Something To Sleep To [21/?]
Title: Something To Sleep To
Chapter: 21/?
Author: wishof_wings // tresbellemichelle
Betas: Becky & Em
Rating: R
Pairing: Klaine
Word Count: 5500+
Summary: What started as a volunteer gig at Lima Memorial is slowly turning into a fairy tale for Kurt Hummel. Except Kurt is pretty doubtful that a kiss is going to wake his Prince Charming from his coma.
Spoilers: None
Warnings: AU, homophobia related violence
Author's Notes: I could sit here and apologize to you guys on ends and ends; it's been nearly a month since an update and I didn't really leave you a very good chapter to end off on. I finish summer school in about three weeks and then I have FOUR MONTHS laid bare in front of me, mine to do with as I like. To make it up to you, this chapter is nearly the length of two very long chapters... So it's almost like you get two chapters for the price of one! I also want to make a note to my LJ readers that, while I plan to continue posting STST on LJ until it's completed, I will not be posting anymore work there. AO3 is much easier to use.
Also, you guys should go and look at this gifset gleeddicted made for STST. It is flawless!
Now available on AO3.
Go back to the beginning.
It doesn't take long for Blaine to meet Laura, his physical therapist. That's her name, his mom says, as if Blaine can't hear her introduce herself.
And he did, he's sure, but the next time she's there he can't remember it or her.
"Do you remember Laura?" His mom asks.
Blink three times for no.
His mom will look at him with a drawn expression and then a tight smile and Laura will introduce herself again. And again. And again. Eventually, she's Laura, he remembers, but the tightness in his mom's face doesn't disappear.
But for once, Blaine feels almost content. Laura seems to answer the questions he has without him asking (how do I do this? how do I move?) and she shows him how again. He forgets, but she shows him again and again until the doctor asks Blaine to wiggle his fingers and he does.
Curling his fingers into a fist has never felt more satisfying as it does right in that moment, and he keeps doing it, thrilled at the exertion it causes and feeling his body moving and working. They're still working with his arms when one day Blaine decides to turn his head and he does it, blinking in surprise and then turning his head the other way to smile at his mother.
She's in tears.
It's slow and deliberate at first; he never turns his head too fast or without reason, but soon the muscles loosen and remember. No more blinking; he nods and shakes his head and watches people move around the room.
He stares at the flowers a lot more than he used to.
With how confined he's felt, Blaine feels like these simple things have given him a new sense of freedom. He wants to laugh, to dance, to sing.
Blaine doesn't think about the possibility that he may never do any of those things again.
Everything is dark. Too dark. Blaine can't even see the ground beneath his feet, but that doesn't stop him. He keeps running. He has to keep running, knows that if he stops, he'll-
"Blaine!"
Jeremy.
Blaine doesn't know where he is, he can't see, it's too dark, too dark, why is it so dark?
He's turned around, running again, running back, but he's moving so slowly. He needs to go faster, needs to find Jeremy, needs to find him before they find him. But it's hard to tell if he's moving, it's too dark, but he keeps going, has to keep going.
He falls so suddenly, slow motion to fast forward and his palms skim the ground. It's sharp, like glass, and he cries out-tries to, there's no sound. The darkness swallows it all up.
"Blaine!"
I'm coming, I'm coming, hold on.
But he can't move. Hands grab at his ankles, more at his legs and his arms and there's a weight holding him down, pushing him into the glass. The hands are rough, sinking through his skin until they're grabbing at his bones and tugging and he tries to scream, tries to cry for help, but when he opens his mouth it floods full of water and he's drowning, drowning, drowning.
Darkness.
There isn’t enough air.
Blaine is gasping, his lungs filling quickly over and over again until he aches from it. It’s not enough but it’s all he has; he could thrash his head from side to side but that doesn’t do any good, it doesn’t help him and he needs help (someone please help).
The room blurs before him-dark, obscured by his fluttering eyelids until he slams them shut, panting. Blaine can’t control anything anymore, but he can control this darkness. He doesn’t want to think about the other darkness, the one that swallows him up, the one with secrets and danger lurking in its shadows.
But he has to look.
He’s scared, he’s so scared and he wants to run, run as far as he can, but he’s being pulled down and kept there and he wants to scream (let me go! get off of me! somebody please help! help!) but he can’t. So he swallows and breathes and makes himself open his eyes.
It’s just a hospital room. There’s no parking lot, there’s no Jeremy, there’s no monsters.
No danger.
He breathes a little easier.
His eyes flick around uneasily, still searching out the shadows. Blaine feels like he’s on the edge of something, waiting waiting waiting, but he has no idea what he’s waiting for. But he has to wait, has to look, because there are answers and that’s all Blaine wants.
He just wants answers.
Why will no one give them to him?
His hands clench, balling into fists except-except not, because his right hand can’t form a fist. There’s something there, something pressed against his skin and it feels strange and he wants to move away from it, so very far away.
But he doesn’t know what it is.
He squeezes his hand-three, four, five times, fingers feeling and clutching and Blaine is still exhilarated because he can move his hands finally that it takes him a few minutes to even grasp what he’s touching.
It’s a hand.
He’s holding a hand.
It’s smooth and warm and strange and Blaine is scared but he’s curious, too, so curious that he wants to turn and look-he hesitates.
It’s a solid weight, not heavy but... But almost comforting, and there are light puffs of air tickling his pinky finger and it twitches, but the tickling doesn’t go away. It’s steady and constant and-breathing. It’s breathing.
Who is here? Who are you? What do you want?
And, for the first time, Blaine realizes he can maybe answer these questions without someone else. He’ll know. He’ll know and he won’t have to wait anymore (waiting waiting waiting, always waiting).
Does he want to know?
So he turns his head and he looks and he stops breathing again.
Someone is there. A head of hair (what color? why is it so dark?) and closed eyes and it’s a boy, a strange boy, resting his head on Blaine’s mattress.
Blaine never thought this would be how he shared a bed with a boy for the first time.
Not this boy; this strange, hypnotically beautiful boy, and-Blaine doesn’t understand. Why is he here? Who is he?
Blue eyes. Blaine thinks of them, face twisted in confusion, and wonders why. The stranger’s eyes are closed so Blaine doesn’t know where the thought comes from, only that it’s there and just as quickly, it’s gone.
Something tells him to be scared, but something else tells him that this boy is holding his hand.
This boy is holding his hand and Blaine has no idea why.
Why is he here? Why is he sitting in the chair that no one ever sits in? Blaine has stared at that chair and wondered at its emptiness and why it felt so wrong.
Who are you? Why don’t I know you? Why are you here? Why are you holding my hand?
No one holds his hand. His mom does, but she hadn’t for a very long time and now she does again, and it makes Blaine feel relieved.
He and Jeremy hadn’t held hands. They were friends. They weren’t even really close friends. They laughed together and talked and bonded over being young and out and suddenly different.
They hadn’t even slow danced.
And this had still happened.
