Author's Note: Because I live and breathe blangst, and because people who prompt me for it on tumblr are the best. Enjoy, everyone.

This was the prompt: Blaine's father is abusive and whenever he gets really mad at his son he beats him, shoves him into a closet and locks it, telling him that if he wants to be gay he can stay in the closet. Eventually, Blaine becomes extremely claustrophobic and has panic attacks every time it happens. He has no idea how long his father is going to make him stay there and it terrifies him. One day, some jocks shove him into a closet and lock it, laughing. The Glee club finds him in the middle of a panic attack.

'Breathe in. Breathe out. Breathe in. Breathe out.'

The walls shrink in around him as he recites the mantra in his head. He doesn't have enough air in his lungs for anything other than gasps in desperation, his heart constricts tightly before swelling hurriedly and repeats the process at 120 beats per minute until he thinks it's surely going to burst. He brings his arms up against the door, sluggishly planting his forearms against the heavy barrier, but his head spins viciously as he tries to remember exactly how he's supposed to bang on it. He feels weak at the knees, his lungs are caving in as the mandatory process of how to breathe properly fails him, and he's suddenly very confused regarding the subject of his whereabouts. The scene feels familiar: the burning in his lungs, the expansion of his overworking, fragile heart, and he slips away into the sinister recollection.

"Dad, please, I'm sorry! Dad!"

He pounded a fist against the door until he thought the bones might splinter and rip right through the skin. The other was cupped tightly around his nose, proving itself to be rather useless in slowing down the steady, river of blood cascading over his swollen lips. It was a miracle that his nose was the only part of him leaking out the awful sticky mess, but as it ran over his lips and liquid metal drenched his tongue he wished he was bleeding from anywhere else—he wasn't sure how much he could swallow before he ended up getting sick, but he guessed he was definitely close to his limit. There was no way for him to keep track of the time, how long he'd been trapped was lost on him. All he was aware of was the useless chain above his head, connected to a broken lightbulb, which left him in absolute darkness and the constricting collection of coat hangers and heavy coats. There was no room to move, no room to breathe, nowhere to expel the persistent buildup of panic in his chest.

"I'll change, I'll stop! Please, just let me out!"

He remembers the first time—how could he ever forget?—that his father looked at him differently. There was something dark and uninviting about those eyes, something one would think a parent could never have the ability to direct towards their own child. With his mother gone from this world and Cooper out of the house, what hope for salvation did Blaine really have?

Blaine continued to bang his balled up fist against the closet door and tried to think about something other than the wild blaze in his lungs. Even through the darkness, he could feel the walls closing in. His heart thumped rapidly against his chest—'if this isn't what dying feels like'—and a brand new onslaught of tears further obscured his limited vision.

"Dad, please!" he managed to choke out through a heavy gasp. "I think I'm—dad, I'm—I can't breathe—please!"

'Is this a heart attack? I'm too young. I don't want to die.'

He took an involuntary step towards the door with the next punch and fell against it as the tiny world surrounding him thrust him into a hurricane.

'I'm going to be sick if I don't stop spinning.'

"Please, someone! Anyone!" he manages to plead with empty lungs. "Please..."

Suddenly he's bathed in light—the introduction of it is so abrupt it causes spots to dance before his eyes—and standing there before him to witness his declining grip on stability is pretty much the entire Glee club.

"Blaine, what the—" Puck lunges forward, but he isn't quick enough to stop Blaine from colliding with the ground. "Are you okay?"

Blaine blinks through a wave of dysphoria and lifts his head to the group of classmates encircling him—this almost feels worse than the closet, he thinks through a rush of added panic. And somehow it must register on his face, because they all take a collective, synchronised step backwards; Blaine gasps his gratitude through another onslaught of tears and silently begs for air to actually fill his lungs instead of dance flirtatiously around him.

