Say What You Say When You're All Alone
Title: Say What You Say When You're All Alone
Author: parsnips
Rating: R
Pairing: Kurt/Blaine
Warnings: Language, sex, teenage boys in love.
Spoilers: AU following "Silly Love Songs," but mildly informed by events following.
Summary: In which there is sex. Somehow. Sort of. Probably. Sure. (Part 3 of the "Crazy Boys in Love" series.)
Written for skyfyre, MP, and She Who Does Not Watch Glee. This fic continues a couple of months after where We Are All a Little Weird, and Life's a Little Weird left off, still in an alternate universe where Klaine turned canon a little sooner than in reality. In addition, while I've been working on this fic since August, I really, really wanted to finish it and post it before "The First Time" aired on the 8th. Because of reasons.
Say What You Say When You're All Alone
--
by parsnips
--
He can feel Kurt's fingers twisting around his cock, and Kurt's hot, open mouth around the head. Maybe a hand, fingers, digging into Blaine's thigh, fuck, and then something else, something, just enough, yes, fuck--
Blaine comes hard, muttering Kurt's name, wringing the last moments of orgasm out as long as he can. One, two, three... yes...
He lets out a long, slow breath, gets his bearings back again. Blaine feels warm, limp, and tired enough to finally get to sleep.
He opens his eyes and strips the sock from his dick, wiping himself off as he does so, and tosses it into the pile of laundry in the corner of his bedroom. The video on GayTube is still going strong -- he's on, like, part three of a promotional video that had gotten divided up and posted separately -- but he just closes the browser and shuts the computer, shoving it off his lap and then lying down. He turns off his lamp, and then--
And then he imagines Kurt curled up behind him, hand running down his side with a maddeningly slow touch, reaching around, running the tips of his fingers through the hair at the base of Blaine's cock, and then wrapping around...
Blaine exhales roughly, hand seeking his growing erection, and thinks, hazily, that this is starting to be a problem.
--
Kurt is wonderful. Kurt is his boyfriend, and they've had phone sex a bunch of times now, sometimes even on purpose, and they make out, like, every time they're in the same room together.
And Blaine feels like a complete dick because... because it's not enough.
The hazy August weather presses against Blaine's face -- the humidity clings like a layer of skin -- and Blaine takes one hand from the wheel of the car and scrubs at his forehead, willing away the imaginary feel of Kurt's mouth on his skin. Hyper-real daydreams of sex with his boyfriend are not useful companions on car trips. He's almost run into a possum twice now.
Sometimes, when he's doing the long drive back to Westerville and his parents' quiet house, with just the radio playing and the road stretching out, hot and wavering in the sun, he gets stuck in these perpetual loops of "what if" and "I should have" thoughts--
What if Kurt followed me back to the car, pressed me up against the car door and pressed his hand down my pants--
I should have turned around when he let me out of the house, I should have turned and put my hand on his shoulder and around the back of his neck and pulled--
--just perpetual loops of all the things that he wished he'd done and that he wants Kurt to do to him, jumping around in his head and making it really, really hard not to say something dumb to Kurt about it.
Because the other thought that runs through Blaine's head, sometimes parallel and sometimes all by itself, is that he knows Kurt doesn't want to have sex yet. Knows because Blaine has put some moves on him, has hinted at going further, and Kurt's evaded it every time. Kurt is the Houdini of sex talks. Except without handcuffs.
(And now he's thinking about Kurt and handcuffs. Fuck. Maybe he should pull over.)
Maybe it's just Kurt's general reticence about physical stuff that's getting in the way, but it might also be-- maybe Kurt's asexual? That's a thing. It doesn't really make sense with the phone sex thing, but maybe he's a romantic asexual, and Blaine will die a virgin because Kurt will never want to have sex with him and Blaine never wants to be with anyone other than Kurt.
He really, really wants to be with Kurt, though. And if Kurt is asexual, or, or even just wants to wait for a long time-- then at some point he's going to notice Blaine's not interested in waiting any more, and it'll be awkward, and maybe pressure-y, and then Kurt is going to break up with him for being a massive jerk.
And he'd really like to have sex with Kurt before they break up. Which means he has to be interested enough to get Kurt into it and not so interested that Kurt freaks out and breaks up with him before they even do anything.
Blaine passes a possum laid out on the highway. Summer traffic in Ohio is not kind to quadrupeds.
The other thing that's bothering Blaine is... he thinks they are going to break up. Him and Kurt. School starts in another couple of weeks. Blaine's heading back to Dalton, and Kurt's heading back to McKinley, and they're not going to have this kind of freedom again for weeks, months, maybe ever. That last part probably isn't true, but it feels true, and it's just enough to make Blaine nervous.
And it's not that he wants to break up, god no, but-- that's what happens, isn't it? Every relationship ends, except the last one. He's only seventeen. It'd be-- it's really, really unlikely that this will last. So he wants to hold on for as long as he can, and maybe have sex for the first time with someone he loves while he still has the chance.
He hates his brain. It's nothing but repeating worries and handcuff fantasies. He flips the turn signal and turns into his driveway.
Blaine's house is cool, and dark. His car is the only one in the garage. His parents are out of town, doing anniversary stuff in Nova Scotia, and he's going to be by himself for at least another week. He heads up to his bedroom, opens his laptop, and starts fucking around with his playlists. It's been an ongoing project most of the summer -- not the most entertaining thing ever, but it fills the time.
And it lets him watch his chat windows, and, well, as the song goes, the internet is for porn. He might as well get some use out of his empty house.
--
A chat window pops up before dinner (delivered Thai for Blaine, roast chicken for Kurt):
hummel_k: doing much tonight?
Blaine grins at his computer, and preemptively pulls off his shirt before replying.
BA_1994: nope. you?
hummel_k: just sitting around, thinking about you.
Blaine settles against his pillows, and reaches out for his phone.
BA_1994: I'm thinking about you too. where are you?
Blaine's already dialing when Kurt replies "in my living room", which should teach him a very important lesson about getting full details before making a phone sex booty call because the person who answers Kurt's phone is actually Mr. Hummel.
He knows it's Burt because right after the wrong voice says "Hi, Blaine," there is an abrupt squawk and the sound of phones being fumbled. "Oh my god," Kurt says, half at Blaine and half at Burt, and then the phone goes silent.
A minute later the chat window says:
hummel_k: discretion - look it up.
--
Blaine was twelve years old the first time he ever saw porn. Through a lot of judicious googling he'd discovered that the net-nanny on his computer couldn't really keep up with all the different YouTube-style porn sites that sprung up like weeds across the internet -- it was easy to find something to watch. Men and women, women by themselves, women together, blindfolds, food, toys, a lot of toys, gallons of lube, fantasy scenarios... It kind of blurred. It was interesting. Academic.
Until he'd accidentally clicked on a gay one.
("Accidentally" was the word he used back then, even in his own thoughts. But Blaine remembers how nervous he was to actually click the link, how he jumped up and locked his bedroom door beforehand just in case his dad came in. He remembers the hot feel of anxiety and fear.)
It was two guys, sitting on a futon. The one on the left had a loose fist around the one on the right's hard-on -- the one on the right was leaning over and just, just swallowing the left guy's cock. There wasn't any music except the noise of their breathing, a moan, the slick sound of a mouth.
Blaine watched it until the end, and then he went looking for another one.
It turned out that gay porn was different from all the other stuff. Because unlike every other video he'd watched, gay porn was actually hot. Literally, too -- he could feel the tips of his ears turning red, a flush across his face, and his own dick was tight and hardening.
Blaine was twelve years old when he admitted to himself that maybe he liked guys.
It didn't take long for him to figure out his own interests, either -- he liked blonds, and he liked light eyes, and he liked watching them get fucked. "Penetrative sex" is what he would call it now, but at the time, his vocabulary was entirely bathroom mutters and the vast world of online pornography, so that's what he called it. There were a lot of other videos, and some of it was weird and fantastic, and some of it was weird and disturbing, and some of it was just weird -- and Blaine still worries about whether something he wants to do will fall under the "fantastic" or "disturbing" category, once he actually gets to have sex with someone ever.
--
Blaine is pretty sure he watches more porn than Kurt. Of course, there are probably baby penguins that have seen more porn than Kurt, so that's probably not indicative of anything except that Kurt is Kurt and Blaine is overthinking things.
--
Over the course of the summer, Blaine's spent more time with the New Directions people than with his own friends -- a couple of beach trips, a jaunt to Cedar Point, a terrible party Puck threw wherein Blaine got drunk and did something remarkably stupid -- all of which basically demonstrated the downside to going to a private boarding school instead of public school. Most of his friends live hundreds of miles away instead of down the block or whatever.
Blaine's not even sure who lives down the street from him right now -- his parents moved house while he was at Dalton this year, and he's still exploring the neighborhood. They'd moved to be closer to him, which is-- pretty great? He thinks that's supposed to be a good thing. His room is decorated with a more grown-up version of his sports-themed room -- fencing prints instead of football posters, that kind of thing. Like a decorator had been hired and given several key words about Blaine's life with which to fill a room, but no actual details.
That probably was what happened, actually.
Blaine keeps a picture of Kurt in his wallet. If he stuck it to the wall, it would be the one piece of decor in the entire house that he actually cared about.
His computer beeps at him. A chat window's popped up.
puckmeister: whats up, hogwarts
Blaine sighs. He's pretty sure he'd never given Puckerman his email. Or IM name. Or any identifying personal information, for that matter.
BA_1994: hi puck
puckmeister: my boy needs some lovin. you need tips?
Blaine blinks.
His phone buzzes, and he picks it up without really thinking about it.
from Finn Hudson: DONT TELL KURT FUCK IM SO SORRY
puckmeister: finn told me that you and my boy r still in virgin territory. wtf dude
from Finn Hudson: IM TRYING TO GET HIM TO STOP SORRY SORRY
puckmeister: the puckmeister doesnt swing that way but shit dude, I woulda hit tht by now
puckmeister: so so hard. fist of an angry god hard.
Blaine, very tentatively, allows himself to type in the open chat window.
BA_1994: I think it's more of a lack of opportunity
--and then wonders what the hell he's doing.
from Finn Hudson: OMG WHAT DID YOU DO
puckmeister: shit dude, is that all? IMMA FIX IT
And then Puck shuts down the chat, and Finn stops texting, and Blaine feels several long moments of deepening dread.
--
Here's the thing about wanting to have sex with your boyfriend for the first time, and which no one warns you about when you're just a tiny baby-gay looking at the wide world through the eyes of GaGa and television stereotypes:
It is really hard to decide what that actually means.
As far as the polite discussions between David and Wes would indicate -- as well as the considerably more graphic and maybe honest appendices provided by Puck and Santana Lopez -- boy-girl sex is pretty straightforward. Like, maybe not in execution, but nobody's shocked and surprised by what is and isn't sex. Tab A, slot B, rinse, repeat. Sex. And by extension, anything that isn't that isn't sex. Blowjobs, handjobs, enthusiastic and inventive locational kissing, a whole lot of submission and dominance stuff that Blaine's not sure he's ready to even think about -- none of that "counts," because it isn't sex as everybody defines it. Or-- not everybody, but a lot of people. Like, the culture? That.
The thing is... nobody's really defining what boy-boy sex is.
And he knows that there's a shitload of blog entries all across the internet about this very topic -- about how it's okay that some gay guys don't like being fucked, or giving head, or any number of things that Blaine had thought were pretty standard issue "gay." He knows that there's not supposed to be any hard rule about what sex is, even for straight people, because it's limiting and stupid and nobody but you can define what sex is for you.
Which is really the problem, in the end. Blaine doesn't know what sex is for him.
Sometimes he worries about this chain of thought, because, following it down the line, it means he and Kurt may have had sex without really discussing that they'd done so. Which means-- how do you even define "virginity" if anything sexual counts? What's the invisible line? Are you supposed to know, suddenly, or do you examine the last five months and tell yourself yes, yes indeed, you can probably definitely pinpoint the loss of virginity at that point right there, when you first felt Kurt's hard-on pressed against your thigh in the backseat of the Navigator.
Based on what he's read about the ancient Greeks, and leaving aside the "combustion engine" part required in that scenario, maybe they would've counted that as sex. Just the slide, the feel, and... the intent. The love. I love him, and we are together in this way. Maybe that's sex.
But maybe it isn't. He just doesn't know.
