Work Text:
Blaine’s favorite part of the day was going to work with Kurt. After having his thimble of coffee with a pinch of cinnamon, and after Kurt filled a thermos at his Keurig machine, they’d set off on the subway. Blaine stayed snug in the breast pocket of Kurt’s coat—to which Kurt had added an extra soft, microfleece lining—and listened to his earphone. Kurt kept one in his ear and the other tucked into Blaine’s pocket so that Blaine could enjoy something other than the extra loud train noises, and so that Kurt could still hear if Blaine needed him.
Blaine tugged on the cord winding up to the right side of Kurt’s head and waited for him to look down. Kurt paused the music and ducked his head so Blaine could speak into his left ear.
“I feel like Greek for lunch. And can we grab a cronut before we get to the office?”
Kurt rolled his eyes fondly and nodded. Blaine wiggled happily back into his pocket and raised a tiny thumbs-up to Kurt, and the music resumed.
Blaine put himself in charge of ordering their lunch after noticing that on a busy day, Kurt had the tendency to either work through his break with rations from the vending machine or forget to eat entirely. Blaine could fill himself with a potato chip or two, but he hated seeing Kurt run himself ragged and it was one of the few ways Blaine could take care of him at his present size. So, as soon as they got to Kurt’s work table, Blaine would use Kurt’s phone to schedule a delivery. Thank the stars for takeout apps.
Later, after Kurt had split the cronut apart to let Blaine pull his fill from it with his hands, Blaine flipped through a magazine on Kurt’s iPad while Kurt pinned fabric to a dress form.
“Blaine?” Kurt said, with a glance at his work table, where Blaine sat cross-legged with the tablet propped up in front of him. “This silk is unruly. Come on up.” Kurt pushed his hip against the table so Blaine could grab on and climb one of his suspenders. Blaine held tight and made his way up, and Kurt pretended he was less ticklish than he actually was.
“I need to pin the fabric, but the whole thing won’t stay in place one-handed. It’s not too thick, so can you pin while I hold?”
“Why don’t I hold while you pin? You’ll do it straighter so you don’t have to redo anything later. Just put me on the dress form.”
“It’s silk taffeta, I’m not letting you lose your grip and fall off the damn thing. Remember that time I tried to catch you and almost broke your ankle?”
“You didn’t try, you caught me. You saved my life,” Blaine said, shooting Kurt a megawatt smile from his perch around Kurt’s left suspender. He did remember that day, vividly. Kurt spilled olive oil on the kitchen counter, and Blaine slipped in it and fell off the edge. He would have fallen to his squishing if Kurt hadn’t dived for him. In the end, he’d squeezed a little too hard around Blaine’s leg when he caught him, and Blaine’s leg was bruised, but there was no lasting damage. Kurt had been so distraught over what nearly happened, and what he’d nearly done, that he couldn’t finish making dinner, and he sat on the floor with Blaine on his shoulder, tucked against his neck and trying to console him.
“Either way, I’m not taking any chances.” Kurt bumped the tip of his nose against the top of Blaine’s head. “I’ll hold. You pin.”
Kurt took one hand off the fabric to pick Blaine off his suspender and set him on the arm he was using to hold the dress form, so that Blaine straddled Kurt’s wrist with his legs wrapped tight. “Pin as close to the fold’s edge as you can, just down to where that button marking is.”
Blaine reached behind himself to pull a pin from the cushion fastened farther back around Kurt’s wrist, then leaned forward, rested his elbow against the back of Kurt’s hand, and slid the pin through the fabric. It really was better for him to be the one pinning, Blaine had to admit, since Kurt refused to admit he was far-sighted and Blaine’s hands could line up the threads much more closely than Kurt’s fingers. Kurt’s work, already the sharpest in the office, had only gotten sharper since he’d started bringing Blaine with him. Plus, Kurt’s eye for detail had become damn near microscopic now that he was in the regular practice of making miniature clothing at home.
After another minute of watching Blaine pin the silk as neatly as he could, Kurt tilted his head at the dress form and sighed. “God, I hate taffeta. I don’t know why they chose this. I could use a second tape measure in action, too. Some of these seams refuse to match up.”
“Use me!”
“I can’t use you as a ruler, that’s absurd.”
“Kurt, I’m six inches tall. Perfect increment for measurement. Two of me would be a foot.”
“Two of you would be about eleven and one third, because you’re five-point-seven inches tall.”
“Six.”
“Five. Point. Seven.”
“Six!” Blaine yelled, and now he was pouting at Kurt over his shoulder.
Kurt narrowed his eyes. “Why, pray tell, are you arguing about your size with the person who makes your clothes and therefore knows full well that you are indeed five-point-seven?”
Blaine slid the last pin through the fabric. He looked down, petting idly at the hairs on Kurt’s arm, but didn’t answer.
Kurt cupped a hand next to Blaine so he could crawl onto it, then carried him back to the work table. Once Blaine was safely seated, Kurt sat at the table with his chin pillowed on his folded arms so that they were near each other’s eye level. Then he waited.
Blaine stared at the table and said, “I don’t like being smaller than the average Small One. Any tinier and I’d be even less useful to you than I already am. I mean, we make up things for me to do, but we both know you don’t really need me to do this stuff.”
Kurt lifted Blaine’s chin with his pinky. “This isn’t a utilitarian marriage.”
“But ever since the Shrinking, I’m just—”
“You’ve been the same wonderful, doting, beautiful man I fell in love with. Just… fun-sized.”
“Not that much fun.”
“Okay, so maybe we can’t do everything we like to do together—“
“Yeah, I know, my sex drive didn’t shrink with my body, I’m aware.”
“—but I’m not just going to live my life without you until they figure out how to get all you Small Ones back to your usual sizes. We’re a team. I thought you knew that.”
Blaine sighed, then walked up to Kurt’s face and kissed his bottom lip. “I do know, I’m sorry.”
“Nothing to be sorry for. I’m not saying this isn’t hard.”
“Yeah, that’s for sure… But what if they can’t figure out how to fix us?”
Kurt shrugged. “They will. And on the off, wild chance that they don’t, we’ll deal with it.”
Blaine nodded and pressed himself against Kurt’s cheek. “So, which part of our vows is this? ‘In sickness?’ Or maybe just ‘for worse?’”
Kurt nuzzled as close as he could without knocking him over and said, “This is the ‘fearlessly and forever’ part, B.”