votestarkforpresident: blaine, are you okay? i know that we aren't very close or anything, since we just started talking a few weeks ago…but i already consider you one of my friends, and the fact that you haven't messaged me in four days is worrying me. please, just send me an IM. or even an ask on tumblr. i'm not picky. i just want to make sure that you're okay.

sherlarked asked didyouparkthetardisonameter:
2012-05-31 02:16
Okay, it's been a full week, and I am really, REALLY worried about you. You haven't been on AIM, you haven't replied to any of my messages, and it looks like your queue ran out yesterday morning, because I haven't seen any posts from you on Tumblr since then. I know that I'm just someone that you met online, and we aren't close, but not knowing what's going on really makes me sad and nervous. Please, just send me *something* to let me know that you're okay.

votestarkforpresident: if something is going on, and you can't get online for very long, i understand. real life gets in the way sometimes, and that’s not a problem. just…just send me something - anything - so that i know you're alive and well, okay?

sherlarked
2012-06-04 17:23
Has anyone heard from Blaine (didyouparkthetardisonameter) lately? I've noticed that we have some mutual followers...I haven't heard anything at all from him in more than a week and a half, and I'm worried that something bad has happened. Has anyone heard anything from him at all? Or do any of you know what's going on?
#didyouparkthetardisonameter #missing friends #message me if you know something please

votestarkforpresident: it’s been nearly two weeks. i hope that you’re okay.

sherlarked asked didyouparkthetardisonameter:
2012-06-08 02:27
I’m beginning to wonder if, maybe, I’ve done something wrong? The last time that we spoke, Blaine, you told me some really personal information…did I handle it incorrectly? Or offend you somehow? I promise you that offending you was not my intent. I was just trying to be a good friend. If I handled the situation incorrectly, then I want to apologize. Please don’t shut me out, though. I can’t fix things if we don’t talk about it.

sherlarked
2012-06-11 04:31
I know that I posted about this about a week ago, but has anyone heard anything from Blaine (didyouparkthetardisonameter)? If so, could you please let me know…or, if you’re able to talk with him, can you ask him to message me, please?
#didyouparkthetardisonameter #missing friends

votestarkforpresident: just wanted to let you know i’m thinking of you. i hope that you’re okay and that nothing has happened.

sherlarked asked didyouparkthetardisonameter:
2012-06-15 19:41
It’s been over three weeks. I know that I’m not the only one worried about you…some of your other followers have been leaving messages and making posts, too. Please just send us a message. I hope that you’re okay.

votestarkforpresident: blaine. please.

***

“Maybe he died?”

Kurt looked up at the sound of Harmony’s voice, his now-lukewarm lemonade long forgotten, an incredulous look on his face. A thousand difference responses flittered through his mind, but before he had the chance to react, Unique spoke.

“What the hell is wrong with you?” she demanded, her voice crackling slightly through Kurt’s iPhone speakers. “Why would you say something like that?”

“I’m not trying to–”

“–can’t you see how upset Kurt is, Harmony?”

“Now, wait just a second! I’m only trying to–”

“–honestly, do you have any tact at all?”

It was a nice, warm Tuesday afternoon in Defiance, and Harmony had decided that they should spend some quality time outdoors; Kurt had resisted her suggestion for a good twenty or so minutes, complaining that he hadn’t brought any sunscreen with him – he had assumed that they would be spending all day inside – and that the sun would absolutely ruin his skin. Harmony had ultimately won the argument by digging around in her closest for a bit and, eventually, throwing a surprisingly expensive-looking bottle of SPF 100 at him.

Three hours later found the two lazily sprawled out across an old, checkered blanket in Harmony’s backyard. Harmony sat at one end of the blanket, her head bent over her Kindle Fire as she scrolled through her dash; Kurt didn’t particularly understand her need to go outside if she was just going to keep blogging, but wisely kept his mouth shut, because he knew Harmony well enough to know that her explanation would likely turn into some hour-long rant.

Kurt, for his part, sat comfortably against a large oak tree, reading an old, worn copy of The Great Gatsby. His phone sat between the two of them, speakerphone on so that they could chat with Unique, who had called Kurt about an hour earlier with a question about Sherlock.

"Stop yelling at me!"

Harmony’s sudden outburst surprised Unique enough that she immediately went quiet on the other end of the phone.