Blaine is suddenly terrified, eyes turning to the door. He waits. Because they have to be coming now. They’re going to come for him and punish him again because some boy he doesn’t know is holding his hand. Blaine wishes he would stop, closes his eyes and hopes that it will make him disappear.
But he’s clutching at that hand because please, please, please don’t disappear.
Please don’t leave me alone.
His heart slows down. The door doesn’t open. Blaine breathes again, opens his eyes, and the boy is still there, his hand loose but clutched tightly in Blaine’s.
He’s still scared. Blaine is always scared, always, and he knows nothing about this boy other than that he’s holding Blaine’s hand.
Blaine wonders if maybe that should be enough.
He turns and tilts his head as best as he can until he can stare easily at where his fingers are laced through with the other boy’s. Laced. Blaine has never held hands this way. His mother never holds his hand this way and no one has ever held Blaine’s hand like this. Something in his chest pinches at the realization and he wishes he could move his arm, wishes he could rub it away.
He has so many wishes these days.
Blaine’s hand is loose again and he stares, stares at how even after being in the hospital (how long have I been here now? why won’t anyone tell me anything?) his skin is just that much darker than the boy’s.
I wish I knew your name.
He wishes he even had the ability or opportunity to ask what it is.
He’d been clutching it before but this time when he squeezes his hand it’s slow, deliberate, wondering. Wondering if the boy might wake up sometime soon and see Blaine. What would happen then? It’s scary, everything is scary, but Blaine still wants it. Every day it’s his mom, the doctors, the nurses, Laura... Never anyone else. Never anyone to talk to him like he’s Blaine and not Blaine-in-the-hospital.
Just Blaine.
He misses being himself.
Holding hands like this is weird. Weird in a different, unknown way that Blaine doesn’t dislike. It feels strange and intimate and comforting and again, he has to wonder who this boy is and why he’s holding Blaine’s hand this way.
His eyes travel from their linked figures the short distance to the boy’s face; it’s pillowed right near his hip, just past their hands, and it’s only then that Blaine realizes how awkwardly the boy is sitting. Blaine has spent so long laying down, but he still remembers how his body used to feel, knows that having his back hunched like that would be painful and uncomfortable.
The boy is asleep, but he doesn’t look comfortably asleep. His eyebrows are drawn and he’s frowning and Blaine wants to ask why.
So many wants. So many wishes. So many questions.
Blaine isn’t sure he’s ever seen a boy like this one before. Maybe. He squints his eyes, tries to remember, but it’s like grabbing at a cloud. Gone. He lets it go and looks instead. He’s beautiful in a way boys aren’t supposed to be beautiful, not when Blaine thinks about the boys from school (sneering faces, spitting lips, angry eyes, disgust, yelling, hitting, pain, so much pain). Boys aren’t beautiful this way and Blaine wonders if he’s dreaming again.
This would be a dream, not a nightmare.
But in his dreams he can move, he can speak, and he can’t now. He wishes and nothing happens.
Not a dream, it can’t be.
So this boy is beautiful. Blaine didn’t know boys could be beautiful, didn’t know he’d ever think another boy was. Handsome, cute, sexy, hot-those are the words he’s supposed to use, isn’t he?
The boy’s eyebrows are furrowed and there’s a line there between them that Blaine keeps staring at, willing the boy to open his eyes. He looks so... Sad. Worried. Uncomfortable. Blaine wants to move his hand (can’t, just fingers, can’t even reach my arm) and wipe it away, like erasing that line will erase everything.
His body is still already but he feels the shock from that, from thinking that. He doesn’t even know this boy, it doesn’t matter how sad he looks, Blaine shouldn’t be wanting to touch him in his sleep. Wouldn’t that be weird?
He’s holding my hand, was holding it while I slept.
Is that weird?
Blaine doesn’t know, isn’t sure, can’t focus on an answer right now.
He watches, wonders, waits (waiting, waiting, waiting) for the boy to open his eyes, holds his hand and wonders who are you?
Freedom is short lived.
Blaine can move, sort of, and it was freedom, once. But it’s not enough. His head is clearing, every day it feels like more things are starting to make sense than they had the day before. It should be a relief, but it only makes things worse. It only tells Blaine how much he doesn’t know and how much they won’t tell him.
His mom doesn’t say a word. He looks at her, stares her down, but she just smiles and reads books. She doesn’t talk about anything-not her social circles, not his dad, not work, not the world around them. The hospital room is a bubble and Blaine feels trapped and exhausted.
When he falls asleep and the sun is up, she stays. But Blaine quickly learns that when he closes his eyes at night, when the hospital is quiet and dark (too dark, too dark, why can’t they leave my light on?), she’ll gather her things and leave and it’s not for food or coffee or the bathroom.
She doesn’t come back.
He does sleep most of the time when he closes his eyes and she kisses his forehead and whispers goodnight, but more and more he finds that he can’t stand the kindness in her eyes when he feels like there are a million secrets behind it.
So he pretends. Turns his head away, closes his eyes, but he doesn’t sleep. He waits until her lips sweep across his skin and she tells him she loves him (and his heart still constricts, still remembers all the days she didn’t say it) and leaves him there. He’s alone and he hates it, but there’s no audience.
His mom is there but she isn’t company. Blaine still feels alone. Blaine still feels so lost and out of control and he hates it.
So he lies in bed, eyes closed, not tired for once, and he tries to think. He tries to remember. But looking back, trying to see, it hurts. His chest clenches and he backs away from it, he can’t look. He wants to know, but he doesn’t want to see.
Sometimes he thinks of other things. Things from before. Before Sadie Hawkins, before Jeremy, before he’d said two words and changed everything forever.
Why did everything have to change?
He was still Blaine. Somewhere, right now, he is still Blaine, even if he doesn’t feel like it anymore.
I’m gay.
Why does that change who he is?
One time, a light appears out of the darkness and Blaine hears a chair move across the linoleum floor. The chair, not his mom’s, but the one that is always, always empty.
Except for once.
Blaine isn’t sure what to do, doesn’t know what to think-it was a dream, wasn’t it a dream?-when he feels warm fingers thread through his and it’s so familiar that Blaine’s breath catches in his throat and opens his eyes.
It’s not dark. He knew already but now he can tell that the lamp to his right is on (he’s never seen it on before), can tell that the rest of the room is dark and quiet. But it’s not empty.
It’s a moment, a split decision, and Blaine battles between his curiosity and his fear of knowing, because he’s scared. He wants to know but he’s scared of what exactly he’ll learn.
But what if I never have the chance again?
He slowly turns his head, eyes open and focused and growing wide as he focuses on the figure sitting, legs crossed, in the almost-always-empty chair. It’s him.
Not a dream.
Because there’s the boy again, head bowed over a magazine, and his eyes would look closed if Blaine couldn’t see the subtle flutter of his eyelashes as he blinks. In the dark of the hospital room the other night (how long had it been now? Blaine never knows how much time has passed anymore), Blaine hadn’t been able to see much of the boy, but now he can.
He’s dressed really nicely.
