I don't own Glee or Doctor Who. Did I even need to say that? Seriously?

The curly haired man looked across the neatly trimmed lawn at the small boy who was standing on the decking. A pink torch decorated with purple flowers was clasped in the boy's hand, and the man winced as the light shone directly into his eyes.

"You're in my garden," the child said.

"Am I?" the man asked. "Oh. I'm sorry about that. The engine failed just as I got into the Solar System. Luckily it had enough power to get to Earth, but I couldn't control exactly where I landed. I guess I'm lucky that I didn't crash in the middle of the Atlantic."

The boy's eyebrows furrowed in confusion. "You're not making any sense."

"Aren't I? Sorry. Let's start again." He finally pulled himself out of the police box lying horizontally on the ground, and walked closer to the boy, holding out his hand in greeting. "Hello, my name's the Doctor. What's yours?"

"Kurt Hummel," the boy said, slowly shaking the man's offered hand. "The Doctor is a title, not a name. Like my dad is 'mister Hummel'. So what's your real name?"

"I told you, it's the Doctor. That's my name because I'm special."

"It's confusing. Can I call you something else?"

The Doctor shrugged. "As long as it's nothing too awful…"

The small boy cocked his hip and pursed his lips and the Doctor had to smile at the concentration on his face.

"You look like a… Blaine."

"Blaine?" the Doctor repeated dubiously.

"Yeah. Like Blaine from Pretty In Pink. That's one of my favourite films."

The Doctor - or Blaine - smiled. "If it makes you happy then you can call me Blaine. I suppose I need to make up for landing in your roses." He looked around the small, suburban lawn. "So, Kurt, where exactly is your back garden?"

"Lima, Ohio, the United States of America," Kurt recited. He opened his mouth to say something else but was cut off by the Doctor's stomach rumbling loudly. "Are you hungry?"

Blaine nodded in mock sadness, patting his belly. "Controlling crashing police boxes always burns up my energy supplies."

Kurt blinked up at him but didn't ask questions; he grabbed the man's hand and pulled him through the open back door into an immaculately clean kitchen. The Doctor paused uncertainly in the doorway, knowing that his clothes were shredded and dirty from the exploding spaceship, but Kurt didn't seem to complain about his messy state as he took a few small steps inside.

"What would you like to eat?" Kurt asked. "I can make anything but I'm not allowed to touch the knives without my dad."

"I won't need anything complicated enough to involve sharp knives," Blaine assured, opening the fridge door to look for something promising. "Ew. Why are there so many vegetables in here?"

"Because vegetables are good for you and make you grow tall and strong. Don't you eat your five-a-day?"

"No," the Doctor replied, shutting the fridge and kneeling down to look through the freezer. He extracted a tub of Ben & Jerry's Cookie Dough from the recesses of a drawer full of frozen peas with a grin. "Not when there's ice cream available!"

"That's probably why you're so short," Kurt told him seriously, handing him a spoon with Kurt written across the handle in sequins.

"I'm not that short," Blaine grumbled as he popped the lid off.

Kurt hopped up onto the table, swinging his legs slightly as he watched Blaine devouring the ice cream like a starving man.

"Are you a policeman?" he asked.

"No, I'm the Doctor. Although I was a policeman once. Not a real policeman of course, not that anyone else knew that! Oh, that uniform got me into a wild party." He glanced at Kurt and shut his mouth. "But you're probably a little too young to go into the details."

"So... Is that a yes?"

"Does it matter whether I'm a policeman or not?"

"Well, my dad told me I wasn't ever allowed to talk to a stranger unless they were part of the police."

"Oh, well then, yes. I'm a policeman. Where is your dad, anyway? Surely he should be home at," he glanced at the clock hanging over the door, "eleven at night?"

Kurt shook his head. "It's the fourteenth of June. Dad always goes to visit mom today and he doesn't get back until very late. I can look after myself for an evening though. I am six."

"You're six years old, at home with a stranger eating ice cream in your kitchen and you're not at all afraid?"

Kurt shrugged. "You don't seem like a mean person."

"Ah, but how would you know what a mean person is like? Have you met any?"

Kurt's lips turned down into a frown. "Yes. There are lots in my class."

"Really?" the Doctor asked. "What do they do?"

"Call me names. Tease me. Once, David Karofsky pushed me over, but the teacher saw him and told him off so he didn't do it again."

"You're right, those are mean people," Blaine said seriously.

"I wish that they would leave me alone," the boy said quietly. "I don't even know why they pick on me."

