(no subject)
TITLE: Hidden in Plain Sight
AUTHOR: Kasey
RATING: PG-13ish, Klaine
WARNINGS: Explicit talk of self-harm
SUMMARY: It's not easy seeming so calm, cool, and confident all the time. Luckily the uniform covers a multitude of sins.
DISCLAIMERS: Not mine. It's been stuck in my head and percolating all day, so I ended up having to write it.
He tries sometimes to remember when precisely he started, but he can't.
It must have been before the January he was in eighth grade, because there's a picture his mother hangs proudly in the front hall where he can just see the corner of a bandaid peeking out from under the cuff of his dress shirt. They were all getting ready to go to the winter semi-formal - eight tweens, paired neatly into boy-girl couples even though none of them were officially allowed to date yet, posed on the staircase. He'd panicked before they got there; the prospect of spending three hours crammed into a gymnasium with the kids who tormented him and minimal adult supervision in the dark, crowded space.
His date was a nice enough girl, but he knew he'd never like her the way his friends liked their dates. What if she wanted to dance with him? Like...dance with him, dance with him? And oh god, if she tried to kiss him- He didn't want her to be the girl who spent this dance in the bathroom crying - there was always at least one girl per dance, usually two or three, always because a guy they liked had been mean to them, and he didn't want to be that guy. He didn't want to be a jerk, but he couldn't exactly tell her "I'm sorry, you look really pretty in that weird bubble-skirt-dress you're wearing, but kelly green isn't your colour and I'd rather be here with the cute boy in my history class."
With the weight of his secret crushing his chest and about forty minutes before everyone was due to arrive, he had half-stumbled to his bedroom door and clicked the lock into place. If his parents knocked, they would assume was getting ready. His hands quivered as he stood on his desk chair and retrieved from the top of his bookcase the wooden box he'd made in shop class the year before; the ugly gash where he had been unable to steer the router accurately enough around the corner was apparently such a grave imperfection it had knocked his final grade to a C.
It looked how he felt those days.
He had flicked open the lid with his thumbs and carefully sifted through the bandanna he'd placed in the box to muffle the clinking sound, then retrieved a piece of glass that had once been part of his bathroom mirror. He'd broken it in frustration once, though he couldn't remember when or precisely why, and its shards had been proving useful.
Some people used knives, but that scared him. That was for trying to kill yourself - that wasn't what he was doing. He just needed to...something.
His unruly hair had flopped defiantly in front of his face and he stared, head bowed, at the top side of his forearm. It was easy to reach, easy to control...never on the underside, then he was back to the knife problem. But on top, where the skin was thicker and the dark hair helped conceal everything so nicely afterward.
He let out a soft hiss at the first motion, even though it was barely more than a deep scratch - the glass was starting to dull from repeated use and it took more pressure to draw blood than it used to. Not that that was his goal, per se; he wasn't trying to make himself bleed, he just...didn't care if he did. The hiss turned into a long, shallow sigh of relief with each subsequent draw of the makeshift blade.
By the time he had felt like he could breathe again, like he wasn't going to die of suffocation in his own skin, there had been seven neat slashes from just above his wrist to the middle of his forearm. They weren't perfect, uniform, parallel, but that had never been the point. He could breathe again - that was the point. He could move and see and not feel like he was going to burst into tears at any moment.
That would have been embarrassing. That would have made him the talk of the school faster than telling everyone his horrible secret. Panicking, letting his front shatter in the presence of the entire eighth grade?
This he could hide, and it was over a lot more quickly. He wasn't left with the unbearable, dizzying headache that the morning after a panic attack brought, or the aching in his lungs and throat from trying to choke back sobs, or the gritty, raw feeling in his eyes, or exhaustion. His arm stung now, but by the time they got to the school that would have faded; he wouldn't even feel it in the morning until he stepped into the hot spray of the shower.
A few dots of blood resting just above the faint pink lines on his skin, he had walked slowly to the bathroom to place bandaids as necessary. They would hurt when they came off, he knew, now that the hair was getting thicker as well as darker, but at least it was January so he needed to wear long sleeves all the time anyway. The corner of the last bandaid was low enough that it would probably show, but there could be any number of explanations for that.
