In the hazy light from the street lamps, he couldn’t see Kurt’s blush, but he could feel his own.
“We should be getting home,” Finn said, shoving his hands deep into the pockets of his jeans. Kurt nodded and hugged Finn’s too large jacket tighter around his slender frame. Finn couldn’t help but stare at him, dwarfed as he was by Finn’s jacket. It fit Finn fine, but it was enormous on Kurt. It made Finn’s protective instinct flare up like he’d never known it to see Kurt look so small and fragile.
“Where do you live?” Kurt asked softly. Finn frowned.
“Well. Nowhere, I suppose. I shared an apartment with Quinn, but we aren’t together and her parents paid for it so…I don’t know. I don’t have my things. I have enough money to get a hotel room for a night or two. Maybe I’ll have to go back to Lima,” Finn said thoughtfully. He didn’t like that idea.
It seemed that Kurt didn’t either.
“I have a spare room,” he said before he could stop himself.
Finn looked at him, at Kurt, slender and fashionable and wrapped up in a coat that clearly did not match his outfit - even fashioned challenged Finn could see that - and looking up at Finn gently.
“You’d let me stay with you?” Finn asked slowly. Kurt paused, bit his lower lip, and nodded.
“Of course. You’re my friend. And friends help each other out,” Kurt said. Finn blinked.
“Friends? Is that what we are?” he asked wonderingly. Kurt’s eyes widened in alarm.
“I mean…only if you wanted to be friends,” he said, cursing his inability to act like a mature adult when he was worried he’d offended someone.
But a moment later, when Finn turned to look at him and smiled a smile so bright that it pierced the darkness of the night and lit up Kurt’s entire world, he wasn’t worried anymore.
“I’d like nothing more,” Finn said.
----
Finn’s jacket smelt like him.
It was a warm smell. It smelt like coffee and deodorant and boy sweat, contrasting with the air around them which smelt like the snow the sky was pregnant with. Kurt huddled deeper into the jacket, nuzzling his nose against the collar and marvelling at his own good fortune.
Finn Hudson, object of his affections, was going to be staying at his apartment. Finn Hudson had said he’d like nothing more than being friends with Kurt. Finn Hudson had leant Kurt his jacket to keep him from being cold. Finn Hudson had held his hands.
It wasn’t a declaration of love, but as Kurt hung Finn’s jacket on a hook in the cupboard, where it was going to be living for the foreseeable future, and bade his new flat mate good night as he vanished into the spare room, Kurt thought it was enough.
----
Living with Kurt Hummel was, if nothing else, interesting. There was only one bathroom in his apartment - which was large, airy and spacious - and Kurt, it seemed, needed to spend a lot of time in there every morning. Finn had no idea just what, exactly, Kurt did in there, and he wasn’t sure he wanted to know - Kurt’s bathroom cabinet was filled with creams, many of which Finn had never heard the name of before, and Kurt had warned him that, above all else, he was not allowed to touch any of them.
Kurt had an internship at a fashion magazine. This wasn’t a surprise to Finn, but what had been a surprise was what Kurt had actually moved to New York for.
They were in the coffee shop. Kurt had just finished for the day, and Finn was on his last break, so they were having a quick coffee and a chat, like girls or French people or something.
“What did you move to New York for?” Finn asked, sipping at his coffee - black, no sugar. Kurt had pulled a face at that one but said nothing.
“I wanted to sing. On Broadway. That’s why I moved here. I guess…it just didn’t happen. And the internship came up and it was too good an opportunity to pass by, so I took it,” Kurt explained, spooning the froth off his cappuccino expertly and sliding the spoon between his lips without making it look like something that wasn’t polite, which was what it looked like if anyone else did it.
“Huh. That’s what I moved here for, too,” Finn mused. Kurt blinked at him over the rim of his cup.
“You moved to New York to sing?” he asked. Finn nodded.
