Waking up happened with a start, and Kurt wasn't sure if it was just because there was someone else there or because it was because everything felt so unfamiliar. The mattress, sheets, blanket on top of him, all of it was different than what he was used to feeling, though he supposed he never really thought about it consciously. But there he was, so aware of the way the sheets felt against his skin and how the blanket was heavier than the one on his bed. More than that was how he'd resituated during the night and was curled in against Blaine's side, his arm draped over his waist.

He could feel each deep breath that Blaine was taking in, the rise and fall of his diaphragm, and feel the warmth radiating from him. Blaine's arm was over his, fingers laced together lightly but almost not at all from how they'd shifted in sleep. It was enough to remind Kurt of how the night had ended, their fingers intertwining as Blaine led him out of the bathroom and toward the bed, and that was how they'd ended up the way they were. Of course thinking of that only led Kurt to think back more through the timeline of the previous night, and that made a smile turn up the corners of his mouth.

Leaning in, just enough, he pressed a soft kiss against Blaine's cheek. The more he replayed the evening before, the more he realized that he was entirely free. Of course he'd been freed from the restraints of his job and the responsibilities therein, and he'd felt that freedom for as long as he'd had it. But everything that had happened with Blaine, the photo shoots and everything thereafter, it was the first time he'd let himself be free completely – playful, maybe even teasing – without stopping to question or think anything through to the point that he could rationalize his way out of it. It wasn't like he'd wanted to do that, either.

"G'morning," Blaine mumbled, his voice sleep rough and barely audible. His fingers flexed against Kurt's and grasped onto them a little better, and Kurt murmured the same against his cheek where his lips were still resting. He was just so comfortableand warm, which were two words that he'd long associated with Blaine in general so it shouldn't have been surprising that was what it was like to wake up next to him. "Sleep okay?"

"Perfect," Kurt murmured in response, kissing against his jaw lightly before pulling back to rest his head on the pillow and watch as Blaine blinked his eyes open and turned his head to look at him.

"My hair is a mess," Blaine replied, and Kurt's eyes flickered up to it briefly as a little grin took over his features. It was curlier than he'd ever seen, but it wasn't like his own hair was anything to brag about, he was sure. Showering and sleeping on it, that wasn't bound to give him the same results as the usual measures he went to – but he wasn't concerned considering that he and Blaine had shared so much already, what was a little bed head on top of it all?

"I like it," he offered with a little shrug, pulling his hand away to bring it up and rake through Blaine's hair, pushing it back from his forehead. It was soft and all kinds of crazy curly, but it had a lot of character. Clearly Blaine normally went to great measures to keep it tamed, and Kurt couldn't blame him because he knew he would do the same, but he wasn't lying when he said he liked it. "It's cute."

Blaine wrinkled his nose slightly and rolled over, nudging Kurt onto his back and letting their bodies overlap just enough that his leg was hooked between Kurt's and his arm was over his chest, hand resting on his shoulder as he propped himself up to look down. "You're just being nice," he said, leaning down and pressing a short but firm kiss against Kurt's mouth. "But thank you."

They could have stayed like that forever, as far as Kurt was concerned. There was something so reassuring about warm, solid weight pressed against him and the way he could feel Blaine's heartbeat from where his chest was resting against his side. Their breath mixed, the steady inhale and exhale between them as they made their way toward being completely awake. The sun was streaming in through the window but Kurt had no idea what time it was because he only knew how to tell that from his own apartment based on how much the sunlight was bothering him. It couldn't have been that much later than he was used to, he was sure.

"What do you have planned for today?" he murmured, tilting his head to the side as Blaine pressed a light trail of kisses along his jawline.

"Good question," Blaine replied, his voice soft and still a little gravelly from where it was back near Kurt's ear. "I was probably going to develop the film from yesterday."

