A couple of weeks passed uneventfully. Blaine sometimes saw Kurt in the halls, and the boy always greeted him cheerfully, but it was all very superficial, his smile barely ever reaching his eyes. Blaine also noticed the frequent presence of one of the nerdy juniors on their floor, Elliott, who seemed to have hit it off with Kurt if the number of times he saw him wait outside his door was any indication. The problem was that, while he was nerdy, he didn't look it. He could even pass off as simply smart and additionally tall, dark and handsome, and even somewhat cool and intriguing with his body jewelry and art. Kurt always seemed flustered around him, in the brief seconds Blaine allowed himself to look, because why would he want to look for more than a few seconds? There was nothing there, Kurt had made that clear, and he never gave any indication of wanting to establish their relationship further than that of casual neighbors.

Taking those circumstances into consideration, it made absolutely no sense whatsoever for Blaine to currently be pounding a punching bag into a metaphorical bloody pulp. It was even more bizarre that he had drawn a very bad kindergarten picture of Elliott, titled it “glitter rock vampire”, and had fastened it to the leather to make it easier to imagine the punching bag was actually his face. Why would he care that he had spotted the two of them at a coffee shop just outside of campus, giggling and speaking in hushed voices as Kurt allowed Elliott to touch his incredibly soft-looking forearm? He had no desire to test whether it was actually as soft as it looked, no Sir.

“Who's that?” a voice that shouldn't be as familiar as it was asked from his right, causing him to cease in his pummeling. Kurt stood there, arms folded, wearing yoga pants and a soft shirt, his hair held back by a headband. Blaine bit his lip and turned back to the punching bag, landing a few successive jabs and cursing internally, because Kurt didn't look adorable or sexy or anything, Blaine definitely didn't care for the way his narrow hips were encased by the waistband of his pants, begging for him to slide them down his thighs and –

He stopped, taking a few deep breaths. “I was assaulted by some punk vampire dude as a kid, and have been carrying deep psychological trauma with me ever since then. The only way I can deal with it is by imagining I'm punching the jerk right back.” He kept his tone sarcastic and indifferent, not revealing how close to the truth his admission was. Only he hadn't been a kid exactly and it had been three jocks twice his size.

Kurt just continued to look at him with an unreadable expression. “I see,” he finally replied. “I just thought it looked like a really ugly version of Elliott, is all.”

“What version of Elliott isn't ugly?” With his stupid fluffy hair and stupid crinkly smile and stupid eyes and stupid face and stupid piercings and tattoos that are just on the right side of edgy and his towering-over-Blaine-ness, Blaine added in his mind.

“You're a real jackass, do you know that?”

“It sounds vaguely familiar.”

When awkward silence ensued around them, Blaine shifted his focus, feeling done with the conversation. He was just raising his fist when Kurt spoke up again.

“Well, why? I know you can be really sweet. I've been on the receiving end of your sweetness, and for some reason, I refuse to believe that was only because you were trying to get me naked.”

Blaine smiled, but didn't shift to look at the pale teen, didn't let the words floating around in his head take the shape of sounds coming from his mouth. He was aware of Kurt shuffling awkwardly but only spared him a side-glance when he heard him huff in frustration.

“Is he the one who warned you off me?” Blaine had to admit, that was a pretty good strategy. Maybe he'd have to try it at some point; get someone suspicious of someone else so they'll see you as the trustworthy guy they can rely on to keep them safe. Only he usually didnt have to rely on such tactics.

“No, he isn't. Not that it's any of your business,” Kurt retorted, sounding thoroughly unimpressed.

“Well then, who was it?”

“You're like a dog with a bone, do you know that?” the other boy snapped. “I came here to let you know that I'm not holding that against you and that I never did, I just let you know very politely that I wasn't interested in becoming another notch in your belt, but of course you're acting like my 6-year-old cousin!”

“So you came to apologize?”

“No!” Kurt exclaimed in frustration, voice becoming louder. “I don't fucking have to apologize for not sleeping with you!”

“Who said I even wanted to sleep with you?”

“Well, didn't you?!”

