Kurt, Matt, and Tess show up late to the event, thanks to Tess having the bladder of an infant.

“You're probably pregnant,” Kurt told her.

“Don't,” was the response from both driver and shotgun.

They pulled off at a random exit and drove around this backwoods, little shit town for someplace with an actual bathroom since Tess refused Kurt's suggestion of pissing in said backwoods. Eventually, they turned back toward the highway and stopped at some funky gas station off the highway between mile markers.

“Well, even if you're not having a baby anytime soon, you'll probably be having an outbreak of herpes, so you might still want to see a doctor,” he said when Tess got back in the car.

“You're such a delight when you're nervous.”

“Nervous about what?” he scoffed.

“That's cute,” Tess said, slapping Matt on the arm to pull him in on her bullshit.

“I'm not nervous,” he insisted.

And he's not. Intimidated, yeah. Kind of. Okay, maybe a little nervous with the way Blaine's eyes keep darting back to him from the center of the room. While he's performing.

Kurt has heard Blaine sing plenty of times. They've sung together, in the car, in their bedrooms. Blaine's performed private serenades that have melted Kurt's heart and made the panties drop. He's even been sweet-talked into watching the Rachel & Blaine show a few times.

Seeing Blaine like this, though – this is new. He's a fucking star. All confidence and charisma and an unnamable quality that makes Kurt feel light and happy. He's proud of Blaine. So pleased to see he hasn't burned out Blaine's fire with their teenage angst to smother the flames. 

Kurt has no idea what this event is even about. He sure he could find a gold plated pamphlet to give him the deets if he cared at all, but his eyes are on Blaine, living for that stupid flutter flapping wildly whenever Blaine's eyes are on him.

After the performance, Blaine Anderson, leader of the prestigious Dalton Academy Warblers is apparently going to be stopped by everyone in this room, Kurt realizes after ten minutes.

“Oh look! Here he is background Warbler number… turn around – do you guys have, like, numbers on your backs or something?”

“Betty. Always a pleasure.”

“Why aren't you off kissing ass, Sebastian?”

“Because they should be kissing my ass and making sure I don't usurp their thrones.”

“Oh my god,” Kurt rolls his eyes, laughing. Too loudly, if the turned heads in their direction are any indication. “Oops,” he mouths.

Sebastian shrugs. Too cool for school, apparently.

Kurt sets his eyes back on Blaine, follows his movements around the room and sharing glances on occasion.

“You guys back together?” Sebastian asks. Cooper, Tess, and Matt all turn their heads toward the pair at the same time, just this side of creepy.

“Is it a family thing? Did you guys take synchronized fucking swimming lessons together?”

“Boo. I wasn't invited,” Blaine says, coming up beside Kurt.

Kurt feels hyperaware of all his missing pieces, all the phantoms appearing at once when Blaine looks at him curiously. He sucks his lip in his mouth and bites down lightly where his ring should be. Everyone is watching them. Kurt and Blaine's everyone. Blaine's parents, his brother. Sebastian.

“It's not polite to stare,” Kurt admonishes, and Blaine's the only one to look away, but he's smiling.

“Can we talk?” Blaine asks, leading Kurt away from the group and out of the hall.

“Oh so now you wanna talk, huh Beav?”

“Hush you,” Blaine commands gently and surprises Kurt with a kiss to keep him quiet.

“Where the hell are we going?” Kurt asks when they've walked – and limped – far enough that the din of voices is distant and fading.

Blaine takes him down one final ritzy-schmitzy hallway, and opens the door to a room Kurt couldn't guess the function of with multiple choice answers because the nicest McKinley ever looks is when the gym gets decorated for prom, and even then it still smells faintly of used jock straps. Or maybe that's the scent of the student body.

“What is this?” he gestures to the couches and fireplace. “Economics class where you cry about the plight of the poor and dry your tears with Benjamins?”

“Kurt,” he chides. “It's the senior commons. Warblers kind of run the place though.”

“Oh ho ho. Look at you and your rock star perks.”

“I'm sorry,” Blaine bursts, knocking Kurt a little off balance.

