Fanfic - Visions of Rain (part six)
Blaine was quiet most of the car ride home, and Jo was getting nervous. Her brother had put on quite the front when he’d seen that guy, Hummel or something, but she knew Blaine. She knew when something was wrong, and judging from the tiny downturn of his lips and the heavy nature of his sighing breaths as he stared out the car window, something was indeed wrong. She just needed to get him to say it.
“Is your friend doing okay?”
“Yeah,” he mumbled quietly. “Kurt seemed to be doing better.”
He quieted once more and she let the silence wash over them. It was uncomfortable and made her fingers itch. Blaine wasn’t providing any answers, though. She’d have to do most of the leg work here.
“Why do you look so bummed then? I mean, if he’s getting better, that’s a good thing, right?”
Blaine didn’t answer immediately; and the quick glimpses Jo caught of his face told her that he was upset and he wasn’t telling her the whole truth. “Blaine?”
“He’s more lucid, Jo, but he’s hiding something. I think that something might be wrong and he isn’t telling us so he can get out of there sooner-not that I blame him; that place is pretty terrifying-but I think he isn’t being completely honest with us.”
“How so?”
“That’s the thing; I don’t know. Something just seemed really off. I didn’t want to say anything though because I’m sure Kurt would pick up on it.” He turned to look at her, his chin still resting on the heel of his palm. “He’s not stupid, Jo. He knows what we want to see, what we want to hear. I think he isn’t telling his doctors everything so he can go home.”
“Why didn’t you say anything, then? I mean, this kid can be pretty dangerous when he goes off, right?”
“Well, yeah, but…I don’t know. Kurt’s not that dangerous.”
“Didn’t you say he tried to kill you with a pen?”
“Yes, but that’s not the point. He wasn’t himself then. Besides, I didn’t really have a chance to say anything. If I mentioned it to Kurt, he’d probably just get defensive or something and I’d have been thrown out. If I said something to his dad, he’d probably freak out and overreact; he’s really worried about his kid, Jo.”
“Can’t blame him for that.”
“No. You can’t. And Burt, he’s a really good guy. He and his new wife gave up their honeymoon just so they’d have enough money to cover Kurt’s tuition to Dalton.”
“Oh, is he a transfer?”
“Yeah. He’s…um, he’s kind of like me. There was a bad situation at his old school.”
That certainly caught her attention, and she wondered just what it was that pushed this kid over the edge, if maybe his situation had something to do with the loose bolts in his brain. Blaine hadn’t exactly been the most stable after the last incident at his old school. “Bad like yours?”
“Worse.”
“Blaine, people were drawing pictures of you hanging yourself or getting dismembered and leaving them in your locker.”
“Don’t remind me.”
“How on earth could it have gotten worse?”
“My bullies never actually touched me.”
“Oh.” Oh, crap. She really hadn’t expected that. “Oh man, Blaine. I’m sorry. Was he hurt or anything?”
“Not exactly, but he was pretty shaken up about the whole thing. There was one guy who harassed him pretty bad. The school expelled the guy after he threatened Kurt, but it was repealed by the school board because they couldn’t prove anything. Kurt could have given them the proof they needed, but that required revealing things that he really didn’t want to tell.”
“What kind of things?”
Blaine shook his head. “I’m not at liberty to say. The main bully, though, he’s a closet case, which is why he picked on Kurt so bad. Kurt couldn’t tell the principal much of anything without outing the kid, and he didn’t want to do that, even though he had every right to.”
“That seems awful cruel of you.”
“It’s the truth. The guy made Kurt’s life hell. If he was just honest with himself about liking boys, then maybe things wouldn’t have gotten so bad.”
“You don’t know that.”
“What?” He looked at his sister, but her eyes were focused on the road.
“You don’t know that things would have turned out differently. I’m assuming Kurt is gay, correct?”
“Yes, but what does that have to do with anyth-”
“Let me finish, dummy. So this Kurt kid, I assume he got picked on because he bats for the other team.”
“Yeah, I guess.”
“So wouldn’t coming out make things just as bad, if not worse, for this other guy? I agree that Kurt didn’t necessarily have to keep anything a secret because from the sound of it, this other guy was out of line, but outing someone else is kind of a big deal. Especially if the kid is insecure enough about it to harass someone else just because they’re open about their sexuality. You wouldn’t have wanted someone to have outed you before you were ready, right?”
Blaine sunk into his seat and stared hard at his knees. He thought of his crush from earlier in the year, Jeremiah, and how upset he’d been after Blaine’s little stunt at the GAP. Oh god, he’d outed him, hadn’t he? At work too. He buried his face in his hands. Oh god, he was a terrible person. How could he have been so stupid?
“Blaine?”
“I’m such a screw up, Jo.”
“What do you mean?”
“I…I did that.”
“I’m not following you here. What exactly did you do?”
“I sort of um, outed someone,” he whispered.
Jo winced and drew in a sharp hiss of air between her teeth. “When?”
“Back in February. In my defense, I thought he was open about the whole thing. He took me out for coffee a couple of times, and I thought-well, I don’t really know what I thought. I got the Warblers to help me serenade him, though. And it kind of got him fired.”
Jo almost lost control of the car. “Wait, what? Why did you think it would be a good idea to do this at his work?”
Blaine sunk down even further, wishing he could make himself disappear. “It was the only place I knew for sure I could find him.”
“You’re kind of an idiot sometimes, you know that?”
“Yeah, I know,” he mumbled into his seatbelt. “Rub it in a little more, why don’t you?”
“Sorry, Blaine, but you gotta admit, that was kind of a dick move.”
“I know. Can we just drop it?”
“Yeah, I guess. It’s not like we can fix it now.” She turned the car into their neighborhood. Blaine was dreading seeing his parents again. “So what makes you think Kurt’s hiding something?” she asked, changing the subject.
“He’s guarded. I don’t know. There’s just something in my gut telling me to look for signs. I missed them before, Jo. He hadn’t taken his meds for nearly a week when he freaked out on mom and me. I’m not going to let this get by me again.”
“So what are you going to do?” Their house came into view and Jo tapped the tiny black square of plastic above her head. The familiar white panels of the garage door slowly cranked open and she pulled the car inside.
“I don’t know. Call Mr. Hummel, most likely. He’ll know if I’m just imagining things.”
---
Blaine never did get around to calling Burt, but the man did call him. He hated to admit it, but he’d felt a light sense of relief when he saw the guy’s name light up the screen of his cell phone, though Blaine felt incredibly stupid at the glaring blue proof the screen provided of his lapse in memory. He should have called Burt and voiced his concerns, should have done it the second he and Jo had gotten home from the hospital, but he hadn’t. It wasn’t that he thought everything was fine, oh no, because there was definitely something off about Kurt.
Unfortunately, he couldn’t put his finger exactly what it was that made him so uneasy. He couldn’t say anything about it. No one would take him seriously. It wasn’t as if Kurt had been acting overly strange when Blaine had seen him last, considering the circumstances; this was just a gut feeling that something wasn’t quite right.
But Kurt had still been recovering then. It was natural for him to still be just a bit strange, just a bit off. Blaine couldn’t say anything-they’d think he was just overreacting to seeing his friend in such a fragile state. No one would believe him. What the hell did he know about psychiatric medicine?
Burt’s call had carried with it good news: Kurt was no longer a danger to himself or others. He was getting transferred to a lower security facility closer to home, and soon he’d be out of there for good. No more hospitals. No more worrying. They’d have moved him sooner, but paperwork had tied up the process. Blaine didn’t know if he should be relieved or not.
It was a lazy summer afternoon, and it found Blaine sitting on the covers of his bed, staring out at the sunny day peeking in through his window. He had thought briefly about calling David or Wes, maybe getting together and doing something, just the three of them, since Wes was finally back in town and both had been itching to get out and do something like old times, but he didn’t. There was too much on his mind. Jo was leaving tomorrow morning. She’d gotten a call yesterday afternoon; the other intern’s mother had died suddenly and they needed her back in the office a few days early. Blaine knew her visit was simply that, a visit. He’d known right from the start that she couldn’t sick around forever, but the thought didn’t make him any more comfortable. His sister was leaving him again. He was losing his main line of support.
Sometimes he wished she had just distanced herself from his problems like their parents. It would make things so much easier right now.
He sighed and squeezed his eyes shut. He shouldn’t be complaining. What right did he have to complain? He hadn’t gathered up the courage to visit Kurt since he’d gone there with Jo nearly a week ago, though he’d kept up communication through the phone. Kurt was allowed to make a phone call or two out a night, and he’d called Blaine once or twice just to talk.
That first one had been a rather awkward affair. Kurt had been talkative then, and mostly lucid. He talked about the facility and seemed genuinely interested in the goings-on of Blaine’s life. It was almost like old times until Kurt made him cut the call short. There were bugs, apparently. Bugs everywhere and they would pick up on the conversation and put him back. He never specified where exactly “back” was, but Blaine knew better than to question it.
He should have called Burt then, when Kurt had started babbling nonsense, but he didn’t. He was sure the calls were monitored. The people at the hospital would have stepped in and done something if it had really been out of the ordinary.
He sighed and fell over onto his side. The soft, pliable skin of his cheek pressed up into the rest of his face as it flattened against the soft covers of his bed, and he closed his eyes to keep them from watering. It was so quiet now. His parents had taken Jo out to town for lunch and a bit of shopping before she had to leave. They were trying to smash every last moment they could with their daughter into these last few days because who the hell knew when Jo would be back around these parts. He had the house to himself.
In many ways, he envied his sister. She was bright and beautiful and everything their parents had ever wanted. Except that she was a girl. They hadn’t wanted a girl. Blaine remembered all of the attention they’d given him as a small child until he starting acting different from what they expected. He wasn’t their little ‘man’s man,’ though he wasn’t nearly as feminine as Kurt. He was Blaine, and that simply hadn’t been good enough. Not when they were constantly comparing him to Jo. There was a reason he’d waited as long as he had to come out to them.
He opened his eyes slowly and looked around the room. His room. His dad had been fed up with him sleeping down in the guest room after the first couple of days. Blaine didn’t blame him, really. It didn’t matter what the heck had happened in his room. He couldn’t keep sleeping downstairs. Blaine just needed to suck it up and deal with it. It had to be irritating to have such a coward for a son.
His gaze shifted unconsciously down to his new throw rug. His mother had gotten it for him to persuade him to move back upstairs. You couldn’t really see the stain anymore, even when the rug was absent, but that didn’t mean that it didn’t haunt Blaine’s dreams, keeping him from sleep. He kept hearing Kurt’s voice over and over in his head, the old Kurt he knew mixing with the new something that Kurt had become.
Warm sunlight washed over his face, and he tried to relax. He longed to simply melt into his mattress and disappear, almost like he’d never existed. No more worries. No more Blaine. His body ached for the quiet shuffling of Pavarotti in his cage, a return to something safe, something normal. He loved Kurt, he really did, but this was starting to grate on him.
Was it really worth all this turmoil in the end? Did he deserve all this heartache? And this was only summer vacation. What about school? What about after? He was graduating next year. What the hell was he going to do then? This was only a teenage romance (sort of), and Blaine was really starting to miss the comforting presence of his mother. If she’d only talk to him-but it didn’t really matter did it? Blaine had made his bed, and now he had to lie in it. He really wished Jo wasn’t leaving. Things had seemed so normal with her around that it hurt. He didn’t want her to go. He didn’t want to return to that terrible loneliness of loving a boy who wasn’t there anymore.
He buried his head into the smooth fabric of his blankets and let the light warmth of the sun wash over him. Sleep was creeping up on him, blurring his thoughts and dragging him down into the dark.
