Chapter 21: Scars

On Tuesday afternoon, Kurt was just about to switch his computer off and leave the office when his phone rang suddenly. Having spoken to both Rachel and Blaine a while earlier, he frowned and glanced at the screen just to see Santana’s name.

‘Santana! Hi, what’s up?,’ he greeted her, still in shock.

‘Hey, Porcelain, I just have a question,’ she answered cheerily.

‘Shoot,’ Kurt encouraged her, gathering his things from his desk and getting up to go.

‘When’s that beau of yours playing next?’

The question was another thing that took him by surprise. Santana did say she enjoyed Blaine’s concert, but he wouldn’t have expected her to show up to another.

‘What brought this on? It’s not like female groupies are his thing, or guys yours,’ he teased as he walked out to get on the elevator.

‘There might be someone who would be interested in producing his stuff and getting him a record deal,’ Santana replied. ‘And you’re absolutely right, guys aren’t my thing, especially ones whose supply of hair gel equals the amount of product in use annually in a small European country.’

‘A record deal? Are you serious?,’ he asked loud enough to attract the attention of everybody else waiting for the elevator.

Santana sighed with annoyance on the other end of the line.

‘Of course I’m serious, Kurt. Record deals aren’t something I take lightly. So when’s his next gig?’

‘This Saturday,’ he told her, barely holding back his excitement, and gave her all the details on the place and time.

‘Oh, one more thing,’ Santana said. ‘Convince him to play his own stuff. Even if it’s a song or two.’

‘I’ll do my best,’ he assured her. ‘And thank you, Santana. You’re a great friend.’

He could hear her chuckle at that.

‘People say I’m a bitch, actually. And you’re welcome.’

***

As soon as he ended the call, Kurt began to wonder if it was a good idea to tell Blaine the news. Yes, he wanted to be successful. Yes, he probably would be excited there was someone coming to listen to him. But then again, excitement wasn’t always a positive thing with Blaine. Making him nervous before the gig was likely the worst thing Kurt could do.

His journey on the subway to Blaine’s passed mostly on settling the dilemma, and finally he made up his mind just as he was walking out into the street from DeKalb Avenue Station. He wasn’t going to tell Blaine about Santana’s friend coming to see him play. All he was going to do was try to convince Blaine to prepare some of his original songs for Saturday.

Blaine opened the door before him with a wide smile and greeted him with a kiss.

‘Hi,’ Kurt said as his boyfriend let him through the doorstep. ‘You’re in a good mood.’

‘I am,’ Blaine replied briskly. ‘But so are you.’

Kurt sent him a grin, trying for it not to be too cryptic. He’d hate for Blaine to figure out he was hiding something.

‘It was a nice day,’ he said with a shrug. ‘And yours?’

‘Mine was awesome.’ Blaine’s face lit up. ‘I was composing all morning.’

A little smug smile crossed Kurt’s mouth, as he settled on the living room couch. Wes and Sebastian were nowhere in sight, and he guessed they were out.

‘So how are your songs?,’ he asked, keeping in mind his decision and his promise to Santana. ‘Will I ever get to hear any of them?’

‘You will,’ Blaine told him without hesitation. ‘Actually I guess I might have one ready to perform on Saturday.’

Kurt’s eyebrows flew up in astonishment. He hadn’t expected not having to work hard on this. He’d already prepared a list of arguments to convince Blaine on his way from the station to his boyfriend’s.

‘Really?’

‘Yeah. I’ve been working on it for a month, so I guess it won’t get any better anyhow.’

‘Can I get a first listen?,’ Kurt asked, making his best pleading expression.

Blaine smirked at him, coming up to the place where he was sitting.

‘Maybe. I could use some convincing, though.’

Kurt wasn’t sure if his boyfriend knew just how seductive he sounded. Without a moment’s hesitation, he pulled Blaine down to the couch. It didn’t take a lot of time for them to end up horizontally, either. Kurt’s lips pressed tiny kisses along Blaine’s jaw line, and went back to his mouth, making him moan with each touch of the skin.

They weren’t thinking, completely consumed by the passion. Their hands wandered further and further down, grabbing at clothes and almost tearing them off. Blaine eventually succeeded in taking off Kurt’s shirt, desperate to feel the warmth of his skin under his fingertips. That skin that was so soft, so pale as to being almost translucent.

This was the furthest they’d come in the physical aspect of their relationship. And even though a tiny voice in Kurt’s head told him not to, that it was too early, the heat of making out rendered him deaf to reason. So his hands slipped down Blaine’s half-removed shirt to the waist of his pants and, with surprising ease, he yanked the piece of clothing down Blaine’s thighs.