It was then that Blaine noticed he had left his spot by the bag and had come closer to Kurt, that he was now so close he could've, hypothetically, counted every damn one of Kurt's freckles as they were illuminated by the artificial light the neon tubes in the ceiling dowsed them in. Only there were too many, and it would take hours, and he kept getting distracted by the milky white underneath their brown, and the eyelashes fanning out over those damn indefinably-colored orbs. Right now, they looked almost green, he mused, and was then distracted by the graceful slope of his nose, and the lush pink lips underneath, parted slightly, and it would be so, so easy to just lean in and suck the plush bottom one into his mouth.

And then he was biting down on it, the flesh paling slightly before he released it, and it bounced back to its original shape, only redder and – Blaine had to suppress a groan and almost did it, almost veered forward, until Kurt suddenly inhaled sharply and took a step backwards, blinking at him with wide eyes, still backing away, like Blaine was some rabid animal. Everything in Blaine deflated at the expression which, once again, reminded him that his advances were unwanted. He copied Kurt in taking a deep breath, and let it rush out of his lungs slowly, the motion making him crave a cigarette although he hadn't smoked in months.

“I – I should go,” Kurt stuttered after a moment. Blaine was still doing his best to regain control of his bearings, the whirlwind of emotions battling each other in his chest making it hard for his lungs to heave in air.

“Y-yeah… I still need to put in some more time here, so…”

Kurt turned to leave, taking a few steps towards the exit as he pulled the headband from his hair and combed his fingers through it.

“Just so you know… Although it's none of your business…” he mumbled, stopping his tracks. “I'm not dating Elliott. So you can stop mauling horribly drawn pictures of him.”

He took off swiftly, before Blaine could say a word in response, making the senior snarl in anger and frustration before he resumed knocking the living crap out of the lifeless leather sack hanging from the ceiling.

The Thursday night before classes were supposed to start back up again, Blaine had been invited to a party thrown by one of the dudes in Delta Lambda Phi, and had failed to remember he'd already banged that particular individual before both accepting and then showing up. The guy, Jamie, had apparently been under the impression that this constituted a date, given their former sexual history, and had subsequently gone off at him when he found him attempting to put the moves on one of his friends. Blaine had left before the situation could escalate, not really into the whole thing anyway, not really looking for another conquest.

It wasn't until he was lying in bed, fully dressed, staring up at the ceiling and listening to Kurt's bell-like laughter percolating through the wall, that he understood why he'd been so off his game. He preferred quality over quantity in his men, but he had been turning down a bunch of quality guys lately, failing to charm them like he usually would effortlessly, and he was slowly coming to the realization that the reason for this was the very same guy who had been his last real attempt at seduction.

More peals of laughter, this time accompanied by the deep vibrations of another man's chuckle, then a melody which was more on the rock-side of pop rock, drowning out the sounds and Blaine… just wanted to fucking shoot himself. His heart plummeted, and that in and of itself was bad enough, but in addition to the sick feeling in his stomach, that weird feeling like his brain was literally trembling as it tried to refrain from giving commands along the lines of “storm over there and fucking take him, he's yours!”, and the green hue generally enveloping him inside-out, he was in agony. He was just on that side of buzzed which wouldn't allow him to sleep either, so he settled for screaming into his pillow, then grabbing his guitar and adding some music of his own, trying not to think of what might be happening next door, what noises the steady thump of drums might be cancelling out.

“I never once said I didn't mean this,” he growled out, not noticing that the hubbub next door had stopped. “I can't wait to see how this one gets out…”

The next lines he played kind of really hit home, but he just kept on belting. “You are the first to question my achievements; but that's alright, my dreams I've been living…”

“Don't hold your breath, I'm not losing sleep over you; I'm Mr Reckless, and you're defenseless,” a clear, high voice suddenly took over the next line of the chorus. Blaine looked up in shock, his fingers over the strings faltering and producing an unpleasantly vibrating sound before he could get them to press down on the proper frets again.

“The best you never had, the best you never had,” Blaine kept on repeating, averting his gaze until the echo of last chord around them had run its course.

“How did you get in?” he asked after what he deemed was an appropriate stretch of silence.

“Your door was open,” Kurt replied, his tone deliberately light. Blaine put the guitar down and began to massage the bridge of his nose, cursing the faulty lock that always popped back open when he banged it close too hard.

He was about to ask Kurt what the hell he was doing in his room when he spoke up, “you have a really great voice. Has someone ever told you that?”

