[FIC] Hard Lines: Chapter 2
Rating: PG-13 (Likely to turn NC-17 later, but undetermined)
Beta: My lovely Laura aka- gottriplets and the lovely Rebecca (andiheardeverything) both of whom are the only reason this fic looks anything remotely coherent or medically accurate ;)
Warnings: Cancer, discussions of terminal illness and infidelity (NO character death ;), for those of you who are triggered by that )
Summary: Blaine’s elaborate plans for the “best senior year ever” get brought to a halt and his dreams of a future are stripped away when he discovers that the headaches he’s been having, aren’t really headaches at all and all of his strange behavior lately, including cheating on Kurt, can all blamed on one thing - there’s a tumor growing inside of his brain that’s doing it’s best to kill him. (AU post “The New Rachel”)
AN: Thank you for all the lovely responses I got about this story. I'll be posting every Friday for now.
Tumblr // FF.net // AO3
Previous Chapters: Prologue // Chapter 1
****
You have to be okay.
Blaine, we need you to count backwards from ten.
He could wake up any time, but the longer it takes...
Sweetheart, you’re going to wake up. You’re going to be fine.
Wake up, Blainers. Please, please wake up. We’re all going a little crazy here.
I love you, Blaine. I’m so sorry I didn’t tell you that before. I was so angry, but it doesn’t matter. I love you, okay? Wake up.
You have to be okay.
You have to be okay.
Blaine's mind started floating back into consciousness at the feeling of affectionate hands running through his hair. His brain was muddled and his head felt about five sizes too big so he didn't attempt to open his eyes, but that didn't stop him from calling out.
"Kurt?" his voice was rough, there was no telling how long he'd been asleep for.
"Sorry to disappoint, Casanova."
Cooper. Of all the people he'd expected to find holding vigil at his deathbed, Cooper wasn't one of them. Not without some sort of personal benefit.
"Don't film me," he grumbled.
"If you'd let me get you on morphine you could be the next YouTube sensation. A lot of careers have started on YouTube, Squirt."
"Don't call me Squirt," he argued half-heartedly, not having the energy for much else.
"I'm just saying you should think about your career. If that kid from Sing can make it after singing Disney songs online, so can you."
"Mom? Dad?" he called out, unable to bring himself to ask the full question because what little he'd already said had worn him out.
"Mom finally went home for a quick shower and change of clothes after I threatened to film her and put it online," Cooper said, pausing for whatever laugh track was running in his head-ever the performer. "Dad's outside talking with the insurance company."
Blaine nodded, grimacing at the way it felt like his head was put through a garbage disposal with such a small movement. There was no way he was opening his eyes if this was the kind of pain waiting for him.
"Aren't you going to ask about your old ball and chain?"
"Not mine," he whispered, about to fall back asleep. He'd exhausted too much energy talking to Cooper for the two minutes he'd been awake.
"Not even the Enquirer is buying that story," Cooper teased, but Blaine was asleep before he could even think of defending himself.
****
"I'm just saying... point in worrying him... we know more," he heard his mother arguing with somebody but he couldn't pull himself out of his semi-conscious state enough to catch the whole argument.
"You...well as I do how stressed... make him, you can't tell him."
Kurt. Kurt was there and for once he wasn't arguing against his mother, he was siding with her. Over what?
"-er. He's going to find out!" Cooper yelled, causing Blaine's brain to scramble and try to painfully reassemble itself.
He groaned out in pain.
"Hey, Champ," his dad said. "How are you feeling?"
"Do you think he heard us?" Kurt whispered, oblivious to the fact that Blaine could hear him. He could hear everything. Even the smallest of sounds echoed loudly in his head and made him wonder if he was going to be sick.
"There was yelling," he said, taking a deep breath and willing the nausea to pass. He had enough experience as of late to usually be able to suppress the need to vomit.
"Sorry about that. You know how passionate I can get when I'm practicing a scene," Copper explained.
Blaine cracked one eye open, hating the way the sun was shining too bright into the room but he was growing sick of darkness. Besides, he couldn't very well find out what was going on if he kept falling asleep.
"How long?" he asked, wanting to know how long it had been since his surgery had happened. With the way his head was aching, it felt like the doctors were still scraping out parts of his brain.
"It's Monday morning," his mom said. "You've been in and out for a little over a day."
Monday morning. It felt at once like it had been seconds ago since the anesthesiologist had him counting backwards from ten and years at the same time. The voices he’d heard, the ones that were too real to be dreams but too far away to latch onto... The time had passed by without him, like he’d been frozen in ice, hearing the whole world happening around him but unable to thaw out.
Was that a Captain America reference? He was spending too much time with Sam.
"Monday?" The word was a square block that should have fit through a round hole but as much as he tried to push it through it was stuck. His brain was blocked over the simplest of things. The day of the week.
"Are you okay? Do you want some water or maybe some ice chips or something?" Kurt asked and his gentle voice managed to break down the roadblock in Blaine’s mind and things made sense again.
Today was Monday. Kurt was here, but it was Monday. He’d been in town for the weekend, but the weekend was over. He had missed his flight home and now he wouldn’t been back in time for work at his fancy city job.
"You should be in New York," he tried to sound commanding, but the fatigue only allowed him to whisper, making him sound needy. He couldn't hide the fact that as much as he knew he wasn't allowed to, he just wanted Kurt to stay there with him until the Earth-shattering pain was gone. If Kurt wanted to stay with him after the Earth-shattering pain was gone, that would be great, too.
You can’t ask him for things like that. You broke him, he reminded himself.
"Isabelle is doing this column on how fashion adapts across the country so I'll be working from here for a few more days and thought I'd visit," Kurt said.
"Liar." Blaine had always been able to tell when Kurt wasn't being truthful even if getting the truth out of him was significantly more difficult. Kurt wasn't hard to read once you understood how to translate his actions.
Kurt shushed him affectionately but didn't try to defend himself.
"Blaine's only supposed to have two visitors at a time," Emily said, making her way into the room and over to the bed to check his vitals.
"I'll just go check in with everyone else and let them know how he's doing-”
“I should call Grandma with an update-”
Kurt and Cooper said, making to move but Blaine reached out, hoping they'd stay. For some reason there was something screaming at him to keep them close. He knew it was an irrational fear, the surgery was over and everything was downhill from this point, but that didn’t stop his throat from starting to close up as tears filled his eyes.
"They aren't bothering me, do they have to leave?" he whined.
"You're still recovering from major surgery and can't stay awake longer than 10 minutes at a time. You don't need all this excitement," she explained as she listened to his lungs. His chest was rising and falling rapidly and she threatened him with a breathing mask to replace his nasal cannula if he didn’t calm down soon.
“They’ll be just outside, Sweetheart,” his mother said. “They aren’t leaving the hospital.”
Blaine ignored her and stuck out his bottom lip but Emily was unflappable and he was forced to say goodbye. Cooper left with a half wave, but Kurt took the time to come over and kiss him on the forehead before leaving - promising to be back later.
"Oh no, totally not dating," Emily teased him once Kurt left.
"Well, certainly not if you send him away every time he's willing to be in the same room as me," he grumbled, trying to ignore the clawing at his heart that told him something wasn’t right. His family had been arguing before he woke up, no matter what bullshit Cooper said about running lines.
"Do you know how much longer Dr. Briar will be? They said he would be by after Blaine’s surgery?" his dad asked.
"He got pulled into emergency surgery. It’ll be at least another few hours. I'm sorry, I know you're anxious for some news," she apologized.
"News?" he asked, feeling like they were having a conversation he wasn't invited to which was made all the more annoying because they were talking about him. Did they think he wouldn’t notice? Or that he’d just be too dumb to ask?
"Just want to know when we can take you home," his mother said with a warning smile at his dad and he knew he was missing something vital but there was no point in trying to get it out of his mom, who they all nicknamed Fort Knox because she was a brick wall when it came to sheltering her kids from negativity. He'd just wait for the next time he was alone with Cooper, he was notoriously bad at keeping secrets.
"What's your pain level?" Emily asked.
He always felt like these questions were a test he couldn't possibly pass. How could he really judge his pain on such a scale? What did the doctors consider a ten? Would Blaine consider it a ten? If he said too high of a number did that mean he'd never go home? If he said too low of a number would they take the meds away?
Every word still echoed in his head and he felt as if his head was stuck inside of a dryer, but it was better than before at least. There was no winning answer in this.
Nine felt too high, like he would use up all of his leverage and nobody would believe him if the pain got worse than it was now. Four was way too low for the way everything rattled inside of him. Six? Six felt safe.
"Six?" he said, hesitantly.
“Which in Blaine-speak probably means he’s at least a seven, likely an eight,” his father said.
“I’ve gathered that much on my own,” Emily said with a playful smirk. “Dr. Green said that you’d been sick for several weeks and didn’t get checked out. You barely told anyone.”
“Thought it was just a cold,” he said with a heavy sigh. He was starting to wake up more and felt some energy returning. Though it wasn’t much, it was more than he’d had before.
He blushed and cowered under her judgmental look. Even if she was only teasing him, he hated that feeling of potentially disappointing somebody.
“Well, there’s no use hiding anything from me,” Emily said. “Your vitals will tell me a lot of what I need to know, and even if you try to lie and say your pain level is only a one, you’re stuck here for at least two more days. You might as well be truthful so I can give you the appropriate amount of drugs. Deal?”
“It’s only a six,” he said, this time more sure of himself. “It was a lot worse earlier. It doesn’t hurt so much to open my eyes now. Still feels like something is trying to claw its way out of there.”
“That’s pretty normal and will go away with some time. You sound like you’ve got more energy than the past few times I’ve checked you out, that’s good,” she said and Blaine wondered just how many times that had been. His mother had said he was in and out since the surgery but he didn’t remember waking up more than two or three times. He supposed that was normal with the amount of drugs they were giving him.
“I’m gonna have you try and drink a few sips of water for me, is that okay?”
Blaine nodded. He’d been given ice chips earlier for his throat, but they hadn’t yet let him actually drink anything. He knew this was a test in and of itself, to see if he was healing properly. He just hoped it was one he could pass. He didn't need to fail at anything else. The guilt of letting Kurt down and now his family was pressing hard enough as it was.
She held the glass up to his lips and waited for him to nod before she slowly tipped a small amount into his mouth. He quickly swallowed it, grabbing for more, but she pulled the glass out of his reach.
“Slowly,” she warned. “You don’t want to make yourself sick.”
She let him finish two small glasses of water, taking a lot more time than it should, but he was grateful for something to drink. What he really wanted was to eat some food, but he knew it would be awhile before they let him eat anything besides broth and liquids.
