The overhead lights blinked thrice, signaling the end of intermission. The mass of extremely well-dressed socialites slowly migrated from the lobby, the bathrooms, and the sidewalks into the theatre. They buzzed with excitement; after an explosive, side-splitting first act, wild speculations concerning the second blazed through the crowds.

In another world, far into the inner depths of the building, Kurt Hummel kissed his boyfriend goodbye. He backed Blaine Anderson, Broadway superstar, into the closed door of his dressing room, trying not to muss the shorter man's costume. This was proving to be quite difficult, considering the costume was a rather well-fitting three-piece suit that fell on his hips perfectly. Kurt desired nothing more than to remove it piece by piece.

"Kurt," Blaine murmured against the other man's lips. "Kurt, I have to go back out, the second act's about to start."

Tracing his tongue along Blaine's jaw line, Kurt groaned. "You're right." He pulled back. "You have to go before things get...awkward." He blushed.

Chuckling softly, Blaine smartened himself up. "Yeah, going onstage with certain...physical reactions would most definitely catch Ryan's attention." The thought of the director's anger aimed toward himself made Blaine cringe.

"I still can't believe you're on Broadway, Blaine." Kurt slung his bag over his shoulder. "I'm so proud of you."

"You're just jealous that I got here first." Blaine laughed when Kurt stuck his tongue out at him.

Kurt placed his hand on the doorknob. "You just wait, Mr. Anderson. One day I'll star in my own Broadway musical, and I'll be so amazing that I'll become famous and everyone will forget about that has-been Blaine Anderson."

Now Blaine let out a bark of laughter. "I don't doubt it." He pecked Kurt's lips chastely with his own. "Okay, you have to go back to your seat, and I have to get behind the curtain before Ryan flays me alive."

Right on cue, a loud banging on the door caused the two men to leap backward. "Anderson! Get your ass out here, now! I told you, no quickies with your boyfriend!" Blaine and Kurt flushed deep red. They emerged from the dressing room to see the director's back marching away.

Kurt kissed Blaine one last time. "Break a leg, baby. I love you."

"I love you, too." Blaine watched his boyfriend disappear into the darkness of the hall. Then he turned to take his place on the stage.

From his place in the audience, Kurt could see his boyfriend hamming it up expertly. His voice resonated beautifully throughout the theatre, and he completely enraptured the spectators. Blaine's character, a skirt-chasing businessman forced to pretend to be gay in order to win over a potential client, had been written some of the wittiest, sharpest lines in comedy's history. Of course, Blaine's acting was so superb that Kurt didn't feel the slightest inkling of jealousy when he shared a particularly passionate kiss with another male actor on stage.

As Kurt watched in awe, he fiddled with his right ring finger. It felt empty, as the ring he normally wore there went missing that morning. He smiled wistfully as he remembered the day he received the piece of jewelry.

Hundreds of square black caps fell to the ground, the horde of teenagers chattering excitedly as they fetched the garments and replaced them upon their heads. They had just graduated from William McKinley High School. They were never going back. For all, it was a bittersweet realization.

"I can't believe we're saying goodbye to this place," Kurt sighed, winding his fingers through his boyfriend's.

"Aw," Blaine cooed. "You're so sentimental sometimes. I find it quite adorable."

Kurt rolled his eyes. "Come on. I mean, it's really just Glee Club that I'll miss. Can you imagine life without the daily love nonagon that is our friends' lives? I mean, if Rachel isn't going to storm out of every room, then who is? If Puck isn't going to make out with all of Finn's girlfriends, then who is? If Brittany isn't going to blurt random statements that both confuse me and make sense at the same time, then who is?"

Placing a soft kiss upon Kurt's porcelain cheek, Blaine interrupted the other boy's rambling. "They're not going away forever. We still have all summer to say goodbye. And Rachel's coming to New York with us. If it makes you feel better, we can piss her off every day, just so you can see her slam a door when she storms out." That brought a smile to Kurt's face. "There we go. Now, if you'll come with me, I'd like to give you your graduation present before we head back to my place for the Glee party." Not allowing Kurt to respond, Blaine dragged him by the hand out of the auditorium crammed with student, parents, and faculty members and into the empty choir room.

