remember, guys, i've put up the warnings before. i'm not going to do it again but this is just to remind you this is pretty heavy material dealing with loads of aspects. if you've pushed on this far, then you should know what we've dealt with in terms of themes and so forth xo Peanut Butter/Sam

#25 – From Kurt, to Blaine – Part 13

"Kurt?" Blaine stepped inside the room, holding a bouquet of flowers. He visited too frequently now, sometimes to talk about books with Kurt, sometimes to talk about Kurt's depression and other times to talk about nothing and everything at once.

Kurt wiped his eyes away with his jacket, something he wore all the time now. He said he was cold, when in fact, he just did not want to see the crisscrossing scars that bathed his body anymore. He didn't want Blaine to see them either. They felt too personal now, even though Blaine knew about his suicide attempt and depression. The subject of self-harming was something else entirely in Kurt's perspective.

"Hello, Blaine," Kurt said, eyes slightly rimmed with red.

Blaine frowned when he noticed the tears that were filling Kurt's eyes. "What's wrong?" he sounded broken-hearted, almost as if he'd already formed a very close connection with Kurt and was incredibly disheartened to see him cry.

Kurt hoped it was just that. "My kidneys are failing."

"Oh," Blaine realised the implications of that immediately, pursing his lips.

"I know this sounds stupid but because my mood changed and…" Kurt shook his head. "I don't want to die, Blaine. Not normally. It's just the mood I was in when I took those pills versus now is so different. I want to live. I do not want to die of renal failure. I do not want to be on dialysis. I'm sick of having to get up to go to the bathroom to either puke or go. I'm sick of waking up at three am to use said bathroom."

Blaine moved towards Kurt, wrapping his arms around the male along. Kurt was buried in Blaine's cologne and the bouquet of fresh flowers that he was carrying along with him. "Shhh."

The gesture felt intimate. Kurt wondered if it was. He took the bouquet from Blaine's hands when it was offered to him but spent a few minutes just staring at the fuchsia-coloured flowers that seemed to bring the only source of colour in the room.

"How was it like to be in the hospital, Blaine?"

Somehow, Blaine wasn't expecting that question at all. "Horrible," he mumbled, shaking his head before offering a smile. "It's still horrible, but I'll tell you one thing—I'd rather be on that bed rather than be staring down at it."

That wasn't something that Kurt thought he'd hear. He looked at Blaine with a puzzled expression. The ravenette had practically told him that he'd rather be sick than witnessing the sick. It just reinforced how much Blaine liked people, how selfless he was but Kurt also knew he could be quite selfish. It was amazing how one person could be the exact definition of a certain word, but also its antonym at the same time.

People were not two-dimensional, or even three – there were so many sides that Kurt didn't know which one to look at. He didn't know if that was a good thing or not yet.

"You are a confusing person, Mr Anderson," Kurt finally announced, shaking his head. "Why would you rather be on this bed is beyond my understanding. I hate the hospital."

He wondered if Sebastian was ever in the hospital. He remembered peering into the cot he was at, lying there, practically dead but not—he wondered if Sebastian was ever beaten to the point where just the only way he'd live was through a blood transfusion. The scary thing was that from what Kurt knew, that didn't sound like an abhorrent assumption. It was a realistic, feasible one and that was what made Kurt feel so sick.

"I need a kidney transplant," Kurt expressed, shaking his head. "Someone mentioned it to me previously. It's just…I don't want to think about it is all. I just don't feel like I deserve it, taken the fact that I'm that boy that just about did this to himself. I should deal with the consequences. At a specific time, this was what I wanted."

"Don't say that, Kurt," Blaine's voice was filled with that emotion that Kurt couldn't read, but he didn't have to put a word to it.

Kurt shook his head, looking down at his knees. "They're thinking of letting my stepbrother donate me his kidney. I'm an AB positive so I can basically take from every single blood type in existence. Finn's okay with giving me one of his kidneys. I told him he that he didn't have to bother. I'm okay with facing up to consequences and dying just because I was so stupid as to—"

"Kurt," Blaine repeated, trying to cut him off. "Let him do it."