“Yeah. It’s something I’ve always liked, and I was in the Glee club at my school. It was great. I really loved it, you know? And I decided that’s what I wanted to do. But it was hard work, and I needed some money and…well. I couldn’t land a role so I got a job instead. I’ve been here ever since,” he explain, waving a hand to indicate that here meant the coffee shop. Kurt nodded.
“I’ve not landed a role, either. But I keep trying. It’s what I really want, so I keep trying. I’ll never know if I don’t,” Kurt said. Finn sighed.
“I wanted to. But I liked the money. I talked with Quinn about it and when you came along and I saw you singing, I thought I’d go back to it. I’d been thinking about it for some time then, but I got serious about it seeing you singing. But she got pregnant and things changed. I needed to support her. And so I took on more hours here, and I threw away all the scripts I’d been looking at,” Finn said sadly. Kurt nodded.
“It must have been hard,” he murmured.
“It was. But I thought…I thought that her baby was mine, and I felt that it was my job to support her and make sure that our baby grew up well, so I just went with what I had. I don’t hate this job - far from it, it’s quite fun. I like meeting people and stuff. But…it’s not ideal. And it’s not what I want to be doing for the rest of my life, you know?”
“I know. You could audition some more. I know I am.”
“I don’t know. I can’t help but wonder if I never got a role because I’m simply no good.”
Kurt frowned at him.
“I am sure that is not the case, but if you have a negative attitude then it certainly won’t help. I can’t help you with learning scripts and singing. I’m good at it, Finn - you know that I am.”
Finn looked at Kurt, who had put his cup down and was looking at Finn very seriously. He meant every word he said, Finn knew that.
“Why are you so willing to help me, Kurt?”
Kurt smiled softly, and Finn felt his frown melt into a matching smile.
“Because I have the same dream, Finn. And I don’t want to see yours crushed because your girlfriend cheated on you and you are feeling vulnerable and not good enough. We can achieve our dream together,” Kurt informed him. Finn beamed at him.
“Thank you, Kurt.”
“What for?”
“For being my friend. For putting a roof over my head. For offering to help me. For everything.”
“Oh.”
They shared a silence for a moment.
“I should get back to work,” Finn said, draining his cup and getting up to do just that.
“Finn?” Kurt’s voice stopped Finn in his tracks and he looked over his shoulder at his friend.
“Yeah?”
“You’re welcome.”
Finn smiled and floated around for the rest of his shift on a cloud of happiness the likes of which he hadn’t known he could achieve.
----
The days passed. It got closer and closer to Thanksgiving and Christmas and Finn couldn’t help but wonder what Kurt was going to be doing for the holidays. He hadn’t mentioned any plans, but then, neither had Finn. It wasn’t until Finn arrived back at the apartment one day in early December to find Kurt setting up a slightly dismal looking tree.
“But…we aren’t going to be here for the holidays,” Finn stated, unwinding his scarf and putting it, along with his coat, into the cupboard - a habit that Kurt had drilled into him. Kurt looked at him, smiling sadly.
“No, we won’t. But I will be,” he said, and turned back to trailing some silver tinsel over the branches of the artificial tree.
“What do you mean?” Finn asked intelligently. Kurt sighed and turned away from the tree to look at him, hands clasped awkwardly in front of him. Finn had never seen Kurt look anything other than utterly confident in everything he did, so this awkward, unsure Kurt threw Finn.
“I mean, Finn, that you are going to go home to Lima to be with your mother and I am going to stay here,” Kurt explained patiently.
“Don’t you have any family?”
“Not any left alive.”
Finn stared at Kurt, dumbstruck.
“You mean…”
“They’re dead, yes.”
“Kurt…I…I’m sorry.”
“It’s okay, Finn. My mother died when I was young, and my father died about a year before I moved here. So, you see, this is my home. I’m not going home for the holidays because I am home.”
