Glee!fic: How To Survive pt II

[rainjoyswriting]

How To Survive, part II. See previously Truth & Consequences and part I.
Disclaimer: Owned by the clever people, I'm just borrowing.
Rating: R, for swearing and subject matter: not for kids.

Warnings & Spoilers: The same as previous applies - plenty of spoilers and distressing subject matter.

Summary: Wake up and help me, you always do . . .


Notes: Trying to post fast because I know waiting for the next part of something miserable can make you even more miserable ^^; Part III needs a bit of rewriting, and then I have a little epilogue in my head I need to post. Until then, this, which is Blaine's part, and comes with a soundtrack because that boy probably brushes his teeth to a soundtrack; the Maxwell cover of This Woman's Work which makes me cry because I am such a giant girl.

Kurt makes his dad go home on the nights now, he's fine, all he really feels like he needs to do is sleep for maybe ever. And shower, he would very much like to shower, but seeing as he can't move much of anything he endures sponge baths for the time being. He hates not feeling clean. He hates not feeling right, his hair just sort of there rather than doing something, at least he's in a pair of his own pyjamas now rather than that awful awful hospital gown.

Awful, awful, awful. He has actually never worn anything more horrible in his life, not even that football uniform with the shoulder pads he couldn't get the smell out of. Awful. Awful. Awful.

Awful.

Awful.

He puts off asking, because he's obviously looked so horrible for so long that it hardly seems like it can matter anymore, but it does. So one evening when Blaine brings him magazines and a very careful kiss on the left cheek - the only place on his face Blaine can kiss that doesn't hurt - he says, "Blaine?"

Blaine perches on the side of the bed, arrays the magazines across his lap for Kurt to choose. "Mm?"

"Do you have a mirror?"

Blaine glances at him, pauses. "With me?"

"Yes."

"No. Sorry. Do you . . ."

Kurt squirms a shoulder. "I must look horrible, I know. I just . . . thank you for not mentioning it."

Blaine stares at him, little flicker of that ever-angry pilot light behind his eyes. His voice comes hard with conviction. "You could never not look beautiful. Nothing could ever make you anything but beautiful to me."

Which makes Kurt's eyes and throat fill painfully, but he's still not crying over this, he's not. He swallows, blinks, says low and raw, "Thank you. But . . . I don't know what I look like, and." He picks at the sheets a bit. "And I haven't moisturised in two weeks now, I can at least find out if those creams were worth the money."

Blaine makes a small amused noise, pats the magazines into a pile for him, stands up again. "There's a little drug store, I'll see if they sell pocket mirrors."

Kurt keeps his head low, smiles awkwardly up at him. While Blaine's gone he riffles a magazine to at least make it look like he read it, and draws his bottom lip into his mouth, presses his tongue over the cut. He's dreading this. He's been dreading this for a long time. He's been dreading having to ask - vanity seems so pointless after someone left him to die in a dumpster, but he's still here and he's still him, so - and dreading actually seeing it, because his face feels so wrong. There's the cut on his cheek, taped at its edges, and he can't even touch the one on his forehead because it hurts so much to, it's still gauzed over. The black eye feels swollen and hot under his fingers, his lip's still puffy as well as cut. He's probably never looked so awful in his entire life, and he hasn't showered in two weeks, and Blaine only leaves when doctors or Kurt's dad make him leave, and Kurt isn't sure why he doesn't want to given Kurt's probable level of attractiveness right now. On a good day, on a day when his hair is behaving and his skin's looking good and he's wearing something he likes, he manages to feel pretty good about himself. Right now?

He stares through an article about the seventies trend continuing into winter fashions and thinks about Karofsky.

Blaine's back ten minutes later, with a little plain silver pocket mirror still wrapped in plastic. He watches Kurt's eyes, hands it silently over. He doesn't tell him not to, but he's very obviously aware that Kurt isn't going to like this. Kurt unwraps it, lifts his head, draws his breath in, opens it.

He stares in silence for a few seconds, brushes his hair back, closes it again and puts it on the sheets next to the magazines. Blaine still just stares at him like he doesn't know what Kurt needs him to say, but Kurt twitches a smile, shrugs with the shoulder that doesn't hurt. "It's actually not as bad as I thought."

Blaine's smile is very, very tentative. "You can maybe lighten up on the skincare regime, then."

Kurt folds his fingers together, apart from the awkward taped ones. "I guess a lot of . . . I guess the bruises fade."

Blaine sits next to him again, puts a hand against Kurt's jaw, warm fingers on his skin. "I want to kill people for doing this to you. But I still think you're beautiful, Kurt. You know I always do."

Kurt runs his fingers up Blaine's arm, folds them around his wrist. His face isn't as bad as it's felt to his blind fingertips - like a cut inside the mouth, everything's felt worse than it actually is now he's seen it in a mirror - but he really does not look good right now. "You're a crazy person," he tells him, and Blaine gives a little breath of amusement, strokes his cheek.

"Yes. That point is irrelevant but, yes, probably. Sorry about that." Kurt looks into his eyes and wonders what Blaine looked like when this happened to him. There's nothing to show for it now, not even a nick in his perfect skin, so maybe Kurt will be lucky too. Blaine says, very softly like he really means it, "I love you."

Kurt closes his eyes, and doesn't care anymore because he knows that Blaine doesn't. "I love you too."

They kiss very, very carefully, and the hot rise of pain in his lip doesn't make it not worth it.

*

Mostly he's bored. The doctors tell him he's making a good recovery so he doesn't know why they won't let him go home, but they're still wary and his dad's on their side. Kurt says he's not going to suffer some bizarre relapse and drop dead, but apparently his medical opinion doesn't count, so.

He's surprised by his knee. He hadn't even realised it was hurt, the painkillers fogged everything so much, and when he did start feeling the throb he didn't think it was as bad as it is. There'll be physical therapy, they tell him. He'll be on a crutch for some time, he'll wear a brace, his body's young and should heal itself. But he needs to dance. He's not just going to be walking on it, he needs it to dance, and the doctors don't say yes or no to that.

For the first time he really actually might cry. To lose a week of his life like it never happened makes him angry. To be constantly in pain, constantly aware of what was done to him, makes him angry. To have been left to die in a dumpster makes him really just too stunned to feel anything about it at all.

To have every dream pulled away from him makes his heart compress so small it hurts.

But he has visitors now, and that helps. The glee club come two a night, like they've rota'd themselves (they probably have; Rachel probably has). Blaine is there whenever he's not supposed to be at school. Finn often drives his glee friends over, and Mr Schue comes a couple of times which is sweet of him, and there's almost always his dad or Carole there anyway. It's nice to feel loved. Blaine brings Warblers and Warblers, of course, sing; when they do Yellow Submarine banging shoulders trying to dance all cramped together in his tiny room he laughs until it hurts which doesn't take much with two cracked ribs but it's so so worth it. And lots of people send flowers. He is rich with flowers. He's smug of every new bouquet. He'd trade a bruise now and then for a really nice bunch of flowers, easy.

