Disclaimer: I do not own Glee, and any credit for characters, places, people and plot events go to their respective owners.
Warning(s): General angst, you know the drill.
Spoilers: None.
Summary: Semi-AU. I know that it's all my fault, that the tears will never be because of anyone but me, but I can't help it. This is who you fell for, and sadness is the price we pay for love.

Little Lion Man

I'll never be able to protect you. I'll never be able to keep you safe. You will suffer because of me. You have suffered because of me. Like a tower of blocks, I have systematically been building you up over the years, only to knock you down whenever it seems like this odd little push-and-pull relationship that the two of us share is finally about to become serious. I know you hurt and you cry because of me, I've heard you at night, when you think I'm sleeping. And I know it's my fault, my doubts and fears that are driving the two of us apart. And I'm sorry for that, Brittany, but you've always known that's just the way I am, the way I'm wired. And each little cry you stifle into the pillow only raises my doubts higher.

Don't get me wrong, I love you. As you once put it, and in words that I think ring true in my emotion, in my love for you; I love you more than I've ever loved anything in this world. But that is scary for me, because love is something from which I've learned to distance myself. I can only ever recall falling in love once, and that was the day that I caught your eye over the playground as you danced, and I knew, I just knew, that I would do anything to have you, my beautiful little dancer.

I've always known who my heart belonged to in a way, can remember clearly when I gave it to you the moment we linked pinkies in first grade and promised to be best friends forever. However, it was the idea that my heart had gone out to you, to another girl, that had always, and still sometimes does, thrown me through a loop. I'd never foreseen it, never could have guessed that it would come down to this, that I could love another girl so much it was unbearable. But I had, it was, and yet I fell for you anyway.

You are a constant in my life now, ever present in the way that I could not stand losing you. I take it back, you are not constant in my life, you have become my life. Everything I do, everything I've done, has been all for you, your approval, in the name of protecting you, or protecting myself from you. I love you, and you're my everything, that can never change.

But it has not been easy loving you, there have been, there still are challenges. Not everyone accepted us, just as I always imagined they would. Some went as far as to jeer when we walked hand-in-hand down the hallway, and some girls refused to change in the same room as you during PE—you didn't have to tell me it, either, because Kurt had come to me with it. Though I had Coach Sylvester solve it, and the girls mysteriously dropped out the very next day, I knew the few weeks it had gone unchecked had scarred you in a way, and it hurt me more than I could say that you never said a word to me about it.

I considered leaving you, then, to spare you, and myself, the pain that came with being the only lesbian couple at school. Kurt and Blaine, in the end, were the only ones that could beat it through my head that the bullying wasn't something worth pulling us apart over, and that we could push through it together. They reminded me that the secret was out, and that together or not, the bullying had begun, and that it would not stop even if we were to make a painful separation. They reminded me that it had to get worse before it would get better.

And they were right to tell us to push through, that it would get better, because it did. Oddly enough, though I shouldn't be surprised because I was the one that made him a little piece of himself again, David Karofsky was the one that snapped everyone back into place. One slushie I couldn't stop hit you, and as you cried, I knew that was it, that it couldn't go on. He agreed. Though we both came out of it worse for wear, none of the football team, or anyone else for that matter, ever dared throw another at you.

Now that all the threats are gone, all the ones we can see anyway, it leaves only me and you. And you have never been daunted by the prospect of us, always so calm and sure and accepting that it could never be you that drove us apart, not in a million years. That's how I knew it was me that was making you cry a night, when I crept into your room through the window and we cuddled together until you thought I was asleep.

I refused to tell my parents about you, made us break apart whenever they were home, told them firmly that you were only a friend whenever they asked. I couldn't deal with them, with telling them the truth, so I told them that I was in a relationship, dragged a confused Puck around my house as arm-candy some days. And they bought it. Even though you were quietly broken and saddened at the ruse, even though I knew you hated it, you never once said a word; the night after the first time, however, was the very first night I heard you cry.

I wouldn't let you tell your parents about us, either, said it was too risky and that it might get back to mine, even though I knew them well enough to know they would never breathe a word. I was so angry when you told me that it accidentally slipped out, that they knew and that they didn't care. I was furious. I remember slapping you, leaving you crying in your bedroom, and storming out of the house that afternoon. I remember avoid you, not talking to you for two weeks straight, and seeing how sad you looked in the hallways.

But you would forgive me anything, that I know, so long as you could have me. You know that old saying, "you'll forgive your first love anything." Well, it is heartbreakingly true with you, and I know you would let me get away with anything and everything without a word, simply because you love me.

I hadn't thought much of it, of any of it, at the time. Just chalked it all up to the both of us being stressed out, that the tears were just you overreacting. At least, until the nightmares begun.

You woke me up with your screaming the first time, only a week ago, sobbing and crying and calling out my name with such clarity that I was sure you were awake. But you weren't, you were dreaming of me, and though you wouldn't tell me what it was that made you wake up in a cold sweat, shivering and crying each night, I just knew. I would always know. It was me, it always had been.

There isn't much I can do to stop them, nothing much I can do to stop myself from being the one that causes them. I can only hold you, whisper reassurances and promise myself, and you, that it will never happen again, that we can tell my parents next week, that everything will be okay, even when it won't.

I know it's all my fault, and I'm sorry, but I can't help it. I can't change who I am any more than you could change me. And although it makes me want to sob because I can break you so thoroughly, I know I'd never be able to let you go anyway, so all I do is hold onto you tighter and fill your head with empty promises.

I know I'm breaking you, but it's just the way things are.

And for what it's worth, I'm sorry, but I can't change that. This is who you fell in love with, and this is the price that we both pay for love.