Future Klaine

Angst with a capital "A"

Rating: M (alcohol, non-explicit sexual references)

Warning: Mention of character death (not Kurt or Blaine)

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"I'm leaving." Kurt moved hurriedly toward the door, tears running down his cheeks.

"Leaving?" Blaine said in surprise, just now looking up and noticing the bag on his boyfriend's shoulder, panic setting over him. He feared that eventually this day would come, but he still didn't expect it. "Wha- What? Where are you going?"

"I'm leaving," Kurt said again, hand on the door. "I have to go."

"Go where, Kurt? It's the middle of the night."

"I can't anymore, Blaine. I just can't."

Blaine was across the room in an instant, maneuvering his body between his boyfriend and the door.

"You're...you're leaving me?" Blaine choked out.

"Not you, Blaine," Kurt said softly, devastation in his tone. "Everything."

Fear shot through Blaine's veins at the gravity of his voice.

"No, Kurt. Please?" The words tumbled stupidly from Blaine's mouth as he reached out to draw his boyfriend to him. Kurt blocked him with his arm.

"I can't. I can't go on like this. I have to go."

Blaine stared at the shell of a man before him, the spark drained from Kurt's body and voice, his appearance hollow and ashen.

Kurt hadn't been the same since Burt died, suddenly, on a Tuesday while Kurt served coffee at a job he hated. Kurt hadn't been able to get home in time to say goodbye, he and Blaine barely able to scrape together the plane fare, allowing Carole to pay for Blaine's ticket.

Blaine had been trying to hold Kurt together for nearly a year, but since the day that Kurt watched his father's coffin be lowered into the ground, he had been reevaluating everything in his life. Blaine had watched his vibrant, effervescent boyfriend become sullen and lifeless. And now the full weight of the change was hitting him. Things hadn't turned out as easily as a young, naïve Kurt would have wanted to believe. He tried hard, pressed the boundaries, but one door after another slammed shut in his face. The kind of life he wanted seemed ever elusive and Kurt found himself feeling like he was settling.

The only thing in his life that didn't feel like a sacrifice was Blaine. He and Blaine had a fairy tale kind of love, the kind that people write epic poems about. But despite what the movies portray, people can't live on love alone. Blaine had thrown himself headlong into his studies, trying desperately to deal with the pain of watching the man he loved self-destruct in front of his eyes. Blaine tried to help Kurt in any way that he could but he felt Kurt slipping farther and farther through his fingers.

"I don't know how to help you," Blaine sobbed into Kurt's hair one night after holding his boyfriend and pressing inside of him, determined to make him feel how much Blaine loved him, to let him know that somehow this was all going to be okay because they had each other. Though his body responded, Kurt's eyes were vacant. Blaine's body tightened with fear.

"If there is anything that I can do, Kurt. Anything. Just tell me and I will do it."

Kurt couldn't feel Blaine anymore. He couldn't feel anything anymore and that felt worse than the constant pain. He was lost and even Blaine couldn't find him.

"I would go with you, Kurt," Blaine offered. Kurt couldn't even manage to smile, though something faint fluttered in his heart.

"No. I need to be alone. I need time."

"Where are you going?"

"I don't know."

"When will you be back?"

"I don't know."

"Will you be back?" Blaine's gut soured and his heart tightened as the words fell from his lips.

"I think so." That was the best Kurt could offer.

Blaine took Kurt's hand in his own, staring into the dulled blue eyes brimming with tears. Blaine wasn't sure how he was going to let Kurt go. But he had to do it, he had to let go.

Blaine dared to move his other hand to Kurt's cheek, and when Kurt didn't move away he stroked his thumb across Kurt's nighttime stubble. He moved toward Kurt, to envelope him, to find Kurt's lips with his own, to make him a promise, but Kurt just moved away releasing his hand from Blaine's and bringing it to the strap of his bag. A goodbye kiss would have been all for Blaine, Kurt was already gone.

