“Alright, everyone,” Finn says, calling the attention of the New Directions as he walks through the choir room door. All conversations abruptly die, and they look to him. Normally, he’d be a little awed by the mere effect of his presence in this room now. But as it is, he’s a bit preoccupied. He tries not to show it. He’s got to play this off well. “We’ve got a lot to do today and even more to do this week. To start us off, I’ve…” he digs around in his bag, knowing what he’s pretending to look for isn’t there. He furrows his brow after a couple seconds and then sighs, looking up. “I forgot the markers in the Teacher’s Lounge again.”

There are a few scattered laughs and even more people rolling their eyes, but everyone’s got a humored smile on their faces. Finn pretends to grimace, but with a well-meaning smile on his face. He acts like he’s scanning the crowd of faces briefly before saying, “Blaine, could you run down and nab them while I start on the lesson? I’ll catch you up when we get back.”

Blaine nods his gelled head without second thought. His smile isn’t as wide or as truthful as the rest of the groups’, but then, neither is Finn’s, no matter how hard either of them try to make it seem so. Maybe that’s why neither notice the other’s smile deficiency. “Thanks,” Finn says, tossing him the key to the Teacher’s Lounge that he’s had bestowed upon him.

Finn waits until he’s outside before turning to the others and letting his face fall. He takes a deep breath and leans against the piano, covering his face with his hands for a moment to compose himself.

“Finn?” Artie asks, his tone serious and concerned now. “What’s up, man?”

Finn sucks in another sharp gust of air to try and power through it. “I couldn’t say it with Blaine in here,” he says quietly, peering over his shoulder to see Blaine turning the corner into a new hallway, no idea what’s going on.

“What happened?” Sam leans forward, somber-faced and morbidly curious/worried.

“It’s Kurt,” Finn tells them honestly, siding further along the piano until he collapses on the bench.

“What about Kurt?” asks Tina. “He’s okay, right?”

“No, he’s not,” Finn exhales the breath he hadn’t been aware he was holding in. “He got hit by a speeding car. It came around the corner right as he was crossing the street, and they couldn’t stop fast enough and he couldn’t move fast enough and…” he has to fight to even his breathing. He’s always been good at not hyperventilating at terrible news and instead just shouting something and escaping, but this time he feels a bit like it’s closing in.

“Oh my god,” Marley says. Finn smiles at her weakly. She doesn’t even know Kurt and even she’s horrified. They must have done a good job of telling about the little China Doll. “Is he… you know -“

“He’s alive,” Finn answers immediately, nodding to affirm it. There’s a collective sigh of relief, but it’s short-lived. “But he’s in the ICU, and Burt and Carole are flying up to New York tonight to be with him. Rachel’s done a pretty good job so far of calling everyone and keeping it together, but when she called me she kinda broke down and… and she could really use someone who knows how to calm her down, kind of like Kurt might when he wakes up.”

“So you’re going, too?” Tina says, not incredulous, but somewhat coldly, as if she was tired of something. “Are we allowed to come?”

Finn laughs bitterly. “I’m not going until this weekend,” he says. “I had to let you guys know ahead of time why I’ll be acting a little off this week. I couldn’t say it with Blaine in the room because… well, he pretends he’s okay, but he’s really not. He’s getting better,” he says, at the looks of guilt on their faces accompanying their disbelief, “but he’s still pretty messed up, and if he knew how badly Kurt was hurt he’d… I’d hate to think what he’d do.”

“What?”

Finn stiffens and then slumps, turning to look at the doorway, where Blaine is stranding with wide eyes and the markers he’d been sent out for. “What?!” he asks again, more persistent this time, his panic growing by the second.

“You weren’t supposed to hear…” Finn mutters, shutting his eyes against the sight.

The sound of Blaine’s next breath is as harsh as the edge of a blade. His voice is strained and dangerously calm when he next speaks. “Finn,” he says, trying to be gentle and failing miserably, “how badly is he hurt?”

“He’s in the ICU,” says Kitty, sparing no feelings, going straight to the point and blunt.

The effect isn’t immediate. In fact, Finn doesn’t see any effect. Blaine’s face doesn’t change, his voice doesn’t morph, he doesn’t freeze in place or crumble to the floor. He just stands there, and the only thing that’s different is how glassy his eyes are suddenly.

There’s silence for several moments. Nobody says anything, does anything. Nobody dares to breathe.

“Is it alright if I take a walk?” Blaine asks suddenly, exactly the same as before his question was answered.

“Blaine -” Sam starts.

Blaine holds up a hand. “Alone?”

“Yeah,” Finn agrees immediately. “Clear your head, take your time, it’s okay. We’ll be here when you get back.”

-~*~-

“Rachel.”

“Blaine Warbler, I am going to kick your ass if you so much as say that you’re not coming up here right this very instant.”

“Hi.”

“Hi.”

Rachel’s voice, for the first time since Blaine had met her, even over the phone, is scratched and hoarse and rough. Her words are forceful and violent but it’s obvious from how hard she’s trying to make her tone match them that she’s hurting. Blaine sighs. He’s waiting for it to be too much.

At his Sadie Hawkins dance at his second old school, when the three jocks had been him and his date up and they’d been taken to the hospital, they’d asked him to name the amount of pain he was in when they put pressure on certain areas, like his ribs and his calves. The most pain he’d been in was when they’d tried stretching his neck, and it locked up as it was tilted to the right, and it hadn’t moved, causing a horrible grinding agony every time he tried. He named that a nine, and later, when he’d been getting medication, the nurse told him he was brave for calling what should have been a ten a nine.

He’d been holding back on his ten.

He’d thought everything he’d done to Kurt had been his ten. But he realized it had been an eight; what he was feeling was a nine, and he’d been through nines before. But looking at Kurt, seeing that, knowing he might never look back at him… that might be an eleven.

“Has he woken up?”

“He’s heavily sedated, he’s going to be out cold for about two days at least,” she says to him, and it’s good to hear that she can manage to hold herself together. Blaine already feels guilty, asking what he’s about to, and it’s a little easier now that she’s made it clear that she can handle it. He’s proud of her, despite their lack of contact for the past three or so weeks.

“How are you holding it together?”

She takes a really long, really shaky breath. “I’m staying at the hospital tonight, but I’ve got to get to classes at college because we promised each other if one of us got hurt we’d still do what we came here to do, which was slowly become famous, and I can’t break that promise to him. But I can’t… I can’t let him wake up alone.”

“Aren’t Burt and Carole flying out there?”

“Yeah.” She laughs. It’s fake. “They’ll be here in a couple hours, they took the red-eye. But I don’t want him to wake up alone.”

Blaine could feel his nine creeping into ten position. “He’ll have his d-“

“He’s always alone when he’s not with you, Blaine,” Rachel blurts finally, and it sounds like she’s started crying on the other end. “No matter what I do or who he meets, whenever I hear him sleeping he says your name, and when he wakes up crying he says it’s because of nightmares and then falls back asleep and says your name again, and it’s awful. He missed you, Blaine, more than he thinks he should, and he’s alone. I’m not the kind of company he needs. You are.”

“Rachel,” Blaine begins, but he can’t continue. The ten has finally hit; his heart skips three beats and then makes up for it in the space of a third of one, maintaining its pace as if it’s bolting from a monster. Tears leak from his eyes, coating his cheeks, and he drops his head to his hand, sliding down his locker and the one below it until he’s on the ground, trembling with such condensed energy he’s afraid he’ll explode. “I don’t… I d-don’t think I can look at h-him like that. So hurt. I d-did it too him once and… and I c-can’t… I d-don’t…”

“Don’t you start crying until you get on a flight,” she orders him, but it’s obvious she can’t keep herself in one piece much longer. “You have to come up here. He needs you. He needs his Blaine.”

“Exactly!” Blaine chokes, “He n-needs the Blaine he used t-to think I was, not m-me.”

“You’re the same Blaine,” Rachel admits quietly, “but with new mistakes. And I have a feeling, Blaine, that even if he was still mad at you, he wouldn’t be able to send you away. And I need you, Blaine. I need a friend and Finn’s not coming until this weekend, and Burt and Carole can only do so much staying in a hotel and with him all the time.”

“I’m just as messed up about this as you are,” he points out, his voice darkening as he realizes she’s right.

