A/N: Thanks so much for reading and reviewing so far! They make me smile. On we go:


The Warbler is a Tramp – Chapter Four

An incessant buzzing awoke Kurt in the early hours of the Monday the band were due to head back to London. At first he ignored it, sighing in relief when it went away. The buzz would return seconds later over and over though, and after the fifth time Kurt had no choice but to answer, for fear of Santana making good on her threat;

"If you don't answer that phone, Hummel, I will shut your fingers in the kitchen draw!"

Kurt groaned and rolled over to latch his hand clumsily around his cell phone.

"What?"

"Do you know where Blaine is?"

Kurt squinted at the name on the phone's screen in puzzlement. "Quinn?"

"No, it's your fairy godmother," she snapped. "Yes it's Quinn. Where's Blaine?"

"Quinn it's," he looked around for his digital alarm clock, "it's 4.15 in the morning. I've been sleeping. In Bushwick. How the hell would I know?"

"Oh, my mistake, here I was thinking you were their assistant," she said coldly. "Listen, princess. The moment you took on this job, the whereabouts of all five of those boys became your responsibility. That's what you're here for, to keep tabs on them so Wes and the rest of us can deal with everything else. I know you must love your beauty sleep, but you're on trial. If you can't cut it, Wes will fire you. Find out where the hell Blaine is and get him to JFK 30 minutes before check-in, or don't bother turning up because you won't be coming with us to London. Got it?"

She hung up before Kurt could answer.

"Shit."

Rachel and Santana were peering into his room partition curiously. "Where's the fire?" Rachel asked, rubbing sleep from her eye.

"Blaine's gone missing and apparently if I don't find him, I'm fired," Kurt replied numbly. He switched his lamp on.

"What, so you're his babysitter now?"

"Yes, that's exactly what I am." Kurt frantically pulled up the schedule for today on the iPad Quinn had given him on his first day.

Check-in was at 9.45, so he had until 9.15 to find Blaine and get him to the airport.

He was never going to make it. He hadn't even spoken to Blaine since that Wednesday three weeks ago, Blaine having chosen to glower at the floor or leave the room when Kurt was around. The vulgar and suggestive remarks had stopped, but in their place he had chosen to make Kurt's life as difficult as possible, his demands growing more ridiculous with each day.

His second week, Kurt was sent to purchase a long list of British products Blaine supposedly couldn't live without. Cadbury's chocolate, Yorkshire Teabags, Marmite, Pot Noodle, and something called a Rowntree Fruit Pastel that Kurt found by chance in an obscure store outside the Subway near Soho. Kurt had let himself into Blaine's hotel suite, dumped the three heavy bags down on the chaise lounge, and startled when a long, pleasured grunt came from behind the closed door of the bedroom. Fingers in his ears, Kurt was back in the corridor with the suite door shut behind him in record time.

Just this last Saturday, Kurt had spent an hour walking around the same block, over and over, trying to locate a specific shop that, it turned out, had closed the year before. Only, Blaine denied ever sending him there. Kurt had wrinkled his nose sardonically at that, accepted a sympathetic grimace from Trent, and went about his day with his head held high and proud.

On Sunday, after three weeks of this shit, Kurt was near the end of his tether, when the child (Kurt refused to consider him a man) asked Kurt to go through his phone and call every number in his contacts list to check their validity. There were 3,134 numbers logged. He wasn't even a third of the way through the list.

And now he had to find the asshole or he was fired. Fabulous.

"What do I do? Who do I call? I don't even know what types of places he hangs out in. I'm screwed!" Kurt said, pacing up and down his bedroom. Santana pushed him down onto his bed with an eye roll.

"Okay, first of all, calm the fuck down. Secondly, who knows the dick best?"

"The Warblers."

"Then call them, numb nuts."

Kurt sifted through his phone's address book, deciding the most sensible person to call would be David.

"Please tell me you've got Blaine?" David said, upon picking up.

"No, do you have any idea where he might be?" Kurt cradled the phone between his ear and shoulder as he hopped across his room trying to put his socks on, throwing a pair of sweatpants and a hoodie on over his undershirt. Fashion would have to wait.

"We have a few ideas, but so far we've turned up empty. I take it Quinn called you?"

"Yes. Apparently if he doesn't turn up before check-in, I'm fired."

"No you're not!" Kurt heard Jeff shout from the background.

"Nah you'll be fine, Quinn talks out of her arse and makes threats when she's under pressure from Wes, but Wes answers to us and not Quinn. We like you; ergo your job is safe."

"Blaine doesn't," Kurt muttered.

He fished his keys out of the bowl by the door, made sure everything he needed for the flight later was by the door (although he was convinced he probably wouldn't need it), and asked Rachel to let the driver Canary Records was sending to collect his luggage into the apartment at 8:15. He slammed the sliding front door shut behind him.

