hang with me (4/4)
Pairings/Characters: Kurt/Blaine, Blaine-centric.
Rating/Word Count: PG // 2186
Summary: Blaine doesn't know what to do and, for once, he doesn't even know how to pretend to know what to do. AU post-Sexy.
Part One
Part Two
Part Three
Note: Originally this was meant to be two parts, but it ended up consolidating itself pretty easily into one. No need to belabor much longer, amirite?
I know what's on your mind
There will be time for that too
If you hang with me
Santana will not leave Blaine alone.
Every time she passes him and Kurt talking in the hall, she makes sex moans; she suggests suggestive songs during glee club and looks right at Blaine while she does it; sometimes she even stands right behind Kurt, in Blaine's line of sight, and rolls her eyes back into her head in a parody of pleasure.
"Dude," Finn says one day, "Santana is trying really hard to get with you. Does she know you're gay?"
"It's not that," Blaine tries to explain, while utterly unsure how to actually explain. His eyes find Santana across the room; she's behind Kurt at the piano, of course, and she raises her eyebrows and licks her lips.
Blaine sighs.
Santana torment aside, Blaine is actually beginning to enjoy McKinley – it's looser, more casual, but rougher too. It feels so starkly real against the dreamy backdrop of Dalton and Blaine's surprised to find he doesn't actually hate that.
Kurt helps, though.
He's helping himself to the emergency hairspray in Kurt's locker (explaining as he does so that multiple layers of product are needed throughout the day to keep his hair under control; Kurt nods wisely) when he gets hit with the first slushie.
It's Azimio, who Blaine was warned about. Karofsky is missing in action but there are other football lackeys there, all guffawing to themselves, and suddenly Blaine is furious. It's due in part to how much work he'd put into his hair that day and part righteous anger at just how unfair this is, but he finds himself pushing Azimio, dripping fluorescent red everywhere.
Azimio doesn't budge an inch, but he still shoves Blaine back out of principle. Blaine stumbles, then slips, then hits the floor while Kurt cries out. He feels the shock of pain before he realizes what's happened. There's red all over the floor and it takes him a moment to realize it's not just the slushie, he's bleeding.
"Oh, Blaine, your lip," Kurt says fretfully, kneeling down tentatively beside him.
Tina is on his other side. She touches his arm lightly. "Bathroom," she says, nodding.
"Bathroom," Kurt agrees.
The girls' bathroom, as it turns out, is well-prepared for this. Tina emerges with all sorts of cleaning supplies and Kurt pulls shampoo out of somewhere and they get down to business.
"I could probably just Windex this off your hair if I wanted," Kurt says dryly.
Blaine finds it in him to grin, though his lip aches when he does. "It's dapper."
Kurt smiles faintly and shakes his head. "I suppose it suits you."
"Mike might have an extra t-shirt in his locker," Tina says, sponging fruitlessly at Blaine once-blue polo. "I could go find him?"
"Thank you," Blaine says, genuinely grateful. Tina smiles sweetly and pats his shoulder once before leaving.
"You should go to the nurse," Kurt says absently, wetting a carefully folded square of paper towel and pressing it to Blaine's mouth.
"It's fine," Blaine insists. "It just…bled a lot. It's not like I've never had a split lip before."
Kurt frowns but he doesn't press on that topic. "You shouldn't have done anything, you know. It doesn't help and Azimio is about eight times your size, he could kill you."
Blaine frowns back. "It was an accident. I didn't plan it."
Kurt harrumphs but doesn't say more. He tilts Blaine's head up with one finger on his chin as he cleans away the drying blood. "You have to be careful, Blaine," he says. "Don't lose your temper." He turns Blaine's face from side to side, eyes searching for any stray stains. "I guess you're really one of us now."
Blaine catches Kurt's hand and holds it, both of them feeling the same sadness and resignation. "I guess so."
