Kurt sits on the edge of the tub, head in his hands. He feels Blaine stroking his back, but can't look up and give himself that hope.

"How are you here?" he asks, as calmly as he can muster.

"I don't know." Blaine's voice is as confused as his. "I just am. I went into the locker room to get our music, and Karofsky was there. He was crying and I tried to talk to him. Next thing I know, he's on me. We wrestled for moment and then he was stabbing me. I kind of blacked out after that."

"I got there, Blaine," Kurt promises. He feels like this is important. "I was there when you died."

"I know." Blaine reaches over and grabs Kurt's chin, guiding it up gently so that their eyes meet.

"Hey, Kurt," he thumbs at Kurt's tears. "I know." Kurt nods while gasping for breath.

"I felt you there," Blaine continues. "I was unconscious, but at that point I think my mind knew it was dying for sure, and I was still...well, things just kind of changed. I was out, but I was still awake on some level, and I knew you were there."

Blaine bites his lip, thinking for moment before adding "I knew when I stopped breathing, too."

Kurt feels but doesn't hear a wounded noise that emits from his throat. "It's okay," Blaine reassures.

"You're dead. You're also here, Blaine. Nothing about this is okay!" he yells.

"Shhh." Blaine puts his fingers over Kurt's lips, but he shoves them away. "You're going to wake your dad up."

Kurt ignores him, instead reaching tentatively for Blaine's hand. "It isn't warm." He hovers an inch above Blaine's skin.

"You can touch me, Kurt." Blaine reaches slowly for his hand, bringing it to his cheek. "See. I'm here."

"It's…weird," observes Kurt. "It's like…I can feel you there, but there's no temperature." He gives Blaine a once over, looking for stab wounds, but something else catches his attention "You're…you're breathing," Kurt gasps, staring at the rise and fall of Blaine's chest.

"I'm not alive," Blaine warns. "I'm only breathing because I'm used to it, I think. And you're the only thing I can touch." He stands. "Watch this."

He reaches for the tissue box on the back of Kurt's toilet. Instead of the tissue box moving when Blaine touches it, his hand just simply stops, like it hits a wall. "It's like I have no weight," he explains.

"Why can I feel you, then?" Kurt demands.

Blaine smiles and shakes his head. "I don't know. I just…it's like I'm attached to you. I stayed there in the locker room until they took you away. I knew I was dead, but I don't think it had really registered yet. You were crying, so I tried singing to you. For a minute it was useless, but then…there was this moment when I just stared at you and there was nothing in the world I wanted more than to make you better."

"But then it passed and I stopped singing. I was ready to give up. I was going to leave, but then…you started humming back." Blaine's eyes are wide in the way Kurt usually associates with angsty solos and held back tears. "I don't really know where I was going to leave to…but when you started humming I knew I was staying."

Kurt pulls his hand back from where it had been resting on Blaine's cheek to wipe at his own. "Where have you been since then? Why am I only seeing you now?"

"Remember that willow tree down by the preschool?"

Kurt nods. "The one with the playground we hopped the fence to?"

He remembers the afternoon with Finn, Puck, and the other Glee guys, one of the few times Kurt was included in their activities. Most of the guys were playing an impromptu game of Ultimate Frisbee as Kurt and Artie watched from the sidelines. For some reason, Puck had got it in his head that he really wanted to climb on top of the jungle gym within their line of sight.

Getting over the fence had taken a lot more effort than any of them had ever predicted, doubly hard with Artie. Lifting a wheelchair over a fence was neither safe nor very successful, but that didn't stop the guys from trying. Instead of goofing off with the rest, Kurt and Blaine had climbed up the branches of a nearby Weeping Willow to watch and laugh.

Kurt remembers it well; the tickle of the fronds on their noses and the way Blaine had gripped his hand tight to pull him up.

"I needed a minute to think, so I went there. I used to dream about that afternoon all the time. That place. I felt like it was where I needed to go to think. I was dead, and I needed to deal with that, you know?"

"How on Earth are you supposed to deal with that?" Kurt asks.

"That's what I'm figuring out. You don't." There is no anger in Blaine's eyes, there never is. Kurt knows Blaine well enough to know that what most people interpret as anger in him is pain. "I can't even box."

Kurt moves his head back down to place between his knees, and the two sit in silence.

"How do I know I'm not crazy?"

"How am I supposed to know?" Blaine snaps, almost aggressively. "I don't think you're supposed to ask your dead boyfriend if you're crazy."

A laugh rips from Kurt's chest, rough but genuine.

"What are we supposed to do now?" he asks.

"Sleep," Blaine orders. "You need to get some sleep."

"I don't mean right now, I mean for life. New York can't be the plan anymore, Blaine. I can't do that after what happened."

"We're going to do what we've always done," Blaine tells him. "We're going to love each other no matter what."

For the first time in days, Kurt thinks of Blaine on the locker room floor, covered in blood and deathly still and he does not want to die. Blaine was there, yes, but now Blaine is here. No matter what the circumstances, Blaine is here beside him, talking and breathing and loving him. Kurt smiles.

