It’s early when my eyelids flutter open, awakening from a dream that I can’t recall right away. Blaine was there, I’m sure of that. But he’s not here now, which is why I woke, because I was cold without his body pressed up next to mine.

The bed is warm next to me, so I knew he hasn’t been gone for a while. I roll onto my back and stretch, my limbs sore in a way they haven’t been in a long time. Sore in a good way. I smile as I remember the night before and my insides jump around like I’m a little kid receiving some kind of prize for the first time. Is that what Blaine is, a prize? Have the best thing taken away from you, wait your five years, and then get it all back? I shake my head, I don’t want to think about those kind of things. He’s here now, and that’s enough.

I can hear some movement outside of the room, the kitchen I suppose, the door to the bedroom is open slightly, so the sound makes its way in. I sit up and get out of the bed, remembering that all I’ve got to put back on are my jeans, which don’t feel like morning after clothes, and with the way the sun’s drifting in through the window, it feels too calm a moment to put the scratchy material back on.

Despite the sounds of Blaine moving around in the kitchen, it’s quiet. There’s a stillness to the air that feels almost familiar, but I can’t place my finger on why.

I make my way over to Blaine’s dresser, hoping he’s got a pair of pyjama pants or something that I can wear. They’ll be too short, of course, but right now I just want something comfortable, something his. I find a pair of sweatpants and tug them on. When I’ve got them on I pad around the bed, picking up our haphazardly discarded articles of clothing from the previous night and fold them, leaving them on the edge of the bed.

The sounds of cupboards from the kitchen lure me out of the room and towards Blaine. He’s standing against the counter next to the stove, ingredients all around, cooking it seems, and I walk up behind him, running my palms over his sides and then hug him, hooking my chin over his shoulder. There’s still that silence hanging around, I can feel it in my skin and in his. It makes me a bit uneasy, but I pay it no mind. Maybe that’s just what happiness feels like, I’ve gone so long without him here, this is what settling in is all about.

We share some light banter about the making of breakfast, his nose leaning back to nudge at my cheek, his body melting into mine before I press a kiss against his lips, feeling comfort washing over me. He tells me to go sit down, so I kiss his cheek and drag my hands over him as I leave.

I watch as he makes batter for some pancakes and starts to move around, cooking for us. It’s domestic and my head fills with all the things that could be happening right now if prom hadn’t happened. If we’d be in our own apartment, if I’d still be wearing his sweatpants or my own instead, if there’d be a ring on my finger.

“What are you doing?”

“I’m making you breakfast.”

I laugh a little, light and still a little nervous despite everything. Blaine’s parents are out of town, and with an extremely vague phone call to my father, I stayed for the night after the West Side Story show.

It had been an impulsive decision at the time, and I hadn’t really been thinking about the fact that his house would be empty the entire night, and had only known that his parents weren’t there at that moment and what I really wanted was to go to Blaine’s house and share something with him that I didn’t want to share with anyone else ever. Now we’re here alone and it’s like we’re playing house.

“If you’d have woken me, I would have helped,” I say, smiling as I wrap my arms around him from behind, “But I guess I could get used to you cooking for me some times.”

He leans back and kisses me soft but lingering, “I love you. I’ll cook breakfast for you for the rest of our lives just to make you happy.”

I stand and collect glasses and juice to clear those thoughts, knowing it’s a life I can’t have right now, knowing it’s something that can’t happen because of the past and all the things I haven’t told Blaine yet. Maybe one day we’ll have our own place, there’ll be rings and maybe a wedding, all the things I’ve always wanted with him, but I can’t have them right now.

When Blaine serves up the food, we sit at the bar in the kitchen and eat. It’s calm and comfortable, that eerie silence still hanging around even when I compliment the food, it really is good, and Blaine’s chest rises in poorly disguised pride.

“You said something last night, and I was just wondering...” he says, trailing off at the end before he shakes his head at my raised eyebrow. “It’s nothing, never mind.”

I’m curious now, what could Blaine be trying to bring up? I don’t remember saying anything out loud last night that would rouse his suspicion about anything. My thoughts had been running rampant, but I kept them all inside, after these two months, I know how to refrain from blurting out strange things that he doesn’t understand. I can’t think of what I might have said.

