Written for the Klaine Valentine's Challenge prompt 'A Sky Full of Stars' and dedicated to sunshineoptimismandangels. Happy V-day, hun :D I hope this is weird enough ... I mean, romantic enough ... for you. xD

"I can't believe I'm letting you do this!" Kurt laments, pacing the living room behind his desk where Santana sits monopolizing his laptop. Kurt hates when Santana gets like this - obnoxiously self-righteous with her nose stuck up where it doesn't belong. It's not as if Kurt was complaining about his current dating dry spell. In the midst of conversation, Santana happened to bring up Kurt's last dating disaster – Mike Sheldrake, April 19th, 2015. Kurt didn't comment on it one way or the other. He wasn't in the mood to dredge up those memories. All he did was correct her. It hadn't been two years since his last official date.

It had been three. April 19th, 2014.

Santana bringing up Mike had seemed random considering the topic – whether or not Kurt had managed to swing passes for her and Britt to this year's Fashion Week. Santana was usually lukewarm about that sort of thing, regardless of the fact that Kurt got them for her and her girlfriend every single year without fail, so he didn't understand why she would ask, but it seemed safe enough to answer at the time.

Obviously it wasn't, because when Kurt admitted he'd been able to get the passes but it wouldn't be a double date this time around, this began.

Now that Kurt gives it some thought, he suspects that that whole conversation may have been a setup.

"To be fair, it's not like you can stop me." Santana picks at the keyboard a couple of times, then starts typing in earnest, which makes Kurt's stomach flop like a dying fish. What the hell could she be typing? Kurt's life story? Santana's been at it for close to an hour! Kurt's not all that complex. Aside from his job, which he's discovered is only really exciting to those people who enjoy fashion, he only has four close friends (though, after tonight, he may not count Santana anymore), and very few interests outside of the odd Broadway musical. His biggest obstacle to finding a significant other is that he's a certified workaholic. It's been proven to him over and over again that he has too little time on his hands to be of interest to any of the male inhabitants of the Earth planet, so putting a profile on a dating website is a waste of time.

Now if he could just convince Santana of that fact and get her bossy ass out of his apartment!

"They want to know distance."

"Like emotional distance?" Kurt scans his coffee table for something he can throw that's heavy enough to get his point across, but not so heavy that he knocks his friend out cold.

Though, if he did, he could drag Santana out into the hallway and lock the front door.

"Like how far are you willing to go for dick?" Santana looks at Kurt. Cheeks going red, he crosses his arms over his chest and looks away. Santana rolls her eyes. How Kurt became so prudish with such an open-minded and cool af friend as herself always keeping it real, Santana would never know. "I think you've dated everyone in New York, so I'll pick open to the possibilities. There you go. Okay, so here's what we've got – Kurt Hummel, 5' 10", 27 years old, 155 pounds …"

"Don't lie! I weigh 163!"

Santana raises an eyebrow.

"Which is not bad, by the way," Kurt defends, gesturing for Santana to change it.

Santana shrugs and hits delete. "If you say so."

"Look, if you're determined to make me do this, then I get a say, and I don't want to start a relationship based on lies." Kurt picks up a glass paperweight, weighs it in his hand, then returns it to the coffee table.

No. That would definitely cause a concussion.

"Well, if it comes to that, you can always blame it on me," Santana offers.

"That's comforting." Kurt scoffs. "I'm sorry, Mr. Ax Murder, that you thought I was a model who's interested in taxidermy and field hockey. You see, my friend set up my dating profile, and she thinks she's some sort of comedian."

"Beggars can't be choosers."

"I'm not begging!"

"Maybe that's part of the problem."

"Ugh!" Kurt groans, reconsidering the paperweight. "Is everything sex with you?"

"Not everything. Sometimes it's food. Here, now look. Your profile has already matched with over two hundred people."

"You're kidding?" Kurt peeks over her shoulder from a distance so he won't seem the least bit interested. But Santana sees his face in the reflection of the computer screen and keeps the list of potential bachelors rolling. "So what you're telling me is that there are two hundred pathetic saps in this world with my same interests?"