Harmony ran her fingers through her hair in frustration and sighed, suddenly sitting up straight. She set her Kindle down on the blanket and looked between Kurt and his phone. "I'm not trying to be mean,” she said after a second. “Please, just hear me out, all right?"

"Start talking," Kurt said finally, watching her closely.

Harmony was quiet for a long time, obviously trying to gather her thoughts.

"I wasn't trying to be insensitive or cruel," she said eventually, "and if it came off that way, then I truly apologize, Kurt."

Kurt gave her a short nod, letting her know that he accepted her apology.

"My point when I said that is, well..." she trailed off for a second, almost as though she was trying to think of the correct way of wording what she wanted to say. “I think that, sometimes, the two of you forget that this is the internet."

"Excuse you?" snapped Unique, irritated. "Does it look like we’re stupid?"

Harmony sighed and leaned forward, burying her face in her hands. She took a deep breath before looking back up at them.

"That is not what I meant," she replied defensively. "Look, I know that this entire conversation is making me look like an ass, but I am really, really not trying to be one. I'm just attempting to be realistic here.”

Kurt stared down at the cover of his book for a few seconds, his fingers lightly tracing across the raised letters of the title. “What do you mean, Harmony?”

“The internet is absolutely massive, guys, and people vanish from it every single day,” she said, inching closer to the phone. “I can't even begin to tell you – okay, look, I can name at least twelve people that I followed on Tumblr who just up and disappeared one day; and, for the record, they were people who posted thirty, forty, even fifty times a day. They were always there until, one day, when they suddenly weren’t.”

“So, what, you think that Blaine just woke up one day and decided that he was sick of the internet?” asked Unique, sounding absolutely bewildered by the very idea of anyone voluntarily going offline.

Harmony shook her head. “No, I don’t think that at all. What I am saying is that the nature of the internet makes it almost impossible for us to know why someone has disappeared.”

Kurt finally looked up at that. “What do you mean?”

“Well, some people choose to go offline for personal reasons,” Harmony explained, “and others go offline because they have no choice. The major problem with the internet – in this case, anyway – is that everyone has to make a choice, at one point or another, about how much information they want to share with someone online.”

“What does that have to do with anything?” asked Unique.

“Do you keep your relationship with person A confined strictly to the internet? Do you give person B your phone number? Do you agree to meet person C in real life?” Harmony said, reaching up with her left hand to tuck a strand of her long, dark hair back behind her ear. “My point here is that if someone doesn’t trade any information like this with someone else, it becomes much more difficult to find out what has happened with them if they suddenly disappear.”

Kurt stared at her, confused. “Harmony, you’re not seriously saying that we should give everyone our phone numbers and addresses?”

“No,” she replied, “of course not. That would be irresponsible. Kurt, I have nine-hundred and eighty-two followers on Tumblr. I would have to be an absolute idiot to give my phone number and address out to all of them.”

Unique spoke, her voice again crackling through the speakers. “So, what are you saying, exactly?”

“If you are chatting with someone online for a long period of time – and building a friendship with them – then, eventually, you are going to have to make a decision,” Harmony replied, glancing down at the phone. “Do you think that you know them well enough to try building a friendship with them offline? Do you think you can trust them with personal information like your phone number? If so, then you give them that information. If not, well, then you confine the friendship to being online only.”

Kurt and Unique were silent, contemplating Harmony’s words. Eventually, Unique spoke.

“So, going back to the disappearance issue, how does this tie in?”

“Well, I’ll use myself as an example,” Harmony said. “You two are the only two people on Tumblr that I know in real life. Unique and I spoke for nearly six months before we finally agreed to meet offline, and meeting Kurt in real life was completely accidental; if I hadn’t grabbed his phone that day at the NYADA mixer, and recognized his URL, we probably wouldn’t be best friends – or, at least, we wouldn’t be nearly as close as we are. Now, aside from the two of you, there are four other people on Tumblr who have my phone number and know my full name.”

“All right,” Kurt said.

“Let’s say that, tomorrow afternoon, I am killed in a car crash. Chances are high that my followers would find out what happened rather quickly because, at the very least, I know the two of you in person. You would either make a post letting everyone know that I had passed away, or people who wanted to know what happened could message one of you. Now, even if I took the two of you out of the equation completely, there are still four other people who have both my home phone number and my cell. So, if a week or two passed, and I hadn’t been online at all, then those four could still potentially contact my mother and find out what happened.”

