Glee!fic, Unscripted: Symptoms
I went looking for stuff halfway close to finishing and found this, woo. Currently typing in Word before I can install Works in the morning. Not happy about this. At all. No-one likes change ;_;
Symptoms, a short(ish) from the Unscripted universe. Guess what! We timejumped again. I will be writing that wedding, I'm currently waiting for some canon Anderson background to see how badly Jossed I've been before I attempt it ^^; Patience <3
Disclaimer: So. Not. Mine.
Rating: G. Innocent as bunnies and puppies and oh no wait Blaine does stare at Kurt's arse a bit. You know what, the entire universe stares at that boy's arse, whatever.
Warnings: Italics abuse. Which I noted because Word ate all my italics and I had to go through working out where I probably spewed them because I always spew too many of them. Masochism: fun ways to waste time if you hate yourself.
Summary: A hospital story, though an ungodly fluffy one.
There is a nurse in the hospital who is so in love with Blaine that she can't even bring herself to look him in the face.
Blaine is aware of that if nothing else, and thinks that he's offended her somehow, and feels horrible about it. About once a week he makes an attempt at an apology for something he genuinely cannot place (he's pinned Kurt to the sofa in their apartment more than once with long run-throughs of every interaction they have ever even almost had trying to get Kurt who is so wise to pick out the bad, bad, horrible, horrible bad thing that Blaine must have done), bringing her coffee and a smile or trying to help her with her rounds or even once bringing her a summer-bright gerbera as orange as a child's crayon but she puts her head down, mumbles, twists a ring on one of her tight-clenched hands, looks ready to cry until she can flee and oh god Blaine must have done something horrible.
"You are an idiot." Janek says, while Blaine sits on the sideboard in the break area, next to the kettle, clasped hands dangling between his knees while he looks at the floor like a kicked puppy.
He nods, sadly. "I know."
Janek mutters something in Polish and says, "You are an idiot." and turns the TV on.
At lunchtime when Blaine takes the ukelele from his locker and goes to the children's ward for the Almost-Doctor Blaine Lunchtime Concert (because he has a captive and appreciative audience and why would he ever pass that by), she's helping another nurse to change the beds while the kids gather in one clump at the end of the ward, where Blaine sits and picks away at the ukelele and gives her a miserable look, until a little girl pulls at his scrubs and says without taking the thumb from her mouth, "Do Cee Lo, Doctor Blaine."
He looks at her, finds a smile that feels real. "I can't do Cee Lo anymore honey, somebody's mom pointed out that it was not an appropriate song for your age group. But I can do Yellow Submarine! Careful with that drip in your arm, okay?"
He loves the kids' ward, with the bright painted animals and the bright smiling kids. Yes almost every day the kids break his fucking heart just for being kids and being where they are, why they're here, some days he feels about three seconds from crying in front of some poor kid just for being ten and having to be here and it's so unbelievable to him that the world is allowed to be the way it is. But he loves it. It's his favourite place in the whole hospital. He teaches them the Macarena, even the kids who can't get out of their beds can do it, and he takes home every picture they draw him to stick on the fridge. Some of the long term patients demand, request, sulk, weep for his presence during hated procedures. He does a lot of talking to kids to distract them from needles. They distract him from a lot of things too; he's forgotten that the nurse who Blaine has clearly hurt so badly that she can't meet his eye is in the room by the time he's onto Daydream Believer and she's just standing by the window, silently staring at him and twisting a ring on one hand, while the kids wave their hands in the air like they're at a rock concert.
There's a slower set of clapping in the kids' applause at the end, and he looks across to the doorway where Kurt's leaning against the frame with Tupperware tucked under his arm, clapping delicately, smiling wickedly. "Bravo, Doctor Blaine."
"Heeeeey." Blaine holds his arm out and Kurt walks to him, kisses the top of his head then bops it - gently - with the box. "You left your lunch in the fridge. Again. Amita said you'd be up here."
"Thank you. And hey, now you're here you can do a song!"
"Oh can I."
"Of course you can! You guys want to hear a song from Kurt, right?"
The kids cheer. Kurt gives them a lopsided smile that's trying not to get too wide, and he looks back to Blaine so amused. "What song did you have in mind to kickstart my career as a freelance children's entertainer, love of mine?"
Blaine strums furiously at the ukelele while he thinks. "Oh. One second." He picks away at it, nods to himself, kicks himself in and trusts that god it's Kurt, of course he'll follow note-perfect without any warning at all. "Ain't no mountain high, ain't no valley low, ain't no river wide enough baby-"
Kurt tucks the end of his tongue out of his teeth for a second in amusement but he doesn't miss a beat. Blaine will never get tired of hearing how their voices meet and meld and ring off each other, it's like their voices know they're in love, since before they knew it they've met on this level of perfect harmony when they sing. And Kurt smiles and sings so beautifully and meets Blaine's eye and oh, this man. The rest of Blaine's life just looks like a dream to him sometimes.
