“Hey, Blaine! Nice to see you back!”

“Hey, Maureen. How’s your afternoon been so far?” Blaine asks, approaching the nurse’s station with a brown paper bag in hand.

“Pretty good. No real complaints,” she says, smile widening when Blaine hands the bag over. She unrolls the top and takes a sniff of the freshly baked cronuts inside, the scent of sweet, warm pastry making her eyes twinkle and her stomach growl. “Better now, though. Three of us on shift haven’t had anything to eat since breakfast, and that was about eight hours ago.”

“Well, hopefully those will tide you guys over till you can take a break,” Blaine says, tapping out a cheerful rhythm on the counter with his index fingers.

“They will.” She cinches the bag at the top to keep the cronuts toasty. “Thank you so much, Blaine. You’re a life saver.”

“Nope. That title falls to you guys,” Blaine says. “The cronuts are just my way of saying thank you, though I don’t think I could ever thank you enough.”

“We appreciate it, Blaine,” Maureen says. “We don’t always hear a lot of thank yous around here. Those usually go to the doctors. But I think you and your boyfriend have filled our quota for the year.”

“I’m glad. Speaking of, is he …?”

“He’s awake. And he’s been asking about you.”

“Can I …?” Blaine motions towards Kurt’s room with his head.

“Go right ahead. He is your brother after all.” Maureen winks, and Blaine chuckles, his cheeks pinker when he turns away.

The brother façade slipped within the first five minutes of Kurt’s dad leaving to return to Ohio, but the nurses were fine with it. It wasn’t as if Kurt and Blaine had been fooling anyone anyway. The way they looked at one another with stars in their eyes; the way they sat close when they spoke, Blaine’s head resting on Kurt’s pillow and their foreheads tilted together; and the way they held hands nonstop, as if they couldn’t stand to be more than an inch away from one another at any given time all hinted at them sharing more than a brotherly affection towards one another.

There was also the fact that the two men bore absolutely no familial resemblance – not in their skin, their eyes, or their facial features. But it wasn’t as if other couples hadn’t pulled this same sort of thing at that hospital before. With the ways laws constantly changed to benefit LGBT couples, and then changed again to condemn them, many couples had no choice but to lie in order to visit. Blood relatives of the farthest divide were sometimes granted the final say, giving them the freedom to ply their homophobia as they saw fit. But the nurses didn’t abide by that stupidity, and did their best to ensure that same sex couples got as much leeway as possible.

The biggest surprise has been the newfound friendship between Blaine and the lead ICU nurse, Maureen. And to think that Maureen was more than willing to kick Blaine out on his ass the first day he came in, but now, through a mutual love of baked goods and Barry Manilow songs, they’ve become fast friends.

Blaine slips into Kurt’s room quietly just in case he drifted back to sleep. But when Blaine steps through the door, he’s greeted by a slightly loopy grin and shining blue eyes.

“Hey,” Blaine says, relieved to see Kurt in high spirits.

“Hey, yourself. Come. Sit.” Kurt pats the air above the chair beside his bed as if Blaine hasn’t been occupying that spot every day since Kurt had been brought to the hospital.

“I’m sorry I bugged out for a few hours,” Blaine says, dropping a careful kiss on Kurt’s forehead before taking his seat. “I had to take care of a few things, change my clothes … shower. I was becoming paranoid that people could smell me in the hallway.”

“It’s alright.” Kurt searches for Blaine’s hand blindly and finds it with ease. “You’ve been here every day. You needed a break from this place. I get that. I need a break from this place.”

“Yeah,” Blaine says, guilty because Blaine knows that Kurt wants out, which is one of the reasons why he’d waited until Kurt fell asleep before he snuck away. He had only intended on staying out for an hour or two, but four hours later he was racing for the subway, cursing at himself for losing track of the time. “But they’re moving you to a new room today, out of the ICU. That’s a good sign. Hopefully that means you’ll be out of here soon.”

“Thank God!” Kurt gives Blaine’s hand a subconscious squeeze. “I need to go home. I’m tired of lying down. I’m tired of this gown …” Kurt looks down at it and makes a face, sticking out his tongue “… these sheets, the all of twelve stations on the TV, and the lighting in here …” He glances at the bulbs directly above him and scowls. “They’re really drying me out. By the way …” Kurt leans closer to Blaine before he continues “… thank you so much for sneaking in my face wash and cream. I owe you one.”

