Author's Note: I promise this fic is wrapping up soon, but there are some key points that I need to cover before we get to the end. I really am trying to keep writing time in my very busy schedule, lol, though sometimes I end up having to schedule auditions or rehearsals during writers' group. Boo. I hope you enjoy this chapter. It'll probably be 3 weeks instead of 2 before I get the next one up because of said auditions. Sorry :/

-SQ

Disclaimer: See previous 48 chapters

Chapter Forty-Nine: Pancakes and Heart to Hearts

Wes and David may have had many vices, but tardiness was not one of them, especially when food was concerned; they rang the Hudson/Hummel doorbell at ten o'clock sharp the next morning and were greeted by a bleary-eyed, pajama-clad Finn.

"Just get out of bed, sleepyhead?" said Wes, coming in the door and taking off his shoes in the hallway. Not that Burt or Carole required this, but Wes's parents did, and it was a force of habit. "Hey, that rhymed. I'm a poet!"

"Don't flatter yourself, Shakespeare," advised David. He sniffed the air. "I smell… blueberries?"

"Lingonberries," said Blaine gleefully from the kitchen, where Kurt had employed him to set the table ("and not stick your fingers in the powdered sugar! I see you, Blaine Anderson!"). "And crepes. So get your butts in here before I eat them all!"

The other boys did not have to be told twice, and soon breakfast was being devoured at a much more rapid pace than the one at which Kurt had cooked it. Halfway through the second round of pancakes there was a sound by the kitchen door and the four high schoolers looked up to find a slightly awkward looking Cooper hesitating at the threshold. "Um, can I join you?"

Before Blaine could open his mouth, David and Wes had made a space between them at the table and pulled Cooper down into it. David loaded Cooper's plate with crepes while Wes turned avidly to the newcomer and asked in a would-be-casual voice, "So, Cooper, what brings you back to Ohio?"

"Um," said Cooper, looking rather overwhelmed by the sudden attention. "You are…?"

"Wes, one of Blaine's best friends. And you're Blaine's older brother. But I don't recall ever meeting you."

"Um, no," said Cooper. "I was in grad school in Michigan. But I guess you knew that."

"It must have kept you very busy," said Wes, nodding sagely. "What did you study?"

"Business management."

"Aha," said Wes.

"And are you finished?" asked David.

"This is my last year."

"Aha," said Wes again. "Must be pretty busy right now."

"Yeah, I mean, fairly."

"Any extra-curriculars?" asked David.

"Working mostly. And I'm on the board of the Board of Students of Business."

"Impressive," said Wes. "Do you have a girlfriend as well?"

"I do," said Cooper. Something else Blaine hadn't known about his brother. Then again, Cooper hadn't known about Kurt until yesterday either.

"So what are you doing out here?" asked David "Sounds like you have a lot of important things going on back in Michigan."

"Nothing as important as my little brother," said Cooper.

"You two are close, then?" said Wes. "Funny, he doesn't talk about you much."

"We used to be," said Cooper. "We…haven't been in the last few years. Something I regret."

"How many years older than Blaine are you?" asked David after a brief pause.

"Five," said Cooper. "I left for college when he was thirteen. Yes, things had already started to change by then. Within our family and between us. Guys, I know what you're doing, and I get it. I appreciate how much you obviously care about my brother and want to protect him. But this is a complicated issue and it's something Blaine and I have to talk about with each other."

Wes and David shared a look and then pushed their chairs back and stood up from the table. "Well Kurt, thank you so much for breakfast, it was delicious, but we've got to head out. Finn, Kurt, will you come take a look at my car for a minute before we go? I know your dad's a mechanic and it's been making some weird sounds I'm a little concerned about."

"Uh," started Finn, "I'm not sure how much help me or Kurt'll—" but the other three boys were already ushering him out of the kitchen.

Blaine and Cooper looked at each other.

"Well that was obviously planned," said Cooper, breaking the silence.

"Um, yeah," said Blaine with a nervous laugh, running a hand through his curly hair. "Sorry about that. Wes and David can be a little…intense."

Cooper laughed. "Good descriptor. I'm glad you have such good friends, though. You deserve it after all the crap you've been through."

Blaine nodded.

Cooper ran a tired hand over his face. "Shit. Where to start. Blaine… I can't begin to imagine how much you must resent me for essentially disappearing like I did and leaving you to deal with Dad on your own. I was your big brother, I was supposed to be there for you, and I wasn't."

"Yes," said Blaine, "you were. And no, you weren't."

"I'm sorry, Blaine," said Cooper, "there's no excuse for that. But you have to understand, Dad raised me, just like he raised you, to adhere to certain rules. And you, you had no choice but to break those rules, it was who you were. But me…they worked for me. And I didn't understand. I didn't understand why you they didn't work for you too, why you were different. I was seventeen and stupid and naïve. In a lot of ways you grew up a lot faster than I did because of what you went through. I was torn between my father and my baby brother and I loved you both, I didn't want to choose. So I chose to escape. I thought I could get away without choosing sides. And honestly…I was scared. That house was a toxic environment. You know that, do you ever know that. But it wasn't just for you. My relationship with Dad suffered too as I pulled away. And with mom. I retreated into my schoolwork and my college applications and my friends. I didn't want to spend time at home because I didn't want to see what was happening, didn't want to have to acknowledge it. And that was wrong of me, Blaine, I know it was. I should have tried to stop him—"

"No," Blaine cut it. "No, that would have only made things worse. For both of us. You don't know what he's like, when he's angry…"

"That's the thing, Blaine, I do know. He's fucking scary. He never hit me, but only because I was the 'right' son, I did things his way, so I was spared. I don't doubt that he could have, that he would have had I provoked him. Not that I'm saying you provoked him! There was something wrong in that house, Blaine, from even before things started between you and him. Maybe you were too young to see it, but as I got older our family's perfection seemed more and more fragile; it was like walking on eggshells all the time to keep it intact. I-I resented you for disrupting that, for rocking the boat and making the darkness that lived within Dad spill over."

