Fic: Glee: I Bet You Look Good on the Dancefloor (Kurt/Blaine, Teen)
I wrote much of this fic after 5x17 with its infamous club scene when I got to thinking about how Kurt would experience New York club life and what it might have been like for him to come to terms with the differences in being gay in the city vs. Lima. I barely scratched the surface.
Thanks to Stoney and Liz!
It’s a journey through canon, so warnings for Klaine breaking up and also Kurt/Adam.
Title: "I Bet You Look Good on the Dancefloor" [on the AO3]
Author: flaming muse
Fandom: Glee
Pairing: Kurt/Blaine, Kurt/Adam
Rating: Teen
Word count: 10,500
Summary: Seven times Kurt goes clubbing in New York.
Spoilers: set from soon after 4x03 (“Makeover”) to the summer after 5x20 (“The Untitled Rachel Berry Project”)
Notes: The title comes from the song by Arctic Monkeys
Disclaimers: The characters belong to various corporate Powers That Be. I make absolutely no profit from playing with them.
Distribution: Please ask.
Feedback is lovely!
1. September 2012
There are people everywhere, lined up from outside the door to far down the block and also pulsing inside the club itself in time with the loud beat of the music spilling out onto the sidewalk whenever the bouncers open the doors and allow someone inside. The waiting club-goers are wild and mysterious with their bright make-up and even crazier clothes, flashes of neon, glitter, and skin everywhere, and Kurt feels almost like he’s out on Halloween with magical creatures from his imagination roaming the streets, except it’s not Halloween, and the people are real. They’re so very real.
With wide eyes, Kurt rushes to keep close to Isabelle. His hands itch to grab onto her froth of swirling skirts like a child to keep from getting lost, but he keeps his elbows tight against his sides and his fingers balled against his thighs. He isn’t a child, and this is his new boss, who invited him out to join her and some friends after a late night at work. He needs to impress her, not show her how overwhelmed he is.
Besides, this is his first official New York club. He bets the bouncers are going to be more careful than the bored guy who could barely check their fake IDs at Scandals; he’s going to need to look mature and composed if he wants to get in the door. He can’t even imagine the embarrassment of being sent home for being underage while Isabelle and his co-workers head inside.
He tries to school his face into something other than wonder at the mass of bare-armed, tight-clothed, impossibly attractive men milling around beyond the ropes as Isabelle leads them right up to the bouncer holding the clipboard. He’s so big she barely comes up to his shoulder, even in her towering magenta Jimmy Choos, and his arms look thicker than Kurt’s legs are, but she doesn’t even pause as she calls out her name with a wave and walks breezily past him into the club.
Kurt feels like there’s a spotlight on him as he follows after her, right on Chase’s heels, but even though he feels a foot shorter and five years younger than anyone else there nobody seems to notice. Nobody calls after him or grabs hold of his shirt collar to yank him back out onto the sidewalk.
He’s in.
But what, he thinks in utter shock as he steps inside, has he gotten himself into?
The first thing that Kurt really registers inside is the heat. The club is a confusing kaleidoscope of darkness and brightness from the way the lights are flashing and swirling through the space, everywhere is filled with a press of writhing, dancing bodies that’s claustrophobic and hard to pull apart with his eyes into individual people, and the music is so loud that it feels like his ears aren’t working and he’s swimming in a muffled world where he feels music instead, but it’s the hot, steamy air, filled with fake smoke, spilled drinks, sweat, and cologne, that is the first thing he can actually understand and experience.
He’s overdressed, and not just because he’s wearing dress pants instead of leather or denim; no wonder everyone is going sleeveless or shirtless if this is what it’s like being in here. It’s a sauna. He’s sure there’s air conditioning somewhere, but it’s still hot.
And so, he thinks as he turns his head in a slow arc and his eyes go wide again, are all of the men here.
Well, there’s another reason for them to be wearing so few clothes, he thinks, and his hand goes up in dismay to the buttons of his shirt as though there’s a chance they might pop open of their own accord just by being in that room. He does not look like everyone else. They’re so grown up and filled out, so many of them wide and muscular. A lot of them would make even Puck or Sam look seriously underdeveloped.
Kurt stares for a moment, his heart fluttering in a combination of amazement and concern. He is so in over his head.
“Come on, Kurt!” Isabelle calls to him over her shoulder, waving in his direction.
He unroots his frozen feet and hurries after her, wiggling his way through the patrons by the bar to reach her. The last thing he needs is to get lost.
“Here,” Isabelle says when he gets to her side, handing him a glass with clear liquid, ice, and a twist of lime, and he’s more relieved than he can say when a sip assures him it’s only water; he’s already spun around, and he can’t afford to get drunk. “I have some friends I want you to meet.” She tucks her hand into his arm and leads him away from the dance floor toward a niche filled with plush couches, laughing, brightly clad women, and beautiful, half-dressed men.
Isabelle introduces him around, and he smiles and nods, collecting lifted eyebrows, interested looks, and forgotten names in return.
He knows he should be focusing more on remembering what people are saying, but the music is so loud it’s making his head swim, and he finds it hard to believe that the two guys in matching leather vests are going to be important business contacts in the future. He could be wrong, but he would have expected to get more than a two-fingered wave, at least. They all laugh about something he can’t quite hear, and he lets his eyes drift around the room in wonder.
There are so many people, so many men, all of them happy and dancing like they don’t have a care in the world.
Maybe they don’t. This is New York, after all. Maybe they found what they were looking for the same way Kurt is hoping he will by being here.
When he manages to tear his gaze away from so much very well-toned male skin - skin that he doesn’t have to pretend he doesn’t see in the locker room, skin that isn’t a picture on the internet, skin that doesn’t belong to Blaine, who is so far away right now - he realizes most of the women Isabelle is talking to are actually men, too: tall, slim, perfectly made up, and utterly fabulous in their drag, nothing at all like Scandals, either.
Kurt sips at his drink, takes a shallow breath, and finds himself having to hold back a helpless laugh. He’s in a gay club. In New York. With his boss from Vogue.com. Because he lives here, and he works there.
And nobody is looking at him like he doesn’t belong.
Somehow, and he doesn’t quite know how this is possible, he isn’t dreaming any of it. It’s real, and he’s here.
“Okay?” Isabelle asks him with a pat on his arm.
“I don’t think I’m in Kansas anymore,” Kurt tells her, the laugh bubbling out of him.
Isabelle’s smile is warm and knowing, so affectionate that it goes right to his heart. “You aren’t,” she promises and hooks her hand through his elbow again. “Come on, Dorothy. Let’s dance.”
Kurt looks out at the dance floor with its intimidating mass of adult bodies, more than he count touching and grinding. He can’t help but feel a little intimidation at the sight of so many strange men all together, not that he objects in the slightest, but he just doesn’t know how to do that. It’s one thing to dance with Blaine and his friends or dip into the just barely more than pedestrian pleasures at Scandals, and it’s quite another to throw himself into this world of skin and temptation, where he doesn’t know where he fits. This isn’t his world, not yet.
A quiet part of him deep inside also doesn’t know if it’s better if guys come up to dance with him with the same kinds of presumptuous touches he’s seeing but isn’t interested in or if it turns out that even in New York they don’t want him, either.
But he does know how to hold his own on the dance floor. He’ll figure it out. Nothing bad’s going to happen.
As he draws breath to say yes, Isabelle smiles again and says, “Don’t worry. I won’t let any flying monkeys carry you away if you don’t want them to. Really.”
Kurt laughs and sets down his glass, following as Isabelle pulls her small army of men behind her to the dance floor. He stays at the edge, in sight of the couches and out of the worst of the crowds, and when she catches his eye he gives her a grateful smile for her concern. She winks back and spins around with her arms raised and her hair streaming out behind her in a banner of perfect waves.
Shimmying to himself, Kurt lets his shoulders bounce as he watches the dancers around him twirl and move with the throbbing beat. There are so many men dancing here. Young, pretty, happy, unselfconscious. They’re touching, kissing, enjoying each other without a second thought, without even a hint of fear or shame. Some of them are even holding hands as they dance, not just on the prowl but together.
Kurt accepts the hand of a towering drag queen and lets himself be spun out and back in before pulling away to dance alone again, dizzy from the motion, the lights, and the night itself. One song shifts into another, this time Lady Gaga, and the crowd roars in approval and excitement that mirrors his own and lifts his heart even higher.
Biting his lip, Kurt thinks with a sense of fierce excitement that he can’t wait for Blaine to come to New York.
It’s all true. Everything they’ve been hoping for, somewhere they can be openly in love and accepted, somewhere they can just be, like everyone else is.
Somehow, like a miracle, it’s all true.
2. November 2012
Kurt dances with sharp, angry movements, the bass as heavy in his chest as his own broken heart. The release of motion doesn’t make him hurt less, but it does make the blood flow freely through his body instead of feeling frozen solid in his veins.
There’s a comfort in being driven by forces outside of himself. He doesn’t have to think his own bitter thoughts or feel his own dark feelings; right now, he just has to dance.
Besides, Kurt was born to move. He breathes music as much as he does air. Blaine might have taken away so much of what he held precious, including the future they were supposed to have, but he can’t take this from Kurt. He can’t take away who he is.
The club isn’t of his choosing; one Rachel’s friends suggested it when she said she wanted to take Kurt for a night out to get over their wounded hearts after their ill-advised trip to Lima to see Finn and Blaine’s production of Grease. And it had been not just ill-advised but stupid, because all seeing Blaine had proven to Kurt is that his heart is still broken and will always be broken, and he still has to find a way to do what feels impossible and stop loving Blaine, anyway.
Setting his jaw, Kurt puts Blaine’s handsome face out of his mind and spins further into the mix of dancers. He might not have chosen to be here, but this, at least, was a good idea.
It’s not exclusively a gay club, but it’s gay-friendly, enough that when he looks around there are plenty of men looking back at him. He can see the hunger in their eyes, less subtle than what he sees in the hallways of Vogue.com. Eyebrows lift, eyes glitter, muscled bodies sway closer to him, ready to take whatever he has to offer.
No one has approached him with any seriousness yet, and he honestly hopes they won’t, not tonight, because the sharp edges of his anger and hurt aren’t going to be soothed by a nice pair of arms right now. He doesn’t want them. He wants to get lost in the music, maybe have a hot partner step in to finish out a song with a little respectful grinding against a body that will feel all wrong, and then go home and eat ice cream with Rachel on the couch.
No, Kurt doesn’t want these New York men yet. They’re too tall, too broad, too different, too unknown. They look wrong. They smell wrong. Kurt’s foolish heart still wants Blaine and everything he thought that Blaine was to him: love, safety, understanding, forever.
But, he thinks with the rising taste of bile and anger burning in his throat, he doesn’t have that anymore.
The good news - the only good news right now - is that Kurt has all of New York instead. He’s not trapped in Lima; he’s here. He has options. He has freedom. He might have had his heart broken, but he’s not actually alone. He has thousands upon thousands of gay men here, living this life that he wants, already sharing the dream instead of shattering it like Blaine did.
Kurt lets his eyes flick around him once, just to see the other eyes watching back. They are. They’re there. Dozens of options in this very room.
Dozens of men who aren’t Blaine.
And soon... soon, Kurt knows - fierce, determined, and just a little sad - as he feels hands skim his hips and he makes himself allow the touch, he will grab hold and actually want them instead.
3. February 2013
The music shifts from one song to the next, the DJ meshing the tracks well enough that the beat stays steady, and Kurt twirls himself out of Katie’s arms and looks behind him for Adam. They’re there in a group with a bunch of members of Adam’s Apples at a grubby little club in Chelsea, the floor beneath them gritty with dirt and spilled drinks - and Kurt doesn’t even want to think about what the bathrooms must look like - but one of Adam’s friends knows the bartender, so with the promise of not being carded and no cover at the door they’d ended up here.
It’s been a lot of fun, actually. The crowd is enthusiastic, the music is good, and the Apples have been more than welcoming to Kurt. They’ve danced in ever-shifting groups and pairs, the way friends do, and accepted him into the knot without a blink, just like they seemed to be giving him a much-needed home at NYADA. They’re silly, platonically handsy, and fun. Kurt has been in the middle of them all night long, caught up in good music, happy companions, and the occasional fruity drink with plenty of alcohol. He feels dizzy with not just the music and the drinks but with simply smiling so much. He’s been smiling all night, it feels like. His cheeks ache nearly as much as his legs do. It’s something he’s missed.
