“We need each other now,” Brittany said matter-of-factly.

Blaine looked at her across the lunch table. She was still sad about her breakup with Santana, but she had a look of resignation about her, and maybe even a hint of hope. She looked more hopeful than he felt, anyway, after Kurt had told him to stop calling until Blaine figured out what was going on with himself.

“For what, exactly?” Blaine asked. She obviously meant for emotional support of some kind, but she seemed to have something very specific in mind.

“You know for what, Blaine Warbler,” she said, a bit annoyed. She looked deliberately at his lips, then made eye contact again. “Can you come over after school today?”

He blinked in surprise. Blaine had never considered anything other than friendship with Brittany, but as soon as the thought entered his mind, he knew it was a good idea. Both of them needed physical contact on a regular basis to stay sane. They were both single. Neither of them wanted to enter into a serious relationship with anyone right now. Neither of them wanted to be sleeping around in meaningless flings. They needed each other now. For the interim. For comfort and safety and healing. For now.

“Yes. After school. I’ll be there.”

----------------------

They walked into Brittany’s room and lay down on her bed without discussion, as if it were a thing they had been doing for years. They curled up together on top of the covers and just cuddled, fully clothed, resting in each other’s arms.

Calm crept inch by inch into Blaine’s body, and into his mind. This calm was what he had needed since Kurt had left for New York. This was the missing thing, what he needed for his life to even begin to work properly. The absence of touch had slowly corrupted him, like a poison gas rotting him from the inside out until he was desperate for it but couldn’t even remember what it was that he needed. Until he made a desperate grab for it but reached in the wrong direction, knowing it was the wrong direction but hoping it was close enough to fix him or far enough to destroy him completely, because either way would be better than the fog he had become lost in.

It hadn’t been either close enough or far enough. It had left him more wrecked than before, but still alive and still desperately needing. And he could never forgive himself for what it had done to Kurt.

He cuddled closer in to Brittany. His mind had been stuck in a vicious spiral for days, the memories hurting him, making him want to hurt more, hurting him more, until he couldn’t think about anything else at all. Suddenly, with Brittany’s touch, he could look at the thoughts calmly, almost rationally, maybe truly rationally in due time.

Blaine took a deep breath, pleased, close to contented but not quite there yet. “It’s like magic,” he said softly, a touch of wonder in his voice.

“It is, Blaine Warbler,” Brittany said. She sounded more relaxed than she had been in weeks.

They lay there silently for a few moments, letting the calm seep into their bones. It was quite different from the instant rush of joy that always filled Blaine when he touched Kurt. And it was so very, very different from the claustrophobic panic that he had unsuccessfully tried to ignore when he’d touched Eli. This was a stillness, a place for meditation, a way to find his own peace. The sadness still lay beneath, unchanging, but the desperation was draining away.

Blaine turned his head to look at Brittany, wondering what she was feeling. She looked at him with a triumphant smile on her face, clearly pleased with herself for planning this.

“Brittany? You know I’m gay, right? Not bi like you. Really gay.”

“It doesn’t matter,” she said, sounding very certain. “The magic will work just the same.”

He smiled tentatively. “It does seem to be working.”

“It does, Blaine Warbler.”

----------------------

Blaine and Brittany were cuddled on her bed again the next day, the same as before, silent and just letting in the calm again.

Brittany spoke first. “Santana’s not a unicorn. She never can be.”

“What?”

“That’s why we had to break up,” she said sadly. “A unicorn can’t marry a non-unicorn, it wouldn’t work out in the long run. And I’m a unicorn and Santana’s not. I thought she might be, at first. I tried really hard to help her find her unicorn. But it turns out it’s just not there. We were never meant to be, not for longer than a little while.”

Brittany’s thoughts had their own internal logic to them, Blaine had always thought. He didn’t truly understand what she meant, but he could go with it. “I’m sorry,” he said, stroking her shoulder. “Me and Kurt too, I guess. You always said he’s a unicorn.”

“It’s not the same with you and Kurt,” Brittany said. “He’s a unicorn and you’re not one yet, but you can be. You have the seeds of it in you.”

“That’s very nice of you to say,” Blaine said, smiling sadly.

“I’m not just trying to make you feel better,” Brittany said, annoyed that she had to explain. “It’s true. You’re a Warbler on the outside, but you’re a unicorn on the inside. I thought you knew that’s why we’re here. To let the unicorn out so you can be with Kurt again.”

Blaine blinked his eyes a few times, so startled that he didn’t know what to say.

Brittany let out an exasperated sigh. “You and Kurt are going to get married. But a Warbler and a unicorn can’t get married. What kind of weird babies would they have?”

“I don’t know, maybe a Pegasus?” Blaine joked.

“That would be a sad little Pegasus, because its wings would be too tiny for it to fly and then it would just be this freaky horse thing with half-wings and a half-horn and nobody would want to play with it.”

