“Are you okay?” Kurt asked.

“Yes. I – I’m just…”

“Overwhelmed?” Kurt supplied, “I’m kind of there with you.”

“I – it’s hardly even been a whole day since Nick and I broke up and I’m already throwing myself at you and it’s as if I’ve just forgotten that he meant something to me. He did.”

Kurt reached a hand towards him and Blaine caught it with his own. “You wouldn’t be you,” he said, “if you weren’t thinking of him just a little bit. I get it, I do, and frankly I was kind of thrown because isn’t this just going a bit fast? You and Nick just broke up.”

Blaine bowed his head. “I might have jumped the gun a bit.”

“Yeah. But, Blaine, it’s not unrequited.”

His heart made a leap. He’d known already of course, but to actually hear it was entirely different.

“But I also think we can’t jump into this – pick up where we left off…”

Blaine wanted to protest and he was already even preparing to argue for what Kurt wanted to say, but he stopped himself. Yes, this had taken too long a time to get to, but it was worth doing it right. Blaine didn’t know if he’d be able to handle it if it ended on a bad note again. No, they had to do everything right.

“Oh god,” Kurt said and dropped his hand.

“What, what is it?”

Kurt stood up and pulled out his phone. He turned it on and waited as it came to life, vibrating in his hand.

“Steve,” Kurt whispered, “I forgot. Damn it.”

Blaine couldn’t believe it. Of all things, Kurt mentioning Steve had not been something he’d expected.

“Are you kidding, Kurt? Tell me you’re kidding. After whatever Sebastian put your father through – enough stress to cause a freaking heart attack, you’ll still want to be with Steve. Hasn’t it been made clear yet? He’s the bad guy.”

Kurt dropped the hand that had been holding his phone up, to his side and he sighed. “It’s more complicated than that.”

“Why, because he’s your, I don’t know, fuck buddy?”

Kurt shook his head and Blaine could see in his eyes that he’d gone too far.

“Steve is nothing to me,” he said, almost seemed to spat it out, “and I’ll admit that when I first met him I didn’t know who he was and that one night we had, it was fun. But I didn’t need your warnings about him to let me know he was bad news once I realized he was nosing around my stuff and asking all the wrong questions.”

Blaine didn’t understand. Then why was Kurt still with Steve? It didn’t make sense. He wanted to ask the question, but Kurt continued on.

“Then dad pulled me aside and told me he thought Steve was somehow involved with the Smythes, or that he was a Smythe himself and he asked me if I would do him a favor. You know what their father did to my family. You know this. Would you really think I’d be stupid enough to not see that? That I might think him enough to just drop my family like that?”

Blaine should have known, he should have figured it out. But he’d been jealous and he’d been angry and more than that, he’d been afraid for what would happen to Kurt. Logic hadn’t fit in with all the rest of his concerns.

“No,” he said, “I just…I was worried about you. And jealous, I guess, and it took me a while to figure out who he was and once I did seeing him with you – talking about you…I didn’t like it.”

Kurt dropped down next to Blaine. “We’re a pair, aren’t we?”

“If I’m with you I don’t care what we are,” Blaine said.

Kurt half turned to him and shook his head. “You’re so cheesy.”

“So, you’ve been spying on him, then?”

Kurt nodded. “It’s exhausting. Steve’s quite good at his game. Half the time I could barely even remember that I wasn’t supposed to be feeling sorry for him – that I wasn’t supposed to actually like him. But I got what we needed and I don’t think he knows it’s missing yet, but I have to keep seeing him.”

“No you don’t.”

Kurt rank back into the sofa. “I do,” he sighed, “if I want this to end, I do, and that means we can’t…”

“No!” Blaine turned and grabbed Kurt’s hands, “I think it’s been enough time, don’t you?”

After a quick nod, Kurt pulled his hands back to wrap his arms around Blaine’s neck. “Too long,” he whispered into his shoulder as he pulled Blaine against him. After a while though he pulled back and staring at Blaine intensely, he said, “but you know I have to do this, especially now. I want to destroy them. I never want them to mess with my family again.”

“I know, Kurt, and I guess I sort of get it all now, but…”

Kurt bent down and surprised Blaine by kissing him. It was a quick peck on the lips that could have barely even been called a kiss and Blaine had been too surprised to respond.

“You need time, Blaine,” he said and pressed a finger to Blaine’s lips when he looked like he was going to protest. “You need time to deal with Mia and how she’ll take to everything, and you have to I don’t know, get over Nick maybe. You just broke up.”

