April 3rd, 2013

The name "Blaine" means "yellow."

Yellow like the sun, yellow like the tail of one blazing meteor that Blaine had seen during a shower when he was seven, yellow like the flecks in Blaine's hazel eyes that Kurt has seen up close too many times to count.

Blaine knew this, because he looked it up on a whim one day. His mother had chosen "Blaine" for his first name, and his father chose "Devon" for his middle name—which refers to, much less interestingly, a county in England known for its farmland.

Blaine's older brother Cooper had always called him "Squirt"—"which simply meant "a small and mildly annoying younger sibling."

Blaine had come to him with the names. Cooper remembered it vividly—he'd forgotten it, he hadn't thought of it in years, but as soon as he stepped into Blaine's hospital room and saw him there, he remembered. Little curly-headed Blaine, a big book of baby names in hand, stumbling into Cooper's room and stopping at his desk with his fingers closed in the book to mark his pages. He was eight years old.

"Let's find yours, Coop," he said, after they had pondered every deeper meaning of "Yellow" and "English farmland" that they could.

"Barrel maker," Cooper read, disappointed. That was almost duller than "farmland."

Blaine flipped through the pages, intent on hunting down Cooper's middle name to make up for the first one.

"'Jay' means 'swift,'" Blaine told him. "What does 'swift' mean?"

"It means really, really fast," Cooper said. He was more satisfied with "swift." The Flash was swift. Cheetahs were swift. He could deal with "swift." Maybe he'd go by "Jay" from now on.

"A swift barrel maker," Blaine said.

"Shut it, Squirt."

Cooper thought about how just how small he seemed as he sat beside his brother, watching his eyes flick behind his eyelids and the slow and subtle movement of his chest, up and down, the only signs that he was still alive.

His bones seemed to stick out everywhere—cheeks, knuckles, shoulders, collar. This was the result of lying in a hospital bed for a week, tube-fed and unmoving. The only change in Blaine's condition was that he had infrequently begun to twitch and make small sounds at night. Dr. Marshall, with whom the Andersons were becoming well-acquainted, said that he might be having dreams, and that it could be a good sign.

Cooper didn't think it looked like a good sign. He thought it looked like his brother was having the worst nightmare of his life. Still, he stayed past regular visiting hours to watch it happen; to see Blaine's fingers jerk, and his head fall to the side; to pull the blanket back up to his chin when one particular motion knocked it askew; to put a hand on Blaine's arm and pretend that, when Blaine's toes wiggled, it meant that he felt Cooper's touch.

The name "Blaine" means "Yellow," and it had always suited him. Energetic, sunny, optimistic. And so very alive.

C'mon, Squirt, wake up.