"Don't say that." Blaine says, hand stopped over the Scrabble board. "I would buy you flowers, you just never asked for them."

"Well I shouldn't have to ask for them. And that is not a word."

"It's Latin."

"Well we're playing in English, so get it off."

"I let you have words in French."

"And that's why you're going to lose, isn't it?"

Coach Sylvester even visits, brings him a cactus, and in a gesture of the utmost affection he's ever seen from her, pats twice with two stiff fingertips at his shoulder. "You see, Porcelain, this is what happens when people overturn my decisions. I'd've had that boy getting casually shivved in juvie months ago, thus saving all this unnecessary agitation and the inevitable rise of health insurance costs for the more flaming young homosexuals of Ohio."

". . . thank you," he says uneasily, and watches her eyes like a cat watching a rottweiler through glass; probably safe, but. "I have never understood why you seem to like me."

"Oh, I don't like you. I respect you. You don't even let me stop you from being you, which is quite a feat. Also you remind me of the small woodland creatures my sister loved so much. Like some kind of dormouse." She tilts her head, narrows her eyes in consideration. "Or possibly a stoat."

"Oh . . . kay. Um. Thank you for my . . . cactus. I'll take good care of it."

"You should do, it cost me a whole three dollars. Don't worry about it though, I'll put it on the school's expenses account, since it is their cretinous decision making that put you here. Take it easy, Porcelain."

"Not much choice, coach." he murmurs, and she waves a hand over her shoulder as she walks out of the room.

*

He gives Finn very precise directions over the telephone for the exact pieces he needs for his 'getting the hell out of here' outfit. He has him send photographs of ties so he definitely picks the right one out. His dad helps him shower, which they will profoundly never talk about again, both of them keeping their eyes raised and Kurt clinging to the bars to keep the weight off his useless knee. "I used to do your bath time when you were a kid," his dad says to the ceiling.

"Yes." Kurt says. "I was a kid."

"Yes." They keep their eyes on the ceiling, and will profoundly never talk about this again.

He has to go out in a wheelchair so he can't trip and sue the hospital, which he finds merely amusing after the whole 'left to die in a dumpster' thing; tripping will never worry him again. Kurt spins it on one wheel in his room while his dad looks aghast and Blaine grabs for the handles, but Kurt got pretty good at that Proud Mary routine. "I need to look into walking sticks," he says, thumping back to the floor, barely wincing as it jars his ribs. "I'm thinking silver topped black lacquer."

"Of course you are. Please don't do that again."

"I can't wheel straight anyway, I only have one arm working properly. Push me?"

Getting into the car is more difficult, but getting out of it takes longer. Blaine stands there with his arms spread for him like Kurt might fling himself face-first out of the back seat and Blaine may need to catch him, and he just looks so funny. Blaine says, "How many painkillers did they give you?" but he doesn't lower his arms. Kurt swings on his fugly crutch (it needs glue-on jewels and a paint job and really it just needs a more aesthetically pleasing redesign from scratch) back into his home. He has no memory of being here for three weeks; it looks pretty much identical, but there's a dent in the coffee table and a bag of tools by the stairs. "Getting a stair lift delivered first thing," his dad says. "They don't take long to set up, we'll be good by mid-morning."

"I don't need a stair lift, I'm going to be fine."

"Yeah, you are going to be. And until then you use the stair lift and I don't worry about you pitching over an' breaking your neck on our own damn staircase after all that."

Kurt shifts his weight on the crutch, pouts at the stairs. He's actually not sure how to do this, when he does put weight on his knee it makes his teeth clench and the world pops black and he will not scream.

His dad takes the crutch out of his hand and Kurt puts a hand on the wall, startled, as he passes it to Carole. "You ready?"

"For what?"

He puts a hand on Kurt's back, his side. "Careful, 'cause of your ribs. Tell me if I'm hurting you."

"Dad-" His feet are off the floor and he kicks in panic and regrets it hissing; his knee. "I'm not a kid anymore-"

His dad can still lift him pretty easily. Not a ringing endorsement of hospital food, Kurt's weight. "Yeah you are."

He makes his slow heavy way upstairs and Kurt holds him by the neck and gradually stops being embarrassed. He knows that his dad isn't a huggy person but Kurt is, and it's sort of nice to be held by him. He lets his head drop to his shoulder, says quietly, "Thank you."

They're followed, Kurt and his strong steady dad, by the procession of Finn with hands raised in case they fall back and Carole holding the crutch and Blaine bringing up the rear, Kurt can feel his eyes on him through his dad's body. He wonders how long his dad will let Blaine stay; in the hospital, once they could, he had Blaine climb onto the bed with him to snuggle and talk very quietly with their heads low together. There is a line of unbruised skin across Kurt's hipbone like the perfect landing strip for Blaine's arm. One of the worst parts of this is the loss of casual close contact with a boyfriend now scared to touch him because the bruises are everywhere. But Kurt's stronger than he looks. Maybe Blaine knows that by now.

Maybe it's the painkillers. He could go back to sleep now in his dad's arms, soothingly rocked by each step taken.

Blaine

The thing is, Kurt always replies to texts. Sometimes he replies by saying that Blaine is being an idiot and he's not texting him anymore, but he still replies to the next one and the one after that. So at first Blaine just thinks that he's in a class with a stricter than usual teacher. Then it's lunch and Kurt isn't responding, even when he texts Notice meeeeee, the first time he's said it in as many words to Kurt but very much not the first time he's ever communicated that sentiment. So at the end of lunch he texts, Hey, call and tell me I'm a paranoid idiot, ok?

Kurt doesn't.

He texts Finn, paying no attention to biology by this point. Finn will hopefully know if Kurt is in a strange mood, or tied up somehow, or just sulking for whatever Kurtly reason. Finn texts back, Havnt seen him dude will go look ok. Okay. There's still nothing to worry about. Nothing to worry about at all.

Thad asks him where he's going but Blaine doesn't really hear him. He walks straight out of Dalton through the main entrance like he knows exactly what he's doing - he learned long ago that if you act confident enough about it then there's little that people will stop you in - and through the parking lot for his car.

He tries calling Kurt one last time, lets it ring and ring. Maybe he lost his phone. Occam's razor dictates it's the most likely reason, it's just so simple. He lost his phone, he left it at home. He counts rings, listens to his heartbeat, keeps it calm and slow. He probably left it at home. Forgot it.

(When has Kurt ever forgotten his phone?)

It's strangely difficult to hang up. He puts his cell on the seat beside him so he can grab it if it goes off, turns the ignition on, pulls out. He won't make it to McKinley until school's pretty much over, so he can wait for Kurt in the parking lot, and Kurt will hopefully look glad rather than affronted to see him there. Actually Blaine won't care. Kurt can walk up and spit on him, Blaine will still only be relieved to see him.

