There is a knock on the door. Blaine doesn't answer it; instead closing his eyes like perhaps wishful thinking will make them go away. It knocks again. He screws his eyes shut tighter, everything feels hot, his eyes that are still burning from his sleepless nights, and where he's been rubbing at them, his fingers where they itch for something to hold or to break or to just do something, anything, and his chest, pounding away beneath the old Dalton sweater he's lived in for the past few weeks. There is another knock. It's a fun game he's been playing, put on the sweater, go easy on the gel, pretend he's back a Dalton, back to being a warbler. He can pretend he's trapped in that in-between sanctity, caught somewhere between the bullies and broken ribs and the emergency room on a Friday night, and the boyfriend, the broken heart and the piano bar on that Friday night.

There is another knock on the door.

He groans, it comes out as an inaudible mix between a grunt and some muttered profanities; he barely registers the noise in the silence of the sitting room. He can't even recognise his own voice it's too thick with unspoken words and too raw from screaming into his pillow all evening. There is another knock. He stares into the fireplace, he's not really allowed to light fires but he'd decided to anyway, he figures if he accidently burns the house down his parents might remember to acknowledge his existence. They should drop by some time; it's a nice place he's got here.

The knocking's finally stopped, but then he hears the unmistakeable click of key in lock and the low grumblings of a voice he knows all too well. Cooper. He closes his eyes and waits for his brother to burst through the door with a new bullshit story about his Hollywood lifestyle and an even whiter set of teeth than last time he was here.   

‘BLAINE! BLAINE BUDDY WHERE ARE YOU?' Blaine ignores the shouting just like he ignored the knocking. He lies still in the hope that Cooper might think he's asleep and leave him alone.

No such luck, Cooper bounds through the door, already mid conversation, and doesn't even give Blaine a chance to react before settling himself at the end of the couch and throwing Blaine's legs to the floor.

‘Hey squirt, I dropped by the school and you weren't there. Saw they're doing Grease, I take it you're Danny- why don't you tell me all about your audition over dinner and then we can see who does the best John Travolta impression-‘

‘I don't want to go out Cooper... And I'm not Danny.' Blaine sighs exaggeratedly, speaking in a low monotone and hoping that if he rolls his eyes enough Cooper will get annoyed and go out to see how many local waitresses he can impress.

‘What! Why not? You're the best there- is this because you're gay because I swear if it is- they had no problem with it last year- suppose someone better's come along now. Well they'll see- I'll fix this don't worry.' Cooper's off again, talking one hundred miles an hour and gesticulating wildly with his arms. Blaine sighs again, covering his head with his arms and closing his eyes. He head pounds with the rage of his three week long head ache.

‘I didn't want it, I got the part and I turned it down.' He can't tell if there's any emotion in his voice at all, it all sounds foreign to him, who knows if he's even saying the words he's thinking.

‘You turned down the lead? Are you sick? Are you mad? Are you sure they didn't single you out?' Cooper's hand is on Blaine's forehead, he's seen people check temperatures like this before and he needs some first-hand experience for his upcoming role as an extra in Grey's Anatomy.

‘No I'm not.' Blaine doesn't even try to swat Cooper's hand away, just lets it sit there on his forehead and continues to lie, unmoving, on the sofa. He stares up at the ceiling, Cooper has a short attention span so maybe if he doesn't say anything for a while his brother will get bored and leave.

‘Come on what's the deal? They offered you the lead and you turned it down? That's it?'

‘I just...' Blaine sits up and rubs idly at his temple in a fruitless attempt to make the throbbing go away. It feels like someone's taken a sledge hammer to the inside of his head. ‘all I could think was how much Kurt wanted the lead last year, and how much it meant to me when he said I should get it and I just-  I don't even care anymore. You know I thought singing about it would help because that's all I really know how to do, but it didn't. It just made things worse. I mean... I just feel lost, I don't even know how to get up in the mornings let alone sing and dance and act at the same time and how am I supposed to act like I'm in love when I've screwed up every hope at love I've ever had. I just couldn't do it I just couldn't Cooper I couldn't. I just miss him so much and he won't return my calls and what if he never speaks to me again? What if I never see him again? What if he isn't my soul mate? I don't know how to live my life without him.' Cooper knows all about the cheating and the break up, he'd received a call at three in the morning from an inconsolable Blaine a few weeks ago, but it doesn't lessen the shock at seeing his brother, verging on hysterics, talking like this.

