Pattern recognition

Is kind of slow

Like a cool hunter watch the disarray

Keep your secret foolish head away

I will know you…

- * - 

Kurt is standing on the center pedestal smoothing the palms of his hands delicately down the front of his suit when he catches sight of familiar hazel eyes in the reflection of the wall-length wardrobe mirrors.

Although he briefly worries that the surprise and apprehension are visible – palpable – on his face, it does nothing to deter him breath from hitching in the back of his throat, choking him.

Blaine.

Blaine takes a step closer then, as if Kurt whispered Blaine's name aloud, and maybe Kurt did. Kurt isn't entirely sure right now because the sight of those eyes, haunting and present and right there after so, so long, makes the world stop, start, stop and start again, in a jerky back-and-forth motion that makes Kurt dizzy – so dizzy.

Kurt desperately wants something to hold onto, to keep him upright, something sturdy and cemented to the ground, something that is immoveable in this too-rapidly moving world. With nothing like that in immediate grasp, he flattens the palms of his hands on his stomach, hoping the trembling won't knock his now insanely erratic breath even more out of alignment.

He presses them firmly against the tautness of his stomach, like his hands will provide some semblance of sturdiness, something akin to an anchor, ensuring the maintaining of his posture, rigid yet quivering, tense yet aching for release. His physical – nay, his visceral – response to the presence of those eyes rattles Kurt to his very core.

Strong and potent, their presence seeped into Kurt's pores, blossoming like flowers opening for the sunlight, awaking after the long, interminable liminal space of night. He feels suspended in mid-air yet just as easily feels like he is freefalling without a parachute, caught in the vacuum-like pull of gravity, pulling, pulling, pulling him towards those eyes.

Even now, a year later, Kurt's body lurches and keens, the sense memory and hours and hours of practice instinctively responding, delighting in the evident appraisal and affirmation coating those eyes. Accompanied with that spicy, all-too-Blaine scent, the air is thick, full of him, and painted heavy with Blaine. There is no ignoring it or Blaine; no, no matter how hard Kurt tries, he can and could never ignore Blaine.

Even now, a year later, Kurt can't avoid it, can't avoid the pickup quickstep of his heart, the swoop of his stomach, filled to the brink with nervous, anxious energy. He is simply consumed with Blaine in this moment and it terrifies Kurt that he still feels this, all electric and sparked into a fiery inferno, blazing white-hot and in some sort of controlled chaos.

He can't think straight. He can never think straight around Blaine, about Blaine. It is remarkable how fast, how indescribably instantaneous all of it is – that soothing, comforting blanket of home.

But no. No.

Kurt can't let himself feel that, won't let himself feel that anymore. It's a dead emotion, or at least a hibernating one, buried deep into the fabric of his genetic material, long since abandoned and pushed to the very margins of his memory. Yet it rears up again, the tsunami-churned tidal wave, blunt-edged and too fast to even rightfully panic and scramble for defenses. It just crashes and crashes, destroying and flattening, and subsuming.

It rears up again because Blaine takes another step towards Kurt.

And it really isn't at all fair how Blaine moves, all angles and lines, smooth and fluid, just on this side of grace incarnate. Blaine moves with a bone-deep self-awareness, each step a precise movement of his body. Blaine doesn't move superfluously, doesn't move wastefully. He just simply moves and the world moves with him.

Blaine doesn't say anything right away, simply just stands there, cloaked by the soft lighting of the private section of the store and stares, admires rather because Kurt is a vision: light, love and beauty in corporeal form.

Kurt's pale, porcelain skin, that Blaine knows is soft and pliable, a velvet canvas of perfect imperfection, is practically luminescent against the black suit.

“You are striking, a vision Kurt,” Blaine finally whispers.

Kurt sucks in his bottom lip in an attempt to quell a whimper. It doesn't work. Hee struggles for a moment to find his voice, the strength to speak, but when he does, his voice is low, rough with gravel and way too much emotion.

