The rush of people and his father's gruff voice in his ear wakes Kurt from where he's been almost sleeping; cut off from the world in tiredness, but the bluish light of the hospital crashing waves upon waves of thought across his skull.

“Kid, I've spoken to Blaine's parents,” Burt tells him, sinking into the seat next to him, his boxy frame making the seat look childish in comparison, “look, don't get angry ok, we all deal with this stuff our own way but Cooper's coming down, he's on a flight at the moment…”

“They're not coming are they?” Kurt asks, his voice made childish by the presence of his Dad and the aftermath of rushed tears that he finally allowed to stream in Artie's absence.

“Not until the weekend at least,” Burt replies, obviously disappointed in the apparent lack of parenting and that he has to express such things to his only son, curled into his seat like he might never move again, “But we're going to stay here, ok? Me, you, Carole and Blaine and anyone who wants to, we've rented a house and we're staying until Blaine can move.”

“Is it really…” Kurt starts, swallowing his words so he can rework them against his gums, catching them between his teeth, “his arm, is it?”

“Kid, I don't know what to tell you,” Burt says, tiredly, slinging an arm around his son, until he lets his head flump against his shoulder, his soft tufts of hair reminiscent of those he was born with, tickling his throat as he screamed through those first few nights, “It's not going to be the same, but he's stable they've said, he's lost about sixty percent of his blood so he might be out for a few days but Puck was really fantastic out there, he saved his life; you should go thank him.”

“Is he here?” Kurt asks, glancing around the room where his friends are scattered, smudged against walls, lolled in chairs, drifting, waiting for something to happen.

“He took Sam back to the hotel about an hour ago,” Burt explains, pointing out the scruff of a Mohawk jutting out from the corner of room, between the vending machine and the wall, head in hands, no shirt, only shorts, stained with something Kurt is trying not to think about, “he had a bit of a panic I think.”

“Sam just went?” Kurt asks, sitting up stiffly, feeling an anger well in him that he hadn't felt yet, “just like that?”

“You can't imagine what he might have gone through out there, kid needs his sleep, Kurt,” Burt explains.

“I know I can't imagine,” Kurt replies, aggressively, before slipping back into his Father's warm arm, “I should have been there, I knew there'd be something, it's not safe out there out in the water, it's…”

“This kind of thing really is very rare,” Burt tries to calm his son pressing a solid hand between his shoulder and rubbing like he did as they rocked together in those early days, trying not to wake an exhausted Elizabeth, “he was just really unlucky, Kurt.”

“He had his fair share of unluckiness,” Kurt whines turning his face into his Father's neck, breathing harsh air through his teeth and trying to push the burning cinders of heartache out of his eyes and ears, “You shouldn't get that more than once you know? You just shouldn't.”

“Kurt,” Burt starts, taking his son's chin so they can truly face each other, “I know this might be hard to understand but most people they get that ambulance call, that's it, there's no car out, to get that chance again and again, it's a form of luck ok? He's going to be ok. He's not in pain any more. And he's going to live for a really long time, no matter what.”

“Dad, I'm sorry,” Kurt responds, knowing they're both picturing his mother's drawn out face, the sirens that rang and rang out, the ones that trembles with hope, the one where he sketched out black suits in his head and the one she begged them not to call until it came only to take away a lifeless body.

“Just go and talk to Puck will you?” Burt continues, ruffling his hair, “give you both some distraction.”

Kurt nods and pulls himself up onto unsteady feet, one of his legs has gone numb and the cool floor feels unnaturally smooth under his bare feet as he shuffles towards Puck. He feels the silent eyes of his friends hard at the back of his neck.

“Hey,” he says softly, crouching in front of Puck's bent neck before slipping into crossed-legged position. Puck lifts his head slowly, a panicked wild look on his face, cracking with the welts of red where his eyes should be. Salt and sand crust against his face. He scrambles further back against the wall, “Hey, it's ok,” Kurt begins again, reaching out to press a hand against his sand crusted shoulder, “I'm not angry, I wanted to come thank you Puck.”

“For what,” the unfamiliar crunch of a voice responses, almost sarcastically, “For ruining your life?”

“For saving my life,” Kurt corrects him, earnestly.