‘This is about a boy? Come on B we've all been there you'll get over it. In a few weeks' time you'll be fine. Back to normal and I tell you, then you'll wish you'd taken the lead.' Cooper looks at Blaine in what he hopes is a comforting way, trying to convince his baby brother to see sense without upsetting him.

‘You don't get it! None of you get it! Kurt was the love of my life, you think just because we're naïve kids we don't get it, you think we were just kidding ourselves, that our love wasn't real. But it was and so is my heartbreak, I'm still hurting Cooper! I still love him just as much as our parents love each other, just as much as Miss Pillsbury and Mr Schuester love each other just as much as anyone else. Why can no one see that? Just because I'm a teenager it doesn't mean my feelings are any less real than yours.'

‘Blaine I'm just saying there's more to life-.'

‘No. If this were you, all beat up over losing your best friend, if you'd spent almost every day for the last two years with some girl and she suddenly stopped returning your calls, she suddenly lost all contact with you and you were faced with the very real possibility that she would never love you again, no one would tell you to just get over it, they'd talk about how awful it  is, how bad they feel for you, how they thought you were the real thing, they thought you were going to get married, hell after two years you could already be married. So why is it any different for me? Why are the things I'm feeling so different from the things you could be feeling? Why do I just have to pull myself together and get over it?' Blaine sits up, he's not used to feeling things, it's new and it's terrifying and he's not sure what it is but he knows that it hurts in a way that is unprecedented and unbearable. It's tearing at him from the inside, a nauseating mix of guilt and pain and sorrow and helplessness. It's the realisation that he may never stop feeling this, that he may be unsalvageable for the rest of his life and it's a clawing kind of numbness that seems to have manifested itself into emotion. He feels like he might throw up, it wouldn't be the first time since that night in New York and he has the feeling it won't be the last. Something twists in his stomach, churning in an unsettling way and scraping its way up to his chest as well.

‘You're really beat up about this.' Cooper stares dumbly at Blaine, who just grimaces and closes his eyes, trying to put on a brave face and failing.

‘No shit.' Blaine turns his face away, curling up already smaller than he is on the sofa, and glaring at his five year old self smiling at him from behind the protective glass of a photo frame, trapped forever as a happier version of himself, doomed to live on in that constant smiling state. Blaine remembers the last time he smiled, right before the last time he felt Kurt's lips on his own, right before he broke it all. And he'd never thought they'd have a last kiss and he certainly hadn't imagined it would be swift and fleeting and so not what he needed.

Tell the truth and everything will be fine, that's what adults teach children isn't it? That's certainly what his parents had taught him, and look how well that turned out. Tell the truth and you get nothing but more heart break, you just feel even shittier about yourself than you already did. Maybe that's one of those lies adults tell children, like those times when they tell you everything's fine and really everything's falling to shit.

‘Blaine?'

‘Cooper. Just please. Leave me. Alone.' Blaine grits his teeth hard, he will not cry in front of his brother. He will not cry in front of anyone. He will not cry at all. He's always been a crier,  anything sets him off, sad movies and the kind of music that makes you realise your own existence, when someone tells you you're good at something and when the floor comes up to hit you. Hard. He learnt from a very young age that crying will get you nowhere in life, it makes you look weak and pathetic and it lets other people know that they are doing their job right. He will not cry.

He cries.

And it hurts, gone is the burning sensation in his tear ducts and the raw gasping feeling in his throat, they've been replaced with a sort of painful ache, desperate for more. It's like trying to throw up when your stomach's empty or trying to draw blood when your vein's been sucked dry. It's a need for something you don't have and you don't want but you can't seem to get, something you need and yet something that terrifies you beyond compare. His head swims with the clogged up residue of stale tears and his eyes strain, crying without making anything to show for it. He's sobbed himself dry and still he aches for the release, for his body to be racked with the shudders of his sobs, for his eyes to scream for it to stop, for his throat to burn and for him to deny it. None of It comes, there's just this dull aching pain, like the last few moments of life, his heart has been ripped from its protective cage and now he is feeling too much and not enough all at once. His entire body feels as if someone has taken a cheese grater to it, scratched him raw, torn everything away from him and left him a bloody mess, clinging uselessly to life and hating himself for it.

