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It’s times like this when Blaine wishes he had more friends. It’s not that the friends he already has aren’t as lovely as they’ve always been, but they’ve been busy as bees lately and Blaine – well, he hasn’t been busy. Quite the opposite, actually.
He remembers busy summers, juggling advanced courses for college credit and theme park performances and vacations. A rather – posh and privileged way of spending his time, but no less stressful.
And it’s not that he’s been in this same spot all summer: laying on the floor of whichever pal-slash-roommate is home, whining until they acknowledge him. He went on an aggressive job hunt a couple of weeks ago, with no takers as of yet. He’d auditioned for a couple of plays soon after his spring semester ended, one leading role and one small part, and never heard back from either. He’s tried writing songs and writing plays and writing a memoir. He learned how to knit and got bored with making hats and scarves that are too warm to wear in mid-July.
He tried to buy a dog. Sam and Artie loved the idea; Tina absolutely refused.
(“Spoilsport.”
“More like allergies.”
“Lying spoilsport.”
“I’m allergic to incessant barking.”
“Pretty pretty pretty pretty please?”
“Blaine, Artie, Sam – stop!”)
No matter what he’s tried, everything has left him dissatisfied.
There isn’t a point in denying it anymore: Blaine Anderson is in a summertime slump.
A nasally, pitiful whine tumbles out from high in his throat, his heels shuffling on the sun-warmed hardwood floor.
Eventually, a “Tay-Tay” forms out of that whine, his nose still scrunched up even after the noise dies off.
“What is it, Blaine?” Tina says, voice clipped. He can’t see her from this spot, where she sits on her bed. He imagines she still looks like she did when he walked in earlier, her dark hair piled into a sloppy bun on top of her head, surrounded by books, pouring over her laptop.
It’s easier to complain to a disembodied voice, though.
“I’m sooo bored, Tay-Tay.”
“When are you not bored anymore?”
“Entertain me.”
“I’m busy.”
Another whine echoes off the ceiling.
“You’re such a brat.”
Blaine pouts at the side of the bed, rubs his palms along the shaggy black rug underneath him.
“Take it back.”
“If you stop being a brat, then I’ll think about it.”
Blaine sighs, his head listing to the side so he can look at the boxes and books and shoes living dusty lives under her bed.
He’s fully aware of how childish he’s acting. He can’t not be aware of it, considering how different it is from his normal behavior. If he weren’t as close to Tina as he is, there would be no floor-laying or pestering or wordless noises in pitches that are irritating to his own ears.
This is just the most amusing thing he has going on right now. He’s not even sure what they would do if he got her to pay attention to him.
They could possibly stop by the daycare where Sam’s volunteering for the summer, a sudden idea to match the sudden revision of his career plans that has worked out surprisingly well. Blaine’s not sure, though, if he’s desperate enough yet to submit himself to screaming, crying kid land.
Or they could find out where Artie’s filming and make him let them be in a scene or something. At least in the background. Artie hasn’t allowed Blaine to get involved with his projects since he let him in on the first one – something about Blaine trying to overpower the ‘artistic vision of the piece,’ names were called, Blaine had to insist that he’s not like his brother, it was- whatever – but maybe he would be more inclined if he brought Tina along with him.
None of that appeals to him, though. It’s been – he lifts his wrist, notes that it’s been thirty-five minutes since he laid down in this spot next to Tina’s bed. The lack of movement, the sunlight curving along his legs, the unsteady but soothing rhythm of tapping keys and flipping pages from above has him feeling drowsy.
He’s almost ready to ask her if she wants to cuddle, but that would result in either a snappish refusal or a renewal of her crush on him, and neither of which sound very appealing.
“Can’t you just- like-” He sighs, gliding his fingertips along a bit of metal bed frame within his reach. “I don’t know, turn on some music or something?”
“I can’t concentrate with music,” she replies. “Or when people make noise.”
“I’m sorry, okay? I just- really don’t want to sit in my room by myself and stare at the walls.”
“How’s staring at my walls any different?”
