When Blaine was four, he broke Cooper's new bike.

His father had sent him into the garage with a curt, "Blaine, get the potatoes for dinner," so off he went, eager to please.

But to a four year old, a garage is a vast, dark place, filled with scary corners and big shadows, so when he was startled by Cooper's loud shout from the kitchen, it was only natural for him to jump backwards with a whimper. It just so happened that backwards was where Cooper's fire engine-red BMX stood, propped up against a wall. One knock, and it was on the floor, handlebars twisted and chain caught under the pedal.

Uh-oh.

Blaine's heart went all fluttery, and he whimpered again when he heard a faint but very, very angry, "Blaine Anderson, what was that noise?"

Daddy always got mad when he broke things, even when it wasn't his fault, even when Cooper only blamed him and Blaine tried to protest in his tiny voice, fiddling with the hem of his shirt and rocking backwards on his heels.

Daddy was even scarier when he burst through the door, his cheeks already pink from when he'd shouted. He took one look from the mangled bike to where Blaine had scurried across to the other side of the room, and his cheeks went even pinker.

Blaine whimpered again.

"I-I'm sorry, Daddy! Bu-but it was really dark and I was going to get the potatoes like you asked me to get, but then Coop - Coop made a really loud noise and it scared because it was so dark, and I-I'm sorry, Daddy!"

His father said nothing, just looked at him with cold, dark eyes. The same eyes that Blaine saw the other day when Rocky, their new puppy, had wet the carpet. The same eyes he saw when Mommy had come home from a night out with all of her friends, and she was giggling and slapping Daddy's arm. He said nothing then, either, just lead her upstairs, where Blaine heard the sound of a slap and then silence.

"Get upstairs, Blaine."

"Bu-but Daddy, what about the potatoes for din-"

"-Upstairs, Blaine. You're not having dinner tonight."

Blaine's eyes welled up, because he was really hungry after playing with his new friends next door all day, and Mommy told him not to snack because they were having a big, delicious family dinner. He really wanted dinner with Mommy, if only so he could show her the picture he'd drawn of Mommy and Daddy and Coop in a big love heart, with Rocky sitting in there too.

"Daddy, please."

"You're having nothing, Blaine! You are going to stay in your room and think about the damage you have caused this evening. Do you understand?"

Blaine nodded silently, fingers already dropping to play with his fleece because he really, really didn't want to look at Daddy when he was this angry with him. He hated it when Daddy was angry, but he hated it most when Daddy was angry at him. He felt his cheeks burn as he started to cry; small little sobs so that Daddy wouldn't hear and call him a cry-baby like he did when Cooper's friend Rob accidentally knocked him over on the slate kitchen floor.

He heard his father leave with a stomp, and was about to stop holding his breath because he really couldn't not cry out loud anymore, but Daddy poked his head around the door one last time.

"Get to your room, Blaine. And stop being such a cry-baby, or things will get a lot worse than just missing out on dinner. Now.”

Even when Blaine was upstairs, alone, cuddling his little elephant that Mommy won him at the charity dinner last year, and he heard Coop curse loudly downstairs, he still didn't feel as bad as when Daddy called him a cry-baby again.

When Blaine was nine, he broke Carl Thompson's pen at school.

Carl Thompson was huge for a nine year old, about twice the size of Blaine, (who swore that he'd have a growth spurt soon, because he hadn't even got a low voice like Cooper yet and Coop was even taller than Carl Thompson) so breaking his pen was not Blaine's greatest move.

It didn't matter that he didn't mean to do it, because he never meant to break anything and Carl Thompson sure as hell didn't care when he tried to explain himself.

"Hey Blanderson, why is my pen snapped in half? And why is it laying on the floor?"

"Um, I-I- Carl, you left it on the side, and I guess I might have knocked it off when I went to sharpen my pencil, but I swear I didn't mean to stand on it - I didn't even know it was there! I'm really sorry, Carl, I'll buy you a new one, I promise!"

Carl probably bought himself a new one, but he just took Blaine's lunch money to do it. In a way, Blaine thought to himself as he sat alone on the bench outside school at the end of the day, he did buy him a new pen like he said he would.

Carl probably bought himself a lot of new pens that year, because Blaine missed a lot of lunches.

When Blaine was thirteen, his father told him that he'd broken his family.

His mother put her fork down on her plate, blinked rapidly, and put one shaking hand in front of her mouth.

Cooper said, "Holy shit."

His father, once again, said nothing.

Blaine said nothing as well, just stared at his hands that were twisting anxiously in his lap, his mouth moving silently as he repeated the words he'd blurted out halfway through their roast chicken.

I'm gay.

Then, as if he'd been pulled up by an invisible coat hanger, Mr Anderson straightened in his seat and picked up his glass of whiskey.

"No, Blaine, you're not.”

Blaine's heart dropped to somewhere around his liver, and just like he had when he'd broken Cooper's bike all those years ago, he began to apologise.

“Dad, I'm sorry, I didn't mean to say it like that, but I just can't not say it anymore because it hurt so bad to keep it from you, and I need somebody to know because the kids at school have all guessed and now they just pick on me every day, more than before, and I just- I need you. I need you, Dad. Please.”

His father squeezed his tumbler so tightly that Blaine winced, certain it was going to shatter into a thousand pieces right in his face. It wouldn't be the only thing that did so this evening.