“I know,” she laughs. It’s real. But sad. “And that’s why I need you, because we’ll be able to just cry and hug it out and nobody’s going to tell me to just calm down.”

“Rachel -“

“Blaine, please!” she begs him now. “Please come! Kurt needs you and I need you and you know that Burt and Carole still love you and you know that you can stay with us and I can’t keep it together anymore and I swear I’m not angry and please come help me, please!”

He tries to breath, but it gets lodged in his throat. “I’ll see what the next flight is and if I can get on.”

“Thank you, thank you, thank you,” she blubbers at him. “If you tell me where to meet you, I’ll see you there, I’ll… I’m so sorry I guilted you into this but thank you.”

“I do love you, Rachel,” he tells her, “And you know I love K… him.” It hurt too much to say his name. Hearing it was inevitable but saying it made everything seem too final. “And I’m coming. Okay? Right now.”

“I love you too,” she sobs quietly. “D-Do you want to watch a movie tomorrow, when I get out of school?”

He presses his lips together in a tight line in a poor attempt at a bitter smile. “Yeah. As long as you can bring it to the hospital.”

“I’ve got a portable DVD player,” she tells him, and for some reason she gets even sadder. Then she explains: “Kurt gave it to me last week.”

Blaine’s about to respond again when Rachel swears loudly. “I’ve got another call. Text me the details, okay? Thank you, I love you, I’m sorry, I’ve got to go -” and there was a click.

Blaine let the loose stitching sewn into him by his friends lately come completely undone, and he brought his knees in tightly to his chest, his hands tugging at his hair, messing it up. He didn’t care. He wondered how bad Kurt’s hair would look…

-~*~-

“So you took a while,” Sam says, crouching down to Blaine’s level in the hallway, his eyes on him evenly, though he was clearly upset. “And I got a little bit worried. Care to explain the sobbing?”

“Aren’t you worried about him?!” Blaine hisses, in a voice a little too broken to be an accusation. “About his pain, and his family, and Rachel? About him?!”

“Whoa, take it easy,” Sam says gently. Blaine is still in a ball on the floor, pulling at his hair so the gel is coming out and it’s beginning to curl. “Seriously, man, I mean it.”

“Easy isn’t possible,” Blaine choked. Sam wished he’d look up, wished he’d stop crying. The rest of the Glee club had finished their daily after-school meetup ten minutes ago, and they’d agreed unanimously to find Blaine. Sam had been the first to hear the sound of sobbing from his locker area, and the ND were waiting for his signal that it was okay to come out. He wasn’t going to give it just yet, not when Blaine was so vulnerable. “Easy is cheating and I’ve done that already and look what it did to me and him.”

“Easy isn’t cheating,” Sam tries to explain. “Easy it relaxation, okay? And yeah, sometimes taking it easy isn’t right. But you haven’t taken anything easy for at least a month, so please just… try to clear your head for a little bit, dude. I’m right here.”

“He’s hurt, he’s hurt…” Blaine whimpers pitifully.

“He’s going to get better,” Sam lied, with a lot of uncertainty that he hid. “And so will you and so will your relationship. Just take a deep breath. Okay? Breathe in through your nose…” Blaine inhaled so quickly it felt like the air was being yanked away, and then he let it all out in a sob, “No, try doing it slowly, not all at once…” and though this took three more tries, he was finally able to take in a controlled breath. “Okay, now breathe out through your mouth.” Blaine attempted to breathe as slowly as he’d done with his nose, but a fresh sob tore from him midway through and the air clogged before gushing out again. “Better, but try to not break the stream of air, try to keep that one breath unbroken.” This time it only took two tries. “There you go, it’s not that hard. Breathe in… sh, it’s okay, bro.” Blaine had begun clenching his fists and tightening his breaths again. “In, like this… there you go, now out like I told you… now in… out…”

By the time Sam was done instructing Blaine on how to breathe properly, Blaine’s legs had peeled away to either side of him and he’d thrown his usual prim and proper head back to rest on the locker, his face closed off but for the air he’d been abusing.

“Better?” Sam asks, feeling a little bit like a therapist and a lot like a best friend.

“Good enough,” Blaine murmurs honestly. Though he’s no longer weeping, his voice is just as broken. Sam had known something was up when he’d just wanted to walk, without showing any signs of discomfort. He knew Blaine was a good actor but the level of skill it must have taken - skill and, unfortunately, practice - to hide so much heartbreak was astounding.

“We were all worried about you, actually, not just me,” Sam says, sighing and relaxing beside Blaine now, having given the cue. Finn is the first one to jump out from behind the wall, and the others all follow. Blaine doesn’t bother even opening his eyes when the massive footstep sounds bombard them.

“So that’s where you were all hiding,” he remarks emotionlessly, still not looking.

“Did you know we were there?” Artie asks him, his wheelchair halting in front of the boy on the ground.

“No,” Blaine said, and Sam was beginning to notice how his voice lost a little brokenness with each sentence, and gained a little emptiness. “I guessed, when Sam said you were all worried.”

“We were worried, Blaine,” Tina says, getting on her knees beside him. Within a moment, the guy’s surrounded, but nobody’s saying anything. “And we’re sorry, because we hadn’t noticed just how not okay you are.”

Blaine makes a sound similar to that of a repressed hiccup and Sam realizes it’s a false laugh. “You’re forgiven,” he nearly moans the words. “It’s not like I expected you to. Even I didn’t notice until after I went to New York to see him. Hopefully that doesn’t happen this time.”

“This time?” Brittany asks, her hand reaching out to grab his. “You’re going away?”

“I told Rachel I would,” he says, to everyone’s general shock. Sam stares at him, confused. When did he talk to Rachel? “I called her when I was sure you guys couldn’t hear me anymore,” he explained, his voice growing fainter. “She begged me to come down because apparently he needs me to break his trust again.”

“Blaine,” Sam said sternly.

“Sorry. I mean, because apparently she made a pact with him that if one of them got hurt the other would still go to class and work and stuff to get famous and she doesn’t want him waking up alone if she’s in class and Burt and Carole are having lunch or something.”

“Blaine,” Sam repeats, this time somewhat suspicious, “You don’t want to go up there, you don’t want to be with him?”

Blaine doubles over like Sam had physically wounded him and brings his hand to cover his face, though the one being held by Brittany stayed by his side without qualm. “F crs wnt t,” comes the reply muffled by his fingers.

“Was that bear language?” Brittany asks quietly, “Because I speak bear and that wasn’t very nice.”

“No,” Blaine says, straightening back up so quickly he flings his head against the locker with considerable force and everyone flinches from the sound on impact. Blaine’s eyes are still closed but Sam can see the wetness beginning to reform around the corners again, and without thinking, puts his hand on his shoulder comfortingly. “I said, of course I want to.”

“To go, to be with him?” Jake specifies.

“Or to stay and do neither?” inquires Ryder.

“The first,” he answers. “But I… what if he…” Blaine takes another deep breath, far too much like the ones Sam told him to use to be of any actual easiness; he was trying to recompose himself. “Never mind. I’m going to be there for Rachel and K… K… him, and I’m leaving tonight, and none of you are coming with me. Finn, I’ll see you this weekend, and then I’ll come back.”

Sam wasn’t the only one who caught his reluctance to say Kurt’s name, nor was he the only one to say nothing of it. “Dude, don’t go,” Artie says.

“I’ll be back a couple hours after Finn arrives,” Blaine specifies, and moves to stand. Just as he’s getting to his feet, his knees give out and he slams against the locker, hanging onto it to remain upright for a moment.

“Blaine, dude,” says Finn, “Rachel can handle herself for a week and we need you. And you’re obviously not in any state to be flying anywhere.”

“I’m going,” he retorts determinedly, his eyebrows furrowing with concentration. “Don’t know why, I’m just a little dizzy. Probably from all that stupid cry… crying.” He didn’t stutter over the word, he restarted saying it because he’d tried to walk and ended up clinging to the tiny lock. Brittany skitters back and away from him and Tina takes his hand instead, throwing Sam a look. Without speaking, he moves over to Blaine’s side and plucks him, far too easily, from his locker, and puts Blaine’s arm around his shoulders, while Tina takes the other one. “What are you doing?” he asks, regaining his footing moments later. “It was just a head rush, I can make my own dramatic exit.”

