A/N: Alright, so, there are lots of fandom tropes in this one, so let me list them all first. We've got Anderberry siblings (and I gave them both Blaine's homophobic dad, sorry, I just need to weave my blangst in there sometime!), Hummel + Fabray siblings (they've got Burt, because there's no possible way for me to take Burt out and give them horrible parents too, that'd be too cruel!), badboy!Kurt (this is Kurt's facade, he uses it as protection), and sadly, since this also deals with college, you should also know that I chose to keep Blaine a junior (junior gate, never forgive never forget!) And if you're still reading this massively long authors note, I'm very proud of this one, so I hope you give it a chance! Thank you in advance for all who read this.

Quinn walked in to the frozen yogurt shop, sweeping her eyes around the room until she spotted Blaine by the "cheesecake" flavor of yogurt.

He turned around and spotted her. "Quinn!"

"Hi, Blaine," she smiled as she walked up to him. He put down his cup and pecked her on the cheek, then held a spoon inches from her face.

"Try it, it is amazing."

"Does it have your saliva on it?"

"What?"

"Am I going to be licking off of a spoon that you've already licked?"

He smiled widely. "Like you would care, all those hours we spend spooning!"

A breathless laugh and a moment of stare down later, Quinn took the spoon and popped it into her mouth.

"Mm," she cooed. "You were right. This is amazing."

"Told you!" After paying, he grabbed her hand. "Now let's find a place to sit!"

She rolled her eyes, but grinned anyways as he led her to a vacant table in the back of the store. The TVs were back there, and Quinn watched as advertisements for the store flashed across their screens, all green and pink and bright.

Blaine handed her a spoon and swept his hand toward the yogurt. "And now, we shall feast."

"You are such an idiot," she murmured, but took the spoon and scooped a huge chunk of the yogurt out anyways.

"Mhm, but that's why you love me," he beamed back at her.

She froze.

"Er, I mean like. I mean like."

"No, Blaine, you don't have to apologize. I-"

"No. It's okay, really. I'm not going to put you in a situation to say anything until you're ready."

"I-"

"No, really." He took her spoon , scooped up a small bit, and fed it to her; she grinned around the spoon. "You don't have to say anything back. Just enjoy this wonderful yogurt I have gotten for the both of us."

"I don't need to be fed," she intoned ominously, but she could tell Blaine knew she was kidding.

"Oh, hey; look!" He pointed to a couple entering through the door, smiling in what seemed like such a private way at each other.

"How old do you think they are?" Quinn wondered out loud.

"College age, I guess?"

She frowned, which did not escape Blaine's attention.

"Listen, I know you don't want to, but-"

"we need to talk about this," she finished.

"Yes."

She struggled silently with herself for a few minutes.

"I am definitely not," she paused for a few more seconds, "looking forward to when I have to go."

"Yale, though, a school with such rich history… class… culture…"

"And a fantastic arts program for me," she finished. "But you know what I mean."

"This means a lot to you; you should be excited to go."

"Stop deflecting."

"No, I mean it! I want you to be happy when you go off to college, regardless of whether I stay behind or not."

"You mean when you do stay behind."

"Well, I mean, I could visit you up there sometimes, and you'll come to visit down here…"

"It's not the same."

"But we'll make it work."

Her face screwed up in a disbelieving expression.

"Blaine! How are you so calm about this?"

"What do you mean? Isn't that what I'm supposed to do?"

For a minute, Blaine's expression almost stopped her in her tracks, but there was a fire rising within her that she had been withholding for so long, and she was sure she couldn't dilute it in time; not this time.

"What you're supposed to do? What does that matter with anything?"

"You're not making any sense, Quinn."

"I don't want to see any of your diplomacy, or goodness, or peacekeeping. I don't want to see you try to comfort me."

"I'm not understand-"

"I am not the only one feeling this way."

"Feeling what? Angry? Upset?"

"Feeling like she's gonna screw this up."

"No, Quinn, I promise I can make long distance work!"

"But I don't know what I can do! I don't know if it's about long distance, or you, or Yale, or whatever. I just need to know that I'm not the only one feeling like something's wrong here!"

"You feel like something's wrong with me?" Blaine repeated quietly.

"No, no, no, Blaine, no."

Blaine was about to answer, but his blue expression was interrupted by the doors opening again. A boy with coiffed hair, pale skin, and a smart look about him walked in, carrying a cocky air with him. Boys and girls alike stared at him through their peripheral vision, stared at the way the stratums of dark clothes swiveled with his body. This didn't escape his notice, and Kurt jiggled briefly for their satisfaction before resuming heading towards Blaine and Quinn.

"I just walked into a shark tank, didn't I?"

