Kurt shouldn't have done it.

He told himself that repeatedly. He could be cold, and he could be cruel, and when he got angry he had a habit of making it the other person's fault, no matter how stupid he knew he was being in the back of his mind. Sometimes he hated himself for it; sometimes it was useful. But Blaine... The moment Blaine started fighting back should have been enough for Kurt to stop.

Kurt should have stopped when Blaine told him to, in the shower. And he shouldn't have gotten angry when Blaine apologized. Blaine internalized everything, and he was a very subtle person when he was at his weakest - it wasn't surprising he'd made it his fault and said he was sorry.

But it was just so frustrating! Trying to make someone see themselves through someone else's eyes is impossible, but if Blaine kept looking at himself like he had been, the rest of them would be looking at a corpse. He was so... messed up. Kurt cringed at the term, but that's what he was. Blaine was really messed up. Not that Kurt wasn't.

His hand rose to his slapped cheek again, though it had stopped hurting a while ago.

Kurt was really messed up, too. They all were. Santana was still messed up over Brittany, Kurt was messed up over Blaine, Blaine was messed up over everything because he was convinced everything he did was bad and his fault, and Rachel was messed up over getting someone to love her as much as she loved herself.

Kurt sighed and dropped his hand, absent-mindedly looping his fingers through the bottom drawer's handle, which was the closest to the floor, where Kurt sat cross-legged, afraid to go out.

He really had been stupid. Stupid and cruel and selfish. He just needed Blaine to be able to feel again, because without feeling, they had... well, they had nothing. Their entire relationship was built on feeling. It was built on trust and forgiveness and emotions, and Blaine had somehow pulled out of the last one.

No, Kurt had to remind himself. Blaine didn't pull out. He was forced out. Something had happened to him that made him incapable of feeling, that made him empty, that made him a ghost. But that wasn't true either!

Kurt yanked on the drawer without thinking and it opened smoothly but faster than he expected, banging into his foot and making him curse under his breath.

Everyone said it like that, said he didn't feel, but that wasn't it. He'd been terrified of Kurt and still so utterly brainwashed that he'd thought it was his fault and had apologized for it.

Kurt sucked in a deep breath, and the sound hung in the empty air of the bathroom around him.

But Blaine had fought back. He'd snapped. Kurt has been cruel enough to make someone who thought they were utterly worthless defend themselves. It was supposed to be a good thing when Blaine fought back, it was supposed to mean that he'd found enough confidence to do so, but that wasn't what had happened. Kurt had been so utterly wrong and unfair and horrible to him that he'd realized that nobody, not even the most lowly of human beings like he believed his was, should be force-fed lies and crude names. And Kurt had done that.

Another thing Kurt shouldn't have done: pulled open the bottom drawer.

It took a while before he focused on the contents, but when he did he felt even more sick than he had previously. Because he was looking at razor blades, and an old, familiar journal, and he knew their purpose.

Yet another thing to add to the list that Kurt shouldn't have done: read the journal.

But it was right there! And Blaine hadn't really been made when he'd read it last time. He'd just been mildly disappointed. Granted, he was pretty furious at the moment, but they both had a problem with being unable to actually stay mad at the other for longer than, say, a day or two. And Kurt had kept the secret that he'd read his journal from Blaine for months the first time. Surely it wouldn't be so difficult the second time around to let him cool down for a few days...

He reached in and drew out the journal, and opened it.

It was just like he remembered. The first entry was still there. Still just as intact as it was before. It was old, it was wrinkled, it was stained and ripped and the further back into the pages it went, the less so it became. Until the pages reached the point where the tears and the blood started ruining the paper. You could have organized the phases of Blaine's life by cleanliness just looking at the paper.

The journal was almost full. Kurt felt like flinging it across the room - but that would have defeated the purpose. So he read. And at first, it was like how he'd left off. It was sad, and it was scared, and it was lonely and depreciating and stained - and not just on the paper, but in the words themselves. As much as it broke Kurt's heart, it was something he was used to, no matter how much he shouldn't have been.

It was his Blaine writing this. If Blaine would let him be his anymore.

