Fic: One of the Boys
Media: Fic
Title: One of the Boys
Rating: PG-13
Characters: Blaine Anderson, Kurt Hummel, Brittany Pierce, Rachel Berry, and Mercedes Jones; mentions of other ensemble members
Spoilers (if any): through SLS and the recent blind item
Warnings (if any): Language
Word Count: ~4500
Summary: Blaine really had not intended and did not want to act out every Katy Perry single in his day-to-day life. And honestly, what did the universe have against him that the one he hadn’t gotten to do was “Peacock”?
Notes: Those of you unfamiliar with my main fandom don’t know this, but lls_mutant and I regularly share a brain, independently and simultaneously coming up with the same fic ideas scarily often. Thus, if you notice any striking resemblance to The Worst Day, yes, we both know about it. This started out as a silly ficlet and took on a life of its own. It’s still pretty silly, though. Title taken from a Katy Perry CD that I do not own, and several mentions made of a movie that I have not seen in its entirety. I apologize in advance for any inaccuracies.
One of the Boys
Blaine woke with his face buried in…something, and with something noisy in the background. Thinking was like trying to pedal a bike up a hill, and the gears in his brain were slipping. The fabric surrounding his face was a couch cushion, he finally realized. He lifted his head and regretted it instantly-he’d never thought movement and light could be so very, very evil. He let his head fall back to the couch, though he faced the middle of the room this time so he could breathe more easily.
“Stop killing that poor cat,” Blaine mumbled, waving his hand in the general direction of the noise.
He heard a gasp of mock-horror. “You think she sounds like a dying cat? But Blaine, I thought you loved Katy Perry.”
Being hung over might have made Blaine’s head muzzy, but there was no way even he could miss Kurt’s faux-innocent sarcasm. He cracked one eye open and saw Kurt standing over him, looking way too sober and put-together and holding his portable CD player.
“I thought you’d enjoy this as your wake-up call,” Kurt said, smiling a little too intensely. He started singing along to the recording, head bobbing from side to side. “I kissed a girl and I liked it, the taste of her cherry chapstick. I kissed a girl just to try it…”
Blaine had never been someone who couldn’t remember the next day what he’d done while he was drunk. As memories of the previous night came rushing back to him, he really, really wished he was one of those people.
“Fuck.”
Fourteen hours earlier…
When Kurt had invited Blaine to come to a party at Rachel’s house with him, Blaine had assumed that Kurt would introduce him to the rest of his friends in the normal way: a series of encounters following the pattern of “Blaine, this is X; X this is Blaine,” followed by Blaine working X’s name into a brief conversation three times so he would remember it. Instead, here they were, side by side and leaning against the kitchen island, looking out into the open living room and watching the actual party going on in there from a safe and somehow almost haughty distance. Kurt was using his wine cooler as a pointer, tipping the neck toward whoever he was dishing on.
“And that’s Sam,” Kurt said, indicating the blond boy who was drinking with his head thrown all the way back as Santana and Puck chanted chug, chug, chug! “Sadly, despite the hair and the lips, it appears he’s exclusively into girls, so don’t waste your time. You already know Mercedes and Rachel, so I think I’ve covered everyone now.”
“Rachel looks really nice tonight. Very different from when we all meet for coffee,” Blaine said, still watching the crowd.
Kurt preened, just as Blaine had hoped. “I’ll take that as a personal compliment. She finally let Mercedes and me style her. I wonder what childhood trauma she must have undergone for her to still be dressing like a kindergartener at the age of sixteen.” He rolled his eyes.
Blaine finished off the last of his beer. “I think I need a refill. Want me to get another one of those for you?” he asked, pointing at the nearly-empty wine cooler bottle.
“No, thanks,” Kurt answered. “I’m pacing myself. I’m not a big fan of getting vomit-level drunk. I prefer a mere pleasant buzz.”
Blaine’s brows furrowed. “Wait, you’ve been drunk before? I thought you said this was your first kegger.”
“True, but a kegger is hardly the only situation in which one can get plastered.” Kurt sipped his drink demurely and gave Blaine a look that made it clear he was too enamored with being a little mysterious to tell the rest of the story.
For some reason, hearing that Kurt had been that drunk before bothered Blaine. It didn’t mesh at all with the image of the ingénue who’d so easily admitted he’d never really been kissed and who’d cried so prettily in front of Blaine within an hour of meeting him. Sure, Blaine had gotten drunk twice before, but there was something deeply unsettling about Kurt having a past. Even worse, there was a chance Kurt might have more of a past than he did. That would just be wrong.
“You okay?” Kurt asked, which made Blaine realize he’d been staring at him. Before he could answer, the tall, blonde girl whose name Blaine had already forgotten (damn Kurt and his memory-trick-thwarting mode of “introductions”) dougied her way into the kitchen.
“Hey, Kurt,” she said, still dancing. “They let you out of the life-sized Ken Doll factory to come to the party, huh?”
Kurt gave Blaine a quick don’t even bother asking look before patiently answering, “Dalton is a private school, not a doll factory.”
“Hi, my name is Blaine. It’s nice to meet you,” Blaine said, offering his hand.
Brittany didn’t take it. “Blaine? Blaine is the Australian home-wrecker who broke up Barbie and Ken in 2004. But that Blaine is blond. You must be 1980s Alan. Your hair is even plasticky like his.” Blaine instinctively reached up to touch his hair, but Brittany just turned to Kurt. “Why aren’t you and your boyfriend dancing, Kurt?”
“We’re not boyfriends,” Kurt and Blaine said at once. Kurt made a face that Blaine couldn’t read, then continued, “We’re just good friends. However, Blaine is ‘capital G Gay,’ as you so artfully put it, so I’m afraid you can’t add him to your collection of boys you’ve made out with.”
“That’s okay. Now that I’m dating Artie, I’m collecting manhole covers instead, anyway.”
Blaine decided he needed to be very careful about looking down whenever he walked the streets of Lima from now on.
