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Kurt leans heavily against the wall of the not-actually-an-elevator and sighs with frustration. He doesn’t know what’s going on - though he does have an ugly inkling - but this is not how his day was supposed to go. He was supposed to watch the Warblers perform in terrifyingly precise synchronization, work with New Directions to keep them from jumping ship before it was their time to take the stage, and maybe cap off the night with a chatty phone call with Walter.
He isn’t supposed to be trapped in a pretend elevator with Blaine.
He also isn’t sure that the fact that it has a bathroom is actually encouraging.
Blaine mashes the elevator’s buttons again. Like the twenty times they’ve tried before, nothing happens. They don’t light up. The door doesn’t open. Help doesn’t miraculously appear.
Blaine pushes them again more forcefully.
“How many times are you going to push those buttons before you give up?” Kurt asks him.
“I don’t know. How many times are you going to snap your fingers at waiters when they’re ignoring you?” Blaine replies curtly, jabbing his finger against the door open button.
“Sometimes wait staff need to be reminded we’re there and have needs,” Kurt says, stung. “If there were a button on the table to call them - “
Blaine stabs the button three more times.
“ - it probably still wouldn’t work if today is any indication,” Kurt finishes. He fans himself with his papers and then shrugs out of his jacket.
Blaine’s eyes widen a little in surprise as he turns around to see Kurt removing the garment, but Kurt can’t really care. It’s hot, and it’s just a jacket.
He has a lot of layers left.
*
“We need to get out,” Blaine says, glancing at his watch. It’s two minutes later than the last time he checked it.
He paces away from the door and back again, looking for some magical new button that will release them from this room. “I’ve probably already missed the Warblers’ performance.” He can’t believe he’s let them down already. He’s their teacher; he needs to be there.
He can’t believe they’re trapped like this.
“Someone will figure out where we are,” Kurt tells him. He slides down the wall to sit on the floor, stretching out his long legs in his gorgeous pants like he’s not particularly concerned by their situation. “We’re still on school property. McKinley isn’t that big.”
“We can’t just sit here,” Blaine says.
“What other option do we have?” Kurt asks with his eyebrows raised and that calmly judgmental look on his face that always used to make Blaine feel like he was overreacting to everything.
He doesn’t feel that way about that look anymore. He knows better. He knows himself better. His reactions are perfectly reasonable, thank you.
“You can’t just give up on things every time they seem hard, Kurt,” he insists with frustration and goes back to staring at the door that they need to get open instead of Kurt’s carefully blank, hurt face.
*
His knees pulled up in front of him, Kurt pokes at the screen of his phone. He clearly is going to get no service of any kind in the elevator, but at least he can play a game to pass the time instead of just watching Blaine pace around the tiny room.
“I can’t believe I left my phone in my car,” Blaine mutters to himself as he walks back and forth. “What a day.”
Kurt watches him out of the corner of his eye and nearly fails to maneuver the bird on his screen around an obstacle. He can’t let himself get distracted. It’s difficult enough to be trapped, and he has to do what he can not to go totally crazy. “Do you want to play Flappy Bird?” he offers.
“No,” Blaine says shortly. “You know I hate that game, Kurt.”
Kurt pauses his game, not quite looking up. “I still have Temple Run,” he admits quietly. He doesn’t really want to admit it, but it doesn’t seem fair to have a way to help Blaine calm down without offering it to him.
Blaine stops and turns toward him in surprise, because they both knew Kurt never liked Temple Run all that much; he’d put it on his phone at Blaine’s suggestion when they were living together over the summer.
“No, but thank you,” Blaine says more gently. He’s quiet for a second, just looking at him, his eyes wide and disarmed, then turns back to the door, slamming his fists on it with renewed vigor. “We need to get out.”
*
“You’re just going to bruise your hands,” Kurt bites out after sitting in silence while Blaine bangs on the door, and Blaine knows that tone. He knows the annoyance simmering beneath it. He feels his own blood start to burn hot and hurt beneath his skin.
Blaine yanks open the bow tie around his neck and keeps pounding.
There are much worse people to be trapped in an elevator with than Kurt, especially now that they’re friends again, but he knows just how quickly things can turn sour between them and ruin everything that they’ve built.
He really, really, really doesn’t want that to happen again.
