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“Thank you so much for staying with him, Sam, really.”
“Aw, it’s nothing! Been too long since I visited, anyway. I haven’t seen him since… you know. Before.”
Blaine sat in the center of the kitchen island with his back against a pepper shaker, waiting for his husband and other best friend to enter the room. He’d spent half the evening sulking as Kurt finished packing; he wasn’t being fair, he knew that, but it was easier than giving in to self-pity. Through his job at the atelier, Kurt had received a last-minute invitation (as in, “Your flight leaves at 11 tonight, here’s your ticket. You have a passport, right?”) to join the team in London for Fashion Week. Kurt was already exhausted, as New York Fashion Week had been non-stop mayhem, and now, he was jetting off for another five days of stylish insanity.
Blaine was proud of Kurt, of course, and he knew no one deserved the opportunity more. Kurt was excited to go, and he knew the same. Neither fact stopped the fight that ensued when Blaine realized he wasn’t going with him.
"Blaine, will you please be rational about this? You’ve been with me all week, you’ve seen first-hand how crazy it is!”
“Yeah, I have, which is why I don’t understand why you’re leaving me here like I can’t handle it!”
“What am I supposed to do with you in London, keep you in my hotel room all day?”
“‘Do with me?’ Right, just arrange me however it works best for you, Kurt!”
“We’ll be all over the place, I can’t take you with me! Not after this week! It was stressful enough in a familiar place; I will not run all over Somerset House with you and just hope for the best! I don’t know the space, I can’t prepare it for you, anything could happen, I can’t—”
“Well, I’m sorry I’m such a burden, Kurt—”
“Blaine, don’t you dare.”
Not only had Kurt’s voice dropped, it had gone too quiet. Blaine looked down at the throw pillow he sat on, digging his fingers into the embroidery.
“I have to pack. We’ll figure something out for you.”
That had been the end of the discussion, until Kurt called Sam and asked him to “stay with Blaine and apartment-sit,” very distinctly did not ask him to “Blaine-sit,” though that’s what it was and Blaine would not call it anything else.
The fight resumed.
“This is ridiculous, I am not a child!”
Kurt pressed his lips together to contain the obvious retort to that statement, the easy, bitchy one on the tip of his tongue, and spat instead, “No, you’re a grown man who happens to be five-point-seven inches tall, so explain the next few days to me, Blaine, please! Explain how you’ll prepare your meals, how you’ll — I don’t know, base-jump off the fucking bed to get to the floor!”
“I’m not completely helpless,” Blaine said, not nearly as confidently as he wanted, because he realized he’d spent so much energy being indignant about not joining Kurt in London that he hadn’t thought about what would happen when he stayed.
“You’re not helpless, but you do need help. That is all I’m trying to do here. I don’t know why you’re being so difficult!” Kurt threw a dark gray pair of pants into his suitcase, then pulled them back out because he hadn’t folded them. “We shouldn’t even be arguing about this. There’s nothing to discuss. Sam’s staying with you until I’m back on Wednesday. He’s your bestie, it’ll be fun.”
“Don’t talk down to me.”
“It’s physically impossible not to.”
Kurt had meant it as a joke, sort of, trying to make Blaine see how pointless this argument was, but Blaine, now positively seething, just scowled and said, “I want to sit in the kitchen.” He couldn’t say, “Kurt, please put me in the kitchen,” because storming out lost its effect when he needed Kurt to make it happen. The knowledge that he couldn’t even get space to cool off from a fight with his husband without asking said husband only added fuel to the fire.
Kurt sighed and placed the gray pants in his suitcase. He gently scooped Blaine up from his pillow and carried him to the kitchen, setting him down on the island in the middle. He didn’t leave immediately, and he looked upset, but—
“You have to finish packing, Kurt,” Blaine said, turning around so that he was sitting with his back to him. God, that felt childish, but it was “physically impossible” for Kurt to not loom over him where he stood next to the island, and Blaine really did need space to think.
He heard Kurt take in a breath behind him, then let it out slowly, a counting-to-ten-before-I-swat-you-off-the-counter kind of breath. “Sam will be here in an hour,” Kurt said, then returned to their bedroom and closed the door.
