It had been a really, really difficult week.

Blaine moving to New York was saving Santana's financial ass and he knew it. He didn't tell her that, of course - it was one of their unspoken agreements. Blaine wasn't sure when he and Santana had become friends close enough to think stomaching each other for months in a tiny apartment in a huge but crowded city was even a remotely tolerable idea but it had happened somehow and here he was; sitting amidst the last of his boxes, in his "room", having just made it home from classes at NYADA on his first day, exhausted and worn out and lonely and homesick and hurt and in pain.

But Blaine was a pleasant person. Earnest, kind, generous, thoughtful, even if he could sometimes be reckless and make horrible choices. He was a decent human being. And despite what others might say, so was Santana. She just happened to be a different kind of decent. She was honest, not earnest, and loving, not kind; accepting instead of generous and insightful, not thoughtful - and she could be abrasive instead of reckless and think too much to make any choice at all instead of making horrible ones.

Unfortunately, that day, she was also feeling a bit tired and stressed, just like Blaine was. And unlike Blaine, Santana wasn't the kind of person to keep quiet about it.

She stomped into the apartment after her shift that day to find that Blaine was putting away his boxes in his dresser. "Still unpacking?" she grumped at him.

"Mm," he replied, his back still turned to her, placing a picture into his bottom drawer and immediately covering it up with clothes.

"Hummel did that, too," she remarked, walking up behind him and slinging her bag onto the floor beside her, off her shoulder. "Put a picture of you face-down under clothes in his bottom drawer."

"How do you know it's of Kurt?"

"Who else's face would you love so much you'd have to hide from because it hurt to look at knowing they won't look at you the same way?" Santana snorted.

Blaine froze. She didn't notice.

"In fact," she continued, shifting her weight to one leg and crossing her arms, "I'm pretty sure that next to that picture he had this weird little red box. I tossed it aside when I was looking through his things, but I saw him pull it out once when I was visiting, and there was this old weird ring in it."

"He kept it?"

Again, she didn't notice. "But then, what's it matter?" she griped. "I'm pretty sure I saw him throw it out after he and Adam became official -"

Blaine's head dropped to his shaking hands.

"Oh, for Pete's sake, Kitten Boy, lighten up. It's just a project he did once, knowing Hummel. No big deal."

"Tell me, did you put a picture of Brittany face-down in your bottom drawer?" Blaine snarled, whirling around, and suddenly his face was red and set like wood and she actually felt the need to step back to get out of his line of sight because his glare was like ice despite the fire in his eyes. "Or did you make a shrine to her? Do you pray to her at night?"

"When did you get a backbone?" she snapped. "What happened to the little cupcake who went around wearing bowties and using too much hair gel and singing show tunes?"

"He moved in with a bitch," Blaine answered. "And don't act offended, because you've said it yourself a thousand times and I know you don't care, you're just looking for reasons to fight."

"Now that you brought Brittany into it, I am." She narrowed her eyes and bent down - she was still standing above him and he was still shorter, no matter how big he acted.

"But you know, I could understand a shrine and praying to her, or even hiding pictures," Blaine continued with his previous insults. "I get that. But making eye contact with some random stranger in a cafe and then you're running up to Ohio to break up with her? I -"

"His profile picture was a lighthouse."

"Shut up."

"He friended you on facebook and sent you two messages before you decided to give up on Kurt. And then you went running up here to tell him -"

"I didn't pretend to have a fake relationship just to get him to break up with his new boyfriend!" Blaine actually took a step toward her and she stepped back without thinking about. "You paid some chick that went to a college you dropped out of to pretend to be your girlfriend and then kissed Brittany and then left?"

Santana ought to have guessed that getting drunk around someone with a tendency to remember everything even slightly important was a bad idea, but it had been graduation night, and everything had come out then, for both of them and everyone else - though mostly them, because they were talking about roommate plans when this particular conversation happened. As a result, they knew more about each others' relationship problems than the others in their relationships did.

