wowbright | Happy Sappy New Year! (Reply)

It's a little late for the Jewish New Year and a little early for the Roman one, but maybe it's New Year's for some culture somewhere? In any case, have a little New Year's Eve-themed Klaine fluff!

Title: Happy Sappy New Year

Pairing: Kurt Blaine
Rating: PG
Summary: Snapshots of New Year's Eve over Kurt Hummel's lifetime.
Word Count: 933
A/N: Written almost a year ago for a prompt from

mixed_berryjam. Edited today.

A kiss at midnight bodes a good year to come.

Kurt's mother used to tell him that when he'd stay up late with his parents on New Year's Eve. Sometimes Aunt Mildred would come over with a couple bottles of champagne and polish one off by herself as they played board games and waited for the ball to drop at Times Square. She'd sleep it off in the guestroom and wake Kurt up early in the morning to make French toast with strawberry compote. She taught him that a splash of champagne made each recipe better.

Aunt Mildred or no, midnight always meant kisses. Kurt's parents would kiss, and then Kurt's mom would lean over and kiss Kurt on the cheek and say, "Happy New Year to the most beautiful boy who ever lived!" and then he would kiss her on the cheek. Then Kurt would move toward his dad, lift his hat and kiss his bald spot. If Aunt Mildred was there, Kurt would kiss her, too; she thought it was most charming when he kissed her on the back of the hand.

Kurt figured that the more kisses he got and gave, the better his year would be.

Then his mother died, and Kurt and his dad started to go to sleep early on New Year's, because it was just easier not to think about the year ahead, about trudging through another 365 days without her.

In middle school, Mercedes invited him to a New Year's all-girls-and-Kurt sleepover. At first, his dad told him he couldn't go, but Kurt was obstinate. His father finally relented after Kurt explained, for the fourth time, that he needed to go because the girls were planning to do makeovers and none of them knew how to polish their nails properly (Tina colored her nails with Mr. Sketch markers, for crying out loud), and they needed someone knowledgeable to teach them about base coats and top coats and drying time. If Kurt didn't, who would?

So he went to the party and taught the girls the proper way to paint their nails and apply eyeliner, and at midnight when one of the girls asked him to French kiss, he responded by kissing her once on each cheek, faire la bise style. Once the rest of the girls saw the faire la bise, they all wanted one from him, too.

There were nine girls at that party, which meant 18 New Year's kisses altogether, so it should have turned out to be a very good year.

It was, and it wasn't. In the spring, after a particularly, um, romantic dream about James McAvoy, he understood with a new clarity why his dad let him go to a girls' sleepover, and why he could be trusted to do nothing more than cheek-to-cheek kissing with any of them.

After that, the New Year's parties started being co-ed. He didn't want to go; he knew that too many of the single girls would run up to kiss him at midnight because he was safe, and that none of the boys ever would.

Anyway, he wasn't usually invited.

Tonight, though, life has come full circle. He's sitting in his own living room with his dad, and a mother - not his mother, but a mother to him, anyway – and Aunt Mildred, who is drinking her champagne out of a soda glass and calling it “Mountain Dew” to avoid being a bad influence on the young people present.

Said young people include Finn, Rachel, Rory and Sugar Motta, who has been killing them all in Apples to Apples. (Sugar Motta? Who ever thought Kurt would be friends with Sugar Motta?) Mercedes is here, too, although Kurt's pretty sure she's not going to be insisting on faire la bise with him tonight. She's been making swoony eyes at Sam all evening when she thinks no one is looking.

It makes for a huge room of people to kiss, but the only person Kurt cares about kissing is the one sitting next to him. Sugar Motta may be getting everyone else's green cards,[i] but pretty much the whole night, all of Blaine's have been ending up in Kurt's hands, and vice versa. Santana stopped making retching noises after the third time it happened.

It's 11:59. Kurt thought he would be nervous to kiss Blaine in front of all of these people. He doesn't, in general, like to kiss in public. Fear of what people might do is probably part of it, but it’s not the biggest part; he’s pretty sure he’d feel the same way about PDA with Blaine if they were a straight couple.

The heart of it is this: He doesn’t want people to look at them kiss and think they know what it means, dismissing it as young love and infatuation and sweetness – when what it really means is you are my home and completeness.

But the people he's with now, he thinks that maybe they're beginning to understand.

So maybe that's why, when the ball drops at Times Square and he turns to look at Blaine, Kurt forgets everyone else in the room, doesn't worry what they might understand or not understand. Kurt forgets everything when he sees the undulating gold and amber of Blaine's eyes. (He will never tire of trying to memorize their beauty.) Kurt even forgets, for just a moment, how to speak.

Blaine's eyes crinkle with delight. "To another year with you, Kurt Hummel."

"To the first of many," Kurt answers.

When they kiss, Blaine's lips are like a new year – exhilarating and ripe with promise.

[i] In Apples to Apples, the goal is to get as many green cards from other players as possible. You do this through a combination of creativity and mind-reading. The better you understand how someone's mind works, the more likely you are to win their green cards. More about the game here.