“Well, Blaine looks like he’s healing up nicely,” Emily said, giving him a warm smile. “Dr. Briar will be in whenever his surgery finishes up, but it might be awhile. If you need anything, just press the call button.”
“Thank you,” his father said, walking her out the door. “I’m gonna go check in with the office and let them know I won’t be in all week.”
“Try and get Kurt to go home for a few hours,” his mom said.
“Kurt hasn’t been home?” Blaine asked, trying not to sound... however it was he was sounding. Hopeful? Worried? Whatever emotions he was feeling towards Kurt were emotions he wasn’t allowed to feel anymore.
“His dad’s been bringing him clothes,” his mom shook her head. “He’s been sleeping in the lobby; he doesn’t listen whenever people tell him he needs to rest.”
“Kurt’s mom died in a hospital after a routine surgery. She got an infection and was gone before his dad could even get Kurt to the hospital to say goodbye,” he said before he even realized what he was saying.
“Blaine-”
“Kurt doesn’t think I’m dying, does he?” he asked. “The surgery is over. I’m fine. I’m going to be fine, right?”
“Of course you are,” she said with a smile that didn’t come close to reaching her eyes.
“Go get him for me,” he said.
“Your dad’s going to get him to head out,” she said.
“He’s not going to,” he said. “I’m probably the only one that can convince him it’s okay to leave for a few hours. Just go get him for me. He shouldn’t be out there miserable and worrying over me. I’ve put him through enough already.”
“Whatever you think you need,” she said and left to go get Kurt.
Blaine closed his eyes and tried to piece together all the secrets that they were hiding from him. Kurt was putting off going back to New York. Cooper was yelling at his mother over something she wasn’t telling Blaine. Kurt agreed with his mother, so Blaine knew it had to be bad enough if Kurt thought the news would break him. It was one thing when his mother shielded him from the truth; she still refused to tell him that Santa Claus wasn’t real even after he’d told her that dad had already broken the news to him years ago. Kurt didn’t believe in hiding though. So for him to be doing this...
“You rang?” Kurt said, standing in the doorway and looking even more amazing now that Blaine knew he’d been sleeping in the hospital for the last three days.
“You don’t need to stay here for me,” he lied; his stomach twisted into knots at the thought of Kurt leaving even for a few minutes time.
“I work for Vogue.com, Blaine. There's this newfangled thing called the Internet? It’s everywhere,” Kurt said playfully, though Blaine could hear the slight edge behind it. They weren’t on joking terms yet, but Kurt was trying hard to be. “And I told you, Isabelle gave me an assignment out here.”
“You don’t have more interesting things to be doing in New York?” he asked, bitter all of the sudden. Maybe it was the way Kurt had to try too hard for things to be okay between them. They never had to try at being friends. Their relationship had always come as naturally as breathing and Blaine had ruined that.
“Why? Do you want me to leave so your other boyfriends can come give you a quickie in the bathroom?” Kurt spat out and the words hurt. They were well deserved, but they hurt.
“I don’t have a boyfriend, not anymore,” he whispered, looking down at the cheap, fraying hospital blanket because he was too ashamed to meet Kurt’s eyes.
“I’m sorry,” Kurt said. “That was rude. I know I’m not supposed to get mad at you. Dr. Green said you couldn’t help it, I just... It’s hard.”
He couldn't help it? What was Kurt talking about?
“I don’t understand.”
“It wasn’t your fault,” Kurt said, flippantly. “Apparently you couldn’t help but allow some muscled college boy to fuck you into a mattress, so enjoy your ‘Get Out of Jail Free’ card.”
He waved Blaine off like it wasn’t a big deal when he’d been ignoring Blaine for weeks because of it. He’d de-friended him on Facebook for God’s sake and now he was acting like it was nothing?
“I don’t want a ‘Get Out of Jail Free’ card,” he said, feeling all the more confused. He wanted to talk about things. He wanted to apologize and be heard for once. He needed Kurt to believe that he meant it. He wanted forgiveness, not for everything to get brushed under the rug like it never happened.
“Kurt, what’s going on?”
Kurt looked like he was going to say more. He opened and closed his mouth several times before shaking his head in defeat. Blaine couldn't help but let out a frustrated growl. How were they ever going to get anywhere if Kurt wouldn't talk to him?
“I should go home and shower or something,” Kurt said, walking away before he could say goodbye.
Blaine threw his head back on the pillow and clawed at his head, willing the pain away so he could feel something besides the splitting pain. Kurt had been right there. After weeks of ignoring him, he was finally there for Blaine to talk to and all he'd managed to do was run him off again and he couldn't even feel his heartbreak because his body was too focused on the hole that had been drilled into his skull.
"Ahh!" he screamed out, throwing his bandaged wrist over his eyes to block out the light. He just wanted it all to stop so he could get back to being a normal, brooding teenager.
“Did you need something?” Emily peeked her head in with a sympathetic look, like she'd been watching him the whole time and knew how pathetic he was.
"What's wrong with me?" he whined.
"Dr. Briar should be in soon to check you out-"
"No, I mean what's wrong with me?" he yelled into the room.
At this rate, he was surprised his mother hadn't come running in. Perhaps she recognized that her son was hopeless. Maybe she'd run off along with Kurt. He wouldn't blame her. He was a pretty shitty son and at the rate he got hospitalized, he knew he was an expensive kid to care for. Maybe it was best if everyone just gave up on him and left him here alone. At least that way he couldn’t mess anyone else’s life up again.
"You're a teenager; you're supposed to ask yourself these kinds of questions. If you don't make your mistakes now you're going to be that thirty year old man that still lives with his parents and can't ever get past the first date. Trust me; everyone's a mess when they're eighteen."
“But how do I fix it?” he asked.
“I can’t give you the answers, that’s cheating,” she teased.
“Kurt left,” he said, though he’s pretty sure that she saw him leave considering how little time it took her to reach his room.
“He’ll be back,” she comforted him. “He’s probably just pissed that your blond friend keeps arguing with him.”
“My blond friend?” he asked, unsure of who she was referring to.
“The one with the muscles and the big lips? Your mom totally thinks he’s the one that you slept with.”
“She what? You’re talking about Sam? Why is Kurt fighting with Sam? They’re friends,” he said.
He couldn’t even begin to understand what those two could possibly have against each other. Kurt was the one who kept Sam’s secret sophomore year when Sam’s family was homeless and he’d even given him clothes to wear, despite the personal hardships it caused Kurt at school. Sam had even been living at the Hummel-Hudson’s house during the school year so he could attend McKinley. Those two were friends long before Blaine ever learned how to get along with Sam. It made no sense.
“I’ll give you one good guess what they are fighting over,” she said with a pointed look.
“I don’t-me?” he asked, surprised.
“Congrats, it looks like your head injury didn’t affect your intelligence,” she teased.
“But Sam would befriend a mountain lion if it would listen to his impressions. He gets along with everyone, this doesn’t make any sense. Why would they be fighting over me?” he asked.
“Why would two incredibly good looking men be fighting over another painfully adorable heartthrob who just had brain surgery?”
“Sam’s straight,” he replied, knowing where she was going with this.
“So you didn’t sleep with him?”
“No,” he argued. “Why? Does Kurt think I slept with him?”
“I think his exact words were So he’s sleeping with you, too, why else would you care so much all of a sudden?”
How could Kurt possibly think that he would sleep with Sam? Sure Blaine had done a lot of uncharacteristic things lately, but Sam? Kurt knew that Sam was straight and if Blaine was going to cheat on him, he would at least have the decency to not do it with the boy that was sleeping in Kurt’s house.
“Sam’s dating Brittany,” he said defensively at her knowing smirk. “We’re just friends.”
“Well, regardless, Kurt and Sam can’t even sit near each other without getting into a fight,” she said.
“How come I haven’t heard about any of this?”
“Because nobody brings the drama into patient rooms,” she explained. “Everyone knows if you want to know how people are really doing, you have to watch them in the lobby.”
“Well, you’re not afraid to tell me,” he said with a small chuckle, noticing that his pain level had slightly decreased as he’d been talking to her. Emily was really good at distracting him from his suffering.
“Why would I be?” she asked. “It’s not like you’re going to break. You’re one of the strong ones, I can tell.”
“How?”
“Because you’ve been living with intense migraines for months and didn’t feel the need to bother anybody with them,” she said. “If my pain level ever hits above a three, I’m crying to anybody that will listen and ordering my boyfriend to bring me ice cream.”
“Will you tell me what’s wrong with me?” he asked.
“I think that’s a conversation best left to Dr. Briar. I’m just a nurse,” she said.
“Since when is a nurse ever just a nurse?” he pressed, but knew it wasn’t any use. He would find out what was going on whenever Dr. Briar decided to come around.
“Charming,” she said. “I can see why everyone loves you so much. Now get some rest. You’ve already been up much longer than you’re used to.”
He hadn’t noticed how tired he was, but as soon as Emily lowered his bed, he was out cold.
****
“What isn’t Mom telling me?” Blaine asked Cooper later on that afternoon once his parents had stepped out to get something to eat from the cafeteria.
“You know how she gets,” he brushed him off with a wave of his hands and he continued to flip through the channels on TV. “She thinks you’ll spiral out of control with the slightest breath of news that isn’t positive-How this guy has steady work and I don’t is beyond me,” he complained as he stopped on a re-run of How I Met Your Mother.
“Neil Patrick Harris? You’re putting yourself in the same category as Neil Patrick Harris?” Blaine asked with a laugh. Cooper held himself in high regard, but he had to be joking with this one, right?
“No, not NPH. Though I still think with enough work I could get there. I’m talking about Ted... I mean, does anybody even know his real name? Is he in anything besides this show? How is he working and I’m not?” Cooper complained.
Blaine had to admit, Cooper might have a point. While his brother was a bit overdramatic and overacted pretty much all the time, it wasn’t like Josh Radnor was anything special.
“You could have played Marshall,” Blaine said, not exactly believing his words but feeling kind enough to say them anyway. Sometimes Cooper just needed to hear that he was good enough after constantly being told ‘no’ audition after audition.
“Thanks.”
“So what breath of news does she think is going to make me spiral?” Blaine asked, returning them back to the original topic. They only had so much time before their parents would be back and Blaine would be unable to get any information out of anyone.
“I was forbidden from telling you,” he said.
“Which makes it all the more exciting when you do,” Blaine argued, knowing how to twist Cooper to his will.
Cooper sighed deeply before muting the TV and turning to glare at him, completely aware that Blaine was manipulating him into talking. Still, he could see Cooper had given in and decided to tell him what he wanted to hear.
