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kingstylesdaily · 4 years

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Playtime With Harry Styles

via vogue.com

THE MEN’S BATHING POND in London’s Hampstead Heath at daybreak on a gloomy September morning seemed such an unlikely locale for my first meeting with Harry Styles, music’s legendarily charm-heavy style czar, that I wondered perhaps if something had been lost in translation.

But then there is Styles, cheerily gung ho, hidden behind a festive yellow bandana mask and a sweatshirt of his own design, surprisingly printed with three portraits of his intellectual pinup, the author Alain de Botton. “I love his writing,” says Styles. “I just think he’s brilliant. I saw him give a talk about the keys to happiness, and how one of the keys is living among friends, and how real friendship stems from being vulnerable with someone.”

In turn, de Botton’s 2016 novel The Course of Love taught Styles that “when it comes to relationships, you just expect yourself to be good at it…[but] being in a real relationship with someone is a skill,” one that Styles himself has often had to hone in the unforgiving klieg light of public attention, and in the company of such high-profile paramours as Taylor Swift and—well, Styles is too much of a gentleman to name names.

That sweatshirt and the Columbia Records tracksuit bottoms are removed in the quaint wooden open-air changing room, with its Swallows and Amazons vibe. A handful of intrepid fellow patrons in various states of undress are blissfully unaware of the 26-year-old supernova in their midst, although I must admit I’m finding it rather difficult to take my eyes off him, try as I might. Styles has been on a six-day juice cleanse in readiness for Vogue’s photographer Tyler Mitchell. He practices Pilates (“I’ve got very tight hamstrings—trying to get those open”) and meditates twice a day. “It has changed my life,” he avers, “but it’s so subtle. It’s helped me just be more present. I feel like I’m able to enjoy the things that are happening right in front of me, even if it’s food or it’s coffee or it’s being with a friend—or a swim in a really cold pond!” Styles also feels that his meditation practices have helped him through the tumult of 2020: “Meditation just brings a stillness that has been really beneficial, I think, for my mental health.”

Styles has been a pescatarian for three years, inspired by the vegan food that several members of his current band prepared on tour. “My body definitely feels better for it,” he says. His shapely torso is prettily inscribed with the tattoos of a Victorian sailor—a rose, a galleon, a mermaid, an anchor, and a palm tree among them, and, straddling his clavicle, the dates 1967 and 1957 (the respective birth years of his mother and father). Frankly, I rather wish I’d packed a beach muumuu.

We take the piratical gangplank that juts into the water and dive in. Let me tell you, this is not the Aegean. The glacial water is a cloudy phlegm green beneath the surface, and clammy reeds slap one’s ankles. Styles, who admits he will try any fad, has recently had a couple of cryotherapy sessions and is evidently less susceptible to the cold. By the time we have swum a full circuit, however, body temperatures have adjusted, and the ice, you might say, has been broken. Duly invigorated, we are ready to face the day. Styles has thoughtfully brought a canister of coffee and some bottles of water in his backpack, and we sit at either end of a park bench for a socially distanced chat.

It seems that he has had a productive year. At the onset of lockdown, Styles found himself in his second home, in the canyons of Los Angeles. After a few days on his own, however, he moved in with a pod of three friends (and subsequently with two band members, Mitch Rowland and Sarah Jones). They “would put names in a hat and plan the week out,” Styles explains. “If you were Monday, you would choose the movie, dinner, and the activity for that day. I like to make soups, and there was a big array of movies; we went all over the board,” from Goodfellas to Clueless. The experience, says Styles, “has been a really good lesson in what makes me happy now. It’s such a good example of living in the moment. I honestly just like being around my friends,” he adds. “That’s been my biggest takeaway. Just being on my own the whole time, I would have been miserable.”

Styles is big on friendship groups and considers his former and legendarily hysteria-inducing boy band, One Direction, to have been one of them. “I think the typical thing is to come out of a band like that and almost feel like you have to apologize for being in it,” says Styles. “But I loved my time in it. It was all new to me, and I was trying to learn as much as I could. I wanted to soak it in…. I think that’s probably why I like traveling now—soaking stuff up.” In a post-COVID future, he is contemplating a temporary move to Tokyo, explaining that “there’s a respect and a stillness, a quietness that I really loved every time I’ve been there.”

In 1D, Styles was making music whenever he could. “After a show you’d go in a hotel room and put down some vocals,” he recalls. As a result, his first solo album, 2017’s Harry Styles, “was when I really fell in love with being in the studio,” he says. “I loved it as much as touring.” Today he favors isolating with his core group of collaborators, “our little bubble”—Rowland, Kid Harpoon (né Tom Hull), and Tyler Johnson. “A safe space,” as he describes it.

In the music he has been working on in 2020, Styles wants to capture the experimental spirit that informed his second album, last year’s Fine Line. With his debut album, “I was very much finding out what my sound was as a solo artist,” he says. “I can see all the places where it almost felt like I was bowling with the bumpers up. I think with the second album I let go of the fear of getting it wrong and…it was really joyous and really free. I think with music it’s so important to evolve—and that extends to clothes and videos and all that stuff. That’s why you look back at David Bowie with Ziggy Stardust or the Beatles and their different eras—that fearlessness is super inspiring.”

The seismic changes of 2020—including the Black Lives Matter uprising around racial justice—has also provided Styles with an opportunity for personal growth. “I think it’s a time for opening up and learning and listening,” he says. “I’ve been trying to read and educate myself so that in 20 years I’m still doing the right things and taking the right steps. I believe in karma, and I think it’s just a time right now where we could use a little more kindness and empathy and patience with people, be a little more prepared to listen and grow.”

Meanwhile, Styles’s euphoric single “Watermelon Sugar” became something of an escapist anthem for this dystopian summer of 2020. The video, featuring Styles (dressed in ’70s-flavored Gucci and Bode) cavorting with a pack of beach-babe girls and boys, was shot in January, before lockdown rules came into play. By the time it was ready to be released in May, a poignant epigraph had been added: “This video is dedicated to touching.”

Styles is looking forward to touring again, when “it’s safe for everyone,” because, as he notes, “being up against people is part of the whole thing. You can’t really re-create it in any way.” But it hasn’t always been so. Early in his career, Styles was so stricken with stage fright that he regularly threw up preperformance. “I just always thought I was going to mess up or something,” he remembers. “But I’ve felt really lucky to have a group of incredibly generous fans. They’re generous emotionally—and when they come to the show, they give so much that it creates this atmosphere that I’ve always found so loving and accepting.”

THIS SUMMER, when it was safe enough to travel, Styles returned to his London home, which is where he suggests we head now, setting off in his modish Primrose Yellow ’73 Jaguar that smells of gasoline and leatherette. “Me and my dad have always bonded over cars,” Styles explains. “I never thought I’d be someone who just went out for a leisurely drive, purely for enjoyment.” On sleepless jet-lagged nights he’ll drive through London’s quiet streets, seeing neighborhoods in a new way. “I find it quite relaxing,” he says.

Over the summer Styles took a road trip with his artist friend Tomo Campbell through France and Italy, setting off at four in the morning and spending the night in Geneva, where they jumped in the lake “to wake ourselves up.” (I see a pattern emerging.) At the end of the trip Styles drove home alone, accompanied by an upbeat playlist that included “Aretha Franklin, Parliament, and a lot of Stevie Wonder. It was really fun for me,” he says. “I don’t travel like that a lot. I’m usually in such a rush, but there was a stillness to it. I love the feeling of nobody knowing where I am, that kind of escape...and freedom.”

GROWING UP in a village in the North of England, Styles thought of London as a world apart: “It truly felt like a different country.” At a wide-eyed 16, he came down to the teeming metropolis after his mother entered him on the U.K. talent-search show The X Factor. “I went to the audition to find out if I could sing,” Styles recalls, “or if my mum was just being nice to me.” Styles was eliminated but subsequently brought back with other contestants—Niall Horan, Liam Payne, Louis Tomlinson, and Zayn Malik—to form a boy band that was named (on Styles’s suggestion) One Direction. The wily X Factor creator and judge, Simon Cowell, soon signed them to his label Syco Records, and the rest is history: 1D’s first four albums, supported by four world tours from 2011 to 2015, debuted at number one on the U.S. Billboard charts, and the band has sold 70 million records to date. At 18, Styles bought the London house he now calls home. “I was going to do two weeks’ work to it,” he remembers, “but when I came back there was no second floor,” so he moved in with adult friends who lived nearby till the renovation was complete. “Eighteen months,” he deadpans. “I’ve always seen that period as pretty pivotal for me, as there’s that moment at the party where it’s getting late, and half of the people would go upstairs to do drugs, and the other people go home. I was like, ‘I don’t really know this friend’s wife, so I’m not going to get all messy and then go home.’ I had to behave a bit, at a time where everything else about my life felt I didn’t have to behave really. I’ve been lucky to always feel I have this family unit somewhere.”

When Styles’s London renovation was finally done, “I went in for the first time and I cried,” he recalls. “Because I just felt like I had somewhere. L.A. feels like holiday, but this feels like home.”

Behind its pink door, Styles’s house has all the trappings of rock stardom—there’s a man cave filled with guitars, a Sex Pistols Never Mind the Bollocks poster (a moving-in gift from his decorator), a Stevie Nicks album cover. Fleetwood Mac’s “Dreams” was one of the first songs he knew the words to—“My parents were big fans”—and he and Nicks have formed something of a mutual-admiration society. At the beginning of lockdown, Nicks tweeted to her fans that she was taking inspiration from Fine Line: “Way to go, H,” she wrote. “It is your Rumours.” “She’s always there for you,” said Styles when he inducted Nicks into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 2019. “She knows what you need—advice, a little wisdom, a blouse, a shawl; she’s got you covered.”

Styles makes us some tea in the light-filled kitchen and then wanders into the convivial living room, where he strikes an insouciant pose on the chesterfield sofa, upholstered in a turquoise velvet that perhaps not entirely coincidentally sets off his eyes. Styles admits that his lockdown lewk was “sweatpants, constantly,” and he is relishing the opportunity to dress up again. He doesn’t have to wait long: The following day, under the eaves of a Victorian mansion in Notting Hill, I arrive in the middle of fittings for Vogue’s shoot and discover Styles in his Y-fronts, patiently waiting to try on looks for fashion editor Camilla Nickerson and photographer Tyler Mitchell. Styles’s personal stylist, Harry Lambert, wearing a pearl necklace and his nails colored in various shades of green varnish, à la Sally Bowles, is providing helpful backup (Britain’s Rule of Six hasn’t yet been imposed).

Styles, who has thoughtfully brought me a copy of de Botton’s 2006 book The Architecture of Happiness, is instinctively and almost quaintly polite, in an old-fashioned, holding-open-doors and not-mentioning-lovers-by-name sort of way. He is astounded to discover that the Atlanta-born Mitchell has yet to experience a traditional British Sunday roast dinner. Assuring him that “it’s basically like Thanksgiving every Sunday,” Styles gives Mitchell the details of his favorite London restaurants in which to enjoy one. “It’s a good thing to be nice,” Mitchell tells me after a morning in Styles’s company.

MITCHELL has Lionel Wendt’s languorously homoerotic 1930s portraits of young Sri Lankan men on his mood board. Nickerson is thinking of Irving Penn’s legendary fall 1950 Paris haute couture collections sitting, where he photographed midcentury supermodels, including his wife, Lisa Fonssagrives, in high-style Dior and Balenciaga creations. Styles is up for all of it, and so, it would seem, is the menswear landscape of 2020: Jonathan Anderson has produced a trapeze coat anchored with a chunky gold martingale; John Galliano at Maison Margiela has fashioned a khaki trench with a portrait neckline in layers of colored tulle; and Harris Reed—a Saint Martins fashion student sleuthed by Lambert who ended up making some looks for Styles’s last tour—has spent a week making a broad-shouldered Smoking jacket with high-waisted, wide-leg pants that have become a Styles signature since he posed for Tim Walker for the cover of Fine Line wearing a Gucci pair—a silhouette that was repeated in the tour wardrobe. (“I liked the idea of having that uniform,” says Styles.) Reed’s version is worn with a hoopskirt draped in festoons of hot-pink satin that somehow suggests Deborah Kerr asking Yul Brynner’s King of Siam, “Shall we dance?”

Styles introduces me to the writer and eyewear designer Gemma Styles, “my sister from the same womb,” he says. She is also here for the fitting: The siblings plan to surprise their mother with the double portrait on these pages.

I ask her whether her brother had always been interested in clothes.

“My mum loved to dress us up,” she remembers. “I always hated it, and Harry was always quite into it. She did some really elaborate papier-mâché outfits: She made a giant mug and then painted an atlas on it, and that was Harry being ‘The World Cup.’ Harry also had a little dalmatian-dog outfit,” she adds, “a hand-me-down from our closest family friends. He would just spend an inordinate amount of time wearing that outfit. But then Mum dressed me up as Cruella de Vil. She was always looking for any opportunity!”

“As a kid I definitely liked fancy dress,” Styles says. There were school plays, the first of which cast him as Barney, a church mouse. “I was really young, and I wore tights for that,” he recalls. “I remember it was crazy to me that I was wearing a pair of tights. And that was maybe where it all kicked off!”

Acting has also remained a fundamental form of expression for Styles. His sister recalls that even on the eve of his life-changing X Factor audition, Styles could sing in public only in an assumed voice. “He used to do quite a good sort of Elvis warble,” she remembers. During the rehearsals in the family home, “he would sing in the bathroom because if it was him singing as himself, he just couldn’t have anyone looking at him! I love his voice now,” she adds. “I’m so glad that he makes music that I actually enjoy listening to.”

Styles’s role-playing continued soon after 1D went on permanent hiatus in 2016, and he was cast in Christopher Nolan’s Dunkirk, beating out dozens of professional actors for the role. “The good part was my character was a young soldier who didn’t really know what he was doing,” says Styles modestly. “The scale of the movie was so big that I was a tiny piece of the puzzle. It was definitely humbling. I just loved being outside of my comfort zone.”

His performance caught the eye of Olivia Wilde, who remembers that it “blew me away—the openness and commitment.” In turn, Styles loved Wilde’s directorial debut, Booksmart, and is “very honored” that she cast him in a leading role for her second feature, a thriller titled Don’t Worry Darling, which went into production this fall. Styles will play the husband to Florence Pugh in what Styles describes as “a 1950s utopia in the California desert.”

Wilde’s movie is costumed by Academy Award nominee Arianne Phillips. “She and I did a little victory dance when we heard that we officially had Harry in the film,” notes Wilde, “because we knew that he has a real appreciation for fashion and style. And this movie is incredibly stylistic. It’s very heightened and opulent, and I’m really grateful that he is so enthusiastic about that element of the process—some actors just don’t care.”

“I like playing dress-up in general,” Styles concurs, in a masterpiece of understatement: This is the man, after all, who cohosted the Met’s 2019 “Notes on Camp” gala attired in a nipple-freeing black organza blouse with a lace jabot, and pants so high-waisted that they cupped his pectorals. The ensemble, accessorized with the pearl-drop earring of a dandified Elizabethan courtier, was created for Styles by Gucci’s Alessandro Michele, whom he befriended in 2014. Styles, who has subsequently personified the brand as the face of the Gucci fragrance, finds Michele “fearless with his work and his imagination. It’s really inspiring to be around someone who works like that.”

The two first met in London over a cappuccino. “It was just a kind of PR appointment,” says Michele, “but something magical happened, and Harry is now a friend. He has the aura of an English rock-and-roll star—like a young Greek god with the attitude of James Dean and a little bit of Mick Jagger—but no one is sweeter. He is the image of a new era, of the way that a man can look.”

Styles credits his style transformation—from Jack Wills tracksuit-clad boy-band heartthrob to nonpareil fashionisto—to his meeting the droll young stylist Harry Lambert seven years ago. They hit it off at once and have conspired ever since, enjoying a playfully campy rapport and calling each other Sue and Susan as they parse the niceties of the scarlet lace Gucci man-bra that Michele has made for Vogue’s shoot, for instance, or a pair of Bode pants hand-painted with biographical images (Styles sent Emily Adams Bode images of his family, and a photograph he had found of David Hockney and Joni Mitchell. “The idea of those two being friends, to me, was really beautiful,” Styles explains).

“He just has fun with clothing, and that’s kind of where I’ve got it from,” says Styles of Lambert. “He doesn’t take it too seriously, which means I don’t take it too seriously.” The process has been evolutionary. At his first meeting with Lambert, the stylist proposed “a pair of flares, and I was like, ‘Flares? That’s fucking crazy,’ ” Styles remembers. Now he declares that “you can never be overdressed. There’s no such thing. The people that I looked up to in music—Prince and David Bowie and Elvis and Freddie Mercury and Elton John—they’re such showmen. As a kid it was completely mind-blowing. Now I’ll put on something that feels really flamboyant, and I don’t feel crazy wearing it. I think if you get something that you feel amazing in, it’s like a superhero outfit. Clothes are there to have fun with and experiment with and play with. What’s really exciting is that all of these lines are just kind of crumbling away. When you take away ‘There’s clothes for men and there’s clothes for women,’ once you remove any barriers, obviously you open up the arena in which you can play. I’ll go in shops sometimes, and I just find myself looking at the women’s clothes thinking they’re amazing. It’s like anything—anytime you’re putting barriers up in your own life, you’re just limiting yourself. There’s so much joy to be had in playing with clothes. I’ve never really thought too much about what it means—it just becomes this extended part of creating something.”

“He’s up for it,” confirms Lambert, who earlier this year, for instance, found a JW Anderson cardigan with the look of a Rubik’s Cube (“on sale at matches.com!”). Styles wore it, accessorized with his own pearl necklace, for a Today rehearsal in February and it went viral: His fans were soon knitting their own versions and posting the results on TikTok. Jonathan Anderson declared himself “so impressed and incredibly humbled by this trend” that he nimbly made the pattern available (complete with a YouTube tutorial) so that Styles’s fans could copy it for free. Meanwhile, London’s storied Victoria & Albert Museum has requested Styles’s original: an emblematic document of how people got creative during the COVID era. “It’s going to be in their permanent collection,” says Lambert exultantly. “Is that not sick? Is that not the most epic thing?”

“To me, he’s very modern,” says Wilde of Styles, “and I hope that this brand of confidence as a male that Harry has—truly devoid of any traces of toxic masculinity—is indicative of his generation and therefore the future of the world. I think he is in many ways championing that, spearheading that. It’s pretty powerful and kind of extraordinary to see someone in his position redefining what it can mean to be a man with confidence.”

“He’s really in touch with his feminine side because it’s something natural,” notes Michele. “And he’s a big inspiration to a younger generation—about how you can be in a totally free playground when you feel comfortable. I think that he’s a revolutionary.”

STYLES’S confidence is on full display the day after the fitting, which finds us all on the beautiful Sussex dales. Over the summit of the hill, with its trees blown horizontal by the fierce winds, lies the English Channel. Even though it’s a two-hour drive from London, the fresh-faced Styles, who went to bed at 9 p.m., has arrived on set early: He is famously early for everything. The team is installed in a traditional flint-stone barn. The giant doors have been replaced by glass and frame a bucolic view of distant grazing sheep. “Look at that field!” says Styles. “How lucky are we? This is our office! Smell the roses!” Lambert starts to sing “Kumbaya, my Lord.”

Hairdresser Malcolm Edwards is setting Styles’s hair in a Victory roll with silver clips, and until it is combed out he resembles Kathryn Grayson with stubble. His fingers are freighted with rings, and “he has a new army of mini purses,” says Lambert, gesturing to an accessory table heaving with examples including a mini sky-blue Gucci Diana bag discreetly monogrammed HS. Michele has also made Styles a dress for the shoot that Tissot might have liked to paint—acres of ice-blue ruffles, black Valenciennes lace, and suivez-moi, jeune homme ribbons. Erelong, Styles is gamely racing up a hill in it, dodging sheep scat, thistles, and shards of chalk, and striking a pose for Mitchell that manages to make ruffles a compelling new masculine proposition, just as Mr. Fish’s frothy white cotton dress—equal parts Romantic poet and Greek presidential guard—did for Mick Jagger when he wore it for The Rolling Stones’ free performance in Hyde Park in 1969, or as the suburban-mom floral housedress did for Kurt Cobain as he defined the iconoclastic grunge aesthetic. Styles is mischievously singing ABBA’s “Gimme! Gimme! Gimme! (A Man After Midnight)” to himself when Mitchell calls him outside to jump up and down on a trampoline in a Comme des Garçons buttoned wool kilt. “How did it look?” asks his sister when he comes in from the cold. “Divine,” says her brother in playful Lambert-speak.

As the wide sky is washed in pink, orange, and gray, like a Turner sunset, and Mitchell calls it a successful day, Styles is playing “Cherry” from Fine Line on his Fender acoustic on the hilltop. “He does his own stunts,” says his sister, laughing. The impromptu set is greeted with applause. “Thank you, Antwerp!” says Styles playfully, bowing to the crowd. “Thank you, fashion!”