"Oh, but you hooked up with Hummel," Santana took a step forward herself, so she was nose-and-nose with him, though she had to bend down a bit more. "You made out with him in a Prius and then hooked up with him and then he left."

"Stop."

"You started it!" Santana raised the volume and acidity of her voice. "And that's the difference, isn't it? That he left? Because I left Brittany, but I never cast her aside or promised her we were just friends. Best friends, yes, but just friends? Never. And Hummel threw you out like yesterday's garbage once he slept with you."

"No, he didn't!"

"Oh, so he took you to see some musicals and out to dinner with Tina the day after, after declaring quite obviously that it didn't mean anything, and didn't get tired of you. Yeah. Sure, he didn't."

"At least I don't blame him for that!" Blaine exploded. "At least I understand him, I get it! Maybe I'm doomed to spend forever waiting for him or maybe he'll get out of denial soon, it doesn't matter - at least I don't go around making him feel bad for getting his life under control and happy!"

"What the hell do you mean by that?"

"Brittany - is - dating - Sam," Blaine growled. "And you can't stand it and you know how much it hurts Brittany for you to act on that but you do it anyway. You make her feel guilty for Sam's unhappiness and discomfort because she can't stop hanging on to you because you're pulling her along like a thread. Britt's a good person, Santana, and so is Sam, and you're just making both of them miserable."

"At least they're not making me miserable!" Santana felt like screaming and nearly did, managing to withhold it into a shout. Blaine flinched at the sudden change in volume and tempo, but regained his composure quickly. "Flaunting their relationship all the time, almost never talking to me because they can no longer end a conversation? No, that's all Hummel, Mr. I'm-Never-Saying-Goodbye-To-You and I-Can't-Say-I-Love-You-Because-I'm-Dating-Someone. And don't pretend he's not doing it on purpose!"

"He's not! He wouldn't!"

"Oh, yes, he would. He's stringing you along, just like -"

"But it doesn't even matter what you said because - b-because they are making you miserable!" His eyes flashed in a way she had never seen before and she almost thought they were starting to tear up. "Brittany is making you utterly desolate, Santana, don't deny it! Every single second you're not with her you feel lost and hopeless and you put on the same old mask you've always worn, but it's cracked and chipping away over time and you're near your breaking point, I can see it. Just one more announcement of news from them and you'll shatter."

Santana pulled her foot back, insanely glad in that brief, adrenaline-filled moment that she'd put on her combat boots that day, and swung it, hard, into Blaine's shin, never breaking eye contact.

Blaine cried out and stumbled back onto his bed so he sat without meaning to. For the briefest fraction of a second, Santana thought the guilt of hurting him might not hit, but then there it was, poudning away at her, raising her heart rate like the fight had failed to, and she relied more on the very mask he taunted to make sure he couldn't see. "GOD DAMN IT, LOPEZ," he bellowed, clutching his shin with both hands, and though he was obviously livid she had never seen a faced that screamed 'Why did you do that?' so clearly.

"You looked like a kicked puppy," she scoffed, secretly curling her toes back in her boot as they throbbed.

"I look like a kicked person," Blaine hissed.

"You deserved to be kicked," Santana said, shrugging. No, you didn't. I shouldn't have kicked you, I'm sorry. I'll get ice.

"OF COURSE I DID!" And Blaine was suddenly crying, the muscles in his face pushing and pulling, all working against each other, and the red seemed to shrink away to frame his eyes and settle in his nose and splotch about randomly, and the tears she'd seen filling those fury-filled eyes, the color of sunlight through a dusty window filtering a glass of whiskey, were overflowing. "I ALWAYS DO! YOU - DO YOU HAVE ANY IDEA?!"

"What?"

"But you - you - do you honestly think that I deserve to be injured and you don't?" He seemed too tired to shout now and as if from nowhere the exhaustion felt set in her bones, too. "Hell, from all you've said and done, you deserve a lot worse than I'll ever do to you." He began rocking back and forth, and Santana was acutely aware of just how drawn he looked, how large the circles under his eyes were when coated with saltwater, how haggard his features had become. "But that's what matters, is that I'll never do it to you. I thought - I thought I at least deserved that."