Right:

Wrong:
Woke up and didn't make the bed
Forgot to make breakfast for Santana
Late to class
Forgot lunch plans with Kurt
You need to stop, Blaine
You're ruining this
STOP
Late to class again
Bought Santana wrong flowers - she likes tulips, not daisies
Made Santana wait for 3 minutes for me to pick her up after work
Left Santana at home alone to finish packing
By herself
It's better than being near you, Blaine
STOP
Bought Kurt wrong kind of flowers
Lied and said this journal was a different book when Kurt asked
I lied to Kurt
Lied to Kurt
No wonder he doesn't trust me
Remembered that Kurt didn't trust me
Kurt doesn't trust me
Let him lie and say it was okay
Made Kurt lie
You're killing yourself, Blaine
It doesn't matter
You can't die
I'm not living
Stop
STOP
PLEASE
Wasted money on I'm Sorry presents
Cried on Kurt's hair when he fell asleep
Stop using people as pillows, Blaine
Nobody wants your tears
PLEASE STOP
Wrote in journal
Put off cutting because I didn't want to use their razors
Made excuses for not cutting
Not cutting doesn't require an excuse, cutting does
PLEASE!
You're horrible
You're wasting paper
There's only one line left
please help

Kurt remembered that day. Blaine had forgotten to make Santana her normal breakfast, well-cooked and premeditated, so he made up for it by buying her a box of chocolates on his way to pick her up and was three minutes later than usual as a result. And he had forgotten his lunch plans with Kurt; but his lunch plans with Kurt had consisted of "meet and eat if you can", and Kurt hadn't been bothered by it in the least. He'd known Blaine was busy. And Blaine had bought him flowers to make up for it, and Kurt had thought everything was okay.

He shook his head, both to clear it of the tears that threatened to join Blaine's on the page and out of wistfulness. He hadn't thought everything was okay in a long time, it seemed. Maybe he'd just been awake too long, but it seemed that the last twelve hours he'd been alive had stretched on for years.

Maybe that was just the problem. They'd all been awake too long. Awake and alone and writing in a journal. It definitely wasn't his Blaine that had written that. It was the Blaine that had made and broken promises and who had lied his way in and out of confrontation time and time again... Kurt wished that he could say he'd done otherwise.

He kept reading.

When Kurt eventually did walk out of the bathroom, the journal safely in its drawer and his face carefully washed of the tear stains, he found that he'd forgotten that it adjoined into Blaine's room and not the living room right away - and he found himself staring at Blaine's back, because he was lying on his bed. "Oh," had crossed his lips before the thought had finished forming in his head, and he stiffened anxiously, unsure of how Blaine would react.

Blaine didn't at first. Kurt stood there in anticipation for what seemed like forever - and was in fact thirty seconds - before Blaine said, "I know you're there, Kurt."

Kurt had inhaled without meaning to when Blaine spoke, and when he spoke next it was while sighing, "Is it too soon to apologize?"

Blaine didn't answer. Instead, he changed the topic.

"Why is everyone so obsessed with last words? Like, what does it matter what words happened to be the last ones out of your mouth? Why don't people focus on HARD words? You know, the ones that, when they pass your lips, take your heart with them while you're still alive, instead of taking your heart and killing you? I'm not interested in what people say last. I'm interested in what they last meant. Why is nobody else?"

"Because when you're dying, you know you've got one last chance to say what you mean and mean what you say," Kurt explained gently, looking at him still with his head to the side, his arms hanging limply at his sides, unsure of what to do. "A lot of people are too scared of leaving the world unheard to pass that up."

"I just don't get why they'd wait that long, though," Blaine murmured, looking at his hands. "Why wait until the last minute when you mean things all your life but never took the chance to say them?"

"Because people have a knack for screwing up," Kurt answered. "People have a knack for thinking there's always going to be a tomorrow and really messing up when there's not."

"But what about the people who know tomorrow's not coming, or who hope it doesn't?"

Kurt's fingers twitched. "Those are generally the ones who kill themselves, Blaine. I'd be fairly interested inthose last words."

Blaine shrugged. "They wouldn't tell me anything I don't already know."

"Blaine..." Kurt trailed off. Where had this topic come from? Why was he speaking to Kurt so informally? Was he really forgiven that quickly? "You said you're interested in what people mean."

"Yes."

Kurt wished he had trouble seeing the Blaine with his back turned to him as the boy who'd spilled everything to an almost-full, blood-stained book. Kurt wished that the low lighting mixed with the sun from outside didn't cast everything in the room into a haze of dancing dust particles. Kurt wished that he didn't understand, because he wished there was nothing to be understood.

And from that, he asked, "What do you wish?"

