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Who knew when it really began. As effortlessly as other boys seemed to jettison upwards with summer growth spurts and settle into using the deeper tones of fathers, uncles, and older brothers, Blaine Anderson started to stray more and more from the path of what “other boys were,” getting splashed more and more with the acidic bite of what other boys were not.
Arguably, what hurt the most were the mixed signals. Why was it endearing when Cooper met up with old friends from high school and captured them in long bear hugs, yet repulsive when Blaine mimicked the same embrace with his grade school playmates?
When Blaine’s mother would sit herself down in front of the vanity and playfully dot Blaine’s cheeks with blush, why did her eyes flit from playful to worried as soon as the garage door began to open below?
And most of all, why was it the case that it didn’t matter what other people thought – “You’re not too short, honey, don’t listen to them,” “Now, Blaine, it’s perfectly acceptable to want to be on the teacher’s good side” – except when it came to being a “man”? One never truly forgets things like, “You know, Grandpa’s right, son, Lord knows nobody got to Dartmouth singing and dancing" and “Are you sure you don’t want to go to that concert, dear? I hear almost half the Dalton boys are attending.”
Inasmuch as the rising action could never be traced back to one source, maybe this end for Blaine Anderson was inevitable. So many slaps on the wrist, side-eyed glares, muttered slights, and fraternal double standards compounded so that he could only feel like a time bomb. What was left inside was no longer the steadfast faith in humanity he'd had bludgeoned from his heart, it was no longer the optimistic logic that reminded him ten more years, five more years, two more years… even when his body betrayed his heart's struggles. What was left inside was unnameable, indescribable.
Blaine's mother had always said he had "too much heart." Barred familiarity with having a home, friends, even a future, there was no possibility of Blaine ending up empty, or bare. That heart held a capacity to love, a capability to wrap the world ten times over in one of those breathtaking embraces; spurned enough, though, the result was an ardent black hole – through trial and error, Blaine came to the conclusion that approaching the world with an intent to love ended in hate, while hate brought you the likes of peace and protection. That was probably as close as you could get to happiness in a town like Lima, Ohio.
Happiness. What a thought.
~
The halls of McKinley High had always felt unbearably long in Blaine’s mind. When he was forced to trudge through them on sludge-drenched soles – cold feet, understatement of his puberty – or when Blaine was delayed and the only person to pass (to overcome, to witness) in the hallway was someone like Azimio or Nelson. Those journeys made the corridors feel miles wide, leagues long.
But this, this felt like he was moving so slowly, his heart might have just found it easier to stop completely.
As Blaine concentrated on planting his footsteps, the world around him resembled at once a crawl and a blur. The murky gray of the institutional lockers, the shuddery clatter and clang as books were replaced and doors were slammed. The chaos of humans – his fellow classmates, his peers, as it were – poking and prodding him as they pushed roughly past. A roaring flame broiled higher and higher in Blaine’s gut; if they wanted to see just how much would make him tick, boy were they in for a surprise.
Every iota of focus was in attempting to get his feet moving, to navigate the blur of jackets (and oh, that red is just so vibrant, it simply aches), shoes, backpacks, and everything else without losing his way or his footing. How did anyone get anywhere when the linoleum and the metal and the pavement and the flesh all looked so similar? How was Blaine the one sent from the pack when he was pretty sure that once upon a time, he smelled and looked and felt just the same way as everyone else does?
A momentary distraction: Shelby Reynolds, sophomore brunette lacrosse player, had collided with Blaine’s side after tossing her head back in the middle of a friendly after-school conversation. She turned, smile toothy and glaringly white. Mid-laugh, all that instantly faded into muted disgust. That curl of the lip, the immediate drop of an eyebrow and almost imperceptible crinkle in the nose. He could remember that her birthday was November something, that she also had a deadly peanut allergy, while she deemed any details of his life, right down to his first name, unnecessary. Her eyes had flicked over his face for all of a second before she returns to standing, turning away with something like relief. She and her friend walked off unfazed, leaving the corridor nearly empty.
Thankfully, she hadn’t noticed anything out of the ordinary. Blaine’s calloused, poised finger slid over warm steel in his sweatshirt pocket. A week ago, he’d held a tire iron for the second time in his life, poised to bash his father’s brains in while he slept.
