February 2013
Blaine cracked open a sleep blurred eye and stared at his clock in confusion. 2:11 a.m. He briefly closed his eyes before looking again. No, the numbers continued to not make any damn sense. Why would he be awake at 2:11 a.m.? The jarring vibration of the phone resting on his nightstand answered his unspoken question. Groaning and flinging his right arm over his eyes, he fumbled blindly for the offending object.
Kurt: Are you awake?
Kurt: Blaine?
Blaine blinked at the text in confusion. Who in their right mind would be awake right now?
Blaine: I am now. What's up?
Kurt: Sorry. I just needed to share something with you. It's silly though, and late. You should go back to sleep.
Blaine: Are you ok?
Kurt: More than ok. It's a good thing. A really really good thing. And I couldn't think of who else to tell. :)
Blaine raised his eyebrow at the last line. Something so good that Kurt couldn't wait until morning to tell him?
Blaine: Is Gaga coming to Ohio?
Kurt: Better. :)
Blaine: Well, come now, Kurt. You know that's just not possible. ;)
Blaine felt his breath catch in his throat. Kurt's reply was a picture message. And the picture was of some random guy.
Blaine: Nice hair. Who is he?
Kurt: Blaine ...
Blaine: Kurt ...
Kurt: I think I might finally have my first boyfriend! :) !
...
December 2013
Blaine tore into the apartment in a frenzy of movement humming cheerfully under his breath. Kurt looked up from where he was lounging on the couch with a book. He couldn't help but smile as Blaine got tangled up in his jacket trying to simultaneously remove it, toe off his shoes, and complete a complicated spin move in time with Maroon 5.
"Watch yourself." Kurt said lightly. Blaine looked over at him, beaming.
"Kurt! I didn't think you'd be home this early. Don't you have your costume design class?"
"Cancelled. My professor's daughter is having a baby." Blaine paused in the kitchen, but kept talking even though he was out of Kurt's line of sight.
"And she cancelled? I would have expected you guys to meet anyway and design fashionable sequined onesies for the new baby." Blaine's curly head peeked around the wall and he smiled infectiously. Kurt rolled his eyes.
"Please, Blaine. Even I know better than to design for a 6-pound smelly creature that continually ruins clothing from both ends. The drool alone is enough to convince me that maybe, just maybe, there is a place in life for walmart." Blaine gasped, staggering into the living room, and spilling half off his soda as he clutched it dramatically to his chest.
"Blasphemy!" Kurt gave him his best bitch look.
"Planning on cleaning that up?" Blaine shrugged and dropped into their old squashy armchair that Kurt threatened to throw out the window about once a week.
"Eventually. You don't like kids?" Kurt shuddered.
"I like them just fine. As long as they belong to someone else and stay far away from me." Blaine looked faintly surprised.
"Yeah, that's fine for now, but I mean someday. You don't ever see yourself wanting kids of your own?" Kurt shrugged looking back down at his book.
"I guess I wouldn't completely rule it out. It's not something I exactly lie awake at night dreaming about though." Kurt felt Blaine's eyes on him.
"Having a family someday isn't something you think about?"
"To be honest, not really, no." Kurt peeked up at Blaine through his eyelashes and saw his friend swirling his soda around in his glass. He looked ... sad maybe? Kurt couldn't figure out why this would bother him so much, but he decided to try and lighten the mood anyway.
"After all, I'm much too busy daydreaming about the day I finally sweep Jude Law off his feet." Kurt felt relieved as Blaine responded with a smile.
"Isn't he married?"
"Divorced."
"Of course." Kurt kept smiling, watching Blaine as he drained the rest of his soda and swung out his chair, two stepping into the kitchen for a towel to clean up the spilled drink, humming a refrain of Maroon 5.
"Something's put you in a good mood today." Blaine looked at him mysteriously through his lashes. Kurt ignored the resultant little jolt in his chest.
"Let's just say I got up the courage to do something today that I wasn't sure I was going to be able to."
"Enter a Gap?" Blaine laughed.
"Hardly." Kurt smiled. This was the Blaine he had missed, and it killed him that it had taken him so long to notice his absence.
