Kurt seats himself warily across from Blaine later that night, his usual seat in the coffee shop hard and cold beneath him.

“Hi,” he says as neutrally as possible, dropping his bag on the floor and setting his cup on the table.

“Hi,” Blaine replies with a polite smile. “Ready to get started?”

“Uh, yeah. Yeah, sure.”

Without hesitation, Blaine snaps open his physics textbook to the relevant chapter and Kurt slips out his notebook. The hour that follows isn’t necessarily tense, there’s just an unresolved…something in the air, lingering over them like an overcast sky; not quite a storm, but too grey to just be cloudy. The level of comfort they had previously reached with each other, while low, is gone completely. It’s like they’re back to being strangers.

But Kurt can’t see Blaine as a stranger anymore, not after the cheerless images he’s had in his mind for the past couple of days. He can’t stop seeing Blaine sitting alone in his room, a dim light on his desk and a stack of textbooks in his lap. He sees Blaine checking his phone too hopefully for a text message from a friend he knows he doesn’t have. He sees him sitting at dinner with his family, a family that doesn’t ask how his friends are doing or what his plans are because none of those things are there.

At least when Kurt was an outcast, he still had Mercedes and, oddly enough, Finn. Blaine doesn’t have a pseudo-brother or someone to pal around with.

Despite Kurt’s hard exterior, he’s heartbroken for this boy.

“ –and so we’ll stop here for tonight,” Blaine is concluding as Kurt zones out.

“Right, okay,” Kurt says, stuffing his spiral of physics notes into his bag.

“When did you want to meet up again?” Blaine asks.

“Um, well tomorrow’s Friday, which means there’s a football game. Which means I have to cheer.”

“Ah, of course. Sunday, then?”

“Saturday would be better. Saturday night.”

Blaine’s eyebrows rise toward his hairline, surprised, as if wondering why in the world Kurt would be free on a Saturday night with his ever busy reputation to uphold.

Of course, both Saturday and Sunday could work for Kurt, but he doesn’t say as much. He just feels like he has a responsibility to get Blaine out of the house on a Saturday night for once.

“Works for me,” Blaine says, zipping up his backpack and making to stand. “See you then.”

“Wait,” Kurt says, reaching into a pocket of his bag. “This is – I got you this. Well, I mean, it was a buy one get one free thing yesterday at the mall so I figured I’d just give the second one to you.”

From within his bag, he pulls out a classy red bowtie and holds it out to Blaine. Blaine, however, simply stares at the tie in Kurt’s hand, blinking furiously. He’s staring like the image of Kurt giving him a gift is just a hallucination, like he expects it to disappear within a matter of seconds.

When it remains solid and very much real, he finally looks into Kurt’s eyes.

“You bought me-”

“Technically I got it for free,” Kurt reminds. “Just – just take it, okay?”

Blaine plucks the little bowtie from Kurt’s palm. He rolls it over in his fingers, checking once more to make sure it’s actually there, and gives a nod.

“Thank you,” he says. “You didn’t have to give it to me.”

“It matches that cardigan you like to wear,” Kurt replies offhandedly. “And I don’t pass up sales.”

“Thank you,” Blaine says again. “I’ll see you on Saturday.”

“Wait. Aren’t we – are we going to-”

“…What?”

“Y’know,” Kurt says grudgingly. “Aren’t we going to have our little tête-à-tête? Like we always do?”

“Um, I have to get home, actually,” Blaine says, nibbling on his lower lip.

“Oh. Right. Okay.”

“I’ll see you later.”

Blaine turns promptly and leaves the sweet scented air of the coffee shop. After a few seconds, Kurt shakes himself out of his confusion and follows quickly. He’s not quite sure why he feels the need to catch Blaine once more before he leaves early without explanation, but he shoves open the door to the shop and looks around frantically. Blaine looks to be in a hurry, body already poised in between the car and his driver’s side door, ready to duck inside.

“Blaine!” he shouts, just loud enough to be heard.

Blaine’s head snaps up at the sound of Kurt’s voice. He adjusts his glasses. Heart pounding wildly in his chest, Kurt’s mind has suddenly gone into overdrive. He doesn’t know why he’s doing this, doesn’t know what he needs to say.

So he speaks and allows the words to fall out of his mouth, voice sounding small and pathetic even to his ears.

“I don’t have anyone else.”

“…What?” Blaine asks.

“I don’t have anyone to talk to,” Kurt explains, “about being gay. There’s no one who knows what it’s like.”

No one but you, he doesn’t say.

“I’m sorry. For what I said to you the other night,” he says.

“Kurt, it’s fine. Honestly. Don’t worry about it.”

“I don’t – I don’t have anyone else,” he says again for no reason at all.

Blaine stares at him from across the parking lot, bowtie clutched in his fingers and dangling over the edge of the car door where he grips it forcefully. Even with the glare on his glasses from the blinking ‘OPEN’ sign in the coffee shop window, Kurt knows that Blaine is sizing him up, analyzing his words and his eyes and the slight frown Kurt can feel on his lips.

“I know,” Blaine finally says.

And he gets in his car.

And he drives away.

Kurt’s left standing on the curb, the vague sound of music muffled behind him, and the shining, starry sky glaring at him from above. At the moment, he’s all confusion and what ifs but he pushes it all to the back of his mind because he has to go home and perform a rigorous moisturizing routine if he wants his skin to look flawless during the game tomorrow.

Even though millions of questions are begging to be answered, Blaine will have to wait.