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Blaine’s a little late at getting to the place where they said they’d meet, a coffee shop that Kurt had suggested a short subway trip away. It had been three weeks since they’d exchanged numbers, and although he had started off with confident hope, with every day since that had passed, Blaine had gotten closer to simply trying to pretend that that evening hadn’t happened. Maybe it was a trick of his memory, maybe a reminder of Kurt Hummel and everything they’d once had together hadn’t whirled into his life again. But when Kurt had called, and suggested getting together, and Blaine had accepted the invitation. He isn’t sure what he’s doing, if he is going to let Kurt back into his life again, if he’s headed back down the rockiest, most painful road that he’s ever known. And yet - he wants to see Kurt again, and that desire combined with curiosity is too strong to resist.
The coffee shop is still decorated for Valentine’s Day two days after the fact, pink and white streamers still hanging from the ceiling, red glittering hearts strung on the walls. It’s cheesy, but despite the hell that his experiences of love have been, he still appreciates the naive hopefulness of it. Still--an odd choice for meeting one’s ex-fiance, and he wonders if Kurt had known or even considered the decorations before hand.
He finds Kurt sitting alone at a table near the corner of the shop. Kurt’s still as breathtakingly beautiful as ever. He’s wearing a beige coat, and a knitted brown scarf. His legs are crossed underneath the table, and he’s staring down at the steaming cup of coffee in front of him. And for a moment, it’s like they’re back at the Lima Bean, and Kurt’s waiting to meet up with Blaine after school. Kurt turns his head and Blaine can finally see him straight on, his eyes are much older now. Kurt smiles when he sees him but his face is more worn. They’re not the kids they used to be.
He pauses for a moment, knowing that he could turn right back around and head out. There’s no obligation here. But it’s Kurt, and his heart has never quite been able to say no.
“I was beginning to think you wouldn’t show up,” Kurt says. He’s antsy, too, drumming his fingers on his coffee cup.
Blaine almost reaches out to him, a soft hand on his shoulder or arm, the way he always used to, but he refrains, and instead reaches up to take off his scarf instead. “Can I be honest? I didn’t expect you to call.”
“Oh,” There’s shock in Kurt’s eyes, but then he softens. “I wanted to earlier, I just...needed some time.”
“Sure,” Blaine says as he slowly sits down.
Kurt pushes a cup of coffee in his direction. “It wasn’t until after I ordered that I realized I have no idea if you take your coffee the same way. Medium drip, with a little bit of cream.”
Blaine can’t help but smile at the gesture. “Thank you, I do. Good taste doesn’t change, Kurt.”
Kurt laughs, unexpectedly, but welcome, and for a second, Blaine lets himself believe that Kurt is happy to be there with him. Then Kurt lets out a sigh as he looks around the room. Blaine’s not sure where to go from here, and it looks like Kurt isn’t either.
“You’d think a few days after Valentine’s day, they’d have taken all the decorations down,” Blaine says. He takes a sip of the coffee. It's rich from just the right amount of cream, and still plenty warm, just exactly how he likes it. There’s some comfort in that.
“I almost asked you to meet on the holiday,” Kurt says. “I completely forgot about Valentine’s Day, and it was the only day I had entirely free, but when I looked at the date, I didn’t want to imply…”
“Of course.”
“I also didn’t want to disrupt any plans you might have had.”
“I didn’t have any plans, Kurt,” Blaine says, a smirk forming across his lips.
Kurt’s lips twitch into a grin, but he’s almost successful in hiding it behind his coffee cup.
Kurt asks Blaine what it’s like being a teacher, and Blaine’s nervousness slowly melts away as he gets swept away in describing the joy of working with his high school kids. It’s challenging - in an inner city school, there are so many things that get in their way - but that makes it all the more rewarding, too, when he knows that his work has helped them. Kurt asks if he’s given up on performing, then, and he explains that when he’s not teaching, he performs in plays that a friend of his puts on in a hole in the wall theater. It’s not a perfect life, but he loves it.
Kurt smiles, happy for him, but there’s something clouded behind his eyes.
