Part Fourteen

Kurt opened his eyes, head spinning and an ache burning between his eyes. The first thing he realised was that he was very hungover. The second was that someone else was in bed with him. Which didn't make sense; he should be back at the house and not sharing the bed with anything but his pillows. Unless Rachel had been in one of her tragic melodramatic moods and demanded he stay and hold her through the night.

"Kurt," came a soft breath from the body next to him, "Kurt, sweetheart, I can practically hear you thinking. Calm down, take a deep breath and look at me. I promise, I won't tell anyone what happened last night."

Kurt rolled over, squeezing his eyes shut to avoid having to face the reality of what he had done, remembering the desperation of their encounter and the moral wrong of his actions. "Blaine, why am I in bed with you?"

"Don't pretend you don't remember everything," Blaine said, a slight edge to his voice. "Open your eyes, sweetheart. This doesn't have to get complicated. We don't have to tell anyone."

Kurt reluctantly opened his eyes to see Blaine smiling at him softly. "Good morning, beautiful," he murmured, carefully pushing a strand of hair from Kurt's forehead. He was glowing, his expression warm and tender, and something inside Kurt just snapped.

"I hate you!" he screamed, rocketing out of bed, finding his clothes and yanking them on, stuffing his feet into shoes. "You made me have sex with you and you made me a cheater and this isn't who I am."

"I made you have sex with me?" Blaine asked, his voice almost dangerous. "Tell that to the man who begged for it last night." As Kurt started for the door, blinking back angry tears, Blaine whispered, "Don't go, Kurt. We have to talk about this, figure it out."

"Don't you dare tell anyone," Kurt snapped before he left, slamming the door hard enough behind him to shake the floor. He ran out of the hotel and into the bright morning sunlight, running through morning traffic for the one place he knew he would never be judged.

"Is Santana in?" he asked as one of his friend's younger sister's opened the door to the family home, surprisingly quiet for a place that usually echoed with arguments, music and Spanish expletives.

"Did you bring Finn with you?" she asked, a blush creeping up her cheeks as she looked behind him. Kurt had to tell himself not to snap at the sixteen year old with her unrequited crush on Finn, but all he really wanted to do was see Santana and talk to her about what he'd done.

"Rosa, lo dejó entrar!" came a shout from within the house. Santana's mother appeared briefly in the hallway as Rosa, muttering something in Spanish, no doubt a dire threat riddled with cursing if she was similar in any way to Santana, stepped aside and Kurt ran up the stairs.

When he knocked on the door, he heard the creak of bedsprings inside, feet thudding across the room and Santana yanked the door open, her hair a tangled mess and smeared mascara smudged around her eyes. "Alright, alright, I'm awake!" she roared before she saw Kurt and a horribly knowing smirk came over her face. "Good morning, sunshine. Lovely walk of shame outfit. Your shirt's buttoned up wrong. So whose bed did you end up in last night?"

"I can't believe I did it, San," Kurt said quietly, picking his way through the messy room and sitting down on the end of the bed, unbuttoning his shirt quickly to shove the buttons through their corresponding holes. "This isn't who I am. I don't cheat on boyfriends."

"How would you know, you've only ever had one," Santana said immediately. At Kurt's glare, she added, "Sorry, that was bitchy, but I'm hungover and it's absurdly early. What do you want me to do about it? Brittany hasn't finished building a time machine yet."

"I don't know, tell me I'm dreaming and I was dreaming and any minute now I'm going to wake up back in New York with that stupid cat on my head and go out with Charlie and learn how to fall out of love," Kurt whined, flopping back onto the bed. "Other people fall in and out of love fifty times a day, why is it so hard for me?"

"Why are you stringing poor Charlie along?" Santana asked. "He's a nice guy, Kurt. Aside from the Bieber hair and the addiction to stupid reality shows and the resemblance to a beanpole and the fact that he can't make a decent coffee for shit, he's lovely. Are you still in love with Blaine?"

"No!" Kurt immediately protested vehemently. Santana arched an eyebrow at him and he sighed heavily before murmuring, "More than I was before. Absence really does make the heart grow fonder."

"Well yes, anyone could've guessed that from the way you were all over each other at the club last night," Santana agreed. "I should've guessed you'd be the slutty drunk of us all, Hummel. Although maybe you should've agreed to it when your boyfriend asked if he could come back with us so you could fuck him instead of some whore you should've been over months ago."