“What – what're you doing here, Blaine?”

Blaine flinches visibly. He can't blame Kurt for questioning his motive for being here, for showing up at the last of Kurt's tux fittings. Not even entirely sure himself, he chastised himself the length of the trip over to the tiny, upscale store.

He essentially begged and bartered with Rachel to reveal the location of the store, something to this very second he's not altogether proud of. Rachel relented but not before warning Blaine through a dangerous, breathy seething of a tone that he better not mess with Kurt's heart any more than he already has.

Fuck.

To hear Rachel say that aloud, it twisted Blaine's heart, swiftly causing it to implode in on itself because really that's what he'd done to Kurt. He messed with Kurt, toyed carelessly and haphazardly with his heart, which Blaine so vulnerably, confidently placed in his hand. Kurt trusted Blaine with his heart and Blaine took advantage of that trust.

The vision of Kurt, cheeks puffy and slick with the sticky, salty remnants of his tears, and eyes bloodshot and red haunts Blaine daily, nightly in his dreams and catching him off guard. He knows – he knows, okay – that he shouldn't be here, that he shouldn't insert himself into Kurt's life again.

Especially not now. Not now that Kurt is getting married in two days.

Blaine walked away. Blaine didn't choose Kurt, just wiped his hands of their potential and possibility and only now did he even consider looking over his shoulder. It bothers him that he's here in this store because this isn't him; it's not.

But regardless of his choices, his actions Kurt is…gravity.

Not like gravity but the actual physical incarnation of the scientific fact. Blaine can run as fast and far away as his legs will allow but it ultimately didn't work because just as quick he is snapped back, plummeting through the atmosphere only to slam into the force field that is Kurt Hummel.

True North – Blaine's true North, Kurt constantly and consistently simmered just under the surface of Blaine's skin, skittering and inflaming Blaine's already oversensitive, raw nerve endings. As much a part of himself as his own heartbeat, nothing he did or could do ever really wiped the traces of Kurt from his being.

He tried, he really, really tried to rationalize his decision to walk away, to simply not choose Kurt but nothing quite summed up the reason why. Why, the question that complicated and plagued the human race, snapping reality until it broke like a stretched-too-thin rubber band, pushing logic to its very limits and still coming up short. Why drives people insane for its beckons to resolution and comprehension but supplies only dangerous ambiguity.

The faintest traces of pepper and laundry detergent fill Blaine's nose and he is catapulted through space and time concurrently to a weekend, a luxurious seventy-two hours, of discovery and exploration. In a lifetime seventy-two hours seems trivial, posited neatly into the little compartments in one's memory and honestly, there were no explosions or lightning strikes.

It was a simple weekend, really. Sure, it started with a bombastic leap in the impulsive direction (okay, maybe it did start impulsively) but the rest of it came naturally, softly. The picture of domesticity, they made love, cooked meals together, watched TV, finished a crossword puzzle and fell asleep nestled in the crevices and cradles of each other's bodies.

It was a breathlessly sexy weekend, one crafted not by the throes of erotic passion and tumultuous carnal desperation, but by the sheer actions of just being. The weekend shifted something in Blaine. He found domesticity sexy, monogamy sexy in the natural knowledge of trust and adulation.

There exists a comfort in domesticity. It's the comfort that comes with the decisive collapse of settling into surrender, of leaning onto that pillar of familiarity and intimacy that develops out of knowing and be known.

It may have taken Blaine by surprise but it took him more by surprise that he couldn't find it with someone else. He didn't have a problem with monogamy. He really didn't. He sought out monogamy, sought out the steadiness of being in a partnership. Yet whatever rock he overturned or turn he took, he couldn't find that thing, that indescribable, inexplicable thing that just makes sense.

Life is about playing for keeps and Blaine should've been playing for keeps with Kurt. He didn't and now here he stands drowning in the sight and smell of Kurt again. It is all so much and entirely not enough. It is too much, too much, so fucking much, so how can it simultaneously not enough? It doesn't make sense.

