“What do you…what do you mean it came back?” Kurt asks, lowering his coffee mug to the table. This isn’t the direction the conversation was supposed to go, not after the joking and the teasing and the laughing of literally fourteen seconds ago. This isn’t what they’re supposed to be talking about anyway. Kurt came back to Ohio to celebrate his birthday and escape his problems, not get slapped in the face with one that could make the mountains he’s been climbing lately look like mole hills in comparison. But right when he was beginning to feel like everything else wrong in his life was manageable, that he could make it through just fine, after his slice of black forest birthday cake was half finished and he had decided not to sweat the calories, his father had to come out with this.

“At my last check up,” his father says to what’s left of the coffee in his cup, “I got the results of my PSA test. The doctor says that it points to the possibility that the cancer has returned.”

“Well, how bad is it?” Kurt asks, his voice cutting jaggedly through the sudden tense silence. “I mean, is it inoperable? Do you do another round of radiation? Brachytherapy? What…what do we do?”

“Slow down, kid.” Carole reaches across the table to pat his hand. “He hasn’t even had a biopsy yet. We won’t know anything more until then.”

“And when are you going to get one?” Kurt snaps, the scolding edge of his own voice making him flinch. His anxiety levels ratchet. He feels himself becoming unhinged. He knows it’s happening, but he can’t make it stop. It’s like he’s sitting beside himself, watching his sanity degrade, but he can’t calm himself down. He doesn’t want to lash out at his father, but why tell him this when he doesn’t have all the facts? What if this turns out to be nothing? Did they really think giving him half-information and a week of sleepless nights would be better than, “Hey, guess what? My doctor thought my cancer had come back, but turns out, the biopsy showed nothing serious. I would have told you earlier, but I didn’t want to worry you?”?

Burt moves his mug to the side and folds his hands. “I’m going to the hospital tomorrow,” he says. “I’m sorry to spring it on you like this. I didn’t want to tell you on your birthday of all days, but I wanted to tell you face-to-face, not over the phone.”

The guilt in his father’s eyes makes Kurt feel like dirt. Kurt may be affected by his father having cancer, but only second-hand. The disease isn’t his. The battle to fight it isn’t his. The blood tests, the hospitalizations, the surgeries, the treatments, the follow ups – Kurt may worry about their outcome, but he doesn’t have to suffer through them.

“No need to apologize,” Kurt says with a reassuring, albeit tight, smile. “I understand.” He sighs, this new information adding weight to the burden already balanced on his shoulders. Whether he’s handling it or not, slowly but surely, it’s crushing him. “You know, I think I’m going to get going. I wanted to hit the highway before midnight. Get into the city before the thick of morning traffic.” It’s a bullshit excuse, but he can’t come up with anything better. Before his father’s announcement, Kurt had been considering spending the night. He doesn’t have anywhere he needs to be first thing in the morning. But as awful as it sounds, he can’t. He knows he’s being selfish, thinking about himself when his focus should be on his father’s health, but being in this house, steeped in bitter memories, with everything he had bearing down on him before he arrived, and now this – it’s too hard for him. He needs to leave so he can breathe.

“Yeah. Yeah, sure,” his father says. He looks disappointed, but he also looks like he understands.

“Well, you be careful.” Carole stands when Kurt stands, not letting him leave the house without giving her a proper goodbye hug. “Drive safe. Drink lots of coffee. Pull over if you feel even the slightest bit sleepy. And keep an eye out, you know, for clowns.”

Kurt looks his stepmother in the eye with exasperation on his face. He knows that Carole is trying to lighten the mood, but she managed to pick the only other topic that Kurt hates about as much as his father’s cancer. Couldn’t she just poke fun at his lack of a sex life like the normal stepmom of an adult son forced into abstinence by abhorrent work schedules and circumstances beyond his control?

“I will,” Kurt promises, not in any mood to talk about this. Along with the recent circus that is the 2016 presidential elections, this stupid clown epidemic has him on edge. Clowns on their own are creepy enough, but running the risk of seeing one standing in the middle of the street on a dark night; or out by the woods, trying to lure kids in; or chasing people at bus stops with knives; with cops writing it off as a harmless prank, infuriates Kurt. Don’t the people of America have anything better to do with their time? Have all the wars been won? Poverty eradicated? Homelessness solved that people have to waste their times being assholes?

“I mean it.” Carole’s upbeat tone turns serious. “Have you seen the news? It’s getting a little out of hand.”

“Why are they doing it?” his father chimes in, contributing to the conversation so that the last thing he and his son talk about before Kurt leaves won’t have been cancer.

