The Great Pillow Pass-Off [1/4]
TITLE: The Great Pillow Pass-Off [1/4]
AUTHOR: Lanie Kay-Aleese
GENRE: General, on the Romantic Comedy side
RATING: PG
PAIRINGS: Kurt/Finn, Mike/Rachel
Dear Readers,
I spent the past two weeks (since I was Hell-o) working on a fanfic combining my favorite things about the show Glee, and about this fandom -- all revolving around that popular trope of "character x moves in with person y, in spite of their differences, love and hyjinx ensue". We all thought that this would never happen, right? Then, in "Home," Glee actually did one of the things that I wrote about. It even lined up with some of the more unbelievable sides of nonsense that I'd written, like Burt & Carole not telling their kids that they were moving in together until the last possible second. So I've been left with the awful feeling of "I JUST FINISHED WRITING THIS AND WHAT DO I DO NOW, GLEE? WHAT DO I DO." I will tell you what I did; I spent three days pouting with my arms folded. And then I remembered that there is such thing as A/U. And since we're all mid-season anyway, can we please just pretend that this was posted one week in the past?
Thank you,
Lanie Kay-Aleese
P.S. The fact that something like this can happen is why I love Glee. <3
Now, without further ado..
* * * * *
The Great Pillow Pass Off
Chapter One
* * * * *
It started with Finn's house burning down by way of nachos. It ended with a slumber party of the likes that McKinley High had never seen before, and, if God was merciful, would never see again. But at some point, there was also a dry-erase marker that Will Schuester held captive in his hand.
On its own, the marker was white, non-descript, and motionless as it lay in the tray of the music room's small, rectangular whiteboard. In Will's hands it met its most climatic moment; the height of its terrible and functional beauty. But captive and forced into play, it could claim no culpability. Will Schuester's hand was the thing that moved; Will Schuester, not the marker, wrote the terrible nonsense that caused Glee Club to change forever.
It screeched across the board, completing its final stroke, then pop! The cap was returned, and the marker set down, and Will Schuester turned to his Club with eager expectation.
"You've got to be kidding," said someone in the back of the room.
Will looked at the text he had written, which he thought to be inconspicuous enough. It read: Z, Z, Z.
"'Z'?" asked Noah Puckerman, looking bored and unamused, "Are we seriously supposed to find songs that start with the word Z? I don't use words that have crappy letters in them."
"Puckzilla?" his girlfriend queried beside him from beneath her blonde tresses.
"Ziggy Stardust," said Mike Chang immediately. He put on a falsetto. "Ziggy Stardust killed a man..."
"Or maybe a song about zebras," suggested Brittany. At Santana's sharp look, she explained, "I saw it on Nick, Jr. with my boyfriend."
Artie diverted everyone's attention. "Guys," he said, "it's not one Z, but a series of Zs. It's supposed to indicate sleep. Like in a comic strip."
"That's right, Artie," said Will, visibly relieved that at least one person in the room understood him. He stepped toward the kids. "We spend an entire third of our lives asleep. That deserves to be recognized. So this week, your assignment is to find songs about sleeping, and dreams. I'm looking forward to seeing what you could be up to."
"Mr. Schuester, we've already done something like this," Rachel protested. She stood up and addressed the students on the bleachers. "We did that mattress commercial, remember? I believe all of us sincerely regret the event of last fall, even though it may have been the stepping stone to some of our acting careers, and it gave Mr. Schuester a bed to sleep on when he decided to leave his wife, but all the same--"
"T-that was a song about jumping, not sleeping," said Tina. "So it doesn't count."
"We wore pajamas," insisted Rachel. "One does not just 'jump' in pajamas."
"I think we should do a number like Beyonce in Dreamgirls," suggested Kurt from his spot between them.
"Can you imagine if all the boys had to perform in drag?" Merecedes sniggered. He grinned, but confided in her ear, "Schue has tried."
After club finished and he was taking his books out of his locker, Kurt spoke to Mercedes much more freely and in far more detail.
He idly rubbed the leather of his jacket's lapel between his fingers as he talked. "I honestly wonder where Schue gets his ideas. I mean, can you imagine if we end up doing a song about a dream sequence? It would require us to prance around the stage like we were on crack."
"From what he keeps saying about Vocal Adrenaline, we might as well start doing crack anyway. There's no way we can win sectionals. They're just too good." Mercedes paused, and shut the locker. "Speaking of Vocal Adrenaline..."
Kurt held up his phone and gleamed. "Honey, I've got it covered. I went to the phone dealership last week and got him put on my Block List."
"Nice," said Mercedes, and they walked to French class together.
Except it wasn't 'nice', because when he went to the phone dealership, that was when all of the problems in Kurt Hummel's life began.
Or, much more accurately, that was when a whole new bunch of problems in Kurt Hummel's life began.
The first problem went like this.