“The doctor’s found a tumor when they were operating on you,” he said.
A tumor? Like cancer? That couldn’t be right.
“A tumor-When they were-It was just there? Why wasn’t it-But the CAT scan?” His words all rushed out of him, not even bothering to finish a thought before moving onto the next one.
“I guess it was in a difficult place to detect or something and they weren’t looking for it in your scan since they didn’t know you had a history of issues until you said so,” Cooper said with a shrug as if the medical side of things was too much for him to remember it all.
“Until you said so,” Blaine clarified, not forgetting how Cooper had thrown him under the bus in front of everyone by bringing up how he’d slept with somebody else.
“Exactly,” he nodded, completely unfazed by Blaine’s glare. “Well, they realized that you had more going on than a brain hemorrhage, so they looked closer at the scan and had to take a biopsy during your surgery. We’ve been waiting on the results; that’s why Mom and Dad are so on edge.”
“A biopsy? To see if I have cancer?” he asked, but he knew that’s exactly what it was. What else would they have done if they found a tumor in his brain?
Oh, God. He had brain cancer. He must have looked panicked because Cooper was on his feet and trying to grab for a million things at once to help him out-water, the breathing mask, gesturing towards the call button.
“What do you need?” Cooper asked, moving around helplessly as Blaine turned away everything he offered.
“Cancer?” he said, though he knew that wasn’t even a complete question, it was the only thing he could get to come out of his mouth.
“You might not,” Cooper added in with a hopeful grin, like that would help anything.
“They didn’t take the tumor out? It’s still in there?” he asked.
He still had a tumor in his brain. One that was diseased and possibly growing, eating up other healthy parts of him. Pretty soon he was going to be left with nothing. He was going to be brain dead or something. Was that how it worked?
“There’s only so much of this medical talk I understand, despite being an extra on Grey’s Anatomy for three weeks. They couldn’t remove the tumor without your consent before and I guess now they are worried about losing some vital brain function so they are waiting,” Cooper said, which did nothing but make him more stressed out.
“Vital - I’m going to be sick,” he said, and before Cooper could even reach for a bedpan, he was leaning over the bed and vomiting all over the floor.
“See, this is what Mom was talking about,” Cooper said in that obnoxious I’m wiser than you tone that only an older brother could perfect. He reached over and pressed the call button. “You’re lucky you didn’t barf on my new shoes.”
“I should have,” he grumbled as a nurse he didn’t recognize came in and helped clean up the mess he made and asked him about his pain level.
Blaine gritted his teeth and let the poor girl check all of his vitals and had to dig his nails into his fists to keep from screaming at the woman. His anger had nothing to do with her, he reminded himself. He was just scared and lashing out would do nothing to ease that fear.
“I fell down the stairs, Coop,” he said as soon as she left them. “I can’t have cancer. That doesn’t give you cancer.” He looked up at his older brother with what must have been a pathetic expression, because Cooper looked more broken than Blaine had ever seen him before.
“You’ve been sick for awhile-” Cooper explained as he tried to hold his tears back.
Blaine couldn’t remember the last time Cooper honestly cried. He endured the fake, dramatic tears on almost a weekly basis, but this wasn’t for a scene. This was his older brother looking lost at being unable to stop Blaine’s suffering. This was Cooper at a loss for words to say which might be another first for him.
“With the flu,” he said desperately, as if saying it loud enough would somehow make it true. “It was the flu! That’s it!”
“I’m not really the best person to be talking about this with,” Cooper said, floundering. “Do you want to practice my monologue with me?”
“What? No! Cooper, when were you guys going to tell me about this?” he asked. He hadn’t realized he was crying until he tasted the salt water on his lips.
“I wanted to,” Cooper said, unable to keep the tears back any longer. God they must have been a sight, the two of them crying in that hospital room with How I Met Your Mother playing silently in the background. “That’s what Mom and I had been arguing about when I cleverly convinced you that I was practicing for a role.”
“I never believed you were practicing for a role,” he growled out of spite, though he didn’t really mean to come off so harsh.
That was just how things went with siblings. They were there to take all of your worst and still loved you unconditionally in the end. It was the one thing Blaine was grateful for. While soulmates apparently could leave you whenever things got rough, family was forever. He never thought that Cooper would be the guy he ended up depending on more than Kurt, but there it was.
“Maybe I should go get somebody else-”
“NO!” he yelled. “You can’t leave. You’re the only one not lying to me. You stay. You’re not allowed to leave this hospital room until I do.”
“Oh, can we make a reality show about it? We could sell it for millions,” Cooper said, already pulling out his camera until Blaine smacked it away.
“Coop, focus.”
“Defcon Five, right. Got it,” he said.
“What am I going to do?” Blaine asked, not really expecting an answer back. There wasn’t an answer.
“Relax,” Cooper said. “Even if you do have cancer, they can cure that. You’ll get some chemo and lose your hair-”
“I don’t want to lose my hair-” he whined but Cooper ignored him and just kept talking.
“You’ll have a really great story to tell in your first Behind the Music special. Audiences eat cancer stories up.”
“I hate you so much right now,” Blaine said, but they both knew that wasn’t true.
“You’ll get over it,” he smirked. “Hate is a passionate emotion and passion never lasts forever.”
“Are you physically incapable of giving good advice? Is anything you say ever not bullshit?” Blaine asked.
“Wow, that tumor’s made you kind of an asshole,” Cooper whined, slumping back in his chair and turning the volume back up, presumably so he could try to ignore Blaine.
“Oh, God, do I really have a tumor?” he asked, trying to let the information sink but it wouldn’t. It wasn’t the truth. It couldn’t be. Eighteen year old kids weren’t supposed to get cancer. That’s not how the world was supposed to work.
“On the bright side, now you have an excuse for cheating on Kurt,” Cooper said, which was probably supposed to make him feel better but the reminder only added to his stress. “I don’t think he’s really even mad anymore. You're off the hook thanks to the deathtrap in your head.”
“I don’t want to be off the hook. I cheated on him!” Blaine groaned.
“What are you boys arguing about?” his mother asked, walking into the room and glaring at Cooper. “Your brother needs to relax. Don’t get him worked up.”
“Actually, we were just having a discussion about the brain-eating tumor you failed to mention to me,” Blaine said, daring her to contradict what Cooper had said. He wouldn't put it past her to make up some story about how it wasn’t true. That was the last thing he wanted to hear, mostly because he needed to not have a tumor. He needed this to all be a joke and if she said he was fine, he would be crushed when he found out it wasn't. So he dared her to try and contradict Cooper.
“I told you not to tell him,” she hissed at Cooper.
“Well, he knows now,” Cooper said with a shrug, completely cool under his mother’s heated glare. He didn’t know how his brother did it; she always had him quivering in fear when she looked at him like that.
“For all we know, it could be benign and now you’ve worked him up for nothing,” she said, moving to sit at the edge of his bed to run her fingers through his hair. “We just didn’t want to stress you out until we knew more,” she said to him.
The only thing he could think of in response came seemingly out of nowhere, “I don’t want to die.”
****
That night, the Anderson’s all crammed into Blaine’s small hospital room and pretended to watch a movie while they waited for Dr. Briar to stop by with Blaine’s biopsy results. Emily had warned him that even though there had been a rush put on his test results, the lab often got backed up and it was entirely possible that they wouldn’t have any news tonight. Still, Blaine was looking forward to being actively involved in his care from now on and he was doing his best not to fall asleep on his mother’s shoulder while they waited. It would be just his luck to sleep through Dr. Briar’s meeting and though Emily promised him that nobody would let that happen, he didn’t believe that to be true.
“They’re showing more commercials than they are movies,” his dad grumbled as the movie cut to another break.
“Commercial actors deserve equal screentime,” Cooper chirped up from where he was slumped in a chair playing Jungle Run on his phone. He’d been obsessed with the game ever since Blaine had shown it to him on his last visit home.
“Well, I’m sick of this,” his dad said. “I’m changing the channel.”
“Don’t,” his mom said. “Blaine likes Hugh Jackman.”
His dad turned to him and gave him a strange look, almost interested, which was another sign of this tumor completely uprooting his life and making everyone completely unrecognizable because his dad had never shown interest in hearing about his love life-even if it was just about a celebrity crush.
“It’s okay, you can change it. I’ve seen this one about a hundred times,” Blaine said, blushing under his parents’ dual gaze. They had been doing that a lot lately, just staring at him like it was the first time they were seeing him.
More like the last, he reminded himself sadly.
“When you get out of here, we should plan that trip to Puerto Princesa we’ve been putting off,” his dad said. “Your mom’s been wanting to take you boys back to see her family for years but we’ve all been too busy.”
Blaine was going to say that it wasn’t such a bad idea. He could stand to get away from things for a while and he’d always heard about how beautiful the Philippines were from his mother, though he’d never been able to see for himself. She hadn’t been back home since before Blaine was born. There had been a trip when Cooper was younger, but once Blaine came along everyone’s schedules seemed to get crazy and there was always the ever constant promise that they would go the next year.
“Bill,” his mother cut him off with a warning look. “Let’s not talk about this right now.”
Which everyone knew was her way of saying that they wouldn’t be talking about it ever.
Great, so he had one parent trying to check off items from a bucket list and another one that was likely never going to let him do anything ever again. Blaine was pretty sure if she could get away with it that he’d be wrapped in bubble wrap and never allowed to leave his room.
A knock at the door had them all looking up in both relief and dread as Dr. Briar and Dr. Green made their way into the room.
“We’re sorry to have kept you all waiting so long,” Dr. Briar apologized. “It looks like Blaine’s feeling a bit better?”
Blaine nodded and pushed off his mom so he could sit up straight by himself, trying to make himself look more mature. Like somebody that could be trusted with the whole truth.
“How’s the pain level?” Dr. Green asked cheerfully as she moved to listen to his chest and check over his vitals despite the fact that Emily had just checked on him ten minutes earlier.
“About a five? The meds have helped a lot,” he said, honestly in his most put together voice. A voice he hadn’t really had a use for since leaving Dalton.
“You seem pretty energetic, have you been feeling tired at all?” she asked, checking off several boxes in her notepad.
“I’ve had to take a few naps throughout the day, but I feel okay,” he said.
“Good, that’s great. Any lightheadedness?”
“Some,” he said.
“He got sick earlier,” Cooper chimed in, causing Blaine to roll his eyes.
“I did say some,” Blaine clarified, glaring at his brother.
“Well, that’s to be expected,” Dr. Briar said, effectively cutting off Dr. Green’s endless stream of questions. It seemed pretty harsh, but then again, Blaine remembered that most of the answers to her questions could be found in his chart.
