WHAT CAN I GET

Kurt is seriously, seriously thisclose to quitting Cheerios.

It was hard enough fighting it out with Sue and Schue and Figgins to let him wear regular clothes all day (well, not that Kurt is anywhere near something so boring and common as regular but you know) instead of the classless red uniform (and this is still top of his list on why he will not be transferring to Dalton thank you), and it hurt to lose Mercedes and then turn right around and get Quinn back. And doing it along with Glee is infuriatingly time-consuming. But Kurt finds he likes his days like that - jam-packed with something he's supposed to be doing every waking moment. It gives everything a little bit of structure, makes it somehow more manageable rather than the hectic mess it sounds like it would be. Plus, this way, he has less time to sit around and get distracted by thoughts that run through his head that he would rather not be thinking, thoughts of two very different kinds that still creep into the back of his head when he sniffs out artificial blue raspberry or catches a strain of Katy Perry lyrics, respectively.

Unfortunately, with this current fundraising situation, he's got plenty of time to just sit around doing basically nothing. And quitting is starting to look more and more appealing.

"Is this even legal?" he grumbles to Brittany, head slumped onto the pillow of his arms at the white plastic table they're using. "It's basically prostitution."

"No, Quinn just gave blood like two days ago," she murmurs back, and it takes Kurt a good thirty seconds to figure that one out, though that's not too unusual. At any rate, he can't think on it for too long, because here comes Jacob Ben Israel with the leftover change from buying his lunch.

"What can I get for thirty-seven cents?" he pants, his clammy hand smearing the dimes and pennies into Kurt's and seriously messing up his moisturizing.

"The same thing you got yesterday for thirty-seven cents," bites Santana. She rips a corner off a sheet of paper from her geometry notebook, presses her lips to it to create a perfect shimmer-red print, and then uses the lip-gloss residue to stick it to Jacob's forehead. They all watch, gagging, as he peels it off and slips it into his pocket - way, way too deep into his pocket.

"Look out, ladies, I'm breaking my Dalek piggy bank open tomorrow." He shuffles away and for a moment Kurt is pretty sure Brittany is actually going to vomit into the cashbox. He just closes it up and flops his head back down.

Kurt mans the cashbox for first lunch. Becky does it for second lunch. The rest of the cheerleaders - the hot ones, the ones that everyone would want this sort of thing from - sell kisses at the freaking kissing booth.

"Is my breath okay?" asks Santana, leaning in Brittany's face.

"Let me see," says Brittany. She basically eats Santana's face off in the middle of the cafeteria, and when they're finished it's enough that she has to wipe her mouth. "No you seem fine to me."

"Okay, good. I'm almost out of gum."

"You should be charging for that too!" a basketball jock catcalls from a few tables over, and Santana fixes him with a deathstare.

"That's the preview. You want the real deal, it's four bucks."

"Your sign says two!"

"You have to pay for her to kiss me and you have to pay for me to kiss her."

This. Close. To. Quitting. And it's only Tuesday.

Lunch is almost over when Kurt's phone goes off pulsating in his pocket with a text message, and when he pulls it out the display reads Blaine.

From: Blaine
you all right today?

Kurt would almost laugh if he weren't so miserable. Instead, he flips his phone open, leans backward across the table a little, and angles his camera lens up so the photo can encompass both the kissing booth sign and his bored-out-of-his-skull frown. The picture mail takes a few minutes to send - McKinley has traditionally crappy network service - and Kurt has to scramble to put it away as a couple of guys from jazz band sidle up and request the services of Brittany and Amber Young, handing their cash to him only as an afterthought.

All right today. Yeah, right. Blaine's texts have dropped down to about one every couple of days, and he can usually time them right when Kurt's at lunch and he's not interrupting anything, but he should know by now that Kurt's days at WMHS are hardly ever all right. If it's not some stupid Cheerios bullcrap or more unnecessary glee club drama, it's slushie dripping down the cowlneck of his third-favorite blue sweater or Karofsky passing him in the hallway between English and chemistry if he's running late. Or Carol, nosing into his business, always wondering if there's a nice young man in his life.

