In the morning, Blaine combed and gelled his hair down and got dressed for the day. He ignored the dream he’d had last night, where Kurt had actually kissed him, and Blaine hadn’t protested. He was terrified of Kurt. Why in the hell would he want to kiss him!? He put together his book bag and went down for breakfast. This time, he was careful in what he chose to eat, making sure that if it was spilled on him, that he wouldn’t have to go change. He ate quickly and with purpose at an empty table, not stopping to look up at anyone. When breakfast was over, he pulled out his map again and made sure he knew where he was going before he went to English. When he tried to take a seat in the front, the teacher pointed at the same seat he’d been in yesterday. “Once you sit in a seat, it’s yours for the year.”

Oh. Well, that was great, except that Blaine couldn’t see the board very well, and that was the seat that was pretty much directly in front of Kurt. Sullenly, he nodded and took it, pulling out his textbook as other students started to trickle into the classroom. When Kurt comes in…He cut his mind off, feeling a flush rise to his cheeks. Blaine didn’t want to think about Kurt. All he could think about was that kissing, even in his dreams, felt good.

Kurt just couldn’t get back to his room fast enough. He was one of the rare people that had a single since his roommate transferred out midterm. As always he was grateful for the ability to shut the door on the rest of the world and just be alone. What the fuck had just happened? Obviously he knew the answer, he knew what had happened, he thought to himself. He just didn’t know why. Kurt crossed to his dresser, realizing that he’d left everything back in the bathroom and there was just no chance he was going back for them right now. He’d have to sneak in early and grab them before they disappeared.

As he dropped the towel and slid into pajama bottoms he shook his head and a short laugh escaped, bubbling up out of his throat on its own. In the time he’d been at Dalton Kurt had never had this sort of reaction to anyone, certainly not from some snot nosed uptight dick like Blaine. Of course he’d been occasionally attracted to a guy, he’d had a couple of flings and more straight guy bj’s than he cared to count, but none of them were under his skin in the matter of a few hours the way Blaine was. It made his head ache.

He wanted to hurt Blaine though. He wanted to see him lose it. Kurt wanted to see him cry. This wasn’t at all like a crush. Kurt flopped down on his bed and threw an arm over his eyes. When no answers came he reached over and tugged the little chain on his bedside lamp and plunged his room into darkness. Even with all the recent revelation, he still had no real answers and he knew he wasn’t going to get any tonight. He was just glad he hadn’t closed those few inches and kissed Blaine earlier. That really would have screwed with the whole hating Blaine thing he had going now.

Sleep was a long time coming, and then it wasn’t peaceful or restful by any means. He didn’t remember any actual plot or order to his dreams but he did have lingering images that floated behind his still closed eyes. Blaine outside slumping over with a split lip, Blaine in the bathroom crying in a corner, Blaine in his bed panting beneath him, Blaine’s red lips wrapped around…

Kurt sat up and through the covers back, practically leaping from his bed. Okay, okay. That was when he realized that the front of his pants were wet, and oh god, sticky. Kurt was looked down, incredulous. He couldn’t even remember the last time that had happened to him. He quickly stripped out of his pants and pulled on his clothes. He would not think about it. Not even a little. This was the single strangest thing he’d ever felt and he would not think about it.

He was able to retrieve his things from the bathroom where he splashed cold water on his face and proceeded to ignore any remaining images that wanted to play through his mind. Then he was off to class, and even though he knew he would see Blaine there, he knew he had to have his game face on. There was no way he was letting on to anyone that he had any hesitation about the situation. Nothing had changed. Blaine had better stay out of his way and that was that.

Kurt made it to class just as the bell was ringing and he went directly to take his seat. He did not look once toward the boy in the seat in front of him. He trained his eyes down on his desk and did not budge an inch. This was going to work out just fine. It would. It was working out great right up until the teacher starting calling out their partners for the next book report and Blaine Anderson was assigned to Kurt Hummel. Shit, shit, shit.

“You may move from your seats to sit with your partner. Remember, I want three pages on your analysis on the themes on the board, a summary of the book, and two pages each on how you feel the author got across his message. You’ll have the entire class period to work on this, but I suggest you find each other outside of this room.”

Blaine wanted to sink into the floor. He’d stopped taking notes for the assignment the moment he’d heard the name of his partner. He’d been praying for it to be someone, anyone else but him. Not Kurt. But of course it was, because it would have been too much like good luck for Blaine to have been paired with someone who didn’t absolutely hate him. The feeling in his stomach was definitely fear and anxiety about the fact that he wanted to leave this project with all of his body parts in tact, but there was also another, more exciting feeling thrumming just below the surface of his skin, and vaguely Blaine remembered the thought he’d had when he first woke up from his dream. Blaine bit his lip and pulled off his glasses to polish them before putting them on again. There would be no easy way to do this.

