Kurt returned to New York at the end of December, feeling better for having been away and spent time with his family. He thought about staying in Lima for New Years, but after several pleading phone calls from Rachel and his family urging him to go and enjoy himself by ringing in the New Year at the annual party hosted by one of Rachel's cast mates, he came back. Rachel talked his ear off from the second he stepped into the apartment, telling him all about her time with her dads. Kurt was grateful for her lack of insight on when to stop talking; he'd spent the flight back thinking of the New Year and Blaine, and he was glad she was giving him something else to occupy his mind with.

"So, how was your Christmas?" Rachel asked brightly, still smiling after talking about her afternoon of ice skating with her dads yesterday.

Kurt blinked at her, a little taken aback by the abrupt switch in conversation topic. "Oh." He fumbled around for words. "Oh, it was good. Pretty quiet, but it was nice to get a break from... from this."

Rachel nodded slowly, her eyes searching his. She'd jumped from gushing and beaming and holding center court to peering at him with concern so quickly that Kurt had no time to bury his worries or mask how he was feeling.

"You didn't feel forced to come back for New Years, did you? Because I know I said I really wanted you to come, but you could have stayed with your family if you didn't feel like going this year."

Kurt shook his head. "It's fine. We've gone to this party together for the last few years now; I'd hate to break the tradition." He gave her his best attempt at a reassuring smile.

Rachel returned his smile and lifted her eyebrows in a haughty manner. "Well, I do need someone as fabulous as myself to accompany me."

"And someone to dress you for the occasion," Kurt added, copying her snobbish tone.

She clapped her hands together. "Ooh, yes!" she exclaimed. "I wanted to get my dress all sorted out today actually. We've got dinner with my dads later - did I tell you about that?" She paused, scrunching her forehead in thought for a moment, before she shrugged. "They're taking us both out to dinner tonight, but we should still have plenty of time to pick out the perfect outfit for me." She grabbed Kurt's hand and tugged him to his feet, leading him through to her room. "I got these cute new shoes from Shelby and I was thinking-"

Kurt watched Rachel pull dozens of pairs of shoes and heaps of dresses out of her closet, only really half-listening to what she was saying. He did his best to concentrate on the dresses she was showing him, but it was hard. He wasn't looking forward to this party at all. His enthusiasm for it was so low he could barely summon up the energy to plan an outfit for his friend, something he normally loved doing. He'd been to this party twice and knew what it was like. There wasn't anything particularly wrong with it, but as it was thrown by one of Rachel's friends, he didn't know many of the people attending. This hadn't been a problem last year when he'd taken Liam along with him, but this year it would just be himself, Rachel, and Finn. He'd be spending New Years as a third wheel at a party full of mostly strangers who were all excited to be celebrating the beginning of a New Year, the chance of a fresh start, the passing of more time. He was dreading it.

It took all of his concentration and most of his energy, but he managed to help Rachel pick out an outfit for the party. He then just had time to shower and change before Rachel's dads arrived to take them to dinner.

He greeted LeRoy and Hiram Berry warmly. He had always liked them and they'd given him invaluable advice and support during high school when he'd struggled with bullies. They'd become sort of like adopted uncles to him and they treated him as such, inviting him to family events such as the dinner that night.

The restaurant they'd chosen was one he'd never been to before. The food looked good and the atmosphere was pleasant, but Kurt was put off ever returning by the behaviour of one of their waiters. From the moment he laid eyes on Kurt he began flirting openly with him.

"And can I get you anything?" the waiter asked Kurt, his voice lower than when he'd taken everyone else's drink orders. "Can I recommend you a wine?" He tried to meet Kurt's eyes, but Kurt dropped his gaze to the menu, feeling slightly uncomfortable.

"I'll just have some water, thank you," he replied. He wasn't in the mood for alcohol.

"That's no problem at all," the waiter said, still talking as though he and Kurt were having a private, intimate conversation. Kurt stared determinedly at his menu, though he'd already decided what he wanted to eat. "I'll be right back with those for you."

