Glass Bones & Paper Skin (4/?)
Title: Glass Bones & Paper Skin (4/?)
Pairing: Kurt/Blaine
Word count: ~3,500
Rating: PG-13.
Warnings: A single swear word, an illness which can be a sensitive subject for people, angst.
Summary of the story as a whole so far: When Blaine discovers that he has a dreadful illness, him and Kurt have to fight through it together because Kurt has vowed to be with him every step of the way.
In this chapter: Kurt takes Blaine to the hospital... cue drama and angst and tears.
Author's Notes: I am so, so sorry for the lack of updates on this. It's been well over a month and I've just been caught up in college and personal issues. It's been hard so I haven't been able to write as much... but I wrote a lot and just couldn't get the ending, at all. I'm sorry if it's a disappointment. I tried!
The clock on Kurt’s dashboard read 10:47 as he drove himself and Blaine to the hospital, the radio humming lowly in the background, too quiet for either of them to hear.
They sat in silence, sore, tired eyes fixed on the road ahead. They hadn’t said much since Kurt had picked Blaine up from his home and quickly stopped off to grab coffee from the Lima Bean... while Blaine’s right hand grasped a warm cup, Kurt’s held tightly onto Blaine’s left over the centre console of the car, fingers painfully entwined as they sought comfort in one another. Kurt tried to ignore the tremble of Blaine’s hand but it was okay; his was shaking just as much.
If this had happened last year, Kurt would’ve denied that he was scared. That he was scared for the lost little boy who sat curled up in the passenger seat beside him. Fear was for the weak. Fear was for the pathetic. But after the Karofsky incidents and the meeting upon the staircase, Kurt learnt that it’s easier to pull out the stopper in the bottle and let the emotions flow.
If anyone asked him how he was feeling now, it wouldn’t be ‘scared’... it would be ‘terrified’.
When they pulled up in the hospital car park and the key had been removed from the ignition, Kurt sighed and leant his forehead against the steering wheel. There was no point trying to hide what he was feeling from Blaine. They’d both seen each other’s tears last night and the nervous breakdowns. Hiding would just complicate things. It was all out in the open. The illness, the emotions. Everything. Lies just make things more confusing and muddled, like kite strings tangled in a knot. Tangled strings mean no flight. Just a poor grounded kite in the mud. If the strings in Kurt and Blaine’s lives get tangled by lying and hiding things from one another, then they’d just get nowhere and be held in place without moving forward.
Blaine just looked straight ahead out of the windscreen as Kurt composed himself, the coffee in his hand now stone cold. He didn’t move, didn’t respond, just wanted to get this all over with and find out if this disease inside of him was slowly poisoning other parts of his body, eating away at his insides. What would happen when the cancer runs out of bones to latch onto? What would be next to suffer? His intestines, his liver, his stomach, his lungs, his heart, his brain...
Something softly touched the side of his face, snapping him out of his thoughts and making him flinch harshly. He looked over at Kurt and his outstretched hand with a stricken look.
“I- I’m sorry... I thought...” the younger boy stuttered, withdrawing his fingers from Blaine’s skin as if it had scorched the tips, biting his lip through fear of upsetting and unsettling the older boy.
“No. No, it’s okay. It just made me jump... that’s all.” Blaine took Kurt’s hand before it completely withdrew, pressing it back against his cheek. As Blaine moved his hand off of his, Kurt stroked with the back of his fingers as gently as possible from temple to chin. Blaine leant into the touch; eyes closed and mouth open slightly, almost purring like a kitten.
“Everything’s going to be alright...” Kurt whispered softly, fingers stroking down Blaine’s cheek again and again, still gently comforting even when Kurt can feel the wetness of tears upon his skin. “Blaine...”
Blaine breathed out heavily, his chest shaking from the effort not to sob. It sounded worse when he tried to breathe in, his breath coming in broken little gasps. He tried not to look at Kurt as he cried, looking out across the parking lot.
“I’m s-sorry, I’m b-being st-stupid b-but... but I can’t f-find the st... strength for this. I’m s-sorry, Kurt...” He hated himself. He truly did. Two steps forward and three steps back. What happened to the night before when Kurt had helped to push himself into fighting for his own life? What happened to that? What had changed?
“It’s okay, it’s okay. Shhh,” Kurt pulled him into an embrace, pressing a kiss to his curls that lay free from the vice like gel grip. His hands fisted the back of Blaine’s shirt whilst Blaine’s grasped the front of his. They held each other so close, so tightly, it was a wonder that their hands hadn’t become numb from the pressure. “It’s okay... I would say that if you’re not ready for this, we can go home right now, forget about it, shove a DVD on or two, grab a bowl of popcorn, the works. But you need to do this, Blaine. Because you might not find the courage to come back here and, as much as I hate to say it, this may be something that needs to be treated. Leaving’s only going to make things worse.”
