1

A room full of darkness

A broken heart

And only me to blame

For every single part

“Blaine is gone.”

That was the first thought that crossed his mind when his eyes opened. He was laying on the bed, his cell phone in his right hand, in the other was the ring that his husband had left behind.

He had no idea of how much time he'd spent laying there like that. Minutes, hours, days. Everything was a blur. Every single emotion he had was tangled with all of the others and stuck in an inextricable skein.

The hurt for having lost the man he loved above everything else, the guilt, because he'd known the end was looming ahead of them, drawing closer with each passing day. He'd seen Blaine lose his will to fight, heard his voice become more resigned and distant every day. He'd listened to his father's reproaching lectures, week after week, worried about their marriage.

And then there was the anger. The fierce, burning rage directed towards Blaine, but

also directed at himself. Because he knew Blaine, and that he could have forced him to talk. He knew that they could have fixed everything, if only they had found the courage to admit that things between them had gone awry.

But neither of them had been courageous, and this was where it left them.

His hands were shaking as he dialed the number what seemed to be the thousandth time.

But Blaine's cell was still disconnected, and slowly a feeling of pure panic seized him, because Blaine was nowhere to be found. Not with Kate his assistant, or at least that's what she had told him, his dad hadn't heard from him. Wes and David had no idea where he was, and calling every single hotel in New York couldn't be an option.

He could do nothing but wait.

Waiting for what? He had no idea. A call, a message, a knock on the door maybe.

The silence of the room was getting on his every nerve. It was unbearable.

The tears had stopped streaming down his face, but somehow that hurt even more.

Maybe he should have gone out searching for him, he knew Blaine's favorite places. His favorite restaurant, the corner of Central Park where he used to go every Sunday morning, the little coffee shop where they used to have breakfast at every opportunity that arose during their college years.

Things were very different now.

Those days seemed so far away from the moments they were living, the two kids that had lived them were completely different from the men they had become.

They hadn't gone back to that little coffee shop anymore for a long time; they had always been too involved in other things.

The shrill sound of the cell phone startled him, brought him back to present. He answered, without even checking the ID, his voice breathless.

“Blaine?”

On the other end of the phone there was only silence. Not even a sigh.

“Blaine” he tried again. He looked down at the screen to check the number. It wasn't familiar, but he knew it couldn't be anyone else. It had to be Blaine.

“Blaine” he whispered. His voice was shaking. The lump in his throat was becoming larger by the moment, and the tears that seemed to have run out started up again.

“I had to let you know I was safe.”

Blaine's voice was insecure, like he had no idea of what he was doing. Rough, probably from all the crying.

“Come back home. Please” Kurt begged with a sigh.

There was moment of silence that screamed unspoken regrets.

“I can't.”

And Kurt just knew in that moment, that he would have preferred to endure the fires of hell than to get that answer, anything to have not heard that answer. He knew what those words meant. They meant that Blaine couldn't come home, because he didn't feel like he had a home with Kurt anymore, because he didn't feel like he belonged in Kurt's life. He knew as well that he couldn't just let this go without a fight.

“We can talk about it, we can fix this. But we can't do anything if you don't come back. We can't put the pieces back together if you're not here with me.”

His words were returned with a sigh, followed by another seemingly endless span of silence.

“You have no idea...” Blaine choked. “You don't know how much I would like to come back to you, but I can't, Kurt. All I can do is think about how long we let this go without talking, all those months of being lonely. And on Christmas day” he said, his voice shaking. “I was here, alone, while you were out living your wonderful new life, with your job, and your new friends and without me. I was here alone on Christmas, watching stupid movies, and it was like I had no husband. It was like I haven't had a partner for half of my life.”

Kurt wanted to scream, to yell, to hit something. Because what could he possibly say to that? That it was work? That he'd done it for them? That it would have been worth it in the end? It didn't matter that he had spent his Christmas working. He'd had his co-workers to keep him company and a party to attend at the end of the day. While Blaine was, for some unfathomable reason, home alone instead of being in Lima with their family.

Then he stopped himself, because he knew the reason. Blaine had been alone because he had left him alone. And, like the coward that he was, had sent a text message to tell him, instead of having the guts to at least speak to him.

In his heart he had known that his choice had broken them. He knew that the fact that Blaine hadn't answered the phone that night meant that forgiveness was out of the question.

“I'm sorry.”

“I know.” Blaine responded quietly.

Kurt knew they were at a crossroads, but he had no idea which path to take. They could take a break, not talk to each other for a while. Maybe try to forget. Or, they could fight together. Discuss, yell at each other but never lose hope. Never lose their love.

“Come home Blaine.”

He already knew what Blaine's answer would be, but he just had to try again.

“I need time. I need to find myself again. Fix my life.”

“So you're breaking up with me, without even giving us the chance to try it make it work?”

It was the wrong thing to say, he knew that. But in that moment everything was amplified, everything hurt. It was killing him.

“I wasn't the one who let go, Kurt.” Blaine's voice was now hard, cold. “I came to see you every time I could. Did you do the same? Can you honestly say that you did everything you could to save our marriage?”

“You are not giving me the chance to!”

It was not an answer to Blaine's question, but it was everything he had. He wasn't ready to take responsibilities. Not yet. He knew he'd been wrong. He knew that though Blaine hadn't spoken up, he had some of the blame too. He had invested too much in a job he didn't even like. He'd chosen to stay and work at the magazine rather than to go home for the week-ends to his husband.

Blaine's sigh on the other side of the line brought him back to present.

“I gave you so many chances to,” He said with an air of finality. “listen, I need to go.”

Where? Kurt wanted to ask. Where are you? With who? Why you have to go instead of coming home and trying to fix this. But he knew his questions wouldn't have been supplied with an answer.

“Will you call tomorrow?” he asked instead, his voice shaking, heart beating manically in his chest.

Another sigh.

“I'll see you around Kurt.”

Then the line went dead. The house was quiet again.

In the hurt of that moment, something gave him comfort.

The picture of their wedding, Blaine's favorite, was not on the nightstand anymore.

It was a picture of them dancing like idiots at the reception, their clothing and hair totally disheveled. Kurt hadn't wanted to put it in the wedding album but Blaine had it framed.

“It's me and you” He'd said. “Free of every social restraint and happy, it's just us.”

It was just a picture, but he loved it more than anything else in the world now. It was the place in time he wanted to go back to.

Blaine had taken it with him and maybe, just maybe, everything was not lost yet.