♥ ♥ ♥

Leaving New York is bittersweet. I won’t see Mercedes again until spring break, when we go with her family to Hawaii—but I’m also coming back to the town that is home to the person I love, the person I can’t stop thinking about; my Blainers.

It’s kind of ridiculous how much I think about him. Practically every minute of every day, my brain has blaineblaineblaineblaineblaine on constant loop; his face, his eyes, his gorgeous voice, his kind heart. I can’t wait to see him. Even though we’re just friends—and even though I’m now probably officially dating Cooper in the eyes of the McKinley student body—I still feel all buzzy in my head whenever I see him, like he’s a drug I never want to quit. I bought him a t-shirt from AMDA when Mercedes and I scouted out their campus, and I pray he’ll like it. He told me he wanted to go there, and I hope things haven’t changed on that front.

I turn my phone back on as we exit the plane at Dayton International Airport. I have four new messages.

Rachel Berry: YOU KISSED COOPER I CAN’T BELIEVE I JUST HEARD ABOUT THIS NOW

Santana Lopez: WHAAT BOY YOU BE MAKIN’ OUT WITH COOPER?

Cooper Anderson: Back yet?

Blainers: Kurtyyyy I miss you when are you coming back? I heard you kissed my brother...but I heard it from my brother when he came into my room to gloat, so I hope that’s not true...

Oh, fuck.

I elect to ignore Rachel’s and Santana’s messages, respond to Cooper with a simple Yes., and smile like an idiot at the screen as I reply to Blaine.

Kurt Hummel: Blainers! I’m back! We literally just got off the plane. I missed you, too! Brought you something back from NY. Xmas present. And, um, well, your brother kissed me, actually. Prob thinks I’m a really bad kisser now but that’s just cause I wasn’t actually kissing back :)

I get his reply as my family and I enter the taxi that’s waiting for us outside the arrivals gate.

Blainers: Awww you are the sweetest, but you didn’t have to get me anything!! And okay, yeah, that makes me feel better haha. If you had initiated it I would have reminded you that you dating him isn’t actually real :)

Kurt Hummel: Oh, trust me, Blaine. I know it isn’t real. :P

“Kurt, put your phone away,” I hear my dad say as I hoist my bag out of the trunk of the taxi with one hand. I look up at him, expecting further admonishment, but receive a fatherly smile and a bear hug.

“Whoever you’re texting must be pretty important,” he comments, winking at me like he knows something.

“Oh, God, what did Finn tell you?”

That gets a laugh out of my dad, who takes my bag from me and walks with me up to the house. “Just that there are two brothers fighting over you, and the one you like isn’t the guy you’ve been on all those dates with.”

Pretty much. “So, yeah, he basically gave you the CliffsNotes version.”

My dad smiles again, opening the door for me. I walk into our “home,” figuring that coming back to Lima from New York will never not be a disappointment.

“Thanks, Dad,” I mutter, starting the climb up the creaky wooden stairs to my room.

“Wait,” I hear him call. I turn around. “C’mere, Kurt.”

I walk over to my dad, who envelops me in another hug.

“Kurt, I am beyond proud to be your dad,” he tells me, “and I love you no matter what. But...Finn also told me that he’s not quite sure how truthful you’re being with any of these people. Don’t kill him; he just...let his thoughts slip, I guess. Kurt, I would hate it if you lost sight of your morals and who you are as a person. You are an amazing young man, and anyone would be lucky to have you in their life. You don’t need to prove anything to anyone.” He pulls away, clapping me on the back. “Just don’t let yourself be changed by this; whatever ‘this’ is.” He makes a swishy motion with his hand on “this.”

“I promise I won’t, Dad.” I sigh. I can only hope I won’t let him down.

♥ ♥ ♥

Two and a half weeks later, rehearsal for Regionals is in full swing in the auditorium, and Mr. Schue is more nervous than he’s letting on.

“C’mon, Sam, put your ass into it,” he yells over the din of dance practice for one of our numbers. Blaine and I look at each other and burst out laughing, clinging to each other for support.

“Kurt! Blaine! Focus!”

Mr. Schue’s anger sobers us up, and we go back to dancing as we were.

Our set list consists of mid-2000s hip-hop, as the theme for Regionals is R&B. 2008, I’ve learned, was the golden year for new-millennium pop music, but we’re also including earlier stuff.

The number we’re dancing to right now is “U Got It Bad” by Usher, which only the men of New Directions are singing. The girls have their own song: a Mariah Carey mashup of “We Belong Together” and “Always Be My Baby.” Rachel, of course, is handling the high notes on that one. She’s amazing, but sometimes, I wish Mr. Schue would give another girl a chance—someone like Tina or Quinn.

Our first song in the set is a rousing rendition of “SexyBack” by Justin Timberlake. That one features Blaine, Santana, Brittany, and Sam, and as they take their places, Schue cues the band and the lights go up. Blaine turns to Santana, making the come-hither eyes at her, and begins the unabashedly sensual dance routine Mike has choreographed for the song.

I’m not going to lie; I’m mesmerized, watching those hips move like nothing I’ve ever seen before. That boy is damn sexy, and I’ve known him as Blainers Cutie Pie Here’s-My-Sweatshirt Anderson for so long that I didn’t even recognize the pure sex that radiates off him with every step he takes.

I sure do recognize it now.

