Summer came and went and Kurt was spiraling into a radical depression. Or at least that’s what Carol assumed because he had become rather inactive over time. He spent most of his mundane days attached to the sheets of his bed, listening to the whistle of the brisk autumn wind and he frequently devoted his free moments to observing the presence of death. It wasn’t that he wanted to die (God knows that’s already taken care of) but it was simply because he had nothing else to think about. To him, life was a just side effect of dying.

He was sixteen when he was unwillingly thrown into the weekly Cancer Support Group. Every day he attended was a painful reminder that death was imminent and that he had no choice but to accept it with amicable arms. As a wounded victim of the acrimonious cancer, the infamous disease designed to weather down even the strongest heart, Kurt, of course, found the Support Group to be rather melancholic. He could never know if the next time he saw a face would be the last time he saw it, and it was that bleak prospect that only furthered his reluctance to go.

In fact, he became more and more resistant that soon, Carol had to drag her stepson to the church by his ears.

“I shouldn’t have to go,” Kurt muttered angrily with crossed arms. “They’re depressing as hell.”

“You’ll go because I said so,” Carol replied assertively as she pushed him through the door, carrying Kurt’s oxygen tank in her free arm. “You need this more than you think.”

“I doubt that,” Kurt grumbled under the noisy slam of the front door. He snatched his tank from his stepmother and gently placed it on the ground, preparing it for its routine walk. Step and drag, step and drag. It was the same old pattern but Kurt still wasn’t accustomed to the flow. The tank, although tremendously important, was a weight that pressed into his body. He felt like Atlas, perpetually carrying the world on his broad shoulders with no hope for salvation. However, there were perceptible differences in this comparison. Example: Atlas could live without his burden; Kurt could not. But comparing himself to a mythological figure wasn’t the solution to repairing his physical state. His body wasn’t as durable as he desired and it wasn’t as portable, but he lived with it because he had to.

Carol gently caressed his face with a sad smile. Kurt noticed the deep bags under her eyes but decided not to point them out in respect, but he couldn’t help but wonder if he was the reason they were there. “I have to go now. You be good.” And with those kind words, she vanished, leaving behind a sorrowful trail of adieus and apprehension.

Despite its desperate attempt to appear comfortable, the basement of the church in which the Support Group was held wasn’t comforting at all. Kurt likened it to a solitary cell, where the wounded spirits were left to die. When he rolled off the creaky elevator, he was greeted by his fellow cancer survivors. Some were in wheelchairs, some were ambulatory, but all were just as disheveled as Kurt was and just as depressed. Even the happiest one among them, a surviving leukemia patient named Amanda, had a melancholic sparkle in her young blue eyes.

Every meeting was the same old thing. The support leader rambled on about his daring battle with testicular cancer and about how he emerged the victor at the loss of his marriage, friends and last but not least, his balls. Some survivor. Harold was as inspirational as a sack of slugs. Correction: a sack of slugs were more inspiring than him, but Kurt sympathized for him. It wasn’t technically Harold’s fault for simply becoming a victim. It was no one’s fault.

The only redeemable component of the otherwise morose group was Rachel, an ambitious young woman whose talent for song could rival Apollo’s. The two had known each other for a while because she was happily dating Kurt’s stepbrother, Finn, but their flourishing love was doomed to die when Rachel was attacked by a statistically improbable eye cancer. She lost one eye in her battle and was perilously close to losing another. Like Kurt, she had dreams of becoming a famous Broadway star, but unlike Kurt, that fire didn’t fade into glowing embers when she suffered her untimely diagnosis.

It was the seventh week of his attendance when Kurt meet Blaine Anderson.  

After saying the usual goodbyes to Carol, Kurt wheeled his oxygen tank through the door, but instead of taking the elevator as he normally did, he took the stairs. The tank wasn’t hefty and it only weighed a couple pounds, which made it easier to carry as Kurt descended towards the basement. As soon as he reached the bottom step and turned the corner, he came face to face with a breathtaking pair of warm, hazel eyes.

