"Isn't the class president someone we all look up to?"

Blaine sighed, halfway through putting a book into his locker, and kept doing his activities, eyeing the jock and his bright red jersey warily. "Yes," he answered, as more jerseys joined the one, all assembling behind him in an unpracticed formation.

"How are we supposed to look up to you," he drawled, "when you're so short?"

It was a pathetic insult and Blaine had expected it for a while now. He simple smiled a tight-lipped smile and turned back to what he was doing. Even just putting books in an taking them out seemed as pointless as everything did lately; for a while, when he and Kurt had been talking regularly again, things had seemed somewhat okay, but now that Blaine knew what the future held for Burt and how it would affect Kurt (not to mention the rhyming-named-father-in-question and himself), everything was dreary. It was as if, before, knowing Kurt was happy was enough to make him see the happy things in every situation. Now, knowing Kurt wasn't and wouldn't be made everything seem sad. And for some reason it was so much worse than just sad - it was pitiful and repugnant and horrible and putrescent just to wake up each morning and was even worse to live the days through. Whenever anyone asked, he repeated, "I'm just a little sad." That's all it is, he reason, is just a little sadness. It only seems worse because Kurt's not here to make it better.

"And single," one of the other jocks taunted, and Blaine clenched his jaw, forcibly ignoring them now. "Yeah, we heard you and Lady Face broke up 'cuz you cheated, Anderson."

"His name isn't Lady Face," he muttered, but nobody heard.

"Yeah, dis be why gays cain't get married," spewed another. "Dey cain't keep dem hands to demselves."

A stereotypical and prejudiced assumption based on a mistake he made. Great. He was bringing more ignorance and hurt into the world. Didn't he feel lovely.

"That's right," nodded the first jock in agreement. "What have you to say to this, Anderson? Any arguments? Gonna deny?"

Blaine said nothing. If I ignore them, they'll go away, he thought, though he knew, from experience, that it wasn't true - he was praying to something he didn't know of for it to suddenly become a fact.

"Ooh, staying quiet," he taunted. "That mean it's true?"

Blaine didn't respond, and the jock gritted his teeth, and cracked his knuckles, his teasing and malicious smile loosing its light nature and darkening into a scowl.

"Don't ignore us, Bowties," he snarled, and he shoved Blaine's shoulder.

Blaine stumbled back in surprise and then immediately tensed up, slipping into a fighting stance, having practiced for years so that this couldn't happen again. The other jocks laughed at him - the one in front just grinned sadistically. "Gonna hit me?" he chuckled, and Blaine waited for the first strike. His head screamed at him in two sides, one bellowing, Hit him first, he wants you to, give him what he wants! and the other screeching Get away, run away, last time you were cornered by a group this big you woke up in a hospital!

The jock balled his hand into a fist and swung.

He never stood a chance.

Blaine swept his arm upwards in an upper block and knocked his fist totally off course, and then stepped forward. He threw a punch with his left that connected solidly with his jaw, and followed right after with his right, so the jock's head was reeling, and then swung his curled knuckles up in an uppercut, and felt it smack his lips. The jock staggered back and Blaine took the advantage, sweeping forward and kicking his shin so he raised it and cried out, and then, as he was doubled over, Blaine brought his elbow down hard on his back and he toppled over to the floor.

And all of it happened in under four seconds.

Blaine didn't relax his pose and the other jocks had all backed up - though they were all taller than him, so had been the first one, who was now writhing on the floor, clutching at his bloodied mouth and whining over his shin and back, and they seemed to get the hint. But they were stupid jocks, and the idea of a fight to avenge something seemed good enough to them. Blaine knew he could take them down but sorely didn't want to; he wanted to run away because there was a bit of blood on his right fist and knowing it was his fault, his swing, that had put it there made everything inside his head that much darker.

Just as the second-tallest jock in the bunch was stepping forward and preparing to swing, someone called out, "Blaine!" in a voice so panicked Blaine wondered if it could have actually been meant for him - nobody cared so much as to sound like that. But it was Jake, and though Blaine didn't turn to see, he knew he was accompanied by others.

The jocks all scurried back as Sam, Jake and Ryder all swarmed around him, and he finally relaxed his stance. "Dude," said Ryder, bending down so he was on his knee by the one on the floor, looking up at Blaine, "Did you do this?"

"Yes." Why bother explaining? He was going to hit you! Like that mattered. Blaine defending himself or anyone else would always be violent and wrong and it was useless to try and say otherwise. You're the one in the clear here, it's him who deserved it. Whether he deserved it or not didn't matter, administration and government rarely has the time of discipline to deal with who deserves what punishment and whether or not they got it. At least explain to them what happened! Why? They'd only get angry or disapproving and both were things Blaine felt plenty of on his own.

"Why?" Sam said, stepping forward when one of the scattering jocks paused before turning the corner to consider helping his fallen teammate. "Stupid hockey idiots. Were they picking on you?"

Blaine nodded. "He tried to hit me," he said, pointing at the one on the floor. "I didn't let him."

Why didn't you let him hit you? It's not like you don't deserve to be hit.

Ryder beckoned to Jake, who, after a long glance at Blaine, went to help him sit the boy up. He was whimpering and muttering incomprehensible threats about pressing charges and whatnot. Blaine hadn't hurt him that badly, he was just milking it for all it was worth and then some, and Blaine turned his face into a blank mask so that he'd neither curl his lip in distaste or start to cry. "How long did it take you to do that to him?" Sam asked, putting his hand on Blaine's shoulder, which he immediately shrugged off, all feeling of physical contact feeling invading and filthy and like an attack.

"A couple seconds," Blaine answered. "He's got a bloody lip and maybe a broken jaw but I doubt it; I didn't hit him hard enough or in the right place either time."

Sam raised both eyebrows. "When did you learn how to fight, Blaine? Because every time I've seen you try, you've been... no offense, but kind of sloppy."

"I wasn't trying to actually fight any of those times," he said. "It always took me by surprise when I fought back and I didn't try very hard. I'm not used to defending myself."

"Why not?" Sam asked, and then realization dawned on him, and he answered himself with, "Oh... Blaine -"

Blaine shook his head and silenced him as the other two helped the guy to his feet, both of them looking at the jerk with vague dislike, but mostly interest when they looked at Blaine, and he felt it overwhelming his blank mask. He didn't want their pity or their disapproval or their anger or their questions; and it was then that he looked up at the hallway and saw that the few people who had still been in at that point, running late for the bus or having time to spare after the final bell had rung, were staring with rapt attention and various emotions that Blaine all felt coddled up inside of him.

He turned on his heel and stalked past a group of ninth graders, frightening them and making them disperse like gas particles as he walked by. He felt his mask slip as he heard Ryder tell Jake to let him calm down and be, and Sam begin to call after him before sighing and letting him go, and that was the biggest disappointment. The fact that he was cared about, but not enough for it to matter when someone else was hurting. The other one's pain was purely physical, though, and not nearly as terrible as Blaine's on the inside, but Blaine couldn't see that.

It's your fault he's hurting anyway, you can't be mad at them for caring more about him than you.

He wished he could tell the voice to shut up, but it was his own, and one doesn't simply silence oneself entirely just to be rid of gnawing and nagging mental torture.

He paused for the briefest of moments before quickening his pace. Yes. Yes, they did.

---

It was cold.

He got out of his car, which he'd parked along the side of the bridge, and stepped out into the open. Remnants of frost graced the pavement under his feet; the sun, though shining brightly, was chilled by the frigid wind that blew across directly at him. It stung his eyes and burned his skin with its icy gusts, but he wouldn't have to suffer them much longer.

He didn't even know where he was. He was over a river, one that (he hoped) was deep, but didn't happen to be too wide. There was a train station that he'd passed driving onto it and the rails ran over the bridge, too, but on the other side. He parked far enough along that he didn't get in the way of anybody passing, but still had enough room to step out onto a solid, flat surface before he plummeted to his doom.

All his thoughts were wounds that kept bleeding more and more so he was weakened with each sentence. He knew it was useless to fight against it, the words that cut at him and bit at him and clawed until he was torn to shreds, the words from his own mind. It is impossible not to feel pain. Be it interior or exterior, you can't simply decide not to feel it. You can hide that you do and you can pretend that you do when you don't, but when pain comes, it swallows you whole and forces you to climb your way back out inch by torturous inch. The only difference between the pain he felt now and the pain he'd felt before was that this time he couldn't make himself climb out. Why bother when he'd only be knocked back down again?

He looked back over his shoulder, squinting against the glare, his head pounding him with each new injury created inside of it. His back ached as it had been for a while and though he didn't know why he could no longer even feel frustration at the fact. It was as if all emotions inside him but grief and despair and longing and brokenness were gone and vanished. He looked to see if anyone was stopping or slowing down to prevent his fall. He was correct in his suspicion; nobody did.

Though he'd been telling himself it for over the four-and-something hours he'd been driving, it still hurt to know that even total, fleeting strangers could tell that they shouldn't stop him, because they deserved a world free of him and he deserved no world.

His eyes watered from the whipping cold. Yes, just the cold, that was all. There was no feeling in his tears, just a simple biological reaction. There are times when you're beyond tears.

But as he was looking over his other shoulder, just to make sure, he saw a bit further down there was a figure standing there. It was the figure of a man, wearing what was obviously old, rugged clothes, and he was tall and dark in his silhouette against whatever city it was the bridge came from. And he was clearly looking at Blaine.

Blaine might have been sad and about to do so himself, but he wasn't about to let someone else commit suicide without trying to talk him out of it.

His feet carried him forward, and it was clear that the man had seen him, because he paused from raising his arms like he had been, and lowered them back to his sides, turning his posture so he was facing Blaine's approach. As he advanced, the wind blew at his back and not his front, like it propelling him forward. He drew nearer and made out enough features to tell that the man's clothing was old and dirty and his skin, already darkened by his ancestry, had dirt piled on its dark color, and the dried mud was a lighter tone, contrasting and making the bloodshot whites of his eyes stand out even more. "You too?" he called over the wind loudly, his voice deep and projecting, but filled with a different kind of sadness than Blaine's.

Which wasn't to say Blaine's wasn't as powerful, which it was; it was just of a kind. He didn't understand the kind of sorrow that the man spoke with but he understood the depth and repercussions of it just fine. He stopped before him and joined him on the ledge as opposed to beckoning him down - as it was with most people, he'd learned, if you put someone who's done no wrong to you in danger where you can stop it, you tend to get both you and the other person to safety. Or both he and the man could hit the waves together. He'd still be alone, but maybe he could make the man feel otherwise in those few brief seconds before the waves swallowed them like the pain.

"Me too," Blaine said, looking up and studying his haggard features. He was weary and sad and he was crying like Blaine wasn't - actual tears, and not just runoff from his eyes trying to keep themselves dampened in the harshly dry air. "Why you?"

The man appraised him for a moment, and then shrugged, in a gesture that was clearly supposed to mean, Well, I'm going to die anyway, what's he going to do, kill me? "Nowhere else to go but down there," he said, not even bothering to point. "Home burned down and I'm broke with no family or food and they took my daughter from me. I've got nothing but a life that ain't worth living." He paused for a moment, and swallowed thickly, before asking, "You?"

"Worthless," Blaine responded with one word, and that word was enough to make the man nod, but for some reason he felt compelled to continue, though he held his tongue until the man made a hand signal for him to go on. "Nobody seems to notice that anything's wrong and when they do they don't care. My parents are never home and think I'm going to burn in hell for being gay. I only made my friends because they were my boyfriend's friends, and they're fantastic people, but now he's gone and hardly speaks to me anymore and it's all... scary." Blaine shuddered, either from his lack of eloquent or accurate words to describe his situation or from the wind. "A bully among others at school tried to beat me up today and I hurt him. And I didn't mind. It was sick and I didn't mind." He grimaced at his own lack of humanity.

The man nodded and raised his hand for a high-five, which Blaine half-heartedly gave. "Gonna hit the water with me?" the man asked.

Blaine looked at the water below, gray and rushing and swirling about, foaming, sparkling in the sun's light but dark and moving so fast he felt dizzy. He looked back up at those bloodshot eyes and found an odd form of kindness in them, and nodded. "On three," he said softly.

"One," said the man, and they both repositioned themselves so they were facing the outside of the water. The man was a good two heads taller than Blaine, and wider, and a hell of a lot scruffier, but for a moment, Blaine forgot that he wasn't with someone he trusted explicitly.

"Two," he said.

"Three."

And just as Blaine was leaning forward to fall, assuming the man would, too, the man shoved him back off the ledge, and he stumbled back, trying to regain his balance before he backed into the street - and then the man took his spot on the ledge, his back to the open air, and grabbed the collar of his shirt. What shocked Blaine wasn't the man's obvious strength, and his skill at moving quickly, but how gentle the otherwise abrasive movements were. Blaine stood below him, and his hands curled around the man's wrists, both to hold on to him or to push him off, he didn't know.

"Don't give up," the man's voice was slightly raspy and strained, and his eyes were wide and his breath hitching.

"What are y-"

"Don't you dare do this," he interrupted. "You're young and you're scared and that's fine, but don't stop trying to fix your life when it's still fixable. Talk to your friends and your family and let them know about this. Do yourself a favor, kid, and don't stop living yet."

"I don't understand," Blaine choked, his knuckles white as he clutched at the man's hands, and once more he couldn't tell if he was trying to tighten his grasp or loose his fingers. He was acutely aware of how just by tilting backwards this man, this man who was trying his hardest to save a random kid he'd just met, this man who didn't deserve to die, would fall and perish and be gone, and suddenly it was vital that that never happened. "You can stay with us, but don't fall off, don't give up, we can help you get back on your feet, don't -"

"I've got nothing left but something I don't even want," the man whispered, sounding as frantic as Blaine felt, and Blaine found himself shaking over. Blaine finally figured out that he was trying to pull him out of harm's way and not get him off. "You want something, right? You have hopes and dreams. Chase 'em," he said, coughing hoarsely, and Blaine felt hot tears well up, real ones. "Chase 'em down and fall in love with 'em, and go see that boyfriend and stand up to those bullies. You're human, kid, and sometimes you're not gonna feel like one, and that's okay. But you're a good person and there's not enough of them out there, so you gotta stay. You gotta live."

"So do you, you can't do this!"

The old man shook his head.

Blaine started to cry.

"You're kind, don't go, don't let any more kindness leave the world," Blaine begged him. "Please don't, please, please don't!"

The man said nothing, but instead, his fingers left Blaine's shirt, and while he desperately tried to make them re-clasp against his own, the man stepped back and fell. "No!" Blaine strangled out, and fell to his knees, bending forward and leaning over the ledge just in time to see those tattered rags smack against the waves and then be covered. "No!"

Horror and dread washed over him like the waves had washed over the man, and he sobbed once before bolting. He staggered tiredly to his feet and then began sprinting away, back to the train station, thinking only that he had to honor the last wish. He didn't deserve to, he didn't deserve to, why didn't I stop him, he wept, and he flew through the freezing, lashing wind, past his own car until he was off of the bridge, and then slowed down outside the train station, aware of people eyeing him with fear and curiosity as he slumped against the wall.

He had just been speaking to him not five minutes ago and now he was dead.

The enormity of that hit him and he froze in place.

Train station.

"... go see your boyfriend..."

He stood properly again, and, wiping his eyes as they continued to overflow profusely with hot, salty tears, walked inside to get a ticket to New York.

---

Sam was one step away from having a mental breakdown.

So far, Blaine had floored a man bigger and supposedly stronger than him in a matter of seconds and walked off angry; he, Jake and Ryder had taken the jock to the nurse and told Figgins what they knew had happened; Sam had called Blaine repeatedly while Jake and Ryder filled in the rest of Glee Club on the fight and said to maybe give Blaine some space to calm down and that Sam would talk to him; and the last time Sam had called, he actually bothered listening to the message on the answering machine instead of just hanging up and trying again, and it had said, in Blaine's broken voice:

"You've reached Blaine Anderson. At the moment, I'm not up to talking, and I probably never will be again seeing as how, if I do this right, I'll be incapable of doing so. If you're one of my friends, I apologize for inconveniencing you. If you're Kurt, I love you more than anything. If you're anyone else who knows me, especially Cooper, I'm sorry, so sorry, for everything. Leave a message if it'll clear your conscience. But I won't respond."

Needless to say, Sam was freaking out. He was doing a good job, though, up until now, with holding himself together on the outside. He'd already told Mr. Schue and Finn to listen to it and decide what they thought of it, and they'd all come to the same conclusion, and Finn wasn't holding himself together as well as Sam and Mr. Schue were. They both agreed that nobody else should be told until they were sure - but they had no clue where Blaine was.

Until Sam walked through the front door and heard Burt's voice yell hoarsely, "GOD DAMN IT, BLAINE, PICK UP YOUR DAMN PHONE!"

"Burt?" Sam called, panic rising even more than it had been, and he rushed to the living room, where Burt sat on the edge of the couch, his cellphone in his hand and clutched tightly to his ear, his eyes wide and his jaw set but trembling as he stared at the screen. Sam followed his gaze, and immediately snatched up the remote and went back so he could see. It was a News Report, and on it was a clip of a bridge, and a very familiar car.

The voice-over of the newscaster narrated the scene, apparently having already told the location: "Earlier today, a young boy pulled up here in his car, and pulled over. According to one person who witnessed the event, there were a couple minutes before he could see from his place on the other side someone jump off the ledge into the river. Upon investigation, the police have found inside the car a cellphone and other various identifications of teenage Blaine Anderson. Anyone who knows Mr. Anderson is urged to call the number at the bottom of the screen -"

Sam muted the TV and lost it.

---

"Sam," Kurt greeted happily as he answered his cellphone, poring over sketches of outfits he'd been working on and planning to show to Isabelle. "What's -"

"Has Blaine talked to you?"

Kurt froze.

He knew that tone of voice. That voice was panic and fear and sadness and anxiety and everything he had felt when he realized something was wrong when Blaine had sung him Teenage Dream the last time. "No," he said, putting down the drawing he'd been holding gently, his happiness vanishing into seriousness. "Why?"

"There's..." Sam seemed ready to burst into tears. "There was a fight at school, and a jock tried to hit him and he beat him up and knocked him down and bruised his jaw, and then he walked away, and I didn't go after him because we all thought he needed time to calm down, and then he didn't answer his phone for, like, five hours, and now there's a news report saying they found his car by a bridge and someone on shore on the other side saw somebody jump off, and I think it's him, Kurt, I think he jumped, and if he talked to you -"

"He didn't," Kurt confirmed. He sat back in his chair. He was unable to decipher which emotions were among the tightening ball of pain that knotted in his torso and drew strength from all over, so he felt weak and limp and his stomach cramped and he bent over as it burned agonizingly. "Oh, god, Blaine, do you - how did they know it was -"

"He left his phone in the car and his answering machine, Kurt, he left a note, I swear it's a note," Sam said, his words growing more hysterical and closer together, higher in pitch and faster, too, and Kurt would have told him to calm down if he weren't having the same reaction all over. "I don't - I don't understand, I thought - I think - I don't understand -"

"Neither do I, oh god, oh Blaine, oh my god." Both of them were totally flummoxed when it came to complete and proper sentences, and Sam dissolved into total hysterics - Kurt could hear the tears and couldn't make out his screams of frustration and fear. As for Kurt himself, he fell silent and stayed that way, shutting his eyes tightly and curling into as small of a ball as he could on the chair and rocking back and forth in tight motions, hoping he wouldn't explode like Sam had.

---

They spent hours calling police and his family and others and they finally gleaned enough from people at the train station nearby that afterward someone like him had run sobbing from where the jump had happened and boarded a train, which led the police to believe he might have murdered someone and the rest of them to believe he'd been murdered. Nobody at the station could accurately describe his features; everyone that could have would have been on the train with him by then. Kurt wished desperately to know what was going on, as did everyone else - by the time midnight came around, almost the entire state of Ohio was aware to look out for a possible murderer or murder victim. Everything was so confusing that school at McKinley was cancelled the next day and parents warned. Kurt listened to Burt rant and Sam break down and Finn go around yelling for random objects or people and he and Rachel held each other in silence as all the graduated Glee members became aware and started calling in various states of disbelief and terror for confirmation.

The whole next day was like that. People cried and his parents were questioned and Cooper was enraged and terrified, and when people weren't on the phone, they were sitting either in contemplative and worried silence for the missing boy or they were pacing and yelling and throwing things so he'd maybe come back.

Kurt thought morbidly at one point, so emotionally detached from himself that everything seemed like a movie he could analyze, that if Blaine had had any idea of the effect his death would have he might have thought it was worth sticking around. He'd known Blaine was dramatic, but not so much as to off himself.

But he'd listened to the message so many times he was sure it was nearing the hundreds mark. As he was listening to it again, for the ninety-sixth time (he wasn't actually counting, just guessing, or so he says) he was struck by how ordinary and plain and non-dramatic it sounded. As if Blaine hadn't been sure.

Rachel was in her room, discussing loudly on the phone with Finn, still trying to get him to calm down even though it had been almost exactly twenty-four hours since the witness had seen the jump and he really should have by then, when there was a knock at the door.

Kurt moved robotically, still listening to the message he had memorized already, standing and moving across the floor, thinking into the words, trying to deduce what could have possible happened when he opened the door.

He threw down his phone so hard it shattered and gasped, and then launched himself forward and squeaked, "Blaine!" as he was caught in his arms.

---

Blaine rocked back at the force of the hug, his left foot repositioning itself so his weight was once more supported. His arms wrapped around Kurt as tightly as they were used to doing when Kurt flung his own around Blaine's neck - or, well, one arm around his neck and shoulder and the other reaching under his arm to grab at his shoulder blade. It was how they usually hugged when they couldn't keep emotion in anymore, and Blaine didn't disagree in the slightest with the fact that it was being executed. It took him a moment of having Kurt hug the living daylights out of him like a viper to figure out something was wrong.

Sure, it was great for Kurt to hug him like that. But why was he? He'd only just seen him a week or so ago. He couldn't have missed him that much.

But before he could ask, Kurt pulled away and slapped him.

His palm moved so quickly it was just a pale blur before it smacked across his cheek. Blaine's face jerked to the side and he gasped at the contact, feeling the insane amount of force behind it, the entire side of his face stinging from the blow. And then Kurt hissed, "You let me think you were dead."

"Dead?" Blaine sputtered, looking at Kurt with wide eyes that, though he tried to limit their ability to manipulate Kurt, still managed to make him a little disgruntled, so his hands clenched and unclenched at his sides. "Why dead? Ow!" he added as an afterthought, putting a hand to his cheek gently to cover it.

Kurt's eyes swept over him. "You went to a bridge."

Blaine didn't pause in his place like a statue this time, because he wasn't surprised. The trip from the train station down in Ohio up into New York, with added taxi time, was well over sixteen hours - more than enough time for Kurt to have been told. But why was he so worried? Wouldn't anyone have thought to call if they were so concerned? "Yes," he confirmed.