Then he got dressed, and he went downstairs, and no one noticed, and everyone thought he was fine, and life...went on.
He's still not sure how no one noticed. Looking at the picture even now whenever he goes home, the bandaid isn't nearly as noticeable as the dead look in his eyes. But at least it beats looking panicked.
* * * * *
He had long since learned that, when the day started off feeling this way, it was best not to fight it.
Now that he was no longer stuck in the hellhole that was his old school, now that he was in a place where he could be happy and himself and didn't feel like he was going to die under the unbearable, crushing weight of tightly-guarded secrets, it was mostly a thing of the past.
But some days he just-
He didn't get it. He knew he was fine now. There was nothing to panic about. He was incredibly fortunate in every way he could possibly think of. He had friends, he had parents who supported him - even if that support was in the kind of classic Ohio 'that's nice, dear, we're never mentioning it again' kind of mold. He had teachers who would stand up for him, he had an incredible musical outlet, he had plenty to keep him busy with school. On top of which he had every material possession he could possibly want and a more-than-comfortable dorm room with a decent roommate because he'd lucked into getting David in the lottery this year.
He should have been ecstatic but some days...okay, a lot of days...he'd wake up feeling like he might literally start twitching because his body was so tense. And when he did...
He didn't know why, there was absolutely no reason he should have felt that way - a fact he kept reminding himself of as he slowly pulled himself to sit on the edge of the bed and drew in as many quiet deep breaths as he could before attempting to stand. David was still asleep, which was good; he never felt like trying to explain himself when he felt like this, and today was no exception.
What even was there to say? Because the person would ask what was wrong, and he would have to say he had no idea. Then no one would believe him because it sounded like such crap.
He could get the box. David wouldn't be up for half an hour, probably, that was plenty of time-
At the thought, he felt the first tiny bit of relaxation, of relief. It was always like that. He hated how predictable it was - he wanted to feel like maybe this time he could break the cycle. Like maybe today he could actually figure out some other way of dealing with his problems because he knew it was ridiculous. It was...it was dangerous and stupidly, cliche-ly safe all at the same time. He hated the feeling it gave him before and immediately after.
The problem was, the feeling he got during?
No, he told himself firmly. He pushed himself up off the bed and grabbed his shower caddy. This time of morning, at least a few stalls would be free and he could take a few extra minutes - maybe the hot water would help him relax a little.
It didn't. It never did. Neither did any other task that could command his focus enough to reduce any garden-variety nerves. It was like once the seed had been planted...once he thought about doing it...
He wondered if this was what addicts felt like. It was the closest to anything familiar he'd ever read on the subject, because none of the sites aimed at helping people who-...people who did what he did (he hated using the actual verb, it made him sound pathetic and so cliche he cringed even thinking it) seemed to fit. It wasn't about making himself feel. It wasn't about releasing pain in a physical way so he wouldn't have to process it mentally. It wasn't about so many more things than it was.
The biggest problem, he concluded as he carefully and methodically shaved off his day's worth of dark stubble, was that the thought of not doing it caused more anxiety. And the only way he could think of to relieve this particular kin of anxiety...it all became a self-fulfilling prophecy of sorts.
The razor never appealed to him, and when he nicked himself under the chin because he was distracted, it did nothing to ease his frustration. It wasn't about blood, it was about the ritual. It was about the scent of the untreated wood of the box, the folds of the bandanna, the soft clinking of glass on glass as he searched for a piece that hadn't been worn down to the point of uselessness. It was about the careful, methodical bandaging afterward before the panic and shame set in.
None of the websites told him how to deal with that part. The best anyone could offer was "Don't do it anymore"; the worst was essentially the cutting version of a pro-ana website: "You only get ashamed of it because people tell you it's bad. It's not."
He was pretty sure it was bad, if only because he knew vaguely that it was probably unhealthy and did theoretically still carry some minimal risk of screwing something up. Unfortunately that didn't help his brain unwind.
