it's funny how you just break down [andersquared creys]
title: It's Funny How You Just Break Down
rating: PG
fandom/pairing: Glee. Blaine/Blaine; mentions Blaine/Kurt and Blaine/Rachel friendships.
spoilers: Blaine becomes a Nude Erection for inexplicable reasons?
warnings: Erm, extremely fictionalized psychosis and the unpleasantness that comes with it; unnecessary ~ambiguity~ for most of it; holy mother of narcissim but not in a canon Hotchkissy way; angst creys.
summary: Blaine falls in love with a boy in a mirror.
words: 1398
disclaimer: I do not own Glee, or the Killers' "Read My Mind."
a/n: This isn't even funny and I hate myself for it. What a stupid fortune.
He’s beautiful. Blaine has never spoken to him before, never exchanged so much as two words with him before - but he can tell that the boy is almost everything Blaine’s ever wanted in a boyfriend, except, he’s unreachable.
It starts as just a curiosity. He presses a hand to the cool glass of the mirror; the boy on the other side raises one to match. Blaine blinks in surprise, and raises an eyebrow. The boy in the mirror looks just as confused, just as unsure, of what’s going on - and really, Blaine can’t blame him.
It becomes an obsession. Blaine brings a mirror with him everywhere he goes - not a hand mirror, of course, because that would be impractical, but he takes to “borrowing” his mother’s compact (not exactly for the first time, but the boy doesn’t have to know that) on a regular basis, just to keep the boy near. He’s always there, whenever Blaine looks, and he doesn’t understand how it is that that happens, but it’s not the sort of thing he’s going to question.
Because the boy is beautiful, and Blaine needs him. It’s not just wanting, not just desiring the beautiful boy with the beautiful eyes and the remarkable facial structure. It’s needing; it’s honestly needing to see the boy’s face once in a while, because otherwise Blaine might -
No one understands. It surprises Blaine, at first, that everyone in the Glee Club seems to think there’s something wrong with him - or at least that he’s just extraordinarily shallow. He’d expected them to get it; he’d heard that they were the epitome of Misfits, and if anyone should understand the inexplicableness of falling in love with a boy that doesn’t technically exist, outside of the shiny glass pane of a mirror, Blaine would have thought it ought to have been them.
But he grows to accept it. He accepts that they won’t understand; comes to the conclusion that no one will understand, if not his best friend in the world - who raises a judgmental eyebrow and inquires about Blaine’s hair gel usage, like it’s interrelated somehow - and eventually, Blaine forgets to be upset about that. He forgets about his teammates, and the two real friends he has amongst those teammates, and only focuses on that boy, the beautiful boy in the mirror.
His sanity slips a little more every day, he’s aware of. It’s a distant awareness; just an abstract thought that occurs to him when he’s wondering about the boy (something that he does frequently, more frequently than is acceptable), and he recognizes it as a Bad Sign. Still, however, he does nothing about it. The only changes Blaine makes to his routine, regarding the boy that always stares back through the mirror with warm eyes and slight, satisfied smiles, is that Blaine starts to talk to him.
That should probably be the turning point where he realizes that he needs help, but it’s not. He starts holding conversations with the boy, and maybe it’s just his imagination - but he’s almost positive; he could swear - that the boy talks back; actually replies.
“Who are you?” Blaine asks, mirror cradled in his trembling hands, as he lingers behind in the choir room after school for the sake of privacy.
(His friends have become irksome these days; they grate on him in ways that they never used to, and he’d nearly had to push them from the room to convince them that he was fine, and that yes, he was sure he didn’t want to go to the Lima Bean.)
The boy in the mirror smiles a little, the same smile he always does - like he knows everything, but most specifically, like he knows Blaine, and it’s an intoxicating image that follows Blaine wherever he goes, invades his dreams, is the conqueror of the beasts in his nightmares. Blaine’s breath hitches, and he thinks he bites his lip.
“Who are you?” the boy asks instead of replying, and Blaine could sob from the frustration; from the taste of futility (rather like iron; rather like blood) on his tongue.
“Stop joking around!” Blaine shouts, desperately, and he feels himself losing control; he sees himself losing control in the image of the boy shuddering in front of his vision as his eyes swim with ugly tears and his hands shake with uncontrollable fear.
The boy’s smile falls - he still looks beautiful; more beautiful - and he looks up at Blaine, slightly concerned. Blaine wonders if he imagines that the boy’s lower lip looks a little redder, plumper, than usually. He pushes the thought from his mind just as quickly as it appears; he doesn’t want to know if the boy has someone else, someone in his mirror world that he loves, that can be for him what Blaine can’t only because of circumstance, that loves him back -
“Stop…joking around?” the boy repeats slowly, and Blaine feels a searing heat spill over onto his cheeks; it burns like nothing he’s ever felt before, and he wonders if he’s imagining that, too; if he’s imagining everything; if he’s the one that’s just a boy in the mirror, unreal and a projection of a stilted stage of phallic development. It feels like it could be the most likely thing in the world, at that moment, and he shuts his eyes tight and shakes his head, trying to make everything disappear.
