Love (Makes You Do the Crazy)
Title: Love (Makes You Do the Crazy)
Author: parsnips
Rating: R
Pairing: Kurt/Blaine
Warnings: Language, sexual situations, awesomeness.
Spoilers: Up to Silly Love Songs
Summary: In which Blaine is an emotionally stunted idiot, and Kurt finally notices. (A sequel/coda-thing now exists as well: We Are All a Little Weird, and Life's a Little Weird.)
Written for skyfyre, because she asked, and MP, because she also asked. Started right after Silly Love Songs, and jossed by everything after, but hey, a love story's still a love story no matter how AU it gets, right?
ETA: This fic mentions in a positive light PSU Coach Joe Paterno and the Penn State football community. This is in the process of being edited out.
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Love (Makes You Do the Crazy)
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by parsnips
He hadn't thought things could get worse.
They're coming back from the coffee shop. Kurt's just walking next to him, not talking or anything like that; they do this thing where they can hang out together without talking constantly and it's... nice. It's always been nice, actually, that there's someone he can just be quiet around, someone he doesn't have to prove anything to, or--
Except that apparently his actually being comfortable around Kurt means that he's been leading him on. Meanwhile, two coffees do not make a deathless passion, serenading does not equal instant boyfriend, and Christmas duets are a major turn-on. It's Bizarro World all up in this shit. Also, it's winter, and it's cold, and he's making that once-in-a-blue-moon wish that he'd actually kept his hair long, because his ears are freezing. He should have brought a hat with him.
He should've done a lot of things.
Blaine keeps his head down as he walks into the wind, and tracks the cement under his shoes. There's a lot of twigs, and pebbles, and gum stains. He doesn't remember ever seeing anyone chewing gum at Dalton. It's an Altoids institution.
The Jeremiah thing is-- it fucking sucks, but at least it's sort of easy to understand now that he's on the other side of it. Laughably easy, which is depressing. He'd met Jeremiah at a local Alliance meeting back in September, in the basement of the Westerville town library. Someone had made snacks, and there was lemonade and fall-themed paper napkins, and Blaine had wondered if every gay man and lesbian in the entire state of Ohio was over the age of forty. It wasn't until people had settled down and started talking about that week's topic (half discussing the Cleveland Gay Games thing, half gossiping behind their Tollhouse cookies about the Target-brand cups and napkins and scabs who break shopping boycotts in favor of cute and affordable disposable dinnerware) -- it wasn't until then that Blaine had caught sight of the young guy across the room, all blond, wavy hair and a mouth that was more than a little amazing.
He remembers thinking Might be straight might be straight might be totally uninterested and straight, but after the meeting broke up he'd made a beeline for the guy and-- yeah, the guy wasn't straight. And he was actually close to Blaine's age, and his voice was wonderful, and his hair was manageable, and when Blaine had smiled at him he'd given a small, shy smile back, and Blaine was crushing so hard that it was a miracle the guy didn't immediately notice and file a restraining order.
Add a couple more Alliance meetings, where they'd sat together to represent the "too young to remember Stonewall" crowd, and two coffee dates-- not dates, back up, two coffee occasions, because there hadn't actually been dates and all they'd talked about was more Alliance stuff, god-- all that adds up to is a friend. Maybe a friend. Probably an acquaintance with a limited number of mutual interests.
The wind gusts, and Blaine wonders if his ears could actually, like, fall off from hypothermia before they make it back to Dalton.
"You're kind of a moron," Kurt says philosophically beside him.
Kurt never looks cold. Ever. He seems to wear scarves solely for decorative purposes, and his gloves have more cutouts than actual fabric. Right now he's wearing a coat, but Blaine gets the impression it's only because it's winter, and one wears coats in winter.
Kurt unwinds his scarf one-handed and drapes it over Blaine's shoulder. "Tie it around your head if you're feeling adventurous, but you could probably just wrap it over your scarf. If you pull it up you should be able to cover your ears a little." And then he folds his hands around his latte and goes back to silent walking. As if they hadn't just had a Major Conversation in the Starbucks; as if Blaine isn't stuck here wondering if everything he does -- everything Kurt does -- now secretly means something.
Blaine wraps the scarf up around his face, a compromise between Kurt's options. He's suddenly much warmer, and he can smell Kurt's aftershave, and he'd never had anything like this with Jeremiah. Which doesn't make any sense, because he thought he'd been in love with Jeremiah, and he's only friends with Kurt. It's all backwards. Bizarro. Horrible.
Also, with his face covered up, he has no idea how the hell he's going to drink his coffee.
*
Kurt is his friend. Definitely his friend. Probably his best friend, actually, which is weird, because he hadn't realized he was missing one before Kurt came to Dalton.
It's just that... Blaine doesn't know what else Kurt might be. Maybe. In the future.
Blaine lives in the dorms, but since Kurt's just a day student he goes home every night. Sometimes Kurt sticks around to study, but usually he's off at five, after Warblers practice or coffee or whichever. It's a long drive to Lima, and the times when he does stay to study are usually just before finals or midterms, when the "refined air of quality leather upholstery" is apparently the perfect study aid.
So it's more than a little startling when Blaine steps into the common area and finds Kurt sitting on the couch, idling texting someone while swinging his foot to silent music. It's late, nearly nine, but Kurt doesn't look like he's got anywhere to be.
Why is he here? Was he waiting for him? Blaine has a terrible vision of Kurt breaking out into song. Maybe the same song he sung to Jeremiah. Maybe to a Disney song. A world of awkward possibilities looms, the opening chords of something melodramatic start to fill his ears--
Kurt looks up and quirks a smile. "Hey," he says, and then goes back to texting.
What he is feeling is definitely not disappointment. Definitely. Because if Kurt had tried to serenade him it would have been weird, and also his brain needs to shut up.
"Hey," Blaine says. Except that it's actually been a minute since Kurt said anything, and now Kurt's looking up again, a little puzzled, and oh good, Blaine turned a friendly greeting into a massive awkward pause. He coughs, and sits down beside Kurt. Unless-- is he too close? Jesus. "I mean. Hi," he says, and tries with every ounce of self-control he has left not to twitch violently either off the couch or, somehow, into Kurt's lap.
Kurt raises an eyebrow, then puts down his phone with a determined air. "Okay," he says, "I think we need an intervention." He twists on the couch until he's facing Blaine directly, and rests his cheek on one fist. "I didn't actually say I like you," Kurt says, "but I pretty heavily implied it. Because I thought you should know. And now you're acting like a straight guy in a gay bar wondering if it 'means something' that he wants to dance to ABBA." Kurt wrinkles his nose. "Which it does. But that's beside the point."
"You... think I'm straight?"
Kurt rolls his eyes. "After the show at the Gap? No. No, I do not. But I think maybe you're feeling weird about me liking you. So, here you go: Bam. I'll stop reading meaning into your every move, and you can stop being nervous around me."
There's a window just beyond Kurt. Blaine totally thinks he could jump through it before anyone could stop him. He could die in a blaze of glory and artistically applied snowflakes. "I'm not nervous around you, Kurt."
"Uh huh." Kurt nods at Blaine's school jacket. Where apparently Blaine's hands have, unbeknownst to him, been smoothing out the seams for the last, like, ten minutes. "You, my friend, have a tell," Kurt says with diabolical good humor, and then laughs himself silly when Blaine, for lack of any response, starts singing Gene Kelly numbers as a defensive maneuver.
Kurt gets his breath back eventually and joins in. Which is... nice.
*
He doesn't have classes with Kurt, which is a bit of a relief. It means there's at least one place where he won't dive into music just so there's some way to end a conversation. Ms. Rosenbaum would not appreciate his French assignment sung in three-quarter time, especially because he tried it his freshman year and it went over really badly.
He still doesn't know what Kurt was doing in the common room last night, because, frankly, nothing happened. They'd finished singing, both of them laughing and Kurt saying disparaging things about Blaine's habit of climbing on the furniture, and then Kurt had picked up his bag and left, waving over his shoulder and promising lunch together today. No lingering glances, no subtextually interesting comments -- just a friend saying goodnight.
Except Kurt likes him. So he doesn't know what anything means, really.
Lunch comes quickly, or slowly, depending on where Blaine is in his mental weirdness map. Kurt sits down beside him and brings out one of his step-mom's lunch bags, always full of soup and salad and an enormous baked good that Kurt pushes Blaine's way automatically. Blaine eats from the kitchens, because he hasn't seen his parents since the beginning of the school year, and this whole line of thought is depressing and should be stopped immediately.
Kurt's step-mom makes really good brownies.
"So I'm thinking that you're emotionally stunted," Kurt says by way of greeting. He shakes a carton of milk and opens it with panache. "And I am here, Blaine, to help you with your sad, sad issues."
"Really," Blaine says, because that is a great way to talk to someone you like, Kurt.
"Totally," Kurt says, unfazed. "You sang about sex toys in public to a boy you hardly knew, and then you got weirded out by a completely normal person--" he sweeps a hand down his immaculate uniform, "--saying that he likes you. And then you confessed that you're bad at romance while at the same time giving the 'you're a real pal' speech, so you're clearly someone who needs to learn how to interrogate their own emotions."
"You... have thought a lot about this," Blaine says.
"Not really," says Kurt. "It was obvious. That it wasn't obvious to you just proves my point." Kurt takes a sip of milk, and then turns a serious eye on Blaine. "My issues are straightforward and to the point: bullying, inappropriate crush objects, and skin that dries out too quickly in the winter. You? You are, by your own admission, faking a confidence you don't feel and are apparently so out of touch with the emotional reality of others that the only way you feel you can connect with anyone is through song. You may be out and confident about it, but this isn't about being gay or whatever -- this is about being human." Kurt breaks off the steady eye contact and instead spears an enormous forkful of salad. "So, step one: Tell me all about Jeremiah. The whole story. Without," he adds sharply, "singing your way out of it."
Blaine feels a little like he's been trapped into something, and that's probably because he has been.
*
He does start humming at least twice, but he makes it through lunch. Just before they head to different classes, Kurt rests his hand on Blaine's arm and gives a little squeeze. Blaine's pretty sure it could be interpreted as "supportive friend" or "supportive potential boyfriend," but either way, it's comforting.
"Step two will come over coffee, after school," Kurt says. "Meanwhile, your ongoing homework--" Kurt visibly puts on a brave face as he shoulders his bag. "I don't need an answer right away or anything, but... think about what you actually feel for me, okay? Whatever it is, I promise, I'll be fine with it -- I had a crush on a straight guy who thereafter became my brother, I am really not going to be bothered. But it's going to stay weird between us the longer you're uncertain of things, and I'm starting to miss my best friend."
"What about you?" Blaine asks without meaning to. "Are you going to think about it too?"
Kurt doesn't actually call him an idiot, but his face is very, very expressive. "I don't have to," he says slowly. "I already know I like you."
And then Kurt's heading toward the north wing, waving briefly before getting caught up in the throng of students.
A few minutes later Blaine takes his seat in American Literature and proceeds to ignore it entirely. He can study up on James Fenimore Cooper some other time. He's sort of stuck thinking about Kurt right now, because after that little speech, how could he not?
Anyway, it's an easy, familiar place for his thoughts to wander. Mr. Murkoff's rundown on Leatherstocking can take the backseat for a bit.
So. Kurt. They'd met on a staircase, which was a pretty good start to things. Less good was the misery pouring off the kid, and-- yeah, and the thing where he thought of him immediately as "the kid," that was probably a bad sign. It was just that -- he knew exactly what Kurt was feeling, because it was clear from a mile away that Kurt was gay, bullied, and looking for a way out. It was startling, and scary, to see it on someone else's face, someone else clutching the straps of their book bag, someone else checking for exits out of the corner of their eyes. Blaine had gone through it two years ago, and Kurt had gone through it two months ago, and somehow that had all added up to "show the kid that it gets better."