"Why?" Kurt raised an eyebrow. "There are so many things that could go wrong in an organ transplant and I don't want to risk either of us. I don't want to. I'm tired of—"

"Kurt! Stop it!" Blaine's voice was a little angrier this time. Kurt was surprised at the sudden anger. "Let him do it. Stop overanalysing everything. It's not doing you any good. Isn't that same over analysis that wound you up on this stupid bed? People want to help you Kurt, believe it or not. You might be okay with you dying but we're not!"

Kurt was silent afterwards, playing with the hem of his hospital gown before he nodded his head. "Fine," he was starting to feel more than just a tad nauseous. He wasn't sure what that was from. He just wanted to be knocked out and sedated.

The Glee clubbers were asking for where he was, practically blowing up his phone. Kurt had just answered them that day after he got wind of his renal function. Something happened, he typed out, and now, I'm in the hospital and don't yell at Finn for not telling you because I didn't want him to. I thought I'd be able to go home, but turns out it might just be serious.

He managed to dodge mentioning of him taking any pills. He didn't want them to know that it was a suicide attempt. He didn't want them to know about his depression. Finn told him that probably wasn't a good idea.

Finn.

Finn was in therapy right now, for bulimia and for how he was handling the rape from what Carole told him. Kurt was happy to hear that, but he could tell Finn right now was more spaced out. He'd stopped losing weight, and Kurt was a little glad about that, but he hadn't seen Finn in a while now. He didn't want to talk to anyone. He'd told Burt not to come in on specific days just because Kurt wanted to be alone with his books. Blaine was the only person that had a free pass to come when he wanted to. He even told the New Directions and Mr Schue that they were not allowed to visit him when they pleased, that he just had to be alone right now. He didn't know how to react. His emotions were all over the place and he was too guilty to accept anyone's help.

"Okay?" Blaine broke the silence.

"Okay," Kurt nodded his head, watching Blaine stare at him vacantly.

Blaine smiled at him weakly. "You're a really nice boy, Kurt, and I think I've gotten really attached to you already and I just don't want to lose you before I got to know you. You're too young to die."

Kurt shrugged, finding that statement meaningless. "We're all too young to die, Blaine."

Blaine looked overtaken by that statement. "You are something else, Kurt Hummel."

"And what about you, Mr Anderson?" Kurt responded with a light hearted tone of voice before he shook his head. "I think I'll be able to tell my friends to visit me soon. I don't…I've been avoiding most human contact for a while now. Slightly hard to do with a hospital and also, you're quite charming so I still have to have to let you in."

Blaine could only nod his head and offer Kurt a bright grin.

Then it happened a few days later. Kurt was curling up in his bed, making sure sheets covered everything. He liked to pretend that cuts did not exist and that he was not just one of 'those' depressed adolescents that seemed to have stupid reasons for suicides. Yes, had it been anyone else Kurt wouldn't have ever thought that it was stupid. Suicide was not stupid, but for some reason, it only applied to him. He was only stupid for killing himself after a falling out with his family. He was only stupid for turning to the knife when times were hard—

"Kurt!"

Kurt was broken down from his train of process when he heard the sound of nobody other than Rachel Berry. He turned around to face her, raising his eyebrow in a quizzical expression.

"I won't believe you!" Rachel exclaimed, crossing her arms. "You don't tell us where you are. You don't text back. You don't—"

"I'm in the hospital," Kurt cut her off, choosing to answer her question then.

Rachel shook her head, looking slightly annoyed and he didn't blame her. She sighed. Mercedes seemed to take the opposite approach, walking towards him only to place a hand on his shoulder. "Kurt, are you okay? What happened? What's wrong?"

"My kidneys are failing," Kurt was quick to respond, hoping that a mention of why would not come up. He felt like it wouldn't come up which was why he'd mentioned it so easily. "Finn might just give me a transplant. In fact, anyone can considering my blood type is a complete taker. AB positive. I just…am not comfortable with the idea of Finn offering me one of his kidneys for Christ's sake."

