It’s strange, he thinks a few days later, how naturally and completely he and Kurt have fallen into friendship with one another. Meeting in the cafeteria for meals when their schedules line up, going out for coffee; even studying together in Kurt’s room, which is quieter and neater than his.

They stick to surface streets at first, talking about family in general terms and their friends from home. Blaine doesn’t talk about Ryan, not even when he’s interrupted mid-meal by a phone call he doesn’t hesitate to take. After the second time it happens, when he disappears from the caf and doesn’t come back, Kurt takes his tray of uneaten food and throws it away. He carefully wraps a bagel in a napkin and searches Blaine out.

When Kurt comes out, he finds Blaine in the courtyard. He’s pacing through the snow and his voice is quiet and strained. Seeing Kurt, Blaine blushes and looks down. He seems embarrassed, shrugging helplessly. Kurt smiles, handing him the bagel and miming that he’ll call Blaine later. The look he gets in return could almost be considered a smile.

It’s that day- well night really- that they first talk about Ryan.They’ve been studying in silence, listening to the Avenue Q soundtrack. Every now and then Blaine forgets himself and starts singing along, stopping only when he can feel Kurt glancing at him curiously.

“He’s not always like that you know?” Blaine starts, startling himself and Kurt.

“Like what?” One of the things he likes best about Kurt is the way he controls the inflection of his sentences. This one is completely lacking in judgment. Blaine is learning by now that while Kurt has a sarcastic side, and a definite bitchy streak, he’s also very compassionate and loyal, and very kind.

“I-“ Blaine looks down, “I’m not sure I know.” Kurt is quiet for a bit.

“Are you afraid that I’m judging him or you?” Kurt finally asks.

“I guess so?” Blaine shrugs, miserably wondering why he’s even started this line of conversation.

“Blaine.” Kurt comes to sit next to him, “I’ve gathered that you’ve had a lot of that- friends judging you. I don’t really know enough about anything to know what is going on, but maybe…” Kurt worries his lip, “Maybe, when or if you are comfortable, you can talk to me. Without worrying about what I think or about having to have the right answers.”

Blaine looks up sharply at this, and Kurt just smiles a little. It’s a tight smile, but his eyes are still kind.

“I have the sense that you try to do that. To make everyone around you happy?” Kurt’s question doesn’t even seem like a question really, so Blaine doesn’t respond, staring at the floor under his feet instead, stomach knotting and tensing. “It must be exhausting, trying to balance it all. Making sure Ryan is happy, answering to people who are telling you they aren’t happy that you are with him.”

Blaine shrugs; he feels exposed and confused. Kurt pats his knee, then gets up to go back to his chair. Standing above Blaine he pauses, resting his hand cautiously on top of Blaine’s head. It’s fleeting, just the smallest gesture of comfort, but it rockets through Blaine, washing him in confusing waves of warmth. Blaine sighs, deeply.

“It is.”

~*~

A week later finds them in the student lounge with Kurt’s roommate Kevin and his best friend Mercedes, who is visiting Kurt. They are all laughing, talking about high school experiences; Kurt and Mercedes have them in stitches with stories about their school glee club when they are interrupted.

“Hey!” A tall student, wearing what Blaine privately always thinks of as ‘all American jock with no sense of style beyond the community brain’, is approaching them. He ‘s handsome- dark hair and obviously fit, but Blaine easily spots the way that Kurt tenses up, shooting Mercedes apologetic glances. “Kirk right?” Nameless guy asks, smiling at them all and then at Kurt.
There’s something a little predatory about the way he smiles at Kurt though, and it has Blaine’s hackles rising.

Kurt answers quietly, “Kurt, actually.” His face is red and his hands are tensed, white knuckled fingers knotting together in his lap. Mercedes is shooting Kurt what can only be described as a mix of curious and slightly preening looks. Honestly Blaine is really confused by the whole thing.

