Warnings: Mentions of m/m rape

Summary: Blaine was broken by his Senior year, in more ways than one. When he tells Kurt that he has HIV, and he fears his ex does too, a new side to the story of Eli is revealed.

"It doesn't matter who I was with Kurt. What matters is that I was by myself. I needed you. I needed you around and you weren't there. And I was lonely and I'm... I am really sorry." Blaine

.***.

Blaine twisted his hands in his lap. They trembled when he held them still, so he kept them moving, moving, fingers twining into configurations that he stared at rather than staring at Kurt. "I need to tell you something."

"You always open conversations like this," Kurt said, his voice high and light, that voice that made something in Blaine feel hot, and cold, feel like it was crumbling in on itself. Sometimes Kurt's voice made Blaine feel like he was shattering apart, and only the high, clear sound of it kept him together. "So serious. My serious Blaine."

My Blaine, like he cared, like they were together, like Kurt didn't denounce their relationship every chance they got. Blaine's kept twisting his fingers together, trying to keep his heart from racing. Best not to get hopes up. Kurt was going to hate him. He was prepared for that. He wasn't prepared for my Blaine.

"I…Kurt, it's really bad." He didn't mean for the last word to break over a sob, had meant to keep it together. Kurt was easily frightened since his dad's cancer.

And just like that Kurt's hands were on his and Blaine knew he could feel them trembling, "Blaine you're shaking." Kurt used one hand to touch Blaine's hair, his cheek, wipe away a hot tear or embarrassment, "Blaine you're scaring me. What's wrong?"

Everything.

"I'm so sorry," Blaine choked out, then bit his lip and shook his head and looked at the sky, trying to keep it together. He wouldn't cry. He didn't deserve to cry. "Kurt, I'm so sorry to do this to you."

"You're scaring me," Kurt said again, his voice climbing higher. "Blaine tell me what's wrong!" Kurt's hands were grabbing his again, holding them steady. Anchoring him.

"I went to the clinic," Blaine said, his voice wavering and quavering but not breaking this time because he didn't deserve to be upset. "I…I'm so sorry. I never thought…"

"It's okay," Kurt said quickly, "Whatever it is it's okay. Just tell me. Are you…what's wrong? Is it cancer?"

So quietly it was a whisper, something barely heard, Blaine spoke the truth that would ruin everything, "I have HIV."

Kurt took his hands away.

Blaine gaped at the spot where Kurt had been a moment ago, blinking as his vision fogged with tears. "Please – I didn't even think. I didn't – I'd never hurt you."

"You got it from him?" Kurt asked, which wasn't really what he meant to ask. There were so many more important questions, like how long have you known and are you all right and do you have medicine and how can I help. But the one that popped out of his mouth was Eli, always Eli.

"Yes. Of course. Kurt, I didn't sleep with anyone else. Just him. Just you."

"Thank god for that," Kurt said, and he couldn't stop the words, even though as soon as they flew out of his mouth he wanted to call them back, "We'd be calling all your boy-toys right now."

Slut. Worthless. Empty. Miserable. Whore. Eli's words, and Blaine's own thoughts chased each other in his head and Blaine dipped his body forward until his hands were gripping his head, holding tight. Tears, hot and awful, dripped down his fingers.

"I didn't know how to tell you. I don't want you to think – if I'd known I had it I never would have…we wouldn't have fooled around. If there was even a chance you could get hurt."

Kurt laughed without humor, without mirth, an empty and frighteningly cold laugh. "Well, you really had that down didn't you?" He was crying too, with rage that they were fulfilling a goddamned stereotype. A young gay couple with AIDS. How fucking throwback.

"We were safe," Blaine reminded, quietly. After Eli they'd always been safe, always condoms where they hadn't been any before, because they'd been each other's firsts and they'd trusted each other and hey neither could get pregnant so why not. But after Eli the trust had vanished and there was rubber. "Maybe you won't have it. I hope…Kurt, I pray every second you don't have it. I didn't want this."

And suddenly the protective, angry thing in Kurt melted away and he looked at Blaine, really looked at him. All year he'd been like this – drawn and grey like he was ill, and they'd all chalked it up to breaking up and being lonely and graduating and his goddamned awful father. And all year his body had been eating him up from the inside.

Really looking at him, Kurt reached out, put an arm around shoulders, "My poor puppy."

That's when Blaine really started to cry. That's when he couldn't stop.

.***.

Kurt found a handkerchief in his back pocket, an honest-to-god handkerchief, and the appearance of such an object made Blaine laugh through his tears, slowed the deluge. He blew on the handkerchief and tried to stop crying. He was such a hot mess, and Kurt was just looking at him patiently as if Blaine hadn't ruined both of their lives.

