warnings: bullying, gross homophobic jerks, gross homophobic language
Blaine’s bag skids a few feet across the parking lot and Blaine cringes as if the asphalt is dragging across his own skin, not soft worn leather.
Cooper gave him that bag. He loves that bag. Coop may make an art form out of appearing to be the most blindly clueless, insincere person on the planet, but his ability to give Blaine the most perfect gifts is unmatched. Twice a year, birthdays and Christmas, a curtain being momentarily jostled by a contented sigh, letting Blaine see his brother the way he always yearns to. Perceptive and generous, and the kind of person who looks satisfied with simply managing to make his kid brother smile.
He takes a step to retrieve is, and his chest meets an open hand that pushes, a brick wall fighting back. A teenage, letterman jacket wearing brick wall with too-small eyes and a cruel smirk, who he’s never spoken to in his life and has apparently offended with nothing more than his existence.
Blaine had thought that by now maybe that particular pattern would have stopped hurting quite so much.
He stumbles back and hits a second laughing body, this one more like a tree. Taller and thin and ropey with muscles that uncoil and shove him helplessly back the way he came. He’s dizzy with uncontrollable motion, incapable of anticipating which way he’ll be jostled next, so he just stops. Stops trying to get past them, stops giving them a target to react to. Just freezes, hands in fists at his side and breath coming heavy as he looks up at The Wall and contemplates the size of him.
He knows how to throw a punch now. As much as he enjoys understanding the burning duck and weave and lash of it, it’s not something he ever wanted to have to learn. It was a hobby born of lurking dark memories that he tries to face as infrequently as possible, and happened to find far more gratifying than he’d ever anticipated given his reasons for taking it up.
But he’s never made the conscious decision to use those skills against another human body, and it’s bile in his throat that even after everything he can’t bring himself to act first.
Blaine Anderson has never been able to bring himself to throw the first punch, and that’s why he’s ending his first day at his third school in as many years standing between two giants and waiting to see if they just like fucking with the new kid or if they actually mean it.
Please please please please please don’t mean it.
Behind him The Tree snorts. “Looks like we got ourselves another fairy at McKinley.”
The Wall gives him and up-down look that makes Blaine’s skin crawl. “You sure? Smells like a nerd to me.”
“He’s wearing a bow tie. He’s a fag nerd at least, I’d put money on it.”
“Cross breed. They make ‘em freaky these days,” The Wall curls a lip at him, more disdain in a teenage boy than Blaine wants to contemplate. “So, poindexter. D’you take it up the ass too, or do you just dress like Mardi Gras?”
Blaine’s stomach shrinks, hands clenching and unclenching weakly. “Just let me get my bag and get to my car and I’ll never bother you again.”
Bother them, like dressing how he likes and having to go to the same school as them and not looking at his feet and skulking away is so fucking bothersome.
“Don’t you want to stay and chat?” The Tree asks, stepping into Blaine’s line of sight. “I thought we were having fun.”
“Yeah, we know a nice dumpster round the back of the cafeteria that we want to show you. It was macaroni day today, it’s gonna be real nice and –”
“Hey, assholes!”
Blaine’s head snaps up as the two guys’ heads snap around, landing on a lithe, leather jacket clad boy leaning easily back on a long black and chrome motorbike.
He raises a hand in a wave, and calls in the same surprisingly high, clear voice. “Would you look at that. You respond to your names and everything. Or would you prefer Asshole One and Asshole Two?” he pauses, glancing up mock-thoughtfully. “Oh wait, I don’t give a fuck.”
The Wall turns to face the boy completely. “Mind your own fucking business, Hummel.”
“I just made it my fucking business,” he pushes off the motorbike and takes half a step forward. “So how about you find someone dumb enough to voluntarily want to spend time with you and leave him alone to go home and try to scrub the stench of you off himself,” his eyes drift to Blaine’s and lock, too far away to tell their colour, close enough for it to be clear he's enjoying himself. “I’d use something with bleach in it. It’ll sting, but it’ll be worth it in the long run. I can recommend a good moisturiser if you need it.”
Blaine’s mouth falls open, his stomach swooping strangely. “Um…”
“Maybe burn your clothes too. They might have crabs, you can never be too safe.”
“Don’t fucking push it, Hummel!”
“I’m not the one ganging up on someone who doesn’t even look like he’s had his first growth spurt yet,” the boy, Hummel, says lightly, turning his hand to eye his nails. “But you know, if you want a witness who’s more than happy to name names to Principal Figgins, I have a whole afternoon to stick around and see where this is going,” he flicks his hand. “Really, don’t let me stop you.”
The two guys turn to look at each other, and The Tree grunts and murmurs, “Fuck this, I got better things to do.”
Hummel laughs quietly, back to examining his nails. “I sincerely doubt that’s true.”
They start walking off in the opposite direction, one of them slamming into Blaine with his shoulder and knocking him sideways as he passes, and the other aiming a solid kick at his discarded bag. Blaine doesn’t move, waiting for them to get far enough away for him to feel comfortable with making himself vulnerable by bending down to pick it up.
Their footsteps have almost faded completely when a shout echoes back to him. “Fucking faggot.”
Blaine flinches, stumbling the few feet to his satchel and fumbling its strap in his clumsy fingers, jerking it up and onto his shoulder. When he stands up again Hummel is back to leaning against his motorbike, watching him calmly.
“Don’t worry. They were talking to me,” he calls, a humourless smile twitching on his face. “I’m the fucking faggot. Or at least I am to people with too little imagination to come up with anything more original.”
Blaine lets his breath out and swallows, his throat full of sand. “Thank you. You didn’t have to do that.”
“I know,” he shrugs, matter of fact. “You don’t have to stand all the way over there, either. They’re too dumb to realise that a twenty year old Ducati and a pair of Doc Martens don’t actually mean I know the first thing about fighting, but I don’t bite.” His eyebrows furrow. “If they ever figure it out I’m probably going to be praying that my dentist actually is as good as he always tells me he is.”
Blaine wraps both hands around the strap of his bag and walks over stopping a good five feet away, and getting a proper look at the boy for the first time. He’s pale, the faintest hint of freckles spraying across the bridge of his nose and shadowing his sharp jaw. He’s unfairly gorgeous, something about the delicacy of his features and the sweet upturn of his nose playing perfectly with the forceful black and studs of his jacket and the uncomplicated white of his t-shirt. His jeans are – Blaine takes one look at them and tears his eyes away, blood surging like a wave. Tight doesn’t cover it. Long, long legs and thick thighs, and Blaine doesn’t know how comfortable he is with holding a stranger’s eyes right now, shaken as he is, but he can’t keep looking at those legs if he wants to be able to think at all straight, so he focuses on his eyes.
They’re blue. Or maybe grey. A swollen, furious sea.
“You’re new,” Hummel says, unhooking his helmet from his handlebars and fiddling with the strap.
“First day,” he considers offering his hand to shake, but settles on a small wave instead. “I’m Blaine.”
“Well, Blaine. I deeply apologise for whatever it was that brought you to this hell hole,” Blaine knows he doesn’t know, but he can’t help the way his jaw hardens a little in response. “I’m Kurt.”
Blaine shifts from foot to foot and weakly jerks a thumb over his shoulder. “Should I learn to get used to that, then?”
Kurt wrinkles his nose. “Maybe just try not to expect anything better. The falls hurt less that way. Sorry.”
Blaine blinks. “Oh.”
“Yeah. Oh,” there’s something dark in the set of his face, dispersing just as quickly with a jagged smirk. “Don’t worry. I know which piece of shit cars are theirs. They’ll go to leave tomorrow afternoon and some unlucky mechanic somewhere'll be faced with the mystery of not one, but two missing batteries. What a shocking and strange coincidence.”
The laugh tears up Blaine’s throat, stinging with the force of it. “You can do that?”
“See?” Kurt grins, tugging his helmet on over his neat hair. “No one will ever suspect little old me.”
Blaine smiles back, can’t hold it in, and only just stops himself from blurting if you don’t give me your phone number I’ll die, because rejection’s a bitch and Kurt is the first student who’s gone out of their way to speak to him all day, and he doesn’t need a beautiful, spiky teenage boy in steel cap boots to switch from looking at him like he’s amusing to looking at him like he’s a joke two minutes after meeting him.
Instead he says, “Thank you.”
Kurt swings his leg over the seat of his bike, oh god, his thighs, they make him lightheaded, and settles back. “I’d have probably done it anyway. Fun to see the looks on their faces when anyone dares to fuck with them in return.”
Blaine laughs again, feeling infinitely stronger than he did five minutes ago, and takes a startled step back when Kurt knocks the bike off its stand the jerks it to life with a harsh snarl.
He takes a deep breath, warm exhaust fumes metallic on his tongue, and shouts over the roar. “Where do you sit at lunch time?”
Kurt raises a quizzical eyebrow, eyes narrowed. “Wherever they aren’t.”
Blaine’s hands tighten around his bag, sharp leather cutting into his palms, and apparently this boy makes him brave. “I’ll come find you.”
Kurt’s teeth scrape off his bottom lip, and in the second before he flicks his visor down, he yells. “Right. See you ‘round Blaine.”
The bike purrs and growls and pulls away, picking up speed with a scream, and holy shit his ass.
Blaine stays rooted to the spot for a moment, heart beating insistently in his chest, and exhales. Maybe he doesn’t make him brave. Maybe he just makes him stupid.
Blaine’s always had kind of a hard time telling the difference between the two anyway.
a/n: my hard drive died and i lost like 99% of my wips so i haven't written klaine for months and this is like me awkwardly catching up with two friends i haven't seen in ages and has like no structure and is the opposite of good but w/e hi ♥
Still, he's never quite sure how to feel these days when Kurt and Blaine come to visit. The Anderson's house a manageable car drive away, and Burt with their son sleeping and eating and smiling under the Hummel roof like there's no need to even decide between the two. He likes having Blaine there. It feels right, the two of them together, and it seems ungrateful to even contemplate guilt at harbouring someone else's kid when he's mostly just grateful that he's never had to discover if he'd feel resentful or abandoned or countless uglier sentiments if Kurt decided he preferred the comfort of another family's home.
He does respect Kurt's freedom to make that decision for himself though. Given how much time Blaine does spend smiling in their house, he'd have to be blind and cruel not to respect his too.
Smiling when Carole casually and frequently hugs him, smiling constantly while Kurt talks, smiling when Burt hands him the bread rolls at dinner. He isn't smiling for anyone else's sake, god knows how many of them go unnoticed by Burt when he isn't watching the kid with half an eye. He's just smiling. He's just happy.
That happy just to be included in their little family, and it's humbling as hell.
He notes how as a couple Kurt and Blaine have obviously changed in ways that probably don't even register to them. They may not be living together now, but it's unmistakeable that they have done. Even before they were dating and every day was the day Burt expected to hear that announcement they've had a way of moving in sync. Twin choreography that may as well have been ingrained in their muscles since birth. A shoulder rising in conversation while the other's dipped, Blaine's hands gesturing to punctuate Kurt's words to the point where Burt thought they must have been doing it just to mess with him. Genuine halves.
Now he sits at the kitchen table and watches them do the dishes with the unspoken practice of two people who are already used to domesticity. Blaine washes and Kurt dries, and Burt doesn't even need to hear the conversation to know that Blaine volunteered to save Kurt's hands from harsh dishwater and vocal, woeful moisturising. Hell, they probably didn't even need the conversation.
They bicker more, but there's almost always laughter in it. Like it slides right off their skin and there's comfort in being able to casually express when they're casually getting on each other's nerves.
Coming down the stairs in the morning, the silent house yawning awake around their barely raised voices, “I swear to god, Blaine, it takes thirty seconds to put your towel in the dryer after you've used it, it isn't an inconvenience.”
“Tell me that again in ten years when the Polar Bears are extinct.”
“Do Polar Bears object to you wiping down the mirror too?”
“I don't know, maybe.”
“Oh my god...”
It's only when they come to visit that Burt realises the convenience of having a newspaper to hide his face in so they can't see him failing not to laugh.
And it's only when they come to visit that he realises just how deeply he worries about them and just how much of a relief it is to be given a few short days when he has ample evidence not to.
Because he remembers what it was like to be their age, and he remembers waiting years and years before finally accepting that his preconceptions of adulthood weren't ever going to magically line up with how it felt to actually be an adult. You get older and the stakes get higher and you fuck up and you fall harder, and it will happen to Kurt again and again and all Burt can hope is that he'll still let him slap a bandaid on the odd scratch every now and then.
Because the two of them meant the world to each other before they'd even graduated and learnt in the worst possible way that like forgiveness, trust is a gift you give to someone, and by no means a guarantee that the person you give it to won't shatter it.
Because his teenage son called him up one night and told him that his teenage fiancé was moving out and thought he was going to tear his jeans from gripping his thigh so hard at being told that while being reassured that everything was perfectly okay between the two of them.
But having them home, sitting in the living room with the television on, Kurt sitting shoulder to shoulder with Blaine and their hands loosely tangled between them while Burt keeps watching with half an eye. Neither of them fighting to just be, nothing to prove to anyone, no need to shout for attention or navigate shared space. Yeah, everything's okay.
He'll worry. When Kurt was born he could barely swaddle him and pick him up without his heart rate doubling in fear of his own huge, clumsy hands, and he still grew up better than Burt feels any right to take credit for. He'll worry when they're thirty years old and still kids in his eyes. He's a father and he's doomed to worry.
He'll worry because he worries and sometimes these things are unavoidable. He's still learning from experience too, and trips and stumbles or not Kurt and Blaine are making a pretty solid track record of trying to prove it unnecessary.
warnings: spoilers for all episodes of season five that have aired so far to be safe, and moments of NC-17
1.
The sheets being pulled back, air on his skin, and Blaine being gently tugged from sleep by a body dipping and shifting the mattress.
Kurt’s body.
He smiles, the movement feeling lazy and liquid on his face in the fog of just waking, and rolls onto his back, fluttering his eyes open in the dim.
“Go back to sleep, Blaine,” Kurt whispers, his cool palm brushing his curls off his forehead and settling for a moment with his fingers buried deep, scratching soothingly like petting a week old puppy.
Blaine’s eyes finally focus on Kurt, shuffling his way under the covers in boxers and a henley, eyes overbright and hooded with weariness.
He croaks. “What time is it?”
“After six,” Kurt settles on his side, crowding into Blaine’s space – his warm hard body, his achingly familiar body, his home – and somehow forcefully and carefully manipulating Blaine so he delightedly finds himself cupped by the long length of Kurt, shoulders to ankles. “Go back to sleep.”
Blaine wriggles back, his hand fumbling to lace with Kurt’s where it’s draped across his belly, and murmurs, “Hate graveyard shifts.”
“I know.”
He closes his eyes again, so close to drifting off. “Missed you.”
Kurt laughs quietly, breath huffing against the back of his neck. “I was only gone eight hours.”
Blaine hums, breath sighing out, burying his nose in the pillow. “Missed you.”
Kurt shifts again, the mattress rolling Blaine’s body towards him, following where Kurt leads, moving when he moves. Always.
“I missed you too,” Kurt whispers, and Blaine, barely conscious, feels the soft, giving press of Kurt’s lips to the corner of his mouth, glancing and dry and smelling of mint, before Kurt curls back around him and squeezes his hand firmly, skin the exact same temperature as Blaine’s now.
He hums happily one last time and lets sleep drag him under.
--
2.
“I’m late, I’m so late, the subway’s going to be hell, shit.”
Blaine sits at the kitchen table, hands cupped around a mug of coffee, watching as Kurt stumble-kicks his second boot on and zips it up, barely missing a step.
“Just get a cab.”
Kurt strides towards Blaine and swings his bag onto his shoulder, the momentum swaying it all the way around his body to batter his opposite hip before it settles at the small of his back.
“We can’t –” he pauses, hand resting on Blaine’s shoulder, Blaine automatically tilting his chin up and closing his eyes to meet the lightning fast goodbye kiss Kurt darts to his lips. “–afford that. Why the hell do we live in Bushwick, I’m going to be ten minutes behind all day.”
“Because we can afford it.” Blaine blinks, dazedly following Kurt’s whirlwind path to the door, calling, “Love you.”
“Love you too,” Kurt sings over his shoulder, hauling himself into the hall off the door jamb and immediately pulling himself back in again, a human pendulum with his hand clutching at his throat. “Scarf, scarf, scarf, where’s my grey scarf.”
“Hanging off the mirror,” Blaine calls, twitching a smile into the lip of his mug as Kurt whips the scarf into his hands and loops it around his neck, finally stilling like a statue – all gorgeous sturdy, broad shoulders and artfully chiselled elbows and jaw – to eye himself in the mirror and very deliberately drape and settle it perfectly against his chest, flicking his gaze up and down his outfit.
Then he’s off again, nodding once in satisfaction and flying back towards Blaine to cup his cheek and kiss his bottom lip with a muted smack like he’s forgotten he already completed that task and could save himself ten precious seconds if it didn’t mean leaving the loft again without attending to the most important part of his morning routine.
He pulls away, hand trailing down Blaine’s arm until he either has to let it slip off or drag Blaine along with him. Not that Blaine would particularly protest, bare footed and not yet showered, and still leaning his body subtly in the direction of Kurt’s exit like a flower chasing the sun.