*
“God, that was horrible. Do you think it’s going to come back?” Blaine asks, his gaze drifting back toward the panel that the terrifying Sue doll had come out of.
Kurt would like to think that it won’t. He’d like to think this is all a terrible dream. He’d like to think that he’s going to wake up in a minute and find himself in bed alone, free of the elevator if also free of Blaine.
But he knows better.
Thanks to Sue, this is - somehow - an actual thing that is happening.
“Yes,” he tells Blaine, direct and apologetic, right into Blaine’s worried eyes.
Kurt wishes he could provide him with the reassurance he’s seeking, the first reassurance Blaine has wanted from him in a long while. But he has to be honest. He always wants to be honest with Blaine. “It’s going to come back.”
*
His sweater draped over his arm and his shirt unbuttoned against the rising heat, Blaine emerges from the tiny, utilitarian bathroom to find Kurt kneeling on the floor beside the heart-shaped picnic basket, delicately inspecting its contents one at a time with careful fingers.
“Should we eat?” he asks, coming to stand beside him. His stomach rumbles in anticipation.
Kurt looks up at him, his face composed but open, and says, “I’m hungry.” His expression grows contemplative, and he turns back to the basket. “Do you think it’s poisoned?”
Blaine stares down at the ripe fruit, marinated mushrooms, wine, and other contents of the basket, somehow all suddenly infused with even greater malice than they had when they were delivered by an evil robotic Sue doll. It wouldn’t make any sense for Sue to poison their food after telling them what she wanted was for them to kiss, but none of it makes sense at all. He can’t count on logic in this situation. “Probably not...”
After another long moment of them both staring at the basket with rising paranoia, Kurt shrugs and breaks the tension. “What choice do we have?” He puts his hands on his thighs and rises to his feet, all long limbs and the supple grace he’s grown into over the past few years. “I’ll go freshen up first.”
Setting his clothes aside, Blaine rocks on his toes for a moment after the door to the bathroom closes between them, but he doesn’t just want to stand there and wait, so he starts to pull out the contents of the basket. He has two choices: to let it be a scattered mess on the floor or to put some effort into making everything look nice. It isn’t really a choice.
He fluffs out the blanket and lays out the meal, smiling a little as he begins to arrange it all just so. If they’re trapped, they might as well make the best of it.
“Oh,” Kurt says, soft and happily startled, as he opens the door. He steps over to the edge of the blanket, a pleased smile flickering over his mouth. “It looks nice,” he says and meets Blaine’s eyes tentatively with approval in his own. “You’ve always had an innate skill for setting up perfect picnics.”
“Thank you,” Blaine says, his own smile genuine in reply to Kurt’s delight. He isn’t sure if he’s supposed to feel proud from Kurt’s praise, but he does. “I thought if we had to eat on the floor we might as well make it an occasion.”
“There’s always a reason to turn the ordinary into the extraordinary,” Kurt agrees, just like Blaine knew he would. It’s something they’ve always shared, this love of creating a moment and having the world around them be beautiful.
This certainly isn’t how Blaine had planned for his day to go, but at least some parts of it can be good.
Blaine pulls out the sparkling water and gestures to the spot across from him on the blanket. “If you’d like to take a seat, I’ll pour.”
“Ever the gentleman,” Kurt says with just a hint of shyness as he slips off his vest and folds himself down onto the floor.
*
Kurt leans back against the wall, his stomach happily full and his heart too stupidly light from getting to talk so easily with Blaine. It’s not like they’ve been having deep conversations over dinner, but it’s the longest span of time they’ve been alone together since... well, since they were together, and it feels so good.
It feels good to talk to Blaine. It feels good to smile at him and receive smiles in return. It feels good to be himself, to share stories and laughter, to be able to be at ease with the love of his life. It feels good to connect with Blaine and have his attention in a way that he’s been missing so deeply.
Kurt has missed Blaine so deeply, and it feels so desperately, wonderfully good to be able to be with him again, like a few precious sips of water after months in a desert he knows it’s his own fault for being lost in in the first place.
Kurt takes one last grape and then tucks his heart away and dusts off his hands.
It is absolutely wonderful to spend this time with Blaine, but it needs to stop before it starts to hurt instead.
“Okay, we need a plan to get out of here,” he says.