He returned to his room as David was waking up and pulled a clean uniform shirt from the closet. It was best to change before David was fully awake and paying attention; the unmarred places on his body were getting fewer and further between. He could wear short-sleeve shirts if no one was looking closely, but he avoided it just in case. The ones on his legs had stopped at precisely the bottom of his boxers for a reason - those were mostly from freshman year, when fitting in at his new safe haven proved more difficult than he expected and panic attacks were too frequent an occurrence for a place where he needed to fit in.
It wasn't easy seeming calm, cool, and confident all the time the way the Warblers expected - nay, demanded. Luckily for him, the uniform covered a multitude of sins.
The freshest were on his lower torso. It had occurred to him at some point that, on the off chance he ever found a boyfriend and was ready to take the next step into a sexual relationship, slices and scars across his legs would be fairly obvious...and explaining their origin would sufficiently kill any mood he might have been able to create. There were a lot more ways to have sex and explain away wearing an undershirt.
He hoped, at least. He didn't have many other options.
By the time David was coherent and getting up, Blaine had his shirt and trousers on and was starting on his tie. Minor potential crisis averted; the panic was not.
It percolated just beneath the surface all morning. It almost spilled over in AP Government when talking about powerlessness, but he dug his fingers subtly into the hem of his jacket sleeve. As the wool twisted in his fist and he forced himself to breathe calmly, evenly, he pasted on an interested smile. His stomach felt like it was twisting in time with the fabric under his fingertips; his breathing sounded ragged and rushed as his heartbeat pounded too quickly in his ears.
When he looked around, no one seemed to notice. Or care.
It was better, he knew. No one was supposed to know. That was the entire point. If he wanted them to know, he would stop fighting the growing panic attack and just let it out. If he wanted them to know, he would tell someone something other than "I'm fine" when they asked how he was or if he was okay. If he wanted them to know...
They couldn't. He couldn't.
"You coming?"
Wes's voice snapped him out of his trance. Somehow class had ended - he wondered how he had missed it. He remembered it seeming like the seconds were ticking by in excrutiating increments and then...nothing. He hoped he hadn't done anything embarrassing, anything that would give him away; no, judging from Wes's casual face and tone, he just looked like he'd zoned out. It would be out of character for him, but apparently not enough.
He forced his best 'I'm totally fine and kind of a rockstar' smile and replied, "I forgot about an essay that's due in French, so I think I'm gonna head back to my room and try to crank it out over lunch."
Wes offered a withering smile. "Good luck."
Blaine pulled himself to his feet, groaning softly with the effort. His head ached already with the effort of holding himself together, a dull throb that he knew would only be worse if he tried to sleep it off. Sleep was good for calming down, but he didn't have the luxury of blowing off the afternoon and - with how foggy and achy he would be when he woke up - all evening. And right now he wasn't sure he could sleep if he forced himself.
His heart leapt a little as he knew what that meant.
With a renewed sense of purpose, he walked quickly down the back stairs where he was unlikely to be seen, then across the quad to the dorm. His entire body was stiff, clumsy, like he couldn't move his limbs at the same time in different direction and keep breathing and not panic all at the same time. But he could fix it now. He could fix this and make himself feel better and then go on with the rest of his day.
The dorm was empty save a few guys darting back to swap out their books, but almost everyone was at lunch. David never came back this time of day - he viewed lunchtime as a kind of sacred time that no one could intrude on, not because he was food-obsessed but because he was one of the few guys at Dalton with a healthy respect for down-time. When they were coming up to a major Warbler show, he was the one who demanded that they cut the late-Friday rehearsal because it would only stress people out, he made out a study schedule for finals that actually built in breaks (unheard-of among Dalton students, especially junior year)...
He claimed it was stress relief.
Blaine wondered idly if that would work for him. Maybe it was just that he tried to cram too much into too little time - Warblers and drama club and a rigorous academic schedule, even by Dalton standards, with a handful of community volunteer activities on the weekend...maybe if he slowed down, he would stop having days that felt like this. He seriously doubted it, but it might be worth a shot.
