He stands behind Blaine as his brother looks at himself in the long mirror again. He looks fantastic in his simple, elegant tuxedo, with the pink carnation tucked into his lapel. Despite the similarity, he doesn’t look like he’s going to prom, not at all.

“Are you ready for this?” Cooper asks, picking lint that isn’t there off the fabric. Kurt is in the room next door, getting ready with Finn, his own carnation bright and pretty against the black fabric of his jacket.

“I’m not nervous,” Blaine says as he turns away from the mirror. Cooper reaches out and straightens his brother’s perfectly straight bowtie again and smoothes the unwrinkled fabric. He can’t seem to stop fussing with Blaine.

“You’re not?” Cooper is having a hard time believing that. He’s sweating a little in his expensive tux and his hands keep trembling a little, and he’s not even the one getting married.

“No. Not one bit. It’s all been leading to this,” Blaine waves his hand around the room as if he can encompass the last ten years of his life. “Everything. Every day since that first one. Since the staircase at Dalton. It was all for this moment. Right now.” Blaine stops and smiles - a warm, secret smile that makes Cooper’s heart clench to see. He can’t believe that after everything, his brother found the happiness that he did.

“So no. I’m not nervous. I’m ready.”

Cooper gathers Blaine into his arms, as he’s done so many times throughout their lives, uncaring that he’s probably wrinkling the jacket he’s spent all afternoon fussing with. He’s careful, though, not to mess with Blaine’s hair. It looks perfect today, and he’s not sending Blaine off to marry Kurt with ruffled hair.

He’s having a hard time understanding that he’s about to watch his baby brother get married. Married. They are still so young, but they’ve been together for a decade - a full, solid decade. They’ve made it through high school and college, first jobs and callbacks. They’ve made it through rejections and staring roles; through Blaine’s first Tony nomination and Kurt’s first win.

But even through all of that, Cooper still sees in Blaine his baby brother. He sees a little boy in a too-big bowtie with a pillowcase tired around his neck as he jumps around on his bed, fencing foil in hand as he attacks his pillows. He sees the young kid who was so bruised and broken for so long, but somehow managed pulled himself out of the darkness and become the bright, wonderful, loving, and loved man that he is today. Cooper could not be prouder of him if he tried.

He wonders if this is what a father feels like.

“All right then,” Cooper says, finally pulling back. He can already feel the tears ready to flow and he doesn’t know if he’s going to make through the ceremony before completely losing it.

“Let’s get you married.”

It’s a small ceremony, just friends and family. Everyone, including Cooper, who’s known Kurt just as long as Blaine, had expected Kurt to go all-out for this wedding. Blaine had been prepared to step back and let Kurt’s anal-retentive attention to detail take over. But he hadn’t, not at all.

“All I want is you,” Kurt had said, touching the pile of wedding magazines that Blaine had brought home for him two weeks after their engagement. “As long as it’s you standing across from me vowing to be mine for the rest of our lives, then I’m happy. In this, everything else is just the details.”

They’d chosen The Foundry in Queens for their venue. Kurt had fallen in love with the exposed brick walls and the way it contrasted with the modern steel accents, and Blaine was completely taken with the Greenhouse and its skylight ceiling and living ivy that wrapped around the space. Kurt also appreciated that the Foundry provided their own caterers, florists, furniture rentals, and musicians.

“Less work for me,” Kurt had said when they’d visited the space, running his fingers along the rough brick. “Means I can spend more time more time with you instead of planning this, basking in our pre-wedding glow instead of drowning in floral arrangements and cake flavors.”

What Kurt was heavily involved with was the ceremony itself.

There are no groomsmen, no flower girls, no aisle to walk down. There is no altar. It’s just them and their friends and their family, and that’s all that matters.

Finn is standing up for Kurt, while Cooper stands for Blaine, each of them looking rather dashing in their tuxes. And Puck, Noah Puckerman, of all people, is officiating. Kurt and Blaine’s marriage will be legalized once they sign the papers; this is just the show, the party, and Puck had made it clear the moment he’d heard of their impending nuptials that he would be the one to see them through this.

Blaine and Cooper’s parents sit with Kurt and Finn’s, and even though they will probably never be one completely happy, intertwined family, Mrs. Anderson accepts the package of Kleenex that Carole offers her, and Mr. Anderson accepts the hearty handshake that Burt gives him when they find their seats.

