A/N: I wrote this on tumblr (abrokenkindofperfect) a while back and thought I'd share it with you lovely people! In this verse, Rachel and Blaine Anderberry are half-siblings, and a joy to write. It was originally in 3 parts, so sorry if it seems a bit stilted.

Enjoy!

"Blaine? Blaine! Where did you put my ear buds?" Rachel's angry call echoes through the Anderberry household, amplifying through each empty room and hallway. She stops for a moment, listening, and finally marches down to her brother's room, where she promptly throws open the door and nearly demands an explanation for her missing headphones.

But rather than seeing Blaine sitting at his desk the way he usually is, scribbling down some notes or flicking through his i-pod (or, even more typically, on the phone with Kurt), she sees a lump under a tangle of sheets, shaking with barely muffled sobs.

"Oh my god, Blaine?" she asks, so surprised she feels nearly offended. "Are you okay?"

"Go 'way," she thinks she hears before another choke wracks his frame. Her jaw drops then, because just this morning he'd been all smiles, bowtie fixed nicely and hair slicked back.

In true Rachel form, she does the opposite of what she's asked, and sits on the corner of the bed, perched awkwardly in the little room there is. "What happened?" she asks quietly, rubbing his back through the linen. She's not good with these types of encounters, having lacked a mother figure most of her life, but Rachel's nothing if not determined to fix things for her brother. "You can tell me."

They stay like that for a stretched out strain of moment, seconds turned to minutes turned to worry lines upon her face because she's never seen Blaine like this, never. He's still crying, shuddering every once in a while.

She's worried that he didn't want her intruding at all until, "I screwed up." Another heave of dry air, a catch in his breath, a wet noise from his throat, and "with Kurt."

His head peeks up after this, out of the mound, and his cheeks are blotchy and his eyes are bloodshot so Rachel brushes away a tear and resists the urge to kiss him on the cheek. There's an issue she needs to solve first.

This is dangerous ground here, Rachel knows, because Kurt is her best friend. But this is her brother. "Do you want to tell me about it?"

He's still shaking, still trembling, but he soldiers on with, "He was worried about Sebastian, and I was oblivious like freaking always, and when he kissed me Kurt saw and I tried to get him off me, I did! I swear I did-"

"Hey, calm down. I'm sure you did. I believe you," soothes Rachel, because the panic edging on hysteria in his voice leaves Rachel wondering exactly how bad of a fight this was. And there's so much self-hatred, so much loathing directed towards himself that she's scared. She knows how he can get when he's in a mood. She knows how hard on himself he always is. When he grabs his car keys and his boxing gloves he thinks he's being careful, being subtle, but she knows.

"He said we needed a break." And while Rachel knows those words must have shattered Blaine, must have absolutely torn him apart, there isn't much she can do besides be relieved that that's all it was: a break. Because all breaks come to an end, especially one between these two.

"Did you try to explain the situation to Kurt afterwards?" Rachel's starting to feel like a therapist, asking all of these questions, but she doesn't know what else to say.

"He didn't really g-give me a chance." This is the first time she's heard his voice break since puberty.

"Do you want me to talk to him at school tomorrow? Because I could."

He swallows hard, looks up, and asks, "Please?" in a voice so small she can't resist the urge to wrap him up in a hug. It isn't very difficult, because Blaine's just a petite guy in general, and this conversation's made him seem twice as small. Blaine curls into her, buries his head in her shoulder, and Rachel rubs his back in slow circles, having expected this reaction. What she hadn't expected was for him to burst into tears once again.

She just holds him tighter.

…

She finds Kurt after school by his locker, resolutely not looking at the picture of Blaine that's still hanging there. Rachel mentally chalks up one point for their relationship, especially remembering the cold satisfaction of tearing Finn's picture out of her own locker time and time again.

Her footsteps are like pops of gunfire across the cheap linoleum. "Kurt, we need to talk. It's about Blaine."

He just sighs, looking up slowly and deliberately as if just daring her to get in the middle of things. When her gaze refuses to waver, he answers, "Fine."

"I'm serious, Kurt. Do you know what happened last night? I came home, walked into my brother's room, and found him in bed crying harder than I've ever seen him cry." Kurt winces minutely at this point, swallows visibly, and rubs at his left eye. "You hurt him a lot, Kurt, and I think you owe him a chance to explain himself-"

"To explain what?" Kurt finally asks, voice too loud and too grating and all the more angry for it, "That he was kissing another guy? That when I caught him he looked like the guiltiest man alive? He said it wasn't Sebastian's fault, that Sebastian was harmless, that he wanted nothing to do with Sebastian. What was I supposed to think when I saw that?" he practically spits, cheeks turning a fiery red as he works himself up.

