Fic: Fidelity, Chapter 18 - Waiting For You
Summary: Not even the best-laid cheese tray can prevent a misunderstanding. ~6,500 words
Chapter notes: This chapter continues to parallel 3.17 “Dance With Somebody.” All the songs mentioned in this and the next chapter are on this YouTube playlist in order of their appearance.
Warnings: sensory descriptions of eating, sp0ilers for “The Way We Were” movie, sp0ilers for Yentl if you watch the playlist
Rating for this chapter: NC-17
Pairings this chapter: Kurt/Blaine, Dave/Kurt crush, Chandler/flirting
Prologue | Chapter 1 | Chapter 2 | Chapter 3 | Chapter 4 | Interlude | Chapter 5 | Chapter 6 | Chapter 7 | Chapter 8 | Chapter 9 | Chapter 10 | Chapter 11 | Second Interlude | Chapter 12| Chapter 13 | Chapter 14 | Chapter 15 | Chapter 16 | Chapter 17
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Note: Chapters on AO3 are numbered differently due to factors beyond my control.
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Chapter 18: Waiting For You
On Friday morning, Kurt’s dad texts that he’s going to be stuck in Washington yet again tonight, so Kurt invites Blaine over for a private dinner and movie.
Kurt doesn’t want a repeat of last Friday’s Yentl debacle, so he makes sure they agree on something not-depressing to watch over lunch. After school he goes to the grocery store to pick up necessities for the after-dinner cheese plate: Blaine’s favorite unaged Gouda, a 7-year sharp cheddar from an artisanal Wisconsin cheesemaker, and an apricot-studded White Stilton to balance out the flavors. He spots a jar of orange-blossom honey and grabs that, too, along with red grapes, two Bosc pears, a bar of Green & Black’s 85-percent dark chocolate, and a bottle cardamom pods to serve as palate cleansers.
He doesn’t need crackers; he had a nightmare about his NYADA audition that woke him up at 4 a.m. this morning, and ended up trying to make the best of it by going down to the kitchen and experimenting with some crisp flatbread recipes he’d saved to his phone. Despite his lack of sleep and the vivid memory of the NYADA audition committee laughing at his Romeo, the flatbread turned out better than satisfactorily.
Carole has already left to go see a movie with a girlfriend from work by the time Blaine arrives, and Finn is just about to leave for dinner at the Berrys; Sam is upstairs playing video games with Rory, and Kurt has plied them with his personal-recipe chocolate-chip cookies to keep them from trying to budge in on dinner.
Blaine is quiet through much of the meal, but that’s not so unusual; Blaine is a slow, purposeful chewer in general and he’s shows even more diligence when Kurt cooks, not wanting to miss any of the subtleties of Kurt’s culinary artistry. He’s also uncomfortable talking with food in his mouth. So Kurt fills most of the silence.
“I’ve been looking over that Whitney Houston songbook and there are way too many good choices. I don’t know how I’m going to narrow it down to one - or even two, if I do decide to go with ‘One Moment in Time’ for my NYADA audition.”
Blaine nods and slips another bite of tortilla española into his mouth; Kurt takes a sip of water and swallows the piece he’s been pocketing in his cheek while talking.
“I don’t know, though, maybe everyone’s paying homage to Whitney Houston right now and the dean will have already heard a hundred different versions by the time my audition rolls around.” He stabs his fork into his arugula-and-orange salad. “Maybe I need to be more daring. Do you think ‘Not the Boy Next Door’ would be daring?”
Blaine chews and nods.
“Or I could try for something old that no one sings anymore, like from the 1950s? Maybe Frankie Lymon?” Kurt slaps his hand against the edge of the table and starts bouncing. “Oh, yes, yes, and then I would have an excuse to wear those vintage peach-and-white oxfords I’ve been watching on eBay, and you would totally be able to help me pick out the rest of my outfit, you dapper 1950s leading man, you!” Kurt keeps bouncing, silently waiting so that Blaine can answer with words this time.
It takes a long while.
Blaine finally swallows and sets down his fork. “I don’t know. Did Frankie Lymon sing anything other than ‘Why Do Fools Fall in Love?’ Because I really don’t think that song has enough, well, depth.” Blaine shrugs and looks down at the pepper grinder in the center of the table. “I mean, I’m sure you could give it depth, maybe slow it down and turn it into more of a ballad? But you have like, what, a four-octave range? That song’s not going to show it off.”
