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Fic: to boldly go [2/2]
Title: to boldly go [2/2]
Fandom: Glee/Star Trek
Rating: PG-13
Characters: Blaine Anderson/Kurt Hummel; blink-and-you'll-miss-them cameos from various Warblers, Rachel Berry, Santana Lopez, and Jacob Ben Israel
Summary: Blaine Anderson is in the Starfleet Academy command track when he meets fellow cadet Kurt Hummel.
Count: ~12,260 words total; 6500 in this part
Notes:![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
preromantics put out the call on Tumblr for Blaine in a cadet uniform. I started writing a drabble and this ... happened! A magical human being whose LJ name I am unaware of miryak drew fanart that I love! And then yo_mawari did too! They're both a little spoilery for this part, and are thoroughly delightful!
* * *
At lunch, Jeff jokes that Kurt must have eyes in the back of his head, after Kurt makes a quick-witted quip about Blaine silently laughing behind his back. Kurt doesn't even skip a beat in response. He says, “No, just the ability to sense strong emotions,” and as a few of the others at the table begin to stare at him, he lightly buffs his nails against his wrist, “so whoever decided that it would be the height of hilarity to slather my doorpad in toothpaste should probably start preparing his or her apologies.”
It takes some further conversation to clarify that Kurt wasn't kidding about the empath part, and Blaine isn't sure who he cares for more in this moment: the cadets who started out as Blaine's friends but are now Kurt's, too, who ask a few interested questions but otherwise don't bat an eyelash, or Kurt, whose jaw is set tight with nerves but who is smiling and laughing all the same.
Somehow, Kurt is there right when Blaine needs him. He swears that it isn’t a telepathy thing; just good timing.
Or maybe bad timing, Blaine suggests morosely, and Kurt shakes his head and rests a hand on his shoulder, which somehow becomes a really amazing hug that Blaine tells himself is a hug but is mostly Kurt curling around him while they both stand up.
Talking to his father is the worst. Blaine can always hear the disappointment in his voice and see it in every resigned face that he makes. Nothing is ever good enough; nothing will ever be good enough. He would never say it out loud — that wouldn’t be proper — but they both know it’s all that he’s thinking. Normally, Blaine finishes a talk with his father and he goes to box in the fitness facilities or he pulls a pillow over his head and listens to angry-sounding Klingon music (which, for all he knows, are a bunch of love ballads), and it’s juvenile, but it helps.
But today, Kurt happened to walk in just after Blaine closed the channel, and Kurt — Kurt holds onto him and rubs tiny circles into his back, and all of a sudden, it’s like a – Blaine can’t put words to it, because there were no words in it; it was a tidal wave of sudden emotion, caring and desperate reassurance and warmth. It’s completely foreign and a little scary, and way too intense to be some sudden swell of his own personal feelings. It’s trying to tell him that everything is going to be okay.
And it somehow, without a face or voice or anything even remotely identifiable, feels like Kurt.
“Whoa,” Blaine says, awed, drawing back.
Kurt holds him at arms' length and flatly stares at him like he has gone off the deep end. “--What?”
“You didn't – that wasn't out loud. Did that just happen?”
He blinks for several seconds, and then his mouth drops open. “Oh,” Kurt says. “Apparently it did!” He clicks his tongue, winks, and points finger-phasers at Blaine, in a clear sign that he’s uncomfortable and trying to make a joke so that they can stop talking about this.
“I thought you couldn't project stuff.”
“I can't.” The admittance is like pulling teeth. “Not to most people.”
“Most people?” Blaine asks.
“Sometimes,” Kurt says, and he looks so thoroughly miserable that Blaine wants to stop him right there, even though he has no idea what's going on, “even weak empaths can communicate telepathically with – people they're close to.”
Blaine isn't understanding why he looks like someone has just stolen his puppy; not even a little bit. “Kurt, that's fantastic,” he says, and he gives Kurt a light nudge to the ribs, teasing. “You and Rechela are always saying you guys wish you could talk without being noticed during botany, right?”
“I'm … not talking about Rechela, Blaine,” Kurt says, looking right at him with those dark eyes, and Blaine abruptly gets it.
“—Oh,” Blaine says, deeply startled, feeling like he’s been struck; “Kurt, I—” And he’s lost for words, but he doesn’t need them; not when Kurt can doubtless feel his spike of surprised, confused, uncertain fear. Sure, Kurt initially caught Blaine’s eye across a crowded room because he was gorgeous, and yes, Blaine absolutely loves Kurt – but is he in love with him? Can he do that? Can he face the idea of eventually breaking up with Kurt and not having him in his life anymore? He needs Kurt in a way that is suddenly dizzying and terrifying, but maybe still not enough.
Kurt smiles at him, sad and quiet and resigned, and Blaine’s heart clenches. Kurt is getting much, much better at sensing Blaine’s emotions instead of drawing them into himself and inadvertently suffering through them, too.
Blaine shouldn’t hug him again; it’s sending mixed messages. But he needs to do something to try to tell Kurt how much he cares, even if he isn’t sure if it’s in the way that Kurt wants him to care, and it feels good to be wrapped up in Kurt’s arms and let someone else take care of things for a change.
Just for a little while.
Things should be awkward after that. Kurt all but admitted something that Blaine doesn’t even want to acknowledge, because the depth of it scares him, and Blaine – Blaine let him down. Blaine didn’t even get a full sentence out of his mouth. Blaine looked up Betazoid empathy again. He got about two and a quarter words into the rough translation of imzadi (“first true l—”) and only a little deeper into why it’s relevant (“weaker telepaths have been known to be able to communicate, primarily through crude telepathic images and feelings, with those with whom they share a special connection, particularly im—”) before he had a borderline panic attack and flung his PADD away.
And that’s the thing about Kurt — more than anyone, he’s aware of how much of Blaine’s charm and self-assuredness is a front, but he doesn’t seem to mind. He cares about Blaine anyway.
Still, it should, by all rights, be incredibly weird.
But somehow, life goes on as normal. They laugh and joke and tell each other stories, and Kurt swears at his botany coursework while Blaine tries to help, and they attend theaters and dance at an absurd club in the Castro with Rechela, and Kurt delights in criticizing Blaine’s non-uniform wardrobe. They go to Kurt's top three vintage stores on Sunday afternoons to search through the new arrival items, and Blaine introduces him to his favorite video-karaoke bar in Little Osaka, where Kurt blows him away with a stunning countertenor singing voice. Half of their friends think they’re going to date and the other half think they’ve already added their names to the academy’s truly impressive list of hook-ups, Blaine is pretty sure, but no one asks and so neither does Blaine.
And maybe life would have stayed that way, if it weren't for the Kobayashi Maru.
“Really?” Kurt asks, wrinkling his nose at him under the umbrella that they're sharing.
“What, you don't want to be part of my crew?” Blaine mock-pouts at him; he's about to widen his eyes and try to lay his head on Kurt's shoulder while they're walking, but Kurt laughs and pushes his arm. Blaine nearly goes out from under the shared umbrella and into the rain.
“I don't have a problem with being part of your crew,” Kurt says patiently; “I just think you might want to pick a chief engineer who isn't already infamous for being an integral part of an effort that almost beat the simulation last year. They'll be taking every possible step to thwart me.”
“To thwart you,” Blaine repeats, and Kurt shoots him a beady-eyed are you mocking me, Blaine Anderson, because you will regret it look. Blaine tries to make it clear that despite the teasing, he really means it when he says: “You're the best, Kurt. I want the best.”
“Fine,” says Kurt, like he thinks Blaine will regret it, but his face has gone a little pink.
“Seriously, though,” Blaine says, stepping around a puddle and letting rain flicker down on his head and shoulders for a few seconds before he ducks back under the umbrella with Kurt, “I know you said it was difficult for you last time; I don't want you to feel like you have t--”
“Blaine,” Kurt says, “I'm a Starfleet cadet, not a puppy that you have to protect. If I had a problem with doing the simulation again, I would say so.”
They hold eye contact for several steady seconds, and Blaine is the one who finally blinks.
