“So, have you decided what movie you want to go see?” Kurt asks, peeking his head out the bathroom door and checking to see if Blaine has finally narrowed down their options.

“No, not yet,” Blaine says, going back to the top of the page and scrolling down the listings again, hoping that this time something will leap out at him. Cinema has definitely hit a low point recently in Blaine’s opinion. Even the revival theater downtown is running nothing but duds. What he wouldn’t give for a decent Claude Rains retrospective, or a return of the All About Eve/Showgirls double feature. If worse comes to worse, they can wait a few hours and hit up the midnight showing of Rocky Horror at Bow Tie Cinemas in Chelsea. At least that way they can sing and dance together the way they used to back in high school, with the added perk of throwing popcorn at the screen.

When Blaine looks at it that way, why do they ever go to see any other movie?

“You know, Adam texted me earlier that he might head out to see The Birdcage at a theater in The Village. You like that movie. Maybe I should call him up and we can all go together.”

“Or maybe we could, you know, like, not do that,” Blaine grumbles under his breath. He hears Kurt start singing We Are Family and sighs. He shouldn’t get so pissed at the mention of Mr. Perfect Adam Crawford, but he can’t help himself. Ever since Kurt joined that damn show choir, Adam’s Apples, Adam Crawford, its benevolent leader, is all Kurt ever seems to talk about.

Oh my God! Adam has the cutest accent! And it doesn’t disappear when he sings!

Wait till you hear the set list Adam picked out for this year’s College Winter Regionals! And the choreography he came up with? Too bad we didn’t have his help with the New Directions. We would have been epic!

Did I show you the video I recorded on my phone of Adam and the Apples performing Baby Got Back? It’s so hilarious, and yet so genius!

Adam told me today that I look like a young Paul Newman! Isn’t that the sweetest thing you’ve ever heard?

Blaine slides down in his chair and runs his fingers through his hair, stopping and pulling when melancholy sweeps in. Kurt and Adam are going to start dating soon. Kurt hasn’t said anything yet, but Blaine just knows it. He feels it in his chest where his heart won’t stop aching. He doesn’t begrudge Kurt dating Adam if that’s what he really wants. He doesn’t begrudge Kurt dating anyone. But the two of them have been single together for so long that Blaine was beginning to think he might have a chance.

Selfishly, Blaine’s not ready for this yet.

“Well, you’ve been looking at that computer screen for twenty minutes. I don’t think the selection’s going to change.” Kurt steps out to help, buttoning the last button of his shirt underneath his chin. Blaine watches, slowly raising an eyebrow at Kurt’s uncharacteristic display of modesty. Kurt rarely buttons his shirt to the top button. He usually leaves at least one undone. Plus, he had rushed to the bathroom the minute he got home to change into the shirt he’d picked up from the dry cleaners. That’s not like Kurt. Not anymore.

Kurt had been shy about his body once upon a time. Back in high school, he avoided taking his shirt off in front of anyone, even in the locker room after gym, opting to race home and shower during lunch instead. But that was then. Several years, the Atkins diet, and an onset of puberty later, Kurt is comfortable taking off his shirt pretty much anywhere, especially when he’s home alone with Blaine. Though after they lost their virginities to one another during their junior year (in one of those silly high school pacts that you normally read about in cheesy YA novels) Kurt hasn’t been shy at all about changing in front of Blaine.

Ducking into the bathroom to change his shirt is a small aberration, but where Kurt is concerned, small things are usually the most notable ones.

“Uh, no,” Blaine says, still distracted by Kurt’s shirt. “It’s a toss-up.”

“Well, you mentioned two movies a few days ago that you said you were interested in,” Kurt reminds him, leaning over Blaine’s shoulder to look at the screen, “and according to this, they both start at eight. It’s six forty-three now. We’d have more than enough time to…”

Kurt brushes against Blaine’s shoulder and hisses. Blaine watches Kurt throw a hand to his chest and pat a spot lightly. Blaine’s brows draw together in the middle with concern at how much that one touch obviously stung.

“Kurt” - Blaine watches his best friend roll his shoulder, readjusting something underneath his shirt - “are you okay?”

“Yeah,” Kurt says, purposefully dismissing Blaine’s question. His eyes travel back to the computer screen to avoid Blaine’s worried gaze. “Everything’s fine. Why do you ask?”

“Well, because it looks like you might be in a bit of pain there.” Blaine slowly gets up from his chair so he can look Kurt in the eyes.

“Pain? Where?” Kurt looks caught in the act, but of what, Blaine doesn’t know.

