Chapter Five - Kurtzilla
Sunday 10 May, 2015

The past two weeks had been... difficult. Correction. Blaine was firm in the belief that, over the past two weeks, he had visited every level of hell.

It was finals week at NYU, and in stark contrast to Blaine's own schedule of sit-down exams and a demonstration of practical ability, Kurt had been spending every spare waking moment working on a huge project that would count for seventy percent of his final grade. The project was due the next day, and despite Kurt having meticulously planned his time down to the last second, the one factor he had failed to consider was inspiration. Of which Kurt was fresh out.

Enter Kurtzilla.

Whilst tip-toeing around their apartment as if on broken glass and wading through a veritable ocean of screwed-up balls of paper, Blaine learned many things about this fascinating yet genuinely terrifying creature. Most notably;

1. Kurtzilla did not like to be touched or disturbed in any way while working. Attempting either could, and often did, result in major bodily harm.
2. Kurtzilla could happily subsist on a steady diet of chocolate-coated coffee beans and Red Bull.
3. Kurtzilla's grip on sanity was... tenuous at best.

On the other hand, all of the worry and stress had Kurt fucking Blaine with an almost animalistic need and passion multiple times a day. Blaine had never before seen this side of Kurt, who was usually so calm and collected—especially when it came to his work.

He had been walking oddly for days and didn't really mind.

“Kurt,” he sing-songed, fingers walking up his boyfriend's back where he sat hunched over the tiny desk in their bedroom. Kurt shrugged his hand away irritably, almost immediately losing focus on the sketch in which he had been so deeply absorbed. Dropping his head forward into one hand whilst simultaneously tearing the page out of the sketchbook, he gave a loud and frustrated groan.

“Why is nothing working?” he half-screamed, grabbing another handful of coffee beans out of the jar to his right and gesticulating wildly, “it's like... and nothing's... why am I not good?!”

“Hey,” Blaine murmured, taking advantage of one of Kurt's more lucid moments and bending to wrap his arms around Kurt's shoulders and rock him gently. “You'll get there. You create amazing, beautiful things every day and you can do this. I believe in you.”

“At least someone does,” Kurt muttered under his breath, relaxing back into Blaine for a fleeting moment before inhaling deeply and running a hand through his hair, which was already standing up in approximately forty-nine different directions at once.

“I have an idea,” Blaine whispered.

“Ideas are good,” Kurt said, exhaustion clear in his voice. “Unless they involve drawing more fucking clothes because I swear to God, Blaine, if I ever so much as think about another dinner jacket, I won't be responsible for my actions.”

Blaine chuckled, before turning to crouch at his side and reaching up to smooth away the creases in Kurt's forehead. Kurt leaned into the touch gratefully, closing his eyes and just letting himself be for a moment. “What's this idea, then?”

Blaine straightened, pulling his wallet from his back pocket and dropping it onto the desk in front of Kurt. “Bloomingdale's,” he said simply, letting the word hang in the air between them.

“Blaine, we have no money,” Kurt said, with much less conviction as he felt. Blaine stepped closer, wrapping his arms around Kurt's shoulders once more and sucking gently on his ear lobe. Kurt gasped, leaning further into Blaine's mouth. “Blaine, we—we can't. I c-can't, I have to... mmm... I just have to-to stay in the room and—“

“Kurt,” Blaine cut him off, slowly trailing his tongue along the perfectly sculpted line of Kurt's jaw. “Do it for the store. She misses you. You're her favorite.”

“You're being s-silly,” Kurt stuttered, feeling himself beginning to grow hard and trying to resist Blaine's words.

“Think of how lonely she must feel. Think of the poor, neglected Jack Spade duffels... Dust gathering on the new season Marc Jacobs...”

Kurt suddenly shot out of his seat, grabbing Blaine's wallet and whirling around with a positively frantic look in his eyes. “We have to go,” he said, striding immediately into the bathroom.

“One condition!” Blaine called, and Kurt reappeared in the doorway with an almost homicidal glare. “Leave your hair like that.”

“It looks ridiculous!” Kurt exclaimed, turning towards the mirror. Blaine crossed the room in three quick steps, pressing Kurt into the door frame, their bodies flush together.

“It looks like I've just fucked you every which way to Sunday,” he practically growled, feeling Kurt shiver as he trailed fingertips across his chest.

“Today is Sunday,” Kurt said absently, eyes closed as he tried to steady himself.

Blaine leaned forwards, eyes dark, and for a moment all thoughts of dusty satchels were forgotten. All Kurt knew, needed, wanted was right there in front of him. Then, Blaine pressed a quick kiss to his lips and said, “exactly.”

Blaine quickly ducked out of the bedroom, and Kurt could hear a jacket being shrugged into and keys jingling. “That doesn't even make any sense!”

---

Not for the first time, Blaine thanked his lucky stars for the emergency credit card his father had begrudgingly and at the urging of Mrs Anderson handed over to Blaine the day he had finished packing up the last of his things that would be going with him to New York. After a moment's pause for thought, he thanked them again for the fact that Leon, his father's incredibly supportive accountant was the one discreetly handling any charges on said credit card. Blaine liked being able to treat Kurt to nice things every once in a while. Seeing the way his fingers had reverently brushed across the impossibly soft, light gray leather of the new Marc Jacobs messenger bag made it worth every last one of the six hundred dollars it had cost.

“I love you so much,” Kurt said from the island, still running his fingers over the bag almost disbelievingly before turning to Blaine, his eyes shining. “You know that, right?”