“We’re going to walk you to Sam’s car, and he’s going to drive you home,” Tina said, beginning to outline the plan. “And since there’s no convincing you otherwise, he’s going to help you pack. I’m going to drive your car right behind you and leave it at your house, and when you’re ready, we’re both taking you to the airport.”

Blaine is silent for a moment, and in his next words, gratitude floods his tone. “Why?”

“Because we care about you and we care about our friends,” Sam takes his turn talking.

“Guys, you can’t just -” Finn started from behind them.

“Yes, we can,” Brittany said. And then she was wheeling Artie beside them, and they left Finn and the newcomers standing by the lockers, confused and saddened and a bit weirded out.

-~*~-

“Where are your parents?” Sam asks, as he peeks his head back in Blaine’s room, where Tina is laying out different bowties for him to take.

Blaine pauses for a moment in folding one of his shirts. “Today’s Monday, so… I think my mother has a meeting and my dad’s over at the church.”

“Why is your dad at a church?” Brittany asks.

“Why is your mom in a meeting?” inquires Tina.

Blaine shrugs. “My dad volunteers at the church all the time. He used to be a Pastor, but that didn’t pay too well, and so now he’s a half-time night-shift doctor. My mom’s in a meeting because she has one every Monday and Thursday afternoon right after school lets out and doesn’t get home until late at night. Her law firm keeps her on her toes all the time, though, so it’s not like I see her much anyways.”

Sam waits a moment before he dares to ask. “Will they notice you’re gone?”

Blaine snorts. “Of course they’ll notice. They love me, they just don’t see me enough to tell me. After a day or two they’ll notice that I haven’t been to dinner, and they’ll come to my room and read the note I’ve prepared over there.” He gestured broadly to his desk. “My dad probably won’t mind, he didn’t last time I flew out. We’ve got the money for it, and I’ll be back. My mom will probably call and make sure I’m okay, though.”

Sam and Tina wore masks of equal discomfort and Brittany looked at Blaine blankly.

“Hey, what’s this?” asked Artie suddenly, wheeling into the room with a box on his lap. Inside the small cardboard box, which was lidless, was a stuffed dog, a framed black-and-white photograph, a bouquet of pressed-and-preserved red and yellow flowers, and a scrapbook. “It looks like -“

Blaine makes a strangled sound and lunges for the box, tearing it from Artie’s grasp and yanking it away. “Where did you get it?” he demands, looking in the contents wildly.

“It was in the kitchen -” Artie begins, confused, but Blaine’s already dropped it onto the bed and relaxing.

“Kitchen, right,” Blaine sighs with relief, sitting on the bed next to the box and draping a shirt over it so they couldn’t peer inside, not that it did much good. They’d all seen the various gifts of/from Kurt. “Because I was getting the flowers from between the loafs of bread.”

“Why do you put bread in your fridge?” Brittany asks, as if that’s the thing to focus on. “It makes it go stale quicker.”

“It’s gluten-free bread, it’s supposed to be refrigerated,” Blaine explains briefly. “My mother doesn’t eat gluten.”

And so, after taking a half an hour to pack and an hour more to make plane plans, they all pile into Sam’s car again and drive off, leaving Blaine’s note on his pillow, next to his box, which, oddly enough, is missing its stuffed dog now. The very same stuffed dog that was discreetly placed in Blaine’s bag when the others were turned away.

-~*~-

“Rachel.”

Rachel had been scouring the airport room for any sign of the slick hair she knew so well. She’d been looking for bowties, and short-sleeves, tight-fitting polo shirts. She’d been looking for ankle-length pants and kooky socks and old-man shoes. No wonder she didn’t see Blaine. He looked completely different. And he’d just entered from behind where she’d been standing, with her phone in her hand, ready to text him, and her other hand free but clenched. Even just standing anymore made her feel awful, because no matter how kind and grateful Burt and Carole were, they didn’t get that when your best friend is so close to you but so far away and you can not get to them you feel like your heart is being ripped out and thrown after them. Blaine understood that better than anyone she knew and she thought she knew what he’d show up looking like. She did not expect what she received.

At the sound of her name she spins around, a watery grin on her face to welcome him, and she freezes.

He stood in front of her, completely different. It wasn’t the clothes, or the hair, though honestly she couldn’t believe he was letting it get so unruly as to begin curling loosely around his whole head. It wasn’t that the only tie he was wearing wasn’t in a bow, or that his normal odd attire that had somehow been cute had been replaced by rather loose jeans and a plain gray tee. It wasn’t that his shoes were normal tennis shoes or that he hadn’t bothered to change out of his mis-matched, kooky socks, but had changed everything else. It was him.

The way he stood, the way he carried himself just standing in front of her. He had only one small bag, for which she had expected, but it still saddened her; though not as much as what he’d become did. He was shy, wincing away from society, pulling back, scared. He wasn’t bold and vivacious and out there and those damn Anderson puppy eyes were the saddest she’d ever seen them. He was the same person, but with new mistakes, like she’d said. But those new mistakes had made him so horrified of himself that he was horrified at the thought of being himself.

“Blaine,” she says, taken aback. “You’re… and I thought I was upset.”

“You are,” he replies honestly, holding out his arm, and without a second thought she takes it. At least his chivalry hadn’t changed. “And I’m here to cry and hug it out, remember?”

“Thank you so, so much for coming,” she told him earnestly, forgetting his appearance and demeanor and just being glad he was there. They started walking out of the airport, her unconsciously guiding him out the way she came in. It didn’t feel so much like her heart was being thrown anymore, but it was still out of her chest. “We can go straight to the hospital, but I’m spending the night there and unless you want to too we could go to the apartment first and get you situated.”

“Where am I sleeping?” Blaine asks, his voice lilting and vaguely curious. She actually felt like smiling - it really was easier to stay put together when he was around, and it was clear he felt the same around her.

“My bed, unless you want to sleep somewhere else,” she tells him. “I’ve changed the sheets and washed the pillowcases so it’s all ready for you, and I won’t be using it. If you want to sleep on the couch and fall asleep during a movie, feel free. I’ve got all our DVDs set out for your choice, and the microwave popcorn is on the counter. I’ll show you when we get there unless you want to drop me off first and then go on your own, which I don’t think you’ll want to do.”

Blaine actually chuckles and shakes his head a tiny bit. “What?” Rachel asks. “Too much?”

“No, it’s perfect,” he assured her, “And I mean that. I haven’t heard you talk in so long and now… now I’m going to spend almost a week with you where I’m not actually going to see you most of the time and I really missed you, Rachel.”

She slides her grip on his arm down until they’re holding hands. “I missed you too, Blaine,” she tells him, just as they step outside. “And so did Kurt.”

It’s impossible to miss how, for just one second after hearing his name, everything about Blaine just sort of goes slack. But she says nothing.

-~*~-

Blaine watched as Rachel bade him a last goodbye with a kiss on the cheek before she left for the hospital. He set his bag down on the floor and looked around the apartment, wishing that the hugging would commence so the crying wouldn’t feel so lonely, and also wishing that the crying would stop. He’d felt a lot better talking to Rachel, kind of like how he’d felt talking to Sam - but Sam just didn’t get it the way Rachel did, and maybe that was because Sam had never screwed up a relationship with cheating and had instead been cheated on, and Rachel had experienced what it felt like to be the ‘other woman’. Or maybe it was just because he’d actually missed her voice and her constant state of trying to be enough for everyone, including herself. But she wasn’t there now and though he realized he shouldn’t have, he’d been depending on her for that hug and shoulder to cry on.

‘No,’ he tries to tell himself, ‘you’ve cried way too much way too often lately and you will not break down until you’re watching that movie with Rachel tomorrow. You will absolutely not cry unless Rachel is with you and if Kurt wakes up when you’re around you’re going to do nothing but apologize profusely and leave when he tells you to and even if he doesn’t you will because it’ll be really awkward and painful and Burt will want to see him.’

He hadn’t known how long he’d been standing in the apartment trying not to cry until his phone buzzed with a text and he saw that the time had gone by a lot quicker than he’d thought. The light outside was already almost completely gone, just the last glimmer over the horizon line set by the city dwindling down behind glass towers. The text was from Rachel.

R | He just looks so broken. It hurts.

