Blaine Anderson knows all about that.

X.

And then you came with those red mournful lips, / And with you came the whole of the world's tears, / And all the sorrows of her labouring ships, / And all the burden of her myriad years.

It's the first thing he thinks of, of course, after Kurt leaves with wet eyelashes and Blaine's cell number. Classic, neat and beautiful in its clean layout and smooth repeated middle and bookend beginnings and ends. Yeats is not his father's favourite, but he likes this one well enough, the words rolling smoothly off his tongue like his scholarly learnings had taught him; Blaine would listen in delight and ask silly childish questions that gathered no real meaning, not really, but he would still receive a curt answer and a gentle push into dissecting the text.

Wes and David give him that look they do when they don't understand the reference he's making (which happens a lot, since apparently even private school boys don't read a lot of Yeats unless expected to, and even then it's things like 'The Second Coming'), even when he quickly recites the lines with a cringe because poetry should really be read properly even if nobody but him will notice.

“... Are you saying you're in love with him, or something?” David tries eventually, as they're walking to class (Blaine to World History, David to Calculus) but Blaine just huffs impatiently because that is all wrong. “What? You don't just decide a guy reminds you of a poem. Especially one talking about red mournful lips or whatever. That's odd, man.”

“It's not like that,” he insists, because it's not. Around them, the trees whistle in the clear chime of the fall wind, auburn and gold falling around them in a faint blaze of seasons past. (Dalton is so beautiful in the fall.) “We're just... he needs someone's help and encouragement right now. And I think I can do that.”

David just shrugs, a small fond smile quirking his lips. “Alright then. You go save him, Superman. But I still stand by the fact that sending the kid poetry is weird. I'll see you at practice, yeah?”

“Yeah, later,” Blaine calls after David's retreating back, before turning to ponder at the screen of his phone again. Running a thumb across his lower lip, he walks around the quadrangle and into World History and decides he'll think about it later, post-lecture concerning Weimar Germany. (He might be a little overly concerned with poetry and the well-being of people he's only met once, but it doesn't cut into his studies. Or rather, he tries not to let it get to that point.)

But he finds himself at a loss even after class, fingers paused over the keys, what David had said clicking over the wheels in his head. ... Yeah, David is right. Maybe sending lines from a poem (and not even a positive one, at that) is a little too far.

The anxious twisting feeling in his stomach that he can't explain doesn't think that's why he doesn't do it, but he can't explain that either. Instead:

Courage – Blaine

He'll check his phone later, catch the flash of a new message from Kurt:

Who is this 'Blaine' guy? Hmm. Bit of a strange character, sending such happy sunbeams of positivity to my phone.

Another, a couple of minutes later:

Thank you.

The weight will ease like the push of a wave breaking the shore, a glittering sheen of sunlight on water before there's a panicked phone call and hiccuped I don't know what to do – and neither does Blaine when he thinks about it, but he comes anyway.

He would never forgive himself if he didn't, even as he braces himself against a chain-link fence and – nothing ever comes – there's just Kurt, words fierce and unwavering still. (Strength, noun: power to resist force or attack.) Blaine takes it in and somehow remembers to respond to the situation even though his mind is wavering on other things. Curious. Interesting, fascinating like the unread pages of a novel. There is a lot to learn about this boy.

He buys this boy lunch and decides that he'll think about it later; puts a bookmark between the pages and tells the spine that he will unearth its secrets like the capture of butterflies in cupped hands.

X.

The first thing Blaine notices is that he doesn't notice anything at all. He moves on with his life as normal, perfectly private-school and boring save for the increasing amounts of time he spends in the Lima Bean with Kurt. And nobody is there to say that it isn't especially private-school behaviour – Blaine would be surprised to find a Dalton student who didn't have a severe addiction to mediocre, overpriced coffee – but they are sometimes there to wonder why do you spend so much time with him?

Blaine doesn't have an answer prepared for that; no answer carefully mulled over and scored out in red and rewritten until it is placating and soulless. He's not sure why that is, either. So instead he smiles and says that it's nice to have someone around who understands and that is true, of course it is, but it seems to gather amused looks and hidden smiles and Blaine feels increasingly naked under the lights.

There is a line drawn where he enjoys performing and the rush of applause as he brings an audience to their knees, and another line encroaching in its space in fine ink drawn where he dislikes his motives being thrust into centre stage. But he is a glutton for punishment, so it seems, and Kurt has slipped himself into conversation over and over (a nameless sensation he should perhaps christen The Kurt Effect due to its increasing frequency). Yes. Blaine is sure that he is looking for nothing but friendship in Kurt Hummel, even as his lips curl over the name at the breakfast bar (because he and his father find it awkward to stare at each other across the wide expanse of the dinner table).

“Your friend who transferred?” his father asks eventually, reluctantly, pausing over his neat cursive notes and glancing at Blaine over his glasses. “... How is he?”

Blaine smiles broadly at that. “He's... adjusting. I think it's hard for him. It's... a different situation,” he says lightly, even though both of them know that it's anything but. “But he's getting there, I think. His voice is amazing, and he's just... he's good to talk to, you know? It just needs time. And maybe not singing 'Don't Cry For Me, Argentina' for a solo audition.”

“Oh?” And Blaine knows that look, that little spatter of uncertainty in his father's false expression, and he rolls his eyes and stabs his fork down a little too hard, the metal scraping against ceramic.

