It’s probably not a headache, if the way he’s been eating Aleve like they’re Skittles is any indication. In fact, the source of the throbbing in his head most likely comes on wheels and is armed with a toothy grin.

So long as he doesn’t stroke out somewhere on the third floor, in an hour’s time, he’ll be scrubbing in for Kelsey’s ventricular assistance device placement.

At this point in Kurt’s residency, he’s learned that it can sometimes involve a whole lot of standing around. He makes sure he’s on his best behavior and that he has the answers before the questions are even asked.

That’s why he’s been up half the night researching all of the complications that can result due to the placement of the VAD. The worst of which had been bothering Kurt. Even if Kelsey finds a match soon, the immune system response triggered by having the device implanted could cause her to reject the heart.

The VAD is still a foreign body, no matter how sophisticated it may be.

Kurt has learned to look for the worst possible outcome and do everything in his power to stop it.

“I like you.”

Kurt looks around, but he seems to be the only one within hearing distance. “Pardon?”

“You heard me,” Dr. Yang replies gruffly. “I like you, so I’m going to give you some advice. Keep in mind, this is a one time deal. This doesn’t mean you get to come to me with all of your whiny man problems. Let’s be clear. I don’t care.”

He waits for her to continue, schooling his expression so that he doesn’t look as impatient as he feels.

“Find friends. Don’t let them know you consider them friends, but find friends. It’s the only way you’re going to make it through this program.”

It’s good advice. Kurt is surprised by this.

“Th-thank you, Dr. Yang. That’s actually-”

“I’m scrubbing in on the Long girl’s surgery, by the way,” she says as she dumps a handful of charts into Kurt’s arms. “Figured I’d break the news when you were on a high.”

Residency sucks sometimes. This is one of them.

“Dr. Yang?” he asks.

“I’m sure there will be seating in the gallery, Hummel.”

“It’s not that.” His disappointment must look as transparent as it feels. “It’s just, the VAD. Are you sure about this? That it’s the best option?”

“Doesn’t matter what I think,” Dr. Yang tells him. “At the end of the day, it’s up to the parents. Gotta love peds...”

“Yeah,” Kurt nods, hardly comforted by this. “Gotta love peds...”

-

Kurt typically stays out of the locker rooms. They’re filthy and at any given time, someone is having a nervous breakdown in the one the residents share. He keeps his lunch in Dr. Kepner’s office refrigerator, and he changes in the restroom.

Today, Dr. Kepner is off and her office is locked. Kurt is being forced to fraternize with his fellow residents. He only means to stop in and grab his lunch, but he is drawn in by a familiar voice.

It’s Blaine, of course. It’s always Blaine.

“Pain throws your heart to the ground
Love turns the whole thing around
No it won't all go the way it should
But I know the heart of life is good...”

"Do you have to sing all of the time?" Kurt asks him. Blaine has a lovely voice, but nothing seems lovely when rounds started at 6:30am. He’s exhausted in a way that coffee will do nothing to fix. After a night spent researching the procedure and any possible post-op complications, he has nothing to show for it but a free afternoon.

The presence of a particular peds resident isn’t helping matter.

Blaine’s lips quirk into a smile. "We work 16 hour shifts. When we aren't here, we are on call. So yes, I'm going to sing." He circles Kurt, stopping behind him to whisper into his ear - “All of the time.”

Kurt wants to throw things. Not charts. Charts wouldn’t be good to throw. Blaine, perhaps. Off the hospital roof. May the Space Needle, if he’s feeling ambitious.

“Why aren’t you scrubbing in with Dr. Robbins? They’re placing Kelsey’s VAD today.”

“I let Alex take the surgery,” Blaine shrugs. “His boards are coming up, and this is exactly the kind of thing they want to see. It’ll be good for him. And besides,” he pokes Kurt’s shoulder lightly. “You’re the one in here talking to me instead of nipping at Dr. Altman’s heels.”

Kurt has to fight tooth and nail for his surgeries. Blaine gives his away when he’s feeling particularly charming. How is that even fair?

