By now, Kurt is pretty used to getting dressed up and going out to fancy dinner parties. At first it had all been very dazzling and exciting, but now it is just another part of his life. Not that it isn't still exciting, but the charm of the word "gala" starts to wane after a bit when they become a regular thing. Still, though, he relishes the opportunity to get dressed up and have some fun schmoozing with rich men and women. It's something that he's pretty good at, charming these older people who have all the power to make or break his husband's career.

He looks up, glancing around the room to find the man in question. He smiles softly to himself as he sees him, excusing himself from his current conversation to go over and stand beside him. "Hi, Lucas," he says softly as he leans up and kisses him on the cheek.

"Hey, beautiful," his husband says back, smiling at him and wrapping an arm around his waist to pull him in closer. He quickly introduces him to the older couple that he was chatting with before Kurt came over, continuing the conversation.

Kurt doesn't add a whole lot to the conversation, laughing and smiling in the right places. Leaned slightly into Lucas's side, it's a nice break from having to be on top of his charming game.

If there's anything that Blaine loves most in the world, it's being on stage. His brother has always been more into being on screen, and sure, Blaine obviously wouldn't turn down any opportunity for that (hasn't, in fact; in the past he has gotten a couple of small roles in commercials and things which inevitably got cut until all there was was the back of his head for about a quarter of a second), but his heart is more in it when he is actually standing on a stage.

There's something about the audience, he thinks, or at least the promise of an audience when he's rehearsing and there is no audience to speak of. An audience gives feedback and it's immediate and it gives him energy that standing in front of a camera just doesn't. He likes being watched.

All of this to say, Blaine will always be a part of a play when he can, even if it is a fantastic shit show where essentially no one has any idea what is going on at any given time.

Kurt smiles as he picks up his wine glass, laughing politely at one of the doctors at Lucas's practice's story, all of them having sat down to enjoy their dinner together. Something about the story the other man is telling reminds Lucas of something that had happened in their apartment the week before, and he turns to Kurt to urge him to tell the story.

"He's a lot better at telling it than I am," Lucas tells the table at large, reaching over and rubbing Kurt's back just below his shoulder blades.

Kurt chuckles softly and brushes off his words before starting to tell the story. He smiles brightly as he looks around the table, enjoying the feeling of having all of their eyes on him.

The fact that no one has a clue what they're doing is amplified when they spend longer than usual there. They tend to get together earlier in the day, but when the rehearsal space is available later in the day, they figure there's no harm in seizing the moment and trying to get more work in.

Except, of course, when there is harm in it.

Amidst the chaos of the actors trying to figure out what they should be doing, there are also the crew putting together the set and figuring out lighting, which is arguably more chaotic and disorienting than the actors trying to make sense of a horrible script (Blaine's theory was that the playwright had subscribed to only the first half of Hemingway's famous "write drunk, edit sober"). The end result is that there is almost always several people trying to occupy the same space with only half an idea of where everyone else is in relation to them.

So Blaine isn't really sure whether he should be assigning blame or taking it when out of seemingly nowhere he takes a ladder to the face.

All he knows for sure is that he gets about a half a second's worth of warning from the leading lady who sees the pair of people carrying the ladder starting to swing around but doesn't have time to articulate proper words of caution.

But there's no time for him to process what she's saying, much less do anything to get himself out of harm's way, and the impact sends him falling to the floor.

Kurt is in the middle of a sentence when it hits him. And "it" is the only word he can use here, because by all accounts, nothing hit him. There is no reason that anything should have happened to him, and yet.

The air is knocked out of him and he falls out of his chair by what feels like something slamming into him, just barely staying on his feet and clutching the side of his head afterwards. His vision is hazy for a moment afterwards and he could swear he sees somewhere entirely different from where he is in front on him. He blinks a couple of times and looks around in confusion for a moment and realizes that everyone else is staring at him in bewilderment. Whatever just happened, it must have been all in his head, he realizes, the thought sending a chill down his back.

Lucas stands up and puts a hand on his arm. "Are you okay?" he asks softly into his ear.

Kurt doesn't say anything for a moment, part of him still feeling like he isn't really where he is. He looks back at the table where he still has a few of the people's attention but the rest of the table appear to be trying to move on, tentatively starting up conversation again. He looks back at Lucas, whose face is a mixture of concern and annoyance. "Yeah..." he answers finally. "Yeah, I'm okay."

He nods, seeming to be satisfied with that answer. "You should go home, lay down," he says. "Go call yourself a cab."

Kurt nods slightly and leans up to kiss his cheek before walking away. He stops in the bathroom on the way, standing in front of the mirror and inspecting his reflection. He leans in closer to the glass, tilting his head at different angles, sure that if he looks a bit harder he'll see evidence of something hitting him. But no, there's nothing there. No redness or swelling or black and blue marks forming. Just his normal pale complexion, that's it.

