Saturday 29 October, 2039

Phone pressed against his ear, hair messy and eyes wild, Blaine burst through the door to the apartment and ran down the hallway, attention immediately zoning in on Oliver’s mass of curls over the back of the couch. The TV was switched on, tuned to one of the cartoons that Oliver loved but had declared ‘uncool’ months previously. There was a huge bag of chips, three candy bars, and a bottle of Diet Coke sitting untouched on the coffee table, and as Blaine moved closer, he could see Oliver’s arms wrapped around his knees, chin resting atop them.

“He’s here,” he breathed, and at the other end of the connection, Kurt sighed in relief. Oliver didn’t even flinch, like he’d known it was only a matter of time.

“Honey, don’t be too hard on him. Okay?”

“Okay. I’ll see you at the hospital.”

Oliver winced at the mention of the word ‘hospital’ but was still otherwise silent.

“Twist, what the hell were you thinking?” Blaine demanded, hands on his hips as he shoved his phone into his pocket, the tone of relief in Kurt’s voice having somewhat calmed the anger and worry that had reached beyond boiling point with every passing minute on the 2 from Borough Hall to 96th Street.

The test results arrived slowly. Both Kurt and Blaine’s families and all of their close friends were tested, just in case. It had been a condition of Kurt agreeing to Audrey and Oliver both being tested—exhaust all other possible avenues first, then pursue their last resort option before looking into the donor registry.

Results from Lima and Los Angeles came first. There wasn’t a single match from Carole, Finn and his family, Fiona, Mercedes or Wes—all very much long-shots, but when Blaine had called to give them the news of Kurt’s ill health a day ahead of the press release, they had all volunteered to be tested before the words could even leave Blaine’s mouth. Burt had been closest, with a four-point match, but with two of the unmatched loci being Class I, there was no way that the doctors would have let him donate even if he was thirty years younger and in perfect health.

Over the course of the following week, they received visits from Toby and Andrew, Cooper and Kristy, Rachel and Dominic, along with phone calls from Jeff and Stuart, all bearing bad news. Even Julia had been tested, and when she couldn’t give them good news, she brought over warm berry strudel which she and Kurt ate at the kitchen island, holding hands in silence.

Blaine tried not to notice how Kurt seemed to wilt after every non-match, even in the hours right after his weekly transfusion—the brief window of time when Kurt was something like his old self, and they were almost able to forget what was happening. Almost. The circles decreased, Kurt’s hospital admission date grew closer, and soon there were only three options remaining before it became necessary to look at the donor registry.

Oliver just shrugged, his face ashen, and kept his eyes trained on the floor. His school backpack lay on its side next to him on the couch, looking mostly empty—it seemed to Blaine like a mostly half-hearted attempt at running away, given that he had come to one of two places, other than home, that he knew and could easily access.

“I don’t wanna talk about it,” he grumbled.

“Well, that’s too bad, because we are talking about it.”

“You can’t make me,” Oliver retorted, glancing up at the clock and continuing, just as Blaine was opening his mouth to argue his point further, “you’re gonna be late.”

“Don’t for a second think that I’m leaving you here,” Blaine said, “especially seeing as you’re the reason I’ll be late.”

Oliver shrank back into the couch even further, worrying his bottom lip between his teeth, and Blaine sighed, the last of his anger draining from him. Slowly, he sat down next to Oliver and placed a hand on his knee.

The night before Blaine and the twins were due at the testing center, Blaine was gripping Kurt tightly by the elbow as they slowly made their way upstairs to bed, one step at a time while Kurt’s breathing became increasingly labored and Blaine considered for the umpteenth time turning the den into a temporary bedroom.

“Thank god… I have my trans… fusion tomorrow,” Kurt panted when they reached the landing, gazing at the final three steps after the turn as if they were his own personal Everest. Wordlessly, and even though they had fought about it before, Blaine pulled Kurt’s arm over his shoulders and slipped his own beneath Kurt’s knees to pick him up and carry him the rest of the way. Kurt’s forehead was slick with sweat when he pressed against Blaine’s neck and curled into him, murmuring tiredly into his sweater. “I’m sorry that I’m… putting all of you through this.”

