Blaine held a trembling Kurt in his arms in an attempt to calm him, massaging the muscles of his neck with firm fingers and shushing him gently.

“It’s alright, baby,” he whispered, “I’m here. I’ve got you.”

Kurt didn’t start crying again, but he couldn’t stop his body from trembling.

Afraid that he might fall down, Blaine tried to get Kurt to sit on his stool but Kurt wouldn’t move. He wasn’t about to touch that stool again without scrubbing it with some strong disinfectant first.

Blaine let Kurt lean his body against him, supporting his weight so that they could melt together in their embrace.

“Why don’t you calm down and tell me what’s got you so upset?” Blaine asked.

It was right there – right on the tip of his tongue. He could have just told him what Sebastian had said and asked him if it was true. He should have, but when the words tried to come out, he couldn’t do it. He swallowed them down and let them sink in his stomach like a stone.

In the end, Kurt lied to Blaine.

He didn’t want to lie, but he did, and he hated himself for it.

The last thing he wanted was to be dishonest with Blaine; Blaine didn’t deserve it.

In reality, it was a white lie he told. There was some truth to it and that softened the blow to his conscience a bit.

Kurt stuttered and stammered like an idiot, and told Blaine that it was nervousness over his dad's appointment that had him retching in the garbage can.

Blaine never knew that Sebastian had come to visit Kurt at all.

Blaine nodded and smiled, listening patiently to words that only partially made sense, pecking kisses to Kurt’s cheek and hairline, and holding him tight.

Eventually Kurt quieted down with a long, cleansing sigh. His body stopped trembling. He even laughed at the ridiculous spectacle he was making, but Blaine put a hand up to Kurt’s lips to hush him and told him he looked beautiful. They retreated to the office and sat together behind Burt’s desk, hiding for a while from the outside world and any other surprise visitors who might happen by. Kurt sifted through the receipts and the invoices while Blaine told him what he could expect for the upcoming races, and things slowly shifted back to the way Kurt felt they should be.

***

Kurt had gone to every single one of his dad's doctor appointments. He even had a pocket-sized notebook that he brought with him to write down all the usual useful snippets of information: doctor's names, medications, therapies, websites, phone numbers, new appointments. The book had 180 pages when he bought it. As of his dad's heart attack last year, Kurt had filled 165 of them - every single line, every white space, even jotting notes in the margins, words crowding words until he was the only person who could make sense of them.

Kurt’s obsession with note taking started after his dad’s first cardiologist appointment. His father sat and nodded while the specialist talked, and Kurt, sitting dutifully by his father’s side, assumed that his dad was memorizing and cataloging all the information the doctor was throwing at him. After over an hour of discussion about dietary changes, exercise regimes, and new heart medications, they left – Kurt’s mind buzzing to recall even a third of the information he had heard. While father and son were in the parking garage heading for Kurt’s car, his father turned to him and asked, “What was that last thing he said?”

Why do perfectly intelligent parents become completely unreliable when they have to go to the doctor?

Kurt usually didn't have a problem accompanying his dad to these appointments, after the initial inevitable pissing contest was out of the way, of course. He held his dad's hand, asked all the right questions, got the doctor to disagree with his dad when he tried to convince everyone that bacon was a vegetable. Kurt was his father’s self-appointed guardian and he took his job seriously. But this time around, Kurt felt like an intruder. The doctor had breezed through, ordered blood work, and had gone, which, though obnoxiously short, was also a blessing. Ordering blood work meant moving forward, making progress, not starting at square one and putting his father’s health in any further risk.

It looked like there would be no pissing contest for Kurt Hummel today.

A few minutes after the doctor left a nurse came in, telling them that the doctor – Dr. Newman, Kurt thought he’d said - had requested that she take his dad's vitals. That's when the appointment went weird. Kurt sat in a stiff plastic chair, holding his notebook, pen poised at the ready, while his dad flirted with the nurse, Carole.

