I urge you to read this verse on AO3. It just looks better there, and the story is actually a verse, so it makes more sense reading it there individually instead of in this big jumble of 'chapters.'

This particular chapter contains minor self-harm, but it's not as graphic as the last chapter. This chapter contains no graphic non-con. If you have any questions, please send me a message on Tumblr.

Everything is small on him. He's thin—always has been—but suddenly everything is small. He feels like he can't bend down in his pants without them ripping, or lift his hands in the air without his shirt going up past his belly button. His voice cracks all the time and he can't remember when that started, but he swears it wasn't like this a month ago. His shoes don't fit him unless his bends his toes while he walks, and it's really uncomfortable. When he brings it up to his mom she suggests a shopping trip.

It's always weird going shopping. Blaine doesn't really have a style beyond jeans and plain t-shirts. Sometimes he'll throw in a graphic tee, maybe a band shirt or a comic book shirt. Sometimes he wears plaid button ups or solid colored sweaters. He hates standing out, but there's something about those button ups that attracts him despite how loud they are. Still, he buys them in muted colors and doesn't think twice.

"You're growing so fast!" his mother says in Target that Saturday Saturday. "I know that anything we buy now won't fit in a few months anyway."

But still she dotes on him and hands him clothes to try on in the dressing room. She tells him what looks good and what doesn't, which clothes go together and which don't. He's like a rag doll; he'll wear whatever she gives him.

While his mother is checking out Blaine goes to the bathroom. When he's washing his hands he looks in the mirror and sees some tiny black hairs jutting out of his chin. He stares at them for a few seconds before he realizes that this isn't just stray chin hairs—this is peach fuzz. This belongs there.

Paul probably won't like that, Blaine thinks, running his fingers over his chin and feeling the hair. I'll have to fix that when I get home.

"So what's Kid Chronic up to these days?" John asks from the chair directly across from where Blaine is sitting on the love seat.

It's a week after the first real cutting incident, and the overwhelming guilt attached to it has already passed.

"Not much," Blaine replies, his hands fisted together and squeezed in between his thighs.

He can still feel the cuts when he clenches his legs really hard. The reminder feels good.

"Still stuck in a writer's block?" John prods.

Blaine shakes his head.

"He's back in America. Back in his town. He found an old shack to live in and helps out a few kids who get into trouble." Blaine looks at John, shaking his legs up and down so the denim of his jeans can irritate his wounds.

"And the Soul Crusher?" John asks.

Blaine swallows thickly and stops moving. "The Soul Crusher's nowhere to be seen."

Paul won't talk to Blaine. He hasn't returned any of Blaine's phone calls, or any of his texts. He won't answer the door when Blaine knocks. He cancels the dinner plans with Blaine's parents for the following week. He doesn't show up to the batting cages to help Blaine practice switch hitting even though they planned it.

Total radio silence.

Blaine used to dream of this. That one day he would wake up and Paul would have disappeared or moved on. Blaine always envisioned himself glowing with happiness and marching downstairs every day with a smile on his face and an extra kick in his step. He always imagined all of the great times he'd have, all of the nightmares he'd no longer suffer from. Immediately he would have a large group of friends who'd always want to play with him and he'd no longer have to go to therapy and his mother would smile again, not just with her mouth but with her eyes, too.

The reality is nothing like that. The reality is so much worse.

Blaine feels lost and untethered. This is all his fault, he knows it. He knows it to be true. But he can't for the life of him figure out how to fix it, and he's never felt so desperate in his life. He's never craved Paul's touch, ever. But now he finds himself dreaming of it. It's still a nightmare, and he still doesn't enjoy it. But to not have Paul in his life? To be totally kicked out of it and have his life spun around on its head? Blaine's completely and totally lost, and all he wants is for Paul to lay him out on his bed and take what belongs to him.

It's a disconcerting thought: that Blaine wants something that he also hates. That he wants Paul to do all of the things that he also wants Paul not to do. It's confusing and it's angering and it leaves Blaine feeling completely off balance and volatile. He snaps at his parents, he locks himself in his room, he officially has a very noticeable bald spot on the right side of his head, and any food he manages to eat ends up in a toilet a few minutes later. He's afraid to even weigh himself.

He finds himself eagerly doing the things that he never wants to do. Shaving himself was always a chore, but Paul likes him hairless, so he'd do it occasionally anyway. Now every night he finds himself in the shower maintaining his smooth thighs and armpits, making sure his chin is as hairless as always. He wonders what Paul would say if he knew that Blaine grows hair there now.

His room, which was always a bit messy with art supplies everywhere is more organized and sparse than ever before. Blaine throws out two trash bags of junk. He practices switch hitting anyway, even though Paul never shows up. He cleans the living room and the family room and he cooks his parents' dinner even a few nights though he barely eats any of it. He washes his face more than he probably should, but he wants to get rid of the few pimples that keep popping up. He wants to look presentable in case Paul calls. He hangs out with Matt and goes to the mall and buys himself a forest green polo because he can't stop staring at it. He tries to fill his time with meaningful activities so he can stop thinking about Paul and sex and how he feels, but it doesn't work.