He sighs and turns the sink on, leaning down and splashing water on his face in hopes that it will snap him out of it. He looks himself in the mirror before turning and walking out, resigning himself to the fact that there really wasn't anything more to it, just some weird hallucination.

Blaine sits on the floor for a bit longer, a couple of the girls fussing over him. Tina, a nice girl who was part of the crew and apparently was the one responsible for his intimate encounter with the equipment, was leaned over him, gently touching the forming bruise.

"Are you okay?" she asks him, frowning down at him.

"Yeah, I'm fine," he replies with a soft laugh, giving her a smile to reassure her. It hurt and he's sure that he's going to have a killer bruise on the side of his head to show for it, but he doesn't want her to feel too bad about it.

"Are you sure?" she asks. She looks up when someone else comes over, offering up an ice pack. Blaine is about to take it when she grabs it instead, holding it up to his head.

Blaine gives her a small smile, nodding. "Yeah, completely sure."

No matter how many times he reassures her that he is entirely okay and really, it doesn't even actually hurt anymore, I promise, she still insists on bringing him home and staying there with him for a while, citing that he might have a concussion and so shouldn't be left alone. He doesn't argue with her, letting her take him back to his apartment. Tina seems a bit disappointed when they get there and find that Cooper is sitting on the couch and can clearly take care of Blaine should anything be wrong with him. She lingers for a bit longer before she departs, leaving the two brothers sitting side by side on the couch.

"Can't stay out of trouble, can you, tiger?" Cooper teases him.

"This wasn't my fault at all," he protests, shaking his head.

"Sure, sure," he says with a soft laugh. He is quiet for a moment, looking up at the TV that is still playing some random reality show before turning back to Blaine, clearly unable to help himself. "That girl. She knows that you don't, you know, play for that team, right?"

Blaine laughs and rolls his eyes. "Yeah, she does."

"You should maybe remind her, in no uncertain terms," he says, chuckling. "Because she wants a piece of that. So, I mean, if you were ever interested in experimenting, you've probably got a candidate right there."

"I'll keep that in mind," he replies, shaking his head.

Cooper just laughs softly, wrapping an arm around Blaine's shoulders and pulling him in closer. "Don't you worry, you could probably get just about any girl you want. You wanna know how I know?"

"No," he answers with a laugh, shaking his head because he knows exactly where this is going.

"Exactly. I know because I can get any girl I want, and you're almost as attractive as me," he teases, giving his shoulder a squeeze.

"Thanks for the encouragement," Blaine said, shaking his head.

"Any time, baby brother," he says with a grin.

Kurt sits alone on the couch when he gets home, the living room entirely dark except for a small lamp he turned on when he got home.

The phantom pain from the apparently imagined impact has entirely gone away now, but he still can't shake the feeling that he isn't alone. Well, that feeling has never gone away. What he means is more something like... it feels more tangible right now. Like whatever or whoever it is is closer right now than usual. Part of him feels like he should be frightened, but he still doesn't feel threatened by it.

"Hello?" he tries, calling out the word a couple more times into the quiet apartment as if maybe whatever it is could say anything back to him. "Hello? Is there anyone there?"

Blaine falls asleep leaned up against Cooper, his head resting on his older brother's shoulder.

He's mostly asleep when he hears a voice in his ear. It doesn't really sound like Cooper, but it's only the two of them there and it doesn't sound like it's coming from the TV, so it must be him.

He tips his chin up to look up at Cooper, raising an eyebrow. "D'you say something?" he asks in a mumble, his words slightly slurred from the sleep that he's barely pulled himself from.

"No," he replies, sounding a little bit confused. "Go back to sleep."

Blaine nods and does as he is told, closing his eyes again and letting himself drift off back to sleep.

A few days pass and everything is okay.

Blaine's bruise becomes visible and starts to fade away, and he is cleared of having a concussion (Cooper does get worried when Blaine starts to act a bit airy and seems a bit only-half-there at times, and takes him to the doctor, who checks him out and declares everything fine).

Lucas seems a bit bitter with Kurt for making a scene at dinner, but he gets over it soon enough.

Kurt still can't quite shake the heightened feeling of someone else being in his presence, but by now in his life he has gotten pretty good at ignoring that.

The weather is nice out that weekend, and Rachel marches into Kurt's apartment and insists that he come with her and go hiking.

"It's like I haven't seen you at all recently," she says when he starts to protest, giving him a pout that tells him in no uncertain terms that saying no was never an option.

"I've just been kind of busy, is all," he replies with a small shrug.