Looking up from where he’s picking up a few crumbs from his plate with the pad of his finger, Blaine checks his watch. “It’s getting late enough that people will miss us at home and start to worry.”
Kurt feels his mouth flatten, because ‘people’ means Dave, of course. Blaine has Dave waiting for him at home. Kurt has no one. His dad will assume he’s out, and Kurt has no plans with Walter tonight. His best bet for someone missing him is Rachel, and a slightly manic, definitely self-centered friend is hardly the same as having a live-in boyfriend who is expecting Blaine home to sit and smile at him over their dinner instead of being stuck at the unplanned one he just was forced to share with Kurt.
“We can’t wait to be rescued,” Kurt says. He sets aside his napkin and pushes up to his knees. “I’m not a princess in a tower.” He meets Blaine’s eyes, waiting to be judged yet again for being strong or for Blaine to take it wrongly as a criticism of his own strength.
The judgment doesn’t come, though. The hurt doesn’t come, either. Blaine just wipes his mouth and puts his napkin on top of his empty plate. He watches Kurt with with settled, trusting eyes. “Then let’s come up with a plan.”
Kurt nods and tries not to feel good about that trust. He’s missed it, but he knows it doesn’t really mean anything. They’re in this together, that’s all. Maybe that’s good for them, solving a problem instead of arguing over one, but he reminds himself that it’s just a means to an end, and that end is getting out of this ridiculous elevator, nothing more.
“We should look at every door and panel and see what we can get open,” Kurt says.
“The ceiling, too,” Blaine agrees. “I’m sure the escape hatch is as fake as the rest of it, but it’s worth a try.” He looks at the silverware they were given and turns over a knife in his hand. “These aren’t very strong, but maybe it can help to pry open the panel that awful doll came out of. Or we can try to short out a wire by the control panel.”
“Good thought. We should look at the bathroom, too. It’s not very big, but there could be something loose around the pipes.”
Blaine nods. “We could try banging on the pipes. Maybe she forgot to soundproof the plumbing.” He pokes at the lining of the picnic basket, smoothing his fingers along each surface like he’s trying to make sure he didn’t miss anything. “You’d think my zombie survival club training would be more helpful here,” he says, sounding disappointed in himself.
“To be fair,” Kurt says as encouragingly as he can as he rises to his feet, “there aren’t actually any zombies.”
“Yet.” Blaine’s eyes dart nervously back to the door where the Sue doll came out of.
Kurt tips his head in agreement. “Yet.” He wouldn’t put anything past her.
With a shake of his head and a laugh that isn’t quite filled with humor, Blaine gets up and walks over to the elevator buttons again, the knife in his hand.
Kurt sets his fingers in the groove of the wall panel nearest to him and tries to pull it. It doesn’t budge, but for his troubles he gets a sharp pain in the pad of one of his fingers. “Ow.” He sucks it into his mouth.
“Are you okay?” Blaine asks immediately, looking over in concern.
“Just a pinch,” Kurt replies. He pulls at the panel again, but nothing happens. He pulls again, harder. Nothing. He drops his hands. “This might take a while.”
Blaine looks over again from where he’s trying to fit the knife in between the buttons. “Don’t worry. People will miss us.”
They’ll miss you, Kurt thinks and moves to the next panel. He can’t fix that problem; he can just fix this one.
*
Blaine shifts his shoulders against the wall of the elevator. The hard surface is unforgiving, and he can’t quite get comfortable no matter how he sits. He wonders how Kurt can make looking slumped in his corner seem so easy.
He wishes Sue had outfitted this crazy elevator with at least a small couch or something.
Blaine looks over at Kurt, who is still sitting in the same spot he had dropped onto when they gave up on their escape plans.
Kurt’s eyes look a little hollow as they gaze down at his hands where he’s turning over his dead, useless cell phone. He looks withdrawn, worn down, not the positive, energetic force he had been as they’d worked together.
They’d made a good team, Blaine thinks to himself. It wasn’t their fault their ideas hadn’t worked.
“Are you okay?” he asks Kurt gently.
Kurt’s eyes dart up to Blaine’s face, and they’re so wide and startlingly blue they’re like the sky. He looks so exhausted, but only for a second, and then he rallies, puts a happier expression on his face, and nods. “It’s a lot to take in,” he says, flicking his hand at the space around them. “But I’m fine.”
