1 ) When he realized he might be gay

The first time he’s shoved into a locker, Blaine Anderson doesn’t think anything of it, but brushes it off as an accident, which it very well could be in the over-crowded hallways of Westerville Junior High. When it happens again, he grows suspicious. When the shoves start to accompany slurs, vicious words and hurtful comments, Blaine begins to finally get indignant.

He hasn’t come out yet. He doesn’t even know if he is gay. He just knows that he’s different. He doesn’t fit in with the other boys in his eighth grade class, no matter how hard he tries. He can’t seem to find common interests with them, when he’d rather be singing and playing his cello than playing Call of Duty.

When Marcie Thompson kisses him in the hallway, unexpectedly, after six months of increasingly frequent shoves and pushes, he can’t stop himself from pushing her away. He thinks, convinces himself, it’s just the shock, the suddenness of the kiss that makes him shrink back. But deep down he knows that’s not the truth, and when Marcie smirks, and turns to high five the guys from the baseball team standing behind her, it’s confirmed. Tommy Crawford watches Blaine blush, and immediately starts laughing, sharing the joke with his buddies.

“What, Anderson, you don’t want to kiss Marcie? Or do you not want to kiss girls at all, huh? Are you a homo? Are you gay?”

The words drip like venom from Tommy’s lips, his laugh betraying the hateful sentiment coloring his comments. The other boys laugh, closing in on Blaine and continuing the taunts.

“Aw, guys, he is. Blaine’s a fag.”

When Blaine comes home that afternoon sporting a split lip where his face met the cool metal of his locker, he avoids his parents and locks himself in his bedroom, finally letting his tears fall freely. If he’s completely honest with himself, it’s not the kiss or the humiliation that hurts the worst, but the truth behind Tommy’s words. Blaine’s finally, maybe, figured it out.

But rather than relief at his realization, all he feels is sick dread, settling in the pit of his stomach. His insides seem to cramp, tendrils of fear snaking out from his heart and making his hands shake. He doesn’t want this. Not at all. He can’t do this, not for the rest of his life.

He can’t handle the insults, the constant fear, the ever-present pain and the shame at being who he is. The desperation bubbles up from deep inside, and Blaine wants nothing more than to stop feeling. To claw at his skin until he’s normal, to stop himself from being what everyone else hates. He wants nothing more than to fade away, to not have to deal with what will happen when he comes out. If he ever comes out. Casting his eyes around his room, searching, seeking for an answer, Blaine settles on the compass sitting on his desk.

He’d seen this once, on some television show his older sister loved, seen some red-headed goth girl dragging the sharp end of the tool over her skin to draw blood, to find relief. He didn’t get it at the time-because face it, cutting yourself, that’s just wrong. But now, facing a lifetime of exile by his peers, a lifetime of insults and inflicted pain, he thinks that maybe he does get it. Because maybe everyone else can hurt him, but if he can hurt himself, too, the pain they inflict won’t be so bad.

It’s only after the first three cuts, while he’s watching the blood pulse slowly from the slices, that Blaine realizes he can end it all, here, and now. Maybe he won’t have to live a life where he’s constantly ostracized. Maybe he doesn’t really have to deal with this. He holds the compass over his wrist, hovering, waiting to make the final cut. As he’s lowering the sharp end, the front door slams shut, his sister’s shouts floating upstairs as she tracks in from soccer practice.

The compass clatters to the desk, and Blaine silently wipes away the blood and the tears, filing that thought away for another time.

- - - - -

2 ) When he comes out to his parents

“I will not stand for this in my household! I thought we raised you right, Blaine, I can’t believe you would do this to me. To your mother. To us.”

“Dad, please, I can’t-there’s not-it’s not like I chose this, Dad, I can’t pick what I am. I can’t help that I’m-that I’m-“

“Don’t you dare say that word again under this roof. Blaine Daniel Anderson, no matter what you might think you’re feeling right now, this is a phase. You will get over this. You are not-you are notqueer. I will not have a son who is queer.”