Everything is slowed down, not heightened or quickened like the grasp of rage that he is all too familiar with, but lazy, abstract, painful in a way he's never experienced before. Every shuddering intake is drawn out, every sip of water trickling frustratingly slowly around the lump in his throat. Every movement is heavy and lethargic and not really worth his energy. He feels drunk, tired or drugged or something, he feels separated from everyone, observing but not seeing, sheltered away in his own personal torture. He feels as if he is looking in on a world he doesn't know how to be a part of. There is only them and him and his side of the barrier is decaying pretty quickly.

‘You're not okay are you.' It isn't a question but Blaine still shakes his head, his eyes swimming with unshed tears and his vision going blurry as he feels the world slowing to a standstill around him, he feels it hesitate for a second in orbit and then collapse in on itself, he feels everything he's ever known fall to pieces as he just sits and stares.

‘I can't breathe. It's like I keep inhaling but I'm not getting any oxygen. I keep walking but I'm not going anywhere. My heart keeps beating but I‘m not alive. I don't even want to get up anymore and the worst part is no one's going to make me. Mum and Dad wouldn't even notice, no one at school would care. I just... I wonder what would happen if I wasn't even here.' He feels like he's drowning, like he's losing grip on reality and slipping beneath wave after wave of whatever it is he's feeling as everybody else wades past him. He feels himself falling deeper and deeper, like Alice down a rabbit hole or a ship lost at sea, submerging himself beneath the surface, letting each tidal wave crash over his body in a blissful oblivion he's come to crave. He swings from stabbing pangs of insurmountable agony to such an all-consuming hollowness that he's not sure he's capable of emotion any more. 

‘I would care Blaine. I would care if you weren't here, don't say things like that- god Blaine I would care.' Cooper grips his shoulders too tight, punctuating each word with a shake to Blaine's body and a clench of his fingers around the small boy's shoulders. Blaine seems tiny, he fits so neatly into Cooper's hands and Cooper is reminded of a time that doesn't seem all that long ago when he was persuading an eight year old Blaine not to mention the broken vase to their mother.

‘I just feel so alone Cooper.' Blaine lets out a choked out sobbed as a few stray tears begin to fall from his already stinging eyes. ‘I don't know what to do, he's the love of my life, and I can't see a future without him... I can't see a future at all.' Blaine bites his lip, his hazel eyes looking almost yellow in the reflection of his tears. He stares at Cooper, really stares at him, like maybe his big brother has all the answers, maybe he can make it better, and Cooper hates himself for knowing he can't. He keeps a grip on Blaine's shoulders, something to ground them both to this spot and stop them disappearing into the dark realms of their individual minds. If there's one thing he knows, it's that Blaine going into his head at a time like this is bad, it's very very bad. He's scared Blaine may already be there, he can't tell if his brother's listening. Blaine is just staring at Cooper's head, with a vacant look of constant pain in his eyes and his lip held so tight between his teeth that there is a drop of blood staining it.

‘Listen to me- listen to me! What you did was wrong, I know you know that, and you've apologised, you've done all you can do, you just have to wait for him to come around. And he will, because you are wonderful and clever and kind and he'd be an idiot not to.'

‘But what if he doesn't, what if he leaves me.' Blaine sounds so small, asking his big brother for help, Cooper wishes he could give it, he's all talk and no words. He doesn't have the faintest idea how to help Blaine.

‘We just have to hope that he will, but I think there are more pressing matters at hand.'

‘I don't care about the musical.'

I'm not talking about that, I'm talking about you, I don't think you're okay Blaine and goddammit of course our parents haven't noticed, but... look at yourself. It's been weeks and you just... you look so terrible B. You're pale, you look like you haven't slept in years, your hair is just... horrific. You're losing weight- have you even been eating?'

‘I'm not hungry.'

‘You have to start taking care of yourself.' Blaine does look awful; he seems even smaller than usual in his Dalton hoodie that's two sizes too big and hanging off him at the arms. His skin is pale and dry, almost translucent in the glow from the fireplace and giving Cooper an excellent view of that great Anderson bone structure. Blaine's eyes are red and puffy, sunk low and small in their sockets and there's a dark purplish bruising surrounding them that Cooper knows it's from lack of sleep but looks unnervingly like the result of fist against skin. His hair is sticking out at odd angles; tendrils that have clearly fallen out of place and haven't been fixed are sticking up all over the place. His clothes hang off of him in a strange way, like they aren't even his. Blaine is very much not okay.

