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At first, the repetitive, music box melody is a part of Kurt’s dream.
He doesn’t react to it, beyond finding it odd and perhaps a little disturbing that the tune starts playing as soon as the automated doors slide open on a superstore covered floor to ceiling in vibrant red (and he knows he’s at Target, but geez, point noted already). The song continues on as he walks the circular perimeter of the store, its constant and unchanging tone spiking his nerves as much as his apparent solitude and the racks and stacks organized to inhuman immaculacy.
It’s his own paranoia that shocks Kurt awake, heart racing as he gasps for breath. The dream still lingers, unsettling in its lack of anything, so it’s a moment before the chiming little tune, real and familiar, trickles into his ears and he remembers the meaning associated with it.
Oh. Blaine is calling him.
The tune cuts off before he can even collect his thoughts, much less grab the phone. The covers fall off of his body and pool in his lap as he sits up, his heavy eyes still growing accustomed to the dark of the room.
It is still deeply dark, it can’t be past four o’clock in the morning, if that.
Eyebrows drawn down, he reaches toward the nightstand, where his phone sits plugged into the charger. He lights the screen up to see four missed calls from Blaine, starting at two-thirty and all taking place over the past half hour. No voicemails, no texts; just four calls, with enough space in between to make it seem not quite so frantic.
Still, his heart clenches as he swipes the screen and unplugs the phone to hold it closer. What’s urgent enough for Blaine to call him at this hour, but not important enough to leave a message?
He hears the ring on the other end of the line as he brings the phone up to his ear. It rings a few times, longer than Kurt expected since Blaine had only just called three minutes ago, but when he does pick up, it’s with a tentative, “Did I wake you up?”
Kurt sighs, deep from his chest, and rubs his eye with the heel of his free hand.
“Not really,” he says, voice throaty, his words blurring into one ongoing sound. He still feels sleep-dumb and slow, unsure of how to process what’s going on. “Why did you call?”
There’s some shuffling from Blaine’s side of the line, but it’s close, like Blaine is moving the phone. Otherwise, there’s no noise and, together with the silence on his end, Kurt feels like he’s still asleep, dreaming more peacefully than he had been minutes before.
But he’s not sleeping, and he would much rather be, with a long day at work ahead of him.
“Hello?”
“Sorry, sorry,” Blaine says. He seems alert for the late hour – which makes sense, Kurt thinks belatedly, he’s been awake calling him. His voice is hushed but clear. “I had a bad dream and I wanted to hear you voice, but- I only just realized how silly it is to call you this late, so- Never mind, go back to sleep, I’m sorry.”
“No, no, go on, tell me.”
“No, it’s alright-”
“No, I mean. I’m awake now, so,” Kurt says, trying not to sound as annoyed as he is. Blaine’s been in a peculiar mood lately, not offering much when they talk on the phone or on Skype (Kurt’s always bursting with things to say, true, but he can hear the quiet moments in between and he doesn’t know what to make of them), and he doesn’t want Blaine to think he’s angry at him. Even if he kind of is. He yawns into the back of his hand as he finishes, “So, y’know. Have at it.”
“It’s kind of dumb,” Blaine says, so low Kurt almost doesn’t hear him.
He rolls his eyes, lowering himself back down onto the bed.
“It’s fine, Blaine. Seriously. If it bothered you, you can tell me. That why I’m here.”
A part of him feels like he’s being too blunt with him, and he takes some slow breaths, reminding himself to be patient. Blaine’s upset and clearly a little hesitant about telling Kurt what he’d dreamed.
(Which makes no sense to him, but it also makes him worry. The long distance between them feels more present than usual, sadness panging in his heart at the realization that he can’t just see Blaine and comfort him in person in the morning.
He can’t wait until Blaine gets his ass to New York.)
The other end of the line goes quiet except for the sound of Blaine’s breathing, if he listens hard enough. Kurt stares up at the ceiling and waits, waits until he pulls the phone back to make sure they haven’t been disconnected.
“That’s why you called, right?” Kurt asks. He pulls the covers back up his body. “To talk?”
He thinks for a moment that Blaine really might not have called to talk; maybe he just wanted to know Kurt was on the line, present even when he can’t there physically. It seems like something he might do, and it makes Kurt feel warm with affection for his boyfriend.
Blaine sighs. “Yeah, it’s just-” He cuts himself short, sighs again, then continues, “I don’t even know how to explain it. The dream was- really weird.”
“Whenever you’re ready,” Kurt says, his eyes sinking closed.
“It was like- Okay, you know those movies and TV shows where a person is visited by- something, and they go around seeing how life would be if they were never born?”
“I’ve seen It’s a Wonderful Life, yes.”
