Well, lookee here! A chapter!

This nearly didn't happen. I was THIS far away from stopping writing this fic because damn, writer's block and running out of time and having too much work. But after complaining on Tumblr (same URL over there!), radioactivesunflower made me want to write more so thank you so, so much! And I felt properly inspired by my friend Caz to write some more, as she'd just started reading my stuff and text me telling me that she liked this. We chatted a bit and idk, something lifted and I wrote this yesterday! Thank you times a billion bb, this one is dedicated to you for being amazing and for being one of the most special people in my life, regardless of distance.

I just wanted to thank everyone else who has stuck with me. Everyone who has subscribed, favourited and especially you guys who take the time to review and let me know what you think. Thank you. I know I don't ever get around to messaging you back because I am SO forgetful but I honestly really appreciate you from the bottom of my heart.

So, enjoy. Let me know your thoughts! And sorry if it's not a very strong chapter, still fighting the last of the block away.

XO

PS the hat Kurt is wearing is that gorgeous hat he wears in Furt. I want it so bad!

Glass Bones & Paper Skin

Chapter eight: Pain Has Made You Strong

When something like this happens... as in cancer... things start to feel a little different.

It was coming up to Christmas. The ward was decorated top to bottom. Sarah had begun to don holly leaves in her curly hair, Blaine's newly assigned wheelchair due to his weakened state had been decorated with tinsel and some smartass had so cleverly hung mistletoe up between Blaine's bed and the chair where Kurt would sit every time. Funny. Real funny...

Whilst everyone else wanted to make a big deal out of Christmas this year (and even more so, especially with the underlying thoughts of maybe this is the last Christmas he'll ever see) but Blaine didn't want that. He really didn't. Either Christmas was to be treated the same as every year or it wasn't to be celebrated at all, in Blaine's case.

"If this is the last Christmas I get to see, I don't want to be showered with things that I don't need any more. Thank you, Mom, Dad, but... spend the money on Lily or something. She has the rest of her life ahead of her... I possibly don't."

It was a wonder how Blaine managed to just slip things like that casually into conversation, nowadays. It was almost as if he'd come to terms with it. But come to terms with what, exactly?

"How about- how about a wig or something, honey? We know it's not the same as your real hair, and it won't look exact, but we can look into if you want us to..." Lea, Blaine's mom, said as she reached across the dinner table to hold his hand.

Squeezing her hand in return gratefully, Blaine set down his fork and ran his now spare hand over his entirely bald head. "No. No, that's okay. Thanks, anyway. Cancer isn't something that you can be exactly ashamed of because, at the end of the day, it's not anyone's fault if they get it. I'm not ashamed of it, not anymore, so I'm not going to hide it. Besides," he shrugged a little, picking his fork back up and spearing a piece of meat with it. "Kurt's bald too so I don't feel so alone."

His parent's had been shocked to say the least when he'd come home with a bald head and dried tears on his cheeks, telling them how Kurt had selflessly shaved his own head. Shocked was a little bit of an understatement really, when they both knew how much pride Kurt took in his appearance. But that didn't mean that they weren't grateful too. So grateful that Lea had stolen Kurt's number from Blaine's phone to quickly shoot a text, explaining how she'd gotten his number and how she was proud of what he had done for her little boy. They exchanged a few heartfelt pleasantries, nothing too deep but it made Lea felt somewhat reassured that her boy was in safe hands.

Well, she'd always known that. She'd never had any reason not to doubt Kurt. If that look in his eyes whenever he looked at Blaine was anything to go by.

So Christmas day zipped past with laughter filled meals and wrapping paper fights and snowman building and wheelchair racing and trips to see the distant relatives and even a stop off at Kurt's house for a bit for the hug and present exchange (even though Blaine had argued against it but Kurt insisted that he'd already bought his gifts before Blaine had brought up the 'no present rule' and had since lost the receipts... likely story).

