Author's Note: I haven't posted anything here in awhile, so I came up with this one-shot and thought you might like it.
Disclaimer: I do not own Kurt Hummel or Blaine Anderson or any of the characters on Glee.
Rating: T (for now)
Genre: Romance/Hurt/Comfort/Angst
Pairings: Kurt/Blaine, mentions of Finchel
Summary: "I'm sick," Blaine says, eyes blank and vacant.
And Kurt's world comes crashing down.
don't know how to be without you
"I'm sick," Blaine says, eyes blank and vacant. He stands at the edge of the door and they all look up at him. Rachel and Finn stop ogling each other with sappy eyes and Wes freezes from where he's texting, his fingers stopping their typing on his phone, and Kurt closes the magazine he's reading.
"What?" Wes asks, forehead furrowed in confusion, voice heavy with alarm.
"The doctor says I've got something called acute myeloid leukemia." Blaine stumbles over the words—they're unfamiliar and strange in his mouth, and Rachel stops poking Finn to really listen.
Kurt's heart is thudding, heavy in his chest, and his vision seems to be ebbing and flowing. The magazine holds in his hands goes in and out of focus, and he tries to put all his attention on remembering how to breathe.
"You're gonna be okay, though, right?" Rachel manages, her voice a small, high-pitched squeak. "Right, Blaine?" Her brown eyes flash as she tugs on a strand of chocolate hair and as she looks at the dark-haired boy with concern.
"I don't know," Blaine replies, looking scared. Because yeah, Blaine's been sick, but it can't be this. Because acute myeloid leukemia is cancer, and none of them know the first thing about cancer except that it's bad and people die. Blaine's eyes are empty and his voice is hollow and Kurt wants to hold him and kiss every bit of him better. But Kurt can't move.
"I'm sick," Blaine says, eyes blank and vacant.
And Kurt's world comes crashing down.
oOo
Kurt's world crumples slowly.
It doesn't shatter overnight. It fragments slowly and drops into pieces slowly—and losing Blaine is like losing baby teeth—it hurts, slowly, and a little at a time.
It's one thing after another, slowly building on top of one another until they collect into a giant mess that weighs him down so much he has trouble breathing.
The other kids coddle Blaine, treat him differently, with Wes curbing his cheeky, sarcastic spark and Finn's eyes shining with concern as he offers to carry Blaine's things, and Rachel feeding Blaine as though he's a starving child from a third-world country, but Kurt doesn't.
Kurt kisses Blaine with the same ferocity, launches himself at Blaine with the same aggressiveness and simultaneous gentleness he'd had before Blaine ever said he was sick. He wants Blaine to know that it doesn't matter and this changes nothing and I will always feel this about you—now, maybe even more. When they're laying in bed, arms wrapped loosely around one another, legs entwined in rumpled sheets, Kurt's head rested on Blaine's small chest, Blaine murmurs a "thank you."
Kurt shuts his eyes and whispers, "I love you," so quietly he can barely hear it.
Blaine replies, "I know," and that is that.
oOo
With Blaine's news, Rachel and Finn get even closer if even possible. They're inseperable, as though they have suddenly realized anyone can get cancer and anyone can die, so if Blaine can get it, why can't Finn? Or Rachel? They grow into one another, like vines, folding and twisting togther and blurring the lines separating who they are. Rachel and Finn spend all their time together, cracking jokes, eating lunch, kissing each other like they haven't seen each other in years, laughing until their stomachs hurt—and Wes and the rest of the Warblers looks on with quiet concern.
Kurt starts hating all of them.
Kurt knows that they all mean well and it's not fair to expect them to help him carry this load, but he can't help but also think that Blaine doesn't need them. Blaine only needs Kurt and Kurt intends to be there for him.
oOo
Blaine starts chemotherapy and it's painful to watch.
He throws up allthetime and whines allthetime and everything in his body hurts allthetime and Kurt doesn't know what to do.
