Blaine hasn't pulled another Goldilocks move. When he gets home in the morning, Kurt doesn't find Blaine fast asleep having waited for him. He's not sure where they stand now – if it's he who should apologize for throwing off the casual vibe, if they're back to the fights from before, if anyone needs to apologize at all, if they're just done and over.

But Blaine comes by that night with a short “I'm sorry” and that'll do for now. Kurt's already started packing to leave, has Puck over every day to be his legs. And his arms. And really, Kurt just bosses him around for the hell of it. He could pack on his own, but the sadistic pleasure of continuing to punish Puck is too much to deny himself when everything with Blaine is so batshit.

He and Blaine – hell, he and the entire state – are down to exactly eleven days left together. There's no point in yelling his grievances to an absent audience. Blaine will leave – and Kurt wouldn't blame him at this point, he's made his position clear – if Kurt pushes. It's only to clear his own conscience that he wants clarity. A selfish desire to absolve himself of guilt, though he sure if he picks at the scabs he'll find faults of his possession.

:: ::

Kurt wakes up alone in Blaine's bed.

With six days left, he's practically living at the Andersons. Mr. A has started giving Kurt these looks like Kurt's gotten plenty of before but never from him. Kurt gets it. Kurt will leave and whatever lies Blaine has told himself to keep up his cool demeanor will have no use, no power. Blaine is likely to fall apart once Kurt is gone, and Kurt won't be around to help pick him back up. But he'll be responsible. In his own eyes, and apparently in the eyes of his would-be in-laws.

Kurt's the resident bad seed, even when he's not around.

He really doesn't blame Matt; Kurt feels the same way about Rachel dating Finn, and they are significantly less of a mess than he and Blaine. So he puts up with the looks and tamps down his need to be confrontational because if there's any offense he knows he's guilty of, it's indulging in Blaine's body and hiding his heart. In letting Blaine do the same.

All that shit buried deep is going to blow its way past the surface at some point.

Not today. Today is quiet and nice and peaceful.

Blaine comes in, hair dripping a little and a puffy robe on. Kurt lounges, watching him towel dry and disrobe. It's a gift, these moments. To see Blaine at ease with himself in Kurt's presence. It's not like he's getting dressed for the day just to crawl back into bed and take it all off. It's something private and solitary, but Kurt is granted access nonetheless.

Last summer, it was simple like this. One day, Kurt had shown up uninvited and walked in on his not quite yet boyfriend coming downstairs in only a towel. Blaine ran straight back up the steps and locked the door behind him. Kurt knows, because he followed him up, knocking on the door as obnoxiously as possible until Blaine yanked it open and demanded he stop.

“Can I touch it?” Kurt had asked, voice low and excited. He'd clapped his hands together and bit his lip. “Please!” he begged. And then he realized what Blaine thought he meant and clarified, “Your hair, naughty boy. Your hair.”

“No.” Blaine had looked truly mortified. At no point of any day is Blaine's head not encased in gel; Kurt was sure he popped out of his mother's oven with a tin of Dapper Dan in his hand.

“But it's so curly,” he said, reaching out and being swatted at. “Me likes.”

“It's awful. Don't look,” Blaine pouted, pulling at strands in the mirror.

Kurt decided then and there it was his civic duty to appreciate those curls if no one else would. He'd demanded Blaine stay where he was and not try locking him out again. He ran downstairs and poached a bar stool and a bowl from the kitchen. He dropped the stool outside Blaine's door on the way to his parents' room, not missing the pouty baby look on Blaine's face as he passed. He rifled through the products in Mr. and Mrs. A's bathroom and came back to Blaine with a bowlful of whatever he thought he might need.

“No, Kurt,” Blaine had tried when Kurt dragged in the stool and placed the bowl on Blaine's dresser.

“Please. You can do so much with these little cuties.”

When Blaine's shoulders sagged in defeat, Kurt pumped an obnoxious fist in the air. He got Blaine seated and even threw on that horrible noise called disco to appease him a bit. Blaine started policing every move Kurt made, so Kurt twisted him around so he couldn't see his reflection anymore.

“Don't you like it?” he asked when he was done, laughter erupting from somewhere deep inside. Blaine hated it. Granted, he had plenty of reason to since Kurt had spent an hour pulling and prodding, and in the end he gave Blaine pigtails. “You look cute.”

