Title: Thread Count

Rating: M

Summary: The day after "The Night with the Strawberries"—which is what Blaine plans on calling it for as long as it takes for that thought to stop making him grin…and then the day after that and a little further down the line.

This is the last part of what's turned into a three part series of future Klaine and strawberries and messy sex and sheets.

All up just smutty, fluffy smuff. With strawberries…Except not in this one. You can read this one without the others…just know there was messy, hot, frozen-strawberry based sex in the first two and this is the aftermath of that.

Warnings: None for this part.

Spoilers: Season 2

Wordcount: 2500 for this, so about 11000 all up.

A/N: Took me a while but here is the sequel thing to the other two fics. Just because I couldn't not write it after a conversation with sillygleekt wherein we discussed New York and doing the laundry and the state of those sheets the morning after the night with the strawberries. Thank you to her for editing this one and writing the ending. I just sent it to her sans ending because I couldn't think of a good enough one and she obliged. Also preemptive thanks to her for editing not just easy(ish) fics like this but also the agonizingly difficult-to-write ones which make me into a bratty pain in the ass and that she has to comb through time and time again and try to explain to me what I'm doing wrong and then read it again and again. Thanks (and chocolate and souls and stuff) for that.

Anyway, hope you enjoy it!

The day after "The Night with the Strawberries"—which is what Blaine plans on calling it for as long as it takes for that thought to stop making him grin—Blaine barely puts up a fight when Kurt insists he take the atrociously messy sheets down to the little Chinese laundry around the corner. He spares a few minutes to try to convince Kurt that the stains are permanent and rather unbecoming and blushes when he imagines the face of the tiny elderly woman who runs the place when she sees them.

An hour later, however, he's standing there and blushing again as she clicks her tongue and lifts the folded sheets to look disbelievingly at the bright red stains and sniff and know damn well what is going on. He can't believe Kurt's making him do this.

She tells him in a lot of rambling Mandarin and a few choice English words and a lot of flailing arm gestures that washing them is futile. He also suspects she's accusing him of something he probably doesn't want to know about. But he just pushes the heap of sheets in her direction and says slowly, "I know they'll be stained. Just try."

And then he's out the door as she yells after him, still gesticulating wildly, "You pick up in morning!" and the stifling New York air is hitting his flushed face and he's shaking his head and walking home. Thank god the A/C is working again and Kurt's got it running full blast.

The sheets are stained. They're mortifying when put in the context that for every splash of faded pink—and there are so, so many—there must have been ten times as much juice on their skin that night. But mortifying in such a good way. And as Blaine's wrists flick the folded, laundered material out over the bed for Kurt to survey he feels a strange sense of pride.

"The fitted sheet is going to be just as bad, isn't it?" Kurt asks.

Blaine can only imagine. But kind of wants to check and quickly pulls it out of the bag and flicks it over the bed over the top-sheet. Actually, the fitted sheet is worse—a lot worse. There's darker reds and what he thinks are red-silhouetted curves that he kind of wants to assign to body parts and fingers—where they'd held the sheets hard enough to stave off the dyes, where Kurt had pressed him down with his hands. He thinks he can tell exactly where everything happened but he also thinks he might be making a lot of that up in his head.

He just says, not meaning it at all, "Sorry."

"Well really, Blaine." Kurt's aiming for indignant and his voice hits the mark beautifully. Except he's staring at the strawberry stains and smiling as well.

Blaine looks at him and then reaches out and pulls him in for a kiss, arms linking around his waist. "Worth losing a couple of cheap sheets for?" Blaine asks when he pulls back an inch.

Kurt laughs against his mouth and pushes him back and still manages to sound indignant when he says, "Hey, I'll have you know those are Egyptian cotton, 600 thread count, Blaine!" But he's also smiling radiantly and pulling the sheets into his hands. "I don't suppose we can convince the laundry to try bleaching them."

Blaine grimaces and shakes his head. "I am not going back to her with these. When she handed them over you should have seen the look she gave me."

Kurt laughs lightly and then scrunches the sheets back into the bag.

Four months later.

"I thought you'd be later," Kurt says as Blaine walks in the door.

"I couldn't stay there a moment longer, the day had already dragged on too long and I know you cooked tonight and…" Blaine pulls off his knit hat and scarf and the heavy jacket he'd bought last week when the weather started to turn cold.

