Chapter 4

Songs used in this chapter:

Taylor Swift – Forever and Always (Piano Version)

Kurt smashes his finger into the elevator's button several times and with so much force, it sticks.  The lift takes forever to get him to street level and he grows more impatient with every second that passes.  He pointedly ignores the doorman's friendly words as he leaves, regretting that he followed Blaine to their shared apartment in the first place.  He's showed his face in a neighborhood that he's tried to block out altogether with only one slip up in the immediate past.  He should have been too busy, too pre-occupied with his own life without Blaine, to give any care to what Blaine thinks of it.  Sprinting out of the building, Kurt blends into the busy crowds of Broadway above Columbus Circle, running around several slower pedestrians that are clearly on their mid-afternoon stroll down through the 60s.  It's like he's racing the imaginary ghosts of his past, escaping them any way he can.  He flies down the stairs at the 59th Street subway station and pulls his MetroCard out of his wallet. 

He boards the first train that heads downtown and miraculously finds a seat.  He pushes the back of his head against the cold of the window and closes his eyes, willing off any possibility of a panic attack.  Mindlessly transferring trains when the time comes to take him into Brooklyn, Kurt can't stop thinking about Blaine's wellbeing, and when he gets off a full hour later, it takes everything in him not to physically and emotionally deteriorate on his walk home.

He feels numb, like nothing in his life could ever possibly go right again.  He's had to say goodbye forever to the one person he never thought to, and that would hurt if Kurt still had a heartbeat. 

If you love something, let it go.  If he's truly yours, you'll meet again.

Kurt calls Santana.  He demands, into her voicemail, that she checks in with Blaine to make sure he doesn't do anything stupid.  It's ironic; Blaine had always been his main source of motivation to continue breathing, even when they weren't speaking.  Now, he's nervous that he's the reason why Blaine would want to end it all.

Kurt's put his own plans on hold.  He's in control of this situation.

Santana eventually calls back to say she's been with Blaine, trying to peel him off the bathroom floor.  The knife twists in his heart as Kurt thinks of the parallel to this statement.  He faintly remembers, but frequently tries to forget, the several phone calls from Blaine when he first moved to California that he refused to answer, having been plastered to the bathroom floor.  Before Kurt changed his number to avoid his ex-boyfriend at all costs.

This complete break-up is best for Kurt and Blaine both.  Now all Kurt needs to do is convince himself it's a survivable idea.

xK&Bx

Most of the conversation is a jumbled series of mumbled words in both English and Spanish.  Burt finally convinces Santana to hand the phone off to Blaine, which only results in a slew of tearful sobs on a face that Burt probably wouldn't be able to bear if he were standing in front of the boy.  He knows that Blaine usually refuses to show feelings to anyone since Kurt.  Now he's decaying, unable to move, breathe, see without another crack demolishing him to the core.  Blaine is positively dying of a broken heart.  It's the only explanation Burt has.

Burt agrees with Santana's suggestion that he come to visit, and he's on the first flight the next morning. 

He's been through his fair share of shit with both Kurt and Finn in his years as a father, but he's never seen Blaine so broken, so done with life, as he is when he stares at Blaine curled in the middle of his otherwise vacant, once-shared California King sparkling above Broadway.

If Burt were smart enough to recognize the signs, he would see that Blaine is acting in a way as if Kurt has died.  He would recognize this behavior as one in the same from when he, himself, lost his far-too-young wife almost twenty years ago already, or when his current wife lost her son.  Time will heal as much as it's able, but it will never make it okay.  Burt is prepared to tell all of this to Blaine, but when Blaine sits up, rubs his eyes raw, and demands to go back to Bushwick this instant, for the sake of anything identified with closure, Burt can do nothing but nod and follow his son's ex out of the apartment and into a taxi.

xK&Bx

“You guys, seriously.  I just… I wish he wasn't so alone, otherwise.  Why does my family need to be the one to take him in?  He's not my family.  He's my ex-boyfriend.  There's something so fucked up about this situation when I'm so lonely here, and he constantly turns to you guys.  I don't know what I'm trying to say.” 