There's been an accident and the roads are bad. Blaine's not going to make it to McKinley until Kurt's already driving home; he heads straight for Kurt's place instead. He'll surprise him on his front porch. Tadaa! Kurt loves surprises, loves being surprised by Blaine. He'll give him an earful about cutting class but he'll still kiss him and smile because he never can help smiling. He thinks he's so controlled, Blaine knows, Kurt thinks of himself as icy and aloof but every expression flits over his face and through his sea-change eyes as obvious as city lights at night. As obvious to Blaine, at least.

There are no cars in the driveway, and no-one answers Blaine's knock, no-one answers the house phone when he calls it. He sits on the doorstep, holding his cell between his hands, hands between his knees, clasping it in tight while he bounces his ankles off the edge of the step for a bit, controlling his breathing, telling himself how okay he is. Then he springs to his feet, walks up and down in front of the door and calls Kurt again.

He's so surprised when someone picks up that he doesn't say anything for a moment, just opens his mouth before the words finally bull up his throat, too sharp. "Kurt, where are you, I have called about two hundred times and-" His voice is straining, his throat already hurts. "- and you know I would worry-"

"Blaine," the wrong voice says on the line. "It's me, it's Burt. Kurt can't . . ."

Everything goes still. Blaine breathes. He blinks, and looks down, and sits carefully on the edge of the step, because you are meant to sit, because of the shock. He says, and his voice sounds so neat, so careful, "Where is he?"

He can hear Burt breathing, deep and heavy. "We're in the hospital."

A bird starts singing on the roof of the house. Blaine is sitting, so it's going to be alright. His voice still sounds too calm. "What happened to him?"

Burt's silent for some time, and Blaine badly wants to be up, moving, in the car already, doing something, but he has to think of the shock and he has to sit. He hears Burt's breath pull in again and he says, and it kills Blaine that he can see Burt's face because he says it so rough, so helpless, "They beat the hell out of him, kid."

His fingers aren't holding the phone properly. He swallows, and feels sick, and needs to cry but all he does is swallow again, and blink a few times, and say, "Which hospital?"

There's a pause, while Burt gets his breathing steady again. "Are you driving? It's not good to drive when you just got bad news."

"I'll take the bus." Blaine's a great liar if he doesn't give himself the time to think about it. "Please, Mr Hummel-"

Burt draws his breath in, lets it out shaking down the line.

*

The doctors are still busy with Kurt when he gets there, so while his every instinct is just to shove people aside if he has to until he's next to Kurt, he can't. Finn and Carole are in the waiting room, sitting diagonally across from each other on plastic chairs, not talking; Finn is a long stretched slouch on his seat, hands in his pockets, feet tucked under the opposite chair, and Carole has her bridged hands over her forehead, elbows on her knees. Finn looks across at him, and he looks sick and pale and scared, mostly. It occurs to Blaine that he doesn't know what expression he's wearing. He doesn't know what expression can cover this.

Carole looks up, sits up straight and pushes her hair back. "Blaine, honey." she says, and holds her hands out. He just stands there, very much not wanting sympathy or affection, wanting to know what happened and where Kurt is and when he can be with him. He knows he's being rude, but he can't take her hands, it's not a choice, he can't. He's shaking a little, he feels really impossibly cold all of a sudden, and is the shock hitting now, can it be delayed like this -?

Someone coming down the corridor behind him saves him. He turns his head and it's Burt, with two police officers, and Burt looks grim and tired and old as he walks up to Blaine. He puts his hand on Blaine's shoulder, grips hard, shakes him a bit. "Buses don't travel that fast."

He blinks. "I'm sorry. I'm sorry, sir. I had to."

"I need to trust you around my kid. You do not start lying to me. You okay?"

Blaine swallows. "Is he?"

Burt's face tics, and the police officers stand just in the doorway, quietly talking. Blaine understands that this is something he can do, this is something he can help with, something he can do. His voice comes surprisingly steady. "It was him, wasn't it? It was him. Will they need a statement from me?"

"You weren't there."

"No, but I know everything he's done to Kurt. There was a time when I was the only person who knew." He knows he has to tell them everything, and maybe Burt can see the strain in his eyes. "I would like to tell them everything I can."

Burt looks back at one of the officers. "You want anything from him?"

"Who is he?" one of them says, flipping backwards through filled pages of a notebook.

"Kurt's boyfriend. I guess . . ." Burt closes his eyes, and his body is drooped with exhaustion. "Kids tell each other things they'll never tell us, right?"

Blaine watches the officers' faces, and thinks about institutionalised police homophobia. He would like an excuse to get angry with someone actually in front of him. But they share a glance and one of them says, "You want to come back through with us, son? There's an empty room where we can talk in private. You know what happened?"

"I know who did it."

Outside of Burt Hummel's hearing, Blaine can let his breath shake and tell them, carefully, the things that only he and Kurt and Karofsky have ever known. He watches their faces, hoping for a flicker, a blink signifying contempt or disgust, he needs to be angry with someone actually there to be angry at -

They're quiet and attentive and they write everything down. Afterwards Blaine feels oddly free and oddly sick and oddly disappointed. He knows Kurt planned on no-one ever knowing, but Kurt planned on not getting the shit beaten out of him at school as well, Kurt's plans are not coming off well today.

*

They let them in to see him. It's so much more horrible than Blaine could have imagined. He remembers a post-dance trip to the emergency room, he remembers bruises and stitches and fury almost beyond breathing, mostly at his own helplessness. Because those boys, he knows, intended to beat him up; looking at Kurt like this he knows that Karofsky intended to kill him. He can't - imagine it. He physically jerks his head to try not to. There's always a delicacy about Kurt, an impression of fragility, and Blaine knows that's not the whole story but for someone to do this to him -

Burt walks around the bed, touches the pale back of Kurt's hand, one finger pinched in a little device measuring his pulse. "Hey, kiddo," he says, very quietly, and Blaine just doesn't really feel anything. He traces the bruises and Kurt's utter stillness and under the hospital lighting he can see the blue shadows of his bones underneath his skin. It's too easy right now to see nothing but a body. Where in this stillness is Kurt?

It's already late when Burt and Carole have a quiet word and Carole touches Finn's slouched back, says, "I'll get the car ready, okay? Blaine, honey, you want a ride home?"

He shakes his head a little, realises his arms are folded too tight around himself and shuffles his elbows out a little, lowers his shoulders. "No, thank you. I . . . my car."

"You shouldn't drive this time of night, you're tired."

"With the utmost respect, Mrs Hudson, so are you."

Burt, who hasn't moved from the chair by Kurt's head, says gruffly, "Let 'im stay. I cannot have a fight about this right now. You call your parents, son."

"Yes sir."

