The hotel room seems almost too quiet after the loud throb of the reception. Blaine flicks on the light and lays his key card on the desk. When he turns, Kurt is still hovering just inside the entryway, looking everywhere but Blaine.
“Kurt,” he says, practically begs, “please tell me what you’re thinking.”
The words bring Kurt’s eyes up, and Blaine is taken aback by the depth of emotion he sees there. Kurt truly hasn’t been letting him back in until now.
“Do you remember what I said?” Kurt asks quietly. “Last winter?”
“I do.”
And he does - he remembers all the arguments and discussions in the bleak months after Burt’s second heart attack with painful clarity. They’d taken place while Blaine had hastily helped Kurt pack up his belongings for his return to Ohio, over the phone, over the Internet, behind closed doors when Blaine came home for holidays.
Have you realized that we’ve only been in the same place for two and a half months out of the past fifteen?
This is harder than I thought it would be.
I know you’re trying to help, but I can tell that you’re censoring what you’re saying, Blaine. I don’t want you to feel like you have to do that.
It seems like one of us ends up hurt or angry every time we talk now.
Maybe we should just…
Blaine squeezes his eyes shut.
“I think… maybe I was too hasty,” Kurt says.
“About what?” Blaine whispers, because he has to be sure that he understands what Kurt’s saying before he believes anything.
Kurt takes a deep breath and a half step closer. “I told you that it was too hard. To hear about our life in New York going on without me, and to try to balance a job and helping with my dad’s rehab and a long-distance relationship. To feel so guilty about taking up so much of your time with all of my problems when you were still getting settled in during your first year of college.”
Blaine nods.
“It was so much harder without you,” Kurt says, and his voice cracks.
“Oh, Kurt.”
It’s almost impossible for Blaine to look at Kurt’s face crumpling up and not go to him, but he has no idea if Kurt would want his comfort, so he stays put, clenching his fists while Kurt continues to speak. “There were so many nights… it would have helped just to hear the sound of your voice.”
“You should have called,” Blaine says. “I would have answered.”
Kurt gives him a tiny, watery smile. “I know you would have. That’s why I didn’t. I thought I made the right decision, and I had to be stubborn about it, otherwise I probably would have crumbled as soon as you said hello.”
“I know the feeling,” Blaine mutters, casting his eyes down to the floor.
“I still think I might have made the right decision.”
The words catch Blaine unawares, and the feeling of disappointment is so acute that it feels like his heart has turned into stone and it’s ripping a path straight through him as it plummets to the ground. “Oh.”
“Blaine, no.” Kurt’s voice is earnest and Blaine peeks cautiously up. “It might have been right because as soon as I saw you at the Lima Bean this week, I knew.”
“Knew what?” Blaine asks cautiously.
“That I was wrong.”
“That doesn’t make any sense.”
“I know!” Kurt says with a frown. “Let me try again. I knew that it was you. That it should be us.”
Blaine shakes his head slowly. “What are you saying?”
“That I miss you. That I think we belong together.” Kurt’s on the verge of crying now, and Blaine’s getting close, too. They stare at each other for several long seconds, and Blaine feels like the air is trembling, until Kurt raises his hands a little and says, “Come here?” His voice is small and uncertain.
But Blaine doesn’t need to be asked twice. He strides purposefully over to where Kurt is standing, and they all but throw their bodies together, colliding hard in the middle. Blaine locks his arms tightly around Kurt’s chest, scrabbles at his back for purchase that isn’t there. The boutonniere he’d bought is getting crushed between them - so is his rose - but none of it matters. All that matters is that he and Kurt are wrapped up tight in the circles of each other’s arms, and he can feel Kurt’s damp cheek and smell his cologne and it makes him dizzy.
Blaine presses his face hard into the side of Kurt’s neck, right where it’s always fit. He feels warm, anchored, like the only place on earth is right here. Kurt takes a deep breath, and it shudders, so Blaine angles his head a little to press his mouth comfortingly to the side of his neck. Blaine does it on instinct, but it makes him screw his eyes shut a little tighter - this is the first time any part of Kurt’s skin has been under his lips in half a year.
Kurt gasps and suddenly he’s pushing back. Blaine’s eyes jar open from movement and panic - did he push too far, want too much? “Wait, wait,” he hears Kurt say. It sends spikes of anxiety through him, even though Kurt still has his hands clasped tightly around Blaine’s biceps, not letting him go very far. “Our first kiss after getting back together is not going to be on my neck,” Kurt babbles out. His cheeks are red and his eyes are bright.
Blaine freezes. “Is that what we’re doing?” he breathes, because he needs to make absolutely sure.
