The next thing he consciously remembered was the feeling of being tucked into a warm bed, and a dry palm stroking across his forehead. “Blaine,” he mumbled instinctively, and when he opened his eyes and saw Rachel looking anxiously down at him, he felt something sink in his stomach and he turned his head away from her, ashamed.

                The second thing he remembered was realizing that he hurt everywhere, his head, his arms; his heart. Every fibre of his weary, beaten being ached.

                “Kurt,” Rachel began, sounding upset.

                He pushed himself up to a sitting position and winced as his head throbbed painfully while he adjusted to his surroundings. He was in his bedroom, still wearing the clothes he had worn to school. The lights were dimmed and the curtains drawn so he could see the night sky outside. He felt drained and tired and defeated, and wasn’t in the mood for any more talking. “Please, Rachel,” he croaked out, “I’d like to be alone.”

                “But—”

                “Please,” he repeated more sharply, knowing full well he was being unnecessarily mean, but he couldn’t quite think about that too now. He reserved the guilty twinge in his mind for later.

               Rachel didn’t leave. She hovered at his bedside and wrung her hands together fretfully. He still didn’t meet her eye, and stared down at the duvet, studying the intricate trimming of the edge as if it were the most fascinating thing in the world.

                “Kurt, I’m worried, I don’t understand, I thought everything was—” she rushed.

                “I said to please leave,” he cut across her flatly.

                “I want to help, I—”

                “Get out.” His voice was like a gunshot in the stillness of the room. Still she didn’t move.

                “No, I’m not leaving you here alone—”

                “Get out!” He screamed, snapping his head up to glare into her eyes. They were glistening, but he didn’t care, it was all Rachel’s fault for being so pushy, he thought savagely.

                “Why are you being so mean? I’m only trying to help,” she defended, voice raised and incredulous.

                “If you wanted to help, you would let me alone,” he retaliated immediately, tone steely but controlled. He wondered if she could identify the barely suppressed anger swimming beneath his words.

                “I won’t!” she almost yelled. “I want to know what happened, what was so horrible that made you become… like this again!”

               “I don’t want to talk about it, okay?” he shot back, seething. Why couldn’t she understand that this was him, all him, this was none of her business and he wanted time alone to think and wallow in his own sorrows, not have some air-our-all-your-troubles-and-let’s-make-sure-Kurt-Hummel-isn’t-broken-or-crazy-and-crying-every-two-seconds talk.

                “You can’t keep everything bottled up, Kurt!” she snapped. Just like that, his temper reached the end of its line and exploded in a furious outburst.

                “I can! I can and I have, for the past I don’t know how long! Do you think, that when Blaine left, I was actually, really and truly, comforted by you? Do you think anything you did really helped? Because it didn’t! Everything, all the pain and the hurt and the heartache was all me. I had to go through all of that on my own, climb out from the mess by myself. You think you were some sort of hero, saving me and all that? Well, you didn’t. And you won’t be able to now, so stop trying to play hero again.” Once the words left his mouth, he knew he would regret them later, knew that it all wasn’t true, he wasn’t thinking straight. Later, when he was feeling calmer and less agitated. But now he was so exhausted and angry that he could barely see straight, much less worry about injuring Rachel Berry’s fragile ego.

                Rachel was in tears, her arms wrapped tightly around her middle. “I can’t believe it,” she was saying, “I can’t believe that after all I did for you, you aren’t even grateful at all. I was here for you when no one else was, Kurt, I was the only one who stood by you. And I’m trying again to help you now, and you don’t even care that—”

                “Fine! If you really want to know then fine! I saw Blaine, okay? Happy?” he spat tearfully – because yes, he was crying too, in anger or misery he didn’t know.

                There was a pregnant silence, in which the only sound was of his heavy breathing. He watched as Rachel’s eyes widened in shock and mouth dropped open. He sank back onto the bed, all the fight gone out of him, staring down at the duvet. It was just too much effort to be angry any longer, and to be honest he had forgotten what he had even been mad about. When Rachel recovered, she spoke.

               “Blaine?” she echoed disbelievingly, and she too seemed to have forgotten all traces of their argument. He nodded, suddenly too tired to speak. “But how? Where?”

                “I was out for coffee at Snice, and I saw him. Or well, he bumped into me.” He swallowed heavily and felt his adams apple bob uncomfortably in his throat.

                “Blaine, he… he couldn’t remember me,” he said hoarsely, voice choking on the last bit. There. He had said it.

                “What?” She looked confused, as if still waiting for the information to fully sink in.

