Fic: Glee: Forever (Kurt/Blaine, PG)
It's stoney321's birthday today, and somehow - despite the fact that I am horrible at writing to deadlines and have managed to pull off only a handful of birthday fics over the course of my many years in fandom - I have written her a story in celebration! It should be about a hundred times longer to do any justice to her, but I'm only one woman... and I couldn't ask her to cheerlead her own present! :)
You know how you sometimes are lucky enough to find a friend who just gets you? Not just part of you, like squeeing over cute boys or bonding over being a parent or whatever, but no matter what you say that person just understands, accepts, and frequently feels the same way? I'm fortunate enough to have acquired a handful of wonderful friends like this, and about a year ago I found another in a place I wasn't even looking for it: fandom.
I'd known of stoney321 for the better part of a decade; we had a lot of the same friends in the Buffy and Angel fandoms back in the day, but it wasn't until years later that we followed each other because of discussions around religion. And it wasn't until last summer, while wrapped up in the joy that is Kurt and Blaine, that we really started talking. And then magic happened.
That she turned out to be best beta and cheerleader I could ask for isn't even anywhere near the most amazing thing about her, even if I want to smooch her on the cheek every day for it. She's the kind of heart-to-heart friend (or totally convincing secret sociopath who is going to murder me in my sleep and try to slip into my identity, but I'm hoping for friend) that you don't find often in a lifetime and rarely when you're out of your 20s, and as much as she makes my writing life wonderful she makes my real life even better. I wish we lived next door, but that we can chatter at each other all day long online and travel in person much less frequently is still one of the best things in my world.
Happy Birthday, stoney321! I hope this meager offering warms your heart and makes you smile. <3
Title: "Forever" [on the AO3]
Author: flaming muse
Fandom: Glee
Pairings: Kurt/Blaine
Rating: PG
Word count: 2500
Summary: Moving into a new apartment doesn’t go as they planned. Except it kind of does.
Spoilers: futurefic, but assumed through the end of season 3 just to be safe
Notes: for stoney321 on her birthday!
Disclaimers: The characters belong to various corporate Powers That Be. I make absolutely no profit from playing with them.
Distribution: Please ask.
Feedback is lovely!
“I can only find the flannel sheets,” Kurt said, coming into the living room. He sounded harried, but then he had for most of the day despite how carefully he had tried to plan the move beforehand. He had created detailed spreadsheets, packing lists, and color-coded labels and had directed the movers with an iron fist, and yet now that they were finally moved in it still seemed like a packing store had exploded over their tiny new apartment.
“I like flannel sheets,” Blaine said, not opening his eyes where he was sitting on the floor, leaning limply against the front of the couch with his legs stretched out in front of him. “They’re cozy.” He was exhausted and sore down to his bones, both his shirt and his hair unpleasantly clingy and damp from the day’s exertion, and all he wanted was to be done for the day, or at least for the next five to ten minutes until he felt better or died. Either way would probably be okay.
He just needed five minutes. He couldn’t find the energy to lift his arm to reach his bottle of water nearby. He couldn't even lift his eyelids to see where it was.
“It’s a hundred degrees outside, and we have one barely working air conditioner,” Kurt said. “Which reminds me that I’m delegating all calling of our landlords to you for the rest of our lives, because you’re too cute and charming for anyone but me not to give into you.”
“You’re cute and charming, too,” Blaine said.
Kurt made a sound of disagreement. “Only to you. And not when I’m annoyed. And hot. And I’m going to have to sleep on flannel.”
Blaine let the complaints slide over him and tried to focus on something constructive, because if he only had so much energy left in his body today he wanted to use it fixing the problems. “Okay, so where are the other sheets? The summer ones.”
“In a large cardboard box marked sheets.”
Blaine cracked an eye open. The living room was filled with a jumble of boxes piled around pieces of furniture, but they’d only been able to afford a small, one-bedroom apartment. There were only so many places that box could be. “That shouldn’t be too hard to find.”
Kurt gestured around with an impatient hand. “And yet.”
