Author's Note: So Blaine kinda ran away from me in this chapter. Next chapter I'm going to have to kick his scrawny butt back into his rightful place, because he was *not* supposed to do what he did... I don't know how he showed up there. Stupid characters... they do what they want, with no heed to plot or what the author wants them to do?

Disclaimer: If you recognize it, it probably isn't mine.

Emma Pillsbury had brought Finn into her office after getting a rather interesting call from a Cynthia Johnson; Guidance counselor over at Dalton Academy for Boys in Westerville. The two of them had stayed on the phone for 45 minutes, discussing what had happened when Kurt came to the meeting with her and his father. Emma was surprised to find out that Carole had been abusive, having met the woman on more than one occasion. So after the two got off the phone, she knew the first thing she had to do was talk to Finn. Had to find out if he feels that his mother did anything wrong, to him as well as to Kurt.

"What do you mean 'Did my mom ever hit me?' Of course the answer is no!" Finn shouted, not understanding why Miss Pillsbury was asking such a question.

"Finn, we just need to make sure. After everything that's gone on with your brother…" Emma trailed off and Finn groaned.

"I have no brother." Finn said adamantly and if Emma was shocked at the admission, she didn't outwardly show it.

"Finn…" She tried to get him to calm down.

"I don't. I have a step-brother who seems to think he's better than everyone else, but I have no actual brother." She sighed; at least she understood where his animosity was coming from.

"Fine, after everything that's going on with Kurt; we just want to make sure that you have a stable home life." Emma reasoned, and Finn rolled his eyes.

"My mom doesn't do anything to me. She's never laid a hand on me, ever."

"She doesn't even hug you?"

"Occasionally, but not really." Finn admits, not understanding why Emma was asking such questions.

"Finn, neglect is a type of mistreatment as well." Emma tells him, and Finn is seriously outraged.

"She doesn't neglect me!" He yells at her. "She pays attention to me, she yells when I get bad grades, she gives me my allowance… we just aren't that big on physical displays of affection. She doesn't hug or kiss me; I don't hug or kiss her. It's a system that works for us." He tells her, and she sighs.

"If you're sure about that…"

"I am." He insists, and even though she isn't confident in it, there's nothing more she can do.

Later that night, Burt is sitting on the couch in the living room, watching some sports game. Had anyone come in and asked him what the score was, he wouldn't be able to tell you because his mind was on other things. On whether or not Kurt was safe. On whether or not Kurt would ever come back home. Whether or not he and Carole would be able to work things out. He hated feeling conflicted. Carole says that she's never hit Kurt. Kurt says that she has. He wants to believe both of them, but they can't both be telling him the truth. He wishes it were that easy.

"Burt, can we talk?" Carole says entering the living room, sitting down on the recliner a little ways away from her husband. Burt took a deep breath, unsure if he wanted to talk to his wife. She had said something pretty mean things about his son in the past few days, and finding out what he did earlier today…. Well let's just say if he weren't an honorable moral man, he'd probably have inflicted the same abuse onto her that she did to Kurt.

"Sure, Carole." He says carefully, his tone a warning.

"I know that you think I'm an awful person right now…"

He sighs. "I don't know what I think. Kurt claims that you kept hitting him, you deny it. I want to believe you both, but I can't." He tells her, and she nods.

"You're supposed to trust me, Burt. Trust that I would never lie to you." She looks into his eyes, and he can see into hers. He can see the fear and doubt in hers. He's always seen love and kindness in her eyes, but it was only today that it changed.

"For a while there, I did. But I also know that until you came into the picture, Kurt had never lied to me before. He would try to hide the truth from me occasionally, but when asked a direct question, he would give a direct and honest answer back." Burt told her and she huffs.

"So you're just going to believe your son who has been lying to you repeatedly over the past six months, than your own wife?" Burt shrugs.

"The only reason my son has been lying to me, was because of you. Had you not come down on him so hard, and given him so much shit to do around this house, he never would have felt the need to hide from me how miserable he was." Burt reasoned, and Carole was starting to get angry.

"So now it's my fault that he wasn't happy?"