“Kurt, yeah right.” It’s obvious by now that nameless boy doesn’t really care one way or another. “Didn’t realize you were a student here.” Now Blaine is sure that there is something leering in this guy’s tone and from the horrified looks Kurt is darting at him, Blaine knows this is not going anywhere good. Acting before he thinks, he stands, grabbing his books and tugging Kurt to his feet.

“You know what Kurt, we’re gonna be late for our next class if we don’t get going.” He moves fast, grabbing Kurt’s books and shooting Mercedes a level look that suggests maybe she could have stepped in. Kurt’s hand is trembling in his and Blaine is beyond angry. At the nameless boy who seems to be going out of his way to shame Kurt, at Mercedes who seems to be intent on shooting Kurt “I told you so” glares, and at Kevin, who is somehow managing to blithely ignore the whole scene unfolding before him.

He pulls Kurt as he walks, hand in the crook of Kurt’s elbow, steering them outside and down the street, walking without direction, until Kurt’s quiet voice stops him.

“Where are we going? We don’t have any classes together.” Blaine turns to him, crowding close to him in order to avoid a bicyclist. He doesn’t miss the surge of heat that washes through him, nor the way Kurt stiffens, jaw tilted up and taut with stress. Stepping back carefully he speaks as if nothing has happened.

“Where do you want to go? Do you want to go back to your room and be alone, or do you want to get some coffee?”

Blaine takes a good look at his friend. Kurt is paler than usual and his lips are bright red from being bitten. Blaine has the sudden and frightening urge to kiss Kurt, to lean in and soothe away Kurt’s distress. Stepping back even further, he swallows his guilt and tries a smile.

“I…I guess…I,” Kurt is playing nervously with his scarf, twisting it in a way that Blaine knows is bad for the weave. Taking Kurt’s hand and removing it, he turns, motioning to be followed. Kurt tenses again when Blaine touches him. Blaine has always been a casual toucher. Maybe a bit less since he and Ryan have been dating, but still. Kurt on the other hand, seems to value his personal space, even more so when he’s upset like he is now. Blaine files that information away.

“Is Jeff around?” Kurt is walking behind him with his head down; Blaine has to strain to hear him.

“Oh yeah.” They are heading back toward the dorms; Blaine wants to talk to Kurt alone. He has an idea that whatever is going on with that guy in the lounge, it isn’t the sort of conversation appropriate for a public venue. Kurt’s sigh isn’t lost on him, but Blaine chooses not to comment on it.

“We can go to my room, Kevin has class the rest of the afternoon anyway. Do you have any more?” Kurt offers.

Shaking his head, Blaine opens the heavy old door for Kurt, who shoots him a mild look before sailing in. His tight smile is slightly more natural than its predecessor, which makes Blaine smile. Sometime during the walk back, Kurt has managed to pull himself back together. Blaine follows behind as Kurt swings gracefully up the stairs, admiring his boots.

Once in Kurt’s room, Blaine takes off his coat and scarf, folding them over the arm of one of the recovered armchairs. He’s a little envious- Kurt has really lucked out with Kevin as a roommate- he is not only pretty neat, but he’s let Kurt do what he wants with the room. Like all of their rooms, it’s pretty small, but Kurt has managed to create a cozy space with small armchairs and an interesting rug in one corner.

He sits for a moment, watching as Kurt hangs his coat, fussing with his scarf for a bit, until the silence feels genuinely uncomfortable.

“Do you remember, last week, when you told me if I ever wanted to talk to you, I could, and you wouldn’t judge me or make me feel like I had to have all right answers?”

Kurt turns from the closet, nimble hands still smoothing his sweater. His face is unreadable and a little distant; he shrugs and turns away.

“Yes. I don’t remember you taking me up on the offer.” Blaine’s shoulders hunch, which is a defensive reflex. He can feel it in his stomach, worry that lies heavy and thick inside. Kurt sits in the chair next to him, smiling a little more naturally,

“I’m sorry, forget I said that. I meant it, and whenever you decide you want to talk to me, I’m here okay?” Kurt is looking at him- really looking. This is the Kurt he sometimes sees when they are alone- open and tentative. Softer and less sure.