This is what happens: there is a meeting with Blaine's mother and the boys and Figgins, fraught with drama. The football players insist as one that it was entirely accidental, that Blaine just slipped; other students passing by the scene apparently support this. Blaine pushed first, they say. Slushie-ing is just something that happens to all the new kids, a rite of passage.
They get detention. So does Blaine.
Later that week, during practice, Kurt stands up to sing. Blaine sits up a little in his seat; he hasn't heard Kurt perform a solo since before he left Dalton.
"This is for Blaine," Kurt says, hands clasped. The tiniest of smirks curls the corner of his mouth. "Congratulations on joining the team."
There is a mix of laughter and sympathy from the rest of the room and Tina leans forward to clasp Blaine's shoulders in a friendly gesture. Blaine smiles and ducks his head and then Kurt starts to sing.
And –
Kurt sings and it's a song vaguely familiar but not easy to place immediately. Kurt sings and Rachel gives a little pleased sigh and Blaine –
Blaine looks at Kurt.
Kurt, singing, his eyes closed and voice soft, the room gone silent around him. Kurt in a shiny red blazer with an airplane pinned to one lapel.
Kurt, whose eyes are so very blue when he opens them.
Blaine feels Tina squeeze his shoulder again, hears her say to Mike how sweet. Everyone is looking at Blaine to see how he reacts so he puts on his best smile and says, "That was lovely, Kurt, thank you."
Someone else gets up to sing then, but Blaine isn't paying attention. He's looking at the front of the room but he's hyper-conscious of Kurt sitting beside him.
Blaine's heart is beating in his chest and he keeps thinking how didn't I know how didn't I know how didn't I know – only maybe he's always known, hazy in the back of his mind.
He finds himself touching Kurt's sleeve, the oddly plastic texture of it, and saying again, softly, "That was lovely."
Kurt smiles and drops his hand over Blaine's briefly.
Santana holds her compact up and touches up her brows, hand lightly sweeping the pencil in an arch. Kurt is across the room, allowing Mercedes and Rachel to feed his ego after the song. Santana's eyes slide over to Blaine. "How long?"
"I don't know." Blaine shrugs. He watches Kurt, making sure he isn't paying attention. "Since we met, maybe."
"Nice to hear you admit it, Preps," she says, sounding somewhat more compassionate than she has in the past.
He promised Kurt coffee after they're done with glee, as a proper thank-you for the song. And for being a good friend, Blaine's best friend.
"Do I still have to watch out?" he asks.
"Always." Santana relocates, dropping into the empty chair next to Blaine. "Gotta watch each other's backs," she says.
Santana confuses him, because she bitches about glee club the entire time she's there and insults everyone constantly and once told Blaine she had razorblades hidden in her hair – but then she'll look at him like this, intent underneath her false lashes, and he thinks she's saying she'll watch his back, too.
He nods, first to himself and then nods towards Brittany. "How long?"
Santana follows the line of his gaze and frowns deeply. "Preppy, do not test me."
Blaine laughs a little despite himself. "You're not the only person who can notice stuff."
"No, but I'm the only one who can be sassy and adorable while lording my information over peoples' heads." She rises in a swirl of cheerleading skirt. "Let's remember that for the future, mm?"
Once admitted, Blaine can't get it out of his head. Crush. He has a crush. He has a crush on Kurt. It colors everything, it makes it hard to be around Kurt. Blaine doesn't know what to do and, for once, he doesn't even know how to pretend to know what to do.
Maybe Kurt's crush has passed, he thinks (or hopes, oddly). Blaine can just quietly have a crush on Kurt forever, or until it goes away, or Blaine can sing him a song about sex toys. Whichever comes first.
The problem is he's being weird and, more than that, Kurt notices immediately.
"Blaine," Kurt says, soft-voiced. "I don't want to ask again, but…"
Blaine plays dumb. "But?"
"But…" Kurt peers at him, searching his face. "Do you really just think of me as a friend? Because I thought maybe you were just waiting for the right time, but then…nothing happened. Then I thought I was getting ahead of myself again but Mercedes said she thought you were just being a boy about it. Then you transferred. And there was your song. But…still, nothing. And you've been so strange lately. So…" He's observing Blaine so closely, waiting for a tell-tale flash of emotion or expression. "Should I give up hope here?"
