and at once i knew i was not magnificent

gleeprompts:

blaine x cooper. 

The funeral is held on a Thursday.

Thursday night is 90210 rerun night. Blaine knows this because he hasn’t missed it for the past year-and-a-half, and he also knows this because he’s painfully aware of the absence of Cooper’s ceaseless commentary about mom jeans and Shannen Doherty’s ridiculous facial expressions. He knows this because he used to spend all week looking forward to having Cooper’s arm around his shoulders and Cooper’s fingers in his hair. He knows this because last Thursday was the last time, and it just isn’t the same when you’re sitting in a hospital bed and eating stale vending machine snacks.

Blaine clenches his jaw and tries to fight a hysterical giggle when the theme song begins to sound in his head; he’s not sure what will come out of his mouth when he opens it, and he thinks that it might be a scream. And if he screams, he doesn’t know if he’ll be able to stop.

The people around him cry and whisper and pull their collars up against the harsh, biting wind. It seems ludicrous, when Blaine thinks about it, that most of these people are even here; none of them really know Cooper, at least not in the way that he does. None of them have traced the dip in his spine with their tongues, or mouthed along the line of his sweaty jaw, or murmured I love you into his open and panting mouth. None of them had to hold him when he cried over losing his hair, when the treatments stopped working. None of them watched him waste away on a fucking hospital bed.

Blaine closes his eyes and looks down, only aware of the hollow ache inside of his chest and the wind whistling through the trees; he almost doesn’t notice when he’s the only person still standing by the grave.

Stepping up next to the coffin, he thinks of buttered popcorn and the way Cooper’s mouth tasted after he’d had too many M&M’s. A small smile quirks up the corners of his lips, and he hears Cooper complaining about SoapNet ads and Tori Spelling’s existence and is that it? seriously, we need to get like three of the the complete series.

“God,” Blaine chokes, reaching up to run a shaking hand through his hair. His throat tightens, and his eyes water, and his smile turns into a stubborn grimace. He won’t cry. He promised. “I don’t want this to be all there is for us.”

The wind picks up, and Blaine suddenly hears Cooper’s words from his last night in the hospital, whispered while their parents were out of the room, hushed and hurried and just for him: I have never loved someone the way I love you, Blaine. Please remember that.

Blaine tries to grit his teeth, tries to keep himself in check, but there is no stopping the salty tears that track down his cheeks. “I’ll remember,” he says, his voice breaking. He releases a pitiful sob that sounds almost like a laugh. “I couldn’t forget if I tried.”

Cooper warily eyes the gray stubble on his chin, lightly running the tips of his fingers over it. “God, B. I’m getting old,” he says, shaking his head at the mirror.

Rolling his eyes, Blaine walks up to the bathroom door, leaning against the frame and offering up a small smile. “I think it’s sexy.”

And in that moment, as he watches Blaine on stage, Cooper feels whole again, feels like the last couple of years never happened; like he never went to California, never experienced the crippling ache of being apart from the one thing that shone like a prism of light through the constant dimness. It’s exhilarating, and something within him simultaneously swells and breaks as it crashes over him.

He stares at his brother from the wings of the stage- just stands, unable to take his eyes from the way Blaine throws his everything into the song, the way his shoulders slump as he’s bogged down by something that he can’t quite articulate in any other way than through this song, in this place, in this moment.

Cooper almost steps forward, almost calls his brother’s name and rushes across the stage to relearn the feeling of that small, compact body fitting against his like a puzzle piece. But he pauses, noticing the boy seated before Blaine with a dreamy look on his face, positively mesmerized.

He knows that look. It’s the way that he used to look at Blaine when they hid under the sheets together, when they twisted and arched up under one another’s touch. It’s the way that he used to look at Blaine across the dinner table when their parents weren’t paying attention. 

Slowly, slowly, Cooper steps backward into the wings of the stage, his heart sinking just as quickly as it had bubbled up in his throat when he saw his brother for the first time in two years.

Perhaps another time.

and you could have it all

my empire of dirt

i don’t know your thoughts these days

we’re strangers in an empty space

i don’t understand your heart

it’s easier to be apart

“So you’re just going to leave again? Just like that?”

“I’ll come back for you. Someday.”