The waiter left. Kurt waited a few seconds to make sure he was out of earshot, before looking up.

"Oh, God," he groaned as everyone at the table turned to look at him.

Hiram glanced over in the direction the waiter had gone. "He's not bad looking."

"He's not my type," Kurt replied automatically. The waiter was around the same height as him, blond, and a bit on the skinny side. It was true, he wasn't all that bad looking, but he didn't have dark curls, honey-gold eyes, or a smile that crinkled the corners of his eyes.

"You should be flattered," Rachel said briskly, smoothing her napkin out on the table.

"I don't find blatant flirting with a customer at a restaurant all that flattering," Kurt said, looking out across the restaurant and shuddering when the guy winked at him as he carried their drinks to the table. "It's a bit predatory."

Rachel eyed him from her spot next to him. He deliberately kept looking ahead of him, not wanting to catch her eye. He knew what she wanted to say: how he wouldn't have minded the attention a year ago, and he didn't want to get into a discussion about it. He wanted to try and do the impossible: make it through an evening without being drawn into a void of loneliness over Blaine.

"Here are your drinks," the waiter announced, setting their glasses down and trying to catch Kurt's eye as he did so. "Are you ready to order?" He pulled out his order pad and looked expectantly at Kurt.

As Kurt fumbled with his menu, still trying to avoid catching the waiter's eye, LeRoy cleared his throat and Kurt felt the waiter's gaze lift off him.

"I'll have the eggplant lasagne."

Everyone else followed suit and ordered their meals, giving Kurt time to compose himself and remember what he'd chosen to eat. By the time the waiter had turned back to him he was able to look up with a bland smile on his face and say what he wanted, ignoring the flirtatious smile he received in response. When he left for the kitchens, Hiram began talking, drawing Rachel and LeRoy into conversation, and giving Kurt the chance to straighten everything out in his head.

He felt guilty. Even though he wasn't responding to the waiter's advances in any way, and despite the fact he and Blaine were no longer together, he still felt like he was cheating on Blaine. He supposed this was a common reaction when the end of relationship was still fresh. It just felt adherently wrong for someone else to be coming onto him; he was Blaine's.

But even without all of that, he wouldn't be interested in this guy. Everything about him screamed 'not Blaine', and that meant there was nothing attractive about him. He was too tall, too blond, his eyes were a muddy brown instead of warm honeyed hazel, and the sound of his voice didn't make warmth spill into his stomach. He wasn't Blaine, so Kurt wasn't interested.

"Is he really bothering you?" Hiram asked once their food had been served and the waiter had left the table again after several suggestive smiles and flirty looks at Kurt. "I can put in a complaint if you want," he offered.

Prodding his chicken with his fork, Kurt sighed. "No, it's alright." He gave Rachel and her dads a small smile. "He is making me feel a bit uncomfortable, but it's fine."

None of them looked particularly reassured by his response and Kurt knew his stiff posture and lack of enthusiasm for his food wasn't convincing them. He tried to relax and enjoy his food, changing the topic of conversation to the show Rachel and her dads had seen recently. His issue with the waiter mostly stemmed from his situation with Blaine; he didn't want the waiter to get in trouble with his boss because of this, even if he wasn't behaving appropriately towards customers. Most of all, he didn't want to cause any trouble.

They made it through the rest of the meal without any more mentions of the inappropriate waiter. Once the table was cleared of dirty plates and the bill was taken care of, the waiter wished them a pleasant night and managed to slip Kurt a piece of paper with a wink before he left to serve another table. As everyone put on their coats, Kurt unfolded the paper and rolled his eyes at the scrawled 'call me' followed by a cell phone number.

He dropped the slip of paper in the trash on the way out the restaurant.

Over the next few days Rachel became increasingly excited for the New Year's Eve party. She went out and got her hair and nails done, spent hours debating out loud how she would do her make up, and talked Kurt into helping pick an outfit for Finn. As she got more and more excited, Kurt looked forward to it less and less. He wasn't in the mood to spend a night drinking and dancing; he'd much rather stay at home and try to have an early night.

