The Proper Way to Kiss Kurt Hummel—The Intoxicated Edition

There was nothing like kissing Kurt. The second our lips touched he made this little gasping noise and his fingers clenched around the fabric of my shirt as if everything was immediately too much and not enough. The intensity of his reaction left me floundering for a moment and unsure. I hadn't expected it. Needing something, I lifted a hand to slide my fingers over his jaw and back towards his neck to hold him there. The feel of his skin again mine, even if it was only that tiny, little bit, was as delicious as it was grounding. Leaning into the kiss, I tilted my head and worked my jaw for a more thorough taste of him. He gasped again and pulled just a little bit at my shirt.

And fuck, his lips were softer than anything, so much so that all my prior knowledge of kissing and how it was done went completely out the window. It got to the point where I wasn't kissing him so much as I was moving my lips over his just for the sake of feeling them. With his wide mouth and pouty lips, he was made for kissing, never mind that he obviously had never been kissed before and had no clue what he was doing—it was still delicious. I never wanted to stop.

Just when I realized that if his lips tasted amazing, his lips combined with his tongue on mine would be sensory orgasm worthy, he pulled his mouth away from mine with a soft sucking noise that made me groan for more.

"Fuck, Kurt, don't stop," I gasped, not caring even slightly how completely wrecked I sounded. "Come back," I tugged at his neck. How far I had fallen. A fifteen second kiss, without tongue, and I was ready to cream my goddamn pants. If I was going to embarrass myself, though, I would have preferred to do it with Kurt's mouth on mine.

Breathing heavy and looking hot, Kurt shook his head at my command; not in a 'no' way, but in a my-mind-has-gone-to-mush-and-I-need-a-minute way. I was pretty much right there with him, only I didn't need a minute—I needed more kissing. Lots more kissing. I leaned up again to let my lips convince him that he needed it too. I got away with the tiniest suck at his bottom lip before he was pulling away again.

"Ku-u-urt," I whined, pouting for a good measure.

"Blaine," he said gently, but there was a warning there, too, one that told me I was not permitted to try for more. It was probably the least fair thing that anyone had ever asked of me. He look so ready for it with his eyes closed, his mouth open, and his face still close enough to mine that I would barely have to move to get his lips back. And damn his lips were wet and slightly puffier than they usually were, and after less than half a minute of kissing, too. I could only imagine how delicious they would look after a longer amount of time. I whimpered.

"Please, Kurt? Please?"

"Tomorrow," he said.

"What's tomorrow? You'll kiss me tomorrow? Which tomorrow? Today-tomorrow or tomorrow-tomorrow because tenic—technick—just, it's the early morning time where tomorrow could be today."

"Blaine," he said again, sounding exasperated this time. He reached up to curl his fingers around my wrist, another warning. Apparently I was to stop pulling at his neck, too. Then, just in case I needed more clarification that the kissing portion of the night was well and truly over, "Go to sleep."

His command triggered the far away parts of my brain that weren't completely fogged up by alcohol and I suddenly remembered that I had taken three lies by omission in less than twenty four hours. The last time I did that I had been comatose for almost three weeks. Then again, I hadn't fallen immediately unconscious after the third lie like I had last time, but I didn't know if that meant I was safe indefinitely or just for the time being.

The panic must have risen to my eyes because, even though he couldn't possibly have known what the panic was in response to, Kurt touched me with gentle hands and urged me to calm down with a soft, "Shhh."

He shifted from his kneeling position to one that was more comfortable, sitting on the floor with his legs tucked neatly to the side, and leaned forward to fold his arms on top the edge of the couch. He rested his head down on his arms and looked up at me with a soft, soothing expression on his face and patted a space close to him. "Lay down," he said, voice relaxed and quiet like the rest of him and I could feel my insides start to calm. A small, expectant smile touched his lips, one that was both beautiful and encouraging.

For a minute, I studied him. He looked so peaceful. It made me want to feel that way too.

Without breaking eye contact I relaxed my body until I was curled on my side with my head close to his, my curls brushing his arm. He studied me, looking nervous and shy.

"So…" he began hesitantly, "why am I amazing?" he asked, referring to what I had said just before I kissed him.

For a moment, the question hung there between the two of us.