“What about you?” Blaine asks. He keeps his hands firmly on his coffee cup. If he didn’t, they’d reach out and hold Kurt’s on their own accord. “How are you?”
“I don’t know,” Kurt admits, shifting uneasily in his chair. “The stuff with Andrew has been hard and all of this going on right before the show takes off has just been--overwhelming.”
“Oh, so then are you guys--”
“We broke up,” Kurt says, definitively, his eyes low so as to not meet Blaine’s. “It wasn’t working, if it ever was. And I guess after you tell someone you don’t want to marry them, it makes it hard to sustain a relationship.”
“I can imagine.”
Kurt looks up at him, shocked, mouth agape, as if he had completely forgotten their past. But it doesn’t sting Blaine like he thought it might have. It’s awkward for a moment, but Blaine quickly recovers.
“So, tell me about this traveling production,” he says. “What show are you doing? Or is it a Kurt Hummel original? Something about the Royals? Tell me you’ve finally resurrected your musical about Pippa Middleton.”
Kurt lets out a snort. “Oh, god no. No. That is something that should stay dead and buried.”
“Hmm, true,” Blaine teases. “Oh, but there was that one song I loved from that one--what did you call it? The Ass Wiggle Jiggle?”
Kurt nearly chokes on his coffee with laughter. “Um, it was the Ass Wiggle Boogie, and I can’t believe you remember that. I can’t believe I wrote that.”
“I do believe I share writing credit on that one, especially since it was about more than Pippa Middleton’s ass.” Blaine says carefully. “And it was a good memory. We’re allowed to hold onto the good ones, right?”
Kurt gives him a fond smile. “I’d like to think so.”
Things get a little easier when Kurt starts describing his show, with an animation Blaine hasn’t yet seen from him. It’s an original musical, he says, whose plot and tone is inspired by Oscar Wilde’s drawing-room satires, but set here and now. Elliott had convinced him to put it together from the initial idea, drawing in a few friends from college and then a few more, and now, after years of struggling, they’re finally about to hit the road with it. He’s nervous, but mostly more excited than he’s ever been.
Then for a while they talk about Rachel and her epic trips to London and the phone calls that both of them get about whirlwind romances and the tabloid reports that Rachel swears she hates but still loves getting. They talk about Sam and Mercedes, how Blaine didn’t see Kurt at the wedding and Kurt feels guilty about not making it, but he’s glad that at least he has gotten to meet their two adorable children. Blaine shows him the pictures on his phone that Sam sent him last week, tells him stories about playing superheroes with them and being called Uncle Blaine, and tries not to feel anything about the fact that he’s sitting here talking about children with Kurt again. They talk about plays they’ve both seen, about the music that’s come out in the years since they’ve been apart, about fashion, about celebrities, and hours slip by seamlessly, without any snags where Blaine might be able to pause and redirect the conversation.
Because they always edge around the topic that sits squarely in between them, that brought them back together in the first place. It nags at Blaine, until in the middle of a discussion of Brangelina’s oldest son’s wedding, he takes a deep breath and launches into the conversation that they’ve been avoiding.
“I’m sorry for snapping at you,” Blaine says, finally. “Back in the auditorium.” They’re nearly alone in the shop now, but Blaine feels too warm, too crowded, as if a hundred eyes are staring at him. “I had a thousand ways I imagined seeing you again, and that wasn’t… It wasn’t supposed to go like that.”
“I shouldn’t have dumped all that on you,” Kurt replies. “I was just trying to figure things out, I’m still trying to figure things out and I just got…”
“Single-minded?”
“Yeah.”
“Kurt, what are we doing?” Blaine asks. His heart is racing, his palms are sweating, and he's not sure how Kurt is going to answer, or even what he wants to hear. Because he wants to keep Kurt in his life, he knows that more than ever now that they’ve met again by surprise, and the almost magical connection that he’s always felt is somehow still present between them. But it also feels so much like before that he’s not sure if it’s possible to hold everything that he feels in anything less than a relationship that will end up becoming the most important thing in his life.
There’s a long silence as Kurt contemplates, and Blaine watches his face, content in any case for a minute simply to be able to. “I would like us to be friends,” he says.
