Decembers

Almost all of them were all there. Rachel, Mercedes, and Tina couldn't believe it when they got the call and they cried when they finally got to the hospital. Santana refused to believe it until she and Brittany got there themselves. Sam was still in his football uniform, which was smeared with blotches of Kurt's blood when he had carried the smaller boy to the car. Quinn sat silently in tears on a hospital bench she was sharing with the other girls. Puck never showed up even after they finally called him.

And then there was Finn.

He couldn't understand how he had let it get this bad. How had he not noticed something like this building up until it got to this point? How was he supposed to explain this to Burt and his mom? How was he supposed to even think about anything but letting Kurt down, his little brother. The one he had never known he'd always wanted until he had finally gotten it practically yanked away from him?

He was as silent as Quinn, un-moving and unable to display any emotion on his face due to complete and udder bewilderment at his lack of being the brother he promised to be.

Burt and Carole were on their way, and everyone knew they were possibly speeding to get there. They all knew that Kurt was Burt's most precious thing in the world. His son was the only thing he had that reminded him of his first wife, the one that had left him way too soon.



It was the second day of Kurt being in the coma that he showed up. The strange boy in the blazer.

They didn't know him. They didn't pay any attention to him at first because they thought he was just someone passing by, someone on their way to visit a sick relative or to their doctor for a check-up. He did look sick to them after all. But when he had stopped outside Kurt's room and simply sat on the floor, not even looking at the rest of them on the bench, they got a little curious about him. He didn't go to McKinley, they knew that because he was wearing a uniform and no one had ever seen him wandering the halls before.

The fact that he also hadn't spoken to any of them was something else they had found weird. All of the New Directions, while upset about Kurt, still managed to talk among themselves, but the strange boy just seemed to sit there, not looking at anyone or saying a single thing. He just sat there, blankly looking at the wall opposite him.

Mercedes wondered if he had even left the hospital when she went back to visit Kurt the next day. He looked like he hadn't moved a single inch, still sitting on the linoleum floor and staring at the wall. He had light purple bags underneath his eyes, which looked a bit dull. His hair was curling underneath the gel and his clothes were terribly wrinkled. She could hear Kurt in her head, practically insulting the boy's appearance. It made her smile a little, but sadder none the less. She wanted nothing more than for him to be awake so she could hear him do it in the flesh.

Maybe the boy had gone home, then to school, and finally came back here…which wouldn't explain his appearance.

"Umm…Hello." She said. Mercedes hoped that trying to talk to him might result in the boy wanting to talk back to her, so she could finally ask him questions about who he was.

The boy looked at her and waved solemnly. Apparently, a hello wasn't a good enough reason to get him to talk. Mercedes sighed and looked back to him.

"Do you know Kurt?" She asked and he nodded slowly, a heartbreaking look crossing his tired eyes. He still didn't say anything to her, and he actually seemed to look worse than before she had started talking to him.

"Kurt's my best friend, and yet we've," She pointed back and forth between them, "never met. It's not like Kurt to keep people a secret…or anything for that matter. He tells me everything." She said and the boy sadly smiled. It was like he knew something that she didn't, and if any other circumstance, he might have actually been laughing. But he was too tired to laugh, too tired to truly smile, too tired to actually exist, and no matter what anyone said to him, he wasn't going to give them a true answer. He just let the smile fall and went back to admiring the wall in front of him.

Mercedes turned away from him, but still watched from the corner of her eye. She didn't trust him, mainly because she didn't know him. Who was he to just show up at outside Kurt's hospital room two days in a row, looking as distraught as the rest of them?

Until he proved otherwise, she didn't think highly of him.



"You mean he was there again?" Rachel said when they all gathered at the Hudmel house for dinner, offering some sort of comfort to Finn and the rest of the family. Mercedes nodded and explained more about how the strange boy had been there again when she had gone to visit.

"As far as I know, he was still there when I left. I don't even know if he left when he came over yesterday. His clothes were all wrinkled and he had the same bag with him," She said, "I think he might have just stay at the hospital all night."

"That's impossible. Hospital's only have visiting hours for so long and after that, if you're not family, they make you leave." Rachel said.

"But isn't that only if you're in the room with them? Are there any rules to just sitting out in the hallway?" Quinn pointed out because from what she remembered, the strange boy had only sat on the hallway floor, meaning he had never actually gone in the room to visit. None of them had.

"Maybe there aren't, but that still doesn't change the fact that we have no clue who this guy is, or why he's sitting outside Kurt's room. Even though he claims to know Kurt, we've never seen or heard of him before." Sam said, quoting what Mercedes had told the boy in the hospital earlier.

"Well, that settles it. We figure out who this kid is and why he's outside Kurt's room. We also won't rest until we do, because for all we know, he could be a bully that we missed." Rachel pointed out. Even though she hadn't always been on good terms with Kurt, he still held a valued place in her heart. He was her only true competition, and having him made life all the more fun. She also couldn't shake the feeling that this could have been one of her fathers in the hospital instead of her best friend.

"I highly doubt that Rachel. He doesn't look like the bullying kind. He just looks... miserable. I don't think anyone who was capable of hurting Kurt would feel that bad about it." Mercedes said, remembering the look of the blazered boy's eyes. It was like he wanted to cry, but wouldn't let himself.

Rachel shook her head while Santana rolled her eyes, "People hurt people all the time, and sometimes... they don't feel bad about when they do it. Afterwards though, they do and they want to make up for it. Maybe this prep-school boy just wants to make up for something, but I honestly don't think we should let him. There are few people who are allowed to mess with Hummel, and they're all me. I say that tomorrow, we go down to the hospital and confront him. Ask him exactly who the hell he thinks he is and if he refuses to tell, we make him. I'm fed up with this bullshit."