Finn had been cooking some nachos in the toaster oven when Rachel Berry had called him in a state of hysterics. And while usually hysteria would have just made her angry, more determined, and more self-propelled than ever, Rachel was on her period, and all of the drama made her loud and wet as a hurricane, and equally out of control. Usually people ran away from hurricanes, but since Finn had, after all, promised to pursue Rachel as his girlfriend - and he was serious, this time, really - he figured that he had no choice but to brave the storm, or die trying.
He did pretty good. It took an hour and a box of Kleenex, but Rachel had stopped crying about some Broadway show stopping, and that had less to do with him and more to do with Jesse sending her a text message with some mathematical equation about things that were less than 3. Whatever. He'd left the house, his movements mechanical; apparently coming when she beckoned was not enough to make her like him again. As he settled into the seat of his truck, he felt something stirring in his gut. He realized with some disappointment, that it wasn't that he wanted Rachel Berry. He just wanted something to eat. And actually, hadn't he been wanting food earlier? Wasn't he going to make something...?
He thought back for several moments. Then, with a start, he remembered the nachos. The nachos that he'd left in the toaster oven. The toaster oven that he'd left on.
Oh, crap.
By the time he got home, the fire marshals had already put out most of the fire. The neighbors had gathered around the fire trucks but the smoke spilled out so messily that it obscured the house entirely. One of the firemen kindly informed Finn that there was a hole in the kitchen roof, but that the structural damage would probably not require the entire house to be knocked down. The officer's wheezy laugh at this statement confused Finn, since he didn't think anything was funny about the present situation, so he shrugged his shoulders and wandered off to find his mom.
She was in the neighbor's lawn, watching the steam rolling, her lips in a thin line and her purse gripped tightly in her hand. Finn guessed that she was fighting not to cry.
"We'll figure something out," she said, and her voice wasn't even shaking. Finn hadn't even started to think about what they would actually do now. He was impressed that she could still think things through, that she could figure something out before the smoke had stopped rising from the kitchen.
So the hotel hadn't been that bad. Okay, so maybe it was the same hotel where he had lost 'the big V' to Santana, but at least he and his mom weren't staying in the same room. He had a pretty sweet foldout sofa and there was free ice in the halls (awesome! Why hadn't Santana told him about that?). If there had been an XBOX it would've been perfect.
Before going to bed that night, his mom had reassured him yet again that they would "figure something out." Finn really didn't mind things the way they were.
'Figure something out' meant moving in with his mom's new boyfriend.
He didn't know that she'd been dating anyone in the first place.
He definitely didn't know that she'd been dating Burt Hummel.
This is the phone call that took place between Kurt Hummel and Mercedes Jones on the night of the Nachos incident.
"Mercedes," Kurt began, nearly spitting into the mouthpiece of his cellphone with urgency, the desperate need to get the words from his mouth-- "I need your help. I am in an emergency situation."
Mercedes responded nonplussed and easy-going. "What up Kurt?" she asked.
"Well, Finn Hudson has just showed up at my house with a sleeping bag, two suitcases and an ironing board."
"He what?" Mercedes' voice turned incredulous. "What's that boy doing with an ironing board -- Did he rob somebody?"
"Oh my god, no." Kurt stared at Finn, who was sitting stiffly on the couch. "I don't think he knows where he is. He can't even talk."
"And you let him in without knowing why he was there."
"Yes,"said Kurt, defensively. "We're friends."
"Oh, Kurt-"
"I know what you are thinking Mercedes, so don't even go there," Kurt hissed into the receiver. "But it's freezing outside, and he is glaring and incapable of speech. If I closed the door on him, he probably would have stayed out there all night, looking like a little lost puppy. He might have even died."
"It's in the low fifties outside," said Mercedes.
"You are missing the point," Kurt returned. "Finn Hudson is on my couch and smells like smoke and hotel shampoo. And I don't know what to do about it."
"Mmhmm... Can I call you back?"
"What? No! This is important!"
"Boy, please. It's after 8:30 at night, and I am watching Chuck and that is at least as important as your drama."
"Why don't you have DVR? What is this, the '90s?"
Kurt held back the receiver for a second, ignoring Mercedes' answer. He heard the tail end of a sentence snaking in from the front of his house. He concentrated, and made out both his father's, and a woman's, voice. "I'll buy the episode for you on iTunes later. Just focus with me, Mercedes. I think Finn's mother just showed up," he surmised.
"She also in a coma?"
"No, she's able to speak, thank god," Kurt rolled his eyes. "I think she's talking to my dad right now."
"Huh. If they're in the middle of talking, maybe she came over with Finn."
"I guess, though if that were true, I can't imagine why he came to the front door and she came in through the Garage..." Kurt trailed off, casting a curious look to Finn, who had remained catatonic, and fairly stiff. It appeared that no answers would be coming from him.
"Well, there's no reason to stay with coma boy if he ain't talking," Mercedes said wisely. "If you want to learn what's going on, you should be spying on your dad."
Kurt grinned and walked down the hallway. "Right. Mercedes, remind me more often that you're brilliant."
"I will," the girl answered with lazy pride. "Now tell me all the details when you see them."