“Okay, have a good day, I love you,” the timbre of his clicking heels changes between apartment and hallway.
“You too,” Blaine laughs breathlessly, door already grinding closed, settling back in his chair and feeling the quiet and stillness that swirls around the apartment, only ever so obvious to Blaine when Kurt is absent from it.
--
3.
Kurt’s enthusiasm for blowjobs had turned out to be as unexpected to Blaine as blowjobs themselves.
In the early days, fumbling through sex together at a slightly more severe degree to how they fumble now – and there’s always fumbling, slipping and giggling and struggling with condoms, and all the more enjoyable for it – Blaine had taken to them eagerly.
The first time Blaine had come and left Kurt still hard and gasping, he’d pulled out with a grunt, planted his hands on both of Kurt’s thighs to spread them further (lovely bendy boyfriend) and dived between his legs for the shortest, clumsiest blowjob in the history of blowjobs.
Kurt’s eyes had widened, legs kicking out straight and back arching, and he’d let out the sweetest, softest cry, hands clenching and unclenching on air, fluttering around Blaine’s head like startled butterflies and never actually landing.
Blaine had been thankful for how close Kurt already was, finding it more difficult than he’d expected to gather any kind of finesse when the hot weight and length and width of Kurt’s cock seemed magnified on his tongue. The softest, silkiest thing he’d ever touched and musky-sweet, and he’d looked up at the moment Kurt had come to watch his chest heaving and his mouth stuck open in a silent wail, and it was just about the most magnificent thing he’d ever seen or ever done.
Seventeen years old with the strange, unfamiliar taste of come on his tongue and spit smeared down his chin, and he’d just given his beautiful, meticulous boyfriend an orgasm by putting his mouth over his dick.
Yes, he really likes giving head.
Kurt had taken longer.
For months and months he’d favoured his hand. Gripping tight and twisting and dragging Blaine’s orgasms out of him with the focussed practice of an artist. Testing and responding to Blaine’s breath, and never looking any less fascinated by the moment when climax would hit and Blaine would spill hot and white over his stomach and Kurt’s fingers.
Blaine never minded. Kurt’s familiarity with his own limits of comfort was comforting to him. Still is. Makes him feel more sure of himself and his place in the world if all he can ever achieve is the smallest contribution to Kurt’s ease and happiness.
“I love it when you do it,” Kurt had said quietly once, Blaine basically stuffed into his underarm and leaden and dumb with post-sex relaxation. “Um. When you… put your mouth on me. I don’t – I never think about it when you’re doing it because it’s you and my brain practically shuts down anyway, but whenever I think about it, I – I think I think too much.”
And Blaine had stroked his naked side and burrowed down further and tried to stop himself from keeping half an eye on the soft, sated, still-new sight of Kurt’s dick nestled in its bed of neat brown curls, and mumbled, “You’re sexy when you think.”
And Kurt had just hummed a Well. Yes.
Blaine likes it most when Kurt’s perfectly aware of just how sexy he is.
Then completely out of the blue – which Blaine now knows might as well be Kurt’s signature style, a kick to the side of the head and all preconceptions shattered and revealed as perfectly ridiculous – Kurt had either thought long enough or stopped thinking all together.
The moment he’d realised what it meant when Kurt eventually sat back on his heels between Blaine’s legs and knelt down to make himself comfortable, he’d had to put every ounce of self-control he’d possessed (he was seventeen, it honestly wasn’t much) into not coming untouched and leaving Kurt with nothing to do. He might as well have finally turned into a clichéd teenage extension of his overexcited dick, feeling Kurt’s curious, determined gaze in every cell. Every nerve, every pore.
He’d gripped Blaine around the base and lowered his head and it had started with a kiss.
It was Kurt, of course it had started with a kiss. A soft, chaste press to the very tip that had Blaine choking out a strangled whine. His lips pursed loosely and eyelashes low, pulling back with a tiny satisfied smile, and flicking his tongue out to graze a gentle lick over where he’d just so tenderly branded Blaine for the rest of his life.
Kurt had been finesse from the start. He’d still choked the first time he’d let his ambition get ahead of him and taken Blaine too deep, and he’d still ended up with a spit slick chin, but not once had he reached up to wipe it or shown any sign of discomfort, and to Blaine it had felt like so carefully being shredded and laced back together and shredded all over again. Kurt’s cheeks hollowing around his cock with a little inquisitive hum, and Blaine pinned on his back with an arm thrown across his eyes, staggered by the always building realisation that love can feel like this.
Kurt had wiped his mouth with a tissue afterwards and smiled so happily. No sign of smugness, just the delight of Oh, look what I did. And Blaine wrecked and marooned on the sheets with a pounding heart, gesturing with his arms when he hadn’t been able to gather the words to express just how desperately he’d needed Kurt’s body against his own.
Blaine sees it as a signature now. He can’t think of a time when Kurt’s gone down on him when there hasn’t been that little kiss, to the tip, to the side, to the base. He anticipates it as much as he anticipates engulfing wet heat.
Blowjobs to Blaine are a lingering kiss and then a slow, glorious loss of sanity.
--
4.
Are you home?
Yes, Blaine.
I’m about to swing by the grocer, can you check if we need anything?
I need some peppers and basil for dinner, toilet paper, dish washing liquid, eggs, fancy cheese of your choice as long as it isn’t blue and won’t make the fridge smell like feet.
What are you making for dinner? :D
Who says I’m making it?
D:
God, vegetarian lasagne. Which you’ll be helping me with if you want any.
I love cooking with you.
Only because I feed you scraps.
Why do you think I’m so loyal? I love doing everything with you.
You know exactly how charming you are, don’t you?
Yes. I’m at the store, are you sure that’s all we need?
Maybe grab some coffee to be safe.
On it.
And Blaine.
Yes, dear?
No, Blaine. I need Blaine for dinner too. make sure you bring him back.
I could ask, but I don’t think they stock that here.
Oh, just hurry up and finish the shopping and come home to me you idiot.
I will.
I know. You always do.
It’s the best part of every day I ever have, you know.
Charmer.
Charming. And it’s true.
I love you xx
I love you too xx
Can you pick up some ice cream too, please?
Blaine?
Have you already left?
I just dropped the eggs all over the floor in front of the checkout.
Don’t text and shop.
The owner yelled at me like a little kid, I’m feeling very inadequate right now.
Oh Blaine xxx
--
5.
Mr Anderson sits across from them, rake thin and sharp and somehow taking up a whole side of the table with nothing but the unswerving awareness from all three of them that he’s undoubtedly sitting at the head of the table.
A perfectly square, perfectly even table in a perfectly neutral New York restaurant, and he looms over it like a grim king.
Kurt honestly isn’t particularly concerned by him. He knows bullying. He’s been familiar with intimidation since he was a child and came to terms a long time ago with the understanding that he’ll always live his life parallel to it, running alongside and never getting any further away from its shadow. Mr Anderson may be wearing an expensive custom tailored suit and a designer tie, but as far as Kurt’s concerned he might as well be an eighteen year old boy in ill-fitting faded jeans and a tan and red letterman.
He’s a Hummel. He doesn’t scare him.
What concerns and throws Kurt and has done every single time he and Blaine have met with his father, is how little he knows Blaine when faced with Mr Anderson, and by extension how unsettled he feels about himself.
About them.
It’s like he erases part of them. Steals Blaine’s calm effortlessness around Kurt and shrinks him down to make room for his hulking obvious low opinion of Kurt’s place in Blaine’s life.
He can hear Mr Anderson’s voice booming clearly across the table, he can feel the silky celeriac puree in his mouth and taste the delicate confit salmon on his tongue, and all of it is drowned out and overwhelmed by how deliberately Blaine isn’t touching him.
They haven’t touched since they stepped out of the apartment together over an hour ago, and when Blaine’s fingers had slipped from his Kurt had known he wouldn’t feel them again until Mr Anderson was once again blocks away and out of sight.
Kurt is needy in very particular ways. They’ve never been the kind of couple to cling to one another in public, but since Blaine moved to New York they haven’t shied away from casual contact. Brushing shoulders and guiding palms to the small of the back. Hands linked underneath tables, knuckles seeking out and skimming outer thighs. Little notes in an orchestra piece. Modest and hushed as a part of the whole, but deafeningly conspicuous when they’re lacking.
It’s not the need to reach out and grasp Blaine’s hand. It’s the knowledge that in the presence of Mr Anderson he can’t. Blaine’s hands have been firmly above the table since they sat down, a glowing red please don’t, not now. And Kurt never will. Not if Blaine doesn’t want it. Rejection would be a little sliver peeled off his heart, and Blaine’s discomfort would be a dagger.
Only in front of this man. Blaine’s father, and the only person in the world who with nothing more than a lunch reservation can turn them into this strange, blurred shadow in which Kurt no longer knows where the edges of their ordinarily so clear relationship lie.
Kurt doesn’t say much, caught between anxious, angry, and resigned, and Blaine is subdued and uses the word yes more times in the space of an hour than should be at all possible in intelligible conversation.
When they’ve had coffee (and oh thank god, thank fuck Mr Anderson hadn’t wanted dessert) and Mr Anderson has paid the check – kind, benevolent, deficient patriarch that he is – they stand, and Kurt doesn’t pull Blaine’s chair out for him or offer his hand to help him up.
Waiting for their coats by the bar Kurt catches sight of himself in the mirror behind rows and rows of bottles. He looks manic. Washed out, strung out, the anxious counterpoint to Blaine’s quiet wilting, and he lifts a hand to his forehead and turns to Blaine.
He smiles, stronger than he thought he was capable of, and doesn’t reach out to squeeze Blaine’s arm. “Restroom. Hold my coat for me?”
“Yeah,” Blaine says slowly, eyes flicking between Kurt’s, and face stony in the moment before Kurt steps around him –
And stops when he feels Blaine’s sure hand close around his wrist and tug. He turns on instinct, a question on his lips, and finds it silenced when Blaine’s mouth covers his and surprises Kurt into a short shallow kiss that ends with the whisper of Blaine’s tongue against his bottom lip.
He blinks, shocked, doesn’t dare look over Blaine’s shoulder where he knows Mr Anderson is still standing, and twists his arm to free it and slot his hand into Blaine’s instead.
Blaine squeezes gently, and whispers, “Thank you.”
Kurt squeezes back harder and smiles shakily before releasing it, striding quickly for the bathroom with flushed cheeks and clearer eyes.
--
6.
Blaine’s in the room somewhere. He can hear him laughing, breathless and snorting and beautiful.
He cranes his neck over the back of the couch where he’s sandwiched between Rachel and Rachel’s patchouli scented friend Mark, but he can’t see him through the crush of bodies sandwiched into the loft.
He makes an interest of wanting to know any and all people who can manage to make Blaine laugh like that, if only to look them in the eye and silently thank them.
A happy Blaine is a very precious thing.
He hears his name to his left and turns back around, taking a sip from his gin and tonic, and asking, “Sorry, I didn’t catch that?”
Mark leans forward and says unnecessarily loudly, “I said, have you ever read any Heidegger?”
Kurt furrows his brow, head pleasantly but obviously fuzzy from his second drink. “Heideg – is that a disease? It sounds like a disease.”
Rachel leans across him, her whole torso draping over his thighs, warm and squishy in a kind of nice way, and sings, “Don’t bore him Mark, no one’s cared about philosophy since Ancient Greece.”
“It’s called making conversation, Rachel.”
“It’s a Christmas party, Mark.”
“What should I talk about? Roast dead animals and ginger bread?”
“Oh, for god’s sake –”
Kurt tunes them out, happy to sit with his hand resting on Rachel’s shoulder blade, sipping his drink slowly and smiling around at the chattering clusters of people spread out in front of him. It’s not even a conscious smile. It’s just there. Surrounded by loved ones and loved ones of loved ones, everyone happy and safe and warm, and full of food and drink.
And oh, there’s his loved one. His most beloved one of all.
He’s over in the kitchen talking to Sam and girl with tight black curls and gorgeous dark skin that Kurt doesn’t remember being introduced to, leaning with his hip cocked against the kitchen table and pouring vodka into a cup, holding it up to the light to check the level of liquid and sloshing one last swig into it.
Blaine listens for a moment, eyes narrowed and intent on the girl, and then bursts into conversation, gesturing with his cup animatedly and leaning forward. Practically glowing with the flush of discussion, and glancing up briefly as he motions his arm to the entire room.
His gaze skips over Kurt, and immediately swings back, catching his eyes and continuing to speak as they stare at one another.
Kurt’s smile cracks another notch on his face, aching with it, and he lifts his free hand to press a kiss to his palm and exaggeratedly blow it across the room to Blaine.
Blaine’s chest hitches with a laugh, turning to Sam and the girl to excuse himself for a moment, and then back to Kurt, pressing his open hand hard over his heart and blowing Kurt a kiss right back, beaming across the crowd and cutting through the constant hum of the room like a beacon.
--
7.
Blaine slots a book onto the shelf in their new living room and looks over his shoulder. “We can have sex as loudly as we want now.”
Kurt snorts, plumping a cushion and placing it at a very deliberate angle on the couch. “If you’re worried about Rachel and Santana knowing every single sound you make during sex, I’m sorry to tell you that ship set sail somewhere between two and three weeks after you moved here.”
Blaine accidentally knocks a row of books so they topple like dominos, turning with one in each hand. “What?”
“They spent a month mimicking you to me every time I entered a room before they got bored of it.”
Blaine’s hands fall by his sides, voice coming out far more disappointed than he wants it to. “Behind my back?”
Kurt puts a hand on his tilted hip and eyes the sofa, bending down to knock the cushion a little to the left. “Santana says you take all the fun out of jokes at your expense,” he straightens up again and faces Blaine with a fond smile. “She said something about your sad puppy dog eyes and her firm stance against animal cruelty.”
Blaine drops the books back into the box he took them from and tries to look unfazed. “Oh.”
“Don’t worry,” Kurt grins, something wicked in the slant of it. “That week when Santana’s cosmetics bag went missing and all the soy milk in the fridge kept mysteriously disappearing? Let’s just say it wasn’t so mysterious.”
The laugh barks out of Blaine, loud and delighted. “Seriously?”
Kurt shrugs and walks towards him, wonderfully ruffled in old jeans and a t-shirt. “I’m the only one who’s allowed to make fun of you.”
Blaine’s stomach swoops, painfully aware of the stalking sway to Kurt’s hips. “Kurt Hummel, you aren’t even half as innocent as you look.”
“I have my moments,” he murmurs, draping his arms around Blaine’s shoulders and stepping in close. “Besides, I like how loud you are. You couldn’t keep quiet if you tried.”
Blaine drops his hands to Kurt’s hips and rubs the curve of them through his jeans. “It does always seem like an awful lot of effort for something I don’t really want.”
Kurt laughs softly and drops his head to Blaine’s shoulder, tilting it down to kiss a patch of skin by Blaine’s collar, dragging his teeth lightly over it and testing it with his tongue. “Mm, you need a shower.”
“So do you,” Blaine murmurs, burying his nose in the thick hair at the crown of Kurt’s head. “I can walk naked from the bathroom to the bedroom without worrying about whether anyone’s come home while I was in there.”
“I’m in favour of that. I can cook a Sunday roast without Rachel walking around the apartment with a scarf around her nose spraying air freshener everywhere.”
Blaine’s voice tips higher. “We can marathon TV shows as late as we want without anyone yelling at us.”
Kurt gasps quietly, and draws himself up again, eye to eye. “We can nap on the couch without anyone waking us up.”
Blaine groans, head falling back, eyes falling closed. “That’s pornographic.”
Kurt’s eyes crinkle his smile, palms sliding down to rest on Blaine’s chest. “I think I’m going to like this.”
Blaine’s thumb strokes back and forth over Kurt’s belt loop, mapping out the bone underneath. Making a home in their apartment with their bedroom and their bed and living together around their routine.
Yeah, it’ll be alright.
--
8.
Blaine paces back and forth outside their apartment, keys hanging from his hand and pulse finally slowing back to normal, head clearing.
He stops in front of the door and clenches his fingers in and out of fists at his side, exhaling sharply through his nose.
Come on, come on, you can’t be a coward about this.
He screamed at you and called you selfish and pigheaded and clueless among… other things (don’t think about it, don’t) and you called him a brat, and you had to get out because you felt yourself losing control of your voice and your breath started to go, but you can’t be a coward about this.
You have to be brave. You’re always brave for him.
He makes you brave.
He shakes his hands out, jingle of his keychain, and fits the key into the lock.
Kurt isn’t in the living room, so he heads straight for the bedroom where the door’s knocked ajar.
He’s sitting bare foot on the edge of the made bed with his head in his hands and his collar loose. He glances up when Blaine enters, face splotchy red and eyes swollen from crying in a way that lances dozens of barbs into Blaine’s heart and pulls.
He looks back down at his knees, voice thick but steady when he speaks. “Dad always says that the worst thing a couple can ever do is go to sleep on an argument, but can we just not do this right now? I’ll sleep on the couch, but I’m – my head feels like it’s splitting, I can’t handle another yelling match right now.”
Blaine stands in the doorway feeling about three feet tall. “I don’t want to yell at you.”
Kurt sniffs lightly and lifts his head a little to drag the heel of his palm under his eye. “I don’t want to yell at you either.”
