Fanfic - Visions of Rain (part five)
It had only been two days. Two days. The longest freakin’ two days in Blaine’s life it seemed. But he was finally, finally, finally able to visit him. Two days since Kurt had suffered a psychotic break in Blaine’s room and killed Pavarotti. Two days since Blaine’s world had completely flipped on its head. Two days since his mother had last spoken to him.
Burt had called him this morning and given Blaine the good news: Kurt was responding to treatment. He was able to have visitors. People other than family. And hopefully soon, he’d be transferred back to Lima. Kurt might be able to go home in just a few days. He was getting better. Things were finally looking up.
Blaine had agreed to meet Burt outside the hospital around noon, and Blaine was nothing but a bundle of nervous energy as the morning stretched on. He’d bleached and re-bleached the brownish spots on his carpet until the fibers were stiff and only slightly off color. Maybe he’d buy a throw rug or something to cover the stains, help him forget the memory.
Vacuuming had taken care of the feathers, and there had been so many feathers. He was still finding them in the little nooks and crannies of his room. Blaine had spent a good deal of time picking them out of the carpet one by one to distract himself. The little yellow feathers had crackled in his fingers as he’d picked them up, the edges crisp and hard with dried clots of brownish blood. He still hadn’t bothered to clean out the cage, instead opting to drape a towel over it and leave it alone in the corner. Out of sight, out of mind. He’d take care of it eventually.
But then there was Kurt.
He was going to see Kurt today.
Blaine stood outside the hospital, leaning against one of the large windows of the waiting area. He was early, but not by too much. Burt would be here soon. And then he’d get to see Kurt. He leaned back on his heels and flexed his toes through his shoes. They were old, these shoes. The soft padding was wearing out and growing flat, but he loved the stupid things anyway. Sentimental value and all that nonsense. He liked the way his socked feet slid on the worn felt of his shoes’ insides.
“Hey, you’re early. I wasn’t expecting you so soon.” Blaine turned and found Burt Hummel standing just off to his left. The man looked pretty haggard, but clean. He’d shaved and showered at the very least, and his pants and shirt looked fresh. Blaine figured that he’d cleaned up to keep Kurt from freaking out or something. Kurt was always so particular about hygiene.
“Hello, Mr. Hummel.”
“Look, Blaine,” he started, his voice a little rough and worn from lack of sleep. “I’ve gotta warn you before we go in there.” Blaine felt something tighten in his chest. Oh god, something was wrong. Something was wrong with Kurt.
Let him be okay. Let everything be okay. Please don’t tell me something’s wrong. Kurt should be getting better, right? Otherwise I wouldn’t be allowed to see him. He‘s got to be okay.
Everything’s going to be okay. It has to.
Burt shoved his hands into the pockets of his thin jacket. His shoulders were slumped to match his drooping posture; the rim of his cap was pulled low over his eyes. The man was nervous. “Kurt, he…he’s not well, son.”
Blaine met his eyes squarely, his back still pressed against the cool glass of the window. “I know that, sir.”
“Thought you did. I mean, how could you not, with everything that’s happened, but that…that’s not quite what I’m talking about. Just don’t-” He paused, his eyes wandering upward to the sky. “Don’t expect much from him just yet. He’s not well.”
Blaine simply nodded, not trusting himself to say anything more. Burt sighed and turned his head toward the hospital doors. “Well. Shall we?” He headed inside, Blaine tight on his heels.
---
It was surreal, walking in there again. This hospital gave him a little yellow tag for his name. Not nearly as bright as the garish pink one still laying crumpled in one of the cup holders of his car, but certainly bright enough to be hard on the eyes. His handwriting was better, though. No ‘Blarn Anderson’ this time, no matter how much he wanted to scratch out the neat letters and replace them with the sloppy block print he’d used on the last nametag. It reminded him of Kurt somehow.
Both he and Burt had to remove their shoes and leave them behind the front counter. They were given little paper slippers to cover their socks if they wanted them. Blaine hated the sound they made when he shuffled around in the hard carpet covering the floor, but he wore them anyway. He didn’t feel like testing the waters. Besides, Burt was wearing his; Blaine could suffer through them for an hour or two. They took away his belt, the little white lanyard he used to keep track of his keys. No exposed strings, nothing too rope-like, just in case a patient got too close. No pens or pencils. Nothing sharp. No weapons. Nothing that could potentially turn into a weapon. It put Blaine on edge.
The nurses gave him and Burt a brief overview of how this would happen. Burt had most assuredly heard this speech before-he’d visited Kurt the day before, Blaine was sure of it-but the man listened attentively at Blaine’s side, completely focused on the brief presentation. The last thing he wanted was to mess up and not be allowed to see Kurt again until the treatment was fully working. The nurses instructed them in where they could go, what they could do when inside the facility. Blaine was never to be alone. Always with an adult. Always supervised. Just like a little kid or a dog kept on a short leash. He didn’t mind, though. Not in this place. Not when the patients stared at them from little groups huddled under blankets as they passed by. Not when he didn’t have the comforting slip of his socks against the worn insides of his shoes. Not when he could hear someone screaming just down the hall.
Kurt was kept entirely in his own room for the time-being; they said he wasn’t lucid enough to be trusted alone with the other patients just yet. That made Blaine nervous. Burt’s words from earlier came back to him as they rounded the corner toward Kurt’s room.
He’s not well, son.
Not well.
He’s not well.
The words echoed in his head, bouncing around and around like a billiard ball. That quiet admission had a greater effect on him than even the reality of being here in this place did because Kurt’s dad never gave up on him. Never. And yet, with those three little words, he was admitting defeat.
Blaine really didn’t know what to do anymore.
They were allotted only a few minutes at a time with Kurt. More might be too much. They couldn’t afford to stress him. Not now. Not at this early stage in his treatment.
Burt and Blaine had agreed to go in together. It was easier that way. The door would be kept open, just a crack, and a nurse would be waiting for them just outside to lead them back to the front or subdue Kurt if necessary. Blaine prayed that it wouldn’t be necessary.
Kurt’s room was bare except for a low stool and a bed attached to the wall. Everything was painted in white or a soft, muted blue color. Like the petals of a forget-me-not. Kurt was pressed up into a corner, his bare feet tucked up tight against his thighs, toes curled into the smooth blanket beneath him. His hair was disheveled and there were dark circles under his eyes. He stared intently at the wall, eyes fixed on something Blaine couldn’t see; he didn’t even look up as Burt and Blaine entered the room, didn’t seem to notice their presence.
There was a notebook lying just out of Kurt’s reach, a few of its pages torn out and folded a bit at the corners. A stick of blue wax, almost like a crayon without its wrappings, rested atop the scattered papers. Its rounded edges were harmless, non-threatening. Kurt had scribbled messy words and pictures on some of the lined pages that Blaine couldn’t make out. It didn’t look like Kurt’s handiwork, but no one else could have done it.
Burt approached Kurt’s bed and sat down on the edge of it. His weight pressed down on the covers and he sank into the padding of the hard mattress. Blaine just stood off to the side, not really sure what to do. There was Kurt. Safe and sound. He didn’t really look all that different from what Blaine remembered, just a little mussed, if nothing else.
“Hey, kiddo. It’s me. I’m back.” His voice was quiet and calm, though Blaine knew the man was anything but. “I brought your friend Blaine with me.”
Kurt didn’t respond. He was silent, still.
“Kurt?” Burt leaned forward, trying to catch Kurt’s eye. “Can you hear me?”
“I can hear you fine,” Kurt mumbled, his voice flat and emotionless.
Burt hadn’t lost patience. “Will you look at me, Kurt?”
Kurt was silent, still staring at the wall for a few minutes. Blaine was growing nervous. This wasn’t what he’d been expecting. Kurt suddenly turned his head to look at him. “What are you doing here?”
“What?”
“What are you doing here?” he repeated, a bit stronger this time.
“I’m here to see you, Kurt. I wanted to know how you were doing.” Damn. His voice was shaky. His nerves were showing. This wasn’t going well at all.
Kurt’s face pinched into the faintest hint of a frown, and his hand moved up to pick at the lobe of his left ear. “They don’t like you, you know. Not after what you did, what you said.”
Burt’s hand moved to pull Kurt’s fingers away from his ear. “Kurt, remember what your doctor said. You shouldn’t be doing that.”
Kurt slapped his father’s hand away, his attention still focused on the boy in front of the door. His toes curled even tighter into the blanket, his feet taught, muscles straining. “You shouldn’t be here.”
“What do you mean, Kurt?”
His hand moved ever faster against the skin of his ear. His nails left little red gouges behind on the skin.
“You shouldn’t be here,” he repeated.
“I won’t be here very long, Kurt. I just had to see that you’re okay.”
Kurt was suddenly very distracted with his ear, scratching and picking furiously at the already inflamed skin. “Kurt?” Burt asked softly, “Kurt, are you okay?”
“No. No, no, no, I can’t get rid of them.” He looked up at his dad, his eyes bloodshot. He grabbed the man’s arms and held tight. “Daddy,” he whined, “daddy, you need to get rid of them. I can’t-I can’t do it. They’re everywhere. I-they’re…I can’t-” Tears were leaking from his eyes in a steady, silent stream. Blaine backed away toward the door, his heart pounding. Kurt was scrabbling at his dad’s shirt, trying to get a better grip, trying to ground himself in reality.
“Okay, Kurt. Okay. Just let me go get your doctor, all right? She’ll know what to do. She can make them go away.”
Kurt nodded vigorously, releasing his grip on his dad. Burt grabbed Blaine as they swept from the room. “Come on,” he whispered, tugging gently on Blaine’s shirt and leading him out into the hallway, “we need to go.”
Burt had a short talk with the nurse stationed outside Kurt’s room, and she quickly checked in on Kurt before shutting the door and talking to another nurse nearby. There was a minor flurry of activity centered around Kurt’s room as Burt and Blaine were led away toward the front desk.
“What’s going on, Mr. Hummel?”
“Nothing to worry about, Blaine. A little too much too soon, that’s all. It’s just a bad day.”