“For attention,” Kurt says, a little too quick to anger on the subject, but he’s not sorry. This clown thing is a perfect representation of everything that Kurt hates about society. “Because this messed up world wouldn’t be complete without people taking the crazy up a notch.”

“We haven’t see any around here yet, thank God,” Carole remarks. “But in the next county over there have been.”

“There’ve been a bunch of sightings in New York,” Kurt says, winding his scarf around his neck. “Not near me,” he adds. “On the college campuses mostly, and a few of the subways midtown. But, you know, if something moronic and inane trends in this country, it’s bound to hit New York eventually. One of the Vogue interns even tried to convince Isabelle to showcase it in the next issue, parlay it into some sort of cutting edge fashion craze. See if it catches on.”

“And what did Isabelle say?”

“Nothing I feel comfortable repeating here,” Kurt says, smirking at the memory of Isabelle’s livid tirade.

Kurt gives Carole a last hug goodbye, and then his dad, squeezing him as tight as he can as an apology for cutting their visit short. Though he isn’t really. He’s been with them most of the weekend, but still, it shouldn’t be ending this way. If it wasn’t for the things he’d been running away from when he accepted their last minute invitation, he would have handled it better. But he won’t fool himself, won’t try to give himself points for trying when he should be trying harder.

Kurt walks out the door of his father’s house and heads for his SUV parked by the curb. Another sore spot. Kurt has to sell his baby. He loves his Navigator, but it’s just not practical. Kurt can’t drive it in the city, and it’s way too big to park in New York. Plus, it’s a beast as far as gas consumption is concerned. His father is losing out on storage space keeping it in the garage for him, and spending money to store it would be a waste. The bottom line is - it’s time. The thing has to go. Kurt tries to look on the bright side. He already has a seller lined up willing to pay him blue book. That’s a huge chunk of change that Kurt didn’t have before. He could use it to pay ahead his student loans, pad his bank account, give himself a buffer for when times get lean…or buy some shoes. He’s still up in the air about it.

Before Kurt gets in for his final drive, he does one last walk around. It reminds him of the day his father took him to the dealership to buy it. Kurt was so excited to finally get a vehicle – one that was both stylish and reliable, and one that he could transport all of his friends around in. This Navigator meant so much to Kurt. In his teenage mind, it was his passport to instant popularity (something uber important to him as a sophomore, back in his cheerleading days, when he was hiding so much of himself, but also fighting so hard to be seen). It was a symbol of adulthood, his ticket to freedom. It meant no strings attached, nothing holding him back.

Endless possibilities.

God, he misses feeling that way.

He loves his life in New York. He loves chasing his dream. And he knew it would be a hard dream to catch.

It’s just so much harder than he thought it would be.

Lonelier, too.

Kurt gets to the driver’s side door and sighs. He has to find a way to get that feeling back, has to find something to get excited about. But he won’t get there if he doesn’t move on.

No point in putting off the inevitable.

Kurt is about to unlock his door and climb in when, out of the corner of his eye, he spots the unthinkable. The unimaginable. It’s so ludicrous that, at first, Kurt is convinced it’s a trick of his imagination. But it’s not. Kurt turns his head to get a better look and confirms that he’s not seeing things. It’s a clown, walking away from a house at the end of the block, dressed in a shimmery costume complete with huge brown shoes and a curly red wig stuffed under his arm. Hunched slightly over, trying to be inconspicuous, he looks left and right, sneaking down the front walk and into the street. He must be heading out for the evening, Kurt thinks, feeling the back of his neck all the way to his ears become hot. Kurt hates these clowns. He hates them. Who the fuck started this clown bullshit anyway? And why? Why the fuck would any sane, rational human being pull this shit?

The clown heads away towards the opposite street when he sees Kurt. He seems to consider Kurt, his eyes - dark holes from a distance, surrounded by blue and black makeup - locked unblinking on Kurt’s face, as if he’s making up his mind about something. Which he does, because he changes direction and heads straight for him.

Kurt’s first instinct is to jump into the driver’s seat of his Navigator and nope the hell out of there, but he can’t. And not because he’s paralyzed with fear, but because he’s seething with rage. He’s not going to take it. He’s not going to be scared away from his father’s house, of all places. He’s been bullied throughout a good portion of his life by scarier, even creepier people than this fucking clown. He’s been thrown into dumpsters, kissed by a bully, even beat up in an alley. He refuses to be chased away by a Bozo wannabe.

