I felt for sure last night

That once we said goodbye

No one else will know these lonely dreams

No one else will know that part of me

~

New York City never failed to calm him down.

It was something about the steadiness of it, the reliability; it was as predictable and familiar as his own heartbeat. It was the way swarms of countless people passed by him and rows of buildings towered over him, making his problems and worries seem insignificant, their nagging pain softened and lost in the vast city. It was also how ceaseless the city was, how there was always people on the go, always traffic on the roads; New York really didn't ever sleep.

On days when life threatened to overwhelm him and everything he was keeping hidden deep inside him bubbled close to the surface, Blaine would hit the city's streets and just walk and regain himself, let all of his stress and worries melt away in the comforting rush of New York.

But the city alone wasn't always enough. On days like today, when it was just too much, when he was close to breaking point and tipping towards despair, he needed more and he couldn't be alone with his own thoughts. So he asked Wes to join him and together they would walk the city streets.

Wes had been his best friend for as long as he could remember. Although he had a number of friends and acquaintances, Wes was the only one he considered a close friend and was the only one who knew more than the bare minimum about his life. He was the only one who knew.

"They're not going to let this go, Wes," Blaine sighed, glaring moodily at a newspaper stand across the road. "They're serious this time."

Leaning back against the sun-warmed brick of the building behind him, Wes smiled sympathetically at his friend. "Is there no way you can get out of this? Can you not tell your parents you don't get along with this girl, or something like that?"

Blaine's scowl lessened, the deep frown lines on his face almost smoothing out. When he turned to face Wes he looked tired, the lack of sleep plainly visible as greyish bags under his eyes and drawn lines on his face.

"But I do get along with her, she's a nice girl, I just don't see her that way; I'll never see any girl that way and I don't-" He passed a hand over his face, giving his head a small shake. "I don't think I could go through with more lying and pretending; I just couldn't," he confessed, sounding slightly desperate as he looked pleadingly at Wes, willing him to have some magic solution to solve all his problems and make everyone happy.

Wes just stared at him helplessly. "I don't know, Blaine," he apologised. "I wish I could help, but I just don't know."

Blaine waved away his apology. He knew Wes couldn't help him - no one could, this was something he had to deal with on his own - and he hadn't really expected him to respond in any other way, but when he felt this trapped and depressed he had to look to Wes for help, it was a reflex reaction. Wes was the only person who really knew him and as such, was the only person he could truly be himself around. It was exhausting keeping a mask on all the time, so whenever he was with Wes and finally relaxed, he let his fake persona drop, and all of his troubles, worries, and frustrations spilled over and he found himself unable to avoid telling Wes about them. He felt guilty dumping all of his problems on his best friend every time he saw him, but if he didn't talk about it with someone he would crack.

Wes patted his arm. "You're too nice for your own good. If you were able to tell your parents you didn't get along with any girls they urged you to take on dates you could buy yourself some more time."

Blaine let his head fall back against the wall with a resigned sigh. "I could buy all the time in the world and still be unable to sort this. I can't tell them the truth, Wes, but the only way I'll be happy is if I can be myself and love who I want to love." He blinked away the film of tears that turned the newspaper stand and busy street into a blur. "And I don't think that's ever going to happen."

He was repeating himself again, he knew it. He'd been saying the same thing over and over since the day he couldn't handle keeping it all to himself anymore and broke down, admitting to Wes that he was homosexual. He'd been terrified that he was about to lose his best friend, but Wes hadn't been at all disgusted by his confession, not being one to believe all the misconceptions, nasty rumours, and bad publicity homosexuals received. He said he'd known for a while that Blaine was keeping something to himself, something that often made him look plain ill at the parties his parents threw at their house, and had wanted to help him but didn't want to corner him into revealing what it was if he wasn't ready to tell anyone.

Blaine sometimes wondered whether he'd done the right thing by unloading his biggest secret onto Wes. He'd only done it out of sheer desperate need for someone to listen and to receive some support, have someone help him carry the heavy weight he had been bearing for years now, but he knew he'd given Wes an unnecessary worry. Now Wes was stuck feeling helpless and inadequate as he repeated the same words of encouragement, sounding progressively weaker and looking increasingly worried as time went on. Whenever he noticed this, Blaine insisted he was helping, but Wes knew what kind of person he was: an expert at wearing a mask and at locking his true feelings deep inside.

