A broken leg blows. Knowing he won't be off crutches before he moves away blows even harder. They'll be his number one accessory at design school. What joy! Puck is now officially his bitch, mostly just driving Kurt anywhere he wants to go, sometimes just riding in circles around the block while Kurt glares at him. If this summer is going to suck, he's going to drag Puck into this vaccuum with him.

Nurse Carole is up his ass making sure he's not exerting himself, which is just about impossible to do when he's practically bedridden. He's happy there's someone in the house with the skillset to handle his injury, but holy shit there's only so much mothering he can take before it's smothering.

Finn somehow thinks Kurt broke his whole personality in the fall. He looks at Kurt like a child in need, smiles like he's in on a secret when Kurt threatens him with bodily harm should he offer to help Kurt take a piss one more time. The real secret is that Finn can be a real fucking dunce. He's smart – enough, intuitive about people, but there are truly times Kurt wonders how he's survived life this long. Kurt's glad to be off his painkillers; he's less susceptible this way.

“Give him a break, Kurt,” his father advises, a warning barked behind his words.

“Yeah, okay. Wake up with a towering ogre looking like he wants to swaddle you and see how you feel about it then.”

Burt seemed ripe to become the biggest offender in infantilizing Kurt when he joined them at the hospital. Then he saw the medical bill and jumped on the “kill Puckerman” train with Kurt. Still, he keeps close to Kurt, whose privacy has been stripped away by the shift from his upstairs bedroom to the first floor living room. Burt reads his Car and Driver while Kurt relearns his sewing machine using the opposite foot on the pedal, and occasionally looks up and pretends to care at all about Project Runway reruns.

Kurt is using his immobility as an opportunity to get ahead of the upcoming school year, sketching to build his portfolio and scrolling through blogs of current FIT students. Puck's been forced into being his human mannequin for no other reason than to remind him who's in charge; Cooper's bitter about being booted from the position. Blaine, though cute as a button, was always too short. Quinn models for him voluntarily, always getting to keep the clothes afterward because he's just practicing with her, keeping his options open. At least, he can be productive in his agonizing, sexless summer.

Kurt hasn't seen Blaine since the afternoon of his tackling. Rachel makes sure to drop his name anytime Kurt is within earshot, though. How sweet she is to keep him updated on information he didn't ask for. Kurt knows he's been too hard on Finn for simply caring about him, but if there's anything that makes him question his brother's sanity, it's his relationship with the troll princess.

Rachel is one of those believing that Kurt is a bad seed. And she made it her personal mission to try keeping him from planting that seed in Blaine while they were together. She's over the house more often, previously under the same impression as Finn that Kurt has lost his bite with the full use of his leg. She learned quickly his teeth are still intact when she sat down beside him one day with the intention of having a heart-to-heart about Blaine. She hasn't tried again since. Instead, she hauls Finn into the kitchen where she can be overheard and suggests introducing Blaine to her friend Gavroche and maybe double dating. Finn, to his credit, always calls her out on being “way uncool, Rach” which might be why Kurt considers letting him off the hook about his hovering habits.

Kurt's seeing what he can do about convincing his father to install a chairlift so he can hide when she's over. No progress on that front yet, but he's becoming less clumsy with his crutches, so he can at least hobble across the street to hang out with Papa Anderson, home most days since he's only teaching a web class this summer. He keeps hoping he'll run into Blaine, but the kid's either always out or purposely avoiding him. Or always out in order to avoid him. Probably that.

Blaine volunteers his time and talent to children, pets, and the elderly all year round. He's just the Beaver June and Ward always wanted, and it kind of drives Kurt up the wall that he can't stop thinking he's lost a real catch. But – fuck that noise – Kurt's a catch, too. He's surly and sarcastic, but he's driven and loyal and – shit, man – he likes old people too.

He's lying on the Anderson's couch, watching TV with Miss Kitty atop his belly, waiting for Matt to come home from a run to the post office when he hears Blaine's pattern of footsteps coming downstairs. And then he hears the sharp intake of breath and the sigh that follows.

“Hey.”

“Kurt. What are you doing here?”