Brittany playfully mock-punched Kurt in the arm and added, “Besides, I want to keep you as the special one-and-only Capital G Gay in my make-out collection.” Then she turned to Blaine. “You’re totally missing out, though. I’m a really good kissing teacher.” Blaine wondered if she meant he was missing out on her or her pupil. Before he could think of a subtle and non-flirtatious way of asking that (or deciding one didn’t exist), she twirled Kurt once and casually danced back into the living room, calling out over her shoulder, “Nice to meet you, Alan. Say hi to Ken for me.”
Kurt noticed that Blaine’s mouth was hanging open. “Yeah, I know. I tried to warn you she was…strange, but Brittany is something one has to personally encounter to fully understand. Or maybe to fully not understand. I don’t t know.”
“You dated her?” Blaine asked before he even thought about what was coming out of his mouth.
Thankfully, Kurt wasn’t offended. “You know how Picasso had his Blue Period, where all he painted were beggars and prostitutes and really depressing things? Well, I had a Mellencamp Period.”
Blaine’s mind was still reeling. “You dated what has to be one of the hottest girls in your school?”
Kurt cocked his head. “Didn’t I just say that?”
“And you made out with her.”
“Yes, for like an hour,” Kurt said slowly, like he was talking to a small child. “I wore a trucker hat and sang ‘Pink Houses,’ too. Not one of my more fabulous weeks.” Kurt stared at him oddly. “I’m going to go dance now. Brittany has a point-if we spend much more time alone in here, everyone is going to think we’re dating. I really don’t want to spend all of next week convincing them that we’re not. You coming?”
Blaine shook his head. He needed more time to process all…this. “I’ll be there in a bit. I just need to grab another drink first.”
Kurt apparently didn’t notice anything was wrong. “Okay. See you in a bit, then.”
Kurt left. Instead of going out to the keg in the back yard to refill his cup, Blaine grabbed the bottle of Jack Daniels that Puck had brought and guessed at how much a shot of whiskey was. (Rachel, God bless her, had set the keg up outside in the hopes that she’d avoid beer stains on the floor that way. Poor thing obviously didn’t think through the implications of lidless cups and why "tipsy" was such a good synonym for “drunk.”) He downed his approximation of a shot in one gulp like they did in the movies, but unlike Humphrey Bogart, he gagged and struggled to keep it down.
Blaine braced himself on the kitchen island until the coughing fit passed. He looked up and out into the living room again. Kurt and Brittany were dancing together, or as together as anyone on the makeshift dance floor was dancing with someone else. Their long limbs twisted and their hips snapped and swayed so much more gracefully and joyfully than anyone had a right to.
Kurt had a pretty damn strange and downright unfair definition of what kinds of kisses “counted,” Blaine thought a little viciously.
He shook his head, shocked at his own thoughts. Was he actually…jealous? That would be new; he’d always sort of considered him above something as base as sexual envy. Especially over someone who was firmly in the friends zone and a girl.
Whoa, wait a minute. Which one was he jealous of, Brittany or Kurt?
Blaine looked up at the two of them dancing again. He was still completely indifferent to breasts, but he’d always had a thing for tall and fair-complected…hell, look at Jeremiah…
“I’m not sure,” he said out loud.
Whoa.
“I really need another drink.”
Three hours after that…
Though some small, quiet, and almost-sober part of his mind tried to remind Blaine that he tended to get maudlin and clingy when drunk, the rest of him was so far gone that that part really wasn’t relevant.
“My dads got that vase that Finn broke in Venice. There’s no way I can go to Venice and buy a replacement and get back before my dads come home from Ypsilanti,” Rachel whined as she burrowed herself deeper into the couch cushions beside Blaine. She looked up at Blaine, head wobbling a little. “Do you know how to get wine cooler stains out of silk taffeta curtains?” she practically begged. He shrugged and patted her shoulder in sympathy. She leaned over Blaine’s lap and asked Mercedes the same question. When Mercedes shrugged, too, Rachel said, “Pour me another shot of whiskey, then.”
Mercedes, who was sitting on Blaine’s other side and therefore closest to the end table, rolled her eyes and passed Blaine the bottle of Jack Daniels, which he’d brought into the living room with him when he’d finally made it in there. Rachel held out her cup, and he tipped the bottle with a decidedly unsteady hand.
“Poor me, poor me,” he started to sing, “poor me, pour me another shot of whiskey…”
“Bartender, hit me one more time!” Rachel joined him, harmonizing nicely.
“God, I must be drunk if I’m singing country,” Blaine said as he poured another shot for himself. They both giggled. He offered a shot to Mercedes-Jack Daniels might make him stupid and emo, but nothing short of a coma could dull his good manners-but she waved it off again. “Kurt’s right. You guys are the best.”
“Speaking of, did you and Kurt have a fight or something? You came with him, but you haven’t hung out with him all night,” Mercedes asked.
Blaine looked longingly across the dark room. Kurt was in the midst of the small clutch of partygoers still dancing rather than making out in even darker corners. He was tangoing with Lauren quite happily. Blaine missed Kurt.
“No. It’s just-” Blaine paused. Kurt was always telling him about how great it was to have girlfriends, how they were so good at commiserating and knocking sense into him. He sighed, “It’s just…why aren’t Kurt and I dating?”
“Is this a trick question to figure out whether Kurt told us about you singing about sex toys in the Gap? ‘Cause he did,” Mercedes answered. Then she said almost to herself, “Wow, there’s no way to say that without it sounding even dirtier than it actually was, is there?”
Blaine knew he was really drunk when he didn’t even blush at the mention of the Warblers Gap Attack. “No, I’m serious. Kurt’s my best friend. And he’s gay, and he’s single, and he’s awesome, so why am I not dating him?”
Mercedes raised her eyebrows. Her and Kurt’s “I’m so judging you” faces were frighteningly similar. “Yes, he is awesome. Frankly, I don’t know why you’re not crushing on Kurt, except that there’s no accounting for taste and I guess I don’t crush on every straight boy, either.”