But the smile drops off of his face as he turns around in a full circle in the middle of the dance floor and can’t find Adam. His date. They’re supposed to be here together, even if they haven’t been dancing with each other every minute. Adam’s slipped in here and there, pulling him close with that sparkle in his eyes that always makes Kurt’s stomach swoop, but though he’s been mingling like Kurt is he’s been nearby. They’ve been smiling at each other over their shoulders and catching each other’s eyes as they’ve spun past.
Except Adam’s not there anymore.
“Um,” Kurt mutters to himself in confusion.
It takes a minute to find him, and it doesn’t make Kurt feel any better. Adam’s at the bar, standing talking to some guy Kurt was introduced to earlier, a friend of a friend named Smith or Worth or something that sounds preppy but isn’t actually a name.
With a frown, Kurt brushes off Katie’s clinging hands and steps away from their group of friends as Adam laughs at that guy. Kurt knows that laugh. He knows that smile. He knows how Adam’s eyes warm when he’s being especially charming, and he’s doing it right now. To that guy. While he’s supposed to be out with Kurt.
Kurt’s mouth tightens as hurt flares in his chest. He tells himself not to be jealous. Adam might have asked him out, but they aren’t serious. They’re just dating. Not like he and Blaine dated where they were pretty much married already but like everyone else in the world does it. They’re being casual. They’re going out on a series of dates but aren’t anything more official than that.
Still, Kurt would have thought that being out on a date would have meant that no other flirting would be going on, he thinks with narrowed eyes. But he also knows he has a lot to learn about what college dating actually is like. He’s a lot younger than Adam, and he’s only really been with Blaine. He’s hurt and deeply unimpressed, but he doesn’t need to storm over there like an angry child. He can just not go out with him again if he’s going to be treated this way. He can live with being ignored as long as he knows it won’t happen again.
But if he’s going to be an adult and not lash out the way he wants to, he is also thirsty, so he goes over to the bar to get a bottle of water, standing a few yards away so that he doesn’t have to overhear whatever’s going on. He unscrews the top and takes an angry sip, the water doing nothing to cool his temper.
No, this is not going to happen again with Adam. Kurt doesn’t expect melty eyes full of feelings and forever anymore, but he does insist on a certain level of respect.
“Kurt. Kurt!” he hears, and he turns to find Adam waving at him insistently with an easy, open smile.
Kurt stalks over, his own smile tight on his lips, and says, “I didn’t want to interrupt.”
Adam threads his fingers through Kurt’s empty hand and pulls him to lean against him where he sits on the bar stool. “Don’t be silly. We’re catching our breaths and watching the crowd for any moves we might want to steal for the Apples.” He leans in close to Kurt’s cheek and says, “It was really just an excuse to watch you. You looked amazing out there, Kurt.”
Kurt’s heart stutters in surprise and pleasure at the unexpected compliment, and he meets Adam’s eyes to find only honesty and appreciation in them. “You could have joined me,” he says a little breathlessly, delighted against his will.
“I will,” Adam says with an easy squeeze of his fingers. “But I don’t need to monopolize you. We don’t have to live in each other’s pockets. And I do get to watch you, so it all works out.”
There’s something in the sureness in Adam’s words that makes Kurt’s ire fade. He doesn’t like being ignored, but Adam isn’t ignoring him if he’s still watching. Maybe he’d read the smiling wrong; maybe Adam hadn’t been flirting. Maybe he simply hadn’t been out there with Kurt.
As much as he likes a partner, Kurt’s never needed to be glued to someone else’s side; he just doesn’t want to be forgotten or overlooked.
But being watched while he owns the dance floor? That’s perfectly fine with him. That’s a kind of attention he understands and likes, near or far. That’s a kind of attention he can appreciate.
He’s here to dance, after all. And he certainly knows how to pull focus.
Something warm and certain fills him and makes his smile grow that much more. This is dating, too, flirting from afar. He can do that. It sounds like fun, in fact.
He drains the rest of his bottle of water and leans over Adam to place it on the bar, getting a nice intake of breath in return. “Well, then. If you decide to stop working on Apples routines and let your hair down,” he says with a teasing tweak of Adam’s beanie, “you know where to find me.” With that, he spins away to rejoin the dancers.
Adam’s burst of charmed laughter chases him out onto the floor.
Kurt knows Adam will follow him soon. He is certain of it.
He might not have a lot of experience dating in college, not yet, but this part - the dancing, the teasing, this trick of keeping connected even when apart - he knows he can do.
4. May 2013
“This has been the best night, Kurt,” Blaine says, his hand warm and tight in Kurt’s as they stroll down the sidewalk in the warm spring evening air.
“It has,” Kurt agrees. He’s pretty sure his heart is so light it’s floating up above them somewhere, tethered like a balloon to his chest but made buoyant by everything that’s happening between them.
Blaine’s here visiting, which is wonderful just by itself. Kurt’s missed him, missed his presence and his smile and his hugs and feels like the world is brighter simply from having them again. But Blaine’s not only visiting but is also going to nail his NYADA audition this week, and then he’s going to move to New York and be with Kurt, and then they’ll get married and be happy forever. And tonight with their romantic dinner and just as romantic stroll through Kurt’s favorite window shopping neighborhood has been the perfect start of this perfect life they’re going to have.
Kurt can almost taste it. He’s so ready for their life really to begin. He’s been waiting for so long, waiting, dreaming, and working for it, and here they almost are.
His steps slow as they approach the subway, because it’s getting late, and they should be getting back to the loft... except that Rachel, Santana, and Sam are all there. That means they’ll have to be quiet and discreet instead of totally wrapped up in each other like they have been for hours, all smiles and hand-holding and nothing else to worry about but each other, and Kurt’s not quite ready to let go of Blaine yet.
This is their time. This is his fiancé in his city, soon to be their city. He’s greedy with it.
“What’s next?” Blaine asks, his eyes as intensely focused as ever on him. The streetlight above makes them gleam beneath his dark lashes, his face soft and so appealingly open, and it’s all Kurt can do not to kiss him.
“Well,” Kurt says, swinging their joined hands between them, “we could go back to the loft and call it a night - “ It has its positive sides, that thought: being alone in a bed just the two of them, even if they’d have to be quiet. “ - or I can take you dancing somewhere that makes Scandals look like a 4H picnic in comparison.”
Blaine’s eyes light up, and Kurt’s not sure if it’s because of the promise of dancing or just the thrill of a gay club, which has always been a kind of beacon to Blaine Kurt has never really understood. Kurt doesn’t require the presence of others like him to feel good about himself, while Blaine has always preferred being part of a crowd... but then Kurt has also never felt like he was part of any crowd until he got to New York. He never felt like he fully fit in until he got here and could be himself in a sea of people who didn’t think he stood out in a bad way. In the city, at Vogue, at NYADA, he’s been surprised to find that there’s a comfort in some being part of a group if the people around him aren’t closed-minded idiots.
Maybe he does understand Blaine’s interest in gay clubs after all.
Kurt takes Blaine in from head to toe, his whole perfect, muscled body from his feet that know how to move to his hips that love to flex to his arms that love to pull Kurt in close as they dance, and knows Blaine is going to fit in so well. He’s going to love being a member of that crowd, one of so many men with a similar perspective, not making do at Scandals but grabbing hold of the city. The city is full of men like them. He can’t wait for Blaine to see this part of his new home, too.
Their home.
This is going to be their home so very soon, and they are only going to stand out for being fabulous, not out of place.
Blaine is going to love it.
“Let’s go,” Kurt tells him with a flutter of excitement and tugs him toward the subway entrance.
They’re dressed for a dinner date instead of a night of dancing, but the only thing that matters to Kurt is Blaine’s smile as they approach the club Elliott had told Kurt about the other week. It’s small and eighteen-plus, so there’s no real line at the door. Blaine still looks around in wonder as Kurt hands over their IDs and pays the cover charge, and then they’re in.
Blaine’s eyes don’t stop moving as Kurt brings him to the coat check so that they can discard their jackets. Blaine’s sweater vest will probably be too warm for comfort in a few minutes, but Kurt doesn’t suggest he take it off. He just pockets the check stubs, rolls up his sleeves, and says into his ear over the pounding music, “Well?”
Blaine’s eyes scan the room again, soaking up the flashing lights, the dancing, the men, and then land on Kurt’s face. He looks shocked but elated. Grabbing Kurt’s hand, he says, “Come dance with me?”
With a laugh, Kurt says, “That’s the point, isn’t it? Or will this be a repeat of our big night out at Scandals?”
“No,” Blaine tells him, already swaying a little with the music. “Come on, Kurt.”
Kurt laughs again and lets himself be led to the dance floor. They immediately carve out a little corner for themselves by the wall, close enough to the speakers that Kurt can feel the bass line like a second heartbeat in his chest. Blaine’s adorable in his bow tie and loafers, a bright, preppy spark in a sea of leather and denim, and Kurt can feel the curious, interested eyes on them both.
It doesn’t matter, though, Kurt thinks with a flare of pride. Let them look. Kurt and Blaine are here now, in New York. Everyone else is going to have to get used to them.
Blaine looks up at the ceiling with its grid of lights and over toward the bustling bar, taking it all in, taking all of the men in, but Kurt just watches him, watches him move, watches him smile, watches him take in his surroundings with wonder and joy and an innate ease Kurt had to develop over months of visits to different clubs. But that’s Blaine. It’s part of his charm.
His arms over his head and his body swept up in the same rhythm as everyone else around them, Blaine already fits in here.
It usually takes a few minutes for the beat of the music to get under Kurt’s skin. He can dance without it catching him, but it makes him feel a little awkward in his body until the dark edges of the rhythm pull him under. But with Blaine opposite him, it’s easier to let go right away, because his body isn’t just moving with the music but with Blaine’s. He’s always known exactly how to move with Blaine.
There are still hundreds of other people around, many of them close, but they don’t matter, not when Blaine’s catching Kurt’s hand and pulling him to dance close, closer, not all but having sex on the dance floor like the two guys behind Blaine Kurt’s not quite able to ignore, but just dancing together.
Linking his hands behind Blaine’s neck and letting his hips dig deeper into their shimmy as Blaine fits his fingers to his waist, Kurt sings to himself with the music, wrapped up in sound and heat and Blaine. Blaine’s smile is wide, his hands are warm, and Kurt feels like he’s in a perfect little bubble.
He knows they aren’t acting like everyone else. This is a party, not a private dance floor for the two of them. They should be more open. They should be making eye contact with other people, joining the group, having fun with every there. They shouldn’t just be in their own world.
But they want to be. They’re making their own world together, and this is just the first taste of it. There’s so much more to come.
And with Blaine tugging him in a little closer, nuzzling in against Kurt’s jaw and steering him into a spin, Kurt doesn’t think there’s any reason at all to do anything else right now.
This is what he wants. And he finally has it.
Kurt sways into him, chest to chest, and finds himself smiling against Blaine’s hair as they move together.
They’ve both been waiting so long to get here, to New York, to each other, to this dance floor filled with men just like them, to this absolute freedom; Kurt can’t think of a reason they should do anything but enjoy it.
5. September 2013
The air around them is muggy and oppressive as they walk down the street, and Kurt wishes for not the first time this week that he didn’t like to dress for every occasion, because the slobs wearing tank tops and cargo shorts have to be much more comfortable than he is in his skinny jeans, tall boots, and fitted short-sleeved shirt. He is sweaty, constrained, and annoyed.
On the other hand, he looks fabulous, and even if Blaine’s eyes hadn’t gotten hotter than the air outside when they first saw him Kurt always likes to feel good about himself. He’s going out to a club with his friends for a night of dancing he really desperately needs. He wants to look the part.
Besides, if Elliott can swan down the street beside him in that long, amazing, surely stifling jacket, Kurt can suffer through a pair of clinging jeans.
He can hear the music before they turn the corner, and his pulse speeds up with it. He and Blaine don’t go out dancing often, not with their busy schedules and a city with so much else on offer, but tonight’s a perfect night for it. Kurt’s feeling claustrophobic and restless, weighed down. With the start of NYADA this week, Blaine’s been nervous and clingy just when Kurt’s been feeling the press of his own schoolwork starting up, and Kurt’s edgy and tense trying to walk that tightrope. He just wants to move his body freely and put aside everything that’s weighing him down for a little while.
A club is just the right solution. He’d jumped on the idea the second Elliott had suggested it. It’s going to be too hot in there, too noisy, too crowded, and too sweaty for him to be able to think at all.
“Are you sure this is right?” Blaine asks tentatively as Elliott leads them into an alley between two buildings. “Because Blaze is like two blocks away if we wanted to go there...”
