“Arrrghghgh!” Blaine makes a loud, frustrated noise that was wildly out of character and slams his Calculus textbook closed. He’s leaned against Kurt’s propped-up legs as Kurt tries to study French vocabulary in Blaine’s dorm room.

“What seems to be the problem?” Kurt asks, shifting his eyes from le vocabulaire de chap�tre sept to Blaine’s gorgeously aggravated face. Blaine turns around so he faces Kurt, sitting Indian-style on his bed.

“I’m just so sick of this routine, and this town, and I just need to get away for a few days or so, you know?” Blaine rests his palms on Kurt’s knees, and Kurt knows that Blaine is upset and that his boyfriend’s happiness should be first on his list of priorities, but Blaine’s hands (especially while cupping his knees) are pretty magnificent. It’s been three months, but Kurt is still smitten. Which sometimes prevents him from forming coherent words, so this time, Kurt just nods.

“Let’s take a trip.” Blaine is being hilariously spontaneous, a side Kurt rarely sees.

“Is this stemmed from a recent viewing of Eat Pray Love or what? You’re never like this!” Kurt laughs.

“Actually, I found that movie horribly pretentious. But I just need a change of scenery. And I want to see this changed scenery with you.” Blaine gives his perfected coy smile that always made Kurt want to ravage him right then and there, no matter where they happened to be or what closed-minded Midwestern town they happened to live in.

“So what are you thinking?” Kurt is fully on board with the idea, and fully on board with the thought of just how much Blaine he would have access to on this trip.

“I’m thinking that I don’t tell you where we’re going until we’re there.” Blaine flashes the most mischievous smile he can manage, hops up from the couch where they sat, and kisses Kurt on the forehead.

That bitch… Kurt thinks, but oh God, he loves him.

---

Kurt hates surprises. Not surprises like OH-MY-GOD-HAPPY-BIRTHDAY-KURT-YOU-REALLY-HAD-NO-IDEA?, but surprises like these. Surprises like “Kurt, I’m not going to tell you where we’re going for an entire weekend, but you’ll certainly know what clothes to pack without that information, right?!” Blaine’s newfound love of spontaneity had left Kurt in a state of complete frustration. But Kurt tries to do the best he could with the absolute lack of details- a mountain of cowl-neck sweaters stacked to the top of his Jack Spade overnight bag, four or five pairs of his tightest skinny jeans, and his fabulous pair of silver leather Balmain lace-up boots (because really, what don’t they go with?). Now, the problem is fitting his skin care materials in the little remaining bag space…

---

The next morning (dreadfully early at 8 am, just as promised), Kurt hears a double-honk, clearly recognized as coming from Blaine’s adorable little blue Mini Cooper. So he grabs his bags (he had to pack another one strictly for skincare), says goodbye to Burt and Carole (who still look a little iffy about the whole trip, even after hours of convincing), and opens the door to see Blaine standing in front of his car (looking so very John Cusack in Say Anything, sans boombox. So basically, a guy standing in front of a car, but no matter.) And he looks so, so good. Kurt is still getting used to seeing Blaine in anything but that navy blue, red-piped blazer, but he certainly isn’t complaining, not when he looked so excellent in that dark green cardigan.

“This trip better accommodate silver leather boots.” Kurt says as he approaches Blaine. Blaine simply smiles and kisses Kurt, kisses him deep and sweet and for so long that Kurt has to pull away, because he has a feeling that his dad and Carole were peering out at them from the front window.

“Not sure how to take that.” Kurt says, rolling his eyes. Blaine seems to know that a kiss would shut Kurt up about any further speculation.

“Just get in the car.” Blaine answers with a laugh, opening the car door for Kurt. Blaine hops in the front and starts the car, with it coming Katy Perry’s latest. Kurt had fed Blaine Chicago and Les Miserables and Funny Girl and Wicked, but Blaine is hopelessly addicted to his Top 40.

“Just a little Barbra Streisand, Blaine? Please, please, please. I have a Barbra playlist all loaded up and ready to go.” Kurt pleads.

