Columbus Metropolitan Library - Main Branch, South Grant Avenue, Columbus, OH 02:11:45
"Libraries aren't open at two in the morning," Blaine said as the cabbie dropped them off and peeled away into the night.
"Well, geez, Blaine, I didn't realize," Kurt snapped, then sighed. No matter how tired he was or how much pain he was in, Blaine was in a much worse place. He was tired, he'd been kidnapped, his father was missing, and he was headed into something that would be terrifying for a person with no training. "I'm sorry. Anyway, as I said, this is going to involve some illegal activity."
"Are those my nail scissors?" Blaine asked as Kurt took the tool out of his belt.
"Yes," Kurt said shortly. "They'll make an excellent lock pick with some editing."
"You'll cut your..." Blaine trailed off as Kurt snapped the scissors into two pieces, paying no mind to the slash it opened up on the insides of his fingers and the blood dripping down onto the front steps. "Should we be leaving such a blood trail?"
"Blaine, if they get me on trespassing, they'll get me on trespassing," Kurt dismissed. "I'm more worried about assault, breaking and entering, treason... you know, the felonies."
"Breaking and entering is a felony?" Blaine asked in surprise as Kurt kneeled down to pick the lock, placing the pile of Blaine's clothes he had thankfully remembered to get out of the cab on the ground next to him.
"Never go to law school," Kurt said with a huff, picking the lock in less than ten seconds and opening the door. A quick check around displayed no visible sign of an alarm, but Kurt had to be sure. "Go put these on, I'm going to check the front desk."
"Don't boss me-"
"Would you just go?" Kurt asked, not in the mood to argue with Blaine.
"Fine," Blaine said, picking up the clothes as Kurt walked over to the desk, easily finding the security panel. A few cameras on some precious items, and a softly pulsing light. Silent alarm.
"Clever," Kurt muttered, sitting down and focusing on disconnecting it. He could disarm a bomb, a library alarm was child's play.
"I can't believe you went in my underwear drawer," Blaine said as Kurt stepped away from the desk. He had returned from changing, and he looked adorable in the jeans, white t-shirt and blue Dalton sweatshirt Kurt had grabbed, with his hair slightly mussed from pulling the sweatshirt over his head, but Kurt couldn't be focusing on that right now.
"I can't believe that's what you're concerned about as the moment."
"No alarm."
"Silent alarm. Don't worry, I already killed the signal and cut the wires."
"So that's what the CIA teaches people to do. Good to know."
"No sass required," Kurt muttered. "All right, first things first, we have to figure out where your father is."
"And how do we do that?" Blaine asked.
"If my phone was safe, I could use the GPS still on your father."
"You have a GPS on my father?" Blaine asked, sounding fairly concerned and rather creeped out.
"I have one on you, too," Kurt said, stepping towards his forcible-partner. Blaine's eyes widened, before he realized Kurt was reaching for his necklace. "Within the 'D' of the logo, there's a tiny GPS that can be used to locate you at any time." With that sentence, Kurt snapped the necklace off Blaine's neck and stepped on the guitar pick as soon as it touched the ground. The chip wasn't indestructible, but that probably wouldn't break it, so Kurt checked the ground. The chip was still in tact.
"Damn it," he muttered.
"What the hell was that for?" Blane demanded. "I actually liked that!"
"If the CIA still has your GPS on my phone, Stheno could access it to track you if you were close enough to give off signals to my phone, which you are. This wouldn't be a problem if you had listened to me and were safely at HQ, but now I have to destroy this." Which wouldn't be easy, unless he could short it out.
Ignoring Blaine's queries, he started searching around on the ground. Perfect, he thought to himself when he saw the outlet. He stabbed the chip with the end of one of the nail scissor pieces, and put the piece in the socket as fast as he could, receiving only a mild shock that was nothing compared to the one he had already gotten from the fence. However, the piece remained in the socket, and the chip sparked and shorted.