"I--" Kurt began. He was in the doorway to the entry hall, and through the glass window in the door, he could see his father out with the cars. And Finn's mother was with him. And they were -- they were --
"I--" Kurt attempted to speak, but his voice, among other things, cracked and left him speechless. He felt woozy with the sudden, necessary mental processes.
"Kurt, you okay?" Mercedes tried.
"Hey, you better not be joining Finn on that coma couch. Snap out of it and tell me what's going on or I will cut you," Mercedes threatened.
"You will not," Kurt answered immediately. He adjusted his collar and valiantly attempted to straighten his shoulders.
"Oh yeah?" came Mercedes' unflinchingly strong voice, "My parents are dentists. I have access to scalpels. What's going on?"
Kurt swallowed and began uneasily. He looked away from the door and tried to catch his breath. "I don't quite know what to tell you."
"The truth is a good place to start," answered Mercedes. "Honestly, Kurt, it can't be that bad.
"Oh, it can," Kurt replied. "Do you... Do you remember in season 5 of Project Runway, when Heidi wore that blue thing with the boa?" he asked.
"Yeah, and I wish I didn't."
"Good." Kurt hung his head low. "Now imagine that Heidi is 250 pounds heavier, and has genital warts."
"Why would I want to imagine that, Kurt?"
"Because that is a mere sliver of what I just saw in the Garage. My father and Finn's mother are sucking each others' faces off and I think I need to gouge out my eyes."
Mercedes' voice crackled on the line. "Don't do anything stupid," she said. "I'll be over there in five."
"Come fast," Kurt pleaded, and the line went dead.
This is what happened at the cell phone service vendor, one week earlier.
Since Burt had confiscated his car indefinitely, Kurt had to ask his dad for a ride to 'fix his cell phone.' He left the reasons vague, and to his fortune, his dad wasn't as good with computers as he was with engines, and didn't bother to try and fix Kurt's phone himself. He'd dropped off Kurt and even followed him in - as if Kurt needed to be protected or something, it was totally embarrassing - but again, there was the saving grace that Burt trusted Kurt to deal with the talking on his own. He explained the situation to the representative and they assured him that phone numbers could be blocked. With that taken care of, Kurt turned back around to talk to his dad. But he had become busy talking to another woman with practiced familiarity. That the woman was immediately recognizable as Finn's mother was not quickly missed.
"Kurt," Burt put his hand on Kurt's shoulder as soon as Kurt interrupted their tête-à-tête. He didn't break eye contact with the woman before him as he addressed his son. "Do you know Mrs. Hudson?"
Where Burt could be uncouth, Kurt had excessive resources of manners, and he turned on his charm. "Why, no. I don't think we've met, and such a shame. It's nice to meet you," he automatically reached out his hand to shake hers, and regretted it almost instantly because he was struck by the sudden and irrational fear that she could smell the fact that he loved her son. If she did, in fact, pick up on that fact, she was a talented actress and showed nothing in her demeanor.
"Nice to meet you at last," she said to him. He smiled, though it was strained; he looked at his dad from the corner of the eye, and could tell that Burt wanted him to do something - but what, Kurt had no idea. He fumbled for conversation:
"I know your son Finn from Glee Club."
"Of course you do," said Carole Hudson warmly. "It's amazing that we haven't already met."
"Oh?"
"Kurt and Finn are good friends," she explained. "Finn talks about you all the time."
"Does he now," said Kurt with a watery smile.
"Finn's a good kid, as far as I'm concerned," said Burt gruffly. "Finn helped Kurt make it onto the football team, isn't that right, son."
Kurt looked at his dad and raised his eyebrows. "I don't think I ever told you that," he said slowly.
Actually, he tried to avoid talking about any boys with his dad whatsoever. But before he had time to think on it, the service representative was back with his phone, now capable of blocking undesirable calls automatically. His father and Finn's mother shook hands and said goodbyes. Kurt gave a little wave, the tension finally unsqueezing his heart, but he barely registered her leaving. He heard the digitized ding-dong as she opened and closed the shop door, and he didn't think about it again.
When Kurt explained this to Mercedes a week later, she just shook her head with a fond sort of pity.
"So that's the thing, I thought they were just engaged in a friendly conversation," said Kurt. "I'm not oblivious to these things, but it's my dad, Mercedes. He is not an attractive, well-dressed man."
Mercedes disagreed. "You're just not seeing it 'cuz you're not looking for it, Kurt. I don't think you've gotten over your mother dying. You still think about her all the time. You even smell her clothes."
"Of course I miss her; she was my mother," said Kurt vehemently. Then he paused, and looked rather struck. "You know, I thought my dad was the same. He used to always tell me 'if only your mother was here, she'd know what to do.' But recently he's stopped saying that."
"Kurt..."
"You know, it's possible that Carole is the reason that happened. But I wonder if Finn's mother did that too. If Finn suddenly realized his mom didn't care that his father was dead. Maybe that's why he's not talking. He's in shock."
"Maybe, but you still don't know why he showed up in the first place. Or why he is over there with suitcases."
