Prologue
'Look Rachel,' Mercedes said as she lay back with her hands behind her head. 'Finn is an idiot,' she glanced at Kurt, 'A very nice and well meaning idiot,' she amended, 'But we've only got six weeks of summer before we go to New York and I have to go to work and you have school-'
'And Blaine and I have to go back to McKinley and Mike has to go to Chicago,' Tina added, she was sitting next to her boyfriend lazily holding his hand.
'So for the love of God would you please stop talking about how angry you are at him?' Mercedes finished.
'Besides he and Puck have gone on their long road trip to Los Angeles, it's not like we'll be seeing him for a few weeks.' Mike pointed out, he wasn't exactly in agreement with Mercedes' opinion of Finn but he was certainly in favour of getting Rachel to shut up.
A few hours later they left the park they had been sitting in and split up to head home, Tina and Mercedes in one direction and the other four in the other. Blaine and Mike hung back and let Kurt and Rachel walk together, Blaine was more relaxed about Kurt leaving now but he still didn't want to listen to Rachel talking and talking about it and Mike was a good friend anyway.
But New York wasn't in fact Rachel's topic of choice for today, 'I wish Mercedes wouldn't tell me to shut up like that, I'm not even that angry with him anymore, he called me last night you know.'
'Oh,' Kurt said, he didn't like this being stuck between one of his best friends and his brother but he had more difficulty telling Rachel to shut up than Mercedes did.
'Yeah, we talked about what happened and the army and I said about him not needing to set me free and we said when he got back we'd talk about long distance, like I'm still not totally sure, but the last two weeks I mostly just missed him, I think it might just work out Kurt.'
'That's good,' he said in a non-committal way.
'Yeah it is isn't it?' Rachel said, before launching into more theorising about her relationship with Finn, she didn't seem to be put off by the fact that their relationship was in fact non-existent at the minute. Kurt sighed quietly to himself and thought how glad he was that Mercedes would be living with them in New York, she could dilute Rachel a bit and Quinn and Santana wouldn't be far away at NYU.
Suddenly he noticed that his phone was ringing and that he had stopped listening to Rachel but thankfully she was still talking so she hadn't noticed. 'Sorry,' he said picking up the phone, 'Hi Dad,' and then, 'Yeah I'm on the way home, Blaine's coming over, that's ok, isn't it?' he asked, there was another pause while his Dad spoke again, 'Dad is everything ok, you sound weird?' he said and then, 'Yeah she's still with us,' and then, 'Umm sure I'll ask her, what's wrong Dad?' he asked again getting more uncomfortable as this conversation went on, 'Ok we'll come straight home, bye Dad.' Kurt said as he hung up.
Blaine and Mike had caught up to them by this point and Blaine put an arm around Kurt's waist sensing his discomfort, 'What was that babe?'
'I don't know, Dad wants me and you and Rachel to come home straight away, it was weird he sounded really upset.'
'Weird,' Rachel said, but even she didn't say anything else. It wasn't long until Mike turned off to go home and after he left the three of them walked in silence, the unknown news already hanging over them.
Author's Note: This story takes place following Kurt and Rachel's senior year at McKinley, it follows their first year in New York - with Quinn, Mercedes and Santana. Back at McKinley we follow Blaine, Sam, Tina and the rest of the New Directions. It follows canon up to the end of Season 3 except for a few details to get the characters together in New York and the implied tragedy from this prologue - this story deals heavily with character death and messy grieving teenagers, also past homophobic bullying and attacks and later an eating disorder.