Wandering barefoot and yawning into the kitchen, idly pushing a hand through his messy bedhead, Blaine briefly thinks he's still dreaming - or has died in his sleep and gone to heaven - when he's confronted by a gorgeous man wearing only striped pyjama pants and a robe hanging open across his chest. Then reality quickly hits when Kurt lets out a squeak of horror and rushes to tie the cord tightly around his waist, while Blaine stares open-mouthed and wide-eyed. "Sorry, I'm so sorry, I thought I'd be the only one awake," he says hastily, a blush creeping up his neck and into his cheeks, eyes cast down in embarrassment.
"Don't worry," Blaine manages to force out with an encouraging smile, entire body still whispering Oh my God he's devastating. "You've got nothing to be ashamed of." Kurt blushes even deeper, but he smiles and lifts his gaze to meet Blaine's.
"I'm just used to not wearing much to bed, Rachel and Santana got used to it," he says apologetically.
"It's easy to forget Tina and I are even here," Blaine soothes him, taking a glass down from the shelf and filling it with ice with a noisy rattling.
"I have been staying quite a lot," Kurt admits softly. "You know what it's like at the start of a new relationship, you want to spend all your time together and my parents aren't exactly sold on Walter, so we've been spending a lot of time here. Pam's such an angel, she doesn't mind."
"Well get used to company when you come down, I'm an early riser," Blaine says, and Kurt smiles softly at him. "And a voluntary one. Tina loves it, her and Artie can sleep an extra twenty minutes in the morning and wake up to breakfast already made for them. Every morning."
"Wow, want to live with me next year?" Kurt asks, and Blaine laughs as he opens the fridge, smiling at the two orange juice bottles side-by-side - Walter likes pulp, Pam can't stand it. It's familiar. "My roommates spend at least thirty minutes every morning fighting over who gets the first shower, the one that doesn't win goes sulking back to bed and then they fight about who hid whose muesli mixture." Shaking his head, he says, "I love them, but they're hellish to live with. Maybe without me they'll have found a way to cope with each other." Hearing the wistful affection in his voice, Blaine nudges closer to him under the guise of getting a pan from the cupboard.
They cook breakfast side by side, handing each other knives and spatulas, and it feels shockingly domestic. Caught up in the maybe fantasy of being able to press Kurt back against the counter and lean up to kiss him, eyes misting over when he thinks about undoing the tight knot bobbing with every movement, Blaine is stunned back to reality when Kurt starts as a pair of arms slide around from behind, laughing as Walter tugs him closer and kisses his shoulder. "Good morning," he murmurs, and Blaine can't help the spike of jealousy, followed almost immediately by the joy at seeing his father so happy. Love seems to have made him younger somehow, eyes bright and face softened with a smile.
"Good morning, good morning!" Tina sings loudly as she walks in, already fully-dressed in bright colours and tying a bright yellow ribbon around the end of her ponytail, beaming at Kurt. "It's already a lovely day, let's take breakfast outside, Blaine!"
But Blaine is watching Kurt turn around in Walter's arms and kiss him softly, conscious of the other people in the room. "So what are your plans today?" he asks sweetly, hands running gently up Walter's arms to his shoulders. "I've been looking forward to a lazy morning, then there's a lunch with Santana and Brittany's parents for the lucky wedding party, and I managed to get San to agree that I could bring to you."
"Kurt, sweetheart, I'd love to, but I have to work," Walter says, and Kurt's face falls, a shadow casting over his eyes. "You know I want to get to know your friends, but I need to wrap up some loose ends so I can take July off and spend time with everyone. There'll be other lunches for me to come to."
"I guess," Kurt says, but all the shine has gone from him, and he disappears back upstairs with his black coffee, the sound of the door closing dramatic in the tense silence. Shovelling his and Tina's food onto plates, Blaine ducks outside before the moment grows any more awkward, the dry grass tickling his bare feet and the sun already warming the ground.
"Wow, trouble in paradise," Tina says, taking a seat and putting her feet up in Blaine's lap, curling a lock of hair around her fingers. "I wouldn't think anyone would get so upset about something like that. Kurt seems like he's really sure of your dad, probably loves him."
"Everyone has hang-ups when they're in relationships, Tay," Blaine says, tipping her feet off and ignoring her affronted squawk. "For instance, I worry about actually being in one because Dave and I weren't exactly serious and I don't know how things would be if I was serious about someone. I might find out I can't commit. You've got one too, I'm sure."