"Looks like it."

"And you honestly think I should date one of them?"

"Date, fuck … whatever blows your whistle."

"Yeah, well, thank you but no thank you. My time is way too precious to spend entertaining men who are either cheating on their significant others or living out of their mother's basements. Seriously, bearing that in mind, why would I want to meet any of them?"

Santana throws up her hands. After all, she's done all she can do. She can drag her friend kicking and screaming to the realm of eligible bachelors, but she can't make him date. "I don't know. Why don't you message one of them and find out?"

It takes several more hours, half a cheesecake, and binge watching the first season of Stranger Things before Kurt gets his friend to leave. And after she's gone, Kurt is alone again, but this time with his laptop open and his newly established home page – PerfectPartner . com – displayed on the screen.

Kurt marches over, determined to change it, shut it, forget all about it. But when his fingers touch the top edge of the screen, he hesitates.

Kurt doesn't want to be curious, but he can't help himself. He's always complaining that he can't find anyone to connect with, that there's absolutely no one he's compatible with on the planet.

But apparently PerfectPartner . com wants to prove him wrong.

A small icon in the upper right hand corner that looks like a red envelope indicates that he now has 516 potential matches, half of whom have already sent IMs. That's over 250 men interested in meeting him based on his profile alone.

That's got to count for something, right?

Kurt bounces back and forth between shutting the laptop off and getting back to his life, and sitting down to take a look. His biggest reason for not looking is Santana. Kurt feels that if he looks then she wins, and Kurt can't have that. Not in a million years. But he wouldn't have to tell Santana that he looked. Where's the harm in taking a peek? Kurt is certain that half of those 500 plus men will end up being outright no's as it is. He could look, erase the profile, then move on.

Yeah. That's perfect.

To be honest, the one thing Kurt is extremely curious about is his "profile". Why is it that after countless horrendously bad dates he has suddenly become a match for so many available men? Yes, that number factors in likely candidates from all across the country, but some of those men have to be local. Where had they been hiding? Under a rock?

Kurt pulls out his chair and sits. It doesn't look like he needs a password to access his account, but he should consider creating one so that Santana can't access it from her computer at home, seeing as that's exactly the kind of thing she would do. She'd shave off 15 pounds from Kurt's weight the way she'd wanted to, and God only knows what else. Kurt requests a new password, then checks his bio. The first portion of his profile supplies the basics (grouped in a section conveniently labeled "The Basics"), and contains height, weight, level of education, profession etc., along with a profile picture.

Santana chose a picture of Kurt taken on Halloween over five years ago, when he'd dressed up as a character from the musical Cats, complete with skin tight leotard cut in a V down the front, practically to his belly button, ears, and a tail, not to mention the makeup.

Even by his theatrical standards, it was a little over the top.

Kurt switches it immediately.

"Height and weight are both good," Kurt mutters as he scrolls through the rest, nodding in approval at the accurate entries, rolling his eyes and fixing the inaccurate ones. But his nose scrunches as he continues further down, perusing his supposed "interests". "Jesus Christ, Santana! What the heck? Beer pong? Football? Gymnastics!? Santana!" Kurt deletes each item as he comes across them, furious that not only did his friend paint the picture of a man who only exists to feed the basest of male fantasies, but that that man appealed to (now) over 600 other men! He's about to give up and delete the whole profile for good, the way he'd intended, when he starts to wonder – what if Santana had been a decent friend and set up his profile to reflect the real him? Is there someone, anyone, out there meant for him? A perfect match? It has to be possible. People find their so-called perfect matches every day. Why not him? Why shouldn't there be someone in the universe specifically designed for him, who enjoys the things he enjoys? Who likes to sleep in on the weekends? Who watches ANTM 24/7? Who puts peanut butter on their tofu burgers?

Kurt glances at the time at the bottom of the screen. It's past ten o'clock. He scrolls to the top of the page. It had taken Santana an hour to create this profile. Hopefully it won't take him that long to fix it.

Unfortunately, it takes Kurt longer.

Because instead of creating a plastic, fake, fantasy man, he has to give information about himself, and some of these questions, surprisingly, require thought.