“There,” Blaine says, indicating Kurt’s chest where his hand rests slightly over his heart.

“Oh.” Kurt drops his hand as if he didn’t realize where it was. “No. I just…” Kurt rolls his shoulder again, and this time Blaine hears a crinkling noise coming from under Kurt’s clothes. Blaine jerks his head back as if this new development is entirely inconceivable.

“Did you…get a new tattoo?” Blaine asks in an accusatory tone – but not mad accusatory.

Hurt accusatory.

“Well, I…” Kurt stays stuck for several minutes, debating what he should do, but then he moves his arm unintentionally and that crinkling noise makes another appearance.

Kurt opens his mouth to speak, but stops when he realizes he’s about to lie. He doesn’t want to lie to Blaine. Damn that new parlor on 36th Street and the funky bandages they use that sound like frickin’ cellophane every God damn time he moves! He had had every intention of changing out the bandage when he got home. He headed straight for the bathroom under the pretense of changing his shirt. He rifled through the cabinets for the box of tattoo-friendly bandages they usually kept on hand, only to find an empty container with a neon pink Post-It stuck to it that said (helpfully) Please buy more.

It was in Blaine’s handwriting. Kurt should have taken that as a sign.

Kurt sighs. He has no choice. He unbuttons his shirt and reveals what Blaine already knows is there.

“You got a new one?” Blaine points to the black, rectangular bandage taped to Kurt’s chest over his heart. “You got a new tattoo, and you didn’t tell me?”

Kurt looks down at the bandage covering his latest piece of ink. His newest masterpiece. He was so elated when he got it, but now he feels guilty. Blaine is his best friend, and Kurt had wanted it to be a surprise. But now, he’s not so sure it was his brightest idea.

“Yeah,” Kurt says, carefully smoothing out the wrinkles in the tape. “I got it this afternoon after school. It was kind of spontaneous, but…I’ve been thinking about getting it for a while.”

“But…you haven’t mentioned anything.”

“I…I’m sorry, Blaine. I’m so so sorry but…I didn’t know how.”

As hurt as Blaine is, he understands that. Tattoos are very personal things. But the ones on Kurt’s body, and, subsequently, the ones on Blaine’s, are kind of their thing. It started with Kurt, as a way to commemorate an important moment in his life. In that case, a totem to empower him, to show the world that he would rise above the bullying he’d been enduring while in high school, and to remind himself that it gets better. That’s what the tattoo was supposed to say. It gets better. He was underage at the time, and had to get a fake ID to have it done, but he knew it’d be worth it…until he discovered too late that the artist had messed it up. Well, to be honest, Kurt had messed up by not double checking the print out he’d made for the artist to go by before turning over his flawless, alabaster skin.

Kurt was devastated when he saw it. There he was, wanting to memorialize the fact that he wasn’t a loser, but instead he’d marked himself as an f-up for life. Just par for the course for Kurt Hummel, he’d said.

But he got it fixed. It was Blaine who encouraged Kurt to go back. He even went with Kurt, and in solidarity he got the exact same altered tattoo so that they’d match.

It’s got Bette Midler.

Kurt thought he’d be able to stop at the one. After all, as he was always saying, their bodies are their instruments. They couldn’t be marking themselves up left and right. No one would ever hire them if they were covered in tacky butterflies, Taylor Swift song lyrics, and cartoon characters. But years later (after discovering a little miracle worker called Dermablend body makeup), the both of them had two fully completed sleeves. Most of Blaine’s arms are decorated in an homage to the things that had helped him overcome adversity – his fencing foil, his boxing gloves, a vintage Shure 555 microphone to represent his years of singing on stage, the first piece of music he had written and recorded in a professional studio, his Fender acoustic guitar. Kurt’s are more family focused – his mother’s name, a ‘67 Olds Cutlass (the first car that he and his dad rebuilt together), his favorite birthday present – a pair of sensible heels, a floral teacup in honor of the many tea parties his father sat through with him, the bicycle his father taught him how to ride without training wheels, his first pair of ballet shoes and his favorite pink tutu. The only part of Kurt’s body that was still mostly bare was his chest, as was Blaine’s back, and whereas a good amount of Blaine’s left leg was filled, Kurt’s right leg bore his ink.

And it wasn’t just tattoos. They got a few piercings here and there, but those became kind of a competition.

Kurt’s tongue was the first – a consolation prize curtesy of the tattoo artist who did his first tattoo, given to him when Kurt went back to have it fixed (after Kurt tore him a new one, so the offer was generous considering).

