Prompt: Blaine wants them to notice; to peel back his sleeves and see the healing cuts. He wants them to see his flinching when they clap him on the shoulder or when a book falls in his lap. He wants them to realize that he's not who they want him to be.
Why won't anyone notice?

Ending up to filler, although a hopeful Klaine one would be nice.

A/N: Hope you like it :D Warning for mentions of self-harm

He doesn't remember when, but that's the only detail that evades the memory. He remembers the heavy sun, as it set over the hill across from the house. His room faced the west. It was one of the few things he had ever asked for in his life, the possibility of seeing a beautiful sunset. It was on the twenty-fifth of September. Or maybe it was the twenty-sixth. Even then, he hardly knew. Holidays brought with them the abyss of routine. Over the weeks, Blaine lost himself in the days, the weeks. The only indicator of the time was his alarm clock that vindictively beeped 1 ams into the night, that glowed the early morning numbers into the ceiling so the boy could count the seconds like insomniac sheep all night long.

He'd stopped sleeping a few weeks before. Not entirely, of course. Not by choice, of course.

From his parents' room, low rhythmic breathing, from his sister's room, the subtle snores she spends every conscious second denying in existence, and Blaine wonders how he is the only one still awake. Propriety taught him to sleep, taught him how to fit in the scheduled, doctor-recommended eight hour dream time into his life. He was tired. After so many years, his body knew when to sleep, when to leap into activity and manoeuvre him out of the tangled sheets. Except now, all he was, was tired, immobilised by a sudden weight on his chest, his mind, his eyes. It kept sleep at bay in favour of a semi-catatonic state.

No one knew. His experimenting with make-up from a young age on had educated him in the use of concealer, his love for Gilmore Girls made him curious about coffee when he was just seven years old. He keeps his façade, just like he learnt from the self-help books he keeps stashed underneath the baggy clothes his youth allowed his parents to choose for him before he found his first ever issue of Vogue, on his mother's dressing table.

"Sweetie, it just means they like you."

"I don't want them to like me, I just want them to stop."

Fourteen, he knows, is an age where he should show an interest in at least one girl. There has to be someone from his class that he can like, anyone. Any girl. Forever, he knows, he won't be able to just tell his parents that the girls in his class simply aren't pretty enough for him to like them. Forever, he won't be able to hide that he thinks Toby from his Maths class is much prettier than Alicia, who flicks her hair at every boy, who is considered the class beauty, who, coincidentally, Toby asked out a week earlier.

It looks as it always has, Blaine thinks, when he walks into his mother's bathroom.

I'll be home late, sweetie, will you be okay cooking something for yourself? She had said on the phone and a soft click had announced solitude and an empty house until at least eight pm. His sister was at a sleepover, his father on a business trip.

It's been a long time since he came here, a long time since the excuse of him wanting to try on mommy's makeup had been valid. But he knows exactly where to look. There is the lipgloss, the mascara, the variety of nail varnishes. He reaches past them, to get to the cleansing cream he knows and trusts and just ran out of without any time to buy new supplies. His mother won't notice, he thinks. She won't mind.

There's a glimmer his eyes catch in the dim, amber light of the designer lampshade that apparently puts emphasis on the 'shade' part of its description, and Blaine stops dead in his tracks, retracts his fingers from where they pried in the stuffed cupboard for the tiny bottle.

He knows what it's for, of course, knows probably better how to use this for shaving legs, not cheeks.

When he was younger, what fascinated him was how smooth it felt after use, how simple it was to create magazine beauty. Right now, a different aspect of it fascinates him.

No one knows about the taunting, not yet. No one asked, only those at school have assumed. The worst part of it is between classes, when teachers retreat to the safety of their stuffy, coffee-catered lounges and remain oblivious to the threats, the punches, the stealing.

One time, someone writes the word fag on his locker in permanent marker and the janitor removes it to the best of his ability by the next day. When more words are inspired by the act, the teachers start turning their heads, barely leave their lounge anymore except for classes and to run out to their cars and get home as soon as possible.

