CHAPTER 4

Why would I talk to you? You killed my friend.

Panic shoots through Blaine like electrical current. He barely manages to choke out “What?!”

“Well, okay, not literally. But you killed Kurt’s spirit, it’s just as bad! He doesn’t even sing anymore! You’re evil, Blaine, and I’m going to hang up now.”

“No, Rachel, wait!” The adrenaline rush fades, leaving him weak in the knees, and he silently curses the girl for her dramatic tendencies, but he needs her, damn it.

“Why would I?”

“Rachel, I really, really need to see Kurt. Just listen, please. I need his address. He isn’t picking up his phone and I’m worried about him. It’s… Well, I’ve just learned we had a massive misunderstanding, and it’s been exactly a year, and… I just need to talk to him. Not to make myself feel better, I promise. I have to explain what happened. He doesn’t know. He needs to know. He needs closure, Rachel.”

“I don’t think he’d want to see you.”

“Rachel. Remember his old blog? Go look at it. I’ll wait.”

He can hear tapping of a keyboard, a moment of silence, muted music, a quiet oh. And then the address.




That’s it, he thinks, getting out of his car in front of a dilapidated building. Will Kurt be home? Will he even want to talk? Only one way to check.

Blaine runs up the stairs to the last, fourth story. He knocks on the door with peeling red paint, hard – once, twice, again. After a minute he hears muffled footsteps and then the door is opening.

And there stands Kurt. So familiar and yet so very different. A year ago he wouldn’t be caught dead wearing loose sweatpants and a plain long-sleeved T-shirt, yet here they are. His hair is unstyled, tousled and longer than Blaine has ever seen it. But the greatest shock is Kurt’s face. Though still beautiful, it’s terribly pale, unhealthily so, and gaunt, cheekbones jutting out sharply. A look of deep sadness is etched there and when Kurt realizes who stands on his doorstep, the shock settles on his face like a death mask. His eyes are huge and terrified, deep purple shadows underneath.

“Oh shit. And now I’m hallucinating” he sways and almost falls, but Blaine crosses he threshold and catches him against his own chest. “And it’s not just visual. That can’t be good” Kurt muses.

“Kurt? Oh god, what’s wrong? You look like hell.”

“Hey! Shouldn’t hallucinations be nicer to their owner?”

“Are you ill? Should I take you to a hospital?” Blaine is seriously worried now. Kurt seems to be completely out of it and weak as a baby.

“No, just exhausted.” Kurt’s legs refuse to support him anymore, so Blaine closes the door and sits them both down on the floor, against the wall.

“When was the last time you slept?”

“I don’t do sleep. Well, I try not to. When I sleep, I dream. When I dream, I’m happy. And then I wake up and it’s like dying every single time. So I don’t sleep. I’d rather sleep and not wake up, but I’m not desperate enough for that solution. Except now I apparently dream when I’m awake, and I have no idea what to do about that.”

“That’s it then. You are going to bed.”

“I don’t think I can move.”

“Fine. Where’s your bedroom?”

“The door to the left. What…?” Blaine gets up and effortlessly scoops Kurt into his arms. Too effortlessly. A grown man shouldn’t be so light. He can feel every bone under the loose clothing.

“Now that is just not possible. Hallucinations don’t carry people around, you know” comments Kurt.

“Maybe I’m not a hallucination” murmurs Blaine as he enters the small bedroom and carefully lowers his precious cargo on the unmade bed. The air is stale, so he opens a window.

“Oh, believe me, you are” Kurt assures him, chuckling a little. “He wouldn’t come here. He doesn’t want anything to do with me, though I still don’t know why. He never contacted me, you know? Not once in a year. He probably hates me.”

“No. Don’t even think that. I love you” Blaine says seriously, sitting on the edge of the bed and looking right into the stormy eyes.

“See, that’s why I love the dreams. And why I hate waking up. It seems so real. Like he never left. Like I was still the happiest I’ve ever been, with dreams and plans and forever’s. Like it wasn’t ripped away from me one day without warning. Like I can wake up and see him beside me, and know it was all just a bad dream. And then I actually wake up and he’s not there. And it hurts like hell, and I die again. Every single time.” Kurt’s eyes are already closed, his voice trailing off. “Could you hold me until I fall asleep?”

“Yes.” Blaine swallows the tears that threaten to choke him and lays by Kurt, who moves into his embrace and melts against his chest the way he always used to do whenever they slept together. It’s like coming home.

