A/N: so another shorter one i guess. idk if that's a good thing or a bad thing. hope you like it. oh, and if you're off to school this week, good luck! this is my first year not going back to school and so far it feels pretty good.

December 1993

Blaine played his words over and over again in his head. He had never had impulses like that, so big and so sure. Impulses were Kurt's domain and he spent many an evening chuckling at some of the flighty ideas that spilled from his boyfriend's mouth. Drunk at the clubs in his twenties, grinding against a boy was the only place where he had ever come close to this sort of reflexive thinking that seemed to bubble up from his subconscious and pour from his mouth before the present part of his brain was even made aware of it, never mind process it. Back in those days though, there'd usually been at least two drinks worth of alcohol poisoning his frontal lobe but as far as he knew, the toxic pill cocktail he chocked down twice a day focused its poison south so that day in front of the bell tower, he should have had full function. He didn't though and he didn't know how to feel about it. He'd made plenty of poor choices thanks to those drunk impulses, one of which responsible for the virus feeding on his immune system within. Kurt was the only good thing to have come from one of those nights. But, of course, Kurt was the best thing that had ever happened to him. And he also supposed that all those nights before Kurt had loosened him up to the idea of actually being gay and being with a man, a thought that for many of those years had come very close to short circuiting his sober mind. And what could one little trip to Ireland hurt? People went on vacation all the time and the Green Isle had called to him, called him back really, ever since he could remember.

There was more to it though. Blaine knew that, knew that there had to be something deeper if it had bubbled out so uninhibited and unapologetic. Four months later and he still wasn't sure he was ready to dissect that reason though and yet it refused to leave him alone. Kurt was certainly no help in that matter. Honesty was his favorite policy, a policy Blaine had mixed feelings about. Anybody in law school quickly learned how to contort and twist the truth into something that benefited them and rarely was that something considered by the average public a complete, unbiased, unambiguous truth.

"B. Look," Kurt said, walking away from him and into the kitchen appliance section of Sears.

Blaine followed, allowing his eyes to drift downwards over his boyfriend's ass as it bounded towards whatever had peaked his interest. He looked back up when Kurt stopped and swiveled around, pastel pink kettle in hand. Blaine smiled slightly at his boyfriend's thoughtfulness but the excitement failed to reach him.

"You know it's perfect."

"Yeah," Blaine relented. "Although she seemed perfectly content using the microwave."

"Please. She did it 'cause she didn't have a choice. It's like denying a poor person food stamps because they're perfectly content going to the soup kitchen."

"Okay, Mr. Social Justice, I don't think it's quite that extreme."

"Microwaved tea, Blaine! Microwaved! If I were British I may have just offed myself then and there."

"It won't get there in time."

"Who cares? It can be a New Year's present if you're so concerned."

"And you did finish the cup so..."

"I was being polite. Trying to diffuse the tension," he said with a pointed look.

"Yeah, yeah," Blaine said with an eye role, taking the kettle from Kurt's hands and turning it over in his own. It was old fashioned looking, like it was meant to be heated on the stove except for its electrical cord. It was heavier than he expected, a sign of good quality, although the pink colour still made him skeptical. But it was still small, compact, just like Rachel, just him.

When he was little he liked that he looked like his sister. It helped to ease the initial sting of being adopted. But now, he wasn't so sure. As he grew up it just seemed to become more and more apparent that his family wasn't where he belonged, nor did it seem that he was what they had truly wanted when they boarded a plane to Ireland all those years ago. And now, sometimes, particularly after the latest Rachel fiasco, Blaine wished his outsides matched his insides, even if his insides were under siege.

"Okay," he finally agreed, placing the display model back on the shelf and picking up one of the boxes. He still wasn't sure about making amends with Rachel but if he could take anything from his body is was that it was fighting. It hadn't given up on him yet even though it was through his own poor choices that had landed it in trouble. And if it ever got to be too much, he could always bow out again in the future.

The bright smile on Kurt's face reassured him of his decision. Blaine couldn't help but smile back. Sometimes, he thought he'd walk off a cliff if Kurt gave him an approving grin.

"Good. That was quicker than expected," Kurt said as they made their way to the cashier.

"What? You planned this?" Blaine asked, more bemused than annoyed.

"Maybe." The smirk on his face told Blaine though that that maybe was a yes. "But this is good. Now we won't miss the previews."

Blaine suddenly wished his body had failed to be such an inspiring force, or, at the very least, that everyone else in DC was just as much as a last minute shopper as they were. The city was populated mostly by politicians though who had long left parliament for the Christmas holidays and so, of course, the line was practically non-existent giving him no time to deter Kurt from the movie over fear of missing the beginning.

He fiddled with his box of m&m's and with box sitting between his feet. On the screen in front of him, a newly over weight John Travolta wielded a gun in some preview but he paid it little thought, his eyes carefully scanning everyone else in the theatre instead.