It was one of those big, life defining moments camouflaged by simplicity. The simplicity, however misleading, was there in Kurt's seemingly innocent question, our relaxed bodies, his soft voice and his shy, innocent eyes. But the moment was so much bigger than just those things. Telling him the truth would take me in a direction I had promised myself I wouldn't go. It was one of those moments where I should tell the truth, because Kurt deserved it and I wanted it, wanted him, so fucking bad.

On the other hand, I was a glutton for punishment. I got off on fucking up my own life, just to see if I could make it out at the end still alive and standing on my own two feet. It took me higher than any drug ever could. I knew. I had tried a few—always just once because they hadn't done anything that I could already do for myself more effectively.

But as far as that moment with Kurt went, it was the ideal moment to test myself.

I could see it in Kurt's eyes. His question had been anything but innocent. It had purpose. He wanted my words to mean something and he wanted it badly. All I had to do was say something untrue, something arbitrary or superficial and he would be crushed. Maybe bad enough that he would never speak to me again. It would be the ultimate test of survival. Could I live without Kurt Hummel?

Apparently, though, alcohol made me a lot less self-destructive than sobriety did. Good thing, too, because I probably would have kissed Kurt eventually without being under the influence. It was irony at its best I suppose, or maybe the universe was just a huge dick and that was his way of showing that wanted me to become an alcoholic. You decide. Either way, I gave him the honest truth in the way only a drunk person can.

"God, Kurt you don't even know. Everything is just so much better when you're here, and when you were gone my hands wouldn't stop shaking. It was really bad. Like, really bad." I frowned, remembering. "I didn't like it. You weren't here and they wouldn't stop shaking and I didn't like it. But that's all okay because you're back." I cuddled closer, made it so that my head was almost pillowed in his folded arms. "I'm okay now. See?" I touched a hand to the side of his face to prove it. "And then there was just all this stuff and I then I kissed you because I wanted to so bad and you said you needed me, and no one has ever said that to me before and those ones are the reasons why you're amazing."

He looked like he was holding his breath. "How did you know that?"

"Know what? That's your amazing? I just told you." Hadn't I?

"The needing."

"Oh, that." I grinned dopily at him and rolled my eyes. "I took your omission," I said, feeling that should be obvious. "It didn't hurt, though, so it's okay." Then, in a spectacular show of randomness, "Your hair's diff'rnt," I mumbled, noticing for the first time the way it hung down over his face, slightly wavy and free of product. I wondered if he had left his house right after a shower.

"Wait… no. Omission? What didn't hurt?"

"I like it," I said, still on his hair. "It's pretty. You're pretty." I wrinkled my nose. "Except you're not because pretty is a stupid word that doesn't work. You're beautiful."

He frowned. "How much did you drink exactly?"

"S-o-o-o much," I said like it was some great accomplishment. Then I yawned. "You're so warm." I closed my eyes. "Please don't let me stay asleep forever. You have to promise that I'll wake up this time, okay?"

"What are you talking about? Blaine?"

He smelled really good—the best. "You're s'posed to promise, Kurt," I mumbled and fell asleep before I heard his answer.

For the second time in my life, the first thing I saw when I woke up was Kurt. He was a pleasant sight to wake up to, but my head felt like it was in the process of being cracked open by a rock and my mouth felt like a couple fuzzy creatures had taken up shack inside it and then died horrible, tragic deaths that left them decaying slowly in little, bloody pieces. My face scrunched up in disgust. "Shit."

Kurt was still in the same place he had been in when I passed out—half on the couch and half off of it in a mostly upright position. I winced at the thought of how uncomfortable he must have been all night and wondered how he possibly could have managed to fall asleep.

I tried to remember some of the specifics about what I had said to him, but my mind was like a ball of fluff and the only thing I could recall with any sort of certainty was that I had kissed him several times and whined a lot. It would all come back to me once I woke up a bit more and began to feel less like death, but I decided I was better off not knowing for the moment and focused instead on waking up Kurt.

After all the kissing that I had promised myself I wouldn't do, I really wasn't all gung-ho about making any sort of physical contact with him if it wasn't absolutely necessary. I needed the space. But, as I discovered for the first time, waking Kurt up before he was ready to do it on his own was an absolute bitch and simply calling his name and telling him to wake up just didn't work. He was part whiny and part absolutely adorable as he scrunched up his face at my command to open his eyes and mumbled nonsense I couldn't decipher.

