“What…happened?” Kurt rises from the bed to approach Blaine, eyes glued to the orange tabby in his arms.

“I have no idea,” Blaine admits. “I found her like this this morning.” Blaine watches Kurt examine the cat, appraising her thoroughly with baffled, questioning eyes, making certain that the cat Blaine held was absolutely and without a doubt Sebastian's pet Abigail.

“But how?” Kurt asks, shaking his head in confusion.

“I wish I knew,” Blaine mumbles, scratching the sleepy kitty on the top of her head. He meant it. If he knew Abigail's secret, how she went from being a fluffy puppet one day to a real live cat the next, it might hold the clue to helping Kurt. What does this cat know that they don't? What happened in one night to cause this change? Is there a caveat in the spell? A loophole? Does the spell wear off on animals quicker than on humans? In that case, does that mean the spell wears off eventually? And why now, after so many decades? Question after question pops into Blaine's head, overlapping like a multitude of screaming voices all fighting to be heard at once. They swirling around like a massive whirlpool in Blaine's brain, their growing velocity making his head pound. None of it made any sense, and worst of all, thinking about it, trying to sort it out, brought flashbacks of his nightmare to the surface.

Crawling backward on the palms of his hands and the stumbling soles of his feet, keeping Kurt pushed behind him. He can feel the rug beneath him burning the skin of his hands, desperation thick on his tongue, his breathing harsh and rapid.

I need to get away…I need to protect Kurt…I need to make him understand, make him see…this is not hopeless…I can help him…

If he can't fix this, they won't make it out alive.

“It doesn't have to be that way!” Blaine feels the words prick his lips as he repeats them over and over, trying to get through his thick skull. “We can help you! We can…we can figure out a way!”

But there's nothing but fury in the eyes that advance on him – the eyes of a man who has long given up.

“There is no way!” The voice, full of tears, cracks, and that crack, that fissure in the otherwise cool demeanor of the man bearing down on them, punches Blaine full-force, chipping away another piece of his already fractured heart. “There is no way! Not for me!”

All at once, Blaine drops back into the present, into reality, and he shudders, closing himself off to the voices in his head, wishing them away. He doesn't want to think about that anymore. He can't think about it. He needs to continue on with his efforts to find a solution, hope that whatever is meant to happen happens, and whatever should be left in the past locks itself away and stays there. Selfishly, Blaine realizes that helping Kurt, reversing this spell on him and Sebastian, may be the only way to banish these horrible visions of the past permanently.

“Do you think Sebastian knows about this?” Kurt asks, intensely thoughtful eyes focused on the cat, the puppet inflicted with the same questions that pestered Blaine though not to the same degree.

Kurt misses Blaine's frightened tremor as the last of the nightmares fade and Blaine is glad. He doesn't want to lump this troubling vision onto the pile with the rest of Kurt's worries.

“I don't know,” Blaine says. “I haven't seen him yet this morning.”

“Blaine!”

Ah! Blaine thinks when Sebastian's voice echoes through the living room. Yes, the devil often appears out of the shadows when summoned.

“In here,” Blaine calls out. Kurt smiles when he does. He seems to appreciate when Blaine takes the initiative to include Sebastian, and Blaine figures it must mean a lot to Kurt to know that Blaine has no intention of alienating him, regardless of their rocky start and the bad blood they have yet to exhaust between them.

Blaine has no problem showing Sebastian curtesy. He would like to see them become friends, in their own way, and not only for Kurt. Sebastian seems like a stand-up guy: smart, interesting, ambitious, loyal… Ultimately, Blaine would like to have this animosity between them dissipate into nothing more than an anecdote that they reminisce on fondly ten or twenty years from now. But Blaine also has no intention of backing down because Sebastian is Kurt's oldest friend. He refuses to be intimidated. Kurt is Blaine's boyfriend now, and these feelings he has for Kurt – feelings that seemed to develop even before he knew Kurt was alive – grow stronger every minute they're together, like a web knitting between them, becoming tighter, more secure. Blaine doesn't understand it, he can't explain it, but he doesn't need to in order to know that he doesn't want it to go away. He's not going to lose Kurt for any reason – and not to anyone.