Near the front were two women, probably in their sixties, he guessed and he wondered if they were here for Tom Hanks or for the sons they had lost. He hoped in five hears time his mom would go to the opening night of the next one. He hoped both his mothers would. It was a hard reality to picture though. For one, he still did not know who his birth mother was and she did not know him or the fate that had plagued him. The woman who raised him though would not be caught dead showing support, too ashamed of everything. And he knew there was always the possibility that his birth mother would be the same but he hoped and that hope fed that impulsive need within him to book the next flight out.

Besides the two women, the rest of the audience were male, sitting in pairs sporadically about the theatre. Blaine smiled at the rarity of the scene before him. He still had his reservation about the movie but if it could provide a safe space for a date, it had already won. Even if some of the men were simply friends, it was nice that they could be together especially since the men they may have been on dates with, had probably been gone for far too long.

As Tom Hanks finally graced the screen, Blaine wondered who Kurt would bring. Would it be a date? That was hard to think about but he also didn't want his boyfriend to spend the rest of his life in alone, reaching out for someone in the night who would never come. He didn't want him to spiral down and out like his sister had.

"Can I ask you something?"

"If you do it while wrapping," Kurt answered with a pointed look over the top of his mug from across the table."

Blaine rolled his eyes but picked up his hands from where he had rested them on top of the kettle box. He wiggled his fingers towards his bossy boyfriend before folding the wrapping paper around the box. "It's just that… What are you writing?"

"I'm writing many things."

"No, the one you're really working on?"

"Oh, that one," Kurt answered as if his memory had just been triggered.

"Yes, that one." Blaine returned the pointed look from earlier knowing full well that Kurt didn't truly have to rummage through all of the half-baked projects going on in his head to find the one he was referring too.

"Oh."

Through the living room, A Christmas Story was playing. Growing up it was holiday staple in the Anderson household, just as important as turkey and stuffing and stockings hung by the fire. He'd seen it so many times now that his mind wouldn't let him simply sit and watch it start to finish but he liked having it in the background with the tree and the frost gathering on the window panes. It had always been able to bring him down from his work frenzy because Christmas was no time for reviewing old case files. Blaine knew that, he did, but he always seemed to need and extra little something to flip the switch. This year, that switch was hovering somewhere in the middle. Kurt had all but ripped and old affidavit from his hands and forced the wrapping paper into its place. In Blaine's defense, he'd spent the earlier evening with Kurt on and dinner and movie date. And when the nausea failed to settle in, he thought working until his eyes drooped best because on bad days, he couldn't even take a breath without throwing up.

Once the affidavit was out of his hands though, wrapping Rachel's present didn't seem too bad. His dry, squinty eyes certainly thanked him. But there was something else about the scene playing out around him, the movie, the decorations, the cold nipping in through the windows, Kurt sitting across from him, knees pulled up to his chest fighting the chill in his very lived in hoodie and his mug of tea, something that reminded him that while last year all he had had was his career, this year he had much more. Despite the fact the this more came with bad as well as the slight rasp to Kurt's light giggle when he awoke him with kisses in them early morning, he never wanted to return to that previous year. He didn't want to let that rest of his life slip away. His sister somehow had and with a job as degrading as a waitress at the 'Waffle Hut', her life seemed to have become nothing more than grief. Blaine still didn't quite understand where it all came from. She, of course, claimed it was grief itself. Whatever it was though, it was hard to watch, hard to think about. He never wanted it for her but he didn't see any way to bring her in from the endless sea. He, on the other hand, was still tethered to the shore, the rocking waves pulling his rope taught, testing its strength. He need to fortify that hold.

"So. What's it about?" he asked, keeping his eyes down and his hands busy to hopefully give off a casual vibe despite the fact the there was a lot riding on this answer. Because, you see, Kurt was artist. He was an actor and a writer and even though his boyfriend insisted that he was the most important thing in the world to him, Blaine was skeptical. And the more crucial element, he wasn't going to be here for that much longer and he need to know that Kurt would be okay once he was gone.

"Oh this and that. Life and its occurrences," Kurt answered in the aloof manner that he was trying and failing achieve himself. Kurt was the actor after all.

"Ooh, very specific. Here, give me a finger." He said as he struggled to tie the gold ribbon around the box tightly.

"Interested in switching it up, are we?" Kurt asked with a smirk as he placed his half emptied mug down and leaned across the table, tilting his ass probably a little higher than necessary, to place his index finger on the center of the half completed knot.

"Mmm, very," Blaine laughed, playing along with his boyfriend's dirty mind. "Nothing gets me in a kinkier mood than wrapping my sister's Christmas present."

"Well you are a white man from the Midwest who votes republican. Kinda par for the course."

"Oh my god."

"But who knows, get a little booze in me and I may be down for a threesome."

"Oh my god, Kurt! Stop," he laughed, only partially horrified as he completed his bow. "You're terrible. And don't think I don't know you were trying to change the subject."

"It's not done yet," he shrugged returning to his seat.

"So?" Blaine watched as he got up and made his way into the kitchen under the guise of getting more tea. "Why don't you think I'd like it?" He asked. It was the only explanation of Kurt's avoidance he could think of.

"Because. It's not done for a reason."