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The cramped, tiny backstage area of the club is dusty-dark, and Kurt has Rachel’s back pressed to his front. His knuckles are pressed to the bare skin in the crook of her elbow, a grounding connection, and he feels the vibrations of the breath she takes, can feel the vibrations of the crowd just beyond, murmurs and the tension of a heartbeat as they wait.
A soft electric hum and buzz, and the yellow and orange stage lights come up, the spark lighting among the crowd as they start to make noise. Rachel steps away from him.
Kurt feels a warm palm settle low on his hip, and he glances up to Elliott’s face.
“It’s showtime,” Elliott says, dragging his hand along the waist of Kurt’s pants, before tugging a little on a belt loop. Kurt laughs, twists away from him, and right onto the stage.
The lights flash and Kurt finds his microphone, smiling into it as the music starts.
They’ve performed at this club before. It was one of their first regular gigs after they had finally managed to start booking places beyond Callbacks or places where Elliott knew the bartender or Dani had a friend of a friend of a girl that she absolutely never hooked-up with in her roller derby league (she totally did). Now they play here at least once a month, with a small crowd of familiar faces that have started to always show up and then buy them cocktails after, and Kurt thinks, something about the energy of the place, the way their songs sound in this space, it loosens his legs and hips and his jaw, and he just–sings.
The drinks tonight are very cold vodka gimlets, the lime electric on Kurt’s lips. He sits at one of the high chairs at the bar, foot hooked behind one of the legs. Dani is practically in his lap, with Santana on the other side of her in another chair, and Rachel and Elliott are chatting with some guys at the other end of the bar; Kurt can see the coy line of Rachel’s body from here.
Santana is relaxed and indulgent, staring at Dani, listening to the story she’s telling coming out in bursts and playfully sarcastic smiles. Kurt watches her reach over, wrap a finger around one of Dani’s bright blue streaks of hair. She lets it sit there, skin on hair, and he feels the quiet intimacy of it down to his diaphragm, filling his chest with a dull ache.
When the music changes, Dani breaks off her words with a noise, pulling on Santana and Kurt’s wrists, “I love this song. Time to dance, c’mon.”
They find an empty little space in the crowd and let the music guide them, and Kurt jumps around, bends his knees, shimmies his shoulders. He sees Dani wave to someone over his shoulder, and he knows even before he comes close that it’s Elliott. Kurt can feel his presence up against his side, the rumble of his laugh, as he joins in. He’s warm and Kurt can smell him, skin and just barely there cologne, and this time when Kurt twists, it isn’t away but towards, towards before he can he think of why not.
Kurt slides his hands up Elliott’s upper arms, curls them around his shoulders, and one of Elliott’s hands goes to Kurt’s waist and the other further around, to his lower back. He sees Dani press herself into Santana next to them, and the beat comes up through the floor as the song becomes faster, a little more bass-heavy. He feels the pull of his shirt across his back where it is tugging between Elliott’s fingers. He looks at Elliott, gorgeous smile and stubble along his jaw, and a look that is both a challenge and a welcome, and Kurt feels so vivid, too vivid, in his own skin.
They dance through the next song before Kurt is hot and thirsty and trying to ignore the warning bell that is starting to ring in his head, trying to ignore the pull on his limbs that wants to get closer.
He breaks away with an apologetic shrug at them and goes to hide out at the bar and drink deep on another ice-cold vodka gimlet, his heart beating too fast and sweat gathered on the back of his neck.
***
It’s after one when they get out of there but it doesn’t seem to matter, the street still mostly filled with people. They are in little knots in front of the clubs and bars in each direction, flowing down the sidewalk, with laughter and curls of smoke floating up. It’s always like going from one breathing, pulsing thing into another, from the dark into the bright of the night. The city was hard for Kurt to get used to at first, and there had been some moments of edging panic at the very beginning when he thought he never would, that maybe he’d hate it, have it pushing in and long for more space, more quiet, more something. Instead, it has settled into his marrow in a way that makes him feel like he can breathe.
Rachel hooks one of her arms through his, snuggles up to his side. “I’m exhausted.”
Kurt isn’t. His blood is pumping a little hard for that, the alcohol wearing off but leaving little shivers of almost-anxiety behind.
“Yeah, well, I need some food before I can even think about sleep,” he grins into hair. “And maybe some water for you?” She slaps her hand against his side and he isn’t sure if it’s her agreeing or admonishing him for pointing out that she’s drunk.
“I’m hungry too. We could hit that diner down the street?” Elliott says, and Rachel makes a groaning squeak. They reach the stairs to the subway station.
Santana lifts her head from where she was bent whispering into Dani’s ear. “All right, Berry, we’re going back to the loft anyway. We’ll get you there. Kurt and Elliott can go eat.”
