Disclaimer: I do not own Jane or Kurt or Blindspot. Writing about them is simply the outlet for my obsession.

The first thing they noticed when Kurt opened the bedroom door and then stood aside so that Jane could go out into the hall first was that it was very quiet. Earlier there had been the faint sound of dishes clanking and Sarah and Sawyer's voices, but Jane and Kurt been so wrapped up in each other for the last little while that they'd failed to notice that those noises had stopped.

Jane stopped at the end of the hall, turning to look to her right where the wall turned right, as the hall opened into the small living area and the kitchen beyond it. The room was empty. Kurt stopped just behind her, his left hand coming to rest lightly on her hip and his head turning toward the kitchen from over her left shoulder.

"I guess they decided not to wait for us today," he said quietly, with a chuckle. "Which is okay with me." She smiled, glancing at him out of the corner of her eye. His face was close beside hers, she noticed.

"I'll be right back," she said, leaning away, though reluctantly, because it meant that his hand dropped from her hip as she walked toward the bathroom to their left. When she emerged a few minutes later, he was standing exactly where she'd left him, looking at her.

"What're you doing?" she asked, surprised to find him in the same place, now leaning against the wall.

He shrugged. "Waiting for you," he said.

She walked toward him slowly, stopping less than a foot in front of him, but still far enough away that he had the urge to pull her closer, his hands finding hers as if acting of their own accord. "Dork," she whispered, and watched as his face changed to surprise and mock indignation.

"I was going for charming. Or at least cute," he growled slightly, bringing his face closer to hers but maintaining enough of a distance that there was still space between them. She laughed quietly, unable to keep up the serious façade any longer.

"And you are both of those things," she replied soothingly. "But… also a little dorky." The way she said it, it seemed like a good thing, even though he had his doubts. He wasn't quite sure how he felt about it.

"I think Sarah left us a note," Jane told him, changing the subject as she looked over his shoulder into the kitchen.

"You check on that, I'll be right back," Kurt said. Nodding, she let go of his hands and walked past him slowly to the table as he disappeared into the bathroom.

Sarah had, indeed, left them a note.

Sorry guys, Sawyer couldn't wait for you today. He woke me up at 6 wanting to get ready, and I couldn't hold him off long. I know you got in late last night, so I didn't think you'd appreciate getting up that early. And FYI, he called you 'super slow' and said he couldn't 'waste his beach time waiting' for you. He does, however, want you to meet us at the beach as soon as you can. Also, Kurt, he said, "prepare to be buried." No idea where he got that from. :) So don't stare at each other too long… come meet us at the beach! Same place as yesterday.

Sarah

Kurt had come back from the bathroom and walked up behind her while she'd stood, rereading Sarah's note and chuckling to herself over being called 'super slow' and Sawyer's apparent concern over wasting his beach time. Kurt once again leaned forward over her shoulder to read as well, his arms wrapping gently around her waist. He could easily have stood beside her instead, and for just a second she had a flashback to the black tie op they'd been on a long time ago, under cover as a husband and wife assassin team.

She'd been wearing a multi-million dollar diamond necklace that was their payment to Rich Dotcom for the stolen WitSec list. For a second, she felt the weight of it on her neck again. As long ago as it had been, the details of that day were imprinted into her memory, perhaps better than those of any other op.Kurt had stood behind her to unfasten the necklace, and then, instead of stepping around her to give it to Dotcom, he'd leaned forward, closer to her, to hand it to him from behind her.

At the time, she'd wondered if that was just part of the act. So much of what had happened between them that day had felt so real, at least to her – as if it was the most natural thing in the world for them to be so close to each other… and when she looked in his eyes, she'd sworn he'd felt something between them, too. Of course, that had been part of the op: to make a convincing husband and wife. They hadn't talked about it, of course, what had and hadn't been real. Then again, it wasn't only that day that he'd looked at her that way. No, he had looked at her that way most days, she realized.

Today, on the other hand, she didn't have to wonder – when he leaned into her, she could enjoy it. It was real.

She had another fleeting thought then, about another necklace. The small gold circle with the tiny green stone in the middle, the one that Kurt had given her for what he'd thought at the time was her birthday. It had been Taylor's birthday, they just hadn't yet known that she wasn't Taylor. It was the necklace that Emma Shaw had bought for her daughter.

Someone else's daughter, someone else's birthday.