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latte-fairytaekwoon · 4 years

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Ateez: Their GF Has Superpowers

Kim Hongjoong:

It was after a party that you guys had with the boys that he found out. They were in the process of cleaning up, and all that was left was to take down the balloons, which he was doing. Being bored with nothing to do, you absentmindedly began to play around with a few decorations, making them float around in mid air. It was Wooyoung's piercing scream that had everyone's attention on the floating confetti that currently was making weird shapes.

"I fucking told you that old lady looked like a witch! But you still bought the decorations from her!" Mingi began exclaiming, as he shielded himself behind Yunho's body.

"How was I supposed to know she'd voodoo curse them?!" Hongjoong tried defending himself, but was scared to death as well.

Coming out of your trance, you realized you had to come clean about your telekinetic powers before they developed high blood pressure.

"Guys it's not demons...... it's me." You let out a sigh.

"Babe, now is not the time for jokes! The room has bad vibes and we gotta call an exorcist!" Hongjoong wasted no time and threw you over his shoulder as they all made a break for the door.

You protested, saying you'd prove it by opening the door, which you did, leaving them all stunned and frozen in place. You finally convinced him after moving objects that he asked you to move. Realization hit him that his girlfriend has super powers. He'd be so upset that you never told him.

"And in the 2 years we've been dating, you couldn't mention that fact instead of making me believe that other demons besides San existed?!"

Park Seonghwa:

You and Seonghwa had a very loving and open relationship, full of trust, neither of you hiding anything from the other..... Well except the fact you have the ability to know what anyone is thinking, even from kilometers away. You could just block it out, but being curious, more often than not, you found yourself wanting to know what your boyfriend was thinking. Even when he was away on tour, you connected your mind to his. Needless to say, sometimes there were some very impure thoughts at times, not that you minded.

It was one night, you two almost nearing your first year anniversary. Seonghwa and you were cuddled up in bed, just looking at each other and placing innocent kisses. But you knew better, you could hear how Seonghwa wanted to go further but obviously wasn't going to, thinking you weren't ready.

"I am ready and I want to." You casually blurted out.

"What?" He simply asked.

"I know you want to go further, and I want to as well." You assured him.

He blushed a little and ruffled your hair. "Wow it's like you can actually read my mind."

Biting down on your lip, you looked back up at him. "I can....."

Of course, he only released a soft chuckle, thinking you were obviously joking, cause no one can read minds. You proved that to be untrue, citing down examples of times you read his thoughts. You even made him think of several things, some deemed impossible to guess, and accurately relayed those thoughts into words. You left him stunned for sure, even flustered by your ability.

"Does that mean you even heard what I was planning to get you as an anniversary gift?" He asked, genuinely worried the surprise was ruined.

You poked his nose, assuring him you won't find out.

Jeong Yunho:

To say that Yunho loved how small you were compared to him is an understatement. He adored how tiny you were, it made him feel like your knight in shining armor, your personal protector and boosted his confidence in you needing him for stereotypical manly things, such as opening a jar a pickles.

What Yunho didn't know was that even though you seemed tiny and fragile, you possessed super human strength. You rarely showed it off though, preferring to keep a low profile and if it made your boyfriend happy, why spoil it? Unfortunately, your boyfriend likes to be spontaneous, dropping in on you randomly. It was during one of those surprise visits that he witnessed your true potential, in the form of you lifting up your marble dresser with one hand, like it was nothing more than a basketball. He just stood there with his mouth open, silence for what seemed an eternity.

"Well say something!" You finally exclaimed, hating the silence.

"How long have you had that power?" Yunho simply asked.

"Since birth........ are you mad?" You wondered if he'd be upset about finding out this information.

Instead, he just picked you up and spun you around rather happily.

"Are you kidding?! My tiny girlfriend has super strength! Is there anything cooler than that?"

Yes, he was ecstatic about this discovery.

"Do you know what this means?!" He asked you.

"What?"

"You'd beat Jongho in an arm wrestling match! Oh how I'd love to see his shocked face" A mischievous grin spread across his face just picturing the maknae's face.

"The possibilities are endless baby!"

Kang Yeosang:

You had a super natural ability of healing faster than any human possibly could. If a bullet shot you, you'd feel it as nothing more than a punch and in a couple hours you'd be perfectly fine. Not that the situation ever happened, just an example. And you weren't really the clumsy, accident prone type, so rarely ever needed to make use of your ability.

Which is why you often forgot about it and therefore never told Yeosang about your special gift. But it became known when he was playing around in the company building. While distracted by something, he left his skateboard on top of the stairs, and you happened to be walking over to see him. Holding a bucket of chicken, you didn't see his skateboard and therefore tripped on it, causing you to fall down an entire flight of stairs. Yeosang ran over to you, panic all over his face thinking about all the damage you probably had, he definitely heard bones cracking. But to his surprise, you sat up just fine, only rolled your shoulders back, looking in mint condition.

"You literally just fell down about 20 stairs, how are you not dead?" He questioned you.

You then remembered about your super natural healing and proceeded to explain why you're fine to him. He was silent for a while, but then nodded in understanding.

"Are you sure you're fine? Nothing's broken?" He was still worried about your well being.

"Just my shoulder popped out of place, but I put it back when I rolled them back." You assured him that you were fine and he had nothing to worry about.

You did however scold him for leaving his things scattered randomly. Had it been anyone else, he probably would have been guilty of an accidental murder.

Choi San:

Growing up, you enjoyed your ability to become invisible, both figuratively and literally. You liked keeping to yourself and didn't mind that no one ever noticed you. However someone did notice you eventually, and his name was Choi San. His eyes were always on you since day one and you were all he could see. It took a while, but he finally won you over and the relationship was going wonderful.

The problem arose when he started becoming more bold, more teasing towards you, that's when you weren't able to keep secret that you could disappear into thin air. Knowing fully well you just finished showering and were probably changing right now, he decided to 'accidentally' walk in on you naked. As soon as he opened the door though, the cheeky grin he had was replaced by utter confusion when you turned invisible before he could even get a good look at you.

"Holy crap! What the-!" He could not process what happened and became even more scared when all he heard was your voice telling him to get out and wait for you in the living room.

After putting on clothes and calming him down, you told him that you had invisibility powers. San was amazed and curious about your strange yet unique ability. He proceeded to ask you many questions, which you happily answered to him.

"Ok but if you turn invisible right now, would I be able to touch you?" He asked, while simultaneously reaching his hand to your face.

Song Mingi:

You honestly loved your ability to fly. Sometimes if you had a bad day, you'd just go to a secluded area and fly around without a care in the world. It proved to be somewhat therapeutic for you when you were stressed or sad. You hardly needed to make use of it after meeting Mingi, he was such a ray of sunshine and always there for you, that he became what you needed if you were having a tough time. He never knew about that part of your life of course.

Until one day when he was busy with schedule and you felt bored. You found yourself walking to your favorite place and began reminiscing about old times. Soon you were just happily flying around, thinking no one was around to see you enjoy what you had missed for a while. But Mingi saw. After a canceled schedule, he went looking for you, and having mentioned before that this was your go to place, he went looking for you. He did found you, flying around trees and seeing how gravity didn't affect you at all. Once you finally noticed him, you panicked and came straight back to solid ground.

"How, how long have you been watching?" You fidgeted nervously with your fingers.

"A good 5 minutes." He simply replied.

Your heart sank. What if he didn't like you after this? What if he thought you were weird? What if he would never want to see you after this?

He seemed to notice what you were thinking and he was quick to push your worries aside, pulling you into an embrace and kissing the top of your head. That said it all for you. He loved you and this wasn't gonna change anything.

"So.....by any chance, can you hold my hand and take me flying with you?"

Jung Wooyoung:

You came from a family of shape shifters. Your parents, siblings, aunts and uncles, could all shift into some type of terrifying beast. Wolves, tigers, lions, alligators, bears, you name it. So why the hell were you only able to transform into a weak little kitten? It was embarrassing for you growing up and for that reason you avoided shifting all together, it caused you to have low self esteem.

When Wooyoung came into your life, it was like a breath of fresh air. He made you feel beautiful in every possible way and suddenly you were more confident in yourself. Wooyoung never questioned what made you so insecure, knowing you wouldn't want to talk about it. Eventually he had to find out though, and he did during a family gathering of yours. While he was looking around the pictures, he noticed a lot were of fearsome animals. When he questioned you about it, you took a deep breath, and pointed out that they were your family. He didn't believe you obviously, until he witnessed for himself a few of your relatives morphing into their animal forms. He was genuinely intrigued by this and of course, wanted to dug deeper.

"So what do you turn into?"

You simply turned away, not wanting him to know and refusing every time he asked.

"Why not?!" He screeched.

"Because it's embarrassing!" You hollered.

"Come on! I just saw your grandfather turn into a black bear and scratch his ass on a tree, how embarrassing could it be?"

Sighing softly, you gave up and slowly morphed into the tiniest and cutest ragdoll kitten he had seen. A smile crept up on his face, before bursting into laughter.

"Stop laughing! It's not funny!" Your squeaky kitten voice piped out.

"I'm sorry baby! It's just that it's too adorable!" He was definitely enjoying this.

Choi Jongho:

Speed was your thing. There was nothing that was faster than you on this earth. And it was somewhat euphoric for you. The adrenaline that rushed through you every time you ran faster than light was indescribable. You often wanted to show off your skills, but avoided it knowing how nosey people could be.

You felt attracted to Jongho because of his strength. You often wondered if maybe he was just like you, but you found out that wasn't the case. He had his limits. But you didn't. Of course, you wanted to tell him, you felt sure he wouldn't judge you or pester you about your speed. But you could never find the right moment. It came spontaneously, like the many things in your life. It was when you were watching him workout. Repairs were being made on the ceiling and that's what caused a small piece of it to fall off, almost landing on Jongho had it not been for you pushing him to the opposite side of the room, you landing on top of him.

He just blinked as he processed what just happened.

"Did you just yeet us into another dimension?" He chuckled.

You blushed and laughed softly before proceeding to tell him everything. He didn't need any more proof than what just happened.

"I always knew you were my special girl." He winked at you.

Gifs not mine. Credit goes to their respective owners.

#ateez #ateez reactions #ateez hongjoong #ateez seonghwa #ateez yunho #ateez yeosang #ateez san #ateez mingi #ateez wooyoung #ateez jongho #ateez scenarios #ateez imagines

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qqueenofhades · 4 years

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Having just sent you a message the other day about how much I love your historical asks, I realized I have a question myself that you might know the answer to. I’m a Christian and I have never been able to figure out why Christianity has historically viewed non-procreative sex for pleasure as bad. (And none of my family, including my clergy father, have figured it out either. I think my dad has a bone to pick with Augustine? And I feel like Aquinas also has something to do with this.) But given that Jesus had a body and gives a speech about “the Son of Man came eating and drinking” as though he enjoyed it, how did this whole “the body is sinful especially the sex part” thing happen? I have been thinking about this a lot recently for Old Guard reasons, which should surprise no one.

Oof. So, a short and simple question, then. (Sidenote: did they expand ask limits? Because I’ve definitely gotten a couple asks today, including this one, that are longer than usual, rather than forced to space out and hope that Tumblr doesn’t eat them.)

The entire history of sexuality in the West and its relationship with Christianity throughout the centuries is obviously a topic that far, far exceeds anything I could possibly cram into this ask, but let’s see if I can hit on some of the highlights. First off, one could remark that some aspects of Jesus’s teaching managed to disappear from the official doctrine of Christianity almost immediately, and for a variety of theological, cultural, and social reasons. As anyone who has a passing knowledge of the late Roman Empire is aware, they were known for being sexually liberate (at least if you were a nobleman, as the freedom certainly did NOT apply to women), and the notorious run of emperors who were having orgies and sleeping with boys and their sisters and hosting nonstop sex parties did a lot to sour early Christianity’s relationship with it. Because pre-Constantine/Theodosian Code Rome was Christianity’s enemy (since Christians refused to perform the traditional civic sacrifices to the Roman gods, which was all that Rome required alongside permitting its citizens to practice whatever other religion they wanted), and because the emperors were such a high-profile example of sexual excess, that became an easy point of critique. Obviously, the Roman polemicists, like every other historian, should not be trusted on EVERYTHING they say about the emperors, but the general pattern is there and well-established. So Christianity, trying to establish its religious and moral bona fides, can easily go, “Well, Caligula/Nero obviously sucks, come join us and live a purer and more moral life!”

Constantine converted in the early fourth century and the Theodosian Code was issued at the end of the fourth century, which made Rome officially Catholic and represented a huge reversal of fortune for fledgling Christianity, helping it expand like crazy now that it was officially sanctioned. However, the Roman Empire was splitting into two halves, west and east, and the development of Greek Christianity in the eastern empire was strongly influenced by ascetic and austere traditions (if you’ve heard of the Stylites, i.e. the guys who liked to sit atop poles out in the Syrian desert to prove how holy they were, those are them). The cultural context of denial of the flesh and the renouncing of bodily pleasures also played intensely into the third/fourth/fifth century debates over heresy and orthodoxy. Some of the most vicious arguments came over whether Jesus Christ could have actually had an embodied (and therefore possibly inherently sinful) human body, or it was just a complicated illusion, the “shell” of a body that his entirely divine nature then inhabited without actually being part of. This involved huge theological arguments over the redemptive nature of the Eucharist and even Christ’s sacrifice: was it real/effective/genuine if he didn’t REALLY die and suffer the pain of being crucified, and was just assured that he’d be fine ahead of time? So yeah, the question of whether Christ had a real body (because then that might be sinful) was the knock-down, drag-out theological disagreement of the early centuries C.E., and left a lot of hard feelings and entrenched positions in its wake.

Likewise, your dad is correct in having a bone to pick with Augustine, at least in terms of his impact on views of sexuality in the late antique and early medieval Christian church. Augustine is obviously famous for agonizing endlessly over his sexuality/sexual urges in Confessions, his time as a Manichaean, his relationship with a woman and the birth of his son out of wedlock (and if you want a lot of repressed homoeroticism: well, Augustine’s got that too) and how his conversion to Christianity was intensely tied with his renunciation of himself as a sexual being. Augustine also pioneered the nature of the inheritance of Original Sin: therefore, every human who was born was sinful by virtue of sharing in humanity’s legacy from Eve’s transgression in the Garden of Eden. (And yes, obviously, this led to the beginnings of the embedding of clerical and social misogyny. Oh Augustine, I kind of hate you anyway because I had to read the entire goddamn 1000-page City of God during my master’s degree, but bro, you got a lot to answer for.) This involved EVEN MORE obscure speculations about whether original sin was passed down in male semen, and therefore Jesus was free of it because he was supposedly born divinely to a woman without a male father, but yeah, the idea that sexuality itself was already a suspect thing was fairly well correlated and then cemented by Augustine’s HUGE influence over the early church. Everything post-Augustine incorporated his ideas somehow, and so the idea of bodily pleasures as separating you from divine purpose got even more established.

Then we had the Carolingians in the eighth and ninth centuries, who were the first “empire” per se in Western Europe post-Rome, and who were also intensely concerned with legislating moral purity, policing the sexual behavior especially of its queens, and correlating moments of political or military defeat with insufficiently virtuous private behavior. The Carolingians likewise passed these ideas onto their successor kingdoms, especially the medieval kingdom of France (which would eventually become the pre-eminent secular power in Western Europe). Then the eleventh century arrived with the Cluniac and Gregorian Reforms (which were interrelated). One of their big goals was for a celibate and unmarried clergy on all levels of holy orders, from humble village priests to bishops and archbishops. Prior to this, clergymen had often been married, and there wasn’t a definite sense that it was bad. But because of this, and the idea that a married clergyman wasn’t pure enough to provide the Eucharist and would be distracted from his commitment to the church by a wife and family, the Cluniac and papal reformers intensely attacked sex and sexuality as evil. Priests didn’t (or rather, were not supposed to) do it, and if you weren’t in a heterosexual church-performed marriage and didn’t want children, you shouldn’t be doing it either. (Did this stop people, and priests, from doing it? Absolutely not, but that was the rhetoric.) This was about when celibacy began to be constructed as the top of the heap in terms of holy lifestyles, for men and women alike and laypeople as well as those in holy orders. NOT having sex was the most virtuous choice for anyone, even if sex was a necessary evil for having heirs and the next generation and so on. (Which is interesting considering that our hypersexualized present attaches so much value to having sex of one sort or another, and the asexual-exclusion types, but yeah, that’s a different topic for now.)

Of course, when the Cathars (a schismatic Catholic heresy in France and Italy) in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries began attacking ALL materiality and sexuality as irredeemably evil, the Catholic church went a bit like “whoa whoa that’s a little too far, hold on now, SOME sex is good, sex can be nice, we’re not actually like those guys” (even though they had been about a hundred years before). Because Cathar spirituality taught that any kind of attention or indulgence to the body was sinful, that included any kind of sex at all, even married heterosexual intercourse. (Of course, the Cathars themselves didn’t always live up to it either; see Beatrice de Planissoles and her Cathar priest lover.) The Catholic church obviously didn’t want to go THAT far, so they began rowing back some of their earlier blanket statements about the evilness of sexuality and taught that husband and wife both had a responsibility to offer each other sexual pleasure and fulfillment. I’ve answered many asks about sexual behavior and unions in the medieval era, the arguments over the definition of marriage, and how that changed over time in response to social needs and pressures, so yes. We know what the IDEALS were, and what people were legally supposed to do, but the fact that church writers were complaining about bad behavior, sexual and otherwise, literally the whole time means that, obviously, this did not always match up with reality.

The theories of the Roman physician Galen, which prescribed that female orgasm was necessary to conceive, were also well known and prevalent in the medieval world, which meant that ordinary married couples trying to have children would have had some awareness that female pleasure was supposedly necessary to do it. (This ties into my “it wasn’t an unrestrained extravaganza of violent painful rape for women all the time YOU GODDAMN MORONS JESUS CHRIST” rant, but we will recognize that I have Many Rants. So yes.) Obviously, we can’t know what the sex life of individual married couples behind closed doors was actually like, but there were a variety of teachings and official stances on sex and how it was supposed to be done, and as noted in other posts, just because the church thought it is zero guarantee that ordinary people thought that way too. People are people. They (usually) like having sex. They had sex, both gay and straight, married and unmarried, so on and so forth, even if the church had Opinions. Circle of life, etcetera.

Anyway, then the Renaissance arrived (and we just had the “why the Renaissance sucked for women” ask the other day), which prescribed a reversal of all the comparative sexual and political and social latitude that women had gradually acquired over the medieval era. It very much wanted to see women returned to their silent, domestic, maternal, objet d’arte roles that they had occupied in antiquity, and attacked the actions of women in their public and private lives as one of the major causes of the crises of the late medieval era. (Because you know, misogyny is always a useful scapegoat rather than blaming the powerful men who have fucked everything up, as we’re seeing again right now.) Because the Renaissance is regarded, fairly or unfairly, as the start of the early modern Western world, it’s where a lot of modern gender attitudes and views of sexuality became more explicitly codified and distributed faster than at any point in history before, to a more extensive audience, thanks to the invention of the printing press. We’ve obviously had moves toward sexual liberation and agency in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and the emergence of the modern feminist and gay rights movements, but now in some ways, we’re back in oddly Puritan attitudes in the twenty-first century. And since America was founded by Puritans, their social attitudes are still embedded in the culture, fanned today by hyper-conservative Protestant evangelicalism. Even though Puritans themselves ALSO, shock surprise, didn’t always live up to the stringent standards they preached.

...whoof. I’m sure I’m forgetting something, but hopefully that gives you the broad-strokes development.

#history #medieval history #queer history #history of religion #history of sexuality #history of marriage #women in history #long post #good lord that's a lot of tags #emjee #ask

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hldailyupdate · 4 years

Text

Playtime With Harry Styles

“There’s so much joy to be had in playing with clothes. I’ve never thought too much about what it means—it just becomes this extended part of creating something”

I ask her whether her brother had always been interested in clothes.

Styles cuts a cool figure in this black-white-and-red-all-over checked coat by JW Anderson.

“It’s pretty powerful and kind of extraordinary to see someone in his position redefining what it can mean to be a man with confidence,” says Olivia Wilde

There are references aplenty in this look by Harris Reed, which features a Victoriana crinoline, 1980s shoulders, and pants of zoot-suit proportions.

#harry styles #harry update #article #vogue #november 2020

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hlupdate · 4 years

Link

Over the summer Styles took a road trip with his artist friend Tomo Campbell through France and Italy,setting off at four in the morning and spending the night in Geneva, where they jumped in the lake “to wake ourselves up.” (I see a pattern emerging.) At the end of the trip Styles drove home alone, accompanied by an upbeat playlist that included “Aretha Franklin, Parliament, and a lot of Stevie Wonder. It was really fun for me,” he says. “I don’t travel like that a lot. I’m usually in such a rush, but there was a stillness to it. I love the feeling of nobody knowing where I am, that kind of escape...and freedom.”