Blaine swallows around the bowling ball in his throat. “I don’t even know what we were fighting about.”
Kurt sniffs again. “I do, but I don’t care anymore. I don’t want to fight. I feel like I’ve been hit by a train, I don’t want to fight with you, Blaine.”
Blaine takes a tentative step into the room and feels more certain once he’s made the move, striding to the bedside table to grab the box of tissues there and perching beside Kurt on the mattress.
He pulls a tissue from the box and reaches up to dab at Kurt’s cheek, releasing it when Kurt takes it from his fingers. “I’m sorry.”
“Me too,” Kurt whispers, blowing his nose and balling the tissue in his hand. “I’m sorry too.”
Blaine drops the tissues behind himself. “What can I do?”
“I –” he gives a strangled humourless laugh. “I really need a hug.”
Blaine clamps his arms around Kurt and wrenches him into his body, jamming his face into his neck and sliding his fingers into Kurt’s hair, trying to pour apology into every bend in his body and sagging when Kurt’s arms link behind his own back.
“I’m sorry,” he whispers again.
Kurt hums into his shoulder and tightens his arms.
“Do you want me to make some coffee?”
“No,” Kurt mumbles. “I just want to sleep.”
Blaine’s arms jerk involuntarily. “Please don’t sleep on the couch.”
“I couldn’t,” Kurt rasps, shaking his head and rocking Blaine lightly with it. “I think I would have cried all night, I’d have just crept back in here before midnight and begged you to let me in.”
Fiercely. “You never have to beg.”
“I’m sorry.”
Blaine pulls away, placing his hands on Kurt’s damp, tear streaked cheeks and pulling him into a bruising, breathless kiss, salty with Kurt’s tears, drawing back and moving in for two more short, hard presses.
“I love you,” he breathes, hands still cupping Kurt’s face.
Kurt smiles weakly and wraps the fingers of one hand around Blaine’s wrist. “I love you too.”
Blaine brushes his thumb over the sharp bone of Kurt’s cheek, and smiles, feeling exhaustion in the marrow of his bones. “Get ready for bed, I’ll go get you a glass of water. Do you need an aspirin?”
“No.”
Blaine kisses him again, once between the eyes, and stands to move towards the door.
“Blaine?”
He turns, poised and attentive. “Mm?”
“In the morning,” Kurt says quietly, dabbing at his nose. “In the morning can you put that cheese in the fridge in the trash and take it to the garbage chute so I don’t feel like gagging every time I go to get the milk out?”
Blaine startles himself with his laughter, leaning heavily against the doorframe and dipping his chin to his chest. “Yeah. I can do that.”
“Thank you,” Kurt smile wobbles, real and so fucking beautiful. “I love you.”
Blaine pushes himself upright again and steps out of the room backwards, not yet ready to look away. “I love you too.”
Darling.
--
9.
It’s the first time either of them have seen each other in a state of consciousness in over twenty four hours, one of them asleep before the other gets in, the other leaving the apartment before the other wakes, and Kurt feels hungry for him.
It’s not that rare an occurrence these days, an only just bearable necessity of the two of them carving their individual ways into adulthood while doing everything they can to still do so as a couple.
As fiancés. Kurt has to remind himself every second time, and it still thrills up his spine like the very first time Blaine slid that ring onto his finger.
They meet for lunch, half an hour grabbed between classes, and kiss hello at the door of the coffee shop. They hold hands in the queue, and Blaine hangs off his elbow as they wait for their orders, tugging and kneading his arm and chattering sweet everyday words into his ear.
Their ankles slot together under their table (and of course, that’s what ankles are really for) and they catch up on each other’s lives in a way they haven’t been able to properly do for days. It’s a balm, listening to Blaine tell him about the excitable Labrador puppy that had tangled Blaine in its leash that morning while he waited for the bus and licked his hand and whined blissfully when he’d bent down to scratch its silky puppy ears.
He reaches out to casually hook Blaine’s hand into his own and toy with his fingers, and listens and loves him silently.
It’s hard. It’s the hardest thing in the world to love him so easily and naturally and to see him so infrequently when they sleep in the same damn bedroom, but it’s worth it. Isn’t it worth it to get a concentrated half hour of his smile and his emotive eyes and his focused presence? Isn’t it the most worthwhile thing in his brimming life?
They hold hands on the way to the door, and hold hands on the sidewalk as they huddle out of the way and draw the moment of their parting out as long as humanly possible, and kiss goodbye until the next time they see each other and get to open another valuable moment together with another kiss hello.
--
10.
Kurt’s just opening the front door when he hears a crash from the kitchen and a loud, grating yell.
“Fuck.”
He lets his messenger bag slide to the floor in the hallway and hurries through, finding Blaine crouching on the floor with his back to him and piling shards of broken ceramic in a stack in front of himself.
“Are you okay?”
Blaine jumps, startled, springing to his feet and whirling around to face him, and for one horrifying second when Blaine’s face crumples and his breath jolts in, Kurt thinks he’s about to start crying.
“Hey, oh my god, Blaine,” he closes the space between them and slides his palms down Blaine’s arms to take him by both hands, noticing with a painful stab how small and drawn he looks. “Don’t, don’t, don’t, honey, okay.”
Blaine looks up to the ceiling and blinks his eyes hummingbird fast. “I just broke your favourite mixing bowl.”
Kurt glances down at the sad little mess of red and cream fragments on the floor, and smiles reassuringly, massaging Blaine’s hands with his thumbs. “It’s fine, I don’t care, I can buy a new one.”
Blaine exhales, babbling, “I’ll get you one for Christmas, I don’t even know how I dropped it, it just slipped out of my hands, and I –”
Kurt interrupts, frowning and worried. “Hey, I really, really don’t care, Blaine, I mean it, it’s just a stupid –”
And then he has Blaine’s arms tight around his waist and Blaine’s face pressed in against his chest, and he instinctively folds himself over him and pulls him in closer and tries to keep the panic of the unknown at bay when Blaine shudders his hot breath into his shirt.
His hand makes a fist at the scruff of Blaine’s neck, jamming his cheek to his temple and automatically rocking his body from side to side. “What’s wrong? Why are you so upset?”
He doesn’t say anything, breaths uneven and hissing, and Kurt just holds him and waits.
“Blaine?”
“I’m just tired,” Blaine murmurs shakily, the sound rumbling straight into Kurt’s ribs and ringing through his body. “I’m tired and you were already gone when I woke up this morning and I had to skip lunch to make it to a seminar and I didn’t even know if I’d get to see you tonight before you had to go to work, and I miss you.”
It’s a cold fist around Kurt’s heart and an active effort to not whimper at the way Blaine’s voice cracks on the final word. “I know, I’m sorry, I know.”
Blaine’s fingers clench in Kurt’s shirt at the small of his back. “I knew – I always knew that we’d really have to work at this and it wouldn’t be easy, but there are times when I need to turn around and talk to you and I can’t because one of us is always running out that door, and – I’m just really tired today.”
Kurt drags his hand down Blaine’s spine, urging it to relax, to let the muscles uncoil. “I wish you’d told me.”
Whispered. “You aren’t always there.”
“I’m here now.”
Blaine peels his face away and looks up, long lashes damp and eyes overbright. “Do you… don’t you feel it too?”
“I do,” it bursts out of him like a bullet, reaching behind himself to peel Blaine’s hands away and into his own again. “I do,” he bends his head and presses a fierce kiss to the back of each hand. “I do, I do, every single day, I always want more time with you.”
Blaine nods jerkily, lips pursed and breaths coming mercifully slower.
“I had no idea it was getting to you so much,” he whispers, reaching up to brush Blaine’s hair behind his ear, trying to smile sturdily.
Blaine tries to smile back, and it’s enough. “I just had a bad day.”
“I’m sorry, Blaine,” he pulls his hand gently, drawing him out of the kitchen and into the lamp lit living room and the cradle of the sofa where he lowers himself into the corner and tugs Blaine down between his legs. “I’m here now. We’ll talk now. About anything. Whatever you want. We’ll figure something out to make it easier, okay?”
“The bowl…” Blaine says weakly, already settling back into the curve of Kurt’s body.
“It can wait,” Kurt wraps his arms around Blaine’s stomach and grips either wrist. “We’re more important. You are.”
“You…” Blaine says quietly, anchoring his own fingers through Kurt’s, and letting his head fall back onto Kurt’s shoulder, and Kurt never feels more solid and sure than when he’s in his arms.
--
11.
Blaine forgets about the dozens of family and friends sat in rows and rising to their feet in front of them. He can’t hear their cheering or whistles or applause. The officiant is saying something only three feet away from them, but all Blaine is aware of is Kurt in his arms and his warm perfect mouth pulling against his own.
The soft fabric of his suit, broad shoulders and trim waist. Blaine’s tears had started the moment Kurt had stepped up next to him in that gorgeous suit with a shy, too-much smile and a whispered, “Hi.”
Hi, soon to be husband. Hi, it’s our wedding day. Hi, we’re getting married today, right now, actually right this very second.
Hi.
Hi, Kurt Hummel, I’m going to have the honour and the pleasure of spending every day for the rest of my life introducing you as my husband, and I’m going to love you for every glorious second of it.
You’ll chew me out for forgetting to buy toilet paper when you asked me to, and I’ll love you. You’ll leave pots soaking in the sink for two days straight instead of scrubbing them out and leaving them to dry, and I’ll love you. You’ll fuck me agonisingly slowly until I feel like I’m going to die, and I’ll love you. You’ll always tease me the most and you’ll always mean it the least, and I’ll love you. You’ll fall asleep next to me and I’ll wake up with you on top of my painfully numb arm, and I’ll love you.
I’ll love you, I’ll love you, I’ll love you.
Kurt hums a high, excited, helpless sound into his mouth. They just got married and every single person they love is in the room with them waiting to shake their hands and hug them and congratulate them.
But this is their one and only first kiss as husbands, and Blaine doesn’t mind one bit making them wait just a little while longer.
The working title for this was 'spanking fic' and that was all it was supposed to be and then it got kind of out of control. Fluffy-smutty future fic, established klaine and mentions of canon from seasons one to four. For Jen.
warnings: discussions of various kinks (eg. bondage/restraint, dirty talk, roleplay) spanking, crossdressing, semi-public sex.
“So… what are your views on spanking?”
He takes a moment to remind himself how to speak, and realises he has no idea what to say. “Um…”
Blaine’s noticed that Kurt’s always his most candid after orgasm, and given that they’ve just spent the evening having a marathon of quite spectacular sex he probably shouldn’t be surprised at how chatty and frank he’s being. He thinks maybe it has something to do with nudity. Like Kurt’s maximum potential for mortification exists in the point where he no longer has perfectly tailored clothes and perfectly styled hair to hide behind, so he may as well go for broke. As if he’s less nervous about discussing embarrassing subjects when his bare chest is plastered to Blaine’s side and his still sticky cock is resting against his thigh.
Blaine also likes to think that by this point Kurt knows Blaine will never laugh at him anyway. If Kurt feels even half as comfortable and at home in Blaine’s arms then surely he does.
They’ve been deep in one of the most unexpected conversations of their relationship for the past twenty minutes, and Blaine hasn’t felt like laughing once.
--
As soon as they catch their breath and giddy waves of pleasure stop moving through Blaine’s body, Kurt settles with his arm over Blaine’s waist and hums, “We should win awards for that.”
Blaine snorts, “Sex?”
“Mm.”
“I’m not sure I’d like whatever judging system that’d involve,” Blaine says, pressing his lips to Kurt’s sweat-damp hair. “But yeah, we’ve kind of mastered it, haven’t we?”
“Practice, practice, practice,” Kurt runs his fingers up Blaine’s chest, laying his head on his shoulder, silent for a couple of minutes as he burns lines back and forth into Blaine’s skin. When he finally speaks again Blaine has to force his brain back from the brink of sleep to listen, able to sense the hesitance in Kurt’s voice even through his drowsiness. “Do you think…”
Blaine blinks slowly, stroking Kurt’s side. “Hm? Do I think? Sometimes.”
“Shut up,” Kurt grumbles, not unkindly, smacking Blaine’s chest with the flat of his hand. “Do you ever think about, um. Spicing things up? In the bedroom, I mean.”
Blaine’s eyes widen, his mouth falling open into a small ‘o’ shape. “I don’t know about you, but I’ve never really thought we were un-spicy. Do you mean… like, different positions?”
Kurt shrugs, deliberately not meeting Blaine’s eye, still tracing patterns across his stomach. “Or toys. Or – or anything really,” he quickly adds, “Not that I think what we’ve been doing is boring either. It’s really, really far from boring, but just. Have you?”
Blaine nods slowly, his voice coming out slightly breathless. “Yeah. I guess so.”
Kurt finally looks up, his eyes wide and curious through his lashes, cutting Blaine to the bone. “Like what?”
Blaine licks his lips, incapable of stopping himself from feeling a little self-conscious. “No judgement?”
“Of course not,” Kurt kisses his shoulder, smiling faintly, cheeks flushed from more than exertion. “If you’re about to say you want to pee on me I’ll politely decline, but I’m not going to break up with you for it.”
Blaine’s eyes widen. “I don’t want to pee on you, oh my god, what do you think goes on in my head?”
“I was just going with the first extreme example that came to me,” he deadpans. “I never presume to know the inner workings of your brain.”
“They involve very little in the way of peeing,” Blaine frowns. “I’ll give you that for free.”
“Okay, that’s a good start,” Kurt strokes his fingers down to scratch lightly at the trail of hair low on Blaine’s belly. “What else?”
Blaine laughs breathily, seizing up and drawing something of a blank once actually pressed to share. “I don’t think I’m very adventurous.”
“Try me.”
“Um,” Blaine shifts a little before forcing himself to lie still, starting with the most mild thing he can think of. “Sixty-nine? I’ve sometimes wondered what that would be like. I’m a little surprised we’ve never tried it, actually. Then again, I kind of have trouble walking and texting simultaneously, so I’m not sure how I’d handle giving and receiving a blowjob at the same time. Especially from you,” he peers down and brushes his fingers through Kurt’s fringe. “You give magical blowjobs.”
“It’s a gift,” Kurt snorts, then nods slowly. “I’m open to that. It could be fun. What else?”
“Nuh uh,” Blaine shakes his head. “You tell me one now, I’m not going to unload all my secret, possibly mortifying kinks on you if you don’t do the same.”
“Fine,” Kurt’s chest rises and falls against Blaine’s in a deep breath. “Sometimes – I don’t even know if you realise you’re doing it – but sometimes you talk a lot. Just nonsense mostly, and –”
Blaine’s eyes slide shut, laughing sheepishly. “I curse like a sailor.”
Kurt gazes up at him, relaxed and lazy, and his voice drops to a whisper that make the hairs on Blaine’s arms stand to attention. “You have such a filthy mouth when you’re close.”
Blaine lifts a hand to cover his eyes, smiling broadly. “God.”
“Last week you told me –” Kurt hesitates, teeth scraping off his bottom lip. “You grabbed my cock and told me you were going to get me off and keep fucking me until you came in my perfect tight ass.”
Blaine groans, body tensing. “Oh my god.”
Kurt wraps his hand around Blaine’s hip, and breathes. “It was so hot.”
“I don’t even know where –” Blaine closes his eyes, tossing his head like a wet dog. “I’ll admit, I have a pretty healthy imagination when it comes to you, but generally not that healthy. I swear it’s like I’m possessed,” he scrunches his nose. “By a really graphic demon who watches too much bad porn.”
“Blaine,” Kurt laughs, propping himself on an elbow to hover over him. “I drives me crazy. I thought I was going to burst into flames.”
“Okay,” Blaine grimaces slightly. “Dirty talk. I don’t know how much control I have over it, but I’ll work on it.”
“You have no idea how much I’d like that,” Kurt says, voice low and lips quirking up at the corner. “Okay. Your turn again.”
Blaine clicks his tongue, scouring the corners of his brain for all the little things he’s conditioned himself to keep under wraps – either from fear of certain embarrassment, or the simple fact that social niceties and cues have generally dictated that the more imaginative methods behind his orgasms aren’t exactly dinner table small talk.
“I’d kind of like to try having sex outside,” he stares at the ceiling, wanting to get it all out before he sees whatever reaction Kurt may have. “Not somewhere we’d be caught or anything, but – somewhere we could be caught, I guess. Like the roof, or the fire escape, or something. I’d suggest somewhere nicer, but that’s kind of limited in New York. A park’s probably too risky.”
He pries his reluctant eyes across to Kurt’s face. He looks – well, he looks mildly dazed, but his lips are parted and he’s staring at Blaine like he just announced he’s contemplated quitting his job to join the circus.
Kurt’s tongue darts out, wetting his bottom lip. “We could arrange that.”
Blaine’s eyebrows fly up. “Really?”
“The roof,” Kurt says quietly. “You could bend me over the ledge and fuck me from behind.”
Blaine thinks his heart may actually stop for a fraction of a second, his whole body abruptly blooming with fierce heat. They’ve been together eight years, he should know by now that when Kurt makes a point of being honest he isn’t one to hold back.
Even so, he’s still the only person on Earth who can make Blaine’s skin feel so tight it might split, and knock him flat on his ass just when he’s hastily assumed he knows every little trick up Kurt’s sleeve.
“That sounds,” Blaine’s voice cracks, and he clears his throat. “That sounds nice.”