                “I don’t know,” he replied quietly. “He didn’t seem to know who I was, or remember anything about me.” It hurt to say it out loud, but not as bad as it had been earlier admitting to himself that it was true, Blaine didn’t remember him at all.

                “He doesn’t know me,” he said flatly, with a humorless laugh. He looked up and met her eyes. “He doesn’t know me at all. After all that worrying, that dwelling on if we would ever meet again – well, there wasn’t any point, was there?”

                Rachel sat down heavily on the corner of the bed, looking dazed. He wondered how she was taking the news, what she was thinking. After all, she and Blaine had been pretty good friends back in high school, when she was still an obnoxious eighteen year old and he was, well, there.

                “But… how?”

                Kurt shrugged his shoulders in a pathetic attempt at nonchalance.

                “Kurt… I’m so sorry.” Rachel floundered around for words, a hardly ever seen side to her. “I don’t, I can’t—” She took a deep breath to calm herself.

                “And what happened? Where is he now? What’s he doing? What does he look like? What’s he like now?”

                So many questions. It had been such a good opportunity to get them all answered, a perfect time to grab hold of Blaine and sit him down and talk, find out how he was living now, find out how his life had been since the last time they saw each other. But Kurt, stupidly, had let them all slip away because he was too much of an idiot to just say, “hey, can we talk?”

                So he just shook his head sadly at Rachel and said, “he’s blind.”

                In another time and place, it would have been almost comical to watch how Rachel’s eyes bugged and her jaw dropped open, the sharp intake of breath.

                “…what?” she spluttered, sounding disbelieving. Her face was twisted into incredulity and confusion, and she squeaked out some sort of laugh as if she wasn’t sure she had heard properly. Kurt thought that he should probably feel something at this point, some sort of indescribable sadness at the cruel reality that yes, Blaine, in one way or another, was blind, but he felt emotionless. There was just a general numbness running through his head, and he knew he felt horrible; he just didn’t feel it. And he wasn’t even making sense right now, so drained and weary was he.

                Before him, Rachel seemed to be struggling with her own thoughts, blinking rapidly and opening then closing her mouth as if to say something but nothing could come out. He noticed the tears sliding down her cheeks, and he wondered if she even knew she was crying. She was mumbling incoherently under her breath, and that was when he realized how shocking this must be for her, having all this information unloaded onto her like this. Yes, she and Blaine had been relatively close; hell, they had written songs together before, a privilege awarded unto Blaine because Rachel deemed his talent worthy enough to match hers. It must be torture to hear all this.

                So Kurt wriggled out from under the duvet, moving to her side and taking hold of her hand.

                “Hey,” he said gently, “hey, it’s okay, you hear me?”

                Of course it wasn’t going to be okay.

                “I’m sure Blaine’s alright, I’m sure he’s doing well wherever he is.”

                He didn’t know this for sure, though, and that was a painful thought to bear.

                He wrapped his arms around her tiny frame, and waited until she let her head fall onto his shoulder and her body started shaking with sobs. It was strange, how their positions were switched around this time, with Rachel being the one hurt and he being the comforter.

                But he was determined; if he couldn’t prevent himself from falling apart this time, at least he could make sure Rachel Berry didn’t.

                “Nothing’s going to change.”

                But everything would change. With a sudden jolt of clarity, he knew what he had to do – because Kurt wasn’t letting Blaine go again, not this time.

-

                In the days that followed, Rachel called the taxi company. A billion times, it felt like. She dialed again and again, getting the same reply each time. I’m sorry ma’am, but we can’t help you there. She presented different variations of her argument each time, with increasing frustration and varying tones of voice (from sugary-sweet to snarling into the receiver), but to no avail. Well, Kurt thought drily, now no one could say that Rachel Berry wasn’t persuasive.

                He knew Rachel thought he didn’t know she was doing this, but he wasn’t an imbecile, and also he didn’t quite want to hurt her feelings by revealing to her that her efforts, however well-meant, were awfully poorly concealed – she always mysteriously disappeared off into the bathroom at times, and after a occasions of this, he had snuck up and pressed his ear against the smooth, cool surface of the toilet door.

                “—please, this is extremely important, it’s vital that I find out—”

                “I demand that you tell me—”

                “For god’s sake, this is a matter of life and death, why are you being so stubborn?!”

                It didn’t take long to figure out what she was trying to do. And although most of him wanted to tell her to stop, it wouldn’t help anything, and it definitely wasn’t giving the poor phone operators at the company much joy, another tiny part stopped him from doing so. He still clung on to that tiny (oh, but how thin a thread) hope that perhaps Rachel’s persuasions would finally get through, that a kindly phone operator would take pity on them and contact the taxi driver – he refused to think about the fact that the driver would most probably have completely forgotten Blaine, and that thus contacting him would be of no use whatsoever.