So he'd taken Kurt by the hand, and pulled him through the corridors, and basically eye-flirted like mad while singing a romantic song -- and all because this was what he knew he could do. He couldn't pull the kid out of his school, and he probably couldn't actually beat anybody up for him, but he could show him that sometimes it didn't actually suck to be alive.
Blaine makes score marks on his notepaper, black lines crisscrossing over and over. God, no wonder Kurt likes him. The first gay guy Kurt's age to ever pay attention to him like that -- without being crazy stalkerish and abusive -- and Blaine had made himself into some kind of ideal mentor on high, the perfect crush object. Except he isn't a perfect person, he isn't any kind of mentor, and about the only difference between them is that Blaine had been miserable two years sooner than Kurt.
And anyway, if he actually does the math, Kurt is only about six months younger than him. So everything is basically wrong and awful and James Fenimore Cooper fucking sucks.
*
Blaine's last class of the day is a study hall, so he skips out early and heads to the coffee shop to grab a seat by the windows. It's because of this that, an hour later, he has the opportunity to watch Kurt make the walk over, has a chance to think about exactly what he's seeing when he looks at Kurt.
To be honest, at first, he's exactly the same. He's... Kurt. He's got his earbuds in, listening to dance music or musical theatre or, more likely, a combination of both. His coat is open, and he's changed out of his school uniform into something metallic and knitted and entirely amazing. He should be freezing, but his head and his hands are bare, and the flimsy crocheted thing around his neck is a scarf in name only.
He's... tall. Taller than Blaine, at least, which isn't that difficult. He might get taller. Right now, though, he's just tall enough that Blaine has to look up a little when they're standing close together. Kurt has these eyes that can sometimes be a light blue, sometimes a light green. They're probably the prettiest thing about him if Blaine had to pick, except that it doesn't take into account what it looks like when Kurt smiles at him, or rolls his eyes, or agrees to sing a duet, or says, "I thought that the guy you wanted to ask out on Valentine's Day was me."
Blaine's coffee is bitter, and cold, and too fucking metaphorical.
Okay, shake it out, looking objectively, completely wiping his mind of everything he knows about Kurt Hummel: There's a guy walking down the street, coming closer, ignoring all the sounds around him just to take in a couple of minutes of music. Slow walk, long legs. Chin up, eyes watching some middle distance. Blaine's age, definitely. Objectively speaking, easy on the eyes. The guy stops on the corner to wait for a pause in traffic, turns his head--there's a jawline there, sharp but curved just enough, maybe, to fit into a palm. There's a cleft to his chin--had he noticed that before? Really noticed? Because it's... good. Very good. Pale skin, patches of pink from the wind across the very top of some really nice cheekbones. A long mouth. Eyebrows that perfectly complement those changeable eyes.
The traffic changes, the guy crosses the street and gets closer to the windows, and then--lights up, like it's the goddamn Fourth of July, when he sees Blaine staring at him. A big, infectious smile, and he walks a little faster, waves with long, thin fingers.
Blaine takes a very important moment to come to some conclusions:
Kurt is a hot guy.
Blaine is not immune to this hotness.
And now this hot guy has sat down across from him, right here, and is apparently saying something, because his mouth is moving and everything.
Blaine has lost all sense of time, sense, and propriety, and is very close to wishing he was dead, because dead would be so much easier to go through than suddenly figuring out that his best friend is attractive as fuck and into him and has stopped talking, oh god, oh shit, what should he say.
Blaine takes a long sip of his coffee and says, "So, step two?"
*
Step two is awful. Step two is the worst.
"David," Blaine says, "Wes." He gestures them toward the common room couch. They sit, looking a little leery. The three of them are alone for the moment; Kurt is back in Lima, probably cackling evilly because he knows what's going down. Blaine is willing to bet, like, a lot of money that Kurt has practiced evil, Disney-esque laughter. Probably while dreaming happily of Maleficent costumes.
Except whatever, focus. David. Wes. Feelings.
Blaine is going to stuff Kurt into a cardboard box and mail him somewhere with terrible humidity and no theatre program.
"Guys," Blaine starts. He stops again, twitches out a fold in his uniform jacket, and finally sits down on the coffee table in front of them. Okay, brave face. What can they do?
Laugh themselves sick and then throw you into the streets.
Awesome, brain, that was an awesome answer to that one.
"Remember when I first came to Dalton?" Blaine asks. He's talking a little too fast, maybe. A little too loud. Damn it. Keep going. "It was... not a great time for me. I think you know some of it..."
David shares a quick glance with Wes. "Yeah, we got that impression."
Wes says, "The bruises were a hint."
Blaine remembers. The shiner on his left eye had been his defining feature for the first several weeks at Dalton, courtesy of Walnut Hills High School's very own Mike Wilson and his discomfort with anything disrupting the common heteronormative narrative. Blaine, with his propensity for pink sunglasses and cuffed jeans and wild curls, was a pretty big disruption -- and that was without knowing Blaine was actually gay. The fight with Mike had been the last straw for Blaine's parents, and they'd transferred him within the week.
Blaine had been grateful to get away. His parents, though, weren't overjoyed when he'd been more than just grateful and had actually come out at Dalton. Which in the end had just made it absolutely clear that they'd been more interested in finding somewhere to put him than somewhere to keep him safe.
But he hadn't known any of that when he'd first met David and Wes. And that's not what he's here to say.
Blaine clasps his hands between his knees and tries to maintain something like reasonable eye contact. "Yeah, the bruises were a hint. I'd been getting beaten up for a few months, but never with marks somewhere people could see. Until the last one. And then I came here, and you guys..." Blaine shrugs, and loses the battle with the eye contact. The rug's nice, anyway. "When I met you, and you asked me to sit with you at lunch, and you asked me what brought me to Dalton, and I said 'Homophobia and poor clothing choices,' and you laughed and asked if I could sing..."
Wes frowns, but David just nods. "Sure," he says, as if this whole encounter is totally normal, as if this is something Blaine does. As if Blaine sits down in front of them and tells them something real.
Step two, Kurt had said. David and Wes are, like, your oldest friends at Dalton, and I don't think they've ever even seen you with your hair au natural. Talk to them. Actually talk to them.
Blaine takes a deep breath. "I wasn't out at my old school. When I said that to you guys... you were the first people I ever came out to. And you took it in stride. And it was... it was really important to me, and it's an important memory, and I wanted you to know that."
They're quiet for a moment, and then Wes is leaning forward and putting his hand over Blaine's clenched fists. "Oh my god," he says intensely, "are you dying."
"What?" Blaine did not envision this reaction.
Wes now has both hands wrapped around Blaine's, and is staring really creepily. "Is this one of those twelve steps," he intones. "Have you been experiencing a life-crippling addiction you are only now pulling yourself out of."
David rolls his eyes. "He means you're welcome."
"Is it the crack, Blaine," Wes says. "Is it the white man's devil drug."
"Oh my god," Blaine says, tugging his hands out of Wes's. "This is what I get for listening to Kurt."
"What's Kurt got to do with this?" Wes asks, dropping the crazy eyes and sitting back. "Unless he's the one that's getting you out of your dapper-do-good thing and talking like a human being."
David nods sagely as Blaine tries really, really hard not to make a run for it. "I knew he'd be good for you," David is saying, and what does that even mean?
"I do not understand you," Blaine says dully. "Your words are strange and meaningless."
"He means," Wes says, "that you're an amazing junior Warbler, and a great front-man, and Jeff says you're a decent roommate. But you're not the guy you were when you came here. The Blaine of today -- well, yesterday -- probably wouldn't have come out to us. Not like that, anyway."
"We didn't really notice," David admits, "until Kurt came along. Before him, you smiled and you were charming as hell, and the only time you looked really relaxed was when you were singing. And then Kurt came, and you started getting..."
"Happier," Wes says firmly. "You started getting happier."
Blaine doesn't know what to say. "I--" He cuts himself off, but takes a breath and tries again. "I was happy. Am. Before Kurt."
David and Wes look at him with equal expressions of doubt. It's starting to get pretty frustrating, actually. Like, what, Kurt shows up and suddenly he stops being a Ken doll and becomes a real boy? Like everything he is here is a lie or something? And what kind of friends say that? Fuck them, anyway, he can talk or not talk as real as he wants to whoever he wants and he doesn't need their support or understanding or whatever, this was a fucking stupid idea, Kurt.
Blaine has never actually gotten angry at David or Wes before. It burns, and it makes him want to hit things just to feel the impact on his skin.
He hates feeling like this.
He hates... he hates feeling.
Wes and David are watching him, a little warily now. David says, "We know you're happy. It's just that since Kurt, you seem to know that you're happy, too."
Blaine really can't handle this anymore. So he doesn't. The door's right there, and nobody stops him as he stands, and runs.
*
His room is covered in college football posters and Harry Potter paraphernalia (the football stuff is his; the Potter stuff is Jeff's. Jeff is a fanboy on a deep and shameless level). He wishes he had something on the ceiling, though. Something to stare at as he lies in bed and tries not to think of anything else at all.
His phone rings, and he doesn't really think; he just answers it.
"Hi," he says.
"I am going to kill them." Kurt's voice is tinny and furious. "I'm going to replace Wes's hair product with glue and David's iPod with a Chinese knockoff of ethically questionable manufacture."
"Kurt," Blaine says. "Don't."
"I expected them to have a straight-guy bonding thing with you, not break you," Kurt continues. He sounds like he'd rather keep coming up with grim punishments than actually listen to Blaine, which is funny in a way that really, really isn't, all things considered.
Blaine could hang up. He could change the subject. He could be charming and mentor-y and fucking dapper.
He's so, so tired.
He turns over, looks at a blank spot on the wall, and starts talking.
"When I was younger," Blaine says, slowly and inexorably right over whatever the hell Kurt's saying now about fabric dye and false coinage, "when I was younger, when my dad talked to me, he talked about football. Pro football was the famous stuff, but college ball was the better game, he used to tell me. He loved it. And I loved it too, Kurt. I really did."
Kurt's stopped talking. Blaine can barely feel the phone in his hand. The ceiling has shadows from the setting sun, stretching long and dark, but he's got his eyes trained on that empty patch of wall. "When I was thirteen, my dad drove the two of us to Pennsylvania for a couple of weeks, right in the middle of the school year, to watch the Penn State home games. It was fantastic. Nittany Lions, Joe Paterno, the blue paw stickers, everything. Amazing games. My dad, actually being with me. I was really, really happy, which was pretty impressive because I'd just started figuring out that maybe I might be gay, which was a fucking miserable thing to realize in seventh grade.
"My dad bought me a ton of merchandise before we left, including a poster of Paterno. The coach. Famous guy, practically owns the town, the team, everything. Won't let his players stay on the team if they let their grades drop, that kind of thing. We went to the college's ice cream shop, the one they run out of the agriculture program, and had big cones of Peachy Paterno, that's how big the guy is there. Anyway. We came home, and I put the poster on my wall, and... and I don't even pretend to know why, I really haven't had enough therapy for this, but I... talked to the poster. To Joe. He just seemed like the kind of guy who would listen to his players, support them no matter what. So it was Joe I talked to about my first sort-of girlfriend, who I confessed to when I realized I was more interested in being around Pete Alcott than her, who listened to me when I finally admitted the actual reason I broke up with Megan. He was my total confidant about everything. Anything. Like a dad. A better dad, because I could talk to him, and I couldn't talk to anybody else."
He can hear breathing. That's about it. He doesn't know what he's saying. For the first time -- in a long time, maybe -- he's just talking, without caring about what he should be saying next. It would be terrifying, if he could feel anything. But he doesn't have feelings, that's been established by now.