Kurt cringed slightly at the idea of his best friend dying, but understood what she was trying to say. “So, as far as Blaine is concerned –”

“– it doesn’t look like anyone has his phone number,” Harmony continued, casting Kurt a sad look. “That means that if Blaine isn’t answering his e-mails – or Tumblr asks, or AIM messages – then there is really very little that can be done. Because no one has his phone number, the ability to contact him is solely limited to online communication and, well, if Blaine isn’t online…”

“Then no one can reach him,” Unique finished, her voice soft and hesitant.

Harmony nodded. “Exactly.”

***

votestarkforpresident: just wanted to let you know i was thinking of you. i hope that you're all right.

sherlarked
2012-06-20 15:53
Weekly post asking if anyone has heard from Blaine (didyouparkthetardisonameter) lately?
#didyouparkthetardisonameter #missing friends #message me if you know something please

votestarkforpresident: harmony said some stuff the other day that has been bothering me. i want to talk with you about it, but you're not here. irony. anyway, i hope that you're doing all right, blaine.

votestarkforpresident: there's a matt smith sex riot on tumblr right now. i'm not in the doctor who fandom, so i don't know what caused it - i think he breathed or something - but i'm saving links for you to look at when you come back.
votestarkforpresident: also, he is pretty attractive. i’m still not going to watch doctor who, though.

sherlarked asked didyouparkthetardisonameter:
2012-06-22 20:41
I was chatting with a bunch of people earlier today in Tinychat, and one of them basically implied that I should give up on you ever coming back. I think that my weekly “where is Blaine?” posts annoyed them. I got really upset and left the chat room, and then I immediately unfollowed them because, clearly, they had no soul. Anyway, today marks a month since the last time we spoke, but I’m not going to give up on you coming back. You’re my friend, and I think to do so would imply that I don’t –

sherlarked asked didyouparkthetardisonameter:
2012-06-22 20:46
–care anymore. But I *do* care. A lot. And I’m not going to stop messaging you, Blaine. I don’t know if you left because you wanted to leave, or if something bad happened that made you leave, but I truly believe it was the latter. So, I’m going to keep messaging you. That way, when you come back, you’ll know that at least one person had faith in you. I care, and I’m not going anywhere.

votestarkforpresident: i watched ‘captain america’ earlier today with my dad, and it made me think of you and your entirely misguided belief that steve rogers is better than tony stark. anyway, i miss you, blaine. i that hope you come back soon.

***

Harmony had some sort of family function the following Monday afternoon, which essentially left Kurt to his own devices. His original plan had been to spend the day lazing about at home, reading Sherlock fanfiction and trolling Tumblr like a seasoned pro, but that plan had been ruined by none other than his stepbrother.

Although more than a year had passed since the day that Kurt had been thrown down the stairwell by Karofsky, Finn and Kurt had yet to reconcile. Finn, much like his girlfriend and the remaining members of New Directions, still blamed Kurt for “not making enough of an effort” to convince them of how Karofsky had been treating him.

Kurt, on the other hand, was absolutely done with giving his stepbrother and his old friend’s second chances. As far as Kurt was concerned, they had betrayed his trust one time too many, and he was done making excuses for their behavior.

As such, things in the Hudson-Hummel home were strained. Finn and Kurt made an effort to be civil with one another for the sake of their parents, but aside from that, they barely interacted at all; they were, for all intents and purposes, two strangers living in the same house. They talked and associated with one another when they absolutely had to do so, but otherwise went out of their way to completely ignore the other’s presence.

Burt and Carole obviously weren’t thrilled with the arrangement, but there was really very little that they could do to change things; neither Kurt nor Finn were willing to budge from their position on the matter, and their one and only attempt at forcing the two boys to try and talking things out had been an absolute disaster.

Although Kurt was now a pro at ignoring his stepbrother’s existence, he was not keen on the idea of having to deal with both Finn and the rest of New Directions at once. So, that morning, when he accidentally overheard Finn telling Carole that he had invited Rachel, Artie, Quinn, and Mercedes over for the day, Kurt made a split-second decision to vacate the house immediately.

