black widow bites and head-hungry claws
title: black widow bites and head-hungry claws
summary: blaine is scared of certain bugs because of metaphors and all they mean, and he tries to explain this to kurt.
rating: R
pairing: klaine
genre: gen
warnings: sexual abuse of a minor, parental incest, emotional/mental abuse
notes: written for a prompt over at the glee_angst_meme
When Blaine was very young, he was terrified of black widows -- not so much anymore, now it was praying mantises that got shudders from him -- but back then, the thought alone was enough to make him curl up and cry. Blaine still remembered their teacher cheerfully discussing the black widow's dominance over her prey and partners, the slaughter of it all. He had started sobbing in the middle of the classroom, and pretty Linda had given him a kiss on the cheek to cheer him up. When he'd told his parents, his mother had smiled then frowned, moods as mecurial as ever, and his father had simply stared at him.
Still, as a kid being afraid of a spider was a cute quirk, and going into middle school his peers only gently teased him by calling him Blaine Widow because Blaine was very peculiar about what he managed to keep secret. When it became not alright to be scared of girls in any shape or form and girly to be scared of spiders the teasing had become a little more sharp, the whispers starting. Blaine hadn't really know what to do with those, because he wasn't afraid of black widows by then (that much) and he wasn't afraid of girls. He liked girls, though maybe not in the way his parents wanted. They were pretty and soft and smelled fresh, and they kept their whispers behind backs. Blaine was always pretty popular with the ladies -- something the more astute and homophobic members of the school found offensive -- and he had enjoyed their friendliness.
Really, Blaine was okay with girls. Around the time he started to break out in a sweat whenever he opened his science workbook to the page featuring a glistening, evil-eyed praying mantis (right along the staples, just his luck) there were certain things girls couldn't do, but he was okay with them. As long as they didn't smell like lavender ghosting down his throat, or kiss his ear wet and sloppy and head-hungry, or call him Blainey, he was good. Funnily enough these things never bothered him when it was boys doing it, like Kurt, giggled whispers in his ear as they made out in the backseat of Kurt's Navigator. With girls though ... secret breakdowns, more suspicions, and friends who just drifted away.
Blaine had always wanted to talk to someone, about why certain bugs scared him and meanings and all the stuff that padded therapeutic couches, but either he didn't have anyone to tell or he did and didn't seem right. "Could you pass the salt? Thank you. By the way, my mother is abusive. I think. She doesn't hit me, but what we do can't be right. My father is just as downtrodden. Oh wow, look at the sodium level rising, I need to cut back." Blaine looked and looked for openings, but they didn't come up so he just drifted along. His mother always did say he was aimless.
With Kurt though, Blaine thought things might be different. When Kurt waited carefully before each step forward, Blaine felt respected. When Kurt brought Blaine coffee in the mornings with a kiss, Blaine felt loved. When Kurt was in trouble and stood up for himself, Blaine felt inspired. When Kurt was in trouble and Blaine stood up for him, Blaine felt fearless. Fearlessness was what he needed now, and like a child testing the waters, Blaine began to reach out.
"My mom reminds me of a black widow ..." Blaine said in the barest of segues about insects, hands comfortable on Kurt's hips. Kurt tensed the way he did when Blaine got too pushy, but didn't move away, instead clucking his tongue in amusement while his eyes shone with interest. Blaine knew he didn't talk about his family that often.
"You mean you don't know your real dad from a string of headless skeletons in her closet and she's got the world's worst tramp stamp?" Kurt asked drily, and it was so Kurt that Blaine laughed in delight and spun him around into an improptu rendition of You Make Me Laugh by Little Peggy March. The moment was lost but Blaine didn't worry. Of course he would have another chance -- he was working his way slowly, after all.
A week later they were in a vintage record store on either side of letters B to C, and Blaine picked up an ancient copy of the Bee Gees and thought, mom would like that. So immediately he looked up and blurted out, "I think she's more of a praying mantis, actually." Kurt stared blankly in reply, and Blaine glanced aside, flustered. "My mom."
