a system of touch (3/6)
masterpost
July 2010 cont.
Later on, when the sun has fully set and Kurt has drank clean through about half his bottle of Limoncello, he finds himself lying sprawled on his back in the sand, drunk enough to stand uncaring about the sand gritting into the fibers of his shirt and collecting in the tops of his boots. His bottle is re-capped and lying in the sand beside him, smelling strongly of lemon sugar and mixing intoxicatingly with the hot salt in the air. It really should be suffocating him, like it would on any other day, but mostly he just feels so goddamn relaxed.
He feels a jostle of his particularly woozy worldview when a body drops to the sand next to him, sprawling out as well so that their sides line up like jagged pieces of a puzzle thrown haphazardly to the floor. Kurt looks over and it’s just Blaine, who’s soaked and laughing and smells like strong soap and salt. His hair is wet but still somehow looping, a few wavy curls dripping down across his forehead. His left arm is stuck as a pillow under the back of Blaine’s head, but for the moment he could honestly care less. If he moved right now he feels like he might just melt back into the sand and travel like sweet syrup across the gulf.
“Hey Blaine,” he says, still staring up at the cloudless dark, imaging the laughter of the girls down the beach a ways.
“Hmm?” Blaine’s voice sounds sleepy and low, like he’s been swallowing salt water for the past four hours. He probably has, really, if Kurt thinks about it, since after a bit the girls had become quite fond of hoisting him up into their grasp and tossing him into the swell.
“Someone left a Hemingway at my house, I think it’s yours-“ Kurt feels Blaine’s hand shifting around from where it lays between their thighs and it leaves a slow burn against the scratch of his jeans, “from earlier-we could go.” He thumbs a lazy finger in the direction of the condo, just a few minutes or so down the beachside, and he feels Blaine’s head shift against his arm to follow the motion.
“Hmm, yeah-sure,” Blaine drawls out, the crinkling of his empty plastic cup echoing in the faint calm of the night, “Sure.”
Kurt feels Blaine shift as he climbs lightly to his feet, stumbling only for a moment, and Kurt stays on his back until Blaine shows up in his field of vision, having slid his sandals back on and now standing over Kurt, rubbing a hand through his wet hair and plucking interestedly at his shirt. He holds up a hand, meaning to put it back down and hoist himself up on his own, but Blaine grabs onto it and his attached wrist with firm grip and pull him to his feet with a soft grunt. Once up, Kurt begins to feel out his mobility, walking forward down the beach on heavy legs, and Blaine laughs from behind him, catching up and stopping Kurt for a moment to brush the sand from where it’s coating him all up and down his back and legs.
“Stay still, one sec,” he says, brushing Kurt with light hands, and Kurt chokes hot when Blaine’s hands brush down across the jeans covering his ass and thighs before stepping back to assess his work, “mm, much better.”
--
They walk the rest of the way through the stiff sand near the tide line, barely talking and mostly swinging back and forth together like weak magnets, their hips touching. When they reach the path that Kurt is pretty sure leads up to the back gate of the complex, Blaine trips on the up step and ends up tucked into Kurt’s side, small and warm with Kurt muttering a soft ‘hey, hey, careful cowboy,’ as Blaine stumbles.
The trip up to Kurt’s landing is just as tedious, with Blaine laughing into Kurt’s neck as he catches a hip on the floor’s balcony railing and inadvertently jostles them both into the wall in a way that makes Kurt shush sharply at him. Blaine only laughs harder.
“Shut up--,” Kurt hisses, jiggling the key in the jamb until it breaks free and the door pushes open, “I don’t know who’s sleeping.” At that, he ushers Blaine inside and peeks out the door for a quick cursory check before shutting it softly behind him. When he looks over Blaine is just leaning against the back of the couch, his ass perched up on the backrest. It’s at that moment that Kurt thanks god his grandmother splurged on a waterproof upholstery. He does not want to deal with the water stains from Blaine’s soaked through ass in the morning.
“Stay right there,” he orders, holding a hand out like he’s getting a dog to sit perched and still while he walks to his room. Blaine makes a vague noise of approval. “I’ll be right back, okay?”
“Right back, yep-“ Blaine is mostly just looking around the room, at the walls, the carpet, the pinstripes of the drapes, and then back down at his messed clothes, “I’ll just be holding down the underwater fort in here.”
Kurt pockets his key and walks back to where his room is, debating on whether or not the decision to bring Blaine here like this was entirely rational in the first place. It’s not that Blaine’s drunk and he’s afraid of waking anyone, neither of them are that toasted, really-but when he’d meant to suggest they come back here he hadn’t exactly meant to put out with the excuse he’d given. It was pretty idiotic-he doesn’t actually think he has a Hemingway novel on him this year, let alone any copy of Blaine’s. He wishes he’d thought of a better way to get Blaine back here, or maybe that he’d just had the balls to lay over him right there in the sand like he’s spent time doing with so many other tipsy boys at so many other parties.