Blaine nodded against his shoulder before pulling away and rubbing his eyes with his fists. He looked tired, exhausted even, and Kurt felt a lump form in his throat as he looked at the boy across from him. Oh, how cruel nature could be. How cruel it could be to hit a boy of this age with something as terrifying as this. But with tsunamis and hunger and earthquakes happening all across the world... it’s always been obvious that nature was never one to be kind and giving.
Blaine turned to fix Kurt a wobbly smile, eyes shining with unshed tears. They sat there for a few beats, eyes locked, fingers locked, waiting for courage to hit them with the force of a speeding train.
Finally, with a shuddering breath, Blaine blinked, giving Kurt’s fingers one final squeeze. “Let’s do this.”
---
“Well, Blaine, I’m very glad that you’ve come to me about this...”
The consultant’s office. Kurt sat across the room from Blaine, wringing his hands together, whilst he sat shirtless upon the doctor’s bed. It took all of Kurt’s self-discipline not to rake his eyes over Blaine’s nude chest, slowly moving from his enticing collarbones to his dark chest hair to his perfectly shaped nipples, right down that stomach and God, to those hips. Yep, took all of Kurt’s self-discipline but he managed... just.
The doctor, Dr. Garrison, stood behind Blaine as he kept his eyes lowered to the ground, ignoring the man’s probing fingers on his shoulder blade. From that sentence alone, he could tell it was bad news. Great.
“Why so, Doc?” Blaine tried to say but his voice only coming out in a hoarse whisper, his windpipe feeling swollen and constricted. He couldn’t look up at Kurt, couldn’t meet his eyes, couldn’t face seeing the shine of tears across the surface.
“By the feel of it, it seems like a cyst, a small sac full of fluid. Have you ever injured this shoulder?” Dr. Garrison handed the boy back his shirt, smiling comfortingly down at him. How many people sat there in his place, upon the paper covered bed, day after day. Adults, children, teenagers, elderly. Some sat in that spot only to be told that the cancer had returned or worse, that it was no longer treatable... a terminal illness. A signed death warrant.
“Yeah... last year... fell out of a tree at school...” Blaine murmured in reply, slipping his head and arms back through his shirt. He managed to look up at Kurt at that point, who seemed a little glassy eyed, and gave him a shaky, yet okay, smile.
“There we go then,” the doctor smiled and sunk down into his own chair behind his desk, where he shuffled around various pieces of paperwork. “Cysts sometimes form from a burst blood vessel in an impact injury. Have you ever noticed it in the past?”
“I don’t know,” Blaine slid into the chair next to Kurt, facing the white haired man who was too busy flicking through Blaine’s file to look up. “I mean... I think I can recall my mom pointing out before. I’m not sure if I’m just tricking myself into believing that or not... I guess I’m just so paranoid about it all.”
“Judging by that, I don’t think it’s serious and I believe that that is the reason you have it. Yet I’ll get a biopsy sorted out for you anyway. Hopefully, it’ll just be from the past impact and be benign, non-cancerous, but we’ll get you tested. I’m just glad that you came here because it shows that you’re being more aware of your body and aware that this is something very serious. Something that is also very important for you is that you need to keep checking your leg. We need to know asap if any other lumps appear and the cancer is more likely to spread on the same bone, rather than to somewhere else in your body. Thankfully, the whole disease is in its first stages so we’ve caught it early.”
Kurt sat there throughout this whole speech, chest growing tighter over words such as ‘serious’ and ‘lumps’ and ‘cancer’ kept cropping up. It was all so real and they couldn’t hide from that fact any more. Even the word ‘thankfully’ didn’t calm his nerves so he reached out across the chairs to grip onto Blaine’s hand, anything to help him breathe normally again. Blaine just shortly glanced over at the boy beside him before turning back at the doctor, eyes unblinking.
“Now it’s time to think about your treatment,” the atmosphere suddenly grew tense within the room as Dr. Garrison slowly removed his glasses, eyes beneath them hard and grave. “I believe you really need to think about starting it soon because you’re giving the cancer time, Blaine. Time that can be precious for us to stop it. I understand how you can be apprehensive...”
“What?” Kurt finally managed to interject after sitting with his mouth agape from this revelation, his voice shaking with anger as the doctor’s words slowly processed in his mind. “You’ve been putting off getting treated? Are you out of your mind?”