He didn’t know if he wanted to do this anymore.
Was Kurt really worth it?
---
He almost missed the light tap on the door, he was so distracted. It swished open on its freshly-oiled hinges and Jo peeked her head in.
“Blaine? Can I come in?”
He didn’t answer, just ignored her and kept on writing in his journal. It was stupid. He was just scribbling down the lyrics to half-forgotten songs he’d sung in his dreams. He didn’t even know if the words were his or not. He’d have to listen to Jo’s stupid collection of CDs again to make sure he wasn’t ripping someone else off. He could feel her presence hovering just beside the door, and he bowed his head lower. He was mad at her, and she should know it, even this was stupid and pointless in the end. She’d see through him after a while; Jo never put up with his crap for very long.
She stepped into the room and walked over to where he sat on the floor. Her feet barely made a sound as she slid across the carpet. It was always a trait he’d envied in her, that quiet, delicate way she carried herself. She sunk down to the floor with an exaggerated sigh, and he turned his head away from her sharply, pointedly ignoring her.
She wrapped her arms around her bent knees and leaned over toward him, trying to read over his shoulder. “What you got there?”
He snapped the notebook shut and shot her a steely glare. “None of your business.”
“My, aren’t we testy tonight,” she huffed. “What crawled up your butt and died?”
Blaine busied himself with collecting together the various pens he’d scattered across the rug, making sure each one had the proper cap before placing it into a small pile with similar pens.
She sighed again and he pictured her running her fingers through the dark curls that always spilled across her forehead. “Actually, that’s sort of what I wanted to talk to you about,” she murmured softly.
His sharp, irritated movements slowed for a moment at those words before picking up again with renewed fervor. He said nothing, and Jo took his silence as her cue to continue. “They’re worried about you, you know, mom and dad.”
He snorted at that, still refusing to look her in the eye. “No, they’re not. They’re upset because you’re skipping out on us again and they’re stuck with me.” He angrily snapped his pens together in his hand and made to rise, but Jo stopped him with a hand on his sleeve.
“That’s not it, Blaine.”
“And why not, Jo? You’re so-fuck, I don’t even know anymore!” His eyes were stinging, and he wanted nothing more than to scream and cry and fling things across the room. Who the hell cared about being calm and collected anymore? Blaine didn’t want to do it anymore. He couldn’t do this anymore. Fuck. He was shaking.
He looked so vulnerable in that moment that Jo nearly broke down and wrapped him up in her arms. She watched as he sunk back down to the carpet, and his fingers loosened their grip on the pens. They fell and hit the rug with a light clatter, the caps flew off the cheaper ones like a flock of colorful, plastic birds. Maybe he’d put them back together wrong. Maybe that’s why they didn’t quite fit the way they should.
“Blaine.” His sister’s voice permeated his thoughts. Her fingers were still tangled in the light fabric of his t-shirt. “Tell me what’s wrong. Please.”
Surely she could feel the light tremors running through his body, surely she could see just how close he was to breaking apart and shattering right then and there. “I don’t know what to do anymore, Jo,” he whispered.
Her fingers tightened on his sleeve, and she pulled him in just a bit closer to her. “What do you mean?”
“Kurt called while you were out.”
Oh. She felt something twist in the column of her throat. So that’s what was bothering him. “What did he say?”
“That’s just it, Jo. He didn’t say a thing. He sounded completely normal, like he hadn’t been spewing nonsense at me just two days ago, like the medication is actually working, like…” He slowed, his breath coming in frantic gasps as his face crumbled with emotion. “Like none of this had ever happened.”
She pulled him flush against her and cradled his head against her chest. God, she hadn’t done this in years, since her brother had first transferred to that private school for boys. Blaine had gotten so much taller since then. “But that’s a good thing, isn’t it?” She rubbed comforting circles into the skin of his back, and hoped this was as calming as she thought it was. She wasn’t sure she could handle a hysterical Blaine at the moment. “It means he’s getting better, right?”
“That’s the thing, Jo. I don’t know what to think anymore.” He could feel the gentle brush of her hair against his cheek. She smelled faintly of lavender; it was soothing. “I want so much for Kurt to be better, for this to just go away, and yet I know there’s something wrong. He’s just hiding it, Jo.”
She said nothing, just continued to stroke his back. She didn’t want to tell him that he was probably wrong. His friend was in the hospital for a reason, and surely they’d know if he was still insane. They had to. It was their job to know. They weren’t about to let the kid roam free if they thought something might still be wrong, right? She sighed and squeezed his back reassuringly. Blaine would get over this. It was just one guy, not the end of the world.
“Why are you leaving me again, Jo?” His voice was so quiet, so broken, and she felt something break in her chest.
“Oh, Blaine. Is that what this is about? That I have to go back early?”
He said nothing. Yes, then. That’s what this was about. She gripped his shoulders and pushed him away from her so she could look him in the eye. “It’s not you, you know that, right? Tara’s mom passed, and they need at least one of us around.” She brushed back a curl of hair that has fallen into his face. She’d always liked it better when he wore his hair naturally. “There are some things in life that you just can’t foresee. There are some things you just can’t stop, babe.”
His hazel eyes locked onto hers. “Is this one of those things?”
‘This’ could be so many things. It could be her leaving. It could be the way their parents were reacting to this whole thing. It could be all the stuff going on with his friend, Kurt. It could be everything rolled into one. “Yeah, Blaine. This is one of those things.”
He leaned in and wrapped his arms around her torso. “God, I missed you so much, Jo. I don’t want you to go,” he mumbled into her shirt.
“Yeah, Blaine. I know.”
“I don’t think I can do this without you.”
She grabbed his head and lifted his chin up. There were faint tracks of moisture running down his cheeks, and she wiped at them with her thumbs. “You can do it, little brother. You’re Blaine Anderson. You can do anything you put your mind to. Courage, Blaine. You’ve just gotta have a little courage.”
---
It was almost like déjà vu, standing there at the front door to the Hummel residence, waiting for someone to answer. It was far cooler than he’d expected for this time of year, and the clouds rolling in overhead whispered of rain later on in the day. He hoped that it could wait until after he’d gotten home. There was nothing Blaine hated more than driving in the rain.
As the time ticked by, he was tempted to ring the doorbell again, just in case. He’d called before he came, just to be sure that the timing was fine, that it was okay for him to be there. Burt had sounded a little skeptical over the phone-Kurt had only been home a few days, and visiting him in the hospital was different than visiting him now that he was finally home; the last thing anyone wanted to do was stress him out and risk another lapse-but Burt had agreed. Kurt needed a sense of normalcy to get him used to things.
Blaine rocked back and forth on the porch from his heels to the balls of his feet. Maybe they hadn’t heard the bell. His hand moved to the little metal button, about to press it one more time, before he heard shuffling around on the other side of the door. He quickly pulled back his hand and stood perfectly still. It wouldn’t do to look so nervous now in front of Kurt’s dad.
Blaine was mildly surprised when Finn was the one who peered outside when the locks finally slid from their places and the door swung open. The tall teen looked dreadful. Burt had mentioned that Finn had probably come down with something, and it couldn’t be more apparent than in that moment. Finn’s eyes were rimmed with red and the overall paleness of his skin was accented only by the flush decorating his cheeks. His dark hair was ruffled and his white t-shirt bunched up around his chest as though he had just woken up from a nap, and Blaine felt a twinge of guilt run through him. Burt had said it was fine for him to come down, but it felt an awful lot like he was intruding.
“Um, hey, Finn. Are you okay?” Blaine asked as Finn wavered lightly on his feet. “No offense, but you look pretty terrible. I could, um, I could just-”
Finn waved him off and stepped away, leaving the door open. “Nah, don’t bother. Just come in.”
Blaine followed Finn over to the living room where the taller boy collapsed down onto the couch and wrapped himself in a rumpled blanket that looked as though it had been sitting there for a while. Blaine could hear the clinks and scrapes of glassware being moved around in the kitchen, but he hesitated before heading over there, his eyes fixed momentarily on Finn. Something was wrong with this picture. “Um, where’s Mr. Hummel?”
Finn ground the heel of his palm into his left eye and made an uncomfortable noise deep in his throat. Blaine wondered if the boy was running a fever. “You mean Burt?”
Blaine nodded, but Finn made no indication that he saw the gesture, and he faltered. “Yeah, I guess. Is, um, is Burt around by chance? He said it was fine for me to come over, but if he had to work or something…” he trailed off.
“No, you’re fine. He stayed home today.”
Blaine was confused. “So, is he in the kitchen then? Like, cooking or something, so he couldn’t make it to the door and you had to get it? I don’t want to bug you any more than I have to. You look kind of terrible.”
Finn wedged his back deeper into the sofa cushions and pulled the blanket up higher around his chest. “No, no, Kurt’s in there. Burt stepped out for just a minute to grab me some cold medication and one of Kurt’s new prescriptions that got filled a little late. He’ll only be gone a minute or two ’cause the store’s not that far away. I told him that I’d hang out upstairs in case Kurt got nervous or something. He’s been fine today, though. Nothing to worry about. You should go talk to him; he’s just in there,” Finn mumbled sleepily, pointing toward the kitchen, his voice growing softer with each word.
“I’ll go do that, then. Uh, why don’t you get some sleep? I can keep an eye on Kurt for you for the time being. Because seriously, Finn, you look pretty bad.”
“So I’ve heard.”
Blaine spared him one last look before walking over to the kitchen. What the hell had Burt been thinking? Leaving Kurt alone with his sick stepbrother. Blaine hoped like hell that the medication Burt was getting was completely essential, but the thought didn’t put him at ease. If the stuff was essential, then wouldn’t that put Kurt more at risk of losing it? And if it wasn’t, then why hadn’t Burt simply waited, or asked Carole to pick it up on her way home? Blaine’s throat tightened, Kurt’s voice echoing in his ears.
You shouldn’t be here.
He shouldn’t think that way. He really shouldn’t. The hospital wouldn’t have released Kurt if he wasn’t better by now. He was being silly. There was nothing to worry about. He was safe here, even if Finn was nodding off in the other room and Burt was on his way back from the supermarket. Kurt was fine, but he still had trouble reigning in his racing heart.
Blaine cautiously peered around the corner into the kitchen, his pulse thrumming through his body. “Kurt?”
There was no answer, but Blaine hadn’t really expected one. He couldn’t really hear anything over his pounding heart. Kurt was in the far corner of the kitchen, removing what looked to be clean dishes from the dishwasher. Perfectly normal. Except for the flawlessly lined rows of glasses and plates stacked across the island counter in the center of the kitchen, everything neatly arranged by shape and color. Kurt hadn’t bothered to switch on the overhead light, and the room was dark from the dark, grey clouds outside. What little sunlight there was coming in through the windows pierced through the translucent glass of cups large and small, throwing colorful, patterned shadows onto the grey slate of the kitchen counter. Blaine forgot to breathe. How could something so normal look so very, very wrong? He cleared his throat, this time catching Kurt’s attention. “Kurt?”
Kurt smiled at him, finally noticing his presence, and placed the plate in his hands into one of the neat stacks beside him. “Blaine. It’s good to see you again. In person, this time, I mean. Phone calls are nice and all, but do prefer actually seeing who I’m talking to.” He bent down and pulled out a little handful of utensils, the spoons flashing in his fingers as he sorted them into piles. “How have you been?”
Blaine was having trouble digesting Kurt’s words. He stared at him, eyes widened and mouth gaping open like a fish. This was so…normal, so domestic, and it was bothering him more than he thought. He didn’t really know what to say, and unfortunately, his mouth moved faster than his brain. “What are you doing?” he blurted out, regretting the words almost the instant they fell from his lips.
