“Kurt, you need to listen to me.”

A nod.

“I know I called you out on all that stuff the other day,” Blaine begins. “I said some pretty terrible things and I’m not proud of it. I don’t know you. I don’t know the life you had before I showed up at McKinley. I had no right to say any of that to you.”

“But it’s all true.”

“Whether or not it’s true, it still wasn’t my place. You’re right. You did what you had to do to survive.”

“I turned into everything I hated.”

“Look at me,” Blaine says forcefully, framing Kurt’s face with his hands and angling Kurt’s head toward him. “I never meant to make you feel this way.”

“But you-”

“Your life is your life. My life is my life. We all have our own stories. No one else has the right to edit them. We can only make suggestions and point out the typos, but no one can erase what we’ve decided to do or who we’ve decided to be.”

Batting Blaine’s hands away from his face, Kurt allows his head to fall back against the seat.

“How are you even real? Who says things like that?”

“Kurt, you’re not a bad person.”

“I feel like one,” Kurt groans, unable to stop himself from spilling every detail. “You know, my dad thinks I’m the one tutoring you. He thinks I’m the perfect student who helps others when they’re in need. He thinks I’m kind and gracious and giving.”

“You don’t think you’re any of those things?”

“No,” Kurt spits, straightening his spine abruptly. “I lie and I taunt. I point and laugh when other people get bullied.”

“You never laughed at me.”

“But you!” Kurt begins hysterically. “You walk around with your dorky, adorable glasses and your sweater vests and you – you didn’t even have enough sense to get a bigger backpack! You let them tip your books every day and it never fazed you! You didn’t even think – until I – you’re so fucking genuine and you told me how much of a dick I was being and you’re so – damnit, you’re so-”

“Honest?”

“Yes! You’re so honest! You are who you are and – Blaine,” Kurt says seriously, “honesty gets you beaten. Honesty gets you shoved into a locker and it gets you a slushie facial. Honesty gets you thrown into dumpsters and it turns you into a punching bag. I don’t want you to – to-”

“To what?” Blaine asks softly. “To get hurt? Because I’ve already been there.”

“I don’t want you to turn into me,” Kurt admits miserably. “I don’t want you to turn into something mean and hateful and everything people like us are afraid of. I don’t want you to turn into the bully. I don’t want you to – to laugh at people and feel guilty inside when you do. I don’t want you to be this sick – sick thing. I don’t – I don’t-”

“What?”

Kurt finally notices that Blaine has been brushing a tuft of hair out of Kurt’s eyes for the past few minutes.

Something like barbed wire clenches around his heart because this shouldn’t be happening, they shouldn’t be this close in the back seat of a car. The trunk is probably filled with books and books and bulky cardigan sweaters that make or break the nerdy image. Kurt has fought so hard for so long to flee from any type of image that the majority of the other students would consider unsavory.

Yet here he is.

It’s never easy, running away from yourself.

“I don’t want you to be afraid of me,” he chokes out.

“I’m not afraid of you,” Blaine whispers. “I’ve never been afraid of you.”

“I made you cry. Twice.”

“Everybody cries.”

“But when you cry, you’re so p – p-”

Blaine’s hand pauses, frozen somewhere near Kurt’s forehead.

“Pathetic?” he guesses.

Kurt’s eyes fall shut.

“Pretty,” he says. “You’re so pretty when you cry. And I hate it.”

“You – you think I’m pretty when I cry?”

“At first I just felt really bad and then I kept thinking about you. I think about you all the time, every day but I think about how bad I feel for you and how it isn’t fair that you don’t have anyone to text and I think about texting you but I never do because I’m not supposed to. I’m not supposed to want to talk to you for any reason at all because I’m just not.”

“Kurt-”

“But now I can’t stop thinking about how stupidly pretty you look when you cry and it doesn’t make any sense! People are supposed to be ugly when they cry, but not you. Not you. Because you’re honest and you’ve got a million years in your teenage eyes and how in the hell does that make any sense at all?”

“Stop,” Blaine begs. “Please, stop, Kurt. You don’t have-”

“I hate that you’re pretty and I hate that you’re smart and I hate that you’re kind and that you’re everything I wanted to be and nothing I am.”

“You’re gorgeous, Kurt,” Blaine says, hand on Kurt’s cheek. “You’re absolutely beautiful, no matter what you think you are.”

And that’s the moment when Kurt really looks at Blaine. He looks beyond the glasses and the gelled hair and the bowtie he had gifted that fits snugly into Blaine’s collar. He looks through the shy, waif of a person he’s come to know. It’s like the fog clouding his brain has lifted and good god, if Blaine wasn’t one of the most remarkable people to look upon.

He’s got eyes like honey that shine like the moon. He smells like – like gin and rosewater, oddly enough.

When he finally lifts a hand, allowing his knuckles to brush against Blaine’s cheekbone, he realizes his skin is soft like cotton and smooth like paper.

It’s absolutely wonderful.

The temperature in the car skyrockets to one thousand degrees. He can feel Blaine’s breath on his lips. They’re soclosesoclosesoclose.

“Kiss me,” Kurt whispers.

“I’ve never kissed anybody before.”

“Neither have I.”

“You smell like sugar blossoms,” Blaine breathes.

“You’re crazy.”

“I thought you wanted me to kiss you.”

“I do,” Kurt says before he swallows.

They reach for each other, confined in a too warm car that actually has ice forming on the headlights. Lips meet lips and stars explode by the trillion behind Kurt’s eyelids as he kisses back. It’s like nothing he’s ever experienced; it’s warm and sweet, clumsy and maybe a little wet.

But it’s perfect.

He grapples for purchase on Blaine’s shoulders because it almost feels like the world is tilting. Blaine pulls him closer. Kurt goes willingly, scrambling into Blaine’s lap and bumping his head on the roof of the car before realizing it’s better if he angles his head down. They kiss and they kiss for what seems like eons, lost in a world of hesitant tongues and pouty, eager lips until –

“Fuck,” Kurt mumbles, breaking the kiss and digging in his coat pocket for his phone. “Hello?”

Blaine pants, head lolling back against the seat of the car. His hands still grip Kurt’s hips with a firm, unyielding hold and his eyes remain closed.

“No, I’m – tonight?” Kurt speaks into his phone. “Now? I’m kind of-” he glances down at Blaine, trying to steady his breathing, “- okay. I’ll be there in half an hour.”

Kurt pockets his phone.

“I have to go,” Kurt sighs. “One of the girls on the squad broke up with her boyfriend today and apparently she’s a total wreck so everyone’s going over to her place to cheer her up by telling her how horrible he was in the first place.”

“…Sounds fun.”

“I’m sorry,” Kurt mumbles, climbing off of Blaine and dropping back down next to him on the seat. “We didn’t even get to do dinner.”

“Don’t worry about it,” Blaine replies, adjusting his bowtie.

“Well, um, I’ll – I’ll see you at school?” Kurt tries to ask politely.

Though it’s difficult to be merely polite when they had their tongues down each other’s throats a few minutes ago.

“Yeah,” Blaine says weakly. “See you at school.”

Kurt does his very best to restyle his hair before climbing out of the car.

So much for Blaine being a simple responsibility.

Shit.