Kurt's phone begins buzzing while he's in his evening History of Theatre class; he gives an apologetic look to the professor before ducking out of the room, phone clutched in his fist. Leaning against the wall just outside the classroom he looks at the caller ID, eyebrows rising when he sees that it's Sam. Though they'd lived together briefly, he and Kurt had never really sparked up anything other than a general friendship, and Kurt's sure he can tick off the amount of times they've talked on the phone on one hand.

He leans against the wall and accepts the call, bringing his phone to his ear. "You called in the middle of class. This better be important."

"It is." Kurt immediately becomes alert at the tenseness of Sam's voice and he straightens up.

"Sam?" Kurt asks, clutching his phone a little harder. "What's wrong? Did something happen?"

Hesitance, then a deep, shaky breath that crackles the speakers. Kurt's heart begins to pound a little harder, and his body crackles with nervous energy. "Yeah, something...something happened."

"Please tell me," Kurt says. His legs feel weak with fear, and everything around him begins to fade out until everything is centered on the phone in his hand and Sam's voice hundreds of miles away.

"There was a shooting."

Kurt sucks in a breath. "At McKinley?"

"Yeah. No one...was killed."

Kurt is about to breathe out a sigh of relief when his brain catches up to Sam's words, that hesitance still present, still heavy. He'd said no one was killed. That means that people would be hurt—that means that people close to Kurt have been hurt. There's no other reason for Sam to be calling.

"Sam, who was hurt?" Kurt asks, pleads. He's aware of his voice going up, aware of the way he has to shakily press a hand to the coolness of the wall behind him. His phone is hot, too hot, in his hand, and the sound of people walking by him is too loud.

Sam says nothing for a minute that stretches on too long. Kurt can hear his breathing; hear his inhales as he must open his mouth to speak before closing it again. When he finally speaks, it's almost a plea. "You need to get down here."

"What?" Kurt blinks. "I still have three weeks of classes left, and I'm in the middle of one of them now. I can't just leave New York—"

"It was Blaine."

Kurt's stomach drops painfully fast. His heart thuds hard against his ribcage, like it's trying to escape. The wall feels like it had moved a couple of inches back, and Kurt is vaguely aware that he's swaying. He imagines Blaine, bleeding and injured. He imagines Blaine, so scared and probably trying to act like he knows what he's doing even when he doesn't. "Blaine was...was shot?"

"No."

"Then what—?"

"...He was...he was r—raped. By the shooter."

Kurt slides down the wall, his phone falling away from his ear but still held loosely in his hand. His ears ring; people walking by look at him curiously, and he thinks that one of them says something, but all Kurt can hear is Sam's tinny voice, over and over.

He was raped.

"We couldn't do anything," Sam's saying, voice tight and thick with tears. "The guy had his gun to Blaine's head and he threatened to kill him."

Blaine. Beautiful, strong, selfless Blaine.

"We couldn't fucking do anything." Sam's voice rises in anger, in hysteria. "And Blaine just...he just fucking took it. For us. I saw his eyes. He knew what was going to happen, and even before he was threatened he still didn't try to get away or turn on the guy."

Kurt's world spins dangerously, the floor unstable like he's in an earthquake. His eyes sting, face hot, and it's like an out-of-body experience when he realizes that he's crying, breaths almost inaudibly hitching. He thinks of the last time he and Blaine had talked on the phone (three nights ago) and how Blaine had laughed (beautiful and sweet and just enough to remind Kurt how painfully in love he still is) at something Kurt had said about NYADA. He thinks about the little heart Blaine had left in the final message he'd sent Kurt last night, and how Kurt had sent one back. He thinks about how things have finally been looking up, how he'd been looking forward to the summer to hopefully bring them back together, and how now, in an instant, everything is shattered and littered around Kurt in broken, glimmering pieces.

"Is he going to be okay," Kurt finally whispers. It's not a question, because Kurt doesn't want it to be a question. Kurt doesn't want any of this to be unsure.