Kurt knows Blaine likes Blaze because the bartender there always slips him free drinks if he goes up to the bar without Kurt, and Kurt would almost be jealous except that a tipsy Blaine is a happy Blaine, and a happy Blaine is one who is extra generous and worshipful when they get home at the end of the night.
“Trust me,” Elliott says, sweeping ahead of them with an impressive swish of his coat.
Kurt follows as Blaine picks his way more carefully across the rough ground.
“I think I just stepped on something that was moving,” Blaine says with a shudder. “This can’t be right.”
“Elliott’s never steered us wrong,” Kurt reminds him. Not that Blaine’s been to a club with Elliott before, but Kurt has; there was one night out with him, Santana, and Dani that was so epic Kurt can barely remember it, save for the pictures they found on their phones the next morning. Blaine should trust him. Blaine should trust them both.
There’s a faint snort from Blaine. Maybe it’s a cough. Either way, his face is composed and guileless when Kurt looks back to check on him.
“Here we are!” Elliott announces with outspread arms when they arrive at a rusty door. It’s shut, unmarked, and has no handle. There’s an overflowing dumpster a few feet away.
“Are you sure this is the right address?” Kurt has to ask, because it really, really doesn’t seem right.
“Seriously, Blaze is only a couple of blocks - “ Blaine begins, looking back toward the street.
“You guys have no sense of adventure.” Elliott strides over to the door and bangs on it with his fist. A moment later it swings open, and what looked a second ago like a forgotten entrance to an abandoned warehouse now reveals a pulsing, pounding nightclub inside, all black lights and painted bodies. “Welcome to Baskerville, New York’s newest and greatest nightspot!”
“It’s so great it doesn’t have a front door?” Blaine says with raised eyebrows.
“The front door is only for people who don’t know about this one,” Elliott says. “And for people who like to wait in line, because it’s wrapped around the block out there.” He gestures with an elegant hand at the door, pure Starchild. “Coming?” He doesn’t wait for an answer before heading inside.
“Um.” Blaine glances uncertainly over his shoulder at the street again.
“I don’t care how sketchy it looks; I am not standing in line in this weather,” Kurt says and starts toward the door. He’s not backing down now. Failure is not an option. His two choices are either dance or yell. “Or in this alley, because it smells.” Blaine trails slowly after him.
There’s a glorious blast of cold air in the doorway, and then they’re in the middle of the wild party inside. There’s something shimmery on the walls and pillars, reflecting the black lights and odd flashes of color limning the dancers, not just bright smiles and bits of their clothing that glow in the black lights but splashes of neon on their skin and faces. It changes their outlines, sets off their bone structure and musculature, makes them more alien and exotic. It’s not quite a rave, Kurt feels certain, but it might be as close as he ever gets to one.
He feels a thrill low in his stomach at the thought. He loves being able to dance and let go even in a normal club, but here... here it’s going to be that much more intense, because whenever he opens his eyes he’s not going to see people but art come alive.
Elliott gestures over to a row of flat dishes on the rear bar near them. They’re filled with what looks like glowing sand in a variety of neon colors.
“Time to get painted up,” Elliott says over the roar of the music. At whatever he sees on Kurt’s face, he adds, “It washes out.”
Blaine takes a little bit of the dust on the tips of his fingers and rolls it between them, turning them a bright lime green.
“Don’t be shy about it,” Elliott says, grabbing a small handful of the yellow and slicking it right into the front of his own hair. Kurt has to admit it looks incredible in the lights.
Blaine reaches out and drags a thoughtful stripe down Kurt’s nose with the green, and Kurt rolls his eyes and sprinkles some blue onto Blaine’s hair, where it settles into the careful lines of his style.
“Great, I’m going to be cross-eyed all night,” Kurt says, staring down at the brightness on his nose.
“Yeah, but that’ll just be the drinks,” Elliott says. He adds a purple zigzag down Kurt’s arm and leaves a palm print on Blaine’s shoulder. “Come meet Gina. She makes the most amazing creations.”
He drags them further down the bar, where Gina does provide them with delicious cocktails and a friendly smear of paint down Elliott’s arm and across Kurt’s wrist that glows a vibrant yellow in the lights.
“Drink up, kids,” Elliott says, saluting them with his glass. “The fun is just beginning.”
Blaine makes an ambivalent noise and takes a healthy drink, his eyes narrowed on Elliott’s face.
Kurt watches the crowd as he sips his own cocktail. It’s a hectic and crazy scene all around, but he can feel the buzzing excitement rising in him at the new experience. The techno music grabs his body, pulling him into the beat, and the bright, abstract swirls of color and light throughout the dance floor surge and undulate in time with the song playing. The black light and neon turns the dancers into fragments of people, movement come to life.
This is nothing at all like homework or the ever-present pull of roommates with their own needs. This is giving to him, not taking from him. It’s making his world bigger instead of cramming him into the tiny box of schedules and chores and work and polite conversation before coffee and Blaine’s overflowing shoe collection and hissing bubbles from the goddamn SodaStream and -
“Kurt?” Blaine starts, frowning a bit.
Kurt doesn’t want to see him frown. He can feel the pinched line of his own mouth and hates it just as much. He just wants them both to let go and be happy. He knows they can. They just have to do it.
“Let’s dance,” Kurt tells him. He downs his drink as quickly as he can, and then with a buzz of anticipation as well as the surprisingly strong alcohol he pushes into the dancers and makes a place for himself in the fray.
He watches the blue and purple shapes that make up Blaine come closer, sees Blaine’s eyes catch and hold on him from a few feet away, catches a flash of Elliott’s smile nearby, feels the welcome in the faces of other dancers around him, takes a deep, satisfied, freeing breath, and lets himself fall into the music.
It is just what he needs - the noise, the movement, the anonymity, the release.
Song after song, drink after drink, he feels his wings stretch out around him in the spaces between his body and the next person’s, in the downbeats of the music, and in this break from his everyday routine. He has friends there, but he doesn’t have to worry about them. He doesn’t have to worry about talking and feelings. He doesn’t have to do his homework or wash the dishes. He just has to worry about himself.
He just has to move, letting his stress fall from his shoulders and the knots in his muscles work themselves free.
Over the course of the next couple of hours hours, Kurt collects quite a bit of paint on him, some of it deliberately left but most of it from casual touches from fellow dancers on the floor as they drift past. He doesn’t remember who left the swath of pink around his arm, but he quite likes how it makes his muscles there stand out. Watching himself flex a little, he can almost understand why people get those tribal tattoos to show off their biceps. Almost. They’re still tacky. But his arm looks amazing. He knows with a flutter of pride that other men think so, too.
There are other hand prints, too: fingers at his hips, a bright drag over his shoulder, dust along his collarbone. He doesn’t particularly remember getting them, either, but it’s a crowded dance floor, and he’s been in the thick of it, dancing and dancing and dancing.
It’s been good for him, a purging of negativity, at least for a little while. His muscles burn, his feet ache, and his smile is huge. He feels light as a feather, the weight on his chest he arrived with now gone. Leaning against the bar, he’s sweaty and tired and very, very happy.
An arm snakes around him from behind, leaving a purple mark flat against his stomach, and he turns in surprise to find Blaine there.
“Hi,” he breathes, cupping Blaine’s jaw for a moment and leaving a light dusting of pink behind on his cheek. He feels giddy and loose, more than a little tipsy from the drinks that get pressed into his hand by Gina every time he returns to the bar.
“Having fun?” Blaine asks tightly, and the fingers of his other hand trace the shape of a palm on Kurt’s arm and fit themselves perfectly to it, warm against his skin.
Oh, that one was from him; Kurt smiles, because now he likes it even more. He nods in reply and sips at his drink. “You?”
Blaine’s response is a shrug Kurt doesn’t quite know how to read. He’s been dancing his heart out, too, but instead of elated he looks unhappy around the edges of his eyes. Frustrated. “I almost lost sight of you a few times.”
Kurt’s heart falls. He doesn’t want Blaine to be frustrated; he wants him to be happy, just as he is. That’s why they went out, after all. It’s supposed to make things easier again, because it’s not supposed to be hard for them to be together, and yet still sometimes it really is. This is supposed to fix it.
He’ll just have to try harder. It’s easier now that he feels better, easier to give and coax instead of be frustrated, too. Besides, he likes coaxing smiles from Blaine, even if it doesn’t usually take much to make Blaine light up like a Christmas tree.
He leans in against Blaine’s chest with a flirty poke of his finger against Blaine’s buttons. “I’m glad it was only almost; we’re here together.”
Blaine’s eyebrows quirk together, like he doesn’t quite believe him.
“I knew where you were,” Kurt tells him, quite honest. “I could see your hair.” He traces the bright stripe that sets off the collar of Blaine’s polo shirt, the one that’s been in the edge of his vision for hours. “And this.”
“Could you?” Blaine asks in surprise.
Kurt sways a little with the beat of the music behind them, not quite able to keep himself still even in Blaine’s grasp. “Mm,” he says into Blaine’s ear. “I always know where you are.” It’s like a string between them, always tugging at him; it had been there even when they’d been broken up, but now that they are engaged and live together it’s even stronger. Sometimes it’s a bad thing, a constant reminder of having someone else to worry about, but it usually feels wonderful. It reminds him just how not alone he is.
He can see Blaine swallow, his throat shadowed above his collar. “You do?”
Laughing, Kurt leans in again, skimming the edge of Blaine’s ear with his lips. He is definitely more than tipsy, his blood hot and molasses-thick in his veins. “Of course I do. You’re the one I’m going home with. I always want to know where you are.”
Blaine’s eyes go dark in the swirling lights, and the hand at Kurt’s waist tightens. “I was watching you, too. I love watching you dance, Kurt.”
Kurt drags the tip of his nose against Blaine’s slightly rough, sweaty cheek, leaving a trail of green in its wake. “Good,” he says, still rocking with the music and feeling Blaine follow him. He loves how Blaine follows him, how Blaine knows his body and knows how to fit himself against him, knows so perfectly how to catch his rhythm in a club or in their bed. “I want you to. The best part of the night is going home with you.”
Blaine’s eyes warm even further as they track Kurt’s face in front of him. “Soon?” he asks.
Kurt sways a little more, feeling the music thrumming through him. It’s a temptation, but it’s not as much of a temptation as Blaine is. He bites the edge of his lip in a flirty gesture he knows Blaine can’t resist and says, “Any time you’re ready.”
Blaine’s smile lights up his whole body, and he watches Kurt for a moment, still swaying with him. He slides his hand down Kurt’s arm to catch his fingers. “A few more dances first,” he says. “With me.”
Kurt leans in again with a grin and says, “Then everyone will be watching us. Not just you watching me.”
A sideways grin and a tug toward the dance floor is Blaine’s happy answer.
Kurt’s heart lifts as Blaine pulls him in close, hands low on his back and eyes sharp on his face. It’s so easy to fall into his rhythm, hands on Blaine’s arms and a smile on his face.
The floor is crowded, and he holds tight to Blaine as he gets bumped and jostled, but he doesn’t mind.
They don’t need much room, after all, not when they’re as in sync as they are right now, as in sync as they’re always supposed to be even though they aren’t, the troubles that drove them here finally left behind.
6. January 2014
His shoulders up around his ears to ward off the chill, Kurt knocks on the front door of Blaine’s apartment before shoving his hands back deep into his coat pockets. He knows he should just push on the door and see if it’s unlocked, but he kind of likes the ceremony of knocking. Here’s there to pick up Blaine. They’re going out. He should knock.
Not that he needs Blaine to knock at the loft, but Blaine did live there. It’s still his second New York home, in Kurt’s mind. This is different. This is Blaine’s space, and he was the one who needed it. Kurt likes to keep it official.
Although if no one answers in the next thirty seconds, he thinks, stamping his feet a little to keep his toes from freezing solid in his shoes...
“Damn, it is cold out here,” Mercedes says as she opens the door and steps back to let Kurt in. “You should be wearing a hat.”
“I’m fine,” Kurt replies, though she’s not wrong. It’s just that it would do weird things to his hair, and he wants to look nice. It’s date night. He hasn’t seen Blaine since yesterday morning. He wants to make a statement, even if that statement might come with frostbite.
“It’s a fashion thing, huh,” Mercedes says with a laugh. “I don’t know what’s wrong with you, boy. You used to wear hats all the time.”
“I still like hats,” Kurt tells her. “But not for tonight.”