Blaine scoots a little closer to him, just a foot or two, not close enough to touch, but it doesn’t seem right to be all the way on the opposite wall when Kurt’s clearly not okay. Not that Blaine is okay, either, but at least they can be not okay together.
“We’re stuck in a fake elevator with a bathroom and a creepy horror movie doll,” Blaine says. “That’s a funny definition of fine.”
The corner of Kurt’s mouth turns upwards, as Blaine had hoped that it would, and Kurt’s expression becomes more genuinely warm. He stretches out his legs in front of him and resettles so that he’s facing Blaine more directly.
“So what’s Cooper up to these days?” Kurt asks.
Blaine blinks at the abrupt change of topic, but it’s not unwelcome; they might as well keep their minds off of the situation until they’re rescued. “Infomercials, if you can believe it.”
Kurt’s eyes widen in shock and utter delight, and he leans forward with interest. “Really? Tell me everything.”
*
“I guess we should be glad she isn’t piping in terrible elevator music,” Blaine says, pacing around and swinging his arms as Kurt watches from his seat in the corner. “But it’s weird being somewhere so quiet.”
Whatever soundproofing Sue had installed makes the world feel muffled and small, like nothing exists beyond the walls around them. But it does. Kurt knows it does.
He tries not to torture himself by watching the way Blaine’s shoulders and back stretch and flex with his movements. “What music have you been listening to recently?” he asks to try to distract himself.
“I don’t know,” Blaine says. He turns and paces in the other direction, and Kurt’s eyes ache to drift down his legs instead. “I feel like all I’ve been thinking about is the Warblers set list. But I do like Taylor Swift’s new album.”
Kurt can’t listen to her album, as much as he thinks the songs are fantastic. He bought it, of course, like everyone else in the world, but every song hurts his heart. Every song makes him want to cry. Every song makes him think of Blaine, what they had, what they lost.
Maybe it will be a good litmus test for his own heart’s journey away from their relationship when he can listen to it happily, like Blaine can. Maybe it will be a good indication that he’s finally recovering and moving on.
If he ever will recover from loving Blaine.
It doesn’t seem possible, really. Kurt can live without him, but he knows now he won’t get over him, not when even a few hours together makes him remember all over again how much he likes him, likes his quick mind and his soft words and his kind heart.
He’s allowed to like Blaine. They’re friends, after all. But that’s all he’s allowed now.
He wishes he didn’t want anything more. He wishes he didn’t ache from the very depths of his heart just sitting here with him, having this much of him, more than is even really his.
“It’s a good album,” Kurt manages to say and keeps the rest of his heart inside where it belongs.
*
Blaine leans his head sideways against the wall and tucks his knees up. “I saw your dad at the grocery store the other day but didn’t want to bother him,” he says. “How’s he doing? Is everything okay?”
Kurt’s mouth twists a little, but he doesn’t move from his mirrored position leaning his shoulder against the wall, facing him a couple of feet away. “He’s doing great,” he says. “And I know he would have been happy to see you.”
Blaine smiles in reply, but if he is proud of how he can see Kurt and spend time with him and not feel bad anymore, he doesn’t know if he’ll ever be able to face Burt Hummel without feeling like somehow he’s let him down by not taking care of his son.
*
“You’d think if Sue was going to make this drag on all night she would have at least put some coffee in that basket,” Kurt says and then clenches his jaw to fight off another yawn. His eyes are gritty, and his brain is going fuzzy. Caffeine would help so much. Plus, drinking it would give them something to do besides sit and wait for whatever will happen next.
“I’m pretty sure she’s not all that concerned about our creature comforts,” Blaine tells him with a wry, tired smile. “We’re lucky we got the bathroom.”
“I don’t even want to think about what this would be like without it,” Kurt says. He stifles his next yawn behind his hand.
“Why don’t you get some sleep?” Blaine says. He checks his watch with an easy twist of his wrist. He looks so beautiful and relaxed, not buttoned up and tense but casually taken apart and sprawled out on the other side of the room. Kurt remembers him this way, this Blaine at home, not perfectly put together but perfect to him.
Kurt shakes his head, both to deny himself the memory of a man who is no longer his and to refuse the suggestion. “You know how I feel about horror movies.” He nods at the panel the hideous Sue doll had come out of. “I can’t go to sleep if it’s going to come out and scare me awake. Or even just look at me.” He shudders at the thought.
