Today’s the day.

Kurt repeats that in his head as he straightens his desk, his shirt, his tie, reorganizes his top desk drawer, and cleans up the contacts on his phone to calm his heart running laps in his chest, the hard knot forming in his throat jostling beneath the buttoned top-button of his shirt with every beat. Today’s the day he plucks up the courage to tell one Blaine Anderson exactly what he thinks of him, every last, painful detail, with nothing left out.

And depending on how well that goes over, this will either be the greatest day of Kurt’s life, or he’ll have to find a new job, because there will be no way he can come back to Vogue and see Blaine’s face every day if Kurt tells him he’s in love with him and Blaine doesn’t love him back.

Of course, if the speech he has planned attracts an audience, he could be out of a job anyway. With the rumors about the orgies that supposedly run rampant at Vogue “after hours”, Kurt never dreamed the company would actually have a stricter than strict ‘no office relations’ policy. That policy could mean losing his job if he tells Blaine – sweet, gorgeous, compassionate Blaine – that in the two years, five months, one week, and four days that they have both been working there, Kurt has been in love with him every single second.

Kurt has been thinking it over for weeks now, weighing the pros and cons of choosing Blaine over his job. If Kurt does end up losing his job at Vogue, he can console himself with the fact that he never intended on working at Vogue forever anyway. It was a stop gap, a stepping stone, an unpaid intern position that kept going long after he had something else on the side to pay the bills. But then, he and Blaine got hired on as “permanent” employees, and Kurt couldn’t find a reason to leave. He had a steady salary, health insurance, a pension plan, he got to see Blaine five days a week – life seemed close to perfect. But, in reality, Kurt had every intention of striking out on his own. He’s been working up to that goal, putting together designs for his own clothing line in his spare time. If he loses his job, well, he’ll take that as an omen that now is the time to do something different with his life.

It’s a frightening prospect, losing his security net, but when he considers the many ways this could go, that’s not really what frightens him.

What if he’s not the one who loses his job? What if Blaine does, and he resents Kurt for it?

What if he feels Kurt’s not worth it?

That thought stops Kurt in his tracks, halts his footsteps on the short walk between his office and Blaine’s. He wrings his hands, trying to decide whether to keep going, even if he ends up making up some dumb excuse at the last minute for why he’s there, or turn around and go back the way he came, hide out in his own office and sulk, scolding himself for his cowardice?

He knows people are watching him. He feels that audience he wants to avoid staring at him like he’s a store front mannequin.

Well, at least he dressed fabulously this morning.

He takes a deep breath and sighs. No. It’s decided. No more wondering and waiting. Today’s the day. His freezing cold feet and the lead bricks in his stomach be damned. Kurt is going to tell Blaine how he feels, and then, if Blaine feels the same way, too, they can figure it out. There has to be a way if they both have the will, right?

He just needs to know if Blaine has the will.

Kurt has it the whole scene planned out, every word he wants to say imprinted in his brain like a monologue. The performer in him even maps out how he’ll stand, which way he’ll face, what marks he’ll hit during the course of conversation and when.

But when Kurt walks into Blaine’s office, he sees the one thing he didn’t expect in a hundred years.

Blaine’s office is practically empty. Not the furniture, of course, but the pictures on the walls, the diplomas, the awards, the books. There are boxes on Blaine’s desk filled to the brim with personal effects, with Blaine bouncing back and forth between them, packing his things.

Kurt stares, bug-eyed for a moment, the cold in his feet creeping up his legs and his torso to weigh down his arms. What was Blaine doing? Redecorating? Please, please, oh God … please be redecorating.

Blaine looks up before Kurt gets the chance to knock, his eyes bright, his smile as devastating as ever. “Oh, hey!”

“Hey!” Kurt manages. He also manages a step inside, but beyond that, he has no idea how he’s going to survive the next few minutes.

“You’re just the person I wanted to see. I was going to stop by your office in a bit and tell you the good news!”

“And what news is that?”

“I’ve been hired by Harper’s Bazaar!”

“Oh,” Kurt squeaks. The knot that was forming in his throat is now a full-fledged boulder. He clears his throat to get around it. “That’s … that’s wonderful!”

“Yes! It is!” Blaine cheers. He tosses a few unbreakable odds and ends into the least filled box.

Kurt goes quiet, that speech of his a far, distant memory as Blaine starts clearing out his drawers, pulling folders out by the handfuls. Kurt finds his forward momentum and walks towards Blaine’s desk, empty except for his blotter and the standard issue wood stand-up plaque with his name on it. Kurt picks up the plaque and runs his finger over the engraved surface. It’s the same one Vogue gave Blaine when he was hired on.

Kurt’s had his changed three times already. He was never happy with the first two. But that’s Kurt, always eager to change things until they’re perfect, whereas Blaine makes due with what he’s given.

So what’s different now?

Why is he leaving?

Blaine stops packing. He watches Kurt stare at his name plate. Kurt traced over the letters of his name with his fingertip, then sadly packs it into the box, his brow pinched in the middle. “Hey! Why do you look so bummed out?”

Kurt sighs. He thinks back to just a bit ago when he kept telling himself that today’s the day. That’s suddenly changed to it’s now or never. He either takes his shot, or he lives here on out knowing that he had the chance and he blew it, that he let Blaine go without ever telling him how he feels. And the first day Kurt hears about Blaine’s great new boyfriend that he met after getting his fantastic new job will be Kurt’s last day on Earth.

