Aug. 28, 2013, 9:54 p.m.
Hearts We Hid Up Our Sleeves: Exhaustion
E - Words: 3,565 - Last Updated: Aug 28, 2013 Story: Complete - Chapters: 27/27 - Created: Jun 08, 2013 - Updated: Aug 28, 2013 153 0 0 0 2
Sebastian strides into the studio and Blaine immediately steps away from the camera. "Nice work," he says to the model, "take five. Cleo, do you want to check these ones over and see if we need any more?" Cleo nods and makes her way to the monitor to see the photos Blaine has just taken. He pulls Sebastian to the side. "Hey," he greets, "what brings you to the office?"
"I was just passing through, thought I would stop in and say hi. Where's the boyfriend?" Sebastian asks, scanning the room for any sign of Kurt.
"In our office, I'm assuming."
"That's a pity; I was expecting him to be hanging off your arm. Would you be interested in lunch? My treat."
"Oh, I can't, not today. I've got a meeting with Quinn and Julia. Can we reschedule?" Sebastian nods, "you could always go out with Kurt, instead."
Sebastian snorts. "No thanks. You know the ice queen doesn't like me."
Blaine decides not to mention Sebastian's new nickname for his boyfriend. "He does like you, Bas. Maybe if you tried a little bit harder to get to know him then you would find that you aren't so different."
"Sure, sure. I'll catch you later, Killer. Lunch tomorrow, then?"
"Okay. I'll see you then." Sebastian hesitates to leave, but Blaine eventually manages to persuade him out, though he finds that Sebastian requires someone to escort him from the building. "How did you even get up here, without a guest pass?" Blaine asks.
"Sweet talked the receptionist to get me to the sixth floor, where I sweet talked a lovely young girl to get me up here." Sebastian recounts.
"Ava let you up?"
"Yeah, I guess so. I said I was a friend of yours and she let me up without any further questions. She seemed to like you an awful lot."
"I think she has been friends with Kurt for a while. She's the least annoying co-worker we have." Blaine explains.
"Delightful. Well, I'll be going." Sebastian says, as the doors open in the lobby. Blaine wonders what it is that meant he had shown up uninvited- and he has a horrible feeling that he knows the answer.
Sebastian's visits become more and more regular as the week passes on. He stops by Ava's station one afternoon and requests to know where Blaine could be found. "Actually," she starts, "I can't release that information to you. You don't have a visitor's pass and are technically unauthorised to even be here. You've been here quite a bit this week- have you asked Blaine to get you authorised?"
Sebastian shrugs. "Is it really necessary or strictly a formality?"
"It's a necessity, I assure you. Luckily for you, someone- that would be Blaine and Kurt, judging by the change in handwriting- submitted the appropriate paper work so you can get a semi-regular pass. But, you do have to speak with Quinn before you can get approval."
"Why exactly does Kurt care?"
"I don't know, okay? I just got the form. But maybe if I knew more about what was going on, I would guess that it was because Kurt cares a lot about Blaine and Blaine cares a lot about you. Kurt isn't a horrible person for being Blaine's soulmate, and if I was part of their conversations at all I would be able to tell you that Kurt often tells Blaine that he should be spending more time with you instead of him because he feels bad for messing up your little trio with Santana. But what do I know- I'm just Ms Fabray's PA." Ava shrugs innocently. Quinn's office door opens.
"Thank you for your time." Quinn dismisses, and a small girl who seemed to have big dreams steps out, thanking Quinn profusely for the opportunity. She smiles as she hurries towards the elevator. Quinn sighs. "She reminds me a little of myself, before life happened." She shakes her head and looks over at Ava. "Is something happening here?" she asks.
"Ms Fabray, this is-" Ava starts.
Sebastian cuts her off, saying, "Sebastian Smythe. The pleasure is mine."
"What's his business here?" Quinn asks Ava, instead of talking to Sebastian directly.
"He is a friend of Kurt and Blaine's. Did you get his request for a semi-regular guest pass? It requires your approval." Quinn narrows her eyes at Sebastian.
"Come into my office for a moment, we can have a little chat. May I have the form, Ava?" Ava passes Quinn Sebastian's request form and she retreats into her office, motioning for Sebastian to follow. He sits across from her and she scans the form quickly. "Okay, Mister Smythe. I don't understand why you need a visitor's pass."
"Well, neither do I, frankly. Blaine and Kurt submitted the form without my knowledge."
"Do you want a pass then, or..?" Quinn raises an eyebrow at him quizzically.
"I guess so, if I'm being offered one."
"The thing is, my team of employees work hard, Mister Smythe, and I'm not sure I want you around here without any purpose. What are you even planning on doing here? Why do you visit so often?"
