Prompted by strangeangelsxx,

Kurt and Blaine are driving from Lima to Westerville, singing along to the radio, Kurt decides he loves Blaine's goofy facial expressions.

My mind just took off with this prompt and went somewhere totally strange and unexpected, and I liked where it ended up, so I went with it. Because of that, at first this will probably seem like it has nothing to do with the prompt because of my bizarre apparent need to insert angst into everything I write, but there is plenty of fluff at the end, so I think this should satisfy everyone. The only thing I couldn't make work was the goofy facial expressions. But I think it ended up being worth it. I hope you all agree.

Perfect to Me

The hallways were dim and empty and filled with the faint echoes of the celebrating voices of the graduates in the gym and the cliché music that Principal Figgins had arranged for after the Glee club's live performance. Blaine slipped a finger in between his buttoned collar and his throat and ran it back and forth impatiently, tugging at the confines of his bowtie. The choir room was all too silent behind its closed door, and Blaine tried to remind himself that it was possible they just hadn't opened the envelopes yet. That the lack of jubilance didn't necessarily mean that none of their dreams had come true. Kurt had been so very particular as they had walked to the choir room together that he not try to look in through the narrow window in the door to see who'd gotten into their schools. It was an experience shared only between the graduates, something that Blaine couldn't empathize with no matter how much he wanted to, and Blaine had nodded and squeezed Kurt's hand and pretended that he didn't feel at all excluded.

Now, Blaine pressed his back against the lockers opposite the choir room and struggled to comply, his anxious fingers undoing his bowtie rather roughly and shoving it into the pocket of his blazer because he couldn't breathe and it was becoming impossible to simply stay still and wait and do nothing. Just when he thought that he couldn't possibly occupy himself with fidgeting any longer, Rachel slowly opened the door, and Blaine's gaze swept past her face and settled on Kurt's.

One glance at his expression transported Blaine to the same place in the previous year, and suddenly Kurt might as well have been the crushed, betrayed, newly-elected prom queen that he'd been then. Though his face was thinner and sharper and a year older and very carefully composed, lurking just behind his eyes was the same destroyed person that had been there on the night of his junior prom.

Blaine watched as Finn gave Kurt a light, one-armed hug before removing his arm from Kurt's shoulder's and then stepped forward as Rachel and Finn moved away in the direction of the parking lot exit. "I'm sorry," Blaine murmured in Kurt's ear, trying to pull him into a hug.

"I didn't get in," Kurt said quietly, resting his chin on Blaine's shoulder.

"I think he's in shock," Finn tried to mouth the words, and Blaine felt Kurt smother a humorless chuckle against his neck when the sentence came out very audibly. "He hasn't said anything else since he opened his letter," Finn whispered loudly.

Kurt drew back and rolled his eyes at Blaine dismissively, but the wicked light in his eyes that usually accompanied the gesture was missing, and Blaine couldn't help but shoot a panicked glance at Finn while he smiled absently at Kurt and realized that, despite Kurt's apparent calm, he indeed hadn't said anything but that.

Finn widened his eyes as if to say See? and took Rachel's waiting, outstretched hand. Blaine tried to take Kurt's hands in his as well, but stopped when he saw the rejection letter, rolled up and still clenched tightly in Kurt's fist. "C'mon," Blaine coaxed, gently trying to loosen the fingers wrapped unyieldingly around it.

Kurt looked down at his hand as if he hadn't realized what it was doing and stiffly uncurled his fingers, letting Blaine smooth out the paper and fold it into the pocket of his blazer. "Let's go." He interlocked his fingers through Kurt's on the hand that had held the NYADA letter and began to walk toward the parking lot, pausing as he unlocked the door to glance up at the sunny sky, so blue it hurt his eyes to look at, and wonder how anything could be so bright and beautiful when all of Kurt's meticulously nurtured plans were crumbling around him. Blaine slid into the driver's side of Kurt's car wordlessly, and Kurt moved like a man in a dream to the other side.

Blaine shifted the car into reverse and backed out the narrow parking spot, pulling away from the school, sending anxious glances at Kurt's still-stunned face every once in a while. He headed towards his empty house in Westerville, knowing how exhausting it would be for Kurt to pretend to be politely appreciative of the graduation celebration that Burt had arranged.

"I didn't get in," Kurt repeated again, the panic beginning to rise in his voice.

Blaine swerved abruptly into a dead end and parked along the side of the road, ignoring the horns that blared behind him at his sudden maneuver. "You should have," he said fiercely.

"I'm not disappointed."

