"So, uh, Blaine… Do you want some more potatoes?"
Blaine's head jerked up from his plate, Finn's voice putting him on alert. Finn was larger than he was, and Blaine couldn't stop thinking about how easy it would be for those hands to pin him down, and make bruises in his skin….
But no, Finn wouldn't do that. Finn wasn't a troll. Blaine wasn't sure what Finn was, to be honest.
"Blaine?"
Carole's voice sounded worried, and Blaine realized he had been staring at Finn's face. "No, thank you," He said, willing his voice to come out louder than a squeak. Carole gave him a soft smile, and gently placed her hand on top of his. She smelled nice, like vanilla scented soap, and her hands were soft. Safe. Helping. An elf. Blaine relaxed into her.
It wasn't until halfway through the meal that it happened. Blaine took a bite of meatloaf and Kurt slid his hand across the table. It was a half instinctive action, meant to be reassuring, but Blaine jerked away and swallowed. The bite went down too fast, Blaine's throat rebelling against it.
And then it was nothing but, I can't breathe, I can't breathe, oh, please, stop, get it out, it hurts, get it out, please, stop. It was in his mouth, oh please, no, it was inside him and he couldn't breathe, couldn't scream and he had to scream because Jeremiah was holding him down and breathing in his face and it hurt, it hurt, IT HURT….
"Blaine! Blaine, honey, are you okay?"
Blaine came back to reality on the floor of the Hummel's kitchen, having jerked out of his chair during the flashback. Carole was hovering over him, her hand warm against his forehead. Where Jeremiah's breath had been, there was only the smell of a mother, and Blaine closed his eyes, breathing it in.
It wasn't until his heart stopped racing and his throat stopped burning that Blaine realized there were another set of hands running gently over his hair, rubbing soothing patterns into his shoulders. They were too small to be Finn's, too gentle to be Burt. But that meant Kurt was… No!
"Don't!" Blaine shrieked, twisting away from Kurt's hands. Blaine sat up and stared into Kurt's eyes, desperate to see if he'd noticed, if he'd found out. One look at Kurt's face and Blaine knew he hadn't.
There was no disgust, no sick realization that he wasn't what he should be. Only pain. Why did he hurt everyone? Why did he have to be such a… a…
"I want to go to bed." Blaine said quietly.
The Hummels went about the rest of their evening unaware that Blaine was awake, unaware that he was listening. Blaine never slept well anymore, but he was always listening. It was like his ears were on hyper alert, trying to warn him more effectively, since they had obviously failed him before. Carole had come up to bring him some toast just after dinner, and he'd pretended to be asleep, but Blaine knew he wouldn't be able to sleep. Not tonight. So he listened.
He listened to Finn play a half-hearted game of Bioshock before practicing a drum solo. Blaine heard him groan with relief as he rolled into bed, heard his soft snoring thirty seconds later.
Kurt was listening to Flyleaf in the shower, which made Blaine's heart hurt because he'd bought Kurt that C.D. after seeing how many Flyleaf songs were on his Ipod. Kurt hated Flyleaf. He explained gently that he only had their songs on his Ipod because they were good songs to listen to in the shower after a bad day. No one could hear him cry over Lacey Sturm's screaming.
Kurt's Ipod must have run out of juice, because there was no alternative rock to mask the sound of Kurt crying himself to sleep an hour later.
Blaine listened to Carole and Burt arguing after Finn and Kurt had fallen asleep.
"That's none of my business," Carole hissed, "I love you, and if it were anything else, I would tell you, but that boy has a right to his privacy. What his father told me about is in confidence, and I think I should at least consult Joe Anderson before telling anyone else - "
"He's living in my house, he's dating my son; I think I deserve the basics. Like why he was screaming his head off on my kitchen floor. I'm not asking for his life story, I just want to know what's wrong with the boy!"
Blaine shivered and slid even further under the covers. What's wrong with him.
For the first time in years, he played with the thin scars around his wrists. There was a line in one of them, new scar tissue from where he'd pulled against the ropes. But the old scars were still there, thin lines that stood testament to the day he'd run a knife over them, desperate for the pain to end. Blaine never thought he'd feel like that again.
The Hummel family was all asleep when Blaine crept out of his bed. He walked over to the mirror Kurt had set against the far wall. It was a grand old thing; decorated in tiny, elegant spirals and silver bells in the shape of musical notes. Blaine stared into the mirror, watching how sunken his eyes were, the bruising against one still refusing to go down. The pajamas he'd borrowed from Finn seemed rough and coarse and unfamiliar, but Blaine refused to take them off. Before it happened, Blaine slept in his underwear. Before it happened, his eyes didn't look so mean and empty.
Blaine stared at his face in the mirror for several minutes, until the face didn't look like him anymore, until it didn't look like anything, and he could finally spit the word out, the word that had been plaguing him for days.
"Faggot."
Blaine had never said that word before. His father had taught him that it was uncouth, along with damn and hell and several other words he had never grown rebellious enough to use, even in his thoughts. The word burned coming out, like fire, but Blaine didn't stop them. He liked seeing the boy in the mirror flinch.
"What? Did you want to be something else? Did you want to be special, loved? Well, too bad. You let him in, you let him take it all away from you. Now you have to face, it, you're nothing but a dirty faggot whore."
Blaine felt tears running down his cheeks, saw the boy in the mirror trembling with pain, and ran his fingers along the twin scars on his wrists. Back and forth. Pain and punishment. It never ended. It will never end.
"And that's all you'll ever be."