“Well, what about The Platters? Or Buddy Holly?”
“You really want those saddle shoes, don’t you?”
Kurt nods his head vigorously.
“Maybe find another reason to get the saddle shoes?”
Kurt frowns and nudges Blaine under the table. “I was also really looking forward to you helping me pick an outfit for my audition.”
“You’ve never had any problem coming up with brilliant outfits on your own,” Blaine says, punctuating his sentence by shoving an unusually large forkful of arugula into his mouth and chomping on it loudly.
Kurt has never before seen Blaine shove food into his mouth - not in all their hours of lunching together at Dalton and McKinley, or splitting cookies and scones at the Lima Bean, or dining out at Breadstix, or here eating together in his kitchen. He’s never heard him chomp.
But Kurt doesn’t say anything. Not about that, at least. “Well, ‘A Piece of Sky’ has been going through my head since we watched Yentl last week. That’s got a better range, and emotional depth, although Barbra - I love her, but the dean will definitely have heard a lot of her, too.”
Blaine nods in agreement.
“Such a good song, though,” Kurt sighs. He’s nowhere closer to finding an audition piece than he was at the beginning of the meal.
Blaine swallows and stabs his fork into the salad again, although a little more gently this time. “Sorry to change the subject, but this salad dressing is really good. Did you put cloves in it?”
“Cloves? No. A little nutmeg, though.”
Blaine hums approvingly. “That’s ingenius.”
“Well, I’m not sure I’d go that far.”
“No, seriously. This is the best salad dressing I’ve ever had.” He looks up at Kurt with a smile - the first smile Kurt’s seen on his face all night, come to think of it. It makes Kurt’s heart both light and heavy at the same time.
“Oh, I’m sure it’s not the best,” Kurt says. “It’s just that it makes a good complement to the arugula.”
“You’re too modest,” Blaine says, winking. “I’m pretty sure it’s the absolute best, unless we count some of the other salad dressings you’ve made, and then maybe it can tie for first place.”
The heavy feeling in Kurt’s heart starts to lose its grip. “That’s very sweet of you.”
“So what else is in here? Olive oil, of course, but what’s the acid? I can’t figure out if it’s orange juice or -”
Kurt leans forward across the table excitedly and squeezes Blaine’s wrist. “You’ll never guess!”
“Well, don’t be a tease. Tell me!”
So Kurt starts explaining how he decided last fall to try aging vinegar from raw cider, and once it was the right acidity he infused some of it with orange zest and kaffir lime leaves, which he had to order online because he couldn’t find them anywhere in Lima. Of course, that was just the base; for this particular salad dressing, he added in a few drops of curaçao left over from his dad’s and Carole’s wedding reception, and also the nutmeg, and …
By the time Kurt’s done with his story and all the side branches it’s sprouted, they’ve finished eating, the table is clear, and the dishwasher loaded. Blaine seems much lighter now than he was earlier; maybe he just needed food in him.
“Why don’t you go set up my computer and pick out which episodes of Being Bobby Brown you want to start with, and I’ll get our dessert ready?” Kurt says with a peck to Blaine’s cheek.
“You don’t need any more help?”
“I have everything under control,” Kurt says only a bit haughtily.
It’s not until he carries the cheese tray into his bedroom that Kurt finds out how far his words are from the truth.
*
“Hey, I got the cheese plate. Our Being Bobby Brown marathoncan officially begin.” Kurt is so distracted admiring the jaunty but civilized way he’s fanned out the flatbread between the cheddar and the grapes that he doesn’t really look at Blaine when he first enters the room. It’s not until he sets the tray safely atop his brocade bedspread (wait, it’s April, should he have already switched to something lighter and more springlike?) that he notices Blaine’s face.
Blaine looks like someone punched him in the gut.
No, it’s worse than that. He looks hopeless and lost, the way he used to in those few moments of lucidity he’d have the days following Sebastian’s attack in the garage. He’s perched on the edge of the bed, Kurt’s phone in his hand, eyes welling up as he stares at it, unable to look up.
“Blaine?” Kurt reaches out to touch Blaine’s shoulder. Blaine flinches -- a knife between Kurt’s ribs. “Blaine, honey, what’s going on?”
