The first few days after Blaine returned from New York were the worst. Kurt wouldn't respond to his texts, and his heart felt like it was bleeding out of his chest. He didn't really eat or sleep; he went through the motions of his day at school, but he barely spoke and no one really noticed.

Finn hadn't tried to talk to him about Kurt since that first day back. No one else seemed to know or care what had happened while he was in New York. Or maybe they did. Because no one asked about Kurt.

It should have made him feel worse, but the truth was, being invisible felt better than having to try. Living with the pain had become a hobby. He had destroyed the one good thing in his life and now the pain was the only thing holding him together.

He felt broken. But even worse, he knew he had broken Kurt's heart. And he'd never forgive himself for that.

It was about two weeks before anyone really bothered to reach him and it happened almost by accident. Tina always looked like she wanted to say something, but she never did. Until a random Wednesday afternoon after glee practice. It wasn't even her words that were the important ones; they were just the catalyst.

"You have a flat tire," she said pointing at his car, and then she walked away.

Blaine walked around to the driver's side, and sure enough, his front tire was completely flat.

He didn't even think before he dialed; it was almost reflex. He nearly threw his phone across the parking lot when he heard Burt Hummel's voice answer "Hummel Tires and Lube."

"Um, hi…Burt. It's Blaine," he said.

"Yes?"

"…Anderson."

"I assumed."

"Shouldn't—I mean, I thought you'd be in Washington."

"Congress isn't in session right now," he said.

"Oh."

Blaine felt like he had when he had asked Burt to talk to Kurt about sex. The tone of his voice over the phone was the same as it had been when he told Blaine he was overstepping. Blaine didn't know whether to laugh or cry. It was the kind of full-circle moment that should have some meaning. He couldn't find it.

"Did you want something?" Burt asked. "It's kind of a zoo around here."

"Oh yeah…right," Blaine said. "I uh…have a flat tire. I just thought maybe Mac could…"

"You at the school?" he asked.

"Yes," Blaine replied, barely able to speak. Why had he called his ex-boyfriend's dad for help? There were a dozen tire shops in Lima. Did he have a death wish?

"I'll be there in five," Burt said and hung up.

Blaine was left standing in the parking lot staring at his phone. His hands shaking, his pulse quickening as he panicked. He had cheated on Kurt, and surely Burt knew that by now. He felt sick.

Unexpectedly, Burt said nothing when he pulled up in his truck. He hopped down, checked out the tire, grabbed his jack and went to work swapping the flat for the spare. No words were exchanged.

Blaine stood next to the car and just breathed. In. Out. In. Out. He counted the leaves littering the ground. He dug his heel in the mud.

Burt's breath was visible in the cold, and Blaine realized he was simply breathing too. Blaine watched him work. He was precise, his hands practiced and worn. Even his stint in Washington hadn't slowed his movements. There was something comforting about that. Like there are some things that never change.

And then he was done. Burt stood up and hefted Blaine's tire into his truck.

"Follow me back to the shop and I'll get a new tire put on for you."

"Thanks," Blaine said.

Burt surveyed him for a moment. His eyes narrowed; he looked like he wanted to tell Blaine off. That would be okay. Someone should hate him; someone should yell. He fucked it all up. Why didn't anyone care?

"You okay, kid?" Burt said, dusting off his jeans and putting his jack back in the truck. A simple question. But like so many things in life, the simplest phrases often mean the most.

Blaine tried to speak. Instead he cried. Deep wracking sobs that shook his body, coming out in waves of anguish and despair, choking him and releasing the strangle hold on his heart all at once. Everything he had been feeling, holding in, hoarding, since he got back from New York left his body in that moment.

Burt didn't speak. He just reached out and put a hand on Blaine's shoulder. The weight of it was too much. Blaine wanted the earth to swallow him whole. That simple touch somehow hurt worse than the guilt. Blaine doubled over, clutching his stomach as he tried to swallow the bile that was rising up in his throat.

He felt separate from his body, like his compact frame was just a shell that he no longer inhabited.

