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Of all the many plans Kurt has come up with the past few weeks for how to spend the first day of his first summer with his first ever boyfriend, none have involved spending twenty minutes standing outside said boyfriend's house wondering where the hell he is.
It's extremely irritating, because it would seem Blaine's presence is a basic prerequisite for Kurt actually being able to have a first day of a first summer with a first boyfriend, and right now he's nowhere to be found and certainly not where he's supposed to be: namely, in Kurt's car on the way with him to the Lima Bean.
Kurt tries to think if there'd been any ambiguity about their schedule for the day, but considering the last of Blaine's texts last night had read: I'll see you tomorrow at nine! xx and seeing as how Blaine hasn't got in touch since to inform him of any change of plan, Kurt fails to see how that could be the case.
He tries calling again, and sending another text, and just as he's contemplating going round the back of the house and throwing rocks at Blaine's window, there's a noise from inside and then the front door finally, finally opens.
"Oh, so you are home, then," Kurt says tartly, folding his arms across his chest. "I was beginning to think—"
He gets a look at Blaine's face, then, and it stops him mid-rant. Blaine looks ... well, indisposed would be the polite way of putting it, but just plain awful is a much more accurate description. He's pale in a way Kurt didn't even think was possible for someone of his natural skin tone, his eyes look kind of glassy and unfocused, and he's definitely only staying upright because of the death grip he's currently got on the door frame.
"Blaine?" Kurt says, thoroughly alarmed by the sight of him. "Blaine, what's wrong?"
Blaine blinks a couple of times in the sunlight, like everything's much too bright for him, and murmurs: "Migraine."
And that's ... much less life-threatening that what Kurt was imagining but still, it can't be much fun for Blaine. "Oh, honey, that sucks," he says, stepping in close but resisting the urge to put his hands on Blaine, as he isn't sure how much he wants to be touched, right now. Blaine conveniently answers that question for him, though, by leaning forward and letting his head come to rest on Kurt's shoulder with a whimper of pain. Kurt immediately brings his hands up to rest on Blaine's back, rubbing in gentle little circles there.
"God, Kurt, it's the worst," Blaine says, sounding absolutely miserable.
"I didn't even know you got them," Kurt says, for lack of anything more helpful.
Blaine's head moves a tiny amount against Kurt's shoulder, in a nod, Kurt presumes, and he says: "Only sometimes. More when I was younger ... less now. They're pretty bad, though, when they do come."
"I can see that," Kurt says. He can also feel the way Blaine's body is trembling, just a little; it's obvious he's not going to be able to stand up for much longer. "Come on, back inside," he says, edging them both back through the door and closing it behind them.
Once they're in, he renegotiates their position so that he has an arm around Blaine's waist and Blaine's arm is hooked over his shoulder. It's a little awkward, where Kurt's taller and Blaine's slumped down a bit, but there's no way Kurt is actually carrying him anywhere so this will just have to do. "Right, up the stairs now," he says, and starts guiding Blaine across the hall.
When they reach the bottom of the staircase Kurt has a thought: "You had to try and get all the way down here by yourself just now, didn't you?"
Blaine does something with his shoulders that might be an approximation of a shrug. "It took a while," he says, ruefully.
Kurt feels really bad, all of a sudden, because he was yelling at the door quite a lot shortly before Blaine opened it, and that can't have made him feel much better. "I'm sorry," he says. "You should have texted me to say you couldn't come to the door, I would have gone round the back and done that thing with the kitchen window you showed me."
"Phone fell under the bed," Blaine says. "Couldn't get it. Was trying to text you and tell you not to come today, 'n' then I dropped it. 's probably broken."
"I'm sure it's fine," Kurt says soothingly. "And what do you mean, you were texting me to say don't come, why would you do that?"
"Not gonna be very good company," Blaine says, sadly. "Thought you could make some other plans."
Kurt sighs. "Blaine, don't be ridiculous, I'm not just going to leave you like this."