Blaine smiles back with the kind of lovesick innocence Kurt has never seen on anyone else and something very small in Kurt's head and heart is put back together.

Breathing the kind of heavy sigh only one who has just cried a great deal can breathe, Kurt rises shakily from the bathtub, stumbling over to brush his teeth. The entire time he keeps his eye on Blaine in the mirror, who maintains eye contact.

Kurt crawls into bed carefully, pulling up the covers and gesturing for Blaine to follow him in. He smiles his thanks and climbs in.

"Big spoon or little spoon?" Blaine asks.

"Big," Kurt respond, wanting to feel Blaine, to be able to clutch him close, and he snakes his arms around Blaine's form in a familiar yet foreign way.

"I love you," Blaine whispers.

"How do I know you'll be here in the morning?" Kurt asks.

"I was meant to stay here with you, Kurt. I'm not leaving you now."

Kurt presses his face into Blaine's hair, noting the lack of raspberry scent, or any scent at all for that matter.

For Blaine's sake, he tries to even his breaths out, but it is a long time before he falls asleep.

***

In the weeks following the funeral, it seems like the entire world revolves around Blaine's murder. Lima is a small town, and news that juicy sticks around. It's all Kurt's family can talk about, all his friends can talk about, all any of his neighbors whisper about. Funnily enough, it seems that the only time Kurt isn't talking Blaine's death is when he's talking with Blaine.

Even though the Earth has stopped spinning for Kurt and Blaine, life still does go on, and Lima remembers that eventually. One night Finn knocks on Kurt's door and enters before he gets permission, a smile spread wide across his face.

"Mrs. Pillsbury got me into college," he announces.

"What?!" Kurt shrieks, bolting off of the bed. "What happened to the army?!"

Finn shrugs. "I un-enlisted the day after." There's no need to say after what. "Mom and I have been bouncing around ideas ever since then."

"What college?"

"You don't know it. It's a tech school in California."

Kurt's jaw drops as this sinks in. "Oh."

"Yeah. Oh."

Rachel. Kurt cringes as he thinks of what her reaction will be. The wedding had been called off indefinitely after Blaine's death, but the couple had still been planning to move to New York together.

"Why?" Kurt asks, trying to keep judgment out of his tone. Rachel and Finn can work their issues out later. It isn't his place to take sides.

"I'm not ready to be married, after all. I don't want to rush into this," Finn states, and Kurt smiles, something rare these days.

"I'm proud of you, Finn," he says.

Finn nods appreciatively. "I'm going to do classes in the day, and work at night with Puck. We figure that between the two of us we'll have enough to get us through college."

"You know Rachel's probably not going to wait for you, right?" Kurt asks cautiously.

"I know." Finn looks sad, but not miserable like he usually does when talking about issues with Rachel. "Can you not tell her? She needs to hear it from me."

"Yeah, of course."

Finn moves to hug Kurt tentatively and Kurt steps forward to return the affection. He doesn't have a clue what brought this on, but whatever is happening he thinks it'll be good for Finn, if not for Rachel as well.

"I'm sorry Blaine can't go to college, Kurt," Finn whispers in Kurt's ear.

With anyone else it would seem cruel, but Kurt gets what Finn is saying. "I am, too."

Over Finn's shoulder, he can see that Blaine's eyes are wide again.

Rachel does not take it well. She at least has the good sense not to call Kurt to cry to, but Tina and Mercedes fill him in on what he missed the next day, which was a breakdown of pretty epic proportions.

The thing is, this drama is normal. The break up isn't something earth-shattering, it's normal drama. Preventable drama. Drama that has nothing to do with death. As unpleasant as it is, things change for the better after the break up.

Just like that, life starts to move again. Kurt settles into a rhythm of sorts. He wakes up in the morning and talks with Blaine for a while, then kisses him goodbye for the day. Once Blaine leaves to go do what he wants (the world is big and he can go anywhere now in no time at all), Kurt takes a moment to compose himself before heading downstairs to play the mourning teenager.

It's not hard to play the role. Kurt did not lose everything to Karofsky's knife like he had initially thought, but he still lost a lot. There are still things to be mourned.

After spending time with his family for a while, there's always something social to be done. The members of New Directions (minus Puck and Finn, who moved to California to get a head start on their business) try to spend as much of the summer as possible together before half of them go off to start their lives together. They make a point to keep Kurt distracted and socializing.

At some point during the afternoons Kurt stumbles into the house, exhausted from whatever his friends have put him through. He usually eats dinner with his family before heading up to his room.

When Kurt opens his door, Blaine is always sitting on his bed, and the mask that Kurt wears just the whole day just melts away.

Kurt just isn't Kurt anymore if he isn't with Blaine.

Some nights they watch movies together. Some nights they just talk. Those are the normal days.

Some days things are bad. Some days Kurt refuses to let Blaine go, refuses to leave his room, and the two spend from sunrise until sundown wrapped around each other as Burt tries his hardest to get Kurt out to the other side of the door.

Those nights Kurt's dreams are stained with blood.