a system of touch (4/6)

[gingerrstar]

masterpost


July 2010 cont.

It’s evening, the hour between dinner and darkness, and they’re sprawled out in Kurt’s living room in their shorts-cheeks pink and hair still full of chlorine. Despite Kurt’s protests about letting go without a shower when they’d come back in earlier, Blaine had shucked him of his shirt up against the frame of the door and they’d eventually unlatched their mouths long enough to pour out big glasses of iced tea and sit on the counter and drink it while Kurt made minute rice that they’d shared, mouths kissing sticky between bites and bodies slumped against the edge of the coffee table.

By now, they’re creating a human ‘L’ on the couch, legs spread off and near empty glasses sweating and making sticky rings on the table where they’ve been discarded. The air conditioning is up at full blast-which Kurt’s grandmother never lets him do, but which he figures she isn’t likely to find out, though Kurt’s insides are still melting messily from the combined heat of the summer sun and the easy tingling feeling he gets every time a big sigh of Blaine’s breath hits the cusp of his bangs.

“Mmm, this couch is the best,” Kurt can feel Blaine shifting, like he’s burrowing further in, and Kurt can’t much blame him-this couch kind of is the best, “the very best.” He makes contended noises, like a cat, and Kurt almost expects him to start purring about it soon, crawling over the cushions and marking out a spot, kneading his way into Kurt’s lap and licking at his skin. In retrospect, though ridiculous, the image isn’t so bad.

“You’re crazy, you know that?” Kurt says, craning his neck a bit to peek at Blaine who’s lying with all of his limbs spread out like a starfish, the pink light from the balcony doors refracting across his skin.

“Mm, I do, I do-“ he reaches a hand up and back, fingers wagging, and Kurt’s not sure what he’s going for but he puts his hand out anyway and watches Blaine fold them together, holding them for a few silent minutes in which all Kurt can hear are the sounds of the fan in the kitchen and the pumping of his own heart. “Hey,” Blaine says, propping himself up on a slightly bent elbow, “c’mere.”

It’s the dumbest idea he’s ever had. “Blaine, I do not want your sweat all over me,” he says, rolling his eyes though he’s not sure Blaine can see, “I’m pretty sure that purposely attempting to create heat when it’s already ninety five degrees outside is categorized under ‘really really impractical’.” He moves a hand to wipe a drop of sweat from his forehead for emphasis, “and besides-we can kiss just fine from here.”

Blaine un-props his elbow and moves so his faces is so close to Kurt’s that he can see the follicles of his eyelashes, “oh, is that so?” He’s smirking; face leaning over Kurt now, and Kurt wants to wipe that quirking smile right off of his face. And then kiss it. And not stop.

“It is so,” he drawls, drawing his mouth up into a returning smirk that Blaine leans down to kiss. It feels odd, kissing upside down like this, their faces lined up in all the curious ways he didn’t think they ever would be. Instead of taking in Kurt’s bottom lip, Blaine’s got his top one, and their teeth knock together much easier, making them more apt to settle on smooth slick kisses with little tongue and not so much teeth-for posterity, Kurt really isn’t interested in chipping one. After a minute or so, Blaine moves his mouth to the flat of Kurt’s jaw, laving kisses and licks on the sharp curve of the bone that Kurt hopes will leave behind a sticky sweet scent of iced-tea, if the taste of Blaine’s tongue is anything to go by.

Blaine scooches closer every so often, going up on bent knees with his hands cradling Kurt’s face until finally he thumbs quickly at Kurt’s cheeks and swings himself over until he’s got a safe straddle going on Kurt’s hips. When Kurt looks up he’s got a curious glint in his eye, like he’s giving a big fuck you to all the rules Kurt’s put down about this, and he feels somehow antsier for it, like this is some new line in the sand they’re rubbing away together, one damp kiss at a time. He can feel Blaine rocking slightly, hips shifting back and forth and the material of his jean shorts scratching at the skin of Kurt’s stomach, rubbing the pinked skin a bit raw in a way Kurt will look at in the mirror later and remember.

