A headache has nagged Kurt since mid-morning, and it's grown too hot in his bedroom this afternoon. He's closed the air conditioning vents and opened his window to release the glue smells, but there's little relief in the feeble breeze limping in. Kurt reaches for the glass of soda on his nightstand. Condensation on its surface has warmed to rivulets of water; he takes care not to drip on his bedspread. Upon the bed are two swatches of fabric he hasn't yet decided between. He looks at them and takes a mouthful of drink. It's gone tepid and syrupy. He makes a face and sets it aside.

Kurt shoves his damp hands through his drooping hair, pushing it back off his forehead. His hands come away sticky with hairspray, so he wipes them off on the front of his t-shirt, and he tries to think over the pulse bludgeoning the inside of his skull.

The two swatches are his primary candidates for upholstering both the mattress in the pop-up and the fold-out bench seat. There's the one Kurt likes best, that draws his eye: a retro modern geometric print of interlocking white squares on a navy field. And then there's the one he thinks Finn may prefer: a more conservative and simple navy blue chenille. His basic palette is navy blue, ivory, and amber, with some (mostly faux due to weight considerations) natural finishes as accents: metal, wood, and stone. The goal is to calm the bright orange into something less flamboyant. So far, Finn's liked the individual elements Kurt's shown him, but Kurt has yet to present the entire concept.

Thus, today he's assembling a design board of samples and paint chips and swatches, along with inspirational magazine clippings, and his own sketches and computer renderings. He's optimistic. He'll present it to Finn tonight, and Kurt hopes Finn will give him a green light. It's taken Kurt all the long weeks Puck and Finn have been doing the bodywork to pull it together. He's aimed for something understated, traditional, masculine, and elegant. Nothing too kitschy or too bold. He's relying on the finer details, richness of texture and quality, to make it special. He hopes it's special.

The bench seat dominates the living area, so the fabric has to be the right one. Kurt rubs the tension at the base of his skull and lowers himself to the floor. He leans back against the edge of his mattress. The incomplete design board lies on the floor beside him with his hot glue gun. He looks at what he's got so far, but he's been staring at all the components for so long, he's having a hard time telling if he even likes it anymore. His fingertips wander to the fabric swatches for the throw pillows. They're still his favorite part, the chamois-soft microsuede in burnt orange and the shaggy vanilla faux fleece.

Kurt tips his head back as he squeezes the back of his neck. His mouth is feeling gummy and saccharine stale after all the soda he's drunk this morning. He needs a break.

#

Downstairs is blessedly cool and quiet; no one else is home. In the kitchen, Kurt pours himself a large glass of ice water and grabs a couple of nectarines from the fruit bowl on the island. They're from a local orchard, tree-ripened, so the flesh is the perfect texture, firm and yielding. Kurt eats them over the sink with the sweet juices running from his hands down to drip from his elbows.

After Kurt's washed the stickiness from his arms, he takes his glass of water to the living room and slumps down on the sofa. The push of cold dry air from the vent above him ruffles his hair and cools his skin. Kurt sighs his contentment. The acid of the fruit has the water tasting sour upon his tongue, but he drinks it all anyway and lets himself sink into the sofa cushions, enjoys the cool, dim silence.

His head's still throbbing, though with less ferocity. He can feel the tension loosening at his temples as he fishes his phone from his pocket and checks it for messages. There're a few texts from Blaine, but nothing more significant than sweet notes and updates on his day.

Blaine's been on a weird shift schedule at Six Flags, working most evenings and the weekends, so they haven't seen each other much since Blaine began his summer gig there. Blaine has several weekday mornings and afternoons off, but Kurt doesn't. He'll have to ask his Dad for some more flexibility with his garage schedule.

Kurt sends a few texts back: humorously melodramatic tales of his sore head, a report on his present fabric conundrum, and his general state of missing Blaine and hope for some quality time soon. He sits for a while longer, letting his imagination flip between the two fabric options. As much as he loves the print, he suspects it'll be too much for Finn.

He goes back upstairs and decisively glues the chenille to the board next to the photo of the sofa that's inspired him. Then, after just a moment's hesitation, he adds the geometric print to the collage of accent materials.