"Always worried that Artie would forget about me with his career, but given that I had seven texts from him when I woke up, I doubt it," she says, and stretches luxuriously, wiggling her toes. "What are we going to do today?"
"You have to go home at some point," Blaine reminds her, and can't help but laugh at the disappointment that crosses her face. "I'm going to unpack everything properly and then email Six Flags to see if they have any free performance spots for the summer."
"God, you are so grown-up and boring," Tina says, rolling her eyes. "Can't you even take a week off? Your need to be constantly busy worries me. It'll make you go grey early, you know." Smacking at her legs and making her squeal, Blaine turns when he hears the door open and close again to see Kurt heading towards them, now dressed in a pale grey T-shirt with NEW YORK ACADEMY FOR THE DRAMATIC ARTS splashed across the chest in bright red and the tightest jeans Blaine has ever seen on anyone. His heart starts to beat a little faster, and he hastily looks down at his food.
"Do either of you want to come to this wedding party lunch with me?" he asks, leaning on the table and smiling down, looking for all the world like some untouchable model straight off the runway with his long legs stretched out in front of him and hair falling in his eyes in the sunlight. "I know I could go alone, but San's dragging her feet about invitations and I think if I take one of Walter's family along she'll invite you all."
"Count me out, Artie promised to Skype when he has a free moment and I actually need to go home today, if only to catch up with my parents before coming back here," Tina says, brushing crumbs off her skirt. "Blaine will go, then he can't be boring and grown-up on our first day back at home."
Flushing and giving her a glare, Blaine gulps to wet his dry throat when he looks up into Kurt's hopeful smile. "Will you really come?" he asks sweetly, a note of desperation creeping into his voice. "It's only Breadstix, you don't have to dress up at all, but I'm sure if Santana meets you and sees how wonderful you are she'll invite you to the wedding. She might even grant you a plus one - though I'd be desperately jealous of anyone who managed to hook someone as lovely as you." He winks then, and Blaine wonders for a second if he'll ever breathe again, with this extraordinarily gorgeous man actually flirting with him.
"What time is the table booked for, and how many people are going?" he asks softly, and he sees the way Kurt's eyes light up, ignoring the voice deep inside him that begins to whisper about how bad an idea this is, about everything that could go wrong, about how many people stand to get hurt if he chases the feelings that are making his heart pound and the blush creep gently up his neck.
Smiling now, looser than before, pale limbs and bright eyes and slender waist, Kurt says, "Booked for two, and there won't be too many people there. Santana and her mom, Brittany and her parents, Rachel and her boyfriend, Jesse, Quinn and her boyfriend, Noah, and me. Nothing overwhelming, they're all very friendly, and the screaming matches are reserved for times outside of the public eye."
Glancing at Tina out of the corner of his eye, Blaine sees her give him a barely perceptible nod, and a Go and get him gesture of her head. Refraining from rolling his eyes at her, he looks up at Kurt - momentarily dazzled - and says, "I'd love to. Give me time to shower and change and fix my hair, though, I don't want your friends thinking you want them to invite some scruffy guy to their wedding."
"As if you could look like anything but a man straight out of classic Hollywood, Blaine," Kurt says, and ruffles his hair gently before he darts away, back into the house. Eyes glued to his gently swaying hips, Blaine doesn't notice Tina tugging on his arm until she pulls a little too hard and iced tea sloshes out of his glass onto his arm, prompting him to turn around and finally notice her wide eyes.
"Is he hitting on you?!" she asks in a loud, scandalised whisper. "You can't encourage him! He's your dad's boyfriend, it's wrong on so many levels! I want to go to a wedding with my handsome boyfriend on my arm as much as the next girl, but not if it comes at a price of you flirting with someone who is extremely taken!"
Brushing crumbs off his shirt, Blaine simply replies, "You know a lot of naturally flirtatious people, Tina. I think that Kurt is just flirty by nature, he's not doing it because it's me specifically. I saw him and my dad kissing last night - I know they're in love." Waving a hand vaguely around, as if trying to snatch the words from the air, he finally says, "It was like watching two characters in a film kiss for the first time when you hadn't thought of them together before, and then when their lips meet you just get it. Besides, I saw the expression on Kurt's face when my dad said he couldn't go to this lunch - you don't look like that if you're only in it casually."
