Cooper hate’s hospitals.

Hates the smell.

Hates the echo down hallways as nurses shuffle between rooms and the distant voices of patients and relatives that catch around doors and hang in the air half heartedly; the rhythmic backdrop of beeps and metallic machinery.

He hates the false pretence of calm in the whitewashed walls. Hates the plastic chairs that dig uncomfortably under his knees and elbows – hates that the televisions are always muted and playing depressing newsreels or movies he can’t follow.

Hates the sickening feeling in the pit of his stomach whenever doctors walk by.

The first time Blaine was in hospital was long before the little boy started school.

He was two years old; almost three, and jumping on his parent’s bed with Cooper.

A quick bounce, a tumble, and suddenly his small body had been flung against the bedside table with a sickening crunch.

i.

Blaine is screaming bloody murder and it is all Cooper can do to stop the tears streaming down his own cheeks. His mother rushes into the bedroom and drops to the ground in shock.

Blaine’s body is strewn across the carpet, a smudge of blood steadily growing across his forehead where dark curls are matting with sweat.

Blaine is screaming, and crying, and gasping for breaths, and Cooper presses himself against his parents wardrobe as his father scoops his brother into his arms, running down the stairs with his mother frantically following.

They weren’t supposed to be jumping on the bed. Blaine is 2; barely older than a baby. But Cooper is 10, almost 11, and knows better. He’s been told time and time again.

He feels sick the whole way to the hospital. His mother is in the back with Blaine’s sobbing body pressed tight to her chest. She has his blanket against his forehead and when Cooper looks back at them he can see the small stain of red.

-

Screaming two year olds draw attention in Emergency rooms. Especially screaming two year olds who’ve cut their head open against bedside tables.

Cooper is seated in the plastic chairs in the waiting room and can still hear Blaine’s garbled cries from down the hall. He presses his hands to his ears to try and muffle the sound and then presses them to his stomach to stop it’s rolling.

He’s only 10, almost 11, but even he knows hitting your head against a bedside table is serious.

There’s an older lady watching him from across the waiting room and every time Blaine screams grow worse and Cooper’s small body shakes she looks pained. It takes Cooper a while to realise the rushing in his ears is from his own sobs, not only his brothers, and the older ladies arms wrap around his shoulders.

“There, there,” she murmurs; and she smells like Cooper’s grandma, so he presses his face into her side and cries until Blaine’s yells soften slightly.

He pushes back and watches as the older lady pulls out a handkerchief for him.  

“Is he your brother?” she asks kindly, and Cooper nods. He feels numb all over from crying and blows his nose loudly to try and clear his head.

“We were playing and he hit his head on mom and dad’s bedside table.”

The older woman nods and hums in understanding, brushing Coopers messy hair back from his forehead.

“I’m sure he’ll be just fine. He’s got a healthy set of lungs, your brother. He was screaming too loudly for there to be any real danger.”

Cooper feels a weight lift off his shoulders at her words. “Really?” he asks, hiccupping and rubbing at his wet eyes.

“Oh yes, its always good if they’re screaming.”

Half an hour later and Cooper’s dad comes down the hall. He nods tightly at the older woman who had stayed at Cooper’s side before bending down to his sons level.

“Your brother is fine Cooper. He cut his forehead open and had to have stitches. They’ll come out in a few weeks. When we get home your mother and I will talk to you about your grounding.”

Cooper should be upset as his father walks back towards emergency. Instead he feels light and numb and like crying all at once because Blaine is going to be fine.

ii.

The next time Blaine is in hospital he is 6 years old. Cooper is 14 and in high school and has to walk Blaine home from first grade every afternoon.

He says he hates it. But Blaine loves showing him paintings and drawings and stories he’s written in crayon and the two of them always end up singing as Cooper grabs Blaine’s hand to cross the road.

He’s the only one of his friends with a younger brother and even though they tease him, secretly Cooper loves the attention.

6 year old Blaine worships 14 year old Cooper.

One day Cooper is waiting outside Blaine’s primary school and the next his mother is driving up alongside him, telling him to get in the car quickly.

“What’s happened?” he asks, shoving his bag in the backseat before his mother speeds off down the road.

She looks distracted, and Cooper feels a weight settle in his stomach.

“Blaine fell of the monkey bars at school today. Sprained his wrist and broke his left leg. He’s at the hospital now.”

-

Blaine is screaming bloody murder when Cooper rushes into the hospital with his mother.

He can remember the older lady from 4 years ago, and feels his stomach uncoil slightly at the sound of Blaine sobbing.

