♦♦♦♦♦

Over breakfast that morning, all was silent. It was just Kurt and Blaine; Buster was out shearing a few sheep before joining them. He always got up insanely early.

Kurt smiled at Blaine, who smiled back. Blaine took a bite of his cantaloupe, and was it insane that Kurt even found Blaine's chewing adorable?

Once Blaine had swallowed his fruit, Kurt couldn't hold his words back any longer.

"Blaine, thank you for letting me sleep with you last night. It meant a lot to me to know you were right there, and you knew my pain, because you and Buster had gone through similar things to me and my dad." Kurt paused for air. "And thank you for taking such good care of me yesterday."

Blaine grinned. His face lit up like the sun was shining out of his pores. "What else was I supposed to do?" he chuckled, still grinning as he spoke. "You can sleep next to me anytime you want, Kurt. You're warm, and your skin is softer than mine, and having you there makes me feel safe."

Could he be any more perfect? Kurt wondered silently.

"Thanks, Blainey." Kurt winked, using the nickname he had made up a few hours earlier. "You know, I—"

"Who's ready for eggs?" Buster bellowed, barging in through the door smelling like a sheep. Blaine looked at Kurt and rolled his eyes fondly, making Kurt giggle.

"We'd love some," Kurt answered.

Twenty minutes later, the three sat at the table and enjoyed their eggs.

"Blaine," Buster managed around a mouthful of food, "I think today's a good day to start."

Blaine looked at his father in confusion. "Start what?"

Buster laughed. "Didn't really think you'd get off that easy, did you? Your summer school! For English? Writing mechanics? Remember?"

Blaine's head crashed to the table as he let out a groan. He banged it on the edge a few times for good measure, until Kurt put a calming hand on his elbow to get him to stop. Blaine looked up and smiled at Kurt, then looked at his father and scowled. "Seriously? I have to do that? That's a thing?"

"You got a D in the class, Blaine. You're lucky they're only making you redo the grammar lessons, and that they're letting you do it online."

"Back up," Kurt blurted out, making the Anderson men laugh. "What's going on?"

Blaine sighed. "I was sort of hoping you wouldn't find out. I didn't want you to have a bad opinion of me. The thing is, I'm not the most organized student ever. Not only that, but I sort of suck at words. I'm really good at math, but I've never done good in writing or English classes. My brain just can't process the theirs, theres and they'res like other people's can."

"The long and short of it is he got a D in English, but the category that brought his grade down the most was grammar," Buster supplied.

"They're making me do online summer school for grammar. I've been putting it off a little," he chuckled. "I have no idea why they think doing it again will make me some great writer."

Kurt shot Blaine a sympathetic look. Then, it came to him. As he looked into Blaine's puppy-dog eyes, he knew exactly how to get Blaine to start seeing him as more than just a friend and big spoon.

"I'm the opposite," Kurt said. "I'm terrible at math and good at writing. I could help you if you want—"

"Oh, Kurt, no, you don't have to," Blaine protested.

"Blaine," Kurt silenced him, placing his hand back on that gorgeously tanned arm, "I want to."

The smile Blaine gave Kurt in return was brighter than the sun that shone out the kitchen window.

♦♦♦♦♦

The next day, Kurt and Blaine sat side by side at the kitchen table. Blaine's grammar homework was on the laptop screen in front of them.

"So, this is a comma splice," Kurt instructed, pointing to a spot in Blaine's sentence. "You can't join two separate clauses together with a comma. You can either create a new sentence or separate them with a semicolon."

Blaine looked up at Kurt through his thick eyelashes. "Can you show me?"

Kurt almost gave in to those eyes, but shook his head. "Write a sentence like the one you just wrote."

Blaine nodded.

Kurt is being mean to me, he won't write a sentence for me.

Blaine's sentence made Kurt giggle out loud. "I'm not being mean!" he insisted, his laughter betraying him. "I'm just not going to do your work for you!"

"Oh, fine...meanie," Blaine teased.

Kurt rolled his eyes and pointed at the computer. "Now, fix the comma splice."

Blaine puzzled over the words on his screen, letting his tongue poke out of the side of his mouth as he concentrated. That perfect pink tongue, Kurt thought. I wonder what it tastes like...

"Earth to Kurt?" Blaine joked, snapping Kurt back to attention. "I fixed it."

Kurt is a good teacher; he made me do my own work.

"Beautiful," Kurt declared, clapping his hands. He stared at Blaine, who was looking back at him with a glowing face and proud smile. "You're—it's, uh, it's beautiful." Fuck.

"I'll bring you an apple one of these days," Blaine teased, poking Kurt's shoulder.

"Teacher's pet, I see," Kurt flirted—flirted, oh, God—back. He ruffled Blaine's curly hair, which caused Blaine to faceplant into Kurt's shoulder.

"That tickled so bad, Kurt," Blaine cackled, face still buried in Kurt's shirt.

"I have never met someone whose hair is ticklish," Kurt remarked as Blaine righted himself.

"My neck is super sensitive," Blaine confessed, chuckling lightly before shrieking when Kurt tickled his neck. "Mercy!"

Just as Kurt took his hands away, finally letting up, the door clicked open. A tall, blond man stood there, smiling brightly with his arms outstretched. "Blainey!"

A quick look at Blaine found him smiling right back at the man.

"Sammy!" he shouted, nearly jostling the laptop to the ground in his haste to accept Sammy's hug. Their embrace was tight, but the way 'Sammy' patted Blaine on the back proved to Kurt that it was purely platonic. "There's someone I'd like you to meet."

