At the end of the world, in the last seconds of worldwide consciousness, Kurt knew that he would welcome the escape from life with open arms. 

The final rush of cold air in thick, heated lungs before the inevitable sputter, the choking cries of a boy embracing death. If the end of the world were to occur while Kurt breathed, he would consider it a gift. He'd thought about it often; saying goodbye to the grass and the sky and the sadness that nestled in the wetness of his blackening heart. Kurt sat at his desk; schoolwork was piled up to his shoulder. His phone flashed with unanswered messages. Every now and then it buzzed. Blaine kept calling. Kurt's heart kept hurting.

The house was silent.

Dark shadows had begun to pollute the white space, and endless trails of Kurt and Burt were strewn about the house. A bottle of milk sat on the table, waiting to be tidied away. A cupboard hung ajar, like the room was yawning, milking the serenity from the air. The light switch was worn from constant use, discoloured from the white paint. The tiles on the cabineted wall spoke of times when a delicate, pale hand wiped them with pink cloths. The smears of years past were faint, but the smell of the cleaning products lingered.

Odd boots lay at awkward angles on the floor, creating a pathway from the front door to the staircase. The wooden floor gave way to beige, scratchy carpet leading up the steps; a platform occasionally stained dark from mud or slopped coffee; the beige stretching on, like an eternally outstretched arm.

But Kurt no longer viewed the walls built around him as home. It was merely a confinement of his deepest, darkest secrets, the mountain of hatred that spilled from his skinny bones and soaked into the carpet beneath his scarred feet. All Kurt's problems had been identified in the very room he sat in, at the very same desk that felt worn and sad against the scabbed elbows holding up his weary head.

Everything Kurt had become, stemmed from this room. He was rooted to the plot of land, holding him hostage on an earth that felt unwelcome and barren. Kurt looked out of the window, and he could see clouds on a cloudless day. Ugly, black rain on a snowy winter morning. Icy daggers in the heat of summer. 

It had been an especially hot day when Kurt had first realised he was gay. 

He knew it was an innate thing; an internal creation of pain for himself, like pulling the hairs from his arms one at a time. Thin strands of anger flared as he had kicked a pebble home. Kurt had no friends. He had no comfort, no home away from home. He had no mother, and a father that failed to fill the void, no matter how hard he tried. And Kurt felt like he was failing to be the son his mother had wanted him to grow up to be. 

Kurt could remember the realisation had stung him, straight in the chest, like a ferocious wasp defending its line of flight. The ground seemed to fly up to reach Kurt's eyeline. The trees uprooted and fell towards him, forming barriers across the path home. His breathing had quickened; there was no one to reach forward and tell Kurt it was okay.

"I'm sick, I'm sick, I'm fucking crazy," he had whimpered the whole way home. 

I can be cured. I will be sent away and my father will have to use the rest of mom's insurance money to make me straight. I will be taken away. I'll be changed. 

And Kurt had returned to his home, and ran up the familiar beige stairway, feet colliding angrily with the softened floor. Tears had ruined his eyesight before the angry red haze could set in. His door had barely closed before he was screaming, and punching, and letting everything in his room fall victim to his rage.

Burt returned home to find his little fourteen-year-old boy in a pool of vomit, curled up into himself, trying to disappear from the monster he had morphed into.

"I don't know how I know," he sobbed, as Burt ran him a bath. "I was walking home, and then I knew, I just knew."

"It's ok, Kurt, I'm happy to accept you as you are."

"I can be cured, dad, if you send me away I can get cured."

Burt tried hard to suppress the tears building up behind his reddened eyes. "You don't need to be cured, son. You're perfectly fine as you are." Kurt let his own tears fall at the sight of Burt's wet eyes. "You're perfect, kid."

For months, Kurt was plagued with the idea that he was dirty and ugly and sick. He had a recurring dream; in it, Kurt sat in a large waiting room, full to the brim. With each passing minute, the knot in his stomach grew tighter, until it was excruciating pain, like someone trying to extract his lungs through his navel. The room would grow brighter, and the women would begin to undress, and their hair would fall out in tufts, and then handfuls, and they screamed at Kurt, blaming him for poisoning them, for spreading his evil disease. And Kurt would awake, screaming for his mother, his poor, hairless mother; for the pain to go away; for someone to hold him until he could stop shaking. Burt stopped responding to the nightmares after three weeks. They continued for eight months.

