Kurt/Blaine: Precipice (8/10)
Title: Precipice (8/10)
Pairings: Kurt/Blaine
Rating: PG-13 overall.
Word Count: ~2900
Spoilers: None.
Warnings: None.
Summary: Blaine is a new student at McKinley. Kurt is the star of the Cheerios. When Kurt is failing AP Chemistry, Coach Sylvester hires Blaine to tutor Kurt in order to ensure that he earns a grade that will allow him to stay on the squad. What will happen when the supposed nerd and the head cheerleader are forced to spend time together?
A/N: A million thanks to my wonderful beta gleekto. I am tentatively putting this fic at 10 total chapters. Worse comes to worse, you'll get 11 instead if the boys throw me for a loop here at the end. ;)
Friday instead of Saturday this week?
Blaine blinks at his screen, a flurry of nervous butterflies taking flight in his stomach, and lets his thumb trail over the words before unlocking his phone to reply.
Sure. What did you have in mind?
You’re cooking. I’ll be there at 7.
Blaine barely has time to read Kurt’s reply before Rachel’s attempting to rip the phone from his grasp with absurdly strong, tiny fingers.
“Who are you texting?” she asks, eyes wide and manic, though Blaine is sure they’re supposed to be excited.
“No one,” he says quickly, pulling the phone from her and shoving it safely into his front pocket. He doesn’t trust her not to go for it if it’s in the back.
“Then who were you sexting?” Her eyebrows wiggle lasciviously beneath her bangs and Blaine’s stomach does a strange swoop.
What if she’d seen that he was texting Kurt? His secret would have been out, the secret Blaine had sworn to keep. Heart hammering, he rushes to sit between Mercedes and Santana, eliminating any chance of Rachel sitting by him and continuing to pester him about his phone behavior.
“We’re a little over two weeks out from Sectionals and we still don’t have a replacement for Puck,” Mr. Schuester says. “This is serious, guys. The sign-up list has been in the hallway for two weeks and no one has signed up.”
“That’s not true. Dickface von Assbag signed up last week,” Santana says, sugary sweet smile on her face.
“This isn’t a joke, Santana,” Mr. Schue says, giving her a stern look that makes her roll her eyes. “We all need to try something new, myself included. You all have worked way too hard to be disqualified because we’re short a member.”
Blaine can’t help but feel for the phone in his pocket, palm grazing over the rectangular outline in his pants as worry floods his body. Kurt would be perfect for their group. He could learn the choreography quickly and he has the voice of… Blaine doesn’t even know how to describe it in a way that would do it any justice. Kurt’s voice is… magical.
But, Kurt won’t join. He hadn’t even taken a moment to consider it.
Blaine checks out when Finn starts coming up with some kind of asinine idea for how to get members that, of course, Rachel agrees with, and spends the rest of rehearsal going through the motions with images of Kurt’s bare knees flashing through his head.
The next day, Blaine spends the first hour after school-one that is decidedly slushy free-at the grocery store, quadruple-checking the list on his phone before heading home to embark upon his biggest kitchen adventure yet. He’s nervous. If he was making food for himself for the night, he wouldn’t worry about charring the chicken or burning the orzo, but he’s cooking for Kurt.
Kurt, who had made him such a lovely and delicious dinner a week earlier.
Kurt, who wears kilts and has a voice that makes Blaine’s mind go blank and his heart palpitate.
Kurt, who has invited himself over to Blaine’s house four weekends in a row.
The word date may or may not cross Blaine’s mind one or a million times, but he silences it with loudly blasted Britney Spears and the clanging of pots and pans.
He works diligently, grating lemon zest and stuffing chicken breasts. As he carefully slides the pan of four chicken breast halves meticulously stuffed with goat cheese and artichokes into the oven, the doorbell rings. Eyes opening wide, he glances at the clock.
7:05
When in the hell had it gotten to be that late?
