For the four hours and eighteen minutes that Blaine and I both were 15, we sat side-by-side on the couch in the sitting room, our thighs pressed up together, our hands laced in between us. I leaned over and dropped my head onto his shoulder, and I heard him sigh.

"Stop thinking about it," I told him.

"I can't," was all he said.

It was only a few weeks after That Dark Day, and I kept telling him to forget about it, just for that day, so that maybe we could both be happy, because who knows when we'll get to be happy again? but he was always so stubborn.

I glanced at the clock. 10:28. Twenty-one minutes until Blaine turned sixteen and he became an entire year away from me again. We'd already had slices out of my birthday cake at precisely 6:31 that evening, and then settled in to wait for Blaine's turn. Up until I was five or six I hated that Blaine and I shared a birthday. I hated that he was a whole year older than me, anyway, and then I had to go and split my one special day with him? My only consolation was that I was, technically, born four hours and eighteen minutes before he was, so we always celebrated my birthday first, even though I was a whole year younger.

I stopped caring when I realized that sharing a birthday with the most incredible person I'd ever met, my brother, even though we weren't proper twins, was kind of amazing.

He nudged my shoulder with his and whispered into the quiet room: "Will you promise me something?" "Maybe," I told him. "Promise me you won't ever give up." I felt like crying. "I can't."

10:34

"Why not?" he asked me, and I could hear every thread of hurt in his voice.

"Please don't ask me to do that," I begged.

"I don't understand, Pagan."

"Please."

10:37

"Promise me that, no matter what happens, you won't stop fighting this," he pressed, and I knew he was desperate, clutching at any straw he could see, even if it was out of his reach.

"I can't," I was very nearly crying, "I can't."

10:45

"Please tell me why, Pagan," and I knew he really was crying. "Swear you won't be mad at me?" I had to make sure. "Never." "Ever?" "Never ever."

"Because I don't want to disappoint you."

10:49

"Happy birthday, Blaine."

I kissed his cheek. It tasted like tears.

I thought I'd never see someone as sad as Blaine had been that day, until I looked up at Kurt after Blaine spoke and his eyes were so wide, and the water flowing down his cheeks came so fast that my heart hurt, it hurt inside me, and I wondered if this wouldn't break him.

I watched him cry as he looked between us for what felt like hours, even though the cacophonous chiming from the grandfather clock in the grand hall downstairs told me it had only been twenty minutes, at most. But still. Watching someone's heart break over and over, as they realized again and again that one of the people in front of them was dying, and the other had to watch it happen, was enough to make my own heart break. Again.

I didn't think there were any pieces big enough left to break anymore.

Blaine ran his fingers through my slightly wavy, shoulder- length, dirty blond hair, so different from his that sometimes I hated it, it took me farther away from him, but he always told me he was jealous of how soft it was so I stopped hating it for a while. His own dark curls felt rough beneath my fingers, even the calloused ones, but it was so Blaine that I never once hated them.

"Why?" Kurt choked out, and it was hardly more than a whisper when he said it.

I didn't have to look up at Blaine to know he'd closed his honey-brown eyes, because I knew that he needed to gather his thoughts a bit before telling Kurt exactly why he never mentioned me, and he always closed his eyes when he thought.

When he didn't open his eyes to speak for several minutes, I figured maybe he needed a push.

"I told him not to," I broke the silence, and my voice sounded strangely amplified in my room.

"But why?" Kurt repeated, and Blaine finally moved. He tugged Kurt down so that he was lying on his side next to Blaine, one of his arms resting across Blaine's chest to reach over and trace his fingers across my cheek. I'd known Kurt all of four days and I already felt more connected to him than anyone besides Blaine. Maybe it was because Blaine would always talk about him, come home and tell me stories about things Kurt said or things Kurt did or "And the way he laughs, Pagan, God, I could listen to it for days." And when Kurt stroked his thumb across the purple bruise beneath my eye, I completely understood why Blaine loved him so much.

"I wanted Blaine to have his own life so that when..."I had to swallow really hard because I felt like throwing up again, "when it happens, he'll be able to move on."

Kurt just looked at me, more tears cascading down across his face, the odd angle making them run under his nose to collect on Blaine's shirt, but neither of them cared. I flicked open my envelope of blankets and wiggled a bit so that they stretched to cover all three of us, snuggled down into my grey comforter as we were.