Blaine didn't respond. His curls on the pillow didn't budge an inch, but Kurt could see him breathing, and the sheets below him he hadn't bothered to climb into were still rumpled. The blanket was to the side, unused, untouched, cold, in a pile along the side Kurt usually slept on.

Every inch of Blaine screamed of what Kurt had had to read to see. The way his fingertips grazed each other -

Couldn't stop

- or the way his shoulders shook, even when he was doing nothing but breathing silently -

Couldn't stop

- or the way he covered his ankle with his toes without intending to -

please help

- or how only his ear and above rested on the pillow because he was curled into the form he used when he slept on Kurt's chest.

Kurt moved towards him. He took the few long steps it required to get to the bed, and in moving closer he could see more details, how the hair on the back of his neck stood up straight, how his calves flexed because of the unnatural position he'd twisted his feet to cover his scars, how flat his face was when he was unsmiling. He climbed onto the bed, his hand outstretched for Blaine -

And Blaine rolled away and off the bed, out of reach again, as soon as he heard the bedsheets rustle. He landed on his feet and turned back around to face Kurt, and what Kurt had thought to be flatness was actually anger, and buried beneath it a grief Kurt had spent long hours reading over and still couldn't fully understand. "What I wish?" he clarified, though it was clear he didn't want Kurt to speak. "I wish we met in a grocery store. I wish you asked for my number and I wrote it on your arm. I wish we could go on our first date and talk about ourselves and I wish we could've kissed on my front porch without my parents being disgusted and the neighbors throwing eggs at us. I wish that our second date could've been putting on a movie but being too busy watching each other to watch it. I wish I could grow and mature with you instead of falling back into an age I never should have entered and being forever that many steps behind. I wish you could have introduced me to your father over dinner and he'd have shaken my hand and his meeting me wouldn't have been me waking up hungover in your bed. I wish you could've introduced me to your mother, too. I wish I could have been your plus one at Mr. Schue's wedding because he'd never met me because we met in a grocery store. I wish I had your coffee ready for you in the morning. I wish that when I slept next to you I'd sleep because I wanted to and not because I was hurt or drained and even if I snored you'd just find it charming. I wish we could be happy and not feel selfish when we are."

Kurt blinked slowly, slowly, repeatedly, his breaths coming faster as Blaine's words accelerated. "Blaine..."

"I wish the oven would break," he continued, pointing uselessly in the direction of the kitchen, "and you'd have to fix it so it would be delivery pizza and takeout for a week. I wish I'd give you t-shirts with your favorite band on the front. I wish we'd fret about bills and helping Finn through college and I wish those bills came in the mail with the name 'Blaine Hummel' on them. I wish we had nights where we talked for hours about our days and our co-workers, without it feeling really unsteady and like it's about to break, and only because we wanted to hear about those things, because we love each other. I wish we had inside jokes nobody else would understand, not even Rachel, or Santana; or that we had a routine and not this insane jumble of life we've knotted for ourselves."
Kurt shook his head that was held in his hands against the words. "No..."
"I wish I had a childhood unmarred by hatred and loss and I wish you did too. I wish I could watch your hair turn gray and not from stress. I wish you could watch mine, too, and that we could be old and wrinkled like we planned to be on our first date when we talked about ourselves, even if we never said it out loud. I wish I wasn't who I am. I wish I didn't have to choose your trust over my health and I wish I didn't just make it sound like it's your fault because it's not, Kurt, it'll never be. I wish..." and for the first time since beginning, Blaine stopped and thought over his words before finishing, "that circumstances were different. I guess that's all I'm saying. I wish circumstances were different."

Yet another thing Kurt never should have done: asked what Blaine wished.

"You see now, don't you? The f-"

"And I wish you would just leave!" Blaine tried to shout, but his voice was hoarse and stuck in his throat and it came out a raspy whisper that made Kurt drop the hand he'd outstretched again. Blaine's face had crumpled, his entire posture collapsing in on itself like he was doing, and a huge, fat tear left Blaine's eye, only to be caught in the wrinkles he'd made when he'd shattered. "I wish you could. I wish you didn't have to. I wish -"

"Blaine."

Kurt was more grateful than anything at the sound of Santana's voice as she pulled aside the curtain gently. She spared him a glance - and then returned to the boy she'd been addressing. "You need to rest. We all do. We've been awake too long."

