Wake Up Strange [1/3] for CRACKEDAGLET
Title: Wake Up Strange [1/3]
Recipient: crackedaglet
Author: Threepwillow
Rating: mild NC-17? lol
Warnings: mild/canon-level homophobia and sexual content including oral
Word Count: 21374
Summary: The summer right after Kurt turns seventeen is hot, and personal, and might kind of just maybe be the most important three months of his life.
Notes: I just want to make a couple of apologies - first, for not addressing either of the prompts I used until much, much later in the fic than I was expecting (they're in there, I promise!), and secondly for being so remarkably self-indulgent in a fic that was supposedly written for someone else! But I had an awful lot of fun with this one and I hope that's the sense it conveys to everyone else: fun. :) (And summertime, because I don't know about you, but where I am it's positively freezing.)
June
Kurt's never been really great with receiving gifts. He supposes a large part of it is that he just barely trusts anyone else to shop for him, and past experience has pretty much proved that fear to be realistic. But if he's honest with himself, Kurt also doesn't do very well with generosity. Having to be tough-as-nails fierce just to get by from day to day probably messes with that part of your head.
So he doesn't really talk very much about his birthday. If people ask when it is he'll tell them, but it's not information he offers up freely, and he never makes a big deal out of it. Kurt finds it way easier, somehow, to plan and celebrate for other people. Doing all the work on a day that's supposed to be for him and about him just seems kind of unfair. (And if he doesn't trust people gift-shopping, he definitely doesn't trust anyone else to do that part of it.)
He does come home from Dalton for the weekend, though. Carole bakes an amazing cake, something weird and low-carb for his dad but with all sorts of fancy crystallized fruit on the top, and she also gives him a gift card to Macy's. (Smart woman.) Finn gets him this bizarro teddy bear from one of those customizable places, and it's got a football helmet and a cheerleader skirt and a smart peacoat on it all at once, which is kind of a disaster, but at least he's trying. It brings a bit of a smile to Kurt's face. He also brings home from school Kurt's gift from Mercedes, which is a scarf he'd been eyeing the last couple of times they went shopping together. (Kurt doesn't have the heart to tell her he ended up buying it for himself a week or two ago, but hey, at least now he's got it in two different colors.)
His dad's present is in a small box wrapped with shiny green paper, and he opens it to find a slim and rather pricy digital camera.
"Wow, Dad," he says, because well, wow, but he still doesn't quite understand why.
"This thing comes with a condition, okay kid?" says Burt. "I know you - you usually like to be in the pictures, instead of taking them." He laughs a little. "But here's the thing, it's just that we miss you when you're off in Westerville at school. I feel like..." He trails off, staring more at the camera, as Kurt flips it over and over in his hands, than at Kurt himself. "I feel like we're missing out on parts of your life that I'd kinda like to see, you know? So I'm giving you this, but you gotta promise that you'll - document your life for us a little, okay? I wanna know what you get up to out there, and I want you to show me, not some creepy kid on Facebook."
Kurt looks down at the camera, too, its smooth teal-tinted metal surface and the wide viewfinder screen on the back. He's barely got any school left this year, but he can see what his dad's getting at. He's missed his family pretty fiercely while he's been away boarding, and if it weren't for some of the photos that Carole had posted online, he'd be clueless sometimes. The least he can do is return the favor.
"Yeah," he says. "Absolutely."
"Cool," says Finn suddenly. "We miss you, bro. Happy birthday."
And see, that "we" carries the weight of New Directions on it too, and that stings at his heart even more. There's no way he'd let any of them down now.
---
"Hey Kurt, wait up!"
Since the shouting is clearly from behind him, Kurt slows down, and allows a small tight grin to creep across his face. It's the last day of school and everyone is moving out, and he was worried he was going to have to embarrass himself by being the one that sought him out. But here he is, running up behind Kurt, looking for him.
Blaine.
(Kurt can still barely even think his name without swooning a little, and that's getting to be a problem.)
"Hey," Blaine says again, much softer, from right behind him. Kurt turns to face him and has to take a step back to make enough space between them for the big box of clothes he's carrying.
"Hey," says Kurt, trying not to smile too obviously, wishing his bangs weren't falling into his face a little.
"So explain to me why Facebook had to tell me it was your birthday last week?" he says, laughing a little, breathless from running (in his uniform, in June, seriously what is wrong with him).
Kurt flicks his eyes away, his bottom lip catching a little between his teeth. "Eh, I'm not a big birthday person, is all. Just reminds us that we're getting older!"
"That's a shame," says Blaine. "If I'd known, I would've gotten you something."
"Oh, don't be silly, you don't need to - " But Kurt catches Blaine's eyes again and they are suddenly very serious, even squinting like they are in the bright sunlight. Something about it makes him pause. He's used to the stupid flirting, the dancing around each other, the blatantly leaving things unsaid. They've been doing that for months. But he isn't used to this.
"This might have to count double, then," he says. "And I think it's pretty cocky of me to count this as a gift, anyway. But there's just...something I really need to say." Without breaking eye contact, Blaine takes the box from Kurt's arms and sets it gently down beside them. Then he fills the space the box was occupying, stepping right into Kurt's personal bubble, their toes almost touching on the ground. Slowly, half-nervous but half-righteously sure, Blaine lifts up first one hand and then the other to curve around Kurt's face, holding him there, just - touching him. His right thumb skims a little across the left corner of Kurt's mouth. Between this and the heat, Kurt's pretty amazed that he isn't melting straight into the lawn.
"Kurt," says Blaine, "I really, really like you."
"Damnit," says Kurt, "Blaine..." He leans his face into the curve of Blaine's hand, trying to nuzzle at it without looking like a complete dork, and kind of failing, but he can't help it. Skin-on-skin contact with Blaine is electrifying.
"And I - I want to be with you. I should have told you this a long time ago, really."
"I know," says Kurt. "I - I knew. But hearing you say it, it's - "
"I just - I was going to wait and let you make the first move, you know? Because I figured - "
Kurt shakes his head, and brings his arms up around Blaine's neck. "No," he says, "you'd have been waiting forever, I - I can't make the first move. I tried that, once, and...well, one heart-shattering rejection was enough."
"Oh, Kurt," says Blaine, his intense eyes going softer, "how could I ever reject you?"
It's like something out of a freaking movie. Kurt's heart is beating a mile a minute and he doesn't even care that Blaine is kind of sweating on him (although ew) because he slips his arms down from where he's cradling Kurt's face and up under Kurt's arms instead, locking around him across his back and burying his face in Kurt's shoulder. Kurt can feel his warm breath smooth across his neck as they clutch tighter and tighter, and no he is not going to cry, he refuses, even if this is the most intimate embrace he's ever been part of, the hot and surprisingly solid lines of Blaine's arms pressing him closer, closer, to the boy he's been pretty much in love with since the first time he sang the words you brought me to life to him. He takes a long, shuddering inhale instead, and he can't stop just whispering his name against his ear, Blaine, oh Blaine, Blaine.
And Blaine says, "Mmmm, Kurt."
And his dad says, "Hey, Kurt!"
They pull apart slow and reluctant, smiling at each other, more with their eyes than anything. "I guess I've gotta go," says Kurt, and he bends to get the box but Blaine's already picking it up and handing it back to him.
"Yeah," he says, "me too. We've both got long drives ahead of us. But look, I'm gonna make this work, and I'm gonna do it right." He grins, and rests his hand back on Kurt's shoulder, something he's done so many times before but now is just somehow all the more wonderful. "Real dates. Real everything. Because you deserve it."
"I'll miss you," Kurt says, because it's so, so true.
"I'll miss you too," says Blaine.
Their eyes stay locked for a few more seconds, and Kurt's very skin thrills, because this is it. Blaine's face has shifted from its wonder-soft intensity from earlier to a look Kurt can readily identify as his "sexual tension" face, and he is totally going to kiss him. He practically can't remember a time where he wasn't waiting for this moment, where he wasn't dreaming that their lingering glances at Warblers practice or their casually brushing feet under the table at lunch would drive him to this, and he'd have those amazing lips all to himself.
But Blaine just gives his shoulder a soft lingering squeeze, and then starts to back away, still smiling, refusing to turn and walk forward for a good long while.
And as amazing as all that was, as he heads toward his dad's truck with the last of the boxes, Kurt lets out a disappointed little groan.
(But it was still kind of the best birthday present ever.)
---
It's another week before their first real date. (The concept is kind of funny to Kurt. He thinks about everything they've done together, sectionals, regionals, that production of Rent, dinners at Breadstix, coffee and poetry readings, the local fashion expo in Columbus - how is it that they've never "really" been on a date, exactly?) Kurt spends his first week of vacation developing a solid schedule for his summer job part-time in his dad's garage and trying to get used to the new house. His bedroom is upstairs instead of downstairs, which is weird, and it's a little smaller and squarer than his old one. He appreciates the effort they went through to at least paint it the same color as the before, though, and he has to admit he kind of likes the carpet better here. If only he had a bigger closet.
Saturday morning it's nearly noon and Kurt is just stirring, enjoying the luxury he has of sleeping in on weekends now that he doesn't have a clumsy sports-playing roommate, when his phone buzzes on his bedside table with a text message from Blaine.
hope you dont have plans for tonight! dinner reservations and then movie tickets. its the new pixar one, hope thats alright
Kurt laughs against his pillow and texts back. Dinner and a movie! How...traditional. That's kind of hot.
you know it ;) comes his quick response. pick you up at 5:30 or so, be ready. gosh, ive been waiting for this.
Kurt snuggles back into his blankets and realizes that he has, too. But here it is, at long last. He's going on an honest-to-cheesus date. With Blaine.
Suddenly he bolts back upright and throws the blankets off. What is he going to wear?
What he's going to wear, it turns out after much deliberation, is his ultra-soft floppy black sweater, with the big draping sleeves that go down to about his elbows, and what are possibly the tightest jeans he owns. As he's tugging them up so they finally actually reach his waist, Kurt eyes himself in the mirror, hair styled flawlessly after the trim he got three days ago, face moisturized with that cream that paints him with just the subtlest little bit of shimmer, and, well, he looks good. Damn good. He smirks at himself in the mirror - with any luck, Blaine's not going to know what hit him. As he's tucking himself in at the front and doing up the button and zipper, he has a sudden flash of fantasy that his hands are Blaine's hands, and that they're going through the same motions...in reverse. It's enough to send a flush up the back of his neck and he grins, and takes a couple steadying breaths before collecting his things into his tote and heading downstairs.
"Wow, Kurt, hot date tonight?" teases Carole when she spots him from the kitchen.
And Kurt is so happy he almost wants to laugh, because finally, he gets to say, "Yes."
"I thought I caught you with an extra spring in your step lately," she says. "Who's the lucky guy, hmmm?"
"Ohh, just this guy," he says with a sigh, grinning to himself, "you know, thin, dark hair, a little shorter than me, drives this really cool car, voice like an absolute dream - "
"I knew it!" crows Carole. "Ohh, honey, I'm so happy for you." She puts down the vegetable peeler and skips over to the sofa to hug him, and he doesn't even care that she's getting potato juice on his sweater, not really anyway. "Took him long enough, didn't it? You better show him exactly what he's been missing, maybe that'll snap some sense into him."
Kurt thinks about that lingering touch on the last day of school, about his wandering thoughts in front of his mirror. "Oh, I plan to," he assures her.
The doorbell rings.
"Knock him dead, kid!" she says with a wink. "And be back before your curfew or your dad'll ground both of us!"
Kurt smiles at her as she lets him stand up and ducks back to the kitchen. He gives himself a once-over, brushing invisible lint and imaginary wrinkles out of his long sweater, sweeping his bangs back with his thumb more out of nervousness than anything, and slowly crosses to the front door.
His nerves evaporate a little along with his giggles when Blaine rings the bell again before he even makes it there.
"Impatient, aren't we?" Kurt chuckles as he opens the door, and - oh. Ohhhh wow.