It was with next to no enthusiasm that Kurt got ready for the party on New Year's Eve. He tried to smile and act willing around Rachel so she didn't feel bad about persuading him to come back from Lima, but when he was alone in his room, smoothing out the lines of his jacket, he let his smile fall. His feet dragged as he headed through to the living room to wait for Rachel. As he waited, he slid a hand into the pocket of his pants, his fingers encountering the cool metal of Blaine's pocket watch. He had debated for a while about bringing it with him tonight, but had decided in the end that he couldn't really bear to part from it. It felt wrong to leave it behind.

"Ready to go?"

Rachel entered the room, her heels thudding on the wooden floors. She looked stunning in her dress, and with her hair curled and make up meticulously done she looked older, a lot different from the girl Kurt had sat next to in the choir room in high school.

Kurt straightened up from where he'd been leaning against the back of the couch. "You look beautiful," he said, walking towards her.

Rachel smiled, looking pleased. "Hopefully Finn thinks so, too," she said, looking down at her dress and brushing imaginary lint off the fabric.

"He will," Kurt told her, not a trace of doubt in his mind. He offered Rachel his arm. "Let's get going then, shall we?"

Rachel looped her arm through his and together they left the apartment, heading downstairs to meet the cab they had booked.

Finn met them at the party, immediately blushing and babbling over how wonderful Rachel looked. Kurt did his best to both tune them out and keep the aching jealousy from showing on his face. He tried to tell himself that it wasn't the end of the world that he didn't have anyone here to compliment him and lead him off to dance, but it was hard when the image of Blaine's face was burned into his mind, wide-eyed and lips parted, the way he'd been on the night of their rooftop dinner date. He could almost hear Blaine's voice in his ear, telling him he looked beautiful. Kurt closed his eyes against the wash of pain pouring through him, drowning his organs and senses.

He tried to get into the spirit of the party: he drank the drinks being supported on trays carried by white-coated waiters, ate some of the canapés artfully arranged on the buffet table, spoke to the people he recognised, and laughed at their jokes, but it was far more effort than it should have been. After a few hours of this, he collapsed on one of the chairs grouped around a number of circular tables just off to the side of the dance floor. He was exhausted, his feet and legs ached, and his eyes stung and felt heavy. He wanted nothing more than to be home alone in bed. Staring blankly out over the dancers, he caught sight of Rachel and Finn, twirling together amongst the swirls of brightly coloured dresses and neat suits. It was the first he'd seen of them since they'd disappeared onto the dance floor on arrival. They looked like they were enjoying themselves, laughing and beaming as they spun each other around. Kurt was glad that they, at least, were having fun.

He sunk into a kind of stupor, staring sightlessly across the dance floor, until one of the chairs opposite him was pulled out from the table.

"Kurt!" a female voice exclaimed. "I wasn't expecting to see you here. Rachel said you were going to stay in Ohio for New Years."

Kurt blinked himself back to reality, finding Ellie sitting across from him, smiling delightedly. He fixed a smile on his face. "Hi, Ellie. Are you enjoying the party?"

Swaying tipsily in her chair, Ellie nodded enthusiastically. "I'm at the best New Year's Eve party in New York!" She took a sip from the glass she was holding. "You don't look as if you're enjoying yourself, though," she added. A small frown line appeared between her eyebrows and she looked around at the surrounding tables. "Where's your boyfriend - Blaine, isn't it?"

Kurt froze, his heart clenching painfully. Unconsciously, his hand curled into a fist in his lap.

Ellie was still looking around as if expecting Blaine to suddenly pop out from under one of the tables.

Kurt swallowed thickly. "He's not here tonight," he said rather hoarsely.

"What?" Ellie had had too much to drink to notice his pained expression, rough voice, and reluctance to speak. "Where is he then?"

"He had to spend tonight with his family," Kurt replied. "It- It's tradition for them."

"Oh." Ellie stared at him for a moment. "Well, that's too bad."

Kurt nodded his agreement, bracing himself for any other questions she might ask him. Thankfully, he was spared from any more as several of Ellie's friends appeared, tugging her to her feet and dragging her off towards the dance floor.