"I ..." Blaine paused for dramatic effect, "asked out this kid in my philosophy class." He kept going as Kurt gaped at him silently. "He said yes. We're going out. On Saturday." Kurt struggled to find his voice that Blaine seemed to have stolen and shipped all the way to Nebraska.
"Kurt?" Blaine's smile turned a little more uncertain. "I promise not to serenade him with any inappropriate songs in public places." Kurt forced a smile.
"Well, all of the potential mortified shoppers in eastern Ohio thank you for that." Blaine looked relieved at Kurt's quip. Then his expression morphed into a decidedly evil smirk.
"In private on the other hand ..." Oh look, back to Nebraska it goes. Kurt opened and closed his mouth a few times as Blaine sauntered out of the room.
"Blaine?"
"Yeah, Kurt?" A curly head popped back into sight halfway down the hallway.
"Aren't you going to tell me his name?"
"Oh," Blaine grinned. "Sebastian."
...
Blaine stared into his closet with wild eyes. Clothes. Right. He had to pick clothes. To wear. On his date. With a boy. "What the hell am I doing?" Blaine muttered frantically under his breath. He walked on shaking legs over to his bed and sat down, fixing his closet with a baleful stare. "It's all your fault, you know. Yeah, you heard me. If you didn't have space for so many damn sweaters then maybe this would be an easier decision."
"Blaming inanimate objects for your fashion choices, are we? That's just cruel." Blaine jumped. He hadn't heard Kurt enter the room behind him.
"Kurt. I don't know why I thought this was a good idea." Kurt stood with his hands on his hips, expression unreadable.
"You thought this was a good idea because it is a good idea, Blaine. You are an attractive, intelligent, fun guy and you spend far too much time sitting around this apartment. You deserve this. You deserve to go out on a date with a guy who makes you feel good." Blaine smirked.
"You called me a fungi. Get it? Now I know what I should wear. My fungi t-shirt." Kurt rolled his eyes.
"Of all the compliments that's the one you pick up on. Of course." Kurt crossed to Blaine's closet and began rifling through his shirts. "Now, I'm going to pretend that you never admitted to owning anything that heinous and I'm going to help you dress like your normal dapper self."
"You think I need help?" Kurt looked up at the ceiling in a silent appeal for help.
"Oh, Blaine. In so many ways." Blaine laced his fingers together and rested them on top of his head.
"You'd be right." He answered softly. "I feel completely out of my depth here. Sebastian is cute, and funny, and has had all of these experiences I've never even dreamed of, and when I asked him out, it never occurred to me he would actually say yes. I feel like some bumbling country cousin around him." Blaine took a deep breath before continuing brokenly. "I'm just ... I'm not very good at romance, Kurt."
Kurt was intensely grateful that his back was to Blaine so he could hide his inevitable reaction to those last words. He struggled to fend back tears as memories of a certain day at a certain coffee shop flooded his mind. Kurt had long since resigned himself to the fact that he and Blaine were not living in a romantic comedy, and no matter how much he might wish it, he was never going to be Meg Ryan. And for the most part, it didn't even hurt anymore. Most days he woke up not remembering the feeling of what it was like to be in love with Blaine Anderson. There were just those few moments when a word, or a look, or an unintentional touch would open the floodgates and release that which had been held back for so long. Kurt took a deep breath, filling himself up with the smell that was just undeniably Blaine. Snagging a cranberry cardigan he turned around and smiled.
"Stop. You're going to be fine. He won't be able to help but love you. Now, let's try one of the few items in your wardrobe that's not from Brooks Brothers tonight, shall we?" Kurt ignored the twinge he felt in his gut at the overwhelmingly grateful look Blaine cast his way.
...
Blaine hadn't heard from Kurt since that night. His texts and his emails had gone unanswered, and Blaine struggled to fight down the bile of jealousy that threatened to rise up at the thought of Kurt being too busy doing who knows what with that boy to talk to him.