Somehow, caught up in his own wardrobe panic, so set on wowing the goody-goody romantic straight out of Blaine, it hadn't really occurred to Kurt to ever think about what Blaine might be wearing. Kurt has really only seen Blaine in two states of dress: school uniform and comfort-only casual, pajamas or sweatpants or whatever he's worn to late-night movie marathons or when he's been on rounds as the dorm monitor. Even when they've been off-campus, out together, it's kind of been a blazer-and-tie sort of thing and he's looked remarkably similar to the standard Dalton fare. But here in front of him, Blaine's wearing a deep purple shirt with a Henley collar and the sleeves pushed up to his elbows, the material hanging just loose enough that it slips tantalizingly around the curves and angles of his torso rather than looking baggy and unflattering. His slacks are pretty generic but they're doing wonderful things for every area between waist and mid-thigh, and his hair has about ten percent of its usual product in it if past experience is anything to go by because it's - it's so curly. It's so curly that Kurt kind of really wants to touch it.
"Good evening, monsieur," says Blaine, grinning up at him. Kurt descends the two steps toward him, shutting the door slowly behind him, and gives into his urge. Blaine's hair is soft and dense under his hand.
"Hey there, easy!" says Blaine. "It takes a while to get it to look this good. You of all people should appreciate that."
"Sorry," says Kurt faintly, even though he's not, really, because it's incredible. He retracts his hand and looks down at their shoes. "I just - I really wanted to - "
"It's okay," says Blaine, tilting his chin back up with a soft press of his fingers, and god Kurt could just kiss him right now. It would be so easy. "This is weird, I get it."
"It is weird," says Kurt. "We're just - kind of - "
"Doing it backward?" says Blaine with a chuckle. "Yeah, I know. But I promised you, I'm gonna do this the right way. I am making this a perfect first date whether you like it or not."
"So we're gonna do everything people do after they've known each other for three weeks even though we've known each other for six months," says Kurt.
"Yeah," Blaine says, his grin turning sheepish. "Something like that. Now come on, we'll be late for our reservations."
He takes Kurt by the hand and tugs him to the car, where he opens the passenger-side door for Kurt and lets him climb in before heading around to his own seat. Kurt's checking his hair in the mirror on the flip-down sun visor by the time Blaine's starting the car.
"Your hair looks fine," he assures him.
"Yes, well, that's what anyone would say on the first date," says Kurt. He shoots him a sidelong glare, reveling in the way Blaine sputters a little, and then they're driving off, and Blaine's telling him about the little Thai diner where the reservations are, and how they make like seven different kinds of curry, and it's all basically to die for.
---
But see, the problem is, it doesn't get much better as the date goes on.
They sit across from each other at this tiny table in the restaurant and every so often Kurt can feel their knees knocking together under the table. The material of Blaine's slacks is pretty thin and his own jeans are so tight that they're practically skin-to-skin, and combined with the way Blaine keeps having to drop his mouth open or suck on the straw to his ice-water-with-lemon like it's a freaking lifeline because of how spicy his food is, Kurt is kind of resenting this whole start-from-the-beginning thing, no matter how romantic it is.
(But then Blaine will laugh with the utmost sincerity at some joke Kurt makes, or clasp Kurt's hand across the table when he gets really excited about some story he's telling, or just kind of...look at him, all half-smiles and deep soulful eyes, and Kurt thinks it might not be so bad.)
(The movie theater is another story.)
Kurt hates getting so close to the screen that he has to turn his head to watch, so they sit kind of near the back, and the theater is mostly empty at a screening that's kind of late for a movie targeted at kids. Neither of them get snacks, since they just had dinner, so there's no need to tug down the adjustable armrest between their two seats except for use as an actual armrest. Which Blaine does. Which is kind of, like, infuriating. Sure, he lets their hands and forearms tangle together on the armrest, and after a while Blaine's stroking his thumb in slow, easy circles across the web of skin between Kurt's thumb and forefinger, which is pretty incredible. But Kurt has a harder and harder time paying attention to the comic perils of the animated characters on the screen when he thinks about how he could be nestled in with Blaine, hip-to-hip, nuzzled against his shoulder. And finally he gives up.
"Hey," he whispers, and Blaine shifts a little to look at him, and Kurt very carefully extracts his arm from Blaine's and raises the armrest up to its vertical position.
"Kurt - "
"Shhh," says Kurt, and at long last he snuggles closer. Blaine's hovering arm finally comes to rest across Kurt's back, hand curving around his upper arm, and Kurt smiles, and lays his hand on Blaine's thigh (Blaine's thigh, his hand is on his boyfriend's thigh), and keeps watching the movie.
The movie's feel-good ending has them strolling out of the theater laughing, and Kurt's glad it's gotten a little cooler outside since they went in because he was not looking forward to sweating any more in his sweater than he had to. Blaine's face stretched in honest laughter, his hair curling around his ears, is just a little too hot for him to handle.
"God, imagine what it must be like to do the voices for characters like that?" he says, talking wildly with his hands. "How fun would that be? But then how hard - like, you can't do any of the acting yourself, with your face or whatever, it all has to come through with your voice - geez, I've always been a better singer than an actor, that's why I just gave up."
"I don't think I could do it," says Kurt. "Have it just be my voice, I mean. If I'm going to be in a movie I'm gonna need people to see my face." He poses dramatically, trying to keep that grin on Blaine's face, and it works. "I'm too pretty to hide behind some wacky talking animal hijinks."
"You can say that again," Blaine breathes. He grabs him at the waist and Kurt tenses happily, but then he seems to realize what he's doing. "Sorry."
"Don't apologize," says Kurt, rolling his eyes. They're standing right in front of the poster for the movie they just saw, kind of mimicking the positions of the two leads, and Kurt worms out of his grasp and presses himself up against it, copying the pose entirely. Blaine laughs a little more and scrubs a hand through his hair.
"No, no, this one," says Kurt, flitting down to the next one, a stupid romantic comedy that you'd have to pay him to see. He stands right in front of Matthew McConaughey and makes the same dumb face that he's making and Blaine laughs even harder.
"Gosh, I would pay for a picture of this," he says.
A picture. Kurt's mind flashes suddenly to his little teal camera, which he's pretty sure is sitting at the bottom of his tote. "Oh, wait, hang on!" he says, and he digs around for it, turning it on and passing it to Blaine. "As long as you fully understand that this is never going on Facebook, ever, this is probably the worst face I have ever made in a picture in my life - "
"Just hold still!" says Blaine, and the flash flickers through the summer dusk. Kurt drops the face and the pose as soon as possible and then reaches out for the camera again.
"Okay, you next," he says, gesturing to the next poster down the line. There's three in a row, actually, all for the last Harry Potter film that's coming out next month. Blaine looks them over before selecting the one of Alan Rickman as Professor Snape, holding up an imaginary wand and fixing Kurt with a withering stare.
"You are too good at that," says Kurt, and he snaps the photo.
"You expected anything less?" says Blaine in a pretty atrocious British accent, and then he reaches out for Kurt, tugging him closer. Way closer. Closer than Blaine's let them get all night. Kurt can't help it - his gaze flickers faintly to Blaine's lips, breath huffing out a little too fast from the sudden movement and all the laughter.
"So," he says, "are you the kind of guy that kisses on the first date?"
"...No," says Blaine, and Kurt groans.
"Come on."
"You come on, just let me finish my sentence!" says Blaine. He starts over - "No, but I've been strongly encouraging myself to make an exception all night. I seem to remember saying something along the lines of gosh your lips look delicious back around Christmas time and my opinions haven't really changed - "
"Been thinking about me and my lips that long, hmm?" says Kurt, narrowing his eyes, running his tongue across his bottom lip just because he can.
"You have no idea," says Blaine, and then he finally, finally presses their mouths together, hot and unsteady and absolutely amazing. All first kisses should be like this, Kurt thinks. They should all involve a perfectly charming boyfriend burying his hands into the back of your sweater, rocking up ever-so-slightly on his tiptoes to get at the best angle, while you cling low, low across his waist and try not to forget how to breathe. Blaine's tongue slips lightly across his lips and Kurt doesn't even think about it, he just opens up to let it in, and geez, how long has he been waiting for Blaine's tongue to just be in his mouth? Because this is pretty incredible. He lifts one hand up to fist into Blaine's beautiful curly hair and press their faces even tighter together, tilting his head a little more to the right so they fit better, pushing their tongues back into Blaine's mouth now, tasting absolutely every part of him, this amazing wet twist and pull and just when Kurt thinks he might start moaning softly into his boyfriend's mouth, Blaine pulls away, and presses their foreheads together instead.
"You are amazing," he says.
"Ooh, your lips are delicious," says Kurt, and Blaine swats him on the shoulder before taking his hand and walking them back to the car.
---
Kurt holds it together through the car ride home, and their awkward refusal to say goodbye at the front door (it was almost as bad as a long distance phone call - "you hang up first." "No you first!" oh for crying out loud), and the interesting stares his father and stepmother fix him with as he finally comes inside and up the stairs. But when he's alone in his new bedroom with the door shut and his shoes kicked off and his tote hung on the back of his chair, he finally lets it out.
He falls backward onto his bed, clutching his arms to his chest, and squeals like a little girl.
Finally. Finally! As cockblockingly frustrating as huge portions of his night were, Kurt is finally actually dating Blaine Anderson, in the almost-missing-curfew kissing-under-the-stars kind of way. It's kind of freaking amazing. He replays all the best moments of the night back over in his head, especially the glorious kiss, all smooth tongues and clutching hands, and he remembers distinctly Blaine's hip hitching toward him ever-so-slightly so he must have done something right. (He's going to go ahead and thank his impossibly tight jeans, which he worms out of along with his sweater in favor of his feather-light summer pajamas.)
He tumbles back onto his bed, on his stomach this time, to look through the pictures on his camera. There's the one of him as McConaughey. That face is truly atrocious. And then Blaine as Snape, two because the first one came out blurry, and Kurt honestly doesn't believe he could take a bad picture if he tried, no matter how silly his trying-to-be-serious face looks.
Thinking on it, Kurt's eyes dart over to the Dalton school portrait of Blaine and his snipped out Courage message he'd put under it, leftover from his locker at McKinley and now adorning the side of his bookshelf next to his desk. Kurt's always kind of liked the way it looks, been a little proud of it, even, that he'd managed to make something for himself out of something that Blaine had pretty much given to him, his empowering totem words woven together with Kurt's desperation and letters torn from a magazine or two. He ought to put it somewhere safer, preserve it -
Kurt looks back down at the camera.
He remembers a hot-pink marbled composition notebook he's got sitting empty in his stack of school supplies, that he never ended up using at school last year.
He gets a pretty fabulous idea.
Suddenly he's armed with June's Vogue and May's Glamour and some scissors and an extra strength gluestick, filtering through, finding all the best ads and articles to piece together what he wants. The last piece he has to collect up is the photos off his camera, and he loads them onto his computer, adjusting some color levels so they'll print better. On a whim he gets on Facebook to snag a couple more - there's a particularly good one of him and Blaine locked fierce in a hug at regionals, crying on each other half out of defeat when they didn't pass through and half out of just how awesome it was for Kurt to finally have a solo - and notices he has a little alert floating on the top left, from Blaine E Anderson.
It's a relationship request.
Kurt Hummel is in a relationship with Blaine Anderson.
He feels the grin on his face sweep down through his whole self, and decides maybe he will put the McConaughey picture up, after all.
July
Kurt slides back out from underneath the car, looks up at his dad and shakes his head. Burt sighs and turns to the poor little woman standing next to him, wringing at her hands.
"Okay, Mrs. C., I dunno what you did to this poor thing, but as soon as we figure it out we'll fix it and we'll get right back to you. Don't worry, we may not be all that prompt sometimes but we've got a one-hundred-percent success rate. You're not goin' on any big trips any time soon, are you?" She shakes her head, but she's still frowning at the car and Kurt, lying on his back on the floor. "All right then. Take care." He claps her on the shoulder, and once she's left he reaches down a hand to help Kurt up. "Geez. I thought it was just my eyesight goin'..."
"No," says Kurt, "this thing's a disaster. I'm amazed she was even able to drive it here to us."
"It's really nice havin' another pair of eyes and ears and hands around the shop, kid," says Burt, smiling at him. "I'm impressed with how quick you've caught on to some of this stuff. Thanks."
"Any time, Dad," says Kurt, as his dad heads back into the supply room. He wipes some of the grease on his hands off on the flimsy heather-grey t-shirt he wears under his coveralls, which he's worn rolled down to his waist the past few days. The summer heat is beginning to evolve to the "ridiculous" level and the shop, being open-fronted, doesn't exactly have air conditioning. Trusting that his shoulders at least are probably oil-free he rolls his head around and digs his face into his sleeve to wipe off some of the sweat, and when he looks up at the shop again two new people are there.