And he’s definitely holding Blaine’s hand like... Like it’s nothing. Like it’s normal. Like the boy can sit there and hold Blaine’s hand and read a magazine and it’s okay.
Then, seemingly out of nowhere, the boy raises his head quite casually, and looks at Blaine.
Blue eyes.
Blaine wonders how he knew that.
But if the boy scares Blaine (and he doesn’t, not really, but there’s always fear now), the boy seems to be ten times as scared of Blaine. His eyes widen almost comically and he jerks backwards; his hand would have left Blaine’s, but he tightened his own grip, trying to tell the boy, please, please don’t go, please without the words he doesn’t have.
He wishes so much he had them.
It’s so quiet, somehow quieter than before. The boy stares and Blaine stares back and then watches as those blue eyes fill too quickly with tears. Shock. It rocks through him and his expression is open, confused, he doesn’t understand why this boy is crying. He blinks too quickly, the flash of light and dark disorienting him but there’s not much else he can do and it infuriates him.
I’m sorry, I’m sorry.
The boy’s breathing hitches and the tears haven’t fallen, but the boy’s lip is trembling.
Please don’t cry.
He covers his mouth with his hand and closes his eyes and loses whatever battle he was fighting. The tears seem endless as they run from his eyes and Blaine just watches, face torn apart with helplessness.
I don’t know what I did but please don’t cry. Please don’t cry anymore. I’m sorry.
Blaine has to do something. Why can’t he do anything? He can’t even speak, can’t even ask, he’s so helpless it infuriates him. Blaine does things, he helps people, he can’t stand to see people cry.
He can’t stand to see this boy cry and not know how to help him.
Blaine wants to help him.
So he does the only thing he can do. He squeezes the boy’s hand as deliberately as possible.
This doesn’t seem to help. In fact, the boy just starts crying harder. Now Blaine really doesn’t know what to do. He’s shaking his head, eyebrows pulled in worry and he just keeps squeezing the boy’s hand again and again and again because what else can he do?
But eventually those blue eyes open again and there are still tears, too many tears, and Blaine wishes he’d stopped crying, wishes he could tell him and ask him and do something. They stare at each other again and the boy’s lip wobbles and Blaine doesn’t want him to cry anymore, only this time the boy hiccups out a laugh, rubbing at his eyes and shaking his head.
And Blaine is so confused, can’t look away, his eyebrows furrowed together as he tries to understand.
His eyes are still glossy but suddenly he’s laughing, softly, and it makes Blaine smile just a little bit. He doesn’t understand why this boy was crying or why he’s laughing now, like some joke passed between them and no one decided to tell Blaine what it was. But he likes it when the boy laughs, the way laughing makes him smile and Blaine doesn’t know what he was thinking the other night.
This boy is beautiful, this laughing, smiling boy, even when there are still tears in his eyes.
Blaine squeezes again and this time, this time, the boy squeezes back and it’s so unlike anything Blaine can remember. He’d always wondered about handholding, but he’d never thought he’d like it quite so much.
Another squeeze, and the boy squeezes back and yes, okay, that’s nice, but is the boy going to do anything else? Blaine frowns slightly and they go back and forth, back and forth, until Blaine feels himself get exasperated.
I can’t talk. How am I supposed to ask you things and tell you things when all I can do is squeeze your hand?
But the boy seems to realize, laughs again, more loudly this time (how can I get him to keep laughing like that?) and shakes his head. Blaine doesn’t understand why he’s shaking his head, but he does, and when he looks at Blaine again his expression is more controlled. There’s still a smile, a hint of one, but there’s something else behind the boy’s eyes (so, so blue) that Blaine can’t name.
“Are you trying to get my attention?”
The voice feels like it rocks through him. It’s that feeling again, the one he keeps getting, that niggling sensation at the back of his mind like he should know something and doesn’t. He tilts his head slightly, in confusion, and stares at the boy like he’s some sort of puzzle. Something feels surreal about it all, something is out of his grasp; it feels like he’s talking to a figment of his imagination.
Only it’s not a figment. It’s real. It’s manifested itself somehow and it’s real.
The boy looks nervous suddenly, eyes darting around and he turns to look over his shoulder at the door more than once and Blaine feels more confused. What? Why are you here? What are you looking for? Who are you?
Blaine wishes there weren’t so many questions all the time.
So he just nods, because he was asked a question and he’s going to answer it.
The boy looks a little shocked but he smooths out the material of his pants (denim, jeans, skinny jeans, really tight skinny jeans-Blaine makes himself look away from them) and seems to compose himself.
“What?”
If Blaine could laugh, he would have, but instead he just gives the boy a look. I can’t talk. He tries to convey as much with his eyes and it’s only a few moments before the boy’s face flushes with embarrassment and he groans.
“Wow, I’m-I’m sorry. I forgot.”
I forgot.
Blaine stares at him. Because people don’t forget things like that. People don’t forget that Blaine can’t move or that he can’t talk. They know, and they’re aware, and they treat Blaine like he’s a child (he’s fifteen, for god’s sake!). They treat him like he’s more broken than he is and it just makes him feel that broken. But this boy is looking at him and talking to him like he isn’t different. Like he isn’t as handicapped as he is.
Blaine squeezes the boy’s hand again and, when he looks at him, Blaine smiles just a little. Something flashes across the boy’s face-too fast, Blaine can’t even begin to read it-and then he’s smiling hesitantly back.
“Is that your way of forgiving my moment of stupidity?”
It wasn’t stupid, Blaine wishes he could say, but instead he just nods.
It’s quiet and Blaine wills the boy to speak again, doesn’t want it to fall silent and awkward (because it will be awkward, there’s no way to avoid that). So he waits (waiting waiting waiting) and watches as a million things pass over the boy’s face. He seems... Reluctant and hesitant and so very unsure, but there’s something more.
Do you want to go?
“Do you want me to go?” The boy asks and he sounds so small, and it startles Blaine, his eyes blinking in surprise, and he shakes his head almost too quickly. The boy doesn’t look convinced so Blaine meets his eyes and then turns his head back and forth very deliberately.
No. Don’t go. Stay.
But the boy still looks uneasy even as he settles into the chair, his thumb moving over Blaine’s knuckle and... Blaine doesn’t know how to feel about that. Even if he wanted to, it’s not exactly like he can move his hand away. More than anything, he wants to know who this boy is and why he’s holding Blaine’s hand and why he’s doing it so intimately. Strangers don’t hold hands.
Is he gay?
Does he know that Blaine’s gay?
Do straight boys hold other boys’ hands?
The boy is chewing his lip now and Blaine tells himself not to look, remembers why he’s in the hospital and averts his eyes.
“...do you know who I am?”
Blaine turns to look at the boy again, confused, but the boy is looking down at his lap and Blaine can’t see his face anymore. Should he know who this boy is? Blaine waits, because it does no good answering if the boy can’t see him, until blue eyes raise hesitantly. They’re glassy again and Blaine almost just doesn’t answer, but wouldn’t that be worse? Doesn’t he know better than anyone how hard it is not to have answers?