He stands in the doorway for another few minutes scooping at his hair and picking at his fingernails before he figures it’s safe to give excuse, and then walks back down the hall and out into the foyer empty handed, saying “I don’t know where it ended up-it was on my bed this afternoon,” Blaine looks up from his lap and his eyes are dusty and damp in the soft lamp light. Kurt has to do this. It’s becoming ridiculous. “Maybe my grandmother picked it up-we can uh,”
“Kurt,” Blaine’s voice is so measured when he speaks, his eyes so steady like he hadn’t spent the last fifteen minutes tripping into Kurt’s side. Kurt stops speaking and looks up at him, “My Hemingway is in my Grandparents’ car.” A beat passes after this and Kurt feels the tension encompassing him so much that he wants to reach out and smash it with his fists, to grab it in his fingers and tug until it relents. Blaine just keeps looking at him like he expects an answer he already knows.
“Oh, um-I guess I was,” Blaine hops down off the couch and brushes at his pants, walking to the door, Kurt following after, “it was probably my grandmother’s in the first place-I must’ve mistaken.” He feels his grip slipping on the situation. This is so backwards in all the ways he can imagine-he’s been the pursued, but he’d never had a problem following through on a pursuit before. Is this even a pursuit? Whatever it was intended to be, it certainly is one now-there’s no way he’ll ever get over the crushing, idiotic way that Blaine sticks in his head if he doesn’t let himself just-
Kurt pulls the door open by the latch handle and slips outside ahead of Blaine who’s saying, “No, no-it’s fine--,” as he slides out past Kurt, Kurt’s hand still tight on the door to close it and Blaine’s breath hot in the space between them and that’s when Kurt does it. He brings a free hand up to slide against the wall, bracketing Blaine and suddenly he’s so so close and he’s got Blaine backed against the cold, stucco brick. The door clicks closed with a click they don’t hear over the sound of their mingled breaths and Blaine just looks up at him with some look that makes his eyes look endless and his eyelashes look like tiny fans, wet and peaked, and Kurt just presses down in a rush and kisses him.
Blaine’s mouth tastes like salt water taffy and the lemon from Kurt’s tongue and Kurt bites at his lower lip, bringing a hand up to curl in Blaine’s wet hair and tug like he’d been wanting on the sand earlier that day. It’s been swirling in him, the need to just take and take and grab and now that he’s done it, now that he’s bringing both hands up to cradle Blaine’s head and hair in his palms and Blaine’s groaning neatly into his mouth at the light tug, he just can’t stop.
The tang of the alcohol on Blaine’s mouth reminds him of kissing Ryan and staring up at Blaine’s mouth and how he could’ve kissed it then but didn’t and all of the times that he could have but didn’t and now he has and now is the best possible time for this. He’s got just enough pent up, just enough latent energy surging through his hands and his mouth as he traces at the seam of Blaine’s lips and feels the nip of his upper teeth when he relents that this works, is working, Blaine around him his hands in Blaine’s hand and Blaine’s crawling against his back and up against his neck as they kiss here in the humming balcony light like two buzzing insects meeting at the center of an electrical charge.
“Mmmf,” Blaine groans out, smacking his mouth back with a final suck of Kurt’s bottom lip, “What about that guy-“ They’re not far away enough for Kurt to really stop, and he pushes his mouth along Blaine’s jaw, biting at the curve, “Ryan.” Blaine lets out the name with a loud exhale and a shift of his legs that intertwines them with Kurt’s.
“Not my boyfriend,” Kurt mumbles out between kisses and bites of the skin at the juncture of Blaine’s neck where it’s got a slight tooth to it from a not so close shave. Blaine groans again, lips falling open, and Kurt brings his mouth back up to meet them, tracing his tongue against Blaine’s in a way that makes his head start to spin again. He can feel their chest pressing together now, the wet of Blaine’s shirt soaking through Kurt’s dry one and Kurt can’t even bring himself to care, instead cursing out a soft ‘shit’ as Blaine bites down particularly hard.
After a few seconds, Kurt crowds him in even further, their bodies pressed flush all along the lengths of them and Kurt knows it’s getting stupidly out of hand for a first kiss out in the open Florida air, even if it’s not really a technical first, and it is past midnight, but he can’t bring himself to stop for the moment.
At least, he can’t until Blaine does.
Blaine pushes him back lightly, separating their mouths with a wet smack that makes Kurt gasp out into the warmth of the air and ducking out from under Kurt’s arm. “Um, I have to-“ Blaine stammers, and Kurt hasn’t at all caught up, his eyes focused on the deep red flush of Blaine’s lips, the cut of his teeth and the wild dark of his eyes, “I should-I should really get home.”
He slips fully out of Kurt’s space and Kurt just stands dazed, watching as Blaine slips both down into the stairwell and out through the back gate, his eyes wide like full moons and his head suddenly clear of its tipsy haze. After a second he begins to feel the pooling warmth all through his body start to ebb away and he reaches up with unsteady hands to touch at his reddened mouth. It’s still warm.
--
Kurt steps into Gulf Coast Creamery the next day and his father is just saying goodbye.
