Title: Roswell
Rating: R
Warnings: strong language, scenes of a sexual nature, some intense violence including homophobia, bullying, and torture, mind control powers used in sexual and non-sexual ways, major and minor character deaths
Pairings: Klaine, Santina, other canon mentioned
Spoilers: possible all episodes, both series
Author's Note: This story is a fusion between Glee and Roswell. If you're not familiar with the TV show Roswell and want some background information, you can find a factsheet below. It's not necessary to read that, though. I explain everything you need to know in the story. If you are familiar with Roswell, prepare yourself for some differences big and small. If you find anything in the story confusing, please do ask about it in a review or on my Tumblr (arainymonday).

Updates will come as my betas (the amazing mischief7manager and asimplequirk) and I edit chapters. Expect to see a new chapter about once a month.

I hope you enjoy the story!

ROSWELL FACT SHEET

This is a fusion story inserting Glee characters into the Roswell world/story. You don't need to know anything about Roswell to enjoy this story because it's all explained in the text. However, if you want a brief background, I've typed up a basic summary and guide for you. Be aware, there are unavoidable minor spoilers here.

Roswell is a television show that aired from 1999-2002. The premise of the show is that aliens crashed in Roswell, New Mexico in 1947, and they left behind alien-human hybrids in incubation pods. The aliens came out of the pods when they were children, and the story begins when they are in high school. The main storyline is a romance between an alien, Max, and a human, Liz.

The aliens in Roswell are exactly what the conspiracies tell us they are. They are little gray creatures who fly around in saucer-shaped spaceships. They possess the ability to shapeshift into human form, and they live among us. The alien-human hybrids look human, but have special abilities such as healing, telekinesis, molecular manipulation, and moderate forms of mind control including entering dreams and memory modification. Not all aliens have all these abilities.

There are some physiological differences between humans and the hybrids. For instance, the hybrids have a very dull sense of taste, so they put Tabasco sauce on everything to give it a stronger flavor – hamburgers, lemonade, chocolate bars, everything. Mainly, however, they have the same basic biology as humans.

The hybrids are aware that they are aliens and that they came from the crashed spaceship, but they do not know their full history or their purpose.

When I was in high school, this was THE show that my friends and I talked about all the time. If you decide to watch Roswell, please judge it by the first season. The second season was a hot mess, and the third/final season barely redeemed it. I still think it's a great show with a fantastic premise and a really beautiful love story.

ROSWELL

PART ONE

SOMETHING'S COMING

September 25

I'm Kurt Hummel, and five days ago I died. After that, things got really weird.

CRASHDOWN

The week preceding the Crash Festival brings a lot of fanatics to Roswell, New Mexico. Kurt Hummel knows this better than most because he's been waiting on them at the Crashdown Cafe. He's been having a little bit of fun with them between delivering their orders and leaving the check. He shows them a photograph – or, more accurately, a photo manipulation a third grader with Photoshop could have created – that he says his grandmother took at the crash site in 1947 just before the government arrived to cordon off, clean up, and classify the event. They're just crazy enough to believe it might be true, and the hungry awe on their faces is enough to put Kurt in a fantastic mood despite the ache in his feet.

It's a typical September Sunday in Roswell, New Mexico with the dry heat, dust, and intense sunlight painting the whole world a miserable neutral hue. Kurt has lived here his entire life. Nothing more strange than the odd UFO enthusiasts' annual visit has ever happened in this little town. Until today.

As Kurt comes back around behind the counter where the fry cooks serve up dishes with names like the Sigourney Weaver and the Will Smith onto the metal shelves beneath burning heat lamps and the waiters scoop ice cream out of the giant vanilla vats to mix up Green Martian milkshakes and Blood of Alien smoothies, his best friend, Tina Cohen-Chang, shakes her head and laughs.

"You're terrible, Kurt."

Tina is a sweet, shy girl with a flawless complexion and symmetrical features. She hides behind a fake stutter that only Kurt knows about, multi-colored streaks in her long black hair, and Goth clothes when she's not in uniform.

Kurt is a self-described fashionista, but even he has to admit the uniforms at the Crashdown are cute. The sage color leaves something to be desired, but it's the headband with alien antennae and silver aprons shaped like alien faces with the black eye slit pockets that really make the outfit. Maybe it's just a little kitschy, but Kurt designed them when he was eight-years-old, so he thinks he deserves a break.

His family has owned the Crashdown since before 1947 when it was simply called Hummel's Diner, and while normally Kurt would bemoan the selling out-slash-cashing in on a science fiction hoax, the Crashdown's revenue puts him in designer clothes when he's not working, and he really loves designer clothes. Also, he loves the alien antennae headband, but he'd never admit that to anyone.

Kurt looks nothing like his tanned, athletic classmates at West Roswell High. He's pale, hence the sage and silver ensemble doing little for his complexion, and has to slather on sunblock during his morning moisturizing routine to keep from turning brick red from simply going about his day. A growth spurt and a rigorous pursuit to learn every Beyoncé dance number over the summer has left him tall with lean muscles. He apparently shakes his hips like a girl when he walks, or so the jocks at school tell him, although with much crasser wording.

"By the way," Tina says, "Blaine Anderson is staring at you … again."

"No way. Don't drag me into your deluded fantasies. Blaine Anderson doesn't stare at me ever. Everyone knows he's dating Santana Lopez."

"Who knows that?"

Tina is a little too short to reach the top shelf of the expediter's station, so he pulls down her orders and helps to garnish the plates.

"I don't know. Everyone. They're always together."

"I'm always with you, and we're not dating."

"That's different."

When Kurt came out last year, very few of his classmates were surprised. He's nothing if not flamboyant. Most of them, Tina included, had been operating under the assumption he was gay since at least the sixth grade.

Tina hefts the tray up high to avoid clocking sitting customers while she weaves her way through the dining area. It's nothing special, the Crashdown Cafe, aside from the themed cuteness of the uniforms. There are eight booths, four along each wall, and a dozen tables between, plus ten stools at the counter. The décor is pale orange and white, and that's something Kurt has wanted to change for years, but it matches the outside of the building. There's a saucer-shaped spaceship crashed into the front of the Crashdown over the door.

Kurt tries to pretend like he's watching Tina's progress across the dining room, but he's actually sneaking glances at Blaine Anderson who is seated in the booth just in front of the jukebox with Santana Lopez, who Kurt honestly doesn't know if he's dating. Blaine is, simply put, a teenage dream with his dark, styled curls and classically handsome features that remind Kurt of a 1940's movie star. He's a little short and smiles too brightly to fit the bill completely, but it breathes life into what would otherwise be a cardboard cutout image.

Blaine catches Kurt looking, and he turns away sharply.

Blaine Anderson will admit to exactly zero people that he watches Kurt Hummel on a regular basis. Santana would harass him about it constantly. They can't afford to make attachments, because they might have to leave Roswell at a moment's notice and never come back. To hesitate could spell something far worse than death for them: captivity, experimentation, interrogations that will never cease because they have no answers to give. They look human, but they're not. They're aliens, and they can't afford to forget that.

Still, Blaine watches Kurt. He doesn't make a conscious effort to follow Kurt's progress as he parades down the halls of West Roswell High like he owns the place. His eyes are drawn to Kurt by something beyond his control, and he can't look away until Santana snaps her fingers in front of his face or Kurt turns a corner and disappears. He is completely and utterly at the beck and call of Kurt Hummel, and they haven't spoken more than ten words at a time to each other since the seventh grade.

A sharp snap brings him back into the present. Santana has on the stern face that means he's failed to respond to her in a timely manner. She's a demanding girl, and he thinks that's probably a little bit because she's so pretty she's been able to get away with treating boys poorly all her life and a little bit because Blaine is the only boy who really cares about what she has to say, and it hurts when he zones out while she's talking.

"Sorry. I'm really sorry, Santana."

She shakes her head and pretends it doesn't matter. Her black ponytail – a new extension or a weave, he's not sure which, but she definitely paid for it – swings and catches on her bare shoulder. It's not really hot enough for tube tops and miniskirts, but she dresses like it is all year round anyway. She looks like she's resigned to repeat herself, but an arguing pair draws a judgmental glare from her.

Kurt watches them too while he prepares the orders to deliver to the UFO enthusiast couple who totally bought his fake photograph as legitimate and begged for a copy. Only, he doesn't get to their table because the guys arguing on the far side of the diner escalate their fight. One of them pulls out a concealed handgun, and Kurt has just a moment to think sarcastically – God, I love New Mexico – before the terrified screams startle him back into the moment.

But by then, it's too late.

The men wrestle over the gun, and a finger squeezes the trigger. It goes off with a deafening bang far, far louder than in any movie Kurt has ever seen. And he doesn't quite understand why his stomach feels like it's on fire and he's suddenly flat on his back considering this oddity and the diner's ceiling, but he is, and he can't make his limbs work to get himself back on his feet. He wants to stand up to make sure Tina is okay. He hears her voice, as if from very far away.

"Oh my God, Kurt!"

And that's when his brain puts it all together. The fire in his stomach turns into a raging torrent of pain so intense he forgets in a second that there is anything else in the world but pain. But infinitely worse is the fear. Fear of the darkness creeping into his vision and what comes after, but mostly fear that Tina has to see this and that his dad will have to watch as the police pull back the sheet and prove to him that his son died in a shooting inside his diner.

Tina is running towards Kurt, but Blaine can't let her get there if he's going to help. And he's definitely going to help whether it's a good idea or not, because he can't let Kurt bleed out on the floor of the Crashdown.

"Call 9-1-1!" Blaine orders her, and she digs her cell phone out of her alien-shaped apron.

"What are you doing?" Santana demands.

She jumps out of the booth to bodily block him from doing something stupid, but he pushes past her, and she resigns herself to damage control. She shouts at the tourists to get back and shuffles them around to give Blaine as much privacy as possible. At least Kurt fell so he's partially concealed by the counter.

The metal snaps on the front of Kurt's work shirt pop open, and then there are hands framing his face and redirecting his gaze. He sees Blaine Anderson leaning over him. He looks so different with his handsome face drawn and his eyes full of worry.

"Kurt, I need you to look at me. Kurt, you have to look at me," he urges.

