“Can you leave now? Please?” Kurt’s voice was small, smaller than Blaine had ever heard it. He looked completely and utterly exhausted, and looked at him with eyes of a freakin’ puppy; Blaine had absolutely no choice in the matter.

  “Sure.” he breathed and stood up, walking to the door. Just before he’d closed it behind him, he turned around and looked at the boy sitting with his head rested against the paper-thin wall. His eyes were closed and his mouth was hanging slightly open.

   “Um, see you at school?”

   Kurt slowly opened his eyes and looked at Blaine, then smiled weakly.

   “Probably not.” he said, almost too quiet for him to hear. Blaine didn’t leave still, he just stood frozen at the spot, looking, or maybe more like staring, at Kurt, trying to somehow take in everything he’d been told.

   “Um –Blaine…” Kurt said, voice still a mare whisper, eyes closed. “Ehm, thank… you. Thank you.”

   “Don’t –don’t mention it.” Blaine smiled, quite a long way away from a little taken aback by the other’s words.

   And then he was finally outside again. The sun was starting to rise in the horizon, but it was still pretty dark where he stood. They air felt almost colder than it had before, his breaths turning to small foggy clouds as they left his mouth.

  For minutes he just stood there, just in front of Kurt’s so called home, looking up at the sky.

   And I thought my life was a mess. Blaine thought bitterly to himself, starting to walk home slowly. He had quite a far walk home now, and considering how cold it was, it wouldn’t be paradise. But he actually didn’t mind that much. It had been so long since he’d last been out just taking a walk.

  He walked slowly, repeating everything said between him and Kurt the past hours again and again in his head. It was a lot to go through.

  It was weird, but a part of him almost regretted that he’d been so keen to find out why Kurt was the way he was. Because he’d never imagined it to be that much behind everything; that that boy had already been through hell more times than it was fair.

   “They all died. They just… dropped. One by one. And they all left me behind.” These sentences seemed to be glued to the inside of his head. They repeated themselves again and again, and it hurt every time.

  Kurt had lost his mother and one of his brothers when he was seven. Then his father and other brother at fifteen. He had no family left, and he hadn’t even turned eighteen yet.

This made Blaine’s entire being ache like he didn’t know what. He couldn’t imagine… couldn’t even being to imagine what pain that boy must’ve gone through, what he must still be going through every day. It was just… too much. What made it able for him to get out of bed every morning he had no idea, because at the moment there really seemed to be nothing worthwhile that boy’s his life.

  Before than conversation, if Blaine was to be honest, he had thought that a lot of everything Kurt did was just because a part of him really was a douche, and he almost preferred still believing that instead of knowing. Because even though he knew close to no details, he still knew enough. And it scared him, but he was quite sure that if that had been him who’d been forced to go through all that, he wouldn’t still be alive.

   “My brother became my meaning in life. And then the fire took him away.”

   “I hate him. I hate him so much I could… I don’t know. All I know that I hate my… so called father with every fiber of my being. I hate him more than I hate myself. Because if you look at it, if you really look at it, it’s all his fault. And I’ll never forgive him.”

   “But still, if I hadn’t been so selfish, if I hadn’t only thought about getting myself away from the fire, then Blaine would still be alive. So it really is my fault, isn’t it? My fault because I ever only think about myself.”

   It was as if though by every step he took, another sentence sounded through his head. By every step he took he saw Kurt’s face and everything that had moved behind his eyes, all the memories that came to the surface again after he had no idea how long.

  It was in moments like these that Blaine wished that he really was that smug asshole that a big part of the people who knew of him thought he was. It was in moments like these he wished he didn’t care so much about other people. Caring hurt. Caring hurt so much, and when it came to caring about someone like Kurt… He must be really fucking stupid to ever let that happen.

 He should’ve been more careful. He should’ve stayed away, shouldn’t have let his damn curiosity take him over. Because now when he looked at that boy with all those flaws, he saw more than what he let everyone see and think. He hated that. Because he didn’t want to be the one who saw people. He wanted to be able to just not give a shit. He really did, but that wasn’t possible, was it? The sooner he realized the better, maybe.