No, he concluded as he reached the sanctuary of his room, his breathing shallow and not from rushing up the stairs too quickly. Nothing was going to work as well as this would. He knew from experience - from three therapists and four prescriptions and every meditation technique the internet could instruct him in.
He flung off his blazer and ripped open the buttons of his left sleeve. It wasn't an area he'd used in awhile, but he didn't think he could wait long enough to unbutton his entire shirt and take off his white undershirt. He hastily rolled the sleeve to just above the elbow, shoving it and not caring that it kind of made his arm hard to move with so much bunching - he didn't need that arm to move. He needed it to stay still.
The quiver in his fingers was back now that he was outside the presence of others, as though the door closing gave him silent permission to let out everything he'd been holding in. He laid on his stomach on the bed and fished blindly with his right hand until his fingers closed around the rough edges of the familiar wooden box. It clanked as he pulled it out; he must not have wrapped it well enough last time, he thought dully. He should be more careful this time - if someone kicked the box or something they would wonder what was in it making so much noise.
There was a strange calm that came over him as soon as the box was in his hand. His fingers stilled, gripped the wood more tightly, finding the familiar gash. This was familiar -comforting. Things would be okay now. Things would feel better.
He would feel better.
His body went on autopilot as he sifted through the glass. There were multiple shades now - a few left from the original mirror, pieces of a drinking glass from the dining hall left over from sophomore year, thin green from a dollar-store bottle he'd bought for exactly this purpose...he retrieved a cobalt blue shard that used to be part of a wine bottle Wes had broken after consuming most of its contents, clutching it between his thumb and first two fingers.
He was between the third and fourth cut when he heard it - a soft gasp. His body stiffened. Hide it! He shoved the glass into the box and flipped the lid closed in a fumbling motion and looked up to see-
Oh no. Oh god. Anyone but him.
"Hey, Kurt." He plastered on his smile - the grin that had become such a normal part of his repertoire of facial expressions that it hardly seemed forced anymore. "You need anything?"
AUTHOR: Kasey
RATING: PG-13ish, Klaine
WARNINGS: Explicit talk of self-harm
SUMMARY: It's not easy seeming so calm, cool, and confident all the time. Luckily the uniform covers a multitude of sins.
DISCLAIMERS: Not mine. It's been stuck in my head and percolating all day, so I ended up having to write it.
He tries sometimes to remember when precisely he started, but he can't.
It must have been before the January he was in eighth grade, because there's a picture his mother hangs proudly in the front hall where he can just see the corner of a bandaid peeking out from under the cuff of his dress shirt. They were all getting ready to go to the winter semi-formal - eight tweens, paired neatly into boy-girl couples even though none of them were officially allowed to date yet, posed on the staircase. He'd panicked before they got there; the prospect of spending three hours crammed into a gymnasium with the kids who tormented him and minimal adult supervision in the dark, crowded space.
His date was a nice enough girl, but he knew he'd never like her the way his friends liked their dates. What if she wanted to dance with him? Like...dance with him, dance with him? And oh god, if she tried to kiss him- He didn't want her to be the girl who spent this dance in the bathroom crying - there was always at least one girl per dance, usually two or three, always because a guy they liked had been mean to them, and he didn't want to be that guy. He didn't want to be a jerk, but he couldn't exactly tell her "I'm sorry, you look really pretty in that weird bubble-skirt-dress you're wearing, but kelly green isn't your colour and I'd rather be here with the cute boy in my history class."
With the weight of his secret crushing his chest and about forty minutes before everyone was due to arrive, he had half-stumbled to his bedroom door and clicked the lock into place. If his parents knocked, they would assume was getting ready. His hands quivered as he stood on his desk chair and retrieved from the top of his bookcase the wooden box he'd made in shop class the year before; the ugly gash where he had been unable to steer the router accurately enough around the corner was apparently such a grave imperfection it had knocked his final grade to a C.
It looked how he felt those days.