Kurt thinks that he manages to roll his neck, but he's not sure because all he can feel is the pain making his body shiver on the floor.

Kurt looks so scared and lost, and there's dark red blood pooling in the dip of his stomach, so it's difficult for Blaine to focus on what he knows he has to do. Kurt's eyes lock onto his, and whether it's because he's trying to look at Blaine like he's been asked to do or because fear and pain make him search for any person to connect with, it's the impetus Blaine needs to push aside his own terror and do what he knows he's capable of.

He can save Kurt.

Blaine places his hand over the weeping bullet wound beside Kurt's belly button. The healing power comes when it's called. Blaine doesn't know where it comes from just like he doesn't know why his lungs draw breath when he sleeps. The healing is a part of him encoded into his physiology. A faint white glow wraps around his palm as the connection between himself and Kurt takes hold.

Kurt stops breathing. His heart stills. Bits of his life flash before Blaine's eyes.

A little boy in a bowtie is having a tea party with his stuffed animals. A balding man in a flannel shirt comes over to the small table beneath the shade of an Aspen tree and drops down into the miniature chair. He lets the little boy pour him imaginary tea and instruct him to hold out his pinky finger. The boy knew his dad would join him. He'd already told his teddy bear he'd have to give up his seat eventually.

The same little boy is wobbling on a bicycle with streamers on the handlebars flying in the wind, but he knows his dad has a hold on the back of the seat and won't let him fall. Except his dad lets go, and he does fall. He cries because he doesn't understand why his dad would let him go like that, but the hug and Strawberry Shortcake Band-Aid makes it all better.

The boy and his dad are standing in a cemetery in black suits. The boy is eight-years-old, and it's his mother going into the ground. He's frightened and sad. He's never lost anyone he loves before. It's so much worse than when he lost his favorite teddy bear at the mall, but that's the only comparison he has. His little heart can't comprehend yet what has happened. He reaches out for his dad's hand.

Air rushes into Kurt's lungs, and he gasps. His eyes rove over the ceiling, as if he can't quite recall why he's lying on his back with a boy who's hardly spoken to him kneeling beside him. And then he does. His eyes snap to Blaine, and they're full of questions Blaine can't answer right now. The sirens are getting nearer.

"We have to go!" Santana hisses by his ear. "Keys!"

It's all Blaine needs to remember what will happen if anyone finds out what he did.

He tosses his car keys to Santana, and she runs out of the diner to pull the car around. Blaine grabs a bottle of ketchup from the counter and breaks the glass container on the edge of the Formica. He spills it over Kurt's stomach where blood is smeared over his perfect skin.

"You're all right now. You broke the bottle when you fell and spilled ketchup on yourself. You can't say anything. Please."

Blaine pushes up from the ground and fights through the crowd of customers craning to see what's happening behind the counter. Kurt pulls himself to his feet using the edge of the counter for support. He watches as Santana pulls around in the white Corvette Blaine drives to school every day, and he jumps into the passenger seat without opening the door. He cranes in his seat to peer through the glass front of the diner: one final, silent plea.

You can't say anything. Please.

And Kurt is resolved. He won't breathe a word.

NOT OF THIS EARTH

The bell above the door jingles as Sheriff Sylvester enters the Crashdown. She glances around at the tables shoved aside by bodies hurrying to flee and the spray of debris on the floor from the rush. She's a tall, imposing woman with short blonde hair and a stern face. Her badge is clipped to a black tracksuit. She tears off her reflective aviator sunglasses and surveys the crime scene again.

"I'm fine, Dad. I just spilled ketchup."

The insistent male voice of a higher pitch than most draws her attention to the middle of the diner where Kurt Hummel sits wiping thick red goop from his stomach with a white kitchen towel while his father hovers and worries. Sue has never cared much for Burt Hummel. She has an irrational hatred for the way he always wears flannel and baseball caps to cover his balding head. It's too hot in New Mexico for flannel, and he's not fooling anyone with the hats. But in this instance, Sue feels sorry for him. It's his kid who was supposedly shot in his own diner. If Sue ever got the call that her Becky had been hurt at the police station, she'd be out of her mind.

"You okay?" she asks.

Kurt nods. "Yes, I'm just a little shaken up."

Deputy Ryerson hustles over to claim her attention. He's about as useful as a canine unit of overly friendly Labradors, but he's the one who answered the call about the shooting. He wears his brown and tan uniform accented with a pink scarf, but at least he'd remembered to turn the police siren off this time so she didn't have to listen to its incessant wailing over his nasally account of what he'd discovered at the scene.

"Oh, Sheriff. Thank God you're here. I – Hey!" Sandy turns towards a pair of tourists poking around the swinging kitchen door. "I told you two to stay out of there." He shakes his head sadly. "They're in town for the Crash Festival. They're the special kind of tourist."

Sue thinks Sandy is pretty fresh using that tone to describe anyone, but she lets it slide because the man and woman with alien patches on their pathetically mismatched clothes have something observationally important to tell her, which Sandy hasn't yet.

"The gunman was standing over there and fired in this direction, but where's the bullet hole?" the man asks.

"We haven't found a bullet yet, Sheriff," Sandy finally says. "There wasn't any robbery either or anyone hurt except the boy who fell. It looks like an argument that got out of hand."

"There's something else," the male tourist says. He pulls out a folded photograph printed on cheap photo paper. A third grader with a box of crayons could have doodled the alien in the picture. "Before it happened, the boy gave us this."

Sue lifts her eyebrows and hands the photograph off to Burt. He's near to laughing, but scolds his son anyway for messing with the tourists. She's more interested in walking the perimeter and searching for any clues Sandy might have missed. The UFO conspiracy freaks are only too eager to provide her with more information.

"There were two teenagers sitting in this booth, a boy and a girl."

"Yeah, there were!" Kurt jumps in.

He hurries over to the booth in question where two plates of unfinished food rest on the Formica top. Strangely, there are also two empty bottles of Tabasco sauce overturned on the table. Kurt's still clutching the stained white towel around his stomach, and he looks a little too panicked to not raise Sue's suspicions.

"You know, I didn't recognize them, so they're probably from out of town too."

"No," the tourist says. "It looked like he knew them."

Sue's eyes travel over Kurt's shoulder to the Asian teenager hovering uncertainly. She'll get her name from Sandy and question her when they're not all so jumpy. Sheriff is an elected position, after all, and interrogating children after they've witnessed an almost-shooting where they work is cannon fodder for challengers, but that doesn't mean she won't get to the bottom of this eventually.

o

When he gets home to the renovated bakery attached to the back of the Crashdown, Kurt feigns exhaustion and runs up the stairs to his room. His bedroom and the private bathroom are the only rooms on the third floor, so he knows he'll be left alone for the rest of the night. He sags against the back of the door and takes shuddering breaths to force his nerves to calm.

Everyone has questions for him. He knows his dad is chomping at the bit, but he'd managed to keep his questions to himself for now, and Kurt's grateful for that. The Sheriff isn't done with him either after those idiot UFO hunters ruined his cover story. As he'd left the diner, Tina had sent him a searching look, so he'd have to deal with her too at school tomorrow. She would want to know why Kurt lied for Blaine.

Kurt doesn't know why himself. He's hardly spoken to Blaine since junior high, and yet he feels now that there's something more between them. He can't name the connection he feels, only that it's like an unfamiliar but comforting tug at his chest.

He knows that he was shot. He died. He came back. And now he feels connected to Blaine.

He can't even begin to explain that to himself, much less an outside observer. It's just there: undeniable and indelible.

Kurt catches a glimpse of his ruined uniform in the full length mirror standing beside his computer desk. Blood and ketchup are smeared over his torso, and suddenly it's not the connection to Blaine that disturbs him, but the physical evidence that he died and Blaine brought him back to life. He rushes over to the mirror and fingers the dry, crusted sage material. The tip of his pointer finger slips through the bullet hole in the fabric.

He wants to know how.

Kurt believes in science, and science says that when a person is shot, they require surgery to remove the bullet and stop the bleeding. So how had Blaine healed him in half a minute? There are stories about spiritual healers who lay their hands on the sick, but Kurt doesn't believe in any religion's God. The local Native American tribes have shamans who know about herbal remedies. Kurt had always thought Blaine was Latino, mostly by association because he's always around Santana, but he supposes Blaine's olive complexion could be Native American. But even the best holistic healers can't fix the damage done by a bullet in thirty seconds.

Kurt doesn't know how Blaine did it. What he does know is that his uniform is proof, and if the Sheriff thinks to ask for it, she'll find ketchup and blood and no fabricated story in the world can cover up the mysterious events that happened behind the counter between Kurt dying and coming back. He can't explain why he wants to keep it a secret when it's not his secret to keep, but the thought of selling out Blaine to cast the Sheriff's suspicion off of him makes Kurt's stomach twist.

His hands tear at the ruined shirt. The metal snaps rip apart with sharp pings, and he scrambles to get his arms out of the holes. His fingers catch on the silver fins at the cuff, and he turns frantic. Ten seconds later, the material is bunched up and stuffed into his messenger bag. He runs his hands through his hair, his chest heaving like he's run a marathon instead of just taken off a shirt. He'll destroy the evidence tomorrow, and then Blaine will be safe. His heart slows down now that he has a plan.

A flash from the corner of his eye draws him back to the mirror. What he sees puts a lump into his throat and his pulse pounding in his ears.

On his stomach beside his belly button, exactly where he'd been shot and Blaine healed him with a touch, is a silver handprint glowing faintly in the darkening room.

o

Kurt manages to avoid Tina before school by pretending that he overslept. She doesn't believe his story. He's dressed immaculately as ever with his hair perfectly styled, and he only has time for a pompadour when he wakes up two hours before school starts. The bell rings, though, saving him for the time being, and he has just enough time to shove his messenger bag into his locker, pull out his biology books and notebook, and run to class.

The first thing he notices when Mr. Schuester begins class is that Blaine is absent. They sit at the same lab table, effectively making them lab partners, only because Tina isn't in biology with him and the rest of the class is mostly jocks. Kurt would rather eat his scarf collection than subject himself to a year of torture by attempting to partner with any of them. On the first day of school, Blaine had grinned at him when Kurt picked the second seat at his lab table, and most of their conversation for the past month had been about preparing slides to view under the microscope.