“Chandler’s going to be in New York with you.”
“Um, maybe? He’s auditioning for the musical theater program at NYU, but if he insists on ‘Rainbow High’ as his audition piece, I really don’t see how he’s going to get in, so -”
Blaine looks up then, and Kurt almost wishes he hadn’t - those eyes, wet and betrayed. The knife twists. But the words Blaine speaks are even worse: “You’re leaving me.”
Kurt sits on the bed next to Blaine and tries to remember how to breathe as he reaches for the phone. “Give it to me.”
Blaine resists. Kurt tugs the phone from his fingers anyway.
Chandler: When we go to new york, let’s go to the front of the plaza and reenact the end of the way we were.
Kurt reads the message over and over, trying to make the connection between the words and Blaine’s reaction. He can’t. This is probably the tamest message Chandler’s sent him yet. The final scene of The Way We Were isn’t even very romantic; Barbra’s clearly built the life she wants without Robert Redford to hold her back.
Kurt scrolls up to see if there have been any other new texts since the ones he showed Blaine this afternoon. The only other one is:
Chandler: Can you sing into my voicemail? I want to make your voice my ringtone.
Kurt shakes his head. “I don’t - I don’t understand. I thought you were all for this.”
Blaine’s staring down at his hands again, refusing to make eye contact with Kurt no matter how far Kurt ducks his head to try to catch his gaze. Blaine turns the back of his head to Kurt before finally speaking. “No,” is all he says. Blaine is shaking his head, too, and his shoulders are trembling the way they do when Blaine tries not to cry, and it makes Kurt want to hurt somebody as much as he wanted to hurt Sebastian when he made Blaine cry.
But Kurt doesn’t know who to hurt, so he throws the phone against the bed instead. “What is wrong with you, Blaine? I’m not even sure I like Chandler, but I like his text messages because sometimes they’re hilarious and sometimes they turn you on but sometimes they’re just weird, like why does he want my voice on his phone when he’s never even heard me sing, is he just pulling compliments out of his ass because empty flattery does not impress me and Jesus fuck why on earth would I leave you for him or for anyone, and why would you think that when you’re the one who always talks about wanting me to fuck other guys while you watch and it never even occurred to me before you mentioned it and yes it does turn me on but not because I’m planning to leave you, you’re always there, and what even goes on in your brain? I feel like I’ve taken crazy pills.”
Kurt collapses onto the bed. The cheese tray totters, but doesn’t fall. He has nothing left, and Blaine is still perched primly at the edge of the mattress, and his face is covered with tears, and he just keeps shaking his head and Kurt is the world’s biggest asshole but he’s also not because Blaine makes no sense.
Still, even if Blaine makes no sense, Kurt hates seeing him cry. He grabs one of the purple napkins from the cheese tray - oh god, what was he thinking when he chose those napkins, purple means power and creativity but it’s also a démodé color of mourning - and hands it to Blaine.
Blaine takes it, and Kurt thanks the stars for that. He watches Blaine dab at his eyes and listens to him try to take a deep breath and fail.
Sometimes Kurt hates himself for the power he has to break this precious boy even more than he’s been broken by everyone else.
Kurt reaches for Blaine’s knee, then stops himself, crossing his arms across his chest. “I’m sorry, Blaine, I’m just trying to understand but I don’t and you’ve been so on-and-off these past couple weeks, it started before Chandler and at first I thought it might be Dave but you’re always happy to see him and I keep trying to figure it out but it’s just so frustrating and -”
Blaine looks up at him, opens his mouth slightly like he might be ready to speak. Nothing comes out though, and then there is the shaky inhalation of breath.
“Do you want some water?” Kurt says.
Blaine shakes his head. “It’s not -” He chokes on a sniffle, blots his cheek, tries again. “It’s not Chandler. It’s - it’s New York.”
“New York?”
“I don’t want you to go, Kurt.”
“NYADA doesn’t start until September - if I get in.”
Blaine breathes out a bitter laugh. “Of course you’ll get in.”
“You make that sound like a bad thing.”
Blaine shrugs. “It feels like it is.” He reaches for Kurt, hesitates, then retracts his hands into his lap. He folds them together, the purple napkin tight between them.
Kurt’s head throbs and his heart aches and his whole body feels ready to collapse. “I don’t - I don’t understand. I thought you wanted this for me.”