“Brittany? This conversation is getting kind of weird.”

“The point is, that’s why you need to find your unicorn. So you and Kurt can fix everything and get married and have beautiful unicorn babies.”

“Brit, I don’t think you’re clear on how this whole baby thing works,” Blaine said.

“No, you’re the one who doesn’t get it.” Brittany stared at him. “You told me you understood why we needed each other now. You told me you felt the magic, you said so yesterday.”

“I … I thought you were using a metaphor,” Blaine stammered.

“I don’t know what a meta is, or what I would need it for,” Brittany said. “I was just talking about the magic.”

“O … kay …” Blaine wasn’t quite sure what to say next.

Brittany rolled onto her back. “Kiss me.”

“What?” Blaine was taken aback yet again.

“Kiss me, Blaine Warbler,” she demanded.

It was so bizarre that Blaine almost laughed when he thought about it later. A postmodern retelling of Sleeping Beauty, where the princess was wide awake and dressed in a Cheerios uniform and the prince leaned down to kiss her wearing tight jeans and a blazer he hadn’t bothered to take off. Where it was the prince, not the princess, who woke up.

Blaine felt something stir in himself the moment their lips touched. Not arousal, nothing like what he felt when he kissed Kurt like this. An awakening of something inside him, for just a moment, and then it blinked away as he softly pulled up from Brittany’s mouth. He thought he saw a flicker of surprise in Brittany’s expression, but it was replaced with certainty so quickly that he decided he must have imagined it.

She searched his face. “You felt it, didn’t you? That’s the unicorn inside you.”

He considered, for a moment, whether she was right or whether she was insane. He decided it didn’t matter. “But Kurt is a unicorn, too. Why don’t I feel that when I kiss him?”

“There are lots of different kinds of unicorns, silly,” she said, as if the question was too obvious to even answer.

“What kind am I?” Blaine asked.

“That’s the question.”

----------------------

It was easy, being with Brittany, Blaine learned over the next few weeks. Sweet kisses progressed to make out sessions and then to hands sliding beneath shirts, and all of it felt pleasant and good. Blaine was surprised at it. He never questioned his sexuality, no, he felt no arousal from looking at her, from touching her breasts, from imagining having sex with her. But he found that between the physical contact and his growing affection for her, he could enjoy himself and he could get hard. Sex wouldn’t be a problem, if they got that far, he thought. The stray idea hit him once, that this could have been his whole life had he lived in another era, had he been born eighty years ago instead of eighteen, and he was glad it wasn’t, glad there was something more that he’d had once and hoped to have again. He wondered what Brittany felt for him, but he didn’t ask.

Their relationship was something with no name, something they never discussed. She wasn’t his girlfriend. There were no declarations of love, no romantic gestures, no public displays of affection. This was something just for the two of them, never to be mentioned to anyone at school. It wasn’t that they were hiding it. It was just that it was very personal, not something for anyone else to know.

Blaine drew strength from their interactions, and he began to pull his life back together. He could pay attention in class again. His grades recovered from their brief plummet and he no longer worried about failing or being unable to get into a good college. He sang solos in glee club without falling apart, not reading himself and Kurt into the lyrics of every song the way he had at first. The sharp pain of their break-up faded into a dull ache, still awful but no longer overwhelming.

That odd feeling inside him, the thing that Brittany called his unicorn, also grew. He never felt it except when he was with her, but the feeling was stronger each time they were together and Blaine had the sense that it would someday be there all the time, or at least be something he could access without Brittany’s help. But he still had no idea what it really was.

“Can I tell you a secret, Blaine Warbler?” Brittany asked one afternoon. She was lying on her back in bed, topless, and Blaine was poised above her, with no shirt, up on his arms, about to lean down onto her. It was the farthest they had yet gone, physically.  He paused at her question and held himself there.

“Of course.”

“I don’t think either of us is really a unicorn,” she said.

Blaine’s face fell. If he wasn’t a unicorn, he wondered, did that mean he could never get back together with Kurt? He panicked for an instant, then realized he was being ridiculous. He shouldn’t pin his hopes for a reunion on Brittany’s bizarre ideas about people being magical creatures on the inside.

Brittany caught his change in expression. “Oh, I don’t mean that we’re not magical. I mean that we’re extra-magical. I’ve never done this with anyone like you before, and it’s different. You’re different from other unicorns. It’s making me realize that I’m different from the other unicorns, too. So maybe we’re a different kind of unicorn, or something else magical that’s not exactly a unicorn, or something, I don’t know. I wish people talked about these things more, because I don’t even know what words to use.”

Blaine rolled to his side and faced her, putting his top arm around her waist, ready to listen to whatever she was working through in her head. “Go back and explain, Brit. I don’t understand.”

“See, I’m Brittany S. Pierce because I can pierce through the wall between the regular world and the magical world. Lots of people have magic inside them, and they can use their own magic, but I’ve never known anyone but me who can reach into the magical world and get extra magic. I can use it to help someone grow into a unicorn, if they are one. Or if they’re not a unicorn, just to make their lives better, like with Santana.”