“I will…you know.” Blaine gestures with his hand, “I’m just working on finding the right words.” He watches Kurt curl up, tucking both long legs under himself, leaning his head on a hand as he studies Blaine.

“They don’t have to be right all the time, you know.” They watch each other for a long moment.

“Anyway, didn’t we come up here so you could talk?” Blaine asks lightly, regretting it when Kurt draws back a little, turning to look out the window.

“What I was trying to say earlier was that I am not here to judge you. I have no ground to stand on, really.” Kurt turns back at this, eyes bluer than usual, face tense.

“What does that mean?” Blaine studies Kurt’s thinned lips and sighs, wondering if there is any right way to approach this. He has a pretty good idea who the boy in the lounge is- or at least what he’s been to Kurt.

“Do you know the first time I saw you?” He asks, toeing off his shoes and slouching down in his chair. He leans his head against the back and turning to look at Kurt. “It was at Spiral, right at the start of the school year. I was sitting at a table alone and waiting for some friends to come back and you were a few tables down, alone too.”

“Hmmm.” Kurt runs one finger against his lips, “Seems a little strange you’d remember a random stranger you saw once in a club.” Blaine has to laugh. “What?” Kurt asks, posture stiff.

“First, no. Do you have any idea how gorgeous you are?” Blaine blushes as he says it, but is gratified by Kurt’s response, which is flustered and really kind of adorable.

“Even if I hadn’t’ve seen you later that night, I would have remembered you.” Kurt looks up at this.

“Oh?” Blaine can tell that he’s trying to sound casual, but the way his hand is braced a little against the arm of the chair gives him away.

“I had decided to leave without my friends, because really I was having a terrible time, and I had to go to the bathroom.” He is speaking carefully and watching Kurt, who is slowly flushing red and refusing to meet his eyes. There’s a long moment in which many things pass between them unspoken, and when Blaine speaks again, it’s gently, “You ran into me on your way out of...the stall. But before you came out I heard you- you say…that you’d never done that before.”

And now Kurt has turned away completely, one hand over his face. Blaine wants to reach out, to grab Kurt’s hand or hug him, anything. But he’s pretty sure that any attempt at comfort will just make things worse. After a moment he adds. “Up close, you were even more gorgeous than I had thought. There was something about you…” Blaine swallows. “That just…it’s like you had crawled under my skin. I’d see you, in the dorms or in the cafeteria- you seemed so…together, so confident. It’s probably creepy, but a part of me felt like I understood something that no one else did. That you were sort of like me- one thing on the outside, one person for everyone else, and someone completely different on the inside. ” Blaine laughs, nerves making his hands shake. His words trip over each other as Kurt sits silently, tears sliding down his cheeks. To Blaine, he’s so beautiful it’s very nearly tragic.

He lets Kurt sit for a few moments, watching out of the corner of his eye as the other boy breathes, wiping his face, still looking out over the snow covered campus. After a bit Blaine stands, asking, “Want some water?” Kurt nods. As he passes, Blaine decides to take a chance, laying a hand on Kurt’s shoulder and squeezing. After a hesitation, Kurt’s hand comes up, squeezing back.

~*~*~

He’s meant what he said to Kurt, about not having room to judge. Which is sort of an ironic (wait, was it irony?) thing to think, considering how much time Blaine spends, lying awake, judging himself. For his choices, for his lack of conviction, for the ways he finds it so much easier to give up parts of himself than to fight. For nights when it is all he can do to breathe through the self loathing that coats him, making him feel just this side of crazy when Ryan’s hands find their way around and into him. Nights when the only way he makes it through is to go. To just leave, leave his body as a thing to be used, turning to look out over his room, towards the closed window, before closing his eyes and pretending he is anywhere else, anybody else.

