For Us

58. How to be Kurt Visser alone.

{Kurt}

By the time Kurt finished moving his amps to the basement, he was sad again. He lined each of the familiar shapes carefully beside the mini fridge, thinking he would be carrying them upstairs again next week to move. He'd been hoping maybe he and Jon could work something out over time, if Jon could find time for him in his schedule somehow.

Jon had been so rigid and distant in their most recent conversation that Kurt doubted now that he was interested.

On the main floor, he folded cross-legged on their carpet and pulled the familiar shape of his guitar onto his lap for the first time since Jon retrieved her for him, fingering chords on her neck. Kurt just touched the strings with the pads of his fingers, making them whisper their notes. He was going to have to figure out how to be Kurt Visser alone. He'd suspected as much, but flinched away from the thought. He was shit at being alone.

Leaning his cheek against the smooth hip of his guitar, he reminded himself he would have AA and Laurel. Douglas at work. Maybe without him here, stressing him out, Jon would smile again and laugh and Douglas would tell him stories about happy Jon sometimes.

Kurt swiped the back of his hand over his eyes. He set his guitar on its stand next to the carpet and trudged upstairs to go to bed alone.

On his way back from brushing his teeth, he checked Jon's open door automatically. The other man's bed was empty, neatly made, all the lights still on in the room. Kurt glanced around the hall like he might have missed him in passing. He nudged open the door to Cary's empty room and then poked his head into the darkened attic. Through the topmost window of the house he could plainly see Jon's car parked in the back.

Kurt frowned. Coming down the stairs, he heard a sound, and paused, swivelling his head to listen. It was a muffled human cry, stretching and cracking into silence.

"Jon?" he called, his feet hurrying down the rest of the stairs. "Where the hell are you?"

After a moment, there was another soft, drawn-out cry that made Kurt's chest squeeze. He followed it back to Jon's room, checking around the bed and under the bed, his heart pattering in his chest.

A shuffling noise came from the closet and Kurt threw open the door, blinking at Jon's collapsed body curled in the shadows, his arms clenched over his head. With a swear, Kurt crawled into the small space to try and see Jon's face, to check if he was conscious and could get up with his help.

Jon's eyes were squeezed shut, his hair damp and curling with sweat. Kurt shook his shoulder and patted Jon's cheek. "White. Can you hear me?" But the other man was taking deep shuddering breaths, so buried in pain he didn't respond.

Quickly, Kurt scrambled out of the closet, turning off all the lights in the room and the hall as he fumbled for his phone. "Douglas," he said sharply when Cary picked up. "Is there a spare key. For the med box. Jon's down. I didn't catch it. I don't know how long he's been like this."

"Between the mattresses," Cary said. "Under my pillow. You remember the dose?"

Kurt rattled off what Cary had told him before.

"Yup," Cary said. "You got this. I'll be there in a bit."

When Kurt had managed with fumbling hands to get Jon's meds out of the box, he crammed himself back in the closet, bending over Jon's body to try to rouse him. "Med time. Come on darlin'."

Jon writhed slowly, a breathy cry dragging out of his body and making tears start in Kurt's own eyes. How the hell had Jon let this migraine get so far along without telling him, like he wouldn't care to help? He must have known it was coming on for hours.