--
His fears about Puck and imminent disaster are totally justified by the phone call he receives less than fifteen minutes later.
Kurt doesn't bother saying hi, but goes right for, "So..."
Blaine taps on his space bar, bites his lip, and tries not to sound guilty. "Hi, Kurt."
"Puck tells me you're having a party at your parents' house."
Blaine closes his eyes. "I am?"
"Oh yes. Tonight, as a matter of fact."
Blaine's eyes shoot open again. "What?"
"And what I want to know is what exactly you've been telling him that made him call me up especially to announce the news?" Kurt's voice has reached a particular pitch that means he's angry and amused and maybe can't figure out which is going to win out yet.
It's not a tone that Blaine's particularly good at dealing with. "Um?" he says, and shuts his laptop. Shit, if people are coming over, he needs food, he needs drinks, he needs pants.
"'Um,'" Kurt repeats back at him. "I'm going to assume this means that you didn't just decide to have a party and forget to invite me. Or forget that the last time Puck planned a party, you ended up making out with Rachel Berry. Or forget that I never forget."
Blaine says, "Augh." Or something like that. It's definitely a noise that's related to "oh shit" in a sort of hindbrain mammalian kind of way.
The Puck Party of Disastrousness has not yet really had a chance to settle.
Kurt sniffs and says, "I'll take that as a 'I'm very sorry, please come to my party, I love you.'"
"Yes, that, oh my god," Blaine says.
"And the reason Puck is throwing this little soiree is...?"
Blaine swallows and considers whether now is really the time to start lying to Kurt. "You probably don't want to know," he says instead, and it's true, Kurt really wouldn't want to know.
There's a pause as Kurt deliberates, and then, because he is a kind and loving boyfriend, lets it go. "In which case," Kurt says, "the party's supposed to start at eight. I'll be over by six to help you plastic-wrap the furniture and lock the wine cellar. You're in charge of music and ordering food. Puck's apparently covering the rest."
"I will never get the stains out of the carpet," Blaine says, and Kurt laughs a pitying laugh.
--
Laptop on the desk, delete the search history, clean the bed, hide the laundry, trash the leftovers, pants, he needs pants.
--
"You should know," Blaine says, a couple of hours later, "that there's a really attractive boy going through my clothes right now and saying the most ridiculous things."
Kurt looks over his shoulder and makes a face. Blaine, lying stomach-down on his elbows across the bed, tilts his head and says, "I think he might be trying to get into my pants."
"Oh for the love of--" When Kurt blushes, it doesn't spread farther than two hectic spots across his cheeks. It does, however, happen fast, and frequently. Particularly when Blaine says anything quite that... forward in front of him. Kurt steps completely out of Blaine's closet, holding up a plaid shirt from the Gap that Blaine hasn't ever actually worn (bought during the course of a Clever Ruse, back when getting Jeremiah to be his checkout guy was the height to which Blaine aspired). "How do you have no clothes?" Kurt says, the blush staying but the conversation moving bravely beyond Blaine's comment.
Blaine shrugs. "Uniforms."
"Oh my god," Kurt says, and sets the shirt over the back of Blaine's desk chair before diving back in. "Weekends exist, malls happen, please tell me the cardigan you wore to Rachel's party was an ironic nod to hipster fashion and not the only party clothes you physically possess."
Blaine rolls over and stares into the closet upside-down. "I think I have a tux?"
Kurt makes a faint noise of horror and the clothes hangers rattle with more vigor. Ten minutes later he's pulled out what appears to be a random assortment of clothes and is placing the now carefully folded stack beside Blaine's head.
"Change into these and then come downstairs immediately," Kurt says above him. "I need to find a room that can handle Puck's idea of a good time, and I want to see you before you decide to add a sweater or a hat or something equally horrific."
There's a pause, a breath -- and Blaine feels, for just a moment, Kurt's fingers brush through his curls.
And then Kurt's out the door and gone, leaving Blaine wishing he'd set some kind of boyfriend-net in the hallway. Kurt's been doing this recently, these swift touches -- different from held hands, which are to a certain degree Kurt being Kurt, living in a black-and-white movie and getting his romantic cues from them, and likewise different from the brief leaning he'll do sometimes, just shoulder to shoulder, as if to check to make sure there's someone else beside him.
No, these are very different -- nervous, and fast, and almost more intimate than anything they've done so far. Which is saying something pretty big, because phone sex is without a doubt one of the most intimate, embarrassing things one person can do with another person ever.
Maybe, Blaine thinks slowly, as he starts changing clothes and wondering why the hell there's a bowtie tossed on the pile, maybe.
Except that way lies madness, and disappointment, and probably bad pressuring or something, so he pushes it out of his mind and hopes it stays there this time.
--
It's nine o'clock, and Blaine is at a party. Technically it's his party, but as an outside observer, he couldn't swear to it in a court of law. He's pretty sure it's actually Puck's party, and, somehow, Kurt's.
They'd eventually settled on holding the party in the workout room, which was of a medium size, contained no furniture that couldn't be windexed afterward, and had some very large mirrors that were sure to be just as entertaining as Rachel's stage had been. Blaine had dragged his minifridge into the room and set it up in the corner, while Kurt muttered over Blaine's iPod and the mechanics of the room's stereo system. Pizza and subs and a huge number of breadsticks were delivered and set down on the side table Kurt had covered in a garbage bag earlier.
Bottles of water; more garbage bags; signs in Kurt's careful, looped handwriting pointing the way toward the bathroom on this floor. It was a stupid party they were putting together on too-short notice, but it was still... still their first one. He kept finding himself looking up at Kurt and seeing dozens of future parties overlaying this one, the situations different, but the actions, the teamwork, still the same. It made his breath hitch.
Then, of course, everyone had suddenly arrived at once. At which point the party stopped being an emotionally potent symbol of their relationship and went right back to being a really bad idea.
At this very moment, Brittany is leaning heavily against Rachel with a wild gleam in her eyes, Lauren is listening with rapt attention as Artie falls deeper into his hip-hop soul, and Finn is sitting on the seat of the rowing machine with the remains of what he called a "pizzasubosaurus" littered on the floor around him. Santana and Sam are in a strip-staring contest. Tina and Mercedes are pressing up against the speakers and swaying in time to a completely different song than the one that's playing, and Mike is choreographing something fast and complicated in front of one of the mirrors. Quinn is lying on the floor, staring up at the ceiling with a cup of beer on her stomach and her bare feet rocking back and forth, and there are about half a dozen strangers that Blaine vaguely remembers as playing backing instrumentals on some of the glee club's numbers.
The music is loud, and the air is too warm, and Blaine has actually drunk several cups of questionable alcoholic liquids. He keeps having flashbacks to random after-school specials about kids who throw illicit parties and then have to learn important life lessons. He worries that the doorbell will ring -- does this house have a doorbell? -- and his parents, or the police, or, or Burt will be there, and somehow they'll all know Blaine wants to have sex with Kurt.
Which brings him right back to where he started. The bass thumps, Mike's gyrating hungrily against the mirror, and Blaine's head is starting to hurt.
Blaine's pretty sure that none of the others know about the secret "Get It On With Kurt" plan -- least of all Kurt. If any of the others knew, they'd have told Kurt, and if Kurt had found out, this party would have been put to a stop half an hour ago. Possibly by arson. So Kurt doesn't know. Which is probably for the best, because Blaine kind of likes having a boyfriend, and it would really suck to lose him because Puck is an asshole without boundaries.
The only catch to the "nobody knows" theory is that Finn's starting to look a little squirrelly. As squirrelly as Blaine's ever seen him, which, to be fair, may just be what his face normally looks like. It's hard to tell. Maybe Blaine's just paranoid.
"Hey, Anderson." A large, well-muscled arm drapes itself across Blaine's shoulders, and no, no he is definitely not paranoid, life is just that awful.
Puck gestures broadly with his cup of red alcoholic sugar water, encompassing the room and the several drunk people already residing in it. Santana has just delicately pulled her underwear off from under her skirt. "Hope you're not too wasted," Puck continues, "because, uh, I think you left some stuff in your room."
Blaine stares helplessly up at Puck's wagging eyebrows and extra-wide eyes. "Pretty sure I didn't, Puckerman."
"You would be so surprised by what's in your room," Puck says with deepening conviction, and that's when Blaine finally does a head count, ignores the dropped drink cups and the naked people, and notices what Puck's actually done.
Kurt's not here.
Kurt... might be in Blaine's room.
Far, far away from this room, and its drunken people, and its legitimate excuse for Kurt to be in Blaine's house without parents around.
"Go forth, my wayward son," Puck says, clapping him on the shoulder. "Get jiggy with that gay stuff. I'll make out with everyone here, keep the coast clear for you."
Puck grins cheerily at him, and then saunters off in a disturbing fashion toward Rachel, Lauren, and Artie.
Quinn is balancing a cup on her forehead. Brittany is kissing Tina.
Kurt is somewhere upstairs, in the cool and quiet, waiting.
--
Blaine closes the door carefully behind him-- and suddenly it's dark, and the music is muted, and... it's like cold water. It's different. He's only had a few drinks, nothing like at Rachel's party, but he somehow feels drunk just from the sudden shift.
Kurt is upstairs. He is going to try and seduce Kurt.
He doesn't know what he's doing.
He can't go back to the party -- god only knows what Puck would do to get him out again -- and he can't leave Kurt in his room, waiting for... whatever Puck told him to wait for. Running away is not an option here.
And his cellphone is in his room, so texting and then running away isn't an option either.
Blaine's sweating a little, dampness clinging to the back of his neck, the very edge of his hairline. The party had been hot -- too many bodies in too little space -- but the rest of the house is air conditioned until it's just a touch too cool. Another reminder that out here isn't like in there. Another reminder that he isn't an idiot anymore, he didn't sing about sex toys in public, he thought about his actions and then he did the right thing. That's who he is now. That's what he wants to be.
Blaine takes a deep breath and heads for the stairwell. Two flights up, and down one hall, and that's plenty of time to figure out what he's going to say to Kurt when he gets to his room.
--
Two flights and one hall is significantly shorter than he'd thought it would be. On the other hand, he's gotten better at this stuff -- he'll ask questions first, make sure Puck hasn't done something really horrible, tell Kurt what happened, and then they'll head back to the party. Or maybe just hang out in the living room and watch Katherine Hepburn movies or something. Something nice, and just them -- that'd be perfect, actually. And it's not crazy, or fake, or stupid. Perfect.
He reaches his door. It's closed. He knocks lightly, and then twists the knob.
Kurt's sitting with his back to the door, Blaine's laptop on the desk in front of him. Blaine takes a second to breathe out -- whatever he'd just been telling himself, there had been a moment when he'd had a vague mental picture of Kurt laid out on the bed, waiting... but no. This is better. Better.
"Hi," he says. His voice, thank god, is calm. No outbursts of doubt, or slurred flirting, or whatever else his brain could have tried to fuck him over with. If he'd learned anything from those years of being fake and charming, it was how to deliver a line.
The room is dark -- just the bedside lamp and the blue-white glow of the laptop screen, highlighting the edges of Kurt's hair, the curve of his ear. Like he's standing in front of a spotlight. Like he glows.
Kurt's tapping the scroll button on whatever he's looking at on-screen. "Hi," he says, and he doesn't have Blaine's stupid control, he doesn't have the ability to hide what he's feeling.
Which is how Blaine knows something is really, really wrong.
"Kurt?"
Kurt turns halfway -- his profile cuts the screen in half, and Blaine finally sees what Kurt's looking at: Blaine's playlists.
Oh. Oh shit.
Kurt's voice rasps when he speaks. Too slow, too carefully, he says, "I don't understand."
And this is what it feels like, Blaine realizes, to completely, utterly fuck up. This acid in the stomach, this sinking, this desperate look for something, anything to justify what he's done. They've argued, but it's all been misunderstandings or random bitchiness or just the full moon. Not like this. Not like this is going to be.
"I--"
"Shut up," Kurt says, and it's fast, and it's sharp. "I don't want to hear what you have to say right now, because I'm a little too upset about finding out you've been trying to break up with me for the last six weeks." He turns around completely. That flush is back on his cheeks, but for the wrong reasons, all the wrong reasons. "Seriously, I just-- what the fuck, Blaine? The time you spent on this fucking breakup mix, you could have just fucking called me."
