I'd been wondering about Blaine's past for a while, and then the other day I just wrote all of this.
I ended up depressing myself immensely in the process, but yeah.
Blaine's past - or, at least, my version of it - isn't exactly a barrel of laughs. You've been warned.

Anyway, reviews would be nice :)

And I seriously don't own Glee. Don't look so surprised. I don't.

Scars

Blaine Anderson was a natural performer. From the moment he was able to walk and talk, he was dancing around the house and singing into a hairbrush for his Mom. At school he was the lead in every play, and excelled at the piano, the guitar and the cello. Everything was good until he started high school.

He'd been relatively popular in middle school, but everything changed in his freshmen year of high school, and that change was abrupt and unforgiving. Suddenly it wasn't cool to be the natural performer that Blaine had been his whole life. You had to be athletic. It was the jocks and the cheerleaders who ran things, and they decided from the offset that Blaine wasn't worth being treated like a human being.

There were three jocks in particular who took it upon themselves to make Blaine's life a misery. Luke, Josh and Doug. They were the biggest, meanest guys in school, popular only because they were on the football team and everyone was a little afraid of them. They were juniors when Blaine was a freshman, and they hated him from the moment they saw him. Here was this little curly haired kid that preferred singing and dancing to playing football. He was weird and different, and that just wasn't acceptable. They hated Blaine, and because they were the top of the social food chain, everyone else had to hate him too.

It was just little things at first. When Blaine would go up to the board in Math class to answer a question, someone would trip him up and everyone would giggle. In the hallway, if he happened to walk past Luke, Josh or Doug he'd be shoved into a locker or called a name. Blaine just shrugged it off as best he could. He was smart and talented, and they were all just a bunch of Neanderthals. In the future, he'd have platinum records and would be touring the world, while they'd be pumping gas or packing people's grocery bags. They were picking on him out of jealousy.

And then, for the first time ever, Blaine fell in love. It was a slightly obsessive and completely one-sided kind of love, but it was love all the same. The kind of love that every hormonal teenager feels at some point. The only difference was that Blaine's love was for another boy.

He was called Ethan Harper. He was a sophomore and they were in the orchestra together, Blaine on the cello and Ethan on the violin. Ethan was one of the few people in school who didn't hate Blaine just because the jocks did. They talked a lot during practice and sat together in the cafeteria sometimes. Blaine's heart would race whenever Ethan smiled at him or looked at him with those piercing green eyes. He couldn't stop thinking about him.

But the feelings definitely weren't mutual. Ethan was straight. He had a girlfriend, who was lovely but Blaine hated simply because she was able to walk hand in hand with Ethan down the hallway and kiss him in the parking lot. All the longing and the heartbreak was just too much, and one day Blaine made the mistake of voicing his feelings to Ethan. The result couldn't have been worse. Not only was he shot down, but Ethan stopped talking to him completely. Suddenly it got out that Blaine had had a crush on another guy, and it was like ammunition for the jocks. Pushing Blaine around and calling him a loser just wasn't enough anymore.

Blaine was cornered in the locker room after Gym class. Luke, Josh and Doug walked in and everyone else in the class knew that it was time to grab their stuff and leave. There wasn't meant to be any witnesses. Blaine had just finished getting dressed, and was pinned to the wall by Josh and Doug before he had a chance to get his bag and escape. Luke, the biggest and meanest of the three, smirked triumphantly.

"Hey, Anderson," he said, pretending to sound friendly. "Me and my boys heard something strange about you recently. Apparently you were creeping all over one of your fellow band geeks. Poor boy must've been terrified, having a weird little dwarf like you lusting after him."

Josh and Doug laughed. Blaine tried and failed to push them off.

"Y'know, I always knew there was something wrong with you," said Luke. "But I had no idea the reason you were such a freak was because you were a filthy little cocksucker."

Suddenly he punched Blaine hard in the stomach, winding him. Blaine was then thrown onto the floor, his head hitting the ground painfully, before he was being kicked repeatedly by what felt like hundreds of feet. He curled into a ball to try and protect his face, but the guys above him were relentless. Through his own sobbing he was sure that he could hear them laughing above him. Finally, after what felt like several horrible hours, the guys had had their fill.

"Later, fag," said Luke, stepping over Blaine. "Watch your back."

They all laughed as they walked out of the locker room, and Blaine was left alone, crying on the floor.

There was a part of him that hoped that the incident in the locker room would be it. But he knew deep down that it was only the tip of the iceberg. On good days it was just like before – tripped up in class, shoved in the hallway, head flushed down the toilet. He could deal with that. But on bad days he'd get home from school covered in bruises. If he got a black eye or a bloody nose he'd lie and say it had happened by accident during Gym class or he'd walked into a door or something. He was too scared to say what had really happened. Telling on them would probably just make the jocks treat him even worse.

There came a point when Blaine was so scared that he didn't want to go to school anymore. But there were only so many times that he could fake an illness before his parents insisted that he get out of bed and go to class. When he finally came clean and said that he didn't want to go because of the bullies, it was his Dad that showed him the least amount of sympathy.

"Kids get picked on in high school all the time," he said. "It's like a rite of passage. You might not think its fair, but life isn't fair, Blaine."

"But you don't get it," said Blaine desperately. "I'm being tortured!"

His Dad just chuckled and shook his head. "Stop exaggerating. It's just a little roughhousing. Do you think I didn't go through all that when I was your age? The bigger kids always like to push the smaller kids around. It's not your fault you inherited your mother's height. This'll toughen you up."

"Dad, you're not listening!" Blaine cried. "I hate it at school. All those stupid jocks treat me like garbage just because..."