Bad day? He’d been worse than this? “Will he be okay?”
“Yeah,” Burt murmured absently, not really paying much attention to the boy at his side. “He will be. Just give it some time.”
---
“So, uh, do you want to get some coffee or maybe something for lunch?”
“Sure,” Blaine mumbled, distracted. “That would be great.”
Burt leaned over to peer into the teen’s face. The bright afternoon sunlight washed out Blaine’s skin, making him look extremely pale. “You okay there, kid? I know it wasn’t easy in there.”
“Yeah. I’m fine.” Blaine shuffled his shoes on the pavement, grateful to have them back on his feet, grateful to be outside those terrible restricting walls. It was comforting to have his belongings back on his person-the soft armor of his shoes over his feet, the tight cinch of his belt at his waist, the familiar weight of his keys in his pocket-but he was still shaken. He’d been waiting for this, waiting to see Kurt again, but that hadn’t been Kurt.
The person in that little blue room was something else entirely, something terrible and foreign that made Blaine’s stomach flip and his hair stand on end. He desperately wanted to scream and cry and shake Kurt over and over until the demons fled, until he was Kurt again, because things like this just didn’t happen in real life. He released a short puff of air through his nose and looked at Kurt’s father.
Blaine didn’t quite know what to think of the man. He was such an imposing figure, though Blaine couldn’t exactly put his finger on why. He wasn’t the biggest or most terrifying man physically. Maybe it was the fact that he never really smiled (well, sometimes around Kurt), or perhaps it was the whole flannel shirts, ball cap, mechanic thing. A real man’s man. With one of the most effeminate sons I’ve ever seen. A son that Burt cared for more than anything else in existence. Blaine could tell that from the way the man had tried to comfort Kurt, even though the teen hadn’t even acknowledged his presence until the stress had become too much and overwhelmed him. Burt was a great dad, so far as Blaine could tell. Didn’t mean he was entirely comfortable with Mr. Hummel, though. Not yet.
Blaine swallowed and curled his toes inside his shoes. “Um, where do you want to go?”
“There’s a burger place I ate at last night. It’s not that far from here, and the food wasn’t too bad. We could go there, if you’re not opposed to meat or anything like that. Some of the girls Kurt hangs around have a thing about that.”
“Yeah, that would be fine. I don’t know that I’ve ever turned down a good burger,” he replied with a tired grin.
“Okay,” Burt sighed. “Do you want to follow behind me then, or do you want to take one car and come back here?”
“I’ll ride with you, if that’s okay. I don’t think I can drive right now.”
Burt nodded. “Yeah, I know. That wasn’t…I understand, kid.” He adjusted the worn cap on his head and started over toward his car. Blaine followed along like a lost puppy, his feet moving of their own accord. His hands shook as he opened the car door; he could feel little tremors running through his entire body.
What are you doing here?
You shouldn’t be here.
“Shut up, shut up, shut up,” he whispered fervently to himself as he climbed into the car, desperately trying to get Kurt’s voice out of his head.
You shouldn’t be here.
“Oh god, please shut up.”
Burt shot him a worried glance. “You say something, Blaine?”
“N-no, sir.” He swallowed hard and buckled himself in. Oh god, he was going crazy. What if whatever had crawled into Kurt’s brain had infected him as well? What if he was hearing things, seeing things that weren’t there? What if he was going to start trying to kill his friends and family? What if-?
He threw his head back against the soft padding of the seat and screwed his eyes shut to try and calm himself down. His breath was too fast. His fingers tingled with numbness. His eyes stung so bad. He wanted nothing more than to go into some dark corner and cry until he couldn’t anymore, until every tear buried deep inside his head had dried up and disappeared, but he couldn’t do that. He couldn’t afford to break down in front of Kurt’s dad like that. He had to be strong. He had to do this. He breathed in deep, filling his lungs with air. Blaine wasn’t the one going crazy. Kurt was. Blaine just needed to learn how to cope.
It’s just a bad day.
“Mr. Hummel?”
“Hmm?”
“What did you mean?”
Burt was quiet for a moment, his eyes glued to the road. “I’m not sure what you’re talking about, Blaine. You’ll have to be more specific than that.”
“Sorry. Um, I just-what did you mean back there at the hospital when you said that this was just a bad day? Was Kurt, um, was he…?” He let the question hang in the air unfinished. He didn’t know quite what to say. Was Kurt worse? Was he violent? Was he like this before? Did this mean he wasn’t getting better?
The restaurant pulled into view, and Burt slowed the car to a stop. He pulled the keys out of the ignition but didn’t make a move to get out. Instead, he just sat there, eyes forward, hands resting on the steering wheel. Blaine was startled when the man opened his mouth to speak.
“It was really bad when you and your mom brought Kurt in. The doctor told me they had to sedate him to get him to calm down.” He sighed and flexed his hands around the hard leather of the steering wheel. Blaine watched the man’s knuckles go white as his grip tightened. “He thought the EMTs were trying to kill him.”
Blaine looked down at his knees. It was so much easier than looking at the man beside him. His fingers longed for something to do, itched to trace the lines and stitches of his denim jeans, but he sat completely still, waiting for Burt to continue. He needed to hear this.
“Once he was awake and they got him full of meds, he seemed to be okay. He was calmer, at least. Talking to me and the nurses. He wasn’t-” Burt paused and swallowed around the growing lump in his throat, “wasn’t quite the same, but he was close. Close to being Kurt again. Just a little quieter and kind of confused. Not as expressive. Definitely not as eloquent.” He chuckled a little and Blaine cringed at the sound. It was so hollow, so empty. This whole thing must be really hard for him.
Burt turned his head to look at Blaine. “That’s why they cleared him for non-family visitors, actually. He wasn’t dangerous or anything anymore, but he wasn’t quite the same as he was before he got sick. Come on. We’re here.” He stepped out of the car and Blaine followed suit, shoving his hands deep into his pants pockets where his fingers could run over the rough edges of his keys.
But they hit something he wasn’t expecting and stopped dead in his tracks just outside the door. Burt noticed and shot him an inquiring look. “Kid? You okay? I can turn around if you need me to. We don’t have to eat here. We don’t have to get anything at all.”
“No, this is fine. I just-” The sensitive pads of his fingers ran over smooth plastic, and he pulled the item out of his pocket. Kurt’s phone. He’d forgotten about it. He stared at the black device for a moment before holding it out to Burt. “Here. It’s Kurt’s. I was going to give it to you or Finn earlier, but I completely spaced it. I forgot I even had it.”
Burt took it and pressed the power button. The phone chimed as it turned on, the little screen flashing a greeting. Seven missed calls. Dozens of texts. Most of them from Mercedes. Burt remembered Finn telling him something about her the other night when he’d called to check in. The girl had gotten worried when Kurt hadn’t called her back or something, when everyone refused to tell her where Kurt was. She thought he might have been hospitalized again. Too bad she was right.
Burt held the device reverently in his hands. What he wouldn’t give to have Kurt holding this, chatting into it and running up a stupidly high bill. He stuck it into his shirt pocket and placed his hand on Blaine’s shoulder. “Thanks.”
Blaine nodded and let the gentle weight on his shoulder ground him in reality. This man was Kurt’s rock. He was so strong. Blaine needed to be strong too. For Kurt.
Thanks.
That little word said a lot. He’d never imagined one word could mean so much.
“Of course, Mr. Hummel.” Blaine smiled at the man beside him. He could help him bear this burden. He could be strong for Kurt too. “You’re welcome.”
---
“Jo.”
She stood in the open doorway like a phantom. The warm, bright sunlight hit her back and lined her form in white, almost like an angel. It didn’t matter what she was; she was his saving grace. Always had been. And damn was it good to see her again.
She wrapped her arms around him in greeting. “Hey there, baby bro. You miss me?”
“More than you could ever imagine,” he mumbled into her shirt.
“Oh, hey, I brought you a gift.” She released him and knelt down onto the floor, shuffling through her bag. She pulled out a giant tumble of fabric from the open zipper.
“What, pray tell, is that?” He pointed at the crumpled black and pink whatever-it-was she had bundled in her hands.
“Your gift. Here.” She handed it over to him. “Try it on.”
He unfolded it like a flag and inspected the thing, a tiny grin lifting up the corners of his mouth. “It’s a shirt.”
“Yup,” she said proudly as she stood. “One of the clients was handing them out for free at a fair I had to attend.”
“No offense, Jo, but do you even know what size I wear? This could probably fit three of me.”
“How was supposed to know you hadn’t turned into some sort of terrible obese monster? It’s not like I see you on a regular basis.”
He cocked an eyebrow at her. “Really, Jo? You think I’d gain four hundred pounds in seven months?”
She shrugged. “It’s possible.”
She cringed a little under the look he gave her. “Okay. So maybe all that was left was size double XL. At least I got you something, right? I don’t know, bud. It was free. I couldn’t turn it down. I thought you’d like the colors. You could always use it as a sleep shirt or something.”
He examined the thing again. The black was fine. Most everyone looked good in it, and Blaine was no exception. The pink design on the front, though, that got him. “What is this?”
“Company logo or something. I’m not exactly sure.”
“Mmm.” He nodded and traced the thick lines with his fingertips. He recognized this pink. It was the same shade as that stupid nametag, the one still wadded into a little ball in his car. Wonder what Jo would think of Blarn Anderson. He snorted and draped the thing over his arm. “Thanks, Jo. I like it.”
“Good, ‘cause that’s all you’re getting from me.” Her smile widened and she placed her hands on her hips. “All right, what’s going on, Blaine? You’re awfully quiet, and mom sounded kind of pissed on the phone. Is everything okay?”
He ducked his head. “Let me help you get your bags upstairs.” And he moved toward the luggage piled up at her feet.
“Blaine.” She stopped him with a hand on his shoulder. “Come on. What’s going on with you? I mean, really. I know something’s up. It’s me. You can tell me.”
“I really don’t want to talk about it.”
“Blaine.” He paused, his hand clenched tight around the strap of her duffle. “You sure about that? Talking always helped before. And you know I’m not going to judge you or anything. Promise.”