“We’ve got Blaine’s biopsy results back,” he said.
“And?” Cooper asked. Blaine could see him clutching at his chair until his knuckles were white. He was clutching at his blanket and he hadn’t looked down, but he was sure his own were white as well.
“The tumor is malignant,” Dr. Briar said matter of factly, but he at least had the decency of looking regretful.
“What does that mean?” his dad asked.
“I have cancer,” Blaine answered for him, his voice remarkably strong, though that was probably the denial talking. He felt like he was watching the scene unfold on the TV instead of in front of him. It was certainly easier to believe they were talking about some other patient instead of himself.
“The cancer is growing fairly rapidly. Dr. Green has scheduled an MRI and I’d like to do a spinal tap just to be safe. We won’t know how advanced or widespread the cancer is until we can get a better look at it,” Dr. Briar explained.
“I don’t understand,” his mother cut him off with a wave of her hand. “You gave my son a CT scan on Friday and you told me that he had a brain hemorrhage. Now you’re telling me that he has cancer?”
“I understand your frustration-” Dr. Briar said in a calming voice that he knew would only fuel his mother’s anger.
“How do I even know that we can trust you if you can’t even read his test results properly?” she asked, causing Blaine to blush in embarrassment.
“Mom, just let him talk, please,” he begged, praying that she wouldn’t cause a scene.
“When Blaine came into the ER, we were unaware of any symptoms previous to his fall. Blaine was unable to communicate and the friends he came with didn’t mention any issues he’d been having so we didn’t know to look for a possible tumor. For time’s sake, we ordered a CT scan without contrast because it can take a good hour before one with contrast can be done. We were worried about the pressure on Blaine’s brain due to the bleeding so we performed the quickest test we had available, sadly it was the one that was least likely to pick up the tumor.”
His mother scoffed in disbelief, but thankfully didn’t say anything more.
“You did have a brain hemorrhage like we originally said and we’ve managed to take care of that, which should help relieve some of the pressure on your brain for awhile while we run more tests to see how far the cancer’s progressed,” Dr. Briar said.
“But you’re hopeful right?” Cooper asked. “Whatever you find out, you can still fix this?”
“It’s hard to say anything right now without some more information,” Dr. Green said, sympathetically. “We’d like to get Blaine down for an MRI now if you’re feeling up to it?”
“That’s fine,” he said before his mother cut him off.
“Can we have a few minutes alone please?” she asked, effectively kicking the doctors out of the room.
“Mom!” Blaine practically yelled, horrified as she shut the door behind the doctors.
“We need to find a different doctor before we proceed any further,” she said.
“What? No, I’m fine,” he said, shaking his head. Was she seriously doing this?
“If you really do have cancer-and that’s a big if at this point-I want you to be seen by somebody that can at least read your test results properly,” she said.
“Dr. Briar just said you can’t see all tumors on a CT scan. In fact, if that’s the case, we’re lucky they even found my tumor at all,” he argued. “If anything, you should be thanking them.”
“Why? For giving you brain surgery before they even knew what was wrong with you?” she asked, clearly reaching a new level of hysteria that he’d never seen before. His dad was sitting quietly in the corner, unwilling to interfere. They all knew what she was like when she got like this, which was how Blaine found himself fighting this battle alone.
“It’s not like they made this hemorrhage up,” he said. “I fell down the stairs and hit my head. They had to control the bleeding in my brain before there was any permanent damage. Even if they knew I had a tumor, I would have still had a surgery to stop the bleeding.”
“You’re my baby,” she said as if that somehow justified all of her crazy behavior. “I’m allowed to be concerned.”
“Of course you are,” he said, doing what he could to pacify her so she would just calm down enough to let the doctors do their job. “But if you’re that concerned, you should let them do the MRI so they can help me.”
“Fine,” she grumbled. “But I’m Googling this without contrast thing because it still sounds like a load of shit.”
“What happened to thinking positively?” he asked.
“Oh, Sweetheart, I’m not saying you’re not going to be okay,” she said. “I know whatever it is, you’ll be just fine. I just want to make sure you’ve got the best possible care you can have.”
The one bright side to his mother going completely crazy was that Blaine didn’t really have time to process the fact that he had cancer before Dr. Green was taking him down for an MRI.
The next few hours were spent trying to get some rest after the stressful MRI and a rather uncomfortable spinal tap. The night past by in a bit of a blur, with Blaine constantly waking up with a headache from the spinal tap. He was sick a few more times throughout the night, but thankfully by morning he was feeling at least halfway human.
“Your mom’s crying in the hallway,” Kurt said from the doorway, causing Blaine to look up in surprise.
He hadn’t expected Kurt to come back after waiting all day yesterday for him to show up again. He’d assumed Kurt had caught a flight back to New York or something, but there he stood, looking completely dreadful.
He’s preparing for bad news, Blaine thought to himself, wishing more than anything he had something good to tell him instead. He’d had enough bad news in hospitals; he didn’t want to have to tell him that he might be dying as well.
Blaine just nodded, causing Kurt’s frown to set in deeper as if he knew what was coming next. Cooper stood up from where he was playing on his phone in the corner and excused himself, giving the two of them some privacy.
“I have cancer,” he said, not knowing any other way to say it than to just say it.
“No,” Kurt shook his head in disbelief.
“They told me last night.”
Kurt stood by the doorway, frozen in shock. Blaine didn’t know what to say to him, he was pretty sure there wasn’t anything that could be said if the way his mother kept bursting into tears every time Blaine tried to comfort her was any indication.
“Did they say what they were going to do to treat it?” Kurt asked, his voice strong. Blaine he recognized it.
It was the sound of Kurt building up a wall around himself so that he could be brave when inside he was feeling like a mess. It was the same voice that stood up in front of a gymnasium full of kids and got coronated. It was the same voice that told Sebastian they would love to go to Scandals. This was the Kurt that survived the mess that was his student council president elections, Blaine’s eye surgery, a NYADA rejection and recently Blaine’s cheating by steeling himself off from the world so he wouldn’t have to feel anything too much.
Blaine hated that voice because it meant Kurt was hurting and there wasn’t anything he could do to stop it because Kurt wouldn’t admit there was something wrong when he got like this. Not that he could fix this even if Kurt would let him. Cancer wasn’t something that could be cured with cheesecake and a viewing of Titanic.
“They are still running tests and stuff to see if they even can,” he said.
Kurt’s head shot up at the realization that Blaine might be getting sent home to die.
“You mean there’s a chance that they won’t be able to do anything?” he asked, his voice sounding only slightly more vulnerable this time.
“The cancer is growing too fast,” Blaine explained, picking at the cast on his wrist. “It’s already progressed to stage four, they are just waiting to see if it’s spread to my spinal cord or not.”
“Oh, my God,” he whispered, throwing his head back to stare at the ceiling and Blaine could tell that he was holding back tears.
“I’m so sorry,” Blaine said desperately, hating himself for doing this to Kurt
All Kurt could do was shake his head frantically, like he wasn’t willing to hear it-like he couldn’t hear it without breaking down completely.
“I just keep hurting you and I don’t know how to stop,” he said, feeling his own voice break at how helpless Kurt looked with his arms crossed tightly across his body, like he was trying to hold his insides in.
“Getting cancer wasn’t your fault.”
“I know that,” he said. He hadn’t been talking about the cancer, he was talking about Eli and he was pretty sure that Kurt knew that but was trying to avoid the topic. Well, tough, they needed to talk about it-Blaine needed to talk about it. To be allowed to say his apology and be heard.
“I just feel like I keep breaking things. I’m so incredibly sorry about cheating on you, Kurt. You have no idea how sorry I am, and now I’m sick and I just... I never wanted to hurt you.”
“I don’t want to fight with you anymore, not now,” Kurt said, cutting him off. He looked at Blaine like it pained him.
“I never wanted to hurt you,” he repeated, his lips quivering with emotion, praying that this time Kurt would hear him.
“How did you think I would feel when I found out?” Kurt asked, looking betrayed and it sent a stabbing pain to his heart that had nothing to do with the cancer.
“I honestly don’t know what happened-it just...”
“It just happened?” Kurt said, mockingly. “You tripped and his dick fell in your mouth?”
“It wasn’t like that. I’m sorry. There’s no excuse,” he said, starting to cry. He hated how bitter Kurt sounded and how he couldn’t even get angry about it because it was entirely his fault.
“There isn’t an excuse, you’re right,” Kurt said, glaring at him. “But now you’re sick and I don’t know what I’m supposed to do.”
His breath caught in his throat, wondering if Kurt was just trying to hurt him with the words or if he honestly was only here because Blaine was sick and he felt obligated. Maybe their friends were pressuring him into staying with Blaine. Was that what he and Sam were fighting over? Oh, God...
“I don’t want you to be with me out of pity-if you don’t love me-”
“Of course I love you,” Kurt said, like it was the worst possible thing in the world. “That’s what makes this hurt so bad. I love you and can’t stand the thought of not being with you, but you cheated on me. You took every precious moment we’ve ever shared and put it into question because I can’t trust you. And now I don’t even have the time to come to terms with what happened and learn to forgive you because you’re-you’ve-you might not be around to-” Kurt finally broke down and started crying.
“I have cancer,” he said bluntly, filling in what Kurt couldn’t. “There’s no point in denying it.”
“It’s just not fair. We’re so young-you’re so young,” Kurt said.
“It’s okay,” Blaine started to try and calm him down but Kurt just started getting more worked up until he was sobbing as well.
Blaine had been trying his best to be strong ever since the diagnosis, but he couldn’t do it anymore. Not looking at Kurt. He couldn’t look into the eyes of his future and know that he should have so much more. That he was supposed to have an entire life where he grew old with the man of his dreams and now he might not even have a future beyond this hospital bed. It wasn’t fair.
Kurt pushed off of the door frame that he’d been leaning on like a life support. He moved to climb into bed with Blaine, getting tangled up in the IV for a few minutes before they managed to settle into a comfortable position where Kurt could hold him tightly as they both cried together. He wasn’t sure if this meant that Kurt had forgiven him or not, but at the moment he couldn’t care. He just wanted to be held. It had been too long since Kurt’s arms had been around him.
“It’s okay,” Kurt whispered into his ears. “It’ll be okay. We’ll figure it out together.”
Together.
Those words felt like magic to him and while it didn’t remove any of the fear for the future; it helped him not feel quite as hysterical about his present. There was a lot coming up for him. Most importantly, finding out if the doctors even believed he had a chance at surviving this, but if Kurt was willing to hold his hand through it all in spite of the pain Blaine had cause, maybe he could get through this without losing his mind.