“Just let me take care of you,” Blaine told him as Kurt reached down to turn the door handle, the memory blossoming in his mind’s eye of Kurt twenty years younger, giggling and fumbling as he attempted to slot their key card into the door of their honeymoon suite in the Maldives. “You know I’m awesome at taking care of you.”

Blaine set Kurt down on the edge of the bed, and stopped mid-turn as Kurt weakly gripped his hand and tried to slow his breathing. “None of you should have… to do this. I don’t want this; I don’t… want any of it.”

“Look, Twist. Right now, you’re grounded, which means you have to come with me. If you don’t want to talk about whatever’s bothering you, that’s fine. I’m not gonna force you. But what’s bothering me right now is that I’m terrified of needles and I need someone to hold my hand. And I know that you don’t like hospitals, so maybe we can help each other out, here. What do you say?”

“Fine,” Oliver said grudgingly, able to tell that it was the best he could hope for but still not liking it one bit. He started when the buzzer rang, but Blaine simply stood, picked up Oliver’s backpack and handed it to him.

“That’s just the car service,” he said reassuringly. “I ordered it on the way here.”

Oliver shrugged again, looping the straps over his arms, and followed Blaine out of the apartment.

“You know, I think Twist’s really hoping it’ll be him.”

“For the love of… Why?”

Blaine shrugged. “You know what teenage boys are like. He just wants something cool to show off to his friends. I think he’s under the impression that there’ll be some huge surgery,” he said, before quietly adding, “he’s really scared for you. He won’t say it, but haven’t you noticed that he’s been behaving himself better?”

“Of course I have, but I just thought… that he was coming out of his phase.”

“He’s worried about you, sweetheart. We all are. But that doesn’t mean that you’re going to sit here feeling guilty about us all being put through something we shouldn’t be. This is not your fault, okay? Daniel told you that,” Blaine reminded him, sitting down and taking Kurt’s hand between both of his own. He smiled when Kurt shakily placed his other on top, as he did every time they were talking seriously—old habits die hard. “Besides, I… Kurt, don’t you know how much I want to be a match for you? I know how unlikely it is, I do. I know that one of the twins is your best shot now. But I also know that if that’s something we can avoid, I’ll do everything I can. And that’s not the only reason, it’s—“

“You still want to feel like my knight,” Kurt supplied, a small smile reaching the very corners of his eyes. “You are, you know, you always… have been. You don’t have to rescue me for… that to still apply.”

“You’re still my oak tree,” Blaine whispered, settling his arm around Kurt’s shoulders and kissing his temple, his lips pausing there for far longer than usual. More and more, he was noticing that every touch lately had a lingering quality to it. Each time they kissed, it was slower. Each look was no mere glance, but a commitment to learn by heart. Each moment felt like an opportunity to catalog memory all over again, just in case. Swallowing hard, he shook himself and lifted Kurt’s chin so that he was looking straight into Blaine’s eyes, and he attempted again—as he did every time, for they changed so often—to memorize their color, the pattern of each fleck of green, the darkness of the blue that outlined his irises. “Kurt, no matter what happens with these tests… No matter what happens, everything is going to be fine. I promise.”

As it turned out, they reached the hospital with about ten minutes to spare. Thankfully, there were no paparazzi hanging around, but Blaine still kept Oliver close.

Once Blaine had signed in, they quickly made their way to the Blood Donor Center, where a nurse greeted them with a tired but bright smile and immediately took them into a large, airy room where there were already three other people donating. Blaine stopped just inside the doorway, taking a few deep, bracing breaths. He had been afraid of needles for as long as he could remember; right back to when he was four or five years old and screaming in his mother’s lap at the doctor’s office when getting a shot. It was a part of why he’d been so surprised to discover his tattoo the day after the bachelor party.

