Silk-filtered Sunday morning sunlight beams through Kurt’s drawn curtains and onto the contours of his cheekbones. Curled up together like two commas tangled in bedsheets, Blaine would synchronize his breathing with Kurt’s- deep, slow inhales against his chest. Blaine had looked forward to learning the way Kurt slept. It turns out that he arranges his leg in an elegant triangle against the other, the arch of his foot curved around his knee. It’s full of a ballerina’s grace. Kurt adopts this position when he’s not sleeping curved around Blaine’s body, but as much as Blaine hates that his knee had come unlocked from the back of Kurt’s in the night, Blaine thinks Kurt looks completely exquisite sleeping like this- sleeping at all. He’s unfairly angelic in sleep, lips flushed and pursed, lashes fanned dark and thick underneath his eyes.

Blaine still has the need to touch, he always has, so his arm twines around Kurt’s waist, rising and falling with his breathing. It’s so intimate, so domestic waking up next to Kurt. In trains of morning thought, Blaine imagines his high school boyfriend fade into his college boyfriend, into his fianc�, into his husband. Should it frighten or comfort him that the face doesn’t change? Blaine can’t see a day where he wakes up next to anyone else but Kurt- he doesn’t want to. Imagining touching his lips to the back of anyone else’s neck (the way Kurt likes to wake up) hurts, and it’s probably too early in the morning to be thinking about the rest of his life, but God, for Blaine, that’s all it feels like. Kurt stirs then, shifts and pulls the comforter up a little more. He looks over his shoulder, drowsy-eyed, at Blaine, smiling a closed-mouth smile and sleepily kissing the air. Blaine leans close and presses his lips to Kurt’s, a soft, Sunday-morning kind of kiss.

“Hi.” Kurt whispers, flipping over to face Blaine.

“Nice of you to wake up, Sleeping Beauty.” Blaine says, laughing and wrapping his arms around Kurt’s waist to pull him closer.

“Oh my God, I’m sorry, were you up for long?” Kurt looks far too concerned.

“Little bit. But I like it. I like watching you.” Blaine pauses. “Less creepy in my head.”

Kurt smiles- with his teeth, too. He doesn’t do that a lot. Kurt snakes his hand around Blaine’s neck and moves to tangle his fingers in the hair at the nape.

“Let’s get downstairs. My dad might think we’re having some kind of crude early-morning rendezvous, and I’d like to keep the privilege of a sleepover every now and then, wouldn’t you?”

“Very much. I’m actually fairly shocked he agreed to it, given the circumstances of the first time he found me in your bed.” Blaine mutters with a rush of uncomfortable memories.

“So let’s get out of bed and prove that you are now a responsible, thoughtful man and not that same befuddled young boy lost in a hungover stupor.” Kurt presses a quick kiss to Blaine’s forehead and tugs his hand, and Blaine just lets him. Kurt’s wearing one of Blaine’s hoodies, which is just- wow. Primarily because it’s Kurt wearing Blaine’s clothes, which is something in itself, but it’s also so bizarre and, in a way, comforting to see Kurt in these kinds of clothes, free of chains or padlocks or complicated zippers. It’s nice.

Their fingers stay interlaced all the way down the stairs and Blaine has to bite back his stupidly wide grin. Most things Kurt does make Blaine have to bite back a stupidly wide grin. When they get to the kitchen, Finn’s bent over the stovetop tending to six severely burnt pieces of bacon.

“Finn, I’d really love it if you told me you aren’t trying to cook.” Kurt nearly pleads. Finn looks up, a picture of relief and (Kurt can spot it) a little embarrassment.

“Uh…what if I told you I’m trying to fry?” Finn looks down disgustedly at the frying pan.

“Then I would tell you to step away from the pan and let me take it from here.” Kurt flutters his fingers at Finn and starts scraping the blackened strips of bacon off the pan.

Blaine takes it upon himself to make the coffee. It had become almost reflex- listening to the pulverizing sound of the coffee beans grinding, rolling a few grounds in between his fingers to test the size, swiftly pouring the water into the coffeemaker, letting it brew (he loves the distant bubbling sound of it, the sharp scent that saturates the kitchen). He pours three mugs, hands one to Finn (and gets a gracious head-nod in thanks), and sets one next to his own for Kurt. Bringing his mug up to his mouth, he breathes in the smell. Coffee smells like Kurt. It’s always smelled like Kurt. And not because Kurt particularly smells like coffee, either. But coffee carries with it that first latte at Dalton, the first grande nonfat mocha at the Lima Bean when Blaine learned what kind of coffee Kurt actually liked to drink, and the feels-like-thousands more coffees after those.

Kurt comes over in a flurry, balancing a plate of bacon, a stack of toast, a pitcher of orange juice, and a number of jams teetering on his left arm like some kind of 1950’s diner waitress. Blaine scoops the orange juice and toast to free Kurt’s hands; Finn makes a beeline for the bacon, because God knows Kurt won’t eat it.

