"Stop thinking about marrying me," Kurt teased.

Blaine smiled into Kurt's neck and pulled him a little closer. They were dancing at the party that was supposed to be the reception, but had turned into a weird post-non-wedding get together. "You can't make me."

"There wasn't even a wedding, you can't pretend it inspired you."

"I'll think whatever I want to think. You can't tell me what to think."

Kurt sighed, and smiled, and changed the subject. "Thanks for singing with me. Before I graduated I didn't ever think about how it meant our world renowned duets would be coming to an end. Except for special events."

"Maybe more people will get married and they'll ask us to sing. We could start a company. We could be professional wedding singers. We'd have a duet every weekend."

"That sounds horrendous," Kurt said.

Blaine pretended to be hurt.

Kurt laughed. "Not because I don't want to sing duets with you every weekend…"

"Of course not."

"I just can't imagine…" he laughed again and rubbed his forehead at the thought. "Being a wedding singer. We'd probably have to wear powder blue tuxes and grow mustaches or something."

"Your Broadway dreams are too grandiose," Blaine said. "I'll just stay here and be a solo wedding singer. I could make it a regional midwest thing. I'll Skype you sometimes from glamorous Indiana and show you the progress I've made on my mustache."

"No, I won't accept that either. I also happen to have grandiose dreams for you, too."

Blaine raised an eyebrow at him. "We're both going to be Tony winning Broadway stars?"

"Maybe," Kurt said.

"Both of us will stay grounded, neither of us will have an ego, we'll never compete for roles or step on each other's toes or hate each other…"

"I wouldn't go that far," Kurt said. "I'll definitely have an ego. But no, you don't have to be a Broadway star. I mean, you very well could be. But maybe you'll do other things."

"Like what?"

"Like record an album, or be in movies, or something."

"I mean besides the glaringly obvious."

Kurt laughed again. "I'm serious. You're not going to get Finn Hudson Syndrome and stay here while you figure out what to do with your life. You have to get out and throw yourself into everything you think you might want to do, and figure it out as you go. I won't let you settle on being a wedding singer in Indiana in thirty years."

"What if that's my dream?"

"Shut up." He was quiet for a moment. They listened to the music. "I mean, no offense to Finn. I feel bad for him. Life is giving him a hard time."

"Yeah," Blaine said.

"He said you kind of helped him, though. I also think he's mad at you, but he's grateful, too. And he's actually speaking to Rachel again." Kurt turned and looked behind him, somewhere by the elevator bank in the hallway. He turned back. "And that could be a euphemism for sleeping with her, because I think they went up to her hotel room like ten minutes ago."

"Ew," Blaine joked.

"Tell me about it," Kurt groaned.

"Maybe you were right, maybe everyone is going to hook up at this wedding. And there wasn't even a wedding."

"I'm always right about everything."

"Maybe, in a dramatic turn of events, Mr. Schue will re-hook up with Miss Pillsbury?"

Kurt sighed. "You're making me ill."

Blaine tried to think of an extremely vague and gentlemanly way to mention something about Kurt's hotel room, but Kurt changed the subject again before he could say anything.

"Do you know what Tina's been doing to you?"

"Doing to me?"

"Sexually assaulting you in your sleep. She admitted it to me at the baby cupcake stand."

Blaine stopped dancing. He took a step back to look at Kurt, trying to gauge how serious he was.

"Okay, once. That's why she gave you that NyQuil. She drugged you."

"What did she do to me?" Blaine asked, getting nervous.

"She put Vick's Vaporub on you."

"Where on me?"

"On your chest."

"You mean where it belongs?"

"Okay, you have to ask a person first! Obviously if she had to wait for you to pass out before she did it, she knew she was wrong."

Blaine smiled at him and pulled him close again, resuming their dance. "She's harmless. I think she has a crush on me."

"You think?!"

"I think it's a little intense… but she knows I'm in love with you."

He was close enough to see the muscles in Kurt's neck tense up, to feel the breath hitch for a second. He smiled to himself.