"Happy New Year, Kurt!" she called over her shoulder as she vanished into the crowds.

Feeling as though he'd just dodged a bullet, Kurt took out his pocket watch and checked the time: about an hour until midnight. He weighed up his options in his mind, trying to decide how worried Rachel would be if he left early.

Making up his mind, he got to his feet, slipping the watch back into his pocket. He wasn't at all enjoying himself, he'd never wanted to come, and other than a brief glimpse earlier, he hadn't seen Rachel or Finn since they'd arrived at the party; they wouldn't miss him.

He pushed his way through the crowds of people in varying states of drunkenness until he reached the doors and was stepping outside, hurrying down the steps past the couple of people outside for some air. When he reached the street he began to worry about how easy it would be to get a cab, but luckily spotted one coming down the road towards him. He flagged it down, feeling relieved when it pulled up to the curb.

As he expected, the traffic was mayhem. He jiggled his leg anxiously as he checked and re-checked the time on his watch. He wanted to be home before midnight; there was something he needed to do before a new day - a new year - began.

It was five minutes to midnight when he unlocked the apartment door. The living room was in darkness, the only light coming from that of the neighbouring buildings. Shrugging out of his coat and tossing it over the back of the couch, Kurt strode over to the window where he settled down in the chair they had by it, gazing out across the city.

With all of the rushing around getting ready and Rachel asking his opinion on dozens of eyeshadow and lipstick shades, Kurt hadn't had the time to look at the stars yet. He'd promised Blaine that he would do it every night - needed to do it every night to keep himself sane - and he didn't want to miss tonight, of all nights. He didn't want to start a new year breaking his promise to Blaine.

The sky was almost completely clear; perfect for all of the fireworks displays. Kurt fixed his eyes on a distant patch of sky he could see between buildings, where a cluster of three stars glimmered. As he stared at them, a bang echoed through the city, followed swiftly by a succession of others. Looking away from the cluster of stars to the much larger expanse of sky off to his left, he watched several fireworks burst in an explosion of colour. 2015 had arrived without him noticing.

As he watched the fireworks burst over the city, filling the sky with reds and golds and purples, Kurt felt a bubble of hope rise inside him. He didn't know where this newfound optimism had come from, but he had the feeling that this year would be good to him. Whether it was intuition or wishful thinking, he didn't know, but the hope was there and it brought a small smile to his face as he watched the fireworks.

"Happy New Year, Blaine," he said softly, watching as another firework exploded, raining golden sparks down from the sky.

It took Rachel a while to get going the next day. Kurt wasn't sure what time she got home - he went to bed as soon as the fireworks stopped - but it must have been very late if her slow movements and many yawns were anything to go by. Normally, Kurt wouldn't care how late she slept or how long it took her to get dressed, but her dads were coming over for lunch and so far he had done almost everything to prepare for the meal by himself.

He finished setting the napkins out on the table and sighed when he realized almost everything was ready. Hiram and LeRoy would be arriving any minute now, and Rachel still hadn't appeared.

"Get a wiggle on, Rachel!" he called in the direction of her room. He went into the kitchen to check on the vegetables he had roasting in the oven, looking round when he heard footsteps.

Rachel was standing behind him, dressed and with her make up done, but her hair was still a tangled mess. Kurt opened his mouth to say something about this, but stopped at the look on Rachel's face.

"You sound like Blaine," she said quietly.

Kurt's mouth fell open again, then snapped shut. He felt as though the floor had suddenly disappeared from under his feet and he was free-falling to an invisible landing. For some reason, at that moment he realized - he really understood - that, in this time, Blaine was no longer alive. Blaine had lived his life and was now gone from the world; he wasn't in some other pocket of the universe. He'd had his time on Earth and now he was gone from it, nothing but a stone marker somewhere showing that he'd walked this land.

He distantly heard Rachel speak, say his name. Blindly, he stretched out a hand, searching for something to hold onto, to anchor him, to stop him from plummeting down into the void.