Blaine felt a bit like he’d run out of air again and once more, for the second time that day, his knees gave out and he collapsed onto the couch.

B | Yeah, I could feel the hurt all the way in Ohio.

R | Do you want me to send you a picture so you’re prepared? It’s pretty bad.

B | Not tonight. I can’t take it tonight.

R | Go eat your feelings.

B | Got any cake?

R | Kurt left some in the fridge.

B | Of course he did.

Kurt, who insisted that cakes of any variety were a gift from a god he didn’t believe in, hadn’t even gotten the chance to finish his last cake. Blaine set down his phone, grabbed one of the cheap, stringy pillows on the couch, buried his face in it, and tried to remember to breathe how Sam had told him to. In, slowly… out, not broken… in, slowly… out, not broken… in, slowly… out, He just looks so broken… in, quickly… out, sobbing… again… ‘how totally pathetic, Blaine, you’re so totally pathetic…’

-~*~-

“Are you sure?” Rachel asks him again. “That you’re ready? Because I know you said you are but it’s awful, Blaine, and it’s just terrible and I can’t help thinking -“

“You’re making it sound like I’m going to be walking in on a squirrel nesting in his decomposed ribcage,” Blaine snaps, tired from the previous day and from rising so early so Rachel could go to class and he could stay with Kurt (and Burt and Carole) at the hospital. The walls outside the rooms here were lined with hard, plastic chairs. Blaine had brought the homework he’d been assigned to work on and a book to read afterwards, and he’d brought along Rachel’s DVD player and a box set of Animaniacs, which was a really old show he and Cooper used to watch when they were little and their dad was still recovering from his alcoholism. He feels guilty immediately after he snaps at Rachel. “Sorry. Long night.”

“It’s totally fine,” she assures him quickly. “Did you cry?”

“Not much,” he says through tight lips. “Mostly I just looked at his bed and then fell asleep on yours.” He was lying - he’d fallen asleep on Kurt’s bed, and when he’d gotten up he’d re-made it and rumpled the sheets on Rachel’s to make it look like that hadn’t happened.

Though it’s an odd thing to confess to, Rachel nods in understanding.

A thought that he’d been afraid to voice bubbles over his lips. “Aren’t Burt and Carole in there? Can’t I just wait in the hallway until they come out?”

Rachel purses her lips. “Blaine.”

“It’s entirely reasonable.”

“Are you scared?”

Such simple words. Are you scared? Scared of what? he felt like asking. Scared of losing the one person who noticed and cared if you weren’t okay? Scared of having already lost him but losing him now to death? Scared of seeing Burt sob over his son’s corpse as he counted up all he’d lost? Scared of knowing that after hurting Kurt so badly he’d only been able to watch him hurt more? Scared to go through that door and look at the casts and the bruises and the cuts and the pain? Scared of losing his mind if he did so? Of course he was scared. “Yes. Yes, I’m scared.”

Rachel’s hand finds his again. “Me too.”

-~*~-

“Hey,” Blaine says lamely, leaning back in his chair and meeting the towering eyes of Carole as she stood over him, having emerged. “Everything okay?” He places his pencil soundlessly on the Calculus he’d been attempting.

Carole nods. It seems everything everyone did around this hallway was teary or robotic, like they either had to cry or they had to shut down to not cry. Blaine really couldn’t blame them one bit. He’d cried so much, so very much, yesterday and nearly every day before that for weeks, that he wondered if that was why he wasn’t yet. He knew Kurt was in the room directly in from of him and that the four chairs he took up had been silent for hours as he worked and worked and re-worked so he wouldn’t have to stop working. He also knew that if, by some miracle and yet punishment (because if he woke now he’d be in immense pain, or so the doctors said, pain so strong it burned off the morphine), Kurt awoke, he wouldn’t be alone and he wouldn’t even have to have known Blaine was there. He could disappear as soon as he heard the shouts of joy and he’d never have to look at how bad at was. He could run away.

That seemed to be his specialty.

“It’s the same,” Carole says, as if the very words disgust her. “He’s the same. Burt’s still in there right now, but we’re going to get lunch. We haven’t eaten since last night, and we need food.” She looks at him pointedly. “You’ll stay with him, right? In case he wakes up.”

Sudden terror grips him. How can he possibly? How can he look at the person he loves and adores and admires and whom he had hurt without feeling the same crushing guilt and yet hope, and how could he feel that without also feeling like he was being speared through the chest? How could he make himself remain calm when looking at Kurt’s life draining away? He wonders idly if this is how Kurt felt when Karofsky had threatened to kill him. This same compressing ice that locks around your heart as you see the life you could have had flash before your eyes. Not the one you did have, the one you would have had. The one you lived for. But he jerks himself back into reality and nods. “Yeah. Yeah, of course. I’ll stay with him. Go eat, and if anything changes I’ll call.” The words sound like they’re coming from a stranger’s mouth. Carole doesn’t notice.

But she does sit down on the other side of his open textbook and look at him seriously. “Do you need to be warned?”

Blaine opens his mouth to say no, but thinks better of it. “I know it’s horrible,” he says, “but where is it… what parts… how bad…” he struggles to phrase it right.

Carole gives the smallest, saddest smile he’s ever seen. “He’d got three broken ribs, a sprained neck, his right arm is broken in three places, and hopefully you’re not able to see through his foot cast. They’ve managed to stop the internal bleeding, though, so he’s not quite as pale as he was before.”

Blaine lets his lungs suffer for a moment without air before drawing it in carefully, making sure he was under control. His voice threatened to break before he was even speaking, so he took another short moment to force down the tense knot that had risen from his stomach to his throat. “He was pale to begin with, so I’m sure that part won’t be so bad,” he mutters, almost to himself, and then really looks at her. “Thank you. For… telling me.”

She grimaces. “Thank you. For coming.” She rises to her feet and holds out her hand. Blaine unfolds his legs from in front of him in the chair and sets aside his other open textbook that he’d been holding on his lap. He feels as though the air gets colder with each movement he makes as she helps him up and they walk closer. Closer, closer, the door he’d been so careful not to look through was opening - oh god, that was his foot cast -

Kurt was lying on the cot, just as Blaine thought he would be: his casts glint in the florescent, cruel lighting, and he could see the childish innocence in his face behind the swelling and still-open wounds. And the heart monitor did beep steadily, creating a rhythm his chest rose and fell with. He felt like ripping out his heart, if it hadn’t already been torn from his chest; he even felt the gaping hole where it should be, and crossed his arms over the area, trying to hold himself together, knowing he would be able to as long as he just looked away… but he couldn’t. The peace on Kurt’s face, the peace that always was present there when he entered his dream land, was so twisted by the gore that his body had become it seemed vile, and yet, so sweet. His neck was surrounded by a thick white brace and his cheek had one hell of an ugly bruise across it, and his arm, suspended in the air by a cable, was also covered in the white plastic gauze. The rest of him was under a blanket, but it seemed with each stertorous breath that he could feel the injuries, even when sleeping. How awful it must be, to be free and floating but tied down by tethers of plaster and pain.

Blaine turns his gaze away as quickly as possible. His breath was gone and none was coming in; his lungs screamed in protest but he didn’t care. He looks to Burt, who has dark bags under his eyes similar to the ones that seem permanently etched onto Blaine’s face, ever since his last visit to the Big Apple. He hadn’t been able to sleep more than an hour a night until last night when he collapsed on Kurt’s bed.

Blaine doesn’t keep track of the time because he’s looking at where Burt was but seeing nothing; seeing nothing because a) he’s preoccupied in his head, and b) Burt and Carole left to get lunch already. All that’s in the room is the chair warmed by Burt and the one warmed by Carole next to the bed of the boy whose heart is being monitored with an irritatingly clear and constant beeping noise. He’s alone, he realizes. He can stop the blockade he’d built in his mind. He can think. And he can do it without falling apart… probably. Possibly.

Blaine tentatively sits down beside Kurt. It’s like torture, sitting there and not having him respond. Not having him acknlowedge him. Blaine had been so scared of being turned away, of having Kurt wake up and making him leave, but this was worse; being ignored and not even on purpose, but because he really couldn’t see him. Couldn’t feel him.