Beta: My lovely Laura aka- gottriplets and the lovely Rebecca (andiheardeverything) both of whom are the only reason this fic looks anything remotely coherent or medically accurate ;)
Warnings: Cancer, discussions of terminal illness and infidelity (NO character death ;), for those of you who are triggered by that )
Summary: Blaine’s elaborate plans for the “best senior year ever” get brought to a halt and his dreams of a future are stripped away when he discovers that the headaches he’s been having, aren’t really headaches at all and all of his strange behavior lately, including cheating on Kurt, can all blamed on one thing - there’s a tumor growing inside of his brain that’s doing it’s best to kill him. (AU post “The New Rachel”)
AN: Thank you for all the lovely responses I got about this story. I'll be posting every Friday for now.
Tumblr // FF.net // AO3
Previous Chapters: Prologue // Chapter 1
****
You have to be okay.
Blaine, we need you to count backwards from ten.
He could wake up any time, but the longer it takes...
Sweetheart, you’re going to wake up. You’re going to be fine.
Wake up, Blainers. Please, please wake up. We’re all going a little crazy here.
I love you, Blaine. I’m so sorry I didn’t tell you that before. I was so angry, but it doesn’t matter. I love you, okay? Wake up.
You have to be okay.
You have to be okay.
Blaine's mind started floating back into consciousness at the feeling of affectionate hands running through his hair. His brain was muddled and his head felt about five sizes too big so he didn't attempt to open his eyes, but that didn't stop him from calling out.
"Kurt?" his voice was rough, there was no telling how long he'd been asleep for.
"Sorry to disappoint, Casanova."
Cooper. Of all the people he'd expected to find holding vigil at his deathbed, Cooper wasn't one of them. Not without some sort of personal benefit.
"Don't film me," he grumbled.
"If you'd let me get you on morphine you could be the next YouTube sensation. A lot of careers have started on YouTube, Squirt."
"Don't call me Squirt," he argued half-heartedly, not having the energy for much else.
"I'm just saying you should think about your career. If that kid from Sing can make it after singing Disney songs online, so can you."
"Mom? Dad?" he called out, unable to bring himself to ask the full question because what little he'd already said had worn him out.
"Mom finally went home for a quick shower and change of clothes after I threatened to film her and put it online," Cooper said, pausing for whatever laugh track was running in his head-ever the performer. "Dad's outside talking with the insurance company."
Blaine nodded, grimacing at the way it felt like his head was put through a garbage disposal with such a small movement. There was no way he was opening his eyes if this was the kind of pain waiting for him.
"Aren't you going to ask about your old ball and chain?"
"Not mine," he whispered, about to fall back asleep. He'd exhausted too much energy talking to Cooper for the two minutes he'd been awake.
"Not even the Enquirer is buying that story," Cooper teased, but Blaine was asleep before he could even think of defending himself.
****
"I'm just saying... point in worrying him... we know more," he heard his mother arguing with somebody but he couldn't pull himself out of his semi-conscious state enough to catch the whole argument.
"You...well as I do how stressed... make him, you can't tell him."
Kurt. Kurt was there and for once he wasn't arguing against his mother, he was siding with her. Over what?
"-er. He's going to find out!" Cooper yelled, causing Blaine's brain to scramble and try to painfully reassemble itself.
He groaned out in pain.
"Hey, Champ," his dad said. "How are you feeling?"
"Do you think he heard us?" Kurt whispered, oblivious to the fact that Blaine could hear him. He could hear everything. Even the smallest of sounds echoed loudly in his head and made him wonder if he was going to be sick.
"There was yelling," he said, taking a deep breath and willing the nausea to pass. He had enough experience as of late to usually be able to suppress the need to vomit.
"Sorry about that. You know how passionate I can get when I'm practicing a scene," Copper explained.
Blaine cracked one eye open, hating the way the sun was shining too bright into the room but he was growing sick of darkness. Besides, he couldn't very well find out what was going on if he kept falling asleep.
"How long?" he asked, wanting to know how long it had been since his surgery had happened. With the way his head was aching, it felt like the doctors were still scraping out parts of his brain.
"It's Monday morning," his mom said. "You've been in and out for a little over a day."
Monday morning. It felt at once like it had been seconds ago since the anesthesiologist had him counting backwards from ten and years at the same time. The voices he’d heard, the ones that were too real to be dreams but too far away to latch onto... The time had passed by without him, like he’d been frozen in ice, hearing the whole world happening around him but unable to thaw out.
Was that a Captain America reference? He was spending too much time with Sam.
"Monday?" The word was a square block that should have fit through a round hole but as much as he tried to push it through it was stuck. His brain was blocked over the simplest of things. The day of the week.
"Are you okay? Do you want some water or maybe some ice chips or something?" Kurt asked and his gentle voice managed to break down the roadblock in Blaine’s mind and things made sense again.
Today was Monday. Kurt was here, but it was Monday. He’d been in town for the weekend, but the weekend was over. He had missed his flight home and now he wouldn’t been back in time for work at his fancy city job.
"You should be in New York," he tried to sound commanding, but the fatigue only allowed him to whisper, making him sound needy. He couldn't hide the fact that as much as he knew he wasn't allowed to, he just wanted Kurt to stay there with him until the Earth-shattering pain was gone. If Kurt wanted to stay with him after the Earth-shattering pain was gone, that would be great, too.
You can’t ask him for things like that. You broke him, he reminded himself.
"Isabelle is doing this column on how fashion adapts across the country so I'll be working from here for a few more days and thought I'd visit," Kurt said.
"Liar." Blaine had always been able to tell when Kurt wasn't being truthful even if getting the truth out of him was significantly more difficult. Kurt wasn't hard to read once you understood how to translate his actions.
Kurt shushed him affectionately but didn't try to defend himself.
"Blaine's only supposed to have two visitors at a time," Emily said, making her way into the room and over to the bed to check his vitals.
"I'll just go check in with everyone else and let them know how he's doing-”
“I should call Grandma with an update-”
Kurt and Cooper said, making to move but Blaine reached out, hoping they'd stay. For some reason there was something screaming at him to keep them close. He knew it was an irrational fear, the surgery was over and everything was downhill from this point, but that didn’t stop his throat from starting to close up as tears filled his eyes.
"They aren't bothering me, do they have to leave?" he whined.
"You're still recovering from major surgery and can't stay awake longer than 10 minutes at a time. You don't need all this excitement," she explained as she listened to his lungs. His chest was rising and falling rapidly and she threatened him with a breathing mask to replace his nasal cannula if he didn’t calm down soon.
“They’ll be just outside, Sweetheart,” his mother said. “They aren’t leaving the hospital.”
Blaine ignored her and stuck out his bottom lip but Emily was unflappable and he was forced to say goodbye. Cooper left with a half wave, but Kurt took the time to come over and kiss him on the forehead before leaving - promising to be back later.
"Oh no, totally not dating," Emily teased him once Kurt left.
"Well, certainly not if you send him away every time he's willing to be in the same room as me," he grumbled, trying to ignore the clawing at his heart that told him something wasn’t right. His family had been arguing before he woke up, no matter what bullshit Cooper said about running lines.
"Do you know how much longer Dr. Briar will be? They said he would be by after Blaine’s surgery?" his dad asked.
"He got pulled into emergency surgery. It’ll be at least another few hours. I'm sorry, I know you're anxious for some news," she apologized.
"News?" he asked, feeling like they were having a conversation he wasn't invited to which was made all the more annoying because they were talking about him. Did they think he wouldn’t notice? Or that he’d just be too dumb to ask?
"Just want to know when we can take you home," his mother said with a warning smile at his dad and he knew he was missing something vital but there was no point in trying to get it out of his mom, who they all nicknamed Fort Knox because she was a brick wall when it came to sheltering her kids from negativity. He'd just wait for the next time he was alone with Cooper, he was notoriously bad at keeping secrets.
"What's your pain level?" Emily asked.
He always felt like these questions were a test he couldn't possibly pass. How could he really judge his pain on such a scale? What did the doctors consider a ten? Would Blaine consider it a ten? If he said too high of a number did that mean he'd never go home? If he said too low of a number would they take the meds away?
Every word still echoed in his head and he felt as if his head was stuck inside of a dryer, but it was better than before at least. There was no winning answer in this.
Nine felt too high, like he would use up all of his leverage and nobody would believe him if the pain got worse than it was now. Four was way too low for the way everything rattled inside of him. Six? Six felt safe.
"Six?" he said, hesitantly.
“Which in Blaine-speak probably means he’s at least a seven, likely an eight,” his father said.
“I’ve gathered that much on my own,” Emily said with a playful smirk. “Dr. Green said that you’d been sick for several weeks and didn’t get checked out. You barely told anyone.”
“Thought it was just a cold,” he said with a heavy sigh. He was starting to wake up more and felt some energy returning. Though it wasn’t much, it was more than he’d had before.
He blushed and cowered under her judgmental look. Even if she was only teasing him, he hated that feeling of potentially disappointing somebody.
“Well, there’s no use hiding anything from me,” Emily said. “Your vitals will tell me a lot of what I need to know, and even if you try to lie and say your pain level is only a one, you’re stuck here for at least two more days. You might as well be truthful so I can give you the appropriate amount of drugs. Deal?”
“It’s only a six,” he said, this time more sure of himself. “It was a lot worse earlier. It doesn’t hurt so much to open my eyes now. Still feels like something is trying to claw its way out of there.”
“That’s pretty normal and will go away with some time. You sound like you’ve got more energy than the past few times I’ve checked you out, that’s good,” she said and Blaine wondered just how many times that had been. His mother had said he was in and out since the surgery but he didn’t remember waking up more than two or three times. He supposed that was normal with the amount of drugs they were giving him.
“I’m gonna have you try and drink a few sips of water for me, is that okay?”
Blaine nodded. He’d been given ice chips earlier for his throat, but they hadn’t yet let him actually drink anything. He knew this was a test in and of itself, to see if he was healing properly. He just hoped it was one he could pass. He didn't need to fail at anything else. The guilt of letting Kurt down and now his family was pressing hard enough as it was.
She held the glass up to his lips and waited for him to nod before she slowly tipped a small amount into his mouth. He quickly swallowed it, grabbing for more, but she pulled the glass out of his reach.
“Slowly,” she warned. “You don’t want to make yourself sick.”
She let him finish two small glasses of water, taking a lot more time than it should, but he was grateful for something to drink. What he really wanted was to eat some food, but he knew it would be awhile before they let him eat anything besides broth and liquids.
