Pink to brown, pink to brown.  That was the direction Blaine combed his fingers through Kurt's hair while he slept.  Blaine had been awake for awhile now, but Kurt was still softly breathing and had his eyes shut.  Blaine didn't want to wake him before he was ready, so instead he just kept fingering that hair and watching Kurt's peaceful face.  He wasn't sure how, since they used the same hair products, but Kurt's hair was infinitely softer than his own.

The bedroom door cracked open and Blaine instinctively cupped a hand over the ear of Kurt's that wasn't against his chest to keep things quiet for him as Blaine's mother peaked in.

“Aww…”  She whispered and then her face crinkled up with a smile as she looked from Kurt to Blaine.

“What is it?” Blaine whispered back.  His mother and Rachel had similar ideas about personal privacy when it came to Blaine, never warning him when they decided to come into his area.

She tiptoed in to look over Kurt more closely, “He wears that much even when he sleeps?”

“Yes mom… what do you need?”

She glanced over at Blaine, still wearing that telltale smile that meant she had an opinion, or a few, on something.  “I'm going to the grocery store.  Kurt eats a lot more than he lets on.  Is there anything you'd like?”

Blaine was quick, “Kurt loves cinnamon raisin bread for toast and get real butter, not margarine.”

Shelby's smile turned into a smirk and she nodded, heading out the door, pausing when she was right under the arch and looked back.  Here it comes, thought Blaine, she's going to say something that's going to make me cringe.

She didn't disappoint.

“What about some condoms?”

“Mother!” Blaine hissed.  He had been expecting something bad, but certainly not that.

She snickered and left then, shutting the door behind her.  Blaine sighed and uncupped Kurt's ear, letting his hand fall to the side.

“She gone?”

Blaine tensed right back up and looked down at Kurt whose eyes had fluttered open and were looking up at Blaine questioningly.

“How long have you been awake?  What did you hear?”

Kurt smirked and pushed himself up to a sitting position, “Awhile.  I like having my hair stroked and didn't want you to stop.  Your mom doesn't spare any words does she?”

Blaine groaned and covered his face with his hands to hide the mortified blush rising in them.  He mumbled through his fingers, “I'm so sorry….”

Kurt chuckled, climbing out of the bed and going to his bag to dig through it for clothes, getting a full stack out in his arms.  “Don't worry about it Blaine.  It's kind of entertaining.  Thanks for requesting my bread.”

Blaine mumbled a “You're welcome” through his hands as Kurt left the room to go change in the privacy of the bathroom across the hall, leaving Blaine alone to try and deal with the embarrassment his mother had caused for him.  He had a hard enough time dealing with his increasingly frequent morning erections without his mother going ahead and suggesting a sexual relationship with the boy in his bed, as if Kurt would even be interested.  Blaine was a timid little virgin who had pretty much came the instant Kurt put his mouth around him the one time he had done something remotely sexual.  He had also been the reason that Kurt was subjected to Sebastian.  Blaine just felt lucky Kurt didn't hold that grudge for more than a couple days.

He had worried about bringing Kurt here, exposing him to his mother, but both of them seemed to, at the very least, tolerate each other well enough.   His mother wasn't in the dark as much as Blaine had thought when he had brought Kurt here.  Rachel had made good on her threat and called their parents to rat out Blaine, but neither parent entertained Rachel's tattling.  In fact, Blaine's mother had apparently told her to stop meddling.  Despite that, Shelby had been worried that first night that she and Blaine had spoken while Kurt wandered off to the beach.  

She didn't want Blaine to get caught up in someone's else's problems - and he had to tell her that he was already long past that point, that he was drawn to Kurt from the start, and whether he could control it or not, he was somehow tied to Kurt.  Somehow that made sense to her, and he was grateful she didn't dismiss him outright for saying it.  

He gave her the shortened story of what he knew - from Kurt working the streets, to how he came into Blaine's life, the hospital, the attack they didn't know much about, and the attack by Sebastian.  He also made it clear that according to the social worker Kurt was a perfect model of rehabilitation.  Kurt was clean, he was about to attend college, and he was speaking openly to the cops now.  Sure, he still wasn't open about his whole backstory (and Blaine didn't tell his mother that Wes and him knew more about that than they  let on), but Kurt had been nothing but trustworthy since he came into his home.

In the end, she had admitted she felt bad for Kurt and wanted to adopt him herself given how much trauma he'd been through.  That was when Blaine admitted that Kurt legally had the last name Anderberry.  She had been surprised at first, but then, okay - though she said that Blaine might want to let his dad know about that since it might somehow mess up the family genealogy project he worked on in his spare time, especially if he found out there was another Anderberry in New York that he didn't know about.  

They were going to go back to the city tonight since classes started the next day.  Blaine always looked forward to a new semester, but he felt bad bringing Kurt back to the city that he had come to be afraid of.  Out here, Kurt looked different, moved differently.  He wasn't afraid to go outside the doors here, and had become especially fond of the beach where he and Blaine spent several hours a day walking, making sand castles, and just relaxing.  If only the water was cleaner Blaine might have been inclined to swim in it while Kurt was insisting on hiding under an umbrella on the beach.  Blaine had had to explain to Kurt that the pool wasn't just necessary because it was heated, but because there were factories down the coast that polluted the water.  Blaine had never been comfortable swimming in it because of that.

