New York has so many wonderful and unique neighborhoods, and Blaine finds himself overwhelmed by the myriad options. He wants to live by a serene park with birdsong filtering through the open windows, or above a little coffee shop that’s not a Starbucks, or down a quiet, tree-lined street where kids play and little old ladies walk their dogs. He wants restaurants nearby, but no hotels. He wants to be within easy walking distance of a subway stop, but far away from the tourists. And Kurt is almost no better - he has grand aspirations of high ceilings and bay windows. Some nights they stay up way too late with Blaine’s laptop open and maps of the city spread out across the table with the subway lines highlighted and color-coded. Kurt’s made a checklist, and everything too far north and too far south is crossed off in thick Sharpie, but that still leaves the entire middle of Manhattan. It’s really quite a small city, but right then it’s entirely too big.

Blaine knows he wants a place somewhere between Tisch and Times Square, so neither of them have to commute terribly far. He’s got another year and some change to go in his program, and he doesn’t know how long he’ll have to keep working at the Starbucks, but he doesn’t want to move twice if he doesn’t have to.

Cooper tries to get them to move to the Upper East Side, to a grand house on Carnegie Hill, saying it’s absolutely perfect for them, but Blaine knows the area, and he knows how far out of their price range it is. Up-scale doesn’t even begin to describe the area; he is not a fur coat and parlormaid kind of man. Of course, he’d love to live on Park Avenue in one of those classic, gorgeous, renovated brownstones (with the adorable little stoops where he could keep a potted plant or two in the spring and hang Christmas lights in the winter) or in one of the lovely townhouses down the side streets. But those are for people with old money or new investments. Maybe, one day, they’ll be able to live in a place like that. Or maybe they’ll buy a big, beautiful home with a yard and room enough for a family to grow.

In the end, Blaine just wants to live with Kurt - to make a home with him.

He wants to wake up in their bed and know that Kurt is going to be there - that it’s not one of those cold and lonely nights when, for some reason, Kurt is at his own place and Blaine’s left staring at the empty pillow next to his. He wants Kurt’s side of the closet to be fuller than his own, and somehow Blaine will find a way to keep Kurt’s clothes from absorbing the stink of stale espresso (even though Kurt still presses his nose into the curve of Blaine’s throat and inhales deeply the rich, coffee-flavored scent of his skin). He wants those nights when he doesn’t have class and his work shift ends at five so he can wait for Kurt at the corner of 41st and Broadway. Sometimes they’ll go out for an early dinner before heading home together - Blaine still in his rumpled work clothes and Kurt in whatever impeccable outfit he put on that morning. Kurt is always so put together (unless he’s falling apart under Blaine), but Blaine is getting over feeling like he’s unworthy to stand at Kurt’s side - tall, beautiful Kurt who always looks like he’s stepped off a runway. Blaine is learning all that matters is the way Kurt looks at him, with those ever-changing eyes, like he’s perfect, like he’s wanted. Because to Kurt, he is.

Blaine finds ways to make his basic, boring Starbucks dress code a little more fashionable, a little more interesting. He steals a thick leather cuff from Kurt one morning - sliding it off his wrist and onto his own as Kurt’s cheeks flush a delicate, pretty pink and his pupils blow wide. (They’re both almost late for work that morning, but the bruise sucked into his inner thigh is so worth the rush to clock-in on time.) He keeps finding pants that hug the full curve of his ass and cling to his strong thighs. He makes sure the hems end a few inches above his shoes (new Chucks that mysteriously appeared in his closet and Kurt has no idea how they got there) because he’s seen the way Kurt’s eyes are inexplicably drawn to his bare ankles. He even leaves the top buttons of his increasingly fitted polos undone because of the way Kurt’s gaze lingers on his chest hair, not to mention the spike in tips from customers the store receives.

But they find a place - a gorgeous, newly renovated Pre-War townhouse in Chelsea with high ceiling, exposed brick walls, and a row of huge windows in the living room that has western exposure. They viewed the townhouse one weekday after Kurt got off work, and the late-afternoon sun illuminated the wide-open space, making the rich hardwood floors glow warmly as golden-pink light smoothed along the walls. Blaine stands in the middle of the room, bathed in light with the Hudson River glittering in the distance, with Kurt’s arms snug around his waist and his chin hooked over his shoulder, and takes a soul-deep breath. Blaine hadn’t realized just how close and confined his old apartment was. But this - this feels like it could become home.

