As he stumbles out of the building, the dying light of the evening hurting his eyes nonetheless, his mobile phone rings. For a torturing instant he hopes it’s Kurt, but it’s Wes’ name that is flashing on the screen. Right now Blaine wants nothing more than being alone, curled up in a ball on his bed, listening to heartbreaking songs to remind himself that he isn’t the only one suffering because love constantly seems out of reach. But he also knows that he should try to hold himself together and Wes, with his calmness and his patience, is probably the only one who could help him to do that.

Slumped on a bench in a dusty small park in front of Kurt’s building, Blaine keeps his gaze focused on Kurt’s bedroom window as he presses the green button.

It shouldn’t be so hard; it shouldn’t be so painful.

“Blaine! How did it go?”

He swallows and tries to blink back the tears that are starting to form again.

“It…I don’t know what to do Wes…he…he won’t listen to me and I…”

“First of all calm down. Take a deep breath.”

Blaine balls his free hand in a fist, nails digging into his palm, because he can’t, not when he is breaking, not when the only thing that could keep him together is Kurt.

“Damn it, Wes! I can’t! I don’t want to be calm, I just want…”

What does he want? He wants to go back to how things were before, when there were only promises of something beautiful and he didn’t stumble on the debris of miscommunication.

“I know, I know, Blaine.”

Blaine tilts his head back and looks straight at the darkening sky, too high above his head, too empty.

“No, you don’t.”

He knows he shouldn’t take it all out on Wes, he knows that, yet he can’t help it, because he has the feeling that no one could ever understand what he is going through, what it means to risk to lose someone right after having found him, when you know that he is the one.
Wes’ voice is hard when he answers.

“Trust me, I know.”

Blaine takes in a shaky breath.

“It’s just…in my dreams…we are always so happy…”

“Your dreams?”

“Yeah…I…every night I dream of him, Wes. I dream about promises and I love yous and…I want all of it, Wes…with Kurt.”

Wes is silent and Blaine briefly wonders if he has hung up on him because he is being delusional.

“You…you should write those dreams down, you know? It might help you to understand what you truly want, to your feelings in order.”

Blaine blinks, confused because this totally isn’t the advice that he expected to receive from his best friend.

“Wes…I appreciate the effort, but I really don’t see how this could help me right now…”

“Well, it’s just an idea; we can talk about them together if you want.”

“I…I’ll think about it. Thanks, Wes.”

“Hey, you know that I am always here when you need me, Blaine. Don’t hesitate to call.”

A small smile manages to make its way to Blaine’s lips.
“I know.”

*

The following morning Blaine wakes up tangled in the sheets, with his dreams etched bright in the curves and twists of his brain. He scrambles for his notebook, fingers getting caught in random books and crumpled papers, reminders of hours spent trying to put notes on the page to explain what knots and unfurls inside of him.

Clutching the pen tight with trembling fingers, he starts to write down the images that have filled his dreams.

It was raining, water dripping like tears from the trees onto the soft ground underneath. Kurt’s wet cold fingers were wrapped around his and Blaine felt too heavy to manage to keep the both of them afloat. Kurt had told him that he had never brought any of his previous boyfriends here. It had made Blaine feel special; it had made him feel so in love that his bones shook with the sheer force of it.

Kurt’s voice was thin like tissue paper when he spoke.

“Well, now you can finally meet her.”

Blaine looked at the small photo at the centre of the stone, rivulets of water caressing it. A pair of glossy eyes and a soft smile looked back at him. She looked so much like Kurt.

“She was beautiful.”

Kurt squeezed his hand tighter.

“She would have loved you.”

Blaine blinked because he was supposed to be the strong one for once.

Blaine takes in a deep breath, the tip of the pen still hovering on the page. His ribcage feels too tight. But there’s more; he can feel it pulling, what visits him at night and never stays long enough for him to remember what he has seen.

“Blaine, you can’t!”