Blaine finally managed to glance sideways, his eyes never fully managing to hit Kurt’s so instead settling for his shoulder. He had been hoping that this conversation would be avoided because he knew Kurt would react this way. Understandably, of course.
“I haven’t been putting it off for long. I was just... waiting after I told you. I wanted you to know first, before the chemo destroyed my body. Don’t be angry, Kurt...” Blaine gasped all of this out so quickly, the words tripping over each other as if racing to leave his tongue first. His voice broke slightly on the word ‘destroyed’, their eyes finally locking. As much as he wanted to look away from Kurt’s eyes, he couldn’t. There were so many emotions flashing through one by one and trying to keep up with it all just made Blaine dizzy.
Kurt bit back the words that threatened to spill out and instead opted to clamp his teeth together, his jaw ridiculously clenched. Blaine could see a muscle slightly twitching from the strain of it. Kurt looked expectantly back at the doctor as if willing him to carry on, Blaine reluctantly tearing his gaze away.
“Right...” Dr. Garrison coughed awkwardly before looking back down at his notes. “Well, as you know, we’re going to book you in for chemotherapy and then...”
The rest of the consultation flew past, full of technical terms and various other words that Kurt and Blaine wouldn’t be able to pronounce, let alone understand. But they sat in feigned rapt attention, when all they could really concentrate on was the feel of their palms pressed together and the burning warmth of their tangled fingers.
“...after your surgery, we’ll then arrange some more treatment to make sure that it’s all gone. Any questions? We should start arranging to book you in for chemotherapy as soon as possible.”
“No.”
The voice was so small, so fragile, so tiny, so broken that Kurt and Dr. Garrison almost missed it. It could have been mistaken for an exhalation of breath or the creak of the chair or anything. That voice couldn’t have come from Blaine. It couldn’t have. That one defiant word... no? No. Why ‘no’? As they both turned to give Blaine an incredulous stare, the tips of his ears grew pink, his eyebrows tugged down into a frown as he stared at the edge of the desk, lips set in a straight line.
Kurt was the first to speak as they all sat in stunned silence. Shifting around in the chair, he turned to completely face his best friend, tugging at his hand to try and force him to look up. “No?! Blaine... please.” Kurt clasped Blaine’s hand in both of his and pressed them to his chest, willing him to see sense and feel the heart thudding against his ribcage, as if chanting Do. This. For. Me..
“Not yet. I... I just want to live normal life for a little bit longer... is that too much to ask?” Blaine replied, his voice growing quieter and quieter as his words progressed. It was a wonder as to how he was getting out those words, due to the trembling of his bottom lip.
The doctor slowly opened his mouth to reassure the sick boy across the table but Kurt interjected before he could speak, shuffling his chair closer until his knees were touching Blaine’s thigh. “Blaine, honey... I know, I get it. I’m not going to sugar coat this and tell you that you will still lead a ‘normal life’, even while you fight this. But things will change and you’ll have to adapt. We’ll all have to adapt. But it’s okay. It’s all going to be okay. If that’s what it takes to make you better again, then so be it. The sooner you start treatment, the sooner you’ll find yourself back in normality, look at it that way. It may be a new norm and a different one as to what you know now but... this is what you’ll have to go through. There’s no avoiding this treatment. It’s that or death, Blaine,” the other boy winced at that word, eyes screwed shut as if shutting out the pain. Kurt merely ploughed on through his speech, grasp on Blaine’s hands growing tighter and tighter. “This is something you need to do. But it’s not something you’re going to do alone.”
Kurt looked down to see Blaine’s hand resisting his grasp, fingers trying to gently, but demandingly, pry themselves away from Kurt’s own. “I know... but I can’t do this. Not yet. Let me live a little bit first... I’m going to waste away and I can’t... I can’t face that. I will fight, I will. I promise. But... not yet. I thought you’d understand.”
“No, I don’t understand, Blaine,” Kurt’s voice grew higher as his hands finally released Blaine’s. “I understand that you want to feel normality for a little bit longer. I get that. I just don’t understand why it’s more important than a fight for your life.”
It would have been expected that the volume of Blaine’s voice would rise at these words, but they only grew quieter as he shrunk in on himself. His words were barely audible, not helped by the hands covering his face. “Kurt, this is my life. Not yours. Let me live it how I want. It’s nothing to do with you and it’s none of your business.”
Dr. Garrison wondered if this was the moment to pull on a protective helmet or something. Because at the rate the two of them were going, chairs would be thrown soon. Jerry Springer style.