As cute as he was, I felt like crap rolled up in more crap and I really just wanted to go someplace where the sun was less bright, where I could shower and boil my tongue until it felt normal again, where I could wallow in my own stupidity and maybe spend some time bashing my head against a wall, and Kurt really wasn't helping. So in typical idiot Blaine fashion, I did something that was fucking stupid. I grabbed hold of the nearest pillow and jabbed him with it in the face. "Wake up."

He didn't open his eyes but a truly livid expression blossomed on his face. When I pulled my arm back to jab him again, his hand shot out to catch my wrist. His eyes, when he finally opened them, threatened all kinds of pain. "Don't," he said.

"Sorry," I mumbled. He looked absolutely terrifying. I could imagine him strangling me to death with his skinny jeans… it didn't scare me as much as it should have, especially if he had to take them off first in order to do it. Even better if he had that look on his face when he did it—just because I was twisted like that.

As if he could hear what I was thinking, his eyes narrowed dangerously and he glared at me for a few seconds longer before releasing my wrist. I waited until he squeezed his eyes shut as he stretched before rubbing at the abused skin. Damn, he was strong.

He hissed when he moved his neck in the wrong way.

"You probably shouldn't have slept like that," I observed and he shot me a dark look.

"Whose fault is that?" he fired back.

It was on the tip of my tongue to say something lewd, possibly something about him showering with me so I could work out the kinks under his skin. My lips had already begun to twitch in anticipation, but at the last second I realized that he was absolutely right. I had asked him to stay with me, and he had actually done it. He had slept all night on the floor—for me.

It was too much. It was awkward.

I needed space.

"Uh… I'm going to go shower and stuff. You can go do—I don't know—whatever, I guess. Go back to sleep or something. I just didn't want to leave you here on the floor." I stood up and headed for the door.

"Blaine," he stopped me.

I turned back around way too fast. The room spun. "Yeah, what's up?"

"Come back when you're finished."

Liquid panic rushed loudly in my ears. "…Sure. I just need an hour. To shower and stuff." I had said that already. "But, yeah, I'll come find you. After I'm done."

His eyes narrowed. "Here," he said, eying me too carefully.

"Yeah, sure." I jerked my thumb over my shoulder in the general direction of anywhere but there. "I'll be back."

Leaving him there felt wrong, but I just couldn't. It was too much. I couldn't even pinpoint exactly what it was that made me feel so wrong—there were too many things to choose from. The awkwardness, the kissing, the grand gesture he had made, the things I was slowly starting to remember saying and doing. Maybe it was a little of everything; it didn't matter. I just knew that I felt messed up and I needed to be somewhere else, anywhere else where I would hopefully feel something different, something better. But leaving him felt like the antithesis of right and better certainly wasn't waiting for me outside the room. In fact, the distance made me feel worse, as if letting him out of my sight was the most egregious sin against humanity I could commit.

When I went to my dorm to grab my toothbrush, I took a detour to my nightstand to grab the post-it note Kurt had given me earlier that week out of the top drawer. Touching the familiar faded yellow paper made me feel slightly less like a loose cannon and a touch more like I would actually continue to breathe. The downside? It also made me feel like a basket case who lost his fucking basket, which was always a fun time. None of this was normal. Or maybe it was. People sometimes looked at pictures of their significant others when they were feeling insecure, right? This was like that. Kind of. Only Kurt wasn't my significant other and instead of a picture I was holding an old discolored piece of paper like it was my lifeline, so maybe I hadn't quite landed on the saner side of the sanity spectrum.

I stuffed my hand and the note into the pocket of my jeans and left the dorm without sparing Steven a passing glance.

I brushed my teeth four times in the shower, scrubbing my tongue raw. It was really wasn't necessary to continue doing it after the second time, but the memories from the night before had started to come back with a vengeance and I needed something to occupy myself with while I mulled everything over and tried to comb through all the nonsense so that it made sense.

When I loaded my toothbrush up with toothpaste for the fifth time, it really started to hit me for the first time. I had kissed Kurt. I had kissed him and I had done it because for some wild reason, taking a lie by omission from Kurt was as easy and painless as blinking an eye.

