Walking home from his last class, watching the Trick or Treaters spook each other in the streets – masked menaces leaping out from dark shadows and the mouths of alleys to scare the wits out of their friends and a few innocent bystanders - Blaine gets the greatest idea. The most fantastic idea. In fact, he's so over-the-moon excited by his idea, he can't stop giggling all the way home to his apartment. This is his and Kurt's first official Halloween together as a married couple, and Blaine is going to do something that he hopes becomes an Anderson-Hummel tradition.

He's going to prank the pants off of his husband.

Blaine has never been much of a prankster. Pretty much every prank he's ever attempted has backfired on him in one way or another. He's not even really that good at telling an effective joke. His brother, Cooper, got the cocky attitude and sly delivery, but that's okay because, in Blaine's opinion, he got the smooth dance moves and the better hair. Blaine figures he'll start out small. He stops in at Duane Reade's and buys himself a ghoulish monster mask. If you get a really good look at it, it's not that convincing, but it only costs him seven dollars on clearance, so he's not going to complain. He figures it'll do the trick if Kurt's not expecting it. He's going to put it on and hide out in Kurt's closet until his husband comes home, which should be in about roughly half an hour.

Kurt is a creature of habit. When he comes home, he goes straight to his closet, without fail, to put away his coat and change in to more comfortable clothes, sometimes with only a kiss thrown Blaine's way until after he gets a moment to unwind. Kurt's closet is usually off-limits, but Blaine's willing to take the risk. He realizes he might get lynched after Kurt stops screaming in terror, but he knows it'll be worth it to see the look on his husband's face.

Blaine acts fast when he gets inside their apartment. He kicks off his shoes and slides them under the bed so Kurt won't realize he's home. Then he tiptoes to Kurt's closet, opens the door, and steps inside. It's not a walk-in closet, but it's deep, with enough space for Blaine to hang out. Besides, it's only for (he checks the time on his cell phone) twenty-three minutes. He can stand being mildly uncomfortable for twenty-three short minutes. Blaine puts on the mask and stands in the dead center, flanked by two McQueen suits in bags. There, he lies in wait for his unsuspecting husband to open the door. He focuses, relying on the skills he learned from years of acting classes, slipping into the appropriate beast/killer mindset - quiet as death, a predator in the night.

It takes Blaine a full five minutes to stop giggling.

The enclosed closet and its plastic-covered contents block out all the sound coming from the apartment. Blaine can't hear a thing but his own breathing. It's a little unsettling. He tries slowing his breathing down, muffling it behind lips pressed tight, but he can only manage that for a few minutes before he starts panting for breath, which entirely defeats the purpose. With the temperature in the small space rising, sweat starts down his forehead. The smell of plastic from the mask grows stronger, and Blaine wonders why anyone would become a masked murderer in the first place. But then, maybe things like heat, sweat, and odors don't bother murderers.

Then he wonders why he would think about that.

He's excited, waiting for his husband to come home, but he's also bored out of his mind.

He takes off the mask so he can breathe. Then he turns around, looking for something to occupy his time. The only things in this closet are Kurt's clothes – suit bags, boxes of shoes, a few items that he lets hang free and unprotected. Blaine hopes Kurt might have a book or some of his old copies of Vogue in here. Blaine peeks through the contents twice, but no luck.

He pulls out his cell phone to check the time.

Eighteen minutes. Kurt should be home in eighteen minutes.

Staring at his phone, Blaine realizes his own minor stupidity. He has his phone, and a full battery. He can play Candy Crush until Kurt shows up, maybe read something on his Kindle app. He could probably spend the whole night in this closet if he had to.

Not that he wants to.

He checks the time again.

Seventeen minutes.

Blaine opens Candy Crush and starts to play. The brightly colored pieces make him think of the kids coming to their door, looking for treats. He feels kind of bad hiding in here when he should be handing out Snickers bars. He can't hear if anyone's been knocking because this closet apparently has the sound proofing capabilities of a professional recording studio, but he hopes not too many of their neighbor kids have gone away empty handed.

He also hopes no one decides to egg their door, the way disgruntled children did last year when they still lived in Bushwick. Kurt and Blaine both had to work late that night, so no one was around to man the door. They didn't even think to put out an honor bowl. They came home at two in the morning to discover three dozen dried yolks on their distressed metal door. Management had to have it professionally blast cleaned, and made Kurt and Blaine foot the bill. This year, they bought close to twelve bags of chocolate, to keep their bases covered and their front door clean.