Blaine looks down at himself and groans. He’s covered in bits of food-there’s goat cheese under his nails, for god’s sake-and his body is wrapped in the Kiss the Cook apron his mom had bought for his dad three Father’s Days ago. With jerky, hurried movements, he yanks the apron off his body and tosses it over the back of a chair, not wanting Kurt to think he’d worn it for him, though the idea of kissing Kurt and his wonderfully full lips is not exactly unappealing. At all. The kitchen looks like a tornado blew through it, but there’s really nothing he can do about it now.
The doorbell rings again five times in rapid succession and Blaine rushes down the hallway, praying that he doesn’t have any food on his face before pulling open the door. Kurt looks at him and shakes his head, eyes crinkling a little as he steps inside.
“Why do I feel like I just stepped onto the set of a failed Food Network show?” Kurt asks, hands gripping the strap of his bag as he strides toward the kitchen with a sense of familiarity that makes Blaine’s chest ache for reasons he doesn’t understand. “Oh my god, Blaine.”
“I kind of lost track of time,” Blaine admits sheepishly, stepping inside and immediately grabbing the package of orzo from the counter to start preparing it. Kurt takes it out of his hand and gently pushes Blaine away.
“You clean, I’ll do this,” he says.
“I was supposed to cook for you,” Blaine protests, but he’s already gathering things to shove in the dishwasher.
“Yes, and clearly you failed, so I have to step in and save the day,” Kurt says airily, filling the empty pot on the stove with water before pouring in the orzo and turning on the burner.
“The chicken is going to be delicious,” Blaine argues, putting the cutting boards in the sink.
“We’ll see about that,” Kurt says, pointing the end of a wooden spoon at him before giving the orzo a brisk stir.
Blaine relaxes as he moves around the kitchen, wiping off counters and scrubbing the big items in the sink, and checking on the chicken through the window in the oven door every few minutes. He even manages a glance of his reflection in the glass on the microwave and discreetly fixes his hair while Kurt drains the orzo. Blaine takes over then, asking Kurt to go sit down and relax while Blaine finishes things up.
“So what’s in the oven?” Kurt asks.
“King crab,” Blaine says, voice lofty and a smile unwilling to leave his face.
“C'est très magnifique,” Kurt grins, resting an elbow on the edge of the table and settling his chin on his fist.
“Actually it’s chicken stuffed with goat cheese and artichoke,” Blaine amends, pulling the chicken from the oven and heaving a sigh of relief at the fact that it isn’t burned or smelling like roadkill on a hot summer day.
“Too bad. I’m a sucker for good crab.”
I’ll remember that, Blaine thinks, plating their food and giving the kitchen one final onceover. Seeing that everything is in fact in order, Blaine grabs their plates and heads for the table.
“What would you like to drink?” Blaine asks.
“Hmm,” Kurt says, face scrunched up in a look of deep thought. “Some white wine would pair nicely with the chicken.” Blaine’s mouth goes dry.
“I, um… There’s probably a bottle around here somewhere that my parents wouldn’t miss,” Blaine manages to get out with the tangled bundle of nerves creeping their way up his throat. Wine is… good, but does Kurt really want to drink with him all alone in his house on a Friday night?
“Blaine. I was joking,” Kurt says, and Blaine might be imagining things, but he’s pretty sure that the slightest hint of a blush spreads across Kurt’s cheekbones. “Water sounds great.”
“Oh. Of course. I knew that,” Blaine lies, ears ringing and fingertips going slightly buzzy as he quickly fills two glasses with water. The first he sets down a little too hard, liquid sloshing over the rim. Shit.
“It’s okay,” Kurt says, grabbing his napkin and moving to clean up the mess but Blaine’s beat him to it, rapidly swiping at the small pool of water beneath Kurt’s glass until the table is dry. He throws away his wet napkin and grabs another, sitting down and cutting off a bite of his chicken with his hands still betraying him with shakiness. He very pointedly does not look at Kurt. “The chicken smells delicious.”