In the window that nurse twists her hands together, and looks away.
*
On a bench outside the hospital, in dazzling-bright November sunlight, Kurt sits next to him while he eats the cold leftovers Kurt brought him. As they're Kurt's cold leftovers it really doesn't feel like any chore to eat them; last night's tortillas, homemade guacamole and salad, and that brown rice thing Kurt makes that Blaine thought he would hate and ate the first mouthful of out of love before it turned out to be obscenely good and how does Kurt do that.
"It's nice to have an appreciative audience," Kurt murmurs, hat tilted down over his eyes against the glare of the sun, relaxed on the bench with his arms spread wide on the backrest. It means that Blaine has one of Kurt's arms behind his shoulders while he eats, which feels really nice. Blaine wriggles his shoulders, forks out some rice, points out, "You get an appreciative audience every night."
"This one didn't have cell phones that go off at inopportune moments. I swear to god Sean is going to throw a prop at the next one that starts up."
"It's hard being the last true vestige of culture in the world, babe."
"I will faceplant you into that lunch," Kurt mutters, without lifting his head.
"Aren't you hungry?"
"I ate before I realised you'd left your lunch. Again. How does someone who loves food as much as you do keep on doing that?"
"I just - mornings."
"You always get up in plenty of time."
"I know I do, but you're there and you're all distracting."
"Excuse me I'm sure." Kurt lifts his head, flicks his hat back, frowns across at him. "I'm not even awake when you leave in a morning when I'm working. How am I 'distracting' you?"
Blaine shrugs, and stuffs lettuce into his mouth. "You're cute when you're sleeping."
"You watch me sleep."
"Does it make it less creepy if part of it is because you kick your legs out once you've got the whole bed and it makes your ass under the covers really -"
"No, not really. I don't suppose there's much I can do about it though, I already went and married you, more fool I." Kurt flops his head back again, and squints at the blue of the sky. "This is November. My freckle-inducing arch-nemesis really is supposed to be drowned under clouds by now."
"You're talking about the sun. You're actually taking offence to this incredibly gorgeous day we just got like a gift in the middle of November."
"I'm only saying, you're the one who still has to sleep with me even when I do get all-" He flicks a hand at his face, "- freckled and wrinkly and sun-ravaged."
"Kurt, if you were a brain in a jar you'd still be beautiful to me."
Kurt gives him a long look and says, "I don't know why I act like not really knowing which parts of you are creepy and which are cute is new to me."
"You love me," Blaine says, eating salad.
Kurt's silent for a second before he says, "Yes, I do." Blaine looks across at him with lettuce hanging out of his mouth. Kurt's voice has gone quiet. "So much sometimes I just don't know what to do about it."
Blaine swallows his mouthful. "Kurt. You know I love you too."
Kurt holds his eyes, suddenly very serious, and gives a little nod. Then he looks away, at the grass and the line of trees marking the edge of the parking lot, and Blaine touches Kurt's hand, folds his fingers through Kurt's. Kurt squeezes, and he squeezes back.
"I'm going to love you until I die," Blaine says, trying to stab food one-handed with the box balanced on his knees, "and then come back as a sad and obsessed ghost and follow you around and help while you do the grocery shopping and laundry, like the lamest poltergeist in the whole world."
"Why do you assume my life will be horribly dull after you die? It might be twenty-four hour parties for all you know."
"No, no-one would want to party with you, not when you've got this pathetic weepy ghost following you around all the time balling your socks up and picking up low-fat yoghurt for you."
The snort comes out before Kurt can cover it with a hand, and Blaine's grinning while Kurt covers his eyes and shakes his head, smiling so helplessly, and Blaine cleans the box out with the last piece of tortilla before popping it into his grin.
*
This happens every year, and has become a hazing ritual for the student doctors. There's a waiting room full of people coughing and sneezing, a queue of them clutching tissues and blowing their noses and the doctors are too busy to speak to every single one and tell them that they need to go home and get plenty of rest and fluids and no they can't have any antibiotics. So they make the students do it, with varying levels of success and one predictable outcome.
Amita, brusquely self-assured, sends them home without much difficulty. Mark is nervously apologetic and takes too long with each patient. Blaine treats each of them very seriously, and listens to their lungs when they insist it's a chest infection, and tells them that they're lucky because it's not and if they do get the rest and fluids then it won't turn into one, right? with his shining and hard to argue with silver lining smile.
When Janek crouches down in front of where Blaine's slumped on a waiting room chair near the elevators, legs kicked out carelessly, head drooped, Blaine blinks muzzily at him and twitches the corner of his patented silver lining smile again. "The thing I do know," he says, a little raspily, "the thing I learned from this, is that I am not allowed antibiotics."