Kurt frowned a little in confusion. “Chores. I’m putting away the dishes. What’s it look like?”
Blaine couldn’t answer that. He just stared as Kurt pulled apart the stack of long-tined forks and rearranged them, so that they fit together perfectly, every edge of every fork aligned with the fork above and below it. He was so mesmerized that he almost didn’t register Kurt’s voice when he spoke once more. “You really shouldn’t stare, you know. It’s painfully rude.”
“Sorry,” he muttered quickly, shaking his head to clear away his thoughts. “Do you want some help with that?”
Kurt suddenly stopped and looked up at him, and Blaine’s heart thudded to a halt. Oh god, Kurt was going to attack him again, wasn’t he? Oh god, what was he going to do? Should he call the police, or maybe an ambulance, or-
“Why?”
“Huh?”
Kurt looked genuinely confused. “Why on earth would you want to help me with this? It’s one of the most mundane tasks out there. You can’t tell me that you drove two hours to get here just to help me straighten up the house.”
“Well, it’s what you’re doing, and I wanted to spend time with you, so I just thought that maybe-” Oh man, he was babbling. He couldn’t find a way to tell Kurt that he was doing this wrong, that no one was quite that meticulous when they put away the damn dishes unless there was something going on with their brain chemistry. Thunder rumbled outside.
Kurt frowned and Blaine froze. “You think I can’t do this, don’t you? This one little thing, and you think I can’t do it.”
“That’s not what I-”
“You probably think I’m still nuts, don’t you? You’re trying to sabotage me.” His voice was growing louder and louder and Blaine couldn’t hear the hurt in his words as backed away from the kitchen. He started to panic. Oh god, it was too early for him to see Kurt. He shouldn’t have come here. He needed Burt to come back. He needed Kurt to calm down. He needed Jo back to tell him what to do. He needed everything to be okay again.
You shouldn’t have come.
Kurt stalked toward him, and Blaine couldn’t take it anymore. He ran. He ran past Finn and the old leather couch. He ran past the photos lining the walls of Kurt smiling and posing for the camera. He burst through the door, thankful that Finn had neglected to lock the damn thing, and he bolted to his car.
Rain pelted the glass of the windshield as he sped away into the afternoon, leaving the Hummel family home in his rearview mirror.
---
Water whipped past the glass at an alarming rate; the wipers were hardly doing anything besides push the rain around as they scraped and screamed against the windshield. The world was a blur of muted colors as Blaine sped down the unfamiliar roads. He had no idea where he was going. He just needed to drive. He needed to escape, run far away until the ache in his chest that was his heart finally burst.
Something crawled down his cheek, tickling the skin uncomfortably, and he was surprised to find his fingers wet when he drew them back from his face. Huh. He hadn’t realized he was crying until now. He couldn’t see anymore. The world was a tumbling blur of amorphous shapes around him. A car sped past in the other direction, horn blaring, and he swerved back into his lane.
He should stop, pull over. He was going to crash into something or someone. He was going to kill himself at this rate.
Would that really be so bad? The little voice in the back of his mind urged him on. Just keep driving. It’ll take away the pain, make everything stop.
He gently guided the car into a neighborhood and pulled up outside of one of the houses. The engine quieted and stilled as he turned the key in the ignition, and the lights of the dash went dark. It was cold, even though he’d probably been driving for some time. The heater must be acting up again. The soft tapping of the rain along the body of the car echoed in his ears. He wished it would drown out the white noise in his head.
What the hell was he going to do? This wasn’t fair. None of this was fair. Kurt was supposed to be fine; he was supposed to be normal now. This whole mess wasn’t supposed to have happened in the first place.
He slumped forward over the steering wheel, his seatbelt digging painfully into the exposed skin of his neck where it peeked out from his jacket. He couldn’t stop the tears now. His chest clenched with every sob that wrenched itself from his body. It hurt so bad; it hurt to think, to cry, to breathe. He just wanted this all to be over. He couldn’t run far enough away from this mess.
So much for courage.
Courage.
He laughed at the thought.
Courage, what a crock of shit. He didn’t need courage, he needed Kurt to go back to being that adorable little spy that he fell for over coffee and talk of bullies and glee club. He needed his sister here so she could wrap her arms around him and tell him everything was going to be okay. He needed Burt Hummel to realize the his son was not okay, no matter what front he put on in front of the doctors. Blaine needed his mom to talk to him again and his dad to be there for once when things got hard instead of finding new ways to stay later at work and out of the house. He needed everyone to comfort him, let him know that everything was going to be okay, and then just leave him the hell alone for a little while.
He needed…he didn’t even know what he needed anymore.
He laid his head on his folded arms and stared out the windshield. He could hardly see a thing, it was raining so hard. The water was quickly filling the depressed bit of asphalt between the road and the curb of the sidewalk, running like little rivers to the storm drains. There were still tears dripping from his chin, and Blaine wondered just how much water it would take to fill the car and sweep him away.
He didn’t want to feel like this anymore. He wanted things to be okay again, but that wasn’t going to happen, was it? Things were never going to go back to the way they were, and he hated Kurt for it.
It was all his fault. If he hadn’t gone crazy, none of this would have happened. If it wasn’t for Kurt, Blaine would have his life back. He’d be at home right now cooking dinner with his mom or maybe hanging out with Wes or David on their last summer before they abandoned him for college. He be anywhere but Lima fucking Ohio, sobbing in his car. If it wasn’t for Kurt-
If it wasn’t for Kurt, he wouldn’t have a friend who shared his unnatural obsession with Vogue and cheesy, romantic musicals. If it wasn’t for Kurt, he wouldn’t know the joy of his smile or the light electricity that passed through his body when the boy touched his hand. He wouldn’t know Kurt’s terrible little chuckle or the way his eyes lit up when he smiled.
If it wasn’t for Kurt, Blaine wouldn’t have fallen in love.
He blinked away more tears, and tried to crush out the tight burning sensation that was closing off his throat. Just breathe, Blaine. You can make it through this. You have no other choice. You can’t keep falling to pieces like this.
He screwed his eyes shut and buried his forehead into the soft sleeves of his jacket. He wanted to go home.
He stayed that way, listening to the patter of the rain until a rattling sound edged its way into his consciousness. What the hell?
Blaine looked down to see his phone buzzing against the plastic sides of the cupholder. Someone was calling him. He swiped at his face with the back of his sleeve to clear his vision enough to read the caller ID. It was Finn, calling from the house phone. He hesitated, his thumb hovering over the little red option labeled ‘deny.’
Finn was one of the last people he wanted to talk to right now. The guy was sick as a dog, and he was probably foaming at the mouth at Blaine’s abrupt departure. And what if it wasn’t Finn? Sure, he was the most likely person to call, but Burt should have gotten home by now. He’d be worse than Finn. And of course, there was always Kurt. He wasn’t so far gone that he couldn’t pick up the phone and scream obscenities at him, he was sure of it.
But he deserved it, didn’t he? Such a freakin’ coward. He connected the call.
“Hello?” God, his voice was all scratchy and rough from crying. He was a wreck.
“Blaine?” Finn. Blaine sighed and sank down into his seat, bracing himself for the verbal lashing that was sure to follow.
“Yeah, Finn. I’m here. What do you need?”
“Are you still in Lima?” That was odd. Finn didn’t sound angry at all, just tired and stuffy and strangely kind of terrified.
“I think so. Why?”
“It’s Kurt. I can’t find him anywhere.”
---
Everything seemed to slow down for him as Finn’s words sunk in. Kurt was missing. And he’d been acting weird again when Blaine had fled. But that meant-Blaine swallowed hard and tried to think of something else, anything else. He didn’t need another reminder of his cowardice and the consequences thereof. He closed his eyes, trying to ground himself, regain his composure, but wasn’t really working.
“What do you mean, you can’t find him?” he breathed into the receiver.
“Just what I said. I-Burt came home and woke me up; I hadn’t even realized that I’d fallen asleep. He came up to the couch all confused and asked me why the door was unlocked.”
“And Kurt wasn’t in the house,” Blaine finished softly, the whole thing finally starting to sink in over the shock. The rain hadn’t let up, and fat drops of water pelted the car like stones. Oh god, Kurt was out there in this weather. Alone. And possibly suffering another psychotic break.
This was all his fault.
He shouldn’t have left the house. He shouldn’t have gone and left Kurt alone with an over-tired, sick Finn. He shouldn’t have run away. He should have stayed and tried to calm Kurt down, or maybe woken Finn up and tried to get him to do the job. Kurt could be lost or hurt or god knows what, and he was just sitting there in his car like the coward he was, letting the boy he loved slip through his fingers.
Blaine couldn’t tell if he was breathing or not, but he managed to get enough air into his lungs to speak again. “Is Burt still home?”
“No. He just left to go look for Kurt, like, right before I called you.” Finn paused for a moment, as though contemplating if he wanted to say anything more. His next words were so quiet, Blaine almost missed them. “I didn’t tell him you came by.”
Blaine didn’t quite know what to say to that. It was his fault Kurt was missing, and yet Finn was covering for him. Burt would have freaked and gone on a rampage if he’d known that Blaine’s visit had probably set this off. He swallowed hard around the lump in his throat. “Why-why would you do that?”
“Is Kurt with you?” Finn was avoiding the question.
“What?”
“Is Kurt with you?” Finn repeated, his voice breathy and exasperated.
“No,” Blaine answered quickly. But I wish he was. A sudden thought occurred to him. “Wait, you don’t think I took him, do you?”
“No, but I had to be sure. I trust you and all, but…I mean, Kurt’s not here, and it’s my fault he’s gone. I should have been watching him or something, but I fell asleep and left you guys alone. God, I’m so sorry for that.”
No, Blaine thought, you shouldn’t have been left alone with him in the first place, even if Burt needed to get that medication. This whole thing wasn’t fair, and you shouldn’t have been left to watch him. Not while you’re sick. And I shouldn’t have run out. No matter how freaked I’d been. “Don’t-don’t put this all on yourself. No one knew Kurt would run off, right? And he couldn’t have gone very far. Not in this weather.” He was rambling. He only rambled when he was nervous. Oh god, what if Finn could tell he was nervous? And where in the hell was Kurt?
Blaine restarted his car, and tried to look out the windows through the cascades of water running past. He sucked in a deep breath, the image of Kurt, wet and alone and god knows where flashing through his head. “I’ll find him, Finn,” he promised. “Just, just give me a little time.”
“All right. I’ll call you if I hear anything from Burt.” And the line went dead.
Blaine sat there in the cold, dark cab of his car, slumped over in his seat, his phone clasped loosely in his fist as it rested on the steering wheel. The white noise of the rain hammering the doors and roof filled his head. Kurt was missing. This was his fault. He didn’t even know the first place to look.
Blaine leaned back and was about to drop his phone into the cupholder and start the car up when something stopped him. The phone fell from his slack fingers to clatter against the hard plastic of the dashboard. He drew his hand over to the cupholder and drew out the crumpled pink nametag from when Kurt had first been hospitalized. The messy folds of the paper were rough against his fingers, but the color was still as bright as ever. That stupid color that Kurt had liked so much when this whole mess had first started.
He felt his breath loosen itself from his chest, and a light chuckle escaped his lips. Soon, he was laughing hysterically, tears filling his stinging eyes as he doubled over in his seat, the bottom of the steering wheel jarring painfully against his knees as he tried to curl up in the small space. He didn’t know what to do. This was all so ridiculous; this couldn’t be real.
The pink caught his eye once more, and he tried to calm himself down. His breaths came in large gasping gulps and he brought the ruined nametag close to his face. His shaking fingers scrabbled at the edges of the tag and he carefully peeled the sticky bits away from each other. He could hear paper tearing, but the tag itself still looked to be whole. He unfolded the little slip of paper and pink filled his vision.
