"Blaine."

Snapping his eyes up from where he had been staring off towards the corner of Kurt's room, Blaine looked up, almost sheepishly, at his boyfriend. "Mm?"

Kurt's face was a little guarded, eyes narrowed just slightly as he always got whenever he was deep in thought, or trying to figure something out. He shifted on the bed, where he was sitting cross-legged, turning the pages of the July Vogue issue and placing color-coded post-it notes along the edges of them so he could look back at them later. "You seem preoccupied," he pointed out. "I asked what your thoughts were on this zebra print on a handbag."

"Oh." Blaine licked his lips and leaned over, resting back on his elbow and angling his body towards the magazine, squinting down at it upside-down. "No," he finally concluded, making a face and glancing up at Kurt, whose eyes were trained on his face, as if his opinion mattered the most. It warmed his chest a little. "Tacky."
Kurt's face relaxed. "Exactly," he said, in relief, it seemed, and slid his finger across the page, folding it until he flipped it over, his mouth turned into a lazy smile. Blaine cleared his throat.

"Um…Kurt?"

"Hmm?" was the reply he got, and Blaine nibbled on his lower lip for a moment, sliding his slightly sweaty hands—it was mid-July and the heat was intense lately, as well as the slight anguish for what he was going to ask—down his khacki-covered thighs as he figured out a proper way to ask this. "I was wondering if…well, you see…"

The fumbling, in retrospect, must have been what made Kurt look up, eyebrows lifted the slightest bit as he waited, patiently, for him to continue. Blaine let out a puff of breath through his lips, feeling more than seeing his face flush in anticipation. "Okay, so, I was wondering if we could—if you could—you know," he lifted a hand and motioned vaguely at his own neck, not really meeting his eyes. "Give me a hickey."

There was dead silence for a few moments after that, in which not a sound was heard; not even the creak of the bed in which they were laying, nor the sound of paper rustling. Blaine felt as if his stomach was about to slide right up his throat from the way that it was twisting up in nerves inside of him. He chanced a glance up at Kurt's face; it was mostly…surprised. Lips parted somewhat, and eyebrows still raised a fraction as he observed him. Then it quickly morphed into a sarcastic one, eyes flickering back to his magazine as he turned the page over. "A hickey?" he repeated, voice dripping with irony.

It really was doing nothing for Blaine's nerves.

"Well…yes," he finally said, voice a little quieter than before, watching his boyfriend's forehead, and the slant of his nose as the other kept reading the magazine.

"Why?"

This was the question he'd been hoping to avoid. Mostly because it was just plain…embarrassing more than anything, and it made Blaine feel like a thirteen year old all over again, trying to find out what kissing was like. Sometimes it was hard to forget that all of this was new for Kurt, too. He cleared his throat. "I've just kind of… always wanted one," he said honestly.
Kurt looked up, then, assessing him carefully. "But why?"

Blaine lifted his right hand up to rub his palm against the back of his neck, beneath his slightly longer curls than usual, due for a haircut before school started up again, where he was just the slightest bit sweaty from the summer heat in Kurt's room. "I just—I don't know how to explain it," he mumbled, definitely blushing now. "It's just something—something I've always wanted to do, you know?"

The other boy was pursing his lips at him a little, glancing sideways, his long, pale finger tracing a line down the edge of the magazine over his deep red comforter. "But won't people…know?" he asked quietly, in return. Blaine looked up at him, dropping his hand back down again. "Yeah, that's…that's the thing." Kurt looked at him like he was insane, and he quickly backtracked. "I just mean… Okay, look. It's just always been this thing at school, you know? Guys would come to school on Monday mornings, or show up at Warbler practice on Saturday mornings with hickeys on their necks, and you'd just know that they'd been making out with their girlfriends."

Judging by his face, Kurt still didn't get it.

"And all of us would tease them about it, right? Like, 'oh, hey, man, had fun this weekend?' and of course they'd shove us off and we'd all have a laugh about it but—maybe it's stupid but I kinda want that, too, you know?" Blaine looked up at Kurt hopefully, searching his face. "The rest of the guys knowing that I do stuff, too. Being in on the joke, if you may."

There was another long pause in which Kurt watched him carefully, something like amusement tugging at the corners of his mouth, and Blaine felt very, very self-conscious. Then Kurt pressed his lips together through a smile and shrugged somewhat. "Okay."

"Okay?" Blaine repeated, eyebrows rising a little on his forehead. Kurt nodded. "Yeah, sure. Do you want it now, or?" He caught his eye with a soft smile, leaning back on his elbow as well, motioning to the bed between them, and Blaine swallowed. "Uh…yeah, okay. Sure."