He pulled his lips in tight between his teeth and sucked in a great lungful of air through his nose. This was Jo. She’d been the first person he’d come out to, the first person he’d told about the harassment at school. She was the one to listen-never judging, never interrupting-just there. Always there. But he wasn’t sure if he could tell her about Kurt. He could feel moisture lining the bottom of his eyes, but the familiar sting of tears wasn’t there. He was numb. So very, very numb.
He nodded a little and closed his eyes. “Yeah. Yeah, okay. Let’s go upstairs first, get your stuff back in your old room, and I’ll tell you everything.”
She nodded, grabbed the handle of her luggage and followed her brother upstairs, wheeling the thing behind her. Blaine was suspiciously quiet as they climbed the stairs and shuffled down the hallway to what was once her room. The house was so familiar and yet different all at once. She supposed the different color of the paint on the walls had something to do with it. She slowed and ran her fingers along the smooth drywall. Blue. Just like her mother had always wanted when she was a kid. She wondered when dad had finally relented to having everything painted this way.
“Jo?”
Blaine. She shook herself awake. Her little brother needed her. She couldn’t afford to get lost in nostalgia now. “Sorry. I got distracted for a second.”
His face broke out in a grin. “I noticed.” He gestured toward her doorway. “You coming?”
“Yeah, yeah. Don’t get your panties in a twist.”
Her room had been cleaned, but very little of it had changed since her last visit. A few things were missing, but that was to be expected. Mom had called a while back and asked about a few things, if she was willing to let a couple of her old belongings fall victim to a garage sale. It wasn’t as if she was using them. She propped her bag up against the wall and flopped down onto the smooth surface of her old bed. Blaine was still standing just inside the door, her duffle slung over his shoulder.
“You can put that down now, you know.”
“What?”
She pointed at the bag. “That. You can set it down.”
“Oh. Right. Sorry, my head was somewhere else.”
“So I noticed.” She sighed and watched as he pulled the strap over his head and placed the bag down on the floor. “You okay, Blaine?”
He walked over to her desk, setting his new shirt down on the clean surface in a wadded black lump. He pulled out the chair and sat down, his shoulders hunched forward, his elbows resting on his knees. “Not really, no.”
“What’s going on? You’ve really got me worried, little brother. You’re really not acting like yourself and it’s kind of scaring me.”
“You remember that boy I told you about?”
“Which one?”
“A couple months ago, um, there was this kid who transferred to Dalton.”
“Oh, is this the spy kid you told me about? Robert or something?”
“It’s Kurt, and yeah, that’s the one.”
“Okay, so what about him?”
“He’s in the hospital, Jo.”
“What?”
“Yeah. He was admitted a couple days ago.”
“Oh my gosh, Blaine. I’m so sorry. What’s wrong? Is he okay?”
Blaine hung his head. “I don’t know.”
Jo frowned. Her brother was keeping himself a little too guarded. There was something Blaine wasn’t telling her. “So, is there anything else I should know?”
He stared down at the floor for a moment, chewing his lips in contemplation before slapping his knees and standing. “I need to show you something.” Okay. She could do that, if only it would help him open up.
She followed him to his room, noting his halting steps, the way his socks shuffled loudly against the carpet, his fast, uneven breaths. Something was up. “I haven’t been up here in two days, Jo. I’ve been sleeping in the guest room downstairs.” He paused just inside the door and pointed down at the carpet. There was a slight discoloration, a little darker than the rest of the room, but not by much.
“Okay…so what’s up with the carpet?”
“That’s a bloodstain, Jo.”
Her heart skipped a beat. “What?”
“Kurt was here. On Sunday. He killed Pavarotti, the bird I was watching for him. And then he tried to stab me with a pen.”
“Wait, what? Are you telling me your friend tried to kill you?”
“Um, sort of? I guess you could-”
“What the hell kind of friends do you have, Blaine? Is that why mom was all freaky at me? Because she’s afraid of your friends or something? I thought you got away from all the crazies when you transferred to that all boys school. I mean, jesus, Blaine, what-”
“Would you just stop already?! I just-you know, this, this sort of thing right here is why I didn’t want to tell you what was wrong, okay? Because I knew you’d flip out on me and then just pretend that nothing’s wrong when I stop talking to you. Just. Like. Mom. I swear to god, I’m just-I’m sick of it! Kurt’s fine. He’s fine.” His breath was coming in short gasps as he tried to calm himself down. “He just…forgot,” he mumbled as he collapsed onto his bed, his voice breaking. He was just so tired. Of everything. Why couldn’t things go back to the way they were? Why did everything have to be so messed up?
Jo stared at him in silence for a moment before sitting down beside him on the bed. The mattress dipped with her weight, and she drew her brother flush against her side, resting his head on her collarbone. “I didn’t…I never meant it like that, okay? Sorry. It’s just-you know, I’ve watched people try to hurt you before; I can’t stand to see you like that.”
“Yeah. I know, but Kurt’s not like that, I swear. He…he’s a good kid.”
“I bet. He sounds special to you.”
“Yeah. He is.”
They sat in companionable silence for a while. Jo kept her arm wrapped loosely around her brother’s shoulders. There had been something troubling about what Blaine had said earlier, and she couldn’t just let it slide. “Hey, Blaine?”
“Yeah?”
“What did you mean? When you said, ‘he forgot.’ What did he forget, your friend? Must‘ve been important.” She wasn’t looking at him, instead choosing to stare straight ahead out the open window in front of them.
Blaine was quiet. Jo could feel the steady rhythm of his breathing from the subtle rise and fall of his chest against her side. She tried to form an image of this kid, Kurt, in her head. What sort of person was he like? Blaine had talked about him often enough when they spoke on the phone, even if she hadn’t been paying the most attention. She was so distracted, she almost missed the soft sound of his answer when Blaine finally spoke again.
“His medication. He forgot his medication.”
The kid really was crazy then. Certifiable. She didn’t say a word, hoping that Blaine would eventually elaborate further, but he didn’t, he just laid there against the soft planes of her side, watching the light breeze make the curtains of his window dance in the sunlight. “I have to see him again today, Jo,” he whispered after a while. “I promised his dad I’d come down to see him.”
She nodded and pulled him in a little closer. As uncomfortable as the situation made her, this was her little brother-this was his life, his friend, his decision. Not hers. And whatever had happened, whatever this Kurt kid had done was eating Blaine up inside, and it killed her just a little bit to know that she couldn’t help him. Not really. She could be there for him, though, since she’d done such a piss-poor job of it before when Blaine had been coming home in tears with little notes scribbled in marker detailing what was going to happen to him. All because he was gay. And she hadn’t really done anything to help. Well, she could be there for him now. She could be his backup this time around. Whatever it took. She’d be there.
“Hey, Blaine?”
“Mmm?”
“Do you need a ride?”
---
“Blaine. I wasn’t sure you’d show. I know that it wasn’t exactly easy the other day.” Burt rose from his seat in the waiting room to greet them. He looked better, calmer than he had the last time Blaine saw him. His battered cap was slightly askew on his forehead, and Blaine’s hands itched to straighten it, make it right, but he stayed still. Just because he was more comfortable around Kurt’s dad didn’t mean that he was ready to start fussing about his appearance like a mother hen. Burt tilted his head toward Jo. “And who’s this?”
Blaine shook his head and gestured at his sister. “Oh, sorry, Mr. Hummel. This is Joanna. My sister.”
“Jo.” She held out her hand in greeting. “Call me Jo. Only my coworkers and my mother call me Joanna and it makes me feel ancient.”
Burt’s face split in a grin as he took her hand. “Consider it done.”
“And Jo, this is Burt Hummel. He’s Kurt’s father.”
Her smile fell, and her face went almost blank at those words. Kurt. Of course. The whole reason they drove down here. “I heard about your son. Well, obviously, or I wouldn’t be here, but I’m sorry to hear that he isn’t well.”
Burt’s lips tightened into a thin line, and Blaine was afraid for a second that the man was going to explode or cry or maybe even both. He stepped between the two, cleared his throat, and placed his hands over their still clasped ones. “Speaking of Kurt, how is he doing, Mr. Hummel?”
Burt sighed and loosened his grip, pulling his hand back to straighten the cap on his head. “Better than yesterday. Carole and Finn came up to see him, and he was acting better. No panic attacks or anything that time. The doctors said we’d be able to transfer him maybe the day after tomorrow.”
“You’ll tell me if-?”
“Yeah. Of course. Finn will get in contact with you if nothing else.”
Blaine simply nodded in response, and Jo felt left out. She didn’t know this Kurt kid aside from snippets of conversations on the phone with Blaine and that little revelation from him earlier that day. All she knew was that something was terribly, terribly wrong with the boy, and that if he ever tried to lay a hand on her brother again, she’d end him. Simple as that. No one messes with her little brother, no matter who they were. Not again. Not ever again.
“So are we allowed to see him? Now, I mean.”
“Yeah. I was just waiting for you to get here.” Burt turned his head briefly toward the nurse’s station and his eyes went blank. Blaine could see the guy was torn; he wanted to see his son, but he wasn’t sure that the person back there was really his son anymore. Blaine knew the feeling. He wanted nothing more than to sit and drink coffee with Kurt, talking about clothes and boys and nothing in particular. He hadn’t known just how much he’d miss that until he couldn’t simply call Kurt up and chat with him for an hour or two. Burt looked back at Blaine, his expression still neutral, his emotions contained. “He talked about you yesterday, you know. When they let me in to see him. That’s why I asked you to come down this afternoon. I wouldn’t have done it otherwise.”
“Really?”
“Yeah, kid.” Burt laid his hand on Blaine’s shoulder and smiled at him comfortingly. “He’s getting there. We’ll get him back.”
Blaine’s eyes tracked over to the nurse’s station, to that ominous door leading to the back. “I know. We should,” he swallowed, “we should probably go on back there.” He looked at his sister standing beside him and noted her bewildered expression. “You can wait here if you want, Jo. Or I guess you could come back with us. You don’t have to do anything, really. I’m just glad you came.”