Blaine smiles a little, fond and caring; Kurt remembers that smile, too, and wishes it didn’t feel so good to see it directed at him again.
“I’ll stay up,” Blaine says. “I’m not all that tired yet, and I’ll make sure it doesn’t come watch you. You can do the same for me later.”
Kurt’s tempted, even if the thought of falling asleep right there, hearing his breath, feels almost more terrifying than the doll, because he wants it so much.
“Don’t worry, Kurt,” Blaine tells him gently. “It’s okay. Just get some sleep.”
Somehow it feels less daunting to close his eyes and try to sleep than it does to keep looking at Blaine’s kind face, the one that has always been able to reach into Kurt’s heart, so Kurt makes himself nod.
“Thank you,” he says softly and feels his heart crack open that much further.
*
I should have offered him my sweater, Blaine thinks with a stab of guilt as Kurt lays his head on his folded up jacket and closes his eyes.
He knows Kurt doesn’t need the padding, because he does have his own jacket, but Blaine wants to offer. He wants to give him that little touch of comfort. He wants to take care of him how he can.
But Kurt’s already breathing out slowly in that way he does when he’s trying to settle into sleep, and the moment has passed.
Blaine missed his chance.
Maybe it’s good that he did, he thinks.
Maybe it’s good that he held back, because, as he drinks in the familiar planes of Kurt’s face he feels uncomfortably honored instead of disinterested to see them.
He looks back at the ceiling again.
No, it’s definitely good that he’s not letting that line blur, no matter what he once might have done. It’s good that he’s learning.
*
There aren’t a lot of things Kurt has forgotten about Blaine, but that doesn’t mean that he doesn’t take the opportunity to steal glances at him as he sleeps and re-memorize them.
The fan of his dark lashes against his cheeks. The way his face is so soft and relaxed in slumber. The shadow of growing whiskers on his golden skin. The plump curve of his parted lips. The loose sprawl of his fine-fingered hands. The little raspy snore at each breath, the one that used to drive Kurt crazy in the middle of the night.
Now it drives him crazy in a totally different way. Now he finds himself wishing beyond all hope that he could curl up beside Blaine, head against his shoulder, and listen to that snore all night.
He wishes he were allowed. He wishes he were welcome.
With a sigh of resignation, Kurt picks up a piece of paper to make an airplane that won’t fit through the tightly grated ventilation ducts like an airborne message in a bottle but that will at least keep his hands busy and away from the man he would rather be near.
He knows all too well that he isn’t welcome next to Blaine anymore.
*
The first thing Blaine sees when he blearily blinks open his eyes is Kurt. Kurt’s face is at an odd angle to his, like he’s lying half-off the bed, but Blaine’s mouth automatically curves up in a smile just to see him. He’s beautiful and the best part of every morning. Blaine’s heart fills and soars, making his chest hurt with joy.
Kurt’s eyes are slitted open, vulnerable, soft and the color of the sea, looking back at him, and Blaine says to him in a sleepy croak, “Kurt, I had the craziest dream - “
And then his brain catches up to his eyes and reminds him of where they are. Who they are.
His heart freezes and falls, robbed of that joy and tumbling to his feet. The hand that was just starting to reach for him falters an inch off of the ground.
“Oh,” Blaine says, and he turns onto his back, pressing the heels of his hands into his eyes hard enough that he sees stars.
They’re locked in the stupid elevator. No, the elevator is horrible, but he is the stupid one.
Being trapped in this horror movie nightmare he can forgive himself for forgetting, because it still seems like more of a dream than reality even with the scratchy carpet beneath him, but it’s been months since he’s woken up and forgotten that he and Kurt aren’t together. He wishes today weren’t the day he broke that cycle.
He wishes he hadn’t been so happy for that minute before he remembered.
“It’s real,” Kurt says quietly. He pushes himself upright with a groan, leaning back heavily against the wall.
“How are you doing?” Blaine asks him, sitting up across the room from him.
“I’d kill for a huge cup of coffee, a hot shower, and a well-stocked tool box to break us out of here once and for all,” Kurt says. He brushes lint off of his unbuttoned shirt, and Blaine doesn’t let himself notice how strong and lean he is in his tank top beneath. “But I’m okay. You?”
