Blaine thinks he might throw up. And he never throws up; the only time he can remember was when he was recovering from the Sadie Hawkins dance and the pain was so… exquisite that he swallowed a whole bottle of pain meds. His brother had found him on his bedroom floor and shoved his fingers down Blaine's throat, and his whole body tried to reject them the only way it knew how. The upcoming pills had burned in his throat and nose to the point where he was unable to breathe, and it was terrifying and torture, and Blaine has no desire to experience it again. So he swallows hard and presses his face into Kurt's shoulder, holding onto his Kurt, his lifeline in the middle of all this.
"You… you have a brother?" Kurt whispers, sounding so stunned that Blaine wants to kick himself in the face for never mentioning it before.
"Yeah, um, he's older, he's twenty-six now… he lives in Chicago and I haven't seen him for… god, a year almost?"
Kurt's just staring at him, and Blaine really could kick himself. "He keeps in touch, but I kind of… forgot you didn't know." Blaine's being honest – Kurt knows him, knows so much about him, more than anyone else in the entire world, better than his parents or the Warblers, and Blaine really did forget that there were still things about his life that Kurt wasn't aware of yet. Cooper, for instance.
Wonderful timing for coming back into my life, Coop, Blaine thinks bitterly.
He tells Kurt everything, stroking Kurt's pale hand gently with the pad of his thumb, about Cooper's first time babysitting Blaine when he was five and Coop was thirteen, about how they joined Scouts together, and Blaine was always jealous of Cooper, the Boy Scout to his Bear Cub. He tells Kurt about how Cooper was one of the chaperones at the Sadie Hawkins dance, the one who found Blaine unconscious on the bloody asphalt, the one who ran after the jocks, screaming profanities and brandishing the bloodstained tire iron they'd left behind. Kurt is quiet as Blaine tells him how Cooper got tired of their parents' vice-like grip on the two of them, and left as soon as he was financially able, boarding a plane to Chicago and never looking back.
"You two seemed so close," Kurt murmurs, tracing the lines of Blaine's palm and glancing up to meet Blaine's eyes. "Did he really just… leave?"
Blaine nods, swallowing past the lump in his throat. "I mean, he Skypes me sometimes, and he visits me once a year or so, but he barely talks to my parents. He never forgave my dad for hitting me when I told them I was gay."
Kurt sucks in a small breath, fingers twining tightly with Blaine's. "I'm sorry," he says hesitantly. Blaine shakes his head, forcing a smile and bringing Kurt's hand to his lips to press a kiss to Kurt's knuckles.
"Don't be. It's been a few years now, I got over it."
If you got over it, then why can't you stop thinking about who was on the other end of that phone call? his subconscious asks snidely, and Blaine bites down hard on his lip. There is no logical reason why Cooper should be in Lima, so why is there this vicious knife stuck between his ribs, flaring hot every time he sucks in a breath?
Kurt's quiet, eyes fixed somewhere in the distance, thin lips pressed together in a rigid line. Blaine rubs Kurt's back slowly, trying to concentrate only on the rise and fall of their combined breath, but his eyes keep being drawn to the phone Rachel left behind. Even if it's not his Cooper, even if it was just some random stranger on the other line, Blaine has to know.
He pushes himself up, stretching across Kurt to snatch the phone from the leather cushions.
"What are you doing?" Kurt asks softly, blue eyes questioning.
"Just checking," Blaine mumbles, speed dialing Quinn's number and trying to calm his shaking hands. He sits back and rests his hand on Kurt's knee, fingers drumming anxiously until Kurt gently stills them, listening to the phone ring shrilly in his ear.
The line clicks and Blaine's heart slams into his throat, blocking his airway. He jerks visibly, and Kurt places a hand on Blaine's back, thumb rubbing soothing circles through his shirt, and the voice on the phone speaks, breaking through the wail of sirens and the screech of metal on metal jumbling in the background.
"Hello?"
And Blaine's stomach just drops down through his feet, landing in a quivering puddle somewhere around his toes, because he knows that voice. It's the voice that read him The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn when he was six years old, the voice that taught him how to tie the right knots in Boy Scouts, the voice that was the first thing he heard when he swam back into reality in the hospital when he was fourteen.
"Cooper," Blaine chokes, and his brother is silent for a second, swallowed by the sirens.
"Blaine?" Cooper stammers, and Blaine closes his eyes, heart pounding so hard he can feel it in his ears. Fuck.