“Do you want me to move some boxes?” Blaine shifted the ice pack - actually a bag of frozen vegetables Kurt had hurried to fetch from the bodega on the corner - on his knee and got his hands on the floor to push himself up onto his feet. “I’ll lift, you see what’s underneath? It has to be here somewhere. The movers probably put it in the wrong room.”
"I don't know how I could mark multiple sides of each box and yet they still managed to put every single one blank side out," Kurt said, sinking down on the couch beside him. His hand landed on Blaine’s shoulder and kept him from getting up. “No, Blaine. You’re hurt,” Kurt told him gently.
With a relieved sigh, Blaine leaned into Kurt’s leg and pressed his sweat-sticky cheek against it. He knew Kurt wouldn’t mind; he was wearing old jeans. “I just twisted it.”
Kurt rubbed his shoulder and slid his hand up into Blaine’s hair, carding it with gentle, magical fingers. “I’m going looking for the ace bandage after the sheets.”
“I’ll be okay.” Blaine showed him the bag of vegetables and let his eyes slide shut as Kurt continued to pet his hair. He wasn’t that hurt, really, apart from the way every muscle in him ached and his brain felt like it was mush between his ears at this point in the day, but he knew that Kurt had to be feeling the same way. There was no way in which moving to a new home - even their first together, with all of the excitement they felt about it - wasn’t hard work.
“I know,” Kurt said. He was quiet for a long moment, the only sounds their soft breathing, the whir of the fan in the kitchen, and the varied sounds of the city street filtering through their closed window.
It was almost entirely unfamiliar, apart from the whisper of Kurt’s fingers against his scalp, but it still made Blaine smile. It was something new, but it was new together, the first time where they had a door that they truly could shut with them on one side and the rest of the world on the other, and that was utterly wonderful.
It sounded like Kurt felt similarly, because there was a smile in his voice when he finally said, “If we use only a light blanket I’m sure the flannel will be fine for a day or two.”
Blaine turned his head and kissed Kurt’s knee. Sadly, it wasn’t bare. He loved Kurt’s bare legs, and wasn’t part of the point of this move that he got to see them more? “It’ll be nice. Cozy.”
“Mmm.” After another minute or two, Kurt dropped his hand back to Blaine’s shoulder with a sigh. His fingers gently rubbed over the curve of Blaine's arm. “This isn’t how I thought things would go," he mused.
Blaine blinked his eyes open; he hadn’t realized he’d shut them again. “Hmm?”
“This isn’t what I imagined our first night living together would be like.”
“What did you think?” Blaine tipped his head back against the seat of the couch so he could look upside-down at Kurt’s face. Even from that angle, it was perfect.
“For one, I thought it would be about thirty degrees cooler,” Kurt said, his gaze drifting around the room. “Everything would be organized and already mostly away by now, not mixed up by those horrible movers. We’d have the windows open, the sounds of our new neighborhood as our music as we nibbled cheese and crudités from that perfect cutting board I found the other day that’s now lost in one of the boxes in here because there isn’t room in the kitchen to unpack the kitchen. I thought we’d talk while we made our first meal here together instead of being two floors apart gulping down that awful cardboard pizza we had delivered because we were still supervising the movers at dinner time.”
Kurt looked down at Blaine, smiling at him sadly. “I thought there might even be some romantic, candlelit dancing in your arms before finally getting into bed - our bed - between nice, crisp, cool sheets.”
“That all sounds wonderful, Kurt.” Blaine reached up to take Kurt’s hand and brought it to his mouth, softly kissing the back of it and keeping hold after he lifted it from his lips. The whole night sounded amazing, really, like a perfect scene from a movie except they could live it, but then pretty much everything Kurt ever dreamed up was amazing. It was one of the reasons Blaine felt so lucky to be in love with him.
Kurt smiled again, curling his fingers around Blaine’s. “Did you ever think about what it would be like? Our first night here?”
“Of course I did,” Blaine said with a smile of his own. He’d been thinking about it for months, years, long before him moving to New York to be with Kurt had been a reality, long before Kurt had even gone.