“Thank you,” Blaine says, eating his first bite and sighing in relief around the bite in his mouth when he realizes that, thankfully, it tastes as good as it smells. When he finally looks up, Kurt is looking back at him, his gaze immediately pulling away and darting down to his plate. He spears a bite and lifts it to his mouth. Blaine tries not to watch the way Kurt’s lips part and close around the fork and he definitely tries not to hear the barely audible moan that vibrates Kurt’s throat.
“Tastes delicious, too,” Kurt says. Blaine blushes and tries to hide it by taking a bite of his orzo, which is also pretty damned tasty if he says so himself.
“It’s good to know that I’m not a complete lost cause in the kitchen,” Blaine says. Kurt makes a little humming noise and nods, carefully piecing together another bite on his fork.
They chat while they eat. Well, mostly Blaine lets Kurt talk and follows the conversation like a puppy trailing adoringly after their owner, unwilling to stray for even a moment because he might miss something. Kurt is very into fashion. Apparently, he has stacks of magazines tucked under his bed like porn-his dad had actually stumbled upon them and assumed they were until taking a closer look-and he watches America’s Next Top Model as much to bask in the glory of a crazy Tyra Banks as to get tips should anyone ever happen to notice him, demanding that he drop everything and join the modeling field at once. Blaine doesn’t say it out loud, but knows that Kurt could absolutely model for a living. He has no doubts about that.
Blaine mentions his love of football and boxing and Kurt stares at him like he has a tentacle growing out of his forehead.
“What?” Blaine asks, standing and picking up both of their now empty plates.
“Sports. Really? You like sports.”
“What’s wrong with sports? You’re a cheerleader, isn’t that a sport?”
“Of course it is,” Kurt says quickly. “I just…” He trails off and stands, gathering up their glasses and bringing them to the dishwasher where Blaine’s tucking away their dishes. “You just continue to surprise me.” The tone of his voice is strange, almost annoyed.
Blaine’s chest tightens and he takes the glasses from Kurt, putting them on the top rack before closing the door and pressing it locked with his hip. Kurt’s looking at him intently, the icy blue of his eyes chilling Blaine to his core. He crosses his arms over his chest in an attempt to warm himself.
“Is that a bad thing?”
“I honesty don’t know,” Kurt says, irritation gone and replaced with a soft, almost breathy quality that sends a rush of warmth to Blaine’s lower abdomen.
It’s now that he realizes how close Kurt is standing, their bodies less than a foot apart. Kurt’s breaths are steady and even but loud enough to be heard, and when Blaine chances a glance downward, he sees that Kurt’s fingers are curling in and out of fists, dancing in the air each time they loosen from their tight grasp.
Everything is so quiet aside from their breaths that Blaine is hyper-aware of the throbbing of his pulse in his throat. But when Kurt’s eyes flick down to Blaine’s lips, everything goes silent with a rush of blood to his ears. He doesn’t breathe or blink or do anything because everything feels so delicate as if even the slightest movement could upend the moment. When Kurt leans down, bending toward Blaine, the very tip of his tongue darts out to wet his lips and Blaine’s heart drops to feet. No, to the basement.
Kurt pauses a whisper away. Eyelids fluttering shut, Blaine breathes in, shaky and nervous and scared and excited and basically every anticipatory human emotion all rolled into one as he waits for it to happen.
“Hello!” a voice rings out from the mudroom off the kitchen.
“Shit,” Kurt whispers, pulling back and walking away. Blaine’s mouth drops open, the noisy sound of his parents entering the house impossibly loud as his eyes slowly slide open. Kurt’s picking up his bag, face practically maroon and body tense. “I should go.”
“Kurt, no. You don’t have to,” Blaine says, wanting so badly to add: “Please don’t. Please please please.”
“I really do,” Kurt tells him, already walking out of the room, but Blaine’s rooted dumbly on the spot.