"I didn't--"
Kurt lifts a hand, shutting Blaine down completely. "You made a breakup mix, Blaine. You've been working on it since July. So unless you've got some other boyfriend hanging around--"
"Would that be better?" Blaine asks, and hates himself immediately for chasing after a stupid throwaway comment with something that won't actually help--
Kurt turns back to the laptop. "Death Cab, Adele, more Adele -- really digging into the originals, there, so glad our breakup is going to be so pop-heavy -- awful Ani DiFranco, 'Candles', how poignant, 'Blowing Kisses in the Wind,' and Kenny Chesney, really--"
Blaine slowly goes to sit on the edge of his bed. The alcohol sits heavy in him. He thinks that maybe he deserves this.
"And then there's this one by The Avett Brothers -- this doesn’t even make sense--"
"That one was for you."
Kurt's suddenly silent, and Blaine wishes he'd kept his mouth shut. "You... you picked my breakup music, too?” Kurt twists to stares at him like Blaine’s hair is actively, like, on fire or something. Or like Blaine is insane. Probably more that one.
Blaine says, "It's because it's about going to New York, getting accepted there. I thought you'd find that comforting."
"After we break up."
There is really no good answer here. "...Yes?"
Kurt is pale. Super pale. His old cheerleading coach called him Porcelain, and she wasn't wrong. What she missed, though, was the even more astonishing color he could become when he was actually incandescent with rage.
And his eyes shine. Blaine read a poem once that talked about someone looking forward to battle having "joy-candles gleam in thine eye" -- he’d never really gotten it until he'd met Kurt. It's too easy to think Kurt's holding back tears. It's a lot harder to realize that Kurt's holding back war.
"And you thought, what, we'd break up and then share playlists? Just like that? As if nothing had happened, as if I'd want to take anything so insignificant after losing you?" Kurt slams up from the desk and stands, arms crossed, across the room. Closed off and far away and Blaine doesn't-- he knows he has about five seconds before drama and reality merge so much that Kurt leaves him not just because it's narratively necessary, but because Blaine actually is a massive dick.
Okay. Okay. Breathe. Not everything he learned was bad. Not everything. He closes his eyes, and opens them again. "Kurt," he says, and puts everything into it. Because this needs to be a showstopper.
Kurt stills, staring at Blaine with wide, angry eyes.
"Kurt," he says again, "I don't want to break up with you." Kurt snorts, looks away. No. Blaine stands and comes close, gets Kurt looking at him again. "I never want to break up with you. But I can't imagine how this, us, can be possible." He closes his eyes -- just a blink, long enough for effect, not too long to lose the momentum. "It's too good, Kurt. Us. When we're over, it's going to kill me."
He spreads his hands, eyes holding Kurt's. "I don't know what I'm feeling unless I've got a song attached to it," he says, just quiet enough to draw Kurt closer, make him listen harder. "I wanted to be prepared for when it happens. I needed to have something ready to keep me going... after."
And that's all he's got. It's the truth, and he's given it everything he has.
Kurt shakes his head, just the smallest movement. He takes a step away, and it's like he's slapped Blaine in the face. "And now, on top of that," he whispers, "you're lying to me." He turns on his heel, and he closes the door quietly behind him.
--
Blaine has shut down his computer. He has turned off the light. He has changed into just a t-shirt and boxers, and he is lying in bed.
Somewhere, very far away, he can hear a bass thump. The party's still going on. It doesn't matter.
In all the scenarios Blaine had envisioned about their breakup -- growing apart, cheating, long-distance jealousy, competitiveness gone wrong, horrible death -- in all of that, he somehow hadn't considered "self-fulfilling prophecy." He'd found dozens of breakup songs, categorized them, arranged them for every occasion except the one where he was caught doing it at all.
And while he knows it isn't the worst part, nowhere near the worst part, he can't help but think-- all of that work, all of that preparation, and it's all worthless. He doesn't want to listen to music. He doesn't want to wallow in some fake bullshit emotional methadone that's supposed to somehow make him feel better about the fact that he fucked up.
He's on his side, facing the window. There's moonlight. Some Westerville sky glow. No stars tonight, but he sees the black silhouette of trees against the night, and they're swaying. There's a breeze. Finally, at the end of August, the weather is turning.
He'll be okay. He's seventeen. He knew this was going to happen. He knew. This isn't the end of everything.
Blaine wishes he could call his mom and have it actually help.
--
He hadn't thought he'd go to sleep, but he must have, because something's woken him now. The music is gone. The moon has set.
His door is opening.
He turns over, fast, ready to throw something at Puck or whoever else thought it'd be a good idea to try and get it on in his bedroom -- but the door snicks closed again, and there's someone else in the room with him. Blaine's night vision isn't great, but the bed dips, and then-- he knows it's Kurt. He can smell Kurt's aftershave, just the same as the day he'd wrapped his face in Kurt's scarf and realized that whatever he'd had with Jeremiah wasn't anything compared to what he has with Kurt. The dip shifts, moves, and then Kurt's curled up on his side next to Blaine. Blaine can feel Kurt's breath on his skin.
They don't say anything for a long time, until Blaine says, "I'm sorry."
It takes a while, but Kurt eventually says, "The playlist thing was stupid. Really stupid."
"I know."
Blaine can hear his own heartbeat, loud and fast in his ears. He wishes he could hear Kurt's. He doesn't know what's going on.
But Kurt's in his bed.
"There are a couple of things," Kurt says. "I have a list. Things that did not go right this evening."
"I'm sorry," Blaine says again, because that's really all he's got now.
Kurt ignores him. "The first big thing was the stupid playlist. Let's just all acknowledge that that was dumb." There's a brooding silence. Blaine considers apologizing again. Forever. "But," Kurt says at last, "I spent some time taking apart your kitchen, and staring at your parents' walk-in closet, and dead-heading the roses outside even if they didn't strictly need it, and I did eventually come to the conclusion that, regardless of how you said it, you meant it when you said you were preparing, not planning."
"Never planning," Blaine says, and his voice is shot. It sounds like tears.
"No," Kurt says quietly. "But maybe you should stop preparing, too. Because that's... it's not helpful. It doesn't make it easier, and it definitely doesn't make it look like you have any confidence in us. And..." He takes an audible breath. Blaine holds his. "I need you to have confidence in us, Blaine. I can't be the only one who's dreaming big. When I left earlier... I expected you to follow me." His voice is smaller when he says, "And you didn't."
Blaine knows he's in the wrong for a lot of this. He does. And he is going to continue apologizing, probably for the rest of time. But-- He turns over completely so he's facing Kurt. He can see the edges of him, a lighter darkness. "I can't be an actor in some drama, Kurt. If you leave-- that's what leaving means. Just because I didn't follow you doesn't mean I don't believe in us. It means you left."
Kurt's stilled beside him -- Blaine hadn't even realized how warm Kurt had been until he'd frozen. "Which brings us," Kurt says, brittle and not actually acknowledging Blaine's point, "to the next item on the list. If I was enacting any kind of drama, Blaine Anderson, it's because you started it."
Blaine doesn't even have the chance to fight that one, because Kurt's rolling with it. "Open hands, strong eye contact, deep and meaningful words given soulfully -- that whole 'explanation' you gave, it was all you acting. The words may have been real, but it wasn't you saying them. It was Blaine Warbler, with the short, gelled hair and the meaningless flirting and the crush on a guy five years too old who wasn't me. So don't go telling me that I shouldn't have expected you to come running after me -- that's exactly what that you would have done."
Kurt's breathing hard, and Blaine-- fuck, he's going to cry. His eyes feel hot, and the world is awful. "I didn't know how else to stop you leaving," he says, voice thick. And there's nothing else. No other reason or excuse.
"Maybe... me neither," Kurt admits. The bed shifts as he uncurls a little, hand reaching out to find Blaine's hair, the side of his face. "But it hurt," he says. "That you would do that to me. Put on the Blaine Show, charm me out of whatever. It's not... it's not something I dealt with very well. So I'm sorry too."
And Blaine breaks.
He reaches out, blind in the darkness, and finds Kurt's shirt, the jut of his hip, the line of muscle on his back, and uses it as a guide to bring himself close. Kurt's hand's in his hair, his arm curved over Blaine's arm, and Blaine's found Kurt's shoulder, now, and the curve of his neck. Kurt's neck may be his favorite place, all skin he loves to mouth and bite, wonderful smells and the brush of late-night stubble against his face. Now he just presses in and holds Kurt hard, shaking as he realizes how fucking close they'd come to something he'd never really understood before.
Kurt's holding him just as hard. Maybe he wasn't just apologizing to make things fair. Maybe he felt it too.
Kurt kisses Blaine's forehead, hot breath exhaling against his skin, and then pulls his hand from Blaine's hair, curves around Blaine's chin, and drags Blaine's face up for a kiss.
Oh.
Kissing in the dark isn't new for them -- nights in the car are a sterling example, and once in Kurt's backyard, sweet and soft, on a blanket meant for stargazing. They've kissed in bed, too, though lights were on, clothes were on, it was basically a convenient horizontal surface that was softer than the floor and more leisurely than a wood-panelled wall in a Dalton hallway.
This is different.
They're under the covers -- just a sheet and a cotton weave blanket, but still. They're holding one another. There's no sound but the susurration of the central air, and it means that every sound they make is louder, closer, echoing in the dome of space where they breathe the same air, share the same warmth. Kurt's stretched out, flush against Blaine, hands back in Blaine's hair and his mouth, fuck, his mouth's just not stopping. Blaine knows they can get closer -- basically because if they don't, he's going to-- he doesn't even know-- there's just no other option.
The blankets have become heavier, somehow. The pillow is-- somewhere? Kurt is wearing too many layers. Under the collar of Kurt's shirt, Blaine can feel bare skin heating up, the faintest trickle of sweat. God, he wants.
He slides his hand out of Kurt's shirt, runs it up until he's got a grip in Kurt's hair. It's a thick handful, softer than it looks. He bites Kurt's bottom lip, just the lightest touch, and Kurt gasps into the kiss, open mouths and the touch of tongues-- and then breaks off, panting, his hand fisting Blaine's hair. "Oh my god," Kurt whispers, and it's loud in the space between them. A very small amount of space, that doesn't actually feel like distance at all.
"You," Blaine says, and that takes too long to say, because what he wants to be doing is basically not stop kissing Kurt for the rest of time. But that's not even completely true anymore, it isn't, because he wants-- not more, but different. He wants what the space between them is and isn't promising, what the weight of the blankets is pressing into his skin, what the feel of Kurt in one place means in another.
He's been worrying all this time about what kind of sex he wants to have, and what kind of sex he thinks he can get, and he's never made the leap, never understood that from here to there isn't a line crossed, it's just--
I love him, and we are together in this way.
"Kurt," he says, low because that's the only way he can speak right now, "I want you." So much easier than the first time he'd said it-- so much easier to follow words with actions, and draw Kurt close, closing the space, holding them together hard enough for Kurt to feel-- god, everything. "I want you," Blaine says again, and again, and hopes to god Kurt understands.
"Fuck," Kurt says, and "Can I--?" and "Please," and Blaine's nodding, nodding in the dark like an idiot, but an idiot with the most amazing boyfriend in the world because Kurt's pulled the hand from Blaine's hair and is pulling Blaine's shirt up instead, slipping his palm against Blaine's skin. Blaine feels the strangest touch -- Kurt, his fingers carding the hair on Blaine's chest, following it down until the angle's too sharp too sustain. Kurt follows the muscle up to Blaine's hip, instead, and then it's just Kurt's hand, curved above the edge of Blaine's boxers, a hot weight that's different, necessary, and almost frightening.
And-- Blaine should move. That's probably what has to happen next, shifting for access, tugging down clothes, pulling off shirts, finding the pillow, those are all the things that go with what Blaine thinks they're doing-- and neither of them are moving. Like moving is the same thing as falling off a precipice, and not knowing how long the drop is.
There are two ways this can go, Blaine thinks in the weird half-space his brain is occupying, where everything is sparks and warmth and embarrassment and mouths. He can go back to kissing Kurt -- which is good, and is fine, and is by no means a bad ending to the evening -- or he can fall from his side to his back, open, Kurt's.
Which would be terrifying and amazing in equal measures, he thinks. Provided Kurt understands. Provided he wants it too.