GROWING UP in a village in the North of England, Styles thought of London as a world apart: “It truly felt like a different country.” At a wide-eyed 16, he came down to the teeming metropolis after his mother entered him on the U.K. talent-search show The X Factor. “I went to the audition to find out if I could sing,” Styles recalls, “or if my mum was just being nice to me.” Styles was eliminated but subsequently brought back with other contestants—Niall Horan, Liam Payne, Louis Tomlinson, and Zayn Malik—to form a boy band that was named (on Styles’s suggestion) One Direction. The wily X Factor creator and judge, Simon Cowell, soon signed them to his label Syco Records, and the rest is history: 1D’s first four albums, supported by four world tours from 2011 to 2015, debuted at number one on the U.S. Billboardcharts, and the band has sold 70 million records to date. At 18, Styles bought the London house he now calls home. “I was going to do two weeks’ work to it,” he remembers, “but when I came back there was no second floor,” so he moved in with adult friends who lived nearby till the renovation was complete. “Eighteen months,” he deadpans. “I’ve always seen that period as pretty pivotal for me, as there’s that moment at the party where it’s getting late, and half of the people would go upstairs to do drugs, and the other people go home. I was like, ‘I don’t really know this friend’s wife, so I’m not going to get all messy and then go home.’ I had to behave a bit, at a time where everything else about my life felt I didn’t have to behave really. I’ve been lucky to always feel I have this family unit somewhere.”

“There’s so much joy to be had in playing with clothes. I’ve never thought too much about what it means—it just becomes this extended part of creating something”

Behind its pink door, Styles’s house has all the trappings of rock stardom—there’s a man cave filled with guitars, a Sex Pistols Never Mind the Bollocks poster (a moving-in gift from his decorator), a Stevie Nicksalbum cover. Fleetwood Mac’s “Dreams” was one of the first songs he knew the words to—“My parents were big fans”—and he and Nicks have formed something of a mutual-admiration society. At the beginning of lockdown, Nicks tweeted to her fans that she was taking inspiration from Fine Line: “Way to go, H,” she wrote. “It is your Rumours.” “She’s always there for you,” said Styles when he inducted Nicks into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 2019. “She knows what you need—advice, a little wisdom, a blouse, a shawl; she’s got you covered.”

Styles, who has thoughtfully brought me a copy of de Botton’s 2006 book The Architecture of Happiness,is instinctively and almost quaintly polite, in an old-fashioned, holding-open-doors and not-mentioning-lovers-by-name sort of way. He is astounded to discover that the Atlanta-born Mitchell has yet to experience a traditional British Sunday roast dinner. Assuring him that “it’s basically like Thanksgiving every Sunday,” Styles gives Mitchell the details of his favorite London restaurants in which to enjoy one. “It’s a good thing to be nice,” Mitchell tells me after a morning in Styles’s company.

I ask her whether her brother had always been interested in clothes.

“It’s pretty powerful and kind of extraordinary to see someone in his position redefining what it can mean to be a man with confidence,” says Olivia Wilde

#harry styles #vogue #131120

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eryiss · 4 years

Text

Summary: Freed has taken great joy in watching Laxus become not only a powerful mage, but a celebrity as well. As any dutiful husband would, he saw it his responsibility to make sure Laxus' new found fame didn't go to his head. And what better way to accomplish that than to splash him back to reality. [Fraxus One Shot]

I'm not sure where this idea came from, but it seemed fun and I don’t write canon-focused as much as I'd like to. This is just a fun little one shot, that I hope can put a smile on your faces.

You can read this under the cut, on Fanfiction, or on Archive of Our Own. Hope you enjoy it.

A Splash of Reality

Freed wasn't entirely sure how, but Laxus had become something of a celebrity.

It had started out during their stint working for Blue Pegasus, wherein Laxus had been forced to take an interview with Sorcerer Weekly. Master Bob had insisted on it, claiming that the guild was run on patrons as well as their jobs, and having the world-renowned Laxus Dreyar suddenly as a guildmember was big news and could stir up a lot of business. It was made an even bigger deal because of Laxus' previous aversion to anything to do with press. It was his first interview, and it had been incredibly successful.

From there, things had snowballed. Other interviewers suddenly saw Laxus as a viable target, and Bob forced Laxus to do the more high-profile ones. When Fairy Tail had returned, Laxus had been one of the main points of intrigue, partly because now he was a well-known media figure and Fairy Tail returning was big news, and party because of the rumours about Laxus taking over.

Once he had started, he hadn't seemed to stop. Not only did he do interviews, but he also done an advertisement for the creators of his cherished headphones, which had kickstarted his pseudo-career in modelling. Every interview now came with a photoshoot, and Freed was immeasurably amused about how, with every shoot he did, the amount of clothing Laxus wore seemed to be lessening and the poses became more focused on his physique. Apparently the magazines knew a body they could profit from when presented with one.

While Laxus did complain, Freed knew he was enjoying it all. The man, while private, did like attention, if only on his terms.

The amount of time the couple could spend together did lessen slightly, but Freed didn't mind that. It would be hypocritical if he did, given when they had gotten together it had been the same year he'd gained the reputation as the 'Pretty Boy with a heart of darkness', and he had topped the 'Wizard I'd Like To Date' list; something Laxus had yet to do, Freed thought smugly. Media was something a famous wizard had to deal with, and it was a lot more fun laughing at Laxus' awkwardness in interviews than it would be if he allowed himself to be angry at the late nights Laxus spent in a studio somewhere.

One such night, Freed found himself doing the dishes as Laxus returned home.

"Hey," Laxus greeted as he entered, immediately shucking off his coat. "You alright?"

"Perfectly well," Freed said with a smile, placing the sponge on the draining board and turning to greet his husband. "Did your meeting go well?"

"I guess so," Laxus shrugged. "They offered me the contract. Pretty good pay, lots of coverage, they seemed enthusiastic about it."

"I can't imagine why," Freed chuckled. "It's not as if you're the person everyone's taking about right now, and that everything you attribute your name to seems to explode in popularity. Oh wait, you're exactly that," Freed chuckled. "I expect they threw a party just because you considered it."

An underwear company had, a month prior, come to Laxus saying they wanted him to be the headliner for their new ad campaign. They had stated in no uncertain terms that they would do almost anything to have him as their lead model, and it wasn't hard to understand why. Laxus had done a photoshoot for Sorcerer Weekly where one of the pictures showed Laxus teasing his underwear, and it had been the year's most successful issue of the magazine. The company had openly grovelled to get Laxus to consider their offer, and Freed had found it hysterical. He remembered what it had been like when he'd gotten similar offers, and was thankful that he no longer had to deal with it.

"Are you considering taking it?" Freed asked as he turned back to the dishes.

"Not sure," Laxus said, walking behind Freed and pressing his lips against the man's crown, a silent greeting. "They're respectful, and they said I can pick a photographer I know which means I won't get stuck with a creep. But I'm a mage, y'know. It'd make me less credible if there were magazine and billboard with me nearly naked on them, right?"

Freed paused, and smiled. He had known Laxus most of his life and they'd been together for a good few years, so he could read the man well. The fact that he'd phrased his last statement as a question, rather than as fact, was telling. He wanted to do it, almost definitely would do it, but he just needed a push.

And unfortunately, Freed had a bit of a cruel side.

"You're absolutely right," Freed said, voice almost haughty in tone. He was grinning into the unclean dishes. "Not only would you seem a sell-out, it would also affect your guild work and your reputation. It would risk taking away the fear factor you bring to missions; you shouldn't do it."

There was a beat of silent, one that Freed relished, before Laxus spoke again.

"But there's good aspects to it," He stated, forcing a nonchalant tone. "I could get some more money for the guild, which it always needs. And it's not like it's uncommon for mages to do ad campaigns and get into modelling. I mean, Mira does it all the time and nobody questions how fucking scary she can be."

"I'll agree to that," Freed nodded slightly, looking to Laxus with a wicked grin. "If you agree that you're loving this."

This had been the unspoken aspect of Laxus' celebrity status. Before it had happened, the blonde had been ardent that he'd never get into the publicity side of mage work, and that the people who did weren't as respectable as those who didn't. He'd claimed he would never do an interview by choice, and that he would hate every moment of it if forced to do one. That might have been true at the start, but as he had gotten used to it, gotten more comfortable with it, and had created professional relationships with journalists and photographers, he'd clearly started to enjoy it. A lot. But he refused to admit it, another amusing part of the situation.

"You kidding me?" Laxus scoffed. "Wish they'd stop asking, then I'd go back to normal."

"If that's the case, I'll talk to Master Makarov and have him block all correspondence from the media," Freed offered, and smirked when Laxus' eyebrow twitched slight. "Just admit it Laxus, you've become a celebrity, and you're enjoying every second of it."

"No I'm not," He protested, collapsing into a chair at the dining table.

"Oh please," Freed chuckled. "There's a small voice in your head that is constantly celebrating every moment of this. The arrogant teenager who wanted to hog the spotlight," Freed smiled as Laxus blushed a little. "You remind me of me when I first got into the celebrity side of things."

"I ain't that bad," Laxus stated. "Nobody can be as bad as Freed Justine the Pretty Boy."

"You might be more subtle about it," Freed conceded. "But I know that if you hadn't made such a big deal about not being one of those people, you'd be just as bad as I was."

"So what if I'm enjoying it," Laxus huffed, looking away from Freed and ignoring the chuckle that got him. "It ain't like I'm doing anything wrong by liking it."

"Certainly not, you're a well renowned wizard and you have put a lot of effort into proving yourself capable and impressive. Your celebrity status just proves that it's not just magic you're proficient in, but also publicity, arguably something a lot harder to do," Freed said as he walked from the kitchen sink and towards Laxus. "But if you think I'm not going to take every opportunity to annoy you like you did when our roles were reversed, you are very naïve indeed."

Laxus chuckled slightly at that, and the minor amount of defensiveness dissipated. As a couple, they had always had a flirtatious, harmless tit-for-tat rivalry, and Freed was glad Laxus knew his teasing was a part of that.

"Guess I deserve that," Laxus conceded. "What are you planning to do then? Find an embarrassing picture of me and send it to every magazine you know?"

"I'd hardly do something so unoriginal," Freed chuckled, thinking back to when Laxus had done just that to Freed. The picture of Freed sleeping, leaning against his sword, hair a mess after a mission, drooling slightly, had been featured in every low-end gossip magazine for a week, something which Laxus and The Raijinshuu found great delight in.

"Then what?" Laxus probed, smirking. He was clearly thinking of the picture as well.

"I can hardly ruin the surprise for you," Freed chuckled. "But, overall, I simply intend to keep you humble. To make sure all the grovelling and worshipping doesn't go to your head."

"How d'you plan on doing that?"

"Well, this, for example."

Freed moved quickly. As he had walked from the kitchen sink, he had grabbed the sponge that lay on the draining board and hidden it behind his back, something that Laxus hadn't noticed. He speedily moved it above Laxus' head, wringing it out. A cold shower of dishwater dropped out of it, landing on the blonde's perfectly styled hair, and splashing onto his shoulders.

Laxus let out a loud and undignified squark, wide eyed as the water dripped down his face. He looked up at Freed with shock for a moment, before determination painted itself across his featured. Freed met the expression with a cocky smile.

"You'll regret that," Laxus stated plainly.

"I don't think so," Freed chuckled. "After such a lovely noise, I don't think anything you do could make me regret it."

Laxus strode to the kitchen sink, scooping his hand in and collecting a handful of the foam bubbles. He turned on his heel and looked to Freed, who had crossed his arms and looked at the bubbles with an unimpressed eyebrow quirk. Not put off, Laxus stepped forward and slowly stroked Freed's face over with his bubbly fist, covering the man's features. He chuckled as he stepped back, the bubbles clinging to Freed's face.

"Well I have had a taste of my own medicine," Freed said in a voice so sarcastic it was almost impressive. "And it is very bitt-"

Freed cut himself off, gaping slightly as realisation – and a glass full of water – hit him. He gaped slightly as the cup full of dishwater splashed cold against his face, part of it entering his mouth. He slowly spat the water out onto the floor, glaring at his husband as bubbles trickled down his face. Laxus loudly laughed at him.

"I see," Freed said, voice calm now. "It's war then, is it?"

"Guess so," Laxus shrugged, crossing his arms, and adopting the same stance Freed had used just a moment ago.

And so, the war broke out. Before Freed could get to the sink, Laxus had splashed another handful of bubbles and water in his direction, drenching his crisp shirt and sending a shudder through him. Freed quickly got his revenge, cupping his hands and doing the same. His attack had been more effective, and Laxus groaned at a large wet mark covered his designer clothing; designer clothing that looked indistinguishable from his other clothes, given that no designer could change his unique sense of style.

The impromptu water fight lasted for a short while, and was covered in a mixture of sounds ranging from cries of annoyance to loud and raucous laughter. Though their kitchen was something of a mess by the time the fight neared its end, neither man cared. They both faced a lot of pressure, and moments of ridiculous fun was something they both relished.

Particularly Freed, given that he was now holding Laxus by the hair, threatening to plunge his face down into the rest of the dishwater.

"You wouldn't," Laxus grunted, muscles flexing as he pushed up against Freed's grasp.

"We both know I would," Freed taunted. "Unless you concede, of course."

"Never," Laxus demanded.

"Well then, let me give you a taste of what you've got in stall," Freed laughed, and Laxus' eyes narrowed. "Tonight I had gravy with my dinner, so the water is not only cold and stagnant, but it's also got a delightful hint of soapy beef. The few specs of the dinner I didn't finish are still floating around, which I expect will make this interesting," Laxus curled his nose at that; he could already smell the mix of contrasting scents. He was fine not having a closer look. "And from your nasty sneak attack, I can say from experience that it has a disgusting taste."

"You won't push me in," Laxus huffed. "When it comes to arm strength, I win."

"Perhaps with another man, that would be true," Freed mused. "But as your husband, I know a weakness or two that I can exploit."

Freed's fingers grazed against Laxus' waist, and a tickling sensation flushed through the blonde. His eyes widened as he reaffirmed his grasp on the sides of the sink, because Freed had barely been trying to tickle him and he was now only an inch away from the water's surface. If Freed really wanted to do this, Laxus would be powerless.

"You have one last chance to admit I win," Freed chuckled, breath hitting Laxus' ear. "Or it's bath time."

"Go fuck yourself."

"Very well," Freed grinned. "Enjoy yourself, Mr Celebrity."