She goes to his kitchen, grabbing a bottle of water and a couple of snacks for him to further emphasize how little choice he has in this. "I get it, I do, you are a newlywed and overcome with love, but Lucas is not respecting the fact that you need some best friend time. It's inconsiderate and rude."

Kurt chuckles softly, shaking his head at her. "It's not like he's holding me here against my will. If you're going to be upset with someone, be upset with me for not making time for you, not him."

"No can do, Kurt," she says, stepping over to him and grabbing his face in both her hands to pull him down so that she can kiss his forehead. "You're my friend and therefore blameless."

He doesn't push the issue any further, knowing that doing so will accomplish nothing. Rachel is nothing if not supportive of him and happy for him, but at the same time he knows that she isn't exactly the biggest fan of Lucas. And that's fine.

She makes him change into more proper hiking attire and takes him out of the apartment and out to a car that she's left parked on the curb (all the while telling him excitedly about how she'd gone about renting the car, being that since they were leaving the city they'd need transportation beyond just the subway system).

The drive further upstate is pleasant. It is exactly what he has been needing recently, an opportunity to just let go a bit and not feel self-conscious. If nothing else, Rachel is good for that; she's confident in herself in a way that is very contagious, and even if she wasn't, she is just self-centered enough that being alone with her means not having to worry too much about what anyone else is thinking of you.

And he and Rachel just get along, get each other in ways that he isn't sure he will ever understand (by all accounts, he should probably hate her, and yet she is undoubtedly his best friend in the world). She turns the music up and sings along and he lets himself sing along with her, something that he hasn't done a whole lot of lately. He feels completely relaxed, and the lingering something in the back of his mind is all but forgotten.

It isn't a short drive, and he isn't really sure how much time has passed when they finally reach a sign for a National Park and the car finally stops. They get out of the car, Rachel excitedly chattering at him as they set off up the trail.

Blaine has to admit it, there is something freeing about the lifestyle he is living now. Since there are stretches of time when his schedule is irregular or he just plain doesn't have much going on, he can regularly just take time to enjoy being where he is.

So on days like today where the sun is shining and there isn't a cloud in the sky and the beaches are no doubt full of beautiful people who are similarly unencumbered with busy schedules, he likes to take the car and just drive around. He'll go up the coast sometimes and take in the sight of the ocean, marveling at how big it is and how small he is in comparison. Cooper will laugh at him that evening when he asks what he did that day and he doesn't really have a good answer except "I drove around a bit," but it's just something that he can't really expect his brother to understand.

He just loves it, driving as close as he can to the ocean while still being on a road and taking in the sights. He takes pictures here and there, even though he has probably dozens of similar pictures stored on his phone and none of them are significantly different from the others.

It comes as a complete shock to him when in the middle of his drive the world starts to feel a bit hazy and all of a sudden instead of the Pacific he's looking at what appears to be mountains covered in snow.

He has the presence of mind to pull over quickly before he tries to process what he is seeing. When he focuses he can see what is really before him, the car he's in and the guard rail separating him and the water below. But at the same time, he can see the mountains and the trees and a dirt trail ahead and a petite girl walking in front of him just as vividly as if he was there, seeing it with his own two eyes. He just sits there for a bit staring, appreciating the sight though he has no idea why or how he's seeing it.

"It's so beautiful," he says under his breath to himself.

Kurt is sure that he heard someone speak, a definitely male voice, but when he looks around the only person he can see is Rachel. He tells himself that he is just imagining things (again) and keeps up walking after her.

That is, until he hears the voice again. "What... What is this? Where is this?"

It's that same voice again, sounding equal parts awed and confused.

"Hello?" he asks softly, glancing around him again.

Rachel turns around when she hears him speak, raising an eyebrow at him. "What?" she asks.

He pauses for a moment, hears the voice in his head saying "hello" back. Rachel doesn't react to the voice at all; she clearly doesn't hear it. He hesitates for a second before giving her a smile and saying, "I think I dropped something. Stay here, I'll be right back."

Blaine has no idea what's going on in his mind. He had just been talking to himself, no part of him had expected to get any sort of answer back. And yet, here he is.

He can hear a voice, can see the girl in front of him, all as if it is his own body doing everything. Whoever it is turns away from the girl and heads back down the trail a bit, he assumes until she's out of earshot.

And then, again, the voice repeats, "Hello?"

And all he can say back is, "Um, hi."

(Okay, I know, I know, I'm terrible for ending on a cliffhanger. It just felt right. I hope you can forgive me. Also, as you probably noticed here, the chapters are pretty choppy between Kurt and Blaine. I promise, as the fic goes on and they interact with each other more, this will be the case way less.)