Watching him put the moves on this poor woman burned Kurt’s eyes and ears, and made his skin crawl.

He couldn’t watch. He kept looking left and right, praying that it would end.

Carole's sweet and bubbly personality helped Kurt relax. It was a nice change to all of the straight laced, stuck-in-the-mud nurses Kurt and his dad had encountered in the past. She had a genuine smile and she smelled like Clinique's 'Happy' - a retro scent that Kurt could get behind - instead of like rubbing alcohol. When she had entered the exam room, she made a point of shaking Kurt's hand and introducing herself to him personally. A lot of nurses usually ignored him.

"Are you attending McKinley in the fall?" she asked while she drew blood from his father's arm with practiced ease. "I have a boy at McKinley. His name is Finn. Have you met him yet?"

Kurt was amazed. She asked one question after the other, pelting him with information in rapid succession like bullets firing from a Gatling gun; she barely took a breath in between.

After she was done with Kurt, she started in on his dad. Kurt's head bounced back and forth between Carole and his dad as they talked.  When Carole tried to take Burt's blood pressure, he made a lame joke - a really lame joke – about making sure to give it back when she was done. Carole threw her head back and laughed like he was the featured comic on a Comedy Central special. Kurt's eyes became sore from rolling. When he wasn’t watching the verbal volley and rolling his eyes in response, he glanced periodically to the clock on the wall. Kurt wrote down information as she rattled it off - blood pressure 138/90, temperature 97.5, blood sugar 101. They talked about labetalol and insulin, and changes to his diet, and that's when his dad did it.

He popped the question.

He asked Carole out on a date.

Kurt dropped his pen.

Burt looked over at his son with a half-smile when he heard the writing instrument clatter to the floor.

"Kurt, why don't you head out?” he asked. “I've seen you look at that clock about nine times in the last two minutes."

Kurt bent over and picked up his pen, swallowing his guilt.

"No, that's okay." Kurt shut his pen into the spine of his tiny notebook. "Besides, how are you going to get back to the shop?"

"It's not that far. I’ll walk it. The exercise will be good for me." Burt looked to Carole for some affirmation that what he had just said was true.

"That's right." Carole smiled warmly at Kurt, then she turned to Burt. "I'm off in about ten minutes if you want to go for lunch. It’s Mexican day in the hospital cafeteria. They make some pretty decent veggie tacos. "

Burt's smile grew wider. Kurt’s mouth dropped. He would never have dreamed that someone could make Burt Hummel smile at the thought of veggie tacos.

"It's a date."

Kurt rolled his eyes again.

Carole and his dad continued to look at each other shyly.

That's when Kurt realized he had effectively disappeared.

"Okay." Kurt surrendered his notebook and pen to his dad, looking at him pointedly. "Write down everything the doctor says about your new medication.” Kurt poked the book sharply with his index finger. “I want that back."

"Sure thing, kiddo," his dad said, flipping casually through the pages, then closing the book and setting it down by his side on the examination table.

Kurt hugged his father and kissed him on the cheek, still not completely okay with leaving him. He stood and gave his father a significant look, asking him with his eyes if he was truly okay with Kurt going. His father waved him away with his hand.

“Go, Kurt,” Burt said. “I’ll be fine. I promise.”

“Okay.” Kurt turned to Carole standing beside them. “It was nice to meet you.”

“It was nice to meet you, too, Kurt,” she said, making a shooing motion of her own with her hand. “Now scoot. Your dad and I have tons to talk about.”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” Kurt grumbled, but he couldn’t hide his smile.

For all of his discomfort at the idea of his father dating, Kurt had liked Carole immediately.

"And try to write clearly," Kurt called over his shoulder as he headed for the door. "Last time you took notes it looked like you wrote them in Sanskrit."

Carole chuckled and Burt ducked his head as he laughed.

"Go." Burt's command was authoritative, but his eyes were shining and happy.

"Alright, alright." Kurt let the door close completely and then tried to listen in, but he couldn't make anything out. He sighed, turned on his heel, and headed for the elevator.

