"How do you feel?" Eli asked, steering Blaine in a wheelchair through the hospital parking lot.
"I feel drunk," Blaine answered, and lolled his head back to look up at the gloomy, cloudy sky. Impending doom, one might say. "Can you get drunk off pain medication?"
"You can be inebriated, in any case," Eli said. "I'll get drunk with you and we'll make a night of it."
"Okay," Blaine nodded, which made his head feel funny. "But no. I can't drink anymore."
"I'm not going to make you drink, I'm saying I'mgoing to drink. I'm not quite that evil and irresponsible. Don't you trust me?"
"I don't know. I probably shouldn't."
"Of course you should," Eli smiled at him. He helped Blaine into the car, he drove him safely home. He helped him up the stairs, an arm around his waist, and went as slowly up them as Blaine asked him to. He tucked him into bed and brought him the television remote, he made him a sandwich in the empty Anderson kitchen. "I would have brought you a flower, but I don't know where to find one," he said.
Blaine took about two bites of the sandwich before he fell asleep, and slept until late the next day.
He opened his eyes to darkness. He was sure it couldn't still be Saturday. He felt like he'd slept a million years. It must be Sunday. He would have believed it was days later except that his parents would have woken him to go to school, or taken him to the hospital if he didn't wake up.
He listened for sounds of his parents downstairs but heard nothing. Apparently they weren't back yet. It was unsettling to wake up after such a long sleep and to be alone in the darkness.
But then he heard slow breathing coming from behind him on his bed, and for a second he thought it was Kurt. He felt lips and a nose pressed against his back and remembered sleeping curled against Kurt like that in New York. But more memories came back as he regained consciousness. He remembered Kurt telling him no, that he wouldn't come that weekend. His mind ran down the list: Kurt, Sam, Nick, Eli. It was Eli.
He rolled over to face him. He was handsome, and had nice hair, and smelled nice, and dressed well, and had a good, despite pushy, personality. He paid attention to Blaine when Kurt wouldn't. But none of it mattered to him at that moment. Even then, ten seconds before they kissed, he didn't want him.
Eli raised his eyebrows and rubbed his eyes. "You awake?"
"What are you still doing here?" Blaine asked. "You can't possibly want to sleep with me that much."
"I would have ditched you yesterday, if you were anyone else. But there's something about you, Blaine Anderson. I actually care about you." His eyes were open now, staring into Blaine's. "I didn't want to just leave you here alone."
They were only a couple of inches apart. Blaine should have sat up, or at least backed away, but he didn't move. Eli brought a hand gently to his face, traced over one of Blaine's eyebrows with the pad of his thumb.
Blaine closed his eyes. He couldn't look at him. He just wanted him to be Kurt. He just didn't want to be alone that weekend, hurt, confused, on too much medication. If he would have taken the city bus from the hospital he probably would have ended up passed out somewhere in Cleveland for two days.
When Eli's lips touched his it coincided with a wave a strong, passionate, near hatred of Kurt. Kurt had turned out to be just like everyone else in his life. His family, who only loved him when it was convenient, and forgot about him when they became too busy with other things. Like his friends at Dalton, who'd forgotten him as soon as he changed schools. Out of sight, out of mind. He told himself Kurt was, at that very moment, probably kissing one of the dozens of cute hipster boys who worked at Vogue. Boys who were so much more worth kissing because they weren't in Ohio, or high school anymore, and they didn't spend a quarter of their lives in the hospital, begging for rides or help up the stairs. They'd actually stay awake after making love to him and—
He pulled away from Eli fast, falling into an involuntary coughing fit. He wasn't sure if he was going to be sick or he couldn't breathe, but either way it came on at the thought of someone else making love to Kurt. He'd literally never considered it before. Not until he himself was kissing someone else, in bed with someone else.
And he knew he was lying to himself. Kurt hadn't done anything wrong, none of it was actually Kurt's fault. Still, he could have sworn he almost hated him, just for a second, for leaving him behind.
