Media: Fic
Title: Have you ever been alone in a crowded room
Rating: R
Warnings for this chapter: Self harm
Warnings for whole story: Self harm, bullying, homophobia, assault, poor Blainey gets beaten up pretty bad
Spoilers: 4X11
Word Count: 1798
Summary: He can't distinguish between the last time, almost four years ago now, and this time, not even four minutes ago. The words are the same and the outcome's the same, and again, no one is here to protect him. How does it happen to someone twice? In which Sadie Hawkins happens, history repeats itself and Blaine cries an awful lot.
Author's note: Title from the song Dark Blue by Jack's mannequin.
He hasn't done it in a long time, an awfully long time. It's almost a lifetime away now, for he had promised himself he would spend a lifetime with Kurt. But it was back before the boy and the blazer and everything he has come to feel protected by. It was a dark time, a lonely time, filled with empty nights and shattered lives and the pain.
The pain he still craves.
He stands in the bathroom, door locked even though his parents are out, the overhead light is too bright, but it shows his veins and it shows his skin and that's all he needs. He replays the day's events, an announcement and those three words he has come to associate with fear and pain and this: the bathroom and the blade and the broken little boy. Experience has taught him that he can throw out every blade in the house, his parents can lock away the knives and his brother can beg him not to, but he will still find a way. Today it had come in the form of a pencil sharpener and a screw driver and some rubbing alcohol.
Shards of his day flash through his mind, easy to see in this glaring light. The way his chest had grasped and lungs had stopped and panic had overridden every sense in his body before the sentence was even finished. Three words.
Sadie.
Hawkins.
Dance.
And he had been reduced to a mouse under a plough, an ant under a boot, a boy beneath a fist. He remembers running off to cry in the bathroom, trying to even his breathing at his locker as the rest of the school buzzed with excitement, and lying to Sam as the boy winced with worry. He remembers the clawing, gasping sensation as his lungs filled with useless air, as his eyes blacked out and his heart pounded and he could feel every organ in his body straining to work. He remembers the panic and the blind fear and the wracking tears as his body convulsed with the need to breathe and his fingernails clawed with the need to feel.
And now this, the thing he has been thinking about all day long. He takes a deep breath, removes his cardigan completely, and presents his left arm for punishment. The blade is gripped in his right hand. It's smaller than the ones he used to use, the ones he removed from his razor, the ones Cooper had found dripping with blood. He remembers the screaming and the fighting and the clawing with his fingernails when he had nothing else to use. He remembers being too numb to care that his father was still disappointed with him and his mother was crying more than ever and his brother, well his brother was almost as broken as he is. He remembers the trips to the therapist and the conversations his parents had when they thought he couldn't hear and he remembers buying another razor in secret, hiding the blades in the tissue box next to his bed and cutting his thighs and his chest when people started checking his wrists. He remembers standing naked in front of the mirror, his body painted with scratches, some red raw and others fading brown, his whole body spotted with blood and pain and that itching that comes a few days afterwards.
And he knows it's wrong, but he wants it again.
Just for now, just today he tells himself. Because it's been a hard day and everyone says that he has to go to the dance, he's senior class president after all, and it's just brought back some feelings. It's nothing much- that sinking feeling in his chest, that cataclysmic opening and then the slow freefalling, sinking down down down somewhere deep inside himself, somewhere dark and burning and terrifying. It's just brought back that aching in his chest, the clawing in his heart, that itching of his skin to be cut. It's not going to be a problem, not like last time. He is Blaine Anderson, he is confident and composed and he can stop whenever he wants. He just doesn't want to.
He makes the first cut.
It hurts a little more than he remembers, but it's a good hurt, it's a pain he's in control of, and it distracts him from the other pain, the one that scares him as it builds in his chest and works its way out of his throat and his eyes and his pores. It doesn't bleed straight away, it barely leaves a mark, so he does it again. And again. In the same place, he does it over and over until suddenly a violent pool of red is swelling along the cut, he can see the opening in his arm and he feels the burn and he smiles. He cuts again, moving further up his arm, he rips at the flesh and then waits a few seconds in nervous anticipation until the blood appears. It's a nice contrast against the white of skin, everyone keeps saying how pale he is. Snow white and Rose red. He keeps cutting, he doesn't keep count, just lets himself get lost in the skilful swing of his hand, the monotonous sear of pain and the steady flow of blood.