"I think that's obvious."

"So what are you going to do now? Kick me out, kick Finn out? The two people who actually have stuck by you and didn't run away?" Burt stood up and tossed the remote control at her.

"No. But I do know what I'm going to do."

There was quiet around the dinner table that night. Julia and Martin didn't know what to say, Blaine wasn't sure if he should say anything, and Kurt just didn't want to speak at all. No one could blame him. The day he had wasn't exactly the best, and having his father show up out of the blue at Dalton was sure to set him back in his emotional and mental recovery.

About halfway through dinner, Kurt noticed how silent it really was at the table. He looked across it and saw Blaine who quickly looked down at his plate, as if he'd been caught staring, which he probably was. Kurt looked to the right and saw Martin having an intense non-verbal conversation with Julia and it bothered him. This was their house, yet they were walking on eggshells around him. He had no right to make them do that. He was a guest in their home, a somewhat permanent guest seeking refuge, but a guest nonetheless.

He leaned his fork up against his plate, and wiped his mouth with a napkin before he spoke. "I don't want you guys acting like this." He says to the three of them, all of their heads simultaneously whipping to look at him. "I don't want you being afraid to speak, because you think I might break at any moment."

"Kurt, no. That's not why –" Julia tries to tell him, but Kurt shakes his head.

"Then why have none of you spoken since we sat down for dinner?" He challenged her, and then turned to look at Blaine and Martin. They all looked sheepish, but Blaine spoke up.

"We just didn't know if you wanted to talk about what happened today."

"I don't." Kurt said, and Blaine gave him a pointed look. "But that doesn't mean you can't talk about your days." They all nod and slowly but surely they start to talk. Martin talks about one of his clients who doesn't understand that she signed a pre-nuptial agreement and is trying to get more money out of the husband she's divorcing. One of Julia's patients officially went into remission today, which she was incredibly fortunate for.

"Well, Mrs. Feldman assigned about 300 math problems today, due by Monday." Kurt snorted. He was lucky to have Mr. Walsh instead of Feldman for Trigonometry. When Kurt initially transferred, he had tried to get into Blaine's Trig class, but Blaine begged him not to. Mrs. Feldman was the hardest teacher at Dalton, and Blaine definitely didn't want Kurt to have to go through any of that when he was just starting out.

"Walsh didn't give us anything to do over the weekend. Have I thanked you lately for convincing me not to switched classes when I first transferred?" Kurt snickers and Blaine rolls his eyes at his best friend while his parents chuckle under their breaths. "But I do have to conjugate about 15 irregular French verbs over the weekend, and she's making us handwrite them 5 times each so that we can retain them better." Kurt groans. "I don't see why I have to do this. I'm fluent in French. The only reason I took French instead of another language was so that I'd have one easy class while I got adjusted."

"Smart." Martin commented. "If you don't mind, how did you become so fluent in French?" Kurt shook his head.

"I don't mind. And my mother. She was actually a French native, who came to the USA her senior year of high school on a foreign exchange program. She met my father, and they fell in love." Kurt said enthusiastically. "So in love that I was conceived a few weeks after they both graduated. She decided to stay here with Dad, and out came me."

All three Anderson's were looking at Kurt weirdly, well weirdly to Kurt anyway. They all had the same expression on their face, and it started to make him feel a little weird. "Why are you all looking at me like that?"

"It's nothing, Kurt." Julia said, looking away from Kurt and down at her plate.

"It's just that…. We haven't seen you smile in a long time." Martin told him. Kurt looked to Blaine, who just smiled at him and then nodded his head.

"I didn't know how much I'd miss seeing you smile until you didn't, anymore." Blaine told him, which made Kurt smile even brighter.

When Finn walked into the Choir Room for a Saturday rehearsal, he had felt a chill in the air. He had never felt such a chill before walking into any room anywhere, and he knew it wasn't from the temperature of the room, considering the school at large didn't have air conditioning, and it was 80 degrees out that day. The room was full of noise, Mercedes, Tina and Rachel quietly talking to themselves, while Puck, Quinn, Artie and Santana were also talking in a corner of the room. Mike and Brittany were in the middle of the room, trying their hardest to get Sam to understand the choreography for their Regionals numbers. But the moment he walked in, everyone stopped talking and doing whatever it was they were doing, and just stared at him.

