While Kurt showered and woke himself up, Blaine sipped on his coffee on the edge of the bed and thought about exactly what was going to happen next. He knew it was time for every single thought he had in the ten years since that night and now to come out but how do you even approach that?
He’d been planning his speeches for so long that he’d forgotten how hard it was to say all the things you wanted to say in situations like this.
He swirled his coffee in his cup and listened the whine of shower cutting off.
In a few minutes, Kurt would come out of the shower, dripping and warm and smelling good and Blaine knew it was going to take him straight back to when they shared the dorm at Dalton. Right back to the start, with the dreams and discovering a part of him that he now counted the greatest. And maybe that was a good thing. Maybe if he just closed his eyes and let himself be back there, a stupid sixteen year old who had no idea what he was doing, he could made Kurt understand what had happened.
The door to his bathroom opened and Kurt came out, smiling lightly at Blaine as he took his coffee from the table and sat on the bed next to him.
He took a sip and smiled widely at Blaine. “You still know my coffee order!”
Blaine laughed. “I don’t know why that surprises you. Sometimes I completely blank on mine and order yours instead and I don’t notice until I drink it.”
Kurt was blushing faintly, and Blaine thought it was the most gorgeous thing he’d ever seen. Kurt cleared his throat and then looked sideways at Blaine.
“So,” Kurt started sheepishly, “What of the gazillion things we haven’t said to each did you want to talk about? Preferably something that doesn’t end with me furiously taking off my clothes again.”
Blaine laughed. It was good that they could find some kinda of humour in all the ways they had managed to screw up, even just in the space of two days. Because that’s what their entire lives together had been, if you stuck them all together, a series of mistakes and missed chances and fights all tied together by a love they couldn’t escape.
“Well that’s no fun, now is it? At the very least, give me a tiny chance that there will be nudity. Pleeeeeeease,” Blaine begged, grinning at Kurt and giving him the patented puppy dog eyes.
Kurt chuckled at shoved at him a little and just like that, all the tension melted out of them both. Maybe they hadn’t really gotten to the flirty stage of their relationship ten years ago, but it felt like maybe they always should have.
Blaine stretched back on his bed, watching Kurt as he smiled at his coffee. “Do you remember your sixteenth birthday?” Blaine sounded casual, like he was musing, but it seemed fitting to him that this conversation would start with the morning that started it all.
Kurt spluttering as he tried to swallow his coffee answered that yes, he definitely did remember the morning he was talking about. He turned bright read and Blaine went on.
“I heard you. I don’t know if you knew or not, but I heard you that morning. Moaning and whimpering. At first I woke up coz I thought you were crying, so I watched to see if you were crying or anything. But you weren’t.” Blaine closed his eyes and tried to see back into the past. “You were moving, writhing, and you kept making these amazing noises. And even when I realised what you were doing, what I was watching you do, I couldn’t look away. And I didn’t want to. You were so beautiful, and the moans and the way you moved your hips… god Kurt, for years afterwards I would still dream about it, about watching you again. I’ve seen a lot in the last ten years, I’m not going to lie, but you were, are, still the most sexy thing I’ve ever seen.”
He kept his eyes closed and tried to feel out where Kurt was. He heard a tiny sigh and felt Kurt lie down next to him.
“It seems so obvious to me, really, but I guess I never told you. I’d rather you know everything, even the things you’d already guessed, than leave something out, so bear with me. The dreams started after that morning. Every single day I saw you and we spent every moment together, because we’d always shared our lives, but then at night… I would dream of you. Of fucking you. Of sucking you off. I’d dream me throwing you at a wall and making you scream. Of covering you in bruises and bites. Every single night, I thought about it.”
“I’m a top, you know,” Kurt remarked wryly from next to him.
Blaine opened his eyes and stared at him. “You bottomed for sixteen year old me, in my head. Twenty six year old me, he doesn’t care what he gets, as long as it’s you.” He turned his head back to the ceiling and closer his eyes before he could see Kurt’s reaction. It seemed like he’d said too much too soon.
“I guess, because it was just sex, I thought that the simple solution was just to date and get laid and then I’d be better. Can I just be clear, now that I’m old, dating girls seemed like the stupidest freaking thing I’ve ever done. Not the worst, but the dumbest. And, well, you remember how the girls went. I had sex with Ari, and even that didn’t help. Okay so yes it was probably also because she was girl, but it was mostly because of you. I couldn’t concentrate in class. I couldn’t sleep. You were everywhere. I don’t know how I even managed to keep even a fa�ade of our friendship up, when I wasn’t listening to any of the words you said. I was remembering the sounds you made when you came. So when I finally broke up with whatshername, I decided I need to kiss you, to see what I felt.”