Blaine makes a soft tch sound, before he says, “Well, that’s what it was like. I didn’t have an angel showing me around, but I knew I was seeing what life would be like if I never existed.”
Kurt frowns. “Well, that’s depressing.”
“Tell me about it.”
“So, what did you see?”
There’s more shuffling on Blaine’s end, and it feels like a pause before a big reveal.
“The first people I- visited, I guess you could say, were my parents. They seemed fine. Um, my dad made a joke about lesbians. He sounded like he used to- you know, before I came out. That part sucked. But then I moved on and saw Cooper doing really well, and I went to Dalton and everything was just like when I was there. Then I saw McKinley, whenyou guys were there and it was- it was just like it used to be.”
Kurt opens his eyes when Blaine pauses. He’s very aware that this wasn’t a good dream for Blaine, and the way he’s making it sound…
He presses his phone closer to his ear, has a million and one questions he wants to ask – if Blaine is doing okay without him, if he’s feeling okay – but chooses instead to say, “Go on.”
He hears Blaine take a breath. He sounds like he’s struggling when he speaks.
“Then I saw you are you were- upset, at first. I’m not sure what happened, I think someone may have shoved you. But you stormed down the hall and locked yourself in the girls’ bathroom.”
“Hmm, sounds like me.”
Blaine laughs, squeaky and quiet, cute in a way that makes Kurt smile.
“Anyway, I followed you in and you went over to the sink and looked in the mirror for a while. It was- unnerving, to say the least. You didn’t move, like, at all, for a really long time. I’m not sure what I thought was going to happen. But then I guess you snapped out of it, kicked open a stall, and locked yourself inside.”
“I’m really dramatic in your dreams, apparently,” Kurt says. He leans up and turns on his bedside lamp.
“Only in my dreams?”
“Hey, I’m awake for you, pal. Watch it,” he teases, scowling even when he knows Blaine can’t see it. He hopes it bleeds through the line, there in his voice in the same way he knows without seeing him that Blaine is smiling.
“So, is that all?” Kurt asks. He’s so ready to reply, to tell him not to worry, that the dream was made of Blaine’s memories and shows no real reflection on him, that he almost doesn’t hear it when Blaine replies, “Well, no. There was something else.
“After the bathroom, I saw you again. You were older, in a nice apartment, and I didn’t look at the windows but I knew you were in New York. You were- dancing, slow-dancing with some tall, gorgeous guy.” His breathing is going much faster now, a little louder, and it’s watery when he says, “And you looked so happy.”
Kurt can feel his pulse in his throat when he realizes that Blaine is crying. He can hear it over the line: the sniffles, the catches of his breath, the little sounds that make Kurt’s heart hurt. He really doesn’t like when Blaine is upset.
And yet.
“So.” He’s not sure where to begin, how to articulate what’s rubbing him the wrong way without hurting Blaine’s feelings all the more. “So- Is that the part that bothered you? That’s why you called?”
“Yeah,” Blaine says. He sounds shaky and unsure, but he goes on. “All of it bothered me, but the end is what bothered me the most.”
“Sweetie, in the dream- You were never born. It’s not like we broke up, or I left you or something like that. You never existed.”
Blaine groans, short and aware of the hour but riled. Kurt frowns at the sound, his eyebrows drawing in. He didn’t realize exactly how torn up Blaine is about this, but the more he discovers, the more it irks him.
“I know that,” Blaine says. “But it still wasn’t exactly what I wanted to see.”
Kurt opens his mouth to speak, until he realizes he doesn’t know what to say. He leans up on his elbow, adjusts his phone at his ear.
He hears Blaine speak – “It made me realize how much I-” – just as he forms the words he wants to use.
“Are you saying that you’d have a problem with me being with anyone else, even if you were never born?”
He doesn’t know why he needs to establish that part of it, if his brain is still clinging to sleep and confusing him or if it’s really as unfair as it’s sounding to him. It’s latched on to him, though, an uncomfortable itch that won’t let him focus on anything else.
“No, Kurt, that’s not what I’m saying, it just upset me to see it.”
Kurt runs his tongue along the top of his mouth.
“That’s-” really immature.
Blaine sniffles and he remembers that he’d been crying only a minute ago, so he bites his tongue and reminds himself that he’d been trying to be patient with him.
“Are you saying that you’d be totally fine dreaming about me being with someone else?” Blaine fires back.
His jaw tightens. “No, but if I knew the dream was about me not being alive at the time, I wouldn’t take it so personally.”
Patience not achieved, then.
Blaine doesn’t say anything in reply.
A snore from the other end of the loft reminds Kurt that he isn’t alone, that they have a distinct lack of walls, and that his voice has been steadily rising since the start of their conversation.
“Look,” he says, hushed. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry that it upset you, but I’m not sure what you want me to say. It was just a dream, none of it actually means anything.”
