Well gosh, here I am again. This is like the fluffiest thing I have ever written and I STILL managed to sneak a teeny bit of porn in, so let's all be really proud of me.
This is my headcanon and if you have a little trouble following it, I don't blame you; suffice it to say that Adam and Brody are things of the past, Quinntana somehow captured my heart, and Rachel Berry isn't around when she doesn't need to be.
The Brooklyn Bridge isn't really very romantic. It's almost always crowded, bicyclists weaving their way between tourists and couples and the occasional burly dude with a forty-pound camera; also, the roar of traffic underneath the walkway can be pretty irritating, and in the summer, the entire belt of air above the Hudson River is sweaty and sticky.
But they all decide to walk across anyway, just because—because it's June and the thrill of graduation and the irritation of final exams have already faded to a hazy two-weeks-ago memory; because the sky is clear tonight, a dark crystalline black that glows with New York night-lightning; because they're all happy and still young and more in love every day; because why not, that's why.
Kurt lifts his chin and savors a cool breeze that snuck in from over the Hudson. He gives Blaine's fingers an absent squeeze as they stroll along the wooden pathway, following Santana and Quinn towards the center of the bridge. Blaine squeezes back and Kurt glances towards his boyfriend, whose wide-open smile is that much more wonderful because he doesn't realize that Kurt is looking at it. A sheen of summer-sweat covers Blaine's face and neck, and the breeze is pressing his linen shirt gently up against the curves of his chest. Black curly hair, mercifully free of gel due to weather-related issues ("it won't stay, everything just keeps melting and I look like Russell Brand!"), and the slightest shadow of evening stubble. Two bright hazel eyes that, swear to God, actually fucking twinkle. Blaine is so beautiful he makes Kurt's stomach ache, and all he can do is pray it never stops.
"Do you smell that?" Blaine asks, still looking ahead, still smiling.
"Smell what?"
"It's really summer now. Try it." Blaine inhales deeply, and Kurt follows suit—the dusty, warm, salty New York summer air fills his lungs. "Man, I love that."
"You're such a sucker for summer."
"And proud of it," Blaine replies with a chuckle in his voice.
"Yo, Kurt!" Quinn calls from up ahead, walking backwards as Santana guides her with one slim brown arm around the waist. "What's this place we're going to again?"
"It's called Spice, it's all fancy and stuff," Kurt tells her for the umpteenth time. Quinn raises an eyebrow.
"Is it Indian? Because I told you, after three and a half years of New Haven I really really can't handle good spicy food, at least not yet—"
"They have, like, pasta and stuff, Quinn, you'll be fine," Kurt says, rolling his eyes. Quinn sticks out her tongue and then blows him a kiss, while Santana snorts and presses her own kiss to Quinn's cheek. Blaine giggles as Quinn turns around again and throws her arm across Santana's shoulders.
"She's not very good at New York yet."
"Oh shut up, your first semester you practically cried when we got lost around Canal Street."
"I was tense!"
"You were something, all right," Kurt teases, a grin tugging at his lips, and Blaine gives him a little shove and digs a thumbnail into Kurt's knuckle.
It is so strange that life can make so much sense.
Nights like this are the reason why. The simplicity of his feelings for Blaine is staggering in the face of all the pain and grief they've caused each other: from the early days of fumbled first times and text-message dalliances, to the gut-wrenching obliteration of Blaine's Battery-park confession ("I was with someone" and the world ended right there on the Manhattan asphalt), to the messes and scrapes of the last three years—screaming fights over how to cook pasta that were really about Blaine scoring yet another role that Kurt had wanted in the Musical Theater Department's fall revue, a night of drinking when Kurt found himself grinding with a stranger and only barely managed to stop himself from going further, the suspicions and resentments of Kurt's overseas business trips after his Vogue promotion (part-time co-assistant editor of International Fashion) and Blaine's dance class retreats.
But all of that is smoke rings and spiderwebs cracks, a scribble of unhappiness over a broad, beautiful, blank universe of love and contentment. The best parts of their relationship are simple. Their first time; their first reconciliation; their second (and much, much, much more profound) reconciliation—all those steps felt as easy as anything. Natural. Smooth. It was what their bodies knew how to do, what their souls knew how to feel.
It took Kurt eight months to admit to himself that he wanted Blaine back, nine months to admit what was stopping him, and almost eleven to say it to Blaine's face—"I can't bear the thought that you could do this to me again. I can't love you in fear. I just can't."