And there they all agreed, tomorrow after school, they would go and ask the boy sitting outside Kurt's room exactly who he was and why he was there.

When they all got there though, it seemed like four other boys had beat them to the punch. They all wore the same blazer, and they seemed to be pleading with the boy on the floor, almost begging him to do whatever they were asking of him. The boy on the floor looked worse from the days before. Sure, he apparently had gone home and changed out of the uniform, replacing it with a white tee and jeans, but his skin looked dead and dull, the same with eyes. It seemed the longer he sat there, the more life he lost.

"Blaine come on. You need to eat, and sleep. Your sister is worried about you, she's threatened to shave Jeff's head if we didn't get you to come home, even if it's just for a sandwich and a nap." An Asian-looking boy pleaded, the blond behind him going wide-eyed at the mention of his head getting shaved. The boy in the floor, whose name was Blaine, just rolled and ignored him.

"Blaine, we know that Kurt's important to you," Something sounding like a scoff escaped Blaine's lips, "But he wouldn't want you sitting vigil by his bedside. Actually, you're not even doing that because you're out here in the hallway. You need to come back to school too, before word gets back to your dad that you haven't been going and he drags you out of here by your hair, which you know he will." Blaine looked back to his friends, wanting them to understand, willing them to try to understand why he couldn't just leave. He had to stay, he needed to stay.

The boys looked at each other with hopelessness across their faces. If the threat of his father didn't scare him into leaving, then nothing would. They watched as Blaine motioned for the dark haired boy to come, and whispered something into his ear. The others couldn't hear what was said, but it caused the dark-haired boy to pale significantly. He walked away from Blaine and back to his friends, who immediately wanted to know what had been said. The dark-haired boy just shook and proceeded to walk away from Blaine.

They didn't get very far, the New Directions were in their way. Maybe getting their questions answered would be easier than they thought, because now they had four new people to ask. People that were perfectly capable of talking. When the boys found their way blocked, they stayed silent, the blond one even looking to the ground like he was ashamed to look at them, while the dark-haired one cast his eyes around the hospital hall and then back to them.

"You guys know him?" Finn asked first and they all nodded, "Who is he?"

The Asian boy spoke up, "That's... that's Blaine. He's-You don't know who he is, Finn?"

Now they were shocked. How had someone who they had never met in their lives, know Finn's name? How did the boy even know that the person he was speaking to was Finn?

"I'm Wes, these are my friends David, Jeff, and Nick. We're from Dalton Academy, and so is Blaine. We're friends of Kurt, it's how we know you. He used to come over to Dalton a lot. Especially after the whole spying incident. He's told us all about you, nothing competition wise of course." Wes added when he saw Rachel's face looking ready to explode after he said that, "Kurt said you're very... wary, about other school glee clubs. Everything that was ever spoken at Dalton was about you guys as his friends, nothing about songs or routines."

"So, Kurt knows you guys because he went to spy on your glee club? You guys stayed friends with a spy?" Santana asked, because she didn't honestly believe it. What school was so demented to stay friends with someone who had tried to spy on them? Better question was why Kurt was even at Dalton to begin with. The Finn, Sam, and Artie seemed to know well enough why though, it was written on their faces.

Wes nodded, "Yeah, he came to spy on us and he was so bad at it, we thought it was funny. We actually invited him for coffee later that week back at Dalton. I remember him asking us if we were all gay. Remember David?" The boy standing behind Wes just smiled sadly and nodded his head, thinking back on the day he had first met Kurt.

"Blaine was the one that made the better... connection, I'm going to say, with Kurt. He was like a mentor to him, Kurt was being bullied at school, or so he told Blaine. He knows what that's like, it's why he transferred to Dalton in the first place. Blaine was always there for Kurt and apparently, he's not going to make any effort to leave, even if Kurt would never know." Mercedes looked at David's face and could tell he was lying. There was something he wasn't telling them.

"What else are leaving out?" She asked and David shook his head.

"Nothing. Anything else isn't my story to tell. You'll have to ask Blaine about that, but... good luck. He doesn't seem to be in a very talkative mood." David sighed. He didn't like seeing his best friend like this, but what was he supposed to do?

"He talked to you." Mike pointed to Nick, who was barely getting back the color in his face. The rest of New Directions nodded and agreed. They had seen Blaine whisper something to Nick, who now looked even more reluctant to tell what it was.

"It-It was something personal. It had nothing to do wit-with this." He couldn't get his words out correctly, but he was hoping that tone was enough for them to understand that what Blaine had told him was none of their business and he personally though that he himself would have been better off not having this thought put into his head. He'd have to chew Blaine out on it later, once Kurt was better.

"Well, it was wonderful meeting you all, but we have to get back to school. We're boarding students and it's a two-hour drive back. If we don't get to school by ten tonight then we're locked out for the night. So... We'll see you around." Wes said and he lead the other three past the club.

"But, it's only four-thirty." Tina pointed out.

"Yeah, but it's a two-hour drive, plus the traffic. We also have to stop at Blaine's house, to tell his sister how he's doing. It's better to leave time for things and not plan them so close together. You...you never know what happens." Jeff said, turning back to catch up with his friends. The rest of them stood there and watched the four leave out the hospital doors. They had gotten most of their answers and they figured that, for today, that was good enough.

Quietly as they could, they went and sat next to Blaine, the girls on the bench and the boys on the floor beside him.

He didn't even seem to notice them.