Chapter Eleven

Blaine wakes up first. It’s still dark outside, so he can’t have slept long. His whole body aches, though, and his mouth is dry and tastes of stale wine and cheese. He would slip from the bed immediately, except Kurt has a leg thrown over his hips, calf tucked between his, and both hands resting flush and holding against his skin. Kurt mumbles something and shifts, and Blaine takes the opportunity to push him away.  

He pads through the house on quiet feet, drinks a glass of water, and then brings two back to the bed. He lets himself look at Kurt, naked and barely covered and beautiful. Then he slips into his small bathroom and brushes his teeth.

He doesn’t hesitate before sliding back under the sheets and wrapping both arms around Kurt’s waist, kissing his cool lips against the hot skin of Kurt’s shoulder and watching him smile without waking.

~~*~~

When Kurt wakes up, it is well and truly morning. There is sun pouring through the window, and several floors below he can hear the bustle of New York. He goes to stretch and everything twinges, his back, his thighs, his ass. He’s been well fucked and when he looks down at the mussed hair of Blaine, resting on his chest, he grins as he remembers it. He feels completely gross, though, unused to falling asleep with anyone before taking a shower and brushing out his hair.

It takes half an hour for Blaine to rouse, a soft sniffle alerting Kurt that he’s waking, and then Blaine presses his mouth to the centre of Kurt’s chest and he winces to think what it must taste like. When Blaine turns his face up though, Kurt forgets about most of that, relishing the shift of Blaine’s weight across him and the way Blaine’s eyes are bright and his mouth smiling.  

“Morning,” Blaine mumbles, ducking down to press another kiss over Kurt’s heart.

Kurt lets out a breath he hadn’t known he had been holding. “Good morning,” he says back.

When Blaine slides up Kurt to kiss him, though, Kurt turns his head to the side with a rueful smile. “I need to brush my teeth,” he mumbles as Blaine settles for kissing the corner of his jaw.

“I don’t mind,” Blaine murmurs.

Kurt laughs and runs his tongue over his teeth, feeling the disgusting layer of fur there. “Trust me, you’d mind.”

Blaine shrugs and pouts and kisses Kurt’s temple. Kurt catches a whiff of his peppermint breath and wonders when in the night he wasn’t in Kurt’s arms.

“I kind of really need a shower, too,” Kurt says, trying not to open his mouth too wide and feeling self-conscious. “If that’s not too big a request.”

One last kiss to Kurt’s chin and Blaine rolls off him, onto his back. “Go for it. I’ll um—“ He has slid to the edge of the bed and remembered exactly how naked he is and how much his muscles ache. It’s nothing Kurt hasn’t seen a hundred times before, nothing he didn’t see a hell of a lot closer last night. Bravely, Blaine stumbles to his feet and rolls his shoulders. “I’ll get you a towel and a toothbrush.”

Kurt is staring at him, rolled up on his side and letting his eyes rake from Blaine’s long, slender feet all the way to his lop-sided curls. “Thanks,” he says.

Blaine grabs his underwear on the way out into the hall and spends five seconds leaning there, catching his breath. Then he slides his boxer briefs up his legs and moves to the small linen closet in the hall. By the time he gets back to the bedroom, Kurt is gone and the hum of water can be heard from the bathroom.

The door is still half-open, so Blaine walks in. He leaves the towel on the closed toilet seat and finds an unopened toothbrush under the sink, leaves that besides his toothpaste, and then he hovers.

He likes to imagine Kurt is humming, or would be, if he were in his own bathroom. The barely there silhouette afforded him by the closed shower curtain is not particularly interesting, but the idea that behind it, Kurt is standing naked and wet really, really is.

“Do you still sing in the shower?” Blaine asks without thinking.

He hears Kurt swear and drop something, and guiltily realizes Kurt probably didn’t even know he was there.

“Sometimes,” Kurt says after a few moments.

It’s uncomfortable and awkward and asking him to sing right now would be really, really strange. Stepping in beside him would be less strange, but probably a little too presumptuous.

“I’m going to go and make coffee,” Blaine says, moving to the doorway. “Take as long as you need.”

He trips backwards out the door.

~~*~~

Kurt starts to sing just as Blaine’s slicing through an apple. He has no idea what it is. It’s muffled and quiet, but he’s singing, and Blaine grins.

~~*~~

They swap into the bathroom quickly, Blaine hyper aware of how much of a mess he is in when Kurt sweeps back into the kitchen in just his jeans. His body is wet and shining, his hair pushed back and pulled into soft spikes with the water. Blaine stares at the hair on his forearms and his even darker jaw line, and suddenly feels pretty stupid caked with dried sweat and come and saliva, standing there in pink and purple boxer briefs. He can’t look away, though.