Blaine grins. “I get to annoy you.”
When Tina sighs, Blaine snickers.
He hears her mumble, “You do that plenty on a normal basis,” before the typing starts again. The smile drifts off his face slowly as silence settles back in.
An idea occurs to him, and he rolls it around in his brain for a bit before he decides to voice it.
“Do you have a book up there I can read?”
There’s a pause where the tap of the keyboard stops. Then she says, sounding amused, “You want to read my psychology books?”
“Why not?” Blaine asks. He eases up onto his elbows, wincing at the bone-deep ache in his stiff body. “Maybe it’ll tell me why I keep forgetting how much it sucks to lay in the floor.”
He sits up the rest of the way, looks over the edge of the bed to see her grabbing a novel-sized text from the bottom of a stack.
“Or you’ll figure out why you’re in such a funk,” she says, shooting him a smile. “You can come up here, you know. If you promise not to harass me anymore.”
“Oh god, promise made.” His knees crack as he shuffles up onto the bed, taking the proffered book out of her hand. It takes a moment for them to get situated, his presence disrupting her little set-up.
Once they’re settled, Blaine looks down at the book in his lap. Hard-cover, well-worn, a tough blue material covering the outside. A slip of yellow paper on the front cover tells him it’s from her school’s library and must be returned by August fourteenth. On the spine, gold lettering tells him it’s specifically about human reactions and the psychological nuances of them.
The spine crinkles as he opens the book down the middle. He flips through the pages, all stiff and holding the smell that comes with well-kept old books. Though the pages aren’t dog-eared or ripped, they are marked to high heaven. It surprises him that a university would keep a book as wrecked as this one. There's a rainbow's array of highlighted sentences and passages bracketed in dark ink. It’s rarer to find an unsullied page than it would be to find a unicorn in the wild.
He stops on the first page of an interesting looking chapter titled ‘The Logic of Paranoia.' The title is at the center of the page, the first paragraph shoved down even further, but what catches Blaine’s eye is the scrawl in red ink in the would-be blank space above it all.
It’s a phone number. No name or, really, any explanation beyond ‘Speak 2 the king’ written beneath it in a chicken scratch Blaine can barely make sense of.
Blaine frowns, a crease forming between his brows.
Is the king- like- the number? Or...?
He can feel the warmth from Tina’s body against his arm, so it’s nothing to nudge her side with his elbow.
“T. Hey. Look at this.”
Her hands come up off the keyboard still clawed as she grinds out an irritated noise through her teeth.
“Blaine. You promised.”
“Promise broken. Just- look at this,” he says, holding the book out for her to see. She grabs one side, yanking the book closer.
He watches her anger dissipate into confusion matching his own, her mouth pulling down into a frown.
“Whose number is that?”
Tina scoffs. “Like I’m supposed to know every single person at NYU.” She leans away from him, stretching her arms over her head. “You could ask them yourself, they’re pretty much telling you to.”
He looks down at the book in his hands.
Speak 2 the king.
“Wouldn’t that be weird?”
Tina shrugs, her hands dropping into her lap, a tired smile on her face. “At least you won’t be bored anymore.”
His mouth tugs to one side with a quiet wince. He nods, says, “This is true. You won’t miss this if I take it?”
“Nah, it’s fine. And anyway, I know where you sleep.”
Blaine chuckles, closing the book with his index finger marking the page. He wonders, as he shuffles to his room to retrieve his phone, how to even go about doing this. Definitely not with a call – it might be safer to block his number, but he doesn’t want it to seem like he’s pranking the guy either. At least, not in the 'is your refrigerator running' type of way.
Maybe send a hello text? But how boring is that, especially when he’s contacting someone who calls themself ‘the king.’
He picks his phone up off the nightstand, unhooks it from the charger. He gets settled against the headboard, dropping the book open on one side of him and typing in his passcode at the same time.
As he types in the number, he follows along with his finger. It really is just- the worst handwriting he’s ever seen.