Blaine opens his mouth, hesitates, thinks no and starts, "You're my best friend."
"Right," Kurt says before Blaine can say anything else, however haltingly. "Right." He nods, a quick decisive little motion. "That's all I needed to hear."
"Kurt –"
But Kurt is already offering him that tight smile Blaine has come to know too well and getting up to throw out his lunch tray. He doesn't wait for Blaine.
"Mike wooed me at camp," Tina says brightly.
Blaine looks up from his sheet music, hidden in the pages of his math textbook. "What?"
Mike is nodding along. "I did. Well. Tina wooed me first, actually, only she didn't know she was doing it."
They share a smile. Blaine is bewildered.
"Uh," he says, "Congratulations for you guys?"
"Thank you," Tina says. "But that's not the point. We're trying to think of ways for you to woo Kurt."
"Woo Kurt?" Blaine echoes.
"Yes," she says. "And singing to him is so overdone and you've already done it anyway."
Nervously, Blaine says, "Who said I wanted to woo Kurt?"
They exchange glances. "You like him," Mike says. "Everyone in New Directions knows."
"We talk about it a lot," Tina says. "There's a poll."
"No one's betting anymore though," Mike adds, as though that's a plus. "Well, Puck is."
"I'm not wooing Kurt," Blaine says. "We're just friends."
They both look vaguely disappointed and kind of suspicious. "Well," Tina says after a moment. "If you ever want it, we made a list."
Blaine nods. "I'll keep it in mind."
Blaine has the chance to kiss Kurt a million times.
It's still a strange thought, having coffee or lunch and acting so forcefully normal. Maybe in the past he would have had a passing Kurt looks nice today but now – now it's so different. Now he follows the shapes Kurt's mouth makes when he talks and presses his own lips together, smothers the urge to lean over.
Blaine has the chance to kiss Kurt a million times and he chickens out at every last one.
They're sitting in Kurt's living room, planning his New York outfits and sprucing up some other things, sewing this or that, adding studs where studs are obviously needed.
"So I'm thinking variations on black and gray," Kurt says. "Skyline-inspired with the rare pop of color, a selection of tie clips and at least two hats, but no more than four. What do you think?"
The tiniest smile crosses Kurt's face. He looks pleased, happy, miles and miles away from the boy who cried into his coffee on the day they met.
Blaine is laying his hand on Kurt's before he has time to look away or even think, is leaning up and in. He hears the softest sound of Kurt's intake of breath and then their lips are meeting and Blaine's so nervous and excited and surprised – so many things all at once, things he doesn't have words for, and he just hears silence.
"Oh," Kurt says, as Blaine falls back into his seat. "Oh."
Blaine bites his lip and looks at the table, covered with yards and yards of black faux-fur. "Sorry."
"Sorry?" Kurt repeats, confused.
"I fuck things up," Blaine says. "I – I didn't mean to, t took me so long and then that day in the cafeteria – and Santana has razorblades in her hair and you – "
"You're doing fine so far," Kurt murmurs.
Blaine can't help his smile. "Yeah?"
"Yes." Kurt nods, his cheeks pink and eyes bright. His gaze drops to Blaine's mouth before meeting his eyes again and he says, "Just fine." He tilts his head. "Before, though –"
"I'm not very smart," Blaine says immediately. Kurt laughs, which makes Blaine laugh, and they're both sitting there giddy and awkward, but a nice awkward. A kind of awkward Blaine could get used to, quite frankly.
Blaine and Kurt sit next to each other on the way to New York, still settled right in the middle of that not-unpleasant awkwardness. Every time their elbows brush it makes Blaine grin and they keep interrupting each other.
Kurt smiles at him, really and fully smiles, and Blaine could count on one hand the amount of times Kurt has looked at anyone else like that.
"Blaine," Kurt says, smile widening, "you're blushing."