Kurt snorts, burying his face in Blaine’s chest and giggling helplessly while Blaine tries to find the capacity within to balance being suitably affronted and hopelessly turned on at the same time.
“You know what I mean.” Blaine grumbles.
“Yes,” Kurt lowers himself to dart a quick kiss to Blaine’s pouting lips. “Very nice.”
“Jerk.”
They carry on like that, a confession for a confession, pleasantly surprised when neither one of them reacts with anything less than timid curiosity and a willingness to consider accommodating and experimenting with each other’s desires.
Kurt wonders tentatively what it would be like if Blaine stripped him naked, spread him out on his back and tied his hands together with the cool, liquid silk of one of his Marc Jacobs scarves.
Blaine forgets how to breathe.
Blaine wants Kurt to fuck him as slowly as he can, laying on their sides with Kurt bare inside him and barely moving. He wants to know how long they can last and how much time they can spend building and building until they come. Strung out and drenched in sweat.
Kurt reaches down and wraps his fingers loosely around Blaine’s soft cock.
“Do you think I could get you to come without even touching you?” he whispers, eyes on his hand as he strokes Blaine lightly, barely even brushing his skin. “Get you to tell me exactly how to fuck you until you can’t hold on any longer?”
Blaine’s head falls back, grinding into the pillows, and he grasps Kurt’s wrist to still his movements. A twisted groan spills from his mouth. “If I get hard again right now you’re going to break something important.”
“Can’t have that,” Kurt releases Blaine, his palm coming to rest on the neat thatch of hair framing his cock. “I think you just answered my question anyway.”
And on they go, secrets falling like autumn leaves, admitting even the wishes that Blaine’s previously barely given a second thought to. Filed away as too outlandish or too humiliating.
Kurt wants them to sit down at his laptop together and go lingerie shopping.
“For you or me. Or both.” he murmurs, cheeks the pinkest they’ve been since they started. “I think you’d look incredible in lace. Something red.”
Blaine brings up role play.
“Nothing extreme,” he hastens to add, stumbling over his words in his rush to clarify. “Just, I don’t know. I could be your boss,” he suggests nervously. “I could put on a suit. You could – you could strip naked and open my fly and ride me in the desk chair.”
“Call you ‘sir’?” Kurt purrs.
Blaine’s about to backtrack, admit it was a stupid idea and move swiftly along. But Kurt’s face stays perfectly solemn, eyelids hooded and his breath coming faster, chest rising and falling.
“Yeah, I guess,” Blaine breathes. “If you want to.”
“I do,” Kurt nods slowly. “We should.”
Blaine cranes his head up, searching for a kiss that Kurt quickly supplies, pulling at Blaine’s bottom lip lightly and tracing his tongue with his own, slick and warm.
When Kurt pulls away he holds Blaine’s gaze for a long silent beat, scraping his teeth off his lip and taking a deep breath.
“So… what are your views on spanking?”
“Um…” Blaine blinks and swallows thickly, somewhat lost for the first time since they started. “I’m – not sure. I haven’t really given it any thought before. Do you have any?” he waves his hand weakly by his side. “Views, I mean?”
“A few,” Kurt says uncertainly, beginning to curl into Blaine’s side a little, head lowering.
“Hey,” Blaine squeezes his shoulder and urges him back up. “No judgement, remember? Please tell me.”
Kurt hangs his head, a short burst of self-conscious laughter huffing out his nose. He straightens up again, wriggling his shoulders out and holding Blaine’s eyes almost defiantly.
“I think I’d like it,” he says calmly. “If it was with you, I think I’d love it.”
Blaine speaks slowly, trying not to let his words run ahead of his brain. “If I…”
“If you spanked me,” Kurt finishes for him. “Yeah.”
Blaine nods slowly, more as something to do than any actual understanding or agreement. “I’m not shooting you down or anything, but why do you think you’d like it? Can you tell me?” he props himself up on his elbow, wanting a full view of Kurt’s face. Not wanting to miss any reaction. “Is it a pain thing?”
“No, I don’t think so,” Kurt’s lips purse in thought.
“A power thing?” Blaine tries, drumming his fingers on Kurt’s ribs in a nervous rhythm. “Like a – don’t take this the wrong way, I’m kind of grasping at straws here – is it a… submissive thing?”
“No, it’s –” Kurt looks up, sighing heavily as if frustrated with himself. “It’s like… is you wanting to dress up and pretend to be my superior a dominant thing for you?”
“No,” Blaine smiles crookedly. “It’s more of an I’m really unimaginative and it turns me on kind of thing.” He grimaces. “I guess I can see how the whole power play thing could be a thing, but – it’s not really…” he shrugs, finishing feebly. “Me.”
“I didn’t think so,” Kurt smiles fondly, combing a few curls behind Blaine’s ear with gentle fingers. “The spanking thing. I don’t think it’s really about that for me either. It’s the same kind of thing as wanting you to tie my hands, I guess.”
“What is it?” Blaine asks.
“Trust,” Kurt says simply. “I trust you. Do you think even as horny teenagers we ever would have agreed to have sex in the first place if I wasn’t okay with the thought of you on top of me or around me or inside me?” he asks quietly, barrelling through with that startling honestly Blaine loves him so much for. “And I don’t just mean orgasms or even penetration, I mean the thought of being naked with you and letting you touch me and make me come undone and see me come undone.”
“No,” Blaine breathes. “No, I don’t think I ever had some big conscious epiphany where I realised I was comfortable sharing that with you, but I know it felt the same for me.”
Kurt brings his hand up to Blaine’s face, cupping his cheek and quickly swiping Blaine’s bottom lip with his thumb, voice quiet and almost reverent. “Spanking, it’s – it’s not about you making me feel helpless. I think maybe it’s about not minding how helpless it could make me feel. Because it would be with you,” he scrunches his eyes closed for a moment. “Honestly, having sex with you always makes me feel kind of powerful, no matter what we’re doing. Like I’m – controlled and sexy and confident. It could be scary, but it’s not. And you make the things that should probably be scary exciting.” He shrugs. “I’ve trusted you with every part of me for a long, long time. I trust you enough to share my life with you and share my body with you and share a bed with you. Share my future with you,” he laughs quietly. “I’m pretty sure that’s about as scary as it gets.”
Blaine’s eyes flick between Kurt’s. “You trust me enough to tie you up or have sex with you on a dirty rooftop.”
Kurt hums, his toe brushing down the arch of Blaine’s foot. “What’s that compared to everything else we’ve shared?”
Blaine licks his lips, trying to understand his own hesitance to the same extent that Kurt’s going to in order to try to explain his enthusiasm.
If he’s perfectly honest where spanking’s concerned he just doesn’t understand the appeal. Every time his thoughts have ever wandered towards the realms of pain as pleasure, they’ve just as quickly veered away out of disinterest. He can’t get his head around the concept of pain as anything other than a negative. A punishment or warning, or a natural signal to retreat or desist. He can’t see the connection between that and any kind of enjoyment, let alone sexual arousal.
Obviously from what he’s said it’s not about punishment for Kurt, and he believes him, but Blaine doesn’t exactly feel any more enlightened for knowing that. He wants to see it the way Kurt does, and understand the link between Blaine spanking him, and the both of them getting some kind of satisfaction out of it. He just doesn’t know how.
“So basically,” Blaine closes his eyes, choosing his words carefully. “You want me to put you in a position where you should feel powerless, without actually being powerless?”
“I guess so,” Kurt’s eyes are wide, and Blaine thinks he almost looks excited. “I’m sorry, I don’t know if I can explain it any better. I think there’s something about letting all of my defences down around you and doing something daring with you – letting you do it to me – that sounds incredible.”
Then there’s that. The actual spanking. Just the thought of it makes a cold sweat break out at Blaine’s temple.
“I know you wouldn’t ask for it if you weren’t perfectly comfortable with the idea of it,” Blaine exhales, heart thudding a tattoo in behind his ribcage. “I just don’t know if I could purposefully hurt you.”
Kurt hums, inching closer to Blaine in the way he always does when Blaine’s uncomfortable about something, like some inherent need to soothe. Blaine has a feeling he doesn’t even realise he’s doing it anymore, and feels a fierce rush of affection towards him.
“It wouldn’t have to be like that. You could be as gentle as you want. It doesn’t even have to be your hand if you’re worried about that, we could use a tie or something. Those soft leather gloves you’ve had since senior year. Anything. As long as I can feel it,” Kurt says, and Blaine can’t deny that that image makes something warm and interested stir in his belly. “I mean, I guess it’d still hurt a little bit, but I know you’d never deliberately take it too far. I’d let you know if you did. And you’d stop.”
“I would,” Blaine nods vehemently.
“I know,” Kurt says, like it’s the most obvious thing in the world. “Of course you would.”
“I guess I –“ Blaine rolls over and presses his face into the crook of Kurt’s neck, voice muffled against his sweat-salty skin. “Would you be upset if I said I might need some time to think about it?”
“Blaine,” Kurt drawls, his broad hand skating down Blaine’s spine. “Do I even need to answer that?”
Blaine cringes. “What if I said I need to think about it and I still might end up saying no?”
“Hey,” Kurt says, wrapping his fingers around a handful of hair at the base of Blaine’s neck and tugging gently until he looks up again. “Stop looking so guilty.”
Blaine quickly schools his face into a more neutral expression. “Better?”
“Yes,” Kurt grins, dotting a kiss to the tip of his nose. “Now stop feeling so guilty. It wouldn’t be fun for me – I wouldn’t even be comfortable doing it unless I knew you were comfortable too. If you aren’t then you aren’t. It’s not a big deal.”
Blaine nods. “I will think about it, though.”
“Okay,” Kurt says, rapping his knuckles lightly against Blaine’s forehead. “Don’t hurt yourself.”
Blaine pokes his tongue out, snatching Kurt’s wrist and swiftly tipping him onto his back, one arm pinned above his head as he swings his leg over Kurt and straddles his thighs.
“You know I trust you too, right?” he asks.
“Do you think I’d have brought it up if I didn’t?” Kurt smiles up at him, wriggling clumsily beneath him. “Or let you crush me, god, you’re heavy.”
Blaine protests, “I’m not that heavy.”
“You’re like a dwarf star,” Kurt pokes him in the side with his free hand. “Tiny and dense.”
“I’m going to pretend I didn’t hear that,” Blaine rolls off Kurt again, hopping off the bed and pulling Kurt up by the hand. “And ask you to come have an incredibly vanilla shower with me, then join me in the kitchen in your most comfortable pyjamas to help me finish the last of the pasta in the fridge.”
Kurt groans exaggeratedly and hauls himself off the mattress. “If you insist.”
Blaine leads him to the bathroom by the hand, flicking the light on. “As punishment for the height joke you’re washing my hair, too.”
Kurt leans in the shower to twist on the hot tap with a pained shriek of their apartment’s old pipes. “Have you ever noticed your punishments always feel suspiciously like rewards.”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Blaine smiles, reaching out to test the temperature of the water before crowding Kurt under the spray. “Now kindly soap my chest, please.”
--
If Kurt had thought it would have been a sufficient explanation for Blaine, he probably would have told him that he has no solid idea why he finds the concept of spanking so intriguing. Just that even the thought of it makes his pulse pick up and his dick immediately take interest.
He’s pretty sure it’s just one of those things. He can’t put his finger on the reason bacon and maple syrup taste so damn wonderful together. He’ll never understand why he finds Tom Cruise so hot, but the sight of him on their TV with a gun strapped to his thigh is still generally enough to make Blaine pout and try to distract Kurt from whatever movie they’re watching.
And while there are emotions and sentiments attached to the idea of Blaine spanking him that make it even more thrilling to Kurt, he still has no fucking idea why spanking itself is so attractive to him. If it weren’t for Blaine’s peace of mind – and that will always, always be vital to him where their sex life is concerned – he’d happily accept that it’s very likely that he just gets off on the idea of having his ass slapped and leave it at that.
He admits to himself that they could most likely achieve the same results and display the same level of trust and symbiosis from some light bondage of some kind, but even that doesn’t make his heart race quite as desperately or his skin prickle with anticipation.
It’s a mystery.
He’ll be fine if nothing comes of it, but he thinks of what Blaine’s palm would sound like coming down on his skin and he almost feels dizzy.
*
When a month passes and Blaine doesn’t bring it up again, Kurt automatically assumes Blaine’s decided he isn’t comfortable with the idea. He pushes it down into the corner of his mind it had been previously lurking in, and goes back to business, sex and love as usual.
Well, not quite as usual.
Kurt comes home from work one evening to find Blaine with a file open on his lap and the smell of something rich and mouth-watering simmering on the stove.
“Hey, you,” he kicks his shoes off at the door and makes a beeline for Blaine, who raises his chin for a quick kiss in greeting. “What are you making?”
“Boeuf bourguignon,” Blaine sets the papers on the coffee table and stands. “Still needs about an hour.”
“Fancy,” Kurt smooths his hands over Blaine’s shoulders, working out the day’s wrinkles.
“Beef stew.” Blaine amends.
“Fancy French beef stew,” Kurt smiles, raising an eyebrow when Blaine grips his elbows and steers him to sit in the chair he’d been previously occupying, remaining on his feet in front of Kurt. “What are you doing? Are you about to tell me you’ve accidentally set fire to something important? Did you buy a pony on eBay without consulting me?”
“Not a pony, no,” Blaine says, shuffling a little on the spot as his hand moves to the button of his jeans. “This apartment is woefully unsuited for ponies. Something for you, though.”
“Blaine,” Kurt says warily, managing through some inhuman feat of strength to tear his eyes from the suggestive placement of Blaine’s hand. “What have you done?”
“Do you want me to show you?” Blaine asks, tone half hopeful, half reluctantly anxious.
“Do I?” Kurt asks cautiously.
“God, I hope so,” Blaine mumbles under his breath. “Or this could be awkward.”
Kurt watches as Blaine deftly pops open his jeans, mouth slightly parted and fingers unconsciously digging into the upholstery of the chair. Blaine slides his zipper down. And Kurt catches a flash of red through his fly, realising what’s happening a split second before Blaine tucks his hands into his waistband and shucks his jeans down his hips.
“That’s better than a pony,” Kurt breathes, his eyes glued to the dainty swatch of satin and lace that’s barely concealing Blaine’s cock. “That’s at least a million times better than a pony.”
Blaine tips his weight from one foot to the other, hands hanging by his sides and his jeans bunched around the middle of his thighs, and Kurt forces himself to look back up to check Blaine’s expression.
His cheeks are flushed a pretty pink, pupils conspicuously dilated in the bright room, and there’s a shy smile playing on his lips.
“I know you said you wanted to pick something out together,” he says, laughing breathily. “But I wanted to surprise you. You mentioned red.”
“You remembered,” Kurt blinks quickly, eyes prickling a little from staring.
“I don’t think I could forget that conversation if I tried,” his voice a little too loud and obviously still uneasy, babbling a little. “Lingerie isn’t exactly my strong point, but I thought these were cute. In hindsight that probably isn’t the standard criteria for picking out sexy underwear to surprise your boyfriend with.”
“Come here,” Kurt holds his hand out and sits forward, spreading his legs for Blaine to shuffle between. Blaine’s shirt hangs low, obscuring Kurt’s view a little, and he tugs lightly at the hem. “Can you take this off?”
“Yeah,” Blaine breathes, undoing the first few buttons and pulling it over his head while Kurt works his jeans the rest of the way down his legs. Blaine’s undershirt follows, stepping out of his pants and kicking them aside, naked but for that bright red pop of colour, now level with Kurt’s face and shockingly close. “Better?”
“Oh, Blaine,” Kurt reaches out to lay his hands over Blaine’s hips, brushing over the shoestring elastic of the panties where they dig into Blaine’s skin. They’re tiny, only just covering Blaine’s cock and bulging at the bottom, and Kurt imagines it must have taken some careful tucking and arranging on Blaine’s part to even achieve that much. The contrast of the delicate fabric against Blaine’s strong thighs and the way Blaine’s short, dark pubic hair is visible over the waistband makes something hot and twisting unfurl in Kurt’s belly. “Turn around.”
Blaine complies, and Kurt lets out a deep groan when halfway round he realises it’s a thong, the thin band disappearing between the halves of his ass. He’s entirely speechless until Blaine’s facing him again, and he reaches out to smooth his hand up the length of Blaine’s cock, feeling the heat of him though the lace.
“When did you put them on?” he asks, continuing the slow stroke of his hand, feeling and seeing him slowly hardening.
“The package was here when I got home,” Blaine lets out a small gasp, bracing his hands on Kurt’s shoulders. “I tried them on and decided to just leave them. It was –” he gasps again, back bending. “It was kind of an impulse thing. Do you like them?”
“I do,” Kurt smooths his free hand around the curve of Blaine’s ass, fingers splaying over firm muscle. He peers up at Blaine. “Even more than I thought I would.”
“Me too,” Blaine says, moving further forward and lifting his legs one at a time to fold into the armchair, straddling Kurt’s lap and wrapping his arms loosely around Kurt’s neck. “I wanted to try something you wanted to do. I wasn’t sure if I’d like it at all.”