“Katy Perry is a goddess. Did you know Russell Brand gave her a tiger as a wedding present? The woman has a tiger.” Blaine’s face gets all knotted up when he gets heated up about something, and it’s adorable, even if what he’s getting heated up about is a shitty pop singer.

“Barbra Streisand has won an Oscar, Emmy, Grammy, and Tony Award. Does that mean nothing to you?”

“But Barbra Streisand doesn’t have a tiger, does she?” Blaine says, cocking his eyebrow up at Kurt in an I-told-you-so kind of way, though he had told Kurt nothing to sway his opinion.

“You’re absurd.” Kurt has given up trying. For now.

“You don’t even have a soft spot for ‘Teenage Dream’?” Blaine asks hopefully, covering Kurt’s hand with his own.

“I’ll have to make an exception for that one.” Kurt melts into his hand, big and rough and warm atop his. It’s physically impossible for him to stay irritated with Blaine for preferring a talentless teenybopper who shoots whipped cream from her breasts to the beautiful, elegant divinity that is Barbra Streisand (who would never shoot anything from her breasts). Not when only his hand on Kurt’s could make Kurt’s mind go so delightfully fuzzy.

An hour later, Blaine and Kurt are discussing the sexuality of Warbler Wes.

“I mean, yeah, any guy can say they’re straight, but he immediately recognized my new Oliver Peoples the other day,” Kurt notes, indicating the sunglasses perched on his coif. “And really, what straight guy even knows what mirrored aviators are?”

“I definitely have my doubts,” Blaine agrees. “He was so making eyes at you at rehearsal last week.”

“Oh, shut up!” Kurt gives Blaine as romantic a punch as he could muster, then Blaine winks at him. Fucking winks. This boy will be the death of Kurt.

His patience is beginning to wear thin. Kurt had never been good with long drives, not even with the boy he was madly in love with in the driver’s seat. Yes, that makes it a hell of a lot better, but he’s still beginning to get fidgety.

“An hour left…” Blaine murmurs as they sped past a road sign. His voice is distant and soft, also sounds dangerously close to falling-asleep. So with that, Kurt scoops his iPod from his bag, plugs it in, and presses play on “I’m The Greatest Star”, the first song on the Barbra playlist, turning it up to full volume (of course, strictly for Blaine’s road safety). Blaine jumps at the first belting of the beginning notes.

“Fine. Two songs.” Blaine succumbs to the powerful pull of Barb.

“Four.” shoots back Kurt.

“Three.” And Blaine gives that coy smile.

The last notes of “Where Is The Wonder” lulls Kurt into a beautifully Barbra-induced sleep.

---

“Kurt. We. Are. Here.” Blaine whispers to a sleepy Kurt, punctuating each word with a kiss.

Oh…now that’s a way I wouldn’t mind waking up every morning…

But Kurt doesn’t get up immediately, partly (read: mostly) because he wants to see how long Blaine will keep kissing him until he does. As Blaine moves away from his lips and presses feathery kisses on his earlobe and nose and the little freckle on his forehead, Kurt thanks himself. And when Blaine kisses down his cheek and nears his lip, Kurt pulls Blaine’s bottom lip into his mouth and feels his brain turn to mush, because Blaine is a really, really good kisser and Kurt could kiss him all day. All day. But Kurt supposes he should get up and see where the hell Blaine has taken him.

He doesn’t see much. Just an enormous forest and a pile of logs that could have once been a campfire, but now just looks like…a pile of logs.

“Blaine Anderson, have you taken me camping?” Kurt gives Blaine the most scathing look he can manage, and just shakes his head over and over and over again, because what had he done to deserve this?

“Please don’t kill me. It’ll be fun!” Blaine leans in for a please-forgive-me kiss, but Kurt actually denies him (for the first and probably only time in his life).

“Blaine, do you have any idea what clothes I brought? Not camping clothes. I really don’t think I own any of those!” Kurt keeps shaking his head, because maybe if he does it for long enough he’ll just find that he’s still asleep in Blaine’s passenger seat.

“I knew you wouldn’t. I brought you some.” Blaine raises his eyebrows and grins.