“Okay,” Blaine said. He accepted this at face value for the moment.

“I’m a weird unicorn because I can pierce that wall and the other unicorns can’t. Except for you. You can reach through to the magical world, too.”

Blaine blinked in surprise. “I can? How do you know?”

“Because it comes through to me,” Brittany said. “I can feel magic entering me and I’m not the one pulling it in from over there. So it has to be from you. How are you doing it?”

“I … I don’t know.” He wondered again whether Brittany was clinically insane, or whether her entire method of coping with life was one giant metaphor, or whether she was the only person in the world who could see clearly.

“Will you try it again?” she asked. “Try to feel it this time, while you’re doing it.”

“What do I do?”

“Just what you were about to do before.”

Blaine moved back on top of her, his legs straddling her thighs, his body hovering above her, supported by his muscular arms. “Like this?” he asked, leaning down to press their bodies together. He caught her mouth in a deep, open kiss, his eyes closed, his mind’s eye open and alert.

Energy coursed through him like a river made of lightning, from nowhere and through his body and into Brittany. It was shocking and intoxicating and terrifying, and he couldn’t believe he’d never noticed this happening before. It filled his entire consciousness and everything else blacked out for a second until he lifted his body up away from Brittany’s.

Her eyes were wide with wonder.

“What are you, Blaine Warbler?”

----------------------

He learned to control it over time, at least the amount of it if not the actual use of it. He could shut off the flow of magic and turn it on at will, any time he was touching Brittany. He could regulate the amount that was flowing through, like turning a valve. He also learned to trap the magic in himself instead of letting it through into Brittany, a trick that she had never even attempted. He talked her through how he did it with fumbling words, but his description was good enough for her to try and experiment, and she learned that skill, too. The magic inside himself grew strong enough to linger after he stopped touching Brittany—for a few seconds, then a few minutes, longer each time, and he began to imagine a day when he would feel this constantly, when it would be a part of his ordinary existence.

Their physical relationship progressed by degrees, and as their hands wandered lower, the anatomical differences made him more acutely aware of how much he missed Kurt. How much he missed being with a boy. He tried not to think about it too much. He wanted to enjoy what he had while he had it, and he knew he wasn’t yet ready to end things with Brittany and try to win Kurt back.

But when she went down on him for the first time, he lost the ability to concentrate on her. It felt too much like when Kurt did it. Blaine let his head fall back, eyes closed, and managed to whisper “Brit” before Kurt took over his brain. He could feel the hot, wet stretch of Kurt’s mouth around him, his head bobbing up and down slowly. His hands, firm and long-fingered on Blaine’s thighs as he knelt between his feet. The way Kurt would look up at him through beautiful long lashes—if Blaine would only open his eyes and look down at him, that look would melt his heart. Except…

“Brit. Brit. Please stop. I need to stop this for a minute.”

She pulled off and sat back on her heels, looking up at him calmly, just waiting for him to say something. Blaine hastily pulled his pants back up and then took her hand and guided her to sit beside him on the bed.

“I’m sorry, Brit,” he said, bracing himself for her anger or disappointment or whatever would come after his confession. “I was thinking of Kurt.”

She cocked her head. “Is that all? That doesn’t bother me, other boys used to do that kind of thing with me all the time. You can even say his name, I don’t mind.”

“Brittany, that’s not right,” Blaine said. He reached out and cupped the side of her face with his hand. “I don’t want to use you like that. You always should have the full attention of the person you’re with. It’s completely ungentlemanly to do anything else, I couldn’t.”

Brittany smiled at him. “You’re a sweetheart, Blaine Warbler. You must be an incredible boyfriend. It’s no wonder they call you ‘teenage dream’ and ‘teen angel.’”

“Those were just performances, Brit,” he said gently. “I was performing. It’s not really who I am.”

“Are you certain of that?” she asked.

He filed that question away to think about later.

“I’m sorry I can’t be your real boyfriend,” he said, stroking her hair.

“Don’t be sorry,” she said. “I wasn’t looking for a real boyfriend, and you weren’t looking for a real girlfriend. Like I said at the start, we’re what we need for each other.”

“I love you, Brit. Not like I love Kurt, but in a way.”

“I know, Blaine Warbler. I love you like that, too.”

They lay down in the bed together, just cuddling and holding each other in silence for a long while.

“I hope you can still use magic when we’re done,” Brittany said suddenly.

“What do you mean?” Blaine was confused. “I never used magic before. I never even knew about it.”

“Most people who use magic don’t know about it, silly,” Brittany said. “You had little sparks of it that you could reach already, that you always use when you’re performing. It’s just something that people do naturally, if they’re a unicorn. They use their unicorn in the things they do best. But I’ve never been able to use my magic. I see it, and I can give it to people when I’m with them, but I can’t use it myself.”