“Blaine!” Sebastian groans, walking into Blaine's room uninvited, scowling as much as a puppet made of wood can scowl. “What's with all this gunk on my arms?” Kurt takes Abigail from Blaine's hands as Sebastian walks up to him with his arms outstretched, nearly shoving them in Blaine's face. “That pottery glue is bleeding out of my arms.”

“I can see that,” Blaine says, leaning back a bit to examine the cracks in Sebastian's wooden dermis. The gaps have closed, splintered pieces stuck together, only it's not a smooth surface. The magic wonderglue didn't work on Sebastian the way it had on Kurt. Blaine can't understand why. Glue is glue, right? If there is truly some magical property to the glue that Blaine put on Kurt, then why didn't it work the same way on Sebastian? Maybe there is a different magic wonderglue for wood, Blaine just hasn't found it yet.

Blaine smiles to himself, realizing that everything he thought would probably sound insane if he said it out loud, even to the puppets in the room.

Welcome to his crazy world. Yup, fixing living puppets and magical transforming cats are his life now.

Add that to the visions he's had his entire life, and should he really be surprised?

Sebastian hears Abigail purr, and his wooden eyes open wider, as if he remembered something he meant to mention before.

“Oh yeah. Why were you manhandling my cat?” he asks.

Blaine rolls his eyes, walking off to the restroom for a wash cloth to clean Sebastian's arms up with, deciding to leave Kurt to field the cat questions.

“Blaine found her like this,” Kurt says, holding Abigail up to Sebastian's eyes. “Did you know about this?”

Blaine returns with the wash cloth and begins cleaning the tacky glue off Sebastian's skin while he and Kurt speak.

“Yeah,” Sebastian says, rubbing his forehead against Abigail's, smiling when she blinks open her eyes and bats at his hair with her paws. “I think it happened sometime last night. She started meowing at the bedroom door to be let out, so I got up and opened it so she could do her business...”

“Sebastian!” Kurt gasps, staring at him, blue glass eyes stern.

“I wasn't sending her out to take a wazz in lover boy's house,” Sebastian says with a slightly wicked grin, “though, come to think of it, that would have been hilarious.” A chuckle follows the grin, but then it slowly fades. “No…I was dreaming.” He drops his gaze to where Blaine delicately wipes up the last drips of glue on his right arm and moves to the left arm. “It was…I was half asleep and I thought…” Sebastian grinds his teeth, not wanting to admit to a night of wonderful dreams, amazing dream, dreams of being a human boy again, of going out dancing, of walking to the late show with Kurt, of buying him a soda and watching the fireworks over the boardwalk…

…of kissing Kurt, that surprised little gasp he made when Sebastian did it, the way he had gripped Sebastian's arms for a second, had pulled him in slightly before he pushed him away...

Sebastian would never admit that to Kurt, would never admit that he still thinks about that moment, that he has it so distinctly memorized that he can recall every second of it, down to the fraying collar of Kurt's favorite shirt scratching at Sebastian's neck, the stray hairs that brushed his cheek, or the way Kurt smelled of rose water, which Kurt wore to remind him of his mother.

He doesn't need to admit to dreaming of being human though. Kurt seems to know.

“I understand,” he says, looking at Sebastian with sympathetic eyes and cuddling Abigail beneath his chin. “I have those dreams sometimes, too. They're hard to wake up from.”

Yeah, Sebastian thinks crossly, but you've always had someone to wake up to.

Sebastian had been there for Kurt, but now he had Blaine to sleep beside. His boyfriend Blaine.

Sebastian gets to wake up alone.

Sebastian nods, making a sound like a sniffle, but he quickly shakes his head, his smug grin returning, wiping away whatever traces of regret lingered on his painted face.

“So, I would be careful if I were you,” Sebastian warns Blaine, reclaiming the snarky attitude that Blaine has grown to love so much. “There might be little kitty bombs floating around out there somewhere.”