He had flicked open the lid with his thumbs and carefully sifted through the bandanna he'd placed in the box to muffle the clinking sound, then retrieved a piece of glass that had once been part of his bathroom mirror. He'd broken it in frustration once, though he couldn't remember when or precisely why, and its shards had been proving useful.
Some people used knives, but that scared him. That was for trying to kill yourself - that wasn't what he was doing. He just needed to...something.
His unruly hair had flopped defiantly in front of his face and he stared, head bowed, at the top side of his forearm. It was easy to reach, easy to control...never on the underside, then he was back to the knife problem. But on top, where the skin was thicker and the dark hair helped conceal everything so nicely afterward.
He let out a soft hiss at the first motion, even though it was barely more than a deep scratch - the glass was starting to dull from repeated use and it took more pressure to draw blood than it used to. Not that that was his goal, per se; he wasn't trying to make himself bleed, he just...didn't care if he did. The hiss turned into a long, shallow sigh of relief with each subsequent draw of the makeshift blade.
By the time he had felt like he could breathe again, like he wasn't going to die of suffocation in his own skin, there had been seven neat slashes from just above his wrist to the middle of his forearm. They weren't perfect, uniform, parallel, but that had never been the point. He could breathe again - that was the point. He could move and see and not feel like he was going to burst into tears at any moment.
That would have been embarrassing. That would have made him the talk of the school faster than telling everyone his horrible secret. Panicking, letting his front shatter in the presence of the entire eighth grade?
This he could hide, and it was over a lot more quickly. He wasn't left with the unbearable, dizzying headache that the morning after a panic attack brought, or the aching in his lungs and throat from trying to choke back sobs, or the gritty, raw feeling in his eyes, or exhaustion. His arm stung now, but by the time they got to the school that would have faded; he wouldn't even feel it in the morning until he stepped into the hot spray of the shower.
A few dots of blood resting just above the faint pink lines on his skin, he had walked slowly to the bathroom to place bandaids as necessary. They would hurt when they came off, he knew, now that the hair was getting thicker as well as darker, but at least it was January so he needed to wear long sleeves all the time anyway. The corner of the last bandaid was low enough that it would probably show, but there could be any number of explanations for that.
Then he got dressed, and he went downstairs, and no one noticed, and everyone thought he was fine, and life...went on.
He's still not sure how no one noticed. Looking at the picture even now whenever he goes home, the bandaid isn't nearly as noticeable as the dead look in his eyes. But at least it beats looking panicked.
* * * * *
He had long since learned that, when the day started off feeling this way, it was best not to fight it.
Now that he was no longer stuck in the hellhole that was his old school, now that he was in a place where he could be happy and himself and didn't feel like he was going to die under the unbearable, crushing weight of tightly-guarded secrets, it was mostly a thing of the past.
But some days he just-
He didn't get it. He knew he was fine now. There was nothing to panic about. He was incredibly fortunate in every way he could possibly think of. He had friends, he had parents who supported him - even if that support was in the kind of classic Ohio 'that's nice, dear, we're never mentioning it again' kind of mold. He had teachers who would stand up for him, he had an incredible musical outlet, he had plenty to keep him busy with school. On top of which he had every material possession he could possibly want and a more-than-comfortable dorm room with a decent roommate because he'd lucked into getting David in the lottery this year.
He should have been ecstatic but some days...okay, a lot of days...he'd wake up feeling like he might literally start twitching because his body was so tense. And when he did...
He didn't know why, there was absolutely no reason he should have felt that way - a fact he kept reminding himself of as he slowly pulled himself to sit on the edge of the bed and drew in as many quiet deep breaths as he could before attempting to stand. David was still asleep, which was good; he never felt like trying to explain himself when he felt like this, and today was no exception.
What even was there to say? Because the person would ask what was wrong, and he would have to say he had no idea. Then no one would believe him because it sounded like such crap.