When nobody moved, Santana snapped her fingers and pointed behind her, her movements precise and jagged. "Kurt. Out."

Kurt looked at Blaine.

He'd said he wanted Kurt to leave. He'd said he wished he would. But when Blaine met his eyes, it was clear that what he had been going to say was the opposite. Blaine wanted Kurt out so he didn't have to feel like he was dying in the place he lived; but he needed Kurt there to live at all, and he needed someone to hold him.

"Kurt."

"I'm going," Kurt told her, and all Blaine did was look away, so he went.

"Come on, Blaine," Santana said, taking his hand as gently as she could. "We should bandage you up."

When he looked up at her, she bit the inside of her cheek to remind herself not to cry, which she'd been repressing since they'd spoken while Kurt was in the bathroom.

"Your hand," she said, and his face dropped in understanding.

"Okay," he agreed, and so she led him back into the bathroom. She was really leaning towards redecorating the room if they could; the same floor tiles and smooth walls and irritatingly small mirror over the stained sink, and the shower that sometimes gave the people in the apartment below them a shower... it was all starting to give her a migraine.

That, and Blaine hurt himself in here without her knowing for what was apparently quite some time. She looked down at her feet and wondered just how often he'd had to wash blood off the floor, in the early hours of the morning, when people as good as he was should be doing something great like eating ice cream and not when they should be washing blood off a floor.

She looked back at him just in time for him to stop dead in his tracks and say, "Something's wrong."

"What is it?"

"He... he did something." Blaine's eyes widened in panic and traveled up and down the drawers, and Santana followed his gaze when it eventually froze on the middle of the bottom. It was unevenly closed; the right side was out just a little bit more than the left, but not enough for anyone other than the person who shut it previously to notice. Blaine sucked in a short, hiccuped breath, and said, "He did something," again.

"What did he do?" Santana asked, afraid of the answer.

Blaine took his hand from hers and bent down almost tenderly, and when his knees hit the floor he visibly shuddered and told her without looking at her, "You don't have to watch."

"Wh-" Oh. So that was where he kept it... them... whatever. She considered looking away like he made it clear she should want to do. She considered never laying eyes on the things that made him bleed. But she also considered what it would mean if it did, and how, to him, the things Blaine relied on wouldn't be worth looking at to her, and even if it made her want to puke, she wasn't going to look away. "No, it's okay."

Blaine didn't hesitate after she said it, and she hoped it was because he trusted her, and not because he was desperate to find out what Kurt had done. So Santana directed her eyes towards the drawer when Blaine pulled it out, and successfully managed not to gag when she saw the sharp, shining razor glint in the artificial lighting, on top of the journal she knew too well (though she doubted she knew what was in it now as well as she did weeks ago).

Before, she'd had difficulty picturing it. Blaine, on the bathroom floor, when it was dark, the fake lights making his curls look more brown than black, with a blade in his hand and to his ankle. But she saw it now, and it was... if she'd been anyone else, or if she'd loved him a little less than she did, or if they hadn't just discussed what they'd discussed, maybe she'd have broken down and cried then. But she didn't. She was Santana.

"He read it."

"What?"

"My journal. He read it." Blaine was getting angry again. "But we just... we just settled this. It was only a month or two ago. He only told me a month or two ago." Santana searched for words, but every time she drew close, another shaking sentence passed from his mouth, and she was sent reeling again. "I don't understand. He knew... he knows. Oh, he was... he was pitying me. God, he was pitying me. That's why he wanted to apologize. He -"

"No, no, no no," Santana rushed in, bending down and catching Blaine's wrist before he could move the blade like he aimed to. She didn't want to see him touch it. "How do you know he read it?"

"I always put the blade in the top right corner," Blaine explained, but his anger wasn't anger anymore, it was delving straight into hysterics. His eyes filled with tears and flickered over the room, the drawer, over Santana, and his voice and words trembled, and he looked - as much as Santana found the notion odd - a lot more like her Blaine somehow. "Never just sloppily in the middle. He moved it, he touched it. It feels different, he read it, he must have -"

"It's okay, Blaine -"

"But he kept it from me for months, even though I knew, and told me he wouldn't read it during that time, which was clearly a lie, and now he knows that I know he doesn't trust me and -"

"Wait, honey, Kurt does trust you," Santana told him, confused, her brow furrowing. "Is this about the 'sex toy' comment? You know he says things he doesn't mean when he gets frustrated -"

"No, not that, not that!" Blaine shook his head fervently. "The - the - it was w-when I m-met Adam with you guys -"

"What? What did he say?" Santana begged, clasping her other hand around the free wrist Blaine had moved unintentionally towards the drawer. When Blaine started crying when she made the contact, she loosened her grip, but didn't let him go. "B, you need to talk to me."