Kurt makes sense.

The situation may not make sense but Kurt does. Kurt always makes sense. In a world that is ceaselessly shifting under Blaine's feet, never allowing him to catch a breath or to pause, even for a moment, Kurt's presence guides back to solidity, guides Blaine back through the haze and darkness to his own body. So Blaine had to come. He had to because he lost his way again. He just needed a reminder, a tiny, miniscule reminder that he is indeed here and present, connected.

“I mean it Kurt, you look – you're breathtaking,” Blaine says softly.

Kurt's body stiffens and she narrows his eyes at Blaine, “You didn't answer my question. What're you doing here?”

Something in Kurt's tone siphons off the awe of seeing Kurt in his wedding suit and pummels Blaine into reality. Oh right. Why he's here. That damn why question masked as a what.

“Would you believe me if I said I came by to say congratulations?” Blaine queries with a hopeful lilt in his voice.

Kurt scowls, “You know I don't believe you. Again, what're you doing here? I haven't seen or talked to you in eight months, Blaine. Not since you found out about Ethan and I. And now here you are, two days before my wedding. What gives?”

Blaine's mouth dries up at the flash of painful indignation and tremulous heartbreak in Kurt's eyes.

"I mi – “

Kurt immediately throws up a hand to cut Blaine off, “No. Don't you dare tell me you miss me. I'm getting married, Blaine Anderson. Fucking married in two days. Please tell me you're not that guy, that selfish, narcissistic asshole who is delusional enough to do this.”

Meekly shrugging his shoulders, Blaine shifts nervously on the balls of his feet. Because Kurt is right. He is being that selfish, narcissistic asshole delusional enough to believe that his presence can stop Kurt's impending nuptials.

Because isn't that why Blaine is here? To get Kurt back? But then Blaine remembers. He never really had Kurt to begin with. They shared a weekend together. Beyond that, nothing.

Because Blaine made sure nothing went beyond that.

- * -

“What season and how many episodes?”

Kurt startles a little and turns his head to look up the familiar yet intrusive voice from his slouched and crumpled position on the couch. Through the dim light of the one side table lamp and TV screen, Blaine, with his hands mysteriously behind his back, walks further into the room.

With his bottom lip still quivering, Kurt peers up at Blaine through tear-slick eyelashes. His pale cheeks are puffy and his eyes are bloodshot; his hair is still styled immaculately and he curls in on himself, sad and heartbroken and so lost in his perfect, self-designed wedding suit.

“You don't know what I'm watching,” Kurt whispers lamely in something resembling a rebellious retort.

Blaine pulls one hand from behind his back to motion for Kurt to move over and sits next to Kurt just as he hands Kurt a fork and a clear plastic to-go container of cheesecake, Kurt's eyes widen slightly, ever so discreetly, as he weakly takes the fork and cheesecake.

“Project Runway. So I ask, what season and how many episodes? You always watch Project Runway when you've had a bad day or just need a pick-me-up. Plus I come with cheesecake,” Blaine replies quietly with a smile.

Kurt's bottom lip quivers more and his eyes glaze over with tears. Never would he have thought upon waking up in the morning that his day would leave to sitting in the dark with Blaine, reruns of Project Runwayscrolling on the TV. Shadows of stacks of packed boxes dot his peripheral vision.

And there's Blaine.

There's Blaine – Kurt's vision is filled with warm chocolate-hazel eyes and that crooked smile of Blaine's that quirks cutely in the corners of his mouth and draws lines of mischief and kindness in the crinkles of his eyes. There's Blaine, all comfort and soothing waves of familiarity and home. There's Blaine, a solid force, that anchor that somehow, someway never detached itself from Kurt's being, ever steady and right there, right there as a reminder that yes, yes Kurt is safe and secure and not floating away on the changing tides.