He confirms once, twice, three times that it’s correct, and then sits back and thinks of what to say.
He types, So...The Logic of Paranoia? before erasing it. Who knows how long ago this guy wrote in this book. He might not even remember doing it.
Blaine thinks, Maybe this isn’t such a good idea. A nickname like ‘the king’ conjures up images of The Typical Frat Guy: loud, arrogant, confrontational. Maybe looks like Zac Efron or Dave Franco.
Which- really isn’t a bad thought at all.
Unless he’s loud, arrogant, and confrontational.
Blaine gnaws at the back of his lip, head dropping back against the headboard. He stares at the desk, piled high with a bunch of Sam’s junk, leaving just enough room for Blaine’s desktop computer.
Speak 2 the king.
He snorts at the first thing that comes to mind, then raises his phone to type it.
From Blaine [4:37PM]: Am I speaking to the king?
After a quick check for any typos, he sends the text, his heart picking up speed a little bit, a grin squirming onto his face. It’s kind of a thrill, certainly more interesting than anything he’s done in days.
He keeps the phone in front of him while he waits for a reply, poking around on Twitter and Instagram idly. Minutes pass and the anticipation goes along with them.
He’s in the middle of a match on QuizUp – he’s been trying to level up his Grey’s Anatomy rank for a while now, even though he’s not quite as passionate as some of these people he’s going toe-to-toe with – when his phone chimes at him, a little banner popping up with ‘the king’s’ number on it.
He taps it, the absurd giggles rising in his throat as his phone switches apps.
To Blaine [4:50PM]: Who is this.
Not the response he expected, but every journey starts with the first step.
From Blaine [4:52PM]: My name’s Blaine. No royal connections.
It’s a debate for a moment to include his name, unsure of how risky it is. When he can’t think of anything better to come back with, he hits send.
To Blaine [4:53PM]: How did you get my number.
He types different than Blaine expected him to, considering his use of ‘2’ in the little message. It’s not necessarily refreshing so much as it is an interesting surprise.
Heat creeps up his neck, though, as he reads the message over. He responds quickly.
From Blaine [4:53PM]: I found it in my friend’s psych book.
So he didn’t actually remember writing it. Maybe he’d done it late one night, or while he had been drinking and thought it would be funny.
What makes the blush flood his face fastest is the realization that he probably didn’t get the ‘king’ reference at all.
From Blaine [4:54PM]: Sorry for bothering you.
From Blaine [4:54PM]: I’m just bored and I found this number so I thought I’d text.
He’s in the middle of typing, I’ll leave you alone now, when a new text comes in
To Blaine [4:54PM]: God fucking dammit
Blaine’s eyebrows shoot up, his breath catching with surprise at the curse. It says a lot of things he can’t decide upon, but it does say enough. Mostly, it says that Blaine has made a huge mistake in choosing this as his late-afternoon entertainment.
He erases what he’d written, stares at the blinking bar on his message box without a clue of how to respond.
As it turns out, he doesn’t need to respond at all.
To Blaine [4:55PM]: Okay. Could you do something for me? And, you know, actually do it instead of freaking lying to me?
To Blaine [4:56PM]: White out that number. Sharpie it out, scribble it out with a pen or with a crayon for all I care, just make sure it’s NOT VISIBLE, you got it? I’m sick of this idiotic farce and I want it to be OVER.
The bottom of his stomach drops fast, his eyes barely blinking as he reads over the texts. It claws at the back of his neck, the guilt of bothering a person he doesn’t know, the embarrassment of unintentionally pissing someone off with his own boredom. It’s fine if it’s Tina or Artie or Sam – he knows their limits, knows they understand that he’s doing it just to be a little pest and that they won’t actually hate him for it.
Without a second thought, he sends back his compliance.
From Blaine [4:57PM]: Absolutely. Of course. I’m sorry.
It takes some digging, but he finds a mega-sized permanent marker underneath all of Sam’s mess on the desk.