“Oh, sure I can!”

Kurt scrunched his eyes closed against the handful of flour that Blaine threw his way. When he opened them again the seemed bluer than usual, they made Blaine think about summer storms, the ones that get you unaware and soak you to the bone.

“Blaine Xavier Anderson! You are going to regret this!”

They chased each other around Kurt’s small kitchen, slipping on the tiled floor, getting covered in flour and laughing like children. When the finally stopped Blaine slid his arms around Kurt’s waist, pulling him closer pressing a soft kiss to his temple.

“Geez, Blaine, I swear sometimes I am sure that you are a five-year old!”

“But you love me!”

Kurt pulled back, a smile on his face.

“That I do.”

Blaine stares at what he has written down and swallows down the urge to tear the pages off and throw them away. What if Wes is right? What if these dreams could actually help him sort this jangled mess that his feelings have become?

He probably could see a psychologist to quicken the process, but he still gets chills when he thinks about the times his parents forced him to go after the Sadie Hawkins dance, about how uncomfortable he felt with a stranger poking and prodding at things that hurt too much to see.

He looks at the note Kurt left him after that first night they spent together; it has been there, resting against the lamp, ever since. Blaine can’t find it in himself to put it away, not now, probably not ever.

*

Kurt doesn’t call or text or come to the coffee shop during the following days. It’s as though there’s only white noise left where he had been before. Blaine forces himself to function as a normal human being; he wakes up in the morning and goes to work. He doesn’t play, though; all music is drained up by Kurt’s absence and he wonders how he has reached this point so fast, how he has given Kurt all he had so soon.

Every morning Blaine wakes up and writes what he has dreamt of; the more time passes the more those dreams seem real, feel real.

Kurt’s skin was almost glowing in the half-light of the room, his smile shy. For an instant Blaine imagined what it would have been like to be each other’s first times. Kurt shifted underneath him, warm skin caressing his.

“Where did you go?”

“In a place where there’s only you.”

Kurt’s lips tasted of the white wine Blaine had bought for the occasion, thinking that Kurt might like it.

Something shut down inside of Blaine as he finally slid inside of Kurt. There were no words and no meanings, only Kurt’s soft moans and the constant smoothness of his muscles flexing with every movement.

Blaine spends the rest of the day feeling uncomfortable in his own skin; he knows his first time with Kurt has been different and yet the one he has dreamt doesn’t feel any less real.

*

Blaine knows he has reached rock bottom when he finds himself in a corner of a small and semi-deserted bookshop staring at shelves full of books on how to interpret dreams correctly. It’s useless, really; his dreams are not weird things filled with symbols and hints to decipher, they are so detailed and they taste so real; they keep leaving his heart thrumming and his mouth dry with the need of something that seems constantly out of reach.

*

“Blaine, you need to talk to me or I don’t know how to help you.”

Blaine lifts his gaze from the depths of his glass of beer, resting almost untouched on the table’s surface.

“I…maybe I am going crazy, Wes.”

Wes takes the bridge of his nose between his fingers and Blaine shifts on the stool he is perched on.

“You are not going crazy, Blaine. But I swear you’re driving me insane!”

Blaine blinks; it’s not like Wes to act so distressed.

“I…I am sorry; it must be quite difficult to deal with me lately.”

Wes reaches over the small table and squeezes his shoulder gently.

“No self-pity, Blaine! You know the rules!”

In spite of everything Blaine chuckles. It sounds too watery to be right but it’s better than nothing.

“Now, tell me about these dreams of yours.”

///

Wes grips the edge of the table a bit tighter than necessary and prays to be able to hide what he is truly thinking, because the stories Blaine is telling and the scenes he is describing are not dreams at all. Some of them he doesn’t know, being too personal, but others he remembers Blaine telling him; like the time he accompanied Kurt to visit his mother’s grave.