“But you do?” Kurt drags his palm up Blaine’s chest, flicking his thumb back and forth over his nipple and scratching his nails lightly back down again. He holds his breath as he pulls the waistband back from Blaine’s skin and reaches in to draw his cock out, tucking the elastic beneath Blaine’s balls. He slowly pulls his fist up the velvety skin, working Blaine to hardness as he feels his own dick swelling in response.
“Uh huh,” Blaine’s breath catches, his chest heaving and his hips arching into Kurt’s grip. “At first – at first I was worried I looked ridiculous, just standing in front of the mirror wondering what the hell I was doing and why I hadn’t just bought something less flashy and revealing and – and potentially humiliating,” he gives a tiny moan as Kurt swipes his thumb over the head of his cock. “But then I thought of the way you look at me. And the way you’d react when you saw them on me. Whether you’d think it was hot.”
Kurt twists his wrist on an upstroke, eyes flicking between Blaine’s face – eyebrows pinched and eyelashes fluttering – and his hand, precome beading at the slit of his cock.
“Turning me on turns you on?” he asks, barely a question.
“Yes,” Blaine grits out, his forehead falling against Kurt’s and his hips fucking up into Kurt’s grip in earnest. “More than anything.”
Kurt’s breath shivers out of him, eyes falling shut as Blaine brushes against his hard on through his trousers. “No one else does that to me, Blaine. No one else ever will. You look so amazing.”
Blaine’s voice comes out on a whine. “Close.”
“Come on,” Kurt leans in to capture Blaine’s lips in an off centre kiss, his free fingers slipping under the elastic at the top of Blaine’s crack and twisting gently. “Come on. So hot, Blaine, the things you do for me, come on.”
“Fuck,” Blaine’s hips snap up, body seizing as his dick jerks and spills hot over his hand, and Kurt can’t bring himself to care when it drips between them onto his trousers.
Kurt kisses him again, whispering between pulls of lips as he works Blaine gently through the last of his orgasm. “Never going to stop imagining you trying these on without me and walking around with them under your clothes.”
Blaine’s breath is harsh between them, mingling with Kurt’s. “I could do it again. Not tell you I’m wearing them and let you find out for yourself. Spend the whole day with you and you’d never know.”
Kurt groans, straining upwards in almost desperate search of any friction. Blaine kisses him once more and slides off his lap, pushing the underwear to the floor before sinking to his knees between Kurt’s legs and undoing his belt, eyes staying fixed on Kurt’s right up to the moment his mouth sinks over Kurt’s cock and Kurt’s head falls back against the armchair.
*
Blaine’s foot nudges against Kurt’s under the dinner table, and Kurt looks up from his bowl and smiles at the sweet quirk on Blaine’s lips, visible for just a moment before he takes a bite of his food.
As ingrained as breathing, he nudges back.
“Surprise sexy underwear and a home cooked meal in one day,” he says, tearing a chunk off his bread roll and dipping it into his stew. “This must be how the Queen feels.”
Blaine laughs with his mouth full, quickly swallowing and reaching for his glass of wine, taking a large sip.
Once he’s recovered, face slightly red, he says, “I’m sure that’s just what it’s like. Portrait at nine, visit with the Prime Minister at eleven, kinky underwear at three.”
“You never know,” Kurt grins. “Behind closed doors.”
Kurt isn’t sure what kind of atmosphere he expected there to be after the first time he and Blaine finally acted on any one of the things they’d spoken about. To be fair, whenever he’d thought about it that little detail had been the last thing on his mind. If he’d ever got around to it he doubts he would have envisioned such a level of peace and affection.
It may just be the food and the low lamplight of the room, but it even feels romantic.
It’s probably just Blaine.
They’d slowly disentangled themselves from kisses and wandering hands after Blaine had blown him, and trailed to the bathroom for a quick joint shower, only to sink back into more kisses, wet with water, and bodies slick with soap.
Their hair’s still wet now, Blaine’s curling sweetly around his ears and reverting to its natural state once liberated from Blaine’s heavy handed but endearing use of product. Neither of them bothered to dress with any care once they’d towelled off, and Kurt feels relaxed and swaddled in sweats and thick socks, and he’s barely resisting the urge to abandon his dinner to drag Blaine to the bedroom to twist together and sleep for hours.
Instead he trails his toe up Blaine’s calf, and asks, “How long were you planning that?”
Blaine chews slowly and swallows before answering. “Not long. A few days?”
Kurt smirks shrewdly. “Sneaky.”
Blaine chuckles. “I know. Another impulse.”
“I could get used to your more impulsive side.”
“Me too,” Blaine’s smile turns coquettish. “I know it’s probably not quite as dramatic as being on the receiving end of surprise lingerie, but at the time – it was kind of exciting. Waiting for you to come home. I mean, I know we talked about all those things, but it would have been so easy for us to just leave it at that and never mention it again,” he adds, “Not that that would have been bad.”
Kurt nods. “Just more predictable.”
“Mm,” Blaine traces his finger around the rim of his wine glass, eyes on his finger as it circles. “I kind of thought you’d bring it up first. Beat me to it.”
Kurt raises an eyebrow. “Why’s that?”
“I don’t know,” Blaine shrugs, meeting Kurt’s eye again briefly. “I’ve always thought you’re braver than I am.”
“Blaine,” Kurt sighs knowingly, reaching out and snagging Blaine’s hand.
“I know,” Blaine laughs self-deprecatingly. “I’m not saying I’m not. I know I’ve been more comfortable with sex for longer than you have, but you’d caught up with me before we even left high school,” his eyes flick up, head still lowered. “And everything else. Growing up in Ohio in our position and trying not to just sink under the weight of people we didn’t even know hating us without question. I’m good at raising my voice and puffing out my chest and pretending I have any idea what I’m doing, but you’re just – fearless.”
“That’s because you always see the best in me,” Kurt laughs quietly.
If the lens through which Blaine views Kurt is anything like the glimmering spectrum of the one Kurt views Blaine with, chances are Blaine’s eyes see Kurt a great deal more favourably than he sees himself. When Kurt considers the depth of love he feels on even the slightest inspection of Blaine he can’t imagine how vastly the Kurt Blaine sees differs from the critical view he has of himself. The thought staggers him.
To be so loved.
“I’m really not,” Kurt says, his reassuring smile strong and meant. “I’m just as clueless as you are. I still have days when I’d rather stay in bed because everything seems so big and in my head I can feel so – small, sometimes. It’d be so much easier not to try. There have been times… getting my first rejection letter from NYADA, and finally getting in and seeing how good everyone was, and still getting overlooked at one in every twenty auditions, god. There have been so many times when I’ve thought I probably would have given up years ago if I didn’t have you to pick me up again,” he squeezes Blaine’s hand. “But if you ask me, bravery’s being absolutely terrified of something and having the guts to do it anyway. If I’m brave at all, then you’re just as brave as I am, Blaine.”
Blaine grins weakly. “Well, it looks better on you.”
Kurt kicks Blaine lightly under the table. “I’m an actor Blaine, people pay me to be convincing. Less often than I’d like and less zeros on the pay checks than I’d like, but still. And as for sex, if you think I didn’t feel about two seconds away from passing out on the drive back to your house the first time we slept together then I’m an even better actor than I think I am.”
“Passing out from anticipation?” Blaine asks cheekily.
Kurt smiles. “More like passing out because my boyfriend was about to see my –” one breath in, and even so many years later and so much bolder, it’s still a strange word to say out loud away from the heat of the moment and the burn of Blaine’s body. “ – cock for the first time, and despite how many times I’d imagined your dick and how distractingly aware I was of it almost all the time, nothing could have prepared me for actually seeing it. I probably would have panicked the moment you took your pants off if I hadn’t been completely sure you wouldn’t think I was an idiot if it turned out I had no idea what to do with it.”
Blaine raises an eyebrow, grinning. “You had me fooled.”
Kurt deadpans. “I came after two minutes.”
“It was at least five,” Blaine laughs. “And if you hadn’t given me that handjob in my car a week later I’d have thought sex couldn’t possibly get any better.”
Kurt shakes his head fondly. “Teenage you had such low standards.”
“No, you were just a perfectionist and a quick learner.”
Kurt shrugs, unable and unwilling to argue with that. “You were scared though, too,” falteringly. “Were you?”
Blaine hums. “I felt like I was going to be sick, but mostly from excitement and nerves. I never thought – ” Blaine pauses, swallowing thickly. “I never thought I’d get the chance to have a boyfriend in high school let alone fall in love with him and spend the night with him and wake up with him and make him waffles the next morning.”
Kurt murmurs, “I made you waffles.”
Blaine chuckles. “You were the best thing that had ever happened to me, and getting to be with you like that. It felt like a gift. I felt like the most undeservingly lucky person on the planet. I thought my only chance at losing my virginity before I left the state would be with some stranger at Scandals who I’d never see again. I’d like to think I’d have held on to the idea of true love and that one special boy,” he strokes Kurt’s hand with his thumb, eyes wide on Kurt’s. “But we both know I sometimes end up regretting my impulses.”
They do. Kurt’s always known Blaine is brave, but he also knows that the impulsive side that they both reaped the pleasure of less than an hour ago isn’t a new thing. When they were younger, it was often the worst thing. He remembers those months in Blaine’s senior year when they’d split up. He’s long since forgiven it, but he’ll never quite be able to forget Blaine’s impulse to choose the quick break and shatter of physical comfort and sex with another boy over a possibly equally painful confrontation with Kurt that no doubt would have healed faster or cleaner in the long run. It isn’t the only example, but it’s the one that will always be at the forefront of both their minds in the jagged list of their failings as a couple.
Back then Kurt had hated Blaine for it. Not for long, and possibly for even more brief a time than Kurt thinks he did, but for all that Blaine was hurting at the physical and emotional distance between them, Kurt hadn’t been able to see it as anything more than Blaine hurting Kurt back in the most efficient way possible. Even without the wisdom he’s gained over the years, he’d been too bitter and wounded to see it as anything else.
But now, with hindsight and experience, Kurt knows that the root of Blaine’s kneejerk impulses lies in uncertainty. In all of Blaine’s insecurities and doubts that Kurt now knows intimately and counts as precious as any other part of him.
Blaine rushes into things and makes brash decisions so that he doesn’t have a chance to back out of them. It’s as if he’s afraid of letting himself think about how he’s chooses to act for any length of time out of fear of questioning himself and not acting at all. Now that they’re older it backfires less often than it used to, and Kurt’s noticed the trait in him less and less often altogether, but sometimes Kurt still wonders how someone so sure of himself in some ways, and so confident of his convictions in his professional life and in his ideals can waver so violently in others.
Regardless of how or why, it’s something that Kurt loves about him, and something that he somehow loves even more for the time it took him to learn it. Even more yet for Blaine’s gradual willingness to let Kurt in on what they both know has as much potential to be a weakness as a strength.
Seeing that spontaneity return with a vengeance in a positive and surprising way is somehow both comforting and thrilling to Kurt, and he has a strong feeling Blaine feels the same.
“We both know a lot more about ourselves and each other than we did when we were kids,” Kurt says softly, reaching his free hand across the table to pluck at Blaine’s fingers where they’re tangled around his own. “Sometimes it’s okay to jump in feet first without looking.”
Blaine smiles. “We aren’t exactly ancient.”
“Eight years, Blaine,” Kurt drawls. “You teach kids now. A checkout girl called me sir the other day.”
“Oh, god,” Blaine cringes. “Where did you hide her body? Wait, I don’t want to know. Plausible deniability.”
“I didn’t kill her,” Kurt swats at Blaine’s wrist, just missing as he pulls away. “I conveniently forgot to wish her a good day, though. See? Passive aggression. All grown up.”
Blaine props his head on his hand, gazing warmly across at Kurt. “We are, aren’t we?”
“We’re getting there,” Kurt admits, more at ease with the idea than he once was.
Blaine sighs, eyelashes low. “You’re still the best thing that ever happened to me.”
A calm rush flows through every inch of Kurt’s body, mixing with the low burn of wine and filling
him with a kind of low level relaxed ecstasy.
He nudges Blaine’s foot gently, and whispers, “You too.”
--
It’s been months since they’ve been clubbing.
In their early days in New York together it had been something of a novelty to them. Kurt had called it finally getting to have the irresponsible youth that Ohio and the grimy restrictions of Scandals hadn’t really afforded them. Blaine had always seen it as stress release to keep the two of them from going insane while slugging through the churning cycle of responsibility and college and work and work and college.
They have even less time for it now what with Blaine settling into his second year of teaching at a nearby primary school, coupled with getting an afterschool music program up and running on a voluntary basis. Kurt’s constantly flitting from audition to audition and rehearsing the small parts he manages to score along the way, just as busy and extremely aware of how tenuous a business he’s marched into.
Blaine’s finally reached a point in his life where he actually feels like a reliable, semi-competent adult instead of the mildly panicked man-child he’d been for so many years, playing at maturity and flying by the seat of his pants on a daily basis.
Not that he doesn’t still get hit by choking waves of that on an almost daily basis, but he’s come to terms with his natural state being one of hard fought over-confidence and occasional questionably concealed worry.
The upsides to having a few big accomplishments under his belt are a feeling of self-worth and direction that he’s always been somewhat reliant on and – if he’s honest with himself – probably wouldn’t be able to function without. Maybe it’s the Dalton man in him, still clinging tight and wrapped around him like that crisp tailored blazer he used like chainmail. The downsides are that unwinding and letting loose often come hand in hand with the niggling reminder of responsibilities and duties that he can’t afford to neglect.
He knows Kurt’s the same. Driven to a fault.
One incident they’ve promised to never speak of again occurred when Kurt had been caught in a spiral of sleepless nights while learning a lead role for a NYADA student production, staying up into the small hours of the morning and sleeping far less than any human being can credibly function on. Blaine, sick with worry at watching Kurt stumble around in a daze, had hidden Kurt’s script and accompanying notes and refused to reveal their whereabouts until Kurt had taken some time for himself.
It was childish. Kurt had screamed at him and torn the apartment to shreds and Blaine had held his ground and yelled and left with a final slam of the front door. He’d felt guilty, he’d felt helpless, and at his peak of self-absorbed pity he’d even felt ignored, but when he’d returned to the apartment after midnight he’d found Kurt in their bed sleeping soundly for the first time in weeks.
He may have slept on the couch that night, and it may have taken Kurt all day to bring himself to speak to Blaine again, but it had been a wakeup call that they’d both needed.
Since then they’ve been each other’s warning bell. If one of them tells the other they need a night off, they listen. It doesn’t happen often, but Blaine knows Kurt well enough to judge when it’s in dire need.
Tonight was Kurt’s idea.
He’d called Blaine at lunch as he almost always did, and asked, “Are you staying late again tonight?”
“I was planning to,” Blaine had said sheepishly, incredibly aware that it was the fifth night in a row he’d done so.
“Is it urgent, or are you just going above and beyond?”
“A bit of both?” Blaine had said slowly.
“In other words no.”
Blaine had winced. “No.”
“Come home as soon as you can and put something nice on. I’m taking you out.”
Blaine had grinned, feeling a flush of warmth at Kurt’s familiar stubborn side and a twist of excitement at his spontaneity. “How nice?”
“Dancing nice,” Kurt had said, voice dipping low. “Something you don’t mind getting sweaty.”
Blaine has been on edge with a steady hum of excitement since then, and he can feel the deep throb of bass and high shiver of synth in his bones as Kurt pulls him towards the bar by his hand.
Ever since the night he’d surprised Kurt with The Underwear there’s been something different. Not glaringly so, and certainly not obvious from the outside, but a tiny little tip in their axis. Blaine almost feels like he’s waiting for something. A little twinge of there being something on the horizon without actually being aware of what it might be.
Their sex has almost gone back to normal, incredible as always, undeniably more frequent, and coloured by a slight sense of abandon that hadn’t been there before. It’s like they unwittingly broke through some invisible, untapped barrier into a zone where they understand pleasure for pleasure’s sake like they somehow hadn’t before. Like every subconscious minor fear of judgement has flown out the window on the strength of one conversation and one tiny pair of red panties.
It hasn’t really changed anything between them, it just feels like there’s more.
The skin tingling, breathtaking, heart stopping potential of more.
Kurt shoulders into a space by the bar, hand still wrapped around Blaine’s, and leans close to yell above the music. “Beer?”
Blaine shakes his head. “Something stronger.”
Kurt smiles wickedly and raises his arm, clicking futilely in the din out of habit until the barman makes his way over, and Blaine turns away briefly to watch the writhing bacchic mass of strangely synchronised bodies moving on the dance floor.
At a light nudge of Kurt’s hip against his own he twists back and Kurt presses a tall, sweating glass into his hand, nodding to a spare length of bench space in the alcoves that line the walls.
“Long Island Ice Tea,” he calls as they sit, pressed snugly thigh to thigh. “Definitely stronger.”
Blaine takes a sip and winces at the light burn that tells him the barman may have been a little heavy handed with the shot glass. “I hope you don’t have any plans tomorrow morning that involve being vertical.”
“No,” Kurt grins around his straw. “And neither do you. You’ve been working so hard for so little lately. Tonight you get to be reckless.”
“It’ll all pay off,” Blaine says automatically, so used to defending himself in an economic climate that sees so little worth in the ‘frivolity’ of the arts. “So many kids are going to benefit from it in the long run, I just need to focus on setting a foundation. Everything will get easier once it’s off the ground.”
