To say that the ghost currently occupying his bedroom was surprised would have been quite the understatement on Kurt’s part. He didn’t just look surprised; he even went so far as to look over his shoulder to see if there was someone else behind him that Kurt might possibly be talking to. But the only thing behind him was what Kurt could see out the window and it certainly wasn’t anyone else.

“Oh, my God,” he said, in a manner that had Kurt practically swooning. Even his voice was worthy of him turning into a puddle of goo on the floor. “Oh, my God.”

“It’s no use calling on your higher power,” Kurt informed him, pointing one finger upwards, his eyes glancing at the ceiling above him. “In case you haven’t noticed, He hasn’t exactly been paying you any attention. Otherwise, you wouldn’t have been stuck here for what, like fifty years?”

“You – you can see me?” The ghost breathed out, and it sounded to Kurt like it was rusty from a lack of use. “I don’t understand, how after all these years, no one has ever been able to see me but you.”

“Believe me, I wish I wasn’t,” Kurt shot back. He had to be mean to this ghost, he just had to. Because he knew if he was nice to him, it might land him in some serious trouble. “So tell me, what’s keeping you here, Dapper Dan?”

“It’s Blaine.”

“I’m sorry?”

The ghost had just a tiny smirk on his face as he peered up at him through thick, dark eyelashes that were impossibly long. Kurt swallowed, hard. “My name isn’t Dan. It’s Blaine.”

“Okay, Blaine,” Kurt responded, huffing out a sigh. He really was not in the mood for this. “Just tell me what’s keeping you here and I’ll help you get to your next destination. You can’t keep hanging around here.”

Blaine crossed his arms over his chest in defense. “And what if I happen to like hanging around here?”

“That’s not how it works, Blaine.”

“And you?” Blaine ignored his comment, instead asking his own question.

Kurt just looked at him then. This Blaine guy was a piece of work. “And me what?”

“What’s your name?”

“Kurt,” Kurt decided to humor him. Maybe, just maybe, if he played nice, this ghost would just go away and leave him alone. “Kurt Hummel.”

“Ah, I see,” Blaine remarked, still in his defensive stance. “And this is your room now, is it?”

“Yeah,” Kurt gulped again because now Blaine was actually grinning at him. And damn, did he have a set of perfectly straight, white teeth. Which for Kurt, were quite distracting. “So I suggest you get out.”

“I have to get out?” Blaine blanched back at him, raising those muscular arms in frustration. “This was my room!”

“I’m pretty sure you’re dead,” It was Kurt’s turn to fold his arms over his chest as he raised one eyebrow. “And I’m not sharing my room with some dead, prep school boy from the fifties.”

That got to Blaine. Kurt could see him slam his foot onto the ground and he stood up. He was shorter than Kurt by just a margin but he was a lot more intimidating, and an expert in his ghostly abilities, Kurt could see. The mirror above Kurt’s dresser shook and was teetering on the edge, which he knew wasn’t from some earthquake but from Blaine’s agitation at Kurt’s insult.

“How dare you say something like that!” Blaine raged, wagging a finger in Kurt’s face.

Okay, that was it. Kurt reached to grab hold of the finger that Blaine was practically shoved in his face, and yanked Blaine towards him. He almost instantly regretted it, now that Blaine’s face was mere inches from his own. “Stop shaking my damn mirror. And stop with the finger in my face. I’ll break it if you do it again.”

Kurt knew ghosts didn’t have blood, considering they were dead, but in that moment, he could have sworn all the color had drained from Blaine’s face. Any normal person would have tried to latch onto Blaine and would have failed, having their hand just go right through him. But not for Kurt. He could touch Blaine in the same way he could touch his father; as if Blaine was as real to him anyone else.

This realization didn’t exactly bode well for him.

Blaine, looking down at his finger like Kurt had actually broken it like he had threatened to, seemed incapable of a response at that point. It was probably the first time Blaine had been touched in any sort of way in over fifty years. Kurt broke into a smug smile, pleased that he had rendered Blaine speechless and decided to take advantage of his silence.

