Disclaimer: I most certainly don't own Glee. Not that I'd want to, with the current writing.

This could be seen as a follow-up to "Stars May Collide", but I don't think it's necessary to have read that first.

Small Packages

"Hey Kurt!"

He turned towards the slightly familiar voice. Ah. Jamie. Mop of red hair, short and freckled, "not an Apple, just friends with the whole bunch". Kurt hadn't quite made up his mind about the boy – he hadn't had much of an opportunity.

He seemed nice, yeah, but you never could know.

"Hello."

"Look, I'm not going to keep you, you look as if you're in as much of a hurry as I am, I just wanted to give you something."

Kurt felt his eyebrows rise. Jamie had something to give him? That sounded...unbelievable. Had it been McKinley he'd have run for cover, expecting a slushie (or worse, pee balloons) but this was NYADA and Kurt Hummel would destroy anyone throwing shit at him (or him in it).

"I know, I know, your birthday isn't until next week, but I have a feeling you're going to want this present early. Here."

He took the envelope Jamie thrust at him and gave it a quick once over. Plain white 6 by 9. He'd thought it'd be a birthday card, but it was too large for a normal card, yet too light for one the size of the envelope.

"Just... You might want to burn that when you're done, okay?" And just like that Jamie was gone, leaving Kurt to stare after him. Definitely not a card then. A birthday present, delivered a week early, in an envelope and he was supposed to burn it? Did he even want to know what it was?

He shoved it into his bag, to look at later, and rushed off to his next class.

Later that night he stared at it for almost five solid minutes before thinking to hell with it and ripping it open. And stared again. Was this a joke? He hadn't thought Jamie to be that cruel, not with Kurt being an Apple, and with Adam, but.

"We regret to inform you..." A rejection letter. A NYADA rejection letter. Why would Jamie go through the trouble of digging out Kurt's old rejection letter and hand it over? Was it an attempt at humiliating him? Why?

And then he spotted it, what must have been the reason behind the gift. It was a rejection letter, alright, but it wasn't his letter.

As he burned it under the kitchen fan he could still feel the huge smile plastered across his face. Take that. New York was his and now he'd be free to keep enjoying it without bad reminders from Lima popping up.

Jamie had been right – it had been a gift he wanted early.

~The End ~