He could get the box. David wouldn't be up for half an hour, probably, that was plenty of time-
At the thought, he felt the first tiny bit of relaxation, of relief. It was always like that. He hated how predictable it was - he wanted to feel like maybe this time he could break the cycle. Like maybe today he could actually figure out some other way of dealing with his problems because he knew it was ridiculous. It was...it was dangerous and stupidly, cliche-ly safe all at the same time. He hated the feeling it gave him before and immediately after.
The problem was, the feeling he got during?
No, he told himself firmly. He pushed himself up off the bed and grabbed his shower caddy. This time of morning, at least a few stalls would be free and he could take a few extra minutes - maybe the hot water would help him relax a little.
It didn't. It never did. Neither did any other task that could command his focus enough to reduce any garden-variety nerves. It was like once the seed had been planted...once he thought about doing it...
He wondered if this was what addicts felt like. It was the closest to anything familiar he'd ever read on the subject, because none of the sites aimed at helping people who-...people who did what he did (he hated using the actual verb, it made him sound pathetic and so cliche he cringed even thinking it) seemed to fit. It wasn't about making himself feel. It wasn't about releasing pain in a physical way so he wouldn't have to process it mentally. It wasn't about so many more things than it was.
The biggest problem, he concluded as he carefully and methodically shaved off his day's worth of dark stubble, was that the thought of not doing it caused more anxiety. And the only way he could think of to relieve this particular kin of anxiety...it all became a self-fulfilling prophecy of sorts.
The razor never appealed to him, and when he nicked himself under the chin because he was distracted, it did nothing to ease his frustration. It wasn't about blood, it was about the ritual. It was about the scent of the untreated wood of the box, the folds of the bandanna, the soft clinking of glass on glass as he searched for a piece that hadn't been worn down to the point of uselessness. It was about the careful, methodical bandaging afterward before the panic and shame set in.
None of the websites told him how to deal with that part. The best anyone could offer was "Don't do it anymore"; the worst was essentially the cutting version of a pro-ana website: "You only get ashamed of it because people tell you it's bad. It's not."
He was pretty sure it was bad, if only because he knew vaguely that it was probably unhealthy and did theoretically still carry some minimal risk of screwing something up. Unfortunately that didn't help his brain unwind.
He returned to his room as David was waking up and pulled a clean uniform shirt from the closet. It was best to change before David was fully awake and paying attention; the unmarred places on his body were getting fewer and further between. He could wear short-sleeve shirts if no one was looking closely, but he avoided it just in case. The ones on his legs had stopped at precisely the bottom of his boxers for a reason - those were mostly from freshman year, when fitting in at his new safe haven proved more difficult than he expected and panic attacks were too frequent an occurrence for a place where he needed to fit in.
It wasn't easy seeming calm, cool, and confident all the time the way the Warblers expected - nay, demanded. Luckily for him, the uniform covered a multitude of sins.
The freshest were on his lower torso. It had occurred to him at some point that, on the off chance he ever found a boyfriend and was ready to take the next step into a sexual relationship, slices and scars across his legs would be fairly obvious...and explaining their origin would sufficiently kill any mood he might have been able to create. There were a lot more ways to have sex and explain away wearing an undershirt.
He hoped, at least. He didn't have many other options.
By the time David was coherent and getting up, Blaine had his shirt and trousers on and was starting on his tie. Minor potential crisis averted; the panic was not.
It percolated just beneath the surface all morning. It almost spilled over in AP Government when talking about powerlessness, but he dug his fingers subtly into the hem of his jacket sleeve. As the wool twisted in his fist and he forced himself to breathe calmly, evenly, he pasted on an interested smile. His stomach felt like it was twisting in time with the fabric under his fingertips; his breathing sounded ragged and rushed as his heartbeat pounded too quickly in his ears.
When he looked around, no one seemed to notice. Or care.
It was better, he knew. No one was supposed to know. That was the entire point. If he wanted them to know, he would stop fighting the growing panic attack and just let it out. If he wanted them to know, he would tell someone something other than "I'm fine" when they asked how he was or if he was okay. If he wanted them to know...
They couldn't. He couldn't.
"You coming?"
