It’s four in the morning and his phone won’t stop ringing. Blaine has been doing his best to ignore it, face buried in his borrowed pillow. He can’t breathe like this, and Jan’s pillow smells a little, but it’s a nice break; he’s been staring at the ceiling in the dark for over an hour.  The constant chiming of his phone is just one more sensation; he has them all catalogued. The pillow's smell.  That weird twisting thing his stomach is doing. A few tears, four bruised knuckles from finally giving in and punching a wall, and oh yeah, one broken heart.  He’s reached some sort of victory here, although he’s not sure quite what it is. Ignoring the constant ringing feels like accomplishment, like breathing and living and being.

Unfortunately, his phone is loud, Jan’s apartment is quiet, and he’s the only person in it on the verge of a mental breakdown. Fed up, cranky and only slightly sympathetic, Jan stomps out of her room, grabbing it and throwing it at him, vicious aim right on- it cracks against the back of Blaine’s skull, hard.

“Ow, shit! Jan, what the fuck?”

“Look, I’m really sorry about everything, I am. I’m here for you and all that crap. But Blaine, it’s four in the morning and I have to get up for class in three hours. Either turn it off or answer it.”

 Jan’s stomping away, still annoyed, and she’s fierce enough even at 5’2 to have Blaine wincing because he’s really not sure that he wants to answer the phone.  Turning off his phone and ignoring Kurt seems too final, too close to actually acknowledging what’s happening here. He can picture Kurt too easily, drunk and calling and oh, he’d looked so shocked and broken when Blaine had left.  This picture hurts, Blaine has to bear down hard to keep himself together because this is unraveling him.  The long standing habit is now longing; Kurt rarely gets drunk, finding the hours after to be embarrassing and completely not worth the effort. If he had been home with Kurt, he’d be tucking him into bed, taking blatant advantage of Kurt’s need and vulnerability and sweetness.

            Those fleeting snatches of time between them where Kurt actively needs Blaine, when Blaine gets to take care of him, are so rare.  He’s always loved that, Kurt’s strength, his independence. The twilight moments, when Kurt really needs him, trusting Blaine implicitly to take care of him, are so much more tender this way.  Blaine has never minded Kurt’s take charge attitude, never been bothered by Kurt’s natural inclination to take the lead, often times showing Blaine what he wanted before Blaine himself even knew. 

 In five years of learning to love each other, they’ve reached a sort of agreement; it’s not spoken, and barely acknowledged because really it just is. They’re two men with strong personalities and years of learning independence, self reliance. Growing up, Blaine so often felt the need to have the answers, to be the mentor and the savoir, the pillar of strength; giving that over to Kurt had never been anything but a gesture of love and trust and knowledge that with this boy, he could rest. He could be.  Blaine has never felt  dominated or subservient, because Kurt’s need to love by caring and doing and acting is a balm, a relief, and most importantly, it works.

Which is why he has always loved the moments when Kurt is ready to be taken care of, when Kurt needs him.  With Kurt, Blaine knows he doesn’t have to always be on, always be strong; he’s never felt a need to have things in their place. But Kurt does- Kurt has a place and an idea for everything, and caring for someone else is the only way Kurt knows how to love. It’s always made him feel strong, special, given him a place in a life that has often been too hard. Kurt’s need to take care of Blaine in the everyday spaces of their lives, tiny and important, give him that feeling of place and home and rootedness.  Kurt needing him is tender, it’s rare and something they both prize; speaking a language of love that is active and tangible and healing.

But he doesn’t have the words for this, doesn’t have a reference or understanding to fall back on. He feels so bereft, feels Kurt’s actions like leaving, he’s left in the pressing darkness of this strange apartment, turned inside out.  Beneath waves of bone deep hurt and betrayal, Blaine is experiencing an onslaught of bafflement.  He and Kurt have always been nothing less than honest with each other, trusting their strengths; communication and commitment, to see them through so much. Of all their friends, theirs is the only high school romance to have made it past the first year of college. Insecurities, doubts, passing attractions- they have always made the effort to talk, to trust their friendship to see them through. 

And it isn’t that they’ve needed to talk, as far as he knows. This is lightning, sudden and devastating and so unexpected.  Because it is one thing to be cheated on, it is another to entrust your happiness to another’s and not ever see this coming.  To have your lover betray you is enough, but to have your best friend turn away from you, for Blaine, feels like far too much to bear, to understand.

            He pushes those thoughts away with effort, and thinking of Jan, checks his phone to see how many times Kurt has called.  With a frown, he scans the calls- none are from Kurt, but the last five are from Finn. His phone vibrates, and Blaine can see that Finn is, in fact, calling again. Annoyed, he flicks his thumb to answer, and Finn’s voice is filling his ear before he can snap at him,

“Jesus, finally. Why aren’t you guys answering your phones?”

