“Ok, so, we can officially mark blindfolded dining off of the ‘to do’ list,” Blaine announces, making a strike though motion in the air with his finger. “And, I have to say, that was quite an experience.”

“Would you ever do it again?” Kurt asks.

“Maybe,” Blaine replies, a skip in his step at the thought of another evening out with Kurt. Not that that would be rare. They go out every night, it seems. But as friends. They’re just friends. And even though Blaine wishes they could be something more, he’ll settle for friends if it means he gets to spend time with Kurt. “How about you?”

“Absolutely” – Kurt bumps Blaine’s shoulder – “but only if you’re coming with me.”

“Really?”

“Really. I officially declare blindfolded dining an ‘us’ exclusive activity, all things considered.”

Blaine catches what he thinks Kurt means, and his eyes trail off to nowhere, guilt staining his cheeks. “I’m sorry I spilled red wine on your shirt.”

Kurt winds an arm through Blaine’s and gives him a playful shake. “It was an accident. Drinking wine while blindfolded is way more difficult than I thought it would be.” Kurt chuckles at the memory – Blaine muttering, “Oh … oh no …” followed by the surprise of chilled alcohol splashing onto his right flank, plastering his blue button-down to his skin. Kurt smooths his jacket over the damp spot, the grey wool hiding the evidence. “Besides, you came through with that Tide pen, so you’ve redeemed yourself.”

“Are we still on for Callbacks tomorrow?” Blaine asks as Kurt steers them towards his apartment. This is where I get off, Blaine thinks, disappointed that the restaurant Kurt chose for them was only a stone’s throw from his place.

“You’re singing with me, right?”

“Of course.” Blaine fishes around for his key, patting down jeans so tight that if his key were in them, the whole world would know. As he does, Kurt reaches into Blaine’s inside jacket pocket and pulls out his key ring. He holds it up in front of Blaine’s eyes. Blaine sighs, a smile both fond and sad lifting his lips.

Kurt knows Blaine so well.

He even knows the tactics he uses to stall.

Blaine takes his keys, nodding his thanks. “I’ll text you some duet ideas, and you can give me your input.”

“Perfect! As long as we’re not performing another Katy Perry number.”

“What do you have against Katy Perry?”

“Do you want the list?” Kurt wraps his arms around him, filling Blaine head to toe with a swell of incomparable warmth. “Now, get inside and get your butt to bed. You have an early morning, remember?”

Kurt lets go, and that warmth goes with him.

“Yeah, I remember,” Blaine grumbles, sticking his key in the lock.

Kurt makes his way down the steps, glancing back with a huge smile when he reaches the sidewalk. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”

“Text me when you get home.”

“Will do.” Kurt walks down the street in the direction of the subway. Another hop, skip, and a jump, and he’ll be gone, on his way to Brooklyn. Blaine stops unlocking his door and watches his best friend go, exhaling so long, it empties the air from his body straight down to his feet. They’d just spent a fabulous evening together – dancing, movie, dinner. By far, it was one of the best dates Blaine has ever been on with anyone.

Only it wasn’t a date. Because Kurt is his best friend, has been since high school. In fact, Kurt is the only best friend Blaine has ever had, and Blaine has been Kurt’s as well. And since that is so important to the both of them, that’s the way they swore they’d remain.

Blaine would be fine with that – really, he would – if he hadn’t fallen in love with Kurt the second he laid eyes on him.

Blaine sits down on the top step and puts his head in his hands, contrary to Kurt’s orders. Kurt was right. Blaine does have an early morning. He’s auditioning for his first major role – Jean-Michel in a revival of La Cage aux Folles. But even with that hanging over his head, he doesn’t feel like turning in yet. He doesn’t want this evening to end. It was magical, full of those small moments – the sparks and fireworks – that come when two people really connect with one another. The inside jokes, the flirty smiles, their hands continually brushing as they shared their tub of popcorn, the expert way they negotiated one armrest without having to talk about it first, Kurt automatically putting his arm around Blaine’s waist as they danced – they had them all.

If that’s how Kurt acts with the man he’s best friends with, how will he treat the man he loves?

Like a king. Because that’s the kind of man Kurt is. He gives his all to the people he loves.

Blaine could always tell Kurt how he feels, but he’s not good at expressing his feelings. He can act it out in song. That’s where he really shines, and part of the reason they’ve been spending every Thursday night at Callbacks. Blaine knows he could get the courage to tell Kurt how he feels if he could find the right song. But not a single one does his feelings justice. He’s tried forever to write something that would get the message across, but it would have to be perfect, and he can’t commit to anything. Definitely not at this moment.

He takes his phone out of his pocket, ready to shoot off some songs ideas to Kurt, selections he’s been mulling over the past few weeks, but he starts composing a message to himself instead - the only thing he can think of that will help get his thoughts in order.

He already has a million of them. What’s one more going to hurt?

A ‘to do’ list.

***

Kurt has barely reached the subway when his phone begins to vibrate. He slides it out of his pocket, and grins when he sees the number. “Blaine! I’m not even on the subway yet, you goof.” Kurt shakes his head, stopping in front of a coffee shop to see what Blaine has to say. But after he reads the first message, he realizes Blaine isn’t texting him.

He’s texting himself.

A ‘to do’ list for tomorrow.

And it’s kind of adorable.

Okay, Blaine Anderson. Listen up, because this is what you’re going to do.

Hit the ground running in the morning and start drinking water.

You’re normally a coffee drinker …

‘Medium drip,’ Kurt thinks, biting his lower lip at how quickly that tidbit leapt to mind.

… but you’re gonna have to set that aside, because it’s water from now on.

It’s good for your body, good for your complexion, good for your digestion … I think.

Doesn’t matter. It’s healthy. Just drink that shit! Drink it until it starts coming out of your pores!