Walking toward the living room, Mercedes just shakes her head and calls, “Blaine!”
There’s the sound of light footsteps from above, and by the time Kurt’s looking up the stairs Blaine’s already coming down them.
“Kurt,” Blaine says warmly, his face lighting up.
Sometimes when Kurt hasn’t seen Blaine for a little while - any amount time above about five minutes, if he’s being honest - that first sight of him can take Kurt’s breath away. It can be hard to believe that Blaine really is that handsome, that graceful, that charismatic, that full of life in reality and not just in Kurt’s mind. But he is. And he looks incredible, skipping down the stairs in that shawl-collar sweater and bright red pair of pants.
“Hi,” Blaine breathes when he gets down to the entryway, leaning up for a quick, softly welcoming kiss.
“Hi,” Kurt says, his stomach fluttering with Blaine’s proximity. It’s ridiculous to him that he feels giddy, because they see each other every day, but now that they aren’t living together each time they’re reunited just feels special. They both had very necessary time apart to do their own things today, and now they’re together again the way a part of him is absolutely certain they’re always supposed to be.
Mercedes pokes her head out from the living room and says, “We’re ordering pizza. Want any?”
“Thank you, Mercedes, but we’re going out,” Blaine replies with a polite but happy smile.
“Better you than me,” she says. “You’re going to be ice cubes before you even get to the subway.”
“We’ll be fine,” Blaine tells her, grabbing his scarf and winding it around his neck. “I hope you and Sam have a good night.”
“You, too,” she says. “See you tomorrow.”
Kurt feels another flutter in his stomach, this one of satisfaction, because it’s Saturday night, so it means that Blaine is staying over with him. They can go out and have fun - and they will - and then they can go home.
Together.
It’s right, them living apart, but it’s still odd to Kurt, like instead of being the grown-ups they thought they were when they lived together they’re now playing at being college students, having date nights and sleep-overs when they could just be in the same space day after day. But it’s working, and if it gives him butterflies to pick Blaine up at his apartment then it’s certainly not all bad.
“Are you ready?” Blaine asks him as he buttons up his coat.
“Absolutely,” Kurt replies without hesitation.
They talk the whole way while they walk to the restaurant, then they holds hands and talk through the meal. It’s a little Italian place, nothing fancy, but the table is just for two, the candlelight makes Blaine’s eyes even more dreamy, and the only person who bothers them is the waiter and his seemingly relentless need to keep their water glasses filled to the very top.
Kurt feels like he can’t get his fill of Blaine, like they can’t talk fast enough or smile widely enough, and that’s so different from a few months ago when tensions were running high that he feels even more sure than before of their decision to be apart. It makes being together that much more special. He never wants his time with Blaine to be anything but special.
“What do you want to do now?” Blaine asks after they’re both stuffed full with salad, pasta, and the cannoli they amicably shared. He’s leaning back in his chair, his mouth curved in a soft smile, his fingers light against Kurt’s on top of the tablecloth.
The sluggish, sleepy part of Kurt wants to curl up under a blanket on the couch and watch reality TV with him until the food coma has lifted, but it’s a Saturday night. It’s their Saturday night. He doesn’t want to waste it.
Not that watching TV would be a waste. Not that taking advantage of a few hours mostly alone in the loft would be a waste, either, because Kurt would be more than happy to get his hands and mouth on Blaine’s skin. That’s never, ever a waste.
But they have time for the two of them, with no friends here to bother them and no homework to do, and he wants to use that time wisely. At home, there will be Rachel; at Blaine’s there will be Sam and Mercedes. Kurt loves them, but he wants to be with Blaine, just the two of them. There is always someone else around. They deserve time without other friends distracting them, needing them, expecting things from them.
His bed will be there later, and when they wake up in the morning Rachel will still be more than happy to watch TV with them on the couch. They should do something that’s just for the two of them now. Something that will make them happy. Something that will let them touch. Something that will let him show off his handsome fiancé and the hard work Kurt’s been putting into his own body, too. Something that’s theirs and doesn’t have to be shared with friends and colleagues. Something that is just for the two of them, even if they aren’t alone.
“Let’s go dancing,” he says, tracing his thumb along the edge of Blaine’s fingers. “We haven’t been in a few weeks.”
“Ooh,” Blaine says happily, his head lifting as his smile grows. “It’s ‘80s night tonight.”
“Oh god,” Kurt says with a laugh and a cringe he can’t quite hide. “That will be awful.”
Blaine tugs at Kurt’s hand, his face lit up with humor. “No, come on, that’ll be great.”
Kurt thinks about watching Blaine leap around and sing all night, the brightest light in the club. He thinks about guys in stupid retro outfits making eyes at them both. He thinks about loud new wave music in his ears, driving him into a frenzy he doesn’t want to resist.
He thinks about sharing it all with Blaine, dancing with him here and there, trading drinks, singing songs, circling him on the dance floor, collapsing against him one of the club’s couches at the end of the night for one last drink together before they go home... He thinks about having yet another perfect New York night with him before taking him home and capping it off the best way he knows how in the soft cocoon of his sheets around their bare bodies... and he thinks he wouldn’t have it any other way.
Because it’s them. It’s their night. It’s their city. They might be sharing it with millions of people, but they don’t have to be alone to have it be about the two of them. They get to be alone together in it, able to express themselves and be themselves without anyone to stop them.
Going to the club is an escape to somewhere they get to do that, not an escape from some hardship or another that they feel like they can’t work out any other way. They can work out anything, Kurt knows. It’s just them there together, hand in hand.
So they’ll go dance and have fun, their eyes really only for each other no matter how the crowd pulls at them. The time out will only make getting home and falling into that bed for the whole night tonight that much better.
“You’re right,” Kurt tells him, reaching for his wallet to pay for their meal so that they can go where they can be alone in a crowd. “That will be amazing.”
7. August 2014
The pounding music dips into the next song, and Kurt slows with the beat, wipes at the sweat on his forehead with the back of his wrist, and blinks at the dance floor around him. Blaine had left two songs ago to get them drinks, and he isn’t back yet.
Huh.
Kurt edges through the crowd toward the bar, his lungs and legs burning from the exertion. He needs to focus more on endurance over strength in his workouts again, he thinks absently, so he isn’t out of shape like this before school starts up again next month. Either that or they need to go out dancing more before then, which sounds like a lot more fun than running on a treadmill.
He finds Blaine at the bar with two apparently forgotten drinks in front of him as he and the bartender lean across the bar together, talking animatedly.
“Hey, stranger,” Kurt says, coming up to lean his hip against the stool beside him and reaching out to collect his drink.
Blaine turns toward him with a huge smile, every bit of him vibrating with bright-eyed excitement. “Kurt! Sorry, I was coming back, but Gerry just got engaged!” He gestures to the bartender, who is beaming almost as enthusiastically as Blaine is.
“Congratulations!” Kurt tells Gerry. Kurt hasn’t met Bill-the-medical-student, but he’s heard enough about him over the past few months that he’s not all that surprised they’ve taken this next big step.
“Isn’t that great?!” Blaine says. He takes hold of Kurt’s left hand, fingers tight around his, his thumb against Kurt’s ring. “I told him we should all go out for coffee and talk wedding planning!”
“It just happened last night,” Gerry says with a laugh and a somewhat overwhelmed shake of his head. “We aren’t ready to plan yet.”
“Vendors book up fast in the city,” Kurt tells him, but he knows just how nice it is to linger in the engagement for a while, too. The giddy first months are something to be treasured, living with the utter magic of the knowledge that you’ve actually found forever. Lingering just doesn’t get you your first choice of venue. “But we’re enjoying a long engagement, so who are we to judge?”
Gerry laughs again, his eyes twinkling. “I know you better than that, Kurt. You always judge.”
Kurt can’t really argue with that, so he just nods his agreement as Gerry moves away to serve some of the patrons clamoring for his attention at the bar.
Blaine smiles at him over the rim of his glass as he takes a healthy sip of his drink and then leans in, his mouth close to Kurt’s ear to be heard more easily over the music. “A lot of people have gotten engaged this summer,” he says. “Gerry and Bill. Isaac and Tom. Stacy and Henry.”
“Chase and that guy he met on Fire Island last month,” Kurt adds dryly, though if that one lasts past whenever Chase sobers up and goes back to Vogue.com after this summer of drunken debauchery and beach living he’s Instagramming daily he’ll totally eat his new Moschino waistcoat.
“Mmm,” Blaine agrees, swinging their clasped hands between them in time to the beat. “It’s really nice, isn’t it? I’m happy for them. Finding your soulmate is amazing.”
With a nod, Kurt takes another sip of his drink, feeling it burn all the way down. Its heat holds no comparison to the warmth of the feelings inside him, though, the warm, steady, constantly overflowing happiness in his own heart. “We beat them all, though,” he tells Blaine with a smug sort of joy.
Blaine looks up at him with a laugh. “It’s not a race, Kurt,” he says, though there’s a light in his eyes that seems to mirror what Kurt is feeling.
Kurt tugs on their joined hands and says, “We still won. We won years ago. Isn’t that what you told me?”
His eyes fluttering closed for just a moment, Blaine sighs out softly and then smiles at him in that way he has where Kurt is sure Blaine is actually convinced he hung the moon and the stars in the sky. It’s a lot of pressure to live up to that look, but it’s not in a bad way, not anymore. It just makes Kurt better, the way he wants to think he makes Blaine better by loving him, too.
“We did,” Blaine tells him, sure and content and with his heart on his face for everyone in the club to see.
Kurt doesn’t care if they see. Some of them are friends, and the rest don’t matter. Nobody’s going to judge. What he cares about is Blaine, this man who has his hand and his heart and his promise for their own forever.
Everyone else can live their own lives, and he hopes they’ll be happy, but with Blaine Kurt knows he will be.
Not everything is easy, of course. They have hard days where Blaine’s too chipper before coffee or Kurt’s too quick to judge, but they have their own apartment - only theirs this time - their own bed, their own life in this great city. They have friends old and new. They have a favorite market and a favorite coffee shop and a favorite club with a favorite bartender, who happened to be quite heavy with his pour tonight, because Kurt’s head is spinning with more than just the thump of the bass line and the nearness of his future husband.
Tomorrow they will make time for calling the super to try to get the hot water fixed, for finding a perfect birthday gift for Carole, and for tailoring that new jacket Blaine bought that just doesn’t fit him quite right. Maybe they’ll have brunch out if Gerry hasn’t already cursed them with hangovers that will keep them in, talking in low, pained voices and drinking disgusting green smoothies from the recipe Cooper sent that somehow actually works.
But those are worries for tomorrow. Tonight is just for this, for them, for having fun and enjoying this summer night out in this city that they both are finding their home in.
Kurt sets his empty glass down on the bar and says into Blaine’s ear, “Come dance with me. We need practice for our wedding.”
“Practice?” Blaine asks with a grin, putting down his own drink. “We still haven’t set a date.”
“We will soon.” His shoulders moving with the beat and his lips curved into a grin of his own, because he knows the answer before he even asks the question, Kurt says, “Are you saying no?”
“When have I ever said no?” Blaine replies and lets Kurt lead him onto the dance floor.
There they find a little spot in the press of moving bodies, and Blaine fits so effortlessly against him - chest to chest, thigh to thigh, hands sliding over Kurt’s hips and up his back, his breath warm against Kurt’s cheek, his eyes dark as Kurt twirls in his grasp - as the crowd fills in around them and swallows them up.
The club isn’t home for Kurt and Blaine. Home is the loft for now, with its secondhand smoke and third-hand furniture, with its drafty windows and Hummel-Anderson written on the dented brass mailbox in the entry hall. But home isn’t the loft; it’s them, together again, together for good.
Home is where they’ll crawl into bed together tonight, and next week, and next year. Home is the hope of children and careers, of goals to accomplish, of new dreams to imagine and conquer. Home is what they’re building together each and every day with work that’s sometimes too hard and love that comes so easily, love that comes with forever.
But there’s still something of home here in the middle of the floor, Kurt thinks as he spins back around to get his arms over Blaine’s shoulders. Being here isn’t an exploration anymore. It isn’t an escape. It’s a celebration.
They’re in a city that welcomes them and lets them be free. They’re in a room full of people who don’t know them but who understand their love, who don’t blink when Blaine kisses Kurt’s throat, who don’t challenge the ring on Kurt’s finger, who only care about music and movement and the joy of being alive.
Kurt smiles into Blaine’s radiant face, runs his hands up his slim sides, and lets out a light, buoyant laugh as the lights swirl around them like stars.
