Fic: "Until My Dying Breath" -- Chapter One -- Part One: Kurt/Blaine, Vampire AU.
First there were werewolves, and then magical spells. It was probably only a matter of time before I wrote this, although it definitely caught me entirely by surprise. XD
Let me know what you think, everyone! <3
Title: "Until My Dying Breath" -- Chapter One
Author: emilianadarling
Fandom: Glee
Pairing: Kurt/Blaine
Rating: NC-17
Warnings: Vampire AU with all the unpleasantness that entails. Violence, grotesque descriptions, dark setting, fear, minor past character death. Warnings on a chapter by chapter basis.
Length: 140,000 in total. 11,500-ish for this chapter
Story Summary: On his way home from campus to his apartment on the Upper East Side, Blaine Anderson happens to come across a beautiful young man with bewitching blue eyes. It doesn’t take long, though, for everything Blaine thought was real to fall to pieces. For his world to dissolve into a twisted dance of fear and heat and blood.
Notes: I... don't quite know how this story came into existence. I swear I'm not a supernatural author, and yet this just keeps happening. :) This is probably the closest thing to horror fiction that I've ever written, and I'm excited to hear what you all think. I've enabled anonymous commenting for all you tumblr folks without LJ accounts. (If anyone wants to know my tumblr, it's here. :3)
Also, apologies for the completely arbitrary page break. Silly LJ and its word limits.
Chapter One | Chapter Two | Chapter Three | Chapter Four | Chapter Five | Chapter Six | Chapter Seven | Chapter Eight | Chapter Nine | Chapter Ten | Epilogue
--
It doesn’t happen every night.
Blaine thinks that might make it worse, in the end: the uncertainly. The way his stomach twists up into tight, tension-filled knots as it gets later and later, his ears on edge for the slightest shift of movement outside his apartment door. It doesn’t always happen at the same time. There’s no way to be sure.
Most nights, the phone rings instead - and some nights, nothing happens at all. Some nights he sits and waits on the couch, back rigid and waiting with every nerve frayed and thin until exhaustion finally overtakes him. Blaine will wake up the next morning, stiff and sore and poorly rested, and realize that nothing happened. That he has at least a few more hours before the dread, horrible and thick, starts to creep up inside of him again.
But tonight...
It’s past one in the morning when he finally comes. No padded footsteps can be heard from the outside hall; there is no warning for his arrival at all. He never makes any noise if he doesn’t want to.
The long, dragged scraaape of sharp fingernails running down the wood of his doorframe is what alerts Blaine of his presence. Scratch, scratch, scratch on the wood of the door.
“Blaine,” the high, sing-song voice drifts through the door. Beautiful and musical and terrifying. The fingernails continue to scratch. Jagged, harsh noises amid the beauty of the voice. “Let me inside, Blaine. Just open the door and let me in, I know you want to.”
Terror, raw and hard and unstoppable, fills Blaine’s entire body like an electric shock. When there is still uncertainty, no way to tell whether tonight will be the night, Blaine tends to find himself just wishing he knew for sure. As soon as that voice first starts to call to him, however, he would do anything to have that ignorance back. It’s a hundred times worse, hearing him right outside. Sounding playful and seductive, and ever-so-slightly admonishing.
There is a shadow beneath the door of a figure outside. Lips pressed together and hands shaking, Blaine remains silent.
“Why won’t you talk to me, Blaine?” asks the voice, sounding slightly pouty. The fingernails scratch down the doorframe in a hard, fast scrape. “I can hear your heart beating from here, you know. It’s so fast. So scared.” The scratch, scratch, scratch of the nails. “If you let me in, you don’t have to be scared anymore. It’ll all be over. Don’t you want it to be over?”
A tiny, choked out noise escapes from Blaine’s throat without permission. The scratching stops; outside the door, the figure makes a happy noise in the back of his throat.
“We can’t play this game forever, beautiful thing,” he purrs, and the scrape is lighter now - perhaps just one nail down the doorframe. “Can’t keep teasing me like this.”
The nails are back now, rough and loud and sharp as they drag down the door.
Blaine squeezes his eyes shut against the noise, wrapping his arms around his own shaking torso as fear pounds with his blood in his veins.
--
“The library will be closing in fifteen minutes. Please make your final selections and proceed to the front desk.”
The cheerful drone of the pre-recorded female voice over the intercom manages to wrench Blaine out of his absorption with the thick, dry text in front of him on the table. He blinks at the surprise of being jolted away from contract interpretation and remedies for breach, noticing for the first time that there is darkness outside the windows. Which is ridiculous, though, because the library closes at eleven o’clock on Wednesdays, and he can’t possibly have been here for five hours without noticing.
A quick glance down at his watch - expensive and handsome, a present from his parents when he finished his undergrad - proves that the automated recording is correct. The tiny hands remain firm in their assessment that it is, in fact, only a few minutes before closing. The slight buzzing from the dim lights that he had managed to tone out with his tunnel-vision reading and note-writing drifts gradually back into Blaine’s awareness. He moves to straighten up in his seat, and his back cracks loudly in the silence at having been hunched over and stuffed into a sturdy wooden chair for several hours without moving. For the first time, Blaine registers just how sore and achy his body is.
Stiffly, Blaine saves the fifteen pages of typed notes and then backs them up on his keychain thumbdrive (he learned years ago about the horrors of computers crashing the day before important assignments are due) before quickly e-mailing a copy of them to himself just in case, not even bothering with a header. It only takes a few moments to shove the unfairly large textbook into his book bag along with his laptop. Running a hand through his messy curls, Blaine grabs his jacket from where it hangs over the back of his chair to put it on, slings his book bag over one shoulder - and heads for the exit.
The New York University School of Law Library has a thick, musty air about it that never seems to go away no matter how thoroughly the staff claim to clean it during break. The age of its stacks and halls is palpable; there are imprints of a thousand students’ fingerprints on pages and the ghosts of worn footsteps on the floors. The building itself is antiquated and respectable; practically the Platonic ideal of what an old-world library should appear. The study chairs and tables are thick and wooden, with low-hanging overhead lamps designed to resemble chandeliers in the upper levels. On the ground floor, little green-glass table-top lamps dot the desks in a way Blaine had always thought only existed in period films before he arrived here. The shelves are all solid and dark, lined with row after unfathomable row of leather-bound books. Just how many books reside within this building - the sheer number of documents, newspapers, archives, and heavy texts housed within such a compact space - has left Blaine feeling weak-kneed and slightly sick on more than one occasion.
Heading toward the exit, Blaine catches himself glancing around idly for other students; tucked away in study rooms, perhaps, or emerging from dark corners. He doesn’t see anyone, though; they must have not toned out the first few closing announcements the way he did. Blaine might just be the very last student here tonight.
What’s surprising about that, Anderson? Blaine asks himself sardonically, nodding to the lone librarian at the front desk on his way out. It’s almost eleven o’clock on a Wednesday night. Even the other Law students all have places to be. Except for you, of course.