♥ ♥ ♥

I keep on recognizing it long after I get ready for bed that night. It’s like a switch has flipped; suddenly, erotic images of Blaine in disturbingly sexy situations—disturbing because I am only sixteen, and he’s only fifteen, God, fifteen, and he’s my friend—fill my mind until I can barely focus on my algebra homework, eventually giving up the pursuit altogether around three-thirty in the morning.

I turn off my bedroom light and flop gracelessly onto my window seat to gaze out at my nondescript, boring street. Nothing out of the ordinary; same trees, same ridiculously bright blue house across the way, same streetlight right next to the crosswalk—and a slumped figure under it, sitting in the pouring rain.

Wait. I know that figure.

Without hesitating for a nanosecond, I shove my feet into my slippers and put on the closest outer layer I can see—Blaine’s lacrosse sweatshirt—before rushing downstairs and out the door. I’m still wearing my reading glasses, and the rain renders me half-blind as it beats down from the sky. I run down the stairs that lead to our porch, dash across the street, and collapse into a tired, upset pile of Kurt right next to the boy I love. But...why is he even out here?

“Blaine, what the fuck are you doing? It’s three in the damn morning!” I shout, scaring him out of his compact little ball. He takes his arms away from their place covering his head, looking up at me in confusion. I can tell he’s been crying.

“K-kurt?” he ekes out, his teeth chattering at a rapid rate as he bursts into a fresh round of tears.

Wordlessly, I wrap him up in my arms, shhhing him as he sobs. “It’s okay, honey,” I whisper. “You’re safe now. It’s okay.”

Blaine shakes his head. “It’s not,” he blubbers. “It’s really not.”

“Oh, baby,” I murmur, getting up from the soaking wet ground and helping him up. He stands on shaky legs. “Let’s get you some dry clothes, okay?”

Blaine nods almost imperceptibly, smiling at me like I’m the greatest thing that’s ever happened to him, even though I’m probably the worst. “Thank you.”

“You know I’d do anything for you, Blaine.”

I hold him tight to me as we cross the street, shivering due to my wet clothes as well as the proximity to his. Without saying a word, I guide him up to my room and give him some pajama pants and a long-sleeved henley to wear. I don’t even bother turning on the lights. I cuddle up next to him on my bed, stroking his wet, curly hair and letting him rest his head on my shoulder. We still haven’t spoken, and it’s a while before there's even a good reason to break the silence.

“Feel any better?” I murmur.

“No,” he confesses. I feel a drop hit my shoulder, but I’m not sure whether it’s a tear or a water droplet from his hair. “Kurt...my house feels like a prison. I just couldn’t stand being there anymore, trapped inside my feelings and my truths, and I just needed out of there.”

I turn him gently around to face me. I want to look him in the eyes; those honey-hazel beauties I’ve come to know so intimately.

“Honey, what happened?”

Blaine sighs, leaning into the pillows I’ve propped him up against. “Nothing happened, really,” he explains, “just...a lot of little details culminating in a giant panic attack under that streetlight just now.” He doesn’t offer any more information, and I’m unsure how he’ll react if I push.

I push anyway. “Do you...want to talk about it?”

Blaine nods his head. “I’m just...still trying to process it. My dad is basically the world’s biggest fuckhead, but you knew that. That’s not it. It’s—there was this thing...yesterday, when I showed my mom the kickass AMDA shirt you got me in New York, and she was like ‘who gave it to you?’ and I said ‘Kurt did,’ and she didn’t really know who you were because she doesn’t ever ask about how I’m doing, but she knew some things, I guess, and she said ‘isn’t Kurt Cooper’s boyfriend?’ and I said ‘no’ at the...” Blaine pauses to regain his composure, looking away from me toward the window. “I said ‘no’ at the same time Cooper came downstairs and said ‘yes.’”

“Oh, Blaine—”

“And it’s like I just...it hit me then that I’ve been thinking this whole time that you’re not dating, it’s not real, but...Kurt, it’s real to him. It’s real, and it’s making him happy, and it kills me that I wish my brother weren’t happy.”

“But I’m not his boyfriend, Blaine!” I sit up on my bed. “Why does that make you so upset when you know it’s not real, no matter if it’s real to him or not?”

Blaine sits up, too, his face reddening with anger—at me? At Cooper? I can’t tell, and that scares me.

“Because he is falling for you, Kurt! He’s fucking falling for you, and I have to sit there and watch it happen. He literally comes into my room after every date with you to gloat and gloat, and Rachel’s been avoiding me in the halls like she knows I’m upset.” A tear drips down Blaine’s left cheek—that means pain. “I am upset. I am so mad, Kurt, so mad at you for letting him kiss you. You have no goddamn fucking idea. It’s like all of a sudden, you started going on all these dates, and the two of you fucking made out in a movie theater, and I’m just sitting in my room—”

“Blaine!” I interrupt. “Slow down. You know why I got closer to Cooper all of a sudden?” I ask him, raising an eyebrow.

“N-no,” he answers, trading in the anger for meekness and quiet. “Why? Why would you hurt me like that?”

“It’s the exact opposite, Blaine,” I protest. “You told me that Cooper was freezing you out, that he wasn’t even talking to you because our friendship made him so jealous. You told me how much that was hurting your feelings. I figured the only thing I could do was—was put my feelings aside,” I scoot ever closer to him, closer and closer still until my hand is right up next to his leg on the bed, “and give the two of you a chance to be close again. I wanted things between you to be audible, at least.”

Blaine does his part, inching closer to me until I can feel the heat from his face on mine. “What...feelings...were you pushing aside?” he breathes, voice husky and sexy and God, it’s hot in here.