The feeling quickly returns however. There’s nothing he hates more than the sound of his little brother in pain.

There’s a doctor in the room who’s trying to hold Blaine’s head somewhat still and Cooper can see a graze down his brother’s right cheek. His arm is held in a sling and his leg is also elevated. With a sickening jolt he notices the angle of Blaine’s foot and has to look away. There’s no way that’s natural.

Blaine spots Cooper and his tears start up again. He grabs towards his brother and sobs his name and Cooper can feel his own tears growing.

Without sparing a thought for the doctor he rushes forward and grips Blaine’s little hand, kissing his brother’s tear stained cheek and pushing back his unruly curls.

“It’s okay B, everything’s okay. The doctor just has to fix you up a bit B, and then you’ll be fine. ‘Kay? You’ll be just fine.”

“Noo,” sobs Blaine “Cooper no, It hurts Coop. It hurts. I don’t want him near me!”

Cooper is shaking as Blaine presses closer to him. He looks at his mother who shrugs helplessly.

“He kicked and screamed and tried to bite the doctor until you came along Coop,” she tells him. He can see her gripping her arm tightly. “You were the only thing I could convince him with.”

“B. Look at me. We’re going to play a game, yeah? I’m going to hold your hand and you get to squeeze it real tight, and then the doctors going to fix up your cheek, okay?”

Blaine’s large eyes blink heavy with tears. “That’s not a game,” he pouts, and Cooper rolls his eyes.

“Please B, please do this for me. Just let the doctor fix you up and you won’t hurt. I promise.”

Blaine’s little body heaves up and down with sobs before he finally, shakily, nods his head.

He squeezes Coopers hand so tight he swears he has bruises the next morning.

Later, as they reset his leg, Blaine lets out a gut-wrenching scream and Cooper is sick in the toilet.

But Blaine is loud, and Blaine is alive, and Blaine will be okay. By the time his father finds him and returns Cooper to the room, the little boy is lying quietly in bed, exhausted and drugged and as small as a toddler as he curls up in the bed.

Cooper lies down in the chair next to him and allows himself to sleep.

iii.

Cooper is 22 and out of state, in college, when his mother calls him.

He drops the phone and his roommate spills the beer he had been nursing in surprise.

When he arrives at the hospital 10 hours later, exhausted and shaking, Blaine is still in surgery.

“When will he be out?” he asks his father. His mother is sitting upright in her chair, barely blinking. Her face is blank.

“Dad?”

“They didn’t say,” his father mutters.

Cooper waits.

When the doctor comes out, grim faced but somewhat reassuring, he tells them they’ll have to wait and see the results of the surgery when Blaine wakes.

If he wakes, that is.

Head injuries are always difficult.

-

Blaine lies still in his bed. Even worse, to Cooper, he is silent.

“Who found him?” Cooper asks his parents. His father answers almost a minute later.

“Teachers. They heard…they heard the other boys screams.”

“Did Blaine scream?” Cooper asks quickly.

His father shoots him a confused glance.

“Apparently he tried to shout for help. After he was hit in the head he dropt to the ground. He’s been unconscious since.”

Blaine didn’t scream.

Cooper throws up in the toilet that night.

iv.

“Hey, can’t talk right now, in a meeting, goodby-“

“Cooper. Blaine’s hurt.”

“…”

“…”

“Who is this?”

“Kurt Hummel. Blaine’s Boy-“

“Boyfriend. I know who you are. What’s happened to him?”

The boy lets out a shuddering breath.

“I don’t know. But I do know he’d want you here more than your parents.”

Cooper’s heart is beating rapidly as he pushes the doors of the meeting room open. He’ll explain to his boss later.

“Thanks for calling Kurt.”

-

Kurt Hummel is nothing like Cooper expected, but somehow exactly how Blaine described him. He’s also pale as a ghost in the waiting room.

And wearing leather.

Cooper spares a glance to the mass of leather clad teens standing just off from him and raises an eyebrow.

“Glee club sing off,” Kurt explains quickly, and Cooper just nods. He’s never quite understood anything that goes on in Glee club, but he knows how good Blaine is at performing and has never really questioned it.

“He was slushied,” states a tall boy hovering behind Kurt. He glances uncertainly between Kurt and Cooper, arms crossed as a tiny brunette hangs from his arm. Every few seconds she sniffles and presses herself closer to him and Cooper wants to yell at her because it’s his brother in the hospital, not hers.

“Slushied?” he asks instead.

Seriously. It’s not been that long since he was in high school. What the hell happens at McKinley?