“And?”
Blaine thought for a moment, remembering all of the ideas he'd turned over in his head while drifting happily to sleep, while curled in lonely misery into his pillow wishing desperately he could still smell Kurt on it, while holding Kurt's hand as they walked down the street when he visited. He'd thought about it so many times, and the only answer he could give Kurt was, “Like this.”
It wasn’t quite true, because he’d imagined watching Kurt fall asleep and lying there beside him for hours tracking the rise and fall of his chest, he’d imagined surprising Kurt with kisses in the kitchen, on the couch, at the bathroom sink, when they passed in their narrow hallway, he’d imagined weaving their voices in song from opposite ends of the apartment as they unpacked and smiling across their tiny table over a meal he couldn’t even dream about because what he wanted to do was drink in Kurt’s beloved face instead - all just because he finally could. He imagined so many wonderful things he'd finally get to do.
And yet, this night was somehow exactly right, too. This was exactly it.
“What?” Kurt said, sitting up straight, shocked. He put his hand on Blaine’s forehead. “Are you having heat stroke? Where's your water?”
“Not this in specific,” Blaine said, laughing, and turned to face him. “Not the little things that have gone wrong, but the big thing.”
“What big thing?” Kurt asked. His t-shirt was smeared with dirt, his bangs were drooping over his forehead, a bruise was developing on his bicep, and his cheeks were flushed and freckled. He looked utterly perfect.
“Us. Us finally getting to be together, not just for visits or vacations but all the time." Blaine ran his free hand over Kurt's knee, because he could, because Kurt was there and he was there and he could now, all of the time, any time he wanted to if Kurt wanted it, too. "This is what I thought about. Us being together. Everything else is just a detail.”
Kurt’s face began to crumple into the kind of joyous, elated smile Blaine had only ever seen directed at himself. He wished he could keep each one of them in his heart to pull out on days when he wasn’t able to make Kurt’s every dream come true to remind himself that sometimes he got it very right.
“We're finally doing this,” Kurt breathed. "We're finally here."
Blaine nodded, caught in the emotion written so plainly across Kurt's face and the fact that there was no reason for Kurt to hide even a drop of it because he never had to hide anything from Blaine.
Letting go of Blaine’s hand, Kurt slipped down onto the floor beside him and cupped his face. "I love you, Blaine Anderson," he said softly, still smiling, and then leaned in and pressed kiss after ever-deeper kiss to his mouth until Blaine’s breath was coming hard and his hands were sliding under the back of Kurt’s shirt, seeking out all of that skin that if he was very fortunate and very good was always going to be his to touch.
But when Kurt slid his leg over Blaine’s lap to straddle him, instead of a moan Kurt gave a squeak and pushed away in a hurry, grabbing the bag of vegetables that he’d apparently sat on and shooting it a murderous look before starting to laugh.
"Sorry," Blaine said, trying to pull him back, but Kurt dropped the bag to the side and sat back on his heels, offering Blaine his hand.
“I am officially calling an end to this disastrous day of moving,” he said, pulling Blaine up to his feet. “Unpacking can begin tomorrow. Come help me make the bed. Then we can shower and get in it.”
“Together,” Blaine said with a dizzying rush of happiness. This was them now, twinge in his knee, Kurt's schedules and lists, and everything else.
“Together,” Kurt agreed as he led Blaine down the short hallway to their bedroom. "At least the bed, because that shower is tiny, and I'm not sure tonight is the night to see if we can both fit in there."
"We can both fit," Blaine assured him. "I don't mind being really close."
Kurt grinned at him over his shoulder and said with obvious fondness, "Another day."
Blaine tugged on Kurt's hand to slow him, because they'd have another day, and another one after that, and thousands more to follow. He kissed Kurt gently in the threshold of their room and again at the end of the bed, indulging that part of his fantasy and making Kurt's eyes go soft in return, but then they got to work pulling out sheets and a blanket from one of the boxes and unfolding and tucking them onto the bed that was once Kurt’s, where Kurt had slept on lonely nights and had not slept on stolen afternoons of intimacy between them, but now belonged to them both.