"You better take up the transplant," Rachel was quick to spit out. Finn seemed to walk into the room with a raised expression and a cup of coffee in one hand. "Kurt, you may not be comfortable with the thought of you taking an organ from someone but we're not comfortable with the thought of you—"

"—dying," Kurt cut her off. Exactly what Blaine had said, but it sounded different coming from Rachel. "Yes, I'm aware."

"I'm pretty sure you're not comfortable with the thought of you dying either."

It was that statement that made Kurt snap. He found himself staring at Rachel as if she'd personally insulted him, glaring at her with those wide dark eyes before he spat out, word after word – filled with nothing more than mere venom. "Do you know why my kidneys are failing, Rachel?"

"Because you're sick?" Rachel didn't seem to understand where Rachel was headed at.

Kurt laughed, and his laughing caused Rachel to be suddenly aware of the environment around her. "You know nothing about me," Kurt said, smirking and feeling practically insane. "You can't tell me that I'm not comfortable with the thought of me dying! Do you know why, Rachel? Because the reason my kidneys are failing is because I decided to take a bottle of ibuprofen and a whole box of paracetamol! So don't tell me that I'm not comfortable with dying considering I tried to kill myself!"

Kurt's heart monitor was flying over the charts, and Finn looked back at Rachel before telling her to come along with him. Kurt could tell that Finn was going to blow up, but he didn't even care anymore. He just wanted Rachel out of the room. He wanted to go back in time and never take those stupid pills. He also somehow wanted to make sure he took even more and actually did wind up dead. He wasn't sure if he wanted to die anymore, or if he wanted to live. He kept on alternating between the both, and it showed in his responses and his speech.

When Rachel was made to leave, Kurt's eyes were filling with tears. Crying was another thing he was good at. That was all he was good at. Crying, whining and threatening to die off but never quite well doing it.

Mercedes moved forward. The rest of the New Directions did too. Kurt did a quick inspection – Brittany, Santana, Artie, Mike and Tina all had shocked expressions. Mercedes looked devastated, as she tried to pull Kurt close to her as for him to calm down. Puck was raising an eyebrow, as if he was still wondering what was going on. Standing beside him was none other than Quinn Fabray, whom bore such a sympathetic look Kurt swore that they'd been friends for years. Even the new kid Sam was looking incredibly sad and shocked, even though he didn't really know Kurt as well as everyone else.

There were lapses of silence, and Kurt calming down. He told them that he was to finish the chapter he was at. They didn't seem to mind the extensive amount of silence. Finn and Rachel came back, with Rachel murmuring a quick apology to him and rubbing his shoulder. Whatever Finn had said must've been incredibly convincing. Kurt was unhappy to say that he'd just about added to the list of traumas that Finn had to go through to achieve his current state of mind.

Finn sat down on the cot, staring down at his floor. "You're going to take my kidney, right?" he asked, offering a soft smile. "Because I like…really want you to take it."

Kurt sighed deeply. "Only you would be practically begging me to take your kidney."

Finn smiled. "I'm nice like that," he said before he shook his head.

And that was the end of the kidney discussion. Burt would not have Kurt deny it, and after a hectic morning and a misunderstanding of the timings that were scheduled for the transplantation, it was done with. Kurt was lying in his bed afterwards, just watching Finn asleep afterwards. He felt like it was too quick – the shift from nearly dying to being alive. It was amazing how small that link was, how fragile it was, how one person that was alive only seconds ago could die so quickly or a person that was on the brick of death slowly surfaced back into life. It was beautiful but also, tragic. It just reminded Kurt of how fragile life was, the break – he could remember his Mother on that bed.

He'd expected it somehow, just not that day. He didn't understand why. He could remember himself as a child, eating sushi rolls from his lunch container whilst waiting on the bus stop. He gobbled his food down – peanut butter, butter and jam sandwiches, crumpets filled with strawberry jam, pots of pudding, sushi rolls, tuna salads – he could taste them all as sharply as he could in memory as he did upon eating the food. What once were staples in his diet he hadn't seen or tasted in years now and he could remember how self-conscious he felt whilst eating it, even away from peering, judging eyes raking up on his frame.