However, he had an assignment to get done, but he also had rules to follow. When one of the boys moved down to join another, Blaine got out of his seat and sat in the desk to Kurt’s left. When he sat, he pulled out a piece of paper and started writing on it. He didn’t look up at Kurt once, but when he was done writing, slipped it onto Kurt’s desk. I’m not breaking any of your rules by writing this, but it might be hard to work on this if I can’t talk to you. Then, he pulled out the book, The Great Gatsby, and wrote the themes they were supposed to be identifying and analyzing in the top corner of the first page of the book in the same small, neat script as his note. Finally, finally, he chanced a glance and sat up in his chair, looking at Kurt. Kurt hadn’t said anything to or about Blaine yet today, not that he knew of. “Please don’t hit me for talking to you,” he started. “I just want to know if I should expect to do all the work on this project or not.”

Kurt could feel his insides heating up rapidly. He watched the teacher as their assignment was outlined but he couldn’t move. He didn’t look up, he just took short breaths through his nose and tried not to let any of his confusion or worry flash across his Wes. He knew his friends were watching him to see what he would do. He shot David a quick grin and David seemed satisfied to get back to his own work.

Just then Blaine was moving to sit next to him. He took a breath and leaned back in his chair but he didn’t look over yet. He cracked his knuckles, cleared some things from his desk and fought to come up with a game plan. He was actually in the middle of trying to figure out how much his grade would drop if he blew this off when Blaine passed him a note. His hands actually had the nerve to tingle as he smoothed the paper and read it.

I’m not breaking any of your rules by writing this, but it might be hard to work on this if I can’t talk to you.

Okay. Blaine had finally listened. Of course he had chosen now to follow the rules when there was no possible way to keep it up. Kurt crumbed the note in a fist just as Blaine spoke to him. He should have been focusing on the assignment. He should have been coming up with a level response to show Blaine that he was still in control here. Instead his brain latched on to one detail and just ran with it. Blaine was implying that Kurt couldn’t do his part of the assignment. That uptight prissy little prick!

His head snapped over toward Blaine and whispered a little loudly. “Excuse me? I’m perfectly capable of holding up my part of this; I don’t need any charity from you!” He could feel his face flushing with anger as his eyes bored into Blaine’s.

Blaine shrank back in his chair as Kurt snapped at him. He’d completely misunderstood what Blaine had been trying to do, but Blaine couldn’t figure out how to articulate that when Kurt’s eyes were paralyzing him to exactly where he was. His breath came in short, trembling gasps as he tried not to let it show that all it would take from Kurt would be one word, and he would jump and run, or try to hide. Blaine took off his glasses, which seemed to break him of his paralysis for the moment, and he focused on rubbing them over and over again, trying to think of the right words to say.

“Of course you don’t need any ch-charity from me. I was just thinking that if you didn’t want to do the report…” Blaine faltered, then figured that he was talking now, so he might as well say what he was thinking “with me…that I could just do it and then you wouldn’t have to see me or talk to me or anything and I would put both of our names on it and I wouldn’t tell anyone that I did it. I’ve read the book already, for fun. And I’d make sure you would get a good grade. Or we could, I could, you could… whatever you want to do. It was just a suggestion, but you don’t have to, I mean, you, er, well…sorry, I’ll stop talking now.” Blaine stopped rubbing at his glasses and put them back on, sliding them up the bridge of his nose with the back of the knuckle on his thumb. His hand fell into his lap with the other one, and Blaine picked at his nails, waiting for a response.

When he looked up again, Blaine wouldn’t meet Kurt’s eyes. Instead, they focused on just above his hairline, or where the note rested on his desk. He almost chuckled, reminded of the story of Medusa. But Kurt was much more attractive than Medusa, and Blaine still hadn’t turned to stone. Did you just say attractive? Blaine’s eyes widened at the thought. You’re in English class with someone who could eat you alive. Pay attention!

Kurt was listening, he really was but there was this roar in his ears, a rushing that was drowning out what Blaine was saying. Of course he got the gist of it. Right now he was just trying to figure out why his mouth didn’t seem to be working. He looked away, looked down, pulled out his own book. Anything not to keep looking into Blaine honest face. “Fine, okay.” He said waving his hand. “I get it.” He pulled out his pen and then and only then did he feel like he could look back over at Blaine. This time he just focused on the middle of Blaine’s forehead so he wouldn’t actually have to look into his eyes.

“No one does my work for me. Ever. Got it?” He asked but his voice was quiet. He didn’t wait for a response. “Let’s just figure out how to split the work for now, which means talking, for now.” He amended. Kurt figured he could worry about wanting to pummel Blaine, or whatever, another time, for now he just needed all this interaction to stop.