“Well yeah, but Kurt’s attractive.” The words came out before he knew what he was saying, so Blaine thought about it for a moment. He said with more certainty, “Yes, I find Kurt Hummel attractive. I mean, I don’t know if I have a type, but if I did, tall, slender, pretty eyes-all very, very good.” And he’d sort of wanted to kiss Kurt that one time after they sang “Baby, It’s Cold Outside,” but that might’ve been one of those stray moments when hormones make an idea as bad as kissing your best friend right before you’re not going to see him for three weeks over Winter Break somehow look good. Blaine didn’t say that to Rachel and Mercedes. He did notice he was still talking about something, though, so he tuned back to the sound of his own voice. “I tend to go for blonds, but he’s got fair skin, and holy shit look at those smutty dance moves!” He pointed across the room, where Kurt was now grinding against what must have been an incredibly drunk guy with a mohawk.
“Should we stop him?” Rachel asked.
Before Blaine could say, please don’t, Mercedes said, “At least not until Lauren’s done filming him and Puck with her flipcam. Team Edward and Team Jacob my ass-I always knew Lauren was a slash fan.”
“Blonds, huh? Kurt would look cute with his hair dyed blond,” Rachel commented.
Mercedes glowered at both of them. “Kurt shouldn’t have to dye his hair for somebody to like him.”
“No, that’s not what I meant at all!” Blaine quickly cut in, but Rachel spoke over him.
“I so should’ve invited Kurt to come too when I got my hair highlighted,” Rachel leaned over Blaine again to talk to Mercedes. “Why hasn’t anybody commented on my highlights yet tonight?”
“I think your hair is very pretty,” Blaine offered dapperly. Rachel smiled.
Mercedes just shook her head. “Rachel, what happened to you being a fierce, single, independent diva for a while?”
“I still am!” Rachel insisted. “I can be fierce and independent and still want boys to tell me I’m pretty.”
Mercedes groaned and flopped her head back against the couch.
“Besides, Barbra and Whitney might’ve been single when they became huge successes, but that doesn’t mean they were celi- celi-”
“Celibate?” Blaine supplied after a few moments of thought.
“Exactly!”
“Didn’t you say you wanted to wait ‘til you’re twenty-five to have sex?” Mercedes asked, skeptical.
“Whoa, that’s hardcore,” Blaine said. He stopped himself before he asked about whether there was such a thing as Jewish nuns.
“Don’t you?” Rachel asked Blaine with all the sincerity of the truly sloshed.
“No!” Blaine half-laughed, half-shouted.
She ignored Blaine and went back to Mercedes. “I don’t mean sex, but I don’t have to be…kiss-celibate.”
Kiss-celibate. Blaine liked that term.
“What if I’m bi?” Blaine blurted, only realizing afterwards that the conversational connection between that and kiss-celibacy only made sense in his head. And really, now that he said it out loud, he couldn’t even remember how it had made sense in his head.
“Okay…” Mercedes said, eyeing him warily and scooting away on the couch a bit.
“I mean, what if that’s why I’m not in love with Kurt, because I’m bi?”
Mercedes said, “Bisexual still means you like boys, so that wouldn’t exactly explain your problem…”
Rachel looked sympathetic, so Blaine turned to her instead and said, “That’s gotta be it. Well, the only other thing is the day I met Kurt, he started crying right after I said I was gay. Just like my mom did. Not that it was cause-and-effect with him, but-”
Rachel’s eyes went wide. “Oh my God, you’re bi and Kurt makes you think of your mom! That’s it! And then the sex feelings make you feel all guilty for wanting to kill your dad. My therapist so has a name for that…” She stared off into space, snapping her fingers again and again.
Mercedes cut in, “Call me crazy or partially sober or whatever, but somehow, I don’t think that’s what it is-”
“Oh my God you have an Oedipussy Complex!” Rachel burst out.
“That’s it!” Blaine said equally enthusiastically.
“I think I’m going to go puke now,” Mercedes said, pushing herself up off the couch.
“Aw, did you drink too much?” Rachel asked, concerned.
“Actually, I’m pretty sure it’s this conversation that’s making me want to hurl, but if your explanation makes you feel better, go for it.”
“Feel better, sweetie!” Blaine called after Mercedes as she walked off, throwing her arms in the air and shaking her head.
“So,” Rachel said, turning Blaine towards her by taking one hand and putting the other one on his elbow. Her hand was soft and warm and very, very nice. “Is there a particular woman making you question your sexuality?”
Blaine thought about answering that it was Brittany, but for some reason he couldn’t quite articulate, he knew that wasn’t accurate. He just shrugged.
“Okay, so who is the last woman you remember feeling some sort of sexual attraction to?” Rachel asked.
Blaine wracked his brain. “Does Gael Garcia Bernal in Bad Education count?”
Rachel tried to hide a wince. “I don’t…think so…”
“You look kind of like Gael Garcia Bernal did in Bad Education,” Blaine said, squeezing Rachel’s hand.
“Really?” Rachel said, a tremulous smile on her lips. “Is that a good thing?”
“Totally,” Blaine assured her. “He’s so pretty, even in the long, dark-haired wig and the ugly dresses.”
There were stars in Rachel’s eyes.
The Present…
“Oh God, you saw me kiss Rachel Berry?” Blaine groaned.
Kurt nodded. “I was also the one who pulled Finn off you before he could get a good punch in.”
Blaine winced, realizing that part of the headache was from Finn slamming him against a wall. “That part’s coming back to me now. What’d he do that for? I didn’t think he and Rachel were together.”
Kurt shook his head and rolled his eyes, but he did it fondly. “Actually, I think he was trying to vindicate my honor, in some terribly misguided and unnecessary way.”
Blaine pushed himself up so Kurt could sit beside him on the couch. They were still at Rachel’s house, he noted, but it looked a lot less like a disaster area than it had when he’d passed out last night. Kurt handed him a glass of water, which Blaine gulped down.
“So,” Kurt said primly, clicking off the CD player. “I hear you’re a big fan of the films of Pedro Almodovar.”
Blaine hadn’t thought there could be anything more embarrassing than the Warblers Gap Attack. This wasn’t there yet, but it definitely had the potential to overtake the WGA.