At Kurt's sob, Santana sighed and sat down next to him, saying, "But I guess I can sort of see where you're coming from. He was your first, and you always have a connection to the person who popped your cherry. And I've cheated on people, so I really shouldn't be preaching like this." She flopped down, dragging him with her, and almost gently asked, "Are you going to break up with Charlie?"

"I should, it's the right thing to do," Kurt said quietly before he abruptly shot to his feet, pacing back and forth as best he could across the cluttered floor. Santana watched him in quiet assessment. "God, I tried everything to get over him, Santana. I had the option of coming home for Christmas but I didn't, I started dating someone else who's sweet and understanding and loves me but I've still never been able to give him what he deserves because I'm in love with someone else." He met Santana's eyes, seeing how truly sympathetic she was, and whispered, "But how can I break up with him when he's been so good to me?"

"Kurt, if you don't break up with him you'll just drag this out longer and make it miserable for both of you," she advised gently. "If you still want Blaine, you can go after him, and if you don't, at least you can find someone you'll actually be able to get it up for without thinking about a stupid one-night stand." She stood up and pointed him to the door. "Now go home before I have to field another call from Finn because you went running off to satisfy your libido. We're going back to New York in two days, and you need to decide what you're going to do before then." She gave him an unreadable look as he left, actually feeling worse than before, saying softly, "I know you, Kurt, and I know you'll do what's right for everybody. Including your dick."

Kurt finally grinned at her before he left, dodging two boys having a fight with plastic swords halfway down the stairs, politely rejecting Marissa's offer of him staying for breakfast and brushing off Rosa's request for him to bring Finn for a visit and making it back to his car unscathed by the insanity personified that was the Lopez family.

When he finally reached home, it was to loud barking from Norris, the dog leaping around his feet, and Finn clattering down the stairs and levelling him with a suspicious look. "Where did you go last night?" he asked immediately.

"I promise, I'll tell you everything, but upstairs, out of earshot of our parents," Kurt said, steering Finn back to the stairs and shoving him between the shoulders until he got the message and thudded back up them, into his room and slamming the door demonstratively loudly behind them.

Wrinkling his nose slightly at the stale, musty smell of the room, Kurt fell into the armchair Finn pointed out, kicking aside a discarded single sock and drawing his knees up to his chest, tucking himself in small enough that no one could hurt him. "I'm sorry for worrying you, I went back to a hotel with Blaine last night," he said quietly.

"And you had sex with him," Finn added. It was a statement, not a question. When Kurt's head snapped up and he fixed Finn with a shocked look, his stepbrother shrugged and continued, "I'm not that stupid. What other reason do two drunk gay men leave together and go to a hotel for?" He shifted uncomfortably, averting his eyes from Kurt's as he asked, "Were you safe and everything?"

"Finn, I'm really not comfortable talking about this with you," Kurt said hastily. "I know it's late, but I slept in and then I went to see Santana before I came back here. You wouldn't happen to have any idea about what to do, would you? I think…I'm still in love with Blaine."

"Well, you've really screwed up your love life," was Finn's only observation on the subject. Kurt sighed heavily and left Finn and his useless advice to themselves, slamming the door irritably on his way out.

Within the next two days, Kurt stayed in his room, wrapped up in his blankets and ignoring Carole's increasingly concerned whispers through the cracked-open door as she brought him coffee and meals. He drank the coffee, his veins quickly seeming to run with caffeine instead of blood, but fed the food to a sympathetic Norris, who lay on the end of the bed with his head on Kurt's feet once he realised Kurt was upset, just to avoid hurting Carole's feelings.

He lay on his stomach, head buried in the floral-scented depths of his pillow, listening to his phone buzz incessantly with incoming texts. After five minutes, he pulled his hand out of his dark, relatively quiet, warm cocoon and retrieved the device, wondering who was so desperate to talk to him as it vibrated once again in his hand as he propped himself up on an elbow to read the messages. His heart leapt into his throat upon seeing their sender.

Kurt, are you there?

Kurt, I really need to you to answer me, okay?

Sweetheart, if you're getting these, please text me back. Just so I know you're reading these.

