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Blaine gets out. He leaves the restaurant, takes the subway back to the apartment, packs his shaving kit and his shampoo and his pyjamas and clothes for the next few days into a bag and books himself into a cheap hotel as far as he can get from Bushwick. He can feel his ears ringing with finality, anger crackling in his fingers, making him shake as he signs his name. He’s still angry when he sits on the bed, still angry when he strips naked and climbs into the shower, and still angry when he lies beneath cold, alien sheets and stares at the numbers on the clock beside his bed. As the numbers tick round from 9 to 10 to 11, anger ebbs into numb resignation, and by one, resignation mingles with sadness, and at 1.30 he realises he’s crying, and hates that he’s silly enough, ridiculous enough, to still allow himself to hurt like this. He is, he realises, a statistic, and he’s not sure whether he hates that more or less than he hates Kurt, and then, at 2am, thinks he definitely hates Kurt more. He hates his own fragile heart, and he hates that he leaves himself vulnerable to being this hurt, and he hates that apparently, promises don’t mean anything to Kurt because obviously he did wake up one day and just stop loving him.
And he hates that he’s crying at 2am about all the silly, childish dreams that are scattered around him, fallout from a nuclear blast that has destroyed his heart.
In the morning, sleepless and bereft, he heads back to Bushwick, sits on his bed - his old bed, anyway - and calls his mom, asks her if she and his dad will help him if he has to move out of the loft again. He’ll see if he can get a room in the NYADA dorms, but if he can’t? He’s aware, peripherally, of all the conversations they don’t have on the phone that morning, is glad she doesn’t ask him or push him, and cries tears he doesn’t have left when she says that they’ll do what they can. He collects the few items that are his and his alone, puts them into a box he finds in the kitchen, and leaves it by the door with a label saying he’ll collect it when he can before heading back down the stairs and toward school.
By Christmas, his grades have slipped, he’s barely present when he’s physically there, and he’s too numb to really care when he’s cut from the program. In many ways, it’s actually a relief. Trying has been exhausting, and now he can stop, can breathe, can stay in bed if he wants to, and eat cheese puffs and drink cold coffee and marathon Top Chef all morning, or just bury his face in an old sweater and his pillow and sleep until he’s dead, yet another statistic to chalk up to the education system’s lack of concern for the pressure to perform that it heaps upon its students. Well now he can stop performing. He can go home and stop trying, or just stop altogether, which would be equally okay.
At some point, he realises that “home” is Ohio. He doesn’t want to be in New York, where everything is broken dreams and failed promises and his shattered, damaged heart. “Home” is the familiarity of his parents, of the small town comfort of chain restaurants and Friday night football and his mom’s cooking and take out on Fridays when his dad gets home with cartons and spring rolls wrapped in paper. He wants to go home, and he tries very hard not to sound lost when he calls his mom to tell her.
She tries very hard not to cry when she comes, with his dad, to collect him from the dorms, and ultimately fails. Blaine does let himself be held, though, for a moment, his arms around her as well. She doesn’t say she knew this would happen, doesn’t say anything, just holds him, and they both try to keep breathing.
Ohio is a relief. Ohio has not changed. The Lima Bean remains. Breadstix. His car is still in the garage. His room is bare of his belongings, but otherwise unchanged, his bed still standing in the middle, clean and made. He pulls the curtains closed, shuts the door, and climbs beneath the covers, ready, in his bones, to sleep for at least the next few days, to let the weight of his failure press him down into the sheets and keep him there.
He makes it three days before he gets a message from Sam. “You’re in Lima?” he says. Blaine frowns at his phone, clicks to bring up the keyboard to type a reply, feels nausea rise in his throat, and tucks his phone back under his pillow. It buzzes against his skull, and he tries to ignore it except curiosity overwhelms apathy for a moment. He checks again. “Is it wrong I’m kinda glad you’re here?” Sam asks. Blaine flicks a smile and then feels it tug back down in the corners. He wants to respond, but Sam doesn’t want to see him like this, so he replies, “Yeah, I’m here. Miss you, too.”
That much is true. He has missed Sam’s optimism and his lack of judgement. He knows he could tell Sam what went down and Sam would be as supportive as he knows how to be. But Sam’s cheer has already dragged Blaine out of this hole once, and he can’t lay that on him again. He ignores the next message in favour of sleeping some more.
When Tina tries him on Facebook, he can’t bring himself to even respond. He feels like anything he’d type to her is going to be obviously self-pitying, like he’s overreacting, asking for sympathy and he doesn’t particularly relish the idea of inflicting himself upon people he likes. He closes Facebook, turns on his music, and then turns that off as well when everything knots inside of him, drives him out of bed and into the kitchen. “I’m going out,” he tells him mom, grabs his keys and drives aimlessly into the middle of nowhere, and then to the mall where he can surround himself with people and pretend he’s connected to the world, finds himself sitting in a movie theatre where he can live vicariously through the loves and losses of characters on screen. He buys himself a burger on the way home, which tastes like ash, and then holes himself up in his room again, devoid of motivation and music.
It’s his dad who says the word “therapy” first. Blaine pokes his fork into his potatoes, fights the wave of panic, and tries on a smile that wobbles very quickly into a straight line. His dad’s face is sad when he looks at him, and Blaine lowers his gaze back to his plate.
“We’re worried, Blaine,” he dad says. “It’s been two months.”
“I know,” Blaine whispers, his voice shaking dangerously, clogging up his throat. His eyes burn, feel wet, and he blinks, tries to clear the sadness one more time.
“And you haven’t seen your friends,” his dad continues. Blaine nods mutely. He hasn’t heard from his friends in a week. It’s probably for the best. He drags himself down, and he wouldn’t want to hang out with him for long either. “Do you at least want to think about it?” his dad tries again, and Blaine feels like it’s a pressure he doesn’t need. He lowers his fork and pushes his chair back from the table.
“Excuse me,” he says.
He does think about it, though, sends out a few tentative emails, tries three before he finds a man who he feels understands him, whose specialisations include sexuality but who doesn’t make him feel like a curiosity. Despite the difficulties, Blaine hears his own laugh for the first time since - since before, because saying those words still feels like a knife between his ribs, and he feels a smile that actually creases his cheeks the right way, and he tries out different ways to be himself before settling back into his own skin a little better. There is nothing wrong with who he is, he comes to understand a little better. Not completely, but better. He doesn’t need to break himself to be worthy of love, to prove himself to be accepted, to be perfect to be adored. He is fine just the way he is.
In the process of finding space for his dreams in his life now, he gets himself a job that he thinks might help him regain his voice, assistant coach at Dalton for the Warblers. He checks his phone more, becomes more active in his old passions, and contemplates trying to reach across the chasm of his missing months to his friends. He finds himself a boyfriend, unexpected though the connection is, but it’s good, it’s nice. It’s easy, and he needs it to be easy. Dave likes him, and he doesn’t have to try to be anything other than his own sweet self. The affection is good, the physical presence of someone else in his life reassuring, and slowly, slowly, he starts to like the person in his mirror a little more.
And the more he likes himself, the more he thinks - perhaps - his friends might still like him, too.