Kurt continued, “I know I said having girlfriends is a good thing, but you must realize that Mercedes's and Rachel’s gossiping first allegiance is to me, right?”
“I do when I’m sober,” Blaine answered. He buried his face in his hands for a moment, then gathered himself enough to meet Kurt’s eyes. “Look, I know you’re angry at me. Since there are so, so many reasons why you could be mad, please tell me which ones they are so I can at least get the apology right. Though I am so sorry for all of it, I know blanket apologies tend to be cop-outs.”
Kurt stared silently at the floor for long enough that it made Blaine nervous. “Well, you need to apologize to Rachel for complimenting her on looking like a Castilian transsexual.”
“Definitely.”
“Also,” Kurt hesitated, then said almost defensively, “If you’re really questioning your sexuality, I’m totally sympathetic to that. Emotions and hormones are just…cruelly confusing.” Kurt turned back to Blaine and locked his gaze on him. “But don’t use my friends as test subjects while you try to figure it out.”
That hadn’t been at all what Blaine was expecting to hear. It hurt even worse. “Kurt-”
“I was lucky that I was just another notch on Brittany’s bedpost,” Kurt continued. “Literally. Artie says she has actual notches carved into her headboard. You’re lucky to some extent that Rachel is one of these people whose memory gets fuzzy when she gets drunk enough. Mercedes and I gave her the Cliff Notes version when she woke up, since all she remembered was the Bad Education compliment, but of course the feelings aren’t as intense if you’re merely told about what happened rather than remember it. But before I came out, I really hurt…someone by sort of accidentally leading her on, too.”
“I’m sorry, and I promise I won’t lead anyone on again,” Blaine said. He knew he was taking a big risk, since he was already in such deep shit, but he had to ask. “Is that the only reason you don’t want me to be involved with your friends, that you’re afraid I’ll decide I’m not bi and will have strung them along?”
Kurt sighed. “You know what? That’s not all of it.” Kurt’s eyes were so incredibly clear and honest. It was somehow both a little scary and a little intoxicating. “I love being your friend. I’m fine with you dating other people, the same way I know you’re fine with me dating other people.” Blaine felt his stomach clench and decided to write it off as part of the hangover. “However, I would not be okay with you dating Mercedes or Rachel-hell, let’s throw Finn in there for good measure, too. I never even considered it because I didn’t think they were even an option for you, but it’s just too…too much and too close. I can’t think of a better way to say it.”
“I get it,” Blaine said, because he did, even if he couldn’t articulate it any better, either. “I promise I won’t.” They didn’t quite smile at each other, but the atmosphere seemed to relax considerably. “That is the most grown-up conversation I’ve ever had while hung over.”
Kurt actually did smile at that. “We’re getting quite good at this maturity and honesty and full disclosure schtick, aren’t we?”
That reminded Blaine that something was still weighing on his chest. Kiss-celibacy. The truth was, Blaine had been jealous of Kurt when he’d found out about Brittany. Now, with a little more distance from the situation and a little less alcohol and hormones addling his brain, he was able to latch onto the reason why that had kept slipping through his mental grasp the previous night. As gorgeous as she was, he didn’t want to kiss Brittany, per se. It wasn’t exactly that self-professedly never-been-kissed Kurt was not as sweet and naïve and painfully inexperienced as Blaine had envisioned since that awful day with Karofsky on the stairwell, either. No, it was that Kurt actually was that inexperienced and yet also managed to be far more experienced than Blaine was.
“I feel like I’m so far behind everybody else, you know?” Blaine forced himself to say. This sort of vulnerability was a lot tougher than Kurt made it look, Blaine decided. It didn’t feel very good at all. He kept going anyway. “Even if you weren’t all that interested in the game, you’ve at least rounded a couple bases with Brittany.”
Kurt’s face softened. “Blaine, you should know by now that the sports analogy is completely lost on me. I think I get it anyway. It sucks now, but when the right person comes along, lack of experience isn’t going to matter to them.”
If they were in a movie, this would be the part where the music swelled as one of them leaned in and kissed the other, and they promised to be each other’s firsts and lasts and everything in between. But this wasn’t a movie. Blaine knew his breath reeked, Kurt was wearing the same clothes from yesterday, which always made him testy, and for all that they prided themselves on being mature, right now, the Hollywood ending would be what Kurt so perfectly called too much and too close for them.
The moment passed, and Kurt filled up the silence. “Not that I have any experience with that, either, but that’s the theory I’m personally banking on. Or who knows, maybe the fact that we haven’t hit the puck through the uprights by the age of sixteen has doomed us both to lives of celibacy.” Blaine couldn’t help but chuckle. The skin around Kurt’s eyes crinkled with laughter as well. “I mangled the sports analogy, didn’t I?”
“You totally fumbled the basketball.”
“Okay, now tell me the truth.” Kurt narrowed his eyes and lowered his voice to gossip-volume. “Are you really questioning your sexuality, or were you questioning it the way alcohol makes people question why the lampposts are dancing the watusi?”
Blaine plucked the CD player from Kurt’s lap. “Better yet, I’ll let Ms. Perry tell you for me.” He clicked past the first few tracks on the CD, then turned up the volume on “Ur So Gay.”
Kurt laughed, and Blaine joined in a few moments later. Just when Blaine thought that maybe things were better, Kurt sat up too straight and clutched his chest. “Wait a minute.” He sang, “You’re so gay, and you don’t even like boys? Blaine, are you actually coming out as straight in song?”
Blaine panicked. “Oh God, no! The title-I picked it for the title, not the lyr-” Kurt looked at him evilly and started giggling. “You bastard,” Blaine said, nudging Kurt playfully with his shoulder.
“Floozy,” Kurt said, nudging back.
“‘Floozy?’” Blaine repeated. “Who the hell even uses that word anymore?”
Kurt smacked his shoulder and huffed. “Shut up and help me scrub the beer stain out of the area rug. You still owe Rachel big for the Gael Garcia Bernal in a dress comment.”