“You sneaky little…” Kurt trails off. “Fine. Open mind, open mind. I am Paul Bunyan.” Kurt closes his eyes and inhales the forest air. It doesn’t smell good, just like smoke and pine needles.

“You’re completely and totally Paul Bunyan.” Blaine says with a remarkably straight face. “I have to set up the tent.” Blaine pops open his trunk and lugs out the tent.

“Alright, well, little old me here doesn’t know how to set up a tent and isn’t too keen on learning, so I’m just going to hang back…” Kurt dusts off a tree stump to sit on and watches Blaine. Watches him unravel the tarp and roll out the tent and hammer the pegs in the ground. Blaine with a hammer. It really wasn’t a bad sight at all.

“How did you even learn to do this?” Kurt asks, buffing a fingernail.

“Camping was one of my dad’s “let’s-make-Blaine-straight” activities, but I actually ended up really liking it. But don’t worry, I'm still very much gay.” says Blaine, hammering the last peg into the ground.

“Well, thank God for that.”

“Let’s get you changed. I have plans that would not be kind to that jacket.” Blaine points to Kurt’s blue cashmere military jacket.

“Oh, lord.” Kurt mutters, following Blaine into the tent.

---

Ten minutes later, Kurt is outfitted in a gray Dalton t-shirt, a pair of khaki cargo pants (Really? Really.), and a truly awful pair of hiking boots that belonged to Blaine’s dad.

“I look like some horrible lumberjack mutilation of myself.” Kurt grumbles, his eyes scanning over his own body.

“I think it’s cute.” Blaine glances up at Kurt and pulls him into a kiss, threading his arms around Kurt’s waist and rubbing little circles on his lower back.

“Alright, we’re getting wildly distracted.” Blaine whispers, still centimeters away from Kurt’s lips. He thrusts a fishing pole into Kurt’s hand and envelops the other hand in his own, leading Kurt to the lake.

---

“I GOT A FISH! I GOT A FISH!” Kurt yelps, his fishing pole dangling into the murky green lake water. It had been an hour, Blaine had caught three already, and Kurt had no idea what to do now.

“What do I do? What do I dooo?!” squeals Kurt, lifting the pole out of the water to find a flapping fish hanging from the end,

“Just let it back in! Are you planning to cook up some fish for dinner tonight?!” Blaine cries with a hysterical laugh.

“Well…no…erm….okay!” says a puzzled Kurt, confusedly shaking his pole until the fish seemed to unhook. “But you did see it, right? I caught a fish. I caught one.”

“Oh, I definitely saw it. You’re a very promising fisherman.” Blaine laughs and sets his fishing pole down, reclining on his forearms and grabbing Kurt’s hand.

“So is the point of fishing just like, a pride-of-a-job-well-done kind of thing?” Kurt asks, abandoning his own pole to lay his head in Blaine’s lap.

“Essentially. Unless you’re one of the people who actually want to cook what they catch. And I just think that’s gross.” Blaine shrugs and traces a finger along Kurt’s cheek, slipping down to his neck and then dancing around his throat. Kurt’s eyelids drift closed and he lets out a contented hum.

---

They walk back to the tent hand-in-hand, because ever since he had been granted the privilege of doing so, Kurt finds it hard to refrain from touching Blaine in some way or another. They talk for a few minutes after leaving the lake, but then there’s just a beautiful silence. They talk with their eyes, with the subtle glances that one boy throws the other that are sometimes caught and sometimes not. They talk with the fingers tracing faint lines across a palm. And as the sun starts falling slowly, Kurt realizes that the forest isn’t so bad. It’s kind of a little bit beautiful. And Blaine steals a glimpse at Kurt, and Kurt catches it and crumbles into a guilty smile, because Blaine had broken him (and it was nice).

---

Blaine had been adorable and packed peanut butter and jelly for the both of them, so they ate them underneath the dark curtain of sky and stars, the two of them seated on a log close and warm and snug. Kurt nibbles at his sandwich for a while, then asks suddenly, “What were you thinking when we first met?”