Kurt hated hospitals for obvious reasons, but also because there was never just one elevator that went straight down to the lobby. He started on the seventh floor and rode down to the fourth. He got out, crossed a hallway, and took another elevator to the third floor. That's where the elevators disappeared. Kurt walked up and down the hallways, turning down every corridor, muttering angrily. They had gotten up there, hadn't they? How come he couldn't remember the path they had taken?

"Should have left a frickin' trail of bread crumbs," he mumbled as his phone vibrated in his pocket.

Kurt stopped beside a wall covered in the most despicable excuse for hospitality art he had ever seen, and fished his iPhone from his pocket.

(2:17 P.M.)

From: Blaine

How are things?

Kurt smiled.

(2:19 P.M.)

From: Kurt

Great, if I could actually find my way out of the hospital.

(2:22 P.M.)

From: Blaine

Meet me at the Lima Bean?

(2:23 P.M.)

From: Kurt

Heading your way. If I'm not there in 30 minutes, send a search party...

(2:25 P.M.)

From: Blaine

:)

Kurt looked at the screen and frowned, difficult since he couldn’t stop smiling so the resulting expression probably made him look insane.

"Ugh, Blaine. Emoticons?" Kurt smirked as he shoved his phone back in his pocket and headed for the first stairwell he could find. "And I had so much respect for you."

***

Blaine was already sitting at a table with two coffee cups in front of him when Kurt arrived. Kurt took a moment to look at him through the coffee house window. Blaine wore his signature leather jacket, hair lightly gelled, eyes dark, chewing absently on his lower lip. Kurt sighed. He looked just as dreamy as ever, but there was something else going on behind those gorgeous hazel eyes. Blaine thrummed his fingers on the table erratically. He stared intensely at his cup, his brow pinched with concern, looking both nervous and lost in thought all at once. Kurt waited to see if Blaine would look up and notice him staring. Kurt planned on pulling a silly face and maybe making him laugh, but he didn’t feel Kurt’s eyes on him at all.

Kurt walked into the coffee shop and made a beeline for Blaine’s table, beyond curious as to what might be on the boy’s mind. He slipped quickly into the chair next to him and bumped Blaine’s shoulder with his own. Blaine’s head snapped up to look at him and he smiled when he saw Kurt, but as happy as he looked to see him, his smile didn’t quite reach his eyes; it didn’t erase the lines of worry on his forehead.

"Hey, baby." Blaine passed Kurt one of the coffees on the table.

"Hey, yourself, handsome." Kurt took the cup with a nod of thanks. He lifted it to his lips, took a tentative sip and sighed. Non-fat mocha.

Blaine had remembered.

"I see you found your way out," Blaine teased.

Kurt nodded.

"Yeah, well, I ran into a Sherpa on the fourth floor of the north stairwell and he helped me find my way."

Blaine laughed, but he still seemed preoccupied. He twirled his coffee cup between his fingers, his brow furrowing contemplatively. Kurt cocked his head to the side and watched him.

"Is everything okay, Blaine?" Kurt took another slow sip, giving Blaine time to speak.

Blaine looked up into Kurt's questioning gaze, held it for a moment, and sighed.

"Look," Blaine started, stilling his cup and setting it aside. He folded his hands in front of him, eyes dropping from Kurt’s face to a spot on the table in front of him. "I don't know how to put this…I mean, we haven’t known each other very long and I know it’s not my place to say this…and there’s no subtle way to…fuck, I'm just going to come out and say it." Blaine sat up straighter in his seat, then looked up and locked eyes with Kurt.

Kurt was taken aback by Blaine’s cursing and his sudden change in tone. Here it was, he thought. The other shoe dropping. Whatever Blaine had to confess, Kurt hoped he would do it fast and get it over with. Any more of these surprises and he’d be seeing the cardiologist right alongside his dad.