He’s taken aback for a moment, because the panic in Finn’s voice is not at all what he was expecting.

“Us guys?” It’s dumb, but it is all he can manage at the moment. He’d thought Kurt was having Finn call on his behalf, even if that seemed out of character for him. A few hours ago, Kurt had been fucking Jason at a party. Things change.

“Yeah you guys. Kurt said he’d be by the phone, and I can’t get a hold of him, how can he make flight plans if he doesn’t fucking answer? Burt’s not doing well at all, they’ve had to take him into emergency surgery and I’ve been calling you guys for hours.”

“Wait, what?” Blaine interrupts, sensing that Finn is beyond panic and liable to keep rambling without giving out any pertinent information any time soon. “Finn, what’s going on, is Burt ok?” He’s clutching the phone, and his fear, sudden and so alive, thrums through the phone between them.

“Hold on, didn’t Kurt explain this all to you?” Now Finn sounds suspicious, “Where is he? Why isn’t he answering his phone?”

“I don’t know why he isn’t answering… listen it’s a long story but I’m not with Kurt right now. I haven’t spoken to him, and I know that sounds crazy for us, but right now I don’t know what’s going on, and you’re scaring the shit out of me, so please, can you just tell me what’s happened to Burt?” Finn’s sigh is heavy through the phone, and Blaine can hear so much in that one sound- exhaustion and confusion and fear. His fingers hurt from gripping the phone so tight, he has to make an effort to loosen his grip and listen to Finn’s words.

“I guess Burt was having stomach pains, or something, for a few days, and he kept ignoring it, but it just kept getting worse. Finally Mom made him go to the emergency room because he could like, not even walk; it was so bad.  They did some sort of scan, like a cat scan or something, and said that maybe some of his intestines got twisted up. Anyway, they said they’d keep him overnight and give him antibiotics and somehow that might fix it, I didn’t really get that part.”  There’s a pause as Finn takes another breath, Blaine has been silently dressing and thinking and making plans as he listens, searching Jan’s darkened apartment for his keys and wallet.

“Mom called Kurt when they admitted him to let him know. She told him it wasn’t a huge deal, but that he might have to have surgery in the morning if it didn’t resolve itself or something…I’m kind of confused about this part, but anyway,  we were supposed to call in the morning and let you guys know what was going on and if you needed to come home, but then he really wasn’t doing well, Mom said, and they had to take him to surgery like, right away and he’s in there now- they said it would be a few hours but something is going on and I’m freaking out and you guys weren’t answering your phones…” Blaine’s eyes are closed, his hands shaking as he tries to stop his thoughts and heart from skittering all over the place. This might explain a whole lot about what happened with Kurt, but he’s not sure if it changes anything really.

“Finn, he’s going to be ok right?”

“I don’t know.” For the first time, Blaine can really hear it, the shaking in Finn’s voice and the fear and naked vulnerability, “It’s been like three hours since they took him back and the doctor came out of surgery to talk to Mom, she looked really upset but said she didn’t want to talk about it until we were all here and-“

Blaine glosses right over the assumption that he and Kurt will be coming together, because really why wouldn’t he? Kurt’s family is more his that his own family.  But he can’t even focus on that because the fact that Carole won’t even tell Finn what is going on until they get there speaks volumes.

“Oh god,” he breathes into the phone, “It’s bad isn’t it?”

“Man I don’t know…I didn’t really understand it all because Mom won’t talk to me, and I don’t know what’s going on over there, but can you just find out when you’re getting here, tell him what is going on right now? I’ll come pick you guys up at the airport or whatever, just…we need you guys here now, ok?”

“Yeah, sure of course.” His voice is faint as he promises to call Finn with their flight information.

Hanging up without saying goodbye, he finds himself completely still, staring into the darkness of Jan’s apartment. Thinking about Burt, then Carole and Finn, about everything that has happened, but mostly wondering, so scared and unsure, if Burt is going to be ok. If Kurt is going to be ok.  Kurt, who he’s left alone and, god, if Blaine is this frightened, how must Kurt be feeling, and he just left him there.

But Kurt doesn’t know this, how bad it really is, and that understanding and sympathy can’t compete. Blaine is moving and there’s anger, spiraling and spinning into him, playing through his fingers and making his head buzz, because he knows that Carole’s phone call to Kurt had to have precipitated this whole fucked up mess, but what he can’t see, in the darkness or in his heart or anywhere in the night sky that’s looming over him as he hails a late night taxi, is why Kurt would leave, would leave him instead of calling, choosing the arms of some other man instead, to carry him through. Through one bad moment, not even the worst because now it is clear that there are far worse moments to come, so how had that one phone call been enough for this.