But. The problem wasn’t Dad, it was other people. Blaine wouldn’t have had any of the monkeys on his back if Other People hadn’t stepped in to analyze and judge and disregard and just decimate his life.
Well. Blame where blame was due, right? A life for a life.
~
Breathing had never been this difficult for Blaine. Not the first time he attempted to come out to his father, when Dad had sent him out to walk the dog before Blaine had uttered the tail-end of, "Mom, Dad, I think I'm..." Not the full minute he spent wondering if he'd wasted his first date to a dance on a platonic friend, wondering if he would die with a jock's grimy hands clenched around his neck, punishing Blaine for an identity he'd never even had a chance to act upon (Long ago, when he'd allowed myself to envision such things, romantic even when morbid, on his deathbed Blaine might've envisioned a lover's hands about his face or between his own hands, but no – none around his throat). Breathing felt like drowning while he held a fully loaded pistol, like a sleeping predator, in the pocket of his cotton sweatshirt. His closed left fist was sweaty, stifled, and another sudden bump from a passerby had him scrabbling to check that the slippery weight remained solidly on his person.
Someone's fingers closed tightly – No, his mind screamed – around his forearm. The sudden, bruising grasp knocked the wind wholly out of him and Blaine was yanked into the adjacent hallway. He'd been so very close to the weight room. Karofsky – he always stayed late, there was no chance he wasn't the last one to be in this wing of the school.
Blaine's back collided hard with locker. He looked up, and was met with a fierce animalistic glare mere inches from his face.
"What the fuck is that?"
"Hummel, you've made it abundantly clear you're not interested in what I have in my pants. Faggoty though we both are." Blaine's voice was smarmy, but it rasped uneasily. When was the last time he'd spoken to someone?
Kurt's eyes narrowed even more, if possible. "Fuck with me and you can be certain I make an ass out of you, though I'm guessing not me."
Blaine was fastened to the wall of lockers with a forearm laid across his shoulders, a knee poised to strike him at the crotch at a moment's notice. Kurt's trigger finger twitched at Blaine's throat, challenging his carotid. Blaine paled at the contact, and Kurt's eyes flickered down. His hold loosened minutely.
"Anderson, you tell me what the fucking fuck I just saw in your hand or so help me God I will find out by any means necessary."
"Oh my God, how embarrassing. I've just had the biggest boner for you for years and you've found me out," Blaine simpered. He proceeded with a heavy lisp, "Good work, Ein-thtein. Fine, I admit it, we just have such ineth-capable chemith-try!"
Kurt eased up on his chokehold just enough so Blaine could adjust his jaw, but the boy was still mostly suspended, toes barely touching the floor. Blaine sucked in a ragged breath, paused, "Any means necessary, huh? I guess it's true what they say about those predatory fags…"
"Will you just give it up, already?" Kurt growled. "Anderson, I'm offering you such an out. Just slide it into my messenger bag and we both walk away, no questions asked, no harm done."
"Lady, if we're sliding anything anywhere it's gonna be mighty difficult for you to walk away. Don't say I didn't warn you," Blaine's breath hitched, his chin uncomfortably high within Kurt's grasp.
"What are you playing at, bringing a thing like that into a place like this? They'll hang you."
"Sweetheart, kindly get out of the way or resign yourself to a speedy demise. I have unfinished business."
"With whom? That absolute backwards lug? That inane shithead with hot air for brains? Where the fuck will that get you? Institutionalized at best."
"Stop protecting your pussy boyfriend. Don't you see? He'll be out of both our hairs this way." Blaine's smile was almost sickly sweet, too lopsided and wide for his face.
"My-" Kurt's lips gaped, his eyebrows shot up. "My boyfriend? You think-"
"Oh come on, everyone knows you're on your knees for him at any available moment. Or do you expect people to believe he just stopped giving a shit about you one day?"
"How could you possibly..."
"Kurt, you're blushing!" Blaine gushed.
"I'm not-" Kurt paused, lowered his voice to a whisper, "I'm fucking furious. What gives anyone the right to assume just 'cause some jock let up on me, I'm putting out at the drop of a hat? He's an incorrigible blue collar homophobe who's made my life hell for as long as I can remember, I'd be gagging long before I got his cock down my throat." Kurt's eyes widened a bit at his own words. "You're a fucking prick," he finished, trying to take a breath.
