Author's note: I'm not exactly sure how this happened, and I deeply apologise for the angst. Song lyrics are from Once Upon A Time from the musical Bare: A Pop Opera.
Warning: established character death.
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Once upon a time
I first held your hand
And love was not a crime
He promised himself he wouldn't cry, but standing there alone he knows now what a foolish thing that was to do. Ever the performer, he'd grown so accustomed to keeping his tears at bay—on the stage and off—but he had to be kidding himself if he ever considered entertaining the possibility of containing them now. Limitless grey clouds hover above him in daunting little packs, and he thinks—if he listens closely—he'll be able to hear them laughing, spewing their mockery. But instead...
Quiet.
He realises just how quiet things actually are in the empty lot, the world slowing to an endless still, as he breathes out one, two, three breaths so rapid that his head spins. He doesn't take note of the lack of oxygen to his brain, merely puts one foot forward and stumbles towards heavy ornate doors.
He isn't ready for what's inside, not yet; he isn't sure he'll ever be.
In a private world
where you said, "Don't look down,"
But then I did
And now you're lost
Above me
Nothing feels... real.
He repeats the line in his head until the thought treks down to his vocal chords and journeys away on a quiet whisper, meant for no one in particular.
"Blaine?"
He almost believes the voice to be imagined, another temporary lapse in sanity that he's grown so prone to these past few days. His eyes stay trained on the doors, carved mahogany with deep stained vines, holding far more questions than answers behind them.
"How long have you been standing out here?"
He doesn't know. Time's become something unmeasured and irrelevant for him, simply another necessity far out of his control and suddenly too arbitrary to consider. The rouge hue in his fingertips, a dash of colour on his sullen face, indicates "awhile," but he can't provide anything specific, even if he so desired.
Ages. All night? Who knows? Who cares?
"Blaine, how long have you been out here?" The familiar voice repeats, worry seeping in like an old friend. "Are you alright?"
He wants to answer.
No.
Knows it's something he should do, not something he has any desire to actually follow through on. He settles for a silent shrug of his shoulders, disconnected and insincere, and a shiver strikes his spine like lightning.
"You're like lightning—I've never felt so alive," Kurt murmurs one night, beneath the twisted sheets.
"How ironic, because lightning would kill you," Blaine breathes back in a smug, sarcastic whisper and tangles his body closer against Kurt's.
He blinks away the memory of a conversation almost long forgotten, fleeting and flimsy as the life he used to know. A life spent shaded in darkness, pining for the sun.
How did it come to this?
So much left to say
Trapped alone here
With my best laid plans astray
"Blaine, your lips are turning blue..."
Like his eyes? Another cruel reminder.
"Come on, let's go back to my house."
A gentle hand snakes its way up to Blaine's shoulders, fingers enclosing like the coiling predator, and it's enough to rouse Blaine from his apathy for a passing moment. He twists away from constricting digits—meant only to offer comfort—and nearly knocks himself over in the act.
"I'm not finished here, Sam," he chokes out in a voice belonging to someone else, the raspy useless thing just barely able to convey his conviction.
"The service was over yesterday, Blaine..."
Blaine reminds himself of his earlier promise: no tears. He betrays himself, another vow he's fallen short of seeing through, as his knees buckle and the full force of a uncontainable sob rips through his entire body, leaving him winded and weak.
Standing scared outside a cold church
Soul search, seeking some lost answer
From a God who loves me
Sam's hand returns to Blaine's shoulder, but he still yearns not for comfort and shakes it off again. He tears his pants at the knees as he hits the pavement, the same ornate doors bearing down on him, unblinking and unyielding. The struggle is the same as it's always been—was he really meant to believe in a God who continued to shove him into a swirling vortex of despair. He'd seen a sliver of an escape, the transformation of his solitude, his fortitude, into a seemingly unbreakable bond with a fiery kindred spirit.
But cruel fate's desire called for an act to douse the flames.
Can I turn to You in my need?
Would You take me back or watch me bleed?
Are you there? There at all?
"This isn't going to help at all, Blaine. Please, let's—let's just go."
"Let go of me!" He argues weakly, exhaustion having claimed both his spirit and his stamina.
"This isn't going to bring him back! He wouldn't want this... Blaine, he—" defeat creeps into Sam's words, they're both fighting a losing battle with forces they never stood a chance against. "He wouldn't want this."
"What could I have done? Tell me—what could I have done?" Blaine pleads with a stained glass window as unsympathetic as the heavy wooden egress.
"Blaine, this isn't your fault—"
"It killed him, Sam. It killed him," Blaine can't allow the world to look upon his face anymore and shamefully hides it away in scathed palms. "I kept us a secret and it killed him," he continues on in muffled despair. "I killed—it's all my fault."
"You were afraid, you didn't—Blaine, you loved him. More than anything. I saw that," Sam's so overwhelmed with Blaine's confession, it's almost a chore to hunt down the words he needs from the depths of his murky brain.