"We've been talking about genus and phylum for the past couple weeks. Now we're going to move on to species." Blaine comes in late, but Mr. Schuester doesn't pause his lecture. "Everyone on the right, prepare a slide with a vegetable sample. Everyone on the left, use a toothpick to take a cell sample from inside your cheek."

Kurt reaches for the glass slides, water dropper, and dye sitting in the center of the table. From the corner of his eye, he sees Blaine go very still. He stands up abruptly and drops the pen he's been chewing onto his biology book. Mr. Schuester raises his eyebrows.

"Can I get a bathroom pass?" Blaine asks.

Mr. Schuester holds out the yellow paper pass, and Blaine rushes out of the room leaving Kurt to scrape the toothpick along the inside of his own cheek and create the smear on the slide. He adjusts the microscope until a flurry of little circular red cells comes into focus. Mr. Schuester just wants them to observe since he hasn't asked for drawings yet, so Kurt swivels from side-to-side on his stool waiting for the rest of the class to use what few brain cells getting sacked in football and smoking weed hasn't killed yet and catch up with him. Mr. Schuester is still talking as he weaves around the lab tables.

"It's very easy to look on the outside and determine what makes humans different from other species. But what about what's on the inside?"

Kurt's gaze lands on the pen lying on top of Blaine's books. The pen that had been inside his mouth and against his cheek.

His hands move before he realizes he's made the decision. Preparing slides is second nature to Kurt, and in less than a minute he has the slide under the already focused microscope. He peers into the lens, and his heart skips a beat.

The cells are oblong with dark, vivid black nuclei and swirling green cytoplasm. They're beautiful, microscopic nebulas.

Kurt takes the slide from the biology lab when the bell rings.

o

"Blaine! Blaine!"

Kurt pushes his way through the crowd filling up the halls of West Roswell High now that the bell has rung. He shoulder checks Dave Karofsky on accident, and he'll definitely pay for that later, but right now he has to get to Blaine. There's no logical reason for it, to chase down a boy he barely knows when what he suspects should terrify him, but the tug in his chest and the questions in his head compel him.

He catches up to Blaine in the exterior hallway connecting the main classrooms to the cafeteria and commons where the honors students have study hall second hour. He wraps his arm around Blaine's elbow to keep him from escaping.

"I have to talk to you."

Kurt drags him around the side of the building and into the choir room that's only ever used when Ms. Corcoran allows the show choir a break from the rigorous dance boot camp in the auditorium and they practice scales and harmonies.

"You used to be in show choir, right?" Blaine asks. "I always really loved the performances you did at school assemblies. Why do Jesse St. James and Rachel Berry get all the solos, though?"

"It's Ms. Corcoran's strategy to win Nationals." He shakes his head to clear the distraction of an opening to rant about the unfairness of show choir and why he quit last year. "Blaine, can we focus here?"

Kurt lifts the hem of his shirt slowly exposing his pale torso and the shining handprint beside his belly button. Blaine's eyes go wide, and his mouth forms a surprised O. He knows he has the ability to heal because he's healed Santana plenty of times, but she's never told him about residual handprints. Maybe because their species doesn't mark each other or because she accepted it as a natural part of the healing process. Kurt lets the material fall and brushes the wrinkles out of the designer t-shirt. He crosses his arms over his chest protectively.

"I scraped some cells from your pen and looked at them under the microscope. The cells, they weren't normal. What I'm thinking is is that I got the wrong cells. They're from the pen or something else it touched, and not from your cheek. I did get the wrong cells, didn't I?"

Kurt looks so scared, not of Blaine necessarily, but of Blaine confirming his suspicions because it will change everything he thinks is true about the world. Blaine considers what to do. He presses his lips together and turns away for a moment to think, but he's known since he knelt beside Kurt in the diner that this moment would come. There is no use prolonging it with lies or half-truths.

"You didn't."

Kurt reels backwards and forces himself to take calming breaths. He has no idea what to say next. It sounds like Blaine just admitted that his cells aren't human. Kurt's mind wants to make the logical connection, but the pathway is blocked by a certainty that it can't be true.

"So … help me out here, Blaine."

"I'm … not from around here."

"Where are you from?"

Blaine lifts his index finger to the sky.

"Up north?"

He raises his hand higher.

"You're not an … an … a-alien."

"I prefer the term not of this earth. Sorry, that's a bad joke. Yeah, I am. Wow. It's really weird to actually say."

While Blaine is rambling and trying to fill the terrible silence with sound, Kurt is quietly freaking out. Blaine Anderson is an alien. Yesterday, Kurt would have rolled his eyes and made a sarcastic comment about aliens hiding all over Roswell. But yesterday, Kurt died and came back to life because Blaine Anderson is an alien.

He bolts for the door with sharper reflexes than he knew he had, but Blaine lurches after him. Kurt's brain kicks into overdrive, but instead of producing witty quips, it spews out transparent drivel while endorphins tell Kurt to run, run, RUN!

"I have to go. I'm going to be late for study hall, and I have a project for government to finish that I won't have time for tonight because I'm working at the diner and –"

Blaine's hand pushes the door closed again. He's shorter than Kurt, but strong. He holds the door closed while stepping very close to Kurt and peering those few inches up into Kurt's eyes. He's not just speaking, he's pleading with Kurt just like he had after he saved his life.

"Kurt, you can't talk to anyone about this. Not Tina, not your dad. You don't understand what will happen if you do. Please. My life is in your hands."

THE ALIEN SIDE

Santana glares at Blaine across the table while shaking half a bottle of Tabasco sauce into her lemonade. It takes a lot to make her so angry she can't speak, but clearly Blaine has done it. He gingerly picks up the second bottle of Tabasco to load onto his tacos. He has no idea what will set her off again. It very well might be lunch.

He knows she dragged him off campus for lunch at their favorite Mexican place so she can yell at him, and he's waiting for the worst. The tables are all outside, and the line to the walk-up kitchen is close by so she'll wait until the lunch rush is over, but Blaine knows it's coming. For eleven years, whenever one of them has messed up, the other has called them on it. But they've never screwed up quite as much as Blaine. He can't bring himself to care, though, because he saved Kurt. How could that ever be a bad thing?

Even at a taco stand on the side of the highway, they can't escape reminders that they live in Roswell. There's an alien in a Mexican poncho and sombrero next to their table. Blaine looks away from its clichéd head sharply.

"I can't believe you, Blaine," she says finally.

"You use your powers all the time," Blaine counters.

"Yeah, recreationally." She holds her hand over her tacos and melts the cheese. "It's not the same. We made a sacred pact. You broke the rules."

"I'm sorry. I couldn't just let Kurt die."

She sends him a calculated look. They've talked about this before. There are so many what ifs to obsess over. What if they had each other's strongest power? Whose dreams would Blaine visit? Who would Santana heal? It's a pointless discussion, but one they've had countless times anyway.

"We'll just have to come up with some story to tell Lady Fabulous," she surmises.

Blaine goes quiet. The guilt is evident in the way he looks down at his lunch. He can almost feel Santana's eyes boring into the top of his head.

"Oh my God," she groans. "You told him."

"I didn't have a choice."

The weak defense gets him nowhere with the girl who looks close to throttling him. Santana sits back and pushes her food away. For a minute, Blaine worries she actually will attack him. He's a little bigger than her, but she fights dirty, and he can't hit a girl, so there's no way he'll win. She shrugs her shoulders, though, more resigned than angry.

"Well, then we'll have to leave Roswell."

"Wait, what?" he asks, caught off guard. He shakes his head. "Roswell is our home."

She leans over the table and hisses angrily at him. Everything about the shake of her head and set of her shoulders says she's getting more agitated the more she talks, and it's going to be a real challenge for Blaine to get this idea out of her head.

"It's different for you. You were adopted. True, the Andersons are giant d-bags who think getting grease under your nails will turn you straight, but it's still a hell of lot better than my foster mother who only keeps me around for the monthly check. Roswell is not our home. It's not even our solar system."

They leave the picnic table with their food mostly untouched and climb into Blaine's rebuilt convertible. The red leather seats are hot from sitting in the sun. She digs a chocolate bar out of her bag and shakes Tabasco sauce from the stolen bottle onto it. Blaine's dad nearly has an aneurism anytime he sees them eating in the car, so they make a habit of doing it as often as possible.

"I think we should just go back to school and act normal."

Santana laughs humorlessly.

"Have you thought about what will happen if they catch us?" she asks sharply. "They'll experiment on us, and, oh right, exterminate us. There's a reason we stay as invisible as possible."

Santana twists around in her seat, and from the softening in her consternation, Blaine thinks she knows they're rapidly approaching the limits of his patience. He doesn't like being scolded ever, but it's ten times worse when it's Santana. She's the only person in his life who really knows him. It hurts when she's against him. She knows that because she's felt it too, and she's usually more forgiving, except Blaine has really, really screwed up.

She changes her mind about whatever she was going to say.

"What's done is done," she concludes. "Kurt knows, and that means Roswell isn't safe anymore. I still say we pack up and leave tonight."

Blaine shakes his head vehemently while he slouches down in the seat and crosses his arms over his chest petulantly.

"Kurt won't tell. He's different."

"Oh, really?" Santana asks around another mouthful of chocolate and Tabasco. "And how did Lady Face react to the news? 'Oh, you're an alien, that's fantastic!'?"

Blaine purses his lips and glances out towards the flat, rust red desert leading to a plateau on the edge of his vision. His insistence that, "He's different," is lost when Santana turns the key in the ignition and motions for him to pull out onto the highway leading back into town. Apparently, they're going with his plan of heading back to school and acting normal.

Blaine's dad hadn't allowed him to put in a good sound system into the Corvette. He wanted it rebuilt exactly as it had been in 1959, so there's just the radio and tinny speakers. Santana takes her iPod out of her purse and taps the device against her temple. A soulful female voice blasts out of the car's speakers. Blaine thinks it's Katie Melua, but most of Santana's music collection is soulful, female voices.

"Will you turn that off?" Blaine asks snappishly.

Santana pulls the iPod away from her temple, and the sound shuts off abruptly. Only the wind whipping her ponytail around fills their ears now.