"So, have you had a good day?" Kurt smiled into Blaine's skin from where his head rested on his shoulder. They were sitting in the corner against the wall decorating Blaine's wheelchair with stickers from Blaine's present from Kurt aka 'Kurt Hummel's Awesome Box of Christmas fun', whilst their parents sat conversing over mulberry wine at the kitchen table and Finn pretended to lose playing video games with Lily. Blaine peeled off another sticker from the packet and stuck it on the arm, rubbing his thumb repeatedly over it until it stuck, before shuffling closer to Kurt. The taller boy tangled their fingers together and pulled Blaine in closer.

"It's been okay. Much better now that you're here," Blaine whispered, burying his face into Kurt's collar. He tried not to breathe too heavily as to give the game away that he was secretly smelling Kurt's skin, the scent of whatever cologne Father Christmas had delivered laying thick and sweet in the air.

"I have that effect of making everyone's days greater, huh?" he smirked in return, swiftly pulling off a sparkling sticker and attaching it to Blaine's bald scalp.

"HEY!" Blaine protested, before retaliating and sticking a left over ribbon off the box to Kurt's own bald scalp. Cue the most intense sticker fight known to the Hudmel household, causing their parents to poke their heads around the doorway to see what was going on and Finn to abandon his game as he watched them, mouth agape.

It was times like those when it was easy to forget that cancer even existed. It was just them and only them.

"Sooooo..." Kurt sang, elbows planted firmly on the edge of Blaine's dining table, chin rested in his palms.

"Soooo?" Blaine sung back with laughter, finally closing his notebook and slipping his pen into the rings. Things had felt a bit more cheerful since Christmas and since Blaine had received his good news.

"How do you feel? I mean, ugh, this news is great. Wonderful, even."

"Relieved, mainly. But I feel like something bad is going to happen to cancel out the good. I still need to get my cough checked out and I know that that can't be good news in itself," Blaine sighed, twisting in his chairs to face Kurt properly. "But no, I feel better, I guess. It's been a while since Doctor Garrison came in with a smile on his face, rather than a grave one."

"Maybe this is where things begin to go uphill. Your biopsy results coming back and the lump in your shoulder being a benign cyst is the first step. Then your tumour is going to shrink, your surgery will be a success and then," Kurt grabbed Blaine's hands excitedly, holding them under his chin and resting his head upon them once again. "You're going to be in remission."

Blaine's eyes slipped shut at this as he considered blissfully a life once again without cancer. Remission. How far away that seems but it seems... plausible. It could happen. The cancer could go. He just wanted that day to come sooner than later.

His eyelids flickered a little as he thought deeper. A life without cancer. A life where he and Kurt could be together. If Kurt wanted that, of course, and if he even loved him in that way. They could be a couple. Images of the two of them older, living in a stylish studio apartment in New York as the streets bustled heavily below them with businessmen and tourists fighting their way through the crowds flashed through his mind. Even older. Matching tuxes and buttonhole carnations. White gold wedding rings. Crying mothers with white handkerchiefs. I dos and their first dance. The whole still and curled up on the couch together under a single duvet, a silly comedy on the telly that neither could concentrate on as they watched the flashing baby monitor on the coffee table in front of them with smiles on their faces. Blaine wanted it. Blaine needed it. And God, how he wanted this cancer to be gone, just so he could finally live the life he always dreamed of with Kurt by his side and in his heart.

It was going to happen. Someday.

A smile crossed his face as he opened his eyes, brown meeting ice blue. Kurt's face was one of innocence, of happiness, of... adoration? Love? Was he just imagining it after his little vision?

"What?" Blaine croaked softly, smile still fixed upon his face. Smiling? My, how he could get used to this.

"Nothing. Nothing," Kurt smiled back, grip on his hands tightening by a fraction. How he just wanted to keep that smile on Blaine's face forever... it made his heart ache in all the good ways, his stomach fluttering in an entirely comfortable way as he pulled the boy in the chair closer to him. He wondered if he and Blaine could be together once this was all over. If Blaine even wants me like that, that is. But he was going to sit and wait patiently before broaching the subject, because they have forever after all. Blaine had forever. It was all going to be okay. "I was just thinking."

"About what?" Blaine whispered into the still, quiet air around them, his head tilted at a curious angle as his eyes searched Kurt's.

"You."

