After Monday’s class, Kurt unlocked his office door, hung up his coat, and sat down carefully in his desk chair. He waited, fiddling with a pencil, for whatever was to come.

He’d handed out the papers in the usual way—dividing the stack among his TAs and fleeing the room immediately. It was never a good idea to stick around and see the students’ reactions to their grades. It just made everyone uncomfortable.

Today, though, his discomfort centered on a single student, not the usual vague worry that one or more people would be upset about their grades. He’d spent the entire weekend thinking about how Blaine might react, trying to figure out ways to respond calmly and professionally to anything Blaine might throw at him. He must have run through a hundred scenarios, everything from a crazed shouting match to tears to not showing up at all. Because when he wasn’t thinking about that, when he let his mind rest, there were too many images, vivid scenes of Blaine and the other boy kissing and touching and … no, it was too painful, and anyway it was none of his business. He couldn’t let himself go there again.

Loud, heavy footsteps were rushing down the hallway, and Kurt braced himself. Blaine stormed into his office, tossed his coat across a chair, and slammed his paper down onto Kurt’s desk. “How dare you give me a B, after all this?” he bellowed, nearly shouting. “Every single paper I’ve written for this class has been an A or an A+, and now, all of a sudden, for some mysterious reason, I get a B? Seriously?”

Up and down the hallway, Kurt heard the sounds of office doors slamming shut. Every professor at the university had dealt with students irate over their grades before, and they had no desire to get caught up in someone else’s situation. Kurt stood up and walked to his own door, trembling with the effort to remain calm, and closed it softly before turning around to face Blaine.

Blaine continued, lowering his voice to a more normal level. “Is this some kind of sick, twisted punishment? For kissing you, or for not coming to see you any more, or for …”

“Blaine, that paper deserved a B,” Kurt stated evenly. “Any professor in the department would back me up on this if they read it. And what did you expect? Last semester, you came to class every day and sat in the front row and paid attention. And then you would talk to me about your paper topics outside of class, show me drafts, get feedback before you turned in the final version – an option which is open to every student in the class, I might remind you. This semester you haven’t done any of that. And it looks like you haven’t talked to any of the TAs, either. Is it really surprising that your paper isn’t nearly as good? This is entirely about the quality of your work. It has nothing to do with you and me, and it has nothing to do with you and your new boyfriend.”

Blaine stared at him for a moment and then sank down into a chair. “I broke up with him,” he mumbled, looking at the floor.

Kurt’s mouth dropped open. It had only been three days since he’d seen them kissing in the snow. “You … what? Why?” So much for having a calm, professional conversation, he thought to himself.

“I … it’s stupid,” Blaine kept his gaze fixed firmly on the carpet. “Whenever I was with him, whenever we kissed or held hands or anything, all I could think about was you. It felt like cheating … cheating on him, cheating on you, I don’t know. But after you saw us, I just couldn’t do it any more. It’s stupid, I know you don’t want me, you made that very clear, I need to get over it and I don’t even know why I’m telling you this, oh god, why can’t I shut up? I’m just sitting here embarrassing myself even more. Crap.”

“Blaine …” Kurt said softly. Had the boy really misunderstood that much? “I do want you. I want you so badly it physically hurts. I miss you so goddamn much.”

Blaine looked up at him, finally, surprised. “But then … why? Why did you push me away?”

“You have no idea how much of a risk it is for me,” Kurt said despairingly. “For you it’s all fun and excitement, a little bit risqué. For me … getting involved with a student in your own class is one of the few things they can fire even a tenured professor for. And I don’t have tenure. If the school administration found out, and they would definitely find out eventually, I would be fired in no time flat. And what school would ever hire me after that? No university, and certainly no high school. What do you do with a PhD in History if you’re not teaching? There’s no other use for it. It would be the end of my entire career, everything that I’ve spent the last ten years working toward. I’d have to start over from scratch, doing god knows what. It’s too much. It’s just too much to risk. I can’t, I shouldn’t… But I just … I can’t help it, I …”

Blaine’s expression had gone from shocked to confused to apologetic. “I had no idea,” he said. “If I’d known, I never would have even started…”

“Then I’m glad you didn’t know,” Kurt said in a rush. “I … Blaine … oh god. Come here. Just … come here.”

