Blaine hands Kurt a neon orange miniature golf club and a neon orange ball to match, smiling shyly at the way Kurt looks so adorable in his Ann Arbor Starkid hoodie. The black hoodie is a souvenir from the summer of his sophomore year when his parents took him college hopping, trying to convince him to apply to a more sensible school than NYADA. The hoodie Kurt is wearing represents the last of those trips, to the campus of the University of Michigan.

At that point, after hitting up all the Ivy Leagues with no success at changing his mind, his parents were getting a bit desperate. But the hoodie is one of Blaine's favorites, and he takes it with him everywhere.

It looks spectacular on Kurt. For the sake of remaining inconspicuous, he has the hood pulled up and the drawstrings tugged taut so that the hood sneaks in over his face. With his pale skin and eyes, he reminds Blaine a bit of Kieren Walker from the TV show In the Flesh.

Maybe it's eldritch, but to be honest, Blaine has kind of thing for Kieren.

Blaine grabs his own rented neon blue club and ball, pays for their round of golf, and then leads Kurt through the arcade - where the cashier's station is - to the links. Kurt stands before the entrance and looks at Blaine strangely.

“So, we're playing golf indoors?” Kurt asks, furrowing his brow. He glances at the door, and then at the tiny club in his hands. “Won't we…break something, or hurt someone?”

“Well, you're not going to hit the ball as hard as you can,” Blaine chuckles. “It's negotiating the course that's the challenging part. Haven't you ever played miniature golf before?”

“No,” Kurt says with a shrug. “It's a little after my time, I'm afraid.”

Blaine doesn't like the way Kurt puts that – after his time. But Blaine is determined that doesn't matter anymore. This is Kurt's time now, and Blaine is going to do his best to make it amazing.

“Well, hold on to your hat, sir,” Blaine says, opening the door. Kurt peeks in through the door and smiles wide. The room is dark, but it looks vast, like it goes on for miles. Every surface is covered in paint that fluoresces in bright, garish colors. The golf courses, the holes, the flags, the bumpers, the statues and other props all glow. The theme of the room is Medieval Fantasy, and every conceivable fairy tale setting crowds the space – castles with dragons poking their heads out of the windows, blowing fire into the air; a sparkling blue lake and, rising from the center, a hand holding a sword; a colorful house covered in candies of all sorts; three bears chasing a girl, with a head of blonde curls, out of a cottage; and a little girl in a red hood skipping through the forest, while a vicious-looking grey wolf peeks out at her from behind a thicket of tall trees.

“Incredible,” Kurt breathes as he steps inside, looking around the room, ogling at every painting, his eyes traveling up to gaze at the ceiling above them. The entire ceiling is covered in yellow stars and soaring purple comets. Kurt walks toward a far wall with a painting of a griffin landing in a massive, gnarly tree. Coming from a door in the tree's trunk, life-sized playing card soldiers emerge, led by a bulbous woman in a heart-printed gown, while a Cheshire cat dissolves into just his menacing smile. “It's all so…incredible,” Kurt utters.

“I thought you'd like it,” Blaine says, watching the wonder on Kurt's face as he investigates the details on a tiny, painted mouse wearing a crown and holding a quilting pin aloft like a sword.

The first time Blaine discovered glow-in-the-dark mini golf, he was twelve. His brother took him. Just like Kurt, he spent a good hour before they teed off looking at all the painted objects, all the intricate drawings. It seemed so magical at first. At some point in the middle of their game, however, an attendant was forced to turn on the regular lights to retrieve someone's car keys from under one of the windmills. Seeing everything under ordinary white light sort of broke the spell for him, and even though the lights went back out and the walls glowed again, the magic disappeared.

The look on Kurt's face slowly brings that magic back.

Kurt reaches an arm out to touch the mouse's proud, majestic face when he catches sight of his hand – bright and glittering unnaturally beneath the black light. He gasps, jerking his hand back.

“Oh no!” he exclaims, ducking his head at the realization that any of his exposed skin will look the same – deathly pale and fake.