She'd never found out what had happened to that necklace after she'd been arrested, tortured… she knew that it was silly to feel sad about losing it, because it hadn't ever been hers – not really – but she still felt its absence on her neck once in a while, when she thought about it. That necklace had been so important to her, for several reasons. First, because Kurt had given it to her, and second, because it was one of the few things she had that wasn't courtesy of the FBI. Still, she told herself not for the first time, she wouldn't mourn a necklace. Especially not now, when she had something so much better. She pushed it from her thoughts, and concentrated on what she did have – Kurt, pressed close to her.

Now he leaned into her back, similarly to how he had at Rich Dotcom's party. He was reading Sarah's note, which she held in her hand, over her shoulder. They were wearing their pajamas, not a fancy dress and a tuxedo, and yet the feeling was almost the same. This time, however, was even better, because this time she knew that they weren't pretending to be anyone else. And though the black tie outfits had looked stunning on them both, there was something far more intimate about their being there together in their pajamas, still disheveled from sleep, even if their sharing the bed had been far more innocent than an outsider might have assumed.

"Alone for a little while longer, after all," he observed, tilting his head to lean against hers.

"Yes, but don't let me distract you from breakfast," she told him with a smile.

"But what if I want you to distract me?" he asked, pulling his arms around her a little more tightly.

"Then I guess I'll be forced to cook, and then you'll really be in trouble. Or so you like to tell me," she replied with a grin.

"Hmmm… you may have a point. Though you're getting better," he told her encouragingly.

She put Sarah's note back down on the table. Turning around to face him so that they were once again standing close together, she laid her hands against the cotton of his t-shirt on his chest and felt his heartbeat beneath her right hand. "How about," she began, "I'll work on the coffee and you see about the food situation? I can do coffee."

"You mean I can't just stand right here like this?" he moved his face closer to hers, so that their noses were once again just short of touching.

"Not if you want breakfast," she replied sweetly. "Which you keep saying you do… and yet… you're not really acting like it." There was laughter in her eyes, but she kept a straight face somehow.

"I do," he said, not taking his eyes off of her, "but it's hard to focus on anything except you."

She felt herself blush, and she moved forward the fraction of an inch to press her nose against his. "You're sweet," she told him quietly.

"It's the truth," he said, without any evidence of joking in his voice. He held still for a few seconds, continuing to look at her, then leaned forward for a quick kiss before pulling himself back, leaving a foot between them and unclasping his hands from behind her. "Obviously I'm going to have to learn how to focus on other things, however, or we're going to starve."

"And I think we can agree that we'd rather not do that," she replied.

"Yes," he nodded. "So let's get this breakfast thing over with." He stepped back from her slowly, toward the refrigerator, and she reached up to the cupboard above the coffee machine to get out what she needed.

"Well," he said as he peered into the refrigerator, "it looks like Sarah bought eggs and milk. So our options are cereal, toast and eggs."

"I vote for eggs and toast," Jane replied as she spooned coffee into the paper filter.

"Scrambled, right?" he asked, and she turned toward him in surprise. For some reason, early on in her time with the FBI, several different people had asked her how she liked her eggs, both within a few days of each other. It was a weird, random question, most likely asked by waitresses, but at the time it had bothered her that she didn't know the answer. She'd mentioned to Kurt in passing that it was just one more thing that she didn't know about herself, and that it frustrated her. So he'd shown up at her safe house the next morning, a Saturday, and made her four different kinds of eggs, so she could decide which ones she liked best. Of course, he'd acted like it was absolutely no big deal.

"You remembered," she said, surprise obvious in her voice, as she filled the carafe of the coffee machine with water.

"Of course," he told her with a shrug, as if it was to be expected. As he took out the eggs and looked for a medium sized bowl and a pan, she continued to watch him for a few more seconds, truly surprised by him yet again.

After everything that has happened since then… she thought, the words trailing off in her head. She turned off the water and poured it into the coffee machine, then replaced the carafe and flipped the switch to 'on.' Turning and leaning her side against the counter, she crossed her arms in front of her and watched him work.

He was cracking eggs into the bowl, smiling without looking up at her. "I see you trying to distract me," he said, pretending to scold her. "But it's not going to work."

"Oh no?" she asked with interest. She hadn't been trying to distract him, but maybe she'd try… "That sounded like a challenge."

