It was meant to be different. Nothing like this was supposed to happen, yet it had. The two were staring at each other, faces bright red with anger and tears coming down Kurt's face. They were meant to be together for forever. They were going to graduate from Dalton together and go off to New York to go to college, share a dorm, eventually get married and perhaps have a family together. Blaine and Kurt both agreed on the plan. It was perfect. Well, as close to perfection as a plan for two gay teenagers could get.
Somewhere along the line, however, things began to change, leaving the two standing in the living room of the Hummel-Hudson household, Blaine about to storm out the door and Kurt sitting on a couch with his head in his hands.
Blaine turned away to face the door, refusing to look at Kurt. He closed his eyes and counted backwards from twenty. Twenty… nineteen…seven… four… two… one… his eyes opened again after the final number. Slowly he began to turn back around to face Kurt. "It's not that far away, you know," he said quietly, drawing out each word as he spoke and refusing to look in to Kurt's eyes, knowing that if he did so, it would be revealed that he knew he was lying. Of course, that was the only way to put it. Truthfully, it wasn't that far, but it was much further than the two hour drive it would take Blaine to meet Kurt in Lima back before Kurt had transferred to Dalton.
Kurt lifted his head from his hands. His eyes were red from crying. "Julliard and Harvard are hours apart," he muttered. He wasn't certain about the fact that he had just stated but he was sure that it was further than they had wanted to be. He sniffled quietly as he pulled out his iPhone from his pocket. Blaine gave him a slightly confused look and made his way to the spot next to Kurt on the couch.
The room was silent aside from the sniffles of Kurt and the breathing of Blaine.
Blaine refused to get too close to Kurt, knowing it might set off the tears once again but he couldn't help but be curious about what Kurt was doing with his phone. His eyes made their way to the screen that was tipped slightly away from Blaine.
The tearful expression on Kurt's face changed slightly. It was of mixed emotions. Blaine was sure he could detect sadness and anger and… was that a small smile?
"Over two hundred miles," Kurt informed his boyfriend. "Four hours away. Without the traffic." He tossed the phone to the space between himself and Blaine before sticking his head back in to his hands. "I thought it was worse," he admitted wearily, looking up at Blaine and in to his eyes for the first time in an hour. He smiled a forced smile at the boy.
Blaine pushed himself closer to Kurt. There was still space between the two but now he could comfortably reach over to put his arm across the other boy's shoulders. "It's the same distance as it is to Cornell," he informed Kurt quietly. Kurt broke the eye contact and began to look around the room as if he was searching for something. The silence filled the room once again and, in some ways, it seemed like the silence was worse than the yelling had been when it ran through the house, forcing Finn to retreat to Rachel's house while mumbling something about forgetting to give her a goodnight kiss after their date two nights ago and having to make it up.
"Are you sure that you have to go to an Ivy League school?" Kurt asked Blaine in a quiet voice. Blaine nodded, refusing to speak because he knew whatever he would say would be wrong. Kurt seemed to be contemplating something when Blaine looked over at him the next time he spoke. "What about… what about Columbia?" Blaine could see the hope in his eyes, the certainty that it had to work out, and the need to see his boyfriend on a weekly basis at least.
The shorter boy gulped. "I haven't heard anything from them," he admitted. He scratched the back of his neck with his hand. "It's so close to Julliard. I want it to work out," he added as an afterthought.
"What about-" he began to ask before being cut off.
"Princeton turned me down."
Kurt stuck his nose in the air.
"There's always Penn," Kurt mumbled sheepishly, looking over Blaine with that hopeful smile and a glint in his eye. "They accepted you."
This time it was Blaine who was searching around the room for a nonexistent object. Or perhaps it was his sanity that he was searching for. He wasn't quite sure. The boy closed his eyes and once again began to count backwards, this time just from ten. "Pennsylvania isn't appealing," he mumbled in a way that was almost unable to be deciphered.
Kurt looked hurt at the final statement. "Seeing me isn't appealing?" he asked, sticking his lip out slightly.
"That's not the unappealing part," he told his boyfriend with a wink. "I've been to Philadelphia before. I don't like it there. It makes me feel uneasy." He pierced his lips together so that he could stop himself from saying anything stupid. Or, rather, stupider.
"What about those smaller schools?" Kurt questioned. He reached to pick his iPhone up but was stopped when Blaine put his hand over his own.
"I have to go to an Ivy, Kurt," Blaine said. He swore, Kurt was testing his patience. He squeezed Kurt's hand slightly and gave the boy a crooked smile. "I have to. My family-"
" 'My family will not pay for college and will practically disown me if I don't go'," Kurt recited. He had heard the speech before, many times before. But the reality of it all had just now kicked in as the deadline for college acceptances was rolling around. There was only another week before Blaine would have the final news from Columbia and only another week after that before Blaine had to decide which school he would be going to. He had begun seriously considering his options a month ago when he still had not received any news from Columbia about where he would go instead. Kurt bent his head down.
Blaine lifted his hand up from Kurt's and brought it up to the boy's face. He pulled his face over so that it was looking at Blaine and held his hand up on his face. "We've been dating for fourteen months now," he told Kurt, grinning. "Something as silly as college won't stop us from being together." He began to lean his own face up to Kurt's. They were no more than three or four inches from each other. "We can Skype, we can text, we can call. We'll be no more than a few hours from each other. We can see each other on each and every long weekend, vacation. We can take the extremely long drive from the east coast back to Ohio together every time we go home. No matter what." He leaned in slightly further until his nose hit Kurt's.
"I love you, you know," Blaine muttered. His breath hit Kurt.
"I love you too," Kurt mumbled with a huge smile across his face, leaning forwards and kissing his boyfriend quickly. He pulled back slightly from the kiss. "You can go to wherever you want to go. But if you hear anything from Columbia, I won't hesitate to do nothing but convince you to go there." He grinned slightly.
Blaine smiled, kissing Kurt on the nose before pulling back so that he could look the boy in the eyes. "And you have every right to."