“You're being an inconsiderate, selfish bitch about this!  You've met Christian Anderson, haven't you?  He has no one but us, Kurt.  What the hell is wrong with you?”  Santana is quick with the response.  She's making it very obvious how agitated she is with Kurt.  He has an opportunity for the love he needs, and he's choosing secure over right and real.  He's choosing over fate and it's not fair to him or Blaine or anyone who needs an example that true love exists and works.

“Uh, yeah Santana.  I've met Christian.  It was a very intimate meeting that one time when he beat the shit out of me just for knowing his son?  I am simply saying that it's been two years and maybe it's time for him to find his own people and leave mine out of it.”

“You are such an asshole, Kurt.  This is Blaine we're talking about, not some guy you hooked up with once or twice.”  Rachel pipes in, only as an effort to be heard.  “He changed your life and you know it.”

“And fuck you, Kurt.  Blaine will always be your fucking family, whether you like it or not.  You'll always be in love with him and you can't fool any of us.”

Kurt pointedly rolls his eyes at both of them; he can't confirm nor deny that he fell out of love with Blaine Anderson.  “Why aren't you with him right now then, Santana?  I thought he was family.”

“Because I have someone else on the job who could actually be better for him, douchebag.  You constantly fucking put me in the middle of it all so I have to be conscious to comforting the both of you limp dicks equally.  I can't fucking wait until you get your head out of your ass and put his dick in.  Honestly.”

Rachel rolls her eyes at Kurt and Santana's mutual glare, breaking it up before it really starts.  “Kurt.  You can't possibly wonder why he stays in contact with your parents.  They are the most wonderful people and they're amazing enough to still accept him, after all of this between you two.  He can't have his own, so he turns to your family.”  Rachel takes his hand and takes it upon herself to wipe a tear from his cheek.  Kurt almost smiles; Rachel likes Blaine now.  They were able to bond a lot over the past few years, and she would always be able to count him in for any Broadway event.  Kurt knows that her loyalty to him, after everything, is forcing her to miss her friend Blaine because he moved across the country.  She's gotten smarter lately, saying she misses her friend Kurt even more since Blaine stole his heart and threw it across a sharp, ragged mirror.  It's not accusing or even judgmental, just the way his destiny turned out in her eyes.

“I think they're only talking to him to make me realize he's the one I need to be with or something.  Like, they're forcing me into it.  As if I don't know that it would be better with him.  But I can't.  I don't trust him anymore.”

Silence between Kurt and his friends is something none of them has ever really mastered before.  He knows there must be more to it than what meets the eye.  He's jealous that, although Blaine is the one who should be considered the bad guy, Kurt is being betrayed for not dropping everything and running back to him.  If it weren't for Blaine's sudden urge to move across the country, they'd still be happily living in a dream.  Kurt shudders.  He feels like a child.

The door slams open to a very angry Burt Hummel and a small and meek Blaine Anderson who refuses to look anywhere but down, hiding his eyes from anyone who could see them. 

“Oh, great.”  Kurt crosses the room and heads into the kitchen, in an effort to not get cornered by yet another person he holds dearly in his heart not taking his side.

“Don't you run away from me.” 

Kurt shuffles his feet slowly until he's standing in front of everyone again.  He crosses his arms defensively.  “Of course this comes back to bite me in the ass, I was almost doing okay without him!”  He speaks as though Blaine isn't right there.

Santana whispers something inaudible to Blaine after she crosses the room swiftly, holding him up in a tight hug.  He hardly moves his arms to go around her body, but they are attached nonetheless.

Rachel scatters into the kitchen from where she was sitting on the couch, trying to convince Blaine and Santana to follow but he hardly acknowledges her existence.  Instead, he stares holes into Kurt's body, so uncomfortable that Kurt shifts his body to turn the other way.

Burt continues.  “We took Blaine in after he lost his parents in the worst way, Kurt, and we love him as we love you.  You know that, and frankly, I can hardly recognize you for being so inconsiderate of his feelings.  Did he mean nothing to you?”  There's a beat, everyone well aware that Kurt is definitely not going to answer that question.  “You make me wonder what I did wrong as a father, after eavesdropping on that speech of yours.”

