He rolled over and groaned when he knocked his phone onto the floor, then quickly snatched it up, remembering why it had been on his bed. “Babe?” he spoke into it, but then realized Blaine had disconnected. Judging by the time they’d probably come to take him for physical therapy.

He was awake now; thinking about all of the things they had talked about the night before, focusing mostly on Mr. Anderson’s apparent change of heart. It felt too easy and that left an uncomfortable twist in Kurt’s stomach. He decided to go make some coffee and if he grandmother was still asleep come back and send an email off to Blaine.

“Good morning sweetheart.” Not only was his grandmother awake, she was dressed and looking ready to leave the house. “I’ve made coffee and there’s Danish in the pastry bin.”

“Good morning. You look like you’re going out.” Kurt filled a cup, considered cream then remembered how much he’d eaten the day before and decided black was better, and there was no way he’d be eating a Danish.

“I am, I walk with some friends each morning. I’d have invited you along but I know you were up late talking to Blaine so I thought I’d let you sleep in. Is he going to be alright?”

“I hope so. I don’t want to make you late to meet your friends, we can talk later.”

She studied him a moment and relented, “No worries, I’ll go now, you take your time this morning. Do you know your way to Central Park from here?”

Kurt didn’t know his way to anywhere from there, so his grandmother left him some money and told him that if he wanted the door man would get him a cab that would bring him to Central Park. It was a beautiful day and he should probably start roaming the city on his own a little to get his bearings.

Kurt showered, dressed, checked his phone to see if there was any sign of Blaine and when there wasn’t decided he’d send email from the park, along with some photos. He took a picture of his room, of the building he was staying in, and pictures out of the taxi window that were slightly blurred but still would give Blaine a feeling of being there with him. At the park he took a few pictures of the people, the trees, a particularly pretty bridge and then settled in a shady area to send the email.

“Hi Love, I hope you have your phone back already. If you do send me pictures of your room, I want to be able to picture where you are. I’m sending you some pictures of where I’m staying and then of my cab ride to Central Park and now I’m sitting in Central Park writing to you. This is what it looks like where I am right now. I feel like all I ever say is how much I wish you were here with me but everything is bhetter when I share it with you. I’m so excited for this opportunity to connect with my grandmother, my mother and even this city but I feel like a part of me is back home with you.

You’re better at expressing these things than I am, even though you say you aren’t, but I hope you know I’m yours. It hurts me when you ask again and again if I’m going to find someone else because there couldn’t be anyone else. Only you. I mean that when I say it, and I hope you mean it when you say it to me. Oh, this was supposed to be sexy but this is so much more important than that. I hope your father is truly ready to start accepting who you are but whether he does or doesn’t, in the end all that matters is that YOU accept who you are, and don’t let anyone tell you that you’re anything less than everything. When we first met I thought you were perfect, everything I wanted to be. I know better now, no one is perfect, and I don’t want to be you, I want to be WITH you because while you aren’t perfect you’re perfect for me.”

Kurt sat back, tears in his eyes. He wanted to erase the email and start over but didn’t. Instead of hitting send he saved the email as a draft and went back to read the last email Blaine had sent to him, the steamy email that he had promised a response to. Just reading it made his pulse quicken and the small hairs on the back of his neck stand up. He wanted to do the same for the guy who could turn his knees to jelly so easily but everything he started to write in his head sounded so cheesy. He closed his eyes and pictured Blaine there next to him in the park, thought of what they’d do if they were here together then grabbed his phone and started to type.

“You’re mouth is the perfect shape for mine, I love the way you make me moan just with a kiss. I wish you were here next to me in the grass so I could run my fingers across your stomach and watch the way it makes you shudder with delight. My mind plays again and again the image of you on your back, watching the stars in the moonlight, your throat irresistible, I had to stop myself from biting so hard I’d break skin and leave you bleeding onto my lips.

I’m trying but I can’t do this. I can’t type the words the way you do. It’s not that I’m afraid anymore, I’m not. I’m not embarrassed or timid or ashamed. I want you, I want to do things to you that would make whores blush and maybe after I’ve done them I’ll want the words but right now every time I try to say it, or write it I feel like I’m writing a script for us. I don’t want a script; I just want you and me, sweaty, messy and tangled together. Sealed to one another, unbreakable.”

His fingers shook as he unleashed things he’d held onto; that he hadn’t thought Blaine was ready to hear before.

“I hate to disappoint you because I know what you wanted this email to be, but I know you love me and could never really be disappointed with me. Instead I want to tell you something we haven’t talked about. The night of the accident, riding out to find you, I thought I’d black out, I was dizzy and sick and terrified but I knew I had to hold on because I had to get to you.