Two hours later found Kurt sitting at a booth in the far-back left corner of the Lima Bean, his laptop open on the table and a grande non-fat mocha sitting a safe distance away from it (the absolute last thing Kurt needed right now was to accidentally elbow his coffee and spill it on his laptop).

He was in the middle of reading a rather well-written Sherlock one-shot when AIM dinged, indicating that he had a new message. He switched windows and raised an eyebrow when he realized that the message was from Unique.

thatswhatmakesyoubeautiful1: KURT. HAVE YOU BEEN ON TUMBLR YET?
votestarkforpresident: no, not yet. i was reading a sherlock fic. why?
thatswhatmakesyoubeautiful1: ;adsfhgsgladskjghadsjhgasdlghadsklghads
thatswhatmakesyoubeautiful1: gklhadslgkjadshgklhadsklghadsl
thatswhatmakesyoubeautiful1: you need to go to the astronomy tower NOW
thatswhatmakesyoubeautiful1: she updated it

Kurt’s eyes widened significantly at the mention of The Astronomy Tower, the romantic subsection of FictionAlley, which was the largest Harry Potter fanfiction website online.

There could only be one story that Unique was talking about.

votestarkforpresident: oh, no.
thatswhatmakesyoubeautiful1: oh, yes.
thatswhatmakesyoubeautiful1: ls;dghsd just when i thought today would be boring, harmony makes the day even better
votestarkforpresident: is it bad that i’m excited :|

Although it was absolutely undeniable that Harmony was a woman of many talents – she could sing, dance, play both the saxophone and piano, and she made absolutely breathtaking graphics (which was, coincidentally, the way in which she had gained most of her nearly one-thousand followers on Tumblr) – there was one aspect of life that she failed at miserably.

Writing.

While Harmony had a good grasp of spelling and grammar, the primary problem with Harmony’s Harry Potter fanfiction was that she had a horrible, horrible tendency to write self-insertion stories - self-insertion’s that almost always turned into terrible Mary Sue’s.

Kurt immediately opened The Astronomy Tower and, sure enough, there it was at the top of the page.

Harmony Potter and the Half-Blood Prince by HeroicHarmonySnape (Chapters: 21)
Things get turned upside down when Harry Potter’s long-lost twin sister comes to Hogwarts! Talented and beautiful, Harmony is more than a match for her brother and his friends, but she hides a terrible secret that threatens to destroy them all. What happens when a certain dark and mysterious Potions master figures it out?

thatswhatmakesyoubeautiful1: oj;ldsghlkjdshdsh oh glorious day
thatswhatmakesyoubeautiful1: it starts with a sex scene omg omg omg omg
thatswhatmakesyoubeautiful1: “the dark-haired potions master trailed a finger across her breasts, his deep, silky voice murmuring in her ear. ‘tell me what you want,’ he said, pressing a kiss against her throat ‘do i make you wet?’”
thatswhatmakesyoubeautiful1: DO I MAKE YOU *WET*
thatswhatmakesyoubeautiful1: SOBBING I CAN’T EVEN
thatswhatmakesyoubeautiful1: it’s so terrible omg
thatswhatmakesyoubeautiful1: jfc you would think she’d put more effort into her sex scenes when she’s self-inserting, wouldn’t you
votestarkforpresident: oh my god, i don’t want to read this.
thatswhatmakesyoubeautiful1: also, snape is gross
votestarkforpresident: snape is not gross. he’s a very intense character. he’s just…
thatswhatmakesyoubeautiful1: gross? old? greasy?
votestarkforpresident: i am ignoring that. also, is the whole chapter terrible sex? i don’t want to read this! ick.

Unique and Kurt had both tried, numerous times, to tactfully tell Harmony that her writing was terrible. Of course, none of their attempts had worked, and she kept writing. Each time she updated, the two would read the chapter – even though they knew it would be absolutely terrible – because it was sort of like a train wreck, where you couldn’t look away even if you tried.

thatswhatmakesyoubeautiful1: someone sent her a flame omg
votestarkforpresident: already?
thatswhatmakesyoubeautiful1: oh god, she just referred to snape’s penis as “his meat”
thatswhatmakesyoubeautiful1: whyyyyyyy
votestarkforpresident: i think we need to have another intervention with her about this
thatswhatmakesyoubeautiful1: why? she won’t listen to us. she never does. we’ve had like eight interventions about her writing. she always says that “we don’t understand because we aren’t as into hp as she is” and then ignores us completely
votestarkforpresident: true, true.