It took Blaine ten seconds and one breath to answer. "There is nothing in the world I will not do before I ever, ever, hurt you like that again."
"Nothing?"
"I'll get on the floor and beg for your attention. I'll cry. I'll shout. I'll tattoo your name on my forehead or anywhere else that you want, you name it, I don't care if it hurts—"
"Blaine—"
"I just won't do that to you. I can hurt myself like that. All but the best part of me. And that's you, Kurt."
"Kiss me."
"Kurt."
"Kiss me, and don't talk, and don't leave me ever again."
Simple. Blaine moving to New York, three years of college together, endless days and nights of just being together and happy and safe in the presence of the other. Easy. Smooth. Perfect.
Kurt casts his eyes ahead and swallows around the dryness in his throat. Santana and Quinn are also holding hands now, their twin ponytails bobbing as they trip in high-heeled sandals over the wooden boardwalk. Santana says something in Spanish and Quinn giggles. God, they look happy. God, he loves them. God, both of those things are so weird.
If you'd told him in sophomore year of high school that he would pay witness to the arrival of Quinn Fabray, graduated a semester early from Yale, at his Brooklyn apartment, for the sole purpose of a The Notebook-like roses-and-lilies I've-tried-but-I-can't-quit-you-baby-style declaration of love to Santana Lopez—if you'd told him that Quinn would subsequently move in and begin the only relationship he'd ever seen that was just as embarrassingly happy as his own—if you'd told him that he and Blaine and Santana and Quinn were out on a best-friends double-date in New York summer and that aliens had taken over the world and dinosaurs were discovered in Guatemala and thigh-high argyle socks had become a reigning trend in couture fashion—
Well, he might have believed the thing about the dinosaurs.
Their dysfunctional little family, cobbled together from forgiveness and the fading memories of high school, has become almost unsettlingly close. Quinn is working in an office downtown as she waits to hear back from law schools, while Santana is just finishing her second year at Pace University (majoring in biology, of all random and inexplicable things); Rachel, who took more than twice as long as Kurt to get over herself and reach out to Finn before it was finally, finally too late, is still "living" at the apartment, but in recent times she's always at rehearsal for the national tour of Guys and Dolls (chorus member, but not for long) that kicks off at the end of the month. Thus, Kurt and Blaine end up spending most of their downtime with Quinntana, and almost against his will he's come to love both of these crazy women with the deepest parts of his heart.
Quinn brings Santana down when she starts to get delusions of grandeur and threatens to knife people in the kitchen; Santana punctures Quinn's poor-little-rich-girl mentality at its most swollen moments. Quinn cooks stir-fries and plays Spit with Blaine until two a.m.; Santana finally swallowed her pride and now she helps Kurt with most of his homemade design, contributing everything from opinion to makeshift mannequin and test model.
And Blaine. Blaine fixes appliances, he makes food, he washes clothes. He does his homework on the floor, surrounded by paper, sprawled out like a toddler on the rug. He laughs and toasts Santana with the weird banana-flavored beer she buys. He toggles the radio for ages until he finds an Oldies station and he literally begs them on his knees to let him listen for just a couple minutes. He stalks the girls' work schedules so that he can text Kurt to come home for an emergency and when Kurt barrels through the door, clutching a roll of gauze and a large stick in case there are dogs to fight off or something, he pulls his boyfriend down onto the couch and swallows his indignant exclamation with a hard kiss, rocking against him and working his hands over Kurt's body until Kurt is shaking with how good it feels, with the blind pleasure of Blaine's fingers trailing circles on his inner thigh and the base of his stomach and his shoulder blade and every private part of him, there for Blaine, for this man, for this life.
It's all unbelievable. It's all crazy. It's all wonderful.
And there's a possibility it's all about to go to hell.
Kurt's throat is dry again. He's nervous, so nervous, he has been since he finally did the deed and went shopping last weekend, and ever since he's been waiting and hoping and planning—and dreading dreading dreading the moment, because what if it doesn't work out the way he so desperately wants it to? The only person he's told is his father, and Burt was less than helpful; his only advice was, "Wait until after dinner, 'cause if you do it before you might have lost your appetite by the time the food gets there."
Great, Dad. Thanks. Super helpful.
He loves Blaine so much. He wants this to be perfect. But when is perfect? When, how, what, please send assistance someone he is so scared because what if Blaine doesn't feel the way he thinks he does and what if this is a huge mistake—
"Hey ladies, hold on a sec!" Blaine hollers, snapping Kurt out of his speculative haze. Blaine cuts across Kurt's path and bounds up to the railing of the walkway, standing on tiptoes to look out over the river. They're halfway between the two bridge supports, right in the middle of the Hudson, and Blaine bounces up and down on his toes as he stares intently out at the dark water.