When we saw your car I ran down the hill and you and you looked like you were dead and I turned and vomited because I could not, in that moment, find a way to continue to function. I couldn’t trust my body to do another thing if yours was gone because without you I’m breathless, bloodless, soulless, and heartless. I knelt beside your car and threw up and shook and went completely ice cold until I heard you draw a breath. It was the tiniest sound, rasping but beautiful and I was suddenly alive again, I could move mountains, I would carry you and the truck to the hospital on my back if it meant not losing you. I found my strength, running deeper than I ever thought it could, because I had to, because there was nothing I wouldn’t risk to hold on to you, to us.

I never told you but I was outside the room, and I heard what your father said about the boy that died. I wanted to claw him to pieces. I kept my mouth shut because I knew you couldn’t talk about it then, but I hope you did while you had that therapist, or I hope you do. I will never forgive him for making you feel like you don’t deserve to live. Never. I’ll respect your desire to make things right with him, and I’ll be respectful of him to keep the peace and make it easier to have him in your life if that’s what you want but I promise you Blaine Anderson if that man ever says or does anything like that again I will take you so far away they will never find us because there is NO EXCUSE for that. If he cannot see the amazing man you are despite the complete lack of a role model in your life for manhood then that is his problem and his alone. You are more of man, more of a human being than he’ll ever know how to be.”

Kurt’s anger was boiling over; his thumbs were flying across the keyboard.

“It’s probably not fair that all of this is in an email but if I try to say it to you in person and you defend what he did I just don’t think I can take it. A man should want his own son to live, no matter what. I know there’s a part of you that’s afraid that you’re like him but I promise you my darling you are not. You are reasonable, open and loving. You are helpful, kind and strong. When you look at me I know that there is nothing I could do that would make you dismiss how I feel or ignore me if I should embarrass you.

I know this is a lot, but it’s been on my mind for some time and I want you to be sure, to know that while we are apart my heart is still with you. If you want to talk about any of this just say so, I won’t bring it up. If you’d rather email about it that’s okay too. If you don’t want to, or aren’t ready to that’s alright but please promise me you’ll try to talk to the doctor about it Baby because no one deserves what you’ve been through and I don’t know how to make you trust my love when you’ve been taught that love is conditional.

The short version of all of this? I’m crazy about you and I can’t wait to spend our lives together.”

Send was pressed before he could lose his nerve then Kurt got up and started walking aimlessly. He found an exit from the park that brought him near Lincoln Center so he walked there and took a picture of it to send to Rachel to remind her of when they were there together.

With one eye on his gps trying to make his way toward home he jumped when he got a text.

Blaine: Are you busy?

Kurt: Of course not.

The phone rang and he answered immediately, “You hung up on me.”

“You were snoring and Dad showed up early WITH the psychiatrist.”

Kurt dropped onto the stairs of a nearby building, “You’re joking.”

“Nope.”

“Well, you have your phone so it couldn’t have been terrible. Tell me what happened.”

“First, I read your email.”

“Already? I just sent it.”

“And I read it. I…I love you. I don’t even know how else to, Kurt, you don’t even know, I needed to know all of those things, mostly I needed to know how much it hurt you when I ask you to reassure me. I don’t mean to hurt you, you absolutely show me how much you love me all the time, I just, I feel like I’m not who I was, and that you loved him, not…this.”

“I love all of you Blaine. All. Of . You.”

“I get that now, and yes, of course I mean it when I say it to you. As far as my Dad and what he said to me, I think what we talked about today might clear some of that up. It won’t excuse it, but it may explain his state of mind.”

“I’m sitting on the street. It’s loud here and I want to hear every word you have to say. Let me get a cab and then I can make my way home and hear you.”

Apparently hailing a cab in the city required tricks Kurt had not yet mastered. Blaine suggested he find a nearby hotel where the concierge might get a cab for him. This turned out to be an invaluable trick Kurt would use many times.

Once settled into the back of the cab he gave Blaine the go ahead to tell his story.

“Dad and the therapist come to my room and I’m sleeping with the phone cradled next to my head. I figure Dad’s going to blow his top but instead he asks if I can talk to you later and when I try to wake you and can’t he takes the phone from me and hangs it up, but like, really nicely if that makes sense.”

“Okay. So no top blowing, good start.”

“Very. Then the therapist asks Dad to step out for a moment and he does, no looks, nothing. When we’re alone Dr. Case tells me that Dad called his office early in the morning and said that he read the pamphlets and that we had a conversation in the car that he’d like to continue but he felt like he needed a third party there to keep him on track and help me to process things from my father’s side.”