"You look crap," Janek says, and Blaine puts his head back, rubs his eyes.
"I look like crap," he says. "'You look crap' means you're like, insulting my outfit, and okay scrubs aren't the most flattering thing in the world but they really don't give me a whole lot of choice even though Kurt did offer to customise a couple of pairs for-"
"I call your boyfriend."
"Husband," Blaine says, and with his hands still over his eyes his smile blooms like the silver lining just turned golden and now it's raining diamonds, then falters. "No, wait, he's rehearsing. Janek, he'll be in the theatre 'til-"
"You do not look 'like' crap, you look very crap. I will call your boyfriend. Sit."
"Janek, you came to the wedding. And he's busy."
"And you are disgusting and I am not taking you home. So I call your boyfriend, husband, or you sit there until you are well. Could be long time."
Blaine stares at him with those big little boy's eyes - Americans take a long time to grow up - and then his mouth does a funny crumpling thing. "My throat really hurts."
"I will get you a drink."
"But if he catches it, Janek, he'll kill me. He seriously needs his voice, he-"
"Listen," Janek says, holding a finger in front of Blaine's nose which he nearly crosses his eyes trying to focus on, "carefully. Listening?"
Blaine, still staring at his finger, nods.
"You will not tell me details of how. In my head you sleep in separate beds and maybe hold hands sometimes, details I don't need. But you understand that if he catch this from you, he already catch it, so you sit and shut up and wait for him and do not make my doing a good thing for you difficult. You are not terrible at this job. Stupid but not so stupid. So sit, and I fetch your Kurt."
At that Blaine's face blanks, and then he gives a slow-growing sleepy smile. "Okay. Janek, thanks. Thanks!"
As Janek walks off he hears Blaine singing under his breath in a rough wrecked voice, "My Kurt, my Kurt . . ." and if it was any of the other students he'd wonder if Blaine had self-prescribed a little codeine for his throat; as it is Blaine, he's probably just a bit high from getting to see his boyfriend a couple of hours early, he gets giddy at the end of every working day.
He pulls up Blaine's ICE contact number at the nurse's station and Lily kicks her desk chair to wheel behind him, to peer over his shoulder. "Anderson's down?"
Janek just grunts and reaches for the telephone. Lily pushes herself off the desk and back to her station, the chair's castors grinding as they turn. "Two to go. Not too late for you to join the pool, Jan."
Janek waves a hand at her, holding the telephone to his ear, waiting through the rings. "-don't call me 'Jan', god damn."
"My money's on Gupta," Lily says, picking her way through a box of patient records. "Girl's got an immune system of steel an' she ain't afraid to tell them it's no chest infection and she ain't touching their germ-ridden hide."
Janek stares at the ceiling between two strip lights, breathes slowly. He is patient. He has to be a patient man. Look at what he has to put up with every day and then go home to his wife, Janek has the patience of a saint. He still wishes Blaine's boyfriend (husband, tch, it wasn't even in a church) would pick his god damn phone up.
And then he does, and in a softly stuttered, fear-laced breath says, "Hello?"
*
Fingers touch Blaine's hair and then a palm settles over his forehead, cool as ivory. He blinks up, from his drowsy reverie of how horrible all his body feels, and smiles a tired smile, says, "They make you look after sick people all the time, what is up with that?"
Kurt's face stays tense with worry. He says, "Hi, Blaine," and crouches to look up into Blaine's face. "Janek said you needed to come home."
"S'just. Flu or something." Blaine shrugs, and the muscles in his back and shoulders ache, ache, and his voice hurts his throat. "Everyone's got it."
"My poor Blaine," Kurt says softly, and his fingers run back through Blaine's hair, which is probably a bit sweaty and horrible right now but Kurt is always so forgiving about Blaine never being perfect. "You've got a temperature, you need to be in bed."
". . . sorry. Got you out of rehearsals, Kurt, sorry."
"Don't be stupid, it's not even important." Kurt's breath turns a little amused, and the smile is tight around his eyes. "When Janek called I felt sick. The hospital calls - not you but the hospital - I don't know what I thought. That a patient had gone crazy and stabbed you with a scalpel or something."
"Hospitals are actually really boring. You watch too much ER."
"We both watch too much ER. And I really don't like getting phone calls from hospitals." Kurt leans up and kisses Blaine on his forehead like he doesn't care how gross he is right now. "Come on. I'll find us a cab and take you home."
"You'll catch it."
"I will take a lot of vitamin C. You need to be in bed, Blaine."
"My scooter."
