Kurt lay awake that night. Many thoughts were on his mind, some of them seemingly at the same time. After a while he just resigned to having each one play itself out at its own pace, testing their feel rather than actively trying to make sense of them.

The things Blaine had said were there, but mostly thoughts and sensations, that this conversation had inspired.

Kurt didn't feel that he had to make peace with his Mom.

And he wasn't sure he agreed with what Blaine had been suggesting, if Kurt had even caught his meaning correctly.

Yet, there were things that his boyfriend had said, that touched something in Kurt, although he couldn't always put his finger on them or what exactly it was that they did to him.

But it felt good to actually be thinking about his Mom again for some time.

Not that she was not always on his mind anyway, somehow.

He thought of her every time he saw poppies. They had been her favourite.

So, now, anything closely the shape or colour of them made his mind flash with the thought of her.

He didn't always go deeper into it, of course, when that happened. It was just that it brought itself to his awareness with a fleeting glimpse of her, to then vanish again into the depths of his mind. The word Mom. A scent, a fragment of a memory, a feeling of warmth, or of loss.

But beneath all that, all of him, he was sure she was always there somehow, even if she wasn't in his conscious thoughts.

She was that hum all along his subconscious.

His music of the spheres.

He had always liked the images that popped up in his head at hearing this term.

Someone had talked to him about it, but he couldn't recall who or even when. A teacher at the end of grade school perhaps, but he wasn't sure. He also doubted if that someone had explained it correctly, or if Kurt had fully understood at the time what it was supposed to mean, because when he had researched it quite a bit later on the internet, the descriptions he would find had sounded so different.

What it read there was, that the music of the spheres, or universal music, was a philosophical concept, that said that this music was not audible, thus not music per se and as commonly understood, but that the set of mathematical rules according to which the universe moved, according to which the planets moved in their spheres, followed absolute musical rules, creating harmony. Something like that.

What his imagination had done with it back when that someone had talked to him about it, was something different.

He had pictured a model of the world, like someone once must have had it, must have thought it up, where the earth was a ball surrounded by spheres made of glass or crystal, one inside each other, like a Babushka doll, but perfectly round, crystal ball inside crystal ball, each sphere holding a planet or star. To make those stars move around the world in the patterns that could be perceived, the spheres had to move against each other in their perfect fit.

The sounds that were created by this friction, by that rub of bodies of celestial glass against each other, that was to him the music of the spheres, an ethereal, eternal composition of sounds.

And every being on earth must hear it, always, and therefore can never really become aware of it.

Because the sounds just were ever present, from the day you came into existence, from the day you could hear, they were already and always there. And so it was them, that defined your concept of silence.

There was no ever being without it, this music, in this world, and so it blended in with your reality, no, more like, your very reality was founded upon it.

Kurt didn't know, if maybe the philosophical theory had passed this stage or a similar one at some point in history, but it didn't matter to him, he liked this idea, what his mind had made of it, better than anything else he'd found.

And especially right now.

Because it was her. This was what his Mom was to him. She was his music of the spheres.

His concept of himself was with her ever present, as part of himself, the foundation to his reality, his way of thinking, of perceiving the world.

Her morals, her compassion, her flawless heart.

Was that what Blaine had spoken of, in a way?

Kurt took a deep breath. It might just have been that. At some point of their conversation at least. Yet, the thought brought back other things that Blaine had said, and Kurt weighed and pondered each one in his mind.

Of course Kurt tried to model himself after his mother.

And how could he not? In his memory she had become this perfect human being, all that he ever aspired to be. And maybe that was just the thing. Because he had to admit now, that over all that idealizing her perfection, she might have lost a bit of her humanity along the way, under the hand lens of his imagination.

Of course she couldn't have been perfect in that sense, because no human being ever was.

An ideal was something that was outside of reality with reality itself reaching out for it but never making contact.

It was impossible to fulfill, just by its very definition.

She had not been perfect, of course, when she'd been alive. And that was a good thing, because it now felt to Kurt like it somehow kept her almost close enough to touch.

Kurt tossed himself onto his side.

Still, what Blaine had said, was a step too far going somewhere Kurt could not follow. Yet.

The words sex and Mom just wouldn't go easily together in one sentence for him.

In some distant part of his mind he knew, that his Mom must have had..., well, done stuff, because he was living proof.

But no one ever willingly thinks of his parents like this, do they? Kurt involuntarily pressed his lids shut tightly, but then released them, looking at the ceiling, as if he wished he could see through it.

Still, he had to admit, that maybe it was a good thing to think of her as merely a human being, too.

Human beings simply got messy. They made mistakes. They died.

Kurt blinked several times at the thought and felt his throat tighten.

Then his body just moved.

He threw his legs out from under the covers and sat up, then went down the stairs on bare feet, to get a glass of milk in the kitchen.