Blaine kisses Kurt’s nose. “Anytime.”

It amazes Blaine what a simple person Kurt is, what a creature of comfort. When Blaine first saw Kurt’s picture, he thought for sure that Kurt would turn out to be “high-maintenance” - demanding the very best of everything, not willing to accept anything less - and therefore, out of Blaine’s league. But Kurt’s not that way at all. He’s just picky. He likes things the way he likes them, and why shouldn’t he? People should be allowed to enjoy their time on this planet however they can. But within the boundaries of that pickiness, Kurt is incredibly easy to please. He just needs a handful of his favorite things to keep him calm and make him happy.

Lucky for Blaine, he seems to be one of those things.

And yet, Kurt wouldn’t be in this position if it weren’t for Blaine. And as happy as Blaine is whenever he’s with Kurt, the second he remembers that, it overshadows everything else, and the smile slips, unintentionally, from Blaine’s face.

“You know, I appreciate you spending so much time with me,” Kurt says, lying back against his pillows. “I wouldn’t trade it for anything. But how is this affecting school?”

“It isn’t really,” Blaine assures him, absentmindedly running a thumb over Kurt’s knuckles. “A lot of my classes are independent study with the lectures available online. I’ll have to make up a handful of lab hours, but it’s no big deal. How about you?”

“I was granted a leave of absence.” Kurt lifts his shoulder in a half-shrug that doesn’t quite get that far - a reflex action that his wounded shoulder isn’t ready for yet. “A lot of the classes I’m taking I’ll be able to make up over the summer, along with my performance hours. Summer stock, here I come.”

“That’s … that’s good,” Blaine says, not really feeling it. Blaine remembers Kurt going on and on about a performance of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof that one of the performance majors was directing as part of their senior project. They were aiming to put together an entirely LGBT cast, and Kurt had been counting the days till he could audition. A friend had told him once that he’d make an incredible Brick, but seeing as the director was playing with the genders of the characters a bit, he was dying to try out for the role of Maggie. During the recent excitement, the play had completely slipped Blaine’s mind until Kurt got a text from a friend saying that he had auditioned for and gotten the part of Maggie Pollitt. The disappointment on Kurt’s face was almost as painful to see as the bandage covering his shoulder. Kurt never got his chance to audition for that role because he was in the hospital. And he was in the hospital because of Blaine. “That’s good news.”

Kurt raises an eyebrow at the melancholy tone in Blaine’s voice, at his eyes staring at Kurt’s hand as if it were Kurt’s IV talking to Blaine instead of Kurt. “What’s going on, Blaine?” he asks. “These past few days, you’ve seemed quiet and strangely sad. And, to be honest, it’s making me nervous.”

“I’m sorry,” Blaine says, but unable to meet Kurt’s eyes.

“It’s making me think that you might be having second thoughts about us.”

“I’m not. I swear I’m not.” Blaine bends to kiss Kurt’s hand. “I just … I want you to know that I’m sorry.”

“I know that you’re sorry, honey. You’ve apologized about a hundred times, and I forgive you, even though there’s nothing to forgive. You didn’t do this, Blaine. Nothing that happened between Eli and me is your fault in any way.”

“I get that, Kurt. I do. But, I’m still … I can’t imagine how you feel right now. You’ve been shot, you’ve gone through surgery, and you’re going to need more surgery. You’re missing out on things you want to do, things you had planned on doing before you met me, and the truth is, that does have something to do with me. Maybe indirectly, but still. And you’re such a wonderful guy, so kind and caring. I don’t want you to think that you have to stay with me because of this.” Blaine raises sad eyes to tell Kurt the one thing he’s been holding back since he found out that Kurt would be okay. “If you want to break up with me, then I’ll understand.”

Kurt jerks back as if Blaine just told him he intends to run away and join the circus. “Why would I want to break up with you!?”

“Because you got shot.”

“You didn’t shoot me.”

“But I’m the reason it happened.”

