36…35…34…33…

Kurt watches the seconds tick by on the dusty white clock hanging on the pharmacy wall. The second hand stutters its way around the face, not going nearly fast enough for Kurt, who's itching to be done with his shift and hit the racks at Nordstrom with Mercedes and Rachel for the Start of School/End of Summer sale.

If he doesn't get there soon, there won't be a single Ashley Williams alpaca sweatshirt left in his size.

“Kurt, you've been watching that clock for the last three hours,” Carole reprimands in a not-quite-serious-but-sort-of-serious way. “You know what they say about watched clocks.”

“They never boil?” Kurt mutters, not stopping the countdown in his head to comment – one of the perks of being a singer.

“Something like that,” she says, restocking a shelf of Dramamine below the counter where Kurt leans, elbows resting on the surface, the unfortunate height forcing him to bend over so low his butt sticks up in the air. “Come on. Exceed expectations. Don't just do the bare minimum.”

“What does that even mean?” Kurt scoffs.

“You're supposed to be helping me out here. Is this what you do at your dad's shop when you work over there?”

“No,” Kurt answers, displaying his utter lack of interest in anything pharmaceutical by not even bothering to open his mouth when he talks. “At dad's shop, there's a stool for me to sit on.”

17…16…15…14…

“You know, if you're so bored, you could always pull the expired boxes of Tylenol, or do those customer callbacks I asked you to do this afternoon…”

Kurt groans loudly, dropping his head to the counter with a heavy thunk.

Carole is about to suggest something else her whiny stepson can do when the sound of a woman laughing grabs her attention. Carole peeks over her shoulder and smiles. She turns back to Kurt, feigning unconsciousness on the pharmacy counter, and leans in close to his ear.

“Or you can go help that woman at the endcap of aisle three looking at reading glasses with her adorable son.”

Kurt groans again, longer and more sustained, in response. “I don't like children.”

“Did I mention that he looks about your age, is wearing a Brooks Brothers shirt, tight blue jeans, and an honest-to-God bow tie?”

Kurt's head immediately pops up. He leans over the counter and looks past Carole in the direction of aisle three. He spots the mother in question. It's kind of hard not to with her epically voluminous, darker-than-dark raven hair, wearing a yellow side-ruched dress (designer, but dangerously low-cut in a way that some people might consider slightly inappropriate for eleven a.m. on a Saturday), and crimson red pumps. Beside her stands a boy about Kurt's age, looking at the display of reading glasses with a somewhat discouraged expression, his triangular eyebrows drawn tight together. Kurt reaches out a hand and pushes Carole slowly out of the way to get a better view. Lo and behold, his stepmother is absolutely right. He is adorable – cute and compact, kind of like the chibi version of an old-school crooner. As far as Kurt can tell, the boy is about half-a-head shorter than him, wearing a perfectly pressed purple button down, a brown bow tie with a purple and green paisley print, and his jeans…

Wow. Now that Kurt sees them, he's a little disturbed by the idea of his stepmother needing to point out that they are tight. They're not just tight, they look downright uncomfortable, and that's saying something coming from Kurt, pioneer of the Lima, Ohio, skinny jeans movement, circa 2009.

“Kurt,” Carole says, or sort of sings, when Kurt has stared so long he's actually stopped breathing. “Did you want to go help them, or do you think…”

“I don't know what you're dilly-dallying for when there are customers who need help,” Kurt says, speed-walking around the end of the counter, almost slipping when his feet leave the traction of the carpet and hit the smooth tile floor.

“Good idea,” Carole agrees, smacking Kurt hard on the behind for good measure, “no dilly-dallying. I should definitely get to work.” She goes back to her restocking with a smirk on her lips, watching Kurt in action from the corner of her eye with great interest.

***

“I can't believe I actually need reading glasses,” Blaine says, looking over the display of narrow-rimmed glasses. Not much of a selection really. Black plastic or silver metal, that's all they have. At least either choice will go with everything in his wardrobe. “I mean, what am I? 42?”

“Hey! Watch it! I'm 42,” his mother complains, pinching his upper arm. He laughs, raising a hand in defense and stepping out of the reach of her sharp manicured fingernails. “And it's only temporary, until your eyes recover from surgery.”