Title: One of the Boys
Rating: PG-13
Characters: Blaine Anderson, Kurt Hummel, Brittany Pierce, Rachel Berry, and Mercedes Jones; mentions of other ensemble members
Spoilers (if any): through SLS and the recent blind item
Warnings (if any): Language
Word Count: ~4500
Summary: Blaine really had not intended and did not want to act out every Katy Perry single in his day-to-day life. And honestly, what did the universe have against him that the one he hadn’t gotten to do was “Peacock”?
Notes: Those of you unfamiliar with my main fandom don’t know this, but lls_mutant and I regularly share a brain, independently and simultaneously coming up with the same fic ideas scarily often. Thus, if you notice any striking resemblance to The Worst Day, yes, we both know about it. This started out as a silly ficlet and took on a life of its own. It’s still pretty silly, though. Title taken from a Katy Perry CD that I do not own, and several mentions made of a movie that I have not seen in its entirety. I apologize in advance for any inaccuracies.
One of the Boys
Blaine woke with his face buried in…something, and with something noisy in the background. Thinking was like trying to pedal a bike up a hill, and the gears in his brain were slipping. The fabric surrounding his face was a couch cushion, he finally realized. He lifted his head and regretted it instantly-he’d never thought movement and light could be so very, very evil. He let his head fall back to the couch, though he faced the middle of the room this time so he could breathe more easily.
“Stop killing that poor cat,” Blaine mumbled, waving his hand in the general direction of the noise.
He heard a gasp of mock-horror. “You think she sounds like a dying cat? But Blaine, I thought you loved Katy Perry.”
Being hung over might have made Blaine’s head muzzy, but there was no way even he could miss Kurt’s faux-innocent sarcasm. He cracked one eye open and saw Kurt standing over him, looking way too sober and put-together and holding his portable CD player.
“I thought you’d enjoy this as your wake-up call,” Kurt said, smiling a little too intensely. He started singing along to the recording, head bobbing from side to side. “I kissed a girl and I liked it, the taste of her cherry chapstick. I kissed a girl just to try it…”
Blaine had never been someone who couldn’t remember the next day what he’d done while he was drunk. As memories of the previous night came rushing back to him, he really, really wished he was one of those people.
“Fuck.”
Fourteen hours earlier…
When Kurt had invited Blaine to come to a party at Rachel’s house with him, Blaine had assumed that Kurt would introduce him to the rest of his friends in the normal way: a series of encounters following the pattern of “Blaine, this is X; X this is Blaine,” followed by Blaine working X’s name into a brief conversation three times so he would remember it. Instead, here they were, side by side and leaning against the kitchen island, looking out into the open living room and watching the actual party going on in there from a safe and somehow almost haughty distance. Kurt was using his wine cooler as a pointer, tipping the neck toward whoever he was dishing on.
“And that’s Sam,” Kurt said, indicating the blond boy who was drinking with his head thrown all the way back as Santana and Puck chanted chug, chug, chug! “Sadly, despite the hair and the lips, it appears he’s exclusively into girls, so don’t waste your time. You already know Mercedes and Rachel, so I think I’ve covered everyone now.”
“Rachel looks really nice tonight. Very different from when we all meet for coffee,” Blaine said, still watching the crowd.
Kurt preened, just as Blaine had hoped. “I’ll take that as a personal compliment. She finally let Mercedes and me style her. I wonder what childhood trauma she must have undergone for her to still be dressing like a kindergartener at the age of sixteen.” He rolled his eyes.
Blaine finished off the last of his beer. “I think I need a refill. Want me to get another one of those for you?” he asked, pointing at the nearly-empty wine cooler bottle.
“No, thanks,” Kurt answered. “I’m pacing myself. I’m not a big fan of getting vomit-level drunk. I prefer a mere pleasant buzz.”
Blaine’s brows furrowed. “Wait, you’ve been drunk before? I thought you said this was your first kegger.”
“True, but a kegger is hardly the only situation in which one can get plastered.” Kurt sipped his drink demurely and gave Blaine a look that made it clear he was too enamored with being a little mysterious to tell the rest of the story.
For some reason, hearing that Kurt had been that drunk before bothered Blaine. It didn’t mesh at all with the image of the ingénue who’d so easily admitted he’d never really been kissed and who’d cried so prettily in front of Blaine within an hour of meeting him. Sure, Blaine had gotten drunk twice before, but there was something deeply unsettling about Kurt having a past. Even worse, there was a chance Kurt might have more of a past than he did. That would just be wrong.
“You okay?” Kurt asked, which made Blaine realize he’d been staring at him. Before he could answer, the tall, blonde girl whose name Blaine had already forgotten (damn Kurt and his memory-trick-thwarting mode of “introductions”) dougied her way into the kitchen.
“Hey, Kurt,” she said, still dancing. “They let you out of the life-sized Ken Doll factory to come to the party, huh?”
Kurt gave Blaine a quick don’t even bother asking look before patiently answering, “Dalton is a private school, not a doll factory.”
“Hi, my name is Blaine. It’s nice to meet you,” Blaine said, offering his hand.
Brittany didn’t take it. “Blaine? Blaine is the Australian home-wrecker who broke up Barbie and Ken in 2004. But that Blaine is blond. You must be 1980s Alan. Your hair is even plasticky like his.” Blaine instinctively reached up to touch his hair, but Brittany just turned to Kurt. “Why aren’t you and your boyfriend dancing, Kurt?”
“We’re not boyfriends,” Kurt and Blaine said at once. Kurt made a face that Blaine couldn’t read, then continued, “We’re just good friends. However, Blaine is ‘capital G Gay,’ as you so artfully put it, so I’m afraid you can’t add him to your collection of boys you’ve made out with.”
“That’s okay. Now that I’m dating Artie, I’m collecting manhole covers instead, anyway.”
Blaine decided he needed to be very careful about looking down whenever he walked the streets of Lima from now on.
