Fic: Sriracha and the Benefit of a Warm Compress (Glee, Kurt/Blaine, R)
Sriracha and the Benefit of a Warm Compress
Author: Regala Electra
Fandom: Glee
Pairing: Kurt/Blaine
Rating: R
Spoilers: S2, Sexy
Warnings: Language, Sexual Content
Word Count: 2,780
Summary: A life of awkward starts and stops is par for the course.
Author's Notes: Originally this was going to be a few "day in the life" moments, happy hurt/comfort and all that jazz. Then Kurt started looking at certain pamphlets. One day, I will re-kindle my porn-fu but for today, here's Kurt working on finding his groove.
*
He keeps his head up high and then slips on a buttered floor (thank you, Puck). He gets roped into a rap by Mr. Schuester only to hear a line about a slamming female body which really, why does Mr. Schu always sing the worst lines at him?
He doesn’t have a sexy face. Fine.
A life of awkward starts and stops is par for the course.
He’s got a stack of pamphlets that have been bent and folded over one too many times and a tepid try at a finding few internet sites that haven’t burned his eyes with graphic images he so isn’t prepared for. While he’s closed the browser before reading the nitty-gritty, at least he’s taking the leap. The nervous roil of his stomach is being outmatched by the interested twitch in his dick these days.
Then his dad confronts him during one hasty pass through the kitchen to gather a quick breakfast.
“You, uh, have any questions? It’s been a while since we last talked.”
Thank Finn in all his glory as he walks in after Dad asks him the question. It lets him beat a hasty retreat.
“No, no, I’m fine,” and if he half sing-songs his words, that’s okay too.
*
It’s one of those rare days that Kurt genuinely has a growing teenage boy’s appetite.
He’d like to deny it and even though his final growth spurt has mercifully ended, he’s still at sea with how to combat genuine hunger versus how to eat at a rate that will ensure he will never have the words pear hips directed towards him ever again. He’s no Finn but sometimes he does actually want to pile a plate with enough calories to surpass his daily intake and he doesn’t entirely care because food is delicious.
At least to his eyes as he sets the plate down at the cafeteria table. Then he takes a bite. “This is terrible.”
“Contraband time,” Blaine says to Wes.
“It’s supposed to be our secret,” he hisses back at Blaine. “Unregulated contraband-”
“Really, I’ve had worse things at McKinley. It’s a shock when the salad’s actually green,” Kurt jokes but once again it falls flat despite Blaine’s flicker of a smile.
He’s surprised when Wes pulls a small condiment bottle from his satchel, with the way Wes is treating the thing, Kurt wouldn’t be shocked if it was hidden in a cut out textbook.
He really hopes it isn’t drugs. Unlikely, because the Warblers don’t hold a candle to New Directions when it comes to crazy plans, but still, there’s got to be a dark underbelly at Dalton somewhere.
Wes passes the bottle to Kurt. It’s red, so unless drugs are being sold as sauces, Kurt’s pretty sure he’s safe.
“Sriracha?” Kurt questions Blaine, who’s smiling before Blaine snatches it out of his hand. “Hey!”
“Sorry,” Blaine says as he uncaps the bottle and deposits a generous dollop over his own lunch, “I ran out last week so I’ve been waiting to steal some from Wes.”
Wes just rolls his eyes. “Of course.”
“Hey, come on, I have needs.”
“You owe me, Anderson,” Wes says in his stiff senior council member of the Warblers voice.
Kurt’s sure he talks like that because it makes him sound official but all it does is force Kurt to keep from laughing at his pompousness. Biting the inside of his cheek isn’t all that fun especially since he is starving, terrible lunch aside.
“You should use a little to start,” Blaine instructs as he hands the bottle back to Kurt. “It’s serious stuff.”
Kurt raises an eyebrow. “I actually know a thing or two about cuisine.”
“Really? Diet Coke hasn’t killed your tastebuds yet?”
“You’ll pay for that later,” Kurt promises as he adds the sauce to his terrible cafeteria food.
He might be showing off, matching Blaine by pouring the same amount and as he raises the fork to his mouth, ready to show that Kurt Hummel will not back down. He feels a surge of victory in the making. If he hasn’t gotten food poisoning from McKinley or his dad’s decidedly sub-par meals (before Kurt learned to take over cooking duties) then he’s ready for anything.
