It – The Event – happened on a Tuesday.

What's that saying again? Nothing good ever happens on a Tuesday. Or is that Sunday? Either way, it happened. On a Tuesday. A seemingly innocuous day, really. Just a regular day, a routine day filled with class lectures, a meeting or two and the daily scoops at the Big Gay Ice Cream Shop with Rachel. And it forever altered Kurt's life, permanently and horrifically; a jagged rupture roughly exploded open, scar tissues only beginning to form. The hole would never be closed. It could never be closed.

As deep as the Mariana trench and as wide as the Grand Canyon, nothing short of divine intervention could or would close that fissure, cataclysmically and violently carved down the center of his soul. It left in its wake a constant, bone-deep ache, a simmering intensity that never quite lessens but never entirely increases either. It just remains, a shadowy, nebulous thing that tricks you into believing you've never been without it.

At first, it'd been unbearable, making Kurt want to scream and scratch and claw and dig at his skin to get it out, to wrestle it and rip it out of the molecules of his body. He didn't care about the further marring it would do to his flesh. He didn't care about the pain cutting it out would inevitably cause.

Kurt just wanted it out, out and gone and tossed into the deepest recesses of the universe.

The doctors all reassured him it was normal, this abstract phantom ache, that one day he would simply awake and it would just be – gone, gone like it never existed in the first place, gone like it'd never even occurred or possessed his body. But they didn't have to live with it until that day – not today, not yesterday, not tomorrow – came. No amount of medicine, no amount of salves or balms or massages, or herbs – none of it worked, none of it dulled the sensation of it.

It just…remained, stagnant and collecting toxic mold, pungent in its stilled state.

So Kurt learned, over time, over painful seconds and minutes and hours and days, to deal with it, to tolerate its existence, to even find some semblance of solitude in its suffocating presence. It became almost friend-like, a companion that he never even wanted, never imagined yet now can't seem to desire its dissolution or exit. His doctors praised his efforts, complimented him on his ability to deal with…well, all of it. His doctors cited him as a healthy example, a pillar of inner and mental strength, a warrior among survivors.

The joke is on them, though.

Because he's not dealing with it. He's not some shining, sparkly pillar of inner and mental strength. He's not a warrior. A survivor, yes, but no, not a warrior. All of it, the recovery, the one-step-at-a-time, the one-foot-in-front-of-the-other, daily grind of living, all of it is just something required, necessary because if he doesn't do any of it, he'll sink, plummet beneath the crashing, violent waves and drown, arms and legs thrashing, thrashing and reaching, reaching for air, just one more breath, please one more breath.

It was easy for the doctors, for his array of psychologists, for his family and his friends. It was easy to put under the bright and shiny lights of statistics of victory. It was easy to look at him as the sum total of everything that had gone very, very right as a result of something very, very wrong.

Until he'd had enough and no longer wanted to be the pillar, to be the warrior. He no longer wanted the trite praise, the sort-of empathy. He no longer wanted to live under the blazing microscope of his life now. It gets old. All of the pats on the back. All of the too-quick, hollowly tipped smiles. All of the rushing to help. All of the guiding hands. All of the attention (and to think he once fucking craved attention like a damn drug, God how stupid he'd been in his naiveté and ambition).

It just gets – old.

So he packed up all the praise, all the pats on the back, all the smiles and guiding, helpings hands and heaved it ingloriously into a mental box, secured it with bitterness and unrelenting color and retreated. The retreat served him better than his old ambition. It served him better than all the tireless trying he did when he'd been infused with optimism and a penchant for dreaming big, for dreaming all his Lima, wide-eyed and innocent dreams.

It built him Blackbird Designs.

It built him this deep desire to create something beautiful out of dirt, grime, darkness and violence; it built him this voracious, limitless need to control the uncontrollable. Each success only deepened the need. It only made retreating easier. They – the world-at-large – call him a recluse, some high-fashion version of Howard Hughes. He honestly doesn't mind the comparison; Hughes did, after all, charm Katherine Hepburn and assisted in the resurrection of her flagging career.

Really, if they wanted to inspire sharp criticism of his chosen path, they needed to dig a little deeper than Howard Hughes.

