They toweled each other off hurriedly, enough only to avoid soaking the sheets on Blaine's bed. Kurt took Blaine's hand, and he followed, silently, reverently, but took the lead sitting on the edge of the bed, pulling Kurt to him.

He kissed Kurt's hip, seeking that spot, the one where he knew Kurt's hip bone protruded just enough to latch his lips and suck just hard enough to leave notice that he had been there, that this spot belonged to him.

Kurt swayed, eyes closed, hands tangled in Blaine's wet mop of hair. When he opened his eyes, he saw Blaine looking up at him, eyes dark and pleading. Blaine tugged a little more, bringing Kurt to his side, then rolling him to the mattress until they were prone, face to face. He drew Kurt's face to his, nipping at his ear, his jaw, his neck.  

With a hand to his shoulder, he turned Kurt face-down on the bed, and then continued his trail of deep kisses, down his spine, pausing at the dimpled base of Kurt's back. Blaine laved the spot, caressing Kurt's hips, then moved down his body to begin the slow, wet slide south through his cleft. 

He reached around Kurt's waist and pulled his hips up, just enough to adjust the angle, Kurt compensating by shifting his knees out.

"I wanted to take care of you," he mumbled into the sheets.

"You are," Blaine said in a hushed murmur.

"But ..."

"My turn."

With that, Blaine gently tugged at Kurt's ass, giving his tongue unfettered access. He lapped softly at the hole, using his thumbs to massage around it, then gingerly dipping  in before return to the lap, circle, lap. He shifted, momentarily, to nose at Kurt's perineum, kissing and sucking his balls, before diving back, burying himself cheek-deep in Kurt's ass.

It was nearly more than Kurt could take. His hips rose reflexively to each tiny thrust, each lick, seeking more. He would then force himself down into the mattress, rutting to  find relief.

Blaine tongued and teased, Kurt's moans growing louder with each change in pressure and angle. With a last, penetrative kiss, Blaine rose to his knees. "Turn over, Kurt. Sit up."

Kurt opened his eyes, took a stuttering breath and did what he was told.

Blaine reached back, arranging pillows for Kurt to lean against. He clambered over to the nightstand, fetching the lube and condoms he'd picked up during his errands the day before. Setting the condoms at Kurt's side, Blaine straddled his lap.

"Give me your hand." He squeezed a dollop of lube in Kurt's hand, an raised up on his knees to give Kurt access. 

They locked eyes, and Kurt rubbed the oil in his hands, warming, then reaching. He traced Blaine, from crack to hole to balls and back again, finally circling, circling again to  Blaine's breathy sighs.

Kurt couldn't drag it out long. He wasted little time between the tease of the first finger and the stretch of the second. Blaine stilled for a moment, gasping, then began to rock his hips on Kurt's hand. Kurt moved, stretched, tested.

Blaine clenched his eyes, trying to focus, trying to control his breathing. "More."

"Oh, I don't think you're ready, hon- ..."

Blaine slapped his hand on to Kurt's shoulder, pressing solidly. "More."

Kurt eased a third finger in and paused. Blaine exhaled, let his hand drop to Kurt's chest, and began to move. Kurt crooked a finger and shifted -- here, there -- until a deep moan from Blaine assured him he'd found what he was looking for. 

"Oh, god ... Kurt ... please."

Blaine reached down, dusting his fingertips down his chest, his stomach, pausing at his hips. Then, as if changing his mind, reached to his side for the condoms. He fumbled with the box, writhing while he tried to rip a condom from its wrapper.

"Kurt! A little help, please."

"Mmm. Bossy."

Kurt eased his fingers out of Blaine and helped him shift back further on his lap, far enough for Kurt to roll a condom down his straining cock while Blaine warmed another drop of lube in his hand. He coated Kurt with urgent strokes and raised up on his knees again, letting Kurt align them.

"... been so long," Blaine huffed, sinking down, easing gently at first, then pushing until he bottomed out. They both stilled, just breathing, not even looking at each other, when Blaine's breath hitched. He looked at Kurt and nodded.

He raised up a few inches, just enough for Kurt to thrust back, earning a debauched moan. Blaine rolled his head back, shut his eyes and ground into Kurt, circles, figures eights, trapezoids, he didn't care, so long as he could increase friction between their two shaking bodies, his own erection sliding across Kurt's stomach with their motion, unattended.

Kurt eased himself up, wrapping his arms around Blaine's neck, bringing them face to face. He whispered into Blaine's ear, though he would have been hard-pressed to remember his words. One moment encouraging, another pornographic, he knew that Blaine responded to the sound of his voice during sex, so he rambled on. Blaine responded with more moans, groans, sighs and incoherent exclamations.

They reveled in the closeness of it all, of their bodies connected, chest-to-chest, hip-to-hip, but had difficulty finding the rhythm that both desperately needed. 

"More, Kurt ..."

"Can you turn over?"

"Hmm?"

"Hands and knees ..."

"Yeah, yeah. Yes."

