Blaine slept late. As was entirely reasonable, considering the lack of sleep and overabundance of exhausting activities he'd had; nonetheless, his dream was peculiar.

It started with Santana. She was standing right in front of him, her lips pursed, hands on her hips, feet apart and eyebrows raised. "What?" he asked her, trying to look around to see where they were and finding that he couldn't move unless he spoke. His limbs simply didn't respond as they should have - he was frozen in place. He tried to look beyond Santana to see anyways, but it was like she was the only thing that existed. There was nothing else to see.

"I was right," she told him smugly. "He's making the both of you miserable."

"Who?" Blaine asked. "Kurt?"

Santana had pretended to clap for him then, the sarcasm in her sloppy movements serving only for her pleasure and his irritation. "And he takes the cake," she teased. "Blaine, where's Kurt right now?"

"Um..." Where had Kurt gone to sleep? The best bet would be Blaine's own bed, but Blaine wasn't actually there to see any of the arrangements made. "My bed?"

Santana shook her head. "He's right behind you."

"What, on the couch?" Blaine scoffed. "I don't think there's room."

"He made room," Santana told him, oddly earnest now. "He'll always make room for you. Make room or make time or make anything, do anything, be anything for you except yours. He loves you with all of him that's not broken and even a few parts that are."

"This took an odd turn," Blaine remarked.

"I'm serious!" Santana clasped her hands together. "He's right behind you, right now. He can't make himself let go. Don't give up just because he's too scared to hold on as tightly as he wants to."

"He knows he can always hold onto me." When had this become the discussion? "What does that have to do with him making the both of us miserable? He's n-"

"Don't say he's not," Santana warned him. "Don't."

"But -"

"Think about it," she urged him. "What are his nightmares about?"

"Me," Blaine snapped without meaning to. How did Santana know?

"Losing you," Santana corrected. "That's -"

"Did you and Rachel decide to have an intervention or something?"

"- why he didn't tell us about Adam. He lost his shield. Personally, I never really liked King George he was dating -"

"Adam's a good guy -"

"- but that doesn't matter. What matters is that he didn't either."

"What?" Now Blaine was just confused, even more so than he'd been before. "Yes, he -"

"No, he didn't." Santana wouldn't give him any room to talk. "He liked the idea of him. He liked the concept of dating an older, more mature guy whose name wasn't yours. He liked being the boyfriend of that concept. He never liked Adam, at least not like that. As a friend, I'll buy, but anything more is forcing something unnatural to happen."

"What's unnatural is this conversation," Blaine griped, attempting to point to her and failing. How could she move so easily and why couldn't he? "Why can't I -"

"Move?" Santana finished for him wryly. "That might have something to do with the fact that you're stuck in a state of denial similar to Hummel's. Both of you believe he doesn't love you anymore."

"He doesn't. Not like he used to." Blaine wanted to bite his lip but couldn't. How was it he could talk but do nothing else? He wasn't even blinking or breathing (or feeling the effects of not doing either), just perpetually existed and sometimes voicing thoughts aloud.

"No, see?" Santana sighed and shook her head, "That's not true. Yes, he does, and always will. But you don't and that's what is destroying this for the both of you."

"I love him," Blaine could have spit fire with how hot the words came out.

"I didn't mean you didn't love him," Santana rolled her eyes, yet her voice was gentler. "I mean you don't love you."

Blaine would have gaped were it possible. "What does that matter?"

He found, to his incredible relief, that he could feel his heart beating again, even if he couldn't move still. But his chest rose and fell automatically with the breath he sucked in and his eyelashes graced his cheeks when he blinked. "Do you see what happens?" Santana murmured, looking over him as she approached. "Every time you stop denying something, you're a little freer."

"I -"

"You didn't deny that you don't love yourself." Santana looked at him, almost expectant, her dark eyes petulant but not uncaring. "You hate yourself, don't you?"

Blaine didn't deign to answer.

"Blaine?"

"So what?"

And he looked down as an automatic reflex and found that he could now, though he still could see nothing but Santana. Her presence seemed to be the only thing to be present besides himself. "So," Santana chuckled, though it was the saddest one he'd ever head, "how is Kurt supposed to love you?"

"He did before," Blaine muttered.

"He still does." Santana wasn't up for arguing about that. "But just because he loved you before when you hated yourself doesn't mean he can now. What are you giving to him to love?"