“Look, Blaine. This is my room now, do you understand?” Kurt told him in the most firm tone he could muster. “So either you let me help you get to wherever it is that you need to go or you go haunt someone somewhere else. But you can’t stay here.”

Blaine looked up at him, his eyes clouded with disbelief as his lips parted. “What kind of… boy are you?”

Kurt dropped the finger he was holding, mildly offended by Blaine’s words. Intentional or unintentional, Blaine had insinuated that Kurt wasn’t a boy. It wasn’t like he hadn’t heard it before. He knew his high voice could easily be mistaken for a girl’s and his outfits weren’t always catered to his gender but it did sort of sting, especially from Blaine.

“I’ll tell you what kind of boy I’m not,” Kurt fumed, addressing Blaine with a look that could kill. “I’m not the kind of a boy who shares his room with another boy that he just met, no matter what he looks like.”

Kurt couldn’t believe he’d said that, but it was too late to take the words back now. The thing with being a mediator, was that he tried never to reveal that he was one. But especially a gay one. And particularly never to ghosts, because most of them weren’t from his time. They either wouldn’t understand him liking boys or they’d understand and just hate him for it. And Kurt knew ghosts could take things to a whole new level if they wanted to, a violent level and he wasn’t about to be a target to any of them.

And he knew Blaine was from a different era, an era which Kurt was certain was one where being gay was frowned upon even more so than now. Judging from the way he dressed and the way he talked, Kurt would have guessed the fifties. And from what Kurt knew of the fifties, he knew that Blaine was supposed to be the perfect, polite gentleman who went to work while his housewife took care of their kids in the beautiful home, surrounded by a white picket fence. Blaine had probably never encountered anyone who was gay, let alone be overly fond of anyone who was if he had.

He had basically admitted to Blaine that not only was he gay, but that he found Blaine attractive. Kurt had just put his foot in his mouth. Big time.

Kurt was hesitant to meet Blaine’s eye, but when he finally did, he could see that his honey colored eyes were soft and sympathetic. And even, Kurt thought, apologetic. He had expected them to be angry and cold but they weren’t. Not at all. 

“I’m really sorry, Kurt,” Blaine said so softly and gently that Kurt believed him. It was the first time that Blaine had said his name and he liked the way it sounded rolling off of Blaine’s tongue. “I didn’t realize you were…”

“Now you do,” Kurt said icily. He was bracing himself for whatever Blaine was inevitably going to dole out. He was pretty sure this would be the last of Blaine that he would be seeing now that he knew. “Not that you’d know anything about that.”

“Actually,” Blaine said so quietly, that Kurt thought he had imagined him speaking altogether. “I do know what it’s like.”

Kurt was pretty sure that, for the second time that day, he’d be scrambling to find out where his jaw had hit the floor. Internally, the butterflies in his stomach were in overdrive now and they flipped and flopped, dancing around inside. Blaine had just admitted that he was gay. At least that’s what Kurt had gathered from what he had said. He wanted to jump for joy, because yeah, Blaine was dead and Kurt was the only one who could see him. Well, aside from Will and that Sebastian kid. But he was gay and Kurt would call that progress.

Kurt was just about to formulate a response to Blaine’s admittance, probably not a very coherent or educated one since his head was spinning, when he heard his father’s voice drift up the stairs, “Kurt, the phone is for you!”

Kurt almost couldn’t tear his eyes away from Blaine. Blaine was just gazing at him now, his eyes filled with sadness and hurt etched on his features. Kurt wondered then, how Blaine had died and what his life had been like back then and these past fifty years or so. It made his insides twist but in a very different way than before.

Kurt grabbed the extension that his father had put in his room, and picked up the call. “Hello?”

“Kurt,” the voice on the other end said, and Kurt knew it from somewhere. It sounded vaguely familiar. “Kurt, this is Will Schuester, from school?”

When Kurt acknowledged that he knew who his mystery caller was, Mr. Schuester let out a breath of air and Kurt just knew something was wrong; he could hear it in the tenseness of his voice and the panic began to set in. “Kurt, we have a problem. A ghost problem.”