Kurt/Blaine: Precipice (1/?)
Title: Precipice (1/?)
Pairings: Kurt/Blaine
Rating: PG-13 overall.
Word Count: ~2200
Spoilers: None.
Warnings: Homophobic language, bullying
Summary: Blaine is a new student at McKinley. Kurt is the star of the Cheerios. When Kurt is failing AP Chemistry, Coach Sylvester hires Blaine to tutor Kurt in order to ensure that he earns a grade that will allow him to stay on the squad. What will happen when the supposed nerd and the head cheerleader are forced to spend time together?
A/N: I started planning this fic when the very first Nerd!Blaine/Cheerio!Kurt gifset started floating around Tumblr. I've very much put my own spin on this, taking plenty of liberties especially when it comes to the definition of the word nerd. I hope you all enjoy this fic! <3 A million thanks to my wonderful beta gleekto. :D
It’s going to be a better day today.
With a smile on his face, Blaine walks down the hallway of McKinley High School that houses his locker, but it feels like he’s somewhere else. Sometimes, when he’s having a particularly rough day, when he flinches more than smiles and sees more through his worried peripheral vision than directly in front of him, he plays pretend with himself. He’s no longer Blaine Anderson: High School Student. He’s Blaine Anderson: International Superspy.
Like right now, his shoes aren’t black and white oxfords, they’re shining ebony dress shoes. His pants aren’t cropped and red, his shirt isn’t covered with a sweater vest. Instead of a messenger bag slung over his shoulder, he’s holding a Walther PPK. He’s wearing a tuxedo. Looking for those kinds of enemies is exciting, thrilling, the stuff of video games. The kind of searching he really does is something else entirely. It’s hard and lonely and turns moments that should be living into surviving. Of course he wants to survive, but why can’t he live a little, too?
It’s stupid. It’s not something he would ever tell another living soul. But, it is. It happens. It’s what his old therapist would have called a ‘coping mechanism.’ He knows all of this. But, if it makes him feel better for those few seconds of imagined excitement replacing overstrung nerves, can it really be so bad?
He’s between his second and third periods, keeping an eye out for targets. There aren’t any. Blaine smiles and surveys the students around him, all of them going about their business as if he isn’t there. There haven’t been any targets for days now. It appears as though Blaine has finally bested them, defeated them all with his resilience and the power of positive thinking and-
“Sup, homo?” a voice calls out just before Blaine walks face first into a frigid brick wall. It’s a voice that’s familiar and not all at the same time. He’s never conversed with the person, just heard them talk at him.
Well, yell at him.
No. No no no. This isn’t supposed to happen. It’s supposed to be over.
“Blaine, are you okay?” a voice that’s truly familiar asks from his right.
“I’m fine,” he says, flecks of reddened ice spraying from his lips as he speaks. He swipes the back of his hand across his mouth before wiping the slush from his eyes.
“Do you have a change of clothes?” Rachel asks. He can feel her hand on his arm and he pulls away from her touch, already heading toward the boys’ locker room.
“Of course I do,” he says softly, looking down at his ruined clothes instead of in her direction. If he does, he doesn’t entirely trust himself not to break down. One look into her big sad brown eyes would be even worse. Despite the fact that he can feel chunks of ice creeping glacially down his chest, for a few more moments, it isn’t entirely real. He hasn’t seen himself and hasn’t seen anyone else’s reaction because as per usual, everyone in the hallway just pretended like they hadn’t seen anything.
“Good,” Rachel nods. “I can help you-”
“Thanks, Rachel, but I just... I need to go,” Blaine says, looking at her as sincerely as he can with Red Dye #4 in his eyes before pushing open the door to the locker room and leaving her there in the hallway. He likes Rachel. Really, he does. He likes everyone in Glee club. They’re the only ones who have been nice to him since his transfer. But in these situations, he just can’t deal with them. Especially not now when he’s just so damned confused.
He shouldn’t have gotten slushied. It shouldn’t have happened. Not now.
Not only had an entire week passed without incident, but it’s completely off the schedule. It’s Wednesday. On Wednesdays, if he gets slushied, it’s by Hank Davies from the football team after lunch because he always sneaks off campus for a gas station corn dog and the largest size of slushy they have.
