"Mrs. Anderson! Blaine's on the ground and he's breathing funny!"

"Blaine? What's wrong?"

"Take deep breaths for me, sweetie."

"Charles, call Dr. Davis."

***

Blaine doesn't remember his first attack. He was only five, and boring doctor's offices seem to have faded in favor of days spent playing with Cooper and the other neighborhood kids. Going to football games with his dad. Family dinners. Normal things that he no longer gets.

He does, however, remember sitting on the kitchen counter, legs swinging as his mom hands him a little blue device.

"All right, sweetie, shake it up. Put this part up to your mouth. All right, now blow out as much as you can and push this. Hold your breath. Hold it. Hold it. Now let it out."

His mom tells him to pretend that he's a cloud blowing wind around, but Blaine doesn't feel like a cloud. He feels more like a tiny little breeze. He can't even breathe well enough to play with Cooper.

"Did it work?" his mom asks, and Blaine nods.

"I can taste it in the back of my throat," he complains, wrinkling his nose.

"Good. Do it again."

***

"Blaine! Don't forget your inhaler!"

"Are you wheezing, honey? Stop playing. Take a break."

"I just don't feel comfortable with him taking gym. Can he do art again, instead? Maybe music?"

***

When Blaine is eight, he's on six different medications and has to go to the nurse's office twice a day so she can give him his inhaler (ignoring his irritated retorts that he can do it himself). His mom finally agrees with his father that he should quit dance lessons.

"You can pick it back up again once they get your lungs better, sweetie," she tells him when he cries. "You'll just do something different until then."

His father beams when Blaine says he wants to play soccer like Cooper, but his mom shakes her head and says no, that's even worse.

"Your lungs just can't handle it. All that running and grass will be bad for them, sweetie."

In the end, Blaine's music teacher solves the problem when she sends home a note recommending that Blaine join a children's choir.

His mom cries at his first concert, so proud of her baby boy with his beautiful voice, with lungs too fragile to run, but finally strong enough to do something, to do this.

His father leaves halfway through the first number to go back to work.

That night is the first time his father does not come home. It will not be the last.

***

"You'll grow out of it. These things fade over time."

"It's been a year since you've had any issues, Blaine. I think you're okay."

"Do we really need to refill your inhaler, sweetie? It's been so long since you're needed it…"

***

Blaine feels betrayed as he stares up at his ceiling, gasping for breath and shoving his fingers in his ears so maybe, just maybe, he can sleep over his own damn lungs. They gave him hope. They'd had him convinced he was in the clear, that he'd outgrown his asthma, but now it's back.

He really wants to grab his blanket and trudge down the hall into Cooper's room so his brother can sing to him and distract him from the wheezing long enough for him to sleep. When they used to do it, it was just as much for Cooper's benefit as it was Blaine's, because the older boy always got nervous on his brother's bad nights, and liked to stay close.

Cooper's gone, though. He left for college three months ago, as soon as Blaine hit seventh grade. There's no one down the hall to go to except his father, who's buried deep within files of paperwork.

Cooper is gone. He has no inhaler. The pharmacy is still open at this hour, but the doctor's office that would have to call in his prescription is closed. He's having trouble, but not enough to go to the emergency room. And he's wheezing too hard to sleep.

Yeah. Tonight sucks.

***

"Your asthma's bothering you, isn't it?"

"I left my inhaler at home. Can you call your dad to pick us up?"

"Yeah, sure. Are you okay?"

"It's that stupid smoke machine. Let's wait for him outside."

***

Blaine has never hated his asthma more. At first he blames himself. Then he blames his lungs.

It's never occurred to him to hate the boys. It's never occurred to him to hate their fists.

After the dance, after the transfer, Blaine's asthma is no longer a wheeze. It is an enemy. It is a rage that he feels, that only fades when he has gloves on his fists and he's punching a bag and pretending that it's his lungs, his genetics, his father.

Dalton is hard. The stairs are hard. Choir is hard, but Blaine doesn't tell a single person about his asthma. He is not weak . He will not be defined by this.

"I'm gay!" he shouts from the top of his lungs in the courtyard one afternoon, on a good day with the zero-tolerance policy resting comfortably in his mind, and Wes laughing beside him, but he tells no one about the asthma.

The only place his inhaler is allowed to meet his lips is within the confines of a bathroom stall.

After he goes through his fifth inhaler in two months, it occurs to Blaine that there's no way he's having this much trouble with his asthma. If it was as bad as this, surely he wouldn't be able to make it through all of his Warbler practices. Surely dancing around and jumping on furniture would be out of the question.

It is a constant thing on his mind, a constant nagging that air, he's not drawing in enough air. It fades when he uses his inhaler but never escalates, never actually impairs him.

His lungs tell him no, I can't do this, but his mind tells him yes.

Something is wrong. Something is broken, and Blaine's starting to think it isn't his lungs.

That night the gym is closed. No boxing for Blaine, so he kicks over a chair, tears at the cover of his bed, punches a wall and screams because everything is happy but it's not going away. He breathes in and he forgets the words that were yelled at him, the feet pounding into his body, but it's not enough. There's still not enough air.

Why isn't there enough air?

When will this be better?

***

"My name's Kurt."

"Blaine."

***

He's halfway through Teenage Dream before his inhaler even crosses his mind.

Its weight in his pocket is not a comfort, not a safety blanket. Not anymore.

That night he stows it away on his top shelf, telling his roommate where it is.

As he falls asleep, he dreams of a hand tight in his and eyes like galaxies.