Despite this conviction, he'd been young and stupid and hopeful (and completely, utterly in love) enough to think that maybe he and Blaine were a rare, beautiful exception to the rule.

He'd been wrong.

"We're breaking up, aren't we?"

Five words mark the end of their two and a half years together, and they ring in Kurt's ears and in fitful, unpleasant dreams for a long time afterwards.

*
The ending leaves him gutted, an absolute wreck. It felt like grieving, but instead of mourning the death of a person he was mourning the loss of love and companionship and their hopes and dreams for the future, the loss of the life they'd wanted to build together and would have, had things turned out differently. He's mourning their friendship, which they promise to keep in tact but underneath the surface they both know it's already dead. Having each other in their lives without really having each other is too much. It hurts too much. They both know they can't do it.

Blaine Anderson had been his best friend and his lover and his everything, and then he was just... gone. And it sucked. It really, truly sucked.

*

It sucked even more three weeks later when Kurt saw it on facebook.

Blaine Anderson is in a relationship.

Six words accompanied by various, distinctly coupley photos of Blaine and a boy with a smug grin and pretentious hair who is decidedly not Kurt, but who looks like maybe he'd like to be.

It feels like a kick in the chest. He and Blaine had been together for two years. Their relationship hadn't been perfect, of course, they'd had their ups and downs just like any other couple. But they'd loved each other. You couldn't tell Kurt it hadn't been mutual - he'd been there, he knew better. Blaine had loved him, and ending things had killed him, too. Kurt had seen that.

So how was it that Blaine could forget him already? How was it that Blaine could be content with someone else so soon?

That night Kurt went out and let himself get completely wasted. He set his sights on the first halfway decent looking guy he'd seen, and spends the rest of the evening using every ounce of game he has to score an invitation to 'go someplace more private'. He finds himself in an unfamiliar apartment tangled up in unfamiliar sheets with a strange body moving against him in ways he'd only ever, ever explored with Blaine.

It's awkward and quick and means nothing, and he wakes up the next morning feeling like absolute shit. He's not even sure he can remember the guy's name. It might be Andrew. He thinks it's Andrew, but it could just as easily have been Anthony or Adrian or something else that starts with A, and the fact that he doesn't know twists at his gut and makes him feel sick to his stomach.

He learns first hand why they call it the 'walk of shame' - the walk back to his dorm room is just as bleak as it had always looked on television and in movies. Kurt decides right then and there that casual sex just isn't a viable option for him. He'd used another human being as a buffer against the bitterness and despair threatening to close in on him, trying to erase old memories by gaining new experiences. Trying to make it not matter, because if it didn't matter to Blaine anymore, why should it matter to him?

But it hadn't helped. Instead of feeling better, he just felt filthy and wrong and completely off kilter. He knew if he wanted to live with himself, he couldn't do that again. So he didn't.

*

And eventually, a few months later, he met someone.

Josh Bell is tall and blonde and everything that Blaine is not. Safe. Reliable. A little dull, but Kurt had had enough excitement. Exciting meant dangerous. With Josh, there was no fear of ever truly losing his heart and consequently ending up miserable. He could be mildly fond of him without the fear of it actually going anywhere.

(And with Josh, he won't have to spend what would have been his and Blaine's three year anniversary alone. He'd have a distraction. Maybe, when the time came, he wouldn't even remember the events that had once made that day special.)

So they begin dating. Things were going well - it was nice to feel not-alone again. But in May the relationship started to develop into something more serious. Josh asked Kurt to go home with him for spring break, meet his family, and that's how Kurt knows it's time to end things. He feels bad, because Josh is genuinely a nice guy and he genuinely likes him (likes, but not loves), but it was better this way. Better to nip it in the bud than let Josh go on caring about him and let things continue to develop, having to pretend that he cares, too.

A clean break, no messes. It's the best thing for everyone.

(Of course, even with Josh, he'd ended up remembering their anniversary anyway. Kurt spends the day locked in his room, an old Katy Perry song playing on his iPod as he stares up at the ceiling. He tries, but he can't even bring himself to cry over it.

What would be the point, anyway? It's over.)

*

He doesn't see Blaine again until summer vacation.

It happens by accident. He goes to the Lima Bean, same as always, and orders a grande nonfat mocha, same as always. He never expected Blaine to be the one to hand it to him from behind the counter.

(It feels a little bit like Fate is trying to intervene again. Kurt pushes that feeling away.)

They have coffee and talk, after Blaine gets off work. It's weird, like holding up a mirror image to the past. Everything is the same. Same table, same chair, same person sitting across from him. It's also vastly different. Kurt doesn't know what to do about the differences, so he panics and leaves, making vague promises that they would 'hang out' sometime. Promises he has no intention of keeping.

And yet, somehow, he finds himself right back at the cafe a week later, looking for the ghost of his ex-boyfriend in the scruffy faced young man in front of him. Kurt just wanted to talk. That's all he'd planned. But talking led to yelling, and yelling led to tears and then, one way or another, they end up getting reacquainted in the passenger seat of the Navigator, Kurt in Blaine's lap and their mouths melded together like they'd never been apart.

It's a bad idea and he knows it. It's impossible not to know it when all of his friends keep reminding him. But Kurt's not sixteen anymore. He's smarter than he was the last time around. Just because they'd become physically close again didn't mean he intended to pick up where they'd left off. Maybe Blaine had forgotten what it had felt like when things had ended (he'd had Brenden to help ease the pain, after all), but Kurt most assuredly had not. He wasn't going to put himself in that position again - they would just stay friends. Friends with certain benefits, perhaps, but friends all the same.

(Sometimes he'd forget. Once, mostly asleep, he whispers 'I love you'. Blaine says it back. Kurt doesn't remember it the next morning, but he does know that, cradled in Blaine's arms, he'd gotten the best sleep he'd had in a very long time.)

*

Summer eventually ends, as summers always do. Blaine wants more, wants to make this thing between them more concrete, but Kurt says no. He's not ready to admit that he wants it, too.

You know what they say - once burned, twice shy.