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notyourdayrdream · 3 years ago

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Summer’s Almost Over (So Come Spend it with Me)

Day Eleven, Side A: Vigilant

read it here on AO3

A/N: this update will so much more sense if you’ve read day three of this collection, which was the word ‘ubiquitous’!

Diner in the Sky is closing.

Their bosses, a middle aged couple, told them in tears before the morning shift, how the whole mayor thing had died down and customers had tanked with it. They would shut down the last week of summer.

Being dramatic theatre kids, the New Directions and Blaine worked after hours to try and save the restaurant. Finn and Puck brought the football players and The Unholy Trinity brought the cheerleaders, and that night became a whole party. While it was fun, nobody had really bought anything. Blaine’s idea to perform turned out much better. He and the Warblers became a group of singing quartets, cooing to customers instead of a jukebox. Kurt thought it was fantastic, not just because he got to watch his boyfriend sing and dance around in a striped shirt and tight jeans all night. And oh, was it so sweet to mess up his gelled quiff during makeout sessions in the backseat of his car.

But it wasn’t enough. The Walken’s were grateful, but they had already sold, and with a heavy heart let all of their teenage employees go. Their last day was a week before their place would be cleared out and devoid of any fifties charm Kurt had grown to love.

But once again, being dramatic theatre kids, Rachel and Mercedes asked if they could use the restaurant one last time. And the Walken’s agreed.

“Oh my God!” Santana cried, clicking a few photos with her phone. “I will never get over you guys in those costumes.” Her arm is stretched around the red leather booth, not enough to draw suspicion to why it’s draped around Brittany. But Kurt notices.

Mercedes, Rachel, and Blaine do the Charlie's Angels pose, cracking up their friends, who’ve shoved themselves into three booths, back to back.

“Look, I’m gonna miss this dress, okay?” Mercedes says, pushing her way into a seat, squishing next to Nick. She has a plate of chili cheese fries in her hands, even though they agreed they wouldn’t actually work tonight. They all ended up doing it anyway. “It makes me feel like Tiana, a real Disney Princess.”

“Oh please, you sing like one already,” Blaine interjects, barely sitting on the end of the seat. His bowtie is crooked. Mercedes swats his arm, but Kurt can see her blush.

At first Kurt was a bit nervous about introducing Blaine to everyone. His dad and Carole were no big deal, Blaine has enough charm to sweet talk a lion into not eating him. No, he had been nervous for him to meet the New Directions. They were known to be judgy. Before they went out to a Movie in the Park night, Kurt ran down every moment of drama since the group’s founding. Offending one member would seriously hurt Blaine’s chances of being accepted. But, of course, he didn’t need it at all. He was a natural, jumping back and forth conversations before and after the movie, making everybody feel special. When he hit it off with Sam, Kurt and Mercedes were ecstatic at the thought of their boyfriends becoming best friends like them.

“I’m actually really sad this place is closing,” Rachel says, picking the bacon bits off her cobb salad. Kurt already knows she’s gonna give one of the cooks an earful about that. “Yeah it was a job, but it was so much fun!” Everyone else nods.

“What’s it going to be turned into, anway?” David asks, twisting around from his seat at the booth behind them.

Kurt rolls his eyes. “A laundromat,” he groans. In the middle of downtown. Whoever was doing the layout for Lima’s recreational district needed to be fired. “So now you can wash your dirty clothes with the stench of hot dogs wafting through the air!”

His friends crack up, and soon he’s laughing too. He loves that feeling, when your joke lands really well and everyone laughs with you. It’s the closest Kurt gets to a standing ovation everyday.

“I love you,” Blaine gets out through laughs, probably not even processing what he just said. But Kurt does, and his heart stops like a chipped record.

Yeah, Kurt’s known about Blaine loving him since that night in July, but he’s never said it. And in his eyes those are two different things. So as Kurt’s mind races to process what he just said (“does he really mean that? what if he just said it to be funny?”), Blaine stops laughing, his face white as a sheet.

