Disclaimer: None of these characters are mine! 
Rating: PG, for this part
summary: Kurt leaves for NYC, and Blaine discovers that he is very good at romance, after all.

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Blaine is numb. Two days before Kurt leaves for New York City and he can feel himself retreating into his accustomed shell – retracting all the branches and roots he's busted out, stretching towards the warmth and sunshine of Kurt, putting himself back in the protective shell he wears when it's just him and his parents. Other people can't hurt you when you don't feel anything anyway.

He's realizing just how far New York is from Ohio. And not just in miles.

They've fallen asleep, wrapped in each others arms, on Blaine's bed, fully clothed, door open. It's so late, it's early. They've spent all night, their last night together before The Move, holding each other, reassuring, kissing, caressing, talking, nuzzling, crying, reassuring, loving each other. Kurt kept meaning to go home, kept saying he should go, kept coming back for one final kiss. When they finally couldn't keep their eyes open any longer, they slept, still clutching each other.

Blaine wakes when he feels something wet on his face. He's not surprised to find he's been crying in his sleep. He can't control the tears seeping out from under his eyelids. A cold drop hits his nose. He opens his eyes to see Kurt's face, pressed so close to his that the tears from Kurt's eyes are dripping down on to his own face. Kurt isn't awake yet. Blaine is torn – wants to wake him to stop his crying, wants to let him sleep so he can burn the beauty of delicate veining of Kurt's eyelids into his brain.

Blaine realizes someone's spread a blanket over them. His bedroom door was now just slightly open – still “open” according to Anderson Family Rules, but definitely not as open as he himself had left it. It must have been his mother – his father would have roared and scoffed and woken them. His mother must have seen the tears drying on their faces, how fiercely they were tangled together, even in sleep, how exhausted they both looked, and in a shockingly unknown moment of tenderness, tucked the blanket around them and quietly left them alone.

Kurt reaches up to wipe the tears off his nose, before opening his bleary, gloriously rain-blue eyes. They both try to smile bravely at each other, still bleary with tears. The effect is miserable. They quietly chuckle at each other.

“I love you,” Kurt's voice is rough and scratchy. “I don't want to go.”

“I know, baby.” Blaine rubbed his palms up and down Kurt's shoulder,

“No, I can't go. I can't. I don't want to go. How can I go? How can this be the right thing? How can it be right when it feels like this?”

“I know, baby, I know. It's the right thing. Everything's going to work out. I promise, baby.” Blaine chants the soothing words, reassuring himself as much as Kurt, a mantra against the days and weeks and months to come. “We'll be together again soon. We'll be together. Everything's going to work out, baby.” He kisses a different part of Kurt's face with every sentence – his eyelids, his nose, his chin, “I love you so much, baby.”

“I love you, too, love.” Kurt kisses his lips so sweetly Blaine's heart falters. It's a promise.

Finally, there's no putting it off any longer. Blaine stands on his front porch, watching Kurt climb into his car – both their cheeks still hectically flushed with the emotions preceding – both crying and soothing.

He's determined the last thing Kurt will see of him is his smile. Determined. He stands with his arms wrapped around his waist so tightly his fingers start to tingle, fiercely holding on to the last little bit of Kurt's warmth against his chest. Determination.

He sees Kurt fumbling to get the keys in the ignition, sees Kurt cover his face with his hands, his shoulders shaking. Kurt takes a long shuddering breath and wipes his eyes. Blaine wants nothing more than to run – sprint – jump off his porch, rip the door off the car and take Kurt in his arms again. But he knows it really is time to go. He can't. He has to stay here. He bravely smiles – holding himself upright – smiling bravely, as Kurt starts the car and carefully backs down the drive – 'smile, Anderson', determination – allows himself to press his fingertips against his mouth to hold his trembling lips still as Kurt drives away. He raises one arm in a last wave as Kurt drives around the bend. And then he's gone.

Blaine lets out the breath he hadn't realized he was holding, feeling himself deflate, can barely turn the brass knob on the door. He's gone. He climbs the stairs, walks down the hall, finds himself back in his room, staring at his bed. At the Kurt-shaped dent in the pillow next to his. He shuts the door behind him.

He numbly flips through his CDs. Puts in the first classical one he finds and turns the volume all the way up. Perfect. Rachmaninoff's Elegie, Opus 3, No. 1. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=97vYYcjDh3s&feature=fvst Angry, desolate, forsaken, wild, heartbroken. All the emotions Blaine knows are swirling inside him, but can't feel yet. Not yet. When his parents leave again, he'll go down to the grand piano and learn and play this piece over and over again. Years and years of piano lessons will serve him well. But, not yet. He can't get it out, yet.