“Ice slushy,” murmurs Kurt, gazing down the hallway to where Blaine is being treated. “They throw them at you. Usually you just feel like you’ve stuck your head through the Arctic Circle, but Blaine…Blaine dropt to the ground and just…”

Kurt swallows and Cooper can see the thick sheen of tears rim his eyelashes.

“He was screaming so badly. And those guys just left him there. I’ve never heard someone scream so much…” the tall ones finishes, clearly shaken.

Cooper wonders if it’s bad that he feels relieved.

“He was screaming?”

“Yeah. Dude. It was terrible. Like. Anderson might look tiny and all, but he’s always been pretty tough, and Finn,” the boy talking, mohawk toppling across his head ridiculously, motions to the tall one behind Kurt, “Finn said your brother boxes and everything, so for him to go down like that…they must have added something to the slushy.”

“It hit his eye...” murmurs Kurt, and Cooper reaches out to grasp his hand.

Kurt jerks back, surprised, before smiling tightly at Cooper.

Cooper wonders how much Blaine has told Kurt about him.

“When he was two he slammed his head into the side of our parents bedside table. Cut his head open. He screamed and sobbed for hours and hours. But he was fine after they stitched him up. Same when he was six and broke his leg. He bit the doctor and then screamed in his ear until I convinced him otherwise.”

Kurt’s brow crinkles in confusion, a tear slipping down his cheek.

“It’s always good if Blaine’s screaming. That’s all I’m saying.”

-

In the end Cooper is right.

Blaine has surgery a week later and Cooper takes two weeks off from work to keep his brother company and pester him for details about the boyfriend.

Blaine blushes and rolls his eye and tries to hit Cooper when he resorts to pirate jokes midway through the first day.

“Seriously, Cooper, if you’re going to be an idiot just go home.”

Cooper stops, surprised, and raises an eyebrow.

“Fine,” he says, and walks from Blaine’s room.

“No! no, no, no, no. Come back. Come baccckkkkk you bastard. I’m bored.”

Cooper grins. Blaine doesn’t stop mumbling and grumbling for a week.

v.

Cooper stays longer than two weeks. He stays all the way through Regionals and watches Blaine attempt to rap on stage and takes photos and video’s to blackmail his little brother with for years to come.

He goes along to the tall kid’s (Kurt’s step-brother, funnily enough, he thinks) wedding, and grins as Blaine and Kurt fix each other’s ties and flowers and tuxes.

One day he’ll watch his brother do this for real. He grins softly. Maybe Kurt will be there.

-

The call comes minutes before the wedding is due to start.

Later, as Cooper sits with the boys in the hospital, he draws in a deep breath and thanks what ever deity is listening that it’s not Blaine. Not this time.

Somehow, it still hurts. Blaine and Kurt’s grief is palpable.

“You okay?” he asks, and nudges his brother’s shoulder gently.

Blaine swallows and shakes his head. Kurt disappeared 10 minutes ago and Blaine has been gripping his bow tie between his fingers ever since.

“Remember that boy I told you about. The one who tried to commit suicide last week?”

Cooper remembers. He remembers this is the boy who tormented Kurt. Who Cooper was terrified would turn his sights on Blaine. Who Cooper then realized was hurting Blaine even more by hurting Kurt. That was perhaps the first time he noticed his brother was falling in love.

Wasn’t that what love was all about? When you hurt more for someone else than yourself. Cooper can still remember being 10 and sobbing in a waiting room; wanting to rip the doctor limb from limb because Blaine was screaming under his care.

“Yeah?” he responds quietly.

He lays a hand on Blaine’s shoulder. His little brother leans into him and sighs deeply.

“Kurt’s gone to visit him.”

They sit in silence a moment longer. Cooper hugs Blaine’s and presses his forehead against the teenager’s temple. Blaine leans further down till he’s against Coopers chest and then stays there, breathing deeply.

“Is this how you felt, when I was in hospital?” he asks finally.

“Like what?”

“Like your heart was being ripped from your chest?”

Cooper shakes quietly.

“Yeah B…especially…. especially when we didn’t know if you would wake up.”

“Quinn might die today. Might be dying now. You know she just got into Yale?”

Blaine’s voice is tiny and cracking, and Cooper is glad they’re seated down the hall from the rest of his friends because Blaine so very rarely crumbles like this.

“She’ll be fine,” he murmurs and rocks Blaine softly.

He doesn’t know for certain though. He doesn’t know if she screamed.