“Well, how do I know which ones I need?” Blaine picks up a pair and puts them on. He blinks and looks around, but he doesn't see any noticeable difference. He takes them off and puts on a different pair with thicker lenses. These make everything look like he's inside a fish bowl. He takes them off quickly when he feels a headache set in.

“May I help you?” Kurt asks, sliding up silently and waiting for a pause in the conversation to work his way in. Blaine's mother looks over at the sound of Kurt's voice and smiles brightly, almost knowingly, as he approaches.

“Yes,” Blaine says, examining each pair of glasses again, “I'm looking for…”

Blaine turns to look at Kurt. For a second, he stops, just stops everything he's doing – talking, blinking, breathing, thinking. He stares at the boy in front of him – the handsome boy in blue jeans that match his eyes and a Ralph Lauren sweater, thinking that there has to be a song in there somewhere – and loses his place.

“Blaine?” his mother says, putting hands on his shoulder and squeezing gently. “Baby?”

Kurt looks from Blaine to his mother, and notices how the smile on her face reminds him of Carole's.

“Okay,” she says, patting Blaine on the back, “what my son's trying to say is we're looking for a pair of reading glasses. For him. Right?” She pats Blaine's back harder, hard enough that he falls forward an inch. He shakes his head, as if he's trying to manually reset his brain so he can continue being a part of the conversation.

“Yeah,” Blaine says, nodding more than necessary. “I need a pair of reading glasses. Temporarily. While I recover from laser eye surgery,” he adds. “But I don't know how to choose, or what any of these numbers with the pluses mean.”

“Well, the numbers indicate the strength of magnification,” Kurt says, sounding knowledgeable when, in reality, he had no clue either until one Saturday when he forgot to bring his math homework with him to do during the downtime and got so bored he started reading every pamphlet in the place. Because of that, he knows more about catheter care and maintenance than any teenaged boy should know. “There's really no trick to it. You pretty much have the right idea. Just keep trying on glasses until you find a pair that helps you read comfortably. You probably won't need to go higher than a plus two.” Kurt turns to the display and picks up a pair with black frames from a section marked “+1.25”. He unfolds the arms and slides the glasses carefully onto Blaine's face, taking his time positioning them perfectly on the bridge of his nose, sneaking subtle peeks at Blaine's eyes and the way they seem to be fixed on his own. “There,” Kurt says, pushing Blaine's hair back over his ears to accommodate the ends. “See how those feel.”

Kurt takes a step back. When he looks at Blaine again, there's a shy smile on his lips and a delightful pink color in his cheeks.

Blaine turns away from Kurt's gaze – his face first, followed by his eyes. He looks up, down, all over, flicking his eyes conveniently in Kurt's direction under the guise of getting used to his new glasses.

“So, are those going to work for you?” Blaine's mother asks.

“I guess so. I don't know,” Blaine replies, adjusting the glasses back and forth down the slope of his nose. “I can see fine, but I need something to read. Something with small print.”

“Here.” His mother picks a random box off a nearby shelf and hands it to Blaine. Blaine looks at it and blanches.

“Mom!” he says, eyes darting back and forth between Kurt and his mother, cheeks quickly flaming red as he returns the box to the shelf. “I don't want to read the Tampax box!”

Kurt would normally roll his eyes and tell Blaine to grow up. They're only tampons. Besides, it's not like it's a box of used tampons. But he chuckles instead, choosing to find Blaine's embarrassment endearing instead of annoying, especially when his mother throws her head back and laughs like a deranged kookaburra, amping up the heat on Blaine's cheeks from a healthy-colored flush straight to scarlet.

“Hold on a sec.” Kurt jogs the short distance to the counter, leans over, and grabs his messenger bag. “Here,” Kurt says, opening the flap and reaching inside blindly for one of his school books. His hand finds an obliging spine and he pulls it out, opening the book to a random page without looking and holding it up for Blaine to read. He keeps his eyes glued to Blaine's face, fascinated by the way a dozen variations of the same emotion light up his smile.

“Thank you,” Blaine says, focusing on the page in front of him. His eyes sweep over the words, his lips moving as he reads. His mother hooks her chin over her son's shoulder and reads with him. Suddenly, Blaine's mouth drops into a thin line, bottom lip trembling slightly, while his mother's smile widens to a nearly astronomical extent.