He follows them out of the room, where Finn stops to rub his eye with the heel of his hand and Carole walks ahead, car keys jingling softly where they hang from her hand. "Hey," Blaine says, and Finn looks across at him. "I . . . thank you for finding him." He swallows. "Mr Hummel said you were the one who . . . thank you."

Finn rubs his eye some more, then closes both of them and nods. Blaine swallows again.

"Where was he? Where did it . . . ? I know I'm only torturing myself wanting to know but, but I have to. Where - where did you find him?"

Finn pulls his hand back into his hair, doesn't open his eyes. Blaine realises that he's trying not to cry. "Left him in a dumpster," he croaks. "They left him a dumpster, after. He was . . ."

Blaine has to put a hand behind himself, against the wall, to steady himself. He blinks, and everything is spotting black, and mostly he feels disbelief because human beings don't do that to each other, but then he does believe it. He believes it and feels his bones harden their joints. He believes it and a pulse starts in the back of his brain. He believes it, and at seventeen years old he will never trust humanity again.

He will also kill David Karofsky the first time he lays eyes on him, damn any consequences. It is necessary that he dies. He knows that no-one apart from him will ever understand that. He makes himself consider it properly, he needs to make sure that he means this, he thinks about how it's quite difficult to kill someone, there will be blood, it will be unpleasant. He thinks it through carefully and still knows that he has to do it. So.

Finn hasn't opened his eyes and he's shaking his head now, unburdening himself desperate and fast. "They'd tied his hands up, and, an' they used his tie to - gag him and - and it just, it isn't meant to happen like that, it just, at school, you just go to school and someone does that to you? I just - I just can't -"

Blaine closes and opens his hands at his sides, watches Finn shake in a detached way, understands that he needs sympathy. All the sympathy in the world right now belongs to Kurt, and Blaine can't bring himself to offer anything until Finn's sniffing hard and digging the tears out of his eyes with his fingertips, and Blaine knows that the horror of finding Kurt like that is not the horror of being Kurt like that, but Finn is not someone to be angry with right now. But he also doesn't know what to say. You're meant to say that everything's okay, but it's not, and it's not going to be.

Finn's the one who hugs him, pulls him in sudden and hard, banging at his back, bent over him like a tree cracked in half. Blaine's off balance on one foot, twisted in all wrong and mostly crushed, but the rabbit-rhythm of Finn's heart crammed against his ear is . . . weirdly soothing. Weirdly relaxing. People do have hearts after all. He lets his eyes droop a little; all he feels now is so tired.

"He'll be okay," Finn says, sniffing. "He'll be great. He's always great. They couldn't ever do anything to him. He'll be fine."

Blaine listens to the pounding of Finn's heart, which sounds as giant as a whale's heart pressed in this close. He says, "I have to call my parents."

*

When Finn and Carole are gone he leans his shoulders back against the wall of the strip-lit hospital corridor and calls his mom, tells her he's at the hospital, something happened to Kurt, he's not coming home tonight. She sounds stunned, and then puts his dad on, which is a mistake. His dad's angry before they've even spoken; Blaine is not staying all night on his own in a hospital, he is coming home, now. Blaine keeps his voice level, tells him that he's not on his own, Kurt's dad is here. His dad begins to sound pleading. Can't Blaine see that this is what they've been afraid of all along? Why would Blaine want to go through it again?

The steadiness in his voice almost breaks. "Don't act. Don't ever act. Like anything bad that's happened is his fault."

They egg each other on into fury, he and his dad. Very rarely, because both of them control themselves with such determination, but if one gets angry then inevitably the other will. Which means they're very similar, a thought that makes Blaine want to kick the wall right now as his dad tells him that they have been more supportive than anyone could have asked of Blaine's relationship but -

"Not actually grounding me because of it and never wanting to talk about it is not being supportive. I'll call in the morning. Goodnight, Dad."

He hangs up before he can say anything else, before he can even ask which hospital it is, and then turns his cell off before he slips it into his pocket. He puts his head up, draws his breath in, walks back into Kurt's room, where Kurt is so still and all porcelain white and bruise black, and his dad looks up from his chair, blinks sleepily. "You call your parents?"

"Yes."

"They mind you staying?"

Blaine sits in the chair at the other side of the bed, shrugs a little. He's got Kurt's 'worst' side - the black eye, the cut cheek. Apart from the bandage on his forehead the left hand side of his face is almost untouched, same perfect curve to his cheek, same blue-white skin against these sheets.

Burt rubs his eye, knocking his cap back a little to do it. "I'm gonna go ask if they discharged that kid yet. I wanna be able to think about him spending the night in a cell already. You want me to pick up coffee or anything on my way back? Sandwich?"

Blaine folds his arms, shakes his head. Burt stands, stretches his back, walks around the bed, grips his shoulder again. "Don't hurt yourself. Last thing Kurt wants."

For a second, his throat, his lip goes. Then he lifts his face and nods, and listens to Burt leave the room. He watches Kurt, who's breathing so, so slowly that he gives the impression of not breathing at all. Blaine swallows, and lifts a hand, and touches with frightened fingers against the side of Kurt's hand. Hey, hey. Notice me.

Kurt doesn't.

*

In the morning, Burt insists he calls his parents, goes home, gets some proper rest. Blaine thinks about fighting, eyes a little narrowed, but Burt's eyes are a little narrowed as well and Blaine learned a long time ago that he could never stand up to Kurt's stubbornness, and he knows where Kurt gets the stubbornness from. His mom comes to pick him up. He pretty much passes out on his bed for four hours, then walks and catches a bus and walks back to the hospital, where Burt doesn't look remotely surprised to see him, and neither does Kurt because Kurt's dead to the world. Not entirely metaphorically.

Schroedinger's cat: there is a dual nature to Kurt's stillness. Every second of stillness contains the potential for the next second to be the second in which he moves, or another second in which he doesn't. Blaine is not an idiot - Blaine is not Finn - and he knows that overwhelmingly the odds are that the next second will bring only more stillness. He still watches like if he blinks it might be his fault that Kurt doesn't move, not that second or the next.

That night Burt does make him go home. He hasn't eaten or slept properly in a couple of days and neither has Burt but Burt has a weary, ancient strength in him, an immoveable patience like a thousand year old tree, and Blaine is a skittery sparky mess of feeling now, rage and hurt and guilt and grief. He feels bereft. Who would normally make him feel better when he feels this bad? Kurt. Wake up and help me, you always do . . .

Blaine drives home, eats dinner with his family, calls Burt again, goes to bed. The next morning he dresses in his Dalton uniform, says goodbye to his parents and drives straight to the hospital. Burt gives him a slow, unsurprised look, and they silently determine this as their compromise: Blaine will behave on the nights, if Burt will give him the days. Mid-morning his mom calls because his school called her to report his absence. Blaine says, "Where do you think I am?" and doesn't even really listen to her, just waits until she stops talking so that he can hang up.

