Kurt rarely ever wandered too far away from the central New York City. Of course he did when he traveled and his job required that every now and then, but on a typical day in the life of Kurt Hummel, he stayed within a comfortable distance to Central Park and that way his house as well as the Vogue building - the place he primarily worked in.

He lived so dreamily close to all the things his life revolved around that he didn't feel any need to explore the not so pretty and not so crowded sides of the city. He pretty much lived on Broadway, for crying out loud!

Some would say that he was guarded, but Kurt himself just thought he was extremely lucky. If finding his place in the city of his dreams only four years into moving there wasn't extremely lucky, he didn't know what was.

Which was exactly why he was always very strict on saying no to Rachel and Santana whenever they suggested going drinking - because it was always just far enough from the comfort of twinkling marquees and the crowds of people.

Therefore he didn't know what had possessed him to shrug his shoulders and mutter an almost inaudible yes to Rachel, who asked him to join her to go get dinner out one Thursday night.

If Rachel's painfully loud squealing and clapping of hands was anything to go by, he was a fool to believe that there wouldn't be alcohol and unbearable discomfort involved in the next five hours of his life.

-

"Rachel." Kurt said, shooting a piercing look the petite brunette's way who was standing next to him, with their arms linked, in front of a bar the man had never even heard of. "This is your idea of 'dinner'?"

Rachel shook her head, her curled bangs bouncing on her forehead. "No, silly. It's only six. We have plenty of time for dinner. This is a bar." She said, pointing at the door as if she was showing a small child a tree for the first time.

"Yeah, I can see that."

If he was being perfectly honest, the better half of his experiences with alcohol had not been pleasant. Neither had his trips to places in New York where there weren't any tourists around. He wouldn't say he was traumatized, that just sounded a bit too extreme. He was uncomfortable, and the only situation where he was willing to embrace his uncomfort zone was when he was working - designing, singing, dancing. That was the only situation he knew anything good could come out of it.

Clearly the woman could read his face very well, because she tightened her grip on his arm and rested her head on his shoulder. "Come on. Really, I promise we'll have dinner too. I'll pay, even! I want you to give this a try. It's going to be fine."

Kurt ducked his head, scoffing.

"Fine. You have an hour, Berry."

-

56 minutes and about four and a quarter drinks later Kurt pushed up the sleeve of his button-up shirt enough to take a look at his watch, actually seeing the clock for the first time since they'd arrived.

He was sitting by the bar, leaning on it with both of his elbows and watching Rachel give a speech about her resume to a few guys over in the corner. Even after years of being in the business, Rachel still gave this particular self-promoting talk to every other person that she met. These two guys were just lucky to both hear it.

"Rachel!" He shouted from across the room, causing half of the people's eyes to turn his way for a split second. For his and his vocal chords' luck, even Rachel turned around and lifted her eyebrows in question.

"It's been fifty seven minutes Rachel. Let's go."

It was astonishing to both him and Rachel how functioning he still was after downing - let's face it, several too many drinks. The one he promised Rachel he'd have would've been more than enough.
But of course, no. All of a sudden he remembered how his day at work had been kind of tricky and he was out of ideas and hey, his manager still hadn't figured out if there was enough time in his schedule to do that one show on Broadway he'd been asked to do and actually, alcohol tasted kind of good – And just like that he found himself realizing that he deserved a few more drinks.

If he had felt tired an hour ago, that sensation was long gone now. He felt like he could stay awake for twenty four hours straight without sleeping a single second.

Maybe, just maybe, he was a little bit tipsy.

Rachel, on the other hand, was not. She was walking towards him calmly with an empty cocktail glass in hand and a smile on her face, not wobbling an inch on her five inch heels.

"You ready?" She asked, quirking her eyebrow in amusement

Kurt nodded, putting down the glass in his hand, looking very proudly at Rachel to have just done that. "Yup. You got yourself in another show there?"

She chuckled, grabbing Kurt's forearm and supporting him as he got down from the tall bar chair. "They own a theater off-Broadway, so no, not exactly."

Kurt turned to grab his coat from the table, put it on and slipped his arm through Rachel's. Before they stepped out of the door, he turned to look at the two men over his shoulder.

"The blonde is really cute. So you have his number too?"

Rachel bit her tongue in order not to burst out laughing. "Uh, yeah. He has a girlfriend, though. Just so you know."
Kurt scrunched up his nose and squinted his eyes at her. "Which means that you surely thought that he was cute enough to find that out about him, am I right?"

