I think you'll like the end to this chapter. Just sayin'.

Moments and Momentum

The funny thing about Rational Fear, the break-through hit of the then unknown director-writer Jeremy Brown, was how little hype there was surrounding it before its pilot's airdate. In fact, the first episode was barely a blip on the proverbial radar, with viewing figures just shy of average and solid, but unexceptional public response to the show.

By the second episode, however, the series had exploded.

Critics were raving about the show, calling it "a landmark of modern TV, destined for the infamy of such works as Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Star Trek." There was talk of award nominations. The show's stellar, but inexperienced main cast went from nobodies to everybody overnight.

In his first interview, Blaine Anderson, who plays Gavin Hope, the show's protagonist, summed it up best:

"Turning on my computer the next day was surreal. I legitimately thought the world had ended – that was the only possible explanation for the sudden influx of mail in my inbox."

By the time the third episode had aired, Rational Fear was already well on its way to becoming an undeniable cult classic.

So kids, watch this space. I can already tell that this show's gonna go far.

It was time.

In the pit of his stomach, Kurt could feel the dread start to churn, but he bit down on the growing nausea and instead chose to flex his fingers around his satchel strap. He could do this.

In the seat beside him, Finn pulled the keys out of the ignition and turned towards the white-as-a-ghost face of Kurt.

"Dude, you know it's not too late to go back," he said with a shrug. "Burt'd kill me if I made you go to school when you were less than one hundred per cent."

"I'm fine," Kurt snapped with a little more venom than was strictly necessary.

Finn just held his hands up in a gesture of peace. "Hey, I'm not saying you're not. I just don't want you to think you have to do this, like you have to prove something to yourself, Kurt, 'cause you don't."

Almost immediately, Kurt felt his whole being soften.

"That's not what this is about, Finn," he said quietly.

"It's just, dude, you only have another two weeks before you can start at Dalton. You don't have to do this."

Kurt unplugged his seatbelt and moved for the door.

"I know," he said simply. He pushed open the heavy metal frame and slammed it shut behind him.

Finn rolled his eyes, but got out and followed him.

Five minutes after the accident:

Burt Hummel was a good father.

He did all the right things at all the right times, knew when to push his son, knew when to hold back… He may not have understood Kurt fully, but he loved him. Loved him more than anything.

Which is why he can't really remember much about that day apart from the urgent, anxious, call from one of his part-timers.

"Boss, you should see this."

Frank, smeared in grime and grease, waved his smartphone at Burt, and flashed him the screen, filled with a recent twitter post.

Burt's whole world stopped.

Kurt. Kurt. Kurt. Bloody and damaged and sprawled over the hood of a car and lifeless and limp and stop, just stop.

Frank watched him closely, sympathy and concern creasing his brow.

Burt wanted to tell him to put away the phone – he wasn't on break; he shouldn't have been using it – and shout at the other workers to get back to it – he wasn't a zoo exhibit; he would be fine – but he couldn't. His chest seemed to constrict, tighter and tighter, and suddenly, Burt wasn't sure if it was purely emotional.

His heart thudded against his rib cage and then suddenly, it stopped thudding at all.

Burt hit the ground just as the other mechanics began to panic.

The stares were almost as bad as slushies, Kurt reflected as he slotted a set of books into his locker. Actually, that was a lie – those things stung – but that didn't make the staring any less pleasant. Kurt did his best to ignore it as he navigated the corridors between classes, everyone wisely giving him a wide berth.

Well, nearly everyone.

"Oh my god, Kurt!"

The relative isolation of a hospital room had been too good to last.

"Rachel Berry," he intoned dryly as New Directions' star soloist flung herself at him all the while squealing in happiness. Kurt braced himself against the locker and once again thanked God for the wonders of modern medicine and painkillers.

"It's been such a long time," Rachel cried, breaking off the contact and smiling at him. "You wouldn't believe the drama you've missed."

Kurt raised his eyebrows.

"You guys wanted to do Britney Spears," he listed, checking each item off on his fingers, "but Mr Schue said no, so you dressed up like some sort of slutty catholic schoolgirl kinkfest, and danced around school for a bit until he caved. The later performance caused some sort of sex riot though, so we're probably not touching Britney again with a barge pole. Mr Schue wanted to do the Rocky Horror Picture Show as a school musical, but that was axed because it was inappropriate. We have new members in the glee club, including a guy named Sam, who by the way, needs to stop dying his hair with lemon juice – it shows… Oh, and Finn found the face of Jesus in a grilled cheese sandwich and prompted you all to surround mine and Burt's hospital rooms and pray. Have I missed anything?"

Rachel blinked at him.

"I was in hospital, Rachel, not North Korea," he stated flatly. "And you guys seem to have this obsession with putting everything on facebook."

"It's still been too long, Kurt," Rachel insisted, undeterred.

"I was hit by a car," Kurt deadpanned. Then, he added as an afterthought, "I thought everyone knew that."

