It was the soft tickle against Kurt's back, right across the ridge of his shoulder blade that woke him. As he blinked into consciousness, he assumed it was Blaine kissing his back or running his fingertips across it. As the haze of sleep lifted a little more from his mind, however, he realised that the pressure wasn't right: whatever it was felt too thin to be lips or fingertips, too hard to be skin but not the right texture to be fingernails.

"Blaine?" he mumbled, his mouth pressed into the pillow so it blocked the sound.

The slight press against Kurt's skin suddenly lifted and he felt Blaine move behind him. His boyfriend kissed the back of his neck, confirming that the earlier sensation had definitely not been induced in the same way. "I didn't realise you were awake," Blaine whispered against Kurt's skin.

"I'm only just," Kurt said, voice still muffled by the pillow and thoughts still too fluid to pull together and form grammatically correct sentences.

Blaine traced his fingers over Kurt's shoulder and down his arm. No, the feeling certainly hadn't been like that. Blaine pressed his chest against Kurt's back as he took the other boy's hand, resting his chin in the crook of Kurt's neck. "I love you," he said.

"Love you, too." Kurt let his eyes drift shut again. He was almost asleep when he felt Blaine move his body away. There was a tiny click and then the sensation started again, trailing slowly towards Kurt's spine.

"What are you doing?"

It stopped abruptly and there was a sharp movement behind Kurt, presumably Blaine jumping.

"Sorry. I thought you were asleep."

Kurt pushed himself up a bit on his forearm and twisted his head around to look at Blaine, who was biting his lip. "And why would I need to be asleep? What are you doing to my back?" Kurt turned a little further to change the uncomfortable angle his neck was at. It was then that he saw Blaine was holding a fountain pen, uncapped, in his hand. "Were you…writing on me?"

Blaine flushed and looked away. "It was stupid. I'm sorry; I'll stop and you can go back to sleep."

"What did you write?" Kurt asked, ignoring what Blaine had said. The other boy only looked more uncomfortable.

"It…it's really silly."

"Blaine, just tell me. I can always go look in the mirror."

Blaine ran his fingers through his hair and sighed. "I started off writing my name. I don't know. I thought it would look nice on your skin, I guess."

Kurt turned over, taking one of Blaine's hands and kissing his palm softly. "And does it?"

"Yes," Blaine said with a slight smile. Kurt could tell his boyfriend was nervous about Kurt knowing this information: he was pretty certain Blaine had meant it only as a private gesture, never to be exposed. When people think they won't be discovered, they can bare parts of themselves they normally keep hidden.

"What then?"

Blaine placed the nib of the pen against Kurt's skin again, just pressing it there, not moving it yet. "Lyrics. Lyrics I wrote about you. And poetry."

"What kind of poetry?" Kurt didn't ask about the lyrics because he knew Blaine would not want them to be seen until they were completely polished, ready for a recording that would never quite happen. He felt honoured that Blaine had dared to write them across his skin, laying them out in such a public way. He had run the risk of this conversation, perhaps with a slight twist: if Kurt didn't know Blaine so completely, if he asked about the lyrics, if Blaine was left having to reveal them.

Blaine laughed quietly and began to move the pen. Kurt looked down and saw that, from the splotch the ink had made on his skin, Blaine had begun to write out his name again. The feeling was odd, but certainly not unpleasant. Kurt knew what Blaine had not said: that he was tying himself to Kurt and Kurt to him by writing his name on his skin. It wasn't possessive, but connective.

"Love poetry, of course. You know what I'm like."

"I do." Kurt nudged Blaine's chin with his nose, forcing the other boy to lift his head so Kurt could kiss him. When he pulled back, Kurt took the pen from Blaine's hand and lowered it to the skin of the other boy's arm. He etched out his name carefully, understanding what Blaine meant about his name looking good on someone else's skin – on Blaine's skin. The ink would spread a little, running along the small lines in Blaine's skin and creating a tiny spider's web around the edges of the letters, bigger where Kurt let his hand linger too long. The nib scratched against the hairs on Blaine's arm and Kurt knew if he drew it too hard across the skin it would pull some out. He wrote just his first name, then moved further up Blaine's arm, nearer to his elbow, and wrote his full name. Kurt Elizabeth Hummel looked too good on Blaine's skin. His name shouldn't suit anyone but himself that well.

Kurt knew Blaine was watching the movement of the pen and the letters being scribed across his skin, but he didn't say anything to the other boy. He was waiting for Blaine to add to his earlier statement. Sure enough, just as he added the final flick to the 'l' of Hummel, Blaine spoke.