The Doctor stared at the child for a second before saying, "Well, I know how to deal with bullies, seeing as I'm so tough and threatening." Kurt giggled slightly. "So, how about I come and glare at the mean kids for you so that they leave you alone?"

Whatever Kurt was going to say in reply was cut off by a loud whooshing noise echoing from the back garden. The Doctor leapt to his feet in a panic, digging into his pocket to pull out a key, the ice cream spoon still held in his other hand.

"No, no, no!" he shouted to himself as he sprinted out of the back door, Kurt tripping up in his haste to follow.

"Where are you going?" he called from the doorway.

The Doctor turned, one foot already in the police box. "It just needs to be stabilised. Don't worry; I'll be back in five minutes."

"That's what my mom said," Kurt said sadly. "And she never came back."

Blaine raised his eyebrows at the small boy, cast a glance at the creaking and groaning blue box before moving back over so that he was in front of Kurt, kneeling down to make Kurt meet his eyes.

"Kurt," he said softly, "I'm not going to abandon you. I'm just going to make sure that that," he jerked his head back towards the box, "isn't going to explode. I'll be back in five minutes and then I'll help you chase down all of your bullies."

"Five minutes?" Kurt asked.

Blaine nodded. "Five."

Five minutes.

Four minutes and fifty nine seconds.

Four minutes and fifty eight seconds.

Kurt was sure that he was going to go mad before the clock actually struck three o'clock. He had already mapped out his afternoon perfectly – with the events timed down to the precise minute – and if Mr. Schuester let them out of Spanish even thirty seconds late then his day was going to be completely off-kilter.

The bell rang and Kurt was on his feet, ignoring all of his classmates in his desperate attempt to get out of the door first.

This was the part of his day that he dreaded the most. Either nothing happened, and he was able to keep up with his rigid timetable or-

"Hey, butt boy!" someone shouted from behind.

Or this happens, Kurt thought grimly to himself, pushing past the people who had stopped to see who was shouting.

"Oi! Faggot! I'm talking to you."

He just needed to get to his car, and then he would be safe for the day. If he was lucky, the Neanderthals would get stuck behind a group of slow moving people and he would be able to escape from this conflict unscathed.

But Kurt Hummel was never lucky.

In fact, he was starting to believe that the universe was out to make his life dreadful.

A meaty hand closed on his shoulder, tugging him to a stop. With a weary grimace set in place, he turned on the spot to sneer at the swarm of letterman jackets.

"What?" he snapped.

The hand on his shoulder – belonging to David Karofsky, one of his main tormentors – pushed so that he stumbled backwards a few steps.

"Now, now, lady, you want to be polite with us," he warned, his other hand clenched into a fist by his side.

"Can we just not do this for one day?" Kurt asked tiredly, trying to ignore the threatening postures of the football players. "You've cornered me every day this week, surely that's enough?"

Azimio stepped closer, a smirk firmly etched on his lips. "Well, we're waiting for that magical friend to appear – the one you were so sure was going to protect you. What'd you call him again? Blake? Blaine?"

Kurt exhaled sharply – as he always did when someone mentioned that name to him. It had been so many years that he'd managed to convince himself that the stabbing pain of betrayal in his gut was merely annoyance at an idiotic childhood belief being brought up for the umpteenth time.

"Are you still bringing that up? That was elementary school stuff."

"Yeah but you seemed so sure of it."

Nudging Azimio, Karofsky added, "Remember how he used to threaten us, Z. 'You shouldn't do this! Blaine's going to be back any time now to stop you'."

Azimio and the others joined in with increasingly high-pitched imitations of Kurt. Kurt dropped his stare to the floor, wishing that he didn't blush quite as easily. It was always the same when they brought him up, they enjoyed humiliating Kurt until he was ready to turn on his heel and run away – and then they would leave him with a parting shove.

It was all Blaine's fault.

And Blaine was a figment of Kurt's imagination, so it was technically all Kurt's fault.

Was he that desperate for a best friend when he was younger that his subconscious created a person – too extraordinary to be real –to trick Kurt into believing that there was someone out there, apart from his father, who cared for him?

Whatever the reasons behind his imaginary friend were, Kurt wished desperately that he could go back to his six year old self and tell him not to go into school the next day with a bright smile and the belief that Blaine would be back at any minute. Despite the confidence he had gained for a few months, it wasn't worth the awful teasing that he had had to cope with for the next eleven years. Usually a joke would have died out by then, but everybody seemed to relish humiliating the school queer as much as possible.

"Hey, listen to us, fag," Azimio said, shoving Kurt back into the lockers to regain his attention.

"He's probably daydreaming about Blaine," one of the unseen Titans called from back of the group. "You should knock it out of him!"