Blaine squirmed, hooked between his backpack and Kurt's strong grasp. "Haven't you ever heard of the second amendment? The right to bear arms against lunatics?"
"Look, if there's anyone who hates him as much as you do, it's me. But this isn't a last resort, this is a death sentence."
In Blaine's mind's eye, he saw David Karofsky prostrate on the cement weight room floor, pleading for mercy while spread in submission on the icy ground. Karofsky was trembling, limbs flushed with a mix of embarrassment and desperation, uncommon for him. Blaine could nearly feel the burn of metal move like an extension of his arm, and from his position of power all it took was a pull of a trigger and that weight was lifted. How does it feel to be just a number, David? Just one in six? In his dreams, Blaine had pictured using the residual five to mow down several of his closest tormentors. But that wasn't realistic, and it only took one good lesson to make a point. This was a happy medium.
And now there was a measly, delicate twink who'd somehow overpowered him, who was stifling his fantasies. Preventing Blaine from completion of his step-by-step plan, of the moment he relished the most; the stretched-out seconds Blaine would spend with his heel driving into Karofsky's skull, possibly hearing the vibrant sounds of asphyxiation gurgle from his throat, clogged with his own blood. That pulse-pounding, dizzy panic Blaine had known since the first time he was cornered for being gay, back in middle school - the faces may be different now but the sensation hasn't changed over the years. Every time they would grab Blaine by the collar and chuck him into a locker for the night, every time they would deliver a swift cuff on his back in the classroom and leave him struggling to stand the rest of the day. That absence of oxygen, and eventually of life, that he had in store for Karofsky was poetic retribution; it had style, it delivered sensory empathy.
Who was Kurt Hummel to steal all that away from him?
"Look," Blaine sighed, "Just drop it. I'm just gonna give him a good scare, hopefully he'll piss his pants and run home crying. Leave me alone already and you won't be a witness, an accomplice, what-the-fuck-ever else you're worried about."
Kurt made as if to let go, backing off to stretch his aching muscles then reattaching his grip just as gracefully. They had never been friends, existing in separate planes. By the time Blaine and Kurt had crossed paths, well into high school through a chance French assignment, Blaine's bite was so caustic that he had no allies; when he refused advances even from people like Tina and Kurt, people just trying to get by, his choice was made clear.
In front of Kurt stood the boy who had taken almost all of the jocks' beatings over the past year or so, who hadn't said a word to him in just as much time, ever since Kurt had become privy to Karofsky's secret - David had convinced his friends to lay off shortly thereafter, citing some complicated business ties between his father and Burt Hummel. But that hadn't meant mercy for the gays, or more specifically the only other out boy at McKinley. No, there hadn't precisely been rainbow flags lining the halls, and whereas Kurt couldn't have avoided being pegged as a target if he tried, Blaine's crime was much worse in the eyes of many; he'd had the gall, the balls (or lack thereof?) to want to be proud of who he was all those years ago.
Just because the red jackets had one fewer target, it didn't mean they had less fury. And just because an interdict floated above Kurt's head, it didn't mean he could negotiate safeguards for anyone else. The failed experiment with Schuester and his merry band of show choir players was a thing of the past, which lasted about ten afterschool practices in Kurt's sophomore year and dissolved into fission with the help of inflated egos.
Kurt and Tina had mosied off to the quiet of the visual arts department, sometimes to be joined by Artie or Rachel and Mercedes, who had sidled up to commandeer A/V and drama, respectively. For every time any of his friends was slushied as upperclassmen, Kurt made a point to surreptitiously do a good deed for them; it helped distract Kurt from the fact he was trading hushed-up sexual assault for avoidance of the bumps, cracks, and bruises being inflicted mostly on Anderson. He could lose himself in pages and pages of the sketches he dreamt of packing away for Parson's this coming summer, lose himself in the profitability schemes he drew up to pull in more money at the garage, lose himself in the occasional bottle of 80 proof shared with Tina on her quiet back porch, just to forget for a little while.
And so Kurt had continued, bold and sometimes brash in his fashion choices, in his words, toeing the line where he knew he could get away with a drop-shoulder sweater, but if he made eye contact just-so with a football player they would make him regret it, if only by taking it out on Blaine Anderson at an unknown place and time.
But just because Kurt didn't know this boy, this man, whatever he was, it didn't mean he couldn't recognize the look in his eyes. It was a virile thirst for revenge, a volatility that betrayed Blaine's true intentions.
