Fic: Fidelity, Chapter 15 - Learning to Play Rachmaninoff

[wowbright]

Fic summary:  An unlikely friendship forms. Dave learns to love himself, Blaine learns to trust love, and Kurt learns that love is both simpler and a lot more complicated than he expected. AU from 3.05 with canon elements.
Chapter summary: Kurt discovers something about himself that Blaine’s known for a while; Dave practices (that’s not a euphemism); and the migration of warblers through Ohio begins. ~4,650 words.
Notes:Thanks to unseasonably warm weather, the warbler migration in 2012 started earlier than usual.
Pairings: Kurt/Blaine, Dave/Kurt crush
Rating:PG-13 this chapter

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Note: Chapters on AO3 are numbered differently due to factors beyond my control.

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Chapter 15: Learning to Play Rachmaninoff

It's much too early in the year, but the world is starting to bloom, anyway. Crocuses dot the lawns, and the cherry trees have formed tight buds, tantalizing passersby with the promise of what's to come.

Kurt has cracked the window open. He and Blaine are making out on his bed – really just making out, because it's been so long since they've done that and they miss the slow burn of it, and also because Sam got home early from synchronized swimming practice and keeps darting back and forth between Finn's room and every other place in the house, and it brings his footsteps near the threshold of Kurt's door at least once every four-and-a-half minutes, if the songs that are playing softly out of Kurt's docked iPhone can serve as an accurate keeper of time.

Blaine is the best kisser in the world.

Okay, so it's not like Kurt actually has a lot of experience with anyone else, but he knows it's true because everything that Blaine does with his mouth is exactly what Kurt wants, even when he didn't know he wanted it. And Blaine's lips, always so full and begging Kurt to kiss them, grow even fuller and more pleading with every kiss Kurt gives. They're like the plump petals of snapdragons. Yes, that's it! – when the snapdragons start blooming in late May, Kurt's going to bring bouquets and bouquets of them to Blaine. Kurt will tell him that his lips are softer and more beautiful than their petals, and that he is Kurt's spring and summer.

It's sappy, but he'll do it. Blaine likes sappy.

No, Blaine loves sappy.

If there's a flower that Kurt feels like right now, it's Jack-in-the-Pulpit – phallic but not blatantly so, the erection at its center obscured by petals. Kurt's getting hard, but he's ignoring it, refusing to press against Blaine's thigh. He doesn't want what they're doing right now to turn into more than making out. He wants to reacquaint his lips with the numb buzz that blooms in them when he kisses Blaine for an hour straight.

They don't quite get to an hour. Kurt hears Sam's footsteps in the hallway for the umpteenth time this afternoon when they stop right in front of his door. There's a pause of two beats before the knock.

"Kurt?" Sam calls through the closed door.

Kurt sighs as he pulls away from Blaine's lips, looks at Blaine apologetically before clearing his throat and calling back, "Yeah?"

"Sorry to bother you, but, um, I'm trying to finish my laundry and you left your stuff in the dryer, and I wasn't sure if I could put it in a basket because I know you're kind of specific about how you want your clothes handled. But also your cycle ended 20 minutes ago and if it sits in there much longer, everything's going to get wrinkled, so – yeah."

Blaine looks like he's attempting a smirk at Kurt, but his eyes are too love-addled for it to really work. "You'd better go get your laundry," he whispers.

"I don't know." Kurt kisses the lovely spot at the juxtaposition of Blaine's throat and jaw. "I kind of like what I'm doing right now." He kisses it again. "Maybe I could let someone else touch my clothes for once. Just – he could just throw them in the basket. That wouldn't kill me." Kurt speaks in the hushed tone he usually reserves for sweet nothings. "Or would it?"

"I think it might, and I don't want to risk it – "

Sam's voice again: "Kurt?"

Kurt rolls away from Blaine, still latching on to his hand so that their connection won't be completely severed. He's not ready for that yet. "I'll be there in a couple minutes."

"Thanks," Sam says and bounds away.

Blaine runs his fingers along Kurt's palm. "I would hate for you to die just because someone else touched your laundry. It would be such a pointless way to go."