"Right. Because it's music that's the problem," she grumbles.

The highway curves around a rust red boulder on the right, and the edge of Roswell blooms into view. They'll be back at school in about five minutes even if they do hit the one stoplight between city limits and West Roswell High. From behind, a police siren draws their attention. Blaine cranes around to see the Sheriff's Le Car with lights flashing on top. It should be ridiculous that their Sheriff drives at semi-convertible hatchback – that anyone drives a semi-convertible hatchback – but she's too terrifying to laugh at.

"Go!" Santana orders. "Just go! Don't pull over."

"We can't start acting guilty. She pulls kids over all the time. Just act calm."

Sheriff Sylvester steps out of her classic 1979 Le Car and approaches the two teenagers in the classic sport convertible that screams 'mommy and daddy give me everything I want, and I'm going to throw a tantrum and try to pull strings if you hand me a ticket.' Unfortunately, she can't ticket kids for being spoiled and rich. She's tried before, but the judge threw out the charge even after she tried to blackmail him.

"Hello, Sheriff," the boy says softly.

Sue immediately distrusts him. Rich kids who own Corvettes don't speak politely to adults who drive the infinitely superior Le Car, and that raises a red flag in the Sheriff's mind. She doesn't like things that don't look like what they are.

"License and registration."

While the boy pulls out the requested items from his wallet and the sun visor, Sue glances at the passenger. The Latina girl in the front seat stares straight ahead with a sour look on her face.

"Take it from someone who ruined her hair trying to emulate Madonna, looking like young Burt Reynolds isn't worth subjecting your hair to toxic chemicals," she tells the boy.

His smile falters, but the girl stifles a laugh and draws Sue's attention. The Sheriff's eyes land on an empty bottle of Tabasco sauce at the girl's feet. So now she knows who sat in the booth at the Crashdown and who Kurt Hummel lied to protect. But why?

"You kids be safe out there. We had some trouble at the Crashdown Cafe yesterday, and we wouldn't want a repeat."

"Yes, ma'am," the driver promises.

Blaine lets out a shaky breath when the Sheriff pulls away in her little white hatchback. He reaches for the keys to turn the ignition, but Santana bats his hand away. She twists in her seat to glare at Blaine.

"Now can we get the hell out of Roswell? She is so onto us."

"Just because she mentioned the Crashdown doesn't mean anything," Blaine argues. "Roswell hasn't had a shooting in years. It's all anyone is talking about, and the Sheriff is even more likely to warn everyone to stay safe."

Santana flings the door open and jumps out. The dusty earth puffs up around her ankles where her heeled boots land. She slams the door shut and throws up her arms as she walks away into the desert.

"Santana!" he calls.

"No!" she shouts, rounding on him. "No, I'm not staying in Roswell to be hunted down and thrown in some cell like a lab rat."

"Kurt won't –"

"You don't know that!" she screams. "You want to believe it, but that doesn't mean it's true! God! Blaine, I love you like a brother, but your constant doe-eyed, rose-tinted view of humans is disgusting. The others who came on our ship – our real parents – they didn't just disappear. They were killed."

She spins on her heel and marches away again. Blaine doesn't have it in him to chase her down and make this right. Blaine is the only one who's ever been able to pull her back from the edge when her anger makes her do stupid things, but the truth is, she's right. Blaine hopes Kurt won't tell; he doesn't think Kurt will, but he can't be one hundred percent certain with the way they left their last conversation.

"I'll talk to him." His voice carries to Santana. "If he's going to tell, we'll leave Roswell."

Blaine sighs deeply and sags against the seat. It's almost come to a choice between Kurt and Santana. How can he choose between the girl he loves like a sister and the boy he's been in love with since the fifth grade? But he does know which one he'll choose. He couldn't abandon the only person in the world who truly knows him. As much as it would hurt to leave Roswell and Kurt, he will if he has to. Santana is family.

o

Sue sits behind her desk back at the station considering the hands folded in her lap. She needs to find out more about Blaine Anderson and the girl in the car with him. Luckily, she has a daughter who goes to school at West Roswell High, and Becky is worth more than an entire police squad.

They're about to have a spy in their midst.

EYEWITNESSES

Currently, Artie Abrams is heavily invested in a heated discussion about why Star Trek: Deep Space Nine is a neglected masterpiece … with himself. That's the thing about Artie. He's an unmitigated film geek. Tina doesn't understand half of what he's saying about camera moves and storylines, but normally she at least tries. Today, however, she's frustrated and needs to vent, not listen.

"Fascinating," she says, cutting him off mid-sentence. "Have you talked to Kurt?"

He looks like she kicked his puppy. Tina would feel bad about interrupting his flow, except he gets into a flow daily. He adjusts his glasses with hands covered in black racing gloves that help him keep a grip on his wheelchair wheels.

"Uh. No, actually. The last time I saw him was American History yesterday."

Tina huffs and crosses her arms over her chest while she peers around the cafeteria. Most of the students eat outside when the weather starts to cool down, but Tina has gym right before lunch on Tuesdays and Thursdays, and she wants the air conditioning. She finally spots Kurt sitting at the table outside. He's hard to miss in his red fedora and red, white, and blue star-spangled vest.

"Oh my God!" she cries. "He's sitting with Jesse St. James. He hates Jesse St. James. He goes around openly admitting it."

Artie shrugs. "Maybe he's thinking about joining show choir again?"

She cocks an eyebrow in reply. After the total drama that went down last year when Mr. Schue was fired as show choir director and Ms. Corcoran took over, there isn't a chance she or Kurt are going back to that hotbed of megalomaniacs. Tina has hurt feelings over it all, but Kurt still has the emotional bruises, and she knows how boys get when their pride has been damaged.

"Something happened at the Crashdown."

"Uh, yeah. Some guy shot at Kurt."

Tina narrows her eyes at Kurt's brightly colored back through the glass wall separating them. She hasn't told Artie yet what she's thinking, and she knows she can't right now. He's a sweet guy, but his film-crazy brain dreams up way, way too many fictional plotlines from nothing facts.

"I gotta go, Artie."

He looks like she kicked his puppy again, and this time it does make her feel bad. She knows that he knows she's leaving him so she can stake out Kurt's locker and ambush him before fifth period. She hates to leave him alone in the cafeteria, but she needs to find out what's going on with Kurt.

o

Tina pops out of her hiding place under the stairs when Kurt glides past on his way to his locker a little down the hall. He's no more lifted the latch when Tina smacks the locker shut and glares up at her much taller best friend.

"I sent you thirty-seven text messages, and you didn't reply to any of them. I don't like that. So here's the deal. There's something going on with you, and if you tell me what it is right now, I'll forgive you for ignoring me."

Kurt blanches. It's not often Tina gets into a fierce stride, so he knows how serious she is, but he can't say anything. He hasn't even begun to sort out how he feels about what Blaine told him for himself, much less deal with another person's reaction.

"There's nothing going on, Tina."

He turns away from her to spin his lock again, and Tina knows he's lying because he won't look her in the eye. She puts a hand on her hip and cocks an eyebrow, as if to tell him he has one last chance before shit gets serious.

"Kurt, I was there. What did Blaine do to you?"

Kurt goes still for a moment before he shakes his head. His face looks pinched, like it always used to when they were still in glee and Jesse started ragging on his song selections, high voice, and chasse-style dancing and no one came to his defense, not even Ms. Corcoran who seemed to agree given how much further she pushed him to the back.

"Nothing," Kurt insists. "Tina, you were there, so you know what happened. The gun went off, it scared me, I fell down and broke a ketchup bottle. Can we please stop talking about this now?"

"Sure, Kurt. Just one more thing."

She quickly opens her own locker and pulls out a green and white order booklet she'd found wedged under the ice cream freezer next to where Kurt had fallen. There's a dark red splatter in the corner. Kurt's breath catches in his throat, and his face goes pale. She's so caught him in his lie.

"This isn't ketchup. It looks a lot like blood to me."

Kurt does the only sensible thing. He stalls until the bell rings and they have to go to separate classes. Tina goes to Spanish class and hopes Mr. Martinez's hotness can distract her from the fact that she's being lied to by her best friend.

o

Most of the time, Becky Sylvester is invisible.

She's a tiny girl with a sweet personality until someone makes her mad and the biting sarcasm she picked up from her mother – she'd say inherited, but she's adopted – rears its ugly head. Kids at school used to be cruel in elementary, but as they've gotten older, they've learned not to make fun of the girl with Downs Syndrome. Now they just ignore her. She doesn't know which is worse, being a target or being coddled.

Today, she thinks being invisible is a good thing. Her mom asked her to collect some information about a couple kids she goes to school with, and Becky has thrown herself into the task. She hates to let her mom down, even though she knows she'll still get a hug and her pick of reality television at the end of the day while they snuggle up on the couch with a pint of ice cream. She has no idea why people are afraid of her mom.

She walks down the hallway with her books clutched to her chest and keeping an eye out for any of the kids her mom wants the scoop on. She sees Tina Cohen-Chang on her way to class. She has on a necklace of plastic spiders today that is creeping Becky right out. It's strange not to see Kurt Hummel with her, but luckily he's in her next class, so she'll have time to observe.

Santana Lopez is around the corner in the next hallway. Everyone knows she's trouble. She comes from the wrong side of town, she constantly mouths off to students and teachers alike, and she's so freaky in bed even Noah Puckerman won't brag about being with her. (The rumor is she's either a dominatrix or she put something up his butt or both.)

It's actually the person by the geometry classroom who she wants to talk to, though. She stops short in front of his locker.

"Hey, hot stuff."

Blaine Anderson does a double take. "Uh. Hi, Becky. How are you today?"

"I'm doing awesome. I'm killing some time before Home Ec. We're making cupcakes today. They're going to be vanilla, and I'm going to decorate them with pink icing and sprinkles. I'll give you one after class, if you want."

Blaine flashes her such a toothy smile she swears she'll be blinded. She thinks he might have more teeth than most people. She'll have to tell her mom about this theory tonight.

"Thanks, Becky. That's really sweet. I love cupcakes with sprinkles. When I was younger my mom used to always bake ones just like that for me to take to school on my birthday."