Another week passed and jealousy was replaced with worry. Blaine started asking other friends if they had heard from him, but no one seemed to share his concern, and after a few awkward conversations Blaine dropped it. But he couldn't shake the growing certainty that there was something really wrong. He figured that Kurt would come to him when he was ready, and there was nothing he could do to help until then.
And he was right.
...
"Blaine?" At least that's what Blaine thought Kurt had said. It was almost impossible to decipher drowned in the sobs that were flooding his phone.
"Kurt? Kurt what's wrong?" Blaine quickly walked into his bedroom for some privacy, fairly certain that his father wouldn't even notice he had left.
"God, Blaine. I'm so stupid."
"Shhh, Kurt, it's gonna be ok. Tell me what happened."
"He didn't even like me." Kurt sounded broken.
"Who didn't?"
"Nathan." Blaine hadn't thought it possible, but Kurt seemed to be crying even harder. Blaine hesitated before answering.
"Your boyfriend?" His words were met with a bitter laugh that was totally unlike the way Kurt normally talked to him.
"No, the douchebag that I so naively assumed wanted to be my boyfriend. I can't believe how stupid I am. I shouldn't even be in college. I should just come home and work in the garage for the rest of my life."
"Kurt, stop that. You're not stupid." Kurt lashed back, bitterly.
"Oh yeah? I spend all of highschool pining after one guy after another who never wants me back," Blaine felt a stab of guilt at those words but Kurt was still going, "and as soon as I get to college I get so caught up in the idea that someone actually wants to kiss me and dance with me that everything I know about the real world and how guys think with their testicles goes right out the window," Kurt was talking fast enough now that Blaine had trouble separating where one word started and another ends, "and I just throw myself around at the first guy who looks at me twice."
Blaine took a deep breath, as Kurt seemed to run out of steam.
"Kurt did he ... did he do something ... or try something ... or?" Blaine could practically hear Kurt's flush at the other end of the line.
"No Blaine, he never did anything I didn't want. And we never did ... you know. Not even close." Blaine let out the breath he had been holding.
"Ok, good. That's good."
"How is that good, Blaine?" Kurt's voice started getting shrill.
"Um ... excuse me?"
"I said how is that good? How is it good that I am such a baby penguin that the idea of doing anything more than kissing a guy makes me feel a little bit like I want to throw up and a lot like I want to put my fingers in my ears and start singing at the top of my lungs? This is college, Blaine. How am I ever supposed to get a real boyfriend? Why would anyone want to be with someone like me, someone so stupid and naïve that they think they have a boyfriend just because this guy makes out with them a few times?"
Blaine's stomach twisted uncomfortably as he heard the hurt and bitterness in Kurt's voice.
"Kurt. I promise you, there is someone out there who wants desperately to be with someone exactly like you. Someone who is going to love you exactly how you are." Kurt laughed bitterly again.
"Wishful thinking, Blaine." Blaine spoke quickly to cut him off.
"No, not wishful thinking. It's a fact. Seriously, you'll probably have them lining up to be with you pretty soon. And they should consider themselves lucky that they even get the privilege of being in the same room as you." Kurt laughed, a small one, but one devoid of bitterness. Encouraged, Blaine continued.
"And this Nathan guy, whoever he is? He's the stupid one, Kurt, not you. Never you. It's not stupid to want romance. It's not stupid to want to wait until you're comfortable, until you're with the right person." Kurt sniffed.
"Thanks, Blaine. That means a lot."
"And, Kurt?"
"Yes?" Blaine hesitated before continuing.
"I'm really proud of you."
"Why?" Kurt sounded incredulous.
"I'm proud that you would come to me about this. That you trust me enough as a friend. And I'm proud of you to wait until it means something. Really, truly proud."
There was a moment of silence, and then an answer so quiet that Blaine had to strain to hear it.
"I hope so. I want you to be."
AN: To all you Sebastian haters out there (and I know there are many), when I outlined this story I never actually intended to bring Sebastian into it. It was all Blaine's doing. Blame him. Also, this story is slightly angstier than I thought it would be. I promise though, this is the last chapter of sad!kurt and sad!blaine. Things are looking up for our boys in the final three chapters :)