It all seemed to be a dream for Rachel, how easily they fell in love. She had grown a lot since high school, been careful not to throw the word around as much anymore, but within weeks she knew that was what was happening with Blaine.
He had kept his promise, calling her the next evening and asking her out for an afternoon date, joking that they could at least end it at a normal hour and get some sleep. Of course, that date had barely been shorter than their first, and Rachel walked home at 2 in the morning with another giant smile on her face.
Blaine was wonderful. He was sweet and funny and-she learned on their fourth date when they went to a karaoke bar with Kurt and a few other people-incredibly talented. On their fifth date, only two weeks into dating, she found his guitar and asked him to play for her. He had blushed, muttering about how he didn't really play much around others, but she insisted and he played some songs for her while she sat on his living room floor, memorized by his hands and his voice. She had been the one to initiate their first kiss after that, taking him by surprise before he even had a chance to put the guitar down.
The whole summer continued like that-they seemed to exist in their own blissful world, content to spend their free time with each other and each other alone. They would go on double dates with Kurt and his new boyfriend every once in awhile, but for the most part they had picnics at the park or sat at the waterfront in Brooklyn or went to off-off Broadway musicals and scoped out Rachel's future competition. Sometimes they would just laze in one of their apartments, singing quietly to each other or watching movies. If it was Blaine's turn to pick, they were often things like Harry Potter or Lord of the Rings, and when Rachel got to pick she'd go for things like My Fair Lady and Funny Face.
Before they knew it, it seemed like summer was over and school was starting up again. Their time together went from infinite to limited, and though it was stressful, they still tried to see each other as often as possible. Their dates were less exciting, leaning more towards study dates with take-out food than trips to the zoo or museums around the city, but Rachel just wanted to be around him. When first semester finals rolled around, she was surprised to find that he was even more stressed than she was. She often had to remind him to eat, making him sandwiches and hiding his books every couple days so he'd give himself a break and leave the apartment and get his mind off studying.
It was during one of these walks that she realized just how far she had fallen for Blaine. They were wandering around Central Park, and she was rambling about how she was going to have to start auditioning for roles soon, and how she knew that she probably wouldn't get on Broadway just yet but she wasn't sure if she could settle for anything that wasn't at least off-Broadway, when he stopped her in the middle of the path. "Am I talking too much?" she bit her lip, looking up at him and pulling his hat over his ears a little more so the snow and cold wouldn't affect him too much.
He grinned, leaning down to kiss her nose, something she had already figured out he only did when he was feeling a strong rush of affection towards her. "I love you," he told her, and her stomach nearly fell out of her body it swooped so low at his words. She had gathered as much, though they had never spoken the words aloud.
"I love you too," she whispered back, leaning up on her toes to kiss him softly. She could feel his smile as he kissed her back, and when she finally pulled back she couldn't tell who looked happier. She let her head rest on his chest, their arms wrapped around each other now as they stood on the path near the lake, not worried about blocking anyone or anything since the park was nearly deserted.
It was the first time she let herself think about a future with Blaine, something farther than the next week or two, a future with a marriage and children and the rest of their lives spent together.
Winter faded into spring with surprising ease, and now Rachel was verging on panic. "Rachel, babe, you need to calm down," Blaine told her one Sunday afternoon as she paced her apartment, tearing it apart.
"I can't calm down!" she screamed, and though she wasn't mad at him, he was getting on her nerves with his calm and his ease that he seemed to exude even when there were only a couple months before their lives were officially their own, before there was officially no set agenda for them. Although, Blaine had already applied and gotten accepted to continue for grad school, so she supposed he didn't have any reason to panic about his future. He had another two years before this feeling of sheer terror would wash over him. And that was if it even happened for him.
"Rachel, I told you-you left the script at Kurt's last night when you went over and demanded he run lines with you," Blaine tried to remind her, but she shook her head "no".
"I had it with me this morning-remember? You came in and handed me coffee and waved goodbye to Alissa and said Oh, is this the new script you have an audition for this week? And then you picked it up and put it somewhere!" she yelled again, because this was imperative that she memorized it before her audition-her last one had gone badly, and it was now March and she only had two months until graduation and she was on her own without her dads paying for her apartment and her schooling.