“I don’t even know how to feel about this, I mean, good for him this sounds like he’s trying and actually willing to accept that he needs help but I just don’t want to hear his side, I want him to tell you he’s wrong and he’s sorry and I don’t even know what else he could say that would make up for what he’s put you through.”

“Honey, take a breath. I appreciate your taking up your sword for me, I do, but he has to start somewhere right?”

“I suppose. Okay, go on.” Kurt tried to watch the scenery passing by so he could find his way around but it was too tempting to just concentrate all of his energy on Blaine’s voice.

“The doctor said that Dad wanted him to ask me if I was open to honest discussion with a mediator or if I just didn’t want to hear what he wanted to say. My Dad has never waited to see if I wanted to hear what he was saying, he just said it. Dr. Case asked me to get dressed, he said that I’d feel less like a patient and more like a person having a conversation if I were in my regular clothes, then we met in a little office.

Dad looked like he hadn’t slept much, he looked like crap. You could tell he was uncomfortable, he didn’t know where to look. The first thing he did was give me my phone back; it felt like a peace offering. He told me he thought he was doing the right thing taking it but he could see now that it only made everything worse. The doctor said that Dad wanted to tell me about the night I was in the accident from his side, because we never talked about that.

It turns out when the police called him they had found the other car, not the guy who hit me, but the other car he’d hit, with the dead kid. They called him and said that your father had found my truck and that you were with me in the ambulance.

He thought you and I were together during the accident, thought we hit that other car and killed that boy, and he thought for certain it was because you were, as he put it, “servicing” me while I was driving and that we were probably drunk.”

“But we’d never...”

“We know that, but he didn’t, not until last night when I told him what he’d walked in on was our first time. He still somehow thought that you’d been with me in the car and even when he found out it wasn’t me who hit that other car he thought I wasn’t paying attention when the accident happened because we were being ‘inappropriate.’”.

Kurt asked Blaine to wait while he paid the cabby and went into his grandmother’s building. She had been home and had left him a note saying she hoped he was having a good time and if he was home in time he should meet her after her hair appointment and left an address. He grabbed a bottle of water from the fridge then curled onto the couch. “I wasn’t even with you, and even if I was we wouldn’t have been doing THAT while you were driving. We’re not stupid.”

“Actually Honey, I probably could have been paying better attention. Do you remember what we were talking about when the accident happened?”

Kurt didn’t. He only remembered the panic of losing Blaine at the other end of the phone.

“We were talking about getting excited when we kiss.”

And the entire embarrassing conversation came flooding back to Kurt, it seemed like another lifetime. “I remember. Can we not relive that please?”

“No, no need to go back to that, but the point is, the thought of you, in that situation had me, lets just say not concentrating on the road.”

“Wait, are you saying you were…while you were driving?”

“No, I wasn’t…doing anything about it; I was just uncomfortable let’s say. So when dad told me what he thought I had to admit to myself that he was wrong, but not completely.”

Kurt buried his face in his arm, “Tell me you didn’t tell your father this.”

“No, of course not, who would tell their father they were driving around with a hard on because their boyfriend finally admitted to getting excited when you make out? Who does that?”

“Okay, okay, so anyway, Back to the meeting…”

“You’re so cute when you don’t want to talk about something. So Dad said what he did about my being the one who should have died because he thought I killed a kid while we were having car sex. Then even after he found out I didn’t hit the other car he still thought you were with me, distracting me so he blamed you for the accident. I think he just wanted to believe that his perfect son couldn’t be in any way liable. So when he walked in on us it all just became too much, like we hadn’t learned our lesson about what can happen when we don’t control ourselves. I’m not explaining this all that well, I took a pain killer before I called you because they have me walking so much.

The important thing is he wanted me to see why he was so upset and he was shocked when he learned that you weren’t with me in the car and that what he walked in on was our first time. “

“Why now? Why is he only starting to be interested in your side of things now? He had all that time that you were lying in bed under the same roof as he was.”

“I asked that. I told him I didn’t want to ruin the way things were going but I had to know what changed, why he was suddenly willing to even hear me and that’s when he dropped the big bomb.”

Kurt sat up, “Big Bomb?”

“Mom left him when he put me in the mental hospital. She told him that until he repaired our relationship she couldn’t stand to look at him.”

“Oh honey…this is amazing.”

“It is, it’s huge, do you realize? She never stood up to him for herself but she did for me. She finally walked out on him and it wasn’t because he wrecked her life, it was to stop him from making more of a wreck of mine.”

Kurt’s voice got quiet, “It means more than that though doesn’t it?”

Blaine started to cry, “It means he loves her enough to try with me. I never believed he loved her at all, but he has to, doesn’t he, to swallow his pride and open himself like this for her?”

“Yes, my love, it does.”