"No, it's fine," Blaine says, clearly trying to sound like he means it. "Really, Kurt, you can just get me to my room and—"
"Okay, when you have to ask me to help you back to your room, then you don't get a say in whether I stick around or not," Kurt says, adding: "Now, hush," when it looks like Blaine might protest some more.
They've reached the top of the stairs, and from there it's a lot easier to walk with Blaine along the short length of corridor that takes them back to Blaine's bedroom. The curtains are drawn and the window's open, so the room is pleasantly cool and dark, which Kurt figures is what Blaine needs right now. The bed covers are all twisted and rumpled, though, so Kurt has Blaine sit at the end of the bed for a moment while he straightens them out and turns the pillows over.
"There," he says, when he's done. "If I thought you could wait that long, I'd change the sheets for you, but as it is..."
"What? The sheets are fine, Kurt," Blaine says, sounding slightly affronted. "I only changed them two days ago."
"I know," Kurt says. "I didn't mean that. But there's nothing like cool fresh sheets when you're sick."
"Oh," Blaine says. "That's true." He squints at the bed, and it looks like he's weighing up the pros and cons of actually letting Kurt change the sheets. Kurt knows what he really needs is to lie down, though, so he says, firmly: "Come on, bed," and helps Blaine get safely back under the covers.
When he's all tucked in, Kurt brushes the hair back from his forehead and says: "Do you have anything you can take for the pain?"
"Yeah," Blaine says. "In my parents' room, at the end of the hall; my mom should have some Tylenol on her dresser."
"Okay, I'll be right back," Kurt says, giving Blaine's hair one last stroke before he leaves the room.
The Andersons' house looks like your average Stepford-esque show home; one that's had too much money spent on it by people who don't spend enough time actually in it (Blaine's room is the only one in the house that really feels lived in, most of the time), and therefore even though Kurt's never been in Blaine's parents' room before, he feels sure he knows exactly how it will look before he even opens the door. Turns out he's mostly right: the throw pillows are green instead of blue and the stencilling on the wall is a little different to what he'd imagined, but other than that it's just how he pictured it.
He resists the urge to take a peek in Mrs. Anderson's closet and see exactly how many pairs of shoes she has (Blaine says she has a pair for every day of the year, but Kurt won't believe that till he's seen it himself), and goes immediately over to the dresser, where everything is arranged in a very ordered and precise manner, as expected. Kurt grabs both the bottles of Tylenol that he finds and then makes his way back to Blaine's room, where Blaine is in the exact same position Kurt left him.
Kurt stands beside the bed and looks at the bottles in his hands. "With codeine, or without?" he says, holding them up in Blaine's general line of vision.
"Codeine," Blaine says instantly, making a grabbing motion with one hand towards the bottle.
Kurt raises an eyebrow. "You know, this stuff is habit-forming," he says. "Should I be worried about how quickly you answered just then?"
"Kurt," Blaine says, so plaintively that Kurt instantly feels bad. "Please, please don't joke about the thing that is going to make me not want to stab my own eyes out anymore. Please."
Kurt drops a kiss on Blaine's cheek in apology, and goes into the bathroom to get Blaine a glass of water. "Do you need me to help you sit up?" he asks Blaine when he comes back.
"Maybe," Blaine says, struggling for a second to prop himself up a little on his elbows. "I think— yes."
Kurt perches on the edge of the bed and helps Blaine sit up enough so that he can rest his head against Kurt's side and swallow the pills, then Kurt holds the glass of water up to Blaine's mouth and lets him take a few sips before he slumps down towards the bed again.
"Thank you," Blaine says, muttering into the pillow.
"You're welcome," Kurt says, setting the glass down on the bedside table and smoothing the covers down over Blaine a little more. "Get some sleep. I'll be here if you need anything."
"You sure you want to stay?" Blaine mumbles, sounding half-asleep already. "There's a chance I might throw up, later."
Kurt wrinkles his nose, but he also reaches out again to pet Blaine's hair and says: "I've watched you make out with Rachel Berry barely a foot in front of my face, I'm sure I can cope with a little vomit."