Blaine blinks like the weight of the tears in his eyelashes has made it impossible to keep his eyes completely open. “I did. And I do. But I’m pissed off that I’m going to have to spend the next year learning what it’s like to be without you, and every time you talk about what song you’re going to sing or what outfit you’re going to wear to your callback, and how amazing New York is, and how you can’t wait to get out of here and, and - all I can think about is how in a few months, you’re going to be gone and I’m going to be stuck here in Lima, missing you. And you know how hard long-distance relationships can be. We both saw The Notebook.”
Kurt reaches for Blaine’s hands. They relax under his touch, unclasping slowly, the crumpled napkin rolling out of them and down Blaine’s lap onto the floor. “It won’t be a whole year, though. The school year’s really only nine months, and I get three long breaks in there, and we can do some weekends, and we can Skype every day.”
“But even now, when we can’t see each other for a few days, I just - I miss you so much. I miss touching you and I miss seeing you laugh and I miss sitting around doing nothing with you and looking up from my magazine and seeing your face and suddenly not being able to breathe because you’re the most stunning man I’ve ever laid my eyes on.”
Kurt wipes his own eyes with the end of his sleeve. “When you were in Columbus for your surgery, I was absolutely pathetic.”
“Yeah, I know. Puck kept texting me about it. I think knowing that hurt me more than missing you did.” He leans his cheek against Kurt’s shoulder. “Because even though I get resentful sometimes when you talk about all the awesome stuff you’ll do in New York, I really do want you to be happy there. I just wish I could be there with you for all of it.”
“And I don’t want to go anywhere you’re not going to join me.” Kurt kisses the top of Blaine’s head. “You are still planning to join me, right? Because that’s part of why I get so excited about New York, Blaine - because we can build a life together there that would be so hard to have in Lima.”
“I know.” Blaine sniffles. “And I know we’ll be together again, but it still hurts that you’ll be gone for so long.”
Kurt gives Blaine a squeeze. “Well, maybe that’s something we need to think about - how to be happy when we’re not in the same place together. Because with any luck, we’re going to have a long life, and sometimes we’re going to be apart. Now it’s college, and when we both have jobs it might be business trips -”
Blaine shakes his head and smirks, mischief shining through the red rims of his eyes. “No. You’re going to be rich and famous and I’m going to be the happy house-husband who follows you wherever you go.”
Kurt snickers. “Oh, is that so? I hope you have a nice endowment to support us until we’re 40 then.”
“I’m very nicely endowed. You can ask my boyfriend.”
Kurt kisses Blaine’s forehead, then his damp cheek. “Only you could inject ribaldry into this conversation.”
Blaine winks. “I’m sure you could, too, if you set your mind to it.”
“Maybe later,” Kurt says. “Right now, I just want to make sure - You remember I’m never saying goodbye to you, right?
“Yeah, I know. But sometimes it feels like goodbye, anyway. I mean --” Blaine looks down at his lap and swallows. “I know you’re not Cooper, but it’s just -- Every time Cooper leaves, he tells me how he’s going to keep in touch with me and he’s going to visit more often and he wants me to come out and visit him and then … then it’s back to the way it was before. I know he loves me, but it’s hard to feel that when something’s going on in my life and he takes a week to answer my calls. I mean, I’ve only talked to him once since he visited in March.” Blaine shrugs. “He’s kind of the only long-distance relationship I’ve ever had, and it hasn’t worked out too well.”
“I didn’t realize the thing with Cooper was still bothering you.” Kurt looks down at their intertwined hands. “I’ve been pretty self-absorbed lately, haven’t I?”
“Kind of. But I haven’t really been speaking up, either.”
“Okay, well those are things we need to work on with this whole long-distance thing.”
Blaine looks up at Kurt, slow soft blinking and his eyes full of a love that makes Kurt feel like he’s floating on air. “I’m gonna miss you a lot.”
He wraps his arms around Kurt and pulls him close. Blaine is warm and solid and their chests rise and fall against each other, their breaths breezing past each other’s ears, and Kurt can feel Blaine’s heart beat against his, and also in the arms that are wrapped around his shoulders and back.
