Don't worry, this isn't the end. I'm not done with shenanigans for the TweedleGays.
Kurt shoves his freezing fingers deep into the pockets of his coat and bites a chapped lip. The air is dry as a bone and so cold that Kurt is starting to shiver in his thick winter coat after only three or four minutes out of the car. His hands are still numb, even buried in the pockets, so he clenches them into fists and glances at the road again; no approaching cars yet, Kurt is still all alone with his thoughts and his dead friend.
The barren little field, about half a mile from the Dalton campus, is just as flat and empty and peaceful as Kurt remembers: he picked it to be Pavarotti's final resting place because, apart from the single tree whose branches unfurl like the wings of graveyard angels against the clear blue sky, this seems like just the sort of clear, wide open place where a free-spirited creature like Pavarotti would love to soar and tumble in the air, aiming his beak at the sky and leaving the ground far behind. Kurt's heart aches as he remembers Pavarotti's tiny body, stiff and cold, lying on the floor of his cage. He can see the casket in his mind's eye, bedazzled and decked out in a manner befitting its occupant's extinguished glamor, and he can feel Blaine's cold but soft hand softly slipping into his as they bid Pavarotti a last farewell. We got each other out of this…Kurt closes his eyes, Blaine's voice so close to his heart that it's almost as though he can really hear him.
"Hey."
Kurt's eyes fly open and he whirls around to find that Blaine—real, actual Blaine, not a memory or wishful thinking but a solid black-haired boy in a scarf and coat—is standing underneath the tree behind him. His car is pulled up next to Kurt's by the side of the road; Kurt must have been so distracted by all his reminiscing that he missed the sound of Blaine approaching.
"Hey," Kurt stammers, and his voice comes dangerously close to breaking. Blaine's expression is unreadable: for once, the most expressive person Kurt knows is totally closed off, his eyes locked on Kurt's as he moves slowly forward and stops a couple feet away. Too far for Kurt to reach out and touch him, too close for Kurt to have any excuse to break that iron eye contact—Blaine is making the wide open space seem suddenly claustrophobic.
"I—how are you?" Kurt asks, his brain a total blank. Blaine doesn't reply. The silence is physically hurting Kurt's ears.
"What time did you wake up this morning?" he tries again, flailing like a swimmer in a rip tide. Blaine blinks and turns away, granting Kurt a moment of relief from that stony gaze but immediately causing his stomach to clench anxiously when he walks back to the tree and comes to a halt right in front of Pavarotti's little headstone. Kurt licks his lips, making the chapped skin smart and sizzle a little more.
"Blaine, please say something."
"Something," Blaine returns dully. Kurt swallows and hesitantly approaches Blaine's back, coming up behind him and fighting the urge to reach out and drop a hand lightly onto his shoulder. Blaine is staring down at the headstone; Kurt follows his gaze and suddenly notices that Blaine has a single red rose clutched in one gloved hand. Something painful and ice-cold blooms in the pit of Kurt's stomach.
"Why?" Blaine says softly, his voice like a breath of wind across the open field. Kurt blinks hard and focuses on the black-and-silver placard on the ground. "Why did you have to do it?"
"Blaine, I'm…I'm sorry." Kurt chokes a little on the cold air in his throat. "I was drunk, I felt like crap after what happened in the coat room, and I went outside for air and he was smoking and saying things to me and I couldn't handle it, I screwed up—"
"I told you, Kurt. I promised that Sebastian wasn't important to me. Me, Kurt, I said that to you and I swore it on the heart on the person who means the most to me in the world and you still. Don't. Believe me." Blaine's words might as well be chipped from ice; they fall, sharp and cold, and crack open on the ground at Kurt's feet. "I've told you a million times how I feel about you, how much you matter to me, and I've made it clear that Sebastian is nothing compared to that, and after everything, you won't trust me enough to—to stop! To not fight him like this is some big passion play going on, when really the only thing that's even real about this is what you think could happen and I've told you never will!"
Blaine is breathing hard, his eyes shining as he stares so hard at Pavarotti's grave that it seems in danger of splitting in half. A stiff breeze blows up against the skin of Kurt's cheek and rips at it, burning across the soft whiteness. He feels empty, undone, unraveled; the wind is painful on his cheek, but he can hardly register the sensation.