“I know, honey,” Kurt smiles gently and squeezes Blaine’s knee, as familiar with the spiel as Blaine is by now. “You’re amazing. Just let go for one night, though. Please?”
Blaine smiles, nodding. “Okay.”
“Thank you,” Kurt’s hand slides a few inches up his thigh. “Now, drink your overpriced cocktail.”
He does, and two drinks later Kurt drags him onto the dance floor and carves out a small space for the two of them as he wraps his arms around Blaine’s neck and crowds in close. Blaine’s hands find his waist, slipping around to the small of his back and skimming the band of his jeans.
“I miss this,” Kurt yells, breath hot on Blaine’s ear and his easy hips moving along to the beat in a criminally fluid swivel, confident in Blaine’s arms. “Why don’t we make more time for dancing?”
“I don’t think our neighbours would appreciate it,” Blaine laughs, brain pleasantly fuzzy and limbs heavy and warm in the surrounding crush of bodies. “Maybe when we can afford to move somewhere with walls thicker than cardboard.”
“The neighbours obviously haven’t seen you dance,” Kurt mouths lightly at the sensitive skin of Blaine’s neck, stepping in even closer and squeezing a thigh between Blaine’s. “I love it. Even back in The Warblers when I was practically a doll for how little I wanted to actually think about sex, watching you dance was almost enough to make me hard.”
Blaine groans, grinding his forehead into Kurt’s temple and sliding one hand down to cup the denim clad curve of his ass. “I feel like I should have noticed that.”
“I was probably too busy crossing my legs and thinking of as many disgusting thoughts as possible for it to be too obvious,” Kurt hums. “And you basically flirted with everything that moved when you performed.”
“It wasn’t intentional,” Blaine protests, and at a knowing chuckle from Kurt, he admits. “Fine, it was, but that’s all it was. Performing.”
“Even with me?”
Blaine swallows, his second hand following the first and wriggling into Kurt’s back pocket. “I’m not sure. I’m pretty sure some part of me always wanted to impress you. And then once I figured things out – once I actually saw you – once I started falling for you… there was a while when you may as well have been the only person in the room.”
“I could tell,” Kurt presses an open mouthed kiss next to Blaine’s ear. “I was the same.”
Blaine closes his eyes, breath coming harsher and sweat beading at his forehead as they continue dancing. Loose muscles and buzzing brain.
“I used to lie awake almost every night thinking about you,” Blaine shouts, tugging Kurt closer and biting back a groan at the press of Kurt’s thigh between his legs. “I would have died back then if you’d known, but I jerked off thinking about you more times than I even want to admit now.”
Kurt laughs, bright and audible even over the floor shaking speakers. “I probably would have died too.”
“If you ignore the fact that my hand was on my dick it wasn’t even a sex sex thing,” Blaine yells, struggling a little with complex thought in light of the various spirits coursing through his body. “Knowing a little of how you felt about sex I felt too guilty imagining anything graphic, it was just – I was a horny teenage boy and kissing you and thinking of you and knowing how you felt about me was usually enough to get me off. It still is.”
Kurt’s hand curls in the sweat damp hair at the base of Blaine’s neck. “How almost gentlemanly of you.”
“Almost,” Blaine murmurs in his ear. “I reached a point where I didn’t feel guilty anymore and I just imagined my hand was yours. For the record, imaginary Kurt turned out to be a very poor substitute for real life Kurt.”
“I’d hope so,” Kurt’s leg presses purposefully upwards, and Blaine buries his face in Kurt’s neck to needlessly muffle a groan.
“Did you ever –” Blaine pants in Kurt’s ear, increasingly aware of how tight his own jeans are. “In the beginning, I mean.”
Kurt’s lips brush his ear with every word. “Let’s just say I’m glad I’d always washed my own sheets. I should have been charging you damages for all the wet dreams you starred in.”
“God,” Blaine’s hands clench, drawing a gasp from Kurt.
“In my senior year a few months before we even slept together, I actually –” Kurt laughs, high and breathless, remnants of shy hesitance creeping through his blanket of alcohol. “I was thinking of you the first time I fingered myself.”
“Fuck, fuck, fuck,” Blaine hisses, surging forward to crash his mouth into Kurt’s in a needy, clumsy kiss.
Part of him has always felt strangely fortunate to have been able to witness the way Kurt’s grown and changed and adapted. His gratitude at meeting Kurt at all can’t be put into words, and to him the years he’s spent with Kurt facing life side by side are a dazzling indication of the decades to come. But where Burt and Finn, and even Carole have years and months of time spent with Kurt prior to that day they met back in Kurt’s junior year, Blaine knows he’s been a rare and lucky witness to parts of Kurt’s maturing that they never have.
They’ve all seen his blooming confidence. They’ve seen him soften from cold and justifiably defensive to compassionate and empathetic and endlessly forgiving. They’ve seen him transform into the stunning young performer he’s become, and superficially, they’ve seen him sprout from small and proudly awkward into the gorgeous, graceful man Blaine wakes up next to every morning.
But Blaine alone has watched him flourish and awaken to a whole different kind of confidence in his body and his use of it. Intimately.
He remembers the way Kurt’s ears used to turn bright red when they dared to make out lying down on Blaine’s bed. The first time Blaine got hard from kissing Kurt, Kurt had flown into an endless babble about how the night before he’d found a smoothie that Finn had left in the fridge for so long it had sprouted black mould, and seamlessly slid off the bed to pop Mean Girls in the DVD player and ask Blaine if he wanted a drink. To be fair, it had taken care of Blaine’s boner in ten seconds flat.
He remembers with startling clarity two months later when Kurt’s fingers had begun their first tentative exploration of Blaine’s torso, and the way he’d shyly whispered his appreciation of Blaine’s waist into his neck like it was the most scandalous admission on earth. He’ll never forget the first scorching press of Kurt’s lips to the dip of his throat, or the dry drag of them across his collarbone where it peeked out of his polo.
Blaine was the first person Kurt ever found enough courage and comfort to discuss various acts of sex with, and he’s still surprised he can recall a single second of those conversations given that the hypothetical sex Kurt was referring to always hypothetically involved Blaine.
He’s witnessed Kurt’s ease with the idea of sex draw level with his own, and was present for every step along the way that led to the shyly hypothetical becoming definite and tangible and physical. The Kurt in front of him wasn’t even possible when they first met. The confident, comfortable Kurt dancing against him and kissing him in the centre of a Friday night dance floor wouldn’t have dared to even contemplate existing. Blaine knows that cocktails or not Kurt will never be able to entirely forget the potential for other eyes (eyes that aren’t Blaine’s, and god what a gift to be trusted by him) watching unwanted from various corners, but the Kurt that’s capable of disregarding their existence wasn’t even born when they met.
“How do you keep doing this to me?” Blaine groans into Kurt’s lips. “Every time I think you can’t possibly get any more sexy you go and surprise me again, you’re incredible.”
Out of breath, Kurt replies, “Got to keep you on your toes.”
Blaine pulls back, neither of them dancing anymore, and cups Kurt’s face with both of his hands, burning from the inside out. “I want you. Like, five minutes ago, god, I want you naked right now. Home?”
Kurt watches him, eyes cycling from dark and obviously turned on to something a little more mischievous and harder to read. He reaches up and takes one of Blaine’s hands, smiling as he squeezes his fingers and leans in close.
“Come with me,” he says, half order, half request, and tugs Blaine behind him as he heads deeper into the club.
Blaine follows without question, excited curiosity switching to dawning understanding as he leads Blaine towards the men’s bathrooms and shoulders his way through the door.
“Okay then,” Blaine says dazedly, heat twisting in his stomach as he unhesitatingly steps into a free cubicle and allows Kurt to squeeze the door closed behind them, thankful at least that no one is at the sinks to see them enter together.
Kurt pushes Blaine back into the door and crowds in, catching his lips in a rough nip-pull (and god Blaine can’t stand it when he gets like this, all single minded want, can barely stand up, he makes his muscles shiver) and gasps into his mouth before Blaine can even react, “Right here. Right where anyone could catch us, just like you wanted.”
Blaine lets out a ghost of the breath he can’t seem to catch, dazed enough by the depth and darkness and determination of Kurt’s eyes to stutter, “We’re – it’s kind of dirty in here.”
“Keep your hands on me,” Kurt says shortly, voice gone low and harsh. “Wanna suck you off, just keep touching me.”
Blaine chokes out a groan as Kurt sinks gracefully (unfairly gracefully) to his knees, and does as he’s told, wrapping his hands around Kurt’s jaw to fan around the back of his neck. All he can do is watch as Kurt works his belt open, kneeling on the tiled floor like a stone saint, eyes intent on his hands.
Blaine knows how important touch is to Kurt during sex. Blaine’s hands on him anywhere, everywhere, the only hands he ever wants on his body and the simple desire for contact beyond the intangible and, often for practicalities sake, fleeting flickers and meetings of their eyes. He wants the connection of warm responsive skin exchanging heat and pleasure, always aware of each other and the shattering moment they’re sharing.
Blaine likes his hands on Kurt.
Almost as much as he likes to watch, fingers tightening as Kurt jerks Blaine’s jeans partway down his thighs, hooking his underwear out of the way and drawing his near fully hard cock out with one firm perfect hand.
His head tips upwards between Blaine’s palms, eyes so bright under the buzzing fluorescents, and quietly says, “No sounds, Blaine.”
Which only forces Blaine to have to strangle back a low needy groan that yearns to rise up his throat.
Kurt holds his gaze for the time it takes him to lay a teasing lick to the head of his cock, his eyes fluttering closed as he sinks his mouth over the first couple of inches and sucks, just shortly, just gently, before opening his mouth further and bobbing down onto Blaine, tight wet heat.
Blaine’s skull falls backwards, thudding off the door, his fingers mapping out damp warm skin and feathery hair as he clamps down on the litany of whines and words he wants to shower onto Kurt.
It’s blissful torture. The expected thrill of being in public doing something they’ve never done before on the receiving end of one of Kurt’s practiced blowjobs without being able to howl his approval. He feels the fingers of Kurt’s free hand trail back behind his balls, a whisper sharp slice of pleasure on top of everything, and feels himself about crack and allow a bubble of sounds to break free when –
From the stall next to them echoes a loud and drawn out animal moan.
Blaine eyes snap open and his head shocks forward. Beneath him he hears Kurt choke and cough as cold air hits Blaine’s cock and Kurt looks up at him with a hand held over his mouth and round stunned eyes.
They stare at each other frozen like rabbits for all of a second with Blaine’s cock hanging neglected between them before a second moan rings out, followed by a gravelly, ‘yes, yes, faster.’
Blaine blinks, about to open his mouth to speak when Kurt’s other hand flies up to clamp over the first and a snort of laughter bursts free from his nose.
Blaine watches, mind a little dizzy from cocktails as Kurt leans forward and buries his face in his knees, his whole body shaking with uncontainable silent mirth.
“Oh god, god yes, fuck.”
That’s all it takes for Blaine to let out a short giggle, Kurt’s contagious laughter spreading to his own chest and forcing him to bend over and brace himself on Kurt’s shoulders as he wheezes as quietly as possible.
Kurt looks up, eyes glistening and met head-on by the sight of Blaine’s slowly softening cock, and immediately hides his face again when he gives a high hiccupping squeak.
It takes minutes for them to settle down, all sounds from the next cubicle already graphically risen, faded and ceased entirely by the time Blaine has the control to help Kurt to his feet and gingerly tuck himself back into his underwear and fasten his jeans.
“Oh my god,” Kurt gasps, dabbing underneath his eyes with the heel of his thumb and lifting a hand to resettle his hair a much as possible.
“That was –” Blaine lets out one last weak giggle, his stomach muscles aching slightly. “No.”
Kurt grips his biceps and rests his forehead on Blaine’s neck, a smile curving into his skin. “It started out so well.”
Blaine rests a hand on his back, stroking down the long rope of his spine. “No, that was hot, I was – I was very, very into that but. No.”
“Not sexy.”
“Not at all.”
“At least they had fun?” Blaine offers, cupping Kurt’s cheek as he straightens up again, red faced and beautiful.
“Mm, I did too,” Kurt grins wildly. “Just not the way I expected and with a few more horrifying memories than I would have liked.”
“At least we’ve learnt something,” Blaine reaches for the lock on the door, turning it and peeking out through a discreet crack. “Seedy bathrooms aren’t so great.”
Kurt crowds in behind him. “We really should have known. How do I look?”
Blaine glances over his shoulder. “More debauched than you actually are.”
“I guess I can live with that.”
Blaine smiles to himself, opening the door fully once the coast is clear again and folding his hand around Kurt’s. “Home?”
Kurt bumps his shoulder off Blaine’s, the music in the club coming back in a wall of sound as they exit. “Home.”
*
Back in the quiet of their room Blaine fucks Kurt on their bed, hands and knees. Slow thrusts and breathing, breathing, sobering up and surrounded by warmth and familiarity. A loose hand around Kurt’s sticky startled cock, and the freedom to grind out sounds and words of enjoyment and praise.
No one to walk in on them or distract them and no added thrill past the always thrilling knowledge of the two of them together, slowly making each other fall apart.
--
Weeks pass and Kurt barely thinks about it anymore, doesn’t even contemplate the word spanking. Just thinks about his body next to Blaine’s. He’s never been greedy and Blaine’s never been anything less than giving.
He barely even thinks about it.
--
Blaine thinks.
Mulls it over and keeps it in the back of his mind for so long that it almost feels like an old friend. He never thought it was abnormal, would never think that of Kurt or his desires, but it’s been spinning around in his brain so frequently that he can barely think of any reason to question it anymore.
Like, this is something Kurt wants to try, oh, of course he does.
The shock and awe of a new far distant galaxy being discovered, coming to terms with the constancy and reality of it until he never even remembers a time when he didn’t know it was there all along.
They’re washing the dishes one night, as uneventful and comforting as any night in together, Kurt washing and Blaine drying.
Kurt, playful and teasing, scrapes the last of his serve of slightly overcooked green beans into the trash, and says, “You know I love it when you cook, I just wish you’d accept that you’re too easily distracted to steam fresh vegetables without using a timer.”
Blaine laughs, too content to be affronted, and doesn’t think.
He shakes his damp dishtowel out and heartbeat fast whips the end of it gently off Kurt’s ass.
Kurt squeaks and twists around, elbows deep in suds, and Blaine’s smile doesn’t even have time to melt off his face before his eyes meet Kurt’s and widen in unspoken understanding.
Oh.
So that’s what it’s like.
Sex that night is unplanned and intense, Kurt riding Blaine’s lap and Blaine’s fingers digging into the flesh of Kurt’s thighs just that little bit tighter than usual until Kurt’s whining at the ceiling, his whole body trembling like a leaf.
The first time Kurt allows himself to properly appreciate 'the shorts'.
Blaine gets into NYADA and Kurt and Blaine get back together before the Summer and throw themselves headfirst and terrifyingly into getting reacquainted and remembering how to communicate and learning how to communicate better than they used to. They sharply and loudly and sometimes tearfully acknowledge that yeah, wow, they kind of really fucked up back there. Accepting their individual faults isn't easy or painless, but they're agreed that it's better than the alternative.
They're clueless and clumsy in love and they frequently stumble and they sometimes fall, but as the weeks pass they see clearer than ever that black and white are blinding, unforgiving shades.
What young New Yorker has time to hold grudges, anyway?
Blaine moves into the dorms at NYADA after they both decide they don't want to risk putting too much strain on their renewed relationship too quickly. Rachel smiles and nods with wide eyes that conjure a kind of uneasiness in Kurt that he imagines one might feel if faced with a serial killer, and Santana just snorts and strides out of the loft cackling along with the bright clicks of her murderous heels.
After six months of Blaine sleeping almost exclusively in Kurt's bed, and a crash course in how to have a satisfying sex life without Santana and Rachel being alerted of their every orgasm, they cave and move in together in a closet of an apartment that's no more conveniently located than the loft.
But it's theirs. Every placement of furniture was decided by the two of them, and every decoration and knick knack was agreed on together (although Kurt can't deny that he was far more involved and dauntingly persuasive on that front).
They cook together hip to hip, hands brushing backs and kisses to cheeks, and eat with their knees bumping underneath their miniscule excuse for a dining table. They fall asleep together and wake up side by side and fuck on cushions on the living room rug and forget to blush when they frequently decide that nudity is a far more desirable state than bothering to track down scattered clothes.
They laboriously work out a pattern that ensures they see each other regularly despite their clashing schedules at school. There's a slight underlying fear from both of them that lack of diligence in that area will breed the same kind of cold distance that they've repeatedly struggled with before. So they plan.
Tuesday mornings they meet for coffee and play footsies under the table, never hesitating to tangle their fingers together as they talk. New York, New York. Wednesday nights they alternate cooking for each other and inevitably leave the dishes until the next day, and Blaine's enthusiasm and adventurous use of lentils leaves him sheepishly ordering takeout more than once. Fridays are date nights, replete with sharply ironed shirts and rule straight ties, playing the adults they occasionally even feel like.
Weekends are their own to do with as they will, and Blaine agrees to accompany Kurt to yoga every Saturday morning in exchange for Kurt joining him on his clockwork Sunday morning jogs.
