Meant to update earlier in the week, but I kept forgetting. I'm spending the weekend in NYC, so you can probably expect an update on Sunday evening. :)
The next several days were quiet. There was a bit of tension between them, though neither of them seemed keen to mention what had transpired on the side of the road. That said, Kurt seemed, to Blaine at least, to be more comfortable in the house. He liked to think it was because he was, in fact, allowing himself to start to trust Blaine.
Regardless, Blaine still had a long way to go. And so, despite his last effort being a bust, he was sure that this would work out. It had to.
"Hey Kurt," Blaine said to Kurt over breakfast on the third morning after the car incident. They had slept in and his father had already left for work (though there really weren't many times when he wasn't working, because he was just so damn important), so it was just the two of them.
"Hm?" Kurt asked, looking at him over the edge of his mug of coffee (yesterday morning, Blaine had finally gotten him to admit that he liked coffee).
"We're going to go do something today," he said.
"And what would that something be?" Kurt asked nervously.
"Ice skating!"
Kurt eyed him with a frown, but the look of puppy-esque excitement on Blaine's face told him there was no getting out of it.
Two hours later found Kurt and Blaine at a frozen pond, Blaine sitting on the ground, excitedly chattering as he helped Kurt put on his skates.
"—and Wes hates ice skating, and I really don't see why," he said, lacing up the skate. "I mean, I fall down, too, sometimes, but I keep a good attitude about it. Then again, Wes is a bit uptight sometimes, but really he's a nice guy." He grinned, patting Kurt's feet. "Well, there we are!"
He moved to his feet, smiling at his angel. "Well?"
"How do I…?" Kurt asked, looking down at his feet in confusion.
Blaine chuckled, reaching both hands out towards Kurt's. "Would you mind if I…?"
"Go ahead," Kurt said, blushing a little at the fact that he had asked if he could simply grab Kurt's hands.
He beamed as he took Kurt's hands in his, pulling Kurt to his feet. "I take it this is your first time ice skating?" he asked.
"Well, I haven't had much of an opportunity before now," Kurt said.
"Oh," Blaine said, his face drooping for a second before he forced his smile back on his face. He was not, under any circumstances, allowing today to go wrong.
He slid them out onto the frozen water easily, suddenly grateful that he had had so much experience with this growing up, because he could feel Kurt shaking, as much as he seemed to be trying to hold himself steady. "Relax," Blaine said softly. "I've got you."
"This is weird," Kurt said, looking down at his feet, wobbling unsteadily, and looking quickly back up at Blaine.
He considered making a comment about the boy with wings saying that a regular activity was weird, but Kurt just looked too adorable for him to say anything that might make him upset.
For a while they just skated like that, Blaine guiding the both of them and making sure that Kurt didn't fall, and Blaine was silently thanking God for leading him to Kurt.
Suddenly Kurt's ankle twisted and he almost fell. Blaine urgently grasped onto Kurt, pulling him back up into a standing position.
"You okay there?" he asked.
Kurt looked up at him then with a grin on his face, one that reached up to his eyes. It was the first time Blaine had ever seen him look truly happy, and though he'd never admit it, the sight kicked up butterflies in his belly.
And Kurt's eyes, oh, Kurt's eyes. They would have stood out, vibrant and beautiful, against the cold, white landscape anyways, but with the pure happiness that was held within them was literally breath-taking.
Without realizing he'd done it, he'd loosened his grip on Kurt's hands and the other boy was falling backwards before he knew what was happening.
Kurt's eyes went wide and he stretched out his wings, flapping violently in an effort to regain balance.
"Oh, God, Kurt, I'm sorry," he said, reaching his hands out toward Kurt blindly, his eyes distracted by Kurt's wings suddenly fully stretched out.
"It's fine, I, ah, I should have tried to keep my balance better." He looked up at Blaine bashfully, slipping his hands back into Blaine's. "You know, if you want to—and only if you want to, don't think you have to—you could touch my wings," he said, giving Blaine a meek smile.
Blaine's eyebrows rose sharply. "I—Kurt, are you sure?" he asked.
