A loud thump and a pained voice was all it took to startle Kurt and make him return to earth from his daydreams. He looked down from the stands of the Quidditch stadium to see the sixth year Hufflepuff, captain of their house team and Quidditch mastermind Blaine Anderson sitting on the freshly cut grass, accompanied by his exclusively fantastic and expensive broomstick.

And not that it was important at all, the boy Kurt Hummel, the sixth year Slytherin and the seeker of the Slytherin house team, had secretly had a crush on for two years.

Well, technically he had secretly had a crush on him for a year. The last year Santana, the only Slytherin he could actually call somewhat a friend of his, found out and hadn’t hesitated reminding him of that every chance she got ever since.

If anyone else from Kurt's house knew that he was lusting over a Hufflepuff, he would have already been publicly scolded for it. Possibly executed – who knew, right?

Now, having the dark haired boy sitting on the field holding his knee with a miserable expression framing his features, a massive part of him wanted to run down and help him all he could.

The other highly more rational side of him just wanted to vanish from the scene and leave his rival there to figure out his issues on his own.

"God dammit" Kurt muttered under his breath, cursing the irrationalness taking over as he briskly walked down the wooden stairs that were making incredibly loud cracking noises under his feet all the way down.

The boy in the canary yellow robe didn't seem to hear the sound though. He was rubbing circles around his left knee with his teeth gritted and brows furrowed.

"Your pride got hurt, Anderson?" Was the first thing to escape the Slytherin's mouth when he was in hearing distance of Blaine.

Blaine sighed, clearly biting his tongue before turning to look at Kurt, who was mentally slapping himself square in the face.

You couldn't have been any ruder, could you? He thought to himself, trying his hardest not to show his inner shenanigans to the Hufflepuff Quidditch captain.

"Thank you for showing your concern, Hummel - But no, I did not hurt my pride. However, I bet your teammates seeing you in here with me would hurt yours." He said, slicking back his neatly gelled down dark hair and not taking his eyes off his knee.

Kurt just shook his head, watching as the boy tried to get up from the grass on only one foot.

"That looks like it's going to cost you the other knee, as well." He said, walking behind Blaine to support him by wrapping his arms around his waist. Without listening to whatever complaints the shorter boy surely had about the assistance, he helped him up.

"Thank you." Blaine said quietly, dusting off his robe and white pants that were surely grass stained. He sounded defeated, which was ridiculous and made Kurt's chest ache from what he convinced himself was from Blaine leaning on that exact part of his body very lightly.

"No need. There should be a first aid kit in the dressing rooms." Kurt said, switching the placing of his arms from Blaine's waist alone to having one on his waist and one around his shoulders. He stepped next to him and started to walk him towards the boys' dressing room.

"Wait. Should be?"

"Sebastian has more and less purposefully been pushed off of his broom and got hit by a quaffle so many times in matches and training that they might've run out of first aid equipment in the dressing rooms. We'll find out."

Blaine chuckled, knowing that he maybe shouldn't have.

"It's hilarious how he thinks so highly of himself that he just assumes everyone else does so too, when in reality, every soul in this school despises him." Kurt said, answering a question Blaine would've asked if he wasn't the kindest, most charming human being on the earth - and a Hufflepuff.

"You too, though?" The Hufflepuff asked, equal bits amused and confused.

"I mean, he's captain of our Quidditch team, so I can't really talk too much crap about him behind his back-" He said, waiting for Blaine to open the dressing room door when they finally reached there. "But feel free to ask Santana for the list of nicknames we have come up with for him."

Kurt watched Blaine wince at the contact of his hurt knee and the bench closest to the door. He breathed in sharp through his nose before sitting down with the help of Kurt's supporting arms.

"Careful." Kurt said quietly, watching Blaine struggle with placing his knee on the bench next to him because of the discomfort, and surprising himself as well as Blaine with that.

Surely, the Hufflepuff looked up to the taller boy, who blushed a light pink.

"Ah, yeah- uhm, the first aid kit." He remembered for his very own relief and sprinted out the wide space to the bathroom where he knew they had last left the equipment.

Blaine ducked his head and bit his lower lip to stop himself from smiling. He had no reason for that. Besides the fact that the boy from Slytherin he had been desperately crushing on for several years was suddenly helping him with his almost as sudden Quidditch related injury.

A few minutes later Kurt emerged from the bathroom with the screaming red first aid kit.

"I could've just used magic." Blaine quietly protested when Kurt sat by him, a bandage and a tube of ice gel in hand.

Kurt shot him a somewhat cold, somewhat compassionate look. "Really? Where's your wand?"

Blaine leaned forward ever so slightly to reach the side of his boot he usually kept his wand in. It wasn't there because - Oh, right.

"They banned them from the stadium. I totally forgot."

"And besides, you will go to the Hospital Wing right after this. They will actually heal it. This is just until then" Kurt said, and again, only noticing what he had said afterwards with Blaine’s sparkling eyes on him.

His mouth and brain clearly weren't on the same page. Get it together now, Hummel.

"Slytherin is playing Hufflepuff in two weeks. You're the Hufflepuff captain and there would be a motive for me, as a player of Slytherin, to just leave you here with your injury and that way make sure you can't play. However, it wouldn't be as much fun to win if your team wasn't in their best condition, their leader included." Kurt said, wanting to pat himself on the back for such high class reasoning. Only he was trying to explain that to himself just as much as he was trying to explain it to Blaine.

"Sure." The Hufflepuff said, not paying much attention to Kurt and seemingly more to the pain in his knee as he rolled the white pants that belonged to the Quidditch uniform up to above his knee.

Kurt squeezed some of the bright blue gel out of the ice gel tube and glanced at Blaine, who had his both hands covering his face.

"This can sting a little bit, but I swear it feels better after a few minutes." He said softly and started spreading the gel on the area Blaine had injured. The second his fingertips touched the bruising skin of his knee, he felt like an entire zoo of butterflies entered his stomach.

He told himself countless of times to stop and to act like a rational human being, and that the tingling feeling on his fingertips had nothing to do with Blaine but the icy cold gel. That was no help, though. Kurt spread the last bits of gel from his fingers on the back of Blaine's knee just in case and before his brain caught up with his actions he realized he’d been holding the boy’s knee in his cold hands for possibly a dozen uncomfortable seconds. Kurt shot up from the bench beside the boy instantly and went to wash his hands off of the gel without a word.

When he was out of sight, Blaine let out a much deeper breath than what he had registered holding in. It made no sense. His knee was stinging in pain as well as in the effect of the ice gel, but he hadn't felt so strongly towards the boy from Slytherin ever. Even considering that he had had the biggest case of heart eyes for him for two years and they'd been enemies on the field for twice as long, meaning that there weren’t all that many things on the range of emotions he hadn’t felt towards Kurt Hummel.

You have to stop that, he told himself. You are overreacting. Surely it’s just the pain – That’s it, the pain’s making you irrational.  

Kurt came back with the bandage and tied it around Blaine's knee effortlessly in a heartbeat.

Blaine only looked at him with wide eyes.

"My stepmother's a nurse." Kurt explained hurriedly, tossing the rest of the bandage back in the box and returning it to its place.

Blaine touched the slightly worn off bandage around his knee, wincing, but not as hard as before it was there.

"Thank you." The Hufflepuff said so genuinely it managed to tie Kurt's stomach up in knots and made his heart flutter so much it felt like it could just fly right out of his chest.

He cleared his throat and nodded, unable to help smiling a little. "Still no need. I'll walk you to the castle."

"Yeah." Blaine said, much more breathless than intended. “Okay.”