"Um, hi."

Kurt takes in a deep breath and closes his eyes for a moment, momentarily convincing himself that this is it; he finally has well and truly gone insane. There is no other explanation for this. Sure, he has always had an active imagination and he's never felt alone, but to actually hear a voice inside his head talking back to him?

"You can hear me?" he asks, proud of himself for how little his voice shakes given how very shaken up he himself feels.

"Yeah. I guess so." Part of him had been hoping that he had just imagined a response a moment ago, that he would say something else and get no response. But to no avail, there it was, that same voice again giving him an answer that was clearly not just some overheard nearby voice meant for anyone else.

It takes him a bit before he is able to force words out again. "Who are you?"

"Who are you?" the voice counters, and for a moment the edges of Kurt's vision get hazy and everything takes on a kind of… the only way he can think of to describe it is shimmery. He gropes around him blindly, his hand finding a rock beside him to sit down on.

"I asked first," he said, his voice quiet even though (very fortunately) there is no one around them.

"Okay, alright. My name is Blaine," the voice answers.

"Blaine?" he repeats.

Part of him feels like this isn't new information at all. It feels like maybe this is something that he has known in the back of his mind for as long as he can remember, something forgotten and buried with newer, more important information. At the same time, though, he knows it's not. He's never even met anyone named Blaine, except maybe just in passing.

"Blaine," he confirms. "Blaine Anderson. Where are… we?"

"I am in New York. You are not real," he says.

Kurt feels something like a harsh poke of a finger in his side, a dull phantom pain like from the other night. "Weird, because I feel pretty real," the voice says, and Kurt refuses to let himself believe that what he just felt was an actual, real person poking himself.

"No. You're a figment of my imagination," he says. "A hallucination. I don't know."

"I could say the same about you," Blaine says. "I don't even know who you are. You're just… Here. In my head. Probably a daydream, I don't know. You said you're in New York. You're just some… daydream of mine that I actually made it out to New York. I guess you're… You're me."

"No. Stop," he breathes out, running his fingers through his hair. He pauses for a moment, letting out a long breath. "I'm real, you're… I don't know what you are. But you are not real, and you're… I'm… I'm not crazy."

"Nobody said you're crazy," the voice continues, taking on a more calming, soothing tone. "You're not crazy. There's… There's something going on here that neither of us understands, but whatever this is, it is very real. Just… Talk to me. We can figure this out."

Kurt tries to pay attention to his words but his mind is swimming and it's starting to feel like nothing is real even though he can feel his arms around himself, holding on so tightly that if he were made of glass he would've already broken. He can barely figure out what is going on around him, his vision barely staying on what was in front of him or whatever this other landscape he was imagining unless he focused on it. "What… What is all of this? Why is there an ocean? What does the ocean mean?"

Blaine laughs. He hears it, loud and clear, and something about it makes his heart pound impossibly faster (but in a good way, he thinks, which feels like maybe it's progress). "It means I'm by the ocean," he says.

"But how am I seeing this? I've… I've only been to the ocean once, it didn't look like this, there's no way… I'm losing…" Kurt trails off after a moment, shaking his head.

"You're seeing it because I'm seeing it, I guess," Blaine answers, and Kurt kind of hates him for how calm he sounds about all of this. Sure, okay, part of this feels good, feels like maybe that sensation in the back of his mind that he's never truly been alone is more than just hopeful thinking or something, but still… This wasn't normal. And it wasn't like he had ever shied away from being somewhere south of normal, but this was different. Normal, healthy people didn't just hear voices they couldn't explain.

There's a bit of silence between them where Kurt tries to calm himself down, before Blaine speaks again.

"You didn't tell me your name. I… I told you mine. It only seems fair."

And Kurt can't find any way to argue against that, even though part of him thinks about what if this is some next-level stalker abilities that have hacked into his mind or something – a thought that he cuts off quickly because he's not that paranoid, but still, giving personal information to strangers feels wrong even when said stranger appears to be somehow residing in your head. The point is, he figures, Blaine is already firmly there, and there wasn't too much more harm to be done by telling him his name. "Kurt," he says softly.

"Kurt," Blaine repeats, and it freaks Kurt out a little bit how very much pleased and calm he sounds.

