This is the pattern Blaine Anderson has fallen into. It's rote, mechanical, and if he could describe his days using one word; he'd pick grey. Morning. Afternoon. Evening. Blah, blah, blah. Same. Grey. He's not entirely sure when this fog settled in, he just knows that it has. Perhaps it crept in through a slightly cracked open window--drifting down along the bricks of his apartment building silently? Maybe it arrived while he'd been sleeping, oblivious to the world? Whatever the method if its arrival--the grey doesn't seem to have any intention of leaving him alone any time soon.

He muses about the drab, sameness of his days as he rides an Uptown Bus headed to work. The sky is clouded, the temperature cold--and Blaine's breath steams up the scratched window he's leaned against. Textbook March, he thinks. Manhattan bustles with frenetic energy like it always does--unconcerned with trivial matters like chill, traffic, or Blaine's emotional state.

Smiling to himself briefly--startled to feel his lips twitch upward, Blaine imagines the City as an actual person looking him in the face. A take-no-shit lesbian bartender, maybe? Yeah. Named Ro. (Short for Roberta.) She'd be pierced and menacing--but with a secret soft center. Ro would make you work damned hard to crack her exterior, but when you did, she'd protect you with her life.

Ro wouldn't listen to him bitch and moan about how everything was so...bleak. She'd pour him a beer, whack him upside his head, and tell him to get his curly head out of his ass....

Unfortunately, he couldn't actually just stroll into that imaginary bar and find Ro waiting for him. Couldn't stroll into any bar safely now, memories of charcoal grit at the corners of his mouth, sharp tube rubbing his throat--horrible memories both, but not as bad as the image of his mother's eyes he'd seen when he woke up. They'd been red-rimmed, puffy, and Blaine was certain he'd never seen that particular expression in them. Disappointment? Fury? Resignation?

He'd ended up deciding that it was probably a combination of all three.

Blaine never set out to become an alcoholic, drug addict. Really, though--who does? He'd always thought he was so much more smart--better able to handle himself. Life has ground him down, made him far less likely to be surprised by anything anymore. But the morning he'd realised that he'd fallen so far into himself, that he didn't even recognise his own face in a mirror--shook him to his core.

When he lets himself think about it, which is not often--Blaine calls it The Dark. The whole bleary, blurred, half-a-year he'd spent crawling up out of a chasm of...nothingness. He'd entered the rehab program willingly--all of his fight drained away. The promise of a clean, drug and alcohol-free life not even enticing to him at the time. Blaine had just wanted to be...away. Not responsible for anything. No friends. No lovers. No managers. No claims to anything that reminded him of his jumbled life and fucking exploded shell of a person he'd become.

A loud honk beside the bus startles him--ripping him out of his reverie. Blaine's relieved, truth be told--trips down "hey, remember rehab" lane not really fun. He's putting himself together. Agonising piece by painful piece. The grey? Is actually a phenomenal improvement over the Dark. It's boring, tedious, and not tinged with much excitement--but at least Blaine can function.

With a clang and an abrupt, lurching, motion--the bus stops at Broadway and 14th. Blaine's stop. He heaves himself up and out of the blue moulded seat, and patiently waits his turn behind the other travellers waiting to disembark. Rain starts to fall--the large windshield wipers on the dashboard of the bus churn back and forth--and for a moment, Blaine wants nothing more than to stand there, watching the wide arcs sweep away the angry droplets. But? Work beckons.

Eight hours of mumbled, "How can I help you?" and "Would you like a bag?" the only task on his agenda. With a sigh, and tight grip around the strap of his messenger bag, Blaine clomps down the steel steps, and into the fray of Manhattan's chaos. There's still a part of him, deep-down that thrills a bit at this. Finding his way into the ebb and flow of hundreds of bodies moving all around him--claiming his space. The city's not brought him joy in a long while--but the tickle of it still burns quietly in the back of his mind, in his heart.

Dodging a gaggle of chattering schoolgirls, Blaine leans up against a concrete wall and wonders if he can scrabble together enough change to stop at Starbucks for a coffee this morning. Yeah, B--remember the time when you were a famous fucking rockstar? Coulda bought yourself a goddamn Starbucks, but, whoooo, good going there, brother--now you're slinging books for a living, your apartment is a complete shitshow, and you may or may not have two bucks clinking around in your bag...

Shaking his head, as if doing so will actually mute the berating voice up there--Blaine reaches into a zippered compartment, and begins to feel around for metal bits. Biting his tongue, concentrating deeply, he gives a small "ha!" of triumph when he counts his bounty. $2.47. Perfect. Enough for a Venti Coffee. Deciding to take this as a victory, rather than a sort of sad statement of his current financial situation, Blaine quickly crosses the street, and pulls open the heavy glass door of the coffee shop.

The line is long--but he's a seasoned New Yorker now--he's used to it. Mourning the loss of his iPhone--completely losing his shit and nearly drinking himself to death had put a pretty large damper on his "for cool gadgets" budget--so he settles in for a wait without electronic distraction.

He sweeps his gaze around the large room--typical images of Starbuckian inhabitants greet him. People with eyes glazed and glued to glowing laptop screens, heavily lipsticked women talking animatedly on cell phones--skinny vanilla latt�s in hand--the usual weird dance movements of people waiting to put condiments in their drinks. He blinks once, twice...three times, when he spies a particular man standing by the pastry case with a Sharpie in his hand, wearing a slightly askew green Starbucks apron. Blaine can see his lips moving, but isn't close enough to the head of the line to hear him yet.

He'd know that face anywhere. Those eyes. The man knows him. Knows so many of his fucking stories. Not the ones he'd spun to be entertaining--on camera, or at smokey bars, trying to be witty and suave. No. The ones he barely even wanted to admit to himself--never mind revealing them to another soul.

Kurt.

Kurt Hummel.