                So Kurt let her go on with those misguided calls, saying nothing but feeling slightly guilty at keeping his thoughts from Rachel.  But then again he never seemed to be in much of a mood to discuss Blaine with her, and neither did she with him. (On a side-note: he had apologized profusely for his unmerited outburst the other day – she forgave him easily, but still he felt that his apology was woefully inadequate) They both skirted around the topic, being overly polite with each other, and when they chatted it was about trivial things like who was going to get the groceries this week or anecdotes from their respective school lives. Rachel never brought up Blaine during their dinners together; he never sat her down for a heart-to-heart. They were way more cautious with their words than before, balancing on both ends of a scale, as if one small slip of the tongue or thoughtless blabber would cause the scales to tip and the precarious serenity of their life would be upturned yet again. So they tip-toed around the topic.

                But of course, he hadn’t given up.

                He wasn’t going to let Blaine go that easily.

                The day after his meeting with Blaine, he returned to Snice for his (it was becoming) daily cup of coffee. There was a strange feeling in his stomach as he stepped through the door, but not without first scanning the room to make sure a certain someone wasn’t there (he registered the absence with regret). It was with slight trepidation that he joined the line, and he kept feeling increasingly uneasy, darting glances to the door every time it jangled as someone walked in or out of Snice. When he reached the front of the line, he was pleased to see that it was Ana at the counter again, and felt less tensed up for the first time since he entered the shop.

                Clearly she didn’t share the same sentiment, however. Her face creased into a worried frown when she saw him.

                “What’s wrong, Ana?” Kurt asked apprehensively.

                “You!” she replied sharply. “What happened yesterday, honey?”

                He could feel his heart speed up, and forced himself to keep calm. “Oh, just an old friend.”

               “The blind dude? Oh god, sorry!” she added, looking horrified with herself, when he winced at the word the ‘blind’. She appeared to randomly punch numbers on the cash register in her fluster, and tutted at it in annoyance.  

                “It’s fine, Ana,” he told her with a wan smile.

                “But why did you look so freaked out yesterday! I was watching from here, and you looked so terrible, and then you started crying! I almost walked up to check if you were okay, but again, the stupid queue was so long and I couldn’t just leave the counter, even if it was for the sake of a dear friend.”

                He felt touched. “That’s far too nice of you, Ana… and thanks so much for caring, but really, it’s nothing, I hadn’t seen him in a while, and yesterday was just a little shock is all…” Understatement of the century. Seeing her eyebrow raised skeptically, he hurriedly continued to prevent her from breaking into another spiel. “Funnily enough, that’s what I need to ask you about. About my… friend. I didn’t get to, um, talk to him much yesterday, so I was wondering if he told you anything? What he does, where he lives, even?”

                Ana was shaking her head vehemently even before he finished. “He was in a hurry, so I didn’t bother making conversation. But the poor man, though; has he always been blind?” she asked in a hushed whisper. Trust Ana to always shoot right to the point without faltering.

                “I,” Kurt began. “No. No, he wasn’t always. Um. Blind.” 

                Ana’s face twisted into one of compassion. “Poor thing,” she sighed, “it must suck having your sight stolen from you. He must have been through so much. Oh, but I really hope you do find him!”

                Kurt struggled to bite back a retort at this; Blaine’s life was his and his alone; no one knew what he had gone through and hence should keep their judgments to themselves. And Ana’s comment sounded horribly condescending, even though Kurt knew for a fact he had been thinking those exact same words repeatedly in his own head; it was just a different (and not entirely pleasant) experience knowing that someone else felt that way. Blaine was his. No one else was allowed to pass judgment. Instead, he continued with the lines he had prepared the last night.

                “And that brings me back to what I was going to say from the start. If you ever see him again, could you tell me, please? I need to find him.”

                “Sure thing, honey.” Her eyes softened and she reached out a slim hand to pat his arm. It was oddly comforting. “But what do I say to him?”

                Kurt floundered for a moment. He hadn’t gotten this far before; mostly, he had just focused on the ‘finding Blaine’ part and ignored the rest. “Tell him an old friend is looking for him,” he finally decided. An old friend indeed.

                Ana squeezed his forearm before handing over his cup of coffee. “Of course. And I’ll tell my colleagues too,” she promised, “they can help to look out as well.”

                “Thank you so much, Ana, thank you, you don’t know how grateful I am, how can –”

                “Shh, I’m just doing my job as a friend. Now off with you! I have other customers to serve.” Her bright, infectious smile had returned to her face, and he couldn’t help but grin back.