"Call it what you want," he replied, shrugging his shoulders. Having finished cracking the eggs, he realized that he needed a fork to stir them with. It was only then that he knew he was probably going to lose this challenge, because Jane was leaning against the one drawer that he needed to access. He walked slowly towards her, looking at her with attempted defiance. I can do this, he thought with determination.

"Excuse me, miss," he said with mock formality. "May I get something from that drawer you're leaning against?"

"Which drawer?" she asked, pretending to be confused and looking down. "Oh, this drawer?" she stared up at him innocently as she opened the drawer in front of her, which was beside the one he needed.

He rolled his eyes at her, shaking his head and fighting the smile that he felt forming on his lips against his will. "No, unfortunately," he told her. "I need to get into the one you're leaning on."

"Am I leaning on a drawer?" she asked in surprise, looking down again at her hip, which was holding the drawer securely closed. "Oh, I guess I am." She just looked back up at him with wide, innocent eyes as she fought against the smile that was trying to take over her face, making no effort whatsoever to move.

Oh boy, she's going to milk this, and enjoy every second, he thought, slowly closing the gap between them. He stopped in front of her, a slightly bigger space separating them than the last few times, but still closer than he would stand to anyone else by choice. "I'd like to make you some breakfast," he told her sweetly.

"That's so nice of you," she replied, glancing at the gurgling coffee machine and then back to him. "I'd like that, too."

"But I need a fork, and you're blocking the drawer where the forks are," he continued, looking into her eyes and trying not to be sucked in, though he knew he was fighting a losing battle.

"I guess I am," she said in a voice just above a whisper, looking him in the eyes sadly, as if she didn't know what to do about this problem.

He took the last step forward slowly towards her, putting his hands on her waist once again, this time so lightly she could barely feel them through her t-shirt. "Would you please move out of the way so that I can get a fork?"

"I might," she replied, her eyes dancing with the hint of an evil smile. "But that depends…"

"On what?" he asked, not taking his eyes off of her.

"Do I win?" Her evil smile had spread across her face now. "Did I distract you?"

"You win," he whispered, his face now again only inches from hers. "I'm distracted." He leaned down and kissed her, despite the fact that it meant he'd lost the challenge that he had inadvertently started himself, pulling back much sooner than he wanted to in an attempt to show that he had some degree of self-control left. She grinned up at him, no longer holding back her smile. "But I'm also hungry," he growled quietly, "so could you please move out of the way?"

"Since you asked so nicely," she replied, taking a step that was half forward and half away from the counter, so that she was both slightly out of the way but also closer to him. He just shook his head at her, dropping his right hand from her waist and attempting to get what he needed while letting his left hand settle against her lower back, pulling her closer.

"But maybe I should go sit down," she mused aloud. "I think I'm distracting you."

"Oh, you think so, do you?" he asked in amusement. "Because that wasn't your goal?"

"I don't know what you're talking about," she replied innocently.

He shook his head at her, smiling. "Of course you don't," he said, keeping his left hand on her back as he closed the drawer, having retrieved one fork with some difficulty, and now setting it on the counter. "You're enjoying this, aren't you?" he asked her, narrowing his eyes at her playfully.

She just smiled at him and replied, "I always enjoy being around you." Just then, the coffee machine finished brewing, making the distinctive sound of the last of the water sputtering through the filter.

"Saved by the coffee," he said, reaching up his right hand to the cupboard above to get down two mugs, which he set down on the counter in front of her. She winked at him then, stepping back over to open the same drawer she'd just guarded so fiercely and removing a spoon, then closing it again and taking another step away from him to get what she needed to add to her coffee. His hand had fallen from her back, and he took the fork that he'd worked so hard to get and walked back to the bowl of eggs, shaking his head.

While he worked on the eggs, she poured coffee and made toast, and they sat down a few minutes later with their breakfast. They ate in silence for a minute, sitting side by side and glancing at each other as they ate. There was empty space, though not a lot of it, between them for the first time in quite a while, and it didn't go unnoticed by either of them.

"What?" Kurt asked her, catching her looking up at him, a happy grin on her face.

Jane blushed, shaking her head quickly and looking down at her plate again. Trying to avoid his question, she put down her fork and picked up her coffee cup, wrapping both her hands around it and enjoying the warmth, taking a long sip. It was good coffee, but it was also something to hide behind. He was still looking at her expectantly when she set the coffee down and glanced at him quickly, hoping that he'd forgotten about the question. But no, he was still watching her carefully in amusement.