As Blaine's smile grew to one of his old dazzling smiles and Kurt felt his stomach settle a little. He couldn't wait for Blaine to smile like that again, all day, every day.

The New Year rolled in quietly for them both with gentle albeit awkward cheek kisses when the ball dropped, with blankets around their shoulders as they sat huddled on Blaine's patio watching neighbouring firework displays. It wasn't extravagant, but it was nice, nonetheless.

That day, Blaine returned to the hospital for more treatment. But rather than just chemotherapy this time, Doctor Garrison had booked him in for radiation therapy too for a couple of weeks. Whilst Blaine was fed up of the treatment and just wanted the surgery to get this damn lump out, he grinned and bared it because, after all, there was nothing he could do about it. If he had no treatment, then the tumour wouldn't even shrink.

So whilst everyone else was celebrating the New Year with family meals and gatherings, Blaine was being treated to a nice heaping plate of medicines and drugs. And he was dreading it.

Although Blaine had insisted Kurt not to bother, to stay home with his family and celebrate, the boy still pulled up outside his house on the dot to drive him to the hospital.

"You didn't have to do this," called Blaine from the passenger seat as Kurt safely stowed Blaine's colourful wheelchair (now with added confetti streamers on the handles) in the trunk. "You can't even come into the radiotherapy bit with me, I don't want you to be bored."

"I have a book with me, chill. I won't get bored." Kurt smiled as he slid behind the steering wheel, reaching over to pat Blaine's hand which rested on his knee. It was especially cold out today, so they both donned hats. Blaine a beanie, Kurt his favourite black and grey hat with earflaps included. His hair had grown back a little, covering his scalp in stubble and Kurt had insisted that he'd shave it back off. If I'm going to be bald, I'm going to do it right was all he had said when Blaine broached the subject.

"I'll be the one getting bored, then," grumbled Blaine, sliding down in his seat like a sulking child. "They won't even let me read or write in my notebook. I can't deal with it."

Smirking down at the frowning boy, Kurt indicated his messenger bag laying in the backseat with the nod of his head. "Well, I have a present for you to keep you occupied."

"Kurt... you didn't have-"

"Shut up, Anderson," he coughed, looking straight ahead at the road before switching on the left indicator.

"Yes, sir!" Blaine laughed before pulling himself back up into a comfortable sitting position, admiring Kurt's profile as he drove. Sometimes he wondered if he actually knew how beautiful he was. Because, while Kurt had a confident air about him when he walked down the hallways or stalked through the mall picking out outfits for Blaine left right and centre, Blaine was the one who had seen him at his lowest, as he sat across the table in Dalton's common room with a coffee cup in one hand and a balled up tissue clasped in the other. Blaine sometimes saw how insecure he could be, catching sight of it under that strong show of his. Blaine promised to himself that he would tell Kurt it soon. How beautiful he is. And he vowed to tell him every day if they got together. Every damn day.

Blushing under his scrutiny, Kurt pulled the car into the parking lot, unbuckling his seatbelt quickly and hopping out to get Blaine's wheelchair and to help Blaine down from the seat of his Navigator without falling and fracturing a few bones. They didn't need that on top of their problems. Although he would have relished writing rude things on his cast when Blaine was sleeping.

As Kurt pushed Blaine through the automatic doors, they were both red cheeked and a little out of breath after crazily swerving through the parking, spins and all. The nurses took over Blaine's chair from there, directing them both towards the radiation therapy room. After a hushed conversation with the nurse, Kurt pushed something into her hand which Blaine couldn't really see properly and gave her a hearty wink. He narrowed his eyes suspiciously up at his best friend, indicating with his hands that he was keeping a close eye on him. Kurt just laughed, an overly angelic expression on his face with feigned innocence.

Squeezing Blaine's shoulder gently with a smile, Kurt walked away and settled down on the hard plastic chairs of the waiting room, book already pulled from his bag with the bookmark buried right in the centre of its pages. Within seconds, his face was hidden and his attention drawn into the words of fiction. Blaine just watched him fondly before pushing himself out of the chair and limping slowly after the nurse into the room.

She explained the machine to him as Blaine lowered himself onto his back on the bench. He wasn't listening very well. The whole contraption looked... scary. Overwhelming. He didn't want to do this. He could back out now, right?