"You're right," Kurt sighs, turning his head to face Blaine. "And if I stop kissing you now, it means I'll survive long enough to kiss you again." He kisses Blaine's cheek. "And again." Kiss. "And again."

Blaine's mouth twitches into a grin. "I will let you spend the rest of your life kissing me, as long as you promise to take breaks for clothes-handling. We need to prevent your early demise."

Kurt leans in and nips Blaine on his clothed shoulder. "I promise."

A few minutes later, Kurt is back with his basket of laundry and Blaine looks slightly less disheveled, a fact that makes Kurt's heart sink a little. He must have combed a little more gel through his hair in Kurt's absence. Maybe Kurt should hide the gel or throw it out; but no, not having gel at Kurt's house for post-intimacy touch-ups would probably do the same thing to Blaine that Sam touching the laundry would do to Kurt.

Anyway, it's probably for the best that Blaine is looking a bit more put together. Kurt's not sure he could get the laundry put away promptly if he looked as unraveled as he did before Kurt left the room.

Although it's not quite true that Kurt would die if anyone other than himself touched his laundry. Blaine's allowed to, because he's watched Kurt enough times to know what to do. And this load isn't highly technical, anyway – mostly jeans and briefs and undershirts.

Blaine folds the undershirts along the same invisible lines that Kurt would, turning them into tight, flat rectangles as Kurt walks the jeans to the closet to hang them up. The song on iTunes is The Beatles' "Drive My Car," and Blaine is beep-beep mmm-beep-beep yeah-ing along with it when he interrupts himself. "Why do you have a Webelos scarf?"

Kurt finishes hooking the hanger over the rod before turning around.

Blaine is standing next to the bed, holding Dave's plaid kerchief in the air. "Is it Finn's?"

"No. It's –" Kurt swallows hard.  “Isn't it a Cub Scout thing? I thought it was Cub Scouts. There's the little crest in the corner." He walks toward Blaine and takes the kerchief, turning it to show Blaine the yellow-and-blue fleur-de-lis.

"Webelos is Cub Scouts. It's the highest level before Boy Scouts."

"Wait? Aren't Cub Scouts the same as Boy Scouts?"

"Um, kind of. Not exactly. They're more like junior Boy Scouts. You can't really be a Boy Scout until you're in middle school. But – wow. I really know too much about a group that wouldn't let either of us in."

They stand there, both looking at the scarf as Kurt starts to fold it. He hides the crest on the second fold. "I – it's Dave's."

Kurt feels Blaine's eyes on him, but he can't look up. He keeps working at the scarf, doubling it into ever-smaller triangles, unfolding it when the edges don't match up quite right. "Last year, when he gave me back the cake topper – you know, the one that he stole from me before the wedding –" He sees Blaine nod out of the corner of his eye. "It was wrapped in this, and I figured I was never going to see him again so I just –" He bites his lip. "Kept it."

He sinks down onto the edge of the bed and makes no pretense at folding anymore, just works the cloth in his hands. He closes his eyes. The mattress dips as Blaine settles next to him.

"I don't even know why I kept it. I guess it felt like proof that people can change for the better. … That he could.” Kurt feels Blaine's hand on the small of his back, the warmth anchoring him. "So I put it in the back of my handkerchief drawer and I was just going to keep it there, you know, as a random reminder when I'd be looking through it, but then – "

Kurt sees the exact moment now, when the kerchief reminded him of Dave's smile and he tucked it into his pocket, declaring it the perfect accoutrement for the Christmas season. Except that he kept wearing it on and off after Christmas, especially around Dave – hiding it in his back pants pocket under long sweaters or jackets, half wanting Dave to get a peek of it and half wanting him to never, ever know.

"Oh god, Blaine. It's worse than I thought."

Blaine's hand is full-on rubbing Kurt's back now, long strokes up and down his spine. "Worse? I don't – What's bad?"

Kurt opens his eyes to look at Blaine. "I've been hiding this for longer than I thought."

"Hiding what?"