"The year I transferred to Dalton," he says, "Penn State wasn't doing that well. My parents were helping me pack, and my dad... threw my poster away. Like it was nothing. Because the team was losing, and Paterno should retire, and he-- he didn't think. Or maybe he did, maybe he just didn't care. It was just a poster. It wasn't important or anything." Blaine shrugs, even though there's no way for anyone to see him do it. "He didn't ask me. He just did it. The way I got transferred here, too, actually. I'm glad they sent me, but... I wasn't asked. That's the way the Andersons work. We don't talk, we don't explain, and we don't mean anything."
"I'm sorry." Kurt's voice ghosts out over the phone, and Blaine wants to throw his phone as hard as he can, but he might hit the invisible poster on his wall, and he doesn't think he could bear it right now.
"It's fine," Blaine says.
"Is it?" Kurt asks.
Blaine closes his eyes. "No," he says.
Kurt lets out a loud breath. "Do you need me to come over?"
Blaine laughs, just a little. It hurts his throat. "You wouldn't get here before they close school grounds."
"Whatever," Kurt says, "do you need me?"
"Kurt," Blaine says, "I haven't been able to really talk to anyone in two years, because my two-dimensional D-list celebrity father-substitute is in a garbage dump somewhere. I need a psychiatrist."
"Yeah, I'm getting that," Kurt says, and his voice sounds weird. Which is great, because what Blaine needs right this second is to alienate more people.
Blaine is going to hang up. He is. Except somehow, because he's started saying one real thing, he apparently doesn't know how to shut up about it. "I wish you were here," he says, even as he's thumbing the power button. The phone goes dark. He lets it slide out of his hand and then, because it's a terrible, stupid device that makes him say terrible, stupid things, he pushes it off the side of the bed. It thunks against the hardwood, and Blaine feels, for a second, bad for it.
Everything he's feeling hurts. Even when it's about phones.
Which is right about when there's a perfunctory knock at his door before it swings open, and-- it's Kurt. Kurt who looks winded, and his hair is out of place, and his jacket is open, scarf untied and coming off his neck. He comes barrelling to a halt beside Blaine's bed, narrowly missing stepping on Blaine's phone and instead kicking it hard enough to hit the wall; they both wince. Kurt looks apologetic for a second before taking a deep breath, flicking his bangs, and saying, "Looks like I'm your fairy godmother this time. Your wish is my command."
Blaine stares up at him. And the first thing that comes out of his mouth is, "Did you practice that?"
Kurt sniffs. "Not everyone has to over-think every word they say. Some of us are just that good. Now shove over, it's time for some girl talk. Boy talk. Whatever, we need to talk and I just ran from the parking lot and up several flights of stairs to get the timing right, so I kind of need to sit down before I fall on your face."
Well. Blaine shoves over.
Kurt flops heavily beside him, sitting on one leg while the other dangles over the side of his bed, and begins shedding over-garments. The coat is hung on the bedpost, his bag is placed gently on the side table, and his scarf is rolled into a loose column and put into the bag. "Silk," Kurt murmurs absently, an explanation Blaine hadn't asked for.
Kurt's still wearing his uniform -- clearly he hadn't gone home. "How did you know?" Blaine asks. "That I would talk to them today, instead of tomorrow or--"
"I didn't," Kurt says. He shrugs, clasps his hands over his knee. "I've been staying late every day, just in case." He smiles crookedly; it looks crooked, anyway, from Blaine's position. Sideways and above him and almost too much. "You've been jumpy since Valentine's, and I was... worried about you."
Blaine shifts, stares back up at the ceiling. It's easier than watching Kurt watch him. "I'm fine," Blaine says, and doesn't know whether to be grateful or not when Kurt snorts loudly in response.
"This is definitely what I think of when I think of 'fine'," Kurt says. "Confessional phone conversations and desperate pleas for help."
"It wasn't desperate."
Kurt pokes him in the shoulder, though more gently than he could have. "It was totally desperate. I was there. I ran for you, you idiot."
"Okay," Blaine says. The sun has finally finished setting, and Jeff is probably going to come back to the room soon, and he still feels horrible, but... "Maybe it was desperate." He takes a breath, then another. The words are slow to leave him, but he manages anyway: "I'm... glad you're here."
"Of course," Kurt says immediately. He doesn't poke this time, just lays his hand on Blaine's shoulder and keeps it there. Steadying. "I'm going to try my best to always be here for you. If you want me to be, anyway."
The ceiling is blank, the wall is blank, his thoughts are everywhere and nowhere all at once. But Kurt is here, even after the stupid shit Blaine told him, even after Valentine's and getting sort of turned down and the last four months of Blaine's meaningless flirting. He's here, and he's Kurt. He's never been anything other than Kurt, even when Blaine's been everyone except himself.
In a long day of hard things, it's easy as anything to reach up and put his hand over Kurt's. And for all that Kurt said they were going to talk, they actually don't say anything at all. Just Blaine on his back, Kurt sitting by his head, their hands together until Jeff comes home.
*
Kurt goes home eventually. Not because Kurt doesn't want to stay (and Blaine is surprised by how much he really, really doesn't want Kurt to go), but for the simple reason that he wasn't at all prepared to stay overnight anywhere. His skincare regimen is not one to be trifled with, apparently.
Except the thing is, Blaine would've given up the bed and slept on a blanket on the floor if it would've kept Kurt near him. He thinks he might actually have said that out loud, too. He doesn't remember, things are kind of glowy in his brain right now.
He is pretty sure he didn't say out loud that he also would've gladly shared the bed, if that's what Kurt wanted, because he can still feel the warm press of Kurt's hand on his shoulder, like a buzz under his skin, and the idea of having that feeling along his arms, across his chest, the tops of his thighs-- god, he wants it.
He maybe, when it comes down to it, wants Kurt.
He thinks he didn't say that one out loud, because if he had, maybe Kurt would still be here, and why exactly hadn't he said it again? That would have been amazing. He thinks. He's pretty sure. He's not actually sure, and isn't that why he's lying here? Because it's 10 at night and he's staring at the ceiling again, except in an entirely different way than he was four hours earlier, because instead of existential misery what he's actually doing is trying to balance the timing so that going to the shower just looks like his usual routine and not at all like he's looking for private time with some soap and his hand.
It's a fruitless gesture in the end, because this is an all-boys school, and that's everyone's mental math, but Jeff is sitting at his desk doing Latin homework and hasn't said a word so far about the tableau he walked in on. Or the stay-or-go conversation he had to sit through which, Blaine suspects, was kind of more sappy than maybe either he or Kurt realized at the time.
Jeff is a quiet man with ridiculous hair and a lot of patience. And Blaine is deeply suspicious that if anyone has started a betting pool regarding certain gay members of the Warblers and their undeniable chemistry and certain romantic future, it's totally him.
Blaine swings out of bed and gets his shower caddy and towel and stuff, trying to remember all his usual steps and not blurt out something like, "Hi, I'm just going to go shower, it has nothing to do with Kurt at all why would you say that oh my god I have to leave now--"
He almost makes it to the door, too, before Jeff looks up and says, "Hey, so-- oh, never mind. Showering. Got it," and turns back to his homework.
Because he clearly has a mental disorder that prevents him from shutting up, Blaine says, "Sorry about earlier. With Kurt."
Jeff looks at him again, smiling politely. "It's cool," he says, sounding distracted. Blaine smiles back, trying for as normal as possible, and is halfway out the door when Jeff calls out after him, "Since you're madly in love forever."
Don't look back, don't look back--
Jeff is smiling broadly at him and giving the most lascivious thumbs up Blaine has ever seen in his life. "Rock it, my son. Rock it hard," he says, and Blaine can maybe die now, thank you, good night.
The bathrooms are, thankfully, empty. Most of the guys on his floor are morning men, but Blaine's got the hair gel thing going on, and unless he wants to actually throw away every pillowcase he owns, he makes sure his hair is clean before he goes to bed. And, yes, there's an element of wanting to get some time to jerk off when no one is around, because he may enjoy fronting for the Warblers but in some ways he's very, very private, and he likes to think that time with his dick is one of them.
There are six cubes, three by three, separated from the toilets and urinals by a short hall with hooks and cubbies. He always goes for the last shower on the left; it has the best light, the least draft, a hundred other things he doesn't usually think about. He's thinking about it now. He's thinking about the water (turn the knob full circle, hot as it will go, just to kick the water heater in gear), he's thinking about the bench where he's sitting to take off his shoes (wooden, old, faintly musty from being around steam and heat all the time), he's thinking about the tiles in the cube as he steps under the water (warm, now, but when he touches the wall, leans with one hand and lets the water comb through his hair and run over his neck, they're cold and slick from condensation)-- he's thinking about everything and anything other than what he's about to do, because he's jerked off thinking about all sorts of people, but he's never done it while thinking about Kurt.
His best friend. The only person he's been able to talk to about anything real in years. The first person -- maybe ever -- who's cared enough to understand, to listen.
And who likes Blaine. Likes him, and is hot, and who maybe has jerked off because of him.
Holy fuck. That is a mental image.
The water is hot and the air is thick and he's half hard already just from the thought of Kurt doing, god, anything. Blaine gets a handful of shampoo and cups his cock tentatively, hisses a little at the touch. The shampoo is cool, and he twists lightly to spread the soap just enough to allow a slick slide and yeah, he's ready for this. He doesn't even know what he's doing really -- testing? Seeing if this is something he wants? Someone he wants?
He closes his eyes, remembers the feel of Kurt's hand on his shoulder. The buzz that spreads under his skin, across his muscles. His face feels flushed. He closes his eyes, makes one slow stroke, and imagines Kurt's hand touching his jaw, a thumb on his cheek. Imagines the light brush of skin, someone breathing next to him, Kurt. He rocks into his fist, bracing against the shower wall, and Kurt's eyes are watching, and he can hear singing, a countertenor raising the hair on his arms and he's so fucking hard it hurts.
Kurt's mouth is smiling, crooked and beautiful and Blaine imagines that there's another hand touching him, sliding down, wrapping around his cock and taking over, long fingers and pale skin and a rough touch that's everything Blaine never knew he wanted. Like this? he can hear Kurt saying, tentative and hot, curved behind him with a hand on his hip and the other on his dick and his chin hooked over Blaine's shoulder, taller than him, pressing himself up against Blaine and he can feel it, fuck, he can feel how it would be, could be, Kurt, Kurt.
He gasps, louder than he's ever let himself in the showers, and comes hard enough to see stars, and for just a minute he feels wonderful. Except... it only lasts a minute.
The shower tile is still cold against his hand; he gives up and just leans his body against it, let's the porcelain cool his face even as his hand squeezes once, twice, getting every last moment he can from this. Because he's never felt like this, about anyone, and Kurt may say that he likes him, but this is beyond liking, this is so much more, and Blaine is terrified that he wants something now that Kurt will never give him.
Because this is what he's just figured out: Liking someone is one thing; loving is another.
Blaine's wrung out from the best orgasm he's ever had in his life, and wishing he'd just stayed in his room and dreamt about crushes instead of discovering how much he wants and how little chance he has of getting it.
*
The next morning he wakes up, heads to the bathroom, and pulls out his hair gel.
And looks in the mirror.
His hair is curly. Really, really curly, and a very slightly lighter brown than it is when he's gelled it. It reminds him of his old high school, and the person he used to be. Bullied. Ignored.
But he wore pink sunglasses and he cuffed his jeans and he was... definitely himself. And maybe that was the guy who got beaten up, but he was also the guy who could find happiness in little things, because that's all he had.
Blaine needs to find happiness right now.
He puts down the gel, and spends the entire time he's shaving, brushing his teeth, and tying his tie just looking in the mirror, being startled every time by the person he is.
And trying not to think of what he'll do when he sees Kurt today.
*
Turns out that the easy answer to that one is to avoid Kurt completely. Because every time Blaine tries to think of how their meeting today will go, he sort of blanks out and can't decide if he'd stand there like a moron or, like, fall face-first onto Kurt's mouth. Which would be awkward, and bad, and would probably send the wrong message. Or the right message, except that Kurt wouldn't want it, and that would be worse than the Gap thing, a million times worse, because Jeremiah was a crush and Kurt is... Kurt's everything.