Well, it was certainly Kurt’s voice that rose at this, the tops of his cheeks and nose becoming flushed with anger as he rose from his chair. “Oh, apologies for caring. You’re in my life, Blaine. In fact, you’re a huge part of my life. I think I have the right to interfere. And it became my business when you told me about the cancer! Or even when you sung that damn Katy Perry song to me. If you want to kill yourself, fine, Blaine. Just don’t expect me to sit around and watch you do that to yourself.”
At this, he turned and stalked to the door, his long legs only carrying him three steps before wrenching it open. The hinges creaked threateningly as Kurt muttered something that sounded like “I need some air” before storming down the corridor.
The only thing Dr. Garrison could do was offer Blaine his box of tissues and a pat on the back as he howled and cried into the palm of his hands, Kurt doing the same thing only just down the end of the corridor.
---
Would it always be this hard? This difficult? This painful?
Would it ever stop, even after the words ‘remission’ and ‘all clear’ are heard?
Surely it can never get easier. The memories and the pain and the flashbacks and the nightmares and the trauma and the scars remain. Like Kurt had said, things would change. Normality’ll eventually return but it’ll be a new normality. One that needs to be adapted to. Moulded and shaped to discover what the best is for one’s self. So the original normality? That’ll never come back.
How could one disease do so much? How could it cause so much damage? Destruction? Death? Kurt wasn’t even the one suffering from it... and he could feel himself breaking apart. First a chip... which breaks into a crack... growing bigger and bigger, the glass shaking until shards and fragments break loose... Now it’s only a matter of time until the glass caves in and the whole thing tumbles down.
I shouldn’t have gotten angry, I shouldn’t have gotten angry, I shouldn’t have gotten angry... why can’t you control that damn mouth of yours, Hummel?! If this is how I’m feeling... how is Blaine holding together? Has he caved in already? Tumbled down? Fallen apart altogether and hidden it from me? I know he’s a wreck, I know he’s breaking apart... but not this badly. Maybe I should go-
“I’ve booked myself in for chemo tomorrow.” A tiny broken voice whispered behind Kurt. The words shook and broke a little and Kurt felt the warmth of Blaine’s body as he sat down beside him on the kerbside, shoulders, elbows, thighs and knees pressed flushed together.
“That’s... that’s great, Blaine. Thank you...” Kurt whispered back, his hand feeling around for Blaine’s so he could clutch tightly onto it. They pressed their (slightly sweaty) palms together, fingers painfully wrapped around one another’s as they shakily drew in breaths, eyes fixed on the car park ahead.
“No. Thank you for convincing me that I was being stupid. I just haven’t been thinking straight lately.” The broken boy murmured, leaning his head against Kurt’s. He inhaled heavily, memorising Kurt’s luscious scent and slotting it into his mind... into the box that read “Things that I’ll miss if I go”. Blaine squeezed his eyes shut at this thought, his vice grip tightening upon Kurt’s fingers, body pressing closer to his. Kurt responded by pulling him closer, the muscles in his own hand tense.
“I’m sorry. I just... I can’t stand the thought of you...” Kurt quickly changed the direction where he was heading, unable to voice the words that lingered on the tip of his tongue. “I know you’re a fighter, Blaine. Deep underneath the fear, there’s some courage there. And that fear of yours was making you think irrationally... as was mine,” They both shared slightly sheepish smiles at this, eyes twinkling as the tension in the air slowly thinned. “I’m sorry for being, as Finn would say, a dick.”
A musical laugh escaped from Blaine’s lips at this, the worry etched upon his face instantly vanishing. “You’re not a dick. You were right. I was being stupid. So save your ‘sorry’s, please. I’m already over it. You have nothing to apologise for.”
Kurt smiled at this and looked back ahead across the car park, unsure of what to say next... when he felt lips pressed to the skin of his temple. Soft and tender. Kurt’s eyes closed blissfully, chest heaving as Blaine pulled away and clambered to his feet, their hands still joined together.
“Thank you for caring, Kurt. I don’t know where I’d be without you,” He pushed his thumb across the soft skin of Kurt’s knuckles, eyes suddenly looking a lot older and mature as he gazed down at the boy upon the ground and thought about the long future that he was about to face. “I have to go for my biopsy now... You can come join me when you’re ready, if you want.”
Kurt instantly stumbled to his feet. He promised he’d be with Blaine every single step of the way. And Kurt Hummel always kept his promises. He was certainly not going to start breaking them now.
I’ll never let you down again, Kurt thought to himself as he and Blaine stepped back through the hospital entrance... as they stepped back onto their dark and dangerous path that Life was happily dragging them down.
