A/N: This was written for a prompt on the Glee angst meme, and started during the winter hiatus, so that's were it stands in the continuity. Also, I usually don't do warnings, but you probably shouldn't read this while on a plane.

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The moment after the announcement, Kurt felt oddly calm. The woman sitting two seats over from him, his closest neighbor in the only half-filled plane, was crying, loud sobs filling the near quiet the momentous statement had left.

But he couldn't just start crying. He always needed an extensive period of being teary-eyed and sniffling, fighting the lump in his throat and his face growing redder before a single tear started flowing.

And in this moment he was just too stunned to even start that process.

He was coming home from a contest his school had entered him in, in an hour or two his Dad was supposed to pick him up from the airport in Columbus, and it took a few moments for him to realize that these plans would be interrupted.

He thought back on the contest. It was for french language proficiency. Going to Dalton had introduced him to the concept of academic contests, that looked great on college forms, and that the teachers of McKinley would never even have dreamed of entering their students in. Third place out of 58 was pretty good, and he could come back next year, and beat every one else then.

Except that probably wasn't going to happen.

No need for padding your college applications when your plane was going to be tumbling down within the next few minutes.

That realization was what made his hands start shaking. When he turned on his phone the reasoning in his head was that if things were already bad enough for the pilot to say they were going to crash, whatever ill-specified effects cell phones were supposed to have on the vehicle were probably not going to make much difference anymore.

As he waited for the phone to start up, he noticed the woman next to him had started to pray. Tears were still flowing down her cheek, but her eyes were closed and he could make out the odd whispered word, that vaguely reminded him of those standard prayers that didn't really seem to have any specific purpose. On an intellectual level, he could understand what she was doing, but it didn't make any sense whatsoever to him. If he hadn't seen her do it, it wouldn't have even occurred to him that people could react to this announcement that way.

When he looked down on his phone, he was surprised to find that he had reception. Four bars. Who would've thought, this high up?

Or did it mean they were already so far down? He tried to ignore the pull of gravity, didn't dare look out of the window. It didn't feel like they were free falling, but he wouldn't really know what that felt like, except for one rather unfortunate roller-coaster ride, which had ended up with him emptying his stomach into a nearby flower bush, almost as spectacularly as that time when he had targeted Miss Pillsbury's shoes. Minus the Bambi speech, of course.

He picked the phone app, then hesitated for a minute. He had the opportunity to say something, but he had no idea if he'd be able to find the words, because he was slowly but surely starting to panic. The fact that someone three rows back had started screaming, and that the only cabin attendant he could see from his position had gotten so pale that he was honestly worried about her health, really wasn't helping.

Still, he selected favorites, and dialed his home phone. It was a school day, Carol was at work, and his dad would be at the garage. No one except the answering machine was going to pick up, and he could've called the garage, but he knew that if he had to hear his father's reaction to what he was about to say he would completely fall apart.

Then again, it wasn't very likely that he was ever going to talk to his Dad again…

The thought frightened Kurt so much, that he was startled when the beeping was replaced by Carol's cheerful voice.

"Hi, you've reached the Hummel-Hudson household. We're not here right now, but if you leave a message, we'll call you back as soon as we can. Here comes the beep!"

When they had first moved in, Carol had insisted that they needed a new message to reflect all occupants of the house. When they had moved back out, it had taken Kurt and his Dad almost two months to realize that they needed to change it back.

But now they had a new house, were living together, and his Dad would have someone to hold on to when this happened.

That thought wasn't nearly as comforting as it should've been. Kurt didn't want to die, was the simple truth of the matter. He had so many things yet to do, become a star, be more successful than Rachel Berry at something they both cared about, change the world, get a boyfriend… and so many other, smaller things that didn't pop in his head right away, but were equally important.

When the beep sounded, his throat felt dry, and his eyes had started watering. His voice felt shaky, when he said:

"Hey Dad…"