“You know me,” Kurt says barely about a breathy, disbelieving whisper.

Blaine's smile softens as he watches Kurt open the to-go container. When Kurt dips the fork into the creamy cheesecake, Blaine replies, “I know you.”

Three words.

All Blaine says are three words, yet he could've delivered a Shakespearean soliloquy in iambic pentameter by the way Kurt stares blankly ahead at the TV screen, lips once quivering and his breath coming in short, hiccupped beats.

Blaine takes Kurt's silence to inspect the damage he could see visibly toiling in Kurt's eyes. When Rachel and then Santana called, fifteen times between the two of them before Blaine finally answered Rachel's eighth call, he didn't expect to hear what he heard. The only reason he didn't answer the phone in the first place is because he desired any possibly link to information about Kurt's wedding to be sufficiently snuffed out.

Drowning himself in his sorrows and massive volumes of both self-pity and wine, he did everything in his immediate power to keep out thoughts of Kurt – the way Kurt looked that day in his wedding suit, impossibly ethereal and magic incarnate, a subtle smile tugging on his lips and the pink flush to his cheeks; the sound of Kurt's voice, hollow and shattered and ridiculously stripped to the barest of bare, when he whispered, I'm marrying Ethan, Blaine, I miss you, I do but I'm happy Blaine; and the way Kurt's lips, soft and a little chapped from his constant nervous chewing and tugging, ghosted across Kurt's cheek before he turned and walked away.

He walked away. Fuck, shit. He walked away, again.

Because really what the I'm-happy-Blaine bit meant was “I'm happy Blaine, without you.”

And Blaine couldn't not do something to squelch that, bury it, dispose it. Since actually drinking bleach (because really, he needed something, anything to disinfect the vile, poisonous disease-like infestation of sadness, so much fucking sadness and hurt) was not – and honestly, still isn't – an option, it drank his weight in wine.

It didn't help. Blaine just kept on thinking, thinking and wallowing, thinking and overanalyzing, thinking and feeling like he'd been dispelled into the air, floating aimlessly in that abstract in-between space of loss and acceptance. Only able to blame himself, he drank.

He drank and struggled with and against the onrush of memories, so many memories, banked and filed in a period of seventy-two hours – Kurt tends to eat more of the cookie dough than the actual baked cookies; the flour fight that resulted in stomach-rumbling bouts of laughter and making love on the kitchen floor; Kurt prefers to shower in the evening before bed and fooling around in the waning hours before sunrise; the old married couple like argument over the pros and cons of cable versus network TV shows; and the Sunday night they spent curled in bed, Kurt reading Vogue and he reading a book.

And Blaine missed Kurt, he missed Kurt terribly and deeply and desperately.

Then Blaine answered his phone and without so much as another thought, he grabbed his keys (thanking his lucky stars that he'd stopped drinking hours prior) and after making a cheesecake pit stop, he drove to Kurt's home that really is not Kurt's home anymore.

Rachel let him in before she left and now here he sits watching Kurt willfully stave off sobs. A man of presence and affable vibrancy, it shatters Blaine's heart to see Kurt now shrunken in on himself, dull eyes crystallizing behind a thick sheen of tears and resembling a lost little boy.

Kurt is broken, more broken than Blaine ever imagined someone could be.

“I know you Kurt,” Blaine whispers again, fearing Kurt didn't hear him the first time.

Kurt's chest flutters and he peers back at Blaine from under those tear-slicked eyelashes again. His chest flutters because there's that Shakespearean iambic pentameter soliloquy of parsed subtext again. Because “I know you Kurt” really means I get you, I understand you, I accept you, quirks and all and I think the fact that horde the little mints following any meal is adorable and that no, I don't think you're crazy at all for alphabetizing your credit cards in your wallet.

It means more, so much more, than “I know you.”

It means everything.

