He's sixteen, and he meets Kurt absent mindendly on an autumn afternoon where, as usual, he is late to a Warblers performance. Being late to Warblers performances is sort of his thing lately, and it's probably annoying everyone else, but he can't pretend he minds the further delay when he's stopped on the stairs and finds himself looking up into the eyes of one of the most downright beautiful boys he's ever seen. It's not love at first sight, no way, but Kurt's soft voice is warm in his ears and he feels something, at least, which is more than he can often say these days. He can't help himself from unleashing a smile and grabbing Kurt's hand to pull him along to the performance. To be honest, he's got Kurt pegged in a second - no uniform, no idea what's going on, and that lyrical voice which can only belong to a singer, so of course he's a spy. Blaine should probably mind, but he's actually kind of flattered that anyone thinks he's worth spying on, and it makes him a bit giddy with amusement, at least partly because of who's doing it. He should do some big confrontation or something, but instead he shows off with Katy Perry, and then takes Kurt out with Wes and David so there's no way it's a date.

Before he knows it Kurt's about to cry and Blaine has to step up and play mentor, which he's strangely okay with. He wouldn't have minded dating Kurt, true, but being his friend will do as well.

He goes home smiling and whistling Teenage Dream. At dinner, his mom is suspicious, prods him with gentle exclamations of you look happy and do anything special today, honey? If he was someone else maybe he would laugh and blush and spill all about the adorable guy he serenaded that afternoon, but instead he just hums slightly in agreement and keeps eating.

She probably doesn't really want to know, anyway.

*

New years comes and goes, and he meets Jeremiah's hair. A few moments later he meets Jeremiah, and that's when stuff starts going wrong. Blaine admires him because they have the same hair issues, but where Blaine is afraid of his curls Jeremiah positively embraces them, so there's an aspect of admiration for his bravery. Afterwards, when the embarrassment has died down to an acceptable level and he can consider the event without wanting to sob into his pillow for hours at the hideousness of it all, Blaine wonders if that's how Kurt feels about him, a little.

Jeremiah seems to find him interesting, which is a blessing in itself. They go out for coffee a few times, talk philosophy and gay rights and all the other stuff Jeremiah is learning on his college courses. Blaine trips over his own feet in an endless attempt to please, to seem eager and intelligent and passionate and all the other things he's sure a guy like Jeremiah would be looking for.

After three coffee dates Jeremiah's face becomes the one Blaine paints onto the generic body of his fantasies when he's twisting himself beneath the sheets in the hot dark of his bedroom. His breath huffs out and later when he's sated and nearly asleep, he remembers that Valentine's Day is coming up. The perfect time to make it official with his first boyfriend. How exciting.

The next week he makes about as big a fool of himself as he thinks is possible, and it's enough to make him never want to even attempt flirting with anyone ever again - not even when Kurt, who is absolutely perfect and by now his best friend in the whole world, admits he thought they were sort of dating.

Blaine feels like even more of an idiot then, which is saying something, and he stays home from school pretending to be sick for a week before he can talk himself into the confidence he needs to face everyone again.

He wonders if he'll ever do anything right.

*

It's spring now and Kurt sings Blackbird and Blaine realises that maybe this whole just friends plan wasn't such a great idea as he thought. The only thing his brain can really do after that is run through how lucky he is that Kurt is so forgiving, because after all this time and all those stupid screw ups, glorious Kurt is still waiting patiently for Blaine to catch up.

He feels more open than he ever has in his life when he talks to Kurt over Pavorotti's coffin. For a second his strange mind drifts and wonders if every step forward in their relationship will be governed by a tiny animal death, but then he's kissing Kurt and he doesn't actually care.

*

It's summer and he's turned seventeen now, so he decides it's time to tell his parents about Kurt. They've briefly encountered him once or twice, each time with tight lips and reams of unsaid things hovering around them, a cloud of discomfort and mild disapproval every time Kurt's voice squeaked or he adjusted a flimsy scarf. He's probably the gayest person they've ever met, and even though they've never said more than a sentence to Kurt, Blaine finds it hard to believe they wouldn't at least suspect how he and Kurt feel about each other. Still, though, they know Kurt just like they know Wes and David - friends from Blaine's show choir thing, how nice, now go finish your homework and don't you let those grades drop. And straighten your tie.

