Red Moon Over New York part3
As soon as he was close enough, the tall Warbler grabbed Kurt's shoulder and pulled him into the forest and away from the clearing with the two
angry monsters.
With that, everything became foggy around the two boys.
Sebastian appeared next to Kurt's bed and sat down in the chair Burt must have put there before he left the room. He was probably still in the apartment,
but there was no time to go look for him to let him know that he and Kurt were back.
Kurt slowly came back to consciousness. His body was in agonizing pain and he couldn't move. His insides must have been boiling, as everything felt like it was on fire. When the pain became too much and he wanted to scream, but neither his mouth nor his throat or his vocal cords were working. All he could do was lay there and endure it. A single tear rolled down his face, and Sebastian carefully wiped it away with his thumb. "I am so sorry, but there is nothing I can do for you. Stay strong for Burt. I’ll be here the whole time," he whispered into the boy’s ear.
"The changes in your body are going to hurt like nothing you have ever experienced in your life. That is one of the reasons we always hope our
children or friends and loved ones won’t fall prey to this dreaded disease. We don't talk about it after we are back, and are moving on to make it easier on our families. All I can tell you is that you will be fine. The burning will stop, and within the next four to eight hours you will gain control over you body again. The Mentor will sit with you until you are able to move and he will explain to you how your life will work from now on, depending on what you have chosen in the clearing."
The clattering sound of Burt making coffee in the kitchen startled Sebastian out of his trance. He quickly removed his hand from where it was still resting on
Kurt's face, his thumb still absently stroking in a calming motion. Kurt's eyes were wide with fear and pain and thousands of questions, staring at his Mentor.
Sebastian cleared his throat and looked over his shoulder to the closed door, willing Burt to come back inside and break the silence. After a few seconds, which seemed to stretch into hours, the Mentor looked at Kurt and with a sigh he started to speak.
"I know it hurts right now, trust me, I have been there, too. I'm actually glad newborns like you can't speak or the screaming would alarm the whole neighborhood." Kurt managed to glare at Sebastian and make him chuckle. "Well, if you can already throw your 'bitch please' face at me, then you are well on your way to talking and moving. I’m not sure how much you already know, but you might be able to do stuff now." A slight tilt of Kurt’s head indicated his interest in the topic, and proved how well the process of changing was going.
"Now," Sebastian continued, "Before you ask me something stupid, sweetheart, no, you won't turn into a bat and fly away into the darkness, but I, for example, can run faster then my shadow and make it across the US in under five minutes without breaking into a sweat. I am sure you are glad to hear that sweating is a thing of the past now. Others can communicate telepathically, or pick up and move things with their mind. I have heard rumors of invisibility, but that has not been confirmed yet. Not all of us get to have 'superpowers' though, so don't be upset if you just go back to your normal annoying self. Well, minus the heartbeat." Sebastian looked concerned, and with a firmer voice, he said, "Right now, I need you to stay calm and let your body change. I need to go and organize your first few meals, until you are strong enough to set up your own order. The blood is going to get delivered to your doorstep and you don't have to pay for it right away. However, as soon as you graduate and find a job to make some money, we will take 10% of your paycheck each month. This will pay the wages for our delivery staff, the blood bank staff, and hospitals. It will be used for bribes or bail in case one of us gets caught meddling with the paperwork to make the blood bags disappear. Nobody is going to ask questions as to why 10% goes missing. It will look like a church tax on your papers."
Sebastian got up from the chair and made to leave when Kurt’s hand on his arm stopped him. The Mentor then cradled the hand in his and carefully placed it back on the bed. “Don't force it. You’re doing great already, please let yourself rest, and let your body take its time. I am going to get your dad to sit with you until I am back."
With that, Sebastian vanished out of the room, and, a few minutes later, Burt entered and sat down with his son.
*
Kurt had to change a lot of things in his life. He cut a lot of ties binding him to his former self. He stopped calling or texting Rachel and Santana, stopped meeting them for lunch or brunch, for obvious reasons. He deleted his Facebook and did everything he could to completely vanish from the online world. He got himself a new phone, and he had already set up appointments to look for a new place to live, something on the bottom floor somewhere, maybe. He was hoping to find a cheap house to lease or buy, just so he wouldn't have to worry about the sunlight anymore.