Blarn Anderson.
What he wouldn’t give to be ‘Blarn Anderson’ again. He could be that same dopey boy who fell in love with Kurt Hummel, the same boy who serenaded him and spent long afternoons with him doing nothing or studying in the common rooms of Dalton Academy. He screwed his eyes shut and let the tears fall. Kurt. He needed to get himself together, calm down.
Kurt was missing. He needed to find Kurt.
Blaine scrubbed at his eyes with the heel of his palm, and he started up his car. He needed to do this. Kurt needed him. He was out there, alone, and Blaine was just sitting here. He drew in a deep breath and tried to think. Where would Kurt go?
He watched as the windshield wipers danced back and forth across the windshield, shifting the water across the glass. Back and forth. And he knew where to go.
---
The road shouldn’t have felt so familiar-he’d only driven it once or twice before-but his hands moved almost of their own accord. The GPS was still sitting in the glove box, and even with his terrible sense of direction, he somehow knew exactly where he was going.
McKinley. There were so many places around town that Kurt could go, but he’d told Blaine once that McKinley, as terrible as it was, sometimes felt the most like home. And it was the farthest of the few places he knew Burt would check. If Blaine went there first, and Kurt was there, maybe then he wouldn’t have to admit his mistakes.
The school building came into view, and he pulled over into the student parking lot. Everything was dark and still under the rain; there didn’t seem to be another living soul around. He stepped out of the car, and the rain hit him with full force, washing away the gel in his hair and plastering his clothes to his body. The water ran into his eyes and ears and he couldn’t see Kurt anywhere.
“Kurt!” He called the boy’s name over and over as he stumbled through the parking lot toward the fields surrounding the school. “Kurt, where are you?”
What time was it? How long had he spent moping around in his car? He hadn’t even bothered to check his damn phone or the clock on the dash before he left, and both of those were back in the car. He was almost to the damn football field. This was stupid. McKinley wasn’t all that far from Kurt’s house, but he couldn’t possibly have walked here in that short of time.
“Kurt!” The rain was still going strong, and his shoes were nearly soaked through. The bleachers drew ever closer and his steps slowed. He should get back to his car. Look for Kurt in a place where he could logically be, not at the stupid school. What the hell had he been thinking?
But as he neared the field, he saw a figure out on the grass. Kurt. His feet moved of their own accord and he was racing across the slick grass, stumbling and picking himself back up again, but the figure wasn’t getting any closer. “Kurt,” he whispered to no one at all, and the shadow disappeared. He was being stupid. He was seeing things.
He’d messed up again, and Kurt wasn’t here.
---
Blaine stood there in the middle of the field, trapped by the lure of a shadow and a desperate mind. He didn’t know what to think anymore. The world swirled around him in a blurry haze of moisture. Everything seemed muted now, grey and lifeless, and more than anything he wished that Kurt was standing there beside him. He didn’t need to be whole or sane or anything, just so long as he was there.
But Kurt wasn’t there, and the realization of that fact hit him like a freight train.
Oh god, Kurt isn’t here.
Blaine’s legs were shaking, and he almost fell to his knees. He was sure that if he took a step in any direction that he would surely fall over. My jeans would be soaked from the wet grass, he thought absently and a light chuckle escaped his lips. Why the hell was he worried about that? Something so trivial at a time like this. And it didn’t matter anyway; his jeans were already soaked.
His whole body had gone completely numb; his fingers tingling with cold. The longer he stood there, the faster his mind raced, the faster his heart pounded in his chest. Kurt wasn’t here. And Blaine couldn’t think of any other place Kurt might go. Kurt was lost, crazy and completely alone out there in the rain. What the hell was he going to do?
He could-he could call Burt. He could see if the man had found Kurt. It would betray the fact that this whole mess was probably his fault in the first place, but Blaine was desperate at this point. He reached into his pocket, his eyes still focused on the space in front of him where the shadow had once stood. His fingers scraped through the wet fabric of his pockets, both his jeans and his jacket, to find nothing. He turned to look at the parking lot where the lone car sat on the periphery. His car. He’d left his phone in his car. He had to call Burt or Finn or somebody. Somebody had to know something. He needed to get back.
Blaine staggered back toward the parking lot, completely disheartened as reality began to set in and feeling returned to his body. His feet slipped on the slick blades of grass, but he moved ever onwards until his shoes scraped against wet asphalt. Rain had plastered his unruly curls to his forehead and his face suddenly felt far too warm, almost like the skin was burning. He was crying, he realized absently. The rain was washing away the hot trails of his tears but that familiar sting to his eyes and nose was unmistakable.
He fumbled with his keys and clambered into the cab of his car, water dripping off of his body onto the seats and scuffed car mat beneath his feet. He sat in there in silence for a moment, his hands gripping the steering wheel, just watching the rain as it slunk down the windshield. It wasn’t coming down anywhere near as strong as it had been-the heavy sheets from before had calmed to just a steady fall of moisture. The car was dark-the clouds overhead were blocking out most of the light-but Blaine couldn’t muster up the energy to start the car and illuminate the cab with the dim lights of the dash.
The large brick building of William McKinley High School loomed ahead of him, blurry through the watery glass, and Blaine wanted to scream. He hated this school and everything it stood for.
He hated it for ignoring the torment of its students. He hated it for scarring such a strong person like Kurt so badly that he had to flee. He hated it for having Kurt in the first place. He hated it for coming up against Dalton in sectionals for the glee competition this past year.
He hated that he couldn’t get rid of the damn place no matter how hard he tried to purge it from his life.
It wasn’t fair. He’d been happy. He’d finally been happy before McKinley and its students had wormed their way into his life, and right now there was nothing he wanted to do more than set the place on fire. Even if it had given him Kurt. Public schools had ruined his life and then gone around and presented him with one of the most wonderful things he could ever imagine in Kurt, only to take that away from him too. It wasn’t fair.
It wasn’t fucking fair.
His face still burned, but he couldn’t feel any tears. Maybe he’d run dry. After everything that had happened he wouldn’t be surprised. He laid his head back against the seat and tried to gather his thoughts together.
So, Kurt wasn’t here. Blaine really didn’t know Lima all that well, even if Kurt lived here and he almost knew the way to a few of the residences for the New Directions kids. He didn’t know where else Kurt could be. He’d never talked about any coffee shops or restaurants he’d liked to visit except, no parks or special places from his childhood that he’d find refuge in. There was nothing.
Nothing except McKinley. And Kurt wasn’t there.
His eyes trailed over to the dash, where he’d dropped his phone. It had slid down the slanted surface to wedge itself under the windshield. Blaine stretched himself forward and snagged the device with the tips of his fingers. He should call Finn. Or Burt. Let them know that he’d let them down, let them know he’d failed. But his fingers didn’t move.
Jo’s face swam in his memory and some of her last words to him before she left played over and over in his ear.
Courage, Blaine. You’ve just gotta have a little courage.
He couldn’t do this. He couldn’t give up.
Courage.
He dropped his phone back into the cupholder with the little pink nametag and started up the car. He couldn’t run away again. Kurt was out there somewhere, and Blaine needed to find him.
---
The streets were nearly deserted as he drove; no one wanted to be out in this weather. The cars that passed by sent up hug sprays of water across the road, across the sidewalks. Blaine had no idea where he was going; the streets of Lima might as well have been the streets of Beijing. He simply drove, searching sidewalks and side streets for a lone figure in the rain.
His phone was silent and dark, so Burt hadn’t found Kurt either, and he hadn’t come home. Finn would call. Blaine had complete faith in that.
After navigating his way through the latest neighborhood, Blaine felt hopelessness flare up again in his belly. This was pointless. He wasn’t getting anywhere, and Kurt was still nowhere to be found. He’d stopped not too long ago to text the few numbers from New Directions that he had in his phone: Mercedes, Rachel, some kid named Artie, to see if Kurt had wandered over to their houses. He needed to know if they’d heard anything from him, though he kept the reason for looking for Kurt to himself. There had been nothing. Not a one of them had seen or heard from him today.
The light in front of him turned green and he started forward again. He had no idea where he was or where he was going; maybe he’d have a revelation sometime along the way to wherever the hell it was he was headed.
When the streets started looking familiar again, he realized that he was heading back to the damn school. It was as good a place as any. He looked at the clock on the dashboard and his heart sank. Too long. Kurt had been missing for too long. He was going to have to give up the search. Finn needed to know. Burt deserved to know. He hadn’t found Kurt.
He pulled into McKinley’s parking lot, and his heart gave a start at the figure standing there.
No. No, it couldn’t be-he was seeing things again.
But that was the exact same shade of blue that Kurt’s shirt had been.
He barely thought to put the car into park before he stepped out onto the asphalt once more; the keys were still in the ignition, the front door hanging wide open, and the headlights cutting through the gloom like great yellow beacons. Blaine couldn’t get his feet to move fast enough. The phantom that may or may not have been Kurt hadn’t moved, but it hadn’t disappeared like last time either.
“Kurt!” he cried out, hoping for some sort of reaction, but there was none.
His breath was coming too fast, too heavy, and his feet kept stumbling over one another. It was Kurt. It had to be. The hair he took so much pride in was dark with water and stuck to his forehead, the fabric of his beautiful blue shirt hugging the planes of his chest. He was staring out into the rain, toward the direction of the school, but his eyes were distant, like he wasn’t really seeing anything.
“Kurt?”
Kurt turned toward him, and Blaine couldn’t see anything but the blue of Kurt’s eyes. His skin was so much paler than it should have been, and Blaine longed to reach out and touch him. The skin of his ears was raw and bleeding.
“Blaine?” His voice was soft and sounded so very, very lost; it was almost inaudible under the white noise of the still falling rain, but it was like the sweetest music Blaine had ever heard. “Oh god, is that you?”
Blaine swallowed and searched Kurt’s face. He looked so vulnerable in that moment that Blaine wanted to cry. “Yeah, Kurt. It’s me.”
Blaine’s arms were suddenly full of the other boy; he could feel Kurt trembling against his chest. He was warm and real and Kurt and Blaine was crying again. He had to be.
“I thought…” Kurt paused, his voice choked with emotion. He clung to Blaine as though he hadn’t seen the boy in years, his arms wrapped around his torso like a lover greeting a soldier come home from war. Blaine found that he couldn’t move. This didn’t seem real. “I thought I’d lost you,” Kurt whispered into his jacket.
“What do you mean?”
Kurt looked up at him, and his eyes were so full of fear that Blaine felt his heart breaking. “They said they had you. They weren’t going to give you back, and I…I couldn’t find you. They said you had to disappear because you were trying to sabotage me. But they lie; they always lie, and I had to find you, Blaine. I had to find you. I couldn’t let them take you.” Kurt’s face crumbled and Blaine wanted nothing more than to sweep Kurt into his arms and kiss him and love him until all of the shadows fled from his mind. But Kurt wasn’t his, no matter how much he wanted it. That didn’t mean he couldn’t be there for him.
His hands found the gentle curve of Kurt’s cheeks, and he tilted the boy’s face upward so he could look into his eyes. The skin under his palms was cold and wet with the rain, but it was real, and that was what really mattered.
Courage, Blaine. You’ve just gotta have a little courage.
Kurt’s eyes were bottomless, and Blaine felt as though he could drown in them if the rain didn’t get to him first. He moved his arms down to wrap around Kurt’s hunched shoulders, and he laid his head on Kurt’s rain-slicked hair. The vanilla scent of his shampoo had long washed away, and all that was left was the rain and something distinctly Kurt. It felt like coming home.