#

Finn returns early from his date with Rachel, just after nine. If the sullen set to his jaw is anything Kurt's learned to read, it didn't go well. Which isn't good news for Kurt, because he knows he can't just shove the design board under Finn's nose while he's stewing over whatever went wrong with Rachel. With his work ready to present to Finn, Kurt's increasingly impatient with the desire for him to see it. Until he has Finn's approval, he can't move forward. Kurt's certain Finn will like what he's done. He just needs to hear it. So he's got to improve Finn's mood.

As he puts together a tray of Finn's favorite snacks, Kurt feels only a small pang of guilt. It's not entirely self-serving to cheer up Finn; he doesn't like to see his stepbrother upset. Even though there's a limit to what Kurt can reasonably do for him—Rachel's his friend too—Kurt feels obliged to try. Twinkies, Lay's barbecue potato chips, and Mountain Dew had better work.

Kurt finds Finn outside on the patio in the deepening dark. The last ember glow of sunset fades from the sky above, retreating behind them. A warm easterly breeze has picked up, whispering through the trees and bringing the soapy sweet scent of jasmine from over the back fence. Kurt sets the tray down upon the squat end-table next to Finn. Then he gets the long-neck lighter from the cupboard under the grill and lights the citronella candles. "Hey," he says as he picks up one of the metal chairs from around the dining table. He carries it closer to where Finn's reclined on the chaise longue. Then he picks up a Twinkie from the tray and tosses it toward Finn, who catches it without even looking up.

"Hey," Finn replies without enthusiasm. He unwraps the Twinkie and bites it in half.

Kurt waits for him to swallow. "Qu'est-ce qui se passe?" he asks and hopes Finn remembers that one.

But Finn doesn't smile like he usually does. Just makes a soft grunt and twitches an incomplete shrug.

"That bad?" Kurt asks. "What happened?"

A heavy sigh and Finn rolls his gaze toward Kurt without moving his head. "You're lucky you don't date girls."

Kurt frowns. In his experience, girls are perfectly good company. Once sexual interest is a factor though, Kurt knows that complicates things, and Rachel can be trying on her best day. He's pretty sure it's not actually a girl thing. "Well, um, have you tried talking to her... about whatever it is?"

"Talking?" Finn says. "She wouldn't stop talking. More like yelling. But yeah, no, I couldn't get a word in."

Kurt passes Finn another Twinkie and reminds himself to blink. In the silence between them, a frog begins to croak nearby. "Would talking to me help?" he asks.

Finn turns his head to look at Kurt directly, and he doesn't unwrap the Twinkie immediately. "Maybe?" Finn says. "Except, you're like friends with her, so..." Finn frowns.

"Which means I may have some insight," Kurt says, smiling with more assurance than he feels. "I won't break your confidence, Finn, or pick sides, but I can at least listen, right?"

"I guess." Finn reaches for a soda and pops the can with a hiss. He takes a long swallow and says, "I ripped her bra."

"Oh..." Kurt says. "Um?"

Finn's eyes go wide. "No, dude, not like— I wasn't being rough or anything."

"Okay," Kurt says, and he hopes this isn't going to head into the realm of far too much information.

"We were just, you know..." Finn lowers his voice. "...fooling around and I had my hand on her boob, and I caught my fingernail in the lace, and I tore it. She totally freaked out."

"Was it the lavender and red one?"

It's Finn's turn to be bewildered. "How do you know that?"

"I was with her when she bought it," Kurt explains, and he knows why Rachel was angry. "It was very expensive."

"That's what she said! Like twenty times. She just wouldn't stop, and it's not like I did it on purpose, but she sure acted like I did. There was nothing I could do or say to calm her down. She just kept getting madder."

"Did you..." Kurt ventures carefully. "... offer to replace it?"

Finn blinks at him. "No."

"Um, maybe try that?" Kurt says. "It may help."

"But it was an accident!"

"Doesn't matter," Kurt says. "It's a gesture of good will and it shows her you care."

Finn makes an odd face.

"You do care about her, right?"