“Okay, dad--,” he’s saying, “Yes, yes-of course I’ll let you know-love you.” He slides the call to disconnect and pockets his phone. The inside of the shop looks stupidly the same, really-checked floor, glass counters-and he’s forever going to be disdaining the horrible choices of attire that are those glow stick pink uniforms, but at least Blaine, who is currently rushing around behind the counter with some old lady’s triple cone, his hair flopping onto his forehead under the brim of his hat, is looking charming regardless. Kurt never thought the day would come when he’d find someone wearing such and immoral use of poly-blend attractive-it has.
He slips carefully into the line behind a group of rowdy middle schoolers who’ll likely get cones and shakes in all kinds of disgusting and fattening flavors-with sprinkles added, even. Kurt wants to shudder at the thought. For five more minutes he stand there, looking down at his phone periodically and ducking sneakily out of sight each time he sees Blaine glance up from the register. Eventually he’s only got a girl in bright green shorts and a hair bow in front of him and Blaine, somehow, still hasn’t really seen him because when the girls moves to the side and he steps forward, Blaine doesn’t so much as look up when he asks, “so what would you like today?”
Kurt jabs a long finger just under his collarbone, sure to get his attention. “You?” he says, lilting his voice up like it’s a question and dragging his finger lightly down the catch of Blaine’s unbuttoned polo shirt. He hopes Blaine can feel the tingle of his nerves all the way down to his toes.
Blaine’s looking up at him now, into his eyes and then down at the finger pressing into his sternum just above his apron, his mouth hanging open and flushed like he’s been biting it all afternoon. “Um-“ he stammers, coughing a bit as Kurt removes his finger, “I don’t think we offer that here.” Kurt watches his face change from a gasp to a slight half-smile like he finds his own comment amusing, like he could charm the ever loving pants off of anyone who came into contact with such a face. He probably could, really-with a bit more practice of course-but he’s clearly been paying attention.
“Mm,” Kurt answers, pulling a delicate hand back to his own chest and running his nails up and down lazily, “I was really looking forward to it, too.” Blaine is looking at him like he wants to laugh and Kurt has to admit it’s kind of funny in a really effective way.
“I get off in ten minutes,” he says instead, smiling in a way that stretches his mouth and makes Kurt want to just fuck it all and kiss him right here in the middle of his workplace.
“I’ll take a soy milkshake then,” Kurt knows he’s probably looking like the cat that got the canary right now, but that’s essentially what he is-one very very satisfied cat. Blaine mixes the shake up in record time, the muscles in his arms and wrists tensing and expanding as he works the soft serve machine. Kurt wants those arms to hold him up, wants Blaine’s hands fit snugly against his waist as they kiss with increasing pressure. When Blaine hands the drink to him over the counter he keeps their fingers touching for longer than is probably necessary, but it’s not as if Blaine is acting much like he minds. Nor does he seem to mind when Kurt puts a small extra swing in his hips on the way to his table.
For the next however long-what feels like hours but is in reality no more than fifteen short minutes-Kurt watches Blaine from his tiny corner of the shop, sipping lightly at his shake as Blaine hustles and bustles around behind the counter, hopping from the shake machine to the blender to the hard-press case with fumbling ease. At one point Kurt watches him drip a smatter of strawberry hard dip and rainbow sprinkles in the open skin of his neck and fails to notice, let alone wipe it off. It’s somehow infuriatingly adorable when Kurt would, as normalcy presides, consider it disgusting.
Eventually Blaine goes back through a large metal door, hands working at the knot on his waist, and comes back out-thank god-apron free. He crosses to what assumes is the door to outside and beckons Kurt over with a two fingered wave. Kurt’s milkshake isn’t even half empty but he tosses it anyway on his way to follow Blaine out the door.
When he gets outside, he finds Blaine leaning back against a dilapidated picnic table with his ankles crossed. “I only have about fifteen minutes, you know--,” he says, eyebrow raised at Kurt in a way that makes Kurt feel like the ante is definitely upped here, “I am working.”
Kurt makes a small hum of understanding and nods slowly as he steps forward, eyes on Blaine’s quirked up mouth and hands reaching out to close in on his back belt loops, hooking his thumbs through. “So,” he’s flicking his eyes back and forth between Blaine eyes that dart around like tiny electrons, to his front teeth gnawing lightly at his lower lip.
Blaine is visibly squirmy under his gaze, rolling his shoulders and shifting his ankles apart and saying, “uh-hi.” Their mouths are so close together that Kurt’s not even touching him but he can taste-salt, sugar cone, strawberry that’s probably from a reject smoothie someone had made-and it’s really only a matter of seconds before he can’t hold his cool any longer and he just leans forward and connects them.
Surprisingly, before he’s even moved a hair’s breadth, Blaine does it for him-connects their lips with a sweet suction that’s before today been reserved for first kisses-of which this is not, and yet it feels deliciously okay to be kissing Blaine like this, kissing softly against a picnic table that’s probably giving Blaine’s ass splinters, the light smack of their lips barely audible in the sweltering summer breeze.