The thing that hurt him most was cutting ties with his family. He could have tried to stick it out, but flying posed too many risks for him. Running was an option, but what would the neighbors say when he kept showing up, looking exactly the same? True, he'd always looked younger than he was, and so he wouldn't be forced to alter his face with make up anytime soon, but it was better to be safe than sorry. Sebastian had told him it was stupid to stop visiting his family, but Kurt had just growled at him and kicked him out of his living room.
Letting go of the Skype dates with Blaine was hard as well. Letting go of Blaine was going to hurt him a lot. He was still his best friend, even if they couldn't see each other all the time. Ever since they had broken up, it had been hard to talk to each other. It was clear that both of them still loved each other but, with Blaine changing his career goals and studying to become a music therapist, they had only little time to actually talk. Meeting up wasn't possible due to their schedules, and now - with Kurt not being human anymore - he thought it best to just save them both a lot of heartbreak and cut those ties, too.
A few weeks after he had changed and most of his old life had been taken care of, Kurt sat down and wrote a letter to his ex-boyfriend and best friend.
Dear Blaine,
This is probably the hardest thing I'll ever have to do. I don't even know where to start. I have recently started a new kind of life and no, I cannot tell you more details. All I can tell you is that I won't be contacting you anymore. I am going to stop talking to everyone from my old life, including my dad, in order to focus on my new beginning. Please know that it is nothing you have done or said that made me choose this path. This change has been waiting for me all my life, and now the time has come.
I need you to know that I love you with all my heart. I always have and I always will, for eternity. I forgave you a long time ago for what happened, and I have to know that you understand this.
Please, go and find someone who makes you as happy as you made me. You deserve the world given to you wrapped in bow ties, and I can't give you that. I am not the shy, blushing boy you fell in love with anymore, and it rips my heart to pieces telling you all this.
Do you remember the first time we saw each other? I couldn't believe my eyes. I stuck out like a sore thumb, but you knew right away that something was wrong, you never questioned me about what made me come that day, you just knew. You knew it wasn't just the spying. You were the only one that was able to see what I was going through. You looked straight into my heart and soul and slowly but surely fixed me.
I loved you from the moment we met, and I can't believe how long it took you to come to your senses. But in the end, waiting for you was worth it. You gave me the best senior year I could have asked for. You gave me my first real kiss and you showed me that physical intimacy wasn't scary. You have always been able to read me like an open book, and that is why I can't have you in my life anymore. For you to know means putting everything I love in danger, and I couldn't forgive myself if I ever got you hurt over something that only involves me.
Don't write back, don't call, and don't e-mail me. Don't try to find me. Remember me as a friend, and find happiness in life, that is all I am asking of you.
With all my love
Kurt XXX
Once he was done writing, he folded the paper in half, gently put it in an envelope and wrote Blaine's name on the outside. He wasn't going to mail it. Knowing where Blaine lived, Kurt wanted to wait until nighttime and drop it into the mailbox himself. If he got lucky, perhaps he could even score a quick last view of his friend.
*
A couple months had gone by and Kurt had fallen into his new life with few problems. He was grateful that he was almost done with school, and that the few classes he absolutely couldn't drop were either held after dark or online. His new timetable also ensured that he wouldn't run into Rachel and didn't have to worry about her asking all sorts of questions.
He'd found a cute little townhouse in a rather quiet neighborhood which was for sale reasonably cheaply. He sold most of his belongings and used some of the money his dad had sent him right before he stopped calling or writing. Burt wasn't happy with Kurt's decision, but he understood where it came from. He did wrestle the promise from him to visit once a year on Christmas, and he did get Kurt's new phone number, under the condition that he not give it out to anybody else, not even Blaine.
