Somehow

Blaine's heart goes out to the boy on his screen. He's not entirely sure how he's gotten to this page. (Well, he knows part of it. A YouTube search for high school glee clubs had led him to a video of a performance of an admittedly excellent arrangement of Lady Gaga which the Warblers would never be able to pull off which had led to a rather insipid comment: "Haha screw these losers. Look at this one, weeping in the corner like a little girl. Queer. ~AzM") He'd clicked on the user to report them and then clicked on a few more things until finding a link to this heartbreaking profile shot of a...beautiful, is the only way to describe it...boy, one hand splayed over the book in his lap and the other resting against his temple as he tries to control the tears. He's obsessed with knowing this boy's story (because at heart, he always wants to help and comfort people, maybe because he wishes more people would do it for him), but he has no way of knowing the boy's name and no way of reaching out. He reports the YouTube user, though, AzM, and he's gratified when, two days later, the account and comment disappear.

He decides that's all he can really do for right now, and, like so many things, it slips to the back of his mind, to rest there until something pulls it back to the front.

Blaine usually sits next to Kurt in Glee. It's a sort of unspoken rule of high school, that the couples sit together and nobody stops them.

Rachel broke the rule a few times during "West Side Story" (The result of some ramblings on her part about how feeling emotionally closer would help them play their parts.), but other than that the sanctity of the Klaine coupledom has not been disturbed.

But then, Blaine supposes, Brittany doesn't exactly follow that sort of thing, which is why he's a little surprised but not at all shocked or offended when she drops into the only open chair next to him (he's sitting at the end of a row) and calmly twists their hands together while eying one of her fingernails.

"Lord Tubbington wants to say hi," she informs him. He grins. The first time he'd heard about Brittany, he'd suspected a girl with bad taste in terribly dry humor. He likes the alternate world-view version much better.

"Did he?" (Because what does one say to a greeting from a cat?)

"M-hm," Brittany nods, her fingers bent and hand turned so that she can inspect them. She swings their joint hands back and forth a few times and glances at his face. "His hair gets particularly frizzy this time of year, and he feels sort of self-conscious about it," she explains, "so he wanted to let you know that you're not alone."

Blaine ponders this for a second while internally freaking out a little bit about whether there are already loose curls escaping his hairdo.

Brittany doesn't seem concerned that she might have offended him, but rather continues simply because there's more to her story. "Santana says I shouldn't freak people out by telling them things like that, but I think you're nice and I know you'll understand. If it makes you happy, to have hair that looks like you went outside without an umbrella during a gel storm, you should totally wear it that way."

Blaine follows his boyfriend's walk (strut, really) from the door to the last open chair between Mercedes and Santana as he tries to think of an appropriate response.

"Thank you," he settles on. It comes out as a bit of a question, but Brittany doesn't seem to notice.

"You're welcome," she replies dutifully but absently. "People always think that people who are sad want people to feel sad for them, but I think people who are sad want people to understand them. Like Kurt, when his dad was sick last year and when people were being really mean to him. Or like Santana. People are treating Santana like she's more breakable, and she hates it because she wants people to know that she's still fierce. 'Cause she is."

All of this is said with the same easy cheeriness that marks almost everything that comes out of Brittany's mouth, but Blaine is floored. He thinks someone once told him that people who don't see the world like everyone else are the most perceptive, and he's sure that they are absolutely right.

"You're right," he tells her, squeezing her hand a little.

She smiles. "Thank you. I think you do it too. That's why I like you. It would have been nice if you were around last year. All I had to give Kurt was a school report on heart attacks." She turns her head to the side. "Although I think it helped."

Blaine frowns at the reminder. Two weeks before we met he thinks. Two weeks later and I could've done something. He knows very well that Kurt can take care of himself and that he's fine now, but that doesn't make it any less difficult to picture Kurt in pain and know he couldn't have helped.

"Some people need other people to ask in order to open up," he tells her by way of explanation.

"I know. Like, I never told anyone how frustrating it was that my name is Brittany S. Pierce and that I live under a shadow until someone asked me why I didn't like her. I think Britney Spears is the best artist I've done," she confides. "She rocks. And I look totally like her except more awesome."

"You do, actually," Blaine remarks, considering the blonde's singing voice and dancing. Brittany doesn't quite understand what he was getting at, he thinks, but he figures she's got the gist of it.

"Santana can totally do Lady Gaga though. You should see her, her voice is all rough and crazy and awesome. She did Bad Romance last year." Blaine nods and is about to respond when Mr. Schue enters talking about this week's lesson. He glances towards Kurt and gets a quick look at Santana along the way. Something gives him a sense of deja vu; he brushes it off and grins when his boyfriend winks at him from across the room.

A few minutes later, Kurt stands to sing his song for the week, a Beatles rendition, for which Blaine is insanely excited, because he has a major soft spot for his boyfriend singing Beatles songs. As "You've Got to Hide Your Love Away" fills the room (it had fit this week's theme for a reason that escapes him at the moment), he gets a little lost (okay, really lost) in Kurt's expressive eyes. He suppresses the urge to pull Kurt into the corner of the room and kiss him hungrily for a few minutes or hours. (It's really not his fault that Kurt singing Beatles songs make him feel especially affectionate, or that they remind him of some very pleasant hours spent with him on the Senior Commons couch at Dalton.)