Now, the hour had passed, and there was Sam, staring at Blaine with his mouth wide open and looking exactly like a fish without air. “Whoa, dude,” he said, abandoning his rolling suitcase to walk over to the island and drop to his elbows on the countertop. “This is so cool.”
“Hey, Sam,” Blaine laughed, a sudden flush of relief washing over him as Sam watched him with awe, that giant grin of his appearing absurdly, comically huge from Blaine’s vantage point.
“I’d hug you, but then I’d probably kill you.” Sam chuckled, and then his face fell.
Blaine pulled at Sam’s fingers, loosely clasped on the counter, until Sam opened his hands and Blaine could lean against one of his palms. He wrapped his arms tight around Sam’s thumb, and Sam’s fingers went around the rest of him. Blaine squeezed the thumb and said, “Best I can do, man.”
“You’re like a Borrower now!” Sam said, excitement widening his blue eyes again.
Blaine didn’t get the reference, so Sam put on a thick British accent and said, “A Borrower is quiet, conscientious, and inconspicuous!”
A glance at Kurt, who had stayed back by Sam’s suitcase with his arms folded over his chest, watching the two of them fondly, indicated that Kurt was at a loss, too. Sam waved a dismissive hand and said, “We’ll watch it later.”
“Okay, well, I have to get going. Sam, can you give us a minute?”
“Yeah, sure…” Sam opened his hand to let Blaine go, then grabbed his suitcase and rolled it into the living room.
Kurt didn’t approach the island at first, just stood where he was, twisting the band on his ring finger around and around.
“How long is your flight, again?”
“Seven hours or so. I’ll pop an Ambien and sleep through the flight. Land at Heathrow around eleven AM, their time.”
Blaine nodded.
“I know ‘don’t go to bed angry’ is one of our rules, but what about ‘don’t fly to another continent angry?’ Should we include that?” Kurt didn’t even look angry anymore, just exhausted.
It was in these kinds of moments that the Shrinking frustrated Blaine most. If he’d been his usual size, it would not have even occurred to Blaine to tag along. He wouldn’t have been able to, because he would have had a class full of children to teach the next day. He would have been able to let Kurt take a breather, would have whipped up something quick for them to eat while Kurt packed, and then sent him off with all smiles. Instead, Blaine wallowed in resentment over his dependency on Kurt, and Kurt, pragmatic as always, couldn’t help but remind him how tiny and incapable he was.
That’s it, isn’t it? Blaine thought sadly. I’m a liability.
Blaine sighed and pointed straight up into the air, their signal for Blaine wanting to go up to Kurt’s eye-level rather than having Kurt come down to his. Kurt responded in kind, leaning against the counter and lifting Blaine up in his cupped hands so that they were face-to-face.
“We need to talk about this, but we don’t have time right now.”
"Bla—”
Blaine pushed both hands against Kurt’s lips. “I don’t want you to be late and have to hurry at the airport. I’m proud of you, and I want you to enjoy this. Go take London by storm.”
Kurt watched him warily, trying to figure out what Blaine wasn’t saying in this complete turnaround.
“I’m not mad at you,” Blaine went on. “I’m just…”
"Fuss-trated. Me, too.”
Blaine rested his forehead against Kurt’s cheek; in the endless list of Kurt’s adorable quirks, his mispronunciation of that word never failed to make Blaine smile.
Kurt kissed him — Blaine shut his eyes just in time for Kurt’s lips to press gently against his whole face — and said, “I’ll call you. And I’ll be back before you can say McQueen.”
Blaine tried not to feel sad when Kurt put him back on the counter, slipped on a jacket, and rolled his suitcase out the door.
Some time later, Blaine was sitting on a short stack of pillows on the couch as Sam blew dust off of the Playstation 3 in the entertainment center. “Man, when’s the last time you touched this?”
“I can’t exactly hold the controller, Sam…”
“Not a problem.” Sam powered up the console and carefully placed a controller over Blaine’s lap. Blaine ran his hands over the buttons, all perfectly positioned within his reach, giving him the impression that he had a panel of flight controls in front of him.
“Huh. I never would’ve thought to try it like this.”
“See? Gotta think outside the box, Blaine! How about something with easy controls? Lego Star Wars, play it we must.” He said the last part in a Yoda voice and dropped himself onto the couch next to Blaine’s stack of pillows.