Kurt shushes him and shakes his head, long over Blaine missing dinner when it didn't really matter. He always calls and begs forgiveness and Kurt always forgives. "You look exhausted—"

"Thanks," and Blaine rolls his eyes and rakes a hand through his hair.

"—Sit down and I'll heat you something up."

There's a thankful smile and a heavy sigh and Blaine's bags drop where he's standing just inside the door. Then he crosses the room and slumps into one of the two chairs, head in his hands, elbows on the table and his eyes closed.

Kurt's convinced he's working too hard. And he knows why and supports his boyfriend in his endeavors and in doing what he loves but today was a twelve-hour day, the third in a row, and he knows Blaine ate breakfast and lunch while he worked, drank too much coffee and didn't let his mind or the rest of his body relax. And Kurt's determined to take care of him when these hellish weeks come around.

Part of that involves staring at the top of his head while the microwave hums. When it beeps, Blaine doesn't even flinch and Kurt lets the corner of his mouth quirk up at his good luck and doesn't waste time pulling the ceramic bowl from inside and quickly walking away.

It takes only a few seconds for Blaine to be calling his name in a whining needy voice that makes Kurt feel bad and smirk all at once. He doesn't respond but in the small apartment Blaine already knows where Kurt must have gone and is dragging his feet loudly in the direction of the bedroom a moment later.

He turns the doorknob and pushes, a hand rubbing at his face as his brow furrows and he tries to work out where his dinner has gone and what his boyfriend is playing at. "Kurt, what are you doing?" he's mumbling before his eyes focus on the room and he slowly pieces together the picture in front of him.

Kurt's smiling at him from where he's perched, legs crossed, on the end of the bed. Dark eyes and dark hair, his skin glowing, his silhouette backlit, from the flicker of candles on both bedside tables. They've been burning a while and the room smells of vanilla and strawberries and—Oh.

"Are those…?" Blaine asks, voice a little shaky as he stares past Kurt to their usually immaculately made bed: it should be all black and gold angles but isn't because the covers are folded neatly in the corner and the pillows are up against the wall and all that's left is a fitted sheet and a light cotton top-sheet just like the ones they use in summer.

"Are those what Blaine?" Kurt asks, voice melodious and high and already teasing.

Blaine blushes and he doesn't remember the last time he blushed because his boyfriend made him. "Are those the sheets?"

Kurt does a horrible job of playing dumb, grinning too broadly at his own ingenious plan and very pleased to see Blaine's eyes brightened and his shoulders squared like they haven't been since the week started. A tilt of his head and an enquiring raised eyebrow as he asks "Which sheets?" and then as an afterthought, "Get undressed."

Blaine huffs but raises his hands to start unbuttoning his vest and the shirt underneath hurriedly. It makes Kurt chuckle. And then Blaine says, "I thought you threw them out."

"I decided they might come in handy." Kurt doesn't want to waste time and is only wearing a sweater so he just pulls it over his head and lays it to the side of the bed. When he looks back up Blaine is staring at him with wonder in his eyes.

"You, Kurt Hummel, kept stained sheets?"

Kurt shrugs and wonders how long it's going to take his mentally exhausted boyfriend to do the basic math of the situation.

"But you won't even wear stained undershirts. You caught me wearing one with a coffee stain once and threatened to break up with me!"

It's an exaggeration. But Kurt had quickly pulled the offending item off him and disposed of it. "It made perfect sense to keep them. No point ruining good sheets every time things get messy."

That makes Blaine grin and the curve of his lips makes the tiredness around his eyes dissolve as Kurt watches. "Messy?" he asks as he shrugs the unbuttoned layers off his shoulders and starts to work on his belt buckle.

Kurt makes a sound low in his throat that sounds like agreement and stares unabashedly as Blaine lets his pants slide down his legs and bends to unlace his shoes, step out of them and pull off his socks. Then he's standing there, naked except for underwear, hair askew and eyes bright and blatantly contemplating the situation.

Blaine's gaze alights on the bedside table, straying from Kurt properly to admire the red and white candles Kurt has obviously bought for the occasion and reveling in the smell of strawberries in the air. The scent brings back memories—very, very fond memories that he hasn't thought about enough recently. Then he sees the bowl beside the candles and his brow creases as he wonders and Kurt breathes out "Finally," and scoots up the bed to lean back against the headboard, his pants slung low across his hips.

"What's that?" Blaine motions with his hand before he crawls on to the bed and up to kneel between his boyfriends outstretched legs as he tries to see beyond the familiar light blue ceramic of one of their soup bowls.