“Why not?”

“I don’t know. Maybe because I’m not really a unicorn?  Or maybe because I see what it is, and that means I can’t do it on instinct. Maybe you can’t see it and use it at the same time. But that makes me sad because you’re a lot like me, and I don’t want to make you lose your magic with whatever you’re becoming.”

“Maybe it’s possible to do both,” Blaine said.

“Maybe.”

“Maybe together, we can figure out how.”

“Maybe.”

----------------------

Blaine interrupted their make-out session suddenly. “I just realized I don’t even know your full name,” he said. “Brittany S. Pierce. What does the S stand for?”

“I don’t know,” Brittany said, as if it were common not to know your own name.

“You don’t know?” Blaine asked, stunned.

“I haven’t figured it out yet.”

“Have you thought about asking your parents?” Blaine suggested.

“Why would they know?”

Blaine closed his eyes. Sometimes Brittany’s thought processes were just too much for him to take.

“It’s not like you’re one to talk,” Brittany said. “What does the A stand for in your name, Blaine A. Warbler?”

Blaine opened his eyes again and looked at her. “What A? Do you mean Anderson?”

She rolled her eyes at him. “Anderson is just a name you made up because you don’t know what the A really stands for.”

“Um, no, it’s my parents’ last name.”

“That must have made it really easy for you to pick, then.”

Blaine was speechless.

“Can I try going down on you again?” Brittany asked.

Blaine was even more speechless. “Um, that was quite a change of subject,” he finally said.

Brittany waited patiently for an answer.

“Yeah. Yeah, I guess so. If you want.”

He managed to stay focused on her this time, the lovely and enigmatic Brittany S. Pierce, turning his life upside-down and showing him how to rearrange it piece by piece until everything fit together better than ever before. He felt her magic flowing in and through him, and he breathed it in, allowing it to fill his whole body and heighten his orgasm. It felt incredible.

She smiled up at him when they finished, wiping a bit of come from the corner of her mouth. “You taste a little bit like fairy dust, Blaine Warbler. Is it because you’re gay?”

“Brit?” Blaine asked, his eyes wide. “Why are you glowing blue?”

“I always glow blue,” she said. “The glowing is because I’m magic, and I guess it’s blue because I’m a water sign. Except, nobody besides me has ever been able to see it before.”

“I see it now,” Blaine said, amazed.

Brittany grinned at him. “Congratulations, Blaine A. Warbler. You can see magic.”

----------------------

It had been a month since Blaine began to see magic, and it never ceased to amaze him. Most people didn’t glow solidly like Brittany did. Instead, their magic appeared as sparks, usually located in a particular part of their body. He learned to make guesses at associating the sparks with the person’s magical talents. Miss Pillsbury had a cascade of gold sparks in her heart, the empathy that she used to help people sort through their problems. Many of the student athletes had brown sparks running through their muscles. When Artie’s brain lit up with yellow light, everyone could see the logic of his decisions. Rachel came to visit for a few days, and the shimmering red sparks in her throat when she sang were almost as overwhelming as Brittany’s full-body glow.

He saw new things in the world, too. The soft green threads that wove through plants and trees. Colorful lights dancing in the air, though he had no idea what they were. Occasionally he felt something small, like a mouse, skittering at his feet, but when he looked it was always gone.

He could see the magic all the time, but he held his own magic only for a few hours after being with Brittany. He knew he needed to fully become himself before he could even try to get Kurt back. And he knew that Brittany held the key to fully becoming himself. Which was how he found himself here, naked in her bed, holding a condom packet in his trembling hand.

Blaine was terrified. Never in his life had he thought he would ever be in this situation. Blaine Anderson, who had come out at age fourteen, who had known he was gay since he was eleven and suspected it long before then, was about to have sex with a girl.

It was even weirder when he thought about how this act was different in his head than all the others. For months now, he’d been doing things with Brittany that he would definitely have considered as being sex if he’d done them with a guy. And he did consider that he’d been having sex with Brittany when they did those things. But still, this was different somehow. Was it because of all the cultural baggage built up around it, of virginity and purity and sin? Was it because this was the act that people conjured up in their minds when they thought of the phrase “having sex”? Was it because this was something that was impossible between two boys and therefore seemed extra-scary to him? Blaine didn’t know.

“We don’t need to use a condom,” Brittany said, startling Blaine out of the thoughts he’d become lost in. “I’m on the pill, we’re not going to be making any babies here. At least, not any flesh-and-blood babies, just the usual kind. I had a clean STD test, too, so that’s not a problem.”

“I’m clean too,” Blaine stammered, because he had to say something. What he really wanted to say was oh my god, it had completely slipped my mind that what I’m about to do could create a baby, that has always been so far outside my experience of sex before that I didn’t even consider the possibility even though years of excruciatingly embarrassing sex ed classes were designed entirely to pound that idea into my head, how could I possibly have been so stupid?

