The morning was cool and breezy, the first traces of winter beginning to make themselves known in the early November air. The sky was overcast, dulling the glare of the sun to a thinner, more seasonally appropriate watery light. Around him on the sidewalk in Central Park, people were shivering, twisting their gloved hands into coat pockets and tucking their faces into heavier scarves than the city had seen in months.
It was a perfect morning for the annual, notorious New York City Marathon. And although Kurt, dressed impeccably for the 40-degree weather and sipping gratefully from his piping hot Starbucks, wasn't running, his boyfriend—Kurt's favorite runner and the love of his life—was less than two miles away from the finish line where Kurt was waiting.
And where, if everything went the way that Kurt was hoping it would, both of their lives would change forever.
It had been just over three years since Kurt had met Blaine, on the morning of his first marathon. He hadn't run another since, the demands of balancing school and work—and later, the beginnings of his post-collegiate career—too extensive and time consuming to permit the lengthy, occasionally painful process of marathon training. Instead, he'd stuck to shorter distances: local 5Ks, the chance half marathon for charity, jogging a few mornings a week or after work through one of several nearby parks.
Despite his routine, however, and their promising first meeting, it had actually taken more time and effort for Kurt and Blaine to fit themselves together as runners than as a couple, a process that had unfolded smoothly and with such a sense of…inevitability, almost, that Kurt still occasionally found himself staring at Blaine in wonder, hardly daring to believe that Blaine was real, and really his.
Running, though—for all of Blaine's wide-eyed optimism and aggressively cheerful encouragement, even he had to admit after weeks of trying that the two of them were very different types of athlete. Kurt had flexibility and endurance in spades—and those were qualities that Blaine openly and enthusiastically appreciated in an entirely different context—but lacked the natural speed of a sprinter, and grew easily frustrated trying to keep up with Blaine's pace as it mindlessly crept up over the course of a run. His irritation would trigger Blaine's guilt for pushing him too hard, which would in turn make Kurt feel bad for slowing Blaine down, etc.
Trial and error had eventually won out, and they'd ultimately settled on a pattern of starting out and finishing together but otherwise running separately on most days, only sticking to the same route once a week or so when Blaine had run hard the day before and Kurt was feeling good. It had chafed Kurt's pride a little at first, being the one left behind, but he'd gotten over it quickly, especially after Blaine had confessed over dinner one night that he'd once been passed during a 10K by an octogenarian in a tutu.
It helped to remember, too, how many more years of experience Blaine had than him, on top of his abundance of natural talent. Unlike Kurt, Blaine had continued to run as many marathons as he physically could after the one in Ohio: leading pace groups, running with friends, and burning through more pairs of sneakers each year than Kurt had ever owned in his life.
Aware of the extent to which Blaine used exercise to work through the things that were bothering him—and very mindful of the consequential strength and musculature all that running gave to Blaine's legs and ass—Kurt never tried to talk him out of signing up for any and all races that caught his eye, even the spring marathon that had fallen on the day before they were scheduled to move into their first shared apartment together; a small, charming one-bedroom space a handful of streets east of the Queensboro Bridge.
"Just remember that we're on the third floor, with no elevator," he had warned, smiling despite himself as Blaine had begun peppering his face with kisses at his reluctantly bestowed approval. "And that our friends have all been bribed into helping us out of the goodness of their hearts and lack of willpower when promised free food, but they won't be carrying your share of the boxes just because you're an idiot."
If Blaine noticed that all of the heaviest boxes and furniture had somehow made it up the stairs in the half an hour it had taken him to pick up the pizzas, he never mentioned it, instead curling gratefully into Kurt's side as he ate slice after slice and playfully dodging the usual contingent of comments and questions from their friends about his semi-debilitating hobby: "I don't even driveas far as you run!" "You're going to ruin your knees like that, you know!" "Don't you ever get to the middle of a race and just want to stop running?"
Kurt, being a runner without the value-laden label of 'marathoner' attached to him, tended to get off easy when people interrogated Blaine, but had long since lost count of the number of times he'd been asked, "Do you think you'll ever run another one?" The truth was that he didn't know, not really, but not wanting to explain his uncertainty and hesitation to every acquaintance who asked, he typically gave his stock answer of, "Definitely not today, at least."