Kurt was certain he had never encountered him before. The stranger was handsome as far as strangers went, but his small frame added to his childish appearance. Kurt took a few moments to observe him. Dark hair with short curls that stuck to his face, a titillating smile that possessed an ancient secret. He was obviously younger than Kurt, but not by much.

He picked out a myriad of idiosyncrasies in the stranger, but inexplicably became self-conscious of his own inadequacies. Wearing a simple, coordinated outfit of black jeans and a white t-shirt advertising a fashion designer Kurt didn’t even like, he had to recoil from the stranger’s probing green gaze out of sheer insecurity of his appearance. He silently cursed himself for not bothering to brush his hair as he slunk into the seat next to Rachel, who patiently folded her arms across her lap, and waited for the session to start.

The usual circle began to swim into the room, with the exception of one person. Jill Khripunov, a twelve year old with a rare form of brain cancer called Oligodendroglioma, died at some point during the last week, Kurt guessed. When the circle was good and ready, Harold the Ball Less Wonder began to re-exploit his fantastic story of enduring testicular cancer. While the “heroic tale” continued, Kurt couldn’t avert his gaze from the stranger.

Screw it, he’s hot, Kurt admitted surreptitiously as he watched every slight move the boy made. And then it became a wordless staring contest between the two. Kurt stared at him, he stared back. Their eyes danced together in the air, performing a perfected waltz until the hazel eyes turned away, denying one last dance. Secretly relieved, Kurt fiddled with the nozzles in his nostrils until Harold went around the group, asking every person to explain their emotions at that very second. It was Rachel’s turn.

“My name is Rachel Berry,” she announced with an upbeat tone as she promptly rose from her seat, “I’m sixteen and I was diagnosed with Intraocular Melanoma which is basically eye cancer and even though that might put a wet blanket on my dreams of being on Broadway, I remain, to this day, strong and hopeful.” Everyone in the room could feel her optimistic gaze behind her navy tinted glasses and wordlessly envied her passion.

Finally, the questions came to the stranger. Without missing a beat, his gaze flickered to Kurt and he spoke in a low tone. “My name is Blaine Anderson, I’m sixteen and I recently recovered from osteosarcoma, a bone disease. I’m here today because Rachel forced me to.” Rachel verified Blaine’s sentence with a curt nod.

“And how are you feeling?” asked Harold.

“Oh…I’m just fantastic,” Blaine confirmed. Kurt was unsure if the comment was sarcastic or a truthful remark he found but Blaine’s ostentatious manner slightly annoying. “I’m on a rollercoaster that only goes up.”

“How about you, Kurt?”

He remained seated, scanning the solemn room for an answer to an unknown question until he responded with a breathy sentence.  “My name is Kurt Elizabeth Hummel and I’m sixteen years old. I have thyroid as well as mets in my lungs…and I’m doing okay.”

After a tearful half hour of listening to the sob stories of the cancer patients, Harold turned to Blaine and asked him what his worst fears were.

“My worst fears?” Blaine repeated. “I fear…oblivion.”

“Why?” someone asked.

“Completely disappearing with no evidence that you lived, as a person, on this godforsaken planet? That’s kinda scary don’t you think?”

Although no one mentioned it, everyone harmonized in this thought of their memory being lost forever without hope of retrieval. It was a fearful thing to die, but it was even more fearful to be forgotten. Kurt swept this thought from his mind and raised his hand to speak out against Blaine’s cogitations. Everyone’s attention immediately turned to him.

“At some point in the distant future, everything and everyone will be forgotten. Everything ends. It’s an unspoken rule of life. Everyone knows that. Even the greatest heroes of Earth’s lifetime will be lost in the disastrous end of the world as we know it. So you should ignore it, because otherwise you’ll never get to live.”

These were the words of Kurt’s lifelong obsession, a little known New York musician and philanthropist named Robert Gronhagen. In his music, he constantly questioned the purpose of life and the purpose of death. He was an escape from reality, a fruitful source of truth and understanding that only Kurt seemed to identify with. He’d give anything to have a conversation with him.  

A wave of silence tore through the room until a satisfied smile stretched onto Blaine’s skin. “You’re…you’re something different,” he murmured.