“Dad-”

“Listen here, Kurt.  All poor Blaine wanted to do was talk some sense into you, and you went ahead and broke his heart.  From where I stand, you don't listen to us; you don't listen to your friends, so I sent Blaine because, once upon a time, he was the only person in your entire life that might be able to convince you to stop fucking your life up.  I feel responsible for breaking this boy and you should be ashamed of yourself.”

Kurt whispers.  “Poor Blaine.”

“Apologize to him.”

“I am thirty-fucking-four, Father.  I will apologize to whomever I feel the need.”

“Kurt.  I'm not fucking around here, kid.”

Kurt rolls his eyes and shifts again.  “I'm sorry, B.”

Blaine nods at him, but averts his eyes immediately.

Burt looks between them before continuing.  “Now, what is so fucking special about this Oliver guy that makes you turn on the people that love you the most?”  Burt is in complete dad-mode with a fire in his eyes.

Kurt pinches the bridge of his nose.  “Seriously?  This is fucking exhausting… I need to go make sure everything's fine with the coffee shop and I have errands to run and Oliver and I-” He cuts himself off and looks at Blaine, who must feel his eyes on him and lifts his own.  Blaine gives him a sad half-smile and looks back down to his tangled hands.

“What is so great about him?”  Burt prompts, pushing his son to the absolute edge.

“Maybe if we all understood, we wouldn't try to push you out of a decision that we only think you're making because of a previous bad break-up with someone else.”  Rachel suggests, clearly using her quiet, comforting voice.

Burt looks back at Blaine and then back to Kurt.  “Do you know that he beat the shit out of Blaine?  Do you know what that reminds me of, Kurt?  It reminds me of-” Burt cuts himself off.  It wouldn't be productive to say.

Blaine swallows and looks around the apartment as though he's trying to be distracted by anything else at all.

“Dad…”

“Tell me.  Why do you… quote unquote love Oliver?”

Something snaps and the dam breaks and the river flows and life has to go on.  “I don't!  I'm only with Oliver because he's not Blaine fucking Anderson, okay?  Or at least that's some of the reason.  I like him, but I'm always fucking comparing him and that's not fair to anyone because he will never win.  After Blaine leaving with no notice, moving across the country, not fighting for me, Oliver will still never win.  This doesn't feel like forever the way my previous relationship did; it's not even close.  You want to know why I'm really with Oliver?  Because I can never allow myself to ever take that kind of risk again, because trust is a choice and I can't let myself get hurt like that again.  So I need to go with the complete opposite in order to survive, in order to not be alone, at least for now.”  Kurt falls backward onto the couch and sighs audibly.  He sits back up and stares at Blaine again.  “I think I've realized that I'm not going to get that happily ever after anymore and I'm just wasting time until it's unacceptable to do so, until I'm too old to date casually.”  He finds Blaine's eyes.  “You broke me.  I'll never know how to fix myself, to get me back to who I was with you, B, because you've always been the only one who really knows me.  So I'm trying to take my mind off of it as much as I can without you so maybe, fucking maybe I can actually survive this world without thinking about you every fucking waking moment.  I was really getting along okay without you, but of course I needed to ruin it and call you in the single moment of weakness I've allowed myself to have in nearly a year and a half.”

Rachel sneaks herself back into the living room to stand by Blaine and Santana, if only for support.

“Oh, for God's sake!”  Kurt covers his eyes with his right hand, all the dramatics for show and tell.  “I hate all of you.”

“I'm team Anderson because you're being a terrible person, Kurt, to both Blaine and to yourself.”  Santana snarls as she rubs circles into the valley of Blaine's shoulder blades.

“Me too.  I'm sorry, Kurt.  But you need to grow up.”  Rachel nods enthusiastically and takes Blaine's arm and pats his head like he's a child.  Always condescending whatever the situation, but she means well.

“That's ripe… coming from you, Berry.”

“And me.”  Burt pipes in, inching closer to the three.  “We all love you, but we don't recognize you right now and so I'm with Blaine on this one.”

“That's not fair to Kurt, you guys.  You can't take sides.  You should support him, regardless of his reasoning.  I'm just…” It's nearly a whisper, a pathetic call out to the wind.  “I'm fine.  You don't have to gang up on him on my behalf.  I can handle myself.”

