When Rachel joined Kurt and Mercedes at the lockers one morning and announced that it was high time they had one of their sleepovers and that she could have the pair of them over this Friday, Kurt was torn. He loved the nights he would spend with his two best friends watching movies, eating healthy vegan food with the occasional junk food splurge, giving each other facials and manicures, gossiping, and talking about boys, but on the other hand a night spent with them was a night away from Blaine. It was a bit silly to feel that way, especially now that the other boy had plenty to eat and was a lot happier and more comfortable, but he looked forward to tiptoeing up to the attic at night to talk to Blaine about his day, to teach him something new he'd learnt at school, to read the latest issue of Vogue with him, and to feel his heart skip when he saw his bright, infectious smile and warm hazel eyes.

That night he told Blaine about the sleepover while Blaine ate the food he had brought up with him. He also hesitantly admitted how a part of him didn't want to go since it would mean he wouldn't be able to visit Blaine that night. When he finished talking, Blaine watched him with an odd expression on his face for a minute, before he finally spoke.

"Kurt, you can't avoid spending time with your friends just to sit up here with me," he said. "Besides, I was alone for months before you came along. I think I can handle one day by myself."

Kurt's stomach twisted uncomfortably and his heart clenched as if someone had squeezed it in a vice at the reminder of how long Blaine had been living up here without a single person who cared about him, who cared about whether he lived or died. He swallowed around the thickness in his throat and inhaled deeply to try and hold back the tears that were threatening to make an appearance. He didn't want to start crying about the past that he couldn't change, not after he had shed so many tears over it already, not when he was so determined to improve the future, and not when Blaine was sitting next to him giving him advice and telling him to spend a night with his friends without a hint of pain or longing in his voice.

Just as he was about to nod in response to Blaine's words, he realised something. "You're my friend, too." When Blaine stared at him with a strange expression on his face, he explained, "You said I shouldn't avoid spending time with friends, but you're my friend as well."

Blaine still stared at him, but this time his eyes were a little glassy with tears, his face slightly creased with emotion and Kurt suddenly understood. Although they had really been friends for a while now, that was the first time the word ‘friend' had been said aloud by either of them when referring to their relationship and Kurt was Blaine's first true friend in years. Kurt wanted to say something to him, though admittedly he couldn't think of anything, but Blaine beat him to it.

He smiled softly. "Yes, we're friends." He spoke quietly, slowly, as if savouring the word ‘friend,' enjoying the feel of it on his tongue and the sound of it coming from his mouth. "But you see me every day and you shouldn't neglect your other friends because of me. And I know you really want to go; you've told me before how much you enjoy those sleepovers."

"Yeah, I do," Kurt admitted. "I just feel bad leaving you alone for a day when no one else knows you're here." He picked at the fabric of his pants. "I just hate the thought of you spending another day alone," he finished in a low voice, his eyes on his legs.

"Kurt," Blaine said softly. Kurt lifted his head to look at him. "I appreciate your concern and each time I see you I can't believe that you actually care enough to do everything that you've done for me - that you still do for me; I can't believe you're my friend." He paused for a moment and Kurt gave him a small smile. "But a day alone is nothing when you know that not every day is going to be spent by yourself," he finished.

Swallowing, Kurt nodded. "I'll go to the sleepover."

Blaine smiled. "Good."

As it turned out, Kurt never had any reason to worry. As they were waiting for Glee club to start on Thursday, Rachel announced that their sleepover was off.

"An old friend of my dads' called last night; he's coming to visit tomorrow night and I'm not allowed to have friends over when my dads have guests," she informed Mercedes and Kurt glumly.

"We can't have it at my house either and we can't have it next week because we have Sectionals that weekend," Mercedes sighed.

As his friends expressed their disappointment, Kurt squashed down the little burst of delight he felt at the realisation that this meant he would get to spend time with Blaine tomorrow night; his joy at being able to see Blaine shouldn't have been stronger than his disappointment. Blaine didn't need to see him every day, so he should stop acting like he did.