"Don't those eat the heads off their mates during sex?" Kurt wrinkled his nose delicately and moved down to D. Blaine flinched, dropping the record back into place and following him. "I now know more about your mother's love life than I ever wanted." It was clearly designed for a laugh, a little more forced than the last snarky comeback, but Blaine still laughed and let the opportunity go. What was he thinking, trying to start a conversation that serious in a record store? He was so stupid.
The next day Blaine realized that bug metaphors were too vague, and decided to be a little more concrete -- still small steps though. Over coffee, Blaine complained about his mother's exacting rules about keeping his bedroom clean. Blaine could have gone into more details, about how the blankets always had to be turned down and she needed a lighted white candle to mellow out the mood and if the matches weren't to the left she cut him down to size with a harsh reminder of how easy it was to remember, and that Blaine was lucky he was so cute or his lack of brains would hold him back in life. Blaine wasn't sure that was coffee-level stuff however, more like vodka shots, so instead he left the neatness in the air to be responded to with a vague comment about how Burt didn't really care about that stuff.
Between class a few days later, Blaine explained his tiredness -- normally buried under mountains of forced cheer -- away on his mother keeping him up all night with her badgering. "She's a nag," Blaine laughed to Kurt, smile brittle. His mother had collapsed into a crying ball outside his door when Blaine's dad had made another one of his half-hearted attempts to shut her out and locked the door to their bedroom. Blaine had debated with himself for an hour, pretending his music was too loud to hear her demands to let her in before he drifted over and unlocked his door. The lock itself on his and dad's doors was another half-hearted attempt, because Blaine's mom had a tricky way of getting copies of keys and once smashed out a doorknob with a statuette when they tried a deadbolt.
Of course once she was in Blaine's room he didn't sleep until three am, and at some point he heard his dad stop outside his door on the way to the bathroom, hovering. Blaine had called out for help, a rather shameful reaction he hadn't quite tampered down, and his mom had hissed that her Blainey was a slut and his dad had waited a few painful seconds before saying, "be a man, Blaine" and stomping off. Blaine distantly remembered crying, something he hadn't done in years, but he couldn't really blame his dad. Blaine held the monopoly of his mother's time at night, but his dad had to deal with her the rest of the time and that would be soul crushing.
"It's what parents do," Kurt said stiffly, and Blaine broke out of the memories in order to smile awkwardly. He didn't quite get Kurt's reaction, unless Kurt was already catching on. He was very smart, Blaine reasoned, and the sooner the better. So Blaine vowed to keep at it, Kurt's troubled eyes the light at the end of a terribly long, dark tunnel.
The next few weeks saw a steady increase in Blaine dropping hints about his mother. He told Kurt he couldn't have women too close because all he could think of was his mom's face as she stared down at him coldly. He left out the part where he and his mother were naked in these encounters. Next time though, Blaine mentioned his mother's non-stop need to know where he was at all times, excepting the part where she liked to confine him to his room whenever he was home so he could always be easily found. A few times later it was how his mom regulated his diet and criticized what she saw as unhealthy choices incessantly; unmentioned was that once she made him eat dog food for a week when he got too rebellious.
It was like a little game -- Blaine would phrase it vaguely but always left an unspoken there's more hanging on the end, and Kurt's eyes would get darker and angrier each time and there was a tension that promised good things for Blaine. After over a month of this Blaine could see Kurt was ready to crack, ask are things okay at home? and Blaine would answer with the truth and Kurt would ... maybe not fix things, but support Blaine. That was all Blaine needed, really. His dad wasn't a very good ally when their last conversation ended with "be a man, Blaine" and his mother's mouth filthy at his ear as her perfume choked him. Blaine needed Kurt, or he would just succumb completely to that chokehold and lose himself. Or die -- Blaine considered that a possibility, if he tried to keep fighting without backup.
