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***
Everyone’s watching Kurt. All the time. On the street, on the subway, in the NYADA halls. Blaine sees them look, eyes flicking from the cut on Kurt’s lip to the bruise on his cheek to the gash at his hairline. Some are suspicious, some sympathetic, some impersonally curious. Blaine longs to whisk Kurt away from every single one of them. He could take him to Connecticut or California or some snowbound Alaskan cabin with a big warm bed and a fireplace and no one but them for miles around.
But then this is Kurt and of all things, Kurt is accustomed to being noticed. Blaine has watched a hundred times as Kurt faces the world, lets it look, lifts his chin. Every part of Blaine is enormously grateful that he gets to see all of that again.
*
Before he left New York, Burt said, “Come back to Lima for a few weeks, Kurt.” He looked shaken now the first burst of anger had burnt away. “You could get better there. Heal up. Just- just think about it for me.”
Kurt shook his head and winced at the movement. “Dad, I’m okay. Really. And I can’t leave now. It’s the middle of semester, I need my shifts at the diner. There’s the band and people I’d be letting down.” His eyes skimmed swiftly to Blaine then back. “I’m sorry.” There was a dullness to his voice that had been present since the bashing. It wasn’t cold, just flat, as though he didn’t have energy beyond the essentials of breathing and recovering.
“Don’t be,” said Burt. “This is your home. I knew that the day you left Ohio. I just- I wish I could have stopped this.” He looked exhausted.
Blaine knew how he felt, wanting to take care of this boy, this man, and not knowing how. Not knowing whether it would be welcome. There are harder things of course. They didn’t mention Carole, but in a hospital room there’s always the specter of the child she can never again look after.
“I’ll be here with Kurt,” said Blaine and Burt laid a large hand on his shoulder. Blaine remembers the weight of it - a benediction, heavy and meaningful.
*
Kurt has become something of a minor celebrity at NYADA.
“Kurt Hummel. You brave thing,” says a guy Blaine recognizes from the mime master class. He’s all false sweetness and wide eyes. Around them in the busy hallway, people slow their pace to listen. “It’s so heroic I can scarcely believe it.”
Kurt stills. He’s simmering beside Blaine. Blaine reaches to touch Kurt’s shoulder.
“The scars aren’t bad. Very manly,” says another guy admiringly. “I mean, just think what could have happened. We’re all so proud.”
Blaine’s breath stops in his throat. He lets go of Kurt’s shoulder and rounds on the guy.
“Think what could have happened? You have no idea, do you? What we could have lost. You don’t have the right to be proud. You don’t even have the right to think about him,” he says.
The two guys stutter a bit. “I didn’t mean-” says one, blushing. Someone in the hallway laughs.
Kurt walks Blaine away.
“You don’t need to protect me,” he says after a moment with a faint smile.
“Right now I’m pretty clear on the fact that I can’t protect you,” says Blaine. He holds Kurt’s hand as they walk to class.
*
They’re on Kurt’s bed, lit by the New York night through the window. Blaine unbuckles Kurt’s pants, helps Kurt out of his shirt. He keeps his breathing steady as he traces a hand over the bruise on Kurt’s ribs. Blaine’s ring is on Kurt’s hand and all of their forever is stretched before them. He thought love couldn’t break his heart any more.
It’s quiet inside the loft. The street noise seems muffled and distant. He slides gently down Kurt’s body and takes Kurt’s cock between his lips, tonguing at it, breathing in and sucking tenderly as it swells in his mouth. He trails his fingers across Kurt’s thigh. It’s terrifying, the honor in this. The power to touch this man’s skin even now.
“For god’s sake, Blaine,” says Kurt as Blaine breathes around him. “I won’t break.”
It’s a slap to the face. Because of course Kurt will break. Look what they’ve done to him. It’s already happened.
Blaine lifts his head and looks up Kurt’s naked body to meet his eyes. There’s rage, sizzling just below the surface. Blaine had hoped to hide it. He’d hoped to have time to let it settle inside. It’s not Kurt’s job to face his anger, alongside everything else.
But Kurt’s fury, too, is blistering. In the half-light, his gaze is ferocious and all too knowing. His eyes are so clear that it hurts.
“They hit you with a brick,” Blaine says through his teeth, almost can’t help saying.
Kurt looks sick and Blaine knows he shouldn’t have spoken. “They didn’t break me,” Kurt says, unwavering. He breathes through his nose. “They didn’t break you either.”
For a moment they are frozen, combatants before a war. Blaine wonders what would happen if they truly collided over this. He doesn’t want to fight Kurt. It’s not their war, they didn’t choose this, and it feels so deeply unfair. All Blaine has ever wanted to do is love Kurt and protect Kurt and maybe sometimes serenade him or take him on dates or read him Avengers fanfiction. Even Twilight fanfiction, if Kurt insists. And instead he was at Kurt’s place just sitting and waiting while Kurt was out rescuing people and getting his beautiful face split open.
“I wish-“ Blaine starts. But he can’t change anything by wishing. He can’t have Kurt back, unbruised. He longs to cry, his eyes ache with it.
Kurt’s face softens. “Sweetheart,” he says. “I’m okay. I’m fine. Please-”. He reaches down and takes Blaine’s wrist. “Come up here to me.”
Blaine lifts his body up and presses himself to Kurt’s side, hides his face in Kurt’s neck.
“I’m not going to be bashed,” Kurt says tightly against Blaine’s hair, “I’m not going to be bashed for being gay and then not get to have sex with my fiancé because he’s worried I might ache a bit.”