“Hi boys,” Blaine’s mom says as they come in, looking back and forth between them. Blaine ignores her because he can’t stop staring at Kurt. “You must be Kurt. It’s nice to officially meet you.”
“Hi. It’s nice to meet you, too. I was just leaving,” Kurt says, stepping in and quickly shaking her head and smiling a hello at Blaine’s dad before turning to leave the kitchen.
“Kurt!” Blaine calls out, giving his mother a look of utter confusion and hopelessness before chasing after Kurt. “Please don’t go.”
“Blaine, just don’t, okay?”
“But-“
“I’ll… I’ll see you later,” Kurt says before leaving, pulling the door shut behind him. Blaine tips his forehead against the door and touches the doorknob where Kurt’s fingers had just sat, imagining that he can feel warmth in the metal.
The next twenty-four hours aren’t great in the life of Blaine Anderson. He spends his time practicing for a Sectionals competition he isn’t sure he’s even going to get to participate in if they can’t find another member for their group in two weeks and that’s rather hard to do when one’s lips are constantly buzzing with the phantom feeling of Kurt’s breath brushing softly across them right before their almost kiss. Even a two hour long workout doesn’t help. He goes to bed early.
When Blaine awakes the next morning, he pulls his phone off the bedside table to check Facebook and his email and to see what the weather’s going to do that day only to see that he has a message from Kurt. After an entire day of radio silence, he can’t open their message log fast enough.
You’re do dicjibg precut want to Kidd you do NSF
“What?” Blaine says aloud, confusion combined with the fog of sleepiness still wrapped around his brain making the jumbled message even more difficult to understand.
What? Kurt, are you okay?
He looks at the message again and sees that it was sent at one-thirty in the morning. A drunk text. But what in the hell had Kurt been trying to say? A new message shows up.
Sorry. I didn’t mean to text you. Wrong number.
Blaine frowns with not a small amount of disappointment pumping through him and replies.
Okay…
They don’t communicate for the rest of the day.
Clearly, Kurt hadn’t really wanted to kiss Blaine. Otherwise, wouldn’t Kurt have called him? Wouldn’t they have talked again by now? Wouldn’t Kurt have explained?
Wouldn’t he have stayed?
Even though Blaine knows they won’t talk, he’s still nervous about seeing Kurt at school. The intimacy of that moment had been so tangible. So real. Every moment of it is burned into his brain, the sense memories so vivid that each time he closes his eyes, he can smell Kurt’s cologne and feel the warmth of his body mere inches away. There are passing glances throughout the day when Kurt looks anywhere but at him, further proving Blaine’s theory that the near-kiss had been a fluke. It had to have been, because Blaine had wanted it to happen so badly and he can’t look anywhere but at Kurt.
“Blaine! Come on, you’re late!” Rachel exclaims, coming out of nowhere to death-grip his arm and drag him toward the choir room. “We have our twelfth member!”
“Really? Who?” he asks as she pulls him into the room, the word dying as it rushes excitedly from his lips.
Kurt is sitting between Santana and Quinn, chatting and looking decidedly bored as Mr. Schue hands him sheet music. Clearly, Kurt’s introduction to the group has already taken place because Brad starts playing ‘I’ve Got Rhythm’ and the next three hours of Blaine’s life are spent in a flurry of singing and dancing and trying his hardest not to have a panic attack over the fact that they’re just now getting to serious rehearsals for Sectionals when the event in question is less than a fortnight away.
Finally, when his body is exhausted and his classmates have filed out, he finally gets a chance to approach Kurt. He’s dawdling as he gathers his things and Blaine quickly makes his way over.
“What made you change your mind?” Blaine asks softly with a big grin.
“Finn asked me Saturday night,” Kurt beams before Santana yells at him from the hallway and he dashes out without another word. Blaine slumps into a chair and buries his face in his hands while he tries to settle his throbbing, aching heart.