That evening his parents tell him he's grounded and Blaine just gives them a tired look; he's entered a world in which people leave Kurt in a dumpster to die, this teenage nonsense of grounding just makes him feel old. He hands over his car keys. His mom drives him to school in the morning, watches him go in.

After first period he walks, he catches a bus, he catches another bus, he's back. When he makes it to Kurt's room Carole looks up from leaning over Burt, says, "Look, honey, Blaine's here. We'll both be here, you know we'll call the second anything happens. You need some proper sleep, Burt."

Burt rubs a bruised eye and really needs a shave by this point. He says, "Your parents happy you're here?"

Blaine says, "I don't think anyone is happy that anyone is here."

Burt closes his eyes, and Carole leans down to kiss him. "I'm going home. I'm catching a nap, getting a shower. You - keep an eye on him."

"Yes sir."

Burt leans over to put his hand on Kurt's. "I'm coming back soon. Hang on, kiddo."

*

On the fourth day, Burt goes out to get sandwiches and Blaine sits beside Kurt and hates himself for getting hungry. He shouldn't get hungry when Kurt is like this. He should be superhuman with fury, he should be made of marble, he shouldn't need anything but Kurt awake again. But he is really fucking hungry, and really fucking worn down, and beginning to think entirely crazy thoughts. Like, maybe this is karma. Maybe this is the universe balancing things out, not to hurt Kurt but to hurt Blaine; this is karma for all those months when Kurt loved him hopelessly and Blaine just honestly did not notice, because Blaine is fucking stupid like that. And the only possible way for the reverse situation to ever occur because Kurt loves Blaine in crazy ways and Blaine knows it is for Blaine to love Kurt while Kurt feels nothing at all, because he's not capable of feeling anything anymore. So how many months will this have to last to balance that out?

He presses a hand over his eyes, digging hard into the skin, and doesn't let go of Kurt's hand.

He's never questioned being with Kurt since they got together, never even considered that one day he might question it. He's never exactly thought 'I will be with you forever' but only because he's never thought 'I will breathe until the day I stop' either, there's just an obviousness to it. He knows he's a dumb teenager but he knows what he feels as well, how calm it is, how sure. But it's been four days, and the bruises are softening, less sharply black but Kurt hasn't blinked, and now he has to face the thought that yeah, maybe he won't. Maybe this will be Kurt's life now, no kind of a life at all. He's been cut off from Blaine like someone found that elastic thread that kept them aware of each other across any distance and snipped it in half and it sprung back and hurt. Kurt's right there, but Blaine is nothing but alone right now.

So what happens next?

Blaine thinks about going back to school, leaving Kurt here, and it's just such a baffling thought, nothing that happens at school matters like this. He gets texts from the Warblers, friends are gathering homework for him, but it just doesn't matter to him. College, that's supposed to happen next. Will it? Can he leave Kurt behind and go off and live the things they dreamed they'd live together? Meet people, take classes, learn, grow, change, while Kurt is as still as if caught in amber at seventeen, innocent and warm and bitchy and sweet?

What if he meets another guy? How would that work? He just can't imagine it, it just sounds so stupid. But he's not naïve, and life is long to stay faithful to a boy who got his life knocked out of him as a teenager. He really believes they could make a pretty good go of the rest of their lives, Kurt and Blaine, but not Blaine on his own and Kurt like this. Karofsky meant to kill him. He probably didn't even think about every other life he was cutting off when he did it. What is Blaine supposed to do?

He lays his other hand over Kurt's, Kurt's fingertips cool, he's always cold when Blaine is warm. Blaine cups them in his palm to warm them, hums under his breath, lets it all go. There will be no future. His future is Kurt, so his future is just being here. All the rest of it is just - just actions with no meaning, just things to do, and Blaine won't do them. He just wants to be with Kurt, whatever that means.

He sings a little, softly. He's been singing to Kurt, on and off, whenever they're alone in the room. He doesn't know if Kurt can hear it but it makes him feel better. Since there's no-one around to see, no-one to judge, he warms Kurt's hand in his and sings Kate Bush and thinks that Kurt's been loyal to him through tempests, so he can be loyal to Kurt through the stillness. But it all just hurts so much . . .

When he takes his hand off his eyes the song dies in his throat because Kurt is watching him, sleep-vague half-open eyes, very drowsy dark blue in the harsh hospital lighting. Blaine stands up so fast his chair falls over and his heart is pounding the blood in his ears like Kurt just sat up out of his coffin. He pretty much did.

The door bangs open, Burt tosses two sandwiches at the chair and pulls the cord for the nurse, and Blaine stands and stares at Kurt who looks sleepily confused, like he doesn't know why Blaine's acting like such a freak, and Burt touches his cheek and says to him, "Kurt, Kurt, can you hear me, you know me-?" and Kurt focuses on him, as steps hurry up the corridor and the room fills with activity. Blaine raises a hand to his forehead and it's shaking; he slips out so he's not in the way, has to lean against the wall, realises now what they mean by being in shock, when he pinches his fingertip hard he can't even feel it.

He calls Finn with clumsy idiot hands on his phone, because Finn found him and Finn's looked grey with grief these last few days and Finn needs to know. While he talks he makes his way down the corridor to the waiting room, collapses into a chair making a family in the corner look up, startled. He puts a hand over his mouth. He tells himself not to cry.

Fuck it. Kurt's awake. He cries.

*

Kurt is sort of awake. The doctors are happy, impressed - they don't think there's any obvious brain damage, and it's only by how pleased they seem that Blaine realises how much they really expected it. Kurt's drowsy as hell in the moments when he does open his eyes, and he goes back to sleep again pretty much instantly. It's enough. Blaine is not greedy, it's enough, and there will be more if he's patient. Blaine goes home, gets yelled at by his dad, can't stop grinning, collapses into bed and sleeps the dead sleep of bone-deep exhaustion until the morning, when it's Sunday and he goes back to the hospital where Kurt wakes up for a bit and Blaine talks at him so quickly and wildly that he twitches a little smile, then goes back to sleep again. He smiled! At Blaine! It's even better than the first time he ever smiled at Blaine. He does a little dance in the corridor, until he sees Finn holding coffee and staring at him.

He goes to school on Monday. Pretty much every Warbler acts like they want to hug him and never let go. They've got a card for Kurt, everyone's written in it, and Blaine doesn't actually get a lecture from the principal about a week's skipping school, just gets sat down for a bit and asked how Kurt is, how he is. And his throat lumps, and he swallows, because this is the real world, it really is. There are people who'll leave Kurt in a dumpster to die, but there are so many people who love him so much as well. Kurt woke up and woke Blaine's optimism up again with him.