"I'm going now," Kurt said, no emotion behind his tone.

Blaine was terrified of what happened next. He wanted to get on his knees and beg Kurt to stay, but there was no use. Once Kurt made a decision that was it. Besides, if Blaine begged him to stay he would always have to wonder and Blaine never wanted to wonder whether Kurt wanted to be with him.

"Please keep in touch and let me know that you are okay. I won't stop thinking of you."

Kurt looked at him with something like recognition or agreement behind his eyes.

So he let Kurt go.

Blaine stepped away from the door and watched as the love of his life opened it and stepped through, disappearing down the hallway without ever looking back.

Kurt spent the night at a hotel just down the street, so desperate just to be free of the confines of his life that he simply couldn't stay another night in his apartment. He cried himself to sleep, alone in bed for the first time since he moved in with Blaine two years before. The next morning he made his way out of the city, leaving behind the one good thing in his life and stepping warily into the unknown.

Blaine collapsed in the door frame, sobs choking brokenly from his form. He somehow managed to crawl inside and close the door, curling up and letting the loss overtake his body. Wrapping his arms around his knees, he shook and sobbed so violently that he nearly vomited, falling asleep on the floor from the sheer exhaustion. When he awoke, head throbbing and body aching from a night spent on the hard floor, he looked around and realizing that it all hadn't been a terrible nightmare, picked up crying right where he had left off.

Kurt wandered aimlessly, searching for something that he wasn't sure he could find. Unlike almost everything in his life he had no plan, no goal. He didn't know how long he would be searching, he didn't know where to go, he didn't know if he could spend the money he had or if he needed to preserve it, he didn't know what he was trying to find.

Blaine's life went on just as it had before, except that there was a Kurt shaped hole in everything that he did. He attempted to sleep in their bed the second night, but it smelled like Kurt and he just couldn't bear it, laying himself across the couch instead. Kurt texted him on the third day, Still breathing, and Blaine almost collapsed under the weight of his joy. Maybe he hadn't lost Kurt completely.

Kurt stared at the ocean, he closed his eyes and felt the salty spray and the wind on his face. He felt the intake of air in his lungs, the rush of blood in his veins. He felt, for the first time in a long time, something other than emptiness.

Blaine woke up to the sound of Time After Time playing on the radio, picking it up and hurling it across the room, smashing into the far wall, shattering into pieces. Blaine rolled over and went back to a tortured sleep. It was the first time he skipped class.

Blaine hadn't heard anything from Kurt in nearly two weeks. Kurt never told him where he was in his texts. He had only called once since he left, getting Blaine's voice mail because he was in class.

"I'm still breathing."

Walking down a street in a nameless town, Kurt watched the twinkle of holiday lights play across the drifted snow. He was cold, his jacket not nearly thick enough for this time of year. He hadn't thought he would be gone this long. He didn't think to bring a scarf or gloves. Kurt felt an unfamiliar tug at the corner of his lips as a familiar song swept over him, a song he remembered singing with another young boy in a time that seemed so long ago.

When Blaine didn't hear anything from Kurt after Thanksgiving, he resolved that Kurt would not be home for Christmas and traveled back to Ohio to spend the holiday. The thick cloud of loneliness was settling heavily on him, smothering him. He hid from the festivities, ignored the music of his favorite time of year. He texted Kurt, Merry Christmas. He wondered if Kurt was ever coming home.

Kurt shivered right down to his bones, a fever radiating throughout his body. He wasn't even sure what day it was as he went in and out of consciousness. He dreamed of Blaine, the way that Blaine would take care of him when he was sick, the feeling of his hands on Kurt as he wiped the sweat from his brow and tucked a blanket gently around him. It was December 29th before he saw the text from Blaine. He sobbed harder than he ever had in his life, his nose running and mixing with tears as they streamed down his face. Kurt could not find the will to care.

Blaine returned from Ohio and packed all of Kurt's things carefully into boxes, angry and sobbing. He stripped the sheets from their bed. Finally he washed them.