There are so many ways I could say it: I could give him a speech about my love for him and how it came to be. I could kiss him, not saying a word, hoping my tongue can do the talking for me. There are so many ways it could play out, but if I'm going to do it, I have to do it now.

“God, Blaine, I’m so fucking head over heels in love with you,” I moan, bridging the infinitesimal gap between us and sucking his bottom lip into my mouth. He groans against me, wrapping his arms around my waist and sending us careening onto the pillows. I pull away to add to my declaration. “I love you, and I’ve been dying to do this since the day we met. I love you so, so, so much, Blaine, and even if you don’t feel the same, I just want you to know.”

He pulls away completely, chuckling to himself. “Oh, Kurt,” he breathes. “If you think, at this juncture, that I don’t love you with absolutely everything in me, you’re crazy. You ran outside in the pouring rain to rescue me, my knight in shining armor. I am so insanely in love with you, and oh, God, I have been for so damn long. Too long. I love you so mmmm—”

I swallow the tail end of his speech with another kiss, tangling my tongue with his and rolling on top of him. I’m kissing the love of my life in my darkened bedroom at four in the morning on a Friday night—this is either a dream or a movie, I decide, because things like this don’t happen to Kurt Hummel.

“Things like this don’t happen to me,” Blaine murmurs, echoing my thoughts, “but I’m so unbelievably grateful that you live on this street. I just started walking and didn’t stop, and that’s where I ended up. Mm, okay, fine, I’m done talking,” he cedes as I paw at his chest. “I think you should kiss me some more, baby.”

My heart flutters in my chest when he calls me baby, and I hope he never, ever stops.

♥ ♥ ♥

“Cooper may have made out with you in a movie theater,” Blaine murmurs, rubbing his face in my chest as we lie in my bed together during a break from kissing, “but I’ve made out with you on your bed. I so win.”

I laugh, carding my hand through his hair and leaving it there to scratch it a little. I’ve learned tonight that he likes that. “Not to mention I’m yours. You won me.” I pause. “You gonna tell him about this?

Blaine snorts. “Hell, no. You know how mad he’d get.” He sighs, looking up at my chin. “But the thing is, Kurt, I want to be your boyfriend. I want to walk you to class and kiss you in your bed for hours. I want to call you baby and dedicate songs to you—openly, as opposed to all the implied ones up ‘til now—in glee club. I wish we could have that.”

“I do, too, Blainers.” He smiles at the nickname. “You have no idea how much I want that. I want to be able to hold you close whenever I want. Soon, we will have that. I swear.”

“I know we’ll get there someday, but—I just really wish you could just call off the plan, Kurt, and I really wish you would, but I know why it's not really possible right now.”

All is silent for a few beats before I find the right words. “I want to,” I say softly. “I wish I’d never gotten involved in it in the first place, obviously, but I want to stop it. I want to be with you.”

Blaine sighs. “I want to be with you, too. Speaking of that...Kurt, is it okay if I stay with you tonight?”

I smile warmly at him, kissing him softly on the lips. “I figured you were going to. We’ve got a lot of kisses to make up for.”

Blaine gives me a full-out grin. “That we do,” he agrees, fisting both hands in my hair and capturing my lips with his.

So this is what heaven feels like.

♥ ♥ ♥

Blaine and I eventually fall asleep; it’s got to be around six when we finally succumb to swollen lips and aching bodies, wrapping ourselves up in each other and drifting off. My bed feels like paradise with him in it.

Unfortunately, fate has other plans for us this morning. We are rudely awakened three hours later by an unwelcome guest in a baseball hat.

“Kurt Hummel, who the hell is this?!” my dad roars. From the looks of things (as seen through my groggy eyes), he’s furious.

“Mmph—Dad?”

“Answer me, Kurt. Who the hell is this other guy in bed with you?”

I look over at Blaine, who is sitting up in bed—shirt still on, thank God—and paralyzed with fear.

“Ehm, sir—Mr. Hummel,” he begins, stammering nervously, “my name is Blaine Anderson. I’m—”

I roll my eyes. “Dad, this is Blaine, my boyfriend of four whole hours.”

“Yeah,” Blaine concurs, smiling slightly. “I—um, I know how this looks, Mr. Hummel, but there were no...intimate relations last night, or anything. I kind of...sort of had a panic attack under a streetlight because my home life turned to sh—turned bad recently, and my brother thinks he’s dating Kurt, and I’m in love with your son, by the way, um, and my dad is hugely homophobic...which is bad. So, I kind of collapsed into a heaping pile of sad under that streetlight there,” Blaine points out the window, “and Kurt found me. We came back here, he got me some fresh clothes—but we didn’t watch each other change or anything; this was a little over four hours ago—and we sat on the bed and talked and fell asleep. Well, I mean, we kissed, too, but mostly fell asleep.” Blaine adopts an expression that’s halfway between a grimace and a grin; it’s his please-like-me-I’m-so-cute face.

My dad doesn’t say anything, but comes and sits on the bed next to Blaine, offering him a...hug?

“Do you need a place to stay, kid?” my dad asks, cupping Blaine’s shoulder to soothe him.

Blaine nods, near tears for the fourth time in as many hours. “That would be nice. Just for a few days. I don’t want to overstay my welcome.”

“Blaine, you’re indefinitely welcome. Let me tell you, kid, we don’t tolerate homophobia in this house. You are safe here. You will always be safe here, unless and until you break my son’s heart. Call me Burt, by the way. Kurt, I take it this is the brother you like?”