"Ow, ow," Eli said, holding his hand to his lip. In his haste Blaine had bit him.
"I'm sorry," Blaine said, which was the opposite of what he should have said. He should have punched him.
"It's okay," Eli put a hand on his shoulder. He pulled back the hand to his mouth and checked for blood, but there was none.
Blaine was still coughing, a little.
"I'll get you some water," Eli said, rolling out of bed.
"No, I… you should—" He wanted to say Eli should leave, but he was too nice, or pathetic, to say it. And anyway, Eli was halfway down the stairs already, ignoring his protests.
Blaine was sitting up in bed when Eli returned with a glass of water. Eli sat on the edge and handed it to him; their fingers touched.
"Is your lip okay?" Blaine asked quietly, stuck in a dark place of self hatred and not really aware of the outside world.
"Fine. It just hurt for a second. It was nothing."
They were silent for a while. Blaine stared into the water, hoping it would offer him a vision of the future, or somehow tell him the right thing to do, or something. "When I met Kurt," he said finally, "we told each other we didn't have to date, or even fall in love. We just had to be there for each other."
Eli raised his eyebrows sympathetically.
"But he moved to New York without me," Blaine went on. "He keeps saying it's just a year, we just have to make it through a year. But all he had to do was wait a year here, with me. What was I supposed to do? I couldn't ask him to stay. I just wanted him to want to stay. To insist he was going to stay, for me, without me having to ask him to. He works and he's too busy for me, he goes to parties and he's too busy for me. He doesn't have any idea I went to the hospital yesterday. True, I didn't tell him, but he would have known if he just would have stayed here. If I told him I was going to the hospital, he'd have to spend money he doesn't have, he'd lose the job he just got, he'd hate me for it. He'd be worried and hold my hand and be here for me, but he'd be mad, or disappointed, and keep it to himself. Before he left he said he was afraid to leave me because of my health, but he did it anyway, and now he doesn't even ask me how I'm feeling. You're the only one who's asked me."
Eli leaned back and rested his head on Blaine's ankles, staring up at the ceiling.
"And it's just because you want to sleep with me," Blaine said, and tried to laugh, but it came out as a sort of sob.
Eli gave him a sad look. "It is not. How many times do I have to tell you I actually care about you?"
Blaine was quiet, thinking about what he should do. He should kick out Eli. "You should go," he finally worked up the nerve to say.
Eli didn't move. "Why do you think it is," he asked, "that doing the right thing means you have to be sad and alone?"
Blaine shrugged halfheartedly. "I'm trying to be a good boyfriend."
"You are. You're doing fine. Don't be so hard on yourself."
"Were you not here a minute ago, or…?"
"Except for that." Eli looked up at him. "Do you really want me to go?"
"The real question is whether or not you should stay. And you shouldn't."
"But do you want me to go?"
Blaine couldn't answer. He just sighed and closed his eyes and held his head in his hands.
The bed shifted when Eli stood up. He might have gone. They both knew the slightest disruption in the atmosphere would change everything. Blaine didn't want to be the one to disrupt anything, but he knew he was going to before it happened, like it was inevitable and there was nothing he could do to stop himself.
He grabbed Eli's wrist before Eli had gotten very far. "Wait," he said, unable to look him in the eyes.
Eli waited, not speaking.
"I'm completely miserable," Blaine admitted, not necessarily to Eli. "And furious, too."
"You're allowed to be." Eli pulled on his hand. "Let's get out of this room, breathe some fresh air. It'll make you feel better."
Blaine couldn't move. He looked at Eli. "Let's just do it."
Eli laughed. "No, I can't now. Now I'm all depressed and kind of guilty."
Blaine ignored him. He crawled out from under the blankets and grabbed at Eli with both hands to pull him back onto the bed. He straddled him, pinned his wrists above his head like he did with Kurt once or twice, and kissed him again. He was soft and warm and exactly what Blaine wanted. Another person.