"I didn't want people to know about me so that I couldn't hurt anyone that didn't have to be hurt," I kept speaking, finding it easier to talk to the edge of the blankets than to either pair of eyes.

Blaine continued to stroke through my hair because he knew how much it calmed me, made me forget sometimes that I was hurting, helped me remember that he'd always be there, no matter what.

"Hey, Blaine?" I asked softly, breathing against his chest. "Yeah?" "I'm thirsty." His hand paused in my hair, and I knew that he knew what I wanted, so he said "OK," and, after much wiggling by all three of us, managed to extricate himself from the tangle of limbs and blankets we'd become.

"I'll be back in a flash," he said, dropping kisses onto both my and Kurt's foreheads before he walked heavily out of the room.

I spent a minute just looking at Kurt while he looked at me, both of us resting our heads against my mountain of pillows. His eyes were red around the edges, he looked like he was having a little trouble breathing, and I hated that it was my fault he was hurting like that.

"Hey, Kurt?" I asked. "Yeah?" "You love my brother, right?" "More than anything." "Good."

We lapsed back into silence for a moment, and even though I knew probably everything about Kurt from what Blaine had told me, he knew absolutely nothing about me, and yet, there he was, his thumb still brushing gently across my cheek in a comforting gesture. It made me want to cry again, but I was so tired of crying, so tired of feeling half the time that I would have given everything for it all to be over, but thinking like that scared me more than anything, scared me right out of feeling like crying.

"Will you take care of him?" I asked, and when Kurt looked confused, I went on. "Because he's been taking care of me for two years, and I see how exhausted he gets, and I hate that I'm doing this to him. He's going to need someone to make sure he eats, make sure he goes to school and keeps up with his singing, because he can't ever stop singing, you know? I didn't want anyone to know about me so that when I'm not here anymore, they won't be missing anything. But Blaine will be. And he won't be right for a while, but I think he could be in time, and I'm so happy that he has you, Kurt, because the way he talks about you makes it sound like you're gravity, you're such a part of him. He's going to need you. And I need to know that you'll let him need you. That you'll remind him that he needs someone."

And damn it if I didn't make Kurt cry again, but I was crying, too, even though I really didn't want to because it made me so incredibly tired, but I couldn't help it when I looked at his face and he looked like he might never be happy again. I didn't mean to do that.

"I will never let him be anything less than alright," Kurt promised me, and my chest felt inflated, like the elephant that had been sitting on it for two years finally decided the grass really was greener on the other side and left to go make sure.

Blaine came back a minute later, and when he saw that we were both crying again, he didn't say anything, he just lifted us both up so that were cradled against his chest, and we just sat there for ages, crying and sniffling and trying to hold each other up, but it was really hard when each of us only wanted to fall down.

I was nine when I watched Peter Pan for the first time, and I decided in that moment that I would never grow up, that I would stay a kid forever, because wouldn't that be awesome?

"You can't stop growing old, Pagan," Blaine burst my bubble, but later that night, while I was trying to go to sleep, I decided he was right, but not entirely.

I rolled out of bed, tiny feet slapping on the marble floors as I ran across my room, threw open the large door and bolted down the hall for Blaine's, leaping into his bed once I'd charged into his dark room. He yelped and threw pillows at me, but I caught them all and smacked them back at him, and we started laughing until Anne told us to shut up and go to bed, but before she made me go back to my own room, I looked down at Blaine and said, "Maybe I can't stop growing old, but I can stop growing up," and then I left.

The next morning at breakfast Blaine asked me why I didn't want to grow up if I was going to get old, anyway.

"Because this way I can grow old without getting hurt," I explained. "You can't grow old and grow up without getting hurt?" he asked. "Have you ever seen an adult that was happy all the time?" "No." "Exactly."

"Why do you think that is?" he wondered as we walked into school later that morning. "Why can't everybody just be happy?"

"Because bad things happen, Blaine," I rolled my eyes at him.

"Well, duh," he rolled his eyes back at me, "but just because one bad thing happens doesn't mean there aren't a million other things to be happy about."

"Maybe that one thing just hurts too much," I shrugged. "Maybe it hurts so much that it's all they can think about."

"What if something, just one thing, really bad happened to you?" he asked me as he opened his locker to stuff his backpack inside.