What are you most proud of?

What are you most ashamed of?

What are the three characteristics that you try your best to emulate on a daily basis?

Do you consider yourself to be the kind of person others look up to?

Once he has all the answers corrected, he submits the new profile and waits. It's bordering on midnight when he does. For some reason, he doesn't get a result as quickly as Santana did.

At one in the morning, the results come in.

According to PerfectPartner . com, Kurt matches with three other profiles.

Three.

From 742 disgusting, misled cretins, to three lonely souls.

"Welp. That might explain a lot."

At this point, is it even worth checking those three profiles out? It seems to him like they may be the bottom of the barrel, which is why it took the PerfectPartner . com servers so long to dig them up. But he's come this far in the search for his special someone. Maybe this is a better sign than he thinks. Instead of trudging through a veritable slush pile of candidates whom he might vaguely have something in common with, he's been presented with the elite. A select few.

Yup. He'll go with that.

He decides to start with the best and work his way down. He goes with the profile that, based solely on metrics, comes closest – a 99% match overall. The other two are only matches at 96 and 89 percent respectively.

He clicks the link for that profile.

Kurt half expects this profile to start with a laundry list of preferred sexual positions, but it doesn't, and he breathes a sigh of relief.

The bio begins with a one-liner, but it's humble enough not to be condescending.

Hey guys! My name's kind of long with a lot of consonants and pretty hard to pronounce, so most of my friends just call me Blaine. Visiting new places and learning new things is basically all I do, so hit me up! Let's chat about life, the universe, and everything!

"A Douglas Adams reference. Nice," Kurt says as if his laptop is listening, conferring with him over his decision. He skips "The Basics" and goes straight to interests – reading, writing, experimental cooking (that one is typed in beside a space marked Other), swimming. Blaine seems mellow, laid back, content to simply enjoy life calmly, maybe hang out at the beach, watch the sun set.

For his profile picture, Blaine has chosen the Cat's Eye nebula. A bold choice, in Kurt's opinion, seeing as a majority of the men whose profiles he's seen by accident prefer a shot of their six-pack to their face. But maybe that's because looks don't matter to Blaine.

And maybe Kurt is looking a bit too much into a pic Blaine must have snagged off of Google, but if he's Kurt's "perfect match", then that's what Kurt will believe.

Kurt moves his cursor to the box marked IM. He'll send Blaine a message, something short and sweet, and see if he responds. He won't think too much farther ahead than that, won't obsessively check his message box, won't give it another thought. In fact, after he sends Blaine a message, he's going to bed. No big whoop. It's practically tomorrow anyway and he does have work. He's spent way too much time on something he'd wanted to put behind him hours ago.

Hello, he types because he can't find an opening for this message that will sound less lame. He tries Hey there! and Yo! but neither of those strike the right chord. My name is Kurt, and according to my profile on PerfectPartner . com, you and I are a 99% match!

(Is the exclamation point too much? he wonders. He wants to appear excited, but not too excited. There's no way for him to emote via IM. Meh. Might as well keep it. Who knows? It may be what wins him over after he reads Kurt's snooze-fest of a profile.)

So I thought hey! Why not drop you a line and see what my 99% match is like?

Kurt cringes, but he keeps typing.

From your profile, you sound like an interesting guy. The kind of guy I'd like to get to know better. So drop me a message when you have the time and maybe we can talk.

God! How did he not know that he was so phenomenally bad at this? He'd call himself rusty, but that would be an insult to oxidation. But regardless of how bad that message sounds when he reads it back, he can't figure out a way to fix it, so he sends it as is. Again, if Blaine is his "perfect match", he wouldn't mind the message, would he? Isn't that what "perfect match" should mean? Someone who takes you at face value? Someone who overlooks your faults?

Well, he'll know by tomorrow evening if it worked or not. No way he can snatch the message back and change it now.

Kurt gets up from his chair and heads for his room. He'll skip his shower for tonight and take it in the morning. Well, later in the morning, he amends when he catches the time on the microwave clock – 3:12 a.m. He yawns. If he wasn't tired before, seeing the time makes him downright exhausted.