“I look… ridiculous.”

“Ridiculous looks good on you.”

Kurt smiles at the memory, equal parts pained and nostalgic. Lifting his head from the pillow, his mind finally wakes up enough to process that Blaine is putting on his Dalton uniform.

“What have we here? Role play?”

Blaine rolls his eyes. He tilts his whole head when he does that. It's cute as a fucking button.

“Alumni event. Warblers are performing.”

“Did I know about this?”

“Why would you?”

Kurt has no clue where Blaine goes when they're not together. He's not sure if giving a hoot qualifies as pushing, so he hoots from a distance, getting his information through Cooper, who only considers things relevant if they pertain to him directly. And Blaine doesn't ask after him, doesn't concern himself with the dates of Kurt's doctor visits or invite himself along with Cooper to anymore of Quinn's parties.

“I guess I wouldn't.”

Kurt drags himself out of bed, draping Blaine's sheet around himself and admiring the view of Blaine with his white shirt unbuttoned and gray slacks on that hug his ass too deliciously to be fair to any of the middling boys he attends school with. Kurt gives that ass a little squeeze just to make him jump and grabs the undone tie under Blaine's collar.

Kurt loops the tie around his own neck, the blanket around his shoulder falling to his feet. Blaine actually blushes as though he wasn't naked in this very spot not five minutes prior. Kurt picks up the blanket and fastens it loosely around his waist. Then he winks and goes back to tying Blaine's tie for him.

When he's done he just watches Blaine. Watches him slather all the muck in his hair to tame it. Watches the slow buttoning of his shirt, bottom to top. Helps him into the navy blazer. Then he loosens the knot of Blaine tie and tells him frankly, “I kind of wanna fuck you right now.”

“Oh please, Kurt,” Blaine scoffs, then grins. “You always want to.”

“Always want to – what now?” Kurt teases, affixing the tie to complete Blaine's ensemble.

Blaine leans in close to Kurt, places a kiss to his jaw and whispers, “Frickle frackle.”

“Oh god no.”

“Oh god yes! Let's do the do, bruh.”

“Gross.”

“Okay but… See Kurt, I know you like my cat, but have you met my anaconda?”

“Blaine. I will use this like a noose,” he promises, tie-in-hand again.

“C'mon. Let's make our anacondas kiss!”

“That's enough from you.”

“Let's –”

“Shut the fuck up.”

“Make me.”

Kurt cackles to the heavens, but tugs Blaine backwards with the same tie he has used to bind Blaine's wrists to his headboard and Blaine comes willingly, chasing Kurt's lips.

“Please tell me you have another shirt pressed because this – this needs to come off. Now. Immediately. Take it off, Blaine.” All of their fingers are working the buttons back open, and it's kind of a mess, but it's the sweetest smelling mess they've made all summer.

However, as good things do, it ends too soon.

Cooper knocks once then barges in, smiling at the sight of them panting hard and giving him their best bitch faces at being interrupted. He asks if he can watch and ducks out of the way when Kurt sends a robot flying his direction.

“I'll replace that,” he tells Blaine.

“We gotta go, Squirt.”

Blaine's event is a family function as well, Kurt gathers when Blaine helps him downstairs, hastily dressed in some combination of his and Blaine's clothes. Matt even has a belt on. Must be a super special event.

“Hello, Andersons. Goodbye, Andersons.”

“You're not coming?” Tess asks, smoothing out her dress and fixing her hair in the light shining on a photo frame.

“I tried,” he mutters and Blaine elbows him in the side.

She turns and tilts her head and pout in the same way Blaine does. “Honestly, Kurt. You should come with. And ugh. These things are so stuffy. It'd be like your personal playground.”

“I'll pass,” he says, looking for any reaction from Blaine and getting nothing. Then he looks down at his rumpled clothing. “I'm not even dressed.”

“We'll wait,” she says, and continues quickly when Blaine protests that he'll be late for rehearsal. “Blaine, honey, you can go with Cooper. Your father and I will come once Kurt's ready.”

 “You know we're not dating, right?” he asks Tess once Blaine and Cooper have gone.

“You smell like what I presume involves my son's ejaculate –”

“What is wrong with you people?!”

“Get a move on. A shower is key, ‘kay hon.”