Pairings: Kurt/Blaine
Rating: PG-13 overall.
Word Count: ~2900
Spoilers: None.
Warnings: None.
Summary: Blaine is a new student at McKinley. Kurt is the star of the Cheerios. When Kurt is failing AP Chemistry, Coach Sylvester hires Blaine to tutor Kurt in order to ensure that he earns a grade that will allow him to stay on the squad. What will happen when the supposed nerd and the head cheerleader are forced to spend time together?
A/N: A million thanks to my wonderful beta gleekto. I am tentatively putting this fic at 10 total chapters. Worse comes to worse, you'll get 11 instead if the boys throw me for a loop here at the end. ;)
Friday instead of Saturday this week?
Blaine blinks at his screen, a flurry of nervous butterflies taking flight in his stomach, and lets his thumb trail over the words before unlocking his phone to reply.
Sure. What did you have in mind?
You’re cooking. I’ll be there at 7.
Blaine barely has time to read Kurt’s reply before Rachel’s attempting to rip the phone from his grasp with absurdly strong, tiny fingers.
“Who are you texting?” she asks, eyes wide and manic, though Blaine is sure they’re supposed to be excited.
“No one,” he says quickly, pulling the phone from her and shoving it safely into his front pocket. He doesn’t trust her not to go for it if it’s in the back.
“Then who were you sexting?” Her eyebrows wiggle lasciviously beneath her bangs and Blaine’s stomach does a strange swoop.
What if she’d seen that he was texting Kurt? His secret would have been out, the secret Blaine had sworn to keep. Heart hammering, he rushes to sit between Mercedes and Santana, eliminating any chance of Rachel sitting by him and continuing to pester him about his phone behavior.
“We’re a little over two weeks out from Sectionals and we still don’t have a replacement for Puck,” Mr. Schuester says. “This is serious, guys. The sign-up list has been in the hallway for two weeks and no one has signed up.”
“That’s not true. Dickface von Assbag signed up last week,” Santana says, sugary sweet smile on her face.
“This isn’t a joke, Santana,” Mr. Schue says, giving her a stern look that makes her roll her eyes. “We all need to try something new, myself included. You all have worked way too hard to be disqualified because we’re short a member.”
Blaine can’t help but feel for the phone in his pocket, palm grazing over the rectangular outline in his pants as worry floods his body. Kurt would be perfect for their group. He could learn the choreography quickly and he has the voice of… Blaine doesn’t even know how to describe it in a way that would do it any justice. Kurt’s voice is… magical.
But, Kurt won’t join. He hadn’t even taken a moment to consider it.
Blaine checks out when Finn starts coming up with some kind of asinine idea for how to get members that, of course, Rachel agrees with, and spends the rest of rehearsal going through the motions with images of Kurt’s bare knees flashing through his head.
The next day, Blaine spends the first hour after school-one that is decidedly slushy free-at the grocery store, quadruple-checking the list on his phone before heading home to embark upon his biggest kitchen adventure yet. He’s nervous. If he was making food for himself for the night, he wouldn’t worry about charring the chicken or burning the orzo, but he’s cooking for Kurt.
Kurt, who had made him such a lovely and delicious dinner a week earlier.
Kurt, who wears kilts and has a voice that makes Blaine’s mind go blank and his heart palpitate.
Kurt, who has invited himself over to Blaine’s house four weekends in a row.
The word date may or may not cross Blaine’s mind one or a million times, but he silences it with loudly blasted Britney Spears and the clanging of pots and pans.
He works diligently, grating lemon zest and stuffing chicken breasts. As he carefully slides the pan of four chicken breast halves meticulously stuffed with goat cheese and artichokes into the oven, the doorbell rings. Eyes opening wide, he glances at the clock.
7:05
When in the hell had it gotten to be that late?
