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“That was a gutsy thing to do.”
Blaine looked up at David who was sipping on his beer, giving him a meaningful look. Wes, sitting to David’s right, nodded sagely. “It really was. Could’ve gone really badly.”
Blaine shrugged his shoulders. “I did what I thought was right.”
“Lucky for you, your fellow senators agreed,” David pointed out and took another sip from his beer.
“They’ll endorse anything that brings them some good press,” Blaine mumbled into his own drink before taking a healthy sip. He looked around the bar they were sitting in, trying to make sure there weren’t any reporters in their vicinity. That could become an unmitigated disaster.
David, Wes and Blaine went out for a few drinks every so often. Not as much as they used to, considering their busy schedules, but whenever the opportunity arose, they took it. Unfortunately, Blaine wasn’t the most stable of drinkers. He wasn’t mean or anything, but his inhibitions decreased to an embarrassing level when he was intoxicated. As much as he wanted to drown some of his political problems in alcohol sometimes, he never did it. At least not in public. It really wouldn’t be good press to see him belting out love songs at the top of his lungs or making a pass at some random stranger. He could just see the headlines, proclaiming him as promiscuous or having an alcohol problem, and wasn’t it sad for someone so young and at the beginning of their political career to ruin it so early?
So Blaine never indulged too much. Two drinks, three tops when it was something with low levels of alcohol. These gatherings were mostly to unwind and catch up. They rarely got the chance at the office, and all three of them were too professional to gossip at work in the first place.
Tonight was a little different, though. While they usually didn’t permit any office talk during their outings, Blaine’s recent proposal in the senate was too huge for either David or Wes not to talk about, especially as they hadn’t known Blaine would tell his own story of bullying. That’d been a surprise.
“What made you talk about it now?” David asked, as if reading his mind. He was still incapable of wrapping his head around the whole thing, if the expression on his face was any indication. Hell, Blaine couldn’t blame him; it’d taken the two of them almost a year to get the whole story out of Blaine after he’d transferred to Dalton Academy.
Blaine shrugged. “I just thought it was time that I did. To make a point.” He hesitated, raised his glass to his mouth before he mumbled, “And Kurt thought it was a good idea.”
He didn’t miss the meaningful look Wes and David shared. He couldn’t miss it; they weren’t exactly subtle. He’d rather not ask what that was about, but he didn’t need to. David shook his head, staring at Blaine with a strange gleam in his eyes.
“Blaine, my man,” he said, patting Blaine’s hand. “I love you and I’m saying this with the utmost respect for your person but... you’re an idiot.”
Blaine threw a wounded look his way. “Wow, thanks,” he said dryly. “What brought on this ringing endorsement of my character?”
David and Wes exchanged another look and then a sad, suffering head shake. It only confused Blaine further. “Seriously, what are you talking about?”
“Blaine,” David said with a grave voice, patting his hand again. “You’re not exactly subtle. You’re totally in love with Kurt and want to have his babies.”
“Well,” Wes piped up. “More like his surrogate babies, unless Blaine hasn’t told us something important about his physiology.”
“Excuse me?” Blaine sputtered, but was totally ignored by David who waved his hand around.
“That’s beside the point. The point is that you want to set up house with him and are too chicken shit to talk to him.” There was a brief silence before he added, “You have to do something, man. This is getting pathetic.”
Blaine swallowed, looking from Wes to David and back again. He wasn’t stupid; he’d known he was head over heels for Kurt half an hour into their acquaintance. Not that he’d admitted it to himself right away, but that was what had happened. He’d thought he’d hidden it well enough, but apparently he’d been extremely transparent about it from the very beginning.
“I don’t want to have his babies,” he muttered, looking sullenly into his drink. Wes laughed.
“Blaine. There’s a betting pool going on at the office counting down to the hour when you’ll finally get the courage to ask Kurt out,” he said, ignoring Blaine’s gaping stare.
“Come to think of it, they expanded it to Kurt losing his patience and just throwing Blaine over his desk to fuck him,” David added.
Blaine choked on air.
“Excuse me?!” he hacked out between coughs, but was totally ignored by both his friends.
“You’re right,” Wes exclaimed. “I was thinking about betting on that. Let’s face it, at this point Blaine will never find his balls and ask Kurt out.”
“Sad, sad fact,” David replied with a mock grave voice. “I think he lost them around the time he shook Kurt’s hand for the first time and has been searching for them ever since. Maybe he should look in Kurt’s pants for them.”
“Excuse me!” Blaine shouted, outraged and embarrassed and a little bit horrified to hear his friends talk about his balls in public.
“No, excuse me,” Wes said, suddenly serious. “This is ridiculous. Why don’t you just go and ask him out? I’m sure Kurt will say yes before you even have to ask properly. The UST between you two is so high that you make everyone else around you sexually frustrated.”