"Well, I just mean, since you're going out with Wes and David tonight…"

"No, yeah, now works," Blaine said quickly, clearing his throat and shifting his body forward, not sure what to do now. Kurt swiftly folded the magazine closed and reached behind him to place it over the bedside table next to them, before he crawled over to the edge of the bed, patting the spot next to them. With a quick glance at the only semi-closed door of Kurt's room, Blaine scrambled over to follow his boyfriend, taking a seat next to him.
Kurt angled his body towards him, eyes trailing down his neck—he could feel his gaze almost burning into it—as if assessing his working area, and biting down on his lower lip as he did so; Blaine's heart was thudding hard against his chest. Kurt looked up at him, still visibly amused. "Is there any preference as to where?" he asked him lightly, and Blaine shook his head, eying him for a moment before leaning away a little.
"…you don't think it's stupid, right?" he asked him, just a little self-consciously, again. Kurt broke out into a smile and chuckled softly at him, reaching up to tug his hand over his lap and hold it in his, shaking his head.
"I think it's adorable," he replied, giving it a squeeze, his eyes twinkling. "I think you're adorable."

The familiar words said back to him made Blaine blush a little and chuckle at him, shaking his head and shrugging, as Kurt watched him fondly. "Okay, go for it," he finally said, cracking his neck a little before looking straight ahead. From the corner of his eye, he saw Kurt smile before leaning in, reaching up to cup the right side of his neck with his left hand and tilt his face further into his neck, breathing warm against his skin as he ghosted his lips over the area, as if testing it out.

Blaine clenched his hand on the comforter on the other side of him, holding his breath somewhat in anticipation, before Kurt was pressing his mouth at a spot just a little bit south of his jaw, at a small angle from his Adam's apple—on a place which wouldn't be covered by any sort of summer clothes, nor would be hidden in shadow from the angle of his jaw. Sometimes, he really loved Kurt.

Kurt's lips parted over the area, as he did whenever they had lightly tried kissing elsewhere other than their mouths, and he attached his mouth to it before sucking a little. It felt good; warm, and the teasing edge of Kurt's adorably small teeth behind his soft lips, and Blaine hummed a little, happily.

"I've never done this before," Kurt mumbled against his neck, the vibrations of his voice sending a shiver up Blaine's spine, and sucked a little harder at his neck, with purpose. Blaine could almost picture the way that Kurt's face must be scrunched up, brow furrowed in concentration as he strived to achieve his goal. He lifted his free hand up to Kurt's waist, rubbing his thumb across the material of his shirt, there. "You're doing well," he managed to reply, a little breathily. "Really well."

It was hotter than he had imagined it would be; the actual act of getting a hickey. Maybe it was because apparently his neck was an extremely sensitive spot when it came to these things, or because it was a hickey nonetheless, or simply because it was Kurt's mouth in contact with any part of his body—or perhaps just a combination of the three, but Blaine was getting a little antsy with it.

The sucking turned to light nibbling as Kurt got fed up with trying to suck at it, apparently, and then his tongue was there, too, hot—oh, so hot—and wet and licking over the slowly forming bruise that was just on the side of painful, as his mouth worked at it. Blaine was no expert on hickeys; he knew the mechanics of it, but not the specifics.

After what seemed like an eternity, and in which Blaine had gotten increasingly hard in his pants, Kurt finally pulled back with a satisfied smack of his lips against his neck, and reached up with the edge of his sleeve to wipe away the excess saliva on his skin. "There," he announced proudly, rubbing his thumb over the spot which he had been sucking at on his neck. His bright eyes flicked up to look at him with a smirk. "That should last."

Blaine licked his own lips, flicking his eyes down to Kurt's bright red, slightly swollen mouth, and smiled at him before leaning in a little faster than usual, with a little more drive, to kiss him heatedly, dragging his lower lip into his mouth and prolonging it for as long as he could, ignoring Kurt's surprised whimper and the way his hand was squeezing tight at his own.

They pulled back after a few moments, their breaths slightly bated, and their cheeks very much flushed. Kurt turned his eyes from Blaine's to his neck for a moment, and then back again.

"How does it look?" Blaine asked, breathless, reaching up to touch something he couldn't very well feel. Kurt bit his lip. "It looks like a hickey."

"Good," he replied, leaning in to kiss Kurt's cheek softly. "Thank you," he whispered honestly, after a moment, into his ear, squeezing his hand back before pulling away with a smile.

It was at moments like these, when they could be open with each other about little things that they wanted that sometimes they were too afraid, or awkward about to say out loud, that made them work. That made their summer pretty perfect.

And then, when Blaine showed up at David's house for pizza night, and David would 'ooh' at him and clap him on the back as Wes snickered as discreetly as he could into the sleeve of his shirt, and Jeff, who had also showed up, would start teasing him about Kurt, Kurt, Kurt, Blaine would duck his head a little, blush, and smile to himself.

Because, really, he was the luckiest boy in the world.