"I'm clueless," Kurt agreed. "And it's stressing me out. I could break out because of this."
Kurt shared a gaze with his reflection in the side of the window. He didn't even have to practice a pout; there was already a perfect one on his face.
"My parents are happily married," started Mercedes, "But I have seen enough sitcoms to know that usually parents tell their kids that they're dating someone before they make choices like moving in together."
The idea of his father dating anyone was still vaguely abhorrent to Kurt, but he didn't say anything more than 'hmm' and let Mercedes continue speculating as she drove.
"I think there's more going on. You told me that when he arrived, Finn smelled like smoke, didn't you?"
"Well... Yes. He did smell a bit like campfire." Having run the course of a crush before in the past, Kurt knew better than to spend his time focusing on what Finn smelled like. But, he had to concede that perhaps Mercedes had a point in her inquiry. For once, what Finn smelled like wasn't just a hormonal observation; it was a clue.
"Why could anyone possibly smell that 'boy scout' in the middle of the week? He couldn't have been camping because we had practice today. Do you think he was near fire? Or... or a fire. Oh my god, do you think there was a fire?"
"Already on it," said Mercedes, sharply moving into the turn lane.
In five minutes, Mercedes pulled up to the front of Finn's house and confirmed the theory that neither of them felt sane enough to voice: Finn's house had caught on fire. One wall was halfway missing and what was left of the rest of the building was covered in scorch marks.
"This might explains the suitcases," said Kurt weakly. "And the smell."
"Yeah. It looks like you've got a house guest for at least a few months," Mercedes summed.
"Or forever." Kurt's voice choked as the situation crashed down on him in its realness.
Mercedes patted him on the shoulder with one hand, and used the other to pass him a bag of pita chips that she'd stashed behind the seat. He ate them like a man starved, or perhaps more accurately, like Quinn at the end of Glee practice.
One would expect a healthy, attractive gay boy to be ecstatic that his crush was going to be sleeping on his pull-out couch for the foreseeable future; using his own pillow, no less. Kurt was healthy, and he was, in his own estimation, very attractive. He was, however, less than ecstatic. He knew that he could never see Finn as his brother, and he knew that Finn's mother could never be his mother. But at least he could think of Finn's mother in the role of a mother, because she was a hell of a cook and she made out with his dad when they thought no one was looking. Finn similarly did brotherly things like spending too long in the shower, and leaving his clothes around, but he also left said bathroom with only a tea-towel around his waist, exposing abs that would make the gods cry, and then grinning at Kurt over pancakes for no apparent reason except that he liked pancakes, and then he would ask Kurt to pass him the syrup. Admittedly, the last thing wasn't sexual, but it still did all the wrong things to Kurt's stomach, so it counted against him.
No, Finn Hudson was not his brother. But he was someone important, someone closer than he'd been before. It had the potential of making Kurt miserable forever, and he fully expected to spend the rest of his life ablaze with dramatic tension.
Except nothing happened. If Finn had coping issues, Kurt didn't see them manifest more than they had on the first night, when he and Burt had a silent stand-off that ended in the mutually agreeable viewing of some college basketball highlights on ESPN2. Mostly, it seemed, Finn wanted to act like nothing happened. And maybe because of that, nothing important did. Just little things. Like, after breakfast, he and Finn began to wait for one another so they could walk to school together. Amazingly, no one at school noticed that they crossed the parking lot side by side. Not the first day, nor on the next, nor the week after.
For Kurt Hummel and Finn Hudson, it became almost normal.
"I still don't understand why you showed up that night with an ironing board," Kurt said while they were studying Geometry one afternoon.
Finn looked up from his problem sets and shrugged. "My mom figured that your dad wouldn't have one," he answered. "Since you're basically just a bunch of guys living together."
Kurt rolled his eyes.
"Finn Hudson, have you ever looked at me once in your life? I live for the tailored cut. My dad and I don't have 'an ironing board'; we have three."
"Four, including the one we brought," said Finn, and went back to his homework, leaving Kurt with an expression belying the fact that Finn's words had materialized and slapped him in the face. 'We' have four, Finn had said. Since when had he decided that they'd become family? Kurt couldn't place the moment, but it had probably been somewhere around the time that Carole couldn't tell apart her son's and her husband's laundry any more.
Fortunately, Kurt had never been involved in that particular trouble, as everything he owned required either dry-cleaning or hand-washing, so he'd never had the moral dilemma of accidentally getting a pair of Finn Hudson's boxer-briefs and being required to return them.
In any case, he got to enjoy the sight of the boxers often enough when Finn was getting ready for bed. Kurt was a healthy gay boy and Finn was definitely attractive. Sometimes, the sight of his firm butt even made Kurt think that he could get through the next two years of high school without a care in the world. But most of the time he knew better.
This was usually when he got a slushy thrown on his freshly laundered Cheerios uniform. It was very hard, he had learned, to ignore the social-ladder knock-off effect of the McKinley High School Slushy, even if one knew what Finn Hudson looked like mostly naked.