"Oh," Blaine exclaimed, jumping off the couch where he was reviewing a paper he had due sometime in the next week or so, "I remember now!"
"Good!" she squeaked, watching him as he raced into her bedroom, waiting impatiently before he reappeared, script in hand.
"I accidentally put it with the rest of my school stuff," he apologized, looking a little embarrassed. She was so relieved-not to mention stressed and on the brink of about twelve different emotions-that she couldn't help but jump into his arms, causing them both to tumble onto the floor as she kissed him all over his face in gratitude.
"Thank you so much," she told him between kisses, and he laughed, his hands coming to a natural hold at her waist as she found his mouth with her own, his grip tightening after a minute before she pulled back, giggling slightly. "No time for that right now," she told him as he let out a disappointed groan that he didn't even try and cover up. "I have to memorize this immediately."
"But you could memorize it after-" he whined, continuing to lay on the floor as she stood up and went back to her small kitchen to make herself tea to help focus.
"Not right now Blaine!" she sang, but with a glance back at him a smile formed on her face. "Maybe later tonight? If you finish your paper and I finish memorizing this?"
"Bribery, huh?" he asked with a smirk, but he got off the floor before promptly crashing on her couch once more, pulling his laptop to him to look over his paper some more. "I guess bribery will work for now."
Graduation was a simple affair. Kurt, Blaine and Rachel were all taken out to dinner by their parents-Rachel was glad to see her dad's, though Blaine's parents didn't seem to cotton to well to them. ("It's the gay thing," he winced later that night when they lay in her bed. "They're more…close minded. They don't particularly like Kurt either. I've tried to tell them that it shouldn't matter, but, well they're set in their ways. So as long as they don't say anything hurtful to anyone's faces I try to ignore it. Trust me," he added when he saw her unspoken worry. "They love you regardless of your parentage. And more importantly, I love you ") She was even more pleased when her dad's liked Blaine, they hadn't taken too well to her high school boyfriends. When Rachel, Kurt and Blaine all ended up getting slightly more tipsy than they probably would have liked to in front of their parents and started singing, the parents all said it was a wonder the three of them didn't start a group together.
But with graduation came the end of school for good for Rachel, and the start of becoming a real adult. When her roommate moved out, she had to make the decision of finding a new one or asking Blaine to move in. In the end, it was Blaine who suggested he moved in.
"I don't mean to be forward-"
"You usually do mean to be, but go on," Rachel interrupted as she cooked them dinner one night, the spring air growing more humid outside again, summer hanging in the air.
"But," he continued on, pressing a quick kiss to the back of her neck as he passed by her to grab a water. "I couldn't help but notice that you are without a roommate."
"No one could ever call you unobservant," she commented.
"I was thinking maybe I could fix that problem," he offered, his voice quieter than normal, and she spun around to look at him. He wasn't looking at her, his eyes focused on the floor. He was nervous, and for some reason that just made her love him more.
"Are you offering a cute guy who can play me guitar until I fall asleep when I'm sick and occasionally even clean the bathroom?" she asked, crawling into his lap with a wide smile.
"I don't know about cleaning the bathroom," he grimaced, but his eyes were alight with a happy sparkle at her response.
"Oh, well then I don't know," she quipped back, her tone light and airy. "I mean, that's kind of a deal breaker. I'm a working woman now, I need someone to make sure my apartment is clean."
"Isn't that what maids are for?" he joked back, poking her in the sides to hear her laugh. She let out a fake sigh of exasperation, blowing the bangs out of her face.
"No, Blaine, just because I have a real big girl job now doesn't mean I can afford things like maids, I'm not famous."
"Yet," he told her, his voice serious as he pressed a kiss to her shoulder, and she felt a pleasant bubbling of admiration wash over her.
"Blaine, do you want to move in with me?" she asked, her voice serious now.
He gripped her face with his hands, his thumb brushing against her cheek softly. "I thought you'd never ask."