It was theirs. Everything was. Their books, their towels, their sheet music, their carton of milk in the fridge, once they had milk in the fridge. With a few exceptions like wardrobes and toothbrushes, all of these things were no longer Kurt's or Blaine's; they were theirs. They were their own people and would continue to be, but the sharp edges that had always had to define them as separate, as apart, as two boys in different houses and sometimes different schools or states, as two boys who were in love but not necessarily accepted or acknowledged for it, had blurred just a bit more.
Watching Kurt leaning over the opposite edge of the bed in a box-filled room making a perfect hospital corner with the wrong sheets in a dirty outfit to the light of a bare-bulbed lamp because they hadn’t yet unpacked its shade, Blaine found himself beaming. His heart was so full he felt like it could burst in his chest and take half of the block with it. It everything he’d ever wanted. It was everything.
"Blaine?" Kurt asked, sounding mildly annoyed, and Blaine blinked back to himself to see his boyfriend holding out a pillowcase toward him. Kurt shook it a little, like he had been offering it for some time.
“This is what I imagined,” Blaine told him. “The two of us. Figuring it out together and making it work.”
Kurt stared at him for a moment, his arm still held out over the bed, and then he slowly lowered the pillowcase to the blanket and began to smile. Somehow he seemed able to look beyond Blaine’s own sweaty shirt and all of the work they had yet to do and smiled right back at him, as wide as Blaine had ever seen, like he was seeing exactly the same perfect moment.
“This is what our forever looks like,” Blaine told him, awed and thrilled all at once. It felt too big to hold onto, and yet he knew he could.
Kurt glanced around the room, taking in the details like they were all completely new to him. He looked back at Blaine, his eyes luminous and so very happy.
Blaine reached out for him, meeting him on his knees halfway across the bed, pulling him into his arms, and burying his face against Kurt's shoulder for a long, grateful moment before finding his smiling mouth with his own.
"This is our forever," Kurt echoed in a murmur against his lips before kissing him back and easing Blaine down onto the blanket. He draped himself over Blaine's chest, his hands in Blaine's hair, and kissed him until they were both breathless and aching not from the move but from how much more they needed from each other.
And they could have it.
~end~
You know how you sometimes are lucky enough to find a friend who just gets you? Not just part of you, like squeeing over cute boys or bonding over being a parent or whatever, but no matter what you say that person just understands, accepts, and frequently feels the same way? I'm fortunate enough to have acquired a handful of wonderful friends like this, and about a year ago I found another in a place I wasn't even looking for it: fandom.
I'd known of stoney321 for the better part of a decade; we had a lot of the same friends in the Buffy and Angel fandoms back in the day, but it wasn't until years later that we followed each other because of discussions around religion. And it wasn't until last summer, while wrapped up in the joy that is Kurt and Blaine, that we really started talking. And then magic happened.
That she turned out to be best beta and cheerleader I could ask for isn't even anywhere near the most amazing thing about her, even if I want to smooch her on the cheek every day for it. She's the kind of heart-to-heart friend (or totally convincing secret sociopath who is going to murder me in my sleep and try to slip into my identity, but I'm hoping for friend) that you don't find often in a lifetime and rarely when you're out of your 20s, and as much as she makes my writing life wonderful she makes my real life even better. I wish we lived next door, but that we can chatter at each other all day long online and travel in person much less frequently is still one of the best things in my world.
Happy Birthday, stoney321! I hope this meager offering warms your heart and makes you smile. <3
Title: "Forever" [on the AO3]
Author: flaming muse
Fandom: Glee
Pairings: Kurt/Blaine
Rating: PG
Word count: 2500
Summary: Moving into a new apartment doesn’t go as they planned. Except it kind of does.
Spoilers: futurefic, but assumed through the end of season 3 just to be safe
Notes: for stoney321 on her birthday!
Disclaimers: The characters belong to various corporate Powers That Be. I make absolutely no profit from playing with them.
Distribution: Please ask.
Feedback is lovely!