“What's wrong?” Blaine asks.

“My skin!” Kurt says. “It looks…you can see…it doesn't look…normal.”

“Oh,” Blaine says with a smile. “Don't worry about that.”

“Don't…don't worry about it?” Kurt holds his arms against him, wrapped tight around the golf club. “How is no one going to be alarmed by this?” Kurt asks, anxious over the current state of his iridescent skin.

“Kurt, we're in one of the biggest vampire wannabe cities in all of the United States. Look around. A lot of teenagers wear super light foundation to look paler than they are.” Kurt peeks an eye out from his hood and takes a good look around. There are not many other people there, but a few teenagers in the room playing mini-golf with their friends have glowing pale skin – not to the extent that Kurt's smooth, bisque skin lights up, but definitely something other than the human norm.

“See?” Blaine says as Kurt comes out from hiding. “Kids are probably going to want to be you, especially after the popularity of the Twilight saga.”

“The Twilight saga?” Kurt asks, standing up straight and trying to become comfortable with the idea of showing off his skin. “What's that?”

“Long story short, it's a series of books about vampires that sparkle.”

“Vampires that sparkle?” Kurt laughs. “I've only seen one vampire movie in my life, and that vampire definitely did not sparkle.”

“Well, in Twilight…uh, you know what? Never mind. It's really not worth talking about,” Blaine replies. “Let's get this game going. Where do you want to start?”

Kurt looks around at the various courses in the room, but Blaine already knows that one in particular has piqued Kurt's interest.

“Let's go to the castle,” Kurt says, pointing off in the distant to the huge façade painted to look like grey stone, with a dragon's head swaying left and right from the highest turret, bellowing a recorded roar and breathing painted fire.

“Excellent choice,” Blaine says with a slight affectation to his voice. He offers Kurt his arm, which Kurt takes, and leads him over to the castle.

Blaine does his best to concentrate only on having fun with Kurt. He watches Kurt closely as the puppet lines up his shots, tongue sticking out slightly through painted lips, his hips swaying back and forth subconsciously as he prepares to putt. At the fourth hole, after a few passing compliments about his intense doll make-up from a group of high school kids wearing black Gothic Volunteer Alliance t-shirts and Zombie contact lenses, Kurt pulls off his hood.

But as much fun as he's having, Blaine can't help his mind drifting back to those journals – decades worth of Andrew Smythe's personal thoughts shoved into the back of a garbage truck and being driven down to the landfill, on their way to be shredded and burned.

The worst part about the whole ordeal – the part Blaine feels the most guilt over – is that he's slightly relieved that the burden of finding out whether reversing the spell meant never seeing Kurt again is now off his shoulders – if only temporarily. He's still heartbroken because there was a chance – A CHANCE – that those journals held the key to making Kurt human.

Either way, they'd never know.

But there's another burden to his conscience that he's going to need to confront sooner or later.

What does he do with the journals he still has in his possession?

If he acknowledges he did something wrong in keeping the journals in the first place, then he should turn them over to Sebastian and be done with it.

And yet…

“That's when I found out that I had been implanted with the embryo of a mind-sucking alien baby,” Kurt says, hitting his ball cleanly into the eleventh hole.

“Yeah,” Blaine says mindlessly, catching the tail end of Kurt's sentence. “Wait…what?” His head pops up to look at the puppet when the actual meaning of his words hits him.

Kurt doubles over laughing, clutching his club to his stomach.

“I'm so sorry,” Kurt chortles in response to Blaine's quizzical expression. “I couldn't help it. You've been a million miles away for the last half hour. I even had to let one couple play through.” Kurt slides up to Blaine using a delicate finger to push the curls from Blaine's forehead. “What are you thinking about so hard?”

It's hard for Blaine to remember with Kurt standing so close, his cool fingers making their way through Blaine's hair, his blue glass eyes flicking ever so subtly to Blaine's lips even though they are filled with concern over Blaine's prolonged silence.