They separated briefly to adjust, Kurt running his hands along Blaine's sides, his back and his ass as he lowered himself to the mattress. Kurt ran one hand up and down Blaine's spine as he lined himself up, and leaned to whisper in Blaine's ear. "I can't hold back much longer."

"Then don't. Just fuck me hard."

Kurt, never one to disregard Blaine's wishes in bed, he again followed directions, slamming into Blaine, their skin slapping noisily with each harsh thrust.

He reached around Blaine's chest, holding his hand flat to his heart and leaning his head to Blaine's shoulder. Blaine grabbed Kurt's other hand, wrapping it around his erection and holding tight as he guided it to a grueling pace.

Kurt, who had held back as long as possible, couldn't control himself much longer. Blaine knew it, even without the repeated chant of "gonna come" grunted into his ear. "Harder Kurt. Let it go. Harder."

With Blaine's encouragement, Kurt allowed himself the heated release he had put off for so long. He surged forward one last time, trying to pull Blaine back to him with his free hand. They stilled for the pulse, their breathing erratic. "Stay in me, just a moment more," he said, once again tugging at Kurt's hand, stroking himself viciously until he came across their joined hands.

So they remained for the moment, Kurt softening inside Blaine, Blaine holding Kurt's cum-covered hand.

"Can we just stay like this?" Blaine said with a sigh.

"Not if we care at all about personal hygiene. Come on," Kurt said, kissing Blaine's shoulder. "I need to get up."

He tied off the condom and fetched a moist washcloth from the shower to clean up.

"Have you ever noticed that if you read porn, the couple always comes together at exactly the same moment?"

"Yeah," Blaine said with a huff. "Never happens."

"Not a once. But we do a damn fine job catching up with each other," Kurt said, giving Blaine a light kiss.

"Mmmm. That we do," Blaine said, sounding for all the world like he was about to fall asleep.

****

Kurt couldn't sleep. He curled into Blaine, resting his head on his chest and silently drawing patterns across his torso, a swirl here, a heart there. Blaine wrapped one hand around his head, as if using the crook of his elbow as a support, and looked aimlessly off to a corner of the ceiling. His free hand found Kurt's head, and knitted its fingers gently into his hair.

He looks so alone, Kurt thought.

It struck him that in the hours since they'd been reunited, they really hadn't said much at all, save for the mores and the ughs and the oohs and a handful of unwitting religious declarations. Not that he was complaining, not in the slightest. But they normally talked, a lot, and the room was strangely silent.

"What are you thinking about?" he said, with soft kiss to Blaine's chest.

"Just that it suddenly feels like I've come full circle. All this ...," he said, circling his gaze around the room as if he was looking at at the city scape instead of a small bedroom, "All this has been good for me."

"Well, I try ..." Kurt said.

"I'm not kidding, Kurt. This move. I needed this. I needed to be forced out on my own, to be by myself. I needed to learn how to manage. I needed to learn how to live my life, on my own ... my own terms."

Kurt didn't respond. He wouldn't move for fear of where this might be going.

"Coop's almost never here. I've been pretty much by myself since I moved. I had to make new friends, and for the first time in my life I had to find my way as just as me, not as Blaine Warbler or as Kurt's boyfriend, but as Blaine Anderson.

"And you know what? I did it. I did it without someone holding my hand and without hiding behind a bunch of jackets."

"You were never behind them, Blaine. They were behind you. You were front and center at Dalton ..."

"That's not the point," Blaine said, quickly enough that Kurt knew to stop. This was not a time to interrupt.

"I didn't even realize what this was all about until now. When I went to New York? I was running to you. McKinley? I transferred to be with you. And Dalton? I was there to hide, to escape my life. This? This is the first time I can remember doing something by myself, for myself ... I don't know, it's ... it's forced me to stand on my own. I don't know if that makes any sense to anyone but me, but trust me when when I say this was something I needed.

"Look at Mercedes. She did this on her own, straight out of high school. She turned her back on Lima and never looked back. That Sam got her started, then he sent her away ... that may have been the most loving, generous thing I've ever seen.

"Look, I know it's been rough, Kurt, but you let me go when I needed to, even if I didn't know at the time just how badly I needed to do this."

If Kurt could have blended into a wall, or the sheets, he would have in that moment. Instead, he pulled off of Blaine, just enough to give him the freedom to shift to his side. Blaine turned slightly and rolled on to his hip, placing him face-to-face with Kurt.

He took Kurt's hand and looked him in the eye.

"You set me free."

Blaine's eyes pled with Kurt to understand, but the words deafened Kurt to anything else. Blaine took Kurt's hand and held it to his chest.

"Kurt, we need to talk."

"Right now?"

Blaine nodded. "Right now."

"Am I going to like what's coming?"

"I don't know.

"Kurt, this should be one of the happiest moments of my life. And in so many way, it is. It really is. You're here. I've missed this, you, us -- so much. But ..."

"There always has to be a but ..."

"Always. ... And you love butts," Blaine said, trying to lighten the mood. Kurt curled his left lip in response, almost imperceptibly, then returned to his brow-furrowed concentration.