Over the years, he’d learned to grit his teeth and bear it whenever he needed a shot for a vacation, or to have his blood drawn for a routine check-up. A platelet donation, however, was very different—the needle would be in his arm for anywhere up to two hours.

“Dad, come on. Don’t be a sissy,” Oliver said quietly, nudging him in the side and glancing up at him sheepishly, as if hoping he wasn’t already overstepping his boundaries so soon after getting into trouble. Under normal circumstances, he probably would have been, but right then Blaine didn’t have the heart to admonish him for it.

Two weeks later, at nine a.m. on the last Saturday in October, the twins hadn’t yet come down for breakfast, and Blaine was sitting on the couch with Kurt’s head in his lap, running his fingers through his hair and trying not to think too hard about anything other than the even sounds of Kurt’s breathing as he dozed to the sounds of the cookery channel. The morning was calm, storms overnight having left behind a blue sky punctured with a weakly shining sun and a fresh scent that rode the breeze Blaine had taken in on the balcony shortly after waking. It soothed him, particularly given the fact that he had an appointment at the hospital to donate platelets after lunch. Just the thought of a shot made him shudder, let alone a needle that stayed in his arm for any length of time.

Carefully and deliberately, he pushed all thoughts of his appointment aside and was focusing once more on the sensation of Kurt’s soft hair against the pads of his callused fingers when the doorbell rang and Kurt started back into wakefulness. His eyes were bloodshot and wild as he quickly sat up, hands slowly moving to cradle his head from the inevitable onrush of dizziness. Gently squeezing Kurt’s shoulder with one hand, Blaine made his way out of the living room and down the hall.

It wasn’t long before one of the nurses, Carly, was showing Blaine to one of the eight reclining chairs that lined the edges of the stark room, an imposing machine waiting next to it. He answered Carly’s questions as quickly as he could while she measured his blood pressure, wanting for it to be underway as soon as possible, and automatically turned his head away when he caught the barest flash of silver from the corner of his eye.

“So Grandpa says the Buckeyes should do great this season,” Oliver said as he grabbed Blaine’s hand, eyes trained on his. “Rhodes had an injury in the fourth quarter when they played Illinois last month but he’s nearly better, and they’ve managed without him. The last couple seasons have been really bad, but Grandpa said they’ve got new coaches and they’ve changed the line-up, and they’ve been doing really good so far.”

“Well, look at that. You didn’t feel a thing,” Carly said with a smile, and Blaine tore his eyes away from Oliver’s to glance at his arm, where the needle was already in place and covered by a wad of gauze, and she was affixing strips of surgical tape down the length of his arm to keep the tubing in place. “Your son knows the score, doesn’t he?”

“Thanks, buddy,” Blaine murmured, and Oliver ducked his head.

“Just wanted to help,” he replied, and glanced around at the equipment. Pointing at the machine that had whirred into life just before the tube from Blaine’s arm had filled, he asked Carly, “what’s that?”

“That’s called a centrifuge,” she said. “What we’re actually doing for your dad is apheresis, which means we’re only taking one part of the blood.”

When he opened the door, it was to see Daniel holding a thin white envelope and wearing his ‘doctor face’, as Blaine called it—expression pleasant yet impassive and betraying a whole lot of nothing.

“Come in,” he said immediately, stepping aside to let Daniel pass. “How are you?”

Daniel paused, smiled a tired smile that didn’t reach his exhausted eyes, and his mask slipped just a little. “One of my patients passed away a few hours ago. She was nine years old.”

“Daniel, I’m—“ Blaine stopped, unable to keep himself from imagining the same fate for either of the twins. The mere thought was too much to bear. Instead of attempting to offer empty platitudes to the man he had long thought of as a surrogate father, he simply repeated, “How are you?”

“It never gets any easier, not even at my age,” Daniel answered, shaking his head. His eyes flicked over Blaine’s shoulder, and he silently held up the envelope.

“I’m guessing those are the test results,” Blaine said—after so many years, he knew when to let sleeping dogs lie.