At the end of the support group session, after agonizing wishes to have a brighter future, Kurt wheeled his oxygen cart outside of the church where it wasn’t Carol that waited for him, but his father, Burt. He leaned through the window to say hello but turned around when he felt a light tap on his shoulder. Blaine wanted his attention, so Kurt eagerly decided to give him what he needed. He gestured for Burt to wait a moment and raised an inquisitive brow at the interrupting visitor.

“I don’t think we’ve properly introduced ourselves. My name’s Blaine.” He extended a slender hand towards the older boy and flashed a wide grin that, embarrassingly enough, made Kurt’s heart twitch with enigmatic pride. Of course, Kurt already knew that, but nothing prevented him from closing the space between them with a soft grasp of Blaine’s hand.

“Kurt,” he said. They exchanged interminable glances that whispered a million words that were unconditionally impossible to vocalize.

“So uh…is this your first time here? Because I find it hard to believe that itisn’t.” Blaine stuck his large hands into the tight pockets of his jeans, waiting for an answer. The look on his face was similar to that of a sprightly puppy’s and the pure douchebag-ness of it was too much for Kurt to process.

“What are you doing? Why are you looking at me like that?” he snapped.

With a hearty laugh, Blaine answered his queries. “Because you’re adorable, and I enjoy looking at beautiful people. A long time ago, I told myself that I shouldn’t deny the reality of beauty. And here I am. You’re like…” Blaine paused to find a good comparison. “Elizabeth Taylor, only you’re much more beautiful than she ever was.”

Being compared to one of his favorite actresses of all time was like being compared to God Himself, and there was no feasible way to repress a grin. For the first time in a million years, he was beaming from ear to ear. It was so bright that it shamed the brilliant rays of the sun. It was then that Kurt decided he liked this new kid. Not like as friend but like like.

The car behind him honked, screaming at Kurt to hurry up but he refused to obey authority. “So where do you go to get treated?” he asked, staring at the oxygen tank on the ground and rolling it back and forth. This was a thing he did when he was nervous; it was a vaguely therapeutic method of dealing with his anxiety. “I go to Children’s Hospital.”

“Me too,” Blaine admitted as he tapped his leg with his cane. “It’s depressing there. They have those childish decorations on the walls and toys everywhere. Honestly, it looks like an apartment building full of pedophiles.”

Kurt couldn’t help but throw his head back and laugh. Children’s Hospital may not have been as pedophiliac as Blaine made it sound, but jokes were jokes and this one just happened to be hilarious. At least to Kurt. He hated hospitals; they reminded him so much that life was just a side effect of death. As did everything.

When Rachel burst through the conversation with Finn by her side, she steered him over to his car where they shared a passionate kiss which turned into a full make out session. Blaine and Kurt nervously glanced in their direction and quickly looked away. Even though they were both accustomed to the couple’s impromptu kissing, it was still awkward because a) the couple was friends with the both of them and b) PDA was neither Kurt nor Blaine’s interests.  

Then Blaine reached into his pocket and pulled out, of all things in the world a person who’s had cancer could pull out, a pack of Marlboro cigarettes. Kurt couldn’t believe his eyes as Blaine slipped a cigarette into his lips. “Oh my god, why did you do that?!” he screeched. “You already had cancer, why do you need more cancer?”

“Relax, Kurt, it’s just a metaphor. You put the killing thing in its mouth but don’t give it the power to kill you. I’m making a point.”

“A meta…okay. Okay!” He threw his hands up in surrender and spun around towards the sky. A bemused expression on his face, Blaine watched as Kurt came to terms with the revelation. “Okay, Blaine Anderson, why don’t you take your metaphorical timbres and go somewhere else so I can leave before I hit you.” He opened the car door and threw his oxygen tank inside.

“Actually, I was wondering if you wanted to come to my house,” Blaine said unambiguously. Kurt craned his neck to view his new friend (if you called him a “friend”) and stared at him with a bewildered expression. He was moving things awfully fast. “We could watch ‘Cleopatra’ and admire Elizabeth Taylor’s glory?”

“I…” Kurt began, hanging his head to the ground while he considered Blaine’s request. “Dad,” he called, poking his head through the door. “I’m going to Blaine’s house. I’ll call you when I need a ride.”