Kurt knows it’s bad when Isabelle takes one look at him, winces, and then sends him home again.
“But today was going to be my presentation. I have it all prepared, here! Look! I think you’ll really like some of my ideas; I was especially inspired by what you said about knitwear and bold colours! Just look at it! I can’t go home today!”
Even to his own ears, his voice is feeble, and what should sound like enthusiasm just comes off as desperation. Isabelle shakes her head, a small, understanding smile in place.
“Kurt, sweetie. It’s good that you’re passionate about this, but you look dead on your feet. You need to go home, or maybe see a doctor. Dylan says he heard you throwing up in the men’s room and I really don’t want you to pass out because you’re not taking care of yourself. Go home, go to bed. The designs will still be here, in my drawer, when you get back, and then we can look at them together, alright?”
It’s a sign of how horrible he feels when he doesn’t argue any more, just shrugs his jacket back on and lets himself be led to the doors by Isabelle’s hand on his shoulder. Also, he doesn’t think it’ll help his case to argue that he’s actually been sick for days and can handle it because he has perfected the art of stealth puking. If only Dylan hadn’t barged in. Stupid Dylan and his stupid bladder.
“But the knitwear,” he gets out, and Isabelle chuckles.
“Go home, Kurt. And if you don’t feel better tomorrow, take the rest of the week off and we’ll talk knitwear on Monday.”
“But it’s only Tuesday today.”
“Kurt!”
“Okay, okay. Bye.”
“Get better.”
And she goes back inside, leaving Kurt to sigh, hitch up his bag, wincing when it sends a spike of pain through his tender stomach, and start towards the nearest subway station.

The subway station is closed. Something about a problem with maintenance, he vaguely registers. He didn’t come this way this morning because Rachel had insisted that he join her and Brody for breakfast (and that had just been horribly awkward and not at all helping his stomach settle), so he didn’t see the sign or the plastic tape roping it off, but it’s glaring him in the face now and he kind of wants to scream. His skin is tender and oversensitive, he feels like he’s constantly two seconds away from throwing up, and his stomach hurts every time he takes a step, so there’s no way he’s walking all the way to the next subway station, which might very well be closed too, given his luck. The bus, then.
He spots a bus stop maybe ten feet down the street, and when he gets closer and checks the laminated bus plan fixed to the pole with the bus sign on it, he sees he only has to wait about three minutes to catch a line that’ll take him to a station where he can hop on the train back home. He just hopes he can keep down the nausea until then.
It’s the longest three minutes of his life. The old woman sitting on the bench is side-eyeing him nervously, like he might be sick on her groceries, which, he has to admit, is a distinct possibility, and the bearded man next to him smells of unwashed flesh, but Kurt’s too exhausted to move away, so he stays and tries not to let his dislike show on his face.
The bus finally arrives and Kurt forces himself to climb the stairs without screaming. Body Odour Guy sits down and makes room for Kurt next to him, which is kind of him, because the bus is crowded, but Kurt knows what will happen if he catches one more whiff of that, and he is NOT throwing up on the bus. Instead, he makes his slow, careful way down the middle of the bus and spots an empty seat next to a young guy with neither beard nor invasive body odour. He seems perfectly pleasant, but Kurt feels too horrible to think properly, and only vaguely registers when the guy turns in his seat to shoot him a worried look. A moment later, there’s a warm hand on his arm, and he looks up into the guy’s wide-eyed face.
“Are you feeling alright? Because you look like you have a fever.”
“’M okay. My boss sent me home. I’m fine. Just going home to sleep it off.”
The guy looks worried.
“I think you should see a doctor. You look very pale.”
“I’m always pale.”
“You’re very hot, though.”
Kurt giggles weakly, but even that hurts. It does give him the satisfaction of seeing the other guy blush.
“And you’re shaking.”
“… Huh.”
He is. So much so that the people around them have started to notice. The guy presses the stop button and pokes him in the side to get him to stand up. What must have been a gentle poke with a finger feels like an explosion of lava, and Kurt cries out in pain and almost crumples to the ground. He’s held in place my a hand around his arm and when he can focus again, he realises he’s being led down the steps and out of the bus by that same guy, and before he can protest that this isn’t his stop, he looks up and spots the sign with “Emergency Room” in big, bold letters.
“You brought me to the hospital,” he wheezes.
“Yes. I think you are really sick. Have you had your appendix taken out?”
“What? No. Why do you care about my appendix? You don’t even know me.”
“Because I think you have appendicitis. I had that when I was thirteen and it was no fun at all. Is your stomach and abdomen sore?”
He probes with a finger and instantly regrets it. Ouch.
“Yes! It hurts.”
“Have you been throwing up?” They’re almost at the double doors now.
“Yes. All day. And yesterday. And the day before.”
“Christ,” the guy mumbles.
Kurt still doesn’t understand.
“But why are you helping me? I’m just a stranger from the bus. Weren’t you going somewhere? Aren’t you busy?”
The stranger looks at him.
“Do you want me to leave?”
“No!”
Great, now half the emergency room is staring at him. The guy looks amused, though. He chuckles a bit, then says, “Then I’m staying. Appendicitis is a serious thing, and if this means you don’t end up with a ruptured appendix somewhere, then, clearly, this is where I needed to be.”
Kurt still stares.
“But you don’t know me…” But it’s weak, feeble.
The stranger smiles.
“My name’s Blaine.”
“Kurt.”
“Nice to meet you, Kurt. Now, stay here, I’m just going to grab you an admission form.”