Except for me, he thinks wearily, pushing the front door open. Blaine winces as the chill of the night air hits him, fresh and brisk and smelling of city in autumn. It had been sunny when he left his apartment. Blaine clutches the brown corduroy of his jacket around him a little bit tighter in a pointless gesture of resistance against the cold as he heads to the nearest station to catch the subway home.
Sometimes, on nights like these, it’s hard for Blaine to love his life the way he knows he should. When his Law school friends, driven just as out of their minds as he is by revision and frantically cramming tort and procedure and civil liability into their heads, invite him to come along with them for drinks and he just can’t accept, can’t say yes because he just doesn’t relate to them in some important way and it’s like trying to fit a square peg into a round hole. When he’s on his way home to a well-kept, empty apartment that his parents pay for in the Upper East Side because he had to stay somewhere at least a little respectable.
When he can’t help but feel that he’s putting on a face - just putting on front of politeness and consideration to everyone he meets because no one he knows cares even a little bit about who he actually is.
As he walks down the steps, and swipes his Metrocard, and slides into the first train heading in the right direction, Blaine finds himself wishing. In that absent way that doesn’t mean anything, the what-if-I-maybe that could never come to pass. He’s come too far at this point, has to remind himself that he’s too close to completing something extraordinary for regrets or melancholy.
Regardless of actual intent, however, Blaine finds himself sitting in the not-too-crowded subway car and wishing he had fought harder for music when he came out of high school.
It isn’t that he doesn’t enjoy law. He does - he had to, in order to get through his undergrad and pass the LSAT with a high enough score to get him into one of the most prestigious Law schools in the country. Blaine is good at throwing himself entirely into whatever he puts his mind to, and the show of the court room has always managed to hold a certain appeal to him. But even though Dalton Academy had done a wonderful job preparing him for the strenuous academics of post-secondary, it had also nourished a profound love of music within him. He’d had piano lessons for as long as he could remember, but the joy of performing - of getting onto a stage, opening his mouth, and making a whole crowd of people happy - had been something else entirely.
His parents had never pressured him into Law, exactly. They’d both let him know that they wanted him to be happy more than anything else, to find something he was good at and shine. But his father had repeated that a career in the arts is so unstable, Blaine, do you really want to live the rest of your life like that? And his mother had said wouldn’t you rather have something solid that you can count on, darling boy, for when you have a family?
And after a while, it had seemed like the logical thing to do. The smart thing. The grown-up decision, no more fooling around.
For the first few years of his undergrad, Blaine had made an effort to go to open mic nights occasionally. On the small stages of cafés, he would always feel more like himself than he had all week at school: belting out the most recent pop hits with a twist, making people laugh and smile and boisterous applause filling up the tiny venues. But school had picked up in his third year, and it had become more and more difficult to ensure those nights happened. And now... god, it’s been years since Blaine performed in public. He wouldn’t know where to start, even if he did have the time.
Blaine knows that he is living a dream; going to a prestigious school, living in his own apartment in New York City.
He tries his best to ignore the every-so-often realizations that it just doesn’t happen to be his dream.
The subway car rumbles around him like a sleeping lion as it slides along, shaking every so often in a way he doesn’t even notice anymore. Blaine has been living in New York for almost five years now; knows its faces, it places, its people. When it lurches to a halt at his stop, Blaine disembarks and walks to the station a block away to transfer on autopilot; although he lived in dorms for the first few years, he’s been living in his apartment for almost two years now. He knows the route there and back like the back of his hand; could probably do it in his sleep, if he had to. (Sometimes, on those days when finals are rushing toward him like an oncoming storm and it’s all he can do not to break down and cry like a child, staring at his inadequate notes and the dozens of textbooks and so much to dohe might explode, it feels as though he has.)
He rides the train, avoiding eye contact out of habit, and thinks.
All together, it only takes him a little over half an hour to get to his home stop. The chill of the late-night air hits him again like a slap in the face when he ascends to the top of the stairs. It isn’t too far a walk home, thankfully; his stomach is twisting in the realization that it hasn’t had anything to eat since lunch, and he can’t wait to get inside and turn up the heat.
Adjusting his heavy bag, Blaine is just walking turning a corner when something catches his attention out of the corner of his eye. Movement in the small alley off to his left, a stifled shout. He freezes in place mid-step, ears on edge. Another muffled noise - shuffling feet, a muffled cry - jolt across his perception like a shock of lightening. A horrible suspicion is starting to grow inside his chest; no matter how long he lives here, it never quite manages to stop hitting Blaine that he isn’t in Westerville anymore. Without thinking twice Blaine turns around, backtracks, and peers into the dimness of the alley.
His vision is obscured with darkness and the shadowed light from the streetlamp, but the outlines of two figures struggling is clearly discernable below the distinct silhouette of a fire escape. At a glance, Blaine can tell that one of the figures is large and brutish, and that the other is slender and small. Even with their arms entangled, it’s immediately obvious that this is in no way a fight of equals: one of figures is maybe only half the size of the other. The burly one lets out a sharp, grunted noise as the two of them thrash about violently in the dark.
What happens next occurs too quickly for Blaine to fully process his own actions. One second, he is standing in frozen shock - and the next, he is running into the fray.
“Hey!” Blaine shouts, voice barked out and commanding. Adrenaline is rushing through his limbs, making his head foggy and brightly clear all at once. “Hey, stop it!”
Blindly, hoping to hell the other guy doesn’t have a knife (or oh, god, a gun), Blaine stands his ground. No matter how stupid this move might have been, it’s too late to back out now - and there’s no way n hell he’s leaving the girl alone in here and walking away. Blaine doesn’t own mace or even a pocket knife, but he grips the strap of his book bag with white-knuckled fingers as he stands off against the shadowed people.
Immediately, the smaller figure stops struggling, freezing up - and the big guy pulls away from her with a shouted noise. As the man tumbles back, he steps into a patch of light from the streetlamp. It’s a large man, as the dim light had hinted, wearing a hooded sweatshirt and a pair of jeans. He’s shaking, beady eyes darting between Blaine and the girl in the shadows with a look of absolute terror. Something twinges in Blaine’s mind - even though the guy should be scared of being found out, Blaine is still fairly certain he’s bigger than the two of them combined. He dismisses the thought as irrelevant, gripping the strap of his book bag in what he hopes to be a threatening manner.
But the man doesn’t charge at either of them. Instead, he stumbles back, lets out an unsteady, wordless shout - and proceeds to speed past Blaine and run out of the alley and into the street as fast as his feet will take him.
Time hangs in the dimness of the night, and Blaine’s heart is pounding in his chest. His body is thrumming and awake and on edge with adrenaline, muscles stiff and still clenching the strap of his bag so hard it hurts. But after a few long seconds, the moment seems to break. The tension rushes out, and Blaine lets out a sharp, nervous exclamation of laughter that fumbles its way across the night air.
“Oh, god,” he pants in dazed relief, letting go of his bag strap in order to clutch at his chest. His face feels flushed, and his glasses are askew on his face. Nervous laughter dries up as he re-registers the person with him, and worry floods his chest. Heart pounding in his ears, Blaine takes a step toward the figure in the shadows. “Are you okay?” he asks. “He didn’t hurt you, did he?”