He cries himself to sleep every night, tossing and turning the whole time as he struggles with the idea of wanting: what he does want and what he doesn't, and how it could be the same thing at the same time.

He pulls the X-ACTO knife out again and crosses Xs on his thigh crease—even going dangerously close to his ball sac. The pain is so unimaginable and so real all at the same time, and it's enough to center him and bring him out of his own head.

It's enough to help him sleep.

Kid Chronic is going crazy. Absolutely going crazy. He's huddling in the corner of his shack and shaking and shuffling back and forth and staring at the door in anticipation. Every noise he hears leaves him terrified, and the sun hasn't risen in days. His superhero uniform is torn and the pants don't even reach his ankles. The sleeves are supposed to be long, but they fall just below his elbows.

John, to be quite frank, is more than a little worried.

Blaine hasn't slept well in days, even with the cutting, and he feels like he's not even in his own body. He feels like he's just going through the motions.

"Why's he doing that?" John asks while they sit diagonal at the small table in his office.

"Doing what?" Blaine asks.

"Why is Kid Chronic so afraid when he's never been before?"

John's stare is cold as ice, and Blaine can barely raise his gaze to meet John's. He's afraid if he does that the truth, or at least some of it, will spill out. He's afraid that he'll start blurting things that he's been trying so hard to keep secret.

"I don't know," Blaine muses softly.

Kid Chronic knows a change is coming, he just doesn't know what it is or when it will come.

"Can we talk about his size?" John asks.

"What about it?"

"He's noticeably…bigger, correct?"

Blaine shrugs his shoulders. "He's growing up."

"And are you growing up?" John asks.

Blaine bites his bottom lip and continues looking at the panel in front of him—black and white again, because every color he picks up makes him want to puke.

"Everyone grows up," he replies acerbically, looking up at John with a scowl.

Around the age of seven, Blaine began wetting the bed. It wasn't something he had ever done before. Potty training for him was more of a 'one and done' type thing. One day when he was two and a half he woke up and said, "Mommy, I want to use the potty."

And he did. He potty trained himself. He had almost no accidents. He wore Pull Ups at night for a few months, but when he woke up dry every morning for three weeks, his parents got rid of them, and Blaine became the youngest kid in his preschool to be completely toilet trained. He wasn't even three.

Which is why it was so strange, four years later, for Blaine to wake up almost every night soaking wet. His parents talked to friends and called their doctor, but in the end they were told that everything was normal.

"It makes sense for him to react this way. He's in a very stressful situation," the doctor had said. "In a few weeks, as everyone heals, this will get better."

His parents told him this story when he was older.

"We were all out of whack," his father had said. They were reminiscing about the past, and it was one of only a handful of times Blaine can remember his father ever opening up about this particular topic. His parents normally pretended like it never happened. "Your mom had just given birth to a stillborn. We had to explain to you that you no longer had a baby brother. Family and friends were coming to the house and everyone acted like someone had died—and you were so confused. You spent a week at Paul's afterwards. We wanted to get you out of the situation, keep your daily structure normal. But when you came home, I guess you just picked up on everything. You started wetting the bed. You were really clingy. The doctor said it was the sudden stress of the situation—that you were feeding off of our energy and coping in your own way. You used to throw up all the time, too."

Hearing that story when he was eleven almost made Blaine throw up again.

They always talk about Stranger Danger. Don't get into a car with strangers, don't take candy from people you don't know, don't help search for lost dogs. They never tell you what to do when it's a friend though, or a parent, a guiding figure in your life. Paul wasn't a stranger. Blaine trusted him—depended on him. He loved going over to Paul's house and playing in Paul's pool. Affectionate pats on his back made Blaine feel good about himself. Paul was like the cool uncle that Blaine never had; he was young and stylish, good looking and fun, and all he wanted to do was make Blaine laugh. Blaine's other aunts and uncles lived far away and had annoying kids that liked to push Blaine around.

People never tell you what to do when it's someone you love. All they ever tell you is that the only people who are allowed to touch your privates are the people you trust: your parents and your doctors. But Blaine did trust Paul. He was family.

They don't tell you how to deal with the grief and betrayal, or how to manage the unwavering dependence and allegiance.

Eventually, when you're older, they might tell you that it's not your fault. You did nothing wrong.

Too little too late, though. What they don't tell you is how to deal with your shame. What they neglect to mention is that the person threatening to kill your parents if you tell won't actually kill your parents. No one ever mentions how hard it is to tell the truth. But you hear all the time from naïve students how stupid someone must be for getting into a stranger's car.

"They deserve it if they're that dumb," Blaine's heard.

"They're an idiot for not telling their parents."

"This doesn't happen anymore."

"It's not that big of a deal, right? Not if it feels good."

Blaine likes comics because art shows so much more than words ever could. He sometimes wishes he were more vocal and eloquent, more knowledgeable in how to form a sentence and tell a story.

