“I’m half asleep, what?”

“Sorry, go back to sleep.”

Kurt sat up in bed and checked the clock, 3:15AM. “No, I’m up. What was the question?”

“What you said to Carla, was that true?”

“Honey, I said a lot of stuff to Carla today. It was all true, but what specifically are we talking about?”

“About what you do when you wake up afraid.” Blaine’s voice was soft but serious.

“Call you? Of course. Why?”

He heard a sigh at the other end of the phone.

“Blaine?”

“I’m here.”

“Are you okay?”

It took him a few minutes to answer with a question of his own. “Can I ask you something?”

“Ask away.” Kurt kept his voice light and airy but he didn’t trust the way Blaine sounded. It wasn’t sleepy; it was the way someone sounds when they’ve been thinking too much and looping negative things through their mind over and over.

“Did you have nightmares when I was…when I wouldn’t talk to you?”

“Oh.” Kurt fingered edge of his bedspread, thinking.

“Yeah.”

“I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay.” Kurt slid down into his bed. “Blaine?”

“Yeah.”

“I really love you.” He hadn’t really let all that had gone on in the past few months settle down on him. He hadn’t truly been able to consider the possibility of losing Blaine until it seemed like the danger had passed.

“Sometimes I think of what my life would be like right now if I hadn’t gone to Dalton that day. If I hadn’t met you.”

“Kurt stop. Please.” There was quiet for a moment then Blaine began again. “Will you come to my private session tomorrow? There’s some stuff I need to talk to you about but I don’t know how to say it. I think Doctor Sparks might be able to help.”

Kurt stared into the darkness, his eyes wide, “Um, sure.”

“Cool, okay, good. Yes. Thank you. Okay, I should let you sleep, so I’ll see you tomorrow right?”

“Tomorrow, yes. Um, okay, goodnight.”

“Goodnight. Love you.”

And Kurt was alone in the darkness of his room once again. He laid his head on the pillow but couldn’t even close his eyes. What the hell was this? He let it simmer for a few minutes then grabbed his phone again, sending a text.

Kurt: You there?

An eternity passed then,

Blaine: Sorry, ran to the bathroom.

Kurt: I’m scared.

Blaine: Nightmares?

Kurt: I tell you I love u & u say u have 2 tell me something

Kurt: wtf?

Blaine: Sorry didn’t mean to scare you. I love you, don’t worry, it’s just stuff about me that I want you to know but it’s hard to talk about ok? It’s not about breaking up or anything like that. I ALWAYS want you in my life.

Kurt: Promise?

He was surprised when his phone played Blaine’s ringtone again. He didn’t get a chance to say hello, Blaine’s voice was there as soon as he hit the button.

“I promise. I shouldn’t have said anything. Kurt, if we hadn’t met at Dalton we’d have met at a competition or something but we would have met no matter what. We belong together, I believe that. It’s WHY I want you at my sessions, because I want you to know the things I’m afraid to admit to myself. I want you to be a part of my healing. Does that make sense?”

“Yes. I’m sorry I overreacted but these past few months have been, it just seems like something is trying to keep us apart and it all just hit me, just how much…”

“Kurt?”

“What?”

“Shhh.”

“But,” Kurt started to argue but it was impossible when he pictured Blaine, snuggled in his hospital bed, his perfectly shaped lips coming together to shush him.

“Speaker phone.”

Kurt smiled to himself and gave over. “Okay, done.”

“Lights?”

“off” He’d never turned them on.

“Eyes?”

“Closed.” Well, now they were. His head was on his pillow, his eyes were closed but he could see Blaine more clearly than even if he was lying beside him.

Blaine began quietly, like always when he sang on the phone. He slowed down the song and played with the breaks and moments but it was undeniably Colbie Caillet’s “You Got Me” He sang until he heard the steady breathing that suggested Kurt had fallen asleep.

Hours later, Kurt perched on the edge of the yellow plastic chair in the corner of the large session room. It dug into his leg and was too hard to ever be comfortable but he was the first one there and had no idea where he belonged.

“Hey!” Blaine bounced over to him, “Thank you for coming.” He leaned down for a hello kiss but Kurt looked around as if worried about being caught. “Kurt, it’s okay. No one minds here.” He touched his index finger below his chin and turned Kurt’s face so their lips met.

“Oh, sorry boys, do you want a moment?” Dr. Sparks was right on time.

“No, we’re good.” Blaine winked at Kurt and took his hand,

“Come sit with me over here.”