Brittany playfully mock-punched Kurt in the arm and added, “Besides, I want to keep you as the special one-and-only Capital G Gay in my make-out collection.” Then she turned to Blaine. “You’re totally missing out, though. I’m a really good kissing teacher.” Blaine wondered if she meant he was missing out on her or her pupil. Before he could think of a subtle and non-flirtatious way of asking that (or deciding one didn’t exist), she twirled Kurt once and casually danced back into the living room, calling out over her shoulder, “Nice to meet you, Alan. Say hi to Ken for me.”
Kurt noticed that Blaine’s mouth was hanging open. “Yeah, I know. I tried to warn you she was…strange, but Brittany is something one has to personally encounter to fully understand. Or maybe to fully not understand. I don’t t know.”
“You dated her?” Blaine asked before he even thought about what was coming out of his mouth.
Thankfully, Kurt wasn’t offended. “You know how Picasso had his Blue Period, where all he painted were beggars and prostitutes and really depressing things? Well, I had a Mellencamp Period.”
Blaine’s mind was still reeling. “You dated what has to be one of the hottest girls in your school?”
Kurt cocked his head. “Didn’t I just say that?”
“And you made out with her.”
“Yes, for like an hour,” Kurt said slowly, like he was talking to a small child. “I wore a trucker hat and sang ‘Pink Houses,’ too. Not one of my more fabulous weeks.” Kurt stared at him oddly. “I’m going to go dance now. Brittany has a point-if we spend much more time alone in here, everyone is going to think we’re dating. I really don’t want to spend all of next week convincing them that we’re not. You coming?”
Blaine shook his head. He needed more time to process all…this. “I’ll be there in a bit. I just need to grab another drink first.”
Kurt apparently didn’t notice anything was wrong. “Okay. See you in a bit, then.”
Kurt left. Instead of going out to the keg in the back yard to refill his cup, Blaine grabbed the bottle of Jack Daniels that Puck had brought and guessed at how much a shot of whiskey was. (Rachel, God bless her, had set the keg up outside in the hopes that she’d avoid beer stains on the floor that way. Poor thing obviously didn’t think through the implications of lidless cups and why "tipsy" was such a good synonym for “drunk.”) He downed his approximation of a shot in one gulp like they did in the movies, but unlike Humphrey Bogart, he gagged and struggled to keep it down.
Blaine braced himself on the kitchen island until the coughing fit passed. He looked up and out into the living room again. Kurt and Brittany were dancing together, or as together as anyone on the makeshift dance floor was dancing with someone else. Their long limbs twisted and their hips snapped and swayed so much more gracefully and joyfully than anyone had a right to.
Kurt had a pretty damn strange and downright unfair definition of what kinds of kisses “counted,” Blaine thought a little viciously.
He shook his head, shocked at his own thoughts. Was he actually…jealous? That would be new; he’d always sort of considered him above something as base as sexual envy. Especially over someone who was firmly in the friends zone and a girl.
Whoa, wait a minute. Which one was he jealous of, Brittany or Kurt?
Blaine looked up at the two of them dancing again. He was still completely indifferent to breasts, but he’d always had a thing for tall and fair-complected…hell, look at Jeremiah…
“I’m not sure,” he said out loud.
Whoa.
“I really need another drink.”
Three hours after that…
Though some small, quiet, and almost-sober part of his mind tried to remind Blaine that he tended to get maudlin and clingy when drunk, the rest of him was so far gone that that part really wasn’t relevant.
“My dads got that vase that Finn broke in Venice. There’s no way I can go to Venice and buy a replacement and get back before my dads come home from Ypsilanti,” Rachel whined as she burrowed herself deeper into the couch cushions beside Blaine. She looked up at Blaine, head wobbling a little. “Do you know how to get wine cooler stains out of silk taffeta curtains?” she practically begged. He shrugged and patted her shoulder in sympathy. She leaned over Blaine’s lap and asked Mercedes the same question. When Mercedes shrugged, too, Rachel said, “Pour me another shot of whiskey, then.”
Mercedes, who was sitting on Blaine’s other side and therefore closest to the end table, rolled her eyes and passed Blaine the bottle of Jack Daniels, which he’d brought into the living room with him when he’d finally made it in there. Rachel held out her cup, and he tipped the bottle with a decidedly unsteady hand.
“Poor me, poor me,” he started to sing, “poor me, pour me another shot of whiskey…”
“Bartender, hit me one more time!” Rachel joined him, harmonizing nicely.
“God, I must be drunk if I’m singing country,” Blaine said as he poured another shot for himself. They both giggled. He offered a shot to Mercedes-Jack Daniels might make him stupid and emo, but nothing short of a coma could dull his good manners-but she waved it off again. “Kurt’s right. You guys are the best.”
“Speaking of, did you and Kurt have a fight or something? You came with him, but you haven’t hung out with him all night,” Mercedes asked.
Blaine looked longingly across the dark room. Kurt was in the midst of the small clutch of partygoers still dancing rather than making out in even darker corners. He was tangoing with Lauren quite happily. Blaine missed Kurt.
“No. It’s just-” Blaine paused. Kurt was always telling him about how great it was to have girlfriends, how they were so good at commiserating and knocking sense into him. He sighed, “It’s just…why aren’t Kurt and I dating?”
“Is this a trick question to figure out whether Kurt told us about you singing about sex toys in the Gap? ‘Cause he did,” Mercedes answered. Then she said almost to herself, “Wow, there’s no way to say that without it sounding even dirtier than it actually was, is there?”
Blaine knew he was really drunk when he didn’t even blush at the mention of the Warblers Gap Attack. “No, I’m serious. Kurt’s my best friend. And he’s gay, and he’s single, and he’s awesome, so why am I not dating him?”
Mercedes raised her eyebrows. Her and Kurt’s “I’m so judging you” faces were frighteningly similar. “Yes, he is awesome. Frankly, I don’t know why you’re not crushing on Kurt, except that there’s no accounting for taste and I guess I don’t crush on every straight boy, either.”
