Fix, glee!fic part I
My day is a washout, it seriously did not rain for long enough to pick me up and my writing's gone all over the bloody place. Posting this because it means I don't have to work out what happens next for a few minutes =P
Fix, Glee!fic, part 1 of probably *4* which has made my OCD three-fixated narrative brain collapse screaming in on itself.
Disclaimer: I own none of the characters and not even the concept. Created out of love for god knows no money.
Rating: This part R, may go up, may not.
Warnings and spoilers: A sort of jumbled up rerun of season two, so expect spoilers sprinkled liberally throughout, though canon timelines have been bounced around a lot. Warnings-wise, oh hi it's a rerun of season two, so if anything *mildly* squicked you about season two, expect that but harsher. Not written for kids, not expecting kids to read it.
Necessary note: The whole reform school!Dalton/bad boy!Blaine meme at first made me all lol the crack but actually, some of the fic is really good, and actually, given Blaine's character and situation, you don't need so many tweaks to get him there; a few different decisions, and some more bad luck. So I ended up writing this. It is an *enormous* structural mess, I am so not David Mitchell. Wish me luck for hauling the last two parts vaguely readable ^^;
Summary: He has - god, his grin is wolfish and wicked and somehow, in the bright darkness of his eyes, sweet
Now comes with fanmix for your listening pleasure by the awesome meggie87, and fanart by the very talented mystical_mayhem: basically, people are *awesome* and I appreciate it a lot lot lot <3
Kurt is finally used to detention. At first he hadn't had any clue what he was supposed to do - just sit for an hour and a half? - or where it even was, and the hot furious shame of it had made his face dark and throat thick, sitting in a classroom after school hunched over his books while whatever cretins who'd got themselves stuck in there with him for the evening flicked spitballs and jerked his chair suddenly out from underneath him. The fact that he's now resigned doesn't mean that he actually enjoys it or anything. How does Puck put up with so much of this? By not turning up, clearly. It's not an option for Kurt. So, detention, in a thankfully empty classroom tonight, just him and a geography teacher pushing his glasses up his nose and taking another pull from his water bottle, blinking at his grading.
At least six weeks of detention are doing wonders for Kurt's grades. He's even acing math now. Nothing to do in here but pay attention . . .
The door to the classroom knocks open and Kurt looks up, a glance to check and then a second glance because it's a face he doesn't know. The teacher scowls, says, "You're late, Mr-" He checks the list on the desk. "-Anderson."
"First day. Got lost." He's a short, dark-haired guy, who looks right at Kurt - Kurt looks immediately down at his French homework again - and then scuffs into the room and thumps into the desk next to Kurt's, his bag dumped closer to Kurt's chair than his own. An entire empty classroom and he picks that seat. This cannot be good.
"Just take your books out and, and get on with your work, Mr Anderson."
"Relax. I know the drill."
"I'm sure you do," the teacher mumbles, and lifts his water bottle again, rubbing his eye underneath his glasses.
The new kid's foot thumpathumpathumpathumpas against his table leg and Kurt glances across, making sure to keep his eyes on that foot because eye contact is an invitation to aggression and he knows it. It is really seriously really irritating, though. He can start an argument, but people spending their evenings in detention are not people Kurt needs to join the massed ranks of his enemies; he puts his eyes firmly back on his book, and manages another sentence.
It is a really fucking irritating noise.
He chews his lip inwards, lets his breath out slowly through his nose, chants verb forms in his head. What is the verb for 'to disembowel irritating midget freshmen ADD-sufferers'? He writes slowly, speaking the words loudly in his head, concentrating on his handwriting.
Thumpathumpathumpathumpathumpa-
Oh fuck everything.
Kurt flicks his glance icily across the desk at the boy - who's sitting back in his seat, one outstretched leg beating that rhythm out against the table leg, jaw propped on a hand, staring right at Kurt. His smile flicks alight as Kurt's eyes hit him, and Kurt's face freezes, he can feel the blood rising, he looks quickly back at his books again and hears soft laughter from the next desk. Great. Wonderful. Superbe.
He writes on the corner of the page, tears it out, folds it neatly and flicks it across the desks. The teacher doesn't look up, clears his throat, wipes his nose with a pull of two fingers, and Kurt carries on writing as the new boy opens his note and reads, I hope you get an RSI.
He gives a little amused snort. Kurt feels his ears burn, keeps his eyes on his book, but the rhythm has if anything speeded up. Kurt puts his pen down with an audible click, sits up and glares at him. And the new boy grins back. He has - god, his grin is wolfish and wicked and somehow, in the bright darkness of his eyes, sweet. And Kurt feels something catch in his throat, gulp and clog. He takes him in properly; the small perfect line of a scar on one cheek, plaited leather band around one tanned wrist, just enough product in his hair, just enough co-ordination between jacket and t-shirt and sneakers, black jeans that actually fit which most teenage boys seem to find impossible to source. Smiling at Kurt. Smiling, dangerous and amused, right at Kurt.
