A/N: I would hate me too, readers. Alas, life comes before fic. Expect updates to be slow, for now, but christmas break is just around the corner. If I make it out alive by then, we should hopefully have more frequent updates. No promises for now, but I assure you, I'm trying.
Thank you, once again, for putting up with my shoddy scheduling and still reading this fic. Your lovely, patient messages and reviews make me feel the best kind of guilt for never having time to write. You're all wonderful and my gratitude is endless. xoxo
"The 911 call from Breadstix. Minor rib fracture, mild concussion and nausea, fresh contusions all over?"
The description fits. That's definitely Mike.
"You mean Mike Chang?"
The nurse gives him a puzzled look, looking back at her clipboard and reaffirming that, no, there is no Mike Chang at this hospital and that she saw him come in with a boy whose name was Kurt Hummel.
"Brown hair, blue eyes, pale-faced skinny thing- are you sure you weren't hurt in the incident, honey?"
That's how Blaine finds himself in front of a door on the second floor of St. Rita's medical center, facing a slotted plastic door card that read "116". The curtains of the small window of the door are drawn, as are the curtains of the actual windows to the room. The nurse had left him there several minutes ago, convinced that he is the man that came in with a boy called Kurt.
Everything about this "Kurt" seems to correspond with Mike. It's boggling Blaine out of his mind and he just can't seem to fit the pieces in his mind nor make any sense of what is going on. First the attack (which, for the most part, remains a question), then the injury, then all this identity confusion? It's overwhelming. He takes a deep breath and steps decisively away from the door, needing to regroup his muddled thoughts. He shifts his weight to lean on his crutch and raises his free hand to count the things that he knows on his fingers; a practice he used to do when he was confused as a child.
One. My friend, Mike Chang, was beaten up in bathrooms of Breadstix this evening, for unknown reasons.
Two. He has a rib injury and a concussion, and he threw up once in the ambulance.
Three. The hospital keeps calling him a different name, of which I have never heard of.
Hospitals mix names up all the time, right? It didn't matter as long as they got the right treatment. From what the nurse said, it sounded as if they were able to patch Mike up alright. He'll just tell Mike that some idiot had gotten his name mixed up with someone else's and they'll make the reparations necessary when Mike wakes up.
Convinced that nothing was amiss, Blaine finally turns the stainless steel handle of the suite door and carries himself into Mike's room. The lights are off but the fluorescent light from the corridor allows him to see his sleeping figure to the far left of the small room, tucked in and asleep on his uninjured side while his breathing is monitored on the contraption to his right. His breathing had been labored enough at Breadstix; he's glad that they've noticed how much trouble he'd been having.
A telltale lump of tape and gauze is under Mike's thin hospital gown, only just protecting his battered ribs. The shallow, frequent rise and fall of his thorax is hypnotic and quiet, the only sound in the room besides the steady beep of his breathing monitor. Blaine's footsteps seem to resonate as he takes tentative steps towards the bed, moving as quietly as he can to his friend's bedside.
Mike's face looks soft in the dim light. The bruises on his temple could almost pass for mere shadows as the light casts his face in drastic chiaroscuro. He is paler than usual, no doubt from having thrown up several times despite his injured ribs. Blaine winces as Mike's breathing stutters, emitting a quiet, pained choking sound before resuming its labored pattern. He sleeps on, unmoving in the gurney bed, and Blaine thinks he looks smaller than ever. The blanket provided by the hospital has slipped midway down his upper arm, so Blaine gently pulls it up over his shoulders and tucks him in as discreetly as he can. A hand almost brushes Mike's hair down, but he pulls away just in time, remembering the blunt impact of the concussion and instead places his hand on Mike's, which lies limply on the pillow, just below his jaw.
By watching this boy sleep, holding his hand while he is at his most vulnerable, Blaine knows he is giving himself an awfully open opportunity to be even more enamored by Mike.
Sometimes he can't believe he's twenty one- especially when he's asleep like this, looking younger than ever. His face is of porcelain, fragile and breakable. His brown lashes rest delicately on his fair cheeks, tainted unrightfully by darkly coloured contusions. Even in his drug-induced slumber, he looks like a veritable angel. Blaine knows perfectly well that Mike is not perfect- he is actually rather snarky when he wants to be and though he has many quiet, timid moments, he also has his rare windows of unrestrained attitude and a vibrancy that is completely unique to him. He is human as much as the next man, flawed and impatient and volatile, but here, in the quiet and in his repose, Mike is ethereal. In all this chaos, Blaine finds it within himself to fall a little further for him, uncaring of the implications his feelings bring, especially in a time as tenuous as this.
Internally, Blaine slaps himself for his sappiness. He can't help it; he grew up on 80s rom-coms and corny is practically a permanent part of him as a person. It doesn't matter anyhow; Mike can't hear his cheesy thoughts about him anyway.
He shifts his weight to bend over and places a chaste, barely-there kiss to Mike's forehead, indulging himself for just a moment.
The moment he pulls away, however, he sees something he hadn't before even in the poor lighting. Now changed into a hospital dressing gown, he notices the pale white of Kurt's usually sleeved arm. On the inside of his forearm is a thick raised line of flesh; a straight horizontal scar that looks far too neat to have been an accident.
Of course he'd end up in hospital again. Of course.
It's so cliché that the very thought of it makes him want to roll his eyes out of his head.
It hurts to move, however, so he stays still for the most part.
