Cooper, this your mother. It’s Blaine. There’s been an incident. You should come home.

He blindly throws a few things into a bag and rushes out of the door. He’s absurdly grateful that he never made it to California, that when he turned twenty-one and gained access to his trust fund he’d transferred out of Harvard and into Columbia to complete an education he chose for himself, because it means he’s three hours to closer to getting to Blaine.

The smell of the hospital is like a slap to the face. It’s floor cleaner and bleach and linens and antiseptic and the taste of it in the air coats his tongue, makes it hard to breathe. It’s getting later in the evening and there aren’t too many people around to get in his way as he barrels for the administration desk, likely looking wild and out of control. It’s how he feels.

He gasps out Blaine’s name at the nurses, tells them he’s family, and they point him down a long hallway before going back to their paperwork and their phone calls and not sparing him a second glance.

He pauses outside the hospital room door (of course his parents got Blaine a private room) and tries to steel himself. His heart is hammering and his mouth tastes of bile. You can do this.

Taking a deep breath, he pushes open the door and enters the room. His legs go numb when he sees Blaine and he has to place a hand on the wall to keep from falling over. At least he thinks he touches the wall; he can’t feel his fingers.

Blaine is so very small in the bed, motionless and breathing shallowly, chest barely rising under the sheet. There’s a thick bandage wrapped around his head and his hair is dark against the stark white bandages. Cooper hopes it’s not blood that’s matting those curls down. Blaine’s face is swollen and bruised, blood pooling too close to the surface. His lower lip is split. Both of his eyes are closed in sleep, but Cooper thinks Blaine wouldn’t be able to open the right one even if he were awake. His arm is in a sling, resting awkwardly against his belly, and Cooper can see a dark, ugly bruise spreading across his collarbone and down his chest where the hospital gown doesn’t quite close. He can’t see the cast on Blaine’s leg, but he can tell the shape of it, bulky and solid, underneath the sheet.

It’s all Cooper can do to not vomit on the floor.

Blaine. He wants to say it out loud, but his throat is dry and his lips aren’t working.

“Cooper.”

The sound of his own name snaps him into awareness. He looks over to find his parents standing stiffly off to the side; he hadn’t seen them when he’d entered the room. His father is in a suit and has his long coat folded over his arm, as if he’s getting ready to leave. His mother is wearing heels and a tight expression.

“What the hell happened?” He demands with no preamble, no niceties, no hello haven’t see you in months how’s things? He throws a desperate hand out in Blaine’s direction.

“There was an incident,” his father says flatly, as if it’s nothing. As if Blaine has a scraped knee and scuffed palms. As if it’s a fender bender and not a train-wreck.

“You already said that. What. Happened?” Scenarios are running rapid-fire through his mind: car accident; hit-and-run; slipping and falling down a staircase. Anything.

“Blaine was at that school dance.”

Cooper nods. “He told me about it, the other day. He said he was going to go with this friend, Josh.”

As he says the other boy’s name, his father’s lip curls, almost imperceptibly, but Cooper knows to look for it. He’s seen that look before and he knows what it means.

“Blaine and his friend were…attacked after the dance, while waiting for his friend’s father to pick them up.”

Cooper can feel the blood drain from his face and he sways on his feet. Blaine was attacked. He was bashed.

He thought of the call he received from Blaine the week before.

His brother had been so excited about it – talking a mile a minute about how was going to go to the dance with Josh and they were going to wear coordinating bow ties. How he knew that even though they couldn’t dance together, and were really only going as friends, at least he had someone to go with. At least he would be able to look back on that night and say that he’d taken a boy to a high school dance.

Cooper knows that’s not how Blaine will ever look back on that night now.

Then a realization hits him and it takes his breath away. “The dance was last night.”

His father says nothing and his mother shifts, switching her purse from one shoulder to the other.

“Why the fuck didn’t you call me the second this happened?”

Fire blazes in his father’s grey eyes then. “Do not speak to us like that.”

“Cooper,” his mother says as she places a restraining hand on her husband’s arm. “We didn’t want to upset you. We know it looks bad, but Blaine is,”

“He is my baby brother,” Cooper interrupts. “Nothing is more important. Nothing.”

He sees the shift in his father’s face - the clench of his jaw, the way his nostrils flare just slightly, and knows, knows that his father is blaming Blaine for this. That he’s thinking this never would have happened if Blaine had taken a girl to the dance, if Blaine had worn something more discrete, if Blaine were anything but himself.

He knows his father is thinking that everything would be fine if Blaine could just be different, if Blaine could be more like Cooper.

He’s never wanted to hit his father before.

Cooper turns towards Blaine, turns his back to his parents.

“You don’t need to be here. I’ve got him.” He hears the swish of a coat and the click of heels.

“We’re going out to dinner," his mother says softly. "We’ll be back.”

“Yes you do that.”

The door swings shut with a soft, muffled thwump and Cooper breathes out the tension he didn’t even realize he was holding. It’s old habit to pull his shoulders back and lock his jaw when he’s faced with his father.

Cooper pulls a chair up to the edge of Blaine’s bed and stares and Blaine’s swollen, hurt face. This close to him, Cooper can see a bit of dried blood under Blaine’s nostrils and his stomach churns, knowing that his brother’s nose is likely broken, though not so badly as to be misshapen. He wants to clean it away, but he doesn't want to cause him more pain.

Unable to bear it any long, he tentatively reaches out. There’s an IV in the hand that isn’t bound up in a sling and so Cooper slides his own hand underneath it, letting Blaine’s palm rest limply against his own. His palm is cool to the touch and Cooper rubs a thumb carefully across his scraped knuckles. Blaine’s fingers have gotten longer, he notices, even if the rest of him hasn’t gotten much taller.

The last time he’d sat vigil in a hospital had been a few years prior when Blaine caught a nasty stomach flu during winter break and had needed IV fluids. Cooper’s heart had stopped for a long, stomach-turning moment when he saw Blaine pass out, eyes rolling back and body crumpling to the floor.

He’d looked so pathetic; vomiting uncontrollably into the pan the nurse had left for him before passing out a second time, only to sleep for thirteen hours straight. Cooper spent the night at his bedside, holding his clammy hand and wiping the sweat from his brow with a cool cloth.

And the time before that was his birth, when he’d been so nervous, so afraid to hurt the tiny, squalling, red-faced infant in his mother’s arms. They’d let him hold Blaine, after he’d been cleaned and fed. Cooper had sat in one of the chairs and his father had placed the squirming bundle of blankets in his arms.

Support the head is what he’d thought, because he’d read it in one of his mother’s book.

Blaine had looked at him again, eyes huge and unblinking, focused on everything and nothing at all. Cooper ran a finger across Blaine’s downy cheek and giggled when Blaine instinctively turned towards the touch - red, round mouth suckling soundlessly.

He touches him just as carefully now. There are going to be scars, he knows, visible and hidden, and Cooper is going to do whatever he can to help them heal. And that means he’s moving home. Back to Ohio. Back to his brother who will need him now more than ever. He can transfer out of Columbia and go to OSU. They've got excellent grad school programs. He's sure he'll get into one. And it’s only half an hour from Westerville. That’s close enough.

He wonders the how Josh is, if he’s hurt just has badly, if he’s even in this hospital too. If his parents are gathered around his bed, shaking with nerves and pale with worry. He’ll ask the nurse if Josh is here and how he’s doing because he knows that Blaine will ask for him when he wakes up.

Cooper stays there, hunched awkwardly in the chair, slipping in and out of a restless sleep until Blaine stirs and his fingers finally curl around his own.