“I just…I feel bad,” Blaine says, cautiously winding an arm around Kurt's waist. “I didn't mean to invade anybody's privacy,” he explains. “When I found those journals, you guys weren't even talking to me yet. I just wanted to know more about you.”

“I understand,” Kurt says, resting his hand at the back of Blaine's head, scratching lightly over his skin with his fingertips. “And I don't blame you at all. If they were my journals or my dad's, I don't think I would be bothered. It's just…” Kurt sighs, looking down at where Blaine's arm circles his waist, “you have to understand that things between Sebastian and his dad…they were touchy. Sebastian lost his mom, Mr. Smythe lost his wife, and I'm not sure Andrew was cut out to be a single dad. At that time, men weren't expected to be single parents. Raising children - that was woman's work. Lots of motherless boys ended up on the streets, as thieves, or in workhouses – sent there by their folks when they couldn't afford them or be bothered to raise them. So, when you consider those alternatives, Mr. Smythe wasn't a bad man.” Kurt sighs again, resting his head against Blaine's shoulder, his fingertips switching once again to card through Blaine's hair. “Mr. Smythe might have been abusive, but unintentionally so. He was misguided. He didn't think he was doing anything wrong. Heck, nobody in the country would have judged him harshly for most of the things he did. But, things got out of hand, and now Sebastian has to live with those consequences. He's had to live with them for longer than he should have.”

Blaine nods, trying to understand, trying to put himself into those two pairs of shoes – Sebastian's and his father's – but walking either path is impossible for him.

“How do you feel about what he did? Getting rid of those journals? Knowing the answers that could have been in them?” Blaine asks, hoping that he's not thoughtlessly opening a painful wound with his question.

Kurt stays silent, rubbing his temple against Blaine's shoulder.

“I'm upset,” Kurt admits, “but not for the reason that you think. Sebastian was right. Those journals belonged to him. He had the right to do what he wanted with them… but I think that he did the wrong thing.”

“What do you think Sebastian should have done then?”

“I think he should have read them,” Kurt says, looking into Blaine's eyes. “I think he didn't understand his father, didn't understand his motivations. Don't misunderstand me. I'm not condoning a single thing that Mr. Smythe did, but I think it's Sebastian who needed to read through those journals for the answers.”

“The answers to breaking this spell?” Blaine asks, sighing with regret at the thought.

“No,” Kurt says, lifting his head from Blaine's shoulder. “Sebastian needs closure. He needs to know that his father, at some point in his life, really did love him.”

After their game, they drive home in silence – but not a tense silence or a one-sided silence. It is a companionable silence, soundtracked by smooth big band music from Kurt's favorite station on the radio. Blaine looks at Kurt as he sits low in his seat, eyes shut, hands shoved inside his sleeves, a contented smile permanently fixed to his face. Blaine makes a mental note to find some big band music and download it to his mp3 player so that Kurt can listen to it whenever he wants.

Blaine has also decided to let Kurt keep that Michigan hoodie.

They pull into the driveway of the beach house well after midnight. Kurt stirs when Blaine turns off the engine. He yawns, and Blaine wonders if he does so out of habit. Many things about Kurt fascinate Blaine. He's so human in ways that he probably shouldn't be – in ways that he doesn't need to be. In the time they've known one another, which has not been long at all, Kurt has changed. He blinks more when at first he barely blinked at all. The texture of his skin seems more real when Blaine doesn't think too hard on it. His freckles are definitely more prominent. In fact, one or two seem to have popped up out of nowhere. Kurt's lips are painted, but Blaine can see new lines and creases. Blaine is at a loss as to whether these are real, physical changes, or details that had gone unnoticed, because Blaine was certain he had noticed everything about Kurt.

Absolutely everything.

Kurt turns to look at Blaine, the contented smile on his face still visible.

“Are we home?” Kurt asks.

Home. It isn't a word that Blaine is necessarily all that attached to, but Kurt makes it sound so beautiful.