"I -" Santana was at a loss. It didn't happen very often and when it did she hated it - but at the moment, despite her utter loathing for her own vulnerable state, she found that she hated Blaine's even more. Standing there with her arms crossed and her toes curled and her weight on her right leg and her entire head beating and her heart pummeling her ribcage, the apartment now very, very quiet and very, very thin, she felt herself trembling. She felt her mask cracking. Of course Blaine deserved better. She just wasn't the better person. She was violent and mean and bitchy and crass and she started to cry too.

For a while, it was just the both of them, crying without looking at each other, in the middle of Blaine's room, a foot or two apart even if it felt like worlds, and then Santana blubbered that she was sorry and Blaine blubbered back, "Then why did you do it?"

"Because I'm mean and I make people mad and I'm sorry."

"I'm sorry I yelled at you about Brittany."

"I'm sorry I yelled at you about Kurt."

"I'm sorry our first fight as Roommates couldn't have waited until we were both happier people."

"I want to be a happier person."

"Me, too."

"Can you hug me?"

"Can I hit you first?"

Despite the words, the way he'd said them so tender that she almost felt violated. "M-hm. Really hard. Just slap me." That wasn't helping.

But what did help was when Blaine jumped up from the bed, cursing as he did so, and hobbled toward her, limping, biting back words obviously, and came to stop just in front of her. She giggled at the sight, because it was funny, but then realized she was giggling and cried harder, and waited for him to hit her.

But he didn't hit her. He sighed and skipped it and hugged her like she'd asked him too, asked him to in a moment of total weakness and regret and god if he ever spoke of this again she would murder the kid, but right now she really needed him to hug her. And he did. He was warm and comforting and even though he was small his presence seemed to take up the whole room and just exist in a way that was comforting, and he whispered small reassurances to her, apologies and promises and encouragements that she hadn't heard from anyone in way too long. The last one she'd heard last from only her mother during their phone call the week before: "I love you, San." The nickname, however, was new, and even though a long time ago she'd promised herself she hated nicknames like it, it sent a relieving shot through her.

"Love you t-too, B."

"Blaine, try to relax a little and calm down," Kurt said gently into his phone. The Starbucks he sat in, though it was no Lima Bean, had given him his order promptly, and he had plenty of time to spare before Adam was due to show up. He was early and he knew it, but he had to get away from Rachel - she was in the middle of one of her moods where she was so far gone she was talking to herself out loud (shouting obscenities included). He knew it wasn't being a good friend to walk out when she was having a panic attack, but she was Rachel - she'd probably just call Finn and have him do the deed whether or not Kurt was present. That, and he had a date in twenty minutes. The Starbucks was still shuffling about with end-of-the-night business, but nobody noticed him sitting quietly in a corner, comforting his crying ex-boyfriend over the phone as he counted the raindrops hitting the window.

"I'm still not sure what even happened -"

"Deep breath in," Kurt advised. "You can try to sort it out after you've calmed down enough to revert back to your normal thought processing speed."

"After I what?"

Though Kurt knew he shouldn't have been, he was close to laughter at the tone in which Blaine said those words. "After you revert back to your normal thought processing speed," he repeated. "You know, the speed at which you process thoughts? How fast you can comprehend instead of just retain? Because I'm pretty sure that's the problem here, you do know what happened but you can't make sense of it, right? It means your thought processing speed is off, and that's most likely due to the fact that you're somewhat hysterical."

"I'm not hysterical," Blaine snorted, and Kurt could hear the difference. His rambling explanation had soothed and/or bored Blaine to the point of being calm enough to not just reply, but retort, and Kurt smiled at his small success.

"So tell me what happened," Kurt prompted, only slightly changing the subject.

"Um - Santana came home."

"Sounds bad already."