Kurt twists to the side, stretching out a hand and retrieving the bowl from the table, finding it still hot but not burning his fingers in the way it had when he'd pulled it from the microwave. "This is the soon-to-be mess," Kurt explains, voice purposely breathy and low.

Blaine sits back, happy to wait for Kurt to show him because that is evidently the plan. "Keeping strawberry stained sheets is just a little bit naughty, you know," Blaine explains. Kurt hums and dips a finger into the bowl.

Actually, Blaine's worked out what's in there, can smell it now that he's sitting close and caught enough glimpses to be certain. But he's not about to tell Kurt that. He's much happier to stay where he is, kneeling and watching as Kurt's finger twirls and comes out and moves quickly to press against Blaine's lips.

There's a moment's resistance as their eyes meet and everything freezes and on a weekend this might be where Blaine tries to reverse the seduction, to give tit for tat and level the playing field and all that. It's not though. It's a Wednesday and Blaine has two more long, hard days of work. So instead Blaine just opens his mouth and sucks at the hot liquid chocolate on Kurt's finger, letting himself get lost in the taste and the familiar feel of Kurt's skin in his mouth.

When Kurt pulls back there's a groan that Blaine doesn't even try to swallow and he opens his eyes, not sure when he closed them. Kurt just looks at him critically for a second, trying to determine how tired he is, how much of the fatigue is mental, exactly what he needs tonight. Then Kurt's hands press him back, coercing him from his knees, onto his back and then letting his hands trace wherever they please for a minute, working Blaine quickly into something loose and malleable before he dips a finger again and starts to draw patterns across his chest.

Breathless already and loving that, Blaine asks, "Why tonight?"

Kurt puts the finishing touch on a lopsided heart around a nipple, then ruins the design with a sweep of his hand and raises his palm to Blaine's mouth. "I thought you needed something to take your mind off work."

It's true and they've discussed work, had arguments about it and agreements but with the hand that isn't at his mouth dipping to rub absent-mindedly at the lines of his hip Blaine hardly wants to talk. "Thank you," is all he murmurs.

Kurt draws something sticky along Blaine's neck and then balances himself on hands and knees, pressing down just slightly and he licks it away. When he pulls back he says, matter-of-fact, "And I've been waiting for a night to use these sheets."

Blaine laughs a little, imagining rightly that Kurt has been secretly kind of treasuring these sheets. Then the laughter is cut short as he gasps because Kurt's slipping a hand down to stroke once, lazily, through his boxers over his cock. Blaine finds his voice. "So this was all a big plan?"

"You could say that," Kurt purrs, sliding chocolate over Blaine's bottom lip and then sucking it off.

"Pre-ruined sheets?" Blaine says when Kurt's mouth has moved to bite at his collarbone, his fingers dancing chocolate spots across his abdomen.

Kurt laughs and licks at a nipple, enjoying the arch of Blaine under him. "Let's not call them that."

Blaine's voice is really failing him now, small breathless moans escaping every time Kurt presses his lips, his tongue, his teeth, still-warm chocolate-covered fingers, somewhere new. But he manages to gasp out, "What would you like to call them?" because this is a fun game and he can't get over the fact that he's lying on strawberry stained sheets that his boyfriend kept—secretly—because he planned on staining them even more.

Kurt grins, leaning back over to coat his fingers with more chocolate and then losing his balance as he tries to straighten, ending up putting his hand down on the bed to stop himself from tipping to the side. It leaves a distinct handprint of dark chocolate on the bed next to Blaine's hip.

Kurt looks down at the new addition to the stained sheets then turns his head back to look at Blaine, and as their eyes meet, they both laugh openly.

Blaine reaches over and blindly sticks his hand into the bowl, coming back with his fingers dripping chocolate over the sheet and then his own stomach as his hand hovers there for a moment. Then he reaches up and smears his hand down Kurt's chest and Kurt gasps as Blaine pulls himself up to lick a broad stripe through the chocolate line he just painted.

"Let's call them 'specialty hand-dyed sheets' then, shall we?" he suggests, smirking as he laves his tongue over one of Kurt's nipples.

Kurt's response comes out as little more than a moan. "Six hundred thread count, Blaine."

Hope you liked it! You all know I love to hear from you so I'll just shameless beg a little here. The sequel to 'Come Undone' should be up in a few days. I just need to gear myself up to read the third giant rewrite without loathing the trauma of writing the damned thing (I'm being melodramatic, don't mind me!) Yay!