"You're going to start a fire!" Blaine objected, but Kurt just stepped on the nail piece to remove it from the socket. He would probably had little bits of semi-burned GPS on the bottom of his converse, but it worked.
"Now they don't know where we are," he said coolly, "and there's no fire."
"That was... kind of awesome," Blaine said with a grin, and under any other circumstances Kurt would have smiled back at him, but Blaine clearly didn't understand how serious what he was doing was, and how utterly stupid of the tenor it was to be here when he could be safe.
"Now that they can't find us, we'll find your father," Kurt said, starting up one of the computers on the opposite wall from where he had probably messed up that outlet forever.
"Are you going to talk in bad action movie lines all night?" Blaine asked, sitting at the desk beside the computer Kurt had turned on. "You can't be that angry with me. I'm the one who's supposed to be angry with you."
"I'm not angry with you," Kurt said as he sat down at the desk paired with the computer he planned to use, but he could understand how Blaine would think that. Especially considering what tone that last comment had come out in.
"That was convincing," Blaine said sarcastically. "Seriously, Kurt, why are you so mad?"
"Because you're risking your life for absolutely nothing!" Kurt finally snapped at him, standing up out of his chair. "And before you argue," Kurt continued when Blaine opened up his mouth to cut Kurt off, "I know your father isn't nothing, that's not what I'm saying. There are people whose jobs are to save your father and keep you safe. Why can't you just let them do it?"
"Because they're the reason my father's gone!" Blaine finally snapped in return, standing up as well. "It's not your fault, Kurt, I know that because Agent Perez-"
"Lopez," Kurt corrected him, still mad.
"Agent Lopez explained to me what happened, why I found you like that. It's not your fault, Kurt, and it's not your job to save him. So let me ask you this: why are you doing this? Huh? It is because of me? Is it because you feel guilty? Or is it because you know the CIA can't get the job done?" Blaine demanded.
"The CIA," Kurt started to yell... but then calmed down, because he finally knew exactly what to tell Blaine. "The CIA," he started again at a much more reasonable tone, "is a wonderful organization full of trained and innovative operatives who are perfectly capable of carrying out the missions of rescuing you and saving your father. However, the CIA is also a bureaucratic nightmare that would have to put several days, if not weeks into planning a major operation like this. I can play it off the cuff, and if I fail, your father will still be in good hands."
"Don't try to appease me," Blaine said flatly. "The CIA isn't on the ball, and you are. So why would I want to align myself with them instead of you?"
"Because they can keep you safe."
"Who cares about my safety?"
"Maybe I do!" Kurt snapped. "Maybe if it had been any other damn target I wouldn't have taken a two thousand dollar cab ride from Lima to Columbus armed with nothing but a flashlight and a camera on an idiotic and reckless mission to save you! Ever thought of that?"
Oddly, Blaine didn't react to Kurt's rant except to smirk and take a step towards him. "I knew I wasn't just another target to you."
"Blaine, what-" Kurt didn't get the rest of the question out before Blaine was kissing him. This time he didn't have any reason to object, wrapping his arms around Blaine's neck and returning the sweet kiss. Blaine pulled away after a little bit with a smile.
"Don't think I'm not still mad at you," he muttered, not pulling out of their embrace. "Befriending me to investigate my father was still a crappy thing to do."
"I had to," Kurt replied unapologetically, a little lost in Blaine's warm and very amused hazel eyes.
"I'm just glad you really do like me," the tenor whispered, giving Kurt another quick kiss. "Now," he said as he pulled away, "while I would love to defile this library, I'm terrified of being caught with my pants down by the police," Kurt blushed at the suggestion, "and we're not exactly in the most romantic situation."
"Like that would stop you," Kurt muttered, but he did sit back down at the computer. "What carrier do you have?"
"Pardon."
"I'm assuming your dad has a cell phone. Verizon, AT&T, U.S. Cellular-"
"Verizon," Blaine answered before Kurt finished his list. "Why do you ask?"
