Fast-forward a month and Blaine's reticence about physical intimacy seems to be in the rear view. But no matter how often he devolves into breathless pleas and raspy moans, Kurt doesn't surrender to the lovely desperation in Blaine's voice. Blaine's insistence that he's ready – mentally, emotionally, and physically –does nothing to assuage Kurt's worry: that he isn't ready. Not that he doesn't want to, because oh wow, does he miss losing himself in the impossibly hot tightness of Blaine's body but Kurt fears, with just a single thrust of his hips, he'll cause the carefully rewound spool to unravel again.

Hurting Blaine is not only not an option but it's also inconceivable.

So Kurt distracts Blaine – expert ministrations, insatiable licks, wandering caresses and heated, hungry kisses. Blaine seems satisfied with his efforts; however, Kurt doesn't miss the slightest tinge of disappointment flicker in the corner of Blaine's whiskey eyes. It rips Kurt's heart out. Each time he comes back to the fear, the fear of pushing too hard, too much; the fear of dissolving every stride Blaine has made, tainting the progress his counselor champions each session, with or without Kurt present; and the fear that their sex life will never quite return to normal, or rather, their version of normal – audacious, fervent, open, trusting, vulnerable, and safe.

Kurt reaches his breaking point, finally –

They've somehow lucked into an evening without plans, without arrangements or appointments, without conflicting schedules and they use the time to pack a picnic basket, grab two old blankets, two low-to-the-ground beach chairs and head to one of Blaine's favorite places in LA: the Hollywood Forever Cemetery, to watch a movie under the stars.

One of Blaine's favorite movies is playing – Pretty In Pink – and although the crowd is a little thinner than usual, they find a quiet space of grass tucked away on an outer edge of Fairbanks Lawn. The sun has barely even set when Blaine slips on one of Kurt's old hoodie sweatshirts he'd brought along, adorably letting his fingers peak out of the too-long-for-him sleeves.

Not even a minute into the opening credits, Blaine abandons his beach chair in favor of settling comfortably in between Kurt's long, outstretched legs. Blaine pulls the other blanket from their oversized tote bag and drapes it over their bare legs.

The next half hour proves torturous for Kurt.

Blaine's familiar weight and warmth seeps into Kurt's skin, liquefying in his veins. Blaine shifts in his lap, his Oxford striped shorts not much of a barrier against how hot, how heavy his butt feels pressing down on Kurt's lap. The months of masturbation and hand jobs (which are, in fact, some of the best and most erotic Kurt has ever received in his life, thanks to Blaine's talented hands) work against Kurt.

Kurt is on a hair trigger.

And each shift, no matter how slight, catches just right and he bites back a deepening moan. Even sitting, he feels like he's going to pass out, dizzy and totally dazed from the rapidly increasing blood relocation. Either Blaine is extremely into the movie or he is purposely ignoring his effect on Kurt.

Or, and no – no, Blaine is not teasing Kurt, not wiggling his butt just so to rub and rub and rub and now, now – “Oh God,” Kurt gasps, body involuntarily rippling with spasms because Blaine has slid his hand behind his back, sandwiching it between their bodies in order to cup Kurt through his shorts.

“Fuck, oh shit, fuck, Blaine,” Kurt whimpers, Blaine's name a heady, breathy exhalation.

Kurt's hips jolt and even though he can't see Blaine's face, he knows Blaine's smirking that stupid, dumb, smug smirk of his, the one he plasters on his face when he knows he has won, when he knows he's gotten the upper hand – in this case, literally.

Blaine squeezes, alternating a deep grip with an even deeper rub. Kurt is practically hyperventilating he's panting so hard…and no, no Kurt. Do not think about the word hard.

Hell, he's basically vibrating he's so spun out and wrecked.

Without warning, Blaine stands up enough to turn, bringing Kurt up with him. Kurt flashes Blaine a confused expression when Blaine motions for him to sit on the ground with his legs stretched out, free from the rigid restraints of the beach chair's unforgiving aluminum and wood arms. Just as quickly, Blaine drapes the blanket around his body like a cape, and unzips his shorts. Kurt's throat constricts, the sight of Blaine, who is so, so incredibly concerned with public image and decorum, sliding his shorts down.

And oh wow – Blaine opted out of his usual boxer-briefs and he is startlingly, brilliantly naked: olive-toned skin hauntingly striking in the pale moonlight, furred strong thighs that Kurt aches to touch, to grab onto, and his cock. Shorter and thicker than Kurt's, it juts outward, reddish-purple and beautifully hard. Kurt's mouth waters at the sight, his default setting when he sees how desperately aroused he makes Blaine.