“You even smell like him” Kurt murmurs into his chest, awed. “I forgot that smell months ago. I cried for a week. And there it is. Can I keep you?”

“Of course you can.” There’s a contented sigh and then just deep, regular breathing, and Blaine can finally let the tears flow.

He cries silently, holding Kurt close, until he can’t stop the sobs trying to rip out of his chest anymore. He carefully disentangles himself from the other boy’s embrace, tucks him in carefully, and flees to the small kitchen, closing the door behind him. Only then does he let himself go completely, sobbing and choking for what feels like hours.

He’s never felt so bad, ever. Not even a year ago, in that caf�. Now that he’s seen the consequences of that day, he would do anything to reverse it, to stop his stupid self with his stupid printout and make him ask one obvious question before he goes and breaks two people. But he can’t. There’s no going back. The only way he can go is forward, to do whatever is in his power to make it better for Kurt, who clearly needs help, and needs it from him. So he will take his head out of his ass right now, be the friend he should have been all along and do anything, anything to make the man he hurt so bad safe, whole and happy again. He will take care of him.

Tears drying on his face, Blaine takes in his surroundings for the first time since he came here. The kitchen looks unused. There’s no food on the counters, the cabinets hold only vast amount of coffee and energy drinks, and the fridge is empty apart from a container of leftover Chinese and some milk. No wonder Kurt’s so thin. He probably doesn’t bother eating much if he’s so exhausted all the time. Blaine looks around the apartment. It’s tiny and dark, beside the bedroom and kitchen he’s already seen there’s only a bathroom that smells faintly of mold and bleach and a small living room with a mess of books and papers, dozens of them, covering every surface. Kurt’s class schedule is taped to the desk in the corner and Blaine stares in shock. This past semester Kurt had classes from dawn till dusk, every day. It looks as if he tried to fill every spare hour. The workload must have been immense, leaving him no time for anything else – like sleeping, for example. Or remembering.

And now that the semester is over it probably all came crashing back, along with the anniversary of their break-up, he realizes.

It’s barely 7 p.m. He knows Kurt will sleep for hours, probably all through the night, so he decides to make himself useful. He finds keys on a tabletop by the door and goes grocery shopping. After buying enough food for a couple of days, with lots of Kurt’s favorites, he stops by his own apartment to grab an overnight bag with some necessities – he decided to stay with Kurt overnight and talk to him in the morning. He doesn’t want to leave him alone in this state.

By the time he returns, it’s dark outside and Kurt is still peacefully asleep. When all the food is finally put away, Blaine can’t postpone making a decision any longer: where should he sleep? He’d love to just crawl back next to the boy he loves, but he doesn’t want to make Kurt uncomfortable in the morning. Surely he wouldn’t want to wake up next to his ex-boyfriend who left him with no explanation and vanished from his life for a year, only to appear on his doorstep unexpectedly now.

He’s halfway to the living room couch when he recalls the words Kurt said earlier. I wake up and he’s not there. And it hurts like hell, and I die again.

No. He won’t let him feel this way ever again. Not when he’s already guilty of causing so much pain.

Blaine showers quickly, changes into pajama bottoms and a T-shirt and slips into the warm bed, immediately embracing Kurt who just mumbles something and burrows into his arms. Falling asleep hasn’t felt this good for a long time. Like, maybe a year.



Blaine wakes up much earlier than Kurt, still cuddled by his side, so he has a lot of time to lie there and watch, listen, feel… just revel in the feeling that he is back where he belongs. It’s almost ten when Kurt’s breathing suddenly hitches and he stiffens in Blaine’s arms, whimpering brokenly.

There it is then, the moment Blaine dreaded at least as much as he was waiting for it. He holds Kurt tighter and whispers softly “Kurt, I’m here. I’m right here, I’m not going anywhere.”

The other boy jerks awake. His eyes are wide and uncomprehending, but he doesn’t move away.

“Blaine? How…? What…? You…”

“I came here yesterday, remember? You thought I was a hallucination.”

“Yeah. But… aren’t you?”

“No. I’m sorry if I scared you, you asked me to stay and I didn’t want you to wake up alone, so…”

“It’s okay.” Kurt seems to be coming to his senses now, pulling away from him and sitting up against the headboard, with his knees hugged to his chest. “But… What are you doing here? After all this time? I thought…”

“I know it will never be enough for what I did to you, but I came to apologize.” Blaine is on his knees now, in front of Kurt. “I… I’ve made the biggest mistake of my life. And I only learned about it yesterday.”