                “Thank you,” he said more quietly, meeting her eyes to show her how thankful he was.

                “I hope you find your friend!” she called out in the place of goodbye, as she shooed him away from the counter.

                “I hope so,” he echoed under his breath as he stepped onto the sidewalk. There was no violent wind; only a soothing breeze, the sky clear and an unusual sense of peacefulness in the air. Amber leaves were drifting down from trees, treading a short dance in the air before finally falling. The streets were layered in dead leaves, but the colours were vibrant and beautiful. He thought about how Blaine couldn’t appreciate such leaves anymore, and felt rather sad. He wrapped his hands around his coffee cup to warm them, taking a scalding sip of coffee.

                 “I hope so too.”

-

                A week passed, then two, then three, with still no reappearance of Blaine. Rachel had stopped harassing the taxi company a long time ago, although Kurt still kept the crumpled slip of paper with the license plate number on it buried deep in the recesses of his bedside table drawer. Ana stopped updating him on the absence of Blaine in Snice, even though he never stopped scanning over the shop as he entered; it became second nature to briefly run his eyes over every face to make sure that none was the one he was looking for. Maybe that was it. Maybe that few minutes of contact really was the last time Kurt would ever see Blaine. It was a hard reality to face, though, and Kurt had never been particularly good with these, so he told himself to not give up, and almost had himself convinced that Blaine would pop up somewhere sooner or later. Because if he resigned himself to the fact that no, they would never meet again, he was doubtful of maintaining his sanity for an extended amount of time thereafter.

                So he continued waiting for news, always holding his breath whenever he reached the front of the line, despite the fact that Ana never had news, apart from the occasional pieces of information about promotions on the coffee.

                He was always set up for disappointment, and maybe that was how it would remain for the rest of his life.

-

                It was yet another day in Snice, and he had just bought his grande non-fat mocha and was making his way out of the shop, typing out a message on his phone, when he, for the second time in his life, bumped into someone.

                “Shit!’ he heard a moment before he felt hop droplets rain down on the back of his hand. Subconsciously, he knew he should probably be worried about the heated stinging of coffee on his fingers – thankfully it hadn’t seemed to have gotten on his coat this time – but that wasn’t key right now because it was that voice again and he seemed to have lost the power of speech and he didn’t know whether to laugh or to cry. Maybe fate wasn’t trying to pry them apart, after all.

                “Oh god, I’m so sorry, shit, are you alright?”

                Slowly, he looked up to see Blaine standing in front of him, holding the spilt cup of coffee at arm’s length, a beanie hugging his head, still wearing his sunglasses and still with that furry dog by his side. The dog was now licking at the spilt droplets of coffee on the floor. Blaine stood unmoving, as if terrified he would cause another mishap again, and this caused Kurt’s heart to twist. Even with the sunglasses on, Kurt could still tell how Blaine’s face was twisted in distress, and he felt a familiar pang followed by a rise of protectiveness within him. Blaine clamped his lips together and turned his to the side then down, looking almost anguished, a mannerism so familiar that all Kurt instinctively wanted to do right now was throw his arms around Blaine, murmur into his ear and sweep away the pain with a dozen kisses trailing down his cheek, jaw line, and down the curve of his neck-into-shoulders, just like he used to do whenever Blaine got upset. He remembered the way Blaine used to press into him tightly and dig his face into Kurt’s shoulder, clinging onto Kurt like a drowning man to a life buoy. He missed that feeling. That heady, dizzying feeling of being wanted. Of being needed.

                But things had changed dramatically since then, so Kurt suppressed the urge.

                “I’m… I’m sorry, are you okay?” Blaine’s panicked inquiry broke through his reverie, and Kurt realized with a stab to his heart that Blaine couldn’t see him, and his silence thus gave Blaine good reason to think that he was mortally wounded in some way or another.

                “I’m okay,” Kurt replied on autopilot, his voice high and breathy, not taking his eyes off Blaine, drinking in the sight of him for the first time in a long while. Blaine looked the same way he had three weeks back during their last encounter, but Kurt could only register the differences between the twenty year old Blaine and the teenage Blaine.

                His hair fell in loose curls that peeked out from under the beanie, encircling the tips of his earsBlaine was so much thinner than he was before, which was almost scary, seeing that he had already been slight back in high school. His navy sweater only served to accentuate this, as it hugged his body snugly. His waist was as slender as before, but his shoulders looked narrower and his biceps less defined, if you could tell that much through layers of winter clothes. Kurt prided himself on having a good eye, though. Kurt had never felt the difference in their heights very significantly, but now that difference was emphasized such that he felt quite a lot bigger. It unsettled him far more than he thought it would. Everything’s changed.