Blinking hard, Blaine pushed himself away from the wall with his forearms and set off down the street, needing the walk to help settle his emotions and clear his head of all the jumbled memories and thoughts that were crowding his mind. He could sense Wes scurrying to catch him up, no doubt surprised by his sudden departure, and sure enough, his friend appeared beside him a moment later just as they paused to wait for the road to clear so they could cross.

They were silent as they walked, each lost deep in their own thoughts as they automatically swerved around the men in neat suits and hats on their way to work. Blaine found himself frowning absently at a group of men standing by the doors of a business firm, all clutching briefcases as they examined the morning's newspaper. All these men here in the city just now - surely one of them was like him, feeling pleasant flutters in the stomach at the sight of a handsome man and daydreaming about broad shoulders, strong arms, and a faint shadow of stubble around a sculptured jaw? He knew homosexuality wasn't as rare as many people seemed to think, so why couldn't he meet someone like him? It didn't even have to be a man he could imagine falling in love with, having someone to talk to who truly understood him would be invaluable. It would give him so much hope his life would improve.

He noticed Wes glancing at him a few times, his mouth opening, probably about to offer him some support or advice, but he would close his mouth and turn away without saying anything every time. Blaine knew that Wes wanted to help him, but was in way over his head and had no idea what else he could possibly do or say to help. Blaine understood this and never expected him to help each time he ranted about his latest difficulties and frustrations; all he'd ever wanted from Wes was someone to simply listen, someone to share his secret with.

"I could just pretend with this girl," Blaine said reluctantly, speaking as they approached a recently opened coffee shop. Wes' brow immediately furrowed in concern. They came to a stop a few feet away from the café's doors. "There are worse women I could pretend for."

"But do you want to spend the rest of your life pretending?" Wes asked him seriously.

Shrugging, Blaine stared dully at a spidering crack running in a diagonal line across a brick in the wall beside him. "What else can I do, Wes?" he asked miserably.

Wes bit his lip, watching him with sad eyes. "I wish I could be of more help. I wish I knew of a way to make the world see there is nothing wrong or sick about who you are and the way you feel." He rubbed at the skin beneath his eye. "But other than doing something drastic like moving and trying to find somewhere you could be yourself, all you can do is stay strong and hope the future is better." He looked apologetic as he said this, as though it was his fault Blaine's life was this way.

Some more guilt washed over Blaine. He sighed and absently traced the long crack in the brick with his finger. "I just wish the world was more accepting and willing to see that not everything is black and white." He ran his finger up and down the length of the split in the brick. "I wish there was somewhere I could be accepted and liked for who I really am, somewhere I don't have to hide behind a mask every day, somewhere I can be truly happy - is it too much to ask for me to be happy?" He raised his eyes to look at Wes with the intention of apologising and suggesting they talk about something else, but before he could do so he was hit by a wave of dizziness so strong he couldn't even see Wes' face or any of the street they were standing on. The ground tilted under his feet and there was a loud ringing in his ears. He had no idea which way was up and which was down, or whether he was still on his feet. Spots of blackness obliterated his blurred vision until he was completed surrounded by a darkness that was pressing in on him from all sides, squeezing the air out of his lungs. The ringing in his ears went up a pitch. His stomach churned. And then his vision slowly came back, soft, blurred shapes of buildings and the street gradually coming back into focus. His ears popped, and then suddenly he was gasping for breath and staring at that crack in the coffee shop's wall. Ears still ringing faintly, he blinked hard and fast to clear the blurriness from his vision, focusing on the crack running through the brick, which now looked a little softer around the edges, or maybe his vision was still slightly off.

Bracing his hand against the wall, he panted, still feeling mildly nauseated, his stomach churning unpleasantly like he was suffering from motion sickness. He breathed through his mouth and waited for the feeling to pass, confusion filling him as his nausea and dizziness faded. What had just happened?

Feeling slightly hurt that Wes wasn't checking that he was ok, Blaine looked away from the café wall to where he knew Wes was standing - and stared. Wes was no longer there. In fact - Blaine spun in a slow circle and scanned the people passing - he was nowhere to be seen. He frowned until a thought struck him - maybe Wes had seen Blaine falling ill and had run off to get help. He nodded to himself; that made sense, though it was a little odd that Wes didn't call out for help and stay with him instead of leaving him alone.

And speaking of odd...

Blaine frowned at the glass-fronted building across the traffic-clogged road - that hadn't been there before... Neither had the strange building next to it with the highly reflective large number over its entrance. In fact...