He had long ago accepted that the only reason Kurt loved Blaine was because Blaine loved Kurt. But when he’d cheated, when he’d told, when he’d come clean to Kurt about what he’d done and what he’d felt, he’d ruined that. Blaine did love Kurt. Blaine loved Kurt more than anyone in the history of anything had loved anyone else, ever. But Kurt didn’t feel like that anymore, didn’t know that anymore, and now he was catatonic and broken and bruised and he didn’t love Blaine. Who could blame him? Blaine didn’t love himself either.

But he raised his hand and touched the one that wasn’t injured that lay on the polka-dotted, stark-white, iron-creased hospital-cot blanket. Kurt’s skin was cold, colder than Blaine had ever felt until he touched it; and the lack of his heat, his warmth, ran in a gigantic wave over Blaine’s body so he was chilled to the bone. Nonetheless, he slips his fingers in between Kurt’s and squeezes, trying to squeeze harder and failing due to the frigid set of his limbs. “Kurt?” Blaine asks uselessly. “Kurt, it’s Blaine. If you want me to go, I will. If you want me to stay, I will. If you want me to just disappear and have ever existed, I’ll try my hardest to make you forget that you ever met me. If that’s what you want.”

He waits. Nothing.

“But only if it’s what you want,” he continues, knowing it’s futile to talk to him but needing to. “If you don’t want me to, I won’t. I won’t do anything you don’t want me to ever again, I swear it. If you want an apology I haven’t been able to get, like, seven out of my head that keep bouncing around and hitting my other thoughts so they take precedent… I could tell you them now but they’re pretty lengthy.”

Nothing. Just the steady, even beats of his heart being relayed on that stupid monitor. But Blaine was getting worked up, and he swallowed the lump that had jumped back in his throat down, successfully fighting tears back (for the first time since that night), though he couldn’t stop the feeling of being freezing old or of being alone, and he couldn’t stop the quivering.

“I’m so sorry, K…” again, he stops just before the name comes up, and this time he shudders, shutting his eyes and dropping his head. “I’m so sorry. I know that doesn’t matter and that you don’t trust me, but I am, so… right. You get it. Well, no, you don’t, but if you were… right. I just… I feel like I owe you an explanation because I do. It’s just… I was so proud of you, and I know that sounds stupid, but I really was. I was so proud of you making it so big so fast, and for being so happy. But I wasn’t happy and I wasn’t proud of myself and without you there, nobody else was, either, and I felt lonely and sad and scared and I sometimes think that if that’s how you felt before you met me then I am the worst human being to walk the planet. I don’t even feel human without you, though, so I suppose that doesn’t mean anything. But you didn’t need me anymore, and I still needed you, and I thought maybe that meant… that meant that I shouldn’t need you, and so I went and… you know. You know what I did. And immediately afterwards I knew how wrong and awful and hurtful and untrustworthy I’d been and so I had to go see you because I love you and then you were so happy to see me and it hurt and then I tried to tell you that I wasn’t okay through our song and you realized what nobody else did when I needed you to, and then I went and told you and I swear that I’ll try harder. I swear, I promise, I’ve made the only mistake in my life that I’ve ever regretted more than trying to kill myself all those years ago after the Sadie Hawkins dance. And you helped me so much and I watched you grow and learn and make mistakes and I tried to be a good boyfriend and person and teammate and then I… I’ve tried so hard and you walked away crying because I wasn’t enough, and I’ve never been enough but you made me feel like I was. And now I’ve made you feel like you aren’t and I cannot express how wrong that is because you are beautiful and talented and hard-working and independent and strong-willed and classy and funny and loving and more than enough for anyone and you should never feel differently just because I’m an idiot, okay? I love you and I’m so sorry.”

Nothing met his words but the chilled air around them and he shivered in his seat, wondering if he’d ever be warm again.

-~*~-

“It’s hell,” comes the muffled voice from the other side. “Sam, it is absolute hell. I hate it.”

“So come home.”

“I can’t.”

“Yes, you can.” Sam had asked to go to the bathroom during last period, right before the bell rang, and since he’d finished his work, the teacher let him take his stuff and leave early. He’d bolted out of the classroom and to his locker, getting the things he needed for next period, and he’d gone outside the front doors - where, oddly enough, nobody ever looked - and he’d called Blaine. Blaine, whom he’d called and texted for the past two days at every opportunity, trying to make sure that he wasn’t lying when he said staying up there was better. Apparently, he was done lying; the first thing he’d said when he’d picked up was, ‘It’s hell’. “Blaine, for one second, stop thinking about how much it will hurt now and start thinking about how much hurt you’ll be spared later.”

“That doesn’t make any sense, Sam.” He didn’t sound like he was crying; in fact, his voice sounded kind of cracked, like it was dry. Dehydration from all the crying?

“Do you want to come home?”

“Let’s be honest for a minute,” Blaine sighed, “Rachel comes down here and spends the night and after we’ve talked for a while I go to the apartment. I spend most of the day in the hallway reading and watching movies and when Burt and Carole go to lunch, I do the same thing in the room with him. I’m not helping anybody. I’m just a watchdog. And it’s not like he’ll wake up until at least tomorrow anyway, so what am I supposed to do? Wait for a miracle?”

“Dude,” Sam pities him but tries not to show it. “You are helping. You’re not a watch dog. Rachel needs you there when she isn’t there because otherwise you know she’d combust from everything. Burt and Carole don’t ask you to stay out when they’re in there, do they? No, they don’t. They’ve invited you in more than once, you said so yourself. They really do value your company and whether or not you’re doing anything but sitting there and trying not to run away, you’re helping.”

“But I’m not helping him,” Blaine argues. “And if he wakes up it’ll only hurt that much more if I’m the one he wakes up looking at. And then what? I’ll tell you what, as soon as he wakes up, I’m coming home. Burt and Carole will never leave his side and Rachel won’t need me there anymore, plus Finn’s coming on Saturday. I’m trying to be in this room as little as possible because if I do happen to be the one there when he wakes up I don’t want him to know I’ve been there.”

“Why not?” Sam demands, leaning against a pillar, his back to the windows/doors so nobody sees him in front of the stone structure. “Blaine, why didn’t you want to go, and why do you want to come back; and if you want to be here so badly, why not leave now?”

Sam hears something rattling on the other line and Blaine sighs again, this time frustrated. “I didn’t want to come because he didn’t want me to come,” Blaine tells him finally, after a loud thud and the rattling stops. “He didn’t call or respond to any of my calls… or texts, or emails, or notes, or letters. He just didn’t want anything to do with me anymore. And I want to come back because if I do, that means he’s awake and will be okay, and it won’t have been me he sees because he really doesn’t want to see me. But I can’t leave now, because I can’t leave him knowing I could have done something. If he’s awake, it means he’s going to make me leave anyway, so there’s nothing I can do. And I don’t want to be in Ohio that badly; I want to be here, with him, but only if he wants me here, too, and he doesn’t. So I just don’t want to be here.”

Sam takes a deep breath and thinks again about how often breathing is important in talking to Blaine. “Dude, whatever you have in your hands, put it down.”

“No.”

“Bro, put it down. Breaking it won’t help.”

“I need to break something, Sam! I can’t let him be the only broken thing in here, it’s… I can’t!” He was begging Sam to understand now, and Sam shook his head.

“Seriously, man, don’t make me play the low card to get you to set it down.”

“I dare you,” he taunted, and though he obviously didn’t mean it, Sam continued: he needed to hear this.

“He’s not the only broken thing in the room if you’re with him,” Sam counters quietly, tilting his head up to look at the sky.

“I’m not broken.” The words were jagged.

“Yes,” Sam disagrees sadly, “you are.”

There was a long moment of silence, in which Sam could almost feel the horrible waves of depression rolling off of Blaine. And then there was the smallest sound he’d heard over a telephone - something was set down on a surface of some sort with a soft clink. “My hands feel weird empty,” Blaine mutters.

“So hold Kurt’s hand,” he suggests.

The replying words were shattered. “I’ve tried. It doesn’t help. He’s not in there, it doesn’t feel like I’m holding anything.”

“He’s still in there. He’s trying to come back as we speak, but you and I both know he’s trying not to mess up his designer clothes as he fights his way into consciousness.” Sam’s shoulders slumped a little as the weight lifted off them when Blaine laughed. “There you go,” Sam tells him. “So hold his hand, and every time you start getting sad, imagine him taking a break from fighting in some lion pit to check his scarf’s safety, and the lions checking their manes or something.”