“What are you talking about?”

“I thought you were cheating on me.”

“What?!”

“Remember the picture I brought with me? I got it in an e-mail earlier that day, along with several others, kind of an erotic sequence with you and that guy. I don’t know who sent that e-mail, but it said that you two were in love and that I should just let you go and not stand in the way of your happiness.”

“But it’s bullshit! It was just a rehearsal. In a theatre! And Henri was straight and happily married, for god’s sake!” Color rises high on Kurt’s pale cheeks as he gets agitated.

“But it didn’t look this way in the pictures. The scene was captured so that it looked like you were in a room. And up until yesterday, I had no idea it wasn’t real. When I saw you there… I couldn’t believe you would cheat, but the evidence kept staring me in the face. The images of you, half-naked with another man, behind my back… my imagination ran wild and by the time I saw you, I was angry. Which was a mistake, I couldn’t think clearly. I wanted to just ask you about it. But when you looked guilty about the picture, when you said you were going to tell me when you were certain you wanted it… It was as if you were confirming what I thought. I just snapped. I’d have probably come to my senses soon and we would have talked about it, learned about the misunderstanding, but then you said Did you assume you are the one and only?. And that did it, like a knife through the heart. Because that’s what I believed all along, you know? That we are forever, that you are the one and only to me and that you feel the same way about me. I went there that day with keys for you, Kurt. I rented a perfect apartment… for us, I wanted to ask you to move in with me. And instead…” he can’t talk anymore.

Kurt is crying openly by now, hands covering his mouth, but at that he lets out a choked sob.

“Oh Blaine, no… I was just trying to say that you can’t assume you are the only one with a talent to think of in this relationship… I got choked up halfway through it. Of course you were my one and only, forever. Would I look like I do now if you weren’t?”

“I’m sorry. I’m so, so sorry…”

“But I tried to contact you. I called, e-mailed, texted, I even wrote letters. I wrote about the play, you should have been able to deduce that we were talking about different things that day.”

“I never read any of them. I decided that I needed to sever all ties between us immediately, especially since I was supposed to let you be happy with someone else. I probably wouldn’t be able to stay away if I still had any contact with you. I never looked at your texts before deleting them, I blocked your e-mail address, destroyed the letters without opening them. I even deleted all your pictures.”

“And the box of your things that I asked Rachel to give you? Did you throw it away?”

“No, but I’ve never opened it. It sat in the back of my closet until yesterday.”

“Why yesterday?”

“You know what day it was. Since I woke up, I couldn’t think about anything but you. I had to see your face again and I didn’t have any photos. So I went to your blog to check if all the high school pictures were still there. And there was this new entry…

I didn’t understand – as far as I knew you should be long over me, happy with this other guy. And then I heard that song and I felt like I died. It tore me to pieces. I didn’t know what to do, what was going on, how come you didn’t know, how could you be unhappy because I left if I left so that you could be happy with someone new. Then I remembered this box and thought that maybe, just maybe, you slipped a message there. And you did. That’s how I learned about how stupid I was. And here I am. I know I don’t deserve your forgiveness or anything but I had to tell you everything and say how very sorry I am.”

“How did you find me?”

“I begged your address out of Rachel. Quite literally.”

Kurt is silent for long minutes before he says softly, slowly “This song on my blog… I barely remember putting it there. I have no idea what I wrote. I was at a really low point then. I just… Yesterday I realized that I need help, that I won’t make it on my own much longer. And I had no one to tell it to. To lean on. My family… it’s too much to trouble them, not with my dad’s health. Rachel thinks I should have moved on long ago and just forget about it. No one else is close enough. Once I would have called you. You would have understood. I really miss having my best friend, you know? So I… I don’t know, imagined I was sending it to you? I just imagined someone would notice how bad it is. And it’s bad. You can see just the tip of the iceberg right now.”

“Kurt…”

“I… I need a moment. Can you leave for a while? The room, not my life” he adds quickly. “I’ll want to talk, I just… need a moment.”

“Okay. I’ll make breakfast.”

“There’s nothing to eat.”

“There is now.” Blaine smiles and goes to the kitchen, closing the bedroom door behind him. He starts coffee and prepares a small feast – pancakes and fresh fruit, eggs and bacon, and toast. Twice he can hear desperate sobbing through the thin wall and has to fight the instinct to run to Kurt, take him in his arms and promise to fix everything. But he has to respect his wish to be alone. And he knows that, being the cause of Kurt’s unhappiness, he may not be able to be the cure.