Blaine had had some pretty bad Christmases throughout his seventeen years of life, but this one was close to topping them all. Sure, there was that time when both of his parents had been away for some reason he didn't quite remember and his brother had tried – and failed – to make it just like all the other years. His parents were home this year, even if his brother wasn't, and it would have been not great but at least normal – save for the fact that he couldn't stop thinking about Kurt, and save for the fact that every Christmas had been colder since freshman year, but that was nothing new.

The more he thought about it, the more he regretted ignoring the other boy when he had tried to talk to him. Because the more he thought about it, the more something just didn't seem right. If Kurt had really blown him off, not shown up on purpose – then he wouldn't have shown up at TCC begging Blaine to listen to him. He would have ignored him, right, if he didn't want anything to do with him? He wouldn't have tried to talk to him at all. Or at least that was what Blaine kept telling himself. He still didn't know what was going on with Kurt, but the least he could do was let him explain. And if he didn't want to hang out with him anymore, he could just say so, and that would be that.

On Christmas, he texted him. Just a simple merry christmas – Blaine, but the next day when he hadn't answered he tried to call him, and it went straight to voicemail.

So Blaine decided that there was only one thing left to do, and that thing was to talk about this in person.

~*~*~*~

He only semi-remembered where Kurt's house was, but he was pretty sure he had it right.

So Blaine stood at Kurt's front door, rocking back and forth on his heels. A quick glance towards the driveway told him that Kurt was home; he was almost positive that that was his car. He played with the ends of the scarf he was wearing while he waited. It was early evening, and it was winter, so it was already dark and really cold.

Burt answered the door. “Not interested, sorry. Try next door.”

“I'm not selling anything,” Blaine told him, as politely as he could. “My name's Blaine. I, uh. I was wondering if I could see Kurt?”

Burt looked him up and down. He obviously wasn't one of Kurt's usual friends, and the look on this boy's face told him that he was probably the reason why Kurt had barely come out of his room for the past few days.

“You were here the other night.”
Blaine nodded, shuffling awkwardly on his feet. “That... wasn't what it looked like, sir,” he said quickly. “I was walking home from work, and it started to rain and Kurt was kind enough to let me stay here for a little bit. But then it started storming and I fell asleep, and by that time it was so late that he just let me stay over. But that's all that happened, Mr. Hummel.”

Burt gave him a look that was guaranteed to give him nightmares later tonight before gesturing for him to come in. “Up the stairs, first door on the right. Leave the door open.”

“Thank you, Mr. Hummel,” Blaine smiled gratefully, making his way down the staircase that Burt had indicated.

“Kurt?” He called out softly, once he was at the top of the stairs. The door was open, so he walked right in. But there was no sign of Kurt anywhere. He was about to turn around and leave, because now that he was actually here in Kurt's room he was, admittedly, freaking out. Maybe this was a sign. Maybe this was the wrong thing to do. Maybe Kurt had heard his voice and escaped out the window to avoid confrontation... but the windows didn't look big enough for him to fit through...

Blaine's thoughts were interrupted by a scream, and he stumbled back into the doorframe, startled, losing his footing. His head slammed into the wall and he hissed under his breath.

The first words out of Kurt's mouth were, “What are you doing here?!” And as soon as Blaine stopped seeing stars he could see why – Kurt was wearing nothing but a towel, wrapped loosely around his waist. The thing that struck Blaine as odd, though, was the way that his hands rushed up to hide his face, over all of the other exposed parts of his body. Not that they needed to be covered... oh, not at all. He would never admit it if you asked him but at first Blaine kind of stared at the other boy. He was... beautiful, and he looked so strong, and all at once Blaine was wondering what it would be like to feel Kurt's bare skin against his own and dear god he was wearing nothing but a towel. All of these things ran through Blaine's mind over the course of two seconds, because sooner than later his hand was flying up to cover his eyes and he was talking a mile a minute.

“I'm so sorry I didn't mean to- I mean- your dad told me you were in here and I didn't know and I'm sorry-”

Kurt retreated back to the ensuite bathroom so quickly that his towel almost fell off. It fell to his ankles as he slammed the bathroom door behind him but at least he was alone. There were many things that Kurt Hummel did not expect to see while emerging from his evening shower, and Blaine Anderson was pretty damn high on the list.

What was he doing here, anyway? Kurt had tried to apologize to him and from what he could understand, the other boy wanted nothing to do with him. Even though he hadn't stood him up, not at all, not on purpose.

Meanwhile, in Kurt's room, Blaine stared at the bathroom door, his mouth hanging open a bit. Yeah, that was awkward, but Kurt didn't need to run back into the bathroom immediately without even acknowledging his existence.

“What are you doing here?” Inside the bathroom, Kurt caught his reflection in the mirror and oh no, this was bad, this was so bad.

On the other side of the door, Blaine leaned against the wall, biting his lip.

“I'm sorry,” he repeated. “I didn't mean to... I talked to your dad and he told me I could find you here. I didn't know you were...” he trailed off. “I just- I'm sorry.”

Kurt's eyes were still as wide as they'd ever been and he was pretty sure that the color of his face could easily put tomatoes to shame but Blaine couldn't see him, so he cleared his throat and tried to get his voice to sound confident but it didn't matter anyway because Blaine spoke before he had the chance to.

“Not just for this, either. I'm sorry for the way I acted at work the other day. That was... wrong of me, but I still think...” he trailed off again. “We need to talk.”

Kurt bit his tongue to keep himself from saying that's what I've been trying to tell you this entire time, you idiot.

But Kurt didn't say anything.