"I wasn't supposed t-to hear," Blaine blubbered, and Santana recognized this, these actions, the way he teetered, unstable, even sitting back on his heels. "I was outside, and coming in I heard K-Kurt say it, and he s-said, 'Once a cheater, always a... a cheater', and I -"

"Triggers?" Kurt asked.

"If I were to say the words 'heart attack', what's the first thing you think of?"

"My dad."

"A trigger is like that, a bit," Rachel explained. "It's when you hear or see or smell or touch something that reminds you of a certain thing, except for a trigger, it basically reverts your mind to the precise moment when your trigger became your trigger, and your body goes back to the chemical state it was in then. So a retired soldier's trigger could be a gunshot or seeing blood, and when that happens, he kind of has a panic attack."

"Blaine doesn't have panic attacks," Santana and Kurt said at the same time, and then looked at each other evenly.

"Okay then," Rachel said, "That doesn't mean he can't have a trigger. What if something reminded him of when he cheated on you?"

Kurt flinched. "I don't know. Maybe he'd cry? We haven't really... talked about when it... happened."

"His body would go back to the chemical state it was in then," Rachel kept going. "He'd be right back in that moment when the guilt first hit him."

"So he'd still feel like he'd just cheated?" Santana clarified.

"In other words, he'd feel like 'once a cheater, always a cheater'," Kurt repeated her.

"Yup," Rachel nodded. "That's what it is. We don't know if it's Blaine's, but it could be that."

"Blaine, stand up," Santana ordered, her lips tighter than she expected them to be, and she pulled the boy to his feet. "You're having a panic attack."

"What? I-I don't -"

"You're having a panic attack," Santana repeated calmly. "And you must have heard that out of context. We were talking about triggers and how you might feel if you were brought back to the night of you cheating. Kurt trusts you, Blaine. And you're having a panic attack."

"But I d-don't!"

"You are now," Santana told him. "It's a good thing, if you think about it."

"W-What? How?"

She smiled. "Instead of not feeling, you're feeling too much. And it's physical now instead of just mental and emotional - or, well, physical in a way that's not self-inflicted - and you're getting better."

He stared at her so blankly beyond the blatant hysteria she lost hope for a moment that he even understood what being better was like anymore. But then it was there; the understanding that he didn't have to bleed in that moment to feel as immensely as he could. But with that understanding came not just relief, but fear. "It's t-too m-much, San, I don't w-want to -"

"Shhh, honey, you'll be fine," she soothed, running her hands through his hair and nudging the drawer closed with her foot. "I'm right here and you're safe now. I promise I'm here. Right here. Waving my arms like a crazy person." And she did so as an example, flapping her arms around and flinging her limbs about randomly, almost hitting the wall and grazing the mirror with her knuckles.

Blaine giggled behind his tears and she dropped her arms to his shoulders.

"See?" she asked. "Right here."

Kurt barely managed to fall asleep at all. He was surprised when he did; so surprised he almost woke himself up again just by falling asleep. But the fact of the matter was that he heard the slivers of words from under the bathroom door for a long enough time that it beat down on him having to strain to hear until he passed out of fatigue.

Blaine didn't know that. Blaine half expected him to be awake, so he could talk to him, so they could talk - but when he pulled aside the curtain, he was fast asleep under Santana's covers, snoring ever-so-lightly, his shoulders rising and falling with his even breaths. For a moment, Blaine watched him sleep; he watched the innocence play over his features with the light that danced through the covered window, he watched how his breaths didn't cost him any pain, he watched how he gripped the pillow tighter than he'd gripped Blaine in a while - with the exception of the shower, but that wasn't something Blaine was too keen to think about.

So he pulled the curtain shut again and returned to his room.

"He's asleep," Santana deduced, as soon as he entered, from her position sitting on Kurt's side of Blaine's bed.

"Yeah," Blaine confirmed loosely, flopping himself on the mattress lazily. He felt like he was allowed to, after how long he'd been awake and what all had happened in that time. So when Santana shifted but didn't say anything, he titled his head back and grimaced when he noticed that she was looking off into space with an expression she probably didn't want him to see. "Are you alright?"