"Hey, Mom said to come by and make you guys come home for lun--oh, uh, hey," says Finn, as he and Blaine nearly walk into each other.
"Hello," Blaine says, all friendly smiles and curling hair. He only comes up to about the middle of Finn's chest and it's so funny that Kurt can't help but laugh a little.
"Hey now," Blaine starts, but Burt's coming back into the main workroom and suddenly the four of them are all just kind of...standing there. It's painfully awkward, and finally Kurt just has to say something.
"This is Blaine," he stammers, coming to stand next to him but careful not to lean on him for fear of wrecking his clothes (a T-shirt for some band Kurt doesn't know, deliciously snug across his chest and shoulders, goddamn; the shorts are a little less forgivable). He does slip the cleaner of his two hands into Blaine's, holding tight.
"...Yeah," says Burt, "we've met Blaine before. How's it going, kid?"
"Pretty good, sir," says Blaine, still just smiling like he hasn't a care in the world.
"Sorry for - almost like - stepping on you there, dude," says Finn, not really making things any better.
"No worries, you get used to it when you're the little guy. Not that you'd know," adds Blaine, and then too late seems to think better of it, and claps his mouth shut a little too hard.
"Right."
"Wait," says Kurt, frustrated, because he's kind of been looking forward to this, "I know you've met, but I wanted to - this is my boyfriend, Blaine." They've only gone on the one true date so far, although Blaine did bring a pint of low-fat ice cream and the DVD of Dream Girls to Mercedes's place to hang out with the two of them last week, and this is kind of the big reveal. Not Blaine-this-guy-I-like but Blaine-whom-I'm-actually-dating. For real.
But Burt's deadpan expression just kind of stays in place. "Yeah, son," he says after a minute, "we know."
And Kurt would be kind of pissed if it didn't make him so damn happy.
"Whatever," says Finn, "just come home for lunch, Mom basically demands it."
"Ah," says Blaine, "I hope that - I mean, can Kurt be an exception to these demands, possibly? It's just that I was kind of hoping we could go out this afternoon. This is your morning-day in here, right?"
"Yeah," says Kurt, smiling. "That's all right, right Dad?"
"Sure, sure," he says. "Just make sure to take your phone and don't do anything stupid, you know the rules."
"Absolutely. Come on, let's get back so I can clean up real quick."
Blaine rolls his eyes. "'Real quick' for you is like a snail's pace for anyone else when it comes to getting ready. Promise you'll go fast?"
"I promise!" Blaine just laughs, and gives him a simple quick kiss on the lips.
"You've got motor oil on your forehead," he whispers, and Kurt swears softly.
By the time they get back to his house the grease on Kurt's clothes is driving him insane. It's one thing to be slimy and disgusting in the shop, where a lot of things are slimy and disgusting. It's another thing entirely to be slimy and disgusting while sitting next to your really hot boyfriend in your really hot boyfriend's really nice car. When it's 90 degrees outside. Ew.
They've barely made it in the door before Kurt is stumbling to the downstairs bathroom and shooing Blaine upstairs to his bedroom to wait for him. "It's on the left," he says, reaching down to the hem of his t-shirt to twist it off because he can't really take it any more.
"First left or second left?"
"Second!" he mumbles into his shirt, and then it's off, thank you, and then - oh. Blaine still hasn't really gone up the stairs yet. Blaine's still kind of standing there looking at Kurt and Kurt is kind of shirtless.
That's new.
"Okay," Blaine breathes, his eyes fixed to Kurt's chest in a way that makes Kurt feel seriously embarrassed and kind of awesomely powerful at the same time. He smirks a little to himself, knowing it'll go unnoticed because Blaine's gone kind of google-eyed. As a test, he shifts his stance a little, popping out one hip and leaning his torso closer in Blaine's direction, and he's rewarded with Blaine swallowing thickly. Yeah, okay, that kind of rocks.
He breaks the tension by throwing the grimy shirt right in his boyfriend's face. "Throw that in a plastic bag or something, will you? They're behind my trashcan, next to the dresser."
"Mmm, sure," says Blaine, holding the shirt a bit too fondly. He shoots Kurt a last lingering look, lips curling a little sideways into a smirk of his own, and then trots the rest of the way up the stairs.
Kurt dumps his coveralls just inside the bathroom door, along with his underwear, and then sets the shower temperature several degrees colder than he'd usually prefer.
---
"So which bowling alley are we going to again?" asks Kurt over his shoulder, fighting with his stuffed-full closet in search of...something. Something he doesn't quite know he's looking for but he'll know it when he sees it...
"Uh, the one downtown?"
"Which one downtown? Is it the AMC or the local place?"
"Do you have a preference?" Blaine says, mock-scathing.
Kurt surfaces and frowns at him. "The AMC has orange in their shoes and the local place has green in their shoes," he says. "I'm just trying to coordinate."
Blaine blinks at him, and then chuckles and shakes his head. "I don't know - wear blue. Won't that kind of go with either?"
Kurt tugs at the hem of his snug black undershirt and ponders. Depending on the shade of blue, Blaine could be right.
"Plus," he adds, "I like it when you wear blue...it really brings out your eyes, I think. Yeah?"
Kurt flushes. "Why, what a wonderful sappy romantic boyfriendly thing for you to say, Blaine," he says.
"I thought it sounded pretty good, yeah," says Blaine, and they exchange a grin before Kurt dives back into the closet. He knows just the thing. But now he's going to have to find that bowtie, too.
"I'll have you know," he says to Blaine in the car, half an hour and two failed hairstylings later (third time, thankfully, was the charm, because Kurt's getting kind of hungry), "I bowl pretty damn well. Just as a warning."
"Your reputation preceeds you," says Blaine. "Mercedes mentioned horror stories of bitter defeat. I told her I thought I could handle it."
"Maybe," says Kurt. "Probably not, but you know."
"Maybe you should be the good boyfriend and let me win to make me feel better."
"Right," says Kurt, shooting him a glare. "Sure."
Blaine reaches over to pat him on the knee, and his hand just kind of...stays there. Kurt flushes a little, and puts his own hand overtop, holding it in place on his thigh, and it stays that way the rest of the way to the bowling alley. They're actually pretty reluctant to separate when they get out of the car, and Blaine kind of falls back into Kurt's arms as soon as they can.
"Hi," he says, smiling brilliantly.
"Hi," says Kurt.
"I like the way this is going, I think," he says, smoothing his hand up and down the small of Kurt's back. "A lot."
"Yeah," says Kurt. "Me too."
And thinking about earlier, how they seem to be going so easily from sexual tension to friendly casual intimacy and back again, testing the waters, pushing each other's buttons, just kind of - being with each other, better than they ever could at school, when Blaine was still hesitant and Kurt was still delicate - Kurt really, really does.
Even if, as it turns out, Blaine is a really sore loser.
"Oh come on, seriously? You barely even did anything! There is no way you got a spare by just kind of rolling the ball down the lane." Blaine scowls up at the electronic scorekeeper and Kurt tries not to laugh.
"Blaine? That's kind of how you play the game. By just rolling the ball down the lane. You know that, right?"
"You're a jerk."
"You're whiny! You definitely didn't complain this much when we lost at regionals, what's your problem?"
"I don't have a problem! I just - "
"Sure, sure. Come on, crybaby, it's your turn."
"Not yet." He shoots out a vicegrip arm and yanks Kurt into his lap, where he's sitting in one of the awkward plastic seats, their half-eaten pizza and fries forgotten behind them. Kurt falls on top of him rather gracelessly but then suddenly realizes that he's sitting on his boyfriend in the middle of a bowling alley and that is kind of awesome.
"You suck," says Blaine, but he's grinning, and kind of staring at Kurt's mouth. Kurt kisses him, hard, shifting a little in his lap to get the best angle, and - to prove a point - sucks slow and tender and kind of vicious on his lower lip before pulling away.
"Maybe," says Kurt boldly.
"Kurt," groans Blaine, and it's probably meant to sound like an admonition but it comes out half-scolding and half-really turned on. At least that's what Kurt is assuming the whoa hi sexy quality in his voice indicates, and wow, if Kurt gets the chance he's probably going to do his best to bring that back, because um. Wow.
But, you know, only if he gets the chance. Because he actually really likes where they are right now, too.
"Come on," he says. "There's only like three bowls left and then we can, I don't know - "
"Go back to the arcade and play air hockey so I can actually win for once?"
Kurt grins. "Sure."
When it's over, Kurt has just broken two hundred and Blaine hasn't even broken one hundred. He glares, and sucks down the entirety of Kurt's remaining Diet Coke just for spite, but lets Kurt lead him by the hand back into the arcade area. There's only a couple of people back there, some little middle schoolers watching their friend get a frighteningly high score on Dance Dance Revolution and a large, dark-haired girl with the Ms. Pac-Man joystick in one hand and a massive Snickers bar in the other.
Hey, Kurt totally recognizes her.
"Lauren?" he says tentatively, and she doesn't turn away from the screen but she does call "Yo!" back over her shoulder a little, in his direction. He gives Blaine a face that's kind of apologetic, even though he doesn't really have much to apologize for, and heads over to her, sort of hovering at her right elbow.
"What's up?" he says.
"Trying to beat Puckerman's high score," she says between bites. "If I win he owes me homemade brownies and an actual date."
"Wow," says Kurt. Lauren and Puck's relationship has always kind of fascinated him, but he figures she's probably good for him. She can knock him down to size every once in a while. And he's never really had a problem with looks so long as the other warm body is female so maybe it'll work both ways.
"Yeah, I've been here for like three days," she says. "I'm really close, though, so don't distract me."
"Right, right," says Kurt. He's prepared to drop it and head back to Blaine, but she speaks again.
"You here with that short hottie boyfriend of yours?" she says.
"Uh, yeah," he says. "How'd you know about Blaine?"
"Facebook, duh," she answers. "Plus like Mercedes and Tina and Britt all told me too. Like I'm stupid and don't get on the internet. Where do you think I get my X-rated Twilight fanfiction fix?"
"Uhh - "
"Because let me tell you, PG-13 movies just aren't cutting it."
"Right," says Kurt, thoroughly grossed out. He looks back to Blaine for help, or something, but Blaine's bent over trying to find the air hockey puck and all Kurt sees is his ass in those shorts. Which isn't exactly, uh, helpful.
Still, something Lauren says catches his attention. "You've been hanging out with Mercedes and Brittany?"
"There was a glee girls' pool party a couple weeks ago," she says. "I wasn't invited, but I crashed it with a squirt gun full of laundry soap. Quinn's hot tub was awesome." She actually reacts to his stunned silence this time. "I'm kidding, jeez. I was totally invited. I just hate wearing swimsuits so I didn't get in."
"I didn't think you were all that into glee club," says Kurt. "That's not the impression I got when I saw you at regionals, anyway."
"Yeah," she says vaguely, and then, "Yes! Puckerman can suck my power pellet!" She holds out the last bit of her candy bar to Kurt, who takes it without thinking and holds it while she enters LEZ (oh, that's unfortunate) into the high score slot just above the one that says PUK. When she's done she takes it back from him and turns to face him properly for the first time. "I guess the retarded thing about New Directions is that it kind of sucks you in and doesn't let you go. Even though glee club is stupid, somehow I got it all twisted around backward in my head that it's actually really awesome, and now it'd just be weird not to be there. Oh hey, short hottie boyfriend!" She waves at Blaine with a chocolatey hand, and he waves awkwardly back, kind of uncertain. "See you 'round, I guess. Or not, whatever. I've got a date." She swallows the last of the Snickers and turns to duck out of the arcade, more spring in her step than Kurt has ever seen,
"Wait!" says Kurt suddenly. She stops and gives him an are you serious kind of glare. "Can you...can you take a picture of us?" He pulls the camera from the front pocket on his short-sleeved hoodie and hands it to her. "Please?"
"Uh...sure." She takes it from him, and Kurt tries not to think about how thoroughly he's going to have to clean it later, just grabs Blaine's hand and tugs them shoulder-to-shoulder. Blaine puts his arm around Kurt's back, and at the last possible second before the flash goes he presses a sharp kiss to Kurt's cheek. Kurt's sure the photo will have him looking scandalized but thoroughly amused all at once.
"Thanks," he says to her, taking the camera gingerly.