Three different officers are shouting more than three different sets of information at once; calling out shield integrity, distance from the nearest Romulan warship, distance from the helpless Kobayashi Maru, weapons status, life support, a constant list of which decks are now sucking space vacuum. The next hit sends the navigation panel up in sparks and throws Blaine to the deck; the girl who’d been sitting at the panel isn’t as quick to get up.
He can’t do this. Why did he ever think he could do this? Why did he go into the command track? He only did it to try to impress his father; it was foolish. It was stupid. It was arrogant. He shouldn’t be here. He’s at Starfleet because of his parents’ connections, not because he earned his place.
And then it’s like someone shouts his name, but without sound; it cuts straight through the dull fog surrounding him. It’s the same warm reassurance he’d felt before, but it’s sharper this time, more forceful. It’s someone wordlessly telling him that he can do this, he needs to take courage, he belongs here, he’s brave and confident and so much better than what he is doing right now, and that he’s being an idiot and he needs to move. It’s like an invisible, fierce hand suddenly gripping his and yanking him to his feet.
The bridge shudders under another direct hit. “Shields at 39% and rapidly dropping,” contributes the ensign who has been placed in charge of bridge security. He sounds bored; he must be a serial crew member on the simulation.
Not a simulation, Blaine tells himself. Treat this like it’s the real thing.
Blaine offers Cadet Ngabe, who’d been flung out of her chair, a hand up. “Sick bay or bridge?” he asks, and she grabs his arm and, without a word, heaves herself back into her station.
“Shunt everything we’ve got to the forward deflector shield,” Blaine says, and he’s barely aware of half the heads on the bridge turning toward him in shock at the fact that he just gave an order; he’s too busy running scenarios and making lightning fast decisions to pay them any heed.
He leans over the back of Ngabe’s chair, holding on as another blast rocks the ship. “Take us right up to the Kobayashi Maru, as close as possible; we’re going to try to piggyback their shields off of ours. Stay between them and the Romulans as much as you can.” Ngabe nods, her hands flying across her instrument panel, and the deck plating groans underfoot as the wounded ship begins its ponderous turn toward the freighter.
“Open a channel; tell them to abandon ship and use us as cover.” Perched at the communications station, Wes nods smartly, turning away and lifting his hand to his ear. Blaine turns toward the Arcadian bridge officer in the back. He has a quick glimpse of Kurt flitting past behind her, snapping an order at someone, but Blaine can’t give him more than a split second of his attention; not even that much. He points at the Arcadian officer. “Evacuate all nonessential personnel,” he orders, and she nods.
The bridge is filled with smoke and the warning klaxons are shrieking, everything lit in flashing red warning lights, and Blaine realizes that everyone on board this bridge is doomed, but as he crosses to the weapons officer’s station, he finds himself filled with a rising sense of grim satisfaction all the same.
He’s the front man; this is where he belongs.
The post-mortem with his instructors is both exhaustive and exhausting. By the time that he is allowed to leave, Blaine has been thoroughly humbled. He was humbled to begin with, well aware that he panicked and then unforgiveably froze in the first few minutes, but now that he has been walked through every single error that he made, he feels seriously schooled.
The commander and the lieutenant were harsh, but not undeservedly so, and they pointed out what he did right as well as what he did wrong. The point of the exercise was for the cadets (but mostly Blaine, as the student actually being tested) to accept that they were going to die and to learn how to carry on, and they pointed out about 20 stupid things that Blaine did after he pulled himself together – but they praised several of his decisions, too.
He's going to do better. He's going to be better.
Blaine goes back to the dorms with the recording, and he starts it up again.
As ready and willing as he is to go over his mistakes, it’s hard to watch himself dwarfed by that big chair, shouting bad order after order and then getting thrown onto the deckplates. He knows that he’s eventually going to fall silent, his face slack, and then snap out of it. But he’s seen this recording nine times already, and this is the first time that he has watched it without a hard-faced instructor over each shoulder.
His eyes drift to the back – and then hold there.
Kurt stands at the engineering console, his feet firmly planted. While most of the other cadets go flying as the bridge rocks and rolls, Kurt sways but holds steady, one hand clutching the console and the other darting across the controls. His face is intent on his work. The entire effect is graceful and terrifyingly competent.
Past-Blaine freezes on the bridge, stops even trying to control the situation, and Kurt glances up for the first time. He didn’t look away from his calculations when the alarms went off; he didn’t even flicker on the biggest explosion, but just after Blaine loses it, Kurt’s eyes rise. He looks at the back of Blaine’s head for several seconds, his face cool and unreadable, then he says something indistinct about venting atmosphere. And that’s it. He’s right back to his duties.
In the recording, Blaine lurches into motion; he helps Cadet Ngabe up.
Current Blaine, though – he can't tear his eyes away from Kurt Hummel.
Kurt does a whole lot of things very, very well, but Blaine is suddenly aware that he’s seeing him in his element here; that this is where Kurt truly shines. He dimly wonders what it would be like to see Kurt in an actual engineering room – checking warp core dilithium levels, shouting out orders, resting his feet on the outside of the ladders so that he can confidently skid down til his boots hit the deckplates.
Blaine wants to see that.
Kurt saved his bacon in the simulator, but gratitude is not why Blaine finds himself tapping the screen to pause it. Two loose pieces of hair have escaped Kurt’s pompadour in the moment where Blaine froze the recording, and they hang over his forehead as he works, his movements calm and impossibly fast. Blaine wants to reach out and brush his hair into place. He wants to be able to see Kurt’s hands, which are moving so quickly that even paused, they’re a pale blur. He wants to touch Kurt’s face and trace the concentration lines furrowed into his forehead; he wants to—
Oh, Blaine thinks dumbly.
Oh.
Slow and tiny and disbelieving, the corner of his mouth begins to rise.
“Hold the door!” Blaine lunges for the turbolift, hurling himself through at the last possible second.
“Oh my God,” Kurt yelps, some sort of leafy greens flying out of his take-out container as he throws up his hands in shock.
Blaine skids to a stop just shy of plowing right into him; he was not at all expecting to find anyone in the turbolift, much less Kurt himself.
The doors slowly hiss open again behind Blaine, the sensors belatedly registering that a body wedged itself through them.
They stare at each other.
“—Sorry,” Blaine says, his heart suddenly pounding, “sorry, I just—” He swallows.
Blaine’s first instinct had been to take a step back; to take it slow. Work out what he’s feeling. But he knows what he’s feeling, and the thing is: Kurt will know it, too, the second that they see each other. There’s no point in playing it coy.
The whole idea of running to find him and giving a spontaneous confession seemed a lot more romantic and appealing, and less frightening, before Blaine found himself face to face with a wide-eyed real-life Kurt Hummel.
Blaine is trying to feel too much at once; excited and scared and nervous and so, so hopelessly awkward now that Kurt is within arms’ reach. He kind of thinks he might throw up.
From the way that Kurt is staring at him, pressed back against the rail, Kurt can feel most of that, too, and he isn’t getting a lot of sense out of it.
The turbolift doors close.
“I’m – I owe you,” Blaine says, and then he winces, because that is not the appropriate way to start this. “That’s not what this is about, at all, but thank you, for what you did earlier; I couldn’t have made it through without you.”
Kurt’s expression isn’t any less stunned. Blaine is ranting like a madman and, to top it off, is essentially doing the equivalent of shouting nonsense right in Kurt’s face. He takes a deep breath, shuts his eyes, and wills himself to stop being such a jumbled explosive mess.
“I didn’t contribute as much as my skills would have allowed,” Kurt finally says, wary, his eyes flicking from Blaine’s hands clenching at his sides to Blaine’s face. “Someone programmed the simulator to anticipate me; it was blocking every rerouting maneuver I tried to ta—”
“You ‘didn’t contribute as much as your skills would have allowed,’ ” Blaine repeats, extremely dubious. “You mean besides when you boosted power to the deflectors by 15%, and when I completely panicked and you snapped me out of it and saved the entire mission?”
Kurt’s face freezes up. He looks, Blaine realizes, like he’s about to start apologizing; like he thinks it was a bad thing that he was able to give Blaine a telepathic kick in the uniform trousers. Blaine knows now that the fact that Kurt can broadcast to him, when Kurt doesn’t have strong abilities and Blaine has about as much telepathic potential as a rock, is important; that it means that Kurt has strong feelings for him, and that he might be that person for Kurt who fits the Betazoid word that frightened him when he first looked it up.