Kurt blanched at his honesty; he'd obviously expected defiance. "Why?"

"To jump," he said simply, and Kurt's eyes widened like saucers until he shut them tightly and shook his head until he yanked on Blaine's wrist and tugged him inside, sliding their door closed behind him.

"RACHEL!" Kurt demanded the attention of his roommate, and without a word began helping Blaine out of his jacket, the one he'd donned without thinking about it before getting out of his car. It struck him then that even when he'd planned to die he'd tried to be as comfortable as possible, and he began to wonder if, like the cold, all his problems could be solved just by someone or something warm being there for him. Rachel leaned out of her doorway, the phone pressed to her ear, her face nervous and sad, until her eyes set on Blaine.

There was a moment of tense silence before she spoke into the phone with a voice Blaine had never heard her use before. "Blaine's here. Get the word out." And then she shut it with a finality, charged across the room, and punched him in the gut. Blaine felt all the air rush out of his lungs as he "Mmph!"ed in response, doubling over as the blast he hadn't known she'd been capable of hit him. He was being physically abused all over the place lately, but he found this version much more agreeable, especially when, after he leaned over, Rachel kissed the top of his head fondly and trilled, "Where the hell have you been?!"

"Air," Blaine gasped for the second time before daring to straighten up, wincing as he did so. "Ah, ow. Ow," he said again, caving in a bit more and clutching his stomach as continued - though fading - pangs of pain rolled through it.

"I'm sorry, I'm so sorry," Rachel apologized, her voice entirely different then, transforming so quickly Blaine's first thought was that she was playing two entirely different characters at the same time. She put her hand through the loop his vent arm created and guided him slowly to the couch, Kurt hovering disapprovingly in the background. Blaine sat and sank into the cushions, biting back a badly-timed sigh as the pain eased up at his relieving his body of standing duty.

"Why..." he asked, regaining his breath, "did both of you... hit... me?"

"You, too?" Rachel dead-panned to Kurt, who nodded seriously. "Hm. Way to go, Kurt." Blaine felt the scathing in the remark turn to him, but also the light playfulness he'd come to expect of her that she had basically thrown out the window a moment ago. She turned back to him and said, "Explain yourself."

"Can't," Blaine replied, looking up only at Kurt when he spoke, the words ringing in his ears, pounding through him like the sadness had before. "I need to know how much you guys know."

"We know you pulled up to the bridge," said Kurt, his voice terse but his face soft, "and that you got out and a couple minutes later a person on shore saw someone fall off. You left your phone and driver's license but not your wallet in the car, so nobody could reach you," so that explained why nobody had called - he hadn't had his phone! He felt utterly stupid as Kurt continued, "and the police were notified to investigate. Some people at the train station kind of described you and so the cops think you pushed someone off and ran and everybody thinks - or thought - that you fell off and it couldn't have been you. According to the world, you're either a murderer or a murder victim. Either way you're breaking news." The last part was a scoffed remark that he uttered lowly as he flopped into a chair, staring at the ankles he crossed. "We'd like an explanation."

Blaine had, inadvertently, let the horror of one sentence take root and shove all else from his mind, becoming an invasive parasite, feeding off of anything he wanted to keep. "They think I pushed him?" he repeated the only part he'd truly heard. "No, I was trying to pull him away! I didn't push him, that's - oh, God!" he covered his face with his hands and keeled over so his forehead rested on his knees.

"Hey, hey," Rachel soothed him. "It's alright, you're okay. Nobody thinks you pushed him off but idiots who don't know you."

"Who was he?"

Blaine shook his head before he raised it, seeking and finding solace in those eyes of sea before him. "He didn't tell me his name," Blaine confided. "He didn't have a home and the government took his daughter from him and we were going to jump together but... at... at the last second he shoved me away and told me to fix my life and I begged him not to jump but he did and I ran away because I felt like it was my fault and it was scary." He pressed his lips together tightly, wishing he hadn't just said the last part, knowing he hadn't intended for it to come out. He averted his eyes, ashamed to even look at Kurt.

"Sweetie," Rachel crooned, nestling her head in the crook of his shoulder, and he leaned into her, feeling, for the first time in a while, an odd sort of warmth that didn't even bother to heat him before it reached his mind and battled off one of his cold thoughts. "Do you need to rest? If you took the train like I think you did, you must be exhausted."

Blaine sighed in relief, feeling another cold thought vanish, already feeling lighter, and nodded a tiny nod, just large enough for them to tell it was there and small enough not to bring any thoughts back accidentally.

And then one of Kurt's hands was wrapping around both of his clasped ones, and Blaine opened his eyes, surprised to find Kurt kneeling in front of him, holding his hands tenderly, smiling with so much kindness Blaine felt the entirety of himself flare up against all the bitterness in his head until it was just an irritating drone in the background, second to Kurt and everything about him. "Come on, then," Kurt whispered, and Rachel let him go slowly, saying something he didn't hear or respond to. Kurt led him into his bedroom beyond the room dividers, and slowly, carefully, as if not to frighten him, pulled back the covers and beckoned from Blaine to climb in.

Blaine did tentatively but willingly, shutting his eyes as Kurt draped the thick comforter over him, the benefits of a nice, comfortable bed welcoming him like they hadn't in a bit too long - and it was made all the better when the mattress and sheets shifted and he felt Kurt crawl in behind him and this his arm drape over his side to intertwine their fingers before Kurt's other hand reached up to play with the curls at the nape of his neck.

Such was the sense of familiarity and freedom that sleep soon led him into dreamless darkness that promised things much better than the darkness of his head.

---

Kurt had no clue what he was doing.

Or rather, what he'd done. He'd hugged Blaine, slapped him, drilled him for information and then said it could wait, and then tugged him into bed and cuddled up behind him. He was surprised that Blaine hadn't just turned into stone out of pure confusion. Kurt felt like he was doing that himself; he considered all his actions, and the thoughts behind them, and how contradictory they were, and he saw that of course he would act like that - he'd thought his best friend was dead and then he shows up totally unharmed and completely out of the blue! What would your first reaction be? Overwhelming relief and ecstasy, hence the hug, and then anger, hence the slap. Drilling him for information could also be explained as anger, although it was more desperation than anything else then, truly; and telling him to put it off was a bit of wisdom mixed in there, understanding that Holy crap, he was going to commit suicide and someone else did instead and he came to me of all people. And tugging him into bed and cuddling up to him was a reiteration of that wisdom being turned into both pleasure and pain.

But what did he do next? Blaine was asleep in his arms, and he was playing with the loosened curls at the nape of his neck, his fingers absentmindedly twirling them and pulling softly so they sprung back into position. His body wasn't as warm as it should have been - understandable, if he'd been outside for a while or in a taxi/on a train with bad or broken heating - but Kurt cold feel his own heat seep through his clothing and into his bronze skin. He would have been flushed if not for the chills Blaine's cooled figure leeched into him. But the chills were just pleasant flashes of adrenaline making him break out in goosebumps. It was a mixture of frozen fire and burned ice and it was exactly as heavenly as he remembered.

And so he fell asleep.

He dreamed. And not in the good way where everything is vague and blurry but clear enough for you to make out the happiness radiating out of everything, nor in the good way where everything seems so clear it's as if someone took all the frames of the video and raised the contrast level, but in the way where you can't tell if it's good or bad. In the way where some things are clear and yet when you try to remember you can't recall what they were, and some things were great masses of blurred shapes spiraling everywhere. It's the type of abstract dream you have when your body is only mildly tired and your mind is racing but exhausted and all of your feelings become visual behind your eyelids so they drain away before you can actually sleep.

And then he actually slept.

When he woke, he and Blaine had shifted. Kurt was laying flat on his back, his right arm raised and bent so his elbow rested on the pillow beside his head and his palm was face-up above his ruffled hair, his other arm curled down to fit the contours of Blaine's shoulder. That same shoulder was hunched over as Blaine lay on his side beside Kurt, his torso curved so the arm beneath him reached up to nestle under his upper arm so the automatic curl of his fingers had their tips tracing over the skin of Kurt's shoulder teasingly, his head rested on Kurt's chest, one of his legs resting under Kurt's and the other right behind the first. The blanket was warm and cozy and moving felt like a small crime, not unlike stealing a loaf of bread. Blaine seemed to blissful in his sleep, his breathing even and mellow as it washed over Kurt's chest, that Kurt brought down his raised arm and started playing with the loosed curls that splayed all over.

He played with those curls with no small amount of joy or fascination until he felt Blaine chuckle silently, his laughter shaking the two of them slightly, and then his voice, deep and thin with sleep, said, "Having fun?"

Kurt smiled tenderly though he knew he wouldn't see. "Tons," he said. His fingers paused and began to unknot themselves from his hair. He stopped drawing his hand out when Blaine made a noise of disapproval. "Yes?"

"Mm," Blaine said, communicating with a single syllable that he liked Kurt playing with his hair and didn't want it to stop. And so Kurt grinned lightly and kneaded the curls, twisting and pulling gently and stroking through them so each baby-hair thin lock could twist and glimmer and catch on another. They stayed like that for what was really far too long; sunlight streamed through the window with dust dancing in its beam, the morning air around them friendly, the chirps of birds outside somehow harmonizing with the early-morning New York traffic. Everything was bustling and yet in their little bubble of the world all was calm and still.

But eventually, Blaine mumbled something unintelligible - probably because it wasn't actually said in any particular real language - and then sighed, and spoke a little louder, his gravelly voice rumbling, "I'm hungry."

Kurt giggled before he realized that if Blaine had really been on a train and saving his money for the cabs of New York than he hadn't really eaten anything in over a day. Regardless of how this motivated them, they were still reluctant to move; but move they did and empty they felt when they left each other's arms. Yet when Blaine turned to him and smiled with such a simplistic air of gentility Kurt's lips spread wide in response though he'd granted them no permission and they sat on opposite sides of the bed, turned to face each other and with smiles outshining the sun. It may have been silly, but it was also true, that to Kurt, Blaine's genuine smile could and did outshine a thousand flaming sunsets.

---

Rachel was making breakfast when they came out of their room. Or perhaps it was lunch. Neither of them knew for certain. Time had slipped their grasp and floated away and all they knew was that they existed and they did so together. They were both smiling when they came out, and Rachel grinned at them briefly before turning away. Kurt knew immediately something was wrong but didn't say anything; he didn't want to spoil how right things felt with Blaine there.

"Morning," Blaine said warmly, walking up to her and kissing her cheek. Rachel's eyebrows shot up in surprise, and then she giggled and returned the favor, patting him on the head fondly.

"Good," she responded, and it took Kurt longer than it took Blaine to figure out she'd said the beginning of Blaine's phase instead of her own, and then he smirked and bit his lip so as not to laugh. "I assume you're hungry?" she asked them both, but her question directed at Blaine. Blaine nodded and Kurt copied the action. "Are waffles okay?" she asked, indicating to the waffle iron on the counter to the side. "I'm making a fruit salad to go with it."

"Oh, that's perfect," Blaine nearly moaned the words, closing his eyes and tilting his head back. A small laugh flew past Kurt's lips at the sight and he cracked open an eye and raised the eyebrow above it. "Yes?"

"You make it seem so sensual," Kurt informed him, and his lips twitched upward.

By the time the waffles were on their plates and the bowl of fruit salad was on the table, Kurt had picked up that Blaine's stomach was rumbling fiercely but he somehow found a way to quiet it into a noise just barely noticeable when all was dead silent through tightening his stomach muscles. He noted the differences in his breath and voice when he was repressing the growls and Kurt knew he was embarrassed - to reassure him it was okay, he reached across the table and took his hand and squeezed it gently. Blaine squeezed back, not-so-gently, and then let go to pick up his fork.

Rachel sat down at the table with them, and before she took a bite, she took a deep breath instead. She looked at Blaine seriously and her smile slipped away. "Blaine," she said, her voice soft, "you need to tell us what happened."

The effect was immediate.

The fork full of food he'd been about to shovel into his mouth paused right in front of his lips, and the contented smile he'd donned and wore since waking vanished; the emotions that flitted onto and then off of his face were regret, fear, and very clearly came and settled down grief. Kurt whipped his head around to Rachel and glared at her as the clinking sound of Blaine's fork being set on his plate was heard. Rachel looked back at him sadly but with determination, yet he still said, "Not yet, Blaine, if you -"

"He came up to me in the hallway after school," Blaine interrupted, and Kurt faced him again, listening now with rapt attention. Blaine's eyes flickered about but for the most part stayed trained on his hands in front of him on the table. "A jock. I don't know his name. He had backup. He started teasing me about my height, and then about... and then about you," he admitted sheepishly, his cheeks flushing bright red as he dared to glance at Kurt's reaction before continuing hurriedly. "I told him to leave me alone and he basically said no and tried to hit me, and I blocked him and... um, kind of beat the crap out of him in around five seconds."

"Blaine, you don't have to," Kurt whispered, but Blaine paid him no heed. His voice was strained and thick and he was staring intently at his hands as if they held something precious, his whole form rigid and still.

"And then Sam, Ryder and Jake came, and it was... it was confusing. And I was sad and angry and scared and I went away and it was like everything just kept getting worse. With every footstep came another nightmare and with every nightmare came the realization that it was a reality. I didn't... I didn't want to live inside a nightmare and make the lives of other people a nightmare because I was living." His voice was lower, huskier, getting deeper and deeper until it resonated at a pitch so low Kurt was afraid he'd lower it too much and they'd be unable to hear. "And I drove for hours until I just stopped on a bridge. And I went to jump but I saw someone else about to jump, too, and so I went over there to try and convince them not to..."

"Blaine," Kurt tried again, the wisp of breath containing the name floating off his tongue and dissipating into the air.

"He was homeless and broke and starving and they took his daughter from him and he had nothing left he could do with his life but... but die," Blaine choked then and shut his eyes. Kurt's own eyes welled with tears and his hands shook until he clasped them together. "And then I told him my story and we were going to jump together. And at... at the... the last second, he..." Blaine shook his head, raising a hand to run through his hair, taking a breath shakier than any he'd heard before. "He pushed me back and told me that I was a good person and that I couldn't die for that reason, and I tried to say that it applied to him, too, but he just told me to fix my life and then shoved me away and jumped and I couldn't... I couldn't... he hit the water."

"Blaine!" Kurt tried again, more forcefully, as a tear dropped from his wet lashes to a raspberry sitting atop his waffle, the saltwater glistening over it as it spread out. Blaine just shook his head.

"I ran to the train station at the other side of a bridge, got a ticket to New York, got on my train, and when I got here I took two taxis until I was only about three blocks away and walked the rest of the way, and you know the rest." He finished by finally moving, his joints going from stiff to fluid in the smallest of seconds, his hands opening and his palms facing up as if it signal that he had nothing more to hold back. He tilted his head up and looked at them defiantly for a moment before he dropped his head again and it hung so the next tear that fell dropped directly onto his lap.

"Hey, hey," Kurt crooned, pushing his chair back, scraping its legs against the floor, and moving over to where Blaine sat and then kneeling beside him. "Shh, it's alright. You're okay. I'm right here."

"Nobody was there for him, though," Blaine refuted weakly, and Kurt was then struck by the knowledge that Blaine wasn't crying for himself, he was crying because a total stranger had died. How he lived through each day knowing the atrocities committed everywhere escaped him; but he had met someone who had helped him and could have helped the world, only to take himself out of it a moment later - no wonder he was crying. Out of the corner of his eye, Kurt saw Rachel mouth, 'I'm sorry,' and then disappear into her room with her phone in her hand - so she was calling the police to tell the story. That was why she'd pushed it. "And he was there for me, too. It isn't fair, someone should have... I should have... I could have -"

"Done nothing more but what you already did," Kurt cut across. "Sweetheart, you tried your hardest to make him understand that he shouldn't jump, right? And he did anyway? You tried, and it's okay. It'll be okay."

"But -"

"He told you to fix things, right?" Kurt interrupted again. "So fix this. Fix the thoughts in your head telling you that you can always do better. You did your best, and sometimes it's not going to be enough, and that's okay. That's human."

"I can't," Blaine confessed, finally opening his eyes again to meet Kurt's, their normal golden color faded into a murky grayish-brown. "They're always there. I can't ever get them out of my head. This is just proof. I'm broken, there's something wrong with me, with my head, with how I see things, and it can't be fixed."

"Everything can be fixed," Kurt said firmly, before melting as yet another tear fell and hugging Blaine fiercely, trying desperately to convey everything through one embrace and failing miserably.

---

Rachel's head was turned toward the living area beyond the room dividers as she sat on her bed. The guilt was pouring through every bit of her it could and she was lagged by it, the feeling abhorrent and grimy. She ached to run back into the room and apologize but she couldn't; according to the police, who had called while the boys had been sleeping, they were harboring a possible murderer. Anyone who'd ever known Blaine was appalled by the accusation - sometimes he could be a bit aggressive, but he could never possibly kill someone. It was as outrageous as suggesting that a puppy was a serial killer on a rampage through downtown Tokyo; it just wouldn't happen. But nonetheless, she had had to get the story, and as the call was picked up to the department's secretary, she said, "Hello, this is Rachel Berry, and I've got the story of Blaine Anderson to tell."

She was patient with her ever-growing self-induced torture and berated herself constantly for not waiting until Blaine had at least eaten breakfast; she could hear him crying in the room over. What worried her most was what he'd said after she'd slipped out of the room - that he couldn't stop thinking of his own insufficiency and insignificance and that no matter what happened or how happy he was the thoughts were always there. Those hadn't been his words, but they had been her father's before he was tested and diagnosed with depression. Rachel hated to recognize the symptoms she'd seen running rampant throughout her household for years before her father broke down and allowed himself to admit to having the disorder and take the medication. He'd been sad and it had made a part of her sad - in fact, it was during that time that she became such a huge show-off and ambitious person. She tried thrice as hard if not harder than she had before at home to get her father to smile more often. She'd never gotten out of the habit of trying too hard, though she had slipped out of having a reason for it. She loathed how obvious it was that Blaine was experiencing the exact same thing.

By the time she was transferred to the right person on the other line, she was wiping tears off of her cheeks with a rough tissue from the box beside her bed.

They asked her questions and she answered them with as much detail as she'd been given. And while she did so she thought over her choice of words; the Story of Blaine Anderson. It could be an epic or a novel. The story of an openly gay teenage boy who suffers through bullies and fears and an endless amount of crap only to delve deeper into despair and trudge through depression. It was soap opera material and it made her cry a bit harder, her voice wavering more as it spoke, because the story almost ended before it was supposed to.

Nobody likes tragedies. People like to read them or watch them or write them but nobody ever likes to live them. Reality is far harsher than words on pages between two sides of the same cover, or scenes in a movie between two rolls of credits. And yet every life is a tragedy because they all end exactly the way they're supposed to - not like the movies, where it ends on the perfect kiss, or the books, where the epilogue shows you how happy the characters are. Real life goes beyond where happy stories end and it ends tragically. And nobody likes tragedies.

---

Rachel had been in her room, speaking in a low and teary voice, for over an hour, and over the last few minutes her voice had shot through two octaves and she'd screamed, "HE IS NOT!" Neither Kurt nor Blaine had the gall to ask her who or what she was screaming at, not when they were cuddled up on the couch, snuggled under a blanket and (not) watching the first channel the TV had turned on to.

There was a sudden crashing noise from behind the room dividers. "Rachel?" Kurt called, "Are you okay?"

"GOD DAMN IT!" Rachel's voice carried with the lungs of a singer throughout the apartment, the double timbre brought on by its shakiness piercing through two entirely different notes. Kurt sat up straighter, turning towards the sound, concern for her and not just Blaine rising.

"Rachel?" he asked again, and she stormed out, red-faced, and not just from anger but around her eyes as well, her heavy eye makeup running in dark streaks down her face, smudged and haunting. He raised his eyebrows at the sight, and she held her fist forward and unfurled it so the already-crushed device she'd held in her hands dropped to the floor and splintered further.

"Threw my phone," she explained gruffly, "and it broke."

There was a moment before Blaine broke the silence and then said, "Impressive."

"Why'd you throw it?" Kurt followed up.

"Got angry," Rachel said, and dropped the last few remnants to the ground before rage filled her features and she stomped on the broken pile furiously, causing tiny pieces of debris to fly about and scatter at the impact.

"Hey, hey!" Kurt exclaimed, "I'd rather not be vacuuming tiny pieces of phone for the next two weeks!"

"DAMN YOU!" Rachel bellowed, and Kurt was so taken aback that he felt his face freeze at the words, and her foot swept back and then kicked the remaining pieces of the pile forward so they splayed all over.

"Rachel!" Blaine snapped warningly, and at the sound of his voice all the anger vanished from her features, leaving her drained and broken-looking. She looked at him plaintively before collapsing into the chair. "What's got you all worked up?"

"Stupid police," she groaned, slinging her head back.

"Police?" Blaine repeated, his tone wary and quiet, and with a jolt Kurt and Rachel's eyes locked - he didn't know. He'd gotten right on the train and thought Rachel and Kurt had only wanted to know what had happened because of morbid curiosity and not to clear his name.

In that instant of eye contact, both Rachel and Kurt automatically moved in synchronization until they were both sitting with their backs straight and their faces in the same set, looking at him the same way, because they knew that if they didn't tell him the right way the result would be disastrous.

---

The result was disastrous.

---

"Blaine don't leave, Blaine don't LEAVE!"

Kurt's volume increased in a panic as he stumbled after Blaine, who had risen from the couch and swept his jacket off the coat hanger and gone to open the door. He was turned so his back was facing them, and they couldn't see his face; but they'd seen it before he'd stood and gone to leave and neither of them would ever be able to forget how the sight of it burned them. It should have been impossible for someone who was guiltless to look so conscience-stricken and condemned and wholly responsible and it should have been possible to accurately depict his reaction with words but it wasn't and isn't. He'd stood so quickly he'd knocked Kurt off the couch and he'd moved with such speed Kurt barely had time to clamber to his feet and lunge to grab his arm before he was at the door and about to be outside of it.

"Let go of me." Not a single words of the sentence was said with any conviction or steadiness and yet all of it was monotonous.

"Never," Kurt panted, and, in an action that surprised all of them, yanked with so much force on Blaine's arm that he cried out and tipped over backwards, landing on the floor with a resonating thud and a gasp as Kurt caught his head just before it smacked against the ground.

"Blaine, just try to calm down," Rachel said, though she herself was anything but calm.

Blaine tried to shove himself away from Kurt but Kurt held fast to him and watched with increasing self-hatred how he struggled desperately to get away. The thing that was saddest about it was that Kurt knew he was fully capable of getting away if he truly tried - he was much stronger than Kurt - and that meant he was really pushing against his subconsciousness, his weakness holding him down like Kurt, and he was losing. Kurt and the compressing sadness were winning. Never had Kurt hated himself more.