He tries to remind himself to nod in all the right places and ask questions, but the truth is he has never felt as helpless as he feels right now. Blaine is hurting- it’s written in his hunched shoulders, in the way his knuckles whiten as he grips his glass even tighter- and yet Wes has no idea of how to help him. Telling him the truth seems out of question; what if by telling him he sets off some counter effect of the erasure procedure?

Blaine stops speaking and simply looks at him, looking so thin and pale that Wes can hear his heart cracking.

“Blaine…I…”

Blaine quickly shakes his head, eyes wide.

“Oh, no, Wes, don’t worry. I know that you can’t do anything about it. It’s just that…”

There’s no hope in his words, not a single speck of hope, when Blaine is the most positive person Wes has ever met. And this is what gets to him, what breaks his reservation like water breaking through a cracked dam.

“I wish I could do more, Blainers. I hate seeing you like this, but the only thing I can tell you is: don’t give up. Hold on to these dreams, because, who knows, maybe there aren’t only dreams after all.”

“It…it hurts, though, to hold onto them…”

“I know, but…if they are there, there must be a reason for that, right?”

Blaine lowers his gaze and Wes briefly wonders what he sees at the bottom of his empty glass.

“Do you think it will work out?”

Wes wishes he could give his best friend a clear answer, a certainty, but he can’t. This doesn’t change the fact, though, that the more time passes, the more he sees Blaine falling for Kurt again, the more he is convinced that they are meant to be together, that there must be a reason why their connection couldn’t be severed.

“I hope so.”

Blaine nods and flashes him a smile. It’s weak and strained, but it’s something.

///

The following day is Sunday and Blaine spends half of it sitting on his bedroom floor, surrounded by crumpled sheets of paper, clutching his guitar like a lifeline and desperately trying to put his messy feelings into notes.
They stumble around in his head, drunk with pain and longing, crashing against the pale ghosts of Kurt’s smiles, the faded memories of his smooth skin.

He is about to grasp a passage that has been eluding him for the past half hour when the doorbell rings, shattering his feeble concentration. Even though his body seems to weigh like a ton of rocks, Blaine drags himself to his feet. It hurts to realize he isn’t even hoping that it might be Kurt; the certainty that there is something he can’t fix standing between them has settled over him, heavy and unmoving.

Indeed, it’s not Kurt who is standing on the landing, but Jeremiah, smiling and holding some kind of flowers which Blaine can’t recognize in the half light. His first instinct is to yell, to scream at him to leave him alone, because he can’t stand his presence, not when everything refuses to work, not when Kurt doesn’t want him. But there’s always that small part of him that grew up in a respectable boarding school, that his parents raised to be presentable, the part of himself that makes him act kind and respectful even when he wants nothing more than smashing something. That’s the reason why instead of yelling he takes a deep breath before speaking.

“Jeremiah, what do you want?”

“Blaine, please, open the door.”

“Look, I am tired of this. I don’t want to talk to you, or see you for that matter.”

“But, baby, you need to listen to me. I need you.”

A shiver runs down Blaine’s spine; he hates when Jeremiah calls him that, but what he hates more is that he is trying to play him where he is weakest, knowing all too well that Blaine hates letting people down who need him or believe in him.

“Don’t…don’t you dare!”

Through the peephole he sees Jeremiah tugging at his hair, swinging the bouquet around as he speaks.

“But, Blaine, you don’t understand. There’s nothing I want more than to be with you, I…when I’m with you I’m exactly where I want to be and…”

Blaine blinks, his thoughts scrambling to reach something, a feeble light in a distant corner of his brain. His throat seems almost impossibly tight and he has to force the words out.

“What…what did you just say?”

“That I need you, baby.”

“No, after that.”

“That when I’m with you I’m exactly where I want to be?”

Blaine gulps down air, his muscles trembling and his mind reeling. Kurt told him those words that night on the river and before then…before then Blaine had already heard them, he is sure of it. His head is threatening to split in two and he has to lean his forehead against the door.