The figure slowly steps out of the shadows and into a patch of light, and shock ripples through Blaine’s chest as he realizes that it isn’t a woman at all. It’s a young man, not possibly a day older than eighteen and probably even younger: the slender lines of his body had confused Blaine in the dark. He’s fully clothed, which is a relief for reasons Blaine doesn’t want to dwell on; dressed in a snugly-fitting blue button-up shirt with no jacket, jeans so tight they’re positively sinful, and tall black boots.
The breath leaves Blaine’s lungs as though winded when he takes in how obscenely beautiful this boy is. Delicate and fey, with sharp lines to his body as though he’d been cut out of stone. Skin so pale it hurts, from the sweep of his cheekbones to the tiny amount of skin exposed by the buttons left undone on his shirt. His hair is swept up into an artful mimicry of unkemptness. There is a sweet curve to his mouth, and his eyes - oh, his eyes. Stunning blue, and shining impossibly bright through the dark.
For the briefest of moments, Blaine thinks he sees a hint of red twisted up in the blue of his eyes - but it must be a trick of the light, because it’s gone in the very next instant.
“Oh,” says Blaine stupidly, trying not to stare. The boy is stunning in an unnatural way that reminds him of models and film stars; the kind of people to be found splayed across advertisements and television sets, not in a place like this. Trying to suppress the flush growing in his cheeks, Blaine gives his head a firm shake. This is neither the time nor the place, and certainly not the circumstance. “I’m sorry,” Blaine tries again, “but - really, are you okay?”
All at once, the way in which the other boy is staring at him hits Blaine square in the chest. The boy is breathing in deeply through his nose, looking unsteady on his feet as he tilts his head and looks. The blue of his eyes drag up and down the length of Blaine’s body as though seeing a miracle - as though seeing something that can't possibly exist. The sharp closeness of his gaze makes Blaine feel oddly exposed, on display. He fidgets under it, not knowing how to respond or what to say.
The boy stares at him, unspeaking, for a long moment; his hands are shaking against his sides. Carefully, his eyes dart to the street where the attacker had run off, and then back to Blaine.
And slowly - very slowly - he smiles.
“Thank you,” he says at last, and his voice is higher and clearer than Blaine had been expecting. Practically angelic when matched against his particular type of beauty. His voice contrasts sharply with the slight grime of their surroundings. The boy cocks his head to one side, eyes locked on Blaine, and Blaine feels something painful clutch inside his chest. “I don’t know what I would’ve done if you hadn’t come along.” He lifts his arm up and extends one long-fingered, pale hand in Blaine’s direction, never once breaking eye contact. “I’m Kurt.”
Blaine stares down at the hand for a half second longer than strictly necessary, but before long he can feel a relieved smile tugging at his lips.
“I’m Blaine,” he says in return, reaching up to take Kurt’s hand in his to shake it. Kurt’s grip is firmer than he expects it to be, the skin softer - and slightly cool to the touch. “Oh, god, you’re freezing,” exclaims Blaine in horror, letting go of Kurt’s hand to lower his book bag to the ground and strip off his own jacket. It’s cold, but he’s warm with the rush of remaining fear and adrenaline - and besides, he isn’t the one who almost got assaulted just now. He holds it out for Kurt to take. “Here.”
Kurt stares at the brown corduroy without saying a word. After a moment, however, he takes it gratefully and slides it over his own shoulders. It’s the smallest bit short on him, fitting around the shoulders but loose around his waist. It looks good, Blaine thinks. He rather suspects that most things would look good on Kurt, but the fact that this is his jacket makes something heated rush through his fingertips.
Suddenly, Blaine cannot help from letting out a nervous choke of a laugh.
“I’m sorry,” Blaine rushes to explain, feeling slightly hysterical. “It’s not you, I swear, I just... I haven’t been in a fight since high school.” Another nervous giggle. “And I lost that one pretty spectacularly. That was... I have no idea what to do now.”
“That’s fine,” says Kurt, smile tugging at the corners of his lips. “This isn’t a situation I’m too familiar with either, I promise.”
“Do you want me to walk you home?” asks Blaine quickly, a rush of genuine concern making masculine protectiveness follow quickly in its wake. It’s late at night, after all. There are people who could look at Kurt, with his slender arms and small sharp features, as an easy target. Blaine knows the odds are against Kurt running into another person as eager to take advantage of him in so short a timeframe, but he doesn’t feel willing to risk it after what’s already happened tonight.
The other boy pauses for a moment to think, still staring at Blaine as though he is some kind of marvel. It makes sadness and anger at the world twist in Blaine’s stomach, that the idea of someone helping Kurt without expecting anything in return is obviously so foreign to him. After a moment, however, Kurt nods.
“I live pretty far from here,” says Kurt, inclining his head toward the street. “But... how about I walk you home, and then I can hail a cab from there? That way, neither of us goes unescorted.”
“Okay,” Blaine nods enthusiastically, feeling relieved for more reasons than one as he picks up his bag and starts to walk them toward the entrance of the alley.
Kurt follows him out into streetlamps and the hundred little lights of the city at night; illuminated, his features appear even more sharp and lovely. Although long years of university have taught Blaine to save his contacts for days when he won’t be reading tiny print for hours on end, and that physical appearances are worth a whole lot less around midterm season, Blaine suddenly very much wishes he’d had time for hair gel and contact lenses this morning. He practically feels dowdy in comparison.
Together, they begin to walk toward Blaine’s apartment. Blaine goes for a quick step at first, unsure if Kurt would rather not be out on the night streets for any longer than absolutely necessary tonight. To his mild surprise, though, Kurt keeps the pace slow; when they finally fall into sync beside one another, they’re practically strolling.
They can’t see the stars -never can, in the city - but it’s a beautiful night anyways. Crisp and slightly foggy, red and orange leaves from the decorative trees mingling along the sides of the road. A few cars and cabs pass them by every so often, but this neighbourhood is usually fairly tame on something as mundane as Wednesday night.
It’s cold without a jacket, but Blaine doesn’t mind. He ignores the gooseflesh rising along his arms and tries to suppress the shiver threatening to run through him.
“So,” Blaine begins, trying to keep his eyes in front of him and not on the beautiful boy beside him. “What brings you around this part of the city so late if you live far away?”
“I was over at a friend’s house and decided it would be fine to walk back,” explains Kurt evenly, shrugging. He wraps his slender arms, swimming in the jacket sleeves, around himself; Blaine can see the muscles of his back moving beneath the fabric. “Apparently not.” He looks over at Blaine, eyes piercing. “What about you? Why are you out and about? A party?”
Blaine cannot quite manage to contain his snort of laughter.
“Um, no,” he explains quickly to Kurt’s delicately raised eyebrow. “I’m doing my post-grad at NYU Law. I take it pretty seriously, so I don’t have too much time for fun stuff. Not that I wouldn’t want to!” he hastens to add as Kurt’s expression grows ever-more amused. “It’s just... hard to find time, sometimes.”