"Nothing," Blaine answered. "I'm not giving him anything. There's nothing left. He's already everything. I don't expect him to love me. I don't want him to love me."

"Why not?"

"What's worth loving?"

"He's right behind you," Santana pointed over his shoulder. "Ask him."

He could move again. Had he just told enough repressed truths? No, that wasn't it. Santana was gone. The nothingness was gone, too, and in its wake was the familiar warmth of his eyelids - though not as familiar or warm as the arm wrapped around him and the form pressed to his back. Lean and muscular and holding him like it used to, Kurt's body was, as she'd said, right behind him. The couch cushions under him were comfortable; the pillow softened his head when he shifted it to make sure he could; the blanket draped over the both of them kept him down like a heavier gravity.

But he would never have gotten up anyway. Nothing could have made him leave that couch.

"Hey," Santana answered her phone, not bothering to check caller ID, knowing the only person who would call her so early on a Sunday before church. She fought the tiredness that threatened heartily to make her close her lids and slump back into the pillows. Her tangled hair fell around her shoulders and her skin, too pale for her liking, was even paler in the morning.

"Is he okay?"

"Nice to hear from you too," Santana teased lightly. "But yes, he's okay. He's got a concussion and two cuts with multiple stitches each, but he's sleeping on the couch with Kurt right now, so he's probably fine."

"Oh, thank god," Quinn breathed on the other line. "Rachel told me that much about his injuries, but if he's with Kurt he's good."

"If you want to talk to him you'll have to wait a while," she told her. "I'm not going to wake him up until he needs to take his meds, and if he wants to sleep again then I'm going to let him."

"So you're playing nursemaid?" Quinn inquired.

"Well..." Santana considered the implications. "I'm playing the part of 'sibling' right now, since his only one I know of is all the way across the country and the rest of the other people here are Berry and Hummel."

"Rachel could be his sibling too," Quinn suggested. "You could be his nursemaid."

"I'm not going to wait on him hand and foot," Santana grouched. "I just want to make sure he's okay."

"Is he okay?"

"He will be."

"That's not what I asked."

"He's not awake," Rachel answered Kurt's phone after picking it up on the coffee table. "Hi, Burt."

"Hi, Rachel," Burt responded. "Neither of them?"

"Nope."

"Call me when they are?"

"Of course."

"Bye."

"Bye."

That was about the extent to which Burt talked to them at this point; he didn't seem capable of forming coherent sentences anymore, and those he did were short and not very eloquent. He made brief contact and then lost it, but nobody blamed him for it - two of his three sons (because Blaine definitely counted as a son) were passed out after surviving a car accident and one of them had been injured.

Rachel place the phone back and looked over her shoulder at Santana. "Again?" she asked. Rachel nodded and though Santana put on the face she used to ward people off, Rachel thought maybe she needed a hug. She didn't give it. She needed one herself, but if she was wrong, they'd both be hurt by the results of her trying.

Kurt never, ever wanted to wake up.

When Kurt woke up it took a while for him to realize that Blaine was, in fact, in front of him, snuggled up so their bodies pressed against each other, his loosed curls spilling over Kurt's face.

It took a good long time for him to actually get up. He spent forever lingering in that embrace. A small forever, but a forever nonetheless.

When he officially "got up", there was a note on the counter from Santana and Rachel. The first thing it said was to call his dad when he woke up - the second was that they'd gone out for groceries and would be back around three - the third was scrawled in Santana's writing and said simply, "Read It". Kurt didn't have to guess to know what it meant.

He looked behind him at the couch and the boy sleeping on it and wished desperately to curl up behind him again, but knew that if Blaine woke up like that it would do more damage than good.

Without even considering it like he had before - Is this right? He'd be upset if he knew... but I have to know... - he searched the room for the book. He'd left it at his own apartment, but Santana must have brought it back if she'd told him to read it. He was right; he found it on the coffee table, underneath Walk Two Moons. There was a note inside the front cover and Kurt read it, already wary.

I know you're going to wake up before him, so we went to your place and got an overnight bag. I snuck these out. Use WTM as a backup for reading if he wakes up and you're reading this. -Santana

Kurt took a deep breath and looked over at Blaine again. He might have questioned reading the book before he actually started doing it (even though he'd felt bad lying to Blaine about it and saying he'd been reading the other book) but not he couldn't, not when it was so obvious that something needed to be done about the contents. He was only on the sixteenth page and he'd begun noticing the pattern - there were very, very rarely more good things written down than bad things.