“Yes,” Daniel replied, all business as he continued, “I would have called first, but since I was on my way home anyway…”

“Platelets, right?”

“You’ve got it. What the centrifuge does is spin the blood really fast so that we can separate the platelets out and just take those,” Carly said.

“What happens to them after that?” Oliver asked, dropping Blaine’s hand and moving around to the other side of the chair. Carly winked at Blaine as if to say, I’ve got this, and Blaine watched as Oliver’s eyes roved over the equipment.

“They get collected into this bag right here,” she told him, pointing at the clear, empty bag hanging over the centrifuge.

“And then what?”

“You’re asking a lot of questions, kiddo,” Carly said. “You’re really interested in this stuff, huh?”

“It’s pretty cool,” Oliver conceded.

“Well, after we’ve got all we need, the red blood cells and plasma go back to your dad, and we store the platelets until somebody needs them. We have to put a special agent in there to make sure that they don’t clot while they’re being stored—“

“Because the platelets are what make you stop bleeding, right? So they’ll start clotting if you don’t stop them first?”

“How did you know that, buddy?” Blaine asked, pride blossoming from deep in his chest.

“Audrey told me,” Oliver said, before explaining to Carly, “that’s my sister. She reads, like, everything. She’s a total geek.”

Blaine led the way back into the living room, stomach twisting uncomfortably at the sight of Kurt slumped on the couch, eyes dull as he took them in. Blaine never would have thought that so much energy went into how Kurt usually held himself, even whilst sitting—for so long, it had been second nature. Daniel took the seat opposite Kurt just as Blaine bent to wrap a blanket around his husband’s shaking shoulders before sitting down and pulling him close to rub at his arms in an effort to get him warm again.

“How are you, Kurt?” Daniel asked.

“By a healthy person’s definition, I feel like I’ve been hit by a freight train. By my own, I’m feeling as well as can be expected for a person with no blood,” Kurt answered wryly, eyes resting on the envelope Daniel had placed on the coffee table.

“Your transfusion is this afternoon?”

“Yes. Are those the test results?” he asked, without further preamble.

After taking a deep breath, Daniel nodded.

“Do we have a match?” Blaine asked, heart simultaneously sinking and swelling.

After a long pause, he said, “We have two.”

“Both of the twins?” Kurt asked, his voice laced with something close to despair. Blaine gripped his hand tightly—how could they possibly try to choose?

“Actually… No. Boys, I’m so sorry, but Oliver wasn’t a match.”

There was a beat of absolute, terrible silence as the unspoken truth behind those five words sank in—up until right at that moment, while neither Kurt nor Blaine could deny that Oliver looked more like Blaine, had inherited his curly hair and slight physique, they had never known for certain which of them was his biological father. It changed nothing, of course, aside from the fact that their hands squeezed just that fraction tighter.

“I don’t blame her,” Carly laughed before Blaine could interject. “This stuff is pretty cool, right?”

Oliver nodded, eyes lighting up. “So, do these platelets go to my dad?”

Carly shot Blaine a brief, confused look before realization dawned. “You have two dads, honey?” At Oliver’s answering nod, she continued, “I’ve got two moms myself. Hey, you wanna switch some time? I bet they drive you crazy, right?”

Oliver grinned and shook his head. “Nah, they’re mostly pretty awesome,” he said. “My Papa’s here to get a blood transfusion today. He has aplastic anemia.”

“Oh, honey. I’m so sorry. Is that why you came with your dad, to keep him company?”

“He’s a flight risk,” Blaine supplied when Oliver remained silent, his cheeks flushing.

“Ah, say no more,” Carly said smoothly, before returning her attention to the centrifuge. “To answer your question, these platelets aren’t going to your other dad, I’m afraid. It doesn’t say on the notes that it’s a direct donation, so they’ll go straight to the lab.”

“We’re different blood types, otherwise that’s what we would have done,” Blaine told him, “but the doctors said I have more platelets than average, so I decided it’d be a good idea to start donating, to help other people like Papa.”

