They dozed the rest of the evening away, Blaine stirring first with a groan and a stretch, wrapping both arms around Kurt, sinking him into the bed, smothering him with kisses as he eked out of his sleep induced haze. “Mmm…you’re cozy.”

Blaine squeezed him tighter and chuckled. “I don’t know how. My whole upper half feels stiff as a board.”

“Did I do that…or the fire?”

“Mmm...the fire. I put myself on the tank end of a hose; those fuckers are heavy.”

Kurt wiggled out of Blaine’s embrace, booping his pouting lip when he sat up. “Roll over. I’ll give you a massage.”

“Oh god.” Blaine was on his stomach in no time, resting his head on his folded arms, wiggling himself deeper into the mattress and pillows.

“You don’t happen to have any oils or anything do you?”

“You know, I think I do. You might have to dig. Closet in the hall…green bottle, blue label.” Kurt got up and found his briefs, not wanting to scare a hall-surfing five year old just trying to make a potty run. After a little digging, Kurt returned with the bottle, squirting a little in his hand for a sniff as he straddled Blaine’s thighs. “Mmm…this smells nice.”

“It was Maggie’s. Helped with some of the pain…”

“Is this…is the scent going to bother you?”

“I don’t think?” Blaine twisted around and groaned at the pull of his muscles. “Lemme sniff.” He breathed in near Kurt’s hand and smiled faintly, closing his eyes as he rested his head back on his arms, the combination of lavender and cardamom warming his senses. “It’s okay. A good memory.”

“Just tell me if you want me to stop, okay?” Kurt oiled up his hands and rubbed them together to warm and started on Blaine’s lower back, pushing up, thumbs pressing at either side of his spine. Blaine’s deep groan of appreciation encouraged him to continue, working out knotted muscles, sneaking in kisses and soft bites when the sight of his sculpted back or the sound of his pleased moans was more than he could take. “Is this good?”

“It’s fantastic.”

“Good.” Kurt scooted back further on Blaine’s legs and added more oil, rubbing at his ass and thighs. “So, can I say it one more time?”

“Say what?”

“I’m so sorry.”

“Stop. I don’t want to hear that again.” Blaine rolled to his back and pulled Kurt down to curl together, kissing his forehead as he snuggled in, burrowing under the blankets. “I mean it. We’ve both apologized. We both meant it. Let’s just go forward, okay?” Kurt nodded and Blaine brushed a stray bang off of Kurt’s forehead, smiling at his post-sex dishevelment – so contrary to his day to day sophistication. “Tell me, though…when did you decide? When did you know?”

Kurt smiled shyly, and buried his head into Blaine’s neck. “You’re going to kill me.”

Blaine wiggled away from him and lifted his chin to make Kurt look at him. “Oh, no no no. No hiding. When!?”

Kurt blushed and closed his eyes before answering. “T-H-O-M-A-S.”

Blaine dropped his finger from under Kurt’s chin and fell silent.

Kurt knew that night. The Night. Before the market. Before the fatal fire, before the parade. Before the bad puns and flower deliveries. He knew. He knew, he knew, he knew, but somehow…he just couldn’t totally buy into it. Couldn’t allow it. Couldn’t.

“Dear god, Blaine. Say something or I’m going to stop breathing forever.”

“Why…” Blaine rolled to his side, running his knuckles along Kurt’s cheek, smiling when Kurt’s worry left his eyes. “Why Thomas?”

“I figured, any boy who could love a boy like Thomas would grow into a man who would love a man like me.”

“Oh, sweetheart…”

“The way you described him. The light in your eyes. You got me and yet you never knew me.” Kurt paused long enough to steal a kiss, Blaine’s gentle smile the only invitation he needed. “And then…what you did for Maggie? Twice? I’d be a fool to walk away from someone as amazing and selfless as that.”

“To quote you…you think too highly of me.”

“No. No, I don’t.”

“So, why did you make us wait? Why this awful, lonely, god I was losing my mind, Kurt. Why?”