"Why are you doing this?" Kurt asked, leveling his gaze with Blaine's openly.
"Come on, babe," Blaine sighed, shrugging his shoulders. "I know you're not that slow. Or have you somehow missed the scars?" His right arm remained in Kurt's clenched fist, but he wiggled enough to draw up the fabric of his sweatshirt and tee, exposing a jagged series of wrinkled, puffy scars littering his lower ribs. The opposite side of his clothing stayed stiffly weighed down. Kurt swallowed loud enough for both of them to hear. No, he hadn't missed them. The school was big, but not that big; being in the same grade and gym class meant yes, he was familiar with the example they made of Blaine, of his flesh and bones.
"Why now?" Kurt asked. "We have a semester, less, before we're out of this town. If Figgins or, worse, Sylvester, even gets a whiff of what you've done no school's gonna touch you."
"This may come as a harsh reality check to you, Hummel, but they weren't knocking down my door in the first place. And my guess is, try as you might to stand out to them, they'll be able to go on without you, too. And then what?
"Look around you, Kurt Hummel. We're not about to begin our lives. They ended a long time ago."
"You don't know that. You're waiting on letters just like the rest of us. I'm not spending another year in this town, believe me."
Blaine chuckled darkly, his jaw latched open in resistance to the struggle. From this close, Kurt could smell the sweet warmth of aftershave, incongruous with the heavy five o'clock shadow upon his cheeks. "Neither am I," Blaine replied, "I'm fairly certain the nearest detention facility is strictly outside city limits."
"You're eighteen already, aren't you?" It wasn't a question, not really.
Blaine's gaze flickered up from where he had been gazing stonily down the hallway. "I didn't plan on getting caught. I'm not that desperate to take it up the ass."
Kurt's eyebrow lifted involuntarily, scooting away from his dropped jaw. "I never said you were. Then again, I can't think of a scenario in which an upper middle class kid acquires a gun, uses it, then gets away scot-free, no bread crumbs leading back to your model home door. And then…" His breath shuddered a bit here, "there's the fact I've seen you now, and if David ends up dead by morning my list of suspects won't be very long."
Blaine growled, rolling his eyes. "Why are you here?"
Kurt looked caught off-guard. "Well I was in the art room late, I have some designs to clean up before submitting my portfolio and-"
"I mean why are you here. Here here." Blaine nodded down to the space between them.
"Because I-I, um, I saw that thing in your pocket and I couldn't let you do that. N-not because it's Karofsky - assume what you will about my behavior but don't expect me to stand by while it happens - but because nobody should get to decide how many chances another person gets. Not him, destroying your life and pushing you to the point where you almost throw everything away; not you, coming here to make sure his number is up way too soon."
"Not soon enough."
"Don't become him, please, Blaine."
Blaine's eyes were wild, near-tears with pleading. "Why won't you just let me have this? Just this?"
"You could take millions out of the equation and it still wouldn't solve your problem. Your life is worth something, too. Even if you don't leave Lima right away you can make something great of yourself one day."
"What, quietly tiptoeing so people don't hate the gay for being competent or obnoxious or successful or flamboyant or emotive or passionate? Constantly keeping myself in check so I'm not too touchy-feely, too bold, too kind, too smart, just so no one takes offense at my existence and picks up a pitchfork? God, Kurt, have you seen the way you can barely even pat your friends on the shoulder sometimes? Or the way you're always adjusting your outfits so they don't set anyone off? Or the way sometimes your face nearly turns purple with all the offensive comments you hear but don't respond to? Unless you're in French, in which case most of your insults back never make a dent because 99% of us are hopeless losers who can't understand a word of it. I hope you're not holding your breath waiting for the puzzle pieces to fall into place. Nobody would buy into, 'It might get better,' even if it's the truth."
Blaine hadn't noticed that as he spoke Kurt had stepped back, nearly releasing him completely but for a feather-light hold of Blaine's wrists.
"Why…" Kurt stopped, eyes searching the air for the right words, "Why do you push everyone away? Of course it won't get better if you don't let it. Because we would've let you, let you take what little we had to offer. I mean, Jesus, we must've invited you to dumb movie marathons or nights in at least once a week early freshman year, and you were just such an abhorrent jackass you put both Tina and Rachel in tears at least twice each. And…" Kurt frowned, looking down confusedly. "And why do you care what I wear, or what I say to them?"