Jo looked at the pair of them and felt a tightening in her throat. “Um, I think I’ll just stay out here. No offense, Mr. Hummel, but I have no idea who your son is, and I know that if it were me back there, I wouldn’t want strangers gawking at me.”
“No, that’s fine.” The corners of his mouth lifted up in a secret little smile. “I don’t think Kurt would appreciate being seen by someone new when he’s at less than his best. He’s kind of picky about his appearance,” he explained.
Blaine chuckled, “That’s an understatement.”
“Maybe a little,” Burt agreed. “Well, let’s go on back, then. Kurt’s been waiting for us.”
“You’ll be okay here, Jo?”
“Yes, dummy. I’m a big girl. I can take care of myself. Go on and see your friend. I’ll be here when you get back.” She sat down in the chair nearest to her and picked up one of the old magazines sitting beside her, leafing through the first couple of pages with mild interest. “Oh, and Blaine?”
“Yeah?”
“Just know that the minute we get home, you’re going to wash all that gel crap out of your hair so I can ruffle it. I miss those fluffy curls.”
“Jo, the reason I started doing this to my hair in the first place was to keep you from doing that.”
“It will make it all the sweeter, then,” she said with a smirk, and she promptly put her full attention to the magazine in her lap, paging through it until she found a story worth reading.
---
A new day, a new tag, this one as blue as the clear skies outside. As Blaine flattened down its corners on his chest, he wondered where the hospitals got these and why they were so stupidly colorful. Maybe it was supposed to be an optimistic contrast to the grim reality of being here. Didn’t make him feel better, though. He wasn’t sure anything would.
Blaine once again lost his shoes, but he refused the paper slippers. His socks would do just fine, thanks, though Burt was fine slipping on a pair of his own. Blaine couldn’t stand the light crinkling sound they made, their cheery blue color, but said nothing. Maybe they were a comfort to the man. He didn’t know and wasn’t comfortable with asking. Blaine still longed for his shoes. A nurse, a completely different one from last time, though Burt seemed to recognize him, quietly gave them the presentation on safety and procedures and led them into the back.
It was quiet this time. No murmuring in the background, no screaming patients behind closed doors, no quiet gossip from the nurses and orderlies, no rattling of pills or quiet strains of music, no shuffling of paper or fabric, even from the patients clustered along the walls of the common area. Nothing. Blaine couldn’t stand it. He wanted to take the silence in his hands and break it-smash it against the walls with screaming and pounding of fists. It would make this place seem far less surreal, like he was actually here and not making the whole thing up in his head, like some terrible nightmare. Maybe he was the one who was really going crazy. He needed this to be real.
Kurt was still locked away in that little blue room, and Blaine couldn’t help but notice the contrast between the muted color of the walls and the bright, glaring nametag plastered to his chest. Maybe it was some sort of cosmic metaphor. Kurt was too pale, too thin, too ungainly. He moved more like a trapped animal than the boy from Blaine’s memory. Maybe it was true. Maybe Kurt was trapped. Blaine felt his chest grow heavy at the sight of him. This Kurt was only a shade of his former self.
Kurt was on his bed as he was last time, but he was far less guarded. The little notebook from before was perched on his knees and he was inspecting the pages with faded interest. The little stick of bluish wax was resting beside his bare foot, the tip of it just brushing the pale skin. Blaine noted that his ear still looked enflamed, and his heart sank. So that habit hadn’t gone away.
“Hey, Kurt.”
He looked up and smiled at the sight of his dad standing in the doorway, placing the bundle of white pages down next to his hip. The crayon rolled around on the bed covers to rest against his toes, and Blaine studied the messy lines and words scribbled across the paper from his place behind Burt. None of it made any sense, but it kept him from looking at Kurt’s face, kept him from staring at the uncombed hair and dark rings of skin under his eyes. He couldn’t even look up at the sound of Kurt’s voice, the first hint of noise to break through the overwhelming silence.
“Hi, dad.”
---
Burt’s smile was a little stifled, but Blaine said nothing as the man walked over to the low stool next to Kurt’s bed and pulled it out for himself to sit. He could see how hard this was for the man, seeing Kurt so sick. Blaine himself hung near the doorway, not really sure what to do or where to go.
He looked at Kurt and couldn’t help picture the sad deranged boy from his last visit with his cold, staring eyes and harsh, jerky movements. Like a marionette whose strings had just been cut. Kurt really didn’t look all that different now, and Blaine wondered just how long it would be before he snapped.
You shouldn’t be here.
His heart leapt into his throat and lodged itself into his windpipe. He wasn’t sure he could do this, not after last time, not when it had become so hard to breathe.
You shouldn’t be here.
Panic was starting to take hold, gripping him in its terrible, icy claws. Blaine stepped back and leaned against the door frame, clutching the wooden ridges tight in his fingers. This was so hard. No one had ever told him love was going to be so impossibly difficult. Maybe his mom was right. Maybe his choice in men was flawed. Maybe he should just give this whole thing up. He didn’t know if he could do this right now.
He pictured the wooden door frame buckling beneath his fingertips, splintering into a thousand little pieces under the pressure of the clenching muscles of his hands. Surely something had to happen; someone had to know just how freaked he was right now, and it really wasn’t fair. Not at all. He’d been so certain that he was ready for this, that nothing could go wrong, and now, when he was finally seeing Kurt again in person, his breath wouldn’t come the way it should, his hands wouldn’t stop shaking, he couldn’t stop sweating. It really wasn’t fair. That terrible numbness from before was creeping into his hands and his throat just kept getting smaller and smaller. He really didn’t know if he could do this anymore.
Burt didn’t take any notice, and he leaned over the side of Kurt’s bed, gripping his son’s long, spindly fingers in his own and brushing the top of Kurt’s hand in a comforting circle with his thumb. “How are you feeling today, bud?”
“Better.” Kurt reached up to trace the shell of his ear and tug at the soft pillow of his earlobe. There was no scraping of nails, no tearing of flesh, but the action still made Blaine incredibly nervous. “They’re not so loud today,” Kurt murmured softly.
“That’s good.” Burt’s voice was quiet, subdued, but genuinely relieved. He brushed a hand over the gentle sweep of Kurt’s bangs, shifting the chestnut hair from the boy’s forehead to tuck it behind his ear. “We don’t want a repeat of two days ago.”
Kurt shook his head-a tiny, almost demure gesture that left Blaine completely and utterly torn. On the one hand, he desperately wanted to run up to the other boy, throw his arms around him, and never let go. The two of them could simply run away together and never come back; Blaine could take out of all the evil things that had wedged themselves into Kurt’s brain and wash them away with love, as though they‘d never been there. Everything would be okay again; they could be stupid and happy and young and in love, and nothing could stop them. Nothing could take them down. But he was kidding himself. Kurt already had more love than he’d ever need from his dad. The man was kind of amazing that way, and Blaine only wished he had that sort of support system. His parents, his sister, they were wonderful, but they weren’t quite the same caliber as Burt Hummel. If love was all it took to cure him, Kurt would never have gotten sick in the first place. Not with a dad like Burt standing behind him and holding him up. It wasn’t fair, but when is anything ever fair?
On the other hand, simply seeing Kurt curled up in this little blue room, all pale and ruffled and all too similar to that strange foreign presence that had so terrified him before, had Blaine so nervous he could barely keep still for fear that the slightest movement would cause Kurt to explode. Though no one could really blame him for feeling the way he did. There really hadn’t been all that much time since Kurt had tried to kill him, after all. He couldn’t just sweep that one under the rug and forget about it without some time. It didn’t mean that he didn’t want to see Kurt; it just meant he self-preservation instincts were alive and well. That’s all. But Blaine would admit that he felt a little bad that his body was already tensing reflexively at Kurt’s words.
They’re not so loud today.
That sort of thing couldn’t be normal, could it?
“Blaine came down to see you.” Burt tilted his head in Blaine’s direction. Kurt looked over at him through heavy-lidded eyes, and smiled just a little.
“I know. I saw him come in behind you.”
“Do you want to talk to him?”
“If he wants to talk to me.” Kurt shot him with a pointed look. “He hasn’t moved from the doorway yet, and to be honest, he doesn’t really look like he wants to be here.”
Well, that certainly sounded more like the Kurt he knew. Burt turned and frowned at Blaine without ever letting go of Kurt’s hand. Blaine cleared his throat and released the wall, taking a step forward. There were tiny tremors running through his legs that he prayed desperately that no one could see. “But you can’t really blame me, can you, Kurt? Even with your wonderful presence, do you think anyone really wants to be here?”
“No, I suppose not.” Kurt leaned back and the hard nub at the top of his spine thudded dully against the wall behind him. Blaine noticed then that Kurt was curled up in the same spot he’d been in the last time Blaine had visited. He wondered how often Kurt moved from that spot, if sitting there was a comfort somehow.
Blaine stepped over to the bed. His socks slipped on the smooth floor, and he could feel the cold from the tiles seeping through the thin fabric up into the sensitive skin at the bottom of his feet. The mattress of the bed was surprisingly firm, and Blaine had to stop himself from cringing as he sat down. Definitely not the most comfortable thing in the world.
“So what did my dad bribe you with to come see me?”
Blaine looked up, startled, until he saw Kurt’s smiling face. Blaine would know that grin anywhere. Kurt was joking with him! “Well, you know, nothing special. Just money, lavish dinners and vacations, your hand in marriage. You know, the basics,” he said, leaning back against the wall.
And Kurt laughed. It was one of his odd low chuckles, but it was genuine. Blaine hadn’t thought he’d ever hear that sound again. It was funny how something he’d never really liked all that much before could make him feel so much better about everything. He reached over and placed his hand over the still clasped ones of Kurt and his dad. The skin under his palm was warm and reassuring, and he smiled. He missed little physical comforts like this, like his mother’s hugs, Jo ruffling his hair or his dad’s gentle pats on the shoulder. He hadn’t realized just how much he’d wanted something like that until now. No one seemed to touch him anymore, and god did he miss it.
He squeezed his hand over the bundle of fingers in his grip. “You sure you’re doing okay?”
