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It’s a hard thing, being in love with Blaine Anderson.
Kurt’s skin tingles at the thought of it — he is in love with Blaine. As uncertain as he is with every other aspect of the situation, he at least knows that much. He’s never felt as much as he does for Blaine, the affection has never engaged with every part of his heart like this before.
(Though he might be willfully blocking out the natures of how he felt for Finn way (way, way) back when. And the short lived idea that was Sam. Way back when.)
The point is that nothing compares. Nothing he’s ever experienced has felt like this, like something has opened his chest like double doors and said It’s all been here, waiting on you. He’s been waiting for this feeling for what’s felt like so long.
In ways, this impossible feeling feels like almost enough. This love, this crush, it’s a live wire. There is electricity pumping through it, and it lives in the sheer fact that ‘yes’ is finally an option. Kurt’s been waiting on that yes for a while. Waiting with a wanting heart in his hands, waiting so hard that the potential alone already feels like a soaring victory.
Being in love with Blaine Anderson is a hard thing. Primarily because he can be so blind to what Kurt wants him to see.
*
They talk on the phone for an hour on Christmas evening. It would’ve gone longer, but Blaine sounded tired and he still has dinner with his extended family to attend.
“Christmas is sort of an all-day affair with us,” he says. Kurt can hear the rueful smile tugged at the corner of Blaine’s mouth in his words.
Kurt sighs. “Well, if you insist, then fine. You may go. Just remember, I’m expecting you here at one tomorrow and no later. For every half hour you’re late, I’ll withhold a present.”
The laugh Blaine gives makes Kurt’s ear burn, his heart throbbing at the sunshine in it.
“Exactly how many presents did you get me?”
“Hmm. That sounds like information you’ll figure out firsthand, if you show up on time,” Kurt replies, squeezing his phone in his damp palm. It still makes him nervous, seeming too playful, but Blaine only laughs again and the smile on Kurt’s face widens that much more.
“Of course! I know how punctual you are. Since when have I ever been late to anything anyway?”
“I can think of a couple of instances.” The chain of events leading to their meeting, for one. Not that Kurt would change a thing about that moment.
Blaine hums, a rumbley sound that makes Kurt giggle behind his hand, before he hedges on a goodbye, like he’s waiting on an official dismissal from Kurt. It makes him happy to think Blaine would stay unless Kurt said otherwise.
Grinning into the quiet of his room, Kurt feels invigorated by the conversation. They spoke of nothing consequential, disappointing a dreamier part of Kurt’s brain that lets himself believe things are easier when they aren’t said face to face; the barest hint of a confession in Blaine’s voice always makes his heart clamor and thud in his chest, dizzy with the harried thought of a sudden declaration of love.
But it did give Kurt new life to hear that Blaine’s partner in his Kings’ Island show paled significantly in comparison to their own impromptu duet a week previous, even if it was only by Blaine’s own judgment. In fact, that’s the only judgment Kurt cares about on the matter of how well they go together.
It’s that line of thought that slows Kurt’s momentum, makes his heart pause with the inevitable ‘oh’.
Blaine’s judgment is the last thing he knows when it comes to their togetherness. Their friendship is a definite — their best-friendship, even — but anything beyond is resolutely unclear.
Blaine is touchy. That’s a fact that Kurt clings to. It’s a jolting fact, one that he still isn’t quite used to — not so frequently, not to second nature and normalized, not from a boy most of all — but it stands so strongly in his mind. Kurt is familiar with linked arms and gentle hugs, as much as he is familiar with rough tugs to the arm or aggressive shoulder-checks, and Blaine’s touches somehow fall in the middle of soft and solid. A hand grabbing his with the intent to lead, the intent to comfort and guide, or a squeeze on the shoulder that gives Kurt a start before it bleeds warmth into the rest of his body. They’re in-the-middle touches that he doesn’t know what to do with.
Is Blaine really that tactile, or is he just that way with him? The hand-holding thing, Kurt noticed quickly, is a rare thing for Blaine to just do. Kurt doesn’t know what it means, that it is a specific action geared toward him, especially when hand-holding can be… coupley.
Hand-holding means a lot to Kurt, but he doesn’t know what it means to Blaine. And yet, Kurt’s not inclined to say it means nothing to him either.
Kurt huffs a sigh, shoves himself up and off the bed to start on his moisturizing routine. He’s snapping his headband onto his head when he remembers something Mercedes had told him a couple of weeks ago: that nothing about Blaine would be clear until Kurt speaks up.
“The boy can’t read your mind, Kurt,” she’d said. “He won’t know how you feel until you say it, and you won’t know what he’s feeling until you open that conversation up.”
It’s sound advice, something that Kurt would say with the conviction that no one option existed.
It still makes his breath shudder out of him, with how much he fears that conversation won’t end how it does in his head.
*
Kurt thinks about kissing Blaine a lot. For a while, he didn’t think about kissing at all, didn’t like the memories it brought up. The memories still come, involuntarily and with a rude persistence, but their signficance has dwindled with time.