But it’s not the afternoon and Hank hadn’t been the perpetrator. It had been Jake McDonald from the hockey team, but Jake usually slushies him on Fridays right after school. The schedule never changes.
Not until today.
Blaine’s fingers are shaking by the time he gets to a sink. He grabs hold of the edge, smearing streaks of watered-down red along the basin as he struggles to get a firm grip with his wet fingers. The breaths lurching up his throat are frantic, hysterical, and he tries to make them vanish with long intakes of air released slowly through his teeth, but it’s not working. Tears prickle at the corners of his eyes and he shakes his head at his reflection before stripping off his shirt and throwing it in the garbage.
He showers and re-gels and takes his sweet time doing so, knowing that his octogenarian English teacher probably hasn’t even noticed he’s not there. Or that she’s supposed to be teaching a class for that matter. The whole time he gets himself looking presentable again, he can’t seem to make his heart rate slow. His most vital of organs is throbbing, hammering, aching in his chest, but it’s not due to nerves or from the shock of what had happened. It’s from fear.
Ever since his first week at McKinley, there’s been a schedule. Never once has there been a deviation from it, something Blaine had always attributed to the fact that they’re probably not capable of coming up with anything more innovative or less predictable than a set time each week to wreck havoc on some poor soul’s life and wardrobe. But now... the schedule has been broken. The comfort of routine has vanished.
It can come at any time. Any day. Any second. Just... whenever.
The bell rings and breaks him from his thoughts. When he steps back into the hallway, Blaine Anderson: Superspy is gone and he knows that he’ll never come around again. No longer can he afford the luxury of pretending. He’s been forced into a perpetual state of now, no matter how horrible it is to be there.
His classes come and go. Glee rehearsal just kind of is. He sings and dances and puts on the same stupid and fake smile he wears every Tuesday, Wednesday, and Friday (his formerly designated slushy days of the week). Rachel asks him if he’s okay and he lies that of course he is. When it’s finally time for him to go home, the halls are mostly deserted and he can feel every muscle in his body sag with relief.
He’s in the process of opening his locker when someone steps into the hallway a few doors down.
“Hey, Gayer Gene Kelly. I need to see you in my office,” the voice says. Blaine ignores it for a second before realizing that the comment is being directed at him. “Yeah, you. My office. Now.”
Dread weighs heavy on his stomach as he pushes his locker closed again and starts toward Coach Sylvester, making sure to avoid eye contact for as long as possible. She’s never really done anything to make him fear her aside from the random mildly-offensive names she calls him on occasion, but for some reason, she makes his hair stand on end and his pulse quicken.
When he enters her office, his breath catches in his throat. Sitting in one of the two chairs across from her desk is Kurt Hummel.
“Take a seat,” she says, gesturing to the empty chair while she sits down behind her desk. “You’re probably wondering why I called you in here.” Blaine tries to answer but can’t. He’s just so damned confused as to why she wants to talk to him and also he kind of can’t stop sneaking hopefully discreet peeks at the snug red polyester encasing Kurt’s long, lean thighs. “We have a problem that you’re going to help us with.”
“There’s no problem. Honestly, Coach I’ll-” Kurt interjects, giving Blaine a withering look out the corner of his eye.
“There is a problem, Porcelain. A big one,” she says to Kurt before turning her attention back over to Blaine, all the while slowly shaking up something thick and goopy-looking in a bright blue Nalgene. “You see, my star Cheerio here is failing AP Chemistry and if he doesn’t get his grade up by the end of the semester, I’ll be forced by the school to kick him off my squad. Obviously I can’t have that because not only can he do a mean high kick and backflips like nobody’s business, but when he’s walking around competitions in those tight red pants, it sends all of the boys on the other squads into such a hormone-driven lust frenzy that they wind up dropping their already inadequate pyramid tops on their lopsided behinds.”
Kurt rolls his eyes and Blaine tries not to blush and not to look at Kurt at all because he can definitely understand how Kurt could be a distraction at competitions. Definitely.
“My grade will be up by the end of the semester. You need to trust me. I’ve never gotten anything lower than an A- in my life. This isn’t necessary,” Kurt interrupts.