Kurt looks to him, and Elliott has his eyebrows up at him, you wanna?
And he nods, not ready to end this night, not ready to go lie down in the still of his bed.
Rachel untangles herself from him and goes to the girls, and it’s a little thing, but Kurt’s heart feels soft when he sees Dani let Rachel lean against her, and Santana takes a step ahead of them as they start down, just in case.
The place Kurt and Elliott end up at just off Bedford has tight blood-red vinyl booths and fake dark wood, sugars and condiments in a chrome caddy on the table, and menus laminated in plastic. Kurt orders a coffee and a grilled cheese, hoping the caffeine and the food soaking up whatever is left in his belly will help him feel even again.
They talk a little about the set that night–what sounded good and where they should mix things up, songs that didn’t get the response they were hoping for. It’s straight-forward and simple and Kurt keeps his hands around the warmth of his mug.
“I almost can’t believe how this is all happening,” Kurt says after they have been digging into their food for few quiet minutes. “I–I don’t know. Starting this band was almost like a whim, for me.” He takes another sip of his coffee. “Maybe that sounds bad.”
Elliott shakes his head. “No, not really. I mean, I have wondered, you seem pretty committed to the musical theater thing?”
“I still am,” Kurt says, unsure how to explain it. “I still want to do that, but there’s a part of me, that wanted to try other things, to sort of see where things can take me.”
“It’s really not that weird. Art isn’t exactly a linear progression; life isn’t.”
“No, I know,” Kurt runs a finger along the edge of the plate, leans in a little more. “Mostly, though, I’m having fun.”
Elliott smiles. “I think we’re starting to get some momentum too.”
“Well, we keep booking gigs, so–” Kurt says, and it’s amazing, after their rough start, after his insecurities, and his forced surety in what he had no idea how to do, the ways they scraped up against each other in the first few weeks. “No, but really, this has become really important to me.”
“Me too. I told you I came to New York to be in your band–”
Kurt laughs, shaking his head. “That was quite a line.”
“It was, but it kinda wasn’t. Because this is the most inspiring thing I’ve been a part of here, that I really do feel a part of. And that is why I came to New York.”
Elliott takes a sip of his own coffee, eyes on Kurt over the edge of the mug. Their knees brush under the table.
***
They sit and talk for close to an hour, until the idea of a long hot shower and his bed starts to sound so appealing to Kurt. The streets are a little emptier when they get out there.
“Here, I’ll make sure you get home okay,” Elliott says, and Kurt wants to argue, thinks he probably should, it’s a little bit out of the way from where Elliott lives in Greenpoint, but he doesn’t. Instead, they jump on the L train together to ride the few stops to Montrose.
When they get to Kurt’s building, he hesitates. “Look, everyone is probably all sleeping inside, so we can’t really–do you want to go up to roof for a bit?”
He isn’t sure what inspired him to ask, and he doesn’t know if it’s because of the fact he’s so tired, or the fact that even with all the things that he hasn’t been able to stop feeling all night–they ebb and flow, and go dormant for a bit before waking up and shaking his insides–he feels the comfort of Elliott, of their friendship, and those moments of just talking that maybe he doesn’t want to say goodnight to, not yet.
“Sure,” Elliott says.
From up there at this time of night, Bushwick feels distant and quiet, the night broken up by the gold of street lights and from one of the windows in the boxy industrial-looking building across the street.
“You see that building there?” Kurt points. Elliott steps closer to him. “It’s lofts like ours on the upper floors, but the bottom floor is like some kind of metal-working studio. They open those big garage doors during the day and you can hear it from here. The sculptures that come out of there are sort of–gorgeous.”
And they are, sharp, sharp angles and lines of grace.
“That’s amazing,” Elliott says, puts his hands on the ledge next to Kurt’s.
“Can I ask you something?”
“Sure.”
“Back at the diner, you said,” Kurt whispers. “That this band was something that you really felt a part of, what did you mean?”
Elliott angles his body towards Kurt, voice going lower and slower. “I spent a lot of time in the city when before I lived here, as much as I could really, remember I told you? So many train rides. I thought it was greatest place in the world, still do. But even with all of that, with feeling so ready, when I finally got here, it felt distant. I did so many things and met so many people, but still part of me expected to get back on the train at the end of the night.”
He pauses, and Kurt holds his breath.
“I was here, but not, really-a part of it.”
Kurt feels it in his chest, the echo of his own feelings with a different story, a different shape, not exact but familiar all the same. He thinks about the things he has been a part of, things he never felt like he was, things he wanted, things he felt so so sure he was a part of until he wasn’t. It tangles in his heart.
Elliott presses his shoulder to Kurt’s, and says and it’s a hushed secret and it’s warmth, “it got better, of course. Better than ever, now.” The sides of their palms meet on the cool concrete of the building and it shocks Kurt, and he has to resist the urge to turn his hand into it.
