“Did you get it? Did you get it? Did you get it? Did you get it?”

“Hold on, Blaine!” Kurt chuckles, switching his messenger bag strap and his phone to his left shoulder in order to get his keys out of his right pants pocket. “I just got home! I’m not even inside yet!”

“Was there anything outside the door?” Blaine asks.

“No, but there wasn’t anything in the mailbox, either, so Rachel might have brought the mail in before she went to work. I told her after our last call that you would be sending me something so she knew to look out for it.”

“Well, tell me if you see a box anywhere when you get inside.”

“A box?” Kurt slides the loft door open and takes a quick look around. “You didn’t say anything about a box. How big a box are we talking about?”

“Not too big,” Blaine promises. “About the size of small moving box maybe?”

“I don’t see …” Kurt’s search stops in the kitchen. “Wait a minute ... yup, here it is, on the kitchen table.” Kurt looks over the box, plain and brown, with nothing printed on it that would give Kurt a clue as to what might be inside. “Please tell me this one’s not full of puppets like the last one.”

“Uh … no.” Background voices on Blaine’s end of the call become louder. Kurt distinctly hears Sam calling Blaine’s name, followed by Tina. “It’s just that … this is going to be our first weekend alone in the loft without Rachel and Santana, and I want to make the most of it,” Blaine says in a sudden rush. “I’ve gotta go. Math. I’ll see you tomorrow night. I love you.”

“I love you, too.” Kurt hears the sound of Sam trying to wrestle Blaine’s phone away, barking an order to turn over his phone in the name of the law a la Sean Connery, then the phone beeps off.

Kurt sets his phone down on the table. He examines the box briefly, then tears into the top, too excited to find out what’s inside to perform a more thorough examination. At the very top, Kurt sees a glossy red card printed with the picture of an iconic chair tipping sideways on the right hand side, and a champagne bottle popping and spraying gold confetti on the left. In black script in the center, the card reads, “Life is a cabaret, old chum! So add some spice to your life with our customized selection of exotic goodies and sensual delights! Come taste the wine! Come hear the band! Come blow that horn!” (with odd, bolded emphasis on the final three words).

“My, my, my,” Kurt mutters, his mind filling with thoughts of black pepper infused dark chocolates, rum-spiked ganache, maybe even a bottle of sparkling white wine. Oh, Mr. Anderson, Kurt muses, slipping the card underneath his phone to be scrapbooked later. What do you have in mind? The theme makes sense. Cabaret is definitely something Blaine would choose. It’s one of Blaine’s all-time favorite musicals. He’s wanted the opportunity to play The Emcee for as long as Kurt has known him. Plus, he told Kurt that he’s been dropping hints at home in the hopes that his mom will get him tickets to see it for his birthday when it comes back to Broadway in September.

Kurt starts rooting through the box. The inside is filled to overflowing with black and red crinkled paper packing strips - a ton of them. Almost enough to assume that whoever packed its contents doesn’t want just anyone to be able to tell what’s in here all that easily.

Kurt picks out an item from the box and discovers he may not be wrong.

The first thing he pulls out is a pair of padded leather handcuffs. Kurt scrunches his nose at them. Must be a gag gift, he thinks, and sets them aside. The next item he pulls out is some sort of halter top made entirely of chains. He can’t tell if it’s meant to be masculine or feminine. It looks unisex. It reminds him of the bondage wear he used to accessorize with during his sophomore year of high school.

He sets that alongside the cuffs.

Kurt sifts through the rest of the contents, picking items out as he comes across them, his eyes growing wider with each one – chocolate flavored lube (he gives it a quick taste – it’s really good); an Aneros prostate massager; a pair of silky, black, boy cut briefs; Ben Wa balls; anal beads; a Do Not Disturb sign with a drawing on it that’s anything but subtle - wondering how in the world his charming, dapper little Blaine came up with this? When did he go from scheduling make-out sessions and singing Katy Perry pop songs to this?

Kurt fishes out the last item in the box - a blue, squishy, gel-filled dildo. A small sticker adhered to the outside says Refrigerate for best results.

Kurt suddenly feels like he should start softly singing “Sunrise, Sunset”.

“Oh my,” Kurt whispers under his breath, cheeks starting to glow. “This is going to be one hell of a weekend.”

***

The following evening …

It’s eight-thirty.

Kurt’s been checking the time on his phone obsessively for the past hour-and-a-half. Blaine texted when his plane landed at seven, and owing to time, traffic, and distance, he should be there any second.

Kurt can’t wait. He went all out for Blaine’s Cabaret themed weekend, completely re-decorating his corner of the loft to give it a seedy nightclub feel … but with class. He made a huge Kit Kat Klub sign out of cardboard, covered it in an obscene amount of silver glitter, and hung it over the head of his bed. He borrowed a miniature disco ball from Elliott and dangled it from the ceiling. He almost broke his neck getting it up there, but he was committed to the decor. He placed a sheet of silver lamé over his black, pinstripe comforter. He put a red bulb in his bedside lamp, and covered the rest of the lamps in sheer red, silver, and gold fabric. He switched out his white privacy curtain for one made of tinsel. He laid a trail of holographic confetti and red rose petals leading from the front door to his room. The finished product is a little messy, but it works. He displayed some of the more playful items – the leather cuffs, the Ben Wa balls, and the chocolate lube – on a separate skull print scarf at the end of the bed. He wanted to contrast the decadence of youth against the dismal political atmosphere of the time period. (If Blaine doesn’t catch the reference, Kurt will fill him in later.) And to set the mood, he has the soundtrack from the musical queued up on his iPod. He was short on time and space (he didn’t want to decorate the whole loft on the off-chance the girls had to come back from their weekend plans early), but he thinks he did an expert job transforming his simple, shabby chic bedroom into a 1930’s cabaret-style boudoir.