"I'm fine," she responded automatically, snapping back into herself and looking down at him. "Just thinking."

He thought about what she might be thinking about. How it had taken him an hour and a half to recover from that panic attack? What they'd talked about? He hated that option, but it was probably the right one. She had stopped when he needed her to, like she said she would, but still... he hadn't drug up those old memories in quite a while in such vivid detail, and it wasn't fun to remember it.

From when Eli first greeted him the pit in his stomach had told him it was wrong. When Eli first kissed him, he tried not to gag, and instead passed it off as a moan - which he realized a moment later was the wrong things to do, because it only encouraged him.

Blaine could describe every tiny thing in Eli's bedroom in detail, because while it was happening, he looked everywhere but at Eli. Eli's dresser's wood stain didn't match his nightstand. His closet doors were still and plastered in posters of semi-naked men. An old, discarded, worn-looking sock was tossed onto the otherwise meticulously clean floor. The ceiling fan wasn't going, but the lights were on.

He focused on all of it intently, but even it couldn't distract from how Eli groaned and thrusted and physically hit him down when he tried to get away. "Stop" Blaine told him, but Eli told him he wouldn't. "I don't want to" Blaine told him, but Eli told him he did. "I have a boyfriend" Blaine told him, but Eli said he obviously didn't care about him much if he'd come over.

"Get off me" Blaine told him, but Eli held him down and fucked him into the stuff mattress with so much force he bruised.

"About what?"

"That was your first panic attack, wasn't it?" she asked.

For someone as emotional and emotionally vulnerable as Blaine, panic attacks when things get to be too much are expected. But that's not what happens. Since he was a little kid, panic attacks had never really been anything but foreign to him. There were times when he panicked, sure, but he never had a full-out chemical unbalance because of stress. Or if he did it was a different sort.

Blaine would get to the point where the stress and frustration and fear would become too overwhelming, and it was like his body shut down all emotion whatsoever. It was impossible to feel, at least until the point where when the emotion started to return he'd spent so long being apathetic that it was no longer overwhelming. As a tool, a lot of people could have seen it as an advantage. He didn't. At all.

So when Cassandra July decided that he was "a fairytale dwarf so short he has to sing everything and dance pathetically just so people know to look down if he has any chance of being seen" and "a ridiculous elf monk with weird round ears who might as well have died his hair rainbow before he glued it to his scalp" on top of all the homework he was behind on because of his absences due to injuries, he came home that day and found that Santana was already there.

She greeted him, and he barely heard it. And then he knew something was wrong.

If it had been ten years prior, what he said would have been "Please get Cooper." He'd never hear himself say it or feel anything behind the words, but when Cooper was there he'd somehow drag something out of Blaine - anger at his selfishness, humor at his jokes, sadness at his worry. And then the attack would cease and Blaine could feel again.

But when Cooper left for L.A., Blaine was stuck with his parents. His parents who were dead-set against him being gay. But he had nobody else to go to when it happened, so his words became "Please get my parents."

His parents never helped really, just stayed around him long enough for the attack to subside - and they considered that good enough and left him alone again.

And then he'd met Kurt.

He'd only had an attack like that twice since he met him, but both times he'd repeated "Please get Kurt" like a mantra. And Kurt would come and Kurt would sit directly in front of him and Kurt would hold his face between his hands and tease his lips in a way that always drove Blaine crazy. And then the craziness would dig through the apathy and his emotions would come back, and Kurt would force him to talk them through so that when they were done Kurt could tease him again and he'd respond accordingly.

Kurt, unlike the others, would make him feel good, and keep him feeling good even when he made him dwell on the bad. And then the bad didn't seem so bad.

So when he shut the door behind him and slid down it, his eyes downcast even as Santana hurried over to him, he just said, "Please get Kurt."

"What's wrong?" she asked. She knelt beside him and put her hand on his arm. "Anderson?"

"Please get Kurt."

"Blaine, you can talk to me -"

"Please. Get Kurt."

And so maybe ten minutes later, when Santana had put him on the couch, Kurt came bursting through the door, and Blaine could see and hear again.

