THERE ARE SPOILERS HERE. READ AT OWN RISK.

A/N: I am not happy, guys. I am trying my hardest to contain myself, but I really just want to hit someone. Kurt...he means so much to me. He was my inspiration. You can do anything. You can achieve whatever you want and NO ONE CAN TAKE THAT AWAY FROM YOU. Ha. Good joke. Thanks, Glee, for ruining every lesson that Kurt Hummel has ever taught me.

Title taken from Jayme Dee's song 'Rules.' /no iron in your veins to give you any sense of pain or fear./

I'm too disgusted to even put a disclaimer here.

...

He tries to smile. He really, really does. He thinks the corners of his mouth lift up a little bit and he's trying to stop his eyes from looking dead, but it's a lost cause at this point. He didn't get in. He's not getting out of Lima. He's not going to New York. His entire life, his entire dream, his entire purpose has been to achieve this goal and he couldn't even manage that.

Failure. Failure. Failure failure failurefailurefailurefailfailfailfailfisdlfid- the word jumbles up in his head until he isn't sure what he's saying anymore. Rachel hugs him and he feels hollow: wooden arms reaching to wrap around her waist, wooden heart pounding steadily in his chest as if nothing's wrong.

He's never hated himself more.

Finally (finally) Rachel and Finn walk out, and Finn is talking about how great it is for her, acting pipe dream already forgotten. Kurt sinks down slowly, numbly, into the chair sitting in front of him. It's cold and hard but he can't be bothered with that right now. With a fumbling hand, he tugs his phone out of his pocket and holds 2 until the speed-dial kicks in. His hands are shaking.

"Hey," says Blaine cheerily, and Kurt can tell he's smiling.

He takes a breath before replying, "Can you come to the choir room?" His voice is choked, and he might be crying but he isn't quite sure when he started, let alone which moment bled into another to make it happen.

Immediately there's a shift in tone, and Kurt curses both the tremors running through him and Blaine's natural compulsion to care too much about everything when he says, "I'm on my way. What's wrong?"

And he can't say it again, he can't, not out loud, at least, so he just tells Blaine to hurry, please, and hangs up the phone. Sure, Blaine is probably worried out of his mind by now, but the humiliation of realizing that all of his hard work has been for absolutely nothing is trickling like ice water down the back of his neck and he can barely string together coherent thoughts anymore.

A moment later (an eternity later), Blaine bursts into the choir room. Kurt's cradling the paper – rejection letter, rejection rejection rejection – in his hands, and doesn't look up. "What's going on?" asks his boyfriend, entirely confused, and all he wants to be able to say is nothing, I got in, everything is wonderful and great, but he can't.

His arms rises, and his hand opens, and suddenly Blaine is reading the letter. "No way," he says, voice low and dangerous, "no way in hell," and Kurt starts a little bit because Blaine never swears, not even little ones, "there is no way in hell that this is right, Kurt. Did…" he hesitates here, "Did Rachel get in?"

A sharp nod is all it takes for the tears to really flow, as if a chink in his armor had been revealed and suddenly the whole dam is breaking apart into little pieces.

Blaine swears under his breath, something stronger, and then pulls up another to chair to sit right across from Kurt. He takes Kurt's hands into his own, then, and looks straight into his eyes, honey-amber burning with fire. Kurt feels another spark of something real drift away, and forgets to lament the loss.

"They are wrong, Kurt," says Blaine fervently, as if he's convincing the world as much as he's convincing his boyfriend, "but we're going to get through this, okay?"

Kurt doesn't even think before blurting out, "Oh, God, how am I going to tell my dad?"

Blaine doesn't have an answer to that.

…

The ride home is nearly silent. Blaine had turned on the radio, but Kurt turned it off seconds later, chords of 'We Are Young' proving too much to handle, too soon after all of the pain.

His posture is so stiff his back aches, but when they arrive at the Hummel-Hudson residence, he slumps. "I can't do this," he whispers to nobody.

Blaine just grips his hand vice-tight for a sweet moment. "You can," he insists, and even though it sounds suspiciously like Blaine is on the verge of tears as well, it rings of courage, so he tries to get his muddled mind together in preparation for shattering his own heart into more pieces than it's already in.

Burt is smiling when he opens the door, but his face falls when takes in the two boys in front of them. "Who died?" he asks half-jokingly, and Kurt almost says me but thinks better of it.

"I didn't get in," he says, rushed and pale and oh god I didn't get in I didn't I didn't I'm a failure oh god no new york no nothing oh god.

The warm weight of Blaine's arm around his waist is slightly comforting, though if the smaller boy thinks the way he's shaking is escaping Kurt's notice he's sadly mistaken.

"What?" asks Burt, brows furrowing, and Blaine hands him the tear-stained, wrinkled letter without another word.

His eyes narrow, and his cheeks turn red, and he sighs resignedly as if somehow that fits with the rest of the picture. As if he can be furious and yet still give up. As if he's accepting it.

Kurt isn't anywhere near that point yet.

…

Ten minutes later and they're sitting in his room, on his bed, and it's finally hit him. There are tears littering the threads of Blaine's sweater, and his heart is pounding erratically, and these little sobs are clawing their way out of his chest every few seconds until it physically hurts, and that's better than not feeling at all so he lets it be. Blaine is just holding him, muttering meaningless reassurances and nothings into his ear, rubbing his back and being a rock and Kurt has never in his entire life been so thankful for this boy in his entire life.

Thirty minutes later and Kurt is going through phases, calming himself down only to fall back into everything is hopeless and New York and when is it my turn?

An hour later, and things are quieter. They're still lying on the bed, and Kurt has stopped crying but he isn't sure how long this will last.

"Thank you," he tries to say strongly, but his voice is shot from crying so much and it cracks wildly in the middle.

Blaine smiles sadly at that. "I love you," he says.

Kurt manages a half-grimace and an, "I love you, too."

Later, they'll talk about this, and figure out that maybe an internship for a magazine or design house would be best, and a vacation if nothing else, because Kurt Hummel was made to be in New York and he's taking it by storm if it kills him.

For now, they're still raw. There's a glimmer of hope, though, enough to just return the life to Kurt's eyes, and it might not be something substantial, but it's something. It's enough.

...

Review if you're as angry as I am?