Kurt woke up the next morning and nothing hurt. In the hazy cloud of his brain, he couldn’t even remember what he should be hurting about. All he knew was that he was warm, his bed was ridiculously comfortable and the breathing of Blaine next to him was the most soothing sound he’d ever heard.
Wait, there was something about Blaine, wasn’t there? Kurt rolled over onto his back and as he did a flash of colour distracted him. It was the tie, stained with spots of his blood, wrapped around his wrist like a bandage.
As soon as he saw the tie he remembered it all. He remembered Blaine leaving, and not seeing him for the entire day until he magically turned up and swept them into the same bed. Mixed signals much?
“Blaine. Blaine. Blaine, get up.”
Beside him, Blaine groaned and rolled further into Kurt’s side. He contemplated leaving him there, snuggling down beside him and enjoying just a few more moments of peace. But he knew that having what he wanted but not really having it was just going to kill him later when Blaine, inevitably, left again.
“Blaine! Get up!”
He was met by snoring.
Kurt pulled the blanket off him and giggled internally at the sight of Blaine immediately springing into fetal position.
“Blaine, go shower. We need to talk.”

If Kurt enjoyed the sight of Blaine’s chest glistening with water (which of course, yes, he did immensely enjoy), he didn’t let on. Because now wasn’t that time. Now was time to be serious. Kurt’s arm was throbbing and it felt hot and itchy and all Kurt could think was that it was still nothing compared to how ill at ease he felt in his skin. And it was time to sit Blaine down and ask what the fuck was going on.
Which is more or less exactly what came out of his mouth.
“Uhh. What?” Blaine looked up at Kurt in confusion, still sleepy.
“Blaine,” he sighed, running his hands through his hair and tugging slightly, “Please sit down. We need to talk about yesterday. And the night before. Actually, no, how bout we stay in this room until we’ve talked about every single second of lives because you used to make sense to me and now I have no idea who you are.” He drew a breath in a hiss as Blaine sat/fell onto the bed with a heartbroken expression on his face.
It hurt Kurt so much to see him like this, always enough for his to tell him to get up and to let things go on the way they were. But instead, Kurt pressed a firm hand to his cut under the tie and began talking, the pain burning through him.
“Let’s start in the library. There was something that I wanted to say to was, was going to say to you, before you decided that making out with me was far better plan than listening to what I had to say.” Blaine blushed and bit his lip.
Kurt knelt in front of him, looking him in the eyes. “Blaine. I’m gay. That’s what I wanted to tell you in the library. I’d just finally said it to myself and I wanted to tell you. Because you are my best friend, Blaine. You are my everything, really.”
Kurt took a deep breathe and looked at Blaine’s stoic face. “And you know what? I think you are too. I think we’re both gay, Blaine, and that’s why you kissed me and that’s why your girlfriend’s didn’t work out and why you have this special smile that is only for me. You’re gay, Blaine.”
Blaine still didn’t say anything, he just stared at Kurt as he spoke.
“But that’s okay,” Kurt said, grabbing Blaine’s face between his soft hands, “Because then we can be together.”
He watched carefully for Blaine’s reaction. Blaine’s squeezed his eyes tightly shut, licked his lips, and whispered one word.
“No.”
“No?”
“No.”
Kurt wrenched his hands away from Blaine, and Blaine fell forward slightly, eyes still closed. “No, what, Blaine? You know, this is exactly the same that fucking note you left. I can’t. Can’t what, Blaine? Why is it always no or can’t with you? Why can’t you ever just say yes?”
Kurt was yelling now, storming around the quiet room, staring at Blaine’s face; a lip firmly grasped between his teeth and his eyes still clenched shut.
Something in Blaine’s face just sucked all the anger out of him.
“Can’t be gay? Is that it? Is that what you can’t? Blaine, I just want you talk to me. It’s me, I know you better than you know yourself. There is nothing you can say that will surprise me. You know why it was so important to me to tell you I was gay? To say it at all? Because I thought that maybe you were too. And I know you, I know exactly how hard that would be for you. I wanted to be there, to be the person who opens up first. So you’d know that I am accepting of you, and that it’s all okay. So that we could go through it together. I wanted you to know that.”
Blaine stayed the same, closed off and silent.
“Or was that not it? Maybe you can be gay, and that’s not what you ‘can’t’ do. Maybe it’s me. You can’t love me. Is that it, Blaine? Because you can’t convince me that I’m blind and that I haven’t seen the way you look at me and everything. Blaine, I know you! You can’t hide from me and you should never have to. What can’t you just tell me the truth?”
Kurt was crying now, talking himself in circles, trying to say the right thing to make Blaine react. To make him yell or scream or cry or anything. The silence was terrifying. They were Kurt and Blaine, they knew each other inside and out. They’d answer questions about each other absent mindedly, uncaring that sometimes it was a little strange that they were so close. Kurt thought he knew what Blaine was thinking. He thought he had worked it out. But he sat there, silent and unresponsive, as Kurt ran through his theories. And he wasn’t Blaine like this, wasn’t the boy with the grin and the charm. God, he wasn’t even the Blaine who looked at Kurt guiltily and kissed girls.
He wasn’t someone Kurt recognised.
And that was far worse than anything else.
After four and a bit years of being so close they breathed together, Kurt had lost Blaine.
He dropped back again in front of Blaine, his everything. He could faintly feel his knees aching and the throb of his arm.
“Blaine?” His voice was soft and firm. “Blaine, please look at me.” Nothing. “Blaine, I can’t do this anymore. This is tearing me apart. You need to look at me. You need to talk to me. Please.” Kurt’s voice broke on ‘please’. “Blaine, if you don’t, I can’t be here anymore. We won’t be friends, you know that. Just like you know I wouldn’t be able to be here if we weren’t. god, it’d kill me. Blaine, please, just look at me, and it will all be okay.”
Blaine scrunched his eyes even closer together.
Kurt let out his breath in a quiet sigh, resigned. “Okay, okay. I get it. you can’t look at me any more. I don’t really know why, but it has to have something to do with gay thing. I don’t even care. I just want you to come back to me, Blaine. We can fix this. Just tell me that you want me to stay. Because – Blaine, I promise you this with everything I am – if I walk out that door, if you let me walk out that door, I will never come back. I won’t do that to you, and I won’t do that to myself. If you don’t want me, then I will go. I love you just that much. So this is it. Tell me not to go.”
He waited in silence for minutes. Then, when nothing came, he wiped his tears, kissed Blaine quickly on the forehead, and walked out the door.