He wondered about Finn. He wondered how intense that feeling must be for him, the feeling that drove him to the bathroom straight afterwards to puke his food. The six-foot-three tall boy that nobody would've guessed would have such problems crouching down and turning the products of his misery into puke and acid. Kurt wondered how much pain he had to be in, how desperate he was to turn to that. He could imagine a thirteen year old Finn, having have ingested a brownie and half a slice of pizza, spending an hour in the bathroom trying to vomit but being unable to. It was an image he'd read in a book once, and something that he'd always remembered—something that always popped into his mind when he thought of Finn puking.

He imagined those knuckles, scarred and cut-open, bleeding and Finn would keep on going. He could taste the blood on Finn's tongue. It was all so imaginary, but who knew what happened behind closed doors, really? Kurt knew what he could do behind closed doors. He would turn from just a boy to something else, a manifestation of the disease. He would go from Kurt to what was essentially the self-destruction phase of his depression, morphing himself into this monster that only sought to destroy but only to destroy himself. Cut himself into ribbons until he bled, only to hate himself over again for needing to do that.

He remembered how Finn looked like a year ago – he was pudgier, rounder, but still not quite fat. Finn was never fat in his life and that was one thing that Kurt knew too well. Kurt knew how being overweight was really like, whereas Finn was too tall to look majorly overweight in Kurt's opinion. He felt like it was all of a sudden that Finn looked like he'd lost twenty or thirty pounds of weight. Actually, the more Kurt looked at it, the more he realised that it was feasible for him to think that Finn had lost thirty pounds of pure fat.

His eyes were analysing the boy's frame for what it was. He shuddered to think how Finn would look like if he wore Sebastian's delicate frame. Firstly, Sebastian was compact in all ways, small-framed with wrists that looked impossibly small in diameter. Finn was the opposite. His wrists were bony enough that Kurt could make out the fact that Finn's bone had an impressively large diameter. Finn wouldn't look thin if he lost loads of weight like Sebastian did. He'd bloody look skeletal.

However, Finn told him he wanted to weigh 125, and as far as Kurt could tell, skeletal was the goal.

That disturbed him to think that Finn was potentially striving for death. He wondered what could've caused that then, the need to lose so much weight. He believed that it was ignited by the fact that he had been raped only a few short months ago. Now that he had to stay at home, Finn went through phases of locking himself in his room and refusing human contact. That was something that Kurt knew all too well. Kurt could tell that Finn wanted to be isolated, but he also did not want to be alone with his thoughts.

Finn wanted to pretend that he was just fine, that his problems did not exist or were not of supreme importance. Thinking about it – if Kurt had heard that Finn tried to take his own life, he would not be surprised. He'd have expected it. That made Kurt's stomach lurch. Kurt was a less viable candidate for things such as suicide and self-harm, yet here he was, and there were his arms, soft, pliable and no longer just white – but colours donned in with its milky nature. It made Kurt feel unnerved.

"Hey," Finn's greeting broke Kurt out of his trance. "Are you okay?"

"Yeah," Kurt nodded his head. "Are you?"

"Yeah," Finn stated.

"What are you thinking about?" it was such a simple question that Kurt had asked, and he didn't expect the answer that Finn would give him.

Finn shrugged. "How much weight I'd lose because I donated my kidney."

Kurt's breathing was sharp. "I am perfectly aware that you donated your kidney for me," he explained then added on. "However, I'm guessing weight loss is another huge reason—significant to you."

Finn nodded his head, looking despondent and ashamed.

"Finn, calm down," was Kurt's first statement. "If anything, I should be the last person on the earth that should be telling you that your mental disorder does not impact your life and impair your thinking to that horrendous of an extent."

Finn slowly nodded his head.

Kurt's hands formed a slight tremble from his thoughts. "Hey, Finn—you'd answer my questions, wouldn't you?"

Finn paused for a minute, as if analysing how okay was him to say 'depends on the question' (Kurt knew that was what he would normally say – it was evident to him considering Finn's background). "Yeah," he finally nodded his head.

Kurt supposed that was one of the 'perks' of attempting to kill himself. People did not want to deny his requests usually, only if they did not imply him having to die anyway (see kidney transplant).