"I'll come back for it later, once you're settled. Okay?" Kurt draws his fingers through Blaine's hair a few more times - he feels muddled and thick-thoughted, and every sensation, every sound is over-heightened, he can hear his scrubs shifting off each other overloud in his ears when he moves, and the sensation-memory confusing him the most is being small and ill and his mom stroking his hair while now Kurt's fingers comb it through and his thumb gently presses it back off his forehead, and Blaine mostly just wants to put his arms around Kurt's neck and fall asleep on top of him. He's so, so glad Kurt is here, he slumps his head down against Kurt's, he's so glad he's here, Blaine feels horrible. He swallows another painful swallow and says, "If you catch it I'll hate myself."
"I don't care, it's fine. Come on, it's okay," Kurt sings softly, and now his hand cups Blaine's jaw, his thumb stroking his cheek. "Everything's going to be fine. I'll get you home and get you to bed and make you some soup. You can have a Popsicle."
"What kind of soup?"
"What kind do you want?"
Blaine nuzzles closer into Kurt's throat, safe against the warmth of him. "Chicken sweetcorn," he mumbles, and Kurt's hand slides back into his hair, tugs affectionately at his curls.
"Okay. Do you need anything out of your locker?"
"Kurt? You're like, the best mom in all the world, do you know that?"
"On one level yes but Blaine, honey, you are going to kill our sex life if you keep saying that. Do you need anything from your locker?"
"Nuh. Wait, wallet and keys, do I need those?"
"I'll pick them up. Can you let go of me for a minute so I can get them?"
"Carry me with you."
"Blaine, tell me the combination for your locker and stop trying to suffocate me with your germy, germy arms."
"I don't need them, don't go."
"Blaine," Kurt pulls at his arms, now doing the exasperated mom voice. "The sooner you let me get your stuff the sooner I can get you home and in bed, so will you please-"
"I can-"
They both look up, Blaine with a little wince of aching muscles, at the rabbit-small voice over their heads. The nurse twists a ring on her finger, and her words shake a little. "I can get them," she whispers. "If you want me to?"
It's a miracle. Suddenly Blaine understands being ill like this: it's blessed karmic punishment which has somehow restored the balance of the universe and she doesn't hate him anymore. God, if this is all it takes, he hopes he's ill every week if it keeps mopping the mess of Blaine's clueless social interactions up after him.
"That would be awesome," he rasps at her, hugging Kurt happily closer. "Thank you so much."
"She's going to need the code, Blaine." Kurt tells him, one hand stroking his shoulder. Blaine nuzzles into Kurt's neck, mumbles there, "S'the year my dad was born."
Still just on the right side of the patient mom voice, "She doesn't know what year your dad was born in, Blaine."
Blaine tells the warm side of Kurt's neck, and Kurt tells the nurse, and thanks her, and Blaine hears her shoes click away. Kurt lifts himself, and Blaine's sagging weight, climbing onto the chair next to him and letting Blaine slump there against him, getting an arm comfortably around his shoulders.
"I'm sorry you feel so sick," he says quietly, his nose against the side of Blaine's forehead, one hand still softly softly stroking his hair. "I'm sorry, Blaine. I'll try to make you feel better."
"Better already," Blaine hums, and sighs into Kurt's throat.
*
The nurse who is so in love with Blaine that she can't bring herself to look him in the face does manage to meet his eye as she hands his keys and his wallet to his husband, who hangs up on the cab he's ordered, takes them graciously and smiles and thanks her. Blaine just lets himself slump against whichever part of his husband is currently supporting his weight and smiles at her, a drowsy, blissful, grateful smile. Her mouth wobbles and twitches back.
The husband stands, shrugs his jacket off and puts it around Blaine's shoulders, then hauls him up by the hands; he's deceptively slim, something of the porcelain doll to him until you notice the muscles shifting in his now-bared arms. He supports Blaine's weight, and Blaine says something muffled into his shoulder and his mouth twitches the sharp corner of a smile, something like pain in it. One of his hands is closed around Blaine's waist, steady and sure and as familiar as a thousand mornings together.
"Thank you," the husband says gratefully, turning Blaine with an arm around his side for the doors. "I'll try to return him to you slightly less plague-ridden."
She manages a smile. Blaine says into his shoulder, "People still get that, you know. The full-on bubonic deal. I don't think that's what I have, I think they'd let me have antibiotics for that."
His husband kisses the side of his forehead on a sigh, gives her a quick last smile and walks Blaine for the exit, hiking one of his arms over his shoulder. "Thank you!" Blaine calls over his shoulder at her. "I won't do it again! I promise!"
"Shut up you are ruining your throat." the husband snaps back at him, and Blaine lets his head swing down onto his shoulder, mumbles something that earns his hip a stroke from that hand firm around his waist. The electric doors slide aside for them.
Love, she knows, is about letting go. Love is about what you don't try to force from someone else. Love is about acceptance, even of nevers. Love is knowing love when you see it, and not resenting it.