“I could have done more, if we'd had someone with us,” Puck continues, disregarding Kurt, “We were so dumb to just go out there and I was just making stuff up, I don't know anything.”

“He's going to be ok because of you,” Kurt responds, hardly believing how quickly he can turn from smothering himself in anguish to coherently comfort another person. But it hurts to see Puck like this, broken and brave in so many ways, encaging himself so deep in the corners of his mind that he can't see, like Kurt hadn't seen, that despite no face being seen, no magnificent grin returning, Blaine's heart is still beating behind closed doors and Kurt aches for it to beat next to his again, “Are you going to be ok?”

“I keep seeing it, it's teeth,” Puck closes his eyes, “I mean I tore them from him, literally, they were still gripping him and that was attached to something you know. That's the water we drink and wash ourselves with, that's the same water I threw over Finn's head at that Fourth of July Party, the same water I may have pushed Rachel's head into when apple-bobbing on Halloween. We can't escape it and I keep seeing them and I know that it's not me that people should be thinking about. I mean, Sam practically chucked up his intestines into the ocean and you look like you haven't breathed in hours and Blaine.”

A sob rips from his throat suddenly and terrifyingly, knocking Kurt sideways into the wall as Puck grips his hand and sobs ‘sorry' over and over into it, rocking out desperate tears into puddles in his wrists, that drip into elbows.

“It's all this fucking water,” he wrecks against Kurt's skin, opening floods of it.

“It's ok,” Kurt says softly, “It'll dry, it's ok, we need the stuff, let it out.”

“Kurt they've got to let you in there,” Puck responds, urgently, tugging Kurt closer to his face so he can breathe in his desperate words, “You've just got to tell them that you're all he wants, you're what will make him survive. I may have saved him but you've got to keep on, you've just got to.”

“I know,” he replies, “But I'm not family, so I've got to wait.”

“Only until they legalise that shit,” Puck adds, smiling slightly, enough to turn the corners of Kurt's mouth too, a little light in the darkest corner of the hospital. Waiting is the cracks in the glass before it shatters or stays, the wobble of a child before it falls or mends, the sinking of sand under waves, dipping endlessly to the bottom of the earth and back again.

Blaine sinks into the sandy subconscious, free of pain for what feels like final moments. He dreams he's in a snow-globe, hands against the glass, the final twist of the music box key, slowly turning a frantic dance into slow measured movements, bumping him from side to side. The glass feels unbending but not hard, it feels cool to touch like the soft mill-pond of bathwater.

He dreams of ducking himself under frothy silken water, making waves for himself in pudgy hands tipping tsunamis against ceramic snow-globe edges. A plastic boat scuttles under hand and fearless sailors sing childish songs away on the ocean.

He dreams of wrapping towels, pulling him tight, in white smiles and motherly kisses to tender skin.

He dreams of a board against his hands, plunging to his feet and whipping around to grin and whoop in the nothing air of globes where, his hands are inches from the curved beginning.

He dreams that inky blotches could be wiped away and spilled red wine on white carpets could be covered over with music boxes and dancing feet across crusted sand carpets; that silt in slipping silent waves and green horses on horizons.

He dream-walks across glassy waters, gravity-less, upside down with sticky feet and hair can't in unmovable breeze. He thinks of tipping things, weights crashing against each other, ticking clocks and blue eyes shuttering open.

It's the blue eyes that make him want to shatter the glass, that grip tiny ice like splinters as he rams his fist again and again. He slams his feet too, pressing hard, crusted, and his starfish limbs are breaking into unmovable limbs, crunching with something that loosens his grip, dropping him through nothing air into hard plastic boards. His limbs become unbending and joints stiffen into nothing but curved bones.

The blue eyes still light up above him like fireworks, like T. J. Ecclesburg, pleading with him, splurging waves over him in endless tearful puddles, sweeping waterfalls over his unbreakable glass. He tries for tears too but they cannot come. He is dry, dusty with sand and salt. His perfect dreams of perfect water turn to glass memories, cutting, slicing at his skin, battering crusted glass froth, on sandy shores, grazes smattering him.

He is smashed open with it, starfished, waiting for blue-eyed water to run deep enough to gash lines in the glass and retrieve him from the nothing air and silken glass waves.