Chapter Twenty Nine

Blaine tensed, the bubble popping. Kurt twisted, his hands still solid against Blaine's skin. The tableau surrounding them was strange, bordering on the surreal. All this drama, for two teenage boys... to Blaine, it was depressing, but to Kurt, it was laughable. Blaine could feel the dark humour coiling within every swallowed breath his boyfriend suppressed.

They just wanted to go home...

"Kurt?" A woman with a badge but no uniform, was starting to walk carefully towards them. Belatedly, Blaine realised that there was a distinct gap between them and everyone else that hadn't been there a moment ago. The joggers were nowhere in sight or sense. "Kurt, my name is Agent Miller. I'm here to help, but it's very important that you let us."

She wasn't even talking to Blaine, she was practically ignoring him. Kurt's hands had at some point slipped from Blaine's face to the back of his neck. Blaine let his forehead drop to rest at the base of Kurt's throat, his fingers twining in the other boy's shirt. He felt so drained, so hollow.

"You keep saying you're trying to help." Kurt's voice was strong and sure, but even as he spoke, a frisson of Kurt's desperate terror shot through Blaine. Somehow the knowledge that Kurt was scared made everything worse. "But every time you try to help, you all just make it worse."

"I understand how you feel Kurt-"

"You cannot be serious," Kurt laughed harshly, his words precise in his growing, fear-driven anger, "Have you any idea how ridiculous you sound?"

"Is that why you won't let us help Blaine, Kurt? Because he's the only one who understands how you feel, and you're scared to let him go?"

The woman's cool words jarred in Blaine's brain, pulling him from his exhausted state enough to open his eyes. Kurt's emotions were tumbling, and they were so out of their depth Blaine was starting to doubt that happy endings existed after all. Kurt had let him hope again, let him believe for once. But how could there be a happy ending out of this?

"That's not true." Kurt choked out.

"Isn't it? Blaine has just had an empathic episode, grade five, maybe even six if I was to guess. He needs to be taken to the hospital, he needs to be looked after. I know you've tried, Kurt, and I know you care for Blaine, but there's nothing more you can do to help. Why don't you let the professionals take over?"

Blaine could feel the spiralling doubt taking root in Kurt's terror as the woman's cajoling words seeped into them both. She was saying all the right things to make Kurt walk away, to make everything go back to how it was before. Back to the emptiness, the loneliness, the countdown until his brain gave up, until his subconscious decided that insanity and a drug-induced stupor were better than enduring one second more of this hell...

"You don't understand..." Kurt pleaded desperately, but his voice was wavering, and Blaine could feel his resolve starting to fracture into a thousand scattered instincts. Not because of any diminishing love or loyalty, but because they were just teenagers, surrounded by adults, stuck with no way out.

Blaine was struck by a startling new appreciation for Romeo and Juliet, and every other doomed couple that came before and after them. For a culture so obsessed with the idea of a soul mate, of that one person who compliments and balances you and makes you whole... this world was so determinedly blind when it came to Kurt and Blaine. But then, he supposed, that's where the tragedy comes in.

Blaine had long ago given up being angry about his lot in life. When you're someone who spends every waking and sleeping moment fending off the world's emotions, both positive and negative, you quickly find that holding onto negative emotion of your own just makes things worse. And then when Kurt had entered his life with a graze of fingertips and a warm hug, Blaine had let Kurt be angry for the both of them.

But now, here they were in the middle of a dark Lima street, surrounded by the cops, and agents and random people just judging them and Blaine hated it. He hated it because he could feel how desperately Kurt was trying to hide how absolutely petrified he was. Here was Kurt, his beautiful, incredible, courageous boyfriend, standing up against everyone else for Blaine; for the right to stay in Blaine's life against all reasonable argument. And here was Blaine, the cause of all this grief.

Blaine was exhausted. He felt empty and broken, so drained that he could see his fingertips tremor uncontrollably against Kurt's chest.

But he was not going to just sit here in the middle of the sidewalk and let them take Kurt away. They had fought too hard and given each other too much. They were in this for the long haul, for all the sleepy mornings and snippy arguments, for every possible minute of future they could hold onto together. For college, however the hell they were going to get there, for Kurt's dreams, and for Blaine's. For that one massive argument that nearly breaks them, and for that perfect resolution that binds them in their personal forever. Blaine wanted that, and he knew now that Kurt wanted it all as well.

Blaine purposely projected a soft reassurance to Kurt to stop him from panicking, and then he raised his head, fixing Agent Miller with a hard glare. "You know, for all this posturing that what you're doing is 'for my own good' not once have any of you stopped to ask me if this is what I want. Or maybe even ask if I feel okay?" Blaine tightened his grip on Kurt's shirt as the other boy dropped his hands to clasp over Blaine's, lending him strength as he pushed through, determined to keep his voice steady and clear even when he felt anything but. "Did it cross your minds, for even one second, that my problem is you?"

There was a fluttering of disbelief running through the onlookers, from police to nosy neighbours. Perhaps the most satisfying was the tangle of utter incredulity that was Agent Miller as she stared at Blaine in plain shock.

"I thought you said that episode was a grade five? That kid should be catatonic!" Miller's partner hissed to her, but his voice carried in the night time air.

"Sorry to disappoint you," Blaine snapped roughly, his nerves jagged as the man's presumption. Kurt hushed him without words, his presence a soothing balm against Blaine's raw edges.