After a few lazy minutes Blaine drags his palms up from Kurt’s hips to his waist, only succeeding in not dragging Kurt’s shirt along because he’d had the genius idea to tuck it in this morning-a fact he’s both lamenting and thanking himself for, taking into consideration that he’s not sure he could handle Blaine’s hands on his bare sides right this minute. Blaine’s cupped hands at the base of his ribs bring with them a rougher version of Blaine’s mouth, one that resembles the faint franticness of last night and one that Kurt cannot complain about in any way whatsoever. When Blaine bites quickly into the meat of Kurt’s lower lip, Kurt licks across the tight seam of Blaine’s mouth and then they’re stepping their legs together like a dance, pushing and pulling with their mouths as Kurt’s thighs wind their way in a close lock between Blaine’s own.
As it goes on that way, the both of them biting teeth and thumbs pressing into the fabric of jeans and t-shirts, Kurt’s legs pressing hot between Blaine’s own to the point that Blaine is forced to spread his own out wider and lift himself a few inches further so he’s fully sat on the table’s edge, feet dangling neatly a few inches from the ground beneath. Kurt doesn’t even pause to disconnect their mouths, then, just crowds in closer once again and listens as Blaine makes a muffled ‘mmph’ into his mouth, his body swelling with the want to just climb knees first into Blaine’s lap and lay him out, kiss him like he’s some misplaced sacrifice to the gods of sickeningly sweet teenage summer romance.
Kurt can feel his gut getting increasingly tighter as it goes on, and he’s almost willing himself to pull back when Blaine pulls back-though only to the point that he’s essentially talking into Kurt’s open mouth-to say, “Only five more minutes.”
“Good enough,” Kurt pants, breath hot both coming and going like the air in his lungs is just the body-warmed by product of Blaine’s own and vice-a-versa. And then he shoots a hand up to cup Blaine’s neck, thumb pressing deep behind his ear in a way that makes Blaine whine low and pleased. Kurt makes a note to make note.
Five minutes is, unfortunately up soon enough and they’re pulling back from each other with reluctantly return kisses, disentangling legs from legs and hands from hair. Blaine laughs softly as he smooths out the wrinkles in his shirt and Kurt raises his hands up to swipe at Blaine’s hair, pulling errant strands back into hat-hair submission. “Gotta work until close tonight,” Blaine says, rubbing at the bridge of his nose with a free hand like he’d rather be doing anything but. Kurt can sympathize-as much as he loves his father, sometimes working eight-hour weekends at the auto shop sucks. “I would say I could hang out later, but-I really can’t.”
Kurt leans forward and kisses him quick and chaste, “Mm, it’s okay-I’ll talk to you tomorrow?”
“Huh? Oh-yeah, yes,” he reaches into Kurt’s pocket and tugs Kurt’s phone out, flicking the screen unlocked and punching in a series of numbers that Kurt assumes is his phone number, “just-uh-text me from there I guess-I’ll punch you into mine whenever that happens.” He hands Kurt back his phone and rubs a hand across the back of his neck like he’s maybe a bit nervous about being so brazen. Kurt watches his eyes dilate from amber to black. “I gotta--,” he thumbs a hand in direction of the door they’d come through and reaches to the side to grip the handle, “I’ll see you.” He then disappears back into the shop and Kurt watches his ass, snug in his tailored black capris-certainly the most redeeming asset of his uniform if you’d ask Kurt-just before the door swings closed.
When Kurt looks back down at his phone in his hand, moments after Blaine’s been gone, he notices that Blaine had aptly keyed in his label name as Blaine! Kurt thinks it apt. His crash into Kurt’s life has been essentially that-an exclamation.
--
“So, I didn’t see you around the pier yesterday-“ Thea eyes him from over her lowered sunglasses like she suspects him of sneaking off to make out with some cuddly drunk of a beach bum, which only half untrue, really. And it’s not as if he wouldn’t have been doing that-were it any of the summer’s previous weekends-but as it were he was mostly just with the making out part and not so much with the specifics of the situation-unless Blaine has some sort of hidden wakeboarding talent that he hasn’t yet let slip, which, for all intents and purposes, he very well could.
“Oh,” he says, flicking his bangs from his face in a move he’s sure he’s done a million times by now, “I was at the ice cream place.”
“By yourself?”
“Talking to Blaine,” She gives him another look over her sunglasses like ‘uh huh, sure’ and Kurt hopes she doesn’t get it in her mind to start questioning him further. At least he has the security of being fairly sure he said it in a manner succinct enough to warrant acceptance. After a beat she settles herself back in her chair, glasses pushed back up to cover closed eyes, and that’s when Kurt hears the skittering and the crash, a familiar voice shouting out a ‘shit, not again’ from not too far away.
Oh, not again he thinks to himself, glad that he’d been too lazy to put the call in on fixing the hedge because he’s sure it’s newly mangled anyway-but he slides reluctantly off of his chair and walks to open the gate, looking down to find Blaine brushing himself off and glancing up at him with a sheepish ‘hey,’ and a scratch of his neck. “You do know you don’t have to do this to get my attention anymore, right?” The hedge is yes, further ruined, but he’s feeling pretty amused.