Kurt sits up straight and blinks at the three of them crowding around Blaine.  “Awesome.  So I've lost my entire family and all of my friends because I broke somebody's heart.  Do you even care how much that hurts my feelings?”  He stands and approaches Blaine, who's opted to hugging himself, looking tinier than ever, even standing next to Rachel.  He takes hold of Blaine's wrist and pulls him away from his bodyguards.  “Blaine, honey.  I don't even know what to say to you anymore.”

“Just... say something, Kurt.”  It comes out, but hardly.  His voice cracks, and it's all he could do to hold it together. 

Kurt shakes his head and swallows the lump in his throat.  “I don't trust myself to say anything.”

They engage in a moment of locked eyes and blurred surroundings.  There's nothing and no one in their world, just the sound of two unsynced hearts desperately wishing, hoping, praying that, one day, they could figure out forever. 

“Kurt.”  Blaine's eyebrows furrow together.  He squints to keep the moisture in rather than flowing down his cheeks.  Kurt knows this; it's the face he makes when he's hiding his tears too.

“You know, I called you when he proposed, because you are still it for me, even if you weren't physically there, even if you hadn't been for years.  You're always with me though, even now, and I hate that you didn't know that and I'm so sorry I tried to just write you off like you're nothing last night because I really want to get over you because I should be able to, right?  So badly, I want to stop feeling so empty without you around.  Oliver means… he is nothing, besides someone who is not you, and I'm sorry he gave you a black eye for no reason.  I don't even know why I'm compelled to tell you any of that.”

“It still feels like it's over between us with no chance to make any of it better and I feel like I can't ever have another chance because I was the asshole who left you in the first place.”  He pauses to catch his breath and he blushes when he sees Kurt's distraught face. 

Kurt watches as Blaine tilts his head and takes him in.

“You are the love of my life, Kurt, and there's no one else that will ever measure up to the love you gave me for four years of my life.  No pity party, pretty.  Stop.”  Blaine smiles and looks down at his hands.

There's no one else in the room watching the conversation diligently.  Rachel's not sobbing like she's watching a daytime soap opera, and Burt is not grunting in agreement to every word they both say.  Santana definitely did not just open a bag of popcorn.

Kurt tilts his head and wipes his eyes, stepping closer into Blaine's bubble.

“Hey.”  He leads Blaine gently by the small of his back to the couch so they can sit.  “We need to have this conversation as adults.  We're just now getting this opportunity.”

Blaine nods and continues.  “It feels like… it just feels like I lost everything.”  He gasps but rushes the following statement, as if he doesn't want Kurt to hear it at all.  “I feel like by losing you, I lost me too.”

Kurt freezes at the familiar words.  “Did you just… you found it.”

“Even your words are beautiful, Hummel.”  Blaine's smirk resembles the one he used to give Kurt so many moons ago.

Kurt smiles immediately.  This interaction is so Kurt and Blaine.  “Not mine.  Taylor Swift's.”

“Oh.”  Blaine lets out a small giggle; the most adorable glimpse into present-day Blaine that Kurt wishes he could see more of.

“Yeah, oh.”  He nudges Blaine in the shoulder and smiles playfully.

“Listen.  If you don't want me anymore, I'll deal with that if it's really true, but I want to make sure you're okay.  Half of loving someone as much as I love you is the sacrifice of my own happiness if it makes you happy, and I'm willing to do that for you.  Because as much as I want you back, I want you to find you and I want to find myself again, and if that's not together then maybe it's for the best.  But I know you know that we are literally lost without each other, Kurt, and I am here, in a city that actually gives me panic attacks, telling you wholeheartedly that I don't want to go on knowing you're out in the world with someone else.  I don't know how I should try to survive that.  I will if I have to, and I have a feeling that I'll have to, and in the grand scheme of things I've probably survived worse.”

“You should have thought-”

“I should have thought about that before I shut you out, before I moved across the country without you, yeah.  I learned the worst lesson of my life and it's damn near fatal.  I made a mistake by shutting you out and not giving a fuck and taking you for granted, and I am so sorry for that.  The past two years have been the worst of my life and I'm just...  I didn't mean to act like I didn't need you.  I've always needed you.  I need you, Kurt, in any capacity.”