“Well, Blaine looks like he’s healing up nicely,” Emily said, giving him a warm smile. “Dr. Briar will be in whenever his surgery finishes up, but it might be awhile. If you need anything, just press the call button.”
“Thank you,” his father said, walking her out the door. “I’m gonna go check in with the office and let them know I won’t be in all week.”
“Try and get Kurt to go home for a few hours,” his mom said.
“Kurt hasn’t been home?” Blaine asked, trying not to sound... however it was he was sounding. Hopeful? Worried? Whatever emotions he was feeling towards Kurt were emotions he wasn’t allowed to feel anymore.
“His dad’s been bringing him clothes,” his mom shook her head. “He’s been sleeping in the lobby; he doesn’t listen whenever people tell him he needs to rest.”
“Kurt’s mom died in a hospital after a routine surgery. She got an infection and was gone before his dad could even get Kurt to the hospital to say goodbye,” he said before he even realized what he was saying.
“Blaine-”
“Kurt doesn’t think I’m dying, does he?” he asked. “The surgery is over. I’m fine. I’m going to be fine, right?”
“Of course you are,” she said with a smile that didn’t come close to reaching her eyes.
“Go get him for me,” he said.
“Your dad’s going to get him to head out,” she said.
“He’s not going to,” he said. “I’m probably the only one that can convince him it’s okay to leave for a few hours. Just go get him for me. He shouldn’t be out there miserable and worrying over me. I’ve put him through enough already.”
“Whatever you think you need,” she said and left to go get Kurt.
Blaine closed his eyes and tried to piece together all the secrets that they were hiding from him. Kurt was putting off going back to New York. Cooper was yelling at his mother over something she wasn’t telling Blaine. Kurt agreed with his mother, so Blaine knew it had to be bad enough if Kurt thought the news would break him. It was one thing when his mother shielded him from the truth; she still refused to tell him that Santa Claus wasn’t real even after he’d told her that dad had already broken the news to him years ago. Kurt didn’t believe in hiding though. So for him to be doing this...
“You rang?” Kurt said, standing in the doorway and looking even more amazing now that Blaine knew he’d been sleeping in the hospital for the last three days.
“You don’t need to stay here for me,” he lied; his stomach twisted into knots at the thought of Kurt leaving even for a few minutes time.
“I work for Vogue.com, Blaine. There's this newfangled thing called the Internet? It’s everywhere,” Kurt said playfully, though Blaine could hear the slight edge behind it. They weren’t on joking terms yet, but Kurt was trying hard to be. “And I told you, Isabelle gave me an assignment out here.”
“You don’t have more interesting things to be doing in New York?” he asked, bitter all of the sudden. Maybe it was the way Kurt had to try too hard for things to be okay between them. They never had to try at being friends. Their relationship had always come as naturally as breathing and Blaine had ruined that.
“Why? Do you want me to leave so your other boyfriends can come give you a quickie in the bathroom?” Kurt spat out and the words hurt. They were well deserved, but they hurt.
“I don’t have a boyfriend, not anymore,” he whispered, looking down at the cheap, fraying hospital blanket because he was too ashamed to meet Kurt’s eyes.
“I’m sorry,” Kurt said. “That was rude. I know I’m not supposed to get mad at you. Dr. Green said you couldn’t help it, I just... It’s hard.”
He couldn't help it? What was Kurt talking about?
“I don’t understand.”
“It wasn’t your fault,” Kurt said, flippantly. “Apparently you couldn’t help but allow some muscled college boy to fuck you into a mattress, so enjoy your ‘Get Out of Jail Free’ card.”
He waved Blaine off like it wasn’t a big deal when he’d been ignoring Blaine for weeks because of it. He’d de-friended him on Facebook for God’s sake and now he was acting like it was nothing?
“I don’t want a ‘Get Out of Jail Free’ card,” he said, feeling all the more confused. He wanted to talk about things. He wanted to apologize and be heard for once. He needed Kurt to believe that he meant it. He wanted forgiveness, not for everything to get brushed under the rug like it never happened.
“Kurt, what’s going on?”
Kurt looked like he was going to say more. He opened and closed his mouth several times before shaking his head in defeat. Blaine couldn't help but let out a frustrated growl. How were they ever going to get anywhere if Kurt wouldn't talk to him?
“I should go home and shower or something,” Kurt said, walking away before he could say goodbye.
Blaine threw his head back on the pillow and clawed at his head, willing the pain away so he could feel something besides the splitting pain. Kurt had been right there. After weeks of ignoring him, he was finally there for Blaine to talk to and all he'd managed to do was run him off again and he couldn't even feel his heartbreak because his body was too focused on the hole that had been drilled into his skull.
"Ahh!" he screamed out, throwing his bandaged wrist over his eyes to block out the light. He just wanted it all to stop so he could get back to being a normal, brooding teenager.
“Did you need something?” Emily peeked her head in with a sympathetic look, like she'd been watching him the whole time and knew how pathetic he was.
"What's wrong with me?" he whined.
"Dr. Briar should be in soon to check you out-"
"No, I mean what's wrong with me?" he yelled into the room.
At this rate, he was surprised his mother hadn't come running in. Perhaps she recognized that her son was hopeless. Maybe she'd run off along with Kurt. He wouldn't blame her. He was a pretty shitty son and at the rate he got hospitalized, he knew he was an expensive kid to care for. Maybe it was best if everyone just gave up on him and left him here alone. At least that way he couldn’t mess anyone else’s life up again.
"You're a teenager; you're supposed to ask yourself these kinds of questions. If you don't make your mistakes now you're going to be that thirty year old man that still lives with his parents and can't ever get past the first date. Trust me; everyone's a mess when they're eighteen."
“But how do I fix it?” he asked.
“I can’t give you the answers, that’s cheating,” she teased.
“Kurt left,” he said, though he’s pretty sure that she saw him leave considering how little time it took her to reach his room.
“He’ll be back,” she comforted him. “He’s probably just pissed that your blond friend keeps arguing with him.”
“My blond friend?” he asked, unsure of who she was referring to.
“The one with the muscles and the big lips? Your mom totally thinks he’s the one that you slept with.”
“She what? You’re talking about Sam? Why is Kurt fighting with Sam? They’re friends,” he said.
He couldn’t even begin to understand what those two could possibly have against each other. Kurt was the one who kept Sam’s secret sophomore year when Sam’s family was homeless and he’d even given him clothes to wear, despite the personal hardships it caused Kurt at school. Sam had even been living at the Hummel-Hudson’s house during the school year so he could attend McKinley. Those two were friends long before Blaine ever learned how to get along with Sam. It made no sense.
“I’ll give you one good guess what they are fighting over,” she said with a pointed look.
“I don’t-me?” he asked, surprised.
“Congrats, it looks like your head injury didn’t affect your intelligence,” she teased.
“But Sam would befriend a mountain lion if it would listen to his impressions. He gets along with everyone, this doesn’t make any sense. Why would they be fighting over me?” he asked.
“Why would two incredibly good looking men be fighting over another painfully adorable heartthrob who just had brain surgery?”
“Sam’s straight,” he replied, knowing where she was going with this.
“So you didn’t sleep with him?”
“No,” he argued. “Why? Does Kurt think I slept with him?”
“I think his exact words were So he’s sleeping with you, too, why else would you care so much all of a sudden?”
How could Kurt possibly think that he would sleep with Sam? Sure Blaine had done a lot of uncharacteristic things lately, but Sam? Kurt knew that Sam was straight and if Blaine was going to cheat on him, he would at least have the decency to not do it with the boy that was sleeping in Kurt’s house.
“Sam’s dating Brittany,” he said defensively at her knowing smirk. “We’re just friends.”
“Well, regardless, Kurt and Sam can’t even sit near each other without getting into a fight,” she said.
“How come I haven’t heard about any of this?”
“Because nobody brings the drama into patient rooms,” she explained. “Everyone knows if you want to know how people are really doing, you have to watch them in the lobby.”
“Well, you’re not afraid to tell me,” he said with a small chuckle, noticing that his pain level had slightly decreased as he’d been talking to her. Emily was really good at distracting him from his suffering.
“Why would I be?” she asked. “It’s not like you’re going to break. You’re one of the strong ones, I can tell.”
“How?”
“Because you’ve been living with intense migraines for months and didn’t feel the need to bother anybody with them,” she said. “If my pain level ever hits above a three, I’m crying to anybody that will listen and ordering my boyfriend to bring me ice cream.”
“Will you tell me what’s wrong with me?” he asked.
“I think that’s a conversation best left to Dr. Briar. I’m just a nurse,” she said.
“Since when is a nurse ever just a nurse?” he pressed, but knew it wasn’t any use. He would find out what was going on whenever Dr. Briar decided to come around.
“Charming,” she said. “I can see why everyone loves you so much. Now get some rest. You’ve already been up much longer than you’re used to.”
He hadn’t noticed how tired he was, but as soon as Emily lowered his bed, he was out cold.
****
“What isn’t Mom telling me?” Blaine asked Cooper later on that afternoon once his parents had stepped out to get something to eat from the cafeteria.
“You know how she gets,” he brushed him off with a wave of his hands and he continued to flip through the channels on TV. “She thinks you’ll spiral out of control with the slightest breath of news that isn’t positive-How this guy has steady work and I don’t is beyond me,” he complained as he stopped on a re-run of How I Met Your Mother.
“Neil Patrick Harris? You’re putting yourself in the same category as Neil Patrick Harris?” Blaine asked with a laugh. Cooper held himself in high regard, but he had to be joking with this one, right?
“No, not NPH. Though I still think with enough work I could get there. I’m talking about Ted... I mean, does anybody even know his real name? Is he in anything besides this show? How is he working and I’m not?” Cooper complained.
Blaine had to admit, Cooper might have a point. While his brother was a bit overdramatic and overacted pretty much all the time, it wasn’t like Josh Radnor was anything special.
“You could have played Marshall,” Blaine said, not exactly believing his words but feeling kind enough to say them anyway. Sometimes Cooper just needed to hear that he was good enough after constantly being told ‘no’ audition after audition.
“Thanks.”
“So what breath of news does she think is going to make me spiral?” Blaine asked, returning them back to the original topic. They only had so much time before their parents would be back and Blaine would be unable to get any information out of anyone.
“I was forbidden from telling you,” he said.
“Which makes it all the more exciting when you do,” Blaine argued, knowing how to twist Cooper to his will.
Cooper sighed deeply before muting the TV and turning to glare at him, completely aware that Blaine was manipulating him into talking. Still, he could see Cooper had given in and decided to tell him what he wanted to hear.
“The doctor’s found a tumor when they were operating on you,” he said.
