"Did you stay here all night?" Kurt asked, his words slurring together a bit as he blearily blinked up at Blaine. Blaine was pretty sure he'd never seen anything more adorable in all the time he'd spent on earth. Unable to say anything that wouldn't make him look like a complete and utter idiot, he just nodded, trying not to make his own content pleasure too obvious as a still sleepy Kurt cuddled back into his side, making a pleased sound at the back of his throat that would have been a purr if he were a cat.

It took Kurt another five minutes to wake up enough to realize that he was currently cuddling with a ghost he was 'just friends' with and had done so all night. With a squeal, he disentangled himself from Blaine in a flurry of awkwardly fumbling limbs until he was sitting at the other end of the bed, so far away from him that he was almost falling off the edge.

"Oh my God, I'm so sorry! You had to be solid the whole night because of me and I didn't even know that was possible and now I- oh God, no, let's just pretend that didn't happen," Kurt moaned, cutting himself off by hiding his face in his hands. Blaine could just see the tips of his very red ears peaking out of his fluffy-looking mess of a bedhead.

"Kurt," he laughed, gently trying to pry Kurt's hands away from his face, doing his best to ignore the tingling sensation spreading through his body from where he was touching him. "Don't be ridiculous. You didn't do anything wrong. And it's fine, it wasn't even really all that much of a strain."

"Are you kidding me?" Kurt huffed, sending him a disbelieving glare from between his fingers. "I know how difficult it is for a ghost to stay solid and interact with living things for longer spans of time. I may not have helped anyone move on just yet, but I am a medium, after all. You don't have to play it down for my sake, me leaning on you all night must have been torture. I'm impressed you even had enough energy to make it this long, I can't remember falling through you at any point."

"Because you didn't." Blaine smiled reassuringly at him. "And it really wasn't exhausting. I feel like I've still got more than enough energy left to turn over your desk or something. You didn't harm me in any way, it wasn't even uncomfortable, so stop worrying, please. Okay?"

"And how do I know you don't just lie to me so I stop worrying?" Kurt asked irritatedly, his arms finally coming down - only to cross over his chest.

"Do I look like I'm lying to you or like I'm robbed off all my energy?" Blaine replied, one triangular eyebrow raised as he looked into Kurt's eyes, not once breaking contact (granted, he had the advantage of not really having to blink).

"No," Kurt had to admit reluctantly, posture relaxing slightly and arms crossed a bit more loosely.

"See? No need to worry." They shared a smile - still a little hesitant on Kurt's side - and Kurt finally relaxed back into his pillows.

"But still," he sighed after a while, playfully nudging Blaine in the ribs. "It must have been incredibly boring, even if for some unexplainable reason you're not exhausted. There wasn't that much of A Nightmare Before Christmas left when I fell asleep."

"Being around you is never boring," Blaine blurted out, biting his tongue the moment the words had slipped out. He could feel the blush rising to his cheeks, turning them slightly less see-through, though no match for the endearing pink coloring Kurt's.

"Not even when I'm asleep?"

"Not even when you're asleep." Blaine shook his head a little at himself, smiling shyly at Kurt. Somehow, this was almost worse than the almost-kiss in the auditorium. Slightly less awkward but more intimate in a way Blaine wasn't sure he knew how to handle.

It got a bit better when they extricated themselves from Kurt's bed and Blaine kept Kurt company at the breakfast table after he'd disappeared into the bathroom for a few minutes. Minutes Blaine most definitely hadn't used to look through Kurt's music and movie collections, pleased to find quite a few things he actually knew.

After that first awkward morning, Blaine and Kurt were back to being practically inseparable, probably even worse than before. It was Christmas break, after all, so Kurt spent most of his days in the house being bored and lonely while his father was at work, anyway. And as for the times of day Burt was actually present to notice, he'd by now become so used to either Blaine or Rachel or both of them being constantly around them - with the exception of the previous few weeks - that he didn't even bat an eyelid whenever Kurt would just start talking to one of them seemingly out of nowhere. Sometimes he even joined the conversation as well as he could when he was only privy to one half of it.

Oddly enough, Rachel seemed to be eager to leave the two of them alone as much as possible, which wasn't helping Blaine's confusion over the things he felt for Kurt in the least. Looking at it that way it probably wasn't all that odd for her, after all. Though Blaine was sure she was internally dying a second time over being unable to witness whatever she thought was happening between him and Kurt.

It came to the point where the only time of the day Blaine wasn't around the Hummel household (and he didn't feel like anyone could reproach him for preferring it to the empty, shabby halls of McKinley, regardless of the company) was at night when everyone but him was sleeping. He just didn't feel comfortable staying around Kurt after he'd submitted to the pull of his dreams, not after that first night. Who knew what he was going to do if he were to spend the whole night alone in a room with a sleeping Kurt again? In retrospect, the way he'd caressed his hair on Christmas had been more than a little creepy. And Blaine didn't even want to imagine the kinds of thoughts he'd have to deal with in that scenario.

So instead of watching Kurt sleep, transfixed by the rise and fall of his chest as he took breath after breath, an almost painful reminder of how very much alive he was and how very much Blaine was not, Blaine resisted and fled the house as soon as he was sure Kurt wouldn't notice him leaving. And maybe it was his masochistic streak he hadn't really been aware of until now, or maybe it was the desperation clawing at him from the inside that he couldn't quite comprehend, but every night without fail he found himself in his family's house, watching his parents and Cooper while away the days between Christmas and New Year's Eve. At first it hurt every single time, almost as much as it had when he'd come here with Kurt for the first time since his death.

