If you don't know the episode, you might want to be aware that someone has a medical crisis.

Quoting from 2x03 has been modified to fit the Donutverse, both the people who say the words and when they say them, but it still goes pretty well with the episode. Warning for continued angst (which continues for the rest of the story).

-amy

Neither of Rachel's dads were home when they arrived. Finn parked his Ford in the driveway and came around to the other side to open Rachel's door, letting her out.

"Are you sure this is okay?" he said. The deja vu hit him: being at Blaine's house and asking the same question before going in. It made him shiver.

"Of course," she said calmly. "My dads trust me. They know I won't do anything… inappropriate, with a boy." She smiled. "Not even you, Finn."

He smiled back and followed her into the house. She brought him into the kitchen and went right to the enormous water in the corner, filling up her cup and drinking the whole thing before filling it up again.

"How are you not peeing all the time?" he asked curiously. She laughed.

"I am, if you hadn't noticed. Hydration is very important." She went to the freezer and opened it. "I have those kulfi bars you like so much."

He happily took one from her, unwrapping it. It was hard to find anything in Rachel's kitchen that measured up to the things Puck made, especially considering she was vegan. "Thanks. You don't have to buy things just for me."

"I like to." She watched him eat with a yearning expression that he didn't think was about the food. "How are things? With… Blaine?"

He shook his head. "Same. I'm trying to stay out of it and let his roommate handle things, but I don't think he's doing very well. It's really getting to Puck."

"It's strange to think about Noah being worried about anybody. He's always seemed so laissez-faire."

Finn had no idea what that meant, but he just shook his head again, making short work of the yogurt popsicle. "No way. I think he cares too much, and sometimes it's better just to pretend not to. He doesn't do that so much anymore, but… I don't know. Things are just really hard right now."

"I'm sorry." She moved in close, taking the stick and wrapper from his ice cream bar out of his hand and setting them on the counter. Her hands slid around his middle, and she sighed as she settled against his chest.

Holding her felt strange, but not at all bad. Her hair smelled lovely, not like Quinn's but soft like that, and her skin was magical. He tried not to be too grabby with the touching, remembering how she needed to go slowly. Eventually she reached for his face, drawing him down to kiss her.

"I know things are complicated for you, but I need to talk to you about something important." She took his hand. "Would you come up to my room?"

This was especially weird. He nodded, walking with her up the curved staircase to her room at the end of the hall. It was the same as always, full of neatly arranged memorabilia.

"Please." She indicated her four-poster bed. "Sit."

He did so, looking up at her in confusion. His phone fell out of his pocket onto the floor, and Rachel picked it up and set it on the nightstand.

"Finn," she said, "let's discuss your newfound love for Jesus and how it's affecting me. I want this relationship to go the distance, but I need to know that when I'm twenty-five and I've won a bunch of Tonys, and I'm ready to have intercourse and babies, that those babies will be raised in a certain way."

He goggled at her. There were too many questions running through his head to be able to say them all, starting with you want to have babies with me, but he just blurted, "You don't think you're gonna have sex till you're twenty-five?"

"I want my children to be raised in the Jewish faith," she said firmly.

He nodded. "Sure. Of course." It occurred to him that Beth was Jewish, kind of, since Shelby was. It's not like our kids would lack for role models. He felt an overwhelming rush of dizziness at the prospect. "You want me to… be the father of your children?"

"Certainly. Someday. A long time from now."

He couldn't address the questions about how she could possibly know what she would want then, or the ridiculously complicated geometry of that relationship compared to all the rest of the ones he currently had. All he could do was smile stupidly at her. "Wow."

She smiled back. "Let's lay down on the bed."

"Okay."

This was quickly escalating into something he hadn't expected. Her tiny body felt nothing like Blaine's, but the size difference was almost the same, and her little moans and breathy sounds were just as appealing as if Kurt had made them. Mostly, though, it was the sudden concept of having children with her.

We could make a baby, he thought, and the idea was an unexpectedly huge turn-on. He tried not to rub his dick on her thigh, although if he'd been with anybody else that would have been happening already.

"Finn," she whispered, "I'd like to give you something in exchange for what you gave me."

She took his hand and slid it up along her body, gathering both her wrists together into the circle of his fingers. He found himself staring down at her, realizing with a shock that he was now holding her pinned with her hands above her head.

