A/N: yes, i realize that it is potentially quite risky posting a blaine/someone-who-is-not-kurt fic, but please have an open mind! jeremiah, despite SHOOTING BLAINE DOWN, had better be back because this aint over! they are ridiculously cute, imo :p anyway, enjoy! (also, this was written before SLLS, but after the episode spoilers were released.)

You Make me Sick, and I'm not Leaving

Jeremiah is sort of standing, shuffling his feet and idly playing with the wooden bead on the bracelet that he wears around his left wrist. He hopes he doesn't look nervous, but he probably does. He's never been able to cope well with stress.

And Blaine is wearing loafers -like who the hell is this kid anyway?- and an outfit that isn't quite his uniform, but some more casual variation of it. He looks equally, if not, more nervous.

They get their coffees separately and sit down at a table that's far away from the door, which is different, because they usually sit close to the big window. Jeremiah figures pretty much everything is different now, though.

Neither of them speak for a while. It's pretty tense, actually. Not the kind of tense like at the beginning, when they were both excited and secretly giddy and just couldn't find the words. This is the kind of tense where Blaine looks like he's ready to get up and run, and Jeremiah is prepared to chase him, but also prepared to lay down and die right there from some fucked up version of embarrassment.

"I'm not entirely mad." He whispers finally, and he means it. "I don't know. This is kind of new for me."

Blaine gets a forlorn look on his face. "I'm sorry." He says breathily, and repeats, "I'm so sorry. It's new for me too."

Jeremiah runs a hand through his hair. His coffee is still cooling down, and he's still so nervous he's a little jumpy around the edges. "And... I'm not saying I want to stop seeing you; it's not that." He honestly can't believe himself sometimes. "Blaine, I'm jobless now. I need money for tuition."

The kid sighs and holds his face in his hands. "I never intended for it to be so poorly-received." He doesn't look up. "I meant to be, well, romantic."

Starbucks is starting to get a bit more crowded now. People are filing in, laughing hysterically and out of control. They're probably on dates, and maybe they think that he and Blaine are on a date and really, it's not like that. Not entirely. Jeremiah'd only told his sister and a few friends, and then Blaine showed up out of nowhere with his Dalton money blazer and his crazy loafers and if he knew how, Jeremiah would probably kiss the hell out of him.

That dumb kid, with his pseudo-wisdom and brilliant smile that most likely stretches from one end of Ohio to the other. Jeremiah doesn't know what he's going to do now that Blaine's shown up and relentlessly shaken his world, held his hand under the table at a lame Starbucks and serenaded him and got him fired in the same day, but understands that maybe these things take time, especially since they're so horrendously new.

"It could maybe be worse." He muses, for the hell of it.

Blaine laughs, but it's not out of control, so it's nice and kind of endearing. "I wish that were an understatement. Trust me."