"I trust you," Kurt whispers. Blaine's shoulders hunch up a little under his coat. "I do."
"Then why would you ever need to beat the shit out of him?" Blaine asks, angry tears hovering at the corners of his eyes. Kurt shakes his head and takes a gulp of freezing oxygen.
"Because it's not about you, Blaine. It's not like I punched Sebastian to stop him from sleeping with you, I know you wouldn't do that, it isn't you and it's not even really him—it's me. It's me being drunk and being easily provoked and scared, and the things he was saying, they—they—god, Blaine, it was like every little thing that I hate, everything I dread, he just knows how pick them out and wave them in my face. I can't handle it. I was…weak."
Blaine doesn't speak for a long time after Kurt finishes, his heart pounding in his chest and his hands curled up so tightly in his pockets that he can feel his fingernails piercing his palms. A bird chirps somewhere overhead, and Kurt doesn't look up because he wants to believe Pavarotti is sending him some kind of comfort, a sign that this isn't the end of everything.
"What are you scared of?" Blaine says suddenly, looking up at Kurt. He twirls the red rose between two fingers, and for a moment Kurt can only watch the puckered red petals spinning in the air.
"A lot of things…" Kurt hedges, not wanting to say more, knowing he'll have to. Blaine takes a few steps and suddenly they're inches apart, as close as they were when Kurt reached out and kissed Blaine in the coatroom the night before.
"Why are you scared, Kurt?" Blaine asks again, and this time he doesn't sound hurt or angry, he sounds alone and confused and scared himself. Kurt wants more than anything to hug Blaine tight and keep him safe, promise him that no one, not even Kurt, will make him feel like this ever again.
"Because…because…" The words aren't coming, and Kurt wants them to but he doesn't, and Blaine's eyes won't let go of his, and everything is freezing cold around him. "Because I wake up every morning and I have two things that make me get out of bed, you and the future. Getting away from home and going to New York and being a star, Blaine, I have to live my life so that I can do that one day, but also so that I can see you and be with you and have you close to me as much as possible."
"Kurt—" Blaine begins, but Kurt interrupts him, desperate to make Blaine understand what he wants him to, to get this most important of points across.
"Don't you get it, to me you are the future, you're what I want and where I need to be, and what is going to happen when high school is over and we're apart and I miss you and you aren't with me, I can't go back to how I was before I met you. I can't lose you, I won't, I'm not going to live like that again," Kurt babbles, and fuck sensitivity, he grabs Blaine's upper arms and practically shakes him.
"Sebastian does that to me, okay? He turns me into this angry lonely helpless thing who doesn't have anything but a lot of dreams with holes in them, and I trust you more than anyone I have ever known but I can't stop myself from hating him because of that!"
The tears are coming now, for the zillionth time today, and Blaine too, teardrops almost turning to ice on both their faces. Kurt swallows around the lump in his throat and reaches a windburnt hand up to rest gently against Blaine's jaw.
"I shouldn't have done it, I'm sorry. I'm so so sorry, and please Blaine, please don't tell me I've ruined this."
Blaine shakes his head slowly, his lips parting as Kurt's hand drifts up to cup the side of his face.
"It won't happen."
"What?" Kurt asks blankly, his brain emotionally overloaded. Blaine leans his face into Kurt's touch and lets his eyes drift shut.
"You won't go back to being lonely, Kurt. Trust me. If it's going to happen to either of us…" He trails off, the implication obvious, and Kurt's heart breaks in half right then and there, and there is so much guilt and anger and regret for everything that he and Blaine have gone through pounding in his head and his chest—all the people who have forced them to hide and run and feel ashamed of themselves, all the self-doubt and fantasies they've indulged in, all the many many moments of uncertainty and fear they've experienced and all the many many more to come—and without deciding to do it, he kisses Blaine, chapped lips settling on perfect soft ones, their thick coats pressed together.
Blaine kisses back without hesitation, wraps Kurt in stiff, frozen arms as the rose falls from his hand and lands on Pavarotti's grave, and maybe everything isn't totally okay between them but in this moment they're together, and that's what matters.