“It's not like that. Don't worry about it.”

It isn't. He will anyway. Blaine shifts in his seat, and changes the subject. “What are you reading?”

“Hm, contemporary Scottish literature,” is the grateful response. “Can't say it's really my kind of thing, though. It's a coin-toss as to whether it's in dialect or not, and the dialect is... it isn't hard, but it is a pain...”

The conversation falls easily from both of them, his father passing over newly thumbed-through poetry collections (“I... here. You might find this interesting.” – Blaine has no idea why) and tapping his pen at interesting passages, Blaine cocking his head and asking questions that he knows will make his father's eyes brighten even if he already knows the answers. He misses this, the nights spent poring over scores of novels and stories together when there was no proverbial elephant.

It's still there, lurking around the bonnet of a '59 Chevy in the garage or in the confused pressing of Carol Ann Duffy's Rapture into Blaine's hands (he looks it up later, runs his fingers over the typed ink, and still only partly understands). But they can both lie and forget for a little while.

X.

Kurt always answers the phone in the space between the tones. “Blaine?”

“I was right,” Blaine starts, leaning on his car door and looking up at the night sky, the rush of performance and applause still thrumming through his veins. God, he loves this. “You were much better than that girl.”

There's a small laugh down the line, and Blaine feels his lips move on their own. “While I'm flattered that you felt the need to call me to announce just how wonderful I am,” Kurt says, and Blaine can hear the pleased quality to his voice, even through the film of biting wit. He's been able to do that more easily, recently. “There had better be a point to all of this. I'm holding my cell with my face, here, and it's a complete waste of moisturiser.”

There wasn't a point to it at all, Blaine realises with an unsatisfactory jolt. It's late December and the snow is falling heavy on the ground, turned to shit-frozen slush in the car park where he's standing and it's bitterly cold, the wind like glass on his cheeks. Hardly a good time for making phone calls to friends about how their singing voice is – perfect – better than a girl he hardly knows, who was fine and pretty and smiled at him a little too often. “Oh, I'm sorry,” he says instead. “If I'm bothering you I'll call you back later. I just... I just wanted to call you.”

It sounds a lot easier off his tongue than it does in his head, smooth and confident in the way he tries so hard to keep up. “... No, it's okay, I'll put you on speaker –” there's a small beep, and the clatter of metal on a desk. “Keep going, I'm listening.”

“... Do you think being at Dalton is a good thing?”

“For who? You or me?” Kurt asks. Receiving no answer other than a shrug he can't see, he continues. “Considering that your control over that Warblers is nearing 'Blaine Anderson is the second coming of Christ' level, I think that if you suddenly decided to become a travelling magician or whatever it is you're about to announce to me, they'll fold in on themselves like a cooling souffl�. And I just don't think I can manage a one-man show choir.”

Pause. “Hah, it's nothing like that,” Blaine laughs, the resulting smile dimpling his cheeks like they haven't in a long time. This kind of thing is happening a lot more often now, and he's not sure why.

“So what's with the sudden existential crisis, then? A girl asked you out, and now you're afraid that what, your 'gay-cred' is suddenly challenged? It's not a points scheme, you know, redeemable at any time. You can totally keep a running tab on that.”

“No, no,” and he's laughing again, because Kurt is so bright and sharp and everything Blaine is not that he can't really help himself. But still, the weird cloud in his mind hasn't gone away and it comes tumbling out in a manner like he entirely doesn't mean it to. “It's nothing like that. ... I just don't think I know how real life works any more.”

“What do you mean?”

I think I'm broken. “Sometimes it just feels like I'm being kept in a glass bubble, you know? And it's nice in here, and all... but. I don't know. It's – sometimes – sometimes it feels like I'm losing at something, and I don't know what it is, and that's the worst part.”

“Blaine,” Kurt says softly, and Blaine cringes because he knows nobody can see. “There's a difference between subjecting yourself to daily torture and being a strong person. Don't you think that making the choice to transfer makes you better than all those losers at your old school? Taking yourself away from that was just as brave as staying. Braver. Yes?”

And neither of them believe that, not really, but Blaine cracks a smile and sinks into the mutual assurance. “Yeah. Yeah, I know. Thanks. I think I just needed to hear that from you.”

“Any time,” Kurt says, and his voice is bright again. “But if you ever call me during Grey's Anatomy I'm sorry, but you're going to have to leave a voicemail. My caring side has its conditions, you know.”

Blaine laughs, avoiding the bubbled cackle he has partly inherited from his mother, then feigns a serious tone. “Please. Why ever would I call you while I was watching Grey's Anatomy?”

“Hm, you have a point. Excepting the events of a horribly-acted plot twist possibly involving evil twins and dentistry students as a plot device, maybe. Hm. Did I ever tell you about the time at McKinley when I was campaigning for us to do a Britney number at assembly...?”

“No, I don't believe you have,” Blaine says in a mock-sultry purr, bubbles of laughter erupting in spite of himself. “You should tell me more. And possibly explain what on earth that has to do with dentists or evil twins.”

They fall into easy conversation in the way Blaine likes, because they mesh so nicely together; Blaine frosted blue to Kurt's fiery red. Others would switch the roles around, maybe, but when Kurt is with him Blaine is sure that bright, passionate boy with a tongue like silver is real; there's no trace of that quiet, destructive icy mask to be found.