Blaine's forehead wrinkles like he's trying to frown, but his face is too slack and squashed up against the pillow for it to really work. "Don't compare Rachel to vomit," he says, the words slurring into one another until they're barely intelligible. "She's your friend. 's mean."
Kurt rolls his eyes. "Shh," he says, running his hand up and down Blaine's back. "Go to sleep."
"Not until you apologise," Blaine says stubbornly, though he doesn't even bother to open his eyes.
"I'm sorry I compared Rachel to vomit," Kurt says, and he actually is. Sometimes he forgets he gave up hating her a while ago.
"'s better," Blaine says vaguely.
"Sleep, now," Kurt whispers, and he keeps rubbing at Blaine's back, soft and soothing, until Blaine's breathing evens out and it's obvious he's asleep, or at least well on the way to being so.
Kurt stays close for a minute or two, just watching gratefully as Blaine's face smoothes out into a slightly less pained expression, before he starts feeling like a creep and decides he should probably find something else to do other than watch his boyfriend sleep.
First, he feels around underneath the bed until he finds Blaine's phone, which is lying next to a stack of magazines that turn out to be back issues of Sporting News rather than porn, though on balance, Kurt thinks he might actually have preferred the latter. He clears off the eight missed calls and twelve text messages that are all from him in the last half an hour and then, turning off the ringer so it won't disturb Blaine, he puts the phone on the bedside table within easy reach.
Then he leaves Blaine in his room with the door ajar and heads back downstairs, making sure to take off his shoes and leave them in the coat closet (the way Mrs. Anderson would probably insist he should have done as soon as he got here, only he'd had slightly more pressing concerns at that point) before he wanders through the hallway and into the kitchen.
It's easily the biggest room in the house and, like everything else, completely immaculate, with no actual food on show anywhere other than in the bowl of perfect fruit that's sitting on the island in the middle of the room (Kurt had rifled through the bowl once, right to the bottom, and found a mouldy grape there, which had been both gross and reassuring at the same time). Even Kurt – who considers himself pretty fastidious when it comes to these things – finds himself wary of touching anything for fear that he won't be able to leave it in the same pristine state he found it.
Still, he's pretty hungry – he'd skipped breakfast this morning in anticipation of Blaine inevitably insisting they share something disgustingly laden with calories along with their coffee – and it doesn't look like he's going anywhere any time soon, so he takes the risk of making a cup of tea and putting together a mix of yogurt, fruit and granola that will require a minimum amount of clean-up afterwards.
He takes his mug and bowl over to the kitchen table and eats while he flicks through some of the interior design magazines that are stacked neatly on the table, probably by Blaine's mother, who's been thinking about redecorating the living room this summer. Kurt had actually given her some advice a little while ago, recommending some warmer, softer tones than she'd been considering herself, and judging by the colour charts she has slotted inside one of the magazines, it looks like she's listened to him. Kurt can't help the little thrill of validation he feels at that.
When he's finished the last of his tea and cleared everything away neatly again, he fixes himself a glass of ice water and decides to sit out on the back patio. It's completely shaded at this time of day, so there's no risk of him getting caught in the sun, but it's warm and pleasant out there, and if he and Blaine aren't going to make it to the park today, Kurt figures this is a reasonable substitute, given the circumstances.
He's brought his outline and notes for Pip Pip Hooray! along with him, meaning to get Blaine's opinion on a few things, so he works on that for a while; then, when he's had enough of figuring out rhymes for 'Pippa' that aren't 'stripper,' 'kipper' or 'zipper' (none of which really fit with the mood of the song he's writing), he gets out this month's issue of Vogue and spends some time giving every page the attention it deserves. Except the one about cowboy boots, because there are some trends even Kurt doesn't pretend to understand.