Kurt cleared his throat. "I think she thinks you're in love with her. You have to talk to her. You have to tell her… something. Not what you just said, exactly…"

"That I'm in love with you?" Blaine said again, teasing him.

"Just be firm with her." Kurt sighed and dropped his forehead to Blaine's shoulder. "I give up. Don't make a joke."

"I never even considered it," Blaine lied.

The slow song they'd started dancing to had changed about three times since then, and the tempo was fast now. But they were still dancing at the same gentle pace, though they had wandered a little toward a dark corner, where no one paid any attention to them and they were hardly visible.

Blaine took one of Kurt's hands into his own and wrapped his other arm around Kurt's waist. Kurt lifted his head and rested his chin instead of his forehead on Blaine's shoulder, and they kept dancing. A new slow song played.

"I changed my mind," Blaine said after a while. "We should be professional wedding dancers. We'll just slow dance in the background, make the room look fuller. And it'd make the newlyweds look really liberal. It's impressive. People would pay for that."

Kurt smiled, but didn't say anything. Blaine turned his head to peek at him, and saw that his eyes were closed. Blaine held him tighter. "Are you falling asleep?" he whispered.

"No," Kurt said, but he sounded tired.

Blaine decided this was his second chance to mention a hotel room, and that he had to take it. "Are you sharing a room with Rachel? Just tiptoe around her and Finn, they probably won't notice you if you're quiet."

"Oh, god, I would be sick for the rest of my life." A pause. "I have my own room."

"Oh," Blaine said.

Kurt reached into his inner jacket pocket and pulled out a key card. He held it between two fingers and wrapped his arms around Blaine's neck, so that the card was there somewhere in Blaine's peripheral vision. On purpose. He could see it at the same time he looked into Kurt's eyes.

Finally Kurt whispered, "Do you want to go?"

And Blaine nodded.

Wordlessly, Kurt took him by the hand and led him to the elevators. The ride up was silent, their hands still clasped. When the doors opened Kurt led him down the hall. He unlocked the door to his room with his free hand, and he pulled Blaine inside.

When the door was closed Blaine had his back to it, and Kurt kissed him, passionately but slowly. The mood wasn't nearly as urgent and confused as it had been in the car, earlier. Now there was a point. They had all the time in the world, or at least one whole night, to be together in a place no one else could get to. The door was locked twice, no one else had the key.

Blaine put his hands on Kurt's cheeks and curled his fingers into the short hair at the nape of his neck. He wanted to keep him close. Meanwhile, Kurt was stripping Blaine nude. Not quickly, or carelessly, just determinedly. With a specific purpose in mind. When Kurt needed him to, Blaine would move his hands from his face, to help shrug off his jacket or to allow Kurt to remove his shirt, but his hands always went back there as soon as they could. He was too caught up in the idea that Kurt wanted him again, that Kurt had initiated all of this, that Kurt was the one who asked him there, to think about anything else. And he didn't realize before just how much he missed the taste of him.

Kurt, still in his shirt and trousers but barefoot and without a jacket, lifted Blaine, now completely naked, an inch or two off the floor and began to carry him to the bed. On the way there Blaine said, "I didn't bring anything with me." Mostly because he'd come from the hospital, and Kurt had packed his clothes for him.

"I thought you didn't sleep with him," Kurt said, as nonchalant as if he'd just made a bland remark about the weather. But it hurt Blaine all the way to his soul.

"I didn't," he said, and tried to shoot back. "You're the one with a boyfriend."

"Unconsummated," Kurt said, and sat Blaine down on the bed.

Blaine's body continued to go through the motions even though in his mind he felt everything was on the brink of collapse. With Kurt standing over him, he unhooked his belt for the second time since the car ride to the church. "Then maybe it should be annulled," he mumbled.

"We'll see," Kurt replied, and leaned over to open the drawer of the nightstand. He pulled out a small handful of condoms and two little bottles of lubrication. He dropped them on the bed next to Blaine. "I happened to notice earlier that this hotel is well stocked."