“Dr. Yang’s scrubbing in,” Kurt explains. He’s not sure why he owes Blaine any sort of explanation for anything, especially considering what went down yesterday. “Not that it’s any of your concern.”

“Well, sort of,” Blaine says with an apologetic smile. “I don’t mean to be nosy, but I kind of like keeping track of the people who are caring for my patient.”

Blaine has a point.

Kurt doesn’t care.

“Your patient?” Kurt echoes. His gives Blaine a tight-lipped smile. This is the smile that holds in his rage.

“Yes, my patient.”

Anger is bubbling below the surface. It has reached its boiling point thanks to the help of almost-serenades and Blaine’s obnoxious kindness.

“You’re impossible.” Kurt is seething. It’s misplaced anger at best, accelerated only by Blaine’s presence and previous diss. The person he’s really mad at is Dr. Yang. Kurt is not allowed to be mad at Dr. Yang.

“Wanna count down from five and try that again?” Blaine asks. His smile is warm and reassuring, his tone in no one condescending.

Kurt wants to scream.

“You humiliated me!” Kurt says in a harsh whisper, on the off chance that they are no longer alone in the locker room. “You led me on, and you humiliated me!”

He doesn’t know why it comes out. He feels like he’s been doing everything in his effort to squash it down.

“Whoa. Okay. Hi.” Blaine puts up his hands in surrender. “See this? This is exactly why I don’t get involved with co-workers. Jesus, Kurt. I didn’t mean to make you feel that way. Our signals got crossed, that’s all.”

“Why do you do that?” Kurt continues. “You’re so nice.”

“Sorry?”

“And now you’re apologizing for being nice! I just, ugh--”

He think of a proper comeback, he’s sure if it. Even though it probably won’t be until he’s halfway down the hall.

-

“Kurt, wait up!” Blaine calls after him.

Kurt ignores him and keeps walking.

“Dr. Hummel?”

He’s not falling for that one either.

“I’m going to eat your lunch if you don’t stop ignoring me,” Blaine shouts from the other end of the hall. “Regardless of its contents.”

Kurt turns to find Blaine holding his lunch up for him to see. “You left it in the locker room. Figured you were hungry. Lunchtime is a good time for these things.”

He has two options. He could stubbornly stalk off and leave his lunch for Blaine to ultimately devour, or he could give in and retrieve his food.

His stomach grumbles. Option B it is.

He walks up to Blaine and snatches the bag out of his hand.

Blaine gives him one of those cheerful smiles that started this mess in the first place. “You’re welcome!”

“Thank you,” Kurt mutters under his breath.

“You seem stressed,” Blaine observes.

“You have no idea,” Kurt admits.

“I know a quiet place.”

-

Blaine’s quiet place turns out to be the on-call room Kurt tugged him into yesterday. It turns out the unit is still closed so the area surrounding it is deserted.

Scene of the crime or not, Blaine hadn’t lied. It is a quiet place.

With their lunches finished and Kurt almost feeling human again, they find themselves laying side by side on (separate) on-call beds, trading gossip and residency horror stories.

He even finds himself relaying his conversation with Dr. Yang earlier. Kurt has missed having someone to vent to.

They fall into comfortable conversation. It’s almost nice.

“Where’s home, Kurt Hummel? I’ve been trying to place your accent and I’m coming up with nothing. You seem super displeased with everything so I wanna say L.A. but you’re a little too pale.”

“Ohio,” Kurt says. “I’m from a town you’ve never heard of.”

“Try me,” Blaine challenges.

“Lima.”

“Get out!” he chuckles. “I’m from Westerville. Well, Columbus originally, but my boarding school was in Westerville.”

“Boarding school?” Kurt smirks.

“Hey, don’t knock it. Best years of my life. It was all show choir and sneaking cute boys into my dorm. Well, maybe not so much the last part….”

“…show choir? No. You have to be lying. That’s the only logical explanation here.”

“I was a proud member of the Dalton Academy Warblers, kind sir! And a Dalton gentleman doesn’t lie.”

Kurt lets out a pained sounding laugh. “My life continues to be an unfortunate series of ironies.”

“How so?”