“Do you really think that could work?”
“We've done it before.”
“Kurt, I don’t think we’ve ever really been friends.”
Kurt looks at him with genuine surprise. “Oh. I guess. I’d like to have you in my life again. I’d like to try.”
“Maybe,” Blaine replies. He’s conflicted, he wants to try but with no more assurance than this he’s not sure if he can take the risk of Kurt leaving again. And he knows that he’s always wanted to give Kurt what he wants, making choices and compromises that he couldn’t sustain. But still… Kurt’s been sitting across from him for the past - three? four? hours, smiling and laughing and it’s been easy and good and Blaine thinks that maybe after all he can just enjoy this too. He doesn’t want to give it up, at any rate. “If we take it slow. And careful,” he says.
“Of course.” Kurt reaches across the table to grab his hand, and squeezes it.
And for a moment, Blaine wants to believe that almost anything’s possible.
---
When he had said it, he didn’t know what it had meant—wanting Blaine back in his life again. An abstract thought when it had come out of his mouth. But now that Blaine is back in his life, it’s somewhat unbelievable that he has spent as long as he had without him. Kurt’s happy. Undeniably happy, and he can’t remember the last time he had felt quite this way.
It’s not that he was unhappy before. He has his career, his good friends, his dad, who is doing well. But somewhere along the line, everything had begun to feel routine. In the past few weeks everything has become much more unstable--and he isn’t sure what to think of it. But he knows that he’s happy, and that’s what scares him the most.
They’ve been out three times since they met in the coffee shop. The first time to a dinner and a movie, not a date he had told Blaine firmly, just an outing to catch the film version of Wicked, which wasn’t as nearly as good as they’d hope it would be, but that didn’t stop them from belting out the soundtrack as they walked home.
The second time was to a hole-in-the-wall piano bar Blaine knew. Kurt spent the early part of the evening glued to the bar as he watched Blaine belt out numbers from Cabaret and Showboat with a dozen other guys. Kurt couldn’t keep his eyes off Blaine as he exuded all charisma, charm, and energy. And Blaine would sneak looks back to him, his eyes bright and eager, watching him carefully even amidst all the attention he was getting from the other men. After three glasses of wine, Blaine was finally able to pull Kurt up to the piano, where he proceeded to sing half the numbers from Gypsy to an adoring audience. Kurt couldn’t remember the last time he just let loose and had fun like that.
The third time, this time, a benefit concert for a children’s organization Blaine knew from work, hosted by a delightful drag queen, and included numbers sung by a children’s choir. One of the little boys dressed exactly like Blaine used to---bowties and gelled hair and a sweater vest---giving him the fondest of memories. Not to Kurt’s surprise, but Blaine later mentions he’s one of the kids he gives vocal lessons to.
They’re on the way home from the concert, riding the cramped subway, shoved in-between a guy with dreadlocks nodding his head along to the music from his headphones, and an elderly woman knitting. Normally, Kurt would feel too confined being smashed against people, but he doesn’t feel like that now. There’s something a electric about being so close to Blaine--their knees bumping, their arms brushing against each other, Kurt can feel Blaine everywhere. And it would be easy enough for Kurt to rest his head on Blaine’s shoulder, god knows he’s tired enough, and there’s something comforting at the thought of curling into Blaine, but he doesn’t. He isn’t sure what that impulse means.
It’s been almost like a fantasy with Blaine these past few weeks, a break from the stresses of the show, from the messiness of his breakup with Andrew, from the heaviness of his life. Was it ever this easy before, he wonders.
Blaine nudges him slightly, and silently directs his attention to across the aisle, where two young girls are sitting. They remind Kurt a little of Santana and Brittany, the way they used to flirt and cuddle in the back of the choir room all those years ago. They hold each other close, while staring at each other adoringly. They’re so in love with each other they don’t even notice Kurt watching them. His heart aches. He misses that feeling.
He turns his head to see that Blaine is staring at him, intensely and sure. Kurt knows that look, had long forgotten the familiar pull of it. His heart begins to race, his head spins, and it would be so easy to get lost in it. But something in his brain pulls him back. It’s too fast. Too easy to fall into something. He isn’t sure what to think.
