fic: You Want Me To What?
Title: You Want Me To What?
Rating: PG
Ship: Rachel/Kurt
Words: ~1,000
Summary: They’re living in New York. Kurt is out shopping and calls Rachel and asks if she needs anything for their apartment. He promptly regrets asking.(a fill for the glee_awk_meme)
Moving to New York had been the most exciting thing to happen to Kurt and Rachel to date, but they found that as they got into the swing of things - classes, working, paying the bills - it seemed a lot more like Ohio than it had before. Just a week after moving in, Kurt found himself at the market down the street from his and Rachel’s apartment, searching the shelves for foods Rachel would eat, being vegan, and foods healthy enough yet still within Kurt’s budget.
Kurt’s small cart was filled with the essentials; bread, milk, eggs, butter, fruits and vegetables, and of course, bottled water. As he neared the exit of the store, he glanced over towards the clothes, then over at the electronics, and even though it wasn’t a high line store like he was used to, Kurt frowned at the fact that he didn’t actually have the budget to go buy himself something nice. His textbooks had emptied out his bank account leaving very little remaining for food and essentials.
Deciding to check with Rachel before he left, Kurt pulled out his cell phone and dialed her number. “Hi, Kurt!” she answered cheerfully. “I’m on my way home!”
“I will be too, in a few minutes,” Kurt told her. “I’m getting some groceries. Do you need anything from here? Toothpaste, snacks, anything?”
“Actually,” Rachel began, and just from the tone in her voice, Kurt instantly regretted asking if she needed anything. “I need some tampons. I forgot my box at home and I hate using pads.”
“You have got to be kidding me,” Kurt replied flatly.
Rachel huffed and said, “I wouldn’t joke about something like this, Kurt.”
He glanced towards the aisle with feminine hygiene products, and then over towards the doors, but now that he’d asked he knew he could never get out of this. “I’ll pay you back when you get here,” Rachel told him. “I’ll add it in to my grocery bill. But I really need them and I don’t have time to go and get them tonight.”
Kurt frowned and said, “You owe me so much, Rachel Berry.”
Hesitantly, Kurt wandered over to the aisle and just as he stood at the end of it, he looked terrified. Slowly he took small footsteps further into the aisle and then he said, “Okay, I’m grabbing you this black box and leaving, Rachel.”
“No!” she cried out. Kurt froze, arm half extended towards said box, and she said, “No, Kurt I need my kind.”
Kurt rolled his eyes. Of course she’d be particular about this sort of thing, Kurt thought to himself. He sighed and said, “Well, what kind are yours, then?”
A woman a ways down the aisle looked over at Kurt and was obviously trying to hide her laughter at Kurt’s predicament. Even his glare wasn’t enough to scare her off. These menstruating women were tough to break, Kurt decided, and he didn’t like them. “Well, they’re in a pink box. I like the Playtex Sport ones,” Rachel explained.
Kurt scanned the shelves for what she wanted, and the he cried out, “Rachel, these are seven fifty! That’s like…a lot for something you’re only going to use once!”
“Kurt, it’s fine,” Rachel insisted.
“I’m grabbing you this three dollar box and leaving,” Kurt said instantly.
“No, please, Kurt, just get those for me!” Rachel begged.
Kurt’s face was beet red as an older woman, probably in her thirties or forties, looked at him sadly and said, “My husband got used to it after a while. Just get her what she wants, honey.”
Rachel must have heard, because he heard giggling on the other end of the line. Kurt seethed and his whole face flushed red as he turned back towards the pink boxes that Rachel wanted. “Okay, I’m grabbing you a pink box and then leaving,” he informed her.
“Just make sure you get the regular ones. The supers are too big and they hurt,” Rachel said.
“Wh-what?” Kurt stammered.
He hadn’t even realized there was more than one size. He glanced down at the box in his hand and wondered if the fact that they were supers would inflict just enough pain upon Rachel to get back at her for putting him through this humiliation. As tempting as the thought of revenge via tampon size was, Kurt put them back on the shelf and grabbed the box of regular size instead. “Fine. Is that all?” he asked, his face still beet red.
A store clerk that stood at the end of the aisle spotted Kurt in all his red-faced, humiliated glory, and she laughed and rushed away when Kurt looked up at her. Rachel said that she didn’t need anything else, and Kurt made a beeline towards a register. The lines for the self-checkouts were ridiculously long, so he ended up at a regular register. The teenage boy behind the counter laughed out loud as Kurt set the box of tampons down, along with some food, and Kurt could have sworn he heard the boy call him whipped.
What probably amazed Kurt more than anything else wasn’t the fact that people found the situation so amusing, but the fact that they actually thought he was straight. He dressed the same as in Lima, he spoke the same, he acted the same - but these people didn’t see him as some gay alien. Instead, they saw him as a very whipped boyfriend. Kurt wasn’t so sure which was worse.
He left quickly and when he got up to the apartment, Kurt literally threw the box of tampons into Rachel’s room where she was studying. The box hit her chair and she spun around. “Thank you!” she said happily, oblivious to Kurt’s discomfort.
“You owe me,” was all he said through gritted teeth when Rachel finally realized what had happened.
She fought laughter and followed him into the living room as she tried to hug him and apologize. Laughter won over, though, and Kurt sulked even as Rachel cuddled up to him on the couch. “I refuse to ever do that again. You can get blood all over for all I care,” Kurt told her simply.
Rachel just burst into even louder laughter and wasn’t even upset when Kurt pushed her away to go back to her room to study.