“Are you sure that it’s necessary for me to wear the coveralls, too? I was just going to watch you in them.”

Kurt grinned, rolling up his sleeves as he motioned for Blaine to give a little spin in his very own pair of Hummel Tires & Lube coveralls. Well, they were technically an old pair of Kurt’s. But he was enjoying the vision of his ever-so-dapper boyfriend in a pair of too-long coveralls and an old pair of Kurt’s work boots. The embroidered ‘Kurt’ on a patch on the chest pocket flared a small, enjoyable flame of possession in Kurt’s heart that made him bite his lip as he shook that thought away. “Yes, it’s very necessary,” Kurt replied. He buttoned the last button on his own coveralls and pointed at Blaine’s car on the lift. “I don’t want you getting messy when you get your hands under the hood. Oil and grease are a bear to get out of fabric. Besides, you look good. Very professional.”

“Blaine Anderson, greasemonkey, at your service,” Blaine beamed. He glanced down at the thick roll of cuff resting on top of each boot. “I always forget how long your legs are until I put on a pair of your pants,” he said.

“You forget how long my legs are?”

“You know what I mean!”

“I always thought they were one of your favorite features.”

“You know they are,” Blaine assured him, his voice sheepish. “Are you angry that I momentarily didn’t take into consideration your gorgeous long legs?”

Kurt shrugged. “You should make it up to me,” he suggested. “My poor, wounded ego.”

Blaine reached over and took Kurt’s hand in his. “I’m pretty sure your ego will survive,” he murmured. “Strongest guy I know.” He leaned over, brushing a light kiss to Kurt’s cheek. “Strongest guy I know who wants to get me in trouble in his dad’s garage.”

“We wouldn’t get in trouble,” Kurt insisted.

“What about last time?”

Kurt sighed. “Dad wasn’t angry we were making out in the garage,” he said.

“He was angry we were making out when you were supposed to be getting brake pads from the back,” Blaine chuckled. “His eyes went wide. ‘You boys can do your kissing thing when Kurt’s off of work’,” he added in his best Burt Hummel voice.

“Yes, but Dad’s not here right now,” Kurt countered. “It’s just Mike this morning, and he’s working on his truck outside.”

“Mike’s caught us a bunch of times,” Blaine said. “Always covers his eyes and yells that we’re burning his retinas.”

“He’s overly dramatic. And besides, garage doesn’t open for another hour. We have plenty of time.”

Blaine wrapped his arms around Kurt’s waist and set his chin on Kurt’s shoulder. “Kurt… as much as I would love to make out with you in the garage…” He tilted his head to whisper in his boyfriend’s ear. “It’s not on the list.”

Kurt groaned in frustration. “But it should be!” he insisted. “How could you not want to do that with me?”

“You know the reason for the list,” Blaine chuckled, refusing to let go of Kurt. “Things we don’t normally get to do together before you run off to the big city.”

“And leave you alone and unloved in backwoods Ohio for a year,” Kurt added. He’d heard that line so many times, it was burned into his memory. “Fine, fine. But I still think that some sort of making out should be added to the list. It’s a good thing to do. And I’m pretty sure you’re going to miss doing it.”

Blaine kissed Kurt’s neck. “I am going to miss doing it. And I guess it would be a good thing to make sure that you remember what you’re leaving behind. Since you’re going to be confronted with all sorts of hot, worldly, older men in New York.”

“And none of them will ever compare with you,” Kurt assured him. Yet another line he’d said so many times that it came out without thought, although not without truth behind it. “I still want it added to the list.”

“I’ll add it in,” Blaine promised. “Make out somewhere we’ve never made out before. I promise. So… can we please work on my car now?” he asked.

“Fine, fine,” Kurt said. “I’ll stop trying to make out with my gorgeous boyfriend at his insistence.” He gave Blaine a soft pat on his butt. “That does mean you have to let go of me, though.”