"Why didn't you talk to him, though? You owe him that, at least. You guys care about each other too much to let something stupid stand in your way."

Rachel's finding herself getting angry too now, because she's seen the way Kurt and Blaine look at each other, and it isn't high school dime a dozen plastic roses wild parties hormone-driven the way everything else seems to be. They were supposed to last.

"Did you stop to think that maybe he's not the only one that's hurting because of this?" asks Kurt, voice lilting sadly, and a pang of pity jolts through her.

"You have to talk to him," she finally pleads, "You should've seen him last night. It was horrible, Kurt, I had no idea what to do and he was a mess. He hates himself so much, and I'm not even sure this was anyone's fault but Sebastian's."

"Is he okay?"

"He's doing a little better. He skipped his first three classes today, though. I had to call him and psychologically intimidate him until he agreed to show up. All of this in five minutes, mind you. It wasn't easy!" she exclaims, seeing Kurt stifle a chuckle, and smiles. "Really though, will you talk to him?"

He presses his lips together, a thin line of white amongst pale pale pink, and nods.

She hugs him tightly, smiles to herself, and makes plans to not be home tonight. Blaine can thank her later.

…

The knock on the door is tentative, and at first Blaine resolves not to get up. Rachel will get it, they'll go away, it's no big deal. But a few seconds later the knock comes again, and again after that, until he sighs and throws the comforter off of his head. He trudges barefoot over the carpet, padding across these empty halls until he reaches the front door. It stands like a challenge.

He opens it.

"Hi, Blaine," says Kurt, "I came to apologize," and Blaine's freaking out inside because he has no idea how to react to this. Relief mingles with panic and Kurt's just standing there, shifting his weight.

"Come on in," says Blaine, voice too loud in the empty space, and he shuts his eyes for a moment as Kurt steps aside. Kurt's real, Kurt's here, and Kurt's apologizing; why is this making him feel sick?

There's a tension in the way the taller boy holds himself, like he's a coiled spring waiting to snap. It's making Blaine nervous. It's making him fidgety.

Blaine really thinks that Kurt will break the silence. Kurt, true to form, does the opposite of what's expected, and instead yawns delicately and waits.

"Thanks for coming," Blaine tries, "I was scared you wouldn't come back."

Kurt makes a little disbelieving noise at that, the sound coming from the back of his throat and startling both boys. He soldiers on, though. "Why would you ever think that?"

"I screwed up huge with Sebastian. I've just never felt good enough for anyone, and when you walked away, it kind of felt like that was one more person I disappointed."

With this statement a tear nearly leaks out of his eye, and Blaine hastily rubs it away, mortified. He's cried enough in the past couple of days to last a lifetime.

Kurt gets up slowly, moves to the other seat where Blaine is, and gently (and ever so slowly) wraps his arms around the smaller boy. Blaine just sighs and tries to get closer, because he missed this, and all he wants is to melt into Kurt's skin and stay there for a while.

"Don't ever think that," Kurt says, and Blaine is surprised at the fervor in his tone, "You're not a disappointment. You're amazing."

Blaine's too tired to argue.

Eventually, though, things have to be dealt with. "We still need to talk about this," says Kurt, and Blaine just digs his head deeper into the crook of his boyfriend's (boyfriend's? Are they still?) neck and shuts his eyes tightly.

"I know," he mumbles against the scratch of Kurt's vest. "Can it wait?"

At this Kurt pulls back just slightly. "It shouldn't. Not if we don't want to fight again in the future. We need to talk about this, Blaine. I'm not about to leave you over some misunderstanding. I just need to know what happened with the whole Sebastian incident before I showed up."

Blaine shifts out from underneath Kurt's solid arm and takes a deep breath before beginning. "He said he wanted to show me something around the corner, so I followed him like an idiot. I kept asking him where we were going and he told me to relax. I should've known something was up, I really should've, but I just kept following him until he shoved me up against a locker and kissed me. I tried to get him off, I swear I did, but he's so much bigger than me, you know?"

There's a far-away look in Kurt's eyes when he answers, "I know," and Blaine immediately knows he's flashing back to Karofsky, to all of those moments of darkness before Kurt and Blaine were Kurt-and-Blaine.

"I'm so sorry, Kurt, I shouldn't have followed him anywhere without talking to you first."

"Blaine, that's ridiculous. You couldn't have known. I'm sorry, too. I should've let you explain," he says with a small shrug, as if Kurt's still confused about the situation altogether.

"Can we just agree that we're both idiots and move on?" asks Blaine wryly, seeing a pattern in their conversation.

"Gladly," decides Kurt, and presses his lips softly against Blaine's. "Just make sure Sebastian, and everyone else, knows that you're mine."

"Deal," smiles Blaine, and feels a rush of gratitude that Rachel had left the house empty for the night. He'll thank her later.

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