Dave’s fist slammed into Kurt’s face every time he wanted Kurt to know he meant it. Kurt tried to get away, to turn his little mind-tricks: to focus his breathing, to turn each blow into just an exclamation point in his mind – to try to turn each burst of pain and fear and humiliation and anger into just a simple black mark on a page. They even looked like little fists.

Dave was starting to pant now as he twisted his arms tight around Kurt’s waist, making his ribs burn as they were squeezed into a more perfect point.

“You’re mine. Don’t you ever try that shit again. Mine,” Dave’s voice dropped to a possessive whisper and he brought his mouth to Kurt’s sweaty neck, biting out purple hickeys, not caring if he broke the skin, as his grip moved to Kurt’s hips, squeezing and rocking and moaning as Kurt scarcely breathed because he didn’t know anymore what would set Dave off, he didn’t want to find out –

A car alarm pierced the still night and Kurt sat bolt upright in bed, the moon spilling through his curtainless window. Kurt realized where he was, and who he was, and just how short a time it had been since he’d filed that restraining order against Dave – and put his exhausted face in his hands and cried. He’d lost to the nightmares. Again. Kurt Hummel had always taken pride in who he was – strong, able to defend himself – but he never felt like that person anymore. He felt like a stupid fucking weakling who had to see a psychiatrist every other day and tell her sob stories just to make it through the fucking week. He was sick of being this spineless piece of shit, and he cursed Dave with all his fucking heart for sucking him dry of that last ounce of courage.

Kurt stared glassy-eyed at the blank walls around him, at the untouched boxes of Vogue in the corner, outside at the pale, open moon.

Why was Kurt being such a fucking coward?

He found himself counting the customers in line at the coffee shop where he worked to see if he was going to have to serve someone even resembling Dave – at the slightest inclination to hulkishness or brute strength in one of his customers, Kurt skipped off into the back room to inventory stacks of paper mugs. He hated it. But it was that or end up in the men’s bathroom, retching into the sink. He couldn’t help it – he would see a thick fingered hand dip into the tip jar and some twisted part of his brain imagined that when he looked up he would see Dave’s face, he would see Dave sweet and sad and threatening, Dave playing bedroom eyes, he would feel that thick-fingered hand coming against his face with a sharp crack –

So he tended to avoid the hulking customers.

Kurt listened to his psychiatrist despite all of his qualms; she said that eventually his mind would calm down and that time was the only thing that could help him. Time or pills, she told him seriously, and immediately he opted for time. Time. Kurt had to show that he really was strong inside somehow; maybe he could just show that he was strong enough to wait through this time.