“So, do you have an idea why you started to feel this way again?”

Blaine shrugs, thumb smoothing over the edge of the desk. Dr Marissa keeps his eyes trained on Blaine's face and Blaine wonders whether it's a deliberate move to intimidate him, or whether he just gets intimidated way too easily.

“I s'pose I just started to feel sort of…pointless again.” He tries to explain it, but doesn't know how to put it into words. It's so simple, yet so hard to explain.

“Did you start to feel lonely again?”

Blaine wants to query the ‘again', the word offending him for some reason he can't place. He doesn't mention it.

“Sort of…But it's not like people have stopped talking to me or anything—it's not like last time.”

“Ok,” Dr Marissa nods in apparent understanding and writes something down. “And you're still talking to Kurt each night?”

“Yes.” Blaine answers truthfully. It's not Kurt's fault that Blaine is clingy and needs more than a tinny voice down a phone line, more than a few guilty glances at a Facebook page that no longer contains him. How many times has he trawled through photos of Kurt with various groups of people at dance practice, or out in some club, or, once, squeezed onto Kurt's couch, one particular guy in too many of them, his hand too often on Kurt's shoulder, Kurt's smile a little too happy for Blaine's liking? God, he's so pathetic.

“And your father…?”

Blaine snorts, glancing away. “Is still my father. I don't know, he stays out of my way mainly, but he's less confrontational about his dislike, I guess.”

“Hmm…So it's safe to say you're not really looking forward to Christmas?”

Thunk. Dr Marissa hits the nail on the head with such casualness; Blaine's shrugged reply seems inelegant in comparison.

“Is the prospect of spending Christmas with your father making you feel like this? Is it at least a part of the reason?”

“I don't—I mean, I've survived Christmas with him for eighteen years—sixteen actually; he's been away for the last two, supposedly on urgent business.”

Avoiding your gay son can be very pressing during the holiday season, he adds inside his head.

“Is Kurt coming home for the holiday?”

“Nope.” Blaine says, forces himself to sound nonchalant, but Dr Marissa has put his pen down, fingers clasped over the desk in his battle position.

“Did you think that he would?”

“Maybe. Don't know why though.”

“I'm sure he wanted to.” Dr Marissa says reasonably. Why can't Blaine be reasonable like that?

“I don't blame him.” He feels the need to clarify this; it isn't Kurt's fault that Blaine needs other people's lives to revolve around him.

“Really? I'd be pretty mad at him if I were in your position. He presumably knew you were looking forward to seeing him again?”

“Well, yes, but he has to work. He's already had to drop everything for me once this year.”

“He's also dropped you for everything else before.”

“He didn't ‘drop me'!” Blaine snaps and then realises he's raised his voice and draws his eyebrows together as if they'll pull everything back inside of him. “He just got a life outside of stupid Ohio and I couldn't accept that. It was my problem, not his—it still is.”

“I don't think it's unreasonable to expect to see him over the holidays.”

“He has to work, it's not—none of this is Kurt's fault, okay?”

Dr Marissa holds his hands up in a gesture of placation and picks up his pen; Blaine wonders why he's rearming when he just surrendered.

“Would you maybe consider a change of scene?” Dr Marissa changes tack. “Do you think your parents would mind going away over Christmas? Or maybe you could go and stay with some other relatives?”

“I'm not sure—“

“—How about your brother? You said he lives in LA, right?”

“Yeah, but…” He trails off, thinks about it for a moment. Would it really be so bad to spend a few days on the west coast with Cooper? “Yeah, maybe.”

Dr Marissa smiles. “Ok, well here's what we're going to do. I'll give you some time to think about it and if you decide it's something you want to do, I'll recommend it to your parents. Hard to refuse doctor's orders and all that.”

Blaine smiles back hesitantly; it's nice to be conspirators with someone, even if you barely know them.

xxx

The next day, he somehow finds himself sat at the kitchen table, listening anxiously as his mom arranges for him to go and stay with Cooper for a week, her voice genuinely chirpy as she talks to her favourite son. When she says her goodbye twenty minutes later—apparently it had taken some persuading—she gives Blaine a stupid little thumbs-up.

“There you go, sweetie, you're off to sunny California!” She gives him an awkward sideways hug, ignoring the fact that Blaine doesn't return it. He manages a half-smile, though. It might not be Kurt, but it's also not Ohio, and it makes him actually look forward to Christmas for the first time since Kurt gave him the news.

Which is why, when Cooper rings him a week before school ends to tell him that he's managed to get a role in some new indie film and has to go to Canada to film straight away, Blaine feels disappointed. His Christmas plans have fallen through again because, of course, he can't be trusted to stay in LA by himself—he might throw himself off the Hollywood sign or something.

Blaine ignores the, ‘I'm really sorry, Squirt. Maybe you could come in the spring instead?”, and hangs up without a goodbye. It's so typical of his brother, to put himself first and ignore everything else. Except, Blaine reasons, you do the exact same thing, expecting Kurt and Cooper to rework their lives to fit you.  

He tells his mom that there's been a change of plan and resolves to stop putting people in awkward positions. At least he has a roof over his head and food in his stomach this Christmas; the least he can do is endure it all without complaint. It's not the end of the world, Blaine, because the world doesn't revolve around you.

So why does it feel like he's drifting high above it, looking down on the greeny-blue orb, but unable to make it into the surrounding atmosphere? It's as if each time he tries to float downwards, he's bounced back from some invisible boundary. He's a character in a video game, continually trying to walk back the way he's come even though the screen won't let him. Well, he's not going to do that anymore; from now on he's going to keep moving in the direction he's supposed to.

He does his English homework ahead of schedule and offers to get groceries for his mom, who smiles as she hands him the list like he's just won a Nobel Prize. At least food shopping will distract him for a while; God knows he needs all the distractions he can get.