“I can only find the flannel sheets,” Kurt said, coming into the living room. He sounded harried, but then he had for most of the day despite how carefully he had tried to plan the move beforehand. He had created detailed spreadsheets, packing lists, and color-coded labels and had directed the movers with an iron fist, and yet now that they were finally moved in it still seemed like a packing store had exploded over their tiny new apartment.
“I like flannel sheets,” Blaine said, not opening his eyes where he was sitting on the floor, leaning limply against the front of the couch with his legs stretched out in front of him. “They’re cozy.” He was exhausted and sore down to his bones, both his shirt and his hair unpleasantly clingy and damp from the day’s exertion, and all he wanted was to be done for the day, or at least for the next five to ten minutes until he felt better or died. Either way would probably be okay.
He just needed five minutes. He couldn’t find the energy to lift his arm to reach his bottle of water nearby. He couldn't even lift his eyelids to see where it was.
“It’s a hundred degrees outside, and we have one barely working air conditioner,” Kurt said. “Which reminds me that I’m delegating all calling of our landlords to you for the rest of our lives, because you’re too cute and charming for anyone but me not to give into you.”
“You’re cute and charming, too,” Blaine said.
Kurt made a sound of disagreement. “Only to you. And not when I’m annoyed. And hot. And I’m going to have to sleep on flannel.”
Blaine let the complaints slide over him and tried to focus on something constructive, because if he only had so much energy left in his body today he wanted to use it fixing the problems. “Okay, so where are the other sheets? The summer ones.”
“In a large cardboard box marked sheets.”
Blaine cracked an eye open. The living room was filled with a jumble of boxes piled around pieces of furniture, but they’d only been able to afford a small, one-bedroom apartment. There were only so many places that box could be. “That shouldn’t be too hard to find.”
Kurt gestured around with an impatient hand. “And yet.”
“Do you want me to move some boxes?” Blaine shifted the ice pack - actually a bag of frozen vegetables Kurt had hurried to fetch from the bodega on the corner - on his knee and got his hands on the floor to push himself up onto his feet. “I’ll lift, you see what’s underneath? It has to be here somewhere. The movers probably put it in the wrong room.”
"I don't know how I could mark multiple sides of each box and yet they still managed to put every single one blank side out," Kurt said, sinking down on the couch beside him. His hand landed on Blaine’s shoulder and kept him from getting up. “No, Blaine. You’re hurt,” Kurt told him gently.
With a relieved sigh, Blaine leaned into Kurt’s leg and pressed his sweat-sticky cheek against it. He knew Kurt wouldn’t mind; he was wearing old jeans. “I just twisted it.”
Kurt rubbed his shoulder and slid his hand up into Blaine’s hair, carding it with gentle, magical fingers. “I’m going looking for the ace bandage after the sheets.”
“I’ll be okay.” Blaine showed him the bag of vegetables and let his eyes slide shut as Kurt continued to pet his hair. He wasn’t that hurt, really, apart from the way every muscle in him ached and his brain felt like it was mush between his ears at this point in the day, but he knew that Kurt had to be feeling the same way. There was no way in which moving to a new home - even their first together, with all of the excitement they felt about it - wasn’t hard work.
“I know,” Kurt said. He was quiet for a long moment, the only sounds their soft breathing, the whir of the fan in the kitchen, and the varied sounds of the city street filtering through their closed window.
It was almost entirely unfamiliar, apart from the whisper of Kurt’s fingers against his scalp, but it still made Blaine smile. It was something new, but it was new together, the first time where they had a door that they truly could shut with them on one side and the rest of the world on the other, and that was utterly wonderful.
It sounded like Kurt felt similarly, because there was a smile in his voice when he finally said, “If we use only a light blanket I’m sure the flannel will be fine for a day or two.”
Blaine turned his head and kissed Kurt’s knee. Sadly, it wasn’t bare. He loved Kurt’s bare legs, and wasn’t part of the point of this move that he got to see them more? “It’ll be nice. Cozy.”