“Yeah, yeah I do,” he says, fidgeting slightly on his feet, “just figured I’d-you know-for posterity.” He gestures to the clear hole left in the leaves by his bike’s front end and then returns his hand to rubbing back and forth across his neck. Kurt raises an eyebrow, but smiles warmly at him, laughing softly like it’s a private joke between friends-and maybe it is. After a beat, Kurt has a not at all uncommon urge to sweep at Blaine’s waist, tug him over, and kiss him-and he can do that now, at least he thinks he can-but he stops short as Blaine begins to speak again. “Um, I can’t actually stay-“ Kurt’s smile drops slightly, willing his brain to abort the notions he was beginning to have of Blaine spread out over his bed or curled tight into his couch, “promised my grandma I’d restock the fridge today.”
“Oh,” Kurt tries to hide his further decidedly less than pleasant frown at the idea, but Blaine seems to take notice anyhow.
“I was thinking though,” he scrambles to say, “Meet me later-middle beach. I still haven’t run out of shots yet.” The moment Blaine makes mention of that hideous plastic camera, Kurt’s head is swimming with ideas for what on earth he could wear to this-thing. Maybe the prospect of today won’t be turning out so bad after all. They stand there for a few more moments in relative silence and Kurt takes that time to note that Blaine’s lips look especially chapped today, as if that’s all he can stare at. “Well I’d better-“ Blaine thumbs in the direction of the road beyond Kurt’s gate and starts to rock his bike back and forth on its wheels.
“Oh, yes yes-of course,” Kurt says, breaking of his daze as he watches Blaine take what seems to be one last glance down at his newly wet lips before raising his hand in a wave, swinging a leg over his bike and riding off down the sidewalk.
When Kurt turns back to the open gate, he’s met with only Thea’s face-her sunglasses fully removed and a look on her face as though she knows for certain that this secret he’s been carrying around for so long was definitely worth sharing.
“What?” he asks her, sliding himself down into his own lounge chair once again and keeping his eyes on her for an eventual answer. Instead of giving him one, she mostly slides her glasses back up on her nose, lays her hands out-dangling primly off of the lounge arms-, and faces her profile back to the bright beacon of the mid-morning sun.
“Oh nothing,” she’s not even looking at him, but he can feel some half-haughty, half-amused expression being thrown his way, “absolutely nothing.”
--
When Kurt walks down the pier steps of middle beach later that day, Blaine is bent down against the hot pink sunset, camera raised in the direction of a small girl in a dotted dress who keeps spinning in hazy circles, much to Blaine’s apparent amusement. Kurt stops a short distance from them, unseen though he’s in plain sight, and watches with a small smile of contentment as the girl totters up to Blaine and he wraps his arms around her in a tight hug before letting her scurry away down the beach to where her mother rests on a large beach chair.
“You been out here for long?” Kurt walks closer until he’s at length to sit down to Blaine’s immediate left-Blaine looking over to him with wide open eyes like Kurt is fascinating and new and Blaine is the happiest boy in the world to have discovered him from the murky depths. It’s almost enough to make Kurt want to break out into song-though he’s not sure he yet has something in his repertoire for a situation this, well-warm.
“Not really,” Blaine says, fiddling with the dials on his camera, twisting the wheel until the telltale whine of the next frame starts up, “fifteen minutes, maybe-hey look at me.” He raises the camera to his face as Kurt looks at him from over his shoulder, mouth parted and hair out of place in a way that Blaine regrets to mention because he knows Kurt will fix it. Kurt feels like a very small bug under the scrutiny, but Blaine’s second hand warm on his knee grounds him in a wave of calm somehow. And hey-at least the shirt he’d chosen is nice.
“Where do you want me?” he asks, after the scant of a moment has dissipated mostly, though he still feels a slight haze in his own eyes as he speaks the words, like he knows the implications. Blaine apparently does too, as he leans forward with both hands on Kurt’s thigh and when he stops his face is close enough for Kurt to taste the sweetness of his breath on a warm exhale.
“Mmm,” he’s looking Kurt right in the eyes, smiling with amusement, “right here is just fine,” and then he pushes further into Kurt’s body space and his hands, meant to anchor, mostly serve in pressing Kurt to the ground to the point that Blaine is leaning deftly over him, lips wet from stealing a sharp bite of Kurt’s mouth in a fit of giggles on the way down.
“Hey! Hey-“ Kurt yelps, batting at Blaine’s chest as Blaine continues to keep Kurt anchored firmly to the ground, pinning him by the neck with his mouth like he wants to devour him right here in the sand forever. Eventually, Kurt succeeds in batting him off, scrambling up to his feet and running away into the whirling rush of the tide where he spins in big, wide circles-uncaring that Blaine has scrambled up just as fast, camera in hand and wheel spinning to catch the wild exuberance of Kurt at this weird, magic hour of the night time. “I can’t believe I’m doing this!” Kurt screams, voice loud and elated, “these pants were four hundred dollars! They’ll be ruined!” But he doesn’t stop his twirling.
“Fuck your pants!” Blaine is laughing, unable to hold his camera straight as it continues to whine at him. Kurt throws him a haughty middle finger mid-spin and Blaine nearly doubles over, waiting a short beat after his laughter subsides before he toes off his sandals and follows Kurt in, running up to grasp him around the waist in a move that sends Kurt into a whirligig frenzy of long, long limbs and high, tonal laughter.