“It’s what I do.” At Blaine’s curious look, he tried a different angle. “Describe my job to someone who has no idea what I do.”

“For Marc Jacobs? Um…you take the designs the team comes up with for every season, and you deconstruct them into pieces, like sleeves and collars, pockets…”

“You have been watching…then what?”

“Then, you make rough drawings of those pieces with scale and measurements, send them to pattern makers. And then…what? Pattern pieces come back to you and you make them into proto-types of the clothes. After you’ve terrorized a few fabric manufacturers for sending the wrong material.”

“I do not terrorize.”

“All I know is I would not want to be on the receiving end of some of those phone calls you make.”

“When I say poplin, don’t fucking send me oxford. It’s really that simple.”

“Is there a point to this or are you avoiding my question?”

“My point is…that process? I’ve been doing that all my life – and not just with clothes. With my life. Here, your mom’s dead. Or, your bully just kissed you. Or, you didn’t get into your dream school. Or, your dad’s sick. I’d take it, I’d tear it apart, nip and pull and tuck it in different ways until it fit for me and then reconstruct it so it worked. It’s exhausting. But, it’s how I function.”

“And you hadn’t done that with us, had you?”

“No. And I didn’t want to. Everything happened so fast and it already fit and it was the right fabric and the right style and…" Kurt paused and laughed at his own dead metaphor. "…and it was already selling at fashion week without one single tweak from me. For the first time in my life, I was ready to just run with it…and I did. And then it backfired. So, I thought okay, we’ll run this through my system too. Maybe it’s best.”

“So, was the hold out me or Adrian?”

Kurt scoffed, more at himself than the question. “Me.” Kurt sat up and stole a kiss for courage when Blaine joined him, crossed-legged, knee to knee. “The holdout was all me. Blaine, I’m petrified.”

“Of what?”

“Of breaking him.” Blaine started to counter him, but Kurt kept going. “I can be cruel too – you just said it yourself. I believe your word was terrorize.”

“I didn’t mean…”

“…I can bite. I can bitch. I can snap and snark and just rip someone apart with words and…I don’t have a lot of patience sometimes. I like things the way I like them. I like quiet when I want quiet and I like to be able to think before I act and kids don’t afford you that luxury and I…I don’t want to bite at him. You and I both know…all it takes is one word. From one person.”

“Okay, stop. Kurt, I worry about that stuff every day. One eye roll, one heaving sigh, one jerk of his arm when he darts away from me in a parking lot and he’s ruined forever. It’s what keeps all parents up at night. But most of the time…they don’t break.”

“But what if I go against most of the time?”

“You wo-…okay, let me tell you something that Maggie’s mom told her. Ade was just…god…3 days old, maybe? He still looked like a lizard, so he was young.”

“Nice.”

“Oh, don’t deny it – they look like lizards at first.”

“The self-professed child hater has nothing to add.”

“Exactly. Anyway, Mags was a wreck. She’s just had her first night alone with him, he’d finally fallen asleep after a horrible attempt at nursing. She was sobbing at her incapability and what was she thinking and how was she supposed to do this alone and on and on. Her mom just let her go while I sat there feeling like a total loser. I didn’t know shit, man. I jizzed in a cup 9 months ago, and I had to be at the station in an hour, you know?”

“Typical male.”

“Shut up.” Blaine teasingly pinched skin at Kurt’s thigh – the thigh he’d been so gently caressing only hours before. “After she’d calmed down her mom told her that, from mom to mom, she couldn’t guarantee anything – how things would go, how Ade would turn out – but she could promise one thing. And that was, that we would screw up. We’d say the wrong thing, do the wrong thing and we wouldn’t always have Adrian’s best interests at heart.”

“Gee, thanks mom.”

“No, but you see…it lifted this huge burden. It gave us the freedom to simply do what we knew was right and not sweat the rest.”

“I don’t think it’s that simple, Blaine…nothing in life is.”