Even their kisses feel somehow headier-Blaine’s mouth open wide and teeth catching as he licks his way into Kurt’s mouth, hands pressing down against the dip of his waist, like he’s making a path to the lip of Kurt’s shorts. Kurt feels a swirling surge of want in the base of his gut and when Blaine rubs down again he resists the urge to buck up in retaliation. “I hope this is okay,” Blaine breathes out, voice jagged from the days laughter and the severity of their kisses, and Kurt nods loosely, taking his hands out from where they’re trapped under Blaine’s calves and cupping them against the rounds of Blaine’s ass.

It’s almost weird for him; he’s not had much experience being the guy lying helpless underneath someone else’s body. Blaine is consuming him from this angle-his legs locked, mouth claimed, elbows grating around Kurt’s head. Kurt feels like he should want to flip them over, to sit up and crawl into Blaine’s lap and rut against him until they come, but herein it’s Blaine sucking marks down his sternum and Blaine swirling hip circles against his stomach and Kurt holding him steady by his ass. It’s a welcome change-even if he could never have imagined the way Blaine gasps, low and broken, back when they were two barely connecting ships lying on the sand at midday.

“You’re insufferable-“ Kurt groans out, after Blaine’s started in on sucking out another tender spot on Kurt’s chest, “I’m going to bruise.”

Blaine takes the pause to bite down incomparably hard, smiling around the blooming shape and looking up at Kurt from under the front curl of his hair, “that’s the point.” He laves the bite with his tongue quickly and then shifts himself up so they’re sitting at perpendicular angles to each other, Kurt’s hands rubbing lightly at the tender skin of Blaine’s lower back as Blaine’s hands move to pop open the buttons on his shorts-and okay how was Kurt not aware of how hard he was. The bulge compacted in the front of his shorts shift and expands as he slides each button open, looking at Kurt down his nose, and Kurt audibly takes in a breath, feeling his own gut tightening in response.

And then Blaine is craning his neck all the way down to suck sharply at Kurt’s mouth, one hand cupping against the bulge in his own pants and the other reaching out to tug against the side of Kurt’s hair before they separate. After a beat, he moves himself down so he’s straddling Kurt’s spread thighs, their legs twisted up together to hold them both on the same couch section. He reaches quick hands up to work at the zip on Kurt’s shorts and Kurt wants to speak or gasp or groan, but he’s not sure what to say, so he resolves himself to watching the dips of Blaine’s cheeks and the pink reflected hot against his skin from outside the glass door. He watches Blaine suck a watermelon pink lip in under his teeth in concentration and grunt out a sharp ‘fuck, c’mon,’ as he wrenches the double zip open over Kurt’s straining erection and folds the flaps to each side.

In a quick beat, Blaine has their open flies lined up against each other, Blaine’s calves hooked around Kurt’s knees, and Kurt lets out a winded, “Oh my god, you’re going to make me-“ as Blaine grinds down with particular focus. The snag of their cotton underwear against each other is an almost delicious amount of friction Kurt never thought he’d enjoy before and he listens intently to the metallic clink of zippers and button closures jostling against one another, “If I ruin these,” he thinks to say, feeling heat jamming up the nerves of his spin, around the bones of his hips, “I hope you know you’re re-buying them.”

Blaine ducks down to kiss him again, mouth messier and a bit off from the focus of grinding their twin erections together at just the right pace, from the effort of keeping himself hoisted up on the couch so he can grind down instead of attempting not to slip off, “Of course I am,” he says, practically against Kurt’s mouth and higher like all of his nerves are firing off and his brain is too busy short circuiting to work on the vocal control function, and then presses back in to connect their lips again.

At this point, Kurt’s taken the initiative to grind up as Blaine grinds down and he can feel himself leaking, a damp pocket growing across where their underwear shift and rub together in the openings of their flies. It feels like he is about to jump off of a cliff at any moment, leap out of a moving car, drown-and he mumbles out a chain of nonsense syllables into Blaine’s mouth.