"I started wearing it. In my back pocket, Blaine. Not because of this general idea of people changing, and not because it goes well with some of my outfits because even if it does, it's polyester blend. I mean, if I like plaid this much I could go find something that’s not so synthetic.” Kurt's rushing his words and his voice becomes shriller the faster he talks. “And last week on Ebay I saw an out-of-production Hermes scarf that had the most sublime take on plaid – the colors were intoxicating – and I almost put a bid on it but then I didn’t because – because I like this scarf better, Blaine. This hideous polyester abomination. Because it’s, because it’s –" Kurt squeaks on the syllable. It's not his proudest moment.

"It’s okay,” Blaine whispers, rubbing the tense muscles between Kurt's shoulder blade and spine.

Kurt looks down at his hands, the knuckles of his left fist white from how tightly he's wound the kerchief around it. "I wear it because it’s him."

"Kurt – "

And then Blaine's sweet, snapdragon lips against his cheek.

"You haven't been hiding anything from me, Kurt."

Kurt looks into Blaine's eyes and there they are, that brown so natural and earthy they're bordering on green, like the bare dirt outside that's coming to life as the first perennials push through. “No?”

Blaine shakes his head. “I already told you I've known for a while."

"How?"

"Well, mostly the way you're possessive with him. Which obviously isn’t a requirement when someone feels affection for another person – but for you, it tends to be a side effect. And, also, you get pretty smiley around him."

Kurt blushes. "I'm sorry."

"Don't be. It was never a problem. If it had been, I would have said something –"

Kurt gives Blaine a look.

"Or, okay, maybe not, but I would have destroyed the punching bag in the weight room, right? Or grumbled a lot when we were all together. Or sung an inappropriate solo in glee club to air out our dirty laundry."

Kurt fights a smile. "Stop trying to make me laugh."

"I'm not. But I wouldn't mind if you did laugh, because this is happy stuff and I want you to be happy about it."

"Happy stuff?"

Blaine grabs Kurt's hand. "Dave makes you happy, Kurt. Dave makes me happy. Seeing you happy with Dave makes me happy. Your heart, and how big it is – it makes me happy. It's all happy."

"But I don't – I don't even know if I want something to happen." Kurt leans his forehead against Blaine's. "It's just – it's a little more intense than I know what to do with."

"It's okay if you don't want anything to happen. You can still have feelings." Blaine kisses Kurt briefly before backing up slightly and taking his other hand – the one clutching the kerchief. "Kurt, I know that when you care about anybody, it's going to be intense. The way you love is so fierce and so loyal. It's one of the things that made me fall in love with you."

Kurt feels dizzy. "I don't know that I would call it that. It's – I mean, it's definitely a crush, but I don't know – "

"You mean 'love'?"

Kurt swallows hard. "Yeah."

"You love Rachel, right?"

"Yeah."

"You love your dad?"

"Yeah."

"You love Finn?"

"Of course."

"And you love me."

"Yes." Kurt smiles for the first time in this conversation. He's back on terra firma, on one of the few things he's always certain of. "I do. I love you."

"Do you love any of us in exactly the same way?"

Kurt shakes his head.

"So that's what I meant. I don't know exactly how you love Dave, but I know you love him. I love him, too."

"Yeah," Kurt says. "But not in the developing-a-weird-secretive-relationship-with-his-neckerchief way." Kurt rests his head on Blaine's shoulder and they sit quietly for a bit, holding hands, the scarf now lying loosely on Kurt's lap.

“Well, I sort of have a secret, too,” Blaine says.

Kurt looks up. Blaine is blinking the way he sometimes does when he gets nervous, and he parts his lips like he’s about to speak but then closes them again and says nothing. From the shoulders downward, he’s almost statue-still; Kurt realizes it’s because Blaine is holding his breath. Kurt tries to reassure him with a gentle squeeze of his hand. “Do you?”

Blaine exhales, looks down at their joined hands. “I’ve, um … thought about you two together.” He rubs his free hand over the back of his neck. “I mean, um, well.” He lowers his voice until it’s almost a whisper. “Fantasized.”