“It’s okay, Kurt,” he murmured softly, pulling the boy even closer. “I’m right here. Everything’s going to be okay.”
---
Next
Back
Beginning
“Is your friend doing okay?”
“Yeah,” he mumbled quietly. “Kurt seemed to be doing better.”
He quieted once more and she let the silence wash over them. It was uncomfortable and made her fingers itch. Blaine wasn’t providing any answers, though. She’d have to do most of the leg work here.
“Why do you look so bummed then? I mean, if he’s getting better, that’s a good thing, right?”
Blaine didn’t answer immediately; and the quick glimpses Jo caught of his face told her that he was upset and he wasn’t telling her the whole truth. “Blaine?”
“He’s more lucid, Jo, but he’s hiding something. I think that something might be wrong and he isn’t telling us so he can get out of there sooner-not that I blame him; that place is pretty terrifying-but I think he isn’t being completely honest with us.”
“How so?”
“That’s the thing; I don’t know. Something just seemed really off. I didn’t want to say anything though because I’m sure Kurt would pick up on it.” He turned to look at her, his chin still resting on the heel of his palm. “He’s not stupid, Jo. He knows what we want to see, what we want to hear. I think he isn’t telling his doctors everything so he can go home.”
“Why didn’t you say anything, then? I mean, this kid can be pretty dangerous when he goes off, right?”
“Well, yeah, but…I don’t know. Kurt’s not that dangerous.”
“Didn’t you say he tried to kill you with a pen?”
“Yes, but that’s not the point. He wasn’t himself then. Besides, I didn’t really have a chance to say anything. If I mentioned it to Kurt, he’d probably just get defensive or something and I’d have been thrown out. If I said something to his dad, he’d probably freak out and overreact; he’s really worried about his kid, Jo.”
“Can’t blame him for that.”
“No. You can’t. And Burt, he’s a really good guy. He and his new wife gave up their honeymoon just so they’d have enough money to cover Kurt’s tuition to Dalton.”
“Oh, is he a transfer?”
“Yeah. He’s…um, he’s kind of like me. There was a bad situation at his old school.”
That certainly caught her attention, and she wondered just what it was that pushed this kid over the edge, if maybe his situation had something to do with the loose bolts in his brain. Blaine hadn’t exactly been the most stable after the last incident at his old school. “Bad like yours?”
“Worse.”
“Blaine, people were drawing pictures of you hanging yourself or getting dismembered and leaving them in your locker.”
“Don’t remind me.”
“How on earth could it have gotten worse?”
“My bullies never actually touched me.”
“Oh.” Oh, crap. She really hadn’t expected that. “Oh man, Blaine. I’m sorry. Was he hurt or anything?”
“Not exactly, but he was pretty shaken up about the whole thing. There was one guy who harassed him pretty bad. The school expelled the guy after he threatened Kurt, but it was repealed by the school board because they couldn’t prove anything. Kurt could have given them the proof they needed, but that required revealing things that he really didn’t want to tell.”
“What kind of things?”
Blaine shook his head. “I’m not at liberty to say. The main bully, though, he’s a closet case, which is why he picked on Kurt so bad. Kurt couldn’t tell the principal much of anything without outing the kid, and he didn’t want to do that, even though he had every right to.”
“That seems awful cruel of you.”
“It’s the truth. The guy made Kurt’s life hell. If he was just honest with himself about liking boys, then maybe things wouldn’t have gotten so bad.”
“You don’t know that.”
“What?” He looked at his sister, but her eyes were focused on the road.
“You don’t know that things would have turned out differently. I’m assuming Kurt is gay, correct?”
“Yes, but what does that have to do with anyth-”
“Let me finish, dummy. So this Kurt kid, I assume he got picked on because he bats for the other team.”
“Yeah, I guess.”
“So wouldn’t coming out make things just as bad, if not worse, for this other guy? I agree that Kurt didn’t necessarily have to keep anything a secret because from the sound of it, this other guy was out of line, but outing someone else is kind of a big deal. Especially if the kid is insecure enough about it to harass someone else just because they’re open about their sexuality. You wouldn’t have wanted someone to have outed you before you were ready, right?”
Blaine sunk into his seat and stared hard at his knees. He thought of his crush from earlier in the year, Jeremiah, and how upset he’d been after Blaine’s little stunt at the GAP. Oh god, he’d outed him, hadn’t he? At work too. He buried his face in his hands. Oh god, he was a terrible person. How could he have been so stupid?
“Blaine?”
“I’m such a screw up, Jo.”
“What do you mean?”
“I…I did that.”
“I’m not following you here. What exactly did you do?”
“I sort of um, outed someone,” he whispered.
Jo winced and drew in a sharp hiss of air between her teeth. “When?”
“Back in February. In my defense, I thought he was open about the whole thing. He took me out for coffee a couple of times, and I thought-well, I don’t really know what I thought. I got the Warblers to help me serenade him, though. And it kind of got him fired.”
Jo almost lost control of the car. “Wait, what? Why did you think it would be a good idea to do this at his work?”
Blaine sunk down even further, wishing he could make himself disappear. “It was the only place I knew for sure I could find him.”
“You’re kind of an idiot sometimes, you know that?”
“Yeah, I know,” he mumbled into his seatbelt. “Rub it in a little more, why don’t you?”
“Sorry, Blaine, but you gotta admit, that was kind of a dick move.”
“I know. Can we just drop it?”
“Yeah, I guess. It’s not like we can fix it now.” She turned the car into their neighborhood. Blaine was dreading seeing his parents again. “So what makes you think Kurt’s hiding something?” she asked, changing the subject.
“He’s guarded. I don’t know. There’s just something in my gut telling me to look for signs. I missed them before, Jo. He hadn’t taken his meds for nearly a week when he freaked out on mom and me. I’m not going to let this get by me again.”
“So what are you going to do?” Their house came into view and Jo tapped the tiny black square of plastic above her head. The familiar white panels of the garage door slowly cranked open and she pulled the car inside.
“I don’t know. Call Mr. Hummel, most likely. He’ll know if I’m just imagining things.”
---
Blaine never did get around to calling Burt, but the man did call him. He hated to admit it, but he’d felt a light sense of relief when he saw the guy’s name light up the screen of his cell phone, though Blaine felt incredibly stupid at the glaring blue proof the screen provided of his lapse in memory. He should have called Burt and voiced his concerns, should have done it the second he and Jo had gotten home from the hospital, but he hadn’t. It wasn’t that he thought everything was fine, oh no, because there was definitely something off about Kurt.
Unfortunately, he couldn’t put his finger exactly what it was that made him so uneasy. He couldn’t say anything about it. No one would take him seriously. It wasn’t as if Kurt had been acting overly strange when Blaine had seen him last, considering the circumstances; this was just a gut feeling that something wasn’t quite right.
But Kurt had still been recovering then. It was natural for him to still be just a bit strange, just a bit off. Blaine couldn’t say anything-they’d think he was just overreacting to seeing his friend in such a fragile state. No one would believe him. What the hell did he know about psychiatric medicine?
Burt’s call had carried with it good news: Kurt was no longer a danger to himself or others. He was getting transferred to a lower security facility closer to home, and soon he’d be out of there for good. No more hospitals. No more worrying. They’d have moved him sooner, but paperwork had tied up the process. Blaine didn’t know if he should be relieved or not.
It was a lazy summer afternoon, and it found Blaine sitting on the covers of his bed, staring out at the sunny day peeking in through his window. He had thought briefly about calling David or Wes, maybe getting together and doing something, just the three of them, since Wes was finally back in town and both had been itching to get out and do something like old times, but he didn’t. There was too much on his mind. Jo was leaving tomorrow morning. She’d gotten a call yesterday afternoon; the other intern’s mother had died suddenly and they needed her back in the office a few days early. Blaine knew her visit was simply that, a visit. He’d known right from the start that she couldn’t sick around forever, but the thought didn’t make him any more comfortable. His sister was leaving him again. He was losing his main line of support.
Sometimes he wished she had just distanced herself from his problems like their parents. It would make things so much easier right now.
He sighed and squeezed his eyes shut. He shouldn’t be complaining. What right did he have to complain? He hadn’t gathered up the courage to visit Kurt since he’d gone there with Jo nearly a week ago, though he’d kept up communication through the phone. Kurt was allowed to make a phone call or two out a night, and he’d called Blaine once or twice just to talk.
That first one had been a rather awkward affair. Kurt had been talkative then, and mostly lucid. He talked about the facility and seemed genuinely interested in the goings-on of Blaine’s life. It was almost like old times until Kurt made him cut the call short. There were bugs, apparently. Bugs everywhere and they would pick up on the conversation and put him back. He never specified where exactly “back” was, but Blaine knew better than to question it.
He should have called Burt then, when Kurt had started babbling nonsense, but he didn’t. He was sure the calls were monitored. The people at the hospital would have stepped in and done something if it had really been out of the ordinary.
He sighed and fell over onto his side. The soft, pliable skin of his cheek pressed up into the rest of his face as it flattened against the soft covers of his bed, and he closed his eyes to keep them from watering. It was so quiet now. His parents had taken Jo out to town for lunch and a bit of shopping before she had to leave. They were trying to smash every last moment they could with their daughter into these last few days because who the hell knew when Jo would be back around these parts. He had the house to himself.
In many ways, he envied his sister. She was bright and beautiful and everything their parents had ever wanted. Except that she was a girl. They hadn’t wanted a girl. Blaine remembered all of the attention they’d given him as a small child until he starting acting different from what they expected. He wasn’t their little ‘man’s man,’ though he wasn’t nearly as feminine as Kurt. He was Blaine, and that simply hadn’t been good enough. Not when they were constantly comparing him to Jo. There was a reason he’d waited as long as he had to come out to them.
He opened his eyes slowly and looked around the room. His room. His dad had been fed up with him sleeping down in the guest room after the first couple of days. Blaine didn’t blame him, really. It didn’t matter what the heck had happened in his room. He couldn’t keep sleeping downstairs. Blaine just needed to suck it up and deal with it. It had to be irritating to have such a coward for a son.
His gaze shifted unconsciously down to his new throw rug. His mother had gotten it for him to persuade him to move back upstairs. You couldn’t really see the stain anymore, even when the rug was absent, but that didn’t mean that it didn’t haunt Blaine’s dreams, keeping him from sleep. He kept hearing Kurt’s voice over and over in his head, the old Kurt he knew mixing with the new something that Kurt had become.
Warm sunlight washed over his face, and he tried to relax. He longed to simply melt into his mattress and disappear, almost like he’d never existed. No more worries. No more Blaine. His body ached for the quiet shuffling of Pavarotti in his cage, a return to something safe, something normal. He loved Kurt, he really did, but this was starting to grate on him.
Was it really worth all this turmoil in the end? Did he deserve all this heartache? And this was only summer vacation. What about school? What about after? He was graduating next year. What the hell was he going to do then? This was only a teenage romance (sort of), and Blaine was really starting to miss the comforting presence of his mother. If she’d only talk to him-but it didn’t really matter did it? Blaine had made his bed, and now he had to lie in it. He really wished Jo wasn’t leaving. Things had seemed so normal with her around that it hurt. He didn’t want her to go. He didn’t want to return to that terrible loneliness of loving a boy who wasn’t there anymore.
He buried his head into the smooth fabric of his blankets and let the light warmth of the sun wash over him. Sleep was creeping up on him, blurring his thoughts and dragging him down into the dark.
He didn’t know if he wanted to do this anymore.
Was Kurt really worth it?
---
He almost missed the light tap on the door, he was so distracted. It swished open on its freshly-oiled hinges and Jo peeked her head in.