He could go. He could go and see the place where Blaine now rested. He could torture himself and visit his grave. He could do it. He could.

He didn't even realize he was crying until Rachel placed a hand on his arm and sensation came back to him as the gaping void beneath his feet closed up.

"Kurt? I'm sorry - I shouldn't have said that. I wasn't thinking." Rachel looked guilty, internally beating herself up.

Kurt shook his head numbly. "It's ok. I guess I-" He blinked down at his friend, the last vestiges of adrenaline from the fall leaving him. "I- Blaine isn't alive anymore. I never really let myself realise that until now."

Rachel's face softened, her forehead pinching into a sad and sympathetic frown. She rubbed at Kurt's arm and opened her mouth, something flaring up in her eyes. She closed her mouth and dropped her gaze away from Kurt's, looking down at her hand on his arm instead.

A spark of curiosity ignited inside Kurt, but it was dulled almost immediately after it flickered into being. But then Rachel looked up at him again, the same odd look in her eyes, as though she was concealing something important from him.

"Rachel?" he said, questioning, his curiosity flaring up again and filtering into his expression.

Licking her lips, Rachel looked away again. She removed her hand from Kurt's arm and fidgeted with her nails. "I don't know what it means," she said quietly, her voice so low Kurt had to lean forward to hear her. "I may have jumped to conclusions the other day."

Kurt frowned, confusion making his pain retreat to a distant corner where it burned with a low heat.

Rachel lifted her shoulders in a small shrug, her eyes flicking up briefly to meet Kurt's. "I- I don't want to get your- I don't want to make things worse."

"Rachel - what?"

Rachel's lips moved silently as she twisted her fingers together. She glanced up at Kurt again and her mouth stopped moving. Her hands fell to her sides; she looked resigned.

"When I did research on Blaine when you- when I didn't believe he was from the past, I found these scans of old newspaper articles - the paper keeps an archive of all its articles online." She paused, swinging her hands at her sides slightly.

Kurt nodded impatiently, willing her to get to the point.

"I found articles there on Blaine from 1923. There were several of them over a few months. They- They said he'd gone missing."

Kurt grabbed her shoulder, making her look up at him. "Missing?" he gasped.

Rachel swallowed. "At first I thought it was from him time travelling, but then I realized that, based on what you'd said, the dates of the articles didn't match with when Blaine had left his own time."

Kurt's heart was beating very fast; pounding so hard in his chest he was surprised its thumping wasn't visible through his shirt. "When were they from?"

"The first one was from December. The rest were early the next year."

"December 1923?" Kurt asked.

Rachel nodded. "I thought- The other day when I said that stuff about soulmates, I thought the articles maybe meant Blaine came back - that Blaine was going to return to this time, to you."

Kurt stared at her, speechless. His heart leaped at the possibility of that being true, of Blaine realizing his life really was better in the twenty-first century, and returning. His face fell when another possibility occurred to him.

"What if those articles were about the time travelling failing? What if Blaine never made it back to his own time?" His stomach tightened with fear.

"I-" For a moment, Rachel looked panicked, too, and then the fear dimmed in her eyes a little. "But, no- The dates still don't match up. It wouldn't take them that long to report him missing in the papers."

Kurt relaxed slightly, then tensed again. "We don't know how the time travel works. We don't know if the time stopped for Blaine while he was in the future and he returned to find no time had passed, or what."

Rachel's face fell again. She looked stumped. They stood in silence for a good minute, Kurt's stomach churning with nauseating fear and worry, until Rachel spoke again.

"Do you want to read the articles?" she asked him tentatively.

Kurt shook his head. "No. No, I don't-" He broke off, his breathing shallow. A question niggled at him, but he worried at the answer. He eyed Rachel fearfully, thinking it over. The question would bother him until he knew the answer; he had to ask.

"Wh- What did they eventually decide had happened to him?"

Rachel gazed at him for a moment, taking in his fearful expression and tight, pale face. "They gave up the search for him in March. They said he must have run away from home, made a new identity, and cut off all contact to everyone he knew."