"I don't, it was just an example. You're obviously out of touch with reality if you think some acceptance letter is gonna swoop down and scoop you up from all that."
"You can't 'not care' and listen that carefully, Blaine." Kurt shoved him lightly, holding Blaine to the wall with one hand on his shoulder. "I'd never be able to live with myself if I knew you did something." His voice was raw with its sincerity, jarringly open and bleak.
“Just walk away then, remain blissfully ignorant.” (Until tomorrow.) “I would recommend taking the day off tomorrow, at least until the smoke clears,” he added.
Kurt rolled his eyes. "Are you insane? Did it ever occur to you that you wouldn’t be the only victim of the backlash? Especially with Karofsky gone, they’d have no reason not to hunt me down and plant my head on a stake. Just for existing, just for breathing still.”
Blaine’s eyes had narrowed at Kurt’s mention of the protection David allowed for, but sidestepped that. “Oh I’m sorry,” he paused, face animated in fake concern, “Do I owe you something? This is my choice and my choice alone. Like you said, you’ll be out of here before you know it. I apologize that I don’t see what’s wrong with someone getting a little of his fair share.”
Kurt's natural instinct was to retort, But I’m not someone, idiot, but he relented. “Or,” he began instead, eyes as soft as his hold on Blaine now, “You could acknowledge nothing is fair about this clusterfuck of a town anyway. It’s not fair or right or okay that you’ve been hurt, that they get away with what they do. No one should have to go through any more than what you have, go through anything in the first place. Not even, as much as I hate to say it, a closeted Neanderthal who detests and disgusts himself so damn much he attempts to destroy anyone he sees.” Blaine’s eyes had grown wide but Kurt spoke on, “You don’t deserve that mess of self-loathing, or a single second more of trouble.”
Blaine didn’t respond.
“You don’t, Blaine.” You don’t, you don’t, you don’t, you don’t.
“How do you know?” Blaine had taken so long to speak again that Kurt had to search his mind for what he meant.
“How do I- well, I don’t know you. But unless you’ve gotten away with murder...” he bit his lip on a laugh, and Blaine’s eyes flared with either amusement or annoyance, he couldn’t tell. “You couldn’t possibly have such a karmic debt that the lettermen are secretly carrying out God’s work or some bullshit like that.”
“But I’ve hurt people so much...my mom, my dad, my brother - they all expected so much, gave so much, hardly asked anything, honestly. Dean- I promised him we’d be fine, Jesus Christ, I never even saw him after he transferred, didn’t have the balls to visit or even text. His jaw was wired shut when he left, his parents said the best I could hope for was to burn in Hell for being gay, for turning him, for- Oh God, and I’ll never be the son my family wanted - how could I be when I do the exact opposite of their wishes? It’s like I’m programmed, for Chrissake; it’s not as if I can work on it, I’ll never in a million years get there and they’ll forever be unhappy and whose fault is that? My own.
“I thought- I think- I thought if I just had the courage to stand up for myself - guns are so masculine, such a man’s weapon, right? - there’d be no way my dad could be as ashamed of me as he is now. I’ve already lost them, I know that,” Blaine swiped his cheek down on his shoulder, brushing off salty tears. “But maybe I could regain a little pride back. I’m gonna go on my whole. entire. life with these marks, with nightmares, with so fucking much filling my head to bursting, but maybe I could just do that.”
Kurt cleared his throat. “You think your dad’s gonna be proud of you if you put a bullet in Karofsky’s skull? You think your mom or your brother will pull out pictures of you at lunches and say, ‘And here’s Blaine, he committed first degree murder but look how much of a man he is! A real man’s man-” Kurt coughed dramatically, “Excuse me, ladies’ man. No homosexuals here.
“Have you ever considered,” he continued, stepping closer than was comfortable, but it seemed their personal space was destined for nonexistence from the get-go. “Have you ever considered they’re just bigots who don’t care if they hurt you, despite the fact the only thing you did was make choices and feel things and hold beliefs that don’t hurt a single person? Not on their own. Who’s in the wrong, then, Blaine? Who is it?” Kurt was yelling now, looking right into Blaine’s swimming yellow eyes.