Kurt nodded slowly, looking down at the ground. A blush had risen up on his cheeks. "Yeah," he said, "but like I said, you really don't have to, I just thought, I don't know, it was stu—"
"Kurt," Blaine said, slowly pulling his right hand from Kurt's grasp. "It's not stupid, and I would love to touch your wings." Blaine reached up slowly, his hand shaking as he reached up towards Kurt's wing. He knew how big a deal this was, recalling Kurt's earlier comment about not liking it when other people touched his wings. As soon as his fingertips made contact with a brown feather, he let out a breath he hadn't realized he'd been holding. Blaine's fingers trailed across the soft feathers, and Kurt stretched his wings out widely, constantly giving Blaine's fingers somewhere further to go.
They stood there for a few minutes, his fingers trailing up and down Kurt's wings, and neither of them said anything. They both just stared at Blaine's hand on Kurt's wing, observing them as if they weren't parts of their bodies.
Almost silently, Blaine whispered, "Thank you."
A small smile came across Kurt's face. "I feel like I should be thanking you," he said softly.
That comment made happiness swell up inside Blaine, exploding out into a laugh that he couldn't entirely explain.
But it seemed that he wouldn't need to explain, because soon after he started laughing, he heard Kurt chuckling along beside him. Each boy's laughter egged the other on, until the fell to the cold ground because trying to laugh with on ice skates was, actually, remarkably difficult.
After a few minutes, Blaine managed to stop laughing. He opted to simply turn on his side and watch his angel laugh. Kurt had such a beautiful laugh. Well, he had a beautiful everything, actually. Once again, his mouth decided to say something without his full consent. "I love you."
Kurt stopped laughing immediately and blinked, shaking his head. "But… you don't know me," he said.
"I don't think I need to," Blaine said. "I know everything I need to know."
"Blaine…" Kurt said, a tone of warning in his voice.
"Don't 'Blaine' me, Kurt," he said. "I just told you I love you, and you're not allowed to take that away from me."
"I don't understand you," Kurt said.
"If it helps, I don't understand you, either," Blaine said, grinning at him.
Kurt furrowed his brows. "But you said you love me," he said.
He chuckled. "That's the beauty of it, Kurt," Blaine said. "You don't have to understand someone to love them. In fact, if you want enough romance movies—which I totally don't watch—half the time, they fall in love because they don't understand each other."
"Is that why you love me?" he asked, rolling over to lie on his stomach, his wings lying lazily on the ice.
He raised his eyebrows at the other boy, shaking his head. "No," he said. "That's not it. I love you because…" He made a noncommittal noise.
"You're so eloquent," Kurt commented.
Blaine sighed. "Nevermind, I don't love you," he said with a pout. "You're mean."
Kurt blinked, propping himself up on his elbows and looking down at Blaine. "I just really, really don't understand," he said quietly.
"You don't understand what?" he asked.
"How you can love me."
Blaine blinked. "Well, if you met yourself, then maybe you might understand," he said. "You're… you are really kind of amazing, and I don't think you understand that."
"But it… I…" A look of confusion crossed Kurt's face as he struggled to find the words to say what he needed to say. All the while, Blaine just grinned up at him.
"You really don't have to say anything," he said. "I just wanted you to know."
Kurt stared at him.
"And I'm sorry if that creeps you out, by the way."
Kurt frowned. He stared at Blaine in silence for a second before asking quietly, "Blaine… how do you… how do you know that you love me?"
Blaine raised his eyebrows, looking up at him. He shrugged to the best of his ability from a laying down position. "I'm not really sure," he said. "I just do."
"But— ah—it—but how do you know, Blaine?" Kurt asked, looking increasingly nervous.
"You just sort of do, I guess," he said with a shrug. Smirking, he added, "Or is this you trying to get me to wax poetic about you?" He laughed. "But just so you know, I totally would."
Kurt just stared at him, simultaneously trying to find a way to reply to that, and also trying to decide if Blaine's obliviousness was endearing or a sign of as-of-yet unseen idiocy.