Blaine finished undressing him and then picked all the condoms out of the pile and threw them in the general direction of the wastebasket. Kurt climbed into his lap and wrapped his arms around Blaine's neck and kissed him again. Then he kissed a line up his jaw until his lips were at Blaine's ear, and he whispered, "I still want you to be the only one I'm ever with. For my whole life. Isn't that stupid?"

Blaine shook his head, unable to speak at first. His heart felt like it was swelling up into his throat. "No," he finally choked out. "It's not stupid."

Kurt pulled back a little so Blaine could see him again. He was blushing. He kept his eyes down, his eyelashes splayed on his cheeks.

"It's not," Blaine told him again. Kurt looked up at him then. "Okay?"

Kurt nodded.

Blaine moved underneath him, repositioning himself until he was flat on his back and his legs were open, resting on either side of Kurt, who still sat up, looking at him. "Come here," Blaine asked. He thought maybe that was it, that the stars had changed and Kurt finally changed his mind. That the moment was over.

But Kurt nodded once more, and crawled over until they were close enough to kiss again.

Blaine kept him between his legs, bending them up further when Kurt got closer. He wanted Kurt to have complete control. He was sure Kurt needed that. They wasted a little time using their hands to stroke each other, exactly what they'd wanted to do in the car but couldn't. Then they got the lube involved, which felt even better. Kurt's slick, warm fingers were firm around him, but gentle, and Blaine could feel himself at the very beginning of unraveling. He couldn't kiss as precisely anymore, his breathing became ragged. They were barely speaking but he couldn't help but beg Kurt, hardly above a whisper, to enter him. He rolled his hips up high enough for Kurt to be able to.

When Kurt pressed in a finger first, Blaine slowly, hesitantly, watching Kurt's face for cues, reciprocated on him. When Kurt entered two fingers, Blaine did, too, into Kurt. Kurt's eyes closed again. Blaine reached with his free hand to help glide Kurt's erection into him. Kurt went tense all the way up to his shoulders, and his mouth went a little slack.

Blaine rubbed his fingertips over Kurt's entrance as Kurt began to move, slowly, inside of Blaine.

"Is it okay… if I touch you like this?" Blaine whispered.

Kurt still had his eyes closed. He just nodded. Sometimes he bit his lip, sometimes he pushed back into Blaine's fingers. Sometimes he let out a little moan.

Blaine moved his hands to Kurt's lower back, to feel Kurt's muscles each time he rolled into Blaine. He still moved slowly. They had all the time in the world.

"Why do you have to ask permission?" Kurt whispered back after a while.

"Because…" Blaine said, trying to be coherent as Kurt sped up his movements slightly. "Because I'm yours. I know you think you lost me for a while…"

"I did. I did lose you," Kurt breathed.

"But I'm yours forever. After tonight you'll always know for sure. And I know someday you'll be mine, too. I know you're not, right now."

Kurt shook his head. "I don't know… I can't…"

"We don't have to talk about it. I'll stop pushing you. Just know that I'm yours. You never really lost me, but I promise now you have me back completely."

"You're mine," Kurt agreed. "Touch me like that again."

Blaine did, learning in a short while exactly what patterns and pressures pleased Kurt the most. Blaine caught his mouth with his own and tried to mimic some of what he was doing with his tongue on Kurt's. Kurt in return sucked and bit Blaine's lower lip, leaving little marks, meaning no harm at all.

Kurt began directly hitting his prostate then, and Blaine's thoughts collapsed. He tried to touch Kurt's with his fingers, but it seemed just out of his reach. Still, he tried. He tried everything he could think of, from his position, to help Kurt come first. "Baby," he said. "I'm too close."

Kurt didn't reply, he just sped up his movements. Blaine fought against himself to hold out, to wait for Kurt. He curled his fingers into Kurt, reaching as far as he could, and was finally rewarded when Kurt gasped suddenly. He tensed up even harder than before, and finally came with a sweet moan against Blaine's neck.