Finally, Blaine gave up, slumped against the floor, and started to cry. "I want to die, I only want to die, just let me die," he begged something Kurt couldn't and didn't want to see. "Please just let me die."

---

"Rachel should have called by now," Finn said anxiously, staring at the phone in its cradle on the desk he sat in front of. "She said she'd call by noon and it's half an hour past."

"Have you tried calling her?" Carole asked him from somewhere behind his back; he didn't care enough to turn around and find out. Burt was in the shop, working, like always, but always next to his phone, waiting for news. Finn had no idea what Blaine's parents were doing but he knew the rest of his family, biological or not, was hanging by a thread due to the anxiety.

"She won't pick up," Finn answered the question she'd asked and the one she'd been about to.

"What about calling Kurt?" she suggested.

"He didn't pick up either," Finn grumbled, and laid his head down on the desk. He'd only ever felt so much like he was on a cliff and looking down over the edge into a pit so deep it faded into nothing but inky blackness when he'd found out Burt had had a heart attack, and this was, as much as he was ashamed to admit it even to himself, at least five times worse.

And then he nearly jumped out of his skin when the shrill ringing of the phone shot through the air. He pressed it to his ear and breathed, "Rachel?"

"It's Blaine."

"Blaine!" The name fell off his tongue with relief so great he felt as if a flood inside him had been drained. "I - you - are you okay? Please tell me you're okay, Rachel hasn't told us anything since last night and we're all freaking out and I just need to know -"

"I'm okay," Blaine said softy, and at his voice Finn choked back tears, a huge grin breaking across his face because for what had been the worst day and a half or so of his life he'd been ultimately petrified because he'd thought he'd never hear it again. "Finn, I - is... is everyone..?"

Just then, Sam came barreling into the room from his bedroom, his eyes wild, as if daring himself to hope. "Is that Blaine? I heard you say -"

"Is that Sam?" asked Blaine. "I think I hear his voice."

"Yeah, it's him," Finn answered both questions, and Sam loosed a cry with no description to fit it and nearly threw himself at Finn, who handed over the phone for fear of being pummeled if he didn't. Sam held the thing like gold and when he spoke he spoke in a way Finn had only ever done for his mother - in a way that screamed of pure and unfailing love but with an underlying tension of familial agitation.

"Blaine?" Sam breathed. There was a pause, and Finn looked over his shoulder and caught his mother's eye, which, until then, had been following the phone. "Oh my God, Blaine, you... you scared the hell out of me, out of all of us." The words were reprimanding but the tone was near tears, as was the rest of the blond. "You can't - I thought you were angry, I'm so sorry, I should have followed you," and then he was apologizing inexhaustibly, "I should have known, I'm so sorry, I'm so, so sorry, I promise it'll never happen again, I'll always follow you if you need me to, I'll always be there, we're always gonna be here, Blaine, you've got to know that, please don't ever do this again, I'm so sorry, I... I j-just..."

The words were so unfeigned and ardent that Finn felt like he was intruding; but he couldn't force himself to give Sam any privacy because he'd been without Blaine for far too long himself. When Sam faltered, there was a soft murmur from the other side Finn couldn't quite make out, until Sam said, "It's not okay, not as long as you're trying to jump off bridges and running off without taking your phone, and thinking it's better if you do! Dude, I'm so sorry that I didn't know you felt like that, I'll try harder, it'll be okay -" A longer beat, and then Sam turned so his back was against the wall and slid down it so he was sitting, leaning his head against it. A moment later his eyes widened in total shock. "Wh- what?" he sputtered. "No! No, never! You couldn't have, you would never, of course I don't! You're Blaine, you're you, you could never do it!"

"What?" Finn whispered eagerly, but Sam ignored him, and with good reason.

"Look, I don't know what happened, and you don't have to tell me, but no, I don't think that and I never will," Sam reassured him, his voice softer, his eyes closing as he took a deep breath. There were several long beats that the room waited in total silence but for the buzzing of the phone's incomprehensible words before Sam said, "You're not allowed to do that. I don't care what else you do but you will never, ever, blame yourself for feeling sad, okay?" The authority and creed that reverberated in his voice surprised the Hudsons and they shared another glance before turning back. "And please, please, don't forgot that we all love you to pieces and that the thought of you dying reduced almost an entire state to a meltdown." There was a sound so quiet that nobody was surprised when Sam tilted his head down and said, his tone much quieter, "Yeah, I love you too, buddy."

Finn waited for the phone to be handed back to him but it never was. When Sam pulled it away from his ear, he handed it to Finn and said, "He wanted to know if we thought the police were right and he killed the guy on the bridge." Finn's eyebrows shot up and his grip on the phone tightened. "I said no," Sam told them, and Finn calmed down a bit. "And then he started to say everything was his fault and I tried to tell him no and I think I made him feel a bit better."

"He didn't want to talk to me?" Finn despised how selfish he was being but Blaine was his brother through every way but biology and the law, and those two matter little when it comes to true family.

Sam smiled sadly. "Think about how much he's lived through," he said. "Not just these past few days but his whole life. I think he's allowed to put off a call for another couple hours, don't you?"

---

Blaine placed Kurt's phone back in his hand and steeled himself before looking up - only to never do so and remain looking at his hands. "Did that convince you?" Kurt queried delicately.

Blaine nodded but he looked hollow; Kurt hugged him, softly at first, and then tighter as he became sequentially scared that if he let go Blaine would fall apart and it would be impossible to put him back together again.

---

Blaine hung up slowly from his phone call with Cooper. He held the phone at arm's length before dropping it to the couch cushion and sighing.

Kurt, entering the room, saw the action. "How'd it go?" he asked.

"He cried," Blaine said simply.

"Of course he did, he almost lost his brother and best friend," Kurt reasoned.

"That's the worst thing you could have said just then," Blaine laughed falsely before his face resumed its previous hardness.

"Why is that?" Kurt inquired, draping the shirt he'd been about to give to Blaine over the back of the chair and then leaning on it.

"Because you've convinced me," Blaine said grimly, and it took less than a millisecond for Kurt to enter a wild panic, frenzied anxiety and anguish sending bursts of adrenaline through him. He barely managed to keep his voice down asking what he'd convinced Blaine of. Blaine looked at him, clearly understanding he'd said something wrong, and answered slowly, but sadly, "You've convinced me that the world is so used to pain that a little more or a little less isn't even cared about any more. People are only the pain they cause and feel."

"That's not true," Kurt gushed fervently, "what on Earth made me convince you of that? Was it my reaction to Cooper crying? Blaine, you misun-"

"Misunderstood?" and it was the first time Kurt had ever seen Blaine mock him, and suddenly he was aware that something was very, very wrong inside Blaine's head, because Blaine would never do such a thing. "I'm just another random name that's going to end up on a random headstone somewhere! Just another fatality that's going to hurt people too kind to see past this stupid facade of happiness. Nothing but scrambled letters on a slab or marble on top of a rotting skeleton buried six feet down. That's all I am and I don't see how what you see is possible, how I'll live to become great - I just don't see it! All I see is a weathered gray rock in a cemetery covered in leaves and moss that nobody goes to visit because nobody cares." He shook his head in disgust. "And nobody will care because it'll only be another drop of pain to be met with an 'of course'. Nothing special. Just pain. Everything is so much pain..."

Kurt took Blaine's head between his hands gently and looked him square in the eyes. "Shut up," he advised tenderly. "Shut up and look at me." And Blaine did - Kurt tried not to notice that his pupils dilated when he did so - and so Kurt went on, "I want you to imagine that you're me and what I'm feeling. And don't!" Kurt warned, taking a hand away to hold a finger over his lips, signaling Blaine to stop trying to interrupt as he'd been about to. "Don't read me like you tend to because you know me so well. I want you to put yourself in my head and say out loud what you're feeling when you are."

Kurt watched as Blaine's pupils grew larger and larger until his irises were just a small golden rung around them and his eyes were glassier and glassier. Every second that ticked by felt like a tremor of cockroaches running about under his skin and the thought caused him to tremble a bit, shuddering, trying desperately just to look at Blaine and let loose all of the disquiet presentiment without saying or doing anything. He swore he felt as if his mind was extra clouded, and he shoved back the cloudy feeling, trying to let Blaine's gaze pierce into it, though not so much he saw what Kurt didn't want him to.

Finally Blaine's eyes refocused, and he said, "I'm sorry."

"Don't be -" Kurt began.

"No, I mean," Blaine smirked a little, "that as you, I'm sorry."

"Oh." Kurt felt like all the air had vanished from his lungs. How he'd managed to pinpoint something so monumental and yet hidden away in the back of Kurt's mind and bring it to the forefront so it sent a clamor through his skull, causing everything else to rise it discordant cacophony. "Yeah. I mean, yes. Yes, that's... good."

"You know you don't have to be sorry," Blaine told him, a lot more calm than he had been a minute or two ago; while the development as a whole pleased Kurt, the way in which it had been brought about, with his destabilization, irked him. "For any of it. It wasn't your fault, it was mine. I was the one that -"

"God damn it, I should have known you'd be too good at that," Kurt muttered, and shut his eyes, his head dropping so his chin rested against his collarbones. "Blaine, I know we never had the heart-to-heart I promised you for Christmas, but I don't think this is the best time -"

"Yes you do," Blaine cut him off. "At least, if I'm right, you think now is the perfect time, and the whole reason you haven't brought it up is because you're scared it'll make me sadder."

Kurt gritted his teeth and swallowed back the rising lump caught in his throat. "The last thing I could do right now would be to make you sadder. I'd die if I did."

"Tell you what," Blaine said. "I'm a lot sadder thinking I know what's in your head and not having it confirmed than I would be if we were to talk and say them out loud."

"What else was I feeling?"

"Well, I'm going to go on a limb here and try to reassure you that I've never been diagnosed with the depression you and Rachel are suspecting, or any form of anxiety or other mental or physical illness," he replied. "You were concerned about that, right?" He didn't wait for an answer. "And you were hurt by my shouting at you - and this time when I say I'm sorry I mean for me - and you were scared that I'd leave again."

"How is it," Kurt wondered aloud, raising his eyes to meet Blaine's again, feeling an old, familiar pinprick over his skin at the contact, "that you saw everything I didn't want you to and couldn't just stick to seeing the basic emotions?"

"Basic emotions are too confusing," Blaine answered. "I thought about everything I knew about how you thought and then I imagined going through what you've gone through and thinking about it the way you would, and the thoughts you didn't want me to see were way more interesting."

"Blaine," Kurt sighed.

"Come to think of it, everything people don't want others to see tends to me more interesting, if not more honest as well. Kind of like how they speak with more honesty when they don't think about what they're saying."

"Blaine," Kurt said again, and this time Blaine paused long enough for him to speak. "If you really want to talk about this, you have to promise me you'll wait until we've discussed all of it and you won't yell or scream or cry."

"Because it'll overwhelm you?" Blaine guessed.

"Because it'll overwhelm me," Kurt agreed reluctantly.

And so Blaine carefully raised his hands to both sides of Kurt's face, and they stood for a moment, pressed against each other, their body heats mingling, looking at each other, and Kurt began to comprehend what Blaine meant when he'd basically read his mind - looking at him, and how prepared he was to say things he thought he meant, it was impossible not to see the things he did mean and why he meant them. They were both as readable as open books at the moment and Kurt wondered if it was only to each other or to the world.

He hoped it was only to each other.

And then they both dropped their hands so that they intertwined on the way down, and they led each other to the couch and sat down, and began to talk.

---

"Well," Kurt started, afraid of making eye contact but more afraid of looking away, "I know that I wasn't doing the best job of keeping you in my life."

Blaine nodded. "Which is understandable," he said. Kurt's brow furrowed as he tried to understand what that meant; he didn't and instead continued on.

"And I know that that made you lonely and unimportant," he said, searching for confirmation and receiving it in the form of a small head nod, "but I don't... I don't quite get why you thought that cheating might fix things."

Blaine cocked his head to the side. In that one moment, in that one sentence, that one word, Kurt's vulnerability had spilled over and out and he was a terrified little boy sitting on a couch, begging for something he didn't want and at the same time pushing away what he did. "I don't get it either, Kurt, but I can explain to you what I do get, if that's alright." Kurt heard the strain he masked well, with the skill of an actor only Kurt seemed able to see through, and knew Blaine was holding himself back; he was already into the discussion heatedly in his head and Kurt found himself listening to the words and imagining what they'd sound like if he let loose. "You weren't there. And that's entirely all my fault, and I know that, and I was wrong. I told you to go to New York because I deluded myself into thinking I'd still be the most important thing in your life. You made e feel like that, like I'd always be important. And then you were gone and I was alone and you never responded to my texts or you never answered my calls or called back and you hung up before I could say I love you. This caused two huge problems - one, I needed you there to comfort me through it. Two, you were the reason I needed comfort. Before I met you," Blaine started confessing, "I really was... not happy. At all. There were moments of happiness, and sometimes they lasted a while - like how with you there were bits of sadness that could stretch on - but the main feeling was always sadness. When I met you, the moods were reversed. And when you weren't there again, it felt... it felt a little like everything bad I'd ever f-felt just hit me again all at once." He stuttered but shook his head and picked right back up; Kurt was curling into a ball slowly, trying to enclose himself in himself, as if such a thing were possible. "But this time it didn't go away because you weren't there to make it go away. And as much as it's not your fault, you actually brought more of it than banishing it. I mean that, that's it not your fault, not whatsoever. I was just naive and... and that was when I realized I was holding you back. You wouldn't have even come to New York if I hadn't basically pushed you to, and then when you were there, I was still just a n-nuisance who kept bugging you to keep up c-contact. I -"

"Blaine, sweetie," Kurt whispered, unrolling slightly so that when he leaned forward he was sitting on his legs. "You were never a nuisance. The things that kept me from you were a nuisance. Never you."

Blaine smiled. Kurt didn't believe it. Especially not when it vanished a second after it appeared. He took a moment to compose himself inside that smile and that made it fake; if he'd just continued with his voice getting progressively weaker and his face continuously redder, it would have been real. But he hid that away and Kurt loathed himself for making him do that.

"I tried to call you that night," Blaine told him gently. "You didn't answer, and I needed someone to listen to me, even if I had no clue what I was going to say. He was a guy who friended me on facebook." Blaine shook his head in pure disgust. "And I just thought - I just thought - I didn't think. I just acted, because thoughts hurt too much and actions just are, in the way that air isn't always good or bad but it always is. But after... after, it was impossible to get away from the thoughts, and so I flew out here. I flew out here because you... you didn't deserve what I'd done to you," and his voice was getting dangerously low, his eyes averting and dropping to his knees, "but I couldn't bear to make myself a liar on top of a cheater. I had enough reasons to hate myself, and I tried - no!"

Blaine rocked back in shock, his hand clamping over his mouth as he caught himself right before he said something. Kurt grabbed the wrists and pulled him back toward him. "Blaine, you tried what?" he demanded. "Tried what?"

"It's really not important," Blaine gasped, eyes still wide, his pulse under Kurt's fingers still racing.

"You're only saying that because you think you're not important," Kurt snapped harshly, "and you couldn't possible be more wrong, so tell me: tried what?"

"It was only once and I never did it again," Blaine promised, tears beginning to rise.

"Did what? Blaine, what did you -"

Blaine answered by reaching down, tearing his wrist out of Kurt's grip, and pulling up his shirt's bottom so Kurt could see the soft outline of a long, thin scar across Blaine's hip bone. Around it, parallel to it, were smaller, more puckered lines. They'd obviously had had months to heal and had instead just scarred. They must have been deep.

Bile threatened to rise from his churning stomach as he realized with horror what Blaine meant. "You..." Kurt was speechless. "You cut yourself?"

"It was... nothing else was working! I wasn't thinking, I just acted, like before, and I never thought it would bleed so much, but then it did and I - I couldn't look away or move and it just made it seem like all the bad things stopped in my head for just a little while."

"You cut yourself." The words, so vile, so putrescent, rolled off his tongue, rank with their bitter taste.

"I wanted to feel like there was a pain I could control, Kurt," Blaine said, frenetic. "I couldn't do anything about everything else and it hurt too much and at least doing this I could make it stop."

"But you didn't." Kurt's voice was a hell of a lot more dead than his head was. It spurned off images, pictures, ideas of Blaine sitting in his bathroom, using his razor blade to draw angry red lines across his skin and then sitting and watching them, transfixed. "You said you didn't move. And there's more than one scar here."

"I'm sorry," and Blaine cried. Blaine had cried so much lately Kurt wondered if he was just going to permanently be in a state of either too-many-tears-to-hold-in or fresh-out-of-tears-come-back-in-about-an-hour-when-I-have-more. "But I never did it again after that night, I swear."

"And you never will again." Kurt stared at him, his gaze a glare. "Promise me. Promise me on everything that matters to you that you will never do this to yourself again."

"I can't, I'm sorry -"

"Why not?"

"Because I don't have everything that matters to me anymore," he choked, and then swallowed back, only to have his throat clogged again. His face pulled together and apart at the same time, the face of someone who was totally and utterly falling apart, with no possible chance at holding it in any longer, and he was trying to keep himself together so hard that he was only crumbling further.

"Why? What is it?" Kurt inquired, refusing with absolution for any part of his demeanor outside to reflect the raging wildness inside.

He itched to kiss away the tears that spilled over Blaine's cheeks. "U-Us," he stuttered helplessly, the word coming out as two different syllables, each one ripping off a chunk of Kurt's resolve. He faltered in his holographic display, but then replaced it with a slightly softer one.

Kurt took a long, cold breath in through his nose before nodding, and then leaning forward just the slightest bit so his forehead rested on Blaine's. He didn't just acquire Blaine's eye contact; he commanded it. His eyes were dark and dreary, like a muddy pond during a storm, and they'd lost the golden color they'd had a couple minutes ago.

Fighting to bring the gold back, Kurt told him, "Then promise me on this. On this moment and this kiss."

"Kiss?"

Kurt kissed him.

Much, much later, he would realize how much more important his thoughts were than his actions. At the time, he was under the impression that, like Blaine before him, he didn't think - he just acted. Later he would recognize that suddenly every single bad thing he'd been withholding simply popped out of existence but that Blaine was only crying harder. He could feel new tears gather where his cheeks met with Blaine's and the salt slide into their pressed mouths. Kurt didn't even bother pulling away before saying, "Promise."

"I promise." Blaine's breath was hot in his mouth and he could feel every aspect of him thrumming with a life and energy he couldn't have possible placed right then.

And then Kurt pulled away, and placed his hand on the area with the scars, Blaine's skin slightly raised, the idea of the cutting to repulsive he was crying with Blaine, the idea of kissing so welcoming he was crying with Blaine, the idea that Blaine was just full-out weeping so frightening he was crying with Blaine. Cold, ageless sobs ripped through Blaine repeatedly and Kurt just held him while they did and tried to let a bit of his sickened composure enshroud him - if not for Blaine's sanity than for his.

Before he's stopped crying, but after he'd calmed down enough to speak, he told Kurt, "You shouldn't have kissed me."

"Why?" Did he not want Kurt to kiss him?

"Because I hurt you -"

"Tell you what," Kurt repeated what he'd said right before he'd agreed to even have their gone-awry conversation. "I was hurting a lot more not kissing you."

Blaine gulped. "Promise?"

"I promise."

---

Some things they cleared up through thorough discussion and open-minded arguments:

Kurt could have and should have made a little more of an effort to make sure Blaine was aware he was still a part of his life.Blaine could have and should have told Kurt what was going on and how he felt.

"But I tried. You never picked up the phone or responded to my texts. I tried, Kurt."

Kurt could have and should have picked up the damn phone.There were times when he couldn't and that was fine, but when he could have, he should have. And he definitely could have tried to pick up the last call Blaine made before giving up.Blaine meeting with him face-to-face and telling him the truth right away was both honorable and a hell of a lot kinder than anything else he could have done.Kurt's reaction was totally and completely justified and Blaine didn't blame him whatsoever.

"You're at the point where you're not going to blame anyone because you don't think anyone but you is to be blamed."

Blaine loved Kurt.Kurt loved Blaine.That kiss had been more than a "calm down" kiss.

"But you're sending me mixed signals here, Kurt. I don't even know if you trust me again, and now you're kissing me -"

"I try to avoid kissing people I don't trust explicitly, Blaine."

The title 'boyfriends' had a nice ring to it. Much better than 'ex'.

Was it silly? Yes. Was it long-overdue? Yes. Was it true? Hell, yes. But did it solve everything? No.

But it had solved most things. Looking at Blaine as the last thing on that list was clarified, Kurt realized something lurked in those golden-flecked and ever-changing eyes of his. If hope was a color it would be the color of his eyes. If it was a sound it would be the sound of his laugh. And if it was a sight it would be the way his eyes flickered between the lips he wanted to kiss and the eyes he had to meet and how the corners of his eyes crinkled with his smile. If it was a feeling, it was the anticipation and excitement curling in his stomach as Blaine leaned in and kissed him once more. There were times when he'd found things such as "it's impossible to describe a color without using other colors and that only works for secondary colors" that intrigued him because he was certain there was a way of describing them, if he would just think about it.

For example, the color that sprang to mind was actually a warm brown when Blaine pulled back and nestled his head in the crook of Kurt's shoulder. Brown - the dirt under your feet when you're in a natural or preserved place, the wood burning in fireplace on a cold day while you're snuggled in front of it, comfort and home and familiarity. That moment was brown and it was perfect.

And yet one major thing remained resolved: It had been made clear that while Blaine had never really been abused or neglected, he hadn't truly been raised, either. He was one of those rare people who had to grow up enough to take care of themselves but at the same time couldn't grow up because they never got a shot at really being childish. It explained his grin and his bowties and his attitude towards everything and yet how morbidly accurate his view of the world was. He thought like a child but understood like an adult. That kind of existence is the worst kind because children are the ones that ask questions that need good answers and adults are the ones who know enough to give them; whatever he wondered idly and innocently about had a solution more grievous than anything he'd set out to learn. And the color that that described was a brown so dark, murky, and almost-gray that the moment, if it hadn't been for those golden-flecked eyes, would have faded to gray altogether.

---

When Rachel came home that evening, Blaine was in the shower and Kurt was slipping into pajamas (also known as sweatpants and an old 'Hummel's Tire and Lube' shirt). Kurt poked his head out of his room and then left it entirely, still shrugging on the shirt. "How did the date go?" he asked. "How's Brody doing?"

"Brody's fine," Rachel answered, still glowing from her night out. "And, as always, very gentlemanly."

Kurt rolled his eyes fondly and petted her head before helping her out of her coat. "Look, I was wondering if you could help me with something real quick," he said, fighting to keep the seriousness from getting too heavy.

"Really quick," she corrected him. "Sure, what is it?"

Kurt paused for a moment. "Well, I'm not entirely sure what depression looks like, and I was wondering if you do?"