Blaine breathes in through his nose and makes himself smile. This isn’t how he wanted to wake up, but they’re all right. Nothing has changed.
“I’m just fine,” he says.
“Given the circumstances,” Kurt adds with a wry smile. There’s a conspiratorial edge to it that makes Blaine’s heart beat a little faster.
Blaine nods and just barely grins back. “Given the circumstances.”
*
Kurt comes out of the bathroom, his face splashed with water and his teeth as clean as he can get them, to find Blaine sitting on the floor with his knees tucked up in front of him. He looks tense, his shoulders bent and his gaze on his clasped hands.
“Blaine?” Kurt says, because he can’t ask what’s wrong. Obviously being trapped in the elevator is what’s wrong.
Blaine looks up, his eyes dark and unhappy.
“What time is it?” Kurt asks him. “Is school back in session?”
Blaine doesn’t glance at his watch, but he does give a shrug and a nod. “Probably, yeah.”
“We could try banging again,” Kurt offers. He knows it’s pointless with the soundproofing, but he doesn’t want Blaine to lose hope. He doesn’t want Blaine to feel more terrible than the situation requires.
“No,” Blaine says with a sigh. “No, you were right about that. They obviously can’t hear us.” He looks up at Kurt again, his voice turning soft and genuine in a way that goes straight to Kurt’s heart. He smiles a little, and that seems genuine, too. “But thank you.”
*
“You know what we’re missing?” Blaine says as sudden inspiration strikes.
His eyebrows lifting, Kurt looks up in question from where he’s attempting to use one of the knives to get a sharper crease on the folds of his origami flower.
“A harmonica!” Blaine tells him.
“Oh, yes, that’s just what we need,” Kurt says dryly. “Next you’ll be suggesting bagpipes.”
Blaine knows that tone. He knows Kurt is interested. Besides, Blaine knows he is right; they really could use a harmonica. “No, we do need a harmonica,” he says. “A bluesy soundtrack would be perfect for the situation. We could sing out our woes of being stuck in here.”
“And you’re now a blues expert?” Kurt asks, crossing his legs in front of him and settling back against the wall.
“I am a man of constant sorrow,” Blaine sings to him, because it’s the easiest way to reply. “I’ve seen trouble all my days.”
“I don’t think that counts as blues.” Kurt smiles at him, though, looking unwillingly charmed. His eyes are rapt on Blaine’s face. “And I know we watched that movie for George Clooney, but he wasn’t actually the one singing.”
“I bid farewell to old Kentucky,” Blaine continues to sing. His grin widens as Kurt puts down the flower and knife beside him. “The place where I was born and raised.”
Kurt rolls his eyes and finally jumps into the song, just as Blaine had known he would.
“The place where he was born and raised,” Kurt sings, and if it’s been a long time since Blaine’s heard him sing in person the mild shock at how lovely he sounds doesn’t matter, because their voices blend beautifully, just like they always have.
They start the next verse together, and Blaine’s smile grows that much wider.
*
“The Buckeyes are down by two, and it all comes down to this,” Blaine says, lying on his stomach with his feet kicked up behind him. “The whole team is counting on Anderson making this field goal. He’s strong, he’s focused - “
“He’s going to lose the end zone entirely in a minute if he doesn’t hurry up and flick the damn football,” Kurt says opposite him, his fingers tired from holding them in the shape of the flick football goal posts.
“Time is running out on the clock,” Blaine says with a grin. His eyes don’t waver from the little paper triangle he is holding upright on its point on the floor. “With only seconds to spare, Anderson considers his options...”
Kurt can’t help but smile to himself. If he has to be stuck in a fake elevator with anyone, at least he and Blaine don’t seem to be getting bored, and Blaine’s generally sunny disposition it keeping Kurt from getting too claustrophobic and frustrated.
God, if he’d been stuck in here with Rachel, he’d have murdered her already.
“The crowd is silent, waiting for Anderson to make his move,” Blaine says. “Three, two...” He flicks his finger against the paper football, which goes wide and nearly hits Kurt in the nose.
Leaning over to retrieve the football, Kurt laughs to himself at the thought of how Rachel would be reacting. She’d be climbing the walls. She’d be screaming at the top of her very impressive lungs. She certainly wouldn’t be playing games.