No, no, Kurt thought as he squeezed his eyes shut and tried to cover his face, can't they just leave me alone for a day?

He knew that they couldn't however. So the painful impact of a fist on his cheek, knocking his head back into the lockers, didn't surprise him. He opened his eyes slightly to glare at the football players through pained tears.

"Beiste's coming," a guy said, preventing Karofsky from aiming another punch.

Instead, he was merely slammed against the lockers one more time with a parting comment of, "See you tomorrow, homo."

His shoulders slumped forward in defeat; he slung his bag – which had fallen out of his hands when Karofsky hit him – back over his shoulder and continued walking towards the parking lot. He knew that if he stayed, a teacher would see the developing bruise on his cheek and might possibly try to help, but their version of 'help' was to offer him cups of water in their offices and talk over his problems. No one was ever punished.

The most painful thing about Blaine was the fact that Kurt knew if he had never told other people about him, he would only have to deal with slushie facials, locker slams and the occasional dumpster toss, instead of being regarded as the football team's personal punch bag. After all, being gay was bad, but being gay and constantly talking about an imaginary man? He had practically asked to be put in this situation.

Kurt's schedule was now completely messed up. He wouldn't be able to go home and listen to his Evita soundtrack while completing him homework, before embarking on a Desperate Housewives marathon, and starting dinner for when his dad got home.

No, instead he would attempt to sneak into the house without being noticed by Finn (which would be hard if he was pigging out in front of the television), grab some ice from the kitchen, and then spend the hours before his dad came home trying to reduce the swelling and covering up the black eye.

All in all, a horrible day.

Though it did begin to look up slightly as Kurt pulled up to his house and realised that he had forgotten that Finn was on a date with Quinn. It meant that as soon as the front door closed behind him – and he wasn't in danger of being spotted by curious neighbours – Kurt could release the sob that he had been holding in.

It just wasn't fair.

One thing that Kurt was sure of was that as soon as he could – the very second that he had received his high school diploma – he was getting out of Ohio. It didn't even matter to him if he got into New York University, he would take begging on the streets of New York over wasting his life in Lima, Ohio.

It doesn't even have to be New York, Kurt mused as he pressed a bag of frozen peas to his cheek, sighing as the numbing cold met his stinging skin, as long as it's far away from here. Maybe LA. Or I could become a stripper in Vegas. That'd pay well...

His internal musings were cut short by a strangely familiar sound echoing through his house. A loud, obnoxious whooshing sound that had haunted Kurt's dreams for almost twelve years. Kurt froze in the middle of his kitchen, one hand still pressing the peas to his face, the cold burning his skin from the prolonged contact.

Was it?

No.

That was a daydream. A fantasy. Something created by a lonely little boy who was up past his bedtime one night.

It was not real.

"Kurt?" a voice called from the garden. "I'm back! Although judging from the sunlight, I'm a few hours late..."

He wasn't real. He wasn't real. Enough psychiatrists had told him that. And yet...

Slowly, Kurt made his way to the glass patio doors, his breath catching in his throat and the bag of peas falling to the ground as he was greeted by the sight of Blaine– his imaginary friend, Blaine – looking around the garden in bemusement. He turned at the noise of the door sliding open; the bright smile fell from his face as he saw Kurt.

"Oh, I'm sorry," he said politely, straightening up slightly, "I was looking for Kurt Hummel? I promised him I would be back in a few minutes, but I think I overshot."

"Yeah," Kurt said so quietly it was almost a whisper, "you overshot."

Blaine's eyes widened and he actually took a step away from Kurt.

"Kurt? Kurt? You're Kurt? Kurt, the little boy who I was talking to not five minutes ago?"

Kurt choked out a laugh. "I'm Kurt. The little boy who you were talking to eleven years ago."

"Eleven years? No. No, I said five minutes. I promised you five minutes. I can't be that late. I'm the Doctor, I keep my promises."

He looked so sure of himself, his hands smoothing down the lapels of a brand new, ridiculously ugly blue blazer, his hair – which had been curly the first time they'd met – gelled into a helmet on top of his head.

"Well, you broke that one," Kurt said, turning on his heel and closing the door behind him.

He needed to go upstairs and sleep. Because there was no way that this was possible. Blaine was a fantasy – and even if he was real, it was completely impossible for him to turn up on Kurt's doorstep eleven years later, not looking a minute older than the last time Kurt had seen him.

"No, wait! Kurt, stop!"

The door opened again, and there was a hand on Kurt's shoulder, preventing him from storming upstairs and locking himself in his room.

