Blaine was barely in the front door before his mom pounced.

"How was your appointment?" she asked, her eyes searching his as he dumped his car keys on the little table by the door. "Blaine..." she chastised, her gaze switching to stare pointedly at his keys.

With a sigh Blaine picked them back up and put them inside a little wooden box his mom had bought a few months earlier as a nicer alternative to the jumbled dumping ground that had used to sit upon the table. Blaine thought it was silly to put essentials like keys in a box from which he would only have to untangle them the next morning; his mom disagreed.

His mom smiled when he closed the lid on the box. "How was your appointment?" she repeated.

Blaine hesitated a second. "It was a bit of a mixed bag, I guess." He took a few small steps away from the door, wanting to move out of the entrance way, but feeling trapped there by his mothers intense stare.

"What do you mean?" she asked quickly, jumping in before Blaine had a chance to explain.

"Dr. Lewis and I both felt it was best we discontinue my current therapy," he said delicately, feeling rather like he was tip-toeing around a sensitive landmine. "I didnt think it was helping any and she agreed."

His mom frowned. "You never told me it wasnt working."

"I didnt want to say anything until Id spoken with Dr. Lewis. I didnt know if Id been doing it long enough to see any effects."

Raising an eyebrow, his mom looked at him shrewdly. "And had you?"

"I- Yes," Blaine lied. He swallowed down the tremor in his voice. "Yes - Dr. Lewis doesnt believe continuing it for longer would be of any benefit." He shrugged nonchalantly, hoping his mom wouldnt cling on to the failed therapy and start researching and calling up doctors and uncovering his little white lie.

He didnt like lying to his parents, or anyone for that matter, and as a result it was something he was terrible at. He also had very expressive eyes that managed to give away everything he was feeling even when he didnt particularly feel like sharing. Despite all of this, hed still had to lie to his mom about the therapy. If she knew that he should have really continued it for another month to see any potential benefit, she would have demanded he go back on the treatment. His excuse of wanting a break from testing treatments wouldnt be acceptable, either.

To his relief, his mom didnt press the issue. Instead, she sighed, looking a little disappointed. "So whats the good news?"

Blaine forced a smile. "There are a few trials finishing soon that Dr. Lewis thinks look promising. As soon as any publish hopeful results, she says shell get me on the treatment," he said, trying to inject as much enthusiasm into his voice as he could.

His mom only looked thoughtful. "Maybe thats what we should go back to: trials," she murmured slowly. "I know theyre a bit of a hassle, but it may be where you get the treatment you need."

Before Blaine could say anything in response she wandered off, no doubt heading for the computer to look up any recruiting clinical trials she could sign him up for.

With an exasperated sigh, Blaine climbed the stairs to his room, valiantly hoping there werent any suitable trials currently recruiting patients. He knew his hope was wishful as oneironautics was such a hot topic in medical research at the moment, but he couldnt help but cling to the feeling, holding it in a tight grasp along with the memories of his tornado dream from the other night and the boy hed seen in it.

He nudged his bedroom door closed behind him and made a beeline for his nightstand, wrinkling his nose at the remnants of failed therapies that were scattered throughout the room. He tugged open the top drawer of the little wooden cabinet and grabbed a box of pills sitting on top of a smattering of bits-and-bobs he had tossed in there over the years. With a feeling of immense relief and satisfaction, he strode over to his closet and dumped the pills in a half-full tub of tried-and-tested medication. He shoved the tub back in its spot on the top shelf. The CD of relaxing music went straight in the trash.

Yawning, Blaine sat down at his desk and tried to get started on his homework, but frequently found himself staring sightlessly across the room, pen tipping in his slack hand, his thoughts back on travelling.

Hed known travelling would be a likely scenario for him based on the statistic hed been told and which his parents had fretted over, but hed still never really thought hed experience it. Hed given it a bit of thought over the years: wondering what it would be like, imagining the person hed share a dream with - but it had still seemed akin to pondering what it would be like to meet a celebrity. It was nice and slightly scary to think about, but he hadnt expected it to go beyond thoughts. He was glad it had; it had been interesting to say the least.

His parents, he knew, wouldnt feel the same way.