Except this. Oh fuck.
He really should’ve mixed it in better. He really should have taken Wes’s alarmed look with the same amount of seriousness that Wes applies to every moment of his life.
He really shouldn’t be so pleased that the smug look on Blaine’s face gets wiped away and turns into panic when Kurt completely sets his mouth on fire.
“Milk!” Blaine shouts suddenly and really, for Kurt’s last, fiery minutes on Earth, that’s all that Blaine has to say?
“I am going to die,” Kurt announces at large, between choking gasps. “Mercedes has first dibs on my clothes.”
*
He doesn’t die, fine, but it’s okay to be overdramatic when he’s made such a fool out of himself.
He will never drink another glass of milk again, warm or not. Blaine almost had to force him to finish off the extra carton he’d brought over while Kurt was still trying to get the hideous burn sensation to leave his mouth for good.
Licking his wounds by moping in one of the many corridors is a fine plan of action especially since there’s no Warbler practice today and he’s only got one more class after his study hall period is over.
“Are you okay?”
Figures Blaine would ignore the text Kurt sent off immediately after his inglorious sriracha incident.
“M’fine,” Kurt says because his tongue still feels a little numb and mumbling might hint to Blaine to go away.
“So,” Blaine says, sitting down in the empty chair (of course Kurt chooses one of the few pairs as his moping area, brilliant), “that was kind of scary.”
“What?”
“Your face. It turned red.”
Kurt stares directly into Blaine’s face for a few long moments, trying to crack Blaine’s concerned expression for the joke that must be somewhere under the surface. Screw how much his mouth feels like a smoldering ruin if Blaine wants to talk, he will talk. “I do have a fair complexion. We’ve spoken about my skin regime.”
“In great detail,” Blaine agrees. Then he takes a shaky breath. “Don’t do that again.”
“What?”
“Freak me out like that.”
Kurt tries for a laugh but it doesn’t want to go past his aching mouth. A half-hearted smile is all he can manage. “I think I’ve learned my lesson.”
“You’d think that,” Blaine says, leaning forward. “But as my mom tells me, it took me getting chili in my eyes before I learned to stop pressing my luck with spicy stuff.”
“And now you’re a sriracha addict.”
Blaine shrugs. “Still. Don’t scare me like that.”
“I’ll moderate it better,” Kurt says offhandedly but Blaine takes it seriously.
“Good,” is all he says before moving onto a new topic, his hand briefly grazing against Kurt’s knee as he closes on Kurt. “It’s not worth losing a friend to show off, you know.”
“Well, now you’re just being dramatic,” Kurt says, acknowledging his own ridiculousness and it’s okay if he can’t quite laugh because Blaine more than makes up for it.
*
The pamphlets repeat over and over again what things are perfectly natural but when it comes to advice on how to compartmentalize those perfectly natural feelings with living day to day with certain urges, well, he’s kind of cast back out to sea all over again.
There’s no way Kurt’s about to talk to his dad about falling in love with your friend over and over again and how to make it stop.
Rachel and Mercedes might support him, but he doubts he should follow their advice, bless them.
Typing into Google: help me, my fantasies about my really attractive friend are spiraling out of control now that I’m over-educating myself on things I’m not really all that prepared for, plus, how do I know whether or not I have a gag reflex? seems a waste of time. He already knows this answer: he won’t do anything and even if he’s hampered by an oversensitive gag reflex, he’s not about to get a chance to find out how to work around that issue.
So he rewatches The Sound of Music to feel better about his life, because yes, only Maria feels his pain.
This time though, he’s really more drawn to the plight of Captain Von Trapp. He’s so repressed. So powerful. Such a wonderful dancer.
A quick thought that should be harmless works its way across his mind: you can judge a lot by a person’s ability to dance. Particularly in, ah, other activities.
He has to stop the movie. There’s no way he’s sullying The Sound of Music with something so crass as jerking off. If, when he’s on his bed, lotion and tissues nearby, he turns his head and glances at a framed picture of Blaine, well, only he has to know that made him come so hard he nearly blacks out. Or dies. Or he is dead because holy shit.