"We could have it at my house," he suggested, trying to rid himself of the guilt creeping through him from his reaction to Rachel's announcement.

Both girls brightened and turned to face him with hopeful smiles. "Are you sure that will be ok with your family?" Mercedes asked. "It is a bit last minute."

Kurt shrugged. "I don't see why it wouldn't be."

This would be better than going to Rachel's; he could spend the night with his friends plus visit Blaine. It was perfect. Of course, he would have to keep Rachel and Mercedes occupied while he snuck upstairs to see Blaine and give him some dinner, but he figured that would be easily done with a movie or something.

After school on Friday, the three of them arrived at the Hudson-Hummel house and Rachel led the way upstairs to Kurt's bedroom, a stark contrast to the first time she had been at his house and had been searching the rooms for signs that it was haunted. The thought of those old stories made Kurt laugh now; he couldn't believe all those tales and gossip were caused by Blaine.

Carole was working a late shift that night and since neither Finn nor Burt was capable of cooking much more than grilled cheese, Kurt made dinner with the help of Rachel and Mercedes, who gossiped happily about the latest relationship dramas in Glee club as they worked. They were so caught up in some fresh news about Puck and Quinn that they didn't notice Kurt setting aside a portion of the food for Blaine.

He had to wait until he'd successfully occupied his friends with his stacks of sheet music before he could run downstairs, grab Blaine's food, and sneak it up to the attic for him on the pretence of going to fetch a DVD.

"Remind me again of why I voluntarily spend time with Rachel outside of school hours?" Kurt said by way of a greeting once the attic door had clicked shut behind him and he was climbing the stairs. "She never shut up the entire time we ate dinner."

Blaine looked up from the thick math textbook Kurt had given him and smiled. "Because deep down you really love her?" he offered.

"I like to think I must be slightly crazy," Kurt said, setting the tray holding Blaine's dinner down on a box and moving to look over Blaine's shoulder. "Mind you, I can't be any more insane than you; I can't believe you actually want to do math."

Flipping the textbook closed, Blaine shrugged. "I just don't want to have no education."

Kurt watched him thoughtfully for a moment as Blaine set the book aside, a few dark curls falling over his eyes. Then he shook his head as if clearing it of cobwebs. "Anyway, I can't stay up here long or Rach and Mercedes will get suspicious."

Blaine got to his feet and stretched and Kurt forced himself not to lower his gaze to where he knew a strip of stomach would be visible between the bottom of his shirt and the waistband of his jeans.

"That's ok," Blaine said, crossing the attic and sitting down behind the box where his food was. "Thanks for dinner; you go back and join your friends."

Kurt opened his mouth to tell Blaine that he would rather sit up here with him, but closed it again, instead telling Blaine to enjoy his meal and if he couldn't make it up to see him later then he would see him in the morning.

Kurt left the attic and started down the hall, planning to quickly sprint downstairs and grab the DVD he was supposed to have been looking for when Rachel suddenly stepped out of the bathroom right in front of him.

"What took you so long to get a DVD?" she demanded. Then she froze, her eyes flicking between Kurt and the attic door behind him. "Were you up in the attic?"

Panicking slightly, Kurt tried to think up a believable excuse and not look too guilty. "I thought the DVD might be up there, since that's where we store the ones we don't watch that often, but it wasn't, so it must be downstairs after all."

Rachel looked at him a little oddly and he willed her to buy it.

"Right..." she said slowly. She frowned at him for a few seconds and Kurt tried to look nonchalant under her stare. He sagged with relief when her expression cleared. "Well, go grab the movie, and can you make popcorn while you're down there?" she asked with a hopeful expression. At Kurt's nod, she smiled brightly. "Thanks, Kurt, you're the best!" She skipped off back to his bedroom and Kurt fell back against the wall, exhaling heavily in his relief. That had been a close one.

"Please," Kurt pleaded, his lower lip jutting out slightly. "I know you're worried, but I wouldn't suggest it if I knew there was a chance we could get caught."

