Kurt is flat on his back on the floor of the tiny living room in his apartment, the sound of his phone vibrating the only thing tying him to any sort of consciousness. A moment passes in which he is completely confused; just a moment, before his senses flood, his brain assaulted by so many sensations, nausea and shame and a radiating soreness throughout his limbs.  Then he really starts to wake up and with increased awareness, begins to remember.  Thoughts begin to register, too rapid fire for him to really process; his father, Blaine, and oh shit, last night, and he can feel the bile rising in his throat.

            His hand is over his mouth and he’s already starting to vomit when suddenly a small trashcan appears; he’s throwing up through is fingers, then not, and shaking through the whole thing. There is a moment of terrible gratitude, a wave of fierce love for Blaine, who knows him well enough to know just what he needs, before he’s realizing that Blaine shouldn’t be here.  Before he’s remembering last night, and that he’d walked out. And yet, once done heaving, when left slumped, a graceless and weak wreck on the floor, he sees Blaine clearly, a damp towel to clean his hands with and glass of water in hand.

            Water that’s set down in silence. They don’t speak as Blaine uses the towel to clean Kurt’s hand. His face is perfect and impassive, Kurt has to close his eyes, washed in it, swamped in memories that are clearer now, shame that is only burning more through the passing seconds. The night before is mostly a blur, an ugly mess of bad decisions, but he remembers enough to know what he’s done.  He knows Blaine though, knows the shape and texture of his anger, well enough to know that right now, nothing said will be heard.

They stare at each other, into the heavy silence, for a beat, until it’s broken apart by the sound of Kurt’s phone, alerting him to a voicemail. Or 17. He’s swearing, because there are 17 missed calls, from Finn and Carolee, and he’s flabbergasted by his own selfish stupidity, because Carolee had clearly told him they’d know if surgery was needed by morning and it’s almost nine now, the time for knowing and deciding on flights has come and gone. Panicked by the sheer number of calls, he’s trying to dial his voicemail with numb fingers, standing and stumbling, tripping over the edge of the rug, through fear and a vicious hangover.

“Here.” Blaine is helping him, avoiding eye contact, retrieving Kurt’s phone, speaking around him in a tone he’s never heard before.

“I talked to Finn a few hours ago.” There’s an accusation in the words, sharp and hidden in the impersonal tone, and Kurt is wincing, because Blaine had to hear what was going on from Finn, and Christ on a crutch what had he been thinking last night? He’s standing now, Kurt can clearly see his suitcase propped by the door. For a second, it’s so wrong, all kinds of wrong, because it’s just the one bag, his bag, alone.  But Blaine is talking and it’s too loud and so many words and Kurt has to breathe through his teeth, trying to hear the words and understand what is going on.

“Burt had surgery last night.  Something came up, Finn wasn’t very clear, and they had to rush him to emergency surgery.  Carolee is waiting for you to come home to explain everything, so I don’t have very many answers. Finn is going to meet you at the airport, so you need to go shower. I’ll call you a cab.”

 It’s impersonal, they way he’s imparting this information, and although there isn’t a lot of it, it’s given gently.  Kurt is trying so hard to process the words, to understand that the things he’d feared the night before were actually happening, had happened, and he’d missed them. But he can’t, he can’t make the words true, because all he can see is the bag. His bag, solitary and damning in the hallway.

            Since moving to New York with Blaine, he’s never been home, been anywhere that required a suitcase, without him. And now…now he has to go home to face his family and his father who is apparently so ill and somehow work through this, and Blaine… but of course he isn’t coming. He very obviously can’t even look at Kurt right now, and Kurt has a sudden urge to beg, to kneel down at Blaine’s feet.  But the sheer volume of hurt radiating off of Blaine is enough to stop him.  It’s enough in this, that Blaine is here, taking care of him, because he knows so well that he doesn’t deserve it.  He doesn’t know how he is going to manage this; this mess with Blaine and going home to a family that is breaking apart without him, but he knows he can’t hurt Blaine any more.

Once Kurt is locked in the bathroom, Blaine is able to stop moving, to stop breathing, and biting down on a single knuckle, hard, stop himself from going to Kurt.  He can hear the sound of Kurt’s sobs from the shower.  Blind, he turns, holding onto the kitchen counter with all the strength he has, knuckles white and sharp against his olive skin. For every part of him that is wanting to go to his boyfriend, there’s another that understands that nothing is the same. That it can’t be, for him. Cheating is one thing, and Kurt’s done that.

Even if the circumstances, or what he knew of them, were enough of an explanation for Kurt’s behavior, the fact that Kurt had not confided anything to him, had basically cast Blaine away from himself and the rest of his family- Blaine swears, tears beginning to prickle his eyes. Kurt is his family, his real family. Burt, Finn, Carole- to Blaine, they’re his family too. And Kurt knew that. Knows that Blaine loves and looks up to Burt as a father figure, as the man he always wished his father could have been.

             He meets Kurt coming out of the bathroom on his way to their bedroom where he’s printed the flight information.  For a moment they do a sort of awkward shuffle, trying to avoid contact. Blaine breaks first, looking up and stepping aside; and he must be making some sort of noise, it’s shock and knowing, because Kurt has frozen at the same time.

Slow, so slow he’s hardly moving, his finger is tracing the obvious hickey on Kurt’s neck. A hickey that hadn’t been there, that he’d certainly never put there.  Kurt flinches, Blaine is mapping the edges of this mark, as if reading a fingerprint, pressing harder as he looks into Kurt’s eyes. Then there are tears in Blaine’s, and he’s turning, leaving Kurt in a silence so cold and deep, he can’t even breathe to find the words.

            Blaine finds him fifteen minutes later, still towel wrapped and damp, staring into their closet.  All the beautiful lines of his body, slim and strong and so well known, are slumped.  He can read every ounce of defeat and uncertainty in Kurt’s body. He wants so badly to take him, to wrap Kurt in his skin and his love and to just carry him through this, but he can’t. Because it’s all around them, Kurt’s skin imprinted with the memory of another man. It’s only because he loves them all- Kurt and his whole family, that he is able to help at all. With a sigh, he’s pushing Kurt out of the way; he’s terse, emanating cold.

            “You have to get dressed, the cab is waiting and you’ll miss your flight.” Deft and practiced, he’s pulling clothes out, something comfortable for the flight but nothing that will offend Kurt’s sensibilities. He can hear Kurt dressing, mechanical and slow, behind him, but he can’t do it, can’t bear to look on any part of the boy that had once been his alone.  At a body that, until last night, had only been touched and loved by him.

            “I’m dressed.” Kurt sounds empty, his voice a lifeless thing that wrings at Blaine’s insides. For a moment he wonders how he can still feel everything for Kurt, love and pain and fear; and still be so angry and lost at the same time. Even when Kurt is hurting him, Blaine still loves him, and he knows that if he doesn’t get Kurt out of the apartment soon, he’ll break. He’ll break down and smash it all apart, crashing into Kurt and through Kurt and through all of the pain that he’s putting Blaine through. Because somehow, his love for Kurt is so much bigger than his own heartbreak.

            Instead, he follows Kurt out of the bedroom, hauling his suitcase without speaking, brushing past Kurt to exit their apartment. It’s an impersonal transaction, he’s depositing the suitcase in the cab and handing Kurt the printed copy of his itinerary and never looking up to see Kurt’s face. For a moment they just stand, so much space in the few inches between them.  In a split second, he sees the intention in Kurt’s eyes, before Kurt even realizes; and he’s turning, walking away with his head down, leaving Kurt with his hand out, three words spinning lonely and dazed into the dirty New York air.