The three days before New Directions flew off to New York were a blur for Kurt. Their time was packed full of rehearsals, brain storming in the hope of coming up with some decent original songs, and costuming sessions, with the occasional break to go to an important class. They all sang and danced constantly. They might not have any numbers worked out, but they still knew the best way to prime themselves for the competition was to ensure that at least their voices and bodies were in prime condition, like the athletes Mr Schuester had compared them to after the fiasco of Rachel's party.

Kurt had messaged Blaine every day, mostly idle, innocuous chatter like that of friends who lived each others' lives in real time, as they once had. Kurt had worked up the courage at one point to ask if Blaine had spoken to Patrick - to which Blaine had responded that he'd tried, and been summarily ignored. Kurt tried not to feel too relieved, and instead feel slightly sorry for Patrick, whose longing for Blaine had been not dissimilar to Kurt's own.

Their trip to New York itself had been exhilarating - flying for the first time (and in first class!), parading around the city when they should have been writing songs, sneaking out and singing on the most amazing stage in the whole world with Rachel and knowing that this was where he belonged. And then, even after the kiss between Rachel and Finn, singing 'Light Up the World' and feeling like he really could have lit up the world in that moment. Knowing that it didn't matter that they weren't going to win, because they were amazing and that audience was screaming for them.

Coming back to Lima was the most difficult thing Kurt had done in a very long time - almost as difficult as leaving Dalton for McKinley had been. He'd been half-tempted to call his dad and say he was never coming home, that it didn't matter where he worked or lived but he just had to stay in the city of his dreams. There were only three things pulling him back to provincial Ohio: New Directions, his family and Blaine.

Blaine had been more than sympathetic when Kurt told him that New Directions had lost rather spectacularly, coming in at a less-than-impressive twelfth place. Like a good, supportive friend, the Warbler had railed against the judges, Rachel and Finn, Vocal Adrenaline and the entire show choir establishment in general. He didn't really seem to understand that Kurt wasn't upset; while Blaine maintained a vast appreciation for New York, he'd spent many summers there over the years and had, to a certain extent, forgotten how magical its first, glowing impression was.

Which is how he ended up sitting next to Kurt on his bed at Dalton on a Saturday night, half-packed suitcase flung open at his feet, saying, 'I just don't get how you're not more upset.'

'I explained it to you already, Blaine,' Kurt said with a slight roll of his eyes. 'Being on the stage, and in New York... it was just too amazing for words. How could I possibly be sad after that?'

'But you're not even angry with Finn and Rachel!' Blaine said, pouting slightly in his confusion. 'How can you not even be the littlest bit annoyed with them?'

Expecting a quick-witted but innocent answer, Blaine was a little perturbed when his question was met by silence. He turned to Kurt, intending to nudge the boy's shoulder, but stopped short when he saw Kurt's eyes; sparking, searching and so intense Blaine felt his throat constrict.

'Have you been thinking, Blaine, like you said you would?'

Bewildered, Blaine just blinked. How on earth had they gotten to here from Kurt not being angry with Finn and Rachel? The jump had been too fast for his brain to follow, so he didn't have time to think of an answer to Kurt's question. But Kurt's eyes compelled him to say something. He felt pinned to the bed, those blue irises holding him down with a weight that felt like it might crush his chest. Before he knew what he was saying, Blaine was whispering the unedited truth. 'I tried, Kurt, I did, but every time I thought about it... I still... I just...'

It had been hard without Kurt. Blaine honestly had tried to think about it all while Kurt was away; how to be around Kurt without being afraid, and how to work out what they were. He hadn't been able to. Every message he'd received from his friend was a tiny stab of guilt, knowing that Blaine had made promises that he wasn't keeping. But Kurt had been several states away, not nearly close enough to counteract the ever-present fear; and all those clear, shining truths that had given him such courage and aided such progress the week before seemed to be swallowed in storm clouds.

'Blaine, I told you I couldn't keep being the strong one here, and I meant it.'

All of his excuses were weak ones, Blaine knew.

Blaine bunched the sheets tightly under his hands. Kurt's were similarly poised right next to his, the sides of their palms almost brushing. Kurt's wrist was still grazed from his attack. He was still healing from the consequences of the last time he tried to be the strong one for Blaine.