Finn cast his gaze around the apartment. It was nice, it was lovely, but it was no way to spend the holidays. Alone in a big apartment in a big city. No, the holidays was a time for family and friends and laughter and too much food and copious amounts of alcohol. It was not a time to spend alone in a big airy apartment with no one to share it with.
“Come home with me.”
The words had left Finn’s mouth before he even had time to register he was saying them. Kurt looked at him, eyes big and bright. It took Finn a moment to realise that it was because his friend was on the verge of tears.
“You want me to go home with you for the holidays?” Kurt asked in a voice that wobbled dangerously. Finn didn’t even have to think about the answer.
“Of course. I don’t want you spending it alone, Kurt. Come home with me. I’d love you to come, and I know my mom would too. She’d love to meet you.”
With a wordless cry, Finn suddenly found himself with his arms full of Kurt. His friend was sobbing softly, holding Finn tight. Finn smiled and wrapped his arms around Kurt, resting his cheek on top of Kurt’s soft hair.
“You want me to go home and share your family with you?” Kurt sniffed. Finn nodded against his hair, and for once Kurt said nothing about it getting messed up.
“You’ve shared your home with me. It is time I repaid the favor.”
----
Kurt often finished after Finn did, but this particular day Kurt was home when Finn got in. He knew because there was a note on the cupboard door telling him to go to the kitchen in Kurt’s small, neat calligraphy.
Clutching the note in one hand, Finn ambled to the kitchen. He found Kurt with a myriad of ingredients and contraptions that he could only imagine were for torture of some sort.
“Wha…”
“We are going to bake,” Kurt said, looking pleased with himself.
“Bake,” Finn said the word slowly, rolling it off his tongue like it was foreign.
“Yes, Finn, bake. I am not going to someone else’s home without bringing something. And my mother used to bake with me - she made the best apple and cinnamon pie. Do you like that? Does your mom? Because if she doesn’t, we can do pecan or pumpkin or something. It’s just that is my favorite and what me and my mom used to make at this time of year and…”
Kurt trailed off, tears prickling precariously at the corners of his eyes.
“No, Kurt, apple cinnamon is great. I love it and so does my mom. But…she’ll make pie. Lots of it,” Finn said, flailing his hands about in a vain attempt to make Kurt stop crying - it made Finn’s chest ache whenever he saw his friend cry.
“I know. But I want to make her something for allowing me into her home. Trust me, Finn. This is something I need to do. And you are going to help me.”
Finn just stared at Kurt for a long moment.
“Kurt,” he said slowly, “I can’t cook.”
And it was true. If it didn’t involve a toaster or a microwave, Finn was utterly hopeless. Kurt, however, just looked at him.
“Which is exactly why you must learn,” Kurt stated.
He lead Finn to the side and started explaining about flour and such. All Finn could think about was that it looked kind of like snow, and he was hit with a childish, overwhelming urge to throw some.
“Hey, Kurt?” he asked innocently. Kurt looked at him.
“Yes, Finn?”
Instead of replying, Finn just picked up some flour and threw it at Kurt. It exploded with a tiny puff and spread out it’s limbs on Kurt’s shirt.
“Finn! This shirt is Marc Jacobs! It cost me two hundred dollars! It’s the new line!” Kurt cried.
“It’ll wash,” Finn chuckled. Kurt paused mid rant and then smiled. It was a very dangerous type of a smile, and Finn shifted uncomfortably.
“So will this,” Kurt said, and then he lifted the bowl with the flour it up, stood on tiptoe and upended it all over Finn’s head.
Finn spluttered as a cascade of white obscured his vision. Kurt was giggling merrily away to himself, clearly pleased at his work, and Finn grabbed a handful of flour from the bag and threw it at Kurt.
They proceeded to have the most ridiculous and gratifying fight of Finn’s life. Flour was everywhere - in his hair, in Kurt’s hair, all over their clothes, all under their clothes, dusting every patch of exposed skin that it came into contact with, and many more besides. The kitchen, too, was almost completely white - it looked like a flour bomb had gone off, and the powdery white stuff was everywhere. Kurt sighed as he looked around the kitchen.