She sighed, shaking her head and making a face at him. "It's just…" She looked back down, slightly embarrassed, getting about halfway through her sentence before she looked back up shyly. "This is… nice. Sitting here in our pajamas, eating breakfast… I don't… I haven't done a lot of that… that I remember." Suddenly holding her gaze steady, she watched understanding wash over him.

He knew that it was the truth, and he knew that she wasn't saying it to elicit his sympathy. That wasn't the kind of person she was. It was simply a fact.

Her words tumbled around in his head. She hadn't said she hadn't done it at all, only that she hadn't done a lot of it. He wondered if that meant Oscar was the other person she'd shared that with. To Kurt's knowledge, Oscar was the only one she'd slept with since she'd become Jane. Besides having slept with someone, why else would she have been sitting around in her pajamas having breakfast with them – besides, of course, the situation in which they found themselves now? Not that the fact that she'd slept with Oscar (or anyone else, for the matter) was any of his business, but he couldn't help the fact that he knew it had happened. Still, though he didn't like it, he could let that part go. After all, he'd gone back and slept with Allie at around that same time… and then there was the fact that Oscar was dead. None of that really mattered anymore.

Smiling back at her, he nodded in agreement. "It is nice. And it's rare for me to even get time to sit down to eat breakfast," he replied, "so I'm glad it's with you." As he had more and more since they'd been on this trip, he felt himself drawn to her as if by some sort of magnetic force. Since they were still sitting and eating, their right hands both otherwise engaged, and she was on his left, he reached his left hand over and brushed the base of her neck with his fingertips, where the top of the oil derrick tattoo stuck out from the neckline of her t-shirt, letting the rest of his hand rest against the soft cotton.

She'd been missing their almost constant contact since they'd sat down to eat, despite the fact that it had only been a few minutes, so when he rested his hand gently on the back of her neck, she couldn't help but smile as warmth flooded through her. Her head dropped forward slightly and for a second, her eyes fell closed. She knew that he was watching her, which was confirmed when she opened them again a few seconds later and she looked in his direction, giving him a knowing smile. How did he do that, anyway? How did he temporarily make her forget everything around her?

He slowly withdrew his hand again, and she frowned at him in response. This only made him smile more broadly at her. "We need to finish eating," he said by way of explanation. "And not get distracted."

"You say that as if getting distracted is a bad thing," she said, pretending to be offended.

He got the feeling that they could go back and forth like this all day, and he wouldn't get tired of it. "Not at all," he said, concentrating on not reaching out to her again, which was a struggle. "But we need to finish eating so we can go to the beach."

She looked at him skeptically, as if finishing breakfast so that they could get to the beach was an inadequate reason for his removing his hand from her neck. Smiling at her, he added, "After all, you look really good in a bikini." That caught her off guard enough that she stopped pretending to pout and looked down, blushing, and focused on the food in front of her. He chuckled as he watched her, completely amused.

"I saw that you hung it up for me," she said, looking back up and changing the subject as she reached for her coffee again. "Thank you."

He nodded, and added, "I rinsed it out, and got as much of the water out of it as I could, too." She looks sufficiently impressed, he thought with satisfaction. "Hopefully it had time to dry. Putting on a wet bathing suit is no fun."

"I wouldn't be surprised if the things we were wearing last night took days to dry," she said with a smile, thinking about the rain. More specifically, the kiss in the rain. "Though rinsing that bathing suit probably wasn't necessary after all that rain…" He chuckled, nodding, and just smiled. "But it certainly couldn't hurt it," she added. She took her last bite of food, her last sip of her coffee, and started to stand up slowly. Before she could get anywhere, however, he'd pushed back his chair and taken her hand, tugging her toward him.

"What?" she asked, grinning down at him. Holding onto her hand, he maneuvered her so that when he tugged on her once more, she was suddenly sitting in his lap. Looking at him in surprise for a second, she just smiled in amusement. "You know, this doesn't help us get ready to go to the beach," she told him, just barely holding back her laughter.

"No, it doesn't," he agreed. "But it helps me do this." He leaned forward, one hand on her lower back and the other lightly on her knee, and kissed her. He could feel her smiling even as he kissed her, which was a strange but agreeable feeling, and he withdrew slowly, opening his eyes to look at her. The smile was still there.