“That’s not the point-” says Blaine.
“I’m not saying it’s the point. I’m just not going to let it happen. I’m in pain, and I want to forget everything from that night. I want to feel the things that are good in the world and for me, right now, that’s you.” He shifts his weight on the mattress and moves his head back, pins Blaine with his eyes. “Nothing will hurt when the only thing I feel is you inside me.” And Blaine hadn’t known that this was a way Kurt could need him.
Kurt glances down his body with an impatient sigh. “Look, if we avoid putting much pressure on my right side here we can do this.” He moves to kiss Blaine and Blaine lets Kurt open his mouth and push his tongue deep into Blaine. Lets him take Blaine’s breath. Kurt moans in the back of his throat and his back arches, letting his cock press against Blaine’s hip.
Blaine wants so much but he can’t stop himself speaking, “Just, God. Kurt. Just please don’t let me hurt you. I couldn’t stand it. Tell me. Please tell me.” He breaks off on a shuddery gasp as Kurt lifts a thigh and lets it drag against Blaine’s hardening cock.
Kurt eyes him for a moment. Even now with one eyelid bruised, it’s unbearably sexy to be subject to that rare long gaze.
“I’ll tell you if anything hurts,” Kurt concedes. “But now would you please fuck me.”
Even if Blaine’s mind is in two places on this, his body is not. He keeps his eyes on Kurt as he reaches for the lube.
“I think this will work best if I ride you,” Kurt says. He’s long past anything that could be mistaken for coy.
Blaine lies on his back in the middle of the bed and strokes himself as Kurt lifts himself to straddle him. It’s an effort and Kurt flinches but glares at Blaine before he can move to help.
“Trust me,” he says. So Blaine does, lies back on the pillows and watches as Kurt lowers himself, gasping a little, over the head of Blaine’s cock.
“Slowly, god, go slowly,” Kurt says, whether to himself or Blaine. His stomach muscles clench and his eyes flutter back in his head. He’s so tight at the connection between them, his hole stretched achingly around Blaine. Blaine holds himself still, doesn’t buck his hips though it’s a kind of agony not to do so.
Kurt drops his head back and groans, as though it’s forced out of him. “Blaine,” he says again and again and Blaine pants Kurt’s name in response. Then Kurt’s weight is pressed against Blaine’s hips and Blaine’s cock is wholly inside him. In that moment it’s everything.
“God, Kurt. Please stay,” says Blaine. “Stay with me.”
Kurt looks down and his eyes focus for a sharp moment. “Always,” he says.
Kurt lifts himself up and rocks down hard against Blaine again. Blaine takes it as the invitation it is. He bends his knees a little. He shifts his hips upward, driving them into Kurt, cock sliding in and out. Kurt curls his body downward and meets his lips, sucks Blaine’s tongue into his mouth as though Blaine can fill all of him, can replace everything he’s ever lost.
When he comes he sobs against Blaine’s lips. His beautiful, broken face crumples. Blaine wraps his arms about him. He presses his body up into Kurt, holds hard and still as he comes and they fall apart together.
*
When the street cleaners start their run along Kurt’s street, Blaine is awake. Next to him, Kurt flinches. He opens his eyes with a start as something clatters down below. His gaze is blank. He curls into Blaine’s side in a way he almost never does fully awake.
Later Kurt will wake and dress. Later his whole self will be a challenge to anyone who dares look at him. But in sleep no one is invincible.
Blaine pulls the covers up, wraps his arms around Kurt beneath them and presses his lips to Kurt’s forehead. He lies still and counts Kurt’s breaths as he sleeps.
*
Some things haven’t changed. Kurt is in Bushwick. Mercedes and Sam are watching old episodes of Family Matters downstairs. So Blaine is alone in the bedroom.
He looks at the darkened ceiling and thinks about his Movement in Musical Theater practicum and whether he’d rather be the Human Torch or the Thing and how the guys and girls are doing at McKinley without glee club. He thinks about anything other than fists and boots and Kurt’s crumpled body and how close Blaine came to losing the center of his world.
He lies still and practices breathing steadily. It’s not like Kurt’s about to step out into the night as some kind of masked avenger. Not even as an ordinary boy. Kurt is safe in bed, and hopefully fast asleep.
This is what courage looks like for now: knowing that it was the right thing to move out but lying in bed, alone, with his eyes burning and his stomach twisting. Believing Kurt will be okay when Blaine isn’t there to help him through the pain and make his favorite food. Trusting that Kurt won’t die while Blaine can’t watch over him.
Courage is terrible.
Blaine’s phone rings.
“Kurt,” he answers softly.
“I couldn’t sleep,” says Kurt and there’s a tremor in his voice that only Blaine would notice.
“That’s okay, I’m right here,” says Blaine.
“I’m sorry,” says Kurt. “I know we’re doing our best with this whole living apart thing. I know we’re okay. And- I just couldn’t sleep.”
“You can always call me,” says Blaine. “I want you to.”
He pauses. And this is the other thing that courage looks like. “Kurt, I want to say- You don’t need to live for him as well,” he says. He takes a breath and says the name. “Finn. You don’t have anyone you need to live up to.”
There’s a long pause and Kurt says, “He wasn’t the only one who was brave.”
“Of course not,” says Blaine because that had never even occurred to him.
He stays on the phone, holds it to his ear until Kurt’s breathing steadies into sleep. Then he stays longer.