It's Cooper who gets Kurt the drugs for the funeral.

Kurt spends three days in the hospital, nothing physically wrong with him, but everyone is too afraid to release him in his current state (alternating stages of hysteria and blank stares). By the day of Blaine's funeral, he has come back to himself somewhat, but isn't anywhere near the state of coping.

His dad steps out for coffee around nine, clapping Cooper on the shoulder as he leaves. The older Anderson sibling had showed up in Kurt's hospital room the night after his brother's death, eyes red-rimmed and voicing a desperate itch to get away from his parents. He'd talked briefly with Burt and then plopped down in the seat next to Kurt's bed, dead to the world within minutes.

Now he helps Kurt out of his hospital gown and into a suit. Kurt would normally be bashful (Cooper is anything but ugly, something he's been painfully aware of in previous interactions), but barely even reacts until Cooper is buttoning his jacket, when his hand shoots out to grab Cooper's wrist.

"I can't do this," he insists, voice full of panic.

Cooper takes a step back so he can take a look at Kurt. He hadn't really considered his brother's boyfriend much before. Kurt had seemed nice enough during his last visit, but he mostly knew the younger boy through information he got from his brother, adoring depictions of their terribly sweet and occasionally rocky relationship.

The Kurt Cooper knew was strong and fearless. He didn't care what anyone said about him and loved with an open heart. Those are the things Blaine had gushed to him in the months after their brotherly relationship had been patched.

The eyes that stare back at Cooper are not strong, but not fearful either. They are hopeless, empty, and absolutely resolved. That's why it hurts Cooper to argue with him.

"No, Kurt. You've got to go."

He doesn't understand grief very well, but he's acted it before, so he knows only way to get through grief (or trauma, for that matter, which Kurt has experienced plenty of in the past few days) is closure. And Cooper is pretty sure not attending a funeral is pretty bad for closure.

"I can't." Kurt is serious. Though funerals are, as places to have a breakdown go, pretty good places to have a breakdown, Cooper isn't sure the kind of breakdown Kurt is in the middle of is the kind that needs to be publicly displayed.

"You need to make an appearance, or your friends will be worried about you."

"Maybe they should be." Kurt's voice is shaking.

"They need to deal with Blaine right now. Not to mention that if you don't show up my family is going to think that dad kept you from coming. Which he tried to by the way, but I didn't let him. Thank you, Cooper," he prompts.

Kurt does not thank him.

Cooper sighs. "You and Blaine fought too hard for this for you to hide. Even if it's not for the reason they think it will be."

"I understand that," Kurt says. "But. I. Cannot. Go."

"What if we drug you?"

"How high?"

"Really high."

"I'll do it if I can't feel it."

And that's why Cooper gets him drugs.

***

The drugs are wonderful.

His dad's grip is tight on his arm, guiding him through the crowded church and into a pew. Blinking around, Kurt can see most of former classmates, both Warblers and McKinley students, as well as many stiff figures who he assumes are Blaine's family. He sees Mercedes across the room, but there is no reason to move towards her. Or even think really.

Drugs are very wonderful. It's like he's walking through the mud patches, when he and his mother went creek walking. How many shoes had he lost to the suction of mud until he'd learned to go barefoot?

He's really out of it, Kurt realizes. He never thinks of her. Even her funeral wasn't as sad as this one. It sucks when kids die.

Was Blaine a kid? He was seventeen. Old enough to be treated like an adult, but mourned as a kid.

"Kurt." Cooper's breath is hot on his ear. "You've got to get in line, okay?" A hand tugs him up again and he staggers.

"You're okay, squirt," Cooper tells him as they walk. "Everything is fine."

As they wait in line, a few people approach them and say words to Cooper, who responds in an uncharacteristically hushed tone. Kurt ignores them. The carpet is terrible in this church. Churches shouldn't have carpet. He imagines years of tears weighing down the carpet from funerals past.

They shift and suddenly, Kurt is staring down at Blaine. Cooper murmurs a few things that Kurt doesn't pay attention to. He's not pointing, so they must not be important.

Blaine looks a lot better without the blood, but they've slicked his hair back too much. Blaine looks best with just a little bit of gel, like he wore it at Dalton.

He bends down and kisses his boyfriend on the forehead, and Cooper grips him tighter. Kurt jerks his arm away, not meanly he hopes, and then moves to kiss Blaine's lips. It's chaste, short and sweet, but apparently he wasn't supposed to do it, because he hears angry sounds from the other side of the casket.

Cooper is laughing a bit.

"Oh, you've pissed them off now," he whispers in Kurt's ear, but doesn't grab him again. Kurt is glad, because he needs to reach down and run his fingers through Blaine's hair. He's completely cold now. Like a wax figure.

In the locker room, that had still been Blaine. He'd still had warmth, still been in there. Now this is a wax figure for everyone to weep over. Kurt thinks about that for a second and kisses the wax figure one more time on the chest before stepping away from the casket.

Cooper moves to join the line of his family members and bring Kurt with him, but he tugs back.

"Do you really want to?" he asks, his tongue thick in his mouth.

Cooper smiles wanly. "Got to make an appearance. We'll stand at the end, okay? They would want you there if you were a girl."

In the line some people shake his hand and some don't. People that know Kurt whisper things in his ear that he doesn't choose to process.

Cooper is interacting with the people, sometimes friendly and sometimes not. Soon Kurt's wrist is sore and Cooper leans over to whisper in his ear again.

"I know you're out of it, but try to look sad, okay? You're my ticket back to our seats." Kurt contorts his facial expression into what he hopes is a frown. Cooper frowns and pats him on the shoulder. "I'll work with it."

