Kurt’s singing.

He’s singing, and all Blaine could think was wow, you know? And not because of the amazing outfit the other boy had shown up wearing in lieu of the Dalton uniform, or even because of his voice (although it was every bit as impressive then as it has always been). Instead, it’s because Blaine has suddenly realized how privileged he is to know someone like Kurt.

Kurt was so passionate and brave, and despite everything he’d been through he was still so, so strong. Strong enough to know who he was and own it, not willing to compromise that to fit in, or to avoid getting mocked and pushed around. He was so smart, and funny - his witty remarks, always sardonic and sometimes flat out inappropriate, never failed to make Blaine laugh. And when he cared about something, he cared so deeply. Who else would be capable of standing up in front of a room full of teenage boys, unabashedly crying over the loss of a pet they’d only had for a few short months? Who else would feel it that much?

Even when performing the other boy was something to be admired. Unlike Blaine, Kurt didn’t feel the need to dance around the room, leaping onto furniture and pulling silly faces to ensure he had the crowd’s attention. He just poured his entire heart, everything he was feeling, into the melody and let his (beautiful, and breathtaking, and completely unique) voice speak for itself. It was moving in it’s simplicity in a way that Blaine had never been able to pull off.

And as he watched Kurt make his way across the room, Blaine realized that all of this was unlike anything his other friends had ever been capable of making him feel. Even though he’d known the Warblers almost two years longer, and even though he counted Wes and David as being being among his closest friends, they’d never understood him the way Kurt did, and he’d never understood them the way he did Kurt. They’d never inspired in him the same admiration or desire to protect, and although Blaine knew and was willing to admit that he craved approval like it was the air he breathed, he’d never cared nearly as much about their opinion of him as he did about Kurt’s.

And then it hit Blaine, like a bolt of lightening - Oh my God. Oh my God, I love him. Not the platonic love that he’d convinced himself for months was all he felt for the other boy, but love love. The real thing. The kind people sang about, and wrote about, and dreamed about. The kind he’d been waiting his whole life to feel for another person.

For several minutes Blaine was too stunned to do much more than breathe, and even that was difficult to remember. He was dimly aware that the song had concluded and the meeting was moving on. Various Warblers were approaching Kurt and offering their condolences, and Blaine, on autopilot, joined the throng gathered around him. The Warblers, most of whom had been teasing him for months about having a crush on Kurt, parted and let him through. Before he really knew what he was doing Blaine had his arms around the slim, black clad figure and was crushing Kurt to him in the tightest hug imaginable.

As he pulled back he could feel rather than see the question in Kurt’s eyes - because of course, Kurt just... he got him, and seemed to instinctively know that that hug had been about more than Pavarotti’s regrettable demise. But as much as Blaine wanted to just lean in and kiss Kurt right then and there, kiss him until everything else disappeared and their lips bruised and they couldn’t breathe, he knew it wasn’t the time. Wes would probably have a heart attack over that kind of public display of affection in the middle of a Warblers meeting, although that wasn’t really what was stopping him. Wes had a tendency to freak out over everything, after all.

No, the thing that was giving him pause was that his entire world had just been turned upside down. Or rather, he’d just just found out that it had been, because the thing he was discovering wasn’t that he’d just now fallen in love with Kurt. It was that he’d been in love with the other boy all along, and somehow failed to figure it out until fate had finally smacked him over the head with it.

So he heaved an awkward shrug and flushed, avoiding Kurt’s curious gaze, and when Wes finally banged his gavel to declare the meeting had come to an end Blaine was the first one out the door. His heart was pounding so fast, you see, and it felt so full that he was afraid it might burst at any moment. All he knew was that he had to get out of there before it did.

He let his feet carry him down the corridor without having any real destination in mind, and eventually found himself in the hallway he’d run through hand in hand with Kurt back on the very first day they’d met. Oh God, how had he not realized it before? How had he not realized it immediately? It wasn’t like he did that with everyone, just grabbed them by the hand and dragged them to the senior commons so he could sing a flirty Katy Perry song directly to them. Had it really been just about showing off for the spy? Or had it been about showing off for Kurt, even then?

He didn’t know. That was the thing, he just didn’t know. By the time he’d realized it fifteen minutes before, he was already in so far over his head that it was impossible to pin point where it had all began, even in retrospect.

Blaine didn’t know whether he wanted to laugh, or cry, or run screaming for the hills. He’d never been in love before. He’d thought he had, of course. A naturally romantic frame of mind had taken more than one bout of infatuation and built it up into something more. One only had to look at the situation with Jeremiah (and, honestly, looking back he had no idea how he’d even noticed Jeremiah, when Kurt had been there beside him) to see how easily Blaine could fool himself into thinking someone was The One. But this... this was different, this was real, and that scared the hell out of him.

Because he knew he was going to mess it up. Despite how desperately he craved romance, that was just what he did - he fucked up. Maybe, even, already had. After all, he hadn’t just unintentionally lead Kurt on for months only to enlist Kurt’s help in an attempt to ask out another boy and brushed off Kurt’s own confession of feelings with a ‘let’s just be friends’ speech. Nope, Blaine had to go and also (briefly) date Kurt’s frienemy almost immediately afterward and tell Kurt that his sexy faces made him look like he had gas.

Oh God, he groaned, leaning against the wall and slumping to the floor with his head in his hands, this is a fucking disaster. Of course. Of course he’d have to go and realize it when it was too late. Valentine’s Day had been over a month ago, and with everything that had happened in between the chances of Kurt not having gotten over his crush on Blaine were slim to none. The Warbler wracked his brains, thinking back over the past few weeks and trying to remember if Kurt had displayed any signs of still being smitten with him. The other boy had been as friendly and charming and (oh, if he’d only realized this before) adorable as ever, but to his dismay Blaine couldn’t pin point any one look or touch that said ‘I am in love with you’ instead of ‘I’m really comfortable with you because you’re my best friend’.

And that was... it was bad. Because regardless of whether or not Kurt returned his feelings, he knew this was a chance he had to take. He owed it to Kurt, and he owed it to himself. This wasn’t the type of thing that came along every day, you know? It wasn’t just one of those high school crushes that felt important while it was happening but in retrospect didn’t really matter. Blaine had gone through a plethora of those, he recognized the signs, and this was nothing like that. It carried the same turbulant highs and lows (he’d figured it out less than half an hour ago and he already felt like he was on a roller coaster), but underneath it all was something warm and steady and secure.

So he had to tell him. As suddenly and certainly as he’d realized he was in love with the other boy, Blaine realized that if he kept silent about it and continued on as he had been without giving this a shot it would end up being one of those things he’d always regret.

(And three days later, when he was leaning into Kurt with the other boy’s tongue in his mouth and feeling like he was on fire with how much he cared about this boy and how much he wanted him, Blaine was glad he took that chance. He wasn’t going to make the same mistake he always made and say that Kurt was The One, the guy he was going to end up spending the rest of his life with.�What he did know was there was no one else he’d rather be with right now. And that, he discovered, was all that really mattered.)