Blaine stays behind sometimes, hides out in the classroom until the teacher leaves, then runs for the nearest deserted broom cupboard, waits for silence, for peace. Behind the slurs printed on his locker, behind the scratches and insults, the clearest wound of the object to him remains the faint remains of the first word etched there, still not completely disappeared. He traces it with his index finger slowly, repeatedly, a pained, confused expression on his face.

In that moment, the boy decides that he hates this world.

It escalated in a way he didn't expect, didn't hope for. Somehow he had allowed himself to think that maybe it would be okay, to ask another guy to the dance. Even more so when Evan had said yes.

As soon as his father picks up the phone and hears the words This is inspector Daniels, it's about your son, Blaine's out of the school.

The something special about Dalton is hardly the zero-bullying tolerance. There is no call for it, after all, no expectance of fierce words. What they all have in common is fear. A fear that paralyses any thought of terrorising another, a fear that pushes them together no matter what, that defeats prejudice in unusual ways.

He feels it here. Safety. The taffeta rustle of the curtains no more makes him whip around in fear as the closing of a door makes him jump. But here, no doors are ever slammed as hard as the lockers used to be. The noise is one too familiar to many students, a noise avoided by silence, buffering that blocks a door mid-swing. It makes it easy. Easy to be here, to exist, to live.

Like many others before him, Blaine gets an appointment with the school counsellor. When she introduces herself as Daisy and holds out her hand in a friendly manner to Blaine, she frowns at his terrified glance at the motion. He shrinks back into the cushion of the dark mahogany couch and turns his face away, into the safety of blindness of what might happen next.

She is the first person who sees them. Patterns of welted skin, zig-zags, a word on his forearms, he doesn't show her the ones on his hips. If he expects her to be surprised, to be shocked, he is braced against disappointment. She nods, never touches them, notes it down in the hidden sheet Blaine fails to peek at.

A morbid part of him almost enjoys the feel of his fingertips skimming over his skin. Between the disbelief at his actions and the fight to resist repeating what caused the scars, it becomes a habit for him to feel for where the skin etches away from the smooth surface it should have, where he tampered with it, where white marks show a healing in progress but a long time away still. It becomes a nervous habit, one he gets away with purely because he has blended into Dalton so well, no one seems to take much notice of such offhand actions anymore. They care, all of them, he knows that. But to them, he is simply rubbing his arm. Nothing more.

When Kurt sits across from him at one of the tables and one silent drop of water tears itself from his eyes, Blaine's glance flickers instinctively to the boy's arm. But all he sees is porcelain skin and the innocent, naïve expression of someone too sheltered to be exposed to the temptation Blaine had.

The boy's been through hell, Blaine knows that. And in his envy of Kurt handling it all while he gave up, he utters the one word he will later erase from his vocabulary with a thousand muttered curses of his own foolishness and what possessed him to let this happen to Kurt.

The thing with Dalton is that everyone has experienced pain in some way or another. They are the same, somehow, through that. Bonded by the feel of a parent's hit, bonded by the knowledge of being wrong in the world's eyes. And in all of it, it becomes easier to simply accept. Not question.

It's heaven for most. Blaine knows he should consider it a blessing. There is no remark, no snide questioning, no terrified concern. He has to give no explanations. Instead, he is welcomed into their circle, accepted as one of their own and taught, again, the ways of happiness, of conformity, of belonging.

He notices it first with Kurt. The way the boy doesn't seem to want to be a part of the uniformity. He rebels with the simple addition of a brooch to the uniform, he tries to have a voice in the Warblers meeting.

It's a rebelliousness that affects him oddly. He both admires it and fears it. When Kurt invites him out to lunch with his friends from McKinley one day, Blaine can't help but notice how, with the faintest of his actions, Kurt has himself heard, gains the attention of everyone present. He can so easily captivate them with a story. He so easily garners himself their concern, their enquiring. It hurts Blaine to think that Kurt doesn't even have to try.

It starts with a Saturday morning and, for the first time in years, Blaine purposefully pulls on a dark blue t-shirt and walks out of the door. With summer refreshing the crisp, cold air of the grounds, it's not an unusual sight.

Behind him, before him, people walk by, clap him on the back, greet him, walk with him. Not a single word leaves them about the red marks painting duo coloured pictures into his skin.

