01.
Goldenrod and the 4H stone
The things I brought you when I found out you had cancer of the bone
Your father cried on the telephone
And he drove his car into the Navy Yard just to prove that he was sorry

There were flowers clenched in Blaine’s hand as he stood in Kurt’s doorway.Goldenrod, Kurt remembered suddenly. When he was younger, his mother had kept a garden, a garden so brilliant and immaculately kept that everyone--neighbors, cab drivers, people passing through--made comments about it, and there had been goldenrod in that garden. 
Kurt smiled. “Hi,” he said. “Sorry.” He gestured at himself--the soft old t-shirt, faded jeans, nothing like himself. “I wasn’t expecting anyone.”
Blaine hovered in the doorway, his smile not quite reaching his eyes. They were puffy, slightly damp, and Kurt knew it was his fault. “I brought you a present,” he said, and his voice sounded more like a little boy’s than Kurt could imagine. It stung somewhere in his chest that he hadn’t even really known existed. 
“Come sit on the bed,” Kurt offered, and Blaine padded in, nervous, and handed him the flowers, digging in his pocket until he came up with what else he was looking for--a smooth rock, so blue it was almost black, perfectly shaped like a heart. “I’ve been saving that for a long time,” he said. 
Kurt picked it up, reverent, and held it in his hand. “And you wanted to give it to me?”
Their relationship was so new, still, that Kurt couldn’t fathom why Blaine would part with something so obviously treasured. Didn’t want to think about it. But Blaine nodded. “I want to give it to you.”
Kurt wrapped his arms around Blaine’s neck, just for a moment, and hugged him tight. “Thank you, Blaine.”
And then the silence, the awkward, heavy silence, that signified all that they didn’t--couldn’t--talk about, the silence that Kurt had been waiting for, fell over them, and Kurt sat back against his pillows and Blaine sat on the edge of the bed with the flowers clenched in his hand, until Kurt started feeling tired again, plucked the flowers out of Blaine’s hand, and smiled. “Lay with me for a little while?” he asked, and watched the tension leave Blaine’s body, a real smile crossing his face. “Yes,” he said softly, settling in, reaching for Kurt’s hand as they drifted off to sleep, not thinking about tomorrow, or what the future held.

Kurt’s father was crying on the phone when Blaine picked it up. It was the middle of the afternoon, the rain pouring off of the sheet glass windows. It was the call that Blaine had been waiting for all day, and as soon as he heard Kurt’s father’s voice, he knew.
“Mr Hummel?” he asked, and then held his breath, trying to will good news into existence, trying to pretend he had imagined it. 
“Blaine,” he said, and then there was no more pretending he could do. “We just got back from the doctors, and...it wasn’t such good news.”
Blaine’s chest felt hollow, his hands sweating, his body feeling strange--weightless and heavy, all at once, as if he was a helium balloon with a sand bag attached. He didn’t say anything. Couldn’t. He was frozen. 
Mr. Hummel’s voice sounded far away. Blaine could make out something about cancer and treatment and prognosis and something about six months, but it didn’t make any sense, as if he was speaking a foreign language. “...and maybe you should come see him,” he finished, and those were words Blaine understood. That was something Blaine knew how to do. He didn’t hesitate. “I’ll be there in a few minutes,” he said. “Thank you.”
He hung up the phone, and for a few long, agonizing moments, he felt like everything was completely out of his control. He wanted to cry, but he couldn’t. He wanted to cry and scream and throw things, but he was rooted in one spot, standing there with the phone still clenched in his hand, knuckles going white, unable to do anything but stand.

And then finally something broke, and the first tears pushed through and then the rest came pouring out as if a dam had broken within him, unable to stop. He cried and cried, sitting there in a pile on the kitchen floor, until he had no tears left, and then he gathered himself up, went up to his room, looked around for something to bring to Kurt. His eyes fell on the stone---obsidian, his father had said, but Blaine wasn’t sure if that was true or not--that he had found by the river years before, when everything was still normal. “You have to keep it,” his father had told him, tucking it into the pocket of Blaine’s yellow raincoat. “Because someday someone is going to come sweep you off your feet, and then you can give them your heart.”
Decisively, Blaine picked the stone up and put it in his pocket.

