The whiskey in Blaine’s hand glows amber in the weak light of a single table lamp, shining from one corner of his shadowy living room. He loses all time – seconds, minutes, hours slipping into the past like water down a drain – as he stares into his glass: silent, searching.

“That’s a man’s drink,” his father grunted as he pushed a small crystal tumbler of tawny liquid toward Blaine one evening during his first visit home from college after turning twenty-one. Then, as abruptly as he’d appeared, his father vanished, leaving Blaine alone to drown his sickness in alcohol.

It’s still Blaine’s beverage of choice – one more layer in the thick shield of lies guarding his truth from the world. It’s what he drinks as he sits in solitary stillness in his trendy Tribeca loft, willing the soundless air that sinks heavy on his shoulders to smother the beasts that torture his soul.

Even here, in the tiny piece of the world he tries to call his own, his abusers always find him.

“Hey, faggy!”

Blaine gulps down another mouthful of whiskey, gritting his teeth as the lukewarm liquid sears a burning trail through the thick fear caught in his throat. “Shut up,” he mutters bitterly to the hideous mocking in his head. “Shut. Up.”

But his ugly tumor persists, throbbing painfully just under his skin. Desolation and intoxication fuel its descent to malignancy – inescapable, unembraceable, ripping him apart in an endless, excruciating tug of war.

What if he kept drinking – just drank, and drank, and drank, until his illness was immersed, until his desires disappeared? Until the clock stopped at sixteen years, nine months, three weeks, and five days, and he’d never again be forced to watch the sun rise on another mark on his morbid scorecard?

Blaine heaves out a shaky breath, frantically tapping his foot against the gleaming wood floor to allow a thimble-full of anxiety to escape his tingling body. The sudden jolt of movement sends whiskey sloshing against the sides of the glass he holds in his hand, dangling off his knee. He gazes with heavy-lidded eyes at the glints of golden light that sparkle through the rippling liquid, like bursts of false hope that only serve to remind him that he’s still here. Still alive.

Still sick sick sick.

Blaine springs from his seat, throwing back the last of his drink before slamming the glass down on the coffee table in front of him. He grabs his coat and keys, and then he’s out the door – fleeing the incessant, deafening noise that doesn’t ever leave him alone.

***

It’s the same script Blaine follows each Saturday night, when the violent voices he hears send him searching for a companion that will silence the sound. There’s always women at the bar down the street: bright, young, and supposedly independent, just waiting for a guy like Blaine to come along and pay them notice.

To them, to the world, he’s simply a man: a normal man, a healthy man, trying to pick up a girl at a bar. But inside, his sick thoughts live and play like laughing schoolchildren – innocent in one breath and then cackling, taunting, cruel the next.

He homes in on a blonde – always a blonde if he can find one, part of his self-imposed penance for the mortal sin his eight-year-old self committed. When she shoots him an alluring, inviting smile, Blaine’s transfixed by her blue eyes.

Blue. Blue. Blueblueblue.

Paper-thin rings of blue hug lust-blown pupils, glimmering through the dark to warm the frigid air that stings Blaine’s cheeks. Kurt’s eyes stay fixed on him, curious and wanting through immovable glass; hues of heavenly blue pop frantically like firecrackers until they explode with silent pleasure.

Blaine keeps his eyes locked on blueblueblue, slicing out the rest of the scene – perfumed skin and painted lips; her lithe, feminine frame clad in a sparkly sweater.

“Hi, I’m Blaine,” he introduces himself to the woman, tucking his instinct behind the mask he’s molded and hardened to cover his body and soul. “Can I buy you a drink?”

Their conversation quickly turns to flirty banter as she sinks deeper under the spell of chardonnay. The steady flow of whiskey coats Blaine’s mind with thick strokes of beautiful; fantasy twists and melds with reality in a delicate, dangerous dance until the two are indistinguishable.

He smells the staleness of Kurt’s hallway wafting under his nose when her dainty, bell-clear laughter rings through the air; the melody elicits memories of song that make his cock twitch in his slacks. The teasing touch of her hand on Blaine’s arm steals the air from his lungs, rattling the restraint he clutches so tightly in his chest. Blaine wants to take that hand – to grip it snugly in his own so Kurt couldn’t ever leave him – and pull him up, take him home; lead him proudly instead of following behind in shadows, in poisonous fumes that choke him alive.

“What happened to your lip?” the woman asks, her voice a slurred, throaty murmur as she reaches out to run a single, feather-light fingertip over the bite-shaped scab on his bottom lip.

Blaine battles against himself, against the lightning-quick urge to shrink away snapping through his synapses, as she moves in closer; his body is rigid as fragrant, sticky gloss touches trembling wounds. Her icy lips douse the fire of his dreams for one fleeting, frightening moment, sending up curling tendrils of scalding steam that quickly turn cold, then fade to nothing.

When she pulls away, her eyes linger on his mouth before flicking up to meet his steady gaze.

blueblueblueblue

“Did I make it better?”

Beautiful. You make me feel so much better.

“Not yet.” The half-melted ice cubes at the bottom of Blaine’s empty glass clink softly as he sets it down for the bartender to take away. “But maybe you can help me with that.”

***

They go back to her place – Blaine’s never let a women cross the threshold of his home. Her living room is littered with junk mail and mismatched shoes tossed haphazardly across the floor.

