My apologies for the long hiatus from updating. The prompt I'm doing today isn't the one that was next in line chronologically. Originally I wrote this in June and intended to just have it ready for when it was this prompt's turn to be done, but my mind wouldn't cooperate with writing anything else until I got this finished and posted. Prompted anonymously by someone who was awesome and gave me a bunch of prompts all at once:

Blaine comes to school with bruises from his dad and Kurt comforts him and tells him he loves him.

Chapter title is from the song Keep it Together by Tyler Ward and The CO. Enjoy!

Keep Yourself Together

Everything was normal until it wasn't. Blaine and Kurt were sitting in lumpy armchairs in the corner of the school library during their shared study period, pretending to themselves that they were doing English homework while playing hangman in the margins of Kurt's notebook. One moment, Blaine was laughing and reaching over to draw a hat on Kurt's hangman figure, already replete with fingers and toes and a face as Kurt struggled to guess the last three letters of the word.

The next moment, the right sleeve of his shirt had slid a couple inches up his forearm as he reached across the table, and Kurt had gasped and grabbed at Blaine's arm, holding it in place, staring in horror at the purple bruise on the delicate skin of his wrist.

Blaine yanked the fabric back down over his wrist as if doing so could erase the ugly purple mark there and tried to pull away, but it was in vain. Kurt was staring as if he could see right through the shirt to what was underneath it, and his jaw clenched visibly before he asked in an eerily flat voice, "Blaine, who did this to you?"

"Let go of me," Blaine mumbled, trying again to tug his arm away.

"Blaine."

"It's nothing!"

Kurt turned his eyes up to look at Blaine, his eyebrows raised and his mouth pursed in disbelief and rage. "Tell me who did this to you."

This time Blaine succeeded in tearing free from Kurt's grip, but he couldn't unpin that piercing, ice blue gaze from him, or even look away. "Stop staring at me like that," he said.

Kurt's gaze softened, and Blaine hated the tinge of pity in them. "Or like that," he spat.

"You can tell me."

Blaine flinched and tried to look away. He could resist Kurt's anger, but this… "Just leave it, okay, Kurt?" He crossed his arms stiffly across his chest, pulling his sleeve further down again as he did so, as if that mattered anymore.

"I'm not going to leave it." And now Kurt's voice was gentler, but the familiar steely note of his unyielding, pushy, always-get-my-way personality was back, too. "Was it Azimio? Rick the Stick? Come on. Just tell me whoever it was and we can get them expelled. We can make sure it never happens again."

And then everything became worse, because Kurt thought it was someone at school, and, knowing Kurt, he'd take matters into his own hands and tell the Glee club so that they could all exact justice on whoever Kurt decided the culprit was. "It wasn't anybody." Kurt rolled his eyes, and Blaine added in a rush, "It wasn't! It… I- I got it boxing."

He looked up at Kurt, trying to appear honest and maintain eye contact. "And I didn't want you to know because I don't want you to think that boxing is dangerous or something." Blaine knew it was a weak excuse, could hear the lack of conviction in his own voice, but at least continuing to talk meant that Blaine didn't have to stare into those stupid pitying eyes in silence.

Kurt sighed and reached forward, gently coaxing Blaine's tightly crossed arms loose and brushing Blaine's sleeve back with his thumb to reveal the bruise again. "Look at it." Blaine grudgingly turned his head and stared down at his skin, feeling oddly disconnected from it, as if the arm wasn't part of him. "Those are finger prints. That's not a boxing injury." The tip of Kurt's index finger tenderly traced the four spots where the bruise purpled to nearly black, and then he turned Blaine's arm over and lifted it to brush his lips very lightly over the livid thumb print on the smooth, white underside of Blaine's wrist.

"Please," Blaine almost begged.

"Please what? Ignore this and walk around happily knowing that I'm letting someone beat up my boyfriend?"

Blaine flinched from the words, wishing for the first time that Kurt didn't have to always be so blunt about everything he said. "He's not beating me up," Blaine mumbled reflexively.

Kurt caught onto the instant of weakness immediately. "Who isn't?"

Blaine swallowed against his suddenly dry throat. It felt like it was full of sand. "I can't tell you."

"Why not?"

"Because I can't."