A tumor? Like cancer? That couldn’t be right.
“A tumor-When they were-It was just there? Why wasn’t it-But the CAT scan?” His words all rushed out of him, not even bothering to finish a thought before moving onto the next one.
“I guess it was in a difficult place to detect or something and they weren’t looking for it in your scan since they didn’t know you had a history of issues until you said so,” Cooper said with a shrug as if the medical side of things was too much for him to remember it all.
“Until you said so,” Blaine clarified, not forgetting how Cooper had thrown him under the bus in front of everyone by bringing up how he’d slept with somebody else.
“Exactly,” he nodded, completely unfazed by Blaine’s glare. “Well, they realized that you had more going on than a brain hemorrhage, so they looked closer at the scan and had to take a biopsy during your surgery. We’ve been waiting on the results; that’s why Mom and Dad are so on edge.”
“A biopsy? To see if I have cancer?” he asked, but he knew that’s exactly what it was. What else would they have done if they found a tumor in his brain?
Oh, God. He had brain cancer. He must have looked panicked because Cooper was on his feet and trying to grab for a million things at once to help him out-water, the breathing mask, gesturing towards the call button.
“What do you need?” Cooper asked, moving around helplessly as Blaine turned away everything he offered.
“Cancer?” he said, though he knew that wasn’t even a complete question, it was the only thing he could get to come out of his mouth.
“You might not,” Cooper added in with a hopeful grin, like that would help anything.
“They didn’t take the tumor out? It’s still in there?” he asked.
He still had a tumor in his brain. One that was diseased and possibly growing, eating up other healthy parts of him. Pretty soon he was going to be left with nothing. He was going to be brain dead or something. Was that how it worked?
“There’s only so much of this medical talk I understand, despite being an extra on Grey’s Anatomy for three weeks. They couldn’t remove the tumor without your consent before and I guess now they are worried about losing some vital brain function so they are waiting,” Cooper said, which did nothing but make him more stressed out.
“Vital - I’m going to be sick,” he said, and before Cooper could even reach for a bedpan, he was leaning over the bed and vomiting all over the floor.
“See, this is what Mom was talking about,” Cooper said in that obnoxious I’m wiser than you tone that only an older brother could perfect. He reached over and pressed the call button. “You’re lucky you didn’t barf on my new shoes.”
“I should have,” he grumbled as a nurse he didn’t recognize came in and helped clean up the mess he made and asked him about his pain level.
Blaine gritted his teeth and let the poor girl check all of his vitals and had to dig his nails into his fists to keep from screaming at the woman. His anger had nothing to do with her, he reminded himself. He was just scared and lashing out would do nothing to ease that fear.
“I fell down the stairs, Coop,” he said as soon as she left them. “I can’t have cancer. That doesn’t give you cancer.” He looked up at his older brother with what must have been a pathetic expression, because Cooper looked more broken than Blaine had ever seen him before.
“You’ve been sick for awhile-” Cooper explained as he tried to hold his tears back.
Blaine couldn’t remember the last time Cooper honestly cried. He endured the fake, dramatic tears on almost a weekly basis, but this wasn’t for a scene. This was his older brother looking lost at being unable to stop Blaine’s suffering. This was Cooper at a loss for words to say which might be another first for him.
“With the flu,” he said desperately, as if saying it loud enough would somehow make it true. “It was the flu! That’s it!”
“I’m not really the best person to be talking about this with,” Cooper said, floundering. “Do you want to practice my monologue with me?”
“What? No! Cooper, when were you guys going to tell me about this?” he asked. He hadn’t realized he was crying until he tasted the salt water on his lips.
“I wanted to,” Cooper said, unable to keep the tears back any longer. God they must have been a sight, the two of them crying in that hospital room with How I Met Your Mother playing silently in the background. “That’s what Mom and I had been arguing about when I cleverly convinced you that I was practicing for a role.”
“I never believed you were practicing for a role,” he growled out of spite, though he didn’t really mean to come off so harsh.
That was just how things went with siblings. They were there to take all of your worst and still loved you unconditionally in the end. It was the one thing Blaine was grateful for. While soulmates apparently could leave you whenever things got rough, family was forever. He never thought that Cooper would be the guy he ended up depending on more than Kurt, but there it was.
“Maybe I should go get somebody else-”
“NO!” he yelled. “You can’t leave. You’re the only one not lying to me. You stay. You’re not allowed to leave this hospital room until I do.”
“Oh, can we make a reality show about it? We could sell it for millions,” Cooper said, already pulling out his camera until Blaine smacked it away.
“Coop, focus.”
“Defcon Five, right. Got it,” he said.
“What am I going to do?” Blaine asked, not really expecting an answer back. There wasn’t an answer.
“Relax,” Cooper said. “Even if you do have cancer, they can cure that. You’ll get some chemo and lose your hair-”
“I don’t want to lose my hair-” he whined but Cooper ignored him and just kept talking.
“You’ll have a really great story to tell in your first Behind the Music special. Audiences eat cancer stories up.”
“I hate you so much right now,” Blaine said, but they both knew that wasn’t true.
“You’ll get over it,” he smirked. “Hate is a passionate emotion and passion never lasts forever.”
“Are you physically incapable of giving good advice? Is anything you say ever not bullshit?” Blaine asked.
“Wow, that tumor’s made you kind of an asshole,” Cooper whined, slumping back in his chair and turning the volume back up, presumably so he could try to ignore Blaine.
“Oh, God, do I really have a tumor?” he asked, trying to let the information sink but it wouldn’t. It wasn’t the truth. It couldn’t be. Eighteen year old kids weren’t supposed to get cancer. That’s not how the world was supposed to work.
“On the bright side, now you have an excuse for cheating on Kurt,” Cooper said, which was probably supposed to make him feel better but the reminder only added to his stress. “I don’t think he’s really even mad anymore. You're off the hook thanks to the deathtrap in your head.”
“I don’t want to be off the hook. I cheated on him!” Blaine groaned.
“What are you boys arguing about?” his mother asked, walking into the room and glaring at Cooper. “Your brother needs to relax. Don’t get him worked up.”
“Actually, we were just having a discussion about the brain-eating tumor you failed to mention to me,” Blaine said, daring her to contradict what Cooper had said. He wouldn't put it past her to make up some story about how it wasn’t true. That was the last thing he wanted to hear, mostly because he needed to not have a tumor. He needed this to all be a joke and if she said he was fine, he would be crushed when he found out it wasn't. So he dared her to try and contradict Cooper.
“I told you not to tell him,” she hissed at Cooper.
“Well, he knows now,” Cooper said with a shrug, completely cool under his mother’s heated glare. He didn’t know how his brother did it; she always had him quivering in fear when she looked at him like that.
“For all we know, it could be benign and now you’ve worked him up for nothing,” she said, moving to sit at the edge of his bed to run her fingers through his hair. “We just didn’t want to stress you out until we knew more,” she said to him.
The only thing he could think of in response came seemingly out of nowhere, “I don’t want to die.”
****
That night, the Anderson’s all crammed into Blaine’s small hospital room and pretended to watch a movie while they waited for Dr. Briar to stop by with Blaine’s biopsy results. Emily had warned him that even though there had been a rush put on his test results, the lab often got backed up and it was entirely possible that they wouldn’t have any news tonight. Still, Blaine was looking forward to being actively involved in his care from now on and he was doing his best not to fall asleep on his mother’s shoulder while they waited. It would be just his luck to sleep through Dr. Briar’s meeting and though Emily promised him that nobody would let that happen, he didn’t believe that to be true.
“They’re showing more commercials than they are movies,” his dad grumbled as the movie cut to another break.
“Commercial actors deserve equal screentime,” Cooper chirped up from where he was slumped in a chair playing Jungle Run on his phone. He’d been obsessed with the game ever since Blaine had shown it to him on his last visit home.
“Well, I’m sick of this,” his dad said. “I’m changing the channel.”
“Don’t,” his mom said. “Blaine likes Hugh Jackman.”
His dad turned to him and gave him a strange look, almost interested, which was another sign of this tumor completely uprooting his life and making everyone completely unrecognizable because his dad had never shown interest in hearing about his love life-even if it was just about a celebrity crush.
“It’s okay, you can change it. I’ve seen this one about a hundred times,” Blaine said, blushing under his parents’ dual gaze. They had been doing that a lot lately, just staring at him like it was the first time they were seeing him.
More like the last, he reminded himself sadly.
“When you get out of here, we should plan that trip to Puerto Princesa we’ve been putting off,” his dad said. “Your mom’s been wanting to take you boys back to see her family for years but we’ve all been too busy.”
Blaine was going to say that it wasn’t such a bad idea. He could stand to get away from things for a while and he’d always heard about how beautiful the Philippines were from his mother, though he’d never been able to see for himself. She hadn’t been back home since before Blaine was born. There had been a trip when Cooper was younger, but once Blaine came along everyone’s schedules seemed to get crazy and there was always the ever constant promise that they would go the next year.
“Bill,” his mother cut him off with a warning look. “Let’s not talk about this right now.”
Which everyone knew was her way of saying that they wouldn’t be talking about it ever.
Great, so he had one parent trying to check off items from a bucket list and another one that was likely never going to let him do anything ever again. Blaine was pretty sure if she could get away with it that he’d be wrapped in bubble wrap and never allowed to leave his room.
A knock at the door had them all looking up in both relief and dread as Dr. Briar and Dr. Green made their way into the room.
“We’re sorry to have kept you all waiting so long,” Dr. Briar apologized. “It looks like Blaine’s feeling a bit better?”
Blaine nodded and pushed off his mom so he could sit up straight by himself, trying to make himself look more mature. Like somebody that could be trusted with the whole truth.
“How’s the pain level?” Dr. Green asked cheerfully as she moved to listen to his chest and check over his vitals despite the fact that Emily had just checked on him ten minutes earlier.
“About a five? The meds have helped a lot,” he said, honestly in his most put together voice. A voice he hadn’t really had a use for since leaving Dalton.
“You seem pretty energetic, have you been feeling tired at all?” she asked, checking off several boxes in her notepad.
“I’ve had to take a few naps throughout the day, but I feel okay,” he said.
“Good, that’s great. Any lightheadedness?”
“Some,” he said.
“He got sick earlier,” Cooper chimed in, causing Blaine to roll his eyes.
“I did say some,” Blaine clarified, glaring at his brother.
“Well, that’s to be expected,” Dr. Briar said, effectively cutting off Dr. Green’s endless stream of questions. It seemed pretty harsh, but then again, Blaine remembered that most of the answers to her questions could be found in his chart.