“No, it’s fine,” I answer, and I can feel my noise scrunch up, suddenly worried that I said something dumb in bed last night, “I just don’t know what it was. It wasn’t something bad or embarrassing was it?”

Blaine shakes his head while looking back at his food, assuring, “No, no.” He pauses and the silence, that quiet that’s been fogging up the room presses in. “Who was it that you ran into that day?”

“Who? What day?” I ask, completely thrown.

He waves slightly, trying to dismiss whatever’s bothering him. “That day at the coffee shop. When we first met. You said you’d run into an old friend. Who was it?”

No.

I thought we gotten past this, I thought Blaine had forgotten, and now it seems he’s been sitting here mulling it over all this time. “It was, uh,” I stutter, and I hate it, because I don’t want to lie to him anymore than necessary. I don’t want to hold anything from him except what is needed to not scare him off. “Tina. It was Tina. She just moved here from Chicago, you know that.”

“Well,” he says nonchalantly, but I can tell this won’t go away easily, “I thought you said it was a he.”

I don’t know what to say, I don’t know how to make this go away or be easy. I look down at my plate, it’s easier to lie when I’m not looking into his eyes, when I’m not seeing that honey-hazel coated in a layer of suspicion. He’s on to something and he knows it, but I’m not ready for this.

“I must have been talking about Mike, her boyfriend,” I explain.

I hear Blaine’s fork hit the table when he puts hit down. He’s not angry, but he knows I’m lying, “Her boyfriend? I thought you said he was special.”

I have to get rid of this, I can’t have this argument. I don’t know where he’s getting to, but I don’t like the direction. I can’t tell him that it was him I saw, him who scared me and shocked me and tore apart all the ways I tried to protect myself over those five years. I can’t tell him that he’s a ghost from my past who showed up out of the blue. I can’t tell him these things, I’m not ready for the ball to drop yet, I just want some more time with him, undisturbed by the horrible past we’ve both led but haven’t talked about yet.

I look back at him, I need this topic to go away, “Are you alright, Blaine?”

Blaine looks at me for what feels like years, the silence in the air hanging like it’s waiting for the punch line, waiting for everything to break. There’s a fear in my soul taking root. Blaine’s lips move and it takes a second for the words to make their way into my ears and to that part of my brain that can understand them. “You said that you were glad you found me. Again.”

Just like that, the silence around us breaks, shatters, falls away and lets the waves rush in. My head fills instantly with noise, so much noise, the hum of the refrigerator, the cars outside the window, my thoughts screaming and screaming.

No. No no no. I know that I didn’t say that, I know I was dreaming when that happened, I couldn’t have said that to him. No, no this can’t be real, I’m not ready. “No,” I gasp out, I can’t have him know this, I can’t have him ask, I’m not ready.

Blaine closes off so quickly it’s like he transforms into a different person, an angry person. He places his hands on the counter, looking like he’s steadying himself. “So, what is it?” he asks, cold and hard, “I knew there was something about you. What is it?”

“I don’t understand, what do you mean they want me to leave?”

Hospitals are cold and I can’t stand being in them, nothing good ever happens here for me. First my mother, then dad’s heart attack, and now Blaine. I want to go in and see him, I need to clear my head, need to see him once more without the blood coating his face. Need to scrub that sight from my eyes like I need to scrub my hands of his blood where they’re sitting against my pants, staining the fabric of my prom suit.

“They politely asked that you go home, they’ll contact you with any information they wish to share,” the doctor says, and I know it should make sense, but his words are swimming around and I can’t understand.

I shake my head, “No... No, I have to see Blaine, I have to see him. Please, just... tell me if he’s going to be okay.”

The doctor gives me a sad smile, “I’m sorry, the most I can tell you is that he has slipped into a coma, and that we don’t know if he’ll wake up. I’m not allowed to tell you anything more about his condition. I’m sorry.” And then he walks away. I still don’t understand.