Kurt understands so much, and so quickly, but if there's anything that Blaine's learned tonight, it's that the times when Kurt doesn't understand -- or when Blaine doesn't understand Kurt -- it's all the more awful. That ability to know is rare, Blaine thinks, which means it feels like a betrayal of their epic romance when they... become normal. Normal people in normal relationships have misunderstandings, don't follow one another's thoughts exactly, have petty faults that can overset an argument that shouldn't have started in the first place. Normal people learn to adjust, to figure out how to cope with it all -- become stronger because of it.
Which means, because theirs was the Best Relationship Ever, Blaine had assumed that he and Kurt didn't have to talk.
And then it's not two options anymore -- it's not binary. Nothing's binary, Blaine thinks, and he can't help it, he laughs as he kisses Kurt. Before Kurt can withdraw his hand -- misunderstanding after misunderstanding, and Blaine hadn't made the connection -- Blaine says, "I just figured out something amazing. You're part of it. I love you. I'm going to turn onto my back now, and if you're okay with it, I'd really like it if you, uh, kept going. If you're not, just let me know, and we'll figure something else out."
He turns. Kurt's hand drags along until it's flat on Blaine's stomach. His fingers twitch, but otherwise don't move. And there's silence.
Brief silence, at any rate. "Blaine..." Kurt says slowly, "I'm not sure I understand what just happened there." Kurt takes away his hand, and suddenly Blaine's skin is really, really cold. "I will say, though," Kurt says, and then there's a shift in the bed, the covers move, Kurt takes off his shirt holy fuck and leans over Blaine on one elbow, so fucking bright in the darkness, "that I really, really approve."
Blaine pretty much cannot take his own shirt off fast enough. Particularly with Kurt pushing his fingers under the waistband of Blaine's boxers, the rough pads of his fingertips catching on hair, tracing faint paths on sensitive skin. "I notice," Blaine says, breath catching, "that you are still very overdressed."
"Mm," Kurt says, and this is better than silence, better than the uncertainty of perfection, because this is the total knowledge that they have no fucking clue what they're doing, but by god, they're doing it together. "I think," he continues, and his knuckle brushes the head of Blaine's cock, just the lightest touch, fuck, "that that would be really distracting for me right now. Maybe later. Can you do something about your boxers?"
Yes, there are definitely some things he can do with his boxers. Throw them away, go back in time and not wear them, rip them off without somehow using scissors or velcro, all of those things -- but what he does is shove them down his hips, catching briefly on Kurt's hand, doing the strange dance of attempting to remove them in some graceful manner that isn't, in fact, graceful at all.
With bright flashes of sensation twisting him every time Kurt lightly touches his cock. The best and worst distraction, all in one.
Kurt lies down again beside Blaine, head a little lower than Blaine's, cheek resting on Blaine's shoulder. Blaine can feel Kurt's bare chest against his arm, the slight scratch of hair he knows must be there rough against his skin, the muscles along Kurt's abdomen tense and uncertain. He's moving in the slightest of rhythms as he runs his knuckles up the curve of Blaine's erection, and Blaine can feel how hard Kurt is inside those painted-on jeans of his.
Kurt lets out a breath; Blaine breaths it in. And then Kurt's opening his hand, fingers trailing with infinite slowness as he circles tentatively around Blaine. It's different from how it feels when Blaine touches himself; Kurt doesn't try to move, just holds Blaine, in a grip that is and isn't the same, and-- it's not just that this is Blaine getting his dick touched by someone else for the first time in his life that is making this so unbelievably amazing. Somehow, in some way... it's also knowing that this is how Kurt starts when he's by himself.
Kurt's hand is dry, and his thumb is brushing back and forth just under the head, and Blaine is actually twitching, he can't help it, it's too much, too different, too everything-- and then Kurt uncurls his fingers, pulls his hand away, and instead... Blaine feels something touch the tip of his cock, slow circles, and it's Kurt palm, the very center of his hand, touching just that one slick point.
And Blaine has, up to this point, been pretty fucking polite when it comes to certain boyfriends and their experimental teasing touches, but he's officially reached the end of the line with this. "Jesus," Blaine wheezes, and grabs Kurt's wandering hand, directing it back down and around his aching cock. Fingers just there, this much pressure, just how long a stroke to make when there isn't much lubricant around -- and all Kurt's hand, under his own, with Kurt rocking up against Blaine's bare thigh and his teeth against Blaine's shoulder.
And Kurt's talking now, just words and words -- how soft Blaine is, how hot, the smell of him, the feel, dozens of little words like beautiful and fuck and love and you. And it's that voice, his voice, curling around and coasting over and touching every part of Blaine and his skin is tight and either the nighttime world is phosphorescing around them or Blaine is actually seeing stars.
Kurt moves his leg over Blaine's, thrusts tight and hard against him, and their hands move together until-- Blaine comes, and he's doesn't know if Kurt comes or not, but it's all a mess and hot and sweaty and twisted sheets and embarrassing words and essentially the most amazing experience he's ever had in his life, even if he does feel a little bit like someone may come in at any moment and perform the other kind of after-school-special scenario.
Not enough to get up, though.
He tugs Kurt closer, rubs a kiss into Kurt's hair, and lets sleep take him.
--
He wakes up, probably only a short while later, to the feeling of Kurt teasing one of his nipples. Maybe not on purpose, though -- just idle drags of his fingernails across the skin, more thoughtful than sexual.
Sexual. Sex.
They've had sex.
...Wow.
"Hi," he says, and his voice is a little scratchy -- he doesn't actually know if he was loud or not, before, but he wouldn't bet against it.
"Hi," Kurt says, more contemplative than anything else.
The sky outside is starting to lighten -- not real dawn, not for a while yet, but just the difference between black and midnight blue. For the first time, Blaine wonders what happened to everybody else at the party. Finn had been the designated driver again, but that assumed that people had actually gone home. There were something like four guest rooms and six couches throughout the house -- it was more than possible that no one had bothered leaving.
Puck could still be somewhere in the house. Puck, who had engineered the entire party to get Blaine a chance to hook up with his own boyfriend. Puck, who would be cheerfully obvious when he asked, at some near future point, just how surprised Blaine was about what he'd forgotten in his room.
"Not to be weird," Blaine starts, and Kurt snorts into the pillow, "but I think I should tell you that we've kind of fallen into a scheme of Puck's."
"Only sort of," Kurt mutters, which, wait a minute, doesn't actually make sense. Blaine twists to try and get a better look at Kurt's face, which is presently hiding itself under Blaine's shoulder. Kurt squirms against him and eventually turns to stare petulantly at the ceiling. "Fine, yes, I knew about Puck's sexing up plan," he says, and before Blaine can even address that little revelation Kurt finishes, "and he's going to be a nightmare on Monday unless we figure out our stories now, so do we want to say it was a very beautiful night or just smile mysteriously and say nothing?"
Blaine blinks. "Well, I mean, I'm in favor of the smiling mysteriously plan just on principle, but-- you knew? And also, you said we'd only sort of fallen into it, which--"
"Puck wanted to give us a chance to-- be together," Kurt says. He raises one hand above their heads and stares at it critically. It looks like some kind of pale bird. A hand-shaped bird, anyway. He starts waving it in delicate figure eights and frowning. "And I was curious, and it was a good opportunity, and-- and then there was the playlist, and the fight, and the things I did to your mother's copper saute pan that we're not going to talk about right now, and..."
The hand drops, and Kurt sighs. "I love you," he says, "but I wasn't ready. I'm sorry."
Blaine raises his own hand, tries a couple of figure eights. It stays resolutely just a hand. "I love you, too," he says, "even though I have no idea what you're talking about."
Kurt swats his hand down and props himself up on one elbow to better glare down at Blaine. The upside to this is that, in the increasing morning light, Blaine can see more and more of Kurt's bare chest. There's not really a downside here-- or there isn't, until Kurt says, "I thought you wanted to have sex, and I said I was sorry because we didn't."
Blaine blinks. "But we did."
There is a long and ominous pause. "No," Kurt says, "we didn't."
Blaine levers himself up until he's sitting against the headboard, blanket draped demurely over what he's now remembering is his completely naked and kind of crusty body. He tries not to make it sound like he's talking down to Kurt, but it's really hard not to slow his words when he carefully repeats, "But... we did. I was there. That was-- pretty sure that was sex, Kurt."
"Maybe in some kind of complicated dreamworld you inhabited for the half hour you were unconscious," Kurt says, grabbing his shirt from the end of the bed and pulling it roughly over his head. "But in the universe we both actually live in, that was what is commonly referred to as a lot of making out and-- and--" Kurt's arms raise in a complicated gesture to the heavens that is apparently completely necessary for him to actually say the words, "--a handjob, and that is not at all what is commonly known as sex."
"Says who?" Blaine crosses his arms, and he knows he's being ridiculous, he knows that Kurt can have his own definitions of sex that don't have to at all match Blaine's, but it is kind of horrifyingly disappointing that something that was actually fucking magical for him was just-- something to Kurt? Wait. "So if that's not sex, what is it?"
Kurt looks down at the bed as if it will mysteriously reveal all answers to him. Or rise up and strangle Blaine. "Messing around?" he throws out. "Heavy petting?"
Oh my god, who says 'heavy petting'? Blaine blames the black-and-white movies. "So I guess this would be a bad time to tell you that after that 'messing around' I'm taking myself off Virgin Island and I am totally fine with telling Puck that the mission was accomplished."
"You what?"
This is not going at all well. Which is probably why it's a very good thing that the entire universe wants them perpetually embarrassed.
There's a sudden -- and very loud -- knock on the bedroom door. It serves the dual purpose of cutting the argument off mid-breath and also sending both Blaine and Kurt scrambling after every piece of clothing in the world. "Guys," a whisper that sounds suspiciously like Brittany's says through the door, "I think maybe you forgot about us? Because we're all still in the house. Like mice." There's a ruminating pause. "Mice with, like, cochlear implants."
Kurt raises a finger to his lips. Blaine crosses his eyes at him and manfully abstains from shouting some kind of gratuitously sexed up thank you back through the door. After a moment Brittany, from somewhere near floor-level, says, "Blaine, I ate all the breadsticks in your pantry. Don't blame Kurt," and then thumps her way back down the hall to... somewhere else. Maybe one of the spare bedrooms. Maybe somewhere more disturbing.
Through Blaine's window, the dawn light is now properly gold, not just a lighter shade of darkness. It's lighting up Blaine's room with mellow assurance. Kurt's hair is everywhere, and his face is flushed, but he's looking at Blaine as if he doesn't know which way the conversation is going to go next, just that he'll follow it come hell or high water.
Misunderstandings after misunderstandings.
It's easier to be angry than it is to be real. "Real" is just another way of saying honest, and honesty is a lot harder than it looks.
Blaine takes a deep breath, and lets go.
He tugs at a curl touching his ear, and smiles crookedly. "Let's start this again. Good morning, Kurt. I consider what we did last night to be sex, and I'm really glad my first time was with you." He pulls off the shirt he'd managed to find when Brittany had knocked -- inside out and backwards, not that it ended up mattering. He tosses it over the side, and slides back down under the blankets. Kurt looks... a little dazed, actually. Blaine says, "If it wasn't sex for you, first time or not... that's okay. I'm just-- I'm happy I'm with you. I'm happy you want to be with me." He gestures, and it takes in the bed, and the morning, and the look on Kurt's face. "I'm happy here."
"That's..." Kurt swallows. "That's a lot of happy."
"Well," Blaine says, "yeah. I have a boyfriend who loves me and my dick. It's a pretty good day to be me."
"Oh my god," Kurt says, all hectic blush and pale, fluttering hands, "you say things. You think we're having sex and don't even tell me so that I can too. And, and--" He flops down beside Blaine and shoves Blaine's head with his own until they've both got space on the pillow, "you have awful taste in breakup music."
Blaine turns on his side and puts a tentative arm over Kurt's clothed chest. Kurt burrows closer. "To be fair," Blaine says, "I've been collecting those since I was thirteen. And they're not awful."
"I'm just going to point out: Paula Abdul."
"She," Blaine says, and closes his eyes, "is an underrated genius. Modern youth has been corrupted by pop sensationalism."
Something brushes his forehead -- Kurt, kissing him. "Shut up, Pink. Go to sleep. We have lots of pretty lies to tell everybody later."
The curve of Kurt's neck is dark and warm. Blaine leaves a kiss of his own there, and breathes in, and in, and in.