Blaine giggled at that and a little bubble of warmth jumped to Kurt's throat, threatening to make him do the same, simply because hearing Blaine laugh when he'd just been crying - albeit not very hard, but still - was so very relieving he felt personally triumphant. "Oh, shut up," Blaine chortled. "We love her." No matter how watery the laugh was, it was still a laugh, and Kurt was still happy to hear it.

"I take it you feel better already," Kurt observed, his eyes stuck on the raindrops as they moved and slid and skirted around and through each other on the slicked glass.

"Who are you talking to?"

Damn.

Kurt jerked his eyes away from the window and stared at Adam. Bringing the phone a bit away from his face, but only enough so Blaine's answering "Yeah, I am. It's really nice to hear your voice, it helps." wasn't pointed directly at him anymore - but it was pointed outwards, and Adam heard it.

His face fell and Kurt felt guilty. "Um, Blaine, it's Blaine," Kurt told him, covering the mouthpiece on the phone so Blaine wouldn't hear.

"Why?"

"Kurt?" Though the sound was quiet and cracked by the technology, they both flinched when Blaine's voice came through again.

"One second," he told Adam, holding up a finger, and brought the phone back to his ear, gesturing for Adam to sit. "Hey, Blaine, I'm sorry but I have to go. Talk to you later."

"Kurt? Was it what I said? I'm sor-"

Kurt hung up and put his phone face-down on the table. "Sorry about that," he said, smiling up at Adam, whose face was still set and locked and disappointed, and who was still standing, just looking at him. "What? Oh." He was upset about the phone call. "Blaine was upset, he and Santana had a fight - I think, he didn't really explain - and he called me to calm down."

"Yes, I heard that," Adam deadpanned, "I heard that he called you to calm down. And it was good to hear your voice and it helped. That's what he said."

"Well, yeah." Kurt didn't get it - why was he upset about this. Granted, he was very collected about it all, but it was pretty clear he was upset. "That's what we do. That's what best friends do, right? Call each other to calm down when they can't go over."

"That's what you two do, yes," Adam answered, "But why couldn't you go to him?"

Kurt looked at him, incredulous. "Um, our date?"

"You don't seem to see anything wrong with blowing me off to spend time with him normally, what's different this time?"

"Okay, what are you talking about?" Kurt demanded, beginning to become upset himself. "So I missed a couple of Skype calls because I was talking with him about moving to New York. Adam, he's my friend, that's what friends do."

"Friends don't typically end conversations with 'I love you'."

"Yes, they do," Kurt said, raising his eyebrows and dropping the register of his voice, making it obvious that Adam was approaching territory he shouldn't. "It's how I end conversations with Rachel, and Mercedes, and Finn -"

"No, you end conversations with them with 'goodbye', which comes after saying you love them," Adam pointed out. "You never say goodbye to Blaine."

"Oh, that," Kurt waved it off. "It's just a promise I made a long time ago I'm probably taking too seriously now, no big deal."

"Promises are always a big deal," Adam said, his tone downright angry now, though it was a soft kind of anger. "That's why they hurt so much when they're broken, no matter how small they are. And your promises to Blaine are never small."

"What's going on?" Kurt snapped at him, growing increasingly fed up. "So I was comforting a friend before you were due to show up to our date. What's wrong with that?"

"What's wrong with it is that you're in denial, Kurt," Adam said, shaking his head and accidentally flinging small raindrops around him in a halo. "Are you still in love with him?"

"I -" Adam had never outright asked him that before. Well, once, back in March, after the big snowstorm, he had, but then he'd accepted silence as an answer before moving on - now, he waited, with no small degree of impatience, for Kurt to answer him, not letting the silence slide. Kurt felt his face grow hot and his fingers start to twitch - what kind of question was that? They'd been dating for what, almost a year? Who asks that of their boyfriend? "No, I'm not."

"Liar," Adam said, but his anger broke and in its place just the previous disappointment reigned.

"Excuse me?!" Kurt trilled disbelievingly.