Blaine wonders if he changes with Kurt, too. But he doesn't know.

(He goes home, and the fridge reads:

SORRY
PAPER DUE
THAT SONG IS MOR3 THAN SLIGHTLY CR33PY ANYWAY)

X.

Coffee dates with Jeremiah are full of airless breaths (oh, where has his demeanour left him?) and artfully fluttered eyelashes, coyly tipped chins resting on palms as Blaine accidentally stumbles over the birdsong soliloquies by Shakespeare. Logic dictates that Romeo & Juliet is such a clich� but he used it at their first meeting –

(A smile, quirked by a tip of the head, and Blaine's heart flutters. “Jeremiah,” the cashier affirms in a honeyed voice – or is he only imagining that? “... it's kind of lame, I know.”

Blaine doesn't think it's lame at all, and before he realises it the words are falling off this tongue like drops of beautiful lyrical prose. Which he supposes is infinitely more lame than having such a pretty name. “What's in a name? that which we call a rose / By any other name would smell as sweet; / So Romeo would, were he not Romeo call'd, / Retain that dear perfection which he owes / Without that title.”

“Oh,” Jeremiah says, brightly, his eyes widening slightly in surprise and Blaine's heart falls in showers and thunderstorms and the socks he's buying for no reason. (This is what love feels like. It is. It is.) “Ha, it's cool how you know that. We did a modern adaptation of Romeo & Juliet my senior year of high school. Not the weird one, with the bikers and all. Bit more high school, you know?”

Blaine just smiles in a way he hopes-knows is confident and assured, leaning on the counter with folded arms and a slight tilting swagger in his bones that makes him look at least five years older than sixteen. He knows, because he knows the way every facial expression makes him look; in reverse at least, cocking his head at the mirror (because for so long he was sure that there was something desperately wrong with him). “That's cool. I think I'm more the traditionalist kind, though, you know?”

“Hmm,I can see that,” as the receipt for the socks Blaine really doesn't need (he has a whole drawer full of socks, endless gifts from unsure relatives, and okay, more than few have farm animals on them but whatever) prints out Jeremiah leans over, a suspicious glance to the left before he pulls the receipt and scrawls numbers on the back of it. “That's pretty cool.”

Blaine drives home with no song playing in his head or on the radio, just – he thinks I'm cool, he thinks I'm cool, a boy thinks I'm cool. Somewhere on the freeway, the meaning of the word changes.)

The Revival with Rachel is – odd but not, because he knows he is having fun but he is acutely aware that perhaps it is not the right kind of fun that he's looking for. Rachel is wonderful, really – where she is slightly abrasive and haughty she is also clever and determined, and she sinks into everything she does with such gusto that it's kind of like being pulled around by pure ambition in knee-high socks. Objectively, he knows that Rachel is a 'catch' – the bright-eyed ing�nue with more passion than sense, the girl the guy always runs after at the climax of a movie. But all he can hear is Kurt's voice in the back of his head, picking on the doubt he knows is there.

But Kurt is wrong and Blaine knows that. Bisexuality is not a phase and Kurt is wrong wrong wrong but if that's true (and it is) then why can't be bring himself to kiss Rachel Berry on her doorstep? The lighting is right, the soft silence of the night air is right, the girl is beautiful and smiling at him like he is the only person there and that is all right, all picture-perfect representations of what it is like –

But Blaine doesn't know what it's like, and he leaves with no tingling post-kiss on his lips and an irritating sense of foreboding.

He goes home smelling like soft perfume and popcorn, and his father's face (cast darkly in the harsh spotlights over the breakfast bar) is unreadable.

X.

(When did your name
change from a proper noun
to a charm?)

The weeks pass and Blaine feels strangely disconnected.

The strange cheerleading coach from Kurt's old school had given him something to obsess over and try to craft – private school boys could be sexy, right? – and it hadn't really worked because it had suddenly become all about Kurt, again. That should make sense, because Kurt is his best friend and that's what best friends are for, right? They worry about you and want you to be safe and happy and tell your father that they should have the sex talk with you –

And that's not actually in any of his books, but maybe it counts anyway. Blaine wouldn't really know, because he was never very good at having best friends. That's what he does now; he pushes people away, keeps them at arm's length as acquaintances and Warbler members and short charming conversationalists, but he tries not to do friends because it kind of hurts when friends ditch you.

Kurt has prodded himself into Blaine's life in the most casual way possible, suddenly present in every inch of it; being happy, being sad, being angry (mostly at Blaine, which makes him worry), discussing the merits of penning a musical about the Royal Wedding which makes Blaine smile even though nobody else really gets why.

Blaine smiles all the time around Kurt. Sometimes he'll come home and realise that his cheeks are aching and wonder why, like today while he sits staring out at the spring downpour outside. Rain represents sadness (renewal, forgiveness, fertility – a desperately personal and overarching symbol) but he isn't really sad at all. He's happy, he thinks, but happy in the way that makes his stomach heavy and his throat tight, like he can't sing at all. There's something he's missing – something so so important – but he doesn't know what it is.

(I hear your name
rhyming, rhyming,
rhyming with everything.)

X.

Blackbird singing in the dead of night, spread those broken wings and learn to fly...