"Can I watch?" Kurt asked, the words coming out before he even registered them. He supposed it wasn't the strangest request, but he reallywasinteresting in seeing Blaine at work even more. It was bound to be different, more of the technical side than when they'd been out in the city for him to take pictures of his series or in the studio the day before, but it was still something that Kurt wanted to see. Blaine just took such care with everything he did, and the way he'd spoken before about developing his own film had been more than enough to pique Kurt's interest.

"Sure." Blaine propped himself up again, a soft smile breaking across his features as he looked down at him. "I can't promise it won't be boring, but you can if you want. I just need caffeine first."

They made their way out of bed after many more minutes of lazily staying there, exchanging gentle kisses, and Blaine fixed his hair and got dressed before Kurt had much of a chance to even try to put himself together. "I'll go get us coffee," he said as he slipped on his shoes, leaning down to kiss Kurt's forehead. "You can stay here since your normal clothes still look like a rainbow exploded on them."

"Do you know my coffee order?"

"Of course I do." Blaine gave him an indignant look like he couldn'tbelieveKurt had the audacity to ask such a ridiculous question, and then he ducked out the door and all Kurt was left with was the sound of his footsteps going down the stairs – loud at first but quickly fading the further down he went.

It gave Kurt a chance to look at the apartment much more in depth than he had let himself the night before. He tried to keep from being nosy, but hehadto look at least a little. The kitchen was stocked well enough for a guy living by himself, the closet organized by color, and there were more bow ties than Kurt ever would have imagined there would be. It was all tidy and neat, right down to the way all the different pairs of shoes were lined up along the bottom of the closet. He found it fascinating that he hadn't ever known that Blaine – or anyone, for that matter – had lived there, but then again he hadn't even ventured up to the third floor for the first time more than a week prior.

After brushing his teeth with a spare toothbrush Blaine had found, Kurt tamed his hair enough to feel okay with it, considering he didn't have his usual products, and wandered down the stairs to get to the first floor and retrieve his things from his room. His bag had been left there overnight, which wasn't too much of a concern considered that the door had been locked, but he also got a sketchbook and some pencils to take back upstairs with him when he went.

He paused on the second floor on his way back up. The floor was cold against his feet, but he wandered over to the studio Blaine had set up for his photo shoots. It was just as much a mess as Kurt had remembered, and he leaned down to scoop his shirt up off the floor before pausing. There was such an aftermath from what they'd done, colors everywhere and only slightly smudged from how the pigment had originally fallen thanks to their feet. For the most part it was just how it had been, with the added bonus of footprints tracking it out of the eye of the storm and off to the camera, off toward the exit.

Kurt slung his shirt up over his shoulder and flipped open to a blank page of his sketchbook. It would have been easy to get one of the camera and take a picture of it, but those weren't his and he felt like it would have been trespassing to do. His hand moved quickly once it had a pencil in it, drawing out a vague backdrop of the room before delving into the colors. It was difficult to translate onto paper, and he knew he couldn't get it exactly but he wanted to at least try. He figured he could always go back and add more detail or use it as a reference for an actual piece, but the important part was to get the basics there on the page.

By the time Blaine was back with the coffee, Kurt had made his way back up and settled on the bed, flipping through the pages of his book and taking in what was there. It was the one he usually carried with him so he had something to do on the train rides back and forth, so it wasn't like it was full of what he was working on for the gallery or anything else, but more like doodles and practice to keep himself occupied while he commuted. That didn't mean it wasn't good to look at, though, and he could see the way he'd progressed the further back he got into it.

"Medium non-fat mocha," Blaine announced, handing the cup to him and taking a sip from his own. "Sorry, there was a much longer line than usual."

"It's fine," Kurt replied with a slight smirk, shaking his head and flipping his book shut before taking a drink. It wasn't like he'd been on edge from lack of coffee, which was a way he could tell it wasn't possible for it to bethatlate into the morning, and he'd been keeping himself occupied well enough. "But I know how we can make it better."

They gathered everything they would need for a light breakfast – Blaine apologized for his lack of having anything better than cereal for it, but Kurt pointed out that it really didn't matter considering that he usually ate toast – and Kurt led him up to the roof. It wasn't exactly the same as a fire escape, but it would do well enough. They spread out a blanket and settled sitting on top of it, cereal and milk poured into bowls between them.