Kurt closed his eyes. Blaine had either run away from everyone and everything he knew, had suffered a serious problem in travelling back to his own time, or was, maybe, going to come back to this time. Kurt remembered the hope he'd felt last night while watching the fireworks and, though he'd never put much stock in premonition, he prayed it had something to do with Blaine.

"-I know I resigned myself to it by coming back here, but I can't spend the rest of my life pretending to be someone I'm not. I just can't, Wes." Blaine dropped his head into his hands and squeezed his eyes shut, feeling them burn from another sleepless night.

"No," Wes said firmly. "No, you're not getting married to Anna." Blaine heard him pick his coffee cup up and set it down again. "You're going to postpone that proposal for as long as you can - tell your parents anything to buy yourself more time. In the meantime we are going to do everything we can to find out how we can get you back to Kurt. I'll start taking books home at night as well. We can do this, Blaine; we have to."

Blaine lifted his head up, squinting slightly against the bright winter sunshine streaming through the windows of the small café they were sitting in. He managed to give Wes a small, tight smile.

It was the morning after Blaine's parents had dropped the proposal bombshell on him. He and Wes had met at the library as planned, but after one look at Blaine's face, Wes had dragged him off to a nearby café to talk and get some much needed caffeine. Blaine had felt his panic rising again as he'd told Wes what had happened the night before, but it was quickly dulled by extreme weariness. He was so tired of fighting to be himself.

After another fruitless day searching in the library, Blaine went home, weighed down with as many book as he could carry and the despair that had been hanging over him since the previous night. He let himself into the house and was greeted with the false laughter of his mother. Groaning, Blaine shouldered the door closed behind him. If his mother was laughing like that it meant she had one of her friends over for dinner, friends whom would spend the evening asking him endless questions, mostly about the proposal his mother was bound to have told them about.

Tiptoeing across the hall, he tried not to draw his mother's attention as he crept up the stairs to put the books away in his room; the last thing he wanted was someone asking him what he was researching. Knowing he couldn't hide upstairs, he dumped the books on his desk and reluctantly went down into the living room where he could hear his mother talking. When he reached the threshold, he jerked to a stop and stared in horror, feeling as though all of his insides had dropped out of him.

Anna was sitting in the room with his parents.

The muscles in his legs tensed, preparing for him to spin around and sprint out of the house, but before he could move, his father looked up and saw him.

"Ah, Blaine," he said, smiling at him. "We've been waiting for you to come home. Your mother and I invited Anna round for dinner. We thought it would be nice for all of us to spend some time together."

Forcing a polite smile, Blaine nodded, unable to speak due to the fear sticking his throat. Anna was beaming up at him from her spot on the couch.

"The ball is only a few weeks away, Blaine. You need to let me know exactly what you're wearing so you don't clash with my dress," she told him, oblivious to his discomfort as he joined her on the couch, sitting stiffly as far away from her as he could get.

"Oh," Blaine mumbled, avoiding the eyes of everyone in the room. "I haven't decided what I'm going to wear yet."

A slightly awkward pause followed this. Mrs Anderson broke it before it stretched on for too long.

"That doesn't matter! You have plenty of time to let Anna know what you're wearing. And don't you worry, dear," she added, shifting her gaze to Anna. "If Blaine's outfit doesn't compliment your dress we'll get him something that does. We want you to stand-out at this ball as much as possible."

Resisting the urge to groan or roll his eyes, Blaine tuned out his mother and Anna's gushing over dresses and the ball. He was interested in fashion and he loved hearing Kurt talk at great length about clothes, but the way his mother and Anna were talking about it left him feeling bored and irritable. Maybe it was because Kurt spoke of clothes with passion, whereas they just spoke of how much attention an outfit would bring them.

Dinner was equally as awful. The table had been deliberately set so Blaine was seated next to Anna, and she barely stopped talking throughout the entire meal. Whenever his mother or father got the chance to speak they drew Blaine into the conversation as well, when he wanted nothing more than to eat in silence. Once dinner was over he hopefully awaited the announcement of Anna's departure, but his hopes were quickly extinguished when his mother encouraged him and Anna to go through to the living room while she and his father cleared up and got them all coffee. The significant look his father gave him when Blaine made to leave the dining room had his stomach churning with nausea.