Drew Anderson stands, pacing around the living room as he rages at his son. His wife, Maria, sits quietly on the couch, staring at Blaine in stunned silence. The latter sits across from his parents, tears streaming down his face as his breath comes in hitching sobs. Of all the scenarios he’d played out in his head for the last year, this was somewhere between being bodily thrown from the house and his parents throwing him a party complete with a rainbow cake.

“Dad, please-please don’t say things like that. I’m still your son, Dad, I’m just-I just like boys.”

Drew whips an arm across the end table, knocking a crystal vase from its place. The long-stemmed roses fly out, scattering across the room in a shower of glass shards and water. Blaine watches the vase shatter, feeling his heart break along with it.

“I will not-I cannot-my son is not a fag.”

Drew turns on his heel, storming from the room. Seconds later, the sound of the front door slamming shut was followed by the squeal of tires as Drew leaves the Anderson household.

“Mom?” Blaine tries tentatively nearly twenty-five minutes after Drew’s departure, twenty-five minutes of silence broken only by his own and his mother’s sobs.

“Blaine.”

“Mom, you know-I wouldn’t-Mom, I don’t want this. I want anything but this, but I can’t-I can’t help it, Mom. I can’t.”

“Blaine,” Maria tries again, convulsively swallowing as she forces herself to look at her son. Blaine looks back, seeking acceptance in her eyes, desperately hoping for her approval. “Maybe you should go upstairs for awhile, sweetie.”

Maria stands, leaving Blaine shell-shocked on the couch.

“Mom, wait-Mom, please, just-please. Do you-can you-can you still love me?”

The question freezes Maria, and she turns slowly, fresh sobs wracking her frame as she crosses to Blaine and pulls him into a hug.

“Oh, Blaine, honey, I could never not love you. This is just-this is hard, for me to accept, for your-for your father. You know we only want the best for you. I will always love you, Blaine.”

“But, Mom, why-why can’t you guys just-accept this? Accept me? I can’t-I didn’t choose to be gay, Mom. I just am.”

“Blaine, baby, I just-your dad and I had a lot of plans for you, since you were a baby. I think your father-I think he’s just disappointed right now.”

Blaine pulls away from his mother, holding her at an arm’s length as her words sink in. His father is disappointed in him. Because he can’t control who he likes, what gender he happens to be attracted to. Disappointed.

“I’m gonna-I’ve got some homework, Mom. I’ll-I don’t-“

Blaine trails off, and leaves the living room, trekking with a heavy heart to his bedroom. Locking the door behind him, he crosses to his desk and takes out a fresh notebook, sitting at his bed with a blank page open before him. He starts to write, words pouring out along with his tears, the wet drops smearing the ink as his pen travels across the page.

Dear Mom, Dad, Lisa,

I’m sorry I’m not what you wanted. I’m sorry I’m not what you expected.

I’m sorry I’m gay.

I’m sorry I failed you. I’m sorry I disappointed you.

I’m sorry I’m not what you dreamed about when you held that baby boy in your arms fourteen years ago.

I’m sorry I’m a fuck up.

I’m sorry I’m letting you down now.

I’m sorry I can’t be strong enough to face this.

I’m sorry.

Blaine

Blaine rips the page from the notebook, folding it crisply three times before sealing it with a piece of Scotch tape and scrawling his mother’s name across the front. He flips it over and over in his hands, his fingers shaking as the paper slowly begins to crease under the pressure from his fingertips. This isn’t the first suicide note he’s written, and he’s now sure it won’t be the last. He can’t find the strength to actually do it, because he’s afraid of his sister’s face when she finds him. He sees his mother at his grave on her knees, crying. He sees his father finally realizing what he had in Blaine. Every time, visions of his own funeral are the only thing that stop Blaine from making the very visions reality.

He slides the letter into his bottom desk drawer, letting it fall amongst the crumpled remains of other letters.

