“So I’ve only done this once, but I think we’re really good at it and should continue for as long as as we are both are interested.” He turns his mirthful eyes to Blaine, hoping he’ll bite.

He does.

“Which is to say, forever,” Blaine crows back, smug smirk on his face.

They laugh, both starting to feel disgusting and knowing they should move. Kurt glances at his clock and swears under his breath.

“We really need to move, even though I don’t want to at all. It’s 6:40. Carole will be home in less than a half hour. Do you want to shower?”

Blaine considers this.

“Yes, I do, but Kurt - how are we going to explain me? Where do I even go and there are so many questions...”

“Let’s just do this one step at a time, okay? I don’t know any more than you do but we can do this.” Kurt soothes, reaching down to grasp Blaine’s hand with his own. “You’re not going anywhere today. I’ll figure something out - go get in the shower and I’ll strip this bed and air out my room a bit.” Kurt wrinkles his nose at the end because yeah, it smells like sex in his room. Puck would be so proud.

Blaine squeezes his hand once more and then shuffles to the edge of the bed, easing his body up to sit. He lets out a little breath, and then pushes off the bed, walking a little warily.

Kurt watches, comprehension dawning on his face.

“Blaine - are you-”

Blaine turns to him, smile on his face, albeit a little awkward.

“Um, yeah. I’m a little...it just feels different. Not painful, just...a little different and a little...well taken.”

Kurt tries not to preen - he really does - but he can’t help it. Blaine’s a mess, sticky, sweaty, and well-fucked. By Kurt Hummel, thanks so much.

“I would say I’m sorry but I’m really, really not,” Kurt says, trying to be innocent but failing miserably.

“And I really don’t want you to be, that was fucking hot, Kurt. Just...damn.” Blaine replies, and then reaches into Kurt’s dresser with a question on his face, which Kurt nods to. He searches a moment, pulling out pajama pants and a Hummel Oil and Lube T-shirt and then heads out the door.

“Come back to me soon,” Kurt catcalls, unable to stop himself.

He busies himself about the room, stripping the bed quickly and using the last clean part of the sheet to wipe at himself. He steals out of his room, naked, to throw the sheets and comforter into the washing machine and starts the load. Finally he returns to his room, pulling his backup comforter out of his mother’s hope chest in the closet before replacing the sheets, humming to himself as he goes. He’s pulling the last pillow sham on when Blaine returns from the shower, curls damp over his forehead and t-shirt tight over his chest. Kurt’s breath catches, wanting him all over again.

“Is it going to be like this all the time now? The second I see you, wanting to be...close?” Kurt amends what he’s thinking, finding in you to be a bit crass.

Blaine examines him, eyes like embers, burning burning.

“I actually hope it is, because it’s the same way I feel. How do people do this all the time? How do people in love contain this?” Blaine wonders aloud.

Kurt shrugs and grabs the clothes he’s prepared, skirting Blaine and heading out the door. Blaine whimpers, unaccustomed to the treatment.

“I can’t touch you or I’ll never leave,” Kurt states over his shoulder, “And besides that, I’m so gross you don’t want me right now anyway.”

He thinks he hears a grumbled, “not true” as he closes the bathroom door.

***

Kurt finishes a quick shower and returns to his room ten minutes later thinking about how his skin will have to wait for another few hours when he reaches his door and almost falls through it.

Blaine’s sitting on his bed near the headboard with his legs crossed underneath him. There’s a folder open in front of him and, most surprisingly, Kurt’s dad is sitting on the chaise lounge - pulled up from his alcove.

Kurt has to grip the edge of the doorframe to stay upright.

“D-Dad?” he exclaims, thanking the whole world and all its deities that he had cleaned his room before showering.

Both Blaine and Burt look up from here they’re lt the folder in front of Blaine. Kurt takes mental note of his dad’s appearance - his cap on his head, loose jeans, a t-shirt and a flannel on. Slippers.

He’s not dressed for traveling OR for politicking.

“Hey, Kurt. So I know this’s a surprising thing, me being here with Blaine, but-”

“You’re not home until next weekend, right? Am I insane?” Kurt’s freaking out, the whole room feeling too small for the three of them. He has a boy in his room, the boy is on his bed, and he’s just lost his virginity for god’s sakes and now his father is talking to him in the same room; next to the same bed...

