Going for Broke

Chapter 11

A year ago, a nameless stranger found Blaine in a bar once more, took him home, wrapped himself around Blaine's shoulders and led his fingers across the canvas, saving him in ways Blaine had never expected, teaching him how to pour his emotions out through paint and tears and a hope that he might mean something more.

Now, Kurt Hummel sits at Blaine's dinner table, softly running his finger along the rim of a glass of sparkling cider, and this time he needs Blaine to save him instead.

"Any New Year's resolutions?" Blaine asks helplessly, desperate to break the silence that has settled between them since dinner began.

"Not die," Kurt answers, not looking up from his glass. It's still full, as is his plate, and Blaine has felt too uncomfortable to do anything but take a few bites of potato.

Okay, so maybe Blaine should have expected that answer. Ever since saying goodbye to Santana two days ago and moving his meager collection of belongings to Blaine's apartment, Kurt has been moody and pensive, curtaining his own loneliness and anxiety around himself and hiding like a caterpillar in a cocoon within it. He has curtailed all of Blaine's attempts at having a normal conversation, and seems perfectly content to curl up on the pull-out sofa and do all of the cross-word puzzles Blaine neglects in the paper, occasionally switching on the television to watch I Love Lucy.

Blaine, for his part, has tried to stay out of Kurt's way. He's earned a week or two more of shutting himself off, Blaine knows. Kurt has always seen himself as the abandoner—he left his former life, his father, everything he'd known—and now he's been abandoned himself, and Blaine thinks that maybe it's harder for Kurt because he understands exactly how Santana feels as well. He's shouldering double the pain, in a head where he can't trust his own feelings, trying to hold all the emotions of two people in one head that's already had too much too bear. It's fair, that Kurt needs time to cut himself out, stay floating in time and letters and sitcoms, just to have time to piece his thoughts back together, allow himself to cope.

So Blaine has stayed confined to his room, occasionally venturing to the kitchen for Pringles, finally starting on that list of books that he'd told himself he'd read years ago, bought the hardcover version with matching bookmark, only to have them sit and collect dust on his bookshelf. Neil Gaiman is actually quite enjoyable, in a fantastically disturbing way, he discovers, and he remembers when Kurt had abused him over his book choices, back when things weren't easy but bearable.

Now, sitting at New Year's Eve dinner, Blaine thinks about the Kurt he knew a year ago, the Kurt he knows now, and how well the first had managed to hide the latter, so well that Blaine realizes he'd never really known Kurt at all, even as he fell in love with him.

Blaine knows now that he still doesn't know Kurt, not really. Not in any traditional sense.

But he's beginning to. He sees it in the way Kurt smiles when he figures out a particularly difficult crossword, how he looks over with concern when Blaine coughs. He sees it in the way he loves Santana, in the way he held Blaine's hand when they walked away from the oncologist. How he rolls his eyes and giggles softly when Lucy does something spectacularly stupid and Ricky is left with a disaster on his hands.

And he wonders what Kurt was like, back when he was sixteen and home where he belonged.

He doesn't hear Kurt at first when he asks the question. It's surprising enough that Kurt is talking to him, let alone actually promoting a conversation.

"What?" he says, when his brain catches up with his ears.

Kurt shakes his head, allowing a small smile to appear on his lips. "I asked if you have any resolutions." He takes a sip of cider and picks up his bread.