The thing is, even after all those months of tap-dancing around each other and trying to smile around the sea of homework that Dalton's always so eager to assign, it isn't enough. He can strut down the hallway and drag his hand around the circumference of Kurt's wrist when he passes him, and sure, he gets that two-second joy of hearing his breath catch in his throat, but that's where it ends. He doesn't come swooping towards him, the Warblers don't crouch low to the ground and serenade them with some of the finest, sultriest songs that they have to offer.

Nothing happens at all, ever, and that's a significant problem, even though it shouldn't be at all. Blaine's been in love before, and he figures that Kurt probably needs time to cope over the whole Karofsky thing, but you know. Jesus. How long does a man need to move on? He's been an expert at putting the more disappointing and awful things in life away since he was seven. Parents couldn't come to the middle school choir show? Packed away. Beat up after school? Never happened. A penis drawn on the side of his face while he fell asleep in study hall? Forget it. Moved on.

A part of him loves Kurt's vulnerability. It makes him seem miles more sincere and innocent than anyone else he knows, even if that isn't the case. He's not too sure whether it is or it isn't, because he can't recall talking to Kurt about what he does and doesn't do. There had been the Karofsky situation to handle, and it had been Saint Blaine's time to swing in and lend a sympathetic ear.

Saint Blaine, Wes and David called him. Patron of the lost boys. In the beginning, he'd been thrilled to be likened towards being any sort of higher power, celestial or not. He'd been so much more than Blaine Anderson, average Dalton boy, who sang in the school's glee club and was second in his year and had been bullied before his parents thought to send him to boarding school. He'd been above all of that, and it'd been wondrous.

Blaine remembers sitting on his mother's lap as she read from the history tomes that she collected, her calm alto saying lightly above him, "Remember you are a mortal."

It didn't mean shit to him when he was seven, and at seventeen, it meant even less.

Blaine has always wanted to be a superhero. When he was six, he wore his Superman costume for weeks until the cape became frayed at the edges. He broke his leg on his seventh birthday trying to jump from the roof, eyes shut tight and arms held rigidly in front of him.

Invincible, impenetrable Blaine Anderson. The broken leg hadn't even hurt, and maybe he'd been stuck out in the yard for hours because his au pair was asleep in the kitchen, the butt of her cigarette burning into the table, but- that didn't matter.

Nothing mattered, not really. People were so stupid when they let things phase them like that. They'd grow up to write memoirs and sob over national television, but that was so utterly unnecessary. Deal with it. Move it. Rise above it.

There's a part of him that honestly thinks that he's in love with Kurt. It catalogues those longing sighs and bright lips under things that are lovely, and files past them during the nights when Blaine doesn't sleep but instead rests under the dim lamplight in the library. He sees these things whenever he closes his eyelids; Kurt dancing, Kurt singing along, Kurt being apprehensive.

But he knows that majority of him, the wholeness of the being that is unfortunately Blaine Anderson, isn't in love with him at all. He knows that he likes that Kurt likes him, and there are times when he genuinely appreciates Kurt for being alive. He gets snatches of the person that Kurt's meant to be sometimes, when he catches him grousing on his phone, ignoring the Xeroxed copies on Constantinople and Charlemagne or when he slides an eye over to one of the boys when they'd practicing out of uniform, and they're wearing a less than stunning ensemble. He knows what Kurt can do, and is frustrated as to why he isn't doing it. Maybe he feels that Dalton is, like, 'stifling his creative soul' or whatever, but they're not robots. Dalton teaches you how to wind down, it doesn't beat the imagination out of you.

But Dalton's stripped Kurt of his fancy clothes, and, um, sorry, he knows that fashion's sacred to him or whatever, but get over it. Dalton and growing up are going to separate that from you, and face you to look at the bareness of you. It'll help Kurt appreciate Kurt for what he is; perky-nosed and cunning and the owner of a glorious countertenor. There isn't much going for shock value at Dalton (Blaine's pretty sure that the staff's seen it all before, three times even), and he thinks that Kurt misses that a little, which is totally fine, but.

Move on.

It pisses Blaine off a little that Kurt's constantly skulking around like someone's murdered Marc Jacobs or something. You have to be able to make the best of things, and he isn't. He's stubborn in his habit of being frightened, and there's only so much that Blaine or Saint Blaine or Wes or David can do. There comes a time when you have to help yourself out of your hole. Sink or swim.

So, he gives Kurt chance after chance. He thinks 'kiss me' and he says 'talk to me' and he edges his way onto the bench with him and places his hand calmly on Kurt's knee. He helps him study for an Anthropology test and introduces him to other Warblers, gay and otherwise. They go out to lunch and movies, laughing quietly with each other.

Every single time, Kurt fails. He stutters and makes awkward jokes, he sits stiffly during the movies and lunch dates. There are times when he clams up when Blaine squeezes in next him, and he forces himself to smile and send in Saint Blaine to smooth over any damage that might've occurred.

So when he's sliding across the floor of the Gap to face that cute, curly-haired employee, he's also keeping any eye out for Kurt, who's been sullen (and admittedly, wearing the expression quite well). He thinks 'come and get me' and drags his hand over the employee's, just noticing how Kurt's coming in with the rest of the Warblers to surround him at a much quicker, snappier pace. No Karofsky-inspired freakouts to be found anywhere about him, or any of the timidity that Blaine had (okay, let's be honest) found just slightly disgusting.

The smug look of satisfaction has never felt so at home on his face.