One day, seated side-by-side on a swingset, hands linked, Blaine gave a final nudge. "I just ... really hate my mom. I know I should love her, and I do, but when she's ruining my life it's hard to work up the sweeter feelings."
"Blaine, can you stop?" Kurt asked, tone so icy Blaine's fingers went numb. They weakly slid out of Kurt's grasp, but Kurt didn't notice, turning to face Blaine with angry eyes. "You should feel lucky your mom is alive to even be awful to you. Not everyone is that lucky." There were some tears glistening and Blaine's stomach clenched with guilt.
Oh god. He was a really, really shitty best friend and boyfriend. How had he forgotten? Too caught up in this stupid thing with his mother -- which was, yes, not ideal, but before she headed back to her bedroom mom would stroke his hair out of his face and kiss him and murmur, I love you Blainey, don't ever forget that. I do this because I love you. Blaine was scared of bugs but a lot of people were, and it wasn't like he had any issues past that, right? He was so selfish and stupid and after he made things up with Kurt he was going to go home and kiss his mother and tell her he loved her too, even if he didn't show it that often.
"I'm sorry Kurt. I guess I've gotten a little stressed about my mom recently but it's no excuse for me to be an insensitive jerk," Blaine said quietly. "Forgive me? You don't have to right away, but at least consider it a possibility."
"It's a definite possiblity," Kurt smiled, still a little tense but reaching out for Blaine's hand all the same. Blaine pushed away any lingering doubts and gave Kurt's hand a squeeze -- this was for the best, Blaine never bringing up his mother again. Look at the fight it had started, just in the early stages, Blaine being an idiot of the highest caliber. Kurt probably wouldn't have believed Blaine anyways, though Blaine had always hoped he would. Fearless and fierce and loyal to a fault, that was Kurt Hummel. If Blaine couldn't trust him, he couldn't trust anyone. That was okay. There was only a year until college anyway, and Blaine had kept his mouth shut about this so far.
Blaine continued to keep it shut, and sometimes Burt would ask barely tactful questions about Blaine's parents or one of the teachers would pull him aside and insinuate things about his home life after meeting his mom, but Blaine just brushed it off. He had Kurt and a living mother, what more could he ask for? And after a while, as it came time to plan the rest of his life, Blaine realized he was absurdly lucky. At the request of mom, the source of most of his dad's actions, his dad had helped Blaine pick and choose colleges. Attending a college fair together was their best bonding experience since rebuilding that car, and this time it wasn't about him being gay. Blaine could have -- did sing, and he found himself appreciating his father all the more.
When Blaine sort of wanted a liberal university further away and his dad had shaken his head and pointed out what a waste that would be to his future family, Blaine had agreed because it meant his father cared. When his father declared that Blaine needed to think straight, be a man, for the first time it didn't actually hurt. Now Blaine was looking at something a little more conservative, a little closer to home. Kurt was certainly going to be disappointed when he found them seperated by several states and broken up, and that made Blaine sob in the relative privacy of his shower, but his mom had pointed out that stringing Kurt along through a long-distance relationship just wasn't fair. Ever since Blaine had decided to appreciate his mother more, he had learned just how smart she was when it came to helping Blaine make choices.
Some days, like when Blaine was gathering up the courage to leave Kurt and he came across an application to an arts school in New York in Kurt's bedroom, or his mother made him feel so emotionally battered he dug his fingernails into his arms to keep himself grounded, Blaine would think of the a-word. He couldn't speak it to himself, not even in the privacy of his head, but the idea was enough to remind him that he once wanted to speak up. Then he would be on his way out from making Kurt cry and ask is it me? and see a picture of Kurt's mother on the dresser, or his mom would pull him into a tight lavender-scented hug and murmur I love you Blainey and he would tell himself that everyone had times when they accused their parents of the worst in fits of teen angst.