In the middle of his yawning, he hears a quiet ping come from his computer.

He stops at the door to his room. He chuckles once.

"Nah," he says. "It … it can't be ..."

He takes another glance at the clock.

3:13 a.m.

His forehead wrinkles. It hasn't even been a minute. Could that be Blaine's response?

Kurt turns back to his computer. The indicator in the corner shows that he does indeed have one new message.

Should he check?

He should be in bed, but he's too curious not to.

It might not be from him, Kurt reasons as he walks back to his computer. It could be from anyone. From the owner of one of the other two profile matches, or just some random person who came across his when it posted.

But lo and behold, when he opens his inbox, it's a message from Blaine.

And it's littered with exclamation points.

Hello, Kurt! Blaine here! Nice to meet you!

Kurt doesn't make it to bed.

He sits down in his chair and sends a message back.

After three hours of the most honest and compelling conversation he's ever had with another living being, he decides that Isabelle Wright is more than capable of shouldering the responsibilities of Vogue for one day without him and calls in sick for work.

Kurt: Your profile says you travel for a living?

Blaine: That's right J

Kurt: What exactly do you do?

Blaine: I'm a research scientist. I study new species, collect samples, document, write papers ...

Kurt: Sounds fascinating.

Blaine: It can be. But a lot of times, it's really lonely.

Kurt: I'm sorry about that.

Blaine: That's alright. I shouldn't be complaining. I'm one lucky s.o.b. It wasn't my dream job to begin with, but that changed after a few years.

Kurt: Really? What was your dream job?

Blaine: I wanted to be a song writer, but that wasn't smart enough for my father. He said that if he was paying for my education, I was going to do something sensible.

Kurt: I'm sorry. That sounds awful.

Blaine: Thank you, but it turned out alright. I go to so many interesting places, and I've learned so much. Languages especially. I love picking up new languages. I feel like a permanent student, which, for me, has always been one of my biggest goals – to spend my life learning.

Kurt shakes his head. He hated school, though that may have had more to do with the people who went there as opposed to the institution itself. Regardless, he couldn't wait to be done with it, so much so that he went straight from high school to an internship at Vogue and never looked back. The only language aside from English that he knows is French, and as far as travel goes, he's been to London, Milan, and Paris, and even though those have all been dream locales, he doesn't exactly consider himself well-traveled. How in the heck did the two of them match up at 99%?

Unless the two of them fell so far outside of everyone else's dating parameters that PerfectPartner . com grabbed at straws and made it work.

Seeing as Kurt has never been able to talk to anyone the way he's talked to Blaine after knowing him for only one day, he'll find a way to make it work, too.

Every day for a month, Kurt comes home and rushes to his computer to find a new message waiting for him. It's exciting to know that there will be one there, something for him to look forward to. Blaine understands the demands of Kurt's hectic schedule. His is hectic, too, so the gap of several hours, even an entire day, isn't an issue for him. Depending on where Blaine's research vessel is docked, they sometimes spend entire evenings messaging one another.

Kurt never saw himself as the kind of man who needed a man in his life per se, but he has to admit, it's nice having one.

Kurt: What's your favorite pastime?

Blaine: Okay, call me corny, but … I like looking at the stars.

Kurt laughs. He doesn't think it's corny. He likes doing that, too, when he can.

But instead of admitting it, he decides to tease Blaine, anyway.

Kurt: That sounds like a line.

Blaine: It's not! I swear! It's just always been a passion of mine – looking up at space, wondering whether or not I'm alone in the universe.

Kurt: Do you think you are?

Blaine: Not at all. I know for a fact that I'm not.

Kurt: Well, if there's life on other planets, I sure as heck have never seen it.

Blaine: Yes, you have. You just haven't recognized it. It could be in the form of a germ, a bacterium, a spore. Life travels long distances to survive. It comes in millions of shapes and sizes. Don't assume that alien life has to be humanoid in nature for it to be valid.

