It really wasn’t his fault. He prided himself on getting eight hours of sleep every night while maintaining a strict moisturising routine as well as managing to keep his grades up and have a fairly busy social life. Nightmares, he decided, should be made illegal.

It was always the same one. A boy about his age (though from the fifties, judging by his wardrobe) comes out to his clearly homophobic father. The father then picks up a copy of the Bible and holds it in front of his son’s face shouting ‘YOU KNOW WHAT THIS SAYS, BLAINE! YOU KNOW WHAT THIS SAYS!’ Blaine then lowers his head and replies that it doesn’t change the way he feels. His father loses it and assaults him with the heavy book, only stopping when a screaming female bursts through the door. It’s too late though – everything goes black and Kurt wakes up in a cold sweat.

Kurt had been having this dream for the past week and while he was no stranger to nightmares – he had had them for years after his mother died – he wasn’t used to them being so detailed or vivid. It had always been apparent to Kurt after he woke up that the nightmares about his mother weren’t reality. These new dreams were as clear as if he were being forced to watch a video recording of the thing every night.

What was worse was that he knew that the room the incident took place in was his bedroom. It was decorated differently and there was no shelving, but it was clearly the same place.

If this was a real event, it had happened where he was sleeping.

This thought, coupled with the way his room had seemingly decorated itself, served to create an uneasy feeling at the pit of his stomach. He really didn’t want to believe that anything out of the ordinary was happening, but it was becoming harder and harder for him to come up with logical explanations for what was going on.

What he needed to do, Kurt decided, was to find out if Blaine was in fact a real person. If he was, he would decide what needed to be done from there.
First, he needed sleep.

After excusing himself from breakfast, he sent an apologetic text to Mercedes, saying that he wouldn’t be able to make it to their planned mall crawl, before climbing back into bed fully clothed, ready to sleep for what felt like the first time in ages.

That was when he saw the boy watching him from his desk chair.

Kurt literally jumped out of the bed and pressed himself against his closet in fright while trying to find some shred of logic to help him make sense of the sight in front of him. He found himself failing badly. The guy was translucent for crying out loud. How was he supposed to make sense of that?

“Gee, I’m sorry, did I scare you?” the boy asked, standing up and walking straight through the bed to stand in front of Kurt.

I’m hallucinating, thought Kurt to himself as his eyes bugged out. I’m so tired and that nightmare is so fresh in my mind that I’m starting to see the boy in front of me.

“Kurt? That’s your name, right?” said Blaine, wearing the most adorably concerned expression that Kurt wondered for a moment if it would be such a bad thing if he was real.

Of course he won’t be real because if he is real he’s a ghost and – God, Kurt. Get a grip. You don’t believe in this crap. You viciously mock people who believe in this crap.

“You’re okay right, Kurt?” asked Blaine again.

He looks so worried. The least I can do is be courteous - even if he is just a figment of my imagination.

“Y-yeah,” Kurt replied, “I’m alright. It’s just, I didn’t know what you were at first, but I’m kind of piecing it together in my mind now.”

“Oh, okay,” he says, looking self-conscious for a moment before looking back up at Kurt with a smile. “I’m Blaine Anderson.”

Blaine held out a hand for Kurt to shake and he reached out for it, but his fingers slipped straight through the boy’s hand, unable to grasp it. He wasn’t really expecting to be able to.

“Kurt Hummel,” he replied, noting Blaine’s sad smile at the lack of touch. He quickly tried to find a topic to take Blaine’s mind off the thought, not entirely sure why he was so concerned about his feelings. He gestured to the walls surrounding them. “This is my room.”

“I know,” Blaine replied with a small chuckle.

Of course he knows that – he’s a part of your brain, Kurt scolded himself, trying to think of something else, anything else, to talk about. Before he could, Blaine was speaking again.

“Look, I know that this is a little out there and weird, but I’m honestly not going to do anything to hurt you,” he said, sincerely. “I mean, I may have moved your ornaments and pictures around at first but that was only because –“

“Wait, you were...” Kurt said, not really knowing what else to say. He had to have fallen asleep at some point. There was no way that this was really happening. “You mean to say that it was you who was moving all my stuff around?”

“Well, I didn’t want to make it horribly obvious,” Blaine replied. “But it is my room too and if you’re going to decorate I want a say.”

Kurt stared at the ghost boy incredulously. Was he seriously talking like they were roommates or something?

“Okay look,” he said, starting to get annoyed. “I know you’re like a part of my subconscious brain or something, so I get that you technically have a say in this, but I really don’t appreciate the insinuation that I need help when it comes to interior design. It’s one of the things I live for.”

“I wasn’t insinuating anything. My tastes are different to yours. I really didn’t mean to offend,” Blaine replied softly, looking at Kurt apologetically. After a while he dropped his gaze to stare at his shoes. “Do you really think I’m just a figment of your imagination?”

“Yes,” Kurt replied, a little harsher than he meant to. Blaine flinched and Kurt felt instantly sorry. He still wasn't sure why he was so worried about hurting the boy’s feelings. He wasn’t real. He couldn’t be real. “It’s just... it’s the only thing that makes sense.”

“Have you ever considered that not all things really make sense?” Blaine asked, lifting his head to stare at Kurt in an almost challenging way.

“I don’t even know if a Blaine Anderson existed,” said Kurt exasperatedly, crossing past Blaine to sit on the edge of his bed. “I don’t even know if he was a real person.”

“Yes you do,” said Blaine softly. “I hear you every night, Kurt. You have nightmares and you talk and I hear you say my name. I know that you know what happened to me.”

“So you watch me when I’m sleeping?” said Kurt in a snide tone, half annoyed, half frightened at the idea. This couldn’t seriously be happening, could it? This was just a really detailed dream. Any minute now he’d wake up at the breakfast table to the sound of his father making some funny remark about him falling asleep in his plate of pancakes. Blaine would disappear and he would carry on with his life as usual.

“Well there’s not much else to do when you’re dead,” said Blaine in a touchy voice. He took a moment to calm himself again before he spoke next. “Look, read up on me if you don’t believe me. Just know that when you decide to come to terms with it, I’d really appreciate it if you’d consider being my friend. It gets pretty lonely on the other side.”

Even though the ghost boy’s simple request broke his heart, Kurt wasn’t ready to accept that this was reality. So without another word to him, he grabbed his coat and phone and made his way downstairs.

“Hey, I thought you were upstairs catching up on a few Zs?” came his father’s confused voice as he passed the kitchen on the way to the front door.

“I was, but I just realised that I have to go to the library for something,” he said, picking up his keys. “I’ll be home by lunch.”

“Okay, Bud. Be safe!” Burt said, before Kurt assured him he would and pulled the front door shut behind him.

As he drove to the library, he knew that he had to get to the bottom of this. If Blaine wasn’t real, he owed it to himself to prove himself right. If Blaine was real, however, he felt that he owed it to Blaine to be his friend.

After all, he knew what it felt like to have none, and he wouldn’t wish that on anyone – living or dead.