“For a second there I could have sworn you were talking to the bag,” Blaine quipped. “I love you too.”

Kurt smiled, stretching his arms above his head, his happy expression rapidly disappearing as he caught sight of something in the living room. Blaine followed his gaze and swallowed hard. Slowly, Kurt made his way across the room to join Blaine, who stood behind the couch with his hands buried in his pockets and a guilty expression playing about his features.

“Blaine,” Kurt said after a pregnant pause, “what the fuck is that?”

In the center of the living room floor stood a miniature cardboard city that appeared to be made out of leftover cereal boxes and scraps of paper. A closer examination of the model revealed to Kurt quite how much detail Blaine had painstakingly inserted. Bright orange and yellow paper flames the sides of buildings and exploded out of windows, and tiny figures—people, Kurt realized—were running about wildly, some with penned-on faces showing expressions of sheer terror and panic.

“It's Tokyo,” Blaine said, quietly. “There was nothing on TV.”

“What—“ Kurt began, before stopping himself and rounding on his boyfriend. “You have got to be kidding me with this.”

Blaine shrank back almost visibly, not daring to look Kurt in the eye.

“I heard you on the phone to Wes the other night, calling me 'Kurtzilla'; I'm not deaf. Don't you understand, Blaine? This project counts for seventy percent of my grade. Do you have any idea how much stress I've been under? My whole future could be riding on this and you're making fun of me?”

“Only because you're so incredible!” Blaine practically screamed, which made Kurt stop short. Blaine seldom raised his voice—and even more rarely towards him—and judging by the half-wild look in his eyes, this had been simmering beneath the surface for a while. Stepping forward, he grabbed Kurt's arms so tightly it was nearly painful. “You're so incredible, Kurt, and you don't even see it! I looked at some of the things you designed and I was blown away by your talent, but you never think anything you do is good enough! You create these beautiful things and think they're nothing, but they're everything, Kurt. They're everything; they're your heart, your soul, your dreams, your love. They're you, and it breaks my heart to think that you aren't even willing to look at yourself through my eyes. Because you're a fucking hurricane.”

Kurt's eyes glimmered with tears, stunned into silence by the outburst.

“I've been watching you kill yourself for the past two weeks and I just can't do it anymore, Kurt,” Blaine said as he dropped his hands to his sides, the anger fading from his voice. “I can't watch you hate and disregard all of that and not say anything, because I love it. I love you.”

It was a long moment before Kurt spoke, or even moved, his eyes seeming to search out something in Blaine's. Then, his shoulders sagged and he all but fell forward into the waiting arms that immediately enveloped him in a tight embrace.

“I just don't know what to do. I don't know what to do,” he said as Blaine lowered the both of them gently to the floor.

“Shh, it's okay. It's okay, baby. We'll figure it out together,” Blaine murmured.

Kurt pulled back just far enough to press a shaky kiss to Blaine's lips, before quickly wiping his eyes. “Will you help me? Please?” he asked quietly.

“All you had to do was ask,” Blaine replied, affectionately brushing his thumb across Kurt's chin. “But first, you have to do something for me.”

Blaine quirked an eyebrow and nodded his head in the direction of miniature Tokyo.

“Oh no. No, no, no,” Kurt protested, reading Blaine's mind. “No, 'Kurtzilla' is a thing of the past. This is not going to happen.”

“This is so going to happen,” Blaine said, standing and grabbing the camera from the island. “Go on, get your cute butt over there and make with the Bad Romance hands.”

Kurt gave a long-suffering sigh, before standing and accepting his fate. He was doomed. Cursed to living out his days with a dork of the highest and most ridiculous order possible. A boy who spent Sunday afternoons making miniature cities and screaming civilians out of cereal boxes and then making him pose for pictures. It was cruel and unusual punishment, really.

But as Kurt took his place in amongst the buildings, raising a foot off the carpet whilst baring his teeth and “making with the Bad Romance hands”—if he was really going to do this, he would do it right—he took in the sight of his boyfriend studying the screen of the digital camera and was filled with a sense of contentment. Because when he was totally honest with himself, a life with Blaine didn't seem like a curse at all. It actually seemed kind of magical. Blaine Anderson may have been a dork, but he was his dork.

Click!

“Are we... Wait,” Kurt murmured as he glanced down at the models littering the carpet, a sense of absolute calm washing over him. He lowered his arms, placed his foot gently on the floor between two burning skyscrapers, and felt the rusty cogs in his head begin to turn in exactly the right direction. “That's it.”

“What's 'it'?” Blaine asked as he pocketed the camera.

The next second, Kurt crossed the living room floor in two quick strides. “That's it, Blaine! That's it, that's it, that's fucking it! Best—boyfriend—ever,” Kurt exclaimed, kissing Blaine hard on the mouth to highlight each word. And then he was gone, disappearing into the bedroom and humming happily to himself.

A few minutes later, Blaine looked in on Kurt to see him drawing furiously, pausing every so often to smile at his work.

“Babe? You need anything?”

“Red B—um... Could I maybe get some tea?” Kurt asked with a sheepish smile, catching himself at the last moment.

As Blaine turned back towards the kitchen, he shook his head. Who'd have thought that acknowledging the monster would finally make it disappear? Glancing across to the living room one last time, he tried hard to fight off the confusion at the prospect of Kurt somehow being inspired by his somewhat rudimentary creations.

Sometimes, Blaine really didn't understand how his boyfriend's mind worked.