She turns a ring on her finger, starts for Janek's call and hurries to the nurses' station, brushing her hair back out of her too-hot face.
Symptoms, a short(ish) from the Unscripted universe. Guess what! We timejumped again. I will be writing that wedding, I'm currently waiting for some canon Anderson background to see how badly Jossed I've been before I attempt it ^^; Patience <3
Disclaimer: So. Not. Mine.
Rating: G. Innocent as bunnies and puppies and oh no wait Blaine does stare at Kurt's arse a bit. You know what, the entire universe stares at that boy's arse, whatever.
Warnings: Italics abuse. Which I noted because Word ate all my italics and I had to go through working out where I probably spewed them because I always spew too many of them. Masochism: fun ways to waste time if you hate yourself.
Summary: A hospital story, though an ungodly fluffy one.
There is a nurse in the hospital who is so in love with Blaine that she can't even bring herself to look him in the face.
Blaine is aware of that if nothing else, and thinks that he's offended her somehow, and feels horrible about it. About once a week he makes an attempt at an apology for something he genuinely cannot place (he's pinned Kurt to the sofa in their apartment more than once with long run-throughs of every interaction they have ever even almost had trying to get Kurt who is so wise to pick out the bad, bad, horrible, horrible bad thing that Blaine must have done), bringing her coffee and a smile or trying to help her with her rounds or even once bringing her a summer-bright gerbera as orange as a child's crayon but she puts her head down, mumbles, twists a ring on one of her tight-clenched hands, looks ready to cry until she can flee and oh god Blaine must have done something horrible.
"You are an idiot." Janek says, while Blaine sits on the sideboard in the break area, next to the kettle, clasped hands dangling between his knees while he looks at the floor like a kicked puppy.
He nods, sadly. "I know."
Janek mutters something in Polish and says, "You are an idiot." and turns the TV on.
At lunchtime when Blaine takes the ukelele from his locker and goes to the children's ward for the Almost-Doctor Blaine Lunchtime Concert (because he has a captive and appreciative audience and why would he ever pass that by), she's helping another nurse to change the beds while the kids gather in one clump at the end of the ward, where Blaine sits and picks away at the ukelele and gives her a miserable look, until a little girl pulls at his scrubs and says without taking the thumb from her mouth, "Do Cee Lo, Doctor Blaine."
He looks at her, finds a smile that feels real. "I can't do Cee Lo anymore honey, somebody's mom pointed out that it was not an appropriate song for your age group. But I can do Yellow Submarine! Careful with that drip in your arm, okay?"
He loves the kids' ward, with the bright painted animals and the bright smiling kids. Yes almost every day the kids break his fucking heart just for being kids and being where they are, why they're here, some days he feels about three seconds from crying in front of some poor kid just for being ten and having to be here and it's so unbelievable to him that the world is allowed to be the way it is. But he loves it. It's his favourite place in the whole hospital. He teaches them the Macarena, even the kids who can't get out of their beds can do it, and he takes home every picture they draw him to stick on the fridge. Some of the long term patients demand, request, sulk, weep for his presence during hated procedures. He does a lot of talking to kids to distract them from needles. They distract him from a lot of things too; he's forgotten that the nurse who Blaine has clearly hurt so badly that she can't meet his eye is in the room by the time he's onto Daydream Believer and she's just standing by the window, silently staring at him and twisting a ring on one hand, while the kids wave their hands in the air like they're at a rock concert.
There's a slower set of clapping in the kids' applause at the end, and he looks across to the doorway where Kurt's leaning against the frame with Tupperware tucked under his arm, clapping delicately, smiling wickedly. "Bravo, Doctor Blaine."
"Heeeeey." Blaine holds his arm out and Kurt walks to him, kisses the top of his head then bops it - gently - with the box. "You left your lunch in the fridge. Again. Amita said you'd be up here."
"Thank you. And hey, now you're here you can do a song!"
"Oh can I."
"Of course you can! You guys want to hear a song from Kurt, right?"
The kids cheer. Kurt gives them a lopsided smile that's trying not to get too wide, and he looks back to Blaine so amused. "What song did you have in mind to kickstart my career as a freelance children's entertainer, love of mine?"
Blaine strums furiously at the ukelele while he thinks. "Oh. One second." He picks away at it, nods to himself, kicks himself in and trusts that god it's Kurt, of course he'll follow note-perfect without any warning at all. "Ain't no mountain high, ain't no valley low, ain't no river wide enough baby-"
Kurt tucks the end of his tongue out of his teeth for a second in amusement but he doesn't miss a beat. Blaine will never get tired of hearing how their voices meet and meld and ring off each other, it's like their voices know they're in love, since before they knew it they've met on this level of perfect harmony when they sing. And Kurt smiles and sings so beautifully and meets Blaine's eye and oh, this man. The rest of Blaine's life just looks like a dream to him sometimes.