And with that, Freed's free hand attacked Laxus' weak spot, his muscles buckled, and his face was shoved into the disgusting water below him.

~~~

"You've made a decision then?" Freed asked.

He walked out of his bathroom wearing nothing but a robe, his hair a slight mess after a quick towel dry. After Laxus had been pushed into the sink, Freed had been declared the victor of their water fight, and the two had retreated to the shower to clean off. Laxus had left the bathroom before Freed, claiming he was going to call the underwear company and give them a definitive answer while Freed readied himself for sleep.

"Yeah, just got off the phone," Laxus said, smiling at Freed and shifting the covers so his husband could climb in. "Told them I'd do it, they seemed pretty happy about it."

"I imagine so," Freed chuckled. "I hope you don't become disillusioned by it all, because glamour shoots can be a tiresome bore. I'd certainly rather you endure it than me."

He climbed into the bed, automatically leaning against his husband and curling up around him. Laxus wrapped him in his arms without a second thought, smiling a little at the scent of Freed's distinctive shampoo. He nuzzled his nose into the man's hair for a moment, before resting his chin on the man's head.

He grinned to himself before speaking again.

"You were right, they really would have done anything to get me working with them," Laxus mused, seemingly out of nowhere. "I went to them with a pretty big demand, and they actually went with it. Kinda shocked."

"As I said, you're a big name," Freed shrugged, covering himself with the duvet. "What did you want from them?"

"Double the pay."

"They really were desperate," Freed chuckled. "What they offered before was generous anyway."

"Well, I guess they saw the perks of it," Laxus chuckled, and smiled a little wickedly. "I mean, when I say they doubled the pay, I might have been misleading. Because while they're paying twice as much, it's not just going to me."

"Then who is it going to?" Freed questioned.

"You, of course," Laxus smirked, and Freed froze in his arms. Laxus tightened his grip slightly. "You see, I told them just how much my stud of a team captain – who was the fantasy guy of the whole nation a couple years ago – wanted to get into modelling. How he missed the spotlight, and wanted to show off to the world. And when I told them in no uncertain terms that I wouldn't be doing anything without him, they seemed very happy to do what I wanted."

"You didn't," Freed said, voice hollow.

"Oh I did," Laxus chuckled. "So it looks like I'm not going to be the only celebrity living here from this point, huh?"

"You bastard," Freed grunted.

"Damn right I am," Laxus grinned, taking Freed's chin with his fingers and turning him so they were face to face. He smirked at the man, who was doing a mix of a glare and a pout. Laxus leant forward, kissing Freed with a victorious expression. "I guess I win after all, Pretty Boy."

#Fraxus #Freed Justine #Laxus Dreyar #Fairy Tail #Fanfic #One Shot #Writing #Canon #Word Count 2.8k

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hyperfixationswithkate · 4 years

Text

connect | davey jacobs

reader x davey jacobs

[modern newsies au]

summary: It’s been two years since they spoke, and they need a wedding date. What could go wrong?

The opening of ‘You’re My Best Friend’ plays as you anxiously await for a response. The song he’d made his contact all those years ago as a joke but you’re too sentimental to let it go. You sprint across your apartment to grab it. “Hi,” you pant into the receiver. “As for your proposition, for you” your old friend said, “anything”. Your heartbeat races even faster at the thought of seeing him again. “Thank you” “See you then” He says and then the receiver clicks.

Almost a month and a half later, you sit on your couch waiting. Fidgeting with the hem of your shirt, you think about the last time you saw him. It was almost two years ago now. After graduation, you two had slowly grown apart. People thought you guys were made for each other, actual soulmates, but time is a cruel mistress. Romance was never a word you would use to describe your relationship with Davey. He was always your partner in crime, your best friend, never your boyfriend. Well not never, the amount of times you’d see him laugh or talking or just existing and imagine a world where you two weren’t just friends. But the possibility of love wasn’t worth risking a friendship over.

Somehow the idea of seeing him still makes you feel butterflies. Even though he recently moved to New York for a grad program, you didn’t reach out with the fear of being awkward or just wanting to leave things the way they were. But a friend’s wedding where they were desperate to meet your childhood friend after learning he’s in town and needing a date, a proposal arised.

It wasn’t a large wedding but large enough that you could leave early if things got weird. Getting cornered into bringing a guy you haven’t seen in years to a wedding where you barely knew the bride wasn’t the finest combo but it will have to do. All your worries and fears were pulled from your mind with a knock on the door. ‘Here we go’ you thought. You pull the door open with a deep breath as you see him.

Wow, college has done him well. Davey was always handsome but wow. Maybe time isn’t so criminal after all. Suits make anybody better but damn does he pull it off. “Hey, long time no see” he says, “shut up” you breathe as you hug him. The silk of the suit touches your face, you can smell the laundry detergent. The same one he’s used since he was a kid. The stale cotton smell fills your mind with nostalgia. Memories of crying into his shirt over god knows what, or borrowing a jacket from his car after a spring rain. A small smell brings you back to a past life, a completely different person, someone afraid of the endless possibility of the future. But his voice brings you back to the present. As he pulls away from the hug, he says “So y/n, what’s the plan?”

You two leave your apartment in an almost awkward silence. The fear of making things weird after two years of limited contact weights on you. As you approach his car, he says “so how did you get wrapped into a wedding?” You take a moment to reply and say “I barely know at this point, the groom is a friend of mine from my freshman writing class. His friend group is filled with frat boys and trust fund babies but he’s an alright guy and I am still easily peer pressured.” You ramble.

“You have a theme of finding the one alright guy in a group of animals” He says, winking at you. “A prime example being your juvenile posse from freshman year.” You say. Davey playfully gasps, acting offended. “Jack, Race, Romeo, and the rest of the goonies weren't exactly angels but they weren't heathens” He says in an overly dramatic tone.

He changes the subject before I can poke fun at his boys again saying “Me and Jack are sharing an apartment while I finish my double major and while he’s still doing random things to pay for art school. Some of the other boys are around town. It’s kind of homely though, especially through the first couple weeks. What was it like living somewhere completely new all on your own?” You think for a second and say “It’s kind of nice. Starting completely fresh. No one has any expectation of who you are. It was rough at first without anyone close but I was able to change without fear of ruining old friendships.” He nodded silently, definitely thinking about my statement and analyzing it like the over thinker he’s always been.

We sat in a comfortable silence as we approached his car. Davey takes two large steps to reach the car door before you, “M’lady” he says as he opens the door. The inside of his car smelled like a lemon air freshener and his dashboard was covered in post it notes with random things scribbled on them. “What are these?” you say, staring at the little notes. “Oh well they started by me forgetting things all the time and it evolved into the boys leaving notes every time they’re in here alone. I’m too sappy to take them down” He replies as he gets into the driver seat. ‘If you mess this up, I’ll deck ya. Love Race’ reads one of the notes. Davey notices you eyeing the note as he starts the car and says quietly “Race wrote that one about today. He really wants us to be close again so when I drive down here to see you, I pick up cheap weed for him.” ''God that's such a Race thing to do'' you say laughing. He makes nervous eye contact with you that makes you think that maybe weed wasn’t Race’s only motive for us meeting again. But Davey speaks before your mind can race too far off, “So what’s the address for this wedding venue?”

As we drive for a few minutes, Davey turns on the radio to fill the weird gap of silence between conversations and of course the first sing playing is “You’re my best friend” by Queen. The song about your partner being your best friend is playing, the song that could definitely be labeled as “our song” is playing, the universe is playing a cruel game on us today. Davey turns to you recognizing how significant this song is and says “You better remember all the words to this song” and of course I do. I reply by singing the opening verse very loudly. To which he does the exact same thing. As the song fades out, he says “I remember listening to that in high school. We used to sit on your bedroom floor and do homework while the whole Night At The Opera album played”. The nostalgia flooding back to you as his eyes focus back on the road. A particular memory stands out.

One night we were both studying for our AP Lit test in my bedroom. It was almost 2am and you’d been studying for hours. We snuck down to the kitchen for some snacks before the final haul of work. Running down the stairs your feet slip and Davey catches you in his arms. As you balance again, his arms don’t fall away and you turn to face him about to ask him if something is wrong. His eyes staring deeply into yours as you look at him and you savor the feeling of his warm hands on your arms. The moment quickly passed when your cat meowed very loudly at your feet, scaring the both of you apart. After raiding your kitchen, you two swiftly return upstairs to finish studying and hopefully avoiding another borderline romantic encounter for the evening. Once you close your bedroom door, Davey said “What’s your favorite record at the moment?”. He was trying to avoid studying but I didn’t really care. “Currently it’s A Night At The Opera by Queen. I just got it on vinyl and it’s definitely a winner” I say back. “Well then put it on” he says jokingly gesturing to the small record player in my room. “Alright mate” you mumble in a vague british accent knowing that’ll get him to laugh, and of course he does. You put on the record and the opening instrumental starts playing.

We study for most of the album, only interrupted by pages flipping, pencils scratching, yawning, and me flipping the record. By the end of the album, we’re both lying on the floor staring at the ceiling in exhaustion, the carpet touching my bare arms as the final notes fade out. “That was incredible,” Davey says quietly, turning to face me on the ground. “I know” I say nodding, leaning towards him. For a few seconds, we were close enough together we could have kissed. Staring at each other waiting for the other to make a move. He turns away, a fear of making things weird overcomes him. You can tell in his face that he regrets it the moment he turns.

The memory fades as the car stops at a red light. Turning to Davey as his eyes are fixed on the road, you see the side profile that you saw everyday at school. The slightly crooked nose that got broken from a flying book during lunch. The eyebrow that has a small scar above it from tripping at the city pool during freshman year. The pink blotch of color on his cheek that never seems to leave no matter the temperature. All these memories attached to him for better or for worse.

He notices you staring as he turns the corner. “What?” he says quietly, blushing. “Nothing, just thinking” you say equally as quiet. “About what?” he almost whispers. Just as you panic about what to say, the GPS says “You have arrived at your destination”

#davey jacobs #davey x reader #davey jacobs x reader #davey jacobs modern au #newsies #newsies musical #davey jacobs fluff #davey jacobs angst #connect #fic #gender neutral reader #please give me feedback

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thistangledbrain · 3 years

Text

Deliberately lumping 17 & 18 together this time, because 17 isn’t that big of an entry.

Day 17 - “Accommodations”

So from a *personal* standpoint, I need few or no accommodations, as I’ve learned to make my own & have my own coping skills - when you spend most of your life not even knowing you’re autistic, you’re less likely to ask for something to help you with “your weird hangups”.

But younger auties often DO need accommodations- like being allowed to wear headphones/muffs in school, having a quieter testing environment, smaller classes, and so on. And obviously, the more you struggle with certain aspects (like loud noises or crowds), the more accommodations you’ll need.

I admit I don’t have much experience with the kids who truly need the total SPED environments. *Most* (definitely not all) kids I’ve known have all been capable to a degree of adapting to a NT environment. It’s *exhausting*, but possible *most of the time*. So since I’m a child of “suck it UP!”, I’m unfamiliar with this outside of simple accommodations I asked for, for my youngest, when he was in his earlier HS years - like headphones being allowed, and letting him keep his cell phone on him so he could quietly text with me if he was having a rough day & we could walk through it together. As he’s progressed through high school, he’s needed these accommodations less and less. I’ve noticed as my boys have edged through puberty, they leave more and more of their younger struggles behind them.

Your results may vary, of course.

———————————————

Day 18 - “Someday”

Hm. Boy, that’s ambiguous. Maybe I’ll take this one on from a couple different angles.

Someday I hope NTs understand autism better. Someday I hope each autistic person can be judged on their OWN PERSONAL strengths and weaknesses, like NTs are, instead of lumping us all together and deciding we can or can’t do something, based on the fact we’re autistic. For example, I know *plenty* of autistic musicians who play in bands ranging from death metal & punk rock, to smooth jazz. “But I thought autistic people couldn’t handle loud sounds!!”, you exclaim. Yeah, and some of us can. Also, not all loud sounds are created equal. Or sounds in general. A good example for me is, I occasionally jump and let out a little scream when the toast pops up 🙄, but I don’t flinch at the sound of gunfire - because I love to target shoot (I do not hunt), and it’s something I’m really good at, so I enjoy it thoroughly. (I’m not going to get started on America’s gun violence problem because it enrages me. I can rant about that allllll day & already deleted two paragraphs doing just that. This was just a convenient example.)

I’ve been thinking about this a LOT lately, actually. We have our own hurdles, without NTs adding to them, anyway. But I think about “what if I knew I was autistic, before I joined the Marines? Would I still have been as determined?” YOU’RE DAMN RIGHT...BUT I would have hit a brick wall, because they wouldn’t have let me (if I was honest about it, anyway - I’m telling you right now, if every applicant was 100% honest about their background, almost NO ONE would be accepted). So what happened? Well - I was a damned good Marine, that’s what happened - because I didn’t let *anybody* tell me I couldn’t do something. And as I mentioned before...for certain types of auties, the military is actually a pretty fucking brilliant, comfortable environment that we literally thrive in. Again - we are all different. So this “someday” one is BIG for me. Someday I hope we are judged individually on our merits, someday I hope we are looked at through the lens of what we CAN do, versus what *someone else* thinks we cannot do. I have YET to meet an Autie who doesn’t go “OH YEAH?!” when we’re told we “can’t” do something because of our autism. (We might not always succeed, granted, but we really hate being told we “can’t” do something, based on what YOU think we can and cannot do.)

Someday I hope autism is actually celebrated, instead of thinking it’s some sort of scourge. I hope to see that happen in my lifetime.

Someday I also hope that people (the doctors and psych folks and whatever) realize there’s actually a *considerable* difference between male and female autistics - which is why females are so often diagnosed late in life, because we “don’t fit the profile”. I also hope they realize that some females are more like males, and some males more like females, as far as the expression of our ASD. In other words - back to HOW ABOUT YOU EVALUATE US INDIVIDUALLY, FFS. I hear all this shit about how “autism is a spectrum”, and it just seems like lip service - if you KNOW it’s a spectrum, then why are you still trying to pigeonhole us into the DSM-5 definition or whatever, and operating inside generic parameters?? Auties are the most complex human beings you will ever meet in your life - and I stand FIRMLY by that - so your attempts to shoehorn us into your basic understanding of it is frustrating as FUCK. Infuriating, even. No wonder we fight you so bad when you try it. How would YOU like it if we decided that every middle class blonde woman is a “Karen”, and treated you as such? Or if we decided everyone with brown eyes are slow and we should treat all of you brown eyed people the same, like infants? You’d be like, “what the FUCK?” Yeah. It’s a lot like that.

Someday, I hope more therapists understand the autistic brain better, so they can be more helpful. Sometimes the same advice you’d give a NT patient struggling with an issue (let’s say, the death of a loved one or executive function) just won’t ...WORK...for an Autie. As it stands now, most therapists I’ve known go straight to ABA, and that gets frustrating when you just need to let it all out so you can re-center and actually have a discussion. Speaking of ABA, someday I hope teachers and doctors and therapists understand the resentment and feelings of being “wrong” or “bad” that result from ABA. SOME of it is necessary I think, but mostly, all it does is teach repression & lets us know loud and clear that the way we are is “wrong”. I desperately hope ABA is reevaluated - with the input from ACTUAL AUTISTICS. Using ABA for to overcome a problem like, say, potty training or something, is often seriously necessary. But potty training isn’t part of *who we are*, if that makes sense. Most ABA is basically like putting your Autie kid in a dog training bootcamp, with little to no thought about “what makes that kid tick”. It’s all about training you to act in a way that NTs find acceptable (and I have lots and lots of cuss words about that........) I don’t even train DOGS like some schools or therapists train auties. Dogs aren’t beings to dominate, control, and condition to act in ways I find pleasing (but I’m also not a “general trainer”...I’m on the behavior side of things). They’re sentient beings who deserve to have their personalities discovered, their traumas and their hangups, and THEN we work inside THAT dog’s parameters until we’re solid...*then* we start working on pushing them outside of comfort zones and such. AFTER that trust and understanding has been laid down as a solid foundation, for *that specific dog*, regardless of my experience with past dogs (though I do rely heavily on past experiences of course; knowledge of what did and didn’t work with some other dog similar to the one I have now - that sort of thing - but every dog is a whole new being to me...because, well, they actually *are*). Nothing is “cookie cutter”. Every dog is a brand new exploration. I understand that’s putting a lot of pressure on SPED teachers. I understand they’re baffled when I tell them ABA sucks as a because they see “positive results”. Sure - you see positive results in your ability to repress that child. Positive results in the fact that they’ve now learned to hide themselves from you and others. It seems the current ABA methods don’t necessarily teach any sort of useful skills for actually adapting to the flow of the NT world for that kid - just how to repress who they are, so they fit in. In other words - ABA is successful for the NT world - not us. It actually depresses the shit out of me to think about how teachers and counselors view the rocking and flapping kid they’ve now trained to sit quietly in class feels like their work is successful. You didn’t help that kid - you BROKE them, you broke their spirit, you broke who they are. That makes me so angry. Same when these so called “star trainers” can force or intimidate any dog to performative good behavior. Same as the difference between how native Americans train their horses versus how Anglo Saxons or others did/do. In the native culture, we call it “gentling”. In AS culture *it is LITERALLY called “breaking”*. I’m not kidding - look it up.)

As for my personal “someday”....

Someday I’ll write a book about my adventures & struggles in life and what it was like inside my brain through each one. It’s not that I think I’m anything special, but I’ve been asked to do this, and the reasons were pretty logical. And I do love to write, usually. Or maybe it’ll be a book about how my autism is a HUGE advantage in “my line of work” (the dog thing...being sort of more of a dog/human “guidance counselor” than a trainer - since I hear your voice and feelings, and I also hear your dog’s, I’m less of a trainer and more of a bridge between the two. An interpreter, but also almost like a marriage counselor too LOL). I think that’s my biggest “someday” and the only one worth mentioning, because it’s such a huge goal...most of my other personal “someday” stuff, I eventually kinda go “well fucking why not TODAY, bish?!” and I just...DO it.

But generally, someday I hope it’s understood that no two autistic people are alike - but we share enough commonality that it’s possible to understand we’re basically in a different category of people from “normal”. Someday I hope NTs in general drop their stereotypes and get to know us one on one. Someday I hope people realize and understand that even nonverbals are whole ass human beings, with thoughts and dreams and opinions and a whole complex personality that you missed, because you were too busy judging the fact they can’t speak like you do.

Someday I hope you realize we *enhance* the human experience, we don’t detract from it. Someday I hope you realize we are not BROKEN, we are just different. Someday I wish you’ll stop being so smug and stuck up in your “normally functioning brain”, and stop PITYING us. For fucking what??? Experiencing life in a much more complex and deep way?? Bruh. We pity YOU, too. Your world perception often seems dull and wasteful. Limited. OPEN UP - there’s a whole universe out there that you haven’t even explored. So, someday I hope we can enhance each other’s human experience, like my friends and I do. I’d love to see that on a larger scale.

Someday.

#asd #autism #autistic #acceptance #awareness #actuallyautistic

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darriness · 4 years

Text

Klaine Fic - 3 on 1

Author: darriness

Word Count: 19352

Summary: What happens when triplets each find the potential love of their lives...in the same person?

Author’s Note: This author's note is a little long but I ask that you read it all :) Welcome to my story for the Glee Potluck Big Bang! I've had this story finished for a couple of months so I'm over the moon I'm getting a chance to post it a little early! The original idea for this fic came from a conversation I had with @ipwarn when I discovered that Darren Criss, Alex Brightman, and Henry Golding share the same birthdate. But, saying that, Blaine is still Blaine in this story (he's not Darren) and for Alex and Henry I used parts of their real life inspirations' general appearance as reference but they are completely made up characters. Most notably, and the reason I wanted to say anything, I know Henry Golding is actually Malaysian but Henry in my story is half Filipino. Lastly but definitely not least I would like to thank @imrights for the AMAZING title art above that I am completely obsessed with. And as always I would like to thank my fantastic beta @darrenismydarcy - I could not do any of this without you!! I hope all of the above makes sense! Enjoy the story! I, selfishly, love it a whole lot!

AO3 Link

3 on 1

What do you get when you mix an Asian banker with an Irish elementary school teacher?

Henry, Alexander, and Blaine Anderson.

That? Is Alex Anderson’s favourite joke to tell. It’s caused his brothers to roll their eyes more times then they can count but Alex still gets a kick out of it.

Now, Henry, Alex, and Blaine aren’t JUST brothers. I mean sure, looking at them you probably wouldn’t even be able to tell they share ANY genetic makeup. They are as different as different can be.

Henry towers over his brothers at just over six feet, for one. Blaine and Alex try to pass themselves off as five nine but...they’re five eight on a good day. Alex got all his features from his Irish mother. He’s as white as can be. Literally. His brown hair and brown eyes are the only things keeping him from being part of the Arian race…

Henry, on the other hand, is the spitting image of his Filipino father. His angular features, slightly slanted chocolate brown eyes, and deep chestnut hair are a proud marker of his Asian heritage.

And then there’s Blaine. A complete mix of them both. Growing up, he had to fight (once physically) for people to understand that he is half Asian. Unlike Alex (who to this day gets the quirked eyebrow when he tells people he’s half Filipino and will sometimes, depending on the company, not even bother to mention this fact), Blaine does have Asian traits. It’s just that he has enough caucasian traits to ‘trick’ the more ignorant population.

