Chapter 28

The New in The Old


The last thing they do before Wes leaves Thursday night is have a dinner at Kurt's place together with Blaine and Elliott.

On their insistence they are left to clean up while Kurt takes Wes to the airport.

When Kurt comes back he closes the front door and heavily slumps against it, letting out a deep sigh, welcoming the empty apartment's quiet.

He is startled out of this state by a body slumping against the door next to him, making Kurt jump.

"Blaine! I had thought you'd both gone."

"Elliott is."

"Why are you still here then?"

Blaine frowns, "How are you and Wes doing? You two seemed so tense at dinner."

Kurt sinks his gaze to the floor as he tries not to think of the awkward goodbye at the airport, hugs stiff, kisses on cheeks, one on his forehead from Wes. There had been a weird distance in the intimacy. The whole thing so much of a goodbye that Kurt is doubting now he will ever see Wes again as his boyfriend. No one is running from the other but ... there is an undeniable disconnect in the way they are both hurting, in the way Wes is trying to fix it and in the way Kurt feels about that.

"It's not ..., it might be ...," Kurt's eyes are flooded with tears when he looks up, "I think we might be over."

"Oh, Kurt. Why?"

And then Kurt blurts out the thought he has been fighting to push away since Monday night when Wes had not stopped asking questions, over and over, Kurt knows, to help but that does not change the fact that the one thing it is making Kurt feel is ... wrong, in all he is, in all he does, "He is trying to fix me."

A split second later Kurt finds himself held so tight, his breathing is crushed for a moment against Blaine's chest, "You don't need fixing. Wes doesn't think that. I'm sure he doesn't."

"And I want you to be right," Kurt sobs, "and maybe, probably you are," he lets out a shuddering breath, "but that doesn't change how he makes me feel, asking and asking, do I need help, do I want to talk, how am I feeling, what am I feeling ... . It is too much. It is all too much. I just needed him to be there. But ... I don't think he can be in the way we need. Maybe it is all me. Maybe I can't be who he needs either. Love isn't enough, right?"

"Sometimes not, no," Blaine whispers, swallowing hard as he feels himself pulled back into a memory of his own, the young man in his arms only a couple years younger than now, standing in front of him with wide eyes and only one question on the lips Blaine had just kissed. And Blaine had spent every moment from that day on wishing he could have been enough for him ... for Kurt. 'Can I be enough for you now?' Blaine chokes on the thought colliding with another, 'What am I doing? I'm with Elliott. I'm in love with Elliott.'

"Blaine?" Kurt asks.

"Yeah?"

"Can you stay tonight?" An added whisper, "I just don't know if I can be alone."

"I ... I'm sorry, Kurt. I can't stay, Elliott is waiting for me."

Kurt swallows down the protest. He knows he has no right.

"But ... would you like to come and stay at Elliott's with us? I'm sure he wouldn't mind. I just can't keep changing plans on him anymore. He's been so understanding, I ..."

"You don't want to disappoint him. I get it."

And this is how Kurt ends up curled in on himself on one side of Elliott's bed, watching Blaine and Elliott cuddled up together on the other, talking quietly until they fall asleep, Kurt stays awake for a long time ... thinking. Thinking about why he suddenly feels so envious of Elliott. He cannot remember ever having felt this way before.