He is splayed comfortably on the sofa, one foot propped up the coffee table, newspaper in his hands. He’s been reading the same article on the Buckeyes for the last hour and half, in between bouts of napping and snacking. It’s the beginning of the summer after his first real year of teaching, and Cooper is ready to spend the next few weeks doing less than nothing before he starts prepping for the fall.

He’s enjoying teaching more than he thought he would. When he gave up law school, and his father’s approval, he had no idea what he wanted to do. Travel the world. Learn a new language. Read at least four of those books that have been on his shelf for years. Spend every day in his underwear eating Pop-Tarts. It didn’t matter, in the end, as long as it was something he wanted.

But then a professor had suggested teaching as a possible career, after see how he naturally takes over the classroom during discussions, and the idea hadn’t sounded horrible. Not the way becoming a lawyer, or a doctor, or an executive sounded soul crushing.

And besides, Cooper likes kids. He likes their open hearts and unclouded eyes; their unabashed curiosity. He likes how they say what they mean – no holds barred, no worries about hurt feelings or social stigma. A kid will look you straight in the eyes and tell you you’re wrong. Cooper thinks the way they plant their little fists on their hips and declare something as undeniable truth adorable.

It’s refreshing after so many years seated around his father’s dinner table with his business partners, biting his tongue and looking down at the table to keep from rolling his eyes and the ridiculous conversations going on around him. Cases won. Accounts closed. Business deals finalized. All of it superficial and grating. He’s glad he never has to sit through another one of those dinners again.

And it’s not like he doesn’t have more than enough practice taking care of kids. He spent ten years bringing up Blaine.

It was tough, the first year. There’s no denying that. Getting used to the quirks of children who aren’t his brother. Handling the endless bureaucracy of the public school system. Dealing with the parents. Few things are worse than uppity parents. But the good – the laughter, the spontaneity, the joy - had outweighed the bad a thousand times over and he’s ready to do it all again this next year. He finds his thrives in the controlled chaos of a loud and raucous classroom. Though hopefully the next year will contain fewer glue accidents.

He’s been thinking about working towards a PhD. He likes teaching elementary school, but a university might pay better. And he’s pretty sure he could find a place back at Dalton Academy. He left that school with high honors and all the recommendations he could want for. The world is opening to him now in a way it never had before.

But there’s Blaine to think about – Blaine who is going to be going to college himself soon and won’t have access to his own trust fund account until he turns twenty-one. Cooper’s job doesn’t pay that much, enough for his mortgage and the necessities and spending cash, but he’ll have to tap into his own trust fund for Blaine’s school. And he’s not going to count on scholarships that don’t yet exist. He doesn’t begrudge Blaine a cent of that fund, but he has to be realistic.

Cooper looks up from where he’s once again not reading the newspaper when he hears the front door opens. It’s almost 5pm and there’s only one other person who has a key to his house.

Blaine appears in the entry to the living room. His messenger bag is dangling from his hand, dragging on the floor behind him. He has the happiest, dopiest, mooniest face that Cooper has ever seen on another person outside of a Disney cartoon.

Nothing good is going to come from this.

“Oh god what?”

Blaine takes a few steps forward then collapses to the floor and lies there, starfished flat on his back. The smile has not left his face. His eyes have nearly disappeared into his cheeks.

“I told him I love him. He told me he loves me. We said we love each other.” Blaine squirms happily against the floor. He’s almost drumming his heels.

Cooper bites his lip against a huff of laughter. God help him his baby brother is in love for the first time.

“You drove all the way out here to tell me that?”

“We were having coffee and he was telling me about New York and singing on a Broadway stage and even after losing he was so happy about it. About everything. He’s just so…so…he just takes what the world throws at him and twists it and turns it around into something good. Something worthwhile. How does he do that? How does it not break him? After everything he’s been through?” Blaine takes a deep breath and presses one hand to his belly, the other to his heart. It’s almost as if he’s trying to hold himself together from bursting apart at the seams.

“How can I not love him?” He breathes out the words like a revelation.

Cooper rolls his eyes all the way to New York and back. He lifts the paper back up to cover his face. He doesn’t need Blaine to see the enormous smile that is forming on his own face.

“You let me know when you’re done writing horrible poetry about the color of his eyes and the way he ties his shoelaces and whatever else it is you kids do these days, OK? OK.”

“It just came out, you know? He was talking and then it was there and I couldn’t have held it back if I wanted to.”

“Did you want to hold it back?”

“NO! God no. Of course not. It’s true. It’s so very true. I love him, I do.” Blaine squirms against the floor again, like he can’t keep still, not with everything thrumming under his skin and racing through his body.

“I’m in love with him.”

Cooper gets it. He does. He remembers the rush of a first love. He remembers the upheaval and the awe - the realization and the sudden understanding. He remembers how the world all at once clicks together and falls away.

He knew it would happen for Blaine, one day. But there had been a time, not that long ago, when he hadn’t been so sure. When he’d wondered if Blaine would even open up enough to let anyone else close to him.

Cooper had worried so much about Blaine after the dance. How dim and distant his eyes had been for so many months. How he’d changed his hair and his clothes; how he’d shrugged that Dalton blazer on like bulletproof vest. Blaine had always been good at school – bright and studious – but after the dance he’d thrown himself into his schoolwork like never before. Cooper has to credit the Warblers for slowly drawing Blaine out of his cocoon, especially since he himself hadn’t been there to do it. Sometimes, late at night, Cooper regrets not dropping out of school and coming home to be there for Blaine full-time.

But Blaine recovered. Step by step. Inch by inch. And he’d come far enough that even the disaster of that boy from the GAP hadn’t shut him down again.

And now here his brother is, flat on the floor on his living room - utterly, hopelessly, completely in love with a boy who loves him back.

Cooper is so happy for him he feels his own heart squeeze painfully. The past is, maybe, finally another country.

“Call mom,” Cooper says. “Let her know that you’re staying for dinner.”

“All right.” Blaine just lies there, staring at the ceiling, his hand rubbing tiny unconscious circles over his heart.

“Blaine,”

“Yeah?” His voice is soft and dreamy. Blaine is clearly far-gone and away somewhere. Probably off in some magical mystical land made entirely of Kurt’s eyes and his wrists and his goddamn dimples or something.

“Get your phone out of your pocket and call mom.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Jesus Christ kid, how long are you going to be useless like this?” Cooper grabs one of the pillows off the couch and throws it at Blaine. It smacks his brother in the leg, but he hardly reacts.

“Forever,” Blaine laughs then, open and carefree, and drags his hands across his face and through his hair.

“You’re not going to taste anything I cook for you, are you?”

“Probably not.”

“Leftovers it is.”

“Coop?” Blaine turns his head and gazes at his brother. Cooper is struck by the joy and life evident in his eyes. “Don’t be jealous, OK?”

“What?”

“I still love you most of all.”

“Oh god,” Cooper throws another pillow at Blaine, and this one lands on Blaine’s face. Blaine just laughs, bright and musical, and tucks the pillow under his head. Cooper rolls off the couch to head to the kitchen. In this state his brother would probably set the house on fire just trying to microwave leftover Thai.

“Blaine?” Cooper pauses by his brother and looks down at him. He nudges Blaine’s hip with his foot.

“Yeah?”

“I love you best of all too.”

Blaine grabs Cooper’s ankle and squeezes it. “I know.”