Burt just let him cry. And when the tears subsided and his sobs quieted, Burt towed Blaine's car to the shop. They didn't speak again. Burt never asked him if he was okay. Somehow he knew that Blaine didn't want to talk.

When his tire was changed, he thanked Burt and left. They didn't discuss Blaine's outburst and neither of them mentioned Kurt.

The next time Blaine ran into Burt, he was more composed, but it didn't hurt any less. He was grabbing coffee on a Saturday afternoon, not at the Lima Bean, just a hole-in-the-wall diner that looked like it predated Lima itself. He couldn't face the brightly lit interior of the Lima Bean without Kurt, and he picked this particular place because of its lack of patrons under the age of forty. He could just sit and drink his coffee and stare out over the bleak Ohio landscape.

He never ran into anyone he knew, but the universe was a stupidly small place sometimes. If there was a god, he appreciated the irony of Blaine running into the only person over forty in town whom he couldn't face.

"I thought you kids liked all those frou frou mochachino-frappa-whatsits," a familiar voice said.

Blaine looked up from his chipped ceramic coffee mug to see the kind, warm face of Burt Hummel. At least this time he was smiling.

"I prefer my coffee the old-fashioned way," Blaine said. "Black and loaded with sugar."

"Good thing," Burt said, taking the seat on the other side of Blaine's booth. "The coffee here tastes like elephant piss."

Blaine laughed. It was more like a tiny puff of amused air escaping his lips, but it was more than he had done in weeks. It cracked through something cold and icy that had formed around his heart, and he realized that maybe he and Burt had at least one thing in common. Kurt would never be a part of their lives the way he had before. The thought was comforting and horrible all at once.

"I'm sorry about the other day," he said. "I'm sure you don't want anything to do with me."

"Look, I'm not gonna lie. You hurt my kid…bad. I can't just forget that, you know."

Blaine nodded. "Mr. Hummel, I'm sor—"

"I'm not finished," he said. "I can't forget it, but that doesn't mean I'm not worried about you. Finn said you haven't been yourself. Do you have anyone you can talk to?"

Blaine shook his head slowly. Kurt had been his closest friend, and his family was no help.

"You should talk to someone, you know. It's not good to keep everything bottled up. When Kurt was being bullied, he wanted to protect me by not telling me. And well, you know how that turned out."

He did. Oh, how he did.

But in that moment he didn't think about Karofsky or death threats or even Kurt bearing bruises from all those locker checks. No, instead he thought about how those events set in motion the best year and a half of his life. And how he had thrown it all away.

When Blaine didn't answer, Burt continued.

"You and Kurt, you're the kind of guys who always kind of leave the important things unsaid … at least until you can't stand it anymore. Am I right?"

Blaine nodded. "Usually we sing about it."

Burt chuckled. "Sounds familiar," he said. "Well, maybe it's time you changed that. Dealt with things more directly."

Blaine began running into Burt about once a week after that. At first it seemed random, but it happened too regularly to be pure coincidence. Sometimes he would ask Blaine about school, glee, little things really. Once he asked if Blaine regretted leaving Dalton. He answered truthfully: sometimes, but not because of Kurt. Because it had been something to call his own. Blaine asked him about Congress, the tire shop, Carole, but never Kurt.

Burt seemed to know the subject was the one thing Blaine needed to bring up on his own. But he never did. Until about three months after the breakup when Blaine found himself standing on the Hummels' doorstep, a box of Kurt's things — four sweaters, two bow ties, a mountain of sheet music and so many things Blaine no longer felt belonged in his possession — in his hands. He wished he could put his heart in the box. It didn't feel like it belonged to him anymore. He settled for the photos from the inside of his locker.

"Blaine," Burt said, swinging the door wide. "What are you–?"

"I had some things that were Kurt's," he said, holding the box up higher. "I just wanted to return them."

Burt smiled sadly, and nodded his head. "Come in," he said, taking the box from Blaine's hands.

He felt the weight of the box leave his arms, and something else went with it. He felt lighter somehow. Like he'd let that part of Kurt he'd held captive fly free. It felt surprisingly good.

"I really should get going," Blaine said. He really didn't want to set foot in a house that held so many memories, most of them now painful.