Kurt nods and wipes his eyes again.  He sees his own reflection in the shine of Blaine's eyes, and he analyzes just how pitiful he looks.  He tilts his head, feeling like his stomach is dropping as though the sun is falling from the sky when Blaine closes his eyes and a single tear surfaces.

Kurt whispers.  “I need some time.”

“I miss you, Kurt.”

Kurt lets his breath stagger out, shaky and unstable in all its glory.  “Oliver's supposed to come over.  I think… I think you need to go, for now.  Will you call me when you think it's appropriate?  Maybe a few days, after you've settled back home?”

“Why can't I just-”

“Please, B.  Don't make this harder than it needs to be.  I need some time to fix everything and become the Kurt you know and love.”  He bites his lip and looks hopefully to Blaine.

“You're kicking me out.”

“Only for right now, though, honey.  We'll talk.  I promise you we'll talk because I kind of need you too.”  He shrugs.

“My heart is yours, pretty.  Whatever and whenever you want.”

“Blaine.”

“I love you, pretty boy.”

Kurt nods.  “I know you do, B.”

Blaine turns away from him, trying to hold his composure as much as possible, but Kurt sees right through him.

“Hey guys.  I'm just gonna fly back… I have to- I'm sorry.”  He offers a sad smile and before any of Team Anderson can stop him, Blaine is gone.

Kurt stares at the slammed door. He peels his eyes away to cancel on Oliver through a text message.

xK&Bx

His déjà vu is definite, although he's running from an entirely different pocket of the city and none of his surroundings are the same.  He stops on a random block, the Manhattan skyline haunting him in all its beautiful glory of what should be but isn't and he books whatever flight he can get non-stop, first class to San Francisco.  He has a few hours to kill; he takes the subway into the city then strolls aimlessly and finds himself trying and failing to avoid the center of it all in the most populated, polluted area of New York – Times Square. 

He takes a seat on the top of the red steps in the middle of the party and watches.  The flashing lights to signify Broadway lives here, and the people bustling to make it to their dinners and their shows and their fun causes Blaine to crumble right there in the sea of civilization.

His entire world has collided directly into Hell itself and if rock bottom was bad five years ago with Kurt's help, there's nothing he can do now except leave the city that started the end of it at all, and never return. 

So here's everything coming down to nothing
Here's to silence that cuts me to the core

He makes his way to the street where he hails a cab and disappears from the city of ruins. 

The leather of the cab's back seat is ripped, as if someone took a key to it and slit it open out of sheer boredom.  The foam underneath is bleeding out all at once from just a miniscule incision.  He works at it to rip it open a few more inches as they venture over the bridge.  With the use of just his fingertips, he thoughtfully plays with it to find the metaphor buried within the chair of the minivan taxi.  He finds that each fiber separated in the leather further pulverizes the strings of his heart until there's nothing but a clumpy mess of the seat's intestines crumbling down into a dust between his hands. 

He sighs, stumbling out of the cab at JFK and walks into the airport with nothing but his wallet, a cell phone, and a foul-smelling outfit that's been through the wringer in New York City.  Apparently that, with the fact that he bought a one-way ticket across the country an hour ago, is suspicious so he's pulled aside for an extensive search to include every last crevice of his body.  To top off the absolute worst day of his life, the man working his fingers into every muscle before he's allowed to board his plane home publicly molests him.

The six-hour adventure back to northern California is even more than painfully boring.  He's felt all he can, his heart a numb and meaningless organ beating only for its own sake.  He's slouched over, basking in the fact that he's able to travel light this time, and he makes himself unnoticed as he glides between the crowds in San Francisco.  He finally gets back to his apartment after an experience in New York he'd prefer to just forget.

Kurt's never been to his apartment before, but Blaine's arrival back home finds it freezing cold not in the way of controllable temperature, but in the way of desolate emptiness.   