"When did you find out?" Kurt had been mulling over the correct question to ask first and this seemed most neutral, most appropriate.

"I…Sam noticed something two months ago. Symptoms, he said. He asked if I ever got tested after Eli. You're supposed to, I guess, if you feel sick after random hook up. I thought it was just," Blaine half-laughed, a self-deprecatory sound, "heartbreak."

Kurt made a noise in the back of his throat that might have been a suppressed sob.

"So I went."

"Alone?"

Blaine blinked. He'd been alone so often the past year he no longer recognized it as an abnormal state. "I didn't tell anyone. Guess I was embarrassed. Tina or Sam probably would have come if I'd asked." Probably.

"And they told you then?"

The dark haired boy turned and stared at Kurt. Blaine's eyes were red, puffy. He looked so sad, so bone-deep tired sad. "I would have told you two months ago. Kurt, I want nothing more than for you to be healthy. I found out three days ago."

"Oh."

"I didn't know how to tell you. I don't know how you're supposed to tell someone something like this." His mind flashed to the picture it'd been flashing to since he'd found out, a short scene from Rent where Roger's girlfriend finds out they're sick and kills herself in a bathtub, leaving behind a note just three words long: WE HAVE AIDS.

Blaine tried to pretend he hadn't thought of doing something similar.

He opened his mouth to apologize again and Kurt cut him off, "Have you told anyone? Do you have medicine? Blaine, you have to tell your father -"

"No."

"But –"

"No! Kurt, he already hates me, already thinks I'm sick with some disease. I'm just proving him right," Blaine was quiet for a long moment, then: "I told Coop."

Kurt breathed out a sigh of relief. At least he wasn't the only one to know. Blaine watched Kurt and didn't talk about how his brother had cried over Skype, how Blaine had sobbed for the first time since his diagnosis when he saw Cooper break. "He said he'd send me money if I needed it. He said money doesn't matter, if it makes me healthy."

"From me too! Blaine, if you need anything, any medication – anything to keep you alive."

Blaine almost smiled, and he almost looked like that suave, supremely confident Warbler who'd taken Kurt's hand and promised him courage. Then he crumpled again, "Save it for yourself, Kurt. You might – oh God, if you have it too. I'll never forgive myself. I was so stupid."

"Hey," Kurt grabbed Blaine's shaking hands again, held them tight, "Not so stupid. We were safe. We had protection. There's a good chance I'm okay. We're worrying about you today."

Blaine looked like he wanted to protest that, then nodded. They sat in silence for a while, and Blaine looked up at the tree. Why had he chosen to do this in the graveyard, spitting distance from his dead mother, Kurt's dead mother? For the symbolism? Kurt probably thought so, and Blaine would rather him think that than know that this was Blaine's favorite place in all the world now. Life without Kurt had been agonizingly lonely. At least in a cemetery you're supposed to be alone.

Kurt was the one to break the silence. He usually was. Kurt is not a very patient young man. "How did it happen?"

Blaine opened his mouth, and Kurt knew he would apologize again, apologize for Eli and that whole night, for their destroyed relationship, for getting sick, for everything. But thinking about it, Kurt realized he'd never actually gotten a good explanation. "Just – what happened with Eli? Tell me about the whole night."

He almost recanted the question when Blaine looked at him, wide-eyed and sorrowful, like this was his punishment, and Kurt had hit upon the torture that would hurt worst. "He friended me on Facebook. He knew one of the Warblers, I think."

"Sebastian?" Kurt didn't know why he was so hung up on Sebastian, except that he knew the Warbler was more handsome than he, and less overtly gay, and had a huge crush on Blaine.

"No, not Sebastian. I don't know who. One of them. So he asked if I wanted a drink. You were ignoring me – which was no excuse, and you'd just started your job and you were so excited and I knew I should be happy for you but I was sad and you weren't and I was…jealous. I wanted to feel…I don't know. Special. Loved. Wanted." Blaine sighed, looked away. It all sounded so dumb now.

And then he told the truth, the truth he hadn't told anyone, though he'd wanted to spill it to Kurt, to Sam, so many times. "I didn't want to sleep with him."

Kurt's fingernails dug into the back of Blaine's hands and the hurt was a good kind of hurt, the best kind.

"What?" Kurt breathed, thinking about all the hours and days he'd spent thinking about Blaine's betrayal, about how he wasn't enough for his alpha gay boyfriend. "He – oh my god. He raped you?"