"So you thought it was my fault."

"Sometimes. I wanted things to go back to the way they had been before you started being different. I wanted us to be a family again."

"So did I."

"I know."

The brothers were silent for a minute.

"I never knew you felt that way," said Blaine after a while. "About Dad, being scared. I always assumed it was just me. That everything else was perfect."

"It was never you, Blaine," said Cooper. "It was Dad. And he's my dad too. Abuse…it never affects just one person. Like your lawyer said, we both grew up in an abusive household. I didn't know that then, but I can see it now. I'm certainly not comparing my experience to yours, but it's left scars on both of us. When I was little I wanted nothing more than to be just like Daddy, now I'm terrified of turning out like him."

Blaine looked at his brother, surprised. "You're nothing like Dad."

"Aren't I? Don't you ever look at yourself and see something of him there?"

Blaine opened his mouth to deny the accusation, but then shut it again, his shoulders slumping. "Yeah," he said dismally. "I do. It makes me sick."

Cooper put an arm around his brother's shoulders. He half expected it to be shrugged off and was heartened when it wasn't. "We don't have to be like him, Blaine. We don't have to continue the cycle."

Blaine shivered. Cooper understood better than he had given him credit for.

"My first boyfriend…it was in my freshman year of high school, the year after you left for college. You were gone and Dad was getting worse and I guess I was looking for someone else to turn to. But I didn't know what to look for. My dad thought I was trash, my brother had left me…I didn't even realize there was something wrong in the way Brian was treating me, it had become so much the norm. I was so ashamed of myself, so desperate for someone, anyone to love me. And how could I blame them for hurting me when I was hurting myself?" He fingered the faded scars on his forearms. I didn't want to be a hypocrite as well as gay."

Blaine expected horror from Cooper at this admonition, disbelief maybe, or anger. What he had not expected was understanding.

"I never had a girlfriend in high school," said Cooper. "Oh sure, I went on dates and stuff, but I was never serious with one person. I was too afraid of disrupting the status quo at home. Or among my friends for that matter. Which was dumb, but I just assumed that all relationships were as fragile as the ones in our family, and if those fell apart, as it seemed they were, I wanted to have something to fall back on. And that something was my friends.

"The first girl I was with in college…I was so craved for female attention that I essentially let her rape me. I know that sound ridiculous, a girl raping a guy. Does that even happen? But I wasn't ready, I didn't want it, but I felt like it was the only thing I could give her that was worth anything; I had no experience. An eighteen-year-old virgin. Pathetic. She told me it was the next step. She told me I just needed to get it over with. She told me I'd like it. I didn't. I didn't want to do it again, but she told me I'd done it once, it wasn't fair to go that far and then backtrack, to lie to her like that. It was cheap, a dirty trick. She'd tell the whole school I had taken advantage of her. And who where they going to believe, me or her? So I kept letting her have sex with me until she finally dumped me for being too 'depressing.'" Cooper laughed without humor. "Imagine that."

"Did you…ever hurt yourself?" asked Blaine.

"Not physically," said Cooper. "And I'm sorry that you did. But I was harboring a lot of repressed guilt for leaving you behind. So I rarely let myself have a moment to myself to think, afraid of what those thoughts would be. I became so self-critical, held myself up to such high standards that I couldn't help but fall short of them. And when I did I would punish myself, deprive myself of sleep or food, telling myself I didn't have time for it, I had to work harder. I actually lost weight freshman year instead of gaining it. But I digress."

"After Abigale dumped me I pretty much avoided women like the plague for three years. I'm sure a lot of girls on campus still think I'm a douchebag when really I was just plain scared. Ha, doesn't that sound familiar. Then I met Leah and before I knew it I was head over heels for her. Most terrifying experience of my life. Somehow I had gotten it into my head that—"

"—you would become the perpetrator," finished Blaine softly. "I guess we have more in common than we thought."

Cooper wrapped his arms more tightly around Blaine. "It's good to have you back, little brother."

Blaine let Cooper hug him for a moment and then pulled away. "I'm glad to have you back too, Cooper, but this doesn't just magically fix everything."

"I wish it did," said Cooper. "But I didn't expect it to."

"I'm glad to have you on my side, but we're very different people than we were when we were kids. I have to get to know you again before I can trust you."

"With what you went through it's a miracle that you can trust anyone at all."

"It's been a process," Blaine admitted. "Wes and David probably saved my life."

"Kurt seems like a pretty great guy too," said Cooper with a smile.

Blaine smiled back. "Yeah. Yeah, he is."

They heard the front door open and then close again and two sets of footsteps heading back toward the kitchen.

"Kurt'll want to clean up the kitchen before Carole comes home and sees the mess we've made of it," said Blaine standing up. "We should help him."

Cooper nodded and rose as well. "I'll wipe down the table if you start putting things away. I don't know where anything goes."

"I barely do either," said Blaine with a laugh. "But I can box these leftover pancakes at least."

"I don't believe in leftover pancakes," said Finn, reentering the kitchen and scooping one up with his bare hands.

Kurt laughed and rolled his eyes. "Help yourself; less for me to clean up! They're never as good the second day anyway."

AN: Wow, that was a long chapter for this fic. I hope you enjoyed it. I'm liking exploring Cooper's character and his relationship with Blaine; his role in the boy bonding so to speak. When I started the fic I hadn't even figured him into that equation, but there you go. I hope to hear from you guys soon!

-SQ