Blaine took a deep breath and held it, then let it out slowly through his nose. Kurt scooted to the edge of his seat while he waited, taking a sip of his coffee to give himself something to do.

"I...I don't want you to work for Dalton anymore."

Kurt choked a little on his coffee and put his cup down. The words hung in the air as both boys stared at each other – Kurt waiting for Blaine to elaborate, and Blaine waiting for Kurt to respond.

"What?" Kurt said finally, clearing his throat.

"I know you need money," Blaine rushed into the tense pause. "I know going to New York is important to you, but I think that we..." Blaine glanced away, trying to choose his words carefully. "I think there has to be another way."

Kurt pondered the expression on Blaine's face. He couldn't decipher what Blaine might be thinking. He took another long sip as he stalled to come up with a reply.

"I'm not going to find another job that pays me as much as Wes and his guys do." Kurt watched as Blaine's shoulders slumped slightly and he closed his eyes.

"I don't..." Blaine never stumbled over his words - usually so confident and self-assured - and now it seemed as though he couldn’t put together a coherent sentence to save his life. "I don't like the way they treat you."

Kurt knew what Blaine was referring to. Sebastian never left Kurt's side, his hands usually trying to creep somewhere inappropriate, and he rarely took no for an answer. Dave lurked as Kurt worked, expression blank and unreadable, his eyes boring holes into Kurt's body. Even Wes had become extremely possessive of Kurt, holding onto him or physically moving him whenever he thought Blaine might come over to talk with him. There were also the jokes and the demeaning nicknames that were so pervasive they had started to travel around to the other crews until Kurt became the punchline of a joke. Kurt agreed that the only reason he put up with it was the money. If he had another option, he would definitely jump at it.

Blaine's eyes pleaded silently with Kurt.

Kurt sighed.

"Blaine...” Kurt knew what he was going to say, but he wasn’t looking forward to hurting Blaine’s feelings, “I can't leave. I don't have another choice."

"Yes, you do Kurt!" Blaine was emphatic. He reached across the table and took Kurt's hand in his, squeezing it gently, urging him to see reason. "You do have a choice. You don't deserve this. It's not worth it. Nothing is worth that."

Kurt felt heat rising to his cheeks. He didn't want to be angry with Blaine. He thought Blaine understood about his dream. He thought that Blaine knew how it important it was to him.

"Do you have a dream for the rest of your life?" Kurt asked evenly, holding on to the last thread of his calm after his long morning. "Do you know what you're doing after you graduate? Where you’re going to college?"

Blaine nodded, keeping his eyes locked on their joined hands.

"Wouldn't you do anything to get that dream?" Kurt rubbed his thumb slowly over Blaine's knuckles, trying to be soothing for both of them. “To get out of Lima, Ohio, and live it?”

Blaine nodded and shook his head at odd intervals, at war with himself over how to help Kurt.

"There has to be another way," Blaine argued.

Kurt didn't quite understand the passion behind Blaine's reaction. It's not like they were boyfriends. Would Blaine even want that? Kurt didn't allow himself to linger on the prospect, no matter how much Kurt normally did think about it.

Blaine stayed quiet when Kurt didn't respond, and Kurt realized that silent, moody Blaine was a little unnerving. Kurt wanted sassy, playful, flirty Blaine back. He wanted those sinful, honey-gold eyes staring at him, making him squirm underneath the heat of their gaze.

"Look." Kurt squeezed Blaine's hand gently as he spoke. "There's only one last race before the start of school, and then I won't be hanging with them all that much."

Blaine brought Kurt's hand to his lips. Blaine's eyes fluttered shut as he kissed across Kurt's knuckles, slowly, one at a time. Kurt's heart swelled in his chest at the delicate but deliberate brush of his lips. The feeling of Blaine's lips on his skin derailed his thoughts. At that moment, he considered caving in and quitting. He honestly did.

He would have if Blaine asked him to be only his. He would have for the sweet promise of Blaine's kisses on more than just the back of his hand.