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They have a ritual every night of the show, a way of taking off George and Martin and becoming Blaine and Kurt again.
They’d had trouble with it at first: during rehearsals, they fought at home as well as on stage, until everything was shouting and betrayal and vicious cutting comments. It was three weeks before Blaine finally stopped in the middle of a fight over who’d forgotten to buy eggs and said “What the hell are we doing, Kurt?” Kurt didn’t have an answer.
So after a few difficult conversations and a session with Kurt’s old therapist, now they have a ritual: unless the show was really bad or really good, they don’t talk about it after they’ve left the theater. They don’t talk at all on the way home, until they stop for a while at Cava, a wine bar two blocks from their apartment. The bartender knows Kurt always wants a glass of Viognier while Blaine tends to go for a red. They split an order of olives. And they sit. They talk about everything but work, or they sit in silence, but they make a point of touching: twining their fingers together or rubbing ankles under the table. At some point before he’s done with his drink, Kurt feels his back muscles unclench and he knows that he’s okay again, safe with Blaine. Blaine says it works the same for him too. They hold hands on the walk home.
So the time they spend at Cava is kind of sacred, and Kurt ignores his phone when it beeps at him. But then it beeps again, and then a third time. Rachel. He grimaces apologetically at Blaine and calls her back.
“Oh my God, Kurt, thank goodness you picked up, this is urgent.”
“Rachel, if this is about being your understudy again, I swear to God —”
“Don’t be ridiculous, I know you have a role. No, this is much, much better. You know Miscast?”
“Of course.” Everyone on Broadway knows about the MCC Theater’s annual gala. Performers fight for the chance to be part of the Miscast revue, where they are invited to sing songs from roles they’d never be cast for: gender-swapped, age-inappropriate, whatever else. The tickets are too expensive for Kurt and Blaine’s budget, even with both of them working, but they watch the videos every year as soon as they’re posted.
“It’s in two weeks. I’m singing ‘A Puzzlement’ from The King and I. It’s going to be so great! But that’s not why I called. Andrew Rannells broke his leg and is pulling out of the show, so Jesse and I convinced the casting director that he should get you and Blaine instead.”
“What?” It’s almost too much to process all at once, so Kurt focuses on the things he can grasp. “We’re working, we have a show —”
“The gala is on a Monday for a reason, Kurt. They do it when everything else is dark so people can perform.”
“We like our Mondays off,” Kurt says. They do: it’s mostly sex and errands. But across the table, Blaine is looking intrigued.
“This is a big deal, Kurt! You’re not singing in Virginia Woolf, and this will be a chance for the two of you to shine as the musical theatrical talents that you are, in front of the whole community. I can’t believe you’re even considering turning this down!”
“I’m not,” Kurt says. “I mean, I’m still processing this, Rachel, and of course I have to talk to Blaine. And we’d have to pick a song to perform.”
“Oh, at least that part’s easy,” says Rachel. “Their casting director picks the song. You just show up.”
Blaine squeezes Kurt’s hand. He looks so steady and interested, and that helps clear the noise from Kurt’s brain. They’ve always loved singing together, it’s true. “Okay. Let me see what Blaine thinks.”
Which is how Kurt ends up two days later at the MCC’s rehearsal space, meeting with Charles, the casting director. He’s very gay and far too enthusiastic for so early in the morning.
“You know we’re always looking for not just a different take on a song, but a new spin on it too. I mean, we’ve done the boys sing girl songs and girls sing boy songs, and it’s clever, people eat it up with a spoon, but whenever we can find something to give a performance just a little more I guess I’d call it oomph, that’s what we want to do. Which is why I thought of this song for the two of you.” He hands over the sheet music.
“Ooh!” Blaine exclaims. “Guys and Dolls. I love that show. I had the ’90s cast recording growing up.”
“Yes, thank you for making me feel old,” Charles says. He makes a face. “So as you know, this song is about Sarah and Adelaide deciding they’re going to marry their beaus, imperfections and all. But if the two of you do it, singing about each other...” He beams, pleased with his idea.
“Oh.” Kurt takes a sip of his latte and tries to hide his disappointment.
“You don’t like it.” Charles says. He doesn’t sound surprised.
Kurt tries to think how to put it diplomatically. “It’s not my favorite song from that show. How about ‘I’ll Know When My Love Comes Along’? I could still do Sarah Brown’s part, and I know Blaine would be wonderful as Sky.”
