#boneallthethings

“So... how old are you?” Cooper Anderson asked a rather shy Kurt Hummel in front of him.

“Eight,” Kurt sighed, tucking his mousy brown hair behind his ear.

Now, Cooper Anderson was good with kids. No, more than good. Fantastic. Wonderful. Extraordinary. This, as the case with many others, was the fault of having a much younger brother, especially when said younger brother seemed to have the energy of five million condensed suns. However, Kurt seemed to have a particular aversion to the teenager; possibly because he was seven years his junior, but more likely because his mother had just passed away. It’s often hard to open up to someone when you’re in the waiting room of a stuffy office where your father is sorting things out with a lawyer.

Still, if there’s one thing Cooper Anderson is not, it’s a quitter. Staying up until two a.m. singing Hey, Jude to baby Blaine has proven that. And he was most definitely not about to quit now.

“Kurt, how would you like to meet my younger brother?”

Kurt repeated sceptically, “Younger brother.”

“Yeah!” Cooper responded, “He’s your age...no, well seven, but still, that’s not a big difference.”

10 minutes and a phone debate later, Blaine Samuel Anderson perched on the carpet directly across Kurt.

 “Coop, why do I have always have to have this gunk in my hair when I come to Daddy’s office?” Blaine asked grouchily, his bottom lip sticking out just a fraction.

“Because, Blaine, Mom wants you to look all fancy and proper.”

“You don’t have to wear hair gel!”

“That’s because Mom gave up trying to make me look respectable a long time ago. Besides,” Cooper added, shaking his wavy hair, “my hair’s too sexy to tame.”

Kurt snorted.

Snapping back to reality, the oldest brother said dramatically, “Oh yeah! Blaine, this is Kurt. Kurt, this is my brother Blaine.”

“Yeah, I coulda guessed that,” Kurt mumbled.

“So why are you here?” Blaine wondered, missing what Kurt had said and earning a smack on the arm from his brother.

Kurt’s throat started to tighten, and his chest suddenly felt extremely heavy.

“Oh, um, my mom, she um...she passed away,” Kurt answered sadly. His father always told him that saying ‘passed away’ was a nicer way of saying that someone had died. Kurt didn’t see the point, (dying doesn’t sound nice no matter what way you put it), but his father insisted, so he did it anyways.

“I’m so sorry,” Blaine replied, his face appearing as if he had just seen an ASPCA commercial. He got up quickly, and sat down beside Kurt, wrapping his arms around him.

“What are you, um, I...thanks,” Kurt said lamely, feeling slightly uncomfortable from the hug.

“When my Grandma died,” Blaine explained, “a lot of people hugged me. It was weird, ‘cause I didn’t really know them, but it felt good after a while.”

Cooper gaped at the two grade schoolers in front of him. This was the first time Blaine had spoken about his grandmother since the funeral, and Kurt had barely said more than a word before Blaine came to the building. Realizing that he had captured lightning in a bottle, he pulled out his Nokia and snapped a picture of the embrace.