Blaine looks down at himself and groans. He’s covered in bits of food-there’s goat cheese under his nails, for god’s sake-and his body is wrapped in the Kiss the Cook apron his mom had bought for his dad three Father’s Days ago. With jerky, hurried movements, he yanks the apron off his body and tosses it over the back of a chair, not wanting Kurt to think he’d worn it for him, though the idea of kissing Kurt and his wonderfully full lips is not exactly unappealing. At all. The kitchen looks like a tornado blew through it, but there’s really nothing he can do about it now.
The doorbell rings again five times in rapid succession and Blaine rushes down the hallway, praying that he doesn’t have any food on his face before pulling open the door. Kurt looks at him and shakes his head, eyes crinkling a little as he steps inside.
“Why do I feel like I just stepped onto the set of a failed Food Network show?” Kurt asks, hands gripping the strap of his bag as he strides toward the kitchen with a sense of familiarity that makes Blaine’s chest ache for reasons he doesn’t understand. “Oh my god, Blaine.”
“I kind of lost track of time,” Blaine admits sheepishly, stepping inside and immediately grabbing the package of orzo from the counter to start preparing it. Kurt takes it out of his hand and gently pushes Blaine away.
“You clean, I’ll do this,” he says.
“I was supposed to cook for you,” Blaine protests, but he’s already gathering things to shove in the dishwasher.
“Yes, and clearly you failed, so I have to step in and save the day,” Kurt says airily, filling the empty pot on the stove with water before pouring in the orzo and turning on the burner.
“The chicken is going to be delicious,” Blaine argues, putting the cutting boards in the sink.
“We’ll see about that,” Kurt says, pointing the end of a wooden spoon at him before giving the orzo a brisk stir.
Blaine relaxes as he moves around the kitchen, wiping off counters and scrubbing the big items in the sink, and checking on the chicken through the window in the oven door every few minutes. He even manages a glance of his reflection in the glass on the microwave and discreetly fixes his hair while Kurt drains the orzo. Blaine takes over then, asking Kurt to go sit down and relax while Blaine finishes things up.
“So what’s in the oven?” Kurt asks.
“King crab,” Blaine says, voice lofty and a smile unwilling to leave his face.
“C'est très magnifique,” Kurt grins, resting an elbow on the edge of the table and settling his chin on his fist.
“Actually it’s chicken stuffed with goat cheese and artichoke,” Blaine amends, pulling the chicken from the oven and heaving a sigh of relief at the fact that it isn’t burned or smelling like roadkill on a hot summer day.
“Too bad. I’m a sucker for good crab.”
I’ll remember that, Blaine thinks, plating their food and giving the kitchen one final onceover. Seeing that everything is in fact in order, Blaine grabs their plates and heads for the table.
“What would you like to drink?” Blaine asks.
“Hmm,” Kurt says, face scrunched up in a look of deep thought. “Some white wine would pair nicely with the chicken.” Blaine’s mouth goes dry.
“I, um… There’s probably a bottle around here somewhere that my parents wouldn’t miss,” Blaine manages to get out with the tangled bundle of nerves creeping their way up his throat. Wine is… good, but does Kurt really want to drink with him all alone in his house on a Friday night?
“Blaine. I was joking,” Kurt says, and Blaine might be imagining things, but he’s pretty sure that the slightest hint of a blush spreads across Kurt’s cheekbones. “Water sounds great.”
“Oh. Of course. I knew that,” Blaine lies, ears ringing and fingertips going slightly buzzy as he quickly fills two glasses with water. The first he sets down a little too hard, liquid sloshing over the rim. Shit.
“It’s okay,” Kurt says, grabbing his napkin and moving to clean up the mess but Blaine’s beat him to it, rapidly swiping at the small pool of water beneath Kurt’s glass until the table is dry. He throws away his wet napkin and grabs another, sitting down and cutting off a bite of his chicken with his hands still betraying him with shakiness. He very pointedly does not look at Kurt. “The chicken smells delicious.”