Eventually it took therapy for Kurt to finally accept his sexuality. Kurt was sixteen by the time he allowed himself to watch pornography online. Kurt was seventeen when he met Blaine.

"And the rest is history," Kurt whispered to himself. His phone continued to buzz beside him.

He's only worried about you, Kurt thought to himself. He hadn't attended school all week; he hadn't seen Blaine since he woke up to hear him making breakfast in the kitchen. The morning when he had locked himself in his mother's dressing room and cut himself over and over with a discarded hairgrip. He had ignored Blaine's desperate pleas, the it's okay, Kurt, we don't have to talk about it, but you really should eat, really Kurt, I just want to see you, I just want to check you're all right. With every word, the metal grip in his hand had sunk deeper into the flesh of his left thigh. With each Kurt, a swift flick of his wrist sent the hair grip cascading across pale flesh, leaving a trail of anger behind it. Kurt stayed silent the whole time. 

He only pulled himself up, and unlocked the dressing room door when he heard Burt return home. They had started arguing before Burt had even closed the front door. Kurt had felt the vicious, screeching voice leave his throat, but he didn't acknowledge the words that hung in the dense, dirty air. Burt was unforgiving, relentlessly screaming back, and Kurt had burst into tears and ran upstairs. He ran a cold bath and tried to hold his head under the water and count to a hundred. He managed sixty-four. The cuts on his leg began to ache. After another seventy-six, Kurt's heart finally began to beat normally. It barely even hurt when Kurt allowed himself to remember the pain in Blaine's eyes as Kurt had fallen apart in his living room, and Blaine had wordlessly looked on.

Kurt was reaching a breaking point. It was only a matter of time before he'd finally snap; Kurt relished the thought. Would it bring freedom? Kurt could only hope. An end to the tumultuous shouting that echoed in the empty cavities of his body. Kurt wanted to embrace death. The great escape.

Leaning back in his chair, staring idly at the work piled beside him, Kurt couldn't help but smile. He hadn't smiled in so long, the expression felt foreign on his face, and in a moment of mild panic thoughts piled up in his overwrought mind. Ugly, Kurt, you look ugly, what are you doing? Your hair, Kurt; you're fat and ugly and your hair just isn't right.

Heaving himself out of the chair, Kurt ignored the dizziness, and the pain in his calves, and he propelled himself forwards, forwards, down and down; he held his head regally high, ignoring the persistent feeling of imbalance.

It was dinnertime; the faint echo of his father's gruff tone summoning his son surrounded Kurt. He pulled the chair out with an unsteady hand, and stared loathingly down at a plate piled high with food Kurt was sure he couldn't consume. Burt narrowed his eyes at his pallid son, sitting in silence, previously alone. Kurt had forgotten that his dad had ever been lonely. 

"Eat, Kurt," he commanded. But Kurt was transfixed; the plate was mesmerising, colours that spoke of sickly sweet flavours. His throat tightened. His hands were like cracking rocks, cemented to the table beside his askew cutlery.

When Kurt continued to imitate a statue, face distorted into pure fear, Burt placed down his knife and fork. He felt the breath trickle out of him, like there was a hole somewhere in his tough exterior. 

"Damn it, Kurt, I've had enough of these games." The redness swelled in Burt's visage. "I can't be a widow forever, Kurt. But I'm sure as hell gonna be your father forever, and when I tell you to eat your dinner, you're gonna eat your damn dinner."

Kurt had lost the will to fight back; to his father, to the devillish voices in his head, to the constant hunger that made his head swim. The inner conflict was terrifying, so much so that Kurt felt his eyes close, like he hadn't slept in months. Every ounce of his body concentrated on the movement of his fingers, slow and old, trying so hard to curl in on themselves, hide away from the intimidating knife and fork inches away from his scarred knuckles.

Burt breathed in and out, slowly, allowing his son extra time he didn't deserve. All Burt wanted was for Kurt to snap back into life. He wanted his boy to live. He wanted Kurt to love him, and forgive him, and he wanted them to return to their previous state of neutral happiness. 

It wasn't until he could see his son, really see him in the languid light, that Burt realised that he was too late.