“Blaine? Can I come in?”
He didn’t answer, just ignored her and kept on writing in his journal. It was stupid. He was just scribbling down the lyrics to half-forgotten songs he’d sung in his dreams. He didn’t even know if the words were his or not. He’d have to listen to Jo’s stupid collection of CDs again to make sure he wasn’t ripping someone else off. He could feel her presence hovering just beside the door, and he bowed his head lower. He was mad at her, and she should know it, even this was stupid and pointless in the end. She’d see through him after a while; Jo never put up with his crap for very long.
She stepped into the room and walked over to where he sat on the floor. Her feet barely made a sound as she slid across the carpet. It was always a trait he’d envied in her, that quiet, delicate way she carried herself. She sunk down to the floor with an exaggerated sigh, and he turned his head away from her sharply, pointedly ignoring her.
She wrapped her arms around her bent knees and leaned over toward him, trying to read over his shoulder. “What you got there?”
He snapped the notebook shut and shot her a steely glare. “None of your business.”
“My, aren’t we testy tonight,” she huffed. “What crawled up your butt and died?”
Blaine busied himself with collecting together the various pens he’d scattered across the rug, making sure each one had the proper cap before placing it into a small pile with similar pens.
She sighed again and he pictured her running her fingers through the dark curls that always spilled across her forehead. “Actually, that’s sort of what I wanted to talk to you about,” she murmured softly.
His sharp, irritated movements slowed for a moment at those words before picking up again with renewed fervor. He said nothing, and Jo took his silence as her cue to continue. “They’re worried about you, you know, mom and dad.”
He snorted at that, still refusing to look her in the eye. “No, they’re not. They’re upset because you’re skipping out on us again and they’re stuck with me.” He angrily snapped his pens together in his hand and made to rise, but Jo stopped him with a hand on his sleeve.
“That’s not it, Blaine.”
“And why not, Jo? You’re so-fuck, I don’t even know anymore!” His eyes were stinging, and he wanted nothing more than to scream and cry and fling things across the room. Who the hell cared about being calm and collected anymore? Blaine didn’t want to do it anymore. He couldn’t do this anymore. Fuck. He was shaking.
He looked so vulnerable in that moment that Jo nearly broke down and wrapped him up in her arms. She watched as he sunk back down to the carpet, and his fingers loosened their grip on the pens. They fell and hit the rug with a light clatter, the caps flew off the cheaper ones like a flock of colorful, plastic birds. Maybe he’d put them back together wrong. Maybe that’s why they didn’t quite fit the way they should.
“Blaine.” His sister’s voice permeated his thoughts. Her fingers were still tangled in the light fabric of his t-shirt. “Tell me what’s wrong. Please.”
Surely she could feel the light tremors running through his body, surely she could see just how close he was to breaking apart and shattering right then and there. “I don’t know what to do anymore, Jo,” he whispered.
Her fingers tightened on his sleeve, and she pulled him in just a bit closer to her. “What do you mean?”
“Kurt called while you were out.”
Oh. She felt something twist in the column of her throat. So that’s what was bothering him. “What did he say?”
“That’s just it, Jo. He didn’t say a thing. He sounded completely normal, like he hadn’t been spewing nonsense at me just two days ago, like the medication is actually working, like…” He slowed, his breath coming in frantic gasps as his face crumbled with emotion. “Like none of this had ever happened.”
She pulled him flush against her and cradled his head against her chest. God, she hadn’t done this in years, since her brother had first transferred to that private school for boys. Blaine had gotten so much taller since then. “But that’s a good thing, isn’t it?” She rubbed comforting circles into the skin of his back, and hoped this was as calming as she thought it was. She wasn’t sure she could handle a hysterical Blaine at the moment. “It means he’s getting better, right?”
“That’s the thing, Jo. I don’t know what to think anymore.” He could feel the gentle brush of her hair against his cheek. She smelled faintly of lavender; it was soothing. “I want so much for Kurt to be better, for this to just go away, and yet I know there’s something wrong. He’s just hiding it, Jo.”
She said nothing, just continued to stroke his back. She didn’t want to tell him that he was probably wrong. His friend was in the hospital for a reason, and surely they’d know if he was still insane. They had to. It was their job to know. They weren’t about to let the kid roam free if they thought something might still be wrong, right? She sighed and squeezed his back reassuringly. Blaine would get over this. It was just one guy, not the end of the world.
“Why are you leaving me again, Jo?” His voice was so quiet, so broken, and she felt something break in her chest.
“Oh, Blaine. Is that what this is about? That I have to go back early?”
He said nothing. Yes, then. That’s what this was about. She gripped his shoulders and pushed him away from her so she could look him in the eye. “It’s not you, you know that, right? Tara’s mom passed, and they need at least one of us around.” She brushed back a curl of hair that has fallen into his face. She’d always liked it better when he wore his hair naturally. “There are some things in life that you just can’t foresee. There are some things you just can’t stop, babe.”
His hazel eyes locked onto hers. “Is this one of those things?”
‘This’ could be so many things. It could be her leaving. It could be the way their parents were reacting to this whole thing. It could be all the stuff going on with his friend, Kurt. It could be everything rolled into one. “Yeah, Blaine. This is one of those things.”
He leaned in and wrapped his arms around her torso. “God, I missed you so much, Jo. I don’t want you to go,” he mumbled into her shirt.
“Yeah, Blaine. I know.”
“I don’t think I can do this without you.”
She grabbed his head and lifted his chin up. There were faint tracks of moisture running down his cheeks, and she wiped at them with her thumbs. “You can do it, little brother. You’re Blaine Anderson. You can do anything you put your mind to. Courage, Blaine. You’ve just gotta have a little courage.”
---
It was almost like déjà vu, standing there at the front door to the Hummel residence, waiting for someone to answer. It was far cooler than he’d expected for this time of year, and the clouds rolling in overhead whispered of rain later on in the day. He hoped that it could wait until after he’d gotten home. There was nothing Blaine hated more than driving in the rain.
As the time ticked by, he was tempted to ring the doorbell again, just in case. He’d called before he came, just to be sure that the timing was fine, that it was okay for him to be there. Burt had sounded a little skeptical over the phone-Kurt had only been home a few days, and visiting him in the hospital was different than visiting him now that he was finally home; the last thing anyone wanted to do was stress him out and risk another lapse-but Burt had agreed. Kurt needed a sense of normalcy to get him used to things.
Blaine rocked back and forth on the porch from his heels to the balls of his feet. Maybe they hadn’t heard the bell. His hand moved to the little metal button, about to press it one more time, before he heard shuffling around on the other side of the door. He quickly pulled back his hand and stood perfectly still. It wouldn’t do to look so nervous now in front of Kurt’s dad.
Blaine was mildly surprised when Finn was the one who peered outside when the locks finally slid from their places and the door swung open. The tall teen looked dreadful. Burt had mentioned that Finn had probably come down with something, and it couldn’t be more apparent than in that moment. Finn’s eyes were rimmed with red and the overall paleness of his skin was accented only by the flush decorating his cheeks. His dark hair was ruffled and his white t-shirt bunched up around his chest as though he had just woken up from a nap, and Blaine felt a twinge of guilt run through him. Burt had said it was fine for him to come down, but it felt an awful lot like he was intruding.
“Um, hey, Finn. Are you okay?” Blaine asked as Finn wavered lightly on his feet. “No offense, but you look pretty terrible. I could, um, I could just-”
Finn waved him off and stepped away, leaving the door open. “Nah, don’t bother. Just come in.”
Blaine followed Finn over to the living room where the taller boy collapsed down onto the couch and wrapped himself in a rumpled blanket that looked as though it had been sitting there for a while. Blaine could hear the clinks and scrapes of glassware being moved around in the kitchen, but he hesitated before heading over there, his eyes fixed momentarily on Finn. Something was wrong with this picture. “Um, where’s Mr. Hummel?”
Finn ground the heel of his palm into his left eye and made an uncomfortable noise deep in his throat. Blaine wondered if the boy was running a fever. “You mean Burt?”
Blaine nodded, but Finn made no indication that he saw the gesture, and he faltered. “Yeah, I guess. Is, um, is Burt around by chance? He said it was fine for me to come over, but if he had to work or something…” he trailed off.
“No, you’re fine. He stayed home today.”
Blaine was confused. “So, is he in the kitchen then? Like, cooking or something, so he couldn’t make it to the door and you had to get it? I don’t want to bug you any more than I have to. You look kind of terrible.”
Finn wedged his back deeper into the sofa cushions and pulled the blanket up higher around his chest. “No, no, Kurt’s in there. Burt stepped out for just a minute to grab me some cold medication and one of Kurt’s new prescriptions that got filled a little late. He’ll only be gone a minute or two ’cause the store’s not that far away. I told him that I’d hang out upstairs in case Kurt got nervous or something. He’s been fine today, though. Nothing to worry about. You should go talk to him; he’s just in there,” Finn mumbled sleepily, pointing toward the kitchen, his voice growing softer with each word.
“I’ll go do that, then. Uh, why don’t you get some sleep? I can keep an eye on Kurt for you for the time being. Because seriously, Finn, you look pretty bad.”
“So I’ve heard.”
Blaine spared him one last look before walking over to the kitchen. What the hell had Burt been thinking? Leaving Kurt alone with his sick stepbrother. Blaine hoped like hell that the medication Burt was getting was completely essential, but the thought didn’t put him at ease. If the stuff was essential, then wouldn’t that put Kurt more at risk of losing it? And if it wasn’t, then why hadn’t Burt simply waited, or asked Carole to pick it up on her way home? Blaine’s throat tightened, Kurt’s voice echoing in his ears.
You shouldn’t be here.
He shouldn’t think that way. He really shouldn’t. The hospital wouldn’t have released Kurt if he wasn’t better by now. He was being silly. There was nothing to worry about. He was safe here, even if Finn was nodding off in the other room and Burt was on his way back from the supermarket. Kurt was fine, but he still had trouble reigning in his racing heart.
Blaine cautiously peered around the corner into the kitchen, his pulse thrumming through his body. “Kurt?”
There was no answer, but Blaine hadn’t really expected one. He couldn’t really hear anything over his pounding heart. Kurt was in the far corner of the kitchen, removing what looked to be clean dishes from the dishwasher. Perfectly normal. Except for the flawlessly lined rows of glasses and plates stacked across the island counter in the center of the kitchen, everything neatly arranged by shape and color. Kurt hadn’t bothered to switch on the overhead light, and the room was dark from the dark, grey clouds outside. What little sunlight there was coming in through the windows pierced through the translucent glass of cups large and small, throwing colorful, patterned shadows onto the grey slate of the kitchen counter. Blaine forgot to breathe. How could something so normal look so very, very wrong? He cleared his throat, this time catching Kurt’s attention. “Kurt?”
Kurt smiled at him, finally noticing his presence, and placed the plate in his hands into one of the neat stacks beside him. “Blaine. It’s good to see you again. In person, this time, I mean. Phone calls are nice and all, but do prefer actually seeing who I’m talking to.” He bent down and pulled out a little handful of utensils, the spoons flashing in his fingers as he sorted them into piles. “How have you been?”
Blaine was having trouble digesting Kurt’s words. He stared at him, eyes widened and mouth gaping open like a fish. This was so…normal, so domestic, and it was bothering him more than he thought. He didn’t really know what to say, and unfortunately, his mouth moved faster than his brain. “What are you doing?” he blurted out, regretting the words almost the instant they fell from his lips.
Kurt frowned a little in confusion. “Chores. I’m putting away the dishes. What’s it look like?”