END
Author: parsnips
Rating: R
Pairing: Kurt/Blaine
Warnings: Language, sex, teenage boys in love.
Spoilers: AU following "Silly Love Songs," but mildly informed by events following.
Summary: In which there is sex. Somehow. Sort of. Probably. Sure. (Part 3 of the "Crazy Boys in Love" series.)
Written for skyfyre, MP, and She Who Does Not Watch Glee. This fic continues a couple of months after where We Are All a Little Weird, and Life's a Little Weird left off, still in an alternate universe where Klaine turned canon a little sooner than in reality. In addition, while I've been working on this fic since August, I really, really wanted to finish it and post it before "The First Time" aired on the 8th. Because of reasons.
Say What You Say When You're All Alone
--
by parsnips
--
He can feel Kurt's fingers twisting around his cock, and Kurt's hot, open mouth around the head. Maybe a hand, fingers, digging into Blaine's thigh, fuck, and then something else, something, just enough, yes, fuck--
Blaine comes hard, muttering Kurt's name, wringing the last moments of orgasm out as long as he can. One, two, three... yes...
He lets out a long, slow breath, gets his bearings back again. Blaine feels warm, limp, and tired enough to finally get to sleep.
He opens his eyes and strips the sock from his dick, wiping himself off as he does so, and tosses it into the pile of laundry in the corner of his bedroom. The video on GayTube is still going strong -- he's on, like, part three of a promotional video that had gotten divided up and posted separately -- but he just closes the browser and shuts the computer, shoving it off his lap and then lying down. He turns off his lamp, and then--
And then he imagines Kurt curled up behind him, hand running down his side with a maddeningly slow touch, reaching around, running the tips of his fingers through the hair at the base of Blaine's cock, and then wrapping around...
Blaine exhales roughly, hand seeking his growing erection, and thinks, hazily, that this is starting to be a problem.
--
Kurt is wonderful. Kurt is his boyfriend, and they've had phone sex a bunch of times now, sometimes even on purpose, and they make out, like, every time they're in the same room together.
And Blaine feels like a complete dick because... because it's not enough.
The hazy August weather presses against Blaine's face -- the humidity clings like a layer of skin -- and Blaine takes one hand from the wheel of the car and scrubs at his forehead, willing away the imaginary feel of Kurt's mouth on his skin. Hyper-real daydreams of sex with his boyfriend are not useful companions on car trips. He's almost run into a possum twice now.
Sometimes, when he's doing the long drive back to Westerville and his parents' quiet house, with just the radio playing and the road stretching out, hot and wavering in the sun, he gets stuck in these perpetual loops of "what if" and "I should have" thoughts--
What if Kurt followed me back to the car, pressed me up against the car door and pressed his hand down my pants--
I should have turned around when he let me out of the house, I should have turned and put my hand on his shoulder and around the back of his neck and pulled--
--just perpetual loops of all the things that he wished he'd done and that he wants Kurt to do to him, jumping around in his head and making it really, really hard not to say something dumb to Kurt about it.
Because the other thought that runs through Blaine's head, sometimes parallel and sometimes all by itself, is that he knows Kurt doesn't want to have sex yet. Knows because Blaine has put some moves on him, has hinted at going further, and Kurt's evaded it every time. Kurt is the Houdini of sex talks. Except without handcuffs.
(And now he's thinking about Kurt and handcuffs. Fuck. Maybe he should pull over.)
Maybe it's just Kurt's general reticence about physical stuff that's getting in the way, but it might also be-- maybe Kurt's asexual? That's a thing. It doesn't really make sense with the phone sex thing, but maybe he's a romantic asexual, and Blaine will die a virgin because Kurt will never want to have sex with him and Blaine never wants to be with anyone other than Kurt.
He really, really wants to be with Kurt, though. And if Kurt is asexual, or, or even just wants to wait for a long time-- then at some point he's going to notice Blaine's not interested in waiting any more, and it'll be awkward, and maybe pressure-y, and then Kurt is going to break up with him for being a massive jerk.
And he'd really like to have sex with Kurt before they break up. Which means he has to be interested enough to get Kurt into it and not so interested that Kurt freaks out and breaks up with him before they even do anything.
Blaine passes a possum laid out on the highway. Summer traffic in Ohio is not kind to quadrupeds.
The other thing that's bothering Blaine is... he thinks they are going to break up. Him and Kurt. School starts in another couple of weeks. Blaine's heading back to Dalton, and Kurt's heading back to McKinley, and they're not going to have this kind of freedom again for weeks, months, maybe ever. That last part probably isn't true, but it feels true, and it's just enough to make Blaine nervous.
And it's not that he wants to break up, god no, but-- that's what happens, isn't it? Every relationship ends, except the last one. He's only seventeen. It'd be-- it's really, really unlikely that this will last. So he wants to hold on for as long as he can, and maybe have sex for the first time with someone he loves while he still has the chance.
He hates his brain. It's nothing but repeating worries and handcuff fantasies. He flips the turn signal and turns into his driveway.
Blaine's house is cool, and dark. His car is the only one in the garage. His parents are out of town, doing anniversary stuff in Nova Scotia, and he's going to be by himself for at least another week. He heads up to his bedroom, opens his laptop, and starts fucking around with his playlists. It's been an ongoing project most of the summer -- not the most entertaining thing ever, but it fills the time.
And it lets him watch his chat windows, and, well, as the song goes, the internet is for porn. He might as well get some use out of his empty house.
--
A chat window pops up before dinner (delivered Thai for Blaine, roast chicken for Kurt):
hummel_k: doing much tonight?
Blaine grins at his computer, and preemptively pulls off his shirt before replying.
BA_1994: nope. you?
hummel_k: just sitting around, thinking about you.
Blaine settles against his pillows, and reaches out for his phone.
BA_1994: I'm thinking about you too. where are you?
Blaine's already dialing when Kurt replies "in my living room", which should teach him a very important lesson about getting full details before making a phone sex booty call because the person who answers Kurt's phone is actually Mr. Hummel.
He knows it's Burt because right after the wrong voice says "Hi, Blaine," there is an abrupt squawk and the sound of phones being fumbled. "Oh my god," Kurt says, half at Blaine and half at Burt, and then the phone goes silent.
A minute later the chat window says:
hummel_k: discretion - look it up.
--
Blaine was twelve years old the first time he ever saw porn. Through a lot of judicious googling he'd discovered that the net-nanny on his computer couldn't really keep up with all the different YouTube-style porn sites that sprung up like weeds across the internet -- it was easy to find something to watch. Men and women, women by themselves, women together, blindfolds, food, toys, a lot of toys, gallons of lube, fantasy scenarios... It kind of blurred. It was interesting. Academic.
Until he'd accidentally clicked on a gay one.
("Accidentally" was the word he used back then, even in his own thoughts. But Blaine remembers how nervous he was to actually click the link, how he jumped up and locked his bedroom door beforehand just in case his dad came in. He remembers the hot feel of anxiety and fear.)
It was two guys, sitting on a futon. The one on the left had a loose fist around the one on the right's hard-on -- the one on the right was leaning over and just, just swallowing the left guy's cock. There wasn't any music except the noise of their breathing, a moan, the slick sound of a mouth.
Blaine watched it until the end, and then he went looking for another one.
It turned out that gay porn was different from all the other stuff. Because unlike every other video he'd watched, gay porn was actually hot. Literally, too -- he could feel the tips of his ears turning red, a flush across his face, and his own dick was tight and hardening.
Blaine was twelve years old when he admitted to himself that maybe he liked guys.
It didn't take long for him to figure out his own interests, either -- he liked blonds, and he liked light eyes, and he liked watching them get fucked. "Penetrative sex" is what he would call it now, but at the time, his vocabulary was entirely bathroom mutters and the vast world of online pornography, so that's what he called it. There were a lot of other videos, and some of it was weird and fantastic, and some of it was weird and disturbing, and some of it was just weird -- and Blaine still worries about whether something he wants to do will fall under the "fantastic" or "disturbing" category, once he actually gets to have sex with someone ever.
--
Blaine is pretty sure he watches more porn than Kurt. Of course, there are probably baby penguins that have seen more porn than Kurt, so that's probably not indicative of anything except that Kurt is Kurt and Blaine is overthinking things.
--
Over the course of the summer, Blaine's spent more time with the New Directions people than with his own friends -- a couple of beach trips, a jaunt to Cedar Point, a terrible party Puck threw wherein Blaine got drunk and did something remarkably stupid -- all of which basically demonstrated the downside to going to a private boarding school instead of public school. Most of his friends live hundreds of miles away instead of down the block or whatever.
Blaine's not even sure who lives down the street from him right now -- his parents moved house while he was at Dalton this year, and he's still exploring the neighborhood. They'd moved to be closer to him, which is-- pretty great? He thinks that's supposed to be a good thing. His room is decorated with a more grown-up version of his sports-themed room -- fencing prints instead of football posters, that kind of thing. Like a decorator had been hired and given several key words about Blaine's life with which to fill a room, but no actual details.
That probably was what happened, actually.
Blaine keeps a picture of Kurt in his wallet. If he stuck it to the wall, it would be the one piece of decor in the entire house that he actually cared about.
His computer beeps at him. A chat window's popped up.
puckmeister: whats up, hogwarts
Blaine sighs. He's pretty sure he'd never given Puckerman his email. Or IM name. Or any identifying personal information, for that matter.
BA_1994: hi puck
puckmeister: my boy needs some lovin. you need tips?
Blaine blinks.
His phone buzzes, and he picks it up without really thinking about it.
from Finn Hudson: DONT TELL KURT FUCK IM SO SORRY
puckmeister: finn told me that you and my boy r still in virgin territory. wtf dude
from Finn Hudson: IM TRYING TO GET HIM TO STOP SORRY SORRY
puckmeister: the puckmeister doesnt swing that way but shit dude, I woulda hit tht by now
puckmeister: so so hard. fist of an angry god hard.
Blaine, very tentatively, allows himself to type in the open chat window.
BA_1994: I think it's more of a lack of opportunity
--and then wonders what the hell he's doing.
from Finn Hudson: OMG WHAT DID YOU DO
puckmeister: shit dude, is that all? IMMA FIX IT
And then Puck shuts down the chat, and Finn stops texting, and Blaine feels several long moments of deepening dread.
--
Here's the thing about wanting to have sex with your boyfriend for the first time, and which no one warns you about when you're just a tiny baby-gay looking at the wide world through the eyes of GaGa and television stereotypes:
It is really hard to decide what that actually means.
As far as the polite discussions between David and Wes would indicate -- as well as the considerably more graphic and maybe honest appendices provided by Puck and Santana Lopez -- boy-girl sex is pretty straightforward. Like, maybe not in execution, but nobody's shocked and surprised by what is and isn't sex. Tab A, slot B, rinse, repeat. Sex. And by extension, anything that isn't that isn't sex. Blowjobs, handjobs, enthusiastic and inventive locational kissing, a whole lot of submission and dominance stuff that Blaine's not sure he's ready to even think about -- none of that "counts," because it isn't sex as everybody defines it. Or-- not everybody, but a lot of people. Like, the culture? That.
The thing is... nobody's really defining what boy-boy sex is.
And he knows that there's a shitload of blog entries all across the internet about this very topic -- about how it's okay that some gay guys don't like being fucked, or giving head, or any number of things that Blaine had thought were pretty standard issue "gay." He knows that there's not supposed to be any hard rule about what sex is, even for straight people, because it's limiting and stupid and nobody but you can define what sex is for you.
Which is really the problem, in the end. Blaine doesn't know what sex is for him.
Sometimes he worries about this chain of thought, because, following it down the line, it means he and Kurt may have had sex without really discussing that they'd done so. Which means-- how do you even define "virginity" if anything sexual counts? What's the invisible line? Are you supposed to know, suddenly, or do you examine the last five months and tell yourself yes, yes indeed, you can probably definitely pinpoint the loss of virginity at that point right there, when you first felt Kurt's hard-on pressed against your thigh in the backseat of the Navigator.
Based on what he's read about the ancient Greeks, and leaving aside the "combustion engine" part required in that scenario, maybe they would've counted that as sex. Just the slide, the feel, and... the intent. The love. I love him, and we are together in this way. Maybe that's sex.
But maybe it isn't. He just doesn't know.