"And…" Eli said between kisses, "you're probably still… high on… pain medication and… I don't want to… take advantage of you."
Blaine was still feeling strange from the medication, but it wasn't enough to excuse the fact that he was pulling, however inefficiently, at Eli's clothes. He wasn't conscious enough to remember how clothes worked, that shirts needed to be pulled from the arms, but Eli helped. He protested in words, but contradicted himself by helping him get their shirts off. He moved next to the waistband of the sweatpants Blaine had worn to the hospital and was still wearing.
It wasn't until Eli's hand slipped into Blaine's underwear and he curled his fingers around the base of his penis that Blaine pulled away. It felt good, of course. His body wanted it. It was almost embarrassing how much his body wanted it. His heart was broken and it didn't care either way. But something else made him stop. He thought suddenly of the look on Kurt's face when he inevitably had to tell him that this had happened. It wasn't so bad when he thought about telling Kurt he kissed someone else. They'd both live through that. But now he'd have to tell him he almost slept with someone else. It was the way he knew Kurt would look at him when he told him about it that made him stop.
"I'm sorry," Blaine said again, sliding back and away from Eli. "I can't… I can't do this to him."
Eli looked down at the floor. His cheeks were flushed. Eventually he said, "Haven't you already?"
Blaine just nodded. Emotion threatened to bubble up and explode out of him, so he concentrated hard on the mundane task of finding and pulling on his shirt. "Please, just go."
Eli ran a hand through his hair and stood. He crossed the room and hesitated at the door. "I really am sorry. But you'll be okay. A breakup isn't the end of the world."
Blaine didn't reply.
"I'll call you later," Eli tried.
Blaine didn't reply.
Eli left. Blaine sat, silent and motionless, until he was snapped momentarily out of his daze by the sound of one or both of his parents arriving home. He shut and locked his bedroom door before they got the wild idea he actually wanted to speak to them.
His room was dark. The sun had gone down and he had never turned the light on. His phone, still on his desk, periodically lit up when someone called or texted him, but it took him more than an hour to find the energy or strength to look at it.
His mind had turned off. His body ran on autopilot. It performed the familiar task of reading missed texts because if it didn't, he would have screamed and sobbed and destroyed all the furniture in the house instead.
He was so sure that Eli was sending him the messages that his mind didn't even register that there were several from Kurt until he read them all twice.
"I haven't heard from you in forever," the first one said. It was from three days ago. "It's been crazy busy at work. I could tell something was bothering you earlier, and I'm sorry I didn't listen. I'm officially a bad boyfriend. Please tell me now. I'm listening. Call me."
The next few were from the day he went to the hospital. They started out with a couple of "You haven't replied, am I stupid to worry?" to a couple of "I'm just going to text you about really boring things like there's nothing wrong, to ease my mind. I just got my first falafel from a cart. I'm converted," and another about seeing two rats in the subway. "I don't know if they were fighting or playing. I'm going with playing. Or were they mating?" And three worried ones, "If you don't call me in the next ten minutes I'm calling the police. Or Cooper. Or your father. Or all three." There were three more from earlier that day, while he'd slept. They just said, "Please call me." And there were six missed calls from Kurt, and three voicemails, which Blaine knew he couldn't listen to.
With numb fingers he dialed Kurt's number. Kurt picked it up on the first ring. "Where are you and what's wrong with you?"
Blaine intended to overcompensate and sound absolutely thrilled and giddy and fine, but didn't realize until he actually heard Kurt's voice that he just couldn't do it. He hung up, and wrote him a text instead. "I'm sorry. I lost my phone for a few days. Just found it in my bathroom behind the sink. It's not working right. It must have gotten steam in it." What a stupid excuse.
Kurt responded immediately. "Then call me on another phone. Don't your parents have a landline?"
"I'm fine. Please don't worry," Blaine texted back. He wasn't going to call. He turned his phone off and got back into bed, and stared at the wall until the sun came up.