What confused Kurt the most was that he could feel Blaine's hand on his shoulder. How could he feel something that wasn't real?

"Has it really been eleven years?"

Kurt nodded.

"So you're... how old now?"

"Seventeen."

"Seventeen," Blaine repeated, shocked. "That's... old. You were only six five minutes ago."

Kurt – who had been avoiding Blaine's piercing gaze – suddenly snapped his head up to stare right at him, his eyebrows furrowed in confusion because, no matter what he had been told over the past eleven years, Blaine was real. Blaine was here. It was impossible, but it was true.

"What are you?" he asked quietly, his voice stumbling over the words. "How are you here, eleven years late, and looking exactly the same as you did before? What is that blue box and how can it disappear?" Why did you break your promise?

"I'm the Doctor. I'm an alien from outer space who travels in time in a police box called a TARDIS and arrives at people's houses in the middle of the night to eat their ice cream before running away."

Kurt didn't laugh at Blaine's joke. He didn't even hear Blaine's joke, he was too busy trying to wrap his head around the concept of Blaine being a time travelling alien.

"Are you being serious?" he asked, becoming surer that this was an elaborate practical joke being played on him.

Blaine huffed. "What is it with you humans? You never seem to believe me. Is it that unbelievable?"

"You just told me you're an alien! I think I have a right to be slightly dubious, don't you?"

"Time travelling alien," Blaine corrected. He sighed at Kurt's expression of disbelief before reaching into the inner pocket of his blazer and pulling something out. "Here. I realised that I forgot to give it back."

Kurt took the item and looked down at it in shock.

It was his spoon that Blaine had eaten used to eat the ice cream – that he had stolen. The one thing that kept Kurt believing that that night must have been real for so many years, because how did a spoon go missing from a drawer?

It had smears of ice cream on it, and the sequins that spelled out his name were still glittering – not faded by age like they should have been.

"This… this is my spoon," Kurt said simply, then cursed inwardly for the obvious statement.

"Yeah. It's probably bad form to steal from a child, so I thought I should give it back."

"It's covered in liquid ice cream." Again, Kurt felt like face palming for how slow he sounded.

Blaine didn't seem to notice, as he said, "Yeah, the TARDIS got a bit hot – she usually does after having to remake herself – so it melted a bit."

He was looking at Kurt with wide, cheerful eyes. There wasn't anything malicious in those eyes, no obvious intent to hurt him.

"You're not... You're telling the truth?"

"Yep."

Kurt clenched his eyes shut as he said the next part, knowing it sounded completely ridiculous. "You're a time travelling alien?"

"That'd be me."

With a frustrated sigh at himself for actually believing Blaine, Kurt opened his eyes and stared at him.

"But you look so normal. Despite that blazer, of course. Why are you wearing it? I have to admit that the ripped, burnt clothes looked better than that."

Blaine frowned and stroked the lapels of the blazer. "It's nice," he defended weakly. "The TARDIS has only just started updating its wardrobe and this was the best thing I could find. I think it makes me look quite dapper. And I've never looked dapper before." He paused and then added, "Besides, you're wearing a bow tie."

"Yes, Blaine, but I think you'll find that bow ties are cool. At least, my bow ties are cool," he amended. "I know they're not a style everyone can pull off as fabulously as me."

"I'm still 'Blaine', huh? Not the Doctor?" Blaine asked with a smile.

"Of course. I stand by what I said when I was six: 'the Doctor' is not a name, it's a title. I've spent eleven years thinking of Blaine, and it's going to stay that way."

"You've been thinking of me for eleven years?" Blaine teased. "I'm flattered."

The smile that had been playing on Kurt's lips from the bantering slipped off his face as he remembered exactly why he still thought of Blaine so often.

"It's been impossible to forget you," he said shortly, his finger subconsciously probing at the bruise on his cheek. He shouldn't have dropped the ice; it was starting to throb slightly.

Blaine frowned at the sudden change of mood. "What's wrong? Is it to do with that bruise?"

"The football team don't appreciate the school fag spouting rubbish about an imaginary man. They like to remind me that I'm a freak daily."

There was an awkward silence as Blaine tried to take in what Kurt had said. Kurt shifted uncomfortably on his feet, wishing that he hadn't sounded so bitter – he didn't really blame Blaine for the bullying, he blamed himself for talking about him so openly.

Eventually Blaine broke the silence with, "Would the football team be the same mean people who were bothering you when you were six?"

Kurt nodded. "Sadly, living in Lima, you end up going to the same high school as all of the kids in elementary school."

"I've had to deal with mean people too," Blaine said.

Kurt glanced up at the charming man. "What did yours do?"