Kurt glares again, but Blaine brushes the comment off, trying not to smile at Sebastian's joke for Kurt's sake.

“I'll keep an eye out.”

Sebastian watches Blaine closely, his expression shielded and blank. When Blaine peeks up and sees it, it's disconcerting. Standing still, eyes unblinking, Sebastian doesn't seem real. He doesn't look alive. He's hiding again, the way he had when Blaine first brought him to the beach house. Blaine has no idea what the puppet must be thinking, and that bothers him, not being able to read his tells, nothing that betrays his feelings.

Blaine wants to like Sebastian. He wants to help him. He wants to think of him as just a regular boy, like he does with Kurt, but it feels like there's something hiding inside Sebastian. Something that Blaine feels might not even be Sebastian.

Something that makes the hairs on the back of Blaine's neck stand straight up.

“Do you have any cream in the house?” Sebastian asks, breaking the silence. “Or milk? You know, for Abby here?”

Blaine lets out a sharp breath, his heart stuttering at the sudden and unexpected sound of Sebastian's voice.

“Actually, milk and cream aren't good for cats,” Blaine says, hearing Sebastian's eyes scratchscratch as they roll in their sockets. “Besides, I only have almond milk here.”

Sebastian's brow draws together with a sharp click.

“Almond milk?” Sebastian asks. “What the fuck is almond milk?”

“Language,” Kurt hisses, but Sebastian outright ignores him.

“It is what it sounds like,” Blaine explains. “When you crush almonds, you get a liquid. That's almond milk.”

“So, you're telling me…” Sebastian says, holding back a laugh, “that you…drink…nut juice?”

Sebastian laughs out loud at his own joke, but Kurt looks mortified, mouth falling open.

“Yes,” Blaine says, taking Sebastian's ribbing in his stride. His eyes drift to where Kurt's mouth hangs open. The way Kurt's mouth was originally shaped when his porcelain was fired turns his mouth into the perfect ‘o' shape when he does this. Blaine finds it extremely distracting. “Yes, I drink nut juice,” he admits, side-eying the porcelain puppet, fixated on Kurt's mouth. “But we have cat food in the garage, and I think we have some litter. I'll bring it into the house.”

“Thank you, Blaine,” Kurt says with emphasis, trying to goad Sebastian into echoing the sentiment, but Sebastian only rolls his eyes again, and Blaine chuckles lightly at the exasperation on Kurt's face.

“There,” Blaine says, balling the wash cloth in his hands. He looks at Sebastian's arms, at all the cracks that have been exposed since he cleaned the glue completely away. “You've got a few gaps that I'm going to need to fill, unless you were hoping to host a gathering of ants and termites any time soon. You know, make it easier for them to get in and make a nest.”

“Ha-ha,” Sebastian barks dryly. “Funny. You're so…a regular card, aren't you? Well, what are you going to try sticking me back together with this time? Hopes and dreams?”

“Boys…” Kurt scolds, but with a fond smile starting on his face.

“Let's go out to the dining room,” Blaine suggests. “I think I have some wood glue out there.”

“Wood glue!” Sebastian exclaims with an obnoxious, mocking lilt. “What an inspired idea! Why didn't I think of that?”

“Sebastian…” Kurt says in a cautioning tone, following the two out to the living room with the cat cuddled in his arms.

“Kurt…” Sebastian says, mimicking the same tone.

“Come on, guys, let's not fight. I know I'm fabulous,” Blaine says, leading a sneering Sebastian over to the loveseat while Kurt snickers behind them. Sebastian's glare turns away from Blaine and on to the piece of furniture as they approach it. He doesn't look too thrilled with having to sit on it again, but Blaine figures Sebastian could have other reasons for seeming put-out – reasons Blaine refuses to think about. He sets the wash cloth he's been strangling in his hands down beside the puppet's leg, not missing the way Sebastian looks at the wrung out thing and scoffs. He ignores Sebastian's frustrated sighs and the impatient tapping of his foot on the floor as he rummages through the tools, the tubs, and the tubes littering the dining room table in search of the wood glue.