"Whatever." And Lauren heads out, for good this time, but she leaves a few things behind: the sticky Snickers wrapper (ew), her impressive high score, and some thoughts whirling in Kurt's head, even with Blaine standing right next to him.
It kind of sucks you in and doesn't let you go.
A glee girls' pool party, which he totally would have been invited to regardless of his gender this time last year.
Finn's simple We miss you, bro.
"Well that was...interesting," says Blaine, snapping him back to reality.
"That was Lauren," he answers honestly. Blaine laughs a little, and hands him an air hockey paddle. The smile on his face is pretty brilliant, and a few minutes later, when Blaine is kicking his ass and Kurt's freaking out about the nail he almost broke, he doesn't really need anything more.
---
There's no one there when they pull into Kurt's driveway later that afternoon. His dad is still down at the shop, and will be until six or so, and if Kurt remembers correctly Finn is down taking some test to get points back on his driver's license and Carole has to be there for that. They're doing takeout for dinner. The only car there is his.
"One of these days," he says with a frown, "I'm going to pick the date and I'm going to drive you. I feel like a girl."
"Oh, come on," says Blaine. "I like spoiling you. And you like getting spoiled and you know it, don't try to argue."
Kurt sulks a little, but it's true.
"Besides," says Blaine, and ohhhhh there's that delicious voice again from earlier, and it sends goosebumps all over Kurt's skin, "I don't think you...feel like a girl at all." The word feel is punctuated with Blaine's coarse, square hand sliding up and down his thigh, just once or twice, but it's definitely enough. Kurt is suddenly very glad no one else is home.
But when he doesn't say anything right away, Blaine pulls back. "Sorry. Was that weird? It's just weird. Because you're one of my best friends and we've been friends for such a long while now but you're also so hot - "
Kurt grabs Blaine by the back of the neck, tangling his fingers in the curls of Blaine's hair there ("It always gets a little long in the summer," he said, "since I sweat too much for the gel to stay too well but it looks better without it when it's kinda shaggy"), and kisses him. It's kind of a continuation of what happened at the bowling alley, except this time with way more reciprocation, because Blaine's less stunned-and-trying-not-to-be-horny and way more just plain horny. His hand falls back down to stroking Kurt's thigh, heavy firm pressure, up and down, and it's doing wonderful things for Kurt, to the point that he's almost worried he's not doing enough for Blaine. One slow, solid scrape of his blunt fingernails against Blaine's scalp and he is instantly proven wrong.
"Nnnguh," Blaine says oh-so-articulately into the kiss. "Jesus, Kurt."
"Are we really going to sit and make out in your car when I know for a fact my house is empty?" he says, kissing at the corners of Blaine's mouth, along his jaw, up to his ear.
"I don't know, maybe?" says Blaine. He catches Kurt's mouth with his again, kisses him deeply, then nips gently at his bottom lip, over and over, little tingles hitting him straight in the gut (and lower) every time. "It's kind of hotter this way if you ask me." He pulls back a little to look Kurt straight in the eye, and his gaze is thick and dark with lust as he leans down to scrape his teeth along Kurt's throat. "Plus then we don't really have to move."
Kurt shivers. He can't really argue with that.
---
It's a while before they can manage to stop kissing, and even longer before Kurt can talk himself into leaving Blaine's grasp and going up into the house. He turns back to look at Blaine as he's rummaging for his house key in his tote and sees him shift and adjust in his seat, and yeah, Kurt's pretty much there too, half-hard in his snug crop trousers, and at the same time kind of the emotional version of aroused, this deep intangible longing in the pit of his chest. No one but Blaine has ever made him feel like this, a person-to-person expansion of the tense, heartbreakingly wonderful joy he feels when he splurges on a flawless new coat or nails a note in a solo he didn't think he could reach. It's so incredible that Kurt can't put a label on it - or rather, he can, but he really probably shouldn't, because the label Kurt's starting to think goes on it is a seriously scary one when you've only just barely turned seventeen.
He goes inside and heads up the stairs, thinking he might do some yoga or something until dinner to calm down and to work off a little bit of his junk-food lunch. The house is silent except for the loud white noise of the refrigerator, and then Kurt hears Blaine finally start his car back up and pull out of the driveway, and he gives a small private grin. When he hangs his tote back over his chair Kurt's eye catches on something on his desk, a post-it note he'd been doodling on the last time he was on the phone with Blaine, just his boyfriend's name and a bunch of dopey hearts and swirls - but at the bottom edge of it is something new, something Kurt definitely didn't put there. It's a black, greasy fingerprint, from someone with much blunter fingers than himself. Blaine.
He remembers holding Blaine's hand in the auto shop, and how his left hand was definitely cleaner than his right but it still wasn't very clean at all. He must have smeared some of the oil onto Blaine, and Blaine must have gotten curious about the note, and now here it is, one whorled reminder that his boyfriend has seen him in all sorts of elements and hasn't minded at all (in fact, as he'd mentioned during their hour or so of quality time in the car, Kurt getting all greased up apparently really does it for him). It's like the shop is in his blood - and it is, really, because it's just a huge extension of his dad more than anything - and so Kurt has a piece of what's in his blood, stamped in perfect precision with something that's a part of his boyfriend's very DNA.
Yeah, that's going in the scrapbook.
He prints off the picture Lauren took of them, pressed so flush-close, and adds with it the post-it note and a couple of the tickets they won at Skee-Ball. He has to use the bathroom, he realizes - he refused to go in the disgusting public restrooms at the bowling alley, and he kind of forgot about most of his bodily urges other than the very obvious ones in the car with Blaine - so he shuts the notebook carefully, slips it back into his desk drawer, and heads down the hallway.
Kurt catches sight of himself in the mirror above the sink and is immediately drawn to a thick, dark-red splotch that Blaine has left against the milk-pale skin of his neck.
Shit.
---
That night, Kurt has a dream.
In the dream Blaine is a vampire, and he can't go out in the sunlight or he will die. The rest of the Dalton boys are vampires, too, slinking around in the hallways of their fine academy, Wes and David and Nick and the other Warblers, or Tommy and Ricardo and the other guys that live on his floor. Even the professors are vampires.
Blaine wants to suck his blood, but he also really wants to be just a normal guy, and the way Kurt can somehow fix this is by giving him these gaudy-as-hell hot-pink wayfarer sunglasses, which Kurt would never allow anyone to wear in real life, and apparently they block the sun from Blaine and he can step out into the light of day. They go everywhere together, the ocean, the mountains, the heart of a busy bustling city. Blaine wants to sing to him but he has trouble doing it around his fangs, so it comes out a little funny, and Kurt just laughs.
But then Finn is a werewolf. And Mercedes and Tina and Santana are werewolves. And suddenly Kurt feels like he's maybe a werewolf too, and that's no good because Blaine is a vampire, and aren't they not supposed to be together or something?
But god, he wants to be with Blaine. And they fixed Blaine, look, with the sunglasses.
And Pavarotti chirps out both alike in dignity!! but they're not in Verona, they really really aren't!
And Kurt kind of loves the taste of his own blood in his mouth when Blaine kisses him.
Except he doesn't, because that's gross, and that's enough to wake him up.
It's a little after three am, and Kurt groans and rolls over, digging back into his blankets and scratching at his hickey and letting the stupidity of his dream float away until he can barely remember any of it. Never again will he let Lauren Zizes say the word Twilight in his presence.
---
Carole smiles at him over breakfast one morning, as he's mixing his granola and pomegranate seeds into his yogurt. Carole smiles a lot, really, but it's rare that she just sits and looks at him like this, so he looks back, and says, "What?"
"You just look so happy all the time," she says, prodding her spoon aimlessly into her cereal. "Do you always get like this in the summer, is it just because you like being out of school? Or is this something new?"
Kurt can't really answer her, since he doesn't really know - his own happiness isn't something he usually make an effort to observe. Kurt has a hard enough time dealing with the emotions as they come, he can't exactly document them. "It is nice to be on vacation," he says finally.
"Mmm, I bet. Private school does kind of seem all stuffy to me." She actually takes a bite this time, though it's mostly just a big slice of banana. "But I think - I think this is coming from somewhere else. Someone else, maybe."
Kurt flushes. Yeah, okay, she's probably right.
"It's so wonderful to have someone that loves you, isn't it?"
"I - " And Kurt stammers, because they haven't really. That word. It's just not. "I've got Dad, and you, and Finn too I guess," he says, though his argument is faint.
"Yeah, but you know what I mean," says Carole. Her face is bright and a little wistful, and Kurt realizes just how much she probably does understand - about not having someone like that, and then suddenly having them, there for you, caring with all they've got.
(And okay wow, he totally just compared his boyfriend to his dad, and it's a little too early in the morning for that.)
He takes a big bite of his yogurt and tries not to think about it too much, but that's really kind of hard. He's still thinking about it, even as he suits up to head to the shop (in his blue slob shirt, his grey one must still be in the wash), even as he digs around in Mrs. Crescitelli's engine with his dad, even as they sit and eat the sandwiches that Carole sent along with them for lunch. He thinks about Blaine, and he thinks about being happy, and yeah, Kurt thinks about love.
---
"And between the two of you I expect this house to not be razed to the ground when we get back, you hear?"
"Yes, Dad, okay - "
"'Cause we just got this house!"
"Burt, it's gonna be fine, now go or you're gonna miss your flight." Finn shoots Kurt a look that Kurt returns with his own version of the same face and they finally, finally force their parents into the car and get them on the road to the airport. Kurt especially is smiling as they drive away: after months and months of saving, they've finally been able to get back what they lost paying for his Dalton tuition, and they're going on their honeymoon whether they like it or not.
Having the house to themselves until Monday afternoon? That's just a perk.
"This is like the worst weekend for the house to be empty, though," says Finn with a sigh. "Rachel's extended family is all in town for some picnic for her dads' anniversary and she said she has to stay there to run crowd control or her grandmothers are gonna kill each other."
"Yeesh," says Kurt, as they head back inside. "Well, if it makes you feel any better, I don't really have any big plans either. Some swingin' bachelors we are."
Finn laughs a little, probably at the image of Kurt as a swingin' bachelor because he catches himself a moment later and stops. "Yeah," he says. "You wanna...make some nachos?"
"Sure."
Kurt's being truthful - there are no big plans. He's already seen the new Harry Potter (not that he'd had to, really - Blaine called him at four in the morning after going to the midnight showing at the theater where David's girlfriend works and told him everything) and without his dad around the shop is closed. It's that sick, annoying pit of summer where suddenly everything that's awesome about summer - no school, going swimming, loads of free time to do whatever - is starting to stagnate in the sweltering heat and motionless air. There's no way they can throw a party because Carole will notice something out-of-place in an instant and Burt will rain down on them like the lightning bolts of Zeus. Kurt thinks the most exciting thing he'll probably do while his parents are gone is redecorate his room free from their annoyance at his music being played too loud.
Kurt chops up some green onion to put on the nachos and he and Finn just kind of talk about stuff. Someone brings up the Spider-Man musical, which they never have a problem laughing at; Kurt's always amazed that they managed to make Spider-Man a musical, and Finn's always amazed that they managed to make Spider-Man a musical. Kurt still kind of wants to see it just to goggle over how absurd the whole thing is. Finn's just glad the show they saw when they went to nationals was the one Rachel wanted to see or they'd never have heard the end of it.
When the nachos are ready they decide maybe they'll watch a movie, the quintessential low-key Friday evening. Kurt's flipping through all their DVDs trying to find something he and Finn can mostly agree on when Finn turns on the TV. From the sounds of it Carole left it on the local news station.
" - but on a happier note, who doesn't love a good whirligig ride? Setting up camp in the West Lima Shopping Mall parking lot is the Cross-Country Funwagon, kind of like a little miniature traveling carnival that's now making its third annual appearance in the area. Their official bill says there will be funnel cakes, games with prizes and several fully-functional rides including a carousel. The Cross-Country Funwagon opens officially for business on Sunday, so load up your car with the little ones and have some good old-fashioned fun. Regular mall patrons should just remember that their standard parking options will be limited for the next three weeks."
"Gosh," says Finn, as Kurt slips in Sherlock Holmes, "doesn't it make you kind of wish you were a little kid again? I almost want to go with Rachel but I know she's terrified of clowns."
Kurt, meanwhile, has a smile on his face and a little light burning inside his chest.