“Yeah,” Blaine answers, reaching out a hand to brush through Kurt's hair. “We're home.” Kurt closes his eyes, humming through his lips when Blaine touches him.

“Can I ask you something?” Blaine asks, combing Kurt's hair with his fingers as he speaks.

“Of course,” Kurt says, his eyes shut, the expression on his face one of extreme happiness.

“I've been thinking…” Blaine starts, rolling his eyes at how weak that sounds. It's funny how romantic and erudite he can be through music, but when it's just him, explaining his feelings and his emotions, he tends to sound like a babbling, cliché idiot. “We don't know what's going to happen tomorrow, or in the future…”

“True,” Kurt says, still humming quietly.

“But here and now,” Blaine continues, “that's all we have…” Blaine blows out a breath. Blaine seems to have lost his point between his own banter and Kurt's humming. Kurt opens his eyes, their clear beauty reflecting back at him underneath the low lighting outside. “What I'm trying to say…or ask, actually, is…”

“Yes, Blaine?” Kurt asks, blinking up at him.

Blaine pauses, lost in Kurt's innocent smile and his look of peace.

“Would you be my boyfriend?”

Kurt's smile is effervescent, but Blaine knows the answer he's about to get won't be a simple yes or no.

“That would be…that would be…so lovely,” Kurt says, “but don't you think that you'd be limiting yourself?” Kurt's effervescence dims while he speaks. “I mean, I think you know as well as I do that there are some things I won't be able to do with you.”

Blaine shakes his head, taking Kurt's hands in his.

“Now that depends,” Blaine says with a slight smirk, “are we talking about going out on dates together, because I think we've proven we can negotiate that obstacle.”

“Not…entirely,” Kurt says, blushing, looking at Blaine's hands.

“Well, if you're talking about sex…”

Kurt sits up straight and crosses his legs, the blush on his face getting deeper as he becomes flustered.

“Kurt, our relationship doesn't have to be about that,” Blaine assures him, holding his hands tighter.

“But, wouldn't you…want that?” Kurt asks, looking boldly into Blaine's eyes. “Wouldn't you resent not having it?”

“Don't worry about me,” Blaine says. “I have two hands and an Internet connection. I'll be fine.”

“Blaine!” Kurt laughs loudly.

“The point is I want to be with you, Kurt. In any way I can have you…as long as I get to have you.”

Kurt's laughing peters off and his eyes return to Blaine's face.

“That's probably the most romantic thing anyone has ever said to me,” he admits, pulling Blaine's hands toward his chest, tugging Blaine bodily closer.

“It's the truth,” Blaine says quietly, leaning closer. “You…that's all I want.”

“Well, if it's any consolation, I think I can help you with some of the two handed-stuff,” Kurt says, his eyes moving from Blaine's darkening eyes to his lips, inching closer.

“And there's kissing,” Blaine says, his breath fogging over Kurt's cold, porcelain skin. “I mean, I haven't really kissed anyone but…”

“Yes,” Kurt agrees, “I've always been very fond of kissing.”

Blaine nods, moving closer, pulling Kurt's hands up to his chest to cover his heart, which pounds like a drum, beating against Kurt's hands – thumpthumpthumpthumpthumpTHUD!

Something heavy impacts with the windshield of the car and both occupants jump out of each other's arms. Standing in the doorway is Sebastian, dressed in different clothing from when they left, his wooden arms crossed over his chest, scowling disapprovingly. Blaine looks at the hood of the vehicle and sees a pair of balled-up tube socks resting in front of the windshield.

“So, do you think he wants our attention?” Blaine asks when Kurt eyes the socks. They both look back at Sebastian, his face cross but waving an arm in their direction before he disappears back into the house.

“I'm thinking that might be a yes,” Kurt says with a laugh, then mutters, “the jerk,” underneath his breath, making Blaine laugh out loud. Kurt reaches for his door handle, but Blaine catches his arm by the elbow.

“Wait a second on that,” he says, opening his door and slipping out. He shuts his door, then rounds the car to Kurt's side, and opens the door for him.