In the window that nurse twists her hands together, and looks away.
*
On a bench outside the hospital, in dazzling-bright November sunlight, Kurt sits next to him while he eats the cold leftovers Kurt brought him. As they're Kurt's cold leftovers it really doesn't feel like any chore to eat them; last night's tortillas, homemade guacamole and salad, and that brown rice thing Kurt makes that Blaine thought he would hate and ate the first mouthful of out of love before it turned out to be obscenely good and how does Kurt do that.
"It's nice to have an appreciative audience," Kurt murmurs, hat tilted down over his eyes against the glare of the sun, relaxed on the bench with his arms spread wide on the backrest. It means that Blaine has one of Kurt's arms behind his shoulders while he eats, which feels really nice. Blaine wriggles his shoulders, forks out some rice, points out, "You get an appreciative audience every night."
"This one didn't have cell phones that go off at inopportune moments. I swear to god Sean is going to throw a prop at the next one that starts up."
"It's hard being the last true vestige of culture in the world, babe."
"I will faceplant you into that lunch," Kurt mutters, without lifting his head.
"Aren't you hungry?"
"I ate before I realised you'd left your lunch. Again. How does someone who loves food as much as you do keep on doing that?"
"I just - mornings."
"You always get up in plenty of time."
"I know I do, but you're there and you're all distracting."
"Excuse me I'm sure." Kurt lifts his head, flicks his hat back, frowns across at him. "I'm not even awake when you leave in a morning when I'm working. How am I 'distracting' you?"
Blaine shrugs, and stuffs lettuce into his mouth. "You're cute when you're sleeping."
"You watch me sleep."
"Does it make it less creepy if part of it is because you kick your legs out once you've got the whole bed and it makes your ass under the covers really -"
"No, not really. I don't suppose there's much I can do about it though, I already went and married you, more fool I." Kurt flops his head back again, and squints at the blue of the sky. "This is November. My freckle-inducing arch-nemesis really is supposed to be drowned under clouds by now."
"You're talking about the sun. You're actually taking offence to this incredibly gorgeous day we just got like a gift in the middle of November."
"I'm only saying, you're the one who still has to sleep with me even when I do get all-" He flicks a hand at his face, "- freckled and wrinkly and sun-ravaged."
"Kurt, if you were a brain in a jar you'd still be beautiful to me."
Kurt gives him a long look and says, "I don't know why I act like not really knowing which parts of you are creepy and which are cute is new to me."
"You love me," Blaine says, eating salad.
Kurt's silent for a second before he says, "Yes, I do." Blaine looks across at him with lettuce hanging out of his mouth. Kurt's voice has gone quiet. "So much sometimes I just don't know what to do about it."
Blaine swallows his mouthful. "Kurt. You know I love you too."
Kurt holds his eyes, suddenly very serious, and gives a little nod. Then he looks away, at the grass and the line of trees marking the edge of the parking lot, and Blaine touches Kurt's hand, folds his fingers through Kurt's. Kurt squeezes, and he squeezes back.
"I'm going to love you until I die," Blaine says, trying to stab food one-handed with the box balanced on his knees, "and then come back as a sad and obsessed ghost and follow you around and help while you do the grocery shopping and laundry, like the lamest poltergeist in the whole world."
"Why do you assume my life will be horribly dull after you die? It might be twenty-four hour parties for all you know."
"No, no-one would want to party with you, not when you've got this pathetic weepy ghost following you around all the time balling your socks up and picking up low-fat yoghurt for you."
The snort comes out before Kurt can cover it with a hand, and Blaine's grinning while Kurt covers his eyes and shakes his head, smiling so helplessly, and Blaine cleans the box out with the last piece of tortilla before popping it into his grin.
*
This happens every year, and has become a hazing ritual for the student doctors. There's a waiting room full of people coughing and sneezing, a queue of them clutching tissues and blowing their noses and the doctors are too busy to speak to every single one and tell them that they need to go home and get plenty of rest and fluids and no they can't have any antibiotics. So they make the students do it, with varying levels of success and one predictable outcome.
Amita, brusquely self-assured, sends them home without much difficulty. Mark is nervously apologetic and takes too long with each patient. Blaine treats each of them very seriously, and listens to their lungs when they insist it's a chest infection, and tells them that they're lucky because it's not and if they do get the rest and fluids then it won't turn into one, right? with his shining and hard to argue with silver lining smile.
When Janek crouches down in front of where Blaine's slumped on a waiting room chair near the elevators, legs kicked out carelessly, head drooped, Blaine blinks muzzily at him and twitches the corner of his patented silver lining smile again. "The thing I do know," he says, a little raspily, "the thing I learned from this, is that I am not allowed antibiotics."