He flipped open to page seventeen and began reading.

It wasn't until page one hundred and twelve that Kurt started making sense of the things Blaine scribbled. His mind worked so differently, using abbreviations Kurt couldn't catch, writing things in tiny lettering he had to strain to read, but it was clear it had a system - Kurt just couldn't figure out what it was. Until page one hundred and twelve.

Right:
Told the truth
Bought flowers
Apologized
Made him happy
Sang our song for him

Wrong:
Cheated on him
Told the truth
Bought flowers
Apologized
Made him sad
(/angry/hurt/scared)
Sang our song for him
Stayed the night after
Left without making things right
Tried to make things right
Made things wrong
Wrong
Wrong
Wrong
Wrong
Stop it Blaine
Stop it
Wrong
Cried and made him feel guilty
Cried
Wrong

There were splotches where the ink he'd written in that day had run and been ruined by tears that had wrinkled and hardened the paper. The first time Kurt had seen a page like that in the journal had been when Blaine was recounting the whole Chandler incident; he'd written that his wrongs were caring about himself enough to distance himself from Kurt and that he was clueless about what to do. This was worse, ten times worse.

With Chandler, Kurt had hurt him. He'd done nothing wrong, and yet that was the first page on which he'd written "Was born" under "Wrong". IT had gotten better after that, but on this page he didn't even seem strong enough to write about how much he hated himself; he had to physically tell himself to stop doing something - most likely crying, because he didn't feel he was worth anyone's tears, let alone his own - and he couldn't even say it aloud.

Kurt hadn't hurt him, or so he'd thought before he'd read the last entry. Blaine had listed all their phone conversations, how he was starting to give up, what exactly he was doing to save the relationship, how badly it was working out, and almost all the lines were filled with Kurt's mistakes, not Blaine's. Blaine seemed incapable of differentiating between the two.

Kurt dared to flip the next page.

Right:
Put the blade down

Wrong:
Put the blade down

Kurt sat there, blinking, trying to understand why Blaine had underlined and gone over the words repeatedly on both lists, until he figured out what the words meant; he reeled back in horror and looked closer at the spots on the page; they were stains, dark stains faded by time - almost a year's worth of time - but not erased, still there. Only two of the drops were there, and they'd seemed to leech into the paper instead of make the paper turn in on itself.

Blood. Blood stains.

Intentional blood stains?

Kurt tried to make sense of it. Those were the only words written on the page. The ink was black, from a good pen, like most of the other pages. It was full and thick and his writing was cursive, like it was whenever he was writing for himself and not for anyone else to read (as Kurt had discovered when finding his small folder full of original songs), and it was written as if rushed, not quite as tidy as everything else, slightly sloppy in the formation of the letters.

The words were blurring. Blurring together, shaking, the pages were rustling, why were - oh. He was trembling. He put the book in his lap and pressed his palms to his thighs, trying to make both stay still. He took deep breaths, but the air kept getting caught and disappearing when it met the lump in his throat; that same lump made his eyes sting, and he squeezed them shut and ground his teeth, flexing every muscle he could starting at his head and moving down to his toes.

By the time he was done with that, a fresh tear had landed on the page's corner, and Kurt, realizing what the soft sound was, gasped a quiet gasp and moved to flip the page.

Right:
Got up
Went to school
Ate food
Talked to people

Wrong:
Cried
Cried again
Cried again
Locked self in bathroom during 6th period
Got up
Went to school
Ate food
Talked to people
Kept breathing
Thought about Kurt
Cried again
Found old scrapbook
Cried again
Stop crying Blaine
Stop it
Stop
Cried
Yelled at myself
Thought about Kurt
Cried

Kurt raised a hand to his forehead, unsure as to what to do with it, his joints stiff and muscles unresponsive, his fingers slightly bent to different degrees each, and each of them clawing at his chilled and tear-streaked face.

Right:
Made it a day without crying

Wrong:
Cut myself again
Cried right after midnight so it would be a whole day still
Thought about Kurt
Couldn't make myself eat
Snapped at Artie
Ignored Sam
Forgot homework
No breakfast
Wasted hours staring at the ceiling
Thought about Kurt
Told parents I was still gay
Let them yell at me
Yelled at myself
Again
And again
Stop yelling at yourself
Stop talking to yourself
Stop talking
Stop living
Didn't die
Thought about Kurt

Kurt had to forcefully bite the inside of his cheek to keep from crying out.