The first thing he did was sit directly beside Blaine and take his face between his hands. Kurt's palms were warm on his cheeks, and he could feel the warmth spread through him, almost tauntingly. You can feel this! You can feel this! And then Kurt nuzzled his nose against Blaine's, and brushed their lips together just the faintest bit. He didn't speak - he didn't have to - but he did continue to kiss him ever-so-lightly, drawing out even the smallest shred of desire that unwound from Blaine's stomach.

And he didn't stop until the warmth in Blaine's eyes spilled over.

"Yes," Blaine answered. "You know they just don't happen to me." Santana nodded, but didn't ask anything else, her eyes far away again. And though the silence lasted only about half a minute, Blaine broke it anxiously - it was too thick to sleep in and too thin to leave behind. "Why?"

"I'm wondering," Santana began, "if maybe it's a step towards you getting better, or if it means you're only getting worse. In terms of you... of you... you know."

"Cutting," Blaine supplied listlessly.

She nodded again. "Yeah."

"I don't know," Blaine considered her hypothesis. "If anything, it would be a step in the right direction, right? I mean, feeling so much I can't contain it... it's better than what normally happens."

"But it's not," Santana argued. "A lot of people do what you do because they feel too much, not because the don't feel. If this is a transition from one thing you're used to to something it takes you an hour and a half to get past at a time - and only with my help - I'm not sure if you'd be better off or not."

"At least Kurt wouldn't get angry at me for not talking about my feelings," Blaine said.

"Don't look at it like that," Santana snapped, and he looked at her, slightly uncomfortable with her tone. "Don't try to see the advantages other people would have if you entered a situation that hurt you. Your circumstances should be changed to benefit you, not someone else, no matter how much you love them."

"When did you become a therapist?" Blaine asked, bitterness leaking into his words without his permission.

"I'm not one," Santana threw back, before sighing and slumping and continuing with, "But maybe you should see one."

Blaine paused. "What?"

"Not on any kind of recurring schedule," Santana defended herself, "But at least once. Get a medical diagnosis, see if there's something that's going on inside your head that we can get help for. Pills. Medicine. Something."

"You want me to see a shrink?" Blaine actively let the acid color his voice this time.

"I want you to feel better," Santana looked him square in the eyes. "And if that means seeing a shrink or downing six pills a day, then yes."

"I'm not going to feel better because I sit on a couch and tell a stranger that I'm messed up, Santana," Blaine growled, sitting up, his back to her.

She didn't fight back, and Blaine stared at the wall. The distant, echoing tick of the wall clock in the kitchen marked the seconds as they passed, and when not a rustle or a word came from behind him, he spoke up again, furthering his argument.

"It's always the same, anyway," Blaine told her. "They always start off with how you're feeling. How the hell am I supposed to answer? I'm not feeling, that's why I'm there."

There was a slight movement and his cheap mattress bounced the tiniest bit when Santana moved behind him - but she didn't speak, so he kept going.

"And once I lie through my teeth and tell them some fake answer, they move on to why I'm there. Again, because I'm not feeling. But I've just told them how I'm feeling, so obviously, I can't tell them that. So I just say I'm sad."

Tick.

Tock.

"But then they ask why, and what am I supposed to say? Am I supposed to tell them that my boyfriend and I are fighting? Am I supposed to say I got disowned? Am I supposed to tell them I'm cutting? What am I supposed to do? So I tell them I don't know."

Tick.

Tock.

"And so they try to find out. They ask me what's happening, what's been going on. How do they want me to answer? So I just answer with some bullcrap about school and friends and stuff and from that they just plunge into a bunch of weird crap about television and books I read and somewhere along the way they write down all the lies I tell them, and nobody benefits."

Tick.

Tock.

"And by the time the session ends, they get their money for listening to me whine about my problems that aren't even mine, and they make some bad conclusion about some rare mental disorder I don't have, and I'm put on the same old depression medication that doesn't help at all, because I lied my way through. It's a cycle we go through a hundred times with shrinks; ask a question, lie about the answer, get a new question from the lie, lie about that answer - it goes on and o-."

"How do you know what a session is like, Blaine?"

He whipped himself around to look at her, and to his shock and dismay, she was biting her bottom lip and rocking back and forth on her knees silently, her cheeks sucked in so she wouldn't be tempted to let them be loose enough to let tears slide down them. She was trying not to cry; and succeeding, but the fact remained that she had to try at all.

So the truth came out. "I went to one after... after Eli."

Santana's wrists flexed, but other than that, she didn't react.