“How gallant,” Kurt says, stepping out of the car, leaning in to kiss Blaine on the cheek as he passes by. Blaine lets Kurt take the lead into the house, opening the door and gesturing for Kurt to walk inside.

They find Sebastian sitting on the sofa with Abigail curled up beside him. His face is blank. He doesn't look at Kurt or Blaine, but stares at a point between the two of them.

“I…I need your help,” Sebastian says, looking extraordinarily put-out by his admission.

“Okay,” Kurt says. “How can I…”

“Not your help,” Sebastian cuts in, and then deflates into a long sigh. “I need…his help.”

“Me?” Blaine asks, looking at Sebastian, then at Kurt.

“Yeah, yeah, I need your help,” Sebastian groans. “Don't make this into a big thing.”

“Look, Sebastian,” Blaine starts, having his own painful confession to make, “before you say anything, I just wanted to let you know that I'm sorry. I should have told you about the journals, and I shouldn't have read them. I'm really sorry.” Blaine can hear Sebastian's jaw tighten, the sound of wood grinding against wood setting Blaine's nerves on edge.

“Sebastian?” Kurt says Sebastian's name, and the sound of Sebastian's jaw tightening gets louder until Blaine thinks he can hear a wire snap.

“Well, yippy-skippy,” Sebastian says. “You're sorry. Thanks a lump. Are you going to help me out or not?”

Blaine sighs. Sebastian is determined not to like him, and he's going to have to accept that.

“Sure,” Blaine says. “What do you need?”

“I'm looking for some…information, and none of your books in your library have it.”

“Okay,” Blaine says, uncomfortable staring at the puppet who won't look at him while he talks. “What sort of books did you want?”

“Medical books,” Sebastian says, “human anatomy books, books on drugs and diseases. Do you have anything like that?”

“Wh---“ Blaine starts, but Kurt puts up a hand and shakes his head, asking Blaine not to ask. “I'm sorry, I don't, but…” Blaine reaches beside Sebastian for the television remote. The puppet scoots away quickly to avoid Blaine's touch. Blaine rolls his eyes. “This television has Internet access. You can use it to look that information up.”

Sebastian's eyes snap up to look at Blaine, and Blaine can tell that the puppet either doesn't want to admit that he doesn't understand, or he thinks Blaine is lying.

“Look…” Blaine goes through the steps while Sebastian watches. Blaine presses a button on the remote and a line of symbols come up on the bottom on the screen. Blaine points to a symbol which brings up a white screen. Sebastian sits up straight, paying closer attention to everything Blaine does. “So, you go to this bar,” Blaine explains, “and type in the information you want. You know, some colleges publish their lab work online, offer classes - if you wanted to, you could take some classes from Princeton, Yale, Stanford, all online…” At the mention of Stanford, Sebastian's eyes narrow at Blaine, but Blaine remains impassive as he continues. He turns the remote over to Sebastian. “Have at it.”

“Thank you,” Sebastian says with the first hint of something close to an emotion that isn't blatant disgust with regard to Blaine. “You guys can scat now.”

“You're welcome,” Blaine says, figuring that's as close to polite as he's going to get from him. Blaine turns to Kurt, pulling the puppet into his arms, not concerned with whether it makes Sebastian upset or not. This was his home, and he wasn't going to censor himself to make Sebastian comfortable.

“So, what would you like to do now?” Blaine asks, spinning Kurt around, smiling when he makes Kurt giggle.

“I'm actually kind of looking forward to lying in bed with my boyfriend,” Kurt says, smiling with the emphasis. “Would that be alright with you?”

“I would say…more than alright,” Blaine answers, kissing Kurt on the nose.

“Gag me,” Sebastian moans, sending another pair of balled up socks whizzing past their heads.

“Why are you doing this?” Kurt asks, ducking behind Blaine who pulls him down to the floor as something heavy whizzes by their heads.