“Oh, uh…thank you,” Blaine says, not finishing the page. He takes off the glasses, eyes shifting away from the book in front of him, his skin stained red from neck to forehead. “Yes, uh…these will be good, I think…Mom?” His voice cracks on the word mom, which does nothing to pull his mother's attention away from the page. “Mom!?” Blaine hisses, reaching a hand out and lowering the book from view.

“Killjoy,” she says accusingly to her son. She winks at Kurt and extends a hand his way. “I like you. My name's Pam, by the way, and this is my son, Blaine.”

“Nice to meet you.” Kurt politely shakes Pam's hand, though her sudden unprompted declaration that she likes him sort of throws him for a loop. “Hello, Blaine,” Kurt says, addressing the boy staring at him with a strange, unreadable awe. “My name's Kurt.”

Blaine nods dumbly at Kurt's introduction. It takes another pat on the back from his mother to get his brain started up again.

“Oh, yes, hi, Kurt. I'm Blaine.” Blaine takes Kurt's hand, but he doesn't shake it. He holds it, kind of awkwardly, not doing anything, and Kurt laughs.

“I know,” Kurt says. “Your mother just told me.”

“Right,” Blaine says, ducking his head but still not letting go of Kurt's hand. “It's nice to meet you.”

“So, Kurt,” Pam says, picking up the conversation in lieu of her son, “do you go to McKinley?”

“Yeah,” Kurt says. “I do.”

“What a coincidence,” she says. “Blaine's transferring there this year. He starts Monday. And here I was afraid he wouldn't know anybody.”

“I can definitely show you around,” Kurt offers, “if you want.”

“Yes,” Blaine says, dropping back in. “Yes, I would. And do you think…would you like to, I don't know, go out for coffee? Maybe tomorrow?”

“Smooth,” Pam whispers in her son's ear. “Real smooth.”

“That sounds great actually,” Kurt answers, pretending he didn't hear Pam's commentary. “Why don't I ring you up, and I can give you my number?”

“Or you can give me your number,” Blaine says, unwittingly repeating the same thing.

“Or, you can give each other both your numbers so, you know, you can text and stuff,” Pam adds, lightly removing her son's hand from around Kurt's, relieving Kurt from the problematic situation of having to ask for it back so he can use the cash register.

“Yeah,” Blaine says, following Kurt to the counter with his glasses in hand. “That sounds good, too.”

Kurt rings up Blaine's glasses, then gives Blaine his phone to input his number. Blaine hands over his phone, so excited at getting Kurt's number that he almost leaves without it.

“So, I'll see you tomorrow?” Blaine asks, holding the bag with his glasses inside, clutching it with both hands, bunching up the plastic.

Kurt smiles. Adorable.

“Tomorrow,” he confirms. “Just send me a text.”

Carole returns to the counter when she sees Blaine and his mother leave, eager for the play-by-play.

“So, how did you do?” Carole asks, chuckling at the smug expression on Kurt's face.

“I got his phone number,” Kurt brags, wiggling his phone in front of her before shoving it into his pocket. “He wants to go out for coffee.”

Carole pulls a face, mocking Kurt playfully with an exaggerated show of how impressed she is.

“Good job. I have to say, I was worried there for minute.”

Kurt's brow furrows. “Really?”

“Yeah,” she says, holding back a laugh. “I figured you had to be desperate if you were literally shoving gay erotica in the poor boy's face.”

Kurt laughs, incredulous at her ludicrous statement.

“What?” Kurt glances down at the paperback book in his hands. Instead of pulling out one of the more than twenty required reading books for his A. P. Literature class that he has stuffed in his bag, he's holding Above the Dungeon, a raunchy paperback he had intended on tossing in a Goodwill bin the first chance he got. (He can't bring himself to throw it in a trashcan since it is still a book - a tree died to print it - and he has a thing about throwing books in the garbage.)

“Oh my God!” Kurt says, flinging the book over the counter as if it were a rabid rat. “Santana gave that to me! As a joke! And Blaine saw it! And his mom!” Kurt gasps. “She probably thinks…he's going to think…oh my God! What…what do I do?”

“You're going to have to…” Carole starts, taking Kurt firmly by the arms, but then she chokes. She looks deep in his eyes, trying hard to match the gravity of the situation…but she can't. She takes a deep, calming breath, but fails at stifling the smile that's about to turn into a fit of unstoppable laughter. “Exceed expectations.”