"What's everyone looking at?" Kurt's voice breaches through the sound of Blaine's rattling, pathetic imitation of breathing and he watches Tina and Finn take a step left and right—respectively—like a pair of human swinging doors so that Kurt can peer into the center of the circle at the grand display. It takes Kurt merely half of a second to rush over and drop to his knees beside him. "What happened?" Blaine clamps his eyes shut as a vice clamps itself tighter around his heart.

"Woah, woah—Blaine, what are you doing in there?" Cooper jumped backwards as Blaine's limp body tumbled out of the hallway closet. Any strength to support his own weight had long since gone and he'd propped himself against the door, simply waiting to be let out. Blood crusted around his lips and cheeks in miniature splotchy, flaking lakes; his shirt was completely unsalvageable, stained with the overflow of the awful mess caked upon his face like stage makeup. "Is that—are you bleeding? What the hell happened?"

Blaine lifted his head with sluggish determination and immediately focused in on the fire in Cooper's eyes—he couldn't help but stare for a moment as his mouth moved, emitting silence, and little spiderwebs of cracks spread rapidly through the layers of dried blood. How long had he been sitting there in the dark, lungs ablaze and begging, blood leaking heavily from his nose as though his body could afford to spare it? Sitting outside in the light again only intensified his confusion, leaving him to clear his throat and manage a quiet, "what?" as he'd already forgotten Cooper's questions.

"What happened to you?" Cooper sat on his knees and pressed a hand to the barrier of thick, springy curls on top of Blaine's head. Blaine's first reaction was to recoil from the touch, earning him a new expression from Cooper: completely perplexed mingled with passionately overprotective. "Blaine," Cooper lowered his voice and his hand. "What happened? It's okay, come here. It's me—it's Coop."

Kurt presses his palm to Blaine's back and rubs small circles in entropic patterns across it. Blaine tries to focus on the gesture, tries to zone in on Kurt's face and let the rest of the room melt away, but the murmuring amongst the group seems to have intensified and trying to sink into a world of only KurtandBlaine suddenly feels impossible. Lines of broken conversation breach the muffled blanket surrounding his ears in small bursts; his heart thuds louder with each obvious whisper.

"What do you think it was?"

"More like who."

"Can he breathe?"

"I've never seen him like this before."

He can't place faces to their voices, everything is an unorganised collection of concerned sounds and who is saying what doesn't really matter to him. All that he's aware of is how intense the scarlet splotches on his face must seem in correlation to his overwhelming embarrassment. They'd never seen him like this because he never wanted them to see him like this. Or anyone, for that matter. He'd been so careful when it came to burying his feelings deeply within, perfected the art of a charming smile, and now it had all blown up in his face. Kurt had been able to bear witness to it once before during one of their earlier sleepovers, when a particularly dreadful nightmare trailed after Blaine as he woke; the scene ended with a panic attack on Blaine's part and a bloody nose for Kurt, as Blaine had accidentally smacked him in the face in his lingering confusion. They never spoke about it again afterwards—despite Kurt's insistence—but Blaine had the feeling Kurt was going to press him for further details later on about this new incident.

"Blaine, you have to breathe," Kurt's voice brings Blaine back to himself, but the request is another story. "Look at me. Hey, look at me," he touches two fingers to Blaine's chin and gently tilts his head up. "Nice and slow, watch me and try to follow."

Instinctively, Blaine shuts his eyes nice and tight, wanting to simply disappear. All eyes in the room are on them, he can feel their stares, feel the burning questions that have all been dancing wildly right off of the tips of their tongues since discovering him in that closet. "Blaine, sweetie, please—"

"Maybe we should give them some space," Tina suggests quietly.

"I agree," Mr. Schuester finally assumes his role as the adult in the room and clears his throat. "Kurt, uh—why don't you and Blaine meet us in the auditorium when he feels up to it?"

Silence follows and Blaine can only assume that Kurt's nodded his response. A beat later the dull marching of footsteps parades into Blaine's eardrums and Kurt's hesitant arms find their way around him.