Okay, so I'm guessing you're not going to text me back. Maybe your phone died. Maybe you're hanging upside-down from some criminal mastermind's ceiling while he's reading these out to you as one final act of torture. Maybe you're just ignoring me. That does seem the most likely. But I'm going to send you some messages, and I want you to read all of them.

I swear, I didn't mean for the other night to happen. Yes, I was drunk, and my chief motive for even going to that club might have been because I knew you'd be there. But I never had the intention of leaping into bed with you. Fine, I did, but if I had been sober I would've backed off when you told me you had a boyfriend. Even as drunk as I was, I promise, I would've backed off if you'd given any indication that you didn't want me to. But you didn't, and so we ended up having another one-night stand.

I wish you'd stayed, Kurt. I really do. If you hadn't panicked and run out on me, we could've talked about this, about us, about what it all means. But I can see why you ran away, and I won't tell anyone as long as you don't want me to. I haven't told Seth or Wes or Quincy where I went or who I was with, and I won't as long as you need me to keep this a secret.

And I need to talk to you about this and us and what it means, Kurt. Because I don't know if it still means to you what it does to me. What it has to me, for quite some time, but I never found the courage to admit to you until you were going and gone and I realised how much I was going to miss you. How much I needed you around me just to stop that ache in my chest. I didn't realise that, since the moment I saw you on that ordinary little streets, my heartbeat and my thoughts and my wishes and my breaths have all been for you, until you were out of my reach and apparently in another's arms.

When you told me you were in love with me, way back in November, I was scared. I didn't think you were telling the truth, because I didn't see how anyone could fall in love with me. With a whore. I spent five years of my life being convinced that falling in love was bad for business, that it wasn't something to be desired or admired, but rather brushed away and feared. Sex was all anything was about, sex and money. No one ever loved me, not even my parents after I came out. I ran away because of what they did to me.

But then you came along, and you just lit up my life, Kurt. You were sweet and innocent and nothing at all like the clients I usually have. You didn't use me, you didn't force me into anything, you were understanding and gentle and never pushed my boundaries. Which are non-existent, by the way. Aside from the fact that I never bottom for a client. I always thought that was something to share with the first person I actually loved. It was intimate, it was opening myself up to this faceless other person, it wasn't something I wanted to share in some casual factory-farm fucking. And, as you hopefully remember, I let you top on that night before you went back to New York, when I stupidly said we could never be anything more than friends with the occasional benefit.

What I'm trying to say, Kurt, is that I'm in love with you. And I would be so grateful for another chance with you. And I should've told you the other night, but I thought you wouldn't believe me because I was drunk out of my right mind and all over you from the second I stepped through that door. I thought you might have just thought I was trying to get into your pants, which I was. But this confession is so much more than trying to get you into bed.

I love the way you smile at me. I love the way you look in the morning when your head's on the pillow next to mine. I love how witty and sarcastic you are. I love the way you clearly care for your friends and your stepbrother. I love how soft your skin is. I love your expressive, colourful, beautiful eyes. I love how you talk in your sleep and cuddle closer to me in the middle of the night. I love your breath on the back of my neck as I sleep. I love you and everything about you, and I hope you'll give me another chance.

My best to the boyfriend. I hope he understands and you do the right thing for everyone. I love you -Blaine

"Kurt!" came a shout from Burt up the stairs, making Kurt start suddenly and finally drag his eyes away from the pixellated words blinking balefully at him on his phone screen. "Santana's here, says she's come to give you a ride to the airport. Have you packed at any point during your moping these last couple of days!"

"Yes, I'm packed, I'll be down in a minute!" Kurt shouted back, stuffing his phone into his back pocket, quickly smoothing the duvet and shooing Norris out of his room, grabbing his suitcase and swinging it mindlessly by his side as he clattered down the stairs, clumsy in his shock. He paused in the doorway of the kitchen to give his father a long hug, needing the reassurance the same way he had before his first performance at a competition. "Say bye to Carole and Finn for me."

"Take care of yourself out there," Burt ordered, sounding as choked as he did the first time he saw Kurt off to New York. "I'll see you when I see you. Hopefully you can make it back for Thanksgiving. Call me when you get there so I know you're home safely."

Kurt nodded to Burt, fearing he might start crying and pour out the whole sorry story if he so much as opened his mouth. He found Santana outside, getting ready to lean on the horn, with the older brother she'd only just made up the fight with in the driver's seat, considerately providing their lift to the airport. Santana always did hate taxis. "Took you long enough to get out here!" she exclaimed, hanging out of the window as he shoved his suitcase between him and Rachel in the backseat and climbed in.