Kurt smiles. He'd had misgivings about being with someone who might be heads and shoulders more book smart than him. He'd always considered himself brilliant, but Blaine is intelligent on a level that Kurt can't comprehend. He wasn't looking forward to the condescension, the belittling attitude. But Blaine isn't like that. Kurt has never been corrected so eloquently before.

He could get used to it.

Kurt: Spoken like a true scientist. It must be nice to be so sure.

Blaine: It is J

Kurt: Tell me, what do you like most about your job?

Blaine: I'd have to say being an innovator. Advancing technology. Inventing new ways to give others access to my work.

"Ah. A for-the-good-of-others type of man. I like that," Kurt mulls, still wondering how in the universe he got matched with someone like Blaine. Kurt is the kind of person who would push an old lady out of the way to snag the last designer sweater at a Black Friday sale.

He thinks he may have once.

Kurt: Okay, what's your least favorite thing about your job?

Kurt stares at his screen for several moments, but no new words appear. Kurt knows Blaine's pattern of conversation by now – its rhythm and its flow. Through the line of dots blinking in the IM box, indicating a pause, he feels Blaine sigh.

Blaine: I don't like collecting specimens. I don't like separating organisms from their families, displacing them from their homes. I don't like that collecting a specimen sometimes means ending its life.

"Oh," Kurt says. It sounds so sad the way Blaine puts it. Almost heartbreaking.

Kurt: Well, it's for the good of science, isn't it?

Blaine: I guess, but I don't like to look at it that way. I mean, isn't a part of studying life about preserving it? Protecting it? You can argue that the sacrifice of one life is worth the hundreds saved by the knowledge gained, but what about that one life? What makes it less important? We choose our specimens at random so we don't know the consequences of our decisions in the long run. That type of reasoning, those types of debates, they don't sit well with me.

Kurt: I guess I never thought of it that way.

Blaine: I didn't either when I first started my job, but now … sometimes I feel like I'm stuck. You know?

Kurt: Yeah. I know.

Blaine: That, and I hate my boss.

Kurt barks out a laugh. Blaine always does that – lays down the heavy, then changes moods so quickly, it gives him whiplash.

He loves that about him. But he can't tell him that.

Not yet.

Kurt falls asleep wondering what life on a research vessel must be like – collecting specimens and sticking them in preservative-filled jars; writing papers that may someday be published in journals all over the world. Blaine hasn't said outright, but Kurt suspects he must be traveling the ocean, where he can see every star in the sky at night.

Where he might feel isolated from the world around him.

Who other than a marine biologist would travel aboard a "research vessel"? Kurt only knows of one research vessel – F.L.I.P. He learned about it in high school. Docked off the coast of San Diego, the thing looked like something out of a sci-fi movie, and literally flipped on one end to allow researchers to do their work more efficiently.

That wouldn't be a life for Kurt. He gets seasick taking too long a bath.

But Blaine would have to come up on dry land eventually. Wouldn't he?

The next night, Kurt gets an answer.

He comes home to a message that makes him leap out of his seat, fist pump the air, and squeal like a happy piglet.

Blaine: Hey! I'll be at your location in about three days for work. Do you maybe want to have dinner with me?

At Kurt's location turns out to be somewhat of a misnomer.

General vicinity is more like it.

And by general vicinity, Blaine means Manhattan.

By the time he pinpoints an exact place for them to meet, it turns out to be the docks.

Which means Kurt was right, Blaine had to be on a ship.

But, all things considered, Kurt isn't very comforted by that knowledge.

He wants to go all out for their first meeting, but he doesn't want to stand out, for safety's sake. So he dresses in black – neat and discreet – designer touches over a basic framework of black slacks, black dress shirt, black peacoat, black Tom Ford alligator boots.

He looks like a vice agent, but a classy vice agent.

Maybe that will help keep the undesirables away. Too bad he doesn't own a gun, or a TASER, something that would make him look like a force to be reckoned with, outside of his Totes folding umbrella and his stellar highlight.

His cheekbones can simultaneously cut glass and signal objects in space.

