“You do realise I’m still mad at you right?” Grumbled Rachel as she roughly pulled out a chair at the coffee shop table.

“I think I’m the one who should be mad at you.” Kurt mumbled, looking into his hands.

“Wh-What? What gives you the right to be mad, what have I done? Or did you just beg me to come so you could whine at me some more?”

“I don’t whine.” Kurt defended. “But I do have a reason to be mad at you, a very good one.”

“Oh and what’s that then?” Rachel asked, a smug look on her face.

“You didn’t tell me your saw Blaine.”

Rachel’s face went blank, a look of worry growing.

“What? How do you know about that?”

“Because I saw him, Rachel, I saw him there looking so defenceless, so depressed and it killed me to see it.” Kurt said, a lump growing in his throat, but he wasn’t going to let himself cry, not in front of Rachel.

“Well I still don’t know why you’re mad at me, I tried to tell you but you wouldn’t listen.”

“So that’s what you were trying to tell me the other day.” Kurt groaned, letting his head fall into his hands.

“Yes and if you would have listened, you would have known.”

“Rachel, I’m so sorry, I’m sorry I didn’t listen. I’ve hated not talking and I never knew why but now I know and I understand why you were mad at me and now I just feel mad at myself.”

“Kurt, don’t be mad at yourself, please. I missed talking to you and I shouldn’t have walked out on you. I’m sorry.”

“I’m sorry too.”

Kurt stood up and reached over to pull Rachel into a hug.

“So are we friends again?” He whispered.

Rachel didn’t reply just gave a small nod against karts shoulder.

Everything was going to be ok. He had Rachel back and now he could talk about how he was going to get Blaine to talk to him.

………….

Blaine had run off again, why must he always do that? Why couldn’t he just sit down and talk to Kurt like a normal person, instead of getting freaked out and running off. Kurt was never going to talk to him again. Why did he always make the wrong decisions?

 If he would have just let Kurt take him home, look after him, his life would have been so much better. But Blaine had valued his pride too much. 

So here he was walking down the busy streets of New York City, alone.  It was nearly midday and the sun was high in the sky, although there was a cool wind blowing empty plastic bags around the street. He was feeling the cold yet there was no way to get away from it, instead he just carried on walking to shelter.

He walked back to the alleyway he was in earlier that day and settled himself down with his guitar. He laid his empty guitar case down in front of him in the hope that some random stranger would take pity on him. No such luck and by the time the sun went down and evening came, his case was still empty.

But hope was around the corner, literally. He could hear voices mumbling from round the corner of the alleyway. Blaine played his guitar a little louder in the hope that he could get the strangers attention. It was working, the voices where now getting closer and he could tell there was more than one of them, more like a whole gang.

As the group turned the corner Blaine’s hopes sank to the pit of his stomach, his face turning white.

This was no stranger, it was the drug dealer who had come for Joel. Blaine quickly ducked his head and moved his legs closer to his body, hoping against hope that the men hadn’t seen him.

Too late, Blaine felt a strong hand on his shoulder, lifting him up by the jacket.

“Seen your friend recently?” The bigger man asked.

Blaine lifted his head and gave it a small shake.

“W-why do you ask?”

“Because he ran away from me, just like you did.”

Blaine’s heart thudded fast. Joel had gotten away, he was safe, but Blaine wasn’t.

The stronger man lifted Blaine higher and pinned him against the wall.

“He still owes me, you know and I’m not going to stop till I get it.”

“Well why are you coming for me then? I don’t know where Joel is.”

“Yeah that’s right, no one knows where he is, so we came for you instead.”

“But I don’t have what you want.” Blaine stuttered as the man push him harder against the wall.

“Well, we will just have to get rid of you then.”

Blaine didn’t understand what he meant by get rid him, but he soon did when he felt to strong punch one of the man’s friends gave him.

He felt another one, again and again, each one hard and more painful than the last. All he wanted to do was curl up in a ball and protect himself, but he was still being held up against the wall.

Finally, Blaine thought the punches had stopped when he got dropped to the floor. He instantly wrapped his arms around himself, trying to block out the world.

Then he felt all the air knocked out of him as someone kicked him straight in the back.

It was the worst pain Blaine had ever felt. High school felt so tame compared to this and Karofsky seemed tame compared to whoever was kicking him now.

What seemed like hours, went by before the men finally stopped beating him up. They all just stood there round him whispering to each other. Blaine couldn’t even move and he prayed that they wouldn’t start kicking him again, he just didn’t have the strength left in him.

Finally they left, leaving Blaine lying in a heap on the floor. Bruised, battered and bleeding, Blaine had never felt worse in his whole life, he couldn’t even sit up. He just lay there drowning in pain, waiting for his knight in shining armour to come and rescue him.