“Law school,” pronounces Kurt grandly, enunciating the words as though they are foreign to him. His eyebrows have flown firmly up into his hairline. “I’m impressed. I admit, though, I wouldn’t have guessed it. What specialization do you want to get into?”
“Civil litigation,” Blaine rails off quickly, because this is the question everyone always asks, even though you don’t have to declare a specialization like you would a Major program in an undergrad degree. “I enjoy embracing conflict and controversy, and feel I possess the necessary interpersonal and negotiation skills for the job.”
There is a pause -- before Kurt lets out a high, musical laugh. Blaine blinks.
“I’m sorry,” says Kurt, covering his mouth with his hand and doing a bad job of hiding his smile. He doesn’t appear to be mocking Blaine, or being cruel. He’s just... laughing. “It just - it just sounds like you’re reciting that out of a book, or something.”
The tension in Blaine’s body relaxes, and he can feel a goofy grin stealing over his face against his will. “I sort of am,” he admits sheepishly, reaching up to rake a hand through his untidy mess of curls. Beside him, Kurt moves so that they’re walking a little closer. As they turn the corner, Blaine’s heart races a little at the proximity. “Well,” says Blaine at last, mustering as much pomp as he can. “What would you have guessed, Mr. All-Knowing-One?”
“Hmmm,” Kurt hums deviously, raking his eyes up and down Blaine’s body pointedly. Blaine feels his face grow warm, and again he mentally kicks himself for deciding that today was allowed to be a casual day. Kurt leans in close to inspect him, inhaling deeply as he does so. His eyelids flutter in the smallest possible way, and he shivers. “I’m thinking... maybe a teacher? Wait, no. Painter. Dancer? Soul of an artist, definitely.”
“I used to sing in high school,” Blaine admits, and something almost-painful twists in his chest. It shouldn’t hurt, thinking about that. Except it sort of does. “I played the piano, too. I don’t do either of those very much now, though.”
He can feel Kurt’s eyes burning into him stronger than ever, and when Blaine looks over to return the look as they walk he finds Kurt’s expression frozen into something almost sad.
“I used to sing too, when I was younger,” says Kurt slowly, tilting his head to one side. His eyes are so blue as they look at him; it makes prickles of excitement tingle in his fingertips. Blaine would feel uncomfortable under the intensity of the stare, but it feels... nice. Not awkward in the way it should, since the two of them have only just crossed paths a few short minutes ago.
The words hit him after a moment, however, and he raises an eyebrow.
“Younger?” he asks sceptically. “You can’t be more than... what, nineteen?” In this situation, over-guessing is probably safer than under-guessing. Kurt’s eyes twinkle.
“I’m a little bit older than I look,” he says covertly, as though disclosing a big secret, and Blaine laughs out loud.
Much faster than should really be fair, Blaine thinks, they arrive at the entrance to the grey-stoned building he lives in. He slows their pace to a standstill, and Blaine is almost positive he’s never been less happy to see his own building. There are a couple of people on this stretch of road: a couple with a small dog out for a late night walk, a man carrying grocery bags. Blaine’s building doesn’t have a doorman, however. He makes an awkward gesture toward the doors.
“Here we are,” says Blaine stiltedly, wishing he could conjure up some of the gentlemanly charm that always makes girls seem so happy with him. All that he’s coming up with, however, is nervousness. Kurt moves so that they are standing in front of one another in front of his door, looking him right in the eye. Blaine starts to subconsciously lick his lips, but catches himself mid-movement and stops himself.
“It’s late,” says Kurt quietly, glancing up at the building and back down to Blaine. He bites down on his lower lips he looks Blaine up and down. “You should be getting back to your... girlfriend? Boyfriend?”
“What?” asks Blaine stupidly, before realizing. “Oh. No! No, I don’t have - I mean, if I did it would be a boyfriend, but...” Kurt’s eyebrows have flown up into his hairline again, and his lips are pursed in amusement. “I live alone,” he finishes in a rush, feeling a flush creeping down his neck. He’s so bad at this, shouldn’t be bad at this but he always has been. Romance has never been his strong suit, as much as he used to enjoy pretending otherwise when he was younger.
Not that this is romance. Kurt was almost assaulted tonight, he’s fragile. You should ask for his number to call and meet up for coffee sometime, not...
But Kurt is already leaning in, reaching out a hand lightning-quick and sliding it to rest on the small of Blaine’s back. Blaine feels himself inhale sharply, feeling as though his entire body is vibrating as the other boy pulls him close with a surprisingly strong grip. Blaine’s eyes begin to flutter closed, and his lips are practically buzzing in anticipation of being kissed. But Kurt doesn’t press their lips together; instead, he angles his head slightly to the right - and ghosts his lips over the side of Blaine’s neck.
“I -” Blaine begins, but is cut off by a soft press of lips against the sensitive skin. Kurt still feels slightly cool to the touch, but his breath is slow and warm against Blaine’s skin. The gentle brush of lips is soft and firm and perfect against the curve of his neck. Blaine gasps as Kurt noses along the skin, their bodies pressed close together, and the tiny helpless noises he can hear coming out of Kurt’s throat are going straight to his cock. He reaches up and grips a hand tight into the fabric of his own jacket on Kurt’s shoulders, shuddering because this is somehow so much more intimate than kissing and they’ve only just met but it feels so good. Kurt’s hand clenches hard at the small of his back, and -
And suddenly, Kurt jerks violently away and out of Blaine’s grasp, looking wild-eyed and tense as he stumbles back. Blaine stares, breathing hard and shocked at the sudden shift, before realization hits him. He averts his eyes to the ground guiltily.
“I’m so sorry,” he chokes out, shaking his head and staring fixedly down at the pavement. “I shouldn’t have let that happen, you’ve - you’ve had a rough night and it would be taking advantage, I know.” Blaine runs a shaking hand through his messy hair in agitation, squeezing his eyes shut in mortification. “Let’s just - we’ll hail you a cab, okay? And we can think about all this another -”
But when Blaine opens his eyes and raises his gaze, Kurt is no longer there.
The sidewalk in front of him is completely empty; the space vacant and hollow in the night air. Blaine’s mouth falls open and he blinks in surprise, words catching in his throat. He hadn’t heard the slightest sounds of movement or running away, but it is as though no one had been standing in front of him at all.
He looks around ineffectually for a few moments, but Kurt is nowhere to be found.
Disappointment and shame well up hard and strong inside of him, squeezing at his heart and making it feel as though his stomach has gone hollow. Somehow, despite everything, he’d managed to fuck this up after all. He should have jerked away as Kurt started to move in: given the other boy the proper time he needed to figure everything out. But it had all felt so good, and right, and...
Blinking hard, Blaine bites down on his lip and tries his best not to feel discarded. As the cold air burns against his naked arms and face, he tries to ignore the missed opportunities weighing down his mind like sandbags. He has no idea where Kurt lives, or even what his last name is: there’s absolutely no way Blaine is going to be able to find him now.
Feeling surreal, Blaine lets out a heavy sigh. Trying his hardest not to go over everything he could have done differently, he pulls his keys out of his jeans pocket and lets himself into the building.