"Because your dad probably wasn't kidnapped," Kurt replied, ignoring Blaine's shocked reaction. "The reality is that Stheno probably promised him superior facilities if they relocated him, and since he's not entirely aware of the danger he's in, he went quietly. His lab was probably destroyed when the Stheno goons got a jump on the agents that were supposed to be watching you. What's your dad's cell phone number?" he asked, interrupting his own story.
"614-776-4982," Blaine answered. Apparently, he now trusted Kurt to explain himself, because he didn't ask again.
"If your father went freely, which I bet he did, he probably has some of his personal effects, wallet, keys, phone, etc., thinking that he would need to return home. In reality, if he was able to complete Sue Sylvester's unrealistic demands, she probably would let him return home, because she's exactly that kind of crazy, but there's no way he can possibly do that. Anyway, while I'm sure your father doesn't still have access to his phone, it's probably still in the lab somewhere, and since I'm willing to bet that Stheno has antineutrinos in it so they can track you if you decide to call your dad, it's probably on. Thus, we track it and we find out where your father is."
"Have you always thought like this, or is it an acquired skill?" Blaine asked with a smile, sounding pretty impressed.
"A little bit of both," Kurt answered as he went into the Verizon site. Thankfully he still had some government passwords and overrides, though it was kind of important that none of this could be tracked back to him. The CIA would realize pretty quickly that one of their agents was using power without authority, but he wouldn't be here when they figured it out. "Bingo."
"Where is he?"
"Cape York Peninsula," Kurt said, his mind reviewing years of middle and high school geography.
"That's the northernmost point in Australia," Blaine commented, obviously having a better grasp of geography than Kurt did. "How is there service there?" Stheno was probably providing it through company satellites.
"Ten bucks says its undeveloped, sparsely populated, and hard to access," Kurt said as he looked up the region. Sure enough. "She's smart. On an island with 50 people, her minions would be noticeable. In a region with eighteen thousand people, she's virtually inaccessible, but she won't be noticed."
"So how do we get there?" Blaine asked, and Kurt sighed.
"I have to make a phone call."
Port Columbus International Airport, 4600 International Gateway, Columbus, OH 03:42:18
It would have been a fifteen minute cab ride to the airport, and Kurt still had plenty of cash, but there was no cab on earth that would pick them up from downtown Columbus at three in the morning, so they had to get on a bus. Several buses. Thankfully all the buses were still running. Even a small city like Columbus was still alive in the dead hours of the night. A quick walk to the bus station at East Broad Street and South Grant, 22 stops till they reached East Broad Street and North James, a little walk up North James, then 14 stops until the bus dropped them off inside the airport.
"Who are we meeting?" Blaine asked, because he hadn't been privy to the rather terse phone call Kurt had made a little bit earlier. Unfortunately, to make it in the library was a waste of time, considering he had spent an hour on Columbus buses.
"Someone who's not a morning person," Kurt said as they reached their terminal. Kurt took a seat and patted the one next to them for Blaine.
"I can't believe we're just hopping on a plane to Australia," Blaine said, and he sounded excited, but he also looked exhausted, and when he sat down next to Kurt he leaned his head on Kurt's shoulder. Thankfully, lots of flights departed early, and the one their trio would be getting on actually left at five in the morning, which would give them time to get through security once their third showed up.
"You okay?" Kurt asked the boy snoozing against his arm.
"Yeah, it's just been a long day," was all Blaine said, but Kurt couldn't blame him. Blaine was amazing and strong and stubborn, but he was human and untrained and tired.
"You can get some sleep on the plane," Kurt promised him, giving the tenor a kiss on the forehead.
"So it finally happened," a rather sassy voice interrupted them, and Kurt looked up at the very displeased face of his former partner. "You two finally bumped uglies." Agent Lopez didn't sound like she was teasing. She sounded very annoyed.