"Not enough," Blaine's heart shrivels, thumping too hard and too fast with his guilt and regrets. "Not enough."
"Stop this, just stop it!" Sam closes his hands around Blaine's wrists and wrenches them away from his face. "Next you're going to compare yourself to the fuckers who actually killed him—I can't take this anymore!"
Blaine doesn't fight to free himself, and resigns to laying his weary head on his own shoulder as clinging tears lose their grip on his eyelashes and litter the asphalt.
"I lost a friend. Burt lost a son. It's not just—you're not the only one who lost him, Blaine..."
And as I fall from the person that I tried to be
Could You really love someone like me?
"I should have been there, Sam. I left him alone—I should have been there."
The weight of a world he'll never understand settles itself comfortably on his shoulders. He can't remember the last time his lungs have felt so empty, his chest so open, his limbs so weak.
"You couldn't have known," Sam tries again for reassurance, all in vain.
"He came looking for me," Blaine states simply, the scene still so irrevocably fresh in his mind. "We had a fight at Santana's party."
"Nobody in there cares, Blaine! They're our friends, we can trust them," Kurt chases Blaine out of the back door, frustration heavy on his voice.
"You think that now, but what would stop them from telling anyone else? Kurt, I can't do this anymore. Stop pushing it—" Blaine tries to keep his anger in check; the last thing he wants to do is fight.
"You're ashamed of me, of us, and I hate it. You're never going to stop being that scared little boy who runs away from everything. Just take my hand, I'm trying to help you."
"I can't," Blaine looks down at Kurt's outstretched hand. "And I won't. Please, just... don't say anything. They're not ready for it—"
"They aren't?" Kurt drops his hand, bitterness rising up to pair itself with his questions. "Or you aren't?"
"And I left," Blaine bites down on his lip to keep the rising bile from escaping. "He came looking for me and they found him, must have overheard us talking."
"Blaine," Sam stares back with wide, disbelieving eyes.
"It should have been me."
"Enough, just stop—"
"I didn't even get to say goodbye... And now I'm never going to—" he chokes down a sob, "To get to hold him ever again or—or kiss him, or—"
Sam slides his arms around Blaine's trembling frame, trying desperately to smother the shakes with unspoken reassurance. He has nothing left to say—what consolation could anyone offer at a time like this? He thinks back to Burt, so silent and stiff beside a casket holding the last reminder of a previous life, while Blaine knelt behind the crowd, hands tightly intertwined with each other in silent prayer. Sam wonders if anyone else noticed Blaine then, if they paid any mind to the boy crying just a little harder than everyone else, if they knew anything at all.
"My dad still doesn't know," Blaine's voice crackles through like static over long forgotten airwaves.
"About—"
"Any of it," he casts a glance back to the church. "Kurt wanted to... When we fought, he wanted us to tell him. About us. About everything."
"Burt knew," Sam studies Blaine's ungelled curls, "He was okay with it. He was happy for you two."
"He never said—"
"He was waiting for you to come say something to him," Sam interrupted. "I overheard him and Kurt talking one night, walls can only be so thick."
He thinks this will bring comfort to Blaine, offer some sort of... peace. When, really, the effect's been quite the opposite. Blaine had considered himself alone, even with Kurt, battling his giants with bare knuckles ripped open far too many times. If he had known, if he could have allowed himself to fall back onto Burt's acceptance...
Once upon a time
All I needed was his hand
In mine
"He kept watching you at the funeral," Sam continues in a careful whisper. "Didn't you notice?"
Blaine recalls the glances, and remembers mistaking them for accusatory looks of scorn. He thought Burt had placed the blame on him, by work of some irrational demon nestled deep inside his skull, and had chosen to avoid the father of his late lover in fear of confrontation. It was enough that he was forced to spend time with his own cruel thoughts, he couldn't bear to hear them parroted back in the words of someone else.
"I thought he—I thought..." Blaine considers simply curling up on the pavement, laying his own body to rest in hopes of a reunion somewhere safe between two worlds.
"I'm sure he'd like to see you..." Sam suggests with subtle urgency.
"No, I," Blaine's too exhausted for an argument. "I don't think—I..."
"Come on," Sam states, mind made up for the both of them, and stands, pulling Blaine to his feet. Blaine leans into him like a rag doll, limbs useless and heavy, and has to be led away to Sam's truck. He keeps his eyes to the church, a symbol of endless questions and acts with little meaning.
Where was the God meant to be watching over us? No miracles today? Nothing for the two boys whose only crime was loving each other?
Sam twists the dial for the heater, directing the vents onto Blaine, and casts wary glances over at his friend as he drives away. He hopes, if anything will come of this, that Blaine and Burt can help each other to recover. He isn't a praying man, has never given thought to God, and maybe it's having spent so much time around a church the past few days that leads him to praying, begging, pleading with all of his might that the two of them will somehow find peace in sharing happy anecdotes and fond memories of a boy they both loved so dearly.
And we knew it all
But now I know not what I do
I bow my head and turn to you