“This sounds... crazy,” he begins. “I mean, I don’t even know how I remember any of this. You figure after med school and a few years of residency that the mundane details of your past life will slip out of your mind unnoticed, but... I guess not. So get this. Back in high school, I was in show choir. It was only for a year. Some personal issues came up, and I had to quit my junior year. But the last thing I remember is them announcing our competition for sectionals or regionals or something. And there was this group of older folks working on their GEDs and...”

“McKinley!” Blaine cuts in. “You went to McKinley.”

“Freakishly good memory.”

Blaine tugs his hospital ID badge and taps the MD next to his name. “Comes in handy sometimes.”

“Anyways, I was going to say we were up against some dweeby sounding prep school, but I couldn’t remember the name...”

“Hey,” Blaine scrunches his nose. “We weren’t all that bad.”

“Like I said,” Kurt turns to press his cheek into the pillow so that he’s facing Blaine. “I wouldn’t know. I quit.”

“Artistic differences?” he offers.

“Not even close. My...” Kurt shakes his head. He doesn’t tell the story often, so he’s out of practice. The last time he told it in any sort of length was in an admissions essay. “My Dad died.”

“Oh, Kurt,” Blaine immediately cuts in. “I’m so sorry.”

“It’s okay, it was a long time ago.”

“That doesn’t make it okay.”

Kurt takes a sharp breath. Blaine’s words manage to be comforting and still make Kurt feel uneasy at the same time. It makes him feel like Blaine already knows him too well, even when Kurt knows it isn’t the case. “I know, it’s not. But that’s not the entire story. That’s just the part of the story you need to know so the rest makes sense.

“It was my junior year. I didn’t have the words to explain what happened back then, I didn’t understand it, but one day my dad was here, and the next he wasn’t. We argued that day, and for the life of me, I can’t remember what it was over.” Kurt touches his cheek, expecting to find tear tracks, but he doesn’t. “I can remember a dweeby sounding prep school, but not the fight. Funny, huh?”

Blaine doesn’t seem to think it’s funny. He’s listening intently.

“I know now that he had a myocardial infarction. The man avoided doctors like the plague, so we couldn’t have known his risk factors. I know that the lack of oxygen to his brain caused a stroke. I know that despite the fact that they pumped on his chest and hooked him up to machines, my Dad was gone on the floor of his auto shop. But I also know that everyday, I get a chance to save someone else’s Dad, and that’s good enough for me. It has to be.”

Kurt isn’t crying, but Blaine’s eyes look damp.

“Oh my god, you’re not crying, are you?” Kurt ask in a harsh whisper. “That’s my sad story! That was my NYU acceptance worthy story. You don’t get to cry, Blaine.”

“But it was beautiful,” he tells him, somehow managing to sound impossibly sincere.

Kurt is shaking his head, trying not to laugh at the ridiculous turn of events. “So why did you become a doctor, Blaine? You seem like you’d be happy doing anything else.”

“I almost was.”

“Go on.”

“I was studying music education - I know, I know. You probably could have guessed that much. Anyways, I used to volunteer at this children’s hospital near my school. Teaching the kids instruments, keeping them company. Piano, mostly. They had this awesome piano in the playroom. Wish I could get Dr. Robbins to get one for ours.” He smiles apologetically. “Sorry, back to that point. I spent a little time in a place like that in high school, so I always wanted to find a way to give back. I know how lonely it gets, you know?”

“So how do you go from piano lessons to med school?” Kurt asks.

“Sometimes the kids wouldn’t come back the next week. And I would figure out why. After a while I learned that music can’t fix everything. It can help, but it can’t do it alone. So I guess in short, I wanted to help people with more than music.”

“That’s sweet, Blaine,” Kurt says. He’s surprised to find that he actually means it.

The room is quiet after that, aside from their breathing. Blaine reaches out to grab Kurt’s hand and tangle their fingers together. He lets their joined hands close the gap between the two on-call room beds.

“Why are you being so nice to me?” Kurt finally asks.

“You seemed like you needed a friend.”

Their pagers go off.

“Never a dull moment,” Blaine murmurs as he lets go of Kurt’s hand.

Kurt misses the warmth almost immediately.