He makes a show of leading Kurt back to his pew, arm around the shoulders this time. He leads them to the second row, but Kurt tugs him towards the back. "I'm not family."

"More family than any of them," Cooper responds.

"I'm not one of them."

"I am."

"No, you're not," Kurt says confidently. He knows this. He knows the story of Blaine's family. Cooper is the better son, the son to be proud of, yes, but he is not an Anderson. Not in ways that matter.

Cooper smiles at that. "Oh, Kurt. If you know that then you're more family than you think. Tell you what, we'll sit in the middle."

"Where's my dad?" Kurt asks when they're in their seats.

"He's keeping all those friends of yours off your back. We didn't really want them talking to you while you're this stoned."

Kurt nods, satisfied, but in the next instant a question forms.

"…Am I on pot?"

"No."

"What am I on?"

"Nothing your father and doctor don't approve of."

"It's nice."

"I know. You're not getting more though, if that's where you're going with this."

"Why not?" Kurt really likes whatever he's on. It's making this whole funeral business a lot less terrible than it should be.

"Not good for your mental health, squirt. Now hush. They're starting."

There is a priest up there by Blaine droning on about something. This is nothing like Mercedes' church. This is a lot more depressing and boring, and now that he thinks about it Kurt's pretty sure Blaine was a deist, not Christian.

"Someone had to make all of this," Blaine had said one warm, August afternoon, rolling over on their picnic blanket to stare at Kurt. "Something like this doesn't just happen."

"What made whatever made the universe?" Kurt countered, ready to rapid fire off his memorized list of atheist retorts, but Blaine doesn't take the bait like he expects.

"I don't know how it happened, it just did," he'd insisted, grinning widely. "Something made the universe, and something made you."

"How do you know?"

"Perfection like you doesn't just happen," Blaine had laughed, and pecked Kurt on the nose. "Something made you perfect for me."

Despite the corniness, Kurt had smiled. "And you're perfect for me."

Cooper stands up, jarring Kurt from his memory. "I'm going to go speak now," he tells Kurt. "Just sit there and stay drugged. I'll be back."

There is silence as Cooper approaches the front, and Kurt feels vaguely guilty for making him walk that far. He listens to Cooper when he speaks into the microphone. Cooper is a lot more interesting than the priest.

"When Blaine was a little kid," Cooper begins, reading off a crumpled up sheet of notebook paper. "He was really annoying. He always asked all these questions and followed me around, and I really didn't want him there. Same when he was a preteen, just with more angst. Again when he was teenager, except by then I was in college and I didn't have to put up with him anymore."

"I'm not going to pretend like Blaine and I had a super close relationship. I'm not the most touchy-feely person, so I don't recall any touching moments for us to all sob over. Blaine and I loved each other, but I wasn't the best brother in the world like I should have been. I didn't help him when he came out. I didn't help him out much with our asshole family."

"Yeah. That's right." Cooper looks up from his paper as the crowd shifts. "I'm not going to pretend like he's straight when his boyfriend is here in this room, and I'm not going to pretend like out our mom was motherly or that our dad even fucking cared."

"I didn't come up here to piss my whole family off, even though I've kind of been looking forward to that part. I'm coming up here to tell you Blaine wasn't perfect. He was really scared of a lot of things, he made a lot of mistakes, and he loved too deeply for his own good. He didn't have a good childhood, and everyone always seems to forget that a bunch of assholes beat the life out of him his freshman year and that that might have fucking affected him. That didn't just go away when he healed, and no one ever talked about that."

"I want to close by saying that despite all that bullshit, Blaine was still a much better person than half of you will ever even get close to being. Blaine was a really, really fucking good person. So there."

There is silence once again as Cooper walks back down the aisle. Kurt looks around at the faces and half of them look like they're going to hurt Cooper and half of them look like they're going to hug him. As Cooper slides back into their pew, he is swiping at his cheeks. Kurt pats him on the knee, like his father does to him sometimes.

"Can we go get some air while my dad makes his speech? I don't think you need to hear this and I don't want to," Cooper asks.

Kurt nods, and they leave as quietly as they can.

It's a small, older church, and there's a graveyard out back with a lot of older tombstones. It's not where Blaine will be buried, but it's apparently still too close for Cooper, who is sobbing now.

The wind is blowing aggressively, creating a roaring in Kurt's ears and a rustling in the trees around them.

Cooper continues to cry as Kurt sits down, mimicking the criss-cross pose that Carrie had taken while calming him. His back rests against a tombstone.

He hums to Cooper as the man's tears start to run dry, and the two sit in silence until the funeral lets out.

***

Kurt finally succumbs to sleep in the dark corners of four in the morning, hours after the drugs wear off, just as the coffee he had been keeping awake with fails. The sleep is restless, but thankfully without dreams.

That is what makes it all the more painful when he wakes relatively calm two hours later, only to have the reality hit him like a punch in the gut.

A pained sob escapes him as Kurt curls in on himself, trying to keep images of pools of blood and cold, chalky skin from penetrating his brain. The efforts, however, are fruitless, and he ends up knelt over the toilet within minutes.

Somewhere between his waves of grief and heaves of nausea, Kurt becomes aware of fingers gently carding themselves through his hair, and the soft, concerned "shh" that is way too high to be his father's.

"You're okay," it whispers, and Kurt's stomach lurches again as he recognizes who is speaking. "You're all right, baby."

"You're dead," Kurt chokes out, and it echoes into the toilet bowl.

"I know."