“Why!?” an angry voice growls as the sound of glass breaking and shattering to the floor fills the room. “Because what do I get? You get each other! You get a life, and I…get…NOTHING!”

Blaine shields his eyes against the spray of glass in time to catch something else swing their way. Blaine grabs Kurt around the waist and drops to the floor, shielding Kurt as best he can from impact with the hard ground.

“It doesn't have to be that way,” Blaine yells, looking Kurt over quickly to make sure he's okay before helping him to his feet. “We can help you! We can…we can figure out a way!”

“There is no way,” the voice says, thick with furious tears. “Not for me.”

Blaine pushes Kurt behind his body as a tall figure approaches, but without knowing it, they've backed into a corner – trapped as the man in front of them raises his brutal weapon above his head.

“But if I can't have my happiness,” the voice says – flat and determined, “then I'll make for damn sure you don't either!”

Blaine flattens his body against Kurt, doing his best to keep Kurt out of reach of the metal poker coming down swiftly toward his head.

“No!” he screams, catching a single flash of green eyes before…

Blaine's eyes open wide, his breath coming fast, his chest heaving. He has to blink a dozen times to clear the fear from his brain.

He died. Blaine swore he had just died.

Dreams about death are a hard thing for Blaine to recover from.

Medical science says that a human being can't dream of their own death.

Blaine would like to beg to differ.

His body feels numb, and it's going to take him a moment to convince himself that he's not actually dead.

A look at Kurt's sleeping face helps ground him - brings him back to the present. Kurt has ironically become Blaine's anchor to reality.

A dream - just a dream, like all the others, but this time he wasn't Kurt…was he even himself? It seemed like he was Sebastian protecting Kurt, but he isn't sure. Even trying to recapture that second right before he died, before the world went dark and he woke up, he couldn't make out his attacker's face. He only saw the man's eyes – green eyes.

Blaine can't remember if Andrew Smythe had green eyes or not.

He blows out a long breath over Kurt's head as his breathing returns to normal, his tense muscles relaxing at the feeling of Kurt's body wrapped around his.

His boyfriend's body.

Earlier that morning, while the sky was dark, they had changed into pajamas and climbed into bed. Without any hesitation, Kurt had snuggled into Blaine's chest, wrapped his arms and legs around him, and then the blissful promise of sleep had taken them.

Waking up with Kurt in his arms, even after his horrendous nightmare, was a blessing.

Whatever bad thing might happen the rest of the day, it doesn't matter since Blaine has this happiness in his life – and he wants to hold on to it forever.

But life, as of late, doesn't seem to respect his sleep, his schedule, or his happiness.

He hears a soft scratching, like the sound Sebastian's body had made when he pulled himself across the floor. But this scratching is light, and at the base of his door. Blaine doesn't want to get up. All he needs is for another puppet to show up out of nowhere and reveal itself to him as possessing a human soul.

What would he do with a third?

Blaine slips carefully out of Kurt's arms and rises from the bed, padding across the floor toward the door.

He just hopes it isn't Sammy.

If it is, he's going to punt that puppet straight to Nevada, human soul or no.

That horrid thing about gave him nightmares.

Blaine opens the door slowly, stymied by the image in his head of a living Sammy puppet scratching eerily at his door.

But luckily, it's only Abigail, scratching at the door with one tiny paw. She sits primly on her hind legs and looks up at him, as if he knows why she knocked.

Because if he didn't, why would he have opened the door?

Abigail turns tail and takes off, and Blaine follows. He walks out to the living room, expecting to see Sebastian sitting on the couch, scrolling through the Internet on the TV, but the room is dark and empty, the television turned off, the remote sitting on the couch cushion. Blaine picks up the remote and turns the television on. The search engine is still visible on the screen, and out of curiosity, he looks at Sebastian's browser history. He scrolls up to the beginning of a lengthy list of searches, which terminate somewhere around four in the morning.