In the end, not only are these three completely different men brothers...they actually share the exact same birthdate.

Growing up as a triplet was an interesting experience. One that can only truly be understood by those who, themselves, grew up as a multiple.

For example, there really isn’t a way to explain the special kind of connection that sees one triplet farting on the head of another triplet while the third triplet holds him down.

Which is how we find the Anderson triplets now.

“Oh my God, get the fuck off of me!” Henry shouts, trying to bring his hands up to block the assault.

Alex laughs from somewhere above him, letting out a sigh as he completes the job, before moving from his straddle position.

“You can let him go, Blainers.” Alex says to Blaine who had been holding Henry’s shoulders and arms down.

Blaine releases Henry who immediately shrugs him off (like he had been the one to break the hold) and sits up, “I expect this shit from him,” Henry says, pointing to Alex, “but not from you.” He concludes, pointing to Blaine.

Blaine shrugs, “He had a justifiable reason.”

Henry rolls his eyes before shifting on the couch and picking up some of the papers in front of him. He’s got work to do. He’s not even sure why he agreed to have his brothers over to his apartment on the eve of potentially the biggest meeting of his career.

“So, we need to talk about what we’re going to do for Tiny’s bachelorette.” Alex says, sitting down on the other couch and picking up his beer. HE doesn’t have a high stress meeting in the morning.

But, right. That’s why they’re here. To discuss their little sister’s upcoming nuptials.

“We’re not her bridesmaids OR her maid of honour.” Blaine reminds, “Isn’t our job to go with the guys when they take Sam out?”

Alex stares aghast when Henry shrugs and nods along with the suggestion, “Ummm no!” Alex shouts, indignantly, “This is our baby sister’s wedding. Our ONLY sister’s wedding. If it’s not her big brothers’ job to take her out and get her drunk and danced upon by random strippers then I don’t know whose job it is.”

Blaine and Henry stare at their brother in silence for a moment.

“Ummm, it’s literally anyone else’s job but ours.” Henry says.

Alex rises slightly from his seat and sits down with an emphatic exhale, “You can’t be serious!” He exclaims, “To quote a very neurotic man ‘I expect this shit from him,” He says pointing at Henry, “but not from you.’” He finishes, pointing at Blaine.

Blaine’s eyes go wide and Henry can tell that Blaine’s people pleasing nature is taking a serious hit tonight. If there’s one thing Blaine Anderson can’t stand, it’s people not liking him and being disappointed in him.

“We are her *brothers*.” Alex emphasises again, “I think she’d be really hurt if we didn’t do something for her.”

Henry sighs, “But does that ‘something’ have to include naked men?” He asks, even though he already knows he’s going to agree to whatever Alex has planned. That’s how their relationship works and always has. Alex comes up with the crazy schemes, Blaine goes along with pretty much anything to stop people from being upset with him, and Henry usually acquiesces because if not...the other two would probably end up in jail.

Alex smiles like he knows he’s close, “Come on. You don’t think Tiny would get a kick out of naked men dancing for her? And besides, Blaine and I will enjoy it just as much!” He waggles his eyebrows lewdly. Alex really is a charismatic, nice guy...once you see past the frat boy exterior.

Henry sighs again as he shuffles his papers. He could mention that while Blaine and Alex (being gay and pansexual respectively) would get a kick out of a male strip club, he (as a straight man) probably wouldn’t. But...in the end he loves his brothers and sister too much to refuse…

...especially with Blaine now fully on board and the two of them looking at Henry like he has the keys to all of their hopes and dreams.

“Oh, fine.” He grumbles, even though he smiles.

The other two cheer and Henry rolls his eyes as they begin to make plans and he goes back to his notes.

-- -- --

Blaine leans over and gives Alex a brief hug as their cab pulls up in front of Blaine’s apartment later that night, “Night Al.” He says.

Alex smiles, “Night Blainers.”

Blaine’s got one foot out of the cab when Alex calls his name. He turns and raises a questioning brow at his brother, “Don’t forget to check your Tinder.” He waggles his eyebrows much like earlier. Alex spends a lot of his time waggling his eyebrows.

Blaine chuckles and rolls his eyes, “It’s not Tinder. It’s just...a regular dating app.”

Blaine’s not ashamed of the fact that he’s trying online dating. He’s a 26-year-old single man in New York City and at least half the world is online dating. It’s worth a try. And it’s not like he’s Alex who trips and falls (sometimes literally) over a new sexual partner almost every day or Henry who is married to his job. He’s just covering his bases.

Alex smiles, “Well, just be sure to check it. And remember, only swipe right if it looks like they have a big penis.”

Blaine rolls his eyes again before giving his brother the middle finger and getting out of the car. He stands on the curb as the cab pulls into traffic on its way to Alex’s apartment ten minutes away, stuffing his hands into the pockets of his jacket after getting hit with the wind of a late September evening chill.

When the cab turns a corner and is no longer in sight, Blaine turns and makes his way into his apartment building. It’s not the most posh of buildings but it’s comfortable. It’s home. And Blaine is proud of the fact that he is able to afford it without having to rely on his parents’ money. They’ve offered, sure, but Blaine has never wanted to rely on his parents that much.

His building is quiet this late at night and Blaine doesn’t pass a single person on his way to the fifth floor. He lets himself into his apartment, toes off his shoes, hangs up his jacket, and throws his keys into the bowl on the front table before making his way to the couch and collapsing onto it with a sigh.

Despite his eye roll at his brother, the first thing he does upon sitting down is check his dating app, ConnectSingle. It’s definitely not Tinder, no swiping of any kind required, but Blaine enjoys the fact that both parties need to indicate interest (by clicking a happy face on their basic profile) before they can contact each other or even view their whole profile. And while he feels like it’s slightly shallow, Blaine has definitely used that function to weed out some of the less...aesthetically pleasing requests.

He’s actually only communicated with three guys so far and only met up with one in person (...it didn’t go well), but he’s optimistic he’ll find someone he can really connect with. And if not? Well, he hasn’t really lost anything in trying.

He first checks to see who has given him a smiley face today. Three men seem to enjoy the picture Henry had taken of him on the beach, sunglasses reflecting the ocean and curls loose and billowing in the wind, and he considers each of their pictures before deleting them all. He feels slightly bad but figures if you sign up to online dating not expecting to be rejected sometimes, you’re doing it wrong.

He then flips to his ‘daily matches’ - men the app thinks he might like. He hems and haws over their basic profiles and decides to smiley face two; a redhead named Andy (who appeals to the side of Blaine that enjoys larger men) and a brown haired man named Kurt (who has great hair, great eyes, and a smirk Blaine may be interested in knowing more about).

It’s not as immediately satisfying as he would like it to be, clicking the smiley face. Nothing happens other than a yellow smiley face rises slightly above his thumb and then winks out, leaving a static yellow smiley face behind, but he feels accomplished.

He closes the app and stretches on the couch, glancing at the clock to notice it’s almost 1 am. He doesn’t have anywhere immediate to go in the morning, perks of being an on call studio musician, but figures just in case he gets a call he should go to bed.

Without thinking of ConnectSingles again, he goes about his evening routine, plugs his phone in and is asleep twenty minutes later.

-- -- --

Alex could go home. It’s where he told his brother and, more importantly, the cab driver he’d be going. But as the cab driver pulls away from the curb he gets a text from his friend, Elliott, telling him he should meet him at a bar.

Alex shrugs and tells the cab driver to change his final destination. It doesn’t take much to convince Alex to go out.

When he gets to the bar, he finds Elliott leaning against the brick front wall. He’s got a foot propped up behind him, a bare knee poking out of ripped black jeans, and a cigarette burning from his lips as he looks down at his phone.

“I must reiterate - as a performer you really shouldn’t smoke.” Alex says by way of a greeting.

Elliott looks up from his phone and smirks as he pulls the cigarette from between his lips, “Old habits die hard.” He says with a shrug before flicking the mostly unsmoked cigarette to the ground and pulling Alex into a hug, “Good to see you, man.”

“You too.” Alex says returning the hug, “Any particular reason you dragged me out of bed on this cold night to meet you at a bar at 1 am?”

Elliott rolls his eyes, “If you were in bed, I promise that was the last smoke of my life.”

Alex purses his lips to hide his smile before sighing, “Damnit, fine, I wasn’t in bed.” Elliott laughs and puts a hand on Alex’s shoulder, pulling him forward into the bar.

The noise from inside the bar gets unsurprisingly louder as they enter but luckily not so loud that it makes talking impossible. They may have to raise their voices slightly to be heard but Alex knows he won’t be leaving with burst ear drums.

“We were just having a really great night and I thought you should be a part of it.” Elliott explains.

Alex nods, enjoying that Elliott thought to include him, “We?” He asks as they make their way to the bar.

Elliott shrugs, “Just a bunch of people from the theatre.” He calls.

It’s not wall to wall packed in the bar but it’s busy enough that Alex accidentally runs into someone on their walk from the door to the bar. He ‘oofs’ at the impact and then is immediately apologetic as the person he hit turns around.

The words die on his lips when a set of cool blue eyes make eye contact with him. An eyebrow is quirked above those eyes and pink lips wrap around a straw as they regard Alex. Alex notices the slight pull in of the cheeks attached to the lips as they suck up liquid.

He’s broken from his stare when Elliott laughs, “Alex? Kurt. Kurt? Alex.”

Alex feels Elliott pat his shoulder a few times before the other man is gone, leaving Kurt and Alex still looking at each other. Alex watches as Kurt’s tongue flicks out to play with the straw still between his lips and Alex is transfixed.

“Hi.” He breathes, suddenly wishing he had worn a better outfit to Henry’s than his faded jeans and white button up shirt with tiny rubber ducks on it.

“Hi.” Kurt answers back with a smile.

-- -- --

Henry fidgets the next morning as he sits outside the office the nice receptionist directed him to. His knee bounces and he shuffles through the papers in his folder, wishing he could stop the sweat he can feel building under his suit jacket.

He’s prepared, he knows he is, but a job interview for a large production company is a lot different than working out of a one room studio with guys you went to college with.

Henry checks his watch and realizes he’s probably got another ten minutes to wait - he’s always extremely early to all things, something he wishes he could teach his brother.

As if summoned by Henry’s thought, his phone buzzes in his pocket and a text from Alex pops up.

Alex

You got this brother! Now I’m going back to sleep.

Henry chuckles softly and doesn’t bother to respond. Alex is probably already asleep again.

He’s still looking at his phone when a second text comes in, this time from Blaine.

Blaine

You are more than ready for this, Henry. Call me after to let me know how it goes.

Henry smiles at the texts on his screen and feel bolstered by their support. He texts Blaine back to thank him and tell him he will call him after, before pocketing his phone and going back to bouncing his knee.

“Can I...get you something to drink?” A hesitant voice asks to Henry’s left.

He jumps slightly and turns to find a well dressed man with high chestnut hair and a soft smile looking at him like you might a spooked animal.

Henry chuckles and can feel his cheeks blush slightly in embarrassment at how ridiculous he must look, “The receptionist already offered and I’m good. But thank you.”

The man nods but doesn’t immediately depart. Instead he continues to look at Henry with a calculating expression, “Job interview?” He asks, finally.

Henry bites his lip, “Is it that obvious?”

The man shrugs and gestures to the seat next to Henry. Henry also gestures to the seat with a nod and the man sits, crossing one long leg over the other, “I don’t think anyone else would notice. I just recall with ridiculous clarity my own nerves when I interviewed for a job here.”

Henry nods, “But obviously it went well for you.”

The man seems to preen, his swooped hair swaying slightly as he shakes his head and Henry finds himself smiling, “Obviously.” The man says and while it should come across as cocky, it doesn’t and Henry finds his nerves easing. The man smiles and holds out a hand, “Kurt.” He says.

Henry takes the hand and shakes it warmly, “Henry.”

Kurt smiles, “Well, Henry, what do you say I take you out for a coffee to celebrate after your interview?”

And suddenly Henry is nervous again but this time it has nothing to do with his interview.

-- -- --

Blaine stretches like a cat in a sun spot and hums as he squints at the bright sun shining through his bedroom window. He loves to wake up to the sun.

His phone buzzes on the nightstand and he rolls over to grab it. He’s got three notifications on his phone. One is a text from Alex sent at 3:43 am.

Alex

Duuuuuude you will not believe the night I’ve had!

Blaine chuckles and figures texting Alex back now would yield no fruit. It’s only 9 am, Alex would be asleep for hours yet.

The second notification is reminding him that Henry has a job interview this morning. He silently thanks himself for setting the reminder and quickly shoots a text to his brother for support.

The last notification is from ConnectSingle. Blaine has a match! It’s not quite as exciting as it was when he first got the app but he’ll admit to a tiny thrill going through him at the prospect of mutual interest. He wonders if it’s Andy or Kurt from last night or one of the other people he’s smiley faced in the past.

He thumbs open the app and notices first that Andy’s name is no longer on his ‘pending’ list which means the other man deleted Blaine’s profile. It stings a little but then he smiles when he sees a green smiley face next to Kurt’s name and picture (indicating a reciprocated interest) and an email attachment. He presses the email and settles back against the pillow to read what his new match has to say.

Blaine,

Hi! My name’s Kurt. Though I guess you already knew that... (Blaine chuckles softly) Anyway! Thank you for ‘smiling’ at me. You have a great actual smile :) I’d be interested to learn more about you - your profile says you’re a musician? Message me back if you’re interested in chatting!

Kurt

It’s simple but it still makes Blaine kicky feet just the tiniest bit under his blankets. He bites his lip and reads the message again before opening a reply box and typing his own message back.

Kurt

Hello! It’s great to ‘meet’ you. You also have a really great smile and might I add you have stunning eyes (is ‘stunning’ too much for a first email?) I am a musician! I’m a freelance studio musician, which, believe it or not, makes me a pretty decent living. Your profile says you like cars - Driving them? Working on them? Sitting in them? (I promise not to judge if it’s the last one). Hope to hear from you soon!

Blaine :)

As always, Blaine reads his message four times before hitting send and then rereads it again for any stupid things he may have said. He’s pretty happy with what he sent though and as he heads to the shower he’s already anticipating Kurt’s response.

-- -- --

“You are a God among men!” Alex exclaims as he walks out the front entrance to his apartment building later that afternoon to find Blaine standing outside with a coffee cup extended in one hand.

Blaine chuckles as his brother takes the cup, slings an arm around his shoulder and noisily kisses his cheek, “Well, I figured you would have just gotten up.” Blaine says as the pair start to walk down the street.

Alex hums around a sip of delicious coffee before nodding, “Within the last hour.”

“I still don’t understand how you can sustain this lifestyle.” Blaine says with a shake of his head. He knows that, out of the three of them, Alex relies most heavily on their parents to make ends meet and that his job as an evening bread baker at a small bakery means he doesn’t work typical hours (though who is Blaine to talk?) but sometimes he worries that Alex isn’t taking care of himself as well as he could.

Alex fidgets with the beanie he has on over his undoubtedly messy brown hair and shrugs with an easy smile, “Hey, man, when it works, it works.”

Blaine nods to concede the point, for now, as they round the corner on the street the bakery Alex works at is on, “So, what was so unbelievable about your night last night?”

Alex perks up at the mention and seems to skip along next to Blaine, “I met someone!”

Blaine rolls his eyes affectionately, “You are always ‘meeting someone’.”

Alex nods but smacks Blaine lightly, “I know but this guy is different. He’s...amazing!”

Blaine smiles, “Well, I’m happy for you.” He says, “Are you seeing him again?”

Sometimes, Blaine gets jealous over how easily Alex meets people. Granted as a pansexual, his pool of potential partners is larger than Blaine’s, but there’s just something so magnetic about Alex and he doesn’t seem to have any insecurities holding him back.

Alex presses his lips together and nods, “Tomorrow night!”

Blaine tries not to let his shock show. For as often as Alex hooks up with people, he usually doesn’t see the same person more than once. Blaine has asked that question of Alex a lot and usually gets a shrug and a ‘probably not’. Now, Alex seems genuinely excited.

“That’s amazing. Did you sleep with him last night?” Blaine asks as they come to a stop outside Alex’s work.

“Now, Blainers, you know a man does not kiss and tell!” Alex scoffs but then smirks, “But...there was kissing.” And there is the eyebrow waggle.

Blaine laughs, “Well, you’ll have to keep me updated.” He says.

“Speaking of updated,” Alex says, “Have you heard from our enigmatic big brother today about his interview?”

Blaine furrows his brow, “Not since before it happened. I told him to call me afterwards.”

Alex pouts his lips thoughtfully, “Maybe it went so well he had to go home and masturbate to his work success.”

Blaine half laughs and half groans, “That is not a visual I needed.” Alex shrugs with a chuckle, “But I’ll message him and find out how it went. Have a good shift. I’ll see Friday at Mom and Dad’s?”

Alex nods, “Okay, let me know what he says.” Because texting Henry himself would be too much work?, “And you sure will see me Friday, baby brother!”

Blaine rolls his eyes again, “I am not the baby!”

Alex clicks his tongue and shrugs, “Last one out is always the baby.”

“I am literally one minute ‘younger’ than you.” Blaine huffs complete with sarcastic finger quotes.

“And what a glorious minute it was.” Alex says with a wistful sigh and then dodges when Blaine tries to hit him in the head.

Alex waves without further ado and then heads into the bakery to start his shift, leaving Blaine on the sidewalk to pull out his phone. He’s about to open his text app to message Henry when a red bubbled one by the ConnectSingles app draws his attention.

He opens it with a giddy flutter of his stomach to find a new message from Kurt. He starts walking down the crowded street while he opens the email to read it (he’s lived in New York all his life, he’s an expert at phone reading and dodging people at the same time).

Blaine,

‘Freelance studio musician’ sounds fascinating. Do you know how to play a lot of instruments? As for my interest in cars, it’s all about working on them (who enjoys just sitting in cars? :P lol). My dad owns a garage in my hometown and I’ve been fixing cars since I could hold a wrench. I think he secretly wanted me to take over the business but fixing cars was always a hobby, not a vocation for me.

...Is that an overshare for a second message? I’m fairly new to this online thing. If it is, pretend I didn’t say anything.

Musicals! (I’m very good at subtly subject changes…) Are you a fan of musicals? I don’t like to assume just because a person is gay but I love musicals. They’re a big part of my life. So, I like to know right off the bat if I’m talking to a like minded person.

Talk soon?

Kurt

Blaine can feel the goofy smile on his face and isn’t sure why he feels the need to try and tamp it down. It’s New York City, there are way weirder things happening than a guy smiling down at his phone. He can’t get over how adorable Kurt seems just from two messages. He usually likes to play it slow, wait a while after receiving a message before messaging back but he opens the return message box immediately and crafts a response at the next stop light.

Kurt

I do know how to play a lot of instruments. I’m kind of a jack of all trades but master of none type? My parents put me in piano when I was kid and it’s actually the only instrument I’m classically trained in. Everything else I just picked up along the way. I think my parents secretly wanted me to be a concert pianist but classical music was always more a hobby than a true vocation for me (I don’t think you overshared but just in case you still think you did...I thought I’d ‘overshare’ back :)

I absolutely love musicals! Don’t ask me to pick a favourite, I simply couldn’t. Do you have a favourite? Let me guess...Wicked? You strike me as someone who would really appreciate the brilliance of Idina and Kristin. But maybe I’m wrong - I’m happy either way!

Blaine :)

P.S. You said your dad has a garage in your hometown? Where’s that? I grew up in Manhattan myself.

Blaine’s almost home by the time he finishes typing and he hits send before he can second guess himself. On his way up the stairs, he dials Henry’s number only to have the phone go to voicemail. Blaine’s brow furrows as he gets to his apartment. It’s not like his brother always picks up the phone when he calls, it’s just unusual when he doesn’t.

Shrugging, Blaine texts Henry to get him to call him back when he has a moment and then he starts about making dinner. He tries very hard not to check his phone compulsively for a message from Kurt.

-- -- --

Henry is in the middle of an existential crisis.

He hates to think of it as such. Out of his brothers he’s the level-headed one. Always has been. Blaine has an existential crisis every second week and Alex is too laid back to have anything resembling a crisis of any kind about anything ever. But Henry is always the one who thinks things through. Who sees pros and cons and the black and white of everything and comes to a logical conclusion about all things...

...this afternoon had felt anything but logical or black and white…

He’d walked out of the two hour interview with shaking hands but a smile on his face and a contract in his pocket. He was elated if not a little shaken by the whole experience. He’d almost bumped into Kurt standing just down the hall from the room the interview had taken place.

“So?” Kurt had said with a hopeful expression, “Are we coworkers? Am I taking you out for celebratory coffee?”

Henry had smiled at the man and nodded, “They offered me a job.”

Kurt’s face had lit up and while Henry’s first thought had been to wonder why this virtual stranger was so invested in whether he got a job or not, Kurt’s obvious joy made Henry’s joy that much more palpable.

“Well, then, shall we head to the coffee shop? Drinks on me, obviously.”

And then he winked.

It had hit Henry suddenly, and probably would have hit him sooner had he not been so worked up about his interview, that he was being hit on. It hadn’t been the first time he’d been hit on by a guy and he likes to think even if he didn’t have one gay brother and one pansexual brother that he would have been evolved enough to not be offended or hostile but usually when faced with this situation he would smile politely and say he wasn’t interested.

At that moment, however, he hadn’t wanted to say ‘no’...so he hadn’t.

“That sounds great.” He’d smiled.

Their coffee date had been amazing. Henry had spent the first hour after getting home trying to tell himself it hadn’t been a date but has come to the acceptance part of his crisis. It had been a date. A date with a man. A date with a man he’d actually enjoyed.

Kurt had bought the drinks and then the pair had sat across from each other at the small coffee shop talking about the job Henry had just gotten and what Kurt did for the company (he runs costume design for the theatrical branch of the production company). They talked about musicals (Henry had actually mentally thanked Blaine for forcing him to watch so many over the years), and they talked about football (only briefly after Henry realized it wasn’t up Kurt’s alley).

When Kurt had said he needed to get home, Henry had actually felt bereft. He knew even in that moment he needed to go home and freak out about what exactly was happening but he also didn’t want whatever was happening to end.