(I – oh. Oh. All... all right, then.)

Blaine Anderson knows what it's like, now.

(It's like waking up to the first haze of snow when you are six; like seeing the first spark across your makeshift bonfire; like the flutter in your heart when you realise that he's been here the whole time, but somehow shines now like the edges of a new-cut diamond.)

He goes home in a cloud-like reverie of sorts, wandering through the back door and into the kitchen like it isn't even his house because what does it matter? Today the world's most important query is –

KEATS ODE. GO.

Oh. Blaine can answer that one with no hesitation today.

SURELY I DREAMT TODAY, OR DID I S33
THE WING3D PSYCH3 WITH AWAK3N'D 3Y3S?

“'Ode To Psyche'?” his father calls from behind Blaine's bedroom door an hour later. Blaine is staring blankly at his pre-calc homework and is more than slightly grateful for the literature-based distraction, turning and flashing a smile as his father appears from behind the door and stands in the middle of his bedroom. His expression is curiously bemused. “Really?”

Blaine shakes his head a little in mock-thought before nodding. “Maybe not the best one if we're being objective about it, and I know you like 'Nightingale' –” (“work of genius!”) “– but... let's say that's the one that speaks to me the most right now.” He finishes with a nod, sitting up straighter, prouder without noticing.

(Michael notices.)

“Ah.” His father nods back without meaning it, hand coming up to press knuckles thoughtfully against his chin before the dawning realisation hits. “Ahh. I see. But who wast thou, O happy, happy Dove? His Psyche true!”

A roundabout answer for a roundabout question; Blaine raises his eyebrows and looks away. He doesn't really want to have to explain himself. Especially since he has to explain himself at all. Although he can't see him, Blaine can hear the awkward stand-still pacing his father can do and often does (only the rarest of unspoken communication skills).

“... Is it a boy?”

Blaine breathes out heavily and turns his head so that his profile is facing his father, who from there looks lost again. Abandoned at sea by the safety net of poetry, perhaps.“Your detective skills remain as sharp as ever, Dad,” he says, a little harsher than he intends to be. “... Yes. It's a boy.”

“What about that girl you went out with? Rachel, was that her name?”

Blaine sighs irritably, much in the way that a teenager does when they don't want to explain themselves because their parent(s) is (are) exasperating and doesn't take the ever-changing nature of the pubescent psyche into account. “That was different. Rachel is really nice, and all, but I – I like guys, Dad.”

“Ah.” His father glances over at the opposite wall, the simple action seeming an age; his eyes rolling over the movie posters Blaine had tacked to the wall during his short-lived poster phase: Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Donnie Darko, Silence of the Lambs, I Heart Huckabees, and utterly malapropos, Pretty in Pink. They made the middling-blue walls less monotonous, at any rate. “Okay, then. I'll... leave you to your homework.”

“Go team,” Blaine says, with a half-hearted fist-pump. That's supposed to be the end of their stilted awkwardness, because that is how Blaine and his father work: they don't. They step around each other and don't say things and try not to think things, either, because maybe the other one can tell. So Blaine turns his head and back down to the paper –

“Hey.”

Blaine looks up, but his father has already disappeared behind the door. So he hums questioningly and rolls his pencil between his fingers (carefully, slowly, like how Kurt had taught him during a desperately boring French cramming session). He watches that instead, waiting in the pregnant silence for the next sentence.

“I... good luck, Blaine.”

Blaine just frowns and says “okay,” because he doesn't know how else to respond.

X.

It's a pretty morning in late March, cool and cloudy, and Blaine is burning himself alive.

It's an interesting sensation, he hears hummed dimly, because he is not really feeling it at all. His eyes open and fire licks at his fingers, at his thighs and sparks across his torso and he's naked and that's familiar. Dust scatters smooth through golden-burn sunlight and his head falls back to the ceiling and here he knows where he is, back to wooden flooring and window flung open to what is probably a beautiful summer but he can't see that, doesn't need to see, his vision and every tingling perception rooted to some strange metaphorical blaze.

There is a something – a someone – that's what it is, boundless heat and fluttering as they slip smooth together, a face he doesn't know pressed into his neck demanding and breath harsh against his skin.

And Blaine thinks he should really hate being spread like this, and he thinks maybe he should be embarrassed by the shameless whimpers falling from his lips, but the burn sinks into his skin like a flutter of wings and he simply palms the low arc of their back, sharp as much as it is indistinct. Their skin is strangely soft and pliable under his fingers, and if he curves over just like – that – there's a low curl of a familiar voice against his ear.

“Blaine,” they whisper, fingers tracing Blaine's hips before sliding up to press on his chest. There's a slow, lingering pause and Blaine doesn't dare speak because oh, Kurt – and Kurt just smiles at him, soft and pink, and sinks down and Blaine gasps in a wordless fuck. His fingers rise up to grab at Kurt's shoulders, uselessly sliding down to his hips and off again and he doesn't know what to do (because even in his dreams he is na�ve) but Kurt's hips roll and he leans down, kisses him gently and it feels like only the sweetest kind of burn, the one that flushes your skin afterwards in a wilted tingling. Kurt twines their fingers together and uses Blaine's hands as unneeded leverage, sitting tall and proud and so – Blaine doesn't know but it's incredible and he can't move, shit, what?

