Kurt Hummel stares at the white ceiling, thinking. Thinking and sleeping, that's all he does these days.

He sighs.

"You know, Blaine, I really wish you weren't dead," he tells the ceiling. It's a remark he makes almost every day, but it never gets a response.

"I really wish I wasn't in this place," he continues, picking absently at his thumb and ignoring the pain as yet another layer of the dry skin comes off. Two years ago, had he caught himself doing something like this to his hands, he would have immediately stopped and slathered them in lotion. Now he only stops if they start to bleed.

Sometimes, the worst times, the worst nights when the nurses sit in chairs outside his doors and there's no one to talk to, the pain is better than what he feels and he just keeps picking.

"You know, Blaine," he muses, not caring that the nurses will be checking on him in a few minutes and might hear his one-sided conversation. Today is a worst time, so it's hard for him to care. "If I could stare Karofsky in the eyes right now, I think I would kill him for killing you. I really think I would."

The white ceiling remained unchanging, so Kurt flips back over onto his side.

"Does that make me horrible?" he inquires nervously.

Beautiful brown eyes stare back at him sympathetically.

"No, honey, not horrible," Blaine assures him. "Just angry."

Kurt smiles widely (his nurses would say disturbingly) as his boyfriend pulls his thumb to his lips and lightly presses a kiss onto it.

"I'm sorry," Blaine whispers, the way he has every day for almost two years.

"It's not your fault."