As he marks over the words in even lines, not pressing too hard in case the ink bleeds, he starts putting some things together. Either this guy had just written it on a weird day or, the more likely option when one considers the abrasive nature of his response, someone else wrote his number in here.
This guy’s number above Speak 2 the king above The Logic of Paranoia.
Yikes.
There’s another chime from his phone. Once the number and the message are gone, his work inspected and only spotting through a little bit on the other side of the same page, he picks his phone back up.
To Blaine [5:01PM]: Send me a picture when you’re done.
With a nod and a breathed “okay” to himself, he caps the marker, setting it in the middle crease of the book before taking the picture, an above shot a little dark from his shadow looming over it but decipherable nonetheless.
From Blaine [5:02PM]: (1 Photo Attached) Again I just want to say that I’m so sorry for bothering you. I promise I’ll forget your number.
He expects that to be the last of it, deleting the conversation and setting his phone aside with the need to remove himself from such a cringe-worthy situation. It’s all he can do to keep himself from throwing his phone across the room onto Sam’s bed.
He fans his hand over the black lines. The indent of the pen is still a little visible on the page, but the penmanship is so poor that he can’t tell if it’s scribbles or something worthwhile. He hopes anyone else looking at this book feels the same.
The last thing he expects to hear is another chime so soon after that monstrous fail of an exchange. For a moment, he thinks it might be someone that he knows, but when he picks up the phone, it’s the number, familiar and not at the same time.
To Blaine [5:07PM]: “The Logic of Paranoia.” Nice.
He stares down at the text.
It- feels like something acceptable to respond to? But maybe not.
If it’s not, the guy will probably just not say anything back.
The attempt feels worth it enough to Blaine for him to take the risk.
From Blaine [5:08PM]: The good news is that there’s sense to it.
Regardless of whether the guy was referring himself or the chapter title in general, his reply works. He makes himself not worry about it, busying his hands with placing the book and the marker aside and building his pillows up more comfortably to rest against.
He even changes his text tone in the time it takes the guy to reply, from a classic chime to the tweet of a bird.
And then his phone tweets. And as he reads the response, he smiles.
To Blaine [5:14PM]: Kurt. But King Kurt is okay, too.
*
For the first time in a while, they’re all four home in time to have dinner together.
And for the first time in a while, even though he’s surrounded by noise and activity and friends with attentions undivided, all Blaine wants is to be alone with his phone.
“He’s been like that for hours now,” he hears Tina say, a knowing lilt to her voice.
‘Like that’ meaning hunched over his phone, smiling wide and often enough that his cheeks are aching with it, laughing out loud to things he reads on his screen, and totally oblivious to everything around him. Walking down the stairs from his room to the table had been an adventure of wavy, refocusing vision and legs wobbly from disuse; his phone tweeted twice in the time it took to get from one place to another and, though he couldn’t stop grinning, maintaining balance won out over replying.
“So- you found this guy’s number in some random book and you’re, like, in love with him now?” Sam asks.
“I’m not in love with him, I just like talking to him,” Blaine says, not even bothering to look up from his phone.
He’s not in love. Even though he is a little in love. Not seriously, though. But a little.
Kurt is just so interesting in a ton of different ways, and talking to him makes Blaine feel so alive. He has learned that Kurt is around the same age as him – thank god – and also came from Ohio, though he lives in New York City now as well. He doesn’t go to NYU himself, Blaine learned after asking if he knows Tina, but he does know some people who do: friends, acquaintances, exes.
Exes being the impetus of this whole ordeal.
Kurt had sent him, Nothing hurts a guy’s ego like being dumped by the ‘clingy’ one. Whoops. His tactics for revenge are about as mature as he was.
Blaine had tried to respond as sympathetically as he could, but his eyes kept going back to the word ‘guy’, a blush overtaking his face for a reason unrelated to embarrassment.
They exchanged selfies.
Yeah, Blaine is a little in love.
“As happy as I am for the newlyweds,” Artie says, bringing heat up on Blaine’s face again, “could you maybe turn your phone on vibrate? All that tweeting is getting obnoxious.”