Sebastian started out searching human anatomy, systems and organ functions, which led him to a porn site or two that he apparently only glanced at. He looked up medical programs at different schools, but lingered the longest on Harvard, Stanford, and NYU. Then he searched a few things that were more personal. It hadn't dawned on Blaine that he would, but in retrospect, it made sense. He looked up information on their old Vaudeville act – Andrew and Sons. He looked up articles about his father – recent articles within the last thirty years - followed by his father's obituary…then his mother's…then Kurt's…then his own. The last hour he spent online he looked at pictures of the Stanford University campus.

Blaine feels himself start to crumble from the inside out. It isn't good to have his heart broken this early in the morning, especially not by Sebastian, but he can't help it.

He wanted to go to medical school, Blaine thinks as he turns off the television. He makes this information important, forces himself to remember it. If he can, he has to find a way to get Sebastian there.

He feels a need to make-up for the disappointments of Sebastian's past.

He hears the creak of a door opening and braces himself for the chance that Sebastian will appear, realizing that what he's been doing in the living room could be interpreted as invading Sebastian's privacy yet again. He holds his breath and waits for a telltale frustrated sigh, or the grated clearing of a throat. What he hears instead is the patter of tiny footsteps. He turns towards Cooper's room and sees a little orange puff of fur go streaking out from the cracked open door. Abigail again. Sebastian must have left the door open for her to come and go as she pleases.

Blaine can say anything he wants about Sebastian - about how much he hates his father, how he disregards Kurt, or how Sebastian seems to hate him - but he sure seems to love that cat.

Blaine sits down on the couch and sinks into the cushions. He has another long day ahead of him - so many things to juggle at the house, and he wants to take Kurt out again. His boyfriend. He gets to go on a date with his boyfriend. Blaine almost can't believe it. He almost doesn't want to let himself believe it, or he'll get carried away by it. Everything feels so tenuous, caught on a wire that is pulling itself taut, threatening to break. Fate could step in at any time, cut the wire, and this could all end, but Blaine is determined to enjoy it while it lasts.

Blaine looks around the room filling with morning sunlight and spots Kurt's sketch book on the dining room table.

“Crap!” Blaine exclaims, remembering that he had once again neglected to send the house sketches to Cooper. “Ergh!” He grabs at the couch cushions and groans. Well, that's another fifteen phone calls he can look forward to before the start of the day. Abigail, circling the living room to find a place to bed down in the sunlight, leaps up onto the couch. She moves from cushion to cushion, stepping experimentally on each with cautious paws, then steps up onto his lap and curls into a ball. Blaine looks down at the orange cat. She rolls her body around and around until she finds a comfy position and falls soundly back to sleep. He looks at her – the swirling pattern in her fur, the alternating colors of her paws, her pink exposed belly. She's such a calm little animal, so sweet and trusting, which is probably how she won Sebastian's heart. Abigail didn't just need Sebastian – they needed each other. Blaine takes a finger and rubs her belly, and that's when he notices.

Abigail has changed.

He picks up the drowsy thing, cradles her in his arms, and carries her back to his room.

“Hey, Blaine,” Kurt says, climbing out from beneath the comforter to sit on the end of the bed closest to the boy carrying the sleeping cat. “Did you have another nightmare?”

“Sort of,” Blaine admits, not wanting to mention what the nightmare was about, or all the confusion surrounding it. He'll most likely tell Kurt about it later, but for now, he's more than happy to put this one mystery behind him for the day.

“Well, would it help if I made my boyfriend breakfast?” Kurt asks, smiling shyly, his pretty bisque complexion catching the sunlight and turning a rosy pink.

“Definitely,” Blaine says, warming at the sound of that word on Kurt's lips - boyfriend. “But first, can you answer a question for me?”

“Anything,” Kurt says, crossing his legs and folding his hands in his lap. “Fire away.”

Blaine lifts Abigail up higher for Kurt to see. Kurt smiles at the purring cat, who slowly bats the air with her paws. Then suddenly, Kurt's glass eyes open wide and his mouth drops open with a soft click.

“When did Abigail become a real live cat?”