Kurt wakes the next morning, sated, happy, sort of dizzy, and with a few sore muscles. He smiles to himself, glancing at the clock on his nightstand. He doesn't have to be at work for another hour. They have plenty of time to cuddle. He rolls over to pull Blaine close to him.

The bed is empty.

The sheets are cold.

And there's a pretty blue flower resting on the pillow next to his head.

No.

No, no, no.

No, Kurt thinks, tossing the sheet off his naked body and pretty much falling out of his bed. Ow, fuck, fuck, his head, why the hell did he drink that last night? His stomach rolls and his eyes dart around the room.

Blaine's clothes are gone.

He hastily pulls on a pair of boxers, stumbling out of the room as he does so and notices that, in between the pounding headache and the awful taste in his mouth, the tight red t-shirt Blaine had been wearing the night before is no longer on the floor. His shoes are gone, as is his lonely backpack.

His stomach heaves. He's not sure if it's due to his hangover or Blaine's absence.

He rushes to his bathroom and promptly vomits, the rancid sting of alcohol burning his throat and he wants to crawl back in bed because surely this has to be a dream, it has to be.

When he thinks he's done emptying the contents of his stomach, he leans back and wipes a careless hand across his lips.

Why?

Why did he go?

He sits there on his bathroom floor, eyes unfocused and he realizes his chest hurts and not just from the heaving. There's a pain inside and it resembles the pain he'd felt after he'd gone through the contents of the old shoebox. Only this time, Blaine was not there to hug him for ten minutes straight, he was not there to hold him and ward off all the hurt.

He was alone.

The silence was unsettling.

He had no way to contact Blaine. They never switched phone numbers, why had they not switched phone numbers?

Why?

Kurt isn't sure how long he sits there, but eventually he feels disgusting and picks his heavy body up off the floor and turns on the shower.

He doesn't remember bathing.

He doesn't remember snatching the flower off the pillow.

But he knows now that he's pulling down that old shoebox and fishing out that journal he'd been so reluctant to look at yesterday. He opens it to the very last page.

Inside are five pressed, dried, faded blue flower petals.

The very same flower petals from that horrible day five years ago, from that very first flower he'd been given from this very same person.

He places the new one in between the pages and closes the little book.

So this was his life.

It was a life counted in pretty blue flowers, improper goodbyes, and severe heartbreaks.

Kurt places the journal back in the box and puts it back in the closet.

He glances at the bed one more time and this image is hurled to the forefront of his mind, one of a man with honey hazel eyes and a body glowing with moonlight and a slow, serene smile. He walks over, picks up the pillow on which the flower had been placed, and brings it to his nose.

Blaine.

Kurt has spent the last few days doing everything in his power to keep his tears at bay.

He can't any more.

He crawls into his bed, on the side that Blaine had slept on, and he weeps.

He cries wretched, angry, hot tears and they fall onto the pillow he's still clutching, the salty drops combining with Blaine's precious scent.

Why does he have the feeling that he'll never see him again?

The sun is shining far too brightly through the window, Kurt thinks as he cries. It shouldn't be shining at all, Kurt thinks as he cries. It should be cloudy and raining and the entire world should be asleep, Kurt thinks as he cries.

He can't stop crying.

He doesn't think he'll ever stop crying.