“This is amazing,” Blaine whispered, staring at his fingers on Kurt’s arm, “just being able to touch you like this. I never thought that something so simple could be so…” He trailed off, walking his fingers up to the crease of Kurt’s elbow and sliding them back down to the heel of his palm again.

Kurt couldn’t trust himself to reply: all that would come out would be a moan and Blaine could not hear that. He had thought he would be able to control himself around the other boy, to not reveal the emotions touching their fingertips together had ignited in him, but it seemed like his whole body was an erogenous zone when Blaine’s hands were involved. His friend was just enthralled by being able to be close to Kurt without holding back, but Kurt found that not touching Blaine was even harder now. Because now, he didn’t just want fingertips on his wrist. He wanted them everywhere and it was driving him almost to breaking point. He had to pull his arm back on the pretence of taking Blaine’s hand because the teasing brushes of the other boy’s fingers were pushing him dangerously close to doing something stupid like kissing him or climbing into his lap and doing wicked things to him.

Kurt had never considered himself a sexual being, but Blaine had changed many things about his life. This, apparently, was just another addition to a long list.

“We should probably go downstairs,” Kurt said, proud of how steady his voice was. “Now that we can do…this, my dad might start being suspicious and protective and threatening you with his shotgun.” I wish he had a valid reason.

Blaine laughed and pulled Kurt off the bed. This definitely helped clear Kurt’s head: beds and Blaine were no longer things that could be close to each other if Kurt wanted to think with any form of clarity. Maybe faeries were more lustful than other humans? He’d never really considered it, but wanting Blaine so much in such a carnal way could not be normal.

He had to pull his mind back to the present and totally unsexy things like his father being in the same room as them.

“Hey,” Burt said, smiling at them from the kitchen table. His eyes flickered down to their joined hands and his smile grew. Kurt knew Burt would not be so happy Kurt had someone else in his life if he knew the thoughts that ran through his son’s head about that particular person. It had been difficult for Kurt not to tell his father the truth, but he had known the reaction could only have been bad, so he had decided not to.

“Hey, dad. Where’s Carole?”

“She dragged Finn out shopping. Something about him not being able to live in the same pair of jeans for the rest of his life.”

“At least one of the Hudson family has some sense of acceptable clothing,” Kurt muttered, dragging Blaine towards the counter and beginning to make coffee one-handed. He had held hands with Blaine before, but it had never felt like this and he didn’t want to let go if he didn’t have to. Blaine’s skin was warm, just as Kurt had imagined, but his fingertips were rougher than anticipated. Blaine explained it was from playing the guitar and Kurt had nodded vaguely, still enthralled by the way they had felt against his skin the first time he had noticed. They were oddly smooth, but the skin was not as soft as that on the backs of Blaine’s hands.

Kurt noticed his father leave the room and looked at Blaine with a frown. “Where’s he going?”

Blaine laughed at him and nudged Kurt’s shoulder with his own. “Did you not listen to anything he just said?”

“Um…” No. I was thinking about your hands and all the things you could do with them. Because I’m creepy like that.

Blaine laughed again and leaned in. Kurt’s breath hitched, but Blaine just bumped his nose against Kurt’s cheek, almost like he was nuzzling him. Kurt supposed it was sweet, but he was a little too focused on just how close Blaine’s lips were to his own.

He turned his head away before he let his body get the better of him and poured the coffee into two cups.

“He’s gone to the bar. A couple of his friends are watching a game there. He did seem kind of confused when you didn’t say goodbye to him, you know.”

Kurt knew exactly what grin Blaine would be wearing and endeavoured to not look at him: that grin had a dangerous effect on him. “He should be used to me tuning out of sporting conversations by now.” He paused for a second, then carefully pulled his hand away from Blaine’s.

“Hey, no, what are you doing?” Blaine grabbed his hand again with an adorable pout on his face.

“I was going to carry the coffee to the table, but apparently I can’t do that. I have a puppy attached to me that’s making it kind of difficult.”

Blaine rested his forehead on Kurt’s shoulder and let out a half-laugh. “I can carry my own cup. And you’re offensive.”

Kurt managed to live through a whole cup of coffee with Blaine sitting next to him at the table, bumping their knees together just because he could, regardless of how on edge it made Kurt. Unfortunately, Blaine was much attuned to the nuances of Kurt’s emotions.

“Kurt, I know it’s hard to realign the way we act now, but you have to relax. I can do this,” he cupped Kurt’s cheek with his hand, “and it’s absolutely fine. It’s better than fine. It’s fantastic and you have to calm down. We’ve moved past the no-touching stage. And,” Blaine said, leaning closer and raising his eyebrows in a way that shouldn’t have been as attractive to Kurt as it was, “you should know that I am very tactile. I’m basically going to be stuck to you.”

Kurt had to giggle at that. He hadn’t really let himself enjoy this yet. He’d been caught up in this rush of sensation and he realised that Blaine was right: he needed to calm down; he needed to appreciate this.

He pulled Blaine’s hand from his cheek, flipping it over to bare the wrist. “Okay.” He danced his fingers up the tendons, brushing over the miniscule bumps of Blaine’s veins. Kurt heard Blaine gasp and looked up at him curiously.