The machine lowered down around him and he whimpered, not returning the reassuring smile of the nurse as she left the room. The lights flickered out. The whirring of the machine was the only thing he could hear as it began to rotate around him, like some sort of weird, alien contraption. He wanted out. He didn't like this. Chemotherapy was one thing, but this was entirely different and he already hated it. His chest felt tight, his stomach was cramping like he was going to be sick.

Get me out, get me out, get me out!

"I'm just behind this screen, Blaine," the nurse voice rang out from what sounded like speakers in the corner of the room. "So I can talk to you by this microphone. Just relax, you're only going to be in here for half hour tops."

"I don't like it," Blaine whimpered quietly, barely audible over the rotation of the machine. "I want Kurt." He felt and sounded like a child but he realised he didn't have it in him to really care anymore.

"Is Kurt that boy from outside?" the nurse asked, trying to keep Blaine's mind off of what was happening around him. "He gave me something to play for you to keep you company."

Straight away, music began to be played through the speakers. The first one's intro he recognised as Bruno Mars' Count On Me, but instead of Bruno's voice seeping from the speakers, it was Kurt's. It was Kurt's voice that filled up the room, made it brighter, washed away the fear that clotted up the air and filled it with all things good and pure.

If you ever find yourself lost in the dark and you can't see. I'll be the light to guide you...

The words were so true. Kurt was his light. Without him, he'd still be stuck in the same place. Unable to move forward. Unable to see that one day things were going to be different. But Kurt showed him, guided him...

You'll always have my shoulder when you cry. I'll never let go, never say goodbye...

Blaine smiled, blinking away his tears as Kurt's voice washed over him, calming him. The whole thing seemed a lot less scarier now, a lot less daunting. The rest of the half hour flew by with a mixtape full of musical soundtracks, which primarily consisted of West Side Story and Wicked, their favourite musicals that they had both seen on Broadway that Summer.

Leaving the room at the end of the session, Blaine carried himself with a straighter back and a broader smile from when he entered. He settled himself down into his chair, just as Kurt appeared by his shoulder leaning against the wall, a mischievous twinkle in his eye.

"Have fun?" he teased, reaching an arm out to retrieve his disc from the nurse as she trotted past down the corridor, a knowing look on her face.

Grabbing him by his forearms, Blaine dragged Kurt into his lap, careful to avoid his knee. Kurt let out a squeak in surprise as he fell and wrapped his arms around Blaine's neck to prevent himself from falling off of his knees.

"Blaine! What was that for?" Kurt cried, his voice higher than usual. His fingers dug tightly into Blaine's skin between his shoulder blades, a flush high on his cheekbones. He secretly relished the fact that he was perched on the boy he liked's lap but pushed the thought away quickly before he done something embarrassing, e.g. giggle like a pre-teen girl.

"To hug you!" came Blaine's muffled reply where his head was hidden in Kurt's chest. He pulled the boy in tighter, his arms secured around his waist as his fingers absently played with the hem of his shirt. "Thank you, Kurt. You can always count on me too."

Pressing a soft kiss to his scalp, Kurt smiled to himself as he rubbed Blaine's back lightly with his palms. "I know, Blaine. I know. You'll always have me. I'll never let you go."

He felt Blaine nod against his chest and drew him in closer. And they sat like that for a while, nurses and patients alike passing them by with questioning looks on their faces, not quite understanding the love that both felt for each other, not quite understand the importance for them both to stop now and again just to cling to each other and to let them know that they'd be there. Forever.

Gracefully, Kurt climbed from Blaine's lap and moved behind him to grab at his handle bars. "C'mon, you. Let's get you upstairs for your chemo. You're probably giving Sarah heart palpitations, wondering if you've fallen over in the lift or something."

With a laugh, he sat up in the chair and pointed to the lift, much like someone directing their troops into battle. "Onwards and upwards! With speed!"

And so they did. They didn't stop laughing the whole way down the corridor, only laughing harder when the nurses began to shout and when Blaine nearly collided with the vending machine. But it was okay, everything was okay and they were okay.

Everything was going to be okay.