Blaine opened his eyes, blinking blearily at the ugly sound of an alarm clock trumpeting out of the holes on the back of it. It was seven-thirty, an hour before classes started. He groaned and reached a hand out to touch Kurt's. To his dismay, he didn't find anything but empty air; instead there was a note on the pillow next to him. Reaching with his still-braced hand, Blaine picked it up. Getting his glasses with the other hand, he poked himself in the eye trying to put them on. Finally, when the white spots disappeared, he read the note.

Love,

I'm just getting ready if you wake up and I'm not here. Sarah texted me to tell me that she arranged it so you could have first period off and we both have last period off. I'll bring you coffee from the cafe if I don't see you in the dining hall.

I love you.

-Kurt

He smiled and rubbed his thumb over the "I love you" at the bottom, feeling the curves of Kurt's cursive handwriting pressed into the post-it note. Laying there, he stared up at the ceiling above his bed drowsily; thinking how grateful he was to his new… Sarah, not mom; not yet. Blaine thought as a wave of emotion tried overcome him. He took off his glasses, flinging them carelessly on the mattress beside him, and covered his eyes with his arms, trying to calm himself before he broke into a new storm of tears and mucus. As his breathing slowly evened out, Blaine heard the door open and the lamp on his desk being switched on. The bed dipped with the weight of a body laying down next to him.

"Good morning, love." A voice said close to his ear.

Blaine uncovered his head enough for Kurt to kiss him on the cheek but not enough for him to see his eyes; which he was sure looked red. "Morning." He tried to tell him in the happiest tone he could manage.

"I brought you coffee. Medium drip with whipped cream with mixed in cinnamon, of course." Kurt said as the bed shifted when he grabbed the cup off of the night stand for Blaine.

Blaine sighed heavily and fully took his arms off of his head, reaching for his glasses. Looking around with blurry eyes, he found his black half framed glasses and sat up with his back against the head board. He smiled when Kurt came into focus, holding a familiar beige cup from the cafe emitting a delicious smell. Blaine took a sip, sighing as the liquid warmed his body as it slipped into his stomach.

"Better?" Kurt leaned on his arm on his side next to him, sipping his own cup. He wore only his white dress shirt, the tie loosely around his neck, the charcoal dress pants, black socks, and the blue and red blazer on the back of Blaine's desk chair. His hair was styled in his usual way, parted on the right side of his head with a quarter of the amount of gel that Blaine uses in the morning.

Blaine smiled. "Much. Thank you, Kurt." He took another sip of the delicious medium drip. "Today's going to be torture. I feel like my brain's deflated, no matter how much homework I did."

"You'll be fine. Just don't stress about it, the teachers'll understand." Kurt said as he sat back up on the side of the bed, cross-legged, and sipped from his latte. "And besides, we're back with the Warblers after classes."

Blaine shrugged as he reached for his laptop, wincing as the motion stretched the scar tissue from his gut. He turned it on, hoping for good news on the news stations. Kurt looked on silently until it was almost time for him to go to his first class.

"You'll be okay for the next hour and a half?" Kurt asked as he slipped his shiny black dress shoes on.

Blaine nodded as he stared at the brunette's legs, trying to figure out what was wrong with what he was seeing. "Wait, where's your brace? And your cane?"

Kurt smiled secretly. He lifted his pant until it went up to his mid-thigh to reveal a knee brace. "I heal fast. The doctor said I could wear this instead of the cast for whenever I'm walking around. I still have to use the damn cane, it's by the desk, but at least I don't have to wear the brace until nighttime. And I'm getting sick of the cane; I'm just carrying it around in case I need it, or the need to whack Jeff and Nick when I'm in the chem labs with them over comes me." He rolled his eyes.

Blaine sighed. "You're lucky, I guess." He picked at a strap on his brace.

"Hey, just think of it this way." Kurt told him softly. "At least in practice, you get to sit out while David drills us in his latest choreographical disaster slash extravaganza. Then again, I get to sit out with you." He kissed him gently on the forehead.