    Blaine was about halfway home when he just couldn’t keep walking. He looked around him, and spotted a little playground on the other side if the road. It was rundown like hell, but that didn’t matter to him, because even though the paint was almost completely gone and even though the chains were rusty, the swing set would still work perfectly fine as somewhere to sit and rest for a moment.

 It almost looked like something out of some kind of dark movie, he had to think. It was so rundown and it almost felt like the air around it was darker than the rest. The fence around it was almost gone, both damaged by what he thought was some bored teenager, but also by all the wind and rain it seemed to have been through.

  He hesitated for a moment. It was something about hanging out alone on a playground that just screamed perve in his mind, as well as in many others. But it was the crack of dawn, so there weren’t any kids there anyway, not that he thought there ever was with the state everything was in.

 Apart from the swing set, there was a little, part rusty, slide and a playground carousel, which handles had been a darker shade of green once. It was the basic playground that was usually seen empty when you drove through the area, and that couldn’t avoid seeming a tiny bit spooky.

   The chains tussled when Blaine sat down on one of the swings. The black rubber of the giant wheel that made the swing was slightly damp and the chains were cold, but he barely noticed; he was just happy that he didn’t have to stand up for a little while.

He could barely feel his hands or feet, to Blaine it felt like they were a long way past frozen.

He reached for his jeans pocket, wanting to check the time on his cell, but found it empty.

  “What the hell…” he muttered to himself, searching his jacket as well. Nada.

  “Fuck…” he sighed. Had he dropped it while he was walking? He damn sure didn’t hope so, ‘cause then getting it back wasn’t an option. Maybe he’d dropped it at Kurt’s place? Even though that thought wasn’t exactly pleasing, it did sound better than having lost it at Scandals or something.

  The sun was getting more and more visible, and some of the windows were starting to light up, so he guessed that the time may have been somewhere around five or six in the morning. That meant another day at school after another sleepless night. Fucking fantastic.

When he was still at Dalton, that would mean slacking after in everything a painful lot, but everything was so ridiculously easy at McKinley so it didn’t affect his grades at all. Though the whole thing with no sleep and school the morning after was getting more and more common again.

 This time it wasn’t only the nightmares though, it was too, of course, but there was something else that kept him awake. He wasn’t sure exactly what it was, but it was some sort of weird feeling in his stomach. It made it hard for him to stay put in bed, made him want to… he wasn’t sure what it made him want to do. He wasn’t even sure to why it kept him awake either, it just did. And he was getting more and more tired. As things looked now, this would be the fourth night in a row with no sleep. (Though that was nothing compared to what he’d been through before.) Even though he more than disliked admitting it to himself, maybe he’d have to go back to Ms. Cooper again if things didn’t get better.

Not that he had anything against her; it was just that he didn’t like the questions she asked him and the fact that he needed help on the first place.

  Ms. Cooper was the guidance counselor Blaine had been signed up with after the… accident. He’d been signed up with her before, years back, just after his father had left and his mother had gotten so depressed she couldn’t function normally, and some grown up somewhere had decided that maybe it was best if Blaine had an extra family he could live with for a period of time. Ms. Cooper had been the one who’d gotten the task to try to help the twelve year old boy understand the situation, and try to convince him that living with another family for a while wasn’t that bad. She’d failed. He’d refused whatever offer he’d gotten; there was just no way he was leaving his mother when she was so sad already.

It didn’t even help when she’d started throwing things and screaming at someone who wasn’t there. The boy had refused to leave his mom.

 At last, Blaine didn’t have to go to Ms. Cooper’s appointments anymore, but after about a year, the nightmares started to invade his sleep, and he’d started going again. This had happened a few times since. He got worse and started seeing her again, then he got better and stopped, then it got worse again, and so it went on and on and on.

 After the accident, Blaine didn’t have a choice, he started seeing Ms. Cooper first twice a week, then once, then once every two weeks, and then it finally stopped.

  But now when the nightmares was coming back, and he was starting to get… bad again, he knew it was best if he went to see her again before things got out of control.

   Blaine kicked his feet in the ground softly, thinking that maybe he could rock himself to sleep or something. Sleeping sitting up on a swing in a playground nearly in pieces, in the crack of dawn in the end of November, was better than no sleep at all.