The blood appeared every other day at his doorstep, and his fridge looked like something out of a horror movie. He had tried to power through it and still have his odd cup of coffee here and there, but after a few weeks he gave up. He didn't really need to drink caffeine anyway, due to the fact that he didn't sleep, and the taste was so different, so fake and foreign, that he just couldn't do it to himself anymore. The bags were always labeled with numbers and a bar code. Probably, he figured, to be able to track the donor down if something was wrong. The bags that came from the hospitals looked very professional, whereas the bags from the blood banks that were run by vampires looked kind of sloppy. The bag itself was the same, but the labels looked homemade. And yet, those were his favorites.
AB684 was his absolute favorite, to be exact. He had figured out that each donor had a number letter combination, and, by the taste of it, the same number never had been given to another person.
KD009 had some traces of alcohol in his or her blood, maybe to get over the fear of needles in order to donate, or perhaps a serious problem. Kurt didn't really care. Those bags were on the bottom shelf on the right side. He couldn't get drunk from it, but the flavor of wine or Scotch made it seem fancy to drink on a Friday night while watching TV.
LS694 was always a bit spicy. It had a "zing" to it that he couldn't explain, but he loved it. Middle shelf, left side, for days when he felt like eating something exotic.
AB684 was delicious, though. Kurt was pretty sure if he ever meet that person in real life, he could be tempted to bite, just once, just to have that flavor straight from the vein. It was heavenly to him. Maybe he was being nostalgic, since that was the same donor he had in his first cup of blood so many weeks before, but there was something about it that he just couldn't shake. While he had no problem offering Sebastian, who stopped by way more often then Kurt thought he needed to, something to drink, that was the only blood he never offered.
Sebastian knew that, and always made fun of him for being a blood snob - just like humans had wine snobs - but Kurt didn't care. "Take it or leave it," he said to his Mentor. "I changed my entire life because of this disease. I left all my friends, I hardly talk to my father. I'm not even talking to Blaine anymore, even though he still calls my father at least twice a week to ask if he heard from me. So leave me this. I have found something that tastes like home to me, it makes me feel warm and safe and I am not giving this up. For all I know, AB684 is a 54 year old white overweight lady with greasy hair and no manners, but I don't care. Wanna know why? Because it tastes amazing, and I won't share it, so get over it. Who knows, tomorrow that donor could get killed by a car or jump of a bridge. Hell, maybe they'll die of old age. As long as they have it, I will drink it and not share it."
Sebastian raised his hands and backed away after Kurt had finished his rant. "Geez, calm down, Barbara! I am just poking fun at you. I have my favorites too. Granted, I usually drink straight from the tap, but you know what I mean."
*
More months went by and, in between the seasons changing, Kurt graduated. He was a little disappointed that he wasn't able to graduate with honors but with having dropped so many classes because he couldn't attend them anymore, he had struggled to make it at all.
Through the connections provided by Sebastian, he was able to land a job at Vogue.com. Although in the beginning he was barely getting paid and was writing the fashion horoscope, he was working for Vogue. He briefly entertained the idea of finding one of the off-Broadway theaters to see if they had nighttime rehearsals, as well as the show running night performances, but he couldn't find a single one that didn't make him blush, as the storylines seemed to get raunchier with every script he looked at. Finally, he decided that he was not ready to shake his butt dressed only in a tiny little string to the sounds of The Lion King, which was the best he could find.
After yet another fruitless search for additional ways of getting money into his account, he called Sebastian to ask for help again. As much as Kurt didn't like asking the former Warbler for anything, he had proven him self as a great Mentor in the past months. He was the only one from Kurt's old life that he still had contact with. Despite the differences they had had in the past, it turned out that Sebastian was a decent enough person to have around. He got on Kurt's nerves and drove him crazy with his snarky attitude and the lewd comments, but at least he was able to understand what Kurt was going through and always helped him to see reason in his new life.
Kurt plucked his phone out of his pants and dialed one of the three numbers he had saved in there. Besides his Mentor’s number, there was his father’s and the number for the blood delivery. He kept his father’s because he had promised, when he pulled his disappearing act, to call once a week and let him know how he was doing; the blood delivery one was in case he needed to change his order for some reason or another.
*