Step by Step (fic) - Part 2
continued from Part 1
***
Step 12: Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to others, and to practice these principles in all our affairs.
Blaine still gets lonely. He still gets sad. But the pit he falls into isn't bottomless. It has a ladder propped against its wall, and even when he doesn't have enough energy to climb out of the cold and dank immediately, he can look up and see the sun shining overhead, or the stars winking at him sweetly.
On a sunny Saturday, he's at the coffee shop with April and a new kid to the group named Ben. Ben is asking if he has to believe in God.
Everything, it seems, comes full circle.
He them both goodbye when it's time to go. April curls her arm around Ben's elbow and walks him out the door toward their cars. Blaine heads to the bathroom.
When he comes out, the first thing he notices is the sharp beam of sunlight entering through a nearby window, lighting the dust motes in its wake like sparks.
The second thing he notices is his name, in a voice that will never not be familiar: "Blaine."
Kurt is standing in line at the register, the sunbeam pressing against one side of his face, the sweep of his hair glowing like embers.
Kurt is looking at Blaine, and Kurt is smiling. Not like the smiles he used to give Blaine, when things were easy between them and love seemed like the solution to everything - but it's a smile all the same, warm and real.
"You're in town," Blaine says, because he doesn't know what else to say.
"I got here last night," Kurt says. The line moves forward, and Kurt steps out of it and toward Blaine. "I was going to go to the Lima Bean, but I was afraid people would recognize me from last summer and start ordering me to bring them biscotti."
"I'm glad to see you," Blaine says.
"I'm glad to see you, too," Kurt says, his eyebrows perking up the way they do when he's surprised. Kurt looks over his shoulder to check the progress of the line, then back at Blaine. "Are you here with someone?"
Blaine shakes his head. "I was, but they're gone."
"Care to join me?"
Blaine order decaf because it's no good to have shaky hands when trying to hit a golf ball, and Kurt orders a double shot of espresso, which Blaine has never seen him drink before. They make small talk at first - Kurt asks lots of questions about the New Directions, and about Blaine's plans for college, and he tells Blaine little stories about Vogue and the neighborhood eccentrics and the price of burritos.
Blaine doesn't ask if there's anyone special in Kurt's life, and Kurt doesn't offer up that information.
They keep the tone casual until Kurt finishes his espresso and starts nervously fiddling with the sugar packets at the center of the table.
Blaine takes a deep breath. Give me the strength, courage and direction to do the right thing.
"Kurt. There's something I want to say to you."
Kurt drops the sugar packet back in the bowl and looks up, his eyes wary. "Okay."
Blaine doesn't grovel. His voice quakes, and his hands might shake slightly from all the emotion churning through his veins, and his eyes probably look teary - but he doesn't whine and he doesn't plead for forgiveness. He is a human being, talking with another human being whom he hopes, one day, to find peace with.
"Kurt, what I did was my own fault. I was wrong to put the blame on you. And I was wrong not to give you the space that you needed. I thought if I sent you enough presents or explained enough to you, I could make you see things my way and make you forgive me. But that's your decision to make. You don't owe me anything. I broke your trust and I broke my promises to you."
Kurt blinks, the muscles in his cheeks tight, the way he gets on the rare occasions that he tries not to cry. "I wanted to hate you, Blaine."
"That's okay," Blaine says, and finds that he means it.
"I couldn't, though. Rachel kept telling me to move on, and I tried, but no one's you and -" Kurt picks up the paper wrapper from Blaine's coffee stirrer and starts smoothing it out flat against the table, then folding it in progressive halves as he speaks. "There's a bowtie store near my work, Blaine. A bowtie store. Before you came to visit me, I'd stare in the window and think about what your face would look like the first time you saw it. And then you came and left before I could show it to you and - I took a different route to work for weeks just so I wouldn't have to go near it. And then I decided I needed to toughen up, so I'd walk past it, but I'd never look at it. And then a few weeks ago I got out of work late, and I guess I was distracted because I was in a hurry to catch the train - I don't know. But I looked in the window for the first time in months and there was a sign for a store-closing sale. And I thought I should be happy because I wouldn't have to be reminded of you every time I walked past it anymore, but I wasn't. I went home and watched The Notebook and cried all night."
"Kurt." Blaine wants to reach across the table, to put his palm on the back of Kurt's hand and calm his fidgeting fingers, but he knows he has no right. So instead, he says, "I still watch The Notebook, too."
They don't lean across the table and kiss, and Kurt doesn't reach for Blaine's hand. They just keep talking until it's easy, and then they talk some more until Kurt declares he's starving and Blaine goes to the counter to get him cheesecake, and Kurt critiques its lack of complexity and its imperfect texture with a wry laugh, but gobbles it down, anyway, and Blaine couldn't wipe the smile off his own face for all the world.
Blaine's phone alarm goes off. "Oh," he says, hitting the snooze. "I'm meeting my dad in a bit. I should probably get going."
Kurt raises his eyebrows curiously. "He's not at work?"