“You take the first shower, Finn. I’ll take longer and besides, I want to clean this mess up without getting flour on myself again when I’m clean,” Kurt said, getting out some cleaning things and setting to work.
As Finn showered, he marvelled that the most fun he’d had in months had been throwing some flour around a kitchen with someone he never would have thought he’d become close friends with.
Life was just funny like that, he supposed.
----
They ended up taking two pies with them, one apple cinnamon - that Finn had watched Kurt make, since he knew it was something Kurt had done with his mother - and one pecan, which Finn had made all by himself. It was as little burnt at the edges and had a dip in the center, but Finn had made it himself, and he was very proud of his creation.
Finn drew up outside his mother’s house and glanced at Kurt. It was the same house that he had grown up in - small, cosy, and nowhere near as grand as Kurt’s apartment, but roughly the same size. But Kurt merely grinned, eyes sparkling as he took in the fairy lights draped in all the windows.
“It’s lovely,” he said softly.
“It’s…I grew up here. It’s nothing to shout about, really, but I like it,” Finn said. Kurt smiled.
Finn’s mother met them at the door, cooing appreciatively over the pies and telling them that they shouldn’t have, her eyes shining with pride as Finn presented her with the one he had made. Kurt watched them as they hugged and laughed, and his eyes shone for a very different reason, and he missed his own mother more than ever.
“And you must be Kurt!” Finn’s mother said as she finally let go of her son and looked at him. Kurt smiled at her.
“Hello, Mrs. Hudson. I made an apple cinnamon pie for you,” he said, indicating the pie and holding out a hand for her to shake.
“Oh, come here!” she said, and she pulled Kurt roughly to her in a hug. “And call me Carole.”
Kurt blinked and slowly wrapped his arms around Finn’s mother - Carole. She was soft and mom scented, like cookies and perfume and that special smell only mother’s had. Kurt hummed, a soft, contended little hum, and buried his face into Finn’s mother’s - Carole’s - shoulder. He had missed this more than he cared to admit - the loving embrace of a mother. It was something he hadn’t experienced for too long now.
He let go awkwardly when Carole did, smiling shyly at her, embarrassed. Carole merely smiled at him warmly and stroked some hair back from his face.
“Finn has told me a lot about you. He said you don’t have any family left,” she said. Kurt bit his lower lip and shook his head slowly.
“No. My parents are both dead,” he whispered. Carole made a sympathetic noise.
“Oh, you poor baby. Come on. You are more than welcome here, okay? Here, let me show you to the spare room.”
Finn helped Kurt cart his bags up the stairs to the spare room and thanked everyone God he could think of and some he made up that his mother was accepting and understanding. Kurt seemed more relaxed than he ever had before, and that was why Finn had asked him to come here.
----
Kurt had thought that going and invading someone else’s house over the holidays would be terribly awkward, but it was anything but. Carole was a lovely woman, very caring and welcoming, and she had just opened her arms and accepted Kurt into her home. He was part of the family, almost, in the way she just accepted him. Finn was pleased, and Kurt felt at home and at peace for the first time in years.
They had Thanksgiving dinner together and ate the pies that Finn and Kurt had brought with them. The food was all delicious, and Kurt made sure to let Carole know. She had laughed and said they were old family recipes but, if he kept complimenting her like he did, she might let him sneak a peak. Then she’d winked at him.
Kurt liked Carole Hudson, and he liked her a lot.
The topic of Kurt’s love life - or lack thereof - came up one night as Finn and Kurt were taking a walk outside. The wind was brisk and cold, the sky black and decorated with a fine dusting and twinkling stars.
“Kurt, do you have a girlfriend?” Finn asked. Kurt almost choked on his own spit in surprise at the question, both because it had broken the silence and because it was a topic previously untouched.
“No, I don’t. Why?” he asked.