“Thank you,” Blaine says, eating his first bite and sighing in relief around the bite in his mouth when he realizes that, thankfully, it tastes as good as it smells. When he finally looks up, Kurt is looking back at him, his gaze immediately pulling away and darting down to his plate. He spears a bite and lifts it to his mouth. Blaine tries not to watch the way Kurt’s lips part and close around the fork and he definitely tries not to hear the barely audible moan that vibrates Kurt’s throat.
“Tastes delicious, too,” Kurt says. Blaine blushes and tries to hide it by taking a bite of his orzo, which is also pretty damned tasty if he says so himself.
“It’s good to know that I’m not a complete lost cause in the kitchen,” Blaine says. Kurt makes a little humming noise and nods, carefully piecing together another bite on his fork.
They chat while they eat. Well, mostly Blaine lets Kurt talk and follows the conversation like a puppy trailing adoringly after their owner, unwilling to stray for even a moment because he might miss something. Kurt is very into fashion. Apparently, he has stacks of magazines tucked under his bed like porn-his dad had actually stumbled upon them and assumed they were until taking a closer look-and he watches America’s Next Top Model as much to bask in the glory of a crazy Tyra Banks as to get tips should anyone ever happen to notice him, demanding that he drop everything and join the modeling field at once. Blaine doesn’t say it out loud, but knows that Kurt could absolutely model for a living. He has no doubts about that.
Blaine mentions his love of football and boxing and Kurt stares at him like he has a tentacle growing out of his forehead.
“What?” Blaine asks, standing and picking up both of their now empty plates.
“Sports. Really? You like sports.”
“What’s wrong with sports? You’re a cheerleader, isn’t that a sport?”
“Of course it is,” Kurt says quickly. “I just…” He trails off and stands, gathering up their glasses and bringing them to the dishwasher where Blaine’s tucking away their dishes. “You just continue to surprise me.” The tone of his voice is strange, almost annoyed.
Blaine’s chest tightens and he takes the glasses from Kurt, putting them on the top rack before closing the door and pressing it locked with his hip. Kurt’s looking at him intently, the icy blue of his eyes chilling Blaine to his core. He crosses his arms over his chest in an attempt to warm himself.
“Is that a bad thing?”
“I honesty don’t know,” Kurt says, irritation gone and replaced with a soft, almost breathy quality that sends a rush of warmth to Blaine’s lower abdomen.
It’s now that he realizes how close Kurt is standing, their bodies less than a foot apart. Kurt’s breaths are steady and even but loud enough to be heard, and when Blaine chances a glance downward, he sees that Kurt’s fingers are curling in and out of fists, dancing in the air each time they loosen from their tight grasp.
Everything is so quiet aside from their breaths that Blaine is hyper-aware of the throbbing of his pulse in his throat. But when Kurt’s eyes flick down to Blaine’s lips, everything goes silent with a rush of blood to his ears. He doesn’t breathe or blink or do anything because everything feels so delicate as if even the slightest movement could upend the moment. When Kurt leans down, bending toward Blaine, the very tip of his tongue darts out to wet his lips and Blaine’s heart drops to feet. No, to the basement.
Kurt pauses a whisper away. Eyelids fluttering shut, Blaine breathes in, shaky and nervous and scared and excited and basically every anticipatory human emotion all rolled into one as he waits for it to happen.
“Hello!” a voice rings out from the mudroom off the kitchen.
“Shit,” Kurt whispers, pulling back and walking away. Blaine’s mouth drops open, the noisy sound of his parents entering the house impossibly loud as his eyes slowly slide open. Kurt’s picking up his bag, face practically maroon and body tense. “I should go.”
“Kurt, no. You don’t have to,” Blaine says, wanting so badly to add: “Please don’t. Please please please.”
“I really do,” Kurt tells him, already walking out of the room, but Blaine’s rooted dumbly on the spot.