At the foot of the bed, where Kurt left it for him, neatly folded, is the undershirt Kurt was wearing last night. Blaine buries his face in it, inhaling Kurt's scent, taking the smell of Kurt into his lungs, into his body, and sinks to the floor, finally letting the wracking sobs come as the music begins.

It's been two days. Kurt isn't even in New York yet, driving there with his dad, staying with his dad's “horrible sister in their horrible little podunk town that won't have cell service and oh god Blaine how am I going to stand it.?”

Blaine doesn't know. He's been stumbling around his dark and empty house, mindlessly chewing at chips and slices of cheese and carrots and only things that he doesn't really have to work at; nothing sounds good. Nothing tastes good. Nothing is good. He drinks a glass of water, nearly vomits in the kitchen sink, and returns to his room and turns on his music again.

After running through all of his Rachmaninoff and Chopin CDs, Blaine is sobbed out. The light from his window has darkened into early evening. He's still sitting on the floor, arms hooked around the corner of his bed, holding it tightly. The skin of his face is tight with the tears drying on it, his nose is running, and he can't breathe deeply.

He hears a light knock at his door. He doesn't want to answer it.

“Blaine?” A soft voice he doesn't recognize asks.

“Who is it?” He picks his head up, sniffing, his breath hitching in his chest.

“It's me, Tina. Can I come in?”

Tina? Tina is not the person Blaine wants to see. But it would be rude – un-chivalrous, even – and a Dalton Man is never unchivalrous. Blaine doesn't even know why these things run through his head sometimes. But, he drags himself off the floor, crosses to his door, attempting to rearrange his face into something like his own.

Tina is standing in the hallway, a quiet smile on her face. In one hand, she has a stack of several handkerchiefs, in the other a small ice cream cake with two spoons awkwardly balanced. Under one arm, he sees a stack of movies.

“Your mom let me in. She said I should come right up.” Blaine thinks his mom must be more worried about him than she lets on – letting strange girls up to his bedroom. Though, maybe, just maybe, it means she's accepting that he can have a girl in his bedroom without there being “tomfoolery,” in his father's words.

“Hi. Umm. Please come in?”

She looks around the room, then up at him. “All cried out for today?”

“I...Kurt left yesterday...or the day before ...and I...” he shakes his head and doesn't know what else to say.

“I know, honey. I know,” she smiles sadly at him, “Mike left 3 weeks, 3 days and 19 hours ago.” Her lips trembles, then she controls them.

The sight of that, that bravery, the need to be that brave, brings the tears back to his eyes.“I'm sorry, Tina. I'm afraid I'm not going to be very good company tonight.”

“I know, honey, I know. But here's what we're going to do. I'm 3 weeks, 1 day and 19 hours ahead of you. But I know what today feels like to you. I know how miserable you are. And I'm miserable too. So, I thought we could just be miserable together. No talking about our feelings, no pressure to be “okay” or “just fine.” No sharing, no touchy-feely crap. Just shared misery. And ice cream cake.”

That makes Blaine smile, just a brief flash, as he felt the fog of despair lift for just a second. Tina does know. He could just be with her. No pressure, no expectations, no need to reassure anyone of anything – even himself. To just be.

Blaine piles up all the pillows – except the one with the Kurt-shaped dent which he carefully places on his desk – and the cushions from his chair against the headrest of his bed while Tina put a movie in the DVD player. They quickly settled themselves in, grabbed the spoons and dug into the ice cream.

“Oreo cookie with chocolate frosting. My favorite.” Blaine mumbled around his first too-large bite.

“I know. Mike told me. I knew it'd come in handy.”

The movie began.

“*Steel Magnolias*? Really, Tina? This is not a good idea.”

“It's called catharsis, Blaine. The purging of the emotions or relieving of emotional tensions through exposure to art. Otherwise known as cry until the snot runs down your chin. Just get it all out now.”

“And this is a good thing?”

“It's all gonna come out somehow, somewhere. Might as well jump-start the process – or, judging from how red your poor eyes are, keep the process moving. You've seen this movie before?”

Blaine nodded. “Of course, 'he scoffed. “Julia's 3rd movie – she broke up with Liam Neeson to date Dylan McDermott, who plays her husband.”

Their spoons clinked together as they both dug for the center of the cake. “Liam Neeson? Really? Well, we've got a lot to cover tonight, so we're going to skip forward to the good scene.”

“Good scene?”

“After the funeral, when they're all in the cemetery.”

“With Sally Field screaming? That's the *good* scene?”

“It's the emotional 'money-shot', as it were.”

Blaine nearly spit his mouthful of ice cream onto his duvet and laughed. 'There were many things he'd have expected to come out of Tina Cohen-Chang's mouth, but “money-shot” was not one of them. 'Money-shot', indeed.