Tiago was jumping up and down, almost crushing Kurt in the process, barely able to contain his enthusiasm. They had just left their classroom where they had received the results of the past exam period. Kurt was rather pleased with himself, seeing as his GPA had only dropped 0.2 points - he really had feared the worst after seeing some of the questions. That was one thing he was not going to miss at McKinley, that was for sure.

“You enjoy your holidays,” Kurt smiled, patting his classmate on the shoulder. He still had some papers to write to make up for the exams he had skipped, but he wasn’t going to ruin his friend’s holiday mood with details like that. “But I need to go, I have to find Blaine. Take care!”

“This better not be the last time I see you!” Kurt heard Tiago call after him. “Promise me you’ll come visit again!”

Kurt turned to the boy, raising his hand in silent agreement as he made his way to the exit backwards. It was still hard to believe that even after only two months at Dalton, he had actually made friends here, who wanted to hang out with him, who even cared about him, whose reaction to him coming out was “So, do you have a boyfriend?” rather than an insult or an awkward silence. Granted, he found the question more unnerving than the awkward silence, but that was hardly the point.

He almost had looked over Blaine in the main corridor between the hustle and bustle of hundreds of blazer-clad students, all cramming to get home for the holidays as soon as possible, when he finally spotted him.

“Hey there! Ready to go?”

“Yes. No!” Blaine used Kurt’s shoulder to stabilize him as he stood on his toes, looking around for something or someone. “I just wanted to... say... goodbye to... there!”

He let go of Kurt and disappeared in the mass of boys, leaving Kurt to chase after him between the many bodies, until he literally bumped into his foster brother outside on the main steps.

“Damn, Blaine, you can’t just run off like that and-”

Kurt stopped mid sentence as he noticed Blaine wasn’t paying attention to him in the least. He stood, frozen, his eyes transfixed on the parking lot in front of the school and following Blaine’s gaze, Kurt finally saw what he was looking at.

A girl had just jumped out of a shiny black BMW. She vaguely reminded Kurt of Quinn Fabray, although this girl was taller, with long hair that was waving in the wind as she ran towards one of the Dalton boys. He was obviously a boarder, because he was carrying two suitcases, both of which dropped on the ground when the girl flew him around the neck. The hug threw them both almost of balance and the boy’s arms were waving around in an attempt to keep their balance. Slowly, almost hesitantly, he returned the embrace, closing his arms around the girl carefully, as if he was afraid to hurt her. It wasn’t until they finally pulled away from each other, however, that Kurt was able to recognize the boy.

Kyle.

“Thank the stars he’s straight” was Kurt’s first thought, but he immediately scolded himself - this was no time to be selfish. Blaine looked like he was either going to burst into tears or skin the girl alive, and Kurt wasn’t going to let either of those happen in public.

He grabbed Blaine by the arm, pulling him to his car and much to Kurt’s relief Blaine didn’t struggle at all, but let himself be pushed down in the passenger seat. By the time Kurt had moved to the driver’s side and got into the car, Blaine had slumped against the window, staring out. He didn’t move when they pulled out of the parking lot, and no matter what Kurt said or asked, he couldn’t get more than one syllable-answers out of him. By the time they drove onto the Lima Bean’s parking lot, Kurt was more than sick of it.

“What? Kurt, we... why are you stopping here?” Blaine asked, bewildered, when he finally noticed they’d stopped.

“I realize it may have escaped your attention,” Kurt said, sounding harsher than he actually intended, “but holidays have started and I feel I’ve deserved a cr�me brul�e to celebrate.”

He didn’t look back as he stalked out of the car, leaving Blaine to himself to process what he’d just said. It apparently took him a couple of minutes, because Kurt was already seated at a small table near the window, his coffee and a small plate with a piece of blueberry pie in front of him, when Blaine finally joined him.

“You’re sitting here on your own?”

It was a stupid thing to say, and Blaine knew it, but he wasn’t too sure how to start up a conversation after he’d obviously done something to upset Kurt - although what it was he had no idea.

“Not anymore, it seems. Unless you’re gonna start moping again,” Kurt told him, taking a bite of his pie.

“I... what!? I wasn’t moping!”

Blaine appeared flushed and, somehow, embarrassed, and Kurt leaned back in his chair at the sight, cocking his head.

“No, you’re right,” he said. “You weren’t moping. You were pining.”