"I thought you said we weren't going to control each other?" he asked.

"Maybe a little?"

It wasn't a tease; she didn't do that flirty thing. But he shook his head, letting her hands go.

"Rachel, I don't think you understand. It's not a game. You can't just… decide to do that because you want to."

"But you want to." She looked so earnest. "I want you to have it."

"That's really nice, but… it has to be mutual. Otherwise it's kind of fake." He touched her face, watching her close her eyes in pleasure. "I don't want you to do stuff unless you want it."

She thought about that. "I don't know," she said at last. "Sometimes it sounds exciting. Mostly, though, I still don't really understand."

He thought about Puck talking about the lessons he'd gotten last summer from his girlfriends, about how to make sex awesome for a girl. "I think… that might mean you should wait until you do. Understand, I mean. Like, you know what you like, right?"

Her cheeks, which until now had been their ordinary color, turned pink. She looked flustered. "What do you mean?"

"You know what makes you hot. What gets you off." He peered at her face. "Or maybe you don't?"

"I do," she said quickly. "I've just never told anybody about it before. That's kind of private."

He had to laugh. "Rach, aren't we kind of doing private things? This is how Kurt and I started, back when we were becoming friends. We talked about what we liked, and it… led to other things."

She sighed. "Do we have to talk about Kurt when we're alone together?"

"No. Of course not. This can just be about us."

They kissed a little more, but the moment was gone. Eventually he sat up, and she followed suit, watching him uncertainly.

"You're not mad?" she asked. "That I want to stop?"

"Nah. I'm not in any hurry." He smiled at her grateful expression.

"That's…" She laughed. "That's pretty hot, Finn."

"Awesome," he said. It had been a while since he'd felt so relaxed. It was almost like being happy. "How about we do some homework?"

Ten minutes until French class, Kurt messaged Adam. He was too many countries away for texting to work, but they could still send messages to each other. It was hit or miss whether Adam would be around to receive them when Kurt could send them, but that was okay. He liked collecting Adam's messages throughout the day and responding to them later.

French was one of Kurt's favorite classes of junior year so far, even though he had to deal with Azimio in there as his dialogue partner. He appreciated that Madame Bates gave them every chance to actually speak French, even if most of the class mumbled through it all.

"Classe, nous allons pratiquer le dialogue." Madame Bates made an encouraging gesture. "Parlez-nous de çe que vous ferez çe week-end."

Kurt sighed. He wasn't sure if he could offer anything to Azimio that wasn't going to be fodder for more insults.

"Voulez-vous passer en premier?" he asked politely.

"Whatever," Azimio muttered, his lip curling back in distaste. "You tell me about whatever you want. I ain't gonna understand it anyway."

Kurt gave him a wry smile. "Strangely, I'm not surprised," he said in French, watching Azimio's eyes glaze over. "My father's trying to get me to stay home this weekend, even though apparently I'm the only one who will be. The rest of the world is trying to avoid me and losing sleep over relationships over which they have no control. So I think I'm going to take Sarah and Frances to sing-a-long Sound of Music. And in two hours I will experience more culture and artistry than you will in your entire life."

"Kurt?"

Kurt looked up and saw Mr. Schue and Ms. Pillsbury standing in the doorway. Mr. Schue's eyes were worried. "Can we talk to you outside?"

Ms. Pillsbury spoke quietly to Madame Bates as Mr. Schue escorted him into the hall. "What's going on?" Kurt asked.

"Kurt... there's no easy way to say this. It's your dad. He's had what appears to be a heart attack. The ambulance came to the garage and -"

"What? Wait, he - my dad?" Kurt felt his feet stop, like he'd forgotten how to make them walk. "I don't understand."

Mr. Schue sighed. "The ambulance came to the garage and took him to St. Rita's. We'll take you to the emergency room and wait with you."

"Oh my god." The word god meant nothing, it was just an expression, but Kurt heard himself say it, and he wanted to take it back. He grabbed for Mr. Schue's hands. "Is Carole with him already? What about Noah? Where's Finn? We have to call Sarah at school."

"One step at a time, Kurt. You're the only one who's legally allowed in to see him. You can call Finn and Puck and everybody else later. Finn's mom, she's a nurse, right?"

"She doesn't work at St. Rita's." His head was pounding with the urge to run for his car, but he controlled it. "I think — maybe you should drive."