"How much do you weigh?" the question fell off Kurt's lips without him really thinking.

Finn stared at Kurt, looking slightly quite shell-shocked before he asked, "How much do you weigh? And how tall are you?" he answered Kurt's question with the very question that Kurt as asking him.

He wondered if Finn could do a BMI assessment just by knowing the values. Kurt did not think that Finn was stupid. He wouldn't have asked for height if he wasn't interested in Kurt's BMI as well as his actual weight. "I am about five-foot-eleven—"Kurt was cut off by Finn.

"No way," Finn's cheeks coloured in. "I thought you were shorter."

"I am not! Everyone's short to you," Kurt huffed, shaking his head. "I'm 171 pounds last I checked, down two pounds in weight. That makes my BMI – because I know you're wondering what it is – it is about 23.8. And don't look at me like that. The only reason I calculate my BMI quite frequently is out of curiosity and boredom rather than diligent obsession."

"What's diligent?" somehow, the word falling out of Finn's mouth sounded much more poetic than falling out of Kurt's. He then waited a few seconds before adding on, "What's like the lowest and highest you've ever weighed?"

"Diligent means meticulous," Kurt then flushed before saying. "It means—"

"I know what meticulous means," Finn was quick to say.

Kurt found that strange, but then nodded his head. "Alright," he sighed deeply. "The lowest I've ever weighed at this height was about 152 at the worst of the depression—after my Father went to the hospital, I just didn't eat at all for a while. All I did was come home and cut, so I was surviving on nothing but a calorific deficit. I put all of that weight back on in a week considering that I hadn't been eating at all so anything that I did eat went straight to my stomach. The highest I have weighed was about 185 and that was also because of the depression. I oscillate between having the kind of depression that involves loads of eating, or the one that involves eating less as a result."

Kurt was waiting for Finn to respond to that.

"I was 242 pounds when I was 6'0, and that was when I was thirteen," Finn expressed. "That was my highest ever. I was really fat, and Puck used to make fun of me for being incredibly fat."

Kurt raised an eyebrow. "I'm more shocked by the fact that a thirteen year old could be six feet tall."

"Yeah, it's possible," Finn nodded his head, smiling brightly. "My Dad is way taller than me. Also, my Dad's side of the family can make me look short, and they make my Mom look like she doesn't exist. She's so awkward around them and stuff. They are so friendly and stuff. They used to try and pick me around and we used to play football and there's this girl named Carly that's so nice, Kurt. She and I still talk heaps. She's a runner, and she sort of hurt herself so she's just waiting until she can run again. Sometimes, she messages me at like five am in the morning and tells me she feels like the laziest person on the planet for not being able to run."

"You have an interesting family," Kurt was impressed by Carly already though, and he hadn't even seen her. "Is Carly tall?"

"Carly's your height," Finn responded.

"Oh, how pleasant," Kurt's voice was dripping with sarcasm, noting that Finn was basically telling him that his height was an equivalent of one of the girls on his Father's side of the family. He wondered how many of them were as clumsy as Finn was. He knew that he did not get that particular quality from Carole, seeing as she could be as graceful as a swan. "242 at six foot was your highest?"

"Yeah," Finn nodded his head. "I had like a triple chin."

"Doubtful."

"Okay, maybe a double," Finn flushed. "I did not look good at all. I looked really fat and Puck made fun of me for that for a year. He used to lean down and grab fistfuls of fat and it was humiliating."

Kurt shook his head. He could imagine someone grabbing his tummy fat and squeezing it and it would actually make him melt into the ground. The thought of it happening when he was younger and so much rounder made him feel sick. "That's horrible."

"By the time that I met you, I was fourteen and I was 223 and like six-foot-two," he said then added on. "I only grew an inch from then, so my highest at six-foot-three would be 223."

"And how much do you weigh now?" Kurt asked. "I'm guessing it's your lowest at your height."

"Yeah," Finn nodded his head. "Like 209? Or 210. I'm not sure. The dial on my scale is being weird. I have an analog scale."