"You have to admit, that was a little cheesy," she said, slightly out of breath.

"Are you complaining?" he asked, arching an eyebrow at her.

"Not even a little bit," she replied with a smile, snuggling against him and leaning down to put her head on his shoulder, as he pulled his arms around her.

They sat there for a minute, and without even realizing it he started tracing the lines of ink on her arm just below her t-shirt sleeve. This, of course, only made her more determined to stay exactly where she was. "Hmm," he said, suddenly realizing what he was doing. "I'm not helping us get to the beach faster, am I?"

"Nope," she replied without moving her head from his shoulder. "You did this to yourself." There had been a time when she would never have uttered those words jokingly. A long time, actually. But after many, many sessions with Dr. Borden, and a lot of time and introspection, she'd come a long way. She was determined not to let things like that, like her past, known or unknown, hold that much power over her. Besides, this was a much more positive association to have with that haunting phrase.

He chuckled at her choice of words. Even knowing that the past was well behind them, he sometimes worried when one of them said something that made such an obvious reference to that time. Not the time that Jane couldn't remember – though it was linked to that also – but that time that she could remember, when things had fallen apart so completely. From her tone he could hear that she was alright, or at least he was ninety-nine percent sure she was… still, he felt the need to reassure her – or maybe just himself. He turned his head slightly and kissed her forehead, then turned his head and rested it on hers.

"Hmmmm…" he hummed, pressing his cheek against the top of her head, "Yes I did, and I don't regret it for a second."

"This is so much better than yesterday's breakfast," she said quietly, hoping that he'd forget about how much he wanted to go to the beach. She could easily have sat there for hours.

"It was the eggs," he replied seriously, and she couldn't help but chuckle.

"What?" he asked, turning his head to look down in her direction. "That's the main difference from breakfast yesterday, right?"

"Right. Absolutely," she replied, shaking her head against him. He's so silly sometimes, she thought, knowing she was the only one in the world who would think to call Kurt Weller "silly." He was an absolutely serious guy with everyone else, after all. Even with her, his humor was usually of the deadpan variety, which suited him perfectly.

She felt him tighten his arms around her for a second, and then they began to loosen, to her displeasure. "Alright, time to get ready," he proclaimed. "I need to accept my fate with dignity, and go out there and be buried in the sand." She chuckled, but didn't lift her head from his shoulder. Instead, she took his right hand between both of hers and began tracing the inkless skin the same way he liked to trace her tattoos. He smiled, watching her fingers for a few seconds before turning his hand and closing it around hers. "Yes, you're very distracting, and I know exactly what you're doing. Now stop stalling," he told her. "Time to stand up."

Shaking her head against his shoulder, she made a noise of protest, which made him chuckle. He kissed the top of her head and then began to push her off his lap. "Come on, get moving," he told her.

Looking back in pretend annoyance as she was forced to stand up, she muttered, "So rude…" and walked slowly back towards the bathroom to retrieve her bathing suit, hoping that it was dry. Luckily for her, it was dry, for which she was very grateful. Kurt met her at the bathroom door as she walked out holding the small pieces of red fabric. He stood to the side, waiting for her to walk by, and she blushed slightly as she saw him looking at the material in her hand.

"Is it dry?" he asked.

"Yes, thankfully," she told him as he went in, closing the door behind him.

She emerged from the bedroom a few minutes later, wearing the red bikini and holding a clean t-shirt and shorts in front of her, feeling unexpectedly self-conscious, even though Kurt was the only one there. He was sitting on the couch, once again dressed in his bathing suit, his chest bare, she couldn't help but notice. Walking slowly down the hall, she came to a stop where the hall met the small living area, looking around uncomfortably. She hadn't felt like this since…

For some reason, the first thing that came to her mind was the first time Kurt had seen her in that dress she'd worn for the undercover Rich Dotcom mission, which, ironically, had been the opposite of what she was now wearing, having covered nearly every inch of her. It was the look that he was giving her, she realized, that was making her think of that day… the intense look on his face…

She was frozen in place, but he finally regained the power of movement and walked towards her, stopping slightly farther away than she'd expected – just within his arms' reach of her. "You look…" he said, but stopped. His eyes were locked on hers. "Beautiful."