"I don't think I've ever eaten breakfast up here," Blaine mused, taking a bite of his cereal and glancing around the roof as if he'd never quite seen it before. "We usually only came up here at night."

"It's my favorite way to have it," Kurt said, cradling his cereal bowl in his lap as he looked over. "Well not uphere, obviously, but out on my fire escape. It used to just be on the weekends, but now... I just really love taking in the morning."

There was something to be said about being able to take in the sounds of the city from on high, not having to see any of it but still feeling immersed in its culture and life. It was something that they got all the time without realizing it, because there was no way to shut it out entirely, but it was different in the mornings somehow. It wasn't just the sirens bleeding through the walls of his apartment, or the incessant honking of car horns doing the same. It was him giving himself into it willingly, wanting to hear the noise and rhythm of the world around him as he started his day, connecting himself to it before he walked out his front door and joined in.

Those were the kind of things Kurt wasn't sure if he would ever be able to put into words, but he felt like if there was anyone who would be able to understand, it was Blaine. And even if he didn't get it in the exact way that Kurt had meant, he was almost certain to in his own way, with what it meant tohim.He figured one or the other had happened after Blaine stayed quiet for a long moment, silently mulling over bites of cereal and sips of coffee before giving a nod and replying with a soft smile. "I love that."

They stayed up on the roof long after the cereal and coffee was gone, Blaine's hand sliding over palm up and Kurt slipping his own into it easily. Brooklyn sounded different than Manhattan, but it was in the ways Kurt had become used to seeing and hearing it. It was nuanced, and maybe it was just that way to him because that was how he felt about his experiences there in general.

Kurt washed out their cereal bowls once they were back inside, nudging Blaine out of the kitchen when he tried to take over. He figured it was his job, after all, despite the fact that Blaine hadn't made him breakfast or anything but he'd gone to get coffee and Kurt had eaten his food, so it made sense in his head. As soon as they were washed and dried, the bowls tucked up into their cupboard and the spoons in their drawer, Blaine slipped his arms around Kurt's waist and pulled him in close, raising an eyebrow with a slightly goofy grin tugging at his lips. "So. About this you wanting to spend time in a darkroom with me thing..."

It was in the farthest corner of the second floor, with a sign on the door that said 'hello!' until Blaine flipped it over where it read 'come back later.' After letting them in through the slight airlock of dual doors and double checking a few bottles over on a counter, Blaine ducked back out to get his cameras to bring in. Kurt let himself wander without touching anything, because he wasn't at all familiar with film processing and he didn't want to touch something he could possibly mess up. It didn't take long for Blaine to come back with cameras and a chair in tow.

"I figured you might want to sit," he explained, shutting the door behind him and setting down the chair. "Like I said, it could be boring."

Kurt moved the chair over closer to the counter where Blaine stood, winding the film in both the cameras, and settled down into it. The room seemed so normal until the lights turned off, and Kurt blinked a few times as his eyes tried to adjust to the darkness. It wasn't like he'd forgotten it was a darkroom, but after living in New York for so long where no place was ever completely dark, he'd not quite remembered how darkrealdarkness was.

Blaine talked through the process of getting the film rolled onto the real and down into a light-trap tank, one for the color and the other for the black and white, flipping on the safelight once it was all protected from being ruined by it. It really was a process, Kurt realized, watching as Blaine moved around the room and got different bottles of what he could only assume were chemicals. He could see the concentration on his face, despite the dim red light of the room, and he leaned back against the chair as he watched.

It was definitely its own form of art, and Kurt felt like he was transfixed. Blaine was mostly quiet, though he occasionally hummed to himself while he went through all the different steps, pouring from a bottle into the tank and then back out after a few minutes, rinsing the film, and then getting another bottle and doing it again. Everything got done twice, with the two different reels of film, and Blaine took the film out once it was done and carefully hung it to dry.