Blaine worried the inside of his cheek with his teeth as he gazed at Kurt, conflicted. He trusted Kurt completely, but he was nervous about doing this; he hadn't been outside since before Kurt's family moved into the house and he couldn't help but be concerned. What if someone sees us outside? What if Finn wakes up and catches us on our way back inside? He did want to leave the house he had confined himself to, he wanted to feel the night air on his face and breathe in the smells of fresh air and grass for the first time in over a month, and he knew that tonight was the perfect time to do it with Kurt's dad and step-mom out of town, but he still worried.

A pale hand was placed on his knee. "There's no need to worry about Finn," Kurt assured him. "I swear a bomb could go off and he still wouldn't wake up."

Blaine nodded slowly and wiped his damp hands on his jeans.

Kurt was watching him with increasing concern. "You don't have to go if you don't want to; I don't want to force you into doing something you aren't comfortable with."

"No, it's fine," Blaine told him as firmly as he could manage. "I can't stay hidden away in this house forever. I want to do this."

Kurt watched him closely for a few seconds and Blaine knew he was checking for any signs of reluctance or fear. At the determined look in Blaine's eyes, he nodded. "Ok." He removed his hand from Blaine's leg and stood up. "Let's go then."

Getting to his feet, Blaine tried to ignore his racing heart as he followed Kurt across the attic and down the short flight of stairs to the door leading out into the upstairs hallway. Kurt silently inched the door open, peered out into the hall, and then opened the door wider and stepped through it with Blaine following close behind.

"I just need to get something from my room," Kurt whispered, before he disappeared into his bedroom and left Blaine alone in the dark hall, staring at the closed door that he knew to be Finn's, ready to flee back to the safety of the attic should it start to open.

Kurt returned less than a minute later carrying a couple of folded blankets and a thermos flask. "It's pretty cold out there," he explained in hushed tones. He smiled encouragingly at Blaine before setting off down the hall, walking lightly on his feet so as to make as little noise as possible. Blaine crept silently along behind him, months of practice enabling him to be quieter than Kurt. He shot an apprehensive look at Finn's bedroom door as they passed it, but it remained closed and he could hear the reassuring sounds of Finn snoring lightly in his sleep.

A couple of the stairs had the tendency to creak when weight was placed on them, so Kurt and Blaine avoided them as they descended to the lower floor of the house. A tiptoe across the entrance hall and kitchen later, Kurt was easing open the back door, wincing at the slight squeak of the old handle, and then the cool night air was flooding into the room.

Blaine inhaled deeply as he stepped outside, his nose filling with the smell of night-time, grass, and the plants in the flowerbeds. He wasn't sure what time it was exactly, but the moon was high in the sky and its light bathed the back yard in silver, turning even the ugly, wizened shrub in the far corner into something beautiful. He barely noticed the temperature as he waited for Kurt to shut the back door, but with winter drawing closer and the sky free from an insulating cover of clouds, it was bitterly cold.

He heard footsteps crossing the small paved area against the back of the house and then Kurt was walking past him, smiling as he stepped onto the grass and walked into the middle of the lawn where he set down the blankets and thermos.

Blaine shuffled over to join him just as Kurt was spreading one of the larger blankets out on the ground. "How long have you been planning this?" he asked as he lowered himself onto the blanket beside Kurt.

Shrugging, Kurt passed Blaine one of the other blankets. "Just since I found out my dad and Carole would be away tonight. So..." He paused, thinking, his hands slowly unfolding the blanket in his lap, "since Tuesday." He shrugged again and dropped his gaze down to the blanket. "I just wanted you to go outside; I know it's been a while since you were last out of the house."

Blaine nodded, watching Kurt out the corner of his eye as he tucked the blanket around his legs and leaned back, placing his hands out behind him for balance. "Thank you," he said sincerely, turning his head to face Kurt.

Kurt just smiled at him and reached for the thermos. "I made us some hot chocolate. Do you want some?" He set two small plastic mugs down in between them.