"I mostly only come in to see if Blaine will come out with me. I've been finding it hard to spend a lot of time with him lately, since he's been dating Kurt. Were you aware that they are an item?" Sebastian asks.
"I've heard, noticed, etcetera. They fly under the radar usually, and I can hardly force them to break up, but a little less PDA around the office would be nice. It's just a little... constant. They are really caught up on the whole soulmate thing. It doesn't even mean anything... not all of us have soulmates, and there they are, just flaunting it-" she pauses for a moment and regains her composure. "I'm sorry; I didn't mean to just say all that. Why are you so worried about spending time with him, anyway?"
"Because, Blaine is my soulmate," Sebastian admits. When Quinn questions why he thinks that, considering Blaine and Kurt are, no matter how frustratingly so, obviously together and more or less destined to be as such, Sebastian begins to tell his whole story. He didn't know why he was repeating it to a total stranger, but he felt like maybe Quinn understood his point of view- she certainly didn't seem very happy about Kurt and Blaine's relationship from a professional viewpoint.
"Well," Quinn says, when he has finished, "I think you need a guest pass." She signs the bottom of his form, ready to pass back on to Ava. "I don't mean to interfere in the love lives of my employees, but I think it's clear that if Blaine should be with anyone, it's you." She didn't honestly feel that way at all, but someone who didn't even work at the offices had just offered to her a solution to a problem she didn't know she had. If Kurt and Blaine were to break up, however temporarily- they were soulmates, after all- that she could get some time where they worked solidly and individually. "Do you have any idea how you are going to get Blaine away from Kurt?" she asks. She knew she was overstepping her mark now.
"I hadn't really thought about it yet. Blaine seems so happy with Kurt, and I didn't want to mess up our friendship-"
"I'm going to stop you right there. You need to win over Blaine, and eliminate Kurt in the process. Any plans?"
"Despite what everyone seems to think, I don't actually hate Kurt. He isn't a bad person and he is actually far wittier than most other people are, okay? I don't want to crush him or anything." Sebastian says.
"Crush! That's it! You should get between them; try to persuade them both that they should date you, and not each other. Make them both fall for you, and then you can make that hard decision to date Blaine. Let them fight it out themselves." Quinn suggests.
"Are you sure that will work?" Sebastian asks doubtfully.
"I don't know, but it's worth a shot!" Sebastian nods.
"Okay. We'll try it your way." Quinn shakes his hand and asks him to give Ava the form on his way out of her office. His head is still spinning from their conversation when he leaves the building- today was not the day to get started. He needed to form a more solid plan first. With Quinn enabling as much as she could, anything was worth a shot.
"Blaine, would it be awkward if I took your boyfriend out for lunch some time, instead of you?" Sebastian asks over lunch on a Friday, "I've just realised that I know hardly anything about him, and you keep saying that we should at least try to get along, right?"
Blaine is more than slightly shocked at the thought, but is also pleased that Sebastian has finally come around. He wasn't exactly firing on all cylinders, and honestly he wasn't sure why he had even agreed to going out for lunch. He wasn't capable of holding a real conversation, at least not one he would remember in the morning. "Um, yeah, that would be cool, Bas. I want you two to be friends. You have a lot more in common than you seem to think." He answers lethargically. He rubs his eyes subconsciously.
"Other than you and being bitchy?"
"Neither of you are bitchy. Though now you mention it, I am by far the friendliest member of our group. Huh."
"Except for Brittany. She puts even you to shame."
"Recognition of Santana's soulmate now, too? Is it Christmas?" Blaine says. He finds it impossibly hard to counteract the feeling that he might fall asleep at any moment.
Sebastian snorts. "No, I've just had a change of heart." Change of plan, he thinks.
"Just remember that no matter how stunning Kurt is, he's mine. Hands off, okay?" Blaine jokes half-heartedly. Sebastian laughs appropriately.
"So I talked to Quinn the other day," Sebastian starts. Blaine rolls his eyes. "I heard that you and Kurt put in a request to get me a visitor's pass. Even though I don't have any business in your offices like Henry does. And Quinn actually granted it."
"It was Kurt's idea. He filled out everything except the details he couldn't." Blaine says. Sebastian suddenly wishes that things weren't the way they were- because maybe Kurt was as amazing as Blaine said. To him, it made no sense that Kurt would care at all, and yet he did. But he had a plan, and he had to go through with it now. He still wanted his soulmate, whether Blaine already had a boyfriend or not. Everyone kept saying that Blaine couldn't be his soulmate, but that was the most he had to work with.
"Quinn really seemed to dislike you two. Do you know why?" Sebastian asks.
