Chapter Thirteen

Blaine throws himself into his work. Again. He takes on a few extra cases and puts in extra hours chasing down leads that will amount to nothing and doing research he really doesn’t need. He starts being the first one in the office, turning on the coffee machine, and the one that hangs back and wants to order take out.

But, he continues to smile, and he starts leaving his phone on top of whichever stack of paperwork is closest to him, grinning at it whenever it vibrates.

Eventuallyr12;if by eventually you mean about two weeks after Kurt leavesr12;he tells Emma the whole story. They’ve settled a case, and having gotten less than they wanted, are sitting close in a booth in the back of one of the darker bars just around the corner from the courts. They’ve both already had a little too much.

“What is up with you?” Emma eventually asks, watching his lips twitch up as he stares over the rim of his glass at the wall.

Blaine’s eyes snap to hers before he bats his eyelashes and smirks. “Nothin.”

Emma whacks him on the arm and Blaine sighs happily.

“I’m in love.”

That makes Emma scoff and she’s completely sure he’s kidding. Because Emma knew him in the beginning, when there was Ben and then when there wasn’t. She knows Blaine likes to say he thought he loved him, and she knows Blaine only dropped the L word after almost a year.

When Blaine just keeps smiling her expression eventually shifts from incredulous to intrigued and she asks, “Seriously?”

“Very seriously,” Blaine says. “His name is Kurt. I met him in my sophomore year of high school when he came to spy on the all-boys a cappella group I was in.”

That makes Emma crack up laughing again and Blaine takes his chance to signal the barman for two more drinks. When she calms down, Blaine tells her the whole story.

He doesn’t stop until Emma has laughed some more and has almost cried. She has always known Blaine had a way with words, and with the truth, that could make people feel whatever he wanted them to, but this story is his best. She makes him promise to bring Kurt by the offices as soon as he’s back from London, and then she kisses him on the cheek as they part ways for the evening.

~~*~~

About two months after Kurt left, Blaine manages to get a weekend clear. He works extra hours and begs a few favors, managing to get the Friday afternoon off as well and a late start on the Monday after. He gets away with it, he thinks, because the entire office is gossiping about him and his five day first date and his one year of long distance, and most of them like him enough to want to help. 

The weekend is enough of a reason to delve into his small amount of savings and book a flight to London. He checks dates with Kurt and Kurt promises he will have the entire weekend free. Blaine can guess that Kurt will have to work equally hard to achieve that.

Blaine lands at Heathrow early Saturday morning and Kurt meets him at Kings Cross station before the mid-winter sun has even come up. They kiss right there at the top of the escalators and then Kurt takes his hand and leads him out to the chilly street.

They sit at the very front on the top level of a red double-decker bus, holding hands and hardly speaking, simply exchanging quick glances and soft smiles. Blaine stares at the buildings and the people, and Kurt takes his luggage for him when they switch buses and have to stand for the five minute ride to Kurt’s block.

Kurt unlocks the front door of his apartment and pulls Blaine in, not giving him a moment to think or speak, just pushing the door shut behind them and then pushing Blaine back against it, kissing him hard, like he hasn’t been able to do for months.

Kurt half-carries Blaine to the bedroom, over-eager and uncoordinated, and Blaine doesn’t open his eyes until he’s on his back, with Kurt above him, kissing him over and over and fitting his hands roughly to all the contours he had begun to forget.

They spend hours getting re-acquainted, searching with their mouths and hands and bodies, laughing and barely talking at all, except to tease and try to make the other laugh. Mostly, it’s just sounds and tastes and, for a second date, a level of intimacy even more unbelievable than their first. When Blaine points that out, Kurt just laughs again. 

Blaine naps and Kurt attempts to keep busy by neatening his already immaculate apartment. When Blaine wakes up, he tells Kurt off for letting him sleep at all. They leave the apartment and walk for hours, as far as they can, Kurt leading and Blaine following, staring up at things and bumping into tourists.