“I am not spending two hours in a car with you unless you promise to never fucking ever say ejaculate again. And you'll be writing me a formal letter of apology if I can't repress this.”

:: ::

Thanks to the very limiting cast on his leg, Kurt has hardly any suitable options. Fashion is his forte, his future profession. But Kurt lives to stand out, not blend in like the uniformed lads at Ivy League – Lite.  Skinnies are sadly still off the table; it takes elven magic to get them over his ass, he's not risking strain on the fabric to prove himself right.

Riding the struggle bus from one pair of pants to the next, Kurt finds he has exactly one pair just loose enough to stretch over his cast and still hug his thighs how he likes it. Luckily they're dark enough to match pretty much anything. The catalogue of clothes he owns is stored securely in his head, so he runs through it quickly to figure the least extravagant getup he can manage with what's available. Most of his clothes are already wrapped to be moved, but he's left the simple ones for last, which serves him well today because it's not about him. It's about Blaine.

Kurt's comfortable in any clothes. Or no clothes at all. He wears his skin comfortably enough that the rest is really just dressing. Presentation affects perception, and he does love accessorizing, but Kurt never worries much what strangers have to say because they don't know him. Kurt knows himself and that's what's important.

He also knows Blaine, know Blaine's concern for the way he's understood. Knows presentation is damn near the be-all, end-all of social interaction to Blaine.

Today is about Blaine, and Dalton, and surrendering. Being selfless for Blaine's sake. Kurt's eyes are opening to the fact that another of his faults is not taking interest in this place that Blaine calls home nine months of the year. In concentrating on the gimme gimme feeling of wanting Blaine near and not asking Blaine what he wanted. In trusting that Blaine, the boy who cherishes restraint, would want to lay out all his doubts freely and risk losing control. In not pushing when pushing could have been effective.

Kurt owes Blaine something. What – he's not sure, but this he can give, so he will.

His hair he styles easily, a quick sweep of his bangs off his forehead and half a can of hairspray. With a sigh, he skips past putting on makeup.

He throws on a slim-fitting, gray V-neck that plunges a little lower than what Dalton's probably used to seeing, but it's otherwise plain and it clips off most of the words tattooed on his collarbone. Not that “unbeing dead isn't being alive” is particularly offensive. Still, this is Blaine's world he's entering.

While Blaine himself may take great pleasure in petting at the places ink lives in Kurt's skin, he buttons up when the deed is done. That's who Kurt is doing this for, so he unzips a navy blazer of his own from a bag of garments ready to go. It's sleeker than Blaine's and tailored – personally – to perfection. The sleeves look better rolled up with the patterned fabric inside offering a small flash of color, but since dull is what he's aiming for he keeps them down. Covers the tattoo he got for Blaine, or Burt. Or himself. Some combination of all of them, doubtless. Covers easily the bow made of measuring tape that sits too high for rolled up sleeves to reveal, and covers the buttons that lay lower, but creep upwards along his arm. There's nothing to be done about the lips on his neck, but he's done his best and anyone with commentary can kiss his ass.

He takes off his jewelry last, deliberates over it still as he goes, starting from his ears and working inward until his eyebrow, nose, and lips are suddenly bare. He takes the jewelry with him to the kitchen to find a baggie, puts the metal pieces inside, and stuffs the baggie in his pocket. Those are all going back in the second he's back in the car of the way home. Clothes are one thing. His jewelry he wears morning, noon, and night. It's like the sudden loss of a limb. Worse than a broken leg and pain he can feel, the phantom lingering of their presence unnerves him.

The Andersons come outside to meet him at the car before he even shuffles across his lawn – the struggle bus rolls onward.

Tess has a genuine sparkle in her eye when she opens the door for Kurt.

“Say nothing,” he orders.

Matt is giving him a strange look in the rearview. Kurt's seen that look before, it's the one that Cooper and Finn garner when they bond over a particularly idiotic idea and have to be monitored to make sure they don't go through with it – not after the first time. Someone almost lost a toe. It was Rachel, so Kurt didn't care as much as if it was anyone else in the world, but it's just not a good idea to put them alone in a room together. That is the look Kurt is getting.

No one asked him to be someone else, to try at all, never mind try too hard. He feels a little foolish at their gawking.

“Is this thing happening today, or are we just going to sit here?”

This is for Blaine, he reminds himself.