Pairings/Characters: Kurt/Blaine, Blaine-centric.
Rating/Word Count: PG // 2186
Summary: Blaine doesn't know what to do and, for once, he doesn't even know how to pretend to know what to do. AU post-Sexy.
Part One
Part Two
Part Three
Note: Originally this was meant to be two parts, but it ended up consolidating itself pretty easily into one. No need to belabor much longer, amirite?
I know what's on your mind
There will be time for that too
If you hang with me
Santana will not leave Blaine alone.
Every time she passes him and Kurt talking in the hall, she makes sex moans; she suggests suggestive songs during glee club and looks right at Blaine while she does it; sometimes she even stands right behind Kurt, in Blaine's line of sight, and rolls her eyes back into her head in a parody of pleasure.
"Dude," Finn says one day, "Santana is trying really hard to get with you. Does she know you're gay?"
"It's not that," Blaine tries to explain, while utterly unsure how to actually explain. His eyes find Santana across the room; she's behind Kurt at the piano, of course, and she raises her eyebrows and licks her lips.
Blaine sighs.
Santana torment aside, Blaine is actually beginning to enjoy McKinley – it's looser, more casual, but rougher too. It feels so starkly real against the dreamy backdrop of Dalton and Blaine's surprised to find he doesn't actually hate that.
Kurt helps, though.
He's helping himself to the emergency hairspray in Kurt's locker (explaining as he does so that multiple layers of product are needed throughout the day to keep his hair under control; Kurt nods wisely) when he gets hit with the first slushie.
It's Azimio, who Blaine was warned about. Karofsky is missing in action but there are other football lackeys there, all guffawing to themselves, and suddenly Blaine is furious. It's due in part to how much work he'd put into his hair that day and part righteous anger at just how unfair this is, but he finds himself pushing Azimio, dripping fluorescent red everywhere.
Azimio doesn't budge an inch, but he still shoves Blaine back out of principle. Blaine stumbles, then slips, then hits the floor while Kurt cries out. He feels the shock of pain before he realizes what's happened. There's red all over the floor and it takes him a moment to realize it's not just the slushie, he's bleeding.
"Oh, Blaine, your lip," Kurt says fretfully, kneeling down tentatively beside him.
Tina is on his other side. She touches his arm lightly. "Bathroom," she says, nodding.
"Bathroom," Kurt agrees.
The girls' bathroom, as it turns out, is well-prepared for this. Tina emerges with all sorts of cleaning supplies and Kurt pulls shampoo out of somewhere and they get down to business.
"I could probably just Windex this off your hair if I wanted," Kurt says dryly.
Blaine finds it in him to grin, though his lip aches when he does. "It's dapper."
Kurt smiles faintly and shakes his head. "I suppose it suits you."
"Mike might have an extra t-shirt in his locker," Tina says, sponging fruitlessly at Blaine once-blue polo. "I could go find him?"
"Thank you," Blaine says, genuinely grateful. Tina smiles sweetly and pats his shoulder once before leaving.
"You should go to the nurse," Kurt says absently, wetting a carefully folded square of paper towel and pressing it to Blaine's mouth.
"It's fine," Blaine insists. "It just…bled a lot. It's not like I've never had a split lip before."
Kurt frowns but he doesn't press on that topic. "You shouldn't have done anything, you know. It doesn't help and Azimio is about eight times your size, he could kill you."
Blaine frowns back. "It was an accident. I didn't plan it."
Kurt harrumphs but doesn't say more. He tilts Blaine's head up with one finger on his chin as he cleans away the drying blood. "You have to be careful, Blaine," he says. "Don't lose your temper." He turns Blaine's face from side to side, eyes searching for any stray stains. "I guess you're really one of us now."
Blaine catches Kurt's hand and holds it, both of them feeling the same sadness and resignation. "I guess so."
This is what happens: there is a meeting with Blaine's mother and the boys and Figgins, fraught with drama. The football players insist as one that it was entirely accidental, that Blaine just slipped; other students passing by the scene apparently support this. Blaine pushed first, they say. Slushie-ing is just something that happens to all the new kids, a rite of passage.