He hopes he is.
“You were amazing,” Blaine says, firm; tone booking absolutely no argument. “In every way. That’s why I’m here. Kurt, there’s–” He breathes. “There’s a moment, when you open your eyes and you say,” he feels himself give a faint, breathy, disbelieving laugh, “ ‘oh, there you are; what was I waiting for?’ ”
Kurt looks flushed and painfully confused, and Blaine goes to reach out to him – and the turbolift whirs into motion. Blaine says, “Stop” and it comes to an abrupt halt, sudden enough that Blaine staggers and Kurt, braced against the rail, grabs him.
Blaine knows that he’s doing the right thing when Kurt’s hands on his elbow and his waist feel like they’re branding him right through his uniform. The feeling that rushes through him at that – it can’t be misunderstood, even through a tumultuous empathic link.
Kurt’s mouth drops open. Those same two licks of hair have fallen out of their rightful place again, and Blaine reaches up and very, very carefully tucks them up with the rest of Kurt’s bangs. “That was a moment, for me. About you. I was going to watch the recording again, to study all the places I went wrong,” Blaine says, barely aware of the fact that his voice has dropped, “and all I could watch was you.”
Kurt’s eyes are glassy, and though he blinks a few times in rapid succession, he can’t – and Blaine doesn’t think he’s trying to – hide that they’re wet. His lips are parted and he looks incredibly dazed; stunned, like he doesn’t dare to believe what’s happening.
Blaine is not afraid anymore. He doesn’t feel like he’s going to be sick. He just thinks he’s going to vibrate himself to pieces if he doesn’t kiss Kurt.
So he does.
Kurt tilts his face and for the first second or two, they’re both a little shellshocked. Then Blaine rests his hand on Kurt’s cheek and tips his jaw into the kiss and he’s completely overwhelmed by the feel of the soft mouth hesitantly pressing back; by the fact that he’s kissing Kurt Hummel. He’s kind of giddy and he almost might laugh, except he’s so serious about this and that would mean separating their mouths, and he just wants to do this all the time, because he doesn’t just need Kurt; he needs Kurt.
Kurt draws in a shuddery breath through his nose and then there are steady fingers on Blaine’s jaw and ear and Kurt is parting his lips. His mouth is warm and slick and eager. Blaine goes up on his toes for a better angle, and this is it; this is the real deal. When Kurt sucks on Blaine’s upper lip, the pressure somehow simultaneously sweet and shockingly filthy, Blaine’s legs go shaky. He starts to slump and Kurt follows him down like he can’t get enough, until their mouths part with an audible, if quiet, sound.
Kurt gapes at him and his hand falls away from Blaine’s face and clangs against the rail. Blaine glances down, smiling and flushing so hard it feels like his face might split, and he spots Kurt’s salad scattered across the turbolift floor.
Blaine only realizes that the turbolift had started moving again when it stops and the doors open.
His knees are bent, one hand clutching at the railing, and Kurt is looming over him, and they must look like a pair of idiots in a sea of Terellian lettuce. There’s a faint voice from behind him.
“No,” Kurt says immediately, to whoever it is. “Absolutely not. Occupied. Go; tenth floor.” The turbolift doors slide shut again and the turbolift ascends.
They stare at each other, and then Kurt starts to smile in an expression that Blaine has never seen before, surprised and thrilled and shaky and hopeful. In the same instant, they reach for each other and their mouths collide so hard that Blaine can feel it right down to his toes.
Heat and happiness and intense shock and love, overwhelming love, and something that feels like didn’t think I would get this – it all hits Blaine at once from an outside source, like someone throwing a building at him. It’s too much.
“—Sorry,” Kurt is saying, and it slowly registers that he has an arm looped around Blaine’s waist and is struggling to hold him up, because Blaine’s knees are trying to go out from under him. “I’m sorry – Blaine? Blaine.” He sounds steady, but Blaine can feel Kurt’s arm and his side shaking against him.
“Wow,” Blaine says. He can hear himself almost slurring, and definitely grinning like a fool; he grabs the turbolift rail with a weak hand to try to lift some of his weight off of Kurt. “Where’s the shuttle that hit me?”
“That would be me,” Kurt says, shamefaced, and then he grunts, “Come on” as he manhandles Blaine out of the turbolift.
“You?” Blaine asks, incredulous. He almost feels drunk.
“I wasn’t paying enough attention,” Kurt admits, “and I accidentally blasted you.”
“So – that was you,” Blaine reasons, letting Kurt haul him down the corridor, “telepathically talking to me.”
“That is what I said, yes.” Blaine blinks as Kurt keys in the code at a door without even having to stop to think about it, and he realizes that it is his door. Kurt apparently spends enough time here that he knows Blaine and Trent's codes. He eases Blaine through the door and sets him down on the bed, where Blaine is more than happy to thump onto his back and pull his boneless legs up, and stare at Kurt for several dumbfounded seconds.
“Wow,” says Blaine again. The mattress dips as Kurt perches on the edge of the bed, beside Blaine’s hip. “Is this what it’s like for you all the time?”
“No.” Kurt reaches toward him then hesitates, like he’s not sure this is okay. Blaine cranes his neck toward him and Kurt takes the not so subtle hint; the corners of his lips lift, and he runs light, careful fingers through Blaine’s hair. It feels like heaven. “It used to be, but I turn down people’s volume more easily now. I can still sense it, but it doesn’t…”
“Make you feel like someone dropped a piano on your head?” Blaine suggests, and Kurt’s face sets into a tiny, amused-but-guilty smile as he skates his fingertips along Blaine’s temple. Blaine smiles up at him. “It’s okay, Kurt. I’m good. It actually…” He trails off thoughtfully and Kurt’s hand stills in his curls, his face going leery. “It was obviously way too much at once, but honestly, it felt amazing.”
Kurt is staring at him like he can’t quite figure out what Blaine is trying to say. Blaine plants his hands on the mattress and pushes himself up, Kurt catching his elbow – seemingly automatically – to help. “I wouldn’t be opposed to trying it again sometime,” Blaine murmurs, resting his left eyebrow against Kurt’s. “If you would be okay with that.”
He can hear Kurt’s breathing pick up. “The feedback loop could get even worse than it was in the turbolift,” he warns, his words puffing lightly against Blaine’s cheek. “I’m overwhelmed, so you’re overwhelmed, so I’m overwhelmed, so you’re overwhelmed, so Trent comes back and finds us in the fetal position.”
Blaine laughs, sitting cross-legged with one of his knees overlapping Kurt’s. Everything is warm and comfortable and right. “So we take it slow,” he says. “Open the floodgates a little bit at a time.” He can feel Kurt’s eyebrow try to twitch, at that, and Blaine drags his jaw across Kurt’s until their mouths align again.
And Blaine hadn’t actually meant right this very minute, he’d meant maybe they should give it a try after the first night of giddy kisses, but as Kurt clutches at the front of his uniform jacket, Blaine realizes that Kurt is trying again now. It’s slow and steady and gradual this time, instead of a full-on onslaught; more a rippling ankle-height stream of Kurt’s emotions than a towering wall of them. Kurt is feeling the kind of bone-deep contentment that Blaine always thought was reserved for people much older than them; warmth and comfort and barely-contained joy and disbelief, all threatening to boil over the top of Kurt’s shaky control, and Kurt never wanting to move from this spot.
Kurt is trying to show him how he feels. Some of it is jumbled to the point that Blaine can’t make heads or tails of it, but the important stuff – it’s loud and clear. The fact that they can do this, that Kurt will willingly open up and make himself so vulnerable in something that’s reserved solely for Blaine, is amazing. Kurt is amazing.
Kurt is also really, really into the kissing. Blaine could get that from him even without the low-level telepathy; from the way that he cups Blaine’s face in his hands and doesn’t let their mouths separate for more than a second or two at a time, and he slides the tip of his tongue along Blaine’s lower lip. But Blaine can feel it through the connection, too; the slow heat building between them and how Kurt feels unsteady, dormant arousal prickling just under his skin, and there’s a moment where Blaine is not sure where Kurt’s reactions end and his own begin. And it’s a little frightening, but it’s okay, too, because Blaine loves Kurt and trusts him. Kurt moves him.