And it's more than Kurt can handle in this state. The sudden and acute knowledge that yes, yes Blaine does know him is indescribably heavy, heavy with so-too-much emotion and depth. Kurt is suspended in time, caught in the rip tide of acceptance and deniability.

Kurt isn't ready for this moment. How could he ever be ready for this moment? He's sitting in the dark of his home that isn't really his home, in his wedding suit and silently crying through forkful-after-forkful of cheesecake.

He is doing all that with Blaine sitting beside him and looking at him with that look – the look that says I can see you Kurt, I can see each and every nook and cranny and I don't think you're scary or weird; it says I can see the darkness and shadows and I adore you because of, not despite.

It's that look that has Kurt whispering against, rather than through, the hiccups and tears, “He…he didn't choose me, Blaine…”

Pursing his lips in a thin smile, Blaine slips his arm around Kurt's shoulders to bring the taller man into a side embrace, Kurt's head neatly finding the soft hollow curve between Blaine's neck and shoulder. Kurt nestles his cheek into the warm cotton of Blaine's T-shirt, swiping at his tears on his face.

“He's an idiot, Kurt. For not choosing you,” Blaine says into Kurt's hair.

Kurt closes his eyes against the onslaught of tears. Hos breaths came in staccato hiccups; his body feels heavy, laden down with sadness and confusion, draped over Blaine's compact frame. He can hear the steady thump-thump-thump of Blaine's heartbeat in his ear and he draws immediate comfort from it, that solidity he's been searching for the implosion of his world hours earlier.

It's a strong heartbeat, a tap-tap-tap, thump-thump-thump against Blaine's ribcage, a song of consistency and no surprises. It is the heartbeat that late at night when Kurt can't sleep, tossing and turning and seeking out the cool portions of his pillow that echoes in his ears, that rhythmic cadence which seemed more apart of him than he consciously processed.

“My wedding day, Blaine. My wedding day and he – he didn't choose me…” Kurt whispers sadly. “Why did he even ask me to marry him if he was never going to choose me in the end?”

The question constricts Blaine's heart. When he talked to Rachel earlier, she didn't exactly tell him the details of what happened, just that the wedding imploded, Kurt disappeared into the darkness of his home that really isn't his home anymore and that Blaine needed to get his ass there pronto. The question makes Blaine wrap his arms tight around the trembling body of the man that makes his heart soar, his stomach swoop and his mind do that crazy cartwheel thing over and over until insanity is the appropriate definition for his current mental state.

It makes Kurt curl his long frame, clothed in his beautiful wedding suit, into Blaine's arms, his cheek naturally finding that hard, warm patch of Blaine's chest directly over his heart.

Kurt doesn't fight Blaine or attempt to pull away; rather he snuggles closer, hitching his legs up under his body and wrapping his arms tightly around Blaine's midsection.

“Can – can you tell me what happened, Kurt?” Blaine asks quietly.

Kurt sniffles and wipes his nose before burying his cheek deeper into Blaine's shirt, “I um, I went to – to find Jackson, Ethan's best – best friend and best man for – for something and when – a when I…”

Inhaling a sharp breath, Kurt sucks in his bottom lip between his teeth and jumps from the couch. Blaine remains seated as Kurt begins to pace back and forth in front of the TV. His eyes follow Kurt's path; this is pretty much par for the course with Kurt. When things get to be too much, too heavy, too suffocating, Kurt prefers the endless monotony and shuffle of pacing.

It is one more grasping attempt by Kurt to maintain some semblance of control over his rapidly uncontrollable world. He controls the speed, the length of his steps, the path he takes, when he turns, how he turns. He enters the world of his head, cloaking himself in the velvety self-protective drapes hung with care and habit.

Blaine doesn't say anything. He won't say anything. Because he knows Kurt. He knows Kurt needs to process, to compartmentalize. Kurt needs to create a mental pro/con list, checking each item off in order to then file it away in any number of neatly arranged boxes in the back of his mind to return to later if needed.