“Shit-Kurt, close,” Blaine muffles out against the corner of his lip, rutting down at an increasingly quicker pace, and Kurt keeps thinking about that day at Blaine’s work and how he’d been crowded up in between Blaine’s legs and all he’d wanted to do was roll his back down onto the wood of the table and climb him, to kiss and kiss until there was no place that hadn’t been. And even though Blaine had been wearing that stupid, hideous apron-more stupid than the unflattering cut of whatever on earth type of aprons they wore at sheets-and-things, Kurt had found him idiotically attractive.

Now, as he’s practically tingling all over, each nerve on end and the muscles in his thighs sore from clenching, he can’t stare at anything but the pink of Blaine’s sunburnt nose, the dip of his watermelon mouth, and think that even though he’s spent the past two summers curled up in lap after lap, he has nothing at all to compare this to.

--

“Blaine, honey-don’t forget to mix two spoons of the dressing in instead of one this time-three sandwiches,” his grandma is saying, poking her head out from behind the door of the fridge as Blaine collects cucumbers from the pile Kurt is pushing towards him and adding them to the plastic bowl in front of him, “and do you know where we put the sunflower seeds?”

“Um-“ he pauses for a second, “I’m not sure.” She rifles around a bit more in the bottom cupboard with no luck before Blaine thinks to add, “check the lazy susan-or ask grandpa.” Kurt watches her get up on her tip toes to check in the upper cabinet that contains what look to be spices, before sliding her shoes on and slipping past them to where Kurt assumes is the back door.

Once he’s heard the screen door smacking closed Kurt sneaks a free hand down to loop over the lip of Blaine’s jeans, just holding there loosely until Blaine’s own hand comes down to twine with his own and there they stand-holding hands and making cucumber sandwiches in a kitchen that reminds Kurt of the one he’d grown up in as a child. He thinks he used to imagine this, in between the baking of tiny frosted cakes in his easy-bake oven, that someday he could hold hands with a boy and it would be easy and simple. For all of Kurt’s summer conquests, he’s never really held hands, not so matter of fact as this, at least. He doesn’t say anything, but when Blaine’s grandma rounds back around the edge of the hall and Blaine rubs a soft thumb along the ridges of his knuckles, Kurt doesn’t let go.

“Those are looking lovely, boys-“ She leans gently over the counter to peer into the bowl Blaine is mixing.

“Thanks, Mrs. -“ Kurt trails off, feeling suddenly awkward.

“It’s Anderson, honey-“ she reaches out to squeeze at his shoulder with a delicate hand and Kurt breathes out a sigh of relief. He’d spent his childhood memorizing all the ways his mother had reminded him to be polite and he’d really not like to lose his stripes this early in the game. He gives her a small smile.

As she rummages around in the cabinets again, grabbing plates and a short stack of napkins, Kurt reaches over Blaine to grab the loaf of bread and places the slices together on the sunny yellow lunch plates Mrs. Anderson had set out. They move around each other with just the barest of awkward hip bumps or the one time Blaine elbows Kurt in the side, and by the time they’re done they’ve got three neatly stacked sandwiches and tall glasses of lemonade and Mrs. Anderson is flicking through the knobs on the television.

She greets them both happily when they sit down, settling on a channel that’s showing a slightly fuzzy version of Wizard of Oz, and when Kurt chooses the spot closest to the couches arm, Blaine makes no hesitation in sitting close to him, though his legs stay crossed primly and they’re only really touching by the link of their pinkies. Kurt bites into the corner of his sandwich and it’s, well-good-better than he thought it’d be, even though he likes cucumbers. He makes a note to make sure that Blaine makes enough of these for him that he can remember how once he gets back to Lima-it’s vastly preferable to peanut butter.

For the next few minutes they eat in relative silence, only disturbed by the rhythmic sounds of eating and the occasional short whisper from Blaine about how much he is in love with Dorothy. “I think I just wanted to be her,” he whispers, mouth closer to Kurt’s ear than is probably okay, considering his grandmother is sitting not three feet away. She’s humming softly to herself, though, seemingly distracted, and Kurt figures this is the incentive that gives Blaine the courage to place hands on Kurt’s thighs and knees each time he leans in for another tidbit.