The pillows tilted with the change in weight, but thanks to the controller sitting on top of him, which Blaine grasped like a bulky seatbelt, he didn’t roll off. Sam hurriedly righted the pillows, apologizing over and over and looking scared to touch anything else, but Blaine just laughed and said, “It’s okay, Sam, I’m fine.”
The rest of the evening passed in much the same way. Sam ordered a pizza for dinner and they sat on the floor together, with Sam ranting with pizza in his mouth about how happy he was that Fashion Week was over so he could “demolish” it. Blaine sat on a plate alongside his tiny slice of a slice, breaking a sausage the size of his hand into halves so he could consider eating it.
Sam, true to his word, found The Borrowers on Netflix, and with a declaration of, “This has to be, like, required viewing for Small Ones,” he started up the movie.
A tiny ginger family lived in the walls of a house in England, stealing things from the full-sized humans who lived there to build the things they needed. They had all sorts of clever contraptions for getting around the house, little pulleys and levers and things made from yarn, buttons, Christmas ornament hooks, anything. They were absolutely brilliant ideas.
“Is that Tom Felton?”
"Yeah! Right before Harry Potter! And look, the dad is Professor Slughorn, and the exterminator, it’s Mr. Weasley! And, you know, John Goodman, random.”
“I wish I had their machines.”
Sam shook his head. “I can’t believe you don’t have any!”
Blaine sighed, flashes of his husband flying through his head: Kurt sewing a fleece-lined breast pocket onto his coat for Blaine to sit in while they were out, Kurt refashioning an antique jewelry box into a wardrobe for all the new miniature clothing he’d made, Kurt chopping his food into Blaine-sized pieces for him to share at dinner… “Kurt’s been really great about doing things for me so I guess we just never thought about it. And, um, we thought this was going to be temporary, so…”
“Okay, I mean they keep saying they could figure out how to turn all the Small Ones back any day now, but it’s been four months since the Shrinking, right? What do you do, just wait for Kurt to carry you where you need to go?”
“Well… yeah.”
“That sucks. Whaddya say we build something?”
Blaine laughed. “That simple, huh? Do you know what you’re doing?”
Sam looked thoroughly offended. “No, but I can figure it out and you won’t get smushed or anything. Kurt wouldn’t have called anyone he didn’t trust with your life.”
Now there was a fact Blaine often tried to ignore: Nearly every step of his day-to-day life was a matter of life or death. This was a dangerous project. But Sam looked determined, and Blaine was sick of feeling like an invalid, so he said yes.
*****
Brrzzz. Brrzzz.
Blaine flopped over on his pillow at the sound of his phone vibrating on the nightstand. He yawned, crawling to where the nightstand had been pushed right up against the side of the bed for his convenience, and checked the time.
“Six-thirty?” He yawned, swiping the screen with his hand.
Kurt: Are you awake?
Blaine: Yeah how was ur flight?
The blue Skype display popped up on the phone with Kurt’s face attached. Blaine propped the phone up in its charger stand and accepted the call. “Morning, baby — oh, wait, let me just…” Blaine reached up on his tip-toes to turn the switch on the table lamp.
“There you are,” came Kurt’s voice, and when Blaine turned back to the phone, there was Kurt, smiling hesitantly at him. He appeared to be alone in the leather-clad backseat of a car, the city speeding past in the window behind his head. He looked tired, but considering the sleep he’d gotten on the plane had been his most consecutive hours of sleep in at least a week, he could have looked worse. Still gorgeous, of course. Still Kurt.
“London suits you,” Blaine said, kneeling in front of the phone, leaning in close. He knew why Kurt was giving him that unsure look, knew they’d left things in a weird place, but he had yet to greet Kurt in any way other than happy-to-see-him upon first waking up.
“Jetlag suits me, you mean… This city is so interesting, I’ve never been anywhere with such old buildings. I think you’d like it, too. We’ll both be here next time, okay?”
Unable to keep the bitterness out of his voice, Blaine snorted, “If I’m back to normal next time.”