He makes sure they're both home and arranges everything so they're sat at dinner and he subtly gets them talking about some random play, just so he can casually slip in oh yeah, I took Kurt there on our first date. They freeze for a second, look at each other as though the meet of their gazes will anchor them to the ground, and once they have something to lock on to they slowly resume chewing. There are a few seconds of silence while his mother finishes her mouthful and then she sets down her cutlery, pretends to adjust a napkin.

"So you and Kurt... You're dating, then?" she prods, and she makes no suggestion that she knew already, but Blaine kind of thinks she must have. He figures out how to respond as she studies her peas like they're the most interesting thing she's seen all week, and her son having his first boyfriend is practically old news.

"Yeah," he settles on eventually, and begins to wonder how anyone can ever talk to their parents about their love life without wanting to shoot themselves in the face from embarrassment.

His parents exchange another look, this time a silent conversation more than a reassurance. He wonders if they're fighting. They never fight out loud; it's always done through the repressed privacy of huffed breaths and raised eyebrows. Whatever they're doing, his mother seems to win this time - with a tiny tilt of her head towards Blaine she secures a victory.

He will be forever grateful for that tiny silent battle, because then his dad does something that Blaine will forever be surprised by, and which he will be able to drag out of his memory every time he doubts his parents' support or approval in the future.

He smiles.

"That's great, Blaine," he says, and sure it's a little forced and awkward, but all the same Blaine knows it's a hundred times more sincere than anything else his father has ever said to him.

"He seems a very nice boy," his mother offers quickly, not one to be left behind. Blaine then gives them the most lovestruck look they have ever seen, and they wonder for a second how they could ever think this was anything but glorious, if it makes their son this happy.

"He is," Blaine says, with a small shrug.

Then his dad changes the subject, and they don't really mention it again. In conversation with their friends they will talk about Blaine's friend Kurt, and he knows he should be upset that they won't talk about him having a boyfriend, but the fact that they're talking about Kurt at all means a lot anyway. He never thinks he'll be happier than those rare occasions over dinner when they enquire, with no agenda, how Kurt is.

That, if nothing else, gives Blaine hope.

*

He's seventeen and a half when he finally introduces Kurt to his family. His parents know they're dating, of course, and they've seen pictures of Kurt on Blaine's phone and glimpses of him in Dalton hallways and even quickly said hello to him once or twice as he's slipped out their front door on the few days Blaine can't keep their schedules from overlapping.

Now, though, Blaine's thinking that maybe they're ready for a conversation. Kurt has been pointedly Not Pushing Him, but considering how many strangely heartwarming if a little awkward bonding moments Blaine and Burt have had, it hardly seems fair.

So he invites Kurt to dinner.

He knows it's a risky move. His parents are still so barely okay with everything as it is, but he wants to anyway. He wants to because at this stage if he has to pick between his parents and Kurt, he'll choose Kurt.

He's never felt like that before.

Kurt turns up in a pink shirt and a sequinned jacket and 16-hole Doc Martens, which means Blaine has to smile. If he was meeting the semi-homophobic parents of his first boyfriend for the first time, he'd have spent hours trying to create a look so nondescript they'd forget he was there within the first five minutes. Kurt doesn't do nondescript, though. He doesn't need to. He knows he's perfect just as he is.

Blaine kisses Kurt gently in the porch for as long as he can get away with, damp lips and nervous smiles and warm breath shakily exhaled into each other's mouths. Then he grips Kurt's hand tightly in his and leads him to the dining room. Kurt knows where to go, of course; Kurt has spent more evenings here that he can count, and probably knows his way around better than Blaine does. Blaine's parents don't know that, though. They know the boys hang out in Blaine's room a few nights a week, and Kurt is always gone or about to go by the time they get home. They don't know that he's cooked in their kitchen and showered in their bathroom and curled up on their sofa for hours eating ice cream while the music channel blares on the television.

The fact that they still have so much to learn is another reason Blaine wants to do this.