Even ten years after his first major success – to date, his still most inspired creation, worn beautifully by Rachel on her first opening night – they still attempted to get a rise out of him, to invoke some reaction that would cause him to venture out, noticeably so, in the hopes for a real story, full of sensation and buzz. Journalists tend to be shortsighted and stupid. He ventures out. He's a recluse, not agoraphobic.

He chooses to stay inside the comfort of his Upper East Side penthouse. And he just as easily chooses to venture out, usually to the anonymity of Madam Dorian's ultra-discreet, exorbitantly expensive den of desire where he gluts himself on the obscurity of blindfolds, toys and insanely hot men. He even attends some events with Rachel, albeit ones where he knows, without a shadow of a doubt, that no one notice him. Those, though, are few and far between, prompted only after Rachel turns absolute maniacal in her begging and he – well, he can only stand so much begging.

There is a little something called dignity. Something which Rachel carelessly tosses around concerning his personal life.

But being a recluse – it's not all it's cracked up to be. Sure, in his years-long pursuit of ultimate and total withdrawal from the world, he has created one of the hottest, most exclusive fashion lines in the world, worn by singer, actress, and royal alike. And sure, Madam Dorian's is great for satiating his sexual palate but all of it only serves to push aside the truth of the matter.

That on top of that perpetual, constant, bone-deep ache that his retreat into ascetic hiding, there is the silence – fuzzy, muffled, bombastically loud silence, clogging Kurt's head, distancing him even more, even further from the world he so desperately is trying to hold onto through his creations. He never knew silence could be so loud, so brutally thunderous and never-ending until that Tuesday.

The ache, Kurt could now handle through his retreat but the silence?

Some days the silence grew so loud, so large in its depth and breadth that all he could do was curl in on himself, become so small, so painfully diminutive that he swore he could seep into the fibers of his mattress.

It generally catches Kurt off guard, those days, with the too-loud silence, the too-large feeling of being swallowed whole by the blurry edges of its expanse. He heard one time that one could often contemplate silence but never find it. He wanted to punch that idiot because he found it – explosively, forcibly and traumatically. He wanted to un-find it, to give this back, to shirk it off and wake up the following morning blissfully overwhelmed, oversensitive from the over-stigmatization of sound.

There was some relief, however – from the ache, from the silence, from all of it.

Thanks to Rachel and her irritating habit of getting him out of his penthouse apartment. Thanks to Rachel and that damned Masquerade Ball.

The Mint, The Troubadour, The Viper Room, The Roxy: all venues where the primarily LA-based, struggling piano player and part-time singer/songwriter Blaine Anderson and his friends play shows. Kurt has been to every show (the joys of having access to a private jet with just a phone call), slinking in and finding a place in the shadows just before Blaine's set and slinking back out, embracing the darkness of late-night city life, once the set ends.

No one would get it. Not really, anyway – if he told them, that is.

How could they? They didn't get the silence. It's logical to conclude that they wouldn't get the relief. How the thrumming vibrations of the bass and drums soothe the ache in Kurt's muscles. How the smooth, gliding silk of Blaine's voice trembles, hovers just above the thunderous silence, somehow slithering in through the static, in part, that will forever linger in Kurt's head. How the dim lighting, packed crowd and clamoring beats that are so loud, so boisterous that Kurt swears he can see them floating in the air as it dissolves the tension. How the hyper-awareness of Blaine in the world, of Blaine's skin seemingly soothes cellular configurations of Kurt's now permanent state.

Being in the shadows, feeling the vibrations move through his limbs and batter against the inside of his chest, beating concurrently with his heart in a bruising tattoo, gives Kurt freedom, gives Kurt solace and a place to just to stop and exist, suspended in and of the world around him. No one stops and stares whilst at a live music show; Kurt is merely one among many, another face in a sea of faces.

But really, if Kurt is being totally honest, he comes to the shows because of him – Blaine.

A single syllable, Blaine: a press of lips, a tip of tongue retracting just so to release a subtle exhalation. Six letters that taste and feel on Kurt's tongue, relaxed and stretching just so when the dips and swoops of the letters leave the cavern of his mouth.