If worse comes to worse, Blaine figures they can Trick or Treat in reverse – go from door to door handing out candy, but that might be a little weird.

Blaine considers himself a Candy Crush master. So when he restarts the game a fifth time, he realizes that his husband should be home by now. He flips to his home screen and checks the time.

Forty-five minutes! Kurt is forty-five minutes late! Where the hell could his husband be? Blaine checks his phone for messages, but there are none. He looks up his call log, to see if he somehow missed any incoming calls, but no. There aren't any. Maybe Kurt just got stuck in traffic. Maybe there was a hold up on the subway with all the kids dressed in costume trying to get home from after-school dances, or with the older kids and adults heading for parties in the city.

But why hasn't Kurt called? He's normally fastidious with regard to things like calling when he's going to be late. Kurt's not actually that late, and it isn't that uncommon, but Blaine can't help worrying. Not with the people in the city who like to play pranks on Halloween (thinks the man hiding in the closet, wearing a monster mask).

Blaine decides to step out and take a look around. He's not sure what good it will do if Kurt's not home. He'll go out and stroll the neighborhood, walk to the subway to meet Kurt. He'll bring the mask along, figure out a way to scare him when he gets there.

Blaine peeks out of the closet. The bedroom, cast in a hazy brown glow from the orange arc sodium light outside, is cooler, the air more breathable than in Kurt's closet. He takes a few steps out and breathes in deep, moaning a sigh of relief as his lungs feel full and healthy again.

Blaine's phone rings, loudly playing the song Roar, and he jumps. Shoot! He forgot to lower his ringer. Well, no harm, no foul. His husband's not even home yet.

Blaine glances at the number for the incoming call, his screen showing a photo of him and Kurt kissing on their wedding day.

Crap! It's Kurt.

Blaine's just about to answer, but then he hears a voice yell from somewhere inside the apartment, “Blaine?”

Blaine goes back to his cell phone and picks up the call.

“Kurt?” Blaine starts like he didn't hear his husband's voice calling his name a second ago. “Where are you? You're late.”

“I'm home,” Kurt says, sounding somewhat annoyed. “Where are you?”

Blaine looks left and right, embarrassed by this turn of events.

“Uh…I don't want to tell you.”

“Well, I can hear your cell phone, so I know you're somewhere in the apartment.”

Blaine sighs in defeat, knowing there's no way he's going to be able to salvage his prank. “I'm hiding,” he admits, “in your closet.”

Kurt snickers, but then comes out with an exasperated, “Are you really?”

“Yes.”

“Well, shoot,” Kurt says with a long sigh.

“Why?” Blaine asks. “What's wrong? Did I ruin some plans you had or something?” Kurt wasn't big on Halloween. It was more Blaine's favorite holiday than his. Blaine pictures that changing down the line, when they have children. But this was their first Halloween as a married couple, and Kurt loves to mark firsts. It should have crossed Blaine's mind that Kurt might have something special planned.

“No,” Kurt says. “It's...I'm hiding in the pantry.”

Blaine's moment of anxiety turns into a laugh of relief. “Are you kidding me?”

“Nope,” Kurt says. “I figured you would fix yourself a snack when you got home like you always do, so I put on some stage makeup and hid in here to scare you. But you were taking so long, I ended up organizing instead.”

“Organized it how?” Blaine asks, shaking his head at how like Kurt that sounded.

“I alphabetized the soups and vegetables, got rid of a few expired things. When did we buy caviar, anyway?”

“I don't remember,” Blaine says, walking over to the window and peering at the street below, nearly devoid of anyone in costume under the age of eleven.

“Well, this stinks,” Kurt laughs. “Talk about a waste of time.”

“Yeah,” Blaine agrees, but he's not upset. Not when he knows his husband had the same exact idea, and that it, too, failed royally. It's just another in a series of examples that shows Blaine he and Kurt are meant for each other. Always have been, always will be. “I think we've missed the Trick or Treaters,” he says.

“I heard a bunch come to the door,” Kurt remarks. “I feel so awful.”

“So do I. And what are we going to do with all that candy?” Blaine muses. He hears Kurt chuckle wickedly, the voice on the other end of the line echoing in the hallway, walking towards the bedroom.

“Why don't you start getting undressed, Mr. Anderson-Hummel, and I'll show you.”