Mostly, though, they sit and watch in relative silence, and Mrs. Anderson begs leave around the time that Dorothy meets the scarecrow, going out back to help Mr. Anderson tie the boats to the dock in wait of the impending storm. Once she’s fully latched the door behind her, Kurt watches Blaine sneak a quick glance down to the space between their thighs and then swing his legs up onto the couch and edge himself over until their sides are lined up and Blaine’s shoulder is spooned softly against the curve of Kurt’s own.

When Kurt looks down, Blaine is glancing up at him and his eyelashes look impossibly long in the stark glow from the television set. Kurt wants to kiss him, and he almost does until he feels the tap of Blaine’s palm against the denim of his pants and Blaine’s eyes follow the path to where his hand is laying palm up against Kurt’s thigh. His fingers wiggle softly and Kurt un-tucks his arm from between the warmth of their pressed together sides and curls their fingers together.

“This is nice,” he says after a few beats, soft like it’s a secret he’s maybe a bit too embarrassed to say out loud. He and Blaine both glance down at their conjoined fingers and Blaine gives them a little shake, swinging them lightly like they’re very small children and it makes Kurt’s insides warm all over.

“Yeah,” Blaine looks down at their hands for a beat and then raises his gaze to Kurt’s, “yeah it is.”

They stay like that, then, wrapped close and hands intertwined in a soft comfort as Blaine’s grandparents come and go from the backyard to the house and so forth. Blaine’s eyes look like tiny beams of reflected light in the glow from the screen, and Kurt looks up from them once to find Mrs. Anderson looking at them fondly from the kitchen sink, her eyes darting away when she notices his gaze, as if to pretend she was only glancing. When the credits roll, Kurt finds himself singing ‘Somewhere Over the Rainbow’ over and over again to himself, letting Blaine away for a moment before greeting him with a soft, lingering kiss to the mouth when he returns.

“Mmm, I like,” he whispers, licking out at the faint lick of lemon on his lips.

Blaine moves in for a kiss that lasts longer, their mouths slicking slightly against each other a few times before they pull apart at the clang of the screen door. “Me or the lemonade?” Blaine asks, lower lip hitting Kurt’s own.

“You decide.”

--

“And so by the time I’d reached the dock-“ some girl is saying, pushing at her rattily tied hair as she does so, “she wasn’t even there!” A portion of the group laughs in kind, tucking into bottles of beer and cups filled with a myriad of colorful liquids, and Kurt slips deeper into Blaine’s side, reaching his mouth over Blaine’s shoulder until he relents and raises his raspberry wine cooler to Kurt’s lips and tilts.

“Mmm, thank you-“ Kurt reaches up to smack wine-wet lips against the side of Blaine’s neck before curling back down against him. The air around them feels heavy, salty and damp, which makes him thankful for the light nature of the conversation. Inside, the house bustles, laughter spilling out through the open slide door and a group of girls tripping over themselves in a game of beer pong on the porch. Out here on the sand, they’ve got a group of warm laughter and cold, wet toes and a boy with a mop top who Kurt’s never seen around before, but who plays a mean beach guitar.

He’s been ratcheting through the standards, Sam Cooke and Weezer and a few Pink Floyd riffs that Blaine hums along with into Kurt’s ear. They’ve been steadily sipping, far from flat drunk and mostly tipsy and happy and warm, not talking much except the strange side conversation about melon peelers-of all things-that Blaine’s been holding with the girl next to him. Mostly, Kurt just listens to the swell of the waves at his back and the smooth din of conversation all around him.

After a bit, he smells the telltale scent of apple clove, and when he turns his full attention back to the rest of them, one of Mark’s neighbors is lighting an apple cigarette that puffs heavy licks of smoke into the air as he takes a drag. Kurt watches them pass the cigarette around from person to person, smoke filling the circle in a tantalizing haze and Blaine rubbing the tips of his blunt fingernails up and down Kurt’s arm until the cigarette gets around to him. He holds it in his fingers for a quick second while detangling his body from Blaine’s.

When he drags, the hot feel of the apple burns in his lungs and he shivers down to his toes when he notes Blaine looking over at him with wide, dark eyes, an idea forming in his head. “C’mere,” he says, wagging a finger forward on a smoky exhale and tugging Blaine forward by his collar.