- - - - -

3 ) When Tommy Crawford suggests he do the world a favor

Blaine shoves his books into his bag hastily, trying desperately to be out in the parking lot waiting for Lisa before Tommy or his baseball buddies can find him. The move from junior high to high school hadn’t matured the group. Tommy still leads around his crew, picking on smaller kids and stealing their lunch money, the stuff of bad Saturday morning cartoons.

But when they find Blaine each afternoon, the taunts and the bullying become worse, more serious. They gain a foundation in reality, and the boys find an actual reason to justify their actions. After all, Blaine was the one who had to come out. Blaine was the one who had to go around and flaunt that he was gay, when he was singing in that damn glee club or just walking down the hallway.

“Well, well, Anderson. Seems you still haven’t managed to get fast enough to escape us, huh? Maybe it’s because fairies like you will never be able to grow muscle like a real man.”

Blaine drops his bag, freezing as Tommy sidles up behind him. Uncharacteristically, Tommy’s alone, and drops his hand onto Blaine’s shoulder, spinning the smaller boy around, slamming him back into his open locker with a single hand on his chest.

“Christ, Anderson. Put on a little weight, would you? You make this too damn easy.”

“Tommy, please, just-just leave me alone,” Blaine whispers in a half-hearted attempt to get the taller boy to leave.

“Don’t think so, Blainey-boy. What, you really don’t want to spend time with me today? We have so much fun every afternoon, huh? Maybe I should just throw you in a dumpster, I heard at some school in Lima they toss their gays into dumpsters to take care of them.”

Blaine stiffens, shrinking even further from Tommy’s hand, where it still presses against his sternum. The threat of being thrown into a dumpster is new, and Blaine isn’t sure he wants to figure out if Tommy will make good.

“Nah, I don’t feel like doing any heavy lifting today. Not that it’d be much, but you ain’t worth it, are you, Anderson?”

The words are spit out as a snarl, and Tommy inches his face closer to Blaine’s, his eyes darkening.

“You’re not worth anything, are you, Blaine? You’re just a homo, just a little fag queen who’ll always be alone unless he’s fucking some guy for money in a bathroom of a bar somewhere.”

Blaine lets out a choked sob, closing his eyes against the sheer hatred in Tommy’s. The other boys hand fists in his shirt, shoving Blaine harder into his locker.

“No one would even miss you if you were to disappear, Anderson. Look around. Do you see anyone coming to your rescue? No one cares, Blaine. They don’t care about you.”

“Tommy-“

Tommy backs off, letting Blaine slump to the floor in a heap, shoulders heaving.

“Maybe you should do us a favor and disappear, Anderson. The world could do with one less fag.”

Tommy leaves, and Blaine spends the next forty-five minutes sobbing against his locker, only standing when Lisa comes running around the corner, demanding to know why he’s taking so long. Locked in his room that night, Blaine fiddles with his guitar, pens a song to his sister and writes the lyrics and chords down, folding it up before slipping it underneath the strings of the fifth fret for her to find.

It’s only fourteen days later that Blaine returns to school, his wrists bandaged and hidden beneath a long-sleeve shirt. And he realizes that maybe Tommy was right, as he floats from class to class, ignoring the stares and whispers that follow him.

Maybe no one really does care.

- - - - -

4) When he’s beaten up at his Sadie Hawkins Dance

“Blaine! Oh, God, Blaine, you’re okay. We were so-when we got the call, when they told us-“

“Mom, I’m okay. I’m just-I’ve got a concussion, they broke my arm. It’s okay.”

“Blaine.”

The gruff voice at the door to the ER exam room startles Blaine, and he looks up to see his father standing with a white-knuckled grip on the door handle.

“Dad?”

Drew crosses to the bed in three easy strides, staring down at his son. Blaine unconsciously begins to quiver, terrified his father is going to call him out, scream at him for getting beaten up. Blame him for the attack, for the three homophobes that put him and Kyle in the hospital.

“I’m glad-Christ, Blaine, I’m glad you’re okay.”

