Kurt is exhausted by the time they pull up in front of his house at around midnight, but somehow still giddy from it all. Blaine is slightly more reserved, but he keeps glancing over at Kurt with these smiles on his face, grins that light up the world, and a look in his eyes as if he can’t believe that this is actually his life now. Kurt sighs and leans back in the seat as Blaine parks, unable to hide his grin when he looks over at his boyfriend. His boyfriend, who he is or is well on the way to being in love with, his boyfriend who ran after him when he stormed off in tears, his boyfriend that never pressured him and was simply there, quiet and supportive. His boyfriend who danced with him, in front of every douchebag that might have voted for him, even though he was absolutely terrified, his boyfriend who did everything he could to make this night special even when it looked like nothing could save it.

Even though they’ve been together for weeks now, it actually hits Kurt hardest just then: I have a boyfriend. This boy is in love with me. This is really happening to me.

He snaps out of his thoughts when he feels Blaine’s fingers brushing his hand, sees the funny little smile on Blaine’s face as his eyes trail across Kurt’s body. “What?” Kurt asks, attempting to be cute and coy, but it just comes out breathless.

“Just…” Blaine sighs. “You’re just really beautiful.”

Kurt flushes. “Do you… um. Do you want to come in, for a bit?” He asks. He doesn’t want this night to end, not yet. “It’s so late, you could even stay the night if you don’t want to be driving – or not,” he quickly corrects at the brief look of panic that crosses Blaine’s features.

“No, no, that would be awesome,” Blaine says hurriedly. “Just, um, there’s that stereotype of losing your virginity after prom – not that I’m asking you to!” (He says this as Kurt’s eyes widen, so far he thinks they might pop out of their sockets) “I just don’t want your dad to think I’m, er, stealing your virtue.”

“Okay, first of all, never refer to the eventual consummation of our relationship as ‘stealing my virtue’ again.” Kurt grimaces. “Actually, as your punishment, you’re totally not sneaking up to my room in the wee hours of the morning.” Blaine pouts, and it takes every bit of Kurt’s willpower to keep talking instead of kissing him. “Look, my dad is still up, we’ll just ask if it’s alright – he won’t want you killing yourself trying to get home anyway. Unless your parents aren’t okay with it?”

Blaine snorts. “I’ll text them, but they don’t care.” Kurt doesn’t miss the bitterness in his voice and a twinge of sadness cuts through his joy. “Okay. I would love to stay.”

Kurt leans over and kisses him, keeping it short and sweet because his father is undoubtedly spying on them right now. Blaine takes his hand without prompt as they step inside together. As expected, Burt is awake, watching some game on TV, and in the other room he can hear Carol and Finn in a heated discussion (which mostly seems to be Carol lecturing Finn about not starting fights and Finn trying to explain but just digging himself deeper, and Kurt doesn’t even want to try to talk to Finn tonight.)

“Hi, dad!” Kurt says brightly.

“Hey, boys. Have a good time?”

“Yep!”

“No trouble?”

Kurt and Blaine share a look. There’s no way he can avoid telling his dad, but… not tonight. He can’t let anything else ruin tonight. He’d already hidden him crown so as not to answer all the questions that went with it just yet. “Nah, not really. Um, listen, do you think Blaine could stay the night?”

Burt raises an eyebrow.

“I don’t do so well driving in the dark,” Blaine explains, shuffling around and looking slightly awkward. Burt huffs, thinking about it for another moment.

“Oh, what the hell. I’ll set up the couch for you. No bed hopping.”

Kurt grinned, letting go of Blaine long enough to clap his hands. Blaine, once again, is more reserved. “Thanks, Mr. Hummel.”

“Yeah, yeah.” He disappears upstairs to find extra blankets, and Kurt drags Blaine into the kitchen to find something to drink. Unfortunately, Finn is in there, still fuming as he tries (and fails) to make a sandwich.

“Stupid Quinn,” he grumbles, glaring at the slice of bread in his hand like it got him kicked out of prom. “Stupid Rachel, stupid Jesse, stupid prom.”

Blaine watches him, concerned. “You okay, Finn?”

“Yeah! Fine! Why wouldn’t I be fine!” He glowers.

“Oooookay. We’re just going to step outside to escape your negativity.” He grabs two Diet Cokes from the fridge and takes Blaine’s hand again. Finn continues to sulk and doesn’t seem to notice them leaving.

