"Kurt?" Blaine prompts again. And Kurt makes himself keep looking into Blaine's eyes; he sees concerned confusion.

"I, um." Kurt tucks his bottom lip between his teeth, and reaches for Blaine's hands again.

Blaine loosely curls his fingers around Kurt's. "What's going on?"

A breath, deep and ragged, and Kurt drags his lip free. "I was trying to—" And a nervous huff out. "I mean, I thought you might be..."

"I might be what?"

The words Kurt knows Blaine's asking for refuse to settle upon Kurt's tongue long enough for him to articulate any of them. Instead, Kurt says, "I really like kissing you."

The corner of Blaine's mouth twitches, but he's not smiling. "Me too, but, this isn't about that." Blaine tilts his head and looks at Kurt expectantly. "Is it?" When Kurt still doesn't reply, he sighs and lets go of Kurt's hands, and then he pulls away, slides off the bed and moves toward his bedroom door.

"Wait. Where are you going?" Kurt sits up, leans forward.

"Let's go out for the pizza," Blaine says. He flicks on the ceiling light and then goes to his dresser. He pulls out a folded undershirt, tosses it toward the bed, and before Kurt can look away, Blaine's hauling his Dalton t-shirt off by the neck. He stands, facing Kurt, shirtless and unselfconscious, and reaches for the undershirt.

Presented with Blaine's bare torso, it's like Kurt's never seen a shirtless man before. Kurt tries to look away, but his gaze is stuck, trying to memorize the exact shade and texture of Blaine's bare skin, the way his muscles shift as he shakes the folds from the undershirt, the small ovals of his nipples. He's quickly covered back up, smoothing the thin white cotton down his waist, and Kurt's suddenly, horribly aware of his own open fly and the way he's still staring at the flex of Blaine's arms. "Sure," he says and turns away to get off the opposite side of the bed. He tucks his shirt back in and does up his pants.

A glance over his shoulder shows Blaine at his closet door now, selecting a shirt: a rust colored polo with a dark stripe on the collar. There's something about the way Blaine's moving, so crisply and quickly.

Kurt straightens his tie, turns, and asks Blaine, "Are you angry?"

Blaine looks up from buttoning his collar. "What?"

"Are you mad at me?"

"I'm not... mad." Blaine pauses and closes his eyes for a moment. Opens them again. "I'm just frustrated."

Kurt goes cold. "You're frustrated." Puck was right.

"Yes, I know this isn't easy for you, but I'd really like it if you'd just—"

"You mean sexually," Kurt interrupts. "You're frustrated with me sexually."

"What?" Blaine blinks at him. "No."

"You're not?"

"No," Blaine repeats firmly. "Why would you think that?"

"You just said you were frustrated—"

"Because I wish you'd talk to me about this stuff." Blaine runs a hand over his hair, it comes to rest at the back of his neck. "This is all new for me too, Kurt. I, honestly... I don't know what I'm doing sometimes, and I don't like having to guess. Not with you." Blaine leans over for the remote and turns the television off.

Kurt nods. He told Puck he talked to Blaine about this stuff, but, there aren't actually that many conversations they've had, not direct ones, not really. Not about this. Maybe they do need to talk. "We can talk," Kurt says.

"Okay, good," Blaine says. He picks up Kurt's blazer from where Kurt draped it over the chair. He passes it to Kurt. "Just, not here, all right? It's too..." He motions toward the bed.

"Fraught with implication?" Kurt offers with a hesitant smile.

Which Blaine returns. "Yes," Blaine agrees.

#

It's a ten minute drive to Michelangelo's Pizzeria. Neither of them puts on music: Blaine's iPod is back in his bedroom, and Kurt's not sure he's got an appropriate playlist for preparing to talk about sex with his boyfriend over pizza. Kurt strokes the smooth strap of his seatbelt and steals glances at Blaine, trying to get a better read on his strange, shifting mood. The interior of the car pulses between warm light and cool shadow as they pass beneath the ranks of streetlights.

Kurt's rarely felt so responsible for another person's being or emotional state. Sometimes he forgets that Blaine is no more experienced than he is. It's easy to forget Blaine is younger and carries his own wounds; he puts on such a convincing air of wisdom and confidence. But Blaine was nervous tonight, and Kurt was too absorbed in his own worries to really process it. There's one thing he thinks he can do. He clears his throat and lets go of the seatbelt.

"Hey," he says.

"Hmm?"

"When we get back, after dinner, can we finish watching the movie?"

Blaine's attention flicks to Kurt. He takes a long breath before replying, "We don't have to. It's okay if it's not your thing."

"But, it is your thing, right?"

Blaine's smile is tight. He doesn't look at Kurt, but flips on his indicator and checks his mirrors to change lanes. "Yes," he says.

"Then it's something I'd like to share with you. I was actually enjoying it."

"Were you really?"

"Yeah, I mean, it'd have been better with more musical numbers, but..."

Blaine laughs. "X-men: the musical?" he asks skeptically.