***
Kurt wakes up when Rachel crawls into bed with him. He squints his eyes open at her. “Morning, Rachel.”
She smiles and makes herself at home on one of his pillows. “Good morning. Did you have fun last night?” And her grin is a sleepy puzzle, and his brain is a sleepy sludge, and he just shakes his head.
“Um. What?”
“So, you and Elliott?”
He closes his eyes again. “No.”
“Kurt.”
He blinks. “We went out for food, hung out a little–that’s all.”
She tucks her hands under one cheek and stares at him. “He likes you.”
He doesn’t know what to say. There’s part of him that doesn’t want to deny it, that moment in the almost-morning quiet, what he felt and couldn’t be sure of it, couldn’t make words for. But then his brain, don’t, don’t do it.
“Look, even if,” Kurt says, holding up a hand when Rachel opens her mouth again, “Even if that were the case, you know it wouldn’t be a good idea. We’re bandmates. That needs to come first. It’d be like–it’d be like dating someone I work with.”
Rachel looks unimpressed. “You do realize people date people they work with all the time? Santana and Dani do just fine.”
Kurt groans into his pillow. “That’s–different.“ Because they were a them before they were a band, because if one of them had to walk away it would be okay, because he thinks he knows that their them is more than this band (he can see that blue lock of hair spun around Santana’s finger), because there are so many thing he wants and his list is ever shifting, and he wouldn’t know where this goes, because he knows how that can go.
“Oh my god,” Rachel laughs, rolling onto her back.
They both contemplate the ceiling for a minute.
“Okay, Kurt,” and she gets up. “Is this about Blaine?”
“Rachel,” He doesn’t know. “The band is, I just can’t–”
She flicks the curtain aside and slips through it.
“Okay, Kurt,” and this time she sings it, holding the vowel of his name long long long, and he can tell she’s laughing at him.
***
They play Callbacks one more time, and then their next gig after that is in Philadelphia. They haven’t done many out of town performances yet, and Elliott borrows a van from a friend for the instruments and sound equipment they’ll need, white with a thick green stripe and the name of a floral delivery service painted in looping script on the side. When they open the back, there are smashed leaves and bits of ribbon on the floor, and it smells earthy and sweet and metallic all at the same time.
The plan is for everyone else to come down late afternoon on the bus, and because Kurt doesn’t have a diner shift that day, he volunteers to make the drive with Elliott earlier.
Kurt slips on his sunglasses just as they are driving over the Newark Bay Bridge, the sky finally spilling open from gray clouds to golden sun. The metal of the bridge towers overhead.
“Are we near Paramus?” Kurt asks Elliott.
Elliott laughs. “No, not really.”
Behind his dark lenses, Kurt feels a little less guilty about looking at the shape of Elliott’s wrists, the lines of his strong, inked forearms, his hands around the steering wheel.
“I don’t really know much about New Jersey,” Kurt admits.
“It’s okay,” Elliott says. “We’re going in the wrong direction, but one day I can take you out there.”
Elliott gives him a little side glance and a flash of white teeth, and Kurt sinks his own teeth into his bottom lip just seeing it. He can feel the heat in his face.
“Yeah, I’d like that.”
Kurt rolls down his window a little bit, warm air and the whip of the wind against the side of the van, and Elliott turns up the Bowie playing on the stereo, and they start to fly down the New Jersey Turnpike.
***
Dani talks Kurt into letting her put a little eyeliner on him that night before they go on. This club has a couple of actual dressing room for them, this one with peeling black paint and posters and a green leather loveseat with gray duct tape covering one arm in the corner, and Santana bought them grapefruit shandies to drink while they dress and fuss over each other. Kurt isn’t drunk, not yet, but he’s loose and full of the excited nervy adrenaline of almost almost, and he doesn’t put up any fight. The lights set above the mirror are the brightest point in the room, and Dani gets him to sit on the built-in vanity to do it.
She wiggles into place between his spread knees, trying to not giggle into his face, and she tells him to close his eyes and no Kurt stay still c’mon, with Rachel standing over her shoulder watching with a careful pout to her mouth.
“The trick to this is getting the smudge just right. But I gotta get a good line first.” She waves the pencil in his face like a little weapon.
He looks at it, and then her, “This isn’t inspiring much confidence.”
She does, mostly, get it done. Kurt holds his breath at the brush of it under his eye.
He’s still sitting there when there’s a bang on the door and Elliott opens it, and sticks his head in. “Ready for this?”
“Let’s go,” Santana says. Kurt rubs his hands on the thighs on his black pants as the girls leave. Elliott’s standing there, leaning up against the door jam, and Kurt can feel the weight of his look.
Kurt braces his arms against the vanity top, shifts his weight back, and smiles at him. “So, what do you think?”