‘God, Kurt, no!,’ Blaine gasped, but Kurt already knew he’d made a terrible mistake.

The skin of Blaine’s thighs was covered in hundreds of thin white lines. There was not a centimetre that wouldn’t be marked with a scar. The wounds had been long healed, but they were etched so deeply into Blaine’s flesh, it seemed they were never to disappear.

Blaine threw his arms up, his hands hiding his face with a mixture of despair, terror and shame. He’d known from the beginning this would happen. They hadn’t discussed the issue of sex in detail, so he had pushed it as far away from himself as he could, convinced he had nothing to worry about for the time being. It wasn’t sex as such that terrified him; a part of him couldn’t wait for the moment he and Kurt would take that last step to complete intimacy.

But sex meant nakedness, and he’d rather keep the scars hidden from the world.

‘Blaine-,’ Kurt breathed in horror, forgetting entirely how turned on he’d been just a second ago. ‘Did you- Did you do this to yourself?’

‘What do you think?,’ Blaine spat out angrily, making his boyfriend flinch.

For a moment Kurt couldn’t find a way to react. The situation was something he’d never considered, and he berated himself  internally for that. He knew of Blaine’s issues, of his depression, how could he have not thought self-harm might have been a problem as well?

‘Sweetie, look at me,’ he said softly. ‘I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have done that.’

Blaine still refused to look up, digging his hands into his face.

‘This wasn’t supposed to go that way,’ he said.

‘I know, I’m sorry,’ Kurt repeated more desperately.

‘It’s my fault, Kurt, nobody else’s. I did all that, I didn’t tell you-‘

Kurt put his hands on Blaine’s forearms, pulling them away to uncover his face. Blaine tried averting his gaze, but his boyfriend wouldn’t let him.

‘It’s fine, Blaine, okay? I’m not going to pressure you to anything. Or to telling me stuff that’s tough.’ He paused, sitting back up and cautiously tracing his fingers over Blaine’s left thigh. Blaine watched him in alarm. ‘You’re beautiful. Scars or no scars, I don’t care.’

He cast Blaine an uncertain look, before bending down to kiss the scarred skin of his thigh, making him shiver. It wasn’t sexual in the slightest; it was the gentlest, sweetest kiss Kurt had ever given him, any part of his body.

‘Can I pull up my pants now?,’ Blaine asked weakly, a flood of mixed emotions overwhelming him.

‘Sure.’

They both got dressed, but Kurt refused to leave the couch. Though lying next to each other was challenging, they squeezed together in silence.

‘I used to do that mostly in high school,’ Blaine said quietly after a while. No explanations were necessary, Kurt knew exactly what he meant. ‘Being gay, crazy and socially awkward isn’t very easy to handle when you’re a teenager.’

Kurt didn’t interrupt him. The story went on through that one time Blaine got beaten up after a dance – the only one he’d ever been to. He even managed to convince another boy – gay and an outcast like himself – to accompany him. After that his grandmother enrolled him in Dalton. People there were more understanding and things got a little bit better, but the continued lack of an appropriate therapy for any of his issues put a strain on him. He felt ignored, dismissed, and to top it all, his body didn’t feel like his own. Getting it hijacked by his alters was the main reason why he’d ever hurt himself.

He knew how lame it sounded when said out loud, but he felt like harming the body would keep the alters away. As if they wouldn’t come back to a damaged one. At the same time, feeling the physical pain relieved him from the psychological suffering for just a second. And then it felt like it was worth it. Only Dr. Peterson made him realise it never was.

‘I haven’t done any of that in years now,’ he finished. ‘And I don’t wanna go back.’

‘I’ll make sure you never will,’ Kurt told him gently, but his gaze was intense, boring into Blaine’s hazel eyes.

‘How could I ever get by without you?,’ Blaine asked rhetorically, Kurt’s presence by his side a constant surprise.

‘No idea. I guess I’m not irreplaceable.’

Blaine’s lips arched slightly upwards.

‘You are,’ he said. ‘I used to think there wasn’t a guy in this world that would put up with me and the alters, and all that crap.’

‘The alters!,’ Kurt interrupted. ‘You’re still you! We’ve been talking serious topics all this time and you haven’t transitioned. You weren’t even close to transitioning!’

Blaine took a moment to look back at all their earlier conversations that concerned his past. He soon realised that they all had a common denominator – his alters fighting to take control. And now, he was himself, still tortured over the scars and the way Kurt found out about them, but himself, completely in control.

‘You’re right,’ he said finally, unable to stop a tiny uncertain smile.

‘Do you think it’s gonna last?,’ Kurt asked, his enthusiasm dying almost as soon as it appeared.