“You know what, clown?” Kurt yells. “No! Nu-uh! Not tonight!” He storms straight at the clown walking towards him, patting down his pockets for his Taser. He can’t remember if he stuck it in his jacket when he left his loft for Ohio, but if he didn’t, that’s all right. He’ll beat this guy black and blue with a lawn gnome from Mrs. Pendleton’s front yard. She only has seventeen. She can spare one in the pursuit of vigilante justice. “I’m a decent, hardworking human being that already has a ton of crap to deal with in my life. I’m struggling at school, I work two jobs, I don’t get any sleep, and sex? I can tell you exactly when the last time I had sex was and it wasn’t this year, pal! And to top it off, I come out here to celebrate my birthday with my dad to find out that his cancer has come back, and now, I have to deal with you! Some dumb ass, over entitled prick who gets his jollies dressing up like Pennywise and scaring the fuck out of people for no good Goddamned reason whatsoever! Not today! Not in my neighborhood!” Kurt finds his Taser and pulls it out. “You have ten seconds to turn tail and hit the road or else I’m electrocuting your punk ass!”

He switches on the device, and an arc of blue electricity dances between the electrodes. The clown goes buggy-eyed - his vacant, black stare turning into a softer, hazel one. He skids to a halt, backing away.

“Wait! Wait! Hold up, hold up!” the clown yells, holding up his hands in surrender, his fluffy red wig falling from under his arm and fluttering to the floor. It’s almost too ridiculous for Kurt to keep a straight face, but he manages to hold it together. “It’s not what you think!”

Kurt stops a foot away from the clown – a not all that well put together clown if he’s being honest. The man looks like he’s been sweating buckets – his curly black hair matted to his forehead, blue and black makeup bleeding at the eyes and bright red feathering around the lips.

“Then tell me what it is, or you’re going to be a live wire in about five seconds.” Kurt presses the button on his Taser, making the thread of electricity crackle.

“I…I’m not trying to scare you,” the clown pleads. “I’m not trying to scare anyone. My name’s Blaine. Blaine Anderson, and I…I just wanted to know if I could borrow your phone. I’m actually having the worst night of my life right now.”

Join the club, Kurt thinks, but what he says is, “You’re going to have to do better than that, Blaine.”

“Uh…I…I was invited to a costume party…by my boyfriend.” The clown looks uncomfortably away. “Well, my…my ex-boyfriend now.”

Kurt readjusts the Taser in his sweaty grip, the sad stutter in Blaine’s voice hitting Kurt a little too close to home. “Did he break up with you because of that costume?”

“Uh…no,” Blaine says with a little laugh. “Actually, it was part of an elaborate set up.” Blaine opens his mouth, starting to explain, but embarrassment and exhaustion seem to intervene, and his entire body sinks into itself five inches. “You know, it…it’s a long story, actually, and kind of a painful one. But it ends with me abandoned at a night club in town, newly single, and wearing this costume…” Blaine looks down at the puffy yellow, red, and white outfit he’s wearing, a costume that looks like it might have been handmade, and sighs “…without my wallet, my phone, or any of my clothes.”

Kurt’s eyebrows shoot up and his throat tightens. Hearing Blaine admit that is physically painful. That’s the kind of crap that Kurt can see kids pulling in high school, not a grown man.

“Ouch.”

“Yeah,” Blaine mutters, not looking up. “I made this stupid costume and everything. It took me a week to get it finished.”

“Well, you did a good job. It’s…it’s a nice costume,” Kurt says, lowering his weapon.

“Thanks.”

Poor Blaine, Kurt thinks. That’s just unforgivable. His asshole ex-boyfriend didn’t just dump him and humiliate him. He put the man’s life in danger. Kurt had seen on the news just that morning how students at Lima Community College were forming patrol groups with the objective of hunting down “rogue clowns”. How would this asshat have felt if Blaine’s face had shown up on the news tomorrow morning because he was chased down and beaten by a mob of people who didn’t take the time to hear him out? Isn’t it bad enough that that shit might happen to Blaine anyway simply because he’s gay? And then, as if that wasn’t bad enough, Kurt unloaded on him, and threatened him. Talk about not having a good night.

The two of them made some couple.

“Do you…live around here?” Kurt asks. “I mean, do you have far to go? Because it’s probably not safe with you walking around wearing that costume, considering…”

“I know what you mean.” Blaine’s eyes travel subconsciously to the Taser that Kurt powers off and stuffs into his pocket. “Unfortunately, I live in Westerville. My ex, he lived here in Lima. I was going to ask a friend for help…” Blaine’s gaze trails off to a darkened house at the end of the cul-de-sac “…but it looks like they’re not home.”