--
His fears about Puck and imminent disaster are totally justified by the phone call he receives less than fifteen minutes later.
Kurt doesn't bother saying hi, but goes right for, "So..."
Blaine taps on his space bar, bites his lip, and tries not to sound guilty. "Hi, Kurt."
"Puck tells me you're having a party at your parents' house."
Blaine closes his eyes. "I am?"
"Oh yes. Tonight, as a matter of fact."
Blaine's eyes shoot open again. "What?"
"And what I want to know is what exactly you've been telling him that made him call me up especially to announce the news?" Kurt's voice has reached a particular pitch that means he's angry and amused and maybe can't figure out which is going to win out yet.
It's not a tone that Blaine's particularly good at dealing with. "Um?" he says, and shuts his laptop. Shit, if people are coming over, he needs food, he needs drinks, he needs pants.
"'Um,'" Kurt repeats back at him. "I'm going to assume this means that you didn't just decide to have a party and forget to invite me. Or forget that the last time Puck planned a party, you ended up making out with Rachel Berry. Or forget that I never forget."
Blaine says, "Augh." Or something like that. It's definitely a noise that's related to "oh shit" in a sort of hindbrain mammalian kind of way.
The Puck Party of Disastrousness has not yet really had a chance to settle.
Kurt sniffs and says, "I'll take that as a 'I'm very sorry, please come to my party, I love you.'"
"Yes, that, oh my god," Blaine says.
"And the reason Puck is throwing this little soiree is...?"
Blaine swallows and considers whether now is really the time to start lying to Kurt. "You probably don't want to know," he says instead, and it's true, Kurt really wouldn't want to know.
There's a pause as Kurt deliberates, and then, because he is a kind and loving boyfriend, lets it go. "In which case," Kurt says, "the party's supposed to start at eight. I'll be over by six to help you plastic-wrap the furniture and lock the wine cellar. You're in charge of music and ordering food. Puck's apparently covering the rest."
"I will never get the stains out of the carpet," Blaine says, and Kurt laughs a pitying laugh.
--
Laptop on the desk, delete the search history, clean the bed, hide the laundry, trash the leftovers, pants, he needs pants.
--
"You should know," Blaine says, a couple of hours later, "that there's a really attractive boy going through my clothes right now and saying the most ridiculous things."
Kurt looks over his shoulder and makes a face. Blaine, lying stomach-down on his elbows across the bed, tilts his head and says, "I think he might be trying to get into my pants."
"Oh for the love of--" When Kurt blushes, it doesn't spread farther than two hectic spots across his cheeks. It does, however, happen fast, and frequently. Particularly when Blaine says anything quite that... forward in front of him. Kurt steps completely out of Blaine's closet, holding up a plaid shirt from the Gap that Blaine hasn't ever actually worn (bought during the course of a Clever Ruse, back when getting Jeremiah to be his checkout guy was the height to which Blaine aspired). "How do you have no clothes?" Kurt says, the blush staying but the conversation moving bravely beyond Blaine's comment.
Blaine shrugs. "Uniforms."
"Oh my god," Kurt says, and sets the shirt over the back of Blaine's desk chair before diving back in. "Weekends exist, malls happen, please tell me the cardigan you wore to Rachel's party was an ironic nod to hipster fashion and not the only party clothes you physically possess."
Blaine rolls over and stares into the closet upside-down. "I think I have a tux?"
Kurt makes a faint noise of horror and the clothes hangers rattle with more vigor. Ten minutes later he's pulled out what appears to be a random assortment of clothes and is placing the now carefully folded stack beside Blaine's head.
"Change into these and then come downstairs immediately," Kurt says above him. "I need to find a room that can handle Puck's idea of a good time, and I want to see you before you decide to add a sweater or a hat or something equally horrific."
There's a pause, a breath -- and Blaine feels, for just a moment, Kurt's fingers brush through his curls.
And then Kurt's out the door and gone, leaving Blaine wishing he'd set some kind of boyfriend-net in the hallway. Kurt's been doing this recently, these swift touches -- different from held hands, which are to a certain degree Kurt being Kurt, living in a black-and-white movie and getting his romantic cues from them, and likewise different from the brief leaning he'll do sometimes, just shoulder to shoulder, as if to check to make sure there's someone else beside him.
No, these are very different -- nervous, and fast, and almost more intimate than anything they've done so far. Which is saying something pretty big, because phone sex is without a doubt one of the most intimate, embarrassing things one person can do with another person ever.
Maybe, Blaine thinks slowly, as he starts changing clothes and wondering why the hell there's a bowtie tossed on the pile, maybe.
Except that way lies madness, and disappointment, and probably bad pressuring or something, so he pushes it out of his mind and hopes it stays there this time.
--
It's nine o'clock, and Blaine is at a party. Technically it's his party, but as an outside observer, he couldn't swear to it in a court of law. He's pretty sure it's actually Puck's party, and, somehow, Kurt's.
They'd eventually settled on holding the party in the workout room, which was of a medium size, contained no furniture that couldn't be windexed afterward, and had some very large mirrors that were sure to be just as entertaining as Rachel's stage had been. Blaine had dragged his minifridge into the room and set it up in the corner, while Kurt muttered over Blaine's iPod and the mechanics of the room's stereo system. Pizza and subs and a huge number of breadsticks were delivered and set down on the side table Kurt had covered in a garbage bag earlier.
Bottles of water; more garbage bags; signs in Kurt's careful, looped handwriting pointing the way toward the bathroom on this floor. It was a stupid party they were putting together on too-short notice, but it was still... still their first one. He kept finding himself looking up at Kurt and seeing dozens of future parties overlaying this one, the situations different, but the actions, the teamwork, still the same. It made his breath hitch.
Then, of course, everyone had suddenly arrived at once. At which point the party stopped being an emotionally potent symbol of their relationship and went right back to being a really bad idea.
At this very moment, Brittany is leaning heavily against Rachel with a wild gleam in her eyes, Lauren is listening with rapt attention as Artie falls deeper into his hip-hop soul, and Finn is sitting on the seat of the rowing machine with the remains of what he called a "pizzasubosaurus" littered on the floor around him. Santana and Sam are in a strip-staring contest. Tina and Mercedes are pressing up against the speakers and swaying in time to a completely different song than the one that's playing, and Mike is choreographing something fast and complicated in front of one of the mirrors. Quinn is lying on the floor, staring up at the ceiling with a cup of beer on her stomach and her bare feet rocking back and forth, and there are about half a dozen strangers that Blaine vaguely remembers as playing backing instrumentals on some of the glee club's numbers.
The music is loud, and the air is too warm, and Blaine has actually drunk several cups of questionable alcoholic liquids. He keeps having flashbacks to random after-school specials about kids who throw illicit parties and then have to learn important life lessons. He worries that the doorbell will ring -- does this house have a doorbell? -- and his parents, or the police, or, or Burt will be there, and somehow they'll all know Blaine wants to have sex with Kurt.
Which brings him right back to where he started. The bass thumps, Mike's gyrating hungrily against the mirror, and Blaine's head is starting to hurt.
Blaine's pretty sure that none of the others know about the secret "Get It On With Kurt" plan -- least of all Kurt. If any of the others knew, they'd have told Kurt, and if Kurt had found out, this party would have been put to a stop half an hour ago. Possibly by arson. So Kurt doesn't know. Which is probably for the best, because Blaine kind of likes having a boyfriend, and it would really suck to lose him because Puck is an asshole without boundaries.
The only catch to the "nobody knows" theory is that Finn's starting to look a little squirrelly. As squirrelly as Blaine's ever seen him, which, to be fair, may just be what his face normally looks like. It's hard to tell. Maybe Blaine's just paranoid.
"Hey, Anderson." A large, well-muscled arm drapes itself across Blaine's shoulders, and no, no he is definitely not paranoid, life is just that awful.
Puck gestures broadly with his cup of red alcoholic sugar water, encompassing the room and the several drunk people already residing in it. Santana has just delicately pulled her underwear off from under her skirt. "Hope you're not too wasted," Puck continues, "because, uh, I think you left some stuff in your room."
Blaine stares helplessly up at Puck's wagging eyebrows and extra-wide eyes. "Pretty sure I didn't, Puckerman."
"You would be so surprised by what's in your room," Puck says with deepening conviction, and that's when Blaine finally does a head count, ignores the dropped drink cups and the naked people, and notices what Puck's actually done.
Kurt's not here.
Kurt... might be in Blaine's room.
Far, far away from this room, and its drunken people, and its legitimate excuse for Kurt to be in Blaine's house without parents around.
"Go forth, my wayward son," Puck says, clapping him on the shoulder. "Get jiggy with that gay stuff. I'll make out with everyone here, keep the coast clear for you."
Puck grins cheerily at him, and then saunters off in a disturbing fashion toward Rachel, Lauren, and Artie.
Quinn is balancing a cup on her forehead. Brittany is kissing Tina.
Kurt is somewhere upstairs, in the cool and quiet, waiting.
--
Blaine closes the door carefully behind him-- and suddenly it's dark, and the music is muted, and... it's like cold water. It's different. He's only had a few drinks, nothing like at Rachel's party, but he somehow feels drunk just from the sudden shift.
Kurt is upstairs. He is going to try and seduce Kurt.
He doesn't know what he's doing.
He can't go back to the party -- god only knows what Puck would do to get him out again -- and he can't leave Kurt in his room, waiting for... whatever Puck told him to wait for. Running away is not an option here.
And his cellphone is in his room, so texting and then running away isn't an option either.
Blaine's sweating a little, dampness clinging to the back of his neck, the very edge of his hairline. The party had been hot -- too many bodies in too little space -- but the rest of the house is air conditioned until it's just a touch too cool. Another reminder that out here isn't like in there. Another reminder that he isn't an idiot anymore, he didn't sing about sex toys in public, he thought about his actions and then he did the right thing. That's who he is now. That's what he wants to be.
Blaine takes a deep breath and heads for the stairwell. Two flights up, and down one hall, and that's plenty of time to figure out what he's going to say to Kurt when he gets to his room.
--
Two flights and one hall is significantly shorter than he'd thought it would be. On the other hand, he's gotten better at this stuff -- he'll ask questions first, make sure Puck hasn't done something really horrible, tell Kurt what happened, and then they'll head back to the party. Or maybe just hang out in the living room and watch Katherine Hepburn movies or something. Something nice, and just them -- that'd be perfect, actually. And it's not crazy, or fake, or stupid. Perfect.
He reaches his door. It's closed. He knocks lightly, and then twists the knob.
Kurt's sitting with his back to the door, Blaine's laptop on the desk in front of him. Blaine takes a second to breathe out -- whatever he'd just been telling himself, there had been a moment when he'd had a vague mental picture of Kurt laid out on the bed, waiting... but no. This is better. Better.
"Hi," he says. His voice, thank god, is calm. No outbursts of doubt, or slurred flirting, or whatever else his brain could have tried to fuck him over with. If he'd learned anything from those years of being fake and charming, it was how to deliver a line.
The room is dark -- just the bedside lamp and the blue-white glow of the laptop screen, highlighting the edges of Kurt's hair, the curve of his ear. Like he's standing in front of a spotlight. Like he glows.
Kurt's tapping the scroll button on whatever he's looking at on-screen. "Hi," he says, and he doesn't have Blaine's stupid control, he doesn't have the ability to hide what he's feeling.
Which is how Blaine knows something is really, really wrong.
"Kurt?"
Kurt turns halfway -- his profile cuts the screen in half, and Blaine finally sees what Kurt's looking at: Blaine's playlists.
Oh. Oh shit.
Kurt's voice rasps when he speaks. Too slow, too carefully, he says, "I don't understand."
And this is what it feels like, Blaine realizes, to completely, utterly fuck up. This acid in the stomach, this sinking, this desperate look for something, anything to justify what he's done. They've argued, but it's all been misunderstandings or random bitchiness or just the full moon. Not like this. Not like this is going to be.
"I--"
"Shut up," Kurt says, and it's fast, and it's sharp. "I don't want to hear what you have to say right now, because I'm a little too upset about finding out you've been trying to break up with me for the last six weeks." He turns around completely. That flush is back on his cheeks, but for the wrong reasons, all the wrong reasons. "Seriously, I just-- what the fuck, Blaine? The time you spent on this fucking breakup mix, you could have just fucking called me."