Blaine laughed again, louder this time. “What do you think will happen when he does wake up, and he’s not wearing a scarf?”

Even Sam had to chuckle imagining the look of first shock and then irritation when Kurt awoke to his neck covered in a cast and not some silk from Paris. “He’ll make someone put one on him,” he chortled, his wide grin setting in as Blaine started a laughing fit. Sam didn’t know how he did it, but he could get Blaine laughing when everyone else made him cry. He cried a lot lately… it would have lost its significance if it weren’t for how he cried. But his laugh was really refreshing, good on Sam’s ears. Relaxing to know that someone so tense could make room for a little humor.

-~*~-

“To think tomorrow’s Thanksgiving,” Carole whispers softly, brushing a lock of Kurt’s hair from his forehead. “And he might not even wake up for it.”

“He’ll wake up for it,” Burt says, absolutely certain. “He hasn’t missed one since his mom died. He promised me.”

“He promised you what?” Carole asks, scoffing slightly. “That if he was recovering from having half of his body crushed by a speeding care right before Thanksgiving he’d wake up and have turkey with you?”

“He promised me he wouldn’t miss any Holidays with me until I wasn’t there to not have them with,” Burt clarifies, raising his eyebrows as if daring Carole to scoff at that one. Her face falls a bit. “I was all the kid had left. He was eight when she died, Carole. He put her at the top of his Christmas list.” Carole flinches at that. “I had to explain to him that we couldn’t get her back. He insisted that Santa was magic, that he could bring anything because he worked on the power of love, and he loved her more than anything in the world, so it would be extra easy.”

There’s a few moments of really sad silence. “What did you tell him?” she asks finally.

“I didn’t say anything else,” Burt admits. “But I put her on my list.”

There’s another pause. Carole whispers when she next talks. “How did he react when she didn’t show up?”

Burt grins then, caught up in the memory. “He waited until midnight to go to bed, swearing she was late and that he was going to tackle her when she showed up. All day long, he had a wonderful day, thinking he was going to see her again…” Burt’s smile drops. “I couldn’t get him to sleep until after the sun came up. He didn’t wake up until the next day. I’m pretty sure that’s when he stopped believing in Santa.”

Carole nods bitterly. “Did he at least play with his presents?”

Burt shakes his head. “He gave ‘em away. Sent ‘em straight to a homeless shelter. Made me take him… he tried so hard to be happy for them. One of the mothers said she wanted to give him something back and she was sorry she couldn’t because she didn’t have any money, and he outright asked her if he could have his Mommy again, since you don’t need money for good people.”

“Oh my God, Burt,” Carole insinuated, putting a hand over her mouth and batting back tears. “That’s… I’m so sorry.”

Burt shrugs. “He stopped asking for her for birthdays and whatnot when New Years came around and she didn’t throw her party and we got a bunch of sad phone calls instead. People kept calling to ask why she wasn’t throwing her normal party, asking if she was okay. Kurt picked up the phone one time, and they asked if she was there, and he said, ‘No, she’s dead. This is her son.’ He’s answered the phone that way pretty much ever since.”

“Did they not know?” she breathed, horrified.

He shook his head again. “I suck at calling people, and Kurt was always home when I had the chance, and I didn’t want to deal with the sympathy when he needed comfort.”

Carole wipes her eyes with the palm of her hand. “When did he stop missing her?” she asks, her throat clogged and her nose running.

Burt takes a moment to mull it over. “He never did, not really,” he concludes, his face having slowly fallen into one of grief. “He got better at hiding it and sometimes I think he was even okay with it for a moment or two. But he always missed her and she was always on his mind.”

“Always?”

“Well, not when he met Blaine,” Burt allowed. “When he was with Blaine, it was like he forgot she wasn’t there anymore. It wasn’t like she never existed, not really, but for a little bit, when they were together, he wasn’t dragged down by her memory anymore.”

Neither of them noticed that Blaine had come to the door, which they’d taken to leaving open just a crack. Neither of them noticed how his hands shook, how he blinked thrice every second, how his Adam’s apple bobbed and how he swallowed uncomfortably. Neither of them saw the stuffed dog he held in his hands - the one he always brought with him, hidden among papers and book in his bag. Neither of them looked to the door until he knocked softly. They turned at the same moment, both of them surprised to see him standing there with a stuffed animal wearing a bowtie. “Blaine,” Carole said, her voice loose. “What is -?”

“I need to get out for a little while,” Blaine told them, the words nearly tripping over themselves to escape his mouth. “I’ll be back, but I’ve been here too long, it’s driving me crazy. If… if he wakes up, he’ll understand.” He holds up Margaret Thatcher Dog to indicate that that’s what Kurt will understand.

Burt nods once easily, his eyes scrutinizing Blaine’s appearance and widening a bit as he realizes that Blaine heard what he’d said, and it had upset him, unsettled him. Well, who wouldn’t be unsettled? “Sure, son,” he reassures him. “Take your time. We’ll be here.”

Blaine stands awkwardly for a moment, and then walks the few paces into the room to place the dog at the end of Kurt’s bed before spinning on his heel and fleeing away with his face covered by his hand.

-~*~-

“Happy Thanksgiving,” Rachel greets him weakly, collapsed on a chair outside Kurt’s room in the hallway, her head spinning. She hadn’t actually slept since Kurt got hit, and she didn’t know how people expected her. He was her best friend, and he was basically in a medically-induced coma. Combined with school, which, thankfully, she has off today for a holiday, and the fact that she was trying to keep everyone updated and her assignments done and her friends knowledgeable to her whereabouts at all time and still somehow finding time to eat, she was absolutely 100% exhausted. And about three minutes from passing out.

“Rachel?” Blaine asks, sounding confused and more than a little concerned. “Are you okay?”

Rachel tries to nod and instead her head just rolled to the side, taking her body with it.

“Whoa, whoa,” Blaine says, ducking between her and the chair so that when she lands, her shoulders and head are on his waist. She jerks herself back into alertness for another moment before her head swirls again. “You need sleep,” Blaine tells her sternly but softly, tucking her hair behind her ears and smoothing the rest of it.

“No,” she attempts to disagree but slurs the word so much it sounded like a grunt of approval.

“There you go,” he eases her gently into blank unconsciousness. “Take it easy for a while. Escape into a dream, sing on Broadway, win a dance-off with Miss July. Shh, sleep, Rachel. Sleep…” his voice faded into familiar darkness and she let it consume her.

-~*~-

“Happy Thanksgiving,” he says stiffly, peering around the crack in the door and putting his head through. He gave a start at the scene. “Burt? Are you okay? Burt?” he hustled through the door to the man, who was sitting, rubbing his temples, with Carole holding him. “Burt, what’s wrong?”

“He isn’t waking up,” Burt half-coughs, half-sobs. “He promised me he wouldn’t miss a holiday. He promised me.”

“Well…” Blaine hadn’t cried in nearly two days and he would not relapse now. No, he would not. “We’ve… the day isn’t over, Burt.”

“There are four more hours left!” Burt flings at him, but all the viciousness he’d intended to throw had withered to a stub of bitter sorrow. “He promised me. I can’t lose him, too, I can’t…”

Blaine felt his self-control begin to slip and mentally slapped himself. Burt was crying, Carole was crying, and for once he was not going to join a sob-fest. But here was a grown man, weeping because everything he’d held himself together before, everything he’d loved when he had nothing left to, the only thing he’d had left when his world had crumbled that could hold it together, was slipping away from him. Blaine knew that feeling. And he knew it well. As did Carole. In fact, everyone in the room had felt like that at one point, and Blaine tried to use this to his advantage.

“Promises are sometimes broken no matter how hard people try not to break them. And a lot of times, the promises are made when there’s nothing threatening to harm it.” Blaine isn’t exactly sure where he’s going with this, but it’s got Burt’s attention, and at least he’s sobbing quietly now. “I’ve made promises that I’ve broken and I have never regretted anything more than doing just that. The simplest of promises, the easiest. Those are the kind that break with the smallest push, the gentlest shove in the wrong direction. No matter how important, how significant, how small, or how hard someone tries to keep it, sometimes it just can’t be kept. But sometimes it becomes moot. Sometimes, when things get so technical and opinionated you have to make an exception, they don’t matter for a little while. Sometimes a promise is a secret and sometimes a promise is just a secret. There’s a big difference.”