She saw the shocked look on his face. “Don’t you know where babies come from, Blaine Warbler? When a guy and a girl have sex without protection, the storks see it and decide whether to bring them a baby. I think it’s completely unfair that they won’t give babies to same-sex couples. I was going to start a petition about it, when I was dating Santana, but I was worried that they’d think I wanted a baby right away, and I wasn’t ready for that, so I decided I’d just do it later when I was ready but then we broke up so I never did. I hope you’re not mad at me about that. I know you’re really into marriage equality and stuff.”

He shook his head in wonderment at Brittany’s thought processes for the millionth time. And then the second part of Brittany’s statement hit him. “Um, what do you mean, the ‘usual kind’ of babies?”

“Sex creates life,” she said simply. “Every time, every kind of sex, it creates a new life or it helps to grow one that has been created already. When two people are together, they always make a magical baby, and it lasts as long as their relationship does. Sometimes it’s a lovely little flower that grows and dies in a day. Sometimes, when it’s very wrong, it can be a monster. The best ones can last and grow and change for a whole lifetime. Usually it’s something in between. That’s how I knew it was really over between me and Santana. We had this beautiful red rose together, and even though she said it was not really a break-up, the rose withered and died. I saw it.”

He had to ask. He had to. Even though it was not a nice thing to ask when you’re naked in bed and about to have sex with your not-quite-girlfriend. “What about me and Kurt?”

“I don’t know,” Brittany said. “I haven’t seen it recently. But I didn’t see it die, either.”

He hesitated. “What about me and you?”

“Oh, it’s around here somewhere,” she said, brightening. She glanced around and then pointed to a small, pale blue shape floating near the lamp. “There. I don’t know what it is. All the ones I’ve seen before have been plants or animals. This one is just some kind of weird sphere thing with a ring around it. It looks like Saturn or something. I don’t know what it’s supposed to be.”

Blaine reached out his hand and tried to touch it, but his fingers passed right through, not disturbing it, like a hologram. He couldn’t tell what it was, either.

“So, are we going to have sex?” she asked impatiently.

In answer, Blaine tore open the condom packet.

“I told you we didn’t need that,” she reminded him.

“I … Brit, I wasn’t thinking about pregnancy or STDs when I got the condom out,” he confessed. “I’m just not ready for quite that level of intimacy with you right now. Is that okay?”

“Sure,” she said, smiling gently at him. “We still have some time.” It was April. Graduation was just over a month away, and Blaine would leave for college by the end of summer if not before. He and Brittany hadn’t discussed it, but they both knew this would have to end by then.

He kissed her and then slid the condom on.

He watched the sphere, the one she said was the living symbol of their relationship. He watched it grow slowly larger, glow slightly brighter. When he came, he closed his eyes and listened to Brittany’s soft gasps beneath him.

“Blaine Warbler,” she said a moment later, pleasant laughter in her voice. “Those aren’t Warbler wings.”

He opened his eyes and looked over his shoulder just in time to catch a glimpse of large, shimmering white wings before they faded away. His back tingled where they had connected to his skin.

“What … what are those doing there?” Blaine stammered.

Brittany smiled mysteriously. “I have a guess. But I think you should figure this one out on your own.”

----------------------

Blaine climbed on the bed and kissed Brittany, an ordinary start to an ordinary afternoon.

“We should practice,” she said once his lips left hers.

Oh my god, oh my god, oh my god. Tears filled Blaine’s eyes. She has no idea what she’s saying, he told himself. But the tears flowed down his face anyway. He missed Kurt so much. He could go about his life now, usually the longing was far below the surface, but once something set it off, Blaine felt the pain all over again.

Brittany sat beside him, rubbing his shoulder, until he managed to say something. “I’m sorry, Brit, I just totally lost it there, didn’t I.”

“It’s okay,” she said. “Do you want to talk about it?”

“Not really.” Blaine grabbed a tissue from the table beside the bed and wiped his eyes. “What you said, the way you said it, it just reminded me of a moment with Kurt. I miss him so much, still. I can go on without him now, I’ve learned how to be happy even without him, most of the time, but I don’t want to be without him. I told him once that he’s the love of my life, and that’s still true. I’ll always love him.”

“I know.” There was really nothing for Brittany to say.

Blaine smiled weakly at her, in silent thanks for her support. He wiped his nose with the tissue and blinked a few times, getting himself fully back under control. “What was it you thought we should practice?” he finally asked.

“Doing the magic on purpose,” Brittany said. “Since we can see our own magic, once we turn into our unicorns or whatever, we’ll have to be able to use it on purpose, not just naturally. I’ve never seen anyone do that before. We should try it and figure out what we’re doing.”

Blaine thought this over for a moment. “But how can we do that, since neither of us can actually cast any magic yet?”

Brittany smiled. “I have some ideas about that.”