"I didn't ask if you'd forgiven him, Kurt, I asked if you were still in love with him," Adam specified. "They're two different things and one of them is true, I know. But which one?"

"What, forgiven him for cheating on me?" Kurt raised an eyebrow. "You know I haven't done that yet."

"So you must be in love with him," Adam concluded, almost sadly, leaning against the wall behind his chair rather than sit. Kurt felt the disadvantage of being in a lower position and felt meek; but he'd be damned before he showed it.

"No, I'm not," he argued. "I love him, yes, but I'm not in love with him. I love him like a love Rachel, except he's not quite so selfish."

"And what about me?"

"What about you what?"

"Do you love me, or are you in love with me? Because you haven't said either the whole time we've been dating."

"I - I - I d-don't think I'm - I mean, I -"

"But if Blaine asked, you'd be able to at least say you love him, right?" Adam's eyes were squinted, almost accusatory. "You might explain to what lengths, but you could say you love him. And that's more than you can do for me."

"You know what a big step that is," Kurt hissed.

"You and Blaine said it when you'd been dating for three months!" Adam argued.

He has a point.

No he doesn't, shut up.

"We aren't Blaine and I," Kurt told him sourly.

"No, we're not," he agreed. "But we're not you and me, either. Kurt, you're a good person, and I really like you. Hell, I even love you." Kurt felt his entire body scream at him to run away as soon as possible but he kept himself firmly rooted to the spot. He's my boyfriend, it's entirely appropriate to say that. "But I'm not the person you call when you need to cry and I'm not the person who go to when you just want to have a fun night out. I'm not the first one you run to with good news - or, for that matter, bad news."

"What's your point?"

"My point is that this is obviously a rebound that you are taking way too far in an attempt to delude yourself that you don't need Blaine," Adam said, his voice low but sharp, almost so he was snipping at Kurt, in a tone Kurt hadn't heard him use before. Not only did it make him vastly uncomfortable, but a bit wary - or maybe it was his words and not his tone. "I saw the pillow you bought, the one shaped like half a torso, in the bottom of your closet. I saw you fish that red ring box out of the trash after you and Blaine had your little spat a couple weeks after we got snowed in in March and put it back in your drawer when you made up. I saw you put the picture of him back up when you learned he was coming to New York."

"Anything else you've seen that you think is proof of something that it's not proof of?" Kurt asked dryly. "In all fairness, I don't think I'm the deluded one here."

"You walk with him in between classes now," Adam insisted. "Not me. You talk to him about movies you've just seen, not me. You go over every detail of Vogue with him, not me. You're using me as a back-up plan in case he ever hurts you again and in the meantime you're doing yourself a lot more damage than he could at this point."

"Get to the point!"

"You're hurting me, too," Adam told him, somber, and serious, and the quickened pace of raindrops against the window seemed to keep time to the racing beat of Kurt's pulse. Was he scared? No, that wasn't it. Was he... what was it? Why was his heart racing? Nobody seemed to be paying attention to them, though he was sure Blaine was wondering what made him hang up so abruptly. What was - was he - hopeful? "And I don't want to stick around if you're going to discard me as soon as you realize what literally everyone else already has, me included."

"So you're breaking up with me?" It almost wasn't a question, but Kurt was an actor, and managed to make it hurt. And Kurt was hurt about this. He did like Adam. Adam was his boyfriend, a comfort, a supporter, someone he cared about and who cared about him, someone he'd never want to see get bodily injured. And yet he wasn't torn up. He felt like crying, because Holy crap this is the first time someone's broken up with me but aside from that he was just... sad.

Adam contemplated it for a moment before saying, "I think we've been broken up for a while now, but yes. I am, officially, break up with you."

"You - I - just because I'm friends with my ex?" Kurt sputtered. "Because you're, what, you're... I don't know, jealous? I've never seen you as the jealous sort."

"I'm not jealous," Adam said, a bit more fire in his voice than before. "I'm just not blind."

"Don't."

"I just did."

"Please?"

"You know that the second I leave you're going to call Blaine back."