Kurt shivers out of excitement and fear, but regardless of the unsettling feeling that he's been marked for death, he can't back out now. For one thing, he has no way of getting in contact with Blaine to change their meeting spot. If Kurt goes somewhere with better lighting and misses him, he'll never forgive himself. He's never in his life met anyone like Blaine. He's compassionate, intelligent, he loves the things Kurt loves, and he's so easy to talk to. Kurt hasn't seen his face yet; he has yet to ask him for a selfie. But whatever Blaine looks like, it doesn't matter. Not at this point. Kurt is falling for who he is on the inside. Everything else is just gravy.

None of it matters.

Kurt checks his reflection in the mirror of an abandoned car. Or he tries. The iffy bulb in the closest streetlamp chose this inopportune moment to go on the fritz, along with his cell phone. He doesn't want to see either of those things as a bad omen, but it's kind of difficult not to. He feels less like he's meeting a blind date and more like he's starring in the intro sequence of an episode of Law and Order.

Oh God, he thinks. What if he was right the first time and Blaine is an ax murder? Who the hell else would meet someone here at ten o'clock at night, research vessel or no? Maybe he's not on a research vessel. Maybe he's part of a drug cartel, and he's given Kurt too much personal information.

This isn't a first date at all! This is where Blaine is going to dump his body!

"Calm your tits, Kurt," he says, sounding more like the nosy friend who got him into this mess in the first place than he appreciates. "You've been talking to this man every day for over a month. You should know by now whether or not he's a serial killer."

But, then again, wasn't John Wayne Gacy described as a charming, affable man?

Kurt isn't serious, just nervous. Blaine is late – over half an hour late. Worse than the thought of Blaine being a secret serial killer is the idea that he stood Kurt up.

He tries his reflection again, squinting to see his face in the dark, when white light suddenly surrounds him.

"Oh, thank God," he mutters, checking the status of his hair along with the damage the sea air has done to his complexion (thankful for Glamglow's new illuminating primer not leaving him in the lurch), not taking for granted that his luck with this streetlamp will last longer than a few seconds when it hits him. This lamp, like all the other lamps out here, should be barely bright enough to make his eyes dilate.

When the hell did they become xenon quality?

"Must be some kind of funky power surge," Kurt surmises – an explanation that sounds flimsy regardless of the fact that it's his own, but what else could it be? It's obviously not a helicopter. His hair's on point and he can still hear himself think.

But before he gets an opportunity to look up and prove it to himself, the light disappears.

A second later, his body shudders violently, shaking like an egg preparing to crack.

"What the-aaahhhh!" Kurt screeches as he lifts, following the white light into the sky. He screams and screams and screams until his voice goes hoarse, his mind scrambling for an explanation. He looks around, scanning the skyline at eye level, his stomach flip-flopping when he realizes why it is that he can do that. He risks a peek down and sees the dock below him, empty except for three men stepping out of the shadows, watching his ascent with baseball bats in their hands.

Kurt stops screaming.

Oh well. At least I escaped being beaten to death, he thinks, not searching for a silver lining, but trying not to have a major anxiety attack.

Where is he? What's going on? and the ultimate epiphany – I'm being kidnapped by aliens! are far more difficult concepts for him to handle than every other reality, so he clings to them while he's still sane.

And in one piece.

But once he realizes that he's suspended by a powerful force and in no immediate danger, he calms down.

Then, he gets angry.

"Not now! Not during the first date I've had in ages! You … you little green asshole!"

But cursing gets him nowhere. He rises slowly, giving him more than enough time to levitate … and seethe.

He's jinxed. That's what he is. He was jinxed in high school, he was jinxed his first few years in New York, and he's jinxed now. This is what he gets for finally finding an amazing man like Blaine. A man who understands him. A man who respects him. A man who seemed over the moon to meet him. He should have erased that stupid profile after Santana left. He should have gone about his life and become a spinster the way nature intended.

Kurt glances at his phone, which he'd been clutching like a security blanket since the last time he'd read his text messages. It would be a pipe dream to assume that he'd have bars inside a tractor beam, so he checks the time.

11:00.

Blaine is a whole hour late!

Great. Add insult to injury why don't you? On top of that, if he ever makes it back to New York alive, how is he ever going to explain this to Blaine …

… though, for all intents and purposes, it's Blaine that has some explaining to do.