Oh, man. This kid is a goldmine of information, and he doesn't even realize the juicy tidbits he's giving up. She cannot wait to tell her mom what she's learning. And after she gives him a delicious cupcake, she can pump him for even more information.

"Okay. I'll meet you here after class."

Becky skips into the Home Ec room feeling on top of the world. She has a few minutes before class starts, so she pulls out her Hello, Kitty notebook and jots down everything she just found out on the page titled: "Blaine Anderson."

1. Spends all his money on hair gel and bowties; can't afford socks

2. Has too many teeth like a shark

3. Loves cupcakes and sprinkles

4. Has a mom

She flips it shut again just as her kitchen partners take their seats beside her. Quinn Fabray hardly spares her a look. Most of the time, she treats Becky like she's deaf. Sometimes, Becky likes to make rude hand gestures at her and pretend she's trying to do sign language since Quinn is obviously hearing impaired. She never gets in trouble for it.

Kurt Hummel works in the next kitchen. He passes Becky a warm smile as he takes his seat at the counter. It's a shame her mom suspects him of something, because Kurt has always been nice to her even when they were kids. She thinks it's because he didn't have any friends before Tina, but even after he got a best friend he was kind to her.

"Today is a cooking day. Everyone please remember what we talked about yesterday, especially in regards to safely handling eggs. I'd hate to see anyone in the nurse's office again."

Their teacher, Ms. Harris, fixes Finn Hudson with a stern glare. The gawky guy tries to make himself smaller, which is insanely hilarious considering he's roughly the size of a Tyrannosaurus Rex.

"Start by washing your hands, and then assigning duties. One person should measure the ingredients, and one person should mix. The third person can wash dishes as you go."

They're dismissed to start work on their cupcakes, and of course Quinn and Lisa, another cheerleader, give Becky the task of washing dishes. They try to order her around, but she's so above it she stands back and fixes them with the stink eye her mom uses on loitering teenagers and homeless people when they walk around the park together.

"Whatever. Let's just do it ourselves," Quinn suggests at last.

Maybe she does have a brain after all.

Becky lets them dirty up some dishes and goes across the room to find an apron she can wear over her clothes. No one else really has a problem splashing soapy water all over their clothes, but Becky can't keep the dishwater in the sink. The aprons are hanging from a peg too high for her to reach even on her tiptoes, but Kurt is on his way over to get one as well, so she'll ask him for help.

"I'm glad to see someone else in this class isn't a barbarian baking away without anything to protect their fashion statement of the day. Not that many of these outfits classify as fashionable," Kurt says, glancing disdainfully around the room.

"Do you like my shirt?"

Becky loves her red polo with the tiny alligator stitched into the chest. It's been washed so many times its soft and cozy, and the color has faded from deep red to her favorite lighter almost-pink shade. Kurt's mouth twitches, but forms a smile eventually.

"Do you like your shirt?"

"It's my favorite," she confesses.

"You have very good taste. Red is an excellent color on you."

She forgets for a minute she's supposed to be collecting information about him and just smiles widely at the praise. She has learned something valuable, though: she has a good sense of style. She'll tell her mom that next time she wants to wear the polka dot dress and gets an eye roll.

"I like your shirt too."

"Oh, this old thing?"

Kurt pretends not to care that he got a compliment. For once, he's not wearing something ridiculous like the corset he had on last week or the patriot pride outfit from yesterday. It's a simple black and tan stripped swoop neck shirt. His black pageboy hat does make it a little bit over the top, though.

Ms. Harris sends them a sharp glance because they're lingering. Kurt pulls a face when the ancient teacher looks away and stretches up to pull two aprons from a second row of pegs which are used less often, and therefore probably cleaner. Kurt's shirt rides up his torso a little, and from her place low to the ground, Becky catches of a glimpse of pale skin – and they live in New Mexico, how is that possible? – and something else that startles her.

A glowing silver handprint beside his belly button.

Kurt catches her staring and hastily pulls down his shirt. He hands off an apron quickly with a tight smile that fails to turn up the corner of his mouth much less reach his eyes. He hurries back to his kitchen unit and doesn't look at Becky for the rest of the class.

Becky thinks too many teeth and a love of cupcakes with sprinkles is the least of Blaine Anderson's secrets.

THE WHOLE TRUTH

The thing that Kurt loves most about his bedroom on the third floor of the converted bakery is that the window opens onto the rooftop of the Crashdown Cafe. When he sits on the cushioned lounger at night with only the stars above and city lights below, he can imagine that he's in New York City on the rooftop of his trendy Village apartment and not this spot on the map only famous because of a hoax.

Well, no. Not a hoax. Blaine has changed everything Kurt thinks about his hometown.

That's what Kurt is musing on as he writes in his journal. He's wrapped up in a thick blanket to fight off the cold desert night with the brand new book open on his lap. He's never been one for journals before, but he died and an alien brought him back to life. He thinks he should put his thoughts on paper to sort them out.

There isn't much on the rooftop to distract Kurt, so he writes until his hand cramps, and then shakes it out and goes back to writing. He's considered decorating the rooftop – his terrace, as he calls it – but the wind and dry heat means sand and dust creep into everything. He takes the cushions from his chair into his bedroom nightly for that very reason. He's content with the few flowers that will thrive in the desert – he can't bear the thought of prickly cacti all around him – and the old telescope his dad bought him in fifth grade for his science fair project.

He considers it over the top of his journal for a minute. He wonders where Blaine is from, and if he could find that planet in a low power telescope, if anyone has ever documented its existence without knowing the famed Roswell grays live there.

"Kurt!"

The now familiar voice comes from the street below. Kurt freezes with his pen poised, then scrambles off the chair. He's grateful the flashing lights on the flying saucer over the Crashdown's entrance have been turned off after closing. He braces his hands on the ledge and peers down at Blaine.

"I need to talk to you," Blaine says, hardly a whisper though it bounces and amplifies off the brick walls.

Kurt nods and hurries across the terrace, through his open bedroom window, and down the stairs. He doesn't often use the interior stairwell that connects their home to the diner unless he's late for work. The steps creak something terrible – not that his dad is ever suspicious of a late-night trip to the diner considering how many tubs of ice cream they have in the freezer – but also because opening the adjacent door lets in the pervasive smell of grease into their home, and Kurt deals with that enough at work.

He hurries through the employee lounge and kitchen and across the dining room to unlock the front doors and let Blaine inside. He doesn't know why he's so eager to be in Blaine's company again after pure adrenaline sent him running last time, but the tugging in his chest eases when Blaine steps into the dimly lit diner.

"How are you doing?" Blaine asks.

Instinct tells Kurt to say 'fine' except he's not at all. He's so confused, and now that he's given himself permission to feel that, he sees the worry written over Blaine's face. He looks nothing like the untouchable handsome boy Kurt has forced his eyes to skim over for years. He remembers what Blaine said – "My life is in your hands" – and realizes that beneath the cool exterior, the weight and worry of secrets must be eating him alive.

"I'm confused about what happened."

Blaine cracks a little smile, but immediately apologies when Kurt frowns at him.

"I'm sorry. I just keep seeing that little boy so sure of himself he rode a bicycle with streamers down the street without any doubts that he was perfectly normal, even if he wasn't like the other boys."

Kurt's brow furrows until the memories of his first bike return to him. His eyes slip closed and a smile plays around the corners of his mouth.

"Oh my God. I completely forgot about that bike. I guess I was flamboyant even then." Another thought occurs to Kurt that wipes the smile off his lips. "I had that bicycle when I was seven. I didn't know you until the fifth grade. Did you … read my mind?"

Kurt spits the words at Blaine and steps back. It hits him in an instant that he's alone, far from anyone who can help, with an alien. Run, run, RUN!his brain tells him.

"No!" Blaine rushes to say.

He holds his hands out, palms up, in the universal – and, oh, God, that has such a new meaning now – symbol that shows he comes in peace. Kurt almost starts cackling madly.

"No, I don't read minds." Blaine looks frustrated as he searches for words that can explain. "I can … make connections with people. When I healed you, I had these flashes. I saw … a lot of things, and that bicycle was one of them, and I know how you felt about it."

Kurt doesn't know why he believes, but he does. He stops retreating and doesn't flinch when Blaine takes a step towards him.

"I've thought about telling you so many times."

Kurt scoffs before he can stop himself. "What? Me?"

"I've never tried this before, but … maybe I could reverse the connection, then you'd know me the way I know you." Kurt nods infinitesimally. "I have to touch you."

He nods again, this time more sure of his decision. Blaine closes the distance between them and reaches forward. He's about two inches shorter than Kurt, so he has to reach up to slide his hands around the back of his neck and into Kurt's hair. Normally, he would object to anyone messing up his hair, but the touch sends sparks racing down his spine and steals his breath away.

A moment passes while Blaine furrows his brow in concentration, and Kurt idly notes how his eyebrows lose their triangular shape. Then he's seeing memories and feeling emotions that aren't his.

Two children walk down a dusty desert road holding hands. Headlights cut through the blackness, and they turn to see who's found them. The boy trembles, he's so afraid, but the girl holds him tighter. They're wrapped in blankets from the trunk to keep them warm and cover their nakedness, and they think everything will be okay, but they're separated soon after. The girl goes into one room to sleep, and the boy is all alone in another room full of cots of slumbering boys. He curls up under the blanket and cries.

The little boy is older now. He's covered in engine grease and bent over the hood of a '59 Corvette his dad wanted to rebuild. The boy despises the car. Every time he sees it, he thinks about using his powers to break it so badly it can never be repaired. He takes it out on a punching bag in the school's weight room where no one else can see his rage.

It's last week, and the boy is walking down the hallway at school. He sees Kurt talking animatedly with Tina. His heart speeds up, and his stomach twists up nervously. Kurt catches his eye, and the boy forgets how to breathe. He almost trips over his toes, and his cheeks flush bright red, so he ducks his head and hurries on.

When the connection ends, it's like a wave breaking over Kurt. There's oxygen everywhere around him, but none he can use. His mind reels as he struggles to process the onslaught of emotion. He has seen himself the way Blaine sees him, and the amazing thing is, Blaine thinks he's beautiful.

Kurt can't control his breathing. His chest is heaving like he's run a marathon, and he doesn't realize his legs have given out until he's already seated in one of the chairs and Blaine is watching him worriedly.