“Blaine?”

“Just…just go, Jeremiah. And don’t come back.”

His words sound harsh to his own ears, but he knows all too well this is what must be done. He waits, breath coming out hard and labored as it tries to compensate the furious beating of his heart. When Jeremiah’s footsteps move towards the stairs and softly dissolve, Blaine squeezes his eyes shut, relief washing over him. But it’s not enough, because everything inside of him remains cramped together, messed up apparently beyond repair.

It’s not even a conscious thought; his hand simply reaches out for the car keys on the small table next to the door. He grips them viciously tight until the dents press into the skin of his palm. In his head Kurt’s voice echoes merciless, Now go away. The problem now, as it was back then, is that Blaine doesn’t want to go, doesn’t want to let go and this is why it scares him to no end to climb in the car, drive to the Charles and finally figure all of this mess out. Because, even if he manages to do that, there’s no guarantee of the results. What if the conclusion is that he is just delusional, that all this dreams are simply the fruit of his need to be with Kurt and there’s nothing real about them. What if the conclusion is that Kurt can’t be part of his life?

It feels like standing on his toes at the edge of a precipice; it would be safer to take a step back, but Blaine knows all too well that wouldn’t help his hurting heart, so he takes a deep breath and turns the knob.

*

The ride up to the river is pretty uneventful; Blaine keeps the radio turned off, but memories of Kurt’s profile as he drove, of the warmth radiating from him through Blaine’s palm pressed to his knee. It doesn’t fade, it can’t fade.

It’s sunset when he gets off the car and walks up to the bank; the water has broken free of the ice, spring is near now. Blaine pulls the coat closer to his body, because there’s a chill inside of him that won’t recede. He closes his eyes against the breeze and tries to empty his mind. Kurt is there in front of him instantly. He wearing a red coat and is smiling, his arms outstretched.

“C’mon, hurry up or we’ll be late for dinner.”

Blaine put on his jacket and locked the door to Kurt’s apartment with his spare key. When he turned Kurt was still smiling, his cheeks redder because of the cold wind.

“You look stunning.”

Blaine felt warm all over; even after all the time spent together a single compliment was enough to make him blush. Kurt’s gloved hand was firm around his as they walked down the street towards the underground station.

The streetlights, the buildings, the pavement twist and fade leaving space to a bedroom immersed in the soft light of sunset.

“It’s…I’m tired of fighting for a dream, Blaine. I’ve hoped for so long and it is draining me. This stage at the fashion firm could be really good. It could open a new door for me.”

Blaine looked at Kurt, sat on the bed, looking so much younger, shoulders hunched over and hands clasped together. He thought about Kurt’s voice as he prepared for auditions, strong and clear and powerful, rising from his core and filling up all the space. He didn’t want Kurt to give up on his voice, but he had seen how hard it had become, how tired and hollow Kurt was when he got back home from yet another failed audition. They said he wasn’t what they were looking for, but Blaine knew better, he knew that Kurt was simply too much for them to handle, too bright to fit in.

Slowly he reached out and gently cupped Kurt’s chin tilting his head up. His eyes shone quietly; they made Blaine think of some distant star.

“I love you, Kurt, like I’ve never loved anyone before. I’ll love you whatever choice you make.”

Kurt turned his head and kissed Blaine’s wrist.

“Thank you. I’ll always sing for you, love.”

“Only for me?”

Kurt nodded, his smile so bright it could have swallowed the sun.

Blaine opens his eyes and a sob wrenches its way past his lips as he realizes that Kurt is not there in front of him. The sun has set and the sky is already darker; Blaine looks at the water and prays that whatever has happened, whatever has messed his and Kurt’s lives could be reversed, because deep down he has finally realized that he’ll keep reaching for Kurt even if it meant cutting himself and bleeding to death in the process. He can feel the pull of it in his bones, the pull of a love so big he had never thought his heart could contain it.