'Kurt, being with you is like... it's like dancing along the very, very edge of a cliff. It's amazing and exhilarating and you feel, for a moment, like you could do anything,' Blaine said softly, feeling the look of wonder creep into his eyes. Then, abruptly, they deadened. 'But at the same time, you know that if someone came along and nudged you, or even if you just wobbled slightly in your dance, there's no question as to if you'd survive. You'd be dead in seconds. And, fuck, Kurt.' The curse tasted foreign in his mouth, but it was the only world that really seemed to express what he was feeling with enough force. 'That's terrifying.'

Kurt's hands were white, he was clutching the sheets on Blaine's bed so hard. He wasn't looking at Blaine any more. 'You promised,' he gasped. His voice sounded like it was tearing, ripping itself to pieces with every word.

Blaine had. He'd promised Kurt that he'd find a place for them somewhere in this. And he knew now, even if the truth was partially hidden from him, that he couldn't live without Kurt in some capacity. So where was the compromise?

'Maybe I should just take a step back from the edge. Not back away entirely, but... maybe the best solution here really is if we just stay friends.'

x

As the words stay friends echoed through his head, Kurt was gagging. His throat closed, his lungs failed to expand like they should, and he was suffocating. His head pounded with the memory of a fever on the day after a rain storm, a whole world ago. He had come all this way - through crying in an attic, a month of isolation in a school that was supposed to be his haven, through sheer emotional abuse and then the physical abuse of a closet case out to kill him - and had arrived at this moment battered. Wounded. Ready to collapse. The only reason he'd made it here was some underlying faith in Blaine, a blind hope that maybe, just maybe the boy would come good. That he wouldn't have travelled so far for nothing.

He'd forgotten, in his idiocy, that when you travelled the entire way around the world, it didn't matter what violent oceans, what deserts or treacherous slopes you crossed. You still ended up back at the beginning.

Blaine was asking to just be friends again.

Last time they tried to be friends, Blaine had run from him again and again until they'd ended up here, two terrified, hurt boys completely lost in their own world.

'Blaine, do you know why I wasn't mad at Finn and Rachel?' Kurt finally asked. 'It's because I understood. I understood how they ended up at that point far too well to ever be angry at them for succumbing to the moment. I knew how it felt to be constantly back and forth on where you stood, to see the other person trying to love someone else rather than go back to you.' Kurt started to cry, exhausted tears that were the only possible way he could find to express the explosion in his chest. 'I knew, Blaine, how it felt to be in that moment, to feel a magnetic force so strong you could never, ever have a hope of fighting it. That it didn't matter what was happening around you, if you were in front of a huge crowd or in the middle of a storm or if the whole damn world was watching' - Kurt was on his feet, shouting - 'because nothing could stop you from being pulled to them in that moment! And then, when you kissed, you realised that nothing else had ever mattered, because everything else disappeared!'

Kurt stood in front of Blaine, who was still sitting on the edge of the bed, staring up at Kurt, looking so stunned and terrified and so gloriously beautiful Kurt felt like he was teetering on the edge of his own cliff. He reached down and grasped Blaine's face between his hands. 'And that, Blaine Anderson,' Kurt panted, 'is why we can never just be friends.'

Damn Blaine and his fear. Kurt wasn't afraid. He jumped off the edge of his own cliff. He didn't care about the fall any more. Tears still running down his face, he leaned down to kiss Blaine, hot and hard and fierce.

Their lips had touched for but a moment, though, when something changed. They slowed, mouths crushing to pull each other deeper, closer, and so deliberately it hurt. There was a swell of tenderness and feeling in each movement they made against each other. Kurt could feel the weight of their shared world, one that only they inhabited and where everything was soothing, resting upon the kiss. Tears still streamed down his face, soft and silent, becoming a shared expression as their faces met, the wetness sliding over both their cheeks.

He kissed deeper still, tongues twining tightly between them, and relished the feeling of Blaine under his hands. Then Blaine pulled Kurt down onto the bed and rolled over him, pinning him down, and Kurt kept crying because he'd never been so close to someone in his life. He was falling into Blaine, or Blaine was falling into him; as their lips continued to meld together, it felt like they weren't two people any more but he was in a part of Blaine, a close, warm darkness where he could feel Blaine's heart beat in the air around him.

'I love you,' he breathed into Blaine's mouth on their shared breath. 'I love you, god damn you. I love you.'

They pressed together, their hips meeting. And it was like being embraced by fire, Kurt's tears not enough to extinguish it. The flames that had been burning down the world around them finally reached them, leapt up their limbs to consume them - but not to destroy them. To melt and reforge them. Their bodies moved together and burned, Kurt breaking away from the kiss to bite down on Blaine's neck as he shuddered through his peak, then recapturing the other boy's mouth until Blaine was burning with him.

