Sometime last month I wrote this and posted it on my tumblr. So hey.
"Hey, there, Blaine."
Dr. Savannah is gentle, careful, like he's broken. And maybe she has a reason to.
Blaine stares at the white-and-blue pattern on the linoleum and wills the tears from his eyes, the tremor from his voice. "Hi."
"How are we today?"
To Blaine time stops, stands still, from the moment he enters her office, despite the clock that murmurs seconds into the suffocating silence between them. Stiffly he sits in the pleated armchair across from hers. The same as all those past meetings when they would discuss new friends at Dalton or adapting to McKinley.
He anxiously tugs on the long sleeves of his cardigan, the one that Kurt claimed to adore on some lax Sunday a million years ago. And he bites his lip as his vision blurs, thoughts cascading like the tears that threaten to. He blinks rapidly as he forces his thoughts away, away from—
"Good." He nods. "I'm good."
"So, Blaine, school is good? I know you just started your senior year. Fun." Dr. Savannah's nice and all, but she seems so far off from him so far from able to understand. It's easier to agree, to paint on a chipper smile, like Blaine as he replies, "Oh, yeah. I just won class president."
She brings her pen to the clipboard sitting on her lap, writing now. Analyzing him.
"This is just standard stuff," she lies, attempting to assure him the way she does every time, to supposedly alleviate secrets. To make it feel like the patient is involved. Blaine hates the way they pretend they're friends. "Like, a checklist. Progress reports. Standard stuff." She waves a hand dismissively, directing a smile at him and pushing her thick-rimmed glasses up on the bridge of her nose.
He can't focus for long, not with the lingering depression possessing his mind, his thoughts, leaving him constantly upset and broken. Because, in the ever-changing, pressure-filled routine of his life, Kurt was the one thing constant. The one thing he couldn't stand to lose.
And he could never tell Dr. Savannah all of this. She's only a stranger, a woman paid to listen to him, to feign interest and take notes and have him sent off to some institution where he's not allowed plastic silverware or shoelaces if he opens up a sliver. When the hour's up, so is any attention.
So he's alone.
Blaine sighs.
"You won class president? Did it make you happy?" Dr. Savannah wears red lipstick, crimson so frequent it seems natural, every bi-weekly time Blaine sees her.
"It—it did. I was glad."
Even if she's skeptical, she doesn't allow her smile to falter as she tucks tight blonde ringlets of curls behind her ear and stares at him like she cares. "Did you tell our mom and dad? I bet they were proud of you."
That makes him restrain bitter laughter.
His parents were not the kind to be proud of him. It was foreign, their approval.
Mr. Anderson layered discipline and depreciation onto him in every way, molding him into the impeccable gentleman but failing. He'd bully his son into subordination, yell and manipulate. All his life he was starved for his father's praise, his smile and single nod that delivers the fulfilling feeling of knowing, doubtless, that he'd done something right.
"Yup. We went out for dinner," he lies.
And Mrs. Anderson, she was a phantom, the vague outline of a mother. Never participating, she watched and waited with despondent eyes and shut lips, witnessing the icy manner of Blaine's relationship with his dad.
"I hope that means you and them are getting along better."
The therapy room's stayed in same for the past years he's sat here, across from Dr. Savannah. The tiny coffee table. The two arm chairs. The too-loud clock. A miniaturized living room. The illusion of comfort. An unopened box of tissues waits on the coffee table; he wants to roll his eyes. All these years, and it hasn't gotten any easier.
A slow, false smile brightens his expression. He nods.
"Well, Blaine, it sounds a lot like you're getting better, then. Have you been consistently on your medication?"
The medication.
Daily doses of Xanax and Benadryl and Celexa with breakfast, to cheer him up and calm him down and make him normal. The Blaine that walks the halls of McKinley wearing a smile, not the Blaine that can't sleep, clutching his stomach while he's wracked with sobs as if to keep from falling apart, the Blaine that hurts—
He replies with a simple, "Yes."
She continues, "And you haven't been cutting yourself, have you?"
He shifts uncomfortably. Almost he can feel the scars marring his thighs, the overlapping patterns of lines and gashes healed. And he feels ashamed.
"You can tell me, Blaine. I won't get mad."
It was on Saturday night, the same midnight spent in the park with Kurt. The last time he saw him since he returned to Ohio. He could remember panicking as the night dragged interminably and everyone was asleep, foraging his suitcase for a shaving razor and locking the bathroom door behind him. His breathing was erratic as he yanked the glinting blade into his flesh—
He doesn't need to say it.
He hates the way he's that transparent, that even this hourly rate stranger can sense the results of his sadness. Dr. Savannah's expression changes into one of concern as she asks, "Why?"
It's like a dam, a wall severing him from that edge, that flux of depression that usually forces him into a crouch with a blade that releases rows of crimson blood. It's in that instant that that wall dissipates. His face contorts into a sob and it's uncontrollable, the tears that fall for the remorse and the self-hatred and the longing. He crumbles. Kurt.
Kurt was the one thing good, really good, in his life. The only inevitability. Now he's gone and Blaine can't sleep, can't think, a hollow presence settling in his stomach.
"It's like I—I'm alone," he manages, twisting his knuckles into his eyes to eradicate the tears that come still. Sniffling. "Nothing helps anymore."
"Well, what about your boyfriend? Kurt? Doesn't he help?"
Blaine is so, so grateful when there's a knock on the door, the wordless reminder that their hour is up. Dr. Savannah seems to deliberate for a moment before rising, lifting a tissue from the box and handing it to him. Carefully she rubs his shoulder blade and murmurs empty somethings, pointless optimism. It's always easy to stay positive when it's not happening to you.
He rubs his face to rid his eyes from redness and the rawness of the crying. They exit the therapy room and she shuts and locks the door behind him. Through the maze of hallways Blaine follows her, until the lobby's in view and Mr. Anderson waits, arms crossed. Immediately he smiles politely at her, shaking her hand during the passing over of Blaine to him, offering a goodbye, a thank you.
The sun of the late afternoon tattoos Blaine's skin with shadows as he walks behind his father. It's always been this, this cautious quiet Blaine adopts around his father. Because he can't be judged if he isn't speaking. It's then, when they enter his gleaming car, that Mr. Anderson breaks the quiet.
"Was it good? The therapy?"
If Blaine didn't know any better he'd think this was his father's way of communicating, of reaching out to him. Really, he's just trying to remind why Blaine should be oh-so grateful for him. "Uh, yeah. I guess."
He starts the smooth engine. "It'd better be, with all the money I'm shelling out for you to talk. I don't have to do this, you know."
Mr. Anderson scrutinizes him in a rapid glance from the road to Blaine. "And stop fucking crying all the time. You look broken or something."