Of course when Blaine sends him a text an hour later, something quite innocuous, it takes Kurt a long time to text him back and he still thinks Blaine can look between the fine print and see in blazing letters I got off thinking about you, P.S. would you like to accompany me to the next Sound of Music sing-a-long as a certain Captain?.
*
Blaine is sick. Kurt can tell because his skin is flushed and his nose is red and his voice is all stuffed up and despite all this, he is still unfairly appealing.
“I feel like there are elephants dancing in my head,” Blaine moans, as he hovers over his green tea with honey, fingers curled around the cup.
“What are you taking?”
“Everything. All the things I can get my hands on,” as Blaine takes a tiny, careful sip of the tea, wincing. “I hate tea.”
“Then why did you order it?”
Blaine looks up at him, shocked. He didn’t do a very neat job of gelling his hair this morning, already there’s a curled lock making its escape over his forehead. Kurt’s fingers twitch at the urge to brush it back. “You’re supposed to drink tea when you’re sick.”
“And have chicken soup?”
“I guess,” Blaine says, voice still thick as he plays with the lid of his cup.
“Here,” Kurt relents, pulling the thermos from his bag and setting it between them on the table.
“What’s this?”
“My homemade, heart-healthy chicken soup, a recipe that I will not divulge as I’ve finally mastered it after several tragic failures.”
“Kurt,” Blaine says, and if he wasn’t so sick, it would be spoken in a husky whisper, now it almost sounds like a raspy promise. “You didn’t have to-”
“There is a secret ingredient,” Kurt interrupts, feeling his own cheeks burn and he can’t blame it on a cold. “And it may knock you out if you’re not too careful. But I’d hope you’ve built up a tolerance.”
Blaine’s smile, even with his stupid red nose and tired eyes, is utterly devastating. Which is why it hurts just a touch to see Blaine go to his phone, shooting off a text.
“Who-” Kurt starts to ask but then his own phone vibrates in his pocket and he looks at the message. “Hugs?”
“Don’t want you to get sick,” Blaine says, as he opens up the thermos and takes a deep breath. “Thanks. I feel better already.”
“Well. Other than that being impossible, you’re welcome.”
*
Blaine’s still under the weather by the time they’re have to attend Warblers rehearsal. Even sick, he can’t skip it as he’ll got the lead solo and while he does have to sit a distance away from the healthy Warblers, he’s still there to listen intently to the council’s choreography ideas.
Kurt spends the few minutes they have after the meeting breaks up to formulate a plan. It involves taking Blaine’s hand-ignoring his protests as if Kurt hasn’t been exposed to Finn and all his enchanting ailments and general boy-grossness-and taking him into the nurse’s office.
It pays to know what she takes her smoking breaks.
For a moment it seems like Blaine’s about to say something when Kurt gestures to the cot but Kurt isn’t about to let whatever joke or awkward moment happen. “Warm compresses do wonders, you know.”
“Oh? I thought they were only good in the movies and stuff.”
“Shut up,” Kurt says as he presses the folded cloth over Blaine’s shockingly warm forehead. “Feel better?”
“Other than the plague, a little. Oh. Actually that feels nice.”
"See? Don't complain until the cure's been administered. Otherwise you look silly."
"As opposed to now," Blaine says, eyes closed as Kurt presses the compress against his temple. "I really didn’t think this would help."
"It’s a placebo,” Kurt admits. “But it also gets the patient to shut up and stop worrying that he won’t be healthy in time for Regionals."
"So I'm just the patient now, huh?” Petulant is really not a good look on Blaine; Kurt should use that a deterrent when certain inappropriate thoughts crop up when he’d rather they wouldn’t.
"No. You should be patient, now. You're going to bounce back. Finn had mono in February and he's fine. It was kind of a speedy recovery too," Kurt muses, thinking about Finn's attempt to bound the steps three at a time in their new house. It was lucky that Finn only fell over his own boxes and didn't break anything belonging to Kurt.
"Well, I can only hope. I hate being sick," Blaine confesses.
"Couldn't tell," Kurt says, trying to sound as cheery as impossible despite lying through his teeth.
Blaine peels the compress away from his head so he can give Kurt a strange look, like he’s trying to access something, an answer to a riddle.
“What is it?” Kurt finally says, dropping the wet cloth into a nearby laundry hamper.