Because right now, more than he ever has, more than he ever thought he could in the dark days before they met years before, Kurt really, really loves being alive.
~end~
Reminder: I am spoiler-free!
Thanks to Stoney and Liz!
It’s a journey through canon, so warnings for Klaine breaking up and also Kurt/Adam.
Title: "I Bet You Look Good on the Dancefloor" [on the AO3]
Author: flaming muse
Fandom: Glee
Pairing: Kurt/Blaine, Kurt/Adam
Rating: Teen
Word count: 10,500
Summary: Seven times Kurt goes clubbing in New York.
Spoilers: set from soon after 4x03 (“Makeover”) to the summer after 5x20 (“The Untitled Rachel Berry Project”)
Notes: The title comes from the song by Arctic Monkeys
Disclaimers: The characters belong to various corporate Powers That Be. I make absolutely no profit from playing with them.
Distribution: Please ask.
Feedback is lovely!
1. September 2012
There are people everywhere, lined up from outside the door to far down the block and also pulsing inside the club itself in time with the loud beat of the music spilling out onto the sidewalk whenever the bouncers open the doors and allow someone inside. The waiting club-goers are wild and mysterious with their bright make-up and even crazier clothes, flashes of neon, glitter, and skin everywhere, and Kurt feels almost like he’s out on Halloween with magical creatures from his imagination roaming the streets, except it’s not Halloween, and the people are real. They’re so very real.
With wide eyes, Kurt rushes to keep close to Isabelle. His hands itch to grab onto her froth of swirling skirts like a child to keep from getting lost, but he keeps his elbows tight against his sides and his fingers balled against his thighs. He isn’t a child, and this is his new boss, who invited him out to join her and some friends after a late night at work. He needs to impress her, not show her how overwhelmed he is.
Besides, this is his first official New York club. He bets the bouncers are going to be more careful than the bored guy who could barely check their fake IDs at Scandals; he’s going to need to look mature and composed if he wants to get in the door. He can’t even imagine the embarrassment of being sent home for being underage while Isabelle and his co-workers head inside.
He tries to school his face into something other than wonder at the mass of bare-armed, tight-clothed, impossibly attractive men milling around beyond the ropes as Isabelle leads them right up to the bouncer holding the clipboard. He’s so big she barely comes up to his shoulder, even in her towering magenta Jimmy Choos, and his arms look thicker than Kurt’s legs are, but she doesn’t even pause as she calls out her name with a wave and walks breezily past him into the club.
Kurt feels like there’s a spotlight on him as he follows after her, right on Chase’s heels, but even though he feels a foot shorter and five years younger than anyone else there nobody seems to notice. Nobody calls after him or grabs hold of his shirt collar to yank him back out onto the sidewalk.
He’s in.
But what, he thinks in utter shock as he steps inside, has he gotten himself into?
The first thing that Kurt really registers inside is the heat. The club is a confusing kaleidoscope of darkness and brightness from the way the lights are flashing and swirling through the space, everywhere is filled with a press of writhing, dancing bodies that’s claustrophobic and hard to pull apart with his eyes into individual people, and the music is so loud that it feels like his ears aren’t working and he’s swimming in a muffled world where he feels music instead, but it’s the hot, steamy air, filled with fake smoke, spilled drinks, sweat, and cologne, that is the first thing he can actually understand and experience.
He’s overdressed, and not just because he’s wearing dress pants instead of leather or denim; no wonder everyone is going sleeveless or shirtless if this is what it’s like being in here. It’s a sauna. He’s sure there’s air conditioning somewhere, but it’s still hot.
And so, he thinks as he turns his head in a slow arc and his eyes go wide again, are all of the men here.
Well, there’s another reason for them to be wearing so few clothes, he thinks, and his hand goes up in dismay to the buttons of his shirt as though there’s a chance they might pop open of their own accord just by being in that room. He does not look like everyone else. They’re so grown up and filled out, so many of them wide and muscular. A lot of them would make even Puck or Sam look seriously underdeveloped.
Kurt stares for a moment, his heart fluttering in a combination of amazement and concern. He is so in over his head.
“Come on, Kurt!” Isabelle calls to him over her shoulder, waving in his direction.
He unroots his frozen feet and hurries after her, wiggling his way through the patrons by the bar to reach her. The last thing he needs is to get lost.
“Here,” Isabelle says when he gets to her side, handing him a glass with clear liquid, ice, and a twist of lime, and he’s more relieved than he can say when a sip assures him it’s only water; he’s already spun around, and he can’t afford to get drunk. “I have some friends I want you to meet.” She tucks her hand into his arm and leads him away from the dance floor toward a niche filled with plush couches, laughing, brightly clad women, and beautiful, half-dressed men.
Isabelle introduces him around, and he smiles and nods, collecting lifted eyebrows, interested looks, and forgotten names in return.
He knows he should be focusing more on remembering what people are saying, but the music is so loud it’s making his head swim, and he finds it hard to believe that the two guys in matching leather vests are going to be important business contacts in the future. He could be wrong, but he would have expected to get more than a two-fingered wave, at least. They all laugh about something he can’t quite hear, and he lets his eyes drift around the room in wonder.
There are so many people, so many men, all of them happy and dancing like they don’t have a care in the world.
Maybe they don’t. This is New York, after all. Maybe they found what they were looking for the same way Kurt is hoping he will by being here.
When he manages to tear his gaze away from so much very well-toned male skin - skin that he doesn’t have to pretend he doesn’t see in the locker room, skin that isn’t a picture on the internet, skin that doesn’t belong to Blaine, who is so far away right now - he realizes most of the women Isabelle is talking to are actually men, too: tall, slim, perfectly made up, and utterly fabulous in their drag, nothing at all like Scandals, either.
Kurt sips at his drink, takes a shallow breath, and finds himself having to hold back a helpless laugh. He’s in a gay club. In New York. With his boss from Vogue.com. Because he lives here, and he works there.
And nobody is looking at him like he doesn’t belong.
Somehow, and he doesn’t quite know how this is possible, he isn’t dreaming any of it. It’s real, and he’s here.
“Okay?” Isabelle asks him with a pat on his arm.
“I don’t think I’m in Kansas anymore,” Kurt tells her, the laugh bubbling out of him.
Isabelle’s smile is warm and knowing, so affectionate that it goes right to his heart. “You aren’t,” she promises and hooks her hand through his elbow again. “Come on, Dorothy. Let’s dance.”
Kurt looks out at the dance floor with its intimidating mass of adult bodies, more than he count touching and grinding. He can’t help but feel a little intimidation at the sight of so many strange men all together, not that he objects in the slightest, but he just doesn’t know how to do that. It’s one thing to dance with Blaine and his friends or dip into the just barely more than pedestrian pleasures at Scandals, and it’s quite another to throw himself into this world of skin and temptation, where he doesn’t know where he fits. This isn’t his world, not yet.
A quiet part of him deep inside also doesn’t know if it’s better if guys come up to dance with him with the same kinds of presumptuous touches he’s seeing but isn’t interested in or if it turns out that even in New York they don’t want him, either.
But he does know how to hold his own on the dance floor. He’ll figure it out. Nothing bad’s going to happen.
As he draws breath to say yes, Isabelle smiles again and says, “Don’t worry. I won’t let any flying monkeys carry you away if you don’t want them to. Really.”
Kurt laughs and sets down his glass, following as Isabelle pulls her small army of men behind her to the dance floor. He stays at the edge, in sight of the couches and out of the worst of the crowds, and when she catches his eye he gives her a grateful smile for her concern. She winks back and spins around with her arms raised and her hair streaming out behind her in a banner of perfect waves.
Shimmying to himself, Kurt lets his shoulders bounce as he watches the dancers around him twirl and move with the throbbing beat. There are so many men dancing here. Young, pretty, happy, unselfconscious. They’re touching, kissing, enjoying each other without a second thought, without even a hint of fear or shame. Some of them are even holding hands as they dance, not just on the prowl but together.
Kurt accepts the hand of a towering drag queen and lets himself be spun out and back in before pulling away to dance alone again, dizzy from the motion, the lights, and the night itself. One song shifts into another, this time Lady Gaga, and the crowd roars in approval and excitement that mirrors his own and lifts his heart even higher.
Biting his lip, Kurt thinks with a sense of fierce excitement that he can’t wait for Blaine to come to New York.
It’s all true. Everything they’ve been hoping for, somewhere they can be openly in love and accepted, somewhere they can just be, like everyone else is.
Somehow, like a miracle, it’s all true.
2. November 2012
Kurt dances with sharp, angry movements, the bass as heavy in his chest as his own broken heart. The release of motion doesn’t make him hurt less, but it does make the blood flow freely through his body instead of feeling frozen solid in his veins.
There’s a comfort in being driven by forces outside of himself. He doesn’t have to think his own bitter thoughts or feel his own dark feelings; right now, he just has to dance.
Besides, Kurt was born to move. He breathes music as much as he does air. Blaine might have taken away so much of what he held precious, including the future they were supposed to have, but he can’t take this from Kurt. He can’t take away who he is.
The club isn’t of his choosing; one Rachel’s friends suggested it when she said she wanted to take Kurt for a night out to get over their wounded hearts after their ill-advised trip to Lima to see Finn and Blaine’s production of Grease. And it had been not just ill-advised but stupid, because all seeing Blaine had proven to Kurt is that his heart is still broken and will always be broken, and he still has to find a way to do what feels impossible and stop loving Blaine, anyway.
Setting his jaw, Kurt puts Blaine’s handsome face out of his mind and spins further into the mix of dancers. He might not have chosen to be here, but this, at least, was a good idea.
It’s not exclusively a gay club, but it’s gay-friendly, enough that when he looks around there are plenty of men looking back at him. He can see the hunger in their eyes, less subtle than what he sees in the hallways of Vogue.com. Eyebrows lift, eyes glitter, muscled bodies sway closer to him, ready to take whatever he has to offer.
No one has approached him with any seriousness yet, and he honestly hopes they won’t, not tonight, because the sharp edges of his anger and hurt aren’t going to be soothed by a nice pair of arms right now. He doesn’t want them. He wants to get lost in the music, maybe have a hot partner step in to finish out a song with a little respectful grinding against a body that will feel all wrong, and then go home and eat ice cream with Rachel on the couch.
No, Kurt doesn’t want these New York men yet. They’re too tall, too broad, too different, too unknown. They look wrong. They smell wrong. Kurt’s foolish heart still wants Blaine and everything he thought that Blaine was to him: love, safety, understanding, forever.
But, he thinks with the rising taste of bile and anger burning in his throat, he doesn’t have that anymore.
The good news - the only good news right now - is that Kurt has all of New York instead. He’s not trapped in Lima; he’s here. He has options. He has freedom. He might have had his heart broken, but he’s not actually alone. He has thousands upon thousands of gay men here, living this life that he wants, already sharing the dream instead of shattering it like Blaine did.
Kurt lets his eyes flick around him once, just to see the other eyes watching back. They are. They’re there. Dozens of options in this very room.
Dozens of men who aren’t Blaine.
And soon... soon, Kurt knows - fierce, determined, and just a little sad - as he feels hands skim his hips and he makes himself allow the touch, he will grab hold and actually want them instead.
3. February 2013
The music shifts from one song to the next, the DJ meshing the tracks well enough that the beat stays steady, and Kurt twirls himself out of Katie’s arms and looks behind him for Adam. They’re there in a group with a bunch of members of Adam’s Apples at a grubby little club in Chelsea, the floor beneath them gritty with dirt and spilled drinks - and Kurt doesn’t even want to think about what the bathrooms must look like - but one of Adam’s friends knows the bartender, so with the promise of not being carded and no cover at the door they’d ended up here.
It’s been a lot of fun, actually. The crowd is enthusiastic, the music is good, and the Apples have been more than welcoming to Kurt. They’ve danced in ever-shifting groups and pairs, the way friends do, and accepted him into the knot without a blink, just like they seemed to be giving him a much-needed home at NYADA. They’re silly, platonically handsy, and fun. Kurt has been in the middle of them all night long, caught up in good music, happy companions, and the occasional fruity drink with plenty of alcohol. He feels dizzy with not just the music and the drinks but with simply smiling so much. He’s been smiling all night, it feels like. His cheeks ache nearly as much as his legs do. It’s something he’s missed.