To Be Continued
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AUTHOR: Lanie Kay-Aleese
GENRE: General, on the Romantic Comedy side
RATING: PG
PAIRINGS: Kurt/Finn, Mike/Rachel
Dear Readers,
I spent the past two weeks (since I was Hell-o) working on a fanfic combining my favorite things about the show Glee, and about this fandom -- all revolving around that popular trope of "character x moves in with person y, in spite of their differences, love and hyjinx ensue". We all thought that this would never happen, right? Then, in "Home," Glee actually did one of the things that I wrote about. It even lined up with some of the more unbelievable sides of nonsense that I'd written, like Burt & Carole not telling their kids that they were moving in together until the last possible second. So I've been left with the awful feeling of "I JUST FINISHED WRITING THIS AND WHAT DO I DO NOW, GLEE? WHAT DO I DO." I will tell you what I did; I spent three days pouting with my arms folded. And then I remembered that there is such thing as A/U. And since we're all mid-season anyway, can we please just pretend that this was posted one week in the past?
Thank you,
Lanie Kay-Aleese
P.S. The fact that something like this can happen is why I love Glee. <3
Now, without further ado..
* * * * *
The Great Pillow Pass Off
Chapter One
* * * * *
It started with Finn's house burning down by way of nachos. It ended with a slumber party of the likes that McKinley High had never seen before, and, if God was merciful, would never see again. But at some point, there was also a dry-erase marker that Will Schuester held captive in his hand.
On its own, the marker was white, non-descript, and motionless as it lay in the tray of the music room's small, rectangular whiteboard. In Will's hands it met its most climatic moment; the height of its terrible and functional beauty. But captive and forced into play, it could claim no culpability. Will Schuester's hand was the thing that moved; Will Schuester, not the marker, wrote the terrible nonsense that caused Glee Club to change forever.
It screeched across the board, completing its final stroke, then pop! The cap was returned, and the marker set down, and Will Schuester turned to his Club with eager expectation.
"You've got to be kidding," said someone in the back of the room.
Will looked at the text he had written, which he thought to be inconspicuous enough. It read: Z, Z, Z.
"'Z'?" asked Noah Puckerman, looking bored and unamused, "Are we seriously supposed to find songs that start with the word Z? I don't use words that have crappy letters in them."
"Puckzilla?" his girlfriend queried beside him from beneath her blonde tresses.
"Ziggy Stardust," said Mike Chang immediately. He put on a falsetto. "Ziggy Stardust killed a man..."
"Or maybe a song about zebras," suggested Brittany. At Santana's sharp look, she explained, "I saw it on Nick, Jr. with my boyfriend."
Artie diverted everyone's attention. "Guys," he said, "it's not one Z, but a series of Zs. It's supposed to indicate sleep. Like in a comic strip."
"That's right, Artie," said Will, visibly relieved that at least one person in the room understood him. He stepped toward the kids. "We spend an entire third of our lives asleep. That deserves to be recognized. So this week, your assignment is to find songs about sleeping, and dreams. I'm looking forward to seeing what you could be up to."
"Mr. Schuester, we've already done something like this," Rachel protested. She stood up and addressed the students on the bleachers. "We did that mattress commercial, remember? I believe all of us sincerely regret the event of last fall, even though it may have been the stepping stone to some of our acting careers, and it gave Mr. Schuester a bed to sleep on when he decided to leave his wife, but all the same--"
"T-that was a song about jumping, not sleeping," said Tina. "So it doesn't count."
"We wore pajamas," insisted Rachel. "One does not just 'jump' in pajamas."
"I think we should do a number like Beyonce in Dreamgirls," suggested Kurt from his spot between them.
"Can you imagine if all the boys had to perform in drag?" Merecedes sniggered. He grinned, but confided in her ear, "Schue has tried."
After club finished and he was taking his books out of his locker, Kurt spoke to Mercedes much more freely and in far more detail.
He idly rubbed the leather of his jacket's lapel between his fingers as he talked. "I honestly wonder where Schue gets his ideas. I mean, can you imagine if we end up doing a song about a dream sequence? It would require us to prance around the stage like we were on crack."
"From what he keeps saying about Vocal Adrenaline, we might as well start doing crack anyway. There's no way we can win sectionals. They're just too good." Mercedes paused, and shut the locker. "Speaking of Vocal Adrenaline..."
Kurt held up his phone and gleamed. "Honey, I've got it covered. I went to the phone dealership last week and got him put on my Block List."
"Nice," said Mercedes, and they walked to French class together.
Except it wasn't 'nice', because when he went to the phone dealership, that was when all of the problems in Kurt Hummel's life began.
Or, much more accurately, that was when a whole new bunch of problems in Kurt Hummel's life began.
The first problem went like this.
