The city lights were reflected golden, red and purple in the puddles on Times Square. Rachel linked her arm under Blaine’s as they walked among the masses pushing up and down Broadway at dusk. “This is nice,” she said and smiled up at him, “I never really get out here anymore. You always think you’d be all over town when you live in New York but once you do, you kind of just go bak and forth between work and school…”

“I know, but that’s why I’m here, to take you out and enjoy the Big Apple,” Blaine replied and smiled back down at her. Rachel was beaming. After she had gone to New York alone and Kurt had left both her and Blaine for Fashion school in London, she’d felt terribly alone. But now Blaine was there, visiting and she felt like she could breathe again.

She loved New York an school was great and it wasn’t like she hadn’t made friends but no one really knew her like Blaine did. As they passed by the line for Phantom they both sighend in unison and cracked up a second later. “We should catch a show while you’re here,” she exclaimed, squeazing Blaine’s arm. 

“We need to do tons of things,” he smirked back and once again Rachel felt that tingle below her nable, it was a peculiar feeling. But nice. And promising. Like something had changed between them with Kurt and Finn out of the picture. She was dimly aware that he was still a proclaimed homosexual but something in the way he looked at her, made her feel incredibly desired, in an absoutely not gay way.

“What kinds of things were you thinking about, huh?” It was a deliberate flirty, opening. Apperantly the buzz of the city made her brave. Blaine bit his lip beside her and looked down at her quizically, as if he was trying to figure out if she was serious. He decided it was and dipped his head down to whisper in her ear.

Passers-by could have seen Rachel blush from a mile away. But anyone who saw them kiss a second later, no one would’ve thought that it was the first time in a year - and the first honest time - they did that. No, Rachel and Blaine, kissing on a street just off Times Square, looked like thy’d done nothing else all their lives.

“No no no no no no no,” Rachel had been saying nothing else for ten minutes, like a mantra, curled up in his bed, completely ignoring the hot chocolate he set on the table for her. He put cinnamon in it and some vanilla extract but she wouldn’t even try it. He wanted some of it now though, because seeing her like this made him nearly as miserable. She hadn’t moved an inch since he brought her home, an hour ago, crying with rejection and he felt her pain. NYADA was all she’d wanted, all she’d worked and prepared for the last six months and then she choked on her audition. His heart still hadn’t quite recovered yet from the moment he knew she wasn’t going to finish that song anymore.

Utterly helpless at this point, all he could think of doing was climbing into the bed with her and folding his body around hers, wrapping her into his arms, mumbling reassuring words in her ear.

“No, Blaine,” she argued tearily, “my life is over, I will never be on Broadway.”

“Shh,” he said and kissed the free spot he could reach on her neck, “there’s no way you won’t be there some day, I know you, remember? Come hell or high water, you will be a star, Rachel Berry!”

“Make love to me,” she said merely in reply, as blunt as it can sound when you’re choking words out between sobs “I don’t care if it’s pity sex, I just want to feel something other than this.”

That was something he could do for her. But - “Never in my days will I ever have pity sex with you. It’s always gonna be ‘Oh my god, I can’t believe I get to do this’-kind of sex.” And then he let his hands wander down her body, determined to make her forget about anything bad the world entirely.