He won’t meet Kurt’s eyes. “Um.” The room’s gone deathly quiet, save for the jukebox, constant in its crackling. “I’m gonna start cleaning up now. In the kitchen.” Blaine grabs the plate that Puck was still picking at and rushes into the kitchen. Kurt can’t decide if it’s more sweet or sad.

“Was that the first time he said it?” Tina asked from behind him. The whole diner seems to waits on his every word. Kurt doesn’t trust his voice, so he just nods. Every girl at the tables loses their collective minds, shrieking and telling stories all at the same time. Even though he can’t tell his heart to stop freaking out, he smiles to himself.

“I’ll be right back.” He stands up, knocking the table with his knees. His hands are clammy, when did that happen? Rachel and Wes push him forward when his feet feel planted. Eventually they back off and Kurt pushes through the double doors.

“Hey…” he starts, watching as his boyfriend vigilantly scrubs at a spotless looking bowl. “Are you okay? You kinda disappeared there.”

Blaine nods and keeps his eyes down. “Yep! I’m totally fine,” he grits his teeth in pretending to wipe off a dish. Kurt snorts despite himself, his boyfriend’s just a really awful actor.

“Stop laughing,” Blaine pouts. There’s dozens of reflections of him in the shiny silver pots and pans and refrigerators. “It’s not funny.” He flicks some soapy water at Kurt’s forehead, and it slides down his nose.

He watches the clump of soap run down his face and flop unceremoniously onto the floor. He’ll have to do his skincare routine twice. “Oh it is on.” Kurt comes closer and scoops up a handful of suds just to dump it onto Blaine’s hair.

Blaine gasps, wiping the rest off his head before it pops. He smirks and throws some more soap at Kurt’s chest. And so the war begins.

They attack each other like it’s a snowball fight, racing to grab armfuls of soap suds and throwing them, even if they float to the ground. They fling gray water back and forth at each other and run around the kitchen to dodge it. It’s absolutely gross and undignified, but Kurt finds that he could care less.

After they’ve soaked themselves and the floor, Blaine waives a towel in surrender. “Okay! Okay! You win!” he laughs. His face is slick with a mix of sweat at sink water, and his shirt clings to his chest.

Kurt grins and grabs a towel, linking up beside him to help dry. It’s still on his mind, the whole thing that happened outside, but he doesn’t press. They’re a unit, drying and stacking dishes together, humming a song Kurt can’t exactly recognize.

“I just wanted it to be special,” Blaine admits after a while. “I was gonna set up something really cute here one day, like a candlelit dinner, and get French food from that place across the street. Something big.”

Kurt sets his glass plate down and turns to see Blaine’s face. “As much as I love French food, you didn’t have to do something so grandiose.” He’s learned Blaine loves doing things big. When it was Lauren’s birthday, one of the chefs, he had the entire staff decorate the outside of the restaurant in a beach theme since she was from California. It was gorgeous, if not time consuming.

“But you deserve it,” Blaine replied, eyebrows knitting together. “You deserve the world, Kurt.” And the great goes back to washing dishes like he didn’t say the most romantic thing on the planet.

Kurt presses his against the stainless steel counter and kisses him when words fail. Blaine smells like soapy water and the familiarity of his pine scented cologne. Kurt kisses him softly, his favorite way to kiss (he never thought he’d have a favorite way to kiss, but life has just been full of surprises recently). Blaine absolutely falls apart like this, sighing into his mouth and pulling at the back of Kurt’s shirt.

And he hopes, absolutely prays to a god he doesn’t believe in, that a kiss can convey how he feels. How he’s felt since that night in the heat of July with Italian diners.

“I love you too.”

#tan lines and tan hands #spaceorphan’s sophisticated challenge: vigilant #glee #kurt hummel #blaine anderson #two shot #klaine fanfiction #i had no original ideas for today so this is the best i had #but i really liked the whole diner idea i kind of wish i saved it for a full story

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