“I’m gonna miss you too,” Kurt says, and even though the words terrify him, he suddenly feels two distinct, wonderful things: like he’s on solid ground for the first time this week, and like he’s a young robin who’s just been pushed out of the nest and learned, with fearful exhilaration, what it feels like to fly.
* * *
An hour or so later, Kurt and Blaine are reclined on the bed, so stuffed with cheese and fruit and chocolate that they have both sworn off ever eating again. Or at least ever eating again for another few hours. They haven’t watched any of Being Bobby Brown, just talked and eaten and held each other. They both have become progressively more lax since the crying stopped; the absence of tension in their muscles makes it feel, at each place where they touch, like their bodies are waves flowing into each other.
“Sweetheart?” Kurt says.
“Yeah?” Blaine nuzzles his cheek against Kurt’s chest. Kurt’s heartbeat sounds like the rhythm of the ocean.
“Can I ask you something?”
“Of course.”
“Earlier, when you said you weren’t upset about Chandler, only about New York -” Kurt falters. The muscles of his chest tighten beneath Blaine’s ear.
“Yes?” Blaine curls his hand around Kurt’s bicep to anchor him.
“I think I have a hard time understanding what you get jealous about, and why,” Kurt says. “Because if I were in your shoes, I don’t know if I would be as upset about New York as I would about Chandler.”
Blaine doesn’t say anything for a few long moments. “Before we started dating,” Blaine says quietly, looking up at Kurt’s face,“I used to watch guys flirt with you -”
“Pfft,” Kurt says, crooking his eyebrows in loving indignation. “Who flirted with me?”
“Well, Trent, obviously, and -”
“Wait - Trent?” Kurt looks honestly confused.
“Yeah, when you guys used to practice French together.”
“We were usually discussing Napoleon. I’d hardly call that flirting.”
“Well, and whenever you walked into the room he’d smile at you like you were his own personal ray of sunshine,” Blaine says. It’s bizarre how oblivious Kurt can be to the admiration of other men. Blaine wishes, sometimes, that Kurt could take a turn watching the world through Blaine’s eyes, just so he could see how much he’s loved.
“No no no. Did you seriously never notice how he used to look at you? Like, every time you opened your mouth in Warblers’ practice, he looked as impressed as if you’d just shit a gold brick.”
“Just because he admired me doesn’t mean he can’t also admire you.”
“Hmmm. You have a point.”
“Yes, I do.” Blaine kisses Kurt’s chin; a smile spreads slowly across his face the way light spreads across the sky at sunrise. “But back to your question, every time I saw a guy flirting with you - I guess I had mixed feelings about it.”
“How so?”
“Well, on one hand, it felt good because I liked you and I thought everyone should like you as much as I did, and they should appreciate your smarts and your sass and how singularly gorgeous you are -”
“If you’re trying to butter me up with flattery, it’s working.”
“Not trying to butter you up. Just trying to speak the truth.” Blaine presses his cheek back against the safe warmth of Kurt’s chest. “So anyway - on one hand, it felt good when other guys paid attention to you, and on the other hand, it made me sort of … uneasy, I guess? I worried sometimes that one of them might become more important to you than I was. Which I guess is selfish, but -”
“It’s okay. I’m thoroughly familiar with the feeling - Jeremiah, Gap Attack of 2012.”
Blaine’s ears burn. “Yeah, right. And then when we started dating, I didn’t think about other guys much because everything was so new, but when I did - well, usually it was nice, but sometimes I’d have these nightmares that you’d fallen in love with someone else more than you were in love with me, and you didn’t want to be with me anymore. Or -” He pauses. “It wasn’t so much that you loved them more, but that you started to love me less.”
Kurt wraps his arm a little more tightly around Blaine. “I can’t imagine that happening.”
Blaine shrugs. “Well, after we’d been dating a while I stopped having the dreams. And I think it was because I started to trust you in a deeper way.”
So many moments flash before Blaine’s eyes: Kurt giving him roses on the McKinley stairwell after the West Side Story casting debacle and looking at him with as much love - and maybe more - than he ever had before; of being naked together for the first time and the way Kurt touched him like he was a precious, sacred thing; how every time Kurt made him fall apart, he felt like he was being put back together, too; of the first time Blaine hinted about his fantasies and the way that Kurt responded, loving him and fucking him harder than Blaine thought possible this side of heaven; how when his eye got injured, Kurt held him in the car the whole way to the ER and kept holding him until he had to let him go for his exam, and still he stayed by Blaine’s side, holding his hand as the doctor examined him and telling him over and over that it was going to be okay because that’s what Blaine needed to hear.