*~*

“Do you think I’m disgusting?” Blaine’s head pops up at Kurt’s half whispered question. They’ve been working in shared silence, Kurt curled up on Blaine’s futon with a blanket draped over his lap, laptop perched precariously on his knees.

“Umm, what?” Blaine turns in his chair (god he really needs to fix that squeak), staring at Kurt through his glasses in confusion. Kurt just shoots him a mild glare, before turning back to his laptop, shoulders tensed in a line. Running through Kurt’s words again (in his defense, he’d been deep in thought about the nature of post colonial rhetoric and the roles of women in Latin American countries) Blaine answers.

“Kurt.” He hates the way Kurt’s whole body reacts, tightening and shrinking in even as he tries to project a haughty face. As if Blaine can’t read him better than that by now. Stumped, Blaine tries to find the right words, the right tone.

“I could never, ever think that about you, trust me. About myself may-“ He shakes his head as if to clear it. Now is definitely not the right time, if there ever is one, to try to decipher the complicated ways he is fucking up his own life.

“Kurt, come on, look at me?” But Kurt just bites his lip and turns away. Frustrated, Blaine gets up, taking Kurt’s computer from his clutching fingers and setting it aside, coming to sit close to Kurt’s drawn up knees, practically on the other boy’s feet. Hand carefully on Kurt’s knee, he shakes it a bit.

“Do you want me to judge you? Would that make it easier for you?” Looking down into his lap, watching his hands play with his cuticles, Kurt whispers.

“No. I’m not sure it could be harder.” Blaine just cocks his head, settling back against the cushions and waiting for Kurt to talk.

“You…I mean I know you have some idea, b-because of that night but…I’m so ashamed, I can-I don’t even want to tell you the rest of it, god you are going to think I’m so disgusting.”

“No. Kurt, look at me. Kurt,” Impatient, Blaine takes Kurt’s chin in his hand, leaning against his friends tented knees, “No. I could never think that of you, ever. I don’t care what you’ve done. I know you, and you are an amazing person and an incredible friend.”

“And a slut.” Kurt’s tone is vicious, voice quiet but full of steel.

“Don’t you ever call yourself that.”

“But it’s true!” Kurt shakes Blaine’s hand off of his face, swatting his hands away and pulling in on himself.

“Kurt, can I ask you something?” Blaine folds his hands in his lap; Kurt is closing off more and more. When Kurt nods, the tears in his eyes belie the angry set of his beautiful face.

“If you had a friend, or even someone you knew, who was confident, with themselves and their sexuality, who was comfortable with casual sex and made no excuses for themselves, would you call them a slut?”

Kurt’s head whips around so fast, his hair actually comes lose, which seems to annoy and fluster him more.

“Okay, that’s a crazy hypothetical, that doesn’t even begin to compare to-“

“Oh, but I’m not comparing. I’m asking about this one situation.” Blaine interrupts. Kurt’s face scrunches adorably as he thinks this over.

“Well, no. I mean, if they were okay with it- I don’t judge people for thinking about things differently than I do,” He rolls his eyes, which are a startling blue today, “I mean unless it has to do with terrible taste in music or poor fashion choices.”

“So how do you think about…things?” Blaine asks cautiously, treading tentatively back into dangerous territory. He smiles a bit when Kurt just sighs and lays his head against the side of the futon, his body slowly unwinding a bit, loosening into the pillows. He seems younger, softer, and Blaine wants badly to gather him up and just cuddle.

“I..when I was younger and my dad sat me down for the ‘talk’” Blaine laughs at the face Kurt makes at the phrase, the way his fingers curled around the air quotes, “Well. I mean, I kind of wanted to die of embarrassment at first, but he…my dad is so incredible.” Homesickness is clear in every line of Kurt’s face and Blaine feels a pang, something like hurting and maybe jealousy, deep in the pit of his stomach.