"Of course I do, but, I mean, it's just underwear."

"Expensive and fancy underwear that she chose very carefully, in part, to be seen and appreciated by you."

"But I don't care if she wears fancy underwear," Finn says. "I'm interested in her, not her bra."

Kurt sighs. "Not entirely the point, Finn."

Finn's quiet for a while then. He reaches for the bowl of chips and munches on a few thoughtfully. Then he nods to himself and asks, "Would you help me find a replacement? Maybe I could surprise her with it?"

Bra shopping with Finn sounds like a comically strange endeavor, but if Kurt doesn't offer his assistance, Finn's less likely to do it. "A surprise sounds like a nice idea," Kurt says with an encouraging smile. "Sure."

"Bueno!" Finn says, smiles. "Thanks, little brother."

#

It's been at least three full minutes that Finn's been standing by Kurt's bed looking at the design board. He hasn't said anything yet. He's just shifting his weight from foot to foot, tilting his head, and squinting at the board. Next to him, Kurt's got his hands clasped tightly, twisting his interlocked fingers together and biting his lip to keep silent. As the second hand sweeps around the clock on his desk, his insides jitter more and more.

When it ticks past twelve a fourth time, Kurt can't contain himself. "Say something," he says. "Please?"

"Um," Finn says.

"Finn," Kurt says. "Just tell me what you think."

"I'm sorry," Finn says slowly. "But it's just not..."

"What?" The clock keeps ticking and Kurt's abruptly too hot and dizzy in entirely the wrong way. "It's not what?"

"I don't know," Finn says, and he gives Kurt a nervous look. "But I, I don't like it."

"You don't like it?" Kurt repeats. It doesn't make sense. He tried so hard to make sure Finn, most of all, would like it. "But... you liked everything I showed you. Everything."

"Well, yeah," Finn says unhelpfully.

"I don't understand," Kurt says, feels the rush of blood sweeping his headache back up to strength. The momentum of growing indignation pushes out the next words, caustic and accusatory: "Were you lying to me?"

"What? Dude, no!" Finn's speaking louder now, too. Petulant and defensive. "I liked what you showed me, but seeing it together like this, it's, like, all grown-up and boring."

Kurt clenches his teeth and tips his head back to look up at his ceiling. The light fixture casts a rumpled starburst shape across the plaster. He makes himself take a deep breath. "It's not grown-up and boring. It's understated and classic."

"Whatever," Finn says. "I don't like it, Kurt."

"Whatever?" Kurt asks. "Are you kidding me? Do you know how hard I worked on this? For you?"

"You said you wanted me to be honest!"

"And you couldn't have been a little more honest sooner? Before I'd got this far? If I have to start over, Finn? God, it's going to take so much more time."

"I told you I was being honest!" Finn says. "Don't call me a liar just because I didn't imagine how it was going to all look together."

"You didn't imagine? You were supposed to imagine it! That was the whole damned point of me showing things to you. You were supposed to imagine them together and tell me what you thought, not just smile and nod to humor me."

"Jeez, Kurt, you're as bad as Rachel. I should've just let her yell at me some more."

"Don't you dare," Kurt says, holding up a hand, fingers extended; he can feel the tears, springing up hot behind his eyes. "I am not—" He steps back and takes a steadying breath. "The design is traditional and masculine, Finn. I didn't do anything fancy." Kurt's surprised at the bitterness of his own words, and the way his voice gives out over the last syllable. The pressure of his headache has grown into his chest, and his vision blurs and burns.

And Finn just stands there, in Kurt's bedroom, staring at him like some big dumb lump.

Kurt can't be there for a second longer. This is his space, his home, but it's Finn's now too, and Kurt cannot be there. He snatches his satchel from his desk chair and pivots on his heel to leave. "Tell Dad I'll be at the garage." It's one place he's allowed to be after curfew.

#

The drive calms him. Alone in his car, the hushed white noise purr of his car's engine has always been a kind of solace. The hiss of the tires on the road, the vibrations of the steering wheel. He blinks a scatter of tears from his eyes as he pulls in behind the garage. He doesn't get out immediately, just keys off the engine and sits. Eliza rests, a polished steel skeleton, in the wash of pale light from the security floods.