So he shakes his head again and the boy closes his eyes quickly, shutting himself away, turning aside and letting out a small, ‘ah.’
It’s quiet again and Blaine hears a sniffle, a small one, and his eyebrows raise in alarm.
I’m sorry. I’m sorry I don’t know you. I’d like to.
But he can’t say anything, so he squeezes the boy’s hand again. It worked before, but instead the boy just opens his eyes and looks at his hand.
“I’m sorry.” His voice cracks and Blaine stares at him, a mixture of worry and confusion in his eyes, because what does this boy have to apologize for? “Do you want me to stop holding your hand?”
There’s a moments hesitation-this is an out, he’s being offered one. But the idea of letting go of the boy’s hand, especially now when he’s so obviously distressed, isn’t fathomable. So he shakes his head no again.
“Are you just saying no to all my questions?” There’s a lightness to the boy’s voice then and Blaine is halfway through shaking his head before he stops and frowns, looking at the boy wryly. He laughs and it’s watery and weaker than it was before, but it’s a laugh and that has to count for something. The boy just looks back at him, that same something in his eyes again that Blaine can’t discern, but then the boy is looking away and clearing his throat.
“Then I suppose I should introduce myself.” He sits up a bit more primly and Blaine is sure the boy would offer his hand if Blaine wasn’t clutching it (and Blaine realizes then that, yes, he is clutching this boy’s hand). “I’m Kurt.”
Kurt.
Blaine feels like he’s been hit by a truck and he wishes he could move, grasp his head, but he pushes back into the pillows instead and Kurt’s eyes widen as he looks at him.
“Blaine?” His voice is alarmed, but that’s not what Blaine’s hearing.
“Blaine.”
Had that been that first day? And the other day, when he’d heard Cooper and the nurse talking... They’d mentioned a Kurt, hadn’t they? Blaine has heard Kurt’s voice before, but he... He forgot it, he couldn’t remember, couldn’t-
His head hurts and he feels dizzy and his head hurts, so he closes his eyes and tries to make it all go away. He bites down hard on his lip, too hard, too much pain and there’s a strange gurgle in his throat and-wait, a gurgle, he made a sound?
“Blaine? Are you okay? Do you need me to get a nurse? A doctor?” Blaine opens his eyes and Kurt is standing now, right there, clutching Blaine’s hand in both of his and that-that’s different, too. Good different. Great different.
Kurt looks so scared and Blaine just wants him to know that it’s okay and didn’t he hear? Didn’t he hear Blaine make a sound?
He shakes his head and hopes that’s the right answer.
“You’re not okay?”
Kurt looks so broken.
But he is, he’s okay, it’s just pain. Pain is familiar, he’s used to pain by now. There is so much pain all the time, even when the medication is swimming through him and he can’t feel anything. There’s more than just the physical pain. There is so, so much more.
Blaine looks conflicted again and Kurt seems to notice.
“If you’re okay, nod,” Kurt says slowly as if he’s suddenly realized he’s been asking too many questions too quickly. So Blaine nods, because he’s okay. There’s no pain the doctors or the nurses can fix this time.
Relief seems to seep through Kurt and his entire demeanor shifts and Blaine is looking at him, staring, because Kurt is standing and is close and he can’t not look. He shouldn’t be looking. He’s not supposed to look, not when his attentions aren’t wanted.
Kurt takes back one of his hands and immediately rubs at his eyes and forehead and Blaine doesn’t understand. He doesn’t understand as Kurt moves the chair closer, closer, and wilts into it, doesn’t understand the quiet ‘thank god’ that Kurt whispers.
Why does he care?
Why does Blaine mean anything to him?
He stares at Kurt and wonders, because it feels like something is missing (it always does, like there are so many pieces and he’s only holding a few of them) and Blaine has no idea what. But he’s confused and unsure and curious. He wants to be able to talk, to ask, but he can’t even make the sound in his throat again.
He can’t remember how he even did it the first time.
So he looks at Kurt (Kurt, and it’s wonderful that he has a name now, a name, and a face, and a voice) and he waits. Blaine has always been patient, but the hospital has only made him more so. He waits, and he waits and finally, Kurt looks up at him.
“Why are you looking at me like that?
Like what?
But Blaine just squeezes his hand and it manages to coax a small smile out of Kurt.
“I’m sorry.”
Don’t apologize.
“I know you don’t get a lot of visitors-”
You do?
“-and... If you want me here-”
I do.
“-then I’ll try to be better company. I guess it’s just weird to...”
But Kurt trails off, smiling and biting his lip and shaking his head. Blaine feels like he’s been left out of a joke again. What’s weird? That he’s talking to Blaine and Blaine can’t answer him?
If it means you’ll keep talking to me, then it’s not weird.
It surprises Blaine how much he suddenly wants this. He wants something besides what everyone thinks he should be given. He doesn’t know Kurt, doesn’t know more than his name and his laugh and how his hand and fingers feel in Blaine’s. But he could get to know him, couldn’t he? He could have someone else to talk to (or, at least, to talk to him) and maybe that would help.
He smiles without meaning to and Kurt looks a little surprised and... Something else. It’s that something that Blaine keeps seeing flickers of that he doesn’t understand. No one’s ever looked at him the way Kurt is looking at him.
Kurt squeezes his hand and then picks up his magazine and Blaine notices it then-it’s Vogue. His eyes perk with interest and Kurt looks intrigued.
“Do you like Vogue?”
Blaine nods and then Kurt is beaming at him, scooting impossible closer. Blaine wishes they could be shoulder to shoulder, magazine open between, discussing the photoshoots and the fashion and the trend forecasts.
“There’s some pretty good articles and, of course, wonderful photoshoots. You’ll just have to deal with my commentary, okay?” Kurt looks over at him, hesitant again, but Blaine just smiles. Kurt opens his mouth for a moment but no words come out and then he’s looking down, his hand pushing at imaginary creases in his pants again. When he looks up again he seems to have recovered and Blaine looks at him curiously, a bit confused.
But the feeling disappears as Kurt flips open the magazine and immediately turns the pages towards Blaine.
“Now, I don’t know about you, but I don’t agree with this color palette at all. It completely washes her out.”
Blaine might not know Kurt but he finds that he wants to. Because he’s never known someone like Kurt and he doubts he will ever have the chance again.
So Kurt reads, pauses to ask Blaine yes or no questions and laughs when he makes faces at some of the more hideous fashion choices. And the night wears on and Blaine becomes comfortable, finds that Kurt’s voice doesn’t so much as fade to the background as becomes a soothing present. Blaine doesn’t even notice his eyes are closed until Kurt is touching his arm and whispering, “Blaine?”
He blinks them open and looks at Kurt, frowning and clutching his hand.
“I’m not leaving.”
Blaine’s hand relaxes.
“Would you like me to come back tomorrow night?”
There’s no hesitation when Blaine nods this time and the smile that blooms across Kurt’s face makes Blaine want to continue saying yes.
“Okay.”