Kurt's voice rose into almost a shout and Blaine seemed to collapse in on himself, cowering away from the sound. Of course Kurt was mad. Why wouldn't he be? Blaine was supposed to be the good, strong one, not the cowardly lion.

"It wasn't…I didn't get raped." He said this as a statement, as if he'd repeated it so often it must be true. "He bought me drinks and asked if I wanted to watch Star Wars."

"You're such a sucker for Star Wars."

"I really am," Blaine tried to smile. He hadn't been able to watch the movies, his favorites, his mother's favorites, since that night. Even hearing the music made him feel violently ill. "It was late and it was nice just to sit with someone and talk. He kept coming onto me but I told him I had a boyfriend and we were in love and…I'm sorry, Kurt."

"Please stop saying you're sorry." Kurt said, offering a small smile. "I know you're sorry. I'm so sorry this happened to you."

"He…well, he hadn't had as much to drink as I had, I guess, and he was taller – everyone's taller than me – and strong. He kissed me and I stood up to go and he pulled me back down and then he was -" in, out, licking, biting, binding, holding, squeezing, "such a good little whore," "everywhere."

"Oh Blaine," he looked up at the tears in Kurt's voice, surprised anyone else cared enough to cry over him. "Why didn't you tell me? Why'd you say you slept with him?"

"I did," Blaine said, quietly confused. "We were supposed to be each other's firsts. And onlys. And I ruined that."

"Blaine – oh honey, that doesn't count. What he did to you was so wrong. But you did nothing wrong."

"I did," Blaine said, his voice shaking, tears dripping down his nose, his chin, "I was…hard. He said I had to be enjoying it if I was hard. He made me come. I liked it. I must have."

Kurt lifted Blaine's hand, nuzzling it against his cheek, kissing the fingertips, and Blaine gasped and stared at him, wide-eyed, "No. It was rape. You didn't want it and you told him to stop. It was rape, and no matter what your body did during you didn't want it to happen."

Blaine shook his head, pulled his hand away, "I let him buy me drinks."

Kurt grabbed Blaine's hand again, squeezing tight, "did he hurt you?"

A long, long pause, and Kurt's heart leaped towards his collar bone, his throat, and then a soft reply, "It hurt. It – I've never been…that part before." He looked at Kurt, who blushed furiously, even though he'd known he was a bottom since the first time he'd heard about the configurations of gay sex. "It hurt so much. Did I hurt you like that?"

"What – no! I would have told you. With you it was wonderful."

Relief spread across Blaine's face like a wave, smoothing lines as it went, as if that one answer assuaged the majority of Blaine's worries. "I was thinking about it the whole time. Over and over, I could just think I hope Kurt didn't feel like this. I hope he didn't hurt."

"It hurt a little," Kurt said, daring to come closer to Blaine, to snuggle against him, "It always does. But it's the good kind of hurt. The Mellencamp kind."

Blaine nodded, and Kurt wrapped his arms entirely around the smaller boy's body. Somehow Kurt was taller, and Blaine was the small one, had always been the small one. But now he was heartbreakingly thin, with a concave stomach and feather bones and a heartbeat fast as a hummingbird's wings.

"I wish you'd told me that back at the beginning," Kurt said, "It never would have…I was mad because I thought you cheated on me. Why didn't you tell me? Why didn't you say you'd been raped?"

"I didn't deserve you," Blaine said, the words mumbled into Kurt's arm. "After what I did," whore, slut, worthless, pig, lonely, miserable, empty, "I didn't deserve you."

"I'm so sorry he did that to you."

"I'm sorry if I got you sick. I – when I heard I had HIV the first thing I thought of was you. I don't care what happens to me. You're too good for that."

Kurt just shook his head and tipped Blaine until the other boy was nearly in his lap, and he kept saying over and over again that he was fine and Blaine would be fine, and they'd get him medicine and they'd treat it and he'd live forever, and he said that Blaine was strong and smart and Eli was low and cruel and Blaine didn't deserve what happened to him, and Blaine wasn't a slut and he wasn't a whore and he was just his, just Kurt's, and they' be together forever and they'd be whole and beautiful and happy.

Maybe, Kurt thought, if he said it enough Blaine would start to believe it. Because Kurt believed every word he said, with every fiber of his being, and it broke his heart that Blaine thought of himself as something so disposable.

"You're mine," Kurt said over and over, trying not to think of the symbolism of a cemetery, "You're good and beautiful and you're mine." And that's all that mattered.

.***.

ah well, a disappointing season for glee but at least we got some good relationships in. thought we'd revisit this story with some of them.

if anyone wants to see characters in some good old h/c situations, say it in a review and we'll see if we can make it happen. y'all get the power here. we're just the humble writers along for the ride.