The floorboards don’t creak and the pipes don’t rattle. The living room is big enough for Kurt to set a sewing machine along the back wall where he gets the best light, and there’s a spare room where Blaine can finally, finally put a piano so he doesn’t have to stay late at school using the stuffy practice rooms. The bathroom isn’t huge, but the sink is wide enough for both of their things and the tub is built for two. The kitchen appliances are new, the oven door opens with plenty of room to spare, and there’s even space for a little dining room table. Their neighbors are an elderly couple, who’ve been together for 54 years and still go out dancing every Friday night, and a young family with a new baby and two dogs. It’s as close to perfect as anything could be.

Blaine knows, he just knows, that Cooper did something to get them this place. But he can’t prove it. The monthly rent written down on the lease is too low, far too low for a townhouse like this in a neighborhood like Chelsea. He brings it up to Kurt one night, when the papers are theirs to sign, but he can’t quite make himself pick up the pen. Kurt just shrugs and says something about the previous tenant dying in the bathroom. But he says it with a twitch to his lips and a twinkle in his eyes that makes Blaine scrunch up his nose until Kurt kisses him into submission, pushing him back into the couch cushions as the lease papers flutter to the floor. Blaine lets it go.

His brother has been desperate to help him out since high school (really from the day he was born), since he wanted, for one crazy night, to run away with Cooper to LA, as far away from Bridgeport as he could get. Cooper had offered to buy him a plane ticket and let him stay on the couch for as long as he needed, but by the morning, the wild urge to run that had risen up inside of him had subsided and he’d carried on, like he always had.

Blaine refused Cooper’s offer of tuition help for his undergraduate work at NYU (although it had proved a moot point when he’d won that scholarship), and again for graduate school. He went so far as to tell the school bursar to let him know if anyone tried to pay his bills for him. But every quarter he’d find the books on his reading lists and stacks of sheet music sitting on his table. There was never a note attached, but he always knew where they came from. And when his cupboards and cabinets are packed with more food than he remembers buying after one of Cooper’s visits, well, Blaine is learning to accept the help his brother so desperately wants to give him. Especially when it means he has extra cash to take Kurt out to dinner and shows and museums and Sunday brunches at their favorite cafe where they grin at each other over coffee cups and tangle their feet together under the table.

But Blaine can’t care about the improbably, impossibly low rent, not when he signs his name next to Kurt’s on the lease. He doesn’t say anything, not then, but he thinks about another piece of paper he wants to see his name scrawled out next to Kurt’s on.

***

Neither of them have a lot to sell or get rid of - Kurt’s sublet came fully furnished and Blaine’s cramped apartment was too small for him to have accumulated much at all over the years. Most of what’s Kurt’s are his clothes and his growing supply of fabrics, and his own shelves of books and movies. Blaine can’t wait to see his books organized together with Kurt’s; he wants to reach into a cupboard and not remember which coffee mug was originally his.

There’s the couch (which Blaine bought for $50 five years ago), but he kind of wants to get rid of it, even though they can’t really afford a new one, and the bookcase that Blaine could never part with. There’s the dresser that Blaine’s grandfather built and the low coffee table in the living room, but the latter isn’t very important to him at all. And, of course, there’s Blaine’s bed, which Kurt demands to keep, no matter what.

“I have a lot of very fond memories of your bed,” Kurt whispers into Blaine’s ear and he strokes his hand down Blaine’s waist. Blaine shudders, remembering Kurt’s face above his that first night, the sweetly stunned look in his eyes, and he cannot argue with that at all.

It all means that moving is a fairly simple affair. Blaine’s coworker Jeff shows up in the early morning (on his day off no less) to help pack boxes into the moving truck, and so does Cooper, even though Blaine’s fairly certain his brother is supposed to be in Vancouver shooting a new movie with Martin Scorsese. Jeff stares at Cooper with his mouth agape for about five minutes until Coop offers him an autograph. He blushes so deeply he looks sunburned, but accepts the sleeve from Cooper’s coffee cup that now bears Cooper’s name scrawled across it. Burt wants to fly out to help his boys, but Kurt refuses, telling him he should come over for Thanksgiving instead. (There’s a too-generous check in their mailbox a week later that has Blaine on the phone in seconds and babbling his gratitude to Burt for an hour.)