“Love,” I correct him. “I love him.”

“Sure you do,” my dad responds, flicking his wrist dismissively and making me smile. Such a Burt Hummel response. “Well, Kurt, if you like this Blaine boy, I like him, too; even though I’m 110 percent sure he’s the one who gave you that.” He pokes my collarbone. Shit. I blush a deep red.

My dad smiles at us as he gets up to leave the room. “Chocolate chip pancakes are on the griddle; should be ready in a few.”

Once he’s out of earshot, I turn to Blaine. “He totally loves you now,” I gush. “If he can look past a hickey, you can officially do no wrong.”

“I suppose he’d be okay if I gave you a small, innocent good-morning kiss, then?” Blaine grins, pulling me closer so he can kiss me good morning. “Let’s go get pancakes.”

♥ ♥ ♥

Blaine Anderson: Cooper, tell mom and dad I’m fine, but I’ll be sleeping at a friend’s house until further notice.

Cooper Anderson: Wait, what?

Blaine Anderson: I need to sort some things out before I can go back there.

Cooper Anderson: Blainey, why?

Blaine Anderson: It doesn’t feel like home.

Cooper Anderson: Whose house are you at?

Blaine Anderson: Um, I’m at Finn’s.

Cooper Anderson: He’s a good guy, but I miss you, Beebee. Come back.

Blaine Anderson: I miss you, too, Coop, but I can’t. I just can’t.

♥ ♥ ♥

Blaine is still staying at my house by the time Regionals rolls around, and he takes great pleasure in teasing me mercilessly about my borderline-obsessive-compulsive packing habits. Cooper is still under the impression that Blaine is sleeping at Finn’s, assuming that I’m just the one who picks him up every morning—I get a kick out of Cooper’s apparent ignorance of the fact that Finn and I are stepbrothers.

Once Blaine and I finish packing, we tromp down the stairs, throwing (Blaine) and delicately placing (me) our bags next to Finn’s duffel by the door. We’re due at school by 6:30 for a pre-Regionals team meeting, and by the time the three of us finally get all our affairs in order, it’s nearly 6:25. We’re definitely going to be late.

“We’re gonna be so late,” Finn slurs, still groggy. “It’s still dark outside, what even, Mr. Schue?”

“Yeah, we’ve never left this early for a competition before, actually,” Blaine muses. “Then again, it’s never been this far away before.”

I shrug as I pull into the school parking lot, quickly parking the car and getting everyone’s bags out of the trunk. It takes Finn and Blaine a while to figure out how to get out of the fully unlocked vehicle; they’re still more than a little bleary. Blaine wraps an arm around me, kissing my cheek as I click the clicker fifty times and finally lock the damn car.

“Love you,” he murmurs, tucking his head under my chin as we walk across the parking lot to the school. “I know we’re going to have to pretend that we’re not together once we’re inside the school, but I just want you to know that I love you very much, even though you’re still...doing whatever you’re doing with Cooper.”

“Blaine, you know I’m going to stop that as soon as it’s feasible. I love you, too, honey. I love you so much for being so patient with me about this.”

“I understand, Kurt,” Blaine tells me. “I know why you did it, how it came about, and why it’s going to be difficult to end, timing- and emotion-wise. It’s okay.”

I smile at him like he’s the only thing in the world—he is, my brain insists—and hope to God he’s telling me the truth.

♥ ♥ ♥

Blaine, Finn, and I walk in five minutes late. “Sorry,” Finn apologizes on our behalf. “We sort of...got out of the house late.” He yelps when I sock him in the arm, pulling him and Blaine up to the back row of seats as we listen to Schue accept our apology.

“I’m sorry I punched you, Finn,” I mutter in his ear, out of my boyfriend’s earshot. “It’s just that...Cooper and Blaine’s relationship is in dire straits right now, and it’s my fault. Blaine’s home life, as you know, is bad right now, and that’s why he’s staying with us. When Blaine and Cooper were texting about him staying with us, Blaine told him that he was at your house, because Cooper somehow doesn’t know that you and I are stepbrothers. Aaand, now, he does.” To prove it, I show Finn my iPhone screen.

Cooper Anderson: You live with Finn, too?

“Oh, shit, so he’s mad at Blaine now?” Finn asks, smacking his own head. “I’m sorry, Kurt. If you’d told me, I wouldn’t have said anything.”

I cup his shoulder supportively. “It’s all right. Hopefully, he’ll be mad at me, and not Blaine.”

When I finish my sentence, Finn is smiling down at me.

“What?”

My brother shakes his head. “Nothing,” he mumbles, still smiling. “You just really love him, don’t you?”

I nod. “Yes.”

“And I love you, Kurty,” Blaine pipes up. He’s grabbed hold of my arm with both hands and is resting his head on my shoulder, his eyes closed and his mouth turned up at the corners in a blissful smile.

“I love you both,” I gush, snuggling up to Finn as Blaine snuggles up to me.

“...rt, Finn, and Blaine, I know you three came in late, but please don’t take that as permission to check out,” Mr. Schue admonishes us. We nod, and I fix my eyes on our teacher’s tie to let him know I’m super-duper-serial about paying attention. He gives us a truly moving speech about how we have come so far, and we’re here to win it all, and every other cliché he’s dropped since I joined. Don’t get me wrong; I love Mr. Schue to pieces. He’s my favorite teacher. He just has this tendency to get highly annoying at times, in a motivational-speaker kind of way.