‘Probably not,’ Blaine sighed. ‘But that’s a start.’

***

Later that night Blaine dozed off on his bed and Kurt decided to let him sleep, so he snuck out to the kitchen. Seb had just come home, and was fixing himself some supper from a collection of leftovers from the fridge.

‘Oh, I always knew you liked me better after all,’ he crooned mockingly, earning a doubtful look from Kurt. ‘Okay, fine. Let me guess, he fell asleep. I hope you weren’t making out?’

‘Yes, he fell asleep. No, we weren’t making out. Not now anyway.’

Kurt dropped heavily on one of the stools at the counter. For the last few hours he’d been trying not to let Blaine see how disturbing his discovery was to him. It didn’t change his feelings – nothing could do that anymore – but it made him wonder if he hadn’t taken the misery in Blaine’s life too lightly.

‘Something happened?,’ Sebastian asked. ‘While you were making out?’

Kurt rolled his eyes, not sure if he wanted to talk to Seb of all people about it.

‘Yeah,’ he answered eventually. ‘I just found out about something he hadn’t told me about, and it’s kinda my fault, and I guess I’m still processing.’

Sebastian leant on the counter opposite him, his face more serious than Kurt remembered ever seeing.

‘You saw his scars,’ he stated plainly.

‘Yes,’ Kurt nodded, but then he remembered something Blaine had mentioned and he frowned. ‘How do you know? He told me nobody ever knew except for his therapists and his grandma.’

A sad smile crossed Seb’s face.

‘He never told me about it,’ he admitted. ‘But I’ve seen them.’

‘How? The alters?’

Sebastian nodded his head with a bitter chuckle.

‘Did he tell you how he and I became friends?’

‘Yeah, he said you were the first person to ever meet Liam,’ Kurt replied without hesitation, and then it hit him. ‘Liam. Wait a second. You slept with him?!’

His voice sounded louder than he’d intended it to, and he clasped his hand over his mouth, partly to silence himself, partly in shock.

‘God, don’t be a drama queen,’ Seb said. ‘No, I didn’t. Kinda wish I had, but that would probably be weird.’

‘Tell me about it,’ Kurt muttered. ‘He almost gave me a blowjob.’

‘Almost?’

Kurt shot him an indignant look.

‘Unlike some people, I don’t throw myself around.’

‘Are you calling me a slut?,’ Sebastian asked with a crooked smile.

‘Well, you kinda smell like Craigslist.’

‘Ouch.’

Kurt punched him playfully on the forearm over the counter.

‘We were talking about Liam, remember?,’ he said. ‘What happened with him?’

‘He came to my dorm room one night,’ Sebastian began. ‘He was acting a little strange, ‘cause I knew Blaine as this quiet, ridiculously shy weirdo, and then out of nowhere, he was coming onto me. But – as you said – I’m not exactly a prude, so I went along with it. It was weird he kept on saying his name wasn’t Blaine, that it was Liam, but I just assumed he was into role playing or some other shit.’

‘And?,’ Kurt pressed him on.

‘Just don’t get jealous,’ Seb warned him a little too happily for Kurt’s liking.

‘I won’t,’ he said in a sugar-coated voice.

‘We were making out, and clothes were coming off, you know, nothing out of the ordinary.’ Kurt raised his eyebrows dubiously, but let Seb continue. ‘Until I got to taking his pants off and I saw the scars. Or wounds, I should say. Some were healed, some were in the process of healing, others had barely stopped bleeding. That’s when I stopped. I told him to get dressed and that whatever was going on, I wanted to talk to Blaine.’

‘And he came back?’

‘Not at first. Not for the next hour and a half, but eventually he did.’ Sebastian shrugged. ‘Maybe Liam realised he wasn’t going to get any, so he left. I have no idea what worked. Wish I did, it would make our life easier.’

Kurt stayed silent for a while, the information swirling in his head without any order.

‘So you knew and you didn’t do anything about it?,’ he asked accusatorily in the end.

‘Hey, ease up. I never told him I knew about the scars, but it’s not like I just sat around and watched him spiral down, okay?’

‘So what did you do?’

‘I got the best psychiatrist in Ohio to diagnose him,’ Seb said firmly.

‘The best psychiatrist in Ohio, huh? How did you even do that? Wait, no, I don’t wanna know.’

Kurt began to get up to go back to Blaine, hoping his boyfriend would wake up soon.

‘That psychiatrist is my mother,’ Sebastian said.

‘Oh. Sorry I assumed things,’ Kurt mumbled. ‘I suppose that’s because you’re an ass and a floozy most of the time.’

‘That’s just a part of my charm.’