Just as he flips the switch on the side of his phone, it shakes in his hand, screen lighting up with a slew of emojis, spaceships and confetti and faces, the cat with the heart-eyes most prevalent among them all. He bites his lip to tamper down his smile as he sends a bunch back, minding the number of hearts he includes.
There’s an argument going on at the table. Something about pets and the annoying sounds they make. Blaine can’t make out a single word any of them say.
*
To Blaine [2:34AM]: Csn I call you?
His bleary eyes shoot open, still heavy with exhaustion but wired with shock. They’ve been talking all evening, their breaks only spanning maybe thirty to forty minutes’ time, but neither of them have suggested actually talking on the phone.
The curiosity rises, makes him feel awake and alert as he turns the light of his phone toward Sam’s side of the room. Sprawled out on his back, not snoring but breathing loud and even.
Sam is the heaviest sleeper he knows. Blaine would sooner wake Tina up making a call from bed than he would Sam.
To Blaine [2:35AM]: I wanna go to bed but I wanna hear your voice first
His heart flutters in his chest as he sends back a, Yes! He can feel the shake in his hands as he stares at his phone, waiting for the call to come through.
The screen goes black first, the message app fading away like it does when it switches from one to another. His breath catches in his throat when his phone starts to vibrate in his hand, the button coming up for him to accept the call.
He slides his thumb across the screen and then lifts his phone to the ear not buried into his pillow.
“Hello?” He whispers it, partly out of courtesy – even if it’s unlikely that Sam will wake up, there’s still a chance that he will – and partly because his voice wavers and he can’t make it go any louder.
The first word he hears is a hushed, “Blaine?” so full of excitement, he feels like his chest is going to burst from happiness.
“Of course. Who else would it be?” he asks, smiling so, so wide.
“I don’t know.” It’s all he says, and there’s nothing particularly funny about it, but Blaine can’t stop giggling. He attributes it to how tired he is, can feel that sleepiness in the way his eyelids throb when he closes them.
“Are you still there?”
“Yeah,” Blaine says. He bites down on his lip, then adds, “Your voice is so nice.”
He hears Kurt giggling over the line, quiet but so cute that it steals Blaine’s heart.
“So is yours. Even though I wish I could hear it better.”
“I could call you tomorrow,” Blaine mumbles. He feels his body giving over to sleep, try as he might to keep himself awake for Kurt.
“You’d want to?” There’s a different sort of quietness to his voice that Blaine almost doesn’t pick up in his exhaustion.
“Yeah, totally, I mean-” He breaks his thought to yawn, wide and hard enough that he could feel it down to his toes. His nose scrunches as he shakes his head, feels the shivers in the aftermath as he continues to speak. “Sorry. But yeah, I mean. We’ll be more awake. And we wouldn’t have to whisper.”
“I like your whisper. It’s kind of sexy.” Blaine’s eyes blink open into the dark of his room, his vision swimming in front of him. Kurt rushes on, though, saying, “I just meant that this was a weird sort of evening and I would understand if you- you know. Forgot about it.”
“Well. I mean. It’s not every day I meet boys through library books that belong to my friends. So...” Blaine says, the words rolling off his tongue slow and slurred together. The word ‘sexy’ still bounces around in his brain, and he thinks back to the picture Kurt sent him, where he hadn’t been smiling like Blaine had been in his own picture that he sent, instead wearing a private grin, his eyes bright but undecipherable.
God, what sort of dreams will he have once he does fall asleep?
Kurt giggles, then sighs. “So I’ll hear from you tomorrow then?”
“Mmhmm,” Blaine hums, his eyes closing once more.
“Hm. I look forward to it,” Kurt says, his voice dipping a little lower. Blaine shivers at the sound of it and god bless the dreams he’s going to have tonight.
“Goodnight, Kurt.”
“Mm, King Kurt to you.”
A laugh punches out of him. “And what does that make me?”
“My consort, if you’d like.”
Warmth floods his chest, making a smile bloom on his face.
“Sounds good to me.”