“Hey, it wasn’t that bad of a shot,” Blaine says. “Or have you already forgotten the one you flicked that went backwards?”
“No,” Kurt says with a shake of his head. He settles back down onto his stomach and smooths the folded paper triangle flat again. “I was just thinking how lucky it is that we aren’t trapped in here with Rachel. Her freak-out would be epic.”
“She’s not that bad,” Blaine says.
“She’s my best friend, and she absolutely is,” Kurt replies firmly if fondly.
Blaine’s smile freezes just for a moment, long enough that Kurt catches it, long enough for him to remember that they used to be each other’s best friends, before it had all gone wrong.
Kurt’s chest aches and pulls, and he wishes it were different, wishes he could something to fix things, just wishes...
And then Blaine nods and gives him a wry laugh of agreement.
“She definitely wouldn’t be playing football,” he says.
“Exactly,” Kurt agrees and looks away to set up his next shot.
*
“The next time that doll comes back I’m going to threaten her with a suicide pact like Katniss and Peeta,” Kurt mutters as he stalks in circles around the elevator.
A part of Blaine wonders if he should hide the knives from the picnic basket, but as he paces around behind Kurt he finds himself smiling.
“What?” Kurt asks as they pass, his brow furrowed in frustration.
“I should have known you liked that movie for more than just Effie and all of the costumes,” Blaine says, feeling oddly triumphant. “No matter how much you complained about me making you see it.”
“Oh,” Kurt says softly. His face is smooth and surprisingly unguarded as he looks over at Blaine. “Complaining about something doesn’t actually mean I don’t like it, Blaine.”
“Oh,” Blaine replies, and this time it’s his brow that furrows as he doesn’t let himself think about what that might mean.
*
“I can’t believe they still haven’t found us,” Blaine says, looking at his watch and then at the walls around them. “Do you think Sue kidnapped all the choir directors? Do you think she’s torturing them, too? How many fake elevators are there?”
“At this point, I wouldn’t put anything past her,” Kurt says in a low voice, but he knows in his heart this situation is about them and only them.
*
As Kurt excuses himself into the bathroom, Blaine leans his head back against the wall and closes his eyes. He’s tired. He’s hungry. He is hot, even if he can’t bear the thought of taking off any more clothes in front of Kurt, not if they don’t have to. There are some lines he just doesn’t want to cross.
Still, he finds himself wondering if it would be so bad to kiss him. It would get them out of the elevator, and even if he doesn’t want to kiss Kurt it isn’t like it has to be anything more than a means to an end. It isn’t like it has to mean anything at all.
Blaine doesn’t want to do that to Dave, to kiss Kurt just to be able to get home to kiss Dave, his actual boyfriend, but... he’s kissed Kurt a lot of times. What is one more, really? It’s easy to forget in the moment as they laugh and talk together in this stupid elevator that things are so different between them, but they are.
They aren’t in love. They’re over. They’re just friends, and if this kidnapping has taught Blaine anything it’s how much the platonic part of their relationship can flourish without them having to be more.
Things are different now. They aren’t soul mates destined for forever. A kiss between them doesn’t have to mean anything at all anymore except for a way to escape.
Kurt comes back out of the bathroom, looking too perfectly gorgeous for the ordeal that they’re going through, and Blaine sits up straighter and tucks his thoughts away.
It’s still the middle of the day. There’s plenty of time for them to be rescued or for Sue to give up her game entirely. They don’t need to give in to her whims, not yet.
*
“Is it a person?” Blaine asks, his chin propped up on his hand and his eyes bright on Kurt’s face.
Kurt crosses his ankles neatly in front of him. “Yes,” he says. “That’s two.”
“Is it a woman?” Blaine asks.
“Yes,” Kurt says. “Three.”
“Is she a performer?”
“Yes. Four.”
“Has she been on Broadway?”
“Yes,” Kurt says with a sigh at how quickly Blaine is narrowing things down. “Five.”
“Has she won a Tony?”
“Yes. And that’s question number six.”
“Was she in Evita?” Blaine asks.
Kurt flicks a piece of lint off of his pants. “Yes. Seven.”
“Is it Patti LuPone?” Blaine asks with a hopeful lift of his eyebrows.
“Yes,” Kurt sighs out. “Next time I’m making it harder.”