Finn had been cooking some nachos in the toaster oven when Rachel Berry had called him in a state of hysterics. And while usually hysteria would have just made her angry, more determined, and more self-propelled than ever, Rachel was on her period, and all of the drama made her loud and wet as a hurricane, and equally out of control. Usually people ran away from hurricanes, but since Finn had, after all, promised to pursue Rachel as his girlfriend - and he was serious, this time, really - he figured that he had no choice but to brave the storm, or die trying.
He did pretty good. It took an hour and a box of Kleenex, but Rachel had stopped crying about some Broadway show stopping, and that had less to do with him and more to do with Jesse sending her a text message with some mathematical equation about things that were less than 3. Whatever. He'd left the house, his movements mechanical; apparently coming when she beckoned was not enough to make her like him again. As he settled into the seat of his truck, he felt something stirring in his gut. He realized with some disappointment, that it wasn't that he wanted Rachel Berry. He just wanted something to eat. And actually, hadn't he been wanting food earlier? Wasn't he going to make something...?
He thought back for several moments. Then, with a start, he remembered the nachos. The nachos that he'd left in the toaster oven. The toaster oven that he'd left on.
Oh, crap.
By the time he got home, the fire marshals had already put out most of the fire. The neighbors had gathered around the fire trucks but the smoke spilled out so messily that it obscured the house entirely. One of the firemen kindly informed Finn that there was a hole in the kitchen roof, but that the structural damage would probably not require the entire house to be knocked down. The officer's wheezy laugh at this statement confused Finn, since he didn't think anything was funny about the present situation, so he shrugged his shoulders and wandered off to find his mom.
She was in the neighbor's lawn, watching the steam rolling, her lips in a thin line and her purse gripped tightly in her hand. Finn guessed that she was fighting not to cry.
"We'll figure something out," she said, and her voice wasn't even shaking. Finn hadn't even started to think about what they would actually do now. He was impressed that she could still think things through, that she could figure something out before the smoke had stopped rising from the kitchen.
So the hotel hadn't been that bad. Okay, so maybe it was the same hotel where he had lost 'the big V' to Santana, but at least he and his mom weren't staying in the same room. He had a pretty sweet foldout sofa and there was free ice in the halls (awesome! Why hadn't Santana told him about that?). If there had been an XBOX it would've been perfect.
Before going to bed that night, his mom had reassured him yet again that they would "figure something out." Finn really didn't mind things the way they were.
'Figure something out' meant moving in with his mom's new boyfriend.
He didn't know that she'd been dating anyone in the first place.
He definitely didn't know that she'd been dating Burt Hummel.
This is the phone call that took place between Kurt Hummel and Mercedes Jones on the night of the Nachos incident.
"Mercedes," Kurt began, nearly spitting into the mouthpiece of his cellphone with urgency, the desperate need to get the words from his mouth-- "I need your help. I am in an emergency situation."
Mercedes responded nonplussed and easy-going. "What up Kurt?" she asked.
"Well, Finn Hudson has just showed up at my house with a sleeping bag, two suitcases and an ironing board."
"He what?" Mercedes' voice turned incredulous. "What's that boy doing with an ironing board -- Did he rob somebody?"
"Oh my god, no." Kurt stared at Finn, who was sitting stiffly on the couch. "I don't think he knows where he is. He can't even talk."
"And you let him in without knowing why he was there."
"Yes,"said Kurt, defensively. "We're friends."
"Oh, Kurt-"
"I know what you are thinking Mercedes, so don't even go there," Kurt hissed into the receiver. "But it's freezing outside, and he is glaring and incapable of speech. If I closed the door on him, he probably would have stayed out there all night, looking like a little lost puppy. He might have even died."
"It's in the low fifties outside," said Mercedes.
"You are missing the point," Kurt returned. "Finn Hudson is on my couch and smells like smoke and hotel shampoo. And I don't know what to do about it."
"Mmhmm... Can I call you back?"
"What? No! This is important!"
"Boy, please. It's after 8:30 at night, and I am watching Chuck and that is at least as important as your drama."
"Why don't you have DVR? What is this, the '90s?"
Kurt held back the receiver for a second, ignoring Mercedes' answer. He heard the tail end of a sentence snaking in from the front of his house. He concentrated, and made out both his father's, and a woman's, voice. "I'll buy the episode for you on iTunes later. Just focus with me, Mercedes. I think Finn's mother just showed up," he surmised.
"She also in a coma?"
"No, she's able to speak, thank god," Kurt rolled his eyes. "I think she's talking to my dad right now."
"Huh. If they're in the middle of talking, maybe she came over with Finn."
"I guess, though if that were true, I can't imagine why he came to the front door and she came in through the Garage..." Kurt trailed off, casting a curious look to Finn, who had remained catatonic, and fairly stiff. It appeared that no answers would be coming from him.
"Well, there's no reason to stay with coma boy if he ain't talking," Mercedes said wisely. "If you want to learn what's going on, you should be spying on your dad."
Kurt grinned and walked down the hallway. "Right. Mercedes, remind me more often that you're brilliant."
"I will," the girl answered with lazy pride. "Now tell me all the details when you see them."