When he opens his eyes again, breath a little slower, heartbeat a little more even, the boy in the mirror is still there. His presence is made a little more tolerable by the fact that he looks somewhere near as upset as Blaine feels, and in that moment, Blaine lets himself fall in love.
“I’m sorry,” the boy in the mirror murmurs, with genuine contrition. Blaine mouths the words back to the boy, forms the words on his lips but doesn’t speak them out loud.
Nodding absently, Blaine whispers, “I love you,” in a voice that sounds too hoarse to be his own. He whispers it again, when the boy says it back - says it with a teary smile that looks like some kind of relief; some kind of beautiful, reciprocating relief - and again, and again, until it’s the only thing he can hear; until they’re the only words he can remember.
**
Blaine opens his eyes slowly. The first thing he sees isn’t a thing - it’s a person; two of them, actually.
Kurt doesn’t say anything, just takes Blaine’s hand and holds it tight in an unfamiliar grip that feels too warm, suffocating and warm. Blaine tries to pull away, but Kurt doesn’t let him, and Blaine senses a kind of urgency in his friend’s hold.
Rachel sighs, softly - not as though she blames him, just, tiredly - and perches cautiously on Blaine’s bedside. “You scared us,” she says quietly, brushing a curl out of his face. Her fingertips are too soft, too plush, against his skin, and Blaine doesn’t like that either. He longs for the calluses and the smirks of the boy in the mirror.
But he’s smart enough to know not to ask for him, and he just lets his head fall back against the uncomfortably crisp pillow behind him.
“He’s real,” he tells them, and although his voice is croaky and weak, he thinks he sounds as determined as he needs to. “And I love him,” he adds, just in case that was unclear.
He doesn’t look at their faces; he shuts his eyes again, and tries to picture the boy in the mirror, but for once, no image comes to him. He just sees Kurt, and Rachel, staring down at him in concern, with gentle expressions that he’ll get from them and everyone else for the rest of his life.
It’s not until the nurse enters with two blue capsules for Blaine to take (“For sleeping,” he says, in a no-nonsense tone that Blaine thinks is far too firm for someone in a caretaking position), that the face comes to him again, like a wave of relief that follows the swig of bitter pills and tasteless water.
Blaine pictures brown eyes, kind and thoughtful; light scruff, dark and alluring; curly black hair gelled back into an impenetrable shape against his head. And just before he feels darkness falling over him, Blaine can swear he feels lips, pink and soft, whispering, “I love you,” against his palm.
rating: PG
fandom/pairing: Glee. Blaine/Blaine; mentions Blaine/Kurt and Blaine/Rachel friendships.
spoilers: Blaine becomes a Nude Erection for inexplicable reasons?
warnings: Erm, extremely fictionalized psychosis and the unpleasantness that comes with it; unnecessary ~ambiguity~ for most of it; holy mother of narcissim but not in a canon Hotchkissy way; angst creys.
summary: Blaine falls in love with a boy in a mirror.
words: 1398
disclaimer: I do not own Glee, or the Killers' "Read My Mind."
a/n: This isn't even funny and I hate myself for it. What a stupid fortune.
He’s beautiful. Blaine has never spoken to him before, never exchanged so much as two words with him before - but he can tell that the boy is almost everything Blaine’s ever wanted in a boyfriend, except, he’s unreachable.
It starts as just a curiosity. He presses a hand to the cool glass of the mirror; the boy on the other side raises one to match. Blaine blinks in surprise, and raises an eyebrow. The boy in the mirror looks just as confused, just as unsure, of what’s going on - and really, Blaine can’t blame him.
It becomes an obsession. Blaine brings a mirror with him everywhere he goes - not a hand mirror, of course, because that would be impractical, but he takes to “borrowing” his mother’s compact (not exactly for the first time, but the boy doesn’t have to know that) on a regular basis, just to keep the boy near. He’s always there, whenever Blaine looks, and he doesn’t understand how it is that that happens, but it’s not the sort of thing he’s going to question.
Because the boy is beautiful, and Blaine needs him. It’s not just wanting, not just desiring the beautiful boy with the beautiful eyes and the remarkable facial structure. It’s needing; it’s honestly needing to see the boy’s face once in a while, because otherwise Blaine might -
No one understands. It surprises Blaine, at first, that everyone in the Glee Club seems to think there’s something wrong with him - or at least that he’s just extraordinarily shallow. He’d expected them to get it; he’d heard that they were the epitome of Misfits, and if anyone should understand the inexplicableness of falling in love with a boy that doesn’t technically exist, outside of the shiny glass pane of a mirror, Blaine would have thought it ought to have been them.
But he grows to accept it. He accepts that they won’t understand; comes to the conclusion that no one will understand, if not his best friend in the world - who raises a judgmental eyebrow and inquires about Blaine’s hair gel usage, like it’s interrelated somehow - and eventually, Blaine forgets to be upset about that. He forgets about his teammates, and the two real friends he has amongst those teammates, and only focuses on that boy, the beautiful boy in the mirror.