"Like what?" I asked. "Like if I died." I gaped at him, "Why would you say that?" He shrugged and said, "Just suppose." I thought about it. "I suppose I'd be confused." "Why?" "Because no matter how much I hurt or how much I'd miss you, I don't think I'd ever understand why it happened in the first place."

He said, "Oh."

"Yeah."

It started getting dark outside and Kurt had to get home or else his dad would worry about him, so we all stood on legs that felt too weak to be able to stand straight, but they did, and we said goodbye. Blaine hugged him long and hard, and I felt like I was intruding on something, even though they were just standing there. Then they parted and Kurt looked at me like he was thinking really hard about something before he grabbed my arms and yanked me into his chest, knocking the wind out of me in a hug so strong I'd never felt so loved in my life, except when I was with Blaine. And then, before I could fully appreciate what was happening, I felt the gentle touch of his kiss, right on my mouth. It was swift and it was platonic, but it said "I'm here", and I didn't realize until after he'd left with the promise to call as soon as he got home that I should have made my lips say "Thank you," but I was feeling too overwhelmed at knowing there was one more person in my life to be able to process much of anything as it happened.

I didn't want to be alone that night, and neither did Blaine, so we dragged out our old fort and piled into it, dimming the lights in the sitting room until they were just a soft glow, like candlelight. My thumb twitched against the back of his hand as he held mine, which made him hold it tighter. He spoke to Kurt for almost an hour when he called, a hushed, mostly silent conversation that I tuned out to give them privacy. But Blaine didn't seem to care because he snuggled closer to me and practically held the phone between our ears so that I could hear Kurt's soft, musical voice floating through the tiny speakers.

I didn't listen to what he was saying, I was too tired, so I closed my eyes and let the murmuring of my brother and his boyfriend rock me to sleep faster than any cradle could have.

Kurt spent almost the entire weekend at our house.

He woke up before either me or Blaine on Saturday morning and helped Anne make breakfast: crepes with bananas and strawberries, pancakes, porridge, eggs, bacon, toast and butter and jam. After a frantic Blaine woke me up at nearly seven-thirty, we found him covered head-to-toe in flour, standing in the middle of our basement kitchen, about to take up a groaning platter of dishes.

"I thought we'd eat in the den," he said with a shrug, and Blaine sagged in relief against me while I tried not to laugh.

It was easy to not feel like laughing when I glanced at the calendar hanging on the wall.

"Shit."

Blaine looked at me in concern and I pointed to the bright blue sharpie that circled the next day, "CHEMO" written across it in an equally bright, offensive green that I only used because I thought it would be funny, considering how the treatments made me feel.

"Shit," Blaine echoed. "I completely forgot."

"I'm not hungry," I stated and crawled into the dumbwaiter. "Meet you upstairs?"

Blaine nodded, slid the door shut, and hit the button, but not before telling me to pick a movie, and to make it good.

Kurt and Blaine sent up the food to me after I'd crawled out and dropped the tiny elevator back down to the kitchen, so I grabbed it up and laid it on the low table in the den. I dug through the bookshelf stacked three-deep with slim cases and pulled out Peter Pan, setting it triumphantly into the player just as the boys walked in carrying an assortment of drinks. Blaine handed me a glass of orange juice with a not-so-subtle quirk of his eyebrow that said "It would make me feel better if you did," so I did. I even managed a few strawberries and that made him beam at me.

"You can stay with Kurt tomorrow, if you want," I told Blaine as Peter noticed the rising water from where he stood on the rock with Wendy.

"No way am I making you sit in that room alone," Blaine stated emphatically while Kurt nodded.

"But-"

"No."

"I'm a big girl."

"You just rode in a dumbwaiter, Pagan. You're not very big."

"Blaine."

"Pagan."

Peter grabbed the kite and tried to get Wendy to take it, but she kept refusing to leave him alone to face his own demise.

"You can come if you want, Kurt," I all but whispered.

"Are you sure?" he asked, reaching out to grasp my hand tightly.

"You should know what you're getting yourself into," I tried to smile, but it mostly just hurt.

"Of course I'll be there."

I nodded my thanks, grateful that he didn't cringe or try to run away, because he was about to see me at my absolute worst.

To die will be an awfully big adventure.