"We didn't have time," Kurt said dryly. Blaine's eyes were shut, so Kurt could assume he wasn't really listening well enough to corroborate Kurt's story.
"Didn't I warn you that if you even tried to go after Blaine you would get fired?" Agent Lopez asked, and she looked absolutely steamed.
"He had been kidnapped by Stheno. What was I supposed to do, leave him in the hands of the incompetent, bureaucratic nightmare we call our employer?"
"It's actually your duty as an American citizen to have done exactly that," Agent Lopez replied, but her lips twitched. "So, since we're both going to get fired now anyway, since I let Blaine fall into the hands of Stheno and you rescued him off-case, impressive, by the way-"
"Thank you."
"Never interrupt me," she said, and it probably wasn't the first time. "Fill me in. If we're going to do this, we're not going in blind." Agent Lopez threw something onto his lap. His old CIA badge.
"Blaine's father is in Cape York Peninsula. Judging by the coordinates, I think the lab is somewhere underwater between the landmass and Mount Adolphus Island."
"I really hate that Sylvester bitch," Agent Lopez muttered.
"I got us all a flight to Weipa, but that's still about two hundred miles from where the land access to the lab must be, and there's only one road leading to the peninsula."
"A road that I'm guessing is completely flooded during this time of year."
"Of course."
"We'll find some transportation," Agent Lopez said confidently. "I brought gadgets from the agency, and I figured you needed your badge to get through customs. Here's something for him." The badge she handed Kurt said civilian consultant to the CIA. "Let me make this very clear to you, in case you haven't figured this out: bringing him along is by far the stupidest thing you've done on this case, and that makes him your problem. I'm in charge of you and you alone; Blaine is your responsibility."
"Shouldn't you be worried about protecting him because he's important to the case?" Kurt asked for the sake of arguing.
"I'm not the one who put him in danger," Agent Lopez said coldly.
"He wouldn't go to the agency."
"Then you chloroform him and drag his sorry ass anyway," she said, still angry. "But what's done is done, and your boyfriend is your responsibility." Kurt didn't bother to correct her and point out that he and Blaine hadn't talked about anything serious. It didn't seem worth the wasted oxygen. Agent Lopez sighed heavily. "We're going to get in so much trouble for this."
"I know."
Gate B33, Concourse B, Port Columbus International Airport, 4600 International Gateway, Columbus, OH 04:52:19
It wasn't easy getting all of the gadgets through customs, even as CIA operatives. Blaine was the only person who had passed through quickly, having no metal on him besides his powered-off phone. Kurt had to throw out the broken nail scissors he was still carrying in his belt, and they seemed a little worried about his burned, cut, and scraped hands, but they let him through anyway. Agent Lopez had argued the most, letting them go through her backpack of gear (some of the gadgets she had Kurt didn't even recognize), but refusing to let them test out any of them. Eventually, she had yelled at the customs officers in Spanglish so much that they just gave up and let her through, trusting the badge she was carrying.
"Last call for flight AA228 for Dallas," the gatekeeper called out, and Kurt practically had to drag a half-conscious Blaine to their first-class seats (being government operatives had perks). The moment Blaine's seatbelt was locked and his ticket was checked, he was fast asleep.
"You really shouldn't have brought him," Agent Lopez said again as Kurt watched the tenor sleep. Blaine looked so peaceful, ignoring the dark rings around his eyes.
"I couldn't persuade him to go to the agency," Kurt said again. "It's not exactly like he still trusts me, considering the last time he trusted me I turned out to be undercover."
"He's a liability."
"He's done all right so far," Kurt said softly. "Maybe once we're in Australia, we can convince him to stay somewhere while he go save his father. I think he trusts me more now, and the two of us together are perfectly capable of completing this mission."
Agent Lopez pulled out her phone, clearly looking for places to stick Blaine. "Weipa's a little town, but it will do. Hopefully, Blaine will stay at the Heritage Resort Weipa-Cape York while we try to rescue his father." She checked to make sure Blaine was completely asleep. "How, exactly, are we going to do that?"
