“Oh my God! Are you alright?” Kurt waves away his cab and rushes the stairs, reaching them just as his neighbor from 4B hits the last one, landing square on his tailbone.

“Y-yeah,” the man says, bringing a shaking hand to his head. “I … I th-think s-so.”

“Ooo, stuttering,” Kurt murmurs. “That’s not a good sign. Unless you’re a stutterer. Do you normally stutter?”

“Uh … n-no. N-not that I kn-know of.”

“Ew. Okey …” Kurt makes a few indecisive hand gestures, then says, “Here, let me help you.”

“Th-thank you.” The man groans, humiliation sneaking in to overshadow his grunt of pain. “I … I think I’m okay. I just ouch!”

“Okay” – Kurt freezes mid-hoist, hands underneath the man’s arms – “where ouch? What hurts?”

“M-my … my leg. I th-think … it might be broken.”

“Oh, God.” Kurt feels a little queasy. He’s not a Boy Scout, never has been, and not because of the tacky uniforms. Sprains, he can deal with, but blood, he turns green. And breaks … that’s his cue to vomit. “Are you sure?”

The man takes a deep breath, braces himself, then tries to put weight on his left leg. He immediately crumbles, nodding his head. “Yup, yup, pretty sure.”

“Alright,” Kurt says, his heart slamming in his chest while he tries to think up a way to help this man. Kurt manages to slide him the last half step to the stairs and collapses on the bottom stoop … with the man sitting almost completely in his lap. “Let me call 9-1-1.”

“Thank you. I … I don’t think I can reach my phone.”

“No problem,” Kurt says, phone already in hand and dialing. “I’ve got it.”

The man looks back at Kurt. He comes face to face with him immediately considering their close proximity, and nervously laughs. “Uh, at least it was an impressive fall, right?”

“I know!” Kurt says too brightly, struck by the same unavoidable nervousness. “You hit that ice like an Olympic gold medalist, but I thought for sure you were going to stick the landing.”

“I think you’ve just mashed together two different sports, but I’ll take that as a compliment.”

“I hail from a show choir. Mashups are what we do.”

“That’s quite the coincidence, as I, too, am show choir folk.”

“Oh! Well, that’s … Hi! My name is Kurt Hummel,” Kurt suddenly yells into the phone. “I’m at 399 Bleecker Street, Brooklyn, and my neighbor thinks he has a broken leg.”

“Blaine,” the man says into the phone, but for Kurt, not the operator. “My name … my name’s Blaine Anderson.”

“Yes, Blaine Anderson,” Kurt repeats. “He fell down the stairs. Well, yeah, I’d say he’s comfortable. He’s kind of lying on top of me at the moment.” Kurt feels Blaine laugh interspersed by tiny hisses of pain. “My number? It’s 419-555-0101. Don’t move him till the ambulance gets here? O-kay, I think I can handle that …”

Blaine laughs again, louder, then starts to hiccup.

“Oh, no. What’s wrong?” Kurt asks, petrified that his Armani loafers are about to meet an undignified end. “You’re not going to throw up, are you?”

“No,” Blaine says. “I was just thinking … you don’t believe in signs, do you?”

“I believe in them wholeheartedly,” Kurt says. “In fact, I believe that management should have put one at the top of the stairs as fair warning. It’s been raining for weeks! With the temperature dropping the way it has, of course everything was going to freeze over, and I haven’t seen a speck of salt. You should sue.”

“No, no, I mean …” Blaine sighs, and Kurt thinks Blaine’s about to pass out, but he says, “I’ve seen you on your way to work and on your way to school. I’ve heard you practicing next door, and I … I’ve wanted to ask you out for coffee a dozen times …”

Kurt watches Blaine’s cheeks turn red as he speaks, and whether that’s shyness or cold or a side-effect on an oncoming concussion, Kurt doesn’t know … but it makes his racing heart race just a little bit faster.

“In fact, I was thinking of asking you out today, but at the last second, I chickened out. I just … stood at the top of the steps and watched you hail a cab. I even told my roommate that today was the day, but …”

Kurt wants to say that he noticed Blaine, too. And yes, maybe he’s seen him once or twice in the hallway, but the truth is Kurt’s been wrapped up too tight in everything going on the past few months to see much outside of his own bubble of school-work-homework-sleep to notice.

But he sure as heck notices now.

And maybe these aren’t the greatest circumstances, but if they get one thing out of meeting this way, it’ll be one hell of a story.

“I don’t believe in signs,” Kurt confesses, “and I’m not too thrilled that you broke your leg, but it’s nice to meet you, Blaine.”

Blaine looks at Kurt with a wavering smile and blurry eyes.

“It’s nice to finally meet you, Kurt.”

***

“You broke his leg to get us together!?”

Santana tosses her hair over her shoulder, entirely unfazed by Kurt’s accusation, or the high screechy voice that accompanies it.

“Technically, I didn’t break his leg. Okay? The fall broke his leg,” she says, taking a sip of her white wine spritzer. She spots an aghast Kurt over the rim of her glass and rolls her eyes. “Look, after you and your hag kicked me out onto the cold, cruel city streets, Blaine was nice enough to invite me to stay with him.”

“I was going to work,” Blaine cuts in. “She walked into my apartment with her pillow and her comforter and said, and I quote, I live here now.”

“That was my pillow,” Kurt mutters.

“And my comforter,” Rachel adds.

“Whatever,” Santana continues. “I had to put up with his moping around for months, Kurt - watching you from the window, pining over you while you dated that British guy. We could hear you and Mr. Downtown Abbey having sex through the walls. That really hit him hard. He gained, like, fifty pounds.”

“Fifteen,” Blaine corrects, looking away when Kurt gasps. In the time they’ve been together, Blaine may have neglected to mention that part.

“It was horrible … and pathetic.” Santana makes a face. “Frankly, it was giving me a rash.”

“Thanks, Santana,” Blaine says.

“You’re welcome. Anyway, I just … gave him a little push.”

“Down a flight of ice-covered stairs!”

“It worked, didn’t it? I mean, which wedding anniversary is this one again?”

Blaine looks at Kurt, watching his husband’s face go from indignant pink to bury-me-under-the-porch red. “The … uh …” Kurt mumbles a number that even Blaine can’t make out, and he knows the answer to the question.

“I’m … I’m sorry.” She leans closer with a hand cupping her ear. “I can’t hear you. What was that?”

Kurt breaks. “The fifth! Alright? The fifth! Are you happy now?”

The rest of Kurt and Blaine’s friends and family, gathered around the dinner table, catch a sudden onset of the guffaws.

Santana grins into her drink. “Ecstatic.”