Blaine fell silent, realising what he was just about to say. His Dad gave him a questioning look, putting down the newspaper that he'd been talking over the whole time.

"Because what?" he said. "You're small? You like singing? You're not so great at sports?"

Blaine slowly shook his head. His stomach was clenching painfully, but he knew that he should just say it already.

"Because," he said quietly. "Because I'm... I'm gay."

He said it so softly that he was surprised that his Dad had heard him. But he had heard. His Dad sighed, frowning a little bit.

"If I'm honest," he said. "Your mother and I had our suspicions. Don't worry; we're not going to kick you out of the house or anything. But surely you shouldn't be surprised that you're getting a hard time."

"What?"

"Well, the gays always get a hard time. I'm sure you'll just get used to it. It'll make you stronger. I'm not saying you should let those guys push you around though. You just need to learn to stick up for yourself. You choose that kind of lifestyle and you need to know how to stick up for yourself."

Blaine frowned and looked at his hands, which had balled into fists without him realising. He was suddenly furious, but he didn't want to show it.

"Right," he said slowly, standing up. "Well... thanks, Dad. I'm just going to go finish my homework now."

He rushed upstairs before his Dad could say anything else, and locked himself in his bedroom. He felt like screaming and crying and trashing the place, but all he could do was sit on his bed, shaking with anger. He didn't choose to be gay, it was just who he was. Did that seriously mean that he had to expect to get treated like shit for the rest of his life? School was hell for him. He was being taunted and beaten up almost every day. He didn't even really have any friends anymore, since everyone was too afraid of Luke, Josh and Doug to go anywhere near him. Even the teachers didn't seem to care, turning a blind eye to all the bullying that was happening right under their noses, acting like it wasn't that serious. And now his own father was telling him to just suck it up and take the abuse, because that was just what it meant to be gay. Being gay meant that it was okay for people to treat you as is you didn't even matter.

Blaine felt as if he was going to explode from all the anger and the sadness and the loneliness that was building up inside him. He wanted to cry, but he couldn't. He'd spent weeks at school holding back the tears, knowing that crying in front of his bullies would just make it worse. So now that he was alone and he could cry as hard as he wanted, he just couldn't. And all those feelings just built up inside him even more.

He didn't know why he did it, but he searched his room until he found a pair of scissors and slashed his arm with the blade. He knew it was a stupid thing to do, but the pain was just what he needed. Tears were finally pouring down his cheeks as watched the cut on his arm swell with blood, and it was like some of the pressure was being released along with his tears and the blood. He had never felt so bad about himself before. If this was what his life was going to be like from now on, then he honestly didn't know if he could do it. He couldn't help being gay. He couldn't just stop in order to make his life easier. He'd rather not live at all than have to change for everyone else, or put up with all the abuse.

Blaine was unrecognisable from the natural performer that he'd been back in middle school. His grades were dropping because he was too busy worrying about when his next beating was going to be to pay attention in his classes. Since he didn't have any friends and the teachers wouldn't help him, he could go days without saying a word to anyone unless he was spoken to first. Whenever he went in the cafeteria his lunch was usually stolen from him or thrown at him, so he skipped lunched completely. He was too scared and stressed to eat anything anyway, so he'd started to lose a lot of weight. He couldn't cry all his pain out unless he hurt himself, so his left arm now had quite a collection of cuts and scars. Blaine was a mess.

It was his Mom who noticed. He was sitting alone on his bed during the weekend, worrying about what was going to happen to him on Monday as he attempted to do his homework, when his Mom came in to see if he was okay.

"I'm fine," he lied, his voice just a whisper.

"No, you're not, darling," she said, sitting on the bed next to him. "You used to be a model student, but now your grades are falling and you don't practice any of your instruments anymore. I haven't heard you sing in months. Please tell me what's wrong, Blaine."

He didn't say anything, just looked at down at the incomplete homework laid out in front of him.

"You're father told me what you said to him," she said softly. "About your sexuality. I've known since you were five years old, and I love you exactly the way you are. So does your father, although he's not as good at saying it. We just want you to be happy, darling."

Blaine looked up at his Mom and suddenly began to cry. It was the first time in what felt like forever that he'd managed to cry without needing to hurt himself first. His Mom moved his homework out of the way and gathered him up in her arms, letting him cry on her shoulder for as long as he needed. Once he'd calmed down enough to talk, he ended up telling her everything – everything that Luke, Josh and Doug had done to him since it had gotten out that he was gay, the fact that the teachers didn't care, and just how lonely and scared he felt at that school. His Mom cried for half an hour when he showed her the scars on his arms. She promised that he wouldn't have to go through this anymore.

And he didn't. His Mom had kept her word, and researched schools in the district until she found one that she thought would be perfect for her son. The tuition fees for Dalton Academy were expensive, but Blaine's parents could easily afford it and it was worth every penny. The all boys private school had a strictly enforced anti-bullying policy, not to mention an incredible Arts program, so it was perfect.

Blaine transferred as soon as possible, happy to finally be out of that God forsaken old high school. Things were going to be different this time. Things were going to be better.

But even now – when he was lead soloist for the Dalton Academy Warblers, and he'd finally found the love he'd been looking for forever in Kurt Hummel – even though everything seemed perfect, Blaine would sometimes look down at his left arm where all those old scars were still visible, white against his slightly tanned skin. He could still remember just how bad he had felt back then, how much he hated his life, how many times he'd actually thought about just ending it all, and it still scared him. He knew he was never going to go back to that, but those scars were never going to go away.

So I hope I didn't make you all too sad, Humble Readers.
Reviews are still very much equal to love :)

xxx