Ryan Murphy and FOX own all the cool toys, I'm just borrowing them for a little while.
Prompted by OrangeAnimals (Kinn prompts), who asked for "Cuddle!Finn, Kurt wakes up to a bad dream, Finn comforts him; bonus points if the dream is about Finn." Heartfelt thanks to my lovely beta Teka Lynn.

Dream Logic
by Morgan D.

"Pass the salt."

Kurt looked up from his pineapple chicken salad, his fingers tightening the grip on his fork as he found Finn's eyes staring gravely at him. "What?"

Finn's eyebrows twitched. "The salt." Then, as a reluctant afterthought, he added, "Please."

Kurt was a little surprised to find the saltshaker right next to his plate. And it wasn't even the shaker from the exquisite salt-and-pepper combo in acrylic and stainless steel he had bought in his last kitchen makeover. The pepper grinder was there, and Burt was making good use of it, showering his over-greasy french fries with the fine black powder — oh, that was just wrong in so many levels! But Kurt could swear he had never seen this saltshaker before. Maybe it was Carole's, and she had brought it along when she and Finn moved in?

This one was in creamy white porcelain, perfectly smooth, about three inches high, but thinner than Kurt's little finger. It seemed a miracle that it could stand on its own. Actually, it almost didn't. The shaker had a bit of a slant, which Kurt only noticed now because the china piece slanted in Kurt's direction. The boy leaned over, tilting his head to take a closer look.

He had been wrong about its flawlessness, he noticed now. There were tiny cracks all over the shaker, crisscrossing the porcelain in a pattern that felt somehow familiar.

"Kurt?" Finn did not sound happy. "Dude, what's your problem?"

"No problem," Kurt assured him, hoping the lie wasn't evident in his face and his voice.

"Then pass the pizza."

Kurt blinked. "You mean the salt."

"No, I mean the pizza. Are you deaf or something?"

Kurt looked back at the saltshaker, finally realizing why its leaning shape and the scratches on the porcelain made it look so familiar. "It's Pisa. The Tower of Pisa. Not pizza."

"Whatever," Finn snorted, reaching over the table with his palm upward. "Just pass the thingy, will ya?"

Kurt let go of his fork and reached out to pick the shaker up, but froze before his fingers could touch it. The tower replica was too damn tiny. How was he going to hand it to Finn... without letting his fingers brush Finn's?

He couldn't let it happen. Not after the way Finn had reacted to the moist towelette. There were restraining orders. Carole had pinned the papers to the fridge with a cow-shaped magnet, and while they were written in green crayon in Finn's messy handwriting, the signature at the bottom was from a real judge, and violating those orders would spell real trouble for Kurt. Hopefully not juvie, but more like community services, such as collecting trash from the streets of Lima while wearing bright orange overalls that would clash horribly with Kurt's complexion.

Maybe if he just placed the shaker on the table next to Finn's plate?

But Finn had his hand stretched out, already waiting. A really big hand. A really small shaker. One wrong move, one accidental brush, and Finn would flip, and Burt would yell, and Carole would cry, and the police would barge in, and Kurt would be dragged away to clean Karofsky and Azimio's septic tanks.

Kurt glanced at his dad. Maybe he could get his dad to pass Finn the salt.

"Dad?" he whispered.

"I know you mean well, kid," said Burt. "But just try to be a little more reasonable, okay?"

"What?"

His father ignored him and turned to Finn. "Kurt worries about the sodium intake," Burt explained. "He just wants you to be healthy and live a long life. He does the same with me. It only means he cares."

Finn's eyes widened. "Cares how?"

"He loves you. He's terrified that you might get sick and die and leave him."

"No!" Kurt was mortified. "It's nothing like that, Finn, I swear!"

Burt rolled his eyes. "Come on, kid, everybody knows! Now stop stalling and pass your lover-brother the salt."

Finn's hand seemed to become even bigger in front of Kurt.

Maybe Carole...?

"Did you like my saltshaker, Kurt?" she asked. "I bought it at Sheets 'n' Things. Had to practically pry it from Sandy Ryerson's greedy hands."

"Ryerson?" Burt frowned. "That teacher suspended for groping his students?"

Finn nodded. "Pervert."

"Men like Ryerson don't deserve anything pretty," said Carole grimly. "Don't deserve anything good."

Kurt suddenly realized that all three were staring at him. Why were they staring at him? He was nothing like Mr. Ryerson. Kurt might want what he couldn't have, he might look too longingly at what would never be his, but he would never touch without consent.