Since the day Blaine had been diagnosed they had been searching for a cure. They had taken Blaine to doctors appointments all over the state and further afield, theyd made him go on dozens of different treatment regimens, and registered him on numerous clinical trials. When he was younger he had complained; he hadnt understood that anything was wrong with him and he had found all of the appointments boring, hating that they took up time he could have been using to play games or practice the piano. As he had gotten older he had started to understand his condition and had quickly picked up his parents view on it: scared and desperately wishing to be normal. From then on he had no longer minded the inconvenient treatments or regularly being poked and prodded by doctors; he had wanted to get better.

He knew his parents would be terrified if they found out he had travelled, his mom in particular. He knew it would spur a frenzy of appointments and scans and sleep EEGs. He didnt want that. He didnt want the hectic battle of trying to fit schoolwork and a normal life around the medical stuff. He didnt want to go back to sharing his parents mind-set: to being too scared to sleep, to sleepless nights and drinking endless amounts of coffee, to setting alarms so he only slept in short bursts and avoided dreaming, to sitting hunched over in the most uncomfortable position he could while listening to loud music and working on essays for school. Anything not to sleep long enough to dream.

His parents had a perfectly valid reason for being scared and the same fear still lingered in the back of Blaines mind, a nagging worry that burst to the surface every now and then, leaving him chewing the inside of his cheek and wondering if he was doing the right thing by keeping the travelling a secret. For oneironauts, it was always a possibility that they could enter a dream and not wake up from it for days, weeks, even months. In one or two cases the dreamers had stayed asleep for several years in what doctors referred to as dream comas. So far, nothing that doctors had tried had been successful at waking someone from one of these comas; they had only woken up by themselves. This all pointed to the possibility that, theoretically, he could fall asleep, enter a dream, and never wake up again. The thought alone had been enough to keep him from sleeping for three days.

Inhaling sharply through his nose, Blaine sat up straighter in his chair and tried to return his focus back to his schoolwork. Despite several cups of coffee and a determined attitude, hed still struggled to keep up in all of his classes today, his head heavy and foggy from lack of sleep. He needed to catch up; the last thing he wanted was for his grades to drop because he dreamed a little differently to most people. He didnt want his sleeping habits to interfere with his chances of getting into a good college to study music.

At the thought of college, his mind spun to something that had plagued him since the school and his parents had first brought the subject up: how to manage his condition at college. He wasnt sure how he would succeed at college with such an erratic sleeping pattern. He knew whichever college he went to would support him and make special arrangements as necessary, but hed heard the stories of fellow oneironauts dropping out of school when it all became too difficult to handle. This was one of his and his parents greatest fears and the main reason they were pushing to get treatment or a cure for him.

Tapping his pen against the textbook laying open in front of him and frowning indecisively down at the pages, Blaine wondered, yet again, if he was doing the right thing by not mentioning the travelling to anyone. His mind flashed back to startled blue eyes widened in panic and the spark of some kind of connection zipping through the air.

Yes, he decided, focusing upon his schoolwork once more, he was doing the right thing.

Another three nights passed before Blaine dreamed lucidly again. Oneironauts didnt have fully immersive, lucid dreams every time they slept; instead, it tended to happen about four or five nights a week. On these other nights, they experienced a soothing, shifting mix of colours and shapes with a more physiological brain activity. Doctors believed this to be the bodys defensive measure against the condition to enable survival, and were fascinated by the implications of the ratio between lucid dreaming and what they called restorative dreaming. Blaine didnt care too much about the science behind it; he just liked it because it gave him a good nights sleep.

In his next lucid dream Blaine found himself standing in the narrow, cobbled street of what appeared to be an old European town. From the architecture and layout of the town, he guessed it was somewhere in Italy, like the little villages near Rome that hed visited with his parents when he was thirteen. The buildings on either side of the short, alley-like street he was standing in were crooked and intersected by twisting dark green tendrils of ivy, leaning in towards each other so the sunlight formed a jagged stripe down the centre of the road. The sky above Blaine was periwinkle blue and the air felt neither hot nor cold; it just was.

