Archive of Our Own ^beta

Kurt stumbles off the shoulder into the mud as another car whooshes past, too close to the line. He scrapes his shoes on the edge of the asphalt before he starts walking again. He can’t hear anything over the roar of the highway; the noise vibrates up through his feet. He hugs his coat closer as he walks. It’s too big and most of the buttons on the front are missing, so he has to hold it closed against the wind with his fist. One of the cars honks, long and loud, and Kurt jumps, spinning around to look at the traffic. He can’t tell which car it was.

He doesn’t know how long he’s been walking. It feels like forever. It was raining when he started—when he woke up, lying facedown on the ground—but now it’s just drizzling.

Kurt stops when a semi pulls over. It’s a good sixty feet up ahead, but he can see the driver waving out the window at him. The back of the truck is unmarked but when Kurt gets up to the cab there’s a red logo on the door. He blinks at it for a moment before the trucker leans over and pushes the door open.

“Hey, kid. Where are you headed?”

Kurt doesn’t say anything, just watches him.

“I can get you as far as Omaha,” the trucker offers. When Kurt still doesn’t reply, he asks, “Well, you comin’ or not?”

Kurt climbs up into the cab.

*

“So,” the trucker says. “What’s your name?” 

They been driving for a while now and Kurt’s spent the whole time staring out the window at the fields and occasional farmhouses. He turns to look at the trucker now, but just shrugs.

“No name, huh?” he says. “Well, where are you headed?”

Kurt looks back out the window. “Ohio,” he says. His voice is hoarse and mostly a whisper. He swallows thickly, trying to clear his throat.

“There’s water in the back,” the trucker offers, nodding towards the back of the cab. Kurt watches him warily as he twists around to look for it and finds a cooler with bottled water inside. The seal is still intact, so he sits back down and gulps down half the bottle quickly.

“Ohio, huh? That’s a new one. What’s in Ohio?” the trucker asks. Kurt shrugs again and the trucker frowns. “You’re not much for conversation, are you?”

Kurt shakes his head.

After a few more minutes of silence the trucker says, “I’m not gonna kill you, y’know? Promise.”

Kurt turns to look at him. He lets out a gust of air that might’ve been a laugh, but isn’t really, and shakes his head before turning back to the window. He hunches down into his coat, wrapping it around himself as tightly as he can, and leans his forehead against the cold glass.

*

“C’mon Ohio, wake up.”

Someone’s shaking him, and Kurt jerks awake with a gasp, scrambling backwards. His back hits the door of the cab and he keeps going, falling off the seat and onto the floor. The trucker is—standing over him, grabbing his hair and yanking him up and—holding his hands up in the air, saying, “Hey, hey! Sorry. Didn’t mean to scare you. Sorry.” He grimaces. “You okay?”

Kurt grabs the seat and pulls himself up off the floor. His hip hurts from hitting the floor, but really it’s just another bruise on top of all the bruises he’s been feeling since he woke up earlier, so he nods.

“Sorry,” the trucker repeats. He looks like he means it. “But this is your stop.”

Kurt looks out the windshield. The parking lot is full of other semis, but there’s a sprawling building and a sign for McDonalds as well.

Kurt opens the door and nearly falls out of the cab, clinging to the handle to keep from hitting the ground. As he’s walking away, there’s a shout from behind him. “Hey Ohio!” Kurt turns back, and the trucker has rolled the window down. “Good luck,” he says.

Kurt raises a hand and waves his fingers back at the trucker then turns back towards the building.

Inside, there’s a large map on the wall and a tv that shows the road conditions and weather report. According to the map, Kurt is just outside of Omaha, Nebraska. The truck stop turns out to be pretty big, with a couple of souvenir shops and fast food restaurants. Kurt still has the half empty bottle of water the trucker gave him. He finds an empty booth and curls up against the wall.

Kurt’s not sure how long he’s been sitting there when he’s startled by a woman tapping her hand on the end of the table. “Are you okay?” the woman asks. 

There’s a man standing behind her, glaring. “He’s a hitchhiker, Angie. Stop talking to him.”

She waves him off. “He’s a kid. He’s probably the same age as your nephew.” She turns back to Kurt. “Where are your parents?”

Kurt watches her warily from behind the bangs hanging over his eyes. “Are you by yourself?” she asks, her mouth twisting into a little frown and her eyes full of pity.

The man behind her sighs and she turns to him. “Go get him a cheeseburger or something,” she tells him.

“Are you kidding me?”

“No. Go on.” He rolls his eyes and walks away, and the woman turns back to Kurt, smiling. “Is it okay if I sit down?” she asks. She doesn’t wait for him to answer before she slides into the other side of the booth.

Kurt clenches his fingers around his mostly empty bottle of water and doesn’t say anything. She smiles at him. Kurt hunches down in the booth, pressing himself as close to the wall as he can. He wishes they would go away and leave him alone. He just wants to be alone.

The man returns with a paper bag and a tall drink. He sits down next to the woman and pushes the food towards Kurt. “Here you go; double cheeseburger and a coke.”

Kurt looks back and forth from them to the food for a minute. The woman finally turns and starts saying something about their hotel reservation to the man. When he’s sure they aren’t watching his every movement anymore, Kurt opens the bag as quietly as he can. Inside is the promised cheeseburger, along with fries. It makes a lot of noise as he sets the food on the table, but other than a quick glance out of the corner of her eye, the woman keeps up her conversation with the man.

It’s not until Kurt peels back the wrapper of the cheeseburger that he actually realizes how hungry he is. He is starving. The dull ache in his stomach that’s been there since he woke up is suddenly sharp and painful, overpowering all the other aches of his body.

Despite his hunger, he can only force down a few bites before he starts feeling nauseous. He sets the cheeseburger back down.

The woman smiles at him kindly. “What’s your name, sweetie?”

Kurt shrugs, picking up the drink she bought him and fiddling with the straw, bending it back and forth. The woman continues, “I’m Angie, this is my husband Rick.” The man still doesn’t look like he wants to be talking to Kurt. “Do you have someplace you can go? I can’t just leave you here.”

“He probably wants—“Angie elbows her husband and he stops talking, sighing again.

“Do you need to call someone?” she asks. She starts digging through her purse. “You can use my phone if you need to.”

She holds the phone out to him. Kurt licks his lips and reaches out to take it from her. It takes him a couple of seconds to figure out how to turn it on, but then he’s staring at the numbers. They’re just numbers. He knows which number to dial; it’s just taking him awhile to remember. Numbers are on the (very short) list of things that Kurt knows right now. Along with his name (Kurt), where he is (Omaha, Nebraska), how he got here (he walked for a long time, and then he hitched a ride), and where he is going (Lima, Ohio). He doesn’t want to make a list of the things he doesn’t know right now (like where his coat came from and why his arm hurts so badly and how he got here).

He pushes in eight of the numbers before he hesitates, thinking that he messed up. Is the next number zero or is it nine or is it nine and then zero. He erases all the numbers and starts over, pressing them quickly, trying not to think too hard. When he starts thinking about things he starts messing up. Like the food. When he didn’t think about it, he wasn’t hungry, but then he thought about eating and now it’s still in the back of his mind that he is hungry, he is starving, but trying to eat makes him sick so it was better when he didn’t think about it. And then there are ten numbers pushed in and he hits the green button and it’s ringing, ringing, ringing.

Someone answers. “Hello?”

He holds the phone tightly and opens his mouth, but nothing comes out.

“Hello?” they ask again.

He tries to talk again, but he can’t. He doesn’t know what to say.

The person talking is getting mad. “Goddammit, reporters and now fucking prank calls too. You are—“

Angie reaches over and takes the phone from him, raising it to her own ear. “Hello?” she says. 

Kurt pulls his legs back up onto the seat and wraps his arms around his knees, huddling close to the wall. 

“Hi, I’m Angie Nelson. There’s a boy here I loaned my phone to,and he called you, but I’m not sure he can—“ She stops, her eyes widening as she listens. Then she looks at Kurt. Really looks at him, tilting her head and leaning forward to try and make eye contact. “Are you Kurt?” she asks.

Kurt nods, face pressed against his knees. He can’t see anything but the dirty denim of his jeans now, but he can hear her saying, “He said yes. I… What? Did he do something?” Kurt turns his head a bit to peek at her. She’s staring at him, her mouth open a bit. “Oh my god…” Angie turns to her husband and says, “Get your phone out, call the police. He was kidnapped.”

“What?!” Rick asks.

“Call them!” She’s paying attention to the phone again, and says, “Omaha.” Kurt can hear the person on the phone saying something loudly, and then she’s holding the phone out to him again. “It’s your dad, sweetie.”

Kurt takes it from her and holds it against his ear. His dad says, “Kurt? Are you there?”

Kurt says “Hi.” It’s hoarse and his voice dies before he finishes the i.

His dad says “Oh god,” and starts crying.

*

The police take him to a hospital. They keep asking questions Kurt doesn’t know the answer to so he just doesn’t say anything at all. They take his coat and his clothes and then they poke and prod and take pictures of him. Then they give him a shot. When he wakes up—it’s dark and he can’t see anything but the outlines of unfamiliar shapes—he doesn’t know where he is or how he got there, but everything is soft and warm, so maybe it’s okay. He pulls the blankets up higher when the door opens and the lights flick on.

A nurse walks in and looks surprised to see him awake. “You’re up,” she says. She leans over him to mess with a machine, and then smiles, helping him sit up. “Perfect timing, some officers just got here to talk to you.”

She pats his shoulder and Kurt jerks back away from her, against the pillows. Her smile tightens and she says, “I’ll tell them you’re awake.”

The woman who comes in next is tall and says her name is Detective Barnett. She shows Kurt her badge and smiles at him before pulling up a chair beside the bed. “How’re you feeling, Kurt?”

He shrugs. Better than he was, because everything doesn’t hurt anymore. There’s an IV in the back of his hand and his left arm is cradled in a sling against his chest and he can feel a stiff bandage around his knee, but it doesn’t hurt to take a deep breath like it did before.

“Your parents are on their way,” she tells him.

“My da—?” he tries to ask, but his voice just stops making the sounds again and it doesn’t really even sound like his voice in the first place. She hands him a cup of water from the bedside table and after drinking half of it he tries again. “My dad’s here?”

“He’s on his way,” Detective Barnett says. “It’ll be a couple more hours before he gets here, but soon,” she promises.

Kurt looks across the room to the window. The blinds are pulled up to let in the light, but the view is just of the brown gravel roof of another section of the hospital and the red brick of another building.