“I'm going to go get your breakfast started while you work,” Kurt says, putting Abigail down on the floor and watching her scurry away, claws scritching on the wood as she fumbles over heavy paws and finally zooms out of sight. Then he steps shyly up to Blaine to give him a kiss on the cheek. Blaine leans into it and Kurt giggles lightly against his skin, blushing a deep rose pink as he twirls and heads for the kitchen. Blaine hears the not-so-subtle click-click of Sebastian's eyes following him, and from the corner of his vision he can see the tortured look in the wood puppet's eyes, enormously expressive even though they're simply painted on.

“You two disgust me,” Sebastian mutters, watching Kurt as he walks into the kitchen, continuing to watch long after he's gone. Blaine returns to Sebastian with an ancient-looking beige tube of wood glue. At least Blaine thinks it's wood glue. It looks like wood glue, but the label has been worn mostly away. Blaine bends over the puppet, taking up his arms and carefully applying the thick adhesive to the cracks that cut through Sebastian's brittle flesh like unhealed wounds.

“Good,” Blaine replies to Sebastian's remark with a slight edge. “That's what I was aiming for.”

“I'll bet,” Sebastian spits back, gaze not shifting away from the kitchen door, waiting for Kurt to return. “Out of curiosity, Blaine, what are you planning on doing with Kurt?”

“What do you mean, what am I planning on doing with him?” Blaine asks, concentrating on a crack that looks wider than the others. “I like him, he seems to like me, he agreed to be my boyfriend, we'll see where things go from there…end of story.”

“Yeah, but, he can't really be your boyfriend, can he?” Sebastian asks, not hiding his contempt.

“Ugh, you're not starting this again, are you?” Blaine groans, moving on to another crack. “Because you're not going to win, and it's getting a little old.”

“I thought you guys would have the good sense not to get serious,” Sebastian says, condescension and sarcasm revealing his true feelings, “but now you're calling yourselves boyfriends when you know very well that can't happen.”

“Uh…yes, it can,” Blaine says, focusing on his work and not on his desire to punch Sebastian in his wooden nose.

“How can it?” Sebastian chuckles flatly. “Are you thick? Don't you get it? He's not real.”

“Maybe that's how you see things, but that's not the way I see it,” Blaine argues, the hand holding the tube of glue steady while he works starting to shake. “He's real to me, and I'm going to do anything in my power to make sure that he feels cared for and loved, and that he has as full a life as possible.”

You too, you twit, Blaine thinks, but he doesn't want to hold that over Sebastian.

“Is your family going to see things that way?” Sebastian asks. “I mean, I assume you're going to want to bring him home on holidays, introduce him to your folks, that sort of thing.” Sebastian turns his head and looks up at Blaine through his lashes, the effect positively sinister. “Or are you just going to keep him your dirty little secret?”

Blaine's hand stops applying the glue, but he doesn't return Sebastian's stare.

“I'm sure they'll adore him just as much as I do,” Blaine says with less confidence than he had aimed for.

Sebastian shrugs, his smile both victorious and sad as he faces the kitchen door again.

“If you say so,” he mumbles.

Blaine wants to prove Sebastian wrong. He wants to defend his family to the hilt and tell Sebastian that he has no clue what he's talking about, but he can't, because even if the Andersons were the more tolerant, understanding people in the universe (which they've recently proven they're not) Sebastian is only talking out of concern for his friend.

For the boy he obviously still loves.

“Your arms are done,” Blaine says, changing the subject. “And according to the directions on the back of the tube, you should be dry in about an hour. You know, we should probably take a look at your legs and the rest of your body…”

Both boys perk up when they hear the sound of Kurt humming right inside the kitchen doorway.

“Uh, I think I can handle that,” Sebastian says, taking the tube of glue out of Blaine's hand.

“Are you sure?” Blaine asks, smiling when he sees Kurt walk back in with a plate and a cup.

