Fic: Beauty (4/10)
Title: Beauty (4/10)
Rating: PG-13
Summary: Blaine Anderson was blessed with the perks of being beautiful in a world where people are literally separated into classes based on being "beautiful" or "ugly". Kurt Hummel was not. This is their journey together in throwing off the world's labels, of finding true beauty among a constellation of charades. This is their love story.
Word Count: this chapter, 1,429
A/N: Thanks to everyone who has been reading so far!
“Your knight in shining armor has yet to arrive to the scene?” Kurt heard a high voice behind him ask. Turning around, he was greeted with a groggy Rachel Berry, sporting a knee length dress of a rough fabric with alternating orange and white stripes and an outlined collar in light blue. It was typical Rachel, trying to be fashionable, and picking pieces that would normally not be such a fashion faux paux, but wearing them all the wrong way.
“Forgive my lack of attentiveness today, I skipped my scrupulous morning workout routine to come talk to you,” she told Kurt as she slid out a chair, flipping her hair back over her shoulder and stifling a yawn.
“Why are you here?” he asked, a little annoyed. He was mostly trying to mask his concern; Blaine hadn’t showed up yet, and it was almost 20 minutes after their designated meet up time.
“To see who this mysterious and apparently undeniably charming Blaine Anderson is,” she answered conspiratorially. “Where’s your prince, anyways?” She looked around, looking as if she expected to see Taylor Lautner himself walk through the door of this lowly Ohioan coffee shop.
“I wouldn’t have told you about him, Rachel, if I had known you were going to crash one of our meetings.” He spoke while continually sweeping his eyes around the shop, forever hoping to see those horribly slicked down curls and that idiotic smile.
Rachel leaned forward and smiled slyly. “Dates, Kurt. Dates.”
“Are you buying anything?” he redirected quickly.
“No, don’t have the money to spare,” she said, longingly staring at the people entering and exiting quickly with their prized confections and beverages. “How are you affording to come here every day? What with the exorbitant amount of money you spend on clothes-“
“-Style is very important to me, and besides, I find all my clothes on sale!”
“-that you know we don’t have?”
Kurt sighed. “I hate this.”
“That Blaine isn’t here?”
“Well, yes, but this whole thing in general. I hate being an unsightly, and I hate that someone just decided that I should be without my consent, or even a legitimate freaking reason!”
“There’s nothing we can do about it now, Kurt. Just wait, soon we’ll both be on Broadway, and all of this will be a fond memory.” She went to grab Kurt’s hand, and he accepted it.
With a gentle squeeze to her hand, he fired back. “But I don’t want to wait! I want to do something about it now!”
“I know, Kurt, I know,” she reassured him, standing up to pull him into a hug.
After breaking apart, she cleared her throat loudly. “We‘ve got to be getting to school now. I, uh…I’m sorry.”
“No, it’s alright,” he answered, only a little bit of dejection being betrayed in his voice. “I just hope he’s okay.”
“Walk with me,” she piped up, linking her arm in his. “We can sing the Sound Of Music soundtrack all the way to school.”
“You always know the right thing to do, Miss Rachel Berry.” He laughed, holding open the door and entering the brisk morning air, pushing away the feeling stirring in his stomach and focusing on instead on the opening strains of Do-Re-Mi.
“Doe, a deer, a female deer, Ray, a drop of golden sun!”
~~
Kurt had to force himself throughout all his classes to keep the phone in his backpack, lest he pull it out and text Blaine to make sure he was okay. Blaine was absolutely fine, he probably just overslept. Or forgot his phone and had to go back for it. Or crashed on his way towards the Lima Bean and was sitting in a hospital right now and Kurt was sitting in Spanish…
Focus, Kurt. Español. Blaine esta en su escuela. Él esta hablando a un lección, como tu. Relájate, Kurt. Relájate.
~~
When the last bell of the day finally rang, Kurt almost surprised himself with how eager he was to text Blaine.