Using Kurt's shoulders for support, Blaine suggestively slides the front of his body down, mere inches from his face, to settle himself in between Kurt's legs once again. Blaine's legs bracket Kurt's waist, smug and naughty smirk in place.

“Blaine – what? Um, what, what're you doing?”

Blaine brings a finger to Kurt's lips to shush him. Kurt surreptitiously scours the crowd, looking for any form of an interested party. But they are safely tucked into the dark shadows at the back of the lawn. Blaine's fingertips leave an electrifying trail down Kurt's torso from the teasing dance they do over his thin gray V-neck.

He watches with bated breath and quivering lips as Blaine unbuttons his shorts. He basically forgets how to actually breathe when he hears the teeth of his zipper click-click-click as Blaine nimbly works it down.

“These are my favorite.” Blaine says, smirk illuminating the conspiratorial delight in her eyes.

“Fuck paying attention to my goddamn boxers Blaine. Just – fuck, please,” Kurt gasps out, more an annoyed directive than actual begging.

Blaine's brow quirks, “Please what?”

He's clearly amused by Kurt's evident discomfort – discomfort that he has caused, that he has spurned with tortuous rolls of his hips and languid, expert strokes of his hands. Blaine dips two fingers into the opening of Kurt's boxer shorts, and Kurt notices that Blaine's breath comes out wobbly, broken, the near-hyperventilation of this private moment made scandalously public.

 “T – touch me, please, I just. I need you to – to touch me,” Kurt attempts to demand.

Then he's out, blood-hot bare flesh flushed and hard, and Blaine's hand feels fucking amazing wrapped around him, immediately starting a slow, steady rhythm. Blaine's strokes are anything but tentative. The familiar weight of Kurt in his hand is welcome, needed – and Kurt's achingly throbbing, wanting more friction, desperate for it.

Blaine swipes his thumb over the slit, gathering the bit of pre-come that has accumulated. With widened eyes, disbelieving, Kurt watches, stock-still and pinned in place, Blaine lift his thumb to his mouth to suck the warm fluid from his digit. The moan Kurt wants to release loses itself in the gulp because that is, single-handedly, the hottest, most erotic thing he has ever seen his boyfriend do.

And in public no less.

With a quick lick of his palm, Blaine's hand returns to wrap around Kurt, stroking harshly, purposefully.

Kurt whines and whimpers, “Fuck, oh fuck, Christ Blaine. That feels – so fucking good, baby.”

His lips part as his whines and whimpers turn breathy and heavy. Thighs spreading ever so slightly, he arches his hips, somewhat awkwardly and off-kilter, to fuck up into Blaine's tight fist.

Blaine bites his lip to keep from moaning – the sight of Kurt coming undone at his carefully tended to seams has his hunger deepening into ravenous, desperate need.

“You are the single most beautiful man in the world Kurt,” Blaine confesses reverently, unable to hold the emotion in any longer. His chest aches with it, now cracked open and viciously raw because he still can make Kurt moan like that – low, throaty, rough and wrecked. He can still make Kurt shiver, muscles twitching just from the trail of fingertips. He still can cause Kurt's pupils to dilate, to expand until his crystalline blue eyes are black and hooded, desire and intent radiating from their depths.

With Kurt, under Kurt, above Kurt, at Kurt's side – he still can.

Blaine clutches the blanket, hoping for something sturdy, something firm to hold in the building moans, and the firm grasp of his boyfriend's hand does not provide that. Not when Blaine's firm grasp is the element causing the building moans.

“Yes well, um, your beautiful man, oh fuck, Jesus. He um – I need you to – to not stop. Don't stop.”

And Kurt is the single most beautiful man in the world to Blaine, scars, no scars, just as he is. Especially like this: all flushed skin, dilated pupils, lips swollen from their constant worrying between his teeth, and desperate panting moans.

Blaine can't resist the urge to lean up, bringing his bent knees up to kneel over Kurt's lap, never losing grip of the hard-hot flesh in his hand. He nuzzles the tip of his nose up the side of Kurt's neck and whispers, breath scorching and insistent on Kurt's sweat-slick skin, “You wanna know a secret, baby? No one, I repeat no one, has ever fucked me like you do. I can come just from the thought of you inside me, filling me up, making me take every thick, hot, hard inch of you.”

Kurt inhales sharply, painfully. Eyes wide and open, he watches Blaine fumble for something and the telltale pop-click of a bottle of lube opening makes Kurt moan, deep and rumbling, before he can stop it. Blaine smirks, rebelliously naughty purpose glinting in the upturned corners of his pouty lips – “I prepped myself before we got here.”