There's a faint breathing noise somewhere beyond him. He cracks his eyes open, wincing internally as even the dim light is a little too much and sends a pang of pain up to his temples. His head feels woozy, the last ebbs of residual pain still lingering like a persistent nag in the back of his mind.
A figure sits on a chair as his eyes come to focus. The figure sits slumped, arms folded and crossed against its chest with its head ducked and falling forward.
He doesn't stay awake for long. In the last few fleeting moments of consciousness, he registers the silhouette of unruly curls upon the figure's head. It's not his dad.
A hand clapping quite abruptly on his shoulder wakes Blaine, causing him to jump in his seat. The hand is large; the clap is assertive. His head is hazy from sleep and his back aches from sleeping in a chair, but he strains around to see who the owner of the hand is.
A man- average stature, on the heavy side, wearing a worn baseball cap and what seem to be lumberjack clothing- stands imposingly behind him. The light from behind him hides most of his face in the shadows, but Blaine doesn't miss the jerk of his thumb, urging Blaine outside in silence. He's confused, but with one final glance at the sleeping figure of Mike, he takes his crutch that had been leaning on his side and follows the older man out of the room. The man stands by the door of Mike's room, gently slotting the door closed after Blaine.
Back under the fluorescence of hospital lighting, Blaine can clearly see the features of the man's face. Hard lines are etched into his forehead and brow and his mouth is set in a tentative frown. His crossed arms and widened leg stance speaks volumes; and Blaine has an awful inkling as to who this man might be.
"You wanna tell me who the hell you are?"
Parents have always liked Blaine. It was an intrinsic quality- he simply exuded 'nice kid' and radiated positive energy. In high school, his friends' mothers were always especially welcoming to him and he'd been invited back on more than one occasion. They always liked Blaine.
This man, however, may be the exception to a long line of amicable parent relationships.
His hand instinctively rises to grip at the hair at the base of his neck, awkwardly tilting his head and trying desperately to ignore the piercing glare of this man's green eyes. It's a ferocity he feels he might have felt before- fleetingly, once or twice.
"I'm... I'm Blaine Anderson." he swallows his suddenly dry throat. "...sir." he adds, for good measure.
"Yeah? You go to McKinley?"
Blaine's a little taken aback. Surely, he must look older than eighteen now that he's in his early twenties? That's what the scruff is for, isn't it? It's far from a misguided teenage attempt at a beard, that's for sure.
"Um, I- no...?"
"Then how'd you meet my son?" he asks, accusation dripping from every word. Blaine can feel himself beginning to perspire, fumbling for words and so, so confused.
"I... he gave me a ride home, once, after a gig, and I see him Friday night at that live music bar on west-"
"A bar?" the man questions, voice heightening. "Friday nights?"
Blaine panics.
"I promise, sir, I didn't do anything to Mike. I- we- I invited him to dinner tonight, after the show, and he went to the restroom and- and I don't know, these guys just came in and beat him up, in letterman jackets- I think they were in high school? B-but he was in pain, so I called an ambulance, and I really, really don't know why anyone would do this to him, because he doesn't even know anyone in high school, but I'm really, really sorry that this happened and that I couldn't stop it, but I just didn't know and I really, really care about Mike and I'm so, so glad he's not seriously injured- but he's still injured and that's awful, like really awful, and I'm so sorry, so, so, sorry-"
Blaine rambles, utterly unfiltered and barely coherent. The sweat increases on his brow as the man's face grows more and more worrying. It's a terrifying cross between confusion and outrage. His palm is damp on the crutch handle as he grips around it nervously, watching the man's face twist into a look that one could only equate to "what the fuck".
The man raises his hand, prompting Blaine to shut his mouth immediately as he lets him interrupt his babbling.
"-Who are you talking about, kid?"
"Uh- um, M-Mike...?" he says, pointing his thumb towards the room where Mike lay, confusion starting frustratingly afresh.
The older man gives him a bewildered look, as if Blaine was as dull as dishwater.
"That in there is my son, Kurt. Kurt."
"...I don't- I don't understa-"
"-I think you're mistaken."
"Burt, honey, the doctors want to talk to us."
A woman approaches the man (whose name is apparently Burt) and cuts their conversation short. She looks as worn out as Burt does.
"Go home, kid."
"S-Sir, please- I'm his friend, I swear."
Burt eyes Blaine's open face. There are lines under his eyes and he seems to have been sticking it out here for a while. He sees nothing but blatant but genuine confusion and concern in this stranger.
He sighs. He indicates towards the plastic seats just across the hall and tells him he'll be back.
Blaine obliges.
Before long, his eyes are once again drooping in exhaustion. It is the middle of the night, after all, and he'd spent a fair bit of it sorting out the issue with Mike.
Or Kurt.
He wasn't so sure any more.
Morpheus takes hold of him within minutes, slowly urging him into a sleep full of nameless blue eyes. The nap is short, however, as the same large hand shakes him awake in what seems to have been a second after he'd fallen asleep. He would be irritated if not for how damn scared he was of the man.
He looks a little less grieved than before, but the relief was barely noticeable through the fierceness of his gaze on Blaine right now.
"Alright," he says, his tone assertive. "Tell me how you met Kurt."
"...Kurt?"
"The boy in there. The boy who's room you were in. Tell me how you met him."
Blaine's tongue is immobilized as this man keeps repeatedly telling him that his friend Mike is not his friend 'Mike' at all.
"He told me his name was Mike. Mike Chang." Blaine says, weakly.
Burt's hard eyes stay trained on him, searching.
"Alright. Tell me how you met Mike. Then tell me what the hell happened tonight."
And so he does.