‘I just feel like my life is falling apart, and I don't even think anyone else cares.' Cooper snakes his arms around Blaine's torso, holding his baby brother against him as they both shake together, trying to find some sort of calm as both of their worlds come crashing down around them. For a second Cooper had actually thought he was a good brother, and then he comes home for a few days and finds Blaine like this, his baby brother, one of the kindest people in the world, feeling worthless and alone and spending his evening crying by himself, and he realises he's failed. He's not a good brother, he's not even a good person.

‘I care, Blaine I care.' Blaine just cries, he seems to have run out of words to say. ‘Blaine. I care about you, you are my favourite person in the world, come on Blaine don't cry.' Blaine is full on sobbing now, the tears that seemed to have dried up earlier hit him with an earth shattering reality, gripping him by the throat and throwing him to the floor. They never seem to end, falling hot and heavy down his face, itching his skin and ruining Cooper's shirt and burning everywhere they can touch. He sniffs violently and tries to even his breathing which only makes his breath catch in his throat and his lungs shudder some more.

‘C-C- Cooper.'

‘Sssh Blaine you're okay.' Cooper hasn't seen Blaine this bad since the bullying debacle, since he came home to find his brother curled up and bleeding in the front drive or since he stood in that hospital room looking down on his baby brother, surrounded by tubes and machines and that uneasy smell of disinfectant and death, as he recounted the dance and the boys and the steel toed shoes.

‘I'm scared, I'm scared of how I feel.' It's a confession that hits Cooper hard, penetrating his outer layer of charm and confidence and spearing its way through his whole body. It confirms every fear he's had since he walked through the door. Blaine is not okay.

‘I think you need help, real help, not hollow words from the world's worst Brother.' Cooper tries to stand but Blaine wraps his legs around him and digs his nails into Cooper's shirt.

‘Don't leave me.'

‘I'm not leaving you, I'm not Blaine.' So Cooper just holds his brother until both of them are too exhausted to move, or think or breathe.

Sometime later, when Blaine is back to lying on the couch, his legs stiff and numb from lack of circulation as the curl up underneath him and his breathing laboured and ragged as he blinks his big, abused eyes at Cooper, he speaks again.

‘I'm such a terrible person Coop. No one is ever going to love me again.' Cooper wonders how Blaine can even still make sound, his voice is lower than Cooper has ever heard, it sounds like the noise tires make when they drive over gravel or the crackle of vinyl before the song plays. It's small too, soft and low and almost inaudible in the deafening silence, it rocks Cooper to his core and leaves him struggling for breath as he looks down at Blaine.

‘Of course someone will love you, I don't know if it will be Kurt or someone else, but you will be loved, you are loved because I care about you Blaine. I know you feel alone, but I will always be here for you. I know I haven't protected you in the past but I will, I love you Blaine, and so will other people. You're the bravest person I've ever met.'

‘I don't believe you.'

‘Why not?'

‘I'm weak and pathetic and I'm a terrible human being.'

‘Blaine I don't know how to make it better.'  Cooper screws his eyes shut, trying not to cry, he has to be the stronger one. Anderson men don't cry, that's what he's learnt, but it had never stopped Blaine, Blaine who is still fighting back his own tears, looking at Cooper, staring at Cooper, daring him to contradict him and Cooper doesn't have the words to make it okay.

‘I love you Blaine, and we can get through this together okay. You are brave and you are strong, and I am so proud to call you my brother. You matter Blaine and we're okay, we'll be okay, you just have to trust me.'

‘Okay.' And it may only be one small word, whispered between scarred lips and dragged from the depths of a very broken boy. But to Blaine and Cooper it is a promise, it's the hint of salvation, it's the lone star in the cloudy night, it's a guarantee that they will be okay and it's the promise that they can get through it together. Because Cooper honestly doesn't know if Kurt will take Blaine back and Blaine doesn't want to think about the possibility that he won't so they just clutch at each other's fingers and know that no matter what, they will be okay.

‘Okay.'