Maybe he does have plans this weekend.
---
part 2
Recipient: crackedaglet
Author: Threepwillow
Rating: mild NC-17? lol
Warnings: mild/canon-level homophobia and sexual content including oral
Word Count: 21374
Summary: The summer right after Kurt turns seventeen is hot, and personal, and might kind of just maybe be the most important three months of his life.
Notes: I just want to make a couple of apologies - first, for not addressing either of the prompts I used until much, much later in the fic than I was expecting (they're in there, I promise!), and secondly for being so remarkably self-indulgent in a fic that was supposedly written for someone else! But I had an awful lot of fun with this one and I hope that's the sense it conveys to everyone else: fun. :) (And summertime, because I don't know about you, but where I am it's positively freezing.)
June
Kurt's never been really great with receiving gifts. He supposes a large part of it is that he just barely trusts anyone else to shop for him, and past experience has pretty much proved that fear to be realistic. But if he's honest with himself, Kurt also doesn't do very well with generosity. Having to be tough-as-nails fierce just to get by from day to day probably messes with that part of your head.
So he doesn't really talk very much about his birthday. If people ask when it is he'll tell them, but it's not information he offers up freely, and he never makes a big deal out of it. Kurt finds it way easier, somehow, to plan and celebrate for other people. Doing all the work on a day that's supposed to be for him and about him just seems kind of unfair. (And if he doesn't trust people gift-shopping, he definitely doesn't trust anyone else to do that part of it.)
He does come home from Dalton for the weekend, though. Carole bakes an amazing cake, something weird and low-carb for his dad but with all sorts of fancy crystallized fruit on the top, and she also gives him a gift card to Macy's. (Smart woman.) Finn gets him this bizarro teddy bear from one of those customizable places, and it's got a football helmet and a cheerleader skirt and a smart peacoat on it all at once, which is kind of a disaster, but at least he's trying. It brings a bit of a smile to Kurt's face. He also brings home from school Kurt's gift from Mercedes, which is a scarf he'd been eyeing the last couple of times they went shopping together. (Kurt doesn't have the heart to tell her he ended up buying it for himself a week or two ago, but hey, at least now he's got it in two different colors.)
His dad's present is in a small box wrapped with shiny green paper, and he opens it to find a slim and rather pricy digital camera.
"Wow, Dad," he says, because well, wow, but he still doesn't quite understand why.
"This thing comes with a condition, okay kid?" says Burt. "I know you - you usually like to be in the pictures, instead of taking them." He laughs a little. "But here's the thing, it's just that we miss you when you're off in Westerville at school. I feel like..." He trails off, staring more at the camera, as Kurt flips it over and over in his hands, than at Kurt himself. "I feel like we're missing out on parts of your life that I'd kinda like to see, you know? So I'm giving you this, but you gotta promise that you'll - document your life for us a little, okay? I wanna know what you get up to out there, and I want you to show me, not some creepy kid on Facebook."
Kurt looks down at the camera, too, its smooth teal-tinted metal surface and the wide viewfinder screen on the back. He's barely got any school left this year, but he can see what his dad's getting at. He's missed his family pretty fiercely while he's been away boarding, and if it weren't for some of the photos that Carole had posted online, he'd be clueless sometimes. The least he can do is return the favor.
"Yeah," he says. "Absolutely."
"Cool," says Finn suddenly. "We miss you, bro. Happy birthday."
And see, that "we" carries the weight of New Directions on it too, and that stings at his heart even more. There's no way he'd let any of them down now.
---
"Hey Kurt, wait up!"
Since the shouting is clearly from behind him, Kurt slows down, and allows a small tight grin to creep across his face. It's the last day of school and everyone is moving out, and he was worried he was going to have to embarrass himself by being the one that sought him out. But here he is, running up behind Kurt, looking for him.
Blaine.
(Kurt can still barely even think his name without swooning a little, and that's getting to be a problem.)
"Hey," Blaine says again, much softer, from right behind him. Kurt turns to face him and has to take a step back to make enough space between them for the big box of clothes he's carrying.
"Hey," says Kurt, trying not to smile too obviously, wishing his bangs weren't falling into his face a little.
"So explain to me why Facebook had to tell me it was your birthday last week?" he says, laughing a little, breathless from running (in his uniform, in June, seriously what is wrong with him).
Kurt flicks his eyes away, his bottom lip catching a little between his teeth. "Eh, I'm not a big birthday person, is all. Just reminds us that we're getting older!"
"That's a shame," says Blaine. "If I'd known, I would've gotten you something."
"Oh, don't be silly, you don't need to - " But Kurt catches Blaine's eyes again and they are suddenly very serious, even squinting like they are in the bright sunlight. Something about it makes him pause. He's used to the stupid flirting, the dancing around each other, the blatantly leaving things unsaid. They've been doing that for months. But he isn't used to this.
"This might have to count double, then," he says. "And I think it's pretty cocky of me to count this as a gift, anyway. But there's just...something I really need to say." Without breaking eye contact, Blaine takes the box from Kurt's arms and sets it gently down beside them. Then he fills the space the box was occupying, stepping right into Kurt's personal bubble, their toes almost touching on the ground. Slowly, half-nervous but half-righteously sure, Blaine lifts up first one hand and then the other to curve around Kurt's face, holding him there, just - touching him. His right thumb skims a little across the left corner of Kurt's mouth. Between this and the heat, Kurt's pretty amazed that he isn't melting straight into the lawn.
"Kurt," says Blaine, "I really, really like you."
"Damnit," says Kurt, "Blaine..." He leans his face into the curve of Blaine's hand, trying to nuzzle at it without looking like a complete dork, and kind of failing, but he can't help it. Skin-on-skin contact with Blaine is electrifying.
"And I - I want to be with you. I should have told you this a long time ago, really."
"I know," says Kurt. "I - I knew. But hearing you say it, it's - "
"I just - I was going to wait and let you make the first move, you know? Because I figured - "
Kurt shakes his head, and brings his arms up around Blaine's neck. "No," he says, "you'd have been waiting forever, I - I can't make the first move. I tried that, once, and...well, one heart-shattering rejection was enough."
"Oh, Kurt," says Blaine, his intense eyes going softer, "how could I ever reject you?"
It's like something out of a freaking movie. Kurt's heart is beating a mile a minute and he doesn't even care that Blaine is kind of sweating on him (although ew) because he slips his arms down from where he's cradling Kurt's face and up under Kurt's arms instead, locking around him across his back and burying his face in Kurt's shoulder. Kurt can feel his warm breath smooth across his neck as they clutch tighter and tighter, and no he is not going to cry, he refuses, even if this is the most intimate embrace he's ever been part of, the hot and surprisingly solid lines of Blaine's arms pressing him closer, closer, to the boy he's been pretty much in love with since the first time he sang the words you brought me to life to him. He takes a long, shuddering inhale instead, and he can't stop just whispering his name against his ear, Blaine, oh Blaine, Blaine.
And Blaine says, "Mmmm, Kurt."
And his dad says, "Hey, Kurt!"
They pull apart slow and reluctant, smiling at each other, more with their eyes than anything. "I guess I've gotta go," says Kurt, and he bends to get the box but Blaine's already picking it up and handing it back to him.
"Yeah," he says, "me too. We've both got long drives ahead of us. But look, I'm gonna make this work, and I'm gonna do it right." He grins, and rests his hand back on Kurt's shoulder, something he's done so many times before but now is just somehow all the more wonderful. "Real dates. Real everything. Because you deserve it."
"I'll miss you," Kurt says, because it's so, so true.
"I'll miss you too," says Blaine.
Their eyes stay locked for a few more seconds, and Kurt's very skin thrills, because this is it. Blaine's face has shifted from its wonder-soft intensity from earlier to a look Kurt can readily identify as his "sexual tension" face, and he is totally going to kiss him. He practically can't remember a time where he wasn't waiting for this moment, where he wasn't dreaming that their lingering glances at Warblers practice or their casually brushing feet under the table at lunch would drive him to this, and he'd have those amazing lips all to himself.
But Blaine just gives his shoulder a soft lingering squeeze, and then starts to back away, still smiling, refusing to turn and walk forward for a good long while.
And as amazing as all that was, as he heads toward his dad's truck with the last of the boxes, Kurt lets out a disappointed little groan.
(But it was still kind of the best birthday present ever.)
---
It's another week before their first real date. (The concept is kind of funny to Kurt. He thinks about everything they've done together, sectionals, regionals, that production of Rent, dinners at Breadstix, coffee and poetry readings, the local fashion expo in Columbus - how is it that they've never "really" been on a date, exactly?) Kurt spends his first week of vacation developing a solid schedule for his summer job part-time in his dad's garage and trying to get used to the new house. His bedroom is upstairs instead of downstairs, which is weird, and it's a little smaller and squarer than his old one. He appreciates the effort they went through to at least paint it the same color as the before, though, and he has to admit he kind of likes the carpet better here. If only he had a bigger closet.
Saturday morning it's nearly noon and Kurt is just stirring, enjoying the luxury he has of sleeping in on weekends now that he doesn't have a clumsy sports-playing roommate, when his phone buzzes on his bedside table with a text message from Blaine.
hope you dont have plans for tonight! dinner reservations and then movie tickets. its the new pixar one, hope thats alright
Kurt laughs against his pillow and texts back. Dinner and a movie! How...traditional. That's kind of hot.
you know it ;) comes his quick response. pick you up at 5:30 or so, be ready. gosh, ive been waiting for this.
Kurt snuggles back into his blankets and realizes that he has, too. But here it is, at long last. He's going on an honest-to-cheesus date. With Blaine.
Suddenly he bolts back upright and throws the blankets off. What is he going to wear?
What he's going to wear, it turns out after much deliberation, is his ultra-soft floppy black sweater, with the big draping sleeves that go down to about his elbows, and what are possibly the tightest jeans he owns. As he's tugging them up so they finally actually reach his waist, Kurt eyes himself in the mirror, hair styled flawlessly after the trim he got three days ago, face moisturized with that cream that paints him with just the subtlest little bit of shimmer, and, well, he looks good. Damn good. He smirks at himself in the mirror - with any luck, Blaine's not going to know what hit him. As he's tucking himself in at the front and doing up the button and zipper, he has a sudden flash of fantasy that his hands are Blaine's hands, and that they're going through the same motions...in reverse. It's enough to send a flush up the back of his neck and he grins, and takes a couple steadying breaths before collecting his things into his tote and heading downstairs.
"Wow, Kurt, hot date tonight?" teases Carole when she spots him from the kitchen.
And Kurt is so happy he almost wants to laugh, because finally, he gets to say, "Yes."
"I thought I caught you with an extra spring in your step lately," she says. "Who's the lucky guy, hmmm?"
"Ohh, just this guy," he says with a sigh, grinning to himself, "you know, thin, dark hair, a little shorter than me, drives this really cool car, voice like an absolute dream - "
"I knew it!" crows Carole. "Ohh, honey, I'm so happy for you." She puts down the vegetable peeler and skips over to the sofa to hug him, and he doesn't even care that she's getting potato juice on his sweater, not really anyway. "Took him long enough, didn't it? You better show him exactly what he's been missing, maybe that'll snap some sense into him."
Kurt thinks about that lingering touch on the last day of school, about his wandering thoughts in front of his mirror. "Oh, I plan to," he assures her.
The doorbell rings.
"Knock him dead, kid!" she says with a wink. "And be back before your curfew or your dad'll ground both of us!"
Kurt smiles at her as she lets him stand up and ducks back to the kitchen. He gives himself a once-over, brushing invisible lint and imaginary wrinkles out of his long sweater, sweeping his bangs back with his thumb more out of nervousness than anything, and slowly crosses to the front door.
His nerves evaporate a little along with his giggles when Blaine rings the bell again before he even makes it there.
"Impatient, aren't we?" Kurt chuckles as he opens the door, and - oh. Ohhhh wow.