“I’d hate to get you sick.”
“I have a shockingly powerful immune system. Only Chablis and sriracha have taken me out so far.”
“Chablis?”
“Oh, I’ve never told you that story. It’s a-well, let’s save it for another time, but long story short, no matter how convincing an alcoholic high school dropout trying to regain former glory might be, drinking Chablis before school starts really doesn’t do wonders for your confidence.”
Kurt laughs, a high, fake one, because he’s now thinking about those muscle magazines he made sure, on pain of death, to pack up during the move and discreetly hide in a safe location, far, far away from certain pamplets. The combined thought of the two is making Kurt a little crazy because he’s looking down at Blaine and he’s still laughing, Blaine’s expression turning from polite amusement to utter bafflement.
“Kurt, what is it?”
And he sounds so concerned that Kurt can’t help himself. “Sorry. I was just thinking, you know, she gave me these magazines and I have them hidden so well but I think I left out my sex-ed pamphlets on the bed this morning.”
“Magazines,” Blaine repeats dumbly, his mouth hanging open a little. He sits up so suddenly he nearly knocks his head into Kurt’s, shoving his blazer down his waist awkwardly. He makes a strange noise in the back of his throat before finally settling on “Oh.”
He doesn’t say anything else.
“Well,” Kurt says lightly, “I have to drive back home. If you’re still not feeling well tomorrow, I’ll bring some more soup, okay?”
Blaine only manages to nod and it’s with that lack of any other signal that Kurt finally, finally picks up on the obvious clue. How Blaine’s now tugging at the bottom of his blazer. Oh indeed.
“See you later,” Kurt says as he gets up, daring to initate contact, his hand brushing across Blaine’s shoulder as he walks off. “Feel better.”
There are too many times to record in Kurt Hummel’s short life of awkwardness, failures and outright embarrassment.
This is not one of those times.
*
A bolder version of himself would yank those magazines from their secret location, take a picture and send off a text to Blaine: not terribly realistic, right?
The thought of that boldness, of that surge of power, that he could make someone else feel and want, that though? That’s quite enough for now.
Because he’s sure now that he’s going to go somewhere scary and new and glorious and when he gets there, he just might be ready.
the end.
Author: Regala Electra
Fandom: Glee
Pairing: Kurt/Blaine
Rating: R
Spoilers: S2, Sexy
Warnings: Language, Sexual Content
Word Count: 2,780
Summary: A life of awkward starts and stops is par for the course.
Author's Notes: Originally this was going to be a few "day in the life" moments, happy hurt/comfort and all that jazz. Then Kurt started looking at certain pamphlets. One day, I will re-kindle my porn-fu but for today, here's Kurt working on finding his groove.
*
He keeps his head up high and then slips on a buttered floor (thank you, Puck). He gets roped into a rap by Mr. Schuester only to hear a line about a slamming female body which really, why does Mr. Schu always sing the worst lines at him?
He doesn’t have a sexy face. Fine.
A life of awkward starts and stops is par for the course.
He’s got a stack of pamphlets that have been bent and folded over one too many times and a tepid try at a finding few internet sites that haven’t burned his eyes with graphic images he so isn’t prepared for. While he’s closed the browser before reading the nitty-gritty, at least he’s taking the leap. The nervous roil of his stomach is being outmatched by the interested twitch in his dick these days.
Then his dad confronts him during one hasty pass through the kitchen to gather a quick breakfast.
“You, uh, have any questions? It’s been a while since we last talked.”
Thank Finn in all his glory as he walks in after Dad asks him the question. It lets him beat a hasty retreat.
“No, no, I’m fine,” and if he half sing-songs his words, that’s okay too.
*
It’s one of those rare days that Kurt genuinely has a growing teenage boy’s appetite.
He’d like to deny it and even though his final growth spurt has mercifully ended, he’s still at sea with how to combat genuine hunger versus how to eat at a rate that will ensure he will never have the words pear hips directed towards him ever again. He’s no Finn but sometimes he does actually want to pile a plate with enough calories to surpass his daily intake and he doesn’t entirely care because food is delicious.
At least to his eyes as he sets the plate down at the cafeteria table. Then he takes a bite. “This is terrible.”
“Contraband time,” Blaine says to Wes.