It's almost two hours later when Kurt's phone vibrates with a text that isn't from either Tina (bored out of her mind at her grandparents' in Columbus), Mercedes (bored out of her mind at her grandparents' in Atlanta) or Brittany (wondering which colours would best suit Lord Tubbington should he choose to change his wardrobe any time soon. Kurt isn't sure whether she means actual cat-clothes or just his fur, but he tries to help as best he can, anyway).
From: Blaine (11:48:07 AM)
where r u?
He gathers up his stuff and heads back upstairs to Blaine's room, where Blaine is still curled up under the bedclothes, albeit now with his phone in one hand.
"Hey," Kurt says softly, dropping his bag by the door and coming over to sit on the bed next to Blaine again. "You okay?"
Blaine blinks up at him, sluggish and not quite focused. "Hey," he murmurs. "You're still here."
"Of course," Kurt says, smiling. "I said I would be."
"I know, but—" Blaine trails off and then frowns as though finishing that thought requires too much concentration. Eventually, he just sighs and says: "I'm glad that you are."
Kurt takes the phone out of Blaine's lax fingers and puts it back on the nightstand. "Well, good, because I'm not going anywhere, at least not until your parents get home."
"You know that won't be 'til, like, seven or something, right?"
"I know," Kurt says, and looks at the clock up on Blaine's wall. "Meaning we have another seven hours of uninterrupted time together. Better make the most of it."
"You don't have to do this," Blaine says, quietly. "I'm just gonna stay in bed and sleep, I'll be okay."
"No," Kurt counters, settling back against the headboard and laying a hand gently on Blaine's head, stroking at his hair. "You'll be miserable, and alone, and in pain, and I might not really be able to do anything about the last one but I can certainly help with the first two, and that's what I'm going to do."
"But, Kurt, you had plans today," Blaine says morosely.
"I had plans with you, you idiot," Kurt says, not without fondness.
"Yeah, not this, though," Blaine says. "You weren't planning on doing this."
"No," Kurt admits. "But I'm adaptable. Besides: you're here, we're together, that much of the plan hasn't changed."
Blaine stares up at him, surprised. "You really don't mind?"
Kurt shrugs. "It's the first day of summer and I'm spending it with my boyfriend. What could be better?"
Blaine smiles, then, like suddenly he can't not. "Nothing comes to mind," he says. His smile turns into a grimace, though, and he presses his face back down into the pillow. "Except maybe for my head to fall off, Jesus."
"Oh, honey," Kurt says, pressing his hand against Blaine's cheek. "You should go back to sleep for a while; I'll wake you up in a couple of hours when you can take some more pills, all right?"
"Yeah, okay," Blaine says, voice muffled by the pillow. The next thing he says is so garbled Kurt has to ask him to repeat it. Blaine turns his head to the side and says again: "Will you stay, though?"
"Like I said, I'm not going anywhere—"
"No, I mean ... here, will you stay here, on the bed, with me. At least then it'll be kinda like we spent the day together."
Kurt smiles indulgently. "Of course," he says, and goes back to petting Blaine's hair, in slow, gentle little touches. He's never really seen it this unkempt before, except maybe that night Blaine had spent in Kurt's bed after Rachel's party, but that's something Kurt tries not to think about too frequently, and in any case, he hadn't had the opportunity to actually touch Blaine's hair then. It's all soft and springy and Kurt wonders how much convincing it would take to get Blaine to leave it like this from time to time.
Blaine sighs contentedly and closes his eyes. "That feels nice," he says, and his death grip on the pillow seems to have loosened somewhat.
"I'll keep doing it, then," Kurt says, softly, and he does, until Blaine's dozing again.
When Kurt moves to go and get his bag from the other side of the room, Blaine stirs slightly and murmurs: "Love you."
Kurt swallows down the incredulity he still feels every time Blaine says that, the persistent belief that this is not for him and lets a warm wash of hopeful contentment take its place instead as he says: "I love you, too."
Blaine smiles, just the tiniest twitch of the lips, his hand curled on the pillow like he's waiting for Kurt to take it, and Kurt looks at him and thinks that nothing, nothing could be better than this.