That night Kurt squints up at Finn to place him, then settles back into the pillow closing his eyes, like that was a horrible effort and he needs to rest now. "You," he says, low cracked voice but still with that breathy musical quality that runs right up Blaine's spine. "I'm glad you're straight. If you weren't, I, I'd never have met Blaine. Blaine's better than you."

His head tips, he's gone again. Blaine and Finn glance at each other, the glance of two people already deciding never to talk about this again.

*

The first time Kurt's really aware of being awake when Blaine's there, he looks at Blaine with nervous eyes and asks him what happened last weekend, because he doesn't remember. He doesn't remember, it turns out, anything since the Tuesday before Karofsky tried to kill him. And Blaine knows it's a small price to pay considering what it could have been, if that's the only long term cost, a single week when it could have been a whole life, they got off light. But.

In the back yard of his house he kicks a trash can so hard it spirals in the air and Blaine may have broken his toe. He sits for some time holding his foot and feeling so stupid, then picks up all the garbage scattered about underfoot and carefully pushes the can back against the wall. He goes to bed. He stares into the dark, and then picks up his phone and texts even though he knows Kurt doesn't have his phone there, I love you. He'll find it, sooner or later. He knows it anyway.

After school Blaine brings his ukelele and his keytar, tells Finn that if he knows how to play the guitar then yes he knows how to play the uke, and they jam, Kurt propped up on pillows to sing. It wears him right out, though, and Finn waits outside while Blaine kisses his cheek, tells him he'll see him tomorrow. Kurt puts a hand over his, smiles, says, "Thank you for my music." Blaine kisses the corner of his mouth this time, avoiding the cut.

As he closes the door behind himself Finn is standing stiffly, growling at a boy in a McKinley football jacket, "-the hell away from him, why would he want to see you?"

Blaine recognises him from the Night of Neglect concert, stands tensely beside Finn and says, "Who is this?"

Finn's hands are in fists. "Azimio. You left him to die, he doesn't want to see you, you should be locked up, man."

"Chill, dude, it was not s'posed to go down like that, okay? We did not know that Dave would go all psycho on us."

Finn is nearly shouting now. "You tied his hands up! He couldn't have fought you guys if he wanted to and you tied his hands up and-"

Every muscle in Blaine's body has raised, subtly, to spring. "How exactly," he says, his voice black with calm, "was it supposed to 'go down'?"

Azimio rolls his eyes, waves his hand. "It was a joke, man, chill, it was only a joke. We tied a little bow around 'em like Christmas and everything."

And that is when, as Finn will later relate it to Sam and Puck and Mike, wide-eyed still with shock and dumb with the speed of it, that is when Blaine completely loses his shit.

Finn's just quick enough to grab him mid-lunge, pulls Blaine back and right off his feet while Blaine screams, "-king kill you-" and lashes like a trapped cat. Finn staggers back into the wall and Azimio watches him round-eyed and mouth open, taking half a step back. Blaine thrashes, feet kicking the air and blind for everything but the need to get at this boy and do anything he can to hurt him, and Finn squeezes one arm around his and tries to get a hand over his mouth and says, "Dude, dude, they are gonna throw you out if you-"

"-kill him I will fucking kill him-"

"-they will throw you out and Kurt needs you, don't do this-"

Blaine's entire body tenses before it goes limp, all at once, and he hangs from Finn's arms silent, panting hard. Finn swallows, drops a shoulder so Blaine's feet at least scrabble and touch the floor and says, "Dude, you're heavy for a little guy. If I let you go, are you gonna-?"

"I have to kill him," Blaine says, leaning forward in Finn's arms, every muscle straining. "I have to."

The thud makes them all start, and turn to the closed door to Kurt's room. Blaine slips from Finn's arms in a second, opens the door, stares wild in at Kurt and then looks at the teddy bear Brittany brought him, lying on the floor by the door. Kurt's trying to sit up, face tight with pain, saying, "Everyone's shouting, what's happening-?"

"Nothing." Blaine picks up the bear - it's holding an 'I love you' heart and has really mournful eyes - and hurries to the bed, to press Kurt gently by the shoulder down again. "Nothing, nothing, everything's fine, everything's fine, lay down."

"If everything's so super-fine then why are you all shouting?"

"Because I'm not always as mature as I should be." Blaine carefully touches the side of his head, kisses the unhurt side of his forehead. "Lay down, lay down, it's fine, Kurt. I'm sorry we're so loud. We won't be."

"I'm really tired." He blinks at Blaine, says, "Don't you dare put that bear anywhere near me."

"It would be an adorable photo opportunity."

"Put it back on the night table so I can throw it at you again the next time I need to."

"Get some sleep. Okay? I'm sorry we woke you." He tries to put the bear back without knocking anything else over, but the surface is crammed with flowers and cards, he nearly creates a terrible domino effect of tumbling Feel better soon! wishes, saving them from spilling at the very last second. "Go back to sleep. Okay, Kurt? Go back to sleep. I love you."

Kurt mumbles, eyes almost gone, "Love you too."

Blaine watches his face, creeps back to the door. He doesn't close it yet, stands in the pulled-to doorway and narrows his eyes at Azimio, who's handing Finn a paper bag. "Brought him a present. Just - just say sorry, okay? We really did not want it to go down like that. We just - we got scared, an' we didn't know what to do, an' . . ."

Finn's pulled a magazine out of the bag, says, "What di- you brought him porn? You brought him gay porn."

Azimio says, aggrieved, "I didn't know what to get him, dude's into weird shit. I had to buy that. Appreciate what I went through, man."

Blaine says, "Leave."

They both look at him, and for a moment Azimio's about to say something. But something about Blaine's stance, something about his eyes, something about the way he's holding his jaw makes him stop, and close his mouth again. He shrugs, mutters, "Whatever, man." and walks off down the corridor. Blaine swallows, and looks back into the room, but Kurt's asleep. He closes his eyes, draws his breath in, closes the door behind himself again.

He follows Finn through to the waiting room, where Finn dumps the magazines in a trash can. "I can't - why is he walking around? Why is he - yeah they expelled them but why aren't they all in prison?"

"Because a schoolboy prank that involves tying up and gagging a gay classmate for a friend to beat up isn't necessarily a criminal offence," Blaine says bitterly. "Boys will be boys. It's just their bad luck that Karofsky would have killed him if he could."

Finn's trying not to shout. "They left him in a dumpster to die!"

"I know. I know." Blaine swallows. "There's no justice, Finn. Did you think there was?"

"Then what the hell is the point?"

Blaine shrugs, jaggedly, because he doesn't see one some days. But then he thinks what Kurt would think, and pauses. "Baby steps," he says, softly. "He came here to say sorry. He doesn't deserve Kurt's forgiveness, but it's . . . it's the first little step." He closes his eyes. "They were scared. That was why they dumped him and ran. Because all along it's been a joke to them, whatever it's done to Kurt. But this was real, and they were scared, and they couldn't deal with it so they ran." He folds his arms, shrugs. "It's been real to Kurt all along but he's never been as scared of them as I bet they were then. I hope it stays with them for the rest of their lives. I hope they lead haunted half-existences and suffer until they die. But I know they'll probably just get crappy jobs and get someone pregnant someday and live dull tired lives here and hardly ever even think about it. I just . . . I can't kill all of them, can I?"

