It's a beautiful day, really. All birdshiny, suns chirping… something like that. Just another summer day of idealized suburbia midday perfection. Kurt thinks it'd be a beautiful view to look out on from his nice big bed, thinks the occasional soft breeze would lift the heat in his room to just the right temperature, that he could lose track of the time just lounging in bed and happily live out the day as if he were trapped inside snapshots of someone's fucking vintage, soft grunge, fashion, indie, hipster, hashtag: no filter blog. In fact, he's seconds away from marching across the street and seducing Dapper McBlanderson just for a place to crash.

This is punishment and he knows it, though his dad would call it a prank. No way in hell would Daddy Dearest have gone out his way to lock all the doors and windows unless he knew Kurt forgot his keys when he left last night. He's eighteen, with full permission to come and go as he pleases, but Burt likes to get his licks in where he can whenever Kurt misses a shift at the garage or keeps him up late while “entertaining guests” as Burt calls it. Today's revenge is likely because Quinn blared her horn to wake him up at 2 a.m., and half the neighborhood probably wanted to kill him, never mind just Papa Bear.

He hears a car whiz around the corner and knows it's Cooper without having to look up. And thank God or Satan or Chewbacca because today's level of suck has just significantly lowered.

Kurt is up off his porch steps and practically skipping down the walkway as Cooper pulls up in front of the Anderson home.

“Hey!” Cooper greets him.

His response is cut off by the King of the Shire stepping out of the car and pointedly looking away when Kurt catches his eye. Blaine has a tendency of ignoring Kurt that used to piss Kurt off because he never did anything to deserve it, but now he's mostly just curious as to which part of his personality and appearance bothers Blaine the most.

“Please tell me you don't have plans and wanna hang,” Kurt pleads to Cooper, biting his lip and crossing his fingers.

“Burt locked you out again?” Cooper asks, cackling because he knows the answer.

“Yup.”

“Why would your father lock you out of your house?” Blaine butts in, looking both surprised and regretful at his own actions.

“Because he thinks we're in a fucking frat together. I don't know. I love him, but the man's insane.” Kurt looks back to Cooper, eyes widening in question. “So?”

“Can't. On my way to Allison's.”

“Fuck.”

You could always hang out with Blainey.”

“Gag me.” Kurt responds. Blaine rolls his eyes and goes inside.

“Sorry, man.”

“It's cool,” Kurt says, giving a slap to the roof of Coop's car before he speeds away.

It doesn't occur to him ‘til he's splayed out on his front lawn using his jacket as a pillow that he could've at least gotten a ride to Quinn's or Puck's or the hospital because Carole would definitely loan him her keys and car without giving him grief – hell, even to his dad's shop where the ridiculous gloating might be worth it.

As it is, his phone's dead, he's hungry as shit and exhausted, he feels like he's got bugs crawling all over him every time a blade of grass tickles his arm, the sun's too bright for his hangover, and – it might be the heat, but – spending the day with Baby Blainers is starting to seem like an appealing option.

He doesn't get Blaine. When the Andersons moved in last year, Blaine was at least cordial. A bit nervous around Kurt, but nice enough. It's probably Blaine's poor-choice-in-best-friend-Rachel's influence, Kurt figures, because Rachel's disdain he can understand. After all, he did make her over to look like a sad clown hooker with the false promise of setting her up with his stepbrother just because he had nothing better to do one weekend. Taking pictures and getting shirts made was probably what tipped the scale there, but in his defense, Rachel was, and still is, really, really annoying.

Okay, so maybe not the best defense, but he's not losing any sleep over it.

A shadow falls over him where he lays. Blinking against the sunlight, he looks up to find Blaine crouching down next to him picking at the grass without pulling it up. What a fucking gentleman.

“Can I help you?” he sighs, slipping his eyes closed again.

“God knows why, but since I thought you might be hungry or thirsty or whatever, I was going to invite you over. My bad.” Blaine scoffs and rises to standing. Kurt catches his ankle before he gets too far and smirks at the kicked puppy look he can see on Blaine even with the sun on his back.

“Can I charge my phone?”

Blaine looks like he leaning heavily toward a no, so it's a bit surprising when all he says is, “Can you just be nice to me? Or be quiet if you can't?”