Pairing: Kurt/Blaine
Word count: ~3,500
Rating: PG-13.
Warnings: A single swear word, an illness which can be a sensitive subject for people, angst.
Summary of the story as a whole so far: When Blaine discovers that he has a dreadful illness, him and Kurt have to fight through it together because Kurt has vowed to be with him every step of the way.
In this chapter: Kurt takes Blaine to the hospital... cue drama and angst and tears.
Author's Notes: I am so, so sorry for the lack of updates on this. It's been well over a month and I've just been caught up in college and personal issues. It's been hard so I haven't been able to write as much... but I wrote a lot and just couldn't get the ending, at all. I'm sorry if it's a disappointment. I tried!
The clock on Kurt’s dashboard read 10:47 as he drove himself and Blaine to the hospital, the radio humming lowly in the background, too quiet for either of them to hear.
They sat in silence, sore, tired eyes fixed on the road ahead. They hadn’t said much since Kurt had picked Blaine up from his home and quickly stopped off to grab coffee from the Lima Bean... while Blaine’s right hand grasped a warm cup, Kurt’s held tightly onto Blaine’s left over the centre console of the car, fingers painfully entwined as they sought comfort in one another. Kurt tried to ignore the tremble of Blaine’s hand but it was okay; his was shaking just as much.
If this had happened last year, Kurt would’ve denied that he was scared. That he was scared for the lost little boy who sat curled up in the passenger seat beside him. Fear was for the weak. Fear was for the pathetic. But after the Karofsky incidents and the meeting upon the staircase, Kurt learnt that it’s easier to pull out the stopper in the bottle and let the emotions flow.
If anyone asked him how he was feeling now, it wouldn’t be ‘scared’... it would be ‘terrified’.
When they pulled up in the hospital car park and the key had been removed from the ignition, Kurt sighed and leant his forehead against the steering wheel. There was no point trying to hide what he was feeling from Blaine. They’d both seen each other’s tears last night and the nervous breakdowns. Hiding would just complicate things. It was all out in the open. The illness, the emotions. Everything. Lies just make things more confusing and muddled, like kite strings tangled in a knot. Tangled strings mean no flight. Just a poor grounded kite in the mud. If the strings in Kurt and Blaine’s lives get tangled by lying and hiding things from one another, then they’d just get nowhere and be held in place without moving forward.
Blaine just looked straight ahead out of the windscreen as Kurt composed himself, the coffee in his hand now stone cold. He didn’t move, didn’t respond, just wanted to get this all over with and find out if this disease inside of him was slowly poisoning other parts of his body, eating away at his insides. What would happen when the cancer runs out of bones to latch onto? What would be next to suffer? His intestines, his liver, his stomach, his lungs, his heart, his brain...
Something softly touched the side of his face, snapping him out of his thoughts and making him flinch harshly. He looked over at Kurt and his outstretched hand with a stricken look.
“I- I’m sorry... I thought...” the younger boy stuttered, withdrawing his fingers from Blaine’s skin as if it had scorched the tips, biting his lip through fear of upsetting and unsettling the older boy.
“No. No, it’s okay. It just made me jump... that’s all.” Blaine took Kurt’s hand before it completely withdrew, pressing it back against his cheek. As Blaine moved his hand off of his, Kurt stroked with the back of his fingers as gently as possible from temple to chin. Blaine leant into the touch; eyes closed and mouth open slightly, almost purring like a kitten.
“Everything’s going to be alright...” Kurt whispered softly, fingers stroking down Blaine’s cheek again and again, still gently comforting even when Kurt can feel the wetness of tears upon his skin. “Blaine...”
Blaine breathed out heavily, his chest shaking from the effort not to sob. It sounded worse when he tried to breathe in, his breath coming in broken little gasps. He tried not to look at Kurt as he cried, looking out across the parking lot.
“I’m s-sorry, I’m b-being st-stupid b-but... but I can’t f-find the st... strength for this. I’m s-sorry, Kurt...” He hated himself. He truly did. Two steps forward and three steps back. What happened to the night before when Kurt had helped to push himself into fighting for his own life? What happened to that? What had changed?
“It’s okay, it’s okay. Shhh,” Kurt pulled him into an embrace, pressing a kiss to his curls that lay free from the vice like gel grip. His hands fisted the back of Blaine’s shirt whilst Blaine’s grasped the front of his. They held each other so close, so tightly, it was a wonder that their hands hadn’t become numb from the pressure. “It’s okay... I would say that if you’re not ready for this, we can go home right now, forget about it, shove a DVD on or two, grab a bowl of popcorn, the works. But you need to do this, Blaine. Because you might not find the courage to come back here and, as much as I hate to say it, this may be something that needs to be treated. Leaving’s only going to make things worse.”