"Something's happened, Kurt. Something big."

Kurt could see it coming, like the headlights of an approaching drunk driver, he could see it. He could feel the collision. The best he could do was brace himself for impact.

"It's Christian, isn't it?" he ventured quietly, tensing.

"What? No! Kurt, no. You thought ...? Christian's a friend. Christian's married. He's just got married. He's on his honeymoon right now, Kurt," Blaine said, his voice a blend of bewilderment and panic. "Oh god ... no Kurt, no. That was the wedding I was at yesterday. It shut down the office for the afternoon."

"Christian got married? But I thought ..."

"I know what you're thinking, but no, Kurt. Christian is not Sebastian. Not anywhere close. We're friends. We talk. Ends up, we're a lot alike. He was in a long distance relationship," Blaine said. "I guess we kind of bonded over it."

He told Kurt how they had spent hours trying to figure out how to make relationships work when the couples are separated by a continent. For Christian, it meant getting married, and offering to move back to the east coast.

"Geez, Kurt ... I knew something was bothering you, but you thought ...? Didn't you trust me?"

Kurt doubled-back, looking for he words to explain what was ultimately inexplicable. He'd been jealous, and wrong.

"There's no one but you ... you, and my future."

Kurt hadn't even recovered from the shock of thinking that Blaine may have found someone else, was saying goodbye when he stopped short again.

"What?"

"Something happened, Kurt. This week, after that show at the Catalina, when I sang with Mercedes," Blaine said. "We were only going to sing a couple of duets, but afterwards, Cameron ..."

"He offered you a contract."

There was a time in their history when this moment would have erupted in a patented Pepsodent Blaine Warbler grin and waggle of eyebrows, but not now. Blaine's lips turned up in a tiny, tenuous smile that seemed to ask, Is this OK? Is it OK to be happy? Is it OK to follow my dreams?

"I haven't given him an answer yet."

****

"Why didn't he just do this in New York?" Kurt asked.

They were sitting up in bed now, both propped up on pillows, mirroring each other, their hands in their laps, without touching.

"It's not just about singing, Kurt. I've been learning the studio, arranging, learning production. There's so much more to music than just playing it."

"So you're going to be a producer?"

"Someday, I hope. There's an option for that path. That's why he waited, I think. We talked about this in New York, about my dreams beyond singing. Cameron's been an incredible mentor to me, Kurt. He believes in me. He didn't rush me into some prefabricated marketing niche. He showed me the music business and let me discover where I fit into it."

"And where do you fit into it, if you sign," Kurt asked, certain that the answer could destroy him.

"Here, at least to start."

"So I've lost you."

"Kurt, there are studios all over the world. I may start here, it makes sense to start here, but it doesn't have to end here."

"I thought you were coming home. That was the plan, wasn't it? That's what I signed on for, Blaine."

"I am going back. Before I do anything, I'm going to finish school."

"And then?"

"That's what we need to talk about, Kurt -- how to make this work. 

"Kurt, have you ever considered anything other than New York? Any other possibilities at all?"

"We've never even discussed anything but New York, Blaine. I'm just getting started."

"Isn't that the best time to consider something else, when you're just starting out? Los Angeles has a fashion industry, Kurt. And I've gotten to know people who have contacts in it -- good contacts. People who are willing to help us, Kurt. Do you need to be in New York for your career?

"Could you consider a life here?"

"I'm not done with school."

'Neither am I."

"I've got Siriano."

"An internship. An important one, I'm not discounting it. But you're going to need a job. And eventually, you'll want to go out on your own. Christian has contacts at Monique  Lhuillier, and he's offered to put in a good word for you."

"Why would he do that?"

"I told you, we had a lot in common. And I showed him your designs. He was impressed -- and he thinks Lhuillier will be, too.

"Kurt, I just want us to be together. I want us to have a life together, but this summer's also taught me how important it is for both of us to be have our own lives, our own goals. It's got to be equal, Kurt. I'm a better man when I'm with you, but I'm more complete when I factor in my needs into our needs, if that makes sense."

"That's a lot to spring on someone at once, Blaine."

"Will you at least consider it? It's all I'm asking. We don't need to decide everything right now. ... Please."

Kurt paused, looking deep into Blaine's eyes. There was little doubt of the sincerity, but this was something Kurt had never even considered.

"OK. I'll consider it. But I can't guarantee that I can go along with this."

"Just promise me you'll keep your mind open to it."

"I will," Kurt whispered.

Though alone, the two had slipped into light, murmured words over the course of their talk. Sotto voce, treating the subject with quiet reverence, and more than a little fear.

Blaine reached for Kurt's face, cupping his cheek. He stretched his chin up, placing a delicate kiss to Kurt's forehead, the bridge of his nose, his eyelids, his jawline. He pulled back and looked into Kurt's eyes.

"I will," Kurt repeated, almost silently. He could feel the start of a tear forming, and willed it back, shutting his eyes.