"But we can go to Principal Figgins, he can take care of it-"

"No, Kurt. This isn't something you can just make go away for me. When I say I can't, I mean I can't." Blaine knew as he said the words that already this was too much, too far, but by then, some self-destructive demon inside him wanted Kurt to know, and all the survival instincts Blaine had couldn't stop him.

He could literally see Kurt piecing it together, little bitter comments dropped here and there, the few short exchanges he had seen, the times Blaine averted his eyes during a conversation… "Did your father do this to you?"

And then couldn't Blaine speak, couldn't even deny it, though he knew by now that that would be useless anyway. He tried to look at Kurt but found that he couldn't, and hated that Kurt had forced him to put this between them. How could they be a normal couple when Kurt would never look at him again without that pity distancing them? "Can you just forget it?" Blaine hated his voice for shaking.

But Kurt wasn't listening. He was frozen, his hand against his lips in horror, whispering something inaudible under his breath over and over again.

"Kurt?" Nothing. "Kurt, c'mon, say something."

"I didn't notice."

Blaine frowned, surprised. "What?"

"You're my boyfriend and I didn't notice. I'm supposed to notice these things."

Blaine sighed. Of course Kurt would find a way to feel guilty, as if he'd done something wrong. "I didn't want you to know."

"I should have known anyway." Kurt stared at the bruises that Blaine hadn't bothered to cover again and then continued, "Abuse isn't supposed to look like this."

Blaine's mouth quirked into a humorless smile and he rubbed his thumb comfortingly over Kurt's white knuckles, clenched into a fist on the table. He asked, a quiet laugh in his voice, "What's it supposed to look like?"

"Black eyes. I don't know. You're supposed to be able to see it."

"I don't think anyone thinks that abuse is supposed to be something you can see, Kurt," Blaine said gently.

"It's not funny!" Kurt burst out suddenly. "Why are you being so… so complacent about this?"

"What do you want me to be?"

"I don't know!" Kurt nearly screamed. "I want you to act like it matters! Like you matter. You got my dad to tell me not to throw myself around like I don't matter. So where do you think you get off letting your dad throw you around like you don't matter?"

"Shhh," Blaine hissed, glancing anxiously around the library. It was relatively empty, and nobody appeared to have heard Kurt.

"I know I matter," Blaine explained once he was sure that they'd gone unnoticed. "I'm going to get educated and get into a good college and find a job I love and then I won't need him or anyone else. But until then-"

"Quit lying to me," Kurt snapped. "You need to get out of there. You've heard the lectures about it at school. I can't believe you're letting this happen to yourself. You're smarter than this. I know you love him, but that doesn't mean you can let-"

Blaine jerked away sharply. "You don't know anything," he retorted in a low, fierce voice. "I don't love him. I don't want anything to do with him. What kind of a son does that make me? What I want is a future. And I hate that I have to get that from my father." Blaine swallowed and forced himself to speak past the tightening in his throat. "But I don't know how else I can have one." He stood up, the turn of the conversation sickening. "The bell's about to ring, we better hurry up."

Kurt started and looked around himself at the library, as if he'd forgotten where they were. "Come home with me, we can skip the rest of the day. We need to talk about this," he said.

Blaine crossed his arms and sighed, struggling to compromise. "I'm going to class. Nothing's changed, there's no reason for me to miss half a day of school. We can talk later, okay?"

"You're sleeping over tonight. Burt will bend the sleeping on the couch rule once I explain-"

"You're not explaining anything to him," Blaine interrupted forcefully.

"Some adult should know-"

"I don't need anyone's help," Blaine insisted. "Everything is fine the way it is."

"You're not fine."

Blaine closed his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose between his index finger and thumb, trying to be patient. "Telling people isn't going to make me fine."

Kurt looked at Blaine thoughtfully. "Okay, but please be honest with me from now on?"

Blaine nodded, grateful that Kurt had phrased it as a request and not a demand.

"No more secrets?" Kurt asked.

"No more secrets."

Kurt had been gracious enough to act normally for the rest of the day, singing along with him to the radio in the car on the way to the Hummels' house, chattering with him through their homework about Rachel's predictable song selection for the week's assignment, and then smiling happily with him through dinner with the rest of the Hummel-Hudson family.