"We play racquetball every Saturday afternoon now," Blaine says, not embarrassed at all by the pleasure in his voice.
Kurt's eyebrows go even higher. "This is a good thing?"
Blaine smiles. "Yeah. The racquetball was a nice compromise. He originally wanted to do golf and I wanted to do Zumba. It's good to spend time with him."
Kurt's face relaxes into a smile. "I'm glad."
Kurt's in town for two weeks, and they see each other again several times again before he goes. They aren't exactly dates - they don't hold hands or hug or exchange flowers or pay for each other's movie tickets or walk shoulder-to-shoulder in the park - but they're not exactly not-dates, either. Kurt brings him over to his house and Burt Hummel scratches his forehead when Blaine walks in the door, but soon goes back to treating him as he always did.
The Friday before Kurt returns to New York, he calls Blaine and invites him over for brunch the next day. Blaine's not used to saying no to Kurt, especially not when crepes are involved, but he says no this time. "I'd love to, Kurt. But I have … a meeting I go to on Saturday mornings."
"Oh?" Kurt says. There might be a little disappointment in his voice. Blaine's not sure. "What kind of meeting?"
Blaine thinks for a moment. "How much time do you have?"
"For you?" Kurt says. "Plenty."
So Blaine tells him. He tells Kurt the thing about his mother he was always afraid to say, and he tells Kurt about his new friends, and he tells Kurt how he's not as afraid of life as he used to be.
"I knew there was something different about you," Kurt says when Blaine finishes. "I mean, you're the same, but you're more … you. Does that make sense?"
"I feel more like me," Blaine says.
They keep talking when Kurt gets back to New York. Blaine lets Kurt take the lead, even though he wants to call Kurt ten times a day and text him every time something funny happens on A&E.
"You want to make amends to him for being needy and not giving him space?" Susan says. "It might be a good idea to work on giving him space, then."
So Blaine doesn't call Kurt at work, even when he really wants to. Instead, he calls April or one of the Alateen newcomers, and even though they're not Kurt, he finds that he loves them all the same, and he feels better after his calls with them than he did before.
A month after Kurt returns to New York, when Blaine is having a particularly difficult day - his dad has been on a business trip for a week, and his mom came home from the grocery store yesterday with a gallon jug of Carlo Rossi, and even though she hasn't opened it, it's been staring at him every time he's stepped into the kitchen, taunting him with whispers of his family's impending dissolution - Kurt calls and without even a "How are you?" launches into a story about lady he encountered earlier today who dressed her chihuahuas in pink skirt suits identical to her own and called them "my triplets."
"Kurt -" Blaine says when Kurt takes a breath, but Kurt apparently doesn't hear it, and barrels on with, "If she's going to dress her dogs, the least she could do is find them something that's a little more form-flattering."
"Kurt -"
"I mean, dogs have natural lines to their bodies, too, and the clothes need to work with them, not against them."
"Kurt -"
"I don't know, I've never had a dog, and I think they look ridiculous in clothing, but maybe it's because people have never made the right kind of clothing for them. Do you think this is an untapped market I should look into?"
Kurt finally pauses for more than one breath.
"Kurt, you know I love listening to you, but I've had a really bad day and I just - Can I just tell you about it, please?"
There's a pause, and then, "Oh my god, I'm so sorry. I'm such a bulldozer."
"It's okay," Blaine says. "You didn't know what I needed until I told you."
"Well, go ahead, sweetheart. I'm all ears."
They're not boyfriends, but Blaine's heart squirms joyfully at the endearment all the same.
Blaine visits Kurt in New York. Kurt meets him as he's getting off the AirTran at Penn Station and tackles him with a colossal hug. "I missed you," he says, taking Blaine's carry-on in one hand and Blaine's elbow in his other and dragging him out to the street.
"We're not going straight to Bushwick?"
"I want to show you something first." Kurt squeezes Blaine's hand. "If you don't mind a little walk?"
Blaine smiles. He can't help it. Kurt's hopeful look always turns him into putty. "It's New York," Blaine says. "I came prepared to walk."
Their walk is kind of how Blaine imagined his first visit to New York would be, before he ruined everything with Eli. Kurt has a story for every block they go down, and Blaine's heart is so happy it's about to beat out of its cage. They turn at this corner and that, and Blaine gets progressively more disoriented and has absolutely no idea where they are, but it doesn't matter. He feels safe.
Blaine can tell they're getting closer to their destination by the way Kurt starts bouncing on his toes with each step "Okay." Kurt squeezes Blaine's hand a little tighter. "Close your eyes."
Even though they're still walking, Blaine does as he's told. He trusts him implicitly, and he realizes, suddenly, that he didn't trust Kurt when they were dating - that his constant state of fear kept him from trusting Kurt to love him, or to listen to him, or to catch him if he fell.
Blaine hears the sound of a shop bell chime as a door swings open, feels the air against his skin change as they move indoors. "We're here," Kurt says, swinging their hands between them. "You can open your eyes."
There are bowties everywhere, racks and bins full of them. It's like … paradise.