Though he was still terrified of praying mantises, and of black widows to a lesser degree. Those things just weren't right.
the end
summary: blaine is scared of certain bugs because of metaphors and all they mean, and he tries to explain this to kurt.
rating: R
pairing: klaine
genre: gen
warnings: sexual abuse of a minor, parental incest, emotional/mental abuse
notes: written for a prompt over at the glee_angst_meme
When Blaine was very young, he was terrified of black widows -- not so much anymore, now it was praying mantises that got shudders from him -- but back then, the thought alone was enough to make him curl up and cry. Blaine still remembered their teacher cheerfully discussing the black widow's dominance over her prey and partners, the slaughter of it all. He had started sobbing in the middle of the classroom, and pretty Linda had given him a kiss on the cheek to cheer him up. When he'd told his parents, his mother had smiled then frowned, moods as mecurial as ever, and his father had simply stared at him.
Still, as a kid being afraid of a spider was a cute quirk, and going into middle school his peers only gently teased him by calling him Blaine Widow because Blaine was very peculiar about what he managed to keep secret. When it became not alright to be scared of girls in any shape or form and girly to be scared of spiders the teasing had become a little more sharp, the whispers starting. Blaine hadn't really know what to do with those, because he wasn't afraid of black widows by then (that much) and he wasn't afraid of girls. He liked girls, though maybe not in the way his parents wanted. They were pretty and soft and smelled fresh, and they kept their whispers behind backs. Blaine was always pretty popular with the ladies -- something the more astute and homophobic members of the school found offensive -- and he had enjoyed their friendliness.
Really, Blaine was okay with girls. Around the time he started to break out in a sweat whenever he opened his science workbook to the page featuring a glistening, evil-eyed praying mantis (right along the staples, just his luck) there were certain things girls couldn't do, but he was okay with them. As long as they didn't smell like lavender ghosting down his throat, or kiss his ear wet and sloppy and head-hungry, or call him Blainey, he was good. Funnily enough these things never bothered him when it was boys doing it, like Kurt, giggled whispers in his ear as they made out in the backseat of Kurt's Navigator. With girls though ... secret breakdowns, more suspicions, and friends who just drifted away.
Blaine had always wanted to talk to someone, about why certain bugs scared him and meanings and all the stuff that padded therapeutic couches, but either he didn't have anyone to tell or he did and didn't seem right. "Could you pass the salt? Thank you. By the way, my mother is abusive. I think. She doesn't hit me, but what we do can't be right. My father is just as downtrodden. Oh wow, look at the sodium level rising, I need to cut back." Blaine looked and looked for openings, but they didn't come up so he just drifted along. His mother always did say he was aimless.
With Kurt though, Blaine thought things might be different. When Kurt waited carefully before each step forward, Blaine felt respected. When Kurt brought Blaine coffee in the mornings with a kiss, Blaine felt loved. When Kurt was in trouble and stood up for himself, Blaine felt inspired. When Kurt was in trouble and Blaine stood up for him, Blaine felt fearless. Fearlessness was what he needed now, and like a child testing the waters, Blaine began to reach out.
"My mom reminds me of a black widow ..." Blaine said in the barest of segues about insects, hands comfortable on Kurt's hips. Kurt tensed the way he did when Blaine got too pushy, but didn't move away, instead clucking his tongue in amusement while his eyes shone with interest. Blaine knew he didn't talk about his family that often.
"You mean you don't know your real dad from a string of headless skeletons in her closet and she's got the world's worst tramp stamp?" Kurt asked drily, and it was so Kurt that Blaine laughed in delight and spun him around into an improptu rendition of You Make Me Laugh by Little Peggy March. The moment was lost but Blaine didn't worry. Of course he would have another chance -- he was working his way slowly, after all.
A week later they were in a vintage record store on either side of letters B to C, and Blaine picked up an ancient copy of the Bee Gees and thought, mom would like that. So immediately he looked up and blurted out, "I think she's more of a praying mantis, actually." Kurt stared blankly in reply, and Blaine glanced aside, flustered. "My mom."