"Shut up, I've spent the last two days in my fortress of solitude with the dog, I can't be expected to remember what time you're picking me up," he retorted irritably. "Especially when it's you and you can be anything between an hour early and four hours late."

"What's got you so irritated?" Rachel demanded around the suitcases stacked between them. "Last time I saw you, you were all happy and dancing with yourself. Granted, you were also very drunk, but I hardly think there's a reason for you to snap at us."

"Santana," Kurt said, ignoring Rachel and passing his phone into the front seat, "read those latest texts and tell me what you think of them. Well, they're not really texts, more like essays, but what do they mean?"

Santana was silent for a very long moment, no doubt reading and analysing every one of the messages. Finally, she let out a long breath and passed Kurt's phone back to him. "Correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm pretty sure it means Anderson's in love with you and isn't scared anymore," she said with a shrug. "I said something similar to Brittany. Of course, I did it to her face instead of through texts, but I'm guessing you would've ignored him if he'd tried to talk to you, so this is the next best thing." She met Kurt's eyes in the mirror, giving him a decidedly stern look, "You have to break up with Charlie, Kurt."

And so it was that Kurt found himself in the coffee shop where both Santana and Charlie worked, with the man himself smiling lopsidedly at him from across their little table and a horrible hot guilt twisting uncomfortably in his stomach. "We have to talk," he finally said. "About us and about where we want this to go."

"I'm crazy about you," Charlie murmured, taking Kurt's hand across the table. "And even if we rushed into this because of what happened on New Year's Eve, and even though you won't let me so those three words because you don't think we should enter lightly into something like this before a year has passed, I still really, really care about you. I'd like this to go the distance."

"Charlie, what I've always said about entering into that sort of commitment lightly…that's not exactly how I actually feel," Kurt said slowly, taking a deep breath to steady his jangling nerves, pulling his hand out of Charlie's grasp. "I didn't want you to say those words to me because…because I knew I couldn't say them back."

"Why wouldn't you be able to say them back?" Charlie asked, his voice low and dangerous in a way Kurt had never heard from his charming, funny, incessantly smiling boyfriend of seven months, even around the worst homophobe. "What do you mean by that, Kurt?"

"The first time we met, Santana had already told I'd just come out of a difficult relationship," Kurt began to confess in a quiet, carefully steady voice, determined to keep calm for the sake of his boyfriend. "I told you I was over him. I'm so sorry, but I lied when I said that. I wasn't over him. I'm still not over him. I was in love with him from the very start, and I still am. I've always loved him and I'm sorry for stringing you along all this time." As Charlie stood up, starting to leave, Kurt grabbed him by the elbow and yanked him back down into his seat. "I know, I know you're going to leave, and I know this is over. But there's more: last week, when I went back to Lima with Santana and Rachel to see my family, we were out clubbing with some friends and I met Blaine, the man I'm in love with. I was drunk, he was drunk, we'd missed each other so much and we were still in love and, you know, wanting each other. And we ended up in bed. I had sex with him. I cheated on you, and I'm so, so sorry. I hope we can part on vaguely friendly terms. I may not love you, but I do care about you."

Charlie stood up, his eyes flashing dangerously. Kurt saw, as if in slow motion, his hand swing back, heard the sharp crack and felt the pain explode in his jaw, but it took him amount to equate those events to the fact that Charlie had just slapped him. "You bastard," Charlie hissed as everyone in the café whirled round to look at them, jaws dropping open and one man with his phone out, filming the encounter. "You took my heart and all you did was break it. I hate you, I never want to see you again. This is so over."

Kurt threw ten dollars down onto the table, holding his hand over the throbbing right side of his face, and rushed out of the place, blushing violently. They were supposed to part vaguely amicably after he had told the truth, he wasn't supposed to be running home to find ice, his jaw throbbing every time he panted as he ran through the streets, dodging innocent bystanders until he reached the flat.

But at least he had done what was right. Admitted to his infidelity and his lies for the last seven months and broken up with Charlie so he could find someone who would love him the way his sweet nature deserved. And yet Kurt knew that this regret would chase him for years, and it broke his heart to have treated another so appallingly.