"It was Shakespeare. Not very imaginative, I know, but I was reading some for inspiration last night—"

"This?" Kurt reached across Blaine and picked up a small book from the bedside table.

Blaine nodded.

"Which one?" Kurt asked, flicking through Shakespeare's sonnets, trying to guess which one Blaine would use. It was clich�d, yes, but that was Blaine, and Kurt wouldn't have it any other way. There was a reason he loved romance so much, and Blaine's natural cheesiness, for want of a better term, appealed to many of Kurt's sensibilities.

Blaine turned his face into the pillow and mumbled something indistinct. Kurt laughed and tugged on his hair a little. "You're going to have to speak up, Blaine, I just cannot hear you."

Blaine lifted his head from the pillow to glare at the other boy. "Are you really putting me through this?"

"I just want to know what I've got all across my back."

Blaine let out a small moan and flung himself onto his back. "I knew this was a terrible idea. It's 106."

Kurt flipped through the pages until he found the right one and scanned it quickly. He was actually a little overwhelmed by how sweet Blaine was being. "So…you're saying that you think I'm beautiful."

Blaine turned his head back towards him, his expression soft. "More beautiful than anyone else in the world."

"Not possible," Kurt whispered, leaning a little closer.

"Why?"

"Because you're more beautiful."

"Oh, now who's being clich�d?"

"Stop ruining it when I'm trying to be romantic." Kurt pressed a kiss to his boyfriend's forehead then turned his gaze back to the sonnet. "I think that your hand" – he reached down and swiped the pen against the back of Blaine's hand – "is more beautiful than anyone else's." He looked to the sonnet again. "Your foot?" He locked eyes with Blaine and both boys laughed before Kurt crawled down the bed, kissing one of Blaine's toes before drawing a line from his ankle to the knuckle of his little toe. "Most exquisite foot I've ever seen." He moved back up the bed, lying down next to Blaine with laughter still on his face.

"And my lip?"

Kurt's eyes flickered down to the feature in question. Kurt knew it was on purpose that Blaine's tongue licked slowly across the bottom one, knew Blaine was teasing him just a little bit. He quickly leaned forwards and captured Blaine's bottom lip between his own, flicking his tongue across it before pulling back. Blaine whimpered and stretched his neck towards Kurt, almost begging him not to stop. Kurt just laughed and pushed Blaine back with a finger to his lips before swiping pen across the bottom one, the back of the nib pressed against the flesh so the stripe was thick and full of ink. "Ssh, Blaine," he whispered. "I'm not finished yet."

"I don't care," Blaine said, not noticing that as he spoke, the ink pressed onto the other lip, smudging across both of them.

"Well, I do," Kurt reprimanded, pushing against Blaine's shoulder to hold him back. "I'm about to talk about your eyes." Kurt lifted his hand, resting his forearm against Blaine's cheek. "Close them."

Blaine obeyed and Kurt was very careful not to press too hard this time. He did not want to hurt Blaine. He drew a line in the dip just before the edge of the socket. The lightness of the pressure only made the ink run more, filling more of the tiny crevices in Blaine's skin and stretching further across his eyelid than Kurt had expected. Blaine should look ridiculous, but Kurt could only think of the words on the page, which was now pressed between them as he sketched ink onto the other boy: They had not skill enough your worth to sing.

Kurt brought his arm back down to the bed between their bodies. When Blaine opened his eyes, they were a little misted; love-drunk. "What did you want to say about my eyes?"

Kurt pressed their foreheads together. "I can't remember. They do that to me: jumble my thoughts, make me forget what I want to say."

Blaine let out a noise Kurt couldn't define and pulled his head back. "Tell me about my brow quickly so I can kiss you. Please."

Kurt tipped Blaine's head back, letting it catch the light from the window and considered for a second. Then he lifted the pen to the other boy's skin again, this time just above his eyebrow. He drew a line across the top of the brow and up Blaine's temple, stopping at his hairline. "I love your brow. It's strong, and your eyebrows are—"

Kurt didn't have the chance to finish as Blaine had stopped his mouth with a kiss. He let his boyfriend press him into the bed, taking the pen from Kurt's hand as he licked around the edge of his lips. Blaine pulled back, laughing when he saw that some of the ink from his lips had been transferred onto Kurt's. He turned the pen over to use the flat side of the nib and drew a long swipe from the edge of Kurt's jaw to his chin, enjoying the way it caught a little on the stubble there. He dropped the pen to the floor beside the bed and pressed his cheek against Kurt's so he could whisper in his ear. "So all their praises are but prophecies of this our time, all you prefiguring."