Astray
Written for Tumblr's Klaine Advent Challenge (a 100+ word drabble a day)
Prompt #20: Torch
A/N - Takes place during s4e11, Sadie Hawkins.
***
He’d tried. He really had. He hadn’t meant to fall.
After the initial lull of travelling and getting caught up with his family in Los Angeles, he and Kurt had texted and emailed non-stop, which was exciting and familiar all at once. It wasn’t until Blaine woke up one morning and immediately checked his phone with the giddy whirl of butterflies in his stomach over a message from Kurt that he had realized he’d tumbled down the rabbit hole from which he’d already escaped once.
He couldn’t afford to be dependent on Kurt for his happiness. Not again. That road ended in a dark cul-de-sac of confusion and loneliness. Blaine made mistakes when he was lost. He couldn’t afford to get lost like that again. He might never find his way back. He couldn’t bear to lose Kurt forever.
After he and his family had touched down in Ohio, Blaine received a new Warblers conspiracy theorist text from Sam. Sam. He’d been the light at the end of the tunnel while Blaine had lost his way last year, helping him find the way back to himself. Of course if you’d have told him that, Sam would’ve wanted to change his moniker from the Blond Chameleon to the Human Torch and Blaine wondered for a moment whether Sam could actually do a Chris Evans impression. Flame On! Uh, yeah, he’d nail it.
Once school started back up again, Blaine distanced himself from everything that went on in New York over Christmas. It’d been easy to let himself get wrapped up in the brightness that was Sam and Tina while the glee club limped along without a choir room. Of course he checked in on Mr Hummel every week, just like he’d promised. He kept in contact with Kurt as well, albeit not as frequently. It seemed that Kurt too had pulled away over the past few weeks as he tried to figure out NYADA, just as Blaine navigated the weirdness surrounding the Sadie Hawkins dance and Tina’s invitation.
In the end he and Kurt talked through the oddity of their experiences since starting back at school. They each motivated the other to try new experiences, to push past old fears and self-imposed boundaries. So Kurt joined a new show choir who were quirky ‘to the power of epic’, or so he had put it. Whereas Blaine gathered his courage and went to the dance, happy to marvel at the luminosity of the decorations that Tina had set up. Sure, if he’d had a choice of who to slow dance with, Kurt would’ve been top of the list. Except Kurt lived five hundred miles away. And they weren’t together. Lovers. Friends. Bros. They were a lot of things, actually, but definitely not boyfriends.
Blaine had tried. He really had. He hadn’t meant to fall in love then break someone’s heart along with his own. He hadn’t meant to fall for his very straight and very sweet friend either. Yet here he was, stuck with the love of his life living two states over and an unrealistic but undeniable crush on Sam. He wasn’t lost, and he wasn’t found, but he would carry this torch and hope that, one day, it would lead him back to Kurt.
Us>>