Blaine spun in another circle, his trembling legs wobbling somewhat. Nearly everything around him looked foreign, from the cars on the road to the clothes worn by the people walking by. He stared at a sleek black car that rumbled past, crouched low on the road and with windows somehow too dark to see through, until a man in a neat suit accidently bumped into him, causing Blaine to stumble backwards until he fetched up against the café's wall. The man barely spared him a glance as he continued to march down the street, holding something to his ear and talking fervently, apparently to himself. Nobody was looking the man oddly.

Starting to panic, Blaine lifted a hand to rub tentatively at his temple, wondering if he'd hit his head and was now hallucinating some kind of strange world where no one judged people who were different, where no one stared at the man conversing with himself as he walked down the street. He had completely blacked out, so it was a possibility.

Letting his head rest back against the wall, he closed his eyes and breathed deeply, trying to make the hallucinations pass. When his heart rate settled back to a steady rhythm and the uncontrollable trembling in his limbs disappeared, he opened his eyes again, fully expecting Wes to be standing in front of him and familiar New York to be in the background.

Strange, glass-fronted buildings, foreign cars, and odd fashion met his hopeful eyes.

Fighting down the panic rising inside him, he looked around for something familiar - anything - and tried not to let the desperate noises caught in his throat, which bubbled closer to the surface the more unfamiliar things he saw, escape. What had happened to him?

The faces of passers-by blurred and the sounds of too much traffic, footsteps, and voices became weirdly distorted, slipping between loud and soft like a radio shifting in and out of tune. The street looked familiar, but at the same time, appeared completely foreign.

His hands shook visibly as he tried to make sense of what was going on, his mind ticking rapidly through various possibilities, each as absurd as the last. He hadn't been drinking, he'd never hallucinated before in his life, he was pretty certain he wasn't going mad, but...maybe he had hit his head?

Squeezing his eyes shut again, he willed it to go away, willed this strange, warped version of New York to disappear and for him to return to leaning against a wall with Wes by his side.

Nothing changed when he opened his eyes again. Somehow, he hadn't really expected it to; a small part of his brain, the part more willing to believe in the fantastic and impossible was telling him this wasn't the result of a hard blow to the head, this was real.

He had to talk to someone, had to prove to himself this wasn't real. He stepped away from the wall and swallowed thickly, peering anxiously up and down the busy street, searching for someone suitable. His gaze landed on a young man with coiffed chestnut hair who was dressed relatively normally in a waistcoat and bowtie. Blaine hesitated, nerves making his palms sweat and his mouth dry up, and watched the man walk by, before shaking his head and telling himself to just do it before the man disappeared.

He darted out into the crowds after him. "Excuse me, sir!"

Several people glanced at him briefly while the man with the coiffed hair paused and turned to face him, his blue eyes curious and guarded, his smile polite and tight-lipped.

"Can I help you?" he asked cautiously and Blaine had to take a second to stare; he'd never heard a voice like that before, it was soft and sweet, almost musical.

"I- Um..." Blaine began, but he was stumped - what could he ask exactly? Is this real or a figment of my imagination? Do you really exist or are you being conjured up after I hit my head? And there was still that part of him insisting this was real and he couldn't just ask someone those kinds of things. "Um..." He fumbled around awkwardly for words.

The man was still staring at him expectantly, becoming more suspicious the longer Blaine hunted for what to ask. Blaine could see it, like a shield being pulled over the man's eyes hiding any traces of vulnerability or emotion. Blaine spotted the unfamiliar glass building out the corner of his eye. "I- I'm a bit lost," he said, partially speaking the truth. "Could you possibly tell me exactly where we are?"

"Oh," the man said, his wariness lifting. Blaine congratulated himself on his story - New York was an easy city to become lost in and with his current mental state he was sure he easily passed as disorientated and confused.

"We're on the corner of West Houston and Bleecker Street," the man informed him, glancing fleetingly over his shoulder at the street corner behind him. He gave Blaine another small smile. "Where are you trying to get to?"

Blaine had hit another stumbling block. He wasn't trying to go anywhere - other than back to reality or wherever Wes was - and he wasn't actually confirming what was happening here. "I'm not exactly sure."

As the man frowned in confusion, Blaine was bumped again, this time by a harassed-looking woman tapping frantically at something she held in the palm of her hand. Blaine stumbled in an effort to keep his balance, automatically apologising to the woman. She marched on, either not hearing him or ignoring him.

The man in the bowtie was now eyeing him with sudden understanding. "You're not from around here, are you?"

Blaine blinked. "I- no. No, I'm not." He looked around wildly - there was no longer a newspaper stand across the road. "What date is it today?"