“You can try, but I know you, Kurt Hummel,” Blaine taunts him with a grin. He sits up straighter. “Okay, my turn.”
“Is it an animal?” Kurt asks, not sure if he is pleased or not with how easily Blaine can still read him.
“Nope,” Blaine says happily. “That’s one.”
*
“Do you remember that place we ate on Bleecker?” Kurt asks him. “Or was it Houston? The place with the terrible service?”
“But the incredible dumplings,” Blaine replies with a nod. His mouth waters at the memory at their spicy pork rolls and the amazing miso sauce served with him. He remembers, too, how handsome Kurt had looked across from him in the candlelight.
Kurt’s hands flutter a few inches up into the air in excitement. “Oh my god, that dipping sauce,” he says dreamily. “Yes, that place. Remember the owner had a shih tzu?”
“I think it was a pomeranian,” Blaine says.
“Whatever, that is what Miss J’s new hair style looks like,” Kurt tells him. His eyes are lit up, his face full of life and joy, his posture relaxed and easy as he leans forward over his crossed legs toward Blaine. He’s so beautiful. He’s so alive. He’s so Kurt.
It’s so easy to lean toward him and the light that just naturally pours out of him, and Blaine doesn’t even think to try not to.
“No,” Blaine laughs.
“Yes,” Kurt says. “And you wouldn’t believe - “
*
Kurt watches Blaine’s fingers fold and smooth the paper in front of him, shaping it into an airplane of his own, and Kurt has to close his eyes for a moment at the sharp pain in his chest.
He doesn’t know how much longer he can sit here with Blaine without falling to pieces. He doesn’t know how he’s going to be able to leave whenever the doors finally do open.
He misses Blaine so much. He misses being with him like this, or if not quite like this at least close to this, with nothing to do and nowhere to go but enjoy each other. He misses Blaine smiling at him, laughing with him, talking with him for hours on end.
He feels stripped bare in the heat of Blaine’s presence, his heart just barely covered by his skin.
He knows this interlude will end. They’ll go back to their own lives, Blaine will be happy to get home to his boyfriend, and Kurt will have to put himself back together once again.
He can do it. He can. He’s put himself back together before. He knows how. It will hurt, but he knows he can let go of Blaine all over again and keep his head high.
Kurt can smile. He can go home alone and go back to work the next day. He can call Walter and set up a third date.
He just wishes he didn’t know he’s long since passed the point of no return with Blaine.
No matter when they’re rescued, he knows it’s going to hurt to watch Blaine walk away. It’s going to hurt to see Blaine turn his back and leave him behind when all Kurt wants is to be with him.
At least as they wait he can hold on to the fact that they won’t be kissing for Sue and her crazy mind games. They can’t. Kissing each other has always meant something, even when Kurt insisted it didn’t, and this time would be no different, at least for him.
No, it would be different, he realizes with a sinking feeling deep in in his stomach, because it would be their official last kiss.
Not the one they’d shared months ago without knowing it would be the last before things had all come crashing down, but the last one they would ever share, the last time he’d ever touch Blaine or taste his lips, the very last time he’d get to be with this man he wanted but couldn’t have.
This kiss would be a goodbye when they’ve never said goodbye before.
At least it would be for him. It would be nothing at all for Blaine, because he’s already moved on with his life and shut that door between them, and the thought of Blaine not caring is almost as horrible as the knowledge of how much Kurt would care if it happened.
Kurt inhales through his nose and pushes that thought away.
It doesn’t matter, he reminds himself. He doesn’t have to worry about being ripped apart like that, gutted to the core. It won’t happen.
They’ll get out some other way.
“Okay,” Blaine says, pushing up to his feet with his finished airplane in his hand. “I think if we start in the bathroom we can get a good glide before our planes crash into the wall. And then maybe later we could play a game of Heads Up.”
Kurt smiles at him, helpless to stop himself, not when it’s Blaine looking at him with such focus and enthusiasm.
Not when it’s Blaine.
Kurt is more trapped by him than the four walls around him could ever make him. He knows it now even better than ever.
“Does that sound good?” Blaine asks, his eyes fixed on Kurt’s face the way Kurt wishes they always could be.
“It sounds great,” Kurt says and keeps the smile on his face as he gets up and follows him.