“I could come back later, if this is a bad time...”

Kurt glanced down. Naked. He was naked. Of all the times during the day he was fully clothed in his house Blaine freaking Anderson just had to choose right now to want to have a serious discussion.

“Don't go.” He said it before he could think about it. “Could you hand me my clothes? They're on my bed.”

Blaine nodded, grabbing the clothes that were carefully laid out on Kurt's bed. He could tell that there were about three layers in this outfit, and he tried not to let his face get hot at his newly acquired knowledge that Kurt wore satin boxers – they were at the top of the pile.

He wondered why Kurt was changing into such nice clothes this late at night – unless, duh, he was going out. Which he probably was. He knocked on the door, looking away. Kurt opened it, grabbed the clothes and closed it again all in under a second.

Blaine sat down at the very end of Kurt's bed, thinking that this was probably one of the most awkward things he had ever been part of, and trying not to think about Kurt Hummel being naked only a few feet away.

God, he had only known him for like, three weeks now. He needed to get his mind out of the gutter.

Inside he bathroom, a newly-clothed Kurt began to panic. His hair was an absolute mess and it was still dripping wet so all the hairspray in the world couldn't help it at that exact point in time. But more importantly, what the hell was he going to do about his face? He stared at himself in the mirror, feeling his eyes begin to water again as he did so. He cursed himself for keeping all of the coverup in his vanity. Blaine was here and he wanted to talk and he had this thing and why, why, why. He could not possibly look worse than he did right then. He couldn't go out like this. Oh no, not in a million years.

“Blaine?”

The other boy stood up and moved so that he was standing right in front of the door, his ear pressed against it. “Yeah?”

“Maybe this isn't the best time.”

“Oh.” His heart sank. He had kind of assumed that Kurt would be coming out soon, hence the need for clothes and the 'don't go'.“Well, just call me then, I guess. We really need to talk.”

Blaine was halfway to the stairs when he heard Kurt's voice. “Wait.”

He turned, backtracking to his spot in front of the door. “Me?”

“No, the other guy in my bedroom.”

Blaine almost wanted to smile.

“Talk,” Kurt said, and Blaine furrowed his nose in confusion.

“I was hoping you'd come out of the bathroom for this.”
“Just talk.”

Blaine bit his lip. It didn't take a rocket scientist to tell that something was wrong.

“Okay? Well, I came here because I realized that I should give you a chance to explain yourself. And to tell you that I'm sorry for being such a jerk to you for so long, but I guess I was just upset because I do really like- the point is that you were trying to tell me something that day, and I didn't want to hear it. But I'm ready to listen now... if you want to tell me, that is. And I'm sorry I yelled at you, and I'm sorry I snapped at you like that, but with all due respect you did stand me up.” He took a deep breath, his ear pressed against the door again.

“I didn't stand you up,” came Kurt's reply.

“Really? Because that's what it felt like to me, Kurt.”

“I already told you that it isn't like that. I wanted to go, Blaine.”

“Then what is it like?” Blaine slid down the wall until he was sitting indian-style with his ear still to the door.

“Not like that.”

“Kurt, I want to believe you,” he said levelly. “But you keep saying that it wasn't like that, but you won't tell me what it was like. Just tell me what happened. Please. I really want this... this thing, whatever we have, I want it to work out between us because I'd really like to get to know you better, and then I ask you out and you blow me off and now you won't even come out and explain this to me which leads me to believe that you don't want anything to do with me, and you haven't kicked me out of your room yet so I don't even know what I'm supposed to think.”

Apparently, Blaine had a habit of going into run-on monologues when we was nervous.

But the only thing Kurt said was, “I didn't blow you off.”

“What happened, then?”

Blaine still felt weird about this whole talking-through-a-door thing.

Inside the bathroom, Kurt sat down on the tiled floor, bringing his knees to his chest.

“Something came up.”

“That's it?” Blaine asked, bemused. “You could have told me, Kurt. I would have understood.”

Kurt shook his head. “I couldn't,” he said, dropping his voice. “They broke my phone.”

Blaine's eyebrows knitted together. “What?”

“My phone is broken.”

“No, you said 'they broke my phone'. Who's 'they,' Kurt?”

There was a way-too-long moment of silence in the already-quiet room until Kurt finally spoke, and when he did, his voice was so shaky Blaine could tell that he was about to cry, or maybe he was already. “I think you should go.”

“Kurt?” Blaine asked, jumping to his feet. “Are you okay?”

“Blaine... go.”

“Kurt... you don't sound okay...”

“I said go, Blaine!” Kurt snapped, and Blaine jumped and headed for the stairs, even though leaving was the last thing he wanted to do. What was even going on here? First Kurt showed up at work begging to get Blaine to listen to him, but now that Blaine was there, he wouldn't tell him anything. And what was with his go-stay-go-stay-go-stay routine? One minute it was 'wait,' the next it was 'go.' And the fact that Kurt refused to come out of the bathroom the whole time... there was definitely something wrong. All he knew, as he crossed the front lawn of the Hummel household, was that this hadn't solved anything. All of the anger he had felt towards Kurt melted away, in that moment. There was something really wrong and Blaine just wanted to help, but he couldn't, not when Kurt was telling him to go every other moment, not when he had no idea what was going on.�

He was out of ideas, and he was out of luck. He knew somehow that coming back to the house another day probably wouldn't be the best idea, even if he came at a completely different time to ensure that he wouldn't catch the other boy as he was finishing his shower. But a sinking feeling in his stomach told him that the chances of Kurt reaching out to talk to him first were now, well, really slim.

He needed help, and he knew just who to ask.