It had just been a moist towelette! Why were they all acting like he had tried to molest Finn? He had only tried to help!

But it didn't matter. He was... a fag. He was a menace. He couldn't even pass the salt without people rushing to clasp on their chastity belts.

"Kurt!" Carole's tone was unusually harsh. "My son is waiting."

With a painful gulp that was probably loud enough to be heard by the neighbors, Kurt braced himself and picked the saltshaker up between his thumb and index finger, holding it carefully by the very top of the tower replica. It was oddly heavy for something so tiny, and the uneven weight distribution caused it to swing like a clock pendulum. Kurt briefly wondered if Ms. Heijermans might quiz him about it in the physics test next Tuesday.

No, no, he couldn't lose focus now. Keep the shaker steady. Was that an oxymoron? Focus! Place the shaker on Finn's stretched hand... but where? The tower had barely stood on the smooth table surface, what about the calloused palm of a football player, full of lines and ridges and imperfections? And what if Finn decided to close his fingers around the shaker so it wouldn't fall, would Kurt be able to pull back before their hands touched and the world came to an end?

Tina had taught him a little about palmistry. Finn's life line was long, thick and dark, starting above the thumb and forming a deep arc before vanishing in the wrist. The heart line was high, close to the fingers, practically crossing his palm from side to side. The head line, however, zigzagged all over the palm, like a cartoon lightning bolt. The fate line looked like the symbol for a quarter note rest.

There was this one spot where the head line almost — almost! — touched the heart line in a triple intersection with the fate line, and Kurt chose that spot to land the saltshaker. He took a deep breath and held it in, sent a short prayer to whatever gods might be willing to protect him from disgrace now, and started guiding the china tower in slow descending maneuvers.

He was trembling. Finn's hand quivered slightly. The earth seemed to be moving under Kurt's chair.

Touchdown.

The saltshaker stood firmly on Finn's open hand.

For about four seconds.

Then it toppled miserably, rolled across Finn's palm spilling salt all over his skin, and fell on the table in a pool of white powder.

Kurt felt his heart drop to the bottom of his stomach.

"What have you done?" Burt roared. "Kurt, what were you thinking?"

Finn wiggled his fingers, staring in disgust at the salt that seemed glued to his skin. "Take it off..."

"Do something!" yelled Carole. "It's all over him, do something!"

Kurt panicked. How was he going to clean out the salt without touching Finn? Carole's screams were reaching hysterics, understandably so, because everyone knew what happened when someone spilled salt. If Kurt didn't act fast, it might be too late to save Finn!

So he did the only thing he could think of. He grabbed the saltshaker and shook it once over his left shoulder, in hopes that a dash into the face of the evil spirit lurking behind him would be enough to remedy the situation.

Unfortunately, the top of the saltshaker chose that moment to drop off, and an explosive stream of salt gushed out, a huge crystal white pit forming on the floor of the dining room as the minuscule shaker somehow spat out a neverending flow of salt.

The shaker fell from Kurt's hand, landed on the center of the salt pit, and sank ominously in the next second.

Then he felt the legs of his chair sinking as well.

In a matter of seconds Kurt found himself up to his waist in the pit, unable to move, the salt mercilessly pulling him down. He looked around in terror, trying to find something to grab onto.

All he could see was Finn standing right next to the pit, reaching out to him. "Give me your hand, Kurt."

And there it was.

Salvation.

At the hands of his knight in shining armor.

Literally, at his hands.

Hands that Kurt could not touch no matter what.

"Kurt, grab my hand!"

Kurt's vision blurred with tears as he sank faster and faster. "I can't."

Too soon it was all over. His entire body was stuck, the salt invaded his mouth and nostrils, he couldn't breathe. He still made one last effort to escape, but the pressure around him only increased.

"Damn, dude, stop squirming," he heard Finn hiss. "Or we're both gonna fall here."

Kurt opened his eyes. There was no salt pit. No dining room.

There was the basement bedroom he shared with Finn, lit only by a headboard lamp.

There were salty tears running down Kurt's lips.

And there was Finn. Finn all around him, all over him. Finn holding him so tightly that Kurt couldn't move a single muscle.

"Finn?"

"You awake now?"

"I think so." Having Finn hug him like that felt a whole lot like a dream, though.

"Okay." Finn sighed. "Good. Can you scoot over then? I'm about to land on my ass."