He didn't like it. He didn't like that his friends were angry at him, for no reason. He didn't like that they were taking Kurt's side over his, when Kurt was so selfish as to run away when no one was around to see him go. Finn walked past Brittany, Mike, and Sam who were in the middle of the room to go sit in his normal seat, but as he did so, he could feel the gazes of 10 people on his back. It made him shiver. They kept glaring at him, even after he sat down. "What?" He asked the room at large. A few of them quickly looked away, but Puck, Santana, Mercedes and his two girlfriends (past and present) just scoffed at him. "What your problem?"

"Dude, we should be asking you the same thing." Puck said, walking down the risers and coming to face Finn. "What you've done to Kurt, is horrible."

"I've done nothing to him."

"You helped your moment abuse his kind nature, Finn. You sat back and watched as Kurt did everything you should have been doing as part of your family." Quinn told him, walking down to stand next to Puck.

"If I was supposed to do anything, Mom would have told me to." Finn insisted.

"It's not about what your Mom did or didn't right now. It's about what you didn't do, Finn. You didn't help him; you didn't care about his wellbeing or his happiness. You simply watched it happen and took advantage of it." Mercedes shouted.

"I know Kurt and I have had our differences in the past, but if he were my brother, I would never allow something like this to happen. He doesn't deserve it, Finn. He has feelings, just like the rest of us." Rachel said, before Santana cut in.

"More than most of us actually, and you ignored that for your own selfish gain." Her face overflowing with dismay.

"I get that you guys think I'm a horrible person. But I'm really not. Kurt never gave any clue that he wasn't happy. He never said or did anything that would suggest anything but that he was happy doing all those chores." Finn insisted, and Puck was about to retort when a voice from the door beat him to it.

"That's not true Finn, and you know it." Puck, Santana, Rachel and Mercedes who had all been standing in front of Finn giving him the third degree turned around and parted, allowing Finn to see Blaine standing in the doorway to the McKinley's Choir room.

"What are you doing here, Blaine?" Finn asked darkly.

"I came to talk to you all. I know that you are all worried about Kurt, if the 75 messages you all have left on his cell phone in the past 48 hours are any indication."

"How do you know about that, dude?" Puck asked, and Blaine smirked.

"He told me directly. Complained that his former friends in the New Directions couldn't take a hint." All their faces fell at that moment.

"He doesn't consider us his friends anymore?" Rachel asked, horrified at the thought.

"Why would he? You were in cahoots with his father." Blaine reasoned.

"We just wanted to make sure he was okay. For all we knew he was sleeping on a street bench somewhere."

"Okay first of all, he owns his Navigator outright, so if he was going to sleep anywhere, it'd be in there." Blaine told them, as if he were talking to a bunch of 3rd graders. "Second of all, do you really think Kurt would move out if he didn't already have a place to stay somewhere else?"

"He's with you, isn't he?" Mercedes asked, fearful of the answer. When Blaine nodded, she said nothing.

"My parents offered him a place to stay if he ever needed it. He took them up on it."

"So he's living with you? Good to know, Burt'll be glad to hear it." Finn said, smirking.

"Does Kurt know you're here, Dude?" Mike asked, and Blaine shook his head.

"He was sleeping when I woke up. I knew he would have yelled at me for even attempting to come here, but I felt it was necessary to tell you all what horrible friends I think you've been to him."

"We thought he was in danger!" Santana insisted and Blaine shook his head.

"Doesn't matter. Think of it from his perspective. According to you, Finn Kurt ran away from home. Which he didn't by the way, he moved out. Eighteen year olds can do that without being classified as a runaway. But even if he did run away from home, why would he do that, something that is very dangerous for a teen, let alone a gay teenage boy like Kurt, unless something drove him to do it?"

"Well, I mean. Kurt's always been a tad bit overdramatic…" Sam said, and some of the others nodded along.

