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When Blaine was younger, he spent a lot of his time playing make-believe. Like most boys his age, he'd come home sweaty and covered in mud, dragging dirt through the house for his mom (or, more likely, the housekeeper) to clean up behind him. Occasionally, he'd manage to convince Cooper to play with him, and the two would go on adventures, exploring the jungle or wading in a small stream to collect pretty rocks that caught their eyes. Sometimes their time together included acting, where the two of them would pretend to be pirates seeking lost treasure, or knights slaying the dragon, or, on more memorable occasions, they would act out stories their mother had shared of her home country. Blaine always preferred playing pirates with his brother, though.
When the rock salt in the slushy blinded him, he would have laughed at the irony if it hadn't hurt so much.
After coming home for the emergency room with his eye bandaged and unusable, he spent most of his time laying in bed, reading books and playing games on his computer, trying not to get too used to only having one eye, since his parents had scheduled him for surgery. Kurt came to visit after school and on weekends, and they mostly just talked and cuddled while his parents were home.
"Do you know when the surgery is going to be?" Kurt asked him one day, bringing in stacks of homework from his missed classes.
"Next week, I think. But honestly, it's been so long now, I don't know if they can even save my eye."
"So, what? You think you're just... going to be half-blind forever?" Kurt frowned, moving some of Blaine's school books to sit up on the bed beside him, looking at the bandage covering his eye but trying to be subtle about it. "What are you going to do?"
Blaine laughed a little, shrugging slightly at Kurt's questioning. "Honestly, I'm not sure. Probably get a fake eye, or wear eye patches forever. It won't be that big of a deal, right? I mean, I'll still have my other eye. Maybe I can make pirate jokes."
"Blaine, this really isn't something to laugh about."
"It really is, though!" He laughed again, trying to keep a positive mindset about what could be awaiting him. "Might as well laugh about it instead of being miserable. If I have to lose my eye, there's nothing I can really do about it, yaknow?"
Kurt sighed and shook his head, before changing the subject back to Blaine's homework.
The next week, most of his interactions with the world outside of his house was limited to texting and phone calls. His surgery was finally coming up, and Kurt was busy with his own homework. They probably wouldn't see each other again until after Blaine's surgery, meaning Kurt wouldn't know whether he gets to keep his eye or not until then.
When Blaine woke up from the surgery, he didn't even think to ask if he kept his eye or not. He was too high on the anesthesia, and the bandage had become a permanent fixture in his life for the last few weeks. It took him a day or two of fluctuating consciousness to finally remember to ask the nurse flitting in and out of the room about his eye, but she only went to fetch the doctor in lieu of answering him.
Blaine took that as meaning he didn't get to keep his eye. He found out about an hour later that his suspicions were correct, and the bandage that everyone had thought was temporary had become a permanent fixture.
The first thing Blaine did with this information was to start looking up where and how he could buy a fake eye, or several. He started collecting links to websites featuring eyes he liked, making sure to actually purchase one that would match his natural eye before continuing to shop for ones that would be interesting or match some of his favourite outfits, finding most of them on taxidermy websites. He even added a few rocks and minerals that were smooth and eye-shaped to his growing list.
Needless to say, t was a bit of a shock for everyone else involved that Blaine had lost one of his eyes. When he returned to Lima on Valentine's day wearing an eye patch over the natural-looking glass eye, no one even considered that he had lost his eye for good. It wasn't until the next day at Glee rehearsal when Kurt noticed the fake eye wasn't moving that people began to realize what had happened.
Blaine was genuinely okay with the outcome, though. Most of the time he wore the natural looking eye, but sometimes he took it out and wore something fancy or fun, or simply just put on an eye patch. He didn't mind when people jokingly called him "Pirate Blaine" because, honestly, he always loved pretending to be a pirate.