“You can touch me if you want,” and that's not something Kurt would say, Blaine thinks, but his vision flounders and falls pale and pastel-tainted as Kurt slides like silk across him –

Incoherent and shuddering pleasantly, Blaine curveballs into the waking world and repeats 'fuck' instead. His sheets are wet – hasn't happened since he was fourteen, he thinks irritably – and cooling uncomfortably clammy over his thighs, and he sighs and gets up. Dreams like that are as rare as they are unsettling, and he needs to do something about it. (Like maybe not going back to sleep, even though the clock reads 08:02 and he certainly could.)

It's Sunday. Blaine clicks the washing machine into life and pads back upstairs and sits on his bed staring at his phone because he needs to call someone. He scrolls through his contact list and discards names over and over, and hovers over Kurt's for what seems like an age before he realises that he doesn't know what to say yet. There are a multitude of poets on his shelf who have done it for him, really, in clean clear stanzas of lyrical intensity, but that doesn't – he'd be there all day trying to pick.

He doesn't call anyone in the end. Instead, he puts his phone on the desk and wanders back downstairs. He stretches languidly as he enters the kitchen and doesn't even think to consider the arrangement of the magnets until

ALL LOVE IS SWE3T, GIV3N OR R3TURN3D

Blaine feels himself smiling for no reason. (This is what it is like.)

X.

“We – we should practice.”
“I thought we were.”

Blaine's hands come up to cup Kurt's face and their tongues slide together rough this time, the positioning awkward with Blaine half-standing but he doesn't mind so much because he's nosing at Kurt's skin and breathing him in, heady and warm, his fingers slipping to reverently trace the curve of Kurt's throat down to his collarbone. There's no reason to doubt that Blaine's expression when Kurt laughs low into his mouth and pulls away to look at him is anything other than desperate and lovestruck and who cares, who cares when the tips of Kurt's ears are pink and his eyes dark, just sitting there being the most incredible person and his smile is so cute when he's shy –

“I –” Blaine tries, his cheeks feeling worn from smiling and kissing and his thoughts are all snarled and twisted and there are no easy quotes on his tongue. “I'm so glad I found you.”

Kurt doesn't respond immediately, just catches Blaine's lips over and over again in a maddeningly chaste drag every time, Blaine angling his head up to meet him in earnest – please please please – until there's a pause. Their noses brushing softly, Kurt murmurs “And you are extremely lame, Blaine Anderson,” in a breathless wave. Then they just stare at each other, the rest of the world blurred in their vision; but they aren't lost in the depths, because that's just silly. Everything is so very clear now, Blaine finds in the pale blue surface of the sea.

He comes home that afternoon with spring following behind, his smile so wide it could cut the corners of the Earth. His father is locked in the study again – as he passes the fridge, though:

?

He replaces it:

!!

And in the morning, the fridge laments:

DON'T STACK EXCLAMATION MARKS.

X.

The morning is already bright, thin beams of sunlight splattering themselves in broad strokes across Blaine's bedspread and in extension Blaine himself, licking warm stripes across his bare calves until he wrinkles his nose and stirs. Everything is so, so warm – near uncomfortably so, but Blaine doesn't really care to open his eyes and instead curls into whatever it is he's pressed up against. The heavy heat bears down on his sleep-slicked skin, insistent that really he should wake up because there is something important, maybe.

After much deliberation, his eyes open to a flood of dark brown and the curve of an ear and ah, that was it. They must have fallen asleep together mid-cuddle. That's good, Blaine thinks in a content languid smile; Kurt isn't a hugely tactile person and cuddling is something done only on his terms, so Kurt being relaxed enough to fall asleep with Blaine pressed up against him is – new. Nice.

(He looks up to see that the bedroom door is closed, and he wonders what his father will have to say when Kurt goes home.)

Kurt doesn't seem to be anywhere near the waking world, his chest rising and falling slowly under Blaine's palm, so Blaine just kisses Kurt's shoulder-blade over his (definitely wrinkled, oh dear) shirt and nuzzles into the juncture between neck and shoulder and probably falls asleep again for a while. A long while maybe, because when he stirs again the sun has slid over into dangerous territory towards their faces. Blaine can't really have that – and it reminds him.

“Hrmm,” Blaine mumbles intelligently, the hand on Kurt's chest vaguely moving as though to shoo the light away from them. Kurt stirs then, a soft sigh escaping his lips as his legs curl up slightly and his feet meet Blaine's knees before sliding back down again. Adorable. Blaine doesn't want to move; instead he slides their legs together in a tangle and mutters into Kurt's skin. “Busy old fool, unruly Sun, why dost thou thus, through windows, and through curtains, call on us? Must to thy motions lovers' seasons run?”

“What?” Kurt says in the midst of Blaine's pause-for-effect, rubbing one eye but not making any other efforts to move. “What're you talking about, Blaine... what time is it?”

“No idea. Morning-ish,” Blaine replies cheerfully, the sleepy cloud fogging his brain beginning to lift. Catching Kurt's hand in his, Blaine laces their fingers together and holds them close against Kurt's chest. “The sun is so annoying, don't you think? Saucy pedantic wretch, go chide late school-boys and sour prentices, go tell court-huntsmen that the king will ride...”

Kurt sighs and Blaine can practically sense him rolling his eyes, but from where his head is resting Blaine can just about see his cheek dimpling in a smile. “Is it poetry-reading time again?”