"And before I came out. My parents were worried about me the first time, thought maybe I was depressed. They took me to see a shrink. The second time it was right after Eli, before I even came to tell Kurt, and it was still fresh, and I thought maybe talking to someone who didn't care about me about it would help. Both times went the same way, and neither helped."

"You never actually told..?"

"No."

"They prescribed you depression meds?"

"I tried them. Both times."

"They didn't work."

"No."

Santana moved quickly, gracefully, towards him, her arms outstretched, and without a second thought he fell into them, and she she hugged him he realized he was crying. "I love you, San."

He sighed and skipped it and hugged her like she'd asked him too, asked him to in a moment of total weakness and regret and god if he ever spoke of this again she would murder the kid, but right now she really needed him to hug her. And he did. He was warm and comforting and even though he was small his presence seemed to take up the whole room and just exist in a way that was comforting, and he whispered small reassurances to her, apologies and promises and encouragements that she hadn't heard from anyone in way too long. The last one she'd heard last from only her mother during their phone call the week before: "I love you, San." The nickname, however, was new, and even though a long time ago she'd promised herself she hated nicknames like it, it sent a relieving shot through her.

"Love you t-too, B."

"Yeah. You too, B. I love you, too." Her grip was suddenly tighter. "I'm really proud of you, I - yeah. Love you t-too, B." She sucked in a deep breath, even though he'd felt like the air had been kicked forcibly from his lungs. "Go to sleep," she whispered, and she pulled him backwards; he followed her orders and moved up the bed while she turned and got the blanket, before laying it over top of both of them. "Is this okay?" she asked, suddenly sounding nervous.

"Of course," he promised, and reached out for her, pulling her into his chest; she was warm and compliant, and laid her head down just below his collarbone, her hands resting on his stomach, her fingers curled. Her heartbeat was actually less strong than his, and he didn't expect that - but it was strong enough to override the sound of that damn clock, and it had soon lulled him to sleep.

She could hear Kurt breathing on the other side of the curtain. It had been even at first, but over time, it had grown jagged and heavy, and she could hear him tossing and turning, and every now and them she could have sworn he woke up for a few seconds and then drifted back into restless sleep.

And, to break her heart even further, Blaine was the same way. Though to begin with he'd held her closely, and he'd kissed her hair and wrapped his arms around her, now he was turning onto his side, and kicking in his sleep, and muttering at the nightmares he was having.

It was completely stupid, and she told herself that. It was ridiculous to be jealous of them, and to still be angry because she wanted nothing like what they had. Jealous that they loved each other so much that when an issue went unresolved they still couldn't bear not sleeping next to each other when the opportunity was right there; but she didn't want their fights, and their distrust, and their problems, and... and...

And she wanted to be enough that Blaine would still hold her, even in his subconscious. It had no reason to it, she told herself. She loved Blaine, and she really... she really wanted to be that person for him, his best friend, because he was hers and she was pretty certain that if she'd been the one to fall asleep first they'd still be cuddling like they were. But he'd pushed her to the side in his sleep, and Kurt was his best friend, and... she didn't know why she needed validation from the haunted boy next to her, but she did.

She wanted... she didn't know. She wanted to be held by Blaine and to fall asleep by her best friend and know that she was his, too. She wanted to snuggle with him, god damn it, it didn't matter who she was or how much of a bitch she was. She wanted to help him and she needed help, too.

God, she was a mess. Blaine's problems were way worse, and she knew that, and she wanted to fix that. But did she... did she want to so that he'd be better, or so that her problems could be focused on? Because she was an emotional train wreck and nobody could notice because there was a living, breathing catastrophe right next to her. She loved him, with all her heart, and it scared her a lot, but she could deal with that. She just...

She just stared straight ahead and cried and kept seeing the barrel of the gun right in front of her, and Blaine's blades all around, and it - it - she needed to sleep.

So she did what anyone would do; she stood up, and walked to the other side of the bed, and uncovered Blaine before she picked him up as gently as she could. And then she carried him to her bed on the other side of the curtain, and she laid him down next to Kurt. She bent down to pick up the blanket Kurt had kicked to the floor, and when she came back up, they were clutching each other.

She put the blanket over top of them and went back to Blaine's bed and laid down and stared up at the ceiling, willing herself not to blink and dislodge the tears any more than she had. It was useless and she cried until her eyes burned as much as her head.

She didn't fall asleep for another several hours.