"You look crap," Janek says, and Blaine puts his head back, rubs his eyes.
"I look like crap," he says. "'You look crap' means you're like, insulting my outfit, and okay scrubs aren't the most flattering thing in the world but they really don't give me a whole lot of choice even though Kurt did offer to customise a couple of pairs for-"
"I call your boyfriend."
"Husband," Blaine says, and with his hands still over his eyes his smile blooms like the silver lining just turned golden and now it's raining diamonds, then falters. "No, wait, he's rehearsing. Janek, he'll be in the theatre 'til-"
"You do not look 'like' crap, you look very crap. I will call your boyfriend. Sit."
"Janek, you came to the wedding. And he's busy."
"And you are disgusting and I am not taking you home. So I call your boyfriend, husband, or you sit there until you are well. Could be long time."
Blaine stares at him with those big little boy's eyes - Americans take a long time to grow up - and then his mouth does a funny crumpling thing. "My throat really hurts."
"I will get you a drink."
"But if he catches it, Janek, he'll kill me. He seriously needs his voice, he-"
"Listen," Janek says, holding a finger in front of Blaine's nose which he nearly crosses his eyes trying to focus on, "carefully. Listening?"
Blaine, still staring at his finger, nods.
"You will not tell me details of how. In my head you sleep in separate beds and maybe hold hands sometimes, details I don't need. But you understand that if he catch this from you, he already catch it, so you sit and shut up and wait for him and do not make my doing a good thing for you difficult. You are not terrible at this job. Stupid but not so stupid. So sit, and I fetch your Kurt."
At that Blaine's face blanks, and then he gives a slow-growing sleepy smile. "Okay. Janek, thanks. Thanks!"
As Janek walks off he hears Blaine singing under his breath in a rough wrecked voice, "My Kurt, my Kurt . . ." and if it was any of the other students he'd wonder if Blaine had self-prescribed a little codeine for his throat; as it is Blaine, he's probably just a bit high from getting to see his boyfriend a couple of hours early, he gets giddy at the end of every working day.
He pulls up Blaine's ICE contact number at the nurse's station and Lily kicks her desk chair to wheel behind him, to peer over his shoulder. "Anderson's down?"
Janek just grunts and reaches for the telephone. Lily pushes herself off the desk and back to her station, the chair's castors grinding as they turn. "Two to go. Not too late for you to join the pool, Jan."
Janek waves a hand at her, holding the telephone to his ear, waiting through the rings. "-don't call me 'Jan', god damn."
"My money's on Gupta," Lily says, picking her way through a box of patient records. "Girl's got an immune system of steel an' she ain't afraid to tell them it's no chest infection and she ain't touching their germ-ridden hide."
Janek stares at the ceiling between two strip lights, breathes slowly. He is patient. He has to be a patient man. Look at what he has to put up with every day and then go home to his wife, Janek has the patience of a saint. He still wishes Blaine's boyfriend (husband, tch, it wasn't even in a church) would pick his god damn phone up.
And then he does, and in a softly stuttered, fear-laced breath says, "Hello?"
*
Fingers touch Blaine's hair and then a palm settles over his forehead, cool as ivory. He blinks up, from his drowsy reverie of how horrible all his body feels, and smiles a tired smile, says, "They make you look after sick people all the time, what is up with that?"
Kurt's face stays tense with worry. He says, "Hi, Blaine," and crouches to look up into Blaine's face. "Janek said you needed to come home."
"S'just. Flu or something." Blaine shrugs, and the muscles in his back and shoulders ache, ache, and his voice hurts his throat. "Everyone's got it."
"My poor Blaine," Kurt says softly, and his fingers run back through Blaine's hair, which is probably a bit sweaty and horrible right now but Kurt is always so forgiving about Blaine never being perfect. "You've got a temperature, you need to be in bed."
". . . sorry. Got you out of rehearsals, Kurt, sorry."
"Don't be stupid, it's not even important." Kurt's breath turns a little amused, and the smile is tight around his eyes. "When Janek called I felt sick. The hospital calls - not you but the hospital - I don't know what I thought. That a patient had gone crazy and stabbed you with a scalpel or something."
"Hospitals are actually really boring. You watch too much ER."
"We both watch too much ER. And I really don't like getting phone calls from hospitals." Kurt leans up and kisses Blaine on his forehead like he doesn't care how gross he is right now. "Come on. I'll find us a cab and take you home."
"You'll catch it."
"I will take a lot of vitamin C. You need to be in bed, Blaine."
"My scooter."