"That's fine, Kurt." Ms. Pillsbury took his arm and walked him down the hall. All kinds of words were threatening to leap off his tongue as they walked. It seemed a crisis caused a lack of filter. He let them tuck him into the back of Mr. Schue's rusty sedan.

"Didn't you buy a new sports car?" he asked. "Like Carl's."

Mr. Schue looked at Ms. Pillsbury in the front seat. "I, uh, took it back."

"I got to drive his car once, on my last birthday. It has incredible pickup." His voice was trembling, but he figured neither of them were going to mind, because his dad was in the hospital. It seemed that every thought he was having ended with my dad's in the hospital. "Did Toby make you return it?"

Ms. Pillsbury, inexplicably, laughed. Mr. Schue shook his head.

"I haven't talked to Toby in weeks," Kurt went on. "Blaine's not allowed to see us anymore, so the only person who's driving out there is—"

"What?" Mr Schue looked distressed. "What do you mean, Blaine's not allowed to see you?"

"His dad." Kurt fluttered his hand, choking back tears. "I'm sorry, Mr. Schue, it's too much right now."

"Of course, Kurt, of course. Don't worry about it." He sighed. "I'm sure Toby would love to hear from you, even if you're not visiting Blaine. He said he really enjoyed giving you and Mike and Brittany dance lessons."

"Does he know?" Ms. Pillsbury murmured.

"Not now," Mr. Schue replied in a low voice.

Kurt felt suddenly exhausted by the whole conversation. But of course not as exhausted as my dad, his brain went on blithely, because my dad's in the hospital.

"My… mom," Kurt said. "When she was sick. I spent a lot of afternoons taking car rides like this one."

"How old were you, Kurt?" Ms. Pillsbury asked.

"She got the initial diagnosis when I was six, but I didn't really know very much about what was going on at that time. It went on for a couple years. Most of the last six months were in the hospital. I had to repeat third grade."

He looked down at his buzzing phone, which was inexplicably already in his hand. It was Carole. He put the phone to his ear.

"Kurt," she said, her voice full of pain, "oh my god, honey, I just heard. I called as quickly as I could. Are you okay? Where are you? Jesus, I'm saying all the stupid things we were taught not to say in nursing school."

Kurt couldn't help but smile. "I'm on my way to the hospital, Carole. We don't know anything yet."

"You're so calm. How can you be so calm?"

"I think your son taught me how to do that, actually."

He heard her sob a little as she laughed. "You're such an amazing kid, Kurt. I hope I tell you that enough. I tried calling Finn but it went to voice mail. Do you know where he is?"

"He should be in Spanish," Kurt said slowly. "Both him and Noah. Mr. Schue, who has your class?"

"I don't even know; I didn't make it there today. Probably Principal Figgins is watching them until they can get a substitute."

"Well, I'm on my way, too. I'll keep trying Finn, and I'll arrange for Puck to pick up Sarah and bring her as soon as we know more."

"I… yes. Okay." He wasn't going to get into the details of his conversation with Puck. He'd said he wouldn't run away, and Kurt was going to trust that that was true. "I'll see you in a minute."

They pulled into the emergency parking circle and left the car with the valet. While they waited, he tried Finn himself, but it went to voice mail, too.

They checked in at the counter. The nurse on duty reported that he was in surgery following a heart attack, but that they'd have to wait for more information. Kurt knew what that meant. He waited for an eternity while machines beeped and the television in the waiting room played daytime television too loudly. Eyeing the sign that said No cell phones beyond this point, he sent out a mass text to everyone in Glee while he waited.

1 text - Kurt Hummel
2:23 PM: My dad's in the hospital. He had a heart attack. Mr. Schue is with me. I'll let you know when I know more but right now, no cell coverage.

Finn still hadn't responded, but Kurt got a shower of replies from others, including Mercedes, who said she'd tell Puck. She knew Puck well enough to know he didn't check his phone. For some reason that made Kurt cry when none of the rest of the events of today had.

"Kurt Hummel?" A doctor in blue scrubs emerged from beyond the double doors.

"Where is he?" Kurt blurted, rising from the bench and wrapping his arms around himself. "Is he — dead?"

"No, he's alive," said the doctor, "but I'm sorry, I don't have any other good news."