Finn mumbles, "Kurt would . . . not like that."

Blaine shakes his head, slowly. He wouldn't. He lets his hands down and they squeeze, relax, squeeze, relax at his sides. The things he would sacrifice for Kurt; he can't kill all of them.

He loves Kurt, thinks it so fiercely, I love you I love you I love you. But even for you I can't not kill Karofsky. It's not even as if I could want not to. If I see him it'll be as instinctive as blinking. I know that you'll understand, because you understand me . . .

*

It is really good to see Kurt in his own clothes again, hair swept back and eyes awake, returned to Blaine like a gift. He's called back into the room to help with Kurt's tie, and after straightening his collar he kneels down to do the shoelaces on his Docs too. That is the actual moment when he makes the decision; he's known he'll do this for some time, but that's when he knows, cold hospital floor under his knees, Kurt watching him with a grateful little smile.

"You coulda worn easier clothes than these, Kurt." Burt says. "I was thinking stuff you could slip on an' slip off again at home."

"I have had nothing to do for days but plan this outfit. And it looks great, thanks, Dad."

It does look great, all pale sage green, the colour of his eyes in cold daylight. Blaine can't wait to get him out of this never-changing lighting, start cataloguing the phases of his eyes again. Rockpools and pale seaglass and dark arctic green. He might start keeping a photoblog about it.

Kurt is bright and excited and impish about getting out, makes Blaine's heart jump to his throat the tricks he pulls in the wheelchair. Kurt's on crazy painkillers mostly for the knee, so he has the luxury of being slightly too happy, and Kurt is, weirdly, the least distressed of any of them by everything. Blaine's seen moments of his upset, moments of his being quiet, but during these worst weeks of Blaine's life, undoubtedly the worst weeks of Burt's life, Kurt has been mostly unaware and then preoccupied by other things. He hasn't, Blaine suspects, lingered on what actually happened to him. He hasn't even cried, not once, and Kurt cries at the news sometimes, Kurt pretty much tears up as soon as the music even starts swelling on a movie, Kurt is an easy and unashamed crier. So why, given that this is a moment in his life when no-one on the planet would judge him some tears, doesn't he?

Back where he belongs, Blaine waits outside again while Kurt's dad helps Kurt into his pyjamas in his room. He leans against the wall, arms folded, head nodding to the beat of the song stuck in his head. There's a slightly weird atmosphere because everyone knows that Blaine is the most appropriate person to help Kurt in and out of his clothes but of course he can't because they're seventeen and Burt can't in good conscience let Blaine undress his son even in innocent circumstances. But Blaine would understand the need to loosen the buckle on the back of the waistcoat, Blaine's worn more ties already than Burt has his whole life and knows how to slip them loose with care, Blaine would be the best to help. One day, he thinks. One day he'll have every right to do these things for Kurt.

Burt lets him stay right until the end of curfew. Kurt's long asleep by then, laying on his right hand side, he can't lay on his left with his forehead and his ribs but Blaine knows this hurts his bruised right arm too. He lays on top of the covers next to Kurt, strokes very gently at unhurt patches of skin, brushes his hair back. He could watch his face forever. He thinks he might.

*

By the time Blaine gets to Kurt's house after school there are inevitably more of Kurt's friends there already, Mercedes and Tina bent in half laughing at Kurt's snarky commentary to the reality show they're watching, Rachel talking insistently about set lists for Sectionals that can properly display the team's dancing without leaving Kurt and Artie looking 'sort of pointless', Puck looking uncomfortable and grim while Kurt stops talking as Blaine walks in, smiles at him instead. Everyone gets a ride on Kurt's new stair lift. Blaine's taken Kurt downstairs on his lap on it before, Kurt grinning at him a little wickedly with his fingers laced behind Blaine's neck.

They go home, eventually, to homework and their normal lives again. Blaine stays. Helps Kurt upstairs, puts music on, talks with him, plays cards with him (Kurt cheats, Blaine lets him), helps him with the endless hours of being in this house while life happens outside. But Blaine still doesn't understand, and his reaction to not understanding something is usually a sort of low-level anger, and it's Kurt who eventually says to him over a game of Cheat - which he is ridiculously good at, Blaine doesn't understand how he keeps winning - "So, do you want to talk to me about it?"

Blaine looks at him over the fan of his cards, says, "Talk about what?"

"Why you're mad at me when I don't know what I've done. I have actually literally not done anything in weeks, so, you know, I'd like to know why." He's sitting back against the headboard, propped on pillows, Blaine laying on his stomach next to him on the bed. "You can't be mad just because you keep losing, it's not my fault that you're awful at this."

"It's not my fault that you cheat appallingly."

"That's the game. What's wrong?"

Blaine puts his cards face-down on the sheets. "Do you -"

"What?"

"Don't you want to talk about it? You never even mention it."

Kurt stares at him, then blinks back to his cards. "I don't know what you expect me to say about it. I don't remember it. What am I supposed to say when I can't even remember it?"

"You keep saying that like it means it doesn't matter. Doesn't it - bother you that it happened? It didn't not happen just because you don't remember it."

"What am I supposed to feel about it?" Kurt's angry now, dropping his own cards onto the bed. "Mostly I'm just pissed because I don't know what Dave was thinking and I never will know because I don't remember it. But if you want the truth, Blaine, yes, I hardly even feel like it happened to me. To me, I just woke up in the hospital feeling crappy for no good reason, that didn't happen."

"It did happen. Doesn't it - don't you feel anything about it? You could have died. They left you there to die. Aren't you-"

"Aren't I what? I know it's a horrible thing to happen, okay? I'm not stupid, Blaine, I know what they did, I've been told what they did, I know it's awful. But it doesn't - just, where is the point of me thinking about it? I don't remember it. It looks like a mercy to me. Why would I want to remember that?"

"I just want you to stop acting like it doesn't matter, it matters, Kurt."

"Not moping about it twenty-four hours a day does not mean that I don't know it matters! Can you just - shut up about this, I don't want to talk about it. It was a horrible thing and now it's done and I would like to get on with my life, please. They didn't take that from me. Even if they did try to."

He picks his cards up again, hunches over them scowling. Blaine glares at him, jaw held hard, because this is how you build up a lifetime of PTSD, pretending that you're fine after the appalling has happened. "I just thought we talked about everything, that's all. I didn't think we kept things from each other."

Kurt throws his cards down again. "What am I keeping from you? I don't remember it! Ask me about my birth as well Blaine, get pissed at me for not knowing about that, Jesus I don't remember! And ow it hurts to shout stop pissing me off!"