When it starts to get dark, Kurt takes Blaine to an expensive restaurant near Cambridge theatre and orders wine and food for them both.

“Was that too presumptuous?” Kurt asks once the waiter has left.

Blaine shrugs and smiles. “I’m meant to say yes, aren’t I?”

Kurt shrugs back.

“You know what I like because I tell you pretty much every single night what I’m eating. It sounded delicious.”

Kurt grins. The food is perfect.

“What are we doing tonight?” Blaine asks as the dessert is brought out and placed between them.

They’re splitting it of course. Kurt laments the lack of good cheesecake in London, and Blaine asks again. “Tonight?” He kind of hopes they’re just going back to bed.

“It’s a surprise,” Kurt tells him, eyes dancing in the light from the fire.

~~*~~

Kurt walks close to him as the night gets a little cooler, leading him through the loud, crowded streets of the Saturday night theatre district. Blaine lets him, saying more than once how different it is than New York. He wonders aloud how lost he would end up without Kurt to guide him, because he is so very used to a grid, and London is all back alleys and dead ends and curving roads.

They stop, eventually, in front of the newly built Ivy-Mout Theatre, Kurt waiting, watching, and reveling in the play of emotion over Blaine’s face, which is pink from the walk.

“Oh my god, are you serious?” Blaine eventually exclaims, finally seeing the posters for the recently revived West Side Story.

Kurt nods, his eyes dancing. “I have connections.”

~~*~~

They catch a cab home and Kurt whispers against Blaine’s mouth that London cabbies have seen so much worse. They’re both hard and giggling by the time Kurt gets his door open. They get off fast, spending too much time on kissing and laughing, and too little on actually remembering to try to find a rhythm to their pleasure.

~~*~~

Sunday, Kurt assures Blaine, is just as much for sleeping in and being lazy in London as it is in New York. Blaine corrects him, pointing out that Sunday mornings are his usual weekly date with Max, and then Kurt teases him about being over-eager and shows him the email from Alexis that details all of Blaine’s finer attributes. 

Blaine kisses him to shut him up and can’t help but blush.

~~*~~

“I don’t miss talking to you as much as I think I should,” Blaine confides between kisses, lying heavy across Kurt’s naked body, their half-hard, slowly recovering cocks caught deliciously between them.

Kurt pushes him up and stares. “Me either,” he admits. “I think it’s because we talk every single day. Probably more than is healthy.”

It’s true. They email and text and call and Skype. They share details so mundane that Blaine can’t even be bothered rereading what he writes before sending it, even though he knows that when he gets the same mundane daily accounts back from Kurt, he reads them through twice.

“I miss being with you, though,” Blaine says, rocking into him, kissing his cheek.

Kurt knows he doesn’t just mean the sex, or the kissing, or the being in the same space at the same time. There is something so much more there. “Me too.”

“I guess this is it until Thanksgiving,” Blaine sighs.

“Christmas,” Kurt corrects him, having consciously decided to wait until they were together to break that particularly heart-breaking piece of news. “There’s no Thanksgiving over here and I couldn’t afford to take the time even if there was.” Blaine looks sad for the first time since he got there. “You’re going back to Lima?”

“I wanted you in New York, all to myself.” Sighing heavily, Blaine kisses Kurt’s shoulder and rallies. “Christmas, then?”

Kurt nods. “Back in Lima, we can split your time between my family and yours, if you like.”

Blaine sighs again. “I’d rather spend it mostly with yours, to be honest.” Then he thinks of something he’s been avoiding asking via email for weeks. He kisses Kurt’s neck and asks, “Do you really think you’re dad is happy about me being… back?”

Kurt laughs. “I Skyped him especially to tell him about a month ago. You should have seen his face.”

Blaine is about to ask what exactly that means when his phone vibrates on the bedside table and he buries his face in Kurt’s neck. “Can you?” he asks, because Kurt’s arms seem longer and his hands are too snuggly fitted to Kurt’s waist for him to want to move an inch.