Slightly confused, she shook her head at him. "It's the same thing I was wearing yesterday…"

He chuckled at her, finally stepping closer, looking like he wanted to reach for her but wasn't quite sure where to do so, with so much skin suddenly exposed – even though, as Jane said, she'd been wearing the same bikini the day before. She took pity on him, reaching her right hand for his left and knitting her index and middle fingers through his loosely. His right hand then came up to rest on her now bare lower back, his thumb moving slowly up and down, sending what felt like short jolts of electric current shooting through her limbs.

"So, I think I need some sunblock…" she said, half as a statement and half as a question, trying to break the sudden awkwardness that seemed to have appeared out of nowhere. His face relaxed and his smile became less intense, more familiar, as he raised an eyebrow at her. "After all," she continued, "I've been told that my fair skin would burn easily, so…"

Feeling like his mind had been set on a delay, and he was now catching up, he said quietly, "I know you were wearing this yesterday. Somehow it just looks even better on you than I remembered it." He paused, watching as she smiled and blushed slightly, then added, "And I'd be happy to help you with the sunblock." And then, because he could, he leaned down to kiss her, still in awe that doing so was now an option.

"Come sit down on the couch," he told her, picking up the sunblock bottle from where it sat on the coffee table. "Since it's not the spray one, we don't need to go outside to do it." That was one advantage to the sunblock lotion. If she wasn't mistaken, it also took a little bit more effort to rub that one in, which was another advantage in this case – not that Kurt wouldn't still rub it into her skin far more than was necessary. She smiled at the thought, as the various times they'd applied sunblock to each other the previous day flipped through her mind, creating a montage.

"What are you smiling about?" he asked. Really, they'd both been smiling almost all weekend, and it was addictive. This happiness was addictive. They sat down on the couch close beside each other, and instead of turning her back towards him, she moved her face closer to his, until the tip of her nose touched his.

"You," she whispered. The simplicity of her answer caught him off guard, and the idea that simply thinking of him could be the cause of her smile warmed him from the inside out. Once again, he felt almost frozen in place, overwhelmed by his emotions. Glancing at the ceiling as she thought for a second, then smiling steadily back at him, she added, "Well, technically, you and sunblock."

He couldn't help but chuckle at her then, as she began to turn around, her left foot on the floor, her right leg folded up in front of her on the couch so that she could face away from him. "I'll tell you a secret," he said softly, leaning over her shoulder to speak near her ear, even though what he was telling her wasn't actually a secret, and there was no one else there to hear it. He simply liked the excuse to lean closer to her. "Sunblock isn't usually fun. Most people don't like it at all."

She turned her face towards his, which was still positioned over her shoulder, gave a small shrug and said, "They just don't have the right person helping them."

He couldn't help but smile at that. From someone else, it might have sounded cheesy, but she said it with absolute sincerity. Without a second thought, he leaned forward enough to kiss her cheek, then sat back and opened the top of the sunblock. The sound was familiar by now, and she stared at the wall ahead of her as she listened to his hands rubbing together to warm it slightly before he brought them to her shoulders, where he always started.

It was hard to imagine that about twenty-four hours before, he'd done this for the first time. Her eyes closed without her even realizing it, and she became unconscious of anything else around her except his fingers on her skin. If there was a heaven, then this was it.

He worked his way down her back, obviously not in any kind of hurry. Still, when he reached the upper part of her sides, slightly obscured by her arms as she sat, she could feel the hesitation in his fingers without even having to turn and look at him. Raising her shoulders slightly and shifting her arms forward so that they no longer blocked his hands, she shivered slightly as his hands moved very slowly, in one fluid motion, down the sides of her upper ribcage, not straying any farther toward the front of her, then returning to the middle of her back.

As he had the other times, he worked his way down her back and then back up again, doing even more tracing of her tattoos on the way up her back than he had the day before. This time, however, she wisely said nothing, which meant that the application of sunblock ended up taking at least three times longer than it needed to – and this was perfectly fine with her.

Finally, he slid his hands from her shoulders, down her arms almost to her hands before pulling them across the front of her into a hug, leaning against her back. He'd stood behind her like this in the water the previous day, of course, with the skin of her back against the skin of his chest, but somehow it now felt even more intimate than it had the previous day. Everything did, really, ever since the first time he'd kissed her in the rain the previous night.

"I think that should be good for now," he said quietly, leaning over her shoulder again, this time resting his chin against the bare skin.

"No arguments here," she said, still completely under his spell. He chuckled at her, glad to see that it wasn't just him who was slightly in awe of this… whatever it was.