Detective Barnett tries to catch his attention again. “Kurt? Can you tell me what happened?” When he doesn’t say anything, she adds, “It’s really important that we find out what happened to you.”

He reaches back out for the cup of water, just to have something to hold on to.

“Do you know how you got to Omaha?” she tries.

He knows the answer to that one. “I hitchhiked.” His voice still doesn’t sound right, but at least he said all of it this time.

“Okay,” she says. “Where did you hitchhike from?”

Kurt shrugs.

“We found the trucker who dropped you off. He said he picked you up along I-80, near the Colorado border. Do you know how you got there?”

Kurt shrugs again.

She sighs. “I need you to tell me what happened, Kurt. So we can find whoever did this to you.” He just stares back at her. “Anything you remember,” she prompts.

He shakes his head and looks down at the blankets covering his legs.

“No, you can’t tell me, or no, you don’t remember?”

It’s both, so he just shakes his head again. She sighs and stands up, holding out a card to him. “I want you to call me if you think of anything you want to tell me, alright? Anything at all, doesn’t matter what it is or how little it seems. You call and tell me. Anytime.”

He takes the card from her and she smiles again. “Your parents will be here soon, and then we’ll see if we can’t get you home.”

He swallows thickly and worries her card between his fingers. “Ohio?” he asks.

“Yep. Home to Ohio.”

He tries to smile back at her.

*

Kurt watches television while he waits. The only thing on besides repeats of Ellen and Tyra are game shows, but at least he doesn’t feel like he should know the answers to those questions. He’s always sucked at Jeopardy. It’s switched over to the local news and someone is talking about potholes when the door opens again. Kurt turns to look, but it’s just Detective Barnett.

“Hi, Kurt.” She pauses like she’s waiting for him to say hello back, but he doesn’t. She smiles anyway and steps away from the door. “Your dad’s here.”

And then Dad is there. Dad is standing in the doorway and Kurt just stares at him. He looks different, but Kurt can’t figure out why. He opens his mouth, he wants to say something, but he doesn’t get a chance before Dad is moving across the room and leaning over the bed to wrap his arms around Kurt. Dad is saying Kurt’s name and God’s name over and over again, like a mantra.

Kurt’s still looking at the doorway and there’s a woman standing there now, watching him with watery eyes. Kurt hides his face in Dad’s shoulder. He smells mostly like fabric softener and but also like home and Kurt wraps his good arm around Dad’s back and clutches a bit of his shirt with his fist.

*

As soon as Dad lets go and sits back on the bed, just holding Kurt’s hand in his, it seems like things stop making sense. The woman from the doorway comes over and tries to hug him, but Kurt flinches away. She steps back, looking startled and hurt.

Dad looks surprised too. “It’s okay, Kurt.”

Kurt looks between them, eyes wide and confused. He’s even more confused when Finn Hudson, of all people, walks into the room.

Finn’s smiling widely at him as he leans against the end of the bed. “Oh my god, you’re really okay.”

Kurt clutches at Dad’s hand. Dad frowns, asking, “What’s wrong?”

He’s going to have to say something. It’s not a yes or no question, but at least he knows the answer to this. What’s wrong right now is that some strange woman is trying to hug him and cry over him and that Finn Hudson is here and smiling like he and Kurt are friends—they aren’t friends, even if Kurt sometimes wishes they were.

“Why are they here?” Kurt asks.

Dad looks confused now. “Who?”

Kurt doesn’t want to, but his other arm is in a sling, so he pulls his hand away to point at first Finn, then the woman.

“We’ve been really worried about you, sweetie,” the woman says, stepping closer to the bed again. Finn looks more confused than happy now.

Kurt reaches for Dad’s hand again and asks, “Who are you?” Maybe someone will answer his questions for a change.

Dad squeezes his hand. “It’s Carole,” he says. “And Finn.”

“You… don’t remember who I am?” Carole asks.

Kurt shakes his head.

Dad is staring at him, wide eyed. “You don’t remember Carole and Finn?”

“I know who Finn is,” Kurt says.

“You know I’m your step-brother?” Finn asks. Kurt jerks around to look at him in surprise. “I’m gonna guess that’s a no,” Finn says slowly.

“Oh my god.” Carole sinks down into the chair next to the bed.

“What’s the last thing you remember?” Dad asks.

Kurt remembers lots of things, but that doesn’t mean he wants to think about any of them. And how would he ever know which thing happened last? Was the last thing the police picking him up from the truck stop or was it walking along the highway or was it waking up in the rain or was it before that? Was it something that happened at school or at home?

He just stares back at Dad, who squeezes his hand tightly, begging him to answer.

Detective Barnett interrupts the conversation by saying, “I’m going to go find a doctor. Let’s wait before we ask Kurt a bunch of questions, alright?”

She closes the door behind her when she goes, leaving them all staring at each other awkwardly. Kurt looks around the room at everything except Carole and Finn.

It doesn’t take long before she comes back with a doctor that Kurt hasn’t seen before.

His name is Dr. Merchant, and apparently Kurt has seen him before, he just doesn’t remember because he was asleep. Kurt pulls away when Dr. Merchant reaches for his arm, but the doctor holds on, unclipping the sling. Kurt’s arm is dark purple and he stares at the bruise as the doctor starts poking at his hand.

“Can you feel this?” he asks. Kurt’s still staring at the bruise, so Dr. Merchant waves to get his attention. “Can you feel this pressure on your hand? It’s not numb, is it?”

Kurt shakes his head no.

“What’s wrong with his arm?” Dad asks, eyeing the bruise with wariness, rather than the fascination that Kurt is.

“Dislocated elbow,” Dr. Merchant tells him.

“Elbow?” Finn asks, standing up to look from the other side of the bed. Kurt turns to look up at him. “I didn’t know you could dislocate an elbow. I thought that was just shoulders.”

“It’s usually caused by falling,” Dr. Merchant explains.

Dad frowns. “What about his head?”

After setting Kurt’s arm back in the sling, Dr. Merchant takes hold of Kurt’s other hand in his and tells him to squeeze as hard as he can. Kurt squeezes until his knuckles are white, but it doesn’t seem like it’s very much. “Now make a fist,” Dr. Merchant says. “Good.” He keeps tapping and pushing at Kurt—“testing his reflexes”—and then holds a finger up and tells Kurt to follow its movement.

“No, with just your eyes,” Dr. Merchant corrects. “Keep your head still.”

He moves his finger again and Kurt follows it again. Dr. Merchant doesn’t correct him, so maybe he did it right this time. Dr. Merchant pulls the blanket back and tells him to stand up.

Kurt’s suddenly very aware of the fact that he’s only wearing a thin, papery hospital gown in a room full of people he doesn’t know. It’s gotten bunched up under the blankets and he tugs it down over his thighs frantically, trying to cover his legs.

Kurt’s been able to feel the bruises ever since he woke up—was it still today?—and he saw them earlier, all over his legs and his torso, but now Dad is staring and Kurt is very aware that half of his right leg is wrapped in bandages because it was scraped and bloody. He reaches for the blankets, trying to pull them back, but Dr. Merchant holds on to them.

“I need you to stand up,” he says. Kurt shakes his head no. “Just for a minute. I know you can.”

Kurt shakes his head again and Dr. Merchant sighs, turning to Dad. “Why don’t you all give us a few minutes?”

Dad stands up and takes a step toward the door and now Kurt is up, out of bed. “No,” he says. He reaches for Dad’s arm and snags his sleeve, grabbing hold. “No,” he says again.

Dad can’t leave. Nothing makes sense and the list of things that Kurt doesn’t know is just getting longer and longer. He wants Dad to fix it. No one else is fixing anything. Police and doctors are supposed to fix things but they haven’t done anything but get mad at him for not doing what they want and if he just knew what they wanted he would do it, but he doesn’t. He doesn’t know. He doesn’t know anything.

Dad turns around and grabs his arm. “Hey, it’s okay. I’m not going anywhere.” Dad pulls him forward, his hand on the back of Kurt’s head, pulling him against his chest. His other hand rubs lightly over Kurt’s back. “It’s gonna be okay now. It’s over.”

Kurt’s chest hurts from breathing too hard and too fast, but his eyes are dry as he blinks against the soft material of Dad’s shirt. It doesn’t feel like it’s over.

*

Apparently, Kurt has retrograde amnesia. They aren’t sure what caused it, or how far back it goes yet, but they run lots of tests and decide that his brain isn’t completelyscrewed up.

“You mean, other than the amnesia?” Finn asks. He mumbles sorry when Carole glares at him, but the doctor (a new one, Dr. Lee) nods.

“He has a concussion,” Dr. Lee says. “But nothing that would cause this kind of memory loss.” He’s standing at the end of the bed, but he talks to Dad and Carole and doesn’t look at Kurt. “That doesn’t mean there wasn’t a more severe injury at some point that caused the amnesia, but since Kurt doesn’t remember and there’s no one to tell us what happened, we have no way to know for sure.” He closes his folder—Kurt’s folder, full of information about him and pictures of him—and adds, “It could also be psychological.”

“Psychological?” Dad asks.

“People sometimes disassociate themselves from painful or traumatic events. He could be repressing memories. It’s…” Dr. Lee paused. “It’s difficult to know with this situation.”

Kurt can feel everyone staring at him, so he keeps his eyes locked on the window. It’s dark now and the roof is lit by the orange glow of street lights. It makes everything look weird and flat.

“So what do we do? How does he get his memory back?”

“We wait.” Dad starts to protest and Dr. Lee continues, “I’m sorry, I know that’s not the answer you want, but time really might be the best thing here. There’s nothing we can do to force Kurt to remember.”

“Nothing?” Carole asks.

“Take him home,” Dr. Lee suggests. “Familiar places and things should help. People he knows. Everything here is unfamiliar and I doubt that’s doing him any good.”

Kurt doesn’t notice when the doctor leaves, but he does notice when Dad sits on the edge of the bed. He turns to find Carole and Finn standing awkwardly in the middle of the room, watching him.

“Carole and Finn are going to go find a hotel for the night, okay?” Dad says. “I’m staying here,” he adds quickly.

Kurt doesn’t know why they’re telling him this until Carole comes over and tries to hug him again. He stiffens, but doesn’t jerk out of her hold this time. She’s supposed to be his step-mother. He should hug her. Or let her hug him, whichever it is. She lets go, then reaches up to brush his hair out of his face before wiping at her own eyes. “I’m just so glad you’re alive,” she says. Then she learns over and hugs Dad. “We’ll be back first thing tomorrow. I’ll find us a flight home.”

Dad nods.

