So hey. Been awhile, but I'm back in town!
Obligatory 5x16 reaction fic. Also, just know I'm not trying to portray Kurt as some insensitive monster. I just think that in their discussion, he wasn't being as understanding as he should have been and was kinda making it like Blaine was attacking him, which wasn't really the case. So it's kind of a rewrite of their talk.
"But I will not apologize for not being some delicate flower that needs his boyfriend to protect him."
Blaine ground his teeth in frustration, feeling some kind of phantom pain in his fingertips from trying to claw his way over the wall Kurt built around himself. He had half a mind to just storm out with some excuse about how he was done talking about it if Kurt wasn't really going to listen, but he knew exactly how far that would get him.
"Kurt, you're not listening to me!" he exclaimed, running his fingers through the sweat-loosened curls. Kurt's face immediately hardened, brick after brick being plastered to his defenses. "I don't ever want you to be a delicate flower, OK? I'm so proud of the man you've become, and you should know that."
"Then what did you mean, huh?" Kurt spat, his wall still clearly built high in front of him. Blaine flinched at the acid in his voice. "What else could you have possibly been implying?"
"Maybe if you really listened, you'd understand that what you thought I meant isn't true," Blaine ground out. "My entire fucking existence has been built around being needed, and not just by you. If people don't need me to do things not just for them, but with them, then who am I? I don't feel like you need me or even want me anymore, Kurt! Everything has been a contest or a fight with us and it's been eating me alive, and my weight gain hasn't exactly helped my stupid fear that your love for me is dangling by a thread."
"What are you even talking about, Blaine?" Kurt said exasperatedly. "How could you even doubt that I'll always love you?"
"Because I'm not good enough for you, OK? Look at you! You have this amazing new body and everyone in our combat class is basically pining for you. When they look at me, they see this fat, clumsy idiot who doesn't deserve someone as incredible as you. Do you know how awful it felt to fail in front of all of them, to see them all laughing at me? It was humiliating, and now whenever I go back in there all I can think about is how they think of me instead of focusing on what I'm doing. Compared to you and how incredible you are, I'm nothing."
Kurt's silence seemed like a good sign, so he wiped away the hot tears dripping down his cheeks and continued.
"I hate myself, Kurt," he whimpered. "I hate the fact that I can't function without being needed and I loathe my body. I don't even want you to see me without my shirt on, and that is why we haven't been intimate. Some random porn star on that dumb website can't judge me because he can't see how fat I've gotten." He spat that awful word like it was poison on his tongue, his body curled in on itself. The silence hovered over them until a soft sniffle broke through it like light through fog.
"Kurt…?" Blaine looked up and felt guilt sink into the pit of his stomach when he saw tears dripping onto the floor from Kurt's jaw. The metaphorical bricks lay at his feet.
"Oh God, honey," Kurt sighed, pulling Blaine into the warmth of his arms. "I'm sorry, so so sorry."
Blaine sobbed quietly into Kurt's shirt, clutching him tightly in fear that he'd go away. "No, shush, don't apologize."
"Blaine," he said brokenly, pulling back to wipe the tears from his face. "I clearly have not been making our situation clear to you, and I am so sorry. Right now, I need you to listen to me, OK?"
"Of course," Blaine breathed, shaking slightly from suddenly feeling very cold.
"Blaine, I am in love with you," Kurt exclaimed. "I will go to the roof of this building right now and scream it for the world to hear. I will tattoo your name on my ass if it'll prove to you that you and I are not dangling by a thread. We are together and nothing is going to change that, especially not those assholes from combat class. I would've killed them when I heard them laughing at you if I wasn't focusing on being angry at you, and that was my mistake. And for the record, darling, you are gorgeous and you always have been. So what if you put on a couple pounds? Your weight doesn't make you any more or less amazing, beautiful, and sexy in my eyes. Please, don't ever say you hate yourself. It tears me apart to know that you think of yourself that way."
Blaine sighed with relief from the weight lifted off his shoulders and nodded, swallowing back more tears. "Okay."
"And honey?"
"Yeah?"
"I do need you," Kurt murmured. "You're everything to me, really. Rachel can tell you personally how much of a mess I was when we were apart. Maybe I don't need you to protect me, but I do need you to be with me. I will always want you."
"How do I even deserve you?" Blaine asked, shaking his head in disbelief. "I love you so much, Kurt."
"And I love you," Kurt sighed, stroking his hair. "Now let me take you to the bedroom and show you just how much I love your body, no matter what it looks like."