“It’s just,” Blaine said, “so strange. I didn’t know it could feel like this.”

Kurt tried not to be disappointed as he smiled at the other boy. He had to stop letting himself hope that Blaine was being affected by this the same way he was. He had to stop wishing that Blaine wanted him. He knew he was getting too caught up the lustful emotions and not allowing himself to explore the other ways in which his love for Blaine had been edited. He couldn’t be sure, because of the change in its inherent nature, whether the depth with which he loved Blaine had been increased. He did know that the new emotions were much more painful, ripping at Kurt in ways he didn’t know love could. They say that love hurts, but he had never believed that until now. He felt like his heart had been laid open and handed to Blaine, all without the boy even noticing. Perhaps it was because he was still stuck in the afterglow of the connection, but Kurt noticed that an even greater proportion of his thoughts were geared towards that one boy. Before, he had been able to divide his mind into vaguely equal sections, but now Blaine had taken over almost all of it. Everything in Kurt’s life was centred around Blaine.

“Your hands are really soft,” said Blaine. He looked away from Kurt, an embarrassed smile on his face. “I sort of expected that, but it’s…it’s nice.”

“You have these,” Kurt said, pressing his fingertips into the calluses on Blaine’s. “I’ve never encountered them physically before. No-one I knows plays guitar, you see, and they’re…well, they’re really odd.” He laughed a little and brought Blaine’s fingertips to his cheek, brushing them down it gently and letting himself revel in the unfamiliar texture. “I like it. I’ll always be able to tell your hands apart now.”

Blaine nodded, staring at his fingertips against Kurt’s skin. “I never notice because I’m so used to them. But then, your cheek. It’s not as harsh as mine. Your stubble, you know? It’s softer. Look.” He took both of Kurt’s hands and pressed one to his cheek, one to Kurt’s own.

Kurt dragged his fingertips down both, noting how Blaine’s scratched at his skin in a way that made him have to suppress a shudder of pleasure. “I see. I feel it. I…I don’t think I’ve ever felt someone else’s stubble before. God, this is weird.”

Blaine laughed and dropped Kurt’s hands. “It is, isn’t it?” He took a sip of his coffee, not taking his eyes off Kurt. “I don’t even care if you like hugs. You’re getting them.”

Kurt drank some of his own coffee to hide his expression. He remembered embracing Blaine for the first time the day before. He didn’t know if he could repeat that experience. It had been so hard not to kiss Blaine’s neck, wrap his arms around his waist and lick the shell of his ear. If Kurt had to survive that multiple times a day, he wasn’t sure how long it would be before he snapped. However, he knew it would be worse for him if he tried to stay away from Blaine. From the moment they’d touched, the two of them had stayed as close as possible to each other when together. Blaine had wanted to stay over, but Kurt had forced him to go home, insisting that he had school the next day and he could come over after. In reality, Kurt wanted to say yes and keep Blaine with him forever. There was just the problem that Blaine would have slept in his bed, which his father would have allowed because he thought Kurt had connected to him as a friend. And Kurt could not have Blaine in his bed. He was not that strong.

Blaine tilted his head at Kurt, wordlessly asking why the other boy was looking so distant again. Kurt blinked a couple of times, washing images of Blaine and his bed out of his eyes.

“Sorry,” he said quickly. “It gets a bit overwhelming sometimes.” He couldn’t tell Blaine what was on his mind, but he could at least give him half-truths. “I keep remembering that I’m connected to you forever. I will love you for the rest of my life.” I will be in love with you for the rest of my life, he amended internally. “That’s…kind of crazy. I’ll be a hundred years old and still thinking of you as my…as my best friend.” He’d broken into full-blown lies by this point. He had avoided mentioning the word ‘friend’ around Blaine so far in the hope of evading the emotions it created within him. He was worried that every time he said it, he was pulling himself further away from the chance of ever being with Blaine the way he longed to be.

“It is crazy,” Blaine said, leaning closer again. He took both of Kurt’s hands and pulled them to his chest. “But in the best way possible. You just know what your future is like. You know you’ll always have people to love you and I think that’s what most people long to be sure of. In that way, I think you’re really lucky.”

Kurt knew Blaine’s words should make him feel elated, but they scratched at fears he had only recently started to have. “I don’t know that I’ll always have people to love me. I know I will always love them, but I don’t have any control over their emotions for me.”

“Kurt, don’t say that. Your family love you too much to ever leave you. Mercedes? Mercedes depends on you being there. I can tell how important you are to her and I barely know her. And me? I’ve already told you I’m here to stay.”

Kurt disentangled his hands from Blaine’s so he could wrap his arms around the other boy. He pulled Blaine into a tight embrace, closing his eyes and pressing his face into Blaine’s hair. He let himself breathe in the scent of the other boy, allowed it to comfort him. He held Blaine longer than he ever had before, trying to silence the thoughts that told him Blaine could never be sure of how he would feel in the future, that Blaine probably would not think the same way if he knew Kurt’s true emotions.

Blaine put a hand on the back of Kurt’s head, holding him close. He nearly pressed a kiss to the other boy’s cheek, but the echo of Kurt’s ‘best friend’ in his ears stopped him.