"The sixteenth of April," the man replied, his eyebrows drawing closer together as his frown deepened. When Blaine's expression didn't change any, he added, "It's Wednesday."

The same date as it was in the normal world, but the day was different - it had been a Monday back in reality. It didn't make sense. Why was everything here so logical yet illogical at the same time? If this was happening inside his own head then surely it wouldn't be making this much sense, surely any questions he asked would be answered with nonsense or ignored, and that which would normally be considered impossible would be happening, like it did in dreams. Everything here just made too much sense and felt far too real to be false. Conversely, that didn't mean it was logical, and it didn't explain how he had ended up in this strange version of New York, or where Wes had disappeared to.

Without thinking, Blaine asked weakly, "What year is it?"

The man's eyebrows shot up towards his impressively high swept hair and his expression changed from confusion to one that clearly showed he thought Blaine was crazy. "It's twenty-fourteen," he replied cautiously. He was leaning slightly away from Blaine now, most likely on the verge of hurrying away from the dishevelled man in a wild panic who didn't even know what year it was.

Blaine had no idea what to say now. If this man was telling the truth - and he had no reason to believe otherwise - then he was somehow ninety-one years in the future. It sounded insane, impossible, yet it was all too real for it to be a hallucination. This was real.

He exhaled slowly, trying to calm down and make sense of the avalanche of thoughts, realisations, and emotions hitting him at that moment. This was real, he was somehow in the future, and he had no idea what to do or how to get back to his own time.

His legs trembled violently and he fought to keep them from buckling under the sheer weight of what was happening right now. He took another deep breath and nodded at the man. "Ok. Ok, thank you for your time. I'll let you get on with your day."

He smiled politely at the man and turned to head down the street, not at all sure of where he would go, but knowing he couldn't stand here hoping to return to his own time. He'd only taken a few steps when:

"Wait!"

He heard running footsteps and then the man caught up to him, placing a hand on his arm to stop him. He looked torn, and he hesitated as he searched Blaine's face with eyes of a colour Blaine couldn't put a name to.

"Where- Are you sure you're ok?" he asked Blaine, a hint of concern just discernible beneath the dozens of conflicted emotions evident in his tone of voice. "You seem really confused and you don't look all that well."

Blaine swallowed, his throat making a clicking sound from the dryness. "I'm fine," he answered, his voice a little scratchy. "But thank you for your concern."

The man hesitated again, before nodding and stepping back. He fumbled around for words for a moment before eventually saying, "Have a nice day."

"You too."

Their eyes met briefly and Blaine's heart fluttered, stumbling over its steady rhythm of beats at the connection, leaving him with a racing heart when he turned away from the man once again and set off down the street he no longer knew.

Glaring mutinously at the back of the girl taking far too long to order a coffee, Kurt replied to a text from his roommate, Rachel. When the text was sent and the girl in front still hadn't ordered he began tapping his foot loudly and pointedly against the floor. The barista shot him an apologetic smile, but the girl didn't hurry up any and continued to query some of the drinks on the menu. Kurt rolled his eyes. He wasn't usually this impatient, but he was stopping for coffee a little later than originally planned. He had thought about going without coffee today so he could cross everything off the day's to-do list before his double-date with Rachel and Finn in the evening, but he needed the caffeine too badly after a late night sketching design ideas that couldn't wait until morning.

He sighed as the barista pointed out which of the cakes and cookies were vegan, his thoughts returning to the reason why he was stuck behind a picky customer at his favourite coffee shop: the confused stranger he had helped on the street outside.

He still hadn't decided whether the man had been drunk, had psychological problems, or was genuine. If asked what he would think if a stranger with wild panic in his eyes stopped him on the street and demanded to know where he was and what year it was, Kurt would reply saying he would think they were crazy straight off the bat. There had been something about the man, though, something in his eyes that made Kurt believe he was genuine and none of his questions had been a joke. He had no substantial guesses for why the man had been asking those questions, but he was almost one hundred percent sure those questions were important to him.

The girl finally moved away from the counter and Kurt stepped forward to order, so distracted by the strange meeting and the undoubtedly odd stranger he forgot to glare at the girl as she passed him.

He nursed his coffee thoughtfully as he walked to the offices for the up-and-coming fashion label he worked for. He couldn't stop thinking about the stranger. He'd had people stop him on the streets to ask a question before, so he had no idea why this particular encounter was sticking in his mind. Sure, the man hadn't been a typical tourist or anything, but he was still just someone he'd never see again who'd asked a few quick questions, so why couldn't he brush the encounter off?