What did that mean?

Had it been a fluke? A one time thing that could be filed away in the drunken stupor section of bad ideas and never attempted again? Or was Kurt simply the exception to the rule?

I wished there was someone I could talk to, an expert who would be able to explain everything to me in a clear, thought-out way that I could understand. There was no one, though. Preternatural abilities were still considered to be highly enigmatic. They couldn't be explained, measured, or calculated by science.

Furthermore, like Cooper who was both telepathic and telekinetic, I was something of an anomaly in the preternatural world. For starters, I was the only lie detector in the entire preternatural community who could hear the truth rather than just being able to sense dishonesty. Also, I was the only one who could detect lies made by omission. So it wasn't as if I could seek out other lie detectors and compare notes.

Also, how the fuck was I supposed to explain to Kurt that I had blatantly invaded his privacy?

In a fit of frustration, I attacked the shower taps, twisting violently until the water was off. This was why I didn't do relationships. I couldn't handle the all complications and the feelings and just—ugh. I felt like I was going completely fucking nuts and on top of that, I had to go find Kurt and have a painful conversation with him about how much of an asshole I was.

I took my time getting dressed.

When I finally got back to the lounge I found Kurt looking out one of the windows with his back to me. His hair was different, styled, and his clothes had been changed—black skinny jeans (he loved those things), a white dress shirt and a black vest thing that made his back look masculine and powerful.

He didn't turn to face me, though he must have heard me coming. "Hey, gorgeous," I said quietly when we were finally standing side by side, both of us looking out the window as if a sunny autumn day was a thing of great interest. I hadn't meant to use the nickname. It felt too soon and too personal and I was actually making an effort to be serious, but he was gorgeous, absolutely, and it just slipped out. Surprisingly, though, it seemed to relax him rather than irritate him because the tension in his shoulders ebbed some when the word left my lips. I wasn't quite sure what to do with that. He had always acted like the nickname annoyed him before.

Without looking at me, he broke the silence. "Explain."

"Explain what?" I asked, not in a dickish way. Or at least I hoped not in a dickish way.

"Nothing," he said in a stoic, matter of fact way. Why you kissed me, why you knew that I needed you, what you meant when you said that you 'took my omission,' why you told me I had to make sure you would wake up, why you felt so lost without me."

"That's… a lot to explain."

The tension in his shoulders came back and when he spoke there was a slight bite in his tone. "Do you have somewhere to be?"

"No."

"Then tell me."

"…I didn't like coming back here last night and finding you gone," I said after a moment's hesitation. "I mean, when I get like that… I don't know. It's not like an I-miss-you thing. Not that I didn't—I mean, I don't—just—damn it." I pushed a tense hand through my still wet curls. "I can't do this."

He didn't respond to my little outburst, which was probably the wisest course of action.

"Sorry," I grumbled. I took a calming breath and forced myself to try again. "Okay. It's not like an I miss you thing. It's more like I need to be around you. Like a compulsion thing. It was bad on Monday, but when you gave me the note and we started talking, it was pretty much gone. Maybe because we were together, I don't know. Maybe not, though, because I left yesterday no problem, but when I got back and you weren't here it made me all nervous. Not knowing where you were felt wrong." I took a peek at him. He was still staring straight ahead out the window. I didn't look like he had heard a single thing I said, though he must have. "I know that makes me sound insane…"

Still, he said nothing and gave no indication of what he was feeling. Then suddenly, "Do you want to know why I came back yesterday?"

I nodded.

"It was for no reason, really." I had to come back. Leaving made my skin crawl and it felt like that the whole time I was home. It didn't stop until I decided to come back. I feel a compulsion thing, too.

"So we're both fucked up."

He finally turned to look at me. He had this ironic little smile on his face, one that was almost sneaky, as if we were sharing a private joke. "What do we do about that?"

"We could get a pair of handcuffs and lock ourselves together."

"Of course, Blaine, yes. That's the perfect solution," he said with a dry and cutting look on his face that made me grin. I was thinking more along the lines of exchanging cellphone numbers.

I wrinkled my nose. "That sounds so normal."

He shrugged. "I can't think of any other solution." I could take you home with me next week.