Where the hell is he!?

Ah, yes, Kurt thinks with a sarcastic chuckle as a dark shadow starts to form over his head, indicating an up and coming end to his trip. Focus on the important questions before I get probed.

He floats through some sort of portal and comes to an abrupt stop. Walls build up around him – metal slabs forming a containment unit, trapping him inside. Imprinted in the wall in front of him he sees what could be a door. This whole makeshift room seems to be sealed up tight with the exception of that door. Through its seams, Kurt can hear sounds, muffled though they are. The opening of another sliding door maybe? Wet shoes walking into the space just beyond? None of it makes sense, but he doesn't need it to. He just needs to get out of here!

He'll decide whether or not Blaine deserves a second chance when he gets back to his apartment.

He storms up to the door, legs rubbery but the rest of his body fueled by indignation and rage. He knocks on it hard, his knuckles smarting by the second round, but he keeps going.

"Hey!" he screams in between knocks. "Hey! Is somebody out there? Hello?"

"Stop your shouting," a garbled voice hisses. "I can hear you just fine if you talk normally."

Yeah, right. Like he's about to take orders from … well, he doesn't know what. But that doesn't keep his imagination from running wild.

"You put me back right now!" Kurt screams, loudly to be as defiant as possible.

"Yeah, sorry." The voice laughs bitterly. "Not happening."

"You don't understand." Kurt summons as much courage as he can considering he wants to melt into a ball of quivering goop and slip through the ventilation ducts. (There has to be some. There always are in the sci-fi movies – conveniently placed for the hero to escape). "I have somewhere I need to be!"

"Hmph," the voice gurgles. "Don't we all?"

"I was going on a date!" Kurt argues, as if that's going to persuade the mysterious voice to forgo its nefarious plans and let him go.

"Small world," the voice sneers. "So was I. But because my boss is an ass, now I have to spend the next two hours removing your brain and prepping it for transport." The voice sighs. It sounds like thick yogurt going through a garbage disposal. "I better call and reschedule. Computer - access messaging file, contact name Kurt."

Kurt gasps a half second before his cell phone begins to chirp.

Both he and the whoever outside the cube go silent.

Paralyzed by his chirping phone and what that implies (including the fact that he's getting amazing cell phone coverage for only $39 per month), Kurt hears a strange slurp-slurp-slurping coming from outside the cube.

Without a word of warning, the door slides open. Kurt jumps back so quickly he falls to the ground, landing on his tailbone. It hurts like a bitch, but that's not his biggest concern.

Something's there, low to the ground.

And it's staring at him.

It has to be an alien. It just has to be. Kurt is on a spaceship. That he knows for sure … unless he was beaten unconscious by those thugs on the dock and this is some sort of coma dream.

In that case, he's fine where he is.

But no. He saw himself lifted. He felt it, experienced it with all of his senses. So, what else could that thing be? If he had to describe it, it's a wiggly green glob, like lime Jell-O without the bubbles. Two golden eyes stare at him the exact same way Kurt is staring at it.

In complete shock.

But it's not the alien that intimidates Kurt. Nope. It's the arsenal of scalpels and saws it's carrying. They look medical in nature, but they also look like they could dismantle a cow in fifteen seconds flat.

The call alert pinging on Kurt's phone finally cuts out, and the two become locked in silence.

Kurt swallows, his throat so dry, it's excruciating. But that's competing with the pounding in his skull of blood rushing to his brain as the cells still capable of functioning try to reason this away.

Probably not more painful than having his brain physically removed right here on the spaceship floor, but still quite unpleasant.

Kurt gawks at the alien Jell-O thing standing in front of him, not ready to acknowledge what he knows is true. What has to be true.

And what is just his frickin' luck.

"B-Blaine?"

The Jell-O thing blinks, and then it sighs, and Kurt gets the impression that if he's done with this – the constant and irritating struggle that is juggling a demanding career and playing the dating game - Blaine is, too

"Well" – Blaine blinks, shrugging in a way that makes all the sharp objects in his grasp rise menacingly at once - "isn't this … awkward?"