“I trusted your love for me,” Blaine says. “I trusted our love for each other. That it was real, and it was important to both of us, and neither of us had any plans of just walking away. And I knew for sure if you found someone else to be with - whether it was just for fooling around or if it was something more - that it wouldn’t have any effect on how you felt for me. We don’t love each other because we haven’t found anyone else to love. We love each other because we love each other.”
Kurt tips his head to see Blaine’s face. “I do. I love you because you’re you. That’s why I’ll always love you.”
Blaine feels something in his body loosen - something hard and sharp and impervious become pliable and moving. He moves then, rolling over and lifting himself up until he’s hovering over Kurt. His face is so close, their noses almost touching, but Blaine doesn’t kiss him. They just gaze at each other, and Blaine thinks it’s a miracle to be able to look so closely like this at someone’s eyes. There are as many shades of color in Kurt’s irises as there are stars in the sky. Blaine is sure of it.
He moves a little closer to Kurt’s face. “Make love to me.”
Kurt speaks, his cardamom-tinged breath skirting along Blaine’s lips. “What if Carole comes home?”
“We’ll be quiet and pretend we’re not here.”
Kurt smirks. “We should be quiet anyway unless you want to give Sam and Rory a show.”
“Well -” Blaine blushes, ducking his head.
Kurt laughs and pinches his arm. “Don’t you even think about it.”
Blaine kisses Kurt. He loves how their mouths shape to one another’s, how lips curve and bend together. He pulls away just long enough to whisper, “Okay, fine, I’ll be quiet. But with the way you make me feel, it’ll be tough.”
* * *
The undressing is slow and careful, but not solemn. Each piece of clothing removed feels like one less piece of armor.
Kurt kisses down Blaine’s body slowly, delighting in how the fuzz of his chest turns to coarser, dark curls around his areolas and below his navel. He mouths at each of Blaine’s testicles, letting them roll softly against his tongue, his heart hammering because of the intimacy of it and because Blaine trusts him with this, and also from the way Blaine’s body responds, his cock swelling with each gentle suck, his back arching, his hands clenching and unclenching against the sheets.
Blaine’s head is propped on a pillow and Kurt can see his face over the landscape of his torso, can see his mouth fall open in silent pleasure when Kurt curls his tongue around and under each testicle. They grow firmer, drawing tighter against his body and closer to the base of his cock, less pliant and more difficult to move in Kurt’s mouth. Kurt flicks his tongue lower at the satin-smooth skin of Blaine’s perineum, and Blaine responds with an instinctive push against Kurt’s lips and a restrained gasp.
Kurt licks at the skin softly at first, mouth watering as Blaine churns toward his tongue, everything becoming slippery-rough and urgent. Kurt drags his fingers through the saliva and spreads it downward, just a teasing tickle over Blaine’s opening, that irresistible pucker of silken muscle winking against Kurt’s fingertip. Kurt strokes it with his finger until he can’t resist its pull any longer, needs to kiss it, needs to feel that tender, open part of Blaine moving against his tongue, becoming malleable and pliant as Blaine himself.
Blaine is delicious down here, all sweat and masculinity, and the way Blaine responds is delicious, too: his legs falling further and further open, exposing the hidden recesses of his body, the way his ass tenses with excitement and relaxes with pleasure, the way he moves toward and with each stroke of Kurt’s tongue.
The furrows of Blaine’s pucker start to smooth out a little, the hole a little more open each time it unclenches. Kurt slips the first finger in almost effortlessly, just the slightest resistance as he moves in a little more deeply and Blaine’s body gives in with a shuddering sigh.
He’s so warm inside, the skin more supple than water. Kurt is drowning in love.
He sucks one of Blaine’s balls back into his mouth, looks up at Blaine looking down at him with eyes full of wonder and urgency, and twists his finger around, curling it come-hither against the firm spot inside Blaine.
Blaine’s eyes go wide and he starts to cry out but cuts himself off in a desperate choking sound. He arches his back, his cock twitching in time with the strokes that Kurt makes inside him.
“Oh god please, please Kurt, fuck me.”