“I just wondered. I never see you with anyone, and with me living in your flat I don’t suppose you’ll be taking anyone home. Is there…anyone you are interested in?” Finn asked. Kurt sighed and glanced at Finn from the corner of his eye.
“Yeah,” he breathed softly, “yeah, there is someone I’m interested in. I just…they aren’t interested back.”
“Oh, that’s a shame,” Finn murmured. Kurt sighed.
“I’ve never had a girlfriend,” he said, deciding he might as well get it out of the way now. Finn spluttered.
“But you’re twenty four! How can you not have had a girlfriend?!”
“Because I had a boyfriend instead.”
Silence roared between them as Finn stared at him, taking this new piece of information in.
“You…you’re gay?”
“Yes. And I understand if that makes you uncomfortable or if you want to move out - I get it, it’s fine. I just…I should have told you earlier,” Kurt said, turning his face away. He was dreading Finn saying he’d want to move out, but Kurt couldn’t blame him. He just had to cling to the desperate hope that their friendship would pull through.
“Hey, Kurt, it’s fine. I don’t mind. Honestly. It’s cool. So…this boyfriend of yours…”
Kurt beamed at Finn and then told him about Sam and how they’d met and how they’d been and how they’d broke up.
“When he left, I guess that was when I realised there wasn’t really anything left for me. So I sold my house - my childhood home! - and bought my apartment in New York. I think that my dad would have been proud. It was a big step for me, but there was nothing left for me there, so I moved somewhere new. It was the best thing I ever did.”
Finn watched Kurt. The moonlight bathed his face and took the colour away. His hair looked a dark grey, his eyes silver, his face porcelain. Kurt turned his silver-moonlight eyes to Finn, and smiled softly.
“What about you and Quinn?” he asked.
“Well…” Finn started, trying not to gaze for too long into Kurt’s shining silver eyes for fear of getting lost and not being able to get back out again.
They spent the rest of the time talking about Quinn and Finn and Puck, about their childhood together, about all the things they did. Kurt sat enraptured, learning more than he had ever dared hope about Finn.
They stayed out all night, just talking, and as the sun began to peek tentatively over the horizon, Kurt felt hope creeping into his heart.
----
Kurt was sad to leave Lima. He had grown up in Dundee in Michigan. It was bigger than Lima but smaller - as most places were - than New York. Staying a small town in Ohio was different to everything Kurt had know, and it was nice to walk around with Finn and see him get stopped every ten minutes by someone he had known growing up. Kurt had never known that. Mostly, he knew, because almost everyone had bullied him for being gay.
But leave they had to. They both had jobs to do, and so they went back home two days before New Year’s Eve, leaving Carole to see the new year in with her friends. Kurt would miss Carole, and she had told him that he was welcome to visit any time, “without this great oaf,” she’d laughed, jerking her thumb towards Finn, who had gasped in mock offence.
“She likes you,” Finn informed him. “She’s never said that to Puck.”
Kurt smiled warmly at that thought.
“I like her, too. She’s very nice. You’re lucky to have her.”
Finn beamed, but I faded slightly as he thought of Kurt.
“I know. I’m sorry if it made you upset.”
“What, you having a mother? It didn’t upset me, Finn. I miss my mother, of course I do, but life goes on. And your mother seems to think of me as her second son anyway. I’m lucky too, Finn. I’m very lucky.” Because I have you, was the thought that Kurt didn’t add onto the end.
----
“Finn, what are you doing for New Year?”
Kurt asked this as Finn was about to leave for work. He paused in the doorway and looked at his friend, in black silk pyjamas a with some kind of ludicrous cream all over his face, a frown creasing between his eyebrows.
“Nothin’. Was going to go out or stay in. Not sure yet. Why?” Finn asked, eloquent as ever.