The last phrase struck a sense of déjà-vu in him because yeah, he's been told, countless times, that he had “the stuff”. Too bad “the stuff” he had didn't convince his mother that music was a legit career to follow.

“So do you,” he answered instead of voicing his thoughts. “Didn't know you were into somewhat obscure British bands.” He left the ‘but then again, what do I really know about you?' unsaid.

“Yeah, uh, I'm kind of a Royal Family nut, and obsessed with Great Britain in general, so…” the pale teen trailed off, still awkwardly shuffling in the doorway. Blaine cleared his throat.

“Did… did you wanna come in, hang out for a bit maybe?”

“Yeah… yeah, okay.”

They sat on the bed beside each other, both fiddling with their hands and staring down at their laps until Blaine broke the tension with a chuckle, recognizing this as his one chance to prove himself, to make amends.

“I'm about to apologize, and I wanted to warn you because I haven't apologized to anyone in a long, long time, so I'm not sure how good it will turn out to be.”

“You're on the right track already. Go on,” Kurt encouraged him with a small grin.

“Well… I'm sorry. You were right, of course I approached you hoping you'd come back to my room with me… but…” He bit his lip, unsure if he should continue.

But when Kurt looked at him with those wide eyes, blinking innocently in his confusion, he couldn't not go on. He reminded himself that this was his chance, and he plowed on through.

“I don't know, there is just… something about you,” he began, and very nearly slapped himself across the face for how stupid and generic that sounded. “I mean… you're intriguing. Not just your looks, I genuinely wanted to talk to you and that's not something I usually… do.”

Kurt was quiet for a beat before he burst into laughter. “Wow, you were right – you are awful at apologizing.” Blaine flushed red and scowled, embarrassed. “But… I appreciate the sentiment, and I think I know what you mean, sort of. It's just funny because everyone keeps talking about how smooth you are, but they've never seen the version of you that is sort of adorably bumbling, have they?”

Blaine didn't dare to hope that his assessment that the freshman was smiling at him almost… fondly was right. That would be too good to be true, and probably crush him if it turned out he was wrong. Literally crush him, and he wasn't being dramatic at all, thank you very much. Wait…

“Adorable?” he quipped with a half-smirk, making it Kurt's turn to flush and fumble for words in embarrassment.

“I mean… yeah? Kinda. But, Blaine… I'm not interested in… that. I don't want a quick roll in the sack and then be sent on my merry way again. It's probably stupid, but –“

“It's not stupid,” Blaine countered, actually kind of surprised it was his own voice he heard make that admission. “It's… you're a romantic, and there's nothing wrong with that, right? Just like there's nothing wrong with me being… me.”

Kurt chuckled, the sound softer than earlier when he'd been laughing at him but somehow just as endearing. “Yeah. You're absolutely right. So… friends?”

Blaine smiled through the feeling like being drenched in icy water, and nodded. “Friends. Sure. Yeah.” And then, after a moment, “so, do your friends get your phone number and maybe get to invite you for coffee tomorrow?”

Stupid. Stupid, stupid, stupid, he thought as he watched Kurt's face cloud over with apprehension, just a tiny little bit, like maybe he wasn't even aware of it himself.

“You know, to buy my way into your good graces and make the apology official,” he added, hoping to make Kurt laugh, or his remarkable eyes sparkle, again.

“Of course.” He held out his hand for Blaine's phone, and the senior scrambled to get it off his nightstand and into the pale hand. If he let his own tan one accidentally-on-purpose brush the soft skin to get a tiny taste and appease his curiosity, well, no one had to know.

Blaine was pleasantly surprised when Kurt didn't immediately leave, but instead agreed to stay a bit longer and jam with him before excusing himself to his room with a smile and a promise of, “see you tomorrow.”

He would never admit it, but Blaine did a tiny little huge jump and victory dance the second his door clicked close. Taking a moment to compose himself, he grabbed his phone and fired off a text before he could second-guess himself.

I forgot to say… sweet dreams –B

It only took a few seconds for a reply to come in.

Hah, thank you! Now I can sleep without fear of sour dreams. –K

I live to serve. –B

Noted :D Good night. –K

He did not hide his face in his hands and giggle giddily as he fell back on his bed. Absolutely not.