A/N: For Day 2 of Klaine Week '13: AU. In this everything is as it is in canon except Kurt and Blaine never got together. I didn't think through the specifics of it, so please try not to either.
Disclaimer: Not mine.
The Love of Blaine's Life
by padfoot
...
The love of Blaine's life appeared one day through the window of a coffee shop.
His hair was dyed blonde, dotted with flakes of snow and messily windswept. He wore a blue t-shirt and grey jeans with a tear in the knee, with red converse on his feet. His appearance at that time on that day was nothing short of perfect, but it was also painfully brief. By the time Blaine had lowered his cup of coffee and gone running out the door, the busy streets of New York had swallowed the man up whole and Blaine was left standing out in the cold, grasping the one solid fact that he could.
Today he had met the love of his life.
That afternoon, Blaine walked home in a daze. His eyes wandered everywhere, hoping for just a glimpse of that too-blonde hair and the brown roots it hid. Even on the subway, where he was too short to see over people's heads, he kept his gaze glued to the ground, his heart leaping at every flash of red shoes. And as he dragged his lovesick body up the four flights of stairs to his apartment, he drove himself upwards with the thought that maybe he'd be standing there outside Blaine's door. Waiting for him to arrive.
"I'm in love," Blaine declared, throwing open the (unfortunately abandoned) front door and tugging his scarf off to throw it over the antique coat rack.
"Are you?" a voice replied from the kitchen, sounding sceptical, "And who is it this time?"
Blaine pulled off his coat and hung that on the rack too, then skipped his way into the kitchen. He wrapped his arms around Kurt from behind, pressed a kiss to his cheek, then spun him around so they were chest-to-chest and could dance together down the length of the kitchen, from the stove to the fridge.
"He's tall and blonde and perfect," Blaine sighed, releasing Kurt when he shoved his arms away so he could pull a jar of crushed garlic from the fridge and carry it back to the stove.
"Is he?" Kurt asked dryly, then added, "We're having spaghetti bolognaise for dinner, I hope that's okay, because classes went late and I just couldn't be bothered to cook something nice."
"Everything you cook is nice," Blaine pointed out, not noticing Kurt's flush as he went on to say, "And he was tall – so tall. Taller than you by a bit, taller than me by a mile."
"Wouldn't that make kissing him awfully hard?"
Blaine laughed and slid in next to Kurt at the stove, grabbing the wooden spoon off him and whispering, "But doing other things with my mouth wouldn't be so difficult."
Blaine licked the sauce off the end of the spoon with relish, his eyes fixed on Kurt and sparkling. Kurt's breath stuttered out, but he grabbed the spoon back from Blaine and went to wash it in the sink, feigning annoyance. Blaine knew that really, Kurt didn't mind.
Kurt was such an understanding friend, Blaine thought. He always had been. Ever since they'd met, Kurt had listened tirelessly as Blaine had fallen for a long string of boys – all of varying heights, hair colours and complexions, but all adored with the same puppy-like willingness.
Blaine had a habit of falling in love, and Kurt had a habit of not, which meant that something about their arrangement intrinsically, inexplicably worked. Every time Blaine's giving heart broke, Kurt was there as a friend, and so there'd never been any question about them moving in together after school, living together and spending their lives together for all of the foreseeable future. They were best friends, and that's what best friends did.
"Rachel's coming over for dinner," Kurt said, returning to the stove and pushing Blaine away when he made another grab for the spoon, "So go shower and get changed into something less-"
Blaine raised at his eyebrows at Kurt's appraising look, "Something less?"
"Just something less that."
Kurt waved non-committally at Blaine's general sweatpants-and-hoodie outfit. Blaine feigned offense and tried one more grab for the spoon, but let himself be run out of the kitchen when Kurt lifted it up to brandish at him, threatening his clothes with splashes of red sauce.
"No! Not my best sweats!" Blaine cried, and ran out of the kitchen and down the hall to his room, slamming to door behind him. He heard Kurt yell something about not slamming the door and laughed aloud, giddy with how happy he was.
He was in love. Nothing could ruin his night.
Blaine was in the shower when Rachel arrived, so it wasn't until he opened the bathroom door to go back to his room and change that he saw her.
"Hi, Blaine!" she called, and he waved back, keeping one hand on his hips to hold his towel there. "I heard you're in love again?"
"He's dreamy," Blaine told her with a smile.
"I'm sure," she replied, then motioned for him to go.
Blaine was still smiling when he returned to his room. He headed over to his wardrobe to find something to wear, pushing the door closed behind him. It was only when he heard Rachel's voice drifting in that Blaine realised his door hadn't closed properly, and was still hanging open partway.
"-need to stop letting him do this, Kurt!" Rachel was saying, "He can't just go on telling you about these stupid crushes – which he does nothing about, mind you – while you pine endlessly. There's no such thing as the 'friendzone' these days. Everyone is entitled to be with the person they love, and not just as roommates. You just need to man up and do something!"
"It's not that easy, Rachel," Kurt replied, his tone pained, "We've known each other forever. We're best friends. If I tell him now that I've been in love with him for all this time... he'll think I'm an idiot."
