Chapter Text
There are tragedies that aren't only expected – they are also supposed to be a bit of a relief.
It was a beautiful spring day, the kind that was perfect for picnics, all the birds chirping in the sky, the flowers blooming everywhere you went, the sun shining down on you like a blessing. And yet, as he sat there, Cooper Anderson couldn't feel the warmth, couldn't hear anything but defeaning silence, couldn't feel the soothing touch of his wife's hand in his. All he could see was his brother, standing still as a statue, looking so very alone on the other side of the grave.
Blaine didn't look relieved at all. He just looked as if someone had hit his heart with a sledgehammer and left all the broken pieces of it at his feet.
To be fair, Blaine had looked near to a breaking point for the past five months – maybe everyone else had been charmed and fooled by his polite smile and positive attitude, but Cooper knew his little brother well. He knew he just kept the pretenses in front of the nurses and the doctors, even in front of Michael's family, and that he didn't allow himself to drop the act until he was locked behind his closed bedroom door, away from the world. Not even Cooper had been allowed to see Blaine then, but he could guess what his nights had looked like, he just knew that his brother would cry himself to sleep every single night as he struggled to accept the unavoidable truth: his husband was dying.
The cancer had spread so quickly, no one had any time to actually come to terms with the news before Michael was detereorating and suddenly wasting away in a hospital bed. Blaine had soldiered on, supported by his family, putting everything on hold to be by his side, to tend to his every need. But nothing helped, nothing changed or twisted fate – and so Cooper had gotten the phone call, just two days ago, as he was pouring himself a cup of coffee before heading to the office. He and his wife had exchanged a quick look across the kitchen as Cooper accepted the call, and then his brother's voice had said the simple, yet painful words: “He's gone.”
They had talked about what a relief it was that Michael was no longer suffering, the cliché sentiments seeming to lose all meaning when faced with the harsh reality: Michael was no longer suffering, but the people he had left behind were suffering more than ever.
The priest prattled on and on – it had been Michael's parents' idea, to have a religious service, and Cooper wondered how they could find comfort in the notion of heaven, angels and God wanting Mike by his side, when he was so clearly needed here, on Earth, with his family instead. When his husband was falling apart and failing at hiding it, when he wouldn't let go of their six year old's hand, who looked so confused and so sad. It would take a while for Jonah to come to terms with losing one of his fathers.
It would take a while for them to learn how to be a family of two, instead of a family of three.
Once the service was over, everyone started slowly walking away, no one quite daring to approach Blaine, most people stopping to give Michael’s parents their condolences before they left, until there was no one there but Blaine and Jonah, hand in hand, completely unmoving.
Cooper shared a quick glance with Evelyn. His wife understood immediately and nodded before letting him head towards his brother.
Blaine didn’t look up. It was as if he was transfixed, his eyes on the grave in front of him.
“Hey, Squirt?” Cooper called him softly, hoping the nickname he had given him when they were kids would bring him back from whatever dark thoughts he was having. “Why don’t we get home? I bet Jonah’s hungry. Would you like something to eat, buddy?” He asked his nephew, who was looking up at him, brown eyes reflecting back how lost he seemed to feel.
“Yeah,” Jonah muttered quietly. “I’m hungry.”
“Don’t worry. Uncle Cooper’s got your back,” he said, reaching down to squeeze his shoulder. “I’ll make you some hot dogs. Or some burgers. Whatever you want.” Since his brother hadn’t even acknowledge him, Cooper stepped a little closer and pressed his hand to his arm. “Blaine?”
Blaine inhaled sharply, like he was breaking through the surface of a deep, deep ocean, and finally getting a mouthful of air. “Yes, sorry, I just…” He looked down at his son and then up at Cooper. “Can I have a minute, please?”
He was so nice, so pleasant, even when his heart was in tatters. “Of course,” Cooper whispered and extended his hand to his nephew. “Come on, little buddy. Let’s go find Aunt Evie.”
Both Jonah and Cooper took one last look over their shoulders as they walked away from the grave. Blaine remained very still, and very serious, not a single tear in his eyes.
Cooper was scared of the moment Blaine finally broke down.
After putting the lid on the container, Evelyn carefully wrote the tag – chicken stew – and piled it up next to her, before reaching for the next one. She was glad she hadn’t been the one to cook all this – Cooper was the chef in their marriage, since she could hardly boil an egg or turn the coffee maker on in the morning. It had never been her strong suit.
But she still felt like she needed to do something .
She had spent the past couple of hours cleaning Blaine’s entire house while Cooper cooked, until every inch of it was spotless. She had taken Jonah out for ice-cream the previous day while Cooper sat down with his brother for a few beers in the backyard. She had held her husband when Cooper couldn’t take the sadness and the concern any more, when he was overwhelmed with wanting to do something to help his brother and realized there was nothing anyone could do.