Blaine pursed his lips. "Same sort of thing as yours, I guess, just on a slightly different scale. They were trying to destroy the universe..."

"That must have been...um, exciting?" Kurt said with a raise eyebrow.

"It was rather. It put a slight dampener on things when I almost died, but, as you can see, I pulled through."

"Good for you," Kurt said, not sure what one was meant to say in response to that. "Who exactly was trying to destroy the universe?"

Blaine shrugged. "Well, that time, it was this race of aliens called the daleks. But it varies from day to day."

"Wait, this has happened more than once?"

"Oh, Kurt, it happens on a weekly basis."

"Of course it does," Kurt muttered under his breath and then said louder, "Do you want to go and get coffee or something? We can sit down and talk instead of chatting in my hallway." And it will be extremely awkward if dad comes home to find Blaine in the house.

A wide smile shot to Blaine's face. "Sure, I love coffee. I think. I like the energy burst."

"You do not need any more energy," Kurt grumbled as he grabbed his keys from the bowl next to the door and pushed Blaine out ahead of him.

"I haven't had coffee in a while... About a month, actually. The TARDIS' coffee machine broke which sucked, but there will probably be a new one installed seeing as it's rebooted itself. That'll be-"

Kurt looked up to see what had cut Blaine off from the middle of his coffee-deprived rant, and his good mood vanished. He turned his face away pointedly, breathing in deeply to prevent any tears from falling.

"Kurt," Blaine said slowly, the happiness fading out of his voice, "does this happen often?"

"From time to time," Kurt sniffed.

The silence only lasted a few seconds before Blaine said, "You shouldn't have to put up with this."

It could easily have been a throwaway comment on how awful bullying was, but Kurt could hear the double meaning in those words.

"What are you offering me?" Kurt asked quietly.

Blaine glanced at Kurt's navigator – with the word fag scrawled across it in white paint and a long scratch mark that had been keyed into the paintwork.

"Escape," he said simply. "A chance for a life away from this and all of them. I can take you anywhere, Kurt. Wherever you want to go in the universe, I'll take you there."

"For some reason I think that aliens are going to be a lot worse than some homophobic bullies from Ohio."

Blaine smiled, squeezing Kurt's hand. "I'll always be there to protect you. I promise."

It took all of Kurt's strength not to say 'you've broken promises before', but the Doctor seemed to understand what was going through his head because he clutched Kurt's hand tighter.

"That was only because the TARDIS was about to explode. It's now perfectly functional. That broken promise to you... Kurt, believe me when I say I regret leaving you here for so long."

Every part of his body screamed for Kurt to stop dithering and just say yes. To jump on the impossible police box and run away from his monotonous life. But there was one small part of his brain that wouldn't stop bringing up all of the people that he didn't want to remember: his fabulous best friend Mercedes; his loveable step-brother Finn; all of the Glee Club members who had accepted him despite his reputation as the boy who was absorbed with his imaginary friends; his dad who hadn't stopped supporting him, despite all that Kurt had thrown at him.

"People will miss me," Kurt muttered. "I can't just pack up and leave. How would I even begin to explain this to my dad?"

"Kurt, I can travel in time. If you don't want people to miss you then I can have you back by tomorrow. I can have you back by five minutes ago. We could leave for a year and then return to precisely this second so no one would know you were gone."

"I don't know you," Kurt stalled as he studiously avoided looking at his car because he knew that if he had to look at the evidence of how shit his life had got, he would follow Blaine to end of the Earth. "You appeared to me when I was a boy and then left for eleven years. You're still practically a stranger."

"True, you don't know me... But I am offering you a chance to get to know me. And I'm not a kidnapper, Kurt, if you decide that travelling through space and time isn't for you then I'll bring you straight home. Like I brought the spoon back."

"Are you comparing me to a spoon?" Kurt joked weakly.

Blaine smiled. "You know that's not what I meant. So, can I show you the universe?"

Kurt looked again at his vandalised car.

"You can have me back before anyone knows that I'm gone?"

"Five minutes."

"And you're sure that your police box has a working coffee machine now?"

"If it doesn't, I will buy one for you," Blaine promised, grabbing his hand.

Kurt squeezed slightly, smiling as Blaine reciprocated the action.

"Go on, then. Show me the universe."

Blaine's whole face lit up as he smiled and hummed under his breath, "Let's run away and don't ever look back, don't ever look back..."

This was originally a oneshot, but there so many people liked it when I posted it on Tumblr (youmovedmekurt(dot)tumblr(dot)com) that I decided to write a part 2, which should be coming in a matter of days.

Thanks so much for reading.