“Not fair, Kurt-“ the girl to Blaine’s other side is saying, “don’t be a hog.” Kurt notes the cigarette going stale in his fingers and motions for Blaine to still as he moves it up again to take a second drag.

“I’m just teaching you all to share,” he says, just before he inhales, quick and sharp and holding the smoke down as he shakes the stick quickly at the girl to get her to take it from his grasp. Blaine looks at him curiously for the barest of seconds, just one, maybe two, before Kurt’s pressure pointing his bottom lip and his mouth is falling open only to be covered by Kurt’s a second later. The smoke in Kurt’s lungs flows up and then back down into Blaine’s and Blaine has to fight the near impossible urge to cough uncontrollably at the hot burn of it as it goes down.

Instead, he focuses on the sharp tang of the apple and the sweet slick of Kurt’s lips and before he’s really aware of it, Kurt is pulling back to let him exhale and then they’re kissing lazily in the dissipating swirl of smoke, Kurt’s tongue hot and mingling with his own. It reminds Kurt of the time in the basement and how Blaine’s tongue had curled around his except this time it’s far more dizzying and there are far less people actually paying valid attention to them.

Mostly they just make out lazily for the next span of minutes, letting the soft smacking of their lips be drowned out and lulled over by the cool din of laughter and the hot rush of waves crashing over the tide strip in the distance. Kurt feels Blaine’s lips begin to chap and begins to taste skin rather than apple or raspberry or even the sharp after tang of beer from his tongue, and he knows it’s time to go inside where the smoke is centralized to the pit of his lungs rather than in an all consuming cloud through the twists of his nervous system.

He hoists Blaine to his feet, tugging lightly on his wrists as Blaine scrambles up to grab Kurt’s sweater and follow along after him. The problem therein lies in that there doesn’t seem to be even a scant moment that Kurt can keep his hands from reaching out and just touching and so they end up spending the distance from the camp circle to the porch door tripping messily over each other in the sand, Kurt’s mouth tugging Blaine’s towards him and his fingers gripping and un-gripping on Blaine’s biceps like an ebb and flow cycle.

By the time they make it up through the patio doors, edging their way in past a particularly drunk girl in the midst of divesting herself of her top, they’re in full on stupid make out mode-Kurt dragging Blaine by the pockets and Blaine plastered against his back, sucking wet smacking kisses against the side of his neck, his hips hunching down in a clean circle. When they run into Meg, Kurt has his palms cupped under the hem of Blaine’s shirt and she laughs out as they stumble past her, calling, “third door on the right! Thanks for the show, babies!” as they manhandle each other around the corner to the hall.

“Oh my god,” Blaine muffles out between kisses pressed to his mouth, near giggles when Kurt is crowding him down against the wall, “I can’t believe we’re-“

“Shh,” Kurt hisses through laughing eyes, “c’mon!”

They push their way further down the hall, unable to stop tripping over discarded shoes, or passed out partygoers, or themselves. When they reach what Kurt thinks is the third door, he backs Blaine up into it like a rag doll, laughing loud as he seals their mouths together because in a house this loud, in a place this alive, no one can hear him.

--

He’s nudged awake the next morning by what feels like someone smacking an appendage into his hip. The light from the window is startlingly bright, and Kurt lets himself be blinded by it for a short moment before glancing over to see that what woke him was indeed a socked foot pushing against him where he’s curled up on the floor. To his other side, Blaine is lying curled up in the crook of Kurt’s arm, his limbs thrown haphazardly over Kurt’s body like he’d tried to climb him in his sleep.

The girl isn’t someone he knows, but he recognizes her and can’t come up with a situation in which that was a bad thing. She’s dressed mostly in long socks pulled up like single leg pants and tshirt that hangs off of her shoulders, her hands full of bright glasses of juice. “Brought you something,” she says, and her voice is shot and soft in the cool haze of the morning, “Meg said to tell you it’s no pulp.” He takes the glass from her gingerly, careful not to sit up awkwardly onto Blaine, who’s bare limbs still cling to his now upright back like a limpet. “I got some for him too-“ she adds, gesturing to Blaine who is currently snuffling into a rolled up blanket they’d used as a pillow.

