Fic: The Contract
Summary: The afternoon that Kurt agrees to be his boyfriend again, Blaine writes up a no-cheating contract. 5.01 reaction fic. Thanks to Jamie for the quick beta! PG-13. ~2,100
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The Contract
It turns out that Oprah’s website does not actually have a no-cheating contract.
Blaine is disappointed, but not defeated. He’s determined to prove himself, and if Oprah hasn’t already written the contract for him - well, he can write it himself. After all, it’s not like it needs to say much. Just, “I, Blaine Anderson, love Kurt Hummel and will never cheat on him again.”
So he opens up a blank document on his desktop, types the sentence, and sends the file to the printer. Thirty seconds later, it’s staring back at him in black and white.It doesn’t look right. The paper is too flimsy and the font doesn’t look serious enough - probably because it’s sans serif, he thinks. This is a weighty declaration and it calls for a weighty paper and a weighty font.
He goes into his parents’ office and rifles through the paper drawers until he finds the 28# off-white cotton bond paper they reserve for special occasions. Then he goes back to his room to fiddle with the font style. He finally decides that Garamond is the most appropriate; it’s traditional but also a bit sensuous. Kurt will appreciate that.
Font size is more of a challenge. To fill a page, he’d have to make the font huge. It would end up looking a lot like the “Out of Order” signs that get printed and taped to the bathroom stalls at McKinley. Definitely not the effect that Blaine is going for.
If only printer paper were smaller… He has an idea! He runs back to his parents’ office and returns to his room with cardstock, adjusts the margins on his text, and prints it out.
It looks good. Once he cuts it out, it will be small enough to fit in Kurt’s wallet, so he can always have that reassurance even when Blaine’s not with him.
In formal contracts, you always need a witness. And Kurt is the most important witness of all. So Blaine takes the Waterman pen he got for his middle school graduation from his desk drawer and tucks it into his satchel.
Fifteen minutes later, he’s at Kurt’s front door. Kurt answers with flushed cheeks and a coy smile. He’s still wearing the wonderfully tight camouflage pants from earlier today, along with the torso-hugging purple shirt and the scarf that Blaine’s wanted to pull off with his teeth ever since he first laid eyes on Kurt this morning.
But that can wait. This is more important.
“What took you so long?” Kurt says flirtatiously, leaning against the doorframe with studied casualness.
Blaine looks at his watch. “I thought we said 4 o’clock. Didn’t we say -?”
Blaine is interrupted by Kurt hooking a finger into his belt, reeling him in through the front door, and pushing him gently up against the wall. “Yes, we said 4. I’m just happy to see you, silly.” Kurt kicks the door closed behind them and pushes Blaine against the wall with his body and his kisses. It’s all incredible - both in the sense of being fantastic and of being hard to believe. Blaine can hardly process that this is actually happening, that they’re finally back together, that the months of pain and struggle are finally done.
Blaine may only have kissed three people in his entire life, but he knows that there is no one in the world like Kurt - no one who tastes like him or smells like him or fits so perfectly against Blaine’s mouth. Blaine inhales through his nose just to get a better whiff of Kurt, to breathe him into his lungs and heart.
Kurt licks into Blaine’s mouth and presses their torsos and hips together, and Blaine can feel Kurt growing gloriously hard against him. It’s been so long since Blaine has had sex with Kurt, and longer since he was allowed to whisper I love you, I love you, I love you into Kurt’s skin as they moved against and with each other, and even longer since Blaine was able to touch Kurt like that without a sense of uncertainty and impending loss.
But first things first.
He turns away from the kiss. “Kurt,” Blaine says, ducking his head when his boyfriend - his boyfriend! - tries to kiss him again. “I brought the contract.”
Kurt blinks in that gorgeous, startled way of his. “Contract? What contract?” His smile curls in curiosity, then remembrance. “Oh, that contract. I was only teasing, you know.”
Blaine smiles. “I know. But you’re right. It’s important.” I want to promise everything to you, he thinks, but he doesn’t say it. He tucks it away in the drawer in his brain where he keeps all the mental chicken scratches for the marriage proposal he’s still working on. “We need -” Blaine starts, then stops as he rewords what he wants to say in his head. “I need to earn your trust back. This is a way to start.”
Kurt steps back and takes Blaine’s hand. “You already have it, Blaine. You got it back a while ago.”
“Kurt -” Blaine looks down at their joined hands. He feels that odd pressure behind his eyes that starts whenever he feels like crying from joy, but can’t quite manage it. He often wishes he were more like Kurt, that the tears could spill out freely in moments like this and not just when he’s upset. He blinks and looks back up at Kurt’s face. “I don’t deserve you.”
Kurt raises Blaine’s hand to his lips and kisses it, keeping his eyes on Blaine’s. “That’s ridiculous.”
Blaine wants to argue but he probably shouldn’t, so instead he clears his throat - tears seem to have made it back there, if not out of the front of his eyes - and leads Kurt to the kitchen. He pulls the contract out of an envelope in his satchel and grabs the Waterman pen, too. “I couldn’t find one on Oprah’s website, so I made my own,” he says, setting the contract on the kitchen table. “And there’s space for both of us to sign it, because it’s an agreement between us.”