"It turned out the store didn't close. It just moved to a different place."
"Kurt." Blaine's jaw drops open. "This is the best place in the world." He hopes Kurt understands it's not just the ties that make it so.
Kurt leans into his ear. "You're even more radiant than I imagined you would be."
That night, they sit on Kurt's bed to watch Real Housewives of Atlanta on the laptop, and Kurt falls asleep with his head on Blaine's chest. It is the hardest thing in the world to extricate himself from beneath Kurt when the episode ends - especially when Kurt, still mostly asleep, groggily murmurs his dissatisfaction - but he does it, all the while repeating in his head, G.O.D., show me what my next step is to be.
It turns out that Blaine's next step is to tuck Kurt in, and his step after that is to brush his teeth, and his step after that is to turn the floor pillows in the "living room" into a pallet and fall asleep there to the sound of Kurt's soft snores. (And then to wake up later when Rachel walks into the apartment after her night out and steps on his butt in her high heels. That's not the only reason he sleeps poorly in the night, but it doesn't help.)
The night before Blaine leaves, they go see The Book of Mormon. Despite Kurt having been in New York all this time, it's his first Broadway play. They both dress to the nines and Blaine's not exactly trying to seduce Kurt with his three-piece suit and his pocketwatch chain and the bowtie he bought in bowtie heaven, but by the looks Kurt keeps giving him, he thinks he probably could.
And he kind of wants to, even though he told himself that nothing of the sort would be happening on this trip, nothing of the sort can happen yet. There have been moments - lots of moments - in the past few days where they stopped talking and smiled at each other in that way they used to do just before they'd kiss, but he's always caught himself before he leaned too far forward to go back.
Still, Kurt's suit fits him so well, skims his waist and hips and curves over his ass in a way that makes Blaine's hands jealous. They eat at a restaurant that requires reservations and serves tiny amounts of food on large white plates, and they eat off of each other's forks and keep blushing at each other over their water glasses, and they take the taxi to the theater like adults, and they hold hands in the dark and laugh so hard that tears stream down their necks and into the collars of their shirts.
They sing all the way to Bushwick and up to the empty loft (Rachel announced loudly this morning that she would be staying the night elsewhere) and Kurt has Blaine pressed up against the door as soon as it's shut. They don't kiss. They just lean their foreheads and noses together and breathe nervously against each other's mouths.
"Come to bed with me," Kurt says.
"I want to." Blaine puts his hand on Kurt's jaw, just lets himself feel the skin there for the first time in … forever, and it feels as much like home as it ever did. Maybe even more.
"But?"
The lights aren't on, but the curtains are open and the streetlamps are shining through the windows and Blaine can see Kurt's eyes as clearly as if they were in the sunlit staircase at Dalton, open and willing and ready to leap.
"I'm not ready," Blaine says.
Kurt waits.
"I want to do it right this time. I made assumptions the last time, about what you wanted and what I wanted and how they fit together. I made assumptions about what being in a relationship meant and what sex meant and … I hurt you. I don't want to do that again."
Kurt kisses Blaine's cheek and steps back - not far, just enough so that their chests are no longer pressing together with each breath. "I love you, Blaine Anderson."
Blaine cups his hand around the one Kurt has on his waist. "I love you, too, Kurt Hummel."
They do go to bed together, but they leave their pajamas on and they don't kiss, because that would lead to making out, which would lead to … more. They hold each other and talk about things they've never talked about before - about what love means, about what trust means, about whether a long-distance relationship is served better by two shorter phone calls a day or a longer Skype session each night, about when it's okay to interrupt each other's speech and when it's okay to say I want to be alone and what's the best way to say I'm hurting and I need you to listen.
Kurt takes the train all the way to the airport with Blaine the next morning and walks him to the security gate. They already have their next visit planned, and their phone calls and Skype sessions scheduled, but they still have a hard time letting go of each other's hands.
"I have never wanted to be in Ohio so much in all of my life." Kurt pouts - his natural pout, the one he does without knowing it, where his lower lip goes plump and delectable and Blaine wants to kiss it back into a smile.
"Can I?" Blaine says, and Kurt looks at him curiously, confused.
Blaine tries again. "Can I kiss you, I mean? I know you're not into PDA and I'm about to go and that makes it really bad timing because if I start I'm never going to want to stop, but I -"
He doesn't get to finish his sentence. Kurt's lips interrupt it.
It's an even better sort of paradise than bowtie heaven.
***
On the flight back home, Blaine pulls a notebook from his carry-on. He started writing in it every day somewhere around Step 6. The entries are short - each just a dozen lines of things he is thankful for on any given day. His list today:
- Bowties
- Tickets to a Broadway play
- Seeing my first Broadway play with my best friend
- Falafel stands, even if Kurt says I shouldn't eat at them.
- New York
- My dad
- My dad paying for my trip to New York
- Ms. Pillsbury
- Art/truth/beauty/G.O.D.
- Kurt's bravery
- My willingness
- The courage to change
---end---
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