The short walk to the caf� passed in a kind of daze for Blaine. When he entered, Kurt was already at their usual table with both their coffees waiting, phone in his hand. He looked up only when Blaine sat opposite.

“Oh, hi honey!” His smile was dazzling. Blaine wanted nothing more than to lean in and kiss these full lips, but there was something that needed to be cleared first. He didn’t return the smile as he took the printout out of his bag and placed it on the table in front of his boyfriend. The moment of truth.

“Kurt? Why didn’t I know about this?” His heart sank when he registered the look on Kurt’s face. Shock. Guilt. Defensiveness.

“Oh. Where did you get it?”

“It doesn’t matter where I got it. Why, Kurt?”

“I… I was going to tell you.”

“When exactly?” He felt his temper flaring.

“As soon as I was certain I really want to do it.”

“You seem to be pretty certain already” Blaine gestured at the photograph.

“We were just trying it out. I wanted to make sure I’d be okay with all the… um, touching and nudity… before I told you. I didn’t know if I could do it. But it turned out to be quite natural for me and we were fantastic. Henri has more experience with this kind of stuff and he taught me some useful tricks.” Blaine just gaped at him, frozen, unable to utter a sound. Kurt continued, a little hesitant. “So… are you okay with that? Now that you know?”

Blaine somehow found his voice, but it came out strangled. “Seriously? You’re kidding, right? How can I possibly be okay with it? I’d never think that you, of all people, would do something like that, ever!”

“Blaine, it’s a chance for me, don’t you see? I’ve wanted it for a long time. Besides, you don’t really have the right to tell me what I can and cannot do, you know?” Kurt was getting agitated, his eyes bright. “Did you assume you are the one and only?” he finished with a choked sound and that did it. Blaine stood up so fast that his chair clattered to the floor.

“I don’t believe it. I can’t believe you could do it to me. But fine. If that’s what you want, fine. I’ll just go then, you’re free to do whatever you want. Goodbye, Kurt. I hope you’ll be happy.”

There might have been confusion on Kurt’s face, or maybe shock, but he didn’t care, even when he heard “But… wait, what? Blaine, stop!”

He didn’t.

He ran out of the caf�, angry tears blinding him. He never looked back.

Blaine didn’t remember how he got to his dorm, so it might have been a miracle he didn’t get killed in the rush hour traffic as he ran blindly. Once he fell face down on his bed, he just felt numb. I should feel something now, he thought, pain, anger, anything. There was nothing. His mind just kept repeating Kurt’s words over and over.

I’ve wanted it for a long time.
We were fantastic.
Did you assume you are the one and only?

Has he been deluding himself? Has Kurt stayed with him so long just out of decency? Pity? Friendship? No, friends are honest with each other. So he’s just lost the love of his life and his best friend. And he felt nothing. Some weird defense mechanism must have kicked in, so that he wouldn’t die of broken heart perhaps.

His phone rang an hour later. Kurt. He didn’t pick up. It rang again and again, punctuated by texts coming one by one. Blaine deleted those without looking. What could Kurt say? That he was sorry? That they should stay friends? There was no use talking anymore. In fact, if he was to let Kurt go, he needed to cut all connections, immediately.

He changed the ring tone for Kurt’s number so that he wouldn’t pick up by mistake. He blocked his ex-boyfriend’s e-mail address (holy shit, Kurt was his ex-boyfriend, surely it wasn’t normal not to be reduced to a crying lump on the floor?). While at it, he deleted all their pictures from his laptop and changed the desktop picture from Kurt’s portrait to a cute puppy. There, that was nice. Cheerful.

Then, hardly even thinking about it, he began tossing his belongings into bags and boxes. All Kurt’s things he found in his room – some clothes and toiletries, books and sheet music, along with a couple of their pictures he had displayed on his desk – got packed and prepared to be mailed to Kurt’s dorm. It took just three hours, a lot of running up and down stairs with heavy loads, and one car ride to move everything to their – no, his – new apartment. At midnight he was sitting at the kitchen table, drinking tequila by himself and still feeling nothing. He was prepared to wake up the next day and fully comprehend what happened. Yet the only thing he felt in the morning was a massive hangover. It was as if his emotions were wiped off. No hurt, no anger, no joy. He could live with that.

And he did. He took more singing gigs to fill his days and earn the rent – he decided not to look for a flatmate, solitude suited him, but what was easily affordable for two, became more challenging for one. Still, he managed, people loved him singing and being his charming self if the attendance and the phone numbers he got every time – mostly from girls – were any indication. He worked and then went home. He read, listened to the music, watched movies, ate, slept. He didn’t stop to think or reminisce.

The first breach in his thick armor of numbness appeared two weeks after That Afternoon, as he called it. Kurt stopped trying to call and text him by then and he settled into his new routines. One day he went to the office of his old dorm to check for any messages or post that may have come since his move – he hadn’t given his new address to anyone yet, not that many people would be interested. There were two letters waiting for him and when he recognized the familiar, elegant handwriting on both creamy envelopes, intense pain shot through his chest so unexpectedly that he staggered and briefly wondered if that is what heart attack feels like. It lasted just a few seconds though before the welcome numbness enveloped him again and he was able to go back into the office and ask the nice lady to use their shredder because he didn’t have one or a fireplace at home and he definitely couldn’t read these letters. He was afraid that if he did or allowed himself any other contact with Kurt, he might forget all about the pictures, about letting him go and be happy with someone else, and do something stupid. Like begging him to take Blaine back, perhaps. Possibly begging on his knees.

Days went by after that and his emotions were steadily coming back. Memories attacked him painfully every now and then – when he heard Teenage Dream on the radio, when a guy in his new favorite caf� ordered a non-fat mocha, sometimes when he woke up in the morning and really felt the emptiness of the huge bed that was one of the factors in choosing this apartment. But worse than that, he was never fully numb anymore. There was a constant ache, a phantom pain of something – somebody – missing, like a piece of his life, his heart, his soul was cut off. It was getting worse every day.

At the end of July he got a call from Rachel, asking him to come by the theatre she was working in to pick up a box of his things that Kurt left there. Blaine couldn’t really say no without sounding like a jerk, so he steeled himself, plastered the smiling, charming mask to his face and went. Rachel clearly wanted to talk about Kurt, so Blaine just took the box and made some lousy excuse before he virtually ran out. That may have seemed rude, but he hoped he had been able to radiate busy and content with his life, and mostly not freaking out at all.

At home, he shoved the box to the back of a high shelf in his closet without opening it and promptly proceeded to get drunk.

The next morning he was welcome by a killer headache and a total lack of the familiar numbness, and while the former passed eventually, the latter was there to stay from then on. And it really wasn’t fair, something must have gone wrong in the process, because while all the pain, hurt and regret were back with a vengeance, the good emotions weren’t. There was no joy in his life, no happiness, no hope.

Still, he plowed on. He worked, and when summer ended, he studied. Sometimes he met his friends – well, more like acquaintances really – mostly to stop them preaching that he should just move on with his life. He even let them set him up for two dates, both with perfectly charming guys who were doing their best to gain his interest, but his heart wasn’t in it.

In January a small theatre company asked them to write music for their next performance after someone heard some of his original songs at one of his gigs. It should make him insanely happy, but there was no one to share the success with, no one to truly understand how big a deal that was. Still, it was satisfying to be appreciated and do something creative.

Time passed.

And now there he is, on the day of the first breakup anniversary. Still hurting, still unhappy, missing Kurt more than ever.