Blaine stood up and took the two steps to where Kurt was standing. Kurt reached out and pulled Blaine into a tight embrace, pressing his face into Blaine’s hair and breathing in the scent of him. Blaine froze for a moment, then tentatively put his arms around Kurt and bent his forehead to Kurt’s shoulder. “I missed you, too,” he whispered.

It was incredible, the way the tension melted away from them both so easily as they stood together, swaying a little bit, far longer than any hug should really be. Time seemed to stop as their bodies relaxed into each other and they pulled closer and closer together. Blaine turned his head to nuzzle into Kurt’s neck, and Kurt gasped when he felt Blaine’s soft, warm breath against his skin. The touch, the togetherness, felt so right and good and perfect that neither of them could remember, for a moment, why they had ever resisted it.

“Oh god, Kurt,” Blaine said, his voice wavering. “What are we going to do?”

Kurt took a deep breath and pulled back just enough to look at Blaine, keeping his arms around him. “We’re going to wait,” he said. “That’s the only thing we can do. We’ll go back to being friends, until the end of the semester. And then when my grading is done and the class is over, when you’re not my student any more, then we can find out where this is really going between us. Okay? Can we do that?”

“I could just drop the class so I wouldn’t be your student any more,” Blaine offered.

Kurt gave him a concerned look. “It’s a full-year course and you’re already two-thirds of the way through it. That is a lot of credit to lose. You’d have to take overloads for at least two semesters to make it back up, and that would be really hard on top of all your extracurriculars. You’d have to give up one of your acting or singing things, or else it would be too much work, your grades would fall. You’d be miserable. Waiting through the rest of the semester is really not that bad. Not if we know up front that it’s only for a few months.”

Blaine nodded reluctantly. “A little more than three months… Yeah. I think we can do that.”

“But Blaine? First, right now, I’m going to kiss you. Because I think I will literally go insane if I don’t. But you have to swear you will never breathe a word of this to anyone.”

Blaine’s eyes widened. “I swear, I promise, I’ll never tell, I’ll …”

Kurt clasped his hands on either side of Blaine’s face and pulled him into a deep, desperate kiss. His mouth was already open from talking and Kurt matched it, sliding his tongue over Blaine’s teeth and inside. Blaine let out a small squeak at that and grabbed a fistful of Kurt’s hair, pulling him even closer. Kurt let out a moan, overwhelmed by the sensations and even more so by the wave of emotion cascading over him. He didn’t just want this boy. He was in love with this boy. The realization hit him like a punch in the stomach, with such force that he lost his breath and had to pull away, wide-eyed, to fill his lungs with air again.

Kurt had meant it to be just one kiss, but he couldn’t stop. He pressed back to Blaine’s lips again and again, still desperate but less deep, each kiss slightly softer and shorter than the one before. Blaine’s eyes were closed, his body shaking, clearly as lost in what he was feeling as Kurt had just been. Kurt led him out of it slowly, stroking Blaine’s hair on the back of his neck, then on his forehead, moving the sweet kisses from his lips to his temple and finally to the top of his head before letting go and taking a step back. Blaine looked completely disheveled, his hair out of place, his face flushed, his movements confused and erratic. Kurt couldn’t imagine how he must look himself.

“That was … wow,” Blaine stammered.

“Sit down, Blaine,” Kurt said gently. “Wait until you get yourself together. You can’t leave here looking like that.”

Blaine stumbled around until he found a chair. Kurt walked behind his desk and collapsed into his chair with a sigh. He pulled a comb out of his desk drawer and ran it through his hair a few times before tossing it across the desk to a grateful Blaine. Within a few minutes they’d both rearranged their clothing and calmed their breathing enough to be seen in public again. Blaine smiled shyly. “I guess I’d better go,” he said.

“Yeah,” Kurt said sadly. “I’ll see you on Friday, though, right? For coffee?”

“Absolutely.” Blaine stood and put on his coat, then picked his paper up from Kurt’s desk. “What about my grade?” he asked teasingly.

“Just get an A on everything else and it will all average out,” Kurt told him.

“You don’t think I could do some … extra credit, if you know what I mean?” he winked at his professor.

Kurt arched an eyebrow. “Don’t you even start with me, Blaine Anderson,” he said, his eyes twinkling as he filed that fantasy away for later.