Sammy and Blaine walked over to Kurt, and Sammy held out his arms again.

Warily, Kurt accepted the bone-crushing hug. Sammy smelled like aftershave and pine needles.

When they pulled away, Sam beamed at him. "You must be the great Kurt," he proclaimed. "Sam Evans."

"It's a pleasure, Sam," Kurt said, watching out of the corner of his eye as Blaine hid his red face in Sam's jacket. "So, Blaine..." he trailed off, "I'm great, huh?"

"Oh, I can tell you all about you, Kurt," Sam revealed, winking at Kurt conspiratorially.

The corner of Kurt's mouth quirked up. "Can you, now?" He looked sidelong at Blaine, who was still red and glaring at Sam. "I'd love to hear it."

"God, Sam," Blaine groaned. "Kurt, don't listen to a word he says. Anyway, this is Sammy. He's been my best friend since forever, and even though he goes to U of I now—that's the University of Idaho—he still comes back in the summers to help out. I just know you two are going to get along great!"

With that, Blaine bounded up the stairs, leaving Kurt and Sam laughing in his wake.

"Don't worry," Sam said quietly. "I'm straight."

The statement took Kurt completely by surprise, and he sputtered for a good twenty seconds before he recovered.

"Wh-what do you mean?"

Sam laughed, slinging an arm around Kurt. "Let's go out tonight. I have so many Blaine stories to tell you."

♦♦♦♦♦

And that was how Kurt ended up in a hole-in-the-wall bar in downtown Walla Walla with Sam, nursing a beer against his better judgment. Images cycled through Kurt's head of what Blaine's heartbroken face would look like if he came back drunk, and those thoughts alone fueled his willpower.

"So, Kurt," Sam chuckled, sipping his own beer—he'd ordered two, one for him and one for Kurt, because Burt had confiscated Kurt's fake ID—and staring into Kurt's eyes. "What's brought you to scenic Walla Walla?"

"Drugs," Kurt responded succinctly, causing Sam to spit out a bit of his beer in shock. Kurt smiled wanly to himself; having accepted and embraced his circumstances, Kurt had come to find the reactions amusing. Yes, yes, I know I don't look like your friendly neighborhood alcoholic.

"Drugs?" Sam repeated incredulously. "Like...would you mind explaining? If you don't wanna, that's cool too."

Kurt shook his head. "No, I'll explain. I live in San Francisco. I had a boyfriend back there, named Sebastian. He was hot. He was also a prescription drug addict and an alcoholic. I was lonely. Druggy boyfriend plus lonely Kurt equaled druggy, alcoholic Kurt. My dad found me after a bender with Sebastian and sent me to stay with Buster for the summer. My dad and Buster were roommates at U of I."

"Go Vandals!" Sam interjected.

Kurt laughed. "Go Vandals, indeed. Anyway, yeah. That's why I'm here. I had no idea Buster had a son until I got here." Kurt knew as he spoke that his face was heating up; it was a new stage in his crush that had developed over the previous few days. The mere thought of Blainemade him blush.

"Mmm, and then your world turned upside down," Sam leered, winking at Kurt before bursting into peals of laughter. When he saw Kurt raising a judgmental eyebrow at him, he sobered up—face-wise—and stared back. "Sorry. It's just...so obvious that the two of you are crushing bad on each other."

"Sam, that's ridiculous." Kurt waved him off. "Blaine doesn't have a crush on me. And even if he did, Sebastian and I just broke up, so even though I'm over him completely, Blaine probably thinks I'm in some fragile romantic state."

"Bro, Blaine's clueless," Sam chuckled. "Completely obtuse when it comes to guys. We've gone places—like when I took him to visit my girlfriend at U-Dub and we went gay-bar-hopping—and guys have looked at him like the day's farm-fresh selection, and I have to tell him later because he just doesn't even notice." Sam paused for effect, smiling at Kurt over the table. "And Kurt?"

"Yeah?" Kurt responded flatly.

"I think you're the same way."

Kurt rolled his eyes, smiling indulgently at Sam. "I need another drink," he groaned, downing the last of his first beer.

Sam shook his head violently. "Nuh-uh, Kurt," he responded, taking the empty beer glass away from Kurt. "Not after what you just told me. I'm sorry I bought you a beer, by the way. If I'd known...you know."

At that, Kurt could do nothing but stare at Sam. He looked for all the world like a rom-com character played by a fish-lipped Owen Wilson, but inside, he was clearly so much more. After Kurt had confessed his reasons for being there, Sam hadn't judged him harshly and he hadn't taken pity on him. He had simply accepted the explanation as fact and continued to treat Kurt the way he had before. And now, he was protecting Kurt from Kurt himself. Kurt could not have asked for anything more.

Kurt smiled. "Thank you, Sam."

Sam winked. "Anytime. You areenraptured with my baby best friend, after all. Any crush of Blaine's is always a good friend of mine. Gotta get both sides of the story, ya know."

Sam flagged down a bartender and paid their bill after refusing Kurt's money three times. They walked, arms around each other, all the way back to the Anderson Ranch.

As he lay in bed that night, listening to Blaine breathing below him, Kurt felt a true sense of purpose for the first time since his arrival in Walla Walla.

He would make that curly-haired, cherub-faced angel fall in love with him.

Kurt knew what Sam would say, but he wasn't going to take a chance onhe already is or trust me. Not until he knew for sure.