But eventually, Finn and Burt settled down in front of a football game, and Carole curled up between them on the couch with a book in her hands, and Blaine could think of nothing else to busy himself with in order to avoid Kurt. Blaine was leaning against the counter in Kurt's bathroom, having long finished changing into a soft white t-shirt and plaid pajama bottoms, but unable to make himself just open the door and walk into Kurt's bedroom. He could hear Kurt moving about in the other room, drawing the blinds, opening and shutting drawers, the main light clicking off, and then Kurt's voice called out, "Blaine? You've been in there for twenty minutes. I even had time to finish my moisturizing routine."

Blaine sighed and called softly, "I'm coming." He stood up straight and, reminding himself that he couldn't stay hidden in the bathroom forever, stepped back out into Kurt's bedroom.

The room was dim, lit only by the warm glow emitted from a small lamp next to Kurt's bed. It softened the room, somehow, and Blaine hoped that this would become easier here in the dark than it had been in the too-bright, too-public library.

"Get in," Kurt offered, propping himself up against the headboard of his bed and then lifting the corner of the covers up for Blaine invitingly.

Blaine nestled in next to Kurt, curling into his side and allowing Kurt to wrap an arm around him and draw him even closer. "I want to protect you from everything," Kurt whispered into Blaine's hair. "And I hate it when I can't."

Blaine laughed gently under his breath. "It's not your job to do that, Kurt."

"It should be your parent's job." Kurt said, his voice growing more firm, but still tender. "Everyone deserves to have at least one person who has their back. I don't know how you can be laughing about this, it's not funny."

Blaine shut his eyes, wanting to disappear. "I know it's not," he finally whispered. "But if I let myself realize-" his voice choked off and he took a deep breath and tried to feel like he wasn't suffocating under the unbearable weight of the realness that was suddenly inescapable. "So I laugh," he finally finished, hoping that Kurt would be able to fill in what he wasn't able to make himself say aloud. "Even when I don't feel like laughing. Because that's something I can control."

"I'm sorry."

"Don't be." Blaine's voice was steady again, the fleeting moment of raw pain having passed as he got himself under control and plastered his façade back on. He felt Kurt's skepticism and sighed. "It's not that bad," he tried to explain. "I know- I know that that's what people say," he hurried on when he sensed that Kurt was about to protest. "But it really isn't. Most of the time my dad doesn't know I exist and we both prefer it that way. I'm happy."

"Most of the time," Kurt repeated.

"Yeah."

"And the rest of the time?"

"I have it under control."

"You're wrong. You're worth more than most of the time."

Blaine looked up to see Kurt staring pensively ahead, his eyes thoughtful and sad. "Don't worry about me," Blaine tried to convince him. "I don't need anything."

"Everyone needs to be loved."

Blaine stiffened.

"Even you," Kurt continued, placing a tender hand on the top of Blaine's head and pressing it against his chest. "And at least I can give you that. I know you like to be the one that has it together, but you don't always have to be."

"I know that," Blaine dismissed him, trying to sit up against Kurt.

"No, you don't know it. Listen to me," Kurt said, holding Blaine against his chest, wishing that the arms he wrapped around his boyfriend were enough to protect him from everything that wanted to hurt him. "You don't always have to be that person. Not with me." Kurt tightened his embrace, trying to show with physical contact how much there he was, that he'd be there for forever. He pressed his lips lightly to Blaine's head, murmuring lovingly into Blaine's curls of hair.

This is the person who gave you the courage to leave McKinley, Kurt realized, looking down at the boy in his arms as Blaine's tense muscles gradually loosened and relaxed. Kurt pressed another kiss into Blaine's hair, and with it, promised himself that he would do whatever it took to make Blaine unafraid. To show him that he was loved. That an after existed. That his life would not end when he left his father. That his life would just be beginning. Aloud, Kurt whispered, "I love you."

I hope I managed to do justice to such a serious topic and make it in character. Please review!

Also, during my long break from writing this story, I started another one titled How Bittersweet. Set 6 years into Klaine's future and after they've broken up, it's about Blaine suddenly finding himself in need of Kurt, and deals with the two of them trying to sort out their feelings for each other and find out if they can still have a friendship/romance. Feel free to check it out if you're interested!