The curly haired Warbler smiled sadly. "I love you." He reached a hand up to touch Kurt's cheek and brought his face down to kiss him sweetly on the lips. "Now go, I don't want you to be late for history with all the time we've been gone."

Kurt smiled back as he put on his blazer and buttoned the first gold circle. "You'll be okay? I'm coming back before second so we can go to Calculus together and look fabulous when we enter the room to applause fit for an emperor. Oh, c'mon," Kurt said jokingly when he saw Blaine's face. "You know Sarles is going to have everyone welcome us back one way or another."

"I know. It's… just going to be a little lonely without you here for an hour and a half." Blaine said quietly.

Kurt kissed him once more, a longer time with a fierceness Blaine thought he might have felt from him before. "Text me if you need anything, I mean it. Heckland's going to be boring as ever." He looked him in the eye. "I love you, Blaine Anderson, and I won't stop even if you asked me to."

Blaine chuckled. "Okay, I will and I love you. Now go. You're going to be late."

Kurt chuckled and grabbed his cane around the middle, twirling it while walking steadily on both feet out of his dorm room, closing his door on the way out.

Falling on his back onto the pillows again, he back towards himself. Blaine opened his email and replied to a few that Mari and Lauren already sent to him. He sighed, reading one from Lauren that asked him to Skype her tonight after his last class.

Shutting his laptop, but not powering it down, he lay there with his hands behind his head. Blaine thought about what had happened yesterday with the closet and his mom. He got up and slowly swung his legs over the side of his bed before crouching down, his stomach twanging slightly but no pain, and grabbing the small gray hard plastic box with the alphanumerical lock closing it shut. Blaine played with the lock, trying to remember what his mother told him. "… put my name in the lock…" He muttered to himself. Turning the dials to B-L-A-I-N-E and let it stay there for a second, Blaine tried to press the two square black buttons on either side of the lock but it remained steadfastly locked. He knit his eyebrows together, bemused. Blaine knew his mother told him to put his name in the lock.

After trying a few other combinations, putting his name in backwards, putting the names of Joey and Lauren and even his fath- the bastard, his birthday month, Miranda's maiden name, and the names of her parents, he swung the box onto the mattress dangerously close to his laptop. Blaine glared at the small plastic container, frustrated with tears leaking out of the corner of his eyes. "What name are trying to tell me to put in, Mom?" He growled and throwing his fists down on the bed, not caring out the pain protesting in his left forearm. A tear dropped onto the case, making the spot where it splashed a darker gray than the rest of the box.

Blaine let his head slump back onto his pillows after he tucked the box safely away under his nightstand. He lay on his stomach, trying not to cry as he had been the last couple of days. Exhaling slowly, he lifted his head to see that he only had half an hour before Kurt came back so they could go to Calculus. He rolled over back onto his back and adjusted the glasses on his face.

Stepping over to his closet, without his crutches, he opened the door to fetch a pair of charcoal pants, a pressed white dress shirt, and a blazer. Blaine frowned as he grabbed one; he usually had five but his closet only showed him four of the navy blue and red edged jackets. Oh, yeah. The other one is the one the bastard shot the hell out of. He remembered as he buttoned up the dress shirt. Blaine tried to neatly tie the striped tie but could only manage an extremely sloppy knot since he didn't want to take his brace off because of the pain radiating in his fingers from where he had slammed it against the bed earlier. He sighed, Kurt would have to fix it for him when he came.

Sitting down at his desk, he gathered his binders and put it in his brown leather messenger bag. Well, at least the police gave me back my bag. He thought. The police had given Kurt and him their bags back after concluding that the two messenger bags didn't hold any evidence relevant to the case. Instead of dropping them off at the Berry household, they had given them back to Dalton and back in their dorm rooms until they returned. Blaine opened his laptop, staring at a picture on Facebook of him and Mairead when they were both at all-night cancer fundraiser last summer.

"Hey, ready to go?" A voice asked as the door opened.

Blaine closed out of his Firefox browser and powered down his laptop before putting it away on the sliding tray under his desk's surface. He smiled as Kurt came in. "Yeah, could you tie my tie for me, again? I kinda did a bad job of it."