The piercings in Blaine’s ears started as diamond studs in his lobes, both of which became 0 gauge tunnels later on, inspired by Kurt’s friend and bandmate, Elliott.

Kurt’s left eyebrow got a piercing and, for a while, his septum, until his dance teacher Cassie July told him no. She could overlook the eyebrow ring (she might have slipped in something about it being hot, he chose to forget that bit) but to lose the nose ring. She wouldn’t be held accountable if a stray shoe buckle during a wayward fan kick tore his nose off altogether. He stopped wearing it just for dance class, but it became too much of a hassle, and he let that one go completely.

Blaine eventually got his lip pierced – a subtle, lip-hugging hoop off to the right side and in gold so that most people barely notice it. It’s in the corner of his mouth that had been bruised most when he got jumped in high school and pounded into the pavement by a handful of homophobes after a Sadie Hawkins dance. He pierced his lip there to remind him that even though they broke his wrist and drove him away, they didn’t keep him down.

Kurt had contemplated getting his nipples pierced, but after their friend Puck got his nipple ring torn out in juvie, he decided to pass.

They stopped entirely after Blaine bit the bullet and got a Prince Albert piercing. He claimed he got it in the grand tradition of making his tighter-than-healthy pants fit better. Kurt didn’t buy that excuse for a minute, and it burned him with jealousy fantasizing about the lucky guy who’d get to try that one out.

After that, Kurt declared Blaine the winner and put an end to poking holes in their bodies.

Kurt and Blaine are best friends, utterly inseparable, and have been since high school, but they never dated seriously (aside from sleeping with each other that one time, which Kurt doesn’t feel counts). Kurt had more than entertained the idea of dating Blaine, but he didn’t want to destroy their friendship. It was too precious, too important. Boyfriends in his life had come and gone, and a few of his platonic friends, too, but Blaine was his one constant. He was the one who stayed, the one who went with him to New York (though several people had joined in on the original plan), the one who had always been there, from his father’s heart attack (commemorated by a human heart bound in razor wire on his right shoulder); to his rejection, then acceptance to NYADA (celebrated by a tornado of blackbirds on his right flank, flying towards a rainbow staff of music); to the death of his stepbrother Finn (memorialized by Finn’s name signed on his collarbone). And just as Kurt has accompanied Blaine when he got every tattoo he has on his body, Blaine has been there for every single tattoo Kurt has on his, sitting by his side and holding his hand.

With the exception of that first one…and this one.

“Kurt” - Blaine takes a nervous step closer - “why didn’t you know how to tell me? What happened? What…what is it for?” All Blaine can think is it’s over his heart. It has to be his dad. Something happened to his dad that he’s not telling Blaine. But no. That’s impossible. If something happened to Kurt’s dad, Blaine would be the first person other than Kurt to know. Suddenly, Blaine feels cold. Oh no. What if it isn’t his dad’s heart? What if it’s Kurt’s? Kurt’s doctor had prepared Kurt for the possibility that his father’s heart disease might be genetic. What if Kurt found out that he had it, too? That’s something he’d want to commemorate. It might even be difficult enough that he would need to do it alone.

“I didn’t know how to tell you,” Kurt begins, and Blaine holds his breath, expecting the worst, “because…it’s kind of…a name.”

Blaine lets the breath go. In his gut he feels relieved, but he doesn’t stop feeling cold. In fact, he starts feeling sick. His lips pull tight and he nods. He can see where this is going.

“It’s Adam, isn’t it?” Blaine asks, voice strained and teeth clenched. Of course it’s Adam. It has to be Adam. After weeks of hearing his name in conversation, who the hell else’s is it going to be?

“Adam?” Kurt chuckles gently. “No…no, it’s not.”

“Then…then who is it?” Blaine starts thinking of everyone they know, trying to remember if Kurt has started talking about any one person more than usual, but he draws a blank. There’s that guy Xavier from their stage fighting class who ogles Kurt every chance he gets, but Kurt doesn’t seem to reciprocate. “Is it someone new? Someone you haven’t told me about?” Blaine’s lower lip wobbles, and Kurt sighs. Somehow telling Blaine isn’t going as easy as he thought, so he decides to show him.

Kurt peels the tape, slowly easing the bandage away from the fresh ink. He doesn’t want to reveal it in pieces, but it’s hard not to with Blaine’s eyes tracking his every move. So, consequently, Blaine’s jaw drops before Kurt is halfway done.

There, over Kurt’s heart, is the simplest but possibly one of the most important tattoos he’s gotten so far, one that he had hoped would spur a whole story across the remaining blank spots on his body of dates and symbols representing courtship and a wedding and the future. Even if it didn’t, even if it stopped everything here in its tracks, it would still be one of the greatest pieces of art he wore on his skin.