When put like that Blaine knew that it was probably the smart thing to do, to really and finally move on from Nick and to get Mia to understand just what was happening first. But he was tired of waiting, he was tired of thinking about every minor detail to his every move. All he wanted was to be with Kurt.

“I just want you,” he whispered and then they were kissing.

- - -

Amie could tell almost at once that something had changed. She and Rachel shared a glance and then Rachel made a motion towards Kurt and Blaine as if to make sure that they were talking about the same thing.

“I know,” Amie mouthed, and then leaning closer to Rachel, “what do you think happened?”

Amie turned back to look at them. They had come in just a few minutes before with food in plastic containers and a bag of paper plates.

“Hospital food is horrible,” Kurt had said as he set about bringing out food that he’d either gone home to cook himself or that he’d made Maria make.

What struck Amie as strange at first was that they came in together and as if they were coming from the same place, not as if they had simply run into each other outside. There was also a way about how they stood, closer than they had in a long time. And then there were the looks.

Blaine stared at Kurt, but not with the hungry expression he’d had the night before though there was a hint of that, but as if he couldn’t believe that Kurt was there next to him. It wasn’t only him. Kurt kept glancing at Blaine as well with a small quirk of his lips that hadn’t been there that morning or even the night before. Something had happened. Amie needed to know what.

Burt was awake for lunch and Kurt sat by him, glaring at him when he tried to push off some of the veggies on his plate into a corner.

“Stop it, Kurt,” Burt said when they were almost done eating, “I’m a grown man.”

“Yes, one that’s just suffered a heart attack.”

But despite Kurt’s focus on Burt, there was still and underlying something between Kurt and Blaine. Tension maybe.

Rachel left, claiming that she had to go talk to her agent, but gave Amie a look that said she wanted to know everything if Amie found out anything. She nodded. After Rachel left, she called Blaine to come sit next to her.

“What happened?” She asked almost at once.

“What do you mean, what happened?”

Amie rolled her eyes. He was staring at Kurt.

“You and Kurt,” Amie said at once, “he looks, I don’t know, happier than he has in months and you look carefree.”

He bowed his head and then looked back up to stare at Kurt. “We don’t know yet,” he whispered, “but what I can confirm is that Nick and I are over.”

Amie didn’t know how she managed to hold in the squeal that wanted to erupt from her throat, but she did, settling for a giddy smile. But it was still enough for Kurt to make his deductions and Amie saw him give Blaine a look and groan.

“Alright,” Burt said and looked between Kurt and Blaine, “what happened between you two? It’s like you’re sixteen all over again and you were afraid to tell Drew and me that you were dating.”

Kurt gulped and shook his head and sighed.

“You’re not together again, are you?” Burt asked, his gaze going from Kurt to Blaine.

Amie looked from one to the other and then to Burt, not knowing who she wanted to watch more.

“Wait a minute,” Carole spoke up, staring straight at Blaine, “you have a fianc�; a daughter.”

Blaine gulped and he griped his hands together tightly. “Nick and I haven’t been working out for a while,” he said finally, “and I don’t think Mia would benefit from the kind of relationship we’ve had for the past two months.”

Carole still looked like she wanted to make an argument against Blaine leaving Nick, but she stopped when Burt grabbed her hand.

Blaine closed his eyes and took a deep breath. “I love Kurt. I’ve always loved Kurt.”

“Well, I for one, am happy for them,” Amie said.

Burt laughed. “It’s about time,” was all he said and then turned to Kurt, “and it makes things just a bit easier for me. Carole told me about the call you had yesterday. I told you I had a person in mind to be my successor.”

“What does that have to do with anything, dad?”

Amie knew what Burt meant before anyone else in the room except maybe Carole did and again the urge to let out a squeal of excitement rose in her.

“There is a folder in my middle desk drawer in the office at home. Blaine’s name should be on the cover of it.”

“What?” Blaine said quietly and stood up. He walked to where Kurt was seated and stood behind him.

“I wanted you to come back as the family lawyer for months before your father died, Blaine. Drew wanted to retire. He wanted to go on to do something else with himself and I was going to make you an offer anyway. And then your father died and I knew I had to have you anyway. These past few months have made it clearer and clearer in my mind that I made the right choice in drawing those papers all those years ago.”

Amie hadn’t expected to hear that Burt had always intended this for so long. It made sense though. Burt had known that Finn wouldn’t fit the role right and he had to have known that Kurt wasn’t going to want to be CEO.

“If you accept, Blaine, then Kurt you can take that folder in.”

“Accept what?”

“In the event of my death, or when it comes time for me to retire, I want you to take over my position at the company.”