Footsteps from around the corner had both boys’ heads whipping to the side, with Kurt scrambling to decide whether being caught restraining another student would be worth the security of knowing Anderson wasn’t going anywhere. The steps fell loudly, coming from close by. Into the boys’ visions walked David Karofsky, gym bag slung over his shoulder and eyes on them, having found the source of the commotion. His brow furrowed in anger, gaze scanning first Blaine and his awkward position; however, as soon as he locked upon Kurt’s face, his expression changed completely, like he’d met his match. No, like he’d been beaten. Karofsky shook his head, declined to utter anything but an acknowledging “Get a room, fags,” and stalked off down the hall.
All the while, Kurt had been twitching to make a grab for Blaine’s gun, to tackle him at the first sign of fleeing, to step between the two boys if it came to it, but nothing came. Blaine stood stock still until Karofsky was moving again. Kurt knew he had to speak quickly or risk losing Blaine to the state he’d been in previously, blinded by a thirst for revenge.
Blaine lunged forward, making as if to rocket down the hall after Karofsky, but Kurt had been on his toes already. Kurt yanked Blaine back by the arm, turning him so his cheek was against the cold locker and his arms were fastened behind his back.
“How are you so strong?” Blaine chuckled almost manically, face scrunched against the locker grill.
“Don’t do this, Anderson.” Kurt was bearing down on all his muscles to resist Blaine’s thrashing and shoving, gritting his teeth to distract from the exertion. “You can only be Blaine, and that should be good enough for anyone worth having in your life. Don’t be a coward and don't blow it on that cheap, twisted bastard. Tell me you’ll stay here for me. We’ll lose the gun, or return it, whatever. You say you’re headed nowhere, you have no one, but that just means we have a whole lot of places you’ve gotta try, people you’ll find who are worth knowing.”
“What ‘we’? There is no ‘we’.”
“Fine, there’s not. But whoever it’s with, you should be happy. You should be happy, Blaine.”
“That’s a useless, stupid thing to say. So what if I should be?" Blaine asks. "I’m not."
~ ~ ~
Kurt raises his head from where it rests on a sloppily-folded Afghan at the head of his bed, blinking back the haze of sleep clouding his mind. A scratching, shuffling on the carpet in the hall had caught his attention. He looks directly behind himself, over his bare shoulder. In the doorway stands Blaine Anderson, naked as the day he was born, holding two plums in one fist while the other hand lifts a third one to his lips to take a bite.
“Kurt Hummel,” he speaks around a suckling mouthful of the tart fruit, “You are the best afternoon special I have ever seen. Hands down.”
Kurt grins lazily, laughing through his nose; the corners of his eyes are wet with the remnant tears of a yawn. “You’re not so bad, yourself. But I have to ask: do you kiss your mother with that mouth?”
Blaine huffs out a laugh, shifting his weight to the opposite hip. “As seldom as I can.”
Kurt smiles, easy as the golden light floating through his translucent drapes. A singular beam of it falls across the room, resting next to him upon the bed. He arches his back, flexing pale sinewy skin so that his pose is very nearly feline: resting on his heels and proudly baring the expanse of his ass to his lover, obscured solely by the motes of dust that float between the two of them.
“Mmm,” Kurt groans, as if he’s taken a bite of something particularly savory. “Four fingers, my God. I’m sorry I was so fast. I can’t help myself when you get that way.”
“Get what way?”
“You know what way, you filthy cocksucker," Kurt growls through a smirk.
"That's offensive," Blaine says, "I am squeaky clean. And anyway, we have an hour still. I'll give you a chance to make it up to me." He speaks through a cheeky tilted grin, dropping his chin around chews.
Kurt turns from where he was looking over his shoulder so that he faces Blaine and the door bodily but remains on his stomach over the covers. "Come," he says, twiddling a couple fingers.
Blaine lets the pit of his plum drop into the waste basket by the door; he approaches on loose, swaying strides. He places one of the plums in Kurt's upturned palm, but Kurt stops him, curling slender fingers around the two fruits amongst them and letting them drop to the side, bouncing on the duvet softly.
“I have eaten the plum that was in the icebox and which you were probably saving for breakfast...” Blaine trails off, smile slipping through a shy crack in the right side of his lips. Kurt’s head drops on a chuckle, his shoulders coming together just slightly as his hand continues to grip Blaine’s opposite wrist.
“Do you love me?” Kurt says, face shooting up and eyes bright as he squeezes Blaine’s hand closer to his center.