"Don't those eat the heads off their mates during sex?" Kurt wrinkled his nose delicately and moved down to D. Blaine flinched, dropping the record back into place and following him. "I now know more about your mother's love life than I ever wanted." It was clearly designed for a laugh, a little more forced than the last snarky comeback, but Blaine still laughed and let the opportunity go. What was he thinking, trying to start a conversation that serious in a record store? He was so stupid.
The next day Blaine realized that bug metaphors were too vague, and decided to be a little more concrete -- still small steps though. Over coffee, Blaine complained about his mother's exacting rules about keeping his bedroom clean. Blaine could have gone into more details, about how the blankets always had to be turned down and she needed a lighted white candle to mellow out the mood and if the matches weren't to the left she cut him down to size with a harsh reminder of how easy it was to remember, and that Blaine was lucky he was so cute or his lack of brains would hold him back in life. Blaine wasn't sure that was coffee-level stuff however, more like vodka shots, so instead he left the neatness in the air to be responded to with a vague comment about how Burt didn't really care about that stuff.
Between class a few days later, Blaine explained his tiredness -- normally buried under mountains of forced cheer -- away on his mother keeping him up all night with her badgering. "She's a nag," Blaine laughed to Kurt, smile brittle. His mother had collapsed into a crying ball outside his door when Blaine's dad had made another one of his half-hearted attempts to shut her out and locked the door to their bedroom. Blaine had debated with himself for an hour, pretending his music was too loud to hear her demands to let her in before he drifted over and unlocked his door. The lock itself on his and dad's doors was another half-hearted attempt, because Blaine's mom had a tricky way of getting copies of keys and once smashed out a doorknob with a statuette when they tried a deadbolt.
Of course once she was in Blaine's room he didn't sleep until three am, and at some point he heard his dad stop outside his door on the way to the bathroom, hovering. Blaine had called out for help, a rather shameful reaction he hadn't quite tampered down, and his mom had hissed that her Blainey was a slut and his dad had waited a few painful seconds before saying, "be a man, Blaine" and stomping off. Blaine distantly remembered crying, something he hadn't done in years, but he couldn't really blame his dad. Blaine held the monopoly of his mother's time at night, but his dad had to deal with her the rest of the time and that would be soul crushing.
"It's what parents do," Kurt said stiffly, and Blaine broke out of the memories in order to smile awkwardly. He didn't quite get Kurt's reaction, unless Kurt was already catching on. He was very smart, Blaine reasoned, and the sooner the better. So Blaine vowed to keep at it, Kurt's troubled eyes the light at the end of a terribly long, dark tunnel.
The next few weeks saw a steady increase in Blaine dropping hints about his mother. He told Kurt he couldn't have women too close because all he could think of was his mom's face as she stared down at him coldly. He left out the part where he and his mother were naked in these encounters. Next time though, Blaine mentioned his mother's non-stop need to know where he was at all times, excepting the part where she liked to confine him to his room whenever he was home so he could always be easily found. A few times later it was how his mom regulated his diet and criticized what she saw as unhealthy choices incessantly; unmentioned was that once she made him eat dog food for a week when he got too rebellious.
It was like a little game -- Blaine would phrase it vaguely but always left an unspoken there's more hanging on the end, and Kurt's eyes would get darker and angrier each time and there was a tension that promised good things for Blaine. After over a month of this Blaine could see Kurt was ready to crack, ask are things okay at home? and Blaine would answer with the truth and Kurt would ... maybe not fix things, but support Blaine. That was all Blaine needed, really. His dad wasn't a very good ally when their last conversation ended with "be a man, Blaine" and his mother's mouth filthy at his ear as her perfume choked him. Blaine needed Kurt, or he would just succumb completely to that chokehold and lose himself. Or die -- Blaine considered that a possibility, if he tried to keep fighting without backup.