Finn takes a step forward and for a second it looks like he might try and hug Kurt too, but then he just waves at him instead. Kurt waves back, and Finn grins at him.

Then they’re gone and it’s just Dad and Kurt. Dad pats his arms and says, “Get some sleep, okay. We’ll go home tomorrow.”

“Ohio?” Kurt asks.

Dad smiles. “That’s home, isn’t it?”

*

Kurt thinks someone must have told everyone to stop asking him questions at some point while he was asleep, because when he wakes up in the morning no one asks him anything. They don’t even ask if he needs to use the bathroom or what he wants to eat for breakfast, the nurse just make decisions for him. She pulls him out of bed and stands outside the door while he showers and then she—tosses his sweater at him and glares—hands him clean clothes to wear. Someone brings him a tray of food. It’s so much easier than yesterday that he almost wants to cry in relief.

Kurt’s been hungry ever since the woman at the truck stop tried to buy him food, but when they bring the breakfast tray he doesn’t want to eat. He picks the toast up and takes a bite, but he has to force himself to finish chewing and not spit it back out. He sets the toast back down. 

Dad frowns at him. “C’mon, bud, you’re skin and bones. You’ve gotta eat something.”

Kurt shakes his head, looking at the tray. The smell is making him feel kind of sick.

“How about the cereal?” Dad asks, handing him the spoon. It’s kind of soggy, but Kurt eats half of it anyway and Dad smiles at him.

Dad is trying to talk him into eating the banana when another new doctor comes in. “Ready to get out of here?” he asks Kurt.

There’s a bunch of paperwork and prescriptions and Kurt mostly ignores the information, but then he’s riding downstairs in a wheelchair. Finn grins when he sees him in the lobby and grabs the handles of the chair, pushing him outside to a rental car.

The short ride to the airport is only the beginning of a very long day. The airport is big, noisy, and full of people. Kurt stands right next to Dad the entire time, never more than arm’s length away, and watches everyone warily. He feels like he’s being watched, but never catches anyone looking at him.

He sits next to the window on the plane. For some reason, the enclosed space feels less claustrophobic when he has the window to look out of and the wall against his shoulder instead of another person. There’s nothing to see but clouds and bright blue sky, but he stares outside anyway.

Once they’ve landed and made their way out to the curb to wait as Carole goes to get the car, he asks, “We’re in Ohio now?”

“Dayton,” Dad says, giving him a concerned look. “You didn’t forget where Dayton is, did you?”

Kurt shakes his head. He didn’t forget.

*

Kurt doesn’t recognize the car that Carole drives, but then, he didn’t recognize Carole yesterday either. He doesn’t worry about it until she pulls into the driveway of an unfamiliar house and parks behind Dad’s old, blue pick-up.

Finn is already climbing out before the car has even been turned off. Kurt stares out the window at the house. It’s a pale yellow color, with white trim and a wide porch.

Dad opens the door for him, pulling Kurt’s seat-belt across his chest tightly until he reaches over to undo it. “Come on.”

“Where are we?” Kurt asks.

“Home,” Dad says. He looks at Carole over the top of the car, and she comes around to the door as well. Kurt stares past them at the house that isn’t his house. His house is white and stucco and smaller than this one. It just has a stoop, not a porch with a swing. His handprint is on the edge of the last step, from the time Dad fixed the concrete when he was little.

“We moved two months ago,” Dad reminds him. He sighs. “You don’t remember.” It’s not a question.

“Let’s go inside,” Carole suggests.

Kurt recognizes some of the furniture and decorations inside, but the new layout and addition of things he’s never seen before combines to make even their old couch look completely strange. He wanders from room to room, searching, before he finds what must be his room upstairs. It’s all of his stuff, even if it’s all in different places. The room is smaller than his basement and there’s no couch, no egg chair, just his bed and his desk and his shelves. He recognizes the room and he doesn’t, at the same time. Trying to make sense of where everything fits is making his head hurt.

There’s a knock and he spins around to find Dad standing in the open doorway. “Hey bud, you doing okay?”

Kurt nods.

Dad steps into the room. “We didn’t, uh, mess with anything. While you were gone. So everything’s where you left it.”

Kurt kind of wants to point out that he wouldn’t remember where he’d put anything anyway, but he just says, “Okay.”

Dad pulls him into a hug. His hand is heavy on the back of Kurt’s neck, holding him against his shoulder. “I missed you so much.”

“I missed you too,” Kurt says.

They stay like that for a bit, just holding onto each other, and when Dad pulls back he’s got tears in his eyes. He blinks rapidly, sniffs, and says, “I think we’re ordering pizza or take-out or something for dinner. Come decide what you want.”

As Kurt’s picking through a container of sesame chicken later, focused on trying to find the pieces that look the most appetizing, Finn says to Dad, “Isn’t this ruining your diet?”

“I got the steamed rice,” Dad points out. “And I didn’t use soy sauce. One meal of sweet and sour chicken isn’t going to kill me.”

“Oh, okay.” Finn goes back to his own food.

Kurt frowns. “Diet?” Dad’s never been on a diet, at least not that Kurt can recall. He likes donuts too much to go on a diet, he always said.

“Just watching my sodium, cholesterol, all that stuff,” Dad explains.

“Why?” Kurt asks.

“The doctor said we need to try and let you remember stuff on your own.”

Kurt glares down at the tabletop and pushes his food away angrily. “I don’t even know what I’m supposed to be remembering. What if I never remember anything?”

“Then we’ll figure it out as we go,” Dad says soothingly.

Kurt would cross his arms if he could, but one is still in a sling, so he settles for crossing just the one arm. He doesn’t want to ‘figure this out as they go.’ He wants to know what’s going on now. He wants to know why Dad is on a diet and why they’re in a new house and why he has a step-mom and a step-brother and what happened. 

“I want to know why you’re on a diet,” he says.

“Try and remember on your own, Kurt. You’ve got to try.”

Kurt shoves his chair back against the floor with a loud scrape and stands up, one hand on the edge of the table, glaring at Dad. “No. Just tell me.”

Carole looks back and forth between them nervously. “Kurt, just calm down. It’s okay.”

“No! It’s not okay!” Kurt’s yelling now and he’s not even sure why, but he just wants Dad to tell him why he’s on a stupid diet and he won’t even do that. No one does anything Kurt asks. No one asks him what he wants. No one asked him if he wanted a new house or a new room and he doesn’t want them. He doesn’t want any of those things. “Maybe there’s a reason I don’t remember,” he spits out. “Maybe I don’t want to.”

As soon as he says it, it suddenly registers that he has been yelling, screaming even, and he spins around and flees back upstairs, into his bedroom. There’s a walk-in closet and he buries himself behind a rack of sweaters. It’s stuffy and claustrophobic, but it’s also dark and quiet. When he hears the bedroom door open he pulls his knees in closer, trying to make himself smaller.

“Kurt?” Dad calls. He can hear Dad walking around the room, into the bathroom that connects to Finn’s room, and then coming back. The closet door opens and Kurt pushes himself back into the corner as tightly as he can.

Dad doesn’t move the sweaters aside, just sits on the floor on the other side of them. “I’m sorry,” he says.

Kurt doesn’t know what Dad is sorry for.

After sitting in the closet for a while, Kurt’s heart has finally stopped trying to beat its way out of his chest and he feels like he can breathe normally again. Dad eventually asks, “You ready to get out of here?”

Kurt nods, but then remembers that Dad can’t see him right now. He says, “Yeah.”

Dad shoves some of the sweaters back and helps Kurt crawl out from under them. “Do you want to try and finish dinner?” he asks. Kurt shakes his head. He’s exhausted, and the last thing he feels like doing is eating heavy Chinese food. “How about a movie?”

Kurt spends the movie curled up on the couch next to Dad, tucked up under his arm and an afghan that they’ve had since before his mom died. He falls asleep halfway through. He wakes up when the credits are rolling and Dad is trying to get him to go up to bed.

The shadows in the room are strange and unfamiliar, but his bed feels the same. He burrows under the blankets, but he can’t sleep now. For someone who can’t remember anything his mind is full of thoughts. He can’t calm down. He rolls over, staring at the wall, and counts in French to keep himself from thinking. He falls asleep before he gets to quarante.

*

Dad gives Kurt his phone the next morning. “Your friends have been calling and leaving you messages and stuff. You don’t have to talk to anyone unless you want to,” he adds when Kurt hesitates and almost gives the phone back. “They know you’re home, though, so they want to see you. When you decide you want to see them.”

He doesn’t use any names, and Kurt had no idea what to fill the gaps with. Who wants to see him? Why do they want see him?

There are over fifty messages from someone named Blaine. The newest one says ‘I can’t believe you’re okay.’ Kurt scrolls through the thread of messages. The first one that’s unread is just ‘Where are you?’ dated a little over three weeks ago. The very first saved message in the thread is from November, and says ‘Courage.’

Kurt doesn’t call anyone or reply to any of the texts, which turns out to be a good thing when a couple of FBI agents (they introduce themselves Agent James and Agent Donovan) show up later. It turns out that his kidnapping is a federal case now, since it involves more than one state.

They want to know if Kurt remembers anything. They show him pictures of the path between two buildings they tell him are the dorms and Seaton Hall and ask if he remembers taking it back from a late practice with the Warblers three weeks ago. They have a whole timeline of events and want to go through it with him, to see if any of it triggers his memories.

It doesn’t. It’s like a story that happened to someone on television. Kurt didn’t forget his bag and tell Blaine Anderson and Wes Nguyen to go on to the dorms without him. Kurt didn’t leave his bag and all its contents scattered on the path that runs alongside the park next to Dalton. Kurt wasn’t taken through the woods of the park and not seen for another three weeks and one thousand miles.

Kurt doesn’t say anything in response to their questions. There’s nothing to say.

Agent Donovan is getting frustrated. He pulls out the photos from the hospital and tries to show them to Kurt, who looks away. “Do you remember how you got these injuries?”

Kurt shakes his head, looking at the fireplace in the corner of the room. He tries to find the pattern in the colored bricks, but they’re random. Someone had tried very hard to make sure that none of them repeated.

Agent James is nicer. “Kurt, anything you can tell us could help us find the people who did this to you.” She smiles at him kindly

Dad shoves all the pictures and papers back at Agent Donovan. “He doesn’t remember anything. All you’re doing is scaring him. You can go now, unless you’re gonna help.”

“Sir, that’s what we’re trying to do,” Agent James says. She pulls out another picture, but this one is a sketch. “Do you recognize this man? He was seen loitering around the school by some of the other boys.”