“What’s your point?” Carole asks for Burt.

“My point is that any promise he makes isn’t just a secret,” Blaine explains. “A promise to him is sacred. And if he breaks a promise, especially to you,” he intones, crouching down so he’s on eye level with who could have been his father-in-law, “he would come back from the dead to make amends.”

-~*~-

Blaine sees her head stir in the hallway before he hears her call out. “Blaine?” she asks, groggy, sitting up from how he’d lain her on the chairs, as comfortable as he could make her. “Blaine?”

“In here,” he calls to Rachel, and she swings her feet to the floor, standing and wobbling for a moment before she lurches across the hall and stumbles into Kurt’s room. Her hair is ruffled and her eyelids open and close slowly, her whole body still lethargic. “Aw, Rach,” he sighs, patting the seat next to him. “Come on.”

She doesn’t waste a moment and he catches her as she nearly falls on top of him again. “Easy there,” he guides her to the seat and puts him arm around her shoulders, drawing her close. She’s obviously not done sleeping; she yawns and begins to nod off again right then and there. “Shh, shh,” he soothes her like his mother used to for him before she was so damn busy all the time. She’s out cold in another minute and he’s surrounded, once more, by sleeping people. Burt and Carole had given up on him waking up for Thanksgiving and had gone to their hotel room around eleven, and it was now around three in the morning. He snuggled closer to Rachel, leaning his head on hers, which was nestled into the crook of his neck. He closed his eyes, comfortable. He wondered how it was possible that he was happy right then; his eyes flew open at the thought. ‘Of course you’re happy, Kurt’s here and Rachel’s here and you’re with family again.’ ‘The New Directions are your family, too.’ ‘Yes, but you’re with Kurt. No matter how hard you try, you can’t stay unhappy when you’re with him for too long.’ He continued to war with himself, getting dangerously close to an epiphany before the shrill ringing of his cell phone pierced the air. Cursing, he dug it out of his pocket and answered before it could wake the girl on his shoulder.

“Blaine?”

“Sam,” he sighed, relaxing. “It’s three A.M., why are you up?”

“We need you back home, man,” Sam said, and Blaine recognized the hint in his voice; panic. “We’ve been trying to get a song for Sectionals right and nobody’s stopped texting anybody else and there’s this huge argument, and Finn’s decided on Oppa Gangnam Style and won’t let anyone else have any say and it’s a disaster -“

“Sam?”

“Yes?”

“I’m happy.”

I’m happy. I’m happy! The words had spilled from his lips and he’d felt like laughing outrageously loudly, like he could guffaw until his raucous noise woke up the boy next to him. But he was happy, really happy. He was comfortable and in New York and talking to both Sam and Rachel, his best friends, and one of them was sleeping on his shoulder and the other wanted song choice decision-making help, and he’d been sleeping again, and he could eat again, and he no longer felt like both his body and mind were being shredded, and he was happy. The concept was so foreign and yet so comfortable when Kurt was next to him that tears rose to his eyes; but for once, they were tears of joy.

“Did he wake up?”

“No, not yet,” Blaine admits, “but he will. Do you want me to give you a song choice?”

“Yes, please.”

“How about originals again?”

A beat. Then: “Original songs?”

“Just for sectionals, if you’d like. In case you all run out of ideas or can’t agree, I’ve stored some in the choir room.”

“You write songs?”

“Started when I met Kurt, actually,” Blaine confesses. “Had ideas before then, never the motivation to pursue them.”

There’s a much longer pause. “Blaine… you said his name.”

Suddenly, the heart monitor that had given off those steady beats began to accelerate. Blaine’s head whips to the device, open-mouthed, and he looks to Kurt on the bed. His name still lingered on his tongue, tasting sweet and wonderful and hopeful and in Blaine’s face, and his heart, was an expression of complete belief and faith in that moment - the moment where Kurt’s hand twitched toward the stuffed dog Blaine had placed next to it, and instead of a first groan as expected, the only word he said was said with such sincere emotions, and so many of them, that Blaine nearly leapt to his feet. “Blaine…”

“And he just said mine,” Blaine gasps into the phone, and, ignoring Sam’s startled, “WHAT?!” he moved as quickly as possible, shaking Rachel awake gently and handing her the phone. At her look of confusion, he smiled his widest, most amazing smile, and said, “He’s waking up.”

And then he ignores how Rachel and Sam shouted over the phone together, how the monitor had a slow increase in heart speed, how random limbs kept jerking the tiniest bits. Blaine had eyes only for Kurt’s face, and whether or not he was hurting too badly. “Kurt? Kurt, are you okay? Does it hurt too badly?”

“Blaine,” Kurt says again, with growing urgency, and Blaine nearly melts because there was no pain in that voice - just an unsure hope that he’d felt himself so often lately.

“I’m right here, see?” Blaine tells him, grabbing his hand and intertwining it with his without thinking. Kurt’s skin is still cold, but getting warmer and warmer. “I’m right here.”

“Blaine, Blaine!” Kurt cried out, and his eyes flew open.

-~*~-

The nurses and doctors were gone, Rachel was in the hallway calling everyone to tell them, Sam had told the New Directions via the Spectacular Sectionals Song Slaughter, and Kurt was still looking completely lost as he lay on his cot, listening to Blaine explain to him as gently as possible what had happened. “You were crossing the street,” he tells him again, “and it was on a corner, and someone was speeding. They turned the corner and neither of you had time to stop the collision from happening. It hit the right side of your body and shredded your scarf.” He wasn’t sure why he added the last part in there, but Kurt’s eyes went wide with shock and horror, and he groaned.

“My scarf,” he moaned, “I was wearing my Bellissma Paisley Lurex Tassel Scarf!”

“Your… what?” Blaine bit back laughter.

“Don’t laugh, it cost me forty dollars before shipping and custom fabric choices, not to mention hours of selecting just the right colors,” Kurt pouts.

Blaine didn’t know whether to be grateful or scared. Here was Kurt, holding his hand - not even just letting Blaine hold his, but holding Blaine’s back - and talking to him about fashion and needed explanations and everything seemed so much easier than it really was. Blaine had a sinking feeling in his stomach that it would be gone far too soon, but his head was giddy and his heart was as rampant and random as a kitten on coffee. Kurt. Seeing Kurt, touching Kurt, having just these few blessed moments alone.

“And… and the light was red, they should have stopped,” Kurt murmurs, blinking slowly once more as realization dawned on his face. “They should have stopped, it was still at the crosswalk signs, I was fine. And… and I saw…” he squinted momentarily, as if trying to see it again in the air in front of him, and then his jaw dropped a fraction of an inch and he went slack. “Ah.”

“Kurt?” Blaine asks tentatively.

“Blaine,” Kurt responds immediately, and one of the saddest and yet honest smiles Blaine had ever beheld lodges itself onto his cheeks. “I missed you.”

Blaine thought he might swell until he burst open from the sheer capacity of all the joy inside him. Butterflies in his stomach, thoughts whirling, his eyes darting all over Kurt’s face, bruised or not, and drinking in every beautiful detail, his skin on Kurt’s, their warmth shared, their heat dispersed, their voices mingling softly in the private air. This is what he had missed. He’d missed being able to be there for Kurt without feeling like he was hurting him more. He felt like all the darkness that had been clouding around him had drifted away lazily and then evaporated and now there was nothing stopping him from glowing. “I missed you too. A lot. More than is healthy, probably.”

“But you came,” Kurt murmurs, his voice as soothing as the sound of a nice rain after a harsh day. “You came.”

Blaine felt the need to confide, to come clean, to tell him about anything. Everything. “I almost didn’t,” he confesses. “When I heard, I called Rachel, and she begged me to come, and I almost didn’t. And then I broke down and got on a plane.”

“Why didn’t you want to?” Kurt inquires innocently, his thumb moving over the back of Blaine’s hand in an old habit both of them had acquired.

“I didn’t want to see you so broken,” he tells Kurt, his stomach twisting into one tight ball of cool adrenaline. “Because I thought I ruined everything and I knew I’d ruined us and then this car comes along and gives you a good beating and suddenly, even though I’d lost you, the thought of loosing you so permanently was so terrifying that I didn’t want to have to face it. I wanted to run again. I wanted to run away.”