“Your dad's making that salad pizza thing for lunch,” he responds, and Blaine looks anything but satisfied with it.

“It's weird that you're here.”

“Far as I can tell, I'm here more often than you are. It's weird seeing you.”

Blaine turns back toward the stairs, aborting whatever plan he'd had before seeing his ex-boyfriend sprawled out on his couch. It's too fucking awkward to go from being somebody's someone to being their nothing. It's too false. Blaine still matters to Kurt; unless Kurt never mattered to Blaine, they shouldn't be averse to spending an entire minute together without wanting to run away.

“Blaine, wait,” he groans pulling himself up to sit. He places both hands beneath the knee of his bad leg and hauls it over the edge of his seat, grateful when he looks up to see Blaine is still standing by. Blaine eyes twitch away from staring at the decorated plaster cast, littered in writing and art ranging from disturbingly perverse to genuinely artistic, courtesy of his friends.

Kurt has taken to wearing shorts, not as if he has much choice – they're the most comfortable bottoms other than Blaine that he can get in and out of easily. His love of wearing skinnies took a hit the same time he did. He pinched a pair of yoga shorts Quinn left at his house and wears them as often as he can clean them. But today, he's stuck in a pair he had to construct himself because men's shorts are seriously lacking in style. They're long enough to cover the tattoo wrapped around Kurt's thigh, but Blaine's eyes still flicker to the spot where he's pressed his adept fingers teasingly into the warped piano keys before he pulls them up to meet Kurt's.

“We should talk.”

“Little late for that.”

“You've been avoiding me. Which I get. But this is stupid.”

“It's not stupid, it just hurts.”

“It's stupid.”

“Then if it's stupid, why talk about it?”

“So we can get past the stupid and be – friends. Or cordial, at least.”

“This isn't cordial enough?”

“Beav,” he groans, quickly fed up with having to climb the wall Blaine's putting between them. “Work with me.”

“We're not together anymore.”

“No shit, really?”

Blaine huffs, and goes back upstairs where Kurt can't chase him without hurting himself. Not that he'd be in any better a position with Blaine if he could risk the stairs, but it would be nice if he could try. It'd be really nice if he could even just scratch the permanent itch beneath his cast because, miraculously, Blaine has turned out to be the least of his troubles.

:: ::

Kurt's drunk on wine he tsk tsk'd Mr. A about while tapping his glass for another round. It's late, dark outside and cooling off now the sun has gone down.

Blaine is trailing behind him, an unwilling volunteer to help him get home without passing out or falling over. They don't speak. Blaine doesn't touch him, lets him work his way along with a crutch beneath each arm, watching closely to see if he's needed. Finally stepping in when Kurt falters sideways halfway through the street.

It's a quicker journey, then, with Blaine carrying most of Kurt's weight. Blaine has a lot of muscle packed into his tiny frame, something Kurt will miss until the ache to repair the damage between them has gone. If it ever goes.

“I miss you,” he whispers into Blaine's slicked back hair.

“You're drunk.”

He is. But he's leaning on Blaine and feeling nostalgic, remembering the night last year when Blaine walked him to the door after dinner and a movie – a proper date, their first. Blaine had lingered in the doorway, bashful and smiling, eyes glued to the wooden planks below him. Kurt had laughed, tilted Blaine's face up with a finger beneath his chin, and said, “Hey, chicken shit. If you want to kiss me, get a move on already.” And Blaine bit his lip, unsure for a fraction of a second and then he surged forward. They'd stumbled backward, too much energy from Kurt's little ball of light. “Jesus, Blaine. I think you broke my teeth,” inspired a look so broken Kurt had to kiss it away, bury the first attempt under new successes.

“I miss you when I'm sober, too.”

Blaine helps him up the steps, asks sincerely if he needs help getting inside, hears “no” and backs off. It's nice not to be treated like a child or an invalid. He has to fend off the urge to kiss Blaine. The strings that bound them together hang limply in the absence of purpose, but Kurt feels acutely aware of their severed existence.

Blaine says a quiet goodnight, his eyes as resigned as they'd been the last time they were here. Though, this time he's the one to leave Kurt behind at the door.