Right:
Felt alive

Wrong:
Cut in order to do so

Kurt felt like there were a million colossal steel-toed boots slamming into his ribcage. He wiped at his cheeks stiffly, his body moving in jerking motions only accompanied by the shakes of the rest of him when his sobs tore silently out of him.

Right:
Sang

Wrong:
Sang
Didn't eat
Didn't sleep
Cried
Yelled at myself
Thought about Kurt
Let pillows lose the smell of him
Cried again
Forgot homework
Late to school
Went to the workout room and boxed
Called Cooper and thought he'd listen
Thought someone would listen
Forgot to cry
Forgot to yell at myself
Got worse
Stopped feeling so much
Thought about Kurt
Wished Kurt was here
Broke a lamp
Used shard to cut
Smiled

Kurt wanted to scream. How had Santana done this? How had she stomached reading this? His stomach rolled and he bit back retches of pure vile, the disgust at the pictures it put in his head. How had no one noticed?

But then, he hadn't noticed either. He'd been refusing to speak to Blaine.

Right:
Auditioned for Grease
Got grades back up
Ate again
Told people I'm fine
Replaced the lamp

Wrong:
Cried at my audition for Grease
Only ate one piece of chicken
Lied and said I'm fine
Sang
Thought about Kurt
Gave up
Couldn't make myself give up

It was like bad, realistic poetry. Except it should have never been realistic. Or real. But it was. Horribly real. Terribly, awfully, agonizingly real. And a hell of a lot more painful than even his side of the breakup had been. How could he not have realized?

Right:
Performed Grease

Wrong:
Saw Kurt
Talked to Kurt
Made Kurt walk away
Thought about Kurt
Cried
Yelled at myself
Ripped my shirt
Wasted all the hot water in the shower
Thought about Kurt
Threw Margaret Thatcher Dog in anger
Got angry
It's not his fault it's yours
Stop crying
Stop
Wrong
Wrong
Wrong
Wrong
So wrong
Stop hanging on to him Blaine
STOP TALKING TO YOURSELF BLAINE
Couldn't stop talking to myself
Cried again
Thought about Kurt
Fell in love with him all over again
I hurt Kurt
I'm so sorry

"Kurt?" Blaine's waking voice was so innocent that Kurt was yanked out of the spiral of depression the journal had become. Panic overtook him, and he placed the journal right back on the coffee table, and snatched up Walk Two Moons, opening it to a random page. Kurt had never quite given much thought to his ability to school his features and act as well as he did, but he was enormously grateful for it now; Blaine's eyes, fluttering weakly as he woke up, saw nothing wrong with him except the coloration. Kurt couldn't hide the tear stains fast enough, or make his puffy red eyes less puffy, or his nose less runny. As Blaine blinked into consciousness and saw his state, alarm spread all throughout him. "Kurt, are you okay?"

"Yeah, I'm fine," Kurt answered, "Just... sad book and I'm still rattled because of the accident."

"It wasn't your fault," Blaine was quick to reply. "You know that, right? It was not your fault. At all."

"Yeah, I know." But it wasn't your either. "I just read the closest book I saw. It was on top of this journal-looking thing. Santana brought this back from my apartment -"

"Journal?" Blaine asked, his voice much too casual.

"I think," Kurt said, turning around and picking up the book, showing it to him. "I didn't read it, it looked private."

"How did that get out here?" Blaine mused lightly.

Kurt shrugged. "Santana probably saw it and put it out here so you'd have to tell her what it was. She goes through her roommates' stuff, it's a thing she does. It's not bad, really, she stops after she's sure she's seen everything."

Blaine rolled his eyes fondly. "I'm going to have to adjust to her quirks, aren't I?" He sighed. "Well, it's my journal, just some lists I make sometimes. No big deal, but it is kind of personal. If I could -"

"Oh, yeah, sure," and Kurt handed him the book. He felt immensely powerless the very moment it was no longer in his hands and in Blaine's, and he was terrified about what might be written in it. "No problem."

"Are you sure you're not getting tired of that book?" Blaine asked then, pointing to the one he was holding. "That's, what, the third time in two and a half days you've read it?"

"It could be the five hundredth time and I wouldn't be tired of it," Kurt attempted a smile, though he'd be damned it if looked convincing and anything like what he was going for, judging by the look on Blaine's face.

"Are you sure you're okay?" Blaine asked him again.