The flood of relief was short-lived. "I want to see him." He started forward, but the doctor held him back.

"He hasn't regained consciousness."

"Consciousness?" echoed Mr. Schue. "I thought he had a heart attack."

"Brought on by an arrhythmia, which caused a lack of blood to his brain. That's what made him lose consciousness and is keeping him comatose." The doctor looked as exhausted as Kurt felt.

"I don't understand what you're saying," Kurt said, feeling the panic rise inside him. "When is he going to wake up?"

"I don't know."

"Just - take us to him now, please," said Mr. Schue, and they followed the doctor down the hall to where his dad was waiting.

Every detail of the emergency room — the blue curtains, the constant beeping of the machines, the wheels and tubes and tile floor — brought back an unexpected barrage of memories of his mother. Even the smells were the same, antiseptic and mint and the cloying sweet smell of disease. He couldn't turn off his brain.

I need Adam, he thought, and bit back a sob. But if I call him he'll probably abandon his tour and come here, because… my dad's in the hospital.

His dad was still and small on the hospital bed, hooked up to oxygen and an IV drip. He didn't respond as Kurt drew closer, but it felt better to be close to him anyway.

"I need a minute," he said. "With Ms. Pillsbury."

Mr. Schue's head jerked up, and he looked at Ms. Pillsbury, who appeared to be as startled as he was. "I — I'll be right outside."

Ms. Pillsbury moved to stand beside Kurt, looking up at him. He sighed.

"Carole can't reach Finn," he said, "and neither can I. Can you please call Carl and have him help with that?"

"Of course," she said, "but I don't know… Kurt, Finn was pretty upset when he left the other day."

"I know. He told me about what Carl and you are planning. Congratulations, by the way."

She suppressed a nervous laugh. "I haven't said yes, yet."

"Yeah, but you will." He sighed at her expression. "Sorry. I've lost my filter."

"You're allowed, I think." She touched his arm. "I'll go call him now."

He counted it a mark in the positive column that he hadn't mentioned anything to Ms. Pillsbury about what Carl was like in bed, or how good he was with the single-tail whip. Those details were all in the past, at least for now, because Finn and Carl weren't together. And my dad's in the hospital.

He gathered up his father's limp hand and held it as tightly as he dared. "Dad?" he murmured. "Can you hear me? If you can hear me, squeeze my hand. I'm holding yours right now. Just squeeze back."

It was like being in Lima with Blaine in Westerville, he decided. He could send out as much desire and hope that he could manage, and even take action, but as long as there was no response, he had no idea what was really going on. Blaine might as well be in a coma. He took a shuddering breath.

"Come on, Dad. Just squeeze my hand."

He wasn't sure how long he'd been standing there — the sounds of the hospital put him in a pretty zen state — until suddenly there was gentle pressure on his shoulder. He turned to see Carole beside him, and Puck and Sarah behind her. He hugged Carole.

"Fuck," Puck said, staring at Burt. Then he turned right around and ran out of the room.

"He's always had a weak stomach for stuff like this," said Sarah. Her eyes were enormous, but she wasn't going anywhere. "He's probably puking in the trash can."

Carole moved to stand on the other side of the bed, inspecting Burt's IV and chart with a practiced eye. "Do you want to go check on him, Kurt?"

He didn't really; when people were sick, he felt sick too. But he knew that was just another way of avoiding the responsibility of the situation. Noah might not be feeling like himself, Kurt told himself sternly, but that doesn't mean you're not in charge of him anymore.

Puck was standing outside the door, looking a little paler than he had a moment ago, and leaning back against the wall. He bit his lip when he saw Kurt. "I'm sorry."

"Noah, it's not your fault." He reached out and hugged him before thinking whether or not it was a good idea, but Puck responded by holding on tightly, even desperately.

"Is he going to be okay?" he asked.

"They don't know yet." He tried to reconstruct the three sentence description the doctor had given him about his dad's arrhythmia. Puck just listened and nodded, holding onto his hand. Then Kurt realized who was still missing. "Where's Finn?"

"He went to the garage to close up. He said he'd meet us here. I think he was mad you didn't call him."

"What the hell?" snapped Kurt. "Everybody in the world was calling him, including me. What, did he think I was going to leave him out? He's the one who didn't respond."