"Only because calling you seems like it's no longer an option."

"It's always an option. But you never picked it before, so why would you now?"

"I'm not in love with him," Kurt threw at him again hotly.

Adam smiled sadly. "But you're not in love with me, either, and it's a lot closer for him than for me."

"Don't," Kurt said again, and this time he let his act slip away, and his eyes grew warm and they stung at him, and the color drained from his face, and he looked as confused as he felt. "Please. I'm confused, I'll admit, but I can - I can reform -"

Adam looked absolutely devastated to see him so raw, but she shook his head. "Not for me," Adam whispered. "Don't change for me. Don't ever change for me. Do it for someone who makes you happy, not someone who distracts you from being unhappy."

"You do make me happy."

"Goodbye, Kurt." Adam waited for him to return the sentiment.

"I'm not saying it," he warned.

Adam waited.

And waited.

And waited.

Kurt could hardly murmur the words. "Goodbye, Adam."

Adam left. Kurt dialed Blaine's number and let his cheeks start to mirror the window, fraught with clear, reflective, tiny pools of water. And then he hung up before Blaine could answer and curled his fingers around his phone and fought the urge to crush it and just rush out into the rain and start walking, so nobody could tell if they were tears or just rain on his face.

Kurt didn't tell Rachel, or, for that matter, anyone else, about his breakup. Not at first. But that grew increasingly difficult as time went on - and mainly because of the nightmares.

One might imagine that his nightmares would be about Adam. But no, of course they weren't. His nightmares were, in all honesty, even more terrifying than the thought of his entire relationship with Adam, because they had no filter. Dating Adam had been the filter, a way of suppressing the fact that he didn't actually want Adam there, if that made any sense. (It didn't - but then, denial hardly ever does... not that he was in denial.) His nightmares involved no Adam, no dead mother (which he preferred to pretend he didn't have nightmares about still), no slushies, no homophobic assholes at school, no getting shot by a stray bullet while watching drug deals go down in the park.

They involved a dream.

A very familiar dream. A daydream he'd had only once, a daydream that had done more to hurt than to heal. It was the daydream all over again, but it ended differently. He'd been torn out of the last one by Adam - another reason he was the filter - but he wasn't there to stop it anymore. He'd been a doorjamb, in a way: he was there to keep the door open and not let it close until Kurt kicked him loose, but he'd somehow disappeared, and the door was swinging shut again, trapping all the thoughts inside and not letting anything else in.

He was alone in his head with his horrible, fantastical, twisted unrealities, and it was terrifying.

A wedding song, a love song, their chosen song, and they were singing it. In his nightmare they were always singing it. And Blaine was always raw with emotion and Kurt was always taken aback because though it never surprised him that Blaine felt so strongly the fact that he'd let his guard down enough to show it was shocking. Blaine was a private and controlled person with brief flashes of fear that turned him violent or heartbreak that reduced him to a mess.

In these dreams he was the Blaine he'd only ever seen during sex, but it wasn't dirty at all - it was passionate, and loving, and difficult, and painful despite the pleasure, and he was wild and loose and free and whole and Kurt loved h- it.

But when that last line was to be delivered - "until my dying day" - something always happened. It was always different. Sometimes Rachel's morning scales became sirens as Blaine tripped and fell off the roof - sometimes him accidentally knocking a tissue box off his bedside table became a gunshot that made Blaine crumple - sometimes the blankets curled around his feet became ropes that, when he kicked them off, wrapped around Blaine and pulled him down and away. The sound always ended, then, too, and the color faded. He became mute and blind to all but the golden flecks dancing in Blaine's terrified eyes.

He should have expected it to happen. It was only natural that when dreaming of singing the end of Moulin Rouge with Blaine that the end of Moulin Rouge would continue uninterrupted. And the one night that he fell asleep instantly, about a week after the breakup, was the one night when the last line was finally uttered.

