Denial

“You’ve reached Kurt Hummel. For some reason that’s probably important, I can’t answer the phone right now, so please leave a message, and I’ll get back to you.”

It was silly, that was the one thing Blaine knew for sure.

He was aware that somewhere out there Kurt was laughing fondly at him, rolling his eyes and saying I think it’s time, Blaine. But Blaine didn’t think it was time. Blaine wasn’t ready for it to be time.

And it was silly, he was certain of it. He’d taken that crummy job at The Lima Bean so that he could pay back Burt. Just enough each month so that Kurt’s phone was kept in service. Just enough so that he could keep hearing his voice. He needed to stop, Blaine knew that. But he couldn’t. He didn’t want to.

They say that the first stage of grief is denial. Half a year after Kurt’s passing, and Blaine was sure he was still in that stage. Kept thinking that maybe one time he’d call Kurt’s number, and the sweet voice that he’d missed would pick up. Just like he used to.

A part of him now knew that he’d never hear Kurt’s voice again; not like he used to. There were a few saved messages, a few videos, the voicemail message, but Blaine knew he’d never hear new words. He’d never tell a joke and have Kurt laugh, he’d never kiss the other boy’s neck and hear him groan. There were so many things he’d never get again, and he didn’t want to let go.

So instead of accepting this knowledge, Blaine held fast to the past. Held on to the slim hope that he’d see Kurt again, hear Kurt again, touch Kurt again. He wanted to, so much. He didn’t want to let go.

Blaine dialed the number again, from memory now, not from speed dial. He liked it better that way, Kurt would think it was quirky. Kurt would like it. Kurt would have liked it.

“You’ve reached Kurt Hummel. For some reason that’s probably important, I can’t answer the phone right now, so please leave a message, and I’ll get back to you.”

Blaine sighed when the message ended and the sound that signalled the recording beeped over the line. “Kurt? Hey. I miss you. So much. I just… I just want to see you again, one more time. I just want to… I love you, Kurt. I love you and this isn’t fair… I can’t do this without you.” He choked on his sob and ended the call, slamming his phone down on the table.

-

Anger

It was two weeks later, standing in the Hummel’s kitchen, a place he was still welcomed, washing a few plates while listening to Finn and Puck talk at the kitchen table, when he snapped. He wasn’t sure why he kept coming back to this place, a place that reminded him so much of Kurt, but Burt and Carole were comforting, and they understood what he was feeling. Their child was taken. The love of Blaine’s life was taken. But that didn’t make any of this fair.

It was the smashing of one of the plates that caught Finn and Puck’s attention to Blaine’s distress. He was standing back from the counter, staring at the plate that he dropped on the ground. The air was silent.

“Dude, are you okay?” was what Puck asked.

Of course he wasn’t okay. Blaine could feel it, bubbling up quickly and fluidly. He’d spent the last six months in a daze, listening for Kurt’s voice, waiting for the boy who never seemed to show, and now all he could feel was anger.

He was angry at so many things. He was angry with the driver of the car, he was angry at the doctors at the hospital for not saving him, he was angry with Kurt. How could he do this? How could he just leave him? They had their lives planned out. They were going to graduate, they were going to go to New York. They were going to get married some day and be an old fabulous married couple. And now they never would. How dare Kurt do this to him? How dare he leave him alone? How dare he?

Hot tears started to spill over Blaine’s cheeks and he wasn’t even thinking when he reached forward for another plate in the drying rack, pulling it swiftly out and throwing it roughly at the ground with a grunt. Sharp shards went flying just as Finn and Puck cried out in the background.

“It’s not fair,” Blaine growled, grabbing another plate in both hands and smashing it against the counter, pieces breaking off and digging into his fingers and palms. He barely felt the blood break through his skin.

There was something about breaking dishes; it was a kind of destructive that Blaine wasn’t allowed in life. In the back of his mind he knew he shouldn’t be breaking the plates, knew Kurt would try and calm him, and he knew that Finn and Puck were right behind him, but a fury took over him and all he could see was red.

It wasn’t fair. It shouldn’t have been Kurt. It could have been anyone out on the streets, but it was Kurt, and it wasn’t fair. Blaine hadn’t even known him for that long. Only had a little over a year of memories of the best thing that ever happened to him in his life. It wasn’t fair, it would never be fair.