The other boy seemed to take his silence as a sign that he did indeed want him to wax poetic about him. "I mean, when I first saw you I was, naturally, dazzled by your wings. They really are kind of stupendous, in case you weren't aware," he said, pausing for a moment to grin cheesily at Kurt. "But I'm sure you were aware. Anyways, then I saw your eyes, and I knew you were something special. And from there it went. You have… you have this little habits that I don't even think you are aware of, like, this is the cutest thing, sometimes when you—"
"You should stop," Kurt said, laying his face in the crook of his elbow so Blaine wouldn't see him blushing. He was flattered, of course, but it was in a way that he felt might be a bit creepy. "I've belonged to you for, what? A week?"
Blaine chuckled, and said, "One week together, that's all it took, one week for me to fall in love with you." At Kurt's blank stare, he added, "The Notebook? No?" He looked confused for a second, then said, "Oh, right. You kind of haven't been around."
Kurt blinked. "What is that?" he asked.
"It's a movie!" he said brightly. "It was a book first, I suppose, but everyone knows it as the movie. It's a love story."
Kurt nodded slowly. "I like love stories," he said.
Blaine just grinned, pushing himself up off the ice. "Well, I don't know about you, but sitting on the ground is making me cold," he said, standing up carefully so as to not fall down and embarrass himself in front of Kurt. "And what better way to warm up than to move around a bit?"
Kurt looked nervous, but if Blaine noticed he ignored it, reaching down to take a hold of Kurt's hands and pull him shakily to his feet.
"You good?" he asked once he had gotten the angel to his feet.
"Good as I'll ever be," Kurt replied.
Neither of them was sure how long they spent gliding across the ice and, of course, occasionally tripping and also falling. They spent long enough out on the ice that Kurt had worked up the bravery to ask Blaine to let go of his hands so he could try to skate without help. He fell, of course, too many times to count, but it was the thought that mattered. No one could just strap on some ice skates and go to the Olympics, after all, and he put up a valiant effort.
"You're getting good at this," Blaine said after one fall.
"You're getting good at mocking me," Kurt countered, struggling to get himself to his feet.
"Hey, no," he replied, moving to help Kurt up, "I'm serious. You are."
Kurt looked up at him, frowning. "You don't have to say that to make me feel better," he protested quietly.
"But I'm not!" Blaine said, sighing loudly. "You're picking it up way faster than anybody I've ever tried to teach, really."
Kurt looked at Blaine, an expression on his face that Blaine couldn't quite read, then quickly turned away, his cheeks turning bright red quicker that Blaine thought was possible. It was probably just the cold, Blaine decided to tell himself.
"I know that it's not my place to complain, so if you don't want to leave obviously it's your decision and please don't get mad at me for asking, but it's really cold outside and if you wouldn't mind I'd like to get back to your house," Kurt said. Yep, the cold. It was just the cold finally catching up with Kurt.
When Kurt reached the edge of the ice, he tried to take a step onto the snowy ground, wobbling dangerously, arms and wings flying out to keep his balance. "I can't walk!" he announced.
Blaine laughed, catching up with Kurt and quickly pulling his skates off. He leaned over to pick Kurt up in what could best be described as bridal style, though somewhat awkwardly because he didn't want to mess up Kurt's wings.
"What are you doing?" Kurt asked, wriggling a bit in Blaine's arms.
"Carrying you," Blaine said. "And so I'd appreciate it if you'd stop moving, or I might end up dropping you."
Kurt did stop, but he frowned at Blaine. "Aren't your feet cold?"
Blaine did his best to shrug despite the fact that he was carrying the other boy. "I'll survive."
Kurt looked like he wanted to say something else, but instead just slowly, as if not wanting to be caught, laid his head on Blaine's shoulder.
Blaine made his way to the car as slowly as possible despite the fact that his feet were freezing. Kurt, his angel, was in his arms, completely relaxed and showing absolute trust in Blaine. This would probably never happen again, and he needed to relish it. He tried not to notice the fact that Kurt smelled like his shampoo, since they hadn't made it out to a grocery store to pick up some for Kurt's own just yet. The fact that Kurt smelled like him, though, ignited a sense of territorialism that he never thought he'd have over a person.