"Yeah." Rachel's glow died and her smile slipped. "I know exactly what it looks like. You're asking for Blaine, aren't you?"

Kurt nodded.

"As you should be," Rachel said. "I was actually going to talk to you about it tomorrow. He'll probably deny that anything was ever wrong, even though he literally just tried to commit suicide, but I think we should get him tested."

"Tested... Rachel..." he couldn't finish the sentence he'd begun with either word.

She grimaced sadly. "I know, Kurt. My dad was diagnosed when I was little. He got put on medication and he's a lot better now, and I'd hate - I'd hate to know that I didn't do anything to help Blaine from feeling like he does when I could have."

"I don't want him to think there's another reason to hate himself," Kurt whispered.

"Depression's not a reason for hating yourself," Rachel said firmly.

"I know," he held up his hands in surrender, "But he won't see it like that."

"Until," Rachel emphasized, "we get him medication. I swear it helps, Kurt, and I don't like him being sad any more than you do."

Kurt scoffed. "He is my boyfriend, not yours. I don't care if you kissed him before I did or not."

Rachel froze for a moment before squealing loudly and attacking him with an enormous hug. "You're boyfriends again, I knew it I knew it I knew it! Eeeeeeee!"

Kurt heard the water shut off in the shower behind the volume of her words and broke out into laughter when Blaine emerged, wrapped in a towel, and said, "I don't suppose you'd be celebrating a certain couple, now would you, Rachel?" If Rachel hadn't pulled away and enveloped Blaine in an equally big hug, Kurt would have stood there ogling how the leftover water ran down the curved and hardened sculpture of light bronze that was his body.

---

Kurt loaned Blaine a set of pajamas he never actually wore and he slipped into them. They were a bit long on the limbs but wide enough - his muscles filled out the fabric covering them nicely. He looked a little like an over-dressed puppy, with clothes on that were too big and bulgy but also just tight enough to be adorable. Then they climbed in bed, and Kurt put his arms around Blaine, and said, "I've missed this."

"We were like this just last night," Blaine pointed out.

"Yes, but that's only part of it," Kurt explained. "I missed cuddling you, but I also missed cuddling you as my boyfriend, and it's nice to be able to do that again."

"I missed that, too," Blaine told him, and snuggled in closer.

The moment was red. Kurt's mindset was still stuck with figuring out what color each moment was if a moment were to become the essence of and therefore the entirety of a color. This one was red. It wasn't hyper and into the brighter orange zone, but it wasn't relaxed enough to dull into a pink, either. It was a bright, vivacious red. Holding the one you love and breathing in his scent, feeling his skin on yours, the heat of your bodies together: red. The memories flooding around all at once, the good and the bad combining, the way you know you're going to dream of them: red.

The cuddling was more than cuddling; Kurt began to move in the bed, putting the arm slung over top of Blaine down further so it was against the mattress, and he slowly climbed over his boyfriend. Blaine noticed, of course, and laid down on his back to watch the actions in confusion. "What are you doing?" he asked.

"Kissing you," Kurt responded. True to his word, when he'd positioned himself so he was straddling Blaine's lap and resting their foreheads together, he pressed his lips to Blaine's.

The way his lips feel and taste: red.

"Kurt," Blaine murmured into his mouth, his breath a short gust playing across his taste buds.

The way he says your name: red.

"Blaine," Kurt responded. Blaine's arms came up and around his neck, pulling him down so he was laying on top of him; if it hadn't been for his fingernails digging into the sheets he'd have been putting his entire weight down on Blaine, not that he suspected Blaine couldn't hold him. He knew he could. He'd experienced it firsthand. And he wanted to do so again.

There was a brief moment when Kurt nibbled on Blaine's upper lip and Blaine sucked on Kurt's lower lip when Blaine's one hand slid down to the small of his back, and Kurt's arms grew weaker the stronger the heat in his crotch grew.

"More than kissing?" Blaine guessed.

"More than kissing," Kurt confirmed, and then collapsed onto his elbow so Blaine was the thing holding up his weight. He felt his mind grow a bit fuzzy, thoughts and actions blurred together as the heat continued to build. He knotted his fingers into Blaine's hair, the lack of gel from the shower he'd just taken making it slide between his fingers, fine and thin but abundant. Kurt moved his fingers over the pajamas he'd loaned Blaine and slowly began unbuttoning them, his knuckles digging into his own torso as he did so because he was on top. Meanwhile, Blaine's hands were slipping lower and lower, his thumbs hooking onto the inside of his sweatpants before beginning to slowly and carefully slide them down.

Kurt had his top unbuttoned quickly and the rustling of the sheets was enough, Kurt hoped, to signal to Rachel to put in her earplugs. The last thing he needed was her shouting for them to keep it down, which he knew she might do. But he forgot all about her in a split second when the shirt finally fell off and under Blaine so Kurt could see his tightened muscles and run his fingers in between the slight slots on his stomach, lines that marked his strengthened abdomen. Blaine let out a sound between a whimper and a moan and a shudder ran through Kurt before he could repress it. Kurt felt the cool air run across his legs as the fabric of his pants came off, and locked his ankle around Blaine's. He was getting impatient and his dick was getting downright painful.

He could feel Blaine's tented crotch pressing against his own and the contact set about creating a coil inside Kurt's stomach - a coil of what he didn't know, but a coil nonetheless, and one that wasn't foreign to him.

His hands slipped down Blaine's pants the same time Blaine's crawled back up to his underwear, leaving him to kick off the rest of his pants by himself - he didn't mind, but he did have to unlock his ankle. By the time he'd done that, Blaine's hands had been jostled by his movement so much they'd grazed and teased over every curve of Kurt's ass while Kurt tugged down Blaine's irritatingly existent bottoms. Kurt's dick throbbed and pushed further against Blaine's, and Kurt bit back a semi-snarl that threatened to escape his teeth. He had missed this and he'd missed it so much more than he thought he would have; it was almost angry, how much force he was putting into it.

The rage you feel when you can never be close enough; red.

And then finally, finally, there was just underwear between them, and that was easily dealt with. The shivers of the cold night air, though the apartment was warmed, pressed against them, and in response they pressed against each other tightly. There was a time when Kurt would have been worried in the back of his mind about crushing Blaine beneath him, but now he didn't care and knew it was alright, especially since Blaine's mouth was on his again, whispering, "Kurt, Kurt..."

"I know, I know," Kurt hissed in short breaths, and then they were both naked with clothes strewn about under and around them. Blaine's cock was huge with its erection, standing up straight so that it pressed onto Kurt's stomach painfully, the way Kurt's did to Blaine. He felt the region throbbing, needing to be closer.

How the piece of them you want most is right there, ready to be taken and loved like the rest of them; red.

"Want a present?" Kurt muttered, his tone far too sharp to be as teasing as he intended, but he didn't care. As Blaine's eyes widened with hopeful expectation, the gold of them struck Kurt to the core, and a tremor rocked through him that pulsated so fiercely in his dick he had to reach down and hold it to satiate it for a bit longer.

"Mm," was Blaine's way of answering. And so Kurt rolled off of him so he slid off the bed, and grabbed Blaine's legs as he did so, so they were off the side and Blaine was pushing himself into a sitting position. And then Kurt folded his hand around Blaine's cock and started to stroke it. "Kurt," Blaine gasped, jerking as if a wave had coursed through him. Kurt started low but moved higher, being careful (barely) not to touch the tip, using his other hand to massage Blaine's balls as he did so. Without speaking, both of them understood that this was to be the second of one of their old contests - who can stay the quietest? They'd played it only once before when Burt was home and they couldn't hold back, but this time, Kurt was determined to make Blaine lose, because the last time he'd won.

He moved his hand up and down in an arrhythmic pattern, sometimes changing up his pace, Blaine's dick growing and tensing, his muscles flexing beautifully in the darkness. He felt the coil in his lower stomach settle in and wind itself further and he had to bite his lip to keep from moaning, the same way Blaine was covering his mouth to keep from doing the same. With his eyes closed, laying back on the bed, Kurt's hand moving faster on his dick, he gave a self-telling twitch, and then a small groan slipped past the lips Kurt had just been kissing. Kurt felt the flush of a small victory seize him and he dipped forward, teasing around the edge of his fingers with his tongue, and then Blaine broke what should have been silence and breathed, "Kurt, I'm going t-"

And then he came, and Kurt had it positioned in such a way that it spread out all over his chest, warm and white, and splashed up to cover Kurt's chin and flick over his lips; but it was over quickly - and he knew why. Blaine was looking at him with that same hungry glint to his smile, the one that was often mistaken for and/or combined with tenderness, and Kurt knew they weren't finished. Which was definitely a good thing - seeing as how his dick might as well have been screaming at him to get some for himself.

Blaine complied to his dick's orders before Kurt did, and lunged off the bed so he knocked Kurt onto the floor, lying on top of him like Kurt had before, smearing his come on them both, though neither thought anything of it but that it was yet more warmth to the amount of blood pumping downwards. Blaine's mouth was on his in moments, nipping, biting, teasing, and Kurt groaned from the pure pressure of needing it so badly, the coil in his stomach so tight it was wracking him with boats of adrenaline so fierce he felt strong enough to leap onto the moon from the floor where he lay. But instead, he just rolled back and let Blaine kiss him, moving his lips along, grazing the inside of his bottom lip with his teeth, and Blaine whispered huskily in his ear, "Your turn."

"Blaine," Kurt whined, breaking his streak of silence, hardly caring enough anymore to keep it without breaking. It wasn't a whine of complaint, but of desire and its necessity to be met, and Blaine understood - and he tumbled off of Kurt and in a flash of strength that showed just how much he worked to be able to have the body he did, lifted him and nearly tossed him onto the bed where he'd been moments before. The display of power sent the inside of Kurt's stomach that wasn't busy being coiled and ready to spring was sent into a fluttering panic, especially when he felt lips around the end of his cock. "Blaine," he repeated, closing his eyes, not daring to look down, fighting the urge to come then and there. So little and he would be completely undone. "Ah, ah..." And Blaine started moving his mouth.

He licked and kissed and flicked his tongue around every way and direction and with every technique and thought possible. Kurt grabbed a pillow and held it over his face so that the groans that were impossible to hold back weren't audible to an ears but his and Blaine's. His lips moved up and then back down in what was a clearly distinguished pattern, and Kurt figured it out quickly - every time he went up, he went up a little further than the last time, and when he went back down he didn't go as far as he'd been when he'd started the new round. Kurt shook and trembled, every portion of his body quivering from the exertion of holding back, until finally he ripped the pillow away and sputtered, "I'm g-gone," and he came.

He felt the coil loosen and unspring, a surprising amount of it releasing, freeing itself and coming out into Blaine's waiting mouth. Kurt had never been more glad for all the years he and Blaine had had in vocal training - without such command over their mouths and throats, such an overwhelming stimulus and lack of a gag reflex would have been nearly impossible to achieve. But they achieved it now and Blaine swallowed and was still swallowing after Kurt had finished. He sat, limp, on the bed, but then Blaine was clambering back up, and Kurt understood what the other part of the coil hadn't spun out for. There was still energy and adrenaline spiking through his hot veins.

The way your blood feels like a distant fire and you can feel them say your name, even when the rushing sound prevents you from hearing it; red.

And so he pushed himself forward in time to meet Blaine's crashing kiss, moving into it, pushing on him as forcefully as Blaine pushed, and they struggled for dominance, rolling over repeatedly, their feet dangling off the edge and the sheets and strewn-about clothing wrinkling and rubbing against each other. Every movement was accentuated with a lush kiss, and then Blaine decided that lips wasn't enough, just as the heat in Kurt's cock began to grow again so it pushed against Blaine's. He dipped his head into the dip of Kurt's collarbones, taking a piece of skin between his teeth and gently sucking on it.

Kurt gasped with much more volume than he meant to, and his voice dwinled: "Blaine! Blaine, Bl... o-oh, oh..."

He was unsure where they stood on their competition but didn't care. Kurt let Blaine grind against him, their hip bones shifting and locking into different positions as they moved, as their erections grew again, the liquid rushing through them burning in a way that brought only pleasure. Blaine let go of the skin and moved to the curve of the side of Kurt's neck, kissing and licking the same spot before getting to work on it, too. In a moment of pure frenzy, Kurt felt his hips buck without his permission, and his dick smacked against Blaine's in such a way that at the sound they both froze.

And then moved with twice the speed.

Kurt grabbed at Blaine and Blaine grabbed at Kurt and it was insane, the amount of force they used, pushing and shoving against each other, grunting, bucking, moaning, not caring about noise anymore, wanting to make the other as loud as possible but not wanting to give them the satisfaction of being loud themselves. Kurt's hips flew upward and crashing against Blaine's time and time again.

Kurt finally let his fingers dig into Blaine's shoulders and flipped them over, clawing him in the process, but Blaine just growled and claimed his lips once more, struggling to be back on top.

Kurt entered him, the speed shocking, and Blaine cried out, going rigid, and Kurt was forced to slow down at the feeling of it. The coil in his stomach began to dissipate as it hadn't before, and knowing what was coming, Kurt began to thrust, desperate to make Blaine come before he did, now when he was most submissive, now when Kurt was in control. The control flowed through him, and gripping Blaine's hips so tightly Blaine hissed in a pleasant pain, he slid in and out with a torturous lack of quickness.

"Kurt," Blaine said his name with such a feral honesty the coil tightened a bit. "Kurt, come on, oh, god, Kurt. Ah, ah, oh, god -"

And so Kurt bent down and trailed chaste kisses from his ear lobe to his chin, just brushing over the line of his jaw, and Blaine thrusted from under him in a stark motion, and Kurt knew he'd succeeded when Blaine snarled at the feeling that spread across their waists and the sheets beneath them when Kurt pulled out.

In his distraction at being victorious once more, he took a moment to reposition himself, taking his hands off of Blaine and digging them into the mattress, his knees and hands holding him upright. In one swift move, Blaine shoved him over onto his side, and was climbing over him so he was behind, and Kurt felt his dick press against his ass. "Beg," Blaine ordered.

The word was uttered with no mercy and Kurt felt it as Blaine began to grind again. His cock wasn't as hard as it could have been moments ago, before Kurt had made him go, and it was loosing it fast, but it was enough to set the whole of Kurt's body and mind ablaze with a hotter, faster fire than before. And he begged, not at Blaine's insistence, but because Blaine was taunting him, pushing and then pulling away, going further in and then out, just waiting for him to say what he said: "Blaine, please, please, I need it, oh, oh- ooah, I need it, please, Blaine!" He felt it burn through all the adrenaline in him like oil that disappeared after use when a flame flickers across it and uses it up; he was drained and drained until the coil in his stomach dissolved and he came one final time. All the control had slithered away and in its place came meek submission, though Kurt knew it would happen. With how hard they'd both been fighting for the role that commanded it all, it had been impossible to keep the position for long; although he was majorly impressed that Blaine had managed to keep going after his second orgasm. It flushed through Kurt's system like waves of sound, changing and rocking into everything repeatedly until it just died out.

He collapsed, totally and completely, into the arms of Blaine, who had also fallen wholly limp. Blaine rested on his back on the come-covered and abused bed, his leg dangling off the side, though his foot didn't reach the floor - which also had a few splatters of thick white - his arms around Kurt, who snuggled in to him, not a single part of him an exception from the exhaustion. His mind began to clear of its insane haze, and yet the color of the situation did not change.

The lack of heat inside that causes everything outside to feel cold - when you have to hold them close for warmth; red.

"I love you," he mumbled, his vision fading, sleep beckoning to him.

"I love you too," he heard Blaine respond, his voice barely comprehensible in its slur and quietness.

There was a moment of silence where all seemed perfect, and then they heard, loud and clear: "Goodnight, boys!"

The horrible embarrassment would have made Kurt blush if he hadn't been so tired the blood couldn't rise to his cheeks; as it was, he groaned at it when Blaine hid his face in Kurt's hair, and then they slipped into dreams the same vibrant shade of red as reality.

---

When Rachel woke up, she fought back another huge gust of laughter. She'd been kept up last night by the sounds of her best friends in the next room over getting it on and despite her earplugs and ear muffs over top of those that she used - not to mentioned covering her ears with a pillow - she'd still been able to hear. She'd rocked back and forth, biting her cheek until it almost bled, attempting to keep in her laughter. It had worked, but only barely, and as soon as she heard their softly murmured "I love you"s she'd been unable to keep her bid goodnight silent. She wondered how embarrassed they'd been and chuckled lightly to herself. But the sunlight was flooding the apartment and she could tell she'd overslept, which she blamed entirely on her horny roommates (might as well count Blaine, it wasn't like Kurt was going to live without him when he came to New York). She yawned and wondered just how much there would be to clean up.

Kurt poked his head into her room then, and his face was a mixture between apologetic and angry, and her laughter bubbled up past her mouth and she grinned while laughing like a maniac, while he grew redder and redder in the face. She rolled onto her stomach in an attempt to smother the giggles in her pillow but it didn't work. "Okay, I get that we were a bit loud," Kurt huffed, "But -"

"Oh my G-God," Rachel shrieked with laughter, clutching her pillow and sitting up, doubling over and hugging onto the goosedown, tears of mirth pooling in her clenched eyes.

"Rachel," Kurt whined, and it only made her laugh harder.

---

Apparently, Rachel had slept in so late that both Kurt and Blaine had managed to take showers (separately, as Kurt muttered under his breath) and put the sheets in the laundry, as well as scrub at the floor and then put a towel over the infected area so it would dry without being stepped in and made dirty again. Every single time Rachel passed the room she couldn't repress a smile and whenever she had to look either of them in the eyes she tittered before catching herself. It got to the point where everyone was walking around with their heads down and not looking at each other because whenever they did all of them would flush and laugh.

But then Kurt took her aside once more, and said, "I need you to stop laughing at us."

"I'm sorry," Rachel apologized, not meeting his eye so she wouldn't do just what he'd told her not to. "But it was so funny, I tried blocking you two out but I couldn't -"

"No, I need you to stop because we need to talk to Blaine," Kurt said, unwillingness evident in his posture and voice and face, and suddenly all the humor was gone.

---

It wasn't until that evening that they managed to broach the subject. They'd slowly moved past that small phase and could all look at each other again without snickering immaturely behind their hand. Rachel placed their dinner on the channel; she was still unused to having so little to eat, and while Kurt often scolded her for wasting good food he worked hard for, she tried her best to remember she wasn't as privileged as she had been. She put the salad down and they began to dig in.

This time, she waited until Blaine had eaten half of his meal before taking a deep breath and saying, "Blaine?"

"Yeah?" he asked, shoveling another spoonful into his mouth. Even though she knew it might have been how late he'd been up, the dark bags under his eyes worried her - she'd seen some remarkably similar for far too long once before.

"When I was little, my dad was always sad," she said. Kurt was eyeing her nervously, waiting for her to either screw up or make a good case. "He'd been that way for as long as I could remember. He still laughed and smiled and loved us, but whenever he thought no one was looking, he looked like he was ready to cry."

Blaine had frozen.

"He got fired when I was five," Rachel said. "And it got a lot worse. He always looked sad at that point. There were times when I'm sure he was happy, but there were always sad thoughts in his head, and he stopped being able to hide it."

Kurt's eyes flickered between Rachel and Blaine repeatedly, swiveling this way and that, taking in how Blaine paled and how rigid Rachel was, how the entire room seemed statuesque.

"It took three years before Papa managed to convince him to get tested," Rachel said. "He was diagnosed with Depression and put on medication, and he stopped being so sad. He got better and when he smiled it was real. But those three years in between his being fired and getting help were absolutely horrible, and one time - right after Finn broke up with me and sent me here, actually," she confessed, "I asked him if, during that period, he'd ever considered suicide. He said yes."

Rachel waited for a response. She got Blaine's gray eyes and blank face instead.

"And... Blaine, you're one of my best friends," she told him, her voice smaller now, meek, riddled with guilt and uncertainty. "And I've seen this before and it's scary, and even though I've never experienced it, I know what it looks like, and it looks like you."

"I'm fine." Blaine spoke for the first time and if she hadn't been aware what a good actor he was she'd have been convinced by the casual tone; if she'd been Kurt, she'd have been able to tell he was lying right off the bat.

"You're good," Rachel corrected, "But you're not fine. Fine means that everything about you and your head is happy and reasonable and okay and it's not. If it was, you'd be able to give me an acceptable reason why I'm wrong with no panic or anger. But you're not able. You're a good person, Blaine, and I'm scared that you don't see that enough to stick around for us to prove it to you."

"I am fine." But even he sounded unconvinced and his eyes lost a bit of focus, averting to his plate and staying there.

"No, Blaine." Rachel disagreed timidly, though she tried to sound as sure on the subject as she felt. "You're not. You tried to jump off a bridge a couple days ago and then ran away from home. Granted, you didn't actually jump, and I've managed to satisfy the police that you're not a killer, and you went to your second home instead of just running away to a random place -" she gestured to Kurt on 'second home', and Kurt looked intently at Blaine "- but that doesn't excuse it."

"There's nothing wrong with me."

"Blaine," Rachel pressed, but Kurt shot her a look that clearly said 'that will do' and then moved slowly and quietly away from his seat so he was kneeling beside Blaine's chair. He reached up to take Blaine's hand, but Blaine moved it away. Rachel could see Kurt reel back and hear Blaine's short intake of breath in shock at the tiny choice he'd made without meaning to.

"Please," said Kurt once, in a voice Rachel had heard him use before, and only twice - the week his father had been comatose in the hospital and when he had to leave McKinley because of Karofsky's return. He was terrified and giving up and needed someone to pull him through. What struck her, though, was that neither of those times he'd had Blaine to pull him through, and now he did; but Blaine needed it even more than he did.

There was far too long when there was absolutely no sound in the apartment. There were no sheets ruffling or silverware clinking or so much as a breath too loud - it was absolutely and compressingly silent.

And then Blaine moved his trembling hand and slipped it into Kurt's and they knew they had their answer.

---

Blaine was lying on Kurt's bed when he came in. "We scheduled you an appointment," he said gently, afraid of overstepping boundaries, standing awkwardly in the entryway. Blaine didn't respond, though his chest rose and fell with more significance, and his eyes flickered around instead of staying on the blank square of ceiling he'd been staring at.

"You know, sometimes I hate that I know what hate is," Blaine spoke suddenly, his voice purely conversational, and Kurt was taken aback.

"Well, it's a feeling," Kurt said. "Everyone feels it at some point about something."

"Yes," Blaine allowed, "But then if I think about that I'm disappointed by the fact that we act on it so much we had to give it its own word, and then synonyms for it when just one wouldn't do - loathe, despise, abhor, detest - and it's still not enough for people to just use the words instead of actions."

Kurt didn't know how to reply, and so he got on the bed and sat down cross-legged beside Blaine and stared up at the ceiling with him. And they stayed that way. In an awkward and yet comfortable silence, finally shifting so they lay side-by-side, staring at the rafters, looking at knots in the wood and the way the light caught on each individual beam, and how each shadow danced a certain way, listening to Rachel bustle around in the apartment.