"I'll come back for it later, once you're settled. Okay?" Kurt draws his fingers through Blaine's hair a few more times - he feels muddled and thick-thoughted, and every sensation, every sound is over-heightened, he can hear his scrubs shifting off each other overloud in his ears when he moves, and the sensation-memory confusing him the most is being small and ill and his mom stroking his hair while now Kurt's fingers comb it through and his thumb gently presses it back off his forehead, and Blaine mostly just wants to put his arms around Kurt's neck and fall asleep on top of him. He's so, so glad Kurt is here, he slumps his head down against Kurt's, he's so glad he's here, Blaine feels horrible. He swallows another painful swallow and says, "If you catch it I'll hate myself."
"I don't care, it's fine. Come on, it's okay," Kurt sings softly, and now his hand cups Blaine's jaw, his thumb stroking his cheek. "Everything's going to be fine. I'll get you home and get you to bed and make you some soup. You can have a Popsicle."
"What kind of soup?"
"What kind do you want?"
Blaine nuzzles closer into Kurt's throat, safe against the warmth of him. "Chicken sweetcorn," he mumbles, and Kurt's hand slides back into his hair, tugs affectionately at his curls.
"Okay. Do you need anything out of your locker?"
"Kurt? You're like, the best mom in all the world, do you know that?"
"On one level yes but Blaine, honey, you are going to kill our sex life if you keep saying that. Do you need anything from your locker?"
"Nuh. Wait, wallet and keys, do I need those?"
"I'll pick them up. Can you let go of me for a minute so I can get them?"
"Carry me with you."
"Blaine, tell me the combination for your locker and stop trying to suffocate me with your germy, germy arms."
"I don't need them, don't go."
"Blaine," Kurt pulls at his arms, now doing the exasperated mom voice. "The sooner you let me get your stuff the sooner I can get you home and in bed, so will you please-"
"I can-"
They both look up, Blaine with a little wince of aching muscles, at the rabbit-small voice over their heads. The nurse twists a ring on her finger, and her words shake a little. "I can get them," she whispers. "If you want me to?"
It's a miracle. Suddenly Blaine understands being ill like this: it's blessed karmic punishment which has somehow restored the balance of the universe and she doesn't hate him anymore. God, if this is all it takes, he hopes he's ill every week if it keeps mopping the mess of Blaine's clueless social interactions up after him.
"That would be awesome," he rasps at her, hugging Kurt happily closer. "Thank you so much."
"She's going to need the code, Blaine." Kurt tells him, one hand stroking his shoulder. Blaine nuzzles into Kurt's neck, mumbles there, "S'the year my dad was born."
Still just on the right side of the patient mom voice, "She doesn't know what year your dad was born in, Blaine."
Blaine tells the warm side of Kurt's neck, and Kurt tells the nurse, and thanks her, and Blaine hears her shoes click away. Kurt lifts himself, and Blaine's sagging weight, climbing onto the chair next to him and letting Blaine slump there against him, getting an arm comfortably around his shoulders.
"I'm sorry you feel so sick," he says quietly, his nose against the side of Blaine's forehead, one hand still softly softly stroking his hair. "I'm sorry, Blaine. I'll try to make you feel better."
"Better already," Blaine hums, and sighs into Kurt's throat.
*
The nurse who is so in love with Blaine that she can't bring herself to look him in the face does manage to meet his eye as she hands his keys and his wallet to his husband, who hangs up on the cab he's ordered, takes them graciously and smiles and thanks her. Blaine just lets himself slump against whichever part of his husband is currently supporting his weight and smiles at her, a drowsy, blissful, grateful smile. Her mouth wobbles and twitches back.
The husband stands, shrugs his jacket off and puts it around Blaine's shoulders, then hauls him up by the hands; he's deceptively slim, something of the porcelain doll to him until you notice the muscles shifting in his now-bared arms. He supports Blaine's weight, and Blaine says something muffled into his shoulder and his mouth twitches the sharp corner of a smile, something like pain in it. One of his hands is closed around Blaine's waist, steady and sure and as familiar as a thousand mornings together.
"Thank you," the husband says gratefully, turning Blaine with an arm around his side for the doors. "I'll try to return him to you slightly less plague-ridden."
She manages a smile. Blaine says into his shoulder, "People still get that, you know. The full-on bubonic deal. I don't think that's what I have, I think they'd let me have antibiotics for that."
His husband kisses the side of his forehead on a sigh, gives her a quick last smile and walks Blaine for the exit, hiking one of his arms over his shoulder. "Thank you!" Blaine calls over his shoulder at her. "I won't do it again! I promise!"
"Shut up you are ruining your throat." the husband snaps back at him, and Blaine lets his head swing down onto his shoulder, mumbles something that earns his hip a stroke from that hand firm around his waist. The electric doors slide aside for them.
Love, she knows, is about letting go. Love is about what you don't try to force from someone else. Love is about acceptance, even of nevers. Love is knowing love when you see it, and not resenting it.
She turns a ring on her finger, starts for Janek's call and hurries to the nurses' station, brushing her hair back out of her too-hot face.