As soon as he felt the warmth of Kurt spread inside of him, Blaine released, too. He pushed his hips up a few times into Kurt's stomach as he came, and Kurt, even in his afterglow, stroked Blaine until he was finished.

They spent a couple minutes clutching each other, allowing their muscles to relax again and catching their breaths. When he thought he could talk again, Blaine looked up at Kurt with heavy lidded eyes. "Next time…" he said, still breathing hard. "I don't care if we're 100 years old, next time we'll switch. You'll trust me enough again for that."

"I trust you now," Kurt said. And then, out of nowhere, with no warning at all, he said, "I love you."

Blaine stared at him, into his beautiful blue eyes that he was always alternately obsessed with and haunted by. "I love you, too," he said finally.

"I know," Kurt said. He brought a hand up to comb his fingers in Blaine's hair.

It was too relaxing, too beautiful and perfect. Blaine had to close his eyes.

"Go to sleep," Kurt whispered. "Don't worry about it anymore."

Blaine reached out and blindly grabbed for Kurt's other hand to hold against his heart. "Stay here. Don't leave me."

"I was just thinking… I should go back. To the party."

"No."

"It'll look weird. People will have noticed by now. At least if I go back and look halfway put together they won't talk as much behind our backs."

"Who cares? You're my soulmate. We should spend all of our time making love. We shouldn't ever get out of bed. They'd feel the same way if they knew."

Kurt pulled their clasped hands to him and kissed Blaine's fingers. "Go to sleep," he said again. He said it so sweetly that it was almost impossible not to obey him.

"Don't," Blaine could only manage to say. He meant 'don't leave.'

Kurt didn't say anything.

Blaine fell asleep for about three minutes. When he woke up enough to roll over he could sense Kurt wasn't in the bed anymore. Even though it hurt, even though he very nearly couldn't, he pushed himself up and opened his eyes.

Kurt was dressing at the mirror, clipping on his bowtie and straightening it into place. Their eyes met in the glass. "I'm too embarrassed to let them think anything," Kurt said.

Blaine fought himself until he stood, and shuffled up to Kurt's back. He held him from behind and rested his chin on Kurt's shoulder. "Don't leave me."

"You have to sleep," Kurt said.

"Are you leaving tomorrow?"

"I was supposed to. But I told you I'll stay an extra day." Kurt smiled at him in the mirror. "We can go on that friend-date we missed."

"Stop lying to yourself," Blaine said, bold in his fatigue. "We obviously can't even spend ten minutes trying to be just friends."

"I told you to give me time. I can't talk about it now."

Blaine bit his lip. "Fine."

Kurt turned around and wrapped his arms around Blaine's waist. "You're going to fall over if you don't go back to bed."

Blaine just frowned at him, unmoving.

Kurt kissed him in three places on the throat, then pulled back and looked into his eyes. "Go to sleep. I'll go downstairs for half an hour, and then I'll be back and I'll sleep next to you."

"All night?"

"All night."

"And you'll be there in the morning?"

"I promise."

First Blaine helped Kurt shrug his jacket back on, and then staggered back to bed. Kurt smiled at him from the door before he disappeared behind it, and Blaine fell asleep with a smile on his face.

In the morning he woke up early, while the sun was still low in the sky. Kurt was pressed up against his back. Their legs were wrapped around each others. Kurt had an arm over Blaine, protective, and was holding his hand. Their fingers were intertwined. Blaine could even feel Kurt's lips against his shoulder blade, and his slow, steady breath making a warm place on his back. Blaine kissed the inside of Kurt's wrist, a little gratitude for keeping his promise, and settled back in to sleep.

A few hours later, when the sun was really up, they groaned and complained and roused each other out of bed. Blaine had to go to school, which seemed ridiculous, and Kurt was going to spend the day with Burt and Carole, and Finn if he hadn't run away to New York with Rachel.