Okay.
<< 21 >>
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Chapter: 21/?
Author: wishof_wings // tresbellemichelle
Betas: Becky & Em
Rating: R
Pairing: Klaine
Word Count: 5500+
Summary: What started as a volunteer gig at Lima Memorial is slowly turning into a fairy tale for Kurt Hummel. Except Kurt is pretty doubtful that a kiss is going to wake his Prince Charming from his coma.
Spoilers: None
Warnings: AU, homophobia related violence
Author's Notes: I could sit here and apologize to you guys on ends and ends; it's been nearly a month since an update and I didn't really leave you a very good chapter to end off on. I finish summer school in about three weeks and then I have FOUR MONTHS laid bare in front of me, mine to do with as I like. To make it up to you, this chapter is nearly the length of two very long chapters... So it's almost like you get two chapters for the price of one! I also want to make a note to my LJ readers that, while I plan to continue posting STST on LJ until it's completed, I will not be posting anymore work there. AO3 is much easier to use.
Also, you guys should go and look at this gifset gleeddicted made for STST. It is flawless!
Now available on AO3.
Go back to the beginning.
It doesn't take long for Blaine to meet Laura, his physical therapist. That's her name, his mom says, as if Blaine can't hear her introduce herself.
And he did, he's sure, but the next time she's there he can't remember it or her.
"Do you remember Laura?" His mom asks.
Blink three times for no.
His mom will look at him with a drawn expression and then a tight smile and Laura will introduce herself again. And again. And again. Eventually, she's Laura, he remembers, but the tightness in his mom's face doesn't disappear.
But for once, Blaine feels almost content. Laura seems to answer the questions he has without him asking (how do I do this? how do I move?) and she shows him how again. He forgets, but she shows him again and again until the doctor asks Blaine to wiggle his fingers and he does.
Curling his fingers into a fist has never felt more satisfying as it does right in that moment, and he keeps doing it, thrilled at the exertion it causes and feeling his body moving and working. They're still working with his arms when one day Blaine decides to turn his head and he does it, blinking in surprise and then turning his head the other way to smile at his mother.
She's in tears.
It's slow and deliberate at first; he never turns his head too fast or without reason, but soon the muscles loosen and remember. No more blinking; he nods and shakes his head and watches people move around the room.
He stares at the flowers a lot more than he used to.
With how confined he's felt, Blaine feels like these simple things have given him a new sense of freedom. He wants to laugh, to dance, to sing.
Blaine doesn't think about the possibility that he may never do any of those things again.
Everything is dark. Too dark. Blaine can't even see the ground beneath his feet, but that doesn't stop him. He keeps running. He has to keep running, knows that if he stops, he'll-
"Blaine!"
Jeremy.
Blaine doesn't know where he is, he can't see, it's too dark, too dark, why is it so dark?
He's turned around, running again, running back, but he's moving so slowly. He needs to go faster, needs to find Jeremy, needs to find him before they find him. But it's hard to tell if he's moving, it's too dark, but he keeps going, has to keep going.
He falls so suddenly, slow motion to fast forward and his palms skim the ground. It's sharp, like glass, and he cries out-tries to, there's no sound. The darkness swallows it all up.
"Blaine!"
I'm coming, I'm coming, hold on.
But he can't move. Hands grab at his ankles, more at his legs and his arms and there's a weight holding him down, pushing him into the glass. The hands are rough, sinking through his skin until they're grabbing at his bones and tugging and he tries to scream, tries to cry for help, but when he opens his mouth it floods full of water and he's drowning, drowning, drowning.
Darkness.
There isn’t enough air.
Blaine is gasping, his lungs filling quickly over and over again until he aches from it. It’s not enough but it’s all he has; he could thrash his head from side to side but that doesn’t do any good, it doesn’t help him and he needs help (someone please help).
The room blurs before him-dark, obscured by his fluttering eyelids until he slams them shut, panting. Blaine can’t control anything anymore, but he can control this darkness. He doesn’t want to think about the other darkness, the one that swallows him up, the one with secrets and danger lurking in its shadows.
But he has to look.
He’s scared, he’s so scared and he wants to run, run as far as he can, but he’s being pulled down and kept there and he wants to scream (let me go! get off of me! somebody please help! help!) but he can’t. So he swallows and breathes and makes himself open his eyes.
It’s just a hospital room. There’s no parking lot, there’s no Jeremy, there’s no monsters.
No danger.
He breathes a little easier.
His eyes flick around uneasily, still searching out the shadows. Blaine feels like he’s on the edge of something, waiting waiting waiting, but he has no idea what he’s waiting for. But he has to wait, has to look, because there are answers and that’s all Blaine wants.
He just wants answers.
Why will no one give them to him?
His hands clench, balling into fists except-except not, because his right hand can’t form a fist. There’s something there, something pressed against his skin and it feels strange and he wants to move away from it, so very far away.
But he doesn’t know what it is.
He squeezes his hand-three, four, five times, fingers feeling and clutching and Blaine is still exhilarated because he can move his hands finally that it takes him a few minutes to even grasp what he’s touching.
It’s a hand.
He’s holding a hand.
It’s smooth and warm and strange and Blaine is scared but he’s curious, too, so curious that he wants to turn and look-he hesitates.
It’s a solid weight, not heavy but... But almost comforting, and there are light puffs of air tickling his pinky finger and it twitches, but the tickling doesn’t go away. It’s steady and constant and-breathing. It’s breathing.
Who is here? Who are you? What do you want?
And, for the first time, Blaine realizes he can maybe answer these questions without someone else. He’ll know. He’ll know and he won’t have to wait anymore (waiting waiting waiting, always waiting).
Does he want to know?
So he turns his head and he looks and he stops breathing again.
Someone is there. A head of hair (what color? why is it so dark?) and closed eyes and it’s a boy, a strange boy, resting his head on Blaine’s mattress.
Blaine never thought this would be how he shared a bed with a boy for the first time.
Not this boy; this strange, hypnotically beautiful boy, and-Blaine doesn’t understand. Why is he here? Who is he?
Blue eyes. Blaine thinks of them, face twisted in confusion, and wonders why. The stranger’s eyes are closed so Blaine doesn’t know where the thought comes from, only that it’s there and just as quickly, it’s gone.
Something tells him to be scared, but something else tells him that this boy is holding his hand.
This boy is holding his hand and Blaine has no idea why.
Why is he here? Why is he sitting in the chair that no one ever sits in? Blaine has stared at that chair and wondered at its emptiness and why it felt so wrong.
Who are you? Why don’t I know you? Why are you here? Why are you holding my hand?
No one holds his hand. His mom does, but she hadn’t for a very long time and now she does again, and it makes Blaine feel relieved.
He and Jeremy hadn’t held hands. They were friends. They weren’t even really close friends. They laughed together and talked and bonded over being young and out and suddenly different.
They hadn’t even slow danced.
And this had still happened.