"Okay, turn around," he said, hesitantly removing his chin from her shoulder. She did, and the next thing she knew, there were small blobs of sunblock being applied to her cheeks.

"I'd forgotten about this part," she said with a smile, her cheeks flushing from the sudden scrutiny she was under. She certainly wasn't complaining about his fingers moving across her face – she swore he was working even more slowly than he had yesterday, as if he was trying to take as long as possible. She watched him work for a few seconds, then added, "I'm not sure how I forgot about this." He just smiled at her, smoothing in the sunblock. Far too soon, his fingers stopped moving, coming to rest on her cheek. For a few seconds he just stared at her, almost in disbelief.

This is really happening, he had to remind himself. Just to be sure, he leaned forward and kissed her again. Yep, it's really happening, he thought with a smile.

When he opened his eyes again, leaning back slightly, she was watching him. "What're you smiling about?" she asked.

"You," he replied, just as she had a few minutes before, then added, "Just you." She looked down for a second, then back up at him, wondering how she had managed to get so lucky. There wasn't even anything in her memory with which she could compare this feeling. She supposed that this was… happiness, pure and simple.

She reached forward and took the bottle of sunblock from him, dotting it onto her own fingers, then transferring it to his face. Never mind that since they were still at the house, they both could have done this for themselves just by looking in a mirror. What would be the fun in that?

You'd have thought that at this point, he knew that he had to stay still, but Jane found herself having to remind him of this multiple times. "Are you moving all around just so I'll do this?" Jane asked, finally giving up on the sunblock temporarily and putting both of her hands on his cheeks. She held his face still for a few seconds, looking at him with a frustrated smile. She was fairly sure that that was exactly what he was doing, just to get extra attention.

He grinned slightly, having been caught red-handed. "Maybe…" he said, looking away from her and trying to keep a straight face.

She shook her head, rolling her eyes. "Just let me finish first, okay?" she asked. She kept her left hand on his cheek to attempt to keep him steady, and brushed her right along his hairline of his forehead and then down the side of his face, finally rubbing in a spot of white on the tip of his nose. She took her hands off of his face to inspect her work, then declared herself finished.

"So I can move now?" he asked.

"Yes," she replied. As soon as she answered, he leaned forward to kiss her yet again, leaning back with a grin on his face.

"What?" he asked innocently. "You said you were done, and I could move." She just smiled and shook her head at him.

"It's true, I did," she admitted. She turned to reach for the other bottle of sunblock on the coffee table.

Pushing himself off of the couch and standing up, he held his right hand out to her, waiting for her to follow. She sighed, letting him pull her up and then keeping hold of his hand as they walked to the front door. "I guess I could use some fresh air," she mused aloud as they stepped outside. He handed her the bottle of sunblock, and then turned slowly away from her. That was the hardest thing he'd tried to do so far this weekend, he was fairly certain – to look away from her.

After covering his back with the spray, she started with his neck and shoulders, working equally as slowly and methodically as he had on her. Despite how many times they'd applied sunblock to each other the previous day, somehow it felt like the first time all over again. She wasn't nervous, exactly, it was just… well, if you'd told her forty eight-hours before that this was where she'd be today, she wouldn't have believed it.

Well, a lot has changed since then, she reminded herself.

He shivered a little bit when the spray hit his back, and then again, in a completely different way, when he felt her hands on his shoulders. It didn't matter that they'd done this quite a few times the day before, having her rub his back still felt like just as much of a novelty as it had the first time. He made a mental note to double check their sunblock supply, because he was sure they'd gone through a lot of it the previous day. They wouldn't want to run out, of course – for a few reasons.

Despite the fact that she worked slowly and carefully, she felt like she'd reached his lower back far too soon, and she tried to slow down as she worked her way back up toward his shoulders. Whether it was his hands on her skin or her hands on his, there was something almost magical about the effect. There always had been. The only thing better would have been if she couldn't looked into his eyes at the same time, not just stared at the back of his head.

Kurt leaned his head forward, thinking that Jane had had a better deal, getting to sit down while he rubbed in her sunblock. He'd have to try to remember that for next time. Still, he really couldn't complain about having her hands moving down his back and then back up again. The more they did this, the closer their sunblock applications got to being backrubs, and he was starting to think that this was just one more thing on the long list of things that Jane was really good at it. He wasn't exactly tense after the beach day they'd had yesterday, but even still, he felt himself significantly more relaxed when her hands stopped moving, back at the base of his neck where they'd started.