“No. You, as you are, however you are. This time was just… I’m not trying to baby you, Blaine. I don’t think you’re helpless. You know that, right?” That fierce glint in Kurt’s eyes battled with the weary lids framing them; it was an alarming, unusually desperate look that made Blaine think Kurt was a little closer to the end of his rope on this issue than he had realized.
He thought about delaying this conversation until both of them had had more sleep, taking the easy route and letting them both off with an It can wait, Kurt, we’re fine, please just relax and enjoy your day, but he took a deep breath, scooted a little closer to the phone, and said, “It doesn’t always feel that way.”
Kurt closed his eyes and shook his head. “When the Shrinking happened… I haven’t felt that powerless in a really long time.”
“You’re not the one who got Shrunk,” Blaine pointed out.
“Exactly. I can take control of something that happens to me. I can own it. But when it happens to someone I love? I can’t stand it. I had to sit and watch this insane, inexplicable… thing turn your life completely sideways. I need to know I’m doing everything I can. I can’t reverse this, but the least I can do is make sure you’re safe. And this week I was so stressed out — listen to me, Blaine, do not take that to mean it was your fault, because it wasn’t — there were just, so many people, everywhere, and there was so much going on…”
Whenever someone came close to pressing up against them, whether on a busy sidewalk or a cramped subway car, Kurt would bring his hand up to his chest to protect Blaine’s designated pocket. A sudden rapid heartbeat often accompanied the gesture. “I’m sorry,” Blaine sighed. “You didn’t sign up for this.”
“I didn’t? Let’s see… Are you still Blaine Devon Hummel-Anderson?”
“Yes.”
“Then what did I not sign up for? Don’t tell me what I wouldn’t do for you.”
Blaine grinned. “Okay, fair enough. But, Kurt?”
“Yes, B?”
“Can we work on, um, me doing things without you?”
“What? How do you mean?”
Blaine leapt to his feet. “Look at this! Sam and I built it last night.” He turned the phone towards the other end of the nightstand, where a pencil was stuck in the center of large spool of thread and duct-taped to the top of the table. A plastic phone case had a braided length of dental floss tied to either end of it so that it sat horizontally. The floss looped over the spool and tied back to itself around another spool at the bottom of the nightstand.
“What the hell is that? Did you… did you put duct tape on that cherrywood finish, Blaine?!”
“Nevermind that, babe, just watch.” Blaine held tight to both sides of the dental floss and sat carefully on the phone case seat. He loosened his grip on the floss and the seat lowered with his weight, dropping him down the side of the nightstand and out of Kurt’s sight.
“Blaine!”
The seat rose back up as Blaine pulled on either side of the floss. “See? It’s an elevator! Now I can get in and out of bed by myself!”
Kurt squinted into the camera. “Is that dental floss?”
“Yeah, my hands smell all minty. Mmm.”
“Are you sure that’s secure?”
“Yep! Well… mostly. We tested the weight with a potato. The floss stopped breaking once we braided it.”
“Oooo-kay… We are redesigning that with something stronger and better-looking when I get home. And then we can install one in the kitchen!”
Blaine was beaming as he walked back to the phone and sat down in front of it. He didn’t mention the fact that a duplicate of the elevator was already fastened to the countertop. “I would appreciate that. Thank you.”
“It’s actually pretty amazing. I’m impressed. If you or Sam have any more ideas like that, tell me, okay? I’ll help, so you can help yourself.”
“We’ll work on more prototypes so you can fix them and make them look nice,” Blaine laughed.
“Deal!” Kurt looked genuinely excited about the project. He tilted his head and sighed at the little figure on his screen. “You’re the strongest, bravest man I know. I never meant to make you feel any differently. And I’ll love you through everything, okay?”
“That means everything to me, Kurt. I love you, too. And I’m sorry about yesterday. This is the first time we’ve been apart since it happened, you know?” He put his hand on the screen wistfully, watching the city move behind Kurt’s head. “Call me when you can, okay? We can talk more later. Enjoy yourself. Don’t stress out.”
“I’ll try. Have fun with Sam. Don’t put duct tape on anything else.”
When the call was over, Blaine lowered himself out of bed with his new machine, a proud little swell in his chest as his feet touched the floor. He knew Sam was still asleep on the couch, but he felt like sitting on the kitchen counter. So that’s what he did.