"I didn't--"
Kurt lifts a hand, shutting Blaine down completely. "You made a breakup mix, Blaine. You've been working on it since July. So unless you've got some other boyfriend hanging around--"
"Would that be better?" Blaine asks, and hates himself immediately for chasing after a stupid throwaway comment with something that won't actually help--
Kurt turns back to the laptop. "Death Cab, Adele, more Adele -- really digging into the originals, there, so glad our breakup is going to be so pop-heavy -- awful Ani DiFranco, 'Candles', how poignant, 'Blowing Kisses in the Wind,' and Kenny Chesney, really--"
Blaine slowly goes to sit on the edge of his bed. The alcohol sits heavy in him. He thinks that maybe he deserves this.
"And then there's this one by The Avett Brothers -- this doesn’t even make sense--"
"That one was for you."
Kurt's suddenly silent, and Blaine wishes he'd kept his mouth shut. "You... you picked my breakup music, too?” Kurt twists to stares at him like Blaine’s hair is actively, like, on fire or something. Or like Blaine is insane. Probably more that one.
Blaine says, "It's because it's about going to New York, getting accepted there. I thought you'd find that comforting."
"After we break up."
There is really no good answer here. "...Yes?"
Kurt is pale. Super pale. His old cheerleading coach called him Porcelain, and she wasn't wrong. What she missed, though, was the even more astonishing color he could become when he was actually incandescent with rage.
And his eyes shine. Blaine read a poem once that talked about someone looking forward to battle having "joy-candles gleam in thine eye" -- he’d never really gotten it until he'd met Kurt. It's too easy to think Kurt's holding back tears. It's a lot harder to realize that Kurt's holding back war.
"And you thought, what, we'd break up and then share playlists? Just like that? As if nothing had happened, as if I'd want to take anything so insignificant after losing you?" Kurt slams up from the desk and stands, arms crossed, across the room. Closed off and far away and Blaine doesn't-- he knows he has about five seconds before drama and reality merge so much that Kurt leaves him not just because it's narratively necessary, but because Blaine actually is a massive dick.
Okay. Okay. Breathe. Not everything he learned was bad. Not everything. He closes his eyes, and opens them again. "Kurt," he says, and puts everything into it. Because this needs to be a showstopper.
Kurt stills, staring at Blaine with wide, angry eyes.
"Kurt," he says again, "I don't want to break up with you." Kurt snorts, looks away. No. Blaine stands and comes close, gets Kurt looking at him again. "I never want to break up with you. But I can't imagine how this, us, can be possible." He closes his eyes -- just a blink, long enough for effect, not too long to lose the momentum. "It's too good, Kurt. Us. When we're over, it's going to kill me."
He spreads his hands, eyes holding Kurt's. "I don't know what I'm feeling unless I've got a song attached to it," he says, just quiet enough to draw Kurt closer, make him listen harder. "I wanted to be prepared for when it happens. I needed to have something ready to keep me going... after."
And that's all he's got. It's the truth, and he's given it everything he has.
Kurt shakes his head, just the smallest movement. He takes a step away, and it's like he's slapped Blaine in the face. "And now, on top of that," he whispers, "you're lying to me." He turns on his heel, and he closes the door quietly behind him.
--
Blaine has shut down his computer. He has turned off the light. He has changed into just a t-shirt and boxers, and he is lying in bed.
Somewhere, very far away, he can hear a bass thump. The party's still going on. It doesn't matter.
In all the scenarios Blaine had envisioned about their breakup -- growing apart, cheating, long-distance jealousy, competitiveness gone wrong, horrible death -- in all of that, he somehow hadn't considered "self-fulfilling prophecy." He'd found dozens of breakup songs, categorized them, arranged them for every occasion except the one where he was caught doing it at all.
And while he knows it isn't the worst part, nowhere near the worst part, he can't help but think-- all of that work, all of that preparation, and it's all worthless. He doesn't want to listen to music. He doesn't want to wallow in some fake bullshit emotional methadone that's supposed to somehow make him feel better about the fact that he fucked up.
He's on his side, facing the window. There's moonlight. Some Westerville sky glow. No stars tonight, but he sees the black silhouette of trees against the night, and they're swaying. There's a breeze. Finally, at the end of August, the weather is turning.
He'll be okay. He's seventeen. He knew this was going to happen. He knew. This isn't the end of everything.
Blaine wishes he could call his mom and have it actually help.
--
He hadn't thought he'd go to sleep, but he must have, because something's woken him now. The music is gone. The moon has set.
His door is opening.
He turns over, fast, ready to throw something at Puck or whoever else thought it'd be a good idea to try and get it on in his bedroom -- but the door snicks closed again, and there's someone else in the room with him. Blaine's night vision isn't great, but the bed dips, and then-- he knows it's Kurt. He can smell Kurt's aftershave, just the same as the day he'd wrapped his face in Kurt's scarf and realized that whatever he'd had with Jeremiah wasn't anything compared to what he has with Kurt. The dip shifts, moves, and then Kurt's curled up on his side next to Blaine. Blaine can feel Kurt's breath on his skin.
They don't say anything for a long time, until Blaine says, "I'm sorry."
It takes a while, but Kurt eventually says, "The playlist thing was stupid. Really stupid."
"I know."
Blaine can hear his own heartbeat, loud and fast in his ears. He wishes he could hear Kurt's. He doesn't know what's going on.
But Kurt's in his bed.
"There are a couple of things," Kurt says. "I have a list. Things that did not go right this evening."
"I'm sorry," Blaine says again, because that's really all he's got now.
Kurt ignores him. "The first big thing was the stupid playlist. Let's just all acknowledge that that was dumb." There's a brooding silence. Blaine considers apologizing again. Forever. "But," Kurt says at last, "I spent some time taking apart your kitchen, and staring at your parents' walk-in closet, and dead-heading the roses outside even if they didn't strictly need it, and I did eventually come to the conclusion that, regardless of how you said it, you meant it when you said you were preparing, not planning."
"Never planning," Blaine says, and his voice is shot. It sounds like tears.
"No," Kurt says quietly. "But maybe you should stop preparing, too. Because that's... it's not helpful. It doesn't make it easier, and it definitely doesn't make it look like you have any confidence in us. And..." He takes an audible breath. Blaine holds his. "I need you to have confidence in us, Blaine. I can't be the only one who's dreaming big. When I left earlier... I expected you to follow me." His voice is smaller when he says, "And you didn't."
Blaine knows he's in the wrong for a lot of this. He does. And he is going to continue apologizing, probably for the rest of time. But-- He turns over completely so he's facing Kurt. He can see the edges of him, a lighter darkness. "I can't be an actor in some drama, Kurt. If you leave-- that's what leaving means. Just because I didn't follow you doesn't mean I don't believe in us. It means you left."
Kurt's stilled beside him -- Blaine hadn't even realized how warm Kurt had been until he'd frozen. "Which brings us," Kurt says, brittle and not actually acknowledging Blaine's point, "to the next item on the list. If I was enacting any kind of drama, Blaine Anderson, it's because you started it."
Blaine doesn't even have the chance to fight that one, because Kurt's rolling with it. "Open hands, strong eye contact, deep and meaningful words given soulfully -- that whole 'explanation' you gave, it was all you acting. The words may have been real, but it wasn't you saying them. It was Blaine Warbler, with the short, gelled hair and the meaningless flirting and the crush on a guy five years too old who wasn't me. So don't go telling me that I shouldn't have expected you to come running after me -- that's exactly what that you would have done."
Kurt's breathing hard, and Blaine-- fuck, he's going to cry. His eyes feel hot, and the world is awful. "I didn't know how else to stop you leaving," he says, voice thick. And there's nothing else. No other reason or excuse.
"Maybe... me neither," Kurt admits. The bed shifts as he uncurls a little, hand reaching out to find Blaine's hair, the side of his face. "But it hurt," he says. "That you would do that to me. Put on the Blaine Show, charm me out of whatever. It's not... it's not something I dealt with very well. So I'm sorry too."
And Blaine breaks.
He reaches out, blind in the darkness, and finds Kurt's shirt, the jut of his hip, the line of muscle on his back, and uses it as a guide to bring himself close. Kurt's hand's in his hair, his arm curved over Blaine's arm, and Blaine's found Kurt's shoulder, now, and the curve of his neck. Kurt's neck may be his favorite place, all skin he loves to mouth and bite, wonderful smells and the brush of late-night stubble against his face. Now he just presses in and holds Kurt hard, shaking as he realizes how fucking close they'd come to something he'd never really understood before.
Kurt's holding him just as hard. Maybe he wasn't just apologizing to make things fair. Maybe he felt it too.
Kurt kisses Blaine's forehead, hot breath exhaling against his skin, and then pulls his hand from Blaine's hair, curves around Blaine's chin, and drags Blaine's face up for a kiss.
Oh.
Kissing in the dark isn't new for them -- nights in the car are a sterling example, and once in Kurt's backyard, sweet and soft, on a blanket meant for stargazing. They've kissed in bed, too, though lights were on, clothes were on, it was basically a convenient horizontal surface that was softer than the floor and more leisurely than a wood-panelled wall in a Dalton hallway.
This is different.
They're under the covers -- just a sheet and a cotton weave blanket, but still. They're holding one another. There's no sound but the susurration of the central air, and it means that every sound they make is louder, closer, echoing in the dome of space where they breathe the same air, share the same warmth. Kurt's stretched out, flush against Blaine, hands back in Blaine's hair and his mouth, fuck, his mouth's just not stopping. Blaine knows they can get closer -- basically because if they don't, he's going to-- he doesn't even know-- there's just no other option.
The blankets have become heavier, somehow. The pillow is-- somewhere? Kurt is wearing too many layers. Under the collar of Kurt's shirt, Blaine can feel bare skin heating up, the faintest trickle of sweat. God, he wants.
He slides his hand out of Kurt's shirt, runs it up until he's got a grip in Kurt's hair. It's a thick handful, softer than it looks. He bites Kurt's bottom lip, just the lightest touch, and Kurt gasps into the kiss, open mouths and the touch of tongues-- and then breaks off, panting, his hand fisting Blaine's hair. "Oh my god," Kurt whispers, and it's loud in the space between them. A very small amount of space, that doesn't actually feel like distance at all.
"You," Blaine says, and that takes too long to say, because what he wants to be doing is basically not stop kissing Kurt for the rest of time. But that's not even completely true anymore, it isn't, because he wants-- not more, but different. He wants what the space between them is and isn't promising, what the weight of the blankets is pressing into his skin, what the feel of Kurt in one place means in another.
He's been worrying all this time about what kind of sex he wants to have, and what kind of sex he thinks he can get, and he's never made the leap, never understood that from here to there isn't a line crossed, it's just--
I love him, and we are together in this way.
"Kurt," he says, low because that's the only way he can speak right now, "I want you." So much easier than the first time he'd said it-- so much easier to follow words with actions, and draw Kurt close, closing the space, holding them together hard enough for Kurt to feel-- god, everything. "I want you," Blaine says again, and again, and hopes to god Kurt understands.
"Fuck," Kurt says, and "Can I--?" and "Please," and Blaine's nodding, nodding in the dark like an idiot, but an idiot with the most amazing boyfriend in the world because Kurt's pulled the hand from Blaine's hair and is pulling Blaine's shirt up instead, slipping his palm against Blaine's skin. Blaine feels the strangest touch -- Kurt, his fingers carding the hair on Blaine's chest, following it down until the angle's too sharp too sustain. Kurt follows the muscle up to Blaine's hip, instead, and then it's just Kurt's hand, curved above the edge of Blaine's boxers, a hot weight that's different, necessary, and almost frightening.
And-- Blaine should move. That's probably what has to happen next, shifting for access, tugging down clothes, pulling off shirts, finding the pillow, those are all the things that go with what Blaine thinks they're doing-- and neither of them are moving. Like moving is the same thing as falling off a precipice, and not knowing how long the drop is.
There are two ways this can go, Blaine thinks in the weird half-space his brain is occupying, where everything is sparks and warmth and embarrassment and mouths. He can go back to kissing Kurt -- which is good, and is fine, and is by no means a bad ending to the evening -- or he can fall from his side to his back, open, Kurt's.
Which would be terrifying and amazing in equal measures, he thinks. Provided Kurt understands. Provided he wants it too.