“Very frustrated,” David nodded. “People in Kansas get sexually frustrated and don’t even know why.”
Wes shushed him with a hand. “So put both of you and the rest of us out of our collective misery and ask him out, fuck him senseless and then go get married in New York!”
Blaine froze, his hands gripping his glass tightly. He swallowed once, then again when the lump in his throat refused to budge. After a heavy silence, he finally breathed, “I can’t.”
That seemed to throw both his friends for a loop.
“What do you mean, you can’t?” David asked, confused and exasperated.
Blaine shot him a glare. “It means I can’t, David. Don’t you think I want to? There’s nothing I’d rather do than go up to Kurt and ask him out. But I can’t and do you know why?” He waited for Wes and David to shake their heads before he leaned over the table and hissed, “Because I’m his boss.”
They both stared at him with disbelief. After a moment David leaned forward and cuffed him over the side of his head.
“Ow!”
“Did you not listen to what we’ve just said?” Wes asked, sounding a little annoyed. “Kurt wants you. He couldn’t be more obvious about it if he tried.”
“Well,” David added, inclining his head, “he could strip naked and drape himself over Blaine’s lap.”
“It would get the message across at least,” Wes agreed, brow raised.
“Would you two stop it already?” Blaine hissed, jaw clenched. They both shut up immediately.
“Kurt never indicated... he never said...” Blaine stopped, lost for words to explain why this wasn’t a good idea. He took a deep breath. “I can’t ask him out. I’ll never be sure if he actually wanted to go out with me or did it because I’m his boss.”
Wes looked like he had a lot to say about that but Blaine cut him off before he could start. “I know what you want to say,” he snapped. “Kurt couldn’t be forced into anything he doesn’t want even if you held a gun to his head.”
Blaine remembered the night in his office, after he’d read the letter from Tyler. He remembered how fragile and broken Kurt had looked for that tiny moment before he'd pulled himself back together. He knew that Kurt wasn’t invincible, that he could be hurt. And he knew that this job, this whole political career path was Kurt’s life. He couldn’t risk that for anything; it wasn’t his place. Because if they actually did go out and it ended badly? Kurt would always be the one to take the fall, simply because he’d been Blaine’s subordinate when they’d started sleeping together. Nobody would ever take him seriously again after something like that. It would be the end of his career.
“Kurt is my PA,” Blaine said quietly, with a sure voice. “He is a damn good PA and I will be happy to have him for as long as he can put up with me. I will not put him into a position where he has to choose between me and his job. I will not be that much of an asshole.”
Silence settled over their table. Both Wes and David looked at Blaine before they shared a long look. They sighed almost simultaneously before David rubbed his brow. “You’re too honorable for your own good, Blaine.”
“It’s admirable, but not very practical,” Wes added, patting Blaine’s forearm. Blaine released the breath he’d been holding, relaxing minutely. He hadn’t been sure they would respect his reasonings, but it looked like they still knew him well enough not to interfere when Blaine was dead set against whatever they’d planned.
They fell silent again, each of them nursing their drink. Then David grinned, a wicked gleam in his eye. “If I split the betting pool money with you, will you let me know in advance if you start fucking after all?”
Blaine’s indignant outcry was drowned out by Wes’ groan of despair. “Will you let it go already?”
“No, no, I’m serious,” David said, waving his hands. “If Kurt asks you, you won’t say no, will you?”
That threw Blaine for a loop. He paused, his mouth slightly open. “I... I don’t know,” he admitted, flustered.
A slow smile crept onto Wes’ face. “So you wouldn’t rule out dating if Kurt asked you first?”
Blaine had known these men for more than a decade and knew how they ticked. He glared at them. “Don’t you dare harass Kurt into asking me out. I will end you!”
“Relax, Blaine,” Wes soothed him. “We won’t.”
“We won’t need to,” David added, earning himself an elbow to the ribs from Wes. “Ow! That was totally unnecessary, Mr. Montgomery!”
“I disagree,” Wes replied, then turned back to Blaine and ignored David’s wounded face. “I promise on my mother’s life that we won’t do or say anything to Kurt to make him ask you out.”
Blaine knew that was a serious promise. Whenever Wes involved his mother, everyone knew he was completely serious. So he nodded in thanks and relaxed back, accepting it as the peace offering it so clearly was. He saw Wes and David exchange another quick look, followed by Wes shaking his head and David rolling his eyes, but in the end they relaxed back into their seats as well.
The evening ended an hour later, with Blaine citing an early morning appointment. They said goodbye and Blaine headed home, still mulling over what Wes and David had said. He stood by his decision: he was never going to make an overture towards Kurt. Even if, apparently, Kurt wouldn’t be averse to it. No, it didn’t make a difference. They worked well together, and Blaine liked Kurt as his PA. He would never jeopardize that.
Not even for his own happiness.