“Sky Masterson is precisely the kind of part Blaine is going to play someday. If he’s lucky,” Charles says. “Which is why he can’t play it at my gala. Half the point of the show is that you’ll never get to sing these songs on stage again. Try to value that experience as a performer, Kurt. Because this is my show and my vision, so I’m sorry, but this is the song you’re singing.”
The rehearsal goes for long enough that when it’s over, it’s time to go to work. They share a light dinner before they go to makeup. Kurt picks at his salad listlessly.
“Are you okay?” Blaine asks.
“I’m fine,” Kurt says. “Long day.”
“Are you still unhappy about what Charles said? You know I think you would be a great Sky Masterson, if you want to be.”
Kurt’s caught between finding that comment sweet and irritating. He stabs a particularly recalcitrant cherry tomato with his fork. “That’s not — no, Blaine.”
“Do you not like Frank Loesser anymore? Because maybe I never said this, but because he wrote that first duet, you know, I’ve always sort of thought of him as our composer.” Blaine whistles a familiar refrain, and Kurt can’t not smile.
“I love Frank Loesser. Guys and Dolls is a masterpiece. But...” Kurt drops his fork and sighs. “Are we really going to do this? Play another battling couple on stage? Is this show going to leave us in some kind of typecasting hell?”
“Oh.” Blaine’s eyes go wide. “Really? That’s what’s bothering you?”
Kurt is astonished. “It doesn’t bother you?”
“They’re so different. George and Martin — they should have divorced a long time ago. But they just stay as they are, tearing each other apart. This song is about loving the person you love, even if they’re not everything you want them to be.” Blaine reaches for his hand. “Even if they’re a work in progress.”
Kurt takes Blaine’s hand; he can’t ever not. “That’s dirty pool, Blaine, quoting our vows.”
“I’m not proud.”
“You don’t think it’s kind of a creepy song? About how it's okay to manipulate the person you love?”
Blaine considers the argument. “I mean, I think it's better when it's us, a couple singing it to each other, rather than two women singing about guys who aren’t there. Not that I want people to think that's what our relationship is like.”
“Someday we'll do roles where we aren’t married to each other again.”
“Except then someone will offer us that Noel Coward play about the divorced couple,” Blaine says wryly.
“Oh, Private Lives,” Kurt sighs. “Another pair of Bickersons. But I love that play.”
Blaine’s eyes light up. “That’s what you should do next. A Noel Coward play. You’d be perfect.”
“Let’s just focus on getting through the next two weeks,” Kurt says.
*****
Between rehearsals for Miscast and eight shows a week for Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, the next two weeks go by quickly. It feels like almost no time has passed before they’re waiting backstage while Meryl Streep, the evening’s MC, introduces them. Even if everything else goes wrong tonight, at least he gets to hear Meryl Streep say their names.
“...so please welcome Broadway’s favorite young marrieds, Blaine Anderson and Kurt Hummel.”
Blaine winks at him and they’re on. The stage is intentionally bare, with a big projection screen behind them. They take their places, miming a bit of making-out until the music starts, when Blaine pulls away, looking regretful.
“At Wanamaker’s and Saks and Klein’s, a lesson I’ve been taught,” he sings, “You can’t get alterations on a dress you haven’t bought.” He fixes Kurt’s jacket cuff, and the audience titters politely.
“At every vegetable market from Borneo to Rome,” Kurt continues, “you mustn’t squeeze the melon till you get the melon home.” At ‘melon,’ he makes an exaggerated squeezing gesture towards Blaine’s ass. The audience laughs again. Blaine pretends not to notice.
“You simply have to gamble —”
“There are no guarantees —”
“Now doesn’t that kinda apply to you and I?”
“You and me,” Kurt sings, making his best disapproving face.
Blaine storms upstage. “God, Kurt, could you just...?”
Behind them, the screen says, “Adelaide & Sarah, Guys and Dolls.” There’s knowing laughter from the crowd.
“Oh, why not,” Blaine sighs, and the music picks up.
“Why not what?” demands Kurt.
“Marry the man today,” Blaine sings, gliding towards him. The few people in the audience who hadn’t already recognized the song applaud. “Trouble though he may be.” Kurt lets himself be danced back across the stage while he picks out a face in the audience to flirt with. “Much as he likes to play,” Blaine continues, giving him a pointed look. “Crazy and wild and free.”
“Marry the man today,” they sing at each other, “rather than sigh and sorrow.”
