A/N: Yes, some more writing for my own sanity's sake.

Here

Chapter Two

They are still in bed by 2 pm.

The circumstances are far from what he had wished for, but Kurt cannot regret that he, for once, got to make breakfast in bed for Blaine.

After an exhausting couple of days with work and NYADA it should feel very easy, relaxing too, cuddling up under the blankets all of the early afternoon, exchanging slow, languid kisses.

But Blaine is still tense, and jumpy, touches, being touched, difficult in the strangest of ways for both of them. Every second craved and feared.

Kurt is not sure he has ever seen Blaine like this, and the question keeps running through his head, as his hands try and sooth the ache out of all of Blaine. 'What's wrong? What's wrong? What's wrong?'

Blaine is strong, Kurt is sure of that, as sure as he is that Blaine does feel nothing close to it though today, has not since last night – feels fragile, alone.

Blaine whispers the words, it is an inquiry, not an accusation, "You never asked."

"Asked?" Kurt wonders aloud, frown hushing over his face as his hands keep soothing warmth into Blaine's skin with ever move, or at least trying to, hoping to reach the important places, wherever they might be.

"Why I ..., I need this," Blaine replies, own hands coming up, arms crossed in front of his chest to place his hands on top of Kurt's stilling with the action where they are, beginning their movement again with the soft pressure of Blaine's touch still on them a mere moment later, more hesitant, much slower.

But the words that follow are strong, decisive, "Didn't want to make you feel like you need to explain to me what makes you feel good, ... or better." Kurt places a kiss to Blaine's forehead, murmurs softly, "Don't want you to feel like that is not something I'd always willingly give."

Blaine's lips are persistent on the skin of Kurt's shoulder as he twists his head and presses them right beside the halter of Kurt's top, ... lingers, soft, warm skin on skin.

When he pulls back and looks up he finds Kurt searching out his gaze. Kurt is not asking him to explain, and maybe that, more than anything, makes Blaine feel like he can actually say this, arms coming around Kurt's middle, pulling himself closer to his boyfriend's body, warm, solid, here – his own from, he is painfully aware, cold and shaking, ... tiny.

'Nobody knows,' Blaine's thoughts tremble as he tries to sort them into words, sentences, something, anything, any way to say this. But no one has ever known about this. And it is real already, but saying it will make it a reality in their life, '... in our life.' And Blaine is scared, so scared of what that will do to them.

But the truth is, Blaine having held this in since the attack on Kurt has already done things to them, has made him feel if not act in ways he does not want to. Maybe that person is him, insecure, angry, unreasonably frustrated too much of the time, but if that is him he wants to do everything he can to grow and change.

But there are reasons, of course there are, for him acting this way. All he has been able to think for the last days, ever since he himself had realized what had been going on with him, that he was pushing Kurt away in more than one way too many, all he has been able to think since he has started to try and make it up to Kurt, the date last night being his treat, a first step back to each other, 'I lost you once already, over my own insecurities, I can't let it happen again.'

And the only way that won't happen is this way, ... letting Kurt in. They are engaged, yes, they do know each other, that however does not mean that they know everything about each other, heck, they are in their late teens, they don't even know everything about themselves yet. And good intentions are great, however, they are not a solution.

Kurt, hands moving steady still along the plains of Blaine's back, feels the tremble rising into Blaine's skin before Blaine starts saying anything.

The first part he just blurts out, because it feels like the most insignificant one, but Kurt deserves the explanation about Blaine's freak out about needing, needing sosososo badly, to catch up,"They held me back a year after the bashing." Blaine's birthday had just happened to be one of those dates that did not make it painfully obvious that he should already have been a year further along in school. "And, I ..., I know I pretended it was nothing, that time in high school when Tina organized that dance, the Sadie Hawkins one." Blaine swallows audibly then, presses his cheek firmer to Kurt's chest, fisting his hands in the back of Kurt's top.

And if Kurt had not already felt the tension between them before, he does now.

"I ..., I wanted that night to be a success for Tina, and the others. She didn't need ..., I don't think she could have handled me freaking out. I was so scared."

Kurt tilts his head until he can press kiss after kiss to Blaine's curls, whispers sadly, glad Blaine cannot see his pained expression right now, 'I wasn't there for you,' "So you held back."

Blaine swallows, nods, breathes out a "Yeah."

"That night ...," Kurt starts, himself not certain which night he is referring to. It is like he is offering Blaine the choice to pick this thought up wherever he needs to.

"That night ...," Blaine echoes with a tremor surging into his voice, then stops dead.