The talk seems to help, though, and we board the school bus in high spirits. I’m next to Blaine, naturally, with Santana and Brittany in front of us and Finn and Rachel behind us. Cooper is across the aisle from Blaine and me, sitting with a very bemused Sam; something tells me they haven’t said more than a few words to each other before. Luckily, Blaine likes the aisle and I like the window—match made in heaven—so whatever plan the elder Anderbrother has cooked up will backfire. 

On the bus ride, Blaine and I are careful to nix the PDA. Not only is Cooper across the aisle from his brother, but the three girls I’m basically working for are also quite literally surrounding us. I feel pressure on my shoulder and, a second later, hot breath on my ear.

“We’re going to be in a hotel room in forty minutes,” Blaine murmurs, “where we can show as much PDA as you want.”

I try to flash him a sexy smile—knowing me, however, it most likely fails. I look slightly to my right to find Sam and Cooper immersed in a high-stakes game of Tiny Wings. “We could...now, if you want,” I whisper. “Cooper and Samuel are otherwise occupied.”

Blaine shakes his head. “Too risky. Gimme a sec.” He leans in close to me like he’s going to whisper in my ear, but instead, he peppers the tiniest kisses behind and under my ear, even taking a few seconds to nibble on my neck under my scarf. Something unfamiliar courses through my body, making me shiver in the best way possible.

“And that’s just a preview,” he purrs in my ear.

Sometimes, I really love being me.

♥ ♥ ♥

Once we get to the hotel, Blaine and I are content to spend all four hours of our Schue-sanctioned free time making out—and we do. We’re all kissed out by the time we get the call to our room to start changing and meet at the bus in twenty minutes. I spend a few of those minutes complaining about how that isn’t nearly enough time, and Blaine, being the understanding boyfriend that he is, shoves my garment bag into my arms and yells “¡vamanos!” over and over until I stop.

He’s weird, but I love him.

It takes twice as long as it should for Blaine to touch up his hair gel, and my zipper decides to stick at the least opportune moment, but we’re the first ones downstairs.

“What do you want to bet Mr. Schue told you, me, and Finn to come earlier than everyone else because we were late this morning?” Blaine asks me.

I laugh. “Not taking that bet, considering that’s probably what happened.”

Sure enough, Finn is the next one down, and everyone else storms the lobby five minutes after him. We board the bus amid wisecracks from Mr. Schue about how “you weren’t late this time!”, and thirty minutes later, we’re in our seats at the venue. It’s a high school theater, but it’s much swankier than ours—gold fixtures, two midstage travelers (unless my eye deceives me), and a whole extra section of seats.

“This is Vocal Adrenaline High School,” Blaine whispers to me, reading my mind and answering my unasked question. Such a good boyfriend. “Well, I mean, it's probably not called that, but they may as well be. Their show choir is Vocal Adrenaline, and they’re scary good, but they’re not competing this year because they all tested positive at their Sectionals for a performance-enhancing drug injected into their vocal cords. Miraculously, they can all sing fine, but I heard something about a clubwide field trip to the throat surgeon at Akron Memorial. I also heard they’re sitting in the audience as punishment.”

“That must suck.”

“They suck, Kurt,” Blaine retorts. “When Rachel and Jesse—her ex, the star of Vocal Adrenaline, and a total jackass—broke up, they came to McKinley with eggs and egged her. All of them. She’s a vegan. Vocal Adrenaline is filled with nothing but awful people.”

“Poor Rachel,” I whisper, genuinely in pain on my friend's behalf, as the first group takes the stage. I don’t hear their name, and after their mediocre performance, I don’t care to.

We leave to warm up just as the second group is preparing to go on, and they walk by us on their way to the stage. We find our warmup room and discover that it’s fully equipped with those stage-makeup mirrors; the girls assign themselves a section of the mirrored wall and check themselves meticulously from head to shoulder. (That’s where the mirror cuts off.)

After Mr. Schue calms Captain Rachel down from her Pre-Performance Conniption: Regionals Edition, we warm up and take the stage. Long story short, we kill it.

Blaine’s and my ‘sexy’ number with Santana and Brittany gets the crowd on their feet, and the way he moves those hips and sings those lyrics—I’m bringing sexy back, yeah / And all the boys don’t know how to act—makes my whole body thrum with a lust I’ve never known before. Kurt Hummel certainly doesn’t know how to act, my brain jokes.

We pull off the synchronized boy-band dance moves of our guys-only number with effortless finesse; even Sam. Mike cries a little when we’re done, though he will never admit to it as long as he lives.

The girls, though? The girls bring the house down.The audience eats it all up, especially those Mariah Carey high notes.

"...and the winners of this year's Midwest Regional Championships are...the McKinley High New Directions!"

We fucking win! We’re going to Nationals, holy fucking shit!

I vow not to succumb to my urge to kiss Blaine onstage, but I’m so happy that it’s going to be near-impossible to resist him. Puck hugs me and gives me an elated bro-fist before enlisting Finn’s help in lifting me up and holding me high above the group like I’ve scored the big touchdown. Well, they would know about that, I guess.

When they put me down, I’m immediately pulled into a hug by Rachel, Santana, and Brittany, who snuggle me tight and asphyxiate me with their clashing perfumes.

“Love you, Hummel,” Santana whispers, warming my heart.

When they, too, let me go, I’m faced with none other than Blaine Anderson, the light of my short life, who wraps me up in his arms like only a lover can. “Thank you for moving here, Kurty.” His voice is muffled against my neck, but I can hear him like we’re the only two people in this entire theater.

