Chapter 1: Cute
Today, I kissed a guy for the first time. The thing is, we just became stepbrothers a few weeks ago. And he used to have a crush on me. And I kinda rejected him then. FML
Finn stared at the computer screen. He deleted the two short lines of text, wishing it were that easy to delete what had happened.
Finn kissed Kurt.
No, really. He kissed Kurt. Not like a brotherly-but-still-weird-and-awkward smack on the cheek, and not like a drunken we'll-never-speak-of-this-again-because-it-was-the-Jäger-talking kiss, either. He'd been sitting on his side of the room doing homework, and Kurt had been sitting cross legged on his bed, on his side of the room. He was humming quietly in his high, clear voice and flipping through a magazine, looking unusually casual—and also unusually small and delicate—in a t-shirt and a pair of pajama pants he'd borrowed from Finn because all of his were at the dry cleaners. And Finn remembered thinking that 'Who dry cleans their pajamas?' would have been a perfectly acceptable thought, and that 'Wow, he looks so cute in my clothes' was not. And then Kurt had caught him staring.
Kurt quirked a smile at him, that snarky one-sided grin that wasn't a full-on bitch face, but something more genuine that he reserved for friends and family. Finn's heart skipped a beat and he wondered why.
"Something on my face, Finn?"
"Uhh…no? Could you…could you hum a little quieter is all? I'm having trouble with this math problem and it's distracting."
"Oh," Kurt said, instantly serious and concerned. He got up and walked across the room, the sleeves of Finn's flannel shirt falling right over his hands so that just the tips of his fingers were showing, barely. The neckline was too wide as well, even if Kurt hadn't forgotten to button the top button, which he had. It showed rather a bit more of Kurt's shoulders and collarbones than Finn was used to seeing; he was usually very covered up, even in the spring, and Finn had never seen him during the summer. He wondered idly if Kurt liked to run shirtless through the sprinklers—woah, stop right there! I mean…brotherly thought. That was brotherly. I was thinking it'd be fun to have someone to hang out with this summer, and that's what I do, so yeah…that. Brotherly.
Finn realized he was staring again when Kurt cleared his throat a little awkwardly. Finn jerked his eyes up to meet Kurt's, and saw a weird mix of self-consciousness and worry.
"Finn? Seriously, is something wrong? You're acting a little spaced out, even for you."
"Uhh…I'm fine. Just…the math. It's hard."
"Oh," said Kurt, not sounding entirely convinced. He shrugged. "Well, scoot over and let me see, maybe I can help. It's not my best subject, but..."
Finn didn't catch the end of that sentence, if there was one, because Kurt was shoving him over, making space for himself on Finn's bed. On Finn's bed. Finn nearly fell off the edge of the mattress trying to keep from touching him, and Kurt raised an eyebrow.
"Relax," he said, sounding a bit snippy, "It's not contagious."
Finn felt ashamed immediately.
"N-no, it's not that, I—"
"Finn," Kurt interrupted quietly, looking down at his hands, "It's okay if you're uncomfortable. I know it's a lot to get used to, and I understand. I can accept that. Just…" he looked up, "don't lie to me about it, okay? Brothers shouldn't lie to each other."
Finn swallowed the words on the tip of his tongue. Brothers shouldn't think about how cute their brothers look in their pajamas, either. But Kurt had said he wanted him to be honest.
"Yeah, okay. I won't lie, I'm uncomfortable." Kurt looked away, and Finn felt compelled to continue. "Just…not for the reasons you think okay?"
Kurt looked back—seriously, it was like he was a cartoon with all the looking—and his expression was confused. Like everything else about him in the last bizarre ten minutes, it was really cute.
"What reasons?"
"Don't worry about it." Finn felt his face twisting into that awkward, automatic grin he hated: the fake one that was a dead giveaway to anyone who knew him well that something was really wrong. Surely Kurt didn't know him that well yet, though—
"Finn, you have your gassy infant face on."
Finn scowled. "Gah, could you please not call it that? Freaking Santana—I do not look like a gassy infant! It's just my uncomfortable face!"