Blaine starts to say something else, but his words disappear behind Rachel's voice coming to him from a place, gratefully, far from inside his head. "Kurt? Are you okay?" she asks.

He nods quickly, giving her a smile and hoping that his face doesn't look flushed and there aren't any frustrated tears on his face or anything. "Yeah, sorry. Let's keep going," he said, and after a moment of looking at him skeptically she accepts it. And just like that the other presence in his mind – Blaine. It feels so weird to put a name to it – fades from his attention and he starts to feel human again.

Once Kurt gets distracted, Blaine can practically feel a physical wall blocking him off from reaching him, something that feels more concrete (no pun intended) than the apparently thousands of miles between them, stopping him from talking to him any more beyond that point.

But not being able to communicate with him does not mean that he isn't thinking about him. Hell no. Blaine can hardly focus on anything else for the rest of the day, his mind always wandering back to Kurt and the way he had sounded, and the way he could feel the strong emotions running through him. He found himself sincerely hoping that whatever the deal was with the connection between them, that it wasn't dampening down what Kurt was feeling when he felt it himself. If the fear evident in Kurt's voice hadn't been enough, it was extremely clear by feeling the waves of terror coming across the gap.

To a certain extent, Blaine can totally understand why Kurt was afraid (if he were to be honest, he had forced down some of his own fear and confusion in hopes that doing so might give Kurt a small amount of comfort). This was definitely way out of the ordinary and he knew that hearing voices was basically a universal red flag.

But still… Being able to hear Kurt's voice made so many things make sense. All of the moments in his life where he felt or saw things he shouldn't have been able to feel or see… It all adds up now.

Those experiences that he has had and could never explain, he can explain them now as definitively belonging to someone else. A small part of his mind tells himself to not get carried away yet, to stay skeptical about this until he knows more; for all he knows he really was just imagining everything. He grabs his computer when he get home, halfway ready to look up Kurt until he remembers the fact that he has all of two solid pieces of information about him: his first name, and that he lives in New York somewhere. That isn't going to get him far at all, considering the sheer number of people who no doubt fit that description. He doesn't even have any clue what Kurt looks like, a fact that feels weird to remember considering he is apparently able to see through his eyes.

But still, it is a start, and it is a lot more than he has ever had before now.

He's still caught up thinking about Kurt and what had happened that day, replaying every bit of it that he can remember, when Cooper gets home. If his brother can tell that something is up, he doesn't say anything about it, just pulls Blaine into the kitchen to make dinner with him.

And all through the process of cooking and eating, Blaine debates in his head whether or not he should say anything to Cooper about what happened, about Kurt. He knows that he would listen and believe him, no matter how crazy it sounded or how confused he got, but still… It all still feels too surreal to say anything about just yet, and also it's… He isn't sure of a better word to describe the feeling but intimate. There's something special there, whatever this connection is, and he's not sure what it means yet but it feels like something he needs to keep close to his heart for now.

But then after they've finished up cleaning up dinner and putting everything away, Cooper gets a call from the girl that he's been seeing and just like that Blaine finds himself alone again.

He wants to talk to Kurt. He paces around the empty apartment, trying to figure out how their conversation had started to that maybe he could figure out what had triggered it and he could do it again. He wonders if Kurt knows anything about it, if it was just chance that had them communicating in a much clearer way than they had apparently been doing for years.

Did it have anything to do with the fact that he hadn't been thinking about anything when they broke through to each other? Should he try and think about nothing? After all, Kurt had cut him out when his friend came back, so maybe that meant something?

In the end, he isn't sure how it happens. He can't even figure out to himself whether or not he made it happen or if it just happened on its own. But somehow he blinks his eyes and then everything gets kind of fuzzy around the edges like it did earlier, and then he must be seeing through Kurt's eyes again: he appears to be sitting on a couch with another man, the room dim and quiet music playing. The man is speaking softly but Blaine can't really make any of it out.

"Kurt?" he says quietly.

Kurt startles and Blaine hears him excuse himself to leave the room, saying that his phone had gone off. When he's presumably out of earshot, he says back, "What? Blaine?"