"How about we get you cleaned up, Blainey?" Cooper suggested after minutes had stretched themselves into eons. They'd been sitting in the hallway, Blaine wrapped up tightly in his brother's arms, for at least twenty minutes; twenty minutes of absolute silence, save for their quiet intakes and outtakes of breath. Blaine nodded without lifting his head. With unpracticed precision, Cooper got to his feet and lifted Blaine up with him. Blaine didn't even bother trying to weasel his way out of his brother's grip as he was led into the bathroom. He took a seat on the sink and began swinging his legs slowly; Cooper ran a washcloth under warm water before getting to work on the layers of dried blood around Blaine's mouth.

"...was he drunk again?" Cooper asked after a few seconds of more prolonged silence between them. Blaine considered not answering, wasn't sure he even possessed the words that he needed, but after how patient Cooper had been with him for the past half hour or so he didn't want to disappoint him.

"I don't know," he managed in a fleeting whisper. "Might—he might have been."

"What happened?" Cooper lowered the washcloth.

Blaine bit down on his lip and chewed until he could feel a callous forming; Cooper patiently waited with bright eyes, the faint remnants of the previous fire still smouldering. "He—I... I was..." Blaine's eyes welled up and he swiped two fingers across them, flicking away his tears. "I wasn't even doing anything. I don't know why he—I was in my room and I was practicing my lines for Les Mis—you know I got the role for Javert—and he just—he—" More tears came, faster than he could wipe them away. "He just started h-hitting me," Blaine swallowed loudly and dragged his knuckles across his swollen eyes. "And then went on this whole rant about me being gay and said that if I wanted to be then I could just stay in the closet and he—he locked me in. And I couldn't breathe, I couldn't—"

Cooper's entire expression changed; Blaine was positive he could see the fire travel straight from Cooper's eyes to his mouth and half expected the flames to burst right out of him. It terrified him.

"I'll fucking kill him. I'm going to—"

"Why does he hate me so much?" Blaine averted his gaze and felt the anchor fasten itself around his heart; "Cooper Ablaze" was no more, one look at his baby brother had doused him completely and left only ashes—damp and speechless ashes.

"I can't breathe," Blaine whispers into Kurt's shoulder, muscles as tense as everything else about him right now.

"Breathe out and I'll count—don't breathe in until I get to three, okay?" Kurt spreads out his fingers and presses them into ten different spots on Blaine's back. "Ready?" Blaine keeps his forehead against Kurt's shoulder and nods. "And... out: 1—keep going—2, 3—great, now in," Kurt presses a kiss to the top of Blaine's head, delicate and reassuring and just what Blaine needs to tether him back down. "1, 2—out again now—1, 2, 3. You're doing so good, sweetie."

They sit like that for a few minutes with Kurt murmuring instructions and Blaine follows them to a "T" until they're breathing in sync; Blaine immediately knows what's coming next as they drink each other in—

"Who was it?" Kurt asks with polite insistence.

"I don't know their names," Blaine confesses, truthfully, and snuggles himself closer to Kurt as a distraction for the both of them. He's just positioned himself comfortably on Kurt's lap when the next question comes.

"This has to do with more than just being locked in a closet, doesn't it?"

"I," Blaine begins and loses steam before the rest of his statement can travel from his brain to his mouth. The past incidents involving his father's abuse remained a secret between him and Cooper; just the thought of sharing that information with another human being was enough to send him teetering on the brink of yet another panic attack. But this wasn't just any other person—this was Kurt. And lately, Blaine had been making Kurt the exception for everything in his life. He'd been exposing more and more of himself, peeling back the layers of "the confident, gay teenager" to reveal the frightened boy underneath who sought approval from everyone he held near and dear to him. If he couldn't trust Kurt, who had come to profess so much and placed so much faith in Blaine, then who could he relinquish that trust to? He takes a deep breath and faces Kurt with a crooked, out of place, smile that doesn't quite reach his eyes. "Yes. It does."

"Would you tell me about it?"

"I want to tell you everything, Kurt."

Blainey, I just want to snuggle up with you and Kurt in a little burrito blanket and just never let go. Please review if you liked it.