“What for?” Kurt wonders as he plops down on one of the plushy couches. “This is what a cloud would feel like under my ass, isn't it? Damn. I guess you've got it good here, Beaver.”

“I do.” Blaine sits beside him and Kurt lays his legs across Blaine's lap. “Making you do this,” he tugs on Kurt's sleeve, “was not my intention, you know.”

“Righty-o, let's pretend I'm here at your invitation,” he snorts and pokes at Blaine's shoulder. Blaine looks up from examining the artwork on his cast. “Blainey boy, no one makes me do anything. Not unwillingly.”

“That so?”

“The so-est.” Kurt pokes at him again, gets a smile as Blaine pulls his hand away to hold. Blaine plays his calloused hands over Kurt's longer, softer fingers. “Beaver,” he gasps, sounding scandalized, “Are you trying to put the moves on me?” He's teasing, shimmying his shoulders and sending a wink Blaine's way. Blaine scrunches up his face, shakes his head. A tiny uh-uh falls out on an exhale, but he laces their playing fingers together.

Flutter, flutter bitch, Kurt's belly full of butterflies taunts.

They pick up smoothly where they left off this morning, Blaine pulling Kurt onto his lap. Blaine handles Kurt like treasure, with the reverence bestowed upon a childhood toy still knocking around when childhood's long gone, durable, familiar, and precious. Kurt is his ragdoll, safe in hands that have learned how not to grip too tight or pull too hard. Hands that know how to break him and choose rather to hold his stuffing in place and nimbly mend his ripping seams.

Kurt feels Blaine loving him in the confidence of roving extremities unfettered unlike tamed tongues silenced by experience. 

This is the part that works, and why it works so well. Why Kurt craves him so badly.

Flutter, flutter.

“I thought we came here to talk.” Kurt inhales unsteadily, chuckling and brushing back his falling bangs. “I'm gonna pop a chub if you don't slow your roll, partner.”

Blaine laughs, lost for breath the same as Kurt. “Yeah, we should, uh – we should… talk.”

“You might want to release the death grip, tiger.” Kurt slides back onto his own cushion, though his legs remain in Blaine's space, crowding the area his ass vacated. “We're bad at being exes.”

“We were worse at being together.”

“The whole time? No. I'm just a prick and we're shit at talking. Which we're still not doing, by the way.”

Blaine reaches for Kurt's uncomfortably unadorned earlobes, thumb stroking along the bare skin. “This is weird.”

 “You're weird,” he counters, batting Blaine away.

“I'm serious.”

“Eh.” Kurt looks Blaine over and twists an errant curl around his finger. “Not always, Mr. Frickle Frackle.”

“You love it.”

“Eh.”

“Eh?”

“Eh.”

Blaine nudges aside Kurt's blazer, runs a finger over the tattoo peeking out. He harbors a secret fascination with them only Kurt bears witness to. It's sweet, private. Blaine is the only person granted the same level of access to explore. More than Elliott, the doctor who delivers them into this world. Blaine is the voluntary guardian who devotes time, nurtures with attentive hands.

“Do you think…,” he trails off and Kurt waits. “Do you think we'll be friends again?”

“We're friends now.”

Blaine sighs. “Like we could have been. Without… without ending up – here.”

“Depends on what you mean by ‘here'.”

“Hurting each other.”

Kurt puffs out his cheeks and just – blows. “Maybe.” He bites his lip, missing the metal burning a hole in his pocket. “Maybe not.”

“I wish I knew where potential goes once you've made a decision.”

“Maybe it gets passed on to someone who knows what to do with it.”

“I thought I knew what I was doing.” Blaine swallows, a sad look coming over him.

“Beav. Honey, no.” Kurt wipes at the tears before they fall. “What's done is done, right? We'll just have to do better next time.”

“You're leaving.”

Kurt cocks his head to side, noticing how young Blaine is, how old he feels for being someone's first heartbreak, how far over the edge they've fallen. Six days, that's all they have left. Then Kurt is gone. And Blaine will be here, likely in this very spot every now and again, carrying his pain around and masking it with a smile. There is no next time. No promises to make or keep. That's it, Kurt realizes. The dissolution, their finale that comes without fireworks or fanfare, has brought the elusive inner peace missing all summer, the power to move on though it aches.