Blaine turns away, and deliberately doesn’t look at Kurt for the rest of the ride. That doesn’t stop Kurt from brushing his knuckles against Blaine’s fingers, testing, enjoying the light contact, until Blaine wraps his hand around Kurt’s, safe and warm and content until the reach Kurt’s stop.
When Kurt gets up, pulling away from Blaine slowly, it’s like being doused with icy water. He wants to ask Blaine to come with him, to continue the evening, go out for coffee or back to his apartment. The want is strong. He pushes away his heart with his logical brain. It would be too fast, and he’s beginning not to trust himself when it comes to these outings.
Still, as they say goodbye, both careful when they hug that it’s not too tight, they make plans for sometime soon. And Kurt spends his walk home feeling like sometime soon can’t come quickly enough.
----
The first time Blaine visits Kurt’s apartment is the night before Kurt leaves for his tour. It’s achingly familiar. Kurt still has the same decor, the same furniture, even some of the same throw pillows. It’s like stepping backwards in time. He’s almost sure that if he goes into the kitchen, he could find the kitchen utensils without being told. It’s bizarre and comforting at the same time. Still, there’s evidence of a newer life; new pictures of people he doesn’t know, new books and magazines on the old bookshelves, and a collection of plants in the bay window, gardening being a hobby Kurt had picked up in the last few years. Blaine’s mesmerized, not able to help looking around, wanting to ask questions about everything, but he lets Kurt set the pace.
He gets to be in Kurt’s personal space again. He can’t keep out just how thrilled that makes him. It’s a privilege, he knows. It means something. Kurt gives him a nearly full tour, welcoming and excited as he shows Blaine around. A full tour except for the bedroom. It’s a mess due to the packing, Kurt explains as he shuts the door. But there’s something else that Kurt doesn’t say. Blaine gets it.
Over the course of the past month, their planned once a week activities quickly snowballed into daily when possible. They often shared meals together when their schedules allowed; texted or Skyped when they couldn’t see each other during the day; fell into a routine of being in each other’s lives again. What had once been so long forgotten was normal again without pause or thought. They were them. It seemed to work.
The unspoken rule, however, had been that they didn’t invite each other over. Neither had initiated it. Maybe they were both waiting for the other to take the first step, maybe they were both holding firm on this idea of friendship that they didn’t want to break, maybe the invitation to the other one’s personal space implied that this was going somewhere more than friendship.
Blaine didn’t know what to think, nor did he want to disrupt the delicate balance they constructed. He had spent a long time finally getting comfortable without Kurt in his life. He had been doing okay. But now that Kurt’s back in his life? He isn’t ready to let that go so easily. A slow pace was fine, being friends---more than he could have hoped for, just catching up on the five years they had missed seemed like enough. And then Kurt had asked him over for dinner the night before the tour.
Kurt had broken the rule. And suddenly, Blaine began to wonder what other unspoken rules would soon be shattered.
They have dinner, and wine, and light chatter mostly about Kurt’s tour, and how he feels unprepared even if everything is prepared. Blaine listens intently but can’t keep his eyes off Kurt, how he still has the same adorable, dorky laugh, how his eyes light up when he talks about something he’s passionate about something, just how gorgeous he’s gotten in the past five years. The urge to take it past friendship begins to grow, and Blaine finds it harder to fight. How easy would it be, just to lean in a few more inches, and kiss him. Would he taste the same? Would it be better?
Blaine fiddles with the napkin in his lap, thinking it’s just the wine talking, and tries hard to focus on Kurt’s words. If Kurt notices Blaine acting oddly, he doesn’t show it. He’s as animated as ever as he chatters away, smiley and giddy with anxiousness, and always drawing Blaine’s attention back to him.
Afterwards, they’re drinking the last of the bottle of wine Blaine had brought while finishing the dishes.
“There’s something I wanted to ask you,” Kurt says as Blaine rinses off the last plate and puts it in the drainer. Blaine isn’t sure what it could be about, and looks at him curiously as Kurt fishes in his pocket. “I was wondering if you minded watching my apartment for me while I was gone. Nothing too strenuous, just making sure the plants stay alive, get the mail, dust, things like that.”
