Disclaimer: I don't own Glee.
A/N: Tough time being in that place people tell me I should call home. So this clawed its way out of me. I feel like I should puke but all that comes are words, ... with the dull pain firmly rooted inside me still.
This Pain Is Mine
He is scared.
Scratch that.
Blaine has never been more terrified in his life.
He feels like throwing up and crying and tearing himself apart, all at the same time.
And it is like he cannot decide what to do first, just cannot make up his mind, ... so he just sits there, sits and stares at the door, the wall or whatever is in front of his unseeing eyes as he curls up on his bed, dried tears and snot on his face, tugs the covers extra close around himself and holds on to the cold bundle of fabric, because he needs to hold on to something.
And there is nothing else.
There is no one else.
He stopped existing the moment he grew old enough to fight back, when they could not just let out their frustrations with each other on his little body anymore without that pair of seeing, finally comprehending eyes staring back at them.
So they stopped. They had stopped using him as a punching bag, as the surrogate for a punching bag, ... and for each other.
'They are such cowards' he thinks today, body curling tighter, brain throbbing more and more with the insight, an insight still so much too much too big.
He cannot wish anymore for anyone to protect him, cannot trust himself to do the job.
After all there are two things his parents have taught him: one, it is not like he is worth protecting. Two, he is the most worthless piece of junk they have ever possessed, and no one could ever possibly, no one will ever value ... any part of him.
There it is again, as he squeezes his eyes shut tighter, the screaming starting outside his bedroom door, and twenty minutes later the slamming of the front door, followed by crying, a lot of it.
And now Blaine lies waiting, heart squeezed impossibly tight in his throat, hammering, building that hollow ache that has him fear every time it is not there anymore.
He is crying himself again when he finally uncurls his limbs minutes more later and sets his first foot onto the ground.
Just a couple of steps, just going out there, just provoking enough, just causing enough pain by purely existing ... , by having to be looked at...
There will be bruises and aching bones after, just for a little while, but it will be worth it, so worth it, the one week, if he is lucky two, of peace in his home, of parents hating on him alone, not each other as well. He can hide from them, they never seem to even know the option exists to avoid each other, to find a way around the hate, ... the hurt for his little body.
The tears come heavier as he thinks about them fighting, about it all being his fault, "I can make it better," Blaine whispers to himself. "I can make it all better."
Blaine reaches up with one hand, his face is flooded with tears. His brain can barely register the thought, 'I never used to cry this much,' before arms close around him, and Blaine stops.
He just stops, disappears for just one fraction of a single second into the touch, the way he has blacked out all that between a door creaking open over and over and waking up with skin and bones bruised, never obvious, never broken, hurt too much and ... and not hurt enough to get hel..., to be noticed for more than being the most quiet, well-behaved kid in his class at school.
"I'm here."
It is like Blaine's whole body has held its breath, on the brink of choking, and now is breathing again.
Kurt's voice ..., it is what Kurt does to him.
They have only known each other for eight months. Kurt knows Blaine is still ashamed, still ashamed of being a thirty-six year old man with nightmares he cannot begin to explain, for fear of finding Kurt looking at him the same way others have before.
It is that look that says "Get over it," "Oh poor boy, you have had it so hard," "You are a pathetic whiny child," all rolled into one. It is a look Blaine cannot take anymore.
Why can his pain not count for anything?
How is he supposed to ever let someone in enough to feel love, when all he is used to doing is blacking things out, blocking them out to not have to remember the pain that comes with sometimes a single touch.
How is Blaine supposed to believe that Kurt will still want to hold him once he learns the make-up of all that is tearing Blaine apart? It is not like he counts for anything.
"It's not like I count for anything," Blaine chokes past the ruins of the all too familiar nightmare still standing in his mind.