So he curls in next to Blaine in his hospital bed and lets himself breathe in Blaine's scent of cologne and boy and the undertone of fatigue. Blaine's fingers drift over Kurt's face, and Kurt lets himself believe. He lets himself believe that everything will turn out right, and this is just a bump in the road, and Blaine will be fine. Blaine will be fine and they will be fine.
oOo
Blaine's thick eyelashes, the ones dark as night that are the envy of girls everywhere, fall out the same night Blaine loses his curls of hair.
When Kurt and his friends topple in for visiting hours in the hospital with Finn bounding excitedly in front of a crew of Warblers to push in the door and show his support for his stepbrother's boyfriend, they all roll to a stop and stare in disbelief.
Rachel takes a look at Blaine's pale, smooth head, and bursts into tears.
Wes walks over to Blaine and gives him a hug to try to make things better and jokes that maybe when his curly hair comes back in, it'll be even softer. Thad tells Blaine he's never been more handsome, and while Finn takes off after Rachel, who's run out of the room. Wes soon stammers something unintelligible and follows.
Kurt clambers onto Blaine's bed—his side of the bed—and just breathes.
"You want to talk about it?" he murmurs, and when Blaine says no, Kurt is almost relieved.
oOo
On one of Blaine's good nights, he and Kurt scale the hospital and find their way to the roof of the building. Kurt unrolls a hospital blanket on the hard cement on the upper floor, and they lie there together, watching the stars. Kurt's head is nestled in the crook of Blaine's arm where it has always belonged, and Blaine sighs in comfort, alabaster head gleaming under the night sky.
"Are you afraid?" Kurt's voice breaks the silence, and there's a waver in his tone, and Blaine looks at him.
"Come here," Blaine says, and Kurt shifts, moving his head towards Blaine. Blaine presses a hard kiss against Kurt's lips, and Kurt kisses him back as a wordless of course.
Blaine doesn't answer the question, just continues, "I'm happiest when I'm with you, Kurt."
And Kurt envelops himself in the dark of the night around them and the comforting beating of Blaine's heart. He laces his fingers through Blaine's in an answer. Kurt knows that here is where he belongs, and here's where he promises he'll stay.
oOo
The morning Wes answers his phone and his eyes fog up and look glassy and his mouth draws into a tight, impossible line, Kurt knows what has happened.
"Thank you for letting us know, Mrs. Anderson," Wes says dutifully, voice cracking as it arches onto a higher note, and Kurt knows.
Rachel is the second to notice Wes's expression and she starts screaming and Finn is holding her and trying to calm her down and Wes looking at Kurt with a sympathy that Kurt despises.
Because Wesl, straight-laced Wes with his good intentions and responsible nature and his ability and desire to say everything right and fix everything in his path hasn't been able to fix this. And he can't pretend to understand how Kurt feels.
As Blaine's other friends are crying together and starting on their mourning processes, Kurt walks up and leaves the room. He thinks about feverish fingers on the stretch of his stomach, full lips, and a secretive smile that Blaine only shared with him.
oOo
Kurt throws all of the CDs on the ground, not caring where they fall and careen against the ground, until he finally finds the one he's searching for. It's from a day at the lake the past summer, when Thad had decided he'd take up filming their adventures because why the hell not and he pushes the disc into his computer and blows up the movie full screen.
In it, the Warblers and Kurt are laughing as they run on the sand and they're so young—Wes and David throw sand at each other with glee, and Thad turns the camera to film his own face, his blue eyes shining under the sun.
"Oi! There's our pair of lovebugs!" comes Thad's playful, cheerful voice from behind the camera, and the video is unsteady and poorly filmed, but it focuses on Kurt and Blaine, sitting together at the campfire, a large towel over both of their shoulders. Blaine's fingering Kurt's chestnut hair absently, and Kurt is looking at Blaine like he's seeing him for the first time.
"Oh stop it, Thad." Blaine's voice is smooth like a brick of dark chocolate, and he folds his fingers gently underneath Kurt's chin like he always has.
"Come on now," demands Thad impatiently, "put on a show for the camera. Cheeky bastards."
"We have a little more class than that, Thad." Kurt's voice is worn and tired and a little incredulous, but not at all angry.