Kurt grinned as Blaine left the room. They still couldn’t be together, and yes, it was going to be hard for a few months. But now he knew what he could look forward to, and he felt like he was walking on air.

* * *

Lunch with his friends was out of the question, so Blaine headed back to his dorm room to spend some time alone with his thoughts. He lay on his bed and stared at the ceiling, trying to process everything that was going on in his mind.

It had started as just a fun, harmless game. Hot teacher, flirtatious comments, something to spice up his interest in the class. How had it grown to … whatever this was? The progression was so gradual that Blaine had barely noticed it happening, but somehow Kurt had become incredibly important to him. It was such a relief, speaking to each other again. The six weeks since Christmas break ended had felt incredibly lonely to Blaine, even with all of his friends and his first real boyfriend. Suddenly the loneliness was gone, completely evaporated, just through one little conversation with Kurt. And the kisses. Yeah. The kisses.

But if the loneliness was gone, it had been replaced by something just as painful: longing. Holding Kurt, kissing him, breathing him in, it had been like nothing else Blaine had ever felt. He’d done these things with Austin, repeatedly, and with Sebastian back in high school, but the feeling was so different it hardly even counted as the same thing. Being physically close to Kurt seemed completely natural, as if that was where Blaine had always been meant to be. It changed Blaine from the inside out, somehow, relaxing him, making his heart skip, taking over his brain until he forgot everything in the world except Kurt. He craved that feeling now, needed to experience it over and over again.

A knock on the door roused Blaine from his thoughts. He got up and found Rachel on the other side, holding a sandwich and an apple.

“Oh good, you’re still alive,” she said, inviting herself into the room. “I was worried when you stormed off like that after class, and then you didn’t show up for lunch, so I brought you some food in case you had decided to wallow in despair or something.” She looked at him quizzically. “You don’t look like you’re wallowing in despair. You look pretty normal. Actually, you look happy. What happened?”

“Um…” Blaine tried to work out how to phrase things so as not to give away too much. “It turned out Professor Hummel and I had a misunderstanding. We worked it out, and now everything is fine.”

Rachel looked skeptical. “A misunderstanding? What kind of misunderstanding?”

He’d been too vague. “I thought he didn’t want to talk to me any more, at all. But I was wrong. He still wants to be friends.”

Rachel’s eyes lit up. “Professors don’t go out of their way to be friends with students. He likes you! I mean, he like likes you!”

“No, no, it’s just, I mean, not that he wants to be friends,” Blaine lied, trying to dial it back. “Just that I can still talk to him about my papers, like anyone else. That it’s okay to … meet with him and stuff. If I want to.”

“What is really going on here, Blaine Anderson?” Rachel demanded.

“Nothing! Nothing!” Blaine said, trying not to sound frantic. “I got a B on the paper because I’d been hiding from him and not going to class, which was stupid, of course my grades dropped. And he said it’s okay for us to keep talking like we used to, and so I’m going to go to class regularly again and stuff, and my grades should go back up. That’s it. Can I have that sandwich now? I’m starved.”

Rachel handed over the sandwich and the apple. “There’s more to this, I’m sure of it. I don’t know why you’re suddenly holding out on me, after all the help that I’ve given you, but it’s completely unfair. I will get this information sooner or later, you know.”

“You’re the best, Rachel. Thanks for the sandwich.” Blaine took a huge bite.

* * *

They fell back into their old pattern seamlessly, though everything felt the slightest bit different now. The corner booth at the coffee shop, half-hidden from the other patrons, became their regular table. Their conversations were held in lower voices, not whispered, but no longer uncaringly exuberant the way they had sometimes been last semester. Both of them repeatedly fought the urge to reach across the table and hold the other’s hand, and if their feet or knees bumped into each other under the table more frequently, or their shoulders happened to brush together fairly often as they walked across the quad, well, that was entirely accidental, now, wasn’t it?

Their conversations took a more personal turn as well. They still talked about History class and Blaine’s other classes and Kurt’s research, but they talked about other things too. Blaine’s hopes for the future and Kurt’s fears about his father’s health. Blaine’s struggles over career choices and Kurt’s anxiety about the tenure process. Blaine’s progress at overcoming his instinct to hide who he really was, and Kurt’s abandoned childhood dreams of becoming a Broadway star or a fashion designer. By the end of a month, they felt that no topic was off limits except their feelings for each other which, if voiced, could quickly become irresistible.