It was blue. Blue in the way that the air was somehow both so thick no words would be heard through it and yet so thin it was shattered by every miniscule sound floating from around them. Blue in the way that Kurt wanted desperately to hold him but didn't for fear he didn't want to be held. Blue in the way that everything inside him seemed to hurt.

It was, by no means, one of those experiences that takes forever but seems to last only moment. The happy think a lifetime too short; the sad live an eternity each night. And he'd never appreciated that before he spent hours upon hours bathing in the nothingness that transpired before he finally fell asleep.

---

He'd finally fallen to sleep. He heard the minor change in Kurt's breathing, a change so miniscule no one else would have been able to pick it up, a change that went from consciously even breaths to mechanically even breaths, and an accompaniment of closed eyes and a slightly-open mouth. Blaine didn't dare touch him, didn't dare contaminate him. He'd meant what he'd said and all the hours he'd spent just lying on the bed he'd been waiting for Kurt to say something back, but he hadn't. Blaine had waited for him to say anything back, but he hadn't. And they'd spent far too long in silence, not even touching. Kurt didn't even want to touch him.

He was confused. He was confused and he was hurt and he was sad and as he heard Rachel begin to snore softly over in her room he rose gently from the bed and went into the living room. He slid open the door slightly and grabbed the keys in the bowl beside it so he'd be able to get back in, and made sure to take Kurt's cell phone. The door latched behind him quietly.

The quiet in the hall was of an entirely different sort. With Kurt, it had been compressing, pushing in on them so everything else seemed diluted into the lack of everything. Whereas in the hallway the air wasn't so thick he couldn't breathe.

He pulled out his phone and dialed.

It was answered on the first ring, even though it was late at night and he couldn't have been waiting by it. "Kurt?" asked the voice on the other end.

"It's Blaine."

"Blaine!"

"Hi, Burt."

He heard Burt turn away from the phone and shout, "It's Blaine!" before his voice returned in as much clarity as the phone would allow. "Are you okay, kid? I'm so sorry I didn't -"

"They're taking me to get tested," Blaine interrupted. And he let himself go like he hadn't inside, but he didn't want to cry, and so he held it back in, even though he needed to do so - but he let everything that would have been in his tears with the exception of the saltwater come out. He was crying but his eyes were dry. "They think... they think I have Depression, I don't - I don't..."

"No, hey, listen," Burt said, completely unphased by the revealed event but changing his tone to one less gruff and more open. "Listen to me. Depression is not a good thing and it needs to be taken care of. If you were suicidal, you're pretty obviously depressed."

Blaine dropped his head to his hand and slid down the wall. "I'm just a little sad is all," he tried. It had always worked in the past.

"A 'little sad' isn't throwing yourself off a bridge, bud." Burt's voice was more tender than Blaine had ever heard it. "And Depression isn't something to be ashamed of."

"But it's something to try to fix, huh?" Blaine snapped bitterly, and immediately bit his tongue in remorse. "I'm - I'm sor-"

"No, you're right," Burt told him. "You're definitely right. But what we're trying to fix isn't Depression, Blaine, it's you. You're a broken right now and that's alright, but you almost broke yourself for good, and if there's a reason behind it we can stop, we're going to stop it."

"So I'm the thing to be ashamed of," Blaine concluded.

"No." Burt didn't bother beating around the bush. "You're the thing to be fixed. Just because something needs fixed doesn't mean it's something to be ashamed of. Sometimes, yeah, but not all the time. 'Needs to be fixed' is not synonymous with 'shameful'. That's something the world teaches and the world gets most things wrong these days. You shouldn't be ashamed of having Depression or feeling the effects of it, but Depression should be ashamed because it made someone as nice and honest and good as you feel like you were worthless. Having Depression is okay; Depression is not."

Blaine heard his words but he didn't understand them. "Depression can't help being what it is anymore than I can help having it." The words were sharp and cutting. "And it's my fault -"

"If you're going to play the "it's my fault" card, Anderson, than I'm gonna say that that means it's Depression's fault, because that means you both could have helped meeting with each other." Burt expressed no irritation, only patience, and his lack of reaction both infuriated and calmed Blaine so he was even more confused than he had been. "And kiddo, I love you, and you know I love you, and you know Kurt and Carole and Finn and everyone else loves you too-"

From somewhere nearby came the sound of Sam shouting "ME TOO!"

"- with Sam as a bonus," Burt amended. "Depression isn't gonna change that."

"But it means that there's even more wrong with me than I already see," Blaine blurted without thinking first.

"Blaine," Burt said, still gentle, still calm, still patient, "I want you to believe my next sentence, alright?"

"Alright," Blaine agreed warily.

"If you get diagnosed, the meds will help you understand, but you've got to give them a chance to."

"Understand what?"

"Something that nobody's invented words for," Burt explained. "'xcept maybe the Germans. They got a word for everything. Like sitzpinkler means a guy who pisses sitting down. Did you know that?"

Despite himself, Blaine laughed.

---

When Blaine crawled back into bed, Kurt had moved. Not caring anymore about whether or not Kurt wanted to be 'contaminated' (if Burt was telling the truth, which was possible, he wouldn't be for much longer), he moved his arm under him and lifted him, repositioning him until he was past the blanket slung over the end of the bed, and set him down amongst the pillow. His eyelids fluttered briefly when he was set down but he never woke. Blaine pulled the blanket over them and snuggled next to him, laying his hand on his broad chest, burrowing into him and feeling how his arms moved automatically and even in sleep to wrap around him and hold him close.

---

"I don't want to do this, Kurt," Blaine told him as the cab they'd taken pulled away and out into the fray of traffic once more.

Kurt claimed his hand hesitantly, still unsure of what did and didn't cross the boundaries that he was sure were still up - Blaine had woken before him in the beginning waves of a panic attack and had locked himself in the bathroom and tried to wait it out for the better part of an hour, after which he emerged just in time for Kurt to wake up. Kurt saw the remnants of the spell though he didn't know what had caused it - every time there was a particularly loud noise Blaine didn't expect he'd flinch and he still shook from time to time. Kurt chalked one up to nervousness. "You'll be okay."

Gray. It was all gray, everything was gray. It required no meaning to be understood, even to the blind, that in that moment the world was gray.

Kurt wished with as much of him as he could spare - which, for Blaine, was a fair amount - that he knew how to comfort him without saying something wrong or making him suffer through awkward silence. But he didn't. He was as scared as Blaine was; the only difference was that he was scared of Blaine (though sometimes he considered that Blaine was, too).

Blaine was the one who decided to be brave, something that made every tiny portion of Kurt's heart melt, and he walked into the office they stood in front of and said to the receptionist behind the window, "I'm Blaine Anderson, I have an appointment."

---

"So, Mr. Anderson," said the doctor with the name tag labeling her as Ms. Barker, "You've got quite an interesting file. I presume you're not a murderer?" Though she was joking, he heard the trained patience and care in her tone, and it would have been impossible to be insulted no matter how he'd taken it because of that.

"No, I'm not. "Just because he wasn't insulted didn't mean he was comfortable. His eyes darted back to where he knew Kurt was waiting anxiously in the front. "Why couldn't Kurt come with me?" he asked, even though it had been answered just moments before.

She expressed nothing, not even patience, as if it were the first time the question had ever been asked. "We try our best to make this a one-on-one experience, so it's not quite so easy to hide behind another person," she said, and he raised his eyebrows. The last part was something she'd not told them before when they'd asked. "And, since you're not a killer, I'm going to have to ask why you were on the bridge."

He had to tell her. He couldn't. He had to. He couldn't. He'd seem needy and that would be another reason for someone else to hate him. But if he lied, would it be worse, or better? "I was going to jump."

She smiled, but not in a way that was condescending, or expecting, or even understanding, but rather as if they were talking about what color shirt she was wearing - coincidentally, they were both wearing gray. "And why didn't you?" she asked.

This wasn't a tactic he was expecting her to use. Instead of "Why were you even going to?!" It was "Why didn't you finish the job?!" But it wasn't malicious of taunting - she was honestly curious and not trying to get in a jibe.

"Because..." he paused, the same war waging again. "There was... there was a man. And he was going to jump too. And we talked about why we were both going to do it and at the last second he pushed me back and told me... um, begged me not to do it, and then jumped."

"Why was he there?" she inquired, and he felt like congratulating her on her fantastic job of actually doing her job. She easily explored all the topics of what had before made him sob like a dying soldier on a battlefield with enough gentility and assurance that it seemed like only a feather's poke.

"He had no reason not to be anymore," Blaine told her. "Literally. His daughter was taken from him, he had no home, he was starving, the rest of his family was dead, and I don't think he wanted to just be another statistic for those things to the world any longer."

She nodded. "He never told you his name. Am I correct?"

He looked at her in shock. "Um, yeah. How did you know?"

"Because it's a common mistake." This time the smile was understanding, but not towards him, and that was so endearing he felt suddenly as if seeming needy to her wouldn't be so bad. "He didn't want to be another statistic, but killing yourself doesn't make you matter. It makes you yet another statistic. Living makes you matter. Dying makes you dead."

"He did matter," Blaine retorted hotly. "And he still does."

"I agree," she said. "Everyone matters."

Blaine blinked, anger vanishing and confusion replacing it. "What?"

"Everyone matters," she repeated herself. "Living makes everyone matter. It doesn't matter if it's to one person or one million. Everyone matters. Very few intelligent people actually realize that. Stupid people, on the other hand, seem to grasp it with a lot of ease, probably because the concept is so very simple. However, the simpler a concept is, the more room is has for doubt, which leads to intelligent people, such as you and I, to do just that: doubt."

Blaine sat back. At first, he was appalled; then amazed; then, despite how cliche it may have been, doubtful.

"Now," she said, leaning forward intently, becoming a slight bit more serious, "Blaine - may I call you Blaine?" He nodded mutely. "Blaine, what prompted you going to jump?"

"Well," he started unsure. "Um, it was kind of a string of things -"

"No, no," she shook her head. "The exact moment you thought that you were capable of going through with it, what was the one thing in your head that told you you should?"

He thought. And he thought some more. And it turned into a good five minutes of him thinking and her waiting before he finally gave up and said, "I don't quite understand."

"Good!" And she grinned. "If you'd have understood, that would have mean that, if you do indeed have Depression, it would have been chronic." As odd as the comfort was, it was still comfort, and it still worked. "Now, do you not understand the question, or why the answer was so hard to come to you?"

"The question," he said slowly, not entirely positive anymore that he was telling the truth and wishing he knew.

"Alright," she amended, "so the exact moment when you were one thought away from deciding to actually do it. Not when you were just contemplating it, not when you were fiddling with the idea, but when you really chose to jump. Not even just kill yourself, but jump, and, in particular, off that bridge. What was the one thought that made the decision for you?"

He remembered.

He remembered driving for far too long, his lower body beginning to go numb, the radio's overly-loud music blaring unable to drown out the words stinging his mind, his fingers cramping, his pulse racing, and then finally pulling over. He remembered the physical fatigue and the mental exhaustion and he remembered and spoke aloud, "I'm tired."

She reached out tenderly and placed her hand over his, which he just then realized was gripping the edge of the table so tightly his knuckles were white. "You say that a lot, don't you?" she asked. "When someone asks you what's wrong, you say you're tired, or 'just a little sad', or something like that."

He nodded and dropped his head.

"And now that we both know that's not true," she nearly whispered, and he reluctantly brought his gaze back up to focus better on her words to be able to hear them properly, "how about you tell me why you always feel so tired?"

---

Blaine was quiet when he came out and let the doctor do all the talking. Kurt wasn't sure what he'd been expecting, but it hadn't been a dry-eyed and not-stoic Blaine. He just looked a little bit sick of everything, not like he'd been drilled to a point where he cried, or prodded until he put up a wall. He was irritable, but not with anything or one in particular; simply with the universe. Kurt could sympathize with that.

It was brief. It was Depression, but not anything chronic, simply amplified by a bad situation. The doctor patted him on the arm comfortably and then squeezed around his shoulders and Kurt was shocked to see Blaine actually smile at her. He saw a slip of paper that the doctor slipped into his polo-shirt pocket during them embrace before she pulled away and had Kurt promise to get the medication. Unfortunately, he couldn't, so it was decided Blaine would have to pick it up in Ohio, seeing as how he'd be there soon. The boys cautiously avoided eye contact during that part, both afraid of looking at something they thought didn't want to see them.

Doctor Barker stopped Kurt from leaving behind Blaine and smiled with such kindness he understood why Blaine hadn't looked like he'd thought he would. "If he ever needs to talk and you just can't," she whispered, "I put my number in his pocket. I always try to be available. Would you tell him?"

Kurt nodded and then in a moment of sheer gratitude and lunacy hugged her tightly before jogging to catch up before Blaine turned around to notice anything wasn't as it had been moments before.

---

They'd been at the apartment exactly four minutes and two seconds, just enough time to tell Rachel the gist of what had happened, when Kurt's phone rang. He looked at it curiously, and then turned to Blaine and said, "I don't know the number."

Rachel jumped back when Blaine swore loudly and ripped the phone from his hand, answering the call and holding it to his ear. "Blaine?" she gasped, and Kurt fell into her with the same reaction. And yet neither of them had been prepared enough for what next was spoken:

"Mom."

Kurt looked at Rachel in an instant panic and clasped her hand, not Blaine's, because the one Blaine wasn't using to hold the fold was clenched into a tight fist and balled up at his side. His face wasn't the type it should have been after first hearing from his parents since trying to kill himself - it was wary and stiff and angry, as was the rest of him.

"I'm fine." It was a lie and they all knew it. "No, I'm not. It's good. Yes, they did. Good. He ought to have." The conversation was fast-paced and to the point and though Kurt had no clue what was being said, he heard the growing forcefulness in Blaine's tone and saw his eyes darken, and knew that whatever it was wasn't good. "Were you going to ask me?" he demanded. Pause. "No, you weren't. And I knew you weren't. And I was under the impression that because I'm refusing to not be gay you're giving me the silent treatment." Kurt reeled back and Rachel squeaked in distress. "No, I'm not." Beat. "Yes, I am." Beat. "You weren't going to tell me not to, now were you?" he taunted. "No, I didn't expect you to call." Beat. "Tell him I'm sorry and that I'll talk to him later. In the meantime, don't waste your minutes on a conversation using your gay son's boyfriend's phone when your gay son doesn't want to have a gay conversation with you!" And he ended the call.

He handed the phone to Kurt with the utmost calm and said, "I've wanted to shout at her like that for a while."

Kurt blinked once. Twice. Thrice. "Blaine?"

"Yes?" he asked, as Kurt's hand slowly came up to curl around his phone.

"Your parents were giving you the silent treatment?" Rachel elaborated when Kurt proved he was incapable of doing anything but gaping.

"Oh, yes," Blaine said casually. For someone who'd just been furious, he seemed remarkably content.

"For how long?" Rachel prompted.

"Hm..." Blaine thought about it. "Kurt, how long has it been since we broke up?"

Kurt didn't even want to think about it but the answer came out of his mouth without thoughts: "Seventy-four days."

"Seventy-two days, then," Blaine answered, dropping his now-empty hand and turning casually to open the fridge and pull out - you guessed it - a juice box.

"Have they been feeding you?" Rachel demanded shrilly. "Taking care of you?"

Blaine snorted. "When have the ever? No, wait, never mind, they did before I came out, kind of," he corrected. "I feed and take care of myself," he said to Rachel. "Have for about five years."

"Five..?!" Rachel's voice squeaked again. "I - Blaine, why did you - Kurt?!"

"What's the big deal?" Blaine asked, looking at them as if noticing for the first time that they were alarmed. "Aren't most parents like that?"

Kurt's jaw dropped and Rachel actually skittered back. Blaine held up his palm in a surrendering motion and waited for them to explain, eyes a bit wide, confusion etched into the bags under them. "No, not at all, not if they're good ones!" Rachel nearly hissed. "Homophobic, force you to take care of yourself -"

"Wait, so other kids' parents don't make them live in their cars for a week when they're really mad at them?" Blaine's brow furrowed and Kurt covered his open mouth.

"No!" Rachel said for the upteenth time. "Good parents accept your sexuality no matter what it is, even if they don't really understand it. Good parents don't just pretend you don't exist when they don't get what they want. Good parents aren't yours, Blaine!"

"Well, I knew that," he scoffed, "But I thought they were normal, at least."

"Normal?!" Rachel seemed to be in the middle of an aneurysm. "Normal?!"

"Calm down, Rach," Blaine tried to soothe.

"Calm - calm d-" she fell into silence, her eyes bulging like a fish, and just snapped. "WHY DID YOU NOT TELL US ABOUT THIS?"

"What was there to tell?" he flinched back.

"YOU KNOW WHAT KURT AND BURT'S RELATIONSHIP IS LIKE IF NOTHING ELSE!" Rachel screamed at him. Blaine looked to Kurt for support, but he was still fumbling for words. "WHY COULDN'T YOU SEE HOW CRAPPY YOURS ARE?!"

"Are you really yelling at me over this?" Blaine asked, incredulous.

"YES!" It wasn't meant to have been answered and answering it threw Blaine off. "THIS ISN'T OKAY, THIS IS A HUGE PROBLEM!"

"No, it's not!" Blaine urged. "Kurt, come on, I need some help here."

"KURT HUMMEL DON'T YOU DARE," Rachel spun on him before spinning back. "AND YOU, BLAINE ANDERSON, YOU ARE GOING TO CALL BURT RIGHT NOW AND TELL HIM WHAT'S BEEN GOING ON!"

"Why should I?" Blaine was in entirely over his head. Kurt burned all over with the need to just unfreeze but his joints were locked in place and his mind was thinking so quickly it transcended the vocabulary he knew.

"BECAUSE HE'S GOING TO BE YOUR FATHER-IN-LAW SOMEDAY AND HE SHOULD KNOW -"

"RACHEL!" Blaine finally raised his voice, but in desperation. "RACHEL, CALM DOWN!"

"NEVER TELL SOMEONE TO CALM DOWN, ALL IT DOES IS UNLEASH AN UNBRIDLED FURY NO DEMON HATH RIDDEN!" Rachel screeched. "AND -"

"Seriously?" Blaine lost the volume in his amusement. "'Unleash an unbridled fury no demon hath ridden'?"

"DON'T MOCK ME, I'M SERIOUS!"

"As serious as My Little Pony." Blaine knew what he was doing, right? She was aggravated, livid, for some reason neither of them knew, and he was provoking her further. She'd burst into a rendition of some odd musical theatre song that somehow captured the moment next.

"DAMN IT, BLAINE WARBLER, I LOVE YOU AND THIS ISN'T OKAY!"

"Why not?"

"BECAUSE IT'S NOT!"

"That's not a reason," Blaine yawned, and Kurt finally understood his strategy. He was going to be completely uninterested enough until Rachel figured out it was because she wasn't making sense to him, at which point she'd be forced to calm down and explain. He was intelligent and the small bubble of pride the recognized tactic brought into existence was enough to unlock his joints and bring words back into his head.

"BLAINE, YOU -" and Rachel reached out to tug at Blaine so she could rattle his shoulder, but as he pulled away, he stepped on the hem of his pants so they sagged below his waist, and the shirt he'd been wearing pulled up as he leaned in the opposite direction, and the entire room froze.

Kurt moved first, smacking her hand off of Blaine and standing in between her eyes and the cuts on Blaine's hip.

Tension. He'd wondered what color tension would be, but it was always mixed with something else that left it as a watery, sluggish gray/brown. But that moment was pure tension and he took the time to analyze that it felt very yellow. Bright, and bold, and always right there, dominating but controllable, and undoubtedly primary. Yellow was supposed to be happy, but not the kind of mustard yellow this felt like. This yellow was Pac-Man's bile - this yellow was insufferable.

And yet they suffered through it. Through the yellow, through Rachel's flickering eyes and dying voice and unanswered questions, through Blaine's tugging his shirt down and pants up too late, through Kurt's reaching back to pat his hand reassuringly and missing only to touch that same hip and draw back immediately.

Finally, Rachel breathed, "Sorry," and then her face all pulled against itself as it did when she was about to cry, and she ran out.

Kurt watched her leave in silence while Blaine called uselessly, "It's okay..."

The aftereffects of the yellow were, you guessed it, more yellow. Kurt was positive he'd never like the color again. "So," he spoke. "Why did your parents decide to ignore you right after we broke up?"

---

"Rachel? Why'd you call? Not that I'm not glad to - are you crying?"

"Finn, I - I've just - Blaine -"

"What about Blaine? Rachel, what's wrong, what happened?"

"He - there are - I don't -"

"Rachel, I need you to take a deep breath. What happened?"

"There are cuts. There are cuts, oh, God, there are cuts on his side, and I don't -"

"Whose side? Why are there cuts? Did he get hurt? Are we talking about Blaine?"

"Yes, it's Blaine! And he did them himself, I could - I could - it wasn't -"

"Wait, wait, wait wait wait. Blaine cut himself?"

"Yes!"

---

"SAM!"

"Finn, dude, chill out! What happened? I'm coming!"

---

"Kurt's not answering his phone." Sam said the words calmly, completely in control, and then his face contorted in anger and he slammed his fist against the wall, resulting in an echoing thud. "I'm so sick of people not answering their damn phones!"

"Sam, bro, relax," Finn said, though he was close to following suit after the wall-punch. "Kurt's probably talking with him, that's all."

"Can't Rachel just grow some balls and go back in there?" Sam demanded. "What is she doing right now anyways?"

"Can you please tell Sam that I left my key inside when I left and I'm trying to pick the lock?" Rachel snapped through the phone he held to his ear.

"Rachel, you don't know how to pick a lock," Finn reminded, and Sam rolled his eyes and threw his hands into the air and shouted, "WY DOESN'T SHE JUST KNOCK?!"

"Who says they'll answer?!" Rachel trilled back, and Finn held the phone away from him so he wouldn't go deaf.

"Can you two please stop fighting?" he demanded.

"Not until we know what the hell is going on!" Sam concluded, and then raised his voice and said, "AND IF RACHEL WOULD JUST KNOCK, I'M SURE WE'D KNOW ALL THAT MUCH FASTER!"

"SHUT UP, SAM!" Rachel shrieked, "I'M TRYING!"

"TRY HARDER!" Sam bellowed, and Finn reached out and brought his hand down on Sam's shoulder and shoved him into the desk chair, his red face outraged and his hands, one of which had just attacked an innocent wall and the other of which was holding his cell phone, shaking.

"BOTH OF YOU CALM DOWN OR I'M HANGING UP ON RACHEL AND TAKING THE PHONES AWAY FROM SAM!" Finn dictated. And finally they both fell silent, though he could feel Rachel's anger through the phone and felt Sam's daggered glare spike through him. "There," he sighed, slumping. "Much better. Now, Sam, why don't you try calling Kurt again, and Rachel, why don't you try knocking?"