There were two more plates left to dry, so Blaine grabbed the closest one and brought it down on the counter again, smashing it to small pale pieces of ceramic. He felt the shards as they hit him, bouncing off the fabric at his stomach, but digging in at his bare arms. But he didn’t care. It wasn’t fair. It wasn’t fair. He would never get Kurt back. It wasn’t fair.

He reached for the last one just as a hand came up to resist his arm, but it wasn’t fast enough, and Blaine used the grip he had on the plate with his free arm to throw it towards the ground, pieces scattering around his feet.

Blaine vaguely heard a noise in the background, but he paid it no mind. He brought his hands up to scratch aggressively at his face as he sobbed in frustration, feeling the bits of the plates still covering and lodged it his skin scratch over his face. There was a dampness that his mind registered as blood. It was then that he realized what the noise in the background was: it was screaming, and it was coming from him.

He slid down the counter into the pool of ceramic and he felt hands on his shoulders, but he didn’t know if they were Finn’s or Puck’s. He didn’t care right now. It wasn’t fair. I wasn’t fair.

-

Bargaining

“I just don’t understand why it had to be him.”

It was a few days after the plate smashing incident, his hands still wrapped in gauze to stop the bleeding, and Blaine was lying on his back on top of his bed, turning his head to look at Margaret Thatcher Dog, who was staring at him with her big eyes. Unfortunately, she didn’t hold any of the answers Blaine needed.

“I mean,” he carried on anyways, looking back up at the ceiling, “what if he’d stopped at one more store, or if I’d called him and he sat to talk with me? He’d still be here, wouldn’t he?

“Or what if I hadn’t asked him to pick up that damn bread I like to have with dinner? He’d be here. He’d be here and everything would be okay.”

Blaine needed to stop, he knew that. Ever since smashing the plates all over the Hummel’s kitchen, people had taken to spewing out random advice. Telling him that it was okay to be angry, that it was okay to be sad. That it didn’t matter that it had been over half a year and Blaine was just now reacting to it. That it was okay.

And then they’d started in on how he can’t change what happened, and that it’s useless to go over it again and again in his mind. That what he had to do was accept that Kurt was gone. They meant well, they all did, and Blaine knew he saw the reason in their logic, but he couldn’t find it. His brain felt the need to go over it until he was exhausted.

“I wish he were here,” Blaine whispered softly, a stray tear creeping out from the corner of his eye, “I’d give anything for him to be here. To just see him one more time, or hear his voice, and feel his skin. I would do it. I’d… I’d pay for everyone’s coffee. I’d help every elderly lady cross the street. I’ll read to children. Anything for one more day, one more minute. Anything.”

Blaine felt himself approaching hysterics. But he would, he’d give anything. Trade anything in his life for Kurt’s. Because Kurt shouldn’t have died so young. So close to having so many of the things he wanted in life, and then he had it all ripped out from under him. He would trade his own life for Kurt’s.

Blaine rolled over, grabbing the plush dog and curling his arms around her, burying his face into the head, “I should have called, I should have checked up on him. He would have stopped and it would be okay. I should have… I should have gone with him… I could have…”

He couldn’t speak through his sobs anymore, so he squeezed his eyes shut and choked out the words “I’m sorry” over and over again until he was so drained that he fell asleep.

-

Depression

It was a month later when Blaine started skipping classes. He didn’t really want to, and logically he knew there’d be a lot of work to catch up on eventually, but he couldn’t see the point in leaving his room. He couldn’t see the point to much of anything.

It had started one day when he’d gone looking for something in his closet and found a shirt of Kurt’s that must have been thrown in one day when they were in a hurry to get the layers off and then Kurt must have left in one of Blaine’s own shirts. Blaine had lifted the fabric to his nose and smiled sadly when he registered that it still smelled like Kurt. He curled up on his side on his bed and held it while he cried. It wasn’t until his phone chimed with a text from Tina three hours later that he realized he never went to school. He didn’t really understand why he was still going to school anyways, when it felt like his heart had been ripped out.

So Blaine took Kurt’s shirt, folded it carefully and placed it in a drawer of his dresser gently and then sat on his bed, waiting. For what, he wasn’t sure, but he waited anyways. He waited for some kind of purpose, some kind of reason.

He didn’t find one, not immediately at least, and he sat for a few weeks on his bed, only returning to school when his parents finally confronted him with it. It wasn’t fair to make them really worry; Blaine hoped that it wouldn’t be long before he found whatever he was waiting for anyways.