Eventually, they stopped, lips touching but still. 'I love you,' Kurt whispered, and let the ashes carry him into sleep.

x

Kurt woke in the morning with Blaine still half over him, the long line of the other boy pressed against his right side, heavy and wonderful. He allowed himself to wallow in the sensation for just a moment. His heart hurt more than it ever had before. But, even though he was already in so much pain, he knew it could be worse.

With a heavy sigh, he pulled himself out from under a still-sleeping Blaine and gathered his things. He paused a moment to write a note for Blaine, trying not to cry and wrinkle the page. He didn't want to cry any more. When he was fully ready to leave, he bent to put the note on the bed side table and sucked in a final breath of Blaine. He stopped, still stooped over, and closed his eyes. He had to do this. He knew it. It was just... difficult.

He kissed Blaine's rumpled curls, not knowing if he could withstand the touch of skin on skin, and slipped out the door.

Patrick's room, he remembered vaguely, was in the same block as Blaine's, next to Nick's. He walked there resolutely but quietly; he was careful not to let his boots make too much noise on the hardwood floors, mindful of the early hour. The summer sun bounced off Kurt's skin and beamed through the corridor around him, so bright it managed to make even Dalton's rich wooden panelling look clinical. He knocked on Patrick's door, identical to the rest in the row except for the little gold number, and it was pulled open almost instantly.

Patrick was already dressed despite the time, his suitcase packed and ready for his own journey home. His face turned stony the moment he saw Kurt. 'Hummel,' he said flatly. 'What do you want?'

'Can I come in, please?' Kurt asked gently. 'I don't really want to wake the rest of the corridor.'

Patrick's desire to slam the door shut clearly warred with his good upbringing for a moment, and Kurt inwardly sighed in relief as he saw the manners narrowly win out, Patrick nodding once and stepping back to allow Kurt entry. Once the door was shut, Patrick turned to Kurt, who was standing awkwardly in the middle of the bare dorm room.

'What do you want?' Patrick asked, not sharply, but still without hesitation.

'I'm not really sure,' Kurt said quietly. 'I just... wanted to come to talk to you. I know Blaine hasn't been able to. And it didn't feel right, knowing how things ended between you two.'

Patrick looked faintly disbelieving. 'So... what? You thought, because Blaine chose you over me, you'd be all magnanimous and come make sure I was ok? Tell me it was nothing that I did wrong, I just wasn't right for him?' Patrick waited, but Kurt didn't respond, so he pressed further. 'Or are you here to gloat instead? Rub in how happy you are together?'

Kurt flinched. 'No. I swear, I'm not.' He searched the empty room for inspiration and found none, until he looked Patrick full in the face, where he found it. Regardless of who had broken up with who, Patrick was still in pain. 'I guess I'm just trying to understand why you broke up with him over me. We weren't even friends at that point. He wouldn't speak to me.'

Patrick flopped himself into a Dalton-issue desk chair and looked at Kurt appraisingly. Kurt, remembering that Patrick had always been quite socially adept, allowed the boy to read his face. Running one hand through his messy brown hair, Patrick eventually said, in a conversational tone, 'Right when Blaine first asked me out, Andrew - he's a senior, friends with my older brother - warned me about you. Said that sure, Blaine was hot and charming and whatever, but there was a mess going on between the two of you and no one should be dumb enough to get in the way. But I did anyway, because you were gone, and I really wanted him. Had for what felt like forever.' Patrick stopped and let out a self-deprecating laugh. 'Why am I telling you this? I don't owe you any of it.'

'Because that, at least, I already understand,' Kurt said gently, tentatively going to sit on the stripped down bed. 'I always knew that you wanted him. I recognised the signs,' he said wryly.

'Yeah, I suppose you did,' Patrick mumbled, running his hand through his hair again. Kurt irrationally wondered if that nervous habit was solely responsible for the every-which-way look Patrick's hair always seemed to have. 'Well, everything was good for a bit. I had the boyfriend of my dreams. Right up until you got hurt, and he came to me crying and talking about storm clouds on snow as if it actually made sense.' Patrick flicked a curious glance at Kurt. 'Don't suppose you can explain that one?' he asked. Kurt shook his head.

