When the alarm clock reads 2:00 AM, Kurt accepts that he’s not going to get much sleep tonight, if any. He’s not surprised - he hasn’t slept well for years now, and Amelia’s persistent insomnia doesn’t help. There are dark circles under his eyes that no amount of product can get rid of to show for it. He squeezes his eyes shut, willing himself asleep one last time, but to no avail. He sits up, sighing heavily, glad that he’d opted to work from home for the next week or two. He doesn’t necessarily need to work from the office anyway, and he’s sure that he would send himself into a panic attack if he left Blaine alone.

He stumbles out of his bedroom and into the kitchen, yawning - and startles at the sight of Blaine with his head in the refrigerator, presumably searching for those leftovers from last night. He stands up straight when he notices Kurt, like Amelia when Kurt catches her sneaking candy.

“Couldn’t sleep,” Blaine says after a moment of staring at each other.

“Me either.”

Blaine presses his lips into a thin line, eyes darting back and forth as if plotting an escape route. They don’t speak or move for a long minute, until Kurt starts to realize how absurd it is, feeling like he can’t step into his own kitchen. “Coffee?” Kurt says, more to break the silence than anything.

“Don’t suppose you have a beer?”

He hasn’t kept alcohol in the house since the divorce. Kurt’s eyes narrow. “That isn’t funny.”

“Wasn’t supposed to be.” He shrugs. “Coffee is fine.”

Kurt flicks on a light, filling the small kitchen with a yellowish glow, and sets to pulling out coffee grounds and filters while Blaine takes a seat on one of the stools at the island counters. It’s a mindless, familiar task, one they had been through hundreds of times in their old kitchen. Kurt had moved out of that larger, more comfortable apartment, after the breakup - too many bad memories, and it had been too expensive for just him, and he barely ever got to see Amelia back in those days.

“How are you feeling?” Kurt asks, glancing back over his shoulder. Blaine’s shoulders are hunched, tense all over.

“Really?”

“Um. Yes?” Kurt frowns.

“Like shit, to put it bluntly.”

“…right.” Kurt flinches and turns back to the coffee maker, as if staring at it will make the water boil faster. He really hadn’t thought this through, what living with Blaine again would be like. Is he always going to be this defensive? Because Kurt isn’t sure if he can handle it if that’s the case. “Forgive me for being concerned.”

Blaine doesn’t reply, and this time Kurt lets them fall into silence as he fixes their coffees (he doesn’t bother to ask how Blaine takes it, it’s a fact that remains etched into his memory). He slides Blaine’s mug across the table toward him, and Blaine wraps his fingers around it but doesn’t drink yet. Kurt can’t keep his eyes off Blaine’s wrists, still wrapped in white bandages. How many cuts hide under there? He wonders. The thought of Blaine taking a razor blade to his own skin makes Kurt shiver, so he averts his eyes, taking a gulp of his still-too-hot coffee.

Blaine finally breaks the silence, to Kurt’s surprise. He looks up from his mug, which he had been staring into as if it held the answers to all of life’s mysteries. “How long am I going to have to stay here?”

He makes it sound like Kurt is imprisoning him. From his point of view, it might be that way. “Until you’re better, I guess.”

“I’m not sick.” Blaine’s jaw clenches. “You can’t just - just pump me up with vitamins or make me drink gallons of herbal tea and hope it works.”

“I can try.” Kurt quips. Blaine only huffs. “Until you aren’t in danger, then.”

“What if I promise never to do it again?”

“Jesus, Blaine, is my company really that unbearable?” He closes his eyes and takes a deep breath. Snapping at Blaine won’t help a thing. “Look, I understand. I really do. You’re hurting, and you’re perfectly entitled to feel that way -“

Blaine makes to slam his open palm on the countertop, but stops and clenches his fist instead. “Would you just - stop trying to fucking empathize with me, you don’t know what I’m feeling and -“

“We’re only going to be stuck together longer if you blow up at me every time I try to talk to you!” It’s only with great restraint that Kurt manages not to yell. “Stop being so damn defensive.”

“Stop acting like you know me.”

“I do know you.”

Blaine shakes his head and turns away. Kurt can’t tell if the shine in his eyes is from the dim lamplight or something more. “No you don’t.”

Kurt opens his mouth, but he doesn’t have time to think of a reply before he hears a voice behind him mumble, “Daddy?”

He turns around. Amelia stands in the entrance to the kitchen, clutching her favorite stuffed toy giraffe to her chest and rubbing sleep from her eyes with the back of her fists. Kurt takes a deep breath to calm himself. “Sweetheart, you should be sleeping. You have school in the morning.”

She wanders into the kitchen, leaning up against his leg and closing her eyes. Kurt absently strokes a lock of her tangled hair. “I can’t sleep.” She says.

Kurt sighs. It’s the same routine almost every night - no wonder they’re always cranky with each other. “You have to try.”

“I can’t.” She lets Kurt stroke her hair for another moment before she goes to Blaine instead, and he immediately scoops her up and lets her snuggle into his lap - which she’s a little old for, but she’s also small for her age.

Kurt looks at Blaine and shrugs helplessly. “I’ve tried everything; she just can’t sleep through the night.” He doesn’t add that this had never happened when she was living with Blaine - they both know. He thought that after she got used to the new routine things would change, but no. Kurt wants to scream with the injustice of it, that she was happier with a dysfunctional parent than a stable one. Things were supposed to change when he got her back, and they certainly had, but he can’t tell if it’s for the better.