I pull back, stroking his cheek with my thumb, utterly cognizant—but ignorant by choice—of the fact that we are still partying it up onstage. “Thank you for finding me, Blainers,” I breathe, choked up with emotion.

♥ ♥ ♥

“Okay, guys,” Mr. Schue says, climbing up to the front of the bus over the din of the engine and our voices. “Did we kill it, or what?”

The tiny space fills with our exuberant whoops and cheers.

“Exactly. And now, we’re gonna take our musical stylings to an entire piano bar full of people!”

We cheer again. I look at Blaine as if to say we are getting in on that piano action, and he winks at me in return.

“Hey, Kurt,” I hear Cooper call from across the aisle. “Do you want to—”

Exercising his possessive streak, Blaine pulls me off the bus before his brother can finish. “I’m singing with you,” he growls, his smile assuaging my brief fear that Cooper’s request made him angry at me.

We walk in, arms around each other, and find ourselves pulled into the round booth that Rachel, Finn, and Puck have reserved. Santana and Brittany slide in on Blaine’s other side, and Rachel welcomes Mike and Tina to her side. We have room for two more, and Sam and Cooper—still glued to the Tiny Wings screen—are more than happy to sit down with us. Sam and Mike jokingly hold onto each other for dear life—it really is a tight squeeze, but we end up making it work. There’s no one at the piano right now, and Blaine takes the opportunity.

“I’ll go, Mr. Schue,” he shouts, and our teacher smiles.

“Us?” I ask him, and he shakes his head.

“I’ve got one for now, but you’re getting up there with me later, Kurty.”

Blaine winks at me, and my heart flutters in my chest. Sam, Mike, Tina, Rachel, Finn, Puck, and I assemble a high-five line of sorts, as we have to get out in order for Blaine to get to the piano. He walks to the piano, stopping briefly to check something on his phone. As he sits down at the keys, my phone chimes. Everyone turns to look at me; Blaine just smiles to himself, though he can't have heard the noise from all the way across the restaurant.

“Sorry,” I stage-whisper to my friends. Under the table, I check my texts. Sure enough, Blaine was typing a message to me when he stopped.

Blainers: This one’s for you, baby.

“Wait a second, Hummel,” Puck begins, but I grab his shoulder and whisper in his ear before he can say what I know he’s going to say; what he can’t say with Cooper at the table and Blaine about to sing.

“You cannot tell anyone, Puckerman, and if you do, I swear to God I will...do something bad to you.”

Puck laughs, wrapping an arm around me. He’s turned out to be much friendlier than I’d expected him to be when I first met him, and for some reason, he likes me a lot.

“Just type it out on your phone and show it to me, dude. I’ll delete it after I read it. I won’t tell, but I really want to know now.”

I comply reluctantly, fingers flying across the touchscreen with amazing speed as Blaine begins to talk to the audience. I type quickly, knowing that I won't want to miss any of his song.

Kurt Hummel: So basically I wasn’t actually dating cooper it was just this plan that rach, tana, britt cooked up cause they were mad when he dumped them all which I mean dick move, right? Yeah anyway but the thing is blaine body slammed me on accident in the hall on 1st day of school and I’ve been in love with him the whole time ever since then and like a week ago he showed up on my street crying under a streetlight in the pouring rain at asscrack in the morning bc cooper is falling for me and his home life is bad news puck BAD NEWS homophobic parents etc, and so I took him in and gave him clothes and we talked and eventually I told him I loved him, he said he loved me back and we made out, and then during free time we made out for like four hours there’s the long and short of it

I hand Puck my phone as Blaine wraps up his speech.

“So, this is for my...this is for someone. Yeah. Someone. All right. Let’s go.”
I’m content just to watch the way his body moves with the music, with his fingers as they glide across the keyboard. When he starts to sing, though, I’m gone.

You think I’m pretty without any makeup on

You think I’m funny when I tell the punchline wrong

I know you get me, so I let my walls come down, down

Before you met me, I was all right, but things were kinda heavy

You brought me to life

Now, every February, you’ll be my valentine

Valentine

I want to tell him I’ll be his valentine every day, whether or not it’s February. I’m all his.

Let’s go all the way tonight

No regrets; just love

We can dance until we die

You and I will be young forever

You make me feel like I’m living a teenage dream

The way you turn me on

I can’t sleep

Let’s run away and don’t ever look back, don’t ever look back

My heart stops when you look at me

Mine, too, Blaine.

Just one touch; now, baby, I believe

I believed from the moment he knocked me to the ground and kept believing even after his biology textbook nearly castrated me.

This is real

He and I are real. Everything that’s happened lately—this whole year—has been built on artifice, but Kurty and Blainers are the realest fucking thing there is. The other shit I’ve gotten roped into has nothing on him and nothing to do with him.

So take a chance and don’t ever look back, don’t ever look back

I love him so much.

I’mma get your heart racing in my skintight jeans, be your teenage dream tonight

Let you put your hands on me in my skintight jeans, be your teenage dream tonight

When the song ends, Puck hands me my phone back and claps for Blaine, looking at me quizzically.

“What?”

Puck raises a confused eyebrow at me. “Why’d you get him clothes?” he whispers. I love that he’s whispering so Cooper can’t hear, even though the noise has picked up exponentially since Blaine finished. Everyone loved him.

“Huh?”