At the end of March, Kurt asked the question that had been troubling both of them for some time. “What are you doing this summer, Blaine? Where will you be?”

Blaine sighed. “I want to stay here, because … well, you know why.” He saw Kurt’s hand twitch toward his own and then go still. “But I have no excuse. I haven’t been able to find a job or an internship, and there are no summer classes that are remotely plausible for me to sign up for. My dad wants me to intern at his firm in Columbus, and I don’t think there’s any way I can get out of it.”

“It turns out staying here wouldn’t even help,” Kurt said glumly. He pulled an envelope from his inside jacket pocket and tapped it against his other hand nervously. “I found out this morning that I got a research grant. I applied for it ages ago, back in the fall. It’s to spend the summer at UCLA doing research for my new book, the one about differing experiences of queer actors on Broadway and in Hollywood. The Broadway part is easy, I can pop up to New York any time I have a free day. But all the Hollywood archives are in Los Angeles, and now that I have the funding to spend a summer out there, I’m going to have to use every minute of it. Usually I spend at least a month in Lima over the summer, since I can do my writing anywhere with a computer, but this year that’s just not going to work. I’m stuck in Los Angeles the whole time. It should be good news, it’s such a great opportunity, but I’m just … sad. I wish I could … I wish things were different.”

“Wow … I … congratulations,” Blaine said. There was a smile on his face, but his eyes looked deeply sad.

“Blaine…” Kurt’s voice trailed off. You are too sweet and self-sacrificing and adorable, I could kiss you, god, why can’t I kiss you?

“I wish I could find a summer job out in L.A., but there’s just no way. No matter how good it was, my dad would think it was just a cover for starting a career of acting in low-budget TV commercials like Cooper.”

“I’ll visit Ohio at least once or twice. A weekend, maybe. Fourth of July. Something.”

“It’ll be okay. Somehow. We’re getting good at waiting.”

“Somehow.”

* * *

Mercedes closed the door on her way in to Kurt’s office. She sat down and offered him a small gold-colored box. “Godiva truffles,” she said.

“Ooh, fantastic, thank you!” Kurt said, taking the box from her and opening it. He held it up to his nose and breathed in the luscious chocolate scent. “What is the occasion?”

“No occasion. I just thought it was time for some girl talk. You’ve been moody as all hell since the beginning of the semester. At first it was all-out depression, and now it seems a bit better but with these patches of melancholy. You need to spill it. What’s going on with you? Is your father sick again?”

“No, no, nothing like that,” Kurt said. “My dad is fine. I’m fine. It’s nothing.” He chose one of the truffles and bit into it. His eyes rolled back. “Mmm, raspberry, delicious!”

Mercedes arched an eyebrow at him. “It’s not nothing, Kurt. I’ve never seen you like this before. Honestly, I’m really worried about you. We’re friends, aren’t we? What is wrong? Is this about a guy?”

“What? No!” Kurt absently scratched at his cheek with one finger, then stared studiously at his desk. “It’s probably just seasonal affective disorder. Everyone is sad in the winter.”

“Okay, so it’s about a guy. You are a terrible liar, Kurt Hummel.”

Kurt sighed. “I can’t talk about it.”

Mercedes drew in a breath suddenly. “Oh my god—is this about that Blaine kid? Are you sleeping with him?”

“No! Mercedes! Of course I’m not sleeping with him! Good god, what kind of person do you think I am? He’s in my class!”

“You wouldn’t be the first,” she said.

“I’m not sleeping with him. I’m not.”

“Okay,” she said. “But this is about him, isn’t it? You’re involved with him in some way or another.”

“Mercedes … you can’t tell anyone.”

“Of course not. We’re friends. But Kurt, honey, you’ve got to tell me what’s going on. Keeping this a secret is clearly driving you crazy.”