Bit by bit, though, the pain lessened. Blaine watched his parents smile and laugh with Cooper, watched his mom yell at the TV over the same show she'd already watched when he'd still been alive, witnessed all three of them cuddling together on the couch staring fascinatedly as another crime show flickered over the screen. In the beginning it made him feel horrible, being so aware that he should be there with them but wasn't. But just like the constant ache in his chest at being unable to really be with his family, the weight of that awareness dulled until it faded into the background, no longer a pressing concern. The process was quicker than Blaine would have expected and before he knew it the only thing he felt as he, unbeknown to them, sat with his family and watched ridiculous shows over their shoulders was joy and - not a sense of belonging, because he didn't really belong here now, in the world of the living, not anymore - something that could most accurately be described as... contentment.

Things were okay the way they were. He wasn't bitter over his father's change of heart that only seemed to come after his youngest son's death anymore, instead enjoyed seeing the closed-off man he'd grown up with as a much more open, warmer person, one Blaine was sure he'd have gotten along with much better. He didn't resent Cooper for always pulling focus wherever he went, rather giggled about his dramatic antics and felt so, so incredibly, almost painfully, proud of his achievements.

And when Cooper left shortly after New Year's, Blaine felt sad to see him go, but that feeling that everything was just fine didn't leave with him as Blaine kept visiting his parents. Sure, the atmosphere was a lot more quiet. But it wasn't a bad kind of quiet and Blaine realized that he'd just caught them at a really bad time. The weeks between the anniversary of his death and Christmas couldn't be easy and it wasn't that only Cooper's arrival was able to lighten the mood. It was that Cooper's arrival had been their sign that it was okay to come out of mourning again, that they should return to their lives the way they did the rest of the year.

A sunny, cold afternoon in late January found Blaine sitting in the tree in his parents' garden he'd loved to climb as a child, just watching over the house and thinking. About the way he was fine just looking out for his family now. And what it meant that there was absolutely no 'pull to the light' as Rachel liked to put it even though he felt like he'd found some kind of closure. His thoughts drifted to his current 'life' (for lack of a better word) and the people in it and inevitably stayed on Kurt. Blaine just couldn't figure out what it was that he was feeling around him. Why, how, was it at the same time so incredibly easy and so frustratingly difficult to be around him? Why did he want to be around him constantly even though he knew he would probably manage to make a fool out of himself, even though he knew that without fail, something would happen to turn the mood awkward? He might have died at the tender age of eighteen but he wasn't so naive that he didn't know what a crush felt like. And whatever was happening between him and Kurt, it most certainly wasn't a crush.

Blaine was almost mad at school for starting up again. Usually, he waited impatiently for the school year to resume after Christmas break, for the empty halls to fill with chatter and busy students again. But this time he had Kurt and watching him go back to the place where he was constantly tortured for no reason hurt him deep in his soul. The only thing worse was knowing that there was absolutely nothing he could do about it. It had been such an unwelcome change, having to share Kurt again after days where they'd constantly been together, only kept apart at night by Blaine trying to be the gentleman his mother had raised him to be.

It was then, as he truly became aware of the way he had worded his own musings, that Blaine was hit hard by the realization that had been so close and yet so far out of his reach for weeks now: He was falling in love with Kurt Hummel. Not just a bit and not slowly but dangerously, head over heels, unseeing and flailing and still somehow unafraid of what would come after the fall. After all, he'd died once before, kicked and beat up until his body had been too broken to save. What could be worse than that?

The euphoria of finally having solved the puzzle, the happy buzzing of the metaphysical blood that wasn't really running through his veins anymore, was what drove him back to the Hummel household. Blaine was giddy with the knowledge that Rachel had planned something else for the day and Burt was out in the shop, thus leaving him alone with Kurt. Not that he had a clue what he - they - would do with that privacy, but it was good to know. His plans of sharing his new-found revelation with the object of his affections sort of fell apart when he burst into Kurt's room - unannounced for the first time since the shower incident - only to find him not there, but curled up on the bench in front of his mother's old vanity a few rooms over, all drawers open, head resting on the worn wood. Tears were slowly streaking down his cheeks and his eyes were closed as he took deep breath after deep breath, softly singing between choked gasps.

It took Blaine a while to recognize the song. When he finally caught on, tears of his own started falling and he carefully backed out of the room until he was barely standing in the doorway, feeling like he'd intruded on something private he'd never been meant to see, not uninvited, not like this. Not yet.

As Blaine slowly turned his back on the scene in front him and started to walk down the hall, the last notes of Blackbird haunting him the whole way down the stairs, long after he was out of earshot, he was hit hard by realization for a second time that day: He wasn't falling in love. He was already in way too deep, no way up again. The only way left was down, falling even deeper than he'd thought possible. There was no escaping the pull of Kurt Hummel. Not for him, anyway. And even as he felt Kurt's pain resonating in his own dead, barely there chest as if it were his own and tears were cascading down his cheeks he didn't even for a second doubt the rightness of this fall.