"Finn Hud-"

"Rachel."

"I hate you both," Rachel huffed, but he heard the sound of her knuckles hitting the wood of her door and echoing in the hall. "Kurt? Kurt, can I come back in?" To his left, Sam was dialing and holding the phone to his ear with a resigned frustration, and waiting out with rolling eyes and a darkened face for the ringing to end. "Kurt? Hello, Kurt, I left my key in-"

The next voice to come through the phone was muffled. "If at all possible," Kurt said, "could you let Sam know to stop calling me? Now isn't a good time."

"Oh!" Rachel squeaked, and the line went dead.

---

"Neither of them are answering my calls."

"And it's not like Rachel's going to answer if I call her."

"So we wait?"

"Screw that, we keep calling."

---

"Finn?"

"Yeah?"

"When do you think he did it?"

"What?"

"When do you think Blaine... cut himself?"

"Oh. Um... I don't know. My first guess would be before you convinced him to stay at McKinley when he was going to go back to Dalton."

"And what if they're recent?"

"Then... um, probably before he went to jump."

"Like right before?"

"Yeah."

---

"What have you boys been doing?" Burt asked as he sauntered through the front door, still wringing his oiled-over hands. "I heard some pretty loud shouting hours ago and after that it just got quiet."

"We're trying to call Kurt and Rachel so we can see if Blaine's alright," Sam explained briefly.

"Checking up on him?" Burt asked. "I don't know if he'll like it -"

"No, we also want to know why he cut himself," Finn interrupted. Sam sent him a glance that very easily could have either meant 'You shouldn't have said that' or 'How do you think he'll respond?'

Burt froze. "Cut himself?"

"Well, we're all jumping to conclusions," Sam said before Finn could begin, "But Rachel was yelling at him about his parents or something and yanked at his arm and his shirt came up and there were scars there."

"So maybe somebody hit him with something a while ago," Burt said sharply. "What kind of -"

"Thin," Sam told him sadly. "One deeper than the others but the other still somewhat deep. Straight. Clean. Done on purpose and met with no resistance. Done by Blaine."

"Conclusions," Burt snarled. "And you don't know when -"

"But I saw him shirtless just last week," Sam said, shaking his head. "It must have been really low on his hip for me to have missed it."

"Or maybe he covered it up with makeup or something," Finn suggested, and defended himself with "What?" at the 'you're crazy' look Sam gave him.

"I don't think so," Burt snipped, and Finn had heard him speak in such a way before and knew that it was never a good thing. Burt dug into his pocket and pulled out his phone and started dialing, beckoning for them to do the same. And so they did.

---

"So, let me get this straight," Rachel said, holding up her hands for the two boys to stop talking. "So, when your parents found out that you and Kurt broke up, they basically said it was good because you would come to your senses and start dating girls, and when you told them there was no chance in hell that would happen they refused to speak to you?"

"That's about it, yeah," Blaine agreed with her assessment, nodding. "Go on?"

"And..." Rachel paused to collect her thoughts before continuing. "And since you came out, you've been in charge of your own food and education and pretty much your whole life because they just stopped caring enough to raise you like they should have?"

Blaine flinched. "Yeah. Except whenever Cooper came home to visit, then everything was fine and dandy." It was Kurt's turn to flinch.

"Wait," Kurt cut through, "But you transferred schools and got beat up and went to the hospital loads of times. Did they never..?"

"They did the minimum of what they had to do as parents," Blaine said. "Every now and then they would try harder but then, after maybe a week or so, they'd give up again. They never totally neglected me, and they tried not to call me crude names, but no matter how much they wanted to love me like they should have, they just couldn't somehow."

"That's a load of crap," Kurt muttered. "Who can't love you?"

"My parents," Blaine dead-panned, and Kurt paled.

"Well..." Rachel struggled to find what to say. "And... and the cuts. It was -"

"My fault," Kurt moaned, and dropped his head to his hands. There was the briefest flash of a second where nobody knew how to react, and then Rachel patted his back awkwardly and Blaine said, "It is not your fault."

Rachel cleared her throat and asked, "When.. when did you..?"

"Cut?" Blaine finished, his tone terse. "Months ago, Rachel. Seventy days ago, in fact. Four days after -"

"It is my fault," Kurt whimpered, and Blaine leaned in to him, placing his head right up against Kurt's and murmuring something Rachel couldn't hear.

She allowed them their minute or two together and sat, invested in contemplative thoughts, many of which centered around It's been diagnosed and he will get better.

---

"It's not your fault, you know," Blaine told him, his small frame wrapped around Kurt's larger one. "It's not your fault at all. I was the one that chose to do it."

"Speaking of that," Rachel said, poking her head out of her room, "Sam is going nuts right now wondering how you hid it -"

Blaine shot her a glare that could have curdled milk and she slipped into her room after wincing.

"Yes it is," Kurt said. "If I hadn't ignored you -"

"We've been through this," Blaine soothed. "You ignored me because you weren't ready to talk to me yet, and that's okay. It's not your fault. I was being overly dramatic -"

"No," Kurt disagreed, shaking his head with vehemence, before his eyes flickered to Blaine's lips and then back down. "You were being sad, not overly dramatic. Hurting yourself isn't dramatic. It's tragic in one of the worst ways. Nobody ever does that to themselves because they're overly dramatic. They do it because they're sad."

"Sad doesn't mean it wasn't overly dramatic," Blaine murmured, though by then it was obvious Kurt wouldn't have agreed anyway.

"But -"

"Stop," Blaine ordered, and Kurt had to look up. Blaine's voice had broken, had split directly in half, so that it was vulnerable again, the way it had been when he'd slipped up in his words and Kurt had made him show the scars. Kurt's clouded vision cleared looking at Blaine - his face was directly next to Kurt's, because he was holding him from the back, and it seemed ready to shatter, pale and chalky, ready to be flung apart and separate into glass dust. On top of the shroud of guilt and poorly-chosen reminisces, Kurt could add still more guilt to the mixture, looking at the Blaine who had just been the one comforting him now needing comfort. He wasn't holding him so much now as holding on to him. He shut his eyes tightly and buried his face in the crook of Kurt's neck; not to ease Kurt's mind with his warm breath but to hide how his face pulled against itself.

"I'm sorry," Kurt apologized, not knowing what else to say. "I didn't mean to -"

"Stop," Blaine intoned against his neck. "You can't - don't."

"What do I do?" Kurt begged him.

"Stop feeling bad about it."

"It's not really that easy, Blaine."

"You're telling me," and Kurt was struck once more with how very, very different Blaine was. He was near tears for what seemed like the millionth time in the past week, he was physically weaker than he had been before, and it was medically diagnosed that he had Depression. He wanted to throttle himself for what he'd said but instead hung his head in shame.

"How can I make you happy?" Kurt changed tactics.

"Make you happy," Blaine told him genuinely, and Kurt felt his eyelashes flutter and then something hot and watery roll onto the skin of his neck, and he knew Blaine was crying. He wanted to comply, he really did, but he couldn't really be happy unless Blaine was. It was something inevitable, really, that they should both be so wholly dependent on the other that they were stuck within a perpetual state of one emotion or the other. Due to the world, it was bound to be sadness.

"I don't know how," Kurt confessed. He'd only ever felt dirtier when he'd seen Blaine crying as he ran to hide from him in the hallway after finding out about Chandler.

Blaine laughed lifelessly against him and another tear joined the first. "It would have been a miracle if you did."

"This whole thing sucks, right?" Kurt asked, albeit demanded, of him, not gentle, not tender, not angry, not sad - just circumspect and finally in the know. "The way the world has broken itself to a point where we look at people who are even more broken than us and we aspire to be like them and we end up falling to pieces in the process. It doesn't even have to be someone else, it can be an idea of a person that other people think you are that you just can't be. It sucks."

"What sucks is that I'm a human water hose lately," Blaine remarked.

Kurt thought heavily on his words and what he could say in response. He was crying a lot, but was that good or bad? Well, he was crying, and that definitely wasn't good, simply because it meant he had something to cry over. But then again, the fact that he was finally open enough to let it all out was good. And to doubt that last semi-conclusion there was the black-and-white knowledge that if he was just beginning to let everything out he must have been tortured endlessly by others and himself because there was already an outrageous amount he'd released and even more Kurt knew he'd never really think to.

"What sucks is that you have reasons to be a human water hose," Kurt corrected. "It would suck that you're being one if you didn't have a reason or two."

"Kurt?"

"Yeah?"

"Talk to me."

"About what?"

"Anything."

There is a point where a human body can no longer withstand the effects of its mind's disconsolateness alone. When it reaches this point, everything about it seems to stop, because it either has to shut down or fade into the mind to become even ore dejection; this point is usually accompanied by empty tears, a blank face, and a disinterested tone. In some cases, or some people, there's a problem: no matter how much company is around, the feeling of being alone never goes away. Blaine was the embodiment of that and Kurt wanted with every bit of his damaged and mortally-wounded heart to eradicate that feeling.

"I never did tell you how my mom died, did I?" Kurt mused.

"No, you didn't."

"It was a car accident," Kurt began. "She and my dad were driving to pick me up from school and slid on the ice - it was December. December fourth, if I'm going to be exact, but I'm trying to generalize. My mom's side of the car hit a lamp post. My dad wasn't physically hurt so much as shaken and scratched. But my mom..."

He was aware that Rachel would be listening and that Blaine was waiting for him to continue and that he really should, but though he'd gone over the horrific truths thousands of times in nightmares and grief-stricken longing, the words didn't seem to exist anymore.

Blaine nudged him gently and asked, "On impact or in the hospital?"

"In between," Kurt answered, the words flooding back, along with other flooding substances that stung his eyes. "On the way to the hospital. Dad wasn't allowed to be with her because they were working so hard to help, and so he was riding in the back of a cop car, and I was... I was still waiting for them at school to come get me."

Blaine's only response was to stop holding on to him and begin holding him again.

"Aunt Cindy came instead," Kurt remembered vaguely. "I think. I kind of forget about a lot of things that happened after the counselor took me aside and told me."

More burning tears. This time they were Kurt's.

"We forgot about everyone and everything for a little bit," Kurt confided, "We didn't call anyone or let anyone visit. We pretended we weren't home when people would come knocking. I went to school and then I went home and locked myself in my room. Dad used his old pickup to take me home. We never really talked to each other. We tried, but neither of us could stand to hear the other say anything when it was impossible not to hear them through the walls when they cried at night."

"You were eight," Blaine recalled, and Kurt nodded.

"I was eight," he confirmed. "That first Christmas after she died, Dad forgot about the Christmas tree. He forgot about everything. I think that's the big difference, is that I remembered every tiny little detail about what should have been right but everything's hazy about what it actually was, whereas my dad was hazy on how things should have been and saw every tiny little detail about what was really going on."

"Did you get a tree?"

"Yes. I couldn't say anything to my dad, I couldn't make myself feel like he'd lost something else, even if it was just a stupid tradition about lugging a pine indoors on Saturnalia. But I made an ornament. I took my mom's old perfume bottle and put a hook on it and hung it on my window blinds. He saw me hang it when he walked by, and when he asked what I was doing and I told him, he dropped everything and we went to get a tree that second."

"Did you ever get it set up?"

"Set up and with a star on top and the perfume on a branch by the stroke of midnight."

"You hate talking about this."

"I hate it when I feel like I need to."

"You feel like you need to?"

"With you, yes."

"Are you better now?"

"No."

"Worse?"

"No."

"Are you the same as you were before you told me?"

"No."

"Do you have any idea what you are?"

"I'm yours," Kurt breathed. "That's really all I know right now."

Blaine's arms flexed as he squeezed Kurt. "That's enough."

---

There is little to tell of the next few days in their lives; Blaine avoided speaking to Sam but had Kurt pass on the message that he wasn't angry but nor was he ready for the conversation Sam needed to have, but he couldn't avoid Burt. But he somehow managed not to actually talk about what they needed to and instead drew Burt off on a tangent every time the conversation got serious and kept doing that until it got late enough he had the excuse of bed. He treated everybody but Kurt and Rachel the same way, and even then, looking at Rachel seemed to make him highly uncomfortable. She tried not to take it personally but it was difficult as she was an easily offendable person; Kurt, on the other hand, was the one person Blaine seemed incapable of not looking at. He was constantly staring at him. And not in a way that ought to be written down but instead in a way that made Rachel, who saw his stares, really worried about what he was thinking. But he was an actor, and whenever he thought nobody was looking were the only times either of them ever saw that something was wrong.

Neither said anything.

They should have. They should have said anything.

Especially when he left.

He had to go home eventually and they all knew that. He had a plane ticket and he had to go home. His departure was short and simple and both Kurt and Rachel were really disappointed in it; they'd been hoping for something a little more hopeful, or, in Kurt's case, emotional. As it was, he was very controlled and somewhat distant; though he gave Kurt a goodbye kiss and hugged Rachel, the entire time his eyes were a dull gray, and he didn't even look back so he could return the wave Kurt was frantically committing.

He'd said to Kurt that Cooper would pick him up and that he'd call tomorrow when he'd gotten some sleep. He lied.

He walked calmly out of the airport and started walking. He had no luggage and his hair was starting to curl behind his ears and he was in the same outfit he'd been in the day he left. He didn't go home to pick his phone and he didn't try to find Cooper in the parking lot where he was waiting.

Every step he took killed him.

Every time his feet plodded along and slapped against the concrete, every time he blinked and missed just a fraction of a second that could have been the difference between life and death he wished it was death. Every breath he took he wished were filled with some sort of gaseous poison that only he would react to. Every single time these things coincided a new thought was born, or an old thought returned, and soon his head was swarming.

The sun was shining brightly in the sky and he could feel its uneven warmth dance across his face in patches, when the January wind wasn't biting at him. He was colder than he'd been that day on the beach. Perhaps if it had been raining he'd have felt a little better, because when it rains it's easy to get lost in the mindless, arrhythmic drops - to sit and count them on a window pane, to bet on which one reaches the bottom first, to just listen to the sound and let it wash out everything else. But though the wind howled and the clouds were dark in the sky so gray it matched his eyes, the sun still shined, and it only made it that much harder not to dig himself into the hole he was sure he'd gotten out of.

He thought about Kurt. Of course, Kurt. He thought about everything that had transpired. He thought about his mom and how much he hurt about that every day and realized, not for the first time, nor the last, that it seemed Kurt hurt so much more because of him, especially of late.

He thought about Sam. He thought about how panicked he'd been and how often he'd been it and how sick he must have been of being panicked and realized, not for the first time, nor the last, that Sam would have a lot more relaxed life if Blaine wasn't in it.

He thought about Cooper. He thought about the cost of flying home for your little brother only to have him be in New York as an accused murderer and almost a suicidal victim and realized, not for the first time, nor the last, that Cooper would be a lot more successful if he didn't have to fret over Blaine.

He thought about the New Directions. He thought about how Tina was shunted into the background and how Marley was starving herself and how Kitty was making everyone miserable and how Artie was constantly overlooked and how Joe never had a spotlight on him and how Unique still wasn't "allowed" to be a girl and how most of his friends had graduated and left him behind and realized, not for the first time, that they would all have their own paths and lives and that they wouldn't want him to be on it with them.

He thought about himself and how he managed to ruin everything and how he was screwed up in his head and how no matter how hard he fought it was never hard enough. He thought about Kurt some more. Of course, Kurt.

And he decided to pick up his prescription. And he decided to empty the bottle that day.

---

"Kurt?"

"Hey, Cooper. How's Blaine?"

"Well, that's what I'm trying to figure out," Cooper told the boy on the phone, looking around the terminal for the upteenth time, still looking for his brother. He'd scoured everywhere Blaine could have possible been; his plane had landed over an hour ago and there was no sign of him. "I haven't seem him and his plane arrived a while ago."

"Did he maybe get lost in the airport?"

"I don't think so," Cooper told him. "He's been in this airport loads of times. Not recently, so it's a possibility he got lost, but back before he came out we used to go on all sorts of trips as a family and we'd be here a lot. He used to know it like the back of his hand."

"Cooper," Kurt said, and his tone had changed drastically. "Cooper, something is very wrong."

"What do you -" there was a beeping sound and Kurt grunted, sending his second call to voicemail.

"Sorry, don't know who that was, didn't recognize the number," he said gruffly. "And I mean that we know Blaine's not okay, but when he left he wasn't happy. Cooper, I don't think he's at the airport."

"Where do you think he went?"

"I..." Kurt faltered. "I don't want to think of it as a possibility, but it is one; what is one way he could... you know... um, kill himself, but without anybody knowing or f-... finding out until someone... um, found him?"

"Kurt," Cooper said sternly. "He has no way of getting a gun, I don't think he'd be able to hang himself without someone seeing and stopping him, there are no bridges within a distance he could possibly walk, he swims too well to even consider drowning, I don't see him committing arson just to burn, and how would he get pills or enough alcohol to overdose?"

"Pills," Kurt breathed. "Cooper. Cooper. Pills."

"What about them? He doesn't have any." Cooper was confused but beginning to feel the same quiet catastrophe Kurt was hissing through the phone.

"His prescription," Kurt said. "His Depression medication, Cooper. Pills."

"But the drugstore he'd pick them up at is a good ten miles away," Cooper argued.

"And he's had around an hour and a half to walk already!" Kurt whispered. He was breathless - not speechless, just breathless. Cooper felt the same way. "It would take him, what, three hours to walk ten miles? And he can run a mile in under ten minutes if he sprints, so if he ran until he got exhausted, and then walked or jogged, that's significantly less time."

"I don't know how to get there," Cooper realized, and pulled on his jacket sleeve as a nervous habit, turning and rushing out of the terminal full of people who had grown uncomfortable when he'd listed the various ways to off oneself. "I know Blaine knows how to get there because he and Mom used to go there after our trips while we took the other car home but I was just going to let him tell me the way. I don't know how to get there."

"But you know how far it is?!"

"I've heard my mother say it a dozen times, of course I know!" Cooper huffed.

"Damn it," Kurt swore. "Okay, okay. I'll find directions online and text them to you, alright? Just please be careful and be fast."

---

Cooper got lost. He wasted time. He wasted hours. It was pathetic, really, how he couldn't find the drugstore. If he had within the next hour or so he would have been able to prevent what happened.

Blaine ran.

He ran fast and he ran hard and he didn't stop. He paused to breathe outside to the drugstore, walked in, washed up in the bathroom, and got his prescription. And then he ran again.

Cooper walked into the drugstore four minutes after Blaine left. He asked after him at the counter and was told he'd just left.

He called Kurt. Kurt started crying and begged him to find Blaine.

---

Pills weren't how he wanted to do it.

Staring at the bottle in his hand, under the tree he'd decided would be his final "resting place", he didn't open it. Instead, he set it on the grass in front of him and stared at it some more.

He wanted it to be subtle. Not looking like it was on purpose. So nobody would feel guilty, like it was their fault. Pills weren't how he wanted to do it.

So he might as well brace himself for when the opportunity came. He reached out, unscrewed the lid, and lifted a pill out. Only one, and then two, because that was what he'd been told to take. He didn't know when they'd kick in, but he hoped it would be soon. He needed to be able to think clearly to give an excuse to Cooper. And Kurt. And everyone else. He swallowed them and closed the bottle with some reluctance - it was so close.

But he'd already hurt them enough. He couldn't do it knowingly anymore.

---

Cooper saw him.

Cooper saw the jacket and then the hair and knew it was him. And he yanked his car over onto the side of the road and parked horribly. He only barely bothered to jerk the keys out of the ignition before he was shooting out of the door and racing across to his brother. Under a tree behind the library. Why there? Cooper had no clue. Maybe Blaine didn't either.

Blaine's pill bottle was right in front of him and that was the first thing Cooper saw; and then he saw the sweat stains that had glossed over in the cold air and wind, and that Blaine's eyes were closed. "Blaine!" he shouted, his voice breaking, overwhelming fear throttling him, and he fell to his knees beside his brother.

Blaine's eyes flew open in surprise. "Cooper?"

"Blainey," Cooper wavered, still gripped in the fear, but more relieved than could be expressed by the fact that Blaine seemed, overall, fine. "Did - did you..?" he gestured to the bottle. Blaine's response was to pick it up and shake it. Its rattling noise caused such an unbearable weight to lift off of Cooper than he sagged and threw his arms around his brother and hugged him tightly. He didn't stop, not even when he asked, "Why didn't you let me drive you?"

Blaine sounded sheepish answering, "I needed to run. I mean, I needed to run away. I took two of them, I'm still waiting for them to kick in. I just... needed to move."

"It's okay," Cooper hushed him to stop the explanation. So he'd needed to force his body to do something vaguely beneficial. That was not only tolerably but wholly acceptable, and Cooper craned his neck so he could kiss his forehead. "I missed you, Squirt. Please don't make me miss you again. Please?"

"I'm sorry," Blaine said, by way of responding, and Cooper thought he meant for making him miss him. He did, but he also meant it in a way that meant he was going to make him miss him again, and he was sorry for that. Blaine's head drooped to Cooper's shoulder and Cooper squeezed him even tighter.

---

The first day he got back to school, Cooper drove him and Kurt textd him constantly. Neither brought up why they did so, but made idle chat. Blaine knows they did it so they wouldn't make him feel worse and he felt worse for causing them to exert effort on his behalf.

When he arrived at school, Sam shouted his name from across the parking lot, where he and the New Directions were standing around and waiting, and took off in his direction. It made everyone else look in his direction and begin muttering immediately; though he'd been cleared, Blaine had been fully aware what his return might do to the student body, especially after his absence. Regardless of whether he'd expected the rumors, he wasn't prepared to deal with them.

And then Sam was nearly tackling him with the force of his hug. Blaine's bag slid off his shoulder and thudded onto the ground when his arms flung themselves backwards to try and regain his balance. Sam's arms, on the other hand, wrapped around him with vicious strength, squeezing him like a cobra, but with affection and relief, and not the intent of murder.

Blaine hugged him back as soon as he'd collected his wits again. "Hi there."

"You're home," Sam told him, and Blaine could have sworn he heard tears lurking behind his voice, somewhere he was fighting them back. His mind, instead of jumping to the correct conclusion that Sam was overjoyed at his return, found it as a sign of grief at having to deal with him further. That, and the sentence was a lie: his home was currently in a NYADA class in New York, living with his diva of a friend, working at Vogue, and eating cheap cheesecake whenever he could afford to.

"Yeah," he said instead. "Good to be back."

"You scared the hell out of all of us," Sam told him, pulling away but keeping his hands on Blaine's shoulders, his smile huge and his eyes bright, though somewhat glassy.

"Not the first time I've heard that and I don't think it'll be the last," Cooper remarked, coming around the side of the car. "As long as you don't give them anything new to comment on, Squirt, I think I'll deal with it."