Remembering that he needed to save face with David he shot his friend a disgusted face before scooting his desk close to Blaine’s. Then he looked expectantly back to Blaine as he drummed his pen on his notebook, waiting. Kurt focused hard on his face, keeping it cold, keeping it protected. He knew that Blaine would only use anything he saw against him because that’s how the world worked.

Blaine only nodded when Kurt told him that nobody else would do his work for him. He felt like a jerk for a moment, assuming that Kurt wouldn’t want to do the work, then remembered just as quickly that just yesterday, the boy had told him that he wanted nothing to do with him, and that it was fear and the need for self-preservation that had pushed him to make the offer. It seemed, for a second, at least, that he and Kurt were going to be able to work together on the project.

But that was when Blaine watched Kurt give one of his friends a look. His eyebrows knit together, and Blaine bit his lip to keep from reacting when Kurt was paying attention to him again. This changes nothing, Blaine. He still doesn’t like you, he just has to work with you. Instead of letting his feelings run across is face, he simply copied Kurt and moved his desk so that they were nearly flush. Blaine’s thigh fell lightly against Kurt’s for a brief moment, but he was pulling away from the contact so quickly that Blaine was questioning whether or not it had actually happened.

“Well, we can do this a couple of ways. We can split the themes we have to analyze and do those on our own and put them together. And I can do the summary of half of the book and you could do the other half, and then we’d just have all the work split down the middle, or we could do the whole thing together, which means we’ll probably have to meet after classes are over at some point.” For the time, Blaine forgot who he was talking to. He’d turned to his schoolwork and gotten lost in it. It was what tended to happen, especially when Blaine was reading. He tended to have a one track mind, which his father had lovingly called “educational tunnel vision.” It meant that Blaine brought home good grades without really trying, but he worked to earn the extra credit, and he always pushed the extra mile for the A+.

“I was thinking that if we worked on it together, we could each come up with our own ideas about each theme and find a way to work both of them into the paper if we had different ideas.” Blaine’s hands searched for a pen, and, finding one, began to write down the idea that was forming in his mind. When he looked up, he startled himself. He’d just gone maybe two or three minutes of straight talking without thinking about the fact that he was less than a foot of breathing space away from Kurt. “Or, if you have any ideas, you know, I’d like to hear them.”

Kurt fully intended to sit through this and listen to Blaine, he had only just agreed to do just that but Blaine’s voice was still sort of irritating and it seemed he had already thought way too much about this assignment. Also it went up in pitch, just slightly. Most people probably wouldn’t even notice it but pitch was like a second language to Kurt. Also Blaine had a thing about his diction. The more worked up he got the more emphasis he placed on his t’s particularly. Kurt rolled his shoulders and tried to focus.

Blaine had stopped talking now and was looking at him now sort of expectantly. Right. It was his turn. “So that’s acceptable.” Kurt said quickly and made to scribble some pretend notes. He thought he ought to take the lead now so that Blaine didn’t confuse the situation at any time because nothing had really changed. No, nothing was different today except that they needed each other for a time to finish this project.

“So we will meet in the library. At least once. When are you free?” Kurt couldn’t look back over there, his eyes were boring into the paper on his desk. “I mean, I’m free today. Just today.” He shifted in his seat.

As soon as Kurt told Blaine what was acceptable, he knew that his time to shine had quickly come to a close. Even though Blaine had never considered himself in control of the situation, he knew subtly that something had changed. He could feel it in the way that Kurt moved to tell Blaine where they were meeting, and how often. He started to answer when Kurt asked when he was free, but snapped his mouth shut when the offer was rescinded and replaced with Kurt’s only availability being today.

That was fine with Blaine. The second he’d become aware of Kurt’s presence again, Blaine started to feel the fear seep back into his veins. He bounced one leg up and down against the floor, keeping a quick beat with the ball of his foot. His thigh shifted to the left and came in contact with Kurt’s, but Blaine didn’t feel it, once again lost in thought as he tried to come up with a creative way to say that he had all the free time in the world.

“I’m free as soon as classes are over, and I’m not…doing anything, so I don’t have anything but homework until curfew.” Library, library… Blaine tried his best to remember the location of the building between bounces of his thigh, but he couldn’t place where the library was, not even on the map he still kept tucked in his pocket. Learning a new school hadn’t been this difficult when he’d started junior high. Dalton was just so…daunting. Blaine frowned and sucked his lower lip into his mouth, thinking. “Um, I have no idea where the library is, though. I really only know how to get to the cafeteria, the classrooms, and the dorms.” Blaine’s leg finally stopped bouncing, and then he realized that he’d been unknowingly rubbing against Kurt for God knew how long. His entire face turned bright pink, and he whacked his knee on the desk pulling away. The teacher raised an eyebrow toward them, but Blaine waved it off as an accident. He opened his mouth to apologize, to say something, but nothing came out. Just embarrassment. And absolute knowledge that Kurt was going to kill him. Slowly.

