It was mid-January and the flotsam of Christmas had finally been put away, leaving only the drudgery of an Ohio winter to propel life forward. It was an easy winter as far as winters go, few fires, fewer snow days (much to Adrian’s chagrin) and a nice ease in Kurt’s team’s preparations for fashion week – which was a month away. And a few weeks after that, he’d be in New York. Permanently.

Unless…

Blaine found Kurt hunched at his rickety kitchen table surrounded by crumpled up paper, a legal pad, a disgusting pile of used tea bags and his tablet. He’d been there since dinner and it was only a repeat of last night’s activity where Kurt cooked, Blaine cleaned up, Adrian played and then Kurt disappeared into this hole that neither he nor Adrian could penetrate. But, that didn’t stop him from trying.

“Baby, this is the second day you’ve been doing…this.” Blaine tossed a crumpled ball of paper into the trash. “What’s up?”

Kurt finally looked up, his hair scattered and un-styled, his eyes sunken with worry. “You know, I’m sorry.” He turned his tablet off and knocked back the last drops of now-cold tea. “I should be doing this at home. I just…like the drone of you two behind me.”

“We drone?”

“When I’m concentrating, that’s what it amounts to. I’ll head home.”

“No. You’re not bothering anyone. I’m just worried about you. What are you researching?”

“I’m looking for work in Ohio.”

“But, you said…”

“I know. I said. But I have to try. To look. Blaine, Christmas was…perfect. It could have been the most depressing shit storm I’ve ever experienced since Mom died, but…it was perfect. Because I was with you. I drive through this stupid town to pick up groceries or go to the offices and it feels like home again. Because of you. I go to New York and it sucks. Unless you’re there with me, I hate it there. I feel like I was afraid I would when I first went to college – lost and sucked up by its size and so incredibly lonely.”

“It probably doesn’t help that just about every time you’ve been there without me, we're not talking or you’re vomiting.”

“Thank you. I’m sure that adds to the distaste in my mouth.” Kurt finally allowed himself to smile, reaching out for Blaine’s hand. “I just want to be with you. So, I have to try. And, I can’t ask so much of you if I’m not willing to put myself on the line too – if I’m not willing to at least look at all of the options out there. I mean, I’ve seen you pouring over the hiring process with the FDNY. I’ve seen the prices of houses, even outside of Manhattan, and I’ve heard your phone calls with Sharon. I can’t put those kind of demands on you without looking at the options from my end, too.”

“So, what are you finding?”

“Little. It’s all in Columbus unless I want to teach part time in Cincinnati.”

“Those are still more than a commute away.”

“I know. Maybe I could do weekends in Lima? Or we could live half way? Although the idea of living in Bellefontaine or Marysville doesn’t really thrill me either. All I know is it sounds better than weekend commutes from New York.”

“What kind of compromise will it be to your career?”

“If I get this one I just sent a resume for, not much – which really surprises me. Wexner’s Express is still here – I thought he moved everything to New York.”

“Do you want to leave Jacobs?”

“No. Do you want to leave Lima?”

“Undetermined.”

“Oh?”

“We’re talking about you right now…except that I need to say that I haven’t shut any doors about moving. So, please don’t sit here and stew over this stuff by yourself, okay? I appreciate what you’re doing though.”

“I have to at least try…”

Blaine got up from the table and knelt in front of Kurt, never letting go of his hands. “This is going to work out.”

“You say that like you know it.”

“I feel it. And right now, that’s going to have to be enough.”

Kurt leaned forward for a soft kiss, resting his forehead on Blaine’s with a sigh. “Hot chocolate and movies night?”

Blaine nodded and kissed Kurt’s knuckles. “I’ll go get the boy.”

***

Two weeks later, Kurt made his way over to Blaine’s after a fire in Monroe Township where Dot had spent the entire journey there and back tormenting him about potentially taking her perfect fire chief from her. Because apparently she owned him.

“…get a good one and now you’ve stolen his heart. What if his replacement is a shithead like Chief Tomlinson was?”

“Um? I don’t know? Because with all due respect, I’ll be in New York. And really…we just don’t know yet.”