His sanity slips a little more every day, he’s aware of. It’s a distant awareness; just an abstract thought that occurs to him when he’s wondering about the boy (something that he does frequently, more frequently than is acceptable), and he recognizes it as a Bad Sign. Still, however, he does nothing about it. The only changes Blaine makes to his routine, regarding the boy that always stares back through the mirror with warm eyes and slight, satisfied smiles, is that Blaine starts to talk to him.
That should probably be the turning point where he realizes that he needs help, but it’s not. He starts holding conversations with the boy, and maybe it’s just his imagination - but he’s almost positive; he could swear - that the boy talks back; actually replies.
“Who are you?” Blaine asks, mirror cradled in his trembling hands, as he lingers behind in the choir room after school for the sake of privacy.
(His friends have become irksome these days; they grate on him in ways that they never used to, and he’d nearly had to push them from the room to convince them that he was fine, and that yes, he was sure he didn’t want to go to the Lima Bean.)
The boy in the mirror smiles a little, the same smile he always does - like he knows everything, but most specifically, like he knows Blaine, and it’s an intoxicating image that follows Blaine wherever he goes, invades his dreams, is the conqueror of the beasts in his nightmares. Blaine’s breath hitches, and he thinks he bites his lip.
“Who are you?” the boy asks instead of replying, and Blaine could sob from the frustration; from the taste of futility (rather like iron; rather like blood) on his tongue.
“Stop joking around!” Blaine shouts, desperately, and he feels himself losing control; he sees himself losing control in the image of the boy shuddering in front of his vision as his eyes swim with ugly tears and his hands shake with uncontrollable fear.
The boy’s smile falls - he still looks beautiful; more beautiful - and he looks up at Blaine, slightly concerned. Blaine wonders if he imagines that the boy’s lower lip looks a little redder, plumper, than usually. He pushes the thought from his mind just as quickly as it appears; he doesn’t want to know if the boy has someone else, someone in his mirror world that he loves, that can be for him what Blaine can’t only because of circumstance, that loves him back -
“Stop…joking around?” the boy repeats slowly, and Blaine feels a searing heat spill over onto his cheeks; it burns like nothing he’s ever felt before, and he wonders if he’s imagining that, too; if he’s imagining everything; if he’s the one that’s just a boy in the mirror, unreal and a projection of a stilted stage of phallic development. It feels like it could be the most likely thing in the world, at that moment, and he shuts his eyes tight and shakes his head, trying to make everything disappear.
When he opens his eyes again, breath a little slower, heartbeat a little more even, the boy in the mirror is still there. His presence is made a little more tolerable by the fact that he looks somewhere near as upset as Blaine feels, and in that moment, Blaine lets himself fall in love.
“I’m sorry,” the boy in the mirror murmurs, with genuine contrition. Blaine mouths the words back to the boy, forms the words on his lips but doesn’t speak them out loud.
Nodding absently, Blaine whispers, “I love you,” in a voice that sounds too hoarse to be his own. He whispers it again, when the boy says it back - says it with a teary smile that looks like some kind of relief; some kind of beautiful, reciprocating relief - and again, and again, until it’s the only thing he can hear; until they’re the only words he can remember.
**
Blaine opens his eyes slowly. The first thing he sees isn’t a thing - it’s a person; two of them, actually.
Kurt doesn’t say anything, just takes Blaine’s hand and holds it tight in an unfamiliar grip that feels too warm, suffocating and warm. Blaine tries to pull away, but Kurt doesn’t let him, and Blaine senses a kind of urgency in his friend’s hold.
Rachel sighs, softly - not as though she blames him, just, tiredly - and perches cautiously on Blaine’s bedside. “You scared us,” she says quietly, brushing a curl out of his face. Her fingertips are too soft, too plush, against his skin, and Blaine doesn’t like that either. He longs for the calluses and the smirks of the boy in the mirror.
But he’s smart enough to know not to ask for him, and he just lets his head fall back against the uncomfortably crisp pillow behind him.
“He’s real,” he tells them, and although his voice is croaky and weak, he thinks he sounds as determined as he needs to. “And I love him,” he adds, just in case that was unclear.
He doesn’t look at their faces; he shuts his eyes again, and tries to picture the boy in the mirror, but for once, no image comes to him. He just sees Kurt, and Rachel, staring down at him in concern, with gentle expressions that he’ll get from them and everyone else for the rest of his life.
It’s not until the nurse enters with two blue capsules for Blaine to take (“For sleeping,” he says, in a no-nonsense tone that Blaine thinks is far too firm for someone in a caretaking position), that the face comes to him again, like a wave of relief that follows the swig of bitter pills and tasteless water.
Blaine pictures brown eyes, kind and thoughtful; light scruff, dark and alluring; curly black hair gelled back into an impenetrable shape against his head. And just before he feels darkness falling over him, Blaine can swear he feels lips, pink and soft, whispering, “I love you,” against his palm.