The look of indignant relief that had started to appear on Blaine’s face immediately vanished, making place for shock - but Kurt didn’t give him the chance.

“Oh come on, Blaine! After someone didn’t show up at Sectionals you refused to come down for dinner. After an argument with a certain someone at lunch my first day at Dalton you locked yourself in your room for two days straight. You haven’t said a single word since we left school today when someone was picked up by his girlfriend. And don’t you even dare to pretend we both don’t know who I’m talking about here. You, my dearest brother,” Kurt said, emphasizing every word with his fork, “are pining.”

“Am not!” Blaine retorted, but it didn’t sound convincing.

“Hardcore pining, I’m telling you,” Kurt shook his head, quite unfazed, and took another piece of pie.

“It’s not like that!”

Blaine stopped when he saw a single of Kurt’s eyebrows rise, and he let out a sigh.

“Ok... a bit. Maybe. I just... I like Kyle, ok? He’s my best friend and that girl... she’s just not right for him, Kurt. I know she’s not.”

Kurt hardly even heard the rest of the speech, the three short words tossing and turning in his head. I like Kyle. It wasn’t even the words themselves, but rather the way in which they had been said, the way Blaine’s eyes had lit up, the way he had bobbed his head as he always did when he was excited over something.

I like Kyle.

Honestly, it wasn’t as if Kurt hadn’t known - or suspected, at least. He’d called Blaine out on it, after all. But still, some part of him had hoped it wasn’t true, that he had misinterpreted the looks and the smiles, that he had misjudged Blaine’s need for Kyle’s approval in almost any area. But deep inside, he had known. He had known from the moment Blaine had completely ignored him in favor of crushing Kyle in a hug at the first Warblers’ concert he’d been to. It was part of the reason why he had never really dared to “get his moves on”, as Mercedes so eloquently put it.

It didn’t mean it hurt any less to hear it, though.

“... never even talks about her. When has the long distance thing ever worked for anyone? Honestly, from the moment he told me I had this feeling that-”

“Wait, what?” Kurt interrupted him. He had obviously missed something here. “You knew Kyle had a girlfriend?”

Blaine shifted uncomfortably in his chair, his fingers playing nervously with one of the napkins on the table.

“Well... yeah. He told me they started dating not even a week after he k- .... a week after he came home from holidays. She’s a friend of the family, or something, I don’t even know.”

But Kurt was lost in his own thoughts again. Part of him felt strangely relieved - he wasn’t the only gay who had ever made the mistake of falling in love with a straight guy. But mostly he just wanted to scream at Blaine - why would you even do that?! Why would you even let yourself fall in love with a guy you KNOW is straight, worse, has a girlfriend?! He knew it wouldn’t make a difference, though: he remembered all too well how nothing Rachel or even Mercedes had said had been able to stop him from believing he had an actual shot at Finn.

“Do you trust Kyle?”, he asked instead.

Blaine shot him a surprised look. “Of course I trust him. Best friends, remember?”

“Then why don’t you trust him if he says that he likes this girl? As his best friend, shouldn’t you support him?”

“I... guess...” Blaine didn’t look convinced.

“Look, Blaine... I know you think this girl isn’t right for him,” but neither are you, “but this is his call to make. His decision. And if the worst comes and it turns out you were right, you should be there for him, preferably without any ‘I told you so’s. But until then, shouldn’t you just be happy that he’s found someone?”

Blaine sighed, wiping the remnants of his shredded napkin together in a little pile.

“I know... you’re right. I’ll try.”

They sat together for a few minutes, each lost in their own thoughts, until a small grumble disturbed the silence between them, and Blaine looked up.

“Are you still going to eat that pie?”

Kurt didn’t answer but he pulled his plate a bit closer, cutting off another piece with his fork in clear demonstration.

“Weren’t you going to get cr�me brul�e, by the way?”

“They were out. Their blueberry pie is the next best thing though. Wanna try?”

Kurt pointed to the remainder of the pie, and as Blaine nodded he cut it in half, pricked a piece on the fork and held it out for Blaine to take. Before he knew it, however, Blaine leaned forward, closing his mouth around the end of the fork, sliding off the piece of pie. For a moment, Kurt was so stunned he almost let go of the fork.

“Mmmh... it really is good,” Blaine commented, chewing happily.

But the quality of the blueberry pie was now completely irrelevant to Kurt.