"Okay, but don't dress up too nicely, or I'll start a gossip chain that will quickly wind its way around our friends," Tina says sternly, and Blaine is certain that she isn't joking. Luckily, she can't see the way his heart jumps and his breath catches in his throat when Kurt breezes out onto the lawn again, face softened by love with Walter's guiding arm around his waist. It seems like the world was made only for them, the lovers, as they smile into each other's eyes in that secretive way that only comes of love.
Blaine finds himself watching them, wondering what he's missed out on in years past without the dizzying experience of a first love, without dating someone who made his eyes light up with wheeling fireworks, without the sort of love where a look could move mountains. Dave was nice, they had fun together, they lost their virginities to each other and shared blushing, nervous experiences in dark back seats, but that wasn't love and they both knew it. Blaine knows he wasn't the only one to breathe a sigh of relief when their relationship melted back into friendship as easily as it had boiled into romance.
But to have never experienced what his father now has, with someone as beautiful and sweet and striking as Kurt - it clenches at his heart like an icy fist, reminding him that he hasn't kissed someone since breaking up with Dave, that it's been too long since he felt the swoop of desire in his stomach, that his mind is wound so tightly around the idea of being in love that perhaps he'll never truly feel it.
Finishing breakfast, Blaine dodges inside and drags Tina with him despite her protests, leaving the happy couple on the lawn alone, to be freely affectionate and love each other. Thoughts twisting like snakes around each other, Blaine turns the shower on until it roars and drives out all other sound, letting the pounding water scald away the pleasing hum of want beneath his skin and the whispering malevolent thoughts haunting him, stepping out of the shower and humming to himself as he briskly towels himself dry and pads along to his room.
In the hour it takes to style his hair and choose an outfit, he glances out of the window exactly twelve times, and each time sees Kurt and Walter closer than they were before, culminating in catching a split-second glimpse of them kissing once again. As he angles his mirror so he can knot his bowtie - black, patterned with silver music notes, a gift from Lorraine when he was accepted to NYU - he can't help but wonder what kissing Kurt would be like, a wandering of his mind. Though he tells himself it's the same as thinking what it would feel like to kiss Adam Levine or a cute waiter in a restaurant, it's really, really not.
Thinking innocently about kissing a celebrity or a stranger is fun. If thinking about Kurt's soft lips against his and the way he would gasp so sweetly and the splintered whimper that would drop from his swollen lips as Blaine parted them with his tongue and his long fingers clutching and threading into Blaine's hair was innocent...if it was nothing more than a cool consideration of the possibilities of a physical relationship with someone he finds attractive, that would be okay. But it's not, because his heart shifts and his fingers tremble, and he knows that this could be so much deeper than the physical if he lets himself fall any further.
Kurt stares at him with wide eyes and an incredulous smile when he finally joins them in the kitchen, where Tina is swinging her legs perched on the counter and chattering nineteen to the dozen, waving her hands wildly to illustrate a point. As those eyes slowly drag up his body, Blaine fights down the blush and wonders what it is about tight grey jeans and the simple white polo that makes Kurt's eyes go dark like that. "I'm honoured to be showing up to the lunch with someone as lovely as you," he says softly, and Blaine blushes, feeling his cheeks go hot as Kurt laughs softly, a huffed breath of merriment. "I just have to change my shirt, okay? Can't go to lunch with the parents of those I'm going to be managing the big day of dressed like a slob."
The moment Kurt vanishes upstairs with a swing of his hips in those jeans - so tight they're like a second skin, Jesus - Walter takes Blaine by the shoulder, eyes earnest and face set. "Thank you for going with him," he says, and Blaine just nods, helpless to say anything. "I don't know all the details, but Kurt's been burned badly before, and I'm the first man he's gotten serious with since. You have no idea how big this is for me, Blaine. I'm so glad you're accepting of this."
"Sure, Dad," Blaine says with a smile, and Walter looks down at him with a kind of wistfulness in his gaze before he breaks away. Checking his phone constantly, Blaine finally smiles when Kurt sweeps back into the kitchen, his deep green shirt unbuttoned just enough to draw attention to his long neck and a silvery-grey neckerchief tied neatly. Glancing at his neck, Blaine wonders if he's just imagining the shadow of a lovebite, and covers the silence by loudly saying, "We better go if we have to be there by two. I really am excited to meet your friends."