They get detention. So does Blaine.
Later that week, during practice, Kurt stands up to sing. Blaine sits up a little in his seat; he hasn't heard Kurt perform a solo since before he left Dalton.
"This is for Blaine," Kurt says, hands clasped. The tiniest of smirks curls the corner of his mouth. "Congratulations on joining the team."
There is a mix of laughter and sympathy from the rest of the room and Tina leans forward to clasp Blaine's shoulders in a friendly gesture. Blaine smiles and ducks his head and then Kurt starts to sing.
And –
Kurt sings and it's a song vaguely familiar but not easy to place immediately. Kurt sings and Rachel gives a little pleased sigh and Blaine –
Blaine looks at Kurt.
Kurt, singing, his eyes closed and voice soft, the room gone silent around him. Kurt in a shiny red blazer with an airplane pinned to one lapel.
Kurt, whose eyes are so very blue when he opens them.
Blaine feels Tina squeeze his shoulder again, hears her say to Mike how sweet. Everyone is looking at Blaine to see how he reacts so he puts on his best smile and says, "That was lovely, Kurt, thank you."
Someone else gets up to sing then, but Blaine isn't paying attention. He's looking at the front of the room but he's hyper-conscious of Kurt sitting beside him.
Blaine's heart is beating in his chest and he keeps thinking how didn't I know how didn't I know how didn't I know – only maybe he's always known, hazy in the back of his mind.
He finds himself touching Kurt's sleeve, the oddly plastic texture of it, and saying again, softly, "That was lovely."
Kurt smiles and drops his hand over Blaine's briefly.
Santana holds her compact up and touches up her brows, hand lightly sweeping the pencil in an arch. Kurt is across the room, allowing Mercedes and Rachel to feed his ego after the song. Santana's eyes slide over to Blaine. "How long?"
"I don't know." Blaine shrugs. He watches Kurt, making sure he isn't paying attention. "Since we met, maybe."
"Nice to hear you admit it, Preps," she says, sounding somewhat more compassionate than she has in the past.
He promised Kurt coffee after they're done with glee, as a proper thank-you for the song. And for being a good friend, Blaine's best friend.
"Do I still have to watch out?" he asks.
"Always." Santana relocates, dropping into the empty chair next to Blaine. "Gotta watch each other's backs," she says.
Santana confuses him, because she bitches about glee club the entire time she's there and insults everyone constantly and once told Blaine she had razorblades hidden in her hair – but then she'll look at him like this, intent underneath her false lashes, and he thinks she's saying she'll watch his back, too.
He nods, first to himself and then nods towards Brittany. "How long?"
Santana follows the line of his gaze and frowns deeply. "Preppy, do not test me."
Blaine laughs a little despite himself. "You're not the only person who can notice stuff."
"No, but I'm the only one who can be sassy and adorable while lording my information over peoples' heads." She rises in a swirl of cheerleading skirt. "Let's remember that for the future, mm?"
Once admitted, Blaine can't get it out of his head. Crush. He has a crush. He has a crush on Kurt. It colors everything, it makes it hard to be around Kurt. Blaine doesn't know what to do and, for once, he doesn't even know how to pretend to know what to do.
Maybe Kurt's crush has passed, he thinks (or hopes, oddly). Blaine can just quietly have a crush on Kurt forever, or until it goes away, or Blaine can sing him a song about sex toys. Whichever comes first.
The problem is he's being weird and, more than that, Kurt notices immediately.
"Blaine," Kurt says, soft-voiced. "I don't want to ask again, but…"
Blaine plays dumb. "But?"
"But…" Kurt peers at him, searching his face. "Do you really just think of me as a friend? Because I thought maybe you were just waiting for the right time, but then…nothing happened. Then I thought I was getting ahead of myself again but Mercedes said she thought you were just being a boy about it. Then you transferred. And there was your song. But…still, nothing. And you've been so strange lately. So…" He's observing Blaine so closely, waiting for a tell-tale flash of emotion or expression. "Should I give up hope here?"