“I should move out here when I'm done whatever the fuck it is I'm doing.” Kurt said later that day when Blaine was busy digging out a moat for their little sand city and Kurt was leaning back on a blanket smoking one of those awful cigarettes.

“Pretty expensive.”

“Guess I'll have to get a good job then.”

Blaine chuckled and looked up from his work at Kurt, “Somehow I have a hard time picturing you in some kind of executive role.  All suit and tie and business.”

Kurt snickered, flicking the ashes off the side after he finished taking a puff, “Could happen.”

“Right.”

“Well what the hell should I do then?”

Blaine shrugged, “I don't really know Kurt.  I can't even figure out what I want to do.”

“You should be a musician.”

Blaine chuckled, “I don't think Rachel wants to share the Anderberry spotlight - plus I'm not all that good.”

“Fuck her and fuck that.  You are good.  Besides, you love it.  Anyone can see that.”

“I do…”  he admitted, sitting back to look over the moat and nod in appreciation of his work.  “But it wouldn't pay the bills.”

Kurt chuckled, “Well how about I become some rich suit n' tie type and you become a starving artist and then I can take care of you.”

Blaine grinned at the idea.  He really did love playing and singing, but Rachel had always ensured that he felt that any talent he might have had was always dwarfed by her own.  She was the star of the family, not him.  

“I would you know… if I could.”

Blaine tilted his head to the side as he looked back at Kurt, “What?”

“Take care of you, or pay you back… if I could.”

Blaine shook his head.  He always remembered what Kurt had told him that one, cold night… that he never took charity.  Yet Kurt did, and was - even if it was a government sponsored charity.  “You know I don't care about the money Kurt.”

“Clearly.” Kurt was wearing sunglasses but Blaine was sure he could see him rolling his eyes under them.

“And you know I don't see you as a charity case right?  You're my friend.”

“So you keep telling me.”

“And just like you'd do the same for me if I needed it, you have to know then that I will always be there to help you out when you need it.”

Kurt sighed and stubbed his cigarette out in the sand, lifting his sunglasses to look at Blaine eye to eye, “Sometimes I swear you get your words right out of a hallmark card.”

Blaine shrugged, “It's true though.”

“Whatever.” Kurt's eyes went back to being blacked out as he lowered the shades.

When they left that evening, Blaine's mother packed them an oversized care box full of food from the grocery store as well as some clothes she thought Kurt would like, gave them both big hugs (despite Kurt looking like he wanted to run away), and waved goodbye to them both until the car turned the corner.  

“Your mom isn't a total hag.” Kurt said after they had been on the road for ten minutes.

Blaine laughed at that, glancing over at Kurt who already had a cigarette lit and dangling out of the window.  “I don't really know if I should be relieved or not by that.”

Kurt shrugged, “I figured she'd be more like your sister.”

“Ah.”  Blaine looked back to the road.  “Well… Rachel gets her fire from dad and her confidence from mom… both those things together make her quite formidable.”

“You say potato, I say po-tah-to.  You say formidable, I say bitch.”

Blaine chuckled and shook his head, “She can be nice you know… when she isn't being a diva.”

“I'm sure she was a great big sister when she wasn't making you run lines with her or play music for her to sing to.”

Blaine blinked, “How'd you know about all that?”

“Lucky guess.”

“Maybe you should go work on Wall Street the way you can figure things out like that.”

“Mmm… maybe.  Problem is I've probably screwed half the upright asses in there… or… well… vice versa.”

Blaine frowned.  “I don't like it when you joke about it.”

“Well how else am I supposed to talk about it?”

Blaine bit his lower lip, earning him a small swat on the thigh from Kurt.  “I don't chew nails, you don't nibble your lower lip.  That's why you get chapped lips so much.”

“And here I thought I just left my mother….”  Blaine tutted, earning a second swat.

Beside him, Kurt let out a harumph and flicked ashes out the window of the car from his cigarette, “Anyhow… it's easier to joke about what I did before.  Besides, a lot of what I experienced felt like a joke anyhow.  A joke about how relationships were, a joke about life… whatever you want to think of it as… I can be serious about life now if I think that all that in the past was just a short comic sketch in my life.”

Blaine pursed his lips, trying to understand, but of course he couldn't.  He hadn't been there, he hadn't experienced any of that, and even when he had tried to put himself in Kurt's shoes, all that happened was he got sick the moment he thought of the things Kurt went through.  

“Thank you Blaine…”

Blaine shook himself out of his thoughts and glanced over, “For what?”

“For the vacation.”

Blaine chuckled, “It was hardly a vacation.”

“It was to me.”

“You're welcome then.  I'm glad you liked it.  I wish we could have stayed longer.”

Blaine saw Kurt smirk from the corner of his eye, “If we had stayed much longer your mother might have involved herself a lot more than she already was.”

He groaned and bumped his head against the top of the steering wheel, reliving the mortification from the morning, “Again… sorry.”

“It's okay Blaine… it was worth it to see you get so red.  Kind of like you are now.”