“I’m going to miss you, Blaine,” Kurt says, smiling at a picture in the box of Blaine in his high school days, a younger version of the same dapper man he is now, dressed in a smart blue blazer and striped tie. “We met in the elevator downstairs on the day that we interviewed. I’ve seen you every single day since we started. In the beginning, you were my only friend.”

“Yeah, well, that didn’t last long,” Blaine teases. “The line to get into your office for gossip during lunch is legendary, even for Vogue.”

“But you never needed to wait in line, Blaine,” Kurt says. “In fact, I would have rather spent every lunch hour with only you because I …” Kurt stops. He finds too late that he can’t tell him. Telling Blaine will only make things worse. If Blaine felt the same way about him from the get-go, wouldn’t he have told Kurt he was interviewing for another job? Wouldn’t he have wanted to share his excitement? Wouldn’t he have asked Kurt to keep his fingers crossed for him?

The truth is it’s easy for Blaine to leave. It’s easy for him to take that job without telling Kurt beforehand because Kurt doesn’t mean as much to Blaine as Blaine means to Kurt.

“Kurt, me getting this job isn’t the end of us being friends,” Blaine explains, stepping away from the boxes overflowing with the very memories Kurt knows he’ll miss when Blaine leaves, and making his way around the desk. “In fact, I’d like to think of it as a wonderful new beginning.” Kurt assumes Blaine will stop in front of him and offer him a parting handshake, maybe even a hug. But he walks past him instead and closes his (soon to be ex) office door. After he throws the lock, he goes a step further, drawing the blinds on the two windows that face the interior of the Vogue office.

Kurt watches him with confusion. “I don’t … what do you mean?”

“I mean, I’m stoked that I get a corner office, creative control, an expense account, and all the other perks that come with it ...”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah, you don’t have to rub it in,” Kurt mutters, because even though he’s a little higher on the Vogue totem pole than Blaine, he’s not that much higher up. If he wasn’t already drooling over Blaine’s corner office, he’d be pea green over his creative control. And an expense account? Why doesn’t Blaine just stab him through the heart with his letter opener?

“But the main reason why this new job is so wonderful is because now I get to do this …” Blaine stands in front of him, no longer smiling, but he doesn’t look tremendously serious, either. He looks … eager, and hopeful, and anxious, and relieved. But why he looks all of those things all at once, Kurt has no idea. Blaine’s office is quiet, not because of the closed door because, really, that does next to nothing in an atmosphere like Vogue, where’s there’s constant activity and constant conversation, with barely a break for breath in between. It’s quiet because those people outside don’t exist anymore, not as long as Blaine has his eyes locked on Kurt’s face, on his lips, raising a hand to Kurt’s cheek to pull him closer. “I’ve wanted to do this for a long time,” Blaine breathes as he inches towards Kurt’s mouth. His eyes flicker up to Kurt’s eyes for a second as he asks, “Do you mind?”

“N-no,” Kurt says softly. “Not at all.”

Kurt has dreamed of kissing Blaine an embarrassing number of times. Of course he has. Blaine is that unfair mixture of absolutely adorable and drop-to-your-knees-without-being-told sexy. Even his demeanor switches from Scottish Fold kitten one second to dominant black panther in the blink of an eye. But even if he didn’t look like a cross between Elvis Presley and Howard Keel, if he had a receding hairline, one eye, and a hump, Kurt would still love him because he’s the most genuine, the most caring, the most intensely passionate man that Kurt has ever met.

Blaine’s lips touching Kurt’s flood Kurt’s veins with fire, but it’s the sound of Blaine’s breath as it catches, the feel of his hand creeping up Kurt’s arm, the warmth of Blaine’s palm against his cheek, moving to cradle the back of his head, that makes Kurt weak at the knees.

Blaine brushes dry lips against Kurt’s mouth, but he doesn’t ask for more than that, content to test the water with his toes first before he jumps in with both feet.

Because he’s been in love with Kurt since the moment he met him, and he’ll be damned if he does anything to lose him.

“How long have you wanted to do that?” Kurt whispers as Blaine backs away to lay soft kisses at the corner of Kurt’s mouth.

“Since the day I started working here,” Blaine admits, dropping a kiss on Kurt’s chin.

“What a coincidence,” Kurt chuckles, soaking in the incredible sensation of Blaine’s lips on his skin. “I may have felt the same way.”

“Maybe?” Blaine asks, closing in on Kurt’s mouth again, with strokes of his thumb to Kurt’s jaw bone.

“Yeah,” Kurt says, melting into his kisses, one by one, every dream he’s ever had about this man beginning to come true. “Just maybe.”

“Well, that is a coincidence,” Blaine says, smiling against Kurt’s cheek as he travels to his earlobe. “Do you want to hear another amazing coincidence?”

“Sure,” Kurt says with a giddy hiccup. How could this day get any better? There’s no possible way. Kurt isn’t that lucky. These kisses alone are probably taxing out his good karma meter big time. “Go ahead. Amaze me.”

“At my new job?” Kiss. “Down at Harper’s?” Kiss. “There’s an opening in my department … and they don’t have a policy against employees dating.”