"Kurt says it's because of unfortunate circumstances with her soulmate so she's just a bit sensitive about the topic. She doesn't actually dislike us, she dislikes that we have each other."
"Yeah, well, I don't have my soulmate either."
"I'm sure you will find him, Bas."
"Blaine, the thing is... I think that I might have already found him, if my countdown is anything to go by. But he already has a boyfriend, who is actually kind of great, and-"
"Sebastian," Blaine interrupts, using his full name, which is rare enough, "Santana talked to me at the party the other week. I'm not your soulmate, I don't think- I can't be." Sebastian nods, showing that he is at least listening, "I've already said that I can't choose between Kurt and you, because I really do love you both, but in such different ways... I'm not exactly a soulmate expert, okay? But as I understand it, if we were soulmates- I say we, because I think it's a team thing and that you always have mutual soulmates- then we would have found out that day when you transferred."
"I have to go," Sebastian says, and he promptly flees the restaurant. Blaine puts his head into his hands, hoping he didn't just screw up Sebastian's already unclear perception.
Blaine is still unsure of what happened at lunch when he returns to his office. He puts down his bag as usual and sinks down into his desk chair. His head feels full of cotton wool, and any of the last shreds of his ability to stay awake are going out the window. He knows roughly what happened at lunch, but he has exhausted his ability to form intelligent sentences and can't remember what Sebastian and he were even discussing. "Are you okay, hon?" Kurt asks. He even gets up from behind his sewing machine to approach Blaine. He pulls his own desk chair around so it is by Blaine's, and Kurt swivels Blaine's chair so he is facing him. "Blaine? Are you even in there?" Blaine shakes his head. "Oh, god. Maybe you should just go home, hon. At least take a nap or something, if you plan on staying."
"I'm fine, just really confused... I'm just exhausted, I think, and all I did was talk to Sebastian for a bit."
"Do you think you can get any work done?"
"I don't know. Maybe I should go home." Kurt helps Blaine from his chair and moves him to the couch in their office, instructing him to lie down. He scrambles around his sewing machine for a bit, leaving his station so he can return to it the next day without screwing everything up.
"Okay, we're going now, Blaine. Can you get up?"
"Mm... I think so. Maybe a kiss would make it better..." Kurt leans down and brushes his lips to Blaine's softly, cautious about the PDA even in their office. He passes Blaine his bag and grabs his own, sliding on his coat quickly. Blaine had never taken his off. Blaine gets up from the couch, yawns slightly, and seems the tiniest bit better than he did before. Kurt slides his arm around Blaine's waist and leads him from the office.
"Blaine doesn't seem to be functioning as well this afternoon," Kurt explains to Ava as they pass by her station, "I'm going to take him home, and I'll just stay, unless I have something important happening?" Ava makes a few clicks on her computer.
"I think you two will be okay taking the afternoon off. Have fun, or something... have a nice weekend. Get well, Blaine, and I'll see you both on Monday."
"Thanks, Ava." Kurt replies, and leads Blaine to the elevator. When they get to Blaine's apartment Kurt is pleased to find that the door is unlocked, so he doesn't need to ask Blaine for the keys, unsure how dextrous Blaine would manage to be even just looking through his bag. Santana is on the couch, reading a magazine in her dance clothes.
"You're home early," she greets, before looking up from her pages, "Oh hey, Kurt. Do you want me to leave or..?"
"We aren't here to-" Kurt starts, feeling himself start to blush uncontrollably, "Blaine is just exhausted, I think, he isn't really functioning like a human being should. If he would actually say anything then I might be able to tell you if he's sick or not, but he won't, so I'm just going to put him to bed and stuff."
"Thanks, Kurt. I'll be heading out to the studio again in a bit, so just make yourself at home."
Kurt manages to get Blaine as far as his bedroom before he runs into any problems. "You know you're acting like a drunken toddler?" Kurt tells Blaine, unsure how much is actually being absorbed, "so what are you going to get changed into? Do you want to take a shower, or something?" Blaine just winds his arms around Kurt.
"Don't leave me," he whispers. Somehow, in the short walk from the offices to his apartment, he has managed to completely dissolve into his default position of sickness.
"I'm not going anywhere, baby," Kurt says, "but you aren't at full health, okay? So we're going to get you better. Have you been feeling like this all day?"
"Mmhmm... I just had to go to work today, Quinn needed to talk to me and I had to see you... and I had lunch with Bas..."
"You don't have to come to work every day in order to see me, you know?" Kurt says. Blaine makes a noise that resembles agreement into Kurt's shoulder. "So are you going to take a shower?" Blaine eventually drops his arms from around Kurt and allows himself to be led to the bathroom.