“But you didn’t,” Kurt says, his voice more reassuring than any other he’d ever heard. “You came and you stayed and you held yourself together and you were happy, for just a moment at least, because I was there. Right?”

Blaine exhales loudly. “Yeah, that pretty much covers it,” he laughs, shaky now, a bit frightened by how serious the conversation is turning. “I think it would have been worse if I’d stayed, because -“

“I wouldn’t have woken up,” Kurt mutters. “I kept hearing them say my name. My dad, Rachel, Carole, they all said my name. Their voices were muffled but I could tell that’s what they were saying. But I never heard you say it until just half an hour ago, and that’s when I resurfaced.”

Blaine stares at him. “But… how -?”

“When it hit me,” he continues, his eyes on Margaret Thatcher Dog, “the car, I didn’t see… what I was supposed to. You’re supposed to see your life flash before your eyes, right? Well I saw that, but not the life I had already lived. I saw the life I could have lived, and you were… you were always right there. When I watched Rachel’s first performance for NYADA, you were beside me in the audience. When you graduated, I handed you a tissue.”

Blaine’s throat was clogged again for the first time in days. His eyes stung and were warmer than the rest of his body combined, not that he cared at all. “Kurt.”

“And then… and then we got married, and we lived together, and we had jobs and lives and we were so happy… and then you were at a graveyard, looking at my tombstone, and you were crying, and I tried to call out to you but you couldn’t hear. And then you said my name…” Kurt trails off, his eyes looking at the stuffed puppy but seeing nothing. “And you were such a huge part of my life and I think it’s supposed to stay that way. I think you’re supposed to be in my life.”

“Only in the way you want,” Blaine hurries to tell him. “Only in the ways you’re ready for. I know I broke your trust and I betrayed you and that I messed everything up but I’ll try harder, I’ll be better -“

“You don’t need to be better,” Kurt interrupts, squeezing Blaine’s hand tightly and finally looking up to stare into his eyes. “You need to be you, and you need to stay with me, because I need you.”

And Kurt was crying. “Don’t, don’t,” Blaine says, moving his free hand up to wipe away a tear. “It’s got to hurt to cry.”

“It hurts more to hold it in,” Kurt confides, and his red eyes are swollen and his nose is running and his cheeks are coated in trails of saltwater and the heart monitor on the side is skipping beats and racing through others. “I don’t want to hold it in anymore. I want to talk to you and call you and kiss you through the all the air between us, and I’m sick of feeling like I can’t.”

“I’m right here,” Blaine whispers, leaning closer so his nose nuzzles Kurt’s, his sparkling eyes so much more mesmerizing. “I’m right here.”

“Not close enough,” Kurt grumbles, and Blaine’s grinning like an idiot, just like Kurt, when he tilted his chin down a bit to meet Kurt’s lips with his. When he pulls back, after just a peck, some doubt comes back; would he be okay with it? Would he be happy? But Kurt’s smirking and gives a whimpering sound that sticks in the back of his throat like a growl. “Come back here,” he complains, “I was not done kissing you.”

-~*~-

“Did you bring it?” Kurt asks excitedly from his bed as Blaine enters his room again on Friday morning, holding a small bundle of cloth in his hand. “Yes, you brought it!” he cheers.

“Good morning to you, too,” Blaine greets in return. “And yes, I brought the scarf you requested.”

“It’s pastel colored, nice and light, so it won’t clash with the room too badly,” he says happily, informing Blaine on things he wouldn’t have listened to before but now adores to hear. “Is my dad coming?”

“He’s on his way up,” Blaine says, walking over to the bed and raising his triangular eyebrows, as if to ask what to do. And so Kurt begins to instruct him on how to tie the scarf, which, luckily, is simple, and by the time Burt’s arrived with Carole and a tray of cafeteria breakfast (which, all things considered, didn’t suck) to give to their son, he’s got his precious accessory on over his cast, just like Sam said he would.

-~*~-

“I have to leave tomorrow,” Blaine says quietly, as the Notebook plays on the portable DVD player that rests on his lap. He’s managed to scoot Kurt over on his cot in a fashion that neither upsets the delicate positioning of his limbs nor makes it impossible for Blaine to be on the bed with him. Their hands are clasped together tightly on the crease over the blanket that marks where their thighs meet. Blaine wiggles his feet like a little boy whenever a cute moment comes onto the screen, whereas Kurt just blushes and hides his smile in Blaine’s chest. It’s exactly what they did before when they watched this. And it feels remarkable to do it again. But Blaine has to let Kurt know sometime that he won’t be visiting tomorrow.

Kurt stiffens beside him. “What?”

“I’m sorry,” Blaine sighs. “I should have told you sooner. I made plans only to stay here until Finn arrives, and then I’d leave. I’ve planned it since day one, when I couldn’t even imagine that… that this would be the outcome.”

“Tonight? You’re leaving tonight?” Kurt’s voice was rising in pitch, the way it did when he was incredulous, as opposed to how it got slightly lower when he was truly scared.

“Yeah, I’m taking the ten-o’-clock flight,” he admits. “Are you mad?”

“Don’t leave again!” Kurt gasps, and his voice has changed from rising to lower, and Blaine looks at him sharply. The heart monitor begins to bleat feebly. Blaine has only ever seen Kurt wear that expression once; when he told Blaine that Karofsky had threatened to kill him. Kurt was absolutely paralyzed with fear.

“Hey, hey!” Blaine blurts, shifting so he’s a little more sideways, squeezing Kurt’s hand with so much force he’s afraid he might be hurting him. “It’s okay, it’s not forever. I’m going to come back. We have Sectionals this weekend and Finn’s going to be here afterwards. It’s going to be okay, shh, shh. Calm down, it’ll be okay.”

“You can’t go away again,” Kurt pleads, “please! I-I, I just feel so much safer when you’re here! I can’t go back to the nightmares!”

“He’s always alone when he’s not with you, Blaine,” Rachel blurts finally, and it sounds like she’s started crying on the other end. “No matter what I do or who he meets, whenever I hear him sleeping he says your name, and when he wakes up crying he says it’s because of nightmares and then falls back asleep and says your name again, and it’s awful. He missed you, Blaine, more than he thinks he should, and he’s alone. I’m not the kind of company he needs. You are.”

“Nightmares?” Blaine asks, remembering with horrible clarity the tone Rachel had used when she’d said it before. “What nightmares?”

If Kurt could have covered his face in his hands, he would have. “The nightmares,” he says finally, like he’s been underwater and starved of oxygen. “Where I get a phone call saying you’re hurt, or you’re dead, or something happened to you, and that I can;t help and that you don’t want me there, and… and I d-don’t -“

“Kurt,” Blaine bleats weakly, closing his eyes and burying his face in his boyfriend’s chest. “I swear if something happens, you’ll be the first to know. But nothing’s going to happen. I’m going to be fine, and we can Skype every night if you want.”

“I’m s-so worried when you’re not with me,” Kurt mumbles feebly into Blaine’s hair. “I don’t like being apart from you.”

“You have to wait until I graduate for us to live together,” Blaine reminds him. “Maybe we’ll both get into NYADA next year and start at college at the same time.”

“Please don’t leave me.”

“Kurt, please stop.”

“I don’t… I can’t…”

“Listen to me,” Blaine says fiercely, bringing his head back up and looking straight into those wide, innocent, terrified eyes. “I will be fine. We will be fine! We’ll be perfectly wonderful and you’re going to get better and I’m going to do well and we’re both going to be so proud of each other. You shouldn’t feel scared. I’m not leaving you, not really, because you’ll still have me. You’ll always have me, Kurt. I love you.” The words came too naturally to be stopped, and when he let them slip he froze, afraid he’d said too much.

But apparently that was the only thing that would work. “I love you too,” Kurt says finally, sighing and relaxing his posture. “I’m sorry I’m so clingy.”

“You live a thousand miles away,” Blaine points out. “You’re allowed to be clingy.”

Just then, on the screen, in the rain, the couple kissed - and so Kurt and Blaine followed their example, but with a much sweeter, much more semi-final, and much more prolonged kiss than the one traditionally done during romantic comedies.