Blaine is suddenly terrified, eyes turning to the door. He waits. Because they have to be coming now. They’re going to come for him and punish him again because some boy he doesn’t know is holding his hand. Blaine wishes he would stop, closes his eyes and hopes that it will make him disappear.
But he’s clutching at that hand because please, please, please don’t disappear.
Please don’t leave me alone.
His heart slows down. The door doesn’t open. Blaine breathes again, opens his eyes, and the boy is still there, his hand loose but clutched tightly in Blaine’s.
He’s still scared. Blaine is always scared, always, and he knows nothing about this boy other than that he’s holding Blaine’s hand.
Blaine wonders if maybe that should be enough.
He turns and tilts his head as best as he can until he can stare easily at where his fingers are laced through with the other boy’s. Laced. Blaine has never held hands this way. His mother never holds his hand this way and no one has ever held Blaine’s hand like this. Something in his chest pinches at the realization and he wishes he could move his arm, wishes he could rub it away.
He has so many wishes these days.
Blaine’s hand is loose again and he stares, stares at how even after being in the hospital (how long have I been here now? why won’t anyone tell me anything?) his skin is just that much darker than the boy’s.
I wish I knew your name.
He wishes he even had the ability or opportunity to ask what it is.
He’d been clutching it before but this time when he squeezes his hand it’s slow, deliberate, wondering. Wondering if the boy might wake up sometime soon and see Blaine. What would happen then? It’s scary, everything is scary, but Blaine still wants it. Every day it’s his mom, the doctors, the nurses, Laura... Never anyone else. Never anyone to talk to him like he’s Blaine and not Blaine-in-the-hospital.
Just Blaine.
He misses being himself.
Holding hands like this is weird. Weird in a different, unknown way that Blaine doesn’t dislike. It feels strange and intimate and comforting and again, he has to wonder who this boy is and why he’s holding Blaine’s hand this way.
His eyes travel from their linked figures the short distance to the boy’s face; it’s pillowed right near his hip, just past their hands, and it’s only then that Blaine realizes how awkwardly the boy is sitting. Blaine has spent so long laying down, but he still remembers how his body used to feel, knows that having his back hunched like that would be painful and uncomfortable.
The boy is asleep, but he doesn’t look comfortably asleep. His eyebrows are drawn and he’s frowning and Blaine wants to ask why.
So many wants. So many wishes. So many questions.
Blaine isn’t sure he’s ever seen a boy like this one before. Maybe. He squints his eyes, tries to remember, but it’s like grabbing at a cloud. Gone. He lets it go and looks instead. He’s beautiful in a way boys aren’t supposed to be beautiful, not when Blaine thinks about the boys from school (sneering faces, spitting lips, angry eyes, disgust, yelling, hitting, pain, so much pain). Boys aren’t beautiful this way and Blaine wonders if he’s dreaming again.
This would be a dream, not a nightmare.
But in his dreams he can move, he can speak, and he can’t now. He wishes and nothing happens.
Not a dream, it can’t be.
So this boy is beautiful. Blaine didn’t know boys could be beautiful, didn’t know he’d ever think another boy was. Handsome, cute, sexy, hot-those are the words he’s supposed to use, isn’t he?
The boy’s eyebrows are furrowed and there’s a line there between them that Blaine keeps staring at, willing the boy to open his eyes. He looks so... Sad. Worried. Uncomfortable. Blaine wants to move his hand (can’t, just fingers, can’t even reach my arm) and wipe it away, like erasing that line will erase everything.
His body is still already but he feels the shock from that, from thinking that. He doesn’t even know this boy, it doesn’t matter how sad he looks, Blaine shouldn’t be wanting to touch him in his sleep. Wouldn’t that be weird?
He’s holding my hand, was holding it while I slept.
Is that weird?
Blaine doesn’t know, isn’t sure, can’t focus on an answer right now.
He watches, wonders, waits (waiting, waiting, waiting) for the boy to open his eyes, holds his hand and wonders who are you?
Freedom is short lived.
Blaine can move, sort of, and it was freedom, once. But it’s not enough. His head is clearing, every day it feels like more things are starting to make sense than they had the day before. It should be a relief, but it only makes things worse. It only tells Blaine how much he doesn’t know and how much they won’t tell him.
His mom doesn’t say a word. He looks at her, stares her down, but she just smiles and reads books. She doesn’t talk about anything-not her social circles, not his dad, not work, not the world around them. The hospital room is a bubble and Blaine feels trapped and exhausted.
When he falls asleep and the sun is up, she stays. But Blaine quickly learns that when he closes his eyes at night, when the hospital is quiet and dark (too dark, too dark, why can’t they leave my light on?), she’ll gather her things and leave and it’s not for food or coffee or the bathroom.
She doesn’t come back.
He does sleep most of the time when he closes his eyes and she kisses his forehead and whispers goodnight, but more and more he finds that he can’t stand the kindness in her eyes when he feels like there are a million secrets behind it.
So he pretends. Turns his head away, closes his eyes, but he doesn’t sleep. He waits until her lips sweep across his skin and she tells him she loves him (and his heart still constricts, still remembers all the days she didn’t say it) and leaves him there. He’s alone and he hates it, but there’s no audience.
His mom is there but she isn’t company. Blaine still feels alone. Blaine still feels so lost and out of control and he hates it.
So he lies in bed, eyes closed, not tired for once, and he tries to think. He tries to remember. But looking back, trying to see, it hurts. His chest clenches and he backs away from it, he can’t look. He wants to know, but he doesn’t want to see.
Sometimes he thinks of other things. Things from before. Before Sadie Hawkins, before Jeremy, before he’d said two words and changed everything forever.
Why did everything have to change?
He was still Blaine. Somewhere, right now, he is still Blaine, even if he doesn’t feel like it anymore.
I’m gay.
Why does that change who he is?
One time, a light appears out of the darkness and Blaine hears a chair move across the linoleum floor. The chair, not his mom’s, but the one that is always, always empty.
Except for once.
Blaine isn’t sure what to do, doesn’t know what to think-it was a dream, wasn’t it a dream?-when he feels warm fingers thread through his and it’s so familiar that Blaine’s breath catches in his throat and opens his eyes.
It’s not dark. He knew already but now he can tell that the lamp to his right is on (he’s never seen it on before), can tell that the rest of the room is dark and quiet. But it’s not empty.
It’s a moment, a split decision, and Blaine battles between his curiosity and his fear of knowing, because he’s scared. He wants to know but he’s scared of what exactly he’ll learn.
But what if I never have the chance again?
He slowly turns his head, eyes open and focused and growing wide as he focuses on the figure sitting, legs crossed, in the almost-always-empty chair. It’s him.
Not a dream.
Because there’s the boy again, head bowed over a magazine, and his eyes would look closed if Blaine couldn’t see the subtle flutter of his eyelashes as he blinks. In the dark of the hospital room the other night (how long had it been now? Blaine never knows how much time has passed anymore), Blaine hadn’t been able to see much of the boy, but now he can.
He’s dressed really nicely.