“It’s supposed to be our secret,” he hisses back at Blaine. “Unregulated contraband-”
“Really, I’ve had worse things at McKinley. It’s a shock when the salad’s actually green,” Kurt jokes but once again it falls flat despite Blaine’s flicker of a smile.
He’s surprised when Wes pulls a small condiment bottle from his satchel, with the way Wes is treating the thing, Kurt wouldn’t be shocked if it was hidden in a cut out textbook.
He really hopes it isn’t drugs. Unlikely, because the Warblers don’t hold a candle to New Directions when it comes to crazy plans, but still, there’s got to be a dark underbelly at Dalton somewhere.
Wes passes the bottle to Kurt. It’s red, so unless drugs are being sold as sauces, Kurt’s pretty sure he’s safe.
“Sriracha?” Kurt questions Blaine, who’s smiling before Blaine snatches it out of his hand. “Hey!”
“Sorry,” Blaine says as he uncaps the bottle and deposits a generous dollop over his own lunch, “I ran out last week so I’ve been waiting to steal some from Wes.”
Wes just rolls his eyes. “Of course.”
“Hey, come on, I have needs.”
“You owe me, Anderson,” Wes says in his stiff senior council member of the Warblers voice.
Kurt’s sure he talks like that because it makes him sound official but all it does is force Kurt to keep from laughing at his pompousness. Biting the inside of his cheek isn’t all that fun especially since he is starving, terrible lunch aside.
“You should use a little to start,” Blaine instructs as he hands the bottle back to Kurt. “It’s serious stuff.”
Kurt raises an eyebrow. “I actually know a thing or two about cuisine.”
“Really? Diet Coke hasn’t killed your tastebuds yet?”
“You’ll pay for that later,” Kurt promises as he adds the sauce to his terrible cafeteria food.
He might be showing off, matching Blaine by pouring the same amount and as he raises the fork to his mouth, ready to show that Kurt Hummel will not back down. He feels a surge of victory in the making. If he hasn’t gotten food poisoning from McKinley or his dad’s decidedly sub-par meals (before Kurt learned to take over cooking duties) then he’s ready for anything.
Except this. Oh fuck.
He really should’ve mixed it in better. He really should have taken Wes’s alarmed look with the same amount of seriousness that Wes applies to every moment of his life.
He really shouldn’t be so pleased that the smug look on Blaine’s face gets wiped away and turns into panic when Kurt completely sets his mouth on fire.
“Milk!” Blaine shouts suddenly and really, for Kurt’s last, fiery minutes on Earth, that’s all that Blaine has to say?
“I am going to die,” Kurt announces at large, between choking gasps. “Mercedes has first dibs on my clothes.”
*
He doesn’t die, fine, but it’s okay to be overdramatic when he’s made such a fool out of himself.
He will never drink another glass of milk again, warm or not. Blaine almost had to force him to finish off the extra carton he’d brought over while Kurt was still trying to get the hideous burn sensation to leave his mouth for good.
Licking his wounds by moping in one of the many corridors is a fine plan of action especially since there’s no Warbler practice today and he’s only got one more class after his study hall period is over.
“Are you okay?”
Figures Blaine would ignore the text Kurt sent off immediately after his inglorious sriracha incident.
“M’fine,” Kurt says because his tongue still feels a little numb and mumbling might hint to Blaine to go away.
“So,” Blaine says, sitting down in the empty chair (of course Kurt chooses one of the few pairs as his moping area, brilliant), “that was kind of scary.”
“What?”
“Your face. It turned red.”
Kurt stares directly into Blaine’s face for a few long moments, trying to crack Blaine’s concerned expression for the joke that must be somewhere under the surface. Screw how much his mouth feels like a smoldering ruin if Blaine wants to talk, he will talk. “I do have a fair complexion. We’ve spoken about my skin regime.”
“In great detail,” Blaine agrees. Then he takes a shaky breath. “Don’t do that again.”
“What?”
“Freak me out like that.”
Kurt tries for a laugh but it doesn’t want to go past his aching mouth. A half-hearted smile is all he can manage. “I think I’ve learned my lesson.”
“You’d think that,” Blaine says, leaning forward. “But as my mom tells me, it took me getting chili in my eyes before I learned to stop pressing my luck with spicy stuff.”
