Kurt shrinks low in his seat, he doesn't want to be here, he doesn't even know why he let Rachel drag him along in the first place. The auditorium is far too familiar, it smells like home and disappointment and the crushed dreams of a naïve little boy. It reminds him of stolen kisses when the lights were low, the thrill of a solo when the lights were glaring and whispered promises that... don't mean all that much anymore. He's only just managed to escape this place, so why the hell is he back here?

Because Finn needed help and Mercedes wanted to see him again and Rachel hadn't shut up about it. That's why.

He hates it.

The lights are up and the seats are empty and music is curling around him. Rachel is vibrating in her seat next to him, Finn is yelling something at the stage and all those people he left behind are up there singing their hearts out. There are new people too. Kurt despises them. They're so young and happy, joy flowing from their bodies like nothing on this Earth could kill their high right now, they have that spark, that gleam in their eye that has been decidedly absent from Kurt's for a while now. They have all of it ahead of them, the first kisses and the messed up song lyrics and the drama that at the time will seem like the end of your life. It's hard to believe that's all behind him, when he never really embraced it in the first place. He sees the way some of them look at each other, like they are the only ones on that stage, like nothing could ever stop them from looking like that. Like he used to look at Blaine.

And then of course there is Blaine, skulking at the back of the stage, looking small and lost and very out of place in the one place Kurt had always thought he looked at home. What has happened to this Blaine, to his Blaine. He could've easily made the lead, should've made the lead, and it's not that this guy isn't good, it's just that he's not Blaine, he's not confident in a way that only a very broken person can be, he doesn't light up the stage brighter than the stars outside and he doesn't captivate the audience with that playful half smile and subconscious glint in his eyes. He just doesn't look like he loves it enough.

He isn't Blaine.

Kurt wishes with all his heart that he didn't care, that he could unpick every good memory from the fabric of their relationship and let it fall, broken and frayed to the floor, that he could bury himself in the needle prick pain of betrayal and the mismatched stitching of heartbreak. He can't, he and Blaine are still he and Blaine, they are stitched together too tightly, ragged and desperate and torn on the inside, perfect and pretty and inscrutable on the outside. No matter how much Kurt strains against their bindings, they are very much sewn together.

Most of all he wishes he could hate Blaine, and of course he does hate him, but he hates him in the way the astrophysicist hates the stars and the doctor hates the disease and the child hates the swing set that lets him fall, he hates him with a passion and dependence that burns too fierce to be ignorable. It isn't a hatred that can be cured with a screaming fit and a dark resentment and an overabundance of time. It is the sort of consuming hatred for something you love so dearly and wish you didn't, it's the relapse of an alcoholic, the frustration of a fatal flaw and the child who pulls himself up and gets back on the swing. It's unhealthy in a way that could either lead to a relapse or a remission. It's a hatred that is solely reliant on an incongruous dependence.

There's something wrong, Kurt has a feeling that there's been something wrong for quite a while. He wishes he could ignore it. But he can't, he can't seem to drag his eyes away from Blaine's small frame and shadowy eyes and that glimmer of a smile that only Kurt seems to realise is put on. Finn wanted him to talk to the cast about singing or dancing or how to deal with being underappreciated or something, he wasn't really paying attention, but now there seem to be more pressing matters at hand.

He drags himself from the chair, ignoring the curious and slightly begrudging look he receives from Rachel, and prowls his way along the seats. He keeps low, like a predator in a darkened alley or a dense forest, eyes fixed, dark and compelling on his target. He reaches the stage before he knows what he's doing, pulls himself out of the mist of nostalgia, the haze of uncertainty and the crystal clear clarity of unadulterated despair just as Finn calls for a break.

He approaches Blaine, remaining inconspicuous even in the spotlights, and then pauses momentarily for Blaine to turn round. He feels the other boy tense, sees the intake of breath and can hear the tormented thoughts that seem to rampage through his body at an alarming rate. A brutal sort of satisfaction simmers between Kurt's eyes before he softens, stretching out a hand to touch Blaine's shoulder, turning him softly, forcefully.

Hazel meets blue, fire meets ice, vindication meets guilt and everything fizzles in an anticlimactic downpour. A weight seems to lift from their chests as audible inhales penetrate the calm before the storm, it is soon replaced with the unequivocal winding of phantom fingers around throats, the inability to breathe and longing for the ability to want to.

All too soon it is gone. The camera lens softens, the lights dim, the hearts warm and a soft voice extends a questioning hand into the darkness, a tilt of a head in the direction of oblivion, stage left, and the silent acknowledgment of compliance.

They lurk in the shadows, concealed by a stage curtain and hidden behind masks of apathy. The distorted memories of giggling children and clasped hands and lips that taste like coffee torment them as they gaze out, unseen, into the cataclysm of a non-existent audience. They are surrounded by people, shielded by something indefinable, something heavier and thicker and far more temperamental that the plane the rest of the earth sits on. They hide in the unseeing eyes of others, children playing hide and seek in plain sight as no one notices their presence in this place, or rather their absence in the places they are meant to be.

‘We need to talk' And suddenly it is gone, Kurt is just a boy, clinging to salvation and pretending to be a grown up, there is nothing indefinable between them, nothing special, nothing for a great writer to talk about, there is only a lack of communication, a fear of solitude and two broken, beaten, battered hearts, presented before each other.

‘I thought we weren't' It isn't accusatory or even resilient, it's acquiescent in a pitiful kind of way, that kind that occurs when someone doesn't have enough fight left in them to even cry.