Anna spoke the entire time they were alone in the living room. Blaine didn't hear anything she said, he was too distracted thinking about the look his father had given him. His parents had obviously invited Anna over this evening to give Blaine the opportunity to propose. He wondered how angry his parents would be if he didn't do it and gave them the excuse of wanting to prepare more.

It was some time later that his parents finally re-joined them - or, at least, it felt like it had been a long time to Blaine. His mother had an eager smile on her face when she entered the room, her eyes bright with anticipation, and she and her husband looked over at where Anna and Blaine were sat on opposite ends of the couch. Their faces fell.

"Everything alright in here?" Mrs Anderson asked, carrying a tray of coffee over to the table. She glanced between them, her gaze lingering on Blaine.

Anna beamed at her. "Everything's swell, Mrs Anderson," she replied cheerfully. "Thank you again for inviting me for dinner."

The clock on the mantelpiece chimed 8 o'clock and Anna looked over at it, her smile turning apologetic. "Gosh, is that the time? I'd better get home - my mother is expecting me."

"I'll drive you back," Mr Anderson offered, heading for the door.

Blaine sat in silence as Ann thanked his mother again and said her goodbyes. He smiled and nodded when she bid him farewell and reminded him to let her know about his outfit for the ball. When she had left, he braced himself for his mother to start harassing him about the proposal, but she just continued to serve up the coffee in silence. She didn't look at Blaine when she handed him a cup; he took that as a warning sign.

The second his father arrived back from taking Anna home, they started.

"You didn't propose," his father stated, annoyance evident in his tone.

Blaine set his barely touched coffee down. "I- No." His parents exchanged a look and nerves flooded his stomach, making it twist and churn. "It didn't-"

"You know your mother and I deliberately invited Anna over and then left you two alone so you could propose?" his father interrupted. His eyes were cold and hard.

Blaine's hands began to shake. "It didn't feel like the right moment," he said lamely.

His parents stared at him.

Blaine swallowed nervously. "I- I want to make it special. It's a big moment."

He waited on tenterhooks for some sort of explosion, or a vaguely threatening suggestion to take Anna out tomorrow and ask her then, but after exchanging another look, his parents dropped the subject.

"Of course," his mother said, sipping from her cup. "Just don't wait too long to ask her."

And with that the subject, thankfully, moved on to gossip about one of their neighbors.

As soon as he felt he was safe to do so, Blaine escaped upstairs to his room where, feeling frantic, he sat down at his desk and began to read through the library books. He read even when his eyes began to feel heavy and stung whenever he blinked, when his parents came upstairs and went to bed, when the house reached the still silence that only came with midnight. When he finished one book he moved on to the next without pausing. When the small black print on the pages started to blur, he slowed his pace and forced himself to stay focused. He fought the need to sleep whenever it threatened to close his eyes and make him slump down in the chair. He wanted to finish these books tonight; he had less time than he'd thought.

It didn't immediately register when he found it. He'd been reading for so long and he was so tired that it took several minutes for the words he'd just read to sink in. With a frantic scrabble of hands over paper, he yanked the book closer to him and searched back over what he'd read for the part that could possibly be what he was looking for.

It was a couple of paragraphs on a group of people who believed in magic and got together once a month to practice it. Heart pounding and suddenly feeling wide awake, he flipped to the front of the book to check the publication date: the book was only a couple of years old; there was a good chance this group of people still existed.

Letting the book fall back open at the relevant page, Blaine sat back in his chair, feeling excited. He was thrumming with the kind of anticipation he hadn't felt since coming back to this time. He only wished it weren't so late so he could go tell Wes the good news now.

He looked back over the miracle paragraphs again. "Finally," he said.

Still smiling, he got ready for bed, keeping his eyes fixed on the stars outside as he did.

"I'm coming back, Kurt," he said as hope swelled in his chest. "I'm coming home."