Outside, the rain had slowed down to a light drizzle, drops still clinging to the flowers in his mother’s garden. All at once, Blaine ran back into the house (he would pay dearly later for tracking mud on his mother’s immaculate reclaimed barnwood floors) and grabbed the kitchen scissors, snipping off a bunch of those pretty golden flowers that grew near the front door. There, he thought. That’ll fix this.

02.
In the morning, through the window shade
When the light pressed up against your shoulder blade, I could see what you were reading
All the glory that the Lord has made and the complications you could do without when I kissed you on the mouth

When they finally woke, the dreary day had turned to still, quiet night, and Blaine sat up, blinking in confusion, getting his bearings. He remembered Kurt’s father and the phone call and the tears, and cancer and treatment and six months, and he remembered the smooth dark blue stone, now sitting on Kurt’s bedside table, the pretty golden flowers in a cup of water next to them. The clock on the bedside table said it was 10:15.
“I have to go,” he said uncertainly. “I’ll see you on Monday.”

It was still raining on Monday morning, and it was no surprise to Blaine when he walked into first period English class to find Kurt’s desk empty.
“You’re late, Mr. Anderson,” Ms. Nichols said, and Blaine turned and walked back out.

Blaine pulled his car out of the student lot, his heart pounding in his chest. He had never skipped school before, but he knew he couldn’t be there, not right now, not without Kurt, and he found himself parked in front of Kurt’s house before he really knew what he was doing.

The front door was unlocked, and Blaine let himself in, his feet making the now-familiar journey to Kurt’s bedroom. The door was open, and the morning sun was streaming through the windows, framing Kurt’s head like a halo. Blaine knocked, and Kurt looked up, smiling. “Aren’t you supposed to be at school?” he asked fondly. 
Blaine crossed the threshold, sitting on the end of the bed, reaching for Kurt’s hand. There was a book on his bedside table, and Blaine recognized it after a moment as the Bible. “I thought you didn’t believe in God,” he said.
Kurt took his hand. “I don’t,” he replied, playing with Blaine’s fingers, and then, “I’m dying, Blaine.”
Blaine’s fingers closed on Kurt’s, his eyes falling closed with the weight of the words, the words he had hoped he could ignore until they went away, as if that was enough to save him. “I know,” he whispered, opening his eyes, looking down at their hands joined together on Kurt’s neat bedspread. 

They had been on their first date two weeks before they knew Kurt was dying. Blaine had picked him up, and they went to the movies and drove until Kurt had almost thought they were lost, and laughed and talked and at the end of the night, Blaine had kissed him on the cheek and told him that it was the best time he had ever had, and Kurt had promised him that they would do it again. But that was supposed to be last Saturday, and Kurt was dying and nothing was the same and Blaine was convinced that there would never be a next time, so he stared down at their hands intertwined on the bedspread until his vision went blurry and their hands looked like one, and then he let go, turning Kurt’s face toward him and pressing their lips together gently. 

At first, Kurt did nothing, perfectly still, and then he tentatively reached out, his hand on Blaine’s arm, and kissed him back. When they finally broke the kiss, slightly flushed and out of breath, he looked shyly down at his lap. “You need to go,” he said, and Blaine stood, embarrassed, straightening his clothes. “I’m sorry,” he said, and fled before he started to cry.

03.
Tuesday night at the Bible Study
We lift our hands and pray over your body, but nothing ever happens

It wasn’t until the middle of October that Kurt would come back to school. Blaine walked into the choir room one Tuesday afternoon for the glee club meeting, and there he was, looking paler and more tired than he had before--more breakable in some way beyond the way that he had always looked like a china doll--but there nonetheless, talking to Mercedes and Rachel, smiling. 