He remembers being a fourteen year old boy, despising himself and his family and the world around him. It had started out as a punishment, he deserved it, he deserved the constant pain and the ugly scars and the tears he had shed every night. And then something had changed, he had craved the drag of a knife over skin, the way a blade can catch for a second before it glides across your body and the way they sting every night when you try to sleep. He had pressed his fingers against the scars during lessons, smiling slyly to himself, and he'd started to cut where he knew he'd feel it, the inside of his thighs where his jeans rubbed against them as he walked and his hip bones where a belt could easily press too hard. He remembers getting lost in it, using it as a life line. He remembers clinging with broken fingers to something that was never going to save him.
Eventually he had got better, everything had faded into the belligerent grey scars that Kurt pretended not to see every time they had sex, he had only asked about them once and Blaine had cried and they'd pretended it had never happened after that. The itch to hurt himself, to maim himself, had gone away with his feelings of worthlessness and his constant attempts to impress his father. He had become warbler Blaine, mentor Blaine, boyfriend Blaine.
Now he's back to being plain old Blaine.
The blade had been his friend, it had supported him through the darkest time in his life and it had been there for him when no one else was. It's good to be reunited. Because once again he is alone, nobody cares and nobody's here and all he has to rely on is this shiny little blade. A friend that won't ever leave him.
He doesn't blame Kurt, he doesn't blame Cooper or Sam or any of the warblers. He blames himself, and that's why this is such a good idea, because this doesn't hurt anyone but himself. He's tired of hurting people.
So he cuts and he scars and he enjoys his punishment because it makes him forget, it makes him forget what he is and who he is and how he's never good enough for anyone. He submerges himself in the pain and for a few minutes he forgets.
And it's wonderful.
And then he stops, he washes the blood away and hides his blade-just in case- and he dabs at his freshly opened arm with some more of the rubbing alcohol because he loves the burn and the sting as it gets in his wounds, he loves the hiss of breath between gritted teethed and the shock of finger nails in palms when he clenches his fist too tight. And he loves the pain.
He tiptoes to his bedroom, pulling on pyjamas that are too small and that drag across the puffy red scratches. He presses his fingers and feels a new wave of blood that he doesn't bother to clean. He presses harder and tries not to cry out in pain. He bites his tongue and his cheek and he collapses onto his bed like a corpse in water, feeling less alive than he's ever felt before.
He cries.
Hot and heavy and a betrayal coming from his own body, a traitor in his midst. He scratches across the scars and he claws at his eyes and he wishes that someone were here.
Kurt, who would hold him and kiss him and always knew how to make him better, except he's destroyed everything he has with Kurt, he's ripped down the walls of their palace and he's set fire to their universe and he's ripped that boy to shreds.
Cooper, who would make him laugh and would hold him tight and who would order take out, but Cooper isn't here, because Cooper has better things to worry about than silly little boys who are afraid of school dances.
His mother, who would make hot chocolate and stroke his hair and fetch him a blanket, except she'd cry and try to send him back to Dalton and would take him back to the doctor.
His father, who would tell him he was weak, that Andersons don't cry and that only girls cut themselves and that he's never been good at anything. It would still be better than being alone.
Blaine's tired, he's tired of fighting and he's tired of hoping and he's tired of swimming against this relentless torrent of pain, wave after wave of hurting the ones you love and drowning everything you have and still waking up gasping on the beach. He's tired of being useless and he's tired of caring too much and he's tired of working for the world around him. He's an empty jar, he's a trend that's gone out of fashion, a toy who's child has grown up and a light that's been switched on in the daylight. And he's beginning to think, that maybe he'd quite like to be switched off now.
So he lies and he sleeps and he ignores the stinging of the scars against his skin and the weight of the world against his shoulders, and he thinks that maybe this isn't such a bad arrangement after all. Maybe this is the key to surviving the dance and the school and the rest of his life.
Maybe.