- - -

Cardboard boxes were already beginning to pile up in the living room. The process had started out with Nick sorting through their books, CDs, and movies and determining what was his and what was Blaine’s. It had been easy at first to not explain what he was doing to Mia, just agreeing when she asked if he was cleaning. But as the amount of boxes grew and his things were slowly leaving empty spaces around the apartment, Mia had begun to realize that it was more than cleaning because her stuff wasn’t moving, and Blaine’s things had been left alone too.

“How do we tell her?”

He and Blaine hadn’t spoken much since the night they broke up and Blaine had been giving him his space, even going as far as to take the couch despite Nick’s intention to do so.

“What did you tell her about the packing?”

Nick sighed. “Not much. I didn’t want to do this without you here.”

Blaine nodded. “I guess we should have talked about this. We’re going to have to figure something out for when you move out – to not contradict each other.”

Nick was sorting through their coat closet as he spoke to Blaine and he was glad for the distraction. It hadn’t even been a week yet, but he knew that there was something going on with Blaine and Kurt. He should have expected it. He was glad that at least Blaine hadn’t taken Mia off on another excursion with Kurt while he was still living at the apartment.

“We can just tell her the truth,” Blaine said, “as much of it as is appropriate for her to hear.”

“Okay,” Nick said, “after dinner?”

They hadn’t actually had a properly “family” dinner since the break up. Blaine didn’t spend as much time at home as he’d had before and Nick knew that part of that was as a courtesy to him. He would get home late from the office or the hospital where Burt was still recovering, or from Hummel Plaza and Kurt.

Sometimes he arrived in time to put Mia to bed, other times much later. Once he’d stopped in before dinner, but left and Nick hadn’t seen him until the next day. He still wasn’t sure if Blaine had even slept there.

“Sure.”

It turned out that Nick didn’t need the two weeks he’d asked for. Finding a place to go had been easy once he’d begun looking and with some help from a few coworkers he found the perfect place, even if it was farther away from work than he liked.

But it wasn’t until after he’d signed the lease and put in a security payment that he begun to realize that getting his own place and having to commute even farther, and having to take on all the expenses on his own would not go over well now that he was on his own. He was an artist and he didn’t even work full time. Nick hadn’t realized until he was adding everything up, including things he would need for the new apartment just how much Blaine had been covering with the money he made.

Dinner was awkward that night, worse even than after they had a fight, or the days and weeks following the kiss. Mia was the only one really speaking but she gave up eventually too.

“I thought you needed two weeks,” Blaine said halfway through their meal, “but most of your things are packed.”

“I found a place,” Nick said, “a coworker told me about it. I already signed the lease a few days ago.”

Blaine nodded and took a bite of his food. After he’d finished chewing, he spoke, “I hope you know I didn’t mind you staying here until you found the right place.”

Blaine was kind. He was honorable and charming and everything that was good in a person. Nick knew that had he not chosen to let Blaine keep the apartment, Blaine would have given it to him and moved out himself.

“It’s perfect,” he responded, “a little pricey maybe, but I’ll be fine.”

“If you need money,” Blaine said, “you know I have more than enough. I don’t want you to want for anything.”

Nick shook his head. “I could have picked something smaller or even farther away, I’ll be fine. I have some idea how I’ll manage, but thank you. I want to be able to do this on my own.”

They changed topic after that, when Blaine mentioned the hospital.

“How’s Mr. Hummel?”

“Good, actually,” Blaine said and he launched into talking about Burt and for the first time, Nick realized that Blaine spoke about Burt Hummel not as his boss but as he would an important family member. He couldn’t understand how he’d missed that, but then he’d been blind when it came to the Hummels and Blaine.

After dinner, he lingered by the sink, washing the dishes and Blaine cleaned the rest of the kitchen before he walked to the living room where Mia had relocated with one of her dolls.

“Mia,” he heard Blaine say, “we need to talk to you, okay.”

Nick didn’t hear her response because she practically whispered it. He finished the last of the dishes and left them on the rack to dry and after drying his hands on the towel they usually dried the dishes with, he walked to the living room hoping that it would all turn out alright.

“Papa?” Mia asked when he entered.

“Sweetie, things are going to be changing around here,” Blaine said.

She frowned and then looked at the boxes and pointed at them.

“Yes,” Nick spoke up, fighting the urge to just say nothing again, “Mia, I’m moving away, to a new apartment.”

“But…but Daddy? Me?” She looked more confused than anything else and Blaine set her down on his lap.

“Your Papa is going to be living somewhere else. He’ll still visit sometimes and you’ll visit him, but he’s not going to be here anymore.”

Mia leaned back against Blaine’s chest and regarded Nick. Her gaze asked too many questions.