“We’ve got Blaine’s biopsy results back,” he said.
“And?” Cooper asked. Blaine could see him clutching at his chair until his knuckles were white. He was clutching at his blanket and he hadn’t looked down, but he was sure his own were white as well.
“The tumor is malignant,” Dr. Briar said matter of factly, but he at least had the decency of looking regretful.
“What does that mean?” his dad asked.
“I have cancer,” Blaine answered for him, his voice remarkably strong, though that was probably the denial talking. He felt like he was watching the scene unfold on the TV instead of in front of him. It was certainly easier to believe they were talking about some other patient instead of himself.
“The cancer is growing fairly rapidly. Dr. Green has scheduled an MRI and I’d like to do a spinal tap just to be safe. We won’t know how advanced or widespread the cancer is until we can get a better look at it,” Dr. Briar explained.
“I don’t understand,” his mother cut him off with a wave of her hand. “You gave my son a CT scan on Friday and you told me that he had a brain hemorrhage. Now you’re telling me that he has cancer?”
“I understand your frustration-” Dr. Briar said in a calming voice that he knew would only fuel his mother’s anger.
“How do I even know that we can trust you if you can’t even read his test results properly?” she asked, causing Blaine to blush in embarrassment.
“Mom, just let him talk, please,” he begged, praying that she wouldn’t cause a scene.
“When Blaine came into the ER, we were unaware of any symptoms previous to his fall. Blaine was unable to communicate and the friends he came with didn’t mention any issues he’d been having so we didn’t know to look for a possible tumor. For time’s sake, we ordered a CT scan without contrast because it can take a good hour before one with contrast can be done. We were worried about the pressure on Blaine’s brain due to the bleeding so we performed the quickest test we had available, sadly it was the one that was least likely to pick up the tumor.”
His mother scoffed in disbelief, but thankfully didn’t say anything more.
“You did have a brain hemorrhage like we originally said and we’ve managed to take care of that, which should help relieve some of the pressure on your brain for awhile while we run more tests to see how far the cancer’s progressed,” Dr. Briar said.
“But you’re hopeful right?” Cooper asked. “Whatever you find out, you can still fix this?”
“It’s hard to say anything right now without some more information,” Dr. Green said, sympathetically. “We’d like to get Blaine down for an MRI now if you’re feeling up to it?”
“That’s fine,” he said before his mother cut him off.
“Can we have a few minutes alone please?” she asked, effectively kicking the doctors out of the room.
“Mom!” Blaine practically yelled, horrified as she shut the door behind the doctors.
“We need to find a different doctor before we proceed any further,” she said.
“What? No, I’m fine,” he said, shaking his head. Was she seriously doing this?
“If you really do have cancer-and that’s a big if at this point-I want you to be seen by somebody that can at least read your test results properly,” she said.
“Dr. Briar just said you can’t see all tumors on a CT scan. In fact, if that’s the case, we’re lucky they even found my tumor at all,” he argued. “If anything, you should be thanking them.”
“Why? For giving you brain surgery before they even knew what was wrong with you?” she asked, clearly reaching a new level of hysteria that he’d never seen before. His dad was sitting quietly in the corner, unwilling to interfere. They all knew what she was like when she got like this, which was how Blaine found himself fighting this battle alone.
“It’s not like they made this hemorrhage up,” he said. “I fell down the stairs and hit my head. They had to control the bleeding in my brain before there was any permanent damage. Even if they knew I had a tumor, I would have still had a surgery to stop the bleeding.”
“You’re my baby,” she said as if that somehow justified all of her crazy behavior. “I’m allowed to be concerned.”
“Of course you are,” he said, doing what he could to pacify her so she would just calm down enough to let the doctors do their job. “But if you’re that concerned, you should let them do the MRI so they can help me.”
“Fine,” she grumbled. “But I’m Googling this without contrast thing because it still sounds like a load of shit.”
“What happened to thinking positively?” he asked.
“Oh, Sweetheart, I’m not saying you’re not going to be okay,” she said. “I know whatever it is, you’ll be just fine. I just want to make sure you’ve got the best possible care you can have.”
The one bright side to his mother going completely crazy was that Blaine didn’t really have time to process the fact that he had cancer before Dr. Green was taking him down for an MRI.
The next few hours were spent trying to get some rest after the stressful MRI and a rather uncomfortable spinal tap. The night past by in a bit of a blur, with Blaine constantly waking up with a headache from the spinal tap. He was sick a few more times throughout the night, but thankfully by morning he was feeling at least halfway human.
“Your mom’s crying in the hallway,” Kurt said from the doorway, causing Blaine to look up in surprise.
He hadn’t expected Kurt to come back after waiting all day yesterday for him to show up again. He’d assumed Kurt had caught a flight back to New York or something, but there he stood, looking completely dreadful.
He’s preparing for bad news, Blaine thought to himself, wishing more than anything he had something good to tell him instead. He’d had enough bad news in hospitals; he didn’t want to have to tell him that he might be dying as well.
Blaine just nodded, causing Kurt’s frown to set in deeper as if he knew what was coming next. Cooper stood up from where he was playing on his phone in the corner and excused himself, giving the two of them some privacy.
“I have cancer,” he said, not knowing any other way to say it than to just say it.
“No,” Kurt shook his head in disbelief.
“They told me last night.”
Kurt stood by the doorway, frozen in shock. Blaine didn’t know what to say to him, he was pretty sure there wasn’t anything that could be said if the way his mother kept bursting into tears every time Blaine tried to comfort her was any indication.
“Did they say what they were going to do to treat it?” Kurt asked, his voice strong. Blaine he recognized it.
It was the sound of Kurt building up a wall around himself so that he could be brave when inside he was feeling like a mess. It was the same voice that stood up in front of a gymnasium full of kids and got coronated. It was the same voice that told Sebastian they would love to go to Scandals. This was the Kurt that survived the mess that was his student council president elections, Blaine’s eye surgery, a NYADA rejection and recently Blaine’s cheating by steeling himself off from the world so he wouldn’t have to feel anything too much.
Blaine hated that voice because it meant Kurt was hurting and there wasn’t anything he could do to stop it because Kurt wouldn’t admit there was something wrong when he got like this. Not that he could fix this even if Kurt would let him. Cancer wasn’t something that could be cured with cheesecake and a viewing of Titanic.
“They are still running tests and stuff to see if they even can,” he said.
Kurt’s head shot up at the realization that Blaine might be getting sent home to die.
“You mean there’s a chance that they won’t be able to do anything?” he asked, his voice sounding only slightly more vulnerable this time.
“The cancer is growing too fast,” Blaine explained, picking at the cast on his wrist. “It’s already progressed to stage four, they are just waiting to see if it’s spread to my spinal cord or not.”
“Oh, my God,” he whispered, throwing his head back to stare at the ceiling and Blaine could tell that he was holding back tears.
“I’m so sorry,” Blaine said desperately, hating himself for doing this to Kurt
All Kurt could do was shake his head frantically, like he wasn’t willing to hear it-like he couldn’t hear it without breaking down completely.
“I just keep hurting you and I don’t know how to stop,” he said, feeling his own voice break at how helpless Kurt looked with his arms crossed tightly across his body, like he was trying to hold his insides in.
“Getting cancer wasn’t your fault.”
“I know that,” he said. He hadn’t been talking about the cancer, he was talking about Eli and he was pretty sure that Kurt knew that but was trying to avoid the topic. Well, tough, they needed to talk about it-Blaine needed to talk about it. To be allowed to say his apology and be heard.
“I just feel like I keep breaking things. I’m so incredibly sorry about cheating on you, Kurt. You have no idea how sorry I am, and now I’m sick and I just... I never wanted to hurt you.”
“I don’t want to fight with you anymore, not now,” Kurt said, cutting him off. He looked at Blaine like it pained him.
“I never wanted to hurt you,” he repeated, his lips quivering with emotion, praying that this time Kurt would hear him.
“How did you think I would feel when I found out?” Kurt asked, looking betrayed and it sent a stabbing pain to his heart that had nothing to do with the cancer.
“I honestly don’t know what happened-it just...”
“It just happened?” Kurt said, mockingly. “You tripped and his dick fell in your mouth?”
“It wasn’t like that. I’m sorry. There’s no excuse,” he said, starting to cry. He hated how bitter Kurt sounded and how he couldn’t even get angry about it because it was entirely his fault.
“There isn’t an excuse, you’re right,” Kurt said, glaring at him. “But now you’re sick and I don’t know what I’m supposed to do.”
His breath caught in his throat, wondering if Kurt was just trying to hurt him with the words or if he honestly was only here because Blaine was sick and he felt obligated. Maybe their friends were pressuring him into staying with Blaine. Was that what he and Sam were fighting over? Oh, God...
“I don’t want you to be with me out of pity-if you don’t love me-”
“Of course I love you,” Kurt said, like it was the worst possible thing in the world. “That’s what makes this hurt so bad. I love you and can’t stand the thought of not being with you, but you cheated on me. You took every precious moment we’ve ever shared and put it into question because I can’t trust you. And now I don’t even have the time to come to terms with what happened and learn to forgive you because you’re-you’ve-you might not be around to-” Kurt finally broke down and started crying.
“I have cancer,” he said bluntly, filling in what Kurt couldn’t. “There’s no point in denying it.”
“It’s just not fair. We’re so young-you’re so young,” Kurt said.
“It’s okay,” Blaine started to try and calm him down but Kurt just started getting more worked up until he was sobbing as well.
Blaine had been trying his best to be strong ever since the diagnosis, but he couldn’t do it anymore. Not looking at Kurt. He couldn’t look into the eyes of his future and know that he should have so much more. That he was supposed to have an entire life where he grew old with the man of his dreams and now he might not even have a future beyond this hospital bed. It wasn’t fair.
Kurt pushed off of the door frame that he’d been leaning on like a life support. He moved to climb into bed with Blaine, getting tangled up in the IV for a few minutes before they managed to settle into a comfortable position where Kurt could hold him tightly as they both cried together. He wasn’t sure if this meant that Kurt had forgiven him or not, but at the moment he couldn’t care. He just wanted to be held. It had been too long since Kurt’s arms had been around him.
“It’s okay,” Kurt whispered into his ears. “It’ll be okay. We’ll figure it out together.”
Together.
Those words felt like magic to him and while it didn’t remove any of the fear for the future; it helped him not feel quite as hysterical about his present. There was a lot coming up for him. Most importantly, finding out if the doctors even believed he had a chance at surviving this, but if Kurt was willing to hold his hand through it all in spite of the pain Blaine had cause, maybe he could get through this without losing his mind.