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Kurt is broken when he meets Blaine.Damaged. The word haunts him as he stares into his mirror and drags his eyes up his form. He can see his collarbones jutting out from his chest, can feel the persistent sting of age-old bruises on his back and arms, can count his ribs and that’s not – not what, Kurt? Normal? But you were never going to be normal, were you? Always just going to be a dirty little – okay. It’s not okay.He can do this, though. He knows he can do this.Because he may be broken, but he’s not dead. He’s just bruised, he can still move, and it may sting when he pushes himself up off the ground with grazed hands, but he can still fight. He’s alone, but that’s not going to defeat him, because he’s all the army he will every need.
He can still fight.
It takes him a while to realise that these aren’t the declarations of a warrior. These are the half-hearted chants of a teenager – Jesus, Kurt, you’re just a kid – trapped in his circumstances, broken, but not knowing how to fix himself, and too stubborn to ask for help.Not too stubborn.There’s no one Kurt trusts enough to ask for help.He’s been through the list already, okay? Checked off all the names. He can’t talk to his dad, because he knows that Burt will put himself in the hospital again over it, and he can’t talk to Finn, because God knows the older boy couldn’t care less, and he can’t go to Mr Schue, because, what the hell can he do anyway? Kurt’s done it. He’s looked at his list of allies and drawn a blank.And that makes him feel like crap. The New Directions are supposed to be a family, but Kurt can’t force himself to think of them as his. Families fight, and families hurt each other, but there’s also love and trust in family, and Kurt never feels more isolated and ill-fitting – why don’t you go spy on the Garglers? You’d fit right in – than when he’s surrounded by his fellow club-mates.At first, he tries to push himself into a mould – find his niche – but he quickly gives up on that. Then, he tries to throw himself into the spotlight, make them see him, but that doesn’t work either, and Kurt soon learns that there lies nothing but exhaustion and bitter disappointment.Kurt gives up trying to fit in, and gives up on the New Directions as his family, just as he realises why all his attempts failed.It’s actually simple – god, can’t even figure that out, can you? – he bitterly thinks. It’s not because he’s gay, or because he sings like a girl, or because he’s – just standing there, rubbing your gayness in my face – more likely to spend three hours reading Vogue than five minutes watching a football match.They just don’t care.So really, Kurt can’t see the point in telling them anyway.Part of him, the part that he can’t get to shut up – do you want to have pear hips, Kurt? Show some self-restraint – says that these people, these friends don’t deserve to know. They should have noticed.
They just don’t care, Kurt.
Because, God, he can count his ribs. He doesn’t look happy and he never smiles anymore, and why can’t they see that? They’re not looking, but if they were they’d see him. How messed up he is. How he’s—Cracked and messily glued back together, with imperfect ridges and pale fragility – ugly and damaged and undesirable.Blaine’s broken too.Of course Kurt knows who Blaine Anderson is – even Rachel knows and she’s about as classic-Broadway as you can get without being transported back into 1950’s – and of course he knows why Blaine’s career has ended suddenly, but—But one day, Blaine will sit down next to Kurt on his bed, and narrate in this dull, detached voice – and Kurt will think, this doesn’t sound like you at all, Blaine – the story of how he locked himself in his bathroom, and pulled open the bathroom cabinet, and winced at his reflection in the mirror. How he took a bottle of pills from the cabinet, and unscrewed the cap with shaking hands, and then swallowed them, one by one, dry in his throat. How he lost count after pill number fourteen. And when he’s done with the story, hands wrung into a mess on his lap, he’ll turn to Kurt and stare like he’s waiting for Kurt to leave, or call him a coward, and Kurt won’t know what to say, except, “It’s okay.” It’ll be a lie – they’ll both know it’s a lie – but it’s a lie that Blaine will need to hear.And another day, a few weeks after that, Kurt will wrap himself in Blaine’s arms and speak in slow, halting sentences about self-hate, and loneliness, and falling back on his pillow each night, not sure if he’s going to finally give in tomorrow, not sure if he’ll be waking up the morning after that. Blaine won’t say anything, and Kurt will be crying too hard to say anything else, and they’ll just lie there, until Blaine whispers, “It’s okay.” Kurt will laugh – this is many things, but okay is not one of them. He won’t leave Blaine’s arms though, and Blaine won’t let go.There’s a certain morbid beauty to them, Kurt thinks. A matched pair. To Kurt, looking at Blaine is like looking in a mirror, ready to see all his faults, but when he looks at his reflection with judgement in his eyes, all he can see is how the ghost of himself in the mirror is looking back at him like he’s flawless, like he’s the only thing holding them onto this earth.So, Kurt can look up into Blaine’s hazel eyes, see the image of his face glinting in the deep black recesses of Blaine’s pupils, and say, “When my dad was in hospital, I didn’t eat anything for two days,” and Blaine just wraps his arms around his body – he can still count his ribs, but there’s muscle there now, and somehow, he feels normal when he eats now, at a long oak table in a crowded