"What's the hold-up, Anderson? It's frigging toasty out here, I want AC!" Santana calls back over her shoulder. Kurt rolls his eyes and joins Blaine at the railing, following his gaze but seeing nothing of note.
"Blaine? Did you see a mermaid?"
"You wish," Blaine says with a grin. "There's a—wait, I just saw it—there!" He points, and Kurt follows the path of his finger to a tiny sailboat, way out in the Hudson, so small he can barely make it out—but then he hears a faint weeeeeeeee, and suddenly a shower of golden sparks explodes over the boat. Another whistling noise, and this time green and blue lights flare up like a wreath of fairy dust around the little craft.
"They must have fireworks!" Blaine exclaims, and suddenly it's like Kurt has been hit in the head with a tuning fork. The sound of Blaine's voice, lit up like a string of Christmas lights with an innocent joy and excitement that should be impossible for a man his age, floods through him like an electrical charge. Blaine is there, warm and excited beside him, and it's summer, and he just graduated from college and life is right there waiting for him and he doesn't want to wait until after dinner, he wants to start now.
Fireworks on the Hudson. A blindingly bright smile and the eagerness of simple joy. A history of staggering disparities.
If not after all of this, then when?
"Blaine Anderson." Kurt hears himself speak as if he's calling himself on a cell phone with bad reception. Blaine turns to him, backlight by the glow of Manhattan, still grinning.
"I know, I know, it's probably illegal, but look how pretty it is, Kurt, don't you think that would be fun, to bring a bunch of—"
"You are…we have done a pretty spectacular job of screwing with each other over the last five years," Kurt continues, a train of thought fuzzy and barely tangible in his head. Blaine's face falls a little, and his eyebrows knit with confusion. Behind him, Santana and Quinn are standing, waiting, tapping their feet with impatience.
"What?"
"We're good at that. We know how to hurt each other. And we know how to bug each other, and how to not get along, and we know these things really well because—I don't know how anyone could love another person as much as I love you, and when you love someone, you know just what gets them mad, and you know just what makes you mad. You know the worst. Because you know the best."
He steps back, looks Blaine up and down. Jade-green linen shirt, khaki shorts, tennis shoes, the tacky cowry-shell necklace Quinn won for him at a Pride fair. Shadows of muscle definition on his arms and calves. Uncertainty on his face. Kurt's future in his heart.
The summer after they got back together, when Blaine moved his stuff into the Bushwick loft and Santana and Rachel spent the night at friends' places and he pushed Blaine up against the wall and rolled his hips with maddening slowness and reached down to mold his hand around Blaine's erection, and Blaine moaned high up the octave and buried his face in Kurt's neck, and they made love on the couch, the kitchen table, the windowsill, finally the bed, and then made pad thai and drank wine and made love again and lay on the floor giggling like little kids on an adventure together.
The winter of his sophomore year, when his father had to undergo another round of chemo and he flew home and spent hours every day at the hospital, thinking of his mother and the heart attack and how easy it would be for his father to slip away for good this time, and Blaine called him in Lima every night, absorbing his worries and his sobs over the phone, murmuring nonsense syllables that all somehow translated into "I am here and everything will be okay."
The fall of junior year, when Isabelle gave him a real job and Blaine scored an Off-Broadway role in an original musical and they were so busy they hardly saw each other and then one morning they both woke up at 5 a.m. per usual and without a word they grabbed each other and had sex like starving men, making up for skipped workouts and unfinished memos with the most desperate and intense physical contact of their entire relationship thus far, and not caring even a little when Santana and Rachel banged around the kitchen all morning and cleared their throats and later that night arrived home with a cake from the Italian bakery that read "Congratulations, It's About Fucking Time."
The summer before senior year started, when they smoked a joint on the Highline and gave thirteen dollars to a saxophone player in a top hat and teased eels in a tank in Chinatown and read monologues to each other on the roof and drank too much wine and traded orgasms like Pokemon cards over the longest and dirtiest and most perfect nights—and fought the anxiety of freedom because they only had so much time to be ridiculous before real life started again but who cared, the only thing that mattered was the sound of Blaine's laughter and the flex of his chest against Kurt's back and the ragged breaths in his ear as Blaine dug bruises into Kurt's hips and drove them both to a frenzy.
