Communal laundry room.

Those three words strung together make Kurt’s skin crawl.

He may be a little “high maintenance” when it comes to certain things, but he doesn’t consider himself a snob. However, there are two spaces he hates sharing (with people he doesn’t know) more than anything in the world – bathrooms and laundry rooms. Too much personal, intimate stuff happens in those two rooms, much of which surrounds underwear, so he’d rather not get too many strangers involved.

Rachel told him to look on the bright side. She said using the communal laundry room would be a prime opportunity to meet real, salt of the earth people, whose gritty milieux the two of them could borrow from to keep their performances authentic and relatable.

However, that logic flew the coop the moment Rachel found some sycophant willing to help her sneak her laundry into the NYADA dorms. Not much “gritty” milieu over there. Rachel said that she could get Kurt in, too, but he decided to pass. He doesn’t want to lug his unmentionables onto three trains and a bus just to wash them when the laundry room in their building is three floors down. (Honestly, given his options, some days he’d rather go without.) As for meeting new people, so far he’s had a less than stellar run-in with the crusty hippie from 4C, who Kurt suspects stopped bathing two decades ago; and the uptight older woman in 5E who keeps accusing him of putting too much starch in the dryer. She claims that since he’s moved in, all her clothes have become stiff and scratchy. He’s told her numerous times that he doesn’t use starch in his clothes, but she insists that she knows it’s him - something about his shifty eyes and retractable teeth.

That’s milieu enough for him.

He’s tried to avoid confrontation by dumping his laundry into the machine and just going back to his place, then returning forty-five minutes later when everything is done, but he discovered that that’s a good way to get his clothes stolen. So he carves out time to do his laundry when he knows crusty hippie and uptight lady don’t normally do theirs, bringing a book and a folding chair with him so he can stay and babysit the machine.

It’s a rare Saturday evening when the laundry room isn’t packed full of people, but seeing as it’s a week away from Christmas, the whole building (a squat, recently renovated, red-brick tenement, only six floors total) has been uncharacteristically quiet since the 8th of December. Aside from his load currently running, most of the machines are taken - by who, Kurt doesn’t know. But in the hour he’s been there, they haven’t returned. As long as he can get his whites done before his shift at the diner, he doesn’t really care. Halfway through his first rinse cycle, he hears footsteps shuffle down the staircase to the basement. Oh well. His solitude has come to an end. Kurt turns the page, wondering which tenant he’ll have the dubious honor of meeting today.

Kurt doesn’t remember ever having seen the man who emerges from the stairwell before. This man Kurt would definitely remember. Whoa boy, would he remember. Barefoot and shirtless, muscular and trim, with curly dark hair and a scruffy three-day shadow on his jawline, the man dressed only in grey sweats and carrying a white plastic basket of laundry nods at Kurt when he enters the room.

“Hey,” the man says.

From behind his book, reading over the same three sentences half a dozen times, Kurt sits up straighter. He tries to sound more chill than he feels when he answers back with, “Hey.”

The man goes from machine to machine, searching for an unoccupied one. “Busy in here today?”

“You can say that. There’s only one machine open.” Kurt motions with his chin. The man follows the gesture and locates the vacant machine. He scrunches his nose, that one subtle motion transforming his whole face from rugged to cute.

“It’s not the one that smells like ketchup, is it?”

“No.” Kurt had honestly checked. “No, it’s not.”

“Great,” the man says, claiming it quickly before someone races down there and beats him to it. Kurt can’t blame him. It happens. “Because I already work at a diner. I don’t need to smell like one.”

“What a coincidence. I also work at a diner,” Kurt mentions without thinking.

“I think that about 78% of the people living in this building work in the food service industry.”

78%? Really? Not 75%? Kurt thinks, jokingly judging the man’s illogical percentage usage. “Must be why the hallways always smell like bacon grease.”

The man laughs. It’s not fake; it’s not forced. And Kurt smiles. This is the most at ease Kurt has felt down here since he’s moved in. Kurt has run into a fair amount of the tenants in the few months he’s been here. Most of them keep to themselves, but they all have something about them to the extreme – extremely angry, extremely depressed, extremely outgoing, extremely withdrawn. Even Kurt can be described as extreme - extremely detached. He doesn’t usually start conversation. He likes to keep his distance here. That’s not a phenomenon of this apartment building. NYADA is full of extremes that tend to exhaust him – extreme drama, extreme competition, extreme cliques, and extreme clichés. What appeals to Kurt most about this man is how normal he seems. How regular. He’s just a guy (a shirtless guy) doing his laundry, recently bathed (Kurt assumes from the way his curly hair glistens slightly beneath the string of Edison bulbs overhead), holding no apparent grudges regarding starch that Kurt can tell.

“Well, don’t keep me in suspense,” the man says, dropping his laundry piece by piece into the machine. “Which diner are you slinging hash at?”