So basically, Blaine has been hiding in the library all day between classes and hoping to god no one rats him out. A couple of the Warblers have seen him -- Jeff had raised his eyebrows when he'd seen Blaine's hair, and David had smiled a bit uncertainly and then complimented him on the look -- but no one's actually found him in the library yet. There's a really good chance that he can avoid Kurt for days just by sticking it out in the Religion section on the second floor, fifth bookcase from the back and without a carrel in sight.
It's after school now, anyway, so he thinks he's home-free for the day at least. It's Friday, and Kurt always heads straight to Lima on Fridays unless there's a Warbler event. Which there is not, particularly after Blaine called up Wes and made dire threats if he even thought of doing an impromptu gig. Wes had relented much more quickly than Blaine had anticipated; he wonders if maybe he'd freaked him out yesterday, talking about coming out and then making a run for it.
He wonders if maybe Jeff has been texting the crew and keeping everyone up to date on the latest gossip.
Something terrible is going to happen to Jeff's Prisoner of Azkaban figurines, he swears to god.
The library is always a little chilly, and a little too dark for comfort. It smells like paper and book glue and dust, though, and Blaine can't help it, he's always loved the smell of libraries. This is his favorite spot, too, quiet and with a small window just lighting this corner. He likes to sit on the metal step-stool that lives on this floor and just lean back against the books, closing his eyes, thinking about... oh, anything.
Or Kurt. He could think about Kurt while he's here.
He doesn't even know why he's bothering to lie to himself.
Kurt. Kurt who likes him, except the only Blaine Kurt's ever known is the fake one with gelled hair and an easy smile. This Blaine, the one who's hiding in the library, is the real one. This Blaine wasn't even the one who confessed his lousy life over the telephone last night, because that Blaine was somebody who still thought Kurt was just his best friend, just somebody he could like-like one day, maybe, in the future.
This Blaine, the one right here, is the one who might be in love.
Kurt doesn't know him. And he doesn't know what he'll do if Kurt finds out that he doesn't like the real Blaine, because Blaine's not sure he can go back again.
His phone rings, and he scrambles to shut it off before one of the student shelvers comes and glares at him. Don't be Kurt, don't be Kurt, he thinks, because he is not ready for Kurt at all.
It's Thad. "Blaine," he says, voice serious and startling over the phone, "did you break up with Kurt? Because I need at least thirty-minutes warning of this kind of news before having him show up weeping on my doorstep."
What?
Blaine swallows and hopes his voice doesn't break. "You're over-dramatic," he says. "Kurt isn't weeping on your doorstep. Also, you don't have a doorstep."
He can almost hear Thad waving away his statements. "Don't try to distract me. Are you confirming that you and Kurt were dating, though? Because this changes some things."
Blaine wishes he had never picked up the phone. "No, we were never dating. No, Kurt is probably not on your doorstep. I have to go, this has been great."
"Don't hang up," Thad says quickly. "Fine, none of the above is true. But he is moping, and Jeff said something, and Wes said something, and as a member of the Warbler board I feel it necessary to hold an intervention here if you're thinking of having loud arguments and tearful reunions, because we really can't afford to lose both your voices right before Regionals."
"That," Blaine says, "sounds remarkably more like Wes than you."
"Wes is feeling guilty," Thad says -- in the background, Blaine hears something like a squawk and dark muttering.
"Are you... are you with anybody else?" Blaine asks.
"No," says Thad, "what? No. I mean. What?"
"Listen," says David, suddenly filling Blaine's phone and making Blaine wonder whether the world is conspiring against him, because apparently it totally is, "maybe there are some other people here. But not Kurt, so you're, uh, safe. From him."
There is a voice in the background that sounds a lot like Jeff, and it is clearly saying, For now--
"What exactly is going on here?" says Blaine, and David starts saying something about wanting what's best for him, and delaying the inevitable, and at least three guys are singing in the background words that Blaine is trying not to hear, and--
And Kurt. In the library. Rounding the corner in a rush, and breathing hard and staring down at Blaine.
Blaine hangs up the phone.
Kurt is usually immaculately dressed. Hair perfect, skin perfect, every movement controlled and... perfect. He utterly occupies any space he stands in, and when he sings, that space extends to the boundaries of the room and beyond.
Kurt looks like a wreck.
Blaine's seen Kurt near tears before, but this isn't it. This is wilder, more uncertain. This is Kurt looking panicked. Blaine pushes himself up to his feet and grabs Kurt by the shoulders, all thoughts of love and showers and misery gone. "Oh my god, Kurt, what's happened?" Blaine inhales, the worst options coming first. "Is it Burt? Is he--"
"What?" Kurt blinks heavily down at him, jittering under Blaine's hands. "What's my dad have to do with--"
"You just, you look--" Blaine's thumbs are pressing just above where Kurt's clavicles would be, a dip he can feel through his uniform. "You look like something bad has happened," Blaine finishes, and he should let go, he should probably let go.
"I'm sorry," Kurt says, talking fast, the panic obvious, "I'm just sorry, I shouldn't have made you do any of the steps or whatever, I should've just supported you and bought you coffee and-- and it wasn't David or Wes or anybody who broke you, it was me, and I'm sorry, and please be my friend again, I, I," he swallows, and Blaine can see his adam's apple bob, pale and shadowed, and Kurt says, "I don't care about anything else, I just want us to be okay again."
Blaine lets go. He leans against the bookcase, and closes his eyes. Kurt doesn't care about anything else. Kurt doesn't care. "It's fine," Blaine says to the darkness, "it's okay, we're okay. We don't have to be anything else."
Kurt's silent then, and Blaine wonders if maybe he's gone, left Blaine now that they're friends again. Except he can feel the air shift in front of him, and he can smell Kurt's aftershave, just a little bit. He doesn't know what brand it is, but he's pretty sure he'll recognize it for the rest of his life.
"Blaine," Kurt says, and Blaine doesn't even know what to make of his voice. "Blaine."
Blaine opens his eyes. Kurt's looking at him, but not exactly at him. At his head. His hair.
Kurt raises his hand halfway, stops himself. "Your hair," he says, a little wonderingly.
"Yeah," Blaine says. He wishes he was still sitting down. He wishes a lot of things. "I-- remember when I said I pretend to know what I'm doing?" he says, and there are words pushing to come out of him and all he can think is Why not? It can't get worse, it can't-- "I still don't know what I'm doing, Kurt, but I'm tired of pretending, and I'm tired of being someone fake and happy when I'm not. And I'm not happy, not at all, my family life is fucked up and my entire concept of self-worth is kind of wrapped up in my singing ability and I have this thing where I need to keep my hair gelled because otherwise I'm somehow different and weird like I was in my old high school and maybe no one will like me anymore which is just, just insane, I know it's insane, and how can you possibly like someone like me? How can you like someone who loved a sports poster and can't manage to talk to anyone without the aid of song lyrics? You can't like me, you can't, and it's awful, because the only time I'm ever happy is when I'm with you."
He stops, because if he doesn't he's going to run or kiss Kurt or something stupid, really stupid, and he can't be that guy anymore. So he stands against copies of Lutheran doctrinal studies, the sun throwing splashes of dusty light on the floor, and stares at Kurt. Kurt who is looking at him like he's a stranger, and that's because he is, he is.
And then Kurt takes a step forward, and puts a hand on his shoulder, right over the spot he held last night. And his other hand reaches up, and... Jesus, touches one of Blaine's curls. Gently, so gently. Blaine can feel it on his skin. Kurt bites his lip, and says, very, very hesitantly, "I like you."
Blaine swallows. "You can't," he says numbly. "I'm not the guy you like."
"Okay," Kurt says, and there's just the faintest touch of bite to it, the Kurt who throws pillows at his head and buys him coffee after Gap disasters. "I liked that other guy, yes. I like you more."
Kurt's mouth is right there. "I like you, too," Blaine says, and he's staring, he knows he is, and he flicks his eyes up and there's Kurt.
"You do?" Kurt says, and Blaine nods. Kurt lets out a breath, long and low, and says, "Then I really hope you don't stop me," and presses Blaine hard against the shelves, long body flush against his, and kisses him.
It takes a moment for Blaine to move, because this is-- he-- fuck-- and Kurt hesitates, starts to pull away. No. Blaine reaches out, holds on. And kisses Kurt back. Kurt's hand slides into his hair, and Blaine's tipping his face up, changing the angle, and if Kurt is the Fourth of July when he sees Blaine, then this is all fireworks, bright lights and sparkles and a crowd of thousands breathing out all at once.
Kurt breaks the kiss long enough to whisper against his mouth. "You," he says, and kisses him again like he can't help it. Blaine feels it too, like there are words he needs to say except that would be a stupid use of his mouth right now. And hands, he should probably do something with his hands, but he can't manage anything except fist Kurt's jacket and try to rock him closer. He shifts against the bookcase, his legs spreading as he does, and suddenly Kurt's got a leg between his, his thigh hard against Blaine, and holy shit he's in love.
Kurt gasps, and Blaine chases after him, tasting Kurt's mouth as the kiss turns wet and amazing. The sun is warm and it's quiet, it's so quiet here that he can hear the sound of their mouths, their skin, their blood rushing rushing rushing--
"I like you," he says against Kurt's jaw, finally unclenching one hand just so he can reach up and press his fingers through the hair at the base of Kurt's skull, just to hold him there. "I like you so much, I can't even--"
"How," Kurt says, "how can you, I'm horrible, I made you do awful things," and Kurt kisses him again, like maybe Blaine will stop him from ever doing it again now that he's been reminded of Kurt's infamy.
"It was me," Blaine says, "just me, and then you found me, how did you find me? God, you're perfect, and you found me."
Kurt presses his forehead against Blaine's, and his thigh tenses, hard against Blaine's extremely interested cock. "I have spies everywhere," Kurt says. "And also, Thad told me."
Blaine moves his hips, just a little, and they both hiss. "Thad said you were moping," he says.
"I was a little distressed," says Kurt, "because you were avoiding me."
"I wasn't-- okay, yes, I was avoiding you," Blaine says, and darts a kiss because he can, because that's allowed, because Kurt likes him, even when his hair is curly and he's not singing. Kurt bites Blaine's lip, and that's enough to cause Blaine to make a very embarrassing noise and grip Kurt's head harder, curve his back to get closer to Kurt's body, closer to everything hot and hard and there.
"I couldn't stand it," Blaine says, "the idea that you wouldn't, that you couldn't like me the way I am--"
"Idiot," Kurt says, "you're an idiot, I'm in love with an idiot--"
Kurt rears back, hard, stepping out of Blaine's grip and crashing against the other bookcase, breathing fast and his hair mussed all out of shape and he's beautiful, absolutely beautiful, but way too far away.
Also, there's the thing that he just said, which Kurt seems also aware of.
"I mean," Kurt is saying very quickly, flapping his hands, his eyes rolling wildly as he tries to backpedal like whoa, "I mean, I love you like a friend, not at all like a creeper who has been pining for you for months, I mean," he trills a laugh that is in a register beyond even his normal one, "I mean, this is great, we like each other, kissing, very good, but I don't want you to think that I--"
Blaine reaches across the aisle and pulls Kurt back against him. Kurt almost fights him, and it means that he lands less than gracefully on Blaine, all stiff and hard and a dozen other words that are also convenient euphemisms for exactly what Blaine's feeling right now, because oh my god, Kurt loves him.
Him. Blaine. Kurt loves him, unless this freakout is somehow meant to imply he doesn't, which Blaine is pretty sure is not the case. The part where Kurt is actively melting bonelessly against him is a great sign, all things considered.
"I think I'm in love with an idiot, too," Blaine says, and then he kisses Kurt because yeah, he's in love, and Kurt's in love, and this is what they can do, in the silence of the library, in the warmth of the sun.