Setting his coffee down on his desk and pulling a stack of sketches towards him, he tried to push the stranger from his mind by throwing himself into his work.

It didn't work.

The honey-gold colour of the bodice of one of the dresses reminded him of the man's eyes, a waistcoat he was adding the final touches to was reminiscent of the one worn by the stranger... He didn't know why he kept remembering their encounter, if it was because he was concerned after seeing how confused and almost scared the man had been, or because of something else - he had been very handsome...

Groaning, Kurt dropped his pencil and rested his elbows on his desk, letting his head fall forward into his hands and rubbing at his eyes which were stinging slightly from tiredness and the strain of focusing on tiny, fiddly details for several hours. Pushing himself and not taking a break wasn't working, he needed some time out to organise his thoughts and get his head on straight again.

He leant back in his chair and slid his hands down off his face. Eyeing his long since empty coffee cup, he debated for a moment about going out to get another one, swiftly rejecting the idea; he didn't want to be on that street again today.

He stretched his arms above his head, the joints popping faintly, tilted his head from side-to-side to work out the stiffness in the muscles, checked his phone and replied to a text from Rachel concerning outfit choices for that night....

The man could have been drunk, it had been early, but it was still possible, he could have been out late last night. That would explain his disorientation and apparent distress. Being high on some kind of drug may produce similar effects he supposed...

"Stop thinking about that guy," he chastised himself. "You're worried that someone as innocent and beautiful as him is scared and lost in the city, but you helped him, he thanked you and walked away - what more can you do? The guy's probably back home by now, so stop it; you have your own problems to worry about."

Like how Rachel Berry would kill him if he was late home because he didn't get these sketches finished in time.

Reaching for his pencil, he turned back to his designs, thoughts of the dark-haired man who had stopped him on the street now pushed to the back of his mind.

"Two minutes later and you would have been late."

Kurt sighed and marched past Rachel who was standing with her hands on her hips, already dressed and ready to leave, her glare the first thing that greeted him when he unlocked the door of their apartment. He dumped his satchel on his bed and strode over to his closet to pick out an outfit.

"But I wasn't two minutes later, so I'm not late," he retorted, a little more sharply than he intended, but he was ready for today to be over and really not in the mood to go out tonight. "Besides," he added, tugging a shirt from its hanger, "that was only the time I agreed to be home by, it's not like I'm actually almost late for something."

Frowning at the bite in his voice, Rachel eyed him thoughtfully as he grabbed some more clothes and headed towards the bathroom to change. Kurt closed the bathroom door between them and began getting changed, massaging his temples before unbuttoning his shirt. He could feel a headache starting to take up residence somewhere behind his eyes.

"You work too hard," Rachel informed him through the closed door, her voice softer than before, almost concerned. "You've been coming home late almost every day lately."

Kurt squeezed his eyes shut at the sudden throb in his head - definitely a headache. "I leave the office on time most days," he told her, folding up the shirt he'd taken off and setting it aside on the bathroom counter. "And I can't just stop and come home when inspiration has hit; fashion design isn't a typical nine-to-five job." He pulled on his pants, grabbed his dirty clothes, and padded back through to his bedroom to find a still-frowning Rachel seated on his bed. "You've never worried about my work hours before," he pointed out, checking his hair in the mirror and deciding it was fine the way it was. He wasn't in the mood to go all out on his outfit and hair tonight, in fact, he'd rather spend the evening on the couch in an old t-shirt and pyjama pants.

"You look ill today and I'm starting to worry you're pushing yourself too hard," Rachel said.

Turning to face his friend, Kurt forced a smile. "I have a bit of a headache just now, that's all. I appreciate your concern, Rachel, but I'm fine," he assured her. "Today was a bit of a weird day, that's all."

Rachel's frown smoothed out. "Weird how?"

Panicked golden eyes swan to the forefront of Kurt's mind; he pushed the memory away. "It's nothing really, just work stuff." He checked the time on his phone. "We'd better get going or we will be late."

To his relief, Rachel accepted his answer and nodded, hurrying from the room to fetch her purse, her excitement for the evening returned. Kurt tucked his phone and wallet into the pockets of his pants with a sigh. Though he welcomed the distraction the evening would bring, the last thing he felt like doing was spending several hours in a restaurant with Rachel, Finn, and some guy he didn't even really like all that much. It was with a complete lack of enthusiasm that he hitched a smile on his face and reluctantly followed Rachel out of the apartment.