Blaine nodded against his shoulder before pulling away and rubbing his eyes with his fists. He looked tired, exhausted even, and Kurt felt a lump form in his throat as he looked at the boy across from him. Oh, how cruel nature could be. How cruel it could be to hit a boy of this age with something as terrifying as this. But with tsunamis and hunger and earthquakes happening all across the world... it’s always been obvious that nature was never one to be kind and giving.
Blaine turned to fix Kurt a wobbly smile, eyes shining with unshed tears. They sat there for a few beats, eyes locked, fingers locked, waiting for courage to hit them with the force of a speeding train.
Finally, with a shuddering breath, Blaine blinked, giving Kurt’s fingers one final squeeze. “Let’s do this.”
---
“Well, Blaine, I’m very glad that you’ve come to me about this...”
The consultant’s office. Kurt sat across the room from Blaine, wringing his hands together, whilst he sat shirtless upon the doctor’s bed. It took all of Kurt’s self-discipline not to rake his eyes over Blaine’s nude chest, slowly moving from his enticing collarbones to his dark chest hair to his perfectly shaped nipples, right down that stomach and God, to those hips. Yep, took all of Kurt’s self-discipline but he managed... just.
The doctor, Dr. Garrison, stood behind Blaine as he kept his eyes lowered to the ground, ignoring the man’s probing fingers on his shoulder blade. From that sentence alone, he could tell it was bad news. Great.
“Why so, Doc?” Blaine tried to say but his voice only coming out in a hoarse whisper, his windpipe feeling swollen and constricted. He couldn’t look up at Kurt, couldn’t meet his eyes, couldn’t face seeing the shine of tears across the surface.
“By the feel of it, it seems like a cyst, a small sac full of fluid. Have you ever injured this shoulder?” Dr. Garrison handed the boy back his shirt, smiling comfortingly down at him. How many people sat there in his place, upon the paper covered bed, day after day. Adults, children, teenagers, elderly. Some sat in that spot only to be told that the cancer had returned or worse, that it was no longer treatable... a terminal illness. A signed death warrant.
“Yeah... last year... fell out of a tree at school...” Blaine murmured in reply, slipping his head and arms back through his shirt. He managed to look up at Kurt at that point, who seemed a little glassy eyed, and gave him a shaky, yet okay, smile.
“There we go then,” the doctor smiled and sunk down into his own chair behind his desk, where he shuffled around various pieces of paperwork. “Cysts sometimes form from a burst blood vessel in an impact injury. Have you ever noticed it in the past?”
“I don’t know,” Blaine slid into the chair next to Kurt, facing the white haired man who was too busy flicking through Blaine’s file to look up. “I mean... I think I can recall my mom pointing out before. I’m not sure if I’m just tricking myself into believing that or not... I guess I’m just so paranoid about it all.”
“Judging by that, I don’t think it’s serious and I believe that that is the reason you have it. Yet I’ll get a biopsy sorted out for you anyway. Hopefully, it’ll just be from the past impact and be benign, non-cancerous, but we’ll get you tested. I’m just glad that you came here because it shows that you’re being more aware of your body and aware that this is something very serious. Something that is also very important for you is that you need to keep checking your leg. We need to know asap if any other lumps appear and the cancer is more likely to spread on the same bone, rather than to somewhere else in your body. Thankfully, the whole disease is in its first stages so we’ve caught it early.”
Kurt sat there throughout this whole speech, chest growing tighter over words such as ‘serious’ and ‘lumps’ and ‘cancer’ kept cropping up. It was all so real and they couldn’t hide from that fact any more. Even the word ‘thankfully’ didn’t calm his nerves so he reached out across the chairs to grip onto Blaine’s hand, anything to help him breathe normally again. Blaine just shortly glanced over at the boy beside him before turning back at the doctor, eyes unblinking.
“Now it’s time to think about your treatment,” the atmosphere suddenly grew tense within the room as Dr. Garrison slowly removed his glasses, eyes beneath them hard and grave. “I believe you really need to think about starting it soon because you’re giving the cancer time, Blaine. Time that can be precious for us to stop it. I understand how you can be apprehensive...”
“What?” Kurt finally managed to interject after sitting with his mouth agape from this revelation, his voice shaking with anger as the doctor’s words slowly processed in his mind. “You’ve been putting off getting treated? Are you out of your mind?”