The woman shrugged this comment off, not sure what she was being accused of, if anything at all.

Her plan for the night had changed drastically on the course of it. Whereas a few hours ago she had planned to go have a somewhat relaxing night out, now it seemed that the only thing she needed to do was to get Kurt home safely and get him to drink quite some amounts of water in order to wash the alcohol out of him. He did have work tomorrow, after all, which he had surely already forgotten by now.

"Do you want Italian or Thai?"

The man looked at the brunette, 'offended' written on his forehead.

"Rachel, I hate Thai food."

-

The two of them managed to find an Italian restaurant only a block away and didn't hesitate to go right in.

"Babe. You go get us a table, and I order." Rachel ordered the man, looking him in the eyes. "That okay?"

Kurt furrowed his near to perfection eyebrows. "Yeah, of course. Why wouldn't it be?"

Rachel's eyes widened for a moment, a smile tugging at her lips. Was an oblivious drunk a type of a drunk, or was that just how everybody was? "Yeah. Just go."

"Going!" The man said, turning on his heels to face the area of the restaurant that the tables were scattered around.

What he was faced with wasn't at all what he had expected, and not only because the place was really nice for a place that was so far out of town.

Over at the back of the room, next to the massive glass window, was sitting a man with his hair slicked back with what was obviously a big amount of hair gel. His olive skin was almost glowing in the lighting of the room and all this way Kurt could see his ridiculously long and dark eyelashes leaving gentle shadows on his cheeks as he looked down at the menu on the table. He was wearing a white button-up, a dark gray blazer that left absolutely none of his upper body physique to the imagination and a burgundy color bow-tie, which kind of gave his identity away for Kurt.
Only the fact that he was – well, downright staring at him from across the room, made his breath hitch in his throat and his face heat up.

But wait, he wasn't sober, was he? That would explain it. He could totally blame it on that.

For the second time that night he felt like he wasn't in control of his actions at all, when he started walking across the room towards the man.

When he was about two feet away from the table Blaine was seated on, the man looked up and he breathed in sharply through his nose. His eyes were locked on the other man's and now that they were staring right at him, he definitely felt like he couldn't breathe. His eyes were like honey glistening in the soft lights of the room, and they were exactly like they had been all those years ago. The longer he looked into them, the more he felt like he never wanted to look away.

"Kurt?" The name left his lips after a moment of struggling, a million thoughts whirling through his head. The man sounded surprised, confused and happy at the very same time.

"Blaine." Kurt breathed out, trying to force a wide smile on his face, failing more or less.

"Can you- Can you sit down?" Was what the dark haired man said next, gesturing to the seat opposite his with a smile on his face.

"Yeah, sure." Kurt took the seat with what felt like every inch of his body shaking. Was he one hundred percent sure that this wasn't a dream?

Blaine propped his chin on his palm and leaned on the table with his elbow, looking at Kurt for a good while, taking in all the chances the years had created in him. He still had the perfect everything, basically, from his quaffed hair to his done eyebrows and clothes from designers he'd never heard of.

"You haven't changed at all." He said with a tad distant smile on his face.

Kurt looked up from where he had been intently staring at his hands on his lap only to duck his head after registering what the man had said.

He chuckled lightly, shaking his head. "I was just going to say the same about you. You look great." With his filter long gone, thanks to the alcohol, he of course couldn't settle for such an underestimating adjective like that. "Amazing, really."

It was Blaine's turn to duck his head, biting his lip.

"What are you doing in New York? I mean, I know I heard you say that was your dream all those years ago, but what do you do now? What do you do to afford all those silk bow-ties?"

Blaine laughed, subconsciously fiddling with the fabric of the luxurious bow-tie tied around his neck.

"I sing, I play- various instruments actually, I dance, I act. I get to do it all."

Kurt shook his head, quietly admiring the utterly joyous smile on the man's face on the other side of the table. "That is amazing."

"It really is. And you do fashion, as well as all the things I just listed. Broadway." He smiled knowingly, his eyes sparkling. "I'm not a stalker, either, I swear. Your success is just everywhere."

Kurt felt himself blush a deep shade of red, and he couldn't even blame it on the alcohol. He breathed in deep, then looked back up into Blaine's eyes.

"It feels like High School was so long ago. It has only been four years."