Burt nodded. He seemed to understand, and he didn't push. He shifted the box in his arms to free one hand, which he placed on Blaine's shoulder the same way he had that first time in the parking lot of McKinley. It didn't hurt the way it did before. Today it was a comfort.

"It's not the end of the world, you know," he said. "Sure it feels like that now, but it won't always feel that way. Look, I don't know what's going to happen with you and Kurt, but I know my kid. And once he loves someone, he doesn't stop. It's who he is. You two may never get back together, but he will never stop loving you."

Blaine looked up at him, fresh tears pooling in his eyes.

"I don't deserve it," he said.

"If Kurt loves you, you deserve it," Burt said. "He doesn't take that word lightly."

"Neither do I," Blaine said.

"I know."

"Do you think he'll ever forgive me?" Blaine asked, unsure of what he wanted the answer to be.

"I think first you need to forgive yourself."

His shoulders sagged, causing Burt's hand to fall.

"Look, kid," Burt said. "I don't know the details of what happened with you and Kurt, and I don't want to know. But… I do know you deserve better than stupid, meaningless sex. Did Kurt ever tell you about me giving him the sex talk? The one you asked me to?"

Blaine's eyes went wide. Of course Kurt had told him. He was mortified that his dad had brought it up. Blaine had told him he was lucky his dad cared that much.

"He told me I matter, and then he handed me some pamphlets," Kurt said. "It was like a bad after school special."

"You matter too, Blaine."

That night when he couldn't sleep, Blaine stared at the ceiling and tried to remember what it was like to be loved by Kurt. What it felt like to matter.

His mind wandered to the strangest moments, not even the monumental ones really. Singing "Baby It's Cold Outside" under the pretense of practicing. People watching in the mall so Kurt could criticize Lima's fashion-impaired. Sharing biscotti and dreams over coffee. It all felt too big and too small in his memories. Like every moment mattered too much and not enough. He wished he'd savored the little things more and appreciated the big things as if they were even bigger.

Every moment felt burned onto his heart; Kurt's monogram etched in his veins.

And then he thought about falling in love, the way it happened slowly, but how he later realized he had fallen in love right away; it just took him months to realize it. He remembered trying to deny his feelings for Kurt, telling himself Kurt wasn't ready, but secretly knowing Kurt was far too good for him. But then he remembered the moment he knew, really knew, Kurt was his. That they were both flawed, imperfect, yet perfect for each other.

Watching Kurt sing "Blackbird" to mourn Pavarotti was a moment for Blaine — he hadn't lied about that — but it was not the moment where he fell in love. No, that happened on a staircase when a beautiful boy, who really was the most horrible spy, stopped and asked Blaine a simple question.

No, Kurt singing about his grief over a dead canary was the moment he knew Kurt was flawed, human, someone Blaine could stand a chance with. "Oh there you are. I've been looking for you forever."

And now here he was again, having picked himself up from the depths of despair and gently taken Kurt down from a wobbly pedestal and brought them face to face once more.

He was ready to move forward. He was flawed, but it was okay because so is everyone else…even perfectly imperfect Kurt.

At 3:37 a.m., his phone buzzed with a new message that should have shocked him but didn't because it just felt right.

Kurt:
Can you believe Moschino brought back that awful polka dot print for their spring line?

He couldn't make his fingers move fast enough across the screen as he typed out a reply.

Blaine:
The one that looked like they were drawn on with magic marker and then got left out in the rain?

He had so much he wanted to say, but maybe this was a start. A simple conversation. The simplest of things that was always easy for them, until it wasn't.

Kurt:
The very one. It's awful. We're doing an entire feature on it in February. My eyes are bleeding.

Blaine:
I bet you can make it work.

Kurt:
You know, I'm sure we can.

Blaine tried not to think too hard about Kurt's meaning, but they always left the most important things unsaid. Wasn't that what Burt had said? Maybe now was the time to grow up and change the future. Say the simple things that were anything but.

Blaine:
It's really good to hear from you.

Kurt:
Let's just take this slow, okay?

Blaine:
Okay. But I'm still Billy Crystal.