Blaine finally managed to glance sideways, his eyes never fully managing to hit Kurt’s so instead settling for his shoulder. He had been hoping that this conversation would be avoided because he knew Kurt would react this way. Understandably, of course.
“I haven’t been putting it off for long. I was just... waiting after I told you. I wanted you to know first, before the chemo destroyed my body. Don’t be angry, Kurt...” Blaine gasped all of this out so quickly, the words tripping over each other as if racing to leave his tongue first. His voice broke slightly on the word ‘destroyed’, their eyes finally locking. As much as he wanted to look away from Kurt’s eyes, he couldn’t. There were so many emotions flashing through one by one and trying to keep up with it all just made Blaine dizzy.
Kurt bit back the words that threatened to spill out and instead opted to clamp his teeth together, his jaw ridiculously clenched. Blaine could see a muscle slightly twitching from the strain of it. Kurt looked expectantly back at the doctor as if willing him to carry on, Blaine reluctantly tearing his gaze away.
“Right...” Dr. Garrison coughed awkwardly before looking back down at his notes. “Well, as you know, we’re going to book you in for chemotherapy and then...”
The rest of the consultation flew past, full of technical terms and various other words that Kurt and Blaine wouldn’t be able to pronounce, let alone understand. But they sat in feigned rapt attention, when all they could really concentrate on was the feel of their palms pressed together and the burning warmth of their tangled fingers.
“...after your surgery, we’ll then arrange some more treatment to make sure that it’s all gone. Any questions? We should start arranging to book you in for chemotherapy as soon as possible.”
“No.”
The voice was so small, so fragile, so tiny, so broken that Kurt and Dr. Garrison almost missed it. It could have been mistaken for an exhalation of breath or the creak of the chair or anything. That voice couldn’t have come from Blaine. It couldn’t have. That one defiant word... no? No. Why ‘no’? As they both turned to give Blaine an incredulous stare, the tips of his ears grew pink, his eyebrows tugged down into a frown as he stared at the edge of the desk, lips set in a straight line.
Kurt was the first to speak as they all sat in stunned silence. Shifting around in the chair, he turned to completely face his best friend, tugging at his hand to try and force him to look up. “No?! Blaine... please.” Kurt clasped Blaine’s hand in both of his and pressed them to his chest, willing him to see sense and feel the heart thudding against his ribcage, as if chanting Do. This. For. Me..
“Not yet. I... I just want to live normal life for a little bit longer... is that too much to ask?” Blaine replied, his voice growing quieter and quieter as his words progressed. It was a wonder as to how he was getting out those words, due to the trembling of his bottom lip.
The doctor slowly opened his mouth to reassure the sick boy across the table but Kurt interjected before he could speak, shuffling his chair closer until his knees were touching Blaine’s thigh. “Blaine, honey... I know, I get it. I’m not going to sugar coat this and tell you that you will still lead a ‘normal life’, even while you fight this. But things will change and you’ll have to adapt. We’ll all have to adapt. But it’s okay. It’s all going to be okay. If that’s what it takes to make you better again, then so be it. The sooner you start treatment, the sooner you’ll find yourself back in normality, look at it that way. It may be a new norm and a different one as to what you know now but... this is what you’ll have to go through. There’s no avoiding this treatment. It’s that or death, Blaine,” the other boy winced at that word, eyes screwed shut as if shutting out the pain. Kurt merely ploughed on through his speech, grasp on Blaine’s hands growing tighter and tighter. “This is something you need to do. But it’s not something you’re going to do alone.”
Kurt looked down to see Blaine’s hand resisting his grasp, fingers trying to gently, but demandingly, pry themselves away from Kurt’s own. “I know... but I can’t do this. Not yet. Let me live a little bit first... I’m going to waste away and I can’t... I can’t face that. I will fight, I will. I promise. But... not yet. I thought you’d understand.”
“No, I don’t understand, Blaine,” Kurt’s voice grew higher as his hands finally released Blaine’s. “I understand that you want to feel normality for a little bit longer. I get that. I just don’t understand why it’s more important than a fight for your life.”
It would have been expected that the volume of Blaine’s voice would rise at these words, but they only grew quieter as he shrunk in on himself. His words were barely audible, not helped by the hands covering his face. “Kurt, this is my life. Not yours. Let me live it how I want. It’s nothing to do with you and it’s none of your business.”
Dr. Garrison wondered if this was the moment to pull on a protective helmet or something. Because at the rate the two of them were going, chairs would be thrown soon. Jerry Springer style.