"Okay. Okay. Fine. We won't talk about it. We won't ever mention it again. Not when I have to help you into your shoes and not when we take you back to the hospital to get your ribs and fingers checked. We'll never talk about it. Clearly it never even happened and that's why you look like a goddamn chess board for all the bruises."

"Just shut up, just shut the hell up. Stop acting like I have to be traumatised when I'm fine. Stop acting like they broke me. I'm fine."

"You really look it," Blaine says, and Kurt's face is white with fury.

"You know what? Just go. Just leave me alone. You suck at this game anyway."

Blaine sits up. "If you really want me gone, I'll go."

"Good," Kurt mutters, and folds his arms. "Bye."

Blaine sits fuming in the driving seat of his car - eventually returned by parents resigned to disobedience in a previously immaculately obedient son - for some time before he can text, I love you. because whatever happens, that stays ridiculously true. His cell sings a text while he's driving but he doesn't pick it up until he's home. I love you too.

It's not exactly communication, but they both know what the other means.

*

The next night Kurt's alone when Blaine gets there. "I asked people not to come," he says, playing with his phone, turning it in his hands. "I'm tired."

"Do you want me to go?"

Kurt shakes his head, sitting on the edge of his bed, running his tongue over his cut lip. Everything has mostly healed, by now, the visible bruises at least. The faded remnants of them look like nothing compared to what they were, and it's been so long that it's hard to remember what he looked like without them. Blaine stands uncertainly in his bedroom doorway still, while Kurt looks at the floor, then says, "I went to visit Karofsky."

There is a long silence while Blaine makes that sentence make sense. Eventually, when his mind has strangled itself on all the things he could say, what he comes out with is, "What?"

Kurt puts his phone down and folds his arms over his stomach, gives an awkward one-shouldered shrug. "I wanted to ask him what happened. What he did. What I did. Because - that's the bit that, that gets to me. Not knowing what I did. You - you want to think that you'd have some dignity in that situation at least, don't you?"

"You went - you went to juvie to speak to the prick who tried to kill you." Blaine turns away, can't look at him, his hands shake as he digs them through his hair. "You're not even supposed to leave the house, how the hell did you get there?"

"Puck drove me. Blaine-"

"Puck drove you?"

"I knew no-one else would. You're all really mad at him."

Blaine spins back, tries not to scream, "Do you wonder why?"

"Blaine," Kurt says again, quieter. "Don't - shout."

"You went to juvie to speak to him. What the hell is - do you ever even think about how dangerous-"

"Blaine, don't shout."

Blaine drags his breath in, tries to actually focus on Kurt, notices how small he's compressed himself on the bed. Kurt hates being shouted at. He clenches his teeth for a moment, jigging slightly with helpless rage on his ankles, before he can let himself relax, can walk over, put his hands under Kurt's jaw to raise his face. "I don't even know how you think sometimes," he says, helplessly. "You went to talk to him. Oh god, Kurt, don't you ever think how hurt you could get?"

"Worse than I have been, really?" Kurt says, looking right up at him, swallowing and Blaine can feel his throat moving against his palms. "I just wanted to know, Blaine. I just wanted . . . I just wanted to know what happened." His mouth twitches. "You're the one who wanted me to talk about it."

"Not with him. I don't-" He can't bear the thought of Kurt anywhere near Karofsky. He cannot stand it, he needs to punch someone, Kurt in the same room as the prick who punched him until he fell down and then kicked him until he had to be dragged off. Karofsky should be dead. Karofsky should have got the fucking chair. Karofsky should meet Blaine and a baseball bat down a dark alleyway some night. Karofsky should never be allowed to so much as think about Kurt again.

Kurt touches Blaine's arm, holds it with the bandages on his fingers an ugly off-white against Blaine's blazer. "I just wanted to know what I did, Blaine."

Blaine swallows, and makes himself actually listen to Kurt instead of his own horror. "And what did he tell you?"

Kurt closes his eyes. "Nothing, nothing much. What was I going to do? There were lots of them and one of me and I'm me. They . . . he said I didn't cry." He opens his eyes again, but doesn't meet Blaine's. "I thought I would have. Wasn't I scared?"

Blaine breathes, slowly, and holds Kurt's face, and says very low, very rough, "You're the bravest person I've ever met."

Kurt blinks at him like he doesn't understand. "But I must have been scared. I - I must have known what would happen, no, not what would happen, I couldn't guess that but didn't I know - ? I thought it would help. I thought I would understand better but I don't, I don't feel like it happened to me, just people telling me it - and god he looks horrible, Blaine. That place is worse than what I went through. That place is awful."

Blaine just closes his jaw tight before he says something too fast. Nothing is more awful than what Kurt went thought, apart from maybe what Blaine and Burt and Finn and everyone else who loves him went through. He swallows down the hard hurting ball of rage and through his raw throat says, "Are you okay?"

Kurt looks up at him, and blinks, and closes his eyes as the tears come. "I'm sorry," he says, as Blaine wraps his arms around his shoulders, hugs him gently in as Kurt's hands pull at his blazer. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry, Blaine. I just - I don't even understand, I thought-"

"It's okay," he whispers into Kurt's hair. "It will be okay."

"- I thought it would help, all I can think about is how awful he looked and how I will never, never feel like I was there and I'll never know what I did-"

He can hardly get the words out his throat hurts so much. "You were brave. You always are."

"But I'll never know." He pulls at Blaine like he needs him closer and Blaine is so afraid of hurting him, but he knows it would hurt Kurt more not to be held now. So he folds him in, and presses his face into his hair, and Kurt sobs a bit until he whines, "Crying hurts my ribs, asshole for hurting my ribs and then making me cry about it-"

Blaine holds him, breathes, and thinks that yeah, Karofsky's life must be pretty fucking miserable right now. It's the beginning of the karma for what he's done to Kurt. He needs to suffer a lot more, though, and if Blaine is ever given a fraction of a chance, he will contribute to that as nastily as he can. But until then he has to hold Kurt, and tell him that he loves him, and that things will be okay because Blaine will make them okay, will twist and fight the entire world into the right shape for Kurt.

When he's quiet again Blaine finds him a tissue, sits next to him rubbing the back of Kurt's neck while he calms his breathing and swallows a few times and lets his head slump. It's strange to see Kurt's back anything but upright, he normally has a dancer's spine-straight poise. Blaine runs his hand down his back, says, "I need to tell you and your dad something. Something . . . I just need to tell you both."

Kurt looks across at him, blinks damply, looks only confused. Blaine rubs his back and smiles, a weary twitch of the corner of his mouth, because everything is going to be okay. As long as both of them are alive they will make each other okay, he knows it. "Come on," he says gently, and gets an arm around his back, takes Kurt's hand in his, to help him up.