A/N: Once again heavy Trigger-Warning, for self-harm, depiction and talk of it, as well as a character death.
Chapter 26
Hello Darkness My Old Friend
Kurt is sitting there utterly silent, like a rag doll propped up against the wall, head hanging slightly tilted.
And it cannot be missed, the blood smudging Kurt's clothes, the blood still running along his skin, smears of it covering his face where he must have reached, mind already emptied out but body still very much alive with irritation, to wipe away, wipe out the itch the floods of tears have left his skin's outermost layer with, irritated and red even where not covered in the harsh crimson of his blood.
Blaine does not let himself be deterred by the empty stare he is met with, only slowly softening again around the edges just now, nor by the jagged shard of glass, bloody, lying loosely held in Kurt's hand, cut itself from ' ... the tight grip Kurt must have had on it while ...'
Elliott and Wes stand frozen. Blaine, situation to him familiar in a way that brings no comfort, acts on instinct, like he had that first time, all those years ago. He reaches for that first aid kit he knows Kurt has stowed away at the back of the bathroom cupboard and kneels down by Kurt's side. Takes the shard carefully from his hand and begins by cleaning out that cut.
Elliott is relieved as he watches his boyfriend work away the blood that it is not nearly as much, cuts not nearly as deep, as Elliott had feared at first gaze.
There are some new cuts to Kurt's sides, random and shallow, one to his left forearm, making Blaine feel strangely agitated, 'You've never cut there before.' And then there are the ones deep and determined in their stroke, 'Practiced,' Blaine thinks, feeling sick at the thought, the ones to Kurt's abdomen.
When he is done, bloodstained shirt long stripped from Kurt's body to make sure nothing is missed, Blaine asks, "Kurt?" looking for a reaction more than an answer. "Kurt?"
It is not words but there is a flicker of an eye.
"Let's clean up your face, okay?" Elliott hands Blaine a wet washcloth, "Thank you," a moment later when needed a dry one.
"I need some moisturizer."
Wes, silently watching on from the doorway, by the looks of it still in shock himself, jumps at the words leaving Kurt's mouth.
"Of course," Blaine answers, already holding two kinds up for Kurt to choose.
"My hand," Kurt says, eyes flickering to the bandage for only a second then up to Blaine, "can you apply it?"
Blaine nods, and takes his time, soft, slow motions intend on giving back some life to the roughened up skin.
Elliott has already cleaned away the rest of the shards of the broken mirror from the bathroom floor when they help Kurt, wincing with every step, back out of the bathroom, and into his bedroom, leave Wes to help him into fresh clothes which in the end means no more than boxer shorts set very low on his hips. Every shirt they try ending up rubbing too painfully up against Kurt's skin.
Wes emerges from the room after only a couple of minutes, still visibly shaken, "He asked me to leave."
"Can I try?" Blaine is quick to ask, not liking the thought of Kurt alone in that room, even if it is just a few feet away, at all.
Wes nods, wordlessly retreats to the couch he and Kurt had started this evening out on, '... happy,' Wes thinks with a shudder. He had handled many things in his time at Dalton, especially his last two years as head Warbler been a mentor to boys new to the Dalton environment, or struggling still in it. But, even though he knew about Kurt's past, understands in theory about it, self-harm, cutting, as much as you can understand such a thing in that way, ... the reality of it, being faced with it ... it is a whole different deal. And Wes feels overwhelmed by a helplessness he has not felt in a long time, maybe never ... like this. He makes a point of being an optimistic person, always has. Likes to think he can tackle whatever life throws his way, had to sometimes in his life to keep going. Seeing Kurt like this feels like a cruel reminder that he cannot. He curls in on himself on the couch, hugging a cushion tightly to his chest, murmuring, "Kurt," those pushed back tears finally falling.
Blaine looking at him questioningly Elliott nods in the direction of Kurt's bedroom as if to say "Go," and is gone himself to join Wes before Blaine can question it.
It is the strange feeling of déjà vu that overtakes Blaine as soon as he steps into the room, carefully, his knocking once more having received no answer.
Just for a split-second ... Blaine feels 17 again, and in none of those clichéd great ways. Kurt is lying curled up on his bed, facing away, clutching his lower abdomen with one hand, the other dug deep into a pillow, face too half buried there.
Blaine toes of his shoes, takes of his bloodstained cardigan, scoots onto the bed and closer, closer until he is just barely spooning "... Kurt?"
"Yeah?"
"Mind if I stay with you for a while?"
"It's fine," Kurt's voice is small but his words are clear.
"Okay," and then Blaine closes the last distance left between them, feels Kurt lean into the touch, the only thing reassuring, silence holding the room.
Somehow they both drift off, and when Blaine comes to again Kurt is right there, must have turned to study him in his sleep, keeps looking now as Blaine's eyes focus on him.
"What happened?" Blaine finally dares to ask as the clock on the bedside table clicks on to 4:43 in the morning. They have only been lying here, together, for a little more than three hours. A brief thought of Blaine's flickering toward where Wes and Elliott might be at right now is cut even shorter when Blaine gets the answer he had not expected in all honesty.
Kurt's voice is shaking, but there are no tears as Kurt answers, and Blaine, listening is left to wonder if this is this famous calm, the one after the storm, and before the next one starts, maybe. "I got a call from a friend's mom. My best friend from high school, Blaine, ... she is dead. And I ... I needed to feel something, something else, it hurts, hurts so ... so much, I ... ."
And then there is no calm, just the storm breaking fully lose as Kurt starts to cry, a different kind of storm than that tornado that had left Kurt stranded on the bathroom floor.
Kurt buries himself in Blaine's arms all of a sudden, wincing as the still fresh cuts are agitated all over. Blaine just holds on where he can without increasing Kurt's pain, he hopes. What else is there to do when ... when everything about this is so unexpected.