They both needed time to prepare, so they tried it about a week later. Brittany went first. The two of them sat cross-legged on the bed, facing each other, their knees touching. She’d thought it would be easier if they used physical objects as anchors for the magic instead of trying to cast something in midair. Hers was her cell phone. She set it on the bed beside Blaine, just out of the reach of her right hand.

Blaine took her left hand in both of his. “Ready?” he asked.

Brittany nodded, so Blaine drew in a deep breath and opened his inner gates to flood her with magic.

Brittany’s right hand danced in the air, moving in patterns that she had clearly designed in advance but that Blaine could not understand. Her hand traveled between head and her heart and her mouth and the phone on the bed over and over again, blue magic swirling around and finally coming to rest in and around the phone. “Okay. Done.” Blaine stopped the flow of magic and Brittany withdrew her hand from his. They both stared at the phone, waiting to see if the magic would fade away. It didn’t.

“I think it worked!” Brittany was more excited than Blaine had ever seen her.

“What is it, exactly?” he asked.

“It’s a translator, for my exams. I always know the answers in my head, but when I write them down on the test, the teachers don’t understand them. This will help me translate what I write into that weird language that teachers use so they can see that I actually do know the answers.”

“That’s …  brilliant,” Blaine said. He really thought it was. “Brit, I think you’re the smartest person I’ve ever met.”

She flashed him a big smile. “Nobody’s ever said that to me before.”

“It’s true.”

“It’s your turn,” she said, putting her phone away.

Blaine was more nervous than he thought he should be. He took a silk scarf out of his school bag and unfolded it on the bed, placing it just out of reach of his right hand. It was silvery gray with an image of a white Pegasus in one corner.

“It’s beautiful,” Brittany said.

“Thank you. It’s … it’s for Kurt.”

“Ready?”

“Ready,” Blaine said, holding out his hand to her. Brittany poured the magic into him and he ran it through his heart and out through his right hand into the scarf. He didn’t move his hand the way Brittany had. Instead, he channeled his thoughts, his memories, into the stream of magic. The first moment on that staircase at Dalton when he turned around to see Kurt for the first time. The song he’d sung that day. Every song he’d ever sung to Kurt. Their first kiss, and all the kisses that came after. Their first time together, and every intimate moment they’d shared. Afternoons at the coffee shop. Saturdays at the mall. Evenings cuddled on the couch watching movies. Phone calls and text messages and every single moment Blaine could remember of their time together. Through it all, he focused on the joy, the delight, the peace that they had always shared.

Blaine closed his eyes when he was finished. “Okay. It’s ready,” he whispered. Brittany stopped the magic and let his hand drop.

He couldn’t bring himself to open his eyes. “Did it work?” he asked her.

“Yes,” she said.

He finally looked. The scarf was glowing a strong white, silver sparks floating this way and that inside it. He hesitantly picked it up, then folded it and put it back in his bag.

“Are you going to send it to him?” she asked.

“No,” Blaine said. “I’m going to wait and give it to him in person.”

“I think we’re ready to do this,” Brittany said.

“To claim our inner unicorns?” Blaine asked, a smile on his face.

“That’s what I would have called it before,” Brittany said. “But I think it’s better to say, we’re going to become what we really are.”

“What are we?” Blaine asked.

“Let’s find out.”

----------------------

­Sex creates life, and intimacy creates magic, and change means the destruction of what came before. Blaine and Brittany both understood everything that would require. They lingered over the kisses, gave themselves up to the gentle touches, and finally found themselves naked and face to face with a quiet intensity that they had not experienced together before. They stared into each other’s eyes, confident but still a little bit scared.

“I’m going to miss you, Blaine Warbler.”

“I’m going to miss you too, Brittany Pierce.”

Their bodies joined together, and within them the magic burst through all the boundaries and combined, and for a moment or an eternity they were a single being. Blaine felt the magic from the other world hit his own inner magic and it swelled up, taking over his entire body, until the ecstasy of it was too much and he felt like he would explode. He couldn’t hold all of this within him any longer, and so he came, hot and intense and a relief as he felt Brittany’s body shudder and release at the same time. The pale blue sphere and ring floated into view, larger now, and to his surprise, cracked into two parts. The sphere became a darker blue and floated to rest on Brittany’s outstretched palm. The ring drifted upward, turning pure white, coming to a stop just above his head. And then they were apart, their bodies no longer touching, each filled with their own magic and no trace of the other’s.

They looked at each other, amazed but unsurprised at what they saw.

“Hello, Brittany Sorceress.”

“Hello, Blaine Angel.”

----------------------

This year’s choir room goodbyes were poignant, but not as difficult as last year’s. Brittany and Blaine lingered in the choir room after the others had left, just taking a moment to reflect on the end of their high school years.

“Congratulations on graduating, Brit,” Blaine said. “I don’t know how you managed to pull your GPA up so quickly, but I’m really proud of you.”