Surging forward, Kurt subsumes Blaine's mouth in a wet, hot, devouring kiss. Blaine is a never-ending, one-man tornado of surprises but this – this surprise rips through Kurt's veins, spiking and tumbling in disastrous waves that feel almost too painful to handle. Months of waiting, of wondering if he could get back to this – free, adventurous, spontaneous rounds of dirty, erotic intimacy born of indescribable hunger and unconditional trust – and now it's here, ready and oh dear God, fucking prepped and Kurt can't breathe, can't even let his body do this one involuntary thing because this is Blaine, this is them and really, if they break, if he breaks, then everything has been for naught.

“I – I don't. I can't – I won't hurt you Blaine and – and it's been like an hour since – since we got here,” Kurt stammers, protesting and near sobs.

Blaine smoothes his palms along Kurt's jawline, over his cheeks and brings Kurt's mouth to his, a languid drag of lips, sweet and endearing and soothing.

“Make me feel it, baby. Help me remember what it means to feel you, only you.”

Retracting his hands, Blaine squirts a generous amount of lube into his palm and coats Kurt's length with it. Kurt hisses at the slight chill of the thick, viscous liquid. Blaine wipes the remainder of the lube on the blanket and with his free hand, Blaine twists his fingers in Kurt's coiffed hair, not waiting one more second, because he finally has Kurt where he wants him. Using his hand wrapped around Kurt as a guide, Blaine sinks down.

Garbled and strangled, Kurt's sharp, painful inhale releases itself in an exhaled moan – with one decisive move, Blaine sheathes the entire length of Kurt in his body. Instantly, both are overcome with the feeling of Kurt buried deep inside the blazing hot tightness of Blaine's accepting body.

Blaine yanks Kurt's head back, uncomfortably arching Kurt's neck. He withdraws, pulling up, leaving the tip inside, and then plunges himself down again. Kurt's hands scramble to find purchase of something, anything, finding it in the fabric of the hoodie sweatshirt Blaine is still wearing.

The fact that they are only enshrouded by dark shadows and they can be caught at any given moment means nothing to Kurt. Because right now, all that matters is his sexy-as-hell and still-recovering boyfriend – his Blaine – riding him with vigor and blinding lust, eyes wild and unseeing, lost in the blissful haze of pleasure.

Blaine is chasing his orgasm with abandon. Head thrown back, curls loose from its gel-shellacked helmet and mussed, lips worry-bitten and parted, eyes closed, Blaine is the image of beautiful debauchery. Kurt clamps down on his rising orgasm; it really, truly has been too long since he's been inside Blaine, squeezed masterfully by the tight muscles Kurt knows better than his own.

This is not going to last long.

Months of only fingers and tongue have done next to nothing in stretching the walls of Blaine's body, acting as pseudo stand-ins for the length and girth of Kurt's cock. It must be painful but all sense of Blaine's comfort disintegrates the second Kurt looks into Blaine's eyes – urgent, vibrant, desperate, and brazen tenderness wrapped around deferential adulation. Blaine's body is shaking and he's losing control of the angle and rhythm of his gyrations but Kurt lets Blaine go, lets Blaine own the experience and the pace because the very core of Kurt is telling him that Blaine needs this, needs to re-train his synapses to fire upon the impact of Kurt's touch, Kurt's scent, Kurt's physical presence.

Clutching Kurt's hair franticly, Blaine smashes their mouths together, kissing Kurt deep and breathless. He rides Kurt fast, hard and dirty. Kurt merely gives Blaine whatever he's chasing, gives over to Blaine's determination and focus, gives in to letting Blaine use his body as the means and method to clasp the elusive catharsis that has just been out of reach, to clasp it and hold it, demanding it to soak Blaine's wounds in some sort of antiseptic balm, demanding it heal Blaine's broken body from the inside out.

For months Kurt has been ready to fuck his boyfriend senseless, ready for that Technicolor, high-definition climax. But this isn't just a return to their unabashed, insatiable rounds of rough, hotter-than-hell sex; this is something more, something deeper, something therapeutic; this is both the beginning of something new and the end of something old, liberation from the chains of scars and demons. It is the spectacular implosion of Kurt/Blaine/galaxy.

Kurt isn't ready for is coming inside Blaine, eyes connected and unwavering. He isn't ready for is how heartbreakingly revelatory it is, to do this thing he has done so many times before because Blaine, fastidiously maniacal about protection, requested he forgo the condom to feel Kurt, to feel every bare inch of Kurt filling him up.

He isn't ready for the anxious desire to clutch Blaine's body to hold him close, to spasm and spill inside Blaine, to remain connected like this again because Blaine has taken all the tests, received all the negative results and this – this is Blaine's return, Blaine's homecoming to Kurt in the form of letting Kurt, even after months, paint over the cracked, peeling coat left abandoned by the creator of Blaine's demons, with Kurt,just Kurt.