Somehow, caught up in his own wardrobe panic, so set on wowing the goody-goody romantic straight out of Blaine, it hadn't really occurred to Kurt to ever think about what Blaine might be wearing. Kurt has really only seen Blaine in two states of dress: school uniform and comfort-only casual, pajamas or sweatpants or whatever he's worn to late-night movie marathons or when he's been on rounds as the dorm monitor. Even when they've been off-campus, out together, it's kind of been a blazer-and-tie sort of thing and he's looked remarkably similar to the standard Dalton fare. But here in front of him, Blaine's wearing a deep purple shirt with a Henley collar and the sleeves pushed up to his elbows, the material hanging just loose enough that it slips tantalizingly around the curves and angles of his torso rather than looking baggy and unflattering. His slacks are pretty generic but they're doing wonderful things for every area between waist and mid-thigh, and his hair has about ten percent of its usual product in it if past experience is anything to go by because it's - it's so curly. It's so curly that Kurt kind of really wants to touch it.
"Good evening, monsieur," says Blaine, grinning up at him. Kurt descends the two steps toward him, shutting the door slowly behind him, and gives into his urge. Blaine's hair is soft and dense under his hand.
"Hey there, easy!" says Blaine. "It takes a while to get it to look this good. You of all people should appreciate that."
"Sorry," says Kurt faintly, even though he's not, really, because it's incredible. He retracts his hand and looks down at their shoes. "I just - I really wanted to - "
"It's okay," says Blaine, tilting his chin back up with a soft press of his fingers, and god Kurt could just kiss him right now. It would be so easy. "This is weird, I get it."
"It is weird," says Kurt. "We're just - kind of - "
"Doing it backward?" says Blaine with a chuckle. "Yeah, I know. But I promised you, I'm gonna do this the right way. I am making this a perfect first date whether you like it or not."
"So we're gonna do everything people do after they've known each other for three weeks even though we've known each other for six months," says Kurt.
"Yeah," Blaine says, his grin turning sheepish. "Something like that. Now come on, we'll be late for our reservations."
He takes Kurt by the hand and tugs him to the car, where he opens the passenger-side door for Kurt and lets him climb in before heading around to his own seat. Kurt's checking his hair in the mirror on the flip-down sun visor by the time Blaine's starting the car.
"Your hair looks fine," he assures him.
"Yes, well, that's what anyone would say on the first date," says Kurt. He shoots him a sidelong glare, reveling in the way Blaine sputters a little, and then they're driving off, and Blaine's telling him about the little Thai diner where the reservations are, and how they make like seven different kinds of curry, and it's all basically to die for.
---
But see, the problem is, it doesn't get much better as the date goes on.
They sit across from each other at this tiny table in the restaurant and every so often Kurt can feel their knees knocking together under the table. The material of Blaine's slacks is pretty thin and his own jeans are so tight that they're practically skin-to-skin, and combined with the way Blaine keeps having to drop his mouth open or suck on the straw to his ice-water-with-lemon like it's a freaking lifeline because of how spicy his food is, Kurt is kind of resenting this whole start-from-the-beginning thing, no matter how romantic it is.
(But then Blaine will laugh with the utmost sincerity at some joke Kurt makes, or clasp Kurt's hand across the table when he gets really excited about some story he's telling, or just kind of...look at him, all half-smiles and deep soulful eyes, and Kurt thinks it might not be so bad.)
(The movie theater is another story.)
Kurt hates getting so close to the screen that he has to turn his head to watch, so they sit kind of near the back, and the theater is mostly empty at a screening that's kind of late for a movie targeted at kids. Neither of them get snacks, since they just had dinner, so there's no need to tug down the adjustable armrest between their two seats except for use as an actual armrest. Which Blaine does. Which is kind of, like, infuriating. Sure, he lets their hands and forearms tangle together on the armrest, and after a while Blaine's stroking his thumb in slow, easy circles across the web of skin between Kurt's thumb and forefinger, which is pretty incredible. But Kurt has a harder and harder time paying attention to the comic perils of the animated characters on the screen when he thinks about how he could be nestled in with Blaine, hip-to-hip, nuzzled against his shoulder. And finally he gives up.
"Hey," he whispers, and Blaine shifts a little to look at him, and Kurt very carefully extracts his arm from Blaine's and raises the armrest up to its vertical position.
"Kurt - "
"Shhh," says Kurt, and at long last he snuggles closer. Blaine's hovering arm finally comes to rest across Kurt's back, hand curving around his upper arm, and Kurt smiles, and lays his hand on Blaine's thigh (Blaine's thigh, his hand is on his boyfriend's thigh), and keeps watching the movie.
The movie's feel-good ending has them strolling out of the theater laughing, and Kurt's glad it's gotten a little cooler outside since they went in because he was not looking forward to sweating any more in his sweater than he had to. Blaine's face stretched in honest laughter, his hair curling around his ears, is just a little too hot for him to handle.
"God, imagine what it must be like to do the voices for characters like that?" he says, talking wildly with his hands. "How fun would that be? But then how hard - like, you can't do any of the acting yourself, with your face or whatever, it all has to come through with your voice - geez, I've always been a better singer than an actor, that's why I just gave up."
"I don't think I could do it," says Kurt. "Have it just be my voice, I mean. If I'm going to be in a movie I'm gonna need people to see my face." He poses dramatically, trying to keep that grin on Blaine's face, and it works. "I'm too pretty to hide behind some wacky talking animal hijinks."
"You can say that again," Blaine breathes. He grabs him at the waist and Kurt tenses happily, but then he seems to realize what he's doing. "Sorry."
"Don't apologize," says Kurt, rolling his eyes. They're standing right in front of the poster for the movie they just saw, kind of mimicking the positions of the two leads, and Kurt worms out of his grasp and presses himself up against it, copying the pose entirely. Blaine laughs a little more and scrubs a hand through his hair.
"No, no, this one," says Kurt, flitting down to the next one, a stupid romantic comedy that you'd have to pay him to see. He stands right in front of Matthew McConaughey and makes the same dumb face that he's making and Blaine laughs even harder.
"Gosh, I would pay for a picture of this," he says.
A picture. Kurt's mind flashes suddenly to his little teal camera, which he's pretty sure is sitting at the bottom of his tote. "Oh, wait, hang on!" he says, and he digs around for it, turning it on and passing it to Blaine. "As long as you fully understand that this is never going on Facebook, ever, this is probably the worst face I have ever made in a picture in my life - "
"Just hold still!" says Blaine, and the flash flickers through the summer dusk. Kurt drops the face and the pose as soon as possible and then reaches out for the camera again.
"Okay, you next," he says, gesturing to the next poster down the line. There's three in a row, actually, all for the last Harry Potter film that's coming out next month. Blaine looks them over before selecting the one of Alan Rickman as Professor Snape, holding up an imaginary wand and fixing Kurt with a withering stare.
"You are too good at that," says Kurt, and he snaps the photo.
"You expected anything less?" says Blaine in a pretty atrocious British accent, and then he reaches out for Kurt, tugging him closer. Way closer. Closer than Blaine's let them get all night. Kurt can't help it - his gaze flickers faintly to Blaine's lips, breath huffing out a little too fast from the sudden movement and all the laughter.
"So," he says, "are you the kind of guy that kisses on the first date?"
"...No," says Blaine, and Kurt groans.
"Come on."
"You come on, just let me finish my sentence!" says Blaine. He starts over - "No, but I've been strongly encouraging myself to make an exception all night. I seem to remember saying something along the lines of gosh your lips look delicious back around Christmas time and my opinions haven't really changed - "
"Been thinking about me and my lips that long, hmm?" says Kurt, narrowing his eyes, running his tongue across his bottom lip just because he can.
"You have no idea," says Blaine, and then he finally, finally presses their mouths together, hot and unsteady and absolutely amazing. All first kisses should be like this, Kurt thinks. They should all involve a perfectly charming boyfriend burying his hands into the back of your sweater, rocking up ever-so-slightly on his tiptoes to get at the best angle, while you cling low, low across his waist and try not to forget how to breathe. Blaine's tongue slips lightly across his lips and Kurt doesn't even think about it, he just opens up to let it in, and geez, how long has he been waiting for Blaine's tongue to just be in his mouth? Because this is pretty incredible. He lifts one hand up to fist into Blaine's beautiful curly hair and press their faces even tighter together, tilting his head a little more to the right so they fit better, pushing their tongues back into Blaine's mouth now, tasting absolutely every part of him, this amazing wet twist and pull and just when Kurt thinks he might start moaning softly into his boyfriend's mouth, Blaine pulls away, and presses their foreheads together instead.
"You are amazing," he says.
"Ooh, your lips are delicious," says Kurt, and Blaine swats him on the shoulder before taking his hand and walking them back to the car.
---
Kurt holds it together through the car ride home, and their awkward refusal to say goodbye at the front door (it was almost as bad as a long distance phone call - "you hang up first." "No you first!" oh for crying out loud), and the interesting stares his father and stepmother fix him with as he finally comes inside and up the stairs. But when he's alone in his new bedroom with the door shut and his shoes kicked off and his tote hung on the back of his chair, he finally lets it out.
He falls backward onto his bed, clutching his arms to his chest, and squeals like a little girl.
Finally. Finally! As cockblockingly frustrating as huge portions of his night were, Kurt is finally actually dating Blaine Anderson, in the almost-missing-curfew kissing-under-the-stars kind of way. It's kind of freaking amazing. He replays all the best moments of the night back over in his head, especially the glorious kiss, all smooth tongues and clutching hands, and he remembers distinctly Blaine's hip hitching toward him ever-so-slightly so he must have done something right. (He's going to go ahead and thank his impossibly tight jeans, which he worms out of along with his sweater in favor of his feather-light summer pajamas.)
He tumbles back onto his bed, on his stomach this time, to look through the pictures on his camera. There's the one of him as McConaughey. That face is truly atrocious. And then Blaine as Snape, two because the first one came out blurry, and Kurt honestly doesn't believe he could take a bad picture if he tried, no matter how silly his trying-to-be-serious face looks.
Thinking on it, Kurt's eyes dart over to the Dalton school portrait of Blaine and his snipped out Courage message he'd put under it, leftover from his locker at McKinley and now adorning the side of his bookshelf next to his desk. Kurt's always kind of liked the way it looks, been a little proud of it, even, that he'd managed to make something for himself out of something that Blaine had pretty much given to him, his empowering totem words woven together with Kurt's desperation and letters torn from a magazine or two. He ought to put it somewhere safer, preserve it -
Kurt looks back down at the camera.
He remembers a hot-pink marbled composition notebook he's got sitting empty in his stack of school supplies, that he never ended up using at school last year.
He gets a pretty fabulous idea.
Suddenly he's armed with June's Vogue and May's Glamour and some scissors and an extra strength gluestick, filtering through, finding all the best ads and articles to piece together what he wants. The last piece he has to collect up is the photos off his camera, and he loads them onto his computer, adjusting some color levels so they'll print better. On a whim he gets on Facebook to snag a couple more - there's a particularly good one of him and Blaine locked fierce in a hug at regionals, crying on each other half out of defeat when they didn't pass through and half out of just how awesome it was for Kurt to finally have a solo - and notices he has a little alert floating on the top left, from Blaine E Anderson.
It's a relationship request.
Kurt Hummel is in a relationship with Blaine Anderson.
He feels the grin on his face sweep down through his whole self, and decides maybe he will put the McConaughey picture up, after all.
July
Kurt slides back out from underneath the car, looks up at his dad and shakes his head. Burt sighs and turns to the poor little woman standing next to him, wringing at her hands.
"Okay, Mrs. C., I dunno what you did to this poor thing, but as soon as we figure it out we'll fix it and we'll get right back to you. Don't worry, we may not be all that prompt sometimes but we've got a one-hundred-percent success rate. You're not goin' on any big trips any time soon, are you?" She shakes her head, but she's still frowning at the car and Kurt, lying on his back on the floor. "All right then. Take care." He claps her on the shoulder, and once she's left he reaches down a hand to help Kurt up. "Geez. I thought it was just my eyesight goin'..."
"No," says Kurt, "this thing's a disaster. I'm amazed she was even able to drive it here to us."
"It's really nice havin' another pair of eyes and ears and hands around the shop, kid," says Burt, smiling at him. "I'm impressed with how quick you've caught on to some of this stuff. Thanks."
"Any time, Dad," says Kurt, as his dad heads back into the supply room. He wipes some of the grease on his hands off on the flimsy heather-grey t-shirt he wears under his coveralls, which he's worn rolled down to his waist the past few days. The summer heat is beginning to evolve to the "ridiculous" level and the shop, being open-fronted, doesn't exactly have air conditioning. Trusting that his shoulders at least are probably oil-free he rolls his head around and digs his face into his sleeve to wipe off some of the sweat, and when he looks up at the shop again two new people are there.
