The sun was shining into the classroom, bouncing off the blackboard into the eyes of the twenty or so boys trapped inside by a combination of strict school rules and the weight of their families' expectations on their shoulders. The smell of lunch came wafting down the hallway from the cafeteria, and the four rows of boys sitting at their individual desks were surreptitiously trying to identify the smell and keep an eye on the clock at the same time. Their teacher, blissfully oblivious, was trying to catch a certain student's attention.

"Hummel. Mr. Hummel. What's your answer?"

Kurt started – he'd been staring out the window at the tiny little birds jumping along the tree branch closest to the classroom window, little balls of brown and white fluff that reminded him so much of Pavarotti hopping in his tiny cage that he could feel his stomach twist a little. Kurt, who hadn't heard the teacher's question at all, and turned to the front of the classroom with an apologetic look on his face.

The teacher, a round, balding man with an immense, curling moustache, sighed and looked at the clock. "Just five minutes, boys, and you can go. Well, only if Mr. Hummel here can tell me why the strawberry fields hold such significance in Snow Falling On Cedars."

Shit. Kurt glanced down at the notes he'd been half-heartedly writing throughout the lesson. Strawberries. Strawberries. Ah, there, beneath a definition of a metaphor and a drawing of a samurai sword. He hurriedly skimmed the two lines he had written, noticing to his horror that the answer segued off into a recipe for strawberry cake he wanted to look up when he got home.

Kurt could feel the teacher's gaze on the top of his head, and he heard someone's stomach rumble from the other side of the room. Oh well. Time to go out with a bang.

"The strawberry fields are a metaphor, sir. They represent the combination of the western and … Japanese cultures, and, um, differing opinions?"

To Kurt's immense relief, the bell rang at that point, and his rather weak answer trailed off into an incoherent mumble.

"Pack up your books, boys – and remember, you need to have the novel finished by the end of the week, no exceptions!"

The teacher sat down at his desk as the students jumped up from theirs and practically sprinted out of the classroom. Kurt slammed his notebook and novel shut and grabbed his bag, rushing out of the room before he could make eye contact with his teacher.

As he made his way down the hallway towards the cafeteria with the swarm of hungry teenage boys, he felt something catch his elbow. Jumping and spinning quickly, Kurt found himself face to face with a dark-haired boy wearing an extremely bright smile.

"Blaine," he said, breathing out deeply. "You scared me."

"Really?" Blaine asked, cocking one eyebrow, his grin growing even wider. He held up a brown paper bag and gestured out the doors leading to the courtyard. "Lunch? We could sit outside, have a little picnic."

Blaine had noticed in Kurt's first week at Dalton that Kurt preferred to take his own lunch to school. Kurt had explained it, "Carole makes much lighter food than my dad does – we didn't really ever have to eat lunch before Dad and Carole got married. And, you know, it's cheaper than buying lunch here everyday anyway."

Since then, Blaine, who hadn't ever been a huge fan of the cafeteria food, started taking his own lunch from home as well. Not everyday though, he'd made sure – that would have been too obvious. Just once or twice a week, and Kurt was always open to the idea of lunch outdoors.

Kurt shifted his books in his arms, and a smile crossed his face. "A picnic sounds perfect."

"Awesome," said Blaine, as he slid the books from Kurt's arms into his own. "Come on, I'll show you my favourite spot. It should be dry today."

The two boys turned against the crowd and made their way out the enormous wooden doors at the front of the school. Kurt saw Wes and David as they passed by, and heard Wes shout something that could have either been, "Kurt and Blaine, getting some!" or, preferably, "Remember boys, practice at one."

He fervently hoped it was the latter, and judging by the flattering tomato red shade Blaine's face had taken on as he rolled his eyes and shook his head over his shoulder at his friends, it was clear his boyfriend thought the same.

Boyfriend. Boyfriend. Booooooyfriend.

The word sounded amazing to Kurt. He'd practically been skipping ever since that wonderful day in the senior commons two weeks before, and his family had noticed. Well, Carole had noticed, and Finn had heard the news from Quinn, who had heard it from Brittany, who had heard it from Mercedes. Only his father hadn't picked up on it at first, and thought that Kurt's good mood was merely a residual high from singing a solo at Regionals.

