Everything would be much easier if Blaine’s parents weren’t so busy all the time.

Kurt sits by Blaine’s bedside, tears in his eyes as he pushes his boyfriend’s hair away from his forehead. The initial horror is over. Blaine’s been receiving painkillers through an IV for hours and is sleeping fairly peacefully as far as Kurt can tell. And if anyone would know, it would be Kurt. Kurt’s been watching him sleep since they first put Blaine in a room, his chair turned to face the bed so that his back is towards the door. His thumb rubs restlessly over the back of Blaine’s hand. His eyes never leave Blaine’s face as much as it pains him to see half of Blaine’s face covered by bandages, his hair gradually breaking free from the gel’s hold when Blaine moves his head.

Kurt has heard Blaine say a lot today, from his calm speculation before the “Bad” face-off to his tortured shouts of pain, but he can only think of Blaine saying one phrase.

“Those guys are my friends.”

Kurt winces, breath hitching. “I’m so sorry, Blaine.” Blaine’s head turns toward his whisper, but he doesn’t wake. “Sebastian was going for me and…and you should’ve let me take that slushie. I’m so sorry.”

“I’m sure he’s not.”

Kurt turns to find his father in the doorway. “Dad, he just—I’d do anything to save him from this.”

One corner of Burt’s mouth turns up. “Don’t you think he feels the same way about you?”

Kurt doesn’t respond, tears spilling over. “I hate hospitals,” he says, dabbing quickly at his eyes. “I always end up crying.”

Burt chuckles for a moment and Kurt turns back to Blaine, as if the sound of laughter might heal him. “It’s nine, kiddo,” Burt says. “They’re probably going to kick you out soon, since you’re not his family.”

Kurt grimaces. “Can’t Carole pull some strings?”

“Just because she just got a promotion doesn’t mean she has that much power.”

Kurt sighs, squeezing Blaine’s hand. Ever since the Warbler face-off, Blaine’s family had been unreachable, off in some European country, cell phones going to voicemail. Blaine had shrugged at this and looked as nonchalant as one can when in the emergency room in agonizing pain. Kurt had been all Blaine had, staying by his side through the myriad of ambulance techs, ER nurses, and doctors. He is extremely reluctant to leave now, knowing that no one will be here if he happened to wake up in the middle of the night. He knows from experience that Blaine’s meds will keep him out the whole night, but the chance that they won’t worries him. Kurt gets up from his chair and perches on the edge of Blaine’s bed so that he lean in and kiss an exposed patch of forehead.

“Blaine, baby,” he murmurs against his skin. Baby wasn’t an endearment either of them usually used, but as Blaine lies in this little bed, hooked up to machines and a bag of fluid, his vulnerability necessitates the pet name.

Blaine’s eye flutters open sleepily. “Hey,” he drawls slowly, smile spreading.

Kurt pulls back and smiles the best he can. “The nurses are probably gonna kick me out soon, so I just wanted to warn you in case you woke up and wondered where I was.”

Blaine nods sadly, hand gripping Kurt’s. “We should have gotten married, ‘cause then you could stay.”

Kurt laughs, free hand going to Blaine’s chest, thumb stroking Blaine’s clavicle. “That’s the Lortab talking, I think.”

Blaine shrugs and whines, “I wanna be your husband.”

Kurt’s eyes fill up again at the longing in Blaine’s tone. “One day. I’ll be back in the morning, okay?” Blaine nods seriously. “And I’ll have my phone right next to me all night; you can call me anytime you need to, alright?”

Blaine nods again.

“I love you, baby. Thank you for taking that slushie for me.”

“I’ll always take things for you.” He frowns. “That wasn’t right. I don’t want slushies thrown at you. Especially rocky ones.”

Kurt’s heart aches as Blaine struggles through the haze.

“I know, me too.”

Kurt starts to pull his hand away from Blaine’s collarbone, but Blaine puts his hand over Kurt’s, a broken imitation of a reconciliation long past.

“Stay with me until they make you leave?”

Kurt nods. “Always.”

Blaine’s eye closes, face content. “I love you too.”

Kurt smiles as Blaine’s breathing evens out and he goes back under, hand slipping off Kurt’s and to the side. When the nurse inevitably comes in to pull Kurt away, Burt places a hand on Kurt’s shoulder, reminding him that it’s time to go. Kurt pulls his hand away from Blaine’s as gently as he can, leaving his chair exactly the way he likes it. He’ll be back in a few hours.

-β-

When Blaine goes home Thursday afternoon, having been downgraded to Demerol, a medication with half the strength of the meds he’d been given in the hospital, Kurt is by his side again, helping him into his bed.

“Kurt, honestly, I feel fine. You don’t have to—”

“Shut up, Blaine. I told you I would stay with you until someone made me leave and that’s what I intend to do now.”