Kurt: Well, someone wasn’t at the Lima Bean today! You best be careful, we’re heading into mandatory question territory if you don’t answer back soon!
When he hadn’t answered back a few hours later, Kurt sent him another text.
Kurt: Well, if you didn’t like me, you could’ve just told me instead of blowing off our morning meeting! Jk! You know you love me ;)
Another hour later and still no response.
Kurt: Alright, apparently not.
A few more hours passed by.
Kurt: Blaine, are you alright?
30 minutes.
Kurt: Blaine?
Kurt: I’m kind of worried now.
Kurt: Blaine?
~~
Blaine woke up, Chopin’s Nocturne, op 9, number 3 gently luring him from sleep. He rolled out of bed, groggily reaching for his phone. It said it was 5:30.
“Shit.” Kurt had been at the Lima Bean for half an hour already, and Blaine hadn’t shown up. “Shit.”
He danced around his room, jumping into beige trousers, pulling a crisp white dress shirt over his chest, shrugging into his Dalton blazer, and throwing on his tie. Rushing downstairs, he pulled on black socks, grabbed his bag, and slipped into dress shoes.
“Going to the Lima Bean,” he called out to his mother, who was eating waffles at the island in the kitchen.
“Why don’t you stay and eat with me, dear?”
Blaine sighed, and moved to press a kiss to her forehead. “I would love to, but I’m meeting someone at the Lima Bean and I’m going to be late.”
“But honey, I want us to be more of a family. Can’t you just give your friend a rain check?”
He shook his head impatiently. “I’m sorry; I just really need to get going.”
He was almost out the door when his mother said it.
“Blainey, dear, I feel like you’re polarizing the family.”
He slowly turned around. “What?”
“You’ve seen how upset your father has been recently,” she continued, chewing at her waffles nonchalantly. “I love you, and I understand that you probably like this person that you meet everyday at the Lima Bean, and I want you to be happy, trust me, but… our family unit has been broken. I just want to fix it.”
“How is that my fault?” Blaine asked angrily.
“You’re always bringing up your father’s work nowadays, and the ‘inherent unfairness of comelies and unsightlies and the whole system’. It stresses him,” she said simply.
“That’s because it is unfair,” he retorted. “It’s ridiculous how unfair it is, and he’s in a position that’s only perpetuating this nasty cycle!”
“You know that’s not his fault.”
“Of course it is! He could choose any other job, you know. He’s not being forced to work at the hospital in those stupid id-ing rooms!”
His mother shifted uncomfortably. “He doesn’t really have as much as a choice as you make him out to have.”
“He does. There’s always more than one choice.”
“But you don’t know the choices,” she added quietly.
“I just know that I want him to realize this isn’t right.”
“He does.”
“How can you know?”
“Just believe me when I say he doesn’t have a choice.”
“But there’s always a choice,” Blaine repeated weakly.
“I know, dear. I know. Some are just more attractive than others.”
Blaine was quiet.
“Is this person you meet at the Lima Bean an unsightly?” his mother asked after a couple of moments.
Blaine opened his mouth to answer, but instead he found himself fleeing the situation. He didn’t know why he didn’t want to tell his mother that Kurt was an unsightly, and that he was one of the most wonderful people he had met in spite of and because of it, but there was a swirling feeling settling in his stomach, and all he wanted to do was get out of there. So he did. He grabbed his car keys and ran to his car, trying to quiet his stomach. Driving around aimlessly, he killed time until school started. And then he drove straight to Dalton.
When he got home from school, he continued to run. He ran up to his room and turned off his phone for the day, instead choosing to distract himself by finishing his homework, and when that supply ran out, watching movies on his laptop. He went through around 4 until it was finally midnight.
He still didn’t know why that confrontation in the morning upset him so much, but he chose to ignore it for the time being. The churning feeling didn’t go away until he lapsed into a fitful sleep.