"Oh honey, they'll love you," Kurt says, and links an arm through Blaine's, the corner of his mouth twisted up in a smirk. "You're a charmer." Car keys jingling where they're hooked into his waistband, Kurt leans over to kiss Walter, perhaps a little deeper than he should in polite company. "I'll call you later, babe. Love you."
It's so easy, as Walter replies, "Love you too," and Kurt tugs Blaine out of the house. Settling into Kurt's car, Blaine gazes at the scenery drifting lazily past, trying to avoid eye contact. Kurt has disturbed him, stirred him up, and he feels like he could boil over, just with proximity. He can smell Kurt's sharp cologne, the hairspray, see the sharply-ironed creases in his shirt.
He thanks whatever deity is listening for small mercies when Kurt plugs in his iPod to fill the empty silence, listening to the clicking of him perusing the selection until he finally pauses and smiles. "I hope you like showtunes," he says sweetly, and the familiar opening notes of No Good Deed fill the car. Smiling, Blaine rolls the window down and lets the breeze carry him away, listening to Kurt's crystal clear voice finding every note, in awe of such a blazing talent burning like the sun right in front of him. NYADA is truly lucky to have him.
When they pull into the Breadstix parking lot, Blaine is shortly overwhelmed by Kurt's friends. Four women all crowd around him as soon as he gets out of the car, throwing their arms around him as if they haven't seen each other for months. Introductions leave him reeling - Rachel is the tiny brunette in a short skirt, who kisses his cheek and leaves lipstick behind. Quinn is the blonde holding the hand of the man with a mohawk, who waves and smiles. Brittany is the frazzled-looking blonde curling a lock of hair around her fingers, who hugs him and thanks him for coming in a slightly strained voice. Santana is the most glamorous, dangerous-looking, and her eyes sweep over him and she smirks as he says, "I need your boyfriend's plastic surgeon's number, Hummel. A miracle has been performed."
"Don't be a bitch," Kurt snaps, and Santana actually withdraws. "This is Blaine, Walter's stepson. Walter is working today, so Blaine agreed to come with me. I thought if you actually met some of Walter's family, you'd stop digging your heels in about inviting them. They can round out the numbers."
The table waiting for them is spread along the back of the restaurant, and Blaine shakes hands with the parents of the two brides - they all smile at him and comment on his good looks, casting unreadable glances at Kurt. Once they've ordered, the conversation quickly turns to the wedding, and Blaine absorbs it all like a sponge. He watches Santana and Brittany, the way they sit so close and tangled their fingers gently. The ring Brittany is wearing is simple and elegant, and Blaine thinks about how it might look if he was wearing a ring like that, given by someone he could truly love. His thoughts flit towards Kurt, and then away again. He can't have feelings for Kurt, or he'll just torture himself.
Kurt drops him home after the lunch, and Blaine is reeling as Kurt hugs him, lips brushing gently against his cheek and arms tight around him, comforting. "Thank you," he says softly. "I didn't want to go alone. You saw Santana and Brittany, and Rachel and Jesse, and Quinn and Puck. They're all so happy, I can't bear to be the one who isn't. They'll all be whispering now, talking about trouble in paradise and how I should never have gone out with someone so much older in the first place. Of all the fucking things to talk about-"
"Kurt," Blaine murmurs, and gently strokes Kurt's back, feeling his spine shifting, bending into the touch. "Calm down. People are going to judge you everywhere you go, but you can ignore them. You don't have to listen to what they say."
"I know." Kurt's voice sounds choked, as if he's about to cry or laugh, and Blaine's heart drops like a stone to hear it. "But you don't understand what it's like. All my friends are whispering behind my back, talking about the bad decisions I'm making. I can't take my boyfriend to stay at my house, because my parents stare and look at each other and they worry that I'm being taken advantage of. No one understands, they all think I'm making a huge mistake."
"You're not," Blaine assures him firmly, and Kurt moves back, looking at him with huge, wet eyes. "My dad has never been anything but loving and sweet towards my mom, and I know just from looking at the two of you how he feels about you. He's an amazing man, and I know you love him. You have to ignore what they say and just live in the moment, have this experience for yourself. If you love my dad, you can make it work."
"Oh, Blaine, honey," Kurt says, and his voice is choked now, a barely noticeable quiver at the corner of his mouth. "You're so naive."