The thought of a good kiss with Blaine is a much better use of his brain power, anyway.
He wonders what sort of kisser Blaine would be. He figures he would be the sort to pull him close and keep him near.
It’s these thoughts that keep him up, these bedtime daydreams that keep his eyes alert even as he screws them shut tighter. It’s most certainly inappropriate to think of so much, but as Mercedes said, Blaine isn’t a mind reader.
His thoughts rarely stray beyond kissing, though; Kurt has his limits, and he would rather not blush every time he looks at Blaine.
He mostly just focuses on the moment, the lead up, the strum of the air before a dramatic, much-wanted meeting of lips. He wonders as he falls asleep if it’s something he can have for himself.
*
There are several pages in his notebooks dedicated to Blaine. Nothing thought-provoking or verbose. Just lines and lines of hearts and stars and the mantra of Blaine Blaine Blaine Blaine in red ink.
*
“I’d like to make a verbal agreement before we begin.”
Kurt raises an eyebrow. “Is that so?”
Blaine nods, says, “Kurt Hummel must act like he loves Blaine Anderson’s gift to him, even if he hates it.”
A laugh shocks out of him, continues as Blaine’s own lips stretch into a smile, even through his bite on his bottom lip.
“I must love it?” Kurt asks, still settling down. “That’s a pretty tall order.”
“Must act like you love it, there’s a difference.”
“So what if I really do love it. How will you know if I’m being honest or not?”
Blaine’s eyes look off to a corner, in exaggerated thought.
“Then I guess we’ll just see how well I know you by now,” Blaine replies after a moment.
Kurt scoffs as he pulls the gift back over to him.
“It’s only one present by the way,” Blaine adds. “Try not to be too disappointed.”
“Why should I only pick one if everything I chose was perfect?” Kurt asks, plucking the card perched on top, balanced with the artfully arranged tissue paper.
“It just seems excessive,” Blaine says, and Kurt looks up to see him staring at his pile of (only) five gifts that Kurt given him. “But I appreciate them all nonetheless.”
“You’re welcome,” Kurt replies with a grin before he opens the envelope. His heart races a little with the anticipation of what could be written in the card, possibly a note from Blaine saying all the things Kurt wants to hear. He tunes himself to Blaine’s body language, makes himself sensitive to anything that might read as nerves.
In the end, there’s nothing more than the generic message printed inside with Blaine’s name and a smiley face in dark inked relief against the snow white cardstock.
His heart sinks a little as he sets the card aside, only to shoot up again into his throat when he parts the tissue paper and pulls out what’s inside the bag.
It’s a picture frame, black with smooth, think lines, holding a picture of the two of them. The memory taking the picture sparks in his brain even though the moment hadn’t been anything eventful; he can see the blur of Dalton uniforms in stilled movement, Warblers practicing dance moves, and the way Blaine’s shoulder bunches as he holds his arm out to take the picture. He’d taken it on his phone while they’d been waiting on the start of a morning meeting.
There’d been nothing particularly special beyond the warmth of Blaine’s side against his and the note of how good they looked once they saw the picture, no redo needed. They’d even high-fived over that.
Kurt looks up at Blaine, eyes wide, to find him staring back, rubbing his right thumb against his left wrist.
“Do you like it?” Blaine asks. There is nervousness there, Kurt can hear it, but he’s too thrown to decipher what it means.
“Of course I do,” Kurt replies, holding the frame closer. “I’m just surprised by the picture. I forgot we’d taken it, to be honest.”
Blaine blinks, shrugs a little too stiltedly to be casual. “It’s a nice picture. Plus the only one you have of me is that god-awful school photo-“
“I like that photo,” Kurt says, cheeks blazing now.
“I’m not even smiling it in,” Blaine laughs. “But now you have one of us together. And that’s always better, isn’t it?”
He punctuates his question with a wink, and Kurt feels the smile stutter and spread clumsily on his lips, like a confession all its own of ‘I’m awkward and you’re gorgeous’.
“Of course,” Kurt says, and even behind the face-numbing joy, the confusion swirls and swirls.
*
What’s hardest is the brick wall that always seems to come with every new corner. Even when he feels like he’s gaining something, a new insight into what Blaine feels toward him, he’s met with the reality that unless he says something, they will never be anything more than friends.
It’s the fear that stops him. For all his heart soars when he thinks about the world of possibilities opened when he finally decided to like someone of a compatible orientation, he’s constantly lagged by the potential of a no. The no still exists, and it’s what Kurt has come to expect.
It doesn’t imped his optimism or his private claim over him. Blaine chooses to hold his hand, no one else’s, and that means something to Kurt.
Still, it’s safer this way. His hope is hopelessly capped, but loving from afar has its merits. It saves face, for one. But it also allows him to pick his moment careful, to gather up Blaine’s actions and cues rather than running in with his heart like a bomb, ready to explode without asking if it’s okay to take that liberty.
It’s safer to love this way, even if it makes it all the more difficult. With any of the luck Kurt hasn’t had so far, it will pay off in the end with a love as easy as falling asleep.