“Guess I should do the same,” he mumbles as Kurt waits for him at the other end of the kitchen.

“Yep,” comes the easy answer, Kurt’s eyes dancing as they slip down Blaine’s body once more.

Blaine swallows and is about to move when something shocking occurs to him. “You’ll still be here when I’m done?” he asks, momentarily horrified.

Kurt’s smile gets wider and he tells him, “Of course.”

“Okay.” Blaine makes to walk past Kurt, into the bathroom, to get clean.

At least he would, except Kurt steps to the side and drags him in by the hips, pressing them close and kissing him before he even knows what’s happening. Kurt kisses him until their knees are knocking, and Blaine’s sure his chest is wet and Kurt’s getting dirty again, and then Kurt pulls back and smiles.

“You smell like me,” is all Blaine can say.

“I borrowed some of your stuff, I hope you don’t mind.”

Blaine doesn’t dignify that with a response. He just kisses him once, hard, and then pushes him out of the way and marches towards the bathroom with a huff.

~~*~~

They drink coffee and share three sliced up apples at the kitchen counter. Kurt has found his Henley and slipped it back on, letting it stick a little to the wet skin of his chest. Blaine can’t stop staring at the contours.

Blaine gets dressed in bright blue capris and a polo shirt. When Kurt raises an eyebrow, he just reiterates that he dresses as a lawyer during the week. They eat mostly in silence, except for Blaine pausing to tell Kurt he usually gets bagels on the way to work, or goes in early and starves himself until lunch. Kurt tells him he knows that because Blaine wrote it in an email a few weeks ago.  

Blaine bites his tongue and doesn’t offer to grab Kurt’s hand and take him directly to the best bagel place in the city.  Instead, he asks Kurt what he’ll be doing with his dog Max while he’s in London. Kurt tells Blaine about his assistant, Alexis, and her fondness for the dog, and rather than being the segue into the conversation they’re meant to be having, it just makes Blaine say he really wants to meet Max at some point. 

~~*~~

They are on their second cup of coffee and they’ve run out of apples. Blaine’s stomach grumbles and he wonders if left over duck is an acceptable breakfast.

“How’s you head?” Kurt asks.

Blaine tries to remember at what point last night he managed to hit his head and only succeeds in remembering where every other ache on his body came from. He shifts from one foot to the other and then realizes, “Oh you mean the wine?” Kurt nods. “I didn’t really have that much.”  

They drank three bottles between them, but that’s not the point. Smiling, Kurt agrees, “Neither did I.”

They fall back into silence, watching each other and wondering.

~~*~~

“So about last night…” It’s Kurt who finally says it, staring at the bottom of his cup and swirling the dregs of his coffee around. 

Blaine’s head snaps up, even though he has known it was coming for hours, he still isn’t ready for this conversation. “Do you regret it?” he asks.

“No.”

Blaine smiles and breathes. “Me neither. “

“Good,” Kurt mumbles. Looking up, he catches Blaine’s gaze slipping down to watch Kurt’s fingers on the rim of the cup. “It would be insane if I offered to blow off Vivienne Westwood and stay in New York, wouldn’t it?” He’s not seriously thinking about it, because that would be crazy. 

Blaine laughs, but it’s tinged with bitterness. “After just one night? “

“Yeah.” Kurt has to agree, every ounce of logic says he has to. “But…”

“I would never ask you to.” Blaine cuts across him quickly, reaching out and grabbing his hand. “Or let you. Don’t start thinking about doing anything so ridiculous.”

“We could though.” Kurt watches him with blue eyes that seem so serious, so real, that Blaine, for just a second, thinks maybe they should.

Kurt could blow off the career opportunity of a lifetime. Or Blaine could throw all his hard work at Stanford and the DA’s office out the window and move to London or…

Blaine stares at him and realizes that none of that is the point. “Are you proposing that we get back together? Pick up exactly where we left off, just—“ He hesitates, wary of the word, having not used it in so, so long. “Just fall right back in love and do the long distance thing for god knows how long? Again?”

“Would you?” Kurt asks without even thinking about it.

But they’ve tried this, ten years ago, and it was a complete disaster. Another year without Kurt right there next to him terrifies Blaine. “I have no right to ask for that,” he says.

There’s another long pause during which they both stare into their empty coffee cups and contemplate.