"Blaine, what the hell is—what are you doing?" Kurt gasped as he watched Blaine kneel onto one knee.

"Kurt Elizabeth Hummel." The shorter boy pulled a small velvet box from the pocket of his dress slacks. "I should have given you this a long time ago, because it's been applicable to our relationship for quite a while—"

"Blaine Anderson I swear to you that if you're doing what I think you're doing—"

"So you're just going to have to excuse my lateness. I love you more than anyone else in the world, Kurt—more than life itself. I know for a one-hundred-percent fact that I'm going to die in love with you, whether that's tomorrow or ninety years from now. And I want to prove that to you." Blaine lifted the lid of the tiny box open.

"Oh no—" Kurt stopped short when he saw the box's contents. Instead of a band or a ring with a stone, a different piece of jewelry gleamed from within the folds of velvet. The ring was silver, and it featured a pair of hands clutching a heart, which was surmounted by a crown. Kurt recognized the design—it was traditional in style, not at all modern—but it wasn't even close to what he expected. His brow wrinkled in confusion. "Blaine, what—"

"It's a claddagh ring," the kneeling boy explained. "It's an Irish tradition. In the olden times, people were too poor to buy real wedding rings, so they used these instead. The hands represent friendship, the crown represents loyalty, and the heart...There's a specific way you have to wear it, too."

"Oh?" Kurt was thoroughly baffled. What exactly was Blaine up to?

Blaine stood up and moved close to Kurt, their bodies nearly flush with each other. "When you're in a committed relationship, you wear it on your right hand, with the heart pointing toward you. It means your heart's taken, and that you won't give it away." Blaine removed the ring from the box and slipped it onto Kurt's right third finger, pointing the heart toward the taller boy's wrist. Then he wound his own right fingers through Kurt's, showing off his matching claddagh ring. The heart on his ring, too, faced his body. "We belong to each other," he whispered.

When Blaine pressed a deep, passionate kiss to his lips, Kurt cried freely. The two embraced each other, reveling in the fact that they were equal, that they were together, and that they were in love.

That morning, Kurt's claddagh ring disappeared. He only removed it for a few minutes a day, when he was moisturizing his face. He had slid it off and set it upon the counter in the small bathroom of their one-bedroom New York apartment. When he finished his routine, it was gone. He tossed the room, upending beauty products and rifling through drawers, all to no avail. He came to the sickening conclusion that the ring had been knocked down the drain of the sink while he was working. He hadn't told Blaine yet, because he was ashamed of losing the symbol of their undying love for each other. So he sat in the dark theatre, gazing in amazement up at his unfairly talented boyfriend, tugging lightly at his third finger, wishing desperately that he could spin the ring that had rested there for years.

When the final group number wrapped at the end, the audience leapt to its feet, hands crashing together in a deafening roar. Blaine appeared on the empty stage to take the first bow. His costars each took their bows, and then the entire cast joined them to take the concluding bow together. Kurt's glasz eyes brimmed over with tears; he had never felt so excited, so proud, so hopeful, so in love in his entire life. The cast (and Ryan, whom Blaine had dragged from the wing into view) grinned in front of everyone as the entire theatre applauded until every single person's hands were red.

Instead of the curtain dropping to shield the cast from view, the supporting actors disappeared into the right and left wings, leaving only Blaine and his two costars, a beautiful young woman with flowing brown locks and a strapping man with sandy blonde hair, in the spotlight. Suddenly, the orchestra in the pit began to play something, which struck everyone as odd, since the musical was quite clearly over. After a few moments, Blaine began to sing.

Confused, the audience settled into its seats, curious as to where this was going. Kurt blushed slightly, for Blaine gazed deeply into his eyes as he sang. When Blaine reached the end of the chorus, the music morphed into a new tune. Blaine and his costars, who were offering him some stellar background vocals, followed the transition flawlessly.

The three onstage danced to this song, and everyone in the theatre loved it. Kurt now burned bright scarlet as he remember the first time Blaine sang this song; he'd known right then and there that he was forever in love with the dapper soloist.

The music flowed into another tune once more, and the actors' dancing followed the new beat.