Kurt went from being hyper aware about Blaine’s voice to being hyper aware of Blaine’s thigh. The thigh that was pressing into his own. Right now. And moving. Rhythmically. With each and every bounce of Blaine’s foot. Kurt’s eyes slid over to Blaine now, and he did manage to understand what Blaine said. Basically he was going to meet Blaine and lead his worthless ass to the library. He even opened his mouth to say it. He fully intended to say it, and follow it up with something tacky just to make his point. What came out was surprisingly different.

“We can meet in my room. We’re probably close; you were in my bathroom last night.” Kurt snapped his traitorous jaw with a snap. Dammit. That was not even close to what he’d planned. Kurt was just losing his fucking mind. Clearly. His eyes raked over Blaine’s pinked skin, and realized that Blaine’s leg was gone. Its warmth was gone and Kurt had to physically struggle to keep his own body in check. Okay. Okay. He knew what this was, sure. Of course he did.

No. No he didn’t. He hated this guy. Of course Kurt had been with guys he’d hated, but it was never anywhere close to this. No, Blaine was under his skin. Wait, why was he comparing this situation to those? Oh god. Kurt was shaking his head again and that’s when he realized he was staring right at Blaine’s mouth and waiting to see what was going to happen next because he really didn’t know. He really had no freaking clue.

Blaine had no idea what to say. He knew that something usually came after being invited to work on a project in someone’s room after class, but every cheesy line in every romantic comedy hadn’t prepared him for this: this was the one situation that was completely and utterly non-sexual, the way that the movies pretended to make them, but it was the reality of the situation. “Okay, cool?” Blaine frowned at his own word use, knowing that going from rubbing up against someone’s thigh to getting invited to their room to saying “cool” was probably lower on the list than a lot of things. The problem was that Blaine had never really had enough experience in being invited to boys’ rooms to know.

“I mean…I’m in room 307. What room are you in? I’m pretty sure I can find my way around the dorms well enough.” There were a couple beats of silence, and then Blaine sighed. He looked down, then back up at his notebook. He had an idea of what they wanted to do at least, and Kurt didn’t seem to mind doing his hair share of the work, so he wasn’t particularly worried about that. But Kurt had brought up the showers, the bathroom. “I’m sorry about the bathroom last night,” he murmured, and his mind seemed to exist in a world of its own, completely separated from rational thought. “I was, I meant to tell you that I would just leave, but then you—I, um. Sorry.”

Blaine looked down at his hands and pulled off his glasses. He rubbed them against his shirt before he put them back on. He started to look up at Kurt, then decided against the action halfway into it. Sometimes, Blaine wondered whether or not there was actually a filter from his mind to his mouth. Sure, he was smart and he could talk intellectually with the best of them, but when it came to being able to tell when enough was enough, even Blaine realized that he wasn’t so great at it all the time.

Kurt bit his lip during Blaine’s fumbled apology. He bit hard enough that the coppery taste of blood seeped into his mouth. It was too bad that biting his lip only stopped him from raising his voice at Blaine and did nothing to stop the hard on that seemed to come out of the blue. Instead of continuing this maddening conversation, because that’s exactly what this had become, a conversation, Kurt simply looked straightforward, told Blaine where his room was, 312 incidentally, and then he asked to be excused. The teacher was hesitant but something must have been in Kurt’s expression because the teacher gave a short nod. Kurt tucked his books against his body and rushed out the door.

Surprisingly he made it all the way up to his dorm without incident. There he dropped his books on the floor, leaned up against his door and undid his fly with an audible sigh of relief. He jerked off quick and dirty with no thoughts for anything other than release. One, two, maybe four rough tugs later and he was spilling over his hand as his heart tried to pound out of his chest. Alright. Part of the problem was too clear to ignore. For whatever twisted reason that stuck up dickhead was exactly what Kurt wanted. As for the part where he could barely stand the sight of him, well that was too big to fit unto Kurt’s head right now. He needed to get cleaned up and get back out there in time for his next class.

Hours later the day was done and Kurt was back in his room. He pulled the book out, and thumbed the pages. Like Blaine he’d already read this one but there was no sense bringing that up right away. Kurt had a plan. A semi plan. It involved drawing this assignment out as long as he could; or as long as he could stand being around Blaine. He still wasn’t convinced that he and his dick could come to some sort of middle ground on this. It also involved working off some of the steam right away to see if it made any difference. As for whether or not Blaine would play along, well that was tricky, but Kurt had confidence on his side. Also brute force, but he was sort of hoping wasn’t going to be all that hard. Or maybe he was hoping it would be. He really couldn’t make up his mind. So he stopped trying and just waited.