'That seemed to trigger a completely different Blaine, pretty much.' Patrick said with a sigh, and an air of someone who had already repeated these words more than once to numerous concerned parties. 'There were glimpses of the boy I thought I'd known, but they were few and far between. And then, when Blaine decided to go see you with the other Warblers and we fought about it, I finally realised how stupid I'd been. Because Andrew was totally and completely right, and there was still a mess between you. But I also realised something that Andrew probably didn't - there was a whole extra version of Blaine hiding under his mask of charm, one that only seemed to come out when he was thinking about you.'

Patrick looked at Kurt, and noticed how white he was - the other boy looked positively sickly. 'You don't look happy to hear this,' he said musingly.

'I'm not,' Kurt said shakily. 'I just... I keep wondering when this got so messy. And I'm so, so sorry you got caught up in this, Patrick. I know how much it hurts.'

'Do you? Because I don't see you alone at the end of the game.'

'I am alone.'

The three words seemed to be suspended in the air for a moment before they settled over the boys, like a fistful of flour flung over their heads. 'What?' Patrick gaped, leaning forward. 'You're telling me you guys haven't gotten together? How is that possible? I thought once he'd forgiven you for whatever you'd done, you guys would have been together in a heartbeat.'

It was Kurt's turn to gape. 'You thought I did something to cause this? Patrick, did you honestly think that all the Warblers would have stayed my friends if I'd done something to Blaine?'

Kurt was met with blankness for a moment, before Patrick suddenly looked like he'd been slapped in the face. 'Oh my God. You're as much a victim here as I am.'

Kurt laughed. 'We're hardly victims. We let Blaine do this to us.'

'So... if you're here at Dalton... if you've stuck by Blaine all this time... I still don't get it. Why aren't you together?'

Kurt mused over the best way to answer this for a moment, trying to dodge all the emotion that came with his thoughts. 'Not even I know what "storm clouds on snow" means. There are some parts of Blaine he just won't put on the line.'

'But he gives you more than anyone. The only time I ever saw him really care was about you. And you, I mean, you obviously care for him -'

'I love him.' That, at least, was one thing Kurt wasn't going to hide from any more. No matter how much it hurt, he loved Blaine, and would stand proudly by that love even as he was torn down.

'You love him,' Patrick echoed. 'So, if you love him, and he gives you so much more than he gives anyone else - isn't it enough?'

And for a moment, seen through Patrick's eyes, it almost was. But then the very last two words Blaine had spoken to him - just friends - resurged through Kurt's veins.

'It took throwing myself off a cliff to realise exactly why Blaine keeps part of himself protected,' Kurt said with a sad smile. 'Everyone has the point where they're too scared of getting hurt any deeper.'

Patrick clearly didn't comprehend everything, but he understood enough. 'It doesn't really matter who we are or what we do, does it? We're all still scared teenage boys.'

'We're all scared, yes,' Kurt said slowly, 'but who we are and what we do definitely matters, Patrick. You had the strength to admit that Blaine wasn't who you expected, and the strength to walk away from what you wanted. That matters. I think you came out the best of all of us.'

Patrick smiled gently at Kurt, suddenly looking a lot older than a sophomore. As Kurt headed for the door, Patrick put a hand on Kurt's shoulder. 'Hey, you're walking away too.'

Kurt almost cried then. He grasped the hand on his shoulder for the briefest moment and said, 'Thanks, Patrick. But I'm not walking. I'm running.'

x

Blaine woke two hours before he had to leave Dalton to an empty bed, a half-packed suitcase and a chest that felt like it would explode. He didn't understand anything that he was feeling. It was all too much, way too much, and he needed Kurt. He had a feeling nothing in the world would ever make sense again unless Kurt was there to help him decode it.

But Kurt wasn't there. Instead, folded neatly on the edge of the bed side table, was a piece of note paper with Blaine's name on it. Blaine regarded it with dread. He had no idea what it would say, nor did he even know what he wanted it to say. What did he want from Kurt? He hadn't even begun to comprehend anything that happened, so how could he possibly know what he wanted to happen next? His head and heart were already too full.

Taking advantage of his temporary confusion and using it to feign numbness, Blaine forced himself to pick up the note. The crisp edge of the paper dragged across his fingertips like a tiny graze. Blaine closed his eyes before he opened it so he wouldn't have to see bits revealed one at a time.

A deep breath, a drop of the shoulders. He opened his eyes and read.

Oh. It didn't matter what he wanted, in the end. Oh, Kurt. I'm so, so sorry.

Blaine curled in on himself, heedlessly crushing the note under him, and sobbed.

Blaine,

I couldn't stay. I couldn't give you everything and still have to watch you run again; it would have broken me. I'm sorry. This time, I have to run from you before you can run from me.

I love you.