"You're gay?"

It's the most ridiculous question he's ever asked. Of course Blaine is gay. Straight guys don't have that depth of feeling for an out-and-proud gay guy.

"Yeah. I want to come out, but … it would draw attention, and we try to avoid that."

"We?"

"Santana, the girl from my memories."

Kurt takes a shaky breath. More aliens. Good. He manages to not say that out loud.

"Well, that answers that question. But, Blaine, I do have more. If I'm going to keep your secrets, then I have to know everything. I have to know I'm really doing the right thing and not just what I want to believe is the right thing."

Blaine smiles. "That's exactly why I came here tonight. What do you want to know? I'll tell you anything."

Kurt's brain refuses to work in such close proximity to the boy who's been harboring a crush on him for years. The lonely, frightened boy beneath the perfect façade. The closeted gay boy. The closeted gay alien with resurrection powers. Oh, dear God, and he thought his life was complicated before tonight.

He remembers then that he has a list, and he digs his iPhone out of his pocket. Blaine's lips twitch, and he so clearly wants to smile, but he doesn't for Kurt's sake. Kurt starts at the top of the list.

"Where are you from?"

"I don't know. All we know is that we came on the ship that crashed."

Kurt shakes his head. "I'm no great mathematical genius, but the ship crashed in 1947, and you're seventeen, so …"

"We were in incubation pods. When they opened, we were six years old. Someone found us in the desert and took us to Child Protective Services here in Roswell. The Andersons adopted me. Santana is still in the foster system."

Kurt swallows thickly and tries to balance his sympathy with the insatiable desire to know more. Blaine nods, as if to say that Kurt doesn't have to show basic human compassion during a sad story. Of course Blaine says that, because he's Blaine. Kurt knows exactly what that means now. He'll always put himself second, if Kurt – or Santana – let him.

"I'm sorry that you had to go through that." Kurt knows the story behind the flashy Corvette he's always admired. "And that your parents don't support you."

Blaine grimaces. "I know there's more on your list."

"Blaine –"

"Please, Kurt."

He relents and goes back to his list of questions. But he finds it difficult to care much about them when there's a boy so much like him who needs a friend to listen. Still, the next one is pretty important in the grand scheme of secret-keeping.

"What are your powers?"

"Well, you already know I can heal and make connections with other people. We can also manipulate the molecular structure of things –"

"Wait, what?"

Blaine searches for something on the tabletop, but they had been cleared off at closing. Instead, he passes his hand over the green bowtie around his neck. It changes into a black and white striped bowtie. And again, when it becomes solid orange. And again, back to green.

"Oh my God!" Kurt exclaims, rocking back in his seat. "Oh my God! You only own one bowtie!"

Blaine laughs. It's true and genuine and warms him to his core. "I own a few, but … yes, I do use my powers for fashion opportunities."

Kurt's heart flutters in his chest. He really, really wants to ask if Blaine can turn his last season McQueen jacket into a this season McQueen, but that's not anywhere on his list, and even in the middle of swooning and bonding over fashion, he does realize that he has other important alien-related questions still unasked.

So now the final one. The one that could make this a little easier or a whole lot harder.

"Who else knows?"

"No one. We don't tell anyone, not even our parents. We kind of think our lives depend on it."

It boggles Kurt's mind that he alone among humans knows the truth. That he alone of everyone Blaine has never known was chosen and trusted with this information.

"So when you healed me, you risked everything. Why?"

Blaine breathes out and slowly blinks eyes welling with emotion and truth at Kurt.

"Because it was you."

AND NOTHING BUT THE TRUTH

Artie comes into the Crashdown early on Thursday morning, which is unusual. Kurt cocks an eyebrow while he stirs in cocoa powder, sugar, and milk into his travel mug of coffee. He's been trying to get his dad to invest in fancier equipment, but he says the diners at the Crashdown just want a good old fashioned cup of Joe, so Kurt is stuck making his own low-rent mochas unless he wants to shell out a small fortune at Starbucks.

"Hey, Artie. Do you need a ride to school?"

Of their friends, only Kurt has a car. Actually, Kurt doesn't have a car. He has his dad's truck, which he's allowed to drive to school because his dad works at the diner all day and doesn't need it, and there have been issues with bullies on the bus before.

He comes around the counter so he can see Artie clearly. He brings his coffee with him and takes two muffins from under the glass dome on the counter. Artie puts on his parking brake while Kurt pulls out a chair.

"No, my dad is waiting out front. I kind of had something to talk to you about. It's about Tina."

Kurt pauses with the coffee mug at his lips. "Oh?"

"Yeah. See, you're my friend, and Tina is my friend, so when you two aren't talking …."

Kurt understands, and he sympathizes with Artie, but he can't talk to Tina about what's going on between him and Blaine. One, Blaine is an alien. Two, Blaine is still in the closet. Outing him as a gay alien seems like something that would exact a terrifying degree of cosmic retribution.

"I understand where you're coming from, but … Tina wouldn't understand."

Artie nods slowly. "There's probably a lot of things that people in this town wouldn't understand about people like us, but we've always understood each other. Just consider it, okay? This is the girl who quit glee club as a show of support for us. We owe her our trust."

Of course Artie's right. But Blaine saved his life and deserves his trust too.

After Artie leaves, Kurt hunts around the area behind the counter looking for his messenger bag, but it's not where he usually drops it when he comes downstairs. He runs up to his room to check there, but it's not beside his desk either. He tries to mentally retrace his steps, but he's had a lot on his mind the past couple days. He'll search around school before class starts.

He finds his bag between third and fourth hours, and it's not a pleasant experience.

One of the students who works at the front desk gets Kurt out of class. He leaves his literature book open on his desk with his pen in the crease and follows her to the teachers' lounge. It feels wrong being in this room, especially when all the teachers are in class. It's empty save for Sheriff Sylvester who motions him into a chair. She has on a brown track suit today that looks closer to a police uniform than anything else she owns. It makes her even more intimidating than usual.

"Hello again, Kurt. How are you feeling after your near death experience on Sunday?"

"As well as can be expected after being scared out of my skin by a gun going off. Do you have more questions for me?"

The Sheriff takes a seat opposite Kurt with a smug, hungry look on her face. "As a matter of fact, I do have a few questions. I started out the morning thinking this would almost be a social call. You see, someone found this in front of the Crashdown." The Sheriff lifts his messenger bag onto the table. "But then I looked inside."

Kurt's heartbeat trebles and his stomach flips over. He remembers now. He went out to get the morning paper for his dad and had found a package waiting. The strap slipped from his shoulder, and he thought he'd come back for it in a minute after he hauled the box inside. He tries to wipe the panic off his face and focus on the moment instead of berating himself for his two colossal mistakes.

The Sheriff opens the flap and lifts out the crumbled, blood and ketchup-stained uniform shirt with an alien head-shaped "Kurt" nametag pinned over the chest. He should have gotten rid of it immediately and not let finding out about aliens derail him.

"Now, if I have this shirt tested, Mr. Hummel, what am I going to find?"

"W-What do you mean, Sheriff? I spilled ketchup on myself. I told you that about a thousand times. Can I go now?"

Sheriff Sylvester sits back heavily in her chair and surveys Kurt with narrowed eyes. "One more thing."

She pulls out a manila file folder with a faded label on the tab and flips it open while she talks.

"Did you know I've lived in Roswell my whole life? I was born here. My parents moved here in 1948 just a few years before my older sister was born. They were obsessed with this town. They were famous alien hunters. Sure, they're fringe even by fringe standards, but it doesn't mean they never found anything interesting. This was taken in 1969."

She slides a photograph over to Kurt. His instinct is to flinch away because it's of a corpse, but then he sees it: a glowing handprint on pale skin. His heart constricts in his chest. The Sherriff replaces the picture in the file and flips it closed. She folds her hands on top and gazes levelly at him.

"I'm going to have to ask you to lift up your shirt."

Kurt's heart kick starts with a jolt. His brain is a beat behind, and then all the implications of that handprint on a corpse hit him. If Blaine can heal, can he …? But it's too terrible to think about, and even if he could, he never would. More present is the fact that he can't show his stomach to the Sheriff or she'll know there are aliens in Roswell, and it's only a matter of degrees until she figures out about Blaine. And, God, why did she, of all people, have to believe in aliens?

"Sheriff, please," he stalls.

"Your porcelain skin is evidence, and not showing me is obstruction. Sure, a judge probably won't punish a surly teenager with no priors, but he will order you to comply, and then you'll have to do it in front of me, an officer of the court, and your dad."

Kurt climbs to his feet shakily and pulls out his button down and undershirt from his pants. His fists are full of layers – he has on a vest too – when he raises his shirt up to his chest. He waits with baited breath for an 'a-ha!' that never comes. He glances down. His stomach is creamy peach with no hint of a glowing handprint anywhere.

The Sheriff nods. "It faded on the corpse too. You're free to go."

Kurt reaches for his bag haltingly, not sure if he can take it. She pushes it towards him, but keeps the uniform shirt. He rushes from the room without bothering to tuck in his shirt and make himself immaculate again.

"Porcelain," Sheriff Sylvester calls. "Whoever you're protecting …. Be careful."

After Kurt flees from the room, Sue sits in the hard plastic chair for a few moments ruminating before she takes out her phone and dials the FBI field office in Albuquerque. She has someone there who investigates the stranger happenings in Roswell with her. These kids might not realize it, but this is only the latest in a string of unexplained events in this little town.

She's tempted to ask the receptionist to connect her to the Honey Badger, but refrains.

"I'm calling for Agent Terri Del Monico."

o

Kurt sends a frantic, typo-ridden text message while he runs down the hallway with his shirt tails hanging out. For the first time ever, he doesn't care that he looks a mess. Tears are stinging his eyes. Blaine's life is in danger. Kurt feels every one of Blaine's secret fears and all of his loneliness that comes with their connection, but now he knows it firsthand too.

This is the greatest fear: discovery.

He paces beneath the bleachers while he waits with one hand clenched around his phone and the other unconsciously pulling at his hair. The sound of whistles and shouts from the far side of the football field means a gym class is outside somewhere. Kurt can't see them, so he assumes they can't see him either.