Eventually, though, he got to the car and, although he seriously considered it, he could not get away with making laps around the car just to carry Kurt longer. He deposited Kurt in the passenger seat of his car and went to collect their shoes.
When he got back into the car, he looked over at Kurt to find the other boy curled up in his seat, fast asleep.
"Sleep well, Kurt," he whispered to the sleeping angel, smiling. "I love you."
Blaine had legitimately forgotten that there was such a thing as Christmas, much less the fact that he was home from Dalton for Christmas (or his 'winter break' if you were interested in being politically correct, but everyone knows it's about Christmas). He was, of course, dully aware that yes, Christmas was coming, of course, but anything that was usually of importance was pushed to the back of his mind because, well, Kurt.
So he was remarkably surprised when his mother gently reminded him that he needed to pick out a tree because Christmas was that Saturday. It was Thursday. How did that even happen?
He entered his room to find Kurt once again curled up on his couch, a blanket on his lap and a faint smile on his face as he read a book.
Noticing Blaine, Kurt looked up. "Hm?"
"I need to go get a Christmas tree, and I wanted to know if you wanted to go with me," he said. Rubbing the back of his neck, he added, "Not that you have to if you don't want to. You look awfully comfortable and I'd hate to disturb you."
Kurt smiled. Recently, Kurt had been more and more willing to express his emotions, and Blaine was eating it up. Every time he made Kurt laugh or smile made him feel a bit like he'd won the lottery. "It's been so long since I've been able to celebrate Christmas," he said.
"They didn't have Christmas in… there?" Blaine asked. He, too, was being changed by the whole situation. The more he got to know Kurt, the less comfortable he was with the whole concept of pets. He wasn't about to start standing outside the facilities with picket signs, but he knew he'd never again spend money on buying a pet or support anyone who did.
Kurt shook his head. "They didn't have happiness in there," he replied.
"Couldn't you have, like, had your own secret Christmas, though?" Blaine asked. He could not imagine having grown up without celebrating the holiday.
Kurt sighed. "I would have," he said, "but they knew we would, so they kept calendars away from us. Some of the elders tried to make makeshift calendars just so we could know, but since there weren't windows it was sort of hard to tell one day from the next."
Blaine felt like he was going to cry.
"But, even though I can't actually be at home, being with you is the next best thing," Kurt said. There was real, genuine happiness in his voice.
Blaine was definitely going to cry.
He quickly turned to go to the bathroom. "Anyways, I'm just going to go to the bathroom real quick and then we can head out, okay?"
"Sure," Kurt said, pulling the blanket off of his lap.
Blaine closed the door behind him and finally let a few tears fall. Once again, he made himself a promise that he needed to keep: he would make this a perfect Christmas for Kurt. He needed to, to make up for the years he had missed.
Because seriously? Being with you is the next best thing. How could he not?
"This tree kind of reminds me of one of the guards," Kurt said, "short and fat." Grabbing a protruding branch, he added, "Also, oddly-shaped."
Blaine laughed. "I think it's got character," he said.
"Character, sure," Kurt said. "It's not right, though. Your house is full of high ceilings, and there is nowhere in the house where it would look right."
Comments like these were made countless times that day, over the course of about half a dozen Christmas tree places. None of them were just right, and they need to find one that was absolutely perfect. This was Kurt's first real Christmas since he was little, not to mention the fact that this was their first Christmas together, and Blaine needs it to be special. It's going to set the stage for every holiday season they spent together from here on out (because Blaine had no intentions of saying goodbye to Kurt anytime soon, and even if he did, where would Kurt go?).
They had finally made it out to a real Christmas tree farm, because clearly a few rows of pine trees out in a grocery store parking lot were not going to cut it (not to mention the fact that Kurt was giving his opinions, without being prompted by his master, and that made everyone they encountered stop and stare for a moment in shock).
"What's up with this one?" Kurt asked.
"What about it?" Blaine asked.
"'What about it?' Are you serious, Blaine? It's… there is nothing to like about this one," he said.
"It's tall, though," Blaine said, standing on the tips of his toes and reaching upwards, incapable of touching the top of the tree.