Kurt’s cheeks burn so hot they feel like they might evaporate off his face. He takes a deep breath and leans the side of his body into Blaine’s, nudges his nose against Blaine’s cheekbone before letting his eyelashes flutter against the skin there. “Well,” he says. “That’s not too much of a surprise. I mean, is there anyone you haven’t fantasized about me with?”

Blaine lets out a surprised laugh and shakes his head, beautiful and flustered and making Kurt’s heart melt. “Um, Mr. Schue?” He glances into Kurt’s eyes, and then back at their hands and the scarf in Kurt’s lap. “Or anyone we’re related to except, um, oh-my-god-don’t-hate-me Finn.”

Kurt kisses Blaine’s cheek. “Well, I might have entertained a momentary fantasy about your brother, so I guess we’re even.”

Blaine breathes again. “And girls. I haven’t thought about you with any girls.”

Kurt pushes Blaine back onto the bed, giving the laundry basket a little jounce from their sudden weight against the mattress, and kisses him in earnest. As Kurt shifts over Blaine, the kerchief falls from his lap onto Blaine’s hip. Blaine clutches at it with each hungry kiss.

“So what do we do now?” Kurt says, rolling off to his side to catch his breath. He props himself up with one elbow.

“I think it would behoove us both to keep kissing.” Blaine is still on his back, looking coyly up at Kurt from under those lush-velvet eyelashes.

Kurt feels his cock stirring, but he will not let it divert him from his course. He ignores it and pokes Blaine lightly in the ribs. “You know that’s not what I meant.”

Blaine blinks again, the little vixen. “Do I?”

“I didn’t mean what to do right now. I meant –” Kurt lowers his voice. “I meant about Dave.”

Blaine rolls onto his side to face Kurt, drapes his arm across Kurt’s hip. The kerchief is still clutched in his hand. “Whatever you want,” he says.

Kurt forces himself not to roll his eyes. He puts his hand over Blaine’s sternum to ground himself in the warmth there. “That leaves an awful lot of latitude.”

“Yes, it does.”

“I think,” Kurt says, “I think I don’t want to change anything.”

“Okay,” Blaine says.

“Do you mean that? You’re awfully easy-going about the whole thing. And sometimes –” Kurt bites his lower lip, “Sometimes you pretend to be easy-going about things you don’t actually feel very easy about.”

Kurt feels Blaine’s heart hammer against his fingertips. Blaine looks away, takes a deep breath, then looks back. His eyes are soft and vulnerable. “You’re right,” he says. “I do that sometimes. But I think, here – I just really want you to do whatever you’re comfortable with. I don’t want to push you into something you don’t actually want, because that’s not –” He shakes his head. “That’s not what we’re about. That’s not what love is about.” Blaine puts his hand over the Kurt’s. “So, if what you really want is for nothing to change, then that’s what I want. But if you’re just saying that because you don’t know what you want yet, or because you’re scared of what you want – then I think I want you to take the time to figure it out.”

Kurt’s heart presses against his ribcage. “And in the meantime?”

“Play it by ear, I guess,” Blaine says, then smiles impishly. “And maybe kiss me for the rest of the afternoon?”

Kurt smirks. “Well, maybe not the whole afternoon. I’m not done putting my laundry away yet. And didn’t you say something earlier about homework?”

Blaine shrugs. “Homework, shmomework. I have spring fever and you’re the only cure.”

Kurt chuckles. “That was a terrible pick-up line, sweetie.”

“That wasn’t a pick-up line. That was god’s honest truth.”

“There is no god, and it was terrible,” Kurt says, but he kisses Blaine anyway, because his lips are pink and parted and delicious and his tongue is soft-smooth perfection, and because it is spring outdoors and also in Kurt’s heart.

Later, when they hear Carole come in through the front door, they reluctantly separate their lips and bodies, roll onto their backs so their heartbeats can slow. Blaine looks down at the wadded up kerchief in his hand and smiles. "You’re totally going to have to iron this now, aren’t you?”