Blaine couldn’t answer that. He just stared as Kurt pulled apart the stack of long-tined forks and rearranged them, so that they fit together perfectly, every edge of every fork aligned with the fork above and below it. He was so mesmerized that he almost didn’t register Kurt’s voice when he spoke once more. “You really shouldn’t stare, you know. It’s painfully rude.”
“Sorry,” he muttered quickly, shaking his head to clear away his thoughts. “Do you want some help with that?”
Kurt suddenly stopped and looked up at him, and Blaine’s heart thudded to a halt. Oh god, Kurt was going to attack him again, wasn’t he? Oh god, what was he going to do? Should he call the police, or maybe an ambulance, or-
“Why?”
“Huh?”
Kurt looked genuinely confused. “Why on earth would you want to help me with this? It’s one of the most mundane tasks out there. You can’t tell me that you drove two hours to get here just to help me straighten up the house.”
“Well, it’s what you’re doing, and I wanted to spend time with you, so I just thought that maybe-” Oh man, he was babbling. He couldn’t find a way to tell Kurt that he was doing this wrong, that no one was quite that meticulous when they put away the damn dishes unless there was something going on with their brain chemistry. Thunder rumbled outside.
Kurt frowned and Blaine froze. “You think I can’t do this, don’t you? This one little thing, and you think I can’t do it.”
“That’s not what I-”
“You probably think I’m still nuts, don’t you? You’re trying to sabotage me.” His voice was growing louder and louder and Blaine couldn’t hear the hurt in his words as backed away from the kitchen. He started to panic. Oh god, it was too early for him to see Kurt. He shouldn’t have come here. He needed Burt to come back. He needed Kurt to calm down. He needed Jo back to tell him what to do. He needed everything to be okay again.
You shouldn’t have come.
Kurt stalked toward him, and Blaine couldn’t take it anymore. He ran. He ran past Finn and the old leather couch. He ran past the photos lining the walls of Kurt smiling and posing for the camera. He burst through the door, thankful that Finn had neglected to lock the damn thing, and he bolted to his car.
Rain pelted the glass of the windshield as he sped away into the afternoon, leaving the Hummel family home in his rearview mirror.
---
Water whipped past the glass at an alarming rate; the wipers were hardly doing anything besides push the rain around as they scraped and screamed against the windshield. The world was a blur of muted colors as Blaine sped down the unfamiliar roads. He had no idea where he was going. He just needed to drive. He needed to escape, run far away until the ache in his chest that was his heart finally burst.
Something crawled down his cheek, tickling the skin uncomfortably, and he was surprised to find his fingers wet when he drew them back from his face. Huh. He hadn’t realized he was crying until now. He couldn’t see anymore. The world was a tumbling blur of amorphous shapes around him. A car sped past in the other direction, horn blaring, and he swerved back into his lane.
He should stop, pull over. He was going to crash into something or someone. He was going to kill himself at this rate.
Would that really be so bad? The little voice in the back of his mind urged him on. Just keep driving. It’ll take away the pain, make everything stop.
He gently guided the car into a neighborhood and pulled up outside of one of the houses. The engine quieted and stilled as he turned the key in the ignition, and the lights of the dash went dark. It was cold, even though he’d probably been driving for some time. The heater must be acting up again. The soft tapping of the rain along the body of the car echoed in his ears. He wished it would drown out the white noise in his head.
What the hell was he going to do? This wasn’t fair. None of this was fair. Kurt was supposed to be fine; he was supposed to be normal now. This whole mess wasn’t supposed to have happened in the first place.
He slumped forward over the steering wheel, his seatbelt digging painfully into the exposed skin of his neck where it peeked out from his jacket. He couldn’t stop the tears now. His chest clenched with every sob that wrenched itself from his body. It hurt so bad; it hurt to think, to cry, to breathe. He just wanted this all to be over. He couldn’t run far enough away from this mess.
So much for courage.
Courage.
He laughed at the thought.
Courage, what a crock of shit. He didn’t need courage, he needed Kurt to go back to being that adorable little spy that he fell for over coffee and talk of bullies and glee club. He needed his sister here so she could wrap her arms around him and tell him everything was going to be okay. He needed Burt Hummel to realize the his son was not okay, no matter what front he put on in front of the doctors. Blaine needed his mom to talk to him again and his dad to be there for once when things got hard instead of finding new ways to stay later at work and out of the house. He needed everyone to comfort him, let him know that everything was going to be okay, and then just leave him the hell alone for a little while.
He needed…he didn’t even know what he needed anymore.
He laid his head on his folded arms and stared out the windshield. He could hardly see a thing, it was raining so hard. The water was quickly filling the depressed bit of asphalt between the road and the curb of the sidewalk, running like little rivers to the storm drains. There were still tears dripping from his chin, and Blaine wondered just how much water it would take to fill the car and sweep him away.
He didn’t want to feel like this anymore. He wanted things to be okay again, but that wasn’t going to happen, was it? Things were never going to go back to the way they were, and he hated Kurt for it.
It was all his fault. If he hadn’t gone crazy, none of this would have happened. If it wasn’t for Kurt, Blaine would have his life back. He’d be at home right now cooking dinner with his mom or maybe hanging out with Wes or David on their last summer before they abandoned him for college. He be anywhere but Lima fucking Ohio, sobbing in his car. If it wasn’t for Kurt-
If it wasn’t for Kurt, he wouldn’t have a friend who shared his unnatural obsession with Vogue and cheesy, romantic musicals. If it wasn’t for Kurt, he wouldn’t know the joy of his smile or the light electricity that passed through his body when the boy touched his hand. He wouldn’t know Kurt’s terrible little chuckle or the way his eyes lit up when he smiled.
If it wasn’t for Kurt, Blaine wouldn’t have fallen in love.
He blinked away more tears, and tried to crush out the tight burning sensation that was closing off his throat. Just breathe, Blaine. You can make it through this. You have no other choice. You can’t keep falling to pieces like this.
He screwed his eyes shut and buried his forehead into the soft sleeves of his jacket. He wanted to go home.
He stayed that way, listening to the patter of the rain until a rattling sound edged its way into his consciousness. What the hell?
Blaine looked down to see his phone buzzing against the plastic sides of the cupholder. Someone was calling him. He swiped at his face with the back of his sleeve to clear his vision enough to read the caller ID. It was Finn, calling from the house phone. He hesitated, his thumb hovering over the little red option labeled ‘deny.’
Finn was one of the last people he wanted to talk to right now. The guy was sick as a dog, and he was probably foaming at the mouth at Blaine’s abrupt departure. And what if it wasn’t Finn? Sure, he was the most likely person to call, but Burt should have gotten home by now. He’d be worse than Finn. And of course, there was always Kurt. He wasn’t so far gone that he couldn’t pick up the phone and scream obscenities at him, he was sure of it.
But he deserved it, didn’t he? Such a freakin’ coward. He connected the call.
“Hello?” God, his voice was all scratchy and rough from crying. He was a wreck.
“Blaine?” Finn. Blaine sighed and sank down into his seat, bracing himself for the verbal lashing that was sure to follow.
“Yeah, Finn. I’m here. What do you need?”
“Are you still in Lima?” That was odd. Finn didn’t sound angry at all, just tired and stuffy and strangely kind of terrified.
“I think so. Why?”
“It’s Kurt. I can’t find him anywhere.”
---
Everything seemed to slow down for him as Finn’s words sunk in. Kurt was missing. And he’d been acting weird again when Blaine had fled. But that meant-Blaine swallowed hard and tried to think of something else, anything else. He didn’t need another reminder of his cowardice and the consequences thereof. He closed his eyes, trying to ground himself, regain his composure, but wasn’t really working.
“What do you mean, you can’t find him?” he breathed into the receiver.
“Just what I said. I-Burt came home and woke me up; I hadn’t even realized that I’d fallen asleep. He came up to the couch all confused and asked me why the door was unlocked.”
“And Kurt wasn’t in the house,” Blaine finished softly, the whole thing finally starting to sink in over the shock. The rain hadn’t let up, and fat drops of water pelted the car like stones. Oh god, Kurt was out there in this weather. Alone. And possibly suffering another psychotic break.
This was all his fault.
He shouldn’t have left the house. He shouldn’t have gone and left Kurt alone with an over-tired, sick Finn. He shouldn’t have run away. He should have stayed and tried to calm Kurt down, or maybe woken Finn up and tried to get him to do the job. Kurt could be lost or hurt or god knows what, and he was just sitting there in his car like the coward he was, letting the boy he loved slip through his fingers.
Blaine couldn’t tell if he was breathing or not, but he managed to get enough air into his lungs to speak again. “Is Burt still home?”
“No. He just left to go look for Kurt, like, right before I called you.” Finn paused for a moment, as though contemplating if he wanted to say anything more. His next words were so quiet, Blaine almost missed them. “I didn’t tell him you came by.”
Blaine didn’t quite know what to say to that. It was his fault Kurt was missing, and yet Finn was covering for him. Burt would have freaked and gone on a rampage if he’d known that Blaine’s visit had probably set this off. He swallowed hard around the lump in his throat. “Why-why would you do that?”
“Is Kurt with you?” Finn was avoiding the question.
“What?”
“Is Kurt with you?” Finn repeated, his voice breathy and exasperated.
“No,” Blaine answered quickly. But I wish he was. A sudden thought occurred to him. “Wait, you don’t think I took him, do you?”
“No, but I had to be sure. I trust you and all, but…I mean, Kurt’s not here, and it’s my fault he’s gone. I should have been watching him or something, but I fell asleep and left you guys alone. God, I’m so sorry for that.”
No, Blaine thought, you shouldn’t have been left alone with him in the first place, even if Burt needed to get that medication. This whole thing wasn’t fair, and you shouldn’t have been left to watch him. Not while you’re sick. And I shouldn’t have run out. No matter how freaked I’d been. “Don’t-don’t put this all on yourself. No one knew Kurt would run off, right? And he couldn’t have gone very far. Not in this weather.” He was rambling. He only rambled when he was nervous. Oh god, what if Finn could tell he was nervous? And where in the hell was Kurt?
Blaine restarted his car, and tried to look out the windows through the cascades of water running past. He sucked in a deep breath, the image of Kurt, wet and alone and god knows where flashing through his head. “I’ll find him, Finn,” he promised. “Just, just give me a little time.”
“All right. I’ll call you if I hear anything from Burt.” And the line went dead.
Blaine sat there in the cold, dark cab of his car, slumped over in his seat, his phone clasped loosely in his fist as it rested on the steering wheel. The white noise of the rain hammering the doors and roof filled his head. Kurt was missing. This was his fault. He didn’t even know the first place to look.
Blaine leaned back and was about to drop his phone into the cupholder and start the car up when something stopped him. The phone fell from his slack fingers to clatter against the hard plastic of the dashboard. He drew his hand over to the cupholder and drew out the crumpled pink nametag from when Kurt had first been hospitalized. The messy folds of the paper were rough against his fingers, but the color was still as bright as ever. That stupid color that Kurt had liked so much when this whole mess had first started.
He felt his breath loosen itself from his chest, and a light chuckle escaped his lips. Soon, he was laughing hysterically, tears filling his stinging eyes as he doubled over in his seat, the bottom of the steering wheel jarring painfully against his knees as he tried to curl up in the small space. He didn’t know what to do. This was all so ridiculous; this couldn’t be real.
The pink caught his eye once more, and he tried to calm himself down. His breaths came in large gasping gulps and he brought the ruined nametag close to his face. His shaking fingers scrabbled at the edges of the tag and he carefully peeled the sticky bits away from each other. He could hear paper tearing, but the tag itself still looked to be whole. He unfolded the little slip of paper and pink filled his vision.