Blaine tried to avoid his glance--they hadn’t spoken all that much since that day at the end of September when everything changed. On the phone, every night, but they didn’t say much, and Blaine knew it was his fault, and knew it was much easier to talk to someone when you were mad at them if you didn’t have to look at their face. But Kurt smiled at him, smiled, and patted the chair next to him. “I’m back!” he said, and Blaine couldn’t help smiling back as he sat next to him. 
“How are you?” Blaine asked, which was a stupid question, because dying was how he was, thank you very much, but Kurt didn’t seem phased. 
“I’m okay. I’m finally feeling well enough with the treatment that I get to come back to school for half the day, so...” he gestured in a way that was so utterly Kurt, smiled broadly. “...here I am.”
“I missed you,” Blaine blurted, and then immediately wished he hadn’t. There was only one thing he was good at, he was beginning to realize, and that was doing everything that he shouldn’t. 
But Kurt didn’t seem upset. In fact, he smiled, reaching for Blaine’s hand, giving it a squeeze. “I missed you too,” he said. 
There was a moment where it seemed like he was going to say something else, a moment where Blaine held his breath in preparation for their big Disney Movie moment, but if there was one, Mr. Schuester interrupted it. “Hey, guys! Good afternoon...Kurt! It’s good to see you back!” he said, and Kurt gave a little wave and then went right back to holding Blaine’s hand, and his heart was singing. “Okay, guys...let’s get started. I was--” 
Rachel interrupted him, waving her hand. “Mr Schue, if I may interrupt...”
Not like you weren’t going to anyway, Blaine thought, but Mr Schuester nodded. “Go ahead.”
“They say that music is good medicine, and Kurt,” she gestured at him, as if they didn’t know who he was, and Kurt looked at Blaine and shrugged. “needs all the medicine he can get, so I was thinking maybe we could sing songs dedicated to Kurt?”
Mr. Schuester considered this. “I think that sounds like an awesome idea, Rachel. Kurt, what do you think?”
Kurt shrugged. “If you really want to.” It wasn’t like anything was really going to fix him, but at least Rachel could think she had tried.
“Then it’s decided. Let’s divide into groups and brainstorm.”

04.
I remember at Michael’s house
In the living room, when you kissed my neck and I almost touched your blouse
In the morning, at the top of the stairs, when your father found out what we did that night and you told me you were scared
All the glory when you ran outside with your shirt tucked in and your shoes untied
And you told me not to follow you.

The singing didn’t help, of course. Nobody really expected it to, Blaine didn’t think, but he guessed it had been worth a shot. The singing didn’t help, and the medicine didn’t help (it wasn’t supposed to help, Kurt had explained, it was only supposed to make him not hurt so much), and the fall stretched into winter, and Blaine gave up hope of ever finding some miraculous cure, at least not one that could save Kurt, so instead he focused on loving him, on not being afraid, on thinking about now instead of tomorrow.

“Mike’s having a party,” Kurt told him one afternoon, stretched out on Blaine’s bed, which was big enough that they could lie on opposite sides and only their fingers would touch, but lately they had laid in the middle, tangled together. They could never get close enough. “Tomorrow night.”
Blaine lifted his head, kissed Kurt’s temple, and thought. “Do you want to go?” he asked. They took it easy, mostly. He doesn’t need too much excitement, his dad said, and Blaine took that very seriously.
Kurt shrugged. “It might be my last chance.”
Blaine hated when he talked like that, hated how easily Kurt accepted his own death when Blaine wasn’t even halfway there, but he didn’t say it. He smiled. “We’ll go.”

The party wasn’t anything special. It was loud, bass thumping and Rachel sing-yelling and drinks pouring, and Blaine had four and Kurt had three and then they sat in comfortably tipsy silence on the sofa, wrapped up in each other as though there was nothing else in the whole world. And then Kurt was kissing at Blaine’s neck, and Blaine’s fingers wanted desperately to creep up Kurt’s shirt, but Kurt stopped him, holding his hands. “When we get home,” he whispered, kissing Blaine on the mouth as though he was telling a secret.

Kurt’s house was dark when they got there, and Kurt led Blaine up the stairs with a finger to his lips as if that was enough to keep his heart, which was beating like a trapped baby bird, from waking up the whole house. 