As Kurt grew more aware of his surroundings, it became clear that Finn's fierce hold on him was the only thing keeping Kurt from falling off the bed. "Oh. Sorry." He carefully dragged himself out of Finn's lap and lay down on the center of the mattress.

He expected Finn to let go and rush back to his own bed in the opposite side of the room. Instead, he collapsed beside Kurt with a grunt, stretching his long limbs and cuddling the smaller body as the bed proved to be too narrow for the both of them.

Kurt tried to remain absolutely still. At any moment Finn would remember he should not be cuddling his gay step-brother-to-be who had an unsuitable crush on him, would get spooked, and would run as fast as his legs could take him, hopefully without leaving any more ugly insults behind.

"You okay?" asked Finn. "I'd never seen someone cry in their sleep before."

"Happens to me sometimes," said Kurt, feeling horribly self-conscious. "I'm fine now. Sorry I woke you up."

"Don't fret. Nightmares suck. I can't believe the kind of crap my brain can come up with when I'm asleep."

Sometimes Kurt couldn't believe the kind of crap Finn's brain could come up with when he was awake either, but he wouldn't mention it. Besides, most of that so-called crap only endeared Finn to him even more.

"Were you being chased by zombies?" asked Finn. "I really hate those."

"No. No zombies."

"Vampires?"

"No."

"Trolls?"

"No. No monsters."

"Killer bees? Bats? Squirrels? Because squirrels can be really frightening. Like, a horde of squirrels chasing you down the school hallways. They throw nuts at your head, and it hurts just like paintball bullets."

Kurt bit down a smile. "I wasn't being chased."

"Oh. Okay."

They remained in silence for a long while. Kurt enjoyed feeling the weight of Finn's arm around his waist, the soft touch of Finn's breath in his ear, even the acrid scent of Finn's cheap anti-dandruff shampoo.

"Kurt?"

"Hmmm?"

"Was it... you know... about your mom?"

Kurt couldn't help it. His hand found Finn's in the semi-darkness. "No..."

Finn responded by lacing their fingers together. No words were needed between them to explain how not dreaming of their dead parents could be cause for both relief and sorrow.

"So," Finn insisted after a moment. "Was I in it?"

Oh dear. "...yes."

"Ah."

And still Finn wasn't running away. That was good news, wasn't it?

"Did I, like, die or something?"

"No, you... you wanted me to pass the salt."

"And?"

"And I couldn't."

Kurt didn't need to look at Finn to see his confusion. The tall boy was pretty much exhaling bewilderment at this point.

But Kurt would rather die than tell Finn the details of his dream. So he tried to laugh it off. "I'm sorry. That doesn't sound very scary, does it?"

"No, I get it. Those can be the worst. I mean, sometimes I dream that I'm playing the Super Bowl, and I'm supposed to get into the field, but my cleats are untied, and I can't remember how to tie them up. And everyone, I mean, everyone is staring at me. I'm on the stadium screen making a mess of the laces. I'm on national TV making a fool of myself. And somewhere I just know my mom is watching and wondering where she went wrong with me. I swear, those are worse than the zombie nightmares."

Kurt tightened his grip around Finn's hand, just for a second. Just to thank him for understanding, to show Finn that he understood too.

"Do you want to know what your dream means?" asked Finn. "I have a book."

"A book? Like a dream dictionary?"

To Kurt's disappointment, Finn untangled their hands and got out of bed, running to the drawer where he kept his underwear. To Kurt's delight, he was back with a worn-looking book just as quickly, cuddling the smaller boy even closer. Their hands worked together to flip the pages and find the entry titled 'salt'.

"Here it is," said Finn. "Seeing salt mines means unexpected fortune. Mining salt means adversities ahead. Spilling it means misfortune."

Kurt closed his eyes and let out a sad sigh. Of course his subconscious mind and Finn's dream book would draw from the same folklore.

Finn must have noticed his reaction. "You spilled the salt?"

Kurt nodded.

"Ouch."

"Yeah."

"Maybe... if it was just a little spilled salt, then it'll only be a little bit of misfortune," Finn offered.

"It was a lot of salt. I was about to drown in it when you woke me up."

"Damn. I'm sorry, man."

"Never mind. I think my dream was very self-explanatory, to be honest. Don't worry about it." Kurt flipped a few other pages, grinning at the simplicity of the interpretations listed there. Basin: if full, prosperity; if empty, deficit or illness; if washing hands in it, judicial troubles. "What about you, Finn? Any dreams before I woke you up?"