Dot pulled up to a four-way stop in the middle of Bum Fuck Allen County and took Kurt’s hand. “You know I’m just being difficult…”

“It’s your specialty.”

“I want you happy. And I really like Chief Anderson. I just don’t want to lose either of you.”

“I know, Dot. And if things work out with Express, you might not.”

“Do you want to stay in Ohio?”

“I want to be with Blaine. In Siberia if necessary. Although, in light of how fucking cold it is today, I might have to re-evaluate that. I’m not sure even he could keep me warm enough.”

“Is it smart to put your heart before your career?”

“I don’t know. I don’t think my dad would have ever said that he wishes he would have expanded his chain to Columbus and Cincinnati if it had meant spending less time with Carole. He could have done that. And he would have made a lot more money. But, he wanted her. So he stayed local.”

“And he died a very happy man.”

“He did.”

“Is it okay if I still root for the Ohio angle?”

“Yes. Just so you’re still happy for me if I end up in New York. And that you’ll promise to come visit me.”

“Take me to a show?”

“And dinner.”

“Blow up the air mattress. I’m there.”

So, he got to Blaine’s and the boys were…strange. Well, stranger than usual. Skittish? Adrian was on high voltage, dancing and flitting around like a lunatic and Blaine was just unsettled. Kurt made himself some tea and tried to get them to play a game, but they weren’t having it. He finally gave up and decided to go upstairs to bathe off the smoke smell that lingered in his hair.

“WAIT! Don’t, um. Don’t. Here. Have…could you?…”

Kurt turned to the blathering Blaine and had no words to respond. Although, he did stop, so somehow, blathering was mildly successful. “Blaine?”

“Sit. Down. Um, please? Here.” Blaine took Kurt’s elbow and sat him on a stair step as he eased himself down a few steps lower. Adrian sat on Kurt’s feet, which couldn’t be comfortable since he still had his chunky steel-toed boots on from the fire. But there he sat.

“Blaine…are you okay?”

“Fine. Really. Right, Ade? We’re good.”

“Good. Number one, Kurt. Dad, really. Just…do your speech. Thing.”

“What are you two up to?”

“Here’s the thing. Kurt.” Blaine traced the seam line of Kurt’s sweats with a finger, up from the ankle all the way to his knee and thigh, starting over again before he reached his ass. It would have tickled had the whole scenario not been so incredibly bizarre. “Ade and I, we’ve been talking. As you know. And thinking. And planning. And, I know you have too.”

“Yes…”

“Well. We’ve come to a decision.” Adrian hopped up and started to jump on the landing of the steps, bounding down to the floor with a somersault. And then Blaine sighed. “He knows I won’t punish him right now.”

“I don’t know why you won’t let him jump, but we’ve been over that a million times. You were saying?”

“Adrian, get up here, dude. This is a you and me thing, remember?”

“Oh my goodness. I thought you were going to talk all night, so I…” Seeing the stern look on his dad’s face, he jumped up the two stairs to the landing and leaned on his dad’s legs. “I’m here. Go.”

Kurt looked at Blaine expectantly, trying to ignore the bouncing Adrian because…well, Blaine was starting to creep him out a little. “Blaine?...”

“Yes. We’ve come to a decision. About New York.”

And the thrumming energy in the room ratcheted up so high, it felt like it stopped. “Okay?”

“We want to come with you. We’re ready to move. On one condition.”

Kurt’s eyebrows disappeared under his drooping bangs. “And what happens if I don’t agree to your condition?” Sure, he was just taking advantage of Blaine’s nervous energy. Because it was fun. And because, well. What if he wouldn’t agree? But mostly, because unnerving the nervous ball of nerves was oddly enjoyable.

“Oh. Well…” Blaine looked down to Adrian who simply shrugged.

“No worries. He’s going to agree. Just talk, Daddy.”