Kurt had looked forward to offering Blaine that particular invitation more than he probably should have. Kurt doesn’t need Blaine to say it, only needs the memory of his glassy gaze to know that if he could, Blaine would choose Kurt in the glancing loose fabric of yoga pants over skin tight demin any day.
He’s not alone. Kurt doesn’t even pretend to be put out when they turn up to their first class together and the only available mat space is directly behind Blaine.
Bendy post yoga sex is amazing.
Kurt isn't unfit, but his dedication to working out isn't quite on par with Blaine's, and it only takes their first run together for Kurt to realise that Blaine's somewhat shorter legs are by no means a handicap as far as speed is concerned.
For the first few blocks he bounces along beside Kurt, breath loud and strangely soothing, before he asks, "Do you mind if I go ahead a little?"
"Not at all," Kurt puffs, admittedly glad to have an excuse to set his own leisurely pace.
Which is the first time he allows himself to properly appreciate 'the shorts'.
He's seen them before, of course. Blaine's had them since his first year at McKinley, but back then they’d been something of a harmless joke.
One time Brittany had cocked her head at Blaine when he emerged from the locker room with miles of leg on display, and earnestly asked, “Have you been going through my closet Blaine Warbler?”
He’d replied with a crinkle-eyed laugh and a shake of his head, and Kurt had set the insubstantial item of clothing aside in his head as one of Blaine’s many shameless quirks that simply added to his boundless appeal.
But as Blaine jogs ahead, legs pumping methodically and muscles taut and lightly sheened in sweat, Kurt wonders how he ever managed the most simple form of thought processes in the presence of those criminally tiny shorts and that dizzyingly spectacular ass.
Eventually Blaine rounds the corner out of sight, and Kurt continues their agreed path on autopilot, absurdly aware of the rhythmic pounding of blood in his ears.
When he arrives back at their apartment building it’s to Blaine with one foot on the bottom step, bending forward and stretching, breathing almost back to normal.
He looks up when Kurt slows to a stop behind him, smiling in a way that makes Kurt wonder how much of his racing heart rate is a product of physical exertion.
He braces his hands on his knees, eyes widening as Blaine easily rocks the last few inches and touches his toes.
He pants, “You’re going to cause an accident if you aren’t careful.”
Blaine glances over his shoulder and simply smiles brighter.
Inside Kurt cradles a bottle of water in the kitchen, watching as Blaine tips his head back and chugs thirstily from his own, neck stretched taut as he swallows and swallows.
Well, if he wants to play dirty who’s Kurt to spoil his fun.
“You know what you should do?” he asks, tone forced casual.
Blaine looks across, lips red and glistening damply. “What?”
“You should take your shirt off.”
Blaine’s mouth quirks up, failing to fall flat again. “Should I?”
“I think so.”
“Oh, well in that case.”
He sets his bottle down and reaches up with both arms, muscles twisting in that effortless perfect way as he snags a handful of his tank top at the back of his collar, whisking it over his head and emerging tousle haired and delectable.
Kurt eyes his chest, skin naturally bronzed, cheerful nipples and trim waist, so familiar and never less thrilling.
“Isn’t that better?” he asks, fighting to sound aloof when all he wants to do is choose a spot and put his mouth on it.
“Mm, I think you might be on to something,” Blaine nods, stepping closer and tucking a thumb into the waistband of his shorts. “What about these?”
“No, those can stay,” Kurt smiles innocently as Blaine stops just shy of thigh to thigh with him, and reaches out to set his hands on the hot, sticky skin of Blaine’s chest. “Wouldn’t want you to get cold.”
Blaine raises an eyebrow, close enough that every freckle and every speck of colour in his eyes is gloriously clear. He plucks at the sleeve of Kurt’s running shirt with thumb and forefinger.
“What about this?”
Kurt forces back a snort of laughter that feels desperate to break free. “What about it?”
Blaine purses his lips for a moment in obvious amusement. “Don’t you think it’d look better on the floor?”
Kurt hums and tips his head from side to side. “Maybe…”
“Okay then,” Kurt lets out a tiny hiccup of laughter and wrestles his face back into submission. “Your move.”
Kurt lifts his arms above his head and allows Blaine to snag the hem of his shirt and peel it off, cool air hitting his skin as Blaine exaggeratedly holds the t-shirt out for them to follow as it falls to the kitchen tiles.
They both watch it for a moment, and Kurt asks, “Well?”
Blaine looks back up, eyes roving over Kurt’s newly exposed skin, dark and appreciative in a way that never fails to make Kurt’s stomach twist hotly. “I’m glad I followed my instinct.”
Kurt reaches up and combs the fingers of one hand through the hair behind Blaine’s ear, scratching lightly. “Clever boy.”
Blaine leans into his touch, eyes fluttering shut briefly and smiling warmly. “What now?”
Kurt squints thoughtfully, clucking his tongue. “I’m not sure,” he says slowly, sliding his palm all the way down Blaine’s back to the curve of his ass where he lets it rest, squeezing lightly where it’s warm and soft in those tiny shorts. “Now that you mention it the floor could probably use a vacuum. And I wouldn’t mind watching now that you're appropriately dressed and all.”
Blaine’s face flashes so rapidly from an expression of determination and arousal to offended horror that Kurt’s façade cracks entirely, bursting into body quaking laughter and falling forward to bury his face in Blaine’s bare shoulder.
“You jerk,” Blaine huffs in his ear, arms raising to wrap around Kurt’s waist and hug him close regardless, warm chest to warm chest. “You’re such a jerk.”
Kurt presses a hard kiss to the crook of his neck and pulls back, smiling uncontrollably. “I really am.”
“I can’t believe you,” Blaine cries, his face the most endearing picture of betrayal. “You realise I’m half hard right now.”
Kurt’s breath hitches, laughter ceasing abruptly as he looks down with interest at the obvious shape of Blaine’s cock through tight black cotton. “I’m not sure how I missed that, actually.”
“Probably because you were too busy with your elaborate torture methods.”
“It’s probably for the best,” Kurt says brightly, snapping that the elastic with one finger. “I seriously doubt these would have lived to see another jog if you’d got any more worked up.”
Blaine’s eyes widen and he finally succumbs to a reluctant chuckle of his own. “Jerk.”
“I’m sorry.”
Blaine tips his head back, eyes on the ceiling. “Blaine Anderson, died on a Sunday morning from a terminal case of sexual frustration, may he rest in peace.”
“Do you really think I’m that cruel?” Kurt asks quietly, sliding his hands around Blaine’s smooth waist to knit behind his back. “Because I’m all sweaty now and I could really use a hand in the shower getting every last inch of me clean.”
Blaine’s head snaps down again, swallowing visibly. “Oh, really?”
Kurt nods. “You’re pretty dirty yourself.”
Blaine licks his lips, very obviously not blinking. “We can’t have that, can we?”
The first summer Kurt spends with Blaine is kind of a shock to the system.
Kurt has a boyfriend and that boyfriend is Blaine, and he discovers that boyfriend-Blaine comes complete with dozens and dozens of perks that Kurt hadn’t had the joy of experiencing when Blaine was just friend-Blaine. It turns out there are so many bonuses and benefits to actually dating Blaine.
For one, Blaine has legs. Obviously he has legs, that’s nothing new, but for as long as Kurt’s known him those legs have been wrapped in standard Dalton issue grey slacks, or jeans in multiple colours and unvarying states of tightness.
But as summer emerges in earnest, so do Blaine’s legs. Slight ankles and knobby knees and an inch or so of strong thighs, and a dusting of dark hair that Kurt’s surprised to find he’d like to sit down and investigate with fingers and palms.
A whole other side of Blaine’s wardrobe appears, full of light colours and pinstriped shorts and polo’s as bright as a garden bed. Summer suits him like a second skin, and even more, like the skin he was born to wear.
He uses less product in the sweltering heat, and wears sunglasses that make Kurt wish they were driving a convertible by the sea in the south of France rather than the familiar roads of Lima and Westerville. It’s like Summer opens him up, petals unfurling, and in light of it Kurt forgets almost every reservation he has in regards to prolonged exposure to the sun.
It makes him bloom too, basking in the experience of being in Lima and free of school and most obligations in a way he hasn’t since he was a child.
They go on dozens of drives, air conditioner blasting and vanilla chapstick constantly being passed between them in the cool, dry air of the car. The taste of it on his own lips mingles with Blaine’s whenever they kiss, and he’ll forever associate the flavour with kisses stolen in privacy they always have to strive to make for themselves.
Picnics become a weekly habit, and Kurt digs a wicker and gingham basket from his childhood from the back of the hall closet to complete the picture. It’s whimsical, but then again, since he and Blaine finally started dating, Kurt’s discovered that he has ample room in his life for moments of whimsy.
There’s one particular spot that they find when they venture out of the car to explore on one of their more adventurous drives that becomes Kurt’s favourite place in Ohio.
It’s a rocky patch by a small, burbling river, surrounded by leggy trees and free from any signs of civilisation, let alone the chance of being disturbed by other human beings. They spread out a blanket in the shade, sharing slightly dry sandwiches and drinking soda straight from the bottle. Kurt watches Blaine’s neck stretched taut as he swallows and learns a little more about his endless depths of longing.
He’s surprised by just how much he wants Blaine. It’s something he never thought he’d be surprised by again, but every minute spent together further cements just how solid his love for this bright, cheerful, layered boy is. How deep he’s wriggled his way into his heart, and how permanently he’s curled there.
Luckily being alone means being themselves, and being able to explore, and they test their physical comfort levels with hands, lips, and words.
He sits by Blaine’s side and finally finds out what the coarse hairs on Blaine’s legs feels like with a tentative hand on his knee. They’re softer than he thought they’d be.
Blaine’s fingers tangle in the hair at the back of Kurt’s neck and pull him in to a short, gentle kiss, eyes shining and wide when he pulls away.
“You’re always so warm,” Kurt whispers, mouth inches from Blaine’s. “Is it okay if – can we lie down?”
Blaine smiles, legs unfolding as he lowers himself back onto his elbows and blinks up at Kurt. “Like this?”
“Yes,” Kurt breathes, and carefully stretches out on his side, keeping a deliberate space of air between them as he leans in and kisses Blaine again.
Blaine’s mouth is sweet and slightly sticky, and his tongue hot and slick when it brushes against Kurt’s own. Kurt opens his eyes just long enough to see the thick, dark fan of Blaine’s lashes on his flushed cheeks, and his lets out a tiny sound on his next breath when Blaine’s hand finds its way to his waist and rests there heavily. He can feel the heat of it burning through his thin shirt, coiling up his spine and deep in his stomach, and he deepens the kiss for a moment, eventually breaking away with deep, laboured breaths.
“Is this okay?” Blaine’s hand moves further around his back, fingers bunching the fabric briefly in question.
“So okay,” Kurt nods erratically, swallowing thickly. “Blaine.”
“You can touch me too,” Blaine says quietly, voice low. “If you want to.”
He does. God, he does, like his hands are drawn to the planes of Blaine chest and the curve of his shoulders, hooking around and anchoring as he boldly lowers himself to Blaine and dangerously opens himself up to the draw and joys of kissing chest to chest.
By the time they pack up and head back to the car his head is swimming, jaw aching a little and both of their clothes conspicuously, wonderfully wrinkled.
They hold hands over the console as Kurt drives, and when they kiss goodbye in the twilight in Blaine’s driveway, Kurt can almost imagine the midday sun still clinging to Blaine’s skin, and lingering glowingly on his lips.
The next summer they’ve grown in every way, individually and together, and Kurt again eagerly watches as Blaine’s skin darkens under the touch of the season into a stunning biscuity gold.
They venture back to their old spot by the river with a new knowledge of each other’s bodies, and the weight of Kurt’s uncertain future plans still hanging over them and barely being held at bay by Blaine’s constant and touching support and optimism.
If there’s one thing Kurt’s learnt about Blaine in a year, it’s that he’s contagious and almost impossible to resist.
It’s for that reason and that reason only that Kurt finds himself getting talked into swimming.
Well, that and the incredibly persuading sight of Blaine as he grins and strips his shirt off, emerging with ruffled hair and broad chest and narrow waist.
Kurt shucks his shoes off and watches as Blaine pushes his jeans down his legs and clumsily hops out of them.
“I bet you anything this is the one time a party of girl scouts decides to take a walk through this part of the woods,” he deadpans, unable to shake the slight feeling of exposure at undressing outside in broad daylight.
“That’s not going to happen,” Blaine laughs, and Kurt’s eyes widen when he hooks his fingers into his underwear and discards them too.
“Are you serious?” he asks, mouth dry and eyes drawn to every inch of Blaine’s bare body, not so subtly lingering between his legs where his soft cock hangs, dark and gorgeous.
“I’ve never been skinny dipping,” Blaine shrugs. “Hate to waste the opportunity while I have it.”
“God,” Kurt groans, and before he can talk himself out of it, he pushes his jeans and underwear down his legs in one go, and strides straight for the water.
It’s worth it for the way Blaine’s face lights up.
The river is only about four metres across at its widest, and the water barely reaches the top of their thighs.
It’s freezing. And possibly the worst idea Blaine’s ever had, but Blaine steps close and wraps his arms around Kurt’s waist, and he almost forgets that he can’t feel his toes.
Blaine kisses his cheek softly, and murmurs, “I’m glad you’ve seen my dick under more flattering circumstances. I think it’s about to disappear.”
Kurt hides his face in Blaine’s neck and shakes with laughter. “Can we get out now? I’m worried mine’s going to fall off.”
Blaine snorts. “I’d actually never forgive myself if that happened.”
Then sun’s warm on their skin, and Blaine’s warmer above him as they lay on the blanket to dry, and Kurt closes his eyes against the dappled shade and gives in to the primal sensation of being naked and breeze kissed while Blaine’s lips drag over his chest.
The next summer is a relief. It feels like a long exhale after held breath. A rebirth, older and wiser and with more mistakes and discoveries under his and Blaine’s belts than he ever could have foreseen.
Blaine’s hand in his feels more vital than it ever has. There were a few months not long ago when every touch between them had felt heavy with forgiveness and apology, but now they just feel like an anchor and a promise.
The two of them stumbled, and tore themselves apart and drifted, but they clawed their way together again to best friends and boyfriends, and on Kurt’s return to Lima, they make their way back to the river.
There’s the blanket and the picnic basket, and the addition of quiet music drifting from Blaine’s portable speakers, but there’s also condoms and lube, and hands with more purpose than they’ve ever dared to express in this location before.
Undressing comes quickly, and Kurt’s on his back with Blaine’s mouth around him before either of them have a chance to change their minds.
Kurt doesn’t want to. He wants Blaine and he wants to share this, and he wants to share it here.
His head falls back when Blaine dips to lick across the soft skin of his balls, eyes on the stark blue of the sky and chest heaving a gasp.
“I didn’t know if we’d ever come back here,” he gasps, Blaine’s hands hooking behind Kurt’s knees and guiding them to bend, feet flat on the ground. “If we’d ever come here together again.”
Blaine rises to press a kiss to Kurt’s belly, resting his cheek there as he murmurs. “We’re okay now. We’ll come here every year if you want to. We’ll be fine now.”
Kurt believes him. There’s a rock digging into his back and the sun hits his eyes with every erratic shift of the branches above them, but the sky is blue and they’re alone, and Kurt knows everything will be alright in the long run. If they care for it, it will be wonderful.
Blaine’s tongue is hot and eager at his hole, around and shallowly inside while Blaine’s hands spread and smooth his flesh. His fingers are thick and lazy, and Kurt doesn’t bother to hold back his moans and sighs with every perfect drag.
He watches as Blaine rolls a condom on and slicks his hard length with a hiss of relief, and holds his eyes as he props himself above Kurt and rubs the blunt head of his cock over Kurt’s entrance in an agonising tease. When he finally pushes in it’s with one steady push, and Kurt cries out because he can, arms looped around Blaine’s shoulders and nails scratching lightly at his skin.
It’s fast and sweaty, and Blaine’s hair hangs wrecked in curls around his forehead as he works inside him, arms straining in Kurt periphery. The only word that leaves Blaine’s mouth is Kurt’s name, stuttered and desperate and wracked with pleasure, and fire coils in Kurt’s belly before he has a chance to brace for it, coming with wide open eyes and a shocked gasp across his belly in stripes and untouched as Blaine’s thrusts grow more erratic.
When Blaine comes it with a cut off grunt, Kurt’s grateful for the weight of his body when he collapses on top of him, panting and spent.
He strokes the length of Blaine’s back absently, tired and blissful, and vaguely contemplates the mess between them, and Blaine’s cock softening inside him.
They’ll clean up in the river, hands on each other’s bodies. They’ll dry off and get dressed and if Kurt has any say in it they’ll lie together and kiss for a little longer. They’ll be tired and creased, and Kurt already knows it will be the most beautiful feeling in the world. Together and imperfect, and perfectly aware of it, and finally at peace with the knowledge of it.
He has little love left for Lima, but he loves Blaine and he loves this place. The two of them have seen thick and thin, and over the last year mostly the latter, and their little spot by the river has remained as unspoiled and precious as Kurt believes their love has.
He’ll drag Blaine back here again. Or maybe Blaine will drag him, but he already knows they’ll come back here, changed and unchanged, thick or thin.
anon mini prompt: anderbros - cooper baking cookies for kurt
“Is there a reason why you’re in the kitchen with my big brother instead of in my bedroom with me?” Blaine pads into the kitchen, arms crossed. “Me, your boyfriend?”