They had exchanged phone numbers and Kurt had told him he’d see him the next day at work. And then he winked again. Henry can still feel the blush from that wink almost two hours later.

When his phone buzzed with a phone call from Blaine an hour and a half into his crisis, he’d let it go to voicemail. He wasn’t in a place to talk to his brother. He wasn’t even sure what he would say. ‘Hey, Blaine! Yeah, I got a job and a boyfriend today!’

That thought had caused a spiral that Henry has been in for the last half hour. He does NOT have a boyfriend and one coffee date does not an anything make let alone a boyfriend but the fact that he had the thought means he’s thinking about Kurt in that way. He’s thinking about a man in a romantic way. This is not something he’s ever experienced before.

And suddenly, Blaine seems like the perfect person to talk to about this.

He gropes from his prone position on his couch for the phone he’d tossed onto the coffee table when it had rung with Blaine’s call. He dials his brother’s number and puts a hand over his eyes while he waits for the call to connect.

“Hey!” Blaine answers, happily, “How’d it go?”

Henry knows Blaine is asking about the interview but again his thoughts go to Kurt. He shakes his head to rid himself of the impulsive thought and answers Blaine’s question, “I got it.” He says.

Blaine whoops on the other end of the line, “I knew you would! That is amazing!”

Henry smiles, “Thanks.”

Suddenly, Blaine’s celebration dies off, “Why do you not sound over the moon about this? Is this because of Vance? He was the one who told you to go for this!” Vance is one of Henry’s best friends, one of the men he works with (or he figures it’s now ‘worked’ with). Vance had indeed pushed Henry to interview for the larger company.

“No, no. It’s not about Vance.” Henry answers.

“Then what is it?” Blaine asks and the earnestness in Blaine’s voice opens a flood gate.

“I met someone today.” Henry confesses.

“Oh!” He can tell Blaine is suprised. Henry doesn’t date. Hasn’t had a girlfriend since his junior year of high school. He’ll unpack what exactly that says about him later… “And that’s upsetting?” Blaine asks.

Henry grimaces, “Not in and of itself, I guess.” He starts, “It’s just...it’s a guy?” He says it like a question and then feels slightly queasy afterwards.

The line is silent for a long time, longer than Henry can stand without starting to feel even sicker, before Blaine lets out a breath, “That’s...awesome.”

Henry scrunches his eyes closed, “I don’t know what I’m feeling.”

He can almost picture Blaine nodding on the other end of the line, “And nor do you have to.” Blaine reassures, “Just answer me one thing: did you have fun with him?”

“Yes.” Henry answers.

“Then focus on that.” Blaine says and Henry can hear the smile in his voice, “Leave the other stuff to the side for now. I know you, and I know you want to figure everything out and this puts a little bit of a kink into the careful order of your life but if it makes you happy then that’s all that matters.”

Henry lets out of a breath he hadn’t been aware he’d been holding. Blaine’s words unravel a knot he’s felt in his chest all afternoon and while he knows he’s not done freaking out about this, he’s willing to allow the happiness to overpower it. Blaine had been the right one to call.

“And Henry, if you have any...questions or you just need to talk things out, you know I’m only a phone call away, right?” Henry nods into the phone, getting a little choked up at the offer.

“Yeah. Thanks.” He breathes out.

“Anytime.” Blaine says, “Now, do you want to tell me more about your job or your date?”

Henry bites his lip as he smiles, “Both?”

“I’m all ears.” Blaine says.

-- -- --

The next night, Alex leaves work to once again find a man on the sidewalk waiting for him but instead of his brother, this time it’s Kurt. He smiles at the man and waves as he approaches.

Kurt waves back before putting his hand back into the pocket of his jacket where it had emerged from, “Hey. It’s good to see you again.” He says.

Alex smiles, “Same to you.”

They stare at each other for a few beats before Kurt tilts his head over his shoulder, “I was wondering if you wanted to grab a bite to eat?”

Alex chuckles, “Uh, that sounds nice but I have to admit, working at a bakery means I rarely leave a shift hungry. Samples and all that.”

Kurt chuckles as well and then shrugs, “Then what did you have in mind?”

Alex has a few things in mind and when he smiles at Kurt, who smiles back, he figures Kurt is thinking the same thing.

“I have some snacks at my apartment?” Alex offers with a grin.

He can see Kurt’s cheeks pink slightly as the other man ducks his head in an adorably, flirtatious way, “Lead the way.”

-- -- --

Blaine scrolls through his messages from Kurt over the past four days on the train to his parents’ place. He’s got more messages in their thread than he does in all his other threads combined. He actually hasn’t messaged anyone else since he and Kurt started talking but even if he had, he is sure the frequency with which they chat would have surpassed any other conversation Blaine would be having.

The pair have covered so many topics in their messages that Blaine wonders if there is anything left to share. He hasn’t shared this much about himself so fast to another person ever, let alone a person he’s never met in person. Usually by the time he knows this much about a person they’ve been dating for a few months. He and Kurt have been messaging for four days…

He’s just finished drafting an email suggesting that he and Kurt meet up when he gets to his stop. He hits send and then pockets his phone before exiting the train and taking the stairs to the surface. The air is colder than he expected and he hunkers down in his coat for the five minute walk to his parents’ brownstone. His childhood home.

He’s turning onto their street when he sees Henry coming from the other direction. He throws a hand up in a wave that his brother returns and they make their way toward each other. They haven’t really talked since their phone call but Blaine knows Henry usually needs to work things out in his own head first. He’ll come to Blaine when and if he needs to.

“Hey.” Blaine says when they meet up outside the house, embracing his brother in a hug that has him standing on his tiptoes.

“Hey.” Henry answers before they pull away from each other.

“Everything...okay?” Blaine asks, not wanting to push.

Henry smiles, “Getting there, yeah.” He says.

Blaine smiles and nods, appeased for now, and the pair make their way up the stairs to the front door. It opens before they get there to reveal a tiny ball of energy on the other side.

“My boys!” Amelia Anderson shouts for the whole street to hear and then launches herself into first Blaine’s arms and then Henry’s.

Both men laugh as they absorb their sister’s hug. Amelia is four years younger than her brothers and at twenty-two years old is only five foot three inches tall, prompting her brothers to nickname her…

“Hey Tiny!” Blaine smiles.

Amelia smiles back before gesturing for the men to come inside, “Come, come. Dinner’s almost ready and Al’s already here talking to Dad about some new spice for bread?” She shrugs as Henry and Blaine take off their coats and shoes.

“Is that my other two boys?” The trio hear called from, undoubtedly, the kitchen before Fiona Anderson emerges.

“Mama!” Henry says, pulling their mother to him.

“Oh, it just fills my heart to the brim when all my babies are home.” Fiona gushes as she turns to pull Blaine into a hug and then Amelia even though Amelia lives in the house and has probably been there all day. Their mother is never short on hugs.

“It’s good to be home.” Blaine smiles.

Fiona reaches out and strokes his olive-toned cheek with her pale hand, “Go say hello to your father before dinner.” She says before shooing them in the direction of the living room.

When they enter, Blaine sees Alex showing their father, Daniel Anderson, something on his phone. Daniel looks up when they enter and smiles large, patting Alex’s arm in apparent apology before getting up to hug his other sons.

“My boys.” Daniel says reverently, cupping both Henry and Blaine’s cheeks in his hands and looking between them.

Blaine loves his parents, even if they act like they haven’t seen their children in months when it’s really been only a week. The Anderson’s grew up with family dinners every Sunday and the tradition continued even with the three boys moving out on their own.

“Tell me what’s new.” Daniel asks, sitting back down as Blaine and Henry sit next to Alex on the couch after saying hello and Amelia settles on the ground by the coffee table.

The five chat about work and other sundry topics until their mother calls them for dinner. They settle into their usual spots.

“No Sam tonight?” Blaine asks, noticing the spot next to Amelia, usually reserved for her fiance, is empty.

“He’s at work.” Amelia offers, “Though he has made me promise to bring him leftovers.” She says and Fiona laughs.

“I’ll wrap some up after dinner if your brothers don’t eat it all.” She says with an affectionate glance at the three men sitting along one side of the table.

Dinner conversation is more the same as their conversation in the den until Amelia gets a sneaky look on her face, “So...anybody dating anyone new?”

Blaine swallows and feels the weight of his phone in his jeans pocket more acutely. He’s not nervous to tell his family about Kurt, he just doesn’t know how to tell them and his family can be...a lot sometimes when it comes to relationships. Or anything really.

He glances at his brothers, who are looking back at him and then at each other. Blaine wonders if he’s the only one who knows they actually all have something to tell.

In the end, they all shrug.

“Nothing to report.” Alex answers, seemingly for all of them.

Mercifully, talk turns away from their dating lives and to Amelia’s upcoming wedding. Blaine’s actually surprised it has taken them this long into the evening to start talking about it (it sometimes feels like it’s all they talk about) and Blaine enjoys the excited squeal Amelia gives when Alex mentions their plan to take her out.

His phone buzzes in his pocket and he jolts slightly at the table. His fingers itch to pull his phone out but the rule has always been no phones at the table. He’ll have to wait until he’s on his way home. The waiting is torture even though he loves hanging out with his family.

When they finally wrap up the evening with several rounds of hugs, Blaine and Alex make their way to the subway together (after seeing Henry off in the other direction to a different train).

Blaine’s got his phone out as soon as he’s sitting in the, thankfully, sparsely populated car.

“Any plans for the night?” Alex asks as he lounges next to Blaine, munching on left over rolls from dinner.

Blaine doesn’t answer right away - instead reading the last message from Kurt.

Blaine

I’m glad I’m not the only one who feels like I know so much about you before we’ve even met. I’d love to meet up in person. I know you said you’ll be at your parents house tonight but...any chance I can interest you in a nightcap? We could meet at Coffee Project whenever you're done at your parents? Text me if you’re interested :)

Kurt

212-967-1253

Blaine has no idea where Coffee Project is but he’s already looking up directions when Alex hits him.

“Uh, what?” He asks, looking up in a daze.

Alex quirks an eyebrow at him, “I asked if you had plans for tonight.”

Blaine smiles, “I do now.”

-- -- --

Blaine opens the door to Coffee Project a half hour later and even though it’s late, a few heads turn at the sound of the bell over the door. Blaine’s hoping one of the heads is Kurt’s and he has a fleeting moment to hope Kurt actually looks like his profile picture when his worries are assuaged by a swivelling head at a table near the back.

Kurt looks exactly like his profile picture except he’s even better looking in person. The way his eyes light up when he sees Blaine at the door is something you can’t really capture in a picture.

“Hey!” Kurt enthuses when Blaine gets close. He’s up out of his seat and pulling Blaine into his arms before Blaine can say anything.

It should feel strange to hug someone he’s never met but it doesn’t. He’s met Kurt in every way except the physical (not that he hasn’t thought about the physical...but he digresses), so it feels natural to hug him close.

“Hi.” Blaine whispers as they part and sit on either side of the table.

“I ordered you a medium drip with some cinnamon. I hope that’s okay? You mentioned it was your drink of choice.” Kurt seems a little nervous but he’s smiling excitedly and even if Kurt was just nervous, Blaine’s excited enough for the both of them.

“No, that’s perfect.” He says, lifting his cup in a cheers motion before taking a sip.

Kurt shifts in his seat, “So, I know this is technically our first date but every topic of conversation I could think of while I waited for you we’ve already covered in our emails. This doesn’t feel like a first date.”

Blaine shakes his head, “It really doesn’t.”

Kurt nods, “How was your parents’ house?”

“It was wonderful as usual.” Blaine smiles and Kurt smiles back.

They make small talk for a while, complete with goofy grins at each other, before Blaine scratches his chin and looks out the front window, “What is it?” Kurt asks.

Blaine coughs and loses his nerve at the last moment to ask Kurt back to his place. He may feel like he’s known this man for a lot longer than four days virtually and about an hour in person, but the reality is they don’t know each other at all. And Blaine’s romantic nature is screaming at him to take this slow because this could be the real deal. He doesn’t want his baser instincts to scare Kurt off.

He shakes his head with a smile, “Nothing. Do you want to go for a walk?”

It’s probably a little too cold for a walk outside but Manhattan seems to glow around them as they walk slowly through the still populated street. It’s one of Blaine’s favourite things about New York - it truly never sleeps.

“So you said your brother is taking over the garage from your dad when he retires?” Blaine says as they follow a path through a small park.

Kurt nods, “Yeah. I sometimes wonder if my dad is secretly disappointed I never wanted to take it over.”

Blaine shrugs, “Are you the oldest?”

Kurt pouts slightly before ‘ah’ing and then chuckling, “Did I not mention Finn is my step-brother? Not my biological brother?”

“You did not.” Blaine answers and the pair laugh.

Kurt stops at a rusty swing set in the park and sits down on one, curling one arm around the chain. Blaine sits next to him and mirrors his position. The metal is freezing under his palm but he leaves his hand where it is and rocks his feet in the sand to swing himself back and forth slightly.

“My dad remarried when I was fifteen.” Kurt shares, “To the mother of a boy at my school. Same grade as me. It was...interesting.”

“Were you two friends in school?” Blaine asks.

Kurt chuckles slightly, but Blaine’s not sure why the question was funny, “Not really.” Kurt answers, “At all. We didn’t run in the same circles. His circle was more interested in making my circle’s life hell. Me specifically.”

Blaine feels instantly angry at people he’s never met. He pictures a younger Kurt getting bullied and wants to punch someone. He tries to tell himself his anger comes only from his own similar school experience.

“He was never really someone who bullied me. He just...didn’t do anything about it either. But then things started to change. It took a while - even after our parents married - but now I sometimes forget to tell people he’s my stepbrother.” Kurt shrugs, “He’s just been my brother for a lot of years now.”

Blaine smiles at the soft smile on Kurt’s face before the other man’s face is scrunching up, “I’m once again oversharing too soon, aren’t I?” He asks, “I’m, honestly, not usually like this.”

Blaine shifts so he’s more fully facing Kurt on the swing, “Hey, no. It’s totally fine. I…” He hesitates, “I want to know everything about you.”

Kurt’s eyes light up and he gives a little inhale through a slightly open mouth. Blaine can’t be one hundred percent sure, because the lighting isn’t amazing, but he thinks he sees Kurt’s cheeks pinken.

Blaine shrugs, “And if it helps you any, I once walked in on my parents having sex when I was fifteen and they sat me down the next day and gave me a very indepth, and scarring, sex talk.”

His anecdote has the desired effect and Kurt laughs heartily. Blaine smiles at the lyrical sound.

Kurt puts a hand up to his mouth as his laugh turns into a chuckle, “Are you serious? Or did you just make that up to make me feel better about oversharing?”

Blaine winces slightly which just makes Kurt laugh more, “Unfortunately, I am completely serious. I couldn’t think of anything remotely sexual for months after.”

This admission only makes Kurt laugh again.

-- -- --

A half hour, and one slide down the red metal slide at the park for each of them later, Kurt and Blaine walk toward Kurt’s apartment. Blaine actually feels himself slowing his pace. Despite the late hour, he doesn’t want this night to end.

“I had a really good time tonight.” He says.

Kurt smiles, “So did I.”

They come to a stop outside Kurt’s building and they hesitate, facing each other with shy smiles and hands stuffed in their coat pockets for warmth.

“I’d really like to see you again.” Blaine says.

Kurt bites his lip slightly and, even though it’s a cliche, Blaine’s eyes dip down at the movement before flicking back up.

“I’d really like to see you again as well.” Kurt whispers and then Blaine can take it no longer. He’s been waiting all night.

Without preamble, he pulls one hand from his pocket and rests it on Kurt’s elbow before ducking in and up and pressing his lips to Kurt’s. Kurt breathes in quickly before he’s kissing back. It’s short but amazing and they pull back with equally breathless expressions.

“Good night, Kurt. I’ll text you.” Blaine whispers, still leaning into Kurt’s space.

Kurt blinks at him before smiling, “Night Blaine. And not if I text you first.”

And then with a wink, Kurt pulls away and walks toward his building. He turns at the door to wave at Blaine over his shoulder with another smile, and Blaine waves back before Kurt enters the building and out of his sight.

Blaine has to quell the impulse to jump and click his heels together in joy before making his way down the street to hail a cab home.

-- -- --

Two days later, Henry sits at a counter by himself. There are people around but none of them give much notice to the nervous man at the counter whose knee is bouncing so frantically that Henry is sure he’s going to injure himself.

He keeps glancing around, eyes darting around the room like at any moment someone is going to come and arrest him just for sitting. Well, if he’s being honest it’s not the sitting he thinks he’s going to be arrested for.

He shakes his head at the thought. He’s not going to get arrested for any of this. Ugh, he should have called Blaine again before this.

“Hey!” He hears from behind him and spins to see Kurt standing there. He’s unwinding a scarf from his neck and he looks...beautiful. It’s the only way Henry can describe him.

“Hi.” Henry says around a suddenly dry mouth.

Kurt smiles and looks around as he takes his jacket off, “So...bowling.” He says and his smile turns slightly confused.

Henry coughs, “Uh yeah. Is that okay? I...it felt like a good idea.”

Kurt smiles, “I haven’t been bowling in years, and I’ll admit I’m not at all good, but I’m willing to give it a shot...” He pauses and looks down the counter toward where a man is handing out bowling shoes, “as long as I can get shoes that go with my outfit.”

Henry laughs, nervously, before his eyes are once again darting around. He had almost convinced himself that his wandering eyes before had been in search of Kurt but now that Kurt is here…

His eyes land back on Kurt who is looking at him with a serious face. Henry shifts under the gaze and tries to laugh again but it comes out as more of a groan to his ears.

Kurt licks his lips (and Henry jolts when he realizes how easily his eyes followed the motion) before the other man is nodding, “Hey, I’m kind of hungry. Do you mind if we grab something to eat before bowling? I saw a little cafe down the street.”

Henry feels his chest expand and suddenly getting out of the crowded bowling alley seems like the best idea ever. He nods and grabs his coat while Kurt puts his own back on. They walk in companionable silence to the cafe at the end of the street and it is mercifully empty except for a kind looking waiter around their age and what sounds like a cook in the back room kitchen.

“Hi!” The waiter smiles, “Have a seat wherever and I’ll be right with you.”

Kurt gestures to the back of the cafe and the pair sit opposite each other in a booth. By the time they take off their jackets and lay them down beside them the waiter is at their table with menus.

“Can I start you with a drink?” He asks.

“I’ll just have a coffee.” Kurt smiles.

“Same.” Henry says when the waiter looks at him. The waiter nods and then leaves them alone.

The pair is quiet once they are alone and Henry can feel Kurt’s gaze on him. Henry is more comfortable in the cafe but he’s still not COMFORTABLE.

“Can I ask you something?” Kurt asks softly. Henry nods but Kurt waits while the waiter puts down their drinks, says he’ll be back later to take their orders, and leaves before continuing, “Are you married?”

Henry chokes on the sip of coffee he is drinking and he sputters and coughs. Kurt waits with a slightly quirked eyebrow and smirk while Henry calms and then laughs, “No. No, I’m not married.”

Kurt smiles fully, “Okay. That’s good. For my purposes anyway.” He says, “Can I ask you something else?” Henry indicates for him to go ahead, “Is this the first time you’ve gone out with a guy?”

Henry lets out a breath he hadn’t realized he’s been holding and can feel himself start to shake a little. Kurt folds his hands in front him lightly and just gives him a soft, open smile and slowly Henry calms enough to nod.

Kurt nods, “Well, don’t I feel special?” He says, swiping a hand over the chestnut swoop of hair on top of his head. The question makes Henry laugh which he assumes was the point and Kurt breaks character to chuckle with him.

“I’m sorry. I’m kind of a mess.” Henry says after a moment.

Kurt smiles, somewhat sadly, and shakes his head, “You’re not a mess. At all. And besides, you should have seen me at fifteen.” Kurt’s eyes widen briefly as if he’s remembering something terrible.

“Something tells me you were never a mess.” Henry says.

Kurt shrugs, “Well, okay, maybe you aren’t wrong.”

The pair chuckles and then smile at each other for a moment before Henry clears his throat, “I don’t really know what I’m doing but I...like spending time with you.”

Kurt nods, “Then that is what we shall do. Spend time together.” He makes a show of picking up the menu and opening it with a flourish before smiling over at Henry, “I like spending time with you too.”

Henry smiles and breathes easier than he has all day.

-- -- --

Over the next few weeks, final preparations for Amelia’s wedding are in full swing and the Anderson triplets are put to work doing everything from helping to make party favours (to which Alex had said: ‘We’re rich - can’t someone else make these?’), to helping create a playlist for the reception (‘Blaine, you need to help. Sam only wants country!’), to going to final tux fittings, among other things. They also spend a good portion of time planning their night out with Amelia. Alex is in charge of most of the planning for that but Blaine and Henry check in to make sure everything is under control and nothing planned is illegal.

They also spend more time with Kurt. Alex finds for the first time in his twenty-six years, he’s excited about the prospect of seeing where things go with only one guy. Henry is beginning to understand, and freak out less about, his feelings surrounding Kurt and he’s been dipping his toes into the experience (including but not limited to his first kiss with a man - a fact he only freaked out internally, and to Blaine, about a little bit). Blaine gets a breathless feeling whenever he thinks about Kurt, which is often, and he literally has to turn his phone off sometimes to keep from texting the other man continuously.

Somehow, even weeks later, none of them are aware that they are actually dating the same person...but they are all getting closer to asking Kurt to be their date for Amelia’s wedding.

“Hey Tiny?” Blaine asks one night as he and his sister sit in their parents’ living room tying bows onto plastic bags holding green and peach mints.

“Hmmm?” Amelia hums as she focuses on her current bow.

“Is it cool if I invite someone to your wedding?” Blaine asks.

Amelia looks up and lowers her hands, complete with bag and untied bow, to the table with a soft thud. Blaine had realized when he had thought of asking Kurt to the wedding, that because he’d never gotten an actual invitation (‘Your invitation is implied and your acceptance is non-negotiable’ Amelia had told the three of them) he wasn’t sure if he had been granted a plus one. Now, with Amelia looking at him with a shocked expression, he suddenly feels like a plus one had not been something she had intended to extend to him.

But then Amelia had slumped and hit him in the arm lightly, “Of course you can have a plus one!” She says and Blaine smiles before Amelia shrugs, “I had assumed you and Alex would bring someone and then felt bad for not assuming Henry would, so I just planned for three extra people just in case.”

Blaine chuckles, “Well I haven’t asked him yet but...thanks.”

Amelia smiles, “No thanks necessary, Blaine. But there is a condition to having a plus one.” Blaine’s eyebrows lift at his sister’s serious expression as she points at him, “You have to tell me about this amazing man who makes you smile like that.”

-- -- --