“You’re really not giving me a choice,” Kurt says.

Blaine doesn’t understand exactly what he means. There is so much choice here and only a few aspects are immutable. Kurt needs to go to London. Blaine needs to stay in New York. Last night was amazing. Kurt, Blaine thinks, can do what he wants, and Blaine will do exactly what he needs to.

“I’m going to wait, okay?” Blaine says, voice shaky and his hand continues to hold Kurt’s tightly, even though by now they’ve both got sweaty palms.

Kurt’s eyebrows shoot up and his mouth gapes a little. “For a year?” he says, and then begins to say more.

But Blaine waves him off. He shakes his head and speaks before Kurt has any chance to argue. “No. Let me get this out because I’ve just kind of realized it and it needs to be said.” He pauses, ready for Kurt to argue, but Kurt just shuts his mouth and waits. “Last night I had more fun, I was more relaxed, I was straight up happier than I’ve been since I was eighteen. Probably more than I’ve ever been. Not just because of the sex. Not just because of you or the conversation. All of it.” Blaine swallows. “I’m the one that screwed this up the first time. I’m the one that cheated and threw all of it away—“  

Now Kurt does interrupt, shaking his head and grabbing at Blaine’s other hand across the counter, holding both tight. “No, we talked about this back then and we agreed we both fucked up. I… I hate that you cheated, but I hate that I didn’t notice how far you’d slipped, how unhappy you were and—“

“You’re right, we worked all this out. Ten years ago is not the point now. The point now is now and—“

“Yes,” Kurt agrees, and they hold each other’s gaze in a stalemate and then drop each other’s hands and wipe off the sweat on their pants.  

Blaine’s whole reality has shifted in the space of a few minutes, but it feels so real. “I’ll wait,” he says again. “It’s only a year and we will both be incredibly busy in our own little worlds and… and if you find someone. Or need someone.” He shrugs, but there’s more jealousy in him now than there was last night when Kurt was tangled up in him and showing off the tricks other men had doubtlessly taught him. Blaine pushes it down, though. “If you need someone, you do it. Do whatever you like. I’m going to wait, though, and when you come back—if you come back—we will see where we’re at.”   

“That’s ridiculous,” Kurt tells him.  

Blaine smiles ruefully and brushes him thumb over the dip of Kurt’s wrist. “It’s no more ridiculous than thinking I’ll be able to write this off as a one night stand and let you go forever. Than thinking I’ll be able to find anything even remotely as good with someone else. If I wait, I’ll at least have hope, right?” And he means that, he’s not just saying it, or falling apart and rambling, he’s thinking about best case scenarios and waiting is it. It’s the most he can offer himself.  

Kurt’s teeth have clamped down on his bottom lip and Blaine can see him thinking. When Kurt swallows, something old and ugly inside Blaine rears its head and makes him prepare for rejection.

“How is that arrangement any better than what we had when I left you in Lima?”

“It wasn’t you back then, as cliché as that sounds. It was me, I was… I can wait, and I can be happy waiting, I think.” So long as there’s hope. Perhaps that’s it. Blaine has learned how to hope, how to hold onto optimism.

“Really?” Kurt sounds doubtful and he’s mentally skipping over twelve months of being alone and unsure. It doesn’t sound particularly happy and for the hundredth time since he woke up, Kurt debates saying no to London. “You’d really wait for me? Based on one semi-drunk night?” he says instead.  

“How about a decade of not quite feeling right, and then a night of feeling like I was exactly where I was meant to be?”  Blaine challenges.  

Kurt can feel it too. He blushes and pushes back the bits of fringe that have fallen across his forehead in a move that makes him look like a teenager for a brief moment. “What if I wanted to do it differently?”  

“How?” Blaine asks, and of course, he allows himself to hope a little harder.

“Not make you wait.” Kurt bites his lip again. “That doesn’t sound pleasant.” Blaine doesn’t say anything. “We could date.”

Blaine’s face splits into a grin and then the crease is back between his eyes. “You mean long distance again?” he asks.

“I’ve got five days before I leave,” Kurt counters.

“And then?”

“And then long distance. But… better than when we were teenagers and not particularly good at it.” Kurt’s eyes drop and he raises his cup to take a stalling sip before remembering it’s empty. “If that was something you might—“

“Kurt, last night was…” Blaine trails off and his cheeks flush red. It settles over his skin in a different shade to the one Kurt remembers from when they were young and experimenting. “Would it be completely crazy?” he whispers.

“Yeah,” Kurt tells him. “It really, really would.”