“Yeah,” Kurt replied, his voice soft and peppered with a tiny hint of sorrow. “Yeah, I think I am.”
---
Next
Back
Beginning
Burt had called him this morning and given Blaine the good news: Kurt was responding to treatment. He was able to have visitors. People other than family. And hopefully soon, he’d be transferred back to Lima. Kurt might be able to go home in just a few days. He was getting better. Things were finally looking up.
Blaine had agreed to meet Burt outside the hospital around noon, and Blaine was nothing but a bundle of nervous energy as the morning stretched on. He’d bleached and re-bleached the brownish spots on his carpet until the fibers were stiff and only slightly off color. Maybe he’d buy a throw rug or something to cover the stains, help him forget the memory.
Vacuuming had taken care of the feathers, and there had been so many feathers. He was still finding them in the little nooks and crannies of his room. Blaine had spent a good deal of time picking them out of the carpet one by one to distract himself. The little yellow feathers had crackled in his fingers as he’d picked them up, the edges crisp and hard with dried clots of brownish blood. He still hadn’t bothered to clean out the cage, instead opting to drape a towel over it and leave it alone in the corner. Out of sight, out of mind. He’d take care of it eventually.
But then there was Kurt.
He was going to see Kurt today.
Blaine stood outside the hospital, leaning against one of the large windows of the waiting area. He was early, but not by too much. Burt would be here soon. And then he’d get to see Kurt. He leaned back on his heels and flexed his toes through his shoes. They were old, these shoes. The soft padding was wearing out and growing flat, but he loved the stupid things anyway. Sentimental value and all that nonsense. He liked the way his socked feet slid on the worn felt of his shoes’ insides.
“Hey, you’re early. I wasn’t expecting you so soon.” Blaine turned and found Burt Hummel standing just off to his left. The man looked pretty haggard, but clean. He’d shaved and showered at the very least, and his pants and shirt looked fresh. Blaine figured that he’d cleaned up to keep Kurt from freaking out or something. Kurt was always so particular about hygiene.
“Hello, Mr. Hummel.”
“Look, Blaine,” he started, his voice a little rough and worn from lack of sleep. “I’ve gotta warn you before we go in there.” Blaine felt something tighten in his chest. Oh god, something was wrong. Something was wrong with Kurt.
Let him be okay. Let everything be okay. Please don’t tell me something’s wrong. Kurt should be getting better, right? Otherwise I wouldn’t be allowed to see him. He‘s got to be okay.
Everything’s going to be okay. It has to.
Burt shoved his hands into the pockets of his thin jacket. His shoulders were slumped to match his drooping posture; the rim of his cap was pulled low over his eyes. The man was nervous. “Kurt, he…he’s not well, son.”
Blaine met his eyes squarely, his back still pressed against the cool glass of the window. “I know that, sir.”
“Thought you did. I mean, how could you not, with everything that’s happened, but that…that’s not quite what I’m talking about. Just don’t-” He paused, his eyes wandering upward to the sky. “Don’t expect much from him just yet. He’s not well.”
Blaine simply nodded, not trusting himself to say anything more. Burt sighed and turned his head toward the hospital doors. “Well. Shall we?” He headed inside, Blaine tight on his heels.
---
It was surreal, walking in there again. This hospital gave him a little yellow tag for his name. Not nearly as bright as the garish pink one still laying crumpled in one of the cup holders of his car, but certainly bright enough to be hard on the eyes. His handwriting was better, though. No ‘Blarn Anderson’ this time, no matter how much he wanted to scratch out the neat letters and replace them with the sloppy block print he’d used on the last nametag. It reminded him of Kurt somehow.
Both he and Burt had to remove their shoes and leave them behind the front counter. They were given little paper slippers to cover their socks if they wanted them. Blaine hated the sound they made when he shuffled around in the hard carpet covering the floor, but he wore them anyway. He didn’t feel like testing the waters. Besides, Burt was wearing his; Blaine could suffer through them for an hour or two. They took away his belt, the little white lanyard he used to keep track of his keys. No exposed strings, nothing too rope-like, just in case a patient got too close. No pens or pencils. Nothing sharp. No weapons. Nothing that could potentially turn into a weapon. It put Blaine on edge.
The nurses gave him and Burt a brief overview of how this would happen. Burt had most assuredly heard this speech before-he’d visited Kurt the day before, Blaine was sure of it-but the man listened attentively at Blaine’s side, completely focused on the brief presentation. The last thing he wanted was to mess up and not be allowed to see Kurt again until the treatment was fully working. The nurses instructed them in where they could go, what they could do when inside the facility. Blaine was never to be alone. Always with an adult. Always supervised. Just like a little kid or a dog kept on a short leash. He didn’t mind, though. Not in this place. Not when the patients stared at them from little groups huddled under blankets as they passed by. Not when he didn’t have the comforting slip of his socks against the worn insides of his shoes. Not when he could hear someone screaming just down the hall.
Kurt was kept entirely in his own room for the time-being; they said he wasn’t lucid enough to be trusted alone with the other patients just yet. That made Blaine nervous. Burt’s words from earlier came back to him as they rounded the corner toward Kurt’s room.
He’s not well, son.
Not well.
He’s not well.
The words echoed in his head, bouncing around and around like a billiard ball. That quiet admission had a greater effect on him than even the reality of being here in this place did because Kurt’s dad never gave up on him. Never. And yet, with those three little words, he was admitting defeat.
Blaine really didn’t know what to do anymore.
They were allotted only a few minutes at a time with Kurt. More might be too much. They couldn’t afford to stress him. Not now. Not at this early stage in his treatment.
Burt and Blaine had agreed to go in together. It was easier that way. The door would be kept open, just a crack, and a nurse would be waiting for them just outside to lead them back to the front or subdue Kurt if necessary. Blaine prayed that it wouldn’t be necessary.
Kurt’s room was bare except for a low stool and a bed attached to the wall. Everything was painted in white or a soft, muted blue color. Like the petals of a forget-me-not. Kurt was pressed up into a corner, his bare feet tucked up tight against his thighs, toes curled into the smooth blanket beneath him. His hair was disheveled and there were dark circles under his eyes. He stared intently at the wall, eyes fixed on something Blaine couldn’t see; he didn’t even look up as Burt and Blaine entered the room, didn’t seem to notice their presence.
There was a notebook lying just out of Kurt’s reach, a few of its pages torn out and folded a bit at the corners. A stick of blue wax, almost like a crayon without its wrappings, rested atop the scattered papers. Its rounded edges were harmless, non-threatening. Kurt had scribbled messy words and pictures on some of the lined pages that Blaine couldn’t make out. It didn’t look like Kurt’s handiwork, but no one else could have done it.
Burt approached Kurt’s bed and sat down on the edge of it. His weight pressed down on the covers and he sank into the padding of the hard mattress. Blaine just stood off to the side, not really sure what to do. There was Kurt. Safe and sound. He didn’t really look all that different from what Blaine remembered, just a little mussed, if nothing else.
“Hey, kiddo. It’s me. I’m back.” His voice was quiet and calm, though Blaine knew the man was anything but. “I brought your friend Blaine with me.”
Kurt didn’t respond. He was silent, still.
“Kurt?” Burt leaned forward, trying to catch Kurt’s eye. “Can you hear me?”
“I can hear you fine,” Kurt mumbled, his voice flat and emotionless.
Burt hadn’t lost patience. “Will you look at me, Kurt?”
Kurt was silent, still staring at the wall for a few minutes. Blaine was growing nervous. This wasn’t what he’d been expecting. Kurt suddenly turned his head to look at him. “What are you doing here?”
“What?”
“What are you doing here?” he repeated, a bit stronger this time.
“I’m here to see you, Kurt. I wanted to know how you were doing.” Damn. His voice was shaky. His nerves were showing. This wasn’t going well at all.
Kurt’s face pinched into the faintest hint of a frown, and his hand moved up to pick at the lobe of his left ear. “They don’t like you, you know. Not after what you did, what you said.”
Burt’s hand moved to pull Kurt’s fingers away from his ear. “Kurt, remember what your doctor said. You shouldn’t be doing that.”
Kurt slapped his father’s hand away, his attention still focused on the boy in front of the door. His toes curled even tighter into the blanket, his feet taught, muscles straining. “You shouldn’t be here.”
“What do you mean, Kurt?”
His hand moved ever faster against the skin of his ear. His nails left little red gouges behind on the skin.
“You shouldn’t be here,” he repeated.
“I won’t be here very long, Kurt. I just had to see that you’re okay.”
Kurt was suddenly very distracted with his ear, scratching and picking furiously at the already inflamed skin. “Kurt?” Burt asked softly, “Kurt, are you okay?”
“No. No, no, no, I can’t get rid of them.” He looked up at his dad, his eyes bloodshot. He grabbed the man’s arms and held tight. “Daddy,” he whined, “daddy, you need to get rid of them. I can’t-I can’t do it. They’re everywhere. I-they’re…I can’t-” Tears were leaking from his eyes in a steady, silent stream. Blaine backed away toward the door, his heart pounding. Kurt was scrabbling at his dad’s shirt, trying to get a better grip, trying to ground himself in reality.
“Okay, Kurt. Okay. Just let me go get your doctor, all right? She’ll know what to do. She can make them go away.”
Kurt nodded vigorously, releasing his grip on his dad. Burt grabbed Blaine as they swept from the room. “Come on,” he whispered, tugging gently on Blaine’s shirt and leading him out into the hallway, “we need to go.”
Burt had a short talk with the nurse stationed outside Kurt’s room, and she quickly checked in on Kurt before shutting the door and talking to another nurse nearby. There was a minor flurry of activity centered around Kurt’s room as Burt and Blaine were led away toward the front desk.
“What’s going on, Mr. Hummel?”
“Nothing to worry about, Blaine. A little too much too soon, that’s all. It’s just a bad day.”
Bad day? He’d been worse than this? “Will he be okay?”
“Yeah,” Burt murmured absently, not really paying much attention to the boy at his side. “He will be. Just give it some time.”