END
go to: We Are All a Little Weird, and Life's a Little Weird
Author: parsnips
Rating: R
Pairing: Kurt/Blaine
Warnings: Language, sexual situations, awesomeness.
Spoilers: Up to Silly Love Songs
Summary: In which Blaine is an emotionally stunted idiot, and Kurt finally notices. (A sequel/coda-thing now exists as well: We Are All a Little Weird, and Life's a Little Weird.)
Written for skyfyre, because she asked, and MP, because she also asked. Started right after Silly Love Songs, and jossed by everything after, but hey, a love story's still a love story no matter how AU it gets, right?
ETA: This fic mentions in a positive light PSU Coach Joe Paterno and the Penn State football community. This is in the process of being edited out.
--
Love (Makes You Do the Crazy)
--
by parsnips
He hadn't thought things could get worse.
They're coming back from the coffee shop. Kurt's just walking next to him, not talking or anything like that; they do this thing where they can hang out together without talking constantly and it's... nice. It's always been nice, actually, that there's someone he can just be quiet around, someone he doesn't have to prove anything to, or--
Except that apparently his actually being comfortable around Kurt means that he's been leading him on. Meanwhile, two coffees do not make a deathless passion, serenading does not equal instant boyfriend, and Christmas duets are a major turn-on. It's Bizarro World all up in this shit. Also, it's winter, and it's cold, and he's making that once-in-a-blue-moon wish that he'd actually kept his hair long, because his ears are freezing. He should have brought a hat with him.
He should've done a lot of things.
Blaine keeps his head down as he walks into the wind, and tracks the cement under his shoes. There's a lot of twigs, and pebbles, and gum stains. He doesn't remember ever seeing anyone chewing gum at Dalton. It's an Altoids institution.
The Jeremiah thing is-- it fucking sucks, but at least it's sort of easy to understand now that he's on the other side of it. Laughably easy, which is depressing. He'd met Jeremiah at a local Alliance meeting back in September, in the basement of the Westerville town library. Someone had made snacks, and there was lemonade and fall-themed paper napkins, and Blaine had wondered if every gay man and lesbian in the entire state of Ohio was over the age of forty. It wasn't until people had settled down and started talking about that week's topic (half discussing the Cleveland Gay Games thing, half gossiping behind their Tollhouse cookies about the Target-brand cups and napkins and scabs who break shopping boycotts in favor of cute and affordable disposable dinnerware) -- it wasn't until then that Blaine had caught sight of the young guy across the room, all blond, wavy hair and a mouth that was more than a little amazing.
He remembers thinking Might be straight might be straight might be totally uninterested and straight, but after the meeting broke up he'd made a beeline for the guy and-- yeah, the guy wasn't straight. And he was actually close to Blaine's age, and his voice was wonderful, and his hair was manageable, and when Blaine had smiled at him he'd given a small, shy smile back, and Blaine was crushing so hard that it was a miracle the guy didn't immediately notice and file a restraining order.
Add a couple more Alliance meetings, where they'd sat together to represent the "too young to remember Stonewall" crowd, and two coffee dates-- not dates, back up, two coffee occasions, because there hadn't actually been dates and all they'd talked about was more Alliance stuff, god-- all that adds up to is a friend. Maybe a friend. Probably an acquaintance with a limited number of mutual interests.
The wind gusts, and Blaine wonders if his ears could actually, like, fall off from hypothermia before they make it back to Dalton.
"You're kind of a moron," Kurt says philosophically beside him.
Kurt never looks cold. Ever. He seems to wear scarves solely for decorative purposes, and his gloves have more cutouts than actual fabric. Right now he's wearing a coat, but Blaine gets the impression it's only because it's winter, and one wears coats in winter.
Kurt unwinds his scarf one-handed and drapes it over Blaine's shoulder. "Tie it around your head if you're feeling adventurous, but you could probably just wrap it over your scarf. If you pull it up you should be able to cover your ears a little." And then he folds his hands around his latte and goes back to silent walking. As if they hadn't just had a Major Conversation in the Starbucks; as if Blaine isn't stuck here wondering if everything he does -- everything Kurt does -- now secretly means something.
Blaine wraps the scarf up around his face, a compromise between Kurt's options. He's suddenly much warmer, and he can smell Kurt's aftershave, and he'd never had anything like this with Jeremiah. Which doesn't make any sense, because he thought he'd been in love with Jeremiah, and he's only friends with Kurt. It's all backwards. Bizarro. Horrible.
Also, with his face covered up, he has no idea how the hell he's going to drink his coffee.
*
Kurt is his friend. Definitely his friend. Probably his best friend, actually, which is weird, because he hadn't realized he was missing one before Kurt came to Dalton.
It's just that... Blaine doesn't know what else Kurt might be. Maybe. In the future.
Blaine lives in the dorms, but since Kurt's just a day student he goes home every night. Sometimes Kurt sticks around to study, but usually he's off at five, after Warblers practice or coffee or whichever. It's a long drive to Lima, and the times when he does stay to study are usually just before finals or midterms, when the "refined air of quality leather upholstery" is apparently the perfect study aid.
So it's more than a little startling when Blaine steps into the common area and finds Kurt sitting on the couch, idling texting someone while swinging his foot to silent music. It's late, nearly nine, but Kurt doesn't look like he's got anywhere to be.
Why is he here? Was he waiting for him? Blaine has a terrible vision of Kurt breaking out into song. Maybe the same song he sung to Jeremiah. Maybe to a Disney song. A world of awkward possibilities looms, the opening chords of something melodramatic start to fill his ears--
Kurt looks up and quirks a smile. "Hey," he says, and then goes back to texting.
What he is feeling is definitely not disappointment. Definitely. Because if Kurt had tried to serenade him it would have been weird, and also his brain needs to shut up.
"Hey," Blaine says. Except that it's actually been a minute since Kurt said anything, and now Kurt's looking up again, a little puzzled, and oh good, Blaine turned a friendly greeting into a massive awkward pause. He coughs, and sits down beside Kurt. Unless-- is he too close? Jesus. "I mean. Hi," he says, and tries with every ounce of self-control he has left not to twitch violently either off the couch or, somehow, into Kurt's lap.
Kurt raises an eyebrow, then puts down his phone with a determined air. "Okay," he says, "I think we need an intervention." He twists on the couch until he's facing Blaine directly, and rests his cheek on one fist. "I didn't actually say I like you," Kurt says, "but I pretty heavily implied it. Because I thought you should know. And now you're acting like a straight guy in a gay bar wondering if it 'means something' that he wants to dance to ABBA." Kurt wrinkles his nose. "Which it does. But that's beside the point."
"You... think I'm straight?"
Kurt rolls his eyes. "After the show at the Gap? No. No, I do not. But I think maybe you're feeling weird about me liking you. So, here you go: Bam. I'll stop reading meaning into your every move, and you can stop being nervous around me."
There's a window just beyond Kurt. Blaine totally thinks he could jump through it before anyone could stop him. He could die in a blaze of glory and artistically applied snowflakes. "I'm not nervous around you, Kurt."
"Uh huh." Kurt nods at Blaine's school jacket. Where apparently Blaine's hands have, unbeknownst to him, been smoothing out the seams for the last, like, ten minutes. "You, my friend, have a tell," Kurt says with diabolical good humor, and then laughs himself silly when Blaine, for lack of any response, starts singing Gene Kelly numbers as a defensive maneuver.
Kurt gets his breath back eventually and joins in. Which is... nice.
*
He doesn't have classes with Kurt, which is a bit of a relief. It means there's at least one place where he won't dive into music just so there's some way to end a conversation. Ms. Rosenbaum would not appreciate his French assignment sung in three-quarter time, especially because he tried it his freshman year and it went over really badly.
He still doesn't know what Kurt was doing in the common room last night, because, frankly, nothing happened. They'd finished singing, both of them laughing and Kurt saying disparaging things about Blaine's habit of climbing on the furniture, and then Kurt had picked up his bag and left, waving over his shoulder and promising lunch together today. No lingering glances, no subtextually interesting comments -- just a friend saying goodnight.
Except Kurt likes him. So he doesn't know what anything means, really.
Lunch comes quickly, or slowly, depending on where Blaine is in his mental weirdness map. Kurt sits down beside him and brings out one of his step-mom's lunch bags, always full of soup and salad and an enormous baked good that Kurt pushes Blaine's way automatically. Blaine eats from the kitchens, because he hasn't seen his parents since the beginning of the school year, and this whole line of thought is depressing and should be stopped immediately.
Kurt's step-mom makes really good brownies.
"So I'm thinking that you're emotionally stunted," Kurt says by way of greeting. He shakes a carton of milk and opens it with panache. "And I am here, Blaine, to help you with your sad, sad issues."
"Really," Blaine says, because that is a great way to talk to someone you like, Kurt.
"Totally," Kurt says, unfazed. "You sang about sex toys in public to a boy you hardly knew, and then you got weirded out by a completely normal person--" he sweeps a hand down his immaculate uniform, "--saying that he likes you. And then you confessed that you're bad at romance while at the same time giving the 'you're a real pal' speech, so you're clearly someone who needs to learn how to interrogate their own emotions."
"You... have thought a lot about this," Blaine says.
"Not really," says Kurt. "It was obvious. That it wasn't obvious to you just proves my point." Kurt takes a sip of milk, and then turns a serious eye on Blaine. "My issues are straightforward and to the point: bullying, inappropriate crush objects, and skin that dries out too quickly in the winter. You? You are, by your own admission, faking a confidence you don't feel and are apparently so out of touch with the emotional reality of others that the only way you feel you can connect with anyone is through song. You may be out and confident about it, but this isn't about being gay or whatever -- this is about being human." Kurt breaks off the steady eye contact and instead spears an enormous forkful of salad. "So, step one: Tell me all about Jeremiah. The whole story. Without," he adds sharply, "singing your way out of it."
Blaine feels a little like he's been trapped into something, and that's probably because he has been.
*
He does start humming at least twice, but he makes it through lunch. Just before they head to different classes, Kurt rests his hand on Blaine's arm and gives a little squeeze. Blaine's pretty sure it could be interpreted as "supportive friend" or "supportive potential boyfriend," but either way, it's comforting.
"Step two will come over coffee, after school," Kurt says. "Meanwhile, your ongoing homework--" Kurt visibly puts on a brave face as he shoulders his bag. "I don't need an answer right away or anything, but... think about what you actually feel for me, okay? Whatever it is, I promise, I'll be fine with it -- I had a crush on a straight guy who thereafter became my brother, I am really not going to be bothered. But it's going to stay weird between us the longer you're uncertain of things, and I'm starting to miss my best friend."
"What about you?" Blaine asks without meaning to. "Are you going to think about it too?"
Kurt doesn't actually call him an idiot, but his face is very, very expressive. "I don't have to," he says slowly. "I already know I like you."
And then Kurt's heading toward the north wing, waving briefly before getting caught up in the throng of students.
A few minutes later Blaine takes his seat in American Literature and proceeds to ignore it entirely. He can study up on James Fenimore Cooper some other time. He's sort of stuck thinking about Kurt right now, because after that little speech, how could he not?
Anyway, it's an easy, familiar place for his thoughts to wander. Mr. Murkoff's rundown on Leatherstocking can take the backseat for a bit.
So. Kurt. They'd met on a staircase, which was a pretty good start to things. Less good was the misery pouring off the kid, and-- yeah, and the thing where he thought of him immediately as "the kid," that was probably a bad sign. It was just that -- he knew exactly what Kurt was feeling, because it was clear from a mile away that Kurt was gay, bullied, and looking for a way out. It was startling, and scary, to see it on someone else's face, someone else clutching the straps of their book bag, someone else checking for exits out of the corner of their eyes. Blaine had gone through it two years ago, and Kurt had gone through it two months ago, and somehow that had all added up to "show the kid that it gets better."