“Yeah,” Sebastian says when he catches the same sight. “I mean, it's glue. I can't really botch it up too badly.”

“Well, if you need any help…”

“I won't,” Sebastian says, standing from the love seat, grabbing the wrecked wash cloth by his leg, and exiting the dining room quickly before Kurt can make it to the table with Blaine's breakfast.

Kurt sets the plate down on the table as Sebastian slams the bedroom door. Kurt startles with a slight movement of his shoulders.

“What's wrong? Didn't that go well?” Kurt asks, frowning at the closed door.

“Yeah,” Blaine says, kissing Kurt on the cheek before sitting in his chair at the table. “It went fine.” Those words don't sit entirely well in Blaine's stomach, like he might have inadvertently told Kurt a lie.

“Did you get him fixed up then?” Kurt rests his hands on Blaine's shoulders, his touch a tremendous comfort to Blaine. He tilts his head to run his cheek against the back of Kurt's hand, sighing at the feeling of cold, smooth porcelain against his skin.

“Mostly,” Blaine says, picking up his fork, preparing to eat the omelet that Kurt made for him even though his appetite has long gone. “He's going to try and fix the rest of his wounds on his own.”

***

Blaine finishes his breakfast, his appetite returning the second Kurt's glorious eggs hit his tongue. Kurt sits in the dining room near Blaine while he eats, occupying Sebastian's place on the abandoned loveseat, altering a pair of Blaine's father's old jeans that Blaine had found for him to wear. After the eggs are eaten and the plates washed, Blaine takes Kurt to the garage. Blaine has been in the garage only a handful of times since he's been to San Diego. It's so packed full of stuff his family stored in there over time, there's no room for an actual car. It's almost a museum, each item, each box, representing an event from the Anderson's past – not necessarily an extraordinarily memorable event, but that's not the point. They're all important to Blaine.

Blaine runs his fingers over the shelves, touching the odd knick-knacks (things he and his brother bugged his parents for as momentos, but that his mom felt were too tacky to display), the dozens of half-empty oil containers and anti-freeze bottles, boogie boards, deflated inflatable rafts, about a hundred plastic beach toys – faded from the sun, the oldest ones rigid and broken from abuse in the sand and surf.

Kurt follows, eyeing the items on the shelves, reading the labels on the boxes – Cooper's clothes, Blaine's clothes, mom and dad's clothes, stuff to donate (which apparently never got donated).

“And you guys don't live here?” Kurt asks, stopping in front of a shelf filled with canned goods – fruit cocktail, peas, corn, soups, and more tuna fish than a human can eat in a lifetime.

“Nope,” Blaine says, continuing on to a stack of shelves in the corner where some old, rusted cage-like things seem to have collapsed in on themselves at some point.

“If you guys don't live here, how come you keep so much stuff here?” Kurt asks, poking at a figuring whose head bounces back and forth at his prodding.

“This was the place we came on every vacation, every summer break.” He turns to watch Kurt, currently fascinated by a line of bobble-head baseball players. “I guess you could say it was our home away from home. It's kind of where we came to leave the world behind. We came here when Cooper failed his junior year of high school and my parents thought he'd have to repeat a grade, when I was beaten up at school for being gay…” Kurt peels his gaze away from the toys on the shelf to look at Blaine, sympathetic blue eyes full of a sadness so immense, Blaine has to turn away from it. Kurt was raised during a time when prejudice against homosexuals was much more prevalent, much more dangerous, and yet the sorrow in his eyes is entirely for Blaine – for Blaine's pain and suffering. Sure, Blaine had the ever-loving crap pounded out of him, but that look in Kurt's eyes makes Blaine feel almost ashamed for mentioning it. “Anyway, this was where we ran away to,” Blaine says, taking down the cages one by one. “It wasn't just a summer place. It was almost like a second home. A-ha!”

He pulls out several dusty cans, their torn labels hanging askew, but with the word Friskies still visible.

“If you don't own a cat, why do you have all this cat stuff?”