The man in the sketch is thin, with wide eyes and light hair slicked back into a short ponytail. Kurt feels like the man is staring straight at him, even though it’s just a sketch. It’s just a drawing. It’s not real.

He shakes his head again.

“You’re sure?” Agent James asks. “You’ve never seen him?”

Kurt figures he doesn’t have to point out that he doesn’t remember if he’s seen the man or not at this point. He doesn’t say anything and Agent Donovan sighs heavily, gathering up his papers and pictures. Dad walks to them to the door and they talk in low voices for a while, but he doesn’t say anything to Kurt about it.

Kurt spends the rest of the afternoon playing video games with Finn. Somehow, killing a bunch of fake, digital zombies and watching their blood splatter all over the screen makes him feel a bit better. Finn doesn’t complain about the fact that Kurt sucks at the game, either. Kurt’s player keeps dying and dying and dying. Each time he dies he gets up again. He has extra lives and he comes back and it’s like nothing ever happened. He starts over again exactly where he left off (sometimes a little bit earlier, which is kind of annoying when it happens ten times in a row) and he’s exactly the same as he was before, just minus one life. He doesn’t even remember dying. It’s like it doesn’t matter.

*

Blaine from the text messages comes to visit a few days later. Kurt thought it would be the same as yesterday, when Mercedes, who is apparently his best friend, came to visit. It’s not. Mercedes had talked enough to make up for the fact that Kurt hadn’t known what to say. She had filled in all the gaps in the conversation, telling him gossip about people whose names he didn’t recognize. The stories were entertaining. They painted a picture of who everyone was and he felt like, maybe, he could recognize them when he saw them later.

Blaine doesn’t talk. He smiles at Kurt, but it’s sad, and he keeps apologizing. Kurt doesn’t know what to say to him. He feels like he should apologize as well, for not recognizing Blaine, for apparently telling Blaine it would be okay and going off on his own and getting kidnapped. But if Kurt starts apologizing for that, he’d never stop.

Blaine tries to hug him before he leaves and Kurt freezes up. He’s okay when Dad hugs him, and he’s gotten used to Carole and Finn now, but all these other people are just strangers still. Blaine stops and steps back. “Sorry,” he says again.

Kurt stares at a point on his chest, not meeting his eyes.

“You, um… Do you know if you’re coming back to school?” Blaine asks. “Everyone wanted me to ask.”

Kurt shrugs. He doesn’t remember anything about Dalton, so the idea of ‘going back’ there is odd. How can he go back somewhere he’s never been?

Blaine tries to catch his eye, but seems to give up and finally says, “I’m really glad you’re okay. I mean, that you’re back. I know you don’t remember me or anything, but that’s okay.” He stops, squeezing his fists around the ends of his scarf. “I’ll come back this weekend. If you want me to, that is.”

Kurt just shrugs again. He has a feeling people are going to show up even if he says no.

*

Dad and Carole are arguing. Kurt hangs back in the hallway, hiding next to the stairs where he can hear them clearly, but can still make a quick escape downstairs if either of them approach the open door of their room. He figures it’s okay to eavesdrop since they’re talking about him.

“He has to go back to school,” Carole says. “It’s been three weeks. He’s better now—“

“Better? He still can’t remember a damned thing.”

“I meant physically.”

“He’s not going back to Dalton,” Dad says. It’s the tone he uses when he ends an argument, when what he says is final and he’s not listening to anything else you have to say on the matter. Kurt wonders if Carole knows that, because she keeps arguing with him.

“I didn’t say anything about going back to Dalton.”

“Well I don’t know what you want to do,” Dad says. “He can’t go to McKinley either.”

“We could figure something out.”

Dad cuts her off before Carole can say anything else. “Just because he doesn’t remember that asshole threatening to kill him doesn’t mean it didn’t happen.”

“Finn said Karofsky’s been nicer lately, ever since the football players spent a week in glee.”

“Good for him. Kurt’s not going back there.”

“What if we—“

Kurt doesn’t find out what she’s planning, because there’s a voice behind him, asking, “What are you doing?” Kurt spins around and nearly falls down the stairs, catching himself against the railing before he lands nearly on top of Finn, who’s standing on the landing looking up at him. “Woah,” Finn says, holding his hands out like he’s going to catch Kurt.

Dad and Carole appear at the top of the stairs, asking what’s going on.

“Nothing,” Kurt says, at the same time Finn says, “He fell.”

Dad pulls him up into the hallway to check him over and Kurt pulls away from him. “I’m fine,” he says. “I just tripped. That’s all,” he insists, when Dad doesn’t look convinced.

Kurt is saved from further convincing when Finn’s stomach growls loudly enough that they can all hear it, and he asks what’s for dinner. Carole must have won the argument, though, because the next day they tell him that he’s going to go back to McKinley on Monday. They have lots of reasons, but the main one seems to be that, despite the fact that there is a bully who threatened his life at McKinley, no one ever actually tried to kidnap and kill him there, unlike Dalton Academy. Also, it’s nearby and their only other option is home-schooling. 

The last thing Kurt remembers Dave Karofsky doing to him is tossing him in a dumpster. He’s not sure when or how that escalated to death threats, but the entire thing sounds like something from a soap opera. A really bad one, if Blaine’s version of events is to be believed.

Dad asks, “Do you want to go back?”

Kurt shrugs, staring at the tabletop. All the people who come to visit, who claim to be his friends and tell him stories about the stuff they’ve done together, go to McKinley. Finn goes to McKinley, and Kurt likes Finn more than he thought he would. Finn doesn’t try to make Kurt talk all the time and doesn’t seem to care when he forgets stuff that everyone else thinks is easy, like where the forks are and who his best friend is. That might be because half the time Finn forgets things too, but it still makes Kurt feel better.

“Yes or no,” Dad prompts. “You’ve got to do more than just shrug at people if you’re going to go back to school.”

“I talk.”

“Not enough,” Dad says. His mouth twists into a frown and Kurt looks away. “You don’t say anything more than you have to. You’re gonna have to talk to people at school.”

“I talk to people,” Kurt insists. “I’m talking to you.”

Dad sighs and runs a hand over his head. “Okay. Do you want to go then?”

Kurt nods.

*

Kurt’s nervous about going back to school, but tries not to show it. He spends two hours on Sunday night trying to find something to wear and then spends another hour packing, unpacking, and repacking his bag. Dad finally knocks on the door of his room and tells him to go to bed.

They go in late, which Kurt is grateful for. Everyone else is in class, so the hallways are empty. The teachers sitting in their glass offices can see him walk by and their stares are bad enough. He knows that people talk about him, but as long as Dad shouts “No comment!” into the phone every time a reporter calls and changes the channel whenever the news comes on, Kurt can pretend that no one else knows.

He spends all of first period in the office, pretending to pay attention while Dad and Carole talk to Principal Figgins, who keeps giving him strange looks, and Coach Sylvester, who is giving him even stranger ones. As they’re leaving, she says, “Porcelain,” and he turns back to look at her, raising his chin a bit. “Good to have you back,” she says.

She turns away and Kurt’s glad he doesn’t have to try and think of a response.

In the hallway, Carole asks, “She calls you ‘Porcelain?’”

Kurt shrugs. He doesn’t remember Coach Sylvester ever talking to him before.

He doesn’t remember his classes from before, and the months at Dalton had put him ahead of them anyway (not that he remembers those classes either), so he has the same schedule as Finn. Kurt suspects this was part of Carole’s plan the other day. 

Dad gives his shoulder a squeeze before Kurt pushes open the door to the classroom, and then he’s suddenly the center of attention. Everyone is staring at him. Everyone is watching him, watching everything he does, every move he makes, recording every little thing about him…

Finn jumps up and grabs his arm before Kurt can turn and bolt back for the empty hallway, pulling him towards a table at the back of the room where there’s an empty seat between Finn and Puck. Puck leans over and says, “We got your back, man.” He cracks his knuckles as he glares out at the rest of the classroom.

The teacher is trying to get everyone’s attention again. They’re doing something with graphs and equations and curving lines. Kurt stares at the board for a few minutes, but he has no clue what’s going on. He clutches his bag to his chest and spends the rest of class watching Finn and Puck play paper football.

It turns out the problem was just geometry, not his memory. He does better in English, despite not having read the book they’re talking about, and he even knows most of the answers on the pop quiz in history. Somehow, he remembers all of this school stuff.

Artie is the one who says it, at lunch. “You remember useless crap about Charlemagne, but not your address? That’s kind of messed up.”

Mercedes glares at him. “Lay off. No one asked for your opinion.”

Artie raises his hands in surrender, and looks guilty as he says, “Sorry.”

Kurt picks through the salad he bought from the cafeteria, spearing one piece of lettuce at a time on his fork. He starts to take a bite, but stops and puts the fork back down. It feels like everyone is watching him again.

The others must notice the attention directed at their table as well, and are trying to make a show of ignoring it by talking loudly about their new performance for glee.

“Your voice will work perfectly for this song, Kurt,” Rachel tells him.

They’re all smiling at him, nodding. Kurt looks from face to face, feeling a bit frantic. He can’t get up and sing in front of people. He knows, logically, that he’s done it before. Everyone’s told him that he did. He did it on national television. He’s done it lots of times.

He can’t do it again.

“I know it’s not… Well, it’s about the worst circumstances ever, but I’m really glad you’re back,” Tina says. “We’ve missed you.”

“You can go to Nationals with us now,” Mercedes adds, almost bouncing in her seat.

When lunch ends they sweep him along with them to the auditorium, where they’re practicing today. Mr. Schue steps forward and looks like he’s going to hug Kurt for a moment, but then he just smiles and says, “Welcome back.”

Kurt can’t focus enough to try and read the sheet music he’s holding, but he manages to get a spot at the back of the group and mouths ‘watermelon cantaloupe’ so it looks like he’s singing along. Sometimes he just moves his lips, though, because he can’t even keep up with that. It works until Mr. Schue decides to give him a solo in the second verse.

The music is still going, but Kurt’s voice was never singing to begin with. He can’t. Everyone is staring at him and Kurt feels like he’s on display. It’s even worse than walking through the halls and sitting in the lunchroom because everyone here is expecting him to do something.

Kurt drops the sheet music and flees.

*

Finn finds him in the bathroom, huddled on the floor of the last stall. He peers over the top of the stall but doesn’t say anything, just slides down to sit on the other side of the door.

When the door of the bathroom opens a few minutes later Finn growls, “Get out.” Someone squeaks in surprise and starts to protest, but then the door closes and it’s quiet again. Kurt relaxes a bit, uncurling from the tight ball he’s wound himself into.

