Blaine can't see clearly through the haze of medication he's on, or the fact that his head has been swimming for the last three hours as if he's underwater on a Tilt-A-Whirl. That's what happens when you take half-a-dozen right hooks to the temple. Of course, the mountain of pillows he has stacked in front of his face, leaving only a small, slant hole for his eyes, doesn't help, either. He's been sitting up in his hospital bed like this for the past half hour, waiting for the nurse – the tall, incredible smelling, insanely handsome, unbelievably kind (did he mention handsome?) nurse - to come in and check his vitals.

Blaine might look like an idiot, but he doesn't care. From within his impenetrable pillow fortress, he is king! And he is determined to win the heart of an equally noble king, here in this sterile room, which Blaine has declared “the field of battle”.

Yup. Morphine's one hell of a drug.

It's almost forty-five minutes past, but Blaine is a patient make-believe monarch. He sneaks a hand out from beneath his stronghold and grabs his Jell-O cup off his tray. Yes, with these provisions, he can wait out his conquest for a fortnight, if required.

Or at least until he falls back asleep.

The door opens. Blaine's moment has come. He feels his heart race with anticipation. He can't help himself.

He giggles.

A familiar voice – the voice he's been waiting to hear – giggles in response.

“Hello, Mr. Anderson,” the nurse says, stopping at a dry erase board hanging on the wall by the door to change the time and jot down a few notes. “I'm here to take your vitals.”

“If you want them, you're going to have to fight me for them!” Blaine announces from his fort of pillows. The nurse looks at Blaine – stops at the foot of his bed and takes a good, long look - and laughs, then starts to deconstruct the fort one pillow at a time.

“Maybe later,” he says, helping Blaine sit up to tuck a pillow beneath his back and another under his head. The nurse rolls a blood pressure machine over and sets about putting a cuff on Blaine's arm. He presses a button on the machine, and while the cuff constricts, he puts a thermometer beneath Blaine's tongue. He presses his index and middle fingers to Blaine's wrist to check his pulse. Blaine watches him through blurred vision, mystified at the man's professionalism, his efficiency, at the muscles in his upper arms flexing beneath his compression sleeves, at how warm his hands are compared to the nurse who was there a day earlier.

Blaine doesn't get long to gawk because as quickly as the nurse had set Blaine up on the b.p. machine, he takes Blaine off again, removing the thermometer and the cuff, putting them back in their places, then returning to the dry erase board to write Blaine's readings down. It takes all of seven minutes before the nurse is on his way back out the door again.

And Blaine doesn't want him to go.

“Fight me?” Blaine asks again, his lower lip pulled down in a pout.

The nurse shakes his head and laughs.

“Ask me again next time,” he says, and walks out the door.

***

Blaine's vision has cleared a bit as the morphine drip lessens and the drug starts to wear off. He can feel a dull throb in his flank where the kicks that landed him here broke two of his ribs, and that sucks, but at least the world has stopped spinning. On top of that, he sees for the first time one very important thing - the handsome nurse's name where he wrote it on the dry erase board, in a space completing the message, “Hello! My name is Kurt, and I'll be your nurse for today, Wednesday, June 10, 2015.”

The morphine might be leaving his system, but the pain replacing it makes him feel tired, makes his body feel heavy, reminds his muscles how much they ache. He lays back on his pillows, squeezing his eyes shut and trying hard not to breathe. He concentrates on the air entering his body through his nose and exiting his body through his mouth, the way his boxing coach taught him.

He's concentrating so hard on trying not to hurt, he almost misses the door opening and Kurt ducking back into his room.

“Mr. Anderson?”

Blaine doesn't speak, but raises two fingers on his right hand to acknowledge Kurt's presence.

“It looks like your morphine drip is just about done,” Kurt says, walking straight to Blaine's bed to check the bags connected to his IV. “Do you think you're going to need another bag?”

Blaine opens his mouth to speak but no words come out. His mouth is too dry to function properly.

“How about you raise one finger for yes and two for no, hmm?” Kurt suggests.

Even as exhausted as Blaine feels, one finger pops up quickly. Kurt giggles – it's soft, sympathetic, and for as long as it lasts, Blaine feels like he doesn't need another drop of morphine.

“I'll go get you another bag right away,” Kurt says, brushing a curl from Blaine's forehead. It's a single soothing touch to a body in pain.

Blaine hears Kurt's footsteps head for the door and he groans. He had meant to say, “Hey,” but “mrrrrrr,” comes out instead.

“Yes?” Kurt asks, waiting by the door.

Blaine licks his parched lips, trying to come up with something suave, something cool, something worthy of an ex-Captain of the Dalton Academy Warblers.

“Fight me?” he whispers, his voice raspy. The words catch in his throat and he coughs. He sits up and hacks, gasping for breath in an unattractive way. Kurt takes a step in to help, but Blaine recovers before Kurt can take another. Kurt watches Blaine's red face return to its normal color, and he laughs that sweet, sympathetic laugh again.

“Oh no, I can't fight you now,” Kurt says, dimming the lights as he steps from the room. “Are you kidding? You'd win for sure.”

Blaine shuts his eyes when the door clicks shut and opens them hours later, lifting sagging lids at the sensation of a hand delicately gripping his wrist.

“Well, good morning, sleepy head,” Kurt says. He presses his fingers to Blaine's pulse point, his eyes trained on his watch. “It's a good thing you're awake. Now I get to say good-bye in person.”

Blaine isn't even smiling and his face drops.

“Yes, unfortunately my shift is over,” Kurt says, sensing the subtle change without Blaine having to say a word. “Carole's taking over the next shift. I think you'll like her. She's into the whole pillow fort thing.” Kurt winks and Blaine manages a weak smile. “Food services brought you breakfast. I have to warn you, it's all very thin. You're allowed coffee, but…” Kurt leans in like he's about to tell Blaine a carefully guarded secret, “the stuff the hospital serves is pig swill, so I bought you one from downstairs.” Blaine's weak smile grows barely a centimeter, but Kurt notices, and his own smile brightens. “It was nice meeting you, Blaine,” Kurt says, returning Blaine's hand gently to his side and brushing another curl from his forehead.

Blaine.

Kurt didn't call him Mr. Anderson this time. Kurt called him Blaine.

Blaine watches Kurt leave, waving with two fingers when Kurt turns in the doorway for a final good-bye smile. Kurt walks off down the hallway and out of sight before the door clicks shut.

Blaine sighs, wondering if he'll get to see Kurt again while he's here.

He looks at his breakfast on the table by his bedside. There's the military green plastic tray with a small selection of the soft foods he's allowed to eat set on it in covered containers, their bland contents waiting to be seen, and in the midst of it all, a single paper cup from Starbucks. Blaine reaches out an arm, hand shaking as the effects of another IV bag of morphine wears off, and grabs hold of the cup. He feels its warmth immediately. Even in its insulated container, it can't be more than a few minutes old. Blaine turns the cup around in his hand. Above the Starbucks logo, in neat script, he sees the name Kurt. He runs his thumb over the letters. Moving his thumb reveals more writing, concealed by his hand gripping the cup. He reads it over with a ridiculous, non-morphine induced grin on his face.

Fight me?

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