He grips the doorway tighter as the vision of his dad coming home just a half hour earlier floods his mind.

The door slams downstairs.

Burt stands up quickly, rushing past Kurt.

“You boys just wait for me, okay? I gotta tell Carole not to worry about the car downstairs...

Kurt just watches him disappear down the stairs, mouth agape, towel dropped to the floor, unnoticed.

“Kurt?”

Blaine’s small, tentative voice from his bed rouses him, pulls him back to where Blaine needs him.

“Okay - so, that’s my dad...” be begins, walking to the bed and settling on the end of it as Blaine chuckles softly.

“He introduced himself. When he walked in he didn’t seem to be surprised at me curled on on the pillows. It’s-” Blaine’s voice darkens, “It’s damn serendipitous that he’s a politician, Kurt.”

Kurt eyes Blaine’s face and reads a bit of anger there, something he hasn’t yet seen on Blaine.

“What is it?” he asks, leaning over the folder. He examines the photos on the top of the pile and gasps.

“Is that you?”

Blaine nods until he realizes Kurt isn’t looking.

“Yes. That’s me when I was born, at 2, at 4, at 6...all the even ages until 12. That picture there-” he points and Kurt’s eyes follow, “-was taken three days before I was gone.”

Kurt eyes the photo of the boy, just starting to look like Blaine a little bit in the angle of the jaw, the set of the nose, and then looks up at Blaine again.

“How do you know?”

Blaine’s eyes harden. “The date’s on the back.”

Kurt eyes the pile in front of Blaine, wondering how long his dad has been here.

“How- I mean, Dad’s been here for a little bit?”

Blaine doesn’t look up, just keeps scanning the documents in front of him.

“Yeah, I heard the door about two minutes after you left and I thought it was Carole so I just...I just waited, but closed the door. Then your dad came in and he just...”

Blaine looks up, meeting Kurt’s gaze.

“He just said, ‘Hi, you must be Blaine, I’m Burt’. Just like that.”

Kurt laughs because yeah, that’s his dad.

“So...all this?” Kurt pushes, wanting in on feelings Blaine’s having.

Blaine sighs and gestures to the folder on the bed and speaks.

“Your dad brought it with him - and, by the way, your dad was on a plane at 3:30 this morning and then driven here by who knows who when he got here. The plane was just there for him, he’s a little starstruck.”

Kurt opens his mouth to speak but his father walks back in and sits back down on the chaise.

“So...dad?” Kurt tries, feeling more lost than ever.

Burt sighs, avoiding Kurt’s gaze and addressing Blaine.

“You okay, kid?”

Blaine nods. “Yeah, I mean...yeah. Thanks for bringing all this but...I don’t get why they let you. I mean, I know you’re a congressman and all but this is pretty high security stuff, right, I mean genetic manipulation and whatnot-”

Burt looks at Kurt, resigned.

“It’s because of Kurt’s mom.”

Kurt shivers, his eyes locked with his father’s, waiting.

Burt reaches over and takes Kurt’s hand, tethering them together.

“I met Kurt’s mom one day, in a girl at school that I hadn’t really talked to. But his mom, she walked right up to me and said hello. She said her name was Elizabeth and that she wanted to spend the day with me. I thought it was pretty forward of her at the time, but we did. We walked to classes together and then, after school, we stayed together. We spent until midnight talking to each other and then she said she had to go and was sorry that it was all over. I didn’t get it. Not then. She said she had to go but I thought she meant home. She meant to a different body.”

Kurt gasps, his fingers tightening around Burt’s fingers.

“The next day I was looking for her but she didn’t come to school, ya know? The day after that, and the day after that. And I thought that was it, over, right? But no, the fourth day I got a letter. It was from Elizabeth, telling me that she wanted to see me but that she wanted to know if I loved her - because she already loved me. And god help me, I said yes. I wrote her back, like her letter said, and put it in my mailbox. I watched that damned mailbox until three in the morning that night - but I fell asleep. Three days after that your mother came to the door. But - she wasn’t the same.”