Gripping onto it tightly, he entered the dim living room, where his parents sat comfortably on the couch, watching TV.

Well, they weren't really watching anymore, his dad had turned the volume down and Carole was already dozing off in the circle of his arm.

Kurt wordlessly sat down into the armchair at their side, pulling his legs up, hugging them, still holding onto the glass of milk, that his lips had yet to touch.

Burt acknowledged his son's presence from the corner of his eye, gave a small smile and a gentle huff.

"Can't sleep, kid?" Kurt just shook his head no.

Carole stirred a little in Burt's arm and smiled warmly at Kurt as well.

And for a while, Kurt was content to simply sink into the cosy silence inside the room, to slump in his chair letting himself be wrapped up in it, and he found he was almost fine with the idea of allowing the muffled sounds of the TV to lull him to sleep.

Then he remembered what had brought him here.

He made his voice soft. "Dad?"

Burt gave a throaty sound in reply so Kurt knew he was listening.

"Dad, tell me again how you met Mom, please?"

Now Burt turned his head to look at his son, and Kurt saw the thoughts work behind sensitive green eyes. The request was familiar but Kurt had not made it for several years now. Burt's eyes narrowed and Kurt guessed what was going through his father's mind. "I'm not sleep walking, Dad, I'm awake."

Burt took a deep breath.

"Kurt, you know the story." He angled his head to look down at Carole now, who had opened her eyes again to study Kurt with a hint of worry in her expression.

A thought hit Kurt and he felt his cheeks heat up. "Carole, I'm sorry! I did not mean any offence to you, I just..." He began to stammer. "It... it just has been on my mind, and I'd really like hearing it again."

Carole lifted her head from Burt's shoulder to give Kurt the most reassuring, gentle smile. "Oh, sweetie, of course, you wouldn't, I didn't take it like that!" Then she cocked her head a little at her husband in the slightest gesture. "And actually, I would love to hear the story, too." Kurt sat up a little straighter.

Burt let out a defeated grumble, and a good-natured grunt, then leaned his head back to look at either one them one after the other for a prolonged moment.

When he'd watched Carole reaching for the remote control on Burt's lap to switch off the TV, and Kurt taking an expectant sip of his milk, Burt began to talk.

Kurt listened to the melody of that voice telling the story he knew by heart, using all those words so well-known. And Kurt tried very hard to listen not with the ears of a little boy this time, but with all that he knew now and had learned since then, about people and romance and life.

It was not easy, because the mere flow of his fathers narration, the sound of his voice, brought him back so naturally to countless evenings of goodnight stories, back to Kurt as a boy, and a bedroom with only the two of them in it.

But he found he could do it. Could see his mother in a new light through the words his father chose. Could think of her as a teenager, not unlike himself and his friends at school, with all that was living on their minds.

And Kurt actually became aware, that he had neglected to take that step, to adjust her image in his mind to all the things that had changed him from being a boy, to being where he was now. Instead, he had somehow left her there, in that bedroom, when they had been three persons sitting on that bed still, and she had held him in her arms.

He had left her there, and not taken her along, denying his memory of her to grow up with him.

And he never actively had thought about it, wouldn't have reckoned it was necessary, had always assumed his mind would catch up on its own accord. But he felt now that it simply hadn't, that all this now felt new somehow, even if it was the same story being told.

When Burt ended, the glass of milk was empty, and Kurt felt a glow to his own cheeks that he saw mirrored in Carol's face.

His limbs felt pleasantly heavy, because even though his mind was wide awake, his body really didn't want to fight the way it had been conditioned.

He let out a long contented sigh, slightly nodding to himself and made to get up, to get back to bed.

Burt's tone held him back. "Kurt? You wanna tell me what brought this on?" Kurt stopped and thought about it, then smiled and made sure all the affection he felt showed in his eyes and voice, when he shook his head.

"Not tonight, Dad. Some other time, maybe. But not now. I think I'll be able to sleep now."

And as he started to walk he let his fingers trail over the backrest of the couch, the slightest gesture, the lightest touch to his Dad's shoulder in passing. "Thank you, Dad. Carole."

And Kurt left them to mumble warm words to each other, more of endearment then of worry, and smiles were on all their faces.

Minutes later, when Kurt had tucked himself in and was stretching languorously under the sheets again, he squinted sleepy eyes against the bright display light of his cell phone.

He'd typed in a text to his boyfriend, even if Blaine was most certainly fast asleep by now, as it was well after midnight.

You have quite a way, you know that? Love you. Kurt.

He pressed 'send' and put the phone on the nightstand. Kurt knew he was being cryptic, and Blaine wouldn't probably know what to do with that message, when he'd read it in the morning.

But Kurt would explain it to him, eventually.

He smiled once more to himself.

And he really felt he'd be able to sleep now.