“Not reading, reciting!”

“Yes, yes, you're all very clever.”

“Mhm,” Blaine hums, proud of himself. He continues, his thumb absently stroking over the back of Kurt's hand. “Call country ants to harvest offices; love, all alike, no season knows nor clime, nor hours, days, months, which are the rags of time.”

There's another soft sound from Kurt and he pulls away from their hand-holding and their tangled limbs, turning over so that their noses are aligned and blue eyes, still dark from sleep, are staring right at Blaine. He's smiling; only a little, but in the sharp light of day Blaine wonders just how it was that one person could make his heart race from such a tiny thing. “Indulge me, O master of old dead guy poetry, what are we subjected to today?”

“'The Sun Rising'. Donne. Incredible,” Blaine says softly, nudging his head forward to catch Kurt in chaste kisses, over and over, the light drag against each other's lips maddening and promising just that little bit more every time. “Just like you.”

“Flattery will get you nowhere,” Kurt says, indignant even as he presses closer and slides his arms around Blaine's neck in the quest for a better angle. “At least not uncreative attempts like that, Blaine Warbler. I really need to call my dad –”

Kurt moves to pull himself out from the mesh he and Blaine have found themselves in, but Blaine whines in a dramatic 'no' and scrabbles over until Kurt is pinned underneath his chest. “No, stay here,” Blaine says, half-serious with an amused sparkle in his eyes, bracing Kurt's shoulders with his forearms and just watching Kurt laughing. It's so genuine, in the way that Kurt's usual interactions with the world are not; here his cheeks are pink with sleep-warmth and his eyes clean and blue and soft as they blink up at Blaine with a sudden sobriety. Blaine smiles and leans down until their noses are brushing, ever so gently even in the deep intimacy of their positions. “Yeah?”

“Ten minutes,” Kurt relents, curling his calves under the bend in Blaine's knees and cupping his face in his hands. “And your breath is hardly the freshest in the morning.”

“I'll kiss you on an in-breath, I promise,” and he does even though it probably wouldn't matter anyway, and it's weird and choking until he remembers that right, he can just breathe through his nose. Ten minutes is really nowhere near enough for these feelings to wind their way across Blaine's mind; all the time in the world couldn't help him map the soft wet sounds they make when they break apart, or the quiet curls of hitched breaths hidden through questing tongues.

Grand sweeping gestures. “Thy beams so reverend, and strong, why shouldst thou think? I could eclipse and cloud them with a wink, but that I would not lose his sight so long... can I?” Blaine whispers, his voice getting quieter the further he recites until his real words are barely there at all against the skin of Kurt's collarbone. His fingers curl over the highest fastened button on Kurt's shirt, rolling it in his fingertips, testing.

“Okay,” Kurt breathes in that way he does when Blaine thinks he doesn't really want to have to speak at all. “... Are you really going to keep going with that poem?”

Blaine raises his eyebrows as he leans up on his elbows, undoing buttons and reverently stroking the skin he finds under there, mostly hairless and flushed pale with faded freckles from summers long gone by. “If his eyes have not blinded thine, look, and to-morrow late tell me, whether both th' Indias of spice and mine be where thou left'st them, or lie here with me.”

“Thanks for responding in a non-roundabout manner. I really appreciate your forwardness,” Kurt says, his voice dropping slightly as his shirt falls open and Blaine rests his cheek over Kurt's sternum, the vague pulse of his heartbeat only slightly present there. His fingers run away with his thoughts and trace mindless patterns over Kurt's side like the trails on a roadmap, listening carefully to the soft stutters of breath spilling from Kurt's mouth (I want to make you happy). There's a pleasant silence for a while; Blaine watches Kurt smile up at the glow-in-the-dark stars Blaine has tacked to the ceiling, turned a sickly greenish-yellow in the daylight streaming in through the window. They're kind of lame, but they still hold their charm, deep-rooted in childhoods spent fearing the dark.

“Ask for those kings whom thou saw'st yesterday,” Blaine begins again, his lips curling at the slight start Kurt gives at the sound of his voice. “And thou shalt hear, 'all here in one bed lay'. You're so beautiful.”

“That's not part of the poem, is it? How ineloquent,” Kurt says, but Blaine can feel the betraying drum of his heartbeat as he moves to run his mouth across Kurt's chest, up across his scapula and kissing along his collarbone (which makes him hum low in his throat and squirm, because Kurt is ticklish but would never admit to it). Blaine mouths wetly along the tipped column of Kurt's throat before sliding back down again, feeling Kurt's stomach muscles tense under his attention as he plots clusters of stars with his tongue, kisses galaxies into Kurt's sides and the slight arc of his hipbones.

“He's all states, and all princes I; nothing else is; princes but do play us; compared to this,” he murmurs, his eyes following up the lines of Kurt's chest to meet Kurt's own, dilated – oh – and that does things he can't talk about without wanting to laugh, yet (because awkward teenagers are awkward teenagers, no matter how much they research), and instead he focuses on the words because it's becoming increasingly worrying to not. “All honour's mimic, all wealth alchemy. Thou, Sun, art half as happy as we –”

Kurt's head falls back against the pillows, relaxed all of a sudden. “What is this poem even about? I can't follow it at all – especially – when you're doing that!”