"Can we have bubbles in our bath?" Blaine asks, and Kurt nods, despite the weird way Blaine phrased it, looking in the cupboards and successfully finding a bottle of bubble bath. He runs the bath and turns to Blaine.
"Come here," Kurt instructs, and Blaine shuffles closer to him. Kurt continues to ask Blaine to move as he undresses him like a doll, because it has suddenly become clear that Blaine isn't going to do it himself. It's only once Blaine is left in his underwear that it occurs to Kurt that he is about to see his boyfriend naked for the first time. "Do you want me to leave while you get in, or..?"
"Kuuuurt," Blaine replies, "can't you just get in with me?" though Kurt blushes, he agrees, and undresses himself. When the bath is full he strips his last layer, trying his hardest not be self-conscious. He climbs in and looks up at Blaine.
"Aren't you getting in too? I ran this bath for you." Blaine finishes undressing and somehow manages to climb into the bath without any aid, sitting between Kurt's legs and leaning his back to Kurt's chest. Blaine sighs in contentment.
"Kurt," Blaine whispers, "we're naked." He begins to giggle, until Kurt is giggling too, mostly at how ridiculous Blaine is being.
"I know," Kurt says simply.
"You're so beautiful, Kurt, you should just be naked all the time."
"That's a little impractical, don't you think?" Blaine ponders this for a moment.
"Maybe. But it would be so worth it, Kurt." The bubbles disappear and the water gets increasingly colder, and Kurt tells Blaine that they have to get out now. He protests the thought of moving, but does get out and Kurt follows, passing Blaine a towel. He mentally apologises to Santana, because the only other towel there must be hers, as he wraps it around his waist. Kurt takes Blaine to his bedroom, where Blaine instantly climbs onto the bed.
"Aren't you going to get dressed?" Kurt asks. Blaine remains lying face down on the bed.
"Ijusfwansweep." He mumbles into the bed.
"Didn't catch that."
"I just wanna sleep." Blaine says, sitting up. Kurt sighs and pulls back the covers on Blaine's bed.
"At least dry off first, okay?" Blaine stands up and dries himself, the most dextrous thing he has managed to do all afternoon. Kurt takes the towel from him and dries his hair, which fluffs up in a way Kurt knows a functioning Blaine would be embarrassed about, but that Kurt kind of loves. Finally Blaine gets into the bed and looks up at Kurt.
"Thank you," Blaine says softly, with adoring eyes.
"You're welcome." Kurt says, and he leans down to kiss Blaine on the forehead.
"Kuuuurt," Blaine protests, and Kurt kisses his lips softly. Blaine smiles. "That's better. Are you going to stay, Kurt?"
"Of course. If you want me to." Blaine nods a little too enthusiastically. Kurt walks around the other side of the bed and dries off, and then slides in beside his boyfriend. He really has no reason to get dressed now either. Blaine instantly shuffles over and snuggles into Kurt's side.
"I love you." Blaine says, the first time since they had had the fight that had resulted in everything they had now.
"I love you too," Kurt replies, "go to sleep, baby." Soon Blaine is asleep, as he so clearly needed to be, and Kurt stays holding him.
A couple of hours later Kurt hears the front door open and close again, and the sound of Brittany and Santana coming in, chatting vibrantly. Santana explains to Brittany that Blaine had come home early and that she was going to check on him. Soon the door to Blaine's bedroom opens and Santana's gaze falls straight to the bed. "Well you two look... naked." She says. Kurt shushes her and beckons her over, and she sits on the edge of the bed.
"He has been asleep for a couple of hours now. He asked me to stay so I'm going to do that tonight, but I think he'll be okay by the morning. He isn't really sick, I don't think. I'm not entirely convinced that Sebastian didn't drug him at lunch time." Kurt explains.
"Have you just been here the whole time?"
"No, I got up to collect my clothes from the bathroom and then came back in here. I had my phone then, so I just sort of entertained myself."
"Do you want me to bring you anything?" Santana offers, "bear in mind that we're expecting people over for drinks as usual."
"While I'm naked in Blaine's bed."
"Yeah, about that..." Santana teases, "what went down between you? Or rather, what went up?"
"Nothing happened. We just took a bath together."
"You mean to tell me that you're still virgins?" Santana rolls her eyes, "no hand jobs? Nothing?"
"Nothing," Kurt affirms.
"You two are so boring." Santana says. She sighs dramatically and stands to leave the room. "You should probably get dressed in the next ten minutes or so." She advises.
Kurt wakes Blaine gently, and he eventually agrees to get dressed, though he isn't sure why he agrees to face the usual Friday night drinks party.