“I'll try my best,” he swears, not convincing anyone. Blaine offers a hand to help him up and it's kinda sweet for him to do that so Kurt holds his promise to be quiet, even though he's aching to tease Blaine about knowing the way into his pants is chivalry. Blaine would drop his hand like a bad habit and struggle with a polite way to tell Kurt to fuck off, and Kurt would feel more than a little satisfaction, but if biting his tongue gets him free food and AC for a while, then he can last a little longer than a minute without unleashing himself on Blaine.

Kurt invites himself to the use of the bathroom to take a shower when Blaine retreats to his room as soon as they step inside. “I thought you were keeping me company. You suck at hosting,” he'd told Blaine, who just shrugged and said, “You know your way around.”

Well, there's no denying that.

 He's spent a lot of time in the Anderson house. Mr. and Mrs. A love him to bits and pieces, and of course he's close with Cooper. It's just Blaine who hates him. Well less hates and more pretends I don't exist. For a while there, Kurt thought he had another Karofsky situation with Blaine: self-hating and closeted, but fiendin' for cock. That thought was beaten over the head with the shovel that dug its grave when Cooper's sexuality proved to be as fluid and vast as the ocean. The Andersons are way too welcoming to Kurt after having found him “helping Cooper experiment” multiple times for any child of theirs to honestly believe they'd lose their parents' love and support. Then he learned Blaine was already out and figured the kid just doesn't like him. He doesn't really like that Blaine doesn't like him, at least without any good reason. Once upon a time, he would've tried to get it on with Frodo, but then anytime he tried to talk to him, he got the cold shoulder.

Considering the amount of free time he's got left today and the access to Blaine, he vows to at least get the hobbit to admit why.

He picks the bathroom just beside Blaine's room and smirks at the knowledge Blaine is likely huffing and groaning once the shower starts running. Once he's done, he snags the towel he knows belongs to Cooper off the rack and slings it around his waist. He folds his tossed clothes and gathers them in his arms, taking them with him as he shuffles into Cooper's room.

Tossing his clothes in the hamper first, he rifles around for Cooper's charger and plugs in his phone. Talking to Blaine is next on the agenda until his grumbling stomach takes priority.

“Oooh. Two birds, one stone,” he laughs, reaching the kitchen and finding Blaine halfway through making a sandwich. Rummaging through the fridge like he lives there, he settles on pulling out a bowl of Mr. A's delicious macaroni salad. He feels Blaine's stare as he moves around the room grabbing a bowl and fork and a bottle of water.

“Something to say, Short Stack?”

“It's weird that you took a shower here.”

“You could've joined. Would that have been less weird?”

“Somehow, I think I'd have felt dirtier afterwards.”

“Ouch.”

“Yeah, yeah. Put some clothes on,” Blaine tells him, gesturing to the towel hung low on his hips.

Kurt smirks, amused and judgmental. “Afraid my dick's gonna bite you if it gets loose?”

“You're disgusting.”

Kurt nods along with the statement, swallowing down the food in his mouth. “About that. What's your deal?” To Blaine's questioning look, he clarifies, “What gets your panties all in a bunch whenever I'm around?”

“Gee, I wonder.”

“Oh please, you've had sixteen years of Cooper. I seriously doubt anything I say or do offends your delicate sensibilities any more than he does. And at least I hold back from calling you ‘Squirt.' Though I can, if you're into that.”

“Ew.”

“Rude. I'm a catch.”

Blaine snorts and Kurt would feel more insulted if it were anyone but bowtie-wearing Blaine giving him shit.

“Clearly your brother just has better taste than you.”

Blaine shuts down after that. Kurt catches it in the set of Blaine's jaw when he looks away, staring intently at his half-eaten sandwich.

“We were almost getting along there. What happened?”

“Nothing,” Blaine breathes, but it's definitely something and Kurt's pretty sure he's figured out what. Blaine is up and gone, taking his plate with him a second later. Kurt just scratches at his neck, debating whether to follow and deciding not to. Miss Kitty, the family's cat, startles him by rubbing herself against his leg.

“You like me, don't you?” he pouts, sitting down cross-legged to pet her one-handed while scarfing down food with the other. Miss Kitty couldn't possibly care less about his bullshit, but she purrs and presses herself up to his outstretched hand, so Kurt takes it as a yes.