Finn had slipped something into Kurt’s palm as they got out of the car and it wasn’t until they were upstairs, lying on Kurt’s bed, that Blaine realized it was a condom, wrapped in shiny foil, and he picked it up and examined it. 
“Are you sure?” he whispered, his tentative voice filling the whole room. 
Kurt’s answer came in the form of his hands sliding over Blaine’s skin, under the waistband of his pants, unbuttoning them and sliding them off, ripping the condom wrapper open. “Trust me,” he whispered, and Blaine did, with his life, with his whole life.

“Kurt,” Kurt’s father’s voice, angry, dragged Blaine out of sleep, into the too-bright dawn, and he felt Kurt’s warm body move away from him. “I’m coming,” he called, rummaging for his underpants where they had been abandoned the night before. 
Blaine tried not to listen but it was impossible not to, impossible to tune it out, to pretend he couldn’t hear what Kurt’s father was saying about readiness and protectionand too damn young. Did he really think that they had any other option? That they could have waited until they were too damn young? If Kurt was too damn young to lose his virginity then he was too damn young to die, that was for sure.

Kurt was crying when he came back into the room, and Blaine tried to quickly disguise the fact that he had been, too. “You have to go home,” he said, and Blaine nodded, getting dressed slowly, reluctantly. 
“I’m scared,” Kurt whispered as Blaine finished tying his shoes, and Blaine looked over at him, so small and fragile there, and hugged him tight. “It’s going to be okay,” he reassured him. “He’s just mad for right now, but he won’t stay mad forever.”
Kurt shook his head, his hands balling into Blaine’s shirt. “I don’t want to die.”
Blaine couldn’t breathe, his head spun, and he held Kurt even tighter, as if that was going to save him. “I don’t want you to die either.”

“I think you’re spending too much time with Kurt Hummel,” Blaine’s father told him at dinner that night. “Your mother agrees.”
Blaine’s hand paused midway to the dish of lasagna. “He’s my boyfriend,” he replied practically. “And he’s not contagious, if that’s what you think. You can’t catch cancer.”
“Blaine,” his mother said gently. “We just care about you. We don’t want you to get too attached to him, he doesn’t have much time left.”
The serving spoon clattered out of Blaine’s hand. “If you didn’t want me to get too attached,” he said, willing his voice not to break, “You should have thought of that sooner, because it’s too late now.”
“Blainers,” his mother pleaded, but Blaine stood up. “I’m not hungry,” he said. “I’m going to bed.”

05.
Sunday night when I clean the house
I find the card where you wrote it out with the pictures of your mother
On the floor at the Great Divide with my shirt tucked in and my shoes untied
I am crying in the bathroom

December became January and turned gray and brown and muddy and cold, the magical charm of winter wearing off, and Blaine loved Kurt more than anything in the world, even more than he had before, because he knew if he didn’t love him as much as he could right then, he’d never get to again.

On a Friday night in the middle of January, five months to the day after everything changed, Kurt slipped a card into Blaine’s backpack as he left to go home, ten minutes to midnight. “I love you,” he whispered, his arms around Blaine’s waist. 
“I love you,” Blaine whispered back, and he wished that they weren’t sixteen, that Kurt wasn’t dying, that the world had never changed. “Forever and always,” he added, and then he went again.

He didn’t remember about the card until Sunday night as he cleaned his room and it fell out as he was emptying papers into the recycle bin. He tore it open eagerly, as if it contained the solution to turning the world right again, and read every word carefully.

I wish I didn’t have to tell you this, it said, and already, Blaine didn’t like the sounds of it. But I would rather tell you now while I still can. The cancer spread to my brain, and I don’t have very much time left. Maybe a couple of weeks. I’m not scared to die. When I was little, after my mom died, I used to ask my dad why I couldn’t go to heaven with my mom, and he used to tell me, Kurt, in a long, long time, you’re going to be ready to go to heaven too, and your mom is going to love you just as much in a long, long time as she did when she was here. I don’t believe in God, Blaine, but I hope that if there is one, he forgives me for that and lets me go to heaven. Eight years might not be a long, long time, but I’m ready to see my mom again.