Kurt shudders, and Blaine doesn’t think it’s (entirely) because of the kissing. He thinks it’s because he’s soaking up Blaine’s feelings like a sponge.
When Trent bursts through the door with his usual fanfare, he finds them wrapped up in each other. It’s nothing particularly scandalous; they’re sitting on the bed with Blaine’s head resting on Kurt’s shoulder, and they’re talking.
Trent still says a word that he must have learned from one of the Arcadian cadets, and he claps his hand over his eyes and blindly backs out the door, grinning fit to bust.
Blaine starts laughing. “The entire command and engineering tracks are going to know about this within ten minutes.” He considers it for a second. “Maybe security, medical, and communications, too. Definitely science.”
“I have no objections,” Kurt says, and he nuzzles his nose against Blaine’s collar.
At first, once they began to settle in together, Blaine wondered how he was ever going to date a non-empath, after Kurt; after he got used to wordless conversations at dinner, and never needing to explain how he’s feeling (though he still does, because letting empathy do all the work is just lazy, and he knows that Kurt likes to hear the words as much as Blaine likes to say them, and it’s frighteningly easy to misunderstand each other without speech).
It’s not that it’s always easy or good. Untrained empathic abilities make the first few times they try to have sex incredibly awkward; Kurt reaches a point where he can’t concentrate on the muting effect that he needs to apply to feelings this intense, and it’s way too much for both of them. He’s embarrassed and not a little repressed, and flat-out refuses to talk to any other telepaths about coping strategies. They work it out (slow and steady wins the race, and practice makes perfect; really seriously perfect), but it’s an early struggle.
Empathy can make fights both harder and easier. Easier because they both know it when they’re hurting each other and most of the time, neither of them has the stomach for it, and harder because they can feel it when they really mean the ugly things that they say.
But in the end, Blaine doesn’t really care whether they can sense each others’ feelings. He cares about Kurt. It’s about Kurt.
He comes to the slow realization, after a year and a half, that he doesn’t want there to be anyone after Kurt.
So when Kurt says a remarkably crabby, “You’ve been avoiding this conversation for four months, Blaine Anderson, and we’re going to have it right now,” dread sinks his heart.
“Commencement is in two months,” Kurt says firmly, sitting down on Blaine’s desk, right in front of him, “and assignments will be made in six weeks. We need to talk about it, just like we talk about everything else.”
Blaine half-heartedly considers sliding a hand up his thigh and trying to distract him; from the beady-eyed look that Kurt shoots him, he’s pretty sure that Kurt has figured out the thought and that it would be a really terrible idea.
“Okay,” Blaine says, looking up at him from his desk chair.
Kurt is still in full-on annoyed mode, which makes a fascinating contrast with the words that he’s actually saying. “I don’t want to leave you,” he says. “I just can’t rock the long distance relationship where I get up at 0330 to talk to you from across the solar system; I need my beauty rest.”
Blaine can feel his face contort as he tries not to laugh, both in genuine amusement and in grateful relief. “I don’t want to leave you, either, Kurt,” he says, and when he rests his hand on Kurt’s knee, it’s with no ulterior motive whatsoever. “I’m sorry, I know I’ve been—”
He doesn’t know quite how to classify the way that he’s been acting, but from the way that Kurt’s face softens and a wave of affection rolls off of him, he knows that Kurt can feel his genuine remorse, and how ripped up he is about the idea of them being separated. “It’s okay,” Kurt murmurs, bracing himself with a boot on Blaine’s knee and then hunching over until their foreheads are pressed together.
“It’s not okay,” Blaine says, shutting his eyes and finally letting himself say the words that have been eating at him for longer than he wants to admit. “There’s a ten-to-one chance we won’t be on the same assignment, Kurt.”
“What if I said that I had an idea that could improve those odds?” Kurt asks, like he’s carefully selecting his words, and Blaine slowly leans back to stare at him. They’ve been improving at communicating actual thoughts and words lately, instead of bombarding each other with emotion, and that was definitely an inadvertent montage of wedding-related images from Kurt before he could shut it down.
“Seriously?” Blaine forces out through a suddenly dry throat.
“We are way too young for this,” Kurt says, which is not at all how Blaine had ever idly imagined this conversation starting, “and I don’t know about you, but I don’t feel ready—”
“I don’t either,” says Blaine.
“—But if we got married this week and submitted the proof to Starfleet, they would actively try to assign us together,” Kurt says intently. He’s wringing his hands low in his lap and quietly watching Blaine. “There’s a 66% probability, instead of the 9.2% chance if we just list standard assignment preferences.” Kurt did the math. Of course Kurt did the math.
Marry Kurt. It’s something that Blaine has definitely thought about, but not in the here and now; not before they even receive their commissions or leave the planet for the first time. Kurt’s the romantic one in this relationship, but even Blaine had dreams of one or both of them going down on one knee; of coming back to Earth on leave once Kurt is rapidly ascending the ranks of the engineering crew and Blaine is tagging along on away team missions to collect specimens for future study, and gathering all of their friends and family (well, maybe not Blaine’s immediate family) and having the big stylish wedding that he knows that Kurt has been planning since he was four.
“This is crazy,” he points out. “And we’d have to live together.”
“Obviously. What do you think?” Kurt presses, and Blaine knows that he is genuinely impatient, but that the short tone mostly comes from fear.
“I think,” Blaine says, slowly, “that was the least romantic proposal in the history of proposals.”
He can both see and feel Kurt’s anxiety and annoyance levels simultaneously spike. Blaine smiles broadly at him and squeezes his knee, hard. “I’m in.”
In the end, they don’t tell anyone. They have the conversation on a Monday and go to the courthouse after cadet fitness examinations on Wednesday; they submit the documentation to Starfleet, and they hope. This is a crazy thing that they’re trying, and there are no guarantees. They decide to keep it to themselves and treat it as the simple legal contract that it is. If it doesn’t work out in the end, no one will have to know and they’ll get a quiet divorce, and that will be that.
They don’t talk about what they’ll do if they aren’t assigned together. Blaine knows they’re both trying not to think about it.
That lasts for an impressive six weeks, until Kurt steps into the study block where Blaine and Jeffrey and several other friends are frantically preparing for final command evaluations. Blaine’s head snaps up the second that the door opens. He doesn’t need to look at Kurt to know that their assignments have come in, but he looks anyway. His boyfriend’s eyes are over-bright and his hands hang awkwardly at his sides.
“We got it,” Kurt says, and he smiles tremulously, and Blaine knocks his chair over in his haste to get to Kurt. Kurt is strong and solid in his arms and loud in his head, completely nonsensical in his tumult of relief and excitement and adoration; Blaine sees flashes of a warp drive and an Excelsior-class starship and them holding hands and, incongruously (but so, so Kurt), something that looks suspiciously like a set of drapes. That last one makes Blaine laugh and saves him from getting teary-eyed in front of a bunch of their friends.
“The Potemkin,” Kurt says, beaming, to everybody who is gathering around and clapping them on the backs. “We’re on the Potemkin.”
“How,” Wes says, once Kurt and Blaine have let go of each other, and he can reel Blaine in for a congratulatory hug, “did you two manage to score the same assignment?”
Blaine honestly doesn’t mean to say it. His eyes are on Kurt’s handsome face over Wes’s shoulder and he’s so proud and happy that it just slips out. “We got married.”
Rechela shrieks, “What?” and the room erupts, and then they have to explain the whole thing and there’s another round of congratulations and someone starts making plans for a post-commencement pre-duty wedding party.
When they have a second to themselves in the madness (there is no studying being done here now; absolutely none), Kurt threatens, “I’m letting you tell my dad, Mr. Big Mouth,” but he’s shining, and he squeezes back tightly when Blaine grips his hand.
* * *
(AUTHOR'S NOTE: AND THEN THEY EXPLORED SPACE TOGETHER AND HAD FABULOUS ADVENTURES, THE END.)
