“Monsters are real, and ghosts are real too. They live inside us, and, sometimes, they win.”

Stephen King

Night was the worst moment. He was alone. More alone than he could have ever been during the day. He was alone with his ghosts, with monsters that clawed and bit and ripped, cutting his lucidity into bloody shreds. Nonetheless, he was so lonely to crave for their presence, and when the beasts were late to come it was him himself to summon them. He put his book or paper away, or he glanced away from the television, and thought. And so they came back, quick. “We'd  never leave you alone, Blaine”, they croaked, “we'll never leave you”. But every time he really started to believe it, and he held his hand out to those horribly fascinating creatures, Kurt was there. Kurt was there, and he caught his stretched hand, and murmured monstrous angel words with an hint of sour: “I'd never leave you alone, Blaine”, he whispered, “I'd never leave you”.

At school, the next day, everything  was like it had always been. He entered the classroom and he was there. And then hi, how are you, hugs and kisses, a bit of toungue; and then you had to sit and another common day began. The morning and the afternoon shone until at night they came again; Kurt knew it, and he used to call Blaine every night after dinner. The time would vary, because who knew when they would get over with dinner at Hummels': seven thirty, nine, eight fifteen. But sometimes Kurt managed to crawl into the bathroom and call while kettles still tinkled in the dining room. Then “Why are you calling now?” asked Blaine, and Kurt answered “Later would be too late”. They both knew too late for what.

One night, though, Kurt didn't call. Seven passed, then eight, and then, lazy, nine: nothing, not even a text. At nine thirtyseven, Blaine started to seriously worry. He felt the howls and the fangs of his thoughts stinging. He thought about his mother, in the other side of the house, who watched television, and about his dad, in the other side of the city, in a hospital bed. His mother was laughing, and his dad crying. He cried, he cried… But his mother laughed, and his brother, too, with her. They were laughing there, and how much they laughed! At every laugh, Blaine wished more to lose his hearing. His hearing and his ability to think. To link that laugh to a shallow cause, such as one shitty game show, and to remember the strained sound of the hospital machines. Beep. Beep. Beep. Some more laughing. Beep. Beep. Beep.

At some point, Blaine couldn't take it anymore. He rushed into the bathroom and he grabbed some worn-out razor. He hadn't used it in weeks: it was a bit rusty, and there was some dust on the blaze. In fact, it was really dirty: there were white stains of shaving foam on the blue shaft, and it was unpleasantly sticky at the touch. He spent a lot of time beholding the state of the object before he, unconsciously, raised his gaze to the mirror, and saw what there was reflected. Bearded, rough, livid. A ghost. A demon. One of those monsters, a memory, a laugh, beep-beep!, Kurt who wasn't calling, a butt, a fucking faggot born to suffer. His eyes watered, and while one of the first boiling tears rolled down from his lashes, he uncovered his left wrist. He wanted to do it. He had to do it. He put the blaze on his flesh. His hand was shivering. But he had to. Otherwise they would have laughed again, and they would have mocked hima gain, and his dad…

The phone rang. Blaine almost threw away the razor because of the scare. He glanced at the screen.  It was Kurt.

Kurt was kust late: it seemed like he had forgotten, once he had gotten home, to charge his phone, and so it had died just before he started to have dinner. And there was no way he could leave the dining room just to charge his phone, which was kind of a rude thing to do according to Kurt's dad. So Blaine the next day decided not to tell anything about what had happened, and he pushed the thought of the dust and of the stains back in the black corner of his mind where almost everything nestled. Everything but a few sporadic math calculuses or an almost omnipresent desire for food. Actually though, it was acting more than deciding: he pretended to forget about that little accident of the other night. Not-to-worry stuff, really, everyone in his life accidentally happens sooner or later to – “Blaine? What are you thinking about?” asked the other boy, squeezing lightly the hand which was rested on his thigh. “Die”, Blaine whispered, not really answering Kurt, but himself. The other blanched, but let him finish. “Everyone in his life accidentally happens to… die. Sooner or later”. Kurt smiled, but he held his hand more tightly. Was Kurt sweating? “Discerning”, he answered. He looked at him in the eye, and Blaine let his senses go numb in that blue.

At the end of school, Kurt and Blaine, as planned, after a silent bus trip – Kurt insisted so that Blaine had to listen with him The Smiths' “Asleep”, but Blaine probably dozed off the fourth of fifth time it was playing – went to Blaine's. Up the stairs that leaded to the real entry, Blaine kept brushing his hand against the other's pale one, just as he was asking for permission. It was only when they arrived that he really took it, and he held it desperately. He was a bit upset by the fact Kurt didn't hold back. On the contrary, once he entered he dashed to the kitchen through the door in front of them, without a lot of fuss. He always said that room smelled of closed and cat and he didn't want to spend more then sixty seconds a day there: cleaning before everything else, Blaine, please open the window, thank you, and sweep up. And Blaine did it, he swept, cleaned, scratched, scraped until his hands began to burn inside the plastic gloves he used and his head to spin thanks to the pungent smell of “lemon” detergents, each of which had a different stink. But it seemed to Blaine that Kurt still kept screaming it. He scolded him with gestures: you can't do that, no hand, you didn't do it well, no hugs, you can't cry, no kisses. Whenever they talked about it, Kurt cried with rage. He said that he was a fucking paranoid, and that he hadn't ever even thought those things, how the fuck could he think he had thought those things?

“Blaine? Come over. Why don't we eat?”
The boy obeyed. As usual, his mother had flung a frozen pizza on the table with indifference, and by the nit was laying in a small yellowish puddle. Blaine took it with his hands kind of desperatly and hinting an apologising look, even if he knew Kurt hated those looks of his. He put the pizza in the oven, he set up the timer and he checked that the food was actually in there and wasn't some kind of his mother's magic trick. And now the worst part was coming: waiting. And waiting without doing meant thinking, succumbing. He turned around. He had Kurt for this.
But that day the boy looked different. A bit absent-minded. Or fully present, but wishing not to be.
“Something's wrong, love?”
As Blaine talked, Kurt focused his gaze on the boy again all of a sudden. How long hadn't they been calling themselves like that? Blaine bit his lower lip and stepped istintively back. But it was so natural, so… innocent. Maybe he wouldn't even have regretted it so much if it hadn't been for Kurt's reaction. He looked like a beautiful tripped animal, found asleep in his den; and from the initial surprise, animals get soon to defence.
“I… Blaine. How long haven't we been calling ourselves like that?”, he started with a trembling voice. There was a moment of a strange silence, filled with negative energy. The quiet before the storm.
“I don't know, Kurt… But I thought… I didn't think it was a problem…”
Blaine had to stop to breathe.
“We love eachother, Kurt. I love you. And I don't get why we stopped saying it.”
Kurt smiled and shook his head. His eyes were closed, and his cheeks were blushing. He was perfect. Something otherworldly, ethereal, salvific. An -
“I have some doubts, Blaine. Doubts on… on love. On our love.”
An angel, a perfect angel, spread your wings and fly, angel of mine, fly -
“What do we actually know about love? Look at me. Look at us. You're the only gay boy I've ever been with, Blaine.”
Fly high, always, and earthly affairs won't ever be able to touch your beautiful -
“That's it. I'm starting to think, Blaine, that maybe ours is… pure need. Need of eachother…”
Your beautiful wings, angel of mine, together we fly where everyone flies after -
“Maybe… Maybe we don't really love eachother. No. Maybe this isn't love.”
After death.