                Even Blaine’s face was thinner, his cheekbones and jaw more prominent than before. His nose was still the same, with that little bump in it Kurt used to love running his fingers over. There were tiny lines stretching from the corners of his mouth, and his skin was paler than before. Blaine looked, for the lack of a better word, haggard. Ana’s words came back to him. He must have been through so much. Looking at Blaine now, Kurt suddenly understood the bitter truth in that statement, and all at once he felt a stinging at the back of his eyes, because how much had Blaine suffered? His own pain must have been nothing compared to what Blaine had gone through; Blaine was blind, and he had lost his memory, for god’s sake. He didn’t think he had wanted to hug Blaine so much right now, but again, he repressed the urge.

                “It’s you,” Blaine said in surprise, his worry lifted for the moment.

                “I’m sorry?” Kurt said, cautiously.

                “I bumped into you that time! A few weeks ago, if I remember correctly? Right here, in this coffee shop.”

                Kurt was dumbfounded for a moment. Blaine remembered him. Blaine remembered a total stranger he hadn’t spoken more than a few words to from such a while back. If he looked at it in a detached way, their brief encounter would not have developed into more than a cursory memory. If it had been Kurt bumping into someone else, he was sure he would have forgotten entirely the next day. But Blaine remembered. And Blaine was blind, which would make it even harder to get an impression. He remembered, and surely that meant something.

                “You remember me?” Kurt blurted out, and cursed himself for sounding so stupid. What kind of question was that, anyway? To a stranger, it must sound really weird. Twenty-one and still so socially inept; way to go, Kurt Hummel.

                “Yeah,” Blaine confirmed, “you’ve got a really noticeable voice.” Now it was his turn to blush.

                “No, it’s fine,” Kurt assured him, the words slipping easily from his mouth. “I get that all the time.” Where were all these words coming from? All he had wanted to do was sit Blaine down and say I’m Kurt, and I don’t understand what’s going on right now, but we used to love each other. It sounded ridiculous now. Why would Blaine believe him? He would probably think Kurt was some manic stalker and try to escape in the politest (because that was Blaine, ever polite) but quickest way possible. So maybe he should just try to get Blaine to know him, before springing the big news onto him. Yes. That was the plan, for now.

              “I remember sounds more clearly now,” Blaine explained, looking less mortified. “So unique voices stand out more.”

                He said my voice was unique! Kurt couldn’t control the thrill of happiness that ran through him.

                This was confusing on so many levels. He knew Blaine, but Blaine didn’t know him, and of course Blaine had said a million times before how Kurt’s voice was beautiful, but hearing him say it now in such a different context was an entirely different feeling. He felt like a teenager again, the same way he had felt when Blaine, still woefully oblivious, had complimented him.

                For the record, you, are much better than that girl’s gonna be.

                Kurt could feel himself blushing as he replied. “People always remember me for my voice, actually.” Why had he said that! It sounded totally like he was showing off! Although, the old Blaine would have laughed and leaned in for a kiss…

                It seemed his worries were unfounded though, as Blaine threw back his head and laughed. Kurt could feel himself smiling too, and he didn’t understand how it was so easy to just talk to Blaine like that? In that moment, it felt like old times, and almost immediately Kurt felt the lighthearted feeling in his chest dissipate as he remembered where they were now. It’s not the same as before, he reminded himself firmly. Get yourself together.

                “I’m sorry for knocking into you,” he began more somberly, but Blaine cut him off.

                “Oh, no! It’s my fault, I wasn’t looking.”

                There was a pause, in which Kurt’s eyes widened and Blaine’s mouth hung open for a moment awkwardly. It was as if they were both reminded of where they were.

                “Shit, I’m sorry, but I should probably be going now…” Blaine blabbered, his face downcast and very red, as he made to turn away.

                “No!” Kurt cried. “I mean,” he continued more calmly when Blaine looked at him oddly. “we could still get more coffee? Seeing as ours is spilled anyway?” He held his breath as he waited for Blaine to respond.

                “Okay,” Blaine said finally, and Kurt struggled to hide the sound of relief that rose from the back of his throat. “Okay,” he said heavily, as if making a huge decision. But he pasted a smile on his face and stuck a hand forward formally.

                “My name’s Blaine.”

                Tentatively, Kurt reached out his hand, feeling a sense of déjà vu. We’re back to the start, he thought. He grasped Blaine’s hand, which was warm and dry and sent tingles shooting up his arm. He held on firmly and shook.

                “Kurt.”