“Right.” Blaine looked back up to Kurt and took his hands in his, soaking him in for just a moment. Soaking in the last…had it only been six months? Yes, last six months. And the fact that in six months’ time, his life had dashed off into a trajectory that he could have never imagined for himself. He could have never even dreamt it for himself. But here it was. Here Kurt was, spent from working a fire, but gloriously beautiful and graceful and elegant and ravishing as ever. Waiting patiently for him to find his nerve and just. Freaking. Say. It. “We’ll come to New York with you…if you’ll agree to be my husband.”

Adrian took a flying leap off the landing again, rolling and jumping and shouting and whooping and hollering and it went completely unnoticed by the two men, breathless on the stairs.

“Blaine!” It was all he could say.

“It’s not an ultimatum. Not really, please know that. It’s just…I know what we have is real. And strong. And true. But, we’re asking each other to uproot everything. And the truth of the matter is, I’d uproot more than everything if I had it just to be with you.”

“Blaine…”

“But, I don’t have more than everything. I just have this simple life to offer you. So, if I’m going to uproot it for you…for him…for us…I need to know we share the same promise.”

“Blaine…”

“So. Will you be my husband? And make me the happiest man alive?”

“YES!”

Blaine vaulted up the few steps and landed straddling Kurt's lap, holding his face in his hands and before kissing him, made sure. “Say it again.”

“Yes, Blaine Anderson. I would be honored to be your husband.”

As their lips finally met, hard and grasping, clinging to the promise they just made, Adrian, as only a five year old boy can, lost his shit. He whooped and hollered louder than before, telling anyone within hearing distance and beyond that his daddy was getting married. That he was moving to New York. That Kurt and Blaine were sitting in a tree, K-I-S-S-I-N-G.

Which sent Kurt and Blaine on a giggle fit that settled into silence, only broken by the soft smacking of their gentle kisses in between gazes of reassurance while Adrian plopped himself on the floor below, elbows on his knees, watching them like a nickelodeon movie.

After one final soft kiss, Blaine slipped off Kurt’s lap and looked down to his son with a smile. “Ade. You’re on. Go.”

“Oh my goodness! I got too excited. Kurt, don’t move.” He bounded up the stairs and was blocked by the love birds. “Except, okay move, so I can…” They parted, Blaine smacking his bottom on the way by. “Thank you. Don’t move now.”

When he disappeared, Kurt brushed his knuckles against Blaine’s cheek. Amazed. Awed. Overwhelmed. “You’re going to lose your rank.”

“All the way to the beginning – I’ll just be a fireman, but…”

“…and you’re okay with that?”

“Kurt, I’ve been miserable as chief. I was assured this wasn’t a desk only job. That I’d be fighting fires too, but I’m not unless I break protocol…which as you know, I do frequently because I can't stand idly by while there's a fire raging. And when I'm at the station, it is a desk job. And I hate it. I’m not paper pusher. I’m not one to stand and watch other men do the job. I’m a firefighter.”

“You’re a good chief, though. You’ve already done amazing things for this city.”

“Thank you, but I’m a better fireman. And, they said I’d move up to lieutenant pretty quickly – possibly after my probationary period.”

“You’ve been hired?”

“I have to take the tests yet, so it will take about four months, but yes. They’re starting me at five years service instead of taking away all my tenure, too.”

“How long have you been working on this?”

“I got phone numbers at the Santa rescue at Christmas…” Blaine blushed because that certainly didn’t go along with their we’ll-talk-about-everything plan, but he wanted as much information as possible. And the surprise factor was pretty awesome.

“What if I get the job in Columbus?”

“Knowing what you know now, where would you rather be?”

“In New York. With you.”

Blaine smiled knowingly. “I appreciate that you looked. That you were willing to go that route so we could be together here, but Kurt. Your home is New York.”

“My home is with you two.”

“Then we’ll move our home to New York. I've never been married to the idea of living and dying in Ohio. It was just my only option.”

“What if I said I wanted to stay?”

“One, you’d be lying and two, I’d still want to be your husband, so that’s…you know…still on the table either way.”

“My husband.” Kurt swirled the sound of it around his mouth, listening to the consonants echo ever-so-slightly in the stairwell. “My husband. Myyyy husband. My husband. I like it.”

“I do too. I especially like my husband, Kurt.”

“It does have a nice ring, doesn’t it?”

