“Blaine, what are you humming?” Kurt asked, smiling to himself as he kept his head down, doing his French homework in silence.

This was what they did. Kurt would do his homework while Blaine was online, usually talking to each other about silly things like music, sometimes even helping each other with their homework. But most of the time, it was silent. They would spend their time as close as they could be to each other, which right now, was over web cam. And although his father would often come in and raise an eyebrow at the fact that there was a boy on Kurt’s screen who apparently was doing nothing while Kurt did homework, he didn’t care. Being around Blaine made him feel good, and safe. He wasn’t going to let anyone strip that from hom. This was what they wanted to do, and it made sense to them.

There was a little chuckle from the dark haired boy, before he answered, his voice traveling into Kurt’s ear through the headphones, “You’ve got to hide your love away, by The Beatles. Why, was it distracting?”

His voice was soft, and Kurt let it fill him. He had to whisper, due to the fact that both his parents were asleep, but it was still clear and soothing. It was everything Kurt needed.

Shaking his head, Kurt looked up at him and smiled back at the wonderful face slightly looking at him. “No, I was just wondering. It’s always nice hearing you sing.”

He watched the smile spread onto Blaine’s lips, and Kurt took a deep breath. It wasn’t fair that this was the only way he could see him. It wasn’t fair that a smile halfway around the world could make an awful day so much better. It wasn’t fair that Blaine had no idea that sometimes Kurt would glance up from his homework to look at him, trying not to stare at the way his arms bulged out of his thin t-shirt.

There was a pause, before Blaine’s voice reached Kurt’s ear again, only half of the usual calmness out of it. It was blanketed in concern, and Kurt tried hard not to roll his eyes as he heard the words, “You’re being really quiet today. I just realized that…Something happen at school?”

And suddenly he regrets ever opening up to Blaine. He doesn’t want to talk about it. Right now is his time to escape, his time to just slip into the pleasant routine they had set up. The last thing Kurt wanted to be talking about was school, because Blaine was his perfect thing. Blaine was what Kurt looked forward to coming home to – only not really because in reality, he was thousands of miles away. Even if he had told Blaine everything he had never wanted to tell anyone else a few weeks ago, Kurt hadn’t been looking to relive that. Especially over cam where he couldn’t hide the fact that he was crying.

Shaking his head, he sighed and looked up from his homework long enough to give Blaine a bit of a glare. The dark haired boy held up his hands and shrugged, but said nothing as if still waiting for a reply. Taking a deep breath, Kurt sighed, “I don’t want to talk about it, okay? I’m trying to do homework and talking about it is just going to get me angry.”

“So they did something?” Blaine asked, hesitantly.

All Kurt could do was sigh again. He wanted to both slap him in the head and hug him, because part of him knew that this was just Blaine being concerned. This was Blaine being Blaine. The boy was unraveling before his eyes, and Kurt was dying to know more.

“I really don’t want to talk about it,” he said, his tone a lot less agitated now as he watched Blaine’s face, the way his eyes only fluttered lightly. Kurt wanted to be snarky with him, but it was nearly impossible.

Nodding, Blaine offered Kurt a small smile before saying, “Gotcha.”

A moment passed, and Kurt could hear Carole’s voice bounding up the stairs calling for dinner. Smiling back at Blaine, he got out of his seat, leaning down to say, “You don’t need to wait for me to get back. Go to sleep, okay?”

But the silly boy across the screen only smiles again, nodding slightly, “okay.”

Kurt didn’t return for another thirty minutes, helping Carole with the dishes so that she could go distract his father and keep him from wandering into his room as he spoke to Blaine. It wasn’t that he didn’t want to talk to him, or that he didn’t want Blaine to meet his dad. It was that he didn’t want to have to explain Blaine to his father yet.

A part of him felt like he was smuggling a dog, feeding him under his bed. But as Kurt walked up the stairs to his room, he took a breath as he realized; there wasn’t much to explain. Blaine was a friend, a close friend who lived in Italy. What was that difficult to understand?

“Blaine?” he asked, walking into his room and sitting down again.

The boy was still on his laptop, but Kurt had caught him mid yawn, only to have a goofy smile given back to him as soon as the darker eyed teen looked at him as he slipped on his headphones. “Hey.”

“You should have gone to sleep,” Kurt sighed, rolling his eyes as he picked up his pencil, but didn’t go back to work.

“I didn’t want to, I’m not tired yet,” Blaine replied, shrugging lazily.

Kurt looked at him for a beat, before looking down at the glass on his desk. Moving the pencil in circles over the surface, he let out a breath before asking, “How long have you even been in Italy?”

It took Blaine a moment to answer, but the reply reached Kurt’s ear through the headphone. He hadn’t looked up yet, his eraser making light etches of the glass, absentmindedly trying to distract himself.

“I’ve been here for two years, actually.”

It’s the next question that he felt awkward asking, but he had wanted to know the answer for a while. Especially after the events of today, the events that Kurt was trying his best to even keep out of his own head, Kurt just needed to know.

He needed to know it hadn’t been for nothing.

“Blaine,” he started, looking up, meeting the dark haired teens eyes. Taking a breath, he continued, “where you here when you came out?”

Almost instantly Kurt knows he shouldn’t have asked. He watched as a dark shadow passed over Blaine’s face, wondering at once what it meant. Blaine, who so often was just plain smiles and happiness, now looked like he had seen a ghost. It was his turn to lower his head, and Kurt looked at him as he played with his headphones, noting the way he nodded slightly before looking up.

His eyes are darker than usual, even in the dimness of his room. He took a breath before answering, “I came out a few months before I left, actually. My dad got relocated though and we moved.”

That’s all he said, but the moment still passes between them. Kurt still feels like the second their eyes connect, he understands it. Or so he hopes, because looking into the eyes that look so dark but he knows aren’t, he feels that Blaine really did mean it when he said that things had been hard for him. He can feel that just like him, Blaine had to go through all the shit that came with being out and proud in high school…and a part of him wanted to hug Blaine.

But he wanted to do that a lot lately.

They left it at that, and Blaine smiled and told Kurt to go back to his homework. Obliging him, Kurt began conjugating verbs in French, before he heard a soft, low sound a while after. Looking up, he blinked and looked at the screen, staring wide eyed at the sleeping boy in front of him. Blaine, who had moved to rest on his pillow sometime while Kurt had been finishing his homework, had fallen asleep. On camera. The white light of the laptop illuminated his peaceful face, and Kurt yelped a bit. He was…beautiful, and he suddenly felt so wrong watching him like this. Like he was violating him by watching such a private little moment.

But his soft breathing reached his ears, and Kurt sighed. Smiling, he looked down at his homework again, picking up his pencil, before beginning to hum the first couple bars of ‘Blackbird’ without even noticing, trying to lull the boy to sleep as he scribbled down the last few words, smiling to himself as he finished the rest of his work, waiting for Blaine’s laptop to run out power to go to bed.