Once he has Kurt caught, he whisks him forward with an arm until he’s got their chests pressed together and Kurt notes that his own is feeling particularly tight at the close contact. “Hi,” Kurt says, eyes up and down between Blaine’s dancing eyes and his grinning lips, and Blaine leans forward to catch his lips in a quick smacking kiss, only pausing a moment before leaning in for another, “I don’t really think the water is the best place for this.” He’s suddenly hyper aware of the water rushing across their combined ankles and he only vaguely registers Blaine taking ahold of his wrists and pulling him back to semi-dry land.
“We could relocate-“ Blaine says, eyes still doing quick turns and pirouettes and Kurt thinks that he’s slightly mad but his mouth is pink and soft and Kurt doesn’t at all mind in this moment, “I have no qualms.” And Kurt feels it, steady, as he’s tugged further and further to the damp sand beneath their toes, his body toppling onto Blaine’s in a move that feels warm and wet and wonderful and he has the knees of these stupid expensive pants digging into millions of grains of sand but he could care less-time passes and the sun continues to set and Blaine drags him down into one kiss that turns into two and four and ten until Kurt is so dizzy and sated that he can barely remember anything but the mint of Blaine’s lower lip and the salt caked in the base of his hairline and the deliriously languid feel of Blaine’s hands warm and solid against the bared square of his back.
--
Kurt is surrounded by the sounds of raucous laughter.
He and Blaine are sitting criss cross on the floor in some friend of a friend of Thea’s basement, the closing latch to a sort of circle of people who are all varying degrees of really really drunk right now. Even Kurt is feeling a little more bubbly inside than usual-head twisting warmly and vision swimming-Blaine’s hand intertwined hotly with his own the only thing keeping him grounded to the cool slick of the cement. The girl to his immediate left is squealing, then-her hair red and wild and her eyes like saucers as Kurt watches her vibrate from her seat and point a finger at a guy sitting a few seats to Blaine’s left. Kurt watches the guy laugh in turn and then sighs out a warm breath as they kiss sloppily in the center before the boy returns to his seated position and takes a few deep swigs of his beer, mouth red.
The next spin-or flip or deal or whatever on earth they’re playing-is Kurt’s, and he reaches a hand out to take it, watching as the cup swirls around and around before eventually landing in the vague direction of people he probably doesn’t know. From across the circle someone makes an ‘ooo’ noise of amusement, but in the next seconds Kurt watches a hand reach out to tug the cup in Blaine’s direct direction. He follows the offending arm up to where it meets with Blaine’s shoulder and the moment their eyes meet Kurt watches the irises of Blaine’s spark with mischief.
Kurt wants to laugh at the thought that Blaine, even if he is kind of the flirtiest of drunks, is basically scheming some stupid children’s game to kiss him when they could very well be off on their own making out for the next three hours anyhow. Blaine just sits and smirks at him, his lips pink and wet and not too far away. They smell vaguely of beer, which should make Kurt want to reel, but as Blaine tugs him in closer, Kurt can hear drunk, murmured versions of ‘shit, look at them’ and ‘so not fair, they’re so hot’ from the circle around them and it makes something curl hotly in his gut.
When Blaine finally takes his lips between his own, Kurt feels brave and stupid and he just presses in forward like a man starved-climbing into Blaine’s lap off-kilter and nestled in close with their chest’s pressed together. He looks down in between bites to Blaine’s lower lip and he can see the brush of Blaine’s lashes as his eyes rest and the swollen pink of his mouth, a delicious curve that Kurt wants to bite and does again in the following seconds, letting Blaine swipe a hot tongue across the seam of his mouth when Kurt moves his hands to rest in the loops of Blaine’s jeans.
He feels constricted-like he’s not sitting here at the edge of the circle letting this kiss go on for probably too long, but like the rest of them are closing in on him. For a sharp second it reminds him of the time that Karofsky and the rest of his nameless asshole friends had backed Kurt up against the brick wall behind the gym, water balloons in hand. They’d kept getting closer and closer and Kurt had looked up to see a small bird on a bench not far away and had wanted almost nothing more in that moment than to just become like that-some small creature who could in the blink of an eye just fly away from all of the stupid problems eating away at his day to day life.
He wasn’t, though, and in the end he’d walked wet and cold to the nurse’s office and big-eyed his way into having her sign him out on illness for the rest of the day-by the time his father came home he was cleanly dressed and making soup in the enamel pan on the stove. No one was the wiser.
Now, though, Blaine sucks noisily at his lips, breath a hot mixture of beer and sugar and lashes tickling the apples of Kurt’s cheeks and Kurt can forget that sometimes being kissed feels like being cornered and just remember the way Blaine’s hands rub hot against his thighs sandwiching him in.
After they’ve pulled away, Blaine laughs with all of his teeth showing and rolls until his neck is nestled against Kurt’s crossed legs. The girl next to him continues on with the game, oddly silent, and Kurt just watches Blaine’s eyelashes flutter closed, his face sleepy with drink and the satisfaction of knowing that Kurt just got totally and wholly played.