Blarn Anderson.
What he wouldn’t give to be ‘Blarn Anderson’ again. He could be that same dopey boy who fell in love with Kurt Hummel, the same boy who serenaded him and spent long afternoons with him doing nothing or studying in the common rooms of Dalton Academy. He screwed his eyes shut and let the tears fall. Kurt. He needed to get himself together, calm down.
Kurt was missing. He needed to find Kurt.
Blaine scrubbed at his eyes with the heel of his palm, and he started up his car. He needed to do this. Kurt needed him. He was out there, alone, and Blaine was just sitting here. He drew in a deep breath and tried to think. Where would Kurt go?
He watched as the windshield wipers danced back and forth across the windshield, shifting the water across the glass. Back and forth. And he knew where to go.
---
The road shouldn’t have felt so familiar-he’d only driven it once or twice before-but his hands moved almost of their own accord. The GPS was still sitting in the glove box, and even with his terrible sense of direction, he somehow knew exactly where he was going.
McKinley. There were so many places around town that Kurt could go, but he’d told Blaine once that McKinley, as terrible as it was, sometimes felt the most like home. And it was the farthest of the few places he knew Burt would check. If Blaine went there first, and Kurt was there, maybe then he wouldn’t have to admit his mistakes.
The school building came into view, and he pulled over into the student parking lot. Everything was dark and still under the rain; there didn’t seem to be another living soul around. He stepped out of the car, and the rain hit him with full force, washing away the gel in his hair and plastering his clothes to his body. The water ran into his eyes and ears and he couldn’t see Kurt anywhere.
“Kurt!” He called the boy’s name over and over as he stumbled through the parking lot toward the fields surrounding the school. “Kurt, where are you?”
What time was it? How long had he spent moping around in his car? He hadn’t even bothered to check his damn phone or the clock on the dash before he left, and both of those were back in the car. He was almost to the damn football field. This was stupid. McKinley wasn’t all that far from Kurt’s house, but he couldn’t possibly have walked here in that short of time.
“Kurt!” The rain was still going strong, and his shoes were nearly soaked through. The bleachers drew ever closer and his steps slowed. He should get back to his car. Look for Kurt in a place where he could logically be, not at the stupid school. What the hell had he been thinking?
But as he neared the field, he saw a figure out on the grass. Kurt. His feet moved of their own accord and he was racing across the slick grass, stumbling and picking himself back up again, but the figure wasn’t getting any closer. “Kurt,” he whispered to no one at all, and the shadow disappeared. He was being stupid. He was seeing things.
He’d messed up again, and Kurt wasn’t here.
---
Blaine stood there in the middle of the field, trapped by the lure of a shadow and a desperate mind. He didn’t know what to think anymore. The world swirled around him in a blurry haze of moisture. Everything seemed muted now, grey and lifeless, and more than anything he wished that Kurt was standing there beside him. He didn’t need to be whole or sane or anything, just so long as he was there.
But Kurt wasn’t there, and the realization of that fact hit him like a freight train.
Oh god, Kurt isn’t here.
Blaine’s legs were shaking, and he almost fell to his knees. He was sure that if he took a step in any direction that he would surely fall over. My jeans would be soaked from the wet grass, he thought absently and a light chuckle escaped his lips. Why the hell was he worried about that? Something so trivial at a time like this. And it didn’t matter anyway; his jeans were already soaked.
His whole body had gone completely numb; his fingers tingling with cold. The longer he stood there, the faster his mind raced, the faster his heart pounded in his chest. Kurt wasn’t here. And Blaine couldn’t think of any other place Kurt might go. Kurt was lost, crazy and completely alone out there in the rain. What the hell was he going to do?
He could-he could call Burt. He could see if the man had found Kurt. It would betray the fact that this whole mess was probably his fault in the first place, but Blaine was desperate at this point. He reached into his pocket, his eyes still focused on the space in front of him where the shadow had once stood. His fingers scraped through the wet fabric of his pockets, both his jeans and his jacket, to find nothing. He turned to look at the parking lot where the lone car sat on the periphery. His car. He’d left his phone in his car. He had to call Burt or Finn or somebody. Somebody had to know something. He needed to get back.
Blaine staggered back toward the parking lot, completely disheartened as reality began to set in and feeling returned to his body. His feet slipped on the slick blades of grass, but he moved ever onwards until his shoes scraped against wet asphalt. Rain had plastered his unruly curls to his forehead and his face suddenly felt far too warm, almost like the skin was burning. He was crying, he realized absently. The rain was washing away the hot trails of his tears but that familiar sting to his eyes and nose was unmistakable.
He fumbled with his keys and clambered into the cab of his car, water dripping off of his body onto the seats and scuffed car mat beneath his feet. He sat in there in silence for a moment, his hands gripping the steering wheel, just watching the rain as it slunk down the windshield. It wasn’t coming down anywhere near as strong as it had been-the heavy sheets from before had calmed to just a steady fall of moisture. The car was dark-the clouds overhead were blocking out most of the light-but Blaine couldn’t muster up the energy to start the car and illuminate the cab with the dim lights of the dash.
The large brick building of William McKinley High School loomed ahead of him, blurry through the watery glass, and Blaine wanted to scream. He hated this school and everything it stood for.
He hated it for ignoring the torment of its students. He hated it for scarring such a strong person like Kurt so badly that he had to flee. He hated it for having Kurt in the first place. He hated it for coming up against Dalton in sectionals for the glee competition this past year.
He hated that he couldn’t get rid of the damn place no matter how hard he tried to purge it from his life.
It wasn’t fair. He’d been happy. He’d finally been happy before McKinley and its students had wormed their way into his life, and right now there was nothing he wanted to do more than set the place on fire. Even if it had given him Kurt. Public schools had ruined his life and then gone around and presented him with one of the most wonderful things he could ever imagine in Kurt, only to take that away from him too. It wasn’t fair.
It wasn’t fucking fair.
His face still burned, but he couldn’t feel any tears. Maybe he’d run dry. After everything that had happened he wouldn’t be surprised. He laid his head back against the seat and tried to gather his thoughts together.
So, Kurt wasn’t here. Blaine really didn’t know Lima all that well, even if Kurt lived here and he almost knew the way to a few of the residences for the New Directions kids. He didn’t know where else Kurt could be. He’d never talked about any coffee shops or restaurants he’d liked to visit except, no parks or special places from his childhood that he’d find refuge in. There was nothing.
Nothing except McKinley. And Kurt wasn’t there.
His eyes trailed over to the dash, where he’d dropped his phone. It had slid down the slanted surface to wedge itself under the windshield. Blaine stretched himself forward and snagged the device with the tips of his fingers. He should call Finn. Or Burt. Let them know that he’d let them down, let them know he’d failed. But his fingers didn’t move.
Jo’s face swam in his memory and some of her last words to him before she left played over and over in his ear.
Courage, Blaine. You’ve just gotta have a little courage.
He couldn’t do this. He couldn’t give up.
Courage.
He dropped his phone back into the cupholder with the little pink nametag and started up the car. He couldn’t run away again. Kurt was out there somewhere, and Blaine needed to find him.
---
The streets were nearly deserted as he drove; no one wanted to be out in this weather. The cars that passed by sent up hug sprays of water across the road, across the sidewalks. Blaine had no idea where he was going; the streets of Lima might as well have been the streets of Beijing. He simply drove, searching sidewalks and side streets for a lone figure in the rain.
His phone was silent and dark, so Burt hadn’t found Kurt either, and he hadn’t come home. Finn would call. Blaine had complete faith in that.
After navigating his way through the latest neighborhood, Blaine felt hopelessness flare up again in his belly. This was pointless. He wasn’t getting anywhere, and Kurt was still nowhere to be found. He’d stopped not too long ago to text the few numbers from New Directions that he had in his phone: Mercedes, Rachel, some kid named Artie, to see if Kurt had wandered over to their houses. He needed to know if they’d heard anything from him, though he kept the reason for looking for Kurt to himself. There had been nothing. Not a one of them had seen or heard from him today.
The light in front of him turned green and he started forward again. He had no idea where he was or where he was going; maybe he’d have a revelation sometime along the way to wherever the hell it was he was headed.
When the streets started looking familiar again, he realized that he was heading back to the damn school. It was as good a place as any. He looked at the clock on the dashboard and his heart sank. Too long. Kurt had been missing for too long. He was going to have to give up the search. Finn needed to know. Burt deserved to know. He hadn’t found Kurt.
He pulled into McKinley’s parking lot, and his heart gave a start at the figure standing there.
No. No, it couldn’t be-he was seeing things again.
But that was the exact same shade of blue that Kurt’s shirt had been.
He barely thought to put the car into park before he stepped out onto the asphalt once more; the keys were still in the ignition, the front door hanging wide open, and the headlights cutting through the gloom like great yellow beacons. Blaine couldn’t get his feet to move fast enough. The phantom that may or may not have been Kurt hadn’t moved, but it hadn’t disappeared like last time either.
“Kurt!” he cried out, hoping for some sort of reaction, but there was none.
His breath was coming too fast, too heavy, and his feet kept stumbling over one another. It was Kurt. It had to be. The hair he took so much pride in was dark with water and stuck to his forehead, the fabric of his beautiful blue shirt hugging the planes of his chest. He was staring out into the rain, toward the direction of the school, but his eyes were distant, like he wasn’t really seeing anything.
“Kurt?”
Kurt turned toward him, and Blaine couldn’t see anything but the blue of Kurt’s eyes. His skin was so much paler than it should have been, and Blaine longed to reach out and touch him. The skin of his ears was raw and bleeding.
“Blaine?” His voice was soft and sounded so very, very lost; it was almost inaudible under the white noise of the still falling rain, but it was like the sweetest music Blaine had ever heard. “Oh god, is that you?”
Blaine swallowed and searched Kurt’s face. He looked so vulnerable in that moment that Blaine wanted to cry. “Yeah, Kurt. It’s me.”
Blaine’s arms were suddenly full of the other boy; he could feel Kurt trembling against his chest. He was warm and real and Kurt and Blaine was crying again. He had to be.
“I thought…” Kurt paused, his voice choked with emotion. He clung to Blaine as though he hadn’t seen the boy in years, his arms wrapped around his torso like a lover greeting a soldier come home from war. Blaine found that he couldn’t move. This didn’t seem real. “I thought I’d lost you,” Kurt whispered into his jacket.
“What do you mean?”
Kurt looked up at him, and his eyes were so full of fear that Blaine felt his heart breaking. “They said they had you. They weren’t going to give you back, and I…I couldn’t find you. They said you had to disappear because you were trying to sabotage me. But they lie; they always lie, and I had to find you, Blaine. I had to find you. I couldn’t let them take you.” Kurt’s face crumbled and Blaine wanted nothing more than to sweep Kurt into his arms and kiss him and love him until all of the shadows fled from his mind. But Kurt wasn’t his, no matter how much he wanted it. That didn’t mean he couldn’t be there for him.
His hands found the gentle curve of Kurt’s cheeks, and he tilted the boy’s face upward so he could look into his eyes. The skin under his palms was cold and wet with the rain, but it was real, and that was what really mattered.
Courage, Blaine. You’ve just gotta have a little courage.
Kurt’s eyes were bottomless, and Blaine felt as though he could drown in them if the rain didn’t get to him first. He moved his arms down to wrap around Kurt’s hunched shoulders, and he laid his head on Kurt’s rain-slicked hair. The vanilla scent of his shampoo had long washed away, and all that was left was the rain and something distinctly Kurt. It felt like coming home.
“It’s okay, Kurt,” he murmured softly, pulling the boy even closer. “I’m right here. Everything’s going to be okay.”
---
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