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Distance has always been a problem for Leo. It doesn't work well with his need of having the people he cares about close enough for comfort and with his abandonment issues, which were born with him the day his mother gave him away and subconsciously stuck with him for the rest of his life; so much so that they have made some parts of his life way worse than they could have been. Sure, Blaine's attempt to protect himself and Leo by living his life away from him or Kurt's inbuilt emotional constipation didn't help, but still there was something else underneath it all that nobody cared to address and now it's there forever.
Ironically enough, despite his aversion for distance, Leo's most important relationships – with the exclusion of Adam, who has always been attached to Leo's hip and who remained there, like a ghost limb, even during the excruciating period the two of them were apart – have been affected by distance and survived it, coming back stronger in a blaze of glory. They are, of course, Blaine, Annie and Matt.
A big part of Leo's relationship with Blaine was made of distance. There were times, when Leo was in college, when Blaine would come and go from Westerville, without so much of a notice. Leo would fill that distance with other people, only to try and make up for it by being extra-clingy whenever Blaine was actually there. It was a continuous game of waiting for him when he was away and pretending he was not going to leave again when he was there. It was – on levels he wasn't even aware of back then – exhausting.
Years later, when Leo was alone and Blaine was lost somewhere and refused to be found by him, that kind of distance became a void inside Leo's head. And the more time passed, the further Blaine went, the more empty Leo was. He would reach into that emptiness, hoping once again to catch a glimpse of the man, and fall into it instead. That distance was killing him the same way he was sure it had destroyed their relationship. But when Blaine came back, out of guilt and desperation, expecting (hoping, actually) only to fix someone he had broken, suddenly that distance had no meaning anymore. Sure, there was rage and anger and blaming, but the bond between them was still there and always had been, as if despite the time and space they had put between them, that couldn't be cut, which is – and that's the point of them – both a wonderful and terrifying thing. They now know that they would die before they stop loving each other, no matter how much pain they could be in.
With Matt things have never been so dramatic, of course, but distance is a big part of their relationship too. In fact, it's pretty much its main characteristic. They met on line – one in New York, the other in godforsaken Lima, Ohio – when Leo was just a teenager and Matt was just slightly older than that, and yet living an adult life Leo has never actually come close to live. They bonded over an internet comic phenomenon that had started way before their time and had come down to them in a million different forms that had nothing to do with the original media.
By a curious quirk of fate, Matt has always been Leo's “normality” when Blaine was somewhat involved and made his life unusual or painful. When Leo was young and he would go visit Blaine in New York, Matt was the kid (almost) his age he did normal things with, like going to comic conventions or stuff his face with junk food. He was there to remind him that sex with a thirty-five years old man was not something a normal teenager would do as Leo tended to forget that what he was living – and was obsessing over – was, in fact, a very peculiar exception. Also, Blaine was a bit of a bore out of bed, from young Leo's point of view, as they didn't share any common interest and Blaine didn't want to be seen with him in public for obvious reasons. So, away from home and Adam and Annie, Matt provided the kind of entertainment Blaine would not.
When things went horribly south, Matt became his safe haven, that one place he could always go hide and take a breath from the mess his brain was. When his own home was precluded to him – literally, as his father Kurt would change the lock and refused to let him in. It didn't matter how long ago was the last time they had seen each other or when was the last time Leo had been lucid enough to write him a message. If coming home from work Matt found him in front of his door, he would let him in, no questions asked.
They had a thing, but never a proper relationship. It has always been about comfort between them – or at least it was for Leo – so the feeling they shared easily transitioned to a strong affection when Blaine came back into Leo's life. Today they still are a thousand miles apart and yet they're close as if they lived next to each other.
But Annie is inevitably the one who put more distance between herself and Leo, as she at some point left for Mars and stayed there for months at a time. Still, being on another planet, a sometimes faulty connection and the inability of doing something practical for him didn't stop her from being a good friend. She would sometimes sacrifice her one weekly call home to call him and ask him if everything was alright. He would lie but she would read between the lines anyway. Whenever she was on Earth, she came to visit him and he always made sure that she could find him, wherever he was staying at the time. They would spend days together and she was never judgmental – that is the main reason why it was so nice to be with her –, always trying to fix him up a little before going away again.
She also tried to fix Leo's relationship with Adam, to be the bridge between the two of them, but that was an impossible task as they needed to find their own way to each other. She kept Adam updated on his best friend, though, even if Adam pretended he didn't care, and that helped them later on. When Leo met Adam again, all he needed to do was apologize, as Adam knew everything about everything and he was only waiting for that one word, sorry. And, as it happened before and was going to happen again, that distance that had been there suddenly disappeared.