The morning is a little overcast and cool when they pull up to the townhouse. The street is quiet, and at the end of the block Blaine can see a woman walking a dog. He feels Kurt step up next to him on the sidewalk and slide his hand into Blaine’s, and Blaine shivers when they look up at the building that is now their home.

This is big. This is huge. This is his and Kurt’s together. His heart feels full to bursting and he can’t stop grinning. He doesn’t want to stop. He never, ever thought his life would come to this. He never imagined he’d find someone just for him, especially someone like Kurt - Kurt, who feels like he was built just for Blaine’s hands and mouth and heart. He knows he’s made for Kurt in just the same way. It’s glorious and frightening and Blaine wouldn’t change a thing. The best he can do is hang on while his life barrels down this newly paved road.

Blaine climbs the steps to their front door, Kurt next to him and still holding his hand tightly, but he pauses on the threshold with the new, shiny key grasped between his fingers. His pulse is pounding and his knees tremble.

“You should do it,” Blaine says, looking over at Kurt. Kurt just smiles gently at him and shakes his head.

“Blaine-” Kurt’s voice is soft and fond, and the I love you even though you’re ridiculous look is evident on his beautiful face.

“Kurt.”

Kurt wrinkles his nose adorably before he reaches out and folds his other hand over Blaine’s. “Together.”

Blaine holds his breath as the key slides into the lock and the tumblers give way with a resounding click and the door swings open.

Blaine almost drops his keys and he hears Kurt’s shocked gasp next to him. Their new townhouse is almost completely furnished. There’s a sofa and matching love seat in the living room, angled towards a spot where their TV would fit perfectly. A coffee table in a rich wood that complements the polished floors sits in the middle of the arrangement.

“Huh, interesting.” Cooper says, too nonchalantly, from behind them as he peers around them to look into the house.

Blaine steps inside, mouth hanging agape as he clings desperately to Kurt’s hand. There are long curtains hanging above the windows where there were none before, and the pale cream of them complements the new furniture and the deep maroon rug from Blaine’s old apartment that’s waiting in the moving truck. A comfortable, overstuffed wingback chair that Blaine immediately recognizes from his grandparents’ house is placed next to a side table with a lamp on it. It doesn’t match the couches, not really, but the sight of it makes Blaine’s heart clench almost painfully. He hasn’t been to his grandparents’ home in years, but that chair brings back every memory of it. Set up where the light is best, is a work table, just the height and size for a sewing machine, and even though he can’t see into the spare room from where he is, Blaine’s willing to bet his life that there is a piano waiting for him in there.

And there are vases of fresh, sweetly fragrant flowers everywhere - on the new coffee table, on the long kitchen counter, and spaced along the wide window sills.

Blaine almost can’t breathe and only the heat of Kurt pressed close to his side keeps him from flying out of his skin or collapsing to the floor. When Blaine glances over his shoulder, Jeff is grinning so widely at them that Blaine is certain Jeff knew about this beforehand.

“The flowers weren’t me,” Cooper says casually, because apparently neither Blaine nor Kurt can say anything. “The flowers are from Kurt’s boss. Lovely woman, that Carrie. I think she’s finally gotten over me making her sign all those books. And trading ties with her husband in the Cond� Nast elevator.” Cooper touches one of the walls with careful, reverent fingers.

“Cooper, you-” Blaine starts to say, but stops. There’s really nothing he can say. He just throws himself into Cooper’s arms like he used to when he was a little boy. Cooper’s strong arms come around him and hold him tight and Blaine tries not to cry into his big brother’s chest.

It’s almost too much, especially considering what Cooper’s already done for them, and not just with the townhouse.

It’s been months, and Blaine is still getting over the shock of The Suit (and when he thinks of it, there are always capital letters). Cooper hadn’t said what event the suit Kurt was making for him was supposed to be for. All he said was that it was for a not-quite-black-tie event that would be very widely photographed.

Blaine had never, ever expected to snuggle up on the couch under a blanket with Kurt to watch the Oscars one cold and snowy late-February evening and see his brother (who was nominated again for Best Supporting Actor) walk down the red carpet in the very suit that Kurt had designed and created for him.