I blink hard because I can feel the tears creeping up, my memories swarming my brain, Blaine’s face is there again, bloody and nearing lifeless, and I need to cry, need to swamp my eyes with liquid to blur the image. I mirror Blaine’s hands, gripping the counter, trying to keep myself calm. Here’s the moment of truth. “I know.”

Blaine freezes, his eyes suddenly panicked even as he keeps him body perfectly controlled. “Know what?” he croaks quietly, and I lift my head to stare into his eyes, and I know with that little action, I’m telling him enough, letting him know that what he’s been hiding from me is what I’ve been hiding from him too.

I lean forward and try to take his hands, try to comfort him, but he pulls back. It stings, but I know that he must be shocked and startled and I’m trying not to take it personally. I have to explain some more, now that it’s out there, I need to tell him everything. “I know about that last year of high school,” I explain, and he visibly recoils away from the counter, “I know about prom.”

“Blaine, Blaine, please, please, just stay with me okay, please, sweetie, please.”

Finn’s on the phone behind me, talking fast and urgent about how much blood there is. Puck is pacing around us, grumbling and running both his hands over his mohawk, looking completely distressed, but I can’t spare enough thought for him right now.

My hands are bloody, one touching the side of Blaine’s head in his curls where I’ve found a cut and am trying to stop it and push all the blood back in, the other holding one of his hands. Blaine, strangely, looks to be in the least pain out of all of us, staring into my eyes, tiredly repeating my name over and over again as if it can keep him awake.

“I love you, Kurt,” Blaine rasps out, his voice weak and almost gone and he doesn’t even react when my tears hit his face, swirl in with the blood that’s dripping off him.

“I love you, too, Blaine. I love you, please just, I’m so sorry, I love you.”

His fingers lightly squeeze mine for a second and then Blaine’s eyes are drifting shut to the sound of my screams.

Blaine shakes his head, not wanting to believe me, not wanting to listen. But he has to listen now, I need him to know everything if I want him to understand me, if I want him to stay here with me. “I know that you got hit in the head with liquor bottles and assholes’ boots until there was more blood than skin. I know you were in a coma. I know about all of it.”

I watch as he processes this, his eyes darting off to the side and staring at nothing as he thinks it all over. Eventually he stutters out, “How... how do you know that?” as he rises shakily from his seat so that he can pace in the living room. I spin around so that I can face him.

He looks so lost and so scared and I don’t know how to make this easy. “Because I was there, Blaine.”

Blaine stops in his pacing and looks at me. It’s silent for a moment, like not only have the sounds stopped, but so have our thoughts. “What?” he asks, like he can’t understand that possibility. I don’t know what he knows of prom, but he obviously knows something, he knows he was attacked. He didn’t know who was with him though.

“Did you think you went to prom alone?” I ask softly, afraid that any wrong word will make him flee, make him fly away from me. “You had a date. You had a boyfriend.”

His eyes clear as he looks at me, finally understanding, finally putting all the puzzle pieces together. “You.”

“Will you go to prom with me?”

We’re curled up in the sheets of my bed when Blaine says it. My first reaction is to laugh. My second is to kiss away his hurt expression. “Of course I’m going with you,” I say through my grin, “While I appreciate the adorableness of such an action, you know you don’t have to ask, right?”

Blaine chuckles a little and runs his fingers through my hair; it’s ruined already, so I don’t feel the need to berate him for it. “I just thought,” he says hesitantly, “last year’s wasn’t completely awesome with the whole prom queen thing, and this year hasn’t exactly been celebratory. I didn’t know if you wanted to go.”

I lean up and kiss his lips, before whispering against them, “With you, I’d go anywhere.”

I feel my face crumble, that night was supposed to be good, it was supposed to be something for us and everything was taken from us. “God, I loved you so much and then everything got torn apart.” My mind flicking back to his hand being ripped out of mine, the bottle smashing over his head, my screams tearing apart my entire being. I knew then that nothing would ever be the same.

Blaine looks like he’s having a hard time taking it all in, looks dizzy. “You were...” His face starts to harden as his eyes flick up to mine, he’s getting defensive. He thinks I left him willingly.