“Well yeah, but Kurt’s attractive.” The words came out before he knew what he was saying, so Blaine thought about it for a moment. He said with more certainty, “Yes, I find Kurt Hummel attractive. I mean, I don’t know if I have a type, but if I did, tall, slender, pretty eyes-all very, very good.” And he’d sort of wanted to kiss Kurt that one time after they sang “Baby, It’s Cold Outside,” but that might’ve been one of those stray moments when hormones make an idea as bad as kissing your best friend right before you’re not going to see him for three weeks over Winter Break somehow look good. Blaine didn’t say that to Rachel and Mercedes. He did notice he was still talking about something, though, so he tuned back to the sound of his own voice. “I tend to go for blonds, but he’s got fair skin, and holy shit look at those smutty dance moves!” He pointed across the room, where Kurt was now grinding against what must have been an incredibly drunk guy with a mohawk.
“Should we stop him?” Rachel asked.
Before Blaine could say, please don’t, Mercedes said, “At least not until Lauren’s done filming him and Puck with her flipcam. Team Edward and Team Jacob my ass-I always knew Lauren was a slash fan.”
“Blonds, huh? Kurt would look cute with his hair dyed blond,” Rachel commented.
Mercedes glowered at both of them. “Kurt shouldn’t have to dye his hair for somebody to like him.”
“No, that’s not what I meant at all!” Blaine quickly cut in, but Rachel spoke over him.
“I so should’ve invited Kurt to come too when I got my hair highlighted,” Rachel leaned over Blaine again to talk to Mercedes. “Why hasn’t anybody commented on my highlights yet tonight?”
“I think your hair is very pretty,” Blaine offered dapperly. Rachel smiled.
Mercedes just shook her head. “Rachel, what happened to you being a fierce, single, independent diva for a while?”
“I still am!” Rachel insisted. “I can be fierce and independent and still want boys to tell me I’m pretty.”
Mercedes groaned and flopped her head back against the couch.
“Besides, Barbra and Whitney might’ve been single when they became huge successes, but that doesn’t mean they were celi- celi-”
“Celibate?” Blaine supplied after a few moments of thought.
“Exactly!”
“Didn’t you say you wanted to wait ‘til you’re twenty-five to have sex?” Mercedes asked, skeptical.
“Whoa, that’s hardcore,” Blaine said. He stopped himself before he asked about whether there was such a thing as Jewish nuns.
“Don’t you?” Rachel asked Blaine with all the sincerity of the truly sloshed.
“No!” Blaine half-laughed, half-shouted.
She ignored Blaine and went back to Mercedes. “I don’t mean sex, but I don’t have to be…kiss-celibate.”
Kiss-celibate. Blaine liked that term.
“What if I’m bi?” Blaine blurted, only realizing afterwards that the conversational connection between that and kiss-celibacy only made sense in his head. And really, now that he said it out loud, he couldn’t even remember how it had made sense in his head.
“Okay…” Mercedes said, eyeing him warily and scooting away on the couch a bit.
“I mean, what if that’s why I’m not in love with Kurt, because I’m bi?”
Mercedes said, “Bisexual still means you like boys, so that wouldn’t exactly explain your problem…”
Rachel looked sympathetic, so Blaine turned to her instead and said, “That’s gotta be it. Well, the only other thing is the day I met Kurt, he started crying right after I said I was gay. Just like my mom did. Not that it was cause-and-effect with him, but-”
Rachel’s eyes went wide. “Oh my God, you’re bi and Kurt makes you think of your mom! That’s it! And then the sex feelings make you feel all guilty for wanting to kill your dad. My therapist so has a name for that…” She stared off into space, snapping her fingers again and again.
Mercedes cut in, “Call me crazy or partially sober or whatever, but somehow, I don’t think that’s what it is-”
“Oh my God you have an Oedipussy Complex!” Rachel burst out.
“That’s it!” Blaine said equally enthusiastically.
“I think I’m going to go puke now,” Mercedes said, pushing herself up off the couch.
“Aw, did you drink too much?” Rachel asked, concerned.
“Actually, I’m pretty sure it’s this conversation that’s making me want to hurl, but if your explanation makes you feel better, go for it.”
“Feel better, sweetie!” Blaine called after Mercedes as she walked off, throwing her arms in the air and shaking her head.
“So,” Rachel said, turning Blaine towards her by taking one hand and putting the other one on his elbow. Her hand was soft and warm and very, very nice. “Is there a particular woman making you question your sexuality?”
Blaine thought about answering that it was Brittany, but for some reason he couldn’t quite articulate, he knew that wasn’t accurate. He just shrugged.
“Okay, so who is the last woman you remember feeling some sort of sexual attraction to?” Rachel asked.
Blaine wracked his brain. “Does Gael Garcia Bernal in Bad Education count?”
Rachel tried to hide a wince. “I don’t…think so…”
“You look kind of like Gael Garcia Bernal did in Bad Education,” Blaine said, squeezing Rachel’s hand.
“Really?” Rachel said, a tremulous smile on her lips. “Is that a good thing?”
“Totally,” Blaine assured her. “He’s so pretty, even in the long, dark-haired wig and the ugly dresses.”
There were stars in Rachel’s eyes.
The Present…
“Oh God, you saw me kiss Rachel Berry?” Blaine groaned.
Kurt nodded. “I was also the one who pulled Finn off you before he could get a good punch in.”
Blaine winced, realizing that part of the headache was from Finn slamming him against a wall. “That part’s coming back to me now. What’d he do that for? I didn’t think he and Rachel were together.”
Kurt shook his head and rolled his eyes, but he did it fondly. “Actually, I think he was trying to vindicate my honor, in some terribly misguided and unnecessary way.”
Blaine pushed himself up so Kurt could sit beside him on the couch. They were still at Rachel’s house, he noted, but it looked a lot less like a disaster area than it had when he’d passed out last night. Kurt handed him a glass of water, which Blaine gulped down.
“So,” Kurt said primly, clicking off the CD player. “I hear you’re a big fan of the films of Pedro Almodovar.”
Blaine hadn’t thought there could be anything more embarrassing than the Warblers Gap Attack. This wasn’t there yet, but it definitely had the potential to overtake the WGA.