“Why’s that, babydoll?” Blaine asks gently, his demeanor shifting from one minute to the next. Kurt can’t tell if he’s putting on a persona for her or if she just has a soothing effect on him. “Bad dreams?”

She shrugs. “I dunno. Sometimes.”

Blaine kisses the top of her head. “Hop up, I know just the thing.” She does, wandering back to Kurt now that she doesn’t have a lap on which to perch. Kurt watches in silence as Blaine heats up one of her sippy-cups (only used when she takes a drink to bed with her) full of milk and drizzles it with a bit of honey (and Kurt can’t help but recall a memory of ‘warm milk? Really?’ that makes him want to tease Blaine and it hurts far too much that he can’t.) She takes it eagerly, mumbling, “Thanks, Papa,” around the cup as she drinks.

“Let’s get you tucked back in, okay?” Blaine takes her hand and leads her away, and she calls out ‘goodnight, Daddy’ over her shoulder as they go.

Kurt stays in the kitchen even when Blaine lingers in Amelia’s room, staring into his coffee mug without taking a drink. Blaine knows their daughter so well, better than Kurt does anymore. When did that happen, and why does it make him so bitter? He of all people should have known that warm milk would help her settle - or if anything, she should have been able to tell him so. He sighs and slumps against the counter, miserable for any number of stupid reasons, not to mention exhausted. If only warm milk was all it took for him.

Blaine comes back after a little while, his socked feet padding softly on the carpet. His hands are shoved into the pockets of his jeans, which he never did change out of, and his shoulders are still that little bit hunched.

“It worked, she passed right out,” he said, staring down at his shifting feet. “I didn’t know if it would, but… lucky guess.”

“Thank you,” Kurt says, and he means it.

Blaine bites his lip and nods. “I’m… sorry. Shouldn’t have snapped at you.” He mumbles.

“It doesn’t matter.”

“I just - pet peeve, I guess, when people… act like they understand when they just can’t.”

Kurt leans back against the counter. “Did you know that I wanted to die, before I met you?” Blaine finally lifts his head, eyes wide. Kurt takes it as a cue to continue. “It was when the bullying at school was at its worst. I think I knew how bad I was getting when I started to think of it as like - a solution to everything, like, if things get any worse than they are, I can just kill myself. And no one noticed, or if they did they didn’t care.” Blaine’s mouth fell open slightly, blinking as he absorbed the information. Kurt takes in a harsh breath - it had been a long, long time since he had reminisced about this. “The day before we met, I remember thinking about it all day long, how I would do it. I was going to take my dad’s pain meds and just… fall asleep.”

“Why didn’t you?” Blaine asks. He sounds almost afraid to know.

“You.” Kurt can’t help but smile, just a little, at the look of surprise on Blaine’s face. “You reached out, and you took my hand, and… you were something new. Then you started texting me and… I decided to stick around a little while longer.” He shrugs. “I had to wait for the next text. And then, even after all the bullshit with Dave, and everything - I at least had those texts back and forth with you to look forward to.”

Blaine lets out a breath that Kurt hadn’t realized he was even holding. “I… I never knew.”

“I’ve never told anyone.” Somehow, it’s a weight off his chest, even though he’s long been over it and hasn’t had thoughts of suicide since - one of the last things he’d never told Blaine, finally out in the open. It had seemed too personal to share at the time, and later too big, telling his highschool boyfriend that he’d saved his life. Later still, it hadn’t mattered so much - just one more struggle he was stronger for overcoming, one he was okay with keeping to himself. For Kurt it was a phase, a result of his environment, but he knows that it’s not like that for everyone. “So no, I don’t understand your personal situation - no one can but you - but I can empathize, Blaine.”

“I said sorry.”

“And I said it’s okay.” He sighs heavily. “We just - if we’re going to get through this we can’t blow up at every little thing. We have to be able to tolerate each other’s company, at least.”

“It’s hard… to control, sometimes. I get so pissed off and I lash out and…” He wraps his arms around himself, a familiar defensive pose. “Fuck, I really need a drink.”

“Absolutely not.” Blaine is an adult, and he can make his own decisions, but there is no way Kurt is letting any alcohol into this house. “I can’t control what you do when you go home, but while you’re here, no drinking.”

“That’s - that’s not - but -“

“You do realize that you have a problem, right? Rehab didn’t help you, so… I will. No drinking.”

Blaine rubs his eyes. “I can’t just quit cold turkey.”

“Well, that is exactly what you’re going to do.”

“You fucking suck.”

Kurt closes his eyes, slumping back against the counter, his grip on his coffee mug dangerously tight. And here he thought that, for a moment, they were coming to some kind of understanding. “That’s okay,” he says, and even to his own ears, he sounds exhausted. “If being the villain here is what it takes to get you better, then I suppose I’ll have to be the villain.” On the inside, he laughs at the tiny part of him that had imagined Blaine being gracious and grateful about the whole situation. As if. It’s going to be a battle, one he’s not sure he’s equipped for.

“I’m going to bed,” Blaine mutters, putting his coffee mug in the sink with more force than necessary and stalking away. It’s just like when they were married and fought constantly, but refused to talk about it later - it gives him the same horrible feeling in his gut, anyway. Kurt feels his throat tighten up, but he doesn’t allow himself to cry. He has to learn to have a thicker skin when it comes to these things.

Kurt stays there until the sun makes its first appearance out the window, beginning to bath the apartment in its faint orange glow. He’ll have to take Amelia to school before too long, and if Blaine doesn’t stay in bed all day there will be him to deal with - but for now, he lets himself have this tiny moment of peace before he re-enters the battlefield.

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