"I--" Kurt began. He was in the doorway to the entry hall, and through the glass window in the door, he could see his father out with the cars. And Finn's mother was with him. And they were -- they were --
"I--" Kurt attempted to speak, but his voice, among other things, cracked and left him speechless. He felt woozy with the sudden, necessary mental processes.
"Kurt, you okay?" Mercedes tried.
"Hey, you better not be joining Finn on that coma couch. Snap out of it and tell me what's going on or I will cut you," Mercedes threatened.
"You will not," Kurt answered immediately. He adjusted his collar and valiantly attempted to straighten his shoulders.
"Oh yeah?" came Mercedes' unflinchingly strong voice, "My parents are dentists. I have access to scalpels. What's going on?"
Kurt swallowed and began uneasily. He looked away from the door and tried to catch his breath. "I don't quite know what to tell you."
"The truth is a good place to start," answered Mercedes. "Honestly, Kurt, it can't be that bad.
"Oh, it can," Kurt replied. "Do you... Do you remember in season 5 of Project Runway, when Heidi wore that blue thing with the boa?" he asked.
"Yeah, and I wish I didn't."
"Good." Kurt hung his head low. "Now imagine that Heidi is 250 pounds heavier, and has genital warts."
"Why would I want to imagine that, Kurt?"
"Because that is a mere sliver of what I just saw in the Garage. My father and Finn's mother are sucking each others' faces off and I think I need to gouge out my eyes."
Mercedes' voice crackled on the line. "Don't do anything stupid," she said. "I'll be over there in five."
"Come fast," Kurt pleaded, and the line went dead.
This is what happened at the cell phone service vendor, one week earlier.
Since Burt had confiscated his car indefinitely, Kurt had to ask his dad for a ride to 'fix his cell phone.' He left the reasons vague, and to his fortune, his dad wasn't as good with computers as he was with engines, and didn't bother to try and fix Kurt's phone himself. He'd dropped off Kurt and even followed him in - as if Kurt needed to be protected or something, it was totally embarrassing - but again, there was the saving grace that Burt trusted Kurt to deal with the talking on his own. He explained the situation to the representative and they assured him that phone numbers could be blocked. With that taken care of, Kurt turned back around to talk to his dad. But he had become busy talking to another woman with practiced familiarity. That the woman was immediately recognizable as Finn's mother was not quickly missed.
"Kurt," Burt put his hand on Kurt's shoulder as soon as Kurt interrupted their tête-à-tête. He didn't break eye contact with the woman before him as he addressed his son. "Do you know Mrs. Hudson?"
Where Burt could be uncouth, Kurt had excessive resources of manners, and he turned on his charm. "Why, no. I don't think we've met, and such a shame. It's nice to meet you," he automatically reached out his hand to shake hers, and regretted it almost instantly because he was struck by the sudden and irrational fear that she could smell the fact that he loved her son. If she did, in fact, pick up on that fact, she was a talented actress and showed nothing in her demeanor.
"Nice to meet you at last," she said to him. He smiled, though it was strained; he looked at his dad from the corner of the eye, and could tell that Burt wanted him to do something - but what, Kurt had no idea. He fumbled for conversation:
"I know your son Finn from Glee Club."
"Of course you do," said Carole Hudson warmly. "It's amazing that we haven't already met."
"Oh?"
"Kurt and Finn are good friends," she explained. "Finn talks about you all the time."
"Does he now," said Kurt with a watery smile.
"Finn's a good kid, as far as I'm concerned," said Burt gruffly. "Finn helped Kurt make it onto the football team, isn't that right, son."
Kurt looked at his dad and raised his eyebrows. "I don't think I ever told you that," he said slowly.
Actually, he tried to avoid talking about any boys with his dad whatsoever. But before he had time to think on it, the service representative was back with his phone, now capable of blocking undesirable calls automatically. His father and Finn's mother shook hands and said goodbyes. Kurt gave a little wave, the tension finally unsqueezing his heart, but he barely registered her leaving. He heard the digitized ding-dong as she opened and closed the shop door, and he didn't think about it again.
When Kurt explained this to Mercedes a week later, she just shook her head with a fond sort of pity.
"So that's the thing, I thought they were just engaged in a friendly conversation," said Kurt. "I'm not oblivious to these things, but it's my dad, Mercedes. He is not an attractive, well-dressed man."
Mercedes disagreed. "You're just not seeing it 'cuz you're not looking for it, Kurt. I don't think you've gotten over your mother dying. You still think about her all the time. You even smell her clothes."
"Of course I miss her; she was my mother," said Kurt vehemently. Then he paused, and looked rather struck. "You know, I thought my dad was the same. He used to always tell me 'if only your mother was here, she'd know what to do.' But recently he's stopped saying that."
"Kurt..."
"You know, it's possible that Carole is the reason that happened. But I wonder if Finn's mother did that too. If Finn suddenly realized his mom didn't care that his father was dead. Maybe that's why he's not talking. He's in shock."
"Maybe, but you still don't know why he showed up in the first place. Or why he is over there with suitcases."