He isn't ready for how profoundly this rocks him, so deep and wide that his pulse stutters, his heart stops for the fraction of a second. He isn't ready for Blaine, fingers gripping Kurt's hair and pressing his face into Kurt's collarbone, Kurt's hands still tight fists around bunches of sweatshirt.

With Blaine's heavy, emotionally wracked breathing, his body heaving for regenerative breath, Kurt feels it,really feels it – the depth of this re-marking, or rather, the depth of this new marking and he sobs.

“Oh my God, oh my God. Blaine, baby, oh God – I've missed you, I've missed you so much,” Kurt cries into the sweat-slick skin of his boyfriend's neck.

For the first time in nearly seven months, the role of consoler is reversed. Blaine holds him close, so close that to the outside, untrained eye the beginning of Blaine is the ending of Kurt. Kurt hisses, the closeness distinctly reminding him that, although painfully flaccid and oversensitive, he is still inside Blaine. But no amount of discomfort could sway Kurt from remaining, now more than ever, needing this connection, forged in the binding rings of their fathomless, wondrous faith in the other, in them.

“Shh baby, shh. It's okay. It's okay. I've got you. I'm right here. I've got you,” Blaine murmurs warmly.

“Just – just God, kiss me B. Kiss me to – to I don't know, keep me here, keep me tethered because – because I…don't. I can't – ”

Blaine warmly concedes, subsuming Kurt's mouth in a sweet, gentle press of soft lips. Kurt sighs audibly into the kiss and it's good, so good, like the first few drops of summer rain after a long drought, and he wants more. Wants the torrential downpour, wants the refreshing wash of life and nutrients being replenished by the caressing shower of the clouds opening up and offering rebirth and renewal.

Kurt loses himself in the sensations of it all, his tears slipping between their mouths. Blaine pulls away and tenderly kisses away the tears, leaving Kurt dazed and floating, fighting for breath, fighting to stay just a little longer in this blissful, beautiful liminal space where nothing – absolutely nothing – can reach them.

“I – I…B, I lo – ”

A light press of Blaine's fingers to Kurt's lips and Kurt quiets. Both wince, slight flickers of strained discomfort from an extended period time of disjointedly yet perfectly enmeshing their bodies together, as Blaine pulls up and off, to plant his butt on the blanket-covered ground between Kurt's legs. Blaine cups Kurt's face, thumbs delicately stroking Kurt's tear-wet cheekbones.

“Hey, hey. I know, baby, I know. And I you. So much. So fucking much it defies words. But more than that, more than all the goddamn stupid bullshit, I trust you Kurt Hummel,” Blaine whispers intensely, voice tremulous and raw and painfully open.

Because that's what this is about, isn't it?

Not that Kurt loves Blaine, which he does, infinitely sprawling and deliriously wicked in its depth. Not that Kurt would move heaven and earth should Blaine ever utter a sound. But it's about trust – unconditional, tested and proved, irrationally rational, and battered but resilient trust in another person to hurt your feelings when needed and to pick you up and glue every last chipped, charred, violently chiseled piece back together, leaving you beautifully, imperfectly perfect.

Kurt wonders when this stopped being about recovery and patching up wounds. He wonders when this stopped being about neatly compartmentalized moments of small victories of intimacy, both emotional and physical, and started being about this – this crazy, wild, chaotic, intense need to demolish one another.

Because that's what they're doing – demolishing one another, bit-by-bit, only to turn around and realize that with the other hand, they can rebuild each other, piece everything back together again in a new mosaic of life, love, happiness, only to do it all over again.

It's unhealthy. It's indescribable. It's fucking terrifying, what with Blaine's assault, Kurt's insufferable need to protect and control at all costs, regardless of thought or consequence, and their lack of will power to resist surrendering to the all-consuming, fiery, depths of their hunger.

So Kurt waits.

Waits for the crushing blow of this is not good, this is dangerous and not at all okay, waits for the surge of revelation to overcome him, pushing him towards the fading Exit sign and yes, that's right, the fading Exit sign and then – shockingly calm and gentle, a revelation: this is love, this is trust, this is them, destroying old versions of themselves as individuals, to rebuild and reclaim, to help polish each other, making them shiny and new and better. Better individuals and a better, more impenetrable partnership. This is them – a give-and-take, a push-and-pull, a union of sharp edges and tight curves.

Blaine is healed. Blaine is revitalized.

Kurt is wrecked. Kurt is repaired.

They are resurrected.