It isn’t until he reaches his own apartment, after having travelled four floors up to get there, that it occurs to Blaine that he never got his jacket back.
Click here to continue to part two.
Let me know what you think, everyone! <3
Title: "Until My Dying Breath" -- Chapter One
Author: emilianadarling
Fandom: Glee
Pairing: Kurt/Blaine
Rating: NC-17
Warnings: Vampire AU with all the unpleasantness that entails. Violence, grotesque descriptions, dark setting, fear, minor past character death. Warnings on a chapter by chapter basis.
Length: 140,000 in total. 11,500-ish for this chapter
Story Summary: On his way home from campus to his apartment on the Upper East Side, Blaine Anderson happens to come across a beautiful young man with bewitching blue eyes. It doesn’t take long, though, for everything Blaine thought was real to fall to pieces. For his world to dissolve into a twisted dance of fear and heat and blood.
Notes: I... don't quite know how this story came into existence. I swear I'm not a supernatural author, and yet this just keeps happening. :) This is probably the closest thing to horror fiction that I've ever written, and I'm excited to hear what you all think. I've enabled anonymous commenting for all you tumblr folks without LJ accounts. (If anyone wants to know my tumblr, it's here. :3)
Also, apologies for the completely arbitrary page break. Silly LJ and its word limits.
Chapter One | Chapter Two | Chapter Three | Chapter Four | Chapter Five | Chapter Six | Chapter Seven | Chapter Eight | Chapter Nine | Chapter Ten | Epilogue
--
It doesn’t happen every night.
Blaine thinks that might make it worse, in the end: the uncertainly. The way his stomach twists up into tight, tension-filled knots as it gets later and later, his ears on edge for the slightest shift of movement outside his apartment door. It doesn’t always happen at the same time. There’s no way to be sure.
Most nights, the phone rings instead - and some nights, nothing happens at all. Some nights he sits and waits on the couch, back rigid and waiting with every nerve frayed and thin until exhaustion finally overtakes him. Blaine will wake up the next morning, stiff and sore and poorly rested, and realize that nothing happened. That he has at least a few more hours before the dread, horrible and thick, starts to creep up inside of him again.
But tonight...
It’s past one in the morning when he finally comes. No padded footsteps can be heard from the outside hall; there is no warning for his arrival at all. He never makes any noise if he doesn’t want to.
The long, dragged scraaape of sharp fingernails running down the wood of his doorframe is what alerts Blaine of his presence. Scratch, scratch, scratch on the wood of the door.
“Blaine,” the high, sing-song voice drifts through the door. Beautiful and musical and terrifying. The fingernails continue to scratch. Jagged, harsh noises amid the beauty of the voice. “Let me inside, Blaine. Just open the door and let me in, I know you want to.”
Terror, raw and hard and unstoppable, fills Blaine’s entire body like an electric shock. When there is still uncertainty, no way to tell whether tonight will be the night, Blaine tends to find himself just wishing he knew for sure. As soon as that voice first starts to call to him, however, he would do anything to have that ignorance back. It’s a hundred times worse, hearing him right outside. Sounding playful and seductive, and ever-so-slightly admonishing.
There is a shadow beneath the door of a figure outside. Lips pressed together and hands shaking, Blaine remains silent.
“Why won’t you talk to me, Blaine?” asks the voice, sounding slightly pouty. The fingernails scratch down the doorframe in a hard, fast scrape. “I can hear your heart beating from here, you know. It’s so fast. So scared.” The scratch, scratch, scratch of the nails. “If you let me in, you don’t have to be scared anymore. It’ll all be over. Don’t you want it to be over?”
A tiny, choked out noise escapes from Blaine’s throat without permission. The scratching stops; outside the door, the figure makes a happy noise in the back of his throat.
“We can’t play this game forever, beautiful thing,” he purrs, and the scrape is lighter now - perhaps just one nail down the doorframe. “Can’t keep teasing me like this.”
The nails are back now, rough and loud and sharp as they drag down the door.
Blaine squeezes his eyes shut against the noise, wrapping his arms around his own shaking torso as fear pounds with his blood in his veins.
--
“The library will be closing in fifteen minutes. Please make your final selections and proceed to the front desk.”
The cheerful drone of the pre-recorded female voice over the intercom manages to wrench Blaine out of his absorption with the thick, dry text in front of him on the table. He blinks at the surprise of being jolted away from contract interpretation and remedies for breach, noticing for the first time that there is darkness outside the windows. Which is ridiculous, though, because the library closes at eleven o’clock on Wednesdays, and he can’t possibly have been here for five hours without noticing.
A quick glance down at his watch - expensive and handsome, a present from his parents when he finished his undergrad - proves that the automated recording is correct. The tiny hands remain firm in their assessment that it is, in fact, only a few minutes before closing. The slight buzzing from the dim lights that he had managed to tone out with his tunnel-vision reading and note-writing drifts gradually back into Blaine’s awareness. He moves to straighten up in his seat, and his back cracks loudly in the silence at having been hunched over and stuffed into a sturdy wooden chair for several hours without moving. For the first time, Blaine registers just how sore and achy his body is.
Stiffly, Blaine saves the fifteen pages of typed notes and then backs them up on his keychain thumbdrive (he learned years ago about the horrors of computers crashing the day before important assignments are due) before quickly e-mailing a copy of them to himself just in case, not even bothering with a header. It only takes a few moments to shove the unfairly large textbook into his book bag along with his laptop. Running a hand through his messy curls, Blaine grabs his jacket from where it hangs over the back of his chair to put it on, slings his book bag over one shoulder - and heads for the exit.
The New York University School of Law Library has a thick, musty air about it that never seems to go away no matter how thoroughly the staff claim to clean it during break. The age of its stacks and halls is palpable; there are imprints of a thousand students’ fingerprints on pages and the ghosts of worn footsteps on the floors. The building itself is antiquated and respectable; practically the Platonic ideal of what an old-world library should appear. The study chairs and tables are thick and wooden, with low-hanging overhead lamps designed to resemble chandeliers in the upper levels. On the ground floor, little green-glass table-top lamps dot the desks in a way Blaine had always thought only existed in period films before he arrived here. The shelves are all solid and dark, lined with row after unfathomable row of leather-bound books. Just how many books reside within this building - the sheer number of documents, newspapers, archives, and heavy texts housed within such a compact space - has left Blaine feeling weak-kneed and slightly sick on more than one occasion.
Heading toward the exit, Blaine catches himself glancing around idly for other students; tucked away in study rooms, perhaps, or emerging from dark corners. He doesn’t see anyone, though; they must have not toned out the first few closing announcements the way he did. Blaine might just be the very last student here tonight.
What’s surprising about that, Anderson? Blaine asks himself sardonically, nodding to the lone librarian at the front desk on his way out. It’s almost eleven o’clock on a Wednesday night. Even the other Law students all have places to be. Except for you, of course.
Except for me, he thinks wearily, pushing the front door open. Blaine winces as the chill of the night air hits him, fresh and brisk and smelling of city in autumn. It had been sunny when he left his apartment. Blaine clutches the brown corduroy of his jacket around him a little bit tighter in a pointless gesture of resistance against the cold as he heads to the nearest station to catch the subway home.