Kurt laughed, then turned away from the tree, scoffing as if it had personally offended him. Which, really, it may have. "The color is weird, and the needles are really stiff. I don't think it's getting enough water. It's got this one weird spot here, and the branches are thin there, see, and oh for the love of all that is good, Blaine, why are you putting up with me right now?"
Blaine blinked. Kurt's rant had pulled a complete one-eighty and he was still trying to catch up. "Wait, what?"
"I'm being obnoxious," Kurt said, not seeming to notice when his voice cracked as he spoke. "You would probably be back at home by now if it wasn't for me being so fucking picky about this, and you haven't even said a thing about it and I don't—"
"Kurt," Blaine said, trying to stop Kurt's outburst in its tracks. "Kurt, Kurt." He reached over and gently squeezed Kurt's shoulder. "You are not being obnoxious, and you are not being too picky."
"But I am, though, and you—"
"Stop," Blaine said. "This is important to me, too, Kurt."
"I just…" Kurt's statement trailed off, and he looked away from Blaine, tears forming in his eyes.
"Hey," Blaine said, deciding to risk pushing Kurt's limits again in favor of comforting angel, slowly stroking his thumb across his cheek. "What's wrong?"
"It's just that doing this," he said, gesturing around them at the pine trees, "is bringing back memories for me."
"Do you want to talk about it?" he asked. "Not that you have to. Seriously, don't think that just because I asked, you have—"
"There's nobody else who I can talk to," Kurt said, "and I want you to know." He stepped forward and leaned his forehead on Blaine's shoulder. "Please don't judge me if I cry."
Automatically, Blaine's hands went to Kurt's waist. It was probably to intimate of a gesture, but it felt like the right thing to do, and Kurt didn't pull away or tense, so Blaine left them there. "Never," he replied.
Kurt stepped in closer to Blaine's arms. "When I was little, me, my dad, and my mom would go out together to find the perfect Christmas tree. It needed to be perfect.
"When I say perfect, what I think you hear is 'really good'. No, I legitimately mean that it had to be perfect," he said. "Or, at least that's how I remember it. I remember thinking that my mom had the best eye for picking out Christmas trees… or, well, everything, really." His entire body was trembling, and Blaine wished that he could will himself to believe that it was from the cold.
"You really miss them, huh?" he asked.
"That's not… I do, obviously I do," he said. "But I have for years. That's nothing new. It's just, doing this with you has brought back memories and it made me think about things I've made myself not think about and and and—"
Blaine still didn't know what was going on, but Kurt was crying into his shoulder and it was all he could do to not cry, too, because seriously, when Kurt cried, even if it wasn't your fault, you still felt like a horrible person. "Kurt," he breathed, because he really wasn't sure what else he could say at that moment.
As soon as he said that, Kurt stood up completely straight and stepped backwards out of Blaine's arms, visibly steeling himself for what he was about to say. There were tears in his eyes, but he ignored them as he spoke, "You are not going to say anything or judge anyone because of this story because nothing, I repeat, nothing, that is anyone's fault. Do you understand?"
With a growing sense of apprehension, Blaine nodded.
Kurt let out a long breath. "When I was eight, my mother died," he said, and really, what better way to start a story is there? "She was sick for a long time, and both my dad and I knew it. But I guess we just sort of didn't want to acknowledge it, right? Besides, I was eight. I didn't really comprehend what death even really was.
"All I really knew, I guess, was that my mom, the greatest, most strong person I had ever seen, was getting weaker and weaker by the days. The woman who had once held me tight and calmed my fears and assured me that she'd never let anyone know that I had wings. It was—" His voice cracked then, and for a second he just stood there, breath leaving his mouth loudly in visible puffs.
"Kurt," Blaine said softly, reaching out to touch him. He had no idea what to do to comfort Kurt, really. He'd never been much good at comforting people. But Kurt looked like he was on the verge of a breakdown and it tore Blaine's heart to pieces.
