#oh GOD though the idea of joel being almost relieved when he finally finds out what it is
Note
Okay, here goes for the prompts: number 4 on friends to lovers!
I hope you're doing well :)
thank you so much! sorry it took a little while also i’m feeling a little rusty but here’s a little something-something.
4. “you deserve better. it doesn’t have to be me, but you deserve better.”
Blaine went through a superhero phase when they were seven years old.
Kurt went along with it because he liked the capes and he thought it was cute when Blaine lifted his fist into the air and pretended to fly. The only part of it that was tedious was The Question, every day:
“What would your superpower be?”
The first time he asked it, Kurt answered honestly: “I want to be like Matilda. Move things with my mind and stuff.”
Blaine nodded and then picked super speed for himself. He ran around his backyard in loops until even Kurt felt dizzy, and they decided to just be superheroes who lay on the grass for the rest of the evening.
But then he asked it the next day, and the next, and the one after that. Over and over for almost a year. He wasn’t allowed to say the same one twice. Kurt ran out of superpowers to want.
When he finally moved on to his next obsession, Kurt was relieved, but right now he’d give anything for Blaine to ask him that question.
He’s not sure why Blaine would, though, considering it’s been over twenty years since the last time he did and they’re both wearing suits, not capes. But he’s got a new answer.
Time travel.
In fact, he’d do just about anything to flick a switch or drive a car past 88 or hop into a telephone box and end up thirty seconds earlier, before he said The Words.
The words. The ones that weren’t meant to come out. The one’s he’d vowed to keep stuck inside of his throat, even if it made it hard to breathe sometimes.
“You deserve better. It doesn’t have to be me, but you deserve better.”
Most of the sentence was fine and allowed. Most of it.
“What- what did you say?”
Shit. “I said you deserve better.”
God, he can see a million different things on Blaine’s face right now. He’s read those lines so many times; deciphered them, understood them, figured them out. He can still see all of the lingering pain about Tom not showing up, and the anger at himself for letting that be okay, and the tiredness of fighting for a relationship that neither person really wants. He can see the comfort that Kurt’s giving him, his best friend, in this tiny little restaurant cloak room, and the confusion, too.
“Look, I know you don’t like Tom-”
“It’s your thirtieth birthday. He should be here,” and it comes out like grit in Kurt’s teeth.
Blaine doesn’t say anything. If he did, he’d have to admit that this is actually pretty low on the list of Tom let-downs. There’s been worse - this one just looks bad.
“We should get back out there,” Kurt says, just to say something. The air is starting to feel too stuffy in here. He starts to leave, aware that Blaine’s parents and their mutual friends and a couple of Blaine’s coworkers are sitting at their table, probably wondering where on earth they’d disappeared to.
"Kurt?”
He stops halfway through the door, bracing himself - there’s no way Blaine would let Kurt just breeze over a slip-up like that. It’s not the first slip-up, either. There have been others in the past, from both of them. And it always goes the same way; the one who slipped up deflects and ignores, and the one who heard the slip-up pushes a little bit, desperate to see if the other will be brave this time.
Neither of them are ever brave.
“Yeah?” he says, resigned to the inevitable.
There’s plead in Blaine’s eyes – so much so that it makes Kurt kind of want to be brave this time, even though Blaine hasn’t questioned him yet. He’s gotten stuck, just sort of halted and trying to find the words.
And then the soft sound of a Billy Joel song starts to play from Blaine’s pocket – his ringtone.
Blaine holds his gaze for a second and then checks his phone, sighing, with a little puff of exasperation once he registers who’s calling. “It’s Tom.”
Kurt nods, drained of any bravery, and heads back to the table.
- - - - -
Kurt drops Blaine home after the dinner because even after the phone call, Tom still didn’t turn up.
It’s a quiet ride. Blaine had managed to do what Blaine does best which is to put on a cheerful face and convince a room full of loved ones that he’s fine, but he doesn’t have to do that in this car. Not in Kurt’s presence.
There’s a free spot right by Blaine’s apartment building so he pulls into it and turns the car off. It’s even more quiet now; the hum of the engine had been giving them some kind of music and it’s confronting now that it’s gone. He waits. Blaine seems settled in his seat. He’s staring at the sidewalk, curved in on himself but grounded, grounded to the space next to Kurt.
“Are you okay?”
Blaine’s shoulders lift, “I’ve had better birthdays.”
Kurt thinks that’s all he’s going to say but then he keeps going, his tone lightening a little bit.
“Do you remember that time you paid for all of the Warblers to fly into the city to surprise me?”
Kurt laughs, melodic and sweet at the memory, “I overshot my budget a lot that year.”
“I couldn’t understand why you wanted to go to the top of the Empire State so badly on my birthday,” Blaine laughs too.
“God, it was so stressful. Rachel was helping me co-ordinate it all but there was no service in the subway, and I had no idea if they were all in position and ready, and you were being... difficult, to say the least.”
“I wanted to go to Benny’s.”
That makes Kurt smile. It had been for Blaine’s twenty-first birthday. It was a big deal. And all Blaine wanted to do was get a milkshake from their favourite diner. Maybe share a plate of fries. Nothing big or fancy – just dinner in a place they discovered together. “If I remember correctly, I took you to Benny’s afterwards.”
“You did,” Blaine confirms. And then, with an odd mixture of wist and sadness, “I can’t believe you did all of that for me.”
“Is this your way of telling me you hate the watch?” and it’s an attempt to lighten the mood back up. He reaches for Blaine’s wrist and picks it up, admiring the new silver and ignoring the way it makes him feel to have Blaine’s skin under his palm.
“I love the watch.”
They catch each other’s eyes and oh, here it is. He almost got away with it.
“What did you mean tonight?”
Kurt drops his wrist.
“When you said it didn’t have to be you, but I deserved better?”
He looks straight ahead, the heat from Blaine’s stare burning into his cheek. He doesn’t know how to tell this lie again.
“Kurt?”
“Do you want me to be brave?” he asks, almost wanting permission to be.
Blaine nods, resolute. “I want you to be honest.”
Okay. There’s the permission. And he keeps it simple. “It doesn’t have to be me, but I want it to be.”
Blaine nods again, barely surprised. “Why didn’t you tell me this when we were seven?”
“Seven-year-olds aren’t in love yet.”
“We were.”
And maybe they were, or maybe they fell into it somewhere along the way, but one thing is for sure.
They definitely are now.
Blaine looks like he wants to kiss Kurt but doesn’t, mumbles a little incoherently about needing to sort some things out first which they both know means breaking up with his useless boyfriend, and then he squeezes Kurt’s hand.
Just as Blaine’s reaching for the door handle, Kurt can’t help but ask him something.
“Blaine?”
“Yeah?”
“What would your superpower be?”
Blaine looks a little confused, and then the context of his old obsession sinks in and his eyes crinkle as he laughs. And once his laughter settles, he thinks about it. “Time travel.”
He means: I wish I could go back to that day in Eighth Grade when we came out to each other and explain that you were the reason I knew, or, I wish I could go back to that party we went to when we were 17 and instead of getting horrendously drunk, kiss you instead, or, I wish I could go back to that night at your first apartment in New York when we argued and hold your hand instead. And Kurt knows that’s what he means.
“What about you?”
Kurt sets him with a look that is love, and adoration, and hope, and says, “I’m gonna go back to my original answer.”
“The Matilda thing?”
And he remembers. Of course he remembers.
“Yeah. The Matilda thing.”
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