But the smile drops off of his face as he turns around in a full circle in the middle of the dance floor and can’t find Adam. His date. They’re supposed to be here together, even if they haven’t been dancing with each other every minute. Adam’s slipped in here and there, pulling him close with that sparkle in his eyes that always makes Kurt’s stomach swoop, but though he’s been mingling like Kurt is he’s been nearby. They’ve been smiling at each other over their shoulders and catching each other’s eyes as they’ve spun past.
Except Adam’s not there anymore.
“Um,” Kurt mutters to himself in confusion.
It takes a minute to find him, and it doesn’t make Kurt feel any better. Adam’s at the bar, standing talking to some guy Kurt was introduced to earlier, a friend of a friend named Smith or Worth or something that sounds preppy but isn’t actually a name.
With a frown, Kurt brushes off Katie’s clinging hands and steps away from their group of friends as Adam laughs at that guy. Kurt knows that laugh. He knows that smile. He knows how Adam’s eyes warm when he’s being especially charming, and he’s doing it right now. To that guy. While he’s supposed to be out with Kurt.
Kurt’s mouth tightens as hurt flares in his chest. He tells himself not to be jealous. Adam might have asked him out, but they aren’t serious. They’re just dating. Not like he and Blaine dated where they were pretty much married already but like everyone else in the world does it. They’re being casual. They’re going out on a series of dates but aren’t anything more official than that.
Still, Kurt would have thought that being out on a date would have meant that no other flirting would be going on, he thinks with narrowed eyes. But he also knows he has a lot to learn about what college dating actually is like. He’s a lot younger than Adam, and he’s only really been with Blaine. He’s hurt and deeply unimpressed, but he doesn’t need to storm over there like an angry child. He can just not go out with him again if he’s going to be treated this way. He can live with being ignored as long as he knows it won’t happen again.
But if he’s going to be an adult and not lash out the way he wants to, he is also thirsty, so he goes over to the bar to get a bottle of water, standing a few yards away so that he doesn’t have to overhear whatever’s going on. He unscrews the top and takes an angry sip, the water doing nothing to cool his temper.
No, this is not going to happen again with Adam. Kurt doesn’t expect melty eyes full of feelings and forever anymore, but he does insist on a certain level of respect.
“Kurt. Kurt!” he hears, and he turns to find Adam waving at him insistently with an easy, open smile.
Kurt stalks over, his own smile tight on his lips, and says, “I didn’t want to interrupt.”
Adam threads his fingers through Kurt’s empty hand and pulls him to lean against him where he sits on the bar stool. “Don’t be silly. We’re catching our breaths and watching the crowd for any moves we might want to steal for the Apples.” He leans in close to Kurt’s cheek and says, “It was really just an excuse to watch you. You looked amazing out there, Kurt.”
Kurt’s heart stutters in surprise and pleasure at the unexpected compliment, and he meets Adam’s eyes to find only honesty and appreciation in them. “You could have joined me,” he says a little breathlessly, delighted against his will.
“I will,” Adam says with an easy squeeze of his fingers. “But I don’t need to monopolize you. We don’t have to live in each other’s pockets. And I do get to watch you, so it all works out.”
There’s something in the sureness in Adam’s words that makes Kurt’s ire fade. He doesn’t like being ignored, but Adam isn’t ignoring him if he’s still watching. Maybe he’d read the smiling wrong; maybe Adam hadn’t been flirting. Maybe he simply hadn’t been out there with Kurt.
As much as he likes a partner, Kurt’s never needed to be glued to someone else’s side; he just doesn’t want to be forgotten or overlooked.
But being watched while he owns the dance floor? That’s perfectly fine with him. That’s a kind of attention he understands and likes, near or far. That’s a kind of attention he can appreciate.
He’s here to dance, after all. And he certainly knows how to pull focus.
Something warm and certain fills him and makes his smile grow that much more. This is dating, too, flirting from afar. He can do that. It sounds like fun, in fact.
He drains the rest of his bottle of water and leans over Adam to place it on the bar, getting a nice intake of breath in return. “Well, then. If you decide to stop working on Apples routines and let your hair down,” he says with a teasing tweak of Adam’s beanie, “you know where to find me.” With that, he spins away to rejoin the dancers.
Adam’s burst of charmed laughter chases him out onto the floor.
Kurt knows Adam will follow him soon. He is certain of it.
He might not have a lot of experience dating in college, not yet, but this part - the dancing, the teasing, this trick of keeping connected even when apart - he knows he can do.
4. May 2013
“This has been the best night, Kurt,” Blaine says, his hand warm and tight in Kurt’s as they stroll down the sidewalk in the warm spring evening air.
“It has,” Kurt agrees. He’s pretty sure his heart is so light it’s floating up above them somewhere, tethered like a balloon to his chest but made buoyant by everything that’s happening between them.
Blaine’s here visiting, which is wonderful just by itself. Kurt’s missed him, missed his presence and his smile and his hugs and feels like the world is brighter simply from having them again. But Blaine’s not only visiting but is also going to nail his NYADA audition this week, and then he’s going to move to New York and be with Kurt, and then they’ll get married and be happy forever. And tonight with their romantic dinner and just as romantic stroll through Kurt’s favorite window shopping neighborhood has been the perfect start of this perfect life they’re going to have.
Kurt can almost taste it. He’s so ready for their life really to begin. He’s been waiting for so long, waiting, dreaming, and working for it, and here they almost are.
His steps slow as they approach the subway, because it’s getting late, and they should be getting back to the loft... except that Rachel, Santana, and Sam are all there. That means they’ll have to be quiet and discreet instead of totally wrapped up in each other like they have been for hours, all smiles and hand-holding and nothing else to worry about but each other, and Kurt’s not quite ready to let go of Blaine yet.
This is their time. This is his fiancé in his city, soon to be their city. He’s greedy with it.
“What’s next?” Blaine asks, his eyes as intensely focused as ever on him. The streetlight above makes them gleam beneath his dark lashes, his face soft and so appealingly open, and it’s all Kurt can do not to kiss him.
“Well,” Kurt says, swinging their joined hands between them, “we could go back to the loft and call it a night - “ It has its positive sides, that thought: being alone in a bed just the two of them, even if they’d have to be quiet. “ - or I can take you dancing somewhere that makes Scandals look like a 4H picnic in comparison.”
Blaine’s eyes light up, and Kurt’s not sure if it’s because of the promise of dancing or just the thrill of a gay club, which has always been a kind of beacon to Blaine Kurt has never really understood. Kurt doesn’t require the presence of others like him to feel good about himself, while Blaine has always preferred being part of a crowd... but then Kurt has also never felt like he was part of any crowd until he got to New York. He never felt like he fully fit in until he got here and could be himself in a sea of people who didn’t think he stood out in a bad way. In the city, at Vogue, at NYADA, he’s been surprised to find that there’s a comfort in some being part of a group if the people around him aren’t closed-minded idiots.
Maybe he does understand Blaine’s interest in gay clubs after all.
Kurt takes Blaine in from head to toe, his whole perfect, muscled body from his feet that know how to move to his hips that love to flex to his arms that love to pull Kurt in close as they dance, and knows Blaine is going to fit in so well. He’s going to love being a member of that crowd, one of so many men with a similar perspective, not making do at Scandals but grabbing hold of the city. The city is full of men like them. He can’t wait for Blaine to see this part of his new home, too.
Their home.
This is going to be their home so very soon, and they are only going to stand out for being fabulous, not out of place.
Blaine is going to love it.
“Let’s go,” Kurt tells him with a flutter of excitement and tugs him toward the subway entrance.
They’re dressed for a dinner date instead of a night of dancing, but the only thing that matters to Kurt is Blaine’s smile as they approach the club Elliott had told Kurt about the other week. It’s small and eighteen-plus, so there’s no real line at the door. Blaine still looks around in wonder as Kurt hands over their IDs and pays the cover charge, and then they’re in.
Blaine’s eyes don’t stop moving as Kurt brings him to the coat check so that they can discard their jackets. Blaine’s sweater vest will probably be too warm for comfort in a few minutes, but Kurt doesn’t suggest he take it off. He just pockets the check stubs, rolls up his sleeves, and says into his ear over the pounding music, “Well?”
Blaine’s eyes scan the room again, soaking up the flashing lights, the dancing, the men, and then land on Kurt’s face. He looks shocked but elated. Grabbing Kurt’s hand, he says, “Come dance with me?”
With a laugh, Kurt says, “That’s the point, isn’t it? Or will this be a repeat of our big night out at Scandals?”
“No,” Blaine tells him, already swaying a little with the music. “Come on, Kurt.”
Kurt laughs again and lets himself be led to the dance floor. They immediately carve out a little corner for themselves by the wall, close enough to the speakers that Kurt can feel the bass line like a second heartbeat in his chest. Blaine’s adorable in his bow tie and loafers, a bright, preppy spark in a sea of leather and denim, and Kurt can feel the curious, interested eyes on them both.
It doesn’t matter, though, Kurt thinks with a flare of pride. Let them look. Kurt and Blaine are here now, in New York. Everyone else is going to have to get used to them.
Blaine looks up at the ceiling with its grid of lights and over toward the bustling bar, taking it all in, taking all of the men in, but Kurt just watches him, watches him move, watches him smile, watches him take in his surroundings with wonder and joy and an innate ease Kurt had to develop over months of visits to different clubs. But that’s Blaine. It’s part of his charm.
His arms over his head and his body swept up in the same rhythm as everyone else around them, Blaine already fits in here.
It usually takes a few minutes for the beat of the music to get under Kurt’s skin. He can dance without it catching him, but it makes him feel a little awkward in his body until the dark edges of the rhythm pull him under. But with Blaine opposite him, it’s easier to let go right away, because his body isn’t just moving with the music but with Blaine’s. He’s always known exactly how to move with Blaine.
There are still hundreds of other people around, many of them close, but they don’t matter, not when Blaine’s catching Kurt’s hand and pulling him to dance close, closer, not all but having sex on the dance floor like the two guys behind Blaine Kurt’s not quite able to ignore, but just dancing together.
Linking his hands behind Blaine’s neck and letting his hips dig deeper into their shimmy as Blaine fits his fingers to his waist, Kurt sings to himself with the music, wrapped up in sound and heat and Blaine. Blaine’s smile is wide, his hands are warm, and Kurt feels like he’s in a perfect little bubble.
He knows they aren’t acting like everyone else. This is a party, not a private dance floor for the two of them. They should be more open. They should be making eye contact with other people, joining the group, having fun with every there. They shouldn’t just be in their own world.
But they want to be. They’re making their own world together, and this is just the first taste of it. There’s so much more to come.
And with Blaine tugging him in a little closer, nuzzling in against Kurt’s jaw and steering him into a spin, Kurt doesn’t think there’s any reason at all to do anything else right now.
This is what he wants. And he finally has it.
Kurt sways into him, chest to chest, and finds himself smiling against Blaine’s hair as they move together.
They’ve both been waiting so long to get here, to New York, to each other, to this dance floor filled with men just like them, to this absolute freedom; Kurt can’t think of a reason they should do anything but enjoy it.
5. September 2013
The air around them is muggy and oppressive as they walk down the street, and Kurt wishes for not the first time this week that he didn’t like to dress for every occasion, because the slobs wearing tank tops and cargo shorts have to be much more comfortable than he is in his skinny jeans, tall boots, and fitted short-sleeved shirt. He is sweaty, constrained, and annoyed.
On the other hand, he looks fabulous, and even if Blaine’s eyes hadn’t gotten hotter than the air outside when they first saw him Kurt always likes to feel good about himself. He’s going out to a club with his friends for a night of dancing he really desperately needs. He wants to look the part.
Besides, if Elliott can swan down the street beside him in that long, amazing, surely stifling jacket, Kurt can suffer through a pair of clinging jeans.
He can hear the music before they turn the corner, and his pulse speeds up with it. He and Blaine don’t go out dancing often, not with their busy schedules and a city with so much else on offer, but tonight’s a perfect night for it. Kurt’s feeling claustrophobic and restless, weighed down. With the start of NYADA this week, Blaine’s been nervous and clingy just when Kurt’s been feeling the press of his own schoolwork starting up, and Kurt’s edgy and tense trying to walk that tightrope. He just wants to move his body freely and put aside everything that’s weighing him down for a little while.
A club is just the right solution. He’d jumped on the idea the second Elliott had suggested it. It’s going to be too hot in there, too noisy, too crowded, and too sweaty for him to be able to think at all.
“Are you sure this is right?” Blaine asks tentatively as Elliott leads them into an alley between two buildings. “Because Blaze is like two blocks away if we wanted to go there...”