Fandom: Glee/Star Trek
Rating: PG-13
Characters: Blaine Anderson/Kurt Hummel; blink-and-you'll-miss-them cameos from various Warblers, Rachel Berry, Santana Lopez, and Jacob Ben Israel
Summary: Blaine Anderson is in the Starfleet Academy command track when he meets fellow cadet Kurt Hummel.
Count: ~12,260 words total; 6500 in this part
Notes:
preromantics put out the call on Tumblr for Blaine in a cadet uniform. I started writing a drabble and this ... happened! miryak drew fanart that I love! And then yo_mawari did too! They're both a little spoilery for this part, and are thoroughly delightful!* * *
At lunch, Jeff jokes that Kurt must have eyes in the back of his head, after Kurt makes a quick-witted quip about Blaine silently laughing behind his back. Kurt doesn't even skip a beat in response. He says, “No, just the ability to sense strong emotions,” and as a few of the others at the table begin to stare at him, he lightly buffs his nails against his wrist, “so whoever decided that it would be the height of hilarity to slather my doorpad in toothpaste should probably start preparing his or her apologies.”
It takes some further conversation to clarify that Kurt wasn't kidding about the empath part, and Blaine isn't sure who he cares for more in this moment: the cadets who started out as Blaine's friends but are now Kurt's, too, who ask a few interested questions but otherwise don't bat an eyelash, or Kurt, whose jaw is set tight with nerves but who is smiling and laughing all the same.
Somehow, Kurt is there right when Blaine needs him. He swears that it isn’t a telepathy thing; just good timing.
Or maybe bad timing, Blaine suggests morosely, and Kurt shakes his head and rests a hand on his shoulder, which somehow becomes a really amazing hug that Blaine tells himself is a hug but is mostly Kurt curling around him while they both stand up.
Talking to his father is the worst. Blaine can always hear the disappointment in his voice and see it in every resigned face that he makes. Nothing is ever good enough; nothing will ever be good enough. He would never say it out loud — that wouldn’t be proper — but they both know it’s all that he’s thinking. Normally, Blaine finishes a talk with his father and he goes to box in the fitness facilities or he pulls a pillow over his head and listens to angry-sounding Klingon music (which, for all he knows, are a bunch of love ballads), and it’s juvenile, but it helps.
But today, Kurt happened to walk in just after Blaine closed the channel, and Kurt — Kurt holds onto him and rubs tiny circles into his back, and all of a sudden, it’s like a – Blaine can’t put words to it, because there were no words in it; it was a tidal wave of sudden emotion, caring and desperate reassurance and warmth. It’s completely foreign and a little scary, and way too intense to be some sudden swell of his own personal feelings. It’s trying to tell him that everything is going to be okay.
And it somehow, without a face or voice or anything even remotely identifiable, feels like Kurt.
“Whoa,” Blaine says, awed, drawing back.
Kurt holds him at arms' length and flatly stares at him like he has gone off the deep end. “--What?”
“You didn't – that wasn't out loud. Did that just happen?”
He blinks for several seconds, and then his mouth drops open. “Oh,” Kurt says. “Apparently it did!” He clicks his tongue, winks, and points finger-phasers at Blaine, in a clear sign that he’s uncomfortable and trying to make a joke so that they can stop talking about this.
“I thought you couldn't project stuff.”
“I can't.” The admittance is like pulling teeth. “Not to most people.”
“Most people?” Blaine asks.
“Sometimes,” Kurt says, and he looks so thoroughly miserable that Blaine wants to stop him right there, even though he has no idea what's going on, “even weak empaths can communicate telepathically with – people they're close to.”
Blaine isn't understanding why he looks like someone has just stolen his puppy; not even a little bit. “Kurt, that's fantastic,” he says, and he gives Kurt a light nudge to the ribs, teasing. “You and Rechela are always saying you guys wish you could talk without being noticed during botany, right?”
“I'm … not talking about Rechela, Blaine,” Kurt says, looking right at him with those dark eyes, and Blaine abruptly gets it.
“—Oh,” Blaine says, deeply startled, feeling like he’s been struck; “Kurt, I—” And he’s lost for words, but he doesn’t need them; not when Kurt can doubtless feel his spike of surprised, confused, uncertain fear. Sure, Kurt initially caught Blaine’s eye across a crowded room because he was gorgeous, and yes, Blaine absolutely loves Kurt – but is he in love with him? Can he do that? Can he face the idea of eventually breaking up with Kurt and not having him in his life anymore? He needs Kurt in a way that is suddenly dizzying and terrifying, but maybe still not enough.
Kurt smiles at him, sad and quiet and resigned, and Blaine’s heart clenches. Kurt is getting much, much better at sensing Blaine’s emotions instead of drawing them into himself and inadvertently suffering through them, too.
Blaine shouldn’t hug him again; it’s sending mixed messages. But he needs to do something to try to tell Kurt how much he cares, even if he isn’t sure if it’s in the way that Kurt wants him to care, and it feels good to be wrapped up in Kurt’s arms and let someone else take care of things for a change.
Just for a little while.
Things should be awkward after that. Kurt all but admitted something that Blaine doesn’t even want to acknowledge, because the depth of it scares him, and Blaine – Blaine let him down. Blaine didn’t even get a full sentence out of his mouth. Blaine looked up Betazoid empathy again. He got about two and a quarter words into the rough translation of imzadi (“first true l—”) and only a little deeper into why it’s relevant (“weaker telepaths have been known to be able to communicate, primarily through crude telepathic images and feelings, with those with whom they share a special connection, particularly im—”) before he had a borderline panic attack and flung his PADD away.
And that’s the thing about Kurt — more than anyone, he’s aware of how much of Blaine’s charm and self-assuredness is a front, but he doesn’t seem to mind. He cares about Blaine anyway.
Still, it should, by all rights, be incredibly weird.
But somehow, life goes on as normal. They laugh and joke and tell each other stories, and Kurt swears at his botany coursework while Blaine tries to help, and they attend theaters and dance at an absurd club in the Castro with Rechela, and Kurt delights in criticizing Blaine’s non-uniform wardrobe. They go to Kurt's top three vintage stores on Sunday afternoons to search through the new arrival items, and Blaine introduces him to his favorite video-karaoke bar in Little Osaka, where Kurt blows him away with a stunning countertenor singing voice. Half of their friends think they’re going to date and the other half think they’ve already added their names to the academy’s truly impressive list of hook-ups, Blaine is pretty sure, but no one asks and so neither does Blaine.
And maybe life would have stayed that way, if it weren't for the Kobayashi Maru.
“Really?” Kurt asks, wrinkling his nose at him under the umbrella that they're sharing.
“What, you don't want to be part of my crew?” Blaine mock-pouts at him; he's about to widen his eyes and try to lay his head on Kurt's shoulder while they're walking, but Kurt laughs and pushes his arm. Blaine nearly goes out from under the shared umbrella and into the rain.
“I don't have a problem with being part of your crew,” Kurt says patiently; “I just think you might want to pick a chief engineer who isn't already infamous for being an integral part of an effort that almost beat the simulation last year. They'll be taking every possible step to thwart me.”
“To thwart you,” Blaine repeats, and Kurt shoots him a beady-eyed are you mocking me, Blaine Anderson, because you will regret it look. Blaine tries to make it clear that despite the teasing, he really means it when he says: “You're the best, Kurt. I want the best.”
“Fine,” says Kurt, like he thinks Blaine will regret it, but his face has gone a little pink.
“Seriously, though,” Blaine says, stepping around a puddle and letting rain flicker down on his head and shoulders for a few seconds before he ducks back under the umbrella with Kurt, “I know you said it was difficult for you last time; I don't want you to feel like you have t--”
“Blaine,” Kurt says, “I'm a Starfleet cadet, not a puppy that you have to protect. If I had a problem with doing the simulation again, I would say so.”
They hold eye contact for several steady seconds, and Blaine is the one who finally blinks.
Three different officers are shouting more than three different sets of information at once; calling out shield integrity, distance from the nearest Romulan warship, distance from the helpless Kobayashi Maru, weapons status, life support, a constant list of which decks are now sucking space vacuum. The next hit sends the navigation panel up in sparks and throws Blaine to the deck; the girl who’d been sitting at the panel isn’t as quick to get up.