How else will he tell someone what it feels like to be so afraid of the truth? To be so afraid of the reaction of others. He doesn't want to let his parents down. He knows this revelation will fuck up everything in his entire life, and he thinks he might be too selfish to let that happen.

He wants to know if there's a word in the English language that describes what it's like to hate someone you love. He loves Paul. He really fucking loves Paul. Not as a boyfriend or a friend or a coach, but as a constant guiding figure in his life. He doesn't remember his life before Paul. He doesn't know if he can imagine his life without Paul, either.

He doesn't want to see Paul in an orange jumpsuit with handcuffs on. He just wants to get as far away from Paul as possible. He wants Paul to still have a life and for no one to ever know what transpired between the two of them. He wants to run away and never come back. He wants to grow up and accept what's happened to him and not let it affect his future. He wants to be free.

He has these lofty dreams of never speaking to Paul again, but now that he's not speaking to Paul at all, he doesn't know if that's ever possible. Suddenly the idea of not having Paul there for him breaks Blaine. He thinks about what life might be like in the future without having Paul tell him what to do or where to go, what clothes to wear or what to make for dinner, and he doesn't know if he could do it. He's afraid that no matter how far away he gets from Paul, it will never be far enough, because he'll still need Paul in his life.

He wants to be free.

But he also wants Paul's love and affection. And now that he's not been getting it, he's learning more about himself and his relationship with Paul than he ever has before.

Blaine feels like he's going out of his mind. He can go from angry to lethargic in a matter of minutes. He loses his creative flow and spends more time doodling in the margins of school work than actually creating Kid Chronic stories. He hangs out with Matt and some of his other friends. He runs away once, but it's so hard that he ends up coming home that night anyway. He just wanted to lay in bed and do nothing. He didn't want to have to think, he didn't want to walk around and find ways to occupy his time. So he comes home after eleven and walks right past his parents and goes up to his room. He turns some music on and falls onto his back and doesn't move for hours. He stares at his ceiling and doesn't think. When a stray thought works its way through the tears will start to form in the corner of his eyes and Blaine will blink really hard and wipe them away with his sweater and he won't open his eyes back up until he's sure that the thought is gone and he can just stare at the ceiling again.

He has fluorescent star and planet stickers on his ceiling, dozens upon dozens. His parents used to always buy him packs for good behavior and help him stick them on the ceiling. There's no rhyme or reason to their placement, and in the corner of the room is a glow-in-the-dark B that he put up with stars when he was eight. Sometimes Blaine just lies in his bed and stares at the stars on his ceiling and tries to find constellations.

When Paul starts talking to him it's noticeably colder outside. Thanksgiving is on its way and there's a chill in the air, and more often than not Blaine is wearing a jacket to keep warm. It's green and hangs loose. It makes him look younger than he really is.

Paul's pool is closed. The hot tub, though, is not.

His parents go over and use it with Paul on the weekends. Blaine stays home and tries not to go out of his mind.

It's been five weeks and three days since Blaine's heard anything from Paul. Not a single text has been sent between them. When his parents ask if he's going to Paul's house or if he's seen Paul lately, Blaine tends to grunt noncommittally or bark at them to get out of his life and stop asking so many questions.

After all, closed doors and tight lips have become the norm in his house.

That whole month is hard on Blaine. It's hard on his body, it's hard on his psyche. The new pants he bought a few weeks earlier now hang loose, his thigh and groin are littered with unhealed and semi-healed cuts, and the bald spot on his head still hasn't grown back. His hair is long and curly—unkempt. He hasn't kept up with shaving like Paul prefers. After a while when he realizes that Paul wasn't going to answer him Blaine just stops.

His parents are wary. John is scared. Blaine is just lost.

Come over tonight.

Blaine gets the text while in school. It's a Friday. It's his birthday. It's a relief.

When he gets home from school he showers and shaves and moisturizes. He picks out a nice pair of pants and puts on the green polo he bought before trying to style his hair into something less messy. He doesn't know what time 'tonight' is, so he paces in his room for hours until his clock changes to six and he runs out of his house.

He doesn't even have to knock on Paul's door. It's pulled open before Blaine even lifts his hand.

The rest is just…motions.

Blaine doesn't remember most of it after it happens. Just small snippets and memories that seep through when he thinks really hard about it. He doesn't remember how they got up to Paul's bed, but he remembers Paul apologizing. He doesn't remember if they ate dinner or watched a movie, but he remembers Paul muttering a few things into his ear.

"If you would only listen to me Blaine, I wouldn't have had to do that."

He doesn't remember if it hurt, but he remembers Paul expressing happiness at Blaine's smooth and hairless skin and his pimple free face. Blaine doesn't remember much, but he remembers the lights being off. He isn't sure if he told his parents where he was going, but he remembers waking up the next morning, naked in Paul's bed, and he remembers wanting to cry.

He doesn't remember if he actually does.

He ends up back at his house before nine in the morning. He has a family breakfast with his parents; waffles and bacon and homemade iced tea that Blaine carefully sips.

He doesn't remember the details, but the larger picture is quite clear.

He and Paul…they're forever.

Not so quietly begs for feedback.