“I truly do,” Blaine replies, soft lips quirking wryly.
Kurt nudges forward on the bedspread, coming close enough to press his cheek to Blaine’s thigh. He envelops Blaine within his arms, hands twined at the small of his back and urging him even closer. Kurt inhales, eyes closed and cheek nuzzling the soft hairs at the firmest part of his quadricep. From their place atop the pillows at the head of the bed, Kurt’s feet give a tiny irrepressible jiggle; his bliss simply overflows.
“And are you happy?” Kurt’s voice is muffled by his tight embrace.
“I am.”
“Because why?”
Blaine looks down, meets Kurt’s stare with his own confused frown. “Because... you.”
“What- What kind of answer is that? Because I exist? Because I’m happy? Do I need to remain overjoyed for the rest of my life if I hope to see you smile?”
Blaine’s frown was a little brighter now, illuminated with the knowledge Kurt hadn’t yet caught his “rest of my life” slip and gained his usual breathless flush. “Well, no. I... I can’t say I wouldn’t love that, a guarantee that you’d be set forever in terms of contentment, but God, I don’t want you to feel a need. I don’t want there to be a need.”
And slowly, as Kurt begins to find potential roommates and coffeemates and karaokemates and mental breakdownmates on Parsons’ Facebook page (some – “This one’s wearing UGGs and shorts, too, Blaine. Oh Christ, and is that a hemp tote? – unfortunately don’t make the cut), and Blaine begins to envision possible undergrad destinations after a gap year internship with an off-Broadway theater’s education department (“Blaine, how long were you going to wait before you told me some of the best news of my life? A decade? Several millenia?”), the need to sustain each other’s happiness begins to diminish.
So Blaine’s not lying when he says, “I think I’m starting to get there on my own. Am I allowed to say you make me happy, Hummel? You’re not the only thing, of course – don’t flatter yourself, there’s also your neck, your toes, your stomach, your chest, your nose, your cherry lips, your calves, mmph, your ass, your exceptional cock-”
“Everything but my ego is telling me to make you stop," Kurt says, planting soft kisses to an inner thigh. He raises an eyebrow when Blaine’s dick begins to take an interest again, but only continues to caress his downy leg, teasing with a wandering thumb. Kurt’s fingernails, try as he might to groom them with care, still manage to end up tinted with residual chalk pastels or, as of late, fabric dyes in the colors of spring.
“Majority rules, I guess,” Blaine replies, snorting a laugh into his shoulder.
Kurt sits up and slaps Blaine sharply on his taut stomach. “I thought I told you to be blindly supportive of my bigheadedness, no matter what I say.”
“So sorry.”
“But honestly, would you say you are?”
“Kurt, I have so much more than I deserve. I am giddy, gleeful with how different my days are now. Why won’t you take some credit where credit’s due?”
“You deserve so much more than I can give.” Kurt uses his knees to shuffle forward, slipping the back of his hand along Blaine’s cheek. “Why did we spend so long doing stupid things, building fence after fence after fence around ourselves? What happened in your heart so you still don’t believe this is good and true and deserved?”
~ ~ ~
Kurt had begun to wonder how much longer he could hold Blaine tightly to the wall of lockers before his arms passed the stage where their muscles quaked beyond control. He was strung out so tight, his nerves so thin that a rogue door slam would’ve had him sprawling on the floor in surrender.
Blaine began to puff labored inhales and exhales through his squashed face. His long eyelashes fluttered against his cheeks, something like annoyance and rumination.
"Will you come home with me?" Blaine's voice was so very bleak, Kurt couldn't read a proposition into the request if he tried.
"Beg pardon?" he replied. He was distinctly conscious of an invisible timer in his head, allotting Karofsky thin minutes of a head start.
"Will you please drive me home?”
“Um, Blaine, I don’t have a car. I usually just wait for my dad or sometimes Rachel’s dads give us both a ride.”
“I know. I wasn’t- I mean, can we take my car, but you drive me home?”
Kurt stared, evaluating the boy in front of him who had seemingly gone still, except... yes, there it was, he was trying to suppress violent shakes. Shivers kept Blaine’s legs and back unsteady, threatening to buckle even as Kurt was the one tasked with keeping him upright.