When they didn't respond, he continued, "That's okay; I know how to deal with sharks, being one myself."

There was still no reaction, except for Blaine refocusing his eyes on him, suddenly interested.

Quinn noticed how his eyes flicked to Blaine's briefly before meeting hers.

"Just wanted to check in on the two adorably sweet lovebirds and steal some yogurt before I got back to my friends; they're waiting for me outside."

Quinn rolled her eyes. "Your friends? You're still hanging out with them?"

"Yes." He steeled a brief gaze on her. "They-"

"Are what?" Quinn retorted.

"-are none of your business," he finished lamely.

"Anyways," he scooped up some frozen yogurt and popped it into his mouth, "I'll be going now. Like I said, my friends await!"

He walked out to meet them, a group of rambunctious teenage boys with an overactive need to be popular and cool and the hit of the school, and they didn't stop at much to achieve that. Despite this, they were still the "wannabes" of the school, the ones Quinn use to spit on in her days of being a Cheerio. It didn't matter, they were the middle in the school's social ladder, just safe enough to get by with expressing some individuality, often with fear to back them up. Still, as Quinn looked on, she saw the way Kurt was slightly shying away from them, staying on the boundaries of the group, almost like he was on the outside looking in.

Blaine could do nothing but stare as Quinn stared hard back at him, her usually beautifully contoured face harsh and unnaturally angled.

"You don't belong here, Blaine. I don't belong here, with you."

What was a hopeful face turned sadistic in a minute's time.

"Oh honestly!" Quinn exclaimed. "Don't do that with your face! You knew this was going to happen, we both knew! Things weren't meant to work out between us," she took a controlled breath, "never were."

The silence in the auditorium reverberated between them.

"I'm not giving up!" Blaine shouted as Quinn walked away. "Yale is nothing to me, nothing!"

He sank down to the dirty auditorium floor.

"Nothing," he repeated quietly to himself.

Blaine usually prided himself on being a pretty sane person, on being able to keep his anger under control. But this one, this hurt too much for him to simply dismiss. He took out a load on the punching bag in front of him, swinging dauntingly side to side. An upper cut. College. What does that have to do with me? A low swipe to the side. I can do long distance. A series of jabs, to the right, to the left, up, down, a constant stream of punching and grunting and releasing. Long distance doesn't mean anything to me. I don't give a crap about Yale if it's going to do this to us.

Us. What, all of a sudden, made a simple two letter word so spiteful? According to Quinn and Yale, there was no more us. Just Quinn going off to college and him staying behind in this stupid insignificant town.

"What is so bad about trusting me enough to go off to college and maintain a stupid fucking relationship?" he yelled at the bag.

"I'm taking from that that you and my sister have done the nasty," Kurt echoed from behind him, leaning against a locker. He was dressed fashionably in a menacingly innocent enough outfit (there were so many layers) but the look on his face was enough to contradict that. Blaine turned around, casting a malicious look in his direction.

"What are you doing here?"

"Nothin' honey, nothing unless you want me to be doing something." He winked.

"Kurt, I'm not in the mood."

"Darlin', I'm not going away until either you force me or you explain why you were yelling to an inanimate object. Frustrations? Bad sex life? Do explain; I'm sitting in rapt attention."

Blaine sighed. "Fine. Quinn broke up with me."

Kurt cooed. "Ooh, bad luck. Care to explain why? College, I presume from your lurid rants to this poor punching bag."

"Yeah, Kurt. College. I'm sure you would know more about it than I currently do. Do I look like I know why the hell Yale is more important to her than I am?"

"Listen," Kurt shifted, began in a softer voice, "I know it's hard on you right now, but I'm sure you know how hard Quinn has been having it these past years. Yale, college, it's her beacon. She doesn't think she's strong enough to do this. And frankly," Kurt looked down at the grubby floor, an uncharacteristic flicker of sadness in his eyes, "she loves you. Enough to do this for you."

"Do what for me? What good does breaking up with me do?" He had a brief stream of thought in his mind that his guard should be up, or down, or he should be doing something differently, because Kurt was standing on the other side of the locker room, not even, in his usual style, verbally assaulting him or anything of the nature. His guard was down, and who knew how often that would ever happen. He also knew he shouldn't be so angry, and that Kurt had just said Quinn loved him, but the pain was still too… recent? Painful? Raw? for him to push aside just yet.

"Listen, Blaine Anderson. I love ya, I do, and good Lord do you have a fantastic booty and that should make up for anything and everything, but she's still my sister. She's fucking broken, my goodness, can't you see that?" He looked up to see Blaine's reaction.