"Hey, Mom said to come by and make you guys come home for lun--oh, uh, hey," says Finn, as he and Blaine nearly walk into each other.
"Hello," Blaine says, all friendly smiles and curling hair. He only comes up to about the middle of Finn's chest and it's so funny that Kurt can't help but laugh a little.
"Hey now," Blaine starts, but Burt's coming back into the main workroom and suddenly the four of them are all just kind of...standing there. It's painfully awkward, and finally Kurt just has to say something.
"This is Blaine," he stammers, coming to stand next to him but careful not to lean on him for fear of wrecking his clothes (a T-shirt for some band Kurt doesn't know, deliciously snug across his chest and shoulders, goddamn; the shorts are a little less forgivable). He does slip the cleaner of his two hands into Blaine's, holding tight.
"...Yeah," says Burt, "we've met Blaine before. How's it going, kid?"
"Pretty good, sir," says Blaine, still just smiling like he hasn't a care in the world.
"Sorry for - almost like - stepping on you there, dude," says Finn, not really making things any better.
"No worries, you get used to it when you're the little guy. Not that you'd know," adds Blaine, and then too late seems to think better of it, and claps his mouth shut a little too hard.
"Right."
"Wait," says Kurt, frustrated, because he's kind of been looking forward to this, "I know you've met, but I wanted to - this is my boyfriend, Blaine." They've only gone on the one true date so far, although Blaine did bring a pint of low-fat ice cream and the DVD of Dream Girls to Mercedes's place to hang out with the two of them last week, and this is kind of the big reveal. Not Blaine-this-guy-I-like but Blaine-whom-I'm-actually-dating. For real.
But Burt's deadpan expression just kind of stays in place. "Yeah, son," he says after a minute, "we know."
And Kurt would be kind of pissed if it didn't make him so damn happy.
"Whatever," says Finn, "just come home for lunch, Mom basically demands it."
"Ah," says Blaine, "I hope that - I mean, can Kurt be an exception to these demands, possibly? It's just that I was kind of hoping we could go out this afternoon. This is your morning-day in here, right?"
"Yeah," says Kurt, smiling. "That's all right, right Dad?"
"Sure, sure," he says. "Just make sure to take your phone and don't do anything stupid, you know the rules."
"Absolutely. Come on, let's get back so I can clean up real quick."
Blaine rolls his eyes. "'Real quick' for you is like a snail's pace for anyone else when it comes to getting ready. Promise you'll go fast?"
"I promise!" Blaine just laughs, and gives him a simple quick kiss on the lips.
"You've got motor oil on your forehead," he whispers, and Kurt swears softly.
By the time they get back to his house the grease on Kurt's clothes is driving him insane. It's one thing to be slimy and disgusting in the shop, where a lot of things are slimy and disgusting. It's another thing entirely to be slimy and disgusting while sitting next to your really hot boyfriend in your really hot boyfriend's really nice car. When it's 90 degrees outside. Ew.
They've barely made it in the door before Kurt is stumbling to the downstairs bathroom and shooing Blaine upstairs to his bedroom to wait for him. "It's on the left," he says, reaching down to the hem of his t-shirt to twist it off because he can't really take it any more.
"First left or second left?"
"Second!" he mumbles into his shirt, and then it's off, thank you, and then - oh. Blaine still hasn't really gone up the stairs yet. Blaine's still kind of standing there looking at Kurt and Kurt is kind of shirtless.
That's new.
"Okay," Blaine breathes, his eyes fixed to Kurt's chest in a way that makes Kurt feel seriously embarrassed and kind of awesomely powerful at the same time. He smirks a little to himself, knowing it'll go unnoticed because Blaine's gone kind of google-eyed. As a test, he shifts his stance a little, popping out one hip and leaning his torso closer in Blaine's direction, and he's rewarded with Blaine swallowing thickly. Yeah, okay, that kind of rocks.
He breaks the tension by throwing the grimy shirt right in his boyfriend's face. "Throw that in a plastic bag or something, will you? They're behind my trashcan, next to the dresser."
"Mmm, sure," says Blaine, holding the shirt a bit too fondly. He shoots Kurt a last lingering look, lips curling a little sideways into a smirk of his own, and then trots the rest of the way up the stairs.
Kurt dumps his coveralls just inside the bathroom door, along with his underwear, and then sets the shower temperature several degrees colder than he'd usually prefer.
---
"So which bowling alley are we going to again?" asks Kurt over his shoulder, fighting with his stuffed-full closet in search of...something. Something he doesn't quite know he's looking for but he'll know it when he sees it...
"Uh, the one downtown?"
"Which one downtown? Is it the AMC or the local place?"
"Do you have a preference?" Blaine says, mock-scathing.
Kurt surfaces and frowns at him. "The AMC has orange in their shoes and the local place has green in their shoes," he says. "I'm just trying to coordinate."
Blaine blinks at him, and then chuckles and shakes his head. "I don't know - wear blue. Won't that kind of go with either?"
Kurt tugs at the hem of his snug black undershirt and ponders. Depending on the shade of blue, Blaine could be right.
"Plus," he adds, "I like it when you wear blue...it really brings out your eyes, I think. Yeah?"
Kurt flushes. "Why, what a wonderful sappy romantic boyfriendly thing for you to say, Blaine," he says.
"I thought it sounded pretty good, yeah," says Blaine, and they exchange a grin before Kurt dives back into the closet. He knows just the thing. But now he's going to have to find that bowtie, too.
"I'll have you know," he says to Blaine in the car, half an hour and two failed hairstylings later (third time, thankfully, was the charm, because Kurt's getting kind of hungry), "I bowl pretty damn well. Just as a warning."
"Your reputation preceeds you," says Blaine. "Mercedes mentioned horror stories of bitter defeat. I told her I thought I could handle it."
"Maybe," says Kurt. "Probably not, but you know."
"Maybe you should be the good boyfriend and let me win to make me feel better."
"Right," says Kurt, shooting him a glare. "Sure."
Blaine reaches over to pat him on the knee, and his hand just kind of...stays there. Kurt flushes a little, and puts his own hand overtop, holding it in place on his thigh, and it stays that way the rest of the way to the bowling alley. They're actually pretty reluctant to separate when they get out of the car, and Blaine kind of falls back into Kurt's arms as soon as they can.
"Hi," he says, smiling brilliantly.
"Hi," says Kurt.
"I like the way this is going, I think," he says, smoothing his hand up and down the small of Kurt's back. "A lot."
"Yeah," says Kurt. "Me too."
And thinking about earlier, how they seem to be going so easily from sexual tension to friendly casual intimacy and back again, testing the waters, pushing each other's buttons, just kind of - being with each other, better than they ever could at school, when Blaine was still hesitant and Kurt was still delicate - Kurt really, really does.
Even if, as it turns out, Blaine is a really sore loser.
"Oh come on, seriously? You barely even did anything! There is no way you got a spare by just kind of rolling the ball down the lane." Blaine scowls up at the electronic scorekeeper and Kurt tries not to laugh.
"Blaine? That's kind of how you play the game. By just rolling the ball down the lane. You know that, right?"
"You're a jerk."
"You're whiny! You definitely didn't complain this much when we lost at regionals, what's your problem?"
"I don't have a problem! I just - "
"Sure, sure. Come on, crybaby, it's your turn."
"Not yet." He shoots out a vicegrip arm and yanks Kurt into his lap, where he's sitting in one of the awkward plastic seats, their half-eaten pizza and fries forgotten behind them. Kurt falls on top of him rather gracelessly but then suddenly realizes that he's sitting on his boyfriend in the middle of a bowling alley and that is kind of awesome.
"You suck," says Blaine, but he's grinning, and kind of staring at Kurt's mouth. Kurt kisses him, hard, shifting a little in his lap to get the best angle, and - to prove a point - sucks slow and tender and kind of vicious on his lower lip before pulling away.
"Maybe," says Kurt boldly.
"Kurt," groans Blaine, and it's probably meant to sound like an admonition but it comes out half-scolding and half-really turned on. At least that's what Kurt is assuming the whoa hi sexy quality in his voice indicates, and wow, if Kurt gets the chance he's probably going to do his best to bring that back, because um. Wow.
But, you know, only if he gets the chance. Because he actually really likes where they are right now, too.
"Come on," he says. "There's only like three bowls left and then we can, I don't know - "
"Go back to the arcade and play air hockey so I can actually win for once?"
Kurt grins. "Sure."
When it's over, Kurt has just broken two hundred and Blaine hasn't even broken one hundred. He glares, and sucks down the entirety of Kurt's remaining Diet Coke just for spite, but lets Kurt lead him by the hand back into the arcade area. There's only a couple of people back there, some little middle schoolers watching their friend get a frighteningly high score on Dance Dance Revolution and a large, dark-haired girl with the Ms. Pac-Man joystick in one hand and a massive Snickers bar in the other.
Hey, Kurt totally recognizes her.
"Lauren?" he says tentatively, and she doesn't turn away from the screen but she does call "Yo!" back over her shoulder a little, in his direction. He gives Blaine a face that's kind of apologetic, even though he doesn't really have much to apologize for, and heads over to her, sort of hovering at her right elbow.
"What's up?" he says.
"Trying to beat Puckerman's high score," she says between bites. "If I win he owes me homemade brownies and an actual date."
"Wow," says Kurt. Lauren and Puck's relationship has always kind of fascinated him, but he figures she's probably good for him. She can knock him down to size every once in a while. And he's never really had a problem with looks so long as the other warm body is female so maybe it'll work both ways.
"Yeah, I've been here for like three days," she says. "I'm really close, though, so don't distract me."
"Right, right," says Kurt. He's prepared to drop it and head back to Blaine, but she speaks again.
"You here with that short hottie boyfriend of yours?" she says.
"Uh, yeah," he says. "How'd you know about Blaine?"
"Facebook, duh," she answers. "Plus like Mercedes and Tina and Britt all told me too. Like I'm stupid and don't get on the internet. Where do you think I get my X-rated Twilight fanfiction fix?"
"Uhh - "
"Because let me tell you, PG-13 movies just aren't cutting it."
"Right," says Kurt, thoroughly grossed out. He looks back to Blaine for help, or something, but Blaine's bent over trying to find the air hockey puck and all Kurt sees is his ass in those shorts. Which isn't exactly, uh, helpful.
Still, something Lauren says catches his attention. "You've been hanging out with Mercedes and Brittany?"
"There was a glee girls' pool party a couple weeks ago," she says. "I wasn't invited, but I crashed it with a squirt gun full of laundry soap. Quinn's hot tub was awesome." She actually reacts to his stunned silence this time. "I'm kidding, jeez. I was totally invited. I just hate wearing swimsuits so I didn't get in."
"I didn't think you were all that into glee club," says Kurt. "That's not the impression I got when I saw you at regionals, anyway."
"Yeah," she says vaguely, and then, "Yes! Puckerman can suck my power pellet!" She holds out the last bit of her candy bar to Kurt, who takes it without thinking and holds it while she enters LEZ (oh, that's unfortunate) into the high score slot just above the one that says PUK. When she's done she takes it back from him and turns to face him properly for the first time. "I guess the retarded thing about New Directions is that it kind of sucks you in and doesn't let you go. Even though glee club is stupid, somehow I got it all twisted around backward in my head that it's actually really awesome, and now it'd just be weird not to be there. Oh hey, short hottie boyfriend!" She waves at Blaine with a chocolatey hand, and he waves awkwardly back, kind of uncertain. "See you 'round, I guess. Or not, whatever. I've got a date." She swallows the last of the Snickers and turns to duck out of the arcade, more spring in her step than Kurt has ever seen,
"Wait!" says Kurt suddenly. She stops and gives him an are you serious kind of glare. "Can you...can you take a picture of us?" He pulls the camera from the front pocket on his short-sleeved hoodie and hands it to her. "Please?"
"Uh...sure." She takes it from him, and Kurt tries not to think about how thoroughly he's going to have to clean it later, just grabs Blaine's hand and tugs them shoulder-to-shoulder. Blaine puts his arm around Kurt's back, and at the last possible second before the flash goes he presses a sharp kiss to Kurt's cheek. Kurt's sure the photo will have him looking scandalized but thoroughly amused all at once.
"Thanks," he says to her, taking the camera gingerly.