Eventually Finn asks, “You okay?”

Kurt nods before he remembers that Finn can’t see him through the door. He stands up, stumbling a bit because his foot has fallen asleep, and opens the door. Finn looks up at him, then climbs to his own feet.

“Is it glee?” Finn asks.

Kurt goes to the sink to wash his hands, just to have something to do. “I don’t want to sing,” he says, as he focuses on matching up the hot and cold handles.

“Are you sure?” Finn asks. “’Cos you really like singing. And performing.”

Kurt thinks about how he felt trying to sing in front of just the thirteen people who’d been in the auditorium today, and about trying to do that in front of hundreds of people. Just the thought of getting on stage in front of people is making his stomach clench. He reaches up for a paper towel and his hands are trembling.

“I’m sure,” he says.

Finn says he’ll explain to Mr. Schue, who he’s sure will be cool with whatever Kurt wants to do. He also promises not to tell Dad about Kurt freaking out and hiding in the bathroom for an hour. Finn holds out his fist for Kurt to bump, and waits when it takes Kurt a minute to figure out what he’s doing.

*

Kurt’s friends keep trying to get him to go places. Mercedes and Tina want to go to the mall. Rachel and Blaine want to go to the coffee shop. Finn tries to convince him to go to a movie.

“What’s it about?” Kurt asks.

“Um, cars?”

Kurt raises an eyebrow.

“It’s The Fast and the Furious. Number five or something. Come on, it’ll be cool. You like cars.” He wheedles, when Kurt still looks skeptical.

Kurt gives in when Carole says she thinks it’s a good idea too, and tells them to get some money out of her purse. He needs to get out more.

The movie sucks. Like, really, sucks. Even Finn thinks it’s awful, and he’s kind of a connoisseur of bad movies and tasteless reality television. They sit in the back of the theater rolling their eyes at how overly dramatic it is, but agree that the cars and high speed chases and occasional explosions are cool.

The theater is next to the mall, so afterwards they just wander around. No one is staring at him and Kurt feels kind of normal for the first time in weeks. He’s just a normal sixteen-year-old who went to a stupid movie with his step-brother and now they’re window shopping. None of the people walking past him know that he was kidnapped eight weeks ago or that he doesn’t remember approximately the last two years of his life. He’s spent the last five weeks trying to put everything back together and he’s only just getting started. But none of them know that. For one night, he’s just like everyone else; a teenager walking around the mall.

He probably jinxed it by thinking things were finally so normal. His life isn’t normal. His life is like a bad movie except it never ends and it’s not funny and there are no high speed chases or explosions.

Finn likes driving the Navigator because it’s newer and more expensive than any car he and Carole have ever owned before, so he’s always really careful with it. He parks really far away from the other cars so that no one will ding the doors.

He huffs in annoyance when they get to the car and there’s a van parked right next to them, when there are tons of empty spots all around. Some people are just jerks like that though, and Kurt is only looking out of the corner of his eye when the door to the van slides open.

He doesn’t even get the chance to turn around before the man who opened the door has grabbed his arm and his pulling him away from the Navigator.

Kurt’s body reacts before his mind does, but it’s not his flight or fight response that kicks in. He freezes. He can’t move. He’s still clinging to the door of the Navigator with one hand and a tall, bald man is yanking him towards the pitch black interior of the van and he is just frozen.

Finn comes running back around the front of the Navigator, yelling. The driver’s door of the van swings open just in time for him to slam into it with a sickening thud, sending him flying backward to the ground.

Another man is hanging halfway out the door, and Kurt’s eyes go to him even as the bald man keeps an iron grip on his arm. They’re both looking at Finn. “What do we do with him?” the bald man asks.

“Bring him with us,” the other man says. He’s tall too, with hair slicked back into a short ponytail. The man from the sketch, Kurt thinks. The one that the FBI agents asked him about.

The bald man shoves Kurt inside the van. There are no seats, just carpet and windows that are tinted dark black. A minute later both men manhandle Finn inside as well, and then the bald man climbs inside and slides the door shut. The ponytailed man climbs back in front and peels out of the parking lot.

It seems like it took forever, but Kurt guesses it’s only been a few minutes. In the dim light coming from the front he can see the bald man smirk at him. “Good to see you again, Kurt.”

*

By the time the van finally stops, Finn has recovered from running into the door enough to sit up next to Kurt. The bald man has moved to the front of the van, and the boys are both leaning against the back, trying not to fall over each time it accelerates or turns.

The ponytailed man says, “Go get us a room.”

“Why do I have to?” the bald man asks.

“Because your picture isn’t all over the evening news,” the ponytailed man spits out, banging a fist against the steering wheel.

“We should just dump them already,” the bald man mutters, climbing out of the van.

“Yeah, that worked so well last time.”

It’s quiet while they wait for the bald man to come back. He waves a key in front of the window and says, “Already checked; nearest neighbors are three rooms down.”

The ponytailed man turns around and climbs into the back, reaching for Kurt’s ankle. He tries to move, but there’s nowhere to go in the back of the van.

“Hey!” Finn protests, as the man gets ahold of Kurt and drags him forward. He opens the side door and keeps pulling until he’s got Kurt outside and on his feet.

Finn tries to follow them outside, but the bald man is standing there with a gun. He points it at Finn, forcing him back into the van and slamming the door shut again. There’s a bang as Finn pounds against the door, trying to get out.

The ponytailed man answers back by slamming Kurt against the side of the van. He cries out, hitting at the arms gripping his firmly. The ponytailed man ignores his struggles and leans down to look Kurt in the eye as he says, “You really are more trouble than you’re worth, aren’t you? I thought you were dead.”

Kurt shivers, falling still as he stares back at the man.

The ponytailed man pulls back and shoves him toward the bald man. “Get him inside.”

The gun that the bald man is holding jabs into his back as Kurt is dragged toward the building and inside a room. The bald man forces him to sit down on one of beds and then steps back, looking at him for a minute. Then he pulls back a fist and swings it, hard, into Kurt’s cheek. Kurt falls backwards onto the bed.

“You should have just stayed fucking dead,” the bald man tells him.

The ponytailed man pushes Finn inside the room then, shoving him towards the bed that Kurt’s sitting on. Finn’s standing back up a second later, demanding to know where they are and what’s going on.

“It doesn’t matter where we are,” the ponytailed man tells him. “Sit down and shut up.”

Finn doesn’t sit down. “No. You can’t just—“

The bald man stalks over and pushes the gun into Finn’s shoulder, pushing him back. “We can do whatever we want, boy, and you’re going to start listening. Or I’ve got no problem decorating the walls in here with your brains.”

The ponytailed man has turned the television on and is flipping through the channels. “Shit,” he says. “Shit shit shit.”

“What?” the bald man asks.

“There were fucking cameras in that parking lot.” The ponytailed man gestures to the screen where a grainy, far away picture of Kurt and Finn being forced into the van is being shown.

The bald man stares at the screen, the hand holding the gun falling limply to his side. “What are we gonna do?”

The screen goes back to a newscaster, and now Kurt and Finn’s school pictures are in the corner, along with a partial license plate for the van.

The ponytailed man changes the channel. The same information is running in a ticker along the bottom of the screen. He throws the remote at the television and it bounces off with a clang. Then he spins around and practically jumps towards the other bed, hands going for Kurt’s neck. Kurt claws at him, trying to get away, and is vaguely aware of Finn trying to pull the man off of him.

The ponytailed man keep choking him until he starts seeing spots, until his struggles are barely that, and then he lets go. Kurt gasps, drawing in a deep breath thathurts. The ponytailed man pulls Kurt up and drags him across the room, tossing him onto the hard floor of the bathroom. Finn stumbles inside after him and the door slams shut. Finn tries to open it again, but there’s a thud as something is jammed against it.

Kurt’s still gasping, still trying to catch his breath. He curls into a ball on the floor, trying to remind himself to exhale as well.

Finn rubs his back tentatively, asking, “Are you okay?”

Kurt shakes his head no. 

“Sorry,” Finn says. “That was a dumb question.”

Once Kurt’s caught his breath and examined the red marks on his throat in the mirror, they sit on the floor, backs against the wall and shoulders touching.

Finn asks, “Are those the same guys who kidnapped you before?”

“I don’t know,” Kurt says. Rasps, really; his voice is extremely hoarse.

“You still don’t remember?”

“No.” Kurt kind of wishes he did, right now. At least that way he’d know who these men were, what they wanted. He’d know what to expect from them.

*

The men are yelling at each other in the other room, but Kurt can’t make out what they’re saying. At least, for the moment, they seem to be mad at each other and not at them.

They’ve been in the bathroom for a long time. Finn’s restless and keeps moving around. He stretches his legs out, crosses them, stretches again. Then he stands up, pacing the small area as much as he can before sitting back down and starting over. He’s driving Kurt nuts.

After what seems like forever, and after the men in the other room have gotten quiet, Finn thinks he hears sirens outside. But Kurt doesn’t hear anything. “Maybe it’s the police,” Finn says hopefully. “They’ll do one of those hostage negations.”

“Negotiations,” Kurt corrects. He doesn’t mention that at this motel the police could be here for any number of reasons that don’t involve rescuing the two of them. He wants to hope too.

Finn nudges him and says, “See,” with a grin when the phone in the other room starts ringing. It rings and rings and rings and the men start yelling at each other again.

Finn decides he needs something to fight back with. He’s on his hands and knees, digging through the cabinets, while Kurt leans back against the tub and watches him. Finn sits up, brandishing a plunger.

Kurt raises an eyebrow. “I don’t think they’ll be scared of a plunger.”

“It’s kind of like a bat,” Finn argues, swinging it a bit.

The only other things in the bathroom are towels and Dixie cups, so the plunger is really their only option. They both get to their feet when there’s banging against the door—whatever was shoved against it is being moved. Finn raises the plunger over his head and swings it down, hard, as soon as the door opens, catching the bald man in the side of the head.

The bald man falls against the sink and Finn swings again, hitting him in the back. The ponytailed man is there as well, and he jumps at Finn, tackling him backwards into the bathroom. They fall on top of Kurt and all of four of them are a tangle of limbs, kicking and fighting, on the bathroom floor. Kurt crawls out from under them and starts trying to pull the ponytailed man off of Finn. The ponytailed man is on top of him and he’s got ahold of the plunger now, hitting Finn over the head with it. He swings an elbow back and hits Kurt in the stomach. Kurt trips over the lip of the bathtub and falls, flailing out to try and catch himself on the shower curtain but only succeeding in getting himself tangled up in it.