I have just fed Blaine blueberry pie, was all he could think. By any description in his vast collection of romcoms, that counted as something terribly, cheesily, romantic. But Blaine had just as good as confessed to being in love with Kyle. Was he just messing with Kurt?

Kurt looked over at him, but the other boy was completely engrossed in a magazine that someone had apparently left on their table, seemingly unaware of the turmoil he had released in Kurt’s head. There was a bit of blueberry jelly left right next to the corner of Blaine’s mouth, and Kurt watched him as he wiped it away with his thumb, taking a short glance at it before he licked it off. He swallowed. Oh my stars, I have to get out of here.

He threw down his fork and stood up, throwing his bag over his shoulder.

“I think we should go. My dad will be wondering where I am.”

“But... your pie!” Blaine called after him.

“You have it!”

With a few determined steps, Kurt made his way to the door, longing for the fresh December breeze that would hopefully cool the blush that he could feel burning on his cheeks. He could only hope Blaine hadn’t noticed.

But Blaine h�d noticed. In fact, it was the very reason he had not simply taken over the fork but had opted for the more cheesy alternative. He knew he shouldn’t be messing with his little brother like that, but Kurt just looked so utterly... adorable when he was flustered and it was just too easy to make him blush. Just like Kyle... .

He shook his head. Kurt was right - he had to stand by Kyle no matter who he chose. And if that was Jennifer... then he would have to learn to accept that.

Later that day, they were all sitting together in the living room. It was almost a scene from one of those corny, horrible Christmas movies, Kurt thought as he looked around him. His dad was lying in the couch, watching one of the reality shows he was so fond of, while Blaine was standing on a chair, decorating the christmas tree - on the day before Christmas Eve it was long overdue, but they simply hadn’t gotten around to doing it before.

Kurt himself sat at the table with Mrs. Anderson, writing christmas cards. Actually, Mrs. Anderson was writing the cards, and, courtesy of his gracious handwriting, Kurt had been put in charge of writing the addresses on the envelopes. It looked all comfy and cosy, and it was just what Kurt needed after the frenzy of two weeks of Dalton exams.

“Mrs. A? This address has been struck through... I skip it?” he asked, showing her the four page address list he’d been given and pointing at the one he was having trouble with.

“Oh no, honey, they’ve probably just moved... here... ,” she flicked through the pages until the end, “the new addresses are at the bottom, see?”

Kurt nodded, twirling his wrist before starting to copy down the correct address. He was barely halfway through the list of former Anderson foster children, and already his wrists felt like they were on fire.

“Are these really all foster kids, Mrs. A?” he asked, “How long have you been doing this?”

“I started some time after Blaine was born, I think?” Mrs. Anderson answered, looking up from her cards with a pensive look. “When he started kindergarten or so... I knew I wouldn’t have any more kids of my own, and I had time on my hands anyways. And it seemed fun for Blaine to have some friends to play with.”

“So much fun,” Blaine confirmed, “every time I started bonding they’d leave again. It’s a miracle I turned out so sociable, really.”

He made it sound sarcastic, but there was a soft undertone to his voice, and Mrs. Anderson smiled at him.

“Blaine has always been quick to attach to people,” she said, turning to Kurt, “it was partly why he was always so great with making the kids feel at home... especially the little ones. There’d be tears on both sides each time someone had to leave.”

“Mom!”

Blaine was actually blushing - whether from humbleness after his mother’s compliment or embarrassment at her implication he’d often cried, Kurt didn’t know, but he did know the sight of Blaine blushing made his stomach do somersaults.

“It’s true!” Mrs. Anderson exclaimed, before putting her hand on Kurt’s arm, leaning forward a little bit while she whispered: “Blaine is a really sensitive boy, you know - he cried for hours on end after The Snowman.”

“I was four!”

Kurt bit his lip to keep himself from laughing out loud when he saw the color on Blaine’s cheeks deepen even further. It looked incredibly cute on him.

“Don’t worry about it, Blaine,” Burt’s voice came from the other side of the living room - he had obviously not been so invested in his tv show as Kurt had thought. “I can count the number of movies that Kurt hasn’t cried at on one hand.”

It was Blaine’s turn to snicker now and Kurt felt his face redden.

“I’m not afraid to show my feelings, that’s all!” he tried to defend himself.

“I rest my case,” Burt replied with a wink to his son before he returned his attention to the tv.

Kurt sent his dad a death stare and resolved to switching subjects before any more embarrassing stories could be shared.

“So you’d rather have had just one sister or brother, then?” he asked Blaine.