I love you, Blaine. I love you more than anything in the world, more than anybody has ever loved anybody else, I bet. And I’m going to miss you, I know I will. And I know you’re going to miss me, too, but in a long, long time, when you’re ready to come to heaven, I’m going to be waiting there for you, and I’m going to love you as much as I do right this minute. I need you to look after my dad, and Carole, and especially Finn. They’re going to need it, and they’ll look out for you, too, because even if you won’t ask for it, I know you’ll need them too.

I love you. I love you I love you I love you. I wish I could say that a million times, but it still wouldn’t be enough. And I guess I’m pretty lucky, because when I say I’m going to love you forever, I can really mean it. 

Hold on. I won’t ever forget you. Don’t forget me, either.

Love,
Kurt.

Blaine read the words a hundred times, over and over until he could say them before he saw them, and it still caused an ache in his chest, still made him feel like he was going to explode, no matter how many times he did. 
“Blaine,” his mother called up the stairs. “When you’re done in your room, can you do the bathrooms?”
He didn’t understand how life could go on around him when everything was falling apart, how his mother could care about bathrooms when Kurt was dying, when in a few weeks, a few weeks, the only person Blaine had ever really loved wouldn’t be here anymore. Everything was changing, but everyone else expected it to stay the same.

On shaking legs, he rose, walking to the bathroom, gathering the supplies. He was in the middle of scrubbing out the bathtub when he suddenly got a vision of Kurt in his head, the first time they had ever met. Blaine’s mother had decided that it was high time for Blaine to go to a public school, and, “McKinley is the school your father went to, I’m sure you’ll love it.” He had spent his first day wandering around, feeling completely lost (and maybe a tiny bit terrified without the safety next of his friends), until the most beautiful boy he had ever seen stopped him in the hall and asked him if he needed help, and then taken his hand and brought him to the glee club, as if he had belonged there all along. Blaine slumped against the bathtub, his shoulders quaking with grief. How could he lose the one person who had always made him feel like the best person in the world? How could he lose the first person he had ever loved? It wasn’t supposed to be like this. It wasn’t fair. People weren’t supposed to die when they were 16 and the world was at their feet, when somebody loved them beyond measure. People were supposed to die when they were old and frail and had lived their lives. They were supposed to die holding hands with the person they loved, together, taking their last breath in sync. That was how it was supposed to work. Not like this. 
Blaine gave a little, angry yell, knocking the bucket of cleaning water into the tub, standing up, grabbing his car keys off of his dresser. “I’m going for a drive,” he called, slamming the door behind him, not giving anyone the opportunity to tell him he had to stay behind.

He drove until he didn’t know where he was anymore, and he would have kept driving, driving forever until he lost himself, forgot who he was and what he was running from, but something made him turn around. Kurt might have only been 16 with the world at his feet, but that didn’t mean that he couldn’t die holding hands with the person he loved most. If Kurt could make a promise to love Blaine even after he died, the least Blaine could do was make a promise right along with him, to take care of him until there was nothing to take care of anymore.


06.
In the morning, when you finally go
And the nurse runs in with her head bowed low and the card against the window
In the morning, in the winter shade, on the first of March, on the holiday
I thought I saw you breathing

Kurt took his last breath at 8:25 in the morning, five months, one week, four days and twenty-two hours after the day everything changed. 

Blaine was sitting in the chair by his bedside, watching him sleep. He happened to glance at the clock the second before it happened. It was a Tuesday, he remembered. He should have been in first period English. What were they studying? He hadn’t been back since the day he’d found the card. It probably didn’t matter anymore, because Kurt didn’t remember who he was--didn’t remember who anyone was, not even his own dad, not even Finn--but still he sat, day after day, until the night nurse, the stern one who wore anachronistically cheerful cartoon character scrubs, sent him away. He sat there even after Kurt’s dad was gone, as if somehow, just by sitting there, he could make a miracle happen. 
He looked away from the clock in time to see Kurt take one last deep, shuddery breath, his eyelids fluttering, and then he did not take another. Blaine watched, willing him to breathe once more, just once more, but another breath didn’t come, and eventually the alarm went off and the nurse rushed in, knocking the cheerful get well card Blaine had brought for him, just to brighten up the place, to the ground, abandoned, shoving Blaine away, abandoning him, too. “You need to leave,” she told him, but Blaine stood, rooted in his spot, unable to move, searching desperately for any sign of life from Kurt. Just as he was about to back out the door, he swore he saw Kurt’s chest rise and fall, rise and fall, rise and fall, back to normal. “He’s breathing,” he said, tugging on the nurse’s sleeve. “I saw him breathing!” 
This time when she turned to him, her voice was gentler. “You’re seeing things,” she told him. “You need to leave now, sweetheart.”