Blaine's back up at Kurt's collarbones again, his tongue trailing lazy circles over Kurt's pulse point and feeling every jump of his breath. “It's about how amazing we are,” Blaine grins, kissing the underside of Kurt's chin quickly before lying his head on the plane of Kurt's shoulder. “In that world's contracted thus; thine age asks ease, and since thy duties be to warm the world, that's done in warming us – see, we're the whole world, Kurt, and when the sun shines on us it shines on everything. Yeah?”

“Well, I can't say that's not creative,” Kurt says off-handedly, under the pretence of not caring; but Blaine can see the restrained smile and the creeping colour over his cheeks and up to his ears. “... I didn't say stop.”

Blaine grins delightedly. “You want to hear the end? Shine here to us, and thou art everywhere; this bed thy centre is, these walls thy sphere,” and he sighs, deep with satisfaction. “I don't understand how anyone could hate Donne, when he writes things like that.”

“I suppose I've gained a new appreciation for him,” Kurt says, after a contemplative silence spent running his fingertips over Blaine's right arm (where Blaine is aware of every tiny twitch of movement and finds himself strangely lost in it). “But you walk a fine line between cheesy and charming, you know.”

“I'll take that, as long as you don't move for a little longer,” Blaine says, folding himself tighter against Kurt's side and nosing his way under Kurt's chin, skin warming under the sudden touch of Kurt's hand splayed over Blaine's hip. “I love cuddling you.”

(Blaine mouths 'yes, I know' perfectly in sync against Kurt's throat.)

X.

They don't have sex in the summer heat. There isn't any blazing moment of passion where the body forgets all sense and falls into desire; there's no accidental fumbling in the back seat of Kurt's car; and certainly no sweet awkward explorations (in the wilds with no map to spare) in the lamp-light of their bedrooms when everyone else is asleep and dreaming.

That's okay. Instead Kurt cringes over the clinical and peculiar diagrams he finds lurking in glossy pamphlet pages, and Blaine frowns at the Internet and makes detailed notes and scrawls arrows and asterisks and braces everywhere until he's probably over-analysing it a little bit. 'Ready' is just not spelt that way.

One day, but not now.

(Thus, though we cannot make our sun
Stand still, yet we will make him run.)

X.

Summer is dying, the sticky warmth of June, July, August falling to the crisp air of late September and October in a muted ceremony of gold. It's refined, somehow, in its shameless disarray, and it's Blaine's favourite time of year. When he was little he would spend endless hours in the tufted piles of burgundy and brass, fallen from the trees bordering his backyard and scooped up by his father only to end up scattered over the grass again, a delighted curl-framed face demanding he admire his day's work. Oh, alright then, he'd sigh, picking Blaine up and taking him inside (because now it was getting dark and mysteriously dangerous), but you're helping me with it tomorrow, right kiddo?

Of course he would. (Blaine had always been a particularly agreeable child.) So he would sit in the safety of the kitchen, staring hopefully out of the window with hands curled over ginger tea, legs swinging under the breakfast bar and waiting for tomorrow. Tomorrows spent with his father back when he didn't simply slip through the house like Blaine didn't exist, back when he stretched his arms up for a hug because he could and got one, even accompanied by an amused sigh and 'ah, Blaine, you're really getting too big for this now'.

The fall reminds him of innocent joys, and he relives it every year in the woods bordering his suburb, in an ex-verduous gloom of overhanging trees and curling branches the same as they ever were. But there it's an old happiness, tainted sepia by time, and he wants to join the old and new together like a puzzle – where maybe not all the pieces quite fit, but they fit enough and the imperfection is intricate and beautiful.

So he walks there with Kurt, the pads of their fingers brushing together until they are sure they are unwatched, where their fingers twine together in the secretive shadow of the dusk created by the canopies overhead. It's still such a strange and – some word he doesn't know, hanging just out of his reach, lurking in the dark pages of a dictionary in his father's study – nice feeling, curling deep and warm in his stomach because he is holding a boy's hand, Kurt's hand, and everything is indescribable in any terms that don't sound trite.

“So what is it you wanted to show me?” Kurt asks eventually, turning and tilting his head in a way very reminiscent of a certain fruitless duet practice. In response, Blaine just smiles and shrugs.

“It's... nothing, really. I used to come here a lot as a kid, so...”

Kurt nods in a silent understanding, his own expression more than a little wistful. But Blaine already knows, so he doesn't question anything; just curls his fingers a little closer against Kurt's. Saying nothing sometimes says the most.

Then again, there is an opportunity present, and Blaine's mouth often runs away with itself. “Where are the songs of Spring? Ay, where are they? Think not of them, thou hast thy music too, – while barr�d clouds bloom the soft-dying day and touch the stubble-plains with rosy hue...”

“... Then in a wailful choir the small gnats mourn among the river-sallows, borne aloft or sinking as the light wind lives or dies,” Kurt cuts in, his voice quiet and unsure in the measure of someone unused to reciting poetry. Strange, since it sounds effortlessly richer and brighter coming from him.

Blaine turns his head at that (so very unlike Kurt, whose interests lie contentedly in other areas). “You know 'Ode to Autumn'?”