He hears Blaine playing guitar across the hall when he slips into Cooper's room to steal a pair of boxers. Wearing only those boxers, he walks uninvited to Blaine's weird little mancave, complete with framed drawings of a bunch of old shit and model cars and, “Are you fucking Benjamin Button?”

“No, we're just friends.”

“Don't.” Kurt whips around. “I get enough dad jokes at home. Just don't.”

“Come on in, Kurt. I'm glad you stopped by.”

“I didn't know you played,” he starts, ignoring Blaine's sarcastic tone and plopping down in the chair beside the bed. Blaine ignores him in return, plucking away at the strings. “Hmm… okay,” he murmurs to the silence. He pulls a model car from the end table next to him, not missing the way Blaine's eyes go borderline crazy when Kurt tosses the car carelessly from one hand to the other.

“Put the car down first,” Blaine softly demands, and Kurt complies.

“So, I'm pretty sure I know what's happening here.” Blaine looks mostly unimpressed, but curiosity and maybe fear are swimming just beneath the surface. “I had a little chat with Miss Kitty and she seems to think you like me more than you let on.”

“Miss Kitty?” he scoffs, avoiding the question.

“She's a very trusted source, Blaine.” He cocks his head to the side waiting for confirmation one way or the other, but Blaine remains silent, frozen with his hands stiffly gripping his guitar.

“You do like me. Interesting.”

“Get out.”

“Hell no. I just found a foundation for our new friendship.”

“Get out, Kurt.”

 “You're pissed I fucked your brother right? I get how that could be weird,” he winces. “I mean, that's all over now, so it doesn't have to be weird.”

Blaine doesn't move from his spot on the bed and he won't look Kurt in the eye. Kurt gets up and joins him on the bed. Finally, Blaine looks at him.

“Are you going to kiss me now?” Blaine asks like it's an accusation.

“Not unless you want me to.”

Blaine nervously gulps down his next breath as his eyelids flutter down, and Kurt, bless his fucking heart, thinks it's adorable.

“No,” he tells Blaine, putting a hand on his shoulder and shaking him a little. “We've never hung out just you and me. As a friend I barely even know you, which isn't usually a problem for me, but I'm betting it's one for you.”

Blaine is back to looking away, but he nods. That's probably somewhere on the same family tree as progress, right?

“Alright, we're gonna go hang out downstairs, with Miss Kitty so she can keep an eye on us, and we're gonna work our way toward getting to know one another so when we inevitably start fucking this summer –”

“We're not going to start… doing that. I've officially lost all attraction to you.”

“Yeah, okay,” Kurt laughs.

He pulls the guitar from Blaine's lap and sets it on its stand, then takes the boy by hand and leads him out of the room. “Fair warning: I'm probably gonna pass out on you in the next half hour.”

Holding their laced fingers up to brush a kiss across Blaine's knuckles, he completely destroys whatever moment he's just given Blaine when he speaks afterward, “Don't forget to stick this in the spank bank; I wanna read all about how you jerked it because we made eye contact. I'm just assuming you keep a diary. Correct me if I'm wrong.”

Blaine groans and drops his hand with more flair than strictly necessary.

“Maybe I'll get myself locked out tomorrow, too. This is gonna be fun.”

:: ::

“Kurt, there's no Anderson fortune, if that's what you're after,” he hears Blaine's mother joke when she walks in on the pair getting hot and heavy on the kitchen counter. “Clean up any messes when you're done. And disinfect everything. If you think you've sprayed too much Lysol, spray a little more.”

And then she's gone and Blaine is huffing out a soft laugh, hot against Kurt's ear. Kurt lays a kiss to Blaine's neck and then hugs him lazily, resting his head on Blaine's sweaty, bare shoulder.

Summer's almost over, and while they haven't talked about where they'll stand when Kurt is off to the cesspool that is McKinley to polish off a spectacularly subpar high school experience while Blaine puts on his private school uniform, for entirely different purposes than it has come to serve this summer, and disappears to Westerville for five day stretches every week, Kurt has high hopes he won't fuck this up anytime soon.

As Blaine's steady hand lifts his head by the chin to resume their tongue fucking activities, Kurt can't be bothered to worry about the future. He's got food in his belly and an open invitation to the party in his Blaine's pants – which he's been banned from calling their sex life aloud, but potato, tomato, it is what it is; today is too beautiful to waste thinking about tomorrow.