"I was dreaming of a cock."

Kurt almost swallowed his own tongue. "Aaahn?" he said intelligently.

"I don't know why, but I dream of cocks a lot."

Again Kurt wondered if he was still dreaming. "Wha-what did the cock... look like?"

"I don't know. Like a cock." Finn frowned in concentration. "With black and reddish feathers."

"Oh. Oh! You dreamed of a rooster."

Finn yawned. "That's what I said."

"Right." Kurt quickly looked for a 'rooster' entry, and found none. Suppressing a smirk, he searched for 'cock'. Yep, there it was. Go figure. "Hearing it crow means news from someone who's far away," he read. "Seeing it fight means nuisances caused by money issues. Seeing it with a few chickens, an addition to the family. Seeing it fly, a trip in the near future. Killing a cock means losing your job, but eating it is a caution sign about your enemies. Seeing the poor thing without feathers means a tragedy in the family, but being the one to pluck its feathers means getting an inheritance." Kurt turned the page, and saw the entry went on and on, listing dozens of interesting situations a cock could figure in one's dreams. "What were you doing with your cock, Finn?"

The words were out before Kurt realized what they sounded like. Gosh, what was he thinking? He braced himself for a repeat appearance of loud-mouthed, chair-kicking, mad-as-hell Finn Hudson.

"It was just sitting on the piano in the choir room laying eggs," said Finn with a shrug. "And I was singing Billy Joel's You Look So Good To Me."

"To your... to the cock?"

"I don't know, I guess. There was no one else there."

"Uh, there's nothing about singing to a cock here. But... ah, here it is. Seeing a cock or a chicken lay eggs means fortune in gambling. Three days of luck if it's a cock, seven days of luck if it's a chicken." Kurt scowled at the book. "Okay, that's just wrong. A rooster laying eggs is worth fewer days of fortune than a chicken laying eggs? How fair is that?"

"Yeah, that makes no sense. It's like getting a ten-buck gift card for finding a needle in a pile of hay, and getting a brand new car for finding peanuts inside a Mr. Goodbar." Finn let out a little chuckle. "You know, when I was making the Gaga dress, I almost lost a needle inside the Mr. Goodbar I was eating. Don't ask me how. I was lucky, though, my mom found it before I ate it."

Kurt turned his head to face Finn, his heart speeding up alarmingly as their eyes met. "I'm glad you're okay," he murmured, wishing he could say so much more.

Finn smiled. "You know what?"

"What?"

"We should go to Vegas."

Kurt blinked. "You want to go to Vegas? With me?"

"Well, then I'd hit the casinos to put my three days of good luck to good use, and if some misfortune happened to you, it'd happen in Vegas, so it'd stay in Vegas. Like, you could stumble on the street, then you'd be back home, and it'd be over. No misfortunes ever again."

Kurt suspected Finn probably didn't quite understand the whole 'what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas' saying, but he was too touched by his friend's thinking to point it out. "It's not a bad idea. Too bad we're not old enough."

Finn sighed. "Yeah..."

The air between them seemed to grow thicker, and Kurt averted his eyes under the pretext of closing the book and placing it on the nightstand. Sharing a bed with Finn Hudson in those circumstances was a strange form of misfortune, heaven and hell all rolled into one.

"Whatever happens," Finn whispered, "I'll be there. Okay?"

Kurt nodded, unable to utter a single word.

Finn smiled, turned off the headboard lamp, and made himself comfortable in Kurt's bed.

So Kurt arranged the bedcovers around them, and made himself comfortable in Finn's arms.

Sleep didn't take long to come. This time, Kurt dreamed he was in his silk pajamas in a tacky roofless chapel while Principal Figgins, dressed as Elvis Presley, married him to a tuxedo-clad rooster. But everything was okay, because Finn barged in just in time, mounted on a pterodactyl, his red shower-curtain gown and sequin mask gleaming under the starlight, and together Finn and Kurt flew towards the moon.

Kurt never bothered to check the dream book for the interpretation of that one.

~fine~

A/N 2: The "dream book" is real, although it's not in English and it's probably not legit. It's titled Livro de Sonhos dos Magos do Egito e da Caldéia, attributed to one Ziloaustro. Ricardo Fontes da Silva is credited for the translation from Latin to Portuguese, and "famous British occultist Walter Himmertron" is credited for its modernization. In my research, I couldn't find any of those names related to anything except this very same book, and there's no mention of a corresponding title in Latin or any other language.