After a while of staring, almost right through him, he continued. "She doesn't think she can maintain a long distance relationship. She thinks as soon as she waltzes away you're going to find someone better, or she's not going to be there enough and be a terrible girlfriend, which would hold you back. She's terrified, to be honest-"

"-and she doesn't think her heart can take that," Blaine finished.

"And bingo was his name-o," he replied lazily, studying his fingers. Blaine had never noticed before, but Kurt did that a lot around him, actually.

Blaine stared at Kurt, suddenly noticing the startling pop of his blue eyes. How did I never notice that before? All those times I was at Quinn's house? When he was lurking in the hallways, came up to me to start conversation? They're so blue. It's a shame he isn't in Glee Club with us… he'd fit in…

Kurt looked up to see Blaine quietly observing him. He cast a bright smile at him. "Now, I'd love to stay and chat, but I've got to be going. Toodaloo, Blaine Anderson."

Halfway out the door he turned around, fixing another penetrating gaze on him. Blaine thought it had almost a sad look to it. "Give it time."

His slim figure disappeared from the locker room.

Quinn scrolled through the contacts on her phone. She needed to talk to someone about this.

Brittany. No good. As much as she loved Brittany, Kurt was right when he had said that the reality of her world was no more than the square root of four being rainbows and unicorns prancing around the place like they were all in some kind of castle floating in the sky.

Mercedes. Quinn didn't feel as close to Mercedes as she did before, which she pondered sadly for a minute for moving on.

Rachel. Rachel? Her thumb hovered over her name for a few seconds. They were kind of friends now anyways… No. She couldn't. Rachel was Blaine's sister, she'd just rage at her over the phone about breaking Blaine's heart.

Santana. That was no good either; she'd just end up giving her "Santana's Sex Tips 101: How to Win Back Your Man with Three Easy Moves".

She scrolled through the list, becoming increasingly and increasingly frustrated as black blocked letters flew past her vision, all useless and not as close as they should be to her. She never realized how easily she perfected the art of pushing people away, not until she really needed them and she didn't feel like any of them were there.

She flung her finger up in a frustrated motion, watched the letters blur in a race to get back to the top. It was only until she saw a name that actually might work that she stopped it. Kurt.

Truth was, she and Kurt did not always see eye to eye. Where he was leering and obvious, she tried to be understated and subtle. Not that she really was. Blaine had always said that's what he loved about her, that getting to know her was like peeling back the layers of a personality built for war, and that he felt like he actually, genuinely knew her.

She and Kurt had a relationship a lot like her war personality, understated and deadly. If they teamed up, they could take you down faster than you could beg for mercy. Not that she wanted to take Blaine down… she just wanted someone to talk to, someone that might understand her confliction.

Kurt was out and proud, and Quinn thought that, probably, the reason he styled his personality to be so abrasive was so that, instead of his body being abraded, he could throw up a broken, tough shield, and that had to be better than the alternative of a broken but tough body. She didn't even want to think about what would happen to Kurt at this school if he were soft… fearful… Perhaps that's why he kept his style so openly fashionable, something most guys would be afraid to do… his body was like his only unguarded temple. Even if her brother seemed the opposite way, she was sure he didn't throw his body around like he didn't matter.

She shuddered. She remembered when their father gave them that atrociously awkward sex talk… Don't throw yourself around like you don't matter. You matter. To be honest, the only thing that mattered to Quinn in that moment was to get out of that stuffy room. And to think that she had ended up getting herself pregnant soon after… the disappointment in her dad's eyes… She did acknowledge that she was unnaturally blessed to have had him as father during the whole crisis, though. He was there for her when she needed, and Kurt had been surprisingly tender throughout the whole ordeal, something she really kind of missed right now.

She'd made a speech like this to Kurt once, cautioning him to be careful with himself in the least awkward way she could've. She knocked twice on his door, the door flung open, and then perched herself on his bed in quite the same spot she was before when she had given him that speech.

He was digging through his closet, muttering something about a pair of jeans that were "harder to find than a needle in a bitch of a haystack".

"Kurt!"

He turned around.

"Listen, can you spare some time? I really need to talk to you."

"What's up, sis?" He took a chair near his laptop and sat, cross-legged. "Break up got you down?"

"Wha- what- how did you know?"

"I saw dear Blaine in the locker room today, punching out his frustrations. He's really upset," he implored, pouting his lips mockingly.

Quinn's eyes widened for a second. "Wait. What? No. Kurt. Stop. I need you to be serious."

His face slowly lapsed. Quinn could see an echo of Kurt's former self through the pure porcelain features, the quiet affection in his eyes.

She took a deep breath and closed her eyes. "I'm… confused."

He nodded, urging her on.

"I know why I told myself I broke up with him… but truth be told, I don't exactly know why I did."