She reached his shoulders again, tracing his neck with her thumbs. "I think you're all set," she told him, and he slowly began to turn back around toward her.

"Long time, no see," he said quietly when he finally saw her face again, which made her smile. It did, indeed, feel like a long time that she'd been looking at the back of his head.

"I guess it's time to go up to the beach, right? Before Sawyer leads a very impatient search party to find his missing Uncle Kurt?" Jane asked reluctantly. She didn't want to go, exactly, though she was looking forward to helping bury Kurt in the sand. And now that she could look into his eyes again, she didn't mind as much.

"Yeah," he nodded, not moving. She smiled and shook her head at him, then bent down and picked up the two bottles of sunblock, handing him the spray. They each finished applying it to the areas they were able to reach, stealing glances at each other as they worked. Kurt finished first, and stood watching as the sunblock disappeared beneath the ink of her tattoos.

"Come on, we'd better get our stuff and get going," he said.

"I'm ready," she declared, finally finished.

They walked back into the house, where she pulled on her shorts and t-shirt over her bathing suit, only to turn around and find him looking at her with mock disappointment.

"Shut up," she said, "You'll be seeing the bikini again in just a little while." He grinned then, and picked up the bag of towels that was sitting on the floor. It wasn't as full this time, and he imagined that Sarah had probably taken a few with them to the beach. They each tossed the remaining sunblock into the beach bag that he had bought the day before, which Jane carried, and Kurt checked that the few other necessary items that had been in his pockets the previous day were now in Jane's bag as well.

"Ready?" he asked her. After a quick text to Sarah to confirm that she had the key to the house, he locked the door from the inside and closed it behind them as they set off, hand in hand, toward the beach. Getting out the door quickly apparently wasn't their specialty, but after all, they were on vacation.

They walked in silence for a few minutes, gravitating closer and closer together until it was easier to trade hand holding for his arm around her shoulders and hers across his lower back. There was a crowd of beach goers of various ages ahead of them on the sidewalk, laughing and shouting loudly, and he suddenly had a flashback to the previous day and the things that they'd heard – some whispered and some said outright – about Jane in the crowd of people on their way to the beach. With that thought in his head, he purposely tugged on her to slow their pace.

Somehow, of course, she knew exactly what he was doing. "It won't change anything," she whispered. "They're going to say what they're going to say."

He pulled her closer, unable to understand how people's reactions to her tattoos didn't seem to bother her. "It will change something," he growled. "It'll stop me from doing something I'd later regret to the dumbasses who can't keep their mouths shut." She grinned at his sweet, if slightly violent, protectiveness of her, turning to kiss him on the cheek.

"There's people like that everywhere," she replied quietly. "We can't avoid them all. Or punch them all, for that matter."

"Fair enough," Kurt agreed reluctantly, "but we can avoid those particular people in front of us." She smiled, shaking her head at him.

"You know that there are people on the beach, right? A lot more of them that that?" she asked him patiently, as if she was talking to a small child who might not have known this. "We did see a bunch of them there yesterday."

"Yes, Jane," he said, rolling his eyes.

"Just checking," she chuckled. "And you promise not to assault any of them? No matter what they say about me?"

He looked down at her stubbornly, but finally nodded, knowing that she was right, but hating it at the same time. "I know…" he finally forced himself to say, "that you don't need anyone to defend your honor." The tone in his voice was that of a child who was being made to apologize for something he didn't regret and who was not happy about it.

She stopped on the sidewalk, pulling him to a stop as well, and stepped around him, so that she was in front of him. "No, you're right, I don't," she said matter-of-factly, "but I love that you want to. And if you didn't have my back, I wouldn't be here right now. So keep on doing that, okay?" Her right arm was still wrapped around his waist, and her left hand came up to his cheek, resting there lightly for a few seconds before she leaned in to kiss him. It lasted only a few seconds, but when she leaned back again, he looked calmer, less angry.

"Okay," he said, looking more like his usual, controlled self. "But in the meantime..."

She smiled in amusement as she moved her hand back off of his face and turned around to start walking again. "I know, I know…" she said, "walk slower." She felt him squeeze her shoulder, and she just shook her head. "If it makes you happy, that's fine with me… After all, you're right here, so I'm not in a rush."