And then Blaine collapsed in his arms and coughed thickly but feebly, and something dark and red stained his lips when Kurt caught him, something Kurt felt the overwhelming urge to kiss away because why is he bleeding Blaine stop bleeding it'll be okay stop bleeding.

And yet Blaine didn't stop bleeding. No matter what Kurt said, the color had begun fading from his vision, and the sound was getting lower and lower so he could scarcely hear himself call out. But what was different, even more terrifying, was that it didn't all disappear at once like it always did - it was slow and it was torturous and he could feel the life and heat draining from Blaine as he trembled and went weak in his arms.

Kurt sank to his knees and cradled him, crying out his name, shaking him, trying anything to get him to open the eyes that had closed. There was one thing that never happened, and that was that his eyes closed. Blaine's eyes never closed. They were always open wide, panicked, looking to Kurt for help. He'd thought it was horrible before, but this was ten times worse. The faintest hint of sound and color still remained, and the closer Kurt bent down towards him the more it came back.

And then Kurt kissed him and tasted the blood on his mouth and everything vanished altogether and he sat up straight in his bed, having bitten his tongue in his sleep so hard it had begun to bled, and saltwater trails decorated his cheeks.

He heard thudding and wondered why his throat felt raw and his heart was racing, though it felt like aftereffects of the shouting he'd done at Blaine. And then the lights flickered on and Rachel was standing in his room, panting and holding her bathrobe around her tightly. "Kurt?" she squeaked. "Why did you scream? Is that - are you bleeding? What happened?"

"Bad dream," Kurt tried to say, but then, when it came out "Ba tween" he reached over to the tissue box and grabbed a handful, stuffing it in front of his mouth and spitting into it, feeling the sticky, thick, red liquid leave, and yet more pool up. "Bid my dongue." Bit my tongue.

"You - oh, sweetie," Rachel crooned, moving into his room quickly, and sitting on his bed next to him. She stood up again as soon as she did and looked at his sheets before patting them curiously and raising her eyebrows. "And you've been sweating. At least, I hope that's sweat."

The fabric of his pajamas was plastered to his clammy skin. "Id's swead."

"No, don't talk," Rachel told him. "You might hurt your tongue some more. How did you manage to bite it so hard?" Kurt shrugged, and Rachel bent down, forcing his hands to lower themselves. "Let me see," she ordered, and Kurt reluctantly opened his mouth. Rachel sighed with relief. "That's not so bad," she said, offering the good news with a strained smile. "It just looks like it because it's your tongue and tongues bleed a lot. It's a small cut, I think. No big deal."

Kurt opened his mouth to reply but Rachel shook her head. "No talking for you," she said. "Give your tongue some R&R. Tell you what - go clean the cut up a bit with some water," she instructed. "I'll get some ice you can put on it to make the swelling go down. It'll be sore in a few days for a while, but most likely it'll be okay."

Will it? He wasn't thinking about his tongue.

"Mm - Hello?"

"Hey, Blaine."

"Rachel?"

"Yup."

"Why are you calling me? Isn't it, like, the middle of the night?" Blaine rolled over in his bed, murmuring into the phone as quietly as possible so it didn't wake Santana if it hadn't already. The ringing had alerted him into consciousness so it might have done the same for his roommate. The late hour leeched into his bones and dragged him down and he collapsed against the bed, holding the phone just barely up to his face, his arm flopping lazily. "What happened?"

"How do you feel about a weekend sleepover?"

"I'd probably feel better about it when it's past Eight A.M."

"I meant starting now."

"It isn't technically the weekend yet," Blaine reminded her, looking at the clock on his wall, with two minutes to go until midnight. "Why are you asking?"

"Truth is, Kurt can't go back to sleep yet," Rachel said. "He apparently had a nightmare, but he bit his tongue, and we're trying to take care of it, but if he goes back -"

"Is he alright?"