Kurt had been treated to half an hour of, "Are you sure?" and, "If he tries anything …" from his father once he'd figured it out before Carole had finally tired of watching Burt fumble and Kurt fluster, and the boy was sure it was thirty minutes more than he ever needed to hear.

Grass crunched beneath their feet as they left the gravel pathway at the front of the school and wandered towards the gardens at the side – beautiful little pockets of flowers and shrubs, not yet disturbed by flying footballs and soccer cleats. Kurt tipped his head back a little, enjoying the feeling of the sun on his face, ignoring the vaguely itchy feeling of the stiff blue blazer rubbing against the back of his neck.

Next to him, Blaine was doing the same, his head lolling from side to side as he worked the stiffness from sitting and studying for hours on end from his neck. The tips of Blaine's hair shone in the sunlight, tiny curls escaping from his helmet of gel and settling on his forehead. Kurt smiled as Blaine tried to twitch them away by blowing upwards, scrunching his forehead up and down and, for some strange reason, even blinking at double speed.

The smile drooped a little as Kurt remembered the reason he had to talk to Blaine, all about the long conversation he had had with his parents the night before – the conversation he knew was going to happen at one point or another - but even that knowledge made it no easier to bear. After fuming for a few hours and attacking his math homework with a vengeance that even the most horrible of calculus questions didn't deserve, Kurt had come to accept the fact that he had to leave Dalton.

He had to leave this place, this school of acceptance and beautiful gardens, of friends and opportunities and antique furniture. Even though he hated the idea, Kurt knew there wasn't anything he could do to change the facts.

The most difficult part, he'd figured, would be telling Blaine. The two had become even closer, if possible, than they had been before, and it wasn't just the handholding and spontaneous bursts of affection in the hallways that Kurt would miss. It was the feeling of trust and understanding radiating from the boy who was, Kurt admitted to himself, his closest friend.

Kurt hitched the strap of his bag higher on his shoulder as they walked in a comfortable silence across the grounds, and as he looked across at Blaine, he saw Blaine drop his eyes from Kurt's face to their hands, swinging between them. Kurt almost felt Blaine tense in nervousness a little, before he took Kurt's hand and twined their fingers together.

A surge of contentment welled up inside Kurt, and he squeezed Blaine's hand, feeling the tension that had existed for a moment disappear completely, his own gloomy thoughts pushed to the back of his mind. He was here, for a little longer at least, holding hands with his boyfriend, and that was what mattered.

Blaine smiled nervously at Kurt before raising their joined hands and pointing towards a sandstone building.

"Just behind that block, Kurt."

Kurt could smell the roses well before he saw them, and as they turned the corner, a vast bed of flowers spread out in front of them. He grinned to himself – Blaine knew him so well.

"Do you like it?" Blaine asked him, hefting Kurt's books into a more comfortable position in his arms. "They planted this a few years ago to try and impress a group of alumni who had formed an environmental activism group, you know, get them to donate to the school."

"Did it work?" Kurt asked as they dropped their bags under the shade of a maple tree.

"Oh, yeah," Blaine said, throwing himself on the ground. "It got us the pianos in the music rooms and the new locker rooms for the football team. I don't know what they did with the rest of the money though. Probably bought more German textbooks," he finished with a dramatic grimace, and Kurt laughed. Blaine, who could speak French as well as Kurt could, and was teaching himself Cantonese, had developed something of a block about the German language. As hard as he tried, his sentence order was always wrong, his verbs incorrectly conjugated, and the less said about his pronunciation the better.

They unwrapped their lunches – Kurt had packed himself a slice of leftover quiche, and Blaine's mother, who was on a vegetarian kick, had given him a soggy chickpea patty on a bread roll. Kurt eyed it warily as he settled back against the tree trunk and began to eat, but Blaine merely swallowed the sandwich in three bites and pulled a packet of cookies out of the paper bag.

"Want one?" he asked Kurt, waving the bag in front of his face. "You know you do – I made these myself."

Kurt, who had a mouthful of quiche crust, waved his fork to indicate that he couldn't speak. He swallowed forcefully. "Chocolate chip?" he asked, once the food had disappeared, and grinned as Blaine nodded enthusiastically. "Save me one. Finn's still raving about the plate you brought to our place the other day, but I only got two before the rest of my family cleared them out."