Blaine opens his mouth, hesitates, thinks no and starts, "You're my best friend."
"Right," Kurt says before Blaine can say anything else, however haltingly. "Right." He nods, a quick decisive little motion. "That's all I needed to hear."
"Kurt –"
But Kurt is already offering him that tight smile Blaine has come to know too well and getting up to throw out his lunch tray. He doesn't wait for Blaine.
"Mike wooed me at camp," Tina says brightly.
Blaine looks up from his sheet music, hidden in the pages of his math textbook. "What?"
Mike is nodding along. "I did. Well. Tina wooed me first, actually, only she didn't know she was doing it."
They share a smile. Blaine is bewildered.
"Uh," he says, "Congratulations for you guys?"
"Thank you," Tina says. "But that's not the point. We're trying to think of ways for you to woo Kurt."
"Woo Kurt?" Blaine echoes.
"Yes," she says. "And singing to him is so overdone and you've already done it anyway."
Nervously, Blaine says, "Who said I wanted to woo Kurt?"
They exchange glances. "You like him," Mike says. "Everyone in New Directions knows."
"We talk about it a lot," Tina says. "There's a poll."
"No one's betting anymore though," Mike adds, as though that's a plus. "Well, Puck is."
"I'm not wooing Kurt," Blaine says. "We're just friends."
They both look vaguely disappointed and kind of suspicious. "Well," Tina says after a moment. "If you ever want it, we made a list."
Blaine nods. "I'll keep it in mind."
Blaine has the chance to kiss Kurt a million times.
It's still a strange thought, having coffee or lunch and acting so forcefully normal. Maybe in the past he would have had a passing Kurt looks nice today but now – now it's so different. Now he follows the shapes Kurt's mouth makes when he talks and presses his own lips together, smothers the urge to lean over.
Blaine has the chance to kiss Kurt a million times and he chickens out at every last one.
They're sitting in Kurt's living room, planning his New York outfits and sprucing up some other things, sewing this or that, adding studs where studs are obviously needed.
"So I'm thinking variations on black and gray," Kurt says. "Skyline-inspired with the rare pop of color, a selection of tie clips and at least two hats, but no more than four. What do you think?"
The tiniest smile crosses Kurt's face. He looks pleased, happy, miles and miles away from the boy who cried into his coffee on the day they met.
Blaine is laying his hand on Kurt's before he has time to look away or even think, is leaning up and in. He hears the softest sound of Kurt's intake of breath and then their lips are meeting and Blaine's so nervous and excited and surprised – so many things all at once, things he doesn't have words for, and he just hears silence.
"Oh," Kurt says, as Blaine falls back into his seat. "Oh."
Blaine bites his lip and looks at the table, covered with yards and yards of black faux-fur. "Sorry."
"Sorry?" Kurt repeats, confused.
"I fuck things up," Blaine says. "I – I didn't mean to, t took me so long and then that day in the cafeteria – and Santana has razorblades in her hair and you – "
"You're doing fine so far," Kurt murmurs.
Blaine can't help his smile. "Yeah?"
"Yes." Kurt nods, his cheeks pink and eyes bright. His gaze drops to Blaine's mouth before meeting his eyes again and he says, "Just fine." He tilts his head. "Before, though –"
"I'm not very smart," Blaine says immediately. Kurt laughs, which makes Blaine laugh, and they're both sitting there giddy and awkward, but a nice awkward. A kind of awkward Blaine could get used to, quite frankly.
Blaine and Kurt sit next to each other on the way to New York, still settled right in the middle of that not-unpleasant awkwardness. Every time their elbows brush it makes Blaine grin and they keep interrupting each other.
Kurt smiles at him, really and fully smiles, and Blaine could count on one hand the amount of times Kurt has looked at anyone else like that.
"Blaine," Kurt says, smile widening, "you're blushing."