Kurt couldn't eat. Kurt couldn't function. Slowly, he reached out and touched his son's hand. Kurt was cold. In fact, on closer inspection, he saw Kurt was trembling.

"Come on, kid. Let's forget about dinner for the moment, and I'll run you a nice hot bath, all right?"

Burt didn't want to give in, but he couldn't watch his son suffer for a moment longer. All the anger that was bottled up inside Burt evaporated, and he was overwhelmed with a surge of sympathy, heart-breaking, devastating sympathy for the manic pain that swarmed the tender vessel of Kurt's existence.

Kurt's shoulders began to shake as his father's words penetrated him. They lost meaning immediately. He still didn't look up. Burt pressed calloused palms against the soft wood of the table surface, pushing himself up, grunting at the exertion. Pushing up the greasy sleeves of his overalls, Burt rounded the table and encompassed his son.

Kurt was so still, so perfectly statuesque, that Burt couldn't help but admire his beauty. This beautiful kid, the "fruit of his loins", as to put it so crudely, was so perfect. And Burt couldn't understand why, in the end, he wasn't.

"Kurt. Wake up, kid." 

Burt could say his name over and over, roll it around on his tongue, spit it, scream it, whisper it, plead it. He could have fallen to his knees and sobbed into his son's lap, but Kurt was dead to anything other than the thoughts inside his mind. It was like a swinging cord, a slow and monotonous movement, and it was just too far out of Burt's reach to tug it back in, bring it back to safety.

Burt watched Kurt's face, swathed in shadow, dull grey eyes flickering from side to side, like reading an imaginary text. He just watched, losing all will to do anything more, too heatrbroken to not pay his son at least a little attention.

Minutes passed. Burt continued to stare, until his eyes couldn't focus, until they closed, until he shut off from the world around him, in much the same way as his son.

"Dad," a breaking voice seemed to hum from the distant corners of the room.

Burt looked up from where he was slumped on the floor, head tipped back, legs cramping beneath his body. He'd fallen asleep.

"Kurt?" The room was so dark, and the air was so still and cold. Burt regretted moving the second he was struggling to his feet.

Kurt spoke, again sounding like his voice bled from the walls. "Bath."

Running a bath for Kurt was tradition. After Elizabeth passed, and Burt fought so hard to keep his son all in one piece, it was one of the menial housewife tasks that Burt truly enjoyed. He loved the care he could put into filling a tub with water; he knew just what bubble bath to use, the exact amount of bath salts Kurt and Elizabeth used to enjoy. Burt ran the water just the right temperature. Nine-year-old Kurt loved when the heat from the bath caused condensation to form on the tiles. He used to draw invisible pictures for Burt to rate out of ten.

Kurt was still a little child, on the inside. He was seventeen, but he was a lonely, lost little boy that ached to carve pictures into the water drops on the wall. He needed a father, and a bathtub, and he needed to be clean and loved. Kurt's voice seemed lost in his swollen glands.

His lips tried to form the word again, but he had no strength. The smile that had stained his face hours ago seemed like an ancient memory. Kurt's face felt like stone.

Burt sighed, pulled himself up, stared down at the tired linoleum. "I think it's a little late, kiddo. I think it's a little too late for anything tonight." Burt moved to the wall, flicking on the switch, bathing the little room in light.

Kurt's head jerked uncomfortably, like he'd forgotten how to nod properly. He seemed stiff. Burt wondered if Kurt felt old, too; he felt like he was a million years old.

Once upon a time, Kurt may have joked that Burt looked a million years old. Once upon a time, Kurt may have wrapped warm arms around Burt and told him he loved him. Once upon a time, Kurt would have eaten dinner and sat patiently as Burt ran a bath, excitedly chatting about everything and nothing.

Once upon a time, everything had been okay. And Kurt and Burt and the whole world had turned the right way on its axis. Burt was now going backwards. Kurt's journey was impossible to track; he was nowhere to be found.

Burt guided his son up the stairs. Kurt wordlessly shuffled into his room, not bothering to turn the light on. He was swallowed by the darkness, and then the door was shut, and Burt was staring at the grainy wood, head pounding.

That night, Burt knelt by Elizabeth's side of the bed, stroking the soft cotton sheet, staring into the folds of the blanket, willing her face to appear from under them, grinning a toothy smile, brushing back thick blonde hair that spilled into her beautiful face at any given moment.