Kurt drove Blaine home first, so he could tiptoe around and try to find something other than a rumpled tuxedo to wear to school.

When the rental car rolled to a stop at the front doors of McKinley, Kurt affected a geriatric accent. "All right, Sonny, don't forget your lunch."

Blaine smiled. "Thanks, Pops. See you later?"

Kurt nodded. "Movie, mall, all the finest Lima has to offer. You get my whole night. Starting at 3:30. Ending at 10 when my plane leaves."

Blaine wondered if he should kiss him goodbye, or at least on the cheek, but he couldn't work up the courage. The mood had finally passed. They were back to being friends. He just waved, got out of the car, and walked into school without looking back.

In the afternoon Kurt came into the school, partially to say hi to a few old friends, mostly to affectionately yell at Tina. Blaine kept himself from teasing Kurt about being jealous. He was still blindingly jealous of Rachel every time he thought about her, for getting to live with Kurt in New York, for getting to be close to him all the time and doing only a fraction of the work he did to earn his affection. But he knew how clearly differently he felt about Kurt and Tina, even though he loved them both, it was in radically different ways. He had to tell himself it was the same for Kurt. And he had to remind himself he still wasn't in the position to tease Kurt about anything yet. It wasn't fair to push him to admit his feelings for Blaine, at least not in front of other people. It was different in private conversation. But admitting feelings in public was an entirely different thing.

Tina looked back and forth at them. "So, are you guys getting back together now, or what?"

"We're going to a movie," Blaine answered, intentionally vague. "Want to come with?"

She declined.

At the movie, Kurt held Blaine's hand. At dinner, they would periodically fall into long silences, forgetting to eat just to look at each other. It was because they had too much to say, but neither of them would say it. Blaine waited for Kurt to give him a sign, to say anything other than 'we did nothing and we're still just friends,' but Kurt wouldn't give one.

Blaine drove the rental car to the airport with Kurt in the passenger seat. They walked silently together, Blaine carrying Kurt's bag, to security, the place where they would inevitably have to part.

They turned to face each other, for Blaine to hand over the bag. It was still hard to talk.

Blaine swallowed. "I almost forgot how hard this was until now."

"I didn't," Kurt shook his head. "I asked my dad and Carole to come because I thought if there was a group of people I wouldn't have to think about leaving you so much. But… that's completely ridiculous. And my dad said he had to work tonight. I'm sure that was a lie. I think he's on your side."

Blaine frowned. "There aren't sides."

"I think he likes you," Kurt corrected himself. "I think he wants us to… work everything out. I can't believe it. I thought he would have killed you by now."

"Me too. That's what I said to him."

"You talked to him?"

Blaine looked down at his shoes. "A little. Once. He took me to get coffee one day and asked me how I plan to make it up to you."

"Did you have an answer?" Kurt asked, but shook his head when Blaine opened his mouth. Apparently, he didn't want to know what it was. "He's the one who told me my whole life to never, ever let anyone take advantage of me, and if they do once, they never deserve a second chance."

Blaine nodded. "I'm sorry. I can tell you've been fighting with yourself."

"I have been. Ever since you walked out of my apartment I've been trying to figure out if I should do what I think I should do — what I've been told to do, which is to never see you again. Or if I should do what I feel like I have to do, which is be with you all the time. But what then? Does that mean I'm giving you permission to walk all over me for the rest of my life?"

Tears threatened to spring up in Blaine's eyes. He put his hand to his mouth, to keep something indistinct in, and he shook his head. "No," he whispered.

"And look what I've turned into!" Kurt nearly yelled, turning red. "I'm living so many double lives that I'm confusing myself. I slept with you, and I'm telling you now to forget it, because it didn't really happen. And I'm going to go home and not tell anyone. I already scheduled a breakfast date with Adam in the morning, and I'm going to smile at him and joke around with him and he'll never know that I'll be thinking about you the whole time. And none of that is who I really am! I'm not manipulative, I'm not sneaky, I'm not a liar…"

"I know you're not! You're a true romantic and you deserved to have someone prove you right. I know you believe you went through all the heartache of your childhood so that you could fall in love with a boy who would make you feel like it was worth it. Instead, you got me, and I know… that I fucked it up."