So he'd taken Kurt by the hand, and pulled him through the corridors, and basically eye-flirted like mad while singing a romantic song -- and all because this was what he knew he could do. He couldn't pull the kid out of his school, and he probably couldn't actually beat anybody up for him, but he could show him that sometimes it didn't actually suck to be alive.
Blaine makes score marks on his notepaper, black lines crisscrossing over and over. God, no wonder Kurt likes him. The first gay guy Kurt's age to ever pay attention to him like that -- without being crazy stalkerish and abusive -- and Blaine had made himself into some kind of ideal mentor on high, the perfect crush object. Except he isn't a perfect person, he isn't any kind of mentor, and about the only difference between them is that Blaine had been miserable two years sooner than Kurt.
And anyway, if he actually does the math, Kurt is only about six months younger than him. So everything is basically wrong and awful and James Fenimore Cooper fucking sucks.
*
Blaine's last class of the day is a study hall, so he skips out early and heads to the coffee shop to grab a seat by the windows. It's because of this that, an hour later, he has the opportunity to watch Kurt make the walk over, has a chance to think about exactly what he's seeing when he looks at Kurt.
To be honest, at first, he's exactly the same. He's... Kurt. He's got his earbuds in, listening to dance music or musical theatre or, more likely, a combination of both. His coat is open, and he's changed out of his school uniform into something metallic and knitted and entirely amazing. He should be freezing, but his head and his hands are bare, and the flimsy crocheted thing around his neck is a scarf in name only.
He's... tall. Taller than Blaine, at least, which isn't that difficult. He might get taller. Right now, though, he's just tall enough that Blaine has to look up a little when they're standing close together. Kurt has these eyes that can sometimes be a light blue, sometimes a light green. They're probably the prettiest thing about him if Blaine had to pick, except that it doesn't take into account what it looks like when Kurt smiles at him, or rolls his eyes, or agrees to sing a duet, or says, "I thought that the guy you wanted to ask out on Valentine's Day was me."
Blaine's coffee is bitter, and cold, and too fucking metaphorical.
Okay, shake it out, looking objectively, completely wiping his mind of everything he knows about Kurt Hummel: There's a guy walking down the street, coming closer, ignoring all the sounds around him just to take in a couple of minutes of music. Slow walk, long legs. Chin up, eyes watching some middle distance. Blaine's age, definitely. Objectively speaking, easy on the eyes. The guy stops on the corner to wait for a pause in traffic, turns his head--there's a jawline there, sharp but curved just enough, maybe, to fit into a palm. There's a cleft to his chin--had he noticed that before? Really noticed? Because it's... good. Very good. Pale skin, patches of pink from the wind across the very top of some really nice cheekbones. A long mouth. Eyebrows that perfectly complement those changeable eyes.
The traffic changes, the guy crosses the street and gets closer to the windows, and then--lights up, like it's the goddamn Fourth of July, when he sees Blaine staring at him. A big, infectious smile, and he walks a little faster, waves with long, thin fingers.
Blaine takes a very important moment to come to some conclusions:
Kurt is a hot guy.
Blaine is not immune to this hotness.
And now this hot guy has sat down across from him, right here, and is apparently saying something, because his mouth is moving and everything.
Blaine has lost all sense of time, sense, and propriety, and is very close to wishing he was dead, because dead would be so much easier to go through than suddenly figuring out that his best friend is attractive as fuck and into him and has stopped talking, oh god, oh shit, what should he say.
Blaine takes a long sip of his coffee and says, "So, step two?"
*
Step two is awful. Step two is the worst.
"David," Blaine says, "Wes." He gestures them toward the common room couch. They sit, looking a little leery. The three of them are alone for the moment; Kurt is back in Lima, probably cackling evilly because he knows what's going down. Blaine is willing to bet, like, a lot of money that Kurt has practiced evil, Disney-esque laughter. Probably while dreaming happily of Maleficent costumes.
Except whatever, focus. David. Wes. Feelings.
Blaine is going to stuff Kurt into a cardboard box and mail him somewhere with terrible humidity and no theatre program.
"Guys," Blaine starts. He stops again, twitches out a fold in his uniform jacket, and finally sits down on the coffee table in front of them. Okay, brave face. What can they do?
Laugh themselves sick and then throw you into the streets.
Awesome, brain, that was an awesome answer to that one.
"Remember when I first came to Dalton?" Blaine asks. He's talking a little too fast, maybe. A little too loud. Damn it. Keep going. "It was... not a great time for me. I think you know some of it..."
David shares a quick glance with Wes. "Yeah, we got that impression."
Wes says, "The bruises were a hint."
Blaine remembers. The shiner on his left eye had been his defining feature for the first several weeks at Dalton, courtesy of Walnut Hills High School's very own Mike Wilson and his discomfort with anything disrupting the common heteronormative narrative. Blaine, with his propensity for pink sunglasses and cuffed jeans and wild curls, was a pretty big disruption -- and that was without knowing Blaine was actually gay. The fight with Mike had been the last straw for Blaine's parents, and they'd transferred him within the week.
Blaine had been grateful to get away. His parents, though, weren't overjoyed when he'd been more than just grateful and had actually come out at Dalton. Which in the end had just made it absolutely clear that they'd been more interested in finding somewhere to put him than somewhere to keep him safe.
But he hadn't known any of that when he'd first met David and Wes. And that's not what he's here to say.
Blaine clasps his hands between his knees and tries to maintain something like reasonable eye contact. "Yeah, the bruises were a hint. I'd been getting beaten up for a few months, but never with marks somewhere people could see. Until the last one. And then I came here, and you guys..." Blaine shrugs, and loses the battle with the eye contact. The rug's nice, anyway. "When I met you, and you asked me to sit with you at lunch, and you asked me what brought me to Dalton, and I said 'Homophobia and poor clothing choices,' and you laughed and asked if I could sing..."
Wes frowns, but David just nods. "Sure," he says, as if this whole encounter is totally normal, as if this is something Blaine does. As if Blaine sits down in front of them and tells them something real.
Step two, Kurt had said. David and Wes are, like, your oldest friends at Dalton, and I don't think they've ever even seen you with your hair au natural. Talk to them. Actually talk to them.
Blaine takes a deep breath. "I wasn't out at my old school. When I said that to you guys... you were the first people I ever came out to. And you took it in stride. And it was... it was really important to me, and it's an important memory, and I wanted you to know that."
They're quiet for a moment, and then Wes is leaning forward and putting his hand over Blaine's clenched fists. "Oh my god," he says intensely, "are you dying."
"What?" Blaine did not envision this reaction.
Wes now has both hands wrapped around Blaine's, and is staring really creepily. "Is this one of those twelve steps," he intones. "Have you been experiencing a life-crippling addiction you are only now pulling yourself out of."
David rolls his eyes. "He means you're welcome."
"Is it the crack, Blaine," Wes says. "Is it the white man's devil drug."
"Oh my god," Blaine says, tugging his hands out of Wes's. "This is what I get for listening to Kurt."
"What's Kurt got to do with this?" Wes asks, dropping the crazy eyes and sitting back. "Unless he's the one that's getting you out of your dapper-do-good thing and talking like a human being."
David nods sagely as Blaine tries really, really hard not to make a run for it. "I knew he'd be good for you," David is saying, and what does that even mean?
"I do not understand you," Blaine says dully. "Your words are strange and meaningless."
"He means," Wes says, "that you're an amazing junior Warbler, and a great front-man, and Jeff says you're a decent roommate. But you're not the guy you were when you came here. The Blaine of today -- well, yesterday -- probably wouldn't have come out to us. Not like that, anyway."
"We didn't really notice," David admits, "until Kurt came along. Before him, you smiled and you were charming as hell, and the only time you looked really relaxed was when you were singing. And then Kurt came, and you started getting..."
"Happier," Wes says firmly. "You started getting happier."
Blaine doesn't know what to say. "I--" He cuts himself off, but takes a breath and tries again. "I was happy. Am. Before Kurt."
David and Wes look at him with equal expressions of doubt. It's starting to get pretty frustrating, actually. Like, what, Kurt shows up and suddenly he stops being a Ken doll and becomes a real boy? Like everything he is here is a lie or something? And what kind of friends say that? Fuck them, anyway, he can talk or not talk as real as he wants to whoever he wants and he doesn't need their support or understanding or whatever, this was a fucking stupid idea, Kurt.
Blaine has never actually gotten angry at David or Wes before. It burns, and it makes him want to hit things just to feel the impact on his skin.
He hates feeling like this.
He hates... he hates feeling.
Wes and David are watching him, a little warily now. David says, "We know you're happy. It's just that since Kurt, you seem to know that you're happy, too."
Blaine really can't handle this anymore. So he doesn't. The door's right there, and nobody stops him as he stands, and runs.
*
His room is covered in college football posters and Harry Potter paraphernalia (the football stuff is his; the Potter stuff is Jeff's. Jeff is a fanboy on a deep and shameless level). He wishes he had something on the ceiling, though. Something to stare at as he lies in bed and tries not to think of anything else at all.
His phone rings, and he doesn't really think; he just answers it.
"Hi," he says.
"I am going to kill them." Kurt's voice is tinny and furious. "I'm going to replace Wes's hair product with glue and David's iPod with a Chinese knockoff of ethically questionable manufacture."
"Kurt," Blaine says. "Don't."
"I expected them to have a straight-guy bonding thing with you, not break you," Kurt continues. He sounds like he'd rather keep coming up with grim punishments than actually listen to Blaine, which is funny in a way that really, really isn't, all things considered.
Blaine could hang up. He could change the subject. He could be charming and mentor-y and fucking dapper.
He's so, so tired.
He turns over, looks at a blank spot on the wall, and starts talking.
"When I was younger," Blaine says, slowly and inexorably right over whatever the hell Kurt's saying now about fabric dye and false coinage, "when I was younger, when my dad talked to me, he talked about football. Pro football was the famous stuff, but college ball was the better game, he used to tell me. He loved it. And I loved it too, Kurt. I really did."
Kurt's stopped talking. Blaine can barely feel the phone in his hand. The ceiling has shadows from the setting sun, stretching long and dark, but he's got his eyes trained on that empty patch of wall. "When I was thirteen, my dad drove the two of us to Pennsylvania for a couple of weeks, right in the middle of the school year, to watch the Penn State home games. It was fantastic. Nittany Lions, Joe Paterno, the blue paw stickers, everything. Amazing games. My dad, actually being with me. I was really, really happy, which was pretty impressive because I'd just started figuring out that maybe I might be gay, which was a fucking miserable thing to realize in seventh grade.
"My dad bought me a ton of merchandise before we left, including a poster of Paterno. The coach. Famous guy, practically owns the town, the team, everything. Won't let his players stay on the team if they let their grades drop, that kind of thing. We went to the college's ice cream shop, the one they run out of the agriculture program, and had big cones of Peachy Paterno, that's how big the guy is there. Anyway. We came home, and I put the poster on my wall, and... and I don't even pretend to know why, I really haven't had enough therapy for this, but I... talked to the poster. To Joe. He just seemed like the kind of guy who would listen to his players, support them no matter what. So it was Joe I talked to about my first sort-of girlfriend, who I confessed to when I realized I was more interested in being around Pete Alcott than her, who listened to me when I finally admitted the actual reason I broke up with Megan. He was my total confidant about everything. Anything. Like a dad. A better dad, because I could talk to him, and I couldn't talk to anybody else."
He can hear breathing. That's about it. He doesn't know what he's saying. For the first time -- in a long time, maybe -- he's just talking, without caring about what he should be saying next. It would be terrifying, if he could feel anything. But he doesn't have feelings, that's been established by now.
"The year I transferred to Dalton," he says, "Penn State wasn't doing that well. My parents were helping me pack, and my dad... threw my poster away. Like it was nothing. Because the team was losing, and Paterno should retire, and he-- he didn't think. Or maybe he did, maybe he just didn't care. It was just a poster. It wasn't important or anything." Blaine shrugs, even though there's no way for anyone to see him do it. "He didn't ask me. He just did it. The way I got transferred here, too, actually. I'm glad they sent me, but... I wasn't asked. That's the way the Andersons work. We don't talk, we don't explain, and we don't mean anything."