Kurt was more than just a bit shocked, staring at Finn's frame. "I will not believe that. You look so much thinner than that and I am not just saying that out of the fact that it is what you want to hear. You honestly look so much thinner—at least twenty pounds thinner than you claim considering that your collarbones are protruding and I have not taken my eyes off them for this whole conversation."

"That's just collarbones though," Finn shrugged. "I'm still fat."

Kurt sighed deeply. God knew Finn would think he was fat even if fifty pounds magically disappeared from his frame. "You're in therapy for the bulimia, aren't you? And for that night?"

Finn nodded his head. "Doesn't mean anything," he stated. "The guy I'm working with sucks ass. His name is like Andy and he thinks that if I'm not binging and purging like seven times a day then it's a success. He also thinks that it's amazing that I work out so much and he thinks that all I want to do is bulk up because I'm a boy or something like that and tells me if I stop puking up everything I eat and utilise like the calories, then I'd build up muscle real quick considering I exercise like five million times a day."

"So you basically lie to your therapist?" Kurt asked, not really happy with this piece of information.

"No," Finn shook his head. "I don't have to. He asks me if I've binged and purged and I say no. Because it's technically not true. He never asked me if I just purged, or if I starved, or something like that."

Kurt shook his head. "Why are you bother telling me all this?"

"Your cuts," was Finn's first response. "You know how it's like when you have to destroy yourself so yeah, that's it. Mine is just about what I put in my body, and it's not like you're a picture perfect model of health either. You can't tell me to eat more or puke less or whatever, because I don't tell you that you can't cut yourself. I don't like that you're cutting, Kurt, because me, but it's not like I can say anything about it without being a massive hypocrite."

Kurt was surprised at how thorough Finn's analysis was before he nodded his head. "Fair enough."

"Who's that guy that's always coming around? The Dalton guy?" Kurt wasn't expecting a sudden change in topic, and he flushed immediately when that was mentioned. Finn smirked when he noticed the flush. "Oh, that kind."

"What kind?" Kurt raised an eyebrow.

Finn shrugged. "Nothing."

"I do not like Blaine in that way," Kurt announced all of a sudden, sighing deeply. "Just because he's a boy that happens to be gay that I happen to take a liking to—"

"Yeah, sure," Finn cut Kurt off in a sing-song voice.

Kurt swore this conversation was more frustrating than the more so intense one they had a few moments ago. "Finnegan, I am not happy with that," but somehow, his lips curved into a smile.

Dear Blaine,

I talked to Finn today. He explained some aspects of his eating that I did not agree with, yet again, one thing that he did remind me was that I was self-destructive myself to the point where I tried to kill myself. I am in no way, shape or form able to cope with the fact that Finn can't kill himself because of his mental illness due to the fact that I have attempted to do the same. Basically, nothing that I can say could change his mind on his road of self-destruction, and God knows I'm not willing to put down those knives or have them away from my sight. I'm actually planning on finding a new set of sharp objects and hiding them a tad better now and cutting in locations that people would not be able to see at. I am ashamed of this. I keep on telling myself that I won't cut too deep, but God knows if I actually mean that. I know what this mood could do, but somehow, I feel like I have complete control of it. However, I do realise unless I put a lid on the cutting and try to receive some sort of therapy myself (which I am so against and my Father is sticking me into therapy and I know it's going to be useless because I am not cooperative enough.) I know the first thing they'd be trying to take away is my knives, and I cannot let them go until now. For Christ's sake, I feel safe with those things around me. I feel like if I don't have something to hurt myself with when the time is needed, I'll try to kill myself again.

This is my fault as well. If I didn't attempt to kill myself, then maybe I'd have some sort of ruling over Finn, maybe I could tell him that 'yes, I'm depressed, Finn but I'm not going to kill myself over it like you are with your quest to become practically emaciated'. I don't know what to do, Blaine. I just don't know what's the point of even trying unless I fix myself first but I'm not reluctant to let go of the ability to destroy myself whenever I please because I honestly feel that sometimes, I deserve it. I think I may just try to go without it for a while. God knows I do not need any more ugly scars. "How could one sink so low when they were only floating ashore moments ago?" Is really the question I should be asking.

Love,

Kurt