"Yeah, I am," Kurt reiterated. "I'm fine." You're not.

"If you're sure..."

"I am," Kurt grinned then, forcing his face to relax into the position.

"Maybe you should take a break from the book," Blaine suggested. "It always makes you cry and I hate seeing you cry."

Kurt laughed, far too nervous and high-pitched to sound real, but Blaine didn't seem to catch it. "I get your point," Kurt set the book aside. "Now, don't you have meds to take?"

When Santana got home carrying groceries bags with Rachel in tow, the first thing Blaine did was hold the journal out to her and let her see his face with no pretense behind it.

He'd never seen her more startled. It was unnerving to know he'd been the one to make her so suddenly vulnerable and he hated himself that much more instantly, so he slid the mask he wore back in place easily and instead just asked, with perhaps more fear in his voice than he wanted, "How much did you read?"

Santana, for once, seemed startled and ashamed to answer. Her dark eyes flickered across his face, searching for a hole, something to show her what she'd seen once more, but she found none, and it drove her mad just the smallest bit. She sought out something; an illusion, an assurance that what she'd seen was not an illusion, but Blaine offered none. Her mouth hung open slightly and she stayed rooted to the spot, Rachel, behind her, waiting for her to move, having not heard Blaine's question.

"Santana, are you going to move?" Rachel huffed. "I've got the heavy load, you gave me the cans."

"I..." Santana was at a total loss. Blaine jerked his head to the left, indicating that she move that way, and so she did instantly, her feet shuffling, reacting in a way very unlike Santana. Blaine wondered how long it would take before she was back to her normal self.

And then he remembered that the last conversation they'd had in reality and not his dream had been soft, and gentle, and she'd taken care of him and given him what he told her he needed. The dream had been just that, a dream. He had no reason to assume she'd be back to normal Santana around him yet. She was still shaken, still scared, though he doubted she'd admit it while someone else was in the room.

His features softened instantly, the accusation dissipating when Rachel walked past her into the apartment and struggled to close the door. Kurt, still in the phone with his dad in Blaine's bedroom (he could hear them if he listened), had no clue what was going on. Neither did Rachel.

"You're awake," Santana spoke to him finally.

"Hm?" Rachel asked, turning to understand Santana's sentence, and saw him for the first time. "Blaine!"

"How much?" Blaine asked again, kinder this time, reverting his eyes back to Santana.

But no matter how taken aback she was, she was still Santana Lopez. And she didn't stutter, or, if she could help it, lie. "All of it."

All of it.

Every page, every word. Every spatter of blood, every stain from a tear, everything he'd kept inside for a reason. All of it. She'd read all of it.

Blaine felt more bare than he ever had. He'd suspected Kurt might have started reading and then been ashamed; but if he'd read only the first couple pages it was no big deal. But if he'd followed the note that he left in the book, it was a bit farther than that.

Santana knew where his scars were. Santana knew he had scars. Did Kurt? But that didn't matter. She knew, she knew everything. And he knew almost nothing about her. She'd seen every crevice in his head put down on paper, all the secrets that were secrets because of something, all the little things he'd done, thought, said. She'd lived his break-up, she'd gone through cheating, she... oh, god, she knew about him being disowned. She knew everything.

All of it.

"You..."

"I'm sorry," was the next thing to pass her lips. "I'm sorry. I shouldn't have and I know it but Blaine you need to tell me, tell us, these things! This is serious, you -"

"Stop." She already knew, Kurt might know, he didn't want Rachel to overhear.

"What's going on?" Rachel asked, innocent. Blaine envied her.

"You know I stopped, then," Blaine addressed Santana again, paying no mind to Rachel. "I stopped... you know."

"I also know you started to begin with," she countered. "I know everything. You -"

"I know, Santana," Blaine snapped. "I know better than you. You've only read it, not lived it." If only that were true.

"But was living it better or worse than what I read?" She was begging now, the bags she'd been carrying falling to the ground. "I want to help!"

"Then do me a favor," Blaine bit at her. "Don't ever touch this book. Don't look for it. Tell Kurt to stop reading it. Don't let Rachel even know what it is. Mention it to nobody, not even Brittany. Don't you dare."

"You're really mad about this?" she demanded. "Blaine, this is stuff people go to therapy for, and you're dealing with it all on your own!"

"Yes, and I'm getting better at it!" Blaine hurled back, the word like venom flying towards he so she flinched back. "On my own! I'm fine!"