“No? Look, no matter how fabulous your best is? You’re going to screw up at some point. At your job. With your dad. With relationships. It’s just part of it. You know this…”

“But he’s a child.”

“He’ll bounce. Fucking rubber balls, kids. They know your heart better than anyone. They can cut through your shit faster than any detective. And if they see your heart is right…and Kurt, your heart? It’s the most tender I’ve ever known…they’ll bounce back from any humanity you might show them. In fact, they might even learn from it.”

“He and I did do pretty well tonight.”

“It sounds like it. And when he’s a little shit? And he will be…the more you get to know him, the more comfortable he’s going to get. He’ll have to test you. You’ll manage just fine. And if you screw up? We’ll fix it. Just like we do when I screw up. Just like we do when he screws up.”

“Can I ask you a stupid question?”

“The stupider the better.”

Kurt swirled his finger over Blaine's bicep, embarrassed at the silliness, if not childishness, of his question. But it was heartfelt and oddly, important. “Can we still dance in our underwear?”

Blaine laughed and pulled Kurt in closer, kissing his forehead. “I sure as hell hope so! Ade and I do all the time!”

“I just don’t want to miss the us part…we were so good, just you and me.”

“It’s going to be different, but…”

“…we’re still you and me?”

“Absolutely. And I haven’t dated since I got custody, so I guarantee you, I’m going to screw up too.”

“You already did, Mister.”

“I like to start out with a bang.”

“There’s a pun in there…” Kurt leaned in and kissed Blaine, sighing against him, his warmth, sinking his hand into his hair. “Speaking of screwing up, I probably should head home.”

“Why?”

“What about Adrian?”

“What about him?”

“Blaine…”

“Look, if my bedroom had a revolving door, that’d be one thing. He knows you. He likes you. He asks me every day if you’re my boyfriend or not…”

“Every day?”

“Every god damned day. Got to the point I wanted to deck him. Why isn’t he yet?”

“Because Kurt is an idiot.”

“You’re lucky that wasn’t my answer a few times.”

“Oh! Oh! I see how it is.”

“Do you?” Blaine wiggled his hands down into the blankets to Kurt’s waist. With a finger swirl and a pinch, Kurt squealed and jumped. The blankets flew, the limbs flailed and it was on, squeaks and squawks that should have woken the neighbors but fortunately didn’t even waken Adrian. They raspberried soft skin, stole kisses and nibbles and Blaine found every tender, ticklish spot and probably discovered a few Kurt didn’t even know about. By their breathless end, they were out of bed, one on either side, threatening with wiggling fingers to attack again.

And then Kurt’s stomach rolled, growling for food. “Sloppy Joe break?”

“So you’ll stay?”

“Only if you feed me.”

***

“Hey, beautiful?”

“Mmm…” Kurt turned to Blaine’s husky morning voice and grinned, kissing the air until their lips met, Blaine’s scruff tickling at his cheek.

“I just wanted to warn you, there’s going to be a tornado blasting into this room in about 5 minutes.”

“Oh. I bet its name is Adrian.” Kurt stretched and moaned, flopping onto his back absent-mindedly hiking the sheets up over his bare chest. “Should I put more clothes on?”

“Only if you’re not comfortable. We do a lot of undies only around here, so he probably won’t even flinch.”

As he hiked himself up and ruffled his hair, just as Blaine predicted, a tornado named Adrian blew through the closed door, took a flying leap onto the bed, landing straight on his dad. “HI Daddy!”

“Oof! Hey, buddy. Did you sleep well?”

“Uh-huh and I didn’t even ha-…” Adrian stopped, looked at Kurt – who smiled and waved – frowned and slipped off the bed, running back down the hall into his bedroom. He slammed his door and, from what Kurt and Blaine could hear, took another flying leap onto his own bed.

And then the tears began.

Kurt looked to Blaine as he sat up, wiping his hand down his face. “Welcome to screw up number one?”

“Yeah. That didn’t take long.”