Wanting to see more of the place he was in, Blaine walked along the street, following the curve of the walls on either side of him towards the brightness at the mouth of the alley. Though the sunlight was brighter at the end of the street, it didnt bother his eyes any and he didnt feel the need to squint or shield his eyes. The light brightened further and then he stepped out into a large, square courtyard.

Like the street hed just emerged from, the courtyard was cobbled. The uneven stones glowed under the sun in a multitude of colours, from warm reds to bright golds. Blaine paused at the mouth of the street, running his gaze over the buildings lining the perimeter of the courtyard: some appeared to be businesses and shops of a sort, while others had no obvious use. They were all made from the same sort of stone which was a soft golden colour. Flower boxes decorated some of the windows, adding vibrant bursts of color here and there.

A number of people were hurrying about the square, all of them dressed in fashions from another century. They were all faceless; as meaningless to him as he was to them. They all ignored him as he slowly made his way further into the courtyard, his gaze still sweeping over the surrounding buildings. Despite not paying attention to where he was going, nobody bumped into him, the slightly blurry crowds parting in front of him no matter which way he turned.

Slowly, Blaine became aware of a persistent ticking sound. Once he did notice its presence, it got louder, until he couldnt help but hear it. At first he didnt think anything of the ticking noise - sometimes there were sounds that didnt have any source or any real meaning, they were just there - but then his eyes landed upon a tall clock tower looking down over the courtyard from the far end and suddenly it became apparent to him that the ticking was from the clock and it was counting down to something. Ordinarily, this would have concerned Blaine, but as he studied the large white face of the clock and the burnished red tiles of the steeple roof, he didnt think anything of the ticking noise; it just was.

Moving deeper into the courtyard and closer to the clock tower, Blaine started to feel something, the presence of a sensation that had not been there earlier. The feeling got stronger the closer he got to the clock until it became strong enough that he could begin to recognise it for what it was: a prickling realisation that he needed to do something.

Turning, Blaines eyes alighted upon someone walking away from him, a man with brown hair who was wearing a navy short sleeved shirt. For some reason he felt a pull towards this man, a calling that he should follow him. Without questioning it, Blaine started after him, crossing the courtyard to another one of the narrow streets leading off it.

By the time Blaine reached the street, the man hed been following was nowhere in sight. He made his way further along the street and emerged in a brightly lit, modern day classroom. He stopped just inside the entrance.

The room looked like the classrooms he remembered from his elementary school days minus the highly coloured posters and pictures covering the walls. The small, white, plastic-topped desks were arranged in a horseshoe shape in the centre of the room, all of them facing a blank white wall. Around half a dozen people were already sitting at the desks and, unlike the faceless people from the courtyard, they each had the face of one of his classmates from elementary school. Blaine wasnt surprised or confused by this; he didnt think it was anything out of the ordinary.

The only other person in the room not sitting down was the man he had followed here. He was standing a little in front of Blaine with his back to him. Blaine took a step closer to him and the man turned.

It was the teenage boy from the tornado dream; the traveller he had shared his dream with.

Shock flooded Blaine, freezing his muscles so he was rooted to the spot. He felt a sharp, tugging sensation somewhere deep in his abdomen, but it was almost immediately overwhelmed by something deeper and stronger that kept him standing in that classroom staring wide-eyed at the boy from his dream.

The boy was clearly experiencing the same emotions and sensations Blaine was, for he gaped silently at Blaine for a long moment, his lips parted in surprise. His eyes were bluer than Blaine remembered, his skin paler and smoother, and his shoulders wider.

Making a decision, Blaine cleared his throat. "H- Hi." He did his best to smile warmly, aware his body was trembling and his muscles didnt seem to be working properly.

The boy continued to stare at him, the shock in his eyes slowly being replaced by something else.

"My name is Blaine," Blaine introduced hesitantly. He wasnt sure what the etiquette was for people in this situation: did they become friendly and enjoy the time together or did they politely look the other way and allow the other person to dream in private?

The emotion in the boys eyes coalesced into uncertainty and his gaze flicked to something behind Blaine, before shifting to the horseshoe of desks to their right. Beginning to feel unsure of himself, Blaine took another step closer.

The boys eyes widened again and he darted around Blaine, ignoring his protest and sprinting down the street they had just walked along, before vanishing.