The anger and resentment at a bitter, unfair, premature and preventable ending is fading fast with the sight of Blaine's breakdown, like Blaine's tears are the miracle cure, the absolution from his unanswered questions saving them from rehashing the past. Sadist, he thinks. I'm a sadist.

But no. He hates the sadness that overwhelms to fill the void of anger.

“Let's go back to your family.”

Blaine nods. Too sadly.

“Okay, let's not. Let's just – come here.” He opens his arms and Blaine jostles Kurt's legs to clamor into his hold. They stay just like that, the awkward positioning secondary to the need to be close.

“I'm not ready for you to go,” Blaine mumbles.

“You'll survive.”

“It won't feel like living.” Blaine runs his thumb over the words on Kurt's skin, chuckling when Kurt mutters drama queen. “You – I didn't… I love you,” he looks away. “I'm sorry I wasn't proud enough to deserve you.”

Kurt sucks in a breath through his teeth. “No more being sorry. Not until I leave, then you can crank the angst up to eleven and rebel by – bringing lunch from home or something. Like us peasants.”

“I was so wrong for treating you like I did. You know. Here. Before we – before the break up.”

“You were. That stings a little still, actually.”

“I'm sorry.”

“Blaine.” Kurt flicks him in the arm. “Apologize again and that's what you get.”

“Somehow I think I can take you.”

Kurt raises an eyebrow. “Mm,” he hums. “We can put that theory to practice tonight. For now, let's return to the land of the living.”

Blaine brings them to a bathroom on the way back. “First let me say, if you tell me you don't have them, I won't believe you,” he starts, leaning on a sink and beckoning Kurt over. He puts a finger where Kurt's lip ring should be. “So where are you hiding all the jewelry?

“Blaine, Grease was made over thirty years ago. And it takes place even before that. If you think I'm running your ear under cold water and –”

“Shush.”

“Don't shush me. Rude.”

Blaine holds out his hand and Kurt deposits the little baggie in his palm. “Put them in,” Blaine commands.

“Blaine.” He rolls his eyes. “I'll admit this was for you, you don't have to prove a point.”

“Yes. I do. And it's not a hardship to want to see you – the real you, pierced, tattooed, sexy,” he rolls up Kurt's sleeves, “you you – again.”

“I'm me me now.”

“Humor me then, if this is really all for me.”

“Ass.”

“Just do it.” Blaine holds the bag out in front of him.

One piece of metal at a time, Kurt comes back into view. Blaine helps, maybe hinders, by kissing every spot Kurt redresses, so Kurt leaves his lip ring for last. “Party's probably over by now.”

“Uh-uh. Party lasts all day. These guys love knowing where their money goes.” Blaine checks his grandpa-approved pocket watch. “Campus tours, small groups led by students. We can just go to the dining hall. The tours will be over soon.”

Cooper spots them first, congratulating Blaine on the “good work” and pointing at Kurt.

“Stop,” they demand in unison when Tess claps her hands together in the excited way she tends to do, coming up behind Cooper and waggling her eyebrows in silent question.

“Please, please, please. Just tell me what happened. The PG version,” she hastily tacks on.

“What makes you think there is a PG version?” Surprisingly, not Kurt's words but Blaine's.

Cooper shifts his eyes back and forth between them. “Oh do tell.”

Blaine looks to Kurt for the answer, but Kurt shakes his head. “You stepped in it all on your own, big boy.”

“Tell us!”

“Mom, calm down oh my god. We –” he looks again to Kurt, smirks mischievously. “I liked it,” he bops Kurt's nose, “so I put a ring on it.”

Kurt flicks Blaine as hard as he can, amused but pretending not to be, while the rest burst into laughter. They draw the attention of the room briefly, then mutual oops faces make them laugh all over again. It's a fitting goodbye somehow to leave Blaine this memory, to have it for himself when he's off alone.