--
“Ugh-why does the sun have to be so-so bright,” Kurt feels like someone threw him out his condo-bedroom window, pressure in his joints and a rampant throb in his head, and every time he chances a look at the sun beaming down overhead he feels like he needs about nine more pairs of sunglasses to cover his eyes before it stops being so unbearably painful. From beside him, Blaine chuckles, his ass pressed against Kurt’s upper arm as he smears big globs of sun cream down his neck and chest.
Blaine continues to laugh at him as he works the big stripes of white into his skin, stopping briefly to swat Kurt with a wet hand when his complaints get to the point where there is little to no time in between them. Eventually, after Kurt has spent the better part of five minutes peeking through his fingers at the sight of Blaine’s shoulders shifting as he’d sun-creamed his legs, Blaine caps the bottle and nudges at Kurt’s side with a soft ‘c’mon, up, up’ and a discontented noise from Kurt in return.
“C’mon, do you want to turn into a burnt cherry out here or not?” Blaine uses his hands on either side of Kurt’s ribs to get Kurt to finally turn over onto his stomach, head resting on his folded arms, “mm-that’s better.” Kurt can feel when Blaine climbs atop him, the split of Blaine’s legs straddling the smooth swell of Kurt’s ass in a way that almost makes Kurt want to force his body to wake up from this gross hangover haze it’s stuck in. Blaine uncaps the sun cream again and Kurt hears the telltale click, feels the cold like a quick shiver when Blaine’s wide palms spread out over the skin of Kurt’s back. He digs his hands in, kneading but in loose, lazy circles, like he’s half tempted to turn this into a massage. Kurt could go for that right about now-he’s pretty sure-but the pillow of his arms is so comfortable that he can’t so much as bring himself to lift his head to say so.
“Mmrph,” he mumbles instead, back dipping as Blaine leans down further until he’s pressed all along Kurt’s back, his hands still kneading the cream in and his mouth laying warm, sharp kisses against the thin skin of Kurt’s neck, “hey--,” he mutters off, too worn to really protest.
“Your neck looks so-“ Blaine breathes out hot against the hair at the back of Kurt’s skull, now pressing his wet hands into the skin of Kurt’s upper arm, “edible.” Kurt wonders how hangovers somehow are manifesting themselves as random bouts of brashness in Blaine, like the only bad effect they have on him is the gruffness of his voice and breath as he noses his way up and down Kurt’s neck.
“If you start with the vampire shit I refuse to talk to you,” Kurt groans, serious but amused, really, because it’s not as if he can be totally displeased by the sweet line of tongue he’s feeling dragging across the skin of his neck and collar, “I hope you know that.”
Blaine takes that moment to lift up and squirt a smaller dollop of cream into his palm and rub it thoroughly into Kurt’s collar and sides, “Mm, I do-I do.”
The next minutes lull Kurt into a comfortable half-sleep, wherein he’s only vaguely aware of the dull press of Blaine’s hands on his skin and the pressure of Blaine’s shorts clad ass a settling weight against his own. In his head he can hear mostly the sound of rushing water, faint ripples and the sound of dulled out laughter that’s likely the aftereffect of the noise echoing from the pool in front of them. He hears Blaine’s voice rasping against the side of his ribs, accompanying kisses on his shoulder blade and hip and behind his ear as the air begins to smell more and more of coconut butter sun cream and his mouth imagines more and more the taste of Blaine’s own.
If he weren’t so out of it right now, he’d turn his head around and let Blaine hot kiss his mouth, wet and soft and short-or maybe he’d tug him down by the back of his neck and let their tongues tangle together in the middle, let Thea come back from the water to find them a messy heap of limbs on Kurt’s lounge chair. As it is, he just tingles as Blaine lips at the dip of his back and burrows his cheek further into the cradled pillow of his forearms-the sound of dulled speech in the background lulling him to sleep.
--
When he wakes up, it’s to a shout of his name. A pair of arms shake him lightly awake, but when he turns around it’s just Mark-who’d come back over to grab some water-and a faraway snapshot of Meg waving her arms along with the call of his name.
“Chicken!” she’s screaming, balancing precariously on Blaine’s shoulders which looks hilarious considering she’s got a good four inches on him, “c’mon Kurt!” The rest of them shout out in turn but Kurt just turns back over and drops his head onto his wrists with a groan. For the next few moments he stays like that, feeling the heat of the sun sizzling through the cream on his back and shoulders, until a small, sopping body deposits itself against his back.
“C’mon, Kurt,” Blaine drags the words out like a particularly pouty child, smacking kisses all up and down the expanse of Kurt’s warm back and neck, hands roaming under the shirt he’d apparently gotten into at some point. Kurt feels like he’s getting a crash course in Blaine’s version of sloppy, misled charm-and it really shouldn’t be working, but it kind of is.
“Mmm, fine, fine-“ he says, unfolding his arms and pushing himself slightly up, “I surrender.” He holds his arms up in gesture when he’s finally maneuvered to his feet and, unsurprisingly enough, Blaine takes that opportunity to grab onto them with the clasp of his fingers and walk Kurt up against the fence.