His parents are waiting on them in the dining room. His dad holds a glass of wine; his mother is setting the table. They don't know how to look at Kurt when he arrives in the doorway like an especially fabulous hurricane, beaming and sparkling and already so, so much more than they'll ever be.

"Hi," he says, like it's not crazy that he's there at all. "I know we've technically met before but Blaine says I'm to introduce myself anyway. I'm Kurt Hummel."

His dad sort of nods, smiles slightly but tries not to look at Kurt's blazer like it's personally offended him. Blaine understands. He can hardly say he didn't predict that Kurt's flamboyance would be a bit much for them at first. His mum, though, surprises him; she seems to almost soften when Kurt holds out a limp hand to shake, and by the time he's complimented her dress with an obscure old film reference, she's smiling.

After dinner he's astounded when his parents don't immediately escort Kurt to the door. Instead, they bid both boys goodnight and head to their respective studies. Blaine takes Kurt up to his room and kisses him deep into the bed in celebration.

*

He's just turned eighteen years old, and it's the hottest summer any of them have ever lived through. His mother fills the freezer with ice cream and tries to interest him in plays and art shows, films and concerts, any sort of bonding activity that she can squeeze into their last few months together, but his entire brain is filled with Kurt, Kurt, Kurt, and the final relief from their term-long separation. They lounge about in the Andersons' garden, Kurt lying under an umbrella and making half-hearted snarky comments as Blaine runs about and does cartwheels and tries to wrestle with their dog, who by now is ancient and nowhere near up to that kind of thing. When it becomes clear that the dog isn't interested, Blaine gets a sneaky look in his eyes, and without warning leaps at Kurt instead.

Kurt squeaks and dodges quickly out of the way, but Blaine catches his foot on something in the scramble and goes tumbling onto his hands and knees on the hard tile of the patio. Straight away Maria leaps up from her seat in the living room where she's been watching them quietly through the window. Her mothering instinct kicks in and she's halfway to the door when she realises they're coming to her.

She dodges into the shadows next to the kitchen doorway, and watches as Kurt helps Blaine in through the porch.

" - this is why we don't tackle our boyfriends, isn't it honey," Kurt is saying, but she can see the softness around his eyes as he helps Blaine up onto the counter. Blaine's got a trembling lip and grazed knees, and Kurt flips on the radio before going to the cupboard where the bandaids are and extracting a few.

She wonders how he knew where they were kept.

He stops at the freezer too and extracts a Popsicle. Unwraps it, hands it to Blaine, and starts singing along to the cheesy girl band on the radio as he grins up at Blaine and gently fixes on the bandaids. She realises Kurt's crafted all this perfectly; the sugary snack to cheer him up, the fact that it's frozen which will cool him down and make him more comfortable, the cheesy music which nobody but Blaine enjoys will distract him. This is a boy who knows how to work his way around people. Or maybe he just really, really knows her son.

She knows she's lost Blaine to this boy, already. Her baby will be gone soon, pulled to New York by those big blue eyes, and she doesn't kid herself that he'll call a lot or visit any more than Thanksgiving and Christmas. She's missing out on these last few months with her precious boy, the child she craved for so long before she had him and who she always tried to do right by, even though she knows she screwed it up a lot.

Blaine's still in her house but he's not there, not really. He's already grown too big for this town, too big for her. In fact, the only thing from his pre-graduation life that still fits him is this romance with the sarcastic boy she can see sucking on a Popsicle in her kitchen. The Popsicle Blaine had just been eating. They're trading it back and forth, no thought on the casual intimacy that suggests.

She's sad. But as she hovers in the shadows and watches her son perched on the kitchen counter, she sees Kurt gently smooth a crease out of the bandaid on his knee, and she can't be mad. She wants to hate him so much - but the soft look in his eyes as he sticks his purple-stained tongue out in concentration and fixes Blaine up won't let her.

Blaine's lips quiver, like they always do when he's upset, but Kurt stops that with a gentle kiss.

She sees the way they look at each other, and thinks, my son is gone. But if she had to choose, she'd say she's glad it's this boy who took him.

THE STORY ENDS HERE. BUT OF COURSE, IT DOESN'T STOP