Kurt has just gotten back on his feet when the bald man appears in the doorway. Kurt hadn’t even noticed that he was missing. He’s got the gun again and the next moment seems to take forever even though Kurt knows that it doesn’t. Finn’s still on the floor fighting with the ponytailed man and the bald man is raising the gun, aiming at Kurt, and pulling the trigger.

Kurt jerks at the noise, more than anything. The noise echoes around the small, tile room for the longest time and then Kurt falls forward. The ponytailed man scrambles up, yelling. Kurt’s vaguely aware of Finn crouching over him, turning him over onto his back and saying, “oh god oh god oh god oh god,” but mostly he’s just aware of how much it hurts.

There’s a lot of noise. It’s really loud in the motel room now. Kurt turns his head to the side, and all he can see is the floor, dirt caked between the tiles, and the old wallpaper that’s wrinkled and peeling from years of humidity. And then it's the same bathroom, the same tile and the peeling wallpaper but it's different and he's been here before. He's had jamais vu for weeks now and this is the first time something has felt familiar.

Kurt closes his eyes.

*

Kurt doesn’t see it coming. He’s taking a shortcut back to the dorms after a late Warblers’ rehearsal; the path runs right next to the wooded edge of the park that butts up against Dalton’s property. There’s a fence, but it’s just a small, chain-link thing that most of the boys climb right over when they decide they’d rather go use the park’s basketball court. He’s by himself because he’s an idiot that forgot his bag, and he’d waved Blaine and Wes off when they’d offered to walk back with him.

It’s actually kind of nice to be by himself for once, with just a breeze rustling the branches of the trees along the path and the lamps casting long shadows. He’s always surrounded by other people here at school—even the showers are communal—and the house feels full of people when he goes home now. Home has gotten a bit better since they moved so he and Finn don’t have to share a room anymore. It’s nice to have a space to himself.

Anyway, he’s preoccupied, running through all the random things he still needs to get done that evening before he goes to bed and just not paying attention in general, so he doesn’t notice that he’s not alone until he is really not alone. He doesn’t notice the people walking behind him until they’re practically on top of him, and by then it’s too late. There’s an arm around his torso, trapping his arms against his sides, and another hand covering his mouth before he’s even opened it to scream.

Kurt’s lifted off his feet and he starts kicking immediately, flailing desperately. He manages to kick his assailant in the shin, hard, and they drop him back down, adjusting their hold. The hand over his mouth is covering his nose too and Kurt’s having a hard time breathing.

“A little help here,” the man holding him grunts out.

Which is when Kurt realizes that during his struggle against the man he’s been dragged off the path and over to the fence. He redoubles his efforts to twist out of the man’s hold, but the grip is unyielding. Kurt’s arms are immobilized to the elbow and while he’s pretty sure he’s kicked hard enough to turn the man’s legs purple by now, it doesn’t seem to be doing any good. He bites down on the hand over his mouth as hard as he can, tasting blood as he does.

“Fuck fuck fuck,” the man curses, yanking his hand away from Kurt’s mouth. Kurt draws in a breath to scream.

He doesn’t get much of a scream out before there’s a second man in front of him, who swings his hand forward, and then there’s just pain. Before he’s even surfaced out from under it enough to figure out what just happened the second man is resting the barrel of a gun against his forehead. “Shut up before I kill you right here.”

Kurt’s frozen. He can’t actually see the gun that well, but he can see the man’s blue eyes boring into his, unblinking. “Not another word, got it?” the man says.

The barrel of the gun presses against his forehead a bit harder. Kurt nods frantically.

They make him climb over the fence and then he’s being dragged through the park. He keeps hoping they’ll run into someone, anyone, but it’s late and dark and it’s still March, so the park is completely abandoned. Once they’re out of the trees he sees the car they’re headed towards. Oh no. No no no. If he gets in that car who knows where they’ll take him? He’s already too far away from help now.

One of the men opens the trunk of the car. Kurt starts pleading.

He gets clocked in the head with butt of the gun again and everything gets fuzzy. He’s vaguely aware of being lifted off his feet again, then the lid of the trunk is closing over the top of him and everything is pitch black.

*

It’s still dark when Kurt wakes up, but now it’s also hot and noisy. Incredibly noisy. He tries to turn over, but the trunk is too small and he’s curled up into an awkward position. There’s something poking him in the back and he tries to twist away from it. He’s sweating through the layers of his dress shirt and sweater and his tie feels like it’s choking him. He feels like he can’t breathe. There’s not enough oxygen in the trunk and what little is there is too hot and stale. His chest is tight and each breath is faster, shallower, and hurts more than the last.

He needs to calm down. He needs to stop panicking. But if ever there were a time to panic it’s when he’s been kidnapped by two strange men at gunpoint and stuffed into a trunk. Oh god. Breathe. Breathe. In and out. In. Out.

He’s so focused on trying to convince himself that there is enough air in the trunk, that he is not going to suffocate and die, that he doesn’t notice the changes in speed and direction that the car is making until they nearly stop moving. There’s a sharp turn that rolls him abruptly toward the back of the trunk, and then another in the opposite direction. Kurt has no way to brace himself and no way to tell when another turn is coming.

The car finally stops. He can both hear and feel the doors opening and closing, and then everything’s quiet. He stares at the top of the trunk, expecting it to open at any moment, bracing himself.

He needs to plan. When it opens, he’ll jump up and run. It doesn’t matter what direction he goes, as long as it’s away from the men with the gun. He doesn’t know where they’re stopped at, but maybe it’s near a highway or something—he’s pretty sure they were on the highway earlier—and he can just run and find the highway and then someone will stop and he can call the police and everything will be okay. He shifts around, trying to get into a position that will be the most effective for leaping from the trunk of a car. His right leg is pins and needles from the awkward position he’s been forced into, but he can probably still run. He has to run. He doesn’t have any other options.

Every muscle is tensed and his eyes are wide open, staring up into the pitch blackness as he waits. He doesn’t know when, or even how, he drifts off, but he must at some point because he wakes up when one of the men opens the trunk and reaches inside to haul him out. He’s not prepared anymore. He fell asleep and he doesn’t know how long he spent waiting for them to come back and now he’s disoriented. His leg is even more asleep now, it’s just that dead weight kind of asleep and his ankle turns under him when the man sets him on his feet.

He has the gun again and jabs it into Kurt’s side. “Let’s go,” he says, dragging Kurt across the lot.

They’re at a motel. Kurt doesn’t know what time it is, but the parking lot is empty and lit only by the neon ‘Vacancy’ sign and a streetlight at the other end of the lot, near the office. There are a few other cars, but most of them are parked down there.

Kurt has a feeling screaming isn’t going to do any good. There isn’t anyone around to hear him.

The other man opens the door to the motel room. Once they’re inside, Kurt is pushed into a chair. He stares at the door, but the other man is in the process of locking it. First the handle, then the chain.

It’s the first time Kurt’s gotten a good look at the men. The first one, the one who grabbed him at school and the one who pulled him out of trunk just now, is tall and thin, with dark blond hair slicked back into a ponytail. He sits down on the end of one of the beds, across from Kurt, watching him.

“What’s your name?” the ponytailed man asks.

Kurt doesn’t answer. He breathes in and out shakily, and tries to stop himself from trembling. His knuckles are white around the arms of the chair.

The second man, who’s tall and bald, steps away from the door and reaches out, smacking Kurt upside the head. “What’s your name?”

“Kurt,” he says, eyes darting between them.

The ponytailed man just stares at him for what feels like ages, then he smiles. “Kurt,” he repeats.

Kurt feels like he did in the trunk, like he can’t breathe. He can hear how shaky his next breath is.

The bald man leans over the dresser and twitches the curtain open to peek outside, then moves toward the door. “I’m starving. You want anything?”

The ponytailed man shakes his head and stays on the bed, never taking his eyes off Kurt.

Kurt looks around the room at anything but the man across from him. There’s a picture of a watercolor fall landscape on the wall above the bed. The red and orange colors clash with the green bedspread.

“Come here,” the ponytailed man says. Kurt makes eye contact with him for a moment, then glances at the door quickly. The bald man left the chain lock hanging open when he left. Kurt would only have to get the lock on the handle open to get out of the room, and then he’d be outside and he could run to the office. There must be someone in the office. There will be a phone in the office. He can call the police.

Kurt looks back at the ponytailed man. He’s still watching Kurt, still smiling, and it makes Kurt’s skin crawl. He doesn’t know where the gun went, but the man isn’t holding it anymore.

Kurt runs for the door. He’s fumbling with the handle, fingers that are shaky with adrenaline and fear trying to turn the lock, when the ponytailed man grabs him around the waist and hurls him away. Kurt yells as he hits the dresser hard and falls to the floor. He scrambles back to his feet, moving backwards, putting the dresser between him and the man.

It was a mistake. He’s backed himself into a corner now, the dresser on one side, a bed on the other, and a wall at his back. He keeps moving backwards anyway, until he can’t anymore. There’s nowhere to go.

He bangs against the wall behind him frantically, shouting for help.

“There’s no one there,” the man says.

He’s holding the gun again, but he’s not pointing it at Kurt. He wields it like a club, and hits Kurt in the side of the head again. Kurt falls against the wall and would’ve crumpled to the floor, but the man grabs his arm, holding him up, and hits him again. Kurt can feel the blood trickling down the side of his face. The room spins sickeningly as the man tosses him towards the bed. Kurt tries to get back up, but the man pushes him down again and starts pulling at his clothes. He pushes the gun up under Kurt’s chin when he tries to push the man away again.

“You’re almost more trouble than you’re worth, Kurt,” the man says. “You can either cooperate, or I can put this bullet through your brain. Do we understand each other?”

Kurt stares up at him. The man isn’t smiling at him anymore, but his expression still makes Kurt’s skin crawl. Kurt tries pleading again. 

It doesn’t work this time, either.

Afterwards the man drags him into the bathroom and locks him inside. It’s probably a good thing he’s locked in the bathroom, because Kurt spends a long time hunched over the toilet, puking. Then he curls up on the floor and stares at the wall. There’s dirt caked in between the tiles and the one under his cheek is cracked. The wallpaper is peeling at the bottom, curling up away from where it meets the baseboard. He traces the pattern with his eyes. It’s some kind of swirl, lines looping together and never ending until they hit a new sheet of paper that doesn’t line up.

He lost track of time back when they first locked him in the trunk, so he doesn’t know how long it’s been before the other man comes back. He can hear the door in the other room slamming shut and muffled voices.