“Isn’t that - or do you not want to? Oh god, I just assumed -”
“No!”
“No?”
Kurt’s face is stricken, and Blaine can’t get the words out fast enough. “I mean, no I don’t not want to. I do want to. I miss you so much, Kurt.” He gulps. “I still love you. I never stopped, not even a little.”
He’s seen that tremulous look on Kurt’s face before, like he’s lighting up from the inside, but he’s not sure that it’s ever been more beautiful. “I love you, too,” Kurt says. His hands squeeze Blaine’s arms and then release, moving up to cradle his jaw as they tumble in toward each other again. When they’re just an inch apart, they pause - just for a second - before melting into one perfect kiss. It’s delicate and firm, sweet and passionate, and it makes Blaine's heart flutter in his chest before setting up a pounding rhythm.
When they break apart, Kurt rolls his forehead against Blaine’s and sighs. “I’m sorry I didn’t come to my senses sooner.”
“Hey,” Blaine says softly, “no apologies. What’s done is done, and the important thing is that it led us to this moment, right here.”
Kurt pulls back enough to give him a wavering smile. “But we wasted so much time.”
Blaine shrugs. “What’s six months in the grand scheme of things? We’ve got all the time in the world.”
“A lifetime,” Kurt amends.
“A lifetime,” Blaine repeats, and then Kurt’s kissing him again, over and over, a little frantic at first, but then settling in, the kisses long and luxurious.
“Kurt,” Blaine says, trying to speak against his mouth. “Shouldn’t we… talk… or…?”
“Not right now.”
Blaine chuckles and happily obliges him. In fact, he gets so carried away that it’s not long before he’s humming against Kurt’s lips. “Mmmm, I missed you,” he mumbles. All the tension is draining out of him, knots that had been tied up tight for months loosening and snapping, and his brain is buzzing with a cascade of emotions and the delicious feeling of kissing Kurt again.
“Mmhmm,” Kurt agrees, bringing his mouth back to Blaine’s before he’s even done making the sound, and it vibrates against his skin.
Blaine loses himself for another few moments. Kurt’s lips trace down to his jawline, and Blaine sighs, “Missed this.”
Kurt pulls back just long enough to snort and ask, “Blaine Anderson, are you trying to get into my pants?”
“What? No!” Blaine protests, even though Kurt doesn’t seem bothered, having gone straight back to sucking kisses along his jaw.
He stops, though, at Blaine’s anxiety, and raises his head to look Blaine in the eye. Blaine’s stomach swoops at how mischievous and happy and starting-to-be-turned-on he looks. “Relax. I’m teasing. I missed this too.” He falls forward as he speaks, the words dissolving into a damp, lazy kiss. “I missed your lips,” he whispers.
Blaine smiles as they press together again, warm and easy. He snakes one hand up to the back of Kurt’s hair, tightening his hold there to keep Kurt in place while he brings his mouth to Kurt’s throat. “I missed your neck,” he says, and kisses there, uses his tongue, pushes up under Kurt’s chin so that he has to tilt his head.
“Mmmm, I remember,” Kurt mumbles, and then tugs Blaine back up so that they’re face-to-face, smiling and flushed. “I -” Kurt moves his hands to Blaine’s back and runs them up and down “- think the thing I missed most was -” they drop suddenly and squeeze playful but hard “- your ass.”
Blaine chokes and they both dissolve into giggles that border on hysterical. They calm slowly, as Blaine tips his head forward into Kurt’s shoulder and Kurt slides his hands up to rest loosely at Blaine’s waist. “Well, then, it’s a good thing we’re in a hotel room,” Blaine says.
He means it as a joke; he doesn’t really think - but Kurt’s voice is low when he says, “We are.”
Blaine raises his head. “Kurt?”
He finds that Kurt’s lips are parted around deepening breaths. His eyes are gleaming, but there’s a question there too. Blaine answers it eagerly as they fuse back together, throwing himself against Kurt, but Kurt’s enthusiasm still knocks him back a step. He’s digging his hands into Blaine’s hair from the roots, ruining the careful style, and his tongue is surging into Blaine’s mouth. Blaine plants his feet and takes it all, giving back as good as he gets. His hands clutch tight at Kurt wherever he can find purchase, readjust, and clutch again.
Blaine’s reservations are falling by the wayside within seconds, as he’s caught up in an undertow of emotions and a rapidly-growing arousal that crashes over them like a wave. Somehow, when Kurt releases his mouth to start nipping his way back to Blaine’s ear, he manages to collect his wits and gasp out, “Kurt… Kurt, is it too soon?”
“Too soon?” Kurt asks, rough in Blaine’s ear before his teeth sink sharply into the flesh of the lobe. “I’d argue that it’s been too long.”