A couch. It seemed a little on the nose to Kurt and he couldn’t help wondering if Blaine normally stretched out here and told his secrets to this man. “Oh, okay.” He allowed himself to be led to the admittedly much more comfortable seat and settled in next to Blaine.

“So Kurt, Blaine’s asked me if I’d see you as a couple for a little bit, he feels that this will help him in his personal progress and maybe help you both to heal some of the things you’ve been through over the summer, possibly before.”

Kurt only nodded.

Blaine took his hand and held it, “I want this for both of us, not just for me, but us, you. I want you to have a safe place too, a place where you can say things to me and ask me stuff that you might be afraid of.”

Kurt smiled at him and nodded again, thinking to himself that he had to stop nodding, that he must look like some sort of deranged bobblehead.

Blaine looked at him with wide puppy eyes and squeezed his hand, “I know you expected to just be sitting in on my session and this is just being thrown at you so if you don’t want to, or don’t feel ready for this, I mean, I understand.”

“No. No, it’s, um, it’s fine. I just, I don’t really know what I’m supposed to do.”

“We’re just here to talk, Kurt, that’s all. This has been a challenging summer for you and Blaine. Blaine’s dealing with a number of issues and you’re important to him, “
Blaine cut the doctor off, “You’re the MOST important person to me.”

“Then why did you stop me when I was telling you how much I loved you last night?”

Shaking his head Blaine looked down, “It wasn’t you telling me how much you loved me that I was trying to stop.”

Kurt stroked his thumb over the thin skin at Blaine’s wrist, “What then?”

“Did you ever notice that I never asked you for a painkiller while you were with me? Not until you’d be leaving for the night.”

“You were ready to go to sleep.”

“They weren’t sleeping pills. They were pain pills. As long as you were near me there was no pain, or when there was it was manageable, physical pain. It was when you would leave, I’d panic. Every time you left I was afraid you wouldn’t come back.”

“Oh, Blaine.” Kurt shook his head, “How could I not come back to you?”

“Maybe you’d get sick of taking care of me, sick of my not being strong for you. Or maybe you’d get in an accident or your dad would decide that you should be off doing something else with your time, or my family would decide that it was not okay for your to visit every day.” Blaine took his hand back, folding both of his hands between his knees, closing in on himself physically and emotionally.

“Maybe you’d decide dealing with my family, with our…issues would be more than you could handle, or not your problem and realize you could be out having fun with someone else.”

“That was never going to happen.”

“But it did. That day Dad walked in on us I felt like my world had come to an end because I knew for certain he would never let me see you again.”

Kurt looked at Dr. Sparks at the mention of Blaine’s father walking in on them, but if this was news to him he gave no sign of it.

“I don’t know if you understand what that did to me.” Now it was Blaine who looked to the doctor for reassurance.

“Blaine why don’t you talk Kurt through what it was like when your father told you he was taking you away for awhile?”

“Alone. Just, completely alone. I was sure I was going to go crazy. It felt like I had become too much of a burden and he was going to lock me away somewhere he could pretend I didn’t exist. I was so afraid for you because of what he’d told them you’d done and yet I couldn’t get to you, couldn’t find out what was happening.”

He was quiet for a minute and when Kurt opened his mouth to respond Dr. Sparks raised his hand to stop him. Blaine wasn’t done, just centering himself.

“I thought maybe you’d be relieved that my father put me away. That even though you loved me you might be happy for the break from my constant need.”

Looking at the floor Kurt reassured him, “I need you as much as you need me.”

“And when I realized that I panicked. Kurt, my mother needed my father so much that when she didn’t have his constant attention she started to drink. When I was removed from you I started to numb myself. I don’t want us in a relationship like theirs. I want to want you without needing you, and while I always want to be the person you come to when you are feeling down, or don’t know where to turn, I can’t be everything to you. I don’t want that for you. If you want to hear my voice when you can’t sleep that’s sweet, but if you can’t sleep unless you hear my voice that’s a problem. Does this make any sense to you?”

“We aren’t your parents.”

“And I want to keep it that way. My father loved my mother; I never even considered that as a possibility. I thought he saw us both as a liability, an obligation and nothing more. You know what he told me in session yesterday? He told me he held me away from him and used my sexuality as an excuse but that he didn’t want me to need him because he’d let me down and ruin me the way he ruined my mother. And now I’m afraid I’ll ruin us, or you will. That needing each other is going to destroy us.”

Blaine didn’t fight the tears, didn’t wipe them away surreptitiously the way Kurt did. He just let them run and knew they’d dry in salty streaks on his cheeks that would serve later as the sting of his truth telling. It was a pain he was getting used to and wanted no respite from.