But he waited and he waited and nothing ever came. He felt drained all the time and he wondered if he would ever get anything out of life again. He realized that he wouldn’t. Not without Kurt.

He’d been stuck before Kurt came along. Trapped in a world where he constantly ran away from everything, where he was stuck in a place that kept him caged. And then Kurt had set him free. And now he was gone. Blaine was having trouble seeing the point in doing anything since it wouldn’t lead him to Kurt. His one true reason was gone.

So he walked through life for a few months, constantly being asked if he was even there. Blaine didn’t know how to answer that, he felt like a part of him must have gone with Kurt wherever he went, so he couldn’t answer whether he was there or not, because he didn’t know where he went.

He could almost hear Kurt in those moments where Blaine felt like giving up. Could hear that sweet voice dripping as he whispered gently, What happened to courage?

So Blaine kept going, even when he didn’t want to, because Kurt wanted his courage, so he’d give it to him.

-

Acceptance

“Hey, Kurt,” Blaine said, a bouquet of red and yellow roses in his hand, “I’m sorry… that I haven’t come by, haven’t visited. I hope you can understand why.”

He sunk down until he was sitting cross-legged in the grass in front of Kurt’s tombstone, placing the roses against it where it read … Son, brother, friend, lover, and an ambitious young man.

Blaine chuckled darkly at those last words. “Funny isn’t it?” he spoke out loud as tears started to well in his eyes, “We always talked about getting out of here, but now you don’t have the choice.” He could almost feel Kurt roll his eyes in response. “I know, I know. That wasn’t actually funny. Just… ironic, I guess. The ambitious young man who never got the chance to be ambitious.”

He looked down at the grass, picked a piece and began to shred it absent-mindedly as he blinked to dry his eyes. “I miss you,” Blaine whispered, “So much. I didn’t even know it was possible to miss someone this much. I never thought I’d have to. Not yet at least. Not now. Not with you.

“I kind of always thought it would be me to go first,” he continued, smiling a little at his memories, “I was more likely to break my neck trying to hop up on a table to dance when I’m ninety.”

He thought he could hear it then. The wind whispering, Oh, Blaine.

“But I digress, I’m getting off topic. I was supposed to be apologizing.”

What for? The gentle breeze asked.

Blaine smiled sadly and looked up at the tombstone, his eyes tracing over the words Kurt Hummel. “I should have come and visited, but instead I was… I… I’m so sorry Kurt,” Blaine pleaded, eyes filling up with tears once more, “I just couldn’t do it. I missed you so much and I didn’t want to deal with that. I didn’t want to miss you, I’m so sorry.”

He felt the tears spill out over his cheeks and he quickly tried to rid them, but they wouldn’t stop falling. “How am I going to do this, Kurt? How am I going to move on with my life, move out of this state and leave you?”

I’ll always be with you, in that big heart of yours, dummy. Or have you forgotten?

Blaine laughed wetly as he rubbed at his eyes, furiously trying to dry them. “I miss you. I miss you so much, and I love you. I’ll never ever stop loving you, no matter what happens. I love you with all of my heart, Kurt. But I guess I don’t really get a choice what I do with that love anymore, do I? No matter how much I miss you, I have to go on in life. I have to live since you weren’t allowed to.

“I applied to college,” Blaine quietly confessed after a moment, “New York. I know they were our dreams, but I hope you don’t mind. I’ll go see the things you couldn’t, and I’ll learn and I’ll live and I’ll find the things that you would have loved and I don’t know how, but I’ll find a way to send them to you. I’ll live for both of us now.”

Blaine glanced at his watch when he let a silence settle over the moment and then he was shuffling up to his feet, looking down at the stone. “I have to go for now, Kurt, but I’ll come back. You probably don’t want to hear about the last year, I think you were there, trying to help me anyways, so I won’t bore you with all of that. But I’ll come back, and I’ll tell you all the things about Burt, Carole, Finn, and all the other New Direction kids that they won’t tell you themselves. I miss you. I love you. Always.”

He turned to walk away after lightly brushing his fingers over the stone, but stopped midway, angling back to the tombstone, “You promised you know, and I’m holding you to it. One day…”

With that he turned and left, feeling a little lighter now. The wind whispered one more time, gently blowing into his ear.

I’m never saying goodbye to you. Not really.