The other boy took a step back though, and said, "If you touch me right now I don't think I… just don't." There was a plea in his eyes, so so blue and so sad. He gave his entire body a good shake, once again building up a shell between himself and the words that came out of his mouth. "When my mom died, that's when I think things started to fall apart. My dad tried to hide it, he did, but he was heartbroken. That's not something anyone is ready for, even if you know it's coming. There's no good way to deal with the love of your life dying, right?"
His voice dropped to a shaky whisper then as he said, "I just wanted my mommy to come home."
Despite Kurt's order to not touch him, Blaine could not hold back at that point, rushing forward and pulling him into his arms. Almost as soon as Kurt was in his arms, Kurt's face was burrowed in the curve between his shoulder and his neck. He could feel shaky breaths and what could only be tears against his skin.
"I think you can put together the pieces from there," Kurt choked out. "Since I was nine when they—" Once again his voice cracked, and Blaine simply rubbed a hand over the small of his back.
After a moment, the pieces of the puzzle fell into place into Blaine's mind. In the year after Kurt's mother's death, he and his father must have slipped up somewhere, somehow, and he was found out. In that moment, even if just for a second, he hated literally everything except for the boy crying in his arms. "Oh, Kurt."
"I just know he blames himself for it, you know? But how could we have known? You never think to be worried about people seeing you in your yard and I never let myself think about it but I really just wish I could know that he's doing alright because he lost both of us so fast and you can't just be okay after that, you know? It probably destroyed him and I seriously have no way to know and it's been years so he's got to be doing better now, right? He's got to be, Blaine, he's just…" Kurt's voice, thick with tears, had tapered off until he, most likely, physically could not speak anymore.
Blaine lowered their bodies to the snowy ground, pulling Kurt in tighter to him and whispering soft assurances in Kurt's ear.
"Are you crying?" Kurt asked, looking up at Blaine without lifting his head from his shoulder.
"No," Blaine replied, though they both knew he was.
"Why?"
"Because when you love someone, their pain starts to become your pain, too."
"Blaine, I—" Kurt began, a loud sob cutting him off. "Thank you." He pulled his wings around Blaine, enveloping him and reminding him somewhat of a security blanket.
For a moment, there wasn't a world outside of those chocolate-colored wings; there were only two boys and nothing else.
Eventually, they ended up finding the perfect tree. Once they got back home, they spent nearly forty-five minutes trying to decide where they would put up the tree, testing it out room by room, which was a tall order considering the number of rooms there were in the house.
Once Blaine was satisfied with the tree's location in the foyer, he disappeared into a walk-in closet and came back a few minutes later with a cardboard box containing strings of lights in neat balls and various ornaments.
"And here's the fun part," he said, setting the box on the floor and pulling out a string of lights. Sitting down on the floor and crossing his legs, he added, "We need to unroll each string of lights and check every light."
"Every light?" Kurt asked, eyeing the box suspiciously.
"Every light!" Blaine replied cheerfully, plugging in the lights and grinning at the glowing tangle of twinkling lights in his hand. Starting to unroll it, he added, "It really isn't as bad as it sounds. And usually if there's a problem with one of the lights, you can tell right off the bat, because then half the string is off."
Kurt sighed, grabbing another ball from the box and plugging it into the wall. He started to unroll it, looking at the lights and mirroring Blaine's movements.
Blaine looked up at him with a smile on his face, though it quickly turned into a gape when he saw the way Kurt's eyes caught the Christmas lights. Seriously, though, was it possible for Kurt's eyes to be anything short of dazzling? It was beginning to be a bit of an inconvenience.
"Anyways," he said, standing up quickly and hoping that Kurt hadn't noticed that he had been staring, "All the lights on this string work, so you check that string and I guess I'll just…" He pulled the plug out of the wall and got on the tips of his toes, reaching out to start hanging the lights on the tree.
"Uh, Blaine?" Kurt said.
"Yes?" Blaine looked over his shoulder at him.
"Do you realize what's wrong with what you're doing right now?" he asked.
Blaine frowned. "What?"
"Look where the… ahh," he lifted his hand and made a gesture with his index and middle finger, trying to indicate the end of the plug. "Look where that thing is."
Blaine furrowed his brows, looking at the plug in his hand. "It's a plug," he said.
Kurt sighed. "Yes, and to make those lights light up, where will that plug need to go?"