Those words are like an affirmation falling from his father’s lips, and Blaine finds himself sobbing, throwing himself into his father’s arms fully for the first time in nearly three years.

“God, Blaine,” Drew whispers, holding his son tightly. “I am-Blaine, I am so sorry. I never-I know I haven’t-I haven’t accepted you, but Jesus, Blaine, I never-I never wanted this.”

“Dad, I-I know. I know you’re disappointed. But I can’t-Dad, I can’t change who I am.”

“Blaine, I don’t know-I don’t know if I’ll ever really be okay with-with you being-being-” Drew trails off, extricating himself from his son’s embrace. “But I want you to be safe, Blaine, because no matter what-what you do in your personal life, I still-I still love you, Blaine. You’re still my son.”

Drew holds Blaine at arm’s length, fully appreciating the damage inflicted on the teen. Blaine’s left eye is swollen shut, dried blood caked underneath his nose and over his cheek. Three stitches cross Blaine’s upper lip, and twenty more march across his temple, branched over with Steri-strips. Blaine’s right arm is in a sling, a cast running from his fingertips past his elbow. Drew unconsciously lets go of his son, afraid his grip is causing more pain than help.

He doesn’t miss the way Blaine’s eyes shutter as he pulls away, the shadow that crosses his son’s face.

“Blaine, you look like shit,” Drew says, totally at a loss for how to deal with the situation at hand.

A choked laugh escapes Blaine’s throat, and the three of them join in a hug, and Blaine thinks that, maybe, the world is okay for now, split lip and broken bones and all. His father finally might accept him, but at the very least still loves him. Maybe things will change, and maybe he’ll be able to live his life after this.

It’s only later, when he’s the headline story on the ten o’clock news, that he realizes nothing is different. He’s still the token “gay kid” in small-town Ohio, and when he shows his face at school on Monday, everyone will know exactly what happened, in excruciating detail. The scene outside the school is plastered over every newspaper in town, and the story even makes it to a few major networks in Chicago.

Blaine’s just another statistic, another Matthew Shepard who luckily made it away alive. Another kid gay-bashed at a school event, sent to the hospital because of something he couldn’t control. The sheer banality of it all seems ridiculous, and Blaine starts laughing alone in his room as he watches the news reporters shake their heads at the brutality one human can show another.

A sudden swell of anger rises up, and Blaine has to physically restrain himself from punching something. He screams into his pillow at the unfairness of it all, and wishes desperately for everything to go back to when the world was okay, and he was six and normal. Blaine digs in his drawer, finding the single razor blade he hid there after his parents purged his room, and drags it along his forearm a few times before settling back into his skin, and breathing. A brief thought flutters to the forefront of his mind, one he hasn’t entertained in a while, and he twirls the razor in his fingers a few times, letting the thought simmer.

Maybe he could finish what those guys couldn’t.

Ironically, it’s the fear of banality that stops him this time. The fear that if he succeeds, he’ll become yet another statistic.

Another gay teen suicide to add to the record.

So Blaine puts the blade away, wipes up the blood, and cries himself to sleep. When he enrolls at Dalton the following Tuesday, everyone looks past the bruises and the stitches and sees the quiet, terrified boy underneath, and accepts him at face value.

- - - - -

5 ) When his advice to Kurt backfires

“How could you be so damn stupid?” Blaine hisses to himself, slamming his fist onto the steering wheel as he sits in McKinley’s parking lot. He and Kurt have just returned from lunch, and the younger boy has gone back to classes, leaving Blaine alone in his car as he simmers.

The confrontation with Kurt’s bully had been anything but successful. Instead, it had spiraled quickly out of control, and despite his reassurances to Kurt, Blaine had fully realized just what he had told the younger boy to do last week.

“Why on earth would I tell him to stand up to them? Jesus Christ, I’m such an idiot,” Blaine whispers, banging his head over and over on the steering wheel. He was due back at Dalton for Warblers practice in thirty minutes, but he knew there was no way he’d be making the drive back to Westerville in time. Thirty-five texts to Wes later, and he’s excused from that afternoon’s practice of “Hey, Soul Sister” for Sectionals.