“Yeah, I apparently didn’t think telling you to back off all the way through,” Blaine chuckled, even as he finally released Kurt from the hug and stepped back. “I do want to make out with you, though. You know I do.”

Kurt waved. “I know, I know. Oil change first, make out later. Alright, first up… let’s warm up the car.”

***

Blaine wiped a bead of sweat from his hairline, leaving a grease stripe across his head. “It really gets hot in here,” he said as Kurt replaced the fill cap. “So that’s it? Everything’s all set?”

“Everything is all set,” Kurt said. He closed the hood and wiped his hands on his coveralls. “All that’s left to do is start up the car, let it run for a minute to make sure everything was installed correctly and to let the oil move.” He grabbed Blaine’s keys from the counter and tossed them over. “Your car -- start her up.”

“I never understood why cars are considered female,” Blaine mused as he opened his front door and sat down in the driver’s seat. “What makes them girls? What girl parts are there on a car? Why couldn’t a sports car be a… hot Italian soccer player instead?”

“You drive your mom’s old Volvo,” Kurt pointed out.

“Okay, why couldn’t my reliable used car be a mid-career German soccer player?” Blaine amended. He started up the car and sat for a minute as the engine came to life. “Sounds like a car.”

“That it does,” Kurt agreed. “Everything sounds good, nothing seems to be leaking or smoking -- I think we’re good to go.” Blaine turned off the car and tossed the keys back to Kurt to return to their place on the counter with the rest of his stuff. “You know, I’m surprised that your dad didn’t show you how to do this when you built that car.”

Blaine shrugged. “I wasn’t paying attention to a lot of it,” he said. “I knew he was just making me do it in the hopes that if I got my hands dirty somehow it would make me straight. So I tuned a lot of it out. I went over performance numbers for school in my head. So he’d ask me for a wrench and I’d think it was a microphone. I guess I should’ve paid closer attention.”

“Nah,” Kurt said. “This way I get to teach you from scratch. And I’m very good at it. If you’d had me rebuilding the car, we would’ve had it done in half the time, and the interior would’ve been three times as fabulous.”

“It would’ve been,” Blaine chuckled. He closed the car door and propped himself up on one of the stools as Kurt moved to start wiping down his tools. “You know, I guess I’m still surprised that you know as much as you do here,” he said.

“Why?” Kurt asked without looking up. “I work here during the summer. They don’t just use my pretty face for greeting customers,” he chuckled.

“It’s just…” Blaine trailed off, considered. “It’s just not like anything I’ve ever seen you take an interest in. And when your dad tells stories about when you were little, it’s all tea parties, and meltdowns in Sears because they didn’t have the right color pants, and decorating the inside of the small room on top of the swing set in your back yard.”

“We built that swing set together,” Kurt explained. “Yeah, I loved doing things like that, and I like making things nice. But when it was just me and dad, I came here every day after school. I didn’t get on the bus to go home, I got on the one that stopped at the neighborhood one block over and walked here. So I’d be here with Dad for a few hours every afternoon until he closed up and we’d go home and make dinner. And…” he trailed off, lost in a memory for a moment. “My Dad loves cars. He loves building things. He loves fixing things. He always has. And so I’d want to watch him doing this stuff, and I was tall enough to see under the hood and one day he gave me the wrench and said ‘Hey, kiddo, want to unscrew that lugnut there and give me a hand?’ And he showed me how he changed an oil filter. It was our thing, every day after school. And once I was old enough to stay at home by myself… I’d still come here after school most days because I liked it. Dad was proud of me, it was more interesting than cartoons on tv and way more interesting than my English homework, and it was something that always made sense. Even when… everything I was feeling didn’t make sense. That, and it turns out that I’m really good with my hands.”

“You are,” Blaine agreed with a grin.