"Oh, come on, they're doing one with Spiderman. Imagine it, Blaine. It'd be fantastic."

Blaine flashes a grin at Kurt as he turns into the parking lot of the pizzeria. "Oh my god, you're right. It really would be."

#

On a Friday night, Michelangelo's is busy. The bustle of patrons and the surge of conversation hits them as soon as Blaine opens the door. "Did you used to come here with your brother too?" Kurt asks, stepping into the restaurant's foyer as Blaine holds the door. A bank of vintage arcade games blinks friendlily along one wall, a fully occupied vinyl bench lines the opposite. Dark wood wainscoting clads the bottom half of richly textured plaster walls. Above the paneling, they're adorned with various hand painted pizza toppings, all captioned with their Italian names. There's a line to be seated, so they stand near the wall under the boldly depicted cipolla and aglio.

"Oh, maybe?" Blaine says. "I don't remember. Mostly I remember it being the popular venue for middle school birthday parties."

"Hmm," Kurt says and looks through the window into the kitchen where there's a woman nimbly spinning a round of pizza dough up into the air. The air is heavy with the scents of fresh baked bread, sultry tomatoes with garlic, and a nose tickling hint of pepper.

Beside him, Blaine stands with his hands in his pockets. "Is this okay?" Blaine asks. "I probably should have asked—"

"It's fine. It's always nice to try somewhere new. And as you know, Lima doesn't have much to offer that's not a chain."

Eventually, they're seated in a cozy booth along the wall. A candle in a glass mosaic holder flickers between them: amber, bronze, and vermillion. Kurt opens the laminated menu, careful of the frayed plastic edges. There are a good dozen different pizzas, both classic and more modern, a few pasta dishes, and a decent selection of salads. "So what's good?" Kurt asks.

"I keep it simple and usually get the pepperoni or the margherita," Blaine says, so they decide to share a margherita and a Caesar salad. Blaine also recommends the locally brewed root beer.

After the waiter has taken their orders and their menus, Blaine bumps the toe of his shoe against Kurt's ankle to get his attention. "So," he says. "You said we could talk."

"Right," Kurt says. "Yes, I did." They definitely have privacy: the booth seats are tall, and the place is loud enough. Between Andrea Bocelli singing in the background and the blanketing conversation, Kurt is confident they won't be overheard. They could plan a jewelry heist and no one would know.

"Okay," Blaine says.

"Yeah, okay," Kurt says and realizes he's meant to start. "What, um, exactly did you want to discuss?"

"Generally, where we are with the physical aspects of our relationships, or where we want to be. More specifically, what happened tonight. Things seemed like they were going really... well. And then they really weren't. So what happened?"

Kurt reaches for his glass of ice water. The thick tea-colored plastic of the glass is dull against his lips. Blaine sounds so grown-up and rational about it. He's been writing essays all week on his exams, maybe that's why his conversation starter sounds like an essay question itself. "Tonight," Kurt says. It seems a place to start.

"Yes?"

"Well, this week, it'd been on my mind, that you might not be completely satisfied. With me. Physically." Kurt looks up at Blaine hesitantly. "So I thought I'd try to..." Kurt makes a vague gesture with his hand that conveys very little of the specifics of his intentions. "... seduce you. A little bit."

"A little bit?" Blaine's smile is amused. "You were succeeding."

"Yeah," Kurt says. "Except maybe more than a little bit."

"Is that why you freaked out?"

"I didn't freak out," Kurt says, sees the look Blaine's giving him and sighs. "Fine, maybe I did, a little bit. But I thought we were on the same page. More or less." Kurt carefully unwraps the paper ring from his napkin. "But we weren't. Or, maybe you were, but I wasn't on the page I thought I was on."

"What page were you on?"

"I don't know. Maybe I thought I was reading French, but it turned out to be..." He waves up at the wall above them where a large cross section of a tomato is painted and labeled in irregular, hand painted script: pomodoro. "Italian."

Blaine frowns. "You may be losing me, Kurt."

"Never mind," Kurt says. "It's a terrible analogy." Kurt falls silent as their waiter arrives with two large frosted glass mugs. The sarsaparilla scent is strong and caramel sweet. When the waiter leaves, Kurt asks, "What page did you think we were on?"

Blaine smiles, speaks easily. "The one where we undo each other's pants and touch each other."

It's enough to make Kurt flush hot and look down into his fizzing root beer.

Blaine continues, "But if you were on the page where you just wanted to fondle my belt buckle, then I can understand the confusion."

Though his face remains hot, Kurt laughs. "And is that...? I mean, you wanted that?"

"For you to fondle my belt buckle?" Blaine teases.

"No, the other thing."

"To touch you? Yes."

"No, I meant... the other way."

"The other way?"

"Me touching you." Kurt fidgets, scraping the short nail of his index finger through the thin frost on his mug. "That was my... plan, anyway. But then you wanted to touch me too, and I just. Couldn't. That was too much."