"Cutting. I am such an idiot," Kurt sobs when minutes later he re-emerges from Blaine's arms. "Why did I think this would be a great idea? What did I think?"
"A reflex?" Blaine asks.
"Right, I am an absolute idiot by reflex."
"No, ... Kurt?" Blaine waits for Kurt to wipe his vision free from tears, finds his gaze and his left hand, links it with his right, hold on tight as he says, "I remember it all, every second of it. I remember the boy fighting to deny it all was even happening. I remember every second of it. And you know what? You reacting to it right now like you do, that is telling me you are doing better, that you are not that boy that will try so hard to make himself and everything he could possibly be feeling disappear in that fabricated ache, that gapping void."
"Yeah, right."
"I am serious, Kurt. Last time I saw you like that, like last night, I ... you were so lost in that ache, trying so desperately to control all you could possibly feel. You could hardly talk to me at all. And right now ..."
"... I am."
"Yeah. We are. We're talking. Right now. Aren't we?"
"Yeah," Kurt breathes back. Eyes reconnecting with Blaine's adding, "... I remember."
And there is something else swinging in those words, something old and something new. Blaine shakes it off as he finds Kurt back in his arms, 'Focus, Blaine. Focus.' "Should I walk with you to the youth shelter later?" he asks.
"So I talk to someone?"
"So you can talk to someone," Blaine replies without hesitation, "I think it would be a good idea. Actually, I think you need it."
"I think so too," Kurt breathes unsteady through fresh tears, surprised by his own words, hugging Blaine tighter at the realization dawning that living here in New York for a while now he has already changed so much more than he had himself ever recognized. Meeting Elliott, loving Wes, working at the shelter, ... Blaine back in his life.
There are some moments of just breathing then, together, ... calm.
Kurt is surprised himself by what he says next, but he feels this to him so curiously new urge to ... keep talking, "Relapse sucks. I haven't had one in ... fourteen months. I came close that time you and Elliott tried to encourage me to relax more around you."
"You ...," Blaine is the one to stare over Kurt's shoulder blankly into the darkness of the room now, "... this has happened before? ... This has happened before."
"Tends to," Kurt says, eyes still wet, flicker of a smile dry.
"Why does it happen?"
"Triggers."
"Things causing you stress?"
"In different ways, yes. I ..., we are told not to be discouraged by them happening, relapses, that they sadly do ... for most of us. But that that doesn't mean we are ... back at square one. That there is a win in having been able to stop for as long as we could, whether it is a day, a week ... or even months. I ..., at least this time I know why, there is no question about that. I can't believe she is gone. I ... after you left," Kurt swallows hard at actually saying those words, "I transferred to a new school after that summer, and she, she left everything behind to come with me. She told me not to worry, that the others would be alright, that they had each other."
Kurt is crying quietly, calms back down fast in Blaine's arms.
"You're quiet." Blaine blurts out then, worry overtaking his instinct to just hold on.
Kurt grimaces at that, looking to Blaine like he is in much more pain again all of a sudden than just a moment ago.
"Did I say something wrong?"
Kurt shakes his head. "I hate that it still does that for me, but that is why I did it for all that time. To feel something else and then ... just come down from that for hours, days, sometimes close to a week."
Blaine looks at him confused.
"It ..., cutting ... still ..., calms is the wrong word but, ... stops my head from spinning? That was the one thing I could feel back then, get from it, every time, the sensation of my head clearing for once. I didn't know how else to feel that way. ... to get to feel that way." There is still to Blaine frightening awe in Kurt's voice, speaking those words. A fondness that feels wrong to Blaine associated with violence against oneself. But who is he to tell Kurt how it made him, what it made him feel, allowed him to feel even.
Blaine stays quiet, '... it is not my place, I have no idea what it feels like,' those cuts to his own hands, kitchen "accidents" had only ever made him feel more frightened. Shaking off those thoughts he places a kiss to Kurt's forehead, and then they just lie there for a while longer until Blaine asks, "Should I get Wes?"
Kurt practically bolts out of bed at those words, mumbling over and over as he, wincing, puts on a shirt, "Shit, shit, shit."
"Wes? Ouch," Kurt stumbles into the even darker living room, stubs a toe on his perfectly centred coffee-table before he is crouching in front of the living room couch, finds Wes stirring awake there, head resting on Elliott's shoulder. His eyes are red when Kurt finds them opening.
"Kurt?" there are new tears in both men's eyes before there are more words. Wes carefully reaching out to take one of Kurt's hands sobs this time, "Kurt!"
Kurt reaches up to wipe at least some of those tears away, "Wes, Sweety, I ..." Talking to Blaine had been so strangely easy, probably because Kurt knew that Blaine had seen him in a state like this before. This ..., trying to talk to Wes about any of it is ... so much harder. Cannot be done without digging up at least part of the past.
Elliott is not watching Wes and Kurt, trying to put themselves and each other back together, he had for a moment, now his eyes are on Blaine. Blaine who is still standing by the small lamp in the rooms corner he had turned on after hurrying out of Kurt's bedroom after Kurt. The bulb covered in the smudged white of the vintage lampshade giving off a lightly orange glow.
In all the time they have been friends with Kurt Elliott has seen Blaine many times standing in this glow, but today, there is something altogether new in the way Blaine is watching Kurt.
Elliott has dreaded this day forever, had not thought it would be today of all days, in these early hours that it would come.
A/N: Best and longest I have written in a long, long time. I hope you agree. And also, a substantial step closer to the closing of this tale. I hope you could enjoy the for once longer chapter. I know the short ones are often such depressingly jerky reads. I dearly hope this made up for those other chapters at least a little, tiny, little bit.
M