(The first time he'd been asked, when he and Blaine had still been in college, his answer had been quippier: "Who would drive us home and help us up the stairs if I did? Only one of us can be incapacitated at a time, or we'd starve to death in a pool of our own runner sweat."
The look Blaine had given him had been so guilty and sad that Kurt had never said anything like it again, not even tempted to repeat it by how clingy Blaine had been for the rest of the night, spending hours kissing every inch of Kurt's skin and whispering apologies into it when he thought Kurt couldn't hear him.)
Kurt's indecision, however, didn't stop him from filling out the application Blaine had loaded onto his computer for the New York City Marathon. The likelihood of his being picked through the lottery was slim—Blaine had been turned down twice already, and had begun running and volunteering at New York Road Runners races when he could, hoping to earn his way in through the 9+1 program—and the fantasy of the two of them running another marathon together, the NYC marathon, no less, made Blaine so happy that Kurt couldn't have denied him even if he had wanted to.
Nobody was more surprised than he was when his lottery application was accepted, and Blaine's was not.
Blaine, being God's gift to boyfriendom, had been genuinely excited for Kurt without showing a hint of the annoyance or jealousy that Kurt would have felt had their situations been reversed, and Blaine had been the one to win something that Kurt had wanted for years—backstage tickets to a Beyoncé concert, for example, or a perfectly fitted pair of Ferragamo boots.
Kurt, though, had quashed his budding enthusiasm early and without compunction. "I'm not going to do it," he'd informed Blaine flatly, interrupting him mid-sentence as he gushed about training plans and gels and flying Burt in for the occasion. "I don't want the spot."
Blaine had stilled dramatically, eyes so wide it was almost comical. "Kurt…" he'd begun slowly, clearly searching for the right thing to say to knock some sense into him. "You don't have to do anything you're not comfortable with; of course not. But…"
His teeth worried his lower lip. "Don't you think you should—I don't know, maybe think about it for a few days, first?" he'd asked hesitantly. "It's just that…running the New York City Marathon is a really big deal—you know how long I've been trying to get in—and even if you don't change your mind, I'd feel better if I knew that you've really thought about it, and were sure."
Kurt had looked up from his computer at Blaine, who was hovering over him anxiously. "I have thought about it, and I am sure," he'd told Blaine gently. "And I've made my decision: I'm not running the marathon."
Ignoring Blaine's mildly crestfallen expression, Kurt had reached over and laced their fingers together, running his thumb over Blaine's knuckles. "I'm giving you my spot in the race. You are."
Blaine had tried to protest, promising that he'd be just as happy watching Kurt run, but Kurt silenced him by threatening to sell his bib number on the internet and use the proceeds to buy a set of the creepy garden gnomes that Blaine hated to decorate their bathroom with.
"Picture their beady little eyes, Blaine," he'd insisted, narrowing his own at Blaine as he looked at him solemnly. "Always eyeing you as you shave, watching when you get up to pee in the middle of the night, staring at you every time you get out of the shower."
Blaine had shuddered, breaking eye contact, and Kurt had patted his cheek fondly. "I want to see you do this," he'd insisted firmly. "And this is my only condition: you're not going to pace anyone, or slow down to run with any of your friends, or hold yourself back in any way. You've wanted to run this race the entire time I've known you, and I want you to run it, if only so you can spend your golden retirement years bragging about how fast you were in your youth and actually have the numbers to back it up. Got it?"
Blaine's eyes had been shiny with tears. "Got it," he'd repeated. "I can't even—I'm going to make you so proud, Kurt. Thank you."
He'd thrown his arms around Kurt, who had hugged him back, giving his hair a light tug. "Like I would have traded your spot to some gnome fetishist on the internet," he'd muttered quietly, making Blaine laugh and squeeze him tighter.
The weeks and months passed, and Blaine was as good as his word. Between work and music lessons, dates and friends and errands and grading papers, Blaine found time to fit in his mileage, sometimes returning to the apartment a sweaty, broken wreck, or rain-soaked and dripping with mud, or redder from the sun and the summer heat than Kurt thought was possible for his complexion. He woke up half an hour early three times a week to squeeze in his cross training, and more than once Kurt came home from work or the store to find Blaine sprawled out on the floor, dead limbs draped over his foam roller.