"That is the one advantage of cotton-poly blends." Kurt pulls himself up to his knees, takes the kerchief and smoothes it out over Blaine’s chest. "The wrinkles always work themselves right out."

Blaine sits up and pecks Kurt on the cheek. "Yes, they do."

* * *

The next time Dave comes over to Blaine's house, Kurt's the one to greet him at the door.

Before Dave's even taken off his jacket, Kurt's arms are around him. It's not anything, really. Not clingy or longing or laden with meaning. It's just a hug, the kind you give a friend you haven't seen in forever.

It's brief, but it's long enough for Kurt to get a hint of the smooth expanse of Dave's back, to smell his unimpressively generic and yet charmingly teenage-boyish shampoo (if it's Axe, Kurt would rather not know, because he's starting to like it), to feel Dave's breath parting the hair behind his ear, to feel the brief security of Dave's broad hands against his shoulder blades, the warmth of their chests and shoulders touching.

"What – what was that for?" stutters Dave when Kurt pulls back, letting his hands linger on Dave's shoulders for just a moment before removing them completely.

"I – " Kurt starts, and he feels himself blushing, but he plows through. "It's overdue. I just usually let Blaine show all the affection for both of us. When I’m not drunk." Kurt looks at the door on the coat closet for a moment like it's the most fascinating thing in the world – and to be fair, it's a nice cherry door, with undulating patterns of red and brown swirling together in a way that Kurt could study for a good twenty minutes if he were in the right mindset.

He forces himself to look back at Dave, who looks a little shell-shocked, if shell-shock can come with a slight, shy smile. "Well," Kurt says, "what shall it be first? Homework or Chopin?"

"Homework first. And then – I'm not sure I'm in the mood for Chopin today. I dug out some Bartok that I started on before my fingers – before I quit. I was thinking of going back to that."

"Well," says Kurt flippantly, "I have no idea who that is, but I guess I'll learn, won't I?" and leads Dave to where Blaine is waiting for them in the kitchen.

And even though he doesn't touch Dave, doesn't take his hand or graze his elbow, Kurt is carrying him the whole way there.

* * *

Later that afternoon, when Dave has played through his Bartok a couple of times, Blaine sits down next to him on the bench and flops a folio open on the stand.

"I want to learn this," he says, pointing to the sheet music. It's Poulenc's Sonata For Four Hands. "And my piano teacher said I'm ready to work on it. But I thought it would be more fun to learn if I had someone to play it with besides her once a week. What do you say?"

Dave raises an eyebrow at Blaine. "Is that a proposal?"

"I believe it is." Blaine nudges Dave's elbow. "Did you want me to get down on my knees?"

Kurt's voice comes sing-songy from the kitchen. "I hear you two flirting out there."

"Did you want us to stop?" Dave calls back. He hopes Kurt's a little jealous. Of both of them.

"Not on my account," Kurt singsongs back. "It's kind of endearing."

"Because I'm so bad at it?" Dave calls. Holy shit, what has gotten into him?

"I didn't say that."

Blaine interrupts. "Who's flirting now?" He's facing the kitchen, not Dave. It's loud enough for Kurt to hear.

"I can't let you have all the fun," is Kurt's retort. Dave feels the edges of his ears turn red, but Blaine's eyes are so squinty from the smile on his face that he doesn't seem to notice.

"So, do you want to learn it?" Blaine's voice is bubbling.

"Sure," Dave says, flipping through the pages. "I've always liked this one, and I should have learned it by now. My teacher was kind of obsessed with Dvorak's Slavonic dances as far as duets went, so I never studied this."

"I'm going to take that as an enthusiastic 'yes,'" Blaine says, slapping Dave on the back of the shoulder.

"It is," says Dave. "I'm just kind of reserved."

"One of your many winning qualities," Blaine says, slapping Dave on the back again.

Dave is tempted to ask Blaine to list those winning qualities, but instead he picks the sheet music from the stand for a closer read.

*

Dave’s dad can play Rachmaninoff's Piano Concerto #3.