Kurt laughs out loud, louder with the messages that follow.

That’s a thing that happens, actually.

That’s sweating, and it’s gross.

Ew. Moving on.

Blaine’s texts come fast and furious, and Kurt considers calling him up and letting him in on his mistake. But he can’t. Because this is a side of Blaine that he doesn’t get to see that often. At least, not since they moved to New York. Back at Dalton, Blaine had ‘to do’ lists for everything, from his a.m. routine, to his homework, to outlining the competition season for the Warblers. They hung on his walls, he saved them on his computer, he texted them to his phone. It was a symptom of anxiety he’d been working hard to curb. He must really be stressing out over his audition in the morning, Kurt thinks. He’d hoped that their outing would have done more to calm Blaine down, help him forget how nervous he was.

Guess not.

Go to the gym.

Lift weights. Do cardio. More sets! More reps! You want to look built before you go to Callbacks.

Kurt blinks. Before you go to Callbacks? Why before he goes to Callbacks? They’re not seeing each other until close to eight in the evening and Blaine’s audition is in the morning. Wouldn’t he want to look built for that? It didn’t make sense.

But don’t injure yourself. You know, not like last time.

“Last time?” Kurt scours his memory for a time when Blaine might have called off one of their evenings out because of a sprain, but he can’t remember a single one. He can, however, recall a night when Blaine was trying a little too hard to cover a limp, and yet still had them walk the length of Central Park so they could see Venus in the night sky. When Blaine mentioned it would be visible, Kurt had said he’d never seen it. Blaine seemed determined that they not only see it, but that they get the best possible view.

As hopeless a romantic as he is, Kurt isn’t a huge fan of looking at the stars, but it was one of the sweetest things anyone had ever done for him.

Purchase feeble cable access show and exploit it.

Kurt rolls his eyes at that one. Wayne’s World. It’s one of Blaine’s favorite movies. Kurt –not so much.

But he sits and watches it with Blaine whenever he puts it on.

Dated reference. Not funny.

“No, it’s not,” Kurt says, snickering anyway.

Write a poem. A ballad. A love song.

Kurt’s nose scrunches, but then it dawns on him - hits him so hard he has to catch his breath. Oh my God! Blaine has fallen in love with someone! How? When? Blaine has never mentioned wanting a boyfriend. He’s been so focused on school and his career. Who---who else does he even see during the day? Kurt can’t think of a single person, no one Blaine has talked more than twice about. Has Blaine been seeing someone and keeping it a secret? Why wouldn’t he say anything? Did he think he couldn’t? Did he think it would hurt Kurt’s feelings?

Blaine’s next text gives Kurt a clue as to why, and his heart breaks.

Find new ways to make Kurt Hummel fall in love with me.

Kurt re-reads that final text with sympathetic eyes. Blaine is in love with him? How long?

Kurt sighs.

He knows exactly how long.

“Oh, Blaine.” What is he supposed to say to that? He looks up from his spot and in the direction of Blaine’s apartment. Step by step, he begins walking back. He knows what he needs to tell him, and it’s not something he can do over the phone.

Blaine is his best friend. He has respected him, and his boundaries, since high school.

He owes Blaine more than a phone call.

***

“Done.”

Blaine’s head snaps up in confusion at the sound of Kurt’s voice. Kurt should be on a train to Bushwick, not standing on the sidewalk out front of his apartment. “Wha---what do you mean, done?”

“I mean, done.” Kurt climbs the steps, stopping one down from where Blaine sits. He shows Blaine his phone, scrolling through the messages on the screen slow enough so Blaine can see that the texts he’d sent, the ones he thought he’d been sending to himself, actually went to Kurt instead. Blaine’s mouth drops open. He’s tempted to look down at the phone in his hands, confirm that he was stupid enough to send those messages to Kurt instead of himself, but he can’t.

Because he’s lost feeling in every limb in his body.

Kurt turns the screen back to himself and reads: “Find new ways to make Kurt Hummel fall in love with me. You’ve already done that. So it looks like you’re ahead for the morning.”

“Oh.” Blaine stands when the tingling in his legs reminds him that they’re there “Well … that’s fortunate … for me, I guess.”

“I would think” - Kurt takes a step up – “for the both of us.”

Blaine looks in Kurt’s eyes, stunned at what might be happening here. After everything he’d thought, after all his doubts, is Kurt saying what Blaine thinks he’s saying?

“Wh---what do we do now?”

“I think that maybe we go inside,” Kurt suggests, winding his arms around Blaine’s waist the same way he did when they were dancing. The second their bodies press together, the fireworks come back, sizzling up Blaine’s stomach, making his insides melt. “We talk, decide exactly what it is we want, where we want to go from here, and then …” Kurt’s gaze falls a few inches to Blaine’s lips, but pop back to his eyes in an instant. Kurt is no shy violet, and he needs Blaine to understand how he feels “… I stay with you tonight. You know, to make sure you stay on trend with that list of yours.”

“And h-how do we do that?” Blaine asks, stuttering at the dark look in Kurt’s eyes, the way the blue in them deepens. He’s only seen that in his dreams, and tonight, it seems that dream may be coming true.

“We’ll start with the water.”

Blaine jerks a bit, a nervous laugh slipping past his lips. “The … the water?”

“A-ha. Because you’re going to need to be hydrated when we move on to the cardio.”

“Cardio?”

“If you’re game, that is. You’re such an organized man. I wouldn’t want to derail your schedule.” Kurt takes Blaine’s hand and starts pulling him towards the door. And Blaine follows, tongue-tied at how they've gone from best friends to sexual innuendo in the space of two dozen text messages.

Not that he's complaining. He just wishes he'd thought of it sooner.

“I’ll add it to the list.”