This last spring, when Quinn and Santana were floating around like two birds of paradise and Rachel was on the phone with Finn for an hour every day and he would sit on the couch putting the finishing touches on his design thesis and he would look down at the other end of the couch where Blaine was studying for his psychology final and biting his lip and a pulse of something would run through his body, because he was so utterly and completely home.
This moment. Here. Now.
Kurt sinks down to one knee and pulls the little blue box out of his pocket. Blaine's eyes follow him down to the ground, and when they see what Kurt is holding in the cupped palms of both hands they go so wide it's a marvel they don't fall out and roll through the cracks between the wooden planks.
"I know you. Blaine, I know you inside and out and I want—I want to be the only man who ever gets the chance to do that. And I want you to do the same for me. So…so how about it?" he finishes lamely, and to take the edge off such a weak conclusion to this—whatever it is (because it is way way way too weird and awkward to be a proposal) Kurt pops open the box and the simple silver ring inside twinkles just like Blaine's eyes in the summer night.
Blaine is staring at him, mouth half-open, eyes still ridiculously wide. Kurt is aware that not only is he tying up traffic a bit—an inevitable result of kneeling in the middle of the Brooklyn Bridge—but that a fair crowd of observers is building up around them. Front row center are Santana and Quinn, and out of the corner of his eye Kurt can see Santana mouthing wordlessly and Quinn digging her nails into Santana's arm. But really, all Kurt really has the cognitive ability to watch right now is Blaine, who is taking many long, long seconds to do anything other than stare at the ring in the box.
"Kurt…I…oh my God, no, Kurt, what," Blaine says breathlessly, and he actually takes a step back. Kurt's stomach drops down and splashes into the Hudson. "Kurt, what is this?"
"What do you think?" He can hear the onlookers muttering, hears the beeping of someone's iPhone as they start to record a video, hates himself for doing that Thing Smart People Don't Do and proposing in public. Perfect, year, right, perfect like The Perfect Storm. Kurt is drowning appropriately.
"But I—I can't!" Blaine stammers, his voice cracking, and his panicked eyes meet Kurt's now, torn away from the ring. "Kurt, the last time I decided to—the last time I made a decision like this, about you, I sent you to New York, I wanted—and then I nearly lost you forever and I can't do that again, oh my God, this is—I don't—I'm going to fuck everything up if—and what about when I'm old and I can only eat peas and you think you should have married someone with better teeth, oh my god I can't shut up—"
"Blaine."
Kurt's voice is steady and calm and low, and he himself has gone Zen. This always happens when Blaine freaks out; Kurt finds his own strength in the duty of bringing Blaine back down to safety. But this isn't a centipede in the sink or an audition or an Anderson family reunion. It's them, their future and their history, and right in this moment Kurt knows the power he wields with both.
"I can't mess this up again," Blaine whimpers. Kurt can feel his shock and his anxiety, like static electricity sparking in the breeze. "I can't make the wrong choice. This—this is the biggest choice I could ever ever ever—"
"I've already made it," Kurt cuts him off, and Blaine stops talking with a little hiccup. "I am choosing you. There, I'm done, that's it. And if you—if you choose me back, then that's the last decision either of us will make alone. We'll mess up together. Fuck things up as one, but not—not each other, Blaine. I want to give you my mistakes. And I want every single one of yours."
Blaine is staring at Kurt now, his eyes burning the skin off Kurt's face, and more people are gathering, and he can hear murmurs from the crowd, and Santana suddenly twitches in the background as Quinn's fingernails sink another quarter-inch into her flesh, and suddenly in the distance Kurt hears another faint whistle from the fireworks on the sailboat.
"Kurt," Blaine breathes, but he can't seem to find any other words. Kurt shifts on his knees (another oversight, these planks aren't very comfy) and raises the box a little higher so that it catches the light from the Bridge.
"Do you have an answer?" he says with a single raised eyebrow. Blaine swallows and meets Kurt's eye.
"You haven't actually asked me anything yet," he whispers, and Kurt clearly registers the snort that comes from Santana's corner. His lips twitch, but the moment is too big for a real smile, and he takes a deep breath—in through the nose, out through the mouth—and says it.
"Blaine Devon Anderson, will you ma—"
"Yes."
"…what?"
Something doesn't click. Yes. What? Yes, I'll marry—what? "You…you will?"