With a sigh, Kurt undoes his seat belt and opens the door. He doesn't bother locking the car. Strange that he's nervous as he approaches Eliza. With his hands in his pockets and shoulders hunched, he's wary, as if she too will judge him lacking. She's silent and sightless, as if she's keeping secrets. But Kurt's not superstitious, not really. Except Blaine was right: naming her changed her. Or Kurt's sense of her. She's no longer just a stripped down empty hulk, but a living machine waiting for renewal. It's fanciful and nothing he truly believes, but it is like she has a spirit; he can feel it in the memory of her as she came apart beneath his hands.

He can recall every difficult bolt and stripped screw, every perished piece of rubber and cracked plastic part he marked for replacement. His hand trails over her burnished silver surface, lingers with tenderness on the duller patches where she's had her rust repaired. Even without her engine, wheels, or headlights, he feels her. He was going to make her beautiful again.

And he's spent so much time inside her now, not only physically, but in his mind, imagining her with the finishes and details he's chosen: glossy painted cabinetry with recessed oval panels, the galvanized steel veneer for the counters, the wallpaper that looked so much like wood paneling you couldn't tell it wasn't without touching it. There were the hammered bronze upholstery nails to detail the edges of the bench seat (If he closes his eyes, he can feel the line of them bump beneath his fingers), the marble textured shades for the wall mounted lamps that would cast such a gentle light, and the flexible slate-look vinyl tiles. Everything was light weight, durable, and easy to clean.

But now he has to let that vision fade. He won't be realizing any of it. Whether Finn will even still want his input on the interior, Kurt can't guess. He sniffs and wipes beneath his eye with the edge of his wrist. He doesn't want to cry over this.

Kurt sets his bag at his feet and sits at the edge of her side door opening. Her metal bones are hard and warm beneath his backside. His fingers curl over her bare sandblasted surface. She'll be painted this week, bright and shiny orange like the candy-coating on an M&M.

It's stupid that he'd hoped for a better outcome; he shouldn't be surprised that Finn remains too much of a philistine to appreciate Kurt's work. The cowboy theme would have got a better reception. It's just that he thought he and Finn were through this, and had been for some time now. But he fears they've returned to a place Kurt doesn't wish to revisit. They're family now; he doesn't like feeling so alien again.

From his satchel, his phone chimes with a new text message. With some trepidation, Kurt leans over and fishes it out of the front pocket. If it's Finn, it had better be some kind of olive branch. He's afraid to look, but he doesn't let his gaze flinch from the screen as he taps through to his new messages.

It's from Blaine. Relief and affection displace some of the tension and sadness. Blaine's text reads, "Finally off work. Such a long day! I missed you. <3 Quid agis, amate?"

'What's up, beloved?' Kurt smiles involuntarily; he knows that one. As far as he can tell it's pretty hard to flirt in Latin, but ever since his attempts with French, Blaine reciprocates in small ways. "Long day here too," Kurt types. " He pauses, sighs, and types more, "Finn didn't like the design." The words sit static and irrefutable on his screen waiting for him to punch 'send'. Finn didn't like it. Kurt's head feels five pound heavier, and his heart too. He sends the text.

It's a few minutes before his phone announces Blaine's reply. Kurt imagines he's gathering his things to go home, or walking across the parking lot. "Really? Did he say why?"

"Not really. I don't think he has the vocabulary," Kurt types.

"I'm sorry."

"Me too."

"Are you @ home?"

"Garage. Needed some space."

Another delay stretches out before Kurt gets a response. "R U OK?" (Blaine must have his hands full to resort to that.)

"I hope you're not texting and driving."

"No. Sorry. :P Let me try again. Are you okay, Kurt?"

Kurt shrugs as he types back, "Disappointed more than anything & I don't want to go home."

"Hang on," Blaine texts. "I have to drive now. Pretend I'm hugging you. I love you."

"Love you too."