“Thanks,” Kurt eyes her with a genuine sincerity-his head is starting to feel the telltale throb and the juice is likely to help. She sets Blaine’s glass on the side table on her way out and once Kurt hears the click of the door closing he sets his own safely down and turns to Blaine to wake him.

Blaine looks a little gorgeous sleeping, which Kurt probably should have expected, considering. His lashes look impossibly long and his mouth is pink and plumped up, though whether from Kurt’s own mouth or biting it in his sleep he’s not sure. When Blaine shifts and the blanket he’d been curled up in slips down, Kurt notes that he’s only wearing his underwear, small red briefs with a generic white band, and oh. The lines of his chest are trim and small, with a dipped in waist that Kurt wants to hold his hands to-press down and dig his nails in, push Blaine over onto his back and settle over him and just let himself touch for a long while.

Instead, he nudges at Blaine’s freckled shoulder with a soft palm, saying, “hey, Blaine, hey-wake up,” until Blaine stirs sleepily. He rubs at his eyes and makes a muffled noise into the carpet before palming at Kurt’s shirt to hoist himself up, grasping onto chunks of it with fists like a grabby infant until he’s shuffled himself up to lean against the foot of the bed next to them.

“Hey,” he says, voice thick with the vestiges of sleep and the sharp twist of post-alcohol scratchiness. Kurt hands him the glass of juice he’d set next to himself on the floor and watches as Blaine takes long sips of it, the pit of his stomach caving in under his ribs as he drinks it down. The blanket has slipped down to where it’s only covering the tips of his feet and Kurt can see his bulge half hard in the space between his thighs in a way that reminds Kurt faintly of last night’s activities-the way he’d kissed hot down Blaine’s ribs and Blaine had kicked his pants off and let Kurt mouth wetly at the front of his underwear, looking down at him with eyes dark and wide and burning holes in the space of Kurt’s retainable consciousness.

As of the current moment, Kurt’s still in his shirt, though it’s wrinkled from sleep, and his underwear. His legs are cold in the chill of the air conditioning, but he spots his pants a few feet away, folded across the lip of an open drawer. Blaine’s not doing as well, though he’d clearly noticed-and when Kurt glances around the room for Blaine’s jeans and sweater he finds them tossed akimbo in places he doesn’t remember putting them, the pants crumpled under the bed skirt and the sweater half falling off of a lampshade.

Blaine follows Kurt’s gaze and laughs softly into his glass when he notices. “I’m guessing we don’t have the best aim then?” he says, self-deprecating in a way that’s cute in combination with his sheepishly quirked mouth.

“Certainly not drunk, at least,” Kurt laughs in kind, reaching over to grab his pants and tug them up his legs. Blaine stays put, downing his juice determinedly like it’ll jolt him awake, and once Kurt is buttoned up he climbs up onto the bed to grab Blaine’s sweater and throw it at his head, just then recalling his promise to Mercedes that he’d skype her this morning-and shit what time is it even. “C’mon lover boy-clothes on,” he quips, laughing as Blaine untangles his head from the arms of his sweater with a free hand, “the day awaits.”

--

By the time they make it back to the condo, it’s nearly noon-which isn’t really morning, but it’ll have to suffice. Blaine had taken another fifteen minutes to even get his sweater on and his jeans buttoned up, prolonged partially by the fact that Kurt had assisted him in dressing mostly by hiking the jeans up his legs and crawling into his lap to press a kiss to his mouth that turned into two and five and seventeen after a while. Kurt had sent Mercedes a preliminary text on the way, a hey boo, woke up late. be on chat soon. and then a follow up of bringing a guest ;)

Blaine’s in the kitchen messing with the tea kettle that Kurt had shown him how to use and he’s currently ruffling through his room in order to clear his bed enough that he and Blaine can both lay on it and see the screen if need be, and once it’s suitable he powers up his laptop and clicks open Skype, flopping onto his stomach on the bed and clicking the small leopard print lips that make up Mercedes’ icon.