"Yeah. We were singing there four years ago, and now we're getting paid for it in New York City."

They both laughed, heartfelt and fell back into just staring at each other. Kurt's first instinct was to think that that was extremely awkward, but it didn't feel like that at all.

And did he blame that on the alcohol drowned inhibitions of his? Absolutely.

"And you know, I had the biggest crush on you all through High School. I swear-" Kurt was about to start explaining on detail how he had watched the boy with heart eyes every time he'd walked by him and he didn't notice, and how so many times he'd almost asked him out but never had the courage to, until he realized what he was saying.

His eyes widened and his hand flew up to cover his mouth in mortification.

Kurt Hummel, this is why you don't drink, he was yelling at himself inside of his head.

If he'd ever thought of how the moment he told Blaine about his feelings was going to be like – and oh had he thought about that, he certainly hadn't imagined or hoped that it would be like this.

Before Blaine had any time to react to Kurt's alcohol boosted news burst, a tall, brunette man came to the table and put his hand on Blaine's shoulder, squeezing it gently.

"Sorry I'm late. There was so much traffic."

Blaine swallowed and turned back to look at Kurt, an unreadable expression on his face. "Kurt." He said, taking a deep breath, fixing an almost completely successful smile on his face. "This is my boyfriend, Nathaniel."

Of course, Kurt thought, biting his tongue.

The man – Nathaniel, was looking at him with his ridiculous jawline and effortlessly perfect looking hair, and surely, a smile on his face. "Nice to meet you."

He didn't even know who he was and he said that! For god's sake. He needed to get away from the situation he had put himself in.

Kurt smiled like he hadn't just stared at a taken man like he would marry him any minute – and god, like five minutes into the conversation, and certainly like he wasn't under the affection of more than one too many.

"Yeah, you too." He said and nodded, starting to get up from the table just as not gracefully as you could imagine. "I really need to get going. It was nice talking to you, Blaine."

"See you, Kurt." Blaine said after him.

It had been four years and they hadn't seen each other. What in the world made him think that they would get to see each other again like this – or well, in any way?

He had deep inside himself always hoped that they would meet again, having left High School as not necessarily the best of friends, which was really a pity. The biggest one of all time in Kurt's books, actually. They had been best friends for three years and when Kurt graduated and Blaine was only going to be a senior the next year, they cut off all connections. Just like that.

Blaine looked at the tabletop like a confused, lost puppy. He had so much to talk about with Kurt, so much he wanted to know about him now.

Thinking about what the man said about having had a crush on him years ago made his heart beat faster and his head whirl with thoughts of what actually could've been, but he pushed the thoughts very far away instantly.
Blaine did have a feeling (a strong one) that the man wasn't perfectly sober, though, so it could've just been the alcohol talking.

He shook his head in attempt to shake the whole thing out of his mind just in time to hear his boyfriend say that he'll be back from the restrooms in a second.

-

"Can we take that with? Thank you." Kurt asked the cashier from behind Rachel, grabbing her arm.

As the man behind the counter started packing their foods in paper bags, Rachel turned to look at him with her brows raised. "What are you doing?"

"I would really just rather eat somewhere private, I'm not feeling too well. No, I feel like crap and I need to take an Advil bath to shake the headache I will have tomorrow morning and-"

Rachel nodded, taking the bags from the guy and paying before turning back at Kurt. "No, that's fine. Let's go."

"Kurt, wait."

He turned around to be faced by Blaine and his stunning features and a piece of paper in his hand that he handed to Kurt. He turned the paper around and saw the number on it, as well as the little smiley face scribbled next to it.

"I would love to catch up with you." He said, adjusting the lapels of his blazer.

Kurt let out a breath he hadn't registered holding in and nodded. "Okay. I'll text you."

Blaine smiled nearly blindingly, showcasing his bright white teeth. "I'm looking forward to that."

"It's really nice to see you again, Blaine. We all need to catch up!" Rachel piped from behind Kurt, giving him an enthusiastic little wave.

"Hi, Rachel." The shorter man laughed. "I'd love that."

"Amazing."

They left the restaurant and Blaine and his boyfriend, but even through the haze of alcohol in his brain he realized something and it made his heart flutter in a way it really didn't need to. ‘I'm looking forward to that' is something that you say to another person after a first date when discussing a second one. But Blaine had a boyfriend. And judging by how all this made him feel, maybe Kurt's feelings for Blaine had never faded anywhere.