“He told me that the most important thing to remember was that I mattered. And not to throw myself around. But rather to use sex as a way to be closer to someone.” He looks up at Blaine then, eyes fierce and for a moment, so old. “And I meant to, I did. But…god you have no idea what it was like to grow up in Lima. I was never enough of a boy to be one of the guys, they always treated me like I was diseased, even when they were nice to me. My friends, hell, even my stepbrother- never touching me or going out of their way to avoid accidentally touching me. And the girls- I was always just an honorary girl until it wasn’t convenient, like when my friend Britt ran against me for student council on a women’s rights platform. Suddenly I was just another guy, holding women back or something.” Kurt’s laugh is rueful, but laden with something heavy, and Blaine’s heart hurts hearing it.

“I was just…so lonely.” Blaine meets his glance with a nod, because god, if there is anything he understands, it is loneliness. “And then I came here, and…it was just so okay. Suddenly so okay to be gay.That first night in the club it was like the more I drank the more okay it all seemed. Everything went so fast, it all spiraled out of control so fast. Before that night I’d never had a kiss that counted, and then suddenly I was in that bathroom and-”

Blaine puts a tentative hand back on Kurt’s knee as his friend pauses, worrying his lip, cheeks flushed. Kurt flicks back his hair impatiently, “There seemed little point in going back after that- even when I thought I wanted to, it just- I feel so powerful and so…so wanted?” He’s whispered that last part, ashamed, startling when Blaine’s chin comes to rest on his knee.

“There’s nothing wrong with wanting to feel wanted Kurt.” Kurt sighs impatiently, his shifting body giving away his discomfort. Kurt rarely fidgets, somehow more in control of his body than anyone Blaine has ever met. He meets Kurt’s eyes in the silence, and Kurt’s hand comes up, a little tentative, threading through Blaine’s loose curls.

“But there is, Blaine, when it’s not who you are. It’s not who I am. I want someone. I want to be boring and in love and with the same person. I want monogamy and courtship and romance. It’s wrong when you do something to yourself that you know is going to hurt. I go out,” He looks away, blinking rapidly, hand loosely fisted on his other knee, not even realizing his fingers are brushing against Blaine’s cheek. When he looks back, he seems surprised to find his hand there and slides it slowly down his leg. Blaine tries not to miss the warmth of his fingers.

“When you wake up in the morning and you hate yourself so much you want to throw up, or hit something, or just never get out of bed- then it’s wrong.”

And it is like a punch, literally, to Blaine’s gut, hearing those words. Instinctively he pulls away, trying to mask his reaction to Kurt’s words. This is about Kurt, about being sure that Kurt knows he is here for him, that he doesn’t judge him in anyway.

“Blaine?” Kurt sits forward, putting a careful hand on Blaine’s shoulder.

“I’m fine, it’s just hard…to hear you say things like that about yourself.” His smile feels forced and false, but Kurt seems to accept what he’s saying.

“I don’t want to hear you call yourself things like that anymore. If you want more, if you want someone like you described, then go for it. Don’t punish yourself.” The wistful smile on Kurt’s face almost hurts more than his earlier words did.

“Don’t you think it’s a little late? I mean, no one’s going to want me now.”

“Oh Kurt,” At this Blaine doesn’t even try to stop himself, pulling Kurt into a hug which is tentatively reciprocated, “That is so far from true.” When he pulls back, he finds himself looking into Kurt’s eyes. “Trust me when I say that any guy would be so lucky to have you.”

Kurt just stares back, hands around Blaine’s biceps, and for a second, Blaine is sure he sees his friend’s eyes flicker to his lips. Dizzy and confused, Blaine lets himself feel; feel close to this boy, this ridiculously good-looking boy who is sweet and sassy and who makes him feel so alive and good inside his own skin.

Until his phone rings with Ryan’s ringtone.

Guilty, he fumbles back, almost tripping and falling to the floor in his haste, missing the look of longing and regret on Kurt’s face.
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