Five days, and Kurt probably has a mountain of work and packing and organizing to do. He thinks, London isn’t that far, maybe they can still do weekends. Maybe this is exactly the second chance they deserve. Just ten years late.

Blaine laughs lightly, mostly to himself, and Kurt tilts his head and waits.

When Blaine finally speaks, he says, “Okay,” and then “Okay,” again. “Okay, you’re probably going to think I’m even crazier but…” His throat tightens and his mouth feels dry and he’s caught in a long, hard stare. But maybe, just maybe, this is it: the beginning of everything. He grabs Kurt’s hand again and interlaces their fingers.

“Blaine?” Kurt prompts.

A deep breath, and you don’t say these things this quickly, you don’t even think them, but five days and London and Blaine looks up from their hands to Kurt, right there, watching him back. “I’m in love with you.”    

Kurt’s breath catches, and that should be too much because he’s been promising himself since Blaine kissed him that he wouldn’t say it, and now Blaine has. He has to say it back, but Blaine’s face is a picture of happiness, smiling until it looks like it hurts and dipping his head to kiss at Kurt’s knuckles.   

Now Blaine does start rambling. “I never ever got over you and I don’t think I wanted to. I grew up, and I changed, but god, I never once got over you. And now you’re here and maybe saying you feel enough to try again—“  

“I do!”

“That maybe you feel the same way?” Blaine asks, sounding shy, but so, so happy.

“Yes!” Kurt wants to tell him everything, but he feels like he’s about to start crying and that would be stupid, and anyway Blaine is still talking.

“—And it is insane! We might hate each other. We might not have enough left in common or maybe too much. It might not work at all, but god I want it to. Ridiculously, I want so badly to try.” Blaine pauses to look across at Kurt and watch his chest rise and fall with fast, shallow breaths, to see the grin spread wider across his face. He’s holding his hand too tight, making just one more part of him ache with it.

“We have five days,” Blaine points out.

Kurt echoes him wistfully, “Five days,” like it’s all the time in the world and not nearly enough. It isn’t. “We can visit each other for weekends, if you like? And maybe holidays… if you still go back to Ohio. And you always used to be able to talk to me for hours on the phone even before I was in New York.”

Blaine nods. “And Skype. And texts and email and whatever else we need. If we want it.”

“I want it,” Kurt says without hesitating. “I want you.”

“This is ridiculous,” Blaine says again, but they’re doing it. “We’re like… dating?”

Kurt nods, trying on the idea, feeling young and stupid, and loving it. “We’re like boyfriends.”

And that seems to be that. Five days of undoubtedly hectic togetherness and getting on each other’s nerves and kissing each other as much as they want, as much as they can. Then, a year of penance for waiting a decade to admit what now seems so obvious.

Blaine drops Kurt’s hand to the counter only so he can walk around and face him. He grasps Kurt’s hips, turning him and pulling him in close and loving that he can. All of a sudden, he can do this as much as he wants, forever, if that’s what they want.

Kurt’s mouth chases his and Blaine ducks and leans and keeps it from him, making him smile and then giggle, and only then does Blaine lean forward and capture his lips against his own, a hand up his back and in his hair, tilting him just right so that the kiss doesn’t have to end, but can only deepen.  

They kiss and kiss, and it tastes like coffee. They stop only when Kurt’s stomach makes an unseemly growl and Blaine cracks up laughing at him. He pulls back, but Kurt keeps his arms looped around Blaine’s neck and Blaine keeps his around Kurt’s waist and they settle forehead to forehead, exchanging soft Eskimo kisses.

“I need a proper breakfast,” Kurt admits. “And I promised myself I’d get across town to the other store today and make sure it was going to run while I was away. “

Blaine kisses him.

“But I don’t want to say goodbye to you again. Not yet. I—“

Blaine kisses him harder, swallowing whatever Kurt was about to say. When he pulls back he whispers, “Then don’t.”

“It’s a Saturday,” Kurt says. “You don’t have any work?”

“A little,” Blaine admits. “There are some depositions I need to go over and a few papers I should probably read. If you’ll have me, I’ll shuffle some things on Monday and get that day mostly off. What time on Wednesday is your flight?”  

“Afternoon.”

“I can get the morning off then,” Blaine says. “If you want. That’s… wow. That was kind of presumptuous of me.”

“Be presumptuous,” Kurt replies. “We’ve got five days and we should spend as much of them together as we can. Okay?”

Blaine nods against his cheek and smiles as they sway to no music at all, standing in Blaine’s little kitchen, and wrapped up in each other.