"Oh, Kurt, that's not what everyone knows," Rachel said, shaking her head. "What everyone knows is that you were hit by Blaine Anderson's car."

And there it was. The start of the conversation that Kurt was dreading.

"So?" prompted Rachel eagerly.

Kurt rolled his eyes. He hoiked a textbook from his locker and positioned it in his arms.

"So what?" he tried to deflect casually.

"So you dominated the newspapers for over a week, Kurt!" Rachel pressed. "Not in name, obviously, as they just called you something like 'an unidentified highschool student', but still! You were all anyone could talk about – I would kill for that kind of publicity – and you're trying to tell me that there's nothing extra you can share with a friend?"

"OK, first, Rachel," Kurt replied. "This?" He gestured at the space between them. "Not friendship. We're not friends. Second, I wouldn't answer you if we were."

Kurt slammed the locker door shut. "Thirdly, I'm late for French."

He turned around and walked away.

One week after the accident:

Finn couldn't remember feeling so numb since the day of his father's death.

In the end, Finn supposed, it was the hair that got him.

Kurt's hair was always perfectly coifed – styled to perfection. Finn didn't think he had ever seen Kurt without some sort of hairstyle fixed. Not after that football match, not after a single Cheerio practice, hell, Finn was convinced that Kurt could probably swim in the ocean and still be one because-you're-worth-it-esque flick away from salon standard flawlessness.

Evidently, Finn had never seen Kurt like this before.

Pale and pallid – paler than usual, at least – with closed eyes and faint, barely there breathing, that was Kurt now. Lying on a hard bed, tangles of tubes and wires around him, and his hair? Flat. Dead. Wilted.

Like Kurt.

It was with a horrible, emotionless detachedness that Finn stared through the glass window at Kurt. Maybe he should have been crying, he realised belatedly, instead of just staring. Or at least fighting back tears. Or wrapping his arms around his mom. Or doing something.

But he didn't. He couldn't. He just stared.

Maybe it was because he couldn't really process everything that had happened in the last two hours. Maybe it was because he didn't want to. Maybe it was because he just couldn't get the repeating mantra out of his head.

Your fault. It's your fault. All your fault. You did this.

Logically, Finn knew he couldn't have predicted what would happen.

That just made it worse.

He should have insisted on giving Kurt a ride. He should have insisted on Rachel giving Kurt a ride home. He should have…

… but he didn't.

Finn sank to the floor, leaning back against the wall.

All your God-damn fault.

Mercedes was the next to try and draw the gossip out of him. Kurt made sure it was harder than getting blood from a stone.

"Pol-lease," she said, rolling her eyes. "Kurt, I know you. You watched Anderson's dumb 'Courage' video practically 24/7 last year, even after you came out. You were even more enamoured with him than you were with Finn."

"Do you have a point hiding in there somewhere, Mercedes?" Kurt asked as he copied down the English assignment from the board.

"My point is, Kurt," Mercedes intoned, "that I flat-out refuse to believe that you didn't use this whole scandal business to at least try and meet the man of your teenage dreams."

Kurt resisted the urge to roll his eyes yet again. "Mercedes, I admire Blaine Anderson, sure, because he's a brilliant actor and yes, because he's out and proud, but I was not enamoured with him."

"Whatever you say, Kurtie-pie."

Kurt was prepared to thank whatever greater power there was up there when she finally dropped it.

Three weeks after the accident:

To all my fabulous followers,

The Eyes and Ears in the Wall here, ready to dish the latest on what we have come to call "Crash and Blaine". It's been over three weeks since the now infamous photos hit Twitter and we finally have an update.

Though the identity of the highschool student (henceforth referred to as Mystery Kid by this blogger) Blaine hit has yet to be revealed, our sources have confirmed that the accident was not in fact the fault of the famous TV star. A representative recently told the press that Mystery Kid, who has just come out of his coma, is in fact, claiming to have been pushed into the path of the car by a fellow student at his school.

To Blaine's loyal following, this news comes as a not-unexpected, but still completely welcome relief.

Personally, I'm just glad that Mystery Kid is probably going to be alright. Right now, my thoughts are with his family and friends. So, Mystery Kid's parents, if you're out there somewhere reading this, I wish you all the best in the recovery of your son.

Eyes and Ears over and out.

Kurt was surprised that the next person to speak to him was Mike.

They didn't really speak much, or at all. Even on his brief stint on the football team, Mike had barely said three words to him. Whilst at the beginning Kurt had just assumed he made Mike uncomfortable, it had gradually dawned on him that Mike was like that with everyone. The dancer was in fact merely painfully shy and withdrawn.

Well, last year at least.

One summer seemed to have made a lot of difference to Mike.

After their joint calculus class, Mike caught Kurt's arm and pulled him aside.

"I just wanted to tell you that I'm really glad you're better," Mike said, sincerity evident in his tone. "It was kind of rough on, well, everyone after you got hit by that car."

"Thanks Mike," Kurt replied.