Kurt woke as abruptly as though his alarm had gone off. For a confused moment, he thought it had done and he started to reach for his phone, until his senses caught up with his brain and he realized his room was still in complete darkness with not even the faintest of dawn light outlining his window. Heart still racing, he settled back down against the pillows and tried to relax enough to fall asleep again.

The remnants of his dream still clung to him. He imagined he could hear the ticking of the clock and see the outline of the old buildings through the shadowy darkness of his room. In his minds eye he could still see the unfamiliar faces of the children sitting in the classroom and he felt a ghost of the tugging sensation of his body trying to wake him up, the unfamiliarity making his dream-self consciously understand he was dreaming, thus ending the dream. His slowing heart rate picked up the pace again when he remembered the hazel-eyed boy, the other traveller. He had spoken to him, introduced himself (Blaine, his name was Blaine), had wanted to talk to Kurt and yet, for some reason Kurt hadnt been able to reply. For some reason, despite his curiosity towards Blaine, hed been so shocked that Blaine had spoken to him that hed run away. He hadnt even made it back into the courtyard before waking up.

Kurt rubbed at his burning eyes - waking up in the middle of a dream always made his eyes sting and left him feeling wrong-footed. He knew he should try and put the dream behind him and go back to sleep as trying to analyze everything while feeling this way would only make him feel worse, but he couldnt stop his mind from replaying Blaines hopeful expression and he could still hear the sound of that damn clock ticking. He couldnt help but feel he had just screwed up something important. He had that same sinking feeling that he experienced whenever he walked out of an exam and heard everyone around him discussing answers different to his own. Why had he been so stupid?

Knowing he had little chance of falling asleep now, he sat up in bed, moving until he was sitting on the edge of the mattress where he could rest his feet on the bed frame. There he stared unseeingly at the wall opposite him, thinking.

Hed known it was possible to communicate with those you shared a dream with. From what hed heard from other travellers, you could interact normally with the other person in your dreams. When hed been a little younger and fascinated by the thought of meeting someone in his dreams, hed read everything about travelling that he could find online: every article, blog post, and research paper he came across. Back then hed thought it would be so cool to have a friend to spend time with while he slept. As travellers seemed to be drawn to share dreams with people who shared a similar mind (experiences, personality, and opinions), and were, thus, of a similar age, twelve-year-old Kurt had been sure he would become good friends with whoever he shared a dream with. Hed learned a lot since then and his fantasy of having a friend in his dreams had dimmed somewhat. Quite often travellers didnt want to get to know each other or would rather have privacy in their dreams, some fought and started dreading sharing a dream with that person again, and the vast majority never shared dream with the same person often enough to get to know them. From this he knew it was uncommon that he had shared a dream with Blaine on the only two occasions hed travelled and he also knew this meant it was highly likely he would continue to share dreams with Blaine. The thought made Kurts heart stutter.

Another fact he remembered from his research was that emotions were often skewed in dreams and it was sometimes difficult to remember things outside of the dream unless there was a strong emotional attachment to it, like family, stress, and tragedy. Hed heard of a few instances where this had caught people out, causing problems in the lives of themselves or their fellow traveller. He didnt want to become one of those people where the line between dreams and reality was blurred.

Sighing, Kurt dropped his head into his hands and buried his fingers in his hair. While hed been thinking the sun had just started to rise, a faint light now glowing around the edges of the curtains. The shadows in his room were more pronounced, the outlines of his furniture sharper. Distantly, he could hear what sounded like every bird in the world singing, their songs getting louder the longer he sat there and thought. It was a soothing sound; a reminder that no matter what happened in his dreams, everything stayed the same in reality: the sun would always rise, the birds would always sing. It was a reminder that a fresh start was always possible.

One thought he couldnt help but dwell on was the torment he was subjected to at the hands of the bullies at school - what would happen if Blaine shared the same views as they did? What if Blaine was just as ignorant, spiteful, and homophobic as his classmates? Dreaming was supposed to be his sanctuary, his escape; he couldnt risk losing that.

Shaking his head, Kurt dropped his hands from his face and watched the sunlight around the edge of his curtains brighten. He was probably overcomplicating things. After all, hed only travelled twice and Blaine seemed friendly enough - what was the harm in getting to know him?