I froze. "Oh. Uh…"

He rolled his eyes. "Don't decide now," he said, letting me off the hook—somewhat at least. "What did you mean when you said you took my omission?" he asked, getting right to the point.

I opened and closed my mouth a few times, not knowing how to approach this. I didn't know how he was going to react. Most people didn't respond well to having their privacy invaded, not that Kurt was anything even remotely like most people, but he was pretty closed lipped. He didn't share things about himself readily.

"It's just something I can do," I finally settled on saying as I folded my arms across my chest and turned my face away from his. "Can we maybe leave it at that for now?"

He sighed in an overly patient way. "Blaine…" There was that warning tone again.

"Fine. You know how people say that you can lie by omission? Well, it's more than just some bullshit wives accuse their husbands of doing when they get caught cheating. It's actually a real way to lie. I'm a lie detector, so…" I shrugged, figuring it was needless to say more. "I asked you why you came back, and you chose not to answer. So I took it as an omission."

"You took it?" he repeated, incredulous. "Just like that?" he asked, snapping his fingers, his face written over with angry sarcasm. "Just like that, you decided that was okay?"

"I was drunk," I grumbled despite knowing how pathetic it sounded.

"Oh." He scoffed, throwing his hands up a little. "Well. That makes it so much better." That's a bullshit excuse.

"Look, I'm sorry, alright? It was a dumb fucking thing to do. I know that. I had already done it a couple of times that day and—not to you!" I said in a rush when his face went instantly livid. "To someone else. Just… it's not exactly a safe thing for me to do. It actually hurts a whole fuck of a lot and doing it too often in a twenty-four hour period can land me in the hospital, so I shouldn't have done it. For that and because the privacy thing, but, like I said, I wasn't thinking right."

"What do you mean it could land you in the hospital?" he asked, eyeing me carefully.

I shrugged, feigning nonchalance. "I went into a coma because of it once." His eyes went wide and I continued on, talking fast before he got the chance to ask questions. "Your omission was the third one I took yesterday, and it should have been really bad. But it wasn't. It didn't even hurt. I don't know why—that's never happened to me before, and I don't know what it means. But it was nice, I guess, to hear what you said and to not feel any pain when I heard you say it, and I just felt overwhelmed, so I kissed you, and…"

"And…?" he prompted.

"…And it felt—I don't know. It felt like everything. Like everything in the world was wrapped up in kissing you. I know that doesn't make sense and it sounds completely stupid, but I'm not any good at this crap. I just—I can't..." I trailed off, leaving my thoughts unfinished, even in my own mind. I had no clue as to how to keep going. It was difficult to tell what was right and what wasn't. I didn't know what he wanted, or if he had even wanted me to describe how the kiss made me feel in the first place. Maybe he just wanted me to keep explaining why I had done it. I didn't know. I tangled my fingers together and avoided his eyes. "I don't know what else you want me to say."

"It's not… Do you honestly think that's what this is about?"

I shrugged because what the hell did that even mean?

I looked down at my shoes. They were old and ratty and colored on in three different ballpoint pen colors. It was probably time for a new pair, especially in comparison to Kurt's shoes, which were black leather and damn near perfect.

Kurt sighed at my silence. "Before last night, I hadn't… I had never…"

"Kissed anyone," I filled in.

"Yes," he lied. Yes and no. I had and I hadn't.

I frowned, confused. "I don't get it. What do you mean you had and you hadn't? How can you have kissed someone and never been kissed at the same time?"

Instead of answering me, Kurt cleared his throat. "So, is that something we do now? Kiss each other?"

I shrugged. "I don't know. Do you want it to be?"

"Yes," he lied, and damn did that hurt like fuck.

I don't know, his truth whispered in my head. You just took it from me. You never asked if it was what I wanted. I don't know what to do about that.

"I was drunk," I argued again, even more feebly than the first time. Why did it have to feel like a piece of me was dying? Why was I suddenly so desperate to make this all okay? When had it all changed? Kissing Kurt had been a mistake. Everything had been a mistake. When had that changed? "I said I was sorry."

Kurt's truth was gentle and it broke my heart because it sounded so damn final.

I know.

When the fuck had I fallen in love with someone I barely knew?