"I'm sorry." Kurt's voice ghosts out over the phone, and Blaine wants to throw his phone as hard as he can, but he might hit the invisible poster on his wall, and he doesn't think he could bear it right now.
"It's fine," Blaine says.
"Is it?" Kurt asks.
Blaine closes his eyes. "No," he says.
Kurt lets out a loud breath. "Do you need me to come over?"
Blaine laughs, just a little. It hurts his throat. "You wouldn't get here before they close school grounds."
"Whatever," Kurt says, "do you need me?"
"Kurt," Blaine says, "I haven't been able to really talk to anyone in two years, because my two-dimensional D-list celebrity father-substitute is in a garbage dump somewhere. I need a psychiatrist."
"Yeah, I'm getting that," Kurt says, and his voice sounds weird. Which is great, because what Blaine needs right this second is to alienate more people.
Blaine is going to hang up. He is. Except somehow, because he's started saying one real thing, he apparently doesn't know how to shut up about it. "I wish you were here," he says, even as he's thumbing the power button. The phone goes dark. He lets it slide out of his hand and then, because it's a terrible, stupid device that makes him say terrible, stupid things, he pushes it off the side of the bed. It thunks against the hardwood, and Blaine feels, for a second, bad for it.
Everything he's feeling hurts. Even when it's about phones.
Which is right about when there's a perfunctory knock at his door before it swings open, and-- it's Kurt. Kurt who looks winded, and his hair is out of place, and his jacket is open, scarf untied and coming off his neck. He comes barrelling to a halt beside Blaine's bed, narrowly missing stepping on Blaine's phone and instead kicking it hard enough to hit the wall; they both wince. Kurt looks apologetic for a second before taking a deep breath, flicking his bangs, and saying, "Looks like I'm your fairy godmother this time. Your wish is my command."
Blaine stares up at him. And the first thing that comes out of his mouth is, "Did you practice that?"
Kurt sniffs. "Not everyone has to over-think every word they say. Some of us are just that good. Now shove over, it's time for some girl talk. Boy talk. Whatever, we need to talk and I just ran from the parking lot and up several flights of stairs to get the timing right, so I kind of need to sit down before I fall on your face."
Well. Blaine shoves over.
Kurt flops heavily beside him, sitting on one leg while the other dangles over the side of his bed, and begins shedding over-garments. The coat is hung on the bedpost, his bag is placed gently on the side table, and his scarf is rolled into a loose column and put into the bag. "Silk," Kurt murmurs absently, an explanation Blaine hadn't asked for.
Kurt's still wearing his uniform -- clearly he hadn't gone home. "How did you know?" Blaine asks. "That I would talk to them today, instead of tomorrow or--"
"I didn't," Kurt says. He shrugs, clasps his hands over his knee. "I've been staying late every day, just in case." He smiles crookedly; it looks crooked, anyway, from Blaine's position. Sideways and above him and almost too much. "You've been jumpy since Valentine's, and I was... worried about you."
Blaine shifts, stares back up at the ceiling. It's easier than watching Kurt watch him. "I'm fine," Blaine says, and doesn't know whether to be grateful or not when Kurt snorts loudly in response.
"This is definitely what I think of when I think of 'fine'," Kurt says. "Confessional phone conversations and desperate pleas for help."
"It wasn't desperate."
Kurt pokes him in the shoulder, though more gently than he could have. "It was totally desperate. I was there. I ran for you, you idiot."
"Okay," Blaine says. The sun has finally finished setting, and Jeff is probably going to come back to the room soon, and he still feels horrible, but... "Maybe it was desperate." He takes a breath, then another. The words are slow to leave him, but he manages anyway: "I'm... glad you're here."
"Of course," Kurt says immediately. He doesn't poke this time, just lays his hand on Blaine's shoulder and keeps it there. Steadying. "I'm going to try my best to always be here for you. If you want me to be, anyway."
The ceiling is blank, the wall is blank, his thoughts are everywhere and nowhere all at once. But Kurt is here, even after the stupid shit Blaine told him, even after Valentine's and getting sort of turned down and the last four months of Blaine's meaningless flirting. He's here, and he's Kurt. He's never been anything other than Kurt, even when Blaine's been everyone except himself.
In a long day of hard things, it's easy as anything to reach up and put his hand over Kurt's. And for all that Kurt said they were going to talk, they actually don't say anything at all. Just Blaine on his back, Kurt sitting by his head, their hands together until Jeff comes home.
*
Kurt goes home eventually. Not because Kurt doesn't want to stay (and Blaine is surprised by how much he really, really doesn't want Kurt to go), but for the simple reason that he wasn't at all prepared to stay overnight anywhere. His skincare regimen is not one to be trifled with, apparently.
Except the thing is, Blaine would've given up the bed and slept on a blanket on the floor if it would've kept Kurt near him. He thinks he might actually have said that out loud, too. He doesn't remember, things are kind of glowy in his brain right now.
He is pretty sure he didn't say out loud that he also would've gladly shared the bed, if that's what Kurt wanted, because he can still feel the warm press of Kurt's hand on his shoulder, like a buzz under his skin, and the idea of having that feeling along his arms, across his chest, the tops of his thighs-- god, he wants it.
He maybe, when it comes down to it, wants Kurt.
He thinks he didn't say that one out loud, because if he had, maybe Kurt would still be here, and why exactly hadn't he said it again? That would have been amazing. He thinks. He's pretty sure. He's not actually sure, and isn't that why he's lying here? Because it's 10 at night and he's staring at the ceiling again, except in an entirely different way than he was four hours earlier, because instead of existential misery what he's actually doing is trying to balance the timing so that going to the shower just looks like his usual routine and not at all like he's looking for private time with some soap and his hand.
It's a fruitless gesture in the end, because this is an all-boys school, and that's everyone's mental math, but Jeff is sitting at his desk doing Latin homework and hasn't said a word so far about the tableau he walked in on. Or the stay-or-go conversation he had to sit through which, Blaine suspects, was kind of more sappy than maybe either he or Kurt realized at the time.
Jeff is a quiet man with ridiculous hair and a lot of patience. And Blaine is deeply suspicious that if anyone has started a betting pool regarding certain gay members of the Warblers and their undeniable chemistry and certain romantic future, it's totally him.
Blaine swings out of bed and gets his shower caddy and towel and stuff, trying to remember all his usual steps and not blurt out something like, "Hi, I'm just going to go shower, it has nothing to do with Kurt at all why would you say that oh my god I have to leave now--"
He almost makes it to the door, too, before Jeff looks up and says, "Hey, so-- oh, never mind. Showering. Got it," and turns back to his homework.
Because he clearly has a mental disorder that prevents him from shutting up, Blaine says, "Sorry about earlier. With Kurt."
Jeff looks at him again, smiling politely. "It's cool," he says, sounding distracted. Blaine smiles back, trying for as normal as possible, and is halfway out the door when Jeff calls out after him, "Since you're madly in love forever."
Don't look back, don't look back--
Jeff is smiling broadly at him and giving the most lascivious thumbs up Blaine has ever seen in his life. "Rock it, my son. Rock it hard," he says, and Blaine can maybe die now, thank you, good night.
The bathrooms are, thankfully, empty. Most of the guys on his floor are morning men, but Blaine's got the hair gel thing going on, and unless he wants to actually throw away every pillowcase he owns, he makes sure his hair is clean before he goes to bed. And, yes, there's an element of wanting to get some time to jerk off when no one is around, because he may enjoy fronting for the Warblers but in some ways he's very, very private, and he likes to think that time with his dick is one of them.
There are six cubes, three by three, separated from the toilets and urinals by a short hall with hooks and cubbies. He always goes for the last shower on the left; it has the best light, the least draft, a hundred other things he doesn't usually think about. He's thinking about it now. He's thinking about the water (turn the knob full circle, hot as it will go, just to kick the water heater in gear), he's thinking about the bench where he's sitting to take off his shoes (wooden, old, faintly musty from being around steam and heat all the time), he's thinking about the tiles in the cube as he steps under the water (warm, now, but when he touches the wall, leans with one hand and lets the water comb through his hair and run over his neck, they're cold and slick from condensation)-- he's thinking about everything and anything other than what he's about to do, because he's jerked off thinking about all sorts of people, but he's never done it while thinking about Kurt.
His best friend. The only person he's been able to talk to about anything real in years. The first person -- maybe ever -- who's cared enough to understand, to listen.
And who likes Blaine. Likes him, and is hot, and who maybe has jerked off because of him.
Holy fuck. That is a mental image.
The water is hot and the air is thick and he's half hard already just from the thought of Kurt doing, god, anything. Blaine gets a handful of shampoo and cups his cock tentatively, hisses a little at the touch. The shampoo is cool, and he twists lightly to spread the soap just enough to allow a slick slide and yeah, he's ready for this. He doesn't even know what he's doing really -- testing? Seeing if this is something he wants? Someone he wants?
He closes his eyes, remembers the feel of Kurt's hand on his shoulder. The buzz that spreads under his skin, across his muscles. His face feels flushed. He closes his eyes, makes one slow stroke, and imagines Kurt's hand touching his jaw, a thumb on his cheek. Imagines the light brush of skin, someone breathing next to him, Kurt. He rocks into his fist, bracing against the shower wall, and Kurt's eyes are watching, and he can hear singing, a countertenor raising the hair on his arms and he's so fucking hard it hurts.
Kurt's mouth is smiling, crooked and beautiful and Blaine imagines that there's another hand touching him, sliding down, wrapping around his cock and taking over, long fingers and pale skin and a rough touch that's everything Blaine never knew he wanted. Like this? he can hear Kurt saying, tentative and hot, curved behind him with a hand on his hip and the other on his dick and his chin hooked over Blaine's shoulder, taller than him, pressing himself up against Blaine and he can feel it, fuck, he can feel how it would be, could be, Kurt, Kurt.
He gasps, louder than he's ever let himself in the showers, and comes hard enough to see stars, and for just a minute he feels wonderful. Except... it only lasts a minute.
The shower tile is still cold against his hand; he gives up and just leans his body against it, let's the porcelain cool his face even as his hand squeezes once, twice, getting every last moment he can from this. Because he's never felt like this, about anyone, and Kurt may say that he likes him, but this is beyond liking, this is so much more, and Blaine is terrified that he wants something now that Kurt will never give him.
Because this is what he's just figured out: Liking someone is one thing; loving is another.
Blaine's wrung out from the best orgasm he's ever had in his life, and wishing he'd just stayed in his room and dreamt about crushes instead of discovering how much he wants and how little chance he has of getting it.
*
The next morning he wakes up, heads to the bathroom, and pulls out his hair gel.
And looks in the mirror.
His hair is curly. Really, really curly, and a very slightly lighter brown than it is when he's gelled it. It reminds him of his old high school, and the person he used to be. Bullied. Ignored.
But he wore pink sunglasses and he cuffed his jeans and he was... definitely himself. And maybe that was the guy who got beaten up, but he was also the guy who could find happiness in little things, because that's all he had.
Blaine needs to find happiness right now.
He puts down the gel, and spends the entire time he's shaving, brushing his teeth, and tying his tie just looking in the mirror, being startled every time by the person he is.
And trying not to think of what he'll do when he sees Kurt today.
*
Turns out that the easy answer to that one is to avoid Kurt completely. Because every time Blaine tries to think of how their meeting today will go, he sort of blanks out and can't decide if he'd stand there like a moron or, like, fall face-first onto Kurt's mouth. Which would be awkward, and bad, and would probably send the wrong message. Or the right message, except that Kurt wouldn't want it, and that would be worse than the Gap thing, a million times worse, because Jeremiah was a crush and Kurt is... Kurt's everything.
