Chapter 6

Blaine Anderson crouched in the orchestra pit, awaiting the cue to pull himself onstage with the window washing scaffold he was hooked to.

Before long, he found himself high in the air, staring at the small faces of another sold-out audience, clutching a little red book in one hand and the scaffold’s pulley in the other.

“Dear Reader,” said a familiar voice over the speaker system. “This little book is designed to tell you everything you need to know about the science of getting ahead.”

The dialogue continued until Blaine’s first line: “I can!” His voice rang, clear and confident, around the room. After another minute or so of lines, Blaine heard the jazzy cue for the first song of the evening. He took a steady gulp of air, and sang confidently. “How to apply for a job! How to advance from the mail room!” His voice sounded clear and loud, as it had every other night. By the end of the number, Blaine was sweating and panting, but he had never felt better. Tonight’s show was going to be his best one yet.

The audience was fantastic, cheering loudly after every number and laughing at all the right moments, and Blaine was finding their energy contagious. As the orchestra began Blaine’s second number, “The Company Way,” he was more pumped than ever. Being on Broadway was the best experience of his life, and he couldn’t imagine ever being sick of it.

“NEVER-TAKE-A-RISK-ALL YEARRRRRRRRR!!!!!!!!!!!” Blaine belted, striking a pose and freezing in place as the audience clapped and whooped appreciatively. He smiled, chest heaving, and squinted out at the crowd before him. The first few rows were near-invisible because of the glare from the stage lights. But he could see the faces of everyone in the middle of the theatre. He scanned the people in the center seats, still breathing heavily as the applause continued. He knew he didn’t have long to play his favorite between-song game, picking out the best and worst dressed from the audience. The lady in the seventh row, wearing a t-shirt, she had to be worst dressed, he quickly decided. People who dressed like they were going grocery shopping were rather disrespectful, in Blaine’s opinion. Broadway deserved at least remotely presentable attire.

The applause was beginning to die down. Blaine’s eyes quickly flitted between audience members once more, desperate to pick out the best-dressed before it ended. His worst show so far had been on the night he hadn’t had time to pick a favorite, and it had become something of a superstition to Blaine. The girl in the fourth row wearing a pink scarf and a flowered skirt? No… wait… her. The girl in the gorgeous white dress and- were those gloves? Blaine smirked appreciatively. She won tonight’s award, no contest. As Blaine eyed her outfit pleasedly, a man leaned in to whisper something in the girl’s ear. She giggled into her hand and shoved the man, who turned back to face the stage, a close-lipped smile on his dimly lit face. His eyes met Blaine’s.

Time seemed to stop.

He would know those eyes anywhere.

***

“Ah, sir, I-I-I, um, you see…” Blaine stuttered, looking momentarily flustered before snapping back into character and correcting the line.

Kurt felt all the blood drain from his face.

They had made eye contact.

The thing was, he had been fine. He had been handling it. Blaine Anderson was breathing the same air as him, sure. No problem. Nothing Kurt Hummel couldn’t handle. Blaine Anderson was dancing and singing onstage, looking heart-achingly beautiful. But Kurt could pretend there was a screen between them, and he had managed a few weak jokes with Candi to cover up how faint he felt.

 But then Blaine had made eye contact. Then Blaine Anderson knew he was there. And he had looked as though he’d seen a ghost. Blaine had made so many faces in Kurt’s presence, but he had never looked so terrified of him. He had never, not even after the break-up, given Kurt a look as though he was the last person he wanted to see, as though his very existence was just plain wrong. The look cut through Kurt, straight to his heart, which felt as though it was in his stomach. Blaine was terrified of him. Blaine was horrified by his presence, and Kurt missed him all over again, as if the breakup had been a day ago, not a year and a half ago.

Kurt didn’t know if he was going to cry or throw up.

So he settled for both.

---

Candi met him as he left the fancy bathroom, heading for the water fountain because his mouth felt dry and tasted horrible after the contents of Kurt’s stomach had been emptied into the toilet.

“Kurt! Are you okay?” She looked worried.

“I’m fine,” Kurt said shakily, managing a feeble smile despite the tears pricking his eyes.

“You sure don’t look fine,” she noted, pressing a hand to his forehead. “You don’t have a fever. But you’re super pale, even for you.”

“Must be the alcohol,” Kurt muttered, leaning over the drinking fountain.

“From almost three days ago?” Candi asked skeptically. “I kinda doubt that. I mean, I know you don’t drink much, but I don’t think you can be sick from alcohol you drank three days ago.”

Kurt shrugged and sat shakily on a bench across from the fountain.

“Seriously, Kurt. What’s wrong?”

“Nothing,” he repeated in as firm a voice as he could muster. “I’m fine.”

“First you try to get out of seeing one of your favorite musicals by making lame-ass excuses, then you randomly run out of the theatre and puke your guts out in the bathroom, and now you’re sitting in front of me in tears. Sure doesn’t sound like ‘fine’ to me.”

“I’m not crying,” Kurt protested, his voice cracking in spite of himself. “And I didn’t puke.”

“I’m pretty sure Jake could hear you gagging all the way back at NYADA. Now will you please freaking stop lying to me and tell me what’s going on?”

“I can’t.”

“Why not?” she snapped. Candi hated being in the dark about stuff, and Kurt supposed this certainly counted as stuff.

“I-” Kurt felt tears well up in his eyes, and all of a sudden he felt too tired to keep lying. “I just can’t talk about it, Candi. It’s too hard.” His head was spinning and he kept seeing Blaine’s petrified expression whenever he blinked. He buried his head in his hands and took deep breaths, concentrating on not breaking down completely in the middle of a Broadway theatre lobby.

“Kurt,” Candi’s voice was softer now, and she sounded more concerned than angry. He felt her sit down on the bench beside him. “Are you okay?”