And yet, she knew nothing would ever be enough. Blaine had lost his husband – it would be a long time before he was even remotely okay.
She finished filling the containers and paused to look at her brother-in-law. Blaine was standing at the window, looking outside at the backyard, where Jonah and their daughter were playing in the sunshine. He was awfully quiet and still, just like he had been since the funeral.
“Okay, so,” she said, and it felt like her voice was too loud in the silence of the house. “You have enough food for like a month. Just remember to get the containers out of the freezer the night before, and then you should just heat it up…”
Blaine didn’t say anything, hazel eyes fixed on his son, back painfully straight, curls messier than usual.
Cooper, sitting at the breakfast bar, looked at her, his face a constant mirror to his worry.
Evelyn cleared her throat. “Uhm. Blaine, sweetheart? Did you hear what I said?”
Without turning around, Blaine said in a monotone: “Get the container out of the freezer the night before. Heat it up. Got it.”
Evelyn bit her lip, unsure of what to do. They had been with him since the funeral, but both she and Cooper needed to get back home to New York in the morning. They couldn’t miss any more work. But it felt like they should be staying. It felt like leaving Blaine alone with Jonah wasn’t the right thing to do.
Cooper must have been thinking the same thing, because he said: “You know, I could call the office. See if I can take a couple more days…”
“It’s fine,” Blaine replied. He had always been shorter and smaller in frame than his older brother, but these days he looked even smaller, like he couldn’t find the way to take space in this world anymore, like he just kept shrinking and shrinking into nothingness. “You guys can’t stay here forever. We all have to go back to normal at some point…”
The way he said it… it was obvious Blaine knew his normal had changed completely. He needed to find a new one. He needed to learn to live his life without Michael.
Evelyn wanted to believe in that old adage – time heals all wounds – but the truth was, when she tried to imagine what she would do if something like this happened to her, if she had to let go of Cooper, to raise their daughter on her own…
Her chest ached.
“Are you sure you’ll be alright?” Cooper asked softly.
It was a stupid question, and the three of them knew it.
“I have to be,” Blaine replied.
It reassured absolutely no one.
The empty office down the hall was painfully obvious. It had been occupied, until two months ago, by Michael Anderson-Brown, and had remained empty since then, when it was obvious coming to the office had stopped being a priority, when the illness had spread too much to keep pretending he would be able to return to it.
Early this morning, it had been cleared. Every single personal possession had disappeared until it felt like a blank canvas – just the standard office furniture, no more whimsical paintings on the walls, no more drawings made by Jonah on the corkboard next to the desk, no more family pictures on the windowsill.
Everything that belonged to Michael was now in a box on top of his husband’s desk, in the office next to his.
Violet had been there for their entire love story. She had just started as a secretary on this same floor when Blaine joined the firm, and Michael had already been there for a year or so. They were young and attractive and motivated to do good work for their clients. It hadn’t been until a night when Violet was leaving the office later than usual, turning the lights off as she went, that she noticed the two of them working together in the conference room, boxes of Chinese take-out spread between them, documents forgotten as they ate and chatted, slightly leaning towards each other, like they didn’t want to miss a single word.
She knew then, that something would happen between those two.
Violet had no idea how the rest of the office had figured it out, but by the end of the next week, everyone was betting on when they would get together. She hadn’t told anyone about what she had seen – she wasn’t particularly interested in gossip – and she certainly did not participate, but she guessed it would be sooner rather than later. And it had been – by the end of the month, they were leaving the office together every single day, and most often than not, arriving together the next morning.
They were married two years later.
Whoever saw them together knew they just made sense. Blaine was passionate and often impulsive, emotional, but Michael was always calm and collected. They complimented each other perfectly both inside the courtroom and out of it, and she guessed it was the same thing at home, once they became parents. It was obvious, from the few times they’d had to bring Jonah to the office when they couldn’t get a babysitter, that Blaine was the more playful, permissive dad, while Michael set limits and pulled them both back to Earth, but always in the most loving way.
She wondered how Blaine was dealing with keeping the balance at home when such a strong pillar had stumbled and broken into pieces.
Today was the first day Blaine was back at work since Michael’s death. It couldn’t have been easy. Every time she had caught a glimpse of him, mostly when he left his office to go get a cup of coffee, it was enough to let her know just how broken he was.
Violet took a deep breath and knocked on his door.
“Come in,” came the soft response.
Blaine was sitting at his desk, case files piled all around him, a pen in his hand and a notepad next to him. He looked awful, dark marks under his eyes, a bit of stubble on his jaw. She didn’t think she had ever seen him like this before.
