21.

It doesn’t get much easier after this weekend, even though the therapist assures them that the side effects like insomnia and anxiety should slowly taper off. At least there are hours when Blaine feels fine apart from this numb, unreal feeling that he has pretty much constantly now. They try to make the most of them, preparing Blaine’s applications and essays for the New York schools. It’s hard to convey Blaine’s normal charismatic, bubbly personality in his essays when he is like this, but it’s better than nothing and with Kurt’s support and encouragement, the applications are ready and sent out by Thursday.

But this semblance of normalcy only lasts a few hours, here and there. More often than not, it’s bad. Or really, really bad, depending on the day. Sometimes Blaine’s just restless and dizzy, irritated about his mouth feeling dry all the time, about being unable to sleep more than two or three hours at a time and everything feeling distant and unreal. Sometimes it’s the anxiety again, occasionally landsliding into panic attacks; the new pills help then, but they make Blaine exhausted and groggy without actually helping him sleep, so he only takes them when it’s really bad.

And then there are the hours, blessedly rare, when Blaine’s fingers brutally claw at his skin, his teeth dig into his lips, drawing blood before he even realizes what he’s doing.

The second time this happens, Kurt makes Blaine promise to tell him when he starts feeling this urge so that they could try to take care of it in a different manner. If it helped the day Kurt came back, it could help again, right? Not that he believes in sex as some sort of fix, and he’d rather do it in a slow, worshipping way when Blaine feels better – but he’s willing to do anything to help, and if Blaine needs rough sex, he’ll give it to him. Hopefully the urges to hurt himself will disappear soon and they’ll be able to rediscover the tender sides of intimacy.

So the next time Blaine feels like cutting or shredding his skin open with his fingernails, uncovering the raw reality of pain and blood, they fuck instead. Not make love, no matter how much doing this with Blaine always feels like pure love to Kurt – no, it’s fucking this time, fast and rough, with hardly any preparation, with Blaine begging harder Kurt, please, harder, make me ache, and Kurt crying silently even as he complies, because hurting Blaine is something he’d never wanted to do, ever.

And for a moment, it seems to help – Kurt can feel the unbearable tension unwind from Blaine’s muscles, making him relaxed and pliant, lost in the rhythm and flow of their bodies – but it’s short-lived. Soon Blaine is thrashing and whimpering on the brink of his orgasm, then arching, keening, and… Nothing happens. Kurt does his best to last, pounding into the beautiful, eager body under him at just the right angle, jerking Blaine off exactly the way he likes best, but he’s not made of steel and soon he’s coming, all too aware of Blaine’s impatient, almost pained moans. Not even waiting for his mind to clear, Kurt pulls out and slides down Blaine’s body to suck him off, his fingers sliding into the still open, slick hole and quickly finding the magic spot. But minutes pass and Blaine’s cries turn into sobs until he pushes Kurt away with shaking hands and curls into a fetal position, unable to stop desperate tears from flowing, choking out between his sobs.

“Kurt, just… please, go, I can’t… I can’t even… oh god…”

Kurt gives him space, but doesn’t leave the room except for a short clean-up in the bathroom. He sits down by the desk instead, reading through the leaflet that came with Blaine’s meds. Sure, there it is, under common side effects – ejaculation problems: delayed ejaculation or inability to ejaculate. Nothing to worry about then, medically. Except he can imagine how Blaine must feel now; he cringes just thinking about it.

Blaine has gone quiet and still, hidden under the duvet so that only his unruly curls stick out, and Kurt makes a quick detour to the bathroom before crawling back to the bed with a soft, warm washcloth. Kissing the perfect curve of Blaine’s shoulder, he whispers.

“Hey, let me clean you up a little.” Blaine tenses under his touch, his voice muffled by the pillow that hides his face.

“No, Kurt… I can’t, I just… I feel so humiliated. You should just leave me, I keep getting more and more useless. If I can’t even do this now… What would you need me for?”

Kurt lies down to mold his body against Blaine’s back and answers simply.

“I need you for my world to be whole, Blaine. Without you, it never will.”

He pulls on Blaine’s arm, gentle, but insistent, not taking no for an answer. Finally his boyfriend gives up, rolling to his stomach and letting Kurt clean him up; gently he wipes away all the lube and come residue. It hurts Kurt to even look at the raw, abused flesh and know that he did this to Blaine, but he bites his lip to keep from crying again. He won’t add his own emotions into the mix here.

Blaine’s voice breaks roughly when he finally speaks.

“But look, I’m really turning into more and more of a failure. If I can’t even so much as come?”

“It’s just a side effect of your meds.”

“Maybe I should just stop taking them if they make me worse instead of better.”

Kurt drops the cloth to the floor and pulls Blaine back into his arms.

“Or maybe you should wait until they start working properly. And in the meantime… remember how much fun it was to make out for hours without letting ourselves come? Or explore and discover each other bit by bit? I miss those days sometimes; I’ll gladly go back to that for awhile. We have our whole lives for sex.”

Blaine’s smile doesn’t reach his eyes, but he doesn’t pull away.

It’s always darkest just before dawn, Kurt keeps reminding himself. He just hopes the dawn will come before the darkness swallows Blaine completely.