Maybe they’ll forget about him and leave him here in the bathroom if he’s quiet. Someone will come to clean the room eventually and find him, won’t they? He’ll be okay in the bathroom until someone finds him. He’s got a toilet and a shower and a sink with water to drink. There are even little cups on the counter.

That fantasy shatters as soon as the bathroom door opens. The bald man looms over him, raising an eyebrow when Kurt doesn’t try and move. Moving hurts.

The bald man leans down and grabs his arm, hauling him up. “Time to go, pretty boy.”

Kurt stumbles as soon as he’s on his feet. The man frowns, turning the faucet on and grabbing a towel, swiping at Kurt’s face roughly. Kurt jerks back and the man reaches for his chin to hold him in place. The white towel has streaks of blood on it when the man pulls it away, and Kurt glances at himself in the mirror, out of the corner of his eye. The gash on his head is hidden by his hair, but it’s matted with blood and his skin is still stained red.

The man must decide he’s cleaned up enough, because then he’s shrugging off his coat and forcing Kurt into it. It smells gross, like sweat, but the man buttons up the front of it before grabbing Kurt’s arm again and dragging him out of the bathroom. It’s only the man’s tight grip on his arm that’s keeping him upright as he’s pulled outside to the waiting car. The ponytailed man is sitting in the driver’s seat. This time Kurt is shoved into the backseat, instead of the trunk. The bald man slides in next to him.

It’s early, the sky is just starting to lighten in the east, and Kurt watches road signs as they drive. They’re not on the interstate, so it takes him awhile to figure out that the towns listed on the signs are in Illinois. He’s not even in Ohio anymore. He is two states away. Oh god.

*

They drive all day. The ponytailed man and the bald man swap places occasionally and listen to classic rock stations. When they stop for gas, the ponytailed man goes inside to get the key to the bathroom and then goes in with Kurt. There are other people at the gas station, but the ponytailed man is right there, his hand is on Kurt’s arm the whole time they’re there and Kurt can’t even swallow, much less speak. A woman pumping gas next to them looks over at Kurt and smiles slightly at him. Kurt stares back at her, wide eyed, until the ponytailed man forces him back inside the car.

They’re not driving through any cities, Kurt notices. There’s nothing but farm fields outside the window and tiny towns they have to slow down to drive through. He falls asleep again after they get to Missouri and when he wakes up the signs are for how many miles to Omaha.

The ponytailed man stretches in the front seat. “We’re gonna have to stop again,” he says.

There’s another motel, this one even cheaper and more deserted than the last. The curtains inside are heavy and gold and go all the way to floor. Kurt stares at them while the bald man lies on top of him.

They lock him in the bathroom again, but give him a pillow this time. Kurt curls up in the bathtub. It’s uncomfortable, but he can’t sleep anyway. One of the men is snoring loudly.

Kurt pulls the pillow up around his face, until he can barely breathe, and cries.

*

It’s still dark when they leave this time and Kurt’s pretty sure they’re in Nebraska now. When they finally turn off the highway, he’s expecting another motel. Instead, they drive through a town, past small houses and antique stores and a couple fast food places. The houses start getting further apart until finally they’re turning down a gravel road. Kurt clings to the edge of the seat, trying not to bounce around too much.

They’re going to kill him, Kurt thinks. They’re finally going to kill him. He’s being driven out to the middle of nowhere in Nebraska so that he can be murdered and no one will ever find his body except for cows. He hopes that’s all they’ll do.

The ponytailed man parks the car next to a big van and then pulls Kurt out of the backseat and up the steps to the door of a trailer. Kurt doesn’t get much of a chance to look around, but everything around them is dark anyway. There aren’t any lights, not even far off in the distance. Which must mean there aren’t any neighbors.

Kurt tries to find his voice. “Where are we?” he asks.

“Home,” the ponytailed man says, flicking on the light.

Home is a cluttered living room. There’s a big desk with a computer and a bunch of equipment on the other side of the room. 

Kurt tries again. “We’re in Nebraska?” he asks. He’s pretty sure they’re in Nebraska, even though he’s never been there before and has no idea what Nebraska looks like. “Where in Nebraska?”

The ponytailed man squeezes his arm tightly and swings his other hand down, backhanding Kurt across the face. “It doesn’t really matter to you, does it? Stop talking.” 

He starts dragging Kurt along behind him and digs a key out of his pocket to unlock a door at the end of the hallway. Kurt’s beginning to think that they aren’t going to kill him after all. They’re just going to keep him locked up here, forever. But now there’s no chance of a maid or someone at a gas station figuring it out and rescuing him. Now he’s in a trailer in the middle of nowhere with two psychopaths and if that isn’t every cliché from every horror movie ever he doesn’t know what is.

Once the door’s open the ponytailed man shoves Kurt inside. Kurt hasn’t even gotten back to his feet before the door slams closed and the locks clicks again. He rattles the handle anyway, and is answered with the bang of a fist being slammed against the wood. “Shut up!” the man yells.

Kurt lets go of the handle, stumbling away from the door. The room is so dark he’s seeing things, leftover patterns of light on his retinas. He reaches a hand out and tries to find a wall but hits something with his legs first and falls forward.

It turns out to be a mattress, and there’s already someone else sitting on it. Hands shove at Kurt and he yells, shoving back and striking out blindly. The person he landed on lets out an “oof” as Kurt connects a fist to what he thinks is their stomach. Then they shove him backwards and he hits the wall he was trying to find earlier with his head and another yell.

“Shut up,” whoever he’s fighting with hisses. “Fuck.”

There are footsteps in the hallway, and then the lock is rattling and the door’s swinging open. The ponytailed man is just a silhouette in the doorway, but the light spilling in from the hallway gives Kurt a look at the other person in the room.

It’s another teenage boy, and he’s in even worse shape than Kurt is (and Kurt’s been wearing the same blood-covered sweater and smelly coat for probably two days now, so that’s saying something).

The ponytailed man slams a fist against the wall, and both Kurt and the other boy startle at the noise. “What part of shut the fuck up don’t you two understand?”

Kurt stares back at him. The man seems to be waiting for an answer, but Kurt’s pretty sure anything he said would just result in the man hitting him again.

“Sorry,” the other boy says. “Sorry. We’re sorry.”

There’s a yell from somewhere else in the house, probably the bald man, and the ponytailed man says, “If I have to come tell you to shut up again you’re both gonna regret it,” before he slams the door shut again and plunges the room back into darkness. The lock rattles again and then he stomps back down the hallway. Kurt lets out the breath he was holding.

“What the hell did you scream for?” the boy asks. His voice is angry, but it’s no louder than a whisper. Kurt can’t see him anymore, but at least he knows where he is now. He crawls forward, feeling for the mattress this time, and sits down on it.

“I didn’t know you were there,” Kurt explains.

“Well, I am.”

“Sorry.” Kurt leans back against the wall, shifting a bit to try and sit comfortably. “What’s your name?” he asks.

The boy’s quiet for a minute, before he finally says, “Alex. Yours?”

“Kurt.” He closes his eyes for minute, hoping it will help them adjust to the darkness. He still can’t see his hand in front of his face when he opens them again. “What…” Kurt starts to ask, but then he realizes he’s not sure how to phrase the question. He wants to know what happened to Alex—if it’s the same as what happened to him, so that maybe he’ll know what’s going to happen next—but he also knows that he doesn’t want to tell anyone about what happened at the motels, so it’s not really fair to ask someone else. “Do you know where we are?” he asks instead.

“Disneyland,” Alex mutters. “It doesn’t matter, there’s no way out.”

“It’s a house. There’s a front door.”

“Good luck getting to it.”

*

The bald man is the one who opens the door next, and he fists a hand in Kurt’s hair to pull him to his feet. Kurt tilts his head back, trying to relieve the pressure on his scalp as the bald man walks him to the door and shoves him into the hallway. He waits, looking around and blinking in the light as the bald man locks the door again. Then there’s a hand on his back, pushing him towards another room.

It’s empty except for a bed against one wall and a tripod with a camera across from it. Kurt stares at the camera, his stomach clenching painfully. The ponytailed man is standing behind it, adjusting something. The bald man pushes Kurt down to sit on the bed.

He wants to ask what’s going on, but he also doesn’t to know. He wants to be somewhere else. He wants to be back in the dark room with Alex. He wants to be back in Ohio.

The ponytailed man looks at him over the top of the camera. “So Kurt, here’s how this works. We’re business men. We’re part of the entertainment industry.” He’s very matter of fact. He smiles at Kurt. “You just happen to be that entertainment.”

Kurt tries to swallow, and it feels like his throat is too small.

“This first time’ll be easy,” he promises.

It’s not.

*

He realizes later, when the bald man drags Alex out of the room for a while, that the walls of this place are paper thin and he can hear everything that’s happening the next room. Kurt curls up on the mattress, faces the wall, and presses his hands over his ears as hard as he can. He can hear his blood roaring in his ears with each heartbeat. Every breath he takes sounds impossibly loud.

He can’t see anything in the dark, so he starts counting. He gets to one hundred too fast and it’s too easy, he doesn’t have to think about it and his mind starts to wander so he switches to French. He has to concentrate to remember whether it’s vingt-et-un or just vingt-un. Vingt-et-un, he decides, remembering that the et isn’t dropped until you get to quarte-vingt-un and he isn’t there yet.

He was supposed to give a presentation in French on Monday, and he’s probably missed that by now. He thinks he has, anyway. He doesn’t know what day it is. It feels like it’s been weeks, months. It feels like he’s always been here, moving between this dark room with its dingy mattress and the brightly lit room next door with its big bed.

Alex shoves him to the side when he comes back and slumps against the other end of the mattress. Kurt moves his hands, but keeps counting, mouthing the words to himself. There’s nothing else to do. He can’t remember how to say ‘one thousand,’ and spends a minute panicking, trying to remember. He knows that he knows what it is. He just can’t remember.

He realizes he’s getting worked up over numbers and takes a deep breath. He can just use ‘thousand.’ It sounds weird mixed with the French words, but it doesn’t really matter since he’s the only one who can hear it.

*

There’s a pattern, kind of. It matches up with when the men bring them food—leftovers and junk food, but Kurt is never hungry anyway. One day they take Alex, and the next day they take Kurt. It might not really be a day, though. Kurt isn’t sure how much time passes in between. He tried asking once and got hit instead of getting an answer, so he doesn’t want to ask the men any more questions.

Alex always seems annoyed when Kurt tries to talk to him, but it’s just the two of them here and the only thing to do in the dark room is wait and sleep. Kurt can’t sleep so he tries to talk to Alex instead.