A new melody began as this one faded. As he sang, Blaine began to slowly move off stage, down the steps, and into the audience.

Blaine reached the end of an aisle, every eye in the audience trained on his movements. The entire theatre, save the orchestra, was so quiet one could hear a pin drop. Somewhere along the way Blaine had been given a microphone, so his beautiful voice rang out for everyone to hear. He climbed up the subtle incline toward the middle of the section, where a tomato-red Kurt sat on the aisle, trying desperately to calm his frantic heart.

At this last word, Blaine stopped in front of Kurt, extending a hand out toward him. Kurt shook his head violently, never more nervous in his entire life. Something nudged his left arm. He turned and saw a middle-aged woman with mousy hair and a kind face nodding encouragingly at him, urging him to stand. Kurt looked back at Blaine, and the expression he saw upon his face melted his heart instantaneously. Never had so much joy danced in those hazel eyes, and never had that skin glowed with such bright fervor. Resigned, Kurt placed his hand in Blaine's and stood. When he came into view for the rest of the audience (for the light technicians had followed Blaine from the stage with a soft spotlight), a quick murmur rippled through the crowd, but everyone quickly fell silent again as Blaine resumed his singing with a new selection.

When the song changed once more, Blaine began to lead Kurt down the aisle toward the stage, still keeping the deep eye contact that locked them in their own world.

As they walked together, the orchestra melted into a new song.

The tune morphed a final time as the pair climbed the steps back up onto the stage. Every eye in the theatre was trained on them, and Kurt's own eyes were freely flowing with tears. The couple stopped in the middle of the stage. Blaine's costars had disappeared at some point, so now the shorter man sung alone.

As he belted the last note, Blaine dropped to one knee. Kurt's hands flew to cover his mouth, and his entire body shook. When the music came to a dramatic end, the audience leapt to its feet in tumultuous applause. While he waited for everyone to quiet down, Blaine pulled a tiny box from the pocket of his coat. His eyes never left Kurt's, and the two communicated silently, as they so often did quite expertly.

What are you doing, Blaine Anderson?

What I've been dying to do for years.

And you felt the need to do it in front of thousands of strangers because...?

I refuse to hide my love for you. I want the entire world to hear this.

When the onlookers finally retook their seats, Blaine began to speak in a calm, confident tone. "Kurt Hummel, we've been together for eight years, six months, two weeks, and three days—and during those eight years, six months, two weeks, and three days, I have come to the easy conclusion that I am going to spend the rest of my life with you. It's not an option anymore, not really, not for us. I'm not sure it ever was. Call it fate, call it soulmates, call it divine prophecy, call it predestination—call it dumb luck that it was me you stopped on that stairway at Dalton. I don't care. All I know is that in these past eight years, six months, two weeks, and three days, we've ridden on the highest of highs and drowned in the lowest of lows. We've faced hatred and slander and violence and arguments and doubt—but we made it through. I never truly knew what love meant before you sauntered into my life and opened my woefully blind eyes. I've been alone, surrounded by darkness...but you took me by the hand and led me into the light, and my world is so beautiful because of it.

"So now I want to take the next step. I could be content to stay here in this comfortable, perfect point in our relationship, but we're so much more than that now. It's time we really, truly belonged to one another, in a permanent, irrevocable, forever way. Kurt Hummel..." Blaine lifted the lid of the box in his hand. "Will you marry me?"

Kurt gasped. Inside the box lay his claddagh ring. He was going to kill Blaine for stealing his ring and making him believe all day that he'd lost it. He noticed now that Blaine wore his ring on his left ring finger, the heart pointing away from his body. In any other situation, this gesture would have seemed rather presumptuous and cocky, but Kurt knew his answer before the question was even asked—hell, Kurt knew his answer before they were even dating.

Too overcome with tears and emotion to speak, Kurt could only nod vigorously in reply. The audience exploded again as Blaine slid the ring onto Kurt's left hand in the same fashion that he wore his. Then the Broadway star stood and wrapped his arms around his fianc�, kissing him deeply for a long moment. Then they simply held each other, Kurt bawling into Blaine's suit, and Blaine whispering, "This is the start of our forever...I love you..." in his ear.