Or Blaine. Being a nice young man. In his life.

(...Yeah, especially that last one.)

The bell rings at long last and Kurt locks up the cashbox and drags it by Sue's office before hurrying to French. Just before he crosses the door to Mme. Greer's classroom, his phone goes off in his pocket again. Blaine.

From: Blaine
youre undercharging.

Despite how freaking cryptic that is - despite himself - Kurt smiles.

Wednesday things get a little better. The huge rush right at the beginning of the lunch hour dies down faster than usual, and Coach Sylvester has actually done something vaguely close to praising him about the tidiness and accuracy with which he keeps the cashbox and the sales receipt book. Jacob sweeps by for another pass - this time with enough for a real fully-paid kiss, though Brittany and Santana make Jayme Wyatt do it - and Mercedes gives him a dollar and a peck on the cheek.

"You're a brave soul, man," she says, with a chuckle and an amused glance at Santana (currently sucking face with Puck, who slipped Kurt a ten just moments earlier). Kurt smiles, and tries not to think the word courage.

Thursday things get worse. Thursday, Karofsky and Azimio drop by.

"How's business, queer?" growls Azimio, rattling the cashbox loudly and way too close to Kurt's face.

"We've made $475 since Monday," Kurt answers, already mad at himself for flinching and refusing to budge otherwise.

"We, he says," Karofsky laughs. "Like anyone would pay to play tonsil hockey with you, fag."

"No, you're right," says Kurt, "why pay for something you can just steal." He turns his glare as icy-blue as he can muster and Karofsky falters, just a little. If Azimio picks up on the weirdness he doesn't say anything.

Santana, to her duty, at least kind of notices that something's going on. "What are you tools doing here?" she deadpans. "You don't even have first lunch."

"Had a math test that let out early," says Azimio, "and we're sick of Quinn and Betsy. You know Lopez is my favorite flavor."

"Mine too," says Brittany with sudden and vague excitement. "Well, after pink lemonade."

In the end, Karofsky gives Kurt four dollars, and a hard slap on the back of the head. He kisses Lisa Francis with about two-thirds of the intensity he'd kissed Kurt with in the locker room, and stares at him a little too long as they're leaving for the lunch line.

Thank Gaga and Madge and grilled cheesus, thinks Kurt, that Friday is the last day. Jacob's broke, most people have kind of had their fill already, and they hit their fundraising goal forty dollars ago. Things can only go uphill from here.

Kurt hunkers down into his caesar salad behind the cashbox and when his phone pulses in his pocket, he ends up wither a fork in one hand and his cell in the other. Here it is, right on schedule. Blaine.

From: Blaine
hows business?

To: Blaine
Blessedly slow.

he types back, as soon as he's got the lettuce all the way in his mouth.

From: Blaine
sorry.

Kurt has about three more bites' worth to think on that - why in the hell Blaine would be sorry that the misery Kurt's being forced through isn't any more disgustingly "thrilling" than it has been? - when the rustling starts over at the far end of the cafeteria. There's a cluttering of people, about two degrees down in terms of excitement from what usually happens when a fight is about to start, and Kurt's really glad he doesn't have any of his green tea in his mouth when he figures out what's going on.

He's here.

Oh. No good. Bad. Kurt is woefully unprepared for this. See, running into Blaine now would only be the fourth time they've seen each other face-to-face ever, and the other three times Kurt had totally planned it. What to say, for instance. How to act to make sure he didn't look like a total loser. What to wear. (Newsflash: the answer to that is not a classless red uniform.)

The other three times, Kurt also hadn't gone two months with Blaine's photo in his locker and Blaine's texts sitting in his inbox and Blaine's '09-'10 Warblers studio recording CD on repeat in his SUV. The other three times, Kurt hadn't been kind of in love with him.

"Some super-hot short guy just rolled in here in a freaking BMW!" gushes Katie McAllister, speeding up to the table and hunching in low next to Lisa and Santana. "You guys have got to check this out - oh!"