dining room with a hundred other boys in poly-cotton blazers – and says, “Dalton won’t let me keep a razor in my room,” and that’s it. It’s everything that needs to be said, because when Kurt looks in the mirror – your smile is the best thing I’ve seen all day, Kurt – and sees ghosts of his old expressions on his face, he realises that they’re the faces Blaine used to make.And Kurt doesn’t have to say, “I still dream about him sometimes – about his lips and his smell and it just makes me feel trapped and ill, and I need to vomit, just get rid of it, somehow scrub him out of my skin, push him out of my mind,” because Blaine just gets it. He gets it, and says, “He’s nothing, Kurt, except what you let him be.”Blaine can say, “My parents would hate you,” but it’s with a smile, and Kurt just laughs, “Good.”They take their time getting together.It’s not so much an issue with falling in love – Kurt thinks they’ve both been in love since they first met – but an issue with learning how to be themselves around each other. There’s an unspoken agreement between them – that this friendship is just the basis of something more, that this is just a waiting game for both of them – and Kurt is more than happy to honour it.And sometimes Blaine says things that scare Kurt, like, sometimes I wish my father had never found me, and he says them so casually, like he’s talking about the weather, or an essay for history class, and Kurt freezes in panic, thinks, what do I do? and then rubs his fingers over Blaine’s palm, tells him, “I’m glad he did.”And one time, Blaine walks into a bathroom at Dalton to find Kurt sat on the floor, knuckles bloody, staring dumbly at the red-stained cracked mirror above the sink. He pauses slightly, then—“Seven years,” Blaine teases lightly, and picks Kurt up off the floor to take him to the school nurse – have you read Ender’s Game, Kurt? It’s science fiction, but I think it might surprise you – and then it’s like it never happened.It’s not about falling in love – they’re already in love – but about putting themselves together enough that they won’t tear each other apart.It terrifies Kurt sometimes, though, the power he has over Blaine. On the bad days, when they’re screaming at each other – words like freak and nutcase spat without feeling across an empty dorm room – Kurt catches himself. Because he could destroy Blaine. It would be easy, just a few well-chosen words, well-intoned slurs, and Kurt knows exactly how he’d do it.(He’s spent long enough listening to the voices in his head to be able to imitate them.)It terrifies him, but what terrifies him more is that Blaine could do the same to him. Blaine could be the one—the one to push Kurt down with enough force that he won’t be able to get back up again – won’t want to – and Kurt thinks that he’d probably let him. He’d let him.And that is what terrifies Kurt most of all.In the early days, their entire relationship feels so precarious, because Blaine is clinging to Kurt like a lifeline, but Kurt’s barely able to hold onto himself.It gets better, though.(“It can always get better and it can always get worse. Which one is true is up to you.”)They meet in November, both holding their masks in front of their face, and trying to dance around their issues.(“Hi, I’m new here—holy shit. You’re Blaine Anderson!”)They kiss in December, under a floating sprig of mistletoe, to catcalls and drunken cheers from their friends.(“Merry Christmas, Blaine.”)They agree it was a mistake in January, huddled into each other’s heat and shivering, with hair damp from snow and lips blue from cold.(“I love you Blaine, but I don’t think we can—do that. Yet.”)They start dating in February, shouting at each other about feelings in a crowded coffee shop, surrounded by pink hearts and sickening themed-drinks.(“Why is this so hard? Why does this have to be so hard?”)And they promise each other forever in March.(“You—do realise this is everything to me, don’t you?”)They lose their virginity to each other on a rainy afternoon in April, slowly learning every contour of each other’s body, hands clawing into hair, smiles hidden in between shoulder blades.(“I love you so much, Blaine.”)They talk about marriage in May, mostly joking at first, but it’s not really a joke, not really.(“Come What May – that’s our wedding song. That’s non-negotiable. Just so you know.”)And in June, Blaine fails his drama elective after he misses his final assessment because he’s filming a new movie.(“Somehow, Blaine, I don’t think Ms. Kim was particularly amused by the irony of the situation.”)In July, Kurt meets Cooper when he goes to visit Blaine on set.(“Oh my God – you’re the blogger who does those really obscure stories aren’t you? The cat in the trash can thing that was trending on Tumblr – that was you. Blaine, why didn’t you tell me your brother was awesome?”)And in August, Kurt teaches Blaine how to drive in a rusty scrap of metal that is barely safe.(“Driving a manual isn’t that hard, Blaine. Clutch. Blaine, clutch! Clutch! BREAK! Oh my God, how are you so bad at this?”)In September, they’re blissfully in love.(“Did I ever tell you about the time I was a cheerleader?”)The same in October.(“Rachel wants your autograph, by the way, and wow. Isn’t that a mood-killer and a half?”)And when November rolls around again, Blaine sits down next to Kurt on his bed, takes Kurt’s hand and says, “You saved me.”Kurt wants to scoff and correct him – you saved me – but he doesn’t. He listens.“I want to tell you about—before.” Blaine takes a deep breath in. “There were these pills. In a cabinet. Anti-depressants.”Blaine stares resolutely at the wall.“I lost count after pill fourteen.”