"Kurt?"

He spins at the familiar voice and rushes into Blaine's arms. The shorter boy stumbles, but catches their weight.

"Hey, Kurt. What's going on?"

Kurt pulls away when he realizes he's literally thrown himself at Blaine and dances back a few paces. Blaine looks so serene, like Kurt summoning him out of class for a meeting beneath the bleachers could possibly be a good thing.

Oh.

One part of Kurt really wants to explore the meaning of that, but they have pressing matters to discuss right now. Life and death matters. The very interested part of his anatomy will have to wait.

"Sheriff Sylvester knows," he blurts.

Blaine's bewildered smile fades into a deep frown. Kurt sees the calm façade fall away to reveal the scared, lonely boy beneath. He wants to reach out and hold Blaine and tell him everything will be okay, but he doesn't know that, and he can't stand lying to someone who trusts him so deeply.

"What? How?"

Kurt explains quickly about her alien hunter parents and the photograph from 1969. Blaine tries to run a hand through his hair, but he can't make it through the gel. Kurt almost smiles. Blaine swallows thickly and turns around to begin pacing the same path Kurt had been on.

"We have to go."

"Okay," Kurt says.

"No, I mean …." Blaine exhales harshly through his nose. He looks so broken when he says, "We, meaning Santana and me. We can't stay here anymore. It's too dangerous. We have to leave Roswell and never come back."

Kurt's heart breaks.

o

Santana jogs down the broken sidewalk and slides into the passenger seat. Blaine looks small and injured, but determined.

"Where are your things?" Blaine asks.

She shrugs. "I'm wearing them."

Honestly, everything she owns is shit anyway. Why would she want to bring reminders of her terrible past into their new future? She'll start over from scratch wherever they end up. Maybe she can be a cheerleader at their next school. She's kind of always wanted to be one, but it's too attention-grabbing in Roswell to wear the Comet's uniform.

Now that it's time to leave, she sees the hesitation in Blaine's eyes. He doesn't want to leave behind everything he's ever known. Against her better judgment, Santana lets her kinder nature take over. She reaches over and takes his hand. They hold hands a little awkwardly over the console while Blaine pulls away from the curb and into the traffic of Main Street. She doesn't like showing affection like this, but she knows it gives Blaine the courage he needs to make tough decisions.

"Where are we going?"

"No idea. I don't know how we're even going to do this. We need new identities and cover stories and jobs and –"

"Hey. Let Auntie 'Tana take care of that. You don't grow up in the bad part of Roswell without picking up a few tips. I'll make sure we're taken care of, and then you can do your worst and make us a normal family."

At the stoplight on the corner of Main and Ash, Santana finally notices the strangely dressed pedestrians. There are always aliens in Roswell – the costumed kind – but tonight it's over the top. The number of rubber tentacles and bulbous eyes are off the charts. It's the Crash Festival. In the day they've taken to let Blaine pack and say vague goodbyes, Friday has arrived. It's almost sundown, so everyone will be heading out to the desert now.

Their lives have changed in the five days since Blaine made the monumentally stupid decision to use his powers on a human.

"How did Lady Face take it?" she wonders.

Blaine flinches. However hard Kurt took the news, it's just as difficult for Blaine. Worse, because he's the one who has to drive away when what he really wants is to be loved. Santana's harsh, but she's not without compassion. She knows how long Blaine has been pining in secret for Kurt. She rubs her thumb along the back of his hand, and he squeezes his eyes shut to hold in the tears.

"I can drive, if you want me to," Santana says quietly. "I don't have anything in this town worth staying for. Everything I care about is right here."

She squeezes his hand. Blaine takes a shaky breath. He eases off the brake, but turns into an alley between the drug store and a diner they never go to because the Crashdown is so much better so they can switch places. As they're passing, Blaine tugs her into a hug that she tries to wriggle out of.

"Thanks," he murmurs into her ear.

She goes still, rolls her eyes, and huffs out a breath. Actually, she really loves Blaine's hugs. He has a way of conveying with two arms how much he cares about her that puts a lump in her throat. But she doesn't want to get weepy right now. One of them has to hold it together, and it's not going to be Blaine. It's never Blaine, and that's fine with Santana. They work because they complement each other, and this is what she can do for her best friend – her brother, actually, is how she thinks of him. She has to get him to let go or she'll crack with emotion, so she kisses him quickly on the cheek. He detaches from her.

Thank God.

Headlights flash across them as a silver sedan pulls into the alley and boxes them in. Santana is not at all surprised when Kurt Hummel climbs out of the passenger side.

o

Twenty minutes earlier, Kurt sits on his terrace pouring his broken heart into his journal. He understands why Blaine is leaving Roswell, even if part of him tries to think up reasons why he shouldn't. But Kurt is a realist. After years of bullying, he's formed a low opinion of human tolerance. He knows what will happen if Blaine is discovered. It's infinitely better to know Blaine is alive and well somewhere in the world than the alternative. He's resigned himself to saying goodbye to the boy he's just discovered can make him happy.

A shoe stomping on the terrace behind Kurt startles him. He snaps his journal shut and twists around in his seat. Tina is in full costume for the Crash Festival. She's going for a Goth alien ensemble with black leather and silver eye makeup that's not any one specific character that Kurt can identify.

But Tina is clearly not here to talk about the Crash Festival.

"You listen to me, Kurt Hummel. Just because I'm shy and quiet doesn't mean you get to ignore me. The next words that come out of your mouth are going to be the whole truth or so help me I'm marching into Sheriff Sylvester's office and telling her everything I know." She cocks an eyebrow at him. "Well? Talk!"

Kurt's eyes fall to his journal and back up to Tina. What can it hurt now? Blaine is gone, and he's never coming back. They've gotten so good at hiding in plain sight no one will be able to find them.

"What do you know?"

Tina is taken aback by the calm question. She falters for a minute.

"I know that there's blood on your order book, which means you were shot. I know Blaine Anderson did something to you. I know that you've been avoiding me since then. I know … oh, Kurt. You've been crying."

Kurt ducks his head to hide his itchy, red-rimmed eyes. Tina perches on the edge of the lounger and takes his hand.

"Kurt, I wish you'd talk to me like you used to," she says gently.

He nods slowly. "Okay. I will. But, Tina, you have to promise not to flip out."

"Promise."

She doesn't keep her promise.

Kurt talks for roughly twenty seconds before Tina literally runs away, but downstairs is the scene of the crime, and being in the Crashdown only makes her panic more pronounced. Kurt swears and follows her. She's already climbing into her car. She isn't screaming – that's not Tina's style – but she's breathing unevenly and staring at the world with startled eyes.

"Maybe you shouldn't drive."

She's not listening. She's babbling about aliens and getting away from them and every negative conspiracy theory associated with aliens that's ever been floated. Kurt's forgotten about his heartache for the moment because he's seriously concerned for his life as Tina cuts off a pickup truck as she peals out of the parking lot.

"How are you okay with this?" she demands. "You've been touched by an alien! Oh my God! What if he infected you with something? Oh my God! You might have an alien baby growing in your stomach!"

She dissolves into hysterics again. A rational discussion about reproductive systems will get nowhere, so he focuses instead on keeping her from weaving over the double yellow lines that run through the center of town.

"They're still the same people we've always known, Tina! Who cares if they're a different species?"

"They? Blaine's not the only one?"

Kurt is getting very close to slapping her to snap her out of it, but he sees Blaine's car coming in the opposite direction. His heart leaps into his chest. Blaine isn't gone yet! The car pulls into an alley.

"Tina, turn!"

When she doesn't, he grabs the wheel and jerks harshly. Nearly careening into the brick wall of the drugstore has the same effect as a slap to the face. She quiets down, brings the car to a stop, and shifts into park as Kurt flings open the door and leaps out.

Kurt waits by the car, unsure if he's made things better or worse by giving in to his spontaneous desire to see Blaine once more. Santana glares at him.

"Say your goodbyes and move your car," she orders.

But it's Blaine his eyes are fixed on. He still looks broken, and now there are tears collecting in his eyes.

"I'll never say goodbye to you," Kurt promises.

From the corner of his eye, he sees Tina reach for him to pull him back. But he has eyes only for Blaine. Tears skip down Blaine's cheeks, because he thinks this has to be goodbye. But it doesn't.

"I have a plan."

He doesn't have a plan. He has no idea how to fix this, but he wishes he does, so the words tumble out anyway. He strides forward and pulls Blaine into a hug. He whispers earnestly into his ear.

"I'll never say goodbye to you."

CRASH FESTIVAL

"So what's the plan?"

Santana's question shatters the moment, and Blaine and Kurt realize they can't stand around in an alley hugging forever, although they really wish they could. She fixes Kurt with a steady eye, and panic flares in his chest. He has no plan. Not even the beginnings of a plan, and she obviously knows it.

"We have to divert Sheriff Sylvester's suspicion."

He states the obvious to stall, and it draws an eye roll from Santana. She saunters over to them, but Tina hangs back a little reluctantly. They're all waiting expectantly for his brilliant plan, which he doesn't have.

"The easiest place to do that will be the Crash Festival," Kurt goes on.

"Because …?"

Blaine glances between Kurt and Santana. There's something more to the conversation going on between them. He has the sinking feeling that Kurt doesn't actually have a plan and that they're going to have to say goodbye after all. But then Tina starts talking quickly, and Kurt is adding in details. Blaine wonders if this was Kurt's plan that Tina clued into faster than the others or if this is actually Tina's plan that Kurt has clued into.

Over the next quarter hour, they hash out a plan and go their separate ways to each get ready for their part in it. While the girls race back to their cars, knowing time is of the essence, Blaine and Kurt linger. Their hands slip apart slowly as they back away while never breaking eye contact, and their fingertips curl into a hold when they're almost too far apart to touch.

"I'll see you there?"

Blaine doesn't mean it to come as a question, but he can't shake the gnawing fear that Kurt will have to break his promise. If not today, then one day, he'll have to say goodbye.

"I'll see you there."

o

Blaine dislikes the Crash Festival for obvious reasons. It reminds him of the crash that killed his people, and the grotesque masks are a reminder that he will always be a monster to humans. Most humans, he corrects himself. There are some beautiful souls in the world, like Kurt. Just thinking his name puts a smile on Blaine's lips.