“The Spotlight Diner. Have you heard of it?”

The man makes an impressed face. “Yeah, I’ve heard of it. Fancy. Plus, they make you sing. Must be why they feel they can charge $7.50 for a basket of onion rings when we charge $4.99 ...” He finishes under his breath, followed by a cough to sweep that comment under the rug.

Kurt grins wide. He has no product loyalty. He agrees the prices are outrageous … but he’s not going to admit that. “Must be.”

“I work at Metro,” the man adds.

“Ooo … mmm,” Kurt hisses with feigned distress, “that’s, like, down the block from Spotlight.”

“Yup.” The man pulls a beat up box of laundry detergent from his basket, dumps an indeterminate amount of powder in with his clothes, then shuts the lid. “So we must forever be rivals then.”

“It definitely seems so. Which is a shame since I hear you guys have the best cheesecake in town.”

“Oh yeah” - The man cranks the dials to cold and permanent press without even checking the settings - “absolutely. You’ve tried it?”

“No,” Kurt admits, “but I’ve looked up your menu on the Internet. It helps that it says it right on the menu.”

“Yup. Otherwise, how would you know?” the man quips with crossed arms and a conciliatory smirk. “I mean, it’s not like anyone ever orders it or anything.”

“Of course not.”

“And I hear you guys have some killer pineapple milkshakes.”

“We do,” Kurt agrees.

“God” – the man sighs, leaning against his machine – “I haven’t had a decent milkshake in ages.”

Kurt raises an eyebrow. “Don’t they serve milkshakes at Metro?”

“Yeah, but not good ones. I mean, we have the cheesecake thing going for us. Why do we have to worry about the milkshakes?”

“That makes sense.” Kurt chuckles, and the man’s eyes brighten, his jocular expression smoothing into a warmer, more relaxed smile. It seems to Kurt that maybe he was prepared for some sort of unpleasant confrontation when he came down to do his laundry, too. It’s nice to find someone to commiserate with who doesn’t try to one-up him all the time … not that Kurt has anyone in particular in mind.

“Hey, maybe we can figure out some sort of behind the scenes trade off,” the man suggests. “Kind of a Romeo and Juliet deal.”

“Sounds like a plan,” Kurt says, crossing his legs and leaning forward with interest. “We can do the switch in the back alley. You know, under the cover of darkness.”

“Way to be authentic,” the man says, nibbling his lower lip like he’s chewing on an idea. “Or you could always stop by my place? I’m in the 3G.”

Kurt’s pink cheeks fight to keep from becoming full on red. “I can do that.”

“Great. So, do you have a name, or do I get to call you Romeo? You know, as part of the code.” The man puts a finger to the side of his nose and winks.

“I’m Kurt,” Kurt says, standing and extending a hand to his ridiculously adorable neighbor in 3G. “Kurt Hummel. I’m in 2F.”

“Blaine. Blaine Anderson.”

“Hello, Blaine.”

“Hello, Kurt.” Blaine looks at him a moment longer, small smile lifting the corners of his mouth, but then the machine behind them begins to agitate, and he seems to recall that there are other things he needs to do today. “Well, I’m sorry to plot and run, but I have to get ready for work. That’s my uniform in there.”

“Yeah. I should be heading out myself soon, too. I’m just waiting for the spin cycle.”

Blaine nods, then his face goes blank. “Oh, crap.”

“Oh, crap,” Kurt repeats, frightened that this normal appearing, charming young man suddenly remembered that he actually has a boyfriend or something. “Crap, what?”

“I just remembered,” he says, and Kurt’s heart skips. Kurt is right. Oh, crap. “I’m really sorry for this. You can turn away if you want to.”

“Turn away---what?” Kurt is prepared to tell Blaine that it’s okay, that he knew all along that they were just talking about desserts and not actually flirting, but without giving it another thought, Blaine slips off his sweats and his briefs. Buck naked and without a care about it, he takes them to his machine and tosses them in with the rest of the laundry. The lid slips out of his hand, landing with a loud clang, which is fine by Kurt since it masks the sound of his book falling out of his hands and on to the floor. “Oops,” Blaine says. “Sorry for the loud. I know it kind of echoes. See you tonight.” With a smile and a wave, Blaine strolls out of the laundry room and up the stairs, leaving in all of his tight tan skin and muscular glory.

Now that’s the kind of milieu that Kurt can get behind. And maybe with some luck and a few milkshakes, he might just.

Slowly (to alleviate a sudden throbbing below his belt), Kurt sits back down. He considers picking up his book again, but how can he after that? He’s been locked in the midst of a suspenseful murder mystery for the past hour. He doesn’t need that angst wiping away the impression that Blaine just left behind. Maybe Kurt will never find out if Nick Dunne really did murder his wife, but one thing’s for sure - using a communal laundry room may have its perks after all.