"Well, that woke you up." Rachel sounded oddly smug. "Yes, he's alright, or he will be. But as I was saying, if he goes back to sleep he could hurt it again, and it's bad enough as is. He woke up screaming and spitting blood into a tissue, so -"

"I'll be over as soon as I can. Let me grab a bag -"

"Kurt still has a pair of your old pajamas you left with us back last October, Blaine. And the last time you and Santana stayed the night with us you left your spare hair gel here. And you can use Kurt's clothes during the day, if you want, but my point is you're covered."

"Right, okay, um - but I'll bring a book. His favorite one."

"Which one's his favorite?"

"Oh, it's - it's kind of obscure, and in a way I suppose it's morbid, but he always really loved Walk Two Moons."

"Isn't that the story about the girl who goes to find her mom but her mom died in a bus accident?"

"Yeah, that's the one." Blaine was already out of bed, patting the covers of his bed down as he made it hastily, searching for his shoes. "Kurt says he can identify with the girl's need to have her mother there and that the symbolism is great. He likes it when I read it to him."

"It's, what, a middle-school level book?" Rachel asked.

"So it doesn't have themes that are so adult it's kept out of reach of thirteen-year-olds," Blaine shrugged. "It's a good book. I prefer Chasing Redbird, which is by the same author, but Kurt always liked Walk Two Moons better."

"We were going to watch a movie or two, but the thing is that I have a meeting with my professor this morning and I need rest, so if you could read to him -"

"I'll be there in ten minutes," Blaine assured her, fitting the shoe over his foot and starting on the other one. "I'll bring the book and we'll be quiet. You can get the sleep you need."

"Thank you, Blaine," Rachel awarded him heartily. "I really do love him, but -"

"I know, I get it, I really do," Blaine said. "By the way, what was his nightmare about?"

"He's not talking, Blaine, he's got an injured tongue, he couldn't tell me - and if he tried I wouldn't let him."

"Right, sorry." Blaine rubbed the sleep out of his eyes as he left his room, heading for the door and the hooks beside it where he kept his keys. "I just woke up, cut me a little slack, please."

"Not judging you," Rachel chuckled. "See you soon, Blaine. Thanks for coming."

"No problem. I'll be there."

He had just hung up when a drowsy and irritated voice behind him asked, "Where?"

"Kurt and Rachel's," Blaine answered her automatically, swiveling to face her. "Kurt had a nightmare and bit his tongue and woke up spitting blood, so I'm going over to help him stay awake and calm him down."

"Is he okay?"

"Yeah, he'll be alright."

"That's not what I asked."

Even exhausted and groggy she was astute and blunt. "I don't know," Blaine told her. "I hope so."

"Do you think you can make him okay?"

"Yes."

"Do you think he'll let you?"

Somehow Blaine guessed they weren't on the same subject anymore. "If I give it enough time, I guess," he said.

Santana yawned then, huge and silent, her eyes scrunching closed and her nose wrinkling, and made it obvious that she was nowhere near done sleeping. And though Blaine wasn't entirely sure why, he took the long steps necessary to close the space between them and took her hand and squeezed it. What really settled the suspicion that she was drop-dead tired was that she squeezed back and leaned into him.

"Go back to bed, Santana," Blaine whispered. "I'll call you when I can."

"Don't get in a car accident," she warned, her words slurred, her eyes already fluttering closed.

"I won't," he promised her, and smiled gently before releasing her and pushing her softly in the direction of her room. He waited until she'd stumbled into it and he'd heard her bedsprings creak before he turned to leave, the whisper of her hand in his still tracing his fingers, and he felt warm in a way he hadn't expected Santana could make anyone feel. A sisterly kind of warm, maybe. A warm that you weren't always fond of and more often than not exploded into full-blown heat, but when it was soft and fuzzy like this, it was hard not to revel in it.

He grabbed his keys and stepped out the door, closing it with a nearly unheard click; he blinked in the bright light of the hallway before his eyes adjusted, and then he started walking. He'd fallen into bed that night still wearing his clothes (his first week at NYADA was over and though it hadn't been bad, first weeks of anything tend to take a lot out of anyone) and so he plodded along quickly, Kurt his only destination in mind.