The sound of his phone ringing roused Blaine from his alcohol induced slumber, glancing at the clock and reading 12:02 he answered it, expecting his parents or sister or some random friend eager to welcome the new year.

"I'm coming home," Kurt announced from the other end of the line.

His head pounding and veins pumping dangerous levels of alcohol through his system, Blaine smiled, "Well, it's about time."

Each day Blaine waited for Kurt to appear. He waited for Kurt to call.

He waited.

And waited some more.

Kurt sat down between two pieces of marble where they jutted up from the frozen ground. He talked until his lips turned blue and he could no longer feel where his body met the ground. He begged and he seethed and he let the tears freeze against his skin. He apologized for not being there to say goodbye. He said his goodbyes to the empty air. And when he was done, when he had gotten it all out, he stood from the ground, unsteady on his freezing legs, wrapping his arms around himself, taking a lingering look at his parents' names and walked away without looking back.

Blaine was almost through his second bottle of wine, nearly passed on the couch with some inane television program blaring into the room. Kurt slipped his key into the lock, smiling when it turned easily. He dropped his keys into the basket next to the door with a practiced rhythm, closing the door softly behind him and dropping his well worn bag at his feet.

Blaine's head spun as his body cleared the couch, stumbling and falling to the floor with a crash. Kurt met him and scooped him up in his arms, grasping harshly, clinging to each other. Their tear soaked shirts clung across their chests as their lips finally met, pure, passionate, and deep. They shook with emotion and need, hearts thrashing harshly against their rib cages, gasping for breath, but diving in again and again. They tumbled to the floor, rolling over each other, unable to find enough of the other man to touch.

When the immediate necessity had lessened, Kurt helped Blaine to his feet and, never letting go of his hand, walked back toward the door, finding his bag where it sat on the floor. Kurt slipped a simple silver band on Blaine's finger and carried his fiancé to bed, laying him amongst the crisp and perfectly pressed sheets.

The blunt tips of fingernails dragged heavily across sweat soaked skin, their lips massaging the other man's firmly. They wiped tears from each other's eyes as they fitted perfectly together, pressing in slowly then crashing together over and over until they fell asleep.

"Happy Birthday."

Blaine jumped at the sound of Kurt's voice, having forgotten what it was like to wake up with the man he loved wrapped so closely around him. Kurt tightened his arms instinctively and pulled Blaine closer. He toyed with the ring on Blaine's finger, whispering "I love you" into Blaine's ear and placing a soft kiss to his cheek. Blaine turned his head to look at his fiancé, getting lost in the pools of greenish blue.

Blaine sucked in a sob. "I'm so glad that you are home," he confessed meekly, clinging to Kurt.

"Me too."

They spent long hours coiled together on the couch telling each other stories of their months apart. Kurt told Blaine how he found his breath at the edge of the sea, his smile in a small town in the middle of nowhere, his courage at his parents' graves, his life in Blaine's arms.

Blaine never mentioned that he didn't sleep in their bed one single night while Kurt was gone. He didn't tell Kurt that he had already planned out the message he was going to leave for Kurt if he didn't make it home by his birthday, no longer able to bear the pain of their separation.

Kurt never mentioned that he nearly died not once, but twice, while he was away.

Four months later, Kurt Elizabeth Hummel married Blaine Michael Anderson surrounded by their family and friends. Blaine fell asleep each night clinging to his husband like he was an apparition that would disappear once he closed his eyes and waking up each morning overwhelmed by what he had.

Kurt got a new job, he returned to college and finished his degree, they moved to a larger apartment. Life went on.

Years later Blaine was doing some back-to-school shopping with their daughter when he noticed a small plaque displayed on one of the shelves. He picked it up, clutching at his heart and fighting to breathe as a tear rolled down his cheek.

He read the words that he had repeated to himself every day of Kurt's absence:

If you love something set it free. If it comes back, it is yours forever. If it doesn't, it never was.