“And now you’re a sriracha addict.”
Blaine shrugs. “Still. Don’t scare me like that.”
“I’ll moderate it better,” Kurt says offhandedly but Blaine takes it seriously.
“Good,” is all he says before moving onto a new topic, his hand briefly grazing against Kurt’s knee as he closes on Kurt. “It’s not worth losing a friend to show off, you know.”
“Well, now you’re just being dramatic,” Kurt says, acknowledging his own ridiculousness and it’s okay if he can’t quite laugh because Blaine more than makes up for it.
*
The pamphlets repeat over and over again what things are perfectly natural but when it comes to advice on how to compartmentalize those perfectly natural feelings with living day to day with certain urges, well, he’s kind of cast back out to sea all over again.
There’s no way Kurt’s about to talk to his dad about falling in love with your friend over and over again and how to make it stop.
Rachel and Mercedes might support him, but he doubts he should follow their advice, bless them.
Typing into Google: help me, my fantasies about my really attractive friend are spiraling out of control now that I’m over-educating myself on things I’m not really all that prepared for, plus, how do I know whether or not I have a gag reflex? seems a waste of time. He already knows this answer: he won’t do anything and even if he’s hampered by an oversensitive gag reflex, he’s not about to get a chance to find out how to work around that issue.
So he rewatches The Sound of Music to feel better about his life, because yes, only Maria feels his pain.
This time though, he’s really more drawn to the plight of Captain Von Trapp. He’s so repressed. So powerful. Such a wonderful dancer.
A quick thought that should be harmless works its way across his mind: you can judge a lot by a person’s ability to dance. Particularly in, ah, other activities.
He has to stop the movie. There’s no way he’s sullying The Sound of Music with something so crass as jerking off. If, when he’s on his bed, lotion and tissues nearby, he turns his head and glances at a framed picture of Blaine, well, only he has to know that made him come so hard he nearly blacks out. Or dies. Or he is dead because holy shit.
Of course when Blaine sends him a text an hour later, something quite innocuous, it takes Kurt a long time to text him back and he still thinks Blaine can look between the fine print and see in blazing letters I got off thinking about you, P.S. would you like to accompany me to the next Sound of Music sing-a-long as a certain Captain?.
*
Blaine is sick. Kurt can tell because his skin is flushed and his nose is red and his voice is all stuffed up and despite all this, he is still unfairly appealing.
“I feel like there are elephants dancing in my head,” Blaine moans, as he hovers over his green tea with honey, fingers curled around the cup.
“What are you taking?”
“Everything. All the things I can get my hands on,” as Blaine takes a tiny, careful sip of the tea, wincing. “I hate tea.”
“Then why did you order it?”
Blaine looks up at him, shocked. He didn’t do a very neat job of gelling his hair this morning, already there’s a curled lock making its escape over his forehead. Kurt’s fingers twitch at the urge to brush it back. “You’re supposed to drink tea when you’re sick.”
“And have chicken soup?”
“I guess,” Blaine says, voice still thick as he plays with the lid of his cup.
“Here,” Kurt relents, pulling the thermos from his bag and setting it between them on the table.
“What’s this?”
“My homemade, heart-healthy chicken soup, a recipe that I will not divulge as I’ve finally mastered it after several tragic failures.”
“Kurt,” Blaine says, and if he wasn’t so sick, it would be spoken in a husky whisper, now it almost sounds like a raspy promise. “You didn’t have to-”
“There is a secret ingredient,” Kurt interrupts, feeling his own cheeks burn and he can’t blame it on a cold. “And it may knock you out if you’re not too careful. But I’d hope you’ve built up a tolerance.”
Blaine’s smile, even with his stupid red nose and tired eyes, is utterly devastating. Which is why it hurts just a touch to see Blaine go to his phone, shooting off a text.
“Who-” Kurt starts to ask but then his own phone vibrates in his pocket and he looks at the message. “Hugs?”
“Don’t want you to get sick,” Blaine says, as he opens up the thermos and takes a deep breath. “Thanks. I feel better already.”
“Well. Other than that being impossible, you’re welcome.”