“Mmm.” After another minute or two, Kurt dropped his hand back to Blaine’s shoulder with a sigh. His fingers gently rubbed over the curve of Blaine's arm. “This isn’t how I thought things would go," he mused.
Blaine blinked his eyes open; he hadn’t realized he’d shut them again. “Hmm?”
“This isn’t what I imagined our first night living together would be like.”
“What did you think?” Blaine tipped his head back against the seat of the couch so he could look upside-down at Kurt’s face. Even from that angle, it was perfect.
“For one, I thought it would be about thirty degrees cooler,” Kurt said, his gaze drifting around the room. “Everything would be organized and already mostly away by now, not mixed up by those horrible movers. We’d have the windows open, the sounds of our new neighborhood as our music as we nibbled cheese and crudités from that perfect cutting board I found the other day that’s now lost in one of the boxes in here because there isn’t room in the kitchen to unpack the kitchen. I thought we’d talk while we made our first meal here together instead of being two floors apart gulping down that awful cardboard pizza we had delivered because we were still supervising the movers at dinner time.”
Kurt looked down at Blaine, smiling at him sadly. “I thought there might even be some romantic, candlelit dancing in your arms before finally getting into bed - our bed - between nice, crisp, cool sheets.”
“That all sounds wonderful, Kurt.” Blaine reached up to take Kurt’s hand and brought it to his mouth, softly kissing the back of it and keeping hold after he lifted it from his lips. The whole night sounded amazing, really, like a perfect scene from a movie except they could live it, but then pretty much everything Kurt ever dreamed up was amazing. It was one of the reasons Blaine felt so lucky to be in love with him.
Kurt smiled again, curling his fingers around Blaine’s. “Did you ever think about what it would be like? Our first night here?”
“Of course I did,” Blaine said with a smile of his own. He’d been thinking about it for months, years, long before him moving to New York to be with Kurt had been a reality, long before Kurt had even gone.
“And?”
Blaine thought for a moment, remembering all of the ideas he'd turned over in his head while drifting happily to sleep, while curled in lonely misery into his pillow wishing desperately he could still smell Kurt on it, while holding Kurt's hand as they walked down the street when he visited. He'd thought about it so many times, and the only answer he could give Kurt was, “Like this.”
It wasn’t quite true, because he’d imagined watching Kurt fall asleep and lying there beside him for hours tracking the rise and fall of his chest, he’d imagined surprising Kurt with kisses in the kitchen, on the couch, at the bathroom sink, when they passed in their narrow hallway, he’d imagined weaving their voices in song from opposite ends of the apartment as they unpacked and smiling across their tiny table over a meal he couldn’t even dream about because what he wanted to do was drink in Kurt’s beloved face instead - all just because he finally could. He imagined so many wonderful things he'd finally get to do.
And yet, this night was somehow exactly right, too. This was exactly it.
“What?” Kurt said, sitting up straight, shocked. He put his hand on Blaine’s forehead. “Are you having heat stroke? Where's your water?”
“Not this in specific,” Blaine said, laughing, and turned to face him. “Not the little things that have gone wrong, but the big thing.”
“What big thing?” Kurt asked. His t-shirt was smeared with dirt, his bangs were drooping over his forehead, a bruise was developing on his bicep, and his cheeks were flushed and freckled. He looked utterly perfect.
“Us. Us finally getting to be together, not just for visits or vacations but all the time." Blaine ran his free hand over Kurt's knee, because he could, because Kurt was there and he was there and he could now, all of the time, any time he wanted to if Kurt wanted it, too. "This is what I thought about. Us being together. Everything else is just a detail.”
Kurt’s face began to crumple into the kind of joyous, elated smile Blaine had only ever seen directed at himself. He wished he could keep each one of them in his heart to pull out on days when he wasn’t able to make Kurt’s every dream come true to remind himself that sometimes he got it very right.
“We're finally doing this,” Kurt breathed. "We're finally here."
Blaine nodded, caught in the emotion written so plainly across Kurt's face and the fact that there was no reason for Kurt to hide even a drop of it because he never had to hide anything from Blaine.
