“Kurt!”

I roll over and bring the covers up to my chin. It's too early for consciousness and I was deep in a dream about David Bowie and I on an stimulating shopping excursion that involved various shades of leather and exotic feathers.

“Kurt!”

“No, Finn. Bowie needs me. We’re perfecting bondage chic,” I mummer into my pillow.

“Kurt, I need your help!”

“Fin, for the love of god,” I sigh. “You always bust up in here, I don’t even know how, with some crazy conspiracy theory that involves me making breakfast. And I know you don’t have legs, but god damn you have opposable thumbs-”

“Uh, Kurt-”

“And I know my crepes are delicious, “ I interrupt as I reluctantly roll over and ply my eyes open “But my god…”

It was Blaine. It’s Blaine sitting on the edge of my bed. 

“You are Blaine and so not Finn,” I hear myself say.

Blaine smiles sheepishly at me. I resist pulling the covers, now bunched in my lap, up and over my head. I haven’t moisturized yet, and I’m positive my pillow has left creases in me cheek- not to mention I have no idea what my chest is looking like having ignored it for the better half of my life. I find myself looking down at my stomach and sucking in slightly.

“’Kurt, I need your help” Blaine says with a defined grimace across his face. He is clearly in discomfort. My eyes instinctively travel down to his sleeping shorts before mentally slapping myself and snapping my eyes back to his.

“With?” I inquire.  But then I immediately regret it, for Blaine has hoisted his leg up onto the bed and is wigging his foot before me. Flat dab in the middle of his foot is a nail embedded in the skin like it’s supposed to be there, growing out of the center like some parasite. A good inch of it is missing in his foot. I gag dramatically.

“Get it away!” I yelp, wrenching my face away from his foot.

“Get it out!” He whines and scoots his foot closer to me.  I wiggle away, bringing the covers over my head and curl up in the fetal position.

“Kurt, get it out!”

“You get it out!” I yell back, tucking my legs closer to my knees. “You got it in there, you can get it out!”

“But it’s stuck!” He yells back as he tries to pry the covers from my fingers. “Please! Ouch! Kurt! AH!”

Now he’s just being dramatic. I pause momentarily to take this situation out of context. I smile into my pillow as  Blaine continues to try and rip the covers off my head. This was fun, despite Blaine’s flesh wound;. Him playfully tugging at me, me playfully resisting. Sigh.

Blaine is now climbing on top of me as to reach the covers resting over my head. This throws me off, him almost flush against my back, and for one fleeting moment I think about turning around and catching his lips with mine. Instead, he has flipped me over and off the bed- me landing with an astounding THUMP on the hard floor. Blaine, triumphant on top of my bed, simply makes eye contact with me as I evaluate the damage (none) and raise my eyes to his. I’m sitting in a nest of blankets,  feathers from my pillow snowing down around me, hair disheveled, shirt missing, and obviously out of my element. We look at each other for another moment before Blaine’s smile cracks through and he snorts out laughter. I pluck a feather out of my hair and throw it at him in retaliation. It simply drifts down softly to my lap. This only encourages his laughter, him having to put down a supporting hand on the bed as he leans back and laughs up to the fluorescents.

This laughter continues and only escalates as he brings he knees on the bed, careful to keep his foot pressure free, but laughing freely all the same. His laughing stops abruptly, however, when my pillow makes contact with his face. The pillow ends his laughter in a short “hmpf” and now I’m laughing.

I stand up, armed with a pillow, and heaving hard.  Blaine seems to have the same idea, for now we’re at a stand off. Yet, somewhere between bringing his pillow back to launch at me and me mirroring his action, something strange happens. Blaine is hesitating, and I’m hesitating at his hesitating. His eyes seemed to have traveled slowly down to my exposed chest. I follow his eyes down to my naval and notice my shorts have slipped lower on my hips. I start to blush rapidly and bring my hands up to my cheeks as to blot out the color, but he doesn't seem to notice. He continues to look at me with a unfocused look on his face until we both jump at the sound of our front door opening.

“Kurt!”

  Blaine and I make brief eye contact. I pray my blush has subsided for Blaine seems to be studying my face .

“Yes?” I answer in something smaller than a whisper. “Yes?” I try again.

“Listen,” Finn wheels himself into my room. “There’s a mass alien invasion and they want either the death and destruction of the human race or Kurt style crepes. So what will it be?”

Finn seems to be oblivious to the situation at hand. He looks from me to Blaine and back again before exclaiming shrilly : “Dear God, what is in your foot?”

Blaine blinks a few times before turning his attention to Finn.

“I was putting together my desk and somehow ended up dancing all over the pail of nails,” Blaine explains, sitting on the edge of my bed and extending his foot forward. “This one took to me, I suppose.”

Finn has about the same reaction as I did. He’s mimicking vomiting into his own lap. This is perplexing considering Finn has been in war, but he can’t handle  a nail in a foot.

“Man, you’re worse off than me and I don’t even have any fucking feet,” Finn  laughs. “Get that shit away from my face.”

Blaine groans and lays flat on my bed.

“Well I’ve lost my appetite,” Finn says flatly, wheeling himself out of my room and heading straight for the door.

The door closes and I’m left hot-faced and sweating with Blaine on my bed staring at the ceiling fan.  To lessen the tension, I grab a shirt from my closet. Maybe if I’m clothed we can face the situation at hand: Blaine’s impending tetanus shot.

I grab my desk chair and sit myself in front of Blaine, patting his leg to elevate his foot onto my knee. Blaine does so without retaliation but drags his previously discarded pillow over his head.

“Make it fast,” he moans.

I consider what he says for a moment, but believe me, there is no fast way of doing this. It’ll probably be another 30 minutes before I warm my way over to his foot.

I stare at it. It stares right back, that sturdy nail just taunting me in everyway possible. I gulp. Blaine is starting to sit up on his forearms and crane his neck at me.

“Am I going to die?”

“Probably.” I observe. How to go about doing this? Just grab and pull? Wiggle it’s way free?

“Kurt,” Blaine says softly.

I glance up at him, taking aback by the gentleness in his voice.

“if you can’t get it out, I give you permission to cut it off,” He smirks. I roll my eyes at him and make a brash movement to his foot. He flinches dramatically and clenches to the bed sheets.  I hesitate briefly before sucking in a deep breath, closing my eyes, and grabbing the head of the nail and yanking.

“JESUS FUCKING CHRIST,” Blaine is yelling as my chair tilts backward from the momentum. For a moment I’m grabbing at air until my weight tips me over and the chair tumbles back. When I land I have one hand, still clasping Blaine’s nail, raised high in the air triumphantly. 

Blaine is now coughing between laughter and discomfort, both wiping tears from his eyes and kneading a stitch in his side.

“I don’t think anyone makes me laugh like you do,” He manages to get out. “I can tell this is ganna be good.”

For the first time, I’m confused as to what “this’ is.