They step out into the cool, spring nighttime, hand in hand, and Kurt lets out a sigh. Lights that Carol strung up a couple weeks back, giving off just enough light to see by, illuminate the backyard and when Kurt glances at Blaine, he promptly forgets how to breathe. He doesn’t know what Blaine was thinking, calling him beautiful, because he’s obviously nothing compared to the boy standing next to him. His tuxedo is a little rumpled and his hair does its best to escape from its gel-induced prison, but oh, he glows in the faint light, his eyes shining as bright as the stars he’s looking up at. Kurt stares at him, shamelessly, drinking in the sight and reveling in the knowledge that this boy, this angel, is all his. Suddenly he’s not so exhausted anymore, and he never wants tonight to end.

“You okay?” Blaine asks, finally looking away from the sky and over to Kurt.

“Hmm? Oh, yeah. Of course.”

“Come here.”

“I am here –“

“Come closer.”

Kurt raises his eyebrows but complies, and Blaine wraps an arm around Kurt’s waist, pulling him close, closer than they had dared to dance that night. Kurt’s arms automatically wrap around his neck, and Blaine sways them back and forth, as if they’re dancing.

“There’s no music,” he says, a little amused.

“There is in my head.”

“Oh? What song?”

“Teenage Dream.”

“You dork.”

“It’s our song!”

“It’s so not our song.”

“It so is.”

Kurt groans, but of course, Teenage Dream is stuck in his head on repeat, now. Blaine hums the first few notes of it before grinning and ducking his head. “I’m really sorry that tonight didn’t go as planned.” He murmurs after a minute or so of peaceful silence, just holding each other close. “What they did to you was just awful.”

Kurt laughs, but even to him it sounds fake, and he really wishes that Blaine wouldn’t bring this up. “Well, at least they didn’t dump pig’s blood on my head,” he says, falsely cheerful. Blaine doesn’t seem to find it funny – in fact, now that he’s thinking about it, it seems like Blaine is shaking a little. “Hey, hey. It’s okay, you know. We’re okay,” he says, massaging at the back of Blaine’s neck.

“I just…” Blaine lets his head fall onto Kurt’s shoulder as he searches for the right words. “Watching you accept that crown, you were so – you’re so strong, Kurt, you’re so brave and I…” He takes a deep, shuddering breath, and Kurt unconsciously clings to him even tighter. “When you decided to go back out there, when you stepped up and took that crown, god, Kurt, I loved you so much right then, you don’t even know.”

Kurt shuts his eyes, his breath catching in his throat. “I couldn’t have done it without you,” he says, planting feather-light kisses against the side of Blaine’s neck, shivering a little as Blaine unconsciously nuzzles up against him. They hadn’t gotten to do this at prom, hadn’t dared to kiss in front of everyone even though he so wanted to, and he’s making up for it now.

Blaine hums appreciatively as Kurt kisses a particularly sensitive spot. “Oh, come on. I didn’t do anything.”

“You were there. You gave me my space but you were there for me when I needed you, and you danced with me even though you were terrified. You’ve made this the one of the best nights of my life, when without you it would have probably been the worst.”

Until you find someone as open and as brave as you, you’ll have to get used to going it alone. Normally remembering that conversation with his father just depresses him, but he gets it now. His high school bucket list, as it were, is slowly being filled. Kissing a boy. Holding hands with a boy. Slow dancing (for most of the rest of the night, because after Blaine finally got up the nerve, he didn’t want to stop) with a boy. Loving a boy.

Being loved by a boy.

He pulls back enough to look at Blaine, to exchange quiet smiles, and then Kurt closes his eyes again and touches his forehead to Blaine’s. “I love you,” he whispers, so quiet that the only indication that Blaine heard him is his smile widening. “Thank you for everything.”

“I never want tonight to end.” Blaine sighs.

“Don’t let it.”

He loses track of time, after that. It could be five minutes, or an hour, or an eternity, alone in the backyard, swaying in time with the music Blaine hums in his ear. He doesn’t know or care how long Blaine cradles him in his arms, holding him like he’s some amazingly precious treasure (and Blaine makes him feel like a treasure, is the thing, Blaine somehow finds new ways to make him feel beautiful every day) , or how long he spends twisting his fingers in the hair at the nape of Blaine’s neck. And it doesn’t matter, in the end, because all Kurt knows is that he has never loved so fiercely, has never felt more loved in his entire life.

Kurt wakes up the next morning with his eyes gummy and crusted over with dried up tears, and wonders how much his moisturizing schedule will suffer if he just stays in bed all day.