Blaine groans as Kurt closes his mouth around the place he’d bitten, sucking softly. “But… I didn’t think, I mean, this isn’t…”
Kurt pulls back and takes Blaine’s shoulders firmly in hand, staring him down. “Blaine, I love you. That’s what this is about. And now I want to be close to you.”
“Me too,” he replies quietly, eyes wide, pinned down by the heat of Kurt’s gaze.
Kurt smiles, beautiful and reassuring as his chest heaves and his eyes sparkle. “Well, come on then.”
Blaine finds himself being dragged and nudged toward the bed, pushed down onto it with Kurt toppling beside him. There’s a moment of stillness when they’re settled, facing each other. Blaine has one hand on Kurt’s chest, where he can feel the firm thump of Kurt’s heartbeat, and Kurt trails his fingertips across Blaine’s temple while his thumb swipes gently over Blaine’s cheekbone. From up close, Blaine drinks in Kurt’s eyes; they’re exquisite - the color, the shape, the emotions inside of them. And then, the way they suddenly turn dark again when Kurt’s thumb drops down a little further to slide over Blaine’s bottom lip, where it drags. Kurt breaks eye contact, looking down as he takes his hand away from Blaine’s face to pull his bow tie loose.
It’s something that’s happened a million times before, but it makes Blaine’s breath hitch and his hand curl into a fist around the edge of Kurt’s lapel. Kurt snaps his gaze back up and they’re on each other again in seconds, crushing their mouths and chests and hips together. Blaine hooks his knee up against Kurt’s thigh, desperate to better feel Kurt coming to full hardness against him. In a distant corner of his mind, the words too much too soon? struggle to make themselves heard again, but they’re extinguished when Kurt reaches down to squeeze his leg and then pushes him over onto his back.
Blaine can’t help the satisfied noise that escapes him as Kurt lets his full weight blanket Blaine down into the mattress. He’s still cradling Kurt’s hip with one leg, and Kurt shifts a little against him, aligning them perfectly and then grinding down. Blaine meets him enthusiastically, even as he’s forced to rip his mouth away from Kurt’s to let out a sharp moan.
“Speaking of parts of each other that we missed…” Kurt says cheekily as he passes Blaine’s ear to kiss the spot just behind and a little underneath.
Blaine squirms and tries to find words to string together. “Oh, I see… I see what this is really about,” he pants.
“You,” Kurt says. “Me. Us.” He punctuates each word with a kiss down the front of Blaine’s throat. When he reaches the restrictive collar of Blaine’s dress shirt, he sits up a little, pulls the tie off completely, and begins working on the buttons.
“Kurt…” Blaine’s not sure why the simple words hit him so hard, but all at once, he feels like crying again.
“Blaine,” Kurt counters, but his expression softens when he looks at Blaine staring up at him. “I love you,” he says again. “I think you’re going to have to get used to me saying that a lot.”
Blaine’s smile is a little shaky. “Please. As often as you want. And for as long as you want.”
“Good.” Kurt shifts back even further and tugs on Blaine’s jacket. “Now sit up. You’re still wearing a whole tuxedo.”
Then everything turns hot and hazy. They trade fevered kisses while they push each other’s jackets and shirts down their arms, pausing only when they have to - when they tangle in sleeves and need to pull their undershirts over their heads. As soon as all the skin of Kurt’s chest is exposed to him, Blaine wraps his arms around Kurt’s waist and brings his mouth there. He wants to kiss and drag his tongue over every inch of it, but he’s too frantic to remember where he’s been, especially when Kurt cradles his head in both arms and presses his parted lips to Blaine’s temple, pushing out harsh, damp breaths.
Blaine abandons his plan and sucks on Kurt’s collarbone instead, reveling in the way he feels enveloped by Kurt’s heat and scent. When he lowers his head to bring Kurt’s nipples to stiff peaks, licking and biting a little because he knows it’s okay, Kurt tightens his grip, lets his head drop back with a breathy whine, and twitches his hips down.
The increased friction draws a growl from Blaine’s throat, and he grabs Kurt to hastily reverse their positions, lowering his mouth to Kurt’s chest again as soon as his back hits the mattress. “Blaine,” Kurt whines as Blaine draws his teeth lightly over a nipple again, “you’re not playing fair.”
“Like you were when you kept going for my ears?” Blaine retorts, bringing his hips down roughly and capturing Kurt’s lips in a sloppy kiss.
Kurt works his hands down under Blaine’s waistband, beneath his pants but over his briefs, and grabs his ass hard, forcing him to repeat the motion as Kurt rolls his hips up. “Fair point,” he gasps.