Sometimes, on nights like these, it’s hard for Blaine to love his life the way he knows he should. When his Law school friends, driven just as out of their minds as he is by revision and frantically cramming tort and procedure and civil liability into their heads, invite him to come along with them for drinks and he just can’t accept, can’t say yes because he just doesn’t relate to them in some important way and it’s like trying to fit a square peg into a round hole. When he’s on his way home to a well-kept, empty apartment that his parents pay for in the Upper East Side because he had to stay somewhere at least a little respectable.
When he can’t help but feel that he’s putting on a face - just putting on front of politeness and consideration to everyone he meets because no one he knows cares even a little bit about who he actually is.
As he walks down the steps, and swipes his Metrocard, and slides into the first train heading in the right direction, Blaine finds himself wishing. In that absent way that doesn’t mean anything, the what-if-I-maybe that could never come to pass. He’s come too far at this point, has to remind himself that he’s too close to completing something extraordinary for regrets or melancholy.
Regardless of actual intent, however, Blaine finds himself sitting in the not-too-crowded subway car and wishing he had fought harder for music when he came out of high school.
It isn’t that he doesn’t enjoy law. He does - he had to, in order to get through his undergrad and pass the LSAT with a high enough score to get him into one of the most prestigious Law schools in the country. Blaine is good at throwing himself entirely into whatever he puts his mind to, and the show of the court room has always managed to hold a certain appeal to him. But even though Dalton Academy had done a wonderful job preparing him for the strenuous academics of post-secondary, it had also nourished a profound love of music within him. He’d had piano lessons for as long as he could remember, but the joy of performing - of getting onto a stage, opening his mouth, and making a whole crowd of people happy - had been something else entirely.
His parents had never pressured him into Law, exactly. They’d both let him know that they wanted him to be happy more than anything else, to find something he was good at and shine. But his father had repeated that a career in the arts is so unstable, Blaine, do you really want to live the rest of your life like that? And his mother had said wouldn’t you rather have something solid that you can count on, darling boy, for when you have a family?
And after a while, it had seemed like the logical thing to do. The smart thing. The grown-up decision, no more fooling around.
For the first few years of his undergrad, Blaine had made an effort to go to open mic nights occasionally. On the small stages of cafés, he would always feel more like himself than he had all week at school: belting out the most recent pop hits with a twist, making people laugh and smile and boisterous applause filling up the tiny venues. But school had picked up in his third year, and it had become more and more difficult to ensure those nights happened. And now... god, it’s been years since Blaine performed in public. He wouldn’t know where to start, even if he did have the time.
Blaine knows that he is living a dream; going to a prestigious school, living in his own apartment in New York City.
He tries his best to ignore the every-so-often realizations that it just doesn’t happen to be his dream.
The subway car rumbles around him like a sleeping lion as it slides along, shaking every so often in a way he doesn’t even notice anymore. Blaine has been living in New York for almost five years now; knows its faces, it places, its people. When it lurches to a halt at his stop, Blaine disembarks and walks to the station a block away to transfer on autopilot; although he lived in dorms for the first few years, he’s been living in his apartment for almost two years now. He knows the route there and back like the back of his hand; could probably do it in his sleep, if he had to. (Sometimes, on those days when finals are rushing toward him like an oncoming storm and it’s all he can do not to break down and cry like a child, staring at his inadequate notes and the dozens of textbooks and so much to dohe might explode, it feels as though he has.)
He rides the train, avoiding eye contact out of habit, and thinks.
All together, it only takes him a little over half an hour to get to his home stop. The chill of the late-night air hits him again like a slap in the face when he ascends to the top of the stairs. It isn’t too far a walk home, thankfully; his stomach is twisting in the realization that it hasn’t had anything to eat since lunch, and he can’t wait to get inside and turn up the heat.
Adjusting his heavy bag, Blaine is just walking turning a corner when something catches his attention out of the corner of his eye. Movement in the small alley off to his left, a stifled shout. He freezes in place mid-step, ears on edge. Another muffled noise - shuffling feet, a muffled cry - jolt across his perception like a shock of lightening. A horrible suspicion is starting to grow inside his chest; no matter how long he lives here, it never quite manages to stop hitting Blaine that he isn’t in Westerville anymore. Without thinking twice Blaine turns around, backtracks, and peers into the dimness of the alley.
His vision is obscured with darkness and the shadowed light from the streetlamp, but the outlines of two figures struggling is clearly discernable below the distinct silhouette of a fire escape. At a glance, Blaine can tell that one of the figures is large and brutish, and that the other is slender and small. Even with their arms entangled, it’s immediately obvious that this is in no way a fight of equals: one of figures is maybe only half the size of the other. The burly one lets out a sharp, grunted noise as the two of them thrash about violently in the dark.
What happens next occurs too quickly for Blaine to fully process his own actions. One second, he is standing in frozen shock - and the next, he is running into the fray.
“Hey!” Blaine shouts, voice barked out and commanding. Adrenaline is rushing through his limbs, making his head foggy and brightly clear all at once. “Hey, stop it!”
Blindly, hoping to hell the other guy doesn’t have a knife (or oh, god, a gun), Blaine stands his ground. No matter how stupid this move might have been, it’s too late to back out now - and there’s no way n hell he’s leaving the girl alone in here and walking away. Blaine doesn’t own mace or even a pocket knife, but he grips the strap of his book bag with white-knuckled fingers as he stands off against the shadowed people.
Immediately, the smaller figure stops struggling, freezing up - and the big guy pulls away from her with a shouted noise. As the man tumbles back, he steps into a patch of light from the streetlamp. It’s a large man, as the dim light had hinted, wearing a hooded sweatshirt and a pair of jeans. He’s shaking, beady eyes darting between Blaine and the girl in the shadows with a look of absolute terror. Something twinges in Blaine’s mind - even though the guy should be scared of being found out, Blaine is still fairly certain he’s bigger than the two of them combined. He dismisses the thought as irrelevant, gripping the strap of his book bag in what he hopes to be a threatening manner.
But the man doesn’t charge at either of them. Instead, he stumbles back, lets out an unsteady, wordless shout - and proceeds to speed past Blaine and run out of the alley and into the street as fast as his feet will take him.
Time hangs in the dimness of the night, and Blaine’s heart is pounding in his chest. His body is thrumming and awake and on edge with adrenaline, muscles stiff and still clenching the strap of his bag so hard it hurts. But after a few long seconds, the moment seems to break. The tension rushes out, and Blaine lets out a sharp, nervous exclamation of laughter that fumbles its way across the night air.
“Oh, god,” he pants in dazed relief, letting go of his bag strap in order to clutch at his chest. His face feels flushed, and his glasses are askew on his face. Nervous laughter dries up as he re-registers the person with him, and worry floods his chest. Heart pounding in his ears, Blaine takes a step toward the figure in the shadows. “Are you okay?” he asks. “He didn’t hurt you, did he?”