“It just made me feel like everyone would be better without me.”
Kurt sighs, laying back down. “You know that’s not true, Blaine. I’m sure most of the things you saw were memories. You were there, you were involved, and everything was great with you there.”
“I know,” Blaine mumbles.
He almost doesn’t ask, too nervous about the answer. “Are you alright?”
“Oh! Yeah, I’m fine. It just- really sucked to see it.”
Kurt isn’t sure what else to say, has run out of any comforting words he has available. It’s worrisome, the way Blaine is talking, and he feels like seeing him in person would help him figure out how to proceed. Blaine’s supposed to visit in the next few weeks, but it’s too distant for them to drop this conversation and pick it back up so easily. For now, he takes him at his word.
“Do you really want everyone to be unhappy without you?” Kurt asks. It’s the question that took form in his mind from the moment Blaine started telling him the details of the dream, but the words for it are only now coming together, right as he says them. “Even if you never existed at all?”
More shuffling. “I just want to feel like I matter.”
“You do, Blaine. You do to me.”
Kurt says it, means it with every corner of his heart, and he wonders if Blaine heard him at all.
//
He knows without being told that he isn’t there. Not really, not in a way that is noticeable to anyone else. He’s floating sight, a ghost with a brain. An invisible man.
He watches scene after scene flicker past and there’s nothing he can do. He knows he should take a part in them, but he can’t get anyone’s attention.
These moments aren’t for him.
His father is just the same as Kurt’s known him. The same flannel shirts, the same cadence of his voice. The same smile as he holds up his plastic tea cup, filled with water.
There’s a kid in Kurt’s seat across from his father. A little girl, her long brown hair pulled back with a bow, her blue-gray eyes squinting with her wide smile. And Kurt just knows that’s not a granddaughter in his seat.
Before he is too overcome with the urge to storm over and steal back his tea set, he reminds himself, ‘They were going to have a kid anyway, even if it wasn’t you.’
When the scene switches, it feels like a battle won. With every time he’s able to rationalize what he’s seeing, he feels his pride swell. Primarily because, even in his dreams, he remembers Blaine’s late night call from what feels like ages ago. He can look his fiancé in the eye and tell him, “I’ve seen what everyone’s lives are like without me and I was okay.”
None of it’s true. None of it’s true.
It’s okay if they’re happy. He wants them to be.
He doesn’t exist here. Why would he care? It’s not true.
His father, his mother, Carole, Rachel, Finn, the New Directions as a whole. They smile and laugh and go on, and it is good to see them happy. It borders on humbling. And he gets to wake up to a world with himself in it, so what’s a dream compared to reality? It’s not real. It’s not true.
The sun shines through the tall windows in the large dance room at NYADA. The mirror reflect Blaine’s image as he twirls and twirls, no real form to it, just laughing and spinning until he stumbles. He falls on his ass and throws his head back as he laughs, and Kurt’s heart glows.
Then a figure appears – a guy, some random guy Kurt’s not even sure he knows – walks up to Blaine and holds out his hand. Blaine takes it with a wide smile, a brightness in his eyes directed at this guy Kurt doesn’t know.
They talk and laugh and stand close, and Kurt feels himself shaking with anger. It’s not real, it’s not true. But it’s infuriating.
They kiss and all the mirrors and windows shatter, glass shards flying and filling the room.
He comes to consciousness like he fell into it, graceless and gasping. His heart feels like he caught a bird in his hands, flutters frantically, and he waits for the moment that it bursts threw his chest and flies out into the quiet morning, but it doesn’t happen. Instead he just lays there, body steadily calming and growing more aware, particularly of the arm flung over his stomach.
Blaine is curled up close to him in sleep, a common thing now that they live together.
As Kurt shifts, Blaine holds on tighter, scoots in closer, and Kurt doesn’t resist him. He just turns in his arms, worms down so that they’re face to face. He can tell by the shift of his face, from peaceful to tense, that all the jostling woke Blaine up.
That’s fine, Kurt thinks, drawing his hands up to hold Blaine’s face as he pulls his mouth onto his own.
Blaine makes a surprised wordless sound, mouth slack for several of Kurt’s kisses before they start returning them. He feels it as Blaine’s arms tighten around him with real intent, and he smiles, struggling now to keep up with Blaine.
“Good morning,” Kurt says against his mouth, hums when Blaine kisses him deeply one more time.
Blaine moves his head back far enough to look into his eyes. “Good morning?”
Kurt smiles, watches Blaine as he stares back, confused but receptive, if the upward tilt of his lips is anything to go by. He leans back in for another slow, closed kiss, feels the warmth of Blaine’s skin against his own, and is determined to push his dream out of mind and make a good morning better.