Kurt had choked on his popcorn and Blaine had dropped the remote to the floor. There Cooper was, tall and handsome, in a perfectly-fitted suit with a subtle pattern to the fabric and just enough uniqueness to the cut and style of it to make it stand out in the sea of basic black tuxedos and suits. There his brother was, in front of the world, in an outfit that Kurt, young and inexperienced Kurt, had designed and made with his own two hands. Kurt had told Carrie about the project, and she had given him some time off to be able to complete it - as well as access to fabric and equipment that was better than anything he could have been able to get for himself. (Turned out she was quite the fan of Cooper Anderson.)

And then Cooper had started his red carpet interviews, and in each and every single one he mentioned Kurt. Kurt Hummel: up and coming designer, natural talent, someone to watch out for. Kurt Hummel, boyfriend to his younger brother – a brother who’ll surely be famous in his own right one day.

“I don’t think I’m going to be wearing anything else,” Cooper had said, grinning into the camera. “As long as Kurt agrees to keep making things for me. Hi, Kurt. Hi, Blaine.”

Kurt had buried his bright red face into Blaine’s chest and Blaine could feel his body trembling as he wrapped his arms tightly around his boyfriend. And he knew how this could, would, change their lives, how it would change everything. He knew what kind of influence Cooper had. Blaine could so clearly see the messages and phone calls Kurt would start to receive from people suddenly interested in the unknown kid who designed the gorgeous Oscar suit for Cooper Anderson.

It’s how Kurt’s staggering career truly begins, how their lives become what they do, and Blaine will never, ever be able to thank Cooper enough for that.

Blaine sniffles against Cooper’s shoulder (so maybe he is crying a little). “I love you, Coop,” he murmurs. “So much.”

“You’re my little brother,” Cooper responds, and he presses a kiss to the top of Blaine’s curly head. “I will do anything for you. And for Kurt. You just have to let me.”

Blaine nods and draws back. He gets it. He does. He finally understands that it’s not about money, or pity, or anything like that, but family. Cooper kisses his forehead before he reaches out for Kurt. Blaine shifts to the side a bit as Cooper draws Kurt into his arms for a tight hug.

“Thank you,” Kurt whispers, just loud enough for Blaine to hear. There is so much in those two words that fresh tears come to Blaine’s eyes. Blaine understands that too - there’s no way to thank someone enough for something like this.

“You are so very welcome. You’ve made my brother happier than anyone else possibly could have. This is the least I could do for you. You deserve everything that comes to you. Know that.”

They spend the rest of the afternoon unpacking: putting dishes into cupboards, books onto shelves, and clothes into closets and drawers. Sometimes Blaine has to stop and draw Kurt into a slow, sweet kiss, just to ground himself with the taste of Kurt’s lips and the feel of his tongue. He knows this is real - this home, and this life - but it’s hard to believe. The dreams he scarcely imagined are coming true before his eyes and he can hardly breathe for it.

They order a pizza and Jeff produces a six-pack of beer that he’d somehow managed to hide as a surprise. The four of them settle around the new coffee table, on Blaine’s old carpet, and eat and drink until it grows dark and the lights of the boats on the Hudson twinkle in the distance through the grand windows.

And that night, when Cooper has, thankfully, disappeared to a hotel room for once, and Jeff has gone home, Blaine lays curled up with Kurt in their old bed in their new bedroom. The walls smell of fresh paint and the sheets of his laundry soap. Kurt’s skin is flushed and damp beneath his cheek and against his body, still cooling down from their first intimacy in their new home.

“I am ridiculously in love with you,” Blaine murmurs against Kurt’s throat. His leg is draped across Kurt’s naked thighs with his knee tucked up intimately against Kurt’s groin. He can feel Kurt’s heart beating against his own chest and the sound of it is the rhythm of Blaine’s life.

Kurt’s fingers tangle in his hair and tilt his face up for a lazy kiss. The touch of Kurt’s hands and the taste of his breath are the cadence of Blaine’s very soul. It’s what he’s been trying to capture in words and notes, in verses and bridges, since the moment Kurt walked so unexpectedly into his Starbucks one warm September morning.

“I love you more than I can say,” Kurt whispers as he brushes his thumb across Blaine’s lips. Blaine’s eyes flutter shut.

I am going to marry you, Blaine thinks, but doesn’t quite say. Not yet.

But he will.