Kurt continued, “I know I said having girlfriends is a good thing, but you must realize that Mercedes's and Rachel’s gossiping first allegiance is to me, right?”
“I do when I’m sober,” Blaine answered. He buried his face in his hands for a moment, then gathered himself enough to meet Kurt’s eyes. “Look, I know you’re angry at me. Since there are so, so many reasons why you could be mad, please tell me which ones they are so I can at least get the apology right. Though I am so sorry for all of it, I know blanket apologies tend to be cop-outs.”
Kurt stared silently at the floor for long enough that it made Blaine nervous. “Well, you need to apologize to Rachel for complimenting her on looking like a Castilian transsexual.”
“Definitely.”
“Also,” Kurt hesitated, then said almost defensively, “If you’re really questioning your sexuality, I’m totally sympathetic to that. Emotions and hormones are just…cruelly confusing.” Kurt turned back to Blaine and locked his gaze on him. “But don’t use my friends as test subjects while you try to figure it out.”
That hadn’t been at all what Blaine was expecting to hear. It hurt even worse. “Kurt-”
“I was lucky that I was just another notch on Brittany’s bedpost,” Kurt continued. “Literally. Artie says she has actual notches carved into her headboard. You’re lucky to some extent that Rachel is one of these people whose memory gets fuzzy when she gets drunk enough. Mercedes and I gave her the Cliff Notes version when she woke up, since all she remembered was the Bad Education compliment, but of course the feelings aren’t as intense if you’re merely told about what happened rather than remember it. But before I came out, I really hurt…someone by sort of accidentally leading her on, too.”
“I’m sorry, and I promise I won’t lead anyone on again,” Blaine said. He knew he was taking a big risk, since he was already in such deep shit, but he had to ask. “Is that the only reason you don’t want me to be involved with your friends, that you’re afraid I’ll decide I’m not bi and will have strung them along?”
Kurt sighed. “You know what? That’s not all of it.” Kurt’s eyes were so incredibly clear and honest. It was somehow both a little scary and a little intoxicating. “I love being your friend. I’m fine with you dating other people, the same way I know you’re fine with me dating other people.” Blaine felt his stomach clench and decided to write it off as part of the hangover. “However, I would not be okay with you dating Mercedes or Rachel-hell, let’s throw Finn in there for good measure, too. I never even considered it because I didn’t think they were even an option for you, but it’s just too…too much and too close. I can’t think of a better way to say it.”
“I get it,” Blaine said, because he did, even if he couldn’t articulate it any better, either. “I promise I won’t.” They didn’t quite smile at each other, but the atmosphere seemed to relax considerably. “That is the most grown-up conversation I’ve ever had while hung over.”
Kurt actually did smile at that. “We’re getting quite good at this maturity and honesty and full disclosure schtick, aren’t we?”
That reminded Blaine that something was still weighing on his chest. Kiss-celibacy. The truth was, Blaine had been jealous of Kurt when he’d found out about Brittany. Now, with a little more distance from the situation and a little less alcohol and hormones addling his brain, he was able to latch onto the reason why that had kept slipping through his mental grasp the previous night. As gorgeous as she was, he didn’t want to kiss Brittany, per se. It wasn’t exactly that self-professedly never-been-kissed Kurt was not as sweet and naïve and painfully inexperienced as Blaine had envisioned since that awful day with Karofsky on the stairwell, either. No, it was that Kurt actually was that inexperienced and yet also managed to be far more experienced than Blaine was.
“I feel like I’m so far behind everybody else, you know?” Blaine forced himself to say. This sort of vulnerability was a lot tougher than Kurt made it look, Blaine decided. It didn’t feel very good at all. He kept going anyway. “Even if you weren’t all that interested in the game, you’ve at least rounded a couple bases with Brittany.”
Kurt’s face softened. “Blaine, you should know by now that the sports analogy is completely lost on me. I think I get it anyway. It sucks now, but when the right person comes along, lack of experience isn’t going to matter to them.”
If they were in a movie, this would be the part where the music swelled as one of them leaned in and kissed the other, and they promised to be each other’s firsts and lasts and everything in between. But this wasn’t a movie. Blaine knew his breath reeked, Kurt was wearing the same clothes from yesterday, which always made him testy, and for all that they prided themselves on being mature, right now, the Hollywood ending would be what Kurt so perfectly called too much and too close for them.
The moment passed, and Kurt filled up the silence. “Not that I have any experience with that, either, but that’s the theory I’m personally banking on. Or who knows, maybe the fact that we haven’t hit the puck through the uprights by the age of sixteen has doomed us both to lives of celibacy.” Blaine couldn’t help but chuckle. The skin around Kurt’s eyes crinkled with laughter as well. “I mangled the sports analogy, didn’t I?”
“You totally fumbled the basketball.”
“Okay, now tell me the truth.” Kurt narrowed his eyes and lowered his voice to gossip-volume. “Are you really questioning your sexuality, or were you questioning it the way alcohol makes people question why the lampposts are dancing the watusi?”
Blaine plucked the CD player from Kurt’s lap. “Better yet, I’ll let Ms. Perry tell you for me.” He clicked past the first few tracks on the CD, then turned up the volume on “Ur So Gay.”
Kurt laughed, and Blaine joined in a few moments later. Just when Blaine thought that maybe things were better, Kurt sat up too straight and clutched his chest. “Wait a minute.” He sang, “You’re so gay, and you don’t even like boys? Blaine, are you actually coming out as straight in song?”
Blaine panicked. “Oh God, no! The title-I picked it for the title, not the lyr-” Kurt looked at him evilly and started giggling. “You bastard,” Blaine said, nudging Kurt playfully with his shoulder.
“Floozy,” Kurt said, nudging back.
“‘Floozy?’” Blaine repeated. “Who the hell even uses that word anymore?”
Kurt smacked his shoulder and huffed. “Shut up and help me scrub the beer stain out of the area rug. You still owe Rachel big for the Gael Garcia Bernal in a dress comment.”