"What happened?!" Rachel squeaked.

"You are not fine," Santana argued, her voice quieter, the words spoken in a lower tone, and she moved closer. "And I could point to the proof."

"All it is is proof that I wasn't fine," Blaine hissed. "I am now."

"You're lying."

"I'm not a liar!"

"Look at me!" Santana commanded. "Look at me and tell me that there is nothing you're unhappy about!"

"Of course there's things I'm unhappy about!" Blaine exploded. "For god's sake, I'm human! I'm a person! Everyone is sad about something! I'm unhappy that I don't have the kind of life where I can just fly home to visit my parents whenever I'm homesick! I'm unhappy that I have a roommate that insists there's more wrong with me than there is! I'm unhappy that I don't have a job, that I haven't begun my essay for class yet, that I have yet to do an official NYADA performance! I'm unhappy about a little tiny things that don't matter any more than what I eat for dinner. I'm unhappy about things I can and will fix! Of course I'm unhappy! I'm just past the point of waiting for people to help me!"

"You're past the point of accepting help, because you don't think you deserve it!"

"What the hell is going on out here?!" Kurt trilled, sticking his head past the curtain and into the room.

"I don't know!" Rachel wailed.

"There's more you're unhappy about," Santana went on. "Let me -"

"Let you help?!" Blaine scoffed. "Let you help?! Santana, look at you! You're unhappy, too! You're just as miserable as I am, probably even more, and you're sure as hell not telling me anything or letting me help!"

"I'm perfectly happy!"

"Then why did you break down when we had a fight like this just last week?" Blaine taunted. "Huh, Lopez? You know, when you kicked me, and yelled at me -"

"I didn't know then -"

"And you shouldn't know now!" Blaine was past reason. He was barely aware that Rachel was inching her way over to Kurt, who was watching them, mesmerized by the fight. "I'm not a book, Santana! Just because I wrote in one doesn't give you the right to read it or me! You have problems, too, and don't say you don't! It doesn't matter how small they are, problems are problems."

"Someone out there has problems worse than mine," Santana grit her teeth.

"Someone out there is always going to have worse problems," Blaine felt the anger draining, leaving with each breath he exhaled, and saw the same happening with her. "Just like how someone is always going to be perfectly happy. Just because there's different standards to meet elsewhere doesn't change the fact that the standards you can't meet here and now are upsetting you."

"I want to help you."

"I want to help you."

"I don't need help."

"Liar."

"I'm not a liar!"

"Look at me," Blaine ordered with almost no force. "Look at me and tell me there is nothing you're unhappy about."

Santana didn't reply. Her face was red and her hands were in fists, her hair falling in front of her eyes, her posture bent forward, confrontational, and yet caving inward to keep herself intact. Silence reigned for her and controlled the room until Blaine spoke up again.

"Look," he said, tossing the book onto the couch. "I love you. I really do. I promise." She narrowed her eyes, not trusting the direction he was going. "But we both just need to admit that we are very, very broken and very, very sad people, and leave it at that for a little while. We can fight over it later, but for right now that's as far as we need to go, so long as he start somewhere on even ground."

"There's a lot to fight about." But he noticed her fingers uncurled.

He took a hesitant step forward. "And we'll get there."

Kurt waited, and Rachel waited, and Blaine waited, and then finally, finally, Santana nodded curtly, and asked, "How's your head?"

"It's killing me, thanks for asking." In all honesty, the room was starting to swim, but he'd rather tell her what sounded like an exaggeration than that particular truth.

Santana crossed the distance between them, kissed his forehead, careful to avoid the stitches, smoothed back his hair (how had he forgotten to gel?) and hugged him fiercely, her arms tight around his neck, her body up against his, her head buried in the cook of her elbow and his shoulder. There was that warmth again, that odd tingly feeling that Blaine used to get rarely from Cooper, that kind of sibling-made-me-feel-good spread of ease throughout all of you all at once. He was reminded of how she'd asked him in a whisper at the hospital if he would need Kurt there and had accepted it when he said yes. He was reminded of how she'd held his hand in the taxi on the way home, how she'd asked where he wanted to sleep, left a note on the counter for them.

"Thanks for taking care of me," he murmured into her ear, closing his eyes into the hug and wiring his arms around her torso.

"Same to you," Santana murmured back.

"What the hell?" Rachel whispered loudly to Kurt, who whispered back, "I have no idea."