"Did I put you to sleep?" Blaine asked, washing his hands and drying them on a towel before moving over toward Kurt.

"Not even close," Kurt replied, reaching up and resting his hands on Blaine's waist when he got close enough. "I've never seen that done before, it was interesting."

"Well we have to wait for it to dry before I can make any prints." Blaine cupped Kurt's jaw in his hands and let his thumbs rub over his cheeks slowly. "But thankfully it's pretty dry in here so it usually only takes forty-five minutes, tops."

"What do you usually do in the meantime?"

"Oh any number of things, but right now I think my best option is sitting right in front of me," Blaine replied, a teasing lilt in his voice but then his eyebrows rose, eyes widening. "I didnotmean it like that, oh God, it came out sounding so much worse—"

"Blaine, it's fine—"

"I just really wanted to kiss you, that's all I meant," Blaine babbled on, his thumbs caressing across Kurt's cheeks a little more than they had been before, and Kurt reached up to take his hands and pull him down closer. Blaine's eyes were still wide, clearly searching Kurt's to see if there had been any kind of damage caused by what he'd said, but Kurt just slipped a hand around to the back of his neck and offered him a soft smile.

"So kiss me." He tilted his chin up just enough to brush their lips together, and he could feel Blaine relax beneath his hand and against his mouth. His breath came out in an easy sigh and Kurt hummed in response, letting his other hand move back to Blaine's waist and draw him in even further. It was only awkward for the shortest of moments with Blaine hunched over like that, but he shifted down onto Kurt's lap, sitting back on his thighs and cradling his head in his hands to tilt it and slant their mouths together even more perfectly than they had been before.

Kurt could get lost in that feeling so easily, and gladly so. It was insane to try and think that twenty-four hours prior, he hadn't known what it felt like to have Blaine's lips pressing against his. He hadn't known the taste of Blaine's tongue in his mouth, the feel of Blaine's teeth grazing over his lips, jaw, throat, anywhere, really. It was crazy to try and think of a time where he didn't know how much the room would feel like it was spinning around him because Blaine had this way of humming into his mouth and the vibrations went straight through him all the way to the tips of his toes and the ends of his hair. How Blaine's fingers were long, gentle, and his hands strong and when they held him, it made the world feel like it was moving in slow motion. It was like it would take every ounce of imagination in him to try and fathom what it was like to know a world where Blaine didn't kiss him, didn't touch him in a way that felt like his skin was sizzling in the wake of it, and that imagination would be so much better put to use in other ways.

On the flip side, he couldn't remember what it was like to not know the fit of Blaine's jaw in his hand, the way the light stubble on his cheek would graze against Kurt's palm and send a shiver up his spine if it brushed against his own cheek. How his skin was soft and warm, in a way that Kurt had thought it would be but never quite imagined to its fullest. He knew what Blaine felt like under his hands, howevery inchof his body felt beneath his fingers. He'd spent enough time unintentionally mapping out his muscles and tracing along tendons that he felt that if he wanted to draw him from memory, he could. Maybe he would. All he knew was that with Blaine sitting there with him, he couldn't even being to imagine what it had been like not to have that at all.

"So you're not bored with this whole process yet?" Blaine murmured as he nosed his way back Kurt's jaw, mouthing at the hinge of it before pressing a soft kiss against it and pulling back to rest their foreheads together. "I mean, there's a bit of waiting involved before anything actually happens."

"I think the waiting's my favorite part," Kurt whispered in response, brushing their noses together before pressing a tender kiss to the corner of his mouth.

The dim red light in the room was the only thing keeping them from pitching into complete darkness, and maybe that was what made it seem all the more intimate. He could see Blaine clearly, especially that close, but the color illuminating his features brought them out differently than Kurt was used to. It was a bit like the night before, all the different colors spread across his skin and drawing Kurt's attention to different juts of bone, dips of muscle. He was almost certain that there would never be enough instances or ways to look at Blaine that he would ever run out of things to notice, from how his eyelashes fluttered just so in the light and the shadows fanned across his cheeks, or that particular way the corners of his mouth turned up when he was fighting a smile.