So basically, Blaine has been hiding in the library all day between classes and hoping to god no one rats him out. A couple of the Warblers have seen him -- Jeff had raised his eyebrows when he'd seen Blaine's hair, and David had smiled a bit uncertainly and then complimented him on the look -- but no one's actually found him in the library yet. There's a really good chance that he can avoid Kurt for days just by sticking it out in the Religion section on the second floor, fifth bookcase from the back and without a carrel in sight.
It's after school now, anyway, so he thinks he's home-free for the day at least. It's Friday, and Kurt always heads straight to Lima on Fridays unless there's a Warbler event. Which there is not, particularly after Blaine called up Wes and made dire threats if he even thought of doing an impromptu gig. Wes had relented much more quickly than Blaine had anticipated; he wonders if maybe he'd freaked him out yesterday, talking about coming out and then making a run for it.
He wonders if maybe Jeff has been texting the crew and keeping everyone up to date on the latest gossip.
Something terrible is going to happen to Jeff's Prisoner of Azkaban figurines, he swears to god.
The library is always a little chilly, and a little too dark for comfort. It smells like paper and book glue and dust, though, and Blaine can't help it, he's always loved the smell of libraries. This is his favorite spot, too, quiet and with a small window just lighting this corner. He likes to sit on the metal step-stool that lives on this floor and just lean back against the books, closing his eyes, thinking about... oh, anything.
Or Kurt. He could think about Kurt while he's here.
He doesn't even know why he's bothering to lie to himself.
Kurt. Kurt who likes him, except the only Blaine Kurt's ever known is the fake one with gelled hair and an easy smile. This Blaine, the one who's hiding in the library, is the real one. This Blaine wasn't even the one who confessed his lousy life over the telephone last night, because that Blaine was somebody who still thought Kurt was just his best friend, just somebody he could like-like one day, maybe, in the future.
This Blaine, the one right here, is the one who might be in love.
Kurt doesn't know him. And he doesn't know what he'll do if Kurt finds out that he doesn't like the real Blaine, because Blaine's not sure he can go back again.
His phone rings, and he scrambles to shut it off before one of the student shelvers comes and glares at him. Don't be Kurt, don't be Kurt, he thinks, because he is not ready for Kurt at all.
It's Thad. "Blaine," he says, voice serious and startling over the phone, "did you break up with Kurt? Because I need at least thirty-minutes warning of this kind of news before having him show up weeping on my doorstep."
What?
Blaine swallows and hopes his voice doesn't break. "You're over-dramatic," he says. "Kurt isn't weeping on your doorstep. Also, you don't have a doorstep."
He can almost hear Thad waving away his statements. "Don't try to distract me. Are you confirming that you and Kurt were dating, though? Because this changes some things."
Blaine wishes he had never picked up the phone. "No, we were never dating. No, Kurt is probably not on your doorstep. I have to go, this has been great."
"Don't hang up," Thad says quickly. "Fine, none of the above is true. But he is moping, and Jeff said something, and Wes said something, and as a member of the Warbler board I feel it necessary to hold an intervention here if you're thinking of having loud arguments and tearful reunions, because we really can't afford to lose both your voices right before Regionals."
"That," Blaine says, "sounds remarkably more like Wes than you."
"Wes is feeling guilty," Thad says -- in the background, Blaine hears something like a squawk and dark muttering.
"Are you... are you with anybody else?" Blaine asks.
"No," says Thad, "what? No. I mean. What?"
"Listen," says David, suddenly filling Blaine's phone and making Blaine wonder whether the world is conspiring against him, because apparently it totally is, "maybe there are some other people here. But not Kurt, so you're, uh, safe. From him."
There is a voice in the background that sounds a lot like Jeff, and it is clearly saying, For now--
"What exactly is going on here?" says Blaine, and David starts saying something about wanting what's best for him, and delaying the inevitable, and at least three guys are singing in the background words that Blaine is trying not to hear, and--
And Kurt. In the library. Rounding the corner in a rush, and breathing hard and staring down at Blaine.
Blaine hangs up the phone.
Kurt is usually immaculately dressed. Hair perfect, skin perfect, every movement controlled and... perfect. He utterly occupies any space he stands in, and when he sings, that space extends to the boundaries of the room and beyond.
Kurt looks like a wreck.
Blaine's seen Kurt near tears before, but this isn't it. This is wilder, more uncertain. This is Kurt looking panicked. Blaine pushes himself up to his feet and grabs Kurt by the shoulders, all thoughts of love and showers and misery gone. "Oh my god, Kurt, what's happened?" Blaine inhales, the worst options coming first. "Is it Burt? Is he--"
"What?" Kurt blinks heavily down at him, jittering under Blaine's hands. "What's my dad have to do with--"
"You just, you look--" Blaine's thumbs are pressing just above where Kurt's clavicles would be, a dip he can feel through his uniform. "You look like something bad has happened," Blaine finishes, and he should let go, he should probably let go.
"I'm sorry," Kurt says, talking fast, the panic obvious, "I'm just sorry, I shouldn't have made you do any of the steps or whatever, I should've just supported you and bought you coffee and-- and it wasn't David or Wes or anybody who broke you, it was me, and I'm sorry, and please be my friend again, I, I," he swallows, and Blaine can see his adam's apple bob, pale and shadowed, and Kurt says, "I don't care about anything else, I just want us to be okay again."
Blaine lets go. He leans against the bookcase, and closes his eyes. Kurt doesn't care about anything else. Kurt doesn't care. "It's fine," Blaine says to the darkness, "it's okay, we're okay. We don't have to be anything else."
Kurt's silent then, and Blaine wonders if maybe he's gone, left Blaine now that they're friends again. Except he can feel the air shift in front of him, and he can smell Kurt's aftershave, just a little bit. He doesn't know what brand it is, but he's pretty sure he'll recognize it for the rest of his life.
"Blaine," Kurt says, and Blaine doesn't even know what to make of his voice. "Blaine."
Blaine opens his eyes. Kurt's looking at him, but not exactly at him. At his head. His hair.
Kurt raises his hand halfway, stops himself. "Your hair," he says, a little wonderingly.
"Yeah," Blaine says. He wishes he was still sitting down. He wishes a lot of things. "I-- remember when I said I pretend to know what I'm doing?" he says, and there are words pushing to come out of him and all he can think is Why not? It can't get worse, it can't-- "I still don't know what I'm doing, Kurt, but I'm tired of pretending, and I'm tired of being someone fake and happy when I'm not. And I'm not happy, not at all, my family life is fucked up and my entire concept of self-worth is kind of wrapped up in my singing ability and I have this thing where I need to keep my hair gelled because otherwise I'm somehow different and weird like I was in my old high school and maybe no one will like me anymore which is just, just insane, I know it's insane, and how can you possibly like someone like me? How can you like someone who loved a sports poster and can't manage to talk to anyone without the aid of song lyrics? You can't like me, you can't, and it's awful, because the only time I'm ever happy is when I'm with you."
He stops, because if he doesn't he's going to run or kiss Kurt or something stupid, really stupid, and he can't be that guy anymore. So he stands against copies of Lutheran doctrinal studies, the sun throwing splashes of dusty light on the floor, and stares at Kurt. Kurt who is looking at him like he's a stranger, and that's because he is, he is.
And then Kurt takes a step forward, and puts a hand on his shoulder, right over the spot he held last night. And his other hand reaches up, and... Jesus, touches one of Blaine's curls. Gently, so gently. Blaine can feel it on his skin. Kurt bites his lip, and says, very, very hesitantly, "I like you."
Blaine swallows. "You can't," he says numbly. "I'm not the guy you like."
"Okay," Kurt says, and there's just the faintest touch of bite to it, the Kurt who throws pillows at his head and buys him coffee after Gap disasters. "I liked that other guy, yes. I like you more."
Kurt's mouth is right there. "I like you, too," Blaine says, and he's staring, he knows he is, and he flicks his eyes up and there's Kurt.
"You do?" Kurt says, and Blaine nods. Kurt lets out a breath, long and low, and says, "Then I really hope you don't stop me," and presses Blaine hard against the shelves, long body flush against his, and kisses him.
It takes a moment for Blaine to move, because this is-- he-- fuck-- and Kurt hesitates, starts to pull away. No. Blaine reaches out, holds on. And kisses Kurt back. Kurt's hand slides into his hair, and Blaine's tipping his face up, changing the angle, and if Kurt is the Fourth of July when he sees Blaine, then this is all fireworks, bright lights and sparkles and a crowd of thousands breathing out all at once.
Kurt breaks the kiss long enough to whisper against his mouth. "You," he says, and kisses him again like he can't help it. Blaine feels it too, like there are words he needs to say except that would be a stupid use of his mouth right now. And hands, he should probably do something with his hands, but he can't manage anything except fist Kurt's jacket and try to rock him closer. He shifts against the bookcase, his legs spreading as he does, and suddenly Kurt's got a leg between his, his thigh hard against Blaine, and holy shit he's in love.
Kurt gasps, and Blaine chases after him, tasting Kurt's mouth as the kiss turns wet and amazing. The sun is warm and it's quiet, it's so quiet here that he can hear the sound of their mouths, their skin, their blood rushing rushing rushing--
"I like you," he says against Kurt's jaw, finally unclenching one hand just so he can reach up and press his fingers through the hair at the base of Kurt's skull, just to hold him there. "I like you so much, I can't even--"
"How," Kurt says, "how can you, I'm horrible, I made you do awful things," and Kurt kisses him again, like maybe Blaine will stop him from ever doing it again now that he's been reminded of Kurt's infamy.
"It was me," Blaine says, "just me, and then you found me, how did you find me? God, you're perfect, and you found me."
Kurt presses his forehead against Blaine's, and his thigh tenses, hard against Blaine's extremely interested cock. "I have spies everywhere," Kurt says. "And also, Thad told me."
Blaine moves his hips, just a little, and they both hiss. "Thad said you were moping," he says.
"I was a little distressed," says Kurt, "because you were avoiding me."
"I wasn't-- okay, yes, I was avoiding you," Blaine says, and darts a kiss because he can, because that's allowed, because Kurt likes him, even when his hair is curly and he's not singing. Kurt bites Blaine's lip, and that's enough to cause Blaine to make a very embarrassing noise and grip Kurt's head harder, curve his back to get closer to Kurt's body, closer to everything hot and hard and there.
"I couldn't stand it," Blaine says, "the idea that you wouldn't, that you couldn't like me the way I am--"
"Idiot," Kurt says, "you're an idiot, I'm in love with an idiot--"
Kurt rears back, hard, stepping out of Blaine's grip and crashing against the other bookcase, breathing fast and his hair mussed all out of shape and he's beautiful, absolutely beautiful, but way too far away.
Also, there's the thing that he just said, which Kurt seems also aware of.
"I mean," Kurt is saying very quickly, flapping his hands, his eyes rolling wildly as he tries to backpedal like whoa, "I mean, I love you like a friend, not at all like a creeper who has been pining for you for months, I mean," he trills a laugh that is in a register beyond even his normal one, "I mean, this is great, we like each other, kissing, very good, but I don't want you to think that I--"
Blaine reaches across the aisle and pulls Kurt back against him. Kurt almost fights him, and it means that he lands less than gracefully on Blaine, all stiff and hard and a dozen other words that are also convenient euphemisms for exactly what Blaine's feeling right now, because oh my god, Kurt loves him.
Him. Blaine. Kurt loves him, unless this freakout is somehow meant to imply he doesn't, which Blaine is pretty sure is not the case. The part where Kurt is actively melting bonelessly against him is a great sign, all things considered.
"I think I'm in love with an idiot, too," Blaine says, and then he kisses Kurt because yeah, he's in love, and Kurt's in love, and this is what they can do, in the silence of the library, in the warmth of the sun.
END
go to: We Are All a Little Weird, and Life's a Little Weird