Laughing, Kurt stretches to grab the phone for him. “Who’s Patrick?”

Blaine’s head snaps up. “Seriously?” he asks.

Kurt can only see shock in Blaine’s expression and shakes his head quickly, “No I’mr12;“

Blaine’s heart skips a beat because ten years ago this would totally be about jealousy and mistrust. Now is different, though, and Kurt just seems inquisitive, still smiling. “I mean, seriously, Patrick Hunt, who I haven’t spoken to in months, is messaging me now.”

Kurt reads the message for him and arches an eyebrow. “A little birdy told me you were in London? Obviously you don’t need me for love life advice since you didn’t even tell me you were visiting?” Kurt watches Blaine’s face turn red as he nuzzles closer into Kurt’s skin. “Who’s Patrick?” Kurt teases.

“Oh, he will want to meet you,” Blaine admits, looking up and resting his chin on his hand over Kurt’s chest. Then he starts to chew his lip. 

Kurt waits patiently while Blaine tries to remember how much of his sexual history Kurt knows from two month’s of emails.

“Patrick was a TA at Stanford. He was a good friendr12;“ Blaine hesitates, not sure how to phrase this. “We slept together a bit.”

Kurt scoffs and looks down at Blaine. “He was that TA?” Blaine shrugsr12;so obviously he’s told Kurt some of it. “And he would want to meet me… why?”

It still doesn’t feel like jealousy, and Blaine would be smiling broadly if he wasn’t mentally running through worst case scenarios in which Kurt meets Patrick. “He was kind of rooting for you… us.”

“While you were at Stanford?” Kurt asks, incredulously.

“Yep.”

~~*~~

They meet Patrick in a pub that Kurt’s never heard of. He’s up the back, dressed in a suit far too nice for a Sunday afternoon. He hugs Blaine tight and actually has the audacity to ruffle his hair while Kurt just looks from one to the other.

Then Patrick turns to him and grins and offers his hand. “Hi, I’m Patrick.”

“Kurt,” Kurt responds, not rudely, just being cautious.

Patrick nods and turns back to Blaine immediately, asking, “What’s this surprise you mentioned?” Blaine’s grin grows and Kurt fidgets, and it takes several long seconds to slip into place.

“Kurt?” Patrick asks, and now he’s looking at him much more carefully. Taking in the tailored pants, the styled hair, and the way Kurt is standing a little too close to Blaine. “The Kurt? You two finallyr12;”

And then he hugs Kurt tight.

~~*~~

Kurt likes Patrick, even though Patrick spent several long months fucking Blaine. It’s strange, and Kurt never thought he’d be comfortable with any of Blaine’s exes, but what is meant to be one quick drink at the pub turns into a late lunch. Patrick regales him with tales from Stanford and Kurt tells Patrick about New York and then Lima and Dalton. Eventually, Blaine explains their current transatlantic predicament and Patrick just laughs himself silly. But he takes it all in, and when they part ways he hugs both of them.

He pulls Blaine back though, letting Kurt walk a little further away, so he can whisper something in Blaine’s ear. “I want an invite to the wedding.” It makes Blaine blush, and when Kurt asks him, Blaine says it was nothing even though the color in Blaine’s cheeks makes it plain it was something.

Kurt is a little surprised to find he doesn’t mind so much.

~~*~~

That night, Kurt shows Blaine the new store, pushing his way through the throng of Oxford Street shoppers to get inside, and then snapping at the perky girl behind the counter who is neglecting the many shoppers on the floor. Blaine just stares at how much has obviously been achieved in so short a time. He stares at the rich-looking people and the tourists and the bright patterned skirts and dresses. There is a corner in the front dedicated to a selection of deep purple suits that he desperately wants to run his fingers over. He hugs Kurt tight and tells him he can’t believe how incredible he is. 

~~*~~

Blaine leaves the next day at the crack of dawn and Kurt goes with him all the way to Heathrow, just because he can. They kiss outside security and Kurt finds himself crying when Blaine disappears through the gates.