Blaine rolls his eyes (which Kurt pointedly ignores) and settles into bed, wriggling beneath the duvet Kurt is holding up for him. “I feel—”

“When are your parents coming back?”

Blaine stares at Kurt for a long moment before looking at his knees. “Next Saturday, like they planned.”

Kurt, having been fussing with Blaine’s pillows, turns his head toward Blaine so fast that Blaine hears the sound of air moving past it. “What? You told them about your eye, right? And your surgery?”

Blaine nods, still looking at his knees.

“And they don’t feel, I don’t know, compelled to make sure their son is okay through that.”

Blaine shrugs, unwilling to give Kurt anymore reason to be angry.

“What the hell? What did they say?”

Blaine racks his brain to try and remember the conversation despite the pull of the painkillers. “They asked if I had a way to get there and home and when I told them you and your family would take care of me, Mom said it seemed like I had everything under control. And I’m eighteen, so everything is basically in my hands anyway.”

That wasn’t the full extent of the exchange with his mother. He remembers the disapproval in her tone when responding to how he incurred his injury and the derision in her acceptance of how he intended to go about traveling.

Kurt stood very tall, mouth in a thin line, nostrils flared. “Well, you know what?” he starts angrily before taking a deep breath, shoulders lowering from their position around his neck. “We’ll just have to take really good care of you,” he says, eerily calm. He gives Blaine a small smile which doesn’t reach his eyes and sits down on Blaine’s bed, picking up his hand to kiss Blaine’s palm.

After Kurt ensures that Blaine is comfortable, he leaves Blaine with the television to make a rather delicious dinner in the kitchen—“Honestly, Blaine, it’s not as if people with eye injuries need soup”—and they decide to watch When Harry Met Sally together, Kurt smiling wryly as Blaine announces his choice.

Blaine falls asleep soon after taking his meds, at precisely 9 PM, thanks to Kurt’s near neurotic attendance to his health.

He awakes again to a dim light coming from the gap between his cracked door and the hall, his clock proclaiming the time is 11:27. Kurt’s hushed voice is saying, “He needs me, Dad. I promised him. Remember…” his voice trails off, clearly walking further from the door, but Blaine swears he hears the word “Mom”. He assumes Kurt is complaining about his parents.

When Kurt comes back into the room, now off the phone, and notices Blaine is awake, he says, “I’ll be here when you wake up next time, promise.”

“You can go home, Kurt, really. I’m okay.”

Kurt’s face is indiscernible as he gets in the bed with Blaine and says, “Go back to sleep, baby.”

Blaine closes his eyes and sleep soon follows.

-β-

Kurt is dreaming of being on a wooden ship, warm and content with the sunshine washing over him and working hard to keep everyone on board sailing at the mast. The next thing he knows, he’s in a terrible storm, the boat rocking back and forth wildly, tossing him across the deck, everything is shaking and he can’t get back to the mast and—

He wakes up to find Blaine shivering violently, body convulsing in sleep.

He’d forgotten to set the alarm on his phone to give Blaine his meds.

Fuck.

He gets out of bed quickly, going to the other side of Blaine’s room to search through the bottles on his dresser and find the pills. When he can’t find them, he begins to panic, thinking only of Blaine in pain, unable to remember where he’d left the pills. He rushes to Blaine’s bathroom, searching the counter, nothing. Then he all but runs to the side of the bed, now babbling apologies under his breath. “I’m so sorry. I should’ve set the alarm. I needed to do better for you. I stayed and didn’t even do what I was supposed to do, didn’t even take care of you properly.” He finds the pills on the nightstand and tips the bottle and three come out into his hand. He’s shaking too badly to get the extras back in the bottle.

“This is all my fault. You wouldn’t even know what a slushie was if it weren’t for me. I’m so sorry. Everything is my fault. You’d probably be asleep in your dorm room at Dalton now and you’d be happy and you wouldn’t be here in pain.”

He runs to the bathroom to get a glass of water to give Blaine his pill, still muttering as he fills the cup. “I’m a terrible caregiver. My mother would’ve died in pain, suffered the whole time if I’d been in charge. Can’t even remember to make sure he gets his pill, what kind of father am I going to be?”

When he gets back to Blaine’s side, he leans in and says, “Blaine, sit up for me, baby. I brought you your pill.”

Blaine is visibly struggling, so Kurt puts his hand on the back of Blaine’s neck to support him as he takes his meds. “I’m so sorry, honey. I meant to make sure this wouldn’t happen.” Blaine’s still straining to remain upright as he swallows, and it’s so reminiscent of his mother’s weakness that he sobs, remembering his father holding his mother up like this.

This is Blaine, Kurt thinks to himself, He’s not your mother; he’s not dying. He’s going to be fine.