"Yeah. Hi," he says, staring straight ahead. There is a moment of silence between them, and Blaine uses it to try and figure out a bit more about how this works, trying to switch between what he was really seeing and what he was seeing through Kurt. It's kind of like when you're trying to focus on something near versus far away, and switching between the two.

"Hi," Kurt says back finally.

"Is… Is this okay? I want to talk to you," he says softly.

"Okay," he says back after a moment. "Yeah… We can talk."

"Great," Blaine says with a smile. "So… I've been thinking a lot about… this. Trying to figure it out." He pauses for a moment to wait for Kurt to say something, but he doesn't. If it wasn't for the fact that he could still see the room Kurt was in and he could feel a wave of displaced anxiety running through him, he almost would have thought that he'd been cut off again. "And I don't have any answers, and I'm sure you don't either…?"

"No," Kurt answers softly.

"And that's okay. We can figure this out. I mean, there's got to be a logic to it. And hey, it seems like we're learning about it already! I'm figuring out how to, well, look at what I'm seeing here and what I'm seeing there," he says with a small smile. "That's a nice place you're in, by the way. Is that your home?"

"Yeah," Kurt answers, then adds a moment later, "My husband's, actually. But I live here, obviously, so, yes."

Blaine is caught off guard by that information, nodding slowly to himself. The weirdest part is the fact that he's thrown off more by the idea that Kurt is married than by the fact that he's gay; he knows better than to assume that kind of thing, but still, well, he had assumed. "Oh. You're married," he said. "That's… Right. You've got a name, you've got a life, why can't you be married?"

"Yeah, it's… It's good," he says back and chuckles softly. "So, um… I guess I should ask you a bit about yourself, since I've told you about me."

Kurt's voice is still quiet and unsure and Blaine can tell that he is still a bit afraid, but he is willing to work with it. It seems like progress, how calm his voice sounds now, so that's something. "So, my name is Blaine," he said. "As you know. And, ah, I live in Los Angeles, with my brother. So that's… Something. Don't take that the wrong way. I love him. I do. And, ah… Oh. He likes to set me up on dates, but none of them have really worked out, so… Yeah. I'm single."

Kurt doesn't say anything for a bit again. Eventually, he says, "You're a real person."

"Thank you," Blaine replies before thinking, chuckling softly. "That's the sweetest thing anyone has ever said to me."

He can hear Kurt laugh softly, and that makes the grin on his face bigger. "It's just… I was having a hard time believing that. You're… You're an actual person living a real life."

"And so are you, and somehow… Here we are. Apart, together," he says.

"That's kind of beautiful, in a weird way," Kurt says softly.

"Mhm. Should've been a poet," he said with a laugh. He brings his hand up to run his fingers through his hair, brushing up against the bruise still there on the side of his face and wincing lightly.

"Oh!" Kurt says, his voice having more energy in it than there has been since they first spoke and he had his initial panic. "That… The other night. Was that you? You got hit… Like, really hard?"

"Yeah," Blaine says with a soft laugh. "With a ladder, at rehearsal. Did you feel that? God, I'm sorry."

"It's… It's okay," he says, chuckling softly. "I mean… I was at this fancy dinner and I kind of absolutely embarrassed by husband, but… At least now I know what that was."

"Ah. Well, that's good, then," Blaine says with a soft chuckle.

Kurt pauses for a moment, and Blaine can see that he's looked back towards the door where he had come from. "Hey, listen… I should probably go, okay? I told him I'm on the phone, I should probably…"

He trails off and Blaine just nods to himself. "No, go, it's fine. We can… We can talk later, I guess? Provided this thing keeps working?"

"Ideally," Kurt said, and Blaine can't help but notice that he does finally sound relaxed and happy.

"Great. Tomorrow, maybe," he says.

"Maybe. We'll see," Kurt says back before making his way out of the room. As the door clicks shut, Blaine is alone in his living room again.

Okay, just a quick question for anyone interested in this story: longer chapters less frequently or shorter chapters more frequently? Right now I'm in a good spot for writing so I should be able to update fairly frequently from here on regardless, but I just kind of want to know if anybody would have a preference. Short chapters would be about the length of this one, longer would be about double or more.