"What happened, anyway? Why'd he disappear?" Kurt asked.

David sighed. "There was an argument, he got mad, took off and hasn't been answering his phone since. I wish I could say this wasn't a regular occurrence, but I'd be lying, mate."

David listed off the places they'd checked already and some for Kurt to investigate, while he hailed a cab. Once they'd hung up he figured he may as well try ringing Blaine himself. The connection went straight to voicemail.

"Clever," Kurt muttered. With his phone switched off, no one could trace Blaine location through the phone network.

30 minutes later the cab pulled up at the first diner. Kurt paid the driver extra to make him wait and ran in to check it out. He wasn't in the main diner, or the bathrooms. After a quick conversation with the waitress, he knew no one famous had been there. The 24 hour bar he tried next came up negative too. The only lead he was given turned up around 6am when Nick texted him:

Nick (06:04): Someone just tweeted they saw Blaine staggering around near Central Park.

Kurt cursed. Which side? Would he have to go looking for him in Central Park? It was huge! He'd never find him in time. Kurt tried the next bar on the list to rule it out, before asking the cab driver to circle Central Park.

"You realize the meter is high now, don't you, kid?" the driver informed him at 06:46am.

Kurt nodded gravely. He could claim it back off Canary Records. Or Blaine, he thought darkly. Kurt pressed his head against the window tiredly; his anger drained slowly, giving way to a twinge of genuine concern that felt like lead in his stomach.

What if Blaine was hurt? What if someone had attacked him? Maybe he had been spotted by a group of fans and crushed in their excitement. Oh no, if he was laid out in a hospital somewhere he was fired for sure. What the heck had made him so mad, he walked out of the hotel the night before a flight home?

Kurt was absorbed in the morbid direction his thoughts had taken, so he didn't notice his phone buzzing in his pocket at first, when he finally fished it out, he cursed himself for missing Blaine's call. He dialed him, knee bouncing impatiently.

"Hey sssexy?"

Kurt drew in a calming breath through his nose. "Anderson, where are you? Everyone's worried."

Blaine didn't respond. Kurt frowned, confused by the mixture of harsh breathing and rustling that followed. Clash! Kurt jerked his head away from the speaker with a wince.

"Fuck!"

"Blaine, are you there?" More rustling and cursing. "Blaine? Where are you?"

"Why do you 'ate me?" Blaine's voice was low, slurred.

"Why do I– what? What was the crash?"

"Phone slipped," Blaine mumbled. "Why... do you h-hate me?"

"I," Kurt slumped back against the headrest. He ignored the inquisitive looks the taxi driver was giving him. "Blaine, please tell me where you are? Are you safe?"

"I was just pay-paying you a compliment," Blaine continued like he hadn't spoken. "I think you'd be great in bed. All guys want to be great in bed. What's wrong with telling you that?"

"Blaine, if you tell me where you are, I will come find you and we can have this conversation some other time, but right now, I need to make sure you are okay and don't miss your flight."

"Don't wanna' go," Blaine moaned.

"Why not?"

"You'll be there."

Ouch. Kurt clutched the phone tightly, tried to will the frustrated tears away. How was this job so exhausting?

"And the guys all hate me because five- five years of friendship means fuck all to 'em, and they wish I wasn't around."

"That's not the impression I got from them earlier," Kurt said shakily. Hummel's aren't quitters, it's true, but maybe self-preservation wasn't such a bad route to take, just this once. "And if you miss this flight and hop on the next one, you won't have to worry about me being there anyway. I won't get to go."

"OW!"

"Blaine, are you okay?"

"No," Blaine groaned. "I think I just fell over."

"You… think you fell over?" Jeeze, how drunk was he? "Blaine, do you know where you are? I'm in a cab right now. I can swing by and find you?"

"Erm I - I dunno - New York." Kurt counted to five so he didn't lose his temper. "Outside erm, outside the Wal... Wal uh, Waldorf Astoria."

Kurt gave the name to the cab driver and made Blaine stay on the line the whole journey, encouraged him not to move. Luckily they were close, and he soon spotted a curly headed figure in a leather jacket, his head leant against the outside wall of the hotel. Kurt climbed out of the taxi, shot an apologetic look at the frowning, disapproving doorman, and approached Blaine with caution.

"Blaine?" He lay a gentle hand on his shoulder and prized the phone away from Blaine's ear. "We need to go."

"No we 'on't," Blaine slurred, slipping on the sidewalk. Kurt caught him around the waist and choked; the stench of stale booze that seeped from every pore of Blaine's body and puffed from his mouth, was rancid.

"Come on, the taxis waiting."

Blaine managed three steps towards the road and puked over the sidewalk. Kurt's screech was loud as it narrowly missed his shoes.