"Leave them alone, Thad," comes Wes's voice from offscreen, and David defensively butts in as well, "Thad, let them be. They're cute when they try to be secretive."
"Where's the fun in that? Are you chicken?" Thad's mischievous tone dominates the picture, and on the screen of his computer, Kurt sees Blaine's eyes soften in defeat.
"I'm gonna get you," Blaine threatens Thad, and flips off the towel onto Kurt as he stands up. Kurt watches his movie self squawk under the towel, and then the image slips and becomes grainy before coming into focus again. Thad has thrown the camera to Kurt, and Kurt's managed to catch it.
There's a flicker of doppleganger-Kurt's brown coiff of hair in the camera before Blaine's face fills the entire screen. Kurt remembers how his fingers felt wrapped around the videocamera as he stared straight up at Blaine.
"Be right back, babe," Blaine promises, and he starts off after Thad, but turns to stare back at Kurt mid-run. Blaine's face fills the entirety of Kurt's computer screen—his head turned over his shoulder, his eyelashes full and dark, his hazel eyes bright and full of life, his hitched, crazy smile tugged up on his face exposing white teeth.
With a hoarse sob, Kurt pauses the video there. He touches the pixelated image of Blaine, brushing his fingers over Blaine's face on his computer and making himself remember the scratch of Blaine's scruff, the way Blaine's cheekbones felt under his fingers.
At least for that moment, Kurt's living in that summer day he wishes would never end.
"Be right back, babe."
And Blaine will always come back for him.
oOo
When Blaine shows up that night at his bedroom door, Kurt is expecting him. Blaine looks the same as always, full lips, dark, expansive eyebrows, bright, expressive eyes, and his lithe, sinewy body. Blaine looks the way he did before he was sick, when Kurt first fell in love: messy curls of untamed chocolate hair, impossibly long eyelashes.
"I'm sorry," Kurt says, pulling his covers up around him. "I'm sorry. I couldn't go to the funeral. I couldn't watch them bury you."
Blaine's mouth pulls itself into a thin, straight line. His head is downcast and his skin is stained with soil. He doesn't say anything, but with one step, he's there next to Kurt, so familiar and so unexpectedly fragile.
When Blaine kisses him, Kurt swallows dirt. Blaine tastes unfamiliar and cold, and he smells like damp earth. Blaine's eyes are hollowed and his face is gaunt, and Kurt can feel the ridges of his defined cheekbones underneath his fingers.
"I've missed you," Kurt manages in a whisper, between cold, coarse kisses.
Blaine's body is cold and bloodless and even in the dark, Kurt can see how pale he is.
Blaine breaks a kiss to look at him. "I shouldn't be here. Kurt, you need to let me go," is his low reply, and Kurt feels his heart drop out from his chest.
"I don't know how to be without you," Kurt tells him, his voice strained. "I can't."
He doesn't know what to say after that, so instead he thrusts his tongue into Blaine's mouth, pushing so hard that he stands up and jumps into Blaine's grasp. Blaine's arms are on his legs, supporting Kurt's body, and Kurt kisses him and kisses him until he can't breathe—until he almost convinces himself that this is real. Kurt can survive off of Blaine's exhale; he inhales in dirt and soil and twigs, and runs his hands through Blaine's limp, dying hair.
When he finally breaks off so that his lungs don't burst and his eyes stop watering and he can catch a bit of much-needed oxygen, Blaine looks vaguely disappointed but he doesn't say anything.
Kurt gets back into his bed and pulls the covers around himself.
Kurt feels a weight shift his mattress down, and then Blaine's familiar body is there behind him, spooning him like he always has, like he's always belonged—almost like he never even left.
And with Blaine's frigid body next to his, Blaine's muscled arms wrapped around Kurt's bare chest, Kurt wonders if he ever even knew how to exist alone.
Fin.
I'd really love to hear what you think. I know that they're a bit OOC because this story was originally written as a One Direction fanfiction (oh sue me), but I thought it worked pretty well as Kurt and Blaine.
Somehow I see Kurt actually going into overdrive if he ever found out Blaine had cancer, but what do I know, right?
Anyway... this story... broke me. I hope you liked it.