“It’s just going to be me and you for a while,” Blaine told her.

Mia looked conflicted and Nick didn’t know if it was from some innate need to choose one of them or if it was just confusion. He didn’t think he wanted to really know.

“I’m going to see you as much as I can, princess, and once I’ve got everything set up in my new place you can come over as much as you want, alright?”

She nodded and then climbed off of Blaine, offering Blaine her doll to hold. He took it and they both watched her. She went to Nick and lifted her arms.

“Miss you,” she said and it was then Nick knew she understood far more than she was letting on.

He held her tightly against him. Nick knew that Blaine would never take Mia from him, but still it’d be different to not see her every day. They were going to have to figure something out that worked for them. For a moment he wondered how Blaine was even going to manage taking care of her with his job. For a split moment he wanted to demand that she live with him. But it wasn’t his place. Blaine was the biological father. In no court would he win custody.

“You won’t go without seeing her,” Blaine assured him as if he knew what Nick was thinking, “I won’t let that happen.”

“Thank you.”

- - -

“It looks kind of empty,” Kurt said and dropped his portfolio folder on the coffee table next to story book and a doll.

“I kind of feel weird spreading my things out, I guess. Plus, I haven’t had the time really since he moved out.” Blaine shrugged and handed Kurt the glass of water.

Kurt thanked him and sat down. “Well, this could be the perfect reason to remodel the entire thing. Not that it doesn’t look well now, but it could help with making it your own again.”

Blaine sat down next to him a shrugged. “I don’t know, Kurt.”

Kurt sipped at his water and looked around. The room was organized enough, but the gaps that Nick had left behind where his things must have gone were obvious. Kurt didn’t know how Blaine could live with the reminder.

“Anyway, I want to show you the drawings,” Kurt said and coughed, “now keep in mind these are the first thing I’ve worked on in a while.”

It wasn’t Kurt that had mentioned the dresses and other clothing that he’d drawn specifically inspired by Mia, but Amie and since then Blaine had been hounding him about it.

“Your designs were always great. Stop selling yourself short.”

Kurt rolled his eyes even though he’d missed having Blaine to encourage him. Maybe he might have done all of this already, had entire lines of clothes out had he and Blaine stayed together. Sometimes thoughts like those popped up and he had to just shake them off and remind himself that he and Blaine were sort of together now.

He opened the portfolio and pulled out the main sketchbook. He opened it to the first page and set it in front of Blaine.

“You know it kind of looks like something she’d wear,” Blaine said and flipped the page.

Kurt watched him anxiously. If anyone’s opinion mattered, it was Blaine’s. He didn’t care about the critics that had already been shown some of these, or the other people he’d shared them with to really jumpstart his career.

“They’re gorgeous,” Blaine said, “everything is fantastic.”

“Really?”

“Of course,” Blaine said, “why would you even think otherwise?” He set the sketchbook aside, “come here.”

Kurt moved closer and Blaine placed both of his hands on either of Kurt’s cheeks, “you are absolutely amazing,” he said and kissed him gently, pulling back before it could deepen, “and I love that you were so inspired by my daughter.”

“I kind of went crazy after I met her,” Kurt admitted, “I have no idea why, I just wanted to create clothes for children…for her.”

Blaine leaned in again and this time he let their kiss get a bit more heated. Blaine tasted like the hot chocolate they’d had earlier and his lips made Kurt tingle everywhere. He had an effect on Kurt that no one else had ever had and Kurt hated that he knew that fact so well.

Blaine pushed him back and Kurt let himself fall into a cushion, his arms wrapping around Blaine’s narrow waist. He sucked at Blaine’s bottom lip and let it go just as quickly. A noise that was half moan, half groan escaped Blaine and Kurt pulled back for air. He smirked a little and Blaine dropped his head to Kurt’s shoulder. It was an awkward position with Blaine trying to not drop all of his weight on Kurt and one of Kurt’s legs still dangling off of the couch.

“Okay, I think we were better at this when we teenagers,” Kurt said.

Blaine lifted his head. “What?” He looked offended.

Kurt couldn’t help but laugh. He pushed Blaine up.

“Not the kissing – the kissing is…it’s fantastic. Limb position though, we could use some work on that.”

They were both giggling after that and Blaine fell into Kurt, but this time maybe not being preoccupied by each other’s lips let them position themselves better.

“I missed this,” Blaine breathed after the giggles had died down, “I missed us.”

Kurt still refused to put a label to it, but there was no doubt in his mind that he could agree with Blaine. There was still the Smythes to deal with, after all, and so many more things to talk about like Blaine’s final decision on the company.

“Me too,” he whispered, “me too.”