“If you have romantic feelings for baby Anderbro, which you do, why did you get him fresh clothes after his old ones got wet? Weren’t you gonna bang?” I take in his face; he’s completely and totally dead serious.

I can’t help it; I burst out laughing and hug Puck as Cooper, Santana, and Brittany get out of the booth and let my superstar back in. Wait—how come the billion of us had to climb out the first time around, and those three couldn’t just bite the bullet and get off their asses?

“You’re the best, Puckerman,” I tell him, still laughing. A response like that to my situation was something I never knew I needed.

“Not ready yet?” he ribs me, poking my side. “I see how it is. Should have banged, but you’ll get there, padawan.”

“Did you just make a Star Wars joke?” I ask him, getting my hair ruffled in return.

“I love that you know that,” he tells me before cupping his hand to my ear again. “Go talk to your boyfriend; he’s looking neglected. And remember Uncle Puck’s advice next time his clothes get rained on.”

I smile at Puck and turn to Blaine. “That was beautiful,” I tell him, eyes glassy. If I cry, would he find it romantic? I decide to chance it, letting the tears fall.

“Oh, Kurty,” Blaine breathes, wrapping me up in his warm body. We pull away too soon—no matter when we pulled away, it would have been too soon—and he settles his hands on either side of my waist. “I want to kiss you, but I know we can’t...do anything. I do have to wonder what that enthusiastic thumbs-up from Puck meant, though.”

I giggle, remembering the conversation I just had with him. “He saw your text, actually, and I figured, why not just tell him? He kind of knows everything about us now,” I whisper. We have to whisper, even though it’s bad for our voices. The things I do for you, Blaine Anderson.

“Okay, who all knows everything?” Blaine asks me. I can only hope he’s not mad. “I want to do a head count.”

“On my end, just Finn, Puck, Mercedes—she thinks you look like a model, by the way, in case I forgot to tell you that part—and you know my dad knows.”

“Found us in bed together, and all. So scandalous.” Blaine smiles at me like I’m being silly, reaching up to pinch my flushed cheek. “I’m not mad or anything, Kurty. I’m proud of being yours, and I’d love for everyone to know...but since they can’t, I just wanted to get a count. I...have...told...” My adorable boyfriend taps his head with two fingers as he thinks. “I think just Tina, but she swore on her great-grandmother’s grave not to tell. I just needed to confess my love for you to someone else who wasn’t you. Tell Mercedes thanks, by the way. I have never been told that...maybe because my brother is actually a model.”

“Cooper’s a model?” I ask, louder than Blaine's and my current relationship situation allows us to be—then again, Cooper has nothing to do with our relationship, so I think I’m okay.

“Yep!” Cooper confirms from his place on the end, four people down from me. “I could tell you about it sometime, if you wanted.”

“Oh, um, yeah, sure,” I stammer, turning back to Blaine, who's trying hard to fight a smile. “Your brother is a nice guy, but I really just want to get this plan over with so that I can date you,” I lament in his ear.

“All right, Anderson, time to scooch your bootch,” a voice shouts over the ambient noise in the bar—definitely Santana.

“Me?” Blaine asks, pulling a deer-in-the-headlights face.

Santana rolls her eyes, all red lipstick and pearly whites as she smiles at him. “Not you, baby, although I’d love to see that ass up and walking around again. No, I meant your less bodacious brother. Move it, Coop.”

Cooper laughs as he gets out of the booth to let his ex-girlfriend by.

“Yo, Chang, you wanna help me out with this one? It’s just a standard one-five-six-four progression in D,” Mike looks at Sam, who gets the hint and moves to let Mike through. “Thanks, man,” Santana adds, clapping a hand on Mike’s shoulderblade as they walk onstage together. We clap and whistle and make lots of noise at Blaine’s insistence.

“He’s an amazing player,” Blaine tells me at normal speaking volume.

“And she’s an amazing singer,” Brittany chimes in, smiling with literally all of her teeth.

“Yes, she is,” Blaine and I reply in unison, making our friend smile again.

She moves closer to us, snuggling up to Blaine. He wraps his arm around her. “Hey, Britt.”

“Hey, y’all,” Santana says quite loudly into the microphone, shrinking back when she hears feedback from the monitors.

“Okay, hi. I’m Santana, and I’m friends with Mister Blaine Devon Anderson, the bootylicious little hunk of talent who sang you that Katy Perry song earlier.” Another round of applause erupts for Blaine, and Santana golf-claps for him from the stage. “Isn’t he ass-tastic? He’s fifteen, if you can believe it. What a voice. Anyway, I recently found this great song that sort of sums up how I’m feeling right now. It’s called ‘Attention.’ Hit it, Mikey! This is Mike Chang, by the way; let me hear you.” We, along with the other patrons of the bar, whoop it up in Mike’s honor as he does a small wave from the stage. “Okay, okay. M. Chang and I about to shut it down. Here we go.”

Mike begins to play an arpeggiated, clearly improvised chord progression, and not long after, Santana brings the mic to her lips.

Attention, attention

May I have all your eyes and ears to the front of the room, if only

If only for one second

This table has taken a turn for the worse

Rock bottom and over the edge

Well, it’s not like it hurts that much anyway

Upside down and inside out

When I leave here, I’m going alone

But it’s not like it, not like it hurts much anyway

Attention, attention

May I have all your eyes and ears to the front of the room, if only

If only for one second

‘Til you hear what I have to say

Oh, did I mention

When I see you, it stings like hell

The fact that we could have something that will never happen

Do you hear what I have to say?

