The next morning, Blaine doesn’t go to school; he stays home, winding through laminated hallways and crying silently to himself. Mike calls a few times to make sure he’s okay – which he isn’t – and to ask when he’ll be back at school. Blaine doesn’t know, so he just replies soon and leaves the phone off the hanger for the rest of the day.

Before he knows it it’s dark, and he remembers that it’s a Friday night. Friday nights mean students going out and getting wild. Underage drinking. Thinking that you know everything, and at the same time not thinking at all.

Most of all, though, Friday nights mean that Kurt isn’t coming home at all. He’ll always have a party that he has to be seen at, a formal dinner with his cheerleading coach, a date with his boyfr-

Blaine sniffles a little.

He knows where Kurt is tonight, he always knows, and it’d be easy enough to get in. All he’d have to do is walk inside, nod to a few people like he knew them and he’d be one of the crowd.

And he’s sick of being a loner.

Blaine looks back towards Kurt’s house. One of the lights is on upstairs, and he can hear laughter tinkling through the open window.

He looks back at his reflection.

 Loser.

Nerd.

Faggot.

Freak.

“Blaine, your mother and I really don’t think that this – well, this ‘being gay’, as you call it – is a good idea-“

“Hey, Blaine! What’s it like being fucked up the ass?”

Kurt, standing a little above him and ohsoclose and his hand meeting Blaine’s shoulder-

“Take care of yourself, honey, okay?”

Blaine grabs his jacket and keys and flies out the door faster than he can remember ever doing.

He can let himself go for just one night, right?

*

As it turns out, he can.

Blaine’s been at Rachel Berry’s house for around half an hour, and – aside from the five times he’s been hit on by her – he’s feeling a little out of place. He doesn’t do this. He doesn’t get drunk, or dance to songs without words. He doesn’t interact with people who are above him.

Blaine can’t remember ever enjoying himself this much.

After circulating the house a few times, he finally spots Kurt – he’s in a tight-fitting white t-shirt, black vest and those painted-on jeans that Blaine’s particularly fond of. He’s smiling, laughing, and before Blaine can process it, he’s walking over.

“Blaine?”

Uh.

He’s not really doing much more than staring, but Kurt doesn’t seem to take it too badly.

“How are you?”

Good – say good. Don’t say anything relating to his ass.

“Good.” He forces a smile.

“That’s great!”

Kurt seems genuinely happy to see him and willing to participate in a conversation with him, and he can’t get his stupid mouth to talk.

“H-how are you?”

“I’m good! Good.”

“Good.”

They both look down, a little nervously, and Blaine can feel his bones shaking.

“I didn’t think you usually came to these kinds of parties?”

“I usually don’t.”

“Oh.”

Kurt sits down on one of the lounges, and Blaine finds himself on the arm a second later. Their faces are close together, at the same level, the sides of their cheeks almost touching. Blaine fiddles with his bowtie a little, and he hears Kurt snort. Looking up, he sees Rachel setting up the karaoke stand and calling the entire party to attention.

“Excuse me! Excu- whoa - excuse me, everyone!”

At this point, Rachel looks like a cheap, light green Christmas tree with nothing but dead leaves on the top. A very, very drunk Christmas tree.

“Should I go help her out?” Kurt wonders aloud.

Blaine looks up at him, his lips twitching upwards a little.

“Only if you want to – just to be fair, though, I wouldn’t.”

Kurt looks over at him, mock-scandalized.

“Blaine Anderson! I thought you were nicer than that!”

Blaine falters a little at that, but Kurt smiles at him again and happiness begins to tick back through his shoulders.

“I just don’t need the publicity, I guess.”

“…Publicity?”

Blaine hesitates.

“I don’t need anyone to hate me more than they already do.”

Kurt goes quiet for a moment, and Blaine’s about to get up and leave when he speaks again.

“I don’t hate you, Blaine.”

You’re right next to him. In a conversation. On a lounge. At a party. Go for it!

Blaine feels like he’s about to throw up, but he can’t stop now.

“Why not?”

You’re not going for it.

Kurt looks up, and when he replies he looks so sad that if Blaine didn’t know any better, he’d think that he’d just run over a baby deer.

“Because you don’t deserve it, Blaine. You don’t deserve to be pushed around and hurt and called horrible things and-”

Kurt has to stop to blink back tears, and Blaine can feel his heart bursting.

“-and I wish I could stop it, Blaine, but I can’t, and I’ll never be more sorry for that than I am right now.”

Blaine’s leaning over before he can process what Kurt’s said; it’s like instinct. They hug. He sniffles into Kurt’s shoulder. They pull back.

“Kurt, I-I really like you.”

Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck.

Kurt freezes against him.

Take it back take it back god what are you doing-

“Shit, sorry, I’m sorry, god-“

And Blaine’s walking away as fast as he can, pushing past people and conversations and general happiness until he’s out the door, walking past the too-bright lights on the porch and further and more until he hears someone calling him back.