“Well…I was thinking that you were incredibly attractive….and feeling pretty good about my song choice, because perhaps you hearing me sing about going all the way would, in fact, make you want to go all the way with me.” Blaine says, his eyes fixed on Kurt’s.

“Which it did.”Kurt nods his head in agreement.

Blaine’s knee rapidly springs up and down, twitching as it did when he was nervous. Kurt could see the smile crawling up from the corner of his lips.

“What about you?” Blaine asks shyly, then puts his head down and looks up at Kurt through his impossibly long eyelashes.

“I too was thinking you were incredibly attractive, enhanced even further when I found that you had the voice of an angel and were actually gay. I really just wanted to…be with you, I guess.”

“Well, you are now.” Blaine says in an almost-whisper, snaking his hand behind Kurt’s neck and pulling him towards himself. He puts his lips on Kurt’s, lingering and slow, and methodically moves his mouth in a way he knows makes Kurt fall apart. Smiling into the kiss, Kurt sucks on Blaine’s bottom lip and lets his hands navigate Blaine’s strong, strong back. And he forgets where he is or why he’s there, it’s just Blaine. It’s always been Blaine.

---

They both awoke to the sound of-what the hell is that-…birds? It was a far cry from his usual wake-up call of “Cell Block Tango”. But sunlight was seeping into the tent and making Blaine’s eyes go all squinty and dreary, and oh, it was so cute. Their feet are tangled together in a jumble of limbs and blankets and Kurt loves it, he loves this…he loves him.

“Alright, wakey wakey, we have a day ahead of us.” Kurt checks his watch- it’s nearly noon, but trust Blaine to make it sound as if they’re roughing it bright & early.

“Nooo. I just want to stay here with you…” Kurt whines and trails off, his feet still intertwined with Blaine’s.

“Well, what if I told you that me and my lips are going to be over there,” Blaine points to the other side of the tent, “and not right here-“ He hovers his lips achingly close to Kurt’s- “where you’d like them to be?”

“Tease.” Kurt grumbles and pulls off the blankets.

“We’re going to go biking.” Blaine says with a curious little glint in his eyes. Kurt did not object- a light bike ride was one of the loveliest forms of physical activity he could think of (although he did have a talent for well choreographed football, organized sports were never really his thing), and anything with Blaine was to be done willingly. Blaine throws Kurt one of his t-shirts (Kurt was really beginning to like this whole Kurt-packs-impractical-clothes-and-is-forced-to-wear-Blaine’s situation) and Kurt pulls it on, the smell of Blaine swallowing him up.

A bike rental was situated just outside of the campgrounds, not far at all. Blaine quickly picked a silver one, while Kurt inspected each one, testing the tire pressure and examining for any severe damage. He ended up with a similarly silver one…

The two hoist a leg over their bikes and hesitantly begin pedaling, neither one looking quite at home on a bicycle (they haven’t ridden since about age twelve). Kurt gets used to it first, pedaling faster and faster, whizzing past Blaine.

“Get back here! I’m still re-learning!” shouts Blaine from twenty feet behind.

“I can’t help it that I’m talented, Blaine! I’m fast and furious.” yells back Kurt, turning back to give Blaine a teasing little smile. Kurt hears Blaine grouse in the background, so he’s plagued with a tide of guilt and slows down until Blaine is at his side.

“That’s better.” Blaine says. And then he shouts unexpectedly- “RACE!”, zooming past Kurt and leaving him in a state of shock.

The boy is tricky.

Kurt pedals and pedals and pedals and is going so fast he feels like his bike could burst into flames at any second, but he’s only feet away from Blaine. He won’t give up now. Also, he’s actually sweating, and can’t remember the last time that happened where he wasn’t in a sauna, so this better be worth it.

And it is, when Kurt emerges victorious at last, rocketing past Blaine and slowing his bike down to settle in an expanse of grass. Blaine hurtles into the grass, his tires skidding in the dirt, and topples off his bike.

“Holy…Blaine, are you okay?” Kurt rushes over to him. But Blaine is trapped in a hysterical fit of laughter, rolling on his back in the grass, and doesn’t appear to be hurt at all.