Kurt tried his best to make up for the extra physical pain that Blaine was putting himself through. He helped Blaine stretch after runs, massaging knots out of his muscles as gently as he could, and kept the refrigerator stocked with Blaine's favorite brand of chocolate milk for post-run recovery drinks. He drew hot baths with soothing oils, adding ice to the mix on the rare occasion that Blaine's legs needed it, and tried not to take it personally during the very few instances that Blaine grew grouchy and easily provoked because of how tired and sore he was.
That one wasn't hard—one look at Kurt's hurt expression tended to snap Blaine right out of his mood, and Kurt had long since stopped feeling guilty over Blaine's need to make up for his transgressions, however slight, with flowers and cheesecakes and apology blowjobs.
The summer flew by quickly, and September brought with it fall fashions, a new crop of students for Blaine, and Kurt's 22nd birthday, the morning after which both Kurt and Blaine were far too hungover to even contemplate running. Exercise-free, too, was the long weekend after one of the models in Kurt's office snagged her four-inch heel on the edge of a throw rug, crashing into Kurt and sending him flying into a steel clothing rack. Upon learning of Kurt's subsequent concussion, Blaine immediately canceled all of his lessons in order to spend 72 hours coddling Kurt to death—cooking soft foods, bringing him icepacks on a schedule that bordered on military precision, and policing the television, promptly changing the channel at the first hint of flashing lights, action sequences, or shaky indie camerawork.
It was sweet for the first 24 hours. By the last twelve or so, Kurt was almost grateful to push him out the door in his running shorts.
And then, November came.
The morning of the race, Kurt woke up almost as early as Blaine did, making breakfast for both of them while Blaine got dressed and checked that all of his things were in his bag for the eighth time. When it came time to leave, he threw on an oversized cardigan and walked Blaine downstairs and out the door to bundle him into a cab, which would take him to one of the nearby hotels offering shuttle service to the starting line. Despite the early morning chill that had Kurt shivering, Blaine was already starting to sweat, looking paler and more nervous than Kurt had seen him in a very long time.
"I'll be about three hours, if everything goes perfectly," he reminded Kurt unnecessarily, seemingly more to reassure himself than Kurt. "The text alerts are supposed to be really good for this race, so you'll know if anything—not that—"
"Shh," Kurt ordered soothingly, grabbing on to Blaine's shoulders and pressing down gently. "It's going to be fine. Nothing's going to happen, and even if it did, you wrote me down as your emergency contact— I'm the first person they'd call. You're going to be great out there, though, and I'm so proud of you for doing this no matter what happens."
Blaine slumped under his hands. "You're right," he agreed. "I'm sorry; I'm just making both of us nervous, now. I'll be fine."
Kurt hadn't noticed that his own hands were shaking until Blaine mentioned his nerves. "It's just the cold," he lied, mentally willing them to stop. "Look for me in a winter coat at the finish line, ok?"
A few more encouraging exchanges and one last soft, lingering kiss, and Blaine was gone. Kurt pulled his sweater tighter around his frame and trudged back up the stairs to check the contents of his bag for the eighth time.
At the bottom of the center pocket, right where he'd left it, was a small black jewelry box.
A large group of runners in matching red singlets sprinted past the crowds to the finish line to massive applause, but Kurt barely spared them a glance as he checked the messages on his phone again. Besides the official text alert system that Blaine had mentioned, which sent Kurt an automated update whenever Blaine crossed one of the timing mats on the course (made all the more amusing by the fact that Blaine was most-probably-illegally running under the name Kurt Hummel), Kurt had set up his own unofficial network: friends of his and Blaine's who, despite not knowing what Kurt had planned for after the race, had been prevailed upon to let Kurt know exactly when they saw him run by.