Mike shrugged. "You're a Gleek, Kurt. You're part of the family – no matter how dysfunctional it may be." He paused. "I also wanted to tell you that Tina and I are going to miss you when you leave for Dalton. When do you head off?"

"Two weeks tomorrow."

"Cool, I guess," Mike said. "And, if, uh, the classes there are a bit harder than McKinley, you should drop me a line. My mum makes me go to cram school, so I'm pretty good if you need any homework help."

Kurt found himself staring at Mike.

"What?" the Asian boy asked.

Kurt shrugged. "Nothing. I guess it's just becoming more and more obvious why Tina started dating you. You're a pretty cool guy, you know that, right?"

"I try," Mike said wryly, affecting an easy grin. "See you around, Kurt."

Blaine Anderson's face stared straight forward, with the grainy and shaky quality that only a web-cam video possesses. His eyes bore straight into the camera, like he was trying to size it all up as he worked up the nerve to speak.

When he spoke, his voice was scratchy and hesitant, but grew in both volume and certainty with every word.

"I had thought," he said, "of a thousand ways to say this – a thousand ways I might feel afterwards – but none of them really factored in waking up to see my face plastered over the front cover of every major gossip rag, accompanied with the words, 'The Boy Who Loved Boys'."

"By now, you probably think that you've heard it all, but you haven't heard it from me. In fact, my agent called me just thirty minutes ago to tell me that I could still deny it all now and that by next week, this would have all blown over."

Dropping his eyes, Blaine took a deep breath. "I don't want that."

He shook his head, a small smile working its way onto his face. "Acting on Rational Fear has taught me a lot of things about myself, about people and about life in general. So, I'm going to take a leaf out of Gavin's book and have some courage."

He raked his eyes up the camera, until he was staring dead into the lens. With all the dramatics and flare of someone of unflappable resolve, he declared, "Ladies and gentleman of the internet, my name is Blaine Anderson and I am without a doubt, absolutely, 100% gay.

"I don't care what that makes me. A sinner, a fag, a fairy – whatever. My sexuality is not something that I've been struggling with. It's something that I've really always known. It's a part of me. It's not going to change, ever. It was, however, an element of my private and personal life that I was not ready to share with the general public.

"I didn't want for one moment the hysteria that has surrounded my sexual orientation for the past week. This isn't me pouring my soul out to a magazine, or calling a press conference and dodging invasive questions for an hour or two. I personally think you've all seen every possible play of words relating to my sexuality already and it might have killed the editors if they had to think up yet another set of them.

"Which is why this video isn't going to become someone's exclusive. That's not what this is about."

Blaine finally managed a full smile, one which refused to leave.

"This is about me trying to finally be honest with all of you and to dig into my inner courage."

From the video, Courage, posted by BlaineAnderson on , November 6th 2009, at 11:03 am.

Kurt managed to get Finn to run him home after school, before circling back and returning to Glee club practice. He made up some lie about not feeling up to it, or about his pain meds wearing off, or being exhausted.

His dad was out – out with Carole – and Kurt was perfectly happy to walk through the empty house, running his hands over all the decorations. A thick skin of dust gathered over his fingers, the house having been pretty much abandoned since his accident.

It had taken three weeks for Kurt to wake from the coma he'd fallen into and a further two weeks to get released from hospital. During that time, everything had been manic. Waking up to the news that your father had had a heart attack because of you wasn't really the best way to set foot on the road to recovery, but after five minutes of just plain freaking out, the hospital staff had managed to convince him to calm down.

Burt would be fine, they said. And panicking was bad for both of them. Just breathe, they said. Everything would be OK.

For the most part, they were right. Burt had managed to come visit Kurt a few days after he woke up. The mechanic had to be wheeled into the room in a wheelchair, only to be subjected to a vicious lecture from his bedridden son about healthy eating and bad habbits.

(Burt's only response was to grin.)

The legal side of things had been even more stressful as no less than six different individuals asked Kurt for his side of the story, which he dutifully recounted. Then, he had to insist, hand on heart, that yes he had been pushed into that road and no he wasn't making this up to try and score a favour from his celebrity crush.

Blaine Anderson's team of lawyers had, however, been eager to cover all bases, and suddenly Kurt found himself being handed a cheque for – holy shit, where the fuck was the decimal point?!

Suffice to say it was enough to pay for the rest of his schooling to take place at Dalton, and for all his college tuition.

And no, he wasn't just saying some kid pushed him into the road for the money either. And no, for the last time, this wasn't because he had a crush on Blaine bloody Anderson.

And what on earth was it with people assuming he was in love or lust or something with Blaine Anderson?

Hitting someone with a car didn't exactly scream "be mine".

Kurt startled up as the doorbell rang.

With no real rush, he made it to the front door, peeking through the glass to see who it was. A smile set in place on his lips.

He pulled it open.

"Hey," he said. "I was hoping it was you."

And then he reached out, wrapped his hand around Blaine Anderson's tie and pulled the TV star into a searing kiss.