Kurt sighed. “Okay, okay, fine. Blaine is… I… We’re … Shit, there are no good words to describe any of this. We’re not dating. We’re definitely not sleeping together. I haven’t touched him.” It was a little bit of a lie, but not much. They’d only kissed that once, well okay, twice, and had agreed not to do it again. “But yeah, we like each other. We talked about it. We talked about why we can’t … be together … right now. But neither of us can break it off. We kind of tried to. At the beginning of the semester. That’s when things were really bad for me, like you said. He wasn’t doing well, either. So we went back to being friends, like before. That’s it. Friends. That’s all.”

“That ain’t all, Kurt,” Mercedes said knowingly. “You can’t keep secrets from me.”

“Sometimes being your friend really sucks, Mercedes.”

“Love you too, hon.”

Kurt intertwined his fingers, playing with his hands nervously. “What if I started dating him next year? When he’s not in my class any more. What do you think people would say?”

“I think it’s really risky,” Mercedes said. “People will make assumptions. Even if it’s not technically against the rules, it could seriously affect your career. You don’t have tenure yet. Better safe than sorry. You know how hard it is to succeed in academia even if you do everything right and nothing controversial. You’re such a promising scholar. Why screw things up like that?”

“Because I don’t know if I can ever be happy without him,” Kurt said softly.

Mercedes’s jaw dropped open. “Kurt? Are you in love with him?”

Kurt took a deep breath. “I need another one of those truffles.”

* * *

They had agreed not to be alone together, because the temptation would be too great. There was only one lapse.

The knock on Kurt’s door came just after nine on a Saturday morning in early April. He was awake, but still in pajama pants and a sweatshirt, not quite yet beginning his day.

Blaine was standing on the doorstep, his hair a mess of ungelled curls, eyes red-rimmed and bloodshot, dressed in an atrocious combination of stripes and argyle that showed he had paid no attention to what he was putting on.

Kurt pulled him into the apartment immediately. “What’s wrong? What happened?”

“It’s Cooper,” Blaine said. “It’s … he’s fine, at least he’s going to be, he was in a car accident and broke his leg, won’t be able to dance for a while but the doctors say it should heal as good as new in a few months. My parents called and told me last night. But I just can’t stop thinking, what if it had been worse, what if he’d broken his neck or even died? I couldn’t sleep, I just got obsessive on it, I don’t know, I just needed someone and I—”

Kurt pulled him in to a hug. “It’s okay, it’s okay. Come on, here, let’s sit down.” He guided Blaine over to the couch and sat against the armrest, encouraging Blaine to lean up against him.

Blaine buried his face in Kurt’s shoulder and began to cry. “I’m sorry, I know I shouldn’t have come here, and I shouldn’t even be this upset, it’s stupid, and now I’m ruining your shirt, I’m sorry.”

“Blaine, sweetheart, shh.” The endearment slipped so automatically from Kurt’s lips that the sound of it came as a surprise in his ears. “It’s okay, everything’s going to be fine. I’m always here for you, whenever you need someone. I’m right here.” He rubbed Blaine’s back in a soothing motion, gently, silent as Blaine gradually calmed down.

“Thank you,” Blaine whispered, just before he fell asleep on Kurt’s shoulder.

Kurt bent to press a soft kiss to Blaine’s forehead. “My sweet, precious boy,” he whispered to himself. He chose not to worry about the impropriety, not now, when nothing could be done about it. Instead, he let himself bask in the comfort and closeness, stroking Blaine’s hair until he woke an hour later. He waited patiently, watching Blaine sleep, letting his mind wander through the years of his life, the men he’d dated, the love he’d had once and lost, the long lonely stretches. And he thought into the future, of the joy he felt in this moment and whether it could possibly last.

Blaine woke with a start and sat up quickly. “Shit, I’m so sorry,” he stammered. “I never meant to … I know we agreed not to be alone … I shouldn’t have …”

“It’s okay, really,” Kurt said, reaching out and taking his hand. “You needed someone, and I’m going to be there when you need me, damn everything.”

“Thank you.” Blaine smiled at him. “Just … thank you. For being amazing. I don’t know how, but you always make me feel so … I don’t know. At peace? Does that make sense?”

“Yeah. It does.” Kurt wondered whether his heart could actually, physically melt.

“I should go now, though. I’m fine. Thanks to you.”

“Six more weeks until the end of the semester, Blaine. We’ll make it.”

Blaine nodded, and gave Kurt one last hug before he walked out the door.