The figure slowly steps out of the shadows and into a patch of light, and shock ripples through Blaine’s chest as he realizes that it isn’t a woman at all. It’s a young man, not possibly a day older than eighteen and probably even younger: the slender lines of his body had confused Blaine in the dark. He’s fully clothed, which is a relief for reasons Blaine doesn’t want to dwell on; dressed in a snugly-fitting blue button-up shirt with no jacket, jeans so tight they’re positively sinful, and tall black boots.
The breath leaves Blaine’s lungs as though winded when he takes in how obscenely beautiful this boy is. Delicate and fey, with sharp lines to his body as though he’d been cut out of stone. Skin so pale it hurts, from the sweep of his cheekbones to the tiny amount of skin exposed by the buttons left undone on his shirt. His hair is swept up into an artful mimicry of unkemptness. There is a sweet curve to his mouth, and his eyes - oh, his eyes. Stunning blue, and shining impossibly bright through the dark.
For the briefest of moments, Blaine thinks he sees a hint of red twisted up in the blue of his eyes - but it must be a trick of the light, because it’s gone in the very next instant.
“Oh,” says Blaine stupidly, trying not to stare. The boy is stunning in an unnatural way that reminds him of models and film stars; the kind of people to be found splayed across advertisements and television sets, not in a place like this. Trying to suppress the flush growing in his cheeks, Blaine gives his head a firm shake. This is neither the time nor the place, and certainly not the circumstance. “I’m sorry,” Blaine tries again, “but - really, are you okay?”
All at once, the way in which the other boy is staring at him hits Blaine square in the chest. The boy is breathing in deeply through his nose, looking unsteady on his feet as he tilts his head and looks. The blue of his eyes drag up and down the length of Blaine’s body as though seeing a miracle - as though seeing something that can't possibly exist. The sharp closeness of his gaze makes Blaine feel oddly exposed, on display. He fidgets under it, not knowing how to respond or what to say.
The boy stares at him, unspeaking, for a long moment; his hands are shaking against his sides. Carefully, his eyes dart to the street where the attacker had run off, and then back to Blaine.
And slowly - very slowly - he smiles.
“Thank you,” he says at last, and his voice is higher and clearer than Blaine had been expecting. Practically angelic when matched against his particular type of beauty. His voice contrasts sharply with the slight grime of their surroundings. The boy cocks his head to one side, eyes locked on Blaine, and Blaine feels something painful clutch inside his chest. “I don’t know what I would’ve done if you hadn’t come along.” He lifts his arm up and extends one long-fingered, pale hand in Blaine’s direction, never once breaking eye contact. “I’m Kurt.”
Blaine stares down at the hand for a half second longer than strictly necessary, but before long he can feel a relieved smile tugging at his lips.
“I’m Blaine,” he says in return, reaching up to take Kurt’s hand in his to shake it. Kurt’s grip is firmer than he expects it to be, the skin softer - and slightly cool to the touch. “Oh, god, you’re freezing,” exclaims Blaine in horror, letting go of Kurt’s hand to lower his book bag to the ground and strip off his own jacket. It’s cold, but he’s warm with the rush of remaining fear and adrenaline - and besides, he isn’t the one who almost got assaulted just now. He holds it out for Kurt to take. “Here.”
Kurt stares at the brown corduroy without saying a word. After a moment, however, he takes it gratefully and slides it over his own shoulders. It’s the smallest bit short on him, fitting around the shoulders but loose around his waist. It looks good, Blaine thinks. He rather suspects that most things would look good on Kurt, but the fact that this is his jacket makes something heated rush through his fingertips.
Suddenly, Blaine cannot help from letting out a nervous choke of a laugh.
“I’m sorry,” Blaine rushes to explain, feeling slightly hysterical. “It’s not you, I swear, I just... I haven’t been in a fight since high school.” Another nervous giggle. “And I lost that one pretty spectacularly. That was... I have no idea what to do now.”
“That’s fine,” says Kurt, smile tugging at the corners of his lips. “This isn’t a situation I’m too familiar with either, I promise.”
“Do you want me to walk you home?” asks Blaine quickly, a rush of genuine concern making masculine protectiveness follow quickly in its wake. It’s late at night, after all. There are people who could look at Kurt, with his slender arms and small sharp features, as an easy target. Blaine knows the odds are against Kurt running into another person as eager to take advantage of him in so short a timeframe, but he doesn’t feel willing to risk it after what’s already happened tonight.
The other boy pauses for a moment to think, still staring at Blaine as though he is some kind of marvel. It makes sadness and anger at the world twist in Blaine’s stomach, that the idea of someone helping Kurt without expecting anything in return is obviously so foreign to him. After a moment, however, Kurt nods.
“I live pretty far from here,” says Kurt, inclining his head toward the street. “But... how about I walk you home, and then I can hail a cab from there? That way, neither of us goes unescorted.”
“Okay,” Blaine nods enthusiastically, feeling relieved for more reasons than one as he picks up his bag and starts to walk them toward the entrance of the alley.
Kurt follows him out into streetlamps and the hundred little lights of the city at night; illuminated, his features appear even more sharp and lovely. Although long years of university have taught Blaine to save his contacts for days when he won’t be reading tiny print for hours on end, and that physical appearances are worth a whole lot less around midterm season, Blaine suddenly very much wishes he’d had time for hair gel and contact lenses this morning. He practically feels dowdy in comparison.
Together, they begin to walk toward Blaine’s apartment. Blaine goes for a quick step at first, unsure if Kurt would rather not be out on the night streets for any longer than absolutely necessary tonight. To his mild surprise, though, Kurt keeps the pace slow; when they finally fall into sync beside one another, they’re practically strolling.
They can’t see the stars -never can, in the city - but it’s a beautiful night anyways. Crisp and slightly foggy, red and orange leaves from the decorative trees mingling along the sides of the road. A few cars and cabs pass them by every so often, but this neighbourhood is usually fairly tame on something as mundane as Wednesday night.
It’s cold without a jacket, but Blaine doesn’t mind. He ignores the gooseflesh rising along his arms and tries to suppress the shiver threatening to run through him.
“So,” Blaine begins, trying to keep his eyes in front of him and not on the beautiful boy beside him. “What brings you around this part of the city so late if you live far away?”
“I was over at a friend’s house and decided it would be fine to walk back,” explains Kurt evenly, shrugging. He wraps his slender arms, swimming in the jacket sleeves, around himself; Blaine can see the muscles of his back moving beneath the fabric. “Apparently not.” He looks over at Blaine, eyes piercing. “What about you? Why are you out and about? A party?”
Blaine cannot quite manage to contain his snort of laughter.
“Um, no,” he explains quickly to Kurt’s delicately raised eyebrow. “I’m doing my post-grad at NYU Law. I take it pretty seriously, so I don’t have too much time for fun stuff. Not that I wouldn’t want to!” he hastens to add as Kurt’s expression grows ever-more amused. “It’s just... hard to find time, sometimes.”
“Law school,” pronounces Kurt grandly, enunciating the words as though they are foreign to him. His eyebrows have flown firmly up into his hairline. “I’m impressed. I admit, though, I wouldn’t have guessed it. What specialization do you want to get into?”