“Shouldn’t there be a duplicate for you to keep, then?” Kurt asks, eyebrow raised. It’s flirtatious, but it’s also an excellent point.
Blaine frowns. “You’re right. I didn’t even think of that.”
Kurt sits down in front of the contract and looks at it. “Why is it so small?”
“Oh, that’s so you can keep it in your wallet and always have it with you as a reminder.” Blaine can’t help but smile as he sits down across from Kurt. He’s pretty proud of that idea.
But Kurt doesn’t smile. He stares at the card, and as he does, the light drains out of his eyes.
“Kurt?” Blaine says, reaching across the table and laying his fingers tentatively on the back of Kurt’s hand. “What’s wrong? Did I do it wrong?”
Kurt shakes his head, still looking at the card. “No. This is what I asked for.”
“But -?”
“Now that I see the words, I -” Kurt looks up. “I don’t think I want it in writing, Blaine.”
“No?”
Kurt shakes his head again. “No. It’s too much of a reminder.”
“Oh.” Blaine’s heart presses against his sternum. “I didn’t think of that. I should have thought of that.”
Kurt attempts a half-smile. “I like the part that says, ‘I, Blaine Anderson, love Kurt Hummel,’ though.” He turns his hand so that his palm is facing up, welcoming Blaine’s fingers into it.
Blaine curls his fingers more securely around Kurt’s. “That will always be true, Kurt. It was true even when I cheated.”
“I know,” Kurt says, but he still looks less than happy.
“Is there anything I can do? I feel like I ruined your afternoon.”
“You didn’t ruin it. You just made me think.”
“Can you tell me about what?” Blaine asks, even though he’s worried that the next words that come out of Kurt’s mouth are going to be, That maybe we shouldn’t do this. That maybe I’m not ready. That maybe I’ll never be ready. Blaine knows that they’re destined to be together, but that doesn’t mean that Kurt knows, or that Kurt won’t try to postpone a real commitment until their next life.
So when the next words to come out of Kurt’s mouth are, “I love you, Blaine. I’ll always love you,” it’s not at all what Blaine’s expecting.
“I love you, too, Kurt.”
“And that’s why I just realized what I need from you isn’t a contract. What I need is to ask you an honest question, and for you to answer honestly.”
“What?”
Kurt takes a deep breath. “How do you know that you’re never going to cheat on me again? I mean, deep down in your heart. When you cheated, it was because you thought that I didn’t love you anymore, even though I did. And I just - I need to know what’s going to happen if you feel like that again.”
“I -” Blaine starts, and then stops when he realizes that he doesn’t know how he knows.
I’m not going to cheat on you because I love you, Blaine thinks, but then he realizes that’s not the answer. He loved Kurt even when he was sending flirty Facebook messages back and forth with Eli. He loved Kurt when he was driving over to Eli’s, and when he was nervously drinking water in Eli’s kitchenette, and later when he was in Eli’s bed. He was angry at Kurt, yes - but he still loved him through it all.
Because it would break your heart and I never want to do that to you again, Blaine thinks, and that answer is closer to being right, but there’s something missing from it. Because when Blaine did what he did with Eli, he was convinced that Kurt wouldn’t care at all. What if Blaine digs himself into that way of thinking again?
Because you’re the only one I want to be with, whether you love me or not. That’s almost it, but Blaine’s gone for the next best thing before when he thought he couldn’t have or didn’t deserve the best. He did it with Rachel and Jeremiah, and he might have done it with Sam if Sam were a little more heteroflexible. So that answer isn’t right, either.
And that’s when it dawns on him. He’s known it somewhere in his heart ever since the cheating happened, but he’s never put it into words.
He takes both of Kurt’s hands in his. “Because I’ll turn to you, Kurt. When I’m worried and I’m scared that you don’t love me anymore, I’ll come to you. I’ll come to you even if I’m scared to hear the answer. And if you’re at work, or you’re in Milan for Fashion Week, or you’re working on your next hit musical at a writer’s retreat in rural Michigan out of the reach of cell phone towers, then I’ll wait. I’ll go play Dungeons & Dragons with Sam or I’ll marathon Hoarders or I’ll just -” Blaine shrugs. “I’ll just keep trying to live my life as well and as honorably as I can until we can talk about it.”
It’s a terrible speech, Blaine thinks, but it’s the best he could come up with on the spot. And it’s honest, and Kurt is smiling - that beautiful, radiant smile that lights entire galaxies and shines through tears. “I’ll turn to you, too.” Kurt says.
*
Neither of them sign the card that Blaine printed out. But later that afternoon, when their clothes are crumpled on Kurt’s bedroom floor and Kurt has fallen asleep on top of the sheets, Blaine takes a piece of note paper out of Kurt’s desk and writes on it: “I, Blaine Anderson, love Kurt Hummel more than anything. And I want to hold onto him more than I want to hold onto my own fears. So whenever I am afraid or in doubt, I will turn to him first, now and always, and trust his love for me.”
Blaine folds the paper into eighths and slips it into the bottom of the ring box that he carries with him everywhere. That way, Kurt will have more than a band of metal to take home with him to New York as a reminder of Blaine’s love. He’ll have Blaine’s pledge, too.