"You would think that three years of this would solve the problem." Kurt's lips twitched into an amused half-smile as he brought his hands up to Blaine's throat.

"Well, this is the first time I've had to tie it with a brace." Blaine said as he felt the tie move around the collar of his shirt on the back of his neck as Kurt adjusted the length before quickly and neatly tying it off and buttoning the blazer for him.

"C'mon, let's get to class." Kurt said as he made to grab Blaine's crutches.

He stopped him with a hand on his arm. "Wait." Blaine looked pointedly down at Kurt's black cane in his hand. "Let me use that instead."

"Blaine, you're going to hur-"

"No, I'm not." Blaine said stubbornly. "I've been doing PT on my own. I can stand on my own two feet well enough. And I'm getting sick of the damn crutches. The only one who actually still needs them is my brother, not me." Kurt still looked skeptical. "Kurt, I'm fine. And the guys won't let me fall; in fact, I wouldn't be surprised if there aren't five of them around me at all times. After what I've been through." He said the last part more to himself than to Kurt.

Kurt sighed, rolling his eyes. "Oh, fine. Just don't blame me if you do fall and break something, again." He handed him the cane and adjusted his messenger bag on his shoulder.

The rest of the morning in went well, more than quite a few Dalton boys welcomed the two of the back when they were in class and the painted mural hallways. The teachers were more than understanding when Blaine didn't know the answers to their questions. It made Blaine a little uneasy as some of the teachers he didn't work well with gave him looks of sympathy and pity as he came up to them to ask when to make up his missed tests. Kurt managed to help him stave off most of the questions of what happened to the two of them, even though a few did manage to get some clues out of them. But mostly they asked what they did in the four weeks they were off of Dalton's campus.

During lunch, both Blaine and Kurt walked into the dining hall and all the Warblers cheered for them as they came towards their table. Blaine smiled widely as he received their hugs and fist bumps, wincing a little as some of them were a little harder than he expected and wobbled on his right leg and Kurt's cane, nearly losing his balance. "Alright, I missed all of you guys, too! Let me eat and listen to what's happened to you guys in the last four weeks Kurt and I have been in Malibu." Blaine joked as Kurt got lunch for the both of them. The sat down next to each other and listened as they told him trivial things. Blaine put a smile on his face and tuned out much of his friends' chatter, feeling depressed as he ate his chicken salad. Lunch soon ended and they all went their separate ways to the classrooms, leaving Kurt and Blaine alone momentarily.

"Are you in pain? Don't lie to me, Blaine." Kurt said in a low voice. There were still some boys lingering in the echo-y room.

"Yes," Blaine whispered. "But I'll go to the health office after I'm done here. I promise." He told him in an empty voice.

Kurt raised both of his eyebrows at him. Blaine nodded to his unspoken skeptical query. "Really, I will."

Sighing, Kurt kissed him. "Alright, I'll see you at Warbler practice after last period. I love you."

Kissing him back and giving him a smile, the light not reaching his eyes, Blaine nodded again as he squeezed Kurt's hand. "I love you, too."

Blaine watched his boyfriend walk confidently on both feet before he lurched to his own feet with the help of the cane. He winced as a spear of pain lanced up his leg. Rubbing his thigh, he slowly hobbled to his humanities class.

Sitting down at his desk, Blaine looked up and saw Jeff and Nick walking towards him. He groaned good-naturedly, welcoming his two friends. "Finally, what did you guys do when I was gone? I was getting worried when I didn't hear any stories of mixing Mentos and Diet Coke before putting it under someone's car."

The three of the talked while waiting for the teacher to come in. Blaine opened his notebook and rested his chin on the back of his right hand, smiling as he loved this class and missing the talk of Delphi and ancient Grecians.

Blaine sighed as he lay on his back in his dorm room. Last period had just started and Flint and Wes had accompanied him back to his room as they also had their last periods off. He spread his arms out on the mattress, looking like a starfish but with his legs still dangling over the side of the bed.