Well, it was certainly Kurt’s voice that rose at this, the tops of his cheeks and nose becoming flushed with anger as he rose from his chair. “Oh, apologies for caring. You’re in my life, Blaine. In fact, you’re a huge part of my life. I think I have the right to interfere. And it became my business when you told me about the cancer! Or even when you sung that damn Katy Perry song to me. If you want to kill yourself, fine, Blaine. Just don’t expect me to sit around and watch you do that to yourself.”
At this, he turned and stalked to the door, his long legs only carrying him three steps before wrenching it open. The hinges creaked threateningly as Kurt muttered something that sounded like “I need some air” before storming down the corridor.
The only thing Dr. Garrison could do was offer Blaine his box of tissues and a pat on the back as he howled and cried into the palm of his hands, Kurt doing the same thing only just down the end of the corridor.
---
Would it always be this hard? This difficult? This painful?
Would it ever stop, even after the words ‘remission’ and ‘all clear’ are heard?
Surely it can never get easier. The memories and the pain and the flashbacks and the nightmares and the trauma and the scars remain. Like Kurt had said, things would change. Normality’ll eventually return but it’ll be a new normality. One that needs to be adapted to. Moulded and shaped to discover what the best is for one’s self. So the original normality? That’ll never come back.
How could one disease do so much? How could it cause so much damage? Destruction? Death? Kurt wasn’t even the one suffering from it... and he could feel himself breaking apart. First a chip... which breaks into a crack... growing bigger and bigger, the glass shaking until shards and fragments break loose... Now it’s only a matter of time until the glass caves in and the whole thing tumbles down.
I shouldn’t have gotten angry, I shouldn’t have gotten angry, I shouldn’t have gotten angry... why can’t you control that damn mouth of yours, Hummel?! If this is how I’m feeling... how is Blaine holding together? Has he caved in already? Tumbled down? Fallen apart altogether and hidden it from me? I know he’s a wreck, I know he’s breaking apart... but not this badly. Maybe I should go-
“I’ve booked myself in for chemo tomorrow.” A tiny broken voice whispered behind Kurt. The words shook and broke a little and Kurt felt the warmth of Blaine’s body as he sat down beside him on the kerbside, shoulders, elbows, thighs and knees pressed flushed together.
“That’s... that’s great, Blaine. Thank you...” Kurt whispered back, his hand feeling around for Blaine’s so he could clutch tightly onto it. They pressed their (slightly sweaty) palms together, fingers painfully wrapped around one another’s as they shakily drew in breaths, eyes fixed on the car park ahead.
“No. Thank you for convincing me that I was being stupid. I just haven’t been thinking straight lately.” The broken boy murmured, leaning his head against Kurt’s. He inhaled heavily, memorising Kurt’s luscious scent and slotting it into his mind... into the box that read “Things that I’ll miss if I go”. Blaine squeezed his eyes shut at this thought, his vice grip tightening upon Kurt’s fingers, body pressing closer to his. Kurt responded by pulling him closer, the muscles in his own hand tense.
“I’m sorry. I just... I can’t stand the thought of you...” Kurt quickly changed the direction where he was heading, unable to voice the words that lingered on the tip of his tongue. “I know you’re a fighter, Blaine. Deep underneath the fear, there’s some courage there. And that fear of yours was making you think irrationally... as was mine,” They both shared slightly sheepish smiles at this, eyes twinkling as the tension in the air slowly thinned. “I’m sorry for being, as Finn would say, a dick.”
A musical laugh escaped from Blaine’s lips at this, the worry etched upon his face instantly vanishing. “You’re not a dick. You were right. I was being stupid. So save your ‘sorry’s, please. I’m already over it. You have nothing to apologise for.”
Kurt smiled at this and looked back ahead across the car park, unsure of what to say next... when he felt lips pressed to the skin of his temple. Soft and tender. Kurt’s eyes closed blissfully, chest heaving as Blaine pulled away and clambered to his feet, their hands still joined together.
“Thank you for caring, Kurt. I don’t know where I’d be without you,” He pushed his thumb across the soft skin of Kurt’s knuckles, eyes suddenly looking a lot older and mature as he gazed down at the boy upon the ground and thought about the long future that he was about to face. “I have to go for my biopsy now... You can come join me when you’re ready, if you want.”
Kurt instantly stumbled to his feet. He promised he’d be with Blaine every single step of the way. And Kurt Hummel always kept his promises. He was certainly not going to start breaking them now.
I’ll never let you down again, Kurt thought to himself as he and Blaine stepped back through the hospital entrance... as they stepped back onto their dark and dangerous path that Life was happily dragging them down.