"I'm clueless," Kurt agreed. "And it's stressing me out. I could break out because of this."
Kurt shared a gaze with his reflection in the side of the window. He didn't even have to practice a pout; there was already a perfect one on his face.
"My parents are happily married," started Mercedes, "But I have seen enough sitcoms to know that usually parents tell their kids that they're dating someone before they make choices like moving in together."
The idea of his father dating anyone was still vaguely abhorrent to Kurt, but he didn't say anything more than 'hmm' and let Mercedes continue speculating as she drove.
"I think there's more going on. You told me that when he arrived, Finn smelled like smoke, didn't you?"
"Well... Yes. He did smell a bit like campfire." Having run the course of a crush before in the past, Kurt knew better than to spend his time focusing on what Finn smelled like. But, he had to concede that perhaps Mercedes had a point in her inquiry. For once, what Finn smelled like wasn't just a hormonal observation; it was a clue.
"Why could anyone possibly smell that 'boy scout' in the middle of the week? He couldn't have been camping because we had practice today. Do you think he was near fire? Or... or a fire. Oh my god, do you think there was a fire?"
"Already on it," said Mercedes, sharply moving into the turn lane.
In five minutes, Mercedes pulled up to the front of Finn's house and confirmed the theory that neither of them felt sane enough to voice: Finn's house had caught on fire. One wall was halfway missing and what was left of the rest of the building was covered in scorch marks.
"This might explains the suitcases," said Kurt weakly. "And the smell."
"Yeah. It looks like you've got a house guest for at least a few months," Mercedes summed.
"Or forever." Kurt's voice choked as the situation crashed down on him in its realness.
Mercedes patted him on the shoulder with one hand, and used the other to pass him a bag of pita chips that she'd stashed behind the seat. He ate them like a man starved, or perhaps more accurately, like Quinn at the end of Glee practice.
One would expect a healthy, attractive gay boy to be ecstatic that his crush was going to be sleeping on his pull-out couch for the foreseeable future; using his own pillow, no less. Kurt was healthy, and he was, in his own estimation, very attractive. He was, however, less than ecstatic. He knew that he could never see Finn as his brother, and he knew that Finn's mother could never be his mother. But at least he could think of Finn's mother in the role of a mother, because she was a hell of a cook and she made out with his dad when they thought no one was looking. Finn similarly did brotherly things like spending too long in the shower, and leaving his clothes around, but he also left said bathroom with only a tea-towel around his waist, exposing abs that would make the gods cry, and then grinning at Kurt over pancakes for no apparent reason except that he liked pancakes, and then he would ask Kurt to pass him the syrup. Admittedly, the last thing wasn't sexual, but it still did all the wrong things to Kurt's stomach, so it counted against him.
No, Finn Hudson was not his brother. But he was someone important, someone closer than he'd been before. It had the potential of making Kurt miserable forever, and he fully expected to spend the rest of his life ablaze with dramatic tension.
Except nothing happened. If Finn had coping issues, Kurt didn't see them manifest more than they had on the first night, when he and Burt had a silent stand-off that ended in the mutually agreeable viewing of some college basketball highlights on ESPN2. Mostly, it seemed, Finn wanted to act like nothing happened. And maybe because of that, nothing important did. Just little things. Like, after breakfast, he and Finn began to wait for one another so they could walk to school together. Amazingly, no one at school noticed that they crossed the parking lot side by side. Not the first day, nor on the next, nor the week after.
For Kurt Hummel and Finn Hudson, it became almost normal.
"I still don't understand why you showed up that night with an ironing board," Kurt said while they were studying Geometry one afternoon.
Finn looked up from his problem sets and shrugged. "My mom figured that your dad wouldn't have one," he answered. "Since you're basically just a bunch of guys living together."
Kurt rolled his eyes.
"Finn Hudson, have you ever looked at me once in your life? I live for the tailored cut. My dad and I don't have 'an ironing board'; we have three."
"Four, including the one we brought," said Finn, and went back to his homework, leaving Kurt with an expression belying the fact that Finn's words had materialized and slapped him in the face. 'We' have four, Finn had said. Since when had he decided that they'd become family? Kurt couldn't place the moment, but it had probably been somewhere around the time that Carole couldn't tell apart her son's and her husband's laundry any more.
Fortunately, Kurt had never been involved in that particular trouble, as everything he owned required either dry-cleaning or hand-washing, so he'd never had the moral dilemma of accidentally getting a pair of Finn Hudson's boxer-briefs and being required to return them.
In any case, he got to enjoy the sight of the boxers often enough when Finn was getting ready for bed. Kurt was a healthy gay boy and Finn was definitely attractive. Sometimes, the sight of his firm butt even made Kurt think that he could get through the next two years of high school without a care in the world. But most of the time he knew better.
This was usually when he got a slushy thrown on his freshly laundered Cheerios uniform. It was very hard, he had learned, to ignore the social-ladder knock-off effect of the McKinley High School Slushy, even if one knew what Finn Hudson looked like mostly naked.
To Be Continued
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