“Hi boys,” Blaine’s mom says as they come in, looking back and forth between them. Blaine ignores her because he can’t stop staring at Kurt. “You must be Kurt. It’s nice to officially meet you.”
“Hi. It’s nice to meet you, too. I was just leaving,” Kurt says, stepping in and quickly shaking her head and smiling a hello at Blaine’s dad before turning to leave the kitchen.
“Kurt!” Blaine calls out, giving his mother a look of utter confusion and hopelessness before chasing after Kurt. “Please don’t go.”
“Blaine, just don’t, okay?”
“But-“
“I’ll… I’ll see you later,” Kurt says before leaving, pulling the door shut behind him. Blaine tips his forehead against the door and touches the doorknob where Kurt’s fingers had just sat, imagining that he can feel warmth in the metal.
The next twenty-four hours aren’t great in the life of Blaine Anderson. He spends his time practicing for a Sectionals competition he isn’t sure he’s even going to get to participate in if they can’t find another member for their group in two weeks and that’s rather hard to do when one’s lips are constantly buzzing with the phantom feeling of Kurt’s breath brushing softly across them right before their almost kiss. Even a two hour long workout doesn’t help. He goes to bed early.
When Blaine awakes the next morning, he pulls his phone off the bedside table to check Facebook and his email and to see what the weather’s going to do that day only to see that he has a message from Kurt. After an entire day of radio silence, he can’t open their message log fast enough.
You’re do dicjibg precut want to Kidd you do NSF
“What?” Blaine says aloud, confusion combined with the fog of sleepiness still wrapped around his brain making the jumbled message even more difficult to understand.
What? Kurt, are you okay?
He looks at the message again and sees that it was sent at one-thirty in the morning. A drunk text. But what in the hell had Kurt been trying to say? A new message shows up.
Sorry. I didn’t mean to text you. Wrong number.
Blaine frowns with not a small amount of disappointment pumping through him and replies.
Okay…
They don’t communicate for the rest of the day.
Clearly, Kurt hadn’t really wanted to kiss Blaine. Otherwise, wouldn’t Kurt have called him? Wouldn’t they have talked again by now? Wouldn’t Kurt have explained?
Wouldn’t he have stayed?
Even though Blaine knows they won’t talk, he’s still nervous about seeing Kurt at school. The intimacy of that moment had been so tangible. So real. Every moment of it is burned into his brain, the sense memories so vivid that each time he closes his eyes, he can smell Kurt’s cologne and feel the warmth of his body mere inches away. There are passing glances throughout the day when Kurt looks anywhere but at him, further proving Blaine’s theory that the near-kiss had been a fluke. It had to have been, because Blaine had wanted it to happen so badly and he can’t look anywhere but at Kurt.
“Blaine! Come on, you’re late!” Rachel exclaims, coming out of nowhere to death-grip his arm and drag him toward the choir room. “We have our twelfth member!”
“Really? Who?” he asks as she pulls him into the room, the word dying as it rushes excitedly from his lips.
Kurt is sitting between Santana and Quinn, chatting and looking decidedly bored as Mr. Schue hands him sheet music. Clearly, Kurt’s introduction to the group has already taken place because Brad starts playing ‘I’ve Got Rhythm’ and the next three hours of Blaine’s life are spent in a flurry of singing and dancing and trying his hardest not to have a panic attack over the fact that they’re just now getting to serious rehearsals for Sectionals when the event in question is less than a fortnight away.
Finally, when his body is exhausted and his classmates have filed out, he finally gets a chance to approach Kurt. He’s dawdling as he gathers his things and Blaine quickly makes his way over.
“What made you change your mind?” Blaine asks softly with a big grin.
“Finn asked me Saturday night,” Kurt beams before Santana yells at him from the hallway and he dashes out without another word. Blaine slumps into a chair and buries his face in his hands while he tries to settle his throbbing, aching heart.