Epilogue

Blaine isn’t meant to meet Kurt at the airport. Kurt’s flight is delayed out of Heathrow and Blaine has a big caseload at the moment because two promotions in a year will do that. This make the trek out to JFK is expensive and pointless, so Kurt calls Blaine and tells him not to worry.

He secretly hopes Blaine will ignore him, though, because by the time the plane touches down his heart aches with missing him more than ever and knowing that soon, soon, his heart will ache with too much happiness.

Sure enough, Blaine is waiting behind an absurdly large bunch of red and yellow roses at the arrivals gate; the flowers fall to the ground when Kurt squeals and flings himself into Blaine’s arms.

They hug and hug and someone pushes the flowers back in closer to their feet so they’re not trampled, but neither of them notices.

They hug until they’re kissing, hanging on to each other and saying, “Hi, Hello, How are you?” over and over and over.

Eventually they remember themselves, and when they pull apart there are a few wandering eyes glancing at them, arched eyebrows and knowing looks and smiles. Kurt picks his flowers up off the ground and says, “Thank you,” as he tries to reassemble them into the perfect bouquet they were a minute ago.

Blaine just shrugs and grips Kurt’s hand, pulling Kurt’s luggage along behind him. “Thank you,” Blaine says for no obvious reason.

They make it half way to the exit before Blaine stops Kurt with a tug and a small frown. “We’re gonna move in together, right?” he asks. They haven’t spoken about it at all, their immediate future always seeming so far away until it became now. They’ve discussed neighbourhoods and kids and politics, all the things down the road, but not what comes next.

Kurt grins though, nodding and saying, “We’d better be,” like it’s obvious.

“Good.”

They make it a few more steps and Blaine is pulling him back again. “I um…” He seems flustered and it makes Kurt smile. Then he’s dropping to one knee in the JFK Arrivals lounge, and blinking hard before he looks up at Kurt.

There’s a ring, but Kurt can’t focus long enough to note anything about it. His eyes are too wide, his mouth falling open as the inevitable plays out in front of him.�

“I’m proposing,” Blaine says, and then rethinks that. “I mean…” He takes a deep breath and looks at the dirty carpet underfoot and then looks back up. “Will you marry me?”

He doesn’t say it’s ridiculous, he doesn’t say it might not work. He doesn’t qualify it at all.

Kurt takes too long to answer though, utterly flabbergasted, and Blaine begins speaking again. “What I’m asking is—“

“Yes, of course,” Kurt speaks over the top of him. “Yes!”

He pulls Blaine up and grasps the ring in the palm of his hand and kisses Blaine again. “You couldn’t wait until we were somewhere romantic,” he chastises against his lips.

“I was going to,” Blaine tells him, pulling back. “I had a plan but then I got here and I saw you and—“

Blaine’s voice stutters and stops. Kurt is smiling at him, eyes playful. He’s holding up a small red box between them.

“What’s this?” Blaine asks, voice cracking.�

“This was going to be a surprise for dinner tomorrow night. We have some pretty classy reservations,” Kurt says.

Blaine clicks the box open and stares. “You were going to ask me?”

“To marry me?” Kurt smiles, ducking his head to look at the ring nestled in his palm. He slips it on to his own wedding finger. “Of course I was.”

Blaine draws a shaky breath and pulls his ring from the box, sliding it on. He stares at it until Kurt interlaces their fingers, hands holding tight and the two metal bands catching against each other. Blaine breathes, once slowly, grinning so hard it aches. He laughs through a hiccup and then sniffles, staring at Kurt’s equally wet blue eyes. “For so long as we both shall live,” he says.

~~*~~

A/N: So that’s done. I’ve been writing this off and on for over a year. I started and stopped with ‘Dark Blue’ and then I absolutely had to try again when canon demanded it. And so many people have helped me.

Izzy heard the entire story told to her in my stream-of-conscious narrative as I drove her home one morning and she begged me to write it. When I actually did start to write it she badgered and bitched and read it as I went, telling me it was good and poking me when it wasn’t and she never let me stop writing. She helped me come up with the title. She told me to quote from Plato’s ‘Symposia’ for the summary. Instrumental, is what she is.

Tyna for editing this beautifully. She read it all through and assured me the pacing and characterisation and narrative were good. And then she read every chapter and searched for typos and inconsistencies and must have added several hundred commas and deleted several hundred ‘ands’ which was exactly what this story needed.

Jude for reading the whole thing and then flailing at me in such a way that I was sure I’d written something good. And then for helping me build the last few chapters up to what they are now.

Stut—ter for reading through the first few chapters and offering some insightful feedback and some smart editing tips.

Becca for answering some of my dumber questions about US college and law and being a lawyer in New York.

Thank you to all of them and thank you to all of you who have talked to me about this fic, who have sent me massages or reviewed, who have reblogged or liked or whatever! I have had a blast these last three weeks and it makes me want to write multi-chapter fics forever and ever. I don’t want to leave this verse and I am so happy to talk about it and will seriously consider writing some ficlets to fill missing scenes and future events.

I will say, finally, that the title and summary of this fic deserves some explanation. I rambled about it here the other night and if anyone wants more explanation I would be very happy to oblige.

Anyway, thanks for playing, hope the epilogue was the cherry on top. Done.