"Sure," Blaine replied. He watched Kurt carefully pour out two cups of hot chocolate and accepted one from him with a smile, wrapping his hands around the warm mug and watching the steam rise from the surface of the liquid into the frigid air.

They enjoyed their hot chocolate in a companionable silence. When Blaine had swallowed his last mouthful he set his empty mug aside and laid back on the blanket, gazing up at the star-spangled night sky.

After a few minutes he became aware of Kurt watching him and turned his head to meet the other boy's gaze.

One side of Kurt's mouth lifted into a smile. "Star-gazing?"

"The only bit of sky I get to see is a few tiny squares from the attic windows, so I like looking at the sky when I can," Blaine explained, turning his face upwards again. He heard a slight rustle of fabric and watched out of the corner of his eye as Kurt laid down on his back next to him. The moonlight fell on part of his face, gilding locks of his hair and the curve of his cheek. Blaine noticed him shiver.

He lifted an arm. "Come here," he murmured.

Kurt's eyes searched his face for a moment, before he carefully slid over until he was pressed against Blaine's side. He looked surprised but pleased when Blaine wrapped his arm around him and he hesitantly snuggled into Blaine, his cheek resting on Blaine's shoulder, his skin warming up from the combined heat of both of their bodies under the blankets.

This was the most physical contact they'd ever had. Since the night Kurt had touched Blaine for the first time, all they had done was sit close so their legs and arms brushed, and casual touches like a hand on a knee or shoulder in a friendly gesture. Blaine knew that Kurt didn't want to push him into anything more too quickly and he knew that Kurt was letting him be the one to initiate more when he was ready for it. Blaine appreciated it and he guessed Kurt must have been expecting him to take more time and build up to this slowly - judging from his surprised look - but this felt right: Kurt's head on his shoulder, his silky soft hair brushing his neck; the clouds from their combined breaths hovering in the air before them; the heat from Kurt's body seeping into his own; the softness of Kurt's sweater beneath his hand and the familiar, comforting scent of Kurt all around him. Why had he been holding back all this time?

A small sigh of pleasure escaped him and he noticed Kurt smile in response. He wondered what Kurt was thinking about. His face was relaxed and his eyes were soft, more grey than blue in the night, and the smile was still on his face as he gazed up at the sea of stars above them. He could be thinking about almost anything: pleased that Blaine had come outside with him, glad that he was no longer cold, amazed at the sheer number of stars and their simple beauty, pleasure at being held by Blaine...

Blaine felt some of his insecurities return as his mind followed that train of thought: why would Kurt think of him that way? He was a strong, beautiful, intelligent, brave young man whereas Blaine was weak, broken, riddled with fear and insecurity, disfigured by the scars of his past; why would Kurt want someone like him? Why would anyone want someone like him? Back when he had been living with his parents he had wished for nothing more than to be on his own away from the world that hated him and was sickened by him, and now that his wish had come true maybe that was how it was supposed to be forever.

Desperately pushing away those thoughts before Kurt noticed his changed mood, he turned his attention back to the sky above him. He hadn't been lying earlier when he told Kurt that it was nice to see the whole sky again. Day after day he'd sat gazing out the small attic windows at the patches of sky he could see and wondering when he would be able to see the full thing above him again, the curve of it as it disappeared into the horizon, its impossible height, the ever-changing beauty of it. Now that he was seeing it for the first time in over a month, he found himself a little stunned by the number of stars that flickered and glimmered above him like diamonds.

"How many stars do you think there are?" he wondered aloud, his mind rapidly shifting to other thoughts, to topics he had spent hours mulling over as he had sat alone in the attic. "Infinite?"

He felt Kurt's head turn towards him on his shoulder. "Is anything infinite?" he questioned, suddenly looking thoughtful. "Surely everything must come to an end at some point. It's just that the end is sometimes too large or far for us to comprehend."