"Yeah?" Kurt breathes, still soothing warmth into Blaine's cold form.

"That night at McKinley ... I missed you more than ever," Blaine almost stammers, with a voice beginning to shake more and more tangibly now. "That night at my old school, the night of that dance at my old school ... . I ..., I held Robin's hand, I held on to his hand until I passed out, it had gone limb in mine. I kept squeezing it. I needed, I ... it was all sticky with the blood from the wound on his head he had been clutching before he passed out beside me. They had kicked him in his head, and I couldn't do anything, I couldn't do anythi... ." Blaine, voice broken, harshly pulls himself out of Kurt's arms then, out of his reach, shivers as his body falls into the cold of the sheets on the other side of the bed.

Kurt watches as Blaine fists his hands in his own PJ pants, unlocks his grip over and over to keep wiping them on the fabric. "I was so scared, so scared he would ..., he was ... ."

In all the months of their separation and their long distance relationship, in all of that time Blaine has never felt further away, more out of reach. "And last night?" Kurt whispers, unable to think about anything else he could do.

"Yesterday ... . We ... ."

Kurt can tell Blaine feels shame saying even so much as these few broken words, like he is not allowed, not entitled to feel whatever it is he is feeling over what had gotten to him. Kurt hates that more than any of this, starts to say, "whatever it is ... ."

"We passed that alley, the alley, they ..., you ... ."

Kurt does not know how, how he is not obsessively petrified of any and every darker corner of this city, and of that corner especially. But even now that is not what is at the front of his mind, only somewhere in the back of it. Maybe most of all because something else inside him has just clicked, his eyes widening at the horror of not having seen it before.

There had been so many signs after, right after it had happened, Blaine there by his side, always, leaving it no more than that one time Burt had taken him home and forced him to eat and lie down before he and Carole had accompanied Blaine to his new performance for Carmen Tibideaux, "He hasn't actually slept, Kiddo," his dad had informed Kurt when they had come back a couple of hours later, "... but Carole made sure he at least ate something, and he did great at NYADA."

Blaine had spent every single night with Kurt in that hospital, had held his hand with every step after Kurt's release, '... for days.'

And then Kurt had pulled back ..., and not long after, Blaine had crashed, retreated more and more like those last weeks of Kurt's senior year. But Kurt had not meant anything by it, which might be the worst part, Kurt thinks now. He had simply gotten absorbed in catching up with the classes he had missed and the papers that were due and thought it would be much the same for Blaine.

Sobs and tears breaking free, sudden, harsh, Kurt brings out "I'm so sorry." Kurt knows and understands now, and Blaine needs to know that. "I didn't understand. I'm so sorry, I had no idea ..."

Blaine scoots forward, timidly, reaches for one of Kurt's hands, and they just lie there, quietly, hands holding each other.

You could not tell looking at Blaine now, but Kurt has seen photographs, photographs of that small scrawny child Blaine had been the year of that first school dance with another boy.

Blaine had been a child, scared and helpless when those homophobes had jumped them.

Blaine had had no one to hold him through the pain-drenched nights in that empty hospital room in Ohio.

That day, that attack, had left Blaine emotionally paralysed and petrified until The Warblers and Dalton had happened, had made him feel again, feel a possibility for happiness.

Kurt had not fully understood but had been aware of the terror Blaine had felt still when he had asked Blaine to his school's prom. And for the first time since he got bashed himself Kurt understands that he still does not understand any of it, the lasting pain, the trauma.

Kurt had consciously tried to come to someone's rescue. And only now Kurt realizes Blaine had been that kid, that man on the ground, being struck over and over again, with no one like Kurt coming to help. Having to helplessly watch too how his date was beaten bloody.

Voice thick with tears Kurt says, "I am sorry I did not understand, I am so sorry I don't understand. I would do it again, run into that alley. I would have done it for you back in high school. "

Blaine shakes his head, "I am proud of you, so proud of you for being that person that someone else needed. I ..., but seeing you in that hospital bed like that ..., taking your hand and not being able to feel your skin warm and your fingers flexing and holding on to mine ... . I was, I am so scared. And I can't even properly figure out of what, and it makes it all worse," Blaine breaks into sobs, and Kurt is right there, pulling Blaine back to his chest. "I thought I might know now how to protect us. I don't."

"I am here. We are okay."

"We are?"

"I love you," Kurt says, hands coming up and running in a lasting motion, constantly renewed, through Blaine's curls.

"We are okay," Blaine breathes then, eyes closed flickering open, meeting Kurt's.

Their foreheads resting together Kurt breathes, "We are okay. I love you, I love you SO much."