It takes me a second, but everything suddenly flashes before my eyes. I can’t believe I didn’t see it before. They sit together at every available opportunity. They both hated Rachel, initially; not each other, never each other. Sometimes, when they think no one’s looking, they link their pinkies together. Santana exalts her whenever she can, and vice versa. The way Brittany Pierce is looking at that stage right now tells me everything I neglected to see. I know why they’re both so invested in this “Cooper Anderson must die, and we must kill him using our newfound gay friend as a weapon” plot.

Santana is singing this beautiful song to Brittany, because she loves her, and I can only hope Britt realizes it sooner than I did with Blaine—because right now, judging by this song, Santana’s all broken up over it, and only Britt can piece her together.

Santana and Mike get an overwhelming round of applause at the end, and they bow together before coming back to our table.

I touch Santana’s arm across Brittany and Blaine as she settles back in. “That was beautiful, Tana.”

She makes a heart with her hands. “Like I said when we won, I totes love you, Hummel.”

“Love you, too.” We share a long, lingering smile. I wonder if she knows I’ve figured it out.

♥ ♥ ♥

A few more of us share our musical talents in the next half an hour. Mike and Tina sing “L-O-V-E” by Nat King Cole, and it’s adorable.

Sam goes up there, bringing Mike along to play the chords for “She Thinks My Tractor’s Sexy,” and uses his cute-boy wiles to his advantage—the entire room is eating out of his hands by the time he’s done.

Finn and Rachel sing “Need You Now” by Lady Antebellum; an...unpredictable choice, considering I was under the impression that Rachel only ever listened to show tunes. Nevertheless, their voices sound great together.

“Kurt, you wanna...?” Blaine trails off, but it’s not hard to figure out what he means.

“Of course,” I respond, and this time, the half that doesn’t contain Cooper clears out for us.

“Do you know ‘Songbird’ by Fleetwood Mac, by any chance?” Blaine asks me as we walk, and I nod.

“It’s actually one of my favorites.”

Blaine smiles warmly. “You have good taste, my love. Shall we sing it? I know the chords. I can add low harmony, and you can take the melody, if you want.”

“Perfect.” I add an affirmative nod in case my agreement wasn’t vehement enough. “We should say something, though, at the beginning, like—”

“Something like ‘this is our favorite song, and we really like to sing it, and yeah, and it’s not romantic because we are not at all in a romantic situation?’” Blaine suggests, and I can tell he’s teasing.

“Pretend like I’m kissing you right now, because I would,” I tell him, “if I could.”

“I’ll kiss you for real tonight,” he giggles, picking up a microphone and handing one to me as we sit down on the piano bench. I can’t play, but I follow Blaine’s lead, figuring it’ll look cute...or something. The piano is angled so that the entire bar can still see all the parts of our faces.

Blaine raises an eyebrow at me, and I take the hint, lifting the mic to my mouth. “Hello, piano bar patrons, piano bar staff, William Schuester, and members of New Directions,” I begin, getting a laugh out of the crowd—especially Mr. Schue. I think he’s drunk. “My name is Kurt Hummel, and you already know m-my...best friend, Blaine Anderson. We have this song that we both like. It’s by Fleetwood Mac; some of you might recognize it. It’s one of my favorites, and also his, and we found that out as we were walking up here, actually. So...we’re going to sing it now.”

“It’s not necessarily meant to be taken romantically,” Blaine tells the audience. Except it totally is, his Kurt-only smile seems to whisper. 

“Precisely,” I chime in. “All right, Blaine. You good to go?”

“I am,” he says into his mic. “Let’s do this, Kurt.”

He starts in with the piano, and I pick up the melody where it comes in.

For you, there'll be no more crying

For you, the sun will be shining

And I feel that when I'm with you,

It's all right,

I know it's right

I let Blaine take the next verse.

To you, I'll give the world

To you, I'll never be cold

'Cause I feel that when I'm with you,

It's all right,

I know it's right.

It takes everything in me not to melt into Blaine’s arms when he adds his low harmony on the chorus. His voice is like his eyes, all honey and gold.

And the songbirds are singing

Like they know the score

And I love you, I love you, I love you

Like never before.

I’m sitting here in a piano bar, having the time of my life with great friends and the perfect guy, whom I honestly think I will marry someday, and I am honestly dumbstruck with disbelief at the fact that all of this happened in Ohio. Who’d have thought?

I wish you all the love in the world, Blaine sings to me.

But most of all, I wish it from myself.

His hands lift gently off the keys, and we sing the last chorus a cappella.

And the songbirds keep singing

Like they know the score

And I love you, I love you, I love you

Like never before.

The way Blaine looks at me as he tells me he loves me in song is just—I can’t even describe it. Whatever it is, whatever wonderful word those Webster people are going to have to come up with for this feeling, it’s worth the intense and frequent bitch faces we get from Cooper all the way back to the hotel. We’re used to bitch faces by now.

What I don’t realize until Blaine and I are almost ready to go to sleep, however, is that the two of us are walking on very thin ice; Cooper knows now, without a doubt, that there’s something between us. He has proof, which means he has power, and he will not hesitate to use it the very moment an opportunity presents itself.

I don’t say anything, because the boy I love is cuddling me closer in the dark of our hotel room, and I refuse to upset him after the night we’ve had. It’s been too perfect...and that’s the problem. Nothing stays perfect for long; there’s always going to be something in the way. I can only hope that brotherly love is stronger than jealousy.

♥ ♥ ♥