Hey there, it's Kurt. I'm afraid I can't present you with my fabulous self, as I'm probably doing something terribly productive like buying the newest jacket in the marc jacobs line, or spending time with my wonderful boyfriend. Sorry about tha- Blaine, put that down! Erm - yeah, so, uh, the beeps coming up. Leave a message! You know you want to. So do your thing. I'll always get back to you, unless you're a telemarketer, or, you know. Crazy. Thanks!

He couldn't put the phone down.

Every hour or so, he would try to loosen his clutch on the device until the screen went dark from inactivity, fingers itching for redial, mind screaming and rattling it's cage in protest.

He would try to resist it's hold, try to chuck it across the room, and watch, in smug satisfaction, as it shattered to pieces. He kept the useless battle going until he wanted to collapse in the exhaustion of not hearing the soft lilt of his voice.

Hey there...

And he always lost. Always listened. Because how could he not? The voice he would give anything to hear in person, that... that melodious, snarky, sarcastic, passionate, beautiful voice.

And all he had was a 30 second voice message.

His breathing grew erratic again, tears streaming, hot and fast from the corners of his eyes.

It's Kurt.

Kurt. Kurt was all he had. All he needed. Every morning, before the fog of sleep cleared, before he knew who he was or where he was... before he could even remember to breathe, Kurt's name was on his lips. And it stayed there all day long.

He made him smile simply by being.

When his name was uttered, or even a name that sounded like it- (included in that list had been names like Roberta and Fredrique that Blaine had taken to be Kurt in his love addled brain) Blaine's whole being shifted. His eyebrows lifted, breath hitched, he swiveled immediately in the direction of the poor sucker who had spoken the word, and his blinding grin almost certainly wiped out rooms full of people.

Kurt was in his gut now, the sass, the hair that gained or lost volume depending on his mood, the effortless kindness to the people he cared about, and sometimes the people he didn't.

Blaine was too in love to breathe. He was drowning, air swiped from his lungs, happily dying in a sea of Kurt.

Every day was beautiful, to be cherished and locked away in a trunk of memories to be examined fondly in years to come.

It didn't matter that they fought. He even loved that. Loved the passion, the fire in his eyes when he was spitting scathing retorts in someone's face, loved the aching remorse etched into his features when he came to his senses. 

It wasn't fair how much he loved him. Because fate was a bitch.

And he was gone. 

I'm afraid I can't present you with my fabulous self...

And suddenly he was drowning in the far less favorable grief. What if he couldn't smooth down Kurt's hair fondly, and chuckle at his squawk of protest?

What if he couldn't lie with him in a mess of comforters, soft smiles on their faces, basking in the afterglow?

What if he couldn't grin at him across a crowded room, or propose to him just like he'd want, or buy him a non fat mocha, and smile reminiscently, or just hold him, or hell, yell at him?

He'd take it, he'd take anything. He'd kill himself a minute after, if he could have Kurt back. Bring his beautiful warmth back into the world, let him set fire to the drab grey of the world without him, and be them.

Just for a second.

He missed his smell. A silly thing to miss about a person. He smelled like lilac and mint and coffee and home. He could inhale that perfect blend at the soft warmth of his neck, and know he was safe and loved. He wanted to crawl inside that safety and lie there in the nest of Kurt's arms until he died.

Oh god, he couldn't do it. Every time he closed his eyes, he got flashes, of Kurt running away from him in the rain, laughing at a forgotten joke. Of the world falling to pieces when he brought him forward by the tie to a mind bending kiss.

He could see him, smiling, grinning at Blaine in lost hilarity, shouting at him over the impossibly loud dance beat, or cutting through uneasy silence of an unwanted quarrel.

Dancing, twirling around wildly to a beat he could no longer hear, singing, with an unearthly beauty, and unmatchable passion, sighing softly into a passionate kiss, spread out beneath him, flushed in pleasure, laughing, always laughing, in his mind. Like he had so exasperatedly in that recorded voice he couldn't get enough of.

He couldn't clear it. Couldn't get the imprint of Kurt, of everything Kurt had ever done off his mind. It was seared into his retinas, so even the darkness of sleep couldn't protect him.

Kurt Hummel had altered his perception of the world. He couldn't go back. Didn't want to go back, to a world where he wasn't in his. Rocking it. Changing it.

Storming through it, reorganizing it, and turning to him with a winning smile, that he could. Not. Say no to.

I'm probably doing something terribly productive, like buying the newest jacket in the marc jacobs line...

He had, after all, been looking for him forever. And now he was lost again, like the flickering flames of a dying candle. His brightness had fizzled into nothingness the same time his consciousness had. He'd flared, a glorious warmth, briefly illuminating lost things and new treasures for Blaine before he'd slipped out of his grasp. 

And he couldn't see. 

He was stumbling through darkness, looking for something, anything to support him, to cling to now that the light had gone out, and plunged his life into darkness.

He choked on the dense air, when he realized the thing he was searching for in that dark was always Kurt.

He kept imagining he'd casually flick a switch and smile smugly at him, seated comfortably in the new light of Blaine's existence, and assure him, he'd been there all along. But he wasn't. And he couldn't see.

So now, all he had was that stupid message.

And every time, his heart would beat again, momentarily tricked into believing Kurt was lighting a match... and then it would die as soon as the beep sounded. He grew to resent that beep. And every time, his heart would fall for it again.

Every time it hurt a little more.

So he wept. He wept because he didn't know how to live anymore. He wept at nothing, because Kurt couldn't experience that nothing with him, couldn't transform it into the beautiful something that every moment he spent with him was. And he listened. Again, and again, and again. 

Until he fell into a dream world, where memories saw their opportunity, and attacked him, bombarded him from all sides. They swept his legs and pinned him down with the force of them.

Kurt smiling, and laughing and spinning and screaming all at once.

Bad memories and good ones, and breathlessness, and I love you's, and massages and coffee shops, and friends at the movies, and making out heatedly instead of watching Tony and Maria kiss onscreen, and New York, and the world just sitting out there and waiting, waiting to be taken by the two of them.

To be shared by the two of them.

... or spending time with my wonderful boyfriend.

In his dreams, Kurt was everywhere, and his heart fell apart. Badly slapped on bandages fell away, and the pieces shattered into fragments that Blaine was sure only Kurt would know exactly how to put together again.

That puzzle refused to be solved right now. So the black hole of his chest wept blood and sorrow to an unforgiving world.

He couldn't comprehend it. He kept looking up at the door with an expectant grin plastered onto his features, only to break down into hysterical sobs when he remembered.

And he couldn't do it.

He didn't have the courage, not like Kurt had. He didn't have anything of what he used to without his boyfriend to remind him why he had it. All he had, all he had now, was a voice on a phone.

He listened to it until he went insane, buried in Kurt's scent in the corner of his bedroom, tears streaming endlessly, heart irreparable.

Sorry about that.

Until Burt crashed through the door and said 14 words that changed everything.

"Kurt's alive! He woke up, he actually woke up! He's asking for you, Blaine."

The pieces were inexplicably mended, breath shoved back into his lungs, his world flooded with exquisite light, and a smooth hand offered to him, attached to the body of a boy with beautiful glasz eyes inviting him to take his life back.

You know you want to...

A cellphone lay forgotten on the floor.

I'll always get back to you.