And he’s definitely holding Blaine’s hand like... Like it’s nothing. Like it’s normal. Like the boy can sit there and hold Blaine’s hand and read a magazine and it’s okay.
Then, seemingly out of nowhere, the boy raises his head quite casually, and looks at Blaine.
Blue eyes.
Blaine wonders how he knew that.
But if the boy scares Blaine (and he doesn’t, not really, but there’s always fear now), the boy seems to be ten times as scared of Blaine. His eyes widen almost comically and he jerks backwards; his hand would have left Blaine’s, but he tightened his own grip, trying to tell the boy, please, please don’t go, please without the words he doesn’t have.
He wishes so much he had them.
It’s so quiet, somehow quieter than before. The boy stares and Blaine stares back and then watches as those blue eyes fill too quickly with tears. Shock. It rocks through him and his expression is open, confused, he doesn’t understand why this boy is crying. He blinks too quickly, the flash of light and dark disorienting him but there’s not much else he can do and it infuriates him.
I’m sorry, I’m sorry.
The boy’s breathing hitches and the tears haven’t fallen, but the boy’s lip is trembling.
Please don’t cry.
He covers his mouth with his hand and closes his eyes and loses whatever battle he was fighting. The tears seem endless as they run from his eyes and Blaine just watches, face torn apart with helplessness.
I don’t know what I did but please don’t cry. Please don’t cry anymore. I’m sorry.
Blaine has to do something. Why can’t he do anything? He can’t even speak, can’t even ask, he’s so helpless it infuriates him. Blaine does things, he helps people, he can’t stand to see people cry.
He can’t stand to see this boy cry and not know how to help him.
Blaine wants to help him.
So he does the only thing he can do. He squeezes the boy’s hand as deliberately as possible.
This doesn’t seem to help. In fact, the boy just starts crying harder. Now Blaine really doesn’t know what to do. He’s shaking his head, eyebrows pulled in worry and he just keeps squeezing the boy’s hand again and again and again because what else can he do?
But eventually those blue eyes open again and there are still tears, too many tears, and Blaine wishes he’d stopped crying, wishes he could tell him and ask him and do something. They stare at each other again and the boy’s lip wobbles and Blaine doesn’t want him to cry anymore, only this time the boy hiccups out a laugh, rubbing at his eyes and shaking his head.
And Blaine is so confused, can’t look away, his eyebrows furrowed together as he tries to understand.
His eyes are still glossy but suddenly he’s laughing, softly, and it makes Blaine smile just a little bit. He doesn’t understand why this boy was crying or why he’s laughing now, like some joke passed between them and no one decided to tell Blaine what it was. But he likes it when the boy laughs, the way laughing makes him smile and Blaine doesn’t know what he was thinking the other night.
This boy is beautiful, this laughing, smiling boy, even when there are still tears in his eyes.
Blaine squeezes again and this time, this time, the boy squeezes back and it’s so unlike anything Blaine can remember. He’d always wondered about handholding, but he’d never thought he’d like it quite so much.
Another squeeze, and the boy squeezes back and yes, okay, that’s nice, but is the boy going to do anything else? Blaine frowns slightly and they go back and forth, back and forth, until Blaine feels himself get exasperated.
I can’t talk. How am I supposed to ask you things and tell you things when all I can do is squeeze your hand?
But the boy seems to realize, laughs again, more loudly this time (how can I get him to keep laughing like that?) and shakes his head. Blaine doesn’t understand why he’s shaking his head, but he does, and when he looks at Blaine again his expression is more controlled. There’s still a smile, a hint of one, but there’s something else behind the boy’s eyes (so, so blue) that Blaine can’t name.
“Are you trying to get my attention?”
The voice feels like it rocks through him. It’s that feeling again, the one he keeps getting, that niggling sensation at the back of his mind like he should know something and doesn’t. He tilts his head slightly, in confusion, and stares at the boy like he’s some sort of puzzle. Something feels surreal about it all, something is out of his grasp; it feels like he’s talking to a figment of his imagination.
Only it’s not a figment. It’s real. It’s manifested itself somehow and it’s real.
The boy looks nervous suddenly, eyes darting around and he turns to look over his shoulder at the door more than once and Blaine feels more confused. What? Why are you here? What are you looking for? Who are you?
Blaine wishes there weren’t so many questions all the time.
So he just nods, because he was asked a question and he’s going to answer it.
The boy looks a little shocked but he smooths out the material of his pants (denim, jeans, skinny jeans, really tight skinny jeans-Blaine makes himself look away from them) and seems to compose himself.
“What?”
If Blaine could laugh, he would have, but instead he just gives the boy a look. I can’t talk. He tries to convey as much with his eyes and it’s only a few moments before the boy’s face flushes with embarrassment and he groans.
“Wow, I’m-I’m sorry. I forgot.”
I forgot.
Blaine stares at him. Because people don’t forget things like that. People don’t forget that Blaine can’t move or that he can’t talk. They know, and they’re aware, and they treat Blaine like he’s a child (he’s fifteen, for god’s sake!). They treat him like he’s more broken than he is and it just makes him feel that broken. But this boy is looking at him and talking to him like he isn’t different. Like he isn’t as handicapped as he is.
Blaine squeezes the boy’s hand again and, when he looks at him, Blaine smiles just a little. Something flashes across the boy’s face-too fast, Blaine can’t even begin to read it-and then he’s smiling hesitantly back.
“Is that your way of forgiving my moment of stupidity?”
It wasn’t stupid, Blaine wishes he could say, but instead he just nods.
It’s quiet and Blaine wills the boy to speak again, doesn’t want it to fall silent and awkward (because it will be awkward, there’s no way to avoid that). So he waits (waiting waiting waiting) and watches as a million things pass over the boy’s face. He seems... Reluctant and hesitant and so very unsure, but there’s something more.
Do you want to go?
“Do you want me to go?” The boy asks and he sounds so small, and it startles Blaine, his eyes blinking in surprise, and he shakes his head almost too quickly. The boy doesn’t look convinced so Blaine meets his eyes and then turns his head back and forth very deliberately.
No. Don’t go. Stay.
But the boy still looks uneasy even as he settles into the chair, his thumb moving over Blaine’s knuckle and... Blaine doesn’t know how to feel about that. Even if he wanted to, it’s not exactly like he can move his hand away. More than anything, he wants to know who this boy is and why he’s holding Blaine’s hand and why he’s doing it so intimately. Strangers don’t hold hands.
Is he gay?
Does he know that Blaine’s gay?
Do straight boys hold other boys’ hands?
The boy is chewing his lip now and Blaine tells himself not to look, remembers why he’s in the hospital and averts his eyes.
“...do you know who I am?”
Blaine turns to look at the boy again, confused, but the boy is looking down at his lap and Blaine can’t see his face anymore. Should he know who this boy is? Blaine waits, because it does no good answering if the boy can’t see him, until blue eyes raise hesitantly. They’re glassy again and Blaine almost just doesn’t answer, but wouldn’t that be worse? Doesn’t he know better than anyone how hard it is not to have answers?