"I love the waiting," Blaine said softly, and Kurt let his head loll into his touch as Blaine brushed light kisses along his face. "But I really want to see the pictures."

Blaine had been right about the room being dry, because by the time he shifted back off Kurt's lap and got up to check on them, they were ready. There was a good bit of preparation that went into getting everything ready to make the prints, as well, and it might have been boring if Kurt hadn't been watching Blaine so intently. He had such an ease about everything that he was doing there in the darkroom that it drew Kurt in, and it vaguely reminded him of watching Brittany dance when she'd been demonstrating different steps for him. Blaineflowedthrough all his movements, like he had developed this dance with his equipment that was so routine that it was effortless.

There were so many elements and Kurt wasn't even sure what they all were. There were many tubs of different liquids, papers stacked off to the side next to what he would have called a projector even though he doubted that was the right term, a timer, and who knew what else there was but he couldn't see it all in the darkness. He set his sketchbook on his lap and flipped open to a blank page, trying to keep the movements of his pencil as quiet as possible to keep from disturbing Blaine – hell, he didn't even know if he would have been able to if he tried with how much Blaine seemed to be in his own world. It wasn't like Blaine had forgotten he was there, Kurt knew that, but he had to wonder how often he had anyone else there in the room with him when he was doing anything like that.

Kurt watched as Blaine held the negatives up to the light, essentially scrolling through them until he came across one he seemed to like and then the process began. Without knowing the proper terms, which he didn't because he'd never done much with photography that wasn't a digital camera, Kurt couldn't even begin to describe it. All he knew was that Blaine seemed to be projecting the negative onto a paper, watching the timer, moving the paper off to the side once he was done, and then looking through the negatives before choosing another one and doing the process all over again.

That was how it went, Blaine going through his process and not making any sound besides an occasional hum of thought while looking at the negatives, and Kurt sitting there caught between watching him and looking down at his book and adding to what was on the page. Then was as good a time as any to work on his thoughts for the gallery, at least Blaine's portion of it. It helped to be sitting there with his subject right in front of him, giving him the best possible examples of how he worked and what he did. Over and over, Blaine slid a paper under what Kurt was calling the projector and made a print of the negative, adding it to the other side, away from the blank papers waiting to be filled.

"I'll scan all the negatives into a computer later." It had been near silent for so long, save for the scratching of pencil and the sounds of Blaine's process, that it almost started Kurt when Blaine spoke. He looked up and nodded, thumb brushing over the page to smudge a line. "I mean, I would print them all like this but that would takeforever." He offered Kurt a wink as he gathered up the prints and moved them to the other counter, to the tubs of different liquids, and one by one he dipped them into each one, keeping an eye on a clock before switching between the tubs. "C'mere."

Kurt pushed up to his feet, setting his sketchbook and pencil down on the chair before moving across the small distance to Blaine, loosely sliding an arm around his waist and hooking his chin over his shoulder to watch what he was doing. "So there's the developer," Blaine began, sliding a print down into the liquid as he spoke, using a pair of tongs to make sure it all got coated, and he kept explaining with each time he moved it from one to the next. "Then the stop bath, to keep the chemicals from developing it any further. The fixer, then the wash, and then..." he paused as he pulled the print out of the wash, flipping it over for the first time so they could see the side that was the actual photograph. "Voila."

"Oh my God," Kurt said, not really able to stop himself. Even if he had been, he didn't think he would have.