“And I just wanted to stay,” I beg, knowing I sound desperate, but I need him to know that I didn’t go without a fight. I kicked and I screamed and my dad practically shoved me on the plane to New York, told me I couldn’t stick around and get stuck in rut where I didn’t know anything but couldn’t do anything without any knowledge. My dad caught on faster than I did that the Andersons were never going to tell me anything, “but, your family... my family, everyone. They didn’t let me stay with you.”

He stares off into the distance, his eyes narrowed and his brows furrowed. “Why...” I’ve never seen him look so lost and hurt. I’m doing that to him, I’m hurting him with this. But I have to stay calm or else I’ll ruin even more. It hurts me, but he can’t deal with that now, he’s dealing with his past crumbling.

“Because I know, Blaine,” I reply, and it hurts, it hurts, it hurts, but I have to. “I know everything. I watched you get beaten up while trying to protect me. I watched you slip away that night. And I know that you weren’t supposed to wake up.”

I can hear the rings travelling through the line, and I’m sure by now I’ve memorized the exact pitch to this number. It’s different to all the rest, I’m sure of it.

“Kurt, please stop calling,” Mrs. Anderson’s tired voice states when she picks up the line.

I sigh, “I just want to know how he is. I just want to know what’s going on. Please. I don’t really understand, but I’ll stay away if that’s what you really want, but, please, I just need to know if he’s okay. Carole, she said that... that the hospital let you take him home to be taken care of with an at home nurse. Does that mean... is he doing better? I know he’s not awake yet, but... is he okay? Please.”

“Kurt, please, please, stop calling. I don’t have any information to tell you. Just stop calling. You’re leaving in a couple weeks for school, just let him go.” It’s hard, and it feels like a slap across the face.

“I can’t, Mrs. Anderson, I can’t just let him go. I... I can’t go to New York without him. Please, I just need to know... I just need...” I don’t know when the tears started, but now they’re choking me up.

She sighs, and I know I’m not getting anything out of her this time. Just like every time, she won’t tell me. “Kurt, please, for your sake, move on. Go to New York, and move on. Now please, stop calling.”

She hangs up just as the first sobs shake through my ribs.

Blaine’s face hardens. “So you decided to what?” he bites out harshly, ripping into my heart. “Play around with my feelings now?”

It stings, tears into my soul, crushes my heart and my hope. I don’t know how to repair this. “No. God, no,” I plead, I need him to understand but I don’t know how. I know that he can’t understand right now, he doesn’t know enough, but I don’t know what to do.

He starts to pace in front of the couch, his fist clenching in his anger, he’s searching for the answers, but he’s too worked up to really have it seep into him. “Then what were you doing?” he asks. “Not telling me?”

I need him to sit, I need him to calm down, because him getting worked up isn’t helping me trying to explain it. I’m angry, deep inside, something I pushed down because I knew it wouldn’t get me anywhere, and the more Blaine paces, the more his voice rises, the more I feel it in me. Birds waking up and starting to flap their wings, start building up a ruckus inside me. “It’s so complicated, Blaine,” I say, keep calm through my exhaustion and anger, “Please, just, can we just sit and talk about this?”

“Alright then,” he replies determinedly, striding over and sitting on his previously vacated stool, facing me. “Story for a story?”

I’m confused again; I don’t know what he wants. “What?”

He looks me dead in the eye, it’s the first real eye contact we’ve had since this started and I can see the hurt in his eyes, the confusion and the pain. He gets up again after a few seconds, ripping his eyes away from mine, and turns his back to me when he reaches the living room again. When he speaks, his voice is quiet, “I tell you what I’ve been told, and you tell me what really happened.”

“Blaine...” He turns back to me and he’s practically asking for me to punch him, bring back all the pain he must have felt curled up and dying on the pavement. I’ll have to hurt myself to hurt him like this. My eyesight goes wobbly as tears start to fill my eyes

“No. They lied to me. I want to know what happened.” Blaine stops and his eyes roam over my face. “God, I don’t even know you,” he cries suddenly.

I won’t take that, he knows me. I’m here now, I have been for the past two months, he knows me. “Yes, you do.”