---
“So, uh, do you want to get some coffee or maybe something for lunch?”
“Sure,” Blaine mumbled, distracted. “That would be great.”
Burt leaned over to peer into the teen’s face. The bright afternoon sunlight washed out Blaine’s skin, making him look extremely pale. “You okay there, kid? I know it wasn’t easy in there.”
“Yeah. I’m fine.” Blaine shuffled his shoes on the pavement, grateful to have them back on his feet, grateful to be outside those terrible restricting walls. It was comforting to have his belongings back on his person-the soft armor of his shoes over his feet, the tight cinch of his belt at his waist, the familiar weight of his keys in his pocket-but he was still shaken. He’d been waiting for this, waiting to see Kurt again, but that hadn’t been Kurt.
The person in that little blue room was something else entirely, something terrible and foreign that made Blaine’s stomach flip and his hair stand on end. He desperately wanted to scream and cry and shake Kurt over and over until the demons fled, until he was Kurt again, because things like this just didn’t happen in real life. He released a short puff of air through his nose and looked at Kurt’s father.
Blaine didn’t quite know what to think of the man. He was such an imposing figure, though Blaine couldn’t exactly put his finger on why. He wasn’t the biggest or most terrifying man physically. Maybe it was the fact that he never really smiled (well, sometimes around Kurt), or perhaps it was the whole flannel shirts, ball cap, mechanic thing. A real man’s man. With one of the most effeminate sons I’ve ever seen. A son that Burt cared for more than anything else in existence. Blaine could tell that from the way the man had tried to comfort Kurt, even though the teen hadn’t even acknowledged his presence until the stress had become too much and overwhelmed him. Burt was a great dad, so far as Blaine could tell. Didn’t mean he was entirely comfortable with Mr. Hummel, though. Not yet.
Blaine swallowed and curled his toes inside his shoes. “Um, where do you want to go?”
“There’s a burger place I ate at last night. It’s not that far from here, and the food wasn’t too bad. We could go there, if you’re not opposed to meat or anything like that. Some of the girls Kurt hangs around have a thing about that.”
“Yeah, that would be fine. I don’t know that I’ve ever turned down a good burger,” he replied with a tired grin.
“Okay,” Burt sighed. “Do you want to follow behind me then, or do you want to take one car and come back here?”
“I’ll ride with you, if that’s okay. I don’t think I can drive right now.”
Burt nodded. “Yeah, I know. That wasn’t…I understand, kid.” He adjusted the worn cap on his head and started over toward his car. Blaine followed along like a lost puppy, his feet moving of their own accord. His hands shook as he opened the car door; he could feel little tremors running through his entire body.
What are you doing here?
You shouldn’t be here.
“Shut up, shut up, shut up,” he whispered fervently to himself as he climbed into the car, desperately trying to get Kurt’s voice out of his head.
You shouldn’t be here.
“Oh god, please shut up.”
Burt shot him a worried glance. “You say something, Blaine?”
“N-no, sir.” He swallowed hard and buckled himself in. Oh god, he was going crazy. What if whatever had crawled into Kurt’s brain had infected him as well? What if he was hearing things, seeing things that weren’t there? What if he was going to start trying to kill his friends and family? What if-?
He threw his head back against the soft padding of the seat and screwed his eyes shut to try and calm himself down. His breath was too fast. His fingers tingled with numbness. His eyes stung so bad. He wanted nothing more than to go into some dark corner and cry until he couldn’t anymore, until every tear buried deep inside his head had dried up and disappeared, but he couldn’t do that. He couldn’t afford to break down in front of Kurt’s dad like that. He had to be strong. He had to do this. He breathed in deep, filling his lungs with air. Blaine wasn’t the one going crazy. Kurt was. Blaine just needed to learn how to cope.
It’s just a bad day.
“Mr. Hummel?”
“Hmm?”
“What did you mean?”
Burt was quiet for a moment, his eyes glued to the road. “I’m not sure what you’re talking about, Blaine. You’ll have to be more specific than that.”
“Sorry. Um, I just-what did you mean back there at the hospital when you said that this was just a bad day? Was Kurt, um, was he…?” He let the question hang in the air unfinished. He didn’t know quite what to say. Was Kurt worse? Was he violent? Was he like this before? Did this mean he wasn’t getting better?
The restaurant pulled into view, and Burt slowed the car to a stop. He pulled the keys out of the ignition but didn’t make a move to get out. Instead, he just sat there, eyes forward, hands resting on the steering wheel. Blaine was startled when the man opened his mouth to speak.
“It was really bad when you and your mom brought Kurt in. The doctor told me they had to sedate him to get him to calm down.” He sighed and flexed his hands around the hard leather of the steering wheel. Blaine watched the man’s knuckles go white as his grip tightened. “He thought the EMTs were trying to kill him.”
Blaine looked down at his knees. It was so much easier than looking at the man beside him. His fingers longed for something to do, itched to trace the lines and stitches of his denim jeans, but he sat completely still, waiting for Burt to continue. He needed to hear this.
“Once he was awake and they got him full of meds, he seemed to be okay. He was calmer, at least. Talking to me and the nurses. He wasn’t-” Burt paused and swallowed around the growing lump in his throat, “wasn’t quite the same, but he was close. Close to being Kurt again. Just a little quieter and kind of confused. Not as expressive. Definitely not as eloquent.” He chuckled a little and Blaine cringed at the sound. It was so hollow, so empty. This whole thing must be really hard for him.
Burt turned his head to look at Blaine. “That’s why they cleared him for non-family visitors, actually. He wasn’t dangerous or anything anymore, but he wasn’t quite the same as he was before he got sick. Come on. We’re here.” He stepped out of the car and Blaine followed suit, shoving his hands deep into his pants pockets where his fingers could run over the rough edges of his keys.
But they hit something he wasn’t expecting and stopped dead in his tracks just outside the door. Burt noticed and shot him an inquiring look. “Kid? You okay? I can turn around if you need me to. We don’t have to eat here. We don’t have to get anything at all.”
“No, this is fine. I just-” The sensitive pads of his fingers ran over smooth plastic, and he pulled the item out of his pocket. Kurt’s phone. He’d forgotten about it. He stared at the black device for a moment before holding it out to Burt. “Here. It’s Kurt’s. I was going to give it to you or Finn earlier, but I completely spaced it. I forgot I even had it.”
Burt took it and pressed the power button. The phone chimed as it turned on, the little screen flashing a greeting. Seven missed calls. Dozens of texts. Most of them from Mercedes. Burt remembered Finn telling him something about her the other night when he’d called to check in. The girl had gotten worried when Kurt hadn’t called her back or something, when everyone refused to tell her where Kurt was. She thought he might have been hospitalized again. Too bad she was right.
Burt held the device reverently in his hands. What he wouldn’t give to have Kurt holding this, chatting into it and running up a stupidly high bill. He stuck it into his shirt pocket and placed his hand on Blaine’s shoulder. “Thanks.”
Blaine nodded and let the gentle weight on his shoulder ground him in reality. This man was Kurt’s rock. He was so strong. Blaine needed to be strong too. For Kurt.
Thanks.
That little word said a lot. He’d never imagined one word could mean so much.
“Of course, Mr. Hummel.” Blaine smiled at the man beside him. He could help him bear this burden. He could be strong for Kurt too. “You’re welcome.”
---
“Jo.”
She stood in the open doorway like a phantom. The warm, bright sunlight hit her back and lined her form in white, almost like an angel. It didn’t matter what she was; she was his saving grace. Always had been. And damn was it good to see her again.
She wrapped her arms around him in greeting. “Hey there, baby bro. You miss me?”
“More than you could ever imagine,” he mumbled into her shirt.
“Oh, hey, I brought you a gift.” She released him and knelt down onto the floor, shuffling through her bag. She pulled out a giant tumble of fabric from the open zipper.
“What, pray tell, is that?” He pointed at the crumpled black and pink whatever-it-was she had bundled in her hands.
“Your gift. Here.” She handed it over to him. “Try it on.”
He unfolded it like a flag and inspected the thing, a tiny grin lifting up the corners of his mouth. “It’s a shirt.”
“Yup,” she said proudly as she stood. “One of the clients was handing them out for free at a fair I had to attend.”
“No offense, Jo, but do you even know what size I wear? This could probably fit three of me.”
“How was supposed to know you hadn’t turned into some sort of terrible obese monster? It’s not like I see you on a regular basis.”
He cocked an eyebrow at her. “Really, Jo? You think I’d gain four hundred pounds in seven months?”
She shrugged. “It’s possible.”
She cringed a little under the look he gave her. “Okay. So maybe all that was left was size double XL. At least I got you something, right? I don’t know, bud. It was free. I couldn’t turn it down. I thought you’d like the colors. You could always use it as a sleep shirt or something.”
He examined the thing again. The black was fine. Most everyone looked good in it, and Blaine was no exception. The pink design on the front, though, that got him. “What is this?”
“Company logo or something. I’m not exactly sure.”
“Mmm.” He nodded and traced the thick lines with his fingertips. He recognized this pink. It was the same shade as that stupid nametag, the one still wadded into a little ball in his car. Wonder what Jo would think of Blarn Anderson. He snorted and draped the thing over his arm. “Thanks, Jo. I like it.”
“Good, ‘cause that’s all you’re getting from me.” Her smile widened and she placed her hands on her hips. “All right, what’s going on, Blaine? You’re awfully quiet, and mom sounded kind of pissed on the phone. Is everything okay?”
He ducked his head. “Let me help you get your bags upstairs.” And he moved toward the luggage piled up at her feet.
“Blaine.” She stopped him with a hand on his shoulder. “Come on. What’s going on with you? I mean, really. I know something’s up. It’s me. You can tell me.”
“I really don’t want to talk about it.”
“Blaine.” He paused, his hand clenched tight around the strap of her duffle. “You sure about that? Talking always helped before. And you know I’m not going to judge you or anything. Promise.”