"Yes, of course, you idiot, you idiot, of course I will," Blaine chokes out, and then time is flying by with lightning speed, Blaine leaning down and wrapping trembling hands around Kurt's biceps and yanking him to his feet and Kurt's arms are around Blaine's neck and their mouths meet and the smell of Blaine is stronger than the smell of summer in his throat, and people are clapping around them and Quinn might be sobbing but Kurt doesn't care because the man in his arms is his in a way that he never even knew was possible until this precise second.
"Oh God," Kurt gasps into Blaine's mouth, and then they kiss again, hard and disbelieving and absolute. Blaine fists a hand in Kurt's t-shirt and pulls their stomachs together, as close as they can be without breaking public laws of decency.
"I love you," from Blaine now, half-growl, half-whisper, and Kurt's eyes are wet but he doesn't care because he did it. He made it with Blaine, they got there in the end. From a Dalton staircase to the Brooklyn Bridge. Against all odds.
They stumble into the loft, hands grabbing and yanking, joined at the mouth, lost in a whirl of heat and fierce happiness. The outside world was for tender words, for a reconnection after the worst almost-year of loneliness, for the final forgiveness and the very first renewal. The outside world was for the evolution of "just friends" into "just you and me, forever, each other's." The outside world was making out in the cab and laughing hysterically when Blaine tripped over the curb as they rushed towards the front door.
But now no one is silly or laughing. Now they have that first job to do, the (second) first intimacy, and it's not funny at all, it's a sacred kind of struggle, to reacquaint themselves with the idea of sex in love, of sex as the rite of being a couple. Not bros helping bros, but one hand taking another and never, ever letting go.
"God, I missed you," he pants into Blaine's neck, and in response he gets a low moan and an almost violent clutching at his waist, his hips, his ass, the backs of his thighs—Blaine hoists him up against the door and holy hell the boy is small but the boy is strong, and Kurt can barely draw breath with how close Blaine is, how hard they're pressing together, and how incredibly right and overdue this moment is.
Blaine is hammering into him, again and again and again, driven by a need more powerful than the cognizance it would take to step back and actually take off their clothes. The loft is empty and people shout outside and cars are honking through the open window, but Kurt's head is spinning and he can't register any of it, nothing beyond the fact that he wasn't too late, he wasn't too late, he wasn't too late…
His body is on fire, it feels so incredibly good to be here in this moment, Blaine's hands hooked under his thighs and their lower bodies crushing together in a devastating rhythm, the pulse of pressure building him a little closer to climax every time, and Kurt is arching back and gasping, one hand buried in Blaine's hair and the other pressed flat against the door, because as much as he would like to strip Blaine naked and spend this entire night, this entire life-changing night of freedom and reunion, working Blaine over with delicate precision until they were both crying with the needle-sharp pleasure of a partner who knows just where you come apart—as much as he would like that, right now his body is absolutely powerless to do anything beyond keep its balance and not bring them both crashing to the ground, at least not until they get there, not when they're so close and this is the beginning of a new forever—
Kurt comes first, he can't help it, the reality of Blaine being here and his is overwhelming. A final grind of Blaine's cock against his own, the sting of Blaine's teeth on his collarbone, and he orgasms with a jolt, choking out white noises, digging his nails into Blaine's neck. Blaine half-sobs against Kurt's jaw, his body still steel-hard and tensed up against Kurt, and even as Kurt is still bucking up against him and lost in the rush of pleasure Blaine shudders and gets there too, pressing Kurt so hard against the door that his ribs creak, a raspy whine dragging itself out of him as he rides everything to the finish.
They collapse to the floor, completely and utterly spent, ridiculously still clothed. Blaine wastes no time in burying his face into Kurt's chest and tugging him close, cuddling up like a baby bat. Kurt fights to catch his breath and throws a leg over Blaine's hip, who cares how gross his pants feel. They twine together, there on the cold and un-vaccuumed floor.
"That was—"
"Kind of insane," Kurt finishes, and Blaine giggles weakly.
"I feel like I just got hit with a bomb."
"I've been called worse." Blaine giggles again and nuzzles Kurt's throat.
"You feel so good…you didn't feel like this on Valentine's Day."
"Wonder what's changed."
"Oh God, Kurt…I…thank you, I know you said not to say it but thank you for—"
"Don't." He actually presses a finger to Blaine's mouth, and of course because Blaine is actually a five-year-old kid inside, he immediately bites it (gently). Kurt yelps and swats Blaine on the cheek; he gets a grin and another nuzzle for his trouble. "Don't say that, you—you dork. I made up my mind and now—let's just do this. We already know how, we just have to…"
"Start?"