“That’s…” Blaine pauses to swallow and steady his voice. “That’s my name. You got my name tattooed on your body...” Blaine holds out a hand, fingers shy of touching the bold blue lines and swirls that join together to form the single word Blaine in what Blaine recognizes as Kurt’s own distinctive script. “Over your heart.”

“I…I didn’t know how to tell you,” Kurt says apologetically. “I-I was afraid you might not feel the same way, and you’d tell me not to do it. I didn’t want it to make things awkward between us, but…I wanted it, Blaine. I wanted it so badly because…”

“Because…?”

Kurt shakes his head, exasperated because by now the answer should be obvious. “Because I love you, Blaine. I’ve loved you for so long. I want to be with you. And not just for one night like we were, and not as just roommates like we have been, but as boyfriends, and lovers, for as long as we can be.”

“I…I don’t know what to say,” Blaine admits, eyes glued to Kurt’s tattoo as if nothing else in the world existed.

Kurt shrugs. “Then…don’t say anything, I guess. Because if I’m wrong and you don’t feel the same way, I don’t want to know. I just want to go on from here as if nothing ever happened. I want…”

Kurt stops short when Blaine drops his head and reaches for the hem of his shirt. Kurt doesn’t understand what he’s doing, but he doesn’t say a word. He watches Blaine lift the hem and pull the shirt over his head, revealing a white tank top and, peeking through the fabric, a patchwork of art that Kurt knows so well, it might as well be inked on to his own skin. Blaine tosses his shirt aside. He takes a last look into Kurt’s eyes, a last fluttering glance at the new tattoo, his own name glistening beneath a layer of clear ointment, and lifts the right corner of his tank top.

It’s not difficult to see, but as Kurt hasn’t gotten the chance to see Blaine completely undressed lately, being the dead of winter, he can see why he missed it. Over the curve of Blaine’s hip, cresting like a wave in complimentary shades of blue and silver, almost the exact same colors that Kurt chose, is the most glorious rendition of his own name that Kurt has ever seen.

“But, that’s….that’s my name.”

“Yup,” Blaine says, running a hand over his hip with a bashful smile on his face. “It is.”

“But…” Kurt shakes his head in confusion. “But you didn’t tell me.” It feels like déjà vu when those words hit the air. “I…I don’t understand.”

“I got this a few weeks ago” – Blaine rests his hand over the tattoo, not to shield it from view, but to give him courage – “for the same reasons as you. I didn’t know how you’d feel about it, but I needed to have it…for me. I was going to show it to you when I got home, but then that Adam guy asked you out for coffee and I thought…I thought for sure the two of you were going to become an item, the way you talk about him all the time and stuff. I thought that there was no way…”

“No,” Kurt says, privately wishing that Blaine would move his hand off the tattoo so he can see his name again, permanently embedded in the skin on Blaine’s hip. And oh dear God! What a glorious place to have it! “I mean, he’s nice and all, but he never had a chance.” Kurt shortens the distance between them a step farther, needing Blaine’s closeness more than ever. “It’s you, Blaine,” he whispers. “It’s always been you.”

Blaine breathes sharply, taking those words in like air into his lungs. “Kurt, I…” But at that moment, Blaine can’t think of another thing to say, so he acts instead, rushing forward and doing something he’s wanted to do again for years, since that first time they made love. They’d shared other kisses since then, pecks on the lips and on the cheeks as befitting best friends, but nothing like that first kiss.

Nothing like this one, either.

“Oh, Blaine,” Kurt whispers softly. “You take my breath away. You always have.”

“I feel the same way,” Blaine says, glad to be able to say it after all this time. Blaine looks at Kurt’s lips – so soft and close, tempting him to find a way to convince Kurt to stay home so that he can worship his mouth, and his whole body, the way he’s been dreaming of for ages.

“So…did you still want to go out?” Blaine asks, raising a hand and letting it hover above the exposed tattoo on Kurt’s chest.

“I think,” Kurt says, slowly tracing the curve of Blaine’s hip with the tip of his finger, signing over his name again and again until he feels Blaine shiver, “that I’d like to spend a little more time getting acquainted with this tattoo. I don’t think I’ve gotten a good enough look at it. I think I need to see it” – Kurt’s eyes flick from the tattoo textured by goose flesh, to Blaine’s mouth, lips parted in anticipation – “close up.”

Blaine nods, the next word out of his mouth a murmur as Kurt’s lips meet his. “Okay.”