His Android vibrated in his pocket. Reaching his hand into his pocket, he adjusted his glasses on his nose and saw that it was Mairead calling him. "Hello?" He answered in a curious tone.

"Hey, you." She answered happily. "How're you doing?"

"Fine, I guess. You?"

"Eh, school and all that crap. How's Kurt?"

"Fine, he's in class right now. You know that it's-"

"Last period at Dalton right now? Yeah, I know." Mairead finished for him, laughing. "Mom just wanted me to remind him that his PT appointment is this Friday but he's not picking up his phone."

"I think he's in his French class. He never answers his phone during that, no matter if you call or text him. Trust me, I learned the hard way." Blaine rolled his eyes as he remembered Kurt nearly steamrollering him after that class when he first transferred to Dalton. "Something along the lines of 'being immersed in the language' or something like that."

Mairead laughed and Blaine smiled, realizing how much he missed his best friend even though it had only been about twenty hours since he'd last seen her. "I wish I could feel the same way about Spanish, I hate that class so much. I already have two languages in my head; if I add a third, I'm going to start speaking the wrong language to everything."

"And how does that differ from learning how to swear in Italian?" Blaine asked logically as he grinned, even though she couldn't see him.

"Well, at least people don't know that I'm swearing! They'll just think that I'm the freak of the school as usual." She said casually.

"Oh, c'mon. You know you're not the freak. Isn't there a jock somewhere who doesn't know what zero times zero is?"

"…true." Blaine could hear her smiling at the other end along with a distant voice in the background. "Hey, I have to go, but I just wanted to call to remind Kurt about his PT session this Friday."

"I'll pass it along after he calls you to yell. I'll talk to you later?" Blaine said as he sat up.

"Yep. Love you, Blaine." She said before hanging up.

"… love you too, Mari." Blaine whispered into the dead silence of the phone.

He lay back down after setting his phone on his nightstand, closing his eyes and enjoying the softness of the comforter under him. It only felt like two seconds that he was napping before a certain someone lay down beside him. Blaine slowly opened his eyes and saw a brunette by his side. "Hello, love."

Kurt looked up and smiled at him in his dazzling grin. "Hello."

"Ugh, what time is it?" Blaine yawned. "Is it time for Warbler practice?"

"In a little bit. I thought I'd come in and cuddle with my boyfriend." Kurt said as he tucked himself under Blaine's arm, not caring about his clothes. "I'd would have thought you'd take your blazer off, Blaine?" He asked as he ran a hand over his stomach until his fingers hit the little golden button, unbuckling it from the other side of the blazer.

Blaine shrugged. "I kinda just came in, talked to Mari when she called, and fell asleep afterwards."

"Mmm, yes. I need to call her and teach her about phone etiquette when I'm in French." Kurt murmured sleepily.

"You know she called to remind you of your PT this Friday, right? It was all in good intent."

"Mmm…"

The two of them lay dozing until it was time for Warbler practice. Kurt left to change out of the uniform and Blaine to change in private. Reaching the Warbler's room, he saw all of his friends sitting on the leather couches in casual clothes, much like them. A few of the smiled and greeted the two of them.

David and Wes ran rehearsal as usual, but without Kurt and Blaine. They sang with them still, but not yet doing the choreography. Kurt groaned and covered his face as he saw them doing their best funk "moves". Blaine only laughed as they tried to out-impress each other, used to this.

All of them rehearsed well into the evening. Blaine feeling happier than usual as he was back with his friends.

"Today was a good day." Kurt said from his place on Blaine's bed with his Latin notebook on his stomach.

"Totally agree." Blaine said, his eyes still on his laptop screen. "It was nice being back here. I kinda missed it. Okay, really missed it." He laughed after Kurt coughed, sounding like "A lot". Blaine joined him on his bed, hobbling over with the cane, getting used to walking with it.

"You know, today would have been a lot less enjoyable if you weren't here with me." Kurt said as he smiled a kiss onto Blaine's lips.

Blaine likewise smiled back as he kissed his boyfriend. "I know. I love you."

The two of the stayed like that until they fell asleep, not realizing it until they were unconscious, dreaming of the other.