"I...don't know. He's in the hospital and I think that his parents are there now, but...Kurt, god, I just don't know. The guy was...was brutal."

Kurt squeezes his eyes shut, shakes his head. He doesn't know how anyone could do this, how anyone could single out someone like Blaine, so sweet and innocent, and do this.

(Kurt remembers the first time he and Blaine had had sex, how eager but nervous Blaine was, how scared he was. He'll always remember that evening, the way Blaine had been gasping under him, how somehow they'd found a perfect rhythm halfway through and their bodies had worked together as one, undulating and rocking. He remembers how happy he'd been to have been the first person to feel Blaine in this way.)

(He doesn't think of Eli.)

"I need to get home," Kurt says. He tries to stand up and his legs wobble; he grabs onto the wall for support. "I need to see him. I need to see him right now."

I need to know you're okay, Blaine.

Another student asks if he's all right, and all Kurt does is shake his head and wave them off.

"I don't know if they'll let you into the room yet—"

"I don't care!" Kurt clenches his fist, clenches his teeth. He takes a deep breath and wipes away the tear that begins to slide down his face. "I can't—I won't let him go through this alone."

There's a pause, and then Sam says, heavy and world-worn, "Just...hurry up, man. And let me know when you get to Ohio."

Kurt turns around and walks away from his classroom.

----

Stella Anderson had thought that she'd seen the last of her son being in the hospital. Seeing him go through the trauma after the dance at his old school, then the eye incident last January, had taken its toll on her, and she dislikes how familiar she is now with hospital policy and rules. Everything is almost second-nature for her.

Sitting in the uncomfortable chair beside Blaine's bed, she strokes over the back of his hand and remembers the call, remembers the echoing crash of her mug on the hardwood floor of the kitchen. She tries not to remember the way Blaine had looked at her, hollow-eyed and eerily blank, when she'd gotten to the hospital, the way he'd whispered "Mommy" like it was the only thing keeping him together. She tries not to remember how a male nurse had accidentally touched Blaine when he wasn't expecting it and how he'd screamed and screamed, begging and pleading for some man—that man—to stop, please, not anymore, please, until he'd been sedated.

"Oh, Blaine," she whispers. "Why you?"

She smoothes a hand down Blaine's side over his uniform. The nurses had told her that they'd been unable to run any tests or take any samples before she'd gotten there and had stressed that Blaine undergo a forensic examination when he woke up. They have tests planned for HIV and STIs, as well as a SAFE kit ready.

Stella closes her eyes and tries to remember that morning, how she'd tried to get Blaine to sit down for breakfast but how he'd declined, saying that he'd needed to get to school early to work on something for glee. He'd been on his phone, then, texting someone and smiling whenever they'd send a reply back. She had wondered if it had been Kurt—Blaine was always so much happier when it was Kurt.

She'd let him go without breakfast, and now she wonders what would have happened if she hadn't. She knows, obviously, that she couldn't have forced Blaine to stay home from school, especially so close to the end of the year, but what if she had made a day of it? William may not have been home but she was. Maybe they could have spent the day shopping or gone to the zoo. She hasn't taken Blaine to the zoo since the summer before he'd started high school.

She continues to stroke over Blaine's hand and feels her heart clench. She struggles to take in a sufficient breath. Blaine's eyes are closed, and he's breathing evenly; he looks so peaceful, but Stella knows that it's only temporary. When Blaine wakes up she's going to see that haunted, hollowed look in his eyes that scares her more than anything. Blaine has never looked like that, not even after the dance.

She doesn't know what to do. She's completely clueless, and that might just be the most difficult part. There's nothing to prepare you for that call. There's nothing to prepare you for when you hear that your eighteen-year-old son had been raped in front of his friends. She wonders, absently, how they're doing. Then she realizes, selfishly, that she doesn't care. Not right now, not when her son is hurting.