Blaine hands the cans of cat food to Kurt, then bends over to pick up the bag of cat litter, lifting it up and facing Kurt in time to see his blue glass eyes shoot up and dart quickly away. Blaine smiles, blushing at the thought that Kurt might have been checking him out.

“My dad keeps the cat litter to soak up oil from the drive way, and we had possums in the crawl space the last time we were here. We used the cat food to lure them into the traps.” Blaine motions to the metal traps he moved.

“Ah,” Kurt says, turning the cans over in his hand and looking at the pictures of the cat staring back at him - an orange tabby that resembles Abigail. Kurt pinches his lips together tight, embarrassed at being caught watching Blaine bend over, watching the way the waistband on his pants slid down slightly as his shirt lifted up his spine.

Blaine feels his pocket vibrate, and he sticks a hand into it, swaying beneath the weight of the cat litter to keep it perched on his shoulder while he digs around for his phone. Blaine pulls it out and looks at the number on the screen.

He was expecting this.

“Ergh, it's my brother,” Blaine grumbles. “I have to take this.”

“I'm going to get these inside and open one for Abby,” Kurt says, starting past Blaine and heading back into the house while Blaine answers the call.

As always when Cooper wants to chew Blaine out, he doesn't wait for Blaine to say a word.

“Bla-ine…” Cooper sings through the phone.

A folded edge from the bag of litter digs into Blaine's shoulder, but it's less painful than he knows this call is going to be. He hurries into the house with the litter, cutting Cooper off before he can get too deep into his scolding.

“I know, I know,” Blaine says, dropping the bag inside the door and making his way to the sofa. He sits back into the cushions and closes his eyes, blocking out the world while he talks with his brother – or more accurately, while his brother throws jabs at him and he tries his best to evade. “I promised you those scans, but I got a little in over my head yesterday, and by the time I remembered, it was too late to get to a Kinko's…”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” Cooper says, not sounding too convinced by his brother's flimsy excuses.

“Look,” Blaine says, not in the mood to defend himself again this morning, “I'm looking at the sketches right now…” Blaine opens his eyes and lets them drift back to where Kurt's sketch book sits. “Kurt's all done with them, I'll send them to you this afternoon, we'll still have the website updated ahead of schedule…” Blaine stops his rambling and winces, biting his lip when he realizes his mistake.

“Kurt?” Cooper drawls in that infuriating big brother-esque tone that Blaine knows means he's in for hours of teasing, if not a mention of this new development on Cooper's show. “So, is Kurt the reason why I can't get a hold of you lately?”

“Cooper,” Blaine says, trying to affect a no-nonsense I'm-not-discussing-this-with-you-right-now tone, “I'm not…”

“Oh-ho-ho,” Cooper continues, “Blainey's got himself a summer romance.”

“Coop…”

“Wait! Is he working for one of our contractors?” Cooper asks, toning down the teasing at the intrusive thought of a possible lawsuit. “Because I think some of them have no-no policies about that kind of thing.”

“No, Coop,” Blaine says, rolling his eyes.

“Thank God!” Cooper exclaims, audibly relieved. “Well, then, you have my blessing. Go Blainers!” Cooper laughs. “And here I thought you were spending your nights playing around with those puppets.”

“I told you, the puppets are just a hobby,” Blaine says, subconsciously lowering his voice, hoping that no puppet ears overhear that damning statement.

“So, how did you meet this Kurt?” Cooper asks. “Tell me the deets. Give me the juicy gossip…the 4-1-1.”

“You know, Cooper,” Blaine starts, “I would, but I need to get to the house. We have work in the basement to do today, and I have a feeling we're going to unearth some really interesting stuff down there, so…”

“You're right, little brother. You're right,” Cooper agrees. “That's fine. It's all good. Good to see you getting serious about the job again.”

Blaine silently fumes, but says nothing in response to Cooper's condescending remark.

Choose your battles, Blaine, he reminds himself.

“Thank you, Coop,” Blaine concedes. He hears a door click and turns to see Kurt step out of their room, dressed in the pair of altered jeans and a tight (deliciously tight) cashmere sweater that might have been his mom's at some point.