“And, um...” Blaine spoke again, “You could call your dad to tell him where you’ll be? It’s not too far or anything, shouldn’t take more than fifteen minutes, I just.” He licked his lips, closing them as if unsure how to go on. In front of his eyes were other nights being late to leave McKinley, just late enough to merit a black eye and a good run-around from the hockey team, but still early enough to get home before anyone else, early enough to conceal any marks and put on the show of just wanting to turn in early, citing exhaustion from school. Well, he was tired.
“But what does this mean?” Kurt said. He cocked his head to better take a better look at Blaine’s face, but instead of finding the haze of upset he found swirls of insecurity in his eyes, a plan lost, a self with lost footing.
“I think putting the gun away is maybe a good thought. Could you help me do that?”
“Are you serious?” Kurt held back, unwilling to feel relieved too quickly.
Blaine looked up and to his side, eyes bright with something at once vulnerable and devilish. He said, “Dead serious.” They didn’t laugh, but they did share an understanding.
“Okay,” Kurt said, “Okay... Alright, okay.” His head dipped as he stuttered over his words, and he surreptitiously attempted to bring the sleeve of his dark Oxford to brush away a couple hot tears, a stinging release of nerves, from his cheek. He lifted his gaze again to peer as far as he could down the adjacent hallway, slowly letting up the tension he held around Blaine’s twisted arms.
“What I’m gonna- gonna do; Blaine, I’m giving you one – one – hand to retrieve your keys. And, um...” Kurt spoke wetly, “It’s gonna be your right hand, I honestly don’t care if that’s difficult for you. And you will move so deathly, deathly slow that I barely see you moving, and if you try anything I will have zero qualms about maiming you so hard you won’t even be able to have adoptive children. After that I will take the gun and I will be carrying it until it’s in a safe and I watch you tell your imbecile father you accidentally told me the combination. Then I will walk you to your car and we will go from there. And here is the point where you either agree or we’re stuck here until the janitorial staff gets here; push comes to shove, you get tried as an adult and no good, none, comes of all this.”
Blaine met Kurt’s eyes again. “I’ll do whatever you want.”
Soon enough, Kurt held Blaine’s keys in one moist palm, his messenger bag fell across his chest feeling about a ton heavier, and Blaine turned to face him when he gave the okay. They were both wracked with shuddery tremors still, but Kurt shook out his shoulders and leveled Anderson with a final reckoning glare, daring him to stray from the plan. Blaine surrendered his right palm as they’d agreed upon, and he watched as Kurt almost unconsciously wrapped himself about that point, cradling Blaine’s wrist tight between both hands and up to hold against his sternum. Blaine could dimly feel traces of a maddening heartbeat, much like his own, as he was led out through McKinley’s hallways.
~ ~ ~
“Now Hummel, you listen to me and you listen well,” Blaine says, climbing up beside Kurt to sit on the glowing sliver of bedspread. “I said I am on my way, plain and simple, but it hasn’t, won’t, couldn’t be easy. I don’t deserve you, you don’t deserve me; arguably, that is as perfect as things can get. Every day we will work better, fight better, talk better, fuck better - all of it. You saw me, yes literally, yes figuratively, and thought I was a piece of work worth saving.”
“Like a Van Gogh.” Kurt chuckles minutely at his own joke, brings Blaine’s knuckles to his lips for a soft kiss.
“I have no doubts in my mind that this is real, though, and God, damn good. You’re wrong on both accounts, sorry to say.”
“I think you’re the only person whom I will happily let prove me wrong as often as you like.”
“Thank you,” Blaine says, smiling with a fond glint in his eye.
“But of course,” Kurt grins, sinking his teeth into a plum and licking the juices from between his fingers. “Now if you don’t mind I think we have a score to settle.”
“A bone of contention, if you will.” Blaine leans in to suck reverently at Kurt’s top lip, lingering long after the sour-sweet fades away. Kurt carefully pushes him away just long enough to make a note of the time on his alarm clock.
Blaine leans down to nip reproachfully below Kurt’s ear. “Don’t worry,” he says, proceeding to lave his tongue over ripening love bites along the line of Kurt’s throat, “We have ages.”
Kurt grabs hold of the back of Blaine’s head and presses their lips together tightly, then pulls back to rest their foreheads together. He breathes in, forever thrilled anew with the pleasant warmth in his stomach that springs just from the faintest of touches, just from eye contact. “We most certainly do,” he says.
End.