He was gesticulating a little wildly, and sitting too close to the edge of the bed. He overbalanced, flailed for a minute, and then toppled off the other side, landing in a cursing heap on the floor while Kurt tried to stifle his laughter behind his flannel sleeve-covered hands. Finn hauled himself up, trying and failing to maintain a glare as he took in the sight of his stepbrother.
He was actually rolling on Finn's bed, curling in on himself, knees clutched to his chest and face tucked under his arms, attempting and failing to stifle the peals of laughter escaping him. His hair was messy and sticking up with static. He was the cutest thing Finn had ever seen.
Dammit! Stop stop stop…think of the mail man or something!
But that wasn't going to work, and he knew it. The mail man scenario was for a completely different kind of feeling: the hot and bothered kind. And at the moment, Kurt wasn't making him feel hot and bothered, just…warm and fuzzy. In a way that wasn't entirely brotherly.
Oh brother.
He crawled back onto the bed and sat, waiting patiently for Kurt to calm down. When the laughing fit finally subsided, Kurt sat up, unfurling and brushing tears from his eyes with the sleeves of Finn's shirt while trying to catch his breath.
"I'm sorry," he said. "You were just so funny. You looked like a baby bird getting pushed out of the nest for the first time."
Finn couldn't help but grin at that. Baby bird was better than gassy infant, right?
"So, let's look at this math homework, shall we?" He pulled Finn's math book towards him, glancing between the page in the book and the problems on Finn's paper. He frowned.
"Finn…you've done this entire thing wrong."
Finn groaned. "Great. Help me?" He scooted closer to Kurt, leaning over his shoulder to look at his hopeless math assignment. The only problem was, once he was there he couldn't think about math. He couldn't think about anything all of a sudden except the fact that some of Kurt's static-y hair was tickling his neck. Oh wow, he thought, Kurt's hair is soft. And it smells really good, too. Like a girl's. But not really. Just…really, really good.
Without thinking about it, he ducked his head and buried his face in Kurt's hair, bringing his arms up to wrap around Kurt's shoulders, pinning him against his body, back to chest.
He felt Kurt freeze against him.
"Finn, what—"
"Dunno," Finn mumbled with his usual level of eloquence. "Your hair just smells nice. And you look really cute in my shirt."
He felt Kurt take a long, unsteady breath.
"I don't…" he started to whimper, but Finn stopped him. He didn't think about it. He just turned Kurt in his arms—he was so easy to move; he was about as heavy and resistant as a rag doll—and kissed him softly but firmly on the lips. Kurt brought his hands up within the circle of Finn's arms to press them against his chest, as if to push the other boy away.
Except that he didn't push him away. When his hands made contact with Finn's chest, he froze again…and then melted.
He kissed Finn back. Enthusiastically.
And there was suddenly no way Finn could pretend that this was in any way brotherly. It wasn't just warm and fuzzy anymore, either. Kurt was kissing him in a way that did have him thinking desperately of the mail man, his hands clenched into fists around the fabric of Finn's shirt, pulling him closer. The taller boy had just enough time to be surprised that small, soft-spoken Kurt could be so aggressive before he was shoved roughly away.
For a moment, there were only the sounds of two teenage boys getting their breath back. Finn stared at his lap as he willed his heartbeat to return to its normal, sub-sonic tempo. After what seemed like a very long silence, he dared to glance up.
Kurt was on the other end of the bed, knees drawn up to his chest again with his arms crossed on top of them, pointed little chin resting on his forearm. He wasn't looking at Finn; he was staring straight ahead with his lips pressed into a thin line and his brow furrowed slightly.
"Kurt?" Finn's voice was husky; he cleared his throat, and reached out to lay a hand on Kurt's shoulder. "Kurt, I-"
SMACK.
Finn reeled back, a hand over his face where Kurt had slapped him, and stared helplessly as Kurt jumped up from the bed and ran out of the room without a word, slamming the door behind him.
Author's Note: Oh my lovely readers...this started as a one-shot. I don't even know what prompted it. It just fell into my head. And so I wrote it down, and then I realized I wanted some closure. So now I'm halfway through chapter 2. It will probably be a four-or-five chapter thing at most, but then again, that's what I thought about Music for A Song. :P
-The Raisin Girl