The box with Michael’s things had been shoved to a corner of the room. A picture of Jonah smiling at the camera was peeking at the top. It squeezed her heart painfully.
“Hi, Blaine,” she said softly, as she walked further into the office. “I’m sorry to bother you. I just wanted… I wanted to give you this.”
She placed the business card on top of the notepad, and Blaine just stared at it.
“This doctor really helped my brother when his wife passed,” she explained hastily, feeling awkward as the silence grew longer. “I just thought…”
Blaine reached into his drawer. He started tossing business cards onto the desk, one after the other. “Hypnotherapy, Shiatsu massage, loss of spouse support groups, single parent discussion nights,” his voice was sharp, angry, in a way Violet had never heard it before. He had always been the kindest, most patient guy in the office. “Parents without partners, people who need people. Guys who go into the woods, get drunk and bond. Get a shrink. Hug a friend. Hug yourself…”
He was almost yelling now, and everyone outside of the office had seemed to pause to listen, everyone frozen in their seats and staring at them through the glass wall.
Blaine ran a hand down his face and exhaled. “I’m sorry.”
“No, no,” Violet hurried to say. “It’s okay…”
A sad little smile appeared on Blaine’s lips. He said, self-deprecatingly, only a shadow of his old sense of humor: “Don’t mind him. He’s just the guy who lost his husband.” He let out another exhale as his hazel eyes turned to the large window, the outline of Columbus looking a little grey today. “I think that what we really need is a change…”
Violet nodded. “Yes. That’s a good idea. Why don’t you take a few weeks off, get some sun, maybe take Jonah fishing?”
Still looking outside at the city, Blaine shook his head. “A real change. New city. Someplace where every time I go around a corner I don’t think of Michael…”
He was silent for a moment, completely lost in his thoughts. He seemed to be remembering something. He must have been plagued by memories lately, even the sweeter ones turned bitter in his loss.
“Where would you go?” She asked quietly, unable to hide her concern.
It seemed like Blaine snapped out of it. “I was thinking about New York.”
“New York?” Violet repeated, frowning.
“It’s busy, it’s loud, it’s completely different,” Blaine shrugged. “Plus, I’ve been talking to my brother. He has his own law firm there… he says I could join him, that there’s plenty of work for me…”
Violet found herself nodding again. Columbus was big and loud enough for her, New York always gave her the impression that she would get lost in it. But maybe that was what Blaine wanted. And at least, if his brother was there, he wouldn’t be completely alone with his little boy, without a support system…
With what she hoped looked like an encouraging smile, Violet turned around and left him get back to work. As she closed the door, she saw him throw the many, many cards in the garbage.
Two empty offices, she thought. Soon there would be two empty offices in this floor that would eventually be filled with brand new people, with their own stories.
She didn’t think there would be a story as good as Blaine and Michael’s.
Holding tightly onto Jonah’s hand, Blaine glanced around the crowded terminal. Airports looked very much the same no matter what state you were in – Ohio, New York, there was no difference. But he knew that out there, lied a world in which Michael had never even stepped into.
This state was a blank slate.
It didn’t take long for him to see Cooper and Evelyn waiting for them, Jessica bouncing up and down as soon as her eyes found Jonah. His big brother opened his arms and let Blaine walk straight into them, squeezing him firmly and pulling him even closer. The past couple of months apart seemed to have been as hard on Cooper as it had been on Blaine.
It was a relief, to be close to his brother again.
They helped him with the luggage and guided him across the terminal and towards the exit. Evelyn wrapped her arm around his, a gentle smile on her face.
“This is going to be great for you, you’ll see,” she said. “And eventually, in a few months, you’ll start seeing new guys, you’ll meet someone…”
Blaine felt himself stiffen at her words. “Move on. Right. That’s exactly what I’m going to do. In a few months, boom, I’ll be fine. I’ll just grow a new heart.”
He didn’t mean to sound like he was snapping at her – he just couldn’t help it sometimes, as if something dark and disgusting wrapped around his soul, made the words come out of his mouth before he could stop them…
Grief was such an ugly thing.
Evelyn went a little pale, clearly regretting what she had just said. She began to mumble: “I’m so sorry. You know I don’t…”
Cooper looked sad, his blue eyes filled with concern. “Blaine, you know she didn’t mean…”
Blaine took a deep breath. “I’m sorry. I know, I know.” His voice was a little kinder, a little lighter now. He knew his family meant to help, but sometimes there was nothing to do, sometimes nice sentiments and encouraging words didn’t change reality. Didn’t make Michael any less dead. “Look,” he added. “It just doesn’t happen twice, okay?”
Of course it didn’t. How could he ever believe that, out there, there would be another guy who was perfect for him?