One day, seated side-by-side on a swingset, hands linked, Blaine gave a final nudge. "I just ... really hate my mom. I know I should love her, and I do, but when she's ruining my life it's hard to work up the sweeter feelings."
"Blaine, can you stop?" Kurt asked, tone so icy Blaine's fingers went numb. They weakly slid out of Kurt's grasp, but Kurt didn't notice, turning to face Blaine with angry eyes. "You should feel lucky your mom is alive to even be awful to you. Not everyone is that lucky." There were some tears glistening and Blaine's stomach clenched with guilt.
Oh god. He was a really, really shitty best friend and boyfriend. How had he forgotten? Too caught up in this stupid thing with his mother -- which was, yes, not ideal, but before she headed back to her bedroom mom would stroke his hair out of his face and kiss him and murmur, I love you Blainey, don't ever forget that. I do this because I love you. Blaine was scared of bugs but a lot of people were, and it wasn't like he had any issues past that, right? He was so selfish and stupid and after he made things up with Kurt he was going to go home and kiss his mother and tell her he loved her too, even if he didn't show it that often.
"I'm sorry Kurt. I guess I've gotten a little stressed about my mom recently but it's no excuse for me to be an insensitive jerk," Blaine said quietly. "Forgive me? You don't have to right away, but at least consider it a possibility."
"It's a definite possiblity," Kurt smiled, still a little tense but reaching out for Blaine's hand all the same. Blaine pushed away any lingering doubts and gave Kurt's hand a squeeze -- this was for the best, Blaine never bringing up his mother again. Look at the fight it had started, just in the early stages, Blaine being an idiot of the highest caliber. Kurt probably wouldn't have believed Blaine anyways, though Blaine had always hoped he would. Fearless and fierce and loyal to a fault, that was Kurt Hummel. If Blaine couldn't trust him, he couldn't trust anyone. That was okay. There was only a year until college anyway, and Blaine had kept his mouth shut about this so far.
Blaine continued to keep it shut, and sometimes Burt would ask barely tactful questions about Blaine's parents or one of the teachers would pull him aside and insinuate things about his home life after meeting his mom, but Blaine just brushed it off. He had Kurt and a living mother, what more could he ask for? And after a while, as it came time to plan the rest of his life, Blaine realized he was absurdly lucky. At the request of mom, the source of most of his dad's actions, his dad had helped Blaine pick and choose colleges. Attending a college fair together was their best bonding experience since rebuilding that car, and this time it wasn't about him being gay. Blaine could have -- did sing, and he found himself appreciating his father all the more.
When Blaine sort of wanted a liberal university further away and his dad had shaken his head and pointed out what a waste that would be to his future family, Blaine had agreed because it meant his father cared. When his father declared that Blaine needed to think straight, be a man, for the first time it didn't actually hurt. Now Blaine was looking at something a little more conservative, a little closer to home. Kurt was certainly going to be disappointed when he found them seperated by several states and broken up, and that made Blaine sob in the relative privacy of his shower, but his mom had pointed out that stringing Kurt along through a long-distance relationship just wasn't fair. Ever since Blaine had decided to appreciate his mother more, he had learned just how smart she was when it came to helping Blaine make choices.
Some days, like when Blaine was gathering up the courage to leave Kurt and he came across an application to an arts school in New York in Kurt's bedroom, or his mother made him feel so emotionally battered he dug his fingernails into his arms to keep himself grounded, Blaine would think of the a-word. He couldn't speak it to himself, not even in the privacy of his head, but the idea was enough to remind him that he once wanted to speak up. Then he would be on his way out from making Kurt cry and ask is it me? and see a picture of Kurt's mother on the dresser, or his mom would pull him into a tight lavender-scented hug and murmur I love you Blainey and he would tell himself that everyone had times when they accused their parents of the worst in fits of teen angst.
Though he was still terrified of praying mantises, and of black widows to a lesser degree. Those things just weren't right.
the end