Blaine opens the door to his apartment later that week to find Kurt smiling at him from the other side. He smiles back and gestures for Kurt to enter. He watches as Kurt takes in the low lighting and candles on the table set for two in Blaine’s small kitchen.

“Wow! Colour me impressed.” Kurt says as he takes his jacket off.

Blaine chuckles softly and shrugs as he takes the proffered jacket and hangs it in the front closet, “I just wanted something a little...special.”

Kurt gives him a tiny, shy smile and Blaine smiles back before gesturing to the table, “Dinner’s ready so please, have a seat.”

Kurt smiles, “Mind if I wash up first? Subway germs.” He says, spreading his fingers in front of himself in a slight jazz hands motion.

Blaine chuckles, “Dastard subway germs.” He winks before gesturing down the hall, “Bathroom’s the second door on your right.”

Once Kurt has returned and is seated at the table, Blaine grabs the bottle of wine from the counter. He pours some into Kurt’s glass and his own while Kurt takes his napkin and lays it over his lap.

“Are you...planning to purpose tonight?” Kurt jokes when Blaine sits down after serving them each a bowl of pasta.

Blaine chuckles and shakes his head as he looks down at his lap, “It hadn’t crossed my mind, no.” He says looking back up at Kurt to find the other man smirking at him.

“Darn.” Kurt winks before lifting his glass and offering Blaine a toast, “To fancy non-proposal dinners.”

Blaine laughs again and clinks his glass with Kurt’s. They both take a sip, looking at each other over the rims of their glasses, before picking up their forks and beginning to eat.

Kurt moans at his first bite, “This is amazing!” He enthuses.

Blaine coughs at his body’s reaction to the moan before nodding, “Thanks. Old family recipe.”

“Well, if it wouldn’t make this whole situation completely inappropriate, I’d say I’d want to be your new brother just to get this recipe.” Kurt laughs.

Dinner passes with easy, flirtatious conversation and before long the pair is on the couch with their wine. They both have a leg pulled up and are sitting sideways, knees touching, and their bodies get closer and closer as they talk, and before long, they’re kissing.

They’ve shared quite a few kisses by this point but they never fail to take Blaine’s breath away. He curls in closer to Kurt and rests a hand on his thigh as they continue to kiss.

He pulls away after a moment and leans his head against the back of the couch. Kurt does the same and they stare at each other with soft smiles, “I wanted to ask you to be my date to my sister’s wedding.” Blaine whispers into the space between them.

Kurt’s eyes light up, “I love weddings!” He says.

Blaine squeezes Kurt’s thigh, still under his hand, lightly, “So does that mean yes?” He asks.

Kurt nods, “I’d love to.”

Blaine smiles before chuckling, “I guess I should tell you when it is in case you have a prior engagement.”

Kurt scrunches his nose adorably, “Yeah, that might be a good idea.”

Blaine can’t resist leaning in to kiss Kurt’s lips at the expression and they kiss for another few moments before Blaine pulls away once more, “December 2nd.” He says.

“I’m there.” Kurt replies before lightly fisting his hand in Blaine’s shirt and pulling him forward.

-- -- --

Unlike Blaine, Alex had always assumed a plus one was just a given for him. He was sure he could find someone to go with to the wedding, and whether he went home with that someone, or someone from the wedding, well...he would just be keeping his options open. That, however, was before Kurt.

Kurt, who made Alex’s heart beat faster every time he thought of him. Kurt, who made Alex laugh and actually laughed at Alex’s jokes in return. Kurt, who was breathtakingly beautiful and enchanting in a way no other person had ever really been for Alex. Kurt, who made Alex understand what it meant to want monogamy for himself and not just as an idea that seemed to work for people like his parents and sister.

Kurt, who is biting his lip when Alex pulls open the door to his apartment and Alex wants to bite that lip himself. Until now there hasn’t been a lot of biting of any kind. Despite Alex’s usual MO, he and Kurt have done nothing more than share kisses, and Alex finds himself wanting more but being okay with waiting.

He must be growing up…

“Hey.” He smiles as he gestures for Kurt to come in.

“Hi.” Kurt whispers and Alex realizes that he’d been so focused on Kurt’s bit lip that he failed to notice how nervous Kurt is acting.

“Everything okay?” Alex asks as he sits on the couch and watches Kurt sit across from him and fidget with the end of his scarf that he hasn’t taken off.

Kurt takes a deep breath and looks up at Alex with a sad smile and Alex’s stomach drops in preparation for what he can sense coming.

“You’re ending this, aren’t you?” Alex asks before Kurt can say anything.

Kurt bites his lip again and turns to look at the coffee table in front of Alex’s couch. Silence stretches between them but Alex doesn’t know how to fill it. He’s never been in this situation before, and the longer Kurt remains silent, the more real the moment becomes. He’s being broken up with. And even though they were not serious (hadn’t even talked about exclusivity at ALL) it hurts in a way he’s never really had to deal with before.

“I’m so sorry.” Kurt finally says on an exhale.

Alex presses his lips together and nods, more to himself than to Kurt.

“It’s just...you weren’t the only guy I’ve been seeing,” Alex’s heart hurts a little at this admission even though he had just moments before contemplated their lack of exclusivity, “and things with the other guy have become more serious for me and I needed to make a decision.”

Alex nods again. He’s doing a lot of nodding.

Kurt looks back over at him with a sad smile, “I really like you, but...it just didn’t feel fair to keep going with this,” He gestures back and forth between them, “when I couldn’t give it 100%.”

Alex lets out a breath and chuckles, which causes Kurt’s eyes to widen slightly, “It’s fine.” Alex says flippantly, even though he feels anything but flippant. He waves a hand nonchalantly in front of himself, “We weren’t exclusive. We never talked about it. I do appreciate you letting me know, though.”

He kind of wants Kurt to leave. He’s not devastated? But he’s hurting more than he wants to in front of the man currently breaking things off with him. He almost laughs again when he remembers he had intended to invite Kurt to Amelia’s wedding tonight. How dumb would he have felt had he done that before Kurt broke things off?

“I really do like you.” Kurt says again.

Alex smiles, “I like you, too.” He says softly before coughing awkwardly, “But hey, good luck with the other guy. He’s...very lucky.”

Having never been in this position before, Alex isn’t sure how to act. He’s not sure that’s the right thing to say and Kurt’s awkward smile leads him to believe it probably wasn’t exactly the right thing, but Kurt does nod and then gets up.

“Thanks.” He says.

Alex walks him to the door and holds it open for him to leave - the shortest ‘date’ of Alex’s life.

Kurt smiles with a wave before starting to walk down the hallway, “Oh!” Alex exclaims and Kurt turns around in surprise. Alex leans out his door slightly and smiles, “And if things don’t work out with your other guy...give me a call?”

Kurt’s eyes widen slightly, again, and his awkward smile returns before he nods and waves again before making his way down the hall and to the elevators.

Alex sighs when he’s out of sight and leans his head against the door. Clearly not the right thing to say. Getting broken up with sucks. He doesn’t recommend it. He needs a drink.

He pulls his phone out of his pocket and texts his brothers.

-- -- --

“Al…” Blaine says, coming up behind his brother who is sitting at the bar in Black Iron Burger the next day.

Alex turns with a sad smile and Blaine pats him on the back with a sad smile of his own before pulling him into a hug.

“I’m sorry, man.” Blaine sympathizes as he takes a seat next to Alex. He notices, briefly, that Henry hasn’t arrived yet before focusing back on Alex who shrugs and wraps a hand around the half drunk beer in front of him.

“Yeah, it sucks. I mean, it wasn’t like we were serious or exclusive, but I kinda thought it could get there.” Alex says before shrugging again and bringing his beer to his lips.

Blaine pouts his lips. He can tell that this guy was different for Alex. His brother has never called him to mourn the loss of a partner (aside from the one time he’d slept with a D-list celebrity and claimed he’d been ‘in love’ after one night but that they would never see each other again. ‘It’s like Romeo and Juilet!’ he’d, overdramatically, lamented). Blaine is the brother that gets attached. Alex isn’t. So to see him slumped slightly in defeat makes Blaine’s heart clench.

“He didn’t deserve you.” He says, laying a hand on Alex’s shoulder.

Alex smiles and chuckles lightly, “Yeah, maybe.” He says.

The conversation pauses so Blaine can order a drink and then the pair is quiet while they watch the football game playing over their heads. Blaine figures he’ll take his cue from Alex. He’s here for him after all.

Henry joins them a few minutes later looking more put together than he normally does for a get together with his brothers. Blaine notes, as he watches Alex and Henry hug, that while Henry is usually better dressed than Alex, he doesn’t put as much time into his look as Blaine does. Tonight, he looks polished and Blaine even notices cufflinks on the dress shirt he’s wearing. Even the fact that he’s wearing a dress shirt to meet with his brothers is slightly out of character for him.

Blaine shakes himself out of his thoughts as Henry turns to hug him and then orders a beer for himself.

“So what do you need from us tonight?” Henry says as he sits on Alex’s other side, “Do you want us to sit quietly and watch the game with you, demonize the horrible man who broke your heart, give you shoulders to cry on? Just let us know.”

Alex laughs softly and shakes his head, “I just wanted to see you guys and have a beer...or five. We can just chat.”

Henry nods as his beer is set in front of him. He lifts it slightly and tilts it toward the other two, “We can do that. Right, Blaine?”

Blaine nods and mirrors the gesture, “We can.”

The three clink their glasses together and each take a sip of their drinks before, simultaneously, replacing them on the bar top.

“Speaking of ‘chatting’,” Alex starts, “What’s got you dressed up so fancy? I know it can’t be me. My pain is not a formal occasion.”

Henry chuckles, nervously, as he adjusts his collar, “Uh, I actually have a date later.”

Blaine shoots Alex a nervous look at the admission, afraid of how his brother will react. But when Henry also shoots Alex a concerned look, the man in the middle chuckles, “Guys, I’m fine! I’m not going to break. We weren’t serious. I’m just slightly bummed and wanted to see you guys. I’m Alex. I don’t do ‘feelings’.”

Blaine knows he’s covering a little but trusts his brother to let them know how he’s feeling so he nods and turns back to Henry, “So, how are things going with your guy?”

He notices Henry blush slightly and smiles at the boyish way Henry shifts his eyes as he smiles, “Really well.” He admits and Alex whoops while Blaine smiles bigger, “I was actually thinking of inviting him to Tiny’s wedding. Do you think that would be...cool?”

“You should.” Blaine answers immediately, “No one will care he’s a guy, Henry.” He says, understanding why Henry is nervous, “They may be a bit surprised at first but they’ll just be happy for you.”

Henry nods and takes a deep breath, “You’re right.”

Alex lets out a breath, “So, Henry’s going to have a date to a family wedding. That hasn’t happened...ever.” He chuckles when Henry smacks him on the back of the head before continuing, “And we all know I’ll rally and invite some hot piece with me.” Henry and Blaine give the same ‘Of course’ hand gesture, “So, now we just have to find someone for baby brother.”

Blaine rolls his eyes at the moniker but then smiles, “I actually already have a date myself.”

Alex’s eyes widen and Henry lets out a low whistle, “The same guy you’ve been seeing?” Alex asks and Blaine nods with an even bigger smile, “Well, that’s great.” He says, offering his glass for another toast, “To each of us finding someone we want to hump.”

Henry and Blaine roll their eyes with their glasses held up but participate in the toast anyway.

“Oh! And to it being only two days until we take Tiny out!” Alex adds.

Blaine and Henry, more enthusiastically, cheers to that.

-- -- --

Henry feels his heart leap when he sees Kurt walking toward him. He had left Blaine and Alex at the bar a half hour ago after two hours of chatting and goofing around to meet Kurt for their date.

His teeth start to chatter and not because of the cold weather. He’s nervous. Alex was right. He’s never asked anyone to any of their family weddings. He hopes Kurt says yes!

Kurt’s face breaks into a smile when their eyes meet and Henry all but bounces on his toes when the other man gets closer.

“Hey!” He enthuses, swooping in to give Kurt a quick kiss on the cheek. The desire to do so is still so new for Henry. It both excites him and terrifies him a little. He hasn’t really gotten the hang of casual intimacy with Kurt. Any physical interaction is usually initiated by Kurt. But Henry’s trying. He wants to try.

“Hey you.” Kurt says with a sigh, a white cloud of air following his words due to the cold weather.

“You look great.” Henry smiles.

Kurt smiles back, “So do you. Shall we walk?” He asks, gesturing down the street.

Henry loves that their dates are simple. They’ve been to the coffee shop a few more times and spent an afternoon in Central Park by the pond. Today their plan is to wander around the city and see if anything strikes their fancy. It may be a bit cold to do so? But Henry loves how uncomplicated and safe it feels. A lot less stressful than bowling - Henry is still berating himself for suggesting that to begin with.

The pair start their way down the street, walking close enough that their hands bump every once in a while but never really hold. Henry would like to hold Kurt’s hand, his fingers are flexing like a teenager on his first date, but he thinks he’ll wait and see if Kurt grabs first.

“How was drinks with your brothers?” Kurt asks.

Henry smiles, “It was nice. Alex just got his heart broken a little so we were cheering him up.”

Henry notices Kurt pauses at this, to the point where Henry walks a few steps ahead of him before he notices the lack of Kurt beside him. Henry turns back with a questioning eyebrow raised to find Kurt staring at him with slightly wide eyes. A second later, however, before Henry can ask, Kurt shakes his head with a chuckle and moves to walk next to the other man again.

“Sorry, I just thought...nevermind. It’s not important.” Kurt says with another shake of his head.

Henry nods in acceptance as they round a corner, “So, are you excited about your presentation on Monday?” It’s not what he wants to ask. He wants to ask Kurt to the wedding, but he figures he’ll work himself up to that.

Kurt sighs next to him and it sounds a little regretful to Henry. Which is strange considering the nature of his question. He’d thought Kurt would be excited about the presentation.

“Look, Henry, can we sit for a bit? I wanted to...talk to you about something.” Kurt says around a grimace and Henry doesn’t like the words or the expression but he nods and allows Kurt to lead him into a small, quiet coffee shop on the corner.

They each order a coffee, even though Henry suddenly has a lump in his throat and doesn’t think he’ll be able to drink it, and he shifts continually as Kurt unwinds his scarfs from his neck.

“What’s up?” Henry asks when he can’t take the quiet any longer. Trying for nonchalance and probably failing epically.

Kurt swallows and rests his hands first on the wooden table top, then in his lap, and then finally decides to reach forward and grab Henry’s hands across the table. Henry looks down at their hands and while he realizes this is what he wanted to happen not even ten minutes ago, the current mood isn’t what he had expected or wanted.

“I don’t really know how to tell you this.” Kurt begins and Henry blinks at him, waiting for what he knows is coming but hoping that’s not the case, “I...need to end things.” And there it is. Henry feels his stomach sink to his feet and his instant reaction is to pull his hands from Kurt’s. Kurt won’t let him go though and Henry doesn’t try too hard, “It’s nothing you did. You are amazing.” Kurt continues and Henry goes back to blinking at him, his mind already whirling as he tries to focus on what Kurt is saying.

“What happened?” He asks around dry lips.

Kurt gives him a sad smile and Henry wants to say it’s pitying and hate Kurt for it but...he can’t, “I haven’t just been seeing you and things with the other guy have gotten more serious. I didn’t think it would be fair to either of you to pretend that wasn’t the case.”

Henry intellectually knows that at twenty-six, people date multiple people until things become exclusive but...Henry doesn’t really date. He was exclusive with Kurt from the beginning. It hurts, however irrationally, that Kurt didn’t feel the same way.

“I’m so sorry, Henry.” Kurt continues, squeezing his hand.

Henry shakes himself out of his own head and looks at Kurt, who is continuing to smile sadly at him.

“Would you like me to go?” Kurt asks.

Henry swallows. Does he? He thinks he does. He nods before he can think too hard and Kurt squeezes his hand one more time before pulling away and grabbing his scarf.

He stands to wind it around his neck and then reaches into his pocket to put money down on the table for his undrank (and actually still undelivered) coffee.

“You really are amazing, Henry.” Kurt whispers.

Henry nods, tries to smile, and then Kurt is gone.

Henry lets out a breath he hadn’t realized he’d been holding. He tries to tell himself that people break things off all the time. Hell, he’d just come from an Alex cheer up session for the exact same reason. He tries to tell himself that he and Kurt weren’t serious, regardless of Henry’s personal feelings on exclusivity.

He’ll be fine. It’s not like the very first guy to ever catch Henry’s attention, to make him question everything he thought about himself, just ended things right when Henry was thinking of taking things to the next level.

Henry lets out another heavy breath. Fuck.

-- -- --

“Okay, while I love that you guys took me out? I have to say this is kind of depressing.” Amelia says, carefully, two days later.

She’s seated on the arm of a couch in the VIP section of a swanky club, dressed to the nines in a purple sequined dressed and hair and makeup on point, and while she’s valiantly trying to maintain a buzz...she feels its a bit of a travesty that she has to TRY so hard. She should be drunk out of her MIND right now or at least on her way to it.

She’s not sure if the club is all the night holds, but the way things are going she’s not sure she wants to find out what else there might be.

The only other person actually trying to have fun is Blaine. He’s also dressed to the nines, his bowtie the perfect accessory and has been tweaked by admiring girls AND guys all night. The constant blush on his cheeks at the action is both adorable and endearing. Blaine is currently off buying them more drinks, however, leaving Amelia with Alex and Henry.

It’s the other two members of their party that are being giant party poopers. Alex and Henry are at least dressed nicely for the event but considering this is pretty much all Alex has talked about for months...their mood is definitely off.

“Sorry Tiny.” Henry sighs from where he sits on the couch next to where she is perched.

Amelia sighs, “I don’t want you to be sorry. I want you to be happy!” She says, “Is whatever has the two of you down something you can maybe put aside for the night? Or is it something we can talk about, quickly, so we can move on? Because I’m pretty sure this night is costing you all a lot of money and...it’s my last night out with my boys before my wedding.” She doesn’t want to pout but...she’s the baby, and the only girl, and is used to using her pout to get what she wants.

Alex sighs, “I was ready to have a great night but then Henry had to go and get dumped, too, and...it reminded me how much that sucked.”

Henry lifts his hands, exasperatedly, as if to say it wasn’t his fault he got dumped a day after Alex did, “It’s not my fault I got dumped a day after you did!” He huffs and Amelia almost, almost giggles at her ability to read her big brothers.

Instead of giggling though, she sighs, “Look, guys, getting dumped sucks but get drunk and get on someone else! It’s not like you’d been dating these people for a year or more. You didn’t even tell your family you were dating them!”

Henry and Alex both stare at her after her exclamation and she would feel bad if she didn’t feel she was right. Henry’s mood makes the most sense. He doesn’t date and any seeming failure would be a blow to his dating confidence.

She’s most confused by Alex. Alex goes through men and women like they’re underwear sometimes. She’s confused why he would be so hung up on a guy he clearly didn’t feel serious enough about to introduce to his family.

“We’re sorry, Tiny.” Henry says.

Alex nods, “Yeah. We’ll try harder. This is your night.”

Amelia nods, glad to have them thinking the way she does, as Blaine comes back to the group.

“I’m pretty sure I counted four different people winking at me and/or touching my butt on the way to and from the bar.” Blaine says, setting their drinks down on the table in front of the couch.

Alex laughs as he reaches for his drink, cheersing slightly in thanks, “Well, you are looking very dapper this evening. But better watch it - your man might get jealous.”

Blaine chuckles, himself, as he takes a seat in a chair perpendicular to the couch the other three are sitting on, “Yeah, maybe I should have brought Kurt as protection.”

Amelia is looking at Blaine but becomes aware very quickly of how still the couch to her right has gotten. She turns to find Alex and Henry looking at Blaine but not in the casual way one might when another person is talking. They’re staring at him like he’s just said the most shocking thing they’ve ever heard.

“I’m sorry, what did you just say?” Alex asks.

Blaine seems to catch on to their sudden mood and furrows his eyebrows and shifts as he answers, “That I should have gotten Kurt to come for protection. It was just a joke.”

“Kurt.” Henry says, flatly.

“Yeah. My….boyfriend?” Blaine says the last part questioningly. Amelia isn’t sure if it’s because he’s still confused by their brothers’ reactions, or because he’s not sure if the title is accurate for his relationship.

Either way, the clarification doesn’t seem to help Alex and Henry who continue to look at Blaine like he’s just stolen the last cookie (a criminal offense punishable by beatings from each other when they were kids).

Blaine chuckles nervously under the scrutiny, “What’s going on?”

Henry and Alex look at each other and then back at Blaine, and then back at each other. Amelia’s head is starting to hurt from confusion, but it looks like she’s not the only one who’s confused.

“What’s Kurt’s last name?” Henry asks.

“Hummel.” Blaine provides and again the space is silent which is hard to do considering the music pumping not far away.

“Oh god.” Henry moans, putting his head into his hands. Alex sits, frozen, staring at Blaine. Blaine, for his part, is looking back and forth between his brothers, and Amelia, with a look of distress on his face, unaware of the issue.

And then suddenly, Amelia gets it.

“Were you all dating the same guy?!” She exclaims.

Blaine’s head whips in her direction as Henry moans again.

“No, no, no.” Blaine says with a nervous chuckle as he looks at his brothers to agree.

Instead of confirmation however, Henry is still face planting into his hands and Alex looks murderous.

“No?” Blaine, feebly, tries again.

“I lost my chance to be with Kurt because of YOU?!” Alex yells and Blaine jumps back in his chair slightly at the loud exclamation.

Amelia gets up and puts her hands up in a calming gesture, “Now, just wait a minute. Let’s just...talk about this.”

“Did you know?” Alex accuses as he stares at Blaine.

“Of course not!” Blaine exclaims.

Alex scoffs like he doesn’t really believe his brother and fidgets on the couch. Henry hasn’t moved.

“I cannot believe this.” Alex huffs. He looks around the room before shaking his head and huffing again, “You know what? I can’t be here right now. I’m sorry, Tiny, but...I gotta go.”

Before Amelia can say anything, Alex is up out of his seat and out of the room. Blaine and Amelia watch him go, both looking distressed and confused.

“Henry?” Blaine asks after a moment, small and sounding very much like the ‘little brother’ Alex and Henry like to say he is.

Henry shakes his head before looking up, “I gotta...I’m sorry but I gotta...think about this.” He says and then he’s gone the same way Alex left.

Blaine and Amelia once again watch him leave and then turn and look at each other. Blaine looks close to tears and Amelia feels a tightness in her chest. She’s not sure how to fix what just happened, or even fully understand why it happened. She just knows that a night meant to celebrate very quickly turned into the very opposite of that, and she now has three brothers hurting.

She does the only thing she can think to do at the moment and moves to squish herself next to Blaine, pulling him to her and cuddling him close as they listen to the distant thump of music from the club on the other side of the wall.

-- -- --

Blaine feels like shit. It’s been three days since the disaster that was Amelia’s party and neither of his brothers are answering his calls. He can’t remember the last time he didn’t talk to his brothers for longer than a day, their almost constant back and forth something he took for granted until it suddenly wasn’t there.