The messages had come thick and fast during the middle miles of the race where the course passed through Queens, everyone clamoring to let Kurt know that Blaine looked 'fast' and 'strong' (nobody mentioned 'sweaty', but Kurt was sure they had all thought it). The latest message, 'He just ran by! Tell him not to clench his fingers so tightly, he needs those to perform!', had come from Rachel where she was watching at the 25th mile marker, which meant that if Kurt was counting properly and nothing unexpected had happened since then, Blaine was supposedly a mere tenth of a mile away.
Hands shaking badly, Kurt tucked his cell phone into one of the coat pockets that wasn't holding the ring box.
He could only hope that Blaine ran that tenth of a mile faster than he'd ever run in his life, before Kurt dropped dead of sheer nervousness and anticipation.
And then, there he was.
Kurt drank in the sight of him, feeling some of his tension dissipate as it always did whenever he saw Blaine after an emotionally fraught absence. As Kurt had predicted, he was drenched in sweat, streaks of salt visible at his throat and underarms. As Rachel had noted, his hands had tightened into fists, his arms doing much of the work as Blaine sprinted toward Kurt and the finish line with everything he had left—which, given the pained-yet-relieved expression on his face, likely wasn't much. He was a little taller and more filled out than when Kurt had first met him, but was still dressed just as ridiculously in an orange shirt and pink sneakers, which he'd purchased and broken in specifically for the race.
"I was wearing this outfit on one of the best days of my life," he had explained, when Kurt observed the similarity. "It's my good luck outfit."
He was just as imperfectly perfect as he had been that very first day, only more so now, because now Kurt loved him in a way he'd never loved anyone before; a bone-deep, world changing, forever kind of love.
Yes, Kurt realized, as he watched Blaine perk up and start scanning the spectators to his right, looking for Kurt in the same general area that he always stood near to watch Blaine cross his finish lines. This is the right thing.
A few seconds later, Blaine's eyes landed on his. Waving exaggeratedly, Kurt blew him a kiss, watching with pride as Blaine flashed him a tired grin and picked up speed, legs straining and form falling apart as he crossed the final hundred meters. Kurt watched long enough to see Blaine sail over the timing mat and stumble to a stop, hands dropping to his knees as he drew in heaving breaths, before threading backward through the crowds around him and running his own sprint toward the finishers' area.
Blaine was still breathing hard when Kurt reached him a minute later, a medal draped over his neck and a mylar blanket clutched tightly around his shoulders. His grin was beautiful and teary, matching Kurt's perfectly, and Kurt quickly pulled Blaine's favorite water bottle from his bag. "Here," he offered, twisting off the top and pressing it into Blaine's sweaty, shaking hands, "drink first, then talk—I am not sitting in the back of an ambulance, wondering if your kidneys are failing and if we know anyone who has your blood type that I can murder for organs, not ever again."
Despite the harsh message, Kurt's tone was teasing, and Blaine swallowed a few gulps of water before laughing at him, eyes crinkling. "That was one time, and we didn't even leave the parking lot," he reminded Kurt with a smile. "And I thought we decided that if anything ever happened to me, you were going to call that nice girl in your office to procure me some new body parts."
Kurt rolled his eyes. It was an open secret that Sugar Motta, one of the junior associates in the makeup department at Vogue, had family ties to the mafia. Inexplicably, she and Blaine had gotten on like a house on fire at the last three company parties—which, Blaine had reasonably pointed out, would come in handy if he ever needed a hastily-obtained kidney, or on the inevitable day when Sugar's father bought out Conde Nast.
"Drink your water and we'll never have to find out," Kurt pointed out benevolently, pointedly watching Blaine take another large sip from the water bottle. "Are you hungry? Or would you rather walk around for a little while first?"
Blaine made a face. "Walk around, please," he answered emphatically, taking the bottle top from Kurt and twisting it back on. "Some kids were handing out orange slices about an hour ago, and I swear the one I had spent two miles trying to come back up."
Kurt grimaced in disgust. "And now I'm not hungry either," he pouted. "All those years of etiquette lessons and private schooling gone to waste; what would your mother say?"
Blaine shot him a fondly exasperated look, and Kurt sighed, threading his arm through Blaine's and walking south toward the subway station that would take them home. "I'm kidding," he promised. "We have early dinner reservations at three restaurants—you get to call the two we don't use, by the way; I used a pseudonym so that we don't get a bad reputation as being cancelers—and there's a bottle of champagne from Dad chilling in the refrigerator for tonight."