Blaine was frozen in front of his wardrobe, still alone in his room, wearing nothing but a towel. A cold breeze was coming in through his open window, making the curtains rustle and chilling his skin. But as Rachel started speaking again, he couldn't bring himself to move an inch.
"He deserves to know, Kurt. Like you said, he's your best friend. You can't wait around for him forever. But whether you tell him or not, you need to stop putting yourself through this. Comforting him, being there for him the way you are. It's not right. It's not fair on you."
"I hardly think this is about me, Rachel! Blaine-"
Kurt broke off, his face paling at the sight of Blaine standing in the hallway. Blaine didn't quite know how he'd gotten there. But something had made him move: something about Rachel's words or Kurt's words or this insane, crazy, incredibly obvious thing.
Because, well, duh.
Standing there, silent and still naked but for his towel, eyes fixed on Kurt's horrified face, everything seemed so logical.
Kurt had come to Dalton needing a friend, a mentor, someone to look up to. And Blaine had been that. But what Blaine hadn't realised was that in the years since then, everything had changed.
Kurt had grown up, grown into a tall, handsome man, who succeeded in every passion he pursued. He'd grown into someone who could dismiss bullies with a single glare, could strut down NYADA's hallways with his head held high, finally proud to be himself. Now, he was juggling a job at Vogue, classes at NYADA and a ridiculously needy roommate, all the while insisting he had no time for and no interested in a boyfriend when in fact-
When in fact Blaine had been spending those very same years refusing to grow up at all. He'd never moved on from being the good Dalton boy who held open doors, sang silly songs, fell desperately in and out of love, yet all without one iota of pure passion. In all these years, Blaine had never truly grown up to care for anything or to want anything in the deep, powerful, meaningful way that Kurt always had.
Blaine had always known that Kurt had more ambition than he did, but it only just now that he'd discovered why. Kurt had passion. So much that he was drowning in it – had been drowning for years and years – had spent all this time filling his life with music and fashion to hide the gaping hole that he needed someone to fill. That he needed Blaine to fill.
And standing there in the living room of their tiny New York apartment, wearing nothing but a towel and feeling as if was about five years too late, Blaine had a moment. And Kurt's face was all he could see and it was suddenly one thousand times brighter, one thousand times more beautiful, infinitely more fundamental to his world because of course he loved Kurt. Of course he did.
"Kurt, I-"
"Blaine-"
They both spoke at the same time, and if Blaine had been at all capable of seeing that Rachel was in the room too he may have laughed aloud at her expression, so tense it was if she was watching the moment before a bungee jumper dove of a bridge.
"You go first," Blaine hurried to say.
"I'm sorry," Kurt blurted. "That wasn't about you. I'm... not sure how you heard, but it wasn't about you, we were talking about this guy at work. Rick. Rick at work who I've just had very strong feelings for and-"
"I made a mistake," Blaine interrupted, "I should've gone first."
Kurt mouth snapped shut. His cheeks were flaming red with how much he was blushing.
"I mean, I made about a hundred mistakes," Blaine corrected himself, "All very systematically made over the last five or so years, ever since we met and you were the most gorgeous person I'd ever laid eyes on and then I stupidly did nothing about it for all this time."
"What?"
"I think I just had a moment, Kurt. Or maybe just the second half of a moment that I've been having ever since I met you."
Kurt's mouth was open in a wordless 'oh'. Blaine stepped further into the living room, cautious, and then took four long strides until he was by Kurt's side, where he sat at the table. Across from him, Rachel was utterly silent, watching.
"I've spent so much time fooling myself into thinking that whatever fleeting attraction I felt for other guys was love. I've wasted so much time thinking you were... something that you're not. And that we were something we're not. That is, something we don't have to be, not if you don't-"
It was Kurt who leant in. Kurt who lifted a hand to the back of Blaine's head and tugged him down, while surging up himself, closing the gap between them and cutting off Blaine's words. Kurt whose lips felt so sure, so right against Blaine's as he kissed him hard and desperate, as if he wanted this with every fibre of his being.
And God it was Kurt who drew a quite whimper from the back of Blaine's throat with the stroke of his tongue across Blaine's bottom lip.
They broke apart and Blaine collapsed onto the chair beside Kurt.
"Fuck."
Kurt smiled, almost shy, but not quite.
"Why didn't we do that five years ago?"
"I was waiting for you to be ready," Kurt answered with a shrug. "I can't give you up, Blaine. I can't lose you, ever. And no matter how long it took, I was waiting. I needed you to be ready to love me."
"I love you," Blaine said straight away, the words too eager to leap out of his mouth.
And Kurt grinned an impossibly wide grin and Blaine was probably looking just as idiotically back at him and Rachel wasn't even on the same planet as them as far as he was concerned, so Blaine simply said, "We have a lot of catching up to do," and Kurt pushed himself right up out of his chair to lean down over Blaine and kiss him so hard that the world seemed to rock a little, as if everything was jolting into alignment. As if every one of Blaine's monumental mistakes was being undone kiss-by-kiss, as the universe slowly but surely restored itself back to the way it should always have been.