A/N: So my inner writer insists on switching into the present tense at this point of the story, I hope neither your outer nor inner reader hates me for it.
True closeness I find much more appropriate to write in real time. I hope you too feel it is right this way when you read it.
They wake up together in this, so I figure it is a legite point to make this change. Not exactly a new day, but a new time, you will see what I mean when you read, I hope.
I have been feeling dark and down yesterday. Sad about, well, the world, its people more so, and…this morning Cinematic Hero asked me to be continued. Yes, my stories kind of call for me to work on them. They kind of own me.
Damn it. It seems just to prove the point, my pizza just went cold while I was busy rewriting and of course lost track of time. Hey, just found a still half-warm piece. Yeih me.
Broken Grains Of Sand
As Kurt wakes up the scream is still building in his chest, still pounding angrily against his ribs from the inside.
He feels the desperate need for air and tries to take in a big gulp of it, simultaneously sitting up in bed in a movement too rapid to go unnoticed.
"Kurt? What is it?"
To Kurt's left Blaine sits up too, rubbing his eyes with his left, to clear his vision from sleep, his right simultaneously patting around, searching, for Kurt.
But the boy next to him has already scooted back against the headboard and is now cowering against it, shaking; knees pulled up against his own chest and both hands firmly pressed into the mattress left and right of himself, as if to steady the rest of his body.
Everything feels too heavy, and Kurt just wants to sink back into the mattress, back into his boyfriend's warm embrace, but his body refuses to comply.
The silence lies so heavy on his throat, Kurt finds himself unable to break it to answer.
He feels entirely trapped, pinned against the headboard, in the process of being squashed by the pressure in his chest and the weight of his own mind. Said mind stuffed with thoughts already entirely too heavy, nevertheless still growing and growing.
"Kurt? Love. Please. You are crying again. Please tell me what it is. Please," the helplessness Blaine feels finds its way out in that last word.
A sound so desperate and full of worry and the pain of concern, even Kurt notices in his confused state.
Reply, Kurt can only though, with a whimper.
And Blaine is entirely unsure if that sound is not one of surprise much more than an answer. Surprise at being told he is crying again, because really Kurt does not look like he had noticed before, no matter how heavy the flow of tears.
As Blaine's eyes adjust completely to the darkness after sleep, his right hand finally finds Kurt's left on the dark clad mattress.
Kurt flinches heavily at the contact made.
"Babe, it's just me. I…" and now something, everything begins to make sense to Blaine, "Who hurt you?"
Silence.
Filled with only the absence of breathing.
"No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no,…" Kurt begins to whisper with a choked voice, pulling his hand out of Blaine's, staring Blaine right in the eye, before burying his face, still wet with tears, in his own hands.
The fear and pain he has just seen in Kurt's eyes has Blaine frozen momentarily. Blaine wants so badly to reach out and take Kurt in his arms and hold him, spend him the comfort the other boy, quite obviously, cannot find in himself right now.
Blaine though knows, although he has no idea how he does, that Kurt needs to stay in control should Blaine try to reach out again.
If Blaine is right and this has to do with 'Someone bullying, hurti…,' Blaine cannot bring himself to even think the word.
'I need to make sure he knows he is not left alone in this, whatever it is, wherever it comes from, that he is in control of making things better and I want to help in any way I can' so Blaine kneels on the bed before a still cowering Kurt, the one sentence Kurt had kept saying on the stairs in the cinema replaying in Blaine's head now. Blaine searching for meaning in the words making it up, or at least a clue.
A moment later Blaine softly whispers "Kurt, Love," and Blaine is sure he hears another whimper at that, "I am here, I am here with you."
Blaine leaves the words to linger and find a way to sink into Kurt's mind that - if the exterior of the boy is anything to go by – is completely overcrowded and whizzing and buzzing with thoughts and half-formed sentences covering, crowding everything.
Everything entirely too much.
Feeling he is left with no ground to stand on Kurt pulls his limbs closer towards his own core as to make sure all are still there.
The movement is almost as if to say, 'I am not losing more than my mind tonight.'
"Love, I am here," Blaine whispers again, and again, finally reaching out to place his soft palms to gently steady and cover the hands in which Kurt's face is still buried.
They are ice cold, and damp from the tears running in between Kurt's fingers.
And Blaine realizes it is not just Kurt's mind that needs comfort from Blaine that Kurt cannot find in himself tonight.
Kurt's body finds it impossible to generate any kind of warmth. The whole boy buried under the thoughts so heavy, they feel like a blanket of ice is covering him head to toe.
And as Blaine gently tugs at Kurt's hands and the boy finally uncovers his face the most prominent of blues that Blaine associates with Kurt's face is entirely in the wrong place.
When Blaine's eyes move from lips to eyes and lock with Kurt's there is the same lack of warmth in them as in the rest of Kurt's body. A light cold almost white blue. Pleading for help is all Blaine can find in them.
Kurt whispers "I am so cold," and with this Blaine does not care anymore about shotguns, flamethrowers and what else there might be somewhere in this house to inflict pain on someone, him.
Eyes and hands never leaving Kurt's, Blaine begins to shout, "Burt, Burt...BURT!"
Moments later an astonished looking Carole is standing in the doorway to Kurt's room.
"Blaine? How are you…," but the rest of the sentence dies on Carole's lips as she takes in Kurt.
"What is going on?" Burt can be heard asking as footsteps hurry up the stairs, "Did Kurt have another nightmare, he usually does not after having spent a night with Blai…BLAINE?"
Blaine is surprised both of Kurt's parents are still up, he has no idea if Finn is lurking somewhere in the doorway as well, still not breaking the eye-contact with Kurt.
Had Blaine found it in him to unlock his eyes from Kurt's he would have taken in the time, and the surprise would have quickly died away.
They had been back early and fallen asleep almost immediately, so it is actually only quarter to twelve, and still Friday.
Blaine does not know that, frankly not caring enough to want to know anything not immediately related to Kurt right now.
When Burt says his name again, in a more stern than surprised tone this time, Blaine even with all the concern for Kurt on his mind cannot help the thought creeping in there somewhere, 'Gosh, this is like a game of 'One of these things is not like the others';' and although Blaine knows he is out of place in the context of this bedroom, especially at night, he really feels like Kurt turning whiter and whiter and kind of blue with every shallow breath he takes, should be immediately recognized as the thing truly out of place in here tonight.