Kurt minimized the AIM window for a moment and maximized Chrome, quickly clicking to the tab that currently held his dash. The top of the page said that he had twenty-six new posts, so he clicked refresh.

And immediately froze as he caught sight of the third post down.

didyouparkthetardisonameter
2012-06-25 11:02
Read More

Kurt stared.

And stared.

And stared.

A good minute had to have passed before AIM’s incessant beeping finally caught his attention.

thatswhatmakesyoubeautiful1: omg now they’re doing anal and there’s no lube
thatswhatmakesyoubeautiful1: how does her brain even work
thatswhatmakesyoubeautiful1: no comments, kurt?
thatswhatmakesyoubeautiful1: kurt?
thatswhatmakesyoubeautiful1: KURT?
votestarkforpresident: sorry, i wasn’t paying attention. blaine just made a post on tumblr.
thatswhatmakesyoubeautiful1: WHAT.
thatswhatmakesyoubeautiful1: hold on i’m loading my dash.

Kurt clicked back to his dash and immediately clicked on the ‘Read More.’

i'm sorry about disappearing for so long without contacting anyone. i know that i worried a lot of you and, for that, i'm sorry. some very terrible things have happened in my personal life these past few weeks, and i was unable - and, i guess if i'm being entirely honest, a bit unwilling - to go online because of it. i'm around now, though. sort of. i'm probably not going to be around as much as i was before - not for awhile, anyways - but i'll be online enough to check messages and get back to people. my first project after posting this is to reply to the IMs and asks people have left me, so i promise that i'll get back to you soon.

again, i'm sorry if i worried you. i'm fine.

Kurt frowned at the screen. He was glad that Blaine was back, of course, but there was something very off about that post. After having been missing in action for over a month, Kurt very much doubted that Blaine was “fine.”

He glanced up at the clock hanging in the corner of the Lima Bean for a long moment before returning his gaze to his laptop.

thatswhatmakesyoubeautiful1: i wonder what happened
thatswhatmakesyoubeautiful1: he doesn’t sound okay
thatswhatmakesyoubeautiful1: has he messaged you?
votestarkforpresident: not yet, but i think he just made the post. should i message him, maybe?
thatswhatmakesyoubeautiful1: idk. do you think he’ll answer?
votestarkforpresident: i guess we’ll find out.

Kurt opened Blaine’s blog and sent him an ask.

sherlarked asked didyouparkthetardisonameter:
2012-06-25 11:23
I don’t want to bother you, but if you want to talk at all about what happened, I’m willing to listen. <3 I’m on AIM right now if you’re able to log on.

It was about five minutes later that a new message appeared in his inbox.

didyouparkthetardisonameter asked sherlarked:
2012-06-25 11:27
I’lll bea on in a secnd.

Kurt frowned at the shortness – and incorrect spelling – of the reply, but shrugged it off. A second or two passed, then a little window in the bottom-right corner of his laptop popped up to inform him that ‘hiddlestonismyforeverking is online.’

hiddlestonismyforeverking: hii kegolas.
hiddlestonismyforeverking: i’m sory i haven’t been around.
votestarkforpresident: you don’t have to apologize, blaine. you weren’t ignoring me on purpose. are you okay?
hiddlestonismyforeverking: not relly. i men, i’m as okay as i can be right now. but i’m nt greeat.
hiddlestonismyforeverking: i’m sorry fro the typos. its kindaa hards to rtype.

Kurt paused for a moment before replying, his fingers hovering just over the keyboard. It had taken Blaine almost three minutes to write seventeen words, and the amount of typos in his messages was borderline ridiculous.

votestarkforpresident: what do you mean it’s hard to type? :/
votestarkforpresident: you don’t have to tell me if you don’t want. i don’t want to pressure you into anything.
hiddlestonismyforeverking: my lft arm is brokkn and soo isd my rights wrists
hiddlestonismyforeverking: so its harsds to maneuver my armsa coreectly
hiddlestonismyforeverking: its took me almostsa an hours and a halaf to types my posts on tumblr withouds it beings weird looksing :/

Kurt gaped at his screen.

What the hell had happened to Blaine to result in a broken arm and a broken wrist?