It’s Rachel, of course.

It wouldn’t be Kurt.

“What?” He just wants to leave.

“You forgot your jacket!”

He runs back up, grabs it, turns to leave, but Rachel grabs his shoulder and spins him around for yet another awkward, drunken proposal.

Or so he thinks.

She leans up to his ear and whispers, “Can’t you hear them?”

Blaine listens, just for the sake of listening.

“Excuse me?!”

*
“Kurt, I-I really like you.”

Wait, what?

Kurt’s muscles seem to lock into place, his head still tucked into Blaine’s shoulder, his eyes still a little wet from earlier.

“Shit, sorry, I’m sorry, god-“

And the warmth of Blaine’s body is gone, and Blaine’s gone, walking too fast for a human body to be able to and Kurt wants to scream at himself and slap himself because how did he not notice? How did he not see the way Blaine looked at him?

And oh god, the pet names and the little, lingering touches. The stupidly honest speech he’d given a few minutes ago, the I don’t hate you, the hugging and crying and-

Oh god, I gave him a completely wrong idea.

He needs to go talk to Sebastian.

He finds him within a minute, talking to a few of his friends, laughing and smiling and a little drunk and too happy.

“Sebastian?” He sounds quiet and pathetic, but at least he hasn’t cried yet.

Sebastian looks over at him, holds up a hand to silence his friends and walks over.

“Hi, baby – what’s wrong?”

Sebastian can already sense that there’s something different. He hugs Kurt to him, running a hand through soft hair as Kurt sniffles against him.

“I just – I need to talk with you, okay?”

“I’ll get you some water – go sit down.”

And then Sebastian’s gone too – Kurt’s not exactly cold, but not as warm inside as he’d like to be. He sits down, and within a few seconds he’s joined by Chandler.

He’s met Chandler a few times before, but he’s never really gotten to sit down and talk to him; now he knows why.

“-and then Lenny was all, oh god, yes, more and flinging off the cowboy hat and hitting me in the head with it and we couldn’t look each other in the eye for weeks, you know? And there was that one time-“

“Chandler.”

“Yeah?”

Did you invent cocksucking or something?

“Can we not talk about this right now? I’m not really in the mood.”

“Why not?”

Why don’t you go fuck yourself, that’s why.

“Because I just realized that I’ve made the worst mistake of my life, and now I have to go emote at my boyfriend and-“

“-wait, are you talking about the phone thing?”

What?

“What phone thing?”

Chandler seems to draw in on himself, so Kurt leans closer.

“Chandler, what are you talking about?” Kurt tries to keep calm, but he’s already tried his patience too much for it to work.

“It’s not my business.”

“Chandler.”

“Sebastian, um, didn’t tell you?”

If looks could kill, then Chandler would be dead fifteen times over.

“What do you think?”

“Okay, okay! I’ll tell you, but it wasn’t me, okay?”

“Fine.”

Chandler clears his throat a little.

“Well, um, the other day you guys were doing some…stuff-“

“You guys?”

“You and Sebastian.”

“Oh. Continue.”

“Do I have to?”

Kurt glares.

“You guys were doing stuff – like, sexual stuff – and he…um…”

“Chandler!”

“He stole your phone while you weren’t looking and called Blaine and put it on speaker and kept doing the stuff, please don’t kill me.”

“What?!”

“He stole your phone and-“

“-no, no, I heard that.”

Chandler nods a little awkwardly. Kurt looks away – he doesn’t want to glare holes in Rachel’s table – and tells him to go. Sebastian walks through a few minutes after, and Kurt’s on his feet in seconds.

“Who the fuck do you think you are?”

Sebastian freezes, holding two plastic paper cups and a cheesy smile.

“…Your boyfriend?”

SLAP.

The water spills onto Sebastian’s shirt, and Kurt would have usually appreciated the sight but now is so not the time. He steps forward with each word, and Sebastian instinctively walks backwards.

“Why would I want to date a selfish, betraying, tasteless asshole like you?”

Sebastian could be distantly related to a goldfish at this point.

“Why the fuck would I stay with you when you have nothing better to do than liveblog our sex life – which was absolutely pathetic, by the way – to Blaine Anderson?”

Sebastian opens his mouth, and Kurt punches him square in the throat.

“I-I can explain-“

“Oh, please.” Kurt laughs humourlessly, “-please do.”

 “He kept pining after you and staring and just-“

“Excuse me?!”

“He was making it so obvious, baby, I had to do something!”

Kurt has him slammed against the wall in seconds.

“So you knew? You knew that he had a crush the size of the fucking Titanic and you shoved it through an iceberg?”

“I’m sorry, baby, I promise I’ll never-”

“Too late. We’re fucking through.”