“There is a party at work. We are allowed to bring guests. I just wondered if you’d like to come? I mean, it’s probably not your scene. It’s at the Waldorf. You’ll have to wear a suit. But, y’know. I thought you might like to get out, and I know Puck and Quinn are out of town.”
Finn beamed at Kurt - positively beamed at him, his face almost splitting with the force of it.
“Yeah. Yeah, I’d love to.”
----
New Year’s Eve rolled around and Finn found himself standing in front of the mirror in Kurt’s hall, fighting for dominance over his bow tie. He had a tuxedo on and already he felt uncomfortable in it, but he was determined to pull it off, and to get his stupid bow tie done up.
“Here, let me do it.”
Kurt batted it hands away and Finn turned to him obediently, watching with wide eyes as Kurt did his bow tie up with quick, practiced movements.
“There. Well, Finn Hudson, you don’t clean up so bad,” Kurt said, taking a step back and looking him over, smiling.
“You look good, too,” Finn said.
And he did. Kurt wasn’t dressed in a suit, but instead was wearing a white shirt with a cream waistcoat over it, and around his neck was a silk cravat - was that the word? Finn wasn’t entirely sure, though he had heard Kurt mention he was wearing one a couple of times - of a soft gold color. His pants, too, were cream, and his shows were a soft brown color. It would have looked utterly ridiculous on Finn, but Kurt, as always, managed to pull it off.
“I know I do,” was all Kurt said in reply to the compliment. Finn huffed a laugh and Kurt smirked at him. “But thank you for telling me so.”
“You’re welcome. Thanks for saying I look good. I feel stupid.”
“I know you do. You look uncomfortable, too. But after a few glasses of champagne, you’ll be fine,” Kurt said airily. Finn laughed.
“Won’t you get stains all over your clothes?” he asked. Kurt just looked at him.
“No. I’ve had a lot of practice in not spilling things down myself,” he stated. Finn grinned.
“Okay. Are we going then?”
“Yes. Go hail a cab - I’ll be down momentarily.”
Finn nodded and ambled happily off down Kurt’s stairs, still feeling awkward in his tux but pleased, at least, to be going out in New Year’s Eve with a friend where they would be free alcohol available. Although champagne went straight to his head - it was the bubbles, Finn swore down - and he wondered if there would be anything else. From Kurt’s stories of his work, he highly doubted it.
----
Finn had been right - the only alcohol on offer was champagne. Pink champagne, at that. Well, that and some truly awful red wine that Kurt had told him was murderously expensive. Finn just thought it tasted disgusting, so he stuck to the champagne. At least that tasted alright, if Finn already felt pleasantly hazy on only two glasses of the stuff.
“Kurt! It’s great to see you here!”
This came from a skinny, well dressed guy with a shock of crisp black curls and very, very blue eyes. Finn blinked in surprise at just how blue they were.
“Oh. And who is this?” he asked after he and Kurt had exchanged hugs. Finn had his suspicions that this man was gay, but even while slightly tipsy he wasn’t likely to ask that one.
“This is Finn. Finn, this is Jasper. He’s another intern. And Jasper, don’t bother - Finn is off the market,” Kurt laughed, sipping at his own - third? Fourth? Finn couldn’t remember how many Kurt had had, only that he had just finished his third - champagne.
“Taken?” Jasper asked, looking disappointed.
“Straight,” Kurt said. Jasper sighed dramatically.
“All the best ones are,” he said. Kurt laughed again.
“What about me?”
“Apart from you, sweet cheeks, apart from you. Oh, if you’d excuse me, I do believe that some male models just arrived and they are demanding my attention. Arrivederci, ma chéri!” Jasper said, pecking Kurt’s cheek and wiggling his fingers at Finn before scurrying over to the male models.
“He seems…uh…”
Kurt laughed at Finn’s ineloquence.
“Yeah. Jasper takes some getting used to, I know. But he’s a good guy, really.”
“You like him? Is he the guy you like who you don’t think is interested? Because he seemed interested,” Finn said. Kurt smiled.