‘I know. I needed time, I needed space, to think things through... and now I have. I think I just needed to be away from you for a while... to figure things out as Kurt rather than as Kurt and Blaine. I shouldn't have left you hanging though.  I'm sorry' Kurt's speech sounds like his thoughts these days, disjointed and awkward and unsure of himself in the most basic of ways. He is scared, grasping at the straws of reality, trying to understand how it is possible for him to feel so much pain and still remain alive, trying to understand the why of it all because he knows the what and the who and he could possibly even understand the how, but why? Why this? Why now? Why would Blaine do it? Why? Why? Why?

‘Please don't apologise. Please don't apologise to me ever again. You have nothing to be sorry for, I'm the one that should be sorry. I'm so sorry Kurt.' And Blaine is honestly trying to make it better, he's crying tears that refuse to come and grasping for the duct tape as their hearts begin to wither.

‘Stop it! Stop saying that! You did a bad thing, you did a terrible thing and you need to take responsibility for it. Being sorry isn't going to make it right, it's not going to make it go away and it isn't going to make me forgive you. It's just going to make you feel terrible and even I don't want that.'   The fire dwindles, a spark in the realm of what could be, a rampage replaced by hours of exhaustion because Kurt is tired and Blaine is tired and neither of them have the enough fight left in them to make this hard for the other. Kurt throws his grappling hook as far as he can; hoping it sticks and that he can cling on, just long enough to win this battle. There is no way either of them are coming out of this unscathed, but he'd at least like to be intact. ‘Look. I kind of hate you right now; I really, really hate you right now, not for what you did to me but for what you did to us. Because I can get through this, I've got through worse and I can do it again, with my head held high, but I'm not sure that we can. I'm not sure if we are strong enough and I hate you for testing it. I hate you for breaking us.'

‘I'm sorry.'

‘STOP IT! If you were sorry you wouldn't have done it in the first place.'

‘I don't know why I did. I honestly have no explanation let alone an acceptable one, you know I would never purposefully hurt you, things just sort of happened...' His voice trails off, to that place where unprinted manuscripts and lost car keys and unborn stars go, to the land of regret and mistakes and inaudible apologies.

‘We were perfect. And now we're not.'

‘I don't know what you want me to say.'

‘I don't want you to say anything... It was probably for the best. And no that does not mean it was okay and it does not mean I forgive you and it certainly doesn't make anything you said or did excusable. It just makes us real.'

‘If this is what real feels like then I'd rather be fictitious.'

‘I think to a point we were, we glorified each other in our heads and we lived vicariously through the romanticised dreams of our youth, this is why it hurts so much, because we were perfect, we were perfect in the way a fairy tale is when it stops at the happy ending, the way a family photo is when they stop fighting long enough for the flash, the way a thunderstorm is before it kills someone.  I think now we can be real, we can learn to be us, really us, without the smoke and the mirrors and the idolisation. You can pay for the consequences of your actions and I can learn to appreciate other people and we can both learn to voice our opinions more, to actually say what we need. We can create our own perfect.'

‘Okay, I'll work until you forgive me, until I forgive myself, and we'll be better we can-‘

‘But I think we need to do that apart, at least... for a little while' Smiles fall along with unshed tears and the feeling of having your heart ripped from its barren cage comes back in a cascade of shudderingly real agony. The bargaining, the refusal and the inability to accept the situation comes immediately.

‘Please no please please no, I'm sorry, I can be better, I'll make it up to you please just no.' Blaine's face scrunches in an unattractively pitiful way, desperation in the form of a single expression, heartbreak and denial and horror personified in one irredeemable teenage boy.

‘It's for you more than anything Blaine, because as much as I truly, sincerely hate you right now, that doesn't detract from the fact that I desperately, hopelessly love you, and you need to look after yourself sweetie. You're spiralling, you're becoming a shadow of the person that I love, and only you know why. I have to break up with you, so you can help yourself, because I can't ignore what you did to me and I can't let you carry on, but you need to take care of yourself and you need to be Blaine, just Blaine, away from me. '

‘Kurt I don't think I can.' Hands grasp desperately for each other, lungs that are taking their final breaths and supernovas that shine their brightest just before they fade forever.

‘No Blaine. Something is wrong... with you, and I'm not forcing you to tell me and I'm not asking and I'm so sorry that I didn't catch it when I should have. But I'm telling you, that if you want to talk, if you need to talk, I'm here, as your friend. I will always be here if you need me.

‘I do need you' And Blaine Anderson cracks, says the words that should've been spoken months ago and breaks himself down in front of the only person he truly loves in the hope that he can be put back together again.

‘Okay.' And an equal and opposite set of hands grasp back, pump the air back into useless lungs and create a star at the opposite end of the galaxy. They hold each other, a glimmer of light, a spark of potential in the deserted wings of a stage.

‘I just... you're not going to change your mind are you.' It isn't a question, it's a broken acceptance of the fate that he himself has created, it's an acknowledgment of the unspoken hamartia in the room, and it's hopeful in the way that only human beings can be when they reach their lowest.

‘No.'

‘You're not going to go back out with me?'

‘Not today.'

‘I don't know how to not be in love with you.'

‘Nor I you.'

‘I don't know what to do.'

‘We could try friendship?'

‘I just really need you.'

‘Come on, I'll buy you lunch.' And Kurt knows Blaine recognises those words, the words that began it all, the words that were simple and innocent and held so much meaning without meaning anything at all. It was the beginning of something new and hopeful and young, something that would simultaneously cause so much joy and sorrow. It was the beginning of their end but he prays to god it isn't the end of their beginning.

 So he walks away and hopes that Blaine will follow him into this unprecedented oblivion.