How many years has it been? he thought to himself. He dragged a sweaty palm across his face. And yet, no matter how much he missed his wife, Burt saw her everyday in Kurt. 

Despite Kurt's "illness", his "differences", his "quirks", his "eccentricities", he was entirely his mother's son. 

And Burt resented that.

He firmly knotted his hands together, fingers clashing messily, slick with sweat and gripped too tight. "Dear God... Please give me my boy back. I've asked you every night for the past nine years for you to give me my wife back, and since that's kinda impossible, I thought it was time to change the tune." Burt blinked once, twice, and then held his eyes squeezed shut, as if to compress all his thoughts, his emotions, the pain welling in his heart, the bile accumulating in his oesophagus. 

Burt sniffed. "It just hurts so bad to see him like this. I... I thought we were - I thought he was making progress. I thought he was better."

The silence seemed to crackle around the room, the noises of the night like a symphony, each sound reverberating off the walls, weaving around the outdated furniture that still smelled faintly like a woman's perfume. 

"I wanted him to be better."

---

Kurt lay in bed, watching the ceiling. As he stared, and his eyes lost focus, he watched as the ceiling seemed to cave in on him, falling closer and closer as the darkness seemed to peak and then the black faded to grey. Kurt stared until the plaster looked like it was inches from the tip of his nose, and then he gasped for air, filling his deprived lungs. Kurt forgot to breathe sometimes; he thought it was what made him human.

He pulled himself into a sitting position, traipsing skinny arms around a skinnier body. His fingers fumbled against ribs and protruding unverdeveloped muscle tissue. 

How thin is too thin? he wondered. He didn't think there was an answer.

Breathing in deeply, Kurt swung his legs over the edge of the bed, wincing as his head began to pound. Lack of oxygen, or lack of food? Kurt wobbled towards his dresser, his heart floating between his eyes, beating and beating the rhythm of his strife. 

Measuring tape. His bony fingers barely managed to loop themselves around the thin tape, before it cascaded in a spiral to the floor, uncoiling around his feet. Kurt straightened his back, allowing his shoulders to crack as he moved joints he had forgotten about. The end of the tape in his hands felt cold. He began to crave the feeling of it wrapped tight against his waist.

He was just so tired. Eyes drooping. Fingers relaxing. Uncoiling around frozen toes, baggy pajamas, the pants held up with string, makeshift beltholes cut in the waistband. His eyes were closed, and his head began to swim, hard and fast, breaststroke to the shore, arms cutting through the water like a knife through butter, slicing it into sheets of icy vapour, spraying along behind him, like a trail of memories. And suddenly Kurt was falling, and he was crashing and cracking and breaking and crying.

Broken wrist. Brittle bones. Calcium deficieny. Everything deficiency. Kurt looked on with sullen eyes, sinking into his face, burrowing into the dark circles, embarrassed and ashamed. "I'm not sick," he repeated, but nobody listened.

Burt gripped his son's good arm like a vice, clawing through his skin, tiny droplets of blood making a break for freedom. Kurt didn't understand. He felt deaf. Words were incomprehensible. His father's voice blended into the furore of the scene, the beeping machines and wailing babies and the phone on the hook that kept ringing and ringing.

He felt sick. He imagined the look in Blaine's eye when he'd have to tell him he'd failed once again. And Blaine would ask, "what did you fail, Kurt?" and oh, the way he'd say his name, Kurt felt like he was drifting away from reality. The heaviness of his broken arm dissipated, and Kurt spread winged arms and flew far far away. One day, he'd live in a place where size doesn't matter, because Kurt would be the smallest of them all.

Kurt sat in silence for the whole trip home. He listened to Burt go on about being safe and careful, and how Kurt was supposed to be better, he was supposed to be okay, Kurt, you told me you were okay.

"Answer me, Kurt," Burt demanded. "Don't you dare tune me out. I need you to talk to me. You can't pretend that nothing's wrong. You can't pretend to me, Kurt. I'm disappointed. For once, I'm disappointed."

Burt knew they were the wrong words to use, the worst thing he could say. Kurt was hurt, troubled; Burt saw the look in his eye that he had despised for all those years. But he ignored it. And he pretended that Kurt was normal. But for how much longer could he do that; push the warning signs to the back of his head, forget that Kurt was suffering, that in a weird yet entirely normal way, Burt was suffering too?