"Okay, okay, whatever. You can tell him yourself." Puck looked like he might be sick again. Kurt checked his own phone again, but while there were lots of well-wishes from the rest of Glee, there was no reply from Finn.

The four of them spent the rest of the evening in the emergency room while they processed his dad's admittance to the eighth floor, where the cardiac patients went for recovery. The doctor who'd spoken with Kurt, whose name turned out to be Dr. Yee, gave Carole all the details. For once, Kurt was glad he didn't have to be the detail person.

"He'll be in the ICU until he regains consciousness," she told them as they gathered in the hallway. "Would you all please go eat something while I finish this paperwork? Then we can trade places. Finn said his cell phone is missing, by the way. He called from the garage."

It was good to have an answer to one of the mysteries of the afternoon, anyway. Sarah and Puck held tight to one another's hands, seeming not to realize they were doing it. Kurt let them take care of one another. He was kind of grateful for the space to himself.

"I'm not used to all this togetherness," he told them, sitting opposite from them at the table with their cafeteria trays. "Still, even after this year, it's weird to have people coming together when things happen. My family's always been just me and my dad, and that's it."

"You liked Finn's family reunion," Puck pointed out. He was ignoring his soup on his tray, but Kurt wasn't going to push him to eat.

"I did," he agreed. "I especially liked watching you interacting with everybody."

"Kids love Noah," said Sarah. She munched a fry. "I never had patience for them, even when I was one."

Puck tugged on her curls. "Still are."

"Eighth grade isn't a kid," she said hotly.

"Kurt?"

They all looked up to see Finn standing there in the middle of the cafeteria, staring at him like Kurt had thrown a slushie on him.

"Finn," said Kurt.

"What the hell happened?"

"My dad's in the hospital." It was the words that had been going through his head all day. At this point he was almost able to say them without feeling sick.

"I know. My mom went and got us at school, but everybody was talking about it in Glee, and — I just felt like I was the last one to know."

Kurt frowned. "I'm sorry, Finn. I called you, like, eight times."

"Yeah, I thought my phone was in my bag, but it turns out it wasn't." He looked from Puck to Sarah and back to Kurt. "I thought… maybe you didn't call me because he's not my father."

"Finn," Kurt sighed. He pulled the chair out beside him and nodded at it. Finn sat down next to him, gingerly touching his shoulder, but Kurt shook his head and he pulled away. "I wouldn't do that. He's as close to a father as you have, right?"

"Okay." He took a deep breath. "Yeah."

"I know it may not look like what everybody else has," Sarah said, "but we're totally a family."

"Look, I-I guess I just I didn't like overhearing other people talking about it in Glee." Now he looked embarrassed. "I'm sorry I doubted you."

Puck reached across the table and grabbed Finn's hand. He looked surprised, but didn't pull away. He was already holding on to Sarah's hand on the other side. Kurt rolled his eyes and took Finn and Sarah's hands.

"Blaine should be here," she announced loudly.

"Sarah," Puck said.

"What? You know he should. It's stupid. His dad's being stupid and our dad's being stupid and… there's a lot of stupid happening. Yeah, you're scared, I get it, but I'm not going to sit around and watch you guys let stuff slip away." She kicked Puck under the table, and he jumped back. "Noah. Not talking about it isn't going to make it easier. This family stuff is work. Not like homework. Like… growing things. Like building a house. It takes a lot of work." She glared at him.

"So?" he said, looking uncertain.

"So stop fucking running away from it." She turned her glare on Finn. "And you. So what if Carl and Emma want to get married? He gets to have a family too. Get over yourself."

"Okay," Finn said meekly. He glanced at Kurt. Sarah followed his eyes.

"And Kurt, you can still go see Blaine, right? Fucking go already. It's not like you can make it worse by trying something." She made a frustrated noise. "Tatenui's up there and we don't know what's going to happen and — what if this is all the time we have? You can cry all you want and all it is is lost time. Do something." She kicked Puck again, and this time he let out a little hey. "Fuck."

Kurt felt the combination hilarity-reaction of the day mixing with the unsatisfying soup in his stomach. He leaned his elbow on the table and his head in his hand. "I don't think there's always something to do, Sarah. Sometimes you just have to wait for things to happen."

"Bullshit," she hissed. "That's nothing but a cop-out. You don't get to do that, not when it matters like this." She slammed her thin hands down on the table. They all jumped. "I'm done with you three losers. I'll be upstairs."