Blaine opened his mouth and then shut it, rubbing his hand over his face. "Did I seriously just do that?"
"You did," Kurt affirmed. He gave Blaine a little smile as he stood up and grabbed the wire from Blaine's hand. "This is coming from a place of caring, really it is, so I just need to ask: are you always this… ah, um…"
"You really don't have to try not to offend me," he said, watching as Kurt plugged the lights back in and started in on draping them over the tree's branches.
"You're kind of an idiot," Kurt said. "And I'm just wondering if you're always like this?"
Blaine sighed. "Not usually," he pouted. "Seriously, Kurt, I'm actually a reasonably smart person."
Kurt looked up at him, laughing. "I'm sure," he said. He made his way in circles around the tree, shimmying by Blaine as he went.
Blaine leaned up against the wall, pouting. "Do I detect sarcasm?"
"You do," Kurt replied, reaching for the other string of lights. "I like you, though."
Blaine grinned. "You like me?"
"I do," Kurt said.
"Good!" Blaine said, resisting the urge to clap. "I like you too."
Kurt shot him a look, tucking the end of the lights into the tree. "We are not using like as anything more than it is," he said quickly.
"Of course not," Blaine said. "But usually to love someone, outside of your family at least, you have to like them, first."
Kurt froze in place for a moment, looking something like a deer caught in the headlights, then turned around and went to grab two bags of bauble ornaments, red and green, respectively, from the box, nodding approvingly. "Very classy," he commented, handing the green bag to Blaine.
He nodded. "My mom picked it out," he explained pulling a bauble out of the bag. "We used to have two trees. One for the front of the house, where people would see it, with these ornaments on it, very Martha Stewart-esque and—"
"Martha Stewart?" Kurt asked, placing an ornament on the tree. He frowned at his now slightly sticky fingers, reminding himself why he preferred to touch the tree as minimally as possible.
"Oh, right. Time gap," Blaine said, tapping his head with his index finger and nodding. It was the nicest way to put the fact that Kurt had missed out on about (by Blaine's estimation) eight or nine years of his life because he was in a facility. "Anyways, Martha Stewart is this interior designer or something. She got arrested way back, which is funny, since she's just, well, an interior designer."
"Did she decorate the heck out of the jail cell?" Kurt asked.
"No idea," Blaine said, laughing. "Wouldn't that just be perfect, though?"
"Anyways, you were saying something?" Kurt asked.
Blaine furrowed his brow as he placed another ornament, mentally retracing his steps. "Oh, right," he said. "Anyways, we'd have the nice fancy tree where everyone could see it and wish they were us, and then back in the den we would get a second tree with all those cute, silly ornaments. Like the ones they sell at Hallmark and little kids make in their arts and crafts classes in elementary school. Cheesy and homey." He looks confused for a second, then added, "Somewhere along the line I guess we gave up on that tree. I grew out of it, I guess. My dad's always been an all-business sort of guy, and my mom likes to keep things neat, so I suppose it makes sense, right? When I have kids, though, we're never going to grow out of that. I'm going to have them hang those dorky little glitter-covered handmade ornaments until they move out and then I'll hang them myself with pride.
"And eventually they'll bring their kids to my house for Christmas and I'll hang up their ornaments, too, and they'll laugh at the ornaments their parents made and say theirs are better and I'll agree because those kids will be so cute." He got a faraway look in his eyes for a moment, and hummed a bar of Jingle Bells to himself.
For a second Kurt froze again, and he was overwhelmed with an overwhelming feeling of desire. Desire for what, he wasn't entirely sure. To be a part of the picture Blaine just painted? That was true; he wanted to be part of a family. He closed his eyes and blindly placed an ornament, imagining an older Blaine with a little boy with curly (because though Blaine tried to pretend his hair wasn't a curly mess, Kurt wasn't an idiot) dark hair sitting on his knee, Kurt sitting right beside him. No. He couldn't think that way. Pets were disposable. By the time Blaine got older and got married, Kurt would be long gone, 'love' be damned. Shaking his head to get the idea out of his head, he turned to Blaine and said, "Thought about that a lot?"