He’s tried to text both of them multiple times but has not received a response from either.

He misses his brothers, but he’s also a little mad because he’s not sure their silent treatment/absence is justified. It’s not Blaine’s fault he met a guy. It’s not Blaine’s fault he and said guy grew close. And it’s not his fault that guy just so happened to also be dating his other two triplet brothers and decided to break it off with them.

None of this is his fault...but then why does he feel so guilty for seeking comfort in Kurt?

“I don’t know what to do.” He sighs, resting his chin on his folded arms which are resting on top of his kitchen island where he is sitting.

Kurt sighs from his spot next to him and leans over to kiss his shoulder before leaning his cheek on the same shoulder and smoothing a hand up Blaine’s back.

“I’m sorry.” He whispers.

“I don’t know what to say or do to make any of this better with them.” Blaine continues.

Kurt hums and Blaine appreciates that while Kurt may not know what to say, he’ll listen.

When Blaine had first told Kurt that he had been inadvertently dating Blaine’s triplet brothers, Kurt had thought he was joking. No way did the universe work that way. But after Blaine showed Kurt a picture of himself with Alex and Henry, Kurt had been dumbfounded. He’d sputtered some words that didn’t make a lot of sense and looked like his mind was reeling with a million different emotions and thoughts all at once. In the end, he seemed to finally land on pity and sympathy for Blaine, and while Blaine doesn’t usually like to be pitied...in this situation, he’ll take all the pity and cuddles he can get.

The pair is quiet for a few moments, both in their own heads, before Kurt lets out a breath, “I still can’t believe I was dating three brothers.” Evidently Kurt’s not completely done being dumbfounded, “No, wait.” He says, straightening up, “Triplets. Triplet brothers. Close triplet brothers. Triplet brothers who are close.” He moves away from Blaine to circle to the other side of the island and Blaine immediately misses his closeness.

Kurt paces from one end of the island to the other and brings a hand to his forehead, “And I’ve now hurt all three of them.” He seems to be talking more to himself than to Blaine, “All three are hurting because of me. How did I get myself into this mess?”

Blaine watches him pace for another moment before sighing. His sigh seems to snap Kurt out of his own head and he leans across the island to rest his hands on Blaine’s folded arms, “Oh my God, I’m sorry. You don’t need me having a mental freak out. This is about you.”

Blaine sighs again, “You’re allowed to be confused too, Kurt. I don’t think there is a rule book on how to handle this situation.”

Kurt pouts his lips, “Yeah, but I’m not the one who isn’t talking to his brothers. I’m the one who caused it all.”

Blaine unwinds his arms and grabs Kurt’s hands properly, “It’s not like you planned this. It’s not like you went out in search of triplet brothers, who look nothing alike I might add, to mess with. You dated, you got close to someone, and did the right thing by breaking it off with the others you didn’t feel as close to.”

Kurt nods and squeezes Blaine’s hands, “I think some of that advice could be turned around and given to you.”

Blaine bites his lips together and nods. He can’t be blamed for getting close to someone. He can’t be blamed for not knowing his brothers just so happened to be dating that same someone.

“Should I feel guilty for being happy about how it turned out?” He asks.

Kurt sighs and shrugs slightly, “Only if I should, too.”

Blaine shakes his head. This whole situation was out of their control and he can’t deny how happy he is to be with Kurt. He’ll figure out a way to make things right with his brothers. Everything will turn out okay.

“I like you a lot.” Blaine says, apropos of nothing.

Kurt smiles at him from across the island before circling it again and coming to hug Blaine. Blaine settles his knees on either side of the taller man and leans his head against Kurt’s chest as he wraps his arms around his waist.

“I like you a lot, too.” Kurt whispers into Blaine’s hair.

Blaine enjoys the hug for a minute before pulling back and looking up at Kurt, “Should you still come to the wedding?”

Kurt bites his bottom lip and tilts his head, “Do you want me to still come to the wedding?”

Blaine squeezes the arms still around Kurt’s waist slightly, “Of course I do, but that’s not really the point right now. Would it just cause more issues?”

Kurt shifts his arms so his hands are resting on Blaine’s shoulders and he looks him in the eye, “I would love to come to the wedding with you. I would love to meet your family or, you know, the rest of your family?” He scrunches one eye shut and the question actually makes them both laugh softly before Kurt settles into a soft smile, “But I do not want to do anything else that will cause you, or your brothers, any more hurt.” Blaine starts to speak but Kurt shushes him lightly, “Yes, I know the first hurts were inadvertent, but they still happened.” Blaine sighs and nods, “I will go along with whatever you want. If you want me at the wedding, I’m there. If you’d rather me stay at home, I can do that too. But your decision will not change how I feel about you.”

Blaine stares up into Kurt’s eyes and his feelings for him deepen even further at Kurt’s words. Beyond the external drama, Blaine is a little shocked at how quickly his feelings for Kurt have developed over the course of their short relationship. He’s feeling things he thinks he probably shouldn’t yet, and while he’s not ready to announce them to Kurt...they’re enough to make his decision an easy one.

“I want you there.” He whispers into the space between them, looking back and forth between Kurt’s eyes because they are that close.

Kurt smiles and leans in to press a slow kiss to Blaine’s lips. Blaine sighs and leans into it, pressing his hands more firmly into Kurt’s back to draw the other man closer still.

The kiss is deep from the start and the only sound in the room is their breathing and the wet sound of their lips and tongues coming together. There is something deeply intimate about their position to Blaine and he can feel himself responding and his heart rate pick up.

Kurt’s hands settle on either side of Blaine’s neck and he tilts Blaine’s head ever so slightly and, oh, that angle is so much better.

They make out for another minute or two before Blaine pulls back sharply, a thought suddenly occurring to him.

“Did you…” He pauses, unsure he wants to ask the question. Kurt, who is slightly out of breath with his cheeks flushed standing between Blaine’s legs, looks at him in confusion. Blaine decides he needs to know, “Did you...sleep with either of my brothers?”

He knows he’s broken the mood they were just in, especially when Kurt’s confusion turns to laughter, but he knows he couldn’t continue until he knew.

Kurt leans his forehead against Blaine’s shoulder and laughs heartily into it. Blaine soon joins him and the pair laugh in each other’s arms.

Kurt lets out a breath and hums to calm himself before pulling back and shaking his head, “No. No, I did not.”

Blaine brings a hand up to his forehead and wipes it dramatically, “Phew. I just had this mental image of you comparing our dicks and just...no.” He says and it causes them both to chuckle. Blaine scrunches one eye shut and looks up at Kurt, “Sorry for...ruining the mood.”

Kurt hums again, looks up at the ceiling as if considering, and then shrugs, “It’s okay. Probably wouldn’t be the best idea to sleep together right now. Maybe we should...wait.”

Blaine intellectually knows Kurt is right, but it’s hard to tell his body and heart that.

“We’ll have time.” Kurt whispers, leaning to press a soft kiss to Blaine’s lips.

Blaine closes his eyes and groans softly as Kurt pulls away, “We will.” He agrees.

-- -- --

“Hey. Hey Blaine.” Alex slurs a day later into his phone. He’s wobbling outside of a bar in the West Village and he thought calling Blaine would be the BEST thing to do at this particular moment, “Hey Blaine. Oh wait, I already said that. But hi. I’m mad at you. I think. Shouldn’t I be?” He scrunches up his nose and makes eye contact with another man on the sidewalk who looks at him with a quirked eyebrow and keeps going, “Yeah, I think I’m mad. You stole Kurt. You stole Kurt and his..and his penis!” He exclaims. Two young girls, in the process of passing Alex on the street, jump at the volume and then giggle as they speed walk away, “I had plans for that penis. Big plans because well...I’m sure it would have been big if you know what I mean.

“But you took him and I’m mad.” Alex sighs and then sits on the sidewalk, “And a little sad. I’m...I’m...I’m smad.” He pouts his bottom lip out and adopts a glare before giggling at his attempt to look sad and mad at the same time, “I don’t want to be smad. But I really wanted that penis. And the man it was attached to. But now you have the penis. And I just...I’m smad.”

-- -- --

Kurt’s not entirely sure why he’s here. Technically, he understands the logistics of being here, Blaine’s little sister’s rehearsal dinner, but he isn’t entirely sure he made the right decision agreeing to come.

Blaine had asked him to come. Or rather, Blaine’s sister, Amelia, had asked Blaine to ask him to come. Her thinking was that her family could meet Kurt in a less formal setting first, as opposed to having their first meeting be at her wedding (Blaine had said her exact words were ‘If you cause unnecessary drama at my wedding, I will burn all your bow ties’).

So here Kurt stands, in an admittedly fabulous outfit, next to Blaine outside the restaurant the rehearsal dinner is being held at. They are both fidgeting and side-eyeing each other.

The next time they catch each other's eyes, they both chuckle at the same time.

“Thank you for coming.” Blaine says.

Kurt shrugs, “From the sounds of things I didn’t REALLY have a choice. I haven’t even met Amelia yet and she seems like a force to be reckoned with.”

Blaine nods, “She can be.” He says on a sigh before looking back at the restaurant, “Ready?”

Kurt’s not sure he is, but he nods anyway, and the pair make their way toward the front door.

The hostess leads them to the private room the rehearsal dinner is being held in and Kurt is instantly hit with the sheer amount of people inside the relatively small room. Kurt’s not an introvert, by any means, but faced with a room of people he doesn’t know...including the family of his new boyfriend...he finds himself swallowing, thickly.

And then he remembers that everyone in this room isn’t a stranger and his eyes widen when the first people he lays eyes on are Henry and Alex. They’re hard to miss, right inside the door and talking to a short woman who, based on her physical features, can’t be anyone but their sister, Amelia.

The opening of the door draws their attention and the five of them (Alex, Henry, Amelia, Blaine, and Kurt) freeze. Kurt had kind of hoped to avoid any awkward interactions, but clearly luck isn’t on his side tonight.

“Hey!” Amelia says after a moment, breaking the silence and moving towards the pair, “You must be Kurt!” She’s hugging him before Kurt can even take his eyes off of Alex and Henry, and he hugs her back while still looking at them. Henry looks nervous and Alex’s eyes have narrowed slightly. Kurt coughs and looks away and down at the spitfire of a woman still hugging him

“Yeah. Hi. You must be Amelia. Nice to meet you and congratulations.” He says with a nervous blush rising on his cheeks.

Amelia steps back and hugs Blaine to her, who looks faintly ill as he looks beyond at his brothers.

“Thanks!” She enthuses, “Though I’m kind of glad the wedding is tomorrow. Whoever said planning a wedding was fun obviously hasn’t planned one before.”

She rolls her eyes and laughs, and while Kurt has been planning his wedding since he was six and can’t wait to put the plan into action, he laughs with her because he doesn’t want to be rude.

And then suddenly it’s like Amelia either can’t ignore the tension between the four men in the room, or she just realizes it, and looks between all four of them with a look of apprehension. When no one else speaks or even looks at one another, she sighs and puts her hands on her hips.

“This is ridiculous. Hug. Each. Other!” She orders with a glare at each of her brothers.

Blaine, Alex, and Henry all seem to collectively pout, but none move to follow the order of their little sister. Kurt’s pretty sure the order didn’t extend to him but...it’s so awkward he’s actually considering just going for it and hugging someone.

Amelia rolls her eyes before grabbing Blaine’s elbow, “All right. We are going to talk this out like the adults we all pretend to be. That way you can go back to normal and not ruin my wedding.”

She gestures for Alex and Henry to follow her and it appears this order they will follow. Kurt is simultaneously glad to no longer have to deal with this awkwardness, but also a little terrified that Blaine is about to leave him in a room full of strangers.

The siblings are almost out of the room when Amelia stops and turns back to Kurt with a raised eyebrow, “Are you coming?”

Kurt’s eyes widen in surprise and terror. His presence is required?

Amelia gives him a pointed stare before leading her brothers from the room. Kurt hesitates, momentarily, before deciding staying with Blaine is probably the best course of action (and not angering Amelia any further) and following them out to a quiet section of the restaurant.

For the second time this evening, Kurt wonders how he ended up here.

“All right.” Amelia starts as she looks at her brothers in front of her. The four men are standing in a loose square, with Kurt awkwardly standing to Blaine’s right, “You all need to get over this. I should not be feeling anxious over YOUR love lives and especially not the day before the most important day of MY life.”

Alex crosses his arms over his chest and pouts, “This is all Blaine’s fault.”

Amelia throws her hands up in the air in exasperation but it’s Blaine who answers, “Are you seven?” He asks, incredulously, and the question just makes Alex’s arms cross tighter, “Because that’s how you’re acting. This is like the time mom and dad bought us scooters for our birthday and you got pissed that I got the red one because you wanted the red one.”

Kurt furrows his brow, “Are you likening me to a scooter?”

His question goes unanswered as Alex huffs indignantly, “I really liked him!” He defends.

Blaine rolls his eyes, “Yeah, I got that much from the message you sent me. You know, at first I felt sort of bad for what happened, that maybe it WAS my fault. But it’s not really. I just met a guy and fell in…” He hesitates and Kurt turns to him wide eyed. Blaine swallows thickly and doesn’t meet Kurt’s eye before continuing, “I really didn’t need you talking about how much you want my boyfriend’s dick. Now I’M mad.”

Kurt’s wide eyes widen further before moving to look at the ground. He feels his cheeks heat up in an embarrassed flush. He’s not really shy when it comes to sex related topics like he was in high school, but something about this situation just makes it all the more strange.

The space they’re in goes quiet and Kurt isn’t sure if anyone is going to break the silence. He doesn’t really want the last thing said in this trainwreck of a conversation to be about his penis.

He coughs and all heads swivel toward him. He blinks at each face before landing on Blaine’s and biting his lip, “I...think I’m going to go.” He says, and it’s not until it’s out of his mouth that he realizes he had wanted to say those words.

Blaine’s eyes widen and he steps closer, grabbing Kurt’s hand, “Please don’t.” He whispers.

Kurt looks quickly at the other faces in the space before focussing back on Blaine. He really doesn’t want to say this with Blaine’s brothers and sister in the room, but again his mouth acts before his brain can catch up, “I don’t want to come between you and your family.” He whispers, pleading with his eyes for Blaine to understand.

Blaine shakes his head, “You aren’t.”

Kurt smiles sadly, “I am. I just...can’t be the reason why three brothers are fighting.” He looks around the room again, the other three faces looking on curiously, before turning back to Blaine who looks pained, “I’m sorry.” He whispers and then pulls his hand out of Blaine’s, “I’m...sorry.” He says a little louder to Alex, Henry, and Amelia, before he turns and walks out of the restaurant.

The fact that his heart hurts when he hits the parking lot doesn’t go unnoticed.

-- -- --

Amelia’s wedding is a beautiful, elegant affair the next day. The flowers arrive on time, no one trips down the aisle, Amelia and Sam both tear up during their vows, and if anyone notices the slightly subdued nature of the three men of honour...they don’t comment.

Blaine thinks he and his brothers do a pretty good job at keeping it together during the ceremony and pictures. They act like nothing's wrong and even their parents don’t seem to pick up on the fact that there is a giant elephant in the room.

During the reception, the three of them deliver their joint speech flawlessly (complete with jokes, heartfelt memories, and perfectly timed segways) and Blaine gives a sigh of relief when Amelia beams at them from her seat beside her new husband.

It’s not until the dancing begins that Blaine really lets his mask drop. He finds a seat at an empty table and nurses a glass of wine. He rests his forearms on his legs and lets the glass dangle between his knees.

Kurt was supposed to be here. Blaine was supposed to be introducing his new boyfriend to his family, cuddling up on the dance floor during sappy wedding slow songs, and maybe getting a little drunk and handsy. Instead, he’s spent the day pretending he isn’t hurting.

He sighs as the song changes (it’s a pretty damn good playlist if he says so himself) before he sees black out of the corner of his eye. He closes his eyes, ready to put on a brave face for whatever family member has decided to descend upon him, only to look up to find Henry standing in front of him.

“May I?” His brother asks, gesturing to the seat next to Blaine. Blaine nods and straightens slightly, something in the back of his mind finding it wrong that Henry feels he needs to ask permission to sit next to his brother.

Henry sits next to him with a sigh and looks out over the dance floor. Blaine realizes in that moment that Henry has been pretty quiet since they found out about their shared dating experience. He hasn’t said much on the issue or expressed his feelings in any way. Blaine really hopes he’s not about to get into a shouting match at their sister’s wedding.

“I freaked out.” Henry says. Blaine turns to look at him but Henry is still looking out at the dance floor, “Kurt was the first guy to ever make me feel something like that, and then suddenly he was calling things off to be with you, and I had this giant crisis. Had everything I felt been a lie? An experiment? For nothing?” He shakes his head before sighing again and looking at Blaine, “But my feelings have nothing to do with you and Kurt. None of this is your fault, Blaine. And I’m sorry if I made you think it was.”

Blaine sucks in a deep breath through his nose and holds it for a second before letting it out. He had been expecting tension, not an apology. He also can’t believe he didn’t think to check in on his brother. Of course he’d be analyzing what it all meant.

“I’m sorry I didn’t think to ask how you were feeling about all of...that.” Blaine says.

Henry shrugs before smiling, “It’s okay. It’s not like me overthinking and freaking out is a NEW experience.”

Blaine chuckles softly, “Still. I should have asked. Are you...okay with everything?”

Henry nods looking out over the dance floor again, “I think I am. Or at least...I’m getting there. Maybe Kurt will be the only guy to do anything for me and maybe not. I’m willing to keep my options open.”

Blaine smiles and nods, “Good.” He says.

“I’m growing as a person.” Henry says, dryly, and they chuckle lightly. Henry turns back to Blaine and lays a hand on Blaine’s knee, “How about you? Have you heard from Kurt?”

The question makes Blaine’s chest hurt a little before he shakes his head, “Not since he left yesterday.”

Henry nods, “He’ll come around.” He says, encouragingly.

Blaine bites his lip to keep from either rambling or crying. He doesn’t want to do either. He’s not even sure how he truly feels or what he would even say...though he guesses when you ramble it’s less important what it is you actually say.

He ends up just shrugging and the pair go back to watching the happy people on the dance floor.

“Amelia is beautiful today.” Blaine muses.

“She really is.”

Blaine jumps slightly because it’s not Henry who responds. Both men turn in the seats to see Alex standing behind them. He’s got his hands in his pockets and his head tipped down, looking at them through his lashes.

“Hey, can I...talk to you?” He asks Blaine.

Blaine looks at Henry, who shrugs, before Blaine nods and gets up. He passes his glass to Henry and then follows Alex out of the ballroom into the main lobby. He’s not sure if he and Alex are about to fight again, and he’s not entirely sure if he WANTS to fight again, but all speculation flies from his brain when he sees Kurt standing by chairs in the lobby.

Blaine stops walking and stares open mouthed. He looks back and forth between Alex, who has also stopped halfway between Kurt and Blaine, and Kurt who is standing with his hands in his pockets and biting his lip.

“What…?” Blaine starts.

Alex sighs, “I called Kurt. Explained to him that I’m kind of an ass sometimes. But hey, it’s part of my charm.” He says with a wide, cheeky smile, before sobering again, “None of this was either of your faults. None of this was any of our faults. But what is MY fault was how I reacted to it.” He turns more fully to Blaine, “I’m sorry. I’m no longer mad, I’m no longer sad, and none of that should have been directed at you.”

Blaine nods with a slow smile. He doesn’t really know what else to do right now other than to hug his brother. He’s opened his arms and begun to move toward him when Alex puts his hand up to stop him.

“Just wait, I’m not done. We can hug it out in a minute.” He says.

Blaine’s brow furrows in confusion but he does stop and watches as Alex turns toward Kurt, “I wanted to say sorry to you too, Kurt. I should never have treated you that way...even over a voicemail to my brother.”

Kurt’s eyes are wide as if he wasn’t expecting an apology before he nods.

Alex nods too and then turns to Blaine, “All right. You can hug me now.” He says, opening his own arms.

Blaine chuckles before closing the distance and wrapping his arms around his brother, “I’m sorry for all of this.”

Alex pulls back, “You have nothing to apologize for. You met a boy and you fell in…” He pauses with a knowing smirk and Blaine blushes and diverts his eyes for a second, “I was the only one who had to apologize. And I did.” He smiles, “I must be growing as a person.”

Blaine smiles at the statement Henry said to him minutes before, though as opposed to sarcastic, Alex seems proud.

“You are.” Blaine agrees.

Alex tilts his head in Kurt’s direction, “Go get your man. I’m going to go see if Sam’s friend Mike is single and open to the attention of men.” He waggles his eyebrows and Blaine laughs. Still the same old Alex.

Alex pats Blaine on the arm and then he’s gone, back into the ballroom. When the door closes behind him, Kurt and Blaine are left in silence.

Blaine walks slowly toward him, “Hi.” He whispers when he’s close.

Kurt bites his lip again and smiles, “Hi.”

“So...” Blaine looks around as if he’s searching for something, “You...aren’t coming between me and my brothers anymore. Not that you actually were, but now you DEFINITELY aren’t.”

“It would appear that I’m not.” Kurt agrees with a nod.

“So…” Blaine says again, “does that mean anything for...us?”

Kurt shrugs and looks around the lobby for a moment. Blaine’s stomach drops at the shrug, but when Kurt turns to him with a smirk, Blaine’s stomach fills with hopeful butterflies.

“Come here.” Kurt says, grabbing Blaine by the tie and pulling him forward into a kiss.

Blaine melts into it and he’ll blame the stress and uncertainty on the needy moan he lets out.

They’re just getting into a groove, and Blaine may or may not be thinking about a place in this building they could go to truly be alone, when a ‘whoop’ sounds from behind them.

They both jump and pull apart, looking at each other with wide eyes before turning simultaneously toward the ballroom to find Henry, Alex, and Amelia leaning out of the door with wide smiles on their faces.

“Yay Blainers!” Amelia claps and Blaine and Kurt chuckle at her enthusiasm.

Henry puts a hand on his sister’s shoulder, perhaps in an effort to calm her, and Blaine feels his heart fill with happiness as his three siblings beam at him from the doorway.

Henry pulls slightly on Amelia’s shoulder and the pair turn to go back into the ballroom. Alex remains in the doorway, and while he looks to where his sister and brother just disappeared, he turns back to Blaine and he once again waggles his eyebrows with a wink. A moment later, Henry returns and pulls Alex back to the ballroom.

Blaine can hear Alex complaining about missing the good part before he turns back to a smiling Kurt with a smile of his own. He takes a deep breath and reaches out to grab Kurt’s hand, “Do you...want to come meet the rest of my family?”

Kurt squeezes his hand and jiggles it lightly, “I would love to.”

Blaine didn’t think his smile could get any bigger, and yet he feels his cheek muscles stretch even further, before he tugs on Kurt’s hand and leads him to the ballroom.

The End

#klaine #klaine fanfiction #klaine fanfic #glee potluck big bang #my loves #my stuff #3 on 1

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