Kurt nods, beginning to understand.

“She had her own body back and luckily for me, her parents lived near here - Findlay, where your grandparents are, Kurt. She lived less than an hour away. We were so lucky.”

“But, how did she get her body back, Burt?” Blaine asks, breaking the hold Kurt’s eyes have on his father.

“She fell in love with me, and her body knew. It just...knew it was right. I mean, your scientists there, they’ll tell ya that the soul, the essence, whatever you want to call it, won’t settle with a non-genetic match but not your mom. She saw me and I saw her and that was it - even if, in the end, her body didn’t look the same. When I saw her, talked to her again, I knew.”

“So my mom,” Kurt whispers, “Was like Blaine?”

“Yep. The same thing happened to her when she got her body back - only it wasn’t as advanced as now. Took them weeks to find her body after it disappeared from holding - and don’t ask me what holding is or where because they won’t even tell me that and I was married to Elizabeth - because they didn’t have the tracker chips then. They started with the host’s old home back then and then would branch out. Sometimes they didn’t find ‘em though.”

Kurt’s head is spinning watching Blaine read his paperwork and Burt look at him as if waiting for something to happen; for Kurt to snap.

He’s getting very close, actually.

He turns to Blaine.

“And you knew all this?!” Kurt barks, hurt and confused.

Blaine’s head whips up, papers crinkling.

“Of course not. I don’t think they ever told mom that there was a possibility...that this could...I don’t think they said, ‘oh hey, your child might come back’.” Blaine’s choking up now, his hands fidgeting at the bedspread.

“No, Kurt,” Burt says, feeling the situation slipping, “Blaine couldn’t have known. They don’t tell the altered’s parents that this can happen because it doesn’t always. Sometimes they never do. The altered’s spirit - soul, essence - whatever, it falls where it falls because that’s where others with the genetic match may be, but it’s not guaranteed.”

“Genetic match?” Kurt asks, face draining. Did Blaine love him because of some random scientist somewhere...because he can’t...it’s not...

“Not like, made for each other, if that’s what you’re asking, stop freaking out buddy.” Kurt’s dad reaches over to pat his arm. “Blaine here dropped into Lima because there were other potential genetic matches here - any child of an altered, although that’s less than 20,000 in the whole world - could be his match. If he finds them and he falls in love with them and they should have the genetic makeup.”

“But-” Kurt’s head can’t take much more. “Why didn’t I drop? When I went through...through puberty?”

“Recessive,” Burt answers crisply, “And I gotta say I was relieved. Elizabeth didn’t want to have children - not because she didn’t want you, she did, so much, and cried so many nights before we made the decision. She didn’t want to have you to just lose you...in the end, we were told as soon as you were born. Recessive. Just like Blaine’s mom, only she found out his were dominant so she knew, from day one, that he would be gone.”

Kurt takes a moment to consider this, to think of Blaine’s mom, alone, Blaine’s dad having been there and then gone and then finding out that she would lose Blaine one day.

It is heartbreaking even to consider.

Blaine’s watching him, his eyes red with tears.

“Burt, this one?”

Burt reaches over to take the paper in Blaine’s hand.

“Yeah, kid. Just take your time, okay. You can stay here - we have the extra room - or you can do this. Either way, know I’m not kicking you out and neither is Carole. Although you might want to introduce yourself at some point. She knows about Elizabeth, barely believed but I think she will now that you’re here. There’s this, too.”

Blaine eyes the envelope and then opens it, examining its contents with widening eyes.

“What...what is, but I-”

“It’s not from me, kid. It’s from the government and it’s all yours. All of you have that in safekeeping for when you wake up - experiment expenditures, I guess, but boy, does it make my tax dollars seem insignificant. You’re 18 so you don’t have to contact a parent, but all your documents are there, too. With your history - should anyone need it. I’m not saying I agree, but I am saying I’ve lived through this and you can do it, kid.”

Kurt eyes Blaine’s hands, seeing a bank statement and a debit card with the name “Blaine Anderson” in gold letters. The card is for the National Bank of Lima.

“What’s on that paper, dad?”

Blaine looks at Kurt again, eyes far away.

“Everything about my mom.”