"Hey, Cooper," Sam greeted then, only barely glancing his way. To his credit, Cooper only betrayed a moment of irritation at the slight, and then masked his features once more.

And the rest of the New Directions, who hadn't run as quickly as Sam, managed to catch up, with Brittany pushing Artie from behind like she used to. Tina got to him next, and she jumped onto him so he stumbled back and caught her, her feet lifted off the ground and her hair covering his face. "Blaine!" she squealed, "You're home!"

"I noticed," he said, once more internally shying from the word 'home' and its implications. But he set her down and ruffled her hair with a smile in time for Marley to fling herself at him in a very similar way. Blaine hadn't gotten too close to Marley, but she was family, just as much as the rest of them, and so he hugged her back too.

"We were so worried," she gushed, and she kissed his cheek before moving away.

Jake and Ryder went to hug him at the same time, paused when they saw the other, and then there was an awkward moment before Jake patted his back and Ryder held up his hand for a high five. "Dude, we're so sorry," Jake said, and his welcomingly smile became a serious frown, his eyes widening. "We should have -"

"No, you're fine -" Blaine tried to tell them.

Ryder tried to begin the sentence again: "No, but we shouldn't have -"

"Really, guys, you're fine," Blaine assured them.

"I'm more concerned about whether you're fine or not," Artie said, wheeling up to him and holding out a fist. Blaine hit his own against it and they did the 'explosion' motion, and Artie grinned. "But you're still givin' me the fist, so I think you're alright."

"Blaine Warbler," Brittany said, and then she bounced over and kissed the tip of his nose. "Please don't scare me like that again."

I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. I never meant to scare or worry any of you, I just wanted it to end. I swear I just wanted it to end. "I won't," he told her. Liar!

"Well he's still damn fine, Artie," Unique said, giving Blaine the once-over and snapping her finger. "Just look at that ass, just mm-mm fant-ass-tic."

"I'm really glad you're back," Joe told him, and then patted him on the back with a smile. Kitty looked him over suspiciously and he had the uneasy feeling she saw right through his happy facade, and though he said nothing and she said nothing, he had a sinking feeling that she was more observant in her detached analysis than the people who "cared" about him were with their twinkling eyes and cheery smiles.

Sugar went to pet his head but retracted her hand at the remembrance of his hair gel and instead stroked from his shoulder to his elbow. He didn't mind the touch, because it was Sugar, but it still felt off to have someone who wasn't Kurt do something like that.

He felt homesick.

And then they began to walk inside. Cooper hugged him goodbye and asked him in a whisper if he'd taken his medication. He lied and said yes - in reality he'd thrown two pills into his trashcan that morning instead of swallowing them, knowing if he started he'd down the whole bottle, and he had a good chance of surviving if he did that, which he didn't want. And then Cooper clambered back into his truck and they started walking, and Blaine felt everyone's eyes on him. Nobody seemed to know what to say, so they started talking like they used to, about who slept with who and the latest drama. The only difference was that they periodically asked his opinion, as if they cared about it, which they hadn't before.

As soon as he stepped foot in the building, the stares of everyone with the whispers behind their hands in the parking lot behind him, he fought back the new stares of the people inside, whose animated chattering was slaughtered when the door had swung shut.

He didn't want to deal with the awkward and tense silence, but it was better than the rumors; so he continued walking. He didn't go very far before Finn and Mr. Schue rounded the corner.

"Blaine!" Finn shouted, and the sound was stark in its loudness in comparison to the silence of everyone else. Finn hugged him briefly and then leaned back, his smile reaching his crinkly eyes, and said, "Dude, you pissed Burt off real bad when he found out you cu-"

"Finn!" Tina barked, and Finn's expression died like the talk of the halls had as he caught himself. Bystanders listened with rapt attention. Blaine felt the color drain from his face and the wooziness of having not slept since returning to Ohio - three days, as he came back on a Friday and had spent Saturday and Sunday holed up in his room, barely texting anyone but Kurt once to say that yes, he was alive - hit him like a ton of bricks and he stumbled back.

Mr. Schue reached out and steadied him, and then pulled him in for a hug. If he'd been anyone else, at that point, except Kurt, Blaine would have pulled away - but the fact of the matter was that Blaine's father wasn't so much a father to him as a legal gaurdian, and Mr. Schue was everything a father was - kind, caring, supportive, and a teacher, even though in this sense it was literal. (Though Burt was that and then some, Blaine felt horribly guilty every time he laid eyes on the man of late, and it ruined a bit of the aspect.) Though he made mistakes and came across wrong sometimes, he was the best father figure Blaine had in his life, and so Blaine folded into him pathetically on instinct, and Mr. Schue squeezed him tighter. "You okay?" he murmured in Blaine's ear.

Blaine took a deep breath and pulled back slowly, nodding.

---

"Miss Pillsbury?"

Emma looked up to see Blaine standing in the doorway and a smile spread across her cheeks before she could stop it. "Blaine!" She clapped her hands twice in excitement and gestured for him to come in and sit down. As he did so, she asked, "So, what can I do for you today?"

"I need you to hold something for me," Blaine said seriously, nervously, a muscle beneath his right eye twitching in anxiety and his face haggard and pale. Emma's initial excitement at his return vanished and was replaced by rampant concern. "And it's really important that you never give it back, okay? Throw it away or hide it or something, but never let me see it again."

"What is it?" Emma inquired, intrigued despite her panic.

Blaine stuck his hand into his pocket, flinched when his fingers reached what was in it, and then pulled out a small razor, the kind from pencil sharpeners, with one edge slightly discolored by a faded and dark red.

"Why is the one edge all dark and spotty?" Emma said, the OCD taking control of her mouth, and then she flushed a delicate pink in embarrassment. "So-"

"It's the edge I cut with," Blaine deadpanned, and Emma froze. Her gaze shifted from the blade, to Blaine, to his clear wrists, and then, when he saw her gaze and lifted the top of his shirt the smallest bit on the side, to his scarred waist. She slowly, shakingly, met his eyes again.

"Oh."

His mouth flattened into a straight line. "Yeah. Can you -"

"Mm-hm," she told him, before reaching out tentatively and taking the clean side of the razor, already glaring at the spots of dried blood, despising why they'd been put there in the first place and that they dared remain, planning how to get rid of them before she threw them out.

Blaine seemed to slump a bit more as soon as the blade was gone, and Emma looked at him hesitantly. "Blaine?"

"Yes?"

"You do know that we all love you very much?"

Blaine's grimace became a sad grin. "Yeah. I know."

---

Blaine knew how he wanted to do it.

In a way that caused nobody any guilt or harm but him, in a way that would almost definitely work. Due to his local knowledge and his ability to predict, which had sharpened considerably since Kurt moved away, he had it all figured out.

There was a corner of the parking lot that was basically a deathtrap. It was an area used often by students and cars alike, but there was no sign telling them to go slowly, and so the cars zipped by. The corner was right by the exit, so most people were going pretty fast by then; they were students, getting off of school grounds is a small dream harbored by almost all of them that they would strive to meet each day. Most people parked away from the corner so they wouldn't get hit walking out of the school, but the ones who arrived late were always stuck with those spots, not daring to back out until everyone else was gone for fear of a collision.

He was going to cross it at a speed a little to slow.

It may seem ridiculous that that would be enough to do the job, but it wasn't. It was entirely reasonable. Three students deaths had occurred from doing just that in the last ten years at the school, and more injuries and dented cars had scraped out of the same situation than flies on a three-week-old flypaper above a dumpster.

Blaine would admit to himself that the idea struck him when he heard them muttering about having to go to class with a faggot and a killer.

He excused himself and went to the bathroom and planned.

When the bell after school rang, Blaine headed to his locker, and then to Glee. He didn't worry about his plan; he knew it would work. There were always people who stuck around late for other clubs and activities and just to be irritating; there were people besides his Glee Clubbers that could do the job for him.

Because he was determined to die, but he wouldn't do it by his own hand.

He would allow himself to feel the truth of everything they called him - but he would never allow himself to be a killer. Never.

He walked into the chorus room and sat down.

Finn and Mr. Schue seemed at a loss for how to start, until Mr. Schue shook his head clear and began with, "So, last week's assignment was 'I Miss You'." Heads swerved toward Blaine. His heart constricted and his breath caught, but he only lifted his chin and eyebrow a bit higher. "And not everyone was... um, emotionally stable enough to perform their song choice." Blaine's face froze in place as an act against revealing anything. "So, today, we're going to complete that, and then move on to this week's lesson."

"What's this week's lesson?" Blaine asked, and he could tell everyone was surprised that he'd spoken, himself included.

Finn paused before answering, thinking it over. "Well, we were going to do something that you were okay with -"

"Don't change it because of me," Blaine said. "What did you have planned?"

Finn cleared his throat. "Death."

Blaine raised the other eyebrow. "Interesting choice, but I suppose the variety of songs that applies to is broad enough."

Everyone seemed to exhale with relief in unison to Blaine, or maybe it was just that everything from that point forward seemed to spin together into a mess in his head - until Marley got up to do her solo.

"So, it's a Miley Cyrus song," she said sheepishly, "and not really the best, but it's what I had chosen before... before I knew he was okay."

Blaine felt as rigid as an ice sculpture and pressed his stiff, flat hands together expectantly.

Marley beckoned to the guitarist band member, who began to play. It took only a few chords for Blaine to recognize the song, and he felt like vomitting with the thoughts that sprang into his mind - Marley must have been scared to death to have thought of this. It surprised him. He hadn't expected her to be so affected by it, but she seemed genuinely (and apologetically) struck.

"You used to call me your angel," Marley sang, averting her eyes. "Said I was sent straight down from heaven. You used to hold me in your arms - I loved the way you felt so strong."

Blaine felt anything but strong. He felt so weak he was sure he would collapse under the weight of the lyrics.

"I never wanted you to leave," Marley said, her eyes shining, and she stepped toward him. "I wanted you to stay here, holding me."

Blaine was sure that Kitty was watching him from behind, but he didn't dare turn around and check. He locked eye contact with Marley, who seemed to freeze up for a moment before continuing.

"I miss you, I miss your smile." Marley grimaced ruefully. "And I still shed a tear every once in a while. And even though it's different now, you're still here somehow." Her fingers twitched at her side and her hand balled into a fist. "My heart won't let you go, and I need you to know I miss you... I miss you." She blinked three times in rapid succession. Blaine knew what it meant and what she was holding back.

He thought about her and her problems and how hard her life already was and hated himself for making it worse.

Marley motioned for the guitar player to skip over the next verse, which Blaine thought all the better because he was dangerously close to the same tears she was about to break into. And instead, he went right to the excerpt, and Marley closed her eyes to belt it out.

"I know you're in a better place, yeah; but I wish that I could see your face. Oh, I know you're where you need to be, even though it's not here with me."

She opened her eyes and a tear fell out, and she held out her hand, which trembled, toward him. Without thinking, he bolted up and took it.

"I miss you," she choked out, and then she was hugging him again, tightly, her head on his shoulder and her arms around his neck, her lips turned away from him but still close enough that her thick voice still carried. "I miss your smile. And I still shed a tear every once in a while. And even though it's different now, you're still here somehow." She squeezed him tighter at this, and he wrapped his arms around her, too, and tugged her closer, burying his face in her hair. "My heart won't let you go, and I need you to know I miss you... I miss you."

"You don't have to miss me," Blaine whispered to her, and she sniffed loudly.

He was confused. He was confused and angry and sad all at once, by the fact that Marley had turned out to be just as good a friend as any of the others but was so much more unsure. And he was twice as sure that dying would be the best thing for him then; if he could eradicate himself from their lives, they wouldn't have to hurt like this.

Nobody dared to speak up or move or do anything in the silence except let Marley cry into his shoulder, and so they stayed like that for a length of time that, for some, may have been short. But for the saddened, no time is ever short, and a millisecond is an eternity. Blaine spent multiple forevers holding her and even more wishing he'd done so tighter.

---

He wanted a way that was more certain. He didn't want a chance of living, no matter what. It caused too many people to hurt and they didn't deserve that, and he had no right to keep hurting them - so getting hit by a car wouldn't do it.

But he was presented with the perfect opportunity when he and Cooper were driving to their home and passed what was obviously a shootout. "Stop the car!" Blaine shouted, and pointed. "Call the cops, right now!"

"If I stop here, we could both get shot," Cooper told him, frightened, but he slammed on the brakes. "What are you - Blaine, no!" Cooper's hand shot to the side to try and grab Blaine as he leapt out of the car. "What the hell are you doing?! Get back here! Blaine!"

"Call the cops!" Blaine ordered him again before slamming the door shut. He had every intention of stopping the fight - but he also had every intention of not coming out of it alive. A large shot rang out from the pistol-like gun in one of the man's hands.

Blaine took the time to observe before he bolted in. Two men had guns and were firing. The one who'd shot first wore an old, worn coat, and patched pants, and a frayed scarf. He was tall and his skin was dark, and if it hadn't been for his demeanor and weapon, Blaine would have been tempted to think it was the man from the bridge. The other man was clearly as business man, wearing a suit and loafers and a fedora, of all things, and he stood pointing his gun as if trained. This was the bad part of town, so Blaine had no trouble believing a shootout was actually happening. Both men were unaccompanied and standing almost in shadows.

"Stop!" he shouted, sprinting towards them, and Cooper, who'd rolled down his window, shouted the same. "Stop shooting, you'll kill each other!"

"That's the point!" screamed the raggedy man, and he then called Blaine a name he wasn't sure was actually recognized as a word but sounded offensive.

"Why would you do that?!" Blaine screamed back at him, and skidded to a halt right beside him. He and the other man seemed temporarily confused.

"His business knocked me outta my home," the raggedy man explained, sounding horribly unsure as to why he was doing so. "He and his stupid insurance business -"

"This is on a personal level and you know it, don't blame my business," the business man said.

Blaine knew right then that it was impossible to have stopped the fight at all, because both of them were desperate and terrified for and of something entirely different, and the differences clashed - and they were not good men. They were bitter and determined to be monstrous. They were not good men, and in the next second, when Cooper bellowed at Blaine to duck, the business man shot. It would have hit the raggedy man if he hadn't pushed Blaine in front of him.

"You came in at the wrong time," he whispered, after the bullet shot through Blaine's shoulder and he cried out. The pain was like fire, burning and tearing through him, wracking his body with blow after blow of agony.

"Let go of my brother!" Cooper shouted uselessly, still on his phone, but now getting out of the car. "Let go of him!"

"Shut up!" the raggedy man yelled, and spared enough time to shoot the door of the car next to Cooper before shooting once more at the other man. His head wasn't steady but his mind was - the business man only barely had time to move due to the delay in actions that shooting the car door had brought.

Blaine saw and heard none of this. His mind and stomach were reeling and he felt about to vomit or to tear his shoulder off completely, just to get it to stop burning.

And then the business man shot again, and the raggedy man held Blaine in front of him like a shield, and the bullet struck -

---

"Hey kiddo, what's up -"

"Daddy."

---

Cooper was in the middle of a meltdown. Kurt was repeatedly rushing all around his apartment and screaming at random intervals. Rachel was crying and trying to get him to calm down. Marley was kicking her bedroom walls. Kitty was staring at the picture of the Glee Club she'd brought home and nearly thrown away. Joe was praying. Artie was gulping back tears and swearing under his breath as he tried to maneuver his chair through his bedroom door with blurry vision and slamming his fingers against the frame. Tina was crying and calling Blaine's cell phone repeatedly and leaving message after message, getting more and more desperate for him to answer. Finn and Sam were screaming at each other, fighting about random useless things, and crying at the same time. Burt was watching them helplessly, his phone pressed against his ear, his mouth still trying to speak to Kurt on the other end but making no sound. Carole was hiding in the bathroom so nobody would see or hear her break down. Puck and Jake were sitting in silence, fuming, tense, unsure of how to handle it. Ryder was driving over to Marley's to make sure she was alright. Brittany was Skyping with Santana, who was trying to calm her down and only upsetting herself in the process. Mike hung up Rachel's phone call and called Quinn, who then called Mercedes, who then drove an hour and a half from one part of California to the other to hold her while she sobbed.

And Blaine's parents had yet to answer any calls or show up at the hospital.

---

"Where the hell are you?" Cooper demanded into his phone. "He got shot. Shot, Mom! Why aren't you here?! Dammit, he's your son, don't you care?!"

The long beep cut off the rest of the message he was leaving and he clenched his fingers around his phone, focusing on the muscles to remind himself not to throw it.

The doors to the emergency waiting room slid open again and Cooper paid no mind to it; they'd done that often since he'd arrived and so far nobody had had any clue who Blaine was. Looking around the waiting room, he saw people waiting for news, desperate for an update, waiting to have a wrist or a foot x-rayed, and they were all staring at him and his mindless shouting.

He wondered how many of them envied him his meltdown and how many just wanted him to shut up.

"Cooper?"

Cooper whirled around. There was a man wearing a baseball cap and a vest and an old t-shirt and stained jeans and workboots, and beside him was a woman with red, puffy eyes and blonde hair, and next to them was someone Cooper vaguely recognized as Finn, and next to him Cooper knew was Sam. From that he could only deduce that it was Burt and Carole that stood before him.

"You all came," he said, not bothering to hide his surprise.

"He's our family too," Burt told him. Cooper gritted his teeth but nodded.

"How did it happen?" Sam asked, and Cooper fixed him with a steady glare before taking a deep breath to compose himself and not come across as so rude, even though he knew they'd understand.

"He saw a shootout on the other side of the street and made me stop," Cooper answered through clenched teeth. "He jumped out of the car and told me to call the cops and ran to stop it. I shouted for him to come back but he didn't. And the one guy used him as a freaking shield. A shield!" And Cooper found that he was flooded with rage again and kicked the nearest chair. It was bolted to the ground and he hopped back in pain before slamming his foot back onto the ground. He didn't gauge their reactions; he closed his eyes and took another deep breath. "The first time he got shot was his shoulder. I tried to get to him before he could get shot again but they shot at me when I got out of the car and then they - and then they fired again. I don't know if it just hit his ribcage or a lung or his heart but it was somewhere there." His voice had grown dangerously low while he spoke.

"What about the other guys, the ones who were shooting?" asked Finn.

"I took their guns and knocked them out," Cooper answered, waving his hand as if to dismiss the matter, though he remembered vividly how everything had been tinted red and had blurred together until he was standing above the business man with two guns in his hand and the other guy laying down in a similar position beside Blaine.

Blaine...

"Have they given you any news?" Carole asked.

"No." He nearly spat the word. "Not a scrap of it. DAMN IT!"'

"Sir, I'm going to have to ask you to please calm down," said the woman behind the counter. He glared at her until she cowered back with a mumbled apology.

"Looks like it's time for me to start my shift early," Carole said then, her voice a lot more sure than Cooper suspected she actually was. Nobody was that sure at that time. Everything was wrong.

---

"Kurt, calm down, please!"

"SHUT UP, RACHEL, SHUT UP!"

"Kurt!"

"NO! SHUT THE HELL UP!"

"Please just let me -"

"GET AWAY FROM ME!"

"I'm trying to help!"

"YOU CAN'T! YOU CAN'T HELP!"

"Why not?! Kurt, please -!"

"HOW MANY TIMES DO I HAVE TO SAY NO?!"

"You're not okay, I'm trying to change that -!"

"STOP TRYING! RACHEL, STOP TRYING!"

"Just tell me what to do!"

"BRING HIM BACK! OKAY?!"

"Kurt, I -"

"Just... just bring him back. Please. Just let him come home again."

---

That night, Rachel woke up on the couch. She'd fallen asleep cuddling with Kurt, trying to comfort him, watching The Sound of Music until he'd drifted off. Now the TV was off and outside it was pitch-black spotted and dashed with all the New York City lights. She wondered idly why she woke up, and closed her eyes again, prepared to fall back asleep, when she heard it. It was soft and it was broken and it was Kurt - and he was praying.

At first, she didn't think it was real. She was sure she was dreaming, but no, it was really happening. And he'd apparently just started, his voice, though it had a low volume, having been the thing to wake her. "Dear God," he began. "Um, I don't know what I'm doing. Is that how these things work? Like, you say 'Dear God' and all that?"

Rachel didn't know how to react, so she just waited and listened.

"Look, I - I know I've said mean things about you and I've taunted you and I've scoffed at you under my breath whenever Rachel does something particularly Jewish and then something particularly un-Jewish, and I know that, if you're going to pay attention to anyone, it isn't really going to be me, but I... I need someone to hear me who can help." Kurt sucked in a huge breath and let it out with a gust. "Oh, I feel so stupid right now, talking to nothing. But I can't do anything else."

"The thing is that you've given Blaine a really crappy deal in life. And he is the best person in the world and you've really screwed him over. And it's not fair. I mean, I know that life isn't fair, and blah blah blah, but you're supposed to be loving and caring and all that crap, and you've done this. I've always had my problems with people worshiping someone who apparently has the power to stop world hunger but instead lets thousands of people starve, but this is the most unforgivable thing I could think of you doing, at least to me. You stole my mother and now you're stealing my boyfriend, too, and I suppose next it's going to be my Dad and then Rachel and then Finn and then Mercedes and so on and so forth, and you're going to make me watch."

"I need you to fix this." Kurt was shaking and Rachel was acting her heart out, trying not to show how much it was breaking. "I need you to fix him. Please. Please, I'm - I'm sorry. For whatever it is I did to make you hate me so much, for whatever I did that made you want to kill my heart again and again, I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. But I need you to fix this because I don't think anyone else can. You can't take him, too. Please. It's not his time, it isn't fair, I need him, we all love him so much, and he's not healthy yet. He's all alone in his head and he's sad and he's sick and now he's dying, too. Please."

"You took my mom in the accident and you nearly took my dad, and now you're close to taking my dad again, and Finn could have easily died in the army or mishandling that gun, and I can't - I can't let you take Blaine. I love him more than anything. I love his bowties and his bare ankles and his rolled-up pants and his tight shirts and his hair gel and the way he smiles when he sees me and I love how he's so constant and how much he loves me and I love his voice and his smell and his arms around me when I need them to be and his hands in mine when I need to hold them and I love how everything about him is so bright and beautiful and pure. Please, please, don't take him. He means more than the world to me - he is my world, he's the thing that keeps me grounded and happy and yeah, lately there have been a lot of issues, but I still love him with all of me that you've spared."

"But you're not letting him love himself and that's not fair. It's really not. He's the one person on this damn planet who should be totally and completely in love with himself and you've made it so that he thinks he should die. He shouldn't. You know he shouldn't. And you can't take him, you can't let him, please. I don't think I'd be able to handle it if you did. And I... I don't mean that in the way a lot of teenagers do when they don't get what they wanted, I mean... I mean it hurt so much when Mommy died that I barely got over that and I think if Blaine dies too I might just kind of break. A little bit like all the strings inside of me just snapping."