He pulled his lips in tight between his teeth and sucked in a great lungful of air through his nose. This was Jo. She’d been the first person he’d come out to, the first person he’d told about the harassment at school. She was the one to listen-never judging, never interrupting-just there. Always there. But he wasn’t sure if he could tell her about Kurt. He could feel moisture lining the bottom of his eyes, but the familiar sting of tears wasn’t there. He was numb. So very, very numb.
He nodded a little and closed his eyes. “Yeah. Yeah, okay. Let’s go upstairs first, get your stuff back in your old room, and I’ll tell you everything.”
She nodded, grabbed the handle of her luggage and followed her brother upstairs, wheeling the thing behind her. Blaine was suspiciously quiet as they climbed the stairs and shuffled down the hallway to what was once her room. The house was so familiar and yet different all at once. She supposed the different color of the paint on the walls had something to do with it. She slowed and ran her fingers along the smooth drywall. Blue. Just like her mother had always wanted when she was a kid. She wondered when dad had finally relented to having everything painted this way.
“Jo?”
Blaine. She shook herself awake. Her little brother needed her. She couldn’t afford to get lost in nostalgia now. “Sorry. I got distracted for a second.”
His face broke out in a grin. “I noticed.” He gestured toward her doorway. “You coming?”
“Yeah, yeah. Don’t get your panties in a twist.”
Her room had been cleaned, but very little of it had changed since her last visit. A few things were missing, but that was to be expected. Mom had called a while back and asked about a few things, if she was willing to let a couple of her old belongings fall victim to a garage sale. It wasn’t as if she was using them. She propped her bag up against the wall and flopped down onto the smooth surface of her old bed. Blaine was still standing just inside the door, her duffle slung over his shoulder.
“You can put that down now, you know.”
“What?”
She pointed at the bag. “That. You can set it down.”
“Oh. Right. Sorry, my head was somewhere else.”
“So I noticed.” She sighed and watched as he pulled the strap over his head and placed the bag down on the floor. “You okay, Blaine?”
He walked over to her desk, setting his new shirt down on the clean surface in a wadded black lump. He pulled out the chair and sat down, his shoulders hunched forward, his elbows resting on his knees. “Not really, no.”
“What’s going on? You’ve really got me worried, little brother. You’re really not acting like yourself and it’s kind of scaring me.”
“You remember that boy I told you about?”
“Which one?”
“A couple months ago, um, there was this kid who transferred to Dalton.”
“Oh, is this the spy kid you told me about? Robert or something?”
“It’s Kurt, and yeah, that’s the one.”
“Okay, so what about him?”
“He’s in the hospital, Jo.”
“What?”
“Yeah. He was admitted a couple days ago.”
“Oh my gosh, Blaine. I’m so sorry. What’s wrong? Is he okay?”
Blaine hung his head. “I don’t know.”
Jo frowned. Her brother was keeping himself a little too guarded. There was something Blaine wasn’t telling her. “So, is there anything else I should know?”
He stared down at the floor for a moment, chewing his lips in contemplation before slapping his knees and standing. “I need to show you something.” Okay. She could do that, if only it would help him open up.
She followed him to his room, noting his halting steps, the way his socks shuffled loudly against the carpet, his fast, uneven breaths. Something was up. “I haven’t been up here in two days, Jo. I’ve been sleeping in the guest room downstairs.” He paused just inside the door and pointed down at the carpet. There was a slight discoloration, a little darker than the rest of the room, but not by much.
“Okay…so what’s up with the carpet?”
“That’s a bloodstain, Jo.”
Her heart skipped a beat. “What?”
“Kurt was here. On Sunday. He killed Pavarotti, the bird I was watching for him. And then he tried to stab me with a pen.”
“Wait, what? Are you telling me your friend tried to kill you?”
“Um, sort of? I guess you could-”
“What the hell kind of friends do you have, Blaine? Is that why mom was all freaky at me? Because she’s afraid of your friends or something? I thought you got away from all the crazies when you transferred to that all boys school. I mean, jesus, Blaine, what-”
“Would you just stop already?! I just-you know, this, this sort of thing right here is why I didn’t want to tell you what was wrong, okay? Because I knew you’d flip out on me and then just pretend that nothing’s wrong when I stop talking to you. Just. Like. Mom. I swear to god, I’m just-I’m sick of it! Kurt’s fine. He’s fine.” His breath was coming in short gasps as he tried to calm himself down. “He just…forgot,” he mumbled as he collapsed onto his bed, his voice breaking. He was just so tired. Of everything. Why couldn’t things go back to the way they were? Why did everything have to be so messed up?
Jo stared at him in silence for a moment before sitting down beside him on the bed. The mattress dipped with her weight, and she drew her brother flush against her side, resting his head on her collarbone. “I didn’t…I never meant it like that, okay? Sorry. It’s just-you know, I’ve watched people try to hurt you before; I can’t stand to see you like that.”
“Yeah. I know, but Kurt’s not like that, I swear. He…he’s a good kid.”
“I bet. He sounds special to you.”
“Yeah. He is.”
They sat in companionable silence for a while. Jo kept her arm wrapped loosely around her brother’s shoulders. There had been something troubling about what Blaine had said earlier, and she couldn’t just let it slide. “Hey, Blaine?”
“Yeah?”
“What did you mean? When you said, ‘he forgot.’ What did he forget, your friend? Must‘ve been important.” She wasn’t looking at him, instead choosing to stare straight ahead out the open window in front of them.
Blaine was quiet. Jo could feel the steady rhythm of his breathing from the subtle rise and fall of his chest against her side. She tried to form an image of this kid, Kurt, in her head. What sort of person was he like? Blaine had talked about him often enough when they spoke on the phone, even if she hadn’t been paying the most attention. She was so distracted, she almost missed the soft sound of his answer when Blaine finally spoke again.
“His medication. He forgot his medication.”
The kid really was crazy then. Certifiable. She didn’t say a word, hoping that Blaine would eventually elaborate further, but he didn’t, he just laid there against the soft planes of her side, watching the light breeze make the curtains of his window dance in the sunlight. “I have to see him again today, Jo,” he whispered after a while. “I promised his dad I’d come down to see him.”
She nodded and pulled him in a little closer. As uncomfortable as the situation made her, this was her little brother-this was his life, his friend, his decision. Not hers. And whatever had happened, whatever this Kurt kid had done was eating Blaine up inside, and it killed her just a little bit to know that she couldn’t help him. Not really. She could be there for him, though, since she’d done such a piss-poor job of it before when Blaine had been coming home in tears with little notes scribbled in marker detailing what was going to happen to him. All because he was gay. And she hadn’t really done anything to help. Well, she could be there for him now. She could be his backup this time around. Whatever it took. She’d be there.
“Hey, Blaine?”
“Mmm?”
“Do you need a ride?”
---
“Blaine. I wasn’t sure you’d show. I know that it wasn’t exactly easy the other day.” Burt rose from his seat in the waiting room to greet them. He looked better, calmer than he had the last time Blaine saw him. His battered cap was slightly askew on his forehead, and Blaine’s hands itched to straighten it, make it right, but he stayed still. Just because he was more comfortable around Kurt’s dad didn’t mean that he was ready to start fussing about his appearance like a mother hen. Burt tilted his head toward Jo. “And who’s this?”
Blaine shook his head and gestured at his sister. “Oh, sorry, Mr. Hummel. This is Joanna. My sister.”
“Jo.” She held out her hand in greeting. “Call me Jo. Only my coworkers and my mother call me Joanna and it makes me feel ancient.”
Burt’s face split in a grin as he took her hand. “Consider it done.”
“And Jo, this is Burt Hummel. He’s Kurt’s father.”
Her smile fell, and her face went almost blank at those words. Kurt. Of course. The whole reason they drove down here. “I heard about your son. Well, obviously, or I wouldn’t be here, but I’m sorry to hear that he isn’t well.”
Burt’s lips tightened into a thin line, and Blaine was afraid for a second that the man was going to explode or cry or maybe even both. He stepped between the two, cleared his throat, and placed his hands over their still clasped ones. “Speaking of Kurt, how is he doing, Mr. Hummel?”
Burt sighed and loosened his grip, pulling his hand back to straighten the cap on his head. “Better than yesterday. Carole and Finn came up to see him, and he was acting better. No panic attacks or anything that time. The doctors said we’d be able to transfer him maybe the day after tomorrow.”
“You’ll tell me if-?”
“Yeah. Of course. Finn will get in contact with you if nothing else.”
Blaine simply nodded in response, and Jo felt left out. She didn’t know this Kurt kid aside from snippets of conversations on the phone with Blaine and that little revelation from him earlier that day. All she knew was that something was terribly, terribly wrong with the boy, and that if he ever tried to lay a hand on her brother again, she’d end him. Simple as that. No one messes with her little brother, no matter who they were. Not again. Not ever again.
“So are we allowed to see him? Now, I mean.”
“Yeah. I was just waiting for you to get here.” Burt turned his head briefly toward the nurse’s station and his eyes went blank. Blaine could see the guy was torn; he wanted to see his son, but he wasn’t sure that the person back there was really his son anymore. Blaine knew the feeling. He wanted nothing more than to sit and drink coffee with Kurt, talking about clothes and boys and nothing in particular. He hadn’t known just how much he’d miss that until he couldn’t simply call Kurt up and chat with him for an hour or two. Burt looked back at Blaine, his expression still neutral, his emotions contained. “He talked about you yesterday, you know. When they let me in to see him. That’s why I asked you to come down this afternoon. I wouldn’t have done it otherwise.”
“Really?”
“Yeah, kid.” Burt laid his hand on Blaine’s shoulder and smiled at him comfortingly. “He’s getting there. We’ll get him back.”
Blaine’s eyes tracked over to the nurse’s station, to that ominous door leading to the back. “I know. We should,” he swallowed, “we should probably go on back there.” He looked at his sister standing beside him and noted her bewildered expression. “You can wait here if you want, Jo. Or I guess you could come back with us. You don’t have to do anything, really. I’m just glad you came.”
Jo looked at the pair of them and felt a tightening in her throat. “Um, I think I’ll just stay out here. No offense, Mr. Hummel, but I have no idea who your son is, and I know that if it were me back there, I wouldn’t want strangers gawking at me.”
