A/N: First Glee fanfic, so forgive me for any mistakes please?
Disclaimer: Ryan Murphy owns, not me.
Breathe, Blaine, breathe, he thinks.
Blaine Anderson is not exactly sure how or when he called Kurt; all he knows is that it felt like every minute inside that blasted choir room, sitting beside Artie and Sam and surrounded by a symphony of quiet sobs and sniffles, was an eternity. He doesn't know how long it was since the first gunshot, or how many minutes passed since the last. All he knew was that somehow he got his iPhone out of his pocket and found his fingers flicking across the screen and dialing a too-familiar number.
He checks the time at the top of the screen. It is Friday, he realizes somewhere in the one part of his mind that hasn't been completely capitalized by panic or fear.4:10 p.m. If the shots hadn't been fired, the students of McKinley high should've all gotten out over a half hour ago.
Kurt would be out of work now, Blaine thinks with a kind of horrible relief. NYADA students get out early on Fridays. He doesn't even realize when he learned that fact, just that somehow he learned it and locked it up in the vault in his brain reserved for Things About Kurt.
He puts the phone to his ear, unwinding one of his arms from around his knees and lifting up his head slightly. Beside him, Sam looks up at him, half-incredulous and half-despaired with tear tracks still frozen on his face.
Kurt,he mouths to the blond boy. Sam nods once before turning back and putting his face in his hands, but not before Blaine catches the pained look on the other boy's face that makes his gut twist in sadness. Kurt is safe; whereas Sam doesn't even know where Brittany is.
He pats his friend's shoulder lightly, but his thoughts are already on Kurt.
One ring.
Two rings.
Three…
Four…
Five…
Six—
Click. Kurt picks up.
-Blaine?
His voice is surprised, the sweet soprano that he loves rising an octave. Blaine can imagine him in his mind, standing in the middle of the open apartment. The beautiful eyes that Kurt calls 'glasz' change from greyish-blue to a greener color. The yellow flecks appear more pronounced. The older boy is caught off guard.
-Kurt.
Every syllable of his voice resonates with relief. Blaine's breath rushes out in a hurry and all the emotions inside him almost swallow him whole.
Kurt is okay. Kurt is okay, he thinks. Somewhere in the middle of it he starts quietly half-sobbing and half-laughing in relief.
-Blaine? You okay? What happened? Is everyone okay?
Kurt's voice takes on a more urgent tone. He is panicking, taking on that rapid-fire question mode that comes out when he's freaking out. In the background Blaine hears Rachel's hushed voice asking what happened? What happened?Blaine imagines her with her hands over her mouth in her signature dramatic way.
-I—he pauses, trying to think of the best way to word this to not freak his not-boyfriend out and finds none—Kurt, someone fired a gun in the school. We're in the choir room. No one knows what's going on.
Shocked silence comes from the end of the phone, then there's the sound of a glass shattering and a gasp. Blaine is sure that Kurt can hear all the sobs and bated breath from his side of the phone.
Blaine pauses. His next words come out as a hushed, frightened whisper. Fresh tears leak out of his eyes.
-Kurt, I-I'm scared.
Kurt Hummel feels like someone is choking him. Blaine's words replay in his mind. Kurt, someone fired a gun in the school. We're in the choir room. No one knows what's going on.
He doesn't realize that he loses his hold on the glass of water he was holding until it crashed onto the floor and shattered into pieces.
Rachel stands there, looking smaller than she has in years. Her hands are on his shoulders, trying to shake him out of his trance. Her eyes are wide and frightened. Santana stands in the doorway, looking at Kurt with a rare concern and a hidden amount of panic.
"Kurt," Rachel said, her ocher eyes drilling straight into his soul. "Kurt, snap out of it."
There is a slight pause at the other end of the phone. Then–
-Kurt...I-I'm scared.
Kurt snaps out of it.
-Ohmygod.
His words come out in a huge rush; Kurt is glad that Blaine cannot see how scared he is.
-Oh my god oh my god oh my god.
The words come out as a sort of sick mantra, and it seems to the NYADA student that those are the only words he can speak, then–
-Blaine.
Kurt speaks his ex-lover's (lover seems too mediocre a word to use to describe Blaine, he thinks) name with a kind of emotion even he can't name. It is not totally fright, but it is not totally that kind of heartfelt confession that he assumed would fall out of his lips.