He stared at the screen for another minute, his mind racing. While he understood the points that Harmony had made the week before – as crazy as Harmony normally was, when she made sense, she made sense – the fact of the matter was that Kurt didn’t know Blaine well enough to give him his phone number just yet. Years of being let down by those he had trusted had made him wary of trusting so quickly, especially with information that could potentially be used to hurt him. That being said, though, he didn’t want to force Blaine to keep typing when it was probably painful and uncomfortable for the other boy.

Maybe there was another solution.

votestarkforpresident: do you have skype, blaine?
votestarkforpresident: i know it hurts for you to type. we don’t have to video chat, but maybe we could do a call? that way we can talk without it being painful and awkward for you?

Two minutes passed before Blaine answered him.

hiddlestonismyforeverking: yes. i do. whatsa yours skype name
votestarkforpresident: keh.watsoned
hiddlestonismyforeverking: i’ll addd you ands messages you
hiddlestonismyforeverking is now offline.

Less than a minute later, a Skype notification popped up, telling Kurt that ‘justremember.nottoblink’ had requested his contact information. Kurt raised an eyebrow at the username – knowing Blaine, he assumed it was a Doctor Who reference of some sort – and clicked accept.

Kurt, suddenly remembering that he was in the middle of the Lima Bean, quickly dug around in his bag for his headphones; the corner he was situated in was fairly empty, but he still didn’t want to bother anyone, and nor did he want anyone eavesdropping on their entire conversation.

Kurt plugged in his headphones just in time to hear the tell-tale sound of a Skype call.

He took a deep breath and clicked answer.

***

“Hi,” Kurt breathed once the call had connected. “Can you hear me okay, Blaine?”

A moment had passed without any answer, but Kurt could hear a muffled noise of some sort, which he thought might be movement. Finally, after what seemed like an eternity, Blaine spoke.

“Hi, Krollum,” he said. “Sorry about that...I had to get situated. It’s hard to move around and, honestly, it’s pretty uncomfortable for me to exist at this point.”

The first thought that Kurt had was that Blaine had a very nice, and kind, voice. The second thought that Kurt had was that Blaine’s comment made him even more nervous about what he was likely to hear over the course of this conversation.

“Blaine,” Kurt said after a moment, “I don’t want to force you to talk about things if you don’t want to, but...where have you been?”

“I was in the hospital for almost two weeks,” Blaine said after a long moment of silence. “I broke my left arm, my right wrist, and my left ankle.”

Kurt’s eyes widened at that. “What happened to you?”

“I don’t want to bother you with this,” Blaine said finally. He sounded tired and sad, and it made Kurt’s heart ache.

“You aren’t bothering me,” replied Kurt firmly. “I wouldn’t have asked if I didn’t care.”

Blaine made a noise over the call that might have been part amusement, part exasperation.

“All right, then. Do you remember last month, that weekend that I was going to go home to see my parents? Well, my house caught fire my first night back,” Blaine explained after a moment of silence. “I was asleep – I’ve always been a pretty deep sleeper – and it wasn’t the fire that woke me.”

Kurt stared at his screen. “What woke you?”

“My parents were screaming at each other in the hallway,” Blaine replied.

“Why would they be arguing when their house is on fire?” Kurt asked, frowning. “Wouldn’t their first priority be to get everyone out of the house?”

The silence that stretched after that comment was longer than it should have been, and Kurt suddenly wondered if he had said something wrong.

Blaine finally let out a humorless chuckle. “That’s what they were arguing about.”

“They were arguing about leaving their burning house?” asked Kurt, perplexed.

“No,” Blaine said after a second. “They were arguing about me leaving my burning house.”

Kurt froze, suddenly having a terrible feeling that he knew where this story was headed.

“My mot–” Blaine cut off suddenly and took a deep, shuddering breath. “My mother told my father to leave me. She said that a fa – a person like me – wasn’t worth risking their lives over.”

Kurt sat back in his seat, slack jawed. What sort of cold-hearted woman would leave her child behind to burn to death, just to save her own life – and, even worse, just because he happened to be gay?

A muffled sound snapped Kurt from his thoughts, and it took him a moment to realize that it had come from Blaine.

Blaine was crying.

“I’m sorry,” the other boy apologized. “I’m just – I haven’t talked to anyone else about any of this, not even my brother. I don’t mean to cry.”