Elliott comes closer and Kurt’s pulse slams, and he can feel the flush going up the sides of his neck. He’s so aware of the expand of his chest around each breath, the tension in room nearly something he can touch, and he feels so–intentional. He knows what this is, and he feels like he’s purposefully flipping the circuit.
“Come here, I think you need–” Elliott raises his hand, leaves it hanging there by Kurt’s face, question and request and desire in that few inches. Kurt can say no, Kurt can ask why what are we doing, Kurt can–
He wets his lips and nods. Elliott bends just a little bit over his body, his fingertips skimming along Kurt’s jaw, whisper-soft, and up along his cheekbone. His eyes drop closed.
“I don’t know if–” and the words just barely make it out.
“Kurt, just,” Elliott breathes out a quiet laugh. Kurt can feel it on his face. “I’m right here, trust me, just–try.”
And then Elliott’s fingers are on the delicate-thin skin of his eyelids, and he’s smudging the eyeliner even more and it feels nothing like Dani’s hands to Kurt. He thinks he might be trembling and everywhere inside illuminates all at once.
Elliott pulls his touch away, steps back, and Kurt blinks his eyes open, and they stare at each other, Elliott’s eyes are so blue, and Kurt wants to kiss him so so badly. Instead, he jumps down, he can’t think right now, they have to perform, and does a little turn.
“Shall we?”
***
Things change after Philadelphia. They don’t talk about what is going on between them, what the sum of these moments and touches mean, but Kurt has a feeling Elliott isn’t in any hurry, not really, that this want and question and anticipation is part of what he is enjoying. But mostly, it seems like he just wants to spend time with Kurt.
They start texting more often, and the plans they make barely have the veneer of being about the band. They spend a Sunday walking the vendors of the Williamsburg Flea, and try on vintage velvet jackets and embroidered capes, and every other piece that catches their eye, so many wonderful and awful things, things they never knew they needed. And things they don’t need, that Kurt doesn’t even know what he would do with. Then they go back to Kurt’s place and start ripping things apart, and rebuild them on his dressmaker’s dummy.
Elliott invites Kurt over to his apartment. They eat Thai curry delivered in and drink hard cider and Kurt finds himself barefoot on Elliott’s couch, a knit blanket over his legs, as Elliott plays record after record of things he loves, with a story for each one, and Kurt laughs and sings along and tucks his toes against Elliott’s jean-clad thigh when they get too cold.
One day, when they are leaving Kurt’s and the metal studio across the street has one of their sculptures on a pallet out on the sidewalk, and they watch as the artists hammer wooden pieces together on each side to form a crate. Elliott lays his hand on Kurt’s, and they can still see the highest part of it sticking out of the top, a curve of bright silver catching the sun with a glare almost too bright to look at, when he says, "I see what you mean now.”
***
They are back at that little club, back in that dusty-dark backstage area. It’s just Elliott and Kurt in this side of the wings, and they wait, wait for the lights, wait to begin.
Kurt is so aware of him, and he tries to breathe and he tries to focus, but his hands are shaking and this is the worst possible moment for this, he knows it is, but that doesn’t seem to be calming his heart or the fact he wants. He breathes and thinks about Elliott’s smile and that hush up on Kurt’s roof and that tender tender touch on such a vulnerable part of Kurt’s body. He thinks about wanting to go visit Paramus with Elliott, take that train ride that is a part of him in ways Kurt probably can’t ever understand. He breathes, and thinks about being a part of this.
He turns around, and looks at Elliott.
“Kurt? What–” Elliott starts, but it hangs there, his eyes widening, as Kurt reaches up, takes Elliott’s face in his hands.
“I’m right here. Just let me–try,” Kurt breathes out, and presses his mouth to Elliott’s. The kiss is gentle, a soft wet question, and when he pulls back, Elliott follows, kissing his top lip, the corner of his mouth.
There is a breath and a beat. “Oh god,” Elliott whispers. “I’ve wanted to do that for so long.”
Then his hands are around Kurt’s waist, and Kurt grabs at him, and they end up with Kurt’s back pressed to the wall, their kisses slick slides of lips and tongue and heat. It’s lush and messy and Kurt wants to touch him everywhere, something inside of him coming loose at this, a wire broken and twisting wild, flickers of light and electricity. Elliott’s hands anchor on his hips, press him further into the wall, and he sucks on Kurt’s bottom lips until Kurt moans.
He can see the lights come on from the corner of his eyes, and he doesn’t want to stop, and he knows the light has flooded into their corner, that the girls can see them from across the stage, because he can hear a shriek from Rachel and Dani.
He breaks away, flushed and panting. “Okay, okay, we have to–”
“Yeah,” Elliott says, and takes Kurt’s hand, pulling him out onto the stage, into the lights.