A small orchestra plays a soft, sweet little melody that Blaine wrote two days after Kurt woke him up in the middle of the night with a kiss, a question, and a pair of matching engagement rings as Kurt and Blaine approach each other. Blaine’s smile can be seen from space and Kurt’s eyes are so luminous Cooper can see them shining from where he stands. Finn wraps Blaine up a giant hug, and Cooper does the same to Kurt. They are all brothers now, as if they haven’t already been this last decade. But now it’s kind of official. Cooper feels little cracks in his heart that he hadn’t even known were there seal over completely.

Puck tells stories about McKinley that sends everyone into fits of laughter before delving deep with his own experience of their relationship, how he saw it grow and flourish and become what it is. Cooper watches as Kurt and Blaine stare at each other throughout the ceremony with those matching, ridiculous looks of love and adoration that they’ve been giving each other since day one.

“Now,” Puck says. “Because they can’t just stick to the script, Kurt and Blaine have written their own vows. So everyone get your tissues out because I’m sure this is going get really sappy really fast.”

Kurt reaches out and takes Blaine’s hands in his, caressing his knuckles with his thumbs. Blaine’s smile is so huge his eyes are disappearing and so bright it hurts to look at. Cooper is already tearing up and Kurt hasn’t even said anything yet.

“Blaine, growing up, I never thought that this would happen to me, that I would be standing here with the man I love pledging my life to his. I never even imagined that someone like you could happen to me. I was lost – scared and alone – when you found me. You saved me, and I’m pretty sure I saved you too.

I know you were the one to sing it first, but you are my teenage dream. You are everything I never thought I would have in my life – a hand to hold in the dark, a heart to dance with even when there’s no music playing. You are love and laughter and hope, and I am eternally grateful to you for giving those things to me. I love you, more than words can ever say.”

Kurt’s voice is strong, full of conviction throughout his vows, and the tears are streaming down Blaine’s face. Cooper doesn’t even attempt to hide that he’s crying. Across from him, Finn is wiping at his own eyes. Cooper can’t even look out to see how their parents are all doing. He hopes Puck is doing ok.

Kurt takes the wedding band from Finn and slides it onto Blaine’s ring finger. He lifts Blaine’s hand and presses his lips to the band, smiling up at his husband, his husband. Blaine’s breath hitches in his chest.

“Kurt,” Blaine begins, once he’s gotten himself under control enough to speak. “You did save me. I wasn’t really living before you. I just passing through life, a ghost, a shadow, eyes to the ground, just trying to put one foot in front of the other. Until one day someone called out to me and I looked up. And there you were. There you were.

I didn’t know, then, what you would mean to me. How could I have known? But so quickly you became everything to me. You are my best friend and my lover; you are my heart and my soul and everything in between. You were the only one for me, from the very beginning, and you will remain the only one. I have loved you as long as I’ve been able, and I will continue to love you, until the end.”

Blaine accepts the matching wedding band from Cooper, who is beyond relieved that he doesn’t drop it, and fits it around Kurt’s finger. Blaine takes Kurt’s hand and presses a kiss to the ring, just as Kurt had done. He can’t wait for the feel of the band under his lips to become utterly, wholly familiar.

There is a pause while Blaine wipes at his eyes, and Kurt wipes his, and Puck has to take a moment to compose himself before he can finish the ceremony.

“Well, I did warn you there would be tears. Let’s finish this off so we can get to the food and the dancing. By the powers vested in me, from absolutely no one, I now pronounce you – wait for it, this is going to sound so awesome – husband and husband. You may now make out with each other while the rest of us watch.”

Cooper laughs and applauds with everyone else as Kurt wraps Blaine up and bends him into a sweet dip as he presses a warm, loving kiss to his mouth.

Tonight, they’ll dance and sing and wine and dine at the reception. They’ll all stay out way too late, even though it’s an early Friday evening in October and no one has any obligations in the morning. They’ll laugh and love and catch up with friends they haven’t seen in a while. Cooper will deliver a speech before dinner that gets the tears flowing again.

That night, as he watches Kurt and Blaine cradle each other close during their first slow dance together as husbands, alone on the dance floor, swaying slow and sweet to the music, the stars shining over them through the skylight ceiling, Cooper thinks that maybe, just maybe, he did an OK job being an Anderson.

He thinks that if this is the outcome, then maybe he succeeded at being the best brother he could possibly be.

And whatever else happens in his life, that’s enough.