“No, he’s not the guy I’m interested in. I mean, I wouldn’t say no, but Jasper isn’t exactly one for long term relationships, you see. And…I don’t know. I know that he tends to have more than one guy on the go at once, and I know it sounds old fashioned, but I prefer to be the sole recipient of someone’s affections.”
Finn wasn’t entirely sure what some of Kurt had said actually meant, but he understood the basics, and he nodded.
“I don’t think that it is old fashioned at all. I’m the same way. Let’s drink to mono…single…mono…mono…whatsit.”
“Monogamy?”
“That too.”
Kurt laughed and raised his glass.
“To monogamy!”
“To monogamy and finding the right person!”
They clinked their glasses together and drained them. The bubbles tickled Finn’s tongue playfully and slid sweetly down his throat. He grinned at Kurt.
“Another?” he asked. Kurt grinned back.
“Maybe just the one,” he said.
----
By the time midnight neared, both Finn and Kurt were sufficiently inebriated. Finn’s bow tie had come undone and was hanging loosely around his neck, and Kurt’s cravat had been loosened. His hair was also in a disarray - though not as much as Finn’s, though of course that was little different to how it was normally. He looked wonderfully dishevelled, and Finn found that he liked his friend that way. For once, Kurt looked imperfect. It was nice to see that he wasn’t so flawless all the time.
“Ten!”
People started chanting around them and Kurt clung giddily to Finn’s arm.
“Nine!”
They both joined in on that one.
“Eight! Seven! Six!”
Kurt giggled, his eyes scrunching up adorably as he slurred over the S’s.
“Five! Four! Three! Two! One!”
Finn looked down at Kurt through drunken, heavily lidded eyes.
“Happy New Year!”
And then he bent his head to kiss his friend.
----
Finn regretted every moment of it the next morning, and none of it at all.
His head was pounding, and incessant pounding that really was terrible. He cracked his eyes open and sat up slowly, groaning, holding a hand against his clammy forehead.
He frowned as he tried to remember the previous night. All he knew was that he was currently clad in his boxers and one shoe. He cast his mind around, searching through fuzzy memories of the previous night in an attempt to find something.
He remembered…dancing. Bad dancing, because he was drunk. And he remembered Kurt dancing, his cravat hanging low and loose around his neck, laughing and doing dancing not really all that much better than his, despite the fact that Finn had the disability of his height. The alcohol had made Kurt more free than Finn had ever seen him before, and Finn couldn’t help but think Kurt should be that free more often.
He remembered champagne. Pink champagne, and lots of it. Lots and lots of champagne, flowing from a fountain…or, wait, was that chocolate? Or water? Finn couldn’t remember - but there had been a fountain somewhere. And a guy with dark hair who had called Kurt sweet cheeks - and Kurt hadn’t hit him for it, probably because he’d be a little tipsy at the time - whose name escaped him.
Finn scrunched his nose up in concentration. Midnight. What had happened at midnight?
Slowly, the memory surfaced.
Finn bent his head. He meant to just give Kurt a friendly peck on the cheek, but at the last moment Kurt turned his head to say something and Finn’s lips covered his.
It lasted ten, fifteen seconds at the outside. Kurt’s lips were soft but still beneath his. Finn pulled away and straightened up. Kurt was staring at him, eyes wide and startled.
“I meant it to be on the cheek,” Finn said. Kurt blinked.
“I figured as he much,” he said softly. Finn nodded.
“I’m sorry?”
“It’s fine. Look, balloons.”
Finn looked. As the clock had struck midnight, it seemed, a huge net had been dropped, releasing thousands of gold balloons which floated down towards them in fat, lazy arcs, like over sized autumn leaves. Between them fell gold stars.
Or maybe that was just the alcohol talking.
“Hey, Kurt?”
“Yeah, Finn?”
“Happy New Year.”
Kurt smiled at him.
“Happy New Year.”