“Need to open you first,” Kurt says, his lips never completely losing contact with Blaine’s skin.
“We’ll go slow. Please.”
Blaine is so hard to resist. So Kurt doesn’t. He lets Blaine fumble for a condom packet from the box on the bedside shelf while he continues to lick and finger him, then moves up to shower Blaine’s face with kisses while Blaine rolls the condom onto him and slicks him with lube, each stroke of his hand another seduction.
There isn’t as much resistance as Kurt expects when Blaine falls back against the mattress and Kurt pushes against his opening. Blaine is eager beneath him, and his body gives in easily at first, taking in the head of Kurt’s cock almost at once, a little more snugly than usual but god it feels good to be held like that, tight and needful. Kurt doesn’t push any farther; he stills his hips and lets the drag of gravity and the slow give of Blaine’s body slide him incrementally in.
They watch each other. Blaine’s eyes are heavy with something that looks like awe and he’s breathing slow, deep-heavy breaths that are sweeter than music, and Kurt is hardly breathing at all, overwhelmed as he is by the feeling of Blaine enveloping him.
“Oh god Blaine.”
“Yeah.” Blaine nods and tilts his hips to take more of Kurt in. “You feel … incredible.” Blaine wraps his legs high around Kurt’s back, resting his calves in the crook beneath Kurt’s shoulder blades, and Kurt sinks in a little more, and then more as Blaine starts to rock their bodies together. It is so good and so overwhelming, like being a feather tossed on the breeze.
And then Kurt is all the way in and Blaine bites his bottom lip to keep from moaning and Kurt kisses him, kisses the sweet abused lip and the wanton tongue and swallows each of Blaine’s delighted purrs of pleasure.
“Just stay still like that for a minute,” Blaine says. “Feels so good to have all of you in me.”
“Yes,” and Kurt kisses him again, and kisses him some more, loves himself surrounded by Blaine - Blaine’s skin and legs and arms and mouth and the sweet warmth of his ass. It’s like being subsumed without disappearing, like falling without hitting the ground.
Blaine is the one who starts them moving, rocking like a boat on a gentle wave. Everything is restrained and incremental, and each firing of Kurt’s nerves is distinct pleasure, until slowly the waves grow bigger, cresting higher, and they move faster, new sparks of pleasure bursting into light before the previous ones have faded.
“Oh,” says Blaine, and it’s that choked off sound again, and he cants his hips at a new angle and oh a little louder this time, and another stroke and oh again and again and his eyes are so wide and Kurt wants to kiss him but he can’t because his jaw is too tense with the need to cry out. So he ducks his head down and sucks on the spot where Blaine’s neck meets his shoulder, and Blaine shouts out another accidental oh.
Kurt presses a warning finger against Blaine’s lips and Blaine pulls it into his mouth, a forceful suck that almost hurts but doesn’t because every sensation right now is pleasure. Blaine draws another finger into his mouth, and then another, swallowing quiet, stifled moans around them as Kurt fucks into him, so easy now, such a smooth and delirious slide, and Blaine starts shaking, rocking and shaking and digging half moons into Kurt’s shoulders and sucking bruises into Kurt’s fingers and he reaches down between their sweat-drenched bodies and strokes his cock and fucks up forcefully onto Kurt’s dick, engulfing him again and again with fast, desperate thrusts that fire pleasure up Kurt’s spine and down to his toes, make Kurt’s hips tremble and his knees weak, make him suck bruisingly onto Blaine’s neck because if doesn’t he’s going to absolutely explode but it’s a lost battle, so lost, Kurt is losing and he wants to, wants to lose everything to Blaine, wants to give himself over and over again and never stop.
Blaine bites down onto Kurt’s fingers and clenches around his cock and spurts warmly onto his chest and Kurt loses everything then, happily.
Kurt keeps moving through both their orgasms, losing himself in the twitch and swallow of Blaine’s ass. The pleasure hits Kurt in waves, subsiding and then rising again as Blaine falls apart beneath him, as he watches Blaine’s stunned eyes and his sex-flushed cheeks, as he feels Blaine’s tongue curl tighter around his fingers, as he feels Blaine’s muscle flutter deliriously around his cock.
They fuck each other through it, fuck until every muscle gives way and they collapse across the bed like two shipwrecked sailors washed ashore.