"I don't want... I don't - I don't know why I'm bothering with this. It's not like anyone's listening to me. But I need a miracle and you've got a really big fanclub that thinks you give them out all the time, so here I am. I need a big miracle, God, and I need it really soon. Now would be nice. I need you to make Blaine better. I don't understand anything, and I'm really... really scared. I just need you to make him better. Please. I need you to make him better like you never did for my mom. If you can do nothing else, please, just do this. If you answer one prayer tonight, let it be this one. I know it's long and rambly and repetitive but it's a chance at redemption for you. I may not and may never believe in you, but at least I won't hate the idea of you so much if you do this for me."

"I don't understand. I don't understand, I just want him to come home, I just want Blaine to come back home, I want... I want B-Blaine."

A tear leaked out of Rachel's shut eye and she knew it wasn't the first shed since the prayer had started, though it was the first for her.

"I don't know how to do this," Kurt whispered, his voice trembling and wavering and scratchy, punctuated with small hiccups and gasps as he sobbed almost silently into the air. "I don't know how to end a prayer. Um, I guess... I g-guess I'll end it by asking you not to end Blaine. P-Please. He's everything... he's b-beautiful. You've made a mess of the world and taking him out of it's only going to make it worse. He's the only thing left that's wholly good, a-and I - I n-need h-him. I - please."

Rachel thought he was done. She thought that the softly vibrating couch cushions were the end of it, that the shoulders she ached to put her arms around shaking with his sobs finished it, that his trying to stifle his voice meant it was through. For the prayer, that was true; for him, it wasn't. She spent a good ten minutes debating whether or not she should let him know she was awake, and then she felt him shaking her shoulder gently.

She feigned waking up, yawning and stretching slightly, her eyelids fluttering open tiredly, and then she sat, frozen, struck by how the light from the outside city and stars were caught on his cheeks in his onslaught of tears and danced in his leaking eyes. "Rachel," he sputtered, "How l-long does it t-take for G-God t-to answer a p-prayer?"

Rachel started to cry in earnest. "Too long," she whispered, lurching forward to hold the small boy in her arms. "Way too long."

---

"My parents aren't good for much," Cooper muttered, "but at least we've got money."

Burt looked up from the magazine he was reading. He was still here, waiting in the waiting room with Cooper, after three days' worth of "He's getting surgery, it struck just below his lung, and his shoulder needs serious care. He'll be out cold for a long time" and "Nothing's changed. Still stable, but unconscious", and Cooper was eternally grateful. He was also grateful that what he'd just said was true - paying for Kurt's plane ticket had been the easiest thing for him to decide, especially when he heard Burt and Carole discussing the lack of money they had after the current events. And Blaine's hospital bills wouldn't be cheap, but they'd be manageable.

"Money isn't something to be grateful for," Burt told him seriously. "It's a nice thing to have, but never be grateful for it."

"Why not?" Cooper asked. "It seriously helps."

"Be grateful for what got you the money," Burt said, "not the money itself. Be grateful you have the ability to get it and keep it and things to spend it on. Don't be grateful for the money."

Cooper didn't ask him what prompted the philosophy, but considered it for a while, until he saw Carole rushing towards them, her face red with exertion and a mixture of relief, joy and sadness on it. "Carole, what happened?" Burt asked, putting down the magazine.

"He's awake," Carole panted, coming closer. "He's awake and you need to talk to him, Cooper. Right now."

"Is he having a panic attack or something?" Cooper queried, leaping to his feet, Burt right behind him, and following her as she turned around to lead them away.

"No," Carole said stiffly. "Do you have his depression medication?"

"It's at home," Cooper said. "Why?"

"Bring it in when you come next time," Carole huffed, starting a sprint instead of a jog. "We need to see if it's compatible with his other meds. And he needs to use it."

"Why? Is he... thinking like that again?"

"Yes," was the last clipped word out of her mouth to him that day.

---

"Cooper?" Kurt asked, picking up the phone. "I'm about to board the plane, did something happen?"

"He woke up," Cooper said.

Kurt felt like screaming.

Though it may have been a trick of the technology, Cooper's thick and agitated voice implied anything but the relief and joy it should have been glowing with, and Kurt felt the desperation and frustration setting in again. He should have been leaping around and dancing with ecstasy at the fact that a miracle had occurred after all, whether religious or not, but instead he felt like kicking something. "And?"

"You need to tell him you love him and you need to tell him why."

Kurt barely registered his own sharp intake of breath, but then he said, "Fine. Let me talk to him."

"Here. You're on speaker."

"Kurt?"

"Oh, Blaine!" And Kurt felt the tension unfurl and collapse, and every single bit of him felt so light he could have floated away - hearing Blaine's voice, not hoarse, not thick, just there and just his, was enough to make his heart spin and his heart race. "You're okay. Oh my god, you're okay, I was so scared you wouldn't be, and I love you so much -"

"It's my fault, Kurt, I -"

"No, no, don't ever think that, don't say that, please!" Kurt begged him, and lowered his voice when he noticed people in the terminal looking at him. "It's not your fault, it'll never be your fault, oh my god, just... you're okay. I prayed for you, Blaine, I prayed that you'd be okay, and I never thought it would work, but you're okay and I'm so happy and I love you so much."

"I love you still," Blaine murmured in response, and Kurt was struck by the honesty of it. Not 'I love you, too' or 'I love you more' - nothing competitive, but nothing too simple, and nothing like 'I still love you', which broke apart the sentiment and made it seem less true. 'I love you still' meant it lasted and was reciprocated and equal and perfect and would stretch on forever and Oh my god do I want to curl up in a ball and cuddle him and cry right now oh my god.

"That's perfect," Kurt said, instead of going through with his desires. "You're perfect. Your voice is perfect and your eyes are perfect and your flaws and quirks are perfect and your clothes are perfect and your imperfectness is perfect and I really wish I was there to kiss you but I'll be there soon, I promise."

"Kurt, I wanted it to happen."

The only thing Kurt could think of was blank, almost-white, pale blue. Blue like ice and fear and being paralyzed and confusion. The moment was as blue as ice above a blue flame; flickering with the color, but so uneven that the clarity was warped. "What?"

"I wanted to get shot. And die. And I didn't die. I should have died. I tried to die. Dammit, I don't - I don't want to... I want to die."

Black. The color hadn't even faded or gradually shaded into it, it just been consumed wholly by the color. The color of despair and tragedy and disbelief and terror and Blaine. "No," Kurt whispered. "Blaine, please, please tell you don't mean that."

"Okay, I don't mean it."

"No, no!" Kurt exclaimed, and clamped a sweaty palm over his mouth. "I didn't - I didn't mean you had to hide what you feel, I'm so sorry! I just - you can tell me anything, I promise, I swear, I'm so -"

"Hey, relax," Blaine's voice came. "It's okay."

"No it's not, not if you want to leave me behind," Kurt had said, before he could stop the words.

"I..." Blaine was at a loss for words. "I know it's selfish, Kurt, I'm so sorry, but I was worrying you and hurting you and everyone else, and I... I need you to say something -"

"Yeah, no, I get it, it's not selfish, it's just..." Kurt had no idea what to do. "Blaine, I know that right now it's impossible, but whenever you start feeling like that, please try to understand that you doing that would hurt and worry me, not just now but for the rest of my life, and a whole hell of a lot more than current issues. Living without you before made the world a hell and when I'm with you, no matter how hellish the heaven becomes, It's still heaven to me. I don't ever want to have to go back to living in a hell on Earth, so please don't... try."

"Are you sure you haven't had a religious epiphany of some sort?" Blaine joked tiredly. "First you prayed for me, and now it's heaven and hell comparisons."

Despite himself, Kurt laughed. "No, I'm still positive of what I believe in. Or don't believe in, in this case. It's just a convenient way to speak, I guess."

"You said you were coming here soon?"

"Oh, yes!" Kurt looked up at the board. "I'm getting on a plane in ten minutes and flying out there with this really big suitcase."

"And Rachel?"

"She'll come home when she's not so sick she pukes when she stands up," Kurt explained.

"What happened?" Blaine asked, startled.

"I don't know," Kurt answered. "Don't tell anybody, but personally, I think it's morning sickness, and it's really starting to concern me."

"Oh my god."

"Yeah, tell me about it."

---

"Hey," Brittany said, poking her head in and smiling at Blaine. "You look really bad."

Blaine didn't have to ask what was so bad about it because he knew. He had no hair gel in and his hair was a massive mess, his shoulders was bandaged up and tightly held down, and though the sheet covered it, his torso was a mangled mess beneath the bandages there, too. He was pale, he could see his skin tone on his hand, and he was tired, which probably meant he had bags under his eyes.

"Yeah, I know," Blaine said, and smiled back. "But you look as pretty as always."

"Aww," Brittany said, ducking her head and coming the rest of the way in.

"Is Sam with you?" Blaine asked. "Cooper's gone home to get some rest, it's just me here." In all reality, no matter how much he loved his brother and how good it felt to know his brother loved him, sending him home to cure the bags under his own eyes and replenish his strength had been good for the both of them. Cooper was relentlessly trying to get him to understand all about suicide while simultaneously trying to understand it himself - he just didn't, not when it came to why Blaine would do it or want to or try to or feel like he should, and Blaine didn't know how to make him, or why he'd ever do such a thing anyways.

"Actually, it's just me," Brittany said. "And I know it's late and you probably need to rest, but I wanted to give you a present before you go to bed."

"Oh, Britt, you shouldn't have," Blaine grinned, already thinking I don't deserve it, I don't deserve it in his head repeatedly. He looked, but she held nothing in her hands, and wasn't wearing any pockets (how did she manage to find a coat without pockets?). "Where is it?"

Brittany walked the few steps to the chair right beside him and sat down in it, crossing her ankles and folding her hands in her lap, her kind eyes looking down at him. "Right here," she answered.

"My present is you?" he chuckled. I definitely don't deserve it. "Britt, I love you, but I can't give you a present with the same value. It's hard to find something so precious."

Brittany made a contented sigh and ducked her head again and giggled. "I always liked you, Blaine Warbler," she said, when her head came up again. "When Kurt first introduced you to me you were all sweet and smiley and wore all those bright colors. You were like a bouncy ball, except you had raspberries in your hair."

"Thanks," he snickered, though he felt like crying.

"Which brings me to the actual present," Brittany said, and Blaine raised his eyebrows expectantly. "I want to know what happened to my happy little bird."

Blaine's smile slipped.

"See? Like right now!" Brittany said, pointing to his lips at first and then tweaking his nose with her extended finger. "You got all sad again. My bird has broken wings."

"Literally," Blaine said, nodding to his shoulder, "I got winged."

She shook her head, not buying it. His spirits sank a little. "No. I mean the wings you can't see. When somebody kicks your legs out from under you and it hurts to get back up, your wings are what help you float for a little while. Those are the wings that are broken, not your arms."

Blaine had no clue how to respond, so he settled for unamused silence.

"Please don't be mad at me," Brittany said sadly, noting his expression, and it softened instantaneously. Though he knew that Brittany wasn't really unintelligent so much as challenged, he didn't expect this level of comprehensive capacity from her.

"I'm not mad at you, Brittany," he told her earnestly. "I just don't want to talk about this."

"Yes, you do," Brittany disagreed. "Inside your head, don't you make little arguments all the time as to what people say, but you never say them for you?"

Yes. "No."

Brittany looked so immensely disappointed that Blaine blurted out, "Yes."

She perked up at that, and then looked at him quizzically. "I knew it. So, Blaine Warbler, I want you to tell me everything inside like little bird brain of yours that you've held in."

Blaine knew she didn't mean it as an insult, but that made the 'bird brain' comment ten times funnier. He held back a snort, and then the seriousness of the words hit him, and his laughter died a somber death in his throat, having never been expressed and therefore having never lived. "It's a lot," he said, by way of excusing himself from the activity.

Brittany held out a hand to cover his, and then retracted it, worry etched on her face. "Is it okay?" she asked. "My mom always said that if a baby bird's wings are broken, I should let its mommy take care of it. Is your mommy coming?"

That set him off.

He never thought he'd let it all spill out. He'd let loose bit and pieces and portions and fractions of the truth, at different times, when different parts of him broke, but other people had always chimed in, and never just told him to keep going or asked questions or prompted him when he fell silent. He never thought he'd actually say everything he'd been keeping silent for so long and he certainly never thought it would be to Brittany of all people, even if he loved her to death.

He told her everything.

He didn't understand his own reactions. The saddest parts were what made him laugh and the laughable parts made him cry; the angering parts made him smile and the smile-worthy parts made him angry. Everything was so totally backwards that he found himself telling her everything in the wrong order, starting from recent events and working back, trying to collect his thoughts from going back and finding them too horrendous to dwell on for too long and diving further, hoping to reach the last point he'd been truly happy.

There is a fine line between stopping somebody who needs to speak and stopping somebody who needs to stop speaking. Without saying anything, Brittany understood that difference, and she walked the line with perfect balance. She not only let him speak, but urged him too, until he got to a point where he'd said more than everything he could have and was only harming himself by continuing. Blaine himself didn't realize it when he'd reached that point. But she did. And she stopped it from going any further.

"Sweetheart," Brittany said, moving her thumb over the top of Blaine's hand, which she held loosely, and tightly all the same. "Have you said everything?"

"Have you listened?" he demanded, his eyes still burning but aching with their dryness, his body wanting to cry but not being able to spare the saltwater.

"I've listened to all of it," Brittany said, and Blaine, for the first time since beginning, actually looked at her, and saw that she, at least, could cry, and seemed to be doing it for the two of them. He'd never seen her cry before and was tempted to seriously injure the person who'd done it until he remembered it was him, and then the urge fell.

And then it struck him: he didn't want to harm himself.

He had no idea when it had happened or how it had happened, but it had - that desire to see his own blood, to see the light dwindle and flicker out before his open eyes - and it was gone. He had no clue how long it would last or why it had a chance to, but he knew then that no matter how much people loved and tried to help him, unless they knew the whole story, details and pains included, they'd never be able to completely fix it.

The thing about a terrible story is that when someone who loves you gives you a chance to tell it and does it purely for your benefit, while at first it may be difficult to indulge, after you begin it's the easiest god damn thing in the world. And sometimes somebody knowing a story and loving you unconditionally despite it is enough to make all the problems you just told them either disappear or seem fixable.

Kurt had started on that road, but the overwhelming quality of his love for Blaine had overshadowed the helpful part. To everyone else that had tried, there had been a multitude of factors Blaine never really understood, and still doesn't - but Brittany, sweet, sweet Brittany, had been so much and yet so little that the confusion had propelled him forward.

Blaine laughed with all the honesty he should have had for so long and Brittany laughed with him.

"How did you do it?" Blaine whispered to her, his words punctuated with gasps and giggles, unable to stop from beaming at her.

Brittany smiled a watery smile. "Did it work?"

Blaine laughed harder, squeezing his eyes closed and ignoring the searing pain that coursed through him from his torso when it shook. Laughter cannot cure pain, but it can distract for long enough that pain shrivels up from lack of attention and dies - but that does not mean it is incapable of causing pain, as well. Being cured meant that the load of meaning his actions had carried slammed into him and suddenly he was laughing just so he wouldn't have to stop and face the truth.

"It's okay, sweetheart," Brittany said, and kissed his forehead grazingly. "You can laugh until it's real again."

"Thank... thank you..."

"Are your wings still broken?"

The voice that spoke next was one that completely astonished and delighted the inhabitants of the room. "No, but he needs to learn to fly again."

"Kurt!"

---

Perhaps the greatest injustice of being mortally wounded is that when it affects anywhere from the waist on up and the shoulders on in, you can't sing. Blaine was nearly burning alive inside himself with the desire to sing the entire time he was unable to. He could murmur tunes quietly to himself, but anything that took actual breath support was out of the question. But Kurt could still sing. And he did. Kurt sang him songs to cure his boredom and songs to ease his pain and songs to lighten his burden and songs to remind him he was loved. And, when Blaine found sleep evading him, he sang him lullabies.

Kurt seemed to know several. Both personal ones that he'd heard from family members and normal ones most children knew, and he sang all of them to Blaine. Blaine never questioned his knowledge until he'd recovered enough (after weeks) to focus on it.

"Why do you know so many lullabies?" Blaine asked him one night, after Artie had gone home, when Kurt was holding his hand.

Kurt thought about it for a moment. "I suppose they just stick, though they didn't before I was eight."

"Why?"

"Mom died," Kurt said simply. "When I was little, my first and, if you don't count Pavarotti, last pet was a little labrador puppy we picked up from an abuse shelter. I forget what was wrong with her, exactly, but we couldn't fix it. I remember begging my dad to say no, but he left them put her to sleep. I guess in my head 'dead' had a lot to do with sleeping, and so lullabies kind of popped out."

Blaine struggled to say anything (in no small part due to the pain he felt whenever he spoke, no matter how much he tried to ignore it, and the exhaustion that crept through his veins). "Oh."

"Yeah." Though Kurt's short little soliloquy had been sad, he seemed untroubled by it. "But it's okay."

"Do you - I mean, were you -"

Kurt waited for Blaine to finish, and when it was obvious he couldn't, he prompted, "Was I..?"

"When... you got the news that... this had happened," Blaine broached the subject reluctantly, and wouldn't meet Kurt's eyes, "Did you... did you think of me sleeping?"

If Blaine had looked up, he would have seen the numerous facial expressions Kurt made, and the rate at which he changed them. As it was, he saw nothing, until Kurt lifted his chin with two soft fingers and met his eyes evenly, his face open and smiling (which, for the record, was a gigantic change from the expression he'd just had). "Yes," he said. "I thought of that first. But you should probably understand that this thing is a good thing, that sleeping is a nice way to view the dead. Even if I don't believe that their spirits or whatever go anywhere, like, an afterlife, and even if I know their bodies will decompose, it's nice to just picture them resting and gaining more strength so they can wake up to the sun filtering through their window and a nice breakfast waiting for them in the kitchen. I thought of you sleeping and hoped for it the way I hope for everyone else around me that dies, or could do so easily. You know that, right?"

Blaine's eyelids were fluttering, even though every word was being committed to memory. "Yeah."

"You're tired," Kurt noted, his voice softer now, yet still kind.

"Mm."

"Do you want me to sing to you?"

"Mm." Kurt took a moment to decide, and in that moment, Blaine made a request. "There was one you sang to me before. Back in New York. Your mom used to sing it to you."

"Do you want to hear that one?"

"Yes, please." Blaine yawned tiredly, and Kurt laughed in silence at how he turned his head to the side, his lips slightly puckered. Kurt leaned down and pressed his own against them, knowing what he was searching for. "Mm."

As soon as Kurt broke away, he started to sing the lullaby, whispering it just loud enough for the actual tune to carry, withdrawing slowly from Blaine's worn face to grow a bit louder, so the words weren't as broken. In his head, he could still hear the simple piano music he'd written to go with it, back so many years ago when he still couldn't play.

"Just close your eyes," Kurt crooned gently, "And go to your happy place." Blaine remarked idly in his fading mind that he was already there. "I don't wanna see the tears streaming down your face." Nobody did, and the warmth of the knowledge spread through him, making him comfortable, even on the hard, railed cot. "Just close your eyes and hope - imagine that you're back at home."

The lullaby Blaine had wanted was a short one, but it didn't matter. By the time it was done, he was already sleeping.

Kurt leaned in once more and chastely brushed his lips over Blaine's. "Sweet dreams, love," he wished aloud, and then sat back, content playing at the corners of his mouth as the corner of Blaine's rose up in his slumber.

---

There are several important things that happened in the next few years. Blaine healed just enough to be on time for his audition to NYADA and got accepted, even with poor breath support (because it wasn't his fault and he was stunning regardless), Kurt's status at Vogue went up until he was actually helping Isabelle with design ideas (just little ones when she was stuck, but still), and the Glee kids dated with increasing incestuousness until Kurt swore that Rory was the only one who'd come out of it relatively unscathed. Kurt moved in with Blaine when he got an apartment in the city. Santana constantly asked them for sexual advice, though they knew she needed none and was only asking to see if they'd done it yet. They made her stop (no matter how many good ideas she gave).

Kurt and Blaine kind of forgot to propose to each other. Which wasn't to say that they never got married. It was odd, but they had the wedding planned out so meticulously that neither of them actually thought about when it would happen until the Cake Shop they'd been planning on was about to close and Kurt called Blaine with the news and asked if he wanted to book for two weeks from that Saturday. Everyone else found it hilarious when they explained to them that neither of them actually proposed - and they found it even more hilarious that both of them had rings already so they could do just that.

They got married. Everyone laughed when Kurt gave up pretending it was alright and reached across the "alter" to untie Blaine's tie and his own bowtie and switch them so the garments better fit them. Everyone cried when Cooper, who had demanded he officiate the ceremony, took the first dance with Blaine to make up for their parents not coming. Kurt and Burt (in place of Father and Daughter) didn't mind in the slightest, and when Blaine next got to dance with Kurt, he hugged him so fiercely the whole time he actually had minor bruises around his shoulder blades.

Kurt graduated with a degree in Musical Theatre and immediately got the first role in an off-Broadway production he auditioned for. Blaine followed suit a semester later with a degree in the same, and Isabelle, who, for all intents and purposes, was basically their adoptive New York mother, managed to snag them a photo shoot wearing some of the clothes Kurt designed. Someone from Broadway noticed and remembered Kurt, having seen the musical, and was inspired - and within six months' time, the couple was making their Broadway debut together in a musical that had them playing love interests. The audience was blown away and their performances were called "the epitome of wonderment that all who ever love hope to achieve".

Santana refused to be their surrogate on the grounds that she only wanted things going in her vagina and not out, and Rachel couldn't because she was still working her ass off trying to get the renown they had. (And yes, that does mean that both of them made their names in lights before Miss Rachel Berry. She was pissed and also proud. They didn't care.) They were considering adoption when Tina said she'd gotten into a small private College dedicated only to acting in the city and that she'd gladly do it. And so, a year and two months after that was announced, they brought home their son.

They named him Devon.

And when they brought their little girl home they named her Elizabeth.

They lived long and they lived well. Their friends and family were happy enough (though, with time, Blaine's parents started refusing to acknowledge his existence entirely) and their children were raised well. They followed their dreams, they visited Rory for the first time in way too long, (they helped Rory and Sugar through their long-distance and rekindled relationship,) they played mediator for all the feuding couples, and when one by one the adults they'd had in their lives died off (including Puck, who, despite his claims of immortality, died early of an STD) they healed each other and everyone else.

And years later, when Elizabeth was married and settled down with her wife Katrina and Devon was engaged to his co-star Lois from his hit TV show Greenroom, when they'd starred in all the Broadway productions they could and Blaine's albums had dropped from going platinum to only going gold and Kurt's designs could still be found on every fashionable person in the world, (a.k.a. when they got really old,) they passed away when they were sleeping, with their hands still intertwined.

THE END