Kurt shook his head fervently, even though he knew Blaine couldn’t see it. “Don’t ever apologize for something like that, Blaine,” he said. “Wh–what happened, next?

“My father told my mother that he wouldn’t leave without me,” Blaine said, his voice cracking. “My mother gave up on arguing with him and left. From what the firemen later told my brother, she never made it out of the house. I guess she got trapped somewhere.”

While Kurt had no sympathy for Blaine’s late mother, he felt immensely bad for Blaine. He knew better than anyone that losing your mother – even if she was a cold-hearted, selfish bitch – was difficult.

“My dad came into my room,” Blaine continued. “I was obviously already awake by then. I jumped out of bed, and we went back into the hall to try and get down the stairs. The fire was already there, though, so we had to backtrack. We managed to get back into my room. My dad started to pull the sheets from my bed and tie them together, but we didn’t have any time, and –”

Blaine stopped talking as another sobbing noise escaped him.

Kurt bit at his lip, willing himself not to start crying, too.

“Blaine, what happened next?”

Blaine took a deep breath. “The fire started to get into my room, and there was smoke everywhere; it was hard to breathe, and we were running out of time. We managed to get my window open, and my dad wanted me to jump. I didn’t want to go without him, but he wouldn’t listen.”

Kurt did not speak, instead waiting for Blaine to continue.

“We could hear sirens in the distance, so obviously the firemen and paramedics were on their way. My dad finally gave up on arguing with me and he – he shoved me out the window. That’s how I broke my arm, wrist, and ankle; my bedroom was on the third floor. I’m lucky to have gotten away with so few injuries from a fall like that.”

Kurt stared blankly at the screen. “And your dad?”

Blaine was quiet for a long, long time.

“He never made it out,” he said finally. “I waited, and waited, and waited, but he never came out after me. They told my brother that he got trapped in my bedroom and died from smoke inhalation.”

Kurt blinked back tears as the full impact of Blaine’s words hit him.

Blaine’s father had died saving his life.

“I thought for so long that he hated me,” Blaine admitted, “but he didn’t. He saved my life, and now I’ll never see him again. I’ll never be able to tell him thank you.”

Kurt took a deep breath. “I am so, so sorry for your loss, Blaine. I know that I probably can’t do much over the internet, but if there’s anything that I can do, please let me know.”

“Listening helps,” Blaine assured him. “I haven’t told anyone else any of this. Honestly, I’m afraid to tell my brother. He was always really close with my mom, and...”

"Blaine?"

Blaine took a deep, shuddering breath. “Telling you is easier, I think, if that makes any sense? I mean, is that weird? That I feel more comfortable telling this to someone that I don’t even know rather than my own brother?”

“I don’t think it’s weird,” Kurt said thoughtfully. “I think that, sometimes, it’s easier to tell personal things to someone who isn’t involved. You’re afraid your brother will judge and blame you, but you don’t have that same fear with me.”

“Yeah,” Blaine replied.

“You said you and your brother were really close now, right?” Kurt asked after a long pause. “I think that you should tell him, Blaine. I don’t think he would blame you...you need someone at home to help you get through this – are you staying with him?”

“Yeah,” Blaine replied. “That’s part of the reason that I was offline for so long. I was in the hospital for almost two weeks, and then I had to move across the country to live with my brother. I lost my phone and computer in the fire, too, so I couldn’t get online at all, even after I got out of the hospital. My brother just bought me replacements the other day, though, so that’s why I could get online again…plus, if I’m being entirely honest, part of me just didn’t want to be online for awhile. I guess I just needed to deal with what happened.”

“I understand,” Kurt said softly. “I do think you should tell him, though.”

“I think that I will,” Blaine replied after a few seconds. “By the way, I got all of your messages. I’m so sorry that I worried you. I appreciate each one, though. You have no idea how much they mean to me.”

Kurt smiled at the empty screen. “You’re welcome.”

There was a moment of silence, and then Blaine spoke. “Do you – do you think that, maybe, we could talk about something else for awhile, Kilbo? I don’t really want to think about this right now.”

“Of course we can change the subject,” Kurt said, smiling slightly at the terrible ‘k’ name. He knew that they would probably talk about things again at some point, but for now, he was more than willing to let it go for Blaine. “Did you get my message about the Matt Smith sex riot? I saved you a bunch of links…”