3 AM (Will Schuester)

He goes from a sound sleep to sitting bolt upright and wide awake, and his heart is pounding. For one moment he doesn't even know what woke him.

Then he remembers. It must have been in the back of his memory, surfacing in a dream. Kurt's voice: "No, she's dead, this is her son...".

From the "hello"assignment. Just a slightly morbid joke then, but now...

Kurt's mother is dead. Where is Kurt staying? Is he home, alone? Still at the hospital?

Everyone's been so concerned with the state of Kurt's soul. They're all worried about whether or not he prays... Will wonders now if Kurt's remembering to eat. Where he's sleeping. IF he's sleeping.

Has anyone even thought of the more concrete issue - that there is a sixteen year old boy with no other family that Will knows of, no one else to take care of him? Has anyone even checked? He's not been staying with Finn and his mother, Will knows that much. And there's been a distance between Kurt and Mercedes as well.

And it's entirely in character that Kurt would try to manage on his own, Will realizes. He's been showing up to school, not a hair out of place, but... drifting. Distant in a whole new way. He's hollowed out - only Kurt's body has been present for days now.

Will is out of bed and throwing on the first clothes he can grab before he's really thinking clearly. And he realizes that he can't just knock on the Hummel's door at this hour of the morning. If Kurt is asleep, he certainly needs the rest.

But if he's not...

He decides to check at the hospital first. There is a family waiting lounge outside the ICU that's open 24/7 for cases like this.

And, of course, Kurt is there, sprawled out on one of the armchairs, a textbook on the floor where it dropped from his hands when exhaustion finally overcame him.

He is alone.

And in his sleep, Will can see the traces of the pain Kurt tries to hide, in the faint tracks of the tears that run into his hairline, and the way his hair is all spikes from raking his fingers through it. As Will watches from the doorway, Kurt stirs, curls onto one side into the chair.

A nurse touches Will on the arm; she is carrying a blanket, and she gestures to indicate that it's for Kurt. Wordlessly Will takes it from her, nodding thanks, and drapes it over the sleeping child gently. He settles into the chair across from Kurt, and watches over him while he sleeps.