So he shakes his head again and the boy closes his eyes quickly, shutting himself away, turning aside and letting out a small, ‘ah.’
It’s quiet again and Blaine hears a sniffle, a small one, and his eyebrows raise in alarm.
I’m sorry. I’m sorry I don’t know you. I’d like to.
But he can’t say anything, so he squeezes the boy’s hand again. It worked before, but instead the boy just opens his eyes and looks at his hand.
“I’m sorry.” His voice cracks and Blaine stares at him, a mixture of worry and confusion in his eyes, because what does this boy have to apologize for? “Do you want me to stop holding your hand?”
There’s a moments hesitation-this is an out, he’s being offered one. But the idea of letting go of the boy’s hand, especially now when he’s so obviously distressed, isn’t fathomable. So he shakes his head no again.
“Are you just saying no to all my questions?” There’s a lightness to the boy’s voice then and Blaine is halfway through shaking his head before he stops and frowns, looking at the boy wryly. He laughs and it’s watery and weaker than it was before, but it’s a laugh and that has to count for something. The boy just looks back at him, that same something in his eyes again that Blaine can’t discern, but then the boy is looking away and clearing his throat.
“Then I suppose I should introduce myself.” He sits up a bit more primly and Blaine is sure the boy would offer his hand if Blaine wasn’t clutching it (and Blaine realizes then that, yes, he is clutching this boy’s hand). “I’m Kurt.”
Kurt.
Blaine feels like he’s been hit by a truck and he wishes he could move, grasp his head, but he pushes back into the pillows instead and Kurt’s eyes widen as he looks at him.
“Blaine?” His voice is alarmed, but that’s not what Blaine’s hearing.
“Blaine.”
Had that been that first day? And the other day, when he’d heard Cooper and the nurse talking... They’d mentioned a Kurt, hadn’t they? Blaine has heard Kurt’s voice before, but he... He forgot it, he couldn’t remember, couldn’t-
His head hurts and he feels dizzy and his head hurts, so he closes his eyes and tries to make it all go away. He bites down hard on his lip, too hard, too much pain and there’s a strange gurgle in his throat and-wait, a gurgle, he made a sound?
“Blaine? Are you okay? Do you need me to get a nurse? A doctor?” Blaine opens his eyes and Kurt is standing now, right there, clutching Blaine’s hand in both of his and that-that’s different, too. Good different. Great different.
Kurt looks so scared and Blaine just wants him to know that it’s okay and didn’t he hear? Didn’t he hear Blaine make a sound?
He shakes his head and hopes that’s the right answer.
“You’re not okay?”
Kurt looks so broken.
But he is, he’s okay, it’s just pain. Pain is familiar, he’s used to pain by now. There is so much pain all the time, even when the medication is swimming through him and he can’t feel anything. There’s more than just the physical pain. There is so, so much more.
Blaine looks conflicted again and Kurt seems to notice.
“If you’re okay, nod,” Kurt says slowly as if he’s suddenly realized he’s been asking too many questions too quickly. So Blaine nods, because he’s okay. There’s no pain the doctors or the nurses can fix this time.
Relief seems to seep through Kurt and his entire demeanor shifts and Blaine is looking at him, staring, because Kurt is standing and is close and he can’t not look. He shouldn’t be looking. He’s not supposed to look, not when his attentions aren’t wanted.
Kurt takes back one of his hands and immediately rubs at his eyes and forehead and Blaine doesn’t understand. He doesn’t understand as Kurt moves the chair closer, closer, and wilts into it, doesn’t understand the quiet ‘thank god’ that Kurt whispers.
Why does he care?
Why does Blaine mean anything to him?
He stares at Kurt and wonders, because it feels like something is missing (it always does, like there are so many pieces and he’s only holding a few of them) and Blaine has no idea what. But he’s confused and unsure and curious. He wants to be able to talk, to ask, but he can’t even make the sound in his throat again.
He can’t remember how he even did it the first time.
So he looks at Kurt (Kurt, and it’s wonderful that he has a name now, a name, and a face, and a voice) and he waits. Blaine has always been patient, but the hospital has only made him more so. He waits, and he waits and finally, Kurt looks up at him.
“Why are you looking at me like that?
Like what?
But Blaine just squeezes his hand and it manages to coax a small smile out of Kurt.
“I’m sorry.”
Don’t apologize.
“I know you don’t get a lot of visitors-”
You do?
“-and... If you want me here-”
I do.
“-then I’ll try to be better company. I guess it’s just weird to...”
But Kurt trails off, smiling and biting his lip and shaking his head. Blaine feels like he’s been left out of a joke again. What’s weird? That he’s talking to Blaine and Blaine can’t answer him?
If it means you’ll keep talking to me, then it’s not weird.
It surprises Blaine how much he suddenly wants this. He wants something besides what everyone thinks he should be given. He doesn’t know Kurt, doesn’t know more than his name and his laugh and how his hand and fingers feel in Blaine’s. But he could get to know him, couldn’t he? He could have someone else to talk to (or, at least, to talk to him) and maybe that would help.
He smiles without meaning to and Kurt looks a little surprised and... Something else. It’s that something that Blaine keeps seeing flickers of that he doesn’t understand. No one’s ever looked at him the way Kurt is looking at him.
Kurt squeezes his hand and then picks up his magazine and Blaine notices it then-it’s Vogue. His eyes perk with interest and Kurt looks intrigued.
“Do you like Vogue?”
Blaine nods and then Kurt is beaming at him, scooting impossible closer. Blaine wishes they could be shoulder to shoulder, magazine open between, discussing the photoshoots and the fashion and the trend forecasts.
“There’s some pretty good articles and, of course, wonderful photoshoots. You’ll just have to deal with my commentary, okay?” Kurt looks over at him, hesitant again, but Blaine just smiles. Kurt opens his mouth for a moment but no words come out and then he’s looking down, his hand pushing at imaginary creases in his pants again. When he looks up again he seems to have recovered and Blaine looks at him curiously, a bit confused.
But the feeling disappears as Kurt flips open the magazine and immediately turns the pages towards Blaine.
“Now, I don’t know about you, but I don’t agree with this color palette at all. It completely washes her out.”
Blaine might not know Kurt but he finds that he wants to. Because he’s never known someone like Kurt and he doubts he will ever have the chance again.
So Kurt reads, pauses to ask Blaine yes or no questions and laughs when he makes faces at some of the more hideous fashion choices. And the night wears on and Blaine becomes comfortable, finds that Kurt’s voice doesn’t so much as fade to the background as becomes a soothing present. Blaine doesn’t even notice his eyes are closed until Kurt is touching his arm and whispering, “Blaine?”
He blinks them open and looks at Kurt, frowning and clutching his hand.
“I’m not leaving.”
Blaine’s hand relaxes.
“Would you like me to come back tomorrow night?”
There’s no hesitation when Blaine nods this time and the smile that blooms across Kurt’s face makes Blaine want to continue saying yes.
“Okay.”
Okay.
<< 21 >>
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