Kurt chews nervously on the tip of his thumb as his bare feet scurry over the soft carpet of his floor and Blaine thinks he's never seen anything quite so sadly beautiful in his entire life.

“I found Ethan bent over the arm of the love seat and – and Jackson – Jackson he was um, he was…” Kurt stammers. His cheeks were flushed.

The embarrassment and humiliation rolls off of Kurt in waves when the light bulb clicks on in Blaine's mind and his eyes widen in shocked disbelief – “Oh. Oh! Kurt, I am. Oh fuck, shit…”

“I um, I feel like such a fool, Blaine. He was going to marry me and keep on – doing, well doing Jackson on the side. He – he only wanted to – to marry me be – because it looked good that he was marrying the most eligible man in the fashion world! I spent months designing this suit for this day. It's one of my best designs, like ever. I'm such a fool!” Kurt's voice trembles and quivers as his tone careens towards that almost-nasally high-pitched panicked lilt.

Smiling tenderly, Blaine says quietly, “You're not a fool, Kurt. And I told you two days ago you're beautiful in that suit. More than that Kurt, you are – I can't take my eyes off you…”

Kurt's whole body flushes because that look is back in Blaine's eyes. No, no it never really left at all. It tamed itself, muted itself and spread into the margins of his gaze but now, now Kurt stands before Blaine, exposed and vulnerable.

And now Kurt is the ice cream and Blaine is the spoon and suddenly catching his husband-to-be bent over the arm of the couch taking it from his best man is not nearly as major, not nearly as life altering. Because Kurt can now feel every molecule of his body, feel every beat of his heart and the heat in his veins. He can feel everything in his body under that penetrative gaze of Blaine's.

“You can't look at me like that,” Kurt states lamely, without much force of will behind it.

“Like what Kurt?” Blaine queries softly.

Kurt shivers. Blaine knows what that tone, breathy soft and velvety smooth, does to Kurt – full-on heart palpitations, hot and flushed skin that tingles – tingles – at the slightest of touches, and that nausea-inducing swoop of his stomach that resembles more of a building fallout than actual swooshes and swoops.

“Like – like you chose me. You – you didn't choose me Blaine. You didn't. You walked away, remember? Twice! And the way – the way you're looking at me, it's – it's giving me a complex because, because Ethan really didn't choose me either and I'm not – I'm not feeling very, you know, choose-worthy and please, please, please stop looking at me like that…” Kurt babbles.

Kurt is trying to look everywhere in the room but directly at Blaine.

Blaine doesn't change his expression. He keeps his face soft, relaxed; he keeps his eyes tender and open, inviting Kurt to both drown and come up for air. But Kurt just stands there, fingers toying with the buttons of his suit, biting his bottom lip incessantly and looking every bit the vision of light and love that Blaine could imagine.

“I chose you, Kurt. I did. I chose you every minute of every day for the past year. I choose you right now, and tomorrow and for however long you want me. I was just too pigheaded and stupid and scared to tell you…”

Kurt swallows thickly. This fucking day. One thing after another just leads further and deeper into the dank, dark wilderness of how-is-this-my-life and I-really-can't-handle-the-truth. The low point of the day certainly was walking in on his fiancé in flagrante with the best man and while this – this monumental confession that he'd been waiting a year for – should have sent Kurt spinning off into a new orbit, changing his gravitational force field, it…doesn't.

For the first time in fifteen hours, Kurt doesn't feel adrift. He doesn't feel like he is floating out of his body, an aimless trajectory humming and buzzing around his physical frame. He doesn't feel lost or scared or hurt.

Rather, with this confession, Kurt's body is suddenly present and tangible. He is a corporeal being again. He is anchored, tethered to the force field of Blaine's presence. Blaine is the moon to Kurt's Earth and for the first time in a year, the tides of Kurt's heartbeat, breathing and mind are back to their regular scheduled programming.

And just like that, Kurt knows that, regardless of what happens next, everything will be all right.