“No, some deranged man with delusions of a relationship that didn’t exist and who can’t take no for an answer is the reason I got shot, Blaine,” Kurt says, his medication-induced calm slipping. “And seeing as that man’s behind bars, the chances are slim that it will ever happen again … knock on wood.” Kurt lets go of Blaine’s hand to knock on the wooden table beside his bed. When he can’t reach it, Blaine does it for him. “You can’t villainize yourself for other people’s actions. You had no control over this, no way of knowing this guy was actually going to come out of the woodwork and hunt one of us down. He could have just as easily found you and shot you. And do you know what I would have done then?”

“What?” Blaine re-takes Kurt’s hand, kissing it gently in an attempt to bring Kurt’s rising blood pressure back down from the rafters.

“I would be sitting in that chair beside your hospital bed, on the same leave of absence I have now, missing those same things that I’d planned before I met you, because there’d be no way I could leave your side.” Kurt feels Blaine smile in his small huff of breath. “You deserve nice things, Blaine. You deserve a good life. And so do I, no matter what anyone else wants or thinks they’re entitled to. We shouldn’t be punished because of other people’s assumptions and stupidity.”

Blaine nods. “You’re a nice thing,” he says, reminding Kurt that if Blaine deserves nice things, and Kurt’s a nice thing, then Blaine deserves Kurt.

Kurt smiles. “You are, too. And I don’t want to say goodbye to you. Not over this. This thing that happened? It’s nothing compared to us. My mom used to say that the only reason you should leave someone is because you stop caring about them … barring abuse and whatnot, but that’s not an issue here. Do you still care about me?”

“Yes, I do, Kurt,” Blaine says, a thickness to his words that catches in his throat. “So much.”

Kurt sighs, three days’ worth of tension releasing in a single breath. “I care about you, too. So you see, what’s a bullet between boyfriends?”

Blaine snickers softly. He tries to repress it, because that shouldn’t be funny. But considering the fact that Kurt’s okay, and that Blaine gets to keep Kurt, he can laugh at it a tiny bit.

“Kurt?”

“Hmm?”

“How attached are you to your loft in Bushwick?”

Kurt knew this question was coming. His dad had already asked it, and so had Isabelle. She texted him yesterday to see how he was faring, then offered him the guest room in her condo for as long as he needed. It was a tempting offer. Her condo is gorgeous, close to Vogue and to NYADA, but as much as Kurt loves Isabelle, he tries not to mix his work life and his personal life. If anything at all went sour at work, living at her place would turn into an awkward situation quick.

To be honest, he wasn’t all that scared of someone attacking him at home just because this had happened. Call it his small town naiveté, but what were the odds?

Then he realized that for a gay man living in Brooklyn, probably moderate to high.

It would be nice not to have to travel across town to see Blaine. It would be way more conducive to spending their nights together. But moving in with Blaine at this stage in their relationship? Even after everything they’ve been through as a couple, Kurt feels it’s too soon. They need to be separate entities for a while longer.

That’s the intelligent, mature portion of his brain speaking, the part that’s learned from experience and numerous Cosmo articles.

The rest of his brain – the crazy, impulsive, and admittedly hopeless romantic side – wants to pack up his Vivienne Westwood suits and his Alexander McQueen scarves, and move in with Blaine right now.

And his heart concurs.

But seeing as he’s still on the fence, and filled with more painkillers than he normally likes to be on when making life decisions, he says, “Why don’t we discuss where I’m going to be living when I find out when I’m getting out of this place? I’m not opposed to moving. We may not end up living in the same apartment just yet, but it would be nice if we were less than three subway rides away.”

“Agreed.” Blaine sounds disappointed, but not as much as Kurt had feared, so he’s glad that they’re both on the same page. “You know, I wasn’t going to say this until you got out of the hospital because … well, I didn’t want you to think I felt this way just because you got shot. But it was true about a week ago. I think, actually, it was true the second I saw you – the real you, in person, out on the sidewalk, listening to your music. And it’s still true now. And I’d rather not keep it to myself any longer because, if you don’t mind me saying it, I’d like to start saying it more often.”

“And what’s that?” Kurt giggles. Blaine gets cute when he gets nervous … but also slightly less than comprehensible.

“I love you.”

Kurt bites his lip. Yes. Thank goodness they’re both on the same page. If they can keep that up, it’ll make writing the story of their life together that much easier. “I love you, too.”