"So," Blaine's brow creases. "You wanted to touch me, but you didn't want me to reciprocate?"

"In a nutshell," Kurt says and tries to relax his shoulders. "It seemed like the most... efficient way."

Blaine's eyebrows go up. "Efficient?"

"To, um, satisfy you?"

"Kurt." Blaine's tone falls; he sounds disappointed.

"You... uh. You wouldn't want that?"

"Well, it's not like..." Blaine frowns and presses his lips together. Starts again. "Okay, don't get me wrong, because the thought of you..." Blaine lowers his voice and leans forward. "... doing that for me? It's a nice thought. More than nice, really, but—" Blaine pauses with a wince.

"But?" Kurt ask.

"When I think about doing things like that with you? I think about us doing them together, comfortably and because we're both into it and really want it. Not because you're worried I'm unsatisfied so you're trying to, like, tick something off a 'to-do' list as efficiently as possible. I don't need you to..." Blaine's lip curls, "...service me to keep me happy. That's not what we're doing, is it?"

Then Kurt shakes his head. "No, you're right, that's not what we're doing." This is about their friendship and how they love each other, not just trying to get off. They get to do it their own way. Screw the critics (namely Puck).

"So we can wait, Kurt. As long as you want to, until we're both on the same page, and it's written in a language we both know how to read." Blaine reaches across the table, and Kurt gives him his hand.

It's still a poor analogy, but Kurt nods. Though it's not quite what he wants: this idea of waiting. He tries to explain. "Blaine, it's not that I want to wait. I don't want to think of it as waiting. I'd rather think of it as us being. Like being content with what we're doing together in the present. Honestly? I don't really want much more than what we're doing now."

He takes a moment to look at Blaine, to see if he appears distraught by any of this. He doesn't; he's listening, patient and steady and amazing. So Kurt continues. "I expect I will want more, with you, sometime in the future. But I'd like to get to that place naturally, not because I feel like I have to, or because I'm holding something back and waiting. Or, worse, making you wait. I just want to be able to keep doing the kinds of things we're already doing without worrying that it's not enough."

"Kurt," Blaine says softly. "It's enough."

A long breath exits his lungs in a head clearing rush. "I'm glad," he says. "And it's not like I'm averse to a bit more with you, but I'm not ready for..." Kurt waves his fingers toward his lap. "...below the belt stuff, I guess."

"Okay," Blaine says with a nod. "So... how about we have a rule, or a guideline? Maybe? Like, no hands below the belt, but everything else is all right?"

A firm delineation is simple and easy, "Yes," Kurt says. "I like that."

They share a smile that's also simple and easy, and drift into a comfortable silence for a time. The pizza arrives, and Kurt finds, as he passes the pepper grinder across the table to Blaine, that he has a pleasant fullness in his heart along with the relief. He remembers that Blaine is his best friend, the one he can always talk to. And they did talk, and no one died of embarrassment, and it's okay. Everything is okay. Better than okay—wonderful. Kurt reaches for a slice of pizza, and says, "So tell me more about Jean Grey. She seems interesting."

#

They pull into the garage back at Blaine's house. The space is bright and austere around them, white walls and polished metal shelving. But it's dark and quiet in the car. Intimate. Blaine keys off the ignition and the garage door grumbles down behind them. Before Kurt can move to get out of the car, Blaine takes Kurt's hand. There's something urgent in Blaine's grip. Kurt turns and looks at Blaine, wondering. He stares into Blaine's eyes and Blaine stares back, and they've done this before, but there's something new here between them. Kurt doesn't know what it is.

Blaine is the one to unsettle the silence with a whisper: "Would you kiss me, Kurt?"

"Yes," Kurt replies. He lets go of Blaine's hand and reaches across the console. His hand is steady as he cups Blaine's jaw, but his breath is not as he leans in. It's the first time he's done this, been the one to move in first. He leans in until they're breathing each other's air. Then he presses closer, his mouth to Blaine's. Blaine's lips are soft, sweet, and his kisses are so generous. Blaine yields, and Kurt follows.

Kurt kisses Blaine, kisses and kisses, and strokes over his hair and down his arm. As he thinks about it—as he feels it—Kurt's pulse hammers hard in his throat: Blaine's body, beneath his clothes, what Kurt got to glimpse today, smooth and warm and entirely lovely. He touches to find the shapes he mapped with his gaze—upper arm, shoulder, chest—and the knowledge that nothing more than this is expected or imminent, emboldens Kurt's touch. It's just this between them, and it is magnificent.

When he finally breaks the kiss, and they pull apart, they're both breathing heavily. Blaine's lips are puffy, kiss bruised and damp; his eyes are dark and unfocused. "Good?" Kurt asks softly, petting Blaine's hair into an arc around his ear..

"So good," Blaine says like a sigh.

"Yeah?" Kurt asks, pleased as he gives Blaine's cheek a last lingering caress before he withdraws entirely. "Shall we go in and watch the rest of X-men?"