Santana links her arm in his as they make their way through the crowd. Smoke from fireworks curls through the sharp light directed onto the crowd from the temporary rigging, and a band on the stage plays a song with a heavy bass line. Prosthetics and shining fabrics cover the crowd. There are a few hipsters milling about, too over it to dress up, but in sublime irony, they're all mistaken for the eleventh Doctor.

Blaine hadn't planned on coming to the Crash Festival, so his costume is basic. All black clothes: heavy boots, tight leather pants, clinging t-shirt, fake gun in a holster at his hip. He's a generic badass male lead from whatever movie or show. He doesn't know. Kurt picked out his clothes. Santana is wearing something leather in a dark red shade. He thinks she's Sigourney Weaver, but he's not really sure.

The crowd moves erratically, and they're jostled around as they pick their way through the periphery searching for Sheriff Sylvester and trying to surreptitiously catch her eye. In the parking lot, Tina will be preparing for her part. He searches around for Kurt and spots him up towards the front of the crowd. He's dressed in a long black leather trench coat with red buckles around the chest.

"Who are you dressed as?"

Kurt flushes slightly. "John Crichton from Farscape. Artie made me watch a marathon this summer. It's actually an epic love story, once you get past the Jim Henson alien puppets."

"Oh. And who am I?"

Kurt's cheeks burn. "Aeryn Sun. Also from Farscape." Blaine lifts an eyebrow, urging him to continue with his explanation. "She's an alien who looks completely human. She and Crichton … they're soulmates from across the universe."

Blaine's lips part in surprise. The world spins around them, but he keeps his balance because of Kurt.

"Sorry for the gender swap."

"Don't apologize. I think this costume is great."

Santana makes a disgruntled sound. "Focus, boys. We're here to save ourselves, not moon over each other. There's the Sheriff! Kurt, go."

With a final look, Kurt melts into the crowd. Blaine and Santana move quickly into the Sheriff's line of sight. Sheriff Sylvester follows them to the edge of the festival where the lights are rigged high on metal towers and only a few vendors have set up booths hocking cheap merchandise to tourists or kitschy food. Santana sends a mass text with the go ahead code.

"Let's hope they can pull it off," she murmurs.

"And she takes the bait," he answers.

o

Sue fixes her gaze on Blaine Anderson and Santana Lopez. From everything Becky has told her, these are the two to watch. They were almost certainly in the Crashdown that day, and Sue would bet her badge that closet case hair gel addict is the one who left the handprint on Hummel's stomach. She's not letting them out of her sight until she finds something that will destroy him.

A scream rents the night air. Sue's head swivels in the direction of the parking lot and instinct takes over. She stands head and shoulders over most of the people in attendance, so as she runs towards the sound, she can see headlights shining against a row of cars. The car door is opened and the engine of the silver sedan idles still. A girl lies on the ground, and over her crouches a small figure covered by a white sheet with two eye holes. The low rent ghost looks up, and then turns and flees.

Sue stops in her tracks. Part of her wants to play the Sheriff and check on the girl, but another part is shocked by her daughter running away from her. Every year, Becky comes to the Crash Festival as E.T. in his Halloween costume. No one else does that.

"Oh my God, Tina!"

Kurt's cry of alarm snaps Sue back into the moment. Whatever reason Becky had for running away, the pressing matter right now is the girl who's been struck by a car. Her own or her parents', Sue realizes, because she's had to give Tina Cohen-Chang a speeding ticket before. Her investigative instincts put the pieces together. Someone – Becky? But that's too crazy to believe – tried to steal her car, she jumped in front of it to stop them, and got hit.

Sue dashes over to where Kurt is standing over his friend with tears pooling in his eyes. Her jaw sets when she sees what he's looking at. There is a glowing silver handprint over her heart.

"Tina!" Kurt shouts.

"I got clipped by a car. I didn't rupture an eardrum," the girl grouses.

Sue couches down next to her, and Tina lets her elbows slip so she falls back down to the ground and away from Sue's angry face. The Sheriff touches the handprint. Sure enough, her fingers come away silver. She stands up abruptly and marches back towards the crowded Crash Festival.

"Uh, Sheriff? Tina got hit by a car. Aren't you going to take her statement or something?"

"Later!" Sue shouts over her shoulder.

She pushes through the crowd. Each person she sends sprawling into the dusty ground only serves to heighten her rage. These kids had it in their minds to throw her off their trail, and she could respect a good attempt at it, but she would leave them with no delusions that they'd been successful.

She finds him by a white trailer that advertises funnel cakes made in the shape of alien heads. He starts backwards when she invades his personal space. She grabs him by his elbow, hauls him behind the booth, and shoves him up against the corrugated metal wall. He's so much shorter, she has to bend down to yell at him. He looks terrified of her fury, and rightly so.

"You listen to me. You might look wholesome as a prep school boy, but you're not fooling me. I know that what goes on inside that pampered, privileged teenage mind of yours doesn't match what's on the outside."

"I don't know what you're talking about," Blaine insists. His voice is higher than usual, and all his nonverbals are screaming out how afraid he is of her.

"Don't play games with me, Anderson." She holds up the fingers covered in paint. "You went up to Kurt Hummel in that cafe, and you did something to him. I want to know what it is."

"No, I didn't!" His eyes are wide, and his is voice shaking. "When the gun went off, I ran away. I'm not proud of it, okay? But that's what I did. Is that against the law, Sheriff? Are you arresting me?"

"No," she spits. "Your parents would have you out in an hour. But I am going to find out what the truth is. You can count on it. I'd say you're a real smart one, Blaine, but you didn't even let the paint dry."

When she lets go of the fabric of his t-shirt, he slips down the wall a few inches. She turns with a sneer and marches away.

o

The announcer takes the stage at ten minutes to midnight to whip the crowd into a frenzy. Overhead and to the left, a flying saucer with flashing lights along the middle hangs from a zipline. Santana and Blaine stand by the chain link fence with their fingers curled through the diamond openings. They watch the cartoonish scene with forlorn expressions.

"I don't always get you," Santana says. "You're so into embracing who we are, but you fade into the background so well."

"I don't know how to feel about us sometimes," Blaine responds. "Just like you don't."

She makes a noise of disagreement, but he cuts her off.

"You're desperate to find a way back to our home planet, but you're so angry that we can't be like everyone else. I see the way you stare at all the girls who wear cheerleading uniforms."

"Yeah, because they're all hot," she deflects.

"And you're not mad I told Kurt our secret. You're mad that you don't have anyone to tell."

Santana's face screws up in discomfort. "I fucking hate it when you go all perceptive, and you know that. Just tell me, once and for all, do you want to go home? Or back where we came from, however you want to phrase it."

Blaine considers. "Roswell is my home. If there's any way for us to stay, I want to. But that doesn't mean I don't want to know who we are and where we came from. Most of all, I want to be with you – my real family. Wherever we end up, I want us to be there together."

Santana nods slowly and forcefully. "Me too."

When the countdown begins, the whole crowd shouts like it's New Year's Eve. The zipline releases the spaceship, and it swings down from its high perch and collides with the rocky ground. Bits of the ship fly off, and the whole thing catches fire. Among the wreckage, plastic alien bodies burn with the ship.

Blaine and Santana watch their tragedy play out before their eyes while the crowd around them cheers.

o

After the debris of the crash has been extinguished and the crowd goes back to partying through the night, Santana and Blaine walk towards the parking lot with their hands linked and eyes turned away from the prosthetics and flashy costumes. A flash of stillness through the surging crowd catches his eye. Kurt is standing alone above the festival grounds on a rocky ridge. Blaine tells Santana he'll be at the car soon.

The ridge has a well-worn footpath that takes him directly to Kurt. They're shielded from the festival by a jutting boulder. Blaine has never been so grateful for a natural formation in his life. It means he can stand closer to Kurt than would normally be tolerated, can let his eyes trail to full, pink lips, can reach up and play with an errant lock of hair. Kurt gasps when Blaine's fingers tug his hair gently back into place.

"Sorry," he murmurs. "I know you probably hate people touching your hair."

"Actually, no," Kurt breathes.

His lips quirk into a self-deprecating grin. Blaine wonders how often he could get away with running his fingers through Kurt's silky hair. He loves the way it feels against his skin, and the way it makes Kurt's eyelids flutter.

But his encounter with the Sheriff replays in his mind. He knows what he has to say. It rips his heart out to push the words from his brain to his tongue, but he does because he cares about Kurt too much to stay silent.

"Kurt, it's not safe. I mean, for you and me to … it's not safe."

"I don't care," Kurt says quickly.

Blaine sucks in a deep breath, averts his eyes, blinks away the moisture building. His chest aches so fiercely he wonders if broken hearts can be literal. His chest heaves with the effort of keeping his resolve. He'd do anything for Kurt's happiness. Anything but put him in danger.

"Kurt, I really, really" – his voice breaks, he needs a few seconds – "really wish this could be something more, but it can't. We're just …"

Emotion steals his words, but Kurt finishes the sentence with a sigh of resignation.

"Different."

Blaine is sure his eyes are plaintive, and one more word from Kurt will make him bend and break and give in to everything he knows can't happen, for Kurt's sake. But Kurt is stronger than that. He sees Blaine is about to break and doesn't tempt him, doesn't twist his emotions for his own ends, lets him turn slowly and stumble away. Blaine falls even more in love with him.

"Blaine!" Kurt calls suddenly.

He turns hopefully, but Kurt looks steadier now. The longing has gone out of his eyes, and Blaine recognizes the strength Kurt projects when he's hurting and doesn't want anyone to know it. He's seen it for years when Kurt picks himself up after locker checks and when he didn't have a solo during Vocal Adrenaline performances.

"I never got to thank you. For saving my life."

He hates himself for making this side of Kurt return for the first time in five days. He would hate himself more for putting Kurt in danger, but that's less prescient than this. After everything this boy has done for him – made him feel so deeply, accepted him completely, risked everything to protect him – he doesn't deserve this. But what else can Blaine do? He can't be a spontaneous, reckless teenager. He doesn't have that luxury.

"Thank you," Blaine returns, "for bringing me to life."