"Whatever." And Lauren heads out, for good this time, but she leaves a few things behind: the sticky Snickers wrapper (ew), her impressive high score, and some thoughts whirling in Kurt's head, even with Blaine standing right next to him.
It kind of sucks you in and doesn't let you go.
A glee girls' pool party, which he totally would have been invited to regardless of his gender this time last year.
Finn's simple We miss you, bro.
"Well that was...interesting," says Blaine, snapping him back to reality.
"That was Lauren," he answers honestly. Blaine laughs a little, and hands him an air hockey paddle. The smile on his face is pretty brilliant, and a few minutes later, when Blaine is kicking his ass and Kurt's freaking out about the nail he almost broke, he doesn't really need anything more.
---
There's no one there when they pull into Kurt's driveway later that afternoon. His dad is still down at the shop, and will be until six or so, and if Kurt remembers correctly Finn is down taking some test to get points back on his driver's license and Carole has to be there for that. They're doing takeout for dinner. The only car there is his.
"One of these days," he says with a frown, "I'm going to pick the date and I'm going to drive you. I feel like a girl."
"Oh, come on," says Blaine. "I like spoiling you. And you like getting spoiled and you know it, don't try to argue."
Kurt sulks a little, but it's true.
"Besides," says Blaine, and ohhhhh there's that delicious voice again from earlier, and it sends goosebumps all over Kurt's skin, "I don't think you...feel like a girl at all." The word feel is punctuated with Blaine's coarse, square hand sliding up and down his thigh, just once or twice, but it's definitely enough. Kurt is suddenly very glad no one else is home.
But when he doesn't say anything right away, Blaine pulls back. "Sorry. Was that weird? It's just weird. Because you're one of my best friends and we've been friends for such a long while now but you're also so hot - "
Kurt grabs Blaine by the back of the neck, tangling his fingers in the curls of Blaine's hair there ("It always gets a little long in the summer," he said, "since I sweat too much for the gel to stay too well but it looks better without it when it's kinda shaggy"), and kisses him. It's kind of a continuation of what happened at the bowling alley, except this time with way more reciprocation, because Blaine's less stunned-and-trying-not-to-be-horny and way more just plain horny. His hand falls back down to stroking Kurt's thigh, heavy firm pressure, up and down, and it's doing wonderful things for Kurt, to the point that he's almost worried he's not doing enough for Blaine. One slow, solid scrape of his blunt fingernails against Blaine's scalp and he is instantly proven wrong.
"Nnnguh," Blaine says oh-so-articulately into the kiss. "Jesus, Kurt."
"Are we really going to sit and make out in your car when I know for a fact my house is empty?" he says, kissing at the corners of Blaine's mouth, along his jaw, up to his ear.
"I don't know, maybe?" says Blaine. He catches Kurt's mouth with his again, kisses him deeply, then nips gently at his bottom lip, over and over, little tingles hitting him straight in the gut (and lower) every time. "It's kind of hotter this way if you ask me." He pulls back a little to look Kurt straight in the eye, and his gaze is thick and dark with lust as he leans down to scrape his teeth along Kurt's throat. "Plus then we don't really have to move."
Kurt shivers. He can't really argue with that.
---
It's a while before they can manage to stop kissing, and even longer before Kurt can talk himself into leaving Blaine's grasp and going up into the house. He turns back to look at Blaine as he's rummaging for his house key in his tote and sees him shift and adjust in his seat, and yeah, Kurt's pretty much there too, half-hard in his snug crop trousers, and at the same time kind of the emotional version of aroused, this deep intangible longing in the pit of his chest. No one but Blaine has ever made him feel like this, a person-to-person expansion of the tense, heartbreakingly wonderful joy he feels when he splurges on a flawless new coat or nails a note in a solo he didn't think he could reach. It's so incredible that Kurt can't put a label on it - or rather, he can, but he really probably shouldn't, because the label Kurt's starting to think goes on it is a seriously scary one when you've only just barely turned seventeen.
He goes inside and heads up the stairs, thinking he might do some yoga or something until dinner to calm down and to work off a little bit of his junk-food lunch. The house is silent except for the loud white noise of the refrigerator, and then Kurt hears Blaine finally start his car back up and pull out of the driveway, and he gives a small private grin. When he hangs his tote back over his chair Kurt's eye catches on something on his desk, a post-it note he'd been doodling on the last time he was on the phone with Blaine, just his boyfriend's name and a bunch of dopey hearts and swirls - but at the bottom edge of it is something new, something Kurt definitely didn't put there. It's a black, greasy fingerprint, from someone with much blunter fingers than himself. Blaine.
He remembers holding Blaine's hand in the auto shop, and how his left hand was definitely cleaner than his right but it still wasn't very clean at all. He must have smeared some of the oil onto Blaine, and Blaine must have gotten curious about the note, and now here it is, one whorled reminder that his boyfriend has seen him in all sorts of elements and hasn't minded at all (in fact, as he'd mentioned during their hour or so of quality time in the car, Kurt getting all greased up apparently really does it for him). It's like the shop is in his blood - and it is, really, because it's just a huge extension of his dad more than anything - and so Kurt has a piece of what's in his blood, stamped in perfect precision with something that's a part of his boyfriend's very DNA.
Yeah, that's going in the scrapbook.
He prints off the picture Lauren took of them, pressed so flush-close, and adds with it the post-it note and a couple of the tickets they won at Skee-Ball. He has to use the bathroom, he realizes - he refused to go in the disgusting public restrooms at the bowling alley, and he kind of forgot about most of his bodily urges other than the very obvious ones in the car with Blaine - so he shuts the notebook carefully, slips it back into his desk drawer, and heads down the hallway.
Kurt catches sight of himself in the mirror above the sink and is immediately drawn to a thick, dark-red splotch that Blaine has left against the milk-pale skin of his neck.
Shit.
---
That night, Kurt has a dream.
In the dream Blaine is a vampire, and he can't go out in the sunlight or he will die. The rest of the Dalton boys are vampires, too, slinking around in the hallways of their fine academy, Wes and David and Nick and the other Warblers, or Tommy and Ricardo and the other guys that live on his floor. Even the professors are vampires.
Blaine wants to suck his blood, but he also really wants to be just a normal guy, and the way Kurt can somehow fix this is by giving him these gaudy-as-hell hot-pink wayfarer sunglasses, which Kurt would never allow anyone to wear in real life, and apparently they block the sun from Blaine and he can step out into the light of day. They go everywhere together, the ocean, the mountains, the heart of a busy bustling city. Blaine wants to sing to him but he has trouble doing it around his fangs, so it comes out a little funny, and Kurt just laughs.
But then Finn is a werewolf. And Mercedes and Tina and Santana are werewolves. And suddenly Kurt feels like he's maybe a werewolf too, and that's no good because Blaine is a vampire, and aren't they not supposed to be together or something?
But god, he wants to be with Blaine. And they fixed Blaine, look, with the sunglasses.
And Pavarotti chirps out both alike in dignity!! but they're not in Verona, they really really aren't!
And Kurt kind of loves the taste of his own blood in his mouth when Blaine kisses him.
Except he doesn't, because that's gross, and that's enough to wake him up.
It's a little after three am, and Kurt groans and rolls over, digging back into his blankets and scratching at his hickey and letting the stupidity of his dream float away until he can barely remember any of it. Never again will he let Lauren Zizes say the word Twilight in his presence.
---
Carole smiles at him over breakfast one morning, as he's mixing his granola and pomegranate seeds into his yogurt. Carole smiles a lot, really, but it's rare that she just sits and looks at him like this, so he looks back, and says, "What?"
"You just look so happy all the time," she says, prodding her spoon aimlessly into her cereal. "Do you always get like this in the summer, is it just because you like being out of school? Or is this something new?"
Kurt can't really answer her, since he doesn't really know - his own happiness isn't something he usually make an effort to observe. Kurt has a hard enough time dealing with the emotions as they come, he can't exactly document them. "It is nice to be on vacation," he says finally.
"Mmm, I bet. Private school does kind of seem all stuffy to me." She actually takes a bite this time, though it's mostly just a big slice of banana. "But I think - I think this is coming from somewhere else. Someone else, maybe."
Kurt flushes. Yeah, okay, she's probably right.
"It's so wonderful to have someone that loves you, isn't it?"
"I - " And Kurt stammers, because they haven't really. That word. It's just not. "I've got Dad, and you, and Finn too I guess," he says, though his argument is faint.
"Yeah, but you know what I mean," says Carole. Her face is bright and a little wistful, and Kurt realizes just how much she probably does understand - about not having someone like that, and then suddenly having them, there for you, caring with all they've got.
(And okay wow, he totally just compared his boyfriend to his dad, and it's a little too early in the morning for that.)
He takes a big bite of his yogurt and tries not to think about it too much, but that's really kind of hard. He's still thinking about it, even as he suits up to head to the shop (in his blue slob shirt, his grey one must still be in the wash), even as he digs around in Mrs. Crescitelli's engine with his dad, even as they sit and eat the sandwiches that Carole sent along with them for lunch. He thinks about Blaine, and he thinks about being happy, and yeah, Kurt thinks about love.
---
"And between the two of you I expect this house to not be razed to the ground when we get back, you hear?"
"Yes, Dad, okay - "
"'Cause we just got this house!"
"Burt, it's gonna be fine, now go or you're gonna miss your flight." Finn shoots Kurt a look that Kurt returns with his own version of the same face and they finally, finally force their parents into the car and get them on the road to the airport. Kurt especially is smiling as they drive away: after months and months of saving, they've finally been able to get back what they lost paying for his Dalton tuition, and they're going on their honeymoon whether they like it or not.
Having the house to themselves until Monday afternoon? That's just a perk.
"This is like the worst weekend for the house to be empty, though," says Finn with a sigh. "Rachel's extended family is all in town for some picnic for her dads' anniversary and she said she has to stay there to run crowd control or her grandmothers are gonna kill each other."
"Yeesh," says Kurt, as they head back inside. "Well, if it makes you feel any better, I don't really have any big plans either. Some swingin' bachelors we are."
Finn laughs a little, probably at the image of Kurt as a swingin' bachelor because he catches himself a moment later and stops. "Yeah," he says. "You wanna...make some nachos?"
"Sure."
Kurt's being truthful - there are no big plans. He's already seen the new Harry Potter (not that he'd had to, really - Blaine called him at four in the morning after going to the midnight showing at the theater where David's girlfriend works and told him everything) and without his dad around the shop is closed. It's that sick, annoying pit of summer where suddenly everything that's awesome about summer - no school, going swimming, loads of free time to do whatever - is starting to stagnate in the sweltering heat and motionless air. There's no way they can throw a party because Carole will notice something out-of-place in an instant and Burt will rain down on them like the lightning bolts of Zeus. Kurt thinks the most exciting thing he'll probably do while his parents are gone is redecorate his room free from their annoyance at his music being played too loud.
Kurt chops up some green onion to put on the nachos and he and Finn just kind of talk about stuff. Someone brings up the Spider-Man musical, which they never have a problem laughing at; Kurt's always amazed that they managed to make Spider-Man a musical, and Finn's always amazed that they managed to make Spider-Man a musical. Kurt still kind of wants to see it just to goggle over how absurd the whole thing is. Finn's just glad the show they saw when they went to nationals was the one Rachel wanted to see or they'd never have heard the end of it.
When the nachos are ready they decide maybe they'll watch a movie, the quintessential low-key Friday evening. Kurt's flipping through all their DVDs trying to find something he and Finn can mostly agree on when Finn turns on the TV. From the sounds of it Carole left it on the local news station.
" - but on a happier note, who doesn't love a good whirligig ride? Setting up camp in the West Lima Shopping Mall parking lot is the Cross-Country Funwagon, kind of like a little miniature traveling carnival that's now making its third annual appearance in the area. Their official bill says there will be funnel cakes, games with prizes and several fully-functional rides including a carousel. The Cross-Country Funwagon opens officially for business on Sunday, so load up your car with the little ones and have some good old-fashioned fun. Regular mall patrons should just remember that their standard parking options will be limited for the next three weeks."
"Gosh," says Finn, as Kurt slips in Sherlock Holmes, "doesn't it make you kind of wish you were a little kid again? I almost want to go with Rachel but I know she's terrified of clowns."
Kurt, meanwhile, has a smile on his face and a little light burning inside his chest.
Maybe he does have plans this weekend.
---
part 2