Kurt crossed his arms over his stomach, and didn't say anything.

"I can usually get by if I tell myself I didn't ruin your whole life, just… just a year of it. I keep thinking we'll get over it, we'll fix it somehow, but it might not be true. Maybe I really did ruin both of our lives."

"It's an option, to believe that," Kurt said, quieter now. "We don't have to choose to accept it. We don't have to make it true."

"You'd have to compromise yourself to forgive me, I know that now. You'd have to betray a part of your true self. It's not fair. I would never forgive myself if you did that. I would see it missing in your eyes for the rest of our lives."

"I have every right, despite what everyone else says, to choose to believe you deserve a second chance. If I believe you're worthy of one, I'd still be sticking to my own morals. I wouldn't give up anything."

Blaine waited.

"But I need more time."

Blaine shook his head, and rolled his eyes at himself for being stupid enough to think that they were on the verge of getting somewhere. Either way, good or bad, they had almost moved on. He'd actually believed for a second they were going to. But they were only back to where they had started. "Okay," he said. He gave a quick hug to Kurt without looking in his eyes again. "Have a good flight." He almost turned and walked back to the parking lot, to drive away and leave it at that. He wanted to get away from that conversation, from that atmosphere, more than anything. But he couldn't. So he dug in his heels and hoped Kurt would take the hint and just go, if he was going to go.

"I need to know I won't have any regrets," Kurt said. "I need to envision all my options, I need to list out the pros and cons of every decision I could possibly make, and try to imagine how I'll feel about it ten and twenty and fifty years from now. I just need more time for that."

Blaine bit his tongue. "Okay," he said flatly.

Kurt shifted his weight. "But I think… I know how sorry you are."

"Just like I know how hurt you were… and still are?" Blaine asked, sarcastic. "I don't think we could ever know."

"Maybe it feels exactly the same," Kurt said.

Blaine sighed, exasperated. "I feel like we're fighting, or something."

"We're not fighting, you're just mad at me."

"Why am I mad at you?" Blaine asked, knowing it was kind of true, but not knowing why.

"Because you want more from me than I'm offering, and you want it before I go, which I'm not going to do."

"Why are you so smart?" Blaine asked him, but Kurt didn't answer him. "Why can't we ever be happy anymore?"

"We were, yesterday," Kurt said. "I was happier than I've been in months. I realized yesterday when I was laughing at something you said that the last five hundred times I've laughed in New York, it was fake, or hollow, or something. I didn't even realize I was doing it until I remembered what laughing for real feels like."

"Why was it so different yesterday than it is today?"

"Because we weren't thinking about anything bad. We weren't in an airport, waiting for me to go, hoping time would slow down. We weren't trying to come up with answers. We were just… living. Without being on a deadline. Without trying to make sense of everything."

"I want to feel like that all the time."

Kurt was quiet for a moment. Finally he said, "Keep thinking about moving to New York. I think it'll be easier. I think we'll both feel better."

Blaine shook his head. "I'm not so sure. You have your own life and your own responsibilities there. I'll probably never even see you."

"Just think about it," Kurt said again. "And I'll keep thinking about everything else." He stepped forward and gave Blaine another, better, longer hug.

Blaine held on to him tight. "I hope you smell like me when you go to your stupid breakfast date," he said, trying to joke even though his heart was broken, again.

Kurt stepped back and smiled a little sadly. "I have to go," he said.

Blaine nodded. "I know."

"I hope you know how many times I've changed my mind in the last ten minutes and thought there's no way I could go without you. But I have to."

Blaine nodded. "Maybe next time," he said, "I'll come with you."

He wasn't sure if he was lying or not.