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‘Okay, let’s start again, but this time – ‘
‘Turn on the fourth beat, yeah Blaine, I heard you the first dozen times – ‘
Blaine sighs and flumps down onto the carpet beside the boom box. ‘I don’t think this is working.’
Kurt sits down carefully opposite him. ‘Doing a duet together?’
‘What? No. I just meant – I mean, how do you even choreograph to a song like this?’ Blaine asks.
Kurt tilts his head. ‘Mike could probably do it.’
‘Mike’s not here,’ Blaine sighs. ‘Do you think the others will be choreographing their numbers?’
Kurt gives him a Look. ‘Blaine, it’s a farewell party to a house. I’d be surprised if anyone even practiced beforehand at all.’
‘Oh.’
Kurt shifts forward a little bit, closer to Blaine. He looks as though he wants to reach out a hand, touch Blaine’s fingers, but his hands stay firmly in his lap. ‘Are you okay?’ he asks. ‘You’ve been – I don’t know, tetchy I guess.’ He bites his lip. ‘Did I do something?’
Blaine looks at him sharply. ‘Of course not. I’m just – distracted I guess.’
‘Maybe we should take a break,’ Kurt suggests. ‘We could go make some food or something? I’m starving.’
‘Sure,’ Blaine says absently, and stands up to head out of the room. ‘Sounds good.’
Outside of Blaine’s room, his parents’ house looks the same as it always has done – expensive, large and empty. Blaine doesn’t quite know how he feels about being here with Kurt. Awkward. Intrusive, maybe. This house belongs to a period of his life in the past, and being here feels oddly like forcing open a door that was intended to remain closed. The entire space is a Pandora’s Box of all the memories that he and Kurt share. And memories they’re going to remain, he tells himself sharply. The past is the past.
‘So, you’re sure that your parents are cool with us using this space to practice?’ Kurt asks, wandering into the kitchen after Blaine.
‘Sure,’ Blaine says. ‘It’s bigger than either of our places and – ‘
And Dave won’t be around to interrupt.
He knows that Kurt is beginning to get frustrated with him. All afternoon he’s been behaving strangely; he’s been watching himself and squirming inside with embarrassment but he just can’t seem to help himself, because – because this is Kurt. This is Kurt, who he’s alone with for the first time since the elevator, and he can’t seem to stop staring at his lips, and his whole body is still hot from when he and Kurt were trying to work out choreo and he was close enough to Kurt to smell his aftershave, and –
Blaine wants to kiss him so badly.
‘So!’ Blaine says abruptly, slapping his hands down on the kitchen island. ‘What are you in the mood for? Nachos? Or maybe pancakes? Or we could do both, I don’t mind – ‘
‘Anything’s fine,’ Kurt says slowly, lowering himself onto one of the stools on the other side of the island.
Blaine nods jerkily and starts pulling out ingredients for nachos. They have left over guacamole in the fridge, right? He’s pretty sure they have leftover in the fridge.
He hears Kurt sigh quietly behind him, but he doesn’t turn around. If he does then he’ll say something stupid like, When my boyfriend lies in bed beside me at night, all I can think about is you.
Please don’t say anything stupid, Blaine.
‘Do you remember when we made soufflé here?’ Kurt asks suddenly. When Blaine turns to look at him, he’s looking around the kitchen with a tiny, fond smile on his face.
‘Yeah,’ he says. ‘Real early on, right? For – ‘
‘Our first month anniversary,’ Kurt finishes for him. He laughs suddenly. ‘It was a disaster. Even worse than the ones I tried with dad.’
‘It tasted like soot,’ Blaine says, wrinkling his nose.
Kurt grins. ‘I was so excited to be cooking with you that I forgot to take it out of the oven on time.’
Blaine remembers those times. He remembers how bright everything had felt back then, like the world had been pushed into oversaturation, vivid as an oil painting. He doesn’t know when exactly things started to change, and shadowy tendrils began to push at the edge of their relationship. He misses the times when he was able to look at Kurt, sitting in the very same spot as he had three years ago, and feel nothing more excitement and eagerness. When he looks at Kurt now, he feels a confused, longing ache for him that he can’t seem to shift.
Kurt sighs and drags a finger in circles over the smooth gloss of the island. Blaine starts and realises that he’s holding his bag of corn chips suspended in mid-air, and – god dammit, he’s been staring at Kurt again.
‘This house has a lot of memories,’ Kurt murmurs to the bench.
Blaine smiles a little. Outside, there’s a hammock that the two of them had slept in for hours on one lazy spring afternoon. In the living room, there’s a tiny dent in the floorboards from when they’d knocked a vase over during a particularly vigorous make out session. He can’t even look at the dining table without remembering all the stiff family dinners they’d managed to endure by playing footsie under the table. The history of their relationship lives in the bones of this house, like the spread of ivy rooted in brick. When he’d first come back to Lima, being in his parents’ house had been almost unbearable. Now, it’s almost comforting.
God, he misses when things were simple.
Kurt clears his throat suddenly and Blaine jumps. ‘We should, um – ‘ Kurt takes a deep breath. ‘We should eat our food and then get back to practicing, don’t you think?’
They’ve already got their harmonies down pat and honestly, with the way it was working out before, there’s probably not going to be any choreography to work on. If he wanted to, Kurt could leave right now.
He desperately doesn’t want Kurt to leave yet.
‘Stay for dinner,’ he finds himself saying. ‘There’s a Project Runway marathon I was hoping to catch and I can’t deny that I’ve missed your commentary.’
Kurt looks up at him, and for a moment it seems like that unbearable, unnatural awkwardness from before might creep back in. Then he smiles, a smile that makes his eyes crinkle at the edges and for a moment Blaine can’t even breathe. ‘I’d love to.’
In the end, the spend exactly twenty five minutes preparing for their duet, and over three hours lounging on the couch, trading comments back and forth about the more awful designs on Project Runway. It feels as though they’re in high school again, without the drama or any of the history attached, just as in sync as they always had been in their best moments.
Blaine isn’t fooling himself anymore, isn’t even trying. This thing with Kurt, this thing that they say doesn’t mean anything, is more precious to him than anything that he’s ever shared with Dave. Blaine has barely talked to Dave in a week, doesn’t even know how to look him in the eye anymore – it feels as though being in a relationship with him is a lie. And Blaine... Blaine can’t stop wanting to kiss Kurt every time he laughs. It’s confusing, and it hurts, and it’s exhilarating all at once, and he just doesn’t know what to do about any of it.
He says goodbye to Kurt late that night, and though he tries to stay friendly about it, he can't help but pull Kurt close. His heartbeat is a comforting, grounding thud against Blaine's chest. Blaine never wants to let him go.
Sometimes, Blaine still swears to himself that he’ll never go back to Kurt. The wounds are healed but the scars remain, and if the memories of their good times are bright like sunlight, the bad times are just as dark. Sometimes, he doesn’t think he’ll ever be able to risk it again.
And sometimes, Blaine thinks he would risk a thousand years of messy, jagged heartbreak for one more moment of Kurt’s lovely smile.
These days, one side seems a lot more prominent than the other.