Blaine stepped down from his chair, and appeared to be thinking as he took more baubles out of a big, red box.

“Not really,” he replied, stepping back up, “most people only have one or two siblings to learn from, I’ve had 30 or 40. There are few things that teach you there’s more than one perspective on almost everything than living with complete strangers.”

Kurt gasped - he knew it was a long list of addresses he had before him, but he hadn’t actually counted them. The sheer number was daunting to him.

“You had FORTY foster children?” he asked Mrs. Anderson. “How can you have had so many?”

“Actually, you’re the thirty fourth, if I’m not mistaken,” she smiled, “but you have to know not all of them were here for long. I did emergency intakes for a long time: we’d take in those kids who really had nowhere else to go, until a more permanent solution would be found. Some ended up staying for a year or more, but mostly they would only be here for a couple of weeks or even days. The dates are in the last column, see?”

She pointed at the right margin of the paper, where Kurt could indeed see two sets of dates besides each name. As Mrs. Anderson had said, there was a lot of variability in the duration of the stays, and as the names seemed to be sorted by the dates they had left the Anderson’s, Kurt could see there had been several occasions on which more than one kid had stayed with them at the same time.

“I still like to keep in touch with all of them, though, even if they were only here for a short time,” Mrs. Anderson said as she eyed the list with a smile, obviously remembering each and every face that the names belonged to, “I feel it’s important, you know?”

Kurt nodded. He’d been wondering how it would be when he would leave the Andersons, and although he had really started to look forward to going back to Lima, the thought of staying in touch with this new family of his was strangely comforting.

Mrs. Anderson returned to her cards, and Kurt continued to work his way down the list, referring to the end whenever an address had been crossed out, until he came to the last entry. It wasn’t just the address that had been struck through, the whole entry was crossed out, and there didn’t seem to be an updated address anywhere.

“Mrs. A - this one doesn’t have a replacement address,” he said, looking up.

“Well, that shouldn’t happen,” his foster mother frowned, “what’s the name?”

Kurt strained to read the words through the thick stripes.

“Miah... no... Nic... Nicholas. Nicholas Ramsay?”

DZZINNG!

“Sorry! Sorry!”

Blaine jumped down from his chair, using his bare hands to pick up the pieces of the glass ball that were scattered all over the floor now. “It’s fine, it just slipped, I’ll clean it up!”

Kurt let out a breath and relaxed the hand that had automatically grasped at his heart when he had heard the delicate ornament meet its untimely death on the living room floor. It had given him quite a freight, and apparently Mrs. Anderson too, because she looked very pale when he turned back to her.

“Mrs. A? What do you want me to do?”

His foster mother looked a little bewildered, obviously somewhere else with her thoughts when she replied.

“The duster is in the kitchen, under the sink, if you want to help Blaine clean up.”

Kurt frowned.

“No... I mean, Nicholas Rim... Ramsay? Do you have another address for him?”

Mrs. Anderson seemed to snap back to reality at the mention of the name and she stood up abruptly, starting to gather the papers on the table.

“No, Kurt, that’s ok. We... eh... we lost contact with Nicholas. Moved a couple of times, forgot to pass the new address... you know how it goes. But he was only here for a short time, anyway.”

Automatically, Kurt’s eyes darted to the last column for Nicholas’ entry: 12/03/06 - 07/15/09 flashed before his eyes before Mrs. Anderson took the list away.

“Thank you, Kurt, for your help, but I think I’ve had enough of Christmas cards for today,” Mrs. Anderson said. She looked tired, and more than a little distracted. “I’m just going to put these away.”

Kurt’s brain was working overtime as he watched Mrs. Anderson clean up the table. First she said she thought it important to keep in touch with all of her foster kids, regardless of how long they had spent at her house. Then she shrugged her shoulders at the loss of contact with one of them? His confusion only increased when he tried to calculate how long the boy had stayed at the Andersons. Two and a half years? But Mrs. Anderson had said he’d only been there for a short time... surely he must’ve misread the dates. There was no reason Mrs. Anderson would lie about something a trivial as the time a foster child had spent at her house. And if the dates he remembered were correct, it meant Kurt was the first kid staying with them in over a year - and with Mrs. Anderson’s obvious enthusiasm for foster care, Kurt doubted that could be right. No, he’d definitely misread the numbers - what with the effort it had taken him to decipher the name, it didn’t even surprise him.