"He may emote more than is particularly necessary, but everything he complains about, everything he brags about and everything he does or doesn't do has value. There's no reason to believe that he'd do something so stupid as to run away from home, without a reason, and well thought out plan of attack."

"Did you just come here to berate us Blaine?" Rachel asked, annoyed at the slightly taller boy in front of her.

"No. I came here to tell you all to stop calling him. It's hurting him more than you can possibly imagine. He's stopped listening to your voicemails and has deleted your texts on sight without reading them because for that first day, his eyes would swell up with tears every time he heard Mercedes call and ask where he was and why he ran away from home. Never asking how he was doing, or if he was okay. He nearly threw the phone against the room when Rachel's 5 offers of a makeover were so blatantly transparent…"

"We want to know how he's doing."

"Well I'm telling you exactly how he is doing. He's not doing great, but given time and enough distance from you all. He'll be better."

"I miss him." Everyone turned around to look at Brittany. "What? He's the only boyfriend that ever made me feel special and didn't use me for sex."

"Then that's settled. We're going to see him." Puck said, trying to be menacing to Blaine, who didn't even flinch.

"Fine. You can try. But remember that I warned you when he asks you all to leave."

When Blaine returned home after bitching out the New Directions, Kurt was sitting in the living room with a Dalton copy of The Taming of the Shrew that they both had to read for English. It appears Kurt had gotten through over half of it, which is more than Blaine can say who hasn't even started reading it and it needed to be read by Wednesday. "Hey." Kurt said, closing his book and standing up from the couch. "Where have you been?"

Blaine shrugs. "Out. Went to the park, took a walk around."

"The park huh? You mean the one right next to McKinley High School in Lima?" Kurt asked, raising his eyebrows and Blaine stared at him unbelievably.

"How'd you?"

"I may not be actively reading their texts or listening to their voicemails, but when Santana and Puck mention being bitched out by a hobbit, Rachel mentions something about the competition spying on them, and Mercedes says that she misses her best friend, all within 5 minutes of each other on Facebook? Something has to add up." Kurt reasons, and Blaine sighs and nods his head.

"Yea, I went and talked to them." Kurt shook his head.

"I wish you hadn't." Kurt said grabbing Blaine's hand and pulling him to sit on the couch. "I don't need you to fight my battles for me." Blaine frowned. "I am so thankful to you and your parents for letting me stay here."

"Live." Blaine cut in. Kurt's confused face told him to explain. "Stay sounds… temporary. Like you're going to leave any moment. We're letting you live here, not stay." Kurt dropped his head for a moment, but smiled at the same time.

After a moment he raised his head back up to continue what he was saying. "I'm so thankful to you and your parents for letting me live here, but that's all I need you to do for me. I don't need you fighting my battles; I don't need you talking to my friends about me, without me knowing about it. I don't need you to drive to Lima before I even wake up to yell at my friends and my idiotic stepbrother for me. If I wanted to do that, I would have done it myself."

"It's not like I was trying to hide it—"

"Blaine please. You left before I woke up and when I asked where you were you lied to me. If that doesn't scream 'I'm trying to hide something' I don't know what does?" Kurt said, and Blaine sighed.

"I'm sorry. I just… You get so upset whenever they call and text. I hate seeing you like that."

"I know you do. I do too. You can't imagine how much I hate the fact that they keep calling and texting me when I don't want them to. But for now, can you let me handle the New Directions on my own? Please?" Blaine looked at Kurt for a moment, thought about how much he hated seeing Kurt in pain, versus how much he hated seeing Kurt look the way he does now. Deceived and betrayed by someone he was supposed to trust.

Nodding he says, "Okay. I promise." With a grin Kurt thanks him.

But a brief moment later, the doorbell rings. "I wonder who that could be?" Kurt asks.

"Oh yea… There's something I forgot to mention." Blaine said as the two of them stood up to get the door. When Kurt pulled it open to find Santana, Puck, Brittany, Mercedes and Rachel standing on the Andersons' stoop, Kurt's mouth dropped, and then looked to Blaine. "I kinda told them you were living here…"

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