Kurt understands so much, and so quickly, but if there's anything that Blaine's learned tonight, it's that the times when Kurt doesn't understand -- or when Blaine doesn't understand Kurt -- it's all the more awful. That ability to know is rare, Blaine thinks, which means it feels like a betrayal of their epic romance when they... become normal. Normal people in normal relationships have misunderstandings, don't follow one another's thoughts exactly, have petty faults that can overset an argument that shouldn't have started in the first place. Normal people learn to adjust, to figure out how to cope with it all -- become stronger because of it.
Which means, because theirs was the Best Relationship Ever, Blaine had assumed that he and Kurt didn't have to talk.
And then it's not two options anymore -- it's not binary. Nothing's binary, Blaine thinks, and he can't help it, he laughs as he kisses Kurt. Before Kurt can withdraw his hand -- misunderstanding after misunderstanding, and Blaine hadn't made the connection -- Blaine says, "I just figured out something amazing. You're part of it. I love you. I'm going to turn onto my back now, and if you're okay with it, I'd really like it if you, uh, kept going. If you're not, just let me know, and we'll figure something else out."
He turns. Kurt's hand drags along until it's flat on Blaine's stomach. His fingers twitch, but otherwise don't move. And there's silence.
Brief silence, at any rate. "Blaine..." Kurt says slowly, "I'm not sure I understand what just happened there." Kurt takes away his hand, and suddenly Blaine's skin is really, really cold. "I will say, though," Kurt says, and then there's a shift in the bed, the covers move, Kurt takes off his shirt holy fuck and leans over Blaine on one elbow, so fucking bright in the darkness, "that I really, really approve."
Blaine pretty much cannot take his own shirt off fast enough. Particularly with Kurt pushing his fingers under the waistband of Blaine's boxers, the rough pads of his fingertips catching on hair, tracing faint paths on sensitive skin. "I notice," Blaine says, breath catching, "that you are still very overdressed."
"Mm," Kurt says, and this is better than silence, better than the uncertainty of perfection, because this is the total knowledge that they have no fucking clue what they're doing, but by god, they're doing it together. "I think," he continues, and his knuckle brushes the head of Blaine's cock, just the lightest touch, fuck, "that that would be really distracting for me right now. Maybe later. Can you do something about your boxers?"
Yes, there are definitely some things he can do with his boxers. Throw them away, go back in time and not wear them, rip them off without somehow using scissors or velcro, all of those things -- but what he does is shove them down his hips, catching briefly on Kurt's hand, doing the strange dance of attempting to remove them in some graceful manner that isn't, in fact, graceful at all.
With bright flashes of sensation twisting him every time Kurt lightly touches his cock. The best and worst distraction, all in one.
Kurt lies down again beside Blaine, head a little lower than Blaine's, cheek resting on Blaine's shoulder. Blaine can feel Kurt's bare chest against his arm, the slight scratch of hair he knows must be there rough against his skin, the muscles along Kurt's abdomen tense and uncertain. He's moving in the slightest of rhythms as he runs his knuckles up the curve of Blaine's erection, and Blaine can feel how hard Kurt is inside those painted-on jeans of his.
Kurt lets out a breath; Blaine breaths it in. And then Kurt's opening his hand, fingers trailing with infinite slowness as he circles tentatively around Blaine. It's different from how it feels when Blaine touches himself; Kurt doesn't try to move, just holds Blaine, in a grip that is and isn't the same, and-- it's not just that this is Blaine getting his dick touched by someone else for the first time in his life that is making this so unbelievably amazing. Somehow, in some way... it's also knowing that this is how Kurt starts when he's by himself.
Kurt's hand is dry, and his thumb is brushing back and forth just under the head, and Blaine is actually twitching, he can't help it, it's too much, too different, too everything-- and then Kurt uncurls his fingers, pulls his hand away, and instead... Blaine feels something touch the tip of his cock, slow circles, and it's Kurt palm, the very center of his hand, touching just that one slick point.
And Blaine has, up to this point, been pretty fucking polite when it comes to certain boyfriends and their experimental teasing touches, but he's officially reached the end of the line with this. "Jesus," Blaine wheezes, and grabs Kurt's wandering hand, directing it back down and around his aching cock. Fingers just there, this much pressure, just how long a stroke to make when there isn't much lubricant around -- and all Kurt's hand, under his own, with Kurt rocking up against Blaine's bare thigh and his teeth against Blaine's shoulder.
And Kurt's talking now, just words and words -- how soft Blaine is, how hot, the smell of him, the feel, dozens of little words like beautiful and fuck and love and you. And it's that voice, his voice, curling around and coasting over and touching every part of Blaine and his skin is tight and either the nighttime world is phosphorescing around them or Blaine is actually seeing stars.
Kurt moves his leg over Blaine's, thrusts tight and hard against him, and their hands move together until-- Blaine comes, and he's doesn't know if Kurt comes or not, but it's all a mess and hot and sweaty and twisted sheets and embarrassing words and essentially the most amazing experience he's ever had in his life, even if he does feel a little bit like someone may come in at any moment and perform the other kind of after-school-special scenario.
Not enough to get up, though.
He tugs Kurt closer, rubs a kiss into Kurt's hair, and lets sleep take him.
--
He wakes up, probably only a short while later, to the feeling of Kurt teasing one of his nipples. Maybe not on purpose, though -- just idle drags of his fingernails across the skin, more thoughtful than sexual.
Sexual. Sex.
They've had sex.
...Wow.
"Hi," he says, and his voice is a little scratchy -- he doesn't actually know if he was loud or not, before, but he wouldn't bet against it.
"Hi," Kurt says, more contemplative than anything else.
The sky outside is starting to lighten -- not real dawn, not for a while yet, but just the difference between black and midnight blue. For the first time, Blaine wonders what happened to everybody else at the party. Finn had been the designated driver again, but that assumed that people had actually gone home. There were something like four guest rooms and six couches throughout the house -- it was more than possible that no one had bothered leaving.
Puck could still be somewhere in the house. Puck, who had engineered the entire party to get Blaine a chance to hook up with his own boyfriend. Puck, who would be cheerfully obvious when he asked, at some near future point, just how surprised Blaine was about what he'd forgotten in his room.
"Not to be weird," Blaine starts, and Kurt snorts into the pillow, "but I think I should tell you that we've kind of fallen into a scheme of Puck's."
"Only sort of," Kurt mutters, which, wait a minute, doesn't actually make sense. Blaine twists to try and get a better look at Kurt's face, which is presently hiding itself under Blaine's shoulder. Kurt squirms against him and eventually turns to stare petulantly at the ceiling. "Fine, yes, I knew about Puck's sexing up plan," he says, and before Blaine can even address that little revelation Kurt finishes, "and he's going to be a nightmare on Monday unless we figure out our stories now, so do we want to say it was a very beautiful night or just smile mysteriously and say nothing?"
Blaine blinks. "Well, I mean, I'm in favor of the smiling mysteriously plan just on principle, but-- you knew? And also, you said we'd only sort of fallen into it, which--"
"Puck wanted to give us a chance to-- be together," Kurt says. He raises one hand above their heads and stares at it critically. It looks like some kind of pale bird. A hand-shaped bird, anyway. He starts waving it in delicate figure eights and frowning. "And I was curious, and it was a good opportunity, and-- and then there was the playlist, and the fight, and the things I did to your mother's copper saute pan that we're not going to talk about right now, and..."
The hand drops, and Kurt sighs. "I love you," he says, "but I wasn't ready. I'm sorry."
Blaine raises his own hand, tries a couple of figure eights. It stays resolutely just a hand. "I love you, too," he says, "even though I have no idea what you're talking about."
Kurt swats his hand down and props himself up on one elbow to better glare down at Blaine. The upside to this is that, in the increasing morning light, Blaine can see more and more of Kurt's bare chest. There's not really a downside here-- or there isn't, until Kurt says, "I thought you wanted to have sex, and I said I was sorry because we didn't."
Blaine blinks. "But we did."
There is a long and ominous pause. "No," Kurt says, "we didn't."
Blaine levers himself up until he's sitting against the headboard, blanket draped demurely over what he's now remembering is his completely naked and kind of crusty body. He tries not to make it sound like he's talking down to Kurt, but it's really hard not to slow his words when he carefully repeats, "But... we did. I was there. That was-- pretty sure that was sex, Kurt."
"Maybe in some kind of complicated dreamworld you inhabited for the half hour you were unconscious," Kurt says, grabbing his shirt from the end of the bed and pulling it roughly over his head. "But in the universe we both actually live in, that was what is commonly referred to as a lot of making out and-- and--" Kurt's arms raise in a complicated gesture to the heavens that is apparently completely necessary for him to actually say the words, "--a handjob, and that is not at all what is commonly known as sex."
"Says who?" Blaine crosses his arms, and he knows he's being ridiculous, he knows that Kurt can have his own definitions of sex that don't have to at all match Blaine's, but it is kind of horrifyingly disappointing that something that was actually fucking magical for him was just-- something to Kurt? Wait. "So if that's not sex, what is it?"
Kurt looks down at the bed as if it will mysteriously reveal all answers to him. Or rise up and strangle Blaine. "Messing around?" he throws out. "Heavy petting?"
Oh my god, who says 'heavy petting'? Blaine blames the black-and-white movies. "So I guess this would be a bad time to tell you that after that 'messing around' I'm taking myself off Virgin Island and I am totally fine with telling Puck that the mission was accomplished."
"You what?"
This is not going at all well. Which is probably why it's a very good thing that the entire universe wants them perpetually embarrassed.
There's a sudden -- and very loud -- knock on the bedroom door. It serves the dual purpose of cutting the argument off mid-breath and also sending both Blaine and Kurt scrambling after every piece of clothing in the world. "Guys," a whisper that sounds suspiciously like Brittany's says through the door, "I think maybe you forgot about us? Because we're all still in the house. Like mice." There's a ruminating pause. "Mice with, like, cochlear implants."
Kurt raises a finger to his lips. Blaine crosses his eyes at him and manfully abstains from shouting some kind of gratuitously sexed up thank you back through the door. After a moment Brittany, from somewhere near floor-level, says, "Blaine, I ate all the breadsticks in your pantry. Don't blame Kurt," and then thumps her way back down the hall to... somewhere else. Maybe one of the spare bedrooms. Maybe somewhere more disturbing.
Through Blaine's window, the dawn light is now properly gold, not just a lighter shade of darkness. It's lighting up Blaine's room with mellow assurance. Kurt's hair is everywhere, and his face is flushed, but he's looking at Blaine as if he doesn't know which way the conversation is going to go next, just that he'll follow it come hell or high water.
Misunderstandings after misunderstandings.
It's easier to be angry than it is to be real. "Real" is just another way of saying honest, and honesty is a lot harder than it looks.
Blaine takes a deep breath, and lets go.
He tugs at a curl touching his ear, and smiles crookedly. "Let's start this again. Good morning, Kurt. I consider what we did last night to be sex, and I'm really glad my first time was with you." He pulls off the shirt he'd managed to find when Brittany had knocked -- inside out and backwards, not that it ended up mattering. He tosses it over the side, and slides back down under the blankets. Kurt looks... a little dazed, actually. Blaine says, "If it wasn't sex for you, first time or not... that's okay. I'm just-- I'm happy I'm with you. I'm happy you want to be with me." He gestures, and it takes in the bed, and the morning, and the look on Kurt's face. "I'm happy here."
"That's..." Kurt swallows. "That's a lot of happy."
"Well," Blaine says, "yeah. I have a boyfriend who loves me and my dick. It's a pretty good day to be me."
"Oh my god," Kurt says, all hectic blush and pale, fluttering hands, "you say things. You think we're having sex and don't even tell me so that I can too. And, and--" He flops down beside Blaine and shoves Blaine's head with his own until they've both got space on the pillow, "you have awful taste in breakup music."
Blaine turns on his side and puts a tentative arm over Kurt's clothed chest. Kurt burrows closer. "To be fair," Blaine says, "I've been collecting those since I was thirteen. And they're not awful."
"I'm just going to point out: Paula Abdul."
"She," Blaine says, and closes his eyes, "is an underrated genius. Modern youth has been corrupted by pop sensationalism."
Something brushes his forehead -- Kurt, kissing him. "Shut up, Pink. Go to sleep. We have lots of pretty lies to tell everybody later."
The curve of Kurt's neck is dark and warm. Blaine leaves a kiss of his own there, and breathes in, and in, and in.
END