They sat there and stared at one another after she left, still holding each other's hands. Finn cleared his throat.

"I feel like I should say sorry, but I don't even know what I'm saying sorry for at this point."

"You already said sorry," Kurt said. "Noah, would you stay in town tonight?"

"Yeah. Yeah, of course." Puck hesitated, then added, carefully. "Do you want — anything else?"

Not if you're not willing to give it, he thought. He shook his head. "I'll think about what Sarah said, though. Because I think… I think we're not doing so well without Blaine. And I think it's going to get harder." Because my dad's in the hospital, his brain whispered.

Finn seemed to understand what he meant. "We'll stay here with you and your dad," he said. "People are gonna want to come and visit, and I can give them something to do. And I can tell them what you don't want."

Kurt regarded him. "And what would that be?"

"You don't want anybody's prayers." He nudged Puck's hand. "Because you think God is kind of like Santa Claus for adults. Otherwise, God's kind of a jerk, isn't he? I mean, he makes you gay and then has his followers going around telling you it's something that you chose. As if someone would choose to be mocked every single day of their life."

Kurt swallowed the tears in his throat, but the ones in his eyes leaked out anyway. He nodded, sniffing.

"And right now you don't want a heavenly father. You want your real one back." Finn stroked the back of Kurt's hand with his thumb.

"I'm sorry, Noah," Kurt said, when he could speak again. "You all can believe whatever you want to. But I can't believe something I don't."

"I don't think I was asking for that," said Puck. "Just let me do my thing. I won't force it on you."

"What about your dad?"

Puck didn't say anything. Finn tugged at his hand until Puck stood up with him, and Kurt joined them.

"He doesn't get a say, right? This is our family, not his. Puck, gimme your phone. I'd better call Carl and let him know I'm here before he comes over here himself."

Puck watched him walk out of the cafeteria with his phone. He looked down at Finn's untouched soup.

"He still hasn't even been in your dad's room," he said, and raised an eyebrow at Kurt. "Who's avoiding things now?"

Carole stayed at the hospital the next few days while the boys were at school. Each day was the same: after a wholly unsatisfying Glee rehearsal, Kurt managed to escape to the hospital while Puck and Finn were at football practice. He'd already received hourly no change texts from Carole, so he wasn't surprised to find his dad in the same position he'd been in the day before.

"I'll do homework," he said to Carole on Thursday, opening his government textbook. "Finn and Noah will be here later with Sarah. Go take a walk or something. Eat."

Carole gave him a tired smile and a hug. "I have twelve fires at work to put out. I think I'll be doing that for a few hours, at least. But I'll be back in a bit."

It was quiet for about twenty minutes. Kurt managed to write a page and a half about the similarities and differences between the judicial, legislative and executive branches before he set his pen down and went over to sit beside his dad.

"You're missing all the drama," he said. "It's getting more complicated by the minute, and it seems like we keep losing people. Blaine, and Adam's on the other side of the world, and now Carl and —" He took a steadying breath. "I know you didn't always know what kind of advice to give when things got really weird. Maybe I could just use a hand to hold."

Holding his dad's limp hand and not feeling him hold back was worse than not touching him at all. Kurt rested his hand on top of his dad's instead, and sang one of the Beatles songs he and Blaine and Finn had sung all summer. He sang it softly, so as not to disturb other patients, and slowly, because he knew he would cry if he tried to pretend to be cheerful.

Yeah, I'll tell you something I think you'll understand
When I say that something, I wanna hold your hand
I wanna hold your hand, I wanna hold your hand…

Someone at the door cleared his throat. Kurt stopped singing and looked up to see Dave Karofsky watching him with a stricken expression.

"I'm sorry to interrupt," said Dave uncomfortably. "Okay if I come in?"

Kurt was so surprised for a moment, he just sat there. Then he smiled, pushing his chair out and standing up. "Yeah, yeah… come in. I was just… you know, expressing myself. I don't know if he can hear me, but it helps me feel better."

"How's he doing?"

"The same. We're taking turns keeping an eye on him, but it's pretty quiet around here."

"Except for the singing."

Kurt flushed, smiling. "Yeah. That."

Dave paused a few feet from the bed, shuffling his feet like he didn't know where to stand. "I'm really sorry about all this, Kurt. …And I bet you've been hearing a lot of people say those words."