So Blaine turned and he ran. He ran and ran, out of the parking lot, down the street, into the city, past all the places he and Kurt used to go, back before everything had changed. He ran until he couldn’t run anymore, and then he collapsed on the sidewalk, sobbing, his whole body heaving with the force of it, until he felt a hand on his shoulder. “Are you all right?” a gentle, woman’s voice asked, and Blaine lifted his head, shaking it slowly. 
The woman extended a hand to him. “Why don’t we get you home?” she asked. “I’m Elizabeth.”
“Elizabeth,” Blaine echoed. He had never believed in angels, but maybe now was a good time to start. He was starting to think that maybe Kurt wanted him to. 

They walked in silence for awhile. It wasn’t until they were in Elizabeth’s car, headed back toward Blaine’s house, that he finally spoke. “My boyfriend just died,” he explained, glancing at the digital clock. “An hour and a half ago.”
Elizabeth gave him a look that was more knowing than sympathetic. “I’m sorry,” she said. “That’s a pretty good reason to curl up in a ball on the street.”
Blaine turned pink. “He was the first person I’ve ever loved,” he admitted.
Elizabeth pulled onto Blaine’s street. “And that’s hard,” she agreed. “But I think...if you really, truly loved him, and he really, truly loved you, a part of him will always be right here.” She touched his chest lightly. “Are you okay to be alone?”
Blaine nodded, dazedly, getting out of the car. “Thank you, Elizabeth.”
Elizabeth lifted a hand in a little wave. “Of course,” she said, and then she was gone again.

07.
All the glory that the Lord has made
And the complications when I see his face in the morning in the window
All the glory when he took our place, but he took my shoulders and he shook my face
and he takes, and he takes, and he takes, and he takes

Kurt’s funeral was on a Friday, and the sun was streaming through the windows of the church, breaking up the monotony of the grey brown winter light, as if it was a message from Kurt himself. Blaine stood with Kurt’s family in his immaculately tailored suit, feeling out of place and uncomfortable both because of the linen of the new suit and because he didn’t know what to do when he was sad without Kurt’s hand to hold. 
“To everything there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heavens,” the pastor was saying. “A time to be born, a time to die, a time to plant, a time to pluck up that which was planted...” and Blaine’s mind drifted to Kurt in that box at the front, in his favorite Marc Jacobs, looking as lifelike as he had on Tuesday morning when he’d taken his last breath holding Blaine’s hand in the grey light of his hospital room. If there was a God, a Jesus, if he was merciful and loving like the pastor said he was, why did he take Kurt away? Why did he have to punish Blaine, over and over, taking the things he loved and tossing them away as if they didn’t matter at all? If God loved him, and loved Kurt, why wasn’t he allowed to stay alive? Why did God have to take so much and give so little? How could he make someone so beautiful and perfect and then take him away as if nobody who loved him even mattered? It was easier to not believe in God at all than it was to believe that God, who was supposed to love them all more than anything, would do something like that. Even Elizabeth, his coincidentally-named savior, couldn’t convince him that God existed anymore, not if believing in God meant believing that he took Kurt away from him.

When he finally got to go up and see him, say goodbye one last time, his eyes fell first not on his face but on something smooth and shiny, blue-black, tucked into the front pocket of his jacket, the stone that Blaine had given him what felt like forever ago. His heart, he remembered suddenly, and he felt his legs start to shake as he bent down to kiss Kurt’s cheek.
“I’ll love you forever,” he whispered. “I will see you again, I promise, and I’ll never stop loving you until then.” God could take Kurt away, could change everything, but that was the one thing he could never take.