He rolls over and glances at the clock. It read 7:30, so no one else will be awake, but once Kurt wakes up he can never fall asleep again, so he yawns, and stretches, and climbs out of bed. Coffee. That’s what he needs. Once he has coffee he’ll be able to face the day.

On the way to the kitchen, he pauses to glance at Blaine, spread out on the couch with one leg and one arm hanging off the side, snoring softly, with the most impressive bedhair Kurt has ever seen. He smiles a little, and he remembers dancing with Blaine last night – both during and after prom – and hearing Blaine say I love you, and saying it back and meaning it with every fiber of his being.

He also remembers, very clearly, the sound of Principal Figgins’ voice announcing his name, and his smile disappears. Until now he’d been able to forget it, to enjoy all the wonderful things that had happened in spite of it, but that horrible event overshadows everything. He doesn’t know how he’ll tell his father. He doesn’t know how he’ll walk back into that school tomorrow.

Kurt sighs, leaning down to press a kiss to Blaine’s temple. He stirs, mumbles something and presses his face farther into the pillow, but doesn’t wake up. Kurt shakes his head and retreats to the kitchen.

He returns a few minutes later with two cups of coffee, one of which he sets on the coffee table and the other he waves under Blaine’s nose. “Rise and shine,” he whispers.

Blaine opens his eyes, blinking up at Kurt before his eyes land on the coffee. “You’re an angel,” he croaks, snatching the cup and taking a gulp. “Ow.” He winces as it inevitably burns his throat. He sits up, rubbing his eyes.

Kurt plops down next to him, and they sit in silence for a little while until Kurt sighs and leans in closer, pressing his cheek against Blaine’s shoulder and closing his eyes.

Blaine’s hand finds his and squeezes gently. “You okay?”

“I’m fine.” He whispers.

“Is that secret code for ‘not really fine at all’? Because I’m fine, too.”

Kurt really wants to laugh, but instead he pulls his legs up onto the couch, curling up into a little ball like maybe he can just hide from all the horrible things in the world. He has the horrible thought that maybe he’s glad Blaine said that, that it makes him love Blaine even more. Not that he wants Blaine to feel as awful as he does, but he loves that Blaine gets it. He gets exactly why none of this is okay, he gets why Kurt is so upset.

“I meant it when I said last night was one of the best nights of my life,” he says softly. “But it was one of the worst, too.”

“I know.”

He shudders, pressing his face into Blaine’s chest. Blaine sets his coffee mug and wraps his arms around Kurt. Last night he probably would have pushed Blaine away if he had tried hugging him while he was upset, but now it’s all he needs. “I don’t want to tell my dad. He doesn’t need more stress.”

“He could call the school and bitch them out. Make sure whoever’s responsible is punished.”

Kurt laughs bitterly. “He can scream at them as much as he wants and all it’ll do is raise his blood pressure. Nothing ever changes there. God, I just – I just hate it here so much sometimes. What was I thinking? I think Dalton just made me even more naive. Why did I ever thinks it would get better, just because I wasn’t getting shoved around every day?”

Blaine presses a kiss to the top of his head. “Because you’re the kindest person I know,” he says softly. Kurt snorts. “Because you see the best in everyone. I mean, you have every right to despise Karofsky, but instead you’re trying to help him. I don’t think I could ever do that.”

“If I’m so good,” Kurt whispers, his eyes stinging with tears, which he wipes away angrily. “Then why do they hate me so much?”

He knows by Blaine’s pause that he doesn’t have a real answer for that, and Kurt is almost glad, because he doesn’t want there to be a logical reason for hating someone just for being who they are. If they ever find something logical behind that, they really will have won. It occurs to Kurt, suddenly, that even though he had been brave last night (and he has to trouble admitting that he was brave when he knows it to be true) he hadn’t actually won. He hadn’t solved anything. He had owned that crown, sure, he had refused to run away and be simply a victim, but in the end they, the bullies, still won. That’s what makes him feel sick inside, the fact that no matter what he does he just can’t win.

“You are better than they will ever be,” Blaine says, and Kurt doesn’t miss the way his voice trembles. “And in the end you’re the one who’s going to be somebody, you’re the one who’s going to get out of this stupid town. And you’ll never let them break you.” His voice drops to a whisper, then, and Kurt is pretty sure he isn’t meant to hear what he says next. “Not like they broke me.”