It wasn't like he wasn't used to seeing himself, because he owned a mirror for goodness sake, but he'd been so caught up in the process that he'd completely forgotten that the picture Blaine was working on was of him. He wasn't sure if it was a faux pas to love a picture of himself as much as he did that one that Blaine had in his hands, but he really didn't care. It wasn't even thehimof it that he was drawn to, but the everything else. The way it was framed, the splash of pigment on his face in it – though it was black and white so he couldn't see the green, but he knew that was what it was – how Blaine had somehow caught a moment where he'd been distracted by something else so his expression was so indescribable that Kurt couldn't even figure out what had been happening. It was the same way that Blaine's pictures in the magazine captured moments that always seemed to pass by unnoticed, and despite the amount of time Kurt had spent looking straight at the camera, Blaine had caught a time that he hadn't been and he looked almost vulnerable save for the way the corners of his mouth were turning up in a way that Kurt knew was a telltale sign that he'd been about to smirk.

"Was that agoodreaction?" Blaine asked, tilting his head to the side so he was looking at Kurt as best he could with how Kurt was still pressed against his back and looking over his shoulder.

"That's... yes. Can we do the rest?"

"Sure," Blaine replied with a light chuckle, pulling away just enough to drop the picture into a part of the sink to rinse off whatever was left of the chemicals.

The process repeated over and over, just like it had with projecting the negatives onto the papers in the first place. Each picture was like a revelation, frames that Kurt hadn't even realized had happened despite the fact that he'd been there, that he was the oneinthem. That was why Blaine was who he was, Kurt supposed, and why he'd become so successful at just that. It was no wonder he wanted to develop his own prints, if it was that kind of magic every time. Maybe it was something that just seemed full of wonderment to Kurt because he'd never experienced it before, and each one was a reminder of their time in the studio, andGodhow he wanted to hold onto those memories forever, but he thought maybe it wasn't that because of the way Blaine's mouth was turned up in a smile that seemed to grow every time.

It was when the pictures switched from being just of him to the two of them that Kurt's breath almost felt punched out of him. The first one was right when Blaine had tugged him to his feet, and he could see the mischievous glint in Blaine's eyes and the surprise in his own. Blaine had clearly known what he was doing at the time, because even as swept up in the moment as they both had been, he'd turned them just so and the camera had caught it all. From how the frame had been wider, to catch all of Blaine from the waistband up while Kurt had been peppering him with colors, the next picture showed just how flush they'd been pressed against each other as they kissed, and it was easy to see how both their mouths were turned up in smiles.

The last three were probably what caught Kurt's heart the most, and he wanted to believe they'd gotten Blaine's too since he'd chosen to print them in the first place. There was one where he couldn't quite tear his eyes away from how his fingers had been twisted into Blaine's hair, the tension so clear despite how the curls were wrapped around them. That moment he'd pulled away to look down at himself, and Blaine had reached his hand up to cup his jaw – that was there in front of him, too. The way their gazes had locked, and Blaine's eyes were as gentle as his hand looked there cradling his face in it. Then what had happened moments after, that last kiss that had been so soft and tender. Kurt wanted to frame them all and put them in his apartment, and he wasn't sure if that was weird or egotistical or maybe it was neither. All he knew was that when he looked at them, his arm slid around Blaine's waist a little tighter and he didn't ever want to let go.

"You didn't do any of just you," Kurt commented after all the pictures were done, and Blaine had pulled away to retrieve them from the water and lay them out to dry. It wasn't like he could have possibly had any complaints after getting to watch Blaine work like that, but he kind of did in the sense that he hadn't gotten to see any of the pictures of Blaine. He tilted his head as Blaine looked over at him, smiling innocently. "What, didn't like them or something?"

"This wasn't about me," Blaine replied, setting out the last picture and giving them all a once over before sidling back over to Kurt and sliding his arms around his waist. "But how about this? We have some lunch and then you can look through the negatives and find the ones you like, and I'll print them. I mean, you could wait until I scan them all into the computer but for some reason I feel like you'll refuse to wait..."

"Excuse me,yourpictures deserve the same amount of gravitas as these other ones," Kurt said, rolling his eyes playfully and leaning down to brush a kiss against the corner of his mouth. "That sounds perfect. So lunch?"

"Lunch," Blaine confirmed with a nod, his thumb rubbing against the small of Kurt's back. "And in return, I fully expect to see what you've been working on. Deal?"

"Deal."