Wes's voice snapped him out of his trance. Somehow class had ended - he wondered how he had missed it. He remembered it seeming like the seconds were ticking by in excrutiating increments and then...nothing. He hoped he hadn't done anything embarrassing, anything that would give him away; no, judging from Wes's casual face and tone, he just looked like he'd zoned out. It would be out of character for him, but apparently not enough.
He forced his best 'I'm totally fine and kind of a rockstar' smile and replied, "I forgot about an essay that's due in French, so I think I'm gonna head back to my room and try to crank it out over lunch."
Wes offered a withering smile. "Good luck."
Blaine pulled himself to his feet, groaning softly with the effort. His head ached already with the effort of holding himself together, a dull throb that he knew would only be worse if he tried to sleep it off. Sleep was good for calming down, but he didn't have the luxury of blowing off the afternoon and - with how foggy and achy he would be when he woke up - all evening. And right now he wasn't sure he could sleep if he forced himself.
His heart leapt a little as he knew what that meant.
With a renewed sense of purpose, he walked quickly down the back stairs where he was unlikely to be seen, then across the quad to the dorm. His entire body was stiff, clumsy, like he couldn't move his limbs at the same time in different direction and keep breathing and not panic all at the same time. But he could fix it now. He could fix this and make himself feel better and then go on with the rest of his day.
The dorm was empty save a few guys darting back to swap out their books, but almost everyone was at lunch. David never came back this time of day - he viewed lunchtime as a kind of sacred time that no one could intrude on, not because he was food-obsessed but because he was one of the few guys at Dalton with a healthy respect for down-time. When they were coming up to a major Warbler show, he was the one who demanded that they cut the late-Friday rehearsal because it would only stress people out, he made out a study schedule for finals that actually built in breaks (unheard-of among Dalton students, especially junior year)...
He claimed it was stress relief.
Blaine wondered idly if that would work for him. Maybe it was just that he tried to cram too much into too little time - Warblers and drama club and a rigorous academic schedule, even by Dalton standards, with a handful of community volunteer activities on the weekend...maybe if he slowed down, he would stop having days that felt like this. He seriously doubted it, but it might be worth a shot.
No, he concluded as he reached the sanctuary of his room, his breathing shallow and not from rushing up the stairs too quickly. Nothing was going to work as well as this would. He knew from experience - from three therapists and four prescriptions and every meditation technique the internet could instruct him in.
He flung off his blazer and ripped open the buttons of his left sleeve. It wasn't an area he'd used in awhile, but he didn't think he could wait long enough to unbutton his entire shirt and take off his white undershirt. He hastily rolled the sleeve to just above the elbow, shoving it and not caring that it kind of made his arm hard to move with so much bunching - he didn't need that arm to move. He needed it to stay still.
The quiver in his fingers was back now that he was outside the presence of others, as though the door closing gave him silent permission to let out everything he'd been holding in. He laid on his stomach on the bed and fished blindly with his right hand until his fingers closed around the rough edges of the familiar wooden box. It clanked as he pulled it out; he must not have wrapped it well enough last time, he thought dully. He should be more careful this time - if someone kicked the box or something they would wonder what was in it making so much noise.
There was a strange calm that came over him as soon as the box was in his hand. His fingers stilled, gripped the wood more tightly, finding the familiar gash. This was familiar -comforting. Things would be okay now. Things would feel better.
He would feel better.
His body went on autopilot as he sifted through the glass. There were multiple shades now - a few left from the original mirror, pieces of a drinking glass from the dining hall left over from sophomore year, thin green from a dollar-store bottle he'd bought for exactly this purpose...he retrieved a cobalt blue shard that used to be part of a wine bottle Wes had broken after consuming most of its contents, clutching it between his thumb and first two fingers.
He was between the third and fourth cut when he heard it - a soft gasp. His body stiffened. Hide it! He shoved the glass into the box and flipped the lid closed in a fumbling motion and looked up to see-
Oh no. Oh god. Anyone but him.
"Hey, Kurt." He plastered on his smile - the grin that had become such a normal part of his repertoire of facial expressions that it hardly seemed forced anymore. "You need anything?"