“Sorry, i-it’s such a mess,” she apologizes as she nudges a pair of pink pumps out of their path with her own purple high heel-clad foot.

“It’s all right.” Blaine spares a glance at a fluffy gray cat glaring at him from its spot on her couch. “I’m not here to lounge around, anyway.”

She abruptly turns on her heels, clutching her bedroom doorway to steady her swaying. “Mmmmm,” she hums into his ear as she falls against his chest, her arms snaking around his neck. “I want you.”

“I want you, too.” He’s the only thing Blaine wants. The only thing he needs. The saccharine substitute wound around his body is addictive but artificial, sending waves of sickness swelling and breaking in his stomach, his teeth, his limbs.

Blaine pushes her away, blindly walking her backwards until she falls onto the bed, her limbs sprawled languidly over downy, floral bedding. His deft hands work robotically to rip off her ridiculous purple pumps, her ungodly tight jeans – christ, the way his hips swayed as he walked down the street, ink-black denim sprayed over the luscious curves of his ass, his thighs.

Blaine’s mouth latches on to smooth, milky skin, licking a stripe that ends with a bruising suck on the inside of her thigh. The lewd noises of his lips can’t possibly drown out her high-pitched cries as he travels up, up to the sultry spot where she’s already soaked from anticipation. His tongue thrusts in and out – practiced movements over musky wetness, all the while craving an indescribable saltiness he’s only ever imagined.

Her thighs clench around Blaine’s head as she comes, muffling him in darkness. Darker, deeper, he’d descend, smearing a slick trail past her moist center to the tight, guarded hole beyond, where she’s most basal and raw. Lick him open. Fuck him with his tongue, until he babbled and begged for more.

Scream my name, Kurt. I want to hear you.

Blaine lifts up when her grip recedes; his vision tunnels to stare into blueblueblue. “On your hands and knees,” he growls.

The woman raises a lazy eyebrow. “You like being in control, do you?” she asks, her light voice lilting suggestively as she sits up to obey his command.

Control. Yes. He’s in control. “Always.” His voice shakes for the first, the only time, easily chalked up to arousal.

He doesn’t strip until her face is turned away. She never sees his scars – not the ones strewn across his skin, nor the ones that bruise his soul.

His hard, sheathed cock slips inside her, his hips snapping forward until he’s buried in a vast black hole. It’s only friction, stark and physical, that offers him any pleasure. Her breathy moans tangle with the voices in his mind, stoking a howling, swirling cloud around his head. He wants to claw at his ears, his skin, the air, yanking out the screeching sounds and suffocating them in his palms of his hands.

Hands.

I want to hold yours in mine. Let me feel your hands. Please.

Blaine gulps down a breath and bends, pressing his chest flush against her back. His hands trap hers, fingers curling around fingers, rough on top of silky smooth; the glass barrier between them melts clear away under their fervent, fiery touch.

Kurt. Kurt. He silently mouths the man’s name into the woman’s neck, ending each syllable with a pinching bite. It’s how Blaine would press the reverent word into Kurt’s soft skin as he pounded into him – owning him, owning himself and his truth.

“Uuuhhhrrrr...” His name comes out a guttural, unintelligible groan as Blaine comes inside her, his thrusts growing shallower until he stops, spent.

Mere moments after she slides into sleep, Blaine’s up and gone. He sprints down the city blocks with brisk strides until he’s back in his silent prison, hiding from his demons under covers and pillows that can’t ever warm his ceaseless chill. His arms wrap around his own quavering body as he curls deeper into beautiful – the only safe haven in the haunted forest of his mind.

There he waits, barely breathing, listening to time tick its undying rhythm as he watches for the first muted rays of sixteen years, nine months, three weeks and six days to shine their somber light.

***

Me (7:48am): I never stay with them

Beautiful (7:50am): With who?

Me (7:51am): The women

Beautiful (7:51am): What women, Blaine?

Me (7:53am): The women I fuck

Beautiful (7:54am): Oh
(7:54am): Blaine…

Me (7:55am): I keep trying to find a woman who makes me feel alive
(7:55am): The way you do
(7:56am): But I can’t
(7:56am): All I could think about was you
(7:56am): Your eyes. Your hands
(7:56am): You under me
(7:57am): Sliding into you
(7:57am): God, you felt so good

Beautiful (7:58am): omg Blaine
(7:58am): I want you to. I want you
(7:59am): Have you...do you only sleep with women?
(8:00am): Have you ever been with a man?

Me (8:02am): I can’t

Beautiful (8:03am): Why not?

Me (8:04am): Because that’s sick

Beautiful (8:04am): What? It’s not!
(8:04am): Who said that??
(8:10am): Blaine?

Me (8:13am): I’m tired, Kurt
(8:13am): I can’t feel anything
(8:14am): It’s like I’m dead
(8:15am): Is this what being dead feels like?

Beautiful (8:15am): No. Blaine, no
(8:15am): Please don’t say things like that
(8:16am): It’s ok. I promise
(8:27am): Please let me know you’re ok

Me (8:42am): I can’t
(8:46am): Just stay here with me

Beautiful (8:46am): I’m here
(8:47am): Go to sleep, Blaine
(8:47am): I’ll stay with you