Blaine watched a large star directly above him flicker for a moment. "Maybe," he said quietly. The star appeared to swell slightly, before shrinking again a few seconds later. "How insignificant do you think we are?" he asked, his eyes still fixed on that star high above him. He could just see Kurt watching him in the periphery of his vision and could sense his puzzlement at his questions. "Does every little thing we do really affect anything else that happens?"

"Those are some deep questions, Anderson," Kurt observed after a short pause.

Blaine glanced over at him briefly before returning his attention to the sky and its impossibly large number of stars. "When you spend a lot of time on your own you just find yourself thinking about things like that," he explained. "And after everything that's happened in my life, I often think about coincidences and destiny."

He felt Kurt shift slightly. "You asked me if I believed in fate a couple of weeks ago; I said I didn't know."

"I know," Blaine told him quietly, "I remember." He fell silent for another long moment as he tried to assemble his rambling thoughts into something comprehensible.

"I know everything is essentially just molecules moving around and colliding at random with each other and that these collisions could be the trigger to everything that happens in our lives, such as if we bite our cheek while chewing and when and where people come into our lives," he began slowly, feeling Kurt's gaze on him as if it was something palpable, "but thoughts and emotions aren't made up of molecules are they? They aren't something physical, you can't hold happiness in your hand, so what causes them? Are they just nerve impulses? Some strange electrical activity? They can't be the result of random collisions of countless tiny molecules, so what are they?"

His mind was rapidly ticking through thoughts, the deeper meaning flicking between the vastness of the sky above him and its innumerable stars to the events of his past to his shifting and growing feelings for the boy curled against his side, watching him with wide, curious eyes.

"There must be something that causes you to feel a particular way about a particular person. What causes you to fall in love with one person and not another?"

He shifted his gaze to Kurt when he felt the other boy tense slightly. Their eyes met, Kurt's a gorgeous silvery blue in the moonlight, and something in them made Blaine unable to look away, emotions he couldn't even begin to name flooding through him.

Kurt's breath ghosted over his cheek as he exhaled. "Maybe those are questions that aren't supposed to be answered; maybe we're supposed to accept a random collision at times." His eyes became unfocused as his own thoughts pulled him deep into his head. "It can be scary being caught in a current carrying you somewhere unknown, but you can't fight it, so why not just go with it? Because in the end it may be worth the uncertainty and the pain."

Kurt came out of his thoughts after that and held Blaine's gaze for an immeasurable moment, a moment so full of something intense and indescribable that Blaine felt his breath catch in his throat. And then they were both looking away, their gazes skittering back to the stars as Blaine's heart raced within his chest.

When his rampant emotions finally started to settle he chanced a sly glance at Kurt out of the corner of his eye to see the other boy quickly looking away from him, a light blush dusting his cheeks. A sudden want - a need - filled Blaine and he bit his lip as he struggled with it, wanting to act on it so badly, but scared of the possible outcomes.

It was the desire to finally do something he really wanted to do, after years of being scared and forced to follow rules, that made him do it, that made him lean over and shakily brush his lips over Kurt's cheek in a soft kiss.

Kurt remained still, his eyes focused on the stars above him and Blaine held his breath as he slowly pulled back, waiting for whatever Kurt's reaction would be. When Kurt finally turned his head to look at him, Blaine could have sworn his heart stopped beating. For a second something burned in Kurt's eyes, the same something that had been there earlier just before they had both looked away nervously, and suddenly Blaine could feel and hear his heart beating again as it leaped and stuttered. Then Kurt's gaze softened as he shifted closer to Blaine under the blankets and lifted a hand to gently stroke Blaine's cheek with his thumb.

"I'm glad you came out here tonight," he murmured.

Blaine smiled, his stomach fluttering with each sweep of Kurt's thumb. "Me too." He reached out his hand under the blankets, fumbling around for a moment until he finally caught Kurt's hand. Linking their fingers together he gave Kurt's hand a gentle squeeze, his smile widening when Kurt returned the pressure, his other hand dropping from Blaine's face to rest on the crook of his elbow as they both turned to face the stars again, watching the small fraction of their almost infinite numbers that they could see.