Letting go of Blaine’s hand, Kurt slipped down onto the floor beside him and cupped his face. "I love you, Blaine Anderson," he said softly, still smiling, and then leaned in and pressed kiss after ever-deeper kiss to his mouth until Blaine’s breath was coming hard and his hands were sliding under the back of Kurt’s shirt, seeking out all of that skin that if he was very fortunate and very good was always going to be his to touch.
But when Kurt slid his leg over Blaine’s lap to straddle him, instead of a moan Kurt gave a squeak and pushed away in a hurry, grabbing the bag of vegetables that he’d apparently sat on and shooting it a murderous look before starting to laugh.
"Sorry," Blaine said, trying to pull him back, but Kurt dropped the bag to the side and sat back on his heels, offering Blaine his hand.
“I am officially calling an end to this disastrous day of moving,” he said, pulling Blaine up to his feet. “Unpacking can begin tomorrow. Come help me make the bed. Then we can shower and get in it.”
“Together,” Blaine said with a dizzying rush of happiness. This was them now, twinge in his knee, Kurt's schedules and lists, and everything else.
“Together,” Kurt agreed as he led Blaine down the short hallway to their bedroom. "At least the bed, because that shower is tiny, and I'm not sure tonight is the night to see if we can both fit in there."
"We can both fit," Blaine assured him. "I don't mind being really close."
Kurt grinned at him over his shoulder and said with obvious fondness, "Another day."
Blaine tugged on Kurt's hand to slow him, because they'd have another day, and another one after that, and thousands more to follow. He kissed Kurt gently in the threshold of their room and again at the end of the bed, indulging that part of his fantasy and making Kurt's eyes go soft in return, but then they got to work pulling out sheets and a blanket from one of the boxes and unfolding and tucking them onto the bed that was once Kurt’s, where Kurt had slept on lonely nights and had not slept on stolen afternoons of intimacy between them, but now belonged to them both.
It was theirs. Everything was. Their books, their towels, their sheet music, their carton of milk in the fridge, once they had milk in the fridge. With a few exceptions like wardrobes and toothbrushes, all of these things were no longer Kurt's or Blaine's; they were theirs. They were their own people and would continue to be, but the sharp edges that had always had to define them as separate, as apart, as two boys in different houses and sometimes different schools or states, as two boys who were in love but not necessarily accepted or acknowledged for it, had blurred just a bit more.
Watching Kurt leaning over the opposite edge of the bed in a box-filled room making a perfect hospital corner with the wrong sheets in a dirty outfit to the light of a bare-bulbed lamp because they hadn’t yet unpacked its shade, Blaine found himself beaming. His heart was so full he felt like it could burst in his chest and take half of the block with it. It everything he’d ever wanted. It was everything.
"Blaine?" Kurt asked, sounding mildly annoyed, and Blaine blinked back to himself to see his boyfriend holding out a pillowcase toward him. Kurt shook it a little, like he had been offering it for some time.
“This is what I imagined,” Blaine told him. “The two of us. Figuring it out together and making it work.”
Kurt stared at him for a moment, his arm still held out over the bed, and then he slowly lowered the pillowcase to the blanket and began to smile. Somehow he seemed able to look beyond Blaine’s own sweaty shirt and all of the work they had yet to do and smiled right back at him, as wide as Blaine had ever seen, like he was seeing exactly the same perfect moment.
“This is what our forever looks like,” Blaine told him, awed and thrilled all at once. It felt too big to hold onto, and yet he knew he could.
Kurt glanced around the room, taking in the details like they were all completely new to him. He looked back at Blaine, his eyes luminous and so very happy.
Blaine reached out for him, meeting him on his knees halfway across the bed, pulling him into his arms, and burying his face against Kurt's shoulder for a long, grateful moment before finding his smiling mouth with his own.
"This is our forever," Kurt echoed in a murmur against his lips before kissing him back and easing Blaine down onto the blanket. He draped himself over Blaine's chest, his hands in Blaine's hair, and kissed him until they were both breathless and aching not from the move but from how much more they needed from each other.
And they could have it.
~end~