Kurt watches Blaine hang his head, looking mournfully down at his gigantic shoes. Kurt knows he’s juggling options, trying to figure out how he’s going to get home. This has the potential to be the weirdest walk of shame ever. Kurt has experienced his fair share of bullying, but he’s never been humiliated quite as thoroughly – or cruelly – as Blaine has tonight. Kurt can’t just leave him here to fend for himself, without a phone or a wallet, dressed like this.

“Okay.” Kurt crosses his arms, doing some quick calculating and negotiating in his head. “Why don’t I go ahead and drive you home?”

“Oh…” Blaine’s whole face seems to pop, and Kurt bites back a smile. Even under all the makeup, Blaine looks adorable when surprised “…that’s so kind of you but…no, I…I couldn’t,” Blaine says, the shifting expressions on his face warring with one another over turning Kurt down. “It’s the middle of the night, and Westerville’s two hours away.”

“It’s alright. To tell you the truth, I could use the drive,” Kurt says, leaving out the part where he’s already looking forward to a nearly ten hour drive to New York City. “Clear my head. It’s been kind of a long day.”

“I got that impression,” Blaine chuckles sympathetically. Kurt walks back to his SUV, gesturing for Blaine to follow.

“First things first. Here…” Kurt pops the hatch on his Navigator and rifles through his luggage until he finds a package of Neutrogena makeup remover wipes, “why don’t you take these and de-clown?”

“Thank you.” Relief relaxes the corners of Blaine’s exaggeratedly painted lips as he takes the package of wipes from Kurt’s hand. “Thank you so much.”

“You’re welcome,” Kurt says, reassembling his carefully packed bag. “I know a little something about sweating my ass off in satin and five layers of stage makeup.”

“Are…are you in theater?” Blaine asks.

“You can say that.” Kurt isn’t sure how much more of his life story he wants to tell to a stranger dressed like a clown…even if that stranger is turning out to be a sweet, polite gentleman, and the clown costume in question was a complete misunderstanding.

“I’ve always wanted to perform on stage,” Blaine says wistfully, scrubbing at his eyelids. “I did a bit when I was in high school, and I do summer stock now and then.”

“What do you do for a living, if you don’t mind my asking?”

“I teach music at my old high school,” Blaine replies, grabbing a fresh wipe and moving from his eyes to his cheeks. “Dalton Academy.”

“Oof. Going back to high school? That sounds like some sort of penance.”

Blaine laughs. It’s a nice, congenial laugh. A happy, genuine laugh. The people Kurt interacts with in New York, often times they laugh too loud, too forced. “It’s actually not that bad. I’m one of those assholes who had a good high school experience so it wasn’t a nightmare going back.”

“You’re lucky. You couldn’t pay me to go back to my old high school,” Kurt says. “Thank God I left Lima and moved to New York.”

Blaine’s eyes open wide. “New York? You live in New York?”

“Yup.”

“What part?”

“Brooklyn. But I work and go to school in Manhattan.”

“Wow.” Blaine shakes his head in amazement. “That’s…that’s incredible. You’re so lucky. New York…that’s the dream.”

“That’s how I’ve always felt, ever since I could remember.” Kurt smiles. He suspected he might get that reaction if he let that little nugget slip. Perhaps he’s feeding his own ego, but it’s been a long time since he’s been able to impress someone with the minor details of his humdrum life.

It’s been a long time since someone has looked at him the way Blaine is looking at him now.

“Would you mind telling me a little bit about it? You know, on the way?”

“Sure.” Kurt closes the hatch. “We’ll have two hours to kill. Just tell me to shut up when you get bored.”

“I’m sure I won’t,” Blaine says sweetly. Kurt goes to unlock the passenger door, smiling so hard his cheeks are starting to hurt. “By the way, I really appreciate this,” Blaine reiterates.

“No sweat,” Kurt says, “but before you get in, you swear you don’t have a knife, or a gun…?”

“No. I’m not even wearing underwear.”

Kurt stops. He peeks back over his shoulder at Blaine, wiping off his impressively applied clown makeup. In no way whatsoever does Kurt have a thing for clowns. They have given him the heebie-jeebies ever since he was a child. But the man emerging from underneath the disguise, the one with the shy smile on his lips and the sincere sparkle in his eyes, even though he’s standing within a foot of a man who threatened not a minute ago to electrocute him - he Kurt could find interesting.

He might even give Kurt something new to get excited about.

“Well then,” Kurt says, subconsciously giving Blaine’s silky costume a once over, “let’s get this show on the road.”