“I’m fine.” Blaine says between cackles and hiccups, tugging the back of Kurt’s neck so Kurt’s face could meet his. He plants a short, chaste kiss and shakes himself off.

“Ready to rock.” Blaine speaks clearly at last, snapping his fingers in such a theatrical, Warbler-like way and getting back on the bike. Kurt just smiles. Blaine was such a dork sometimes.

---

Night had come quickly. But Blaine seemed to have plans. It was actually amazing Kurt just how organized he was for this. It wasn’t so much out of character, just very impressive for one teenage boy.

“Come on out!” Blaine calls from outside while Kurt is enjoying a quasi-nap in the tent.

“What, are we going to make s’mores and sing campfire songs?” Kurt says with a laugh.

“…did you look at my notes?” asks a curious Blaine. Kurt peers out of the tent to see Blaine armed with his guitar, a box of graham crackers, some chocolate bars, and a bag of marshmallows. It was laughable how predictable he was. But it was also very cute.

“Get a suitable marshmallow stick, I will sing to you, and it will be swell.” Blaine says matter-of-factly. Kurt was not going to even think about rejecting Blaine’s offer to serenade. There was something about his voice that just made Kurt want to melt into a pile of smitten, sparkly, smiley goo. Trying to stray his mind away from thinking what Blaine would sing, Kurt focuses on finding a stick not infested with ant hills or dirt clods.

“Is there anything I can do to…sanitize this?” Kurt mutters partly to himself, picking up a semi-clean stick. He takes matters into his own hands, finding a pocket knife in Blaine’s bag and shaving the outside bark off. It’s pleasantly smooth by the time he finishes.

“Look, Blaine…I’m an innovator!” Kurt proudly holds up his shaved twig, spears a marshmallow on it, and sits down next to Blaine.

“Very impressive. You’re a natural!” Blaine laughs.

“I always knew I had an outdoors side, it’s just a matter of when I found it….” Kurt muses dreamily, then snaps out of it. “I don’t even want to think about how many calories are in this.” He says, thrusting the marshmallow spear into the fire.

“It’s much better if you don’t.” Blaine says absentmindedly as his calloused fingers tune his guitar. A few experimental strums, a few cautious plucks of the strings.

And then he was off to work- “I may not appreciate Barbra like you do, but I do love me some Paul Simon”, he says over the strums of ‘Me and Julio Down By The Schoolyard’. The song makes Kurt smile; his dad would always listen to it when Kurt was a kid, and Kurt didn’t remember if he had told Blaine about it or not. Either way, it was really quite incredible.

The mama pajama rolled out of bed
And she ran to the police station
When the papa found out he began to shout and he started the investigation
It's against the law
It was against the law
What the mama saw, it was against the law.

As Blaine sings, Kurt wonders how the hell he got so lucky. Even more so when Blaine performs the elaborate whistling portion of the song flawlessly. He could sing, he could dance, he could whistle…and he could also kiss very, very well. There was literally not a thing he was incapable of. But Kurt just wanted to test out that last one.

---

Blaine turns his head, brushing his cheek against Kurt in a mess of warm skin-on-skin, and goes to kiss Kurt’s neck, trailing up to his ear and giving it a soft bite. For a minute, Kurt can do nothing but just breathe, nearly panting, underneath him. Then his lips are on Blaine’s, slow and lazy yet hot and wanting. He kisses across the sharp jut of Blaine’s collarbone, runs his hands to grip his hips, hooks his foot around Blaine’s ankle. He tries not to think of his dad’s Brokeback Mountain talk…because something was definitely going down in the tent.

---

Kurt fully believes that he will never, ever tire of the feeling of waking up and being tangled in Blaine. He loves that Blaine sleeps so late, because this way he can actually enjoy how this feels- Blaine’s arms twisted around him, his breath humming quietly, rhythmically against Kurt’s back, his sleepy stirs where he sometimes mumbled nonsense. Sunlight begins to trickle in, Blaine’s eyes scrunch open and closed and open. Blaine’s fingers trail over Kurt’s stomach, dragging them lightly across the dips of exposed skin until he finds Kurt’s fingers. He laces them into his own, and Kurt is blissful.