Blaine throws his hands in the air, and I know we’ve hit the breaking point, his anger will make me angry, and mine will do the same to him. His hands curl into fist in front of him, a fighters stance, his years of boxing coming back to him, I wonder if he remembers any of that. “No, I don’t!” he practically screams.

“I’m the same guy you took to dinner, the same guy you kissed under the stars!” my voice is starting to raise, but I’ve got to hold myself back, I’ve got to try and stay calm or else this will be explosive. “I didn’t lie to you about anything other than that I already knew you.”

He shakes his head, “Why did you do it?”

“I had to!” the words screaming out of me before I can pull them in. I had to, and I hated it. Because Blaine didn’t know, no one told him, and I couldn’t just throw something like that at him. Why would he trust a stranger over what his parents told him? “They obviously didn’t want you to know. They must have thought it would be easier.”

Blaine starts to droop, starts to look more exhausted than angry, all this information coming towards him and taking him down. “How would that be easier?” he asks.

“Because you’d been gone so long, and I was already here, and I’d been trying to move on, I couldn’t, but I was trying,” I attempt to explain, weariness taking over me as well and my head swims around in all those years of pain. “They said you wouldn’t wake up. I guess they just thought it would be easier if you didn’t know.”

“But, why?” Blaine looks like a small child, standing on the edge of the living room, pleading with his eyes for some answers. But I don’t have these answers, I only have what I’ve learned to tell myself over the years so that I don’t actually die inside.

I feel wilted when I reply, “We were just two kids in love, Blaine.” I shake my head, knowing that I hate this explanation, but it’s the only thing I could ever think of to rationalize what his parents did. “Who’d have known what would have happened if you didn’t get bashed in the head. Who’d have known if we’d still be together. They didn’t know what it felt like to us. They just wanted to protect you.”

Blaine comes alive again, his voice still quiet, but this time harsh, piercing through me, “And what about you? Why didn’t you say anything? Why’d you lie to me?”

My insides snap and I can’t hold it in anymore, I can’t hold in the pain, I have to scream, “I didn’t even know you were awake!” It rips into my soul, it aches and tears at every piece inside of me that tried to repair itself when I got to New York five years ago and cried over how I could never forgive myself for leaving him. The tears that had been swimming in my vision break free and I feel them trail over my cheeks.

“They didn’t want me to know anymore,” I continue, my voice dropping so that I’m not screaming, but the pain is still painting the air when it comes rushing out. “They stopped telling me about you years ago. They didn’t want me to know, and I couldn’t handle it, so I had to stop asking.”

I can feel myself shaking, can feel my bones quivering and trying to break apart. I can see how my words are hitting Blaine, there are tears in his eyes now, but I have to keep yelling because it hurts and I’m finally getting it out, finally telling Blaine what it felt like to have to live like that. “Do you know how hard that was for me? And when I walked into the coffee shop that day and saw you? I didn’t even know you were awake!”

A sob rips through me and Blaine looks away, looks startled by what I’m saying. Looking so hurt and I wish I could take it back just so he wouldn’t look hurt, but I couldn’t hold it in any longer, I didn’t know how to explain it. Blaine reaches out and drags his hand across the wall as he sinks to the floor, leaning heavily against it. “That’s why you looked like you’d seen a ghost...” he whispers, and it’s hard for me to hear him, so I know he’s speaking to himself more than me, “to you, I was already dead.”

I practically leap off my chair, he can’t think like that, I can’t let him think I thought he was dead. He couldn’t be dead to me. No matter what, he’d be there with me somehow, he had to be. I couldn’t live in a world where Blaine was dead. I didn’t know if he was alive, but I couldn’t bring myself to believe he was dead, he couldn’t be to me.

I brush off his tears that must have started when he turned and sunk to ground. “No, you weren’t,” I say fiercely, needing him to believe me, “You were never dead to me. I loved you, and I never stopped. You could never be dead to me.

Blaine looks up at me for a moment, taking in my face, before he snuggles into my chest, grasping my hands and pulling them around him until I understand that he wants to be held. I can’t make everything better, but if this is what he wants from me, I’ll hold him until the day I die.