Finally, Burt received an answer. "I'm disappointed, too." Kurt's head stayed down, staring at his cast. It was white. Kurt didn't have a favourite colour anymore.

The car pulled into their driveway. Kurt didn't recognize the mismatched brick pattern of the wall in front of him, even though it had been his home for his whole life. Burt leaned against the outside of the car, listening. For the seatbelt unbuckling, the door opening, Kurt's light footsteps rounding the car, the swish of fabric as the sleeves of his coat would grate against Burt's own.

The air stayed silent as Burt leaned, and sighed, and waited.

"We have to go back inside, Kurt. I'm not leaving you out here."

Kurt's breaths began to deepen. He couldn't breathe. The air around him felt thick and smoky. His eyes fluttered closed as frightening amounts of liquid began to push itself to the forefront of Kurt's sockets. His closed eyes seemed to flutter, his pupils moving behind the lids like he was tracing the lines of a map.

"Kurt?" Burt whispered, though the noise fell on deaf ears. 

As he began to openly sob, Burt felt the not-so-familiar panic set in. He felt rusty, unvarnished, as if he had expected this particular memory to sit, rusting away in the garage. But Kurt had experienced a trigger, and Burt knew there was no going back. He couldn't push this away, like he had everything else. 

Flashes of the ten-year-old boy, lying in a hospital bed, shrouded in his adult worries and pains, haunted Burt. Right there, in front of his watery, beady, middle-aged eyes, Burt looked into the face of his broken little child, the only part of himself that Burt could love unconditionally. Burt had made a promise to make Kurt well again. Burt had cried until his heart was weak, screamed until his lungs were on fire. Bit by bit, he had stitched together his little boy, and kept a tight grip on the four corners of his and Kurt's world. Without Elizabeth by his side, Burt had wanted to quit everyday. But Kurt was all he had. He owed his whole life to him.

Twenty minutes later, Kurt was sprawled on the couch, and Burt was holding a cool glass of water to his lips. He watched the boy as he slept, so peacefully, so beautifully. 

Kurt had only started to scream once Burt had managed to get him inside, with the bolt pushed firmly across the front door. And then the eerie rumble began to build in Kurt's throat, and his eyes had snapped open. His fingers extended like claws, ripping at the skin of his face, his throat, reaching up and out for something to break, to make his fingers bleed and bruise.

It took him a while, but Burt managed to soothe Kurt, pull him back to a human form, wrapping him in a blanket and transforming him into a baby, falling asleep when cradled in the arms of a parent. The constriction of the tightly wound comforter forced Kurt's anger to be squeezed back inside the frail body that was constantly wracked with pain. Burt knew how to fight the monster within Kurt. He didn't know how to exorcise it.

Burt wondered about the source of Kurt's trigger. The first time had been his mother's death, and then the transition into high school, but Burt was at a loss. Burt couldn't think about anything that had changed in Kurt's life, or even his own. Everything had been perfectly fine.

Kurt had always been different, but he had been okay for the most part. He would cooperate, and smile, and he'd make conversation. He used to wake Burt up with a cup of coffee, or make scrambled egg whites on rye bread for them both, and he'd read aloud the newspaper for Burt because Burt was always too tired in the mornings to see the small print. Kurt would leave for school with a smile, and Burt would stop off at the grocery store before work to compensate for Kurt's small servings, and by the time he'd arrive home in the evenings Kurt would be curled up on the couch, hugging a pillow or singing along to the infomercial tunes. He'd smile and talk about his day, not overly enthusiastically but with colour in his cheeks. They'd eat whatever Burt had the energy to make, and they'd sit in a comfortable silence, and Burt would be homely and happy. Kurt would shower and moisturise and then kiss Burt goodnight, and the routine would repeat as morning reappeared.

Kurt didn't have many friends, if any at all, but at the weekends he was always busy, always participating in projects or clubs or volunteer work at the children's home. He'd come home with stories and souvenirs and an empty stomach. He always ate. Burt always made sure that Kurt ate every night, of every day, of every week of the month. And Kurt was okay. 

Burt didn't understand how, like a surge of blue light that illuminated every pore of his face, he wasn't okay anymore.