They have to wait a while before a nurse comes for them, but they get the form filled out and Blaine now knows more about Kurt than Kurt would normally be comfortable revealing to an attractive stranger. He would care, he really would, but at this point he’s really starting to worry that his stomach might actually be a giant ulcer or a volcano, and he doesn’t even care that his last answers have been grunts rather than actual words. When a nurse finally appears, he’s clutching Blaine’s hand in his, holding on so tightly that his fingers are starting to feel buzzy, and Blaine’s wincing. The nurse asks if they’re related and when they tell her they’re not, tells Blaine to wait outside. Kurt can’t let go of his hand, though. He would if he could, but it’s just not an option anymore, and when the nurse sees their linked hands, her eyes soften and she pats Blaine on the shoulder and tells him he can stay. Then she leaves to find a doctor, muttering about sweethearts.

The doctor arrives, and with him some sweet, sweet relief. Kurt is poked, prodded and has tests taken, and is then diagnosed with acute appendicitis. Then he’s hooked up to a drop and given morphine for the pain until they can take him into surgery.
Morphine, Kurt decides, is awesome. It makes the pain go away and everything feels fuzzy and swirly. It also makes everything about fifty times funnier. The nurse asks him if he’s eaten lunch today, and when he shakes his head, asks him what he had for breakfast.
“Sexual tension,” he says, then he giggles.
“What about sexual tension?” asks the nurse, and Kurt catches Blaine blushing out of the corner of his eye.
“I had sexual tension for breakfast. Nothing but sexual tension and coffee.”
The nurse gives a patient sigh.
“But did you eat anything?” she asks.
Kurt shakes his head. He just had coffee. The nurse looks pleased and leaves them alone.
“What was all that about sexual tension?” Blaine asks. He’s still a little pink in the cheeks.
Kurt grimaces.
“I went out for breakfast with my roommate and this guy, Brody, and you could cut the unresolved sexual tension with a knife. And the awkward. So much awkward, too.”
“You, er, you couldn’t just have asked your roommate to leave?”
It takes Kurt a moment to understand what Blaine means and then he almost chokes on his own laughter.
“Nononono, you don’t understand! Brody is hot, yeah, but he’s also very straight and lusting after my annoying roommate, Rachel, who forced me to come with them and be a third wheel of awkward because she’s afraid something’s going to happen between them, because she still has Finn’s name painted on the wall.”
Relief, then bewilderment sweep across Blaine’s face.
“O-kay. Who’s Finn?”
“Finn’s an idiot.”
“Um.”
“Finn’s a giant.”
“You’re really not helping me understand here, Kurt.”
“Finn Hudson is my giant, idiot brother, who almost married Rachel.”
“Oh. Almost marr… Wait… Hudson?”
“Yep. Hudsonberry Finn. Heheh.”
“But I put ‘Hummel’ on the form! I thought that was what you said!”
“Blaine! Blaineblaineblaine. MY surname is Hummel. I’m not actually genetically related to Finn. Ew.”
Blaine, again, looks relieved but a little unsure.
“So I put the right thing on the form? They’re not going to charge me with insurance fraud?”
“Yup. I’m Kurt Hummel. Finn Hudson is my stepbrother. And sometimes, after football, he smells like that guy on the bus with the beard. Which makes it kind of gross to think that Rachel had sex with him.”
Blaine just looks a little dumbstruck. Luckily, at that same time, the nurse reappears and tells them they’re going to take Kurt into surgery in a couple of minutes, so they need to say goodbye for the time being.
Kurt wants to keep talking to Blaine, because Blaine is funny and pretty, and he tells him, making the nurse chuckle and Blaine blush to the roots of his hair. Then he’s given a hospital gown to change into behind a privacy screen, and when he gets back out, he twirls around so Blaine can see how fashionable he can make anything, even this gown, look. Blaine splutters something about “open in the back” and “ohmyGOD”, and the kind nurse leads Kurt back in bed and tells him to say goodbye to his sweetheart.
“Goodbye sweetheart,” he trills, and Blaine calls back a weak “Bye,” before Kurt is wheeled out into the hall and away through corridors until he’s in a room full of doctors with masks on and they tell him to count down from ten. He’s pretty sure he rocks that countdown. He’s super awesome at counting.

When he wakes up, he’s in a light, quiet room. It smells like hospital and disinfectant, which isn’t really that strange, and he’s a little nauseous, which again, makes sense. There’s also a boy holding his hand. Now that is strange. The boy is asleep in his chair, so Kurt takes a moment to look. There’s something familiar about his very triangular eyebrows, and slowly it comes back to Kurt; the closed subway station, the bus, the emergency room and the wait to be examined. And the gown, oh God. He twirled in front of a boy who’s practically a stranger. He twirled in a hospital gown which opens in the back!
Kurt gasps and Blaine’s eyes fly open, and Kurt blames shock for what comes out of his mouth next:
“You saw my butt! I don’t even know your full name!”
There’s complete silence for a second, and then Blaine collapses in hysterical laughter. It takes a while for him to finally catch his breath, because every time he looks back up at Kurt, he starts laughing again.
Kurt’s crimson-faced and pouting by the time he finally looks up again. Blaine takes a deep breath and holds out his hand.
“Hi, my name’s Blaine Anderson.”
Kurt takes the proffered hand.
“Kurt Hummel. Nice to meet you.”
Blaine winks.
“And by the way; I think you’re pretty too.”
Kurt groans.