“Civil litigation,” Blaine rails off quickly, because this is the question everyone always asks, even though you don’t have to declare a specialization like you would a Major program in an undergrad degree. “I enjoy embracing conflict and controversy, and feel I possess the necessary interpersonal and negotiation skills for the job.”
There is a pause -- before Kurt lets out a high, musical laugh. Blaine blinks.
“I’m sorry,” says Kurt, covering his mouth with his hand and doing a bad job of hiding his smile. He doesn’t appear to be mocking Blaine, or being cruel. He’s just... laughing. “It just - it just sounds like you’re reciting that out of a book, or something.”
The tension in Blaine’s body relaxes, and he can feel a goofy grin stealing over his face against his will. “I sort of am,” he admits sheepishly, reaching up to rake a hand through his untidy mess of curls. Beside him, Kurt moves so that they’re walking a little closer. As they turn the corner, Blaine’s heart races a little at the proximity. “Well,” says Blaine at last, mustering as much pomp as he can. “What would you have guessed, Mr. All-Knowing-One?”
“Hmmm,” Kurt hums deviously, raking his eyes up and down Blaine’s body pointedly. Blaine feels his face grow warm, and again he mentally kicks himself for deciding that today was allowed to be a casual day. Kurt leans in close to inspect him, inhaling deeply as he does so. His eyelids flutter in the smallest possible way, and he shivers. “I’m thinking... maybe a teacher? Wait, no. Painter. Dancer? Soul of an artist, definitely.”
“I used to sing in high school,” Blaine admits, and something almost-painful twists in his chest. It shouldn’t hurt, thinking about that. Except it sort of does. “I played the piano, too. I don’t do either of those very much now, though.”
He can feel Kurt’s eyes burning into him stronger than ever, and when Blaine looks over to return the look as they walk he finds Kurt’s expression frozen into something almost sad.
“I used to sing too, when I was younger,” says Kurt slowly, tilting his head to one side. His eyes are so blue as they look at him; it makes prickles of excitement tingle in his fingertips. Blaine would feel uncomfortable under the intensity of the stare, but it feels... nice. Not awkward in the way it should, since the two of them have only just crossed paths a few short minutes ago.
The words hit him after a moment, however, and he raises an eyebrow.
“Younger?” he asks sceptically. “You can’t be more than... what, nineteen?” In this situation, over-guessing is probably safer than under-guessing. Kurt’s eyes twinkle.
“I’m a little bit older than I look,” he says covertly, as though disclosing a big secret, and Blaine laughs out loud.
Much faster than should really be fair, Blaine thinks, they arrive at the entrance to the grey-stoned building he lives in. He slows their pace to a standstill, and Blaine is almost positive he’s never been less happy to see his own building. There are a couple of people on this stretch of road: a couple with a small dog out for a late night walk, a man carrying grocery bags. Blaine’s building doesn’t have a doorman, however. He makes an awkward gesture toward the doors.
“Here we are,” says Blaine stiltedly, wishing he could conjure up some of the gentlemanly charm that always makes girls seem so happy with him. All that he’s coming up with, however, is nervousness. Kurt moves so that they are standing in front of one another in front of his door, looking him right in the eye. Blaine starts to subconsciously lick his lips, but catches himself mid-movement and stops himself.
“It’s late,” says Kurt quietly, glancing up at the building and back down to Blaine. He bites down on his lower lips he looks Blaine up and down. “You should be getting back to your... girlfriend? Boyfriend?”
“What?” asks Blaine stupidly, before realizing. “Oh. No! No, I don’t have - I mean, if I did it would be a boyfriend, but...” Kurt’s eyebrows have flown up into his hairline again, and his lips are pursed in amusement. “I live alone,” he finishes in a rush, feeling a flush creeping down his neck. He’s so bad at this, shouldn’t be bad at this but he always has been. Romance has never been his strong suit, as much as he used to enjoy pretending otherwise when he was younger.
Not that this is romance. Kurt was almost assaulted tonight, he’s fragile. You should ask for his number to call and meet up for coffee sometime, not...
But Kurt is already leaning in, reaching out a hand lightning-quick and sliding it to rest on the small of Blaine’s back. Blaine feels himself inhale sharply, feeling as though his entire body is vibrating as the other boy pulls him close with a surprisingly strong grip. Blaine’s eyes begin to flutter closed, and his lips are practically buzzing in anticipation of being kissed. But Kurt doesn’t press their lips together; instead, he angles his head slightly to the right - and ghosts his lips over the side of Blaine’s neck.
“I -” Blaine begins, but is cut off by a soft press of lips against the sensitive skin. Kurt still feels slightly cool to the touch, but his breath is slow and warm against Blaine’s skin. The gentle brush of lips is soft and firm and perfect against the curve of his neck. Blaine gasps as Kurt noses along the skin, their bodies pressed close together, and the tiny helpless noises he can hear coming out of Kurt’s throat are going straight to his cock. He reaches up and grips a hand tight into the fabric of his own jacket on Kurt’s shoulders, shuddering because this is somehow so much more intimate than kissing and they’ve only just met but it feels so good. Kurt’s hand clenches hard at the small of his back, and -
And suddenly, Kurt jerks violently away and out of Blaine’s grasp, looking wild-eyed and tense as he stumbles back. Blaine stares, breathing hard and shocked at the sudden shift, before realization hits him. He averts his eyes to the ground guiltily.
“I’m so sorry,” he chokes out, shaking his head and staring fixedly down at the pavement. “I shouldn’t have let that happen, you’ve - you’ve had a rough night and it would be taking advantage, I know.” Blaine runs a shaking hand through his messy hair in agitation, squeezing his eyes shut in mortification. “Let’s just - we’ll hail you a cab, okay? And we can think about all this another -”
But when Blaine opens his eyes and raises his gaze, Kurt is no longer there.
The sidewalk in front of him is completely empty; the space vacant and hollow in the night air. Blaine’s mouth falls open and he blinks in surprise, words catching in his throat. He hadn’t heard the slightest sounds of movement or running away, but it is as though no one had been standing in front of him at all.
He looks around ineffectually for a few moments, but Kurt is nowhere to be found.
Disappointment and shame well up hard and strong inside of him, squeezing at his heart and making it feel as though his stomach has gone hollow. Somehow, despite everything, he’d managed to fuck this up after all. He should have jerked away as Kurt started to move in: given the other boy the proper time he needed to figure everything out. But it had all felt so good, and right, and...
Blinking hard, Blaine bites down on his lip and tries his best not to feel discarded. As the cold air burns against his naked arms and face, he tries to ignore the missed opportunities weighing down his mind like sandbags. He has no idea where Kurt lives, or even what his last name is: there’s absolutely no way Blaine is going to be able to find him now.
Feeling surreal, Blaine lets out a heavy sigh. Trying his hardest not to go over everything he could have done differently, he pulls his keys out of his jeans pocket and lets himself into the building.
It isn’t until he reaches his own apartment, after having travelled four floors up to get there, that it occurs to Blaine that he never got his jacket back.
Click here to continue to part two.