When Kurt finally gets a text from Blaine saying that he’s downstairs paying his cab driver, Kurt puts his plan into action. He presses play on his iPod, then he unlocks the loft door and races for his room, preparing to pose seductively for Blaine’s entrance.

Kurt hears Blaine wheel his suitcase down the hall. Footsteps stop at the door. Then a knock. When Kurt doesn’t answer (he doesn’t want to yell across the loft and ruin his voice), Blaine slides open the loft door and peeks his head in.

“Kurt?” Kurt hears Blaine take a step inside, and his heart begins to race. “Kurt? Where are you?”

“I’m in here, silly,” Kurt calls out, affecting a British accent. “All alone, sitting pretty.”

Kurt positions himself on the bed, lying seductively on his side, gazing with half-lidded, come hither eyes in the direction of the door. He hears Blaine slide the door shut and lock it, then a tired chuckle as he follows Kurt’s trail to his room.

“Kurt? What are you …?”

“Willkommen! Bienvenue! Welcome!” Kurt sings, his heart pounding to the beat of the music as Blaine walks, dumbfounded, through the rain of tinsel. “Well, what do you think? Isn’t this perfectly marvelous?”

Kurt had hoped that Blaine would pick up on his method of using song lyrics from the musical to move the conversation along and say it couldn’t please me more, but Blaine seems speechless, staring at Kurt as if he’s never seen anything like his fiancé before.

Kurt had taken it upon himself to add a few pieces to the outfit to give it flair – a yellow feathered barrette, fishnet thigh-highs, and a pair of black heels (all featured in NYADA’s summer performance of The Birdcage), which Kurt liberated from the costume shop for the weekend. He wanted to pull off a convincing Sally Bowles, and for that, he needed props. He thinks he did a spectacular job, if he does say so himself.

Blaine, however, looks shocked, and not in that, “I can’t believe you pulled it off! This is better than I dreamed!” sort of way.

“Oh! I’m so sorry!” Kurt says, coming up with his own possible explanation for Blaine’s stupor. “Was I not supposed to open the box? Was it supposed to be a surprise?”

“The box?” Blaine asks, as if he’s never even heard the word before. “Oh. No. I mean, yes. Yes, you were supposed to open it. There were things in there that needed to be refrigerated.”

Kurt bites his lower lip in triumph. Score!

“Okay,” Kurt says. “So … why do you look so confused?”

“Because this …” Blaine makes a vague gesture with his hands. “W-was all this in the box?”

“Yeah,” Kurt says. “Well, not all of it. I added to it. But the outfit, the handcuffs, the lube and … some other things … were.” Kurt’s sentence sputters out at the end as he begins to realize something’s wrong. He has no clue what; just something. “Why do you ask?”

“Because this …” Blaine repeats the vague gesture “… isn’t what was in the box I ordered.”

Kurt jerks upright in surprise. “It’s … it’s not?”

“No.” Blaine’s gaze darts away. He chuckles nervously. “The box I ordered was supposed to be filled with ingredients and instructions to cook a romantic dinner for two. I thought that we could make it together.” Blaine picks up the tube of chocolate lube. “I don’t know how they could have mixed that up. Do you still have the box?”

“Over there.” Kurt points to the far corner of the room. “Underneath the purple velvet.” Blaine walks over to where a square piece of purple fabric conceals the cardboard shipping box from view. He removes the fabric and takes a close look at the label. With wide eyes, he immediately spots the problem.

“Here’s how.” He points to the address. “This box was supposed to go to your neighbors next door.”

Kurt’s jaw drops open. “Rachel must not have checked the label when she brought the box inside. She just assumed it was mine.”

“Which means that Mr. and Mrs. Scott Juleson are currently enjoying linguine with seared tuna and tapenade.”

“And they’re also freaky as hell,” Kurt remarks, remembering the gel-filled dildo chilling in the refrigerator. Blaine looks at Kurt with a raised brow, eyes traveling from the feather barrette clipped in Kurt’s hair to the halter of strategically placed chains hanging from his shoulders. Kurt catches Blaine’s gaze traveling down his body and he turns bright red. “Oh. Oh …” he mutters, crawling off the bed.

“Hey, hey, hey! Hey, now.” Blaine circles around the side to block Kurt’s exit. “Where do you think you’re going?”

“I’m going to get dressed before I embarrass myself any more than I already have.”

“What makes you think you’re embarrassing yourself?” Blaine kneels on the bed. He crawls over Kurt, leading him backwards toward the pillows.

“Do you actually like this?” Kurt asks, amazed that he still might, mix up or not.

“A-ha,” Blaine replies. He kicks his shoes off, his right hand pulling his bowtie loose.

“B-but … aren’t you tired after your flight?” Kurt shimmies to his original spot, the intense heat in Blaine’s eyes new and different … and exciting.

“Surprisingly not so much anymore.”

“Aren’t you hungry? Don’t you want to eat?”

Blaine raises the tube of chocolate flavored lube and pops the lid. “Oh,” he says, giving Kurt’s body one more once over. He stops at the front of Kurt’s silky shorts and licks his lips. “I intend to.”