He can’t do this. Why did he ever think he could do this? Why did he go into the command track? He only did it to try to impress his father; it was foolish. It was stupid. It was arrogant. He shouldn’t be here. He’s at Starfleet because of his parents’ connections, not because he earned his place.
And then it’s like someone shouts his name, but without sound; it cuts straight through the dull fog surrounding him. It’s the same warm reassurance he’d felt before, but it’s sharper this time, more forceful. It’s someone wordlessly telling him that he can do this, he needs to take courage, he belongs here, he’s brave and confident and so much better than what he is doing right now, and that he’s being an idiot and he needs to move. It’s like an invisible, fierce hand suddenly gripping his and yanking him to his feet.
The bridge shudders under another direct hit. “Shields at 39% and rapidly dropping,” contributes the ensign who has been placed in charge of bridge security. He sounds bored; he must be a serial crew member on the simulation.
Not a simulation, Blaine tells himself. Treat this like it’s the real thing.
Blaine offers Cadet Ngabe, who’d been flung out of her chair, a hand up. “Sick bay or bridge?” he asks, and she grabs his arm and, without a word, heaves herself back into her station.
“Shunt everything we’ve got to the forward deflector shield,” Blaine says, and he’s barely aware of half the heads on the bridge turning toward him in shock at the fact that he just gave an order; he’s too busy running scenarios and making lightning fast decisions to pay them any heed.
He leans over the back of Ngabe’s chair, holding on as another blast rocks the ship. “Take us right up to the Kobayashi Maru, as close as possible; we’re going to try to piggyback their shields off of ours. Stay between them and the Romulans as much as you can.” Ngabe nods, her hands flying across her instrument panel, and the deck plating groans underfoot as the wounded ship begins its ponderous turn toward the freighter.
“Open a channel; tell them to abandon ship and use us as cover.” Perched at the communications station, Wes nods smartly, turning away and lifting his hand to his ear. Blaine turns toward the Arcadian bridge officer in the back. He has a quick glimpse of Kurt flitting past behind her, snapping an order at someone, but Blaine can’t give him more than a split second of his attention; not even that much. He points at the Arcadian officer. “Evacuate all nonessential personnel,” he orders, and she nods.
The bridge is filled with smoke and the warning klaxons are shrieking, everything lit in flashing red warning lights, and Blaine realizes that everyone on board this bridge is doomed, but as he crosses to the weapons officer’s station, he finds himself filled with a rising sense of grim satisfaction all the same.
He’s the front man; this is where he belongs.
The post-mortem with his instructors is both exhaustive and exhausting. By the time that he is allowed to leave, Blaine has been thoroughly humbled. He was humbled to begin with, well aware that he panicked and then unforgiveably froze in the first few minutes, but now that he has been walked through every single error that he made, he feels seriously schooled.
The commander and the lieutenant were harsh, but not undeservedly so, and they pointed out what he did right as well as what he did wrong. The point of the exercise was for the cadets (but mostly Blaine, as the student actually being tested) to accept that they were going to die and to learn how to carry on, and they pointed out about 20 stupid things that Blaine did after he pulled himself together – but they praised several of his decisions, too.
He's going to do better. He's going to be better.
Blaine goes back to the dorms with the recording, and he starts it up again.
As ready and willing as he is to go over his mistakes, it’s hard to watch himself dwarfed by that big chair, shouting bad order after order and then getting thrown onto the deckplates. He knows that he’s eventually going to fall silent, his face slack, and then snap out of it. But he’s seen this recording nine times already, and this is the first time that he has watched it without a hard-faced instructor over each shoulder.
His eyes drift to the back – and then hold there.
Kurt stands at the engineering console, his feet firmly planted. While most of the other cadets go flying as the bridge rocks and rolls, Kurt sways but holds steady, one hand clutching the console and the other darting across the controls. His face is intent on his work. The entire effect is graceful and terrifyingly competent.
Past-Blaine freezes on the bridge, stops even trying to control the situation, and Kurt glances up for the first time. He didn’t look away from his calculations when the alarms went off; he didn’t even flicker on the biggest explosion, but just after Blaine loses it, Kurt’s eyes rise. He looks at the back of Blaine’s head for several seconds, his face cool and unreadable, then he says something indistinct about venting atmosphere. And that’s it. He’s right back to his duties.
In the recording, Blaine lurches into motion; he helps Cadet Ngabe up.
Current Blaine, though – he can't tear his eyes away from Kurt Hummel.
Kurt does a whole lot of things very, very well, but Blaine is suddenly aware that he’s seeing him in his element here; that this is where Kurt truly shines. He dimly wonders what it would be like to see Kurt in an actual engineering room – checking warp core dilithium levels, shouting out orders, resting his feet on the outside of the ladders so that he can confidently skid down til his boots hit the deckplates.
Blaine wants to see that.
Kurt saved his bacon in the simulator, but gratitude is not why Blaine finds himself tapping the screen to pause it. Two loose pieces of hair have escaped Kurt’s pompadour in the moment where Blaine froze the recording, and they hang over his forehead as he works, his movements calm and impossibly fast. Blaine wants to reach out and brush his hair into place. He wants to be able to see Kurt’s hands, which are moving so quickly that even paused, they’re a pale blur. He wants to touch Kurt’s face and trace the concentration lines furrowed into his forehead; he wants to—
Oh, Blaine thinks dumbly.
Oh.
Slow and tiny and disbelieving, the corner of his mouth begins to rise.
“Hold the door!” Blaine lunges for the turbolift, hurling himself through at the last possible second.
“Oh my God,” Kurt yelps, some sort of leafy greens flying out of his take-out container as he throws up his hands in shock.
Blaine skids to a stop just shy of plowing right into him; he was not at all expecting to find anyone in the turbolift, much less Kurt himself.
The doors slowly hiss open again behind Blaine, the sensors belatedly registering that a body wedged itself through them.
They stare at each other.
“—Sorry,” Blaine says, his heart suddenly pounding, “sorry, I just—” He swallows.
Blaine’s first instinct had been to take a step back; to take it slow. Work out what he’s feeling. But he knows what he’s feeling, and the thing is: Kurt will know it, too, the second that they see each other. There’s no point in playing it coy.
The whole idea of running to find him and giving a spontaneous confession seemed a lot more romantic and appealing, and less frightening, before Blaine found himself face to face with a wide-eyed real-life Kurt Hummel.
Blaine is trying to feel too much at once; excited and scared and nervous and so, so hopelessly awkward now that Kurt is within arms’ reach. He kind of thinks he might throw up.
From the way that Kurt is staring at him, pressed back against the rail, Kurt can feel most of that, too, and he isn’t getting a lot of sense out of it.
The turbolift doors close.
“I’m – I owe you,” Blaine says, and then he winces, because that is not the appropriate way to start this. “That’s not what this is about, at all, but thank you, for what you did earlier; I couldn’t have made it through without you.”
Kurt’s expression isn’t any less stunned. Blaine is ranting like a madman and, to top it off, is essentially doing the equivalent of shouting nonsense right in Kurt’s face. He takes a deep breath, shuts his eyes, and wills himself to stop being such a jumbled explosive mess.
“I didn’t contribute as much as my skills would have allowed,” Kurt finally says, wary, his eyes flicking from Blaine’s hands clenching at his sides to Blaine’s face. “Someone programmed the simulator to anticipate me; it was blocking every rerouting maneuver I tried to ta—”
“You ‘didn’t contribute as much as your skills would have allowed,’ ” Blaine repeats, extremely dubious. “You mean besides when you boosted power to the deflectors by 15%, and when I completely panicked and you snapped me out of it and saved the entire mission?”
Kurt’s face freezes up. He looks, Blaine realizes, like he’s about to start apologizing; like he thinks it was a bad thing that he was able to give Blaine a telepathic kick in the uniform trousers. Blaine knows now that the fact that Kurt can broadcast to him, when Kurt doesn’t have strong abilities and Blaine has about as much telepathic potential as a rock, is important; that it means that Kurt has strong feelings for him, and that he might be that person for Kurt who fits the Betazoid word that frightened him when he first looked it up.
He hopes he is.