Blaine starts the engine, his hands shaking as he grasps the steering wheel. He pulls out of the parking lot, aimlessly pointing his car in the direction of Dalton, barely paying attention to the road as he drives.

He’d almost sent Kurt into a worse situation-hell, he had sent Kurt into a worse situation. Karofsky had kissed Kurt, God only knows how much farther he’d have gone if he hadn’t been so scared. And then Blaine had been stupid enough to try to out the kid in public.

He narrowly avoids a collision with the car in front of him when he fails to realize they’re at a red light. It’s only his quick reflex and the smell of burning rubber that stop him from hitting the SUV. The person behind him honks a warning, and Blaine waves him off, shaking his head at his lack of concentration. He makes it to the Dalton parking lot with no other close shaves, and extricates himself from the car, heading into his dorm with his bag over his shoulder.

Reaching his single-the perks of being the Warblers lead singer pay off sometimes-Blaine drops his bag, locks the door out of habit, and crosses to his desk. He takes out the small black bound book he’s had since he was fourteen, and flips past the fourteen other songs, fourteen other messages he’d intended to leave behind in his wake. He turns to a clean page, and writes.

Forty minutes later, the page is filled with lyrics that will never leave his room, chords to a song he never intends to play. This one is for Kurt, for his own failure as a mentor and as a potential friend, and Blaine fills the page with laments for his shortcomings and for the pain Kurt is going through. The pain he knows too well, but can’t take away. The things he can’t change, but wants to so badly it hurts.

He snaps the book shut, slides it back into its place, and takes out the only other object in the drawer. The razor glints in the light from his desk lamp, almost sparkling as he lifts it with a sick sense of admiration. It’s been awhile, but his skin still remembers the bite of the blade as it cuts through, his nerve endings prickling at the feeling of the blood sliding down his arm in the blade’s wake.

Twenty-two cuts later, Blaine’s left arm is a mess, and the only place left is the patch above the veins in his wrist, the place Blaine’s only cut once before. His phone buzzes, draws his attention, and a single smiley face from Kurt sends him running to the bathroom, where he vomits everything he’s eaten. Blaine ends up dry-heaving for ten minutes before he can collect himself, before he can bandage his arm and sink, exhausted, onto his bed.

He falls asleep clutching his phone to his chest, Kurt’s smiley-face the only thing grounding him in the moment.

- - - - -

And 1) When he tries to say goodbye to Kurt

“Has anyone seen Blaine today?” Kurt asks, tearing into the room for the first time since his return to McKinley and looking frantically around at the Warblers gathered in the Senior Commons. Kurt’s holding his phone in his hand, the screen paused on a message he’s just received. He’s met with blank looks all around, until he meets Wes’s eyes and something clicks in the older boy’s expression.

“Kurt, can I talk to you outside?”

Wes and Kurt leave the room, leave the confused Warblers in their wake as they head to a quiet corner of the hallway.

“Kurt, is there something particular that-“

“He sent me this, Wes.”

Kurt pulls out his phone, all but shoving it under Wes’s nose. The Asian scans the text quickly, his expression darkening.

“God dammit. Shit. Is he in his room?”

“I don’t know, Wes, I came straight here. I left Glee, but I can’t-Wes, I can’t find him alone, if he’s-if-“

“Kurt, we need to go. Now.”

“Wes, what if-“

“Kurt, he’s going to be okay. But we need to get to his room. Now, Kurt.”

Wes spins on his heel, all but running in the direction of Blaine’s room as Kurt follows behind. They skid to a stop outside Blaine’s door, Wes banging on the wood with a force Kurt has only seen him employ on his gavel.

“Blaine! Blaine Anderson, I know you’re in there, and I know you’re about to-Please, Blaine, open this door. Blaine!”