“The hard part was convincing them that I didn’t cheat on my finals,” Brittany said. “After that, it was easy to get them to go back and re-grade all my tests from the past five years.” She waved her hand in the air in demonstration, a trail of blue magic swirling behind it.

Blaine laughed. “Good work,” he said.

“But I don’t understand what you’re waiting around for,” Brittany said. “It’s been two weeks. Why haven’t you called Kurt?”

Blaine sat down in a chair and leaned back, sighing. His shimmering wings, visible to nobody but the two of them, cut straight through the back of the chair without leaving a mark. “Because I still don’t understand. I’m supposed to be an angel? What does that even mean? I’m not even religious. And I’m certainly not perfect. Angels are supposed to be perfect.”

Brittany sat in the chair next to him. “Angels aren’t perfect, Blaine. That’s just a myth. They’re perfectionists. They want everyone to think they’re perfect, but they’re not. Just like you.”

“What even is an angel? I keep thinking about it, and I’ve been reading some stuff, and there are so many different interpretations, so many conflicting descriptions.”

Brittany rolled her eyes. “Who cares what anyone else thinks an angel should be? You are one, so whatever you’re like, that’s something an angel can be.”

Blaine stared at her for a moment. “You make everything so simple, Brit. How do you do that?”

She shrugged. “Go call Kurt. It’s time.”

“What are you going to do about Santana?”

Brittany sighed. “I don’t know yet. Now that I can work real magic and change things, I could make it so that we can be together again. I’ve thought of five different ways to do it already. But I don’t know … I’m not sure whether it’s the right thing to do. I love her and all, but it seems … weird to change things that way, you know?”

Blaine put a hand on her shoulder. “If you ever want to talk about it, just call me.”

“Thanks, Blaine. I’ll miss you when you live in New York.”

“If I live in New York.”

She rolled her eyes again and skipped out the door.

Blaine pulled out his phone and hit Kurt’s speed dial before he could talk himself out of it.

“Hi …” Kurt’s voice came tentatively over the line.

“Kurt…” Blaine’s heart dropped to his feet at the sound of Kurt’s voice. He somehow found the words that needed to be said, and the confidence to say them. “I called to tell you that I’m ready. I’ve figured out who I am and what I want. I don’t know if you’re ready too, or if you’re not there yet, or if you’ve moved on and don’t want to speak to me again, or what. I just needed to tell you, I’m in a place where I’m ready to talk this out, if you want to. And I’m at a crossroads. I have a decision to make, and I’d really like your input on it. If you’re willing to talk.”

“I want to talk.” Blaine closed his eyes and breathed a silent prayer of thanks.

“Can we do this in person?” Blaine asked. “Graduation is tomorrow, I can be in New York the next day.”

“Yes. I’ll see you in two days.”

----------------------

Kurt was so beautiful, it was spellbinding. He’d always been gorgeous, tall and pale and slender and with those clear blue eyes giving him an ethereal quality. But now Blaine could also see the silver sparks of magic, in his throat to create his otherworldly singing voice and in his fingertips for his ability to craft and change through touch. The effect was utterly devastating. Blaine stared at him, wide-eyed.

Kurt was staring, too. “Blaine, you look … good. You look really good. It almost looks like you’re glowing, actually.”

“Must be a trick of the light,” Blaine said quickly. 

He stepped inside the apartment and Kurt narrowed his eyes, trying to figure out what was different about Blaine’s appearance. “What kind of moisturizer have you been using?” he asked.

“The same as always,” Blaine said. “We didn’t really come here to talk about moisturizer, did we?”

Kurt invited him over to the small dining table and they sat down, across the corner of the table so they could be close but still face each other.

“I brought something for you,” Blaine said. He reached into his bag and pulled out a small, flat box.

Kurt grinned, always excited to receive a present, but his eyes widened with real pleasure when he opened it and found the Pegasus scarf inside. “Blaine! This is beautiful!” He stroked the fabric and his expression seemed to soften a little bit.

“It’s … I don’t know how this is going to turn out, with us, today,” Blaine said, trying to stop his voice from trembling. “But whatever we decide, even if we never see each other again, I want you to remember all of the good things we had together. I hope you’ll take me back, but if you don’t, I know now that I can go forward on my own and be okay. What would kill me on the inside is if I’ve ruined our past as well as our future. I want you to look back on your memories of me with peace and happiness, something to give you comfort and not pain. Whenever you wear this, I hope it helps you feel that happiness again, whether I’m there with you or not.”

Kurt looked at Blaine with the sweetest expression he’d ever seen. He moved to put the scarf around his neck, but Blaine stopped him. “No, not yet. After we talk, okay?” Blaine said. Kurt didn’t understand why, but he nodded and folded the scarf back up in its box anyway.

“What’s this decision?” Kurt asked. “You said on the phone that you’re at a crossroads.”

