Everyone thinks they didn't have sex, mostly because Kurt is really, really capital G Gay. But, in fact, there had been sex. Because Brittany loved him, and Kurt had wanted to love her.
And more than that, because she just wanted to steal his first something; she knew that was all she could claim from him; he'd move on, be himself, and she'd stare after him but never have a chance to have him again, but if she held this one part of his life captive, he was bound to remember her forever and stay in some secluded chest with her, hidden in perfect secrecy from the prying eyes of any other boys who would undoubtedly come to take this one perfect man from her.
So, yes, sex. It hadn't been penetrative, because no matter how hard she had tried to work her charms on him, and work the soft spot she knew he had for her, he just didn't cave. But they had fooled around. She had blown him ...or tried to, but halfway Kurt had just grunted in frustration and told her that it wasn't working; and they'd experimented a little in mutual masturbation, which worked a little better than the blowing thing, but she could still tell that when Kurt had his hand down her skirt he wasn't really enjoying it (he closed his eyes and scrunched up his nose and started reciting designer labels under his breath).
But it was something, and that was way better than having nothing at all and watch from a cheap secondhanded audience seat how somebody else slipped into the picture and took all of it away; how someone shiny and new took all of it away from her desperate clutches and made themselves a home with the only person Brittany has ever felt entirely beautiful or worthy with (there's always a throbbing edge with her that kills her a bit).
Turns out the shiny new guy she was afraid of wasn't shiny or new at all. He had even more dents all over than her; even more notches, even more bumps. This guy is even more shattered than her, and he deserves Kurt even less.
Because the guy that's coming to steal Kurt away from her is Noah Puckerman.
She's not the smartest girl around, but even someone like her (someone surrounded by mist, by doubt, by the single recurring theme of not knowing) can see that Noah Puckerman is all kinds of wrong for Kurt.
Except that she knows enough about Noah to discern that all that isn't true, and that sitting around waiting for him to screw up is just wishful thinking. She can hope that he will do something unforgivable (and half of her wants that, but the other half wants to bawl over the possibility of someone grabbing Kurt's heart and smashing it against a concrete floor until it's just a bloody mess), but the truth is that he won't.
Because Noah and her are painfully similar. They are used to being used, to giving people what they expect from them, to throwing themselves around, to finding meaningless pleasure and take the best out of it.
They are also… hollow. Or they have been. Hollow for a long, long time. Hollow, incomplete, meant to be unfixable. Because along those expectations of others –be careless, be daft, be theirs for tonight; be this, be this, be this- there's always been the pressing urge of running away from their own minds, their own desires, their own everything.
And then she fell in love. It wasn't magic, it wasn't a forever kind of solution, and it didn't grant her absolution over everything else she had given away and given into, but it mended a little of all that. (And she knew that someday, when they all grew older, wiser, braver, love would mend something else.)
And falling in love (twice, and even though she never got them to stay in the end) made her faithful. Made her a better person, made her start trying.
Even now, still in love with him and clearly (and forever, and always, just infinitely) in love with her, she keeps on trying.
Noah is just like her. He has fallen. Like her, only twice. The first time, it broke him (thinking about Beth breaks her too, sometimes, because she'd been so soft, so quietly beautiful; she'd been life, rays of sun, the need to hold her close and never let go; then, she just wasn't there anymore). But this time? This time love is mending him, filling him up. Giving him something other than grief and emptiness.
She can see that. See it in the obvious way he is changing. In his smiles –less piercing-, in his singing –heartfelt, pure, colorful-, in the way he's always looking at Kurt like he's the one thing he'll never get enough of. It's there, there for everyone to see.
Noah won't screw up. He will tread around this new ground with awareness of the gift he's been given (the thought that Kurt is no longer with Blaine-who-couldn't-see, and is now with someone who just recognizes how lucky they are to have him consoles her), he will nurture this relationship just the way she would. He will work hard, the way she would.
She doesn't wait for him to trip and fall, then, because it's pointless. And even she knows about lost causes (getting Mr. Tubbington to stop smoking, for example, has proven to be one of those, so far).
She just faces that this is what she knew would happen someday. That this is the guy that will take Kurt away, make him indifferent to any other advances, make him a brand new human being.
Faces that this is her moment to say goodbye to any fantasy of winning Kurt over she had left, that it's time to move on. Or to at least switch tactics, stop wasting time and conquer her heart, because she will be Brittany's forever one day, and the pain in her chest when they are together will subside, but it's all got to start somehow and somewhen.
…At least she'll have something of his to hold close to herself whenever she starts missing him dearly.
(And if she smiles triumphantly every time she thinks about the fact that despite whatever Noah may think, he won't be the only one? Well, she's entitled to her petty pleasures and victories. She is, after all, a cheerleader at heart.)