It looks way better on Kurt, whose ever it is. Kurt strikes a pose when he notices Blaine staring, doing a little twirl to show Blaine the outfit from all sides. Blaine mouths a silent damn when he sees the outfit from the back, the way the newly-tailored pants hug Kurt's body.

Sometimes it's a little too easy to forget that Kurt is a puppet made of porcelain.

“Well, I look forward to meeting this Kurt when I come down for the taping of the final episode.”

“Yeah, well…wait, what?” Blaine is not sure he hears Cooper correctly, but either way, he nearly drops his phone. “You…you're coming down? To San Diego?”

“No, to Pittsburgh,” Cooper jokes. “Yes, to San Diego.”

“You didn't tell me about that,” Blaine argues.

“Yes, I did,” Cooper says.

“When?” Blaine feels himself sweating, hears his voice get louder. Kurt, catching Blaine's change in mood, stops his modeling.

“Just now, so make sure you get my old room ready for me.” Cooper laughs but Blaine doesn't find it funny.

“Cooper,” Blaine says, trying to sound like his liver didn't just shoot its entire load of bile up his throat. “I'm perfectly capable of doing the final taping myself. You don't need to…”

“But, it's your final show,” Cooper whines. “Of course, I'm planning on being there, silly.”

An uneasy silence settles between both brothers when Blaine finds himself at a loss for words and Cooper figures out why.

“Wait, wait, wait…are you playing house with your new man meat?”

Blaine doesn't deny it and he doesn't have any other answer for Cooper – not one that he'd buy.

“Blaine, you dog!” Cooper crows. “What's it been? Three days? Four?”

“Cooper,” Blaine starts over, knowing it's fruitless, knowing he's not going to get any say.

“Don't worry,” Cooper assures him, completely oblivious as per usual. “I'll only be in town for a few days. I promise to lay low while you play hide-the-salami with your boyfriend.”

“Cooper, wait…”

“I have to get going,” Cooper says, a chuckle behind his words, “plane tickets to buy, a car to rent, dinner reservations to make…”

“Cooper,” Blaine calls through the phone, raising his voice, hoping to get Cooper to listen.

But, of course, he doesn't.

“Bye-bye, squirt.”

Kurt sits beside Blaine on the couch as the call goes dead.

Blaine stares at the phone, his mouth dry, his throat burning, the pounding in his head returning with a vengeance, throbbing at his temples, filling his mind again with the sound of screaming – this time, his own.

“Blaine,” Kurt says softly, putting a hand on Blaine's arm, “is there something the matter? You look like death warmed over?”

“Do I?” Blaine asks, not sure he understands the reference but it sounds like it fits. That's the way he feels. Like some jerk psychic savant, Sebastian had unwittingly predicted his fate.

Before Blaine could figure out exactly how he should do it, if he should do it, he would have to explain Kurt to Cooper.

What the hell was he going to do?

“Yeah,” Kurt laughs, putting a hand on both sides of Blaine's head, feeling his skin for fever. “Did you have another vision?”

“No,” Blaine says, blinking down at the phone in his hand. “No, not a vision.”

His life flashing before his eyes.

Kurt smiles nervously, trying to catch Blaine's glassy stare.

“Blaine, you're kind of scaring me. Is everything okay?”

Blaine shoves his phone into his pocket and puts a smile on his face, one he hopes is convincing enough to erase Kurt's concerns.

“Yeah,” Blaine says, wrapping an arm around Kurt's waist and pulling his boyfriend close. “Everything's fine.”

“You promise?” Kurt asks, bringing a hand up to thread his fingers soothingly through Blaine's hair.

“Cross my heart,” Blaine answers, resting his head on the puppet's shoulder.

Screw what Sebastian said. Kurt is as real to Blaine as anyone – flesh and blood or porcelain and wire. It made no difference. The boy in his embrace is as beautiful, kind, and compassionate as any person Blaine had ever met.

And he'd make his brother see that…somehow.