They shared another kiss, Kurt almost losing his balance as he bent down to him. “Oh! Oh my god, what about Maggie’s parents? Your parents?”

“To quote Sharon, They invented air travel a long time ago. You need to go be with Kurt. Hell, maybe we’ll move to Long Island and drive you all crazy.”

“Is she serious? They’d move?”

“Without us, they don’t have anything else in Ohio anyway…who knows? I don’t see it happening soon, but we’ll be okay. We’ll just have to find a new support system, that’s all.”

“And your parents?”

“I’ll send them a wedding invitation. Maybe.”

“Blaine.”

Blaine lifted his shoulders in an unworried shrug and Adrian arrived from his secret mission upstairs.

“Okay, Daddy. Here.” He plopped a velvet navy blue bag into his dad’s hands and grinned at Kurt. “You thought we were done, didn’t ya?”

“I should have known better.”

Blaine bounced the bag in his hand, feeling the weight of it. Of what they were doing. Of the memories inside and the promised memories yet to come. “This has a story.”

“I love your stories.”

With his eyes on the palm of his hand, Blaine dumped the contents of the bag and closed his fingers around it. “This was Maggie’s.”

“Oh, Blaine.”

“Story. Shush.” He unfurled his fingers and lifted his hand to Kurt to show him a man’s ring. It was either a faded yellow silver or a silver ring, unsure because of the age and condition of the ring – old and worn and lived-in, a little dinged up even. “It’s sort of beat up because we found it at the Maumee Antique Mall and she fell in love with it. We really don’t know how old it is. Three diamonds for the three of us she said. She went back and looked at that thing ten times that day. You’ve seen pictures – she loved big chunky rings so for her, this was dainty.”

Kurt wanted to speak, but he couldn’t find words. Even Adrian was quiet, occasionally reaching out to brush his finger over the ring, slipping a finger in and out of it and tentatively dropping his hand away. After quick kisses to each of his boys, Blaine continued.

“At the end of the day, she’d gotten caught up in a bidding war with some guy on a dress, so I snuck off and bought it for her. A month later, she metastasized. But, she wore it on her thumb until it was too big and then she put it on a chain. About a week before she died…" Blaine voice cracked and he stopped, tears pooling at the base of his eyes, his breath ragged as he tried to pull himself together.

"It's okay, Daddy…you know she's okay with this."

"I do, buddy. I do. Some days I just really miss her." With a deep breath and a smile, resting in Kurt's patient gaze, he continued. "A week before she died, she told me I had three choices with the ring, none of which included keeping it on her. I could keep it myself – wear it, store it. I could give it to Adrian when he was big enough, or I could fall in love with the most amazing man made just for me and make a new trio.”

“She voted for the last one, Kurt.” Adrian picked up the ring and slipped it on his own thumb, carefully spinning it around.

“She did, huh?”

“She did. I figured I’d shoot for saving it for Adrian. I had pretty much settled with the idea that I’d be alone. And then, you showed up. And you know, we’ve become a pretty awesome trio.” He plucked the ring from Adrian’s finger and kissed it. “So, we can go find something newer, if you want but for now, I’d love it if you’d wear this?”

Kurt lifted a shaky hand and Blaine slid the ring onto his left ring finger as Adrian watched, eyes gaping as though he was waiting for magic to happen. And maybe it did. It fit perfectly.

Adrian cheered.

Blaine cried.

Kurt cried.

And after sniffles and glances at it again and more sniffles and sleeve wipes of snot and Adrian laughing at the grown-ups being gross and childish, Kurt found his voice. “It’s beautiful. You’re beautiful. Both of you. We have to go find a ring for you, too.”

“Soon.”

“Tomorrow. I want everyone to know.”

“Okay. Tomorrow.” Blaine lifted himself up one step and took Kurt’s hands in his, feeling, like he always did when Kurt’s hands were intertwined with his. Grounded. Sure. Focused and true. “So. Kurt Hummel. Just like a few times before. This is where I want to kiss you. Really kiss you.”

“Oh. Well. Blaine Anderson. This is where I say yes. Always…yes.”