“What isn’t necessary?” Blaine asks, looking back and forth between Kurt and Coach Sylvester.
Kurt just looks him up and down and sighs and Blaine has never been more confused in his entire life. They’ve never talked before. Well, to be fair, they’ve never even made eye contact before. The Cheerios never get in on the bullying that the other school athletes seem almost mandated to participate in, but it doesn’t make them friendly. That doesn’t mean that Blaine hasn’t noticed Kurt before, though.
How could anyone fail to notice Kurt Hummel?
“You’re going to tutor Kurt, make sure that he raises his grade by the end of the semester,” she tells him, setting her bottle down with a loud bang before rising and staring down at them with both hands pressed flat on the desktop.
“But Coach,” Kurt starts.
“This isn’t up for discussion. I can’t afford to lose you from the squad.”
“Why me, though?” Blaine asks.
“Don’t kid yourself. Every inch of you screams nerd even louder than it screams gay virgin,” Sue states, grabbing her Nalgene and opening it before taking a long sip of whatever disgusting concoction she has inside. Blaine’s mouth drops open before he can stop it and he snaps it shut while squirming in his seat, desperate for a more comfortable position. Of course, there isn’t one. “So when I spotted you in the hallway and checked out your transcripts, I knew you were our guy. I know that you took AP Chemistry as a sophomore at the Big Gay Boarding School you transferred in from.”
“What’s in it for me?” Blaine asks, attempting to push all of the offensive comments aside for a moment because he’s genuinely curious. He’s tutored before. Lots of times. He loves tutoring, actually, but he’s always been compensated somehow.
“You’ll be paid, of course. Three hundred dollars a week. Take it or leave it.”
“I’ll take it,” Blaine says without thinking because wow that’s a lot of money and Kurt immediately rolls his eyes.
“This can not be happening,” Kurt stage whispers to himself, scrubbing a hand over his forehead.
“You’ll start tomorrow night. I expect weekly reports on Kurt’s progress,” she says to Blaine. “Now get out of here. Both of you. I have an interview with Fox Sports in fifteen minutes.” Blaine stands and Kurt is already brushing past him, obviously as desperate to get out of that room as he is.
“So,” Blaine says as soon as they’re in the hallway. “Where should we meet? The library?”
“At school? No,” Kurt says, walking away from him. Blaine hurries to follow.
“The public library?”
“No.”
“The Lima Bean?”
“Are you insane?”
Blaine sighs and stops.
“She said that we have to get started tomorrow. We need to figure this out.” Kurt freezes and turns slowly, one eyebrow quirked so high on his forehead Blaine can’t help but be transfixed by it just a little.
“Look,” Kurt says, stepping closer and giving him a look so deadly Blaine is pretty sure that part of his soul actually dies from it. “I don’t need you to tutor me. The only reason I didn’t throw a complete fit in there is because I don’t want to get kicked off the squad. I’m not going to be seen in public with you. I don’t care if you lie to her about meeting with me, but it’s not happening. I don’t need you.”
“I can’t just lie to her,” Blaine says, blinking a little at Kurt’s words.
“And why not?”
“Because I said I’d help you.” Kurt scoffs and rolls his eyes.
“I don’t need your help.”
“If you’re failing, I’d say that you do,” he says with forced sternness as he tries to shove down how incredibly insulted he feels at Kurt’s words. Blaine knows that he's not exactly at the top of the food chain at McKinley, but he's not the worst person that Kurt could've been assigned as a tutor, is he? "Should we meet at your house?"
“No, absolutely not,” Kurt rushes to say. Now it's Blaine's turn to roll his eyes. Kurt's eyes slink around the hallway and Blaine doesn't have to be a mind-reader to know that he's making sure no one is around to hear their conversation. "Your house. We'll meet at your house."
“That works. Just let me help you. I know that it can be really frustrating when you don’t understand something, especially if you’re used to getting good grades,” Blaine offers. Kurt looks at him and shakes his head slightly.
“What’s your address?” Blaine rattles it off while Kurt types it into his phone and then he just walks away without a word.
Blaine stares after him for a moment before turning and heading in the opposite direction.
What a day.
It's going to be a better day tomorrow.