*
Blaine’s still under the weather by the time they’re have to attend Warblers rehearsal. Even sick, he can’t skip it as he’ll got the lead solo and while he does have to sit a distance away from the healthy Warblers, he’s still there to listen intently to the council’s choreography ideas.
Kurt spends the few minutes they have after the meeting breaks up to formulate a plan. It involves taking Blaine’s hand-ignoring his protests as if Kurt hasn’t been exposed to Finn and all his enchanting ailments and general boy-grossness-and taking him into the nurse’s office.
It pays to know what she takes her smoking breaks.
For a moment it seems like Blaine’s about to say something when Kurt gestures to the cot but Kurt isn’t about to let whatever joke or awkward moment happen. “Warm compresses do wonders, you know.”
“Oh? I thought they were only good in the movies and stuff.”
“Shut up,” Kurt says as he presses the folded cloth over Blaine’s shockingly warm forehead. “Feel better?”
“Other than the plague, a little. Oh. Actually that feels nice.”
"See? Don't complain until the cure's been administered. Otherwise you look silly."
"As opposed to now," Blaine says, eyes closed as Kurt presses the compress against his temple. "I really didn’t think this would help."
"It’s a placebo,” Kurt admits. “But it also gets the patient to shut up and stop worrying that he won’t be healthy in time for Regionals."
"So I'm just the patient now, huh?” Petulant is really not a good look on Blaine; Kurt should use that a deterrent when certain inappropriate thoughts crop up when he’d rather they wouldn’t.
"No. You should be patient, now. You're going to bounce back. Finn had mono in February and he's fine. It was kind of a speedy recovery too," Kurt muses, thinking about Finn's attempt to bound the steps three at a time in their new house. It was lucky that Finn only fell over his own boxes and didn't break anything belonging to Kurt.
"Well, I can only hope. I hate being sick," Blaine confesses.
"Couldn't tell," Kurt says, trying to sound as cheery as impossible despite lying through his teeth.
Blaine peels the compress away from his head so he can give Kurt a strange look, like he’s trying to access something, an answer to a riddle.
“What is it?” Kurt finally says, dropping the wet cloth into a nearby laundry hamper.
“I’d hate to get you sick.”
“I have a shockingly powerful immune system. Only Chablis and sriracha have taken me out so far.”
“Chablis?”
“Oh, I’ve never told you that story. It’s a-well, let’s save it for another time, but long story short, no matter how convincing an alcoholic high school dropout trying to regain former glory might be, drinking Chablis before school starts really doesn’t do wonders for your confidence.”
Kurt laughs, a high, fake one, because he’s now thinking about those muscle magazines he made sure, on pain of death, to pack up during the move and discreetly hide in a safe location, far, far away from certain pamplets. The combined thought of the two is making Kurt a little crazy because he’s looking down at Blaine and he’s still laughing, Blaine’s expression turning from polite amusement to utter bafflement.
“Kurt, what is it?”
And he sounds so concerned that Kurt can’t help himself. “Sorry. I was just thinking, you know, she gave me these magazines and I have them hidden so well but I think I left out my sex-ed pamphlets on the bed this morning.”
“Magazines,” Blaine repeats dumbly, his mouth hanging open a little. He sits up so suddenly he nearly knocks his head into Kurt’s, shoving his blazer down his waist awkwardly. He makes a strange noise in the back of his throat before finally settling on “Oh.”
He doesn’t say anything else.
“Well,” Kurt says lightly, “I have to drive back home. If you’re still not feeling well tomorrow, I’ll bring some more soup, okay?”
Blaine only manages to nod and it’s with that lack of any other signal that Kurt finally, finally picks up on the obvious clue. How Blaine’s now tugging at the bottom of his blazer. Oh indeed.
“See you later,” Kurt says as he gets up, daring to initate contact, his hand brushing across Blaine’s shoulder as he walks off. “Feel better.”
There are too many times to record in Kurt Hummel’s short life of awkwardness, failures and outright embarrassment.
This is not one of those times.
*
A bolder version of himself would yank those magazines from their secret location, take a picture and send off a text to Blaine: not terribly realistic, right?
The thought of that boldness, of that surge of power, that he could make someone else feel and want, that though? That’s quite enough for now.
Because he’s sure now that he’s going to go somewhere scary and new and glorious and when he gets there, he just might be ready.
the end.