"I'll make you some more," Blaine promised him, popping half a cookie into his mouth, and laying the packet with the rest on top of Kurt's bag. He pushed his bag along the ground until it was in line with Kurt's folded legs, and lay down next to him. Blaine pulled his own English novel out of his bag, Orwell's 1984, and opened it up.

Kurt watched Blaine read for a few minutes as he finished his lunch and put the container back in his bag. He liked that they didn't feel the need to fill every moment with conversation – that the nervous rambling he had so often displayed before they started dating had died down once he realised that Blaine liked him as much as he liked Blaine.

Blaine's eyes flicked across the pages, his brow slightly furrowed as he held the book above his face to block the dappled sunlight filtering through the leaves of the maple tree. Kurt sat against the tree trunk and breathed in and out deeply, savouring the warmth of the spring day. It made a nice change from the relentlessly cold weather that had plagued Ohio for the past few months, making outdoor adventures like this picnic quite impossible.

After a few minutes, Blaine put the book down, laying it flat on his stomach, and twisted so he could see Kurt's face properly. Kurt was staring up at the sandstone building ahead of them, and beyond, taking in all of the Dalton buildings, all dark brick and polished windows.

"It's a bit much, isn't it?" Blaine said, gesturing to the school. "I think they confused it with a college campus when they were building it."

"Hmm," Kurt said, nodding his head. "It does seem more collegiate – a hundred times more than McKinley, at least." He chanced a look at Blaine when he said the name of his old school, but the only reaction he got from the other boy was a nod and the skin tightening slightly around his eyes.

Kurt took another deep breath. Now or never, he told himself and, for the second time in an hour, thought, time to go out with a bang.

"Blaine," he said, pushing himself further upright and then leaning forward, his elbows on his knees. "I need to tell you something."

"Oh?" said Blaine, shifting so he was lying on his side. "What's wrong, Kurt?"

"You kno-, my dad-, um, I, I don't want- I have to leave Dalton."

There, he thought, he'd said it.

Blaine's mouth dropped a little, and he pushed himself up so he was sitting in a position mirroring Kurt's. He seemed to want to reach out and take Kurt's hand, but Kurt was looking at him intently, trying to see whether Blaine understood, and so Blaine refrained.

"Why?" was all he asked, looking just as intently at his boyfriend.

Kurt sighed and shook his head. "It's a mix of things – mainly expenses, though. Tuition and gas, and the stress of driving for hours each day – Dad and Carole decided it was enough." He bit his bottom lip and twisted his fingers together nervously.

Blaine swallowed hard and nodded, holding his hand out and prying Kurt's apart. He entwined his fingers with Kurt's again, and squeezed. "Are you going back to McKinley?"

The question seemed to hang in the air in front of them for a minute until Kurt nodded as well and reached out his other hand so it was sandwiching Blaine's, and Blaine put his other hand on top, so it was a pile of intertwined fingers hovering above the ground, applying pressure in a physical expression of the support the two boys were trying to show each other. Kurt, because he had thrown Blaine completely off the deep end, leaving him and making their relationship even more confusing, and Blaine, because he understood Kurt's fear, his fear of leaving the little bubble of security Dalton offered and going back to the school where he felt unwanted, to say the least, and where his life was threatened.

They sat in silence for a few moments, squeezing their hands together, until Kurt spoke. "I'm scared of going back," he admitted. "I know Puck and the other Glee guys offered to make sure the footballers keep away, and Finn brought that up again last night, but they can't be there all the time. I don't want them there all the time – it makes me feel so –"

"Helpless," Blaine supplied dully. "I know the feeling."

Kurt looked down at their hands. "I don't want to leave you either," he said in a low voice. "We've just become- I mean, we only just- I don't want to abandon us, Blaine. I don't want to leave you here."

Blaine's jaw dropped for the second time. "Abandon us?" he asked in a slightly higher pitch than usual.

"What? Oh no," Kurt said quickly, suddenly flustered, "I don't want to break up with you, Blaine. Not at all. It's just that … we'll be so far apart. I won't see you anywhere near as much as I do now."

