"There's no way I'm ever going to be able to do this."

It had been a while since Blaine had began trying to write his paper on ancient runes with the help of Kurt without much success. Way, way too much blood and sweat had went into writing five lousy sentences on just about how he had been assigned the topic of the paper. He knew he had done some quite excessive research on this paper previously, but it was as if all of it had disappeared in the form of smoke from his brain.

"I’m sure there is."

"Kurt, I have read the book inside out and then outside in - I know nothing about runes, still" Blaine all but whined, perfectly, completely frustrated. He wasn’t used to having so much trouble with school work. Everything had always been fairly easy for him and if it hadn’t, he’d worked and worked and worked until he'd understood. This was new and horribly, horribly depressing.

Kurt looked at the Hufflepuff, rolling his eyes at him. He found his boyfriend's behavior endearing and frustrating all the same, because he didn't really enjoy watching him struggle so much with something as stupid as this. Especially when the Slytherin himself had gotten Outstandings from every exam and assignment he’d ever done on runes.

“I, uh- I sort of do. Runes have kinda always been my strong suit.”

Blaine looked up at the boy, his eyes growing twice in size. “They have?” He asked, all kinds of emotions from relief to admiration flashing across his face.

“Yeah. I swear. I have a whole collection of graded papers and exams saved, all of them full of notes from the Professor praising my knowledge of ancient writing” Kurt admitted maybe even a bit bashfully.
“I know the most stereotypical thing to think us Slytherins are good at is defence against dark arts and maybe that's partially true, but Professor Washington has never liked me. But DADA classes are stupid anyway. If you’re sharp enough it’s all manageable without any classes at all. But runes I have always liked and understood from the very first class I ever took. They just made sense to me. And I will make them make sense to you, too. At least enough to finish that damn paper.”

The Hufflepuff simply nodded, silently incredibly grateful that Kurt was trying so hard to help him

"I'm sure you remember the numbers. What is the ancient rune for number two?" He then asked, pushing the blank piece of paper closer to him on the table.

Blaine grabbed the quill with a sigh, dipped it in ink and began scribbling what kind of resembled a Viking helmet he vaguely remembered was equal to the number two on the paper. By Kurt’s vigorous nodding he could tell that he remembered correctly.

"Yeah, that's it. Great!" The Slytherin confirmed, getting a quill of his own from the pile of school supplies on the desk. He reached for the paper in front of Blaine and drew a tiny smiley face in the top corner of it.

Blaine chuckled and leaned his head down on Kurt’s shoulder. Kurt wrapped his arm around the boy’s waist.

“I don’t understand how this is so hard for me. And I’ve worked. I’ve worked a lot, Kurt. I read every book they have in the library about this. And I just won’t learn. It’s really frustrating” He sighed loudly, shaking his head a little against the other boy’s shoulder.

“You know you can’t be good at everything, right? You are allowed to not thrive at every single thing you do” Kurt started softly, carding his fingers through Blaine’s for once untamed curls.

He knew very well what kind of things Blaine and the house he belonged in valued, and one of those things were working hard and achieving things because of that. He also knew that Blaine had taken this a step or two further than needed. From what he knew Blaine was an overachiever, and a massive massive one of those. If it was hard enough for him to settle for anything less than a perfect result in anything and everything, accepting the fact that even through hard work and perspiration he couldn’t be great at something was a whole new thing. This was exactly why Kurt wanted and needed to be so gentle about it. He needed him to understand that it was more than okay.

“You probably think I’m so stupid right now” The Hufflepuff chuckled humorlessly, setting the quill back on the table.

“What? No” Kurt tried his hardest not to sound offended, because he could never possibly describe Blaine with an adjective that had a negative tone to it. Ever. “Although I do have to say that you’re being incredibly stupid thinking that I would think that of you.”

“Blaine, you are good at so many things. It’s absolutely ridiculous” Kurt chuckled, causing Blaine to blush and his face turn a very light pink.

“If you don’t know runes beyond the basic numbers from one to ten et cetera – so what? Will you need them when you pursue your career ‘making art and helping people – with magic or without’?” Kurt would never forget the look on Blaine’s face when he had asked about the boy’s future hopes and dreams and he’d talked about them for a solid five minutes before asking Kurt for his in return. “You won’t. I know you have a hard time with letting things go, but some things you just need to.”

Another deep sigh escaped the Hufflepuff’s lips.

“I know” He simply said, well aware that Kurt was absolutely right. “I still need to pass the class though, so I need to learn.”

“And I will help you do that” Kurt said determinedly, giving the boy’s side a gentle squeeze.

Blaine was about to scoot his chair a little father from Kurt so that he wasn’t sitting on his lap rather than on the very chair, but Kurt held onto him, refusing to let him move away an inch.