He opened his eyes, only to find Kurt look back at him with trepidation and fear. They were getting to the part that would hurt. He moved to sit back up and without hesitation, Kurt moved with him so they were face to face again. Blaine locked eyes with Kurt and steadied himself.
“I had it all sorted in my head. I’d kiss you and either I’d feel nothing, or I’d feel like I felt in the dreams. I didn’t plan past the kiss, and I didn’t really even plan the kiss itself. All I knew is that you were there and you were going to say something and I didn’t want it to be something that would stop me so I just… kissed you.” He bit his lip and watched Kurt as he ran a fingertip under his watch (where Blaine knew there was a scar) nervously. He grabbed his hand and pulled it to his cheek. “It was the best kiss I ever had, and it was the start of everything. Because sixteen year old me had gone in there planning for only two options. I didn’t even consider a third. It never even crossed my mind that kissing you would make me realise how in love with you I was.”
He stared at Kurt, willing him to understand the rest, to not make him say it and tear the wounds open again. But Kurt just softly withdrew his hand and nodded for him to go on.
“I don’t know how it was for you, realising you loved me. I don’t even know if I should assume that you did. But for this conversation, let’s assume we were both in love and just didn’t say it. I had to leave, because the world changes when you realise you are in love with your best friend, doesn’t it? I was okay with lusting after you, because maybe that was just my body’s way of telling me to look at boys. And you were my best friend and my other half and obviously I was okay with that. But loving you, that was so much different. I was so scared. I kept myself awake with questions like ‘what if he doesn’t feel the same?’, ‘will we still be friends?’ and ‘what if we do get together and I break his heart?’ So I woke up early, left you a note and went for a walk. I just needed the time and now I realise how fucking dumb that note must have sounded because right when I think I’d come to terms with everything, I got a text from you saying it hurt too much. Which meant of course I had to come for you. I expected to see you crying or maybe angry and at first I couldn’t find you in the dorm until I saw there was light coming under the bathroom door so I opened it and god, there you were, with a fucking razor blade in your hand.”
They were both crying, Blaine’s monologue punctured by sniffs and quiet sobs.
“You can have no idea how it felt to see that, Kurt. To see this boy who you’ve just accepted that you love and that you can be together and you start planning your life together and then suddenly he’s in the shower, bleeding and trying to convince you he didn’t want to die. I don’t know if you did want to die or not, Kurt, and I don’t think I want to, but do you know what? I think I did a little. Not five minutes before I walked through that door we had our entire lives ahead of us and we could be in love and then I saw you and it shattered. I don’t know if this even makes sense, but right then, all I could see was just the blood and your face when you saw me, like you felt so guilty but entirely heartbroken.
“Do you remember when term at Dalton started that first year, and I found you crying in the bathroom coz you missed your dad, and I didn’t get it because I’ve never really loved my parents, but I cried anyway because I couldn’t stand to see you in pain? Well, imagine that times a thousand because this time I knew you were, I knew you were bleeding because of me. And all I wanted to do was run. Run away from you because every second I looked at you my heart was breaking more and more and I just couldn’t do it because I never wanted to hurt you. So when you gave me that chance, I took it. I let you walk out of that door because if I managed to hurt you so badly with one kiss, what would a relationship do to you? What if I fucked it up? I would have destroyed you. So I let you go because I thought you’d get better and I’d just be broken for the rest of my life but that was okay, because you wouldn’t be in pain.
“But –“ his voice cracked as he suppressed a sob, “You weren’t okay when you left. You didn’t get better. You were still the same Kurt I broke back in our dorm at Dalton and I was this close to leaving again, Kurt. You have no idea.” He forced Kurt’s chin up so they could look at each other through their tears. “Every time I try to selfless and protect you because I can’t deal with and I’ve never even thought if you can deal with it. If I fucked it all up again, you’d be okay, because you are the strongest person I know and I can’t believe it’s taken me ten years to realise that I can love you and that you are not going to bleed and break. Because you were always the strong one of us, Kurt. And I am so fucking sick of trying to pretend I’ve been just waiting for my life for you to start and that I feel like I’m not breathing unless I’m with you and I know, I know, I know, that ten years ago I broke us both and now you have all these scars and memories and hate but I just need to know, can we be together?”
He pitched forward, sobbing, and buried his face in Kurt’s stomach.
“Can we?”