Blaine gently disentangled his hands from Kurt's and shuffled across the ground until he was sitting next to his boyfriend. He looped his arm around Kurt's shoulders and drew the boy's head to rest next to his neck.

Kurt could feel every tremor through Blaine's body as he spoke next, could feel the warmth of his boyfriend cocoon him. "You're not abandoning us, Kurt. You're making a decision, taking an action that you need to do. We'll adapt. We've got phones and email and we can drive. I'll see you on weekends – we'll go out, spend as much time together as possible. This doesn't mean the end of us, I promise."

Kurt nestled his head closer, and Blaine laid his cheek on top of Kurt's hair. "I had a feeling you were going to go back eventually," Blaine admitted, rubbing his hand up and down Kurt's arm. "You seem so much … more, when you're with your friends from McKinley. You seem much more comfortable around them than you do with the Warblers."

"That's true," Kurt said sadly. "Though it could be because no one in New Directions has a bloody gavel."

Blaine chuckled. "I'll admit," he said, "I think the gavel's a bit too much. You're not telling me Rachel wouldn't go for one if she could, are you?"

Kurt smiled as well. "Please don't ever mention it to her."

"Deal."

Kurt wrapped his arms around Blaine's waist and squeezed, feeling the blazer rub against his face. "I'm going to miss you," he said quietly.

"Me too," Blaine said, ducking his head and looking Kurt straight in the eyes. His forehead was furrowed, radiating concern. "When do you have to leave?"

"After the Easter break," Kurt said. "About three weeks."

Blaine let out a low whistle and sighed. "Well, that settles it. We'll have to spend as much time together as possible before you go. It'll get to a point where you'll see my name on your caller ID and groan. You'll be wanting the weeks to go by faster, I'll bet."

"Idiot," Kurt said affectionately, pushing Blaine's chest lightly. "That'll never happen."

"Is that a challenge, Mr. Hummel?" Blaine asked him, his eyes twinkling. "I'm sure I can be annoying and clingy – just watch."

Kurt laughed and reached up to kiss Blaine's cheek, reveling in the fact that he just could. He could kiss Blaine when he wanted to, hold his hand when he wanted to, call him in tears or in need of French notes, hug him for as long as he wanted without overstepping the 'just friends' boundary. He could be as affectionate with Blaine as he wanted, just because he could. And to know that the affection and trust and respect and love, though they hadn't said the word, didn't have to stop just because Kurt was leaving, made him feel so warm and fulfilled and happy.

Happy wasn't a feeling Kurt had much experience with – there were experiences in his life that he felt made him happy when they happened, but they didn't come close to what he was feeling at this point. Even sitting on slightly damp grass with the sun shining into his eyes, telling his boyfriend that he had to leave him and the most accepting place he'd ever been didn't altogether dampen his spirits.

Kurt thought back to his younger self, a year, even six months ago. Calm down, he counseled past-Kurt. You'll get there, I promise.

Blaine looked at Kurt, who was leaning back on his hands, a small smile on his face. Blaine's chest tightened a little at the thought of Kurt leaving – he had become so accustomed to having his friend, and now his boyfriend, so close at hand. Someone to talk to, fight with and fight for, someone to support and to be supported by, but Blaine knew he wouldn't be far away. Like he'd told Kurt – they just needed to adapt.

The school bell rang and a groan echoed around the school as the students began to leave the grounds for the torturous hallways of education and the possibility of accomplishment. Blaine got to his feet and held out his hand to help Kurt up. Kurt took it, and as soon as he was standing, threw his arms around Blaine without any warning. Blaine stumbled a little as the weight of Kurt hit him, but Kurt's arms kept him upright, and they stood there for a moment, cheeks pressed together, eyes closed, silent.

As they broke apart and picked up their bags, Kurt brushed away the grass that had collected on the back of Blaine's blazer, and Blaine straightened Kurt's tie. They linked their hands together once more, until both looked at their watches, swore in surprise at the time, and sprinted, hand in hand, across the grounds to their next class.

Disclaimer: I don't own Glee, believe me. Kurt and Blaine probably still wouldn't be together if I did.

There you go, chaps, my first Glee story. I tried to change all the Britishisms into more American slang, but if I didn't catch a few, let me know!

I hope you enjoyed A Parting Picnic!