A/N: Hello everyone, and welcome to this (hopefully) lovely fic. I want to apologize for how terribly morbid this first chapter is; I really needed to get Kurt's depression across. This may be a trigger for some people, and for that I'm sorry. I promise it will just be Kurt/Blaine angst and fluff from hereafter.
The inspiration for this fic came from the book The Name of the Star by Maureen Johnson. While it's not an epic romance thing, I do strongly recommend it.
There's an actual line between depression and misery. No really, there is. While hard to actually define, it's there. Misery is an intense sadness, something you feel when someone close to you dies or your life is in shambles. But misery is also something you know you can pick yourself back up from. There's something, somewhere - an invisible peg - that you can grab onto and hoist yourself back up with. Maybe it's a little out of your reach at times, but it grows closer with each passing day.
When you're depressed, the peg is nearly nonexistent. On brighter days, it can be this translucent, teasing thing, hanging in front of your face but somehow you can't get to it. So you stay at the bottom of your self-dug snake pit and wait to rot.
Kurt Hummel was depressed.
Looking at him as an outsider, you wouldn't guess it. He was silver-tongued, arrogant, and motivated. Even his best friends would have never guessed what was going on in his head.
But Kurt was the type of person who kept bad things inside until he exploded. Only this time, there would be no explosion. No spark, no fire. Things would end. Simply and cleanly.
He'd just had it. He was fed up with the world and the emptiness and the question of why. Why was he here? Why was he alive? What was the point of even living if you were going to die anyway? What was the point of doing something if someone else could do it ten times better? Sure, these were the questions that had been asked for centuries and centuries, but Kurt spent a lot more time on them than others seemed to. It was just how Kurt was; he overthought absolutely everything.
The incessant bullying he dealt with was not helping, either. A slushie to the face, the constant name calling, the lack of any person who understood what he was going through. Sure, they got bullied, but it wasn't anything close to what Kurt was forced to deal with on a daily basis. Though Kurt wasn't the sort to have a "my problems are greater than your problems" mentality, it was true. Simple as that. None of the others were beaten and bruised, both mentally and physically, until they couldn't take it anymore. And they all had significant others, boyfriends and girlfriends, that were a shoulder to cry on. Even if Kurt liked to think of himself as independent, no one was entirely independent. That's why people who live by themselves for years and years go mental. You need other people to live a healthy life.
All day in school, Kurt contemplated how he would do this. Pills? No, he heard that was the worst. Gun, cutting? Too messy. He wouldn't want his dad to have to clean up after him. His dad… Oh. He hadn't really thought about what this would do to the man.
At least he wasn't alone. He had Carole and Finn. They would all take care of each other.
By the end of the school day, it was decided. Hanging would be best. It broke your neck instantly, right? Instant death. Perfect. Kurt needed something to be instantaneous for once.
He'd hugged all of his best friends, told all of his bullies to fuck off, and left the school. His dad wouldn't be home. He contemplated writing a note, but what did one say in a suicide note? 'Sorry, I did this to you', 'Sorry I was a general failure as a son', 'Sorry that I left my bed unmade'? No, he couldn't manage to write it down. His hands were shaking too badly anyway, he doubted he could write anything.
Tying the noose was the hardest part. With his hands shaking, it took him almost a half an hour. But when he was done, he stood up on a chair and tied it to the sturdiest pipe he could find.
Suddenly, there was a rattling noise. Kurt snapped his head around, but saw nothing.
"Dad?" he called. No response. "Carole? Finn?" Nothing.
Figuring it was his nerves, he went back to the task at hand. Once the knot was sturdy and he was sure it could hold him up. Then he slid the noose over his neck, and jumped off the chair.
The thing about hanging yourself is, you've actually got a really poor chance that you'll die on impact. It's actually an incredibly painful way to die, if your neck doesn't break.
Kurt was the unlucky - or lucky, depending on your outlook - one in this scenario. While he didn't die on impact, he definitely got the pain aspect of it. His throat felt like it was on fire and it was being beaten at the same time. He immediately regretted this decision, and struggled to get back on the chair. He kicked and pulled on the rope to no avail.
But then, something caught his eye. A handsome boy, or young man, rather, was running around frantically and screaming his head off. His clothes were something straight out of an eighties movie, an exact replica of Kevin Bacon's 'first day of school' outfit in Footloose. Kurt's eyes went wide, and he tried to yell for help, but he couldn't. How on Earth did this boy not see him, anyway? What was he doing?
Finally, the young man let out a great, heaving sigh, his triangular shaped eyebrows knitting together in fierce determination. He gave an intense push towards the chair, and suddenly, Kurt was standing on it, coughing his lungs out. The young man looked at his hands, flabbergasted, before he jumped on the chair and yanked the rope off of Kurt's neck. Finally, he looked at Kurt, his eyes a lovely hazel color, but somehow milky.
"If you try this again, Kurt," he hissed, glaring, "I'll kill you myself."
Then he hopped down from the chair, muttering 'Idiot, idiot', before walking straight through the wall. The Kurt fell from the chair, and everything turned black.
Blaine couldn't believe his eyes. This… this idiotic… stupid… horrible… child! How could he do this to himself? And what could Blaine do? Nothing. Nothing at all. Because he was this stupid, useless, translucent... thing.
Well, he was going to damn well try. He wasn't about to let Kurt throw his life away. What a waste of talent. What a waste of beauty.
In his anger, Blaine was able to fling a paint can to the back of the shelf. It stopped Kurt for a minute, long enough for Blaine to get his bearings. Maybe Kurt would get it together. Maybe he would realize what a terrible idea this was. Maybe he would stop and get off the chair and continue to be beautiful and grace the world with his presence. But no such luck.
Pacing back and forth along the garage, he tried to ignore Kurt's gasps and struggles because it only made him more frantic, which in turn made his head foggier. They actually turned out to be no less than impossible to ignore. So he screamed. He screamed so loudly that he couldn't hear Kurt anymore, and somehow his screams helped. It cleared his head, but it also made him angrier. Angry at Kurt, whose ignorance was going to send him to the depths of despair. If he thought life was bad, he wouldn't want to know what death was like.
On impulse, Blaine gave a whole-hearted shove to the chair that sat beside Kurt's flailing limbs. To his shock, it slid right back under Kurt and held him up.
Blaine stared at his hands in shock. How had he done that? The most he'd ever been able to move was a piece of trash, some soda can. This wasn't something he should have been able to do. Only people with ties could do it. But then, there Kurt was, standing on the chair and gasping for breath. So preoccupied, he didn't notice that Kurt was staring wide-eyed at him.
Pumped up by this sudden surge of power, Blaine hopped on the chair and yanked the noose off Kurt's neck. Even if he had just done the impossible, that didn't make him any less angry at Kurt.
He could barely hear his own words as he hissed them at Kurt. This boy, the boy he'd been infatuated with ever since he'd found his way to Lima, had almost turned into what he was. Sad, bitter, lonely… It was a well-known fact that all suicides became ghosts. He wasn't going to let Kurt do this to himself.
Once he was finished, he jumped onto the ground and walked through the wall, too angry to think about using an exit.
This boy would be the second-death of him.