Not brilliantly, but with a technical proficiency that Dave hopes he'll reach and surpass someday. The story Paul Karofsky tells is that he hadn't played in a while when he learned it – he couldn't afford the time or money for lessons after he graduated from college and started working – but it occurred to him one day that if he quit smoking, he could save up enough money for lessons.

So he quit, cold turkey, and every time he had the compulsion to handle a cigarette, he'd go over to his keyboard and work on the concerto until the urge passed.  The practice quickly added up to an hour or two each day, week after week.

(Years later, when Dave learned to toddle around and was barely eye-level with the keys when he stood next to the piano, the urge still came often enough that his dad still had to play it at least once a week. Now, Dave hears it once every few months – although he heard it almost daily when he was expelled from McKinley, and twice the week after he came out.)

Dave decides to take a similar approach with the Poulenc he's learning with Blaine. Every time he thinks of Kurt when he's at home, he goes to the piano and plays until he's immersed in the music. Unlike his father, though, Dave's not exactly trying to break himself of his habit. He's not sure what he'd do without it. It's more that he's using the habit to make himself become who he wants to be.

If he left it up to chance or discipline, Dave knows he wouldn't spend even five minutes at the piano each day. For one, he's lost his confidence in his playing, and his belief that he might ever get better. There's a nagging voice inside telling him that he'll never be Vladimir Horowitz, so why even bother? For another, the piano at home hasn't been tuned regularly for the past few years, so his playing sounds even crappier than it should. And finally, there's his mother, who nags at him to stop whenever he starts because "I don't need that racket right now." When his father's home, he tells her to let Dave be; but when he's not, Dave knows he would crumple under her iron glare if he didn't have the thought, I have to keep going; I'm still thinking of Kurt, to hold onto.

So he practices. And practices. And practices. He forgets Kurt for a few moments here and there, and when he remembers him again he regrets the forgetting. He replays the hug in the foyer, the occasional tap on the shoulder in the kitchen, the hand around his forearm last Thursday as Kurt dragged him to the window to look at the first of yet another kind of warbler to appear this spring.

"How many kinds of warblers are there?" Dave asked the third time Kurt pulled him to the window. It was the first time Dave had seen a yellow-throated warbler. The black-and-white stripes on its wings reminded him of Oreo cookies.

"A lot,” Kurt said. “I tried to learn all the ones that go through northwest Ohio when I was at Dalton, and match each one up to the personality of a different member of the Warblers. It gave me something to do while Blaine was hogging all the solos." He turned to his boyfriend, who sat at the kitchen bar poring over his homework, and winked.

Blaine waggled his eyebrows. "If I hadn't hogged all the solos, you wouldn't have been able to tell me off, and then I might not have fallen in love with you as hard as I did."

"Oh, you would have eventually," Kurt teased, and Blaine’s hearteyes proved the statement to be true.

Love. Dave has spent a lot of time looking at the dictionary and thesaurus on his computer, trying to figure out what he really feels for Kurt. He doesn't think he's in love because it's not the marrying type, because it can't be, because of Blaine. So what is it? Affection, fondness, tenderness, devotion, lust, yearning?

One thesaurus gives him the word besottedness, which also has something to do with being dizzy and drunk. It might be that.

Dave's new therapist – not one of the ex-gay quacks that his mom wanted him to see, but the good kind of therapist, the kind that he asked his dad if he could see because life is confusing and so is Dave’s heart – says that the reason he's so enamored with Kurt is that Kurt is unattainable, and Dave doesn't think himself worthy of attaining love.

"Well, duh," was Dave's response to the proposition, which made Dr. Hoskins laugh.

What Dave didn't say was that Dr. Hoskins had only identified half of the equation. The other half is that if Kurt can love Dave, even if only in the smallest way (would that be fondness or attachment?), Dave will know that he deserves love in general. Kurt doesn't give his affection freely; he can be cold and distant even with his own brother, judging by the way he sometimes talks to him on the phone. But Kurt hasn't been cold with Dave for almost a year. It makes Dave feel like he's doing something right. He's getting that much closer to believing he's worthy of love.