Mr Anderson just regarded him, his eyes even colder than before, and filled with what Blaine could now recognise as disgust - downright disgust - before he spoke, calm and collected, but dripping with a hatred that Blaine had feared his entire life.

"I will not allow this hideous act to continue, do I make myself clear? You will apologise to your brother, your mother and myself, and then you will never speak of this again.”

"But Dad, I-“

"-No, Blaine!" His father's eerie calm had disintegrated. "I have not worked to raise you in a good home only for you to be a- a fag. This is despicable."

"I-I can't help it, Dad, I'm sorry! I didn't mean to upset you, I just really need you to understand and I- I'm just really sorry, Dad."

Blaine was so tired of being sorry for things he never meant to happen.

His father stared at him for a second longer, then turned to his mother, and Blaine hated himself for being relieved that the murderous look on Mr Anderson's face was no longer directed at him.

"You. You whore, who did you sleep with before allowing me to raise him in our home?"

"I- what? Andrew, think about what you're saying! I never slept with anyone else, Andrew, Blaine is your son!"

He spun around again to face Blaine, and this time the force of his glare made Blaine shrink back into his seat, his throat burning from the lump that was forming in the back of it.

"No son of mine is gay. I hope you're happy with what you've done, Blaine."

And with that, he swept out of the room, Mrs Anderson teetering out after him in her ridiculously high heels, yelling after him in the foul, simpering, high-pitched tone that always made Blaine shudder. Cooper just looked at him.

Blaine felt more alone than he had in his room when he was four, and as he stared at his plate on the polished wood table, he suddenly wished that he hadn't thrown out his elephant toy.

When Blaine was seventeen, he broke his boyfriend's heart.

In the weeks after what Blaine had named the New York Incident, (and filed in the Never-Speak-Of-In-Public-Because-You'll-Cry-And-Look-Stupid part of his brain) he spent seventy three dollars and sixteen cents on roses and left fourty-one messages on Kurt's voicemail.

He only stopped when he received on short, simple text. No adornments, no embellishments.

Please don't do this anymore.

So he didn't. Instead, he sat at the back of the choir room, checking his Facebook relationship status every five minutes, and only raising his head or opening his mouth when people called his name.

"What do you think, Blaine?"

"...Sorry, what do I think of what?"

"Of a tribute to 80's power ballads. What we've been discussing for the last fifteen minutes, you know?"

"Oh, um, yeah. Sure."

If Mr Schuester or Finn gave him any looks of pity, or Tina gazed at him with yet more sympathy, he ignored it, because he didn't deserve it. He just stared at the same patch of the floor every day, hoping that maybe God would answer the last of his pleas and open it up so that he could disappear.

He floated around in his own little world; a small, self-contained, toxic bubble that he hated every second of being inside, but made no attempts to escape.

It wasn't the destruction of his relationship that he hated himself for. It wasn't even the actual cheating that made him feel dirty all over. It was the look on Kurt's face, in Kurt's eyes, the one where Blaine thought he actually saw a chunk of his heart shrivel and drop, that he hated himself for.

He was so preoccupied with loathing his very existence that he didn't even notice Sam's hushed phone conversation with Kurt, three weeks after the school musical. He didn't hear the words 'scared', 'depressed' or 'help', and he didn't hear Kurt's crackly, static-filled sob on the other end.

So, of course, he hadn't prepared himself for Finn to announce that his brother was coming to visit that day. Everyone's heads swung around to look at him where he sat, frozen in his seat, with the deer-in-headlights stare that he swore was becoming his signature facial expression firmly in place. Blaine shook his head once, twice, and bent down to pick up his satchel before standing and walking slowly towards the door by the drum kit.

"Blaine, dude, please. You don't have to go just because Kurt's coming here.”

He stopped where he stood, a bitter half-laugh, half-sob caught in his throat.

"Yes, I do."

"Why?

And then, seven or eight weeks’ worth of despair clawed its way out of his chest like the weird creature he saw in Alien when he watched a special re-release at the movie theater with Kurt. Kurt's treat.

"Because he doesn't want me here and he doesn't want to see me! Because I have absolutely no right to be here when you are his friends and not mine, and because he deserves to see you while I deserve nothing more than to sit alone with no one trying to tell me that it'll all work out in the end! You know what? It won't work out, because Kurt will work out that he can do so much better than me, that he always could, and I will fade into the background of his incredible life like I already was before and- and rightfully so."

Blaine stopped, chest heaving, and he noted dully that he was sobbing.

“…Blaine?"

Kurt stood in the other doorway, hands by his side, with an expression filled with the most sadness Blaine had ever seen. Or, Blaine's mind told him, it may have been the second most sad expression he had ever seen Kurt wear.

He picked up his satchel quickly and directed his eyes to the same patch of floor he always stared at, arms pulled tight across his chest.

"I-I'll just go, don't worry. You should see your friends, Kurt, so stay.”

He was making his way to the same door as before when he heard a small voice saying something that he'd resigned himself to never hearing again.

"Stay too, Blaine. Please."

Blaine turned around slowly and precisely, afraid that if he moved too quickly the moment would vanish and Kurt would send him away again.

"I think we need to talk, Blaine. Really talk.”

When he fully looked at Kurt for the first time, he saw the corner of his mouth pulling up hopefully, and there was this tiny spark of something warm right by Blaine's heart. Something that felt vaguely akin to happiness, because maybe - just maybe - he might be able to fix this one thing that he'd broken.