“Not like that,” Kurt sighed. “I mean, yes like that too-”

“No, I mean it,” Blaine jumped in. “You’re really good with your hands. You can bake, you can sew, you can fix cars, you can apparently build free standing backyard structures. You’re really good at things like that. You’re very good with your hands and that’s… really impressive,” he added with a shrug. “It’s just one of my favorite things about you.”

“That I’m good with my hands?” Kurt asked, glancing over his shoulder at Blaine.

“That I’m always learning new things about you,” Blaine corrected. “Each time I think I know you, you zig. And then bam, there’s a whole new dimension of Kurt Hummel. How people at McKinley don’t think that you’re the most amazing guy to ever walk the halls is beyond me.”

“Well… they did think I was amazing enough to crown prom queen,” Kurt said.

“There wouldn’t have been any competition if they’d let you do a talent portion,” Blaine chuckled. “Prom queen who can rebuild an engine. Sexy.”

Kurt laughed. “Who knew you’d get turned on by all the greasemonkey activity.”

Blaine hopped off the stool and wrapped his arms around Kurt’s waist, burying his nose into the back of Kurt’s neck. “When you’re the greasemonkey, it’s all sexy,” he murmured. “We’ve checked off the list item. I think we have a few minutes for… anything sexy you want to do.”

“Oh do we?” Kurt mused. He turned in Blaine’s arms, his own hands grasping at Blaine’s hips as he pushed in for a kiss. They were both hot and sweaty and dirty, but wasn’t that part of the fun? Making out, tasting Blaine in the middle of the garage, his boyfriend’s hands sliding further down to -

“Oh come on Kurt, not again!”

The boys jumped back away from each other, at the older man’s voice. Mike, one of Burt Hummel’s longest employed mechanics, was standing there, pressing the button to open up the bay doors and open the garage for the day. “This isn’t make out point. This is a place of business.”

“Morning, Mike,” Kurt said brightly, wiping his mouth off with the back of his hand while Blaine tried to look nonchalant as he glanced around the garage. “I thought you were outside.”

“Yeah, well it’s 9am, which means that the shop is open, and your dad will be here any minute,” Mike said. “You realize this is the third time I’ve seen you boys doing your kissing thing here, right?” He set down the stack of daily orders on the counter. “You realize that’s why man invented cars -- so they could drive to private places to do things they don’t want parents seeing them do. Not in the garage where we fix those cars.”

“Please don’t tell Mr. Hummel,” Blaine said. “I don’t want him to think I was disrespecting his workplace.”

“Blaine, Dad doesn’t care -”

“No, your boy is right,” Mike said, a twinkle in his eye as he pointed at Blaine. “Yeah, your boy is right. Wouldn’t want Burt to think you were disrespecting his workplace. We can work out a deal, you know. You can do something for me. And we’ll consider it forgotten.”

“Sure,” Blaine said. “You want me to pick up lunch or something?”

***

Burt stood next to Kurt as they watched Blaine sit at the front desk of the shop. “So why is wearing that?” he asked.

Kurt shifted on his feet. “Mike caught us… kissing in the bay,” he mumbled.

Burt nodded. “He has a terrible habit of walking in on the two of you,” he said. “So he finally got his payback.”

“I offered to take the punishment for him,” Kurt said. “Blaine was being gallant.”

“Mike knows which one of you watches football,” Burt replied. “He knows which one of you this would hurt more. Looking good there, Blaine,” he called out, grinning.

Blaine tugged at the blue and yellow Michigan t-shirt and continued his sulk at the front desk. “Morning Mr. Hummel,” he grumbled.

“Why do you have on that terrible shirt?” Burt asked brightly.

“Just thought I’d cheer for a good team today,” Blaine replied, struggling on each word.

“Kurt told me what Mike saw this morning,” Burt laughed. “You can take it off.”

“Oh thank god!” Blaine pulled off the shirt and tossed it back to Mike, who was standing at the edge of the garage with two of the other guys, laughing their heads off. “Go Buckeyes!” he called out.