“They say that what you’ll be doing at the same time next year is the same, right?”
“I believe it is the person you are with.”
“Oh,” Finn said softly. “Oh.”
“Yeah. I’m sure you don’t want to be with me this time next year.”
Finn frowned at Kurt.
“That’s where you are wrong. I’ve had more fun this year than any other year. Promise me, Kurt, that even if we both have partners, we’ll spend next New Year’s together.”
Kurt looked at him, seemingly confused, then his face broke out into the brightest smile Finn had ever seen on anyone, ever.
“Yeah, okay. I promise.”
Finn groaned softly. He had kissed Kurt. Kurt, his friend, who was gay. But hey, it was okay, it had only been short and it hadn’t happened again. And it wouldn’t happen again. Because Finn was straight, and Kurt wasn’t interested in him. Everything would be fine and would go back to normal.
With a sigh, Finn kicked off his shoe and tugged his sock off, then padded into the kitchen to make some coffee.
He was just pouring his second cup of the blackest coffee he’d ever made when Kurt appeared. He was in another pair of silk pyjamas - blue this time - and his hair was stuck up all over his head like a halo. Finn blinked at him. He looked like a dandelion puff.
“You look like a dandelion puff,” Finn said, then cursed his lack of control from brain to mouth before his morning caffeine fix had kicked in.
Kurt gaped at him, then squeaked in alarm and ran to the nearest mirror, nearly tripping over the hem of his pyjama bottoms - they were slightly too long for him - and running his fingers desperately through his hair to try and get it to lie flat. he groaned as his head pounded in disapproval of his sudden movements, and Finn chucked softly, putting his cup down and going over.
“You are such a girl,” he said softly. “Here, let me help.”
He reached up and started to stroke Kurt’s hair gently, smoothing it back into place. Kurt sighed happily and leant into the touch. Finn paused, and Kurt leant his head back to peer up at him.
“My mom used to do this when I was sad,” he breathed, and that fact alone made Finn start moving his fingers again.
When he was done and Kurt’s hair was presentable again, Finn wrapped his arms around his friend’s waist and gave him a brief squeeze.
“Your mom,” he said gently, “from what you’ve said, she sounds nice.”
“She was. I miss her a lot. I miss my dad, too.”
“I’m sorry.”
“It…it’s fine. Do you…do you have anymore of that coffee?”
Finn frowned at Kurt. The pauses between his words betrayed his sadness, but he nodded, deciding that if Kurt didn’t want to talk about it Finn wasn’t going to push him.
“Yeah. Come on through.”
Between them, they drank the remainder of the coffee and Finn let Kurt go shower first, then went for one himself, which woke him up considerably. Since there was nothing to do, Finn suggested they watch a movie.
“Yes, but what? I don’t know if it has escaped your notice, Finn, but we have very different tastes in just about everything.”
“I know! But I figured that, y’know. We could come to some sort of agreement.”
Kurt eyed him speculatively.
“Okay,” he said cautiously.
In the end, they watched The Lion King, because it was the only film they could find in Kurt’s apartment that neither of them objected to.
As Simba was trying desperately to awaken his father, a feeling Finn knew all too much about, he noticed that Kurt was shaking. When he looked closer, he realised it was because he was crying, and suddenly Finn didn’t feel as self conscious about the tears sparkling in his own eyes.
“Hey, come here,” Finn murmured throatily, lifting his arm in invitation. Kurt looked at him and gave him a watery smile, and moved gratefully over to him, resting his head against Finn’s chest, wiping away the tears in his eyes. Finn, remembering what Kurt had said about his mom, started to stroke his hair softly. Kurt sighed happily.
“Thank you,” he breathed.
“What for?” Finn asked, bemused.
“Taking care of me.”
“Oh. That. You’re welcome, Kurt. I mean, what are friends for?”
Kurt sighed.
“Yeah. Friends,” he’d whispered, so softly that Finn couldn’t hear him.
Part two.