In the terrifying 32 minutes it takes for the medicine to kick in, Kurt holds Blaine’s back against his front, stroking his chest with his right hand, arm draping over his side, and brushing his hair back with the left. He tells Blaine stories of his mother, how she used to hold him like this after nightmares, even in the days when her arms were too weak to lift anything. He tells Blaine about the stories she would tell about princes too far out of their time. He tells Blaine how sorry he is for forgetting the alarm. But eventually, he dissolves into saying various iterations of “I’ll take care of you.” In the last desperate minutes, he just says “I wish you had let me take the slushie.”

After Blaine stops shaking, he says, “I’d rather do this a hundred times than let it happen to you.”

Kurt sobs into Blaine’s neck. “I’m sorry that you don’t have a mother to tell you stories.”

Blaine breathes in and out slowly, starting to go to sleep as he says, “I have you.”

-β-

Blaine wakes up at 5 AM sharp. Kurt is speaking softly into his ear, waking him gently. “Come on, Blaine. Time to take your pills.”

After downing the tablet, he says, “Thank you for staying here even though I told you to go home. Repeatedly.”

Kurt laughs bitterly. “You’re welcome to my lackluster meds dispensing anytime.”

Blaine grasps his hand tightly. “I’m sure you’d do much better than anyone else.”

Kurt nods after a moment, unsmiling. “I think you’re right about that.”

-β-

Kurt awakes the morning after Blaine’s surgery to Blaine’s hand caressing the nape of his neck. Blaine’s half-lidded eye is watching Kurt with unbridled affection, smile growing as he says, “Hey, sleepy head.”

Kurt smiles back. “What—” he stops to clear his throat, voice still gravelly from sleep. “What time is it?”

Blaine turns his head lazily, reaching to pick up his phone from the table to his right and missing on his first attempt due to his loss of depth perception. “8:49. How long have you been in here?”

“Oh about,” he pauses to check his bare wrist, “An hour and 49 minutes.”

“How long have you been asleep?”

“Approximately an hour and 48 minutes.”

Blaine lets out a short laugh and then looks at him closely, obviously seeing his unstyled hair and simple clothing. “Kurt, when they took me away for my surgery, you went home, right?”

Kurt nods. “Of course.”

Blaine tries to look skeptical, but fails comically. “How long were you home?”

He doesn’t even try to be funny about it. “Less than an hour.”

Blaine’s hand shifts around his face, thumb brushing at his temple. “You should’ve stayed there and slept.”

Kurt responds with his patented did you really just say that look. “As if I could’ve slept when you were having surgery and I could be here. How do you feel?” he asks, much gentler in the wake of his glare, hand reaching out to rest on Blaine’s knee.

Blaine grins. “Well, I’m drugged up and the handsomest man in North America is sitting next to me, so I’m doing pretty well.” He gives Kurt a dopey smile. “How did the surgery go?”

“It went well,” Kurt says, reliving the utter relief that the doctor was telling him about Blaine’s surgery. “Your surgeon said that everything went like it should have. No complications.”

Blaine nods. “Good.”

At the reminder of being updated on him, Kurt looks at Blaine appraisingly. “Blaine, why did the doctor come and talk to me?”

Blaine frowns. “What do you mean? Didn’t you want him to?”

“No, no, I was thrilled, relieved,” Kurt reassures, “but didn’t that break doctor-patient confidentiality?”

Blaine’s expression clears. “Oh, that. No, you’re on my list.”

Kurt tilts his head. “List?”

“Of people that hospital staff can tell about my medical stuff.”

Kurt looks at Blaine, half shocked. “When did you do that?”

Blaine’s brow furrows. “Thursday, right before we left the hospital.”

“That’s…isn’t that a big decision?”

With his head cocked, Blaine says, “You sat outside in the lobby waiting on me all night.”

“Well,” Kurt is quick to say, “I didn’t just sit all night. I wandered around near to the operating rooms, to see if they had a scheduling board, like on Grey’s Anatomy, to see if I could find out anything about your surgery.”

“And you don’t think that I should have the doctor just tell you things?”

Kurt shrugs. “Medical forms are serious.”

Blaine rolls his eyes. “Kurt. If I’ve learned anything this week, it’s that you’re my family. At least the kind that counts.”

Kurt presses his lips together in an attempt not to cry.

“And one day, if you let me,”� he continues, “when you’re in the hospital—but not for anything like this, for, like, tonsil trouble—I’ll be right where you are, waiting to find out if you’re alright.”

Kurt’s eyes fill anyway. “I love you forever, Blaine Anderson.”

Blaine’s eyes widen jokingly. “Breaking out the last name? Things must be serious.”

Kurt just shakes his head, grinning. He grasps Blaine’s hand. “Go back to sleep, Blaine. It has to be difficult to stay awake with your painkillers.”

“Okay,” he replied, closing his eyes, squeezing Kurt’s hand.

And Kurt has never seen a more beautiful sight than Blaine peacefully sleeping.