He couldn't describe it. All he knew was that it was some sort of mixture of love and hurt and sadness and fear and ache. Kurt forces himself to take a deep breath. Breathe, Hummel, BREATHE,he thinks, opening and closing his eyes once.
-It's going to be fine, Blaine, you hear me? Perfectly fine. Just sit tight, okay? It'll all be over soon.
Kurt's throat closes up again, clogged by three simple words that half of his is begging to say and the other half wants to pummel with a hammer until they'd died thrice and gone to hell. Three itty-bitty words, he thinks. What's the big deal?
So he takes another deep breath, and opens his mouth to let the phrase fly out of his mouth like a kind of vomiting—that is, if vomiting could be beautiful.
-I– I love you, Blaine. Don't forget that.
Down the other end of the phone, he hears Blaine give an odd sort of laugh—part amused, part joyful, partially choked by emotion.
-I love you too, babe. Always have, always will.
The air rushes out of Kurt as if someone's just sucker-punched him in the gut. His Blaine's—no, not his anymore, he reminds himself, fighting off the silly notion of crying, of all things) words, spoken in that smooth tenor he adores, couldn't have done any less damage than if someone had carved his heart out with a rusty spoon and then served it on a silver platter to him.
I might never get to say those words to him again, Kurt thinks. He might die today, and he doesn't even know how much he means to me.
So he swallows the lump of emotions and speaks again, because it's the only thing he knows to do.
-I know.
There is silence on either end of the phone, until Blaine says he has to go, because Mr. Shue is ragging him for putting everyone in danger, blah blah blah (to be honest, Kurt wasn't really listening, just trying to memorise his voice), and then Blaine pauses.
-Goodbye, Kurt.
The younger boy's voice is so somber and so formal that Kurt starts to cry a little bit. Not 'see you later' or 'catch you later' or just even plain old 'bye'—no, it was goodbye, the kind of thing you say to someone when you're not completely sure you'll ever see/speak to them again. Kurt's reply is in a shaky voice.
-S-See you later, Blaine.
He cringes immediately after his words; it's a stupid thing to say to someone in immediate danger, he realizes, but doesn't really have the time to completely ponder the resonances of those few words before he's completely breaking down.
Rachel and Santana are swarming him, hugging him and looking worried and Kurt's vaguely surprised that Santana is so good with this kind of comforting thing before he's sat down on their small couch beside a shaking, frantic Rachel and spilling everything.
Then suddenly they're all crying and sobbing and holding each other, so fast that if Kurt had blinked he was sure he'd have missed it, and Santana keeps mouthing Brittany, Brittany, Brittany over and over again like if she missed a beat she would stop breathing, and Rachel hanging like a dead weight on his left arm and sobbing, her mouth still managing to blurt out words in that completely incoherent babble she gets when she's breaking apart at the seams, whispering Mr. Shue, Artie, Tina, Sam, Brittany, each name punctuated by a sob.
Kurt is not aware of how much time passes. They've all stopped crying, that much he can tell. Other than that, it's sensory deprivation for him. But still they sit there, until Kurt finally gets a text apparently about an hour later.
'Hey, Kurt, we're okay. SWAT checked in, everything's fine now. School's cleared. Don't worry, kay? –xx Blaine'
He shoves the phone at Rachel, who gasps and then bursts into a fresh round of tears but still somehow manages to pass it to the Latina girl beside him with shaking hands. Santana reads the message, and Kurt watches with a light-headed kind of dizzying happiness and relief as a huge smile blossoms across her face, the shy, blissful kind of smile that Santana usually keeps under lock and key. She laughs once, a strangled kind of sound, and steeples her hands over her face to hide her tears.
"They're okay," Santana says, her voice echoing with reverence, and of course it's herto break the silence, because Santana's always been so much better about handling these kinds of emotions than he ever was.
Kurt pulls Rachel up, who's laughing like she's never laughed before, and he twirls her around the room like they first did when they moved in, dancing a weird modernized sort of waltz/salsa mix, and then Santana joins in, doing half-ballet and half-whatever go-go dance she'd learnt at her work—and suddenly, inexplicably, they're all laughing until they're left on the ground, clutching stitches in their sides and gasping for air as they giggle like crackheads.
Breathe, Kurt, BREATHE, he reminds himself, still feeling lightheaded. Breathe. Blaine's okay.
Fin. :3
~Alex xx