“Some of it,” Kurt shrugs – and not quite meeting Blaine's eyes, Blaine notices with a secret smile. “We did some Keats in freshman year. For about a week, before everyone complained that they 'didn't get it' and we ended up reading Tess of the D'Urbervilles as some sort of twisted literary punishment.”

“What's wrong with Hardy?”

That gets him the 'are you serious?' look; the one with the slightly arched eyebrow and the ever-so-subtly quirked lips tugged at the corners. “Seriously, Blaine? I was so depressed reading that book I wore the same bow-tie two days in a row and I didn't even notice until Mercedes pointed it out. That bad.”

Well. Yeah, okay, Blaine could definitely see how that could happen. “You have a point,” he affirmed, looking up and – oh, right. “Oh, my swing's still here.”

He says it like it doesn't matter, but the sight of the heavy ropes pilfered from his grandfather's garage and the wide wooden seat big enough for two makes his lips betray his thoughts. Kurt tilts his head at it, though, looking between the swing and Blaine as though he isn't sure what to think. “I was kind of expecting an A-grade treehouse or something.”

“My dad and I weren't exactly that ambitious,” Blaine explains, stepping forward and running his fingers down the rough fibre, a little softened and worn in colour now. “People would have died in a joint treehouse endeavour. Horrible deaths, Kurt. Hey – sit?” he asks, breaking away from Kurt's hold to settle himself on the swing – a little smaller than he remembered it being – and give a testing push with his full weight before looking up at Kurt hopefully.

Blaine actually fully expects an amused-but-sarky response, and is surprised when Kurt just smiles at him and settles cautiously on his lap. “Don't swing,” he warns, and Blaine presses his heels obediently into the ground until Kurt squirms and slides his way into a position he's comfortable with – which ends up being between Blaine's legs and not on them at all.

They both stop, suddenly at a loss for words, and sit quietly with each other's heartbeats as they look out onto the fleeting burn of autumn against the forest floor and the fantastical sunset framing it.

“Honestly, I'm waiting for your merry little band of fairies to come out and do a really catchy Disney-esque musical number,” Kurt smiles uncounted minutes later, leaning his weight on his palms and back to his feet again as he speaks.

Blaine's face lights up shamelessly at this. “I could tell you a fairytale.”

“Oh, god, don't,” Kurt groans, but he doesn't mean it. (Or at least Blaine assumes he doesn't.)

“Well,” Blaine starts loudly anyway, shifting his hips and jogging Kurt slightly as he speaks, turning his head to rest his chin on Kurt's shoulder. “Once upon a time, there was a darling little prince with horribly curly hair trapped in a castle built on an extinct volcano –”

“Blaine,” Kurt tries to say seriously, but a bubble of laughter shutters up and ruins the effect. “Really? –”

“– and all the townspeople wondered whatever could be up there, lurking in the highest room in the tallest tower? But it was just the little prince, all alone in his opulent room surrounded by leather-bound books and tapestries of dragons –”

“– oh, there are dragons too, are there? –”

“– all the dragons in the world! All woven into rich tapestries that covered the little prince's bedroom walls. Every single species, every nail and tooth and claw. But the little prince wasn't really interested in dragons, now. No, his real first love was poetry.”

“Of course,” Kurt nods, and Blaine can hear the dulcet tones of being humoured. “Poems are pretty hard to weave, I'd imagine.”

Blaine 'hmm's in the affirmative, swinging his legs slightly and allowing the swing to shift with their bodies. “And he learned all the poems there were to know, all the old dead white guy poetry in the world – Donne, Keats, Wordsworth, Auden, Byron – but he had no one to share it with. How sad, Kurt! How. Sad.”

“Uh-huh, and did he end up sharing it with the impeccably-dressed prince in the tower across from him? At increasingly inappropriate times, I might add.”

Blaine laughs and squeezes Kurt gently with his arms, nuzzling his face into his shoulder and just breathing for a moment. (He loves it when Kurt humours him and engages in his momentary bouts of silliness.) “Why, as a matter of fact, he did. He and the beautifully-dressed prince became the closest of friends after they discovered the... magical mirror that allowed them to see each other, and they were together through all their shared interests and intelligent conversations, but –”

“Oh, there's a 'but'?”

Kurt turns his head, smile wry; kiss. “But,” Blaine says with a perilous pause. They're swinging together now, gently, the quiet autumn wind catching on their faces as they move. “One day, the little prince realised that he was an idiot and that he'd been missing something that had been staring him in the face for months and months on end. But to hear that story, you're going to have to buy my first novel.”

Kurt clicks his tongue and looks down, winding his fingers carefully and thoughtfully through Blaine's like an elaborate braid. “You mean I don't know the story already?”

“Well, you don't know how it ends,” Blaine points out, grinning before a more pressing thought comes to mind. “Where would I start, though?”

Instead of answering immediately Kurt catches Blaine's lips again in the gentlest of kisses, leaning in for a moment too long to fake the chastity surely warranted of a prince. “Hm,” he begins, his face turning mock-serious in a ponderous thought (and Blaine feels his own train of thought becoming strangely fairytale-like and pompous). “Begin at the beginning, and go on until you come to the end: then stop.”

“I love you, you know that?” Blaine sighs, the smile on his face embarrassingly bright and wide and crinkling his eyes but oh, he doesn't really care when Kurt looks at him with that mixture of pride and joy.

“Of course I do.”

(Of course, of course, of course.)