“Marry the man today and change his ways tomorrow.” Blaine glares at Kurt’s flirtation partner in the audience while Kurt mimes call me at the guy. People laugh. It’s working. Now it’s Kurt’s verse.
“Marry the man today,” he sings. He uses his height advantage to seem a little menacing as they keep dancing. “Maybe he’s leaving town.” He pulls a prop passport from Blaine’s pocket, waggles it at him and throws it offstage. “Don’t let him get away. Hurry and track him down.”
They face the audience and sing together. “And marry the man today, give him the girlish laughter.”
“Give him your hand today and save the fist for after.” Kurt puts Blaine into a headlock, pulling it tighter at ‘fist’ for emphasis. At a table near the front, he sees Nathan Lane grin.
The applause when they’re done is loud and enthusiastic. They take a bow holding hands and then offstage they hug, laughing, the way they used to after show choir competitions. They stood on a stage with the best that Broadway has to offer, and they held their own. Not even the champagne they’re serving in the dressing rooms could make Kurt feel any fizzier.
There’s an after-after-party for the performers at the home of one of the MCC’s trustees; it’s a Greenwich Village townhouse that reeks of money. Kurt studies the sconces and tries not to feel jealous.
“Kurt!” It’s Charles, his voice a little slurred by alcohol. “Darling! Come here, I want you to meet my husband.”
Kurt crosses the room to where Charles is waving at him. Charles’s husband turns out to be a tall Asian man named Evan, who is very complimentary of Kurt and Blaine’s performance.
“I knew they’d be great,” Charles says. “All that sexual energy.”
“What?” says Kurt.
“The whole reason the song works is that everyone in the audience can tell you want to tear each other’s clothes off,” Charles tells him.
“I think you’ve probably had enough,” Evan says. He takes Charles’s cocktail and finishes it in one long swig.
Kurt can feel how deeply he’s blushing. “It was a performance.”
“Of course it was, darling. But the best performances are rooted in truth. Or they work against truth!” Charles raises a lecturing finger. “They spark against the truth like a stone against a flint.” He turns to Evan. “Is that how it works?”
“Like I was a Boy Scout,” Evan says. “All he’s trying to say, Kurt, is that it was delightful to see two young men so in love up on stage tonight, and that the pleasure you take in one another made the rest of us happy as well. It must have been a nice change of pace from Virginia Woolf.”
“Actually,” Kurt says, “that play has brought us closer together. Believe it or not.”
“Precisely. Wonderful,” Charles says. He leans a little against Evan’s side. “Enjoy it.”
Kurt heads to the bar after that: he needs a glass of wine himself. Rachel passes him in the hallway and kisses him on the cheek. “Isn’t this wonderful?” she says. “Blaine’s in the front parlor, you know: there’s a piano.”
“Blaine found the piano? I’m shocked.” They share a grin before she slaps him playfully on the arm and sends him on his way.
The piano is a baby grand, all polished black wood, and the sound is fantastic. Laura Benanti is singing “Let Me Entertain You,” and killing it, of course. Ten years ago, Kurt would have sold his entire wardrobe to be at this party, probably, and now his husband is providing the entertainment. Blaine’s attention is all focused on the song and on his accompaniment until she’s done, but when he realizes Kurt is there he practically bounces up and down on the piano bench.
“My turn,” Blaine says to the group. “Piano man’s prerogative.” The starlet who was getting ready to sing makes an exaggerated face of disappointment. “Ladies and gentlemen, my husband, Kurt Hummel.” Blaine gestures at Kurt, who after all this time knows an entrance cue when he sees one. “We sang a Guys and Dolls tune tonight, but in fact the very first song we ever sang together was also by Frank Loesser.” Blaine starts vamping on the chords. “It’s a song Loesser wrote for himself and his wife to sing together at parties. Back when people sang at parties, of course.” The crowd laughs politely. “What Mrs Loesser said when Frank eventually sold the song to Hollywood is lost to history. But that just means that my husband and I can sing it at our parties now.”
“Don’t you think it’s a little late in the season for this one?” Kurt asks.
“We’ll get one more cold snap,” Blaine says, and he sounds so confident it’s like he controls the weather. He plays a cascade of arpeggios, and then it’s the opening chords of the song, so instantly familiar.
Kurt steps closer to the piano and starts. “I really can’t stay...”
When they’re done, the applause is warm and heartfelt, and from the people who are their peers now. Kurt does what he didn’t do back at Dalton, and leans towards Blaine for a kiss.
“Good?” Blaine asks.
“Yeah,” Kurt says. “We’re good.”