“Good,” Blaine is so close Kurt can feel the heat of his breath and even though his head is throbbing, all Kurt wants to do is find some secluded corner and push Blaine up against it himself-public place be damned. As it is, he lets his skin tingle as Blaine reaches for the bottom hem of his shirt and bends to tug it up over his head, mouth dropping to place a kiss on his belly button as he does so. Immediately, half of him wants to grasp the shirt in his hands and re-cover himself, but Blaine runs warm hands down his sides and into his own, tugging him towards the pool’s edge with stumbling steps that make him forget.
In the water, Meg is attempting to teach Mark what appears to be some form of floating and Thea is kicking absently at them from her perch by the ladder, fruitlessly trying to make them mess up. When she sees Kurt, she leaps off the edge and scuttles over to catch him around the waist, whirling him about in a way that makes Kurt see spots. “Ah! Ah!” he says, squirming in her grasp like an uncomfortable child, “down, girl!” He hears Blaine laugh from somewhere behind him and Thea stops her antics after a few seconds, choosing instead to grab Kurt by the wrist and tug him over to Mark.
“C’mon baby-we volunteered you for chicken,” Mark moves down as if to grab Kurt and hoist him up, but Kurt backs away.
“Ohhhh, no no no-“ He raises his hands in caution, backing up on the balls of his feet until he runs into a solid body, “not happening.” The body turns out to be Blaine, who’s smirking at him, and Kurt knows he’s done for the second Blaine’s hands grasp him around the ribs, leading him forward with mouth close to his ear.
“It can be that bad, c’mon,” Kurt knows it’ll be that bad. He always inevitably loses this stupid game and ends up with a nose full of chlorine and a headache for a week, “live a little.” Mark is waiting to hoist Kurt up again when Blaine pushes him over and Blaine keeps steady on his wrist as they swing Kurt’s legs up around Mark’s shoulders before turning around to hop up onto Meg’s shoulders in turn.
Off to the side, Thea is giggling like a mad woman, mouth covered and trying not to snort lest she get water up her nose. Kurt feels himself tottering as Mark moves towards Meg and Blaine, and Kurt is thankful that his hangover has mostly worn itself off by now because there is no way he’d be able to keep himself even remotely steady if it hadn’t yet. Once Thea makes the motion, the few people around them take notice and start up the typical chant, all of it fading to a jumbled din in Kurt’s ears as he and Blaine reach out to simultaneously grasp each other’s shoulders.
For the next minute or so, Kurt pushes himself to hold on, fingers in a death grip on the skin of Blaine’s upper back and eyes trying not to focus on the wet sweep of Blaine’s lashes because they’re supposed to be warring not kissing. Except then Blaine is using the leverage he has on Kurt’s shoulders to tug him in and off balance just enough that they’re almost completely chest to chest and suddenly Kurt is a lot less interested in how desperately hot it is outside and more intent on the fact that his insides are bubbling a mile a minute at the feel of Blaine’s bare skin sliding against his own.
He feels mildly idiotic at the thought that he’s suddenly become this weird mix of Lima Kurt and Summer Kurt with Blaine-like he takes one look at Blaine’s stupid freckled cheeks and watermelon mouth and all he can think of are long ago family barbecues and playing house with Tina on the playground because the boy he’d asked to play with him had laughed at him instead-like every touch is the first one but he knows how instead of being blind, like every time Blaine touches his mouth it’s the first stupid kiss of his life. It makes him want to climb into himself and then climb into Blaine and then sing about it like he never does in those three months between school’s end and September.
When he refocuses on Blaine’s eyes, they’re glinted over with sparks of light, like he’s about to make this game really bad-for Kurt at least-and Kurt braces himself for the face full of water he knows is coming. Instead, Blaine’s hands grips at him closer to his neck, wobbling them on their perches a bit more at Blaine leans dangerously forward to catch Kurt’s bottom lip between his teeth. And Kurt’s pretty sure in all of his years watching his idiot friends play this game he’s become aware that the object is not to kiss your opponent into heady submission, but to well, knock him off his perch.
And Kurt plans on doing so. Whoever gave Blaine the permission to bite his mouth off balance instead of his limbs has another thing coming because the iron resolve of Kurt Hummel to win in all situations refuses to crumble-even under the influence of a particularly enticing make out session with a gorgeous kind of more than a friend-no, especially under the influence of said friend. Blaine is going down.
Unfortunately for Kurt, the grip Blaine has on both his shoulders and his mouth is just right to keep them both in a safely tottering position atop their friends’ shoulders. Meg is swatting at Blaine’s leg and Thea keeps laughing and shouting ‘unfair, unfair-guys c’mon!’ at them as Blaine refuses to unclamp his mouth from Kurt’s-nipping at him in a series of sopping kisses that leave drips of water down Kurt’s chin. When Kurt moves forward again, jerking his body to try to dislodge Blaine, Blaine groans into his mouth and Kurt feels the vibrations move from his mouth to his toes as the move jostles them both. In the few seconds that follow, Kurt’s leg loses its grip on the meat of Mark’s shoulder and his grip on Blaine’s arm tugs them both down, still connected by Blaine’s sharp grip on Kurt’s mouth as they hit the cool smack of the water.
Kurt shouts as he goes down, but the water muffles the sound until all he can hear is the rushing and the sound of Blaine’s laughter as they break back over the surface.
part four