Cooper is home for spring break and things are tense around the house, conversations stilted, and interactions frosty. It’s Cooper’s first visit home since his grand act of rebellion.

He’d turned 21 that year, gaining access to his trust fund, and with that newfound financial freedom he’d withdrawn from Harvard, from law school, from the life his father had mapped out for him since birth and transferred to Columbia for a liberal arts degree. He still doesn’t know what he’s going to do with it, but he knows he’s not following his father’s footsteps anymore.

There hadn’t been a family Christmas that year, not for him. His parents hadn’t reached out to him, and he hadn’t bothered with them. Instead he spent it alone in the apartment he usually shared with a classmate, sneaking phone calls from Blaine the whole day and sipping from a glass of cheap red wine. He bought a tiny Charlie Brown Christmas tree and placed it in the window, but he’d never gotten around to decorating it.

But he’s home now.

Cooper suspects that Blaine had something to do with it. He can only imagine how often his brother had pestered their parents to have him come home, if only for a little while. How he didn’t whine, or beg, or complain, only asked, over and over again, when he’d be able to see Coop again. Cooper can just imagine his brother’s face, sweetly imploring, eyes huge and innocent and so easily concealing the machinations turning in his little head. He loves his brother so much sometimes.

He’s back in his old room getting ready for bed when there’s a soft knock at the open door.

Blaine is standing in the doorway wearing royal blue pajamas that are a little too long in the leg and arm for him. Cooper knows that even though Blaine has grown a bit, he’ll never been as tall as he is, or their father is. Blaine takes after his mother too much. He has her eyes, and her hair too.

Cooper grins at him. “Hey bud, what’s up?”

“Can I, uhm, talk to you about something?” Blaine’s cheeks are pink and he’s scratching nervously at the back of his neck.

Cooper’s smile fades to a frown at Blaine’s uncharacteristically hesitant tone; his furrowed brow, and the hunch to his shoulders.

“Of course. God. Come on.” Cooper sits down on the bed and pats the mattress next to him. He watches, curious, as Blaine closes the door behind him before settling down on the bed.

“I feel like I haven’t seen you in forever,” he says, bumping his shoulder into Blaine’s. “I’ve missed you.”

“Missed you too, Coop.”

The silences stretches long and Cooper can hear every wheel in Blaine’s curly little head turning restlessly.

“Jesus just spit it out or I’m going to resort to drastic measures. You’re not too old for me to tickle you.”

It has the effect he was looking for and a laugh bursts from Blaine and he sags sideways against Cooper.

“You can tell me anything, you know. Anything at all.” Cooper says, wrapping an arm around Blaine’s shoulders and tangling his fingers in his brother’s hair.

“I know. I know.” Blaine repeats it with conviction and Cooper holds his breath, waiting.

And it’s true. Blaine has told him everything his whole life. He told him when he lost his sheet music somewhere at school when he was seven, and Cooper helped him replace it before their mother found out. He confessed to Cooper when he broke one of the dinner plates trying to get it to spin it on his finger. He was the only one Blaine revealed to that the reason he’d torn a hole in his pants was because he’d tried to jump off one of the apparatuses at the playground and had messed up the landing. Instead, he’d told their parents that he’d caught his pants leg on something sharp.

Blaine has told him everything before, and he’ll tell him this too.

“Coop, I…I think I’m gay.”

Blaine’s voice is so small, so nervous that it breaks Cooper’s heart. He tightens his arm around Blaine’s shoulders and pulls him as close as he can get. He feels Blaine’s forehead press against his shoulder and he presses a kiss to the top of Blaine’s head.

“I love you, Blainers,” he says fiercely, proudly.

“Don’t call me that,” Blaine responds weakly, and Cooper can hear the tears in his voice. He wonder how long Blaine has been holding on to this, holding this realization about himself, this truth, deep in his heart with no one to tell it to.

“Thank you for telling me.”

“Thanks for listening.”

Cooper wonders then how many times Blaine has tried to tell their parents something, anything, only to have them ignore him. How often Blaine has tried to start a conversation about how poorly his day at school went. How he messed up a few times at piano practice even thought he knew the piece inside and out. How each time his father probably hmmmed absently, too busy with work to really listen, and his mother just nodded that’s nice dear.

He hates himself in that moment for being so far away for so long.

Drawing back, Cooper shifts until he’s sitting fully facing Blaine. He grasps him by the shoulders and forces his brother to look him in the face. Blaine’s eyes are bright and shining with unshed tears. Cooper is momentarily taken aback by how adult Blaine is beginning to look, how he’s losing his baby fat and his face is gaining their mother’s angularity.

He’s growing up and Cooper is missing it.

“I’m serious. I want you to be able to tell me everything. I want you to call me and tell me about the boy in your class that you think is cute. I want you to tell me how nervous you are to ask someone out for the first. I want to know about your first kiss. Everything, Blaine. You can trust me with everything.”

A few tears spill over then, but Blaine is smiling. “You really kind of are the best brother ever, Coop.”

“Yeah well, I’ve got a fairly awesome brother to practice on.”

Blaine laughs a little and wipes at his face with the edge of his sleeve. “That felt good to say. Out loud.” He takes a long, slow breath. “I’m gay.”

Cooper gathers his brother into another hug. He wonders when the moment is going to come when Blaine becomes too old to want to be hugged like this.

“Yes you are. And I love you. Now come on, let’s go get you some hot chocolate and you can start telling me about all the boys in your class.”

Blaine flushes to the tips of his ears. “God, Coop. Stop.”

Cooper laughs and gets off the bed to head to the kitchen. Hot chocolate with marshmallows, an old black and white musical, and his brother. He doesn’t need anything else.