He falls backward onto his bed and stares at himself through his mirrored closet doors.  If he cries any more he'll never stop so he turns his back on himself and cradles his head until he escapes into a slumber so thick, he's basically comatose from a broken heart. 

xK&Bx

It's been three days since he's heard from Blaine, which is totally understandable if Kurt's being real with himself; he wouldn't have called him either if someone left it in his control to call when “appropriate.” 

But this isn't someone.  This is Blaine.  He should have called by now.

Kurt looks into the screen of his laptop, his email up and waiting to be utilized, but he doesn't actually see anything at all through the thick cloud of his thoughts hovering over his eyes.  He is back, enraptured in the memories of Blaine, the small details of the fantasy he has of them both getting their way, loving each other so fully, picking each other up right where they left off and metaphorically placing the other wholly on his feet.  He loves Blaine like Bonnie loved Clyde, as an act of survival together in this mad, mean, cruel world. 

A piece of spam mail dings him out of his trance and he goes forth with all of the administrative work it takes to run his second coffee shop.  Willa and Jonathan are managing the crowds out in the front, but with several hints of needing a few more regular employees.  He promises to post an ad for baristas, packs up his belongings and escapes to get ready for Oliver's visit to his apartment.  He cancelled on Oliver the other night and again last night because he hasn't been able to focus on anything except the aftermath of Blaine Anderson, so immediately rescheduling for tonight seemed like the right thing to do.  He hopes his brain doesn't resort to Blaine again tonight.  He hopes he's okay.

He walks home in a hypnotic state thinking about how each step of his life leads to the next monumental moment and he's almost prepared for the rest of it on his own.  He goes home to prepare for his boyfriend's arrival, changes, and patiently waits until the triple knock on the door wakes him from yet another trance of domestic fantasies revolving around Blaine Anderson.  He gets up and pads to the door, plastering a permanent smile on his face as he crosses the room.  Hopefully, his heart can catch up with his logic, and soon.

Sliding the door open and smiling, he greets Oliver.  “Hi!  Thanks for coming!”

“Hey.”  The kiss that follows is sloppy venom that's nothing like the kisses he needs.  Oliver's kisses sink into Kurt's lips like lead, and unlike some others, Oliver's lips do not fit perfectly with Kurt's so Kurt must exert himself a bit extraordinarily in order for the slobber to land somewhere in the vicinity of his mouth and not so much on his chin.

“Come in.”  He opens the door further to let his… person that he's dating into his apartment.  “No one is here.  It's just us for now.  Drink?”

“Whatever you're having.”

Kurt smiles at him and goes straight to the bottle of wine on his counter.  He reaches for two stemless glasses, pours until they are both half full, and walks them back to where Oliver sits patiently on the couch.

“So, I feel like I made a fool of myself.”

Kurt hands a glass to Oliver and smiles again, sitting down next to him.  “Mmm, we should probably talk about that, huh?  Blaine is just-”

“I meant the proposal.” 

Oh.  “Oh.”

Oliver takes a sip.  “You're not going to marry me, are you?”

Kurt shakes his head.  “No, I'm not.  But if it makes you feel better, I'm not going to marry anyone.”

“Oh.  I didn't know…”

Kurt shrugs.  “Why did you feel the need to punch my ex-boyfriend?”

“I saw the way he was looking at you and I got jealous.”

Kurt sighs.  He knows that Blaine is deeply affected by his every move, but he would have thought it had gone away by now.  Looking back, he's not sure why he would have thought that Blaine would ever let go.  He makes a mental note to check in.  Although he put it in Blaine's hands to reach out, there's no rule against him making sure all is okay.

“Well… I'm not going to lie and tell you that he means nothing to me.  It ended badly a few years ago and I don't think either of us ever truly let each other go.”

“Yeah, it seems like that.”  Oliver absently smoothes his pants, already perfectly wrinkle-free.  “Okay.”

Kurt smiles and places a small kiss on his lips before he pulls away shyly.  “I can't delete my history with him.  He remains close to my family and we went through so much when we were together, so I doubt that I'll never see him again; He'll always just be Blaine to me.  I think we're going to try a friend thing now that we're back in touch.”