“You’re amazing, dude. Seriously, like I lucked out in the brother department.” Finn says thickly through a mouthful of bacon and toast.

“Kind of like I lucked out in the boyfriend department.” Blaine says, just quiet enough for Kurt to hear and Finn not to. Kurt rolls his eyes but smiles and squeezes Blaine’s knee underneath the table. Blaine nudges the coffee mug closer to Kurt, his head tilted downwards in a hopeful expression of “I very much appreciate you making my breakfast, please accept this token of it.” Kurt takes it appreciatively and breathes in the scent before he drinks too. Blaine wonders if he’s thinking the same thing.

Finn gets out of his chair with a clatter, knocking over a butter knife and hastily plucking it off the floor.

“Sorry, man- men?- dudes…I have to go. Two-a-days. And since I royally screwed up my breakfast the first time, I’m in a little rush.” Finn says, grabbing one last piece of toast.

“Don’t pass out from heat exhaustion!” Kurt calls to him with a muffled response in return. And then they’re alone, sipping long mouthfuls of coffee and looking, just looking at each other. Kurt pulls the worn sleeves of Blaine’s hoodie over his knuckles and wraps his hands elegantly around the mug to warm them. His hands are always cold, Blaine knows.

“Do you remember our first cup of coffee together?” Blaine says, because God, he’s a sucker for nostalgia sometimes.

“A latte, about 20 minutes after I met you, about 10 minutes after you essentially felt me up via song, not that I’m complaining, and about 5 minutes after I changed out of my tragic imitation of a Dalton uniform to talk to you and Wes and David. So yes, yes I do.” Kurt says matter-of-factly.

“You’re very good. And look how much we couldn’t do then. I couldn’t do this.” Blaine puts his hand on Kurt’s thigh and squeezes. Kurt quirks an eyebrow.

“I couldn’t do this.” Blaine leans over and kisses Kurt light and sweet.

“I sure as hell couldn’t do this.” says Kurt, and then it’s his turn. He gets up and straddles Blaine’s lap, draping his arms over Blaine’s shoulders and twisting his fingers into Blaine’s curls. “And you couldn’t have woken up in my bed like you did this morning.” Kurt says in between kisses to his jawline.

“Remind me why it took us 4 months to get together again?” Blaine says before kissing Kurt, slotting their lips together in a way that was so familiar, so sweet that it pains him to think of his life before it. There’s such a fervent comfort in it, and Blaine tries to think about something he had before Kurt to make him feel so safe. He doesn’t come up with anything. There’s quite literally nothing, nobody in the world that shrouds Blaine in the same contented cloak of security and sanctuary just by holding him- hell, just by being with him.

Kurt kisses gently to the corner of Blaine’s mouth and rests their foreheads together. His hands are elegant, his fingers long and pale, and they twine so luxuriously up the back of Blaine’s neck, swirling like vines up into his curls.

“Thank you.” Kurt whispers.

“For what?” Blaine says, voice hushed to match Kurt’s.

“Just…for being you…just….thank you.” Blaine hardly ever sees Kurt at a loss for words, but here he is, dizzy and inarticulate. His face is contemplative, like he’s considering his life before Blaine (like Blaine had found himself doing a thousand times, wondering what it even was), and then he’s pressing his lips together to fight back the stupidly wide, toothy smile that Blaine knows Kurt hates on himself. Blaine loves it. He moves his lips to Kurt’s ear to whisper right in it, “I love you.”

“I love you too.” Kurt says, letting the ridiculous smile break onto his lips. He stays on Blaine’s lap, with Blaine’s fingers toying with the hem of his own hoodie on Kurt and Blaine’s coffee-laced kisses on his neck and Blaine’s chin hooked over his shoulder, his hand sneaking up the back of Kurt’s shirt to idly trace the skin on the small of his back.

Blaine thinks of Sunday mornings before Kurt, remembers the uncomfortable drive to church where the air hung thick with the things his father didn’t want to admit. He remembers stiff wooden pews against his back, the too-tight collar of his button-up shirt and the wool of his scratchy sweater vest, uncomfortable shifts in his seat when he tried to dismiss his father’s telling glances his way. They were miserable, and left Blaine feeling punched in the gut and worthless and disgusted. Those mornings brought back memories of his father, so tense and trapped. Now he’s making memories of Kurt’s father and Kurt’s house and Kurt- brightness and ardor, a kinetic buzz that shot through to his veins whenever he stepped through the front door.

When Kurt kisses him, Blaine collapses in the best possible way, turning boneless and pliant underneath his fingers and his mouth. It’s magnetic and perfected, and he wants it for the rest of his life. Every single day, until they’re both hunched over with pacemakers and walking sticks, he wants to wake up with Kurt, brew his coffee, and kiss him lazy and lovely, just like this.