Fifth Prompt Post
Welcome to the Glee Angst Meme again! You know how these things work. You can come here and prompt your most angsty prompts, and write stories filling those angsty prompts to let our characters suffer
( Read more... )
Before class even starts, Brittany asks if she can go first. Blaine is surprised, as she rarely sings on her own. Then she beams at Santana, and he feels a little spark of happiness for them, because they’ve stopped believing they have to hide.
Brittany sings, “According to you, I’m stupid, I’m useless, I can’t do anything right.” She’s fierce, glaring at the boys, jabbing her finger against their chests and leaning in close to shove them away. Artie’s chair rolls backwards. He looks startled. Blaine doesn’t think it was choreographed.
“But according to her, I’m beautiful, incredible. She can’t get me out of her head.” She grabs Santana’s hand. Santana shakes her head, then grins and lets Brittany pull her to her feet.
When she’s done, Will claps his hands and says, “Great performance. So much energy! But what does it have to do with the assignment?”
“Well, duh,” says Brittany. “I’m crazy about Santana, and…” She hesitates. “Is it OK if I say it, now that everyone knows?”
Santana rolls her eyes affectionately. “Go ahead.”
Brittany says triumphantly, “Santana’s crazy about me.”
Rory goes next. The tune is so upbeat that it’s easy to ignore the dark lyrics until he reaches the chorus. Then he puts his hands together with pointer fingers extended and sights down his arms. “All you other kids with the pumped up kicks, better run, better run faster than my bullet.” He mimes, complete with recoil, picking off the audience one by one. Blaine shudders as Rory pretends to blow him away.
Mr. Schue clears his throat. “That’s not quite what I expected.”
“When you say crazy, you Americans do mean mad, don’t you?”
“Well, yes, but-“
“I believe murder-suicide is as mad as it gets.”
Mr. Schue frowns. “I wanted you guys to have fun with this. I was thinking Heart or Fine Young Cannibals.”
Suddenly a slurred voice fills the room. “It’ll be one night of let’s just get crazy, let’s just get crazy. Let’s do something really crazy and roll around in the hay.” Several of the kids are snickering, like they're in on the joke.
Santana turns and winks. “Told you, Anderson. You’re not the only one who can’t hold your liquor.”
Mr. Schue is wearing an embarrassed, befuddled look. It makes Blaine nostalgic for Dalton, where the adults are in control.
“Mr. Schue?” ask Finn.
“Yes, Finn?”
“How about Aerosmith?”
Clearly relieved, Will smiles.
Finn sings Crazy, crazy, crazy for you baby, while Rachel preens in the spotlight. It’s predictable and soothing, but Blaine still feels like he needs to go a couple rounds with a punching bag. He hates stereotypes, hates the way people equate mental illness with criminal, dangerous. He thinks he might have punched Rory if the lithium wasn’t weighing him down.
Reply
Mr. Schue answers, “I think you’re projecting your issues onto my kids.”
Suddenly her spine straightens and she stands taller. It’s the stance his mother takes on the rare occasions she stands up to his dad. Mr. Schue doesn’t notice because he’s looking down at her. It reminds Blaine of his dad.
“One in five Americans will be diagnosed with a mental illness at some point in their life. Some studies say one in four. it’s fairly likely that one or more of--.”
Blaine clears his throat and she looks over, suddenly flustered. “Hello, Blaine. Did you want to talk to me?”
“If this isn’t a bad time.”
“No, no. Of course not. Will was just headed to lunch.” She gives him a nudge and a pointed look.
Blaine wonders who thought it was a good idea to design a counselor’s office with a glass wall. Hoping it’s soundproof, he pulls the door firmly shut.
“So how can I help you?”
“You know why I missed two weeks of school?”
She frowns slightly. “Um, yes. Principal Figgins gave me a copy of your file.”
“Kurt’s worried about me. Honestly, I’m just here to make him feel better.” He gestures towards the lunchbox still clutched in her hand. “Don’t let me interrupt.”
She pulls out two Tupperware containers and arranges them neatly side by side. One is filled with grape tomatoes, the other with celery sticks. They look like a grocery ad, every piece identically sized and without blemish. She picks up a tomato, inspects it carefully and pops it in her mouth.
“Eating disorder?”
Her eyes fly open, wide and startled. He’s about to apologize when she says softly, “OCD.”
“Does it help?” he asks, gesturing towards the perfectly aligned boxes.
“It feels like it does, except when it doesn’t.” She reaches for another tomato, hesitates and chooses a piece of celery instead. “So,” she says, “Mr. Schuester picked ‘crazy’ as his theme for the week.”
Blaine shrugs. “He didn’t mean anything by it. My first grade teacher had a us play a game called ‘Crazy or Could Be’ to teach us the difference between fiction and non-fiction. It’s just a word.”
“Sometimes words hurt.”
She nibbles on her celery, allows silence to build. Blaine considers turning the conversation back on her, but he doesn’t think she’d play along this time.