"...Or not. Okay, new plan. You sit here for a moment."

Kurt ran to pay the cab driver, knowing he wouldn't let Blaine in now. Watching the car drive off, he crouched beside Blaine, rubbing his back. A fresh wave of vomit dripped from his mouth. Kurt made sure to breathe through his mouth, and whispered softly in Blaine's ear.

"In through your nose and out through your mouth. Good boy. That's it."

Blaine groaned his misery.

"I know, it'll pass," Kurt said. "Keep breathing."

"Sowwy, so sorwy," Blaine gasped.

"Shhhh, let me know when you're feeling up to moving, because that doorman looks like he's about to call the cops, if the twitchy eye is anything to go by."

Blaine choked a laugh and coughed up bile, a gurgling tear in his throat. "on't make me 'augh!"

"Sorry." Kurt looked around sheepishly.

It took 20 minutes and an argument with the doorman and manager of the hotel, before he was able to coax Blaine off the ground. He slipped Blaine's arm around his neck and kept him upright, to walk a clumsy path across the road, eventually finding an entrance into the park and a bench nearby.

"Sit." Kurt manhandled Blaine onto the bench and sighed when he curled up in the fetal position across the entire length of wood. He had no idea what to do. It was 7.30am. Call Wes? Quinn? Or David?

He chose David.

"Alright mate, any luck?" David said, his voice edged with frustration.

"I found him outside the Waldorf Astoria hotel on Park Avenue," Kurt explained, "before he puked his guts out."

David cursed colorfully. "Where are you now? We're about 20 blocks the other way. We'll come get you both."

Kurt told him their whereabouts and hung up. Scooping a bottle of spring water out of his bag, he settled on the ground, eye-level with Blaine. He bit his lip and focused on Blaine's condition and not on the fitted Calvin Klein V-neck stretched across his chest under his jacket. Now was not the time to admire a well chiseled body. His offers of water to the sick boy were accepted in small sips as they waited.

He shivered in the chilly morning air, wondering what was taking the guys so long. An old couple walked past, shaking their heads disapprovingly, so Kurt offered back a sarcastic wave until they turned away.

Feeling a pair of eyes on him, he looked up at Blaine blinking droopily back at him. He made a feeble grab for the water bottle, and Kurt sighed, relieved when Blaine took a more generous swig and managed to hold it down.

"What did you mean by 'you won't get to go'?" Blaine asked.

Kurt noted his voice was clearer, less slurred than before. "Quinn said it was my job to keep tabs on you," he said, "and if I didn't find you, I was fired."

Blaine's mouth opened and closed a few times, in a struggle to comprehend words. He pressed his forehead into the wood of the bench and mumbled gratefully as the cool varnish in the early spring morning soothed his heated skin.

"Sorry," Blaine whispered.

Kurt shrugged. "It's fine. I'll just quit before Wes can be persuaded to fire me. At least then it'll be on my own terms."

"What?" Blaine tried to sit up, and thought better of it when his head spun. "Why would- you found me. I'm found. I can't exactly run from you right now."

Kurt looked away, unable to take the scrutiny of his deep hazel eyes. Despite their glassy quality, Blaine seemed to be seeing Kurt with more clarity that morning than any other time they'd conversed. Like he'd finally realized Kurt was a person, not a prop.

"You told me you didn't want to go to England because I'd be there," Kurt whispered, drew his knees up to his chest protectively. "I don't want to make you miserable, Blaine. It's better if I just-"

"Stay."

"What?"

Blaine sat up with difficulty, his grip tight on the bench for support. "I made you hate me. I don't want you to. So stay."

"I don't hate you," Kurt whispered. "Frustrate me, yes, but it's not hate."

Blaine was silent for a few minutes. Kurt thought he might have dozed off, but then he whispered, "I'm sorry I harassed you. I - I didn't realize I was doing that until you said it."

"It's okay. I get it." You're used to getting away with things, he added silently.

A car screeching to a halt interrupted any further progression of the conversation. Jeff, David, Nick and Trent hurried through the gates on foot, with little to no regard for the law, if the state of their parallel parking was anything to go on.

"There you guys are!" Nick called out.

"You look like shit, Bee," Jeff said.

"Fuck you," Blaine moaned.

"We called Wes to let him know you found him, Kurt," Trent said from behind Nick, who was helping David haul Blaine up and back down the path.

"Time to catch a flight, Blainers," said Jeff, "and if you puke in the car, you're paying for it. It's a rental."

"You coming with, Kurt?" Trent asked, and offered Kurt a hopeful, wide-eyed, boyish smile.

Kurt chewed on his nail and looked from Blaine to Trent, torn. Was Blaine serious about wanting him to stay on as assistant?

"Well?"