"Why'd you tell him you broke up with him?"

"I said that we," she gulped, "don't belong together."

"And you obviously don't believe that."

"No."

"I also said," she continued, "that we both knew that this was going to happen sooner or later."

"You don't believe that either."

"Nope." She popped the last part of the word.

"I can tell."

"Ho-"

"-Because, your eyes. They do say eyes are the gateway to the soul, you know." He inclined his head towards her, his face scrunching up and a smile appearing.

"I love your scrunchy smiles," she stated after a breathless laugh.

"Why thank you Miss Quinn." Another smile.

His face suddenly shifted again, becoming serious. He exhaled and they just sat there for a few beats.

"I told him in the locker room…"

She stared, wide eyed again.

"… that I knew the reason you broke up with him."

Now she exhaled.

"I hope you don't mind me extrapolating," he added after a small silence.

"No," she breathed on another laugh. "I'd like to hear your psychoanalysis of me. It's kinda the reason I came to talk to you."

He obliged her with a small smile.

"I said," he started, "that you were… having a tough time. And to put it lightly… that you didn't think you could handle if you disappointed him in a long distance relationship."

Quinn was slowly piecing this information together with her feelings when Kurt spoke again.

"Can I ask you something?" he asked quietly.

Not cautiously, she noticed. Just quietly.

"Do you think you… love him?"

"Yes." She was kind of shocked how quickly it came when it happened, but once it was out of her mouth it just felt right. She was unsure why it was so easy to admit this to Kurt, especially when she had such a hard time spitting it out of her mouth in the yogurt shop, but she couldn't shake how accurate it actually felt when it came out.

He grinned. "Then you need to tell him that."

She slowly started nodding. "Yeah. I need to tell him that."

"Now go on, big girl, get outta my room and get to talking to Blaine!" He pushed her out while laughing.

She was almost out of the room when she turned around.

"Thanks Kurt."

"No problem."

When she was out of the room, Kurt collapsed back into his chair and frowned.

She loved him. He loved her. That was a simple enough equation to solve. So why was it that he, someone who could easily put himself into and out of equations so easily; he flexed his pinkie and looked doefully at it; as easily as flexing his pinky, just like that, was never involved in them?

Kurt walked down the hallway, smiling satisfactorily as people shrunk in their tracks at the sight of him. He laughed, high and spiteful, pulling out a bottle of water and chugging it, then brought it down from his lips and pursed them, wet, succulent.

His favorite part of assuming this persona was that he was allowed to be so much more reckless than he normally would've. He wouldn't go so far as to say he pulled people over and had his way with them, but with the littlest hint of consent he did; he made them want him, and then pulled away at the last second. Every time people asked why he never went for the gold he always had some readymade excuse, but if he was being truthful with himself, he didn't actually want to. His body was… his body. He flaunted it and offered it to other people's bodies but he never actually gave it to them, because there was something about his body that was special. Maybe offering it up to other people and being extraordinarily crude kept him out of trouble. He could keep doing that, fine. But if anyone ever made him go through with all of this, he didn't know if he actually could… and then, once the defenses had fallen, what could he do? What could he do to protect himself then?

As he made his way towards English, he noticed Quinn, staring intently at some boy in front of her by the lockers. As he made his way closer, he noticed it was Blaine.

Blaine looked nice today, with his striped bowtie, suspenders, and ill-fitted shirt (but in the best fucking way possible; Kurt was positive he could see his abs breaking through screaming lick me, lick me!). But his hair was messy , either like Quinn had been ruffling it or Blaine had been doing so himself. Kurt couldn't help but want to himself…

This wasn't the first time Kurt had felt this way about Blaine, actually. Since Quinn had been dating Blaine, he'd been seeing a lot of him at their house. Matter of factly, Kurt had already picked up on a lot of Blaine's nuances, just in those windows of times when Blaine was waiting for Quinn to come out from her room. Like how Blaine kind of curled up into himself, how he took long pauses when talking, how he sort of stood ramrod straight, as if to hold himself up under the weight of whatever was inside his head…

Now Blaine was shutting his locker and walking away, eyes shining faintly. Kurt felt his muscles pulling towards him, his shoes clicking on the floor… No. He was Quinn's brother and McKinley's resident bad boy, not a stupid love-struck teenager. He saved that shit for weaker people.

Quinn looked a little shaken up as he walked past, but as he caught her eye she simply shook her head. He kept walking.

Blaine walked into his house later that day, calling around to see if anyone was there. His dad was in the study, answering with a "yes" before the house lapsed back into silence.

Blaine wondered briefly where Rachel was before he walked up to his room, opening the door quietly. He gingerly smoothed a spot on his bed. He sat down and put his head in his hands.