"I have no clue," Kurt answered honestly. "I managed to rescue Blaine thinking on my feet, but we need a plan."
"We know nothing about the laboratory or its security measures. We only have a handful of gadgets. We're still not entirely sure how to get there. And we potentially have a civilian handicap." Agent Lopez sighed. "We're up shit's creek, aren't we?"
"We have 28 hours to figure something out," Kurt said.
"Tell me about the flight."
"3 hours to Dallas, an hour layover there, 16 hours to Brisbane, three and a half hour layover there, 2 hours to Cairns, one hour layover there, and then an hour and a half to Weipa," Kurt said, remembering the details from the computer.
Agent Lopez sat for a minute on her phone, even though they were supposed to have turned off their phones by now, and Kurt didn't interrupt her. He had asked her a huge favor by asking her to come on this crazy mission with him, and she didn't owe him anything. "I booked us a suite at the Novotel Brisbane Airport Hotel for the three hours layover," she said casually. "Blaine can get some more sleep, we can all grab a shower, and we can try to figure out transportation from there." They would have a better idea of what was available. Noticing the stewardess give her a dirty look, Santana turned off her phone and placed it in the next on the seat back in front of her. "Can they track you with that?" she asked, looking at Kurt's shrink-wrapped phone.
"It's not emitting any signals, so no," Kurt answered. "And I already killed Blaine's GPS."
"I noticed," she said casually, "considering the agency was still using that. They assumed, lucky for you, that Stheno found it. They still haven't connected that and the agents tied up in Blaine's basement and the CIA hack into Verizon, so your name hasn't come up yet. Congratulations, Hummel, you're officially off the radar." That was a relief, at least.
"What else was Dr. Anderson working on in his lab?" Kurt asked.
"Why does it matter?" she asked, and she didn't sound like she was trying to cover something up. Agent Lopez sounded legitimately confused.
"Weren't you on the scene to pick up the agents Stheno overcame?" he asked, and she nodded. "Did you not notice the rats?"
Wheels seemed to be turning in Agent Lopez's head. "There were no rats." Vaguely in the background to their conversation, Kurt could hear the pilot announcing their takeover, and his stomach dropped out as the flight started to ascend. Helicopters were cool, but airplanes made him nauseous.
"Did the CIA take a swab of the floor?" he asked.
"We're not CSI, Kurt," Agent Lopez said, but she didn't sound annoyed. "The only thing that was on the floor that we care about are our agents."
"When Blaine called me to tell me that he needed help, he told me the tanks were smashed and the floor was soaking wet-"
"We cleaned up the antineutrinos with the help of a hazmat cleanup crew," Agent Lopez said, obviously trying to calm his nerves. "I was on the scene when the floor was still covered in water, but there were no rats."
"Agent Lopez-"
"I think you can call me Santana now. You've earned it."
"Santana, Doctor Anderson had other things in those tanks, too," Kurt said, reaching the inevitable conclusion. "I don't know what, but it's definitely something dangerous that could be weaponized. Blaine was down there several hours before you guys, and he said there were dead and half-eaten rats on the ground. By the time you got there, the rats had been fully consumed by whatever other experiment Doctor Anderson was working on, something that was cleaned up by the hazmat team without being analyzed."
"So there's something that's small enough to be invisible to the naked eye, but powerful enough to eat rats… the rashes," Santana said suddenly.
"What?" Kurt asked.
"The agents that were found on the floor, they had rashes on their legs where their pants had ripped. We assumed it had happened during the fight, but neither of them remembered it happening, and they had rashes on their legs where their pants were… chewed away." Kurt and Santana both reached the same horrible conclusion at the same time, but Kurt was the one who verbalized it.
"Whatever was in those other tanks started eating those agents… and probably could have finished the job, given the chance."