“Hey, boo!” she greets, waving happily at him from her desk chair, “I hear you have a guest for me?”

“Mmm, I do-he’s busy right now,” Mercedes quirks an eyebrow at him like he’s hiding some devious secret from her, “oh my god-not like that!” He bats a hand at the computer screen and gives her his best incredulously taken aback face before explaining, “he’s making tea.”

Mercedes files softly at her nails with a hot pink filer and Blaine chooses that moment to poke his head into the doorway. “Who’s making tea?” Kurt sees him in the corner of his webcam screen with mugs in his hands, staring attentively at them as if to not let them fall until his thighs hit the side of Kurt’s bed and he hands one off to Kurt who takes it with a wide smile and a quick ‘thanks.’ Blaine gingerly climbs onto the bed, just sitting with his ass resting against Kurt’s side and his legs dangling inches from the floor, not lying down firstly because it’s not really that feasible with his hands full but also because he knows he’ll end up tangling his legs with Kurt’s and one thing will lead to another and this may be Kurt’s friend, but he’s not sure she’s ready for a show.

“Nice to meet you,” he says instead, waving a free hand as Mercedes looks up, and Kurt watches the way Mercedes eyes go wide with obvious interest. She’s thinking the same thing he was-Blaine is damn cute. And he is-hair up in sleepy loops still, though they’d both tried to smooth it down before they’d left the party this morning, and eyes bright in the easy strip of sun coming in between Kurt’s blinds.

“This is Blaine,” Kurt adds, taking a cautious sip of his tea, “special guest.” He flags the phrase with a one handed quotation mark and Blaine reaches his free hand out to toy with the hem of Kurt’s shirt in the background.

“Mm, special am I?” he jibes and Kurt fights the soft tingle that builds its way up through his gut at the feel of Blaine’s fingertips hitting his skin. Mercedes just laughs and Kurt raises a hand to his mouth as if he’s telling a secret.

“Just ignore him-“ he whispers, “he thinks he’s charming but it’s a lie.” She only laughs harder when Blaine retaliates with a smack to Kurt’s arm, laughing softly himself.

In the background of Mercedes screen he can hear voices, chattering back and forth with something about shoe shopping that means Mercedes will probably beg leave soon-the girl couldn’t resist a show sale to save her life. Though, he’s not really one to talk because neither can he as long as they’ve rummaged the right store.

For the next few minutes he sips heavily at his tea, scratched throat thankful for the soft slide of the hot liquid down his throat and up into his sinuses. Blaine chatters back and forth with Mercedes about running shoes and which kind she should buy if she isn’t really interested in running per say, and Kurt looks on, amused, until there’s a rampant knock at Mercedes’ door and a voice that sounds like her sister’s is shouting through that she’s ‘gonna get left behind if she don’t get her fly self downstairs right now.’

Kurt laughs, because he’s pretty sure she’s said the same to him a few times and it’s always made him smile, and when Mercedes rushes out a happy goodbye and a ‘keep safe, boo!’ he blows her a short kiss before letting her go. Once he’s logged out of Skype, he looks up and Blaine is looking down at him, mouth parted and eyes curious and warm. Before Kurt can move to shut the laptop, Blaine’s done it and set it gingerly onto the floor next to the empty cup of tea he’d finished a couple minutes ago, eyes locked with Kurt’s the whole duration.

After he’s settled, he takes Kurt’s mug with steady hands and places it on the floor, deaf to Kurt’s soft noise of protest. “Hi,” he says, rolling over Kurt who’s now propped up on an elbow until they’re chest to chest and touching all along the length of their limbs. Kurt can feel Blaine all around him like a blanket, like they’re overlapping planetary bodies, Blaine the moon eclipsing the light of his sun, except that it’s not as if it’s a metaphor for what they’ve got going here. Kurt’s not stifled in this, quite the opposite, and when Blaine dips down and kisses him, teeth wide against Kurt’s mouth, Kurt feels warm and safe and all those stupid emotions he used to dream he’d feel.

But most of all-most of all he feels crazy. Crazy, stupid, and loved.

part five