He pulls out a silver key and slides across the counter to Blaine.
Blaine’s a little blindsided by the gesture. “Yes, sure, of course I will.”
“I could pay you…”
“No, god, no. It’s not a problem.”
Kurt gives him a relieved look when Blaine picks up the key.
Blaine stares at it for a moment, almost hypnotized. He’s been let back into Kurt’s world. Something shifts between them.
“So, four months.” Blaine leans against the counter, not helping but pass the key between his fingers. He should put it in his pocket. He doesn’t. “That’s a long time to live out of a bus.”
“It’ll be fine,” Kurt says, surely, swirling the wine in his glass as he sets down the drying towel. “If I have to kill a few people along the way, it’ll still be worth it.” He laughs as he downs the rest of the wine and sets the glass on the counter. “And besides, four months doesn’t seem as long as it used to be, you know?”
“Not like five years, right?” A smirk twitches on Blaine’s lips as Kurt’s eyes go wide.
Kurt then looks down, pushing at his empty glass lightly. “I can’t believe that much time had passed. I can’t believe I spent so much time without you. I--” He stops, blushing slightly as he thinks about it. “I’m going to miss talking to you every day.”
“Me, too.” Blaine knows they’ll try to talk every day, but it’ll be different. He’s not ready to let go, even if it’s only for a short while. He nervously begins to tap the key on the counter. “Hey, Kurt?” he says, a lump forming in his throat because he knows what he’s going to ask is hard but he has to anyway. “You and I. Have you noticed how not awkward this is? How it feels, I don’t know---”
“Feels like what?” Kurt’s eyes are wide and deep ocean-blue and wondering.
“Doesn’t it all seem a little too easy to you?”
Kurt looks down, smiling. “You say that like it’s a bad thing.”
Blaine stares down at the key intently, not able to bring himself up to Kurt’s gaze. “I’ve been wondering, been thinking maybe that we should...we could try us again?”
Kurt leans against the counter, folding his arms across his chest. Blaine’s heart races in the moment it takes Kurt to speak. “I’d be lying if I said the thought hadn’t crossed my mind...more than once.”
“And.”
Kurt gives him a worried look that ties his stomach in knots. “It’s so fast Blaine. What if something happened? What if it didn’t work? I just found you again, I don’t want to lose you.”
“I don’t want to lose you either,” Blaine says. He takes a step forward, closing the gap between them, and uses his free hand to clasp onto one of Kurt’s. “I know it’s fast, and I know we really screwed it up last time, but here we are again and I don’t want to waste time wondering if we’re ready or not when it feels right. It feels right to you, doesn’t it?”
“It always has,” Kurt replies quietly.
“So?”
Kurt laces his fingers with Blaine’s. Then looks directly as Blaine as he speaks. “I’m leaving for my job for four months. There are so many things going on right now that this is somewhat overwhelming.”
Blaine doesn’t respond as he feels his heart dropping.
“Blaine,” Kurt holds Blaine’s hand in both of his and puts it to his heart, then smiles. “This is not a no. This is ask me again in four months.”
“Okay,” Blaine grins. His mind is spinning. He wants to fall into Kurt, hold him, touch him, but tries restraint. “I should probably get going then.”
“You don’t have to,” Kurt says, as their hands slowly come apart.
“I do,” Blaine nods. “Because if I stay, I’ll want to kiss you. And if I kiss you I won’t want to stop.”
Kurt gives him a smirk, and takes a step closer, close enough that Blaine can feel Kurt’s warm breath on his skin. He knows that look in Kurt’s eyes, full of want, of need. Blaine is right there with him. But Kurt is right, though. It’s a lot to be placed on four months apart. Pressure they don’t need. Besides, slow has been working for them. Still, it takes all of Blaine’s resolve to break away.
“Okay,” Kurt says, a little choked. “Hey, Blaine?”
“Yeah?”
“I’d let you, you know.”
Blaine’s heart soars. “I know.”