Kurt knows Blaine likes Blaze because the bartender there always slips him free drinks if he goes up to the bar without Kurt, and Kurt would almost be jealous except that a tipsy Blaine is a happy Blaine, and a happy Blaine is one who is extra generous and worshipful when they get home at the end of the night.
“Trust me,” Elliott says, sweeping ahead of them with an impressive swish of his coat.
Kurt follows as Blaine picks his way more carefully across the rough ground.
“I think I just stepped on something that was moving,” Blaine says with a shudder. “This can’t be right.”
“Elliott’s never steered us wrong,” Kurt reminds him. Not that Blaine’s been to a club with Elliott before, but Kurt has; there was one night out with him, Santana, and Dani that was so epic Kurt can barely remember it, save for the pictures they found on their phones the next morning. Blaine should trust him. Blaine should trust them both.
There’s a faint snort from Blaine. Maybe it’s a cough. Either way, his face is composed and guileless when Kurt looks back to check on him.
“Here we are!” Elliott announces with outspread arms when they arrive at a rusty door. It’s shut, unmarked, and has no handle. There’s an overflowing dumpster a few feet away.
“Are you sure this is the right address?” Kurt has to ask, because it really, really doesn’t seem right.
“Seriously, Blaze is only a couple of blocks - “ Blaine begins, looking back toward the street.
“You guys have no sense of adventure.” Elliott strides over to the door and bangs on it with his fist. A moment later it swings open, and what looked a second ago like a forgotten entrance to an abandoned warehouse now reveals a pulsing, pounding nightclub inside, all black lights and painted bodies. “Welcome to Baskerville, New York’s newest and greatest nightspot!”
“It’s so great it doesn’t have a front door?” Blaine says with raised eyebrows.
“The front door is only for people who don’t know about this one,” Elliott says. “And for people who like to wait in line, because it’s wrapped around the block out there.” He gestures with an elegant hand at the door, pure Starchild. “Coming?” He doesn’t wait for an answer before heading inside.
“Um.” Blaine glances uncertainly over his shoulder at the street again.
“I don’t care how sketchy it looks; I am not standing in line in this weather,” Kurt says and starts toward the door. He’s not backing down now. Failure is not an option. His two choices are either dance or yell. “Or in this alley, because it smells.” Blaine trails slowly after him.
There’s a glorious blast of cold air in the doorway, and then they’re in the middle of the wild party inside. There’s something shimmery on the walls and pillars, reflecting the black lights and odd flashes of color limning the dancers, not just bright smiles and bits of their clothing that glow in the black lights but splashes of neon on their skin and faces. It changes their outlines, sets off their bone structure and musculature, makes them more alien and exotic. It’s not quite a rave, Kurt feels certain, but it might be as close as he ever gets to one.
He feels a thrill low in his stomach at the thought. He loves being able to dance and let go even in a normal club, but here... here it’s going to be that much more intense, because whenever he opens his eyes he’s not going to see people but art come alive.
Elliott gestures over to a row of flat dishes on the rear bar near them. They’re filled with what looks like glowing sand in a variety of neon colors.
“Time to get painted up,” Elliott says over the roar of the music. At whatever he sees on Kurt’s face, he adds, “It washes out.”
Blaine takes a little bit of the dust on the tips of his fingers and rolls it between them, turning them a bright lime green.
“Don’t be shy about it,” Elliott says, grabbing a small handful of the yellow and slicking it right into the front of his own hair. Kurt has to admit it looks incredible in the lights.
Blaine reaches out and drags a thoughtful stripe down Kurt’s nose with the green, and Kurt rolls his eyes and sprinkles some blue onto Blaine’s hair, where it settles into the careful lines of his style.
“Great, I’m going to be cross-eyed all night,” Kurt says, staring down at the brightness on his nose.
“Yeah, but that’ll just be the drinks,” Elliott says. He adds a purple zigzag down Kurt’s arm and leaves a palm print on Blaine’s shoulder. “Come meet Gina. She makes the most amazing creations.”
He drags them further down the bar, where Gina does provide them with delicious cocktails and a friendly smear of paint down Elliott’s arm and across Kurt’s wrist that glows a vibrant yellow in the lights.
“Drink up, kids,” Elliott says, saluting them with his glass. “The fun is just beginning.”
Blaine makes an ambivalent noise and takes a healthy drink, his eyes narrowed on Elliott’s face.
Kurt watches the crowd as he sips his own cocktail. It’s a hectic and crazy scene all around, but he can feel the buzzing excitement rising in him at the new experience. The techno music grabs his body, pulling him into the beat, and the bright, abstract swirls of color and light throughout the dance floor surge and undulate in time with the song playing. The black light and neon turns the dancers into fragments of people, movement come to life.
This is nothing at all like homework or the ever-present pull of roommates with their own needs. This is giving to him, not taking from him. It’s making his world bigger instead of cramming him into the tiny box of schedules and chores and work and polite conversation before coffee and Blaine’s overflowing shoe collection and hissing bubbles from the goddamn SodaStream and -
“Kurt?” Blaine starts, frowning a bit.
Kurt doesn’t want to see him frown. He can feel the pinched line of his own mouth and hates it just as much. He just wants them both to let go and be happy. He knows they can. They just have to do it.
“Let’s dance,” Kurt tells him. He downs his drink as quickly as he can, and then with a buzz of anticipation as well as the surprisingly strong alcohol he pushes into the dancers and makes a place for himself in the fray.
He watches the blue and purple shapes that make up Blaine come closer, sees Blaine’s eyes catch and hold on him from a few feet away, catches a flash of Elliott’s smile nearby, feels the welcome in the faces of other dancers around him, takes a deep, satisfied, freeing breath, and lets himself fall into the music.
It is just what he needs - the noise, the movement, the anonymity, the release.
Song after song, drink after drink, he feels his wings stretch out around him in the spaces between his body and the next person’s, in the downbeats of the music, and in this break from his everyday routine. He has friends there, but he doesn’t have to worry about them. He doesn’t have to worry about talking and feelings. He doesn’t have to do his homework or wash the dishes. He just has to worry about himself.
He just has to move, letting his stress fall from his shoulders and the knots in his muscles work themselves free.
Over the course of the next couple of hours hours, Kurt collects quite a bit of paint on him, some of it deliberately left but most of it from casual touches from fellow dancers on the floor as they drift past. He doesn’t remember who left the swath of pink around his arm, but he quite likes how it makes his muscles there stand out. Watching himself flex a little, he can almost understand why people get those tribal tattoos to show off their biceps. Almost. They’re still tacky. But his arm looks amazing. He knows with a flutter of pride that other men think so, too.
There are other hand prints, too: fingers at his hips, a bright drag over his shoulder, dust along his collarbone. He doesn’t particularly remember getting them, either, but it’s a crowded dance floor, and he’s been in the thick of it, dancing and dancing and dancing.
It’s been good for him, a purging of negativity, at least for a little while. His muscles burn, his feet ache, and his smile is huge. He feels light as a feather, the weight on his chest he arrived with now gone. Leaning against the bar, he’s sweaty and tired and very, very happy.
An arm snakes around him from behind, leaving a purple mark flat against his stomach, and he turns in surprise to find Blaine there.
“Hi,” he breathes, cupping Blaine’s jaw for a moment and leaving a light dusting of pink behind on his cheek. He feels giddy and loose, more than a little tipsy from the drinks that get pressed into his hand by Gina every time he returns to the bar.
“Having fun?” Blaine asks tightly, and the fingers of his other hand trace the shape of a palm on Kurt’s arm and fit themselves perfectly to it, warm against his skin.
Oh, that one was from him; Kurt smiles, because now he likes it even more. He nods in reply and sips at his drink. “You?”
Blaine’s response is a shrug Kurt doesn’t quite know how to read. He’s been dancing his heart out, too, but instead of elated he looks unhappy around the edges of his eyes. Frustrated. “I almost lost sight of you a few times.”
Kurt’s heart falls. He doesn’t want Blaine to be frustrated; he wants him to be happy, just as he is. That’s why they went out, after all. It’s supposed to make things easier again, because it’s not supposed to be hard for them to be together, and yet still sometimes it really is. This is supposed to fix it.
He’ll just have to try harder. It’s easier now that he feels better, easier to give and coax instead of be frustrated, too. Besides, he likes coaxing smiles from Blaine, even if it doesn’t usually take much to make Blaine light up like a Christmas tree.
He leans in against Blaine’s chest with a flirty poke of his finger against Blaine’s buttons. “I’m glad it was only almost; we’re here together.”
Blaine’s eyebrows quirk together, like he doesn’t quite believe him.
“I knew where you were,” Kurt tells him, quite honest. “I could see your hair.” He traces the bright stripe that sets off the collar of Blaine’s polo shirt, the one that’s been in the edge of his vision for hours. “And this.”
“Could you?” Blaine asks in surprise.
Kurt sways a little with the beat of the music behind them, not quite able to keep himself still even in Blaine’s grasp. “Mm,” he says into Blaine’s ear. “I always know where you are.” It’s like a string between them, always tugging at him; it had been there even when they’d been broken up, but now that they are engaged and live together it’s even stronger. Sometimes it’s a bad thing, a constant reminder of having someone else to worry about, but it usually feels wonderful. It reminds him just how not alone he is.
He can see Blaine swallow, his throat shadowed above his collar. “You do?”
Laughing, Kurt leans in again, skimming the edge of Blaine’s ear with his lips. He is definitely more than tipsy, his blood hot and molasses-thick in his veins. “Of course I do. You’re the one I’m going home with. I always want to know where you are.”
Blaine’s eyes go dark in the swirling lights, and the hand at Kurt’s waist tightens. “I was watching you, too. I love watching you dance, Kurt.”
Kurt drags the tip of his nose against Blaine’s slightly rough, sweaty cheek, leaving a trail of green in its wake. “Good,” he says, still rocking with the music and feeling Blaine follow him. He loves how Blaine follows him, how Blaine knows his body and knows how to fit himself against him, knows so perfectly how to catch his rhythm in a club or in their bed. “I want you to. The best part of the night is going home with you.”
Blaine’s eyes warm even further as they track Kurt’s face in front of him. “Soon?” he asks.
Kurt sways a little more, feeling the music thrumming through him. It’s a temptation, but it’s not as much of a temptation as Blaine is. He bites the edge of his lip in a flirty gesture he knows Blaine can’t resist and says, “Any time you’re ready.”
Blaine’s smile lights up his whole body, and he watches Kurt for a moment, still swaying with him. He slides his hand down Kurt’s arm to catch his fingers. “A few more dances first,” he says. “With me.”
Kurt leans in again with a grin and says, “Then everyone will be watching us. Not just you watching me.”
A sideways grin and a tug toward the dance floor is Blaine’s happy answer.
Kurt’s heart lifts as Blaine pulls him in close, hands low on his back and eyes sharp on his face. It’s so easy to fall into his rhythm, hands on Blaine’s arms and a smile on his face.
The floor is crowded, and he holds tight to Blaine as he gets bumped and jostled, but he doesn’t mind.
They don’t need much room, after all, not when they’re as in sync as they are right now, as in sync as they’re always supposed to be even though they aren’t, the troubles that drove them here finally left behind.
6. January 2014
His shoulders up around his ears to ward off the chill, Kurt knocks on the front door of Blaine’s apartment before shoving his hands back deep into his coat pockets. He knows he should just push on the door and see if it’s unlocked, but he kind of likes the ceremony of knocking. Here’s there to pick up Blaine. They’re going out. He should knock.
Not that he needs Blaine to knock at the loft, but Blaine did live there. It’s still his second New York home, in Kurt’s mind. This is different. This is Blaine’s space, and he was the one who needed it. Kurt likes to keep it official.
Although if no one answers in the next thirty seconds, he thinks, stamping his feet a little to keep his toes from freezing solid in his shoes...
“Damn, it is cold out here,” Mercedes says as she opens the door and steps back to let Kurt in. “You should be wearing a hat.”
“I’m fine,” Kurt replies, though she’s not wrong. It’s just that it would do weird things to his hair, and he wants to look nice. It’s date night. He hasn’t seen Blaine since yesterday morning. He wants to make a statement, even if that statement might come with frostbite.
“It’s a fashion thing, huh,” Mercedes says with a laugh. “I don’t know what’s wrong with you, boy. You used to wear hats all the time.”
“I still like hats,” Kurt tells her. “But not for tonight.”
Walking toward the living room, Mercedes just shakes her head and calls, “Blaine!”
There’s the sound of light footsteps from above, and by the time Kurt’s looking up the stairs Blaine’s already coming down them.