“Are you serious?” He asked, extremely amused but secretly very happy that he was practically glued to Kurt from toe to shoulder. He wouldn’t rather have had it any other way, honestly.

“You should know that I take holding my boyfriend close to me very seriously” Declared Kurt with a hand over his heart and a grinning smile.

Not thirty minutes went by before Kurt had managed to get Blaine to draw and memorize the first ten plus numbers of the runes on the same stray paper he’d started with. His actual essay paper still sat on the farthest corner of the desk untouched though – with the exception of the five meaningless sentences.

Blaine reached for the four stacked papers that hopefully would turn out to be his finished paper somewhere in the close future and pulled them closer to himself. He turned to look at Kurt whose icy blue eyes were already on him.

“So what can you tell me about runes?”

Kurt looked around the empty Hufflepuff common room – where he wasn’t necessarily supposed to be in at all, trying to recall things from class he was pretty sure nobody else had really paid attention to because they weren’t all that interesting to them.

“Oh, okay-“ Kurt tore off a piece of paper from a notebook as the realization hit him and drew a rune in the corner of it that kind of looked like a very sharp version of the letter P.

“This-“ He looked at Blaine to check that he was following. “-means joy. Our professor told us that the runes that resemble emotions were often used as tattoos. Each emotion rune would remind the person they were tattooed on of a certain person.”

“Oh. How do you remember that?” Blaine asked in awe. Kurt just tapped his temple with his index finger a couple of times and smiled appreciatively.
“So I could easily have had the joy rune tattooed on me – resembling you?”

The Slytherin ducked his head, feeling the urge to laugh at himself for turning into goo because of the smallest nice thing Blaine said to him. He had that effect on him, he’d noticed: and he wasn't going to complain.

“Yeah, I guess so” He finally managed, shooting very subtle heart eyes the other boy’s way. “And I-“ He began to scribble down another rune – one that looked a lot like a lightning. “-Could have the sun rune tattooed on me, to remind me of you.”

“Why the sun?” Kurt could hear the smile through Blaine’s words although his eyes were glued on the sun rune on the paper.

“Because-“ He started, now looking up to find Blaine smiling at him, his eyes shining in delight. “-even the sun can’t live up to the way you light up any room.”

“And you call me sappy” Blaine’s smile was soft and centered and so wide it reached all the way up to his eyes as well as his ears. “How dare you, Kurt Hummel?” He questioned, the love he already felt for the Slytherin expanding in his chest at the words that were incredibly corny but made his heart flutter like no other.

“And I stand by my words. But I’m allowed to be sappy as well, aren’t I? You’re not the only one who can do that” Kurt answered with a grin, gently nudging Blaine's side with his elbow.

“I kind of love you” Blaine said, with his eyes fixated on the books and papers in front of him. At least until he realized exactly what he'd said.

Oh no. No, no, no, no, no. This was not how anything should've gone.

He looked up at Kurt in panic, eyes wide in shock horror, holding his breath. Yet he couldn't say anything. He couldn't deny it or go dismissing his words, because they were true. Blaine had spent more time than he'd ever admit thinking about and analyzing his feelings for Kurt and the things between them, searching his heart for what exactly he felt. He overthought, because that's what he often did. Over analyzed.
He couldn't say that he had a crush on Kurt anymore, that he was certain of. That phase had lasted well over two years and that was more than enough for him. Besides, they were dating, weren't they? Although he lacked any experience or knowledge of relationships he knew that that changed things.
And it had definitely changed things. Scarily quickly he had found that what he was feeling was something much deeper than what he'd initially thought. Sure, the fact that he'd already thought about spending his life together with the person he'd been with for such a small amount of time spoke volumes, but the actual realization had really crept up on him. He was in love, and it was a new and scary concept of it's own.
What made it all the more scary was him being able to read Kurt's mind and know how he felt. But to potentially being seconds away from knowing turned out to be even worse.

Kurt's reaction to the confession wasn't much different from Blaine's. Still, his facial expression was somehow much softer.

After what to Blaine seemed like a forever Kurt blinked a few times, shook his head and exhaled deeply. He looked right into Blaine's honey-caramel eyes as his lips slowly formed into a small smile, making Blaine's heart swoop.

"I love you, too."

Maybe it was that he could breathe again or maybe it was the massive rock that fell off of his heart as he heard Kurt say those words, but Blaine felt like he was ten feet tall. He exhaled very audibly, rubbing a hand over his face as Kurt chuckled at him affectionately.

"Come here" The Slytherin murmured, not leaving much choice to the boy before cupping his cheek and turning his face fully towards him before leaning in to press their lips together. Blaine didn't need a choice though, and just how much he was smiling into the kiss was an indication of that.
Suddenly, in that moment, that was all that mattered in the world.