These are the first words out of Kurt’s mouth when he gets the phone call he has always dreaded. Since his mother died, his worst fear has been that one night he will wake from a deep sleep to learn that yet another person he loves is gone from this world.

What’s most terrifying about this is that it could be anyone Kurt cares about. Burt. Carole. Finn. Anyone from Glee club. Or the Warblers. Even Karofsky.

Even in Kurt’s worst moments, where memories of Elizabeth’s death haunted him and all he could think about was who would be next, he had never even considered losing Blaine.

The possibility was too horrifying to consciously think about.

Now there is no escaping it. The chance that Blaine could, at any moment, be dead – unthinkable as it is, is now laid before Kurt. It is visceral, raw, and all too real.
What is worse is how it came to be.

“No, Kurt,” Burt says, his voice sounding tinny as it travels across miles of telephone wires. “He’s not dead, but he’s…he’s not doing too great right now, buddy.”

Taking a shallow breath, Kurt imagines the wires as nerves in Blaine’s comatose – oh God, he can’t be comatose, not Blaine – brain. He watches in his mind’s eye as one cable sends out sparks, setting the whole system alight.

“Kurt! Are you listening?” With a jolt, Kurt startles back to the present.

“Dad, I…I can’t, I can’t do this, I can’t…” Kurt feels like his airway is closing as he panics. Beginning to hyperventilate, he paces around the room, keeping a white-knuckled grip on his iPhone.

“Listen, Kurt! Just listen!” Burt insists firmly. “Book a flight back here. Now.”

Something in the tone of Burt’s voice, maybe the way it is reverberating like glass about to shatter, compels Kurt to ask an impossible question, one he does not want to know the answer to.

“What happened?”

“He…Kurt, he tried to kill himself,” Burt says, and after that Kurt only hears the dull roar of static in his ears. Unable to really comprehend what he is doing, he ends the call.

He drops to his knees and lets out a keening wail, screaming Blaine’s name mixed with profanities.

It’s at least five minutes before Kurt comes back into himself, his mind clouded and his vision blurred. Somehow, there is enough sense left in Kurt for him to be able to grope for the light switch halfway up the wall and scramble for his laptop where it rests crookedly on his desk.

Something inside his chest clenches.

Missed Skype call from: Blaine

Their shared conversational log is full of missed alerts.

Kurt scrolls through the chat box, his stomach twisting uncomfortably around the weight of his guilt as he realizes just how desperate Blaine had been for the kind of comfort and help only he could offer.

Bile slips into his throat as he reads through their message history. At first, the calls come ten minutes apart. Then five. Then two. Between each attempt at communication, there lies the weight of everything Blaine never had the chance to say.

You weren’t listening you weren’t listening never ever you would have seen this coming what were you doing?

What had he been doing? Blaine had Skyped with Kurt every night for hours at a time, even when they were both concentrating on homework.

He can see everything so clearly now. Looking back over the past three months, Kurt realizes there were small signs he should have noticed.

Something colder than the chill of December in New York rockets through Kurt, turning the blood in his veins to ice and pinning him where he sits as he recounts all the ways in which he has failed.

Neither of them had slept the night before Kurt left.

Kurt remembers this in far too much detail. He had held Blaine from the moment they settled into bed until the moment the sun rose. They had cried together. They had made love – first rough and desperate, then tender and sweet, filled with grief and a kind of strange acceptance of the immediate future.

At some point, Kurt had begun kissing Blaine at every place he could reach without breaking the connection that kept Blaine cradled against his chest. He had tucked promises in secret places along the boy’s skin – his hairline, his jawbone, his shoulder blade, the hot, grief-driven pulse at the side of his neck.

They all said something different.
I love you
I want you
I am in love with you
I will miss you
Wait for me I’m coming back for you Blaine I promise I promise Blaine Blaine Blaine

Blaine had kissed him back, desperate and sorrowful and brimming over with a kind of primal fear that both of them could taste, the kind that only comes when you’re afraid to lose someone forever.

Kurt had thought, at the time, that he had done everything possible to help Blaine through this. To help both of them. It was impossible to do the right thing, because the whole situation seemed so wrong. It felt completely counter-intuitive. The one thing Kurt had been certain of, was still certain of, was that it was wrong for him to leave Blaine behind.

He could not shake the sensation, no matter what he tried to do to distract himself from it.

They both knew it was only a year.

They had a lifetime to look forward to; the goodbye was not permanent. Kurt had not, in fact, said goodbye at all.

It had seemed too final.

They had said I love you, anticipating seeing each other during Christmas break.

There had been no need for a goodbye.

Not then.

Where had it all gone so horribly wrong? He wonders this now. Thinking about it makes him feel sick, but he can’t escape the reality that’s right in front of his eyes even after he closes down Skype.

He is booking a flight from New York to Ohio one week before he is supposed to come home.

There is no way not to be reminded of all the things he stands to lose.

Half an hour later, he is haphazardly throwing clothes into his suitcase, locking his apartment behind him and sprinting for the nearest taxi. Even at three am, they are abundant.

It is not until the cab has pulled into LaGuardia that Kurt realizes he has been wearing Blaine’s sweatshirt since he fell asleep earlier in the evening.

The realization nearly brings him to his knees as another tidal wave of grief threatens to drown him.

But because he has no choice – so many parts of his life, now, are controlled by a complete lack of choice – he staggers on, his back hunched against the wind.

When he begins to cry, Kurt tells himself it’s because of the weather.

He quickly checks in, goes through security, and obtains his boarding pass. He is moving on autopilot, with only one goal in mind, ignoring stares from strangers.

Get to Blaine.
Get to Blaine.

The thought runs through his mind, an insane mantra, as he waits (two hours two hours until boarding oh God too late.)

The royal blue, wash-worn sweatshirt still smells like Blaine.

Kurt pulls the fabric up over his nose and inhales.

He pretends, for a moment, that they are together, that none of this is real.