“You know, since I started dating Kurt, I’ve thought a lot about passing. People look at Kurt and they just know. And they say horrible things to his face. I pass without meaning to, even though I feel like I’m constantly coming out to everyone. Anyway, sometimes people say things to me about people like Kurt, and they expect me to agree because I’m such ‘a nice young man’ that I couldn’t possibly be one of ‘them.‘ They don’t realize that I’m the one who has something wrong with me.”
She speaks carefully, as if she’s considering every word before she says it. “A lot of people believe that you are gay because something is wired differently in your brain. Not wrong, just different. Do you think maybe having bipolar disorder is the same? Not wrong, just different?”
“No.”
“I know.”
He wants to call bullshit, but as he watches her meticulously inspect another tomato, he can see that she really does.
Reply
Reply
Reply
Reply
The week drags on.
Rachel sings a medley of songs from “Next to Normal.” Kurt glares like she’s stolen his first born, then completely outdoes her with a heartbreaking rendition of Patsy Kline.
Sam sings some country song about an old man at a bar. The chorus (“God is great; beer is good; people are crazy”) manages to offend Kurt more than Blaine.
He expects Mercedes to sing something safe, some heteronormative “Crazy ‘Bout My Man.” He nods smugly at Kurt when the band strikes up a Motown beat. To his shock, she begins, “I remember, I remember, I remember when I lost my mind.” He claps politely when it’s over, palms stinging where his fingernails dug in.
Jacob Ben Israel posts a picture of Lauren Zizes in thigh high boots and a leather bustier. “Photoshopped,” sniffs Kurt. Conversations no longer stop when Blaine walks by.
Artie sings, “Let’s go crazy; let’s get nuts. Let’s look for the purple banana til they put us in the truck.” Mike and Brittany accompany him with an improvisational dance that’s half wild flailing and half athletic moves clearly stolen from a Cheerios routine. He distracts himself from the lyrics by marveling at how strong Brit must be to send Mike flying over her shoulders almost as easily as he flips her.
After one particularly tense hour, Kurt lags behind, kneading Blaine’s shoulder muscles until Blaine sighs and says, “We’re going to be late for class.”
Just when he thinks he’s going to implode, Tina, shyer than he’s ever seen her, says, “I used to stutter so people wouldn’t look at me.” She start off quietly, as if she’s singing to herself, but gathers strength by the middle of the song. “They turn their heads embarrassed, pretend that they don’t see.” Her voice soars on the line, “There doesn’t seem a way to be redeemed.” Blaine thinks to himself that redemption is living in spite of everything. He brushes his knuckles against the back of Kurt’s hand.
Reply
He picks up a stool and plants it in the middle of the floor. He ignores his father’s voice saying, “Andersons stand on their own two feet. They don’t use crutches.”
He sits and takes a deep breath that doesn’t calm his fluttering stomach.
“I’m crazy. I take Lithium, and-“
Brittany interrupts him. “Why don’t you float?”
Santana murmurs in Brittany’s ear. Her eyes widen and she nods. Her expression is so sober and childlike that Blaine can’t help but smile reassuringly.
“I take Lithium, and this is how it makes me feel.”
“Hello?” he sings, “Is there anybody in there? Just nod if you can hear me. Is there anyone at home?”
He meets Kurt’s eyes. They shine.
“There is no pain. You are receding.”
Tears roll down his cheeks. He doesn’t wipe them away because, as Rachel says, it is imperative for a performer to express heart-felt emotion.
“I can’t explain. You would not understand. This is not how I am. I have become comfortably numb.”
When he finishes, the silence stretches out awkwardly. He doesn’t have the energy to fill it.
Brittany comes to the rescue. “You’re a prism, Blaine. I know you feel like broken glass, but when you’re happy, you catch all the light and make rainbows dance around the room. You make Kurt sparkle too.” She's beaming at him. Drained as he is, it's impossible not to force his face into a fake smile. He hopes it's reassuring. It feels grotesque.
Tina stands. “For years, I wanted to be invisible. Now I take Prozac and go to therapy and I like myself again. There’s nothing wrong with that.” She crosses to Blaine and takes his hands. “I know I already had my turn, but there’s something I really want to sing right now.” She looks to Mr. Schue for permission. Still a bit shell-shocked, he nods.
“You with the sad eyes, don’t be discouraged.”
Brad joins in on the piano.
“I realize it’s hard to take courage.”
Blaine looks over her shoulder at Kurt, who is gazing back as if he sees something precious, someone worth something. He makes his way over to Blaine as he begins to sing. “I see your true colors, and that’s why I love you.”
The girls join in one by one, Santana chiming in with “If this world makes you crazy…” She grins wickedly.
By the time the song’s over, he’s surrounded in the best possible way-Kurt resting whisper-light against his back with his arms wrapped around his chest, the girls hugging or patting him, and Finn with a hand clapped on his shoulder. There’s a bedlam of voices. He doesn’t know where he's going. He might just rest here for a while.
Reply
Reply
So much love for this fic.
Reply
OMG truer words were never said. Shuester is so unfocused it's insane. actually, that might make a good plotpoint.
Reply
Leave a comment