"Exactly."
"You absolutely bitch, Kurt Hummel," squeals Santana as she throws her arms around him. "You were going to put a ring on it all this time and you didn't tell me?"
"Sorry," he replies through a mouthful of black hair. A couple feet away, Blaine is whirling Quinn around and around in circles. Kurt's heart, already full to bursting, swells another dangerous inch.
"You son of a bitch, congratulations," Santana whispers to him, and plants a resounding kiss on his cheek. He squeezes her tight and then steps back, hands on his hips, to receive a dazzling smile.
"Thank you, Auntie Snixx."
"Oh my god, do you have any idea how long you've made us fucking wait for this? I called you little Furby gays as wedded and bedded, like, the first day I saw Blaine derping around Rachel Berry's basement, and it takes you five fucking years break up and get back together and get your rainbow dust all over everything and then you finally pop out the ball and chain and it's on the Brooklyn Bridge? Jesus, Hummel, just get Channing Tatum to marry you under a waterfall while you're at it."
Her tirade ends with an epic eye roll. Kurt fights the urge to compete with one of his own.
"Is that all, Santana?"
"Not if you give me more of that attitude, Richard Simmons," she snaps, but the smile doesn't leave her face. "God, Berry's gonna flip a shit when she finds out this happened and she wasn't here. Wait-you didn't tell her and not us, did you?"
"No, I did not," Kurt huffs. "And she can flip anything she wants, it's my proposal and I'm not going to spend an hour searching her rehearsal schedule for a single spare night when she could deign to join us."
"Your proposal, eh? Look who got him a man and grew a big ol' pair," Santana chortles. Kurt does roll his eyes then, but he can't seem to stop smiling, he really can't, and a second later Quinn is back on solid ground and hugging Kurt as hard as she can, which frees Santana up to go verbally assault Blaine with her own peculiar form of love.
"Congratulations, honey," Quinn says in his ear, and Kurt presses his face into her shoulder.
"I was terrified," he tells her in a quiet voice, and her fingers scratch gently at the back of his head.
"I know. But you did it, and that's what counts." It is so weird, so weird, when he thinks about it—after all, this is Quinn Fabray, the girl who used to fondle her little gold crucifix while throwing the word faggot out into the McKinley hallways, who sneered when Kurt was still pulling dumpster garbage off himself before homeroom. And now here she is. And here he is. And here is what it all has led to.
"Yo Hummel!" Santana calls, and he turns to see her standing with an arm around Blaine, whose face is shining with the world's most beautiful and derpiest grin. The glint of silver on his left hand is like a lighthouse beacon, drawing Kurt's senses to a sharp feeling of safety and comfort and pride. "I have a request for permission, and you know how much I hate that."
"What up, Snixx?" he asks, not caring whatever it is that she wants because he just got engaged, he'd let her take scissors to his closet if she asked.
(That is a blatant lie.)
"I may or may not have gotten the big moment on Instragram," she says, a devilish grin slowly sliding across her face. "And if you two sign off, I would be honored to break the news across the interwebs via Twitterbook. Only if you're cool with it, but I mean, come on, if I Tweet your marital bliss then people might actually take it seriously."
"Better safe than sorry," Quinn adds with a giggle. Kurt rolls his eyes and takes the phone Santana is offering him: immediately his heart seems to clench into a fist and then explode just as quickly, a blast of emotion in his chest, because there it is on camera—him kneeling, box in hand, biting his lip and looking up at Blaine, who is so beautiful in the light from the Bridge and the city, whose face is so dear and so soft and so familiar, who in that exact moment was deciding that he wanted to be with Kurt and only Kurt for the rest of—
Arms are going around Kurt's waist, strong and warm, and without thinking he relaxes back into Blaine, his back molding up against his boyfriend's—his fiancé's warm chest. Blaine hums in his ear and squeezes him close. "I say let her do it," he whispers hoarsely, and his voice makes Kurt's knees shudder. "I want everyone to know right now, as soon as possible, that you're mine."
Kurt hands back the phone without looking or caring, swivels in the protective loop of Blaine's embrace, and looks the love of his life—he can finally say that now, because life is up and running in a way it's never been before—right in the eye.
"I always have been."
"Right back at you," Blaine murmurs, and it's not dialogue by Nicholas Sparks or William Shakespeare, but it's theirs and it's them, and the kiss that follows is just that as well.
Theirs.