“Karofsky…. Dave. He tried to kill himself because the rest of the world is just…wrong. They’re wrong. And I want to hate him so much because you didn’t see Kurt when I first met him Coop. You didn’t see how close I thought he was to being in Dave’s situation now.”

Cooper can remember a phone call late one night. Blaine humming teenage dream under his breath and babbling about a boy with the most exquisite, pain filled eyes.

Blaine’s never connected with someone so deeply in his life.

“I want to hate him, but I can’t. Because I know that feeling as well as Kurt does.”

“Have you…. I know after…Sadie Hawkins, things were bad. Really bad. But did you ever…”

“Yeah.”

Cooper breathes out slowly. Blaine’s eyes slip closed with tears.

-

“I hate hospitals,” murmurs Blaine later. His head is practically in Cooper’s lap as he stretches out uncomfortably across the plastic chairs. Cooper hums in understanding and twists a curl of Blaine’s hair like he did when Blaine was a baby.

“My first memory of you is in hospital”

“Yeah?”

“A huh. You were like…5 hours old, and I was sitting next to mum on the hospital bed and they laid you in my arms. Dad told me if I dropt you I’d be grounded for a month.”

Blaine snorts, shaking against Coopers side.

“Did you?”

“Did I drop you?”

Blaine hums.

“Of course I did. How else do you explain your weirdness, idiot.”

“Fuck off,” his little brother mumbles.

Cooper’s eyebrows escape up his forehead.

“I didn’t much like the other times you’ve been in hospital. If we could avoid that in future, it would be nice.”

Blaine nods sleepily, “Wake me up if there’s any news. Or when Kurt comes back?”

-

Blaine awakes hours later to fingers drifting gently through his hair.

His face is pressed against someone’s thigh, and as he blinks, fingernails scratch lightly behind his ear. The person leans down and presses a kiss to his temple.

“Quinn is out of surgery. Now we just have to wait,” murmurs Kurt against his ear.

Blaine snuffles quietly and attempts to roll and press himself into Kurt’s stomach. His boyfriends fingers resume their sift through his curls and Blaine hums in contentment.

“Don’t like hospital,” Blaine murmurs sleepily.

“No, honey…neither do I.”

i.

“…Cooper?”

“Yeah?” he grunts, somewhat displeased to be woken by his brother so early.

“Are you busy?”

“Only if you count sleep. Which I know you don’t, freak…so no.”

His wife rolls over and presses her face into his shoulder and Cooper sighs gently. There goes another lazy Sunday morning.

“I’m at the hospital…”

-

Cooper stares unimpressed at Blaine.

“I thought we agreed to stop the ‘Blaine’s in hospital phone calls’?”

“Technically…I’m not the one in hospital,” defends his brother,

Cooper rolls his eyes. Behind him, his wife laughs gently. He always knew she liked Blaine better. Traitor.

“Blaine. Stop pacing,” he grumbles, slumping down into the plastic chairs. Fuck. He really hates plastic hospital chairs.

“Can’t,” Blaine replies distractedly.

“Blaine Theodore, sit down!”

Blaine sits.

“One minute we were all in bed asleep and the next I know he’s screaming,” his little brother is mumbles, and Cooper would be sympathetic. Really. Except he’s been here a million times with Blaine already.

He should have expected that Blaine’s son would be the same.

“He’s barely two years old. How on earth did he climb up the railing let alone fall out of it!”

“He’s almost two Blaine. That’s reason enough. Let alone the fact that he’s raised by you. Best to get to know the doctors now, you’ll be seeing them a lot over the years.”

“Shut up,” Blaine growls. He grips his fingers in his curls and pulls them nervously.

“Fuck, being a parent is terrifying,” he mutters.

Papa Blaine is perhaps Cooper’s favourite thing in the world.

“I just feel sick. So sick. Every time he cries I feel sick, but hearing him scream like that?’

Cooper smiles softly and presses a hand to his brothers shaking shoulder.

“The doctor said he was fine Blaine. He’s fine. Yours and Kurt’s little monster will live to fight and destruct another day.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah bro. He was screaming, you said? Always a good sign when they’re screaming.”

He pulls a handkerchief from his wife’s handbag and presses it into Blaine’s fingers. His little brother nods glumly and waits for the doctor to return.

-

Hours later Cooper can’t help but grin.

Alex is fine. More than fine, actually. Blaine and Kurt are practically sitting in the hospital bed with the little boy between them, giggling and singing and tickling each other.

Alex has a tiny row of stitches across his forehead under his dark mop of curls.

Cooper is already planning on buying him Harry Potter glasses to match.

“Best uncle ever…” he murmurs to himself, grinning.