The two agents exchanged a look, shooting concerned glances back at the muttering onlookers, a silent discussion seeming to pass between them. The moment stretched, until finally it broke. "Alright, get these people back." The male agent directed the fidgeting Lima police, before turning back to Kurt and Blaine. Unlike his partner, he let his gaze alternate, giving both boys equal attention, "What do you boys think about going somewhere a little quieter?"

Kurt's mistrust and doubt was clear in every muscle of his posture, but Blaine could feel a cool collectiveness settle between the two federal agents, their sense training kicking in. "We were going home," he said softly.

Agent Miller nodded, "While you both really should be checked over, I think we're all agreed a hospital might actually do more harm than good right now. My partner Ryan over there is going to see if we can't get your sense doctor to come down to us before we take any drastic action, okay?" She had crept tentatively closer to the pair. Not too close, but enough that her voice could be lowered, affording them a slight semblance of privacy, "How does that sound?"

The background echoed with soft mental grumbles, suspicion mixed with thwarted gossip-mongering as the police began to disperse the gathered crowd, but with a brief effort of focus on Kurt, Blaine was able to let it all fall away. He didn't need to glance at Kurt to know what his face looked like at the thought of his dad. And he could hear the honest truth of the offer behind the agent's words. He nodded, "Okay."

In the end, they had driven past Kurt's house and onwards to Blaine's. The agents were clearly still slightly dubious about Blaine's stability, even if they were willing to give the pair the benefit of the doubt. A uniformed policeman was being sent round to Kurt's to drive his dad over to the Anderson house.

As they pulled up to the house, Kurt gave Blaine's hand a brief squeeze. Warm light shone from his parent's bedroom window, and beckoned from behind the glass panel of the front door. His dad's car was missing from the drive, and a small part of Blaine was glad – this would be a whole lot more manageable if he didn't have to deal with both his parents at once.

Taking a deep breath, Blaine let go of Kurt's hand as Agent Miller opened the side door to let him out. Why was he so nervous?

A hollow wooden thud snapped Blaine's head around to look back at his house. The door slammed in an angry action of cathartic finality that was accompanied by splashes of red and black, solid blotches of colour painted on Blaine's mind's eye.

"Coop?"

What was Cooper doing here? He should be in New York! A swathe of guilt rose up within him, threatening to smother Blaine completely; how much more could he ruin his family's lives?

The silhouette of Blaine's brother jerked to a halt mid-step, backlit on the dark front lawn by the lights of the house.

Every muscle in Blaine's body seized. He couldn't move.

He remembered how not that long ago, Cooper had come to stay with them, just before Blaine joined McKinley. Just before Kurt, right before everything changed both for better and worse. He could remember tackling his big brother in a hug, a running leap that nearly took them both down because Blaine could hug Coop because Coop was family. Same as Mom, same as Dad, same as Molly.

He had lived for those hugs, those touches and the love that shone in them.

Life had been simpler before McKinley, but it had also been getting emptier. As moments passed and Blaine had grown older, the touches and hugs began to nudge just on the edge of not enough, of a craving for something more. There had been an empty hole in his heart, and it had been growing wider, darker; a yawning chasm that beckoned, one that Blaine had always expected to fall into one day, and never climb out.

But then Kurt happened. Kurt had pulled Blaine away from the edge of the dark and helped him start the long task of lighting it up again until Blaine was solid and whole once more.

Life might be harder now, more complex and winding, full of maelstroms and tempests, but Blaine couldn't help be certain that it was better for it. That he was better for it.

Kurt understood that. Hell, Blaine was pretty sure that Puck understood it, and the New Directions, for all they risked to help reunite Kurt with Blaine again.

But would his family? Would his dad understand why Blaine had hidden in McKinley when he ran away from Dalton, rather than come back home? Would Cooper forgive him for breaking his promise to always call, for not explaining how he really felt rather than running away to Dalton in the first place? And, god, would his mom even believe him when he tried to tell her what Kurt really means to him, how Kurt is his future and his life?

"Blaine?" Cooper's choked question cut into Blaine's skin, and he still couldn't move.

He needn't have tried. Cooper was across the lawn in under three seconds, completely ignoring the attempt at professional protest made by Agent Miller asking for minimal touch just in case Blaine wasn't stable enough for it. He had already swept Blaine up into his arms in a crushing hug, his voice cracking as he mumbled in Blaine's ear, "I am going to kill you, squirt."

Tension fell away from Blaine at his brother's words, for a moment allowing himself to get carried away in the swirl of familiar emotions as they rose up within Cooper. Kurt was keeping a slight distance to give the brothers space, but he was close enough to offer comfort if needed and besides, this was Cooper. Blaine knew his emotions as well as he knew his own name. "I'm sorry, Coop."

"Still gonna kill you."

Blaine pressed his face into his brother's neck, eyes pricking slightly as he couldn't help but laugh. "Fair enough."

Kurt snorted at the exchange, warm amusement dancing.

Cooper raised his head from Blaine's shoulder to regard Kurt archly. "I don't know what you think is so funny," he said, "You're definitely on my hug-then-kill list too."

Blaine hadn't thought the moment could get better, but the sheer shock on Kurt's face when Cooper grabbed him into their hug was pretty priceless.

TBC