“Kurt, I-”

Santana pushes the door open just in time to witness Kurt pulling himself closer to Oliver's body and rolls her eyes at the scene taking place on the couch.  She stomps directly into her area and throws her curtain back into privacy-mode.  She hits play and there is electro-pop vibrating Kurt and Oliver to the core of their bodies. 

“If you ignore her, she goes away.”  Kurt pulls his boyfriend in for another kiss.  They make out to the sound of Yazoo and things could be worse. 

Santana stomps back out with a packed suitcase.  “I'm moving out.”

Oliver gets up and off of Kurt, looking entirely put off that Santana's ruined their privacy.

Santana blinks and turns to Kurt.  “I'm moving because I'm boycotting the idea of you with anyone else.  Call me childish, meddling, but you and I both know what's right for you.  I'll be at Blaine's when you're ready to get your head out of your ass.”

Kurt feels the words as a bullet straight into the muscle of his heart. 

“Um.  Should I go?”  Oliver snaps him out of his trance.

“What?  No.  No, it's okay.  She's just in a mood… Blaine's her best friend and you know he was just here.  She'll be back.  Um… do you want to go out to dinner somewhere or something tonight?”

Santana huffs and leaves faster than she came.

Oliver preens for a second and nods.  “Let's go somewhere special, to celebrate us.”

“That sounds like an awesome idea.”

They choose a place in the West Village that they've both openly mentioned wanting to try, and if Kurt is totally depressed for the rest of the night because of both Blaine and Santana, then Oliver doesn't notice at all.

xK&Bx

When Kurt returns from his dinner and Oliver goes home, he climbs into bed and stares at the ceiling.  He wonders if Blaine is still in New York now and fears that his sleeping schedule will be interrupted by the simple knowledge of both of them in the same city but depressingly separate.  Kurt should suck it up and call him but quickly opts to call Burt instead; he would know where Blaine is.  Besides, he hasn't heard from Burt since he left the city the day after Blaine did and he's worried, as his dad usually calls when he returns home.

He plays with the phone in his hand, twirling it up and over around his fingers a few times until he throws it down on the bed.  He sits, sighs, and picks it up again.  Inhaling deeply, he hits his dad's dedicated row on the “favorites” screen and patiently waits for the call to connect. 

He hopes it goes to voicemail, but he assumes it won't.  At the third ring, Kurt takes another deep breath, preparing himself to leave a message when Burt does finally answer, a bit out of breath as if he ran to the phone. 

“Kurt, hi bud.  I meant to call you when I got home, but thought maybe you could use some time off from all the bullying we've all been putting you through.  I'm sorry about that.”

“Oh, Dad.  I'm just checking in, I deserved the tough love.  I'm…” Kurt trails off, unsure what he was trying to say in the first place.  “Dad.”

“I know, Kurt.”  Kurt's dad always knows. 

This is his cue to cry.  He sobs on behalf of Blaine Anderson, someone who had always wanted to keep Kurt happy but fell apart at the worst possible time. 

Burt stays quiet for a few minutes, accustomed to the diva sessions.  “Kurt, buddy, come on.  Take a deep breath.  Do you need me back in New York?”

“No, no.  I'm okay.  I'm so sorry I disappointed you, Dad.”

“You only disappointed me because you were being selfish and cruel on purpose to someone you love deeply, even if you can't admit it anymore.”

“I'm sorry.”

“Don't apologize to me, kid.”

The silence is there to let Kurt's dad know that he's not going to apologize to Blaine.  “I have to let him go, Dad.”  There's a beat.  “Is he okay?”

“He's… he'll be okay.”

“He's still in New York?”

“He went home, Kurt.”

“That doesn't answer my question.  I don't know what he considers home anymore.”

“He's in San Francisco.”

A minute goes by before Kurt speaks again.  “Okay.  Okay, I have to go Dad.  I'll call soon.  Love you.”  He ends the call before his dad can say anything further. 

Blaine's return to California is good news; it's proof that Blaine is distancing himself and listening to Kurt's suggestions of trying to move forward with his life instead of sticking to the past and regretting any ancient decisions.

If Blaine's return to California is such good news, Kurt can't help but wonder why he feels empty and disconnected now that he knows Blaine is gone.