A vision of gel-shellacked dark hair, hauntingly evocative eyes that even from across the venue and hidden in the shadows, that Kurt falls, falls, plummets really, into those depths. A mouth, defined by finely plump pillows of succulent pink, lips that quirk, ever so slightly in sly, self-assured smirks only to fold into a delectable, sensuous pout. A neck, a slender column that sweeps downward into a slope of deceptively broad shoulders. A subtly angular jawline that somehow is still delicate, sharp lines softened by flawless skin, which flashes, a beacon to guide a fingertip down, down, down and around and up, up, up the other side.

A trim, tapered waistline, and hips accentuated by the curve of male hips and highlighted by shapely, toned thighs. Those thighs, those hips: slightly protruding and proportionate, dips and hollows and crevices that create a tantalizingly stunning landscape, beckoning to be explored, touched, discovered; two hands, just a bit larger, a bit disproportionate but graceful and used with intention and purpose.

A beautiful man, an image of sin and skin, a corporeal manifestation of Kurt's inner most desires, plucked straight out of the fray, want and need and too-much-so-much embodied in the sway of Blaine's hips, the underside curve of her jaw, the shell of Blaine's left ear.

Blaine really is breathtakingly beautiful.

It makes Kurt ache in long abandoned places, an ache over the other ache, but this one pleasant, an invited warmth that spreads, slow like molasses yet fast like direct hits of summer lightning, brief only in the flash, then followed up the rumbling clap of booming thunder. This new ache that began the night he saw Blaine on another stage, half-hidden by a striking masquerade mask, an ache which alighted something within Kurt that sent him scouring a laundry list of YouTube videos and a desire to see Blaine again, in any capacity.

He'd been reckless by slipping his personal business card in Blaine's pocket and partly relieved when Blaine didn't use it. He didn't know if Blaine recognized his name or if Blaine knew anything about him really but the tick-tock in his chest at the memory of Blaine's mouth on his has Kurt considering the ration of his life to actual living.

Unable to actually exorcise the feel of Blaine under his skin, Kurt wonders if his body will ever hit the floor that he is surely falling towards. Ever since that night, he has felt a little bit like a citizen without a passport, like he's been suddenly re-written in some foreign language that only Blaine can translate with his submissive kiss and broad hands.

So Kurt eschews his penthouse apartment in favor of LA venues and did he happen to mention how much he loathes the city of Los Angeles?

So yeah, there's that – and he just finds himself unable to stop returning, over and over and over again.

From the shadows Kurt watches Blaine, memorizing lines and angles, curves and dips, hollows and crevices neatly arranged, neatly organized under and around the canvas of smooth, olive-toned skin. Kurt knows Blaine, knows when the right corner of Blaine's lips quirk up he's feeling particularly sassy; knows that when Blaine smiles, the tip of his tongue caught between his teeth and sticking out just so, Blaine feels shy, mutely self-conscious; knows that when Blaine stands feet shoulder-width apart at his keyboard, he needs the equilibrium, the sturdiness of the stage to give in, to surrender to the music and he floats, glides about the surface, above the throbbing epicenter of the crowd.

Kurt watches Blaine, aflame with the heated hyper-awareness of each and every molecule of his own body, relishing in the keen consciousness Kurt attributes to knowing, to feeling Blaine in the air. Blaine's presence is a warm, well-used, well-loved sweater re-discovered in the back of the closest, sliding down and over and fitting in all the right places that have been neglected, abandoned by its absence. Blaine is but a trick of the mind, a long exposure image captured and re-pixelated to high definition.

Blaine is that light at the end of the tunnel, burning bright and hot, combustible star hot, far off in the distance beckoning Kurt forward, onward through the darkness, the roiling masses. And while Kurt will never reach the light, never hold out his hand and touch the glow, it's there, right there and it's steady, consistent, the miraculous oil lamp that continues to burn without any oil.

When it all becomes overwhelming and chaotic, when Kurt can't tamp it down and control it, rein it all in Kurt comes – he comes and he watches, just watches and lets his body sink into the vibrations and loveliness of Blaine's voice and all of it, the ache, the silence, it goes away, evaporates into translucent steam and Kurt can just…be.