He realises after a week that it doesn't matter if he wears short sleeves or not. He doesn't know if it's because they don't care or if it's because they think he doesn't want them to notice.

They break up for Christmas holidays and nothing changes. He continues to wear short sleeves around the house, at first to see what happens, later only out of habit. The Anderson household keeps its cheerful attitude toward the holiday. They don't let a tragic word slip over their lips. And it almost hurts, how Blaine is reminded yet again of the cupboard upstairs, of how he knows he can take his mind of the pain momentarily.

In March, Blaine sees a blackbird with fledglings outside his window and he silently observes every high-pitched squeak from the young ones and how the mother immediately makes a U-turn to check up on her young.

When the call comes, Kurt is passed out on his livingroom couch at home, thanks to a notice alerting the teachers to it being his birthday this weekend and couldn't he come home and celebrate there. Finn officially beat him in at least ten rematches of some odd xBox game and between the two of them, they found out, they can down an entire bucket of energy drinks.

The boy mutters something, an incomprehensible curse at what complete imbecile with lack of any respect for his beauty-sleep would call at this hour of the night, not expecting Kurt to murder them for it.

"It's Blaine."

Kurt stares, filters through his mind for the name to match the familiar voice. "Wes?"

There's distraught voices on the other line, sobbing, a broken voice and Kurt takes a few seconds before he bolts upright.

"He – we just found him, you know we – he was lying there and – I don't even know where he got it! – but we got here – I-I don't know what to do, Kurt, he won't speak and I thought – well, you're friends, like really close friends and – I don't know, he just – "

Kurt says "I'll be there in an hour", and hangs up.

They found him in the farthest corner of the common room, David tells him shaking. Trent had come in to get his book, after hours, and seen a soft shadow, heard a whimper behind the curtains.

The razor is clean, Kurt lets go of a relieved breath at the sight of it, hands it back to Wes, who hurries it far away. In the corner, Kurt sees Blaine, sobbing, muttering broken passages. They sound rehearsed, forced.

"Blaine" Kurt inches forward, lets himself drop to his knees and crawls toward Blaine, propped up against the back of the couch. The other boys keep their respectful distance with wide, unsure eyes.

"Blaine, tell me what's wrong."

It breaks him, the demand rather than the request, the genuine concern he longed for for so long. Fresh tears wash away the old, replace a pain too deep to bear with something more bearable, if only ever so slightly. When Kurt sees the older boy's hands clenching, unclenching, fingernails scraping into his palm, he takes them in his own, massages out the rigid posture until they stop scratching; clutch, instead, on his, pull Kurt closer. The younger boy lets Blaine bury his face in his jacket, holds him like that for as long as Blaine needs it, until he speaks.

"Y-You know. Everyone-they all know and-and n-no one asks, no one c-comments, because it's-it's all normal n-nowadays."

Behind him, the students look at each other with concern. Most of them know what the circumstances of his leaving his old school were. Some of them know the full extent.

"I j-just wanted someone to t-tell me how to f-fix it. B-But either I'm a f-freak or it's t-too common for anyone to c-care!"

Tears fall from Kurt's eyes like beads of glass, sheltered from exposure as long as he can hold them in. He doesn't know what to say anymore. Everything seems strangely inadequate.

"We were told, we – the teachers urge us not to enquire too closely about anyone's problems, to let them be free of them." Trent says suddenly, stepping forward cautiously, with calculated steps. Behind him, the other boys nod in agreement.

"I just w-wanted s-someone to tell me it isn't u-usual." Blaine whispers into the lapel of Kurt's jacket. "S-so that I could stop t-thinking that it w-was a c-common solution everyone used."

In the small boarder's kitchen, David makes a small pot of coffee. In a way, it's the best comfort he can think of giving Blaine, at this very moment. In the future, there is much they can do, but for now, coffee is their best bet.

Outside, Blaine lets his hand curl around the cup, clings to it almost as ferociously as he had to Kurt earlier. When his knuckles turn white, Kurt extracts the cup from him and sets it on the table to cool. Instead, he takes Blaine's heated hands in his own again, holds them securely and traces light patterns into his palm.

There is a silent promise in the air. Like magic.

fin.