Blaine nodded emphatically. "All the time," he said brightly. "I really just want to have a family of my own, you know?"
Kurt shifted from one foot to the other, not entirely sure what to say. He had no idea, after all, how much longer he was going to be in Blaine's life. Even if Blaine did truly love him, it still wasn't at all socially acceptable to marry a pet, though it was perfectly legal. Not that Kurt even wanted that.
He decided to just focus on decorating the tree. It was simple, it was mindless, and it brought him back to a time when nothing really seemed to be of much consequence (though of course even the quickest trip outside was consequential as he knew now). Soon enough he was finished, and looking over at Blaine, he found that he may have been rushing, since Blaine still had at least half of his ornaments left.
Blaine was still humming to himself, occasionally stepping back and looking at the tree as a whole to see if there were any areas that needed more or less ornaments.
There was that feeling again, something tugging at his very being and telling him to do, but he still wasn't even sure what it was that he wanted. All he knew is that when Blaine looked over at him and smiled, his heart leapt into his throat and he had to suppress a shiver.
"I have to go to the bathroom," he said quickly, turning to leave the room before Blaine could say anything.
Blaine wasn't really sure what was going on. He was aware that something was off, but then again just a couple weeks ago this would still be more than he could have asked for. Maybe Kurt was sick. He didn't seem sick outwardly, but then again he was also an angel and he couldn't imagine an angel looking anything but perfect.
More likely, though, Kurt was feeling homesick. Blaine had tried to do what he could to make the conversation light and keep Kurt's mind off of things for the afternoon, but when the thing that had triggered the memory was a Christmas tree lot, a usually fun activity such as decorating for Christmas wouldn't be nearly as much fun. But he knew that Kurt, regardless of how comfortable they had gotten with each other, would never say anything if he was upset, but would get upset if Blaine tried to change what he was doing to appease Kurt.
Frowning, he tried to think of something, anything, that Kurt had said or done that indicated anything that he enjoyed doing. The trouble was that Kurt didn't make a habit of talking about himself. One of the few things that he knew about Kurt was that he liked to read books, as evidenced by the fact that when he had free time he would usually pluck a book off of a shelf. But he didn't know if Kurt would enjoy reading with company, and Blaine didn't want to leave him alone right now. In his experience, when you were alone, that was when your thoughts started to eat at you. So what else was there?
He had a blurry memory of the first day he had spent with Kurt, in which he woke up to the sound of the angel singing. Would he have been singing if he didn't like singing? Most likely not, he decided. It was worth a shot, anyways.
With a grin on his face, Blaine turned around to find something in the closet where they stored the Christmas decorations, quickly finding a small, old boom box. He ran his finger along a row of CDs, ignoring the dust accumulating on the tip of his finger.
"Blaine?" he heard Kurt's voice coming from the foyer.
"In the closet," he called back.
"Never would have guessed," Kurt said, appearing in the doorframe with a smirk on his face. Looking around the tiny room, he pulled his wings in and crossed the threshold.
Blaine rolled his eyes. "Well, look who's being smart with me," he said, making sure to keep his tone teasing instead of reprimanding. Anything to keep Kurt at ease.
Ignoring Blaine's comment, Kurt peered at the shelf Blaine was looking at. "What are you looking for?" he asked.
"I was thinking we could sing together," he said, sending a hopeful smile to Kurt. "If that's okay with you, I mean. I was thinking maybe we could do a little Let it Snow, or—"
"Blaine, put that down," Kurt said, gesturing to the boom box.
Panic rose up in Blaine as he set the boom box down. It was a stupid idea and Kurt was probably even more upset now. "I'm sorry, I—"
Before he could finish his statement, Kurt's body was crashing into his, soft hands on his face and even softer lips against his own. He moaned into the kiss, though if anyone asked he would simply write it off as a noise of surprise, because who really expects to be kissed by a literal angel?
About the time when Blaine was gathering up the courage to touch Kurt, the other boy was pulling away and it ended just about as abruptly as it began.
Cheeks red, Kurt turned back to the shelf and said, "Well about that Christmas music, then."