She thinks back to one night when Blaine was a boy and she had cut herself pretty badly with a pair of gardening shears. She'd been careful to cover the floor and not show how hurt she really was. Blaine was such a sensitive boy; she didn't want to upset him. But he'd found her when she was cleaning her hand at the sink, water swirling pink-red down the drain, and had reached up to set a box full of band-aids on the kitchen counter.

"You always give me band-aids when I'm hurting," he'd said. "I don't want you to hurt anymore, Momma."

Blaine's always been eager to help anyone out; it's one of the reasons Stella's so proud to have him as her son. But now, in this bed when Blaine's hurting more than he ever has, Stella has no idea what to do. No band-aid is going to fix this. She isn't even sure how Blaine is going to recover mentally from this.

She presses a hand to her mouth, squeezes her eyes shut and lets out a hitched sob.

Blaine makes a noise in his sleep, shifting restlessly as his eyes dart behind his closed lids. Stella lets out a shaky breath, breathes deep and keeps her thumb moving gently over Blaine's hand. She whispers, just as much to him as to herself, "You're okay, baby. You're gonna be okay. Mommy's here, sweetie. You're safe now. You're safe."

Blaine still keeps moving, whimpering, and finally his eyes flutter open. The laxness sleep had given his body is instantly gone as he slowly becomes more aware. There's a furrow between his brows, and he looks at Stella with a horrible cloud of confusion for a few moments too long.

She sucks in a breath, holds it, and only lets it out when Blaine says, shakily, "Mommy?"

"I'm here." She nods, tentatively lifts her hand up and reaches it out. When Blaine doesn't flinch she strokes over his cheek and feels the fine tremor of his body. "Hey, baby."

Blaine shifts on the bed and lets out a groan, his eyes squeezing shut and his mouth twisting in a frown. He tries to curl in further on himself and gasps in pain. Stella reaches out, wants to touch him but isn't sure if she should. They'd told her that he'd react better to her touch, but what if he doesn't? What if he freaks out again and this time it's all her fault?

Blaine whimpers. "It hurts."

"I know, sweetie, I know. But the doctors will make it better, okay? They'll get you fixed up."

He shakes his head, pulls away when Stella tries to touch him again. "I'm not going to get better."

Her eyebrows crinkle together. "Sweetie, what—?"

Blaine's next words are tiny, hushed and ominous and awful, and at first Stella can barely understand them. "I deserved it."

When she does it's like every nerve ending in her body has suddenly flash-frozen. She's shaking her head before she realizes it and tries to say as comforting as she can, "No, Blaine, it's okay—"

"No it's not!" Blaine shouts. His eyes are red-rimmed, full of tears, and he starts crying again as he tugs at the hem of his Cheerios shirt like he wants it off. "He singled me out because of this stupid uniform. He didn't choose Kitty, or Brittany. He chose me and I...I liked it." Blaine's voice rises again and it takes everything in Stella not to try to touch his arm to calm him down. Tears slip down his cheeks, one after the other, and his eyes have gone distant. "It h-hurt so bad and I didn't want it and I was so hum—humiliated but he still...he still made me—I still—"

He doesn't finish, but he doesn't need to.

"That doesn't mean anything," she finally says, struggling to keep her voice level and neutrally comforting. She just wants to see the warm light back in his eyes. "Okay? It's not your fault. None of this is. You can't help how your body—how your body reacts. That doesn't mean that you liked it. Baby, you will get better."

Blaine shakes his head vehemently, but before he can answer a nurse walks in with a clipboard in her hands. She looks between the two of them for a moment before she says, "Blaine, if you're up and ready we have a few tests waiting for you." She looks at Stella. "If you wouldn't mind waiting outside, please, Mrs. Anderson."

Stella bites her lip and nods, slowly. She squeezes Blaine's hand, presses a kiss to his forehead. "You're still my brave little boy, Blaine."

She doesn't cry until she reaches the bathroom, and only then does she dial her husband.