“Kurt,” Blaine says warmly, his face lighting up.
Sometimes when Kurt hasn’t seen Blaine for a little while - any amount time above about five minutes, if he’s being honest - that first sight of him can take Kurt’s breath away. It can be hard to believe that Blaine really is that handsome, that graceful, that charismatic, that full of life in reality and not just in Kurt’s mind. But he is. And he looks incredible, skipping down the stairs in that shawl-collar sweater and bright red pair of pants.
“Hi,” Blaine breathes when he gets down to the entryway, leaning up for a quick, softly welcoming kiss.
“Hi,” Kurt says, his stomach fluttering with Blaine’s proximity. It’s ridiculous to him that he feels giddy, because they see each other every day, but now that they aren’t living together each time they’re reunited just feels special. They both had very necessary time apart to do their own things today, and now they’re together again the way a part of him is absolutely certain they’re always supposed to be.
Mercedes pokes her head out from the living room and says, “We’re ordering pizza. Want any?”
“Thank you, Mercedes, but we’re going out,” Blaine replies with a polite but happy smile.
“Better you than me,” she says. “You’re going to be ice cubes before you even get to the subway.”
“We’ll be fine,” Blaine tells her, grabbing his scarf and winding it around his neck. “I hope you and Sam have a good night.”
“You, too,” she says. “See you tomorrow.”
Kurt feels another flutter in his stomach, this one of satisfaction, because it’s Saturday night, so it means that Blaine is staying over with him. They can go out and have fun - and they will - and then they can go home.
Together.
It’s right, them living apart, but it’s still odd to Kurt, like instead of being the grown-ups they thought they were when they lived together they’re now playing at being college students, having date nights and sleep-overs when they could just be in the same space day after day. But it’s working, and if it gives him butterflies to pick Blaine up at his apartment then it’s certainly not all bad.
“Are you ready?” Blaine asks him as he buttons up his coat.
“Absolutely,” Kurt replies without hesitation.
They talk the whole way while they walk to the restaurant, then they holds hands and talk through the meal. It’s a little Italian place, nothing fancy, but the table is just for two, the candlelight makes Blaine’s eyes even more dreamy, and the only person who bothers them is the waiter and his seemingly relentless need to keep their water glasses filled to the very top.
Kurt feels like he can’t get his fill of Blaine, like they can’t talk fast enough or smile widely enough, and that’s so different from a few months ago when tensions were running high that he feels even more sure than before of their decision to be apart. It makes being together that much more special. He never wants his time with Blaine to be anything but special.
“What do you want to do now?” Blaine asks after they’re both stuffed full with salad, pasta, and the cannoli they amicably shared. He’s leaning back in his chair, his mouth curved in a soft smile, his fingers light against Kurt’s on top of the tablecloth.
The sluggish, sleepy part of Kurt wants to curl up under a blanket on the couch and watch reality TV with him until the food coma has lifted, but it’s a Saturday night. It’s their Saturday night. He doesn’t want to waste it.
Not that watching TV would be a waste. Not that taking advantage of a few hours mostly alone in the loft would be a waste, either, because Kurt would be more than happy to get his hands and mouth on Blaine’s skin. That’s never, ever a waste.
But they have time for the two of them, with no friends here to bother them and no homework to do, and he wants to use that time wisely. At home, there will be Rachel; at Blaine’s there will be Sam and Mercedes. Kurt loves them, but he wants to be with Blaine, just the two of them. There is always someone else around. They deserve time without other friends distracting them, needing them, expecting things from them.
His bed will be there later, and when they wake up in the morning Rachel will still be more than happy to watch TV with them on the couch. They should do something that’s just for the two of them now. Something that will make them happy. Something that will let them touch. Something that will let him show off his handsome fiancé and the hard work Kurt’s been putting into his own body, too. Something that’s theirs and doesn’t have to be shared with friends and colleagues. Something that is just for the two of them, even if they aren’t alone.
“Let’s go dancing,” he says, tracing his thumb along the edge of Blaine’s fingers. “We haven’t been in a few weeks.”
“Ooh,” Blaine says happily, his head lifting as his smile grows. “It’s ‘80s night tonight.”
“Oh god,” Kurt says with a laugh and a cringe he can’t quite hide. “That will be awful.”
Blaine tugs at Kurt’s hand, his face lit up with humor. “No, come on, that’ll be great.”
Kurt thinks about watching Blaine leap around and sing all night, the brightest light in the club. He thinks about guys in stupid retro outfits making eyes at them both. He thinks about loud new wave music in his ears, driving him into a frenzy he doesn’t want to resist.
He thinks about sharing it all with Blaine, dancing with him here and there, trading drinks, singing songs, circling him on the dance floor, collapsing against him one of the club’s couches at the end of the night for one last drink together before they go home... He thinks about having yet another perfect New York night with him before taking him home and capping it off the best way he knows how in the soft cocoon of his sheets around their bare bodies... and he thinks he wouldn’t have it any other way.
Because it’s them. It’s their night. It’s their city. They might be sharing it with millions of people, but they don’t have to be alone to have it be about the two of them. They get to be alone together in it, able to express themselves and be themselves without anyone to stop them.
Going to the club is an escape to somewhere they get to do that, not an escape from some hardship or another that they feel like they can’t work out any other way. They can work out anything, Kurt knows. It’s just them there together, hand in hand.
So they’ll go dance and have fun, their eyes really only for each other no matter how the crowd pulls at them. The time out will only make getting home and falling into that bed for the whole night tonight that much better.
“You’re right,” Kurt tells him, reaching for his wallet to pay for their meal so that they can go where they can be alone in a crowd. “That will be amazing.”
7. August 2014
The pounding music dips into the next song, and Kurt slows with the beat, wipes at the sweat on his forehead with the back of his wrist, and blinks at the dance floor around him. Blaine had left two songs ago to get them drinks, and he isn’t back yet.
Huh.
Kurt edges through the crowd toward the bar, his lungs and legs burning from the exertion. He needs to focus more on endurance over strength in his workouts again, he thinks absently, so he isn’t out of shape like this before school starts up again next month. Either that or they need to go out dancing more before then, which sounds like a lot more fun than running on a treadmill.
He finds Blaine at the bar with two apparently forgotten drinks in front of him as he and the bartender lean across the bar together, talking animatedly.
“Hey, stranger,” Kurt says, coming up to lean his hip against the stool beside him and reaching out to collect his drink.
Blaine turns toward him with a huge smile, every bit of him vibrating with bright-eyed excitement. “Kurt! Sorry, I was coming back, but Gerry just got engaged!” He gestures to the bartender, who is beaming almost as enthusiastically as Blaine is.
“Congratulations!” Kurt tells Gerry. Kurt hasn’t met Bill-the-medical-student, but he’s heard enough about him over the past few months that he’s not all that surprised they’ve taken this next big step.
“Isn’t that great?!” Blaine says. He takes hold of Kurt’s left hand, fingers tight around his, his thumb against Kurt’s ring. “I told him we should all go out for coffee and talk wedding planning!”
“It just happened last night,” Gerry says with a laugh and a somewhat overwhelmed shake of his head. “We aren’t ready to plan yet.”
“Vendors book up fast in the city,” Kurt tells him, but he knows just how nice it is to linger in the engagement for a while, too. The giddy first months are something to be treasured, living with the utter magic of the knowledge that you’ve actually found forever. Lingering just doesn’t get you your first choice of venue. “But we’re enjoying a long engagement, so who are we to judge?”
Gerry laughs again, his eyes twinkling. “I know you better than that, Kurt. You always judge.”
Kurt can’t really argue with that, so he just nods his agreement as Gerry moves away to serve some of the patrons clamoring for his attention at the bar.
Blaine smiles at him over the rim of his glass as he takes a healthy sip of his drink and then leans in, his mouth close to Kurt’s ear to be heard more easily over the music. “A lot of people have gotten engaged this summer,” he says. “Gerry and Bill. Isaac and Tom. Stacy and Henry.”
“Chase and that guy he met on Fire Island last month,” Kurt adds dryly, though if that one lasts past whenever Chase sobers up and goes back to Vogue.com after this summer of drunken debauchery and beach living he’s Instagramming daily he’ll totally eat his new Moschino waistcoat.
“Mmm,” Blaine agrees, swinging their clasped hands between them in time to the beat. “It’s really nice, isn’t it? I’m happy for them. Finding your soulmate is amazing.”
With a nod, Kurt takes another sip of his drink, feeling it burn all the way down. Its heat holds no comparison to the warmth of the feelings inside him, though, the warm, steady, constantly overflowing happiness in his own heart. “We beat them all, though,” he tells Blaine with a smug sort of joy.
Blaine looks up at him with a laugh. “It’s not a race, Kurt,” he says, though there’s a light in his eyes that seems to mirror what Kurt is feeling.
Kurt tugs on their joined hands and says, “We still won. We won years ago. Isn’t that what you told me?”
His eyes fluttering closed for just a moment, Blaine sighs out softly and then smiles at him in that way he has where Kurt is sure Blaine is actually convinced he hung the moon and the stars in the sky. It’s a lot of pressure to live up to that look, but it’s not in a bad way, not anymore. It just makes Kurt better, the way he wants to think he makes Blaine better by loving him, too.
“We did,” Blaine tells him, sure and content and with his heart on his face for everyone in the club to see.
Kurt doesn’t care if they see. Some of them are friends, and the rest don’t matter. Nobody’s going to judge. What he cares about is Blaine, this man who has his hand and his heart and his promise for their own forever.
Everyone else can live their own lives, and he hopes they’ll be happy, but with Blaine Kurt knows he will be.
Not everything is easy, of course. They have hard days where Blaine’s too chipper before coffee or Kurt’s too quick to judge, but they have their own apartment - only theirs this time - their own bed, their own life in this great city. They have friends old and new. They have a favorite market and a favorite coffee shop and a favorite club with a favorite bartender, who happened to be quite heavy with his pour tonight, because Kurt’s head is spinning with more than just the thump of the bass line and the nearness of his future husband.
Tomorrow they will make time for calling the super to try to get the hot water fixed, for finding a perfect birthday gift for Carole, and for tailoring that new jacket Blaine bought that just doesn’t fit him quite right. Maybe they’ll have brunch out if Gerry hasn’t already cursed them with hangovers that will keep them in, talking in low, pained voices and drinking disgusting green smoothies from the recipe Cooper sent that somehow actually works.
But those are worries for tomorrow. Tonight is just for this, for them, for having fun and enjoying this summer night out in this city that they both are finding their home in.
Kurt sets his empty glass down on the bar and says into Blaine’s ear, “Come dance with me. We need practice for our wedding.”
“Practice?” Blaine asks with a grin, putting down his own drink. “We still haven’t set a date.”
“We will soon.” His shoulders moving with the beat and his lips curved into a grin of his own, because he knows the answer before he even asks the question, Kurt says, “Are you saying no?”
“When have I ever said no?” Blaine replies and lets Kurt lead him onto the dance floor.
There they find a little spot in the press of moving bodies, and Blaine fits so effortlessly against him - chest to chest, thigh to thigh, hands sliding over Kurt’s hips and up his back, his breath warm against Kurt’s cheek, his eyes dark as Kurt twirls in his grasp - as the crowd fills in around them and swallows them up.
The club isn’t home for Kurt and Blaine. Home is the loft for now, with its secondhand smoke and third-hand furniture, with its drafty windows and Hummel-Anderson written on the dented brass mailbox in the entry hall. But home isn’t the loft; it’s them, together again, together for good.
Home is where they’ll crawl into bed together tonight, and next week, and next year. Home is the hope of children and careers, of goals to accomplish, of new dreams to imagine and conquer. Home is what they’re building together each and every day with work that’s sometimes too hard and love that comes so easily, love that comes with forever.
But there’s still something of home here in the middle of the floor, Kurt thinks as he spins back around to get his arms over Blaine’s shoulders. Being here isn’t an exploration anymore. It isn’t an escape. It’s a celebration.
They’re in a city that welcomes them and lets them be free. They’re in a room full of people who don’t know them but who understand their love, who don’t blink when Blaine kisses Kurt’s throat, who don’t challenge the ring on Kurt’s finger, who only care about music and movement and the joy of being alive.
Kurt smiles into Blaine’s radiant face, runs his hands up his slim sides, and lets out a light, buoyant laugh as the lights swirl around them like stars.
Because right now, more than he ever has, more than he ever thought he could in the dark days before they met years before, Kurt really, really loves being alive.
~end~
Reminder: I am spoiler-free!