“You were amazing,” Blaine says, firm; tone booking absolutely no argument. “In every way. That’s why I’m here. Kurt, there’s–” He breathes. “There’s a moment, when you open your eyes and you say,” he feels himself give a faint, breathy, disbelieving laugh, “ ‘oh, there you are; what was I waiting for?’ ”
Kurt looks flushed and painfully confused, and Blaine goes to reach out to him – and the turbolift whirs into motion. Blaine says, “Stop” and it comes to an abrupt halt, sudden enough that Blaine staggers and Kurt, braced against the rail, grabs him.
Blaine knows that he’s doing the right thing when Kurt’s hands on his elbow and his waist feel like they’re branding him right through his uniform. The feeling that rushes through him at that – it can’t be misunderstood, even through a tumultuous empathic link.
Kurt’s mouth drops open. Those same two licks of hair have fallen out of their rightful place again, and Blaine reaches up and very, very carefully tucks them up with the rest of Kurt’s bangs. “That was a moment, for me. About you. I was going to watch the recording again, to study all the places I went wrong,” Blaine says, barely aware of the fact that his voice has dropped, “and all I could watch was you.”
Kurt’s eyes are glassy, and though he blinks a few times in rapid succession, he can’t – and Blaine doesn’t think he’s trying to – hide that they’re wet. His lips are parted and he looks incredibly dazed; stunned, like he doesn’t dare to believe what’s happening.
Blaine is not afraid anymore. He doesn’t feel like he’s going to be sick. He just thinks he’s going to vibrate himself to pieces if he doesn’t kiss Kurt.
So he does.
Kurt tilts his face and for the first second or two, they’re both a little shellshocked. Then Blaine rests his hand on Kurt’s cheek and tips his jaw into the kiss and he’s completely overwhelmed by the feel of the soft mouth hesitantly pressing back; by the fact that he’s kissing Kurt Hummel. He’s kind of giddy and he almost might laugh, except he’s so serious about this and that would mean separating their mouths, and he just wants to do this all the time, because he doesn’t just need Kurt; he needs Kurt.
Kurt draws in a shuddery breath through his nose and then there are steady fingers on Blaine’s jaw and ear and Kurt is parting his lips. His mouth is warm and slick and eager. Blaine goes up on his toes for a better angle, and this is it; this is the real deal. When Kurt sucks on Blaine’s upper lip, the pressure somehow simultaneously sweet and shockingly filthy, Blaine’s legs go shaky. He starts to slump and Kurt follows him down like he can’t get enough, until their mouths part with an audible, if quiet, sound.
Kurt gapes at him and his hand falls away from Blaine’s face and clangs against the rail. Blaine glances down, smiling and flushing so hard it feels like his face might split, and he spots Kurt’s salad scattered across the turbolift floor.
Blaine only realizes that the turbolift had started moving again when it stops and the doors open.
His knees are bent, one hand clutching at the railing, and Kurt is looming over him, and they must look like a pair of idiots in a sea of Terellian lettuce. There’s a faint voice from behind him.
“No,” Kurt says immediately, to whoever it is. “Absolutely not. Occupied. Go; tenth floor.” The turbolift doors slide shut again and the turbolift ascends.
They stare at each other, and then Kurt starts to smile in an expression that Blaine has never seen before, surprised and thrilled and shaky and hopeful. In the same instant, they reach for each other and their mouths collide so hard that Blaine can feel it right down to his toes.
Heat and happiness and intense shock and love, overwhelming love, and something that feels like didn’t think I would get this – it all hits Blaine at once from an outside source, like someone throwing a building at him. It’s too much.
“—Sorry,” Kurt is saying, and it slowly registers that he has an arm looped around Blaine’s waist and is struggling to hold him up, because Blaine’s knees are trying to go out from under him. “I’m sorry – Blaine? Blaine.” He sounds steady, but Blaine can feel Kurt’s arm and his side shaking against him.
“Wow,” Blaine says. He can hear himself almost slurring, and definitely grinning like a fool; he grabs the turbolift rail with a weak hand to try to lift some of his weight off of Kurt. “Where’s the shuttle that hit me?”
“That would be me,” Kurt says, shamefaced, and then he grunts, “Come on” as he manhandles Blaine out of the turbolift.
“You?” Blaine asks, incredulous. He almost feels drunk.
“I wasn’t paying enough attention,” Kurt admits, “and I accidentally blasted you.”
“So – that was you,” Blaine reasons, letting Kurt haul him down the corridor, “telepathically talking to me.”
“That is what I said, yes.” Blaine blinks as Kurt keys in the code at a door without even having to stop to think about it, and he realizes that it is his door. Kurt apparently spends enough time here that he knows Blaine and Trent's codes. He eases Blaine through the door and sets him down on the bed, where Blaine is more than happy to thump onto his back and pull his boneless legs up, and stare at Kurt for several dumbfounded seconds.
“Wow,” says Blaine again. The mattress dips as Kurt perches on the edge of the bed, beside Blaine’s hip. “Is this what it’s like for you all the time?”
“No.” Kurt reaches toward him then hesitates, like he’s not sure this is okay. Blaine cranes his neck toward him and Kurt takes the not so subtle hint; the corners of his lips lift, and he runs light, careful fingers through Blaine’s hair. It feels like heaven. “It used to be, but I turn down people’s volume more easily now. I can still sense it, but it doesn’t…”
“Make you feel like someone dropped a piano on your head?” Blaine suggests, and Kurt’s face sets into a tiny, amused-but-guilty smile as he skates his fingertips along Blaine’s temple. Blaine smiles up at him. “It’s okay, Kurt. I’m good. It actually…” He trails off thoughtfully and Kurt’s hand stills in his curls, his face going leery. “It was obviously way too much at once, but honestly, it felt amazing.”
Kurt is staring at him like he can’t quite figure out what Blaine is trying to say. Blaine plants his hands on the mattress and pushes himself up, Kurt catching his elbow – seemingly automatically – to help. “I wouldn’t be opposed to trying it again sometime,” Blaine murmurs, resting his left eyebrow against Kurt’s. “If you would be okay with that.”
He can hear Kurt’s breathing pick up. “The feedback loop could get even worse than it was in the turbolift,” he warns, his words puffing lightly against Blaine’s cheek. “I’m overwhelmed, so you’re overwhelmed, so I’m overwhelmed, so you’re overwhelmed, so Trent comes back and finds us in the fetal position.”
Blaine laughs, sitting cross-legged with one of his knees overlapping Kurt’s. Everything is warm and comfortable and right. “So we take it slow,” he says. “Open the floodgates a little bit at a time.” He can feel Kurt’s eyebrow try to twitch, at that, and Blaine drags his jaw across Kurt’s until their mouths align again.
And Blaine hadn’t actually meant right this very minute, he’d meant maybe they should give it a try after the first night of giddy kisses, but as Kurt clutches at the front of his uniform jacket, Blaine realizes that Kurt is trying again now. It’s slow and steady and gradual this time, instead of a full-on onslaught; more a rippling ankle-height stream of Kurt’s emotions than a towering wall of them. Kurt is feeling the kind of bone-deep contentment that Blaine always thought was reserved for people much older than them; warmth and comfort and barely-contained joy and disbelief, all threatening to boil over the top of Kurt’s shaky control, and Kurt never wanting to move from this spot.
Kurt is trying to show him how he feels. Some of it is jumbled to the point that Blaine can’t make heads or tails of it, but the important stuff – it’s loud and clear. The fact that they can do this, that Kurt will willingly open up and make himself so vulnerable in something that’s reserved solely for Blaine, is amazing. Kurt is amazing.
Kurt is also really, really into the kissing. Blaine could get that from him even without the low-level telepathy; from the way that he cups Blaine’s face in his hands and doesn’t let their mouths separate for more than a second or two at a time, and he slides the tip of his tongue along Blaine’s lower lip. But Blaine can feel it through the connection, too; the slow heat building between them and how Kurt feels unsteady, dormant arousal prickling just under his skin, and there’s a moment where Blaine is not sure where Kurt’s reactions end and his own begin. And it’s a little frightening, but it’s okay, too, because Blaine loves Kurt and trusts him. Kurt moves him.