"A lot of a lot of things," Kurt agreed. "So many well-meaning people. My dad has a lot of friends, people I don't even know. A lot of people praying for him." He made a face, and Dave laughed.

"People kind of come out of the woodwork when things happen. You're an atheist?"

Kurt nodded. "You?"

"Yeah." When Kurt sat back down at the table, Dave sat across from him. He didn't take off his letterman jacket. "I think people don't know what to do, so they say they'll pray. It gives them an action. Even if they aren't sure they believe, it's kind of a benign thing to do. Kind thoughts, all that."

"Yeah, but maybe it's a little excessive? To ignore somebody most of the time and then want to offer all the prayers in the moment of crisis?" Kurt shook his head. "It doesn't feel very benign to me. It's too much all at once."

"You're looking for the Golden Mean," said Dave.

Kurt stared at him. The phrase came out of nowhere, right off the cover of the third Griffin and Sabine book, which was currently sitting by his bedside at home. "How did you — what is that?"

Dave picked up Kurt's pen and drew a symbol in the margin of Kurt's government paper: φ, a little circle with a tail in the center. He added = 1.618. "My calculus teacher calls it the most irrational number. In math, you get it when you have a ratio in which the longer part divided by the smaller part is also equal to the whole length divided by the longer part." He grinned at Kurt's confused face. "That's the Fibonacci sequence. And, in Aristotelian philosophy, it's the desirable middle between two extremes, one of excess and the other of deficiency. In architecture and other forms of design, it shows up a lot. In nature, too. It's, like, what's comfortable to the eye. Balance, between the relationship of two parts of a whole with each other and with the whole."

Tears hadn't been far away all week, and Kurt felt them prickle at his eyes and throat now. The desirable middle between extremes. "Yeah. I do feel a little out of balance in all my relationships. And with the whole."

"In Buddhism, it's called the middle way. The balance between the extremes of sensual indulgence and self-mortification." At Kurt's look, he added hastily, "Not — that I'm a Buddhist. It's just an interesting parallel."

"It's the title of the third Griffin and Sabine book," Kurt said, after an uncomfortable silence. "Puck and Finn's names both randomly showed up in the story. It was… surprising."

"Oh." Dave looked even more uncomfortable. "Did… was it a good story? I mean, how did it come out?"

"I don't know." Kurt stared down at the number on his paper. "We never finished it. Maybe tonight. I guess it might help to know how it ends."

Dave nodded. "I was actually trying to think if there was anything I could do to help."

Kurt was about to say no, nothing, just as he had to everybody else who'd asked that question, when he realized there was something Dave could do. "Well, yes. But you might not want to do it."

Dave shook his head vehemently. "Whatever — anything. Anything you need."

"It's Blaine."

Dave's face froze. "Kurt —"

"His dad cut him off from us. Took away his phone. He forbade Blaine from seeing Puck or Finn anymore. I'm the only one who can visit."

"Oh… shit." Dave looked positively horrified, which Kurt thought was pretty big of him, considering Dave didn't benefit at all from Blaine being in their lives. "That really sucks."

"That's only part of it. He seems to have gone into some kind of fantasy world, pretending we don't exist. His roommate's not convinced he knows it's not real. He thinks Blaine's had an actual mental break." He looked at Dave, who definitely was on the verge of bolting. "I need you to go see him. You know him better than anybody."

"Santana," he muttered.

"What?"

"Santana's his oldest friend," Dave said. "You should ask her."

He'd completely forgotten that. "That's a really good idea, actually. That is, if you're going to say no."

Dave visibly squirmed. "I want to help. I really do. But I think it would be a mistake for me to go to Dalton because there's a good chance I'll end up resenting somebody. Probably Finn, but maybe you, and… I don't want that."

"All right." Kurt nodded in resignation. "Thank you for being honest with me."

"Yeah, I think I did promise that." He gave Kurt a halfhearted smile as he stood up. "Can you… ask again, the next time you need something? Something else, I mean."

"I can do that. Thanks, Dave. For coming by."

The smile flashed a little bigger, enough for Kurt to see the real pleasure in it. "Thanks for wanting me to. And good luck."

He really does care about Blaine, Kurt reminded himself. He rested his head on his folded arms and closed his eyes. And me. This is not the time to worry about what I do or don't have.