"We're in big trouble, aren't we?"
Bag Claim C26, Terminal C, Dallas Fort Worth International Airport, East Airfield Drive, Euless, TX 08:13:54
Blaine was still asleep when they landed in Dallas, so Kurt had to wake him up. "Good morning, sunshine," he whispered to Blaine, kissing his forehead.
"'S too early," Blaine muttered, half-conscious.
"While I don't disagree, we have to get off the plane now," Kurt said as Santana was taking her backpack, the only luggage they had, down from the overhead compartment.
"Plane?" Blaine asked, and that woke him up a little. Clearly, he had been somewhere else in his mind, because Kurt could almost see the events of the last twenty-four hours filling in. "Oh, right. Where are we? What time is it?"
"It's 8:15, and we're in Dallas," Kurt said gently as Blaine was still waking up. He really didn't care that Santana was waiting at the end of the row and tapping her foot impatiently. It wasn't like they were the last people on the plane. "We have a little bit of a layover before the sixteen hour portion of the trip, so we're going to get some breakfast."
"Kay," Blaine said yawning, obviously too tired to argue. He stood up a little shakily, but he followed them under his own power off the plane.
"There's a breakfast bar and cafe called Cereality at Gate C6," Santana said to both of them, seeming a little short after the long plane ride. "I wouldn't advise coffee, because you can get sleep on the sixteen hour ride ahead of us, but get something to eat and drink. We can have lunch and dinner on the plane." Santana headed off in a different direction, so Kurt was forced to assume that she would meet them there once she was done doing whatever she was doing.
"Where's she going?"
"I have no clue," Kurt said, taking Blaine's hand as they headed for C6 and ignoring the looks they were getting from some people that were obviously Texas locals. Not many people seemed too bothered, just a little surprised.
Blaine and Kurt had a nice little breakfast at the buffet at Cereality (which had good food despite its ridiculous name), and they were debating about going to Freshen's Yogurt for a treat when Santana came to the table, loaded with bags, and snapped an order to a waiter for a bagel quickly. The waiter, suitably terrified, abandoned another table mid-order to fulfill her request.
"So, this is where you've been," Kurt said, because their layover was going to be done shortly.
"I had to do some shopping. Thankfully this terminal has everything." The airport in Texas was much bigger and more active than the one in Columbus had been, and it seemed to have every store on the planet. Santana was even holding a Brooks Brothers bag.
"Would you like to explain your purchases?" Kurt asked.
She pulled a big duffel bag out of a bag marked 'Southwest Collegiate' that had the Texas A&M logo and mascot on it. As she packed things from various bags into that bag, she explained. "Laptop for research, as well as phone chargers, from Best Buy. Clothes from Brooks Brothers, since I don't even want to think about how long any of us have been wearing these outfits. Bathroom products and makeup from the DFW TravelMart, because we need to look presentable. Books for the flight from Hudson Booksellers, newspapers and snacks from Sierra News, and sweatshirts and t-shirts for both of you from Southwest Collegiate. Kurt, you'll need to look professional in Weipa, but you should put this on in Brisbane. We can never be too careful. Blaine, we want to make you look as much like an innocent, uninvolved citizen tourist as possible, and this will help." Santana was clearly already planning, even though they had agreed to do so during the layover in Brisbane. "We can all change and shower in Brisbane." As she was talking, the waiter brought her the bagel she ordered. She snatched it out of his hand and ate as she continued to talk. "We should get going, our next flight leaves from D25, because that's an international terminal."
Since they had already finished breakfast, Kurt paid the tab with the money he still had from the CIA (it had been dwindling, but he still had plenty), Santana scarfed down her bagel, and the trio headed out of the terminal.
Gate D25, Terminal D, Dallas Fort Worth International Airport, East Airfield Drive, Euless, TX 09:27:18
They had to cross the street in the middle of the airport to get over to Terminal D, but they were on time for their flight, and Blaine was asleep again before the plane ascended into the air. "So, are you going to tell me your plan?" Kurt asked once they were in the air and he was positive Blaine was asleep.