Kurt joins in, tears streaming down his face.

“Blaine, please, babe, you need to let us in. We want to help you, Blaine,” Kurt pleads with his boyfriend through the door, his hand gripping the door knob in the hope that his sheer will power will open it.

“I can’t,” Blaine’s broken whisper floats through the door, almost too quiet to be heard.

“Blaine, baby, you can. I know you can. I need you right now, babe, I need you to open the door.”

“Kurt.”

Kurt’s heart breaks at the pain in that single word, and he throws his shoulder into the door, stumbling in surprise when the maneuver actually works. The site that greets him inside is worse than he’d ever dreamed, though, and his steps falter. Wes slams into him from behind, and the two of them freeze.

Blaine is curled on the floor, a black notebook open in front of him and his guitar at his side. Half the page is scrawled over with words, tear stains dotting the paper and mixing with a few drops of what looked horribly like blood. Blaine is cradling his left arm to his chest, the fingers of his right hand grasped tightly around his wrist as he sobs. A single razor blade lies next to the book, blood glistening on the sharp edge.

Kurt breaks from his trance, crossing to his boyfriend in a few faltering steps and sinking to his knees. He gently takes Blaine’s hand, pries his fingers away and gasps. Without turning, he addresses the only other occupant of the room.

“Wes, you need to call 9-1-1. Now.”

To his credit, Wes doesn’t respond, simply leaves the room with his phone already attached to his ear, relaying details to the operator even as he closes the door to give Kurt and Blaine privacy from the growing crowd. Kurt quickly rips off his sweater, uncaring as he wraps it around Blaine’s wrist, pressing hard against the wounds. He pulls Blaine to him, holding his boyfriend as Blaine fully breaks down.

“Blaine, sweetheart, why? Why?”

“How did you figure it out?”

It’s not an answer to Kurt’s question, far from it, but he obliges, holding Blaine tighter and pressing a kiss to the other boy’s curls.

“You sent me a goodbye text, Blaine. Do you remember doing that?”

Blaine freezes, the bloodied fingers of his right hand clutching weakly at Kurt’s lapels.

“Oh, God. Kurt, I-“

“Blaine, if you say you’re sorry, I’ll kick your ass so hard you’ll never see daylight again.”

Blaine cracks the tiniest of smiles, and Kurt breathes a sigh of relief, carding his free hand through Blaine’s curls as they wait for the ambulance.

“Can you tell me why, Blaine?”

There’s an impossibly long silence, during which Blaine unconsciously glances at his notebook. Kurt leans forward, picking it up and looking to Blaine for permission.

“What is this?”

“It’s-it’s my book of lyrics,” Blaine tries, closing his eyes as Kurt begins to flip through it.

“Blaine,” Kurt begins, the gravity of what he’s holding hitting him. “Blaine, these aren’t-these aren’t songs.”

“I know.”

Kurt starts crying fully then, a combination of his realization and the sheer defeat in Blaine’s voice.

“How long have you felt like this Blaine?”

“Since I was thirteen, Kurt. I’ve only-this is only the second-“

Kurt sobs, clutching Blaine to his chest. He’s holding fifteen finished suicide notes in his hands, fifteen songs meant to be Blaine’s goodbye to the world. Fifteen songs Blaine wrote before contemplating taking his own life.

Kurt watches them carry Blaine to the ambulance, sits by Blaine’s side throughout his stay in the hospital and recovery, drives Blaine to appointments and therapy and group sessions, goes to couples counseling with him so he can help. He counts Blaine’s pills, calls Blaine every night, makes sure his boyfriend knows how much he’s loved. Burt and Carole adopt Blaine as an almost second son, checking on him almost as often as Kurt.

Through it all, Kurt keeps the book, reads it when he feels like Blaine will never get better, to remind himself of what could’ve been. Of what would’ve been that night if Kurt hadn’t taken Blaine’s text seriously.

The sixteenth song stays unfinished, until they burn the book together thirty-six months after Kurt found it.