“No, that’s fine.” The corners of his mouth lifted up in a secret little smile. “I don’t think Kurt would appreciate being seen by someone new when he’s at less than his best. He’s kind of picky about his appearance,” he explained.
Blaine chuckled, “That’s an understatement.”
“Maybe a little,” Burt agreed. “Well, let’s go on back, then. Kurt’s been waiting for us.”
“You’ll be okay here, Jo?”
“Yes, dummy. I’m a big girl. I can take care of myself. Go on and see your friend. I’ll be here when you get back.” She sat down in the chair nearest to her and picked up one of the old magazines sitting beside her, leafing through the first couple of pages with mild interest. “Oh, and Blaine?”
“Yeah?”
“Just know that the minute we get home, you’re going to wash all that gel crap out of your hair so I can ruffle it. I miss those fluffy curls.”
“Jo, the reason I started doing this to my hair in the first place was to keep you from doing that.”
“It will make it all the sweeter, then,” she said with a smirk, and she promptly put her full attention to the magazine in her lap, paging through it until she found a story worth reading.
---
A new day, a new tag, this one as blue as the clear skies outside. As Blaine flattened down its corners on his chest, he wondered where the hospitals got these and why they were so stupidly colorful. Maybe it was supposed to be an optimistic contrast to the grim reality of being here. Didn’t make him feel better, though. He wasn’t sure anything would.
Blaine once again lost his shoes, but he refused the paper slippers. His socks would do just fine, thanks, though Burt was fine slipping on a pair of his own. Blaine couldn’t stand the light crinkling sound they made, their cheery blue color, but said nothing. Maybe they were a comfort to the man. He didn’t know and wasn’t comfortable with asking. Blaine still longed for his shoes. A nurse, a completely different one from last time, though Burt seemed to recognize him, quietly gave them the presentation on safety and procedures and led them into the back.
It was quiet this time. No murmuring in the background, no screaming patients behind closed doors, no quiet gossip from the nurses and orderlies, no rattling of pills or quiet strains of music, no shuffling of paper or fabric, even from the patients clustered along the walls of the common area. Nothing. Blaine couldn’t stand it. He wanted to take the silence in his hands and break it-smash it against the walls with screaming and pounding of fists. It would make this place seem far less surreal, like he was actually here and not making the whole thing up in his head, like some terrible nightmare. Maybe he was the one who was really going crazy. He needed this to be real.
Kurt was still locked away in that little blue room, and Blaine couldn’t help but notice the contrast between the muted color of the walls and the bright, glaring nametag plastered to his chest. Maybe it was some sort of cosmic metaphor. Kurt was too pale, too thin, too ungainly. He moved more like a trapped animal than the boy from Blaine’s memory. Maybe it was true. Maybe Kurt was trapped. Blaine felt his chest grow heavy at the sight of him. This Kurt was only a shade of his former self.
Kurt was on his bed as he was last time, but he was far less guarded. The little notebook from before was perched on his knees and he was inspecting the pages with faded interest. The little stick of bluish wax was resting beside his bare foot, the tip of it just brushing the pale skin. Blaine noted that his ear still looked enflamed, and his heart sank. So that habit hadn’t gone away.
“Hey, Kurt.”
He looked up and smiled at the sight of his dad standing in the doorway, placing the bundle of white pages down next to his hip. The crayon rolled around on the bed covers to rest against his toes, and Blaine studied the messy lines and words scribbled across the paper from his place behind Burt. None of it made any sense, but it kept him from looking at Kurt’s face, kept him from staring at the uncombed hair and dark rings of skin under his eyes. He couldn’t even look up at the sound of Kurt’s voice, the first hint of noise to break through the overwhelming silence.
“Hi, dad.”
---
Burt’s smile was a little stifled, but Blaine said nothing as the man walked over to the low stool next to Kurt’s bed and pulled it out for himself to sit. He could see how hard this was for the man, seeing Kurt so sick. Blaine himself hung near the doorway, not really sure what to do or where to go.
He looked at Kurt and couldn’t help picture the sad deranged boy from his last visit with his cold, staring eyes and harsh, jerky movements. Like a marionette whose strings had just been cut. Kurt really didn’t look all that different now, and Blaine wondered just how long it would be before he snapped.
You shouldn’t be here.
His heart leapt into his throat and lodged itself into his windpipe. He wasn’t sure he could do this, not after last time, not when it had become so hard to breathe.
You shouldn’t be here.
Panic was starting to take hold, gripping him in its terrible, icy claws. Blaine stepped back and leaned against the door frame, clutching the wooden ridges tight in his fingers. This was so hard. No one had ever told him love was going to be so impossibly difficult. Maybe his mom was right. Maybe his choice in men was flawed. Maybe he should just give this whole thing up. He didn’t know if he could do this right now.
He pictured the wooden door frame buckling beneath his fingertips, splintering into a thousand little pieces under the pressure of the clenching muscles of his hands. Surely something had to happen; someone had to know just how freaked he was right now, and it really wasn’t fair. Not at all. He’d been so certain that he was ready for this, that nothing could go wrong, and now, when he was finally seeing Kurt again in person, his breath wouldn’t come the way it should, his hands wouldn’t stop shaking, he couldn’t stop sweating. It really wasn’t fair. That terrible numbness from before was creeping into his hands and his throat just kept getting smaller and smaller. He really didn’t know if he could do this anymore.
Burt didn’t take any notice, and he leaned over the side of Kurt’s bed, gripping his son’s long, spindly fingers in his own and brushing the top of Kurt’s hand in a comforting circle with his thumb. “How are you feeling today, bud?”
“Better.” Kurt reached up to trace the shell of his ear and tug at the soft pillow of his earlobe. There was no scraping of nails, no tearing of flesh, but the action still made Blaine incredibly nervous. “They’re not so loud today,” Kurt murmured softly.
“That’s good.” Burt’s voice was quiet, subdued, but genuinely relieved. He brushed a hand over the gentle sweep of Kurt’s bangs, shifting the chestnut hair from the boy’s forehead to tuck it behind his ear. “We don’t want a repeat of two days ago.”
Kurt shook his head-a tiny, almost demure gesture that left Blaine completely and utterly torn. On the one hand, he desperately wanted to run up to the other boy, throw his arms around him, and never let go. The two of them could simply run away together and never come back; Blaine could take out of all the evil things that had wedged themselves into Kurt’s brain and wash them away with love, as though they‘d never been there. Everything would be okay again; they could be stupid and happy and young and in love, and nothing could stop them. Nothing could take them down. But he was kidding himself. Kurt already had more love than he’d ever need from his dad. The man was kind of amazing that way, and Blaine only wished he had that sort of support system. His parents, his sister, they were wonderful, but they weren’t quite the same caliber as Burt Hummel. If love was all it took to cure him, Kurt would never have gotten sick in the first place. Not with a dad like Burt standing behind him and holding him up. It wasn’t fair, but when is anything ever fair?
On the other hand, simply seeing Kurt curled up in this little blue room, all pale and ruffled and all too similar to that strange foreign presence that had so terrified him before, had Blaine so nervous he could barely keep still for fear that the slightest movement would cause Kurt to explode. Though no one could really blame him for feeling the way he did. There really hadn’t been all that much time since Kurt had tried to kill him, after all. He couldn’t just sweep that one under the rug and forget about it without some time. It didn’t mean that he didn’t want to see Kurt; it just meant he self-preservation instincts were alive and well. That’s all. But Blaine would admit that he felt a little bad that his body was already tensing reflexively at Kurt’s words.
They’re not so loud today.
That sort of thing couldn’t be normal, could it?
“Blaine came down to see you.” Burt tilted his head in Blaine’s direction. Kurt looked over at him through heavy-lidded eyes, and smiled just a little.
“I know. I saw him come in behind you.”
“Do you want to talk to him?”
“If he wants to talk to me.” Kurt shot him with a pointed look. “He hasn’t moved from the doorway yet, and to be honest, he doesn’t really look like he wants to be here.”
Well, that certainly sounded more like the Kurt he knew. Burt turned and frowned at Blaine without ever letting go of Kurt’s hand. Blaine cleared his throat and released the wall, taking a step forward. There were tiny tremors running through his legs that he prayed desperately that no one could see. “But you can’t really blame me, can you, Kurt? Even with your wonderful presence, do you think anyone really wants to be here?”
“No, I suppose not.” Kurt leaned back and the hard nub at the top of his spine thudded dully against the wall behind him. Blaine noticed then that Kurt was curled up in the same spot he’d been in the last time Blaine had visited. He wondered how often Kurt moved from that spot, if sitting there was a comfort somehow.
Blaine stepped over to the bed. His socks slipped on the smooth floor, and he could feel the cold from the tiles seeping through the thin fabric up into the sensitive skin at the bottom of his feet. The mattress of the bed was surprisingly firm, and Blaine had to stop himself from cringing as he sat down. Definitely not the most comfortable thing in the world.
“So what did my dad bribe you with to come see me?”
Blaine looked up, startled, until he saw Kurt’s smiling face. Blaine would know that grin anywhere. Kurt was joking with him! “Well, you know, nothing special. Just money, lavish dinners and vacations, your hand in marriage. You know, the basics,” he said, leaning back against the wall.
And Kurt laughed. It was one of his odd low chuckles, but it was genuine. Blaine hadn’t thought he’d ever hear that sound again. It was funny how something he’d never really liked all that much before could make him feel so much better about everything. He reached over and placed his hand over the still clasped ones of Kurt and his dad. The skin under his palm was warm and reassuring, and he smiled. He missed little physical comforts like this, like his mother’s hugs, Jo ruffling his hair or his dad’s gentle pats on the shoulder. He hadn’t realized just how much he’d wanted something like that until now. No one seemed to touch him anymore, and god did he miss it.
He squeezed his hand over the bundle of fingers in his grip. “You sure you’re doing okay?”
“Yeah,” Kurt replied, his voice soft and peppered with a tiny hint of sorrow. “Yeah, I think I am.”
---
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