A half hour or more passes. Kurt's Dad calls to check on him. Kurt says he's fine; he just wanted to look at the camper again after Finn vetoed his first design. Kurt leans against the edge of the opening and closes his eyes. Maybe he can still do something with plaid fabric and melamine veneers. Seventies inspired. Avocado green and mustard yellow to go with the orange. Cocoa brown accents and shag carpets. It seems a bit tacky to him, but maybe Finn will like it better. Or maybe he should stop thinking about it altogether. He opens his eyes.

The ginger cat who lives nearby and sometimes hangs around the garage has turned up out of the night. Kurt watches him pace warily across the asphalt, tail low and ears swiveled back. Kurt extends a hand, but the cat doesn't approach him. Apparently having a human here at the wrong time is a disruption to routine. The cat stalks about Eliza, sniffing the edges of her, before jumping up and in through the windscreen. Kurt leans back to watch the cat explore the empty space inside; his paws make muffled thumps across the metal floor and his long tail twitches. "I'm sorry I don't have anything for you," he says. The cat ignores him.

"I hope it doesn't still smell like a dog," he says as the cat rubs his face against the open driver side space. His eyes meet Kurt's, curious and celadon green in the slanting blade of light. "I wish I knew your name," Kurt says. He offers his hand again, and the cat comes over to sniff; his whiskers tickle the back of Kurt's knuckles. And then the cat is off again, down to explore the rear of Eliza.

"Tiger?" Kurt tries.

No reaction.

"Stripes? Or... Tigger?

"How about Morris? Garfield? Tom?"

Nothing.

"Sylvester? Scratchy? Felix?"

The cat sits down in a shadowed corner and begins washing his face.

"Of course your name wouldn't be anything so common. Beauregard? Fortinbras? Jean-Pierre?

"Ramses? Mozart? Aristotle?

"Le Chat? El Gato?"

Still nothing.

"Hmm," Kurt says. "You seem to like Eliza. How about Henry Higgins?"

The cat puts down his paw and looks at Kurt again.

"Okay, then, we'll go with that."

The growl of a car engine draws closer, and Henry Higgins' ears prick and his eyes widen. Kurt leans forward and looks out to see Blaine's car pulling in beside his. Kurt smiles and straightens his back. The bare metal is starting to make his backside go numb, so he stands as Blaine shuts his car door with a chunk and walks over. He waves. "Hi," Blaine says. The cat hops down from Eliza and stands next to Kurt. His tail brushes the back of Kurt's bare calf.

"Hi," Kurt says. "I wasn't expecting you." He brings a hand to his hair; it's well mangled. Sweating through hairspray has left it in a stubbornly tousled mockery of his usual style. "Did you come straight here?" Blaine looks freshly showered and shaved; his hair is smoothly combed, and he smells of shampoo and soap. He's in a red polo, dark cuffed jeans, and his boat shoes. Kurt feels disheveled and overexposed in his faded 'Hummel Tires & Lube' t-shirt, Madras shorts, and last year's canvas slip-ons. He jams his hands in his pockets so he doesn't keep fussing self-consciously with his hair.

"Yeah," Blaine says, his gaze is warm as he reaches out to run his hand down Kurt's arm. "I missed you, and you sounded unhappy in your texts."

"Mmm," Kurt says.

"Who's this?" Blaine asks as he crouches down in front of the cat.

"I think we've agreed that Henry Higgins is an acceptable form of address," Kurt says. "He lives nearby."

"Just you wait, 'enry 'iggins," Blaine says in a truly terrible cockney accent that makes Kurt laugh. Henry Higgins approaches Blaine's outstretched hand and deigns to have his ears rubbed.

"I think he likes you."

"So," Blaine says, peering up at Kurt with a note of flirtatious wheedling in his voice. "I thought I would come here, and invite you out for an ice cream."

"At eleven o'clock on a weeknight?"

"You have something else you're meant to be doing at eleven on a weeknight? I know for a fact you don't have homework and there's a parlor still open here in Lima. I did my research."

"I'm not meant to be anywhere but here or home after eleven, but I'd love to," Kurt says; he slips his phone from his pocket and thumbs across the screen of his phone to wake it. "I'll have to ask my Dad."