"The airport in Weipa has a helicopter service. We have to ensure we get one to get to Cape York Peninsula. We try to put Blaine in the hotel, you change into something presentable, we go back to the airport, get a helicopter with the help of CIA badges and the words 'international security,' and fly out to Cape York. I have stealth suits in my backpack of gear which we'll be wearing under our Brooks Brothers clothes."
"Sounds good so far." Santana had at least solved the problem of getting there.
"After that, our first obstacle is gaining access to the facility. Presumably there will be a form of land-based access, since it wouldn't be easy to get in giant tanks of water if the access was underwater, but our stealth suits double as scuba suits just in case." In any other circumstance, that would have been awesome. Now, it was just a little bit scary. "If there is land-based access, we'll have to find it. If it's underwater, a metal detector will probably due, but I doubt that will work for any land-based access."
"What gadgets do we have?" Kurt asked finally, since he had been curious since their first walk through customs (in Dallas, customs had automatically respected the badge and hadn't even made them walk through metal detectors).
"Some of the ones you had for your mission, and a few dangerously experimental ones that I wouldn't have taken if this weren't an urgent and very illegal mission. I'll walk you through them once we've gotten rid of the civilian," she said, looking over at Blaine. "This won't be easy, you know that right."
"It's a suicide mission," Kurt said flatly, because he knew Santana had been thinking it the whole time.
"What did you tell your family?" she asked, and this was the softest he had ever seen her.
"I didn't. After whatever you told them about Dalton-"
Santana thankfully explained. "We told them you got beat up because you didn't understand uniformity. It was a reason you would want to leave the school and an excuse for the mark on your eye."
"Well, they seemed pretty upset and very protective, so I couldn't tell them that I was leaving. I briefly saw my brother when I snuck out, and I think he knows I might die, but my parents probably know I'm gone by now. He's a terrible liar, my brother." Kurt was smiling in spite of himself, because even though he and Finn had previously had problems, they really were brothers.
"You should call them," Santana said gently. "There have been a lot of agents who regretted not getting the chance to say goodbye to their loved ones, agents much older than you that hadn't seen their parents in years or decades. Call them. No matter how angry they are that you're gone, they'll be more happy that your safe." Santana handed Kurt her ten-percent-charged cell phone, and the decision was made for him.
Santana pulled a book out of the bag in the overhead compartment as Kurt dialed, and unconvincingly pretended to peruse it as the phone rang. "Kurt Hummel, where the hell are you?" his dad thundered as soon as he answered the phone. Clearly he had been answering every call like this, considering he wouldn't have Santana's number in his phone.
"I'm on a plane between Dallas and Brisbane," Kurt answered honestly, and there was dead silence on the other end of the line.
"Buddy," his dad's voice was much quieter, "just because Dalton didn't work out, it doesn't mean you have to go back to McKinley. We'll find somewhere else where you fit in."
"I'm not running away," Kurt assured his father as soon as he figured out what the man was talking about. "There are a lot of reasons I was at Dalton, dad, and I can't tell you some of them, but I…" Kurt sighed. "Finn's a terrible liar."
"He shouldn't've had to cover for you," Burt said, sounding considerably more annoyed now that he knew Kurt wasn't having some sort of mental breakdown.
"I love you, Dad," Kurt said gently.
"Buddy, what's going on?"
"Tell Finn and Carole that I love them too."
"We all love you, kiddo, I swear there's no reason for you to-"
"Bye, Dad," he said just before he heard a beep and Santana's phone died.
"You can never explain that to him," Santana said quietly, not having turned a page since she picked up the book. "Even if we get back."
"I know."
A/N: Heavy stuff, right? So, this didn't take too too long, and I'll have more soon. I'm really loving this story! Hope you guys are too.
Reviews are Love.