It feels amazing, but there are too many layers still between them. Kurt seems to agree, if the way he’s fumbling at Blaine’s waist is any indication. When Blaine’s pants are open, Kurt runs his hands back to their previous position, sliding them down. Blaine rolls away for a second so that he can work them off with a minimum of fuss, and when he looks back, he finds Kurt kicking his own pants off his ankles. He’s left his underwear on, and it makes Blaine smile, because that means that Kurt’s teasing him again. As much as Blaine loves - loves - to see Kurt naked, Kurt knows well that there’s something about admiring him in his underwear that drives Blaine crazy. Seeing him now, long and lithe in slate blue boxer briefs, is no exception.
The expression of faux innocence on Kurt’s face as he reclines back on his elbows just proves to Blaine that he’s right, so he aims to knock the look straight off Kurt’s face. He scrambles over and dips his head to press a kiss to the head of Kurt’s cock, right below the place where a damp spot is appearing on the fabric. “Blaine!” Kurt chokes out, collapsing back onto the bed.
“Hmmm?” Blaine draws the flat of his tongue up Kurt’s length, the fabric dry and bunching a little.
Kurt groans and drags Blaine up his body, flipping them over so that he’s on top again, pinning Blaine down. “Stop cheating,” he commands playfully.
“All’s fair in love and war,” he teases, grinning up at Kurt. The position is intimate - they’re pressed and tangled together, touching everywhere from their shoulders to their toes, their faces just inches apart.
Kurt smiles back and leans down to kiss Blaine, more gently than he had expected. Blaine responds in kind, tender and passionate, and Kurt slides his hips in a long, slow arc against Blaine’s. It’s decadent and rich and it doesn’t jolt their lips apart, so Blaine moans into the kiss, opening for Kurt so their tongues can slide in against each other.
They continue rocking languorously together for several minutes, drawing it out as much as they can, but it isn’t long before they’re picking up pace. The kiss gets too messy, and they have to stop, breathing heavily against each other’s cheeks and necks instead. Their bodies roll rougher, faster, and Blaine thinks fleetingly that maybe they should stop, make it better - they could at least be naked - but it’s been so long and he just doesn’t want to, so he digs his fingers hard into the damp skin of Kurt’s back. Kurt chooses that moment to scrape his teeth over Blaine’s earlobe again, and Blaine whites out, arching up against Kurt with a strangled cry. He’s only vaguely aware of Kurt making a sharp noise in his ear and stiffening against him a moment later.
When he comes back to himself, Blaine finds that his eyelashes are wet and he feels heavy, not just because Kurt is dead weight on top of him, panting into his neck. It’s the emotion of it all, the tears and the laughter and the sex, the fact that Kurt is here and he’s going to stay here filling him up and making him feel like he could fly up to the ceiling at the same time. Just when he thinks he might really start to cry, Kurt snuffles into his skin and says, “I had plans. Plans that did not involve us coming in our underwear.”
So Blaine laughs instead, tightening his arms around Kurt, who shifts partially off of him and snuggles into his side. “So did I. But it’s okay - that was amazing. You’re amazing.”
“It was pretty good, wasn’t it?”
“It reminded me of being seventeen.”
Kurt snorts and burrows in a little closer. “That was two years ago, Blaine.”
“You know what I mean.”
“I do.”
“Besides,” Blaine says, his heart soaring. “we have plenty of time to do everything else.”
He feels Kurt smile against his skin. “We really do.”
They stay wrapped up in companionable, perfect silence for another few moments, Blaine doing everything in his power to ignore how much of a sticky mess he is. Eventually, Kurt speaks again. “Do you think Cooper noticed that we disappeared?”
“Absolutely,” Blaine groaned. “Why would you even ask that?”
“Just trying to figure out how much embarrassment I need to prepare myself for.”
“Boatloads,” Blaine says. “He’ll probably make us reenact our tearful reunion. And then critique it.”
“Just as long as we don’t have to recreate everything that happened after that,” Kurt quips.
“Ugh, stop!” Blaine admonishes, running his hand around to Kurt’s side to tickle at the skin there.
Kurt gives a little squeal and squirms away from him. “You stop!”
Blaine moves his hand to Kurt’s back as Kurt props himself up on Blaine’s chest. “What if I want to reenact everything that happened after that?” he asks.
“Oh, we will,” Kurt replies. “Just not in front of your brother.”
“I love you.”
“I love you too.”
***
When they make it back down to the ballroom, smiling and walking close together and warm with the knowledge that Kurt is wearing a pair of Blaine’s underwear, Cooper wrestles the microphone away from the deejay and leads the room in a cheer while they blush.
***
And that’s what really happened.
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