“But if you’re different blood types, how come—“ Oliver stopped, jaw clenching, and Blaine glanced up at Carly.

“Could you maybe give us a minute?”

“We have a match from Audrey, and… from you,” Daniel said, looking at Blaine and hastily continuing, “now, I know that neither of you wanted one of your children to be the donor, but—“

“But Blaine’s a match? He could be my donor?” Kurt interrupted, and Blaine sat forward, breathing an inward sigh of relief. He wouldn’t have to watch either of his children being put under, wouldn’t have to pace a waiting room while the procedure was done, wouldn’t have to ache for them as he watched them wince with every step taken. Their lives wouldn’t be put at risk, they would be safe, he had the power to potentially save his husband…

“Both Blaine and Audrey are six-point matches, but… Kurt, please think about this. With Blaine being an unrelated donor, the chances of not only graft-versus-host disease, but outright rejection, are almost double. If the cells are rejected, we’d have to go through the entire process again, from start to finish,” Daniel informed him, his calm demeanor faltering for only a second before he steeled himself once more. “For the best possible chance, I strongly advise you to consider your daughter.”

“And I strongly advise you to put yourself in my place,” Kurt retorted, his voice heated with a fervor that Blaine hadn’t heard for weeks. “The way I see it, I have two options. I can be selfish, take the easy option and ask my daughter to undergo a scary procedure and endure days, if not weeks, of pain afterward simply because it gives me a smaller chance of contracting a secondary disease. Or… Or I can take up my husband on his offer of trying to save my life in order to not put our child at risk. If you were me, and you had to choose between Julia and thirteen-year-old Andrew, who would you choose?”

At Daniel’s stunned and somewhat guilty silence, Kurt sat back, seemingly satisfied yet exhausted even from such a short outburst. The expression on his face read frustration and heartache, and he looked at Blaine with a question in his yawning eyes.

“Of course I will,” he answered.

Carly excused herself quietly, patting Oliver’s shoulder and saying she’d be back in about ten minutes or so. Oliver stood by the chair, shifting his weight from one foot to the other and looking at the centrifuge, the transfusion bag, anywhere other than Blaine.

“Twist, can you come sit down?”

Hesitantly, Oliver made his way back around the end of the chair and sat on the very edge of the seat next to Blaine, his body leaning forwards as if poised for a quick getaway. “Am I gonna get punished now?”

Blaine laughed. “No, buddy. I can’t do much punishing from here, can I? I mean, I’d still like to know what happened, but…” he trailed off, scratching at the side of his neck and through his hair. “I think sometimes, it’s easy to forget that you’re going through this as well. Your Papa’s sick, and I’m trying to take care of everyone, but I don’t think I’ve been doing a very good job, have I?”

“You’ve been doing okay,” Oliver mumbled, looking uncomfortable even as he said it. He glanced around as if to make sure no one was listening before he said, “I kinda like your food better than Papa’s.”

“Because there’s only vegetables that you like?”

“Because there’s more pizza,” Oliver clarified, and Blaine couldn’t help but let out another laugh.

“Don’t get too used to it. If Papa has any say, he’ll be back on his feet in no time,” he said tightly, unsure of whether he was trying to convince his son or himself.

“But he won’t be, right? Like, it’s gonna take a long time for him to get better?” he asked, adding after a moment, “you can tell me, Dad. I won’t, like, cry or anything.”

An hour and a half later, when Daniel had long since left and Blaine’s thoughts of breakfast were turning to brunch given the fact that the twins still had yet to show their faces, Audrey came running into the living room, her face red, hair wild, almost tripping over her too-long pajama pants.

“Honey, what’s wrong?” Kurt asked, sitting up slowly as she came skidding to a stop in front of the coffee table.

“I can’t find Ollie.”

“What do you mean?” he asked carefully, stomach lurching. “Were you playing a game?”