Kurt looks up smiling from where he’s leaning against the kitchen island, holding his arm out when Blaine steps close and coiling it around his waist. “Coop’s making cookies.”
He clears his throat lightly. “Hate to break it to you Coop, but I’m pretty sure the Anderson baking gene skipped right over you.”
Cooper sighs heavily and lets the spoon fall into the bowl, standing back and eyeing it suspiciously with his hands on his hips. “I gotta say, Martha Stewart made this look a lot easier than it is.”
Kurt turns to Blaine and soundlessly mouths, “Martha Stewart?”
Blaine rolls his eyes, and chants, “Rule number six of breaking into the business,” Coop’s head snaps up, beaming as Blaine dryly recites. “Be prepared to spend weeks on end sitting on the couch watching daytime television while diligently waiting for call-backs.”
“To be fair that one’s more of a side effect of breaking into the business, but it’s still good to know,” Coop shrugs. “And look at it this way, if anyone ever asks me to play Martha Stewart, I’m set.”
Kurt barely supresses a smile, pinching Blaine’s side playfully. “Or Ellen.”
Coop groans, head falling back. “God, I’d out-Ellen Ellen herself.”
“How... avante garde,” Kurt says slowly, voice shaking slightly, and Blaine ducks his head into his shoulder to hide his own uncontrollable grin.
“Rule thirteen of breaking into the business,” Coop chirps brightly.
Blaine looks back up, blinking rapid fire and taking a deep breath to steady himself. “Don’t say can I? Say I can.”
“That’s my boy,” Cooper booms, grabbing hold of the spoon again and only managing to dislodge it from the cement-like dough after some vigorous wiggling and levering.
“Whose rules are they, exactly?” Kurt asks carefully, watching Coop’s progress with a raised eyebrow.
“Cooper Jay Anderson, tried and tested,” Cooper says proudly, holding the spoon up and critically eyeing the mixture caked onto it. “I’m thinking of looking for a publisher, I have a feeling it could be a money maker if they market it right. Maybe put my face on the cover, right in the –”
“Coop,” Blaine interrupts warily. “Is that cornflour?”
“Mm?” Cooper squints at the packet Blaine’s pointing at, lying on its side and spilling its contents amongst the detritus. “Oh, yeah. I couldn’t find the plain flour, so I thought cornflour, plain flour, what’s the difference, they’re both white. What would Martha do?”
Blaine lets out a high exasperated sound. “Martha would go to the store and buy plain flour and follow the recipe instead of trying to kill everyone in the house with her suddenly non-existent ability to bake.”
Coop frowns. “Improvisation is the first step to genius, squirt.”
Blaine takes Kurt’s hand and begins leading him out of the kitchen away from the imminent disaster area. “I’m pretty sure it’s not.”
“Rule number ten of breaking into the business, Blaine.”
“I don’t want to hear it, Coop.”
He calls after them. “Don’t be afraid to try new things. Hey, where are you going?”
Blaine turns in the doorway. “Out for ice-cream,” he takes one last look at the mess in the kitchen, and adds. “We’ll let you come if you promise to throw all of this away as soon as we get back.”
“Alright,” Cooper grins, wiping his hands on his jeans and rounding the island. “I call shotgun.”
“Coop.”
“Can’t argue with shotgun, Blaine,” Cooper squeezes between he and Kurt and slings his arms around their shoulders. “I’m not sure what number it is, but that’s definitely a rule of life.”
Kurt dreams about Blaine, Blaine gets a phone call
post 4x14, i guess i just wanted Kurt and Blaine to talk some shit out. kind of angsty, kind of hopeful. thank you to lovely heyblaine and Jen for reading through and cheerleading *u*
For a long bleary moment Blaine thinks the loud chirping of his phone is the alarm he sets to wake himself up every morning. He rolls over, legs tangling in the sheets as he paws at his nightstand, and god he always feels so old in the mornings. It’s like he ages overnight, knees seizing up and half his brain cells evacuating his skull, leaving him sluggish and stupid.
He’s one swipe away from blindly shutting off the piercing sound before he realises that it’s actually ringing, rubbing an eye as he flops onto his back again and holding the bright screen above his face, blinking at it in the dim of his room.
“Hello?” his voice is thick with sleep and careful with anticipation.
“Hi, Blaine,” he sounds as poised and lovely as ever. How is it that two words from one person still have the power to send him into such a tailspin? Kurt’s clear, controlled tone, slightly breathy down the phone line and coiling through Blaine’s bones. “Did I wake you up?”
Blaine quickly covers the mouthpiece to clear the last of the night’s grit from his throat. “No, it’s fine. I was just getting up.”
Kurt hums, amused. “Liar.”
“Fine, you got me,” Blaine tugs his quilt a little further up his chest, settling into his pillows. “But I still don’t mind.”
“I’ve never known anyone as bad at waking up as you are,” he can hear the smile in Kurt’s voice. “And I lived with morning-zombie Finn for two years, so that’s saying something.”
Blaine can’t decide if the familiarity in the statement is more sweet than it is painful. A reminder of what they had and what they were and what they shared, and how precious that was, or a kick in the teeth of why and how that ended. Their trustingly concrete future that cracked apart like pavement over the roots of an ancient tree.
“I’m a teenager,” he grumbles, rubbing at one eye with a clenched fist. “It’s allowed.”
“Mhm,” Kurt says absently, immediately falling silent again.
The silence stretches on, Blaine laying entirely still, even the sound of his breath dipping lower as he waits for Kurt to elaborate on why he’s calling so early.
When Kurt doesn’t speak up, he carefully ventures. “Is there – did you want me to check in with Burt for you again? Because I’m already going around to your place for dinner with he and Carole on Friday if you want me to call you afterwards with the impartial intel.”
“No, no, that’s – I mean, yes, that’d be great, but –” he trails off, and Blaine can hear him let out a long exhale before he speaks again, his voice perfectly steady and perfectly neutral. “You were in my dream last night.”
Blaine’s eyebrows raise involuntarily and his heart rolls over in his chest; ever faithful hound.
“Oh,” he says, unsure of what else to say.
“Mm, you were the first thing I thought of when I woke up. The phone call was kind of an impulse,” he laughs thinly. “I probably should have thought it through a little more.”
“No, it was a good impulse,” Blaine rushes. “I really don’t mind. I never do.”
“Okay. Thank you,” Kurt says quietly, and Blaine bites back the urge to insist it’s me Kurt, you don’t have to be so damn polite.
Instead he rolls onto his side, phone cradled between ear and pillow, and asks, “What was the dream?”
Kurt doesn’t answer straight away, and when he does his voice is distant and thoughtful, and Blaine can picture the exact expression on his face. Gazing sightlessly into space, lips slightly parted, beautiful and still. “I can’t remember.”
“Not at all?” he prompts.
“You know how they slip away,” Kurt’s reply comes stronger, full attention returning. “I think we were in New York, though.”
A hard lump forms in Blaine’s throat. “Oh.”
“Yeah,” Kurt says slowly, and Blaine thinks he can hear the sound of sheets rustling in the background in the long pause that follows. “Blaine?”
Blaine closes on hand in his sheets and holds on tight, feeling an inexplicable need to ground himself. “Kurt.”
“You know the wedding?”
Blaine blinks. That hotel room, Kurt’s hands pressing hard on Blaine’s hips and his mouth around his cock as he arched off the mattress and openly groaned Kurt’s name, muscles seizing and body curling around Kurt’s head as he came. How could he possibly forget the wedding?
“Of course.”
Kurt breathes out through his nose. “Why did we do that?”
A kind of vicious panic claws its way up Blaine’s rib cage, a dull nausea settling in the pit of his stomach. “What do you mean?”
“Just friends,” Kurt says, brittle as spun glass. “Why did we keep saying that? I know I didn’t mean it. I’m pretty sure you didn’t mean it. Did you?”
Blaine swallows dryly, his heart fluttering in his chest like a drum roll. “No.”
“And you knew I didn’t mean it.” It isn’t a question.
“Yes. Or – I’d hoped it wasn’t all in my head.”
“It wasn’t,” Kurt continues, “So we both knew we were lying to ourselves and each other, but we kept saying it anyway. Like some kind of make-believe. Why did we do that?”
Blaine bites down on his bottom lip once, hard. “I don’t know. I guess. I was scared. And I guess I’ll maybe never stop feeling in the wrong about all this. Us,” part of him wants to hang up. Turn his phone off and throw it across the room and steer as far away from this terrifying, essential, overdue conversation as humanly possible. To just keep lying. “I didn’t want to push you, and – and I didn’t want the only time I’d seen you since Christmas to be difficult and painful. I was being selfish.”
“No, you weren’t,” Kurt cuts in. “I wanted that too. I wanted to be with you and I wanted to forget why it should probably have hurt more than it did. I didn’t want us to hurt anymore. Just for a little while. I know you feel like the ball’s in my court. I shouldn’t have abused that, I’m sorry.”
“No, Kurt, it’s not –”
Kurt interrupts. “We keep doing this. Every time we have a communication breakdown we promise we won’t do it again, and it just comes back to haunt us like we haven’t learned anything, and like the warning signs aren’t glaringly obvious by now. And this time we knew what we needed to talk about it and instead of actually confronting it and talking it out we fell into bed together and just kept lying through our grins.”
Blaine clenches his eyes against the tell-tale prickle, and says firmly, defiantly. “I don’t regret that.”
“Neither do I,” Kurt says immediately, and Blaine lets out a fraction of the breath he’s holding. “There’s literally nowhere else I’d rather have been than in that hotel room with you. But we shouldn’t have taken the easy way out. It’s like we’re always so worried that tearing the bandaid off will hurt more than dragging things out and letting them stew. Why are we always so afraid of ruining things that we’d rather let them fall apart by degrees? And god, it’s not like we could have made things worse. We should have talked, Blaine.”
Blaine inhales shakily. “Yeah. Yeah, I guess we should have.”
There’s a long stretch of hissing silence, then Kurt sniffs lightly. “Have we really fucked each other up?”
“What?” Blaine almost cries. “No. You’re still the best thing that’s ever happened to me Kurt, nothing’s going to change that.”
“I kind of feel like I have. Fucked up. You,” barely above a whisper, and Blaine strains to catch every last inflection. “I feel like you’ve been waiting for me, and you’ll just keep waiting for me until I say stop, and I don’t want to do that to you.”
It’s an active struggle for Blaine to speak, rusted gears churning reluctantly into motion. “Do you want to say stop?”
“No,” it comes out in a burst, the hint of a dry sob behind it, a bullet from a gun. “You’re my best friend. Even the idea of cutting ties with you completely so we can get over each other makes me sick, I can’t imagine not talking to you or seeing you or sharing things with you, I’m so selfish.”
“You’re really not,” Blaine rasps, instinctively shaking his head. “You’re really, really not, I don’t know what I’d do.”
“You have friends at McKinley, Blaine.”
“I know,” desperately. “I know, and they’re amazing, and now that I have them I can’t imagine what I’d do without them either, but they don’t have what we have and they don’t know me like you do, and even if I found someone else who did, and spent years falling in love with them and learning everything about them, why wouldn’t I want to share that with you?”
Blaine hears a shiver of breath over the line. “I still love you, Blaine.”
Blaine’s breath catches, and this time when he squeezes his eyes shut a few tears force themselves free, and trickle down his nose. “I love you too.”
“I don’t know what to do with that,” Kurt breathes. “Part of me is telling me you hurt me and you broke my trust, and I should just keep moving forwards, because that’s what people do when they get their hearts broken, right?”
Blaine whispers, “I don’t know.”
“Me neither. I’ve never done this before, it’s all theoretical, it’s all magazine logic, ‘don’t allow the person who burnt you to burn you again,’ and it’s all so black and white. But it doesn’t feel black and white anymore. The rest of me is saying that my chest still aches when I see your name in my contact list, and I still wonder every day how you’re doing and how you’re coping, and I still have dreams about you and wake up hard.”
Blaine swallows, and can’t resist asking. “Is that – did that happen this morning?”
“No,” Kurt says distractedly. “It was different this time.”
A persistent heat still settles in Blaine’s cheeks in light of Kurt still thinking of him that way, apparently heedless of Blaine anxiety
When Kurt speaks again his hesitation is clear. “Are you waiting for me, Blaine?”
Blaine curls his knees up a little closer to his chest and wills the cold sweat and the inexplicable terror he feels to abate. Why is opening up and being wilfully honest still the hardest thing in the world to him, even to the one person in the world he feels easiest with? It’s like a mental fight or flight, where all he wants to do is close his mouth and close his eyes and never be held accountable for the bone deep, irresistible things he feels.
He makes himself respond, tearing through that uninvited wall in his brain. “I’ve tried to tell myself I’m not. I thought maybe if I told myself I could move on then it would happen. Maybe it still would.”
“Blaine?”
“I’m still waiting.”
Kurt sighs, long and loud. “Me too,” Blaine grimaces against the fresh tears that creep past his eyelids. “I thought. Maybe that made me weak, not being able to say no to you even after – what you did. And a huge part of me still feels like I need to rationalise it to myself and figure out why I’d put myself in a position where you might do that to me again.”
“I won’t,” Blaine whispers. “I won’t, Kurt. I won’t.”
“I think I know that,” Kurt says wearily. “It’s so exhausting. Weighing up what I want with what I should be wary of. But I don’t want to spend the rest of my life being careful with you, and if I took that mentality into a new relationship I’d never let myself take risks again and I’d never let myself be vulnerable, and I need that. I don’t want to close myself off, and I don’t want to do it to you anymore.”
Blaine purses and licks his lips, quickly gathering himself as best he can. “So, what happens now?”
“Do you think we can get past this?”
Blaine doesn’t need to think, but he means it with stark honesty. “Yes. I don’t – I doubt it’s going to be easy,” he exhales sharply through his nose. “I kind of feel like we’d reached a point where we automatically expected it to be easy and we weren’t prepared to cope when it wasn’t. It’ll probably be insanely hard, and maybe things will get worse before they get better, but I think it’ll be worth it. I think we’re worth it. I know you’re worth it. Do you?”
“Yes,” quiet but fortified. “Do you think we can be together without making the same mistakes?”
Blaine looks up, steeling himself. Communication. You have to start somewhere. “If you mean cheating on you, then yes. I can promise you, hand on heart, that won’t happen again. But mistakes in general – do you think that’s a credible aim for us to set right now? Or ever?” he asks. “We’ll never be perfect. I don’t want us to slip up again, and maybe we will, but neither of us are going to actively try to. Are we?”
“No.”
“Mistakes happen,” his mouth quirks into a humourless half smile. “We’re going to argue and we’re probably going to hate each other sometimes, I just think we need to figure out a more sustainable method of dealing with that and work things out from there.”
“No. No, you’re right,” Kurt says. “We can do that.”
“Yeah. I think so too. But,” he takes a deep breath and forces himself to keep talking despite every inch of himself wanting to rebel against the words. “Maybe we should wait a little bit longer.”
“Until you graduate?” Kurt hums a resigned affirmative.
“I don’t think we should jump back into long distance,” Blaine offers. “It’s only a few months until I’m out of here. If we’re going to do this, given that we have the choice, I’d like to hold on if you will,” he huffs out a weak burst of laughter. “I mean, there are things to work out still. I like to think it’ll keep, or we’re already in trouble.”
“We’re still best friends,” Kurt perks up in an obvious attempt to liven the mood. “We still have Skype and phones and email. And carrier pigeons.”
Blaine chuckles wetly and reaches for his nightstand to pluck a tissue and dab at his nose. “Please send me a pigeon.”
Kurt laughs quietly. “Don’t cry.”
Blaine swipes under his eyes. “You were crying too.”
“I know, but I’ve had almost twenty years to get used to it,” he pauses. “Are you still crying?”
Blaine snorts, clamping the tissue over his nose. “No, don’t coddle me.”
“Are you okay, though?”
“I will be,” he lifts his suddenly leaden wrist to check his watch. “God, it’s not even eight.”
“I’m sorry. Impulse,” Kurt says sheepishly. “I kind of want to sleep for the rest of the day now.”
“Are you okay?” Blaine ventures.
“Yeah,” Kurt says, like he’s rolling the thought around in his brain, relieved to find that he actually is. “I am. We’ve probably only just scratched the surface, and there’s still a lot we need to talk about, but yeah. I feel good. Better, at least.”
“I’m glad,” Blaine says, his body uncoiling all at once after what feels like hours of clenched muscles, leaving him alarmingly kitten-weak. “I’m glad you dreamed about me.”
Kurt clears his throat lightly. “Mm. I was kissing you.”
Blaine’s heart tries to lodge in his throat. “What?”
“In the dream. I was kissing you.”
“I thought you said you couldn’t remember it.”
Kurt hums shortly. “That part was kind of hard to forget.”
Blaine closes his eyes and tugs his blankets up to his chin, feeling the beginnings of a headache creeping up to punish him for crying. “One day you’re going to have to tell me about these dreams. In detail.”
Kurt clucks his tongue. “I don’t want to get ahead of ourselves, but hopefully one day I can show you.”
“I’d like that,” Blaine smiles, loose and easy and for himself as much as Kurt. “I really hope so too.”