Kurt shook his head no, and Candi started rubbing his back gently. He looked up gratefully, a tear falling from his eye. He attempted to wipe it away before Candi noticed, but it was too late.

“You are crying,” she observed quietly.

Kurt shook his head again, though he knew it was pointless. He couldn’t even bring himself to care- he was too far gone.

“Are you sure you don’t want to talk about it?” she prompted gently.

He did want to talk about it. He wanted to tell Candi everything; how hurt he had been that day, how much he missed the boy who was really more of an extension of himself, how much it had hurt to see him even after all these years. But just thinking about it brought on another wave of tears, and Kurt found himself sobbing into Candi’s gorgeous white dress, probably staining it permanently. Blaine would have loved that dress. Maybe he had seen it from onstage.

He had to talk, or he was going to burst.

“I-I just th-thought I c-c-could d-do this,” Kurt mumbled shakily into his friend’s shoulder. She said nothing, which Kurt took as permission to continue. “I r-really th-thought… and then… seeing h-him af-ter all this time… it was too m-much!” he wailed, his voice rising as his sat up, ignoring the dirty look of the lady working the nearby cash register.

“Seeing who, Kurt?” Candi raised an eyebrow, looking confused.

Kurt shook his head miserably, a lump forming around the name. He wasn’t sure if he could say it. “B-b-blaine,” he finally managed in a voice so quiet it was barely a whisper.

“Blaine? Who?” Candi looked more lost than ever. Kurt looked down at the floor, staring at a spot on the carpet as it went in and out of focus.

“Kurt?” she tried again. “Who’s Blai- OH!” Kurt glanced up to see Candi, eyes wide, staring at him in utter disbelief. “You know him?”

“I did,” he muttered, not trusting himself to speak above a whisper because he would probably start wailing again.

“How?” The look she was giving him was something between shock and awe, and it was doing nothing to make Kurt feel better about the situation. He looked down at his lap, doing everything in his power to avoid Candi’s piercing gaze.

“Dated,” he said quietly.

“You dated him? The lead?”

“Yeah.”

“What happened?”

“Had a fight. We broke up. He said-” Kurt let out another sob, then forced himself to continue. “He said if I couldn’t su-support h-him, we were d-d-done.”

“Support him?”

“Decided he wanted to b-be a lawyer.”

“But he’s not a lawyer… he’s an actor,” Candi pointed out.

“I know. I saw. Don’t know what happened.” Tears were pouring freely down Kurt’s face now, as he realized just how much he didn’t know about Blaine anymore.

“Shit. Kurt, shit. Is that why you didn’t want to talk about the last person who kissed you?”

He nodded, breaking into another round of sobs. “I miss h-him. So m-m-much.”

“How long has it been?” she wondered quietly.

“Nearly two y-y-years.”

Candi said nothing more, just gathered Kurt in her arms and sat with him until the theatre doors opened and a flood of people surrounded them for intermission.

***

“FIVE MINUTES!”

A stagehand passed by, shouting to the cast and crew. Blaine closed his eyes, allowing his makeup artist to brush on another heap of matte powder over his shiny forehead.

“Blaine, what happened out there?” asked his makeup artist. “I’ve never seen you stutter like that during a show!”

Blaine tensed immediately, his mind working fast to make up a solid excuse. “I, erm, felt sick. Must’ve eaten something yesterday night. It won’t happen again.”

“Don’t worry, it happens to the best of us. But take something for it, medicine or something, if you will. You’re not usually so unfocused,” she noted.

“Will do,” Blaine said, relieved to have gotten off the hook so easily.

In all honesty, he had felt sick, he supposed. Just not because of food poisoning. No, this was because of something much, much harder to face than a bout of Salmonella.

What was he doing here?

Blaine hadn’t seen Kurt since that day at the Lima Bean, when he had been eating with Sebastian. He would never forget the look on Kurt’s face when he saw them together. It was the same look Kurt had given him tonight- shock, confusion, eyebrows knitted together as though he had no idea what to think. The only difference was that Kurt looked older than before, nearly imperceptible to anyone but Blaine. When you spent every day of your junior year of high school staring at the same person, you noticed these things. He was still gorgeous as ever, and seeing him still took Blaine’s breath away. But he clearly didn’t share the same feelings, seeing as it had taken him under a minute to sprint from the theatre and Blaine hadn’t seen him for the rest of the act. After what an idiot Blaine had been to him, ditching their New York dreams and hanging out with Kurt’s archenemy, he couldn’t really blame Kurt for his reaction. Blaine’s heart jolted as he thought of what he would do differently, if he had a second chance. Kurt had been right, he always was. He missed Kurt so much. They were perfect for each other, even after all these years, Blaine was sure of it. But Kurt didn’t seem to feel the same way, Blaine thought, eyeing his leather jacket sitting on the counter. He reached for it, shoving a hand into the pocket and pulling out the promise ring, the one Kurt had thrown at him after the breakup. He hadn’t taken it out of the jacket in nearly two years, except to stare at it and remember what he had let go of.

Blaine turned the ring over in his hands, his vision blurring. No, this wouldn’t do- he didn’t have time to ruin his stage makeup, Blaine thought, shoving the ring back into his jacket pocket.

On second thought… he pulled it back out and stuck it in the pocket of his suit. He wasn’t exactly sure why, but he needed it with him tonight.

“PLACES FOR ACT TWO!”

***

A week later, Kurt was sitting at his desk, typing an essay on Waiting for Godot, when he heard a knock at the door of his dorm room.

“Jake, how hard is it to remember your key?” he muttered under his breath, getting up to open the door.

A pair of hazel-green eyes peered up at him from under long lashes.

“Hey, Kurt.”

***