“Love you forever,” Kurt whispers, curling his fingers into the damp hairs of Blaine’s chest.
Blaine’s eyes give off their own light. “But if you’re an atheist, doesn’t that mean that forever doesn’t exist for our mortal souls?” How Blaine can manage to string so many words together after sex is bewildering and irritating and oh Kurt is so in love with him.
Kurt uses what little strength he has left to press his lips against Blaine’s cheek. “Still love you forever. Always will.”
*
When Kurt wakes up the next morning, he knows exactly which song to sing for the Whitney Houston assignment. It’s never been one of his favorites because it’s steeped in religious metaphors, coming as it does from the soundtrack of The Preacher’s Wife. But when it starts going through his head during his morning shower, the words click in his heart.
And I believe in dreams again,
I believe that love will never end.
And like the river finds the sea
I was lost, now I'm free --
‘Cause I believe In you and me.
Like everything that excites him, it’s hard to keep quiet about it. And he’ll have to do that for days, because his turn to solo doesn’t come until Wednesday. He gets his first practice at not mentioning it to Blaine when they talk on the phone Saturday afternoon, asking instead what Blaine’s planning for his solo. (It occurs to him that he hasn’t asked all week; no wonder Blaine feels unheard sometimes.)
“It’s a surprise,” Blaine says.
“Oh?”
“Yeah. But I think you’ll like it.”
*
At Scandals that night, when Blaine goes to the bar to order another round of soda for the table, Kurt turns to Dave and says, “Thanks.”
Dave furrows his eyebrows. “For what?”
“For listening to me the other day,” he says. “For helping me figure things out.”
“What did I help you figure out?”
“How to be a good boyfriend.”
Dave chuckles and looks down at his hands. “I’m pretty sure I did no such thing. I don’t know the first thing about being anyone’s boyfriend.”
Kurt’s heart clutches in his chest. He wants to reach across the few inches between them so badly, to feel the warmth of Dave’s hand, to pay attention to the skin and find out if his fingertips have grown callused from all the piano playing. He doesn’t, of course. It’s too much to ask.
“You know how to be a good friend. That’s the first step.” Kurt blushes, but doesn’t turn away.
Dave doesn’t turn away, either. “I want to be. For both of you.”
*
Blaine squeezes Kurt’s hand before going up to the front of the room for his solo on Monday. Brad, the piano player, rolls his eyes when Blaine hands him the sheet music, but the bass player and the drummer look like they just won the lottery. Kurt feels a little swell of pride.
Blaine turns around, his eyes flickering across the seats in search of Kurt. When he finds him, he smiles and his body takes on that sudden centeredness that performers get when they’ve found the perfect spot inside themselves from where to begin. “This song,” Blaine says, “is for the love of my life.”
Kurt can feel his cheeks and ears flush red, but for one of a few times in his life, he absolutely doesn’t care what he looks like. He and Blaine are the only two people in the room as far as they’re concerned, and when Blaine starts singing, the words are for Kurt only.
If tomorrow is Judgement Day
And I'm standing on the front line
And the Lord asks me what I did with my life
I will say I spent it with you.
If I wake up in World War III,
I see destruction and poverty
And I feel like I want to go home
It's okay if you’re coming with me.
‘Cause your love is my love
And my love is your love.
It would take an eternity to break us
And the chains of Amistad couldn't hold us.
Kurt is vaguely aware of Artie and Mercedes joining in with harmonies, of Brittany’s ponytail bobbing to the beat, of Puck crying and Santana pretending to vomit in her backpack, but it’s hard to pay attention to any of that when Blaine is still looking at him like he’s the sun and moon and stars - when Blaine’s love makes him feel like he is all those things, and more.
*
Kurt starts out his solo as he starts all of them: feeling terrified and alone at the front of the room, scared of baring his heart and his voice in front of people who already know too much about him, and nonetheless needing to.
He closes his eyes and breathes as the first strains of music begin. He gave the sheet music to the accompanists first chance he got on Monday morning; he knows how much the violinists hate to sightread, how much they demand perfection from each note the way he demands it of himself.
He remembers why he’s here, and who the song is for, and why he has to sing it. He opens his eyes and Blaine is watching him, and Kurt is safe. He sings his first note and the fear disappears. Or maybe it’s still there, but love overwhelms it.