Beaming, he kissed Blaine's sweat-damp cheek. "I'm so proud of you," he stressed, squeezing Blaine's arm.
Blaine squeezed back, gazing serenely at Kurt. "You're my favorite," he announced, stifling a yawn and tipping his head onto Kurt's shoulder, allowing Kurt to lead the way. "I don't know what I did to deserve you, but remind me to keep doing it, please."
Kurt smiled, reaching up to scratch Blaine's hair affectionately before wrapping his arm around his waist, drawing him in closer. "You ran as hard as you could, and did something for you for once," he pointed out, not for the first time. "I loved watching you; I don't think I've ever seen you run as fast as you did just now."
Blaine's eyes lit up, even as he blinked sleepily from Kurt's shoulder. "That's because I never have before," he explained. "2:58:46, Kurt. I'm trying not to get my hopes up until they post the official results, but I know I hit the button on my watch going over the mats, and even if I was a few seconds off, I finished in under three hours—do you know what that means?"
Kurt hummed in thought. "That I have the fastest fiancé ever?" he guessed, willing the tremor out of his voice as he used his free hand to pat the inside pocket of his coat for the billionth time that day.
Blaine laughed, seeming not to hear him at first. "It means that I can qual—"
He stopped abruptly, pulling Kurt to a stumbling halt.
"Say that again," he demanded quietly, staring at Kurt with huge eyes, as if he hardly dared to believe what he'd just heard.
Kurt swallowed, his heart in his throat and mouth suddenly dry.
"I know—" he started, before swallowing again, feeling his legs starting to shake. "I know we said no public proposals, when we talked about getting engaged someday last Christmas," he tried again, feeling sick with nervousness. "And I had always sort of pictured us being better dressed whenever I thought about this moment, but…"
He gestured around them weakly.
"Here," he explained, "this. This is how I met you, doing this crazy, insane thing that you love and that I love because I love you, and this happy, sweaty man who really needs a shower—I'm sorry, Sweetheart, but it's true—is the same one that I fell in love with, almost the very first time that I saw him. Saw you, Blaine."
Tears filled Kurt's eyes, and he blinked them back impatiently as Blaine's hands flew to his mouth, covering his own tearful, disbelieving smile.
"You are the best thing that's ever happened to me," Kurt continued, choking up. "And I want, more than anything, to spend the rest of my life falling in love with you over and over again. And you know I mean it, because I'm about to ruin these pants proving it to you."
Blaine let out a strangled, hysterical laugh behind his fingers as Kurt shakily lowered himself to one knee, pulling the box out of his coat and opening it. Inside, Burt's antique wedding ring from his marriage to Kurt's mom gleamed, beautiful and familiar and polished to shine.
"Blaine," Kurt asked, giving up and letting the tears stream down his cheeks, "will you—would you—"
He couldn't finish, but Blaine nodded manically anyway. "Yes," he croaked, wiping his eyes and smiling brilliantly. "Yes, of course, yes."
Kurt let out an anxious breath. "Yes?" he confirmed, starting to smile back.
Blaine laughed, unable to stop grinning. "Yes, Kurt. Get up, get up, get up, I need to kiss you so badly right now and I can't bend my knees, Kurt please get up and come here and—"
Kurt flew up from the ground and threw himself into Blaine's arms, letting Blaine squeeze the life out of him before pulling back just enough to kiss him. The crowd around them burst into applause, their attention caught when Kurt had gotten down on one knee, but Kurt barely noticed them.
Soon, he would pull back, and they would both stop shaking enough to slide the ring onto Blaine's finger. They'd call Burt, who would be thrilled, and Carole, who would cry so hard with happiness that she'd set Blaine off again. Kurt would throw Blaine into the shower back at their apartment to clean up before dinner, and they'd almost miss their reservation three hours later—a worthy sacrifice, they'd decide, because engagement sex most definitely trumped engagement dinner celebration by a mile.
But at that moment, there was nothing else in the world but himself and Blaine, sweaty and sore and tear-streaked and incandescently happy, ready for the rest of their lives to pass the same way.
The End (for real this time)