"It sounds just like 'I Want to Hold Your Hand'," he hears Rachel remark to Finn behind him as the song comes to a close, "he has such a talent for their songs."

Blaine had known about the song Kurt had done last fall and he turns his head briefly to agree with Rachel's assessment.

Kurt bows gracefully at their applause. "I just wanted to thank you guys. I know last time I sang a Beatles song I wasn't exactly in a good place." He looks at Blaine and smiles. "And you all got me through it." He laughs, almost a scoff, and joins his hands behind his back, glancing at the ground momentarily before looking at them again. "Even that nasty comment Azimio kept leaving all over our YouTube recordings that they deleted, thank God."

Blaine blinks and stares at his boyfriend for a second, his mouth hanging open. The chair squeaks against the ground as he abandons it and pulls Kurt to him into the tightest embrace he can manage. He buries his face in Kurt's neck, bewildered at the tears gathering in his eyes. It's him. It's the boy from the photo.

Kurt has no idea what's happening, but he allows Blaine to mesh their bodies together and settles his hands along Blaine's jaw. The rest of the group looks equally confused but seems to sense that a full-on inquisition wouldn't be appreciated.

Kurt pulls them over to two adjacent seats, where Santana has vacated hers in favor of Blaine's old seat near Brittany, and leaves his hands in Blaine's.

"What is it?" he whispers, running a hand along Blaine's forearm. Blaine is still a little shell-shocked, but he kisses Kurt's cheek and rests their foreheads together briefly. "I'll show you later," he promises. "I just...I really, really love you. And I understand what you went through last year, and I'm sorry I wasn't here. You know that, right?"

"Mhm, I know, Blaine." He presses a quick kiss to Blaine's lips. Blaine doesn't want Kurt to give him excuses, so he doesn't. "I love you, too."

When they get to Kurt's house later that afternoon, Blaine pulls out his laptop and fishes through YouTube, retracing his steps that day until he's found the Lady Gaga video, which, as he suspected, is of the New Directions. The most recent comment is still crossed out, with an official note "This user's account was terminated for 'Offensive/Abuse/Bullying-Sexual Orientation' ".

Kurt narrows his eyes vaguely at his boyfriend. "How did you find this?" he asks. "I didn't know you'd found the New Directions YouTube page."

"I didn't either," Blaine admits. "Until today."

Kurt glares at him for being cryptic.

"I was fishing around for glee club ideas last...I don't know, September?...and I found this great performance of Lady Gaga, and then this jerk who posted some homophobic thing in the comments log and added a link to a photo of this heartbreakingly beautiful boy who was crying in his school's library, so his idiot friends could make fun of the kid. I reported them."

"But that doesn't..." Kurt trails off, bent over the desk where Blaine sits in his room.

"I tried to find the boy," Blaine continues. "I searched the site for an accurate enough mention of his name to find him on Facebook and I tried to figure out who'd uploaded the video and what group it was, but the user name didn't explain anything...Star-berry?...I guess that makes sense, in retrospect. Plus, what would I have done if I had found him on Facebook? Sent him a message? 'Hi, kid whose name I found by creeping all over the internet. You don't know me, but I can't believe some kid would say that about you, and I want to help. Also, I think you're beautiful, even when you cry.' Wouldn't've-mmph"

Blaine's lips are rather abruptly occupied. The kiss is fierce, recklessly emotional. Blaine grips Kurt's forearms where they're resting on the chair's arms and leans up into it as Kurt's fingers press possessively into the skin of his neck and jaw.

Kurt pulls back just as suddenly as he had leaned in.

"It was you," Blaine finishes with wonder, still a little breathless. "Kurt."

Kurt smiles a little. "I guess we were always going to find each other," he observes.

Blaine laughs lightly in return, standing so that he can hold their hands together between their bodies and lean their foreheads together. "I guess we were."

"You thought I was beautiful?" Kurt teases.

"Mm," Blaine affirms. "Still do." He closes the distance between their mouths and connects their lips gently. Kurt buries his hands in the base of Blaine's hair and tilts his head, shuffling until as little space as possible separates their bodies. Blaine stops to inhale deeply for a second, their breath mingling between them as his eyes slip shut.

He dives back in a moment later, smiling into the kiss as Kurt backs them up until the backs of his knees hit the bed.

"So glad you found me," he mumbles as Kurt kisses along his jaw and neck. He gasps as Kurt hits the spot below his ear.

"Mmhm you found me, too," Kurt amends, pushing Blaine back until they tumble sideways onto the bed.

Blaine's hands come to frame Kurt's face, his elbows resting against the mattress for support.

For just a moment, everything spins, and it's just Blaine looking into Kurt's eyes and Kurt looking into Blaine's, each lost in the pure joy of where they are now. It's dizzying, thrilling, like the magnificent final chord to a song or the moment when the lights go out on a stage and all there is for a second is the darkness and the stillness and the memory of that last set of choreography perfectly executed. It's even more amazing considering where they could be right now, but neither of them is thinking about that, because they're so happy. Not sort of happy or relatively happy, but wonderfully, blissfully, perfectly content. And in this moment, the fact that they found each other, somehow...that's all that matters.

I was watching Grilled Cheesus, and I got to the shot during "Losing My Religion" where Kurt's sitting in a chair in the library, failing miserably at reading and acting normal and has tears slipping down his face, and all I wanted was to transport Blaine there to give him a hug. So this was a sort of product of that.

Also, Brittany is so much more perceptive than people think.