Kurt shudders, and Blaine doesn’t think it’s (entirely) because of the kissing. He thinks it’s because he’s soaking up Blaine’s feelings like a sponge.
When Trent bursts through the door with his usual fanfare, he finds them wrapped up in each other. It’s nothing particularly scandalous; they’re sitting on the bed with Blaine’s head resting on Kurt’s shoulder, and they’re talking.
Trent still says a word that he must have learned from one of the Arcadian cadets, and he claps his hand over his eyes and blindly backs out the door, grinning fit to bust.
Blaine starts laughing. “The entire command and engineering tracks are going to know about this within ten minutes.” He considers it for a second. “Maybe security, medical, and communications, too. Definitely science.”
“I have no objections,” Kurt says, and he nuzzles his nose against Blaine’s collar.
At first, once they began to settle in together, Blaine wondered how he was ever going to date a non-empath, after Kurt; after he got used to wordless conversations at dinner, and never needing to explain how he’s feeling (though he still does, because letting empathy do all the work is just lazy, and he knows that Kurt likes to hear the words as much as Blaine likes to say them, and it’s frighteningly easy to misunderstand each other without speech).
It’s not that it’s always easy or good. Untrained empathic abilities make the first few times they try to have sex incredibly awkward; Kurt reaches a point where he can’t concentrate on the muting effect that he needs to apply to feelings this intense, and it’s way too much for both of them. He’s embarrassed and not a little repressed, and flat-out refuses to talk to any other telepaths about coping strategies. They work it out (slow and steady wins the race, and practice makes perfect; really seriously perfect), but it’s an early struggle.
Empathy can make fights both harder and easier. Easier because they both know it when they’re hurting each other and most of the time, neither of them has the stomach for it, and harder because they can feel it when they really mean the ugly things that they say.
But in the end, Blaine doesn’t really care whether they can sense each others’ feelings. He cares about Kurt. It’s about Kurt.
He comes to the slow realization, after a year and a half, that he doesn’t want there to be anyone after Kurt.
So when Kurt says a remarkably crabby, “You’ve been avoiding this conversation for four months, Blaine Anderson, and we’re going to have it right now,” dread sinks his heart.
“Commencement is in two months,” Kurt says firmly, sitting down on Blaine’s desk, right in front of him, “and assignments will be made in six weeks. We need to talk about it, just like we talk about everything else.”
Blaine half-heartedly considers sliding a hand up his thigh and trying to distract him; from the beady-eyed look that Kurt shoots him, he’s pretty sure that Kurt has figured out the thought and that it would be a really terrible idea.
“Okay,” Blaine says, looking up at him from his desk chair.
Kurt is still in full-on annoyed mode, which makes a fascinating contrast with the words that he’s actually saying. “I don’t want to leave you,” he says. “I just can’t rock the long distance relationship where I get up at 0330 to talk to you from across the solar system; I need my beauty rest.”
Blaine can feel his face contort as he tries not to laugh, both in genuine amusement and in grateful relief. “I don’t want to leave you, either, Kurt,” he says, and when he rests his hand on Kurt’s knee, it’s with no ulterior motive whatsoever. “I’m sorry, I know I’ve been—”
He doesn’t know quite how to classify the way that he’s been acting, but from the way that Kurt’s face softens and a wave of affection rolls off of him, he knows that Kurt can feel his genuine remorse, and how ripped up he is about the idea of them being separated. “It’s okay,” Kurt murmurs, bracing himself with a boot on Blaine’s knee and then hunching over until their foreheads are pressed together.
“It’s not okay,” Blaine says, shutting his eyes and finally letting himself say the words that have been eating at him for longer than he wants to admit. “There’s a ten-to-one chance we won’t be on the same assignment, Kurt.”
“What if I said that I had an idea that could improve those odds?” Kurt asks, like he’s carefully selecting his words, and Blaine slowly leans back to stare at him. They’ve been improving at communicating actual thoughts and words lately, instead of bombarding each other with emotion, and that was definitely an inadvertent montage of wedding-related images from Kurt before he could shut it down.
“Seriously?” Blaine forces out through a suddenly dry throat.
“We are way too young for this,” Kurt says, which is not at all how Blaine had ever idly imagined this conversation starting, “and I don’t know about you, but I don’t feel ready—”
“I don’t either,” says Blaine.
“—But if we got married this week and submitted the proof to Starfleet, they would actively try to assign us together,” Kurt says intently. He’s wringing his hands low in his lap and quietly watching Blaine. “There’s a 66% probability, instead of the 9.2% chance if we just list standard assignment preferences.” Kurt did the math. Of course Kurt did the math.
Marry Kurt. It’s something that Blaine has definitely thought about, but not in the here and now; not before they even receive their commissions or leave the planet for the first time. Kurt’s the romantic one in this relationship, but even Blaine had dreams of one or both of them going down on one knee; of coming back to Earth on leave once Kurt is rapidly ascending the ranks of the engineering crew and Blaine is tagging along on away team missions to collect specimens for future study, and gathering all of their friends and family (well, maybe not Blaine’s immediate family) and having the big stylish wedding that he knows that Kurt has been planning since he was four.
“This is crazy,” he points out. “And we’d have to live together.”
“Obviously. What do you think?” Kurt presses, and Blaine knows that he is genuinely impatient, but that the short tone mostly comes from fear.
“I think,” Blaine says, slowly, “that was the least romantic proposal in the history of proposals.”
He can both see and feel Kurt’s anxiety and annoyance levels simultaneously spike. Blaine smiles broadly at him and squeezes his knee, hard. “I’m in.”
In the end, they don’t tell anyone. They have the conversation on a Monday and go to the courthouse after cadet fitness examinations on Wednesday; they submit the documentation to Starfleet, and they hope. This is a crazy thing that they’re trying, and there are no guarantees. They decide to keep it to themselves and treat it as the simple legal contract that it is. If it doesn’t work out in the end, no one will have to know and they’ll get a quiet divorce, and that will be that.
They don’t talk about what they’ll do if they aren’t assigned together. Blaine knows they’re both trying not to think about it.
That lasts for an impressive six weeks, until Kurt steps into the study block where Blaine and Jeffrey and several other friends are frantically preparing for final command evaluations. Blaine’s head snaps up the second that the door opens. He doesn’t need to look at Kurt to know that their assignments have come in, but he looks anyway. His boyfriend’s eyes are over-bright and his hands hang awkwardly at his sides.
“We got it,” Kurt says, and he smiles tremulously, and Blaine knocks his chair over in his haste to get to Kurt. Kurt is strong and solid in his arms and loud in his head, completely nonsensical in his tumult of relief and excitement and adoration; Blaine sees flashes of a warp drive and an Excelsior-class starship and them holding hands and, incongruously (but so, so Kurt), something that looks suspiciously like a set of drapes. That last one makes Blaine laugh and saves him from getting teary-eyed in front of a bunch of their friends.
“The Potemkin,” Kurt says, beaming, to everybody who is gathering around and clapping them on the backs. “We’re on the Potemkin.”
“How,” Wes says, once Kurt and Blaine have let go of each other, and he can reel Blaine in for a congratulatory hug, “did you two manage to score the same assignment?”
Blaine honestly doesn’t mean to say it. His eyes are on Kurt’s handsome face over Wes’s shoulder and he’s so proud and happy that it just slips out. “We got married.”
Rechela shrieks, “What?” and the room erupts, and then they have to explain the whole thing and there’s another round of congratulations and someone starts making plans for a post-commencement pre-duty wedding party.
When they have a second to themselves in the madness (there is no studying being done here now; absolutely none), Kurt threatens, “I’m letting you tell my dad, Mr. Big Mouth,” but he’s shining, and he squeezes back tightly when Blaine grips his hand.
* * *
(AUTHOR'S NOTE: AND THEN THEY EXPLORED SPACE TOGETHER AND HAD FABULOUS ADVENTURES, THE END.)
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BECAUSE TUMBLR LAYOUTS SUCKBECAUSE THIS FIC IS JUST SO AMAZING AND PERFECT, I LOVE IT SO SO MUCH!!!no subject
Tumblr layouts are seriously the worst.Thank you!!