Blaine raised his eyebrows and opened his mouth to question that, but Kurt held up a finger and said, "I'm just angry. At Rachel." He turned and looked almost fearfully up at Blaine. "What kind of selfish is someone who gets mad at their best friend for getting into their dream school?"

Blaine opened his mouth to say that Kurt was being entirely reasonable, but Kurt beat him to it by taking a deep, angry breath, his nostrils flaring, and forging on, "But she didn't deserve it! Do you know how many people get to redo their NYADA auditions even once? None. And she did three times. Rachel is so used to having everything just because she's spoiled and annoying and talented enough to always have her life turn out perfect."

Kurt paused to take another breath and allowed himself to meet Blaine's eyes, a touch of insecurity cracking his anger now. "Winning Nationals was supposed to mean that we're not the underdogs anymore, right? But look at us. Santana got into a college but had to choose what she really wanted over it, Brittany's not even graduating, Finn is as lost as he was at the beginning of this year, and Rachel is the only one whose dreams are all coming true. But she was never an underdog here. She pushed everyone in Glee club around so that she could have her way, and now everyone else's futures are on hold while she gets exactly what she wants. Just like always." Kurt looked helplessly up at Blaine, slowing down as his anger ran down to end of its fuse and fizzled and sputtered. "How is that fair?"

"It's not," Blaine said, his voice hard. He knew that Kurt didn't really mean what he'd said about Rachel, that later he would feel guilty for even thinking it. Yet still, there had been a note of truth in what he'd said that made the words all the more bitter and raw, one that Blaine was still just enough of an outsider to the New Directions to hear. "You'll have your turn, I promise."

"Are you sure? I'll never have what Rachel does. People see her and it's what they want. That's not something you can learn. You just have it or you don't, and I obviously don't."

"You're as much a star as she is, Kurt," Blaine said, and Kurt smiled and nodded absently, but it was clear that he didn't trust the words.

Blaine fiddled with the radio dial of the car to fill the silence while he tried to piece together an assurance that Kurt would actually believe. But when the static-riddled bars of a song's chorus filled the air between them, he stopped breathing for a moment and paused, because it was suddenly clear that that song was the only way Kurt could see in himself what Blaine had known was there since he'd watched Kurt perform "Blackbird" so long ago.

"Pretty, pretty please," Blaine began singing along. "Don't you ever, ever feel like you're less than, less than perfect."

Kurt's breath caught and he stared, clearly hearing what Blaine hadn't found the words to say himself.

"Pretty, pretty please, if you ever, ever feel like you're nothing, you are perfect to me." Blaine's voice grew more sure as he realized over again just how right, how true it was, and he moved on along the lines that Kurt was usually the one to sing. "So complicated, look how big you'll make it. Filled with so much hatred."

Blaine's voice froze in his throat in surprise when he heard Kurt chuckle lightly at that. Kurt's sweet harmony picked up the note before the pause became noticeable and continued, amusement still apparent in his voice, and Blaine knew with equal certainty that this time, Kurt was using the song to speak to him. "It's enough, I've done all I can think of, chased down all my demons, seen you do the same."

Blaine joined in the laughter as he remembered Finn and boxing and tainted slushies, all the memories of the past year tinted slightly comical against the gravity of graduation and their futures looming too close to be complacent, easy dreams any longer. He chimed in again and they finished out the song together, singing and laughing together until they were out of breath as the last note played across the radio.

"Do you mean it?" Kurt asked, his eyes no longer colored by any hint of bitterness or anger, only mild disappointment still, brightened by gentle adoration and humor.

"With all my heart." Blaine reached for Kurt's wrist and pressed Kurt's hand, palm facing him, to the center of his chest, and then dipped his head to kiss the white knuckles.

"I love you," Kurt whispered. "Thank you for always knowing how to tell me what I need to hear."

"I'll never let you forget it," Blaine vowed.

Reading this over now, it's a lot more sappy than I remembered it being when I wrote it at midnight last night. Oops. Oh well. And I know the dialogue got kind of rant-y and preach-y, but given the circumstances, Kurt should get to rant a little bit, right? And Glee seems to be the master of having long-winded dialogue that nobody would ever really say, so I figured it was at least consistent with the fandom.

Did you like my take on this, or should I stick to my prompts more closely in the future? Let me know! My apologies to strangeangelsxx if this was not what you were wanting/expecting when you gave me the prompt. And keep prompting, everyone! Prompts are always open.

Oh, by the way, I didn't get many reviews last chapter. Do I need to beg at the end of every update? I will if that's what it takes. ;)