Going for Broke

Chapter 15

When Blaine gets home from work that night, Kurt has started to paint again. He's spread his canvas out on the kitchen table, the paint at his fingertips, with soft music playing from the stereo in the living room. Santana is sprawled on the couch, thumbing through a magazine and bobbing her head along with the beat. Blaine hangs up his coat and drops his bag in the hall, and she glances over at him before giving a small wave. Blaine returns it.

Kurt doesn't look up until Blaine has joined him in the kitchen, but when he does, it's with a beaming smile. "Hi."

"You're painting," Blaine says, unable to articulate anything else. Because he can remember the first time he saw Kurt paint, last year already, New Year's Eve, and how by that second time, Blaine was already falling for him. He can remember the feel of Kurt warm against his back, the slick slide of paint between his fingers, the rough drag of the canvas, remembers painted trees, and people, and thoughts and memories, and snowflakes and french-fries and walks in the park, and how he'd been so screwed up and fucked over by his own expectations, drowning himself in drink, and how Kurt had reached in there and plucked him out and made him remember what it felt like to dream, because suddenly he dreamed of Kurt and what they could be together.

Last time, thought, Kurt had painted people in sickly yellow. Now, he paints flowers with the pads of his fingers, in blue and purple and red and green. New life.

"Yes, I'm painting." Kurt reaches for a light blue tube of paint and squeezes some out. "I felt like it."

"That's good." Blaine smiles at Kurt, who grins back at him. It's so easy, like this, and Blaine wishes he could make Kurt smile forever.

"Paint with me?" Kurt asks, offering a tube of yellow, and Blaine will never be able to say no to that. So he sits, and he paints, and Kurt smiles at him all the way through it.

***

It's Friday when they get the call from the hospital, asking Kurt to come in the next day for his appointment. Kurt talks to the nurse, pacing nervously the entire time and biting at this lip. "Is it gone though?" he asks her multiple times, and Blaine watches his face as he listens to the answer. When he finally hangs up, he turns to Blaine and Santana, seated together on the couch, and smiles weakly. "She said it's good news," he says. "She hasn't seen the scans herself, but she says the oncologist says it's good."

Santana folds double in her seat, hand flying out and clutching at Blaine's. "Oh thank God," she whispers, and then she's up from the couch and squeezing Kurt tight, and they're both tearing up as they hold each other, swinging gently from side to side. Blaine sits back and lets the information soak in—good news. It's good news.

Kurt's going to live.

And suddenly, there's a whole new future for him to dream.

But why does it feel like nothing has changed?

Blaine doesn't even notice he's crying—crying with relief, with disappointment that nothing feels different, with unknown emotions that somehow need to be expressed through tears—until Kurt sits down beside him and pulls him into his arms, stroking his hair and murmuring 'Shhh...' as Blaine turns his face into Kurt's chest and clings to him.

It should be the other way around.

"I need to see it for myself," Kurt tells him when Blaine expresses this out loud. "I just...need to see the scans myself, and then I'll believe it."

Blaine can respect that, and thinks, partially, that's what his problem is as well. How can you just accept something that changed your life for so long is just gone, without seeing it for yourself? He kisses Kurt's temple and leans against his shoulder, and watches as Kurt orders Santana to his feet and braids her hair into careful, tiny braids.