“Where are you from?” Kurt asks. They’re both lying on the mattress, staring up at the ceiling.

He can feel Alex shrug the shoulder that’s next to Kurt’s. “Does it matter?”

Of course, Kurt thinks. Why wouldn’t it matter? Where you’re from is where home is—this isn’t home, no matter what the ponytailed man says. It’s where your family is, the people who love you, care about you. The people who are looking for you. He’s sure his dad is looking for him

He just says, “Yes,” to Alex.

“Missouri. Misery,” Alex emphasizes, nudging Kurt’s arm. “I don’t think we’re there anymore and it sucked anyway. There’s nothing there but farms. And lakes.”

“It sucks here,” Kurt says. “I’m pretty sure we’re in Nebraska,” he adds.

Alex shrugs again. “What about you? Where’s home?”

“Ohio.”

“Hmm,” Alex says. He doesn’t ask anything else. Kurt tries to think of something else to talk about, not wanting to go back to staring at the ceiling and trying not to think about anything. He asks what happened before Kurt got here, when it was just Alex.

Alex rolls over to face him. “What makes you think it was just me?”

Kurt frowns. “No one else is here.”

“There was another kid here before you,” Alex says.

Kurt has to ask. “What happened to him?”

“He’s dead.”

Alex flops back down onto the mattress. Kurt stares at him. He can just barely see Alex in the dim light coming from the window that’s boarded over. “What happened?” he repeats.

“He pissed them off. Got himself killed.” Alex shrugs, like it’s no big deal. “He didn’t last very long.”

Kurt still trying to decide what to make of that when the bald man opens the door. It’s Kurt’s turn again.

Kurt hadn’t expected to see his Dalton sweater again after the ponytailed man took it the first time, but he comes into the room with it clenched in a fist and tosses it at Kurt. “Put this on.”

Kurt turns it over. The sweater’s been washed but it’s too fuzzy, like it’s been through a washing machine even though it’s supposed to be dry-cleaned. He looks up and the ponytailed man raises his eyebrows at him, a clear ‘what are you waiting for?’ expression. Kurt scrambles to pull the sweater over his head.

“Someone’s gonna recognize that logo,” the bald man points out.

“He’s not going to have it on long enough for anyone to go look up the logo on his sweater. All that matters is that he looks like a Catholic school boy right now.” The ponytailed man turns to smirk at Kurt and reaches out to smooth his bangs down. “Don’t you?”

Kurt stares at the floor and curls his hands into fists until his nails are biting into his palms painfully. He wonders what the other kid did to piss the men off enough to kill him.

The bald man snorts and turns the camera on. “Showtime,” he says.

*

Something changes, and Kurt’s not sure what it is. Everything’s been the same for so long—it’s been awful, but it’s been predictable—and now suddenly it’s not. The bald man drags Kurt out of the dark room twice in a row, breaking the pattern. When he gets back, Alex is pacing back and forth instead of just lying on the mattress like they usually do.

“What’s wrong?” Kurt asks.

“Nothing,” Alex says. “Shut up.”

Kurt pulls his knees towards his chest and rests his head against them, tucking himself into the corner and watching Alex pace. Alex is still agitated when the bald man comes back, hours later or minutes, and heads towards Kurt again, bending down to grab his arm and pull him up.

Alex runs across the room, ramming himself into the bald man and using his momentum to slam them both into the wall. Kurt is caught under them, trying to scramble out of the way as they fight with each other. They’re on the floor now, rolling around. Alex has the upper hand for a bit, adrenaline giving him strength and letting him get a few punches in before the bald man rolls them over, straddling Alex and wrapping his hands around his neck, slamming Alex’s head against the floor again and again and again.

Kurt presses himself back against the wall, trying to be invisible.

The ponytailed man appears in the doorway, staring inside. “What the hell?!” he demands.

“Little fucker just attacked me,” the bald man grunts out, swinging a fist towards Alex’s face.

Alex locks eyes with Kurt, mouthing something at him. The ponytailed man runs back down the hallway, and the bald man is saying something but Kurt can’t hear him, he’s watching Alex. Alex is still looking at Kurt, staring straight at him even as the bald man beats him and finally Kurt can see he’s saying, “Help.”

Kurt can’t help. Kurt can’t even help himself; what is he supposed to do for Alex? Alex brought it on himself. He shouldn’t have attacked the bald man. Why would he do that? The bald man wasn’t even there to take Alex into the other room, he was taking Kurt.

Alex groans as the bald man punches him in the stomach.

Kurt takes a deep breath and pushes himself away from the wall. He runs at the bald man and shoves, knocking him over, off of Alex and onto his side and Kurt starts hitting and kicking out blindly. He doesn’t know what he’s doing. He’s gone crazy.

Maybe he’ll piss them off and they’ll finally kill him.

Alex is already back on his feet, but instead of helping he runs past Kurt and the bald man and out the door, down the hall. Kurt’s distracted by watching him, trying to figure out where he’s going and why he’s leaving Kurt behind and it gives the bald man the opportunity to slam Kurt back onto the floor. Now his hands are around Kurt’s neck, pressing down, choking him. Kurt claws at his hands but it doesn’t do any good and he can’t breathe.

There’s yelling in the other room now, and after slamming Kurt’s head against the floor hard enough to make him see spots, the bald man hauls him to his feet, dragging him into the hallway. One arm is still around Kurt’s neck and the other is wrapped around his chest but Kurt’s too dazed to move anyway.

They get to the living room just in time to see the ponytailed man pointing a gun at Alex. The noise seems to echo around the room, and Kurt jerks in the bald man’s hold, watching as Alex falls against the door and slides down to the floor.

There’s a streak of red blood on the door and there is already blood pooling around him. “Fuck,” the bald man says.

The ponytailed man walks over and turns Alex over onto his back. Alex is gasping up at the ceiling. The ponytailed man presses the gun against Alex’s forehead and pulls the trigger again.

*

They leave Kurt in the living room with Alex while they pack their stuff and drag it out to the two vehicles outside. Kurt huddles on the couch, staring at Alex and the growing stain on the carpet. When the ponytailed man comes toward him, he scrambles backwards over the end of the couch. The ponytailed man growls, stalking after him and twisting his arm as he pulls him along. Kurt trips and falls down the stairs, landing hard on the gravel at the bottom of the stairs. Something in his elbow popspainfully and he cries out, earning himself a kick from the ponytailed man and a “Shut up!”

Kurt clutches his arm to his chest as the ponytailed man shoves him into the backseat of the car again, and watches through the window as they carry the last of their stuff out to the van. They put Alex in the trunk of the car.

The ponytailed man takes off in the van, and the bald man climbs back into the front of the car. As he drives back down the gravel road, he grumbles about being stuck with clean-up duty. Kurt keeps looking out the back window, at the trunk.

They drive along back roads. Half of them are unpaved and when they finally stop they’re completely alone. They really are in the middle of nowhere, Kurt thinks. The ponytailed man and the van went a different direction and Kurt is alone with the bald man and Alex in a field at night.

The bald man makes Kurt help him get Alex out of the trunk and into the ditch. Then he turns back to Kurt, who watches him warily. Kurt doesn’t know what to expect anymore.

“This is a shame, kid,” the bald man says. “I kind of liked you.”

Kurt hesitates for a moment, then turns and runs.

He only gets as far as the front of the car before the bald man has snatched the back of the coat Kurt’s wearing, and swung him sideways into the car. Kurt’s head hits the hood with a bang that reverberates through his skull and then he’s on the ground, underneath the bald man for what feels like the millionth time but this time the man is hitting him too. Kurt squirms, twisting around and digging his nails into the gravel, trying to pull himself away. The man grabs his hips, pulling him back.

Kurt keeps kicking and hitting and biting. This is the last time and he is going to die and he is not going out without a fight. The bald man doesn’t have the gun, but he does have his fists. He slams Kurt against the car again and Kurt can’t see straight anymore. Everything is fuzzy and faded. He tries to crawl away again and only succeeds in getting his leg torn bloody against the gravel.

The bald man grabs his hair and slams his head into the ground again and everything goes away, finally.

*

Kurt’s drifting. He wakes up once, but everything is bright white and there’s just too much so he slips back into sleep.

When he wakes up for real, it’s still bright and there’s still too much of everything, but he can hear Dad talking. The sound keeps him awake, pulls him out from under the fog of sleep until he’s blinking his eyes open and squinting up at a white ceiling. Dad’s holding his hand, and Kurt squeezes back, trying to get his attention.

“Kurt?” Dad leans down over him, brushing a hand over his head. “You’re awake? Oh god, you’re awake.”

Dad squeezes Kurt’s hand back tightly. “Welcome back.” His smile is watery.

Kurt’s not sure where he went, but he tries to smile back anyway.

*

After doctors have rushed around and poked and prodded at him, Kurt’s finally left alone with Dad again.

“They caught both of those guys,” Dad says. It takes Kurt a minute to realize he means the men who kidnapped him.

“Oh,” he says.

“The police stormed in after they shot you.” He frowns, grumbling about how they couldn’t storm in before that. “You don’t have to worry about them anymore,” Dad continues. “Never again, okay?”

Kurt nods, staring down at the blanket. He spreads his hands over it, smoothing out the wrinkles over his lap. “I’m sorry,” he says.

Dad frowns. “For what? You don’t have anything to be sorry for.”

“Yes I—“ Kurt clenches his hands into fists until his nails dig into his palms. “I’m sorry I went with them. I didn’t want to,” he tries to explain. He reaches up, wiping at his nose and sniffling a bit.

“You… Kurt, I saw that tape. They grabbed you and forced you inside the van. You don’t have to apologize for anything.” Dad reaches over to take hold of Kurt’s fists in his hands, trying to get him to loosen them. “It’s alright,” he says.

“He had a gun,” Kurt continues, sniffling again. “And he said he was going to kill me if I didn’t do what he said so I did but then he killed Alex when he tried to run away and he made me help and then he tried to kill me anyway and—“

Kurt’s jumble of words is muffled against Dad’s shoulder as he starts crying. He doesn’t think he’s cried since that night spent huddled in the bathtub of the motel room but now he is sobbing. He can’t stop. There’s a stabbing pain in his stomach where he was shot but he doesn’t want to move. Dad’s arms are warm and solid and safearound him and Kurt just wants to sit here forever.

Dad rubs his back gently, shushing him. “It’s okay, you’re okay now. It’s over now.”

When Kurt finally can’t cry anymore and is just resting, his cheek pressed against Dad’s shoulder, Dad asks, “Do you remember what happened now?”

Kurt nods. He wishes he didn’t.