Disclaimer: I don't own Glee or any of these characters… if I did, Karofsky wouldn't exist anymore, Jesse wouldn't have been such an asshole (albeit one I believe legitimately fell for Rachel), and there would be a LOT more Blaine.

A/n: This chapter took too a long time for me to write, and I apologize for the delay. It just took me a while to figure out exactly what I wanted to do at this point in the story; I feel like I wasted a lot of time on the hospital scenes, but there were so many things I wanted to get in there and I didn't want ridiculously long chapters. And I'm sorry for being kind of evil with this chapter, lol.

The car ride was not going well. It had started out alright – Blaine's parents had pushed the front seat of his father's SUV as far back as it would go, making just enough room to get his broken leg inside. One of the nurses had given Blaine a dose of pain medication right before they left the hospital room so that he would sleep most of the ride home. But that had been completely dependent on the idea that he would be home in less than three hours. No one had counted on running into a traffic jam an hour from home, and whatever had happened ahead of them was bad because traffic had been completely stopped for an hour and a half already.

Blaine shifted in his seat slightly, wincing as pain shot through his body. The pills were supposed to last four hours, and he was at the very end of that time period with no chance of getting any more medication any time soon.

"We should have asked for the prescription yesterday so we could get it filled." Blaine felt his mother gently touch his shoulder from the backseat as she spoke. "How are you holding up, sweetie?"

"It hurts to move already…" Blaine began.

"Just hang in there… traffic has to start moving again soon. We'll stop by the pharmacy on the way home and pick up your prescription." Blaine just nodded and tightened his grip on the door handle as he shifted his weight again, trying to find a more comfortable position. He'd been sitting up for a lot longer than he'd planned, and all he really wanted to do was lay down. "Lea, do you have anything in your purse other than Tylenol?"

"Just some ibuprofen," Blaine's mother replied.

"Give him a couple… it won't do much, but it'll take the edge off for now." Blaine carefully took the pills when his mother offered them, tossing them into his mouth and taking a sip of water to help him swallow them. "Try and go back to sleep, son. We're going to get you home as soon as we can." Blaine closed his eyes again, trying to do what his father suggested. It was difficult given the fact that it was impossible to ignore the pain. It was everywhere, intensifying as the prescription wore off. Blaine just hoped that the ibuprofen would do something for him; he couldn't take much more of this.

"We've got to get him home… I can't stand seeing him in pain like this." Blaine didn't bother to open his eyes even though his parents were talking about him as if he wasn't there.

"I know… we should have gotten his pain medicine filled before we left Westerville," his father replied. Blaine felt a hand stroking through his hair in a comforting gesture. "I don't know how we're going to get him in the house like this… I don't know that he's going to be able to put any weight on his leg with it already hurting like that." Blaine reached up and turned off his hearing aids, not wanting to listen to any more. He was dreading having to do anything that required movement at this point, and he hated listening to his parents talk about him like he wasn't there. It seemed to be happening more and more; they kept discussing things in front of him that Blaine didn't really want to hear about, mostly dealing with the medical side of what was going on.

The problem with turning off the hearing aids so that he wouldn't have to hear all of that was that it meant that the only thing Blaine had to pay attention to was the pain. He'd thought that trying to move around with a broken leg was bad, but at least he'd had the pain medication before. Now he wasn't even moving and pain was still radiating through his body.

Blaine didn't remember falling asleep; one minute he was doing his best to just deal with the pain, and the next his father was telling him that it was time to wake up. Blaine hadn't even noticed the man turning on the hearing aids.

"Do I really have to move?"

"It's too cold out here, kiddo. We need to get you inside," his father replied. Blaine groaned as he realized that he was about to have to deal with more pain. He opened his eyes and started moving to unbuckle his seatbelt. The pain had gotten worse, which Blaine hadn't even thought was possible. "Here… this'll help." Blaine glanced down at the white pill his father held out to him. He took it, smiling slightly at the man in relief. He popped it in his mouth, following it with a sip of water to help him swallow.

"Thanks." Blaine closed his eyes and did his best to think about something other than how much he wanted the medicine to work faster. He winced as the car moved as one of the doors was closed, dreading the fact that his own door would open in a moment and he would have to actually start moving. "I don't think I can do this…" he muttered as the cold air hit him.

"I know it hurts, Blaine, but you have to get inside. It's too cold out here and I don't want you to get sick on top of everything else." Blaine sighed, opening his eyes and letting his father help him turn so that he could put his uninjured foot on the ground first. "Just take it slow… don't hurt yourself."

"It's going to hurt no matter what," Blaine muttered, slowly putting some weight on his right leg. It took him a moment to catch his breath so that he could move again. "At least I don't have to walk the whole way." Blaine leaned most of his weight against his father as he slowly took a few steps until he could sit down in the wheelchair that the orthopedic surgeon had insisted on prescribing for him, at least until he was in less pain. "This is embarrassing…"

"It's temporary." Blaine didn't bother to comment again as his father began pushing him towards the house. He just wanted to lay down somewhere. "Maria, Claire, and I moved some things around the other day… we switched my office and your bedroom so that you wouldn't have to deal with the stairs. As soon as the cast comes off we'll switch them back."

"You moved all of my furniture?"

"Just the essentials. Your bed, some of your clothes. We can bring you whatever else you need…"

"I don't want you all to have to wait on me," Blaine replied.

"Until that leg heals, you're supposed to stay off it as much as possible. You don't have much of a choice, kiddo…"

"I wish things could go back to normal already."

"I hate to tell you this, Blaine, but things can't go back to the way they were. Not completely."