Ten Years Later. New York.

Kurt Hummel is twenty six years old (as of a few days ago) and finally okay with his life again when he sees him.
It’s been ten years, but Blaine Anderson still looks the same, bright and happy and unbelievably gorgeous, standing on a crowded street corner, waiting to cross the road.
Kurt stands and watches him, frozen on the spot and within his own mind. The only thing he can think is that he doesn’t want Blaine to see him. He has many reasons for this, of course, but the most important is the way his chest is aching and he’s not even sure he’s breathing.
His heart is breaking and exploding and filling up in his chest all at the same time. Blaine crosses the road and strides off into the bustle of New York and Kurt can no longer see him.
He still stands there though, paralysed with so many feelings and not wanting to move. He has this vague idea that if he moves, it wouldn’t be true. He never would have seen Blaine. He knows that he should think that is a good thing, but he stands still anyway, standing on the sidewalk, staring into the past until he is positive he’s missed work.

He slams the door behind him, throws his keys on the table, and screams.
On the way back to his apartment (after a quick call to work, citing a stomach bug as the reason for his absence) Kurt finally sorts his feelings into manageable piles. The rush of happiness he felt when he saw Blaine gets put into a box labeled “Just Do Not Go There” along with the way his heart had thrummed at the idea that maybe if he’d turned his head, Kurt would be able to see his eyes again, finally. He places the remembered heartbreak in the box labeled “How Blaine Broke Our Heart” (which was a very full box indeed) and the irrational anger into “How Do We Hate Blaine? Let Us Count The Ways” box. He then takes a deep breath, steels himself in the back of the cab, tips over those two boxes and lets himself go crazy.
By the time he reaches his apartment he’s plotted his own demise and Blaine’s many times over, has made plans to leave the country and become a hermit in India, and has thoroughly found himself back in the exact same headspace Blaine had left him in ten years ago.
Which is why he screams.
He screams, then he yells, “Fuck you!” and then he collapses on his bed sobbing madly.
It’s all back, and Kurt could not be more pissed off and disappointed to have been torn apart so completely by just seeing Blaine. Torn apart again.
He reaches into his bedside table drawer, pushing the condoms and lube aside, rummaging to find something very specific. He feels it, the soft fabric, washed clean of his blood by accident but still smelling very faintly of Blaine, and pulls it out. He pulls it up to his face and falls asleep.

When he wakes up it’s dark, and he feels like complete shit. He sends a group message.
To [New Directions]: Just saw Blaine on a street here. He didn’t see me. Feel like I did back then. SOS.
There is no reason for his friends from McKinley to know Blaine’s name. They’d never met him, never seen photos of him and Kurt never even allowed them to watch the Warblers perform. But they knew all about Blaine.
They knew how Kurt and he had met. They knew his favourite colour. They knew he’d always wanted to be a musician. And they knew that he had broken Kurt heart.
They had seen it first hand. Kurt was broken when they met him. Just a pale skinned waif of a boy who walked down the halls with his head down and flinched when anyone spoke to him. It wasn’t that Kurt had reason to be fearful of anybody at McKinley, it was just that he didn’t want the people around him to see who he was. It took him months to be okay snd secure and comfortable enough in the New Directions to even admit he was gay. The admission was met with a lot of shrugging, "so what?"s and even one "Why didn't you tell us before?"
That was the question that broke him and cemented his friendship with all of them, he thinks when he looks back. Nothing about how he could bear being gay, or demands that he leave the Glee club. Instead there was just that question, a question that said "yes, we knew, and we're all upset you didn't trust us earlier". Kurt had broken down and sobbed on the floor, still slick with the sweat from the earlier rehearsal. It was then that he told them about Blaine. Through hiccups and fits of hysteria, he told them about his ex-boyfriend who inexplicably kissed him and then let his leave once he found out Kurt was gay and how he thought if the person who meant most to him in the entire world could abandon him because of his sexuality, what was stopping a bunch of relative strangers from doing it?
They had soothed him with murmurs then, and now, they soothed him with messages.

From Brit Brit: We had a rainbow over here. Did rainbows appear because you were in the same city again?
From Cedes: Boy, please tell me you aren't crying into your pillow right now or so help me i will shove it down your throat. Forget him!
From Puck: Do I need to bash him up?
From Finn: But you didn't talk to him, right? What is the problem then?
From Rachel: I completely understand. That's how I used to feel when I saw your brother with Quinn. Try to channel all that emotion into a song; it's about time the world hears your countertenor. Maybe a duet is in order....
From Santana: Go get drunk. Call me when you are appropriately wasted. Man up.

He read through them, giggling, snorting and rolling his eyes at the appropriate times. Santana’s messages stuck with him though. Kurt Hummel rarely drank - he found it usually resulted in him waking up in bed with a stranger with his pants flung on a nearby tree - but there was something ridiculously appealing about losing his mind (and his pants) tonight and burning the image of Blaine Anderson forever from his retinas.
He sent a quick “will do” message to Santana, grabbed his coat and headed out to a bar he had heard about from a couple of his friends.
He should have gone to another bar.