Blaine reached into his bag again and pulled out an envelope. He took out the two sheets of paper inside and laid them on the table for Kurt to read. The first was an acceptance letter from the theater program at the University of Michigan. The second was an acceptance letter from the theater program at NYU.

Kurt scanned the text quickly, then looked up at Blaine. “Oh my gosh, congratulations! I am so proud of you, Blaine! It’s everything you’ve ever wanted.” He paused. “Which one are you going to take?”

“That really depends on you,”  Blaine said.

Their eyes locked, and Blaine watched Kurt realize the full weight of this moment. If he said no, it would likely be no forever. Kurt swallowed hard. Blaine couldn’t tell what he was thinking, but he caught a small movement out of the corner of his eye, near Kurt’s foot. He looked down, thinking at first that it might be a mouse. When Blaine realized what it actually was, a smile tugged at the corner of his mouth. Brittany had been absolutely right. It was a tiny Pegasus, silver with glimmering white wings too small for its body, peeking shyly out from behind Kurt’s leg. Hope surged in Blaine’s heart, and he looked back up at Kurt’s face.

“I never stopped loving you,” Blaine told him. The words came out of him in a rush. “Not for a single second, not ever. I made a horrible, unforgivable mistake, and I am so incredibly sorry. I never wanted to hurt you. I never wanted to destroy what we had together. I regret it more than anything I’ve ever done in my whole life. If I could go back in time and change one thing, that would be it. I want you back in my life. I want you and me back together again. I want to be able to make you happy again.”

Kurt reached out and took his hand across the table. Blaine closed his eyes for a moment, trying not to completely melt with the pleasure and relief of it, because there was still so much more that needed to be said.

“Blaine, I always thought of you as my perfect angel,” Kurt said carefully. Blaine’s eyes widened at this, but he let Kurt continue. “You came into my life out of nowhere at a really tough time for me, and having you there made everything better. I thought you would never mess up, that you didn’t need anything from me, because you were so perfect. But of course that’s wrong, you’re human and you’re flawed and you make mistakes just like everyone else. And that’s okay. I can love you even though you made a mistake.”

Blaine blinked back his tears. “I try so hard to be perfect, Kurt. At everything, really, but especially for you. I want to be your perfect angel. The angel who falls down and worships at your feet, and the guardian angel who shelters you and carries you when you can’t walk on your own, both at once and everything you want me to be. Everything that I can be.”

Kurt picked up the NYU letter from the table and held it out to Blaine. “Take this one,” he whispered.

Blaine hesitated. “There’s more that I need to tell you. Kurt, I … kind of dated Brittany. It’s complicated, but we were in a relationship. For more than six months, almost the whole time. We had sex. And not just once. Kind of a lot.”

Kurt hardly seemed surprised at all, considering. “That’s okay. We were broken up, it’s fine that you dated someone else. And, well, we’re adults now and sex is what happens in adult relationships most of the time. But why Brittany? Why did you start dating a girl? Are you …?”

“It wasn’t about dating a girl,” Blaine said. “I’m still gay. It was … Brittany had something very unique about her, she was able to help me, and in the end it didn’t matter that she was a girl. You dated her once, too. What did she do for you?”

Kurt’s answer was immediate. “She helped me understand who I was, and accept it.”

Blaine smiled. “She did exactly the same thing for me. It just took a lot longer.”

Kurt smiled back at him.

“Kurt?” Blaine asked. “Did you date someone else?”

Kurt nodded.

“Did he help you?”

“Yes.”

“Good. I’m glad.” Blaine took a deep breath. “You’re not … you’re not still with him, are you?”

“I broke up with him five minutes after you called me.”

“Kurt…” Blaine drew out his name in a long whine. “How did you know?”

“Your voice, your words, something. It was different. I could tell right away, you’d changed. I didn’t know for certain that it would be everything we needed, but I knew that I had to be free to find out. And it is. It’s right. It’s enough.”

Blaine closed his eyes. “Oh god, Kurt, thank you. Thank you.”

Kurt’s lips were on Blaine’s before he even opened his eyes again. Power surged through Blaine as their mouths moved together, both of them desperate, needing, wanting everything at once. Kurt’s hands tugged at Blaine’s hair and Blaine shivered in ecstasy as he felt the silver sparks from Kurt’s fingers against his skin.

Blaine forced himself to pull back from the kiss even though he wanted nothing more than to lose himself in Kurt’s arms. “There’s so much more to talk about,” Blaine gasped.

“Later,” Kurt said. “Blaine, angel, take me to bed.”

Blaine couldn’t say whether they walked or flew. His feet seemed not to touch the floor. His back seemed not to touch the bed. He knew nothing but being completely engulfed in love and magic, completely himself with the love of his life. Before his eyes, invisible to Kurt, Blaine saw the Pegasus grow from a tiny mouse to full size, its wings now perfectly proportional to its body. It leapt and soared straight through the wall, flying in joyful circles in the night sky.

“I love you forever.”

“Love you. Forever.”