Because there he is. He's got his Dalton blazer unbuttoned and his striped tie hanging loose around his neck, hands in his pockets and clashingly bright pink sunglasses propped up across the top of his head. He looks good. He smells good. And that is so, so bad.

"Hey ladies," he says, cranking his disarming grin onto Amber so hard that Kurt is pretty sure he actually hears her squeal. "You still open for business?"

"Open? Is so the right word," says Santana, and as if to prove a point she spreads her legs a little further apart.

"You're not the default, are you?" he says. "I mean, no offense to you, sweetheart, it's just - I get to pick my prize, right?"

"It's like a carnival," says Brittany, nodding.

Kurt is, of course, pretending none of this is happening, and leaning down as close to the cash box and his salad and his can of Arizona as he possibly can. Eye contact is deadly. Ignorance is key.

Blaine is right in front of him and everything goes out the window.

"Excellent." Suddenly there's a pressure on Kurt's chin, light and warm and wonderful, and it's Blaine's hand, tipping his face upward, and Kurt can see so many weird and beautiful and shockingly interested things in the depths of Blaine's hazel eyes. "Perfect."

Jayme's jaw is nearly to the floor as Kurt sets down his salad fork and stands, just barely taller than Blaine, their eyes still locked together.

"And you say it's two dollars a kiss?" says Blaine, right hand digging into his pants pocket for his wallet, his gaze never faltering.

"That's what the sign says," chirps Santana, a (reassuring?) note of amusement coloring the disbelief in her voice.

Blaine unfurls from his leather billfold a crisp brand-spanking-new fifty dollar bill.

"What can I get for this?"

Kurt's head reels, and he nearly has to sit back down in his chair. It's so easy to forget that Dalton is a private school, and that you have to pay to go there, and that of course Blaine would have money to drop on something this ridiculous. And it's also really hard for Kurt to imagine anyone - especially a boy, especially a really gay really hot boy - thinking he's worth fifty dollars.

There's a giant halo of people around them in the cafeteria, all eyes trained on the kissing booth and everyone remarkably quiet, and Kurt can barely even see them as Blaine walks around the table to stand at his side and leans in close.

"This doesn't have to count unless you want it to," he says. "I mean, it's basically prostitution." He inches even closer, lips almost brushing Kurt's ear as he whispers. "But I just can't take it any more. I have to know, don't you?"

In front of a good half of the student body, Blaine seals his lips over Kurt's in what Kurt is pretty sure is the single hottest most luscious kiss that has ever come to pass between two human beings, let alone two boys, let alone Kurt and anyone ever. Tendrils of electric fire curl through every soft and longing part of Kurt, making the muscles in his jaw tense up fiercer which, gee, has this unfortunate side effect of making the kiss even deeper and more forceful. Bummer. For a few minutes that's all Kurt's even capable of feeling, the thick hot heavy pressure of Blaine's lush lips sliding over and around and across his own, but once the explosive, soul-melting novelty of that wears off he begins to notice other things that make it even better. Like the way Blaine's crooking both hands around into the small of his back and is just sort of pressing there, not trying to push him in any way, just a sort of hot-palmed suggestion like you could maybe curl closer if you wanted to, and damn does Kurt want to, and he does, hips aligned tightly together to the point that Kurt kind of has to half-sit on the table top and Blaine ends up bracing one hand against its surface behind him. Or the spot just behind Blaine's ear where Kurt has buried his own hand in Blaine's hair, this great place up underneath that doesn't feel like two pounds of product but just feels soft and thick and oh, grabbable, like his fingers will never untangle and that's quite all right with both of them. And just when he thinks he's got a handle on all of it, Kurt remembers that oh, yeah, Blaine's tongue is about halfway down his throat in the middle of the McKinley High School cafeteria.

When they break apart, Blaine's lower lip is so plump-flushed red that Kurt has to bite it a little before he lets him speak. "So that's, what, about thirty dollars worth?" he stammers, obviously a little nervous about the degree to which they've put on a display here.

Kurt, who has decided he probably will quit the Cheerios after all, couldn't care less. "If you had just said that's what you wanted," he breathes, mentally adding the instead of being so damn confusing for his own sake, "I probably would have done it for free."