“He sneaked down here to listen when we heard the doorbell and when he came back up he wouldn’t tell me what was wrong and just went back into his room and turned his music on and now I can’t find him. And I know he’ll totally hate me but I just looked in his—in the place where he keeps his allowance and it’s all gone. I tried to find him, Daddy, I promise, because I didn’t want you and Papa to get upset.”

Oliver was scared, that much would have been obvious to anyone. Most days, it felt like Blaine was looking through a window to the past: standing in front of his parents and trying to force the words “I’m gay” out of his throat; when his blood ran cold as he followed Nate’s gaze and took in the three guys who had beaten them bloody after the Sadie Hawkins dance; spending an entire night sick with nerves before finally finding the courage to tell Kurt how he felt for the first time. He knew fear, and it was written plainly all over Oliver’s face.

It made Blaine’s heart clench; Oliver deserved his honesty, if only to feel the fear and be able to understand it.

“Yeah, Twist. It’s gonna take a long time. But he will get better, I promise you,” Blaine assured him. “You know that you can talk to us, and ask us questions, right?”

After a moment, Oliver nodded.

“Why’d you run away, buddy?” Blaine asked softly, and Oliver’s face crumpled fleetingly, eyes screwed tightly shut and lips pursed.

“I heard what Uncle Daniel said, about me not matching Papa. It means I’m not his, right? Like, we’re not related?” Before waiting for an answer, he barreled on, “I guess I just got scared that Papa wouldn’t want me anymore, because you guys haven’t known up ‘til now.”

“Oliver, listen to me,” Blaine said firmly, reaching out with his hand and his heart, both landing squarely on Oliver’s shoulders. “You have to know that from the second Papa and I decided that we wanted kids, there hasn’t been a single second that he didn’t want you, or didn’t love you.”

“I just really wanted to help him. I didn’t want you or Hep to do it, ‘cause like, what if something happens? It wouldn’t matter if it was me.”

“Audrey, I need you to do something for me,” Blaine said calmly, crouching in front of her and taking her hands even as his mind whirred sickly with worry and barely-contained panic. There were only so many places that Oliver could have gone, for whatever reason, especially if he’d taken money with him. “I need you to go get dressed, and then call Julia and ask her to take you and Papa to his appointment.”

Audrey nodded rapidly, bangs bouncing over her forehead, and turned on her heel.

“Blaine, I—“ Kurt began, but cut himself off as he watched Audrey bounding from the room, the resignation plain on his face.

“I know, sweetheart,” Blaine said, bending to drop a hasty kiss to Kurt’s forehead. “I’ll bring him home, I promise.”

With that, Blaine sped out of the living room. It was as he was pulling on his coat and quickly wrapping his scarf too tightly around his neck that he noticed a set of keys missing from the hook—the keys to their old apartment on West 91st, at which Kurt always stayed during Fashion Week and Blaine would use whenever he was working at one of the studios in New Jersey.

Just like that, he knew where to go.

Bile rose up in Blaine’s throat at that, and his right hand clenched around the soft stress ball he had been given to keep the blood flow steady. He swallowed, the acidic burn hot on the back of his throat.

“Oliver, of course it would matter. You matter, I—don’t you realize how much? You matter so much, you help Papa so much, that you give him something to fight for. You give him a reason to get out of bed every morning and keep going through every day.”

“Really?” Oliver asked, his eyes wide and full of such hope that it broke Blaine’s heart.

“Really,” Blaine assured him, tensing to keep his voice steady. “And that’s so, so important, Twist. Promise me that if you ever start feeling like this again, you’ll talk to us. You can’t keep things like this bottled up inside and not let us help you when you’re helping us so much.”

“Okay, Dad. I promise,” Oliver said shakily.

“God, come here,” Blaine said, holding out his arms as well as he was able. After a brief moment of indecision, Oliver seemed to give in to the instincts of his youth and clambered awkwardly onto the chair with Blaine, burying his face in his father’s shoulder and letting out a sigh to match. Blaine held him crushingly tight, blinking up at the brilliant white tiles of the ceiling until all he could see was the end of the tunnel.