Kurt turns his head to look out of the window, very aware by now that he's crimson and breathing in quick fluttery useless breaths that don't get nearly deep enough in his lungs. What the hell, what the hell, what the hell. He's - is he? Kurt swallows. Is he . . . ?
Kurt's gaydar is underpractised, since the only person he can test it on is himself and yes he comes up glowingly gay every time, but obviously Sam was a red herring, and now there's short dark and gorgeous sitting there making Kurt's nerves ring. Probably, he thinks, and it sits bitter in his chest, probably he's just fucking with Kurt. He knows, of course he knows, everyone knows. Even on his first day all he had to do was spot Kurt walking down a corridor. So he knows, and he's fucking with Kurt, and Kurt really cannot cope with this on top of everything else. Detention on his own is a blessing, just some silence before he has to face the afterwards, it's not fair to intrude this on him here. Where the hell can he count as a safe space anymore?
There is a soft thump from the front of the classroom. They both look up; even the rhythm stops. The geography teacher is face-down on the desk, one hand still loosely curled around his water bottle.
Kurt's eyes widen. The rules of detention do not cover what you do if the teacher supervising drops dead before your time's done. But the boy sitting next to him - 'Mr Anderson' - scrapes his chair back and walks to the desk at the front, leans down to check his face, then sniffs the neck of the bottle in his hand. He laughs, slips it loose of his grip, picks up the lid and screws it back on as he strolls back to his desk, dropping the bottle into his bag. "Someone up there really likes me."
"Is he okay?"
"He's wasted. You want-?" He lifts the bottle again, its contents sloshing the sides, but Kurt raises a no thank you hand. The new boy shrugs, drops it back into his bag. "So, we are without supervision. What shall we do."
"I have homework."
"Everyone has homework," he says philosophically, and shrugs. "You aren't exactly the type I normally share this situation with." He leans against his desk, gripping it with relaxed hands, tilting his head to look at Kurt as Kurt looks away, and pretends not to mind, pretends not to be paying attention to every nuance of his quite lovely voice. "What're you in for? We can share crime stories and bond. I'll teach you how to make a shiv."
The laugh balls, sudden and huge, and only just remains buried in Kurt's chest. "How did you get detention on your first day?"
The new boy shrugs, a curious motion leaning back against the desk, letting the corner of Kurt's eye really appreciate the way his shoulders flex. "Apparently 'slushie' is a verb in this school."
"You-?"
"Not to me it isn't. Apparently I used excessive force in my self-defence." He lifts his hands, leaning back on his - well, on his ass against the desk now, and flicks quotation marks in the air. "'Impulse control issues'. I'm Blaine."
". . . Kurt." Clearly he doesn't know of Kurt, not yet, not to speak to him like this. Kurt might as well enjoy the one decent conversation he's likely to get with him. "Who tried to slushie you?"
Blaine shrugs. "Big guy? White? Letterman jacket? Tragic haircut?"
God, he is gay. Is he gay? Please be gay. "That doesn't narrow it down very much."
"He now walks hunched over if that narrows it down any more."
Kurt wants so badly to laugh, puts a hand over his mouth and coughs, delicately. Blaine's openly smirking now, pleased to be of amusement, stands up and strolls around Kurt's desk running a finger around the rim. "So, Kurt. What are you in for? Arson? Drug dealing? Excessive charm?"
Kurt's mouth freezes on open before he manages to re-engage his brain. Is he being flirted with? In detention, with a guy who got himself put here on his first day in a new school, with the teacher passed out drunk at the front of the classroom? He doesn't know anything about flirting, doesn't know if this is flirting or if he's being presumptuous or if he's being messed with or if he's even hearing Blaine right over all the blood filling his head up. "Um. I . . ."
Blaine's fingertips draw little swooping patterns on the desktop, and he leans a little lower to murmur, "Distracting the other boys?"
Kurt kicks his chair back, scraping some distance between the two of them, and Blaine lifts his head, a little surprised, mostly amused. "I," Kurt says, and swallows. "I - there was this - guy who'd been - harassing me. For a while. For. Well. Years. And." He shuffles his shoulders a little higher, and Blaine glances to the window, walks there to look out, hands clasped loosely behind his back as he listens. "And -"
He can't say why. That's why he's here, because he can't say why, can't risk actually saving himself. All he can do is cope.
"And it all got more intense and creepy and he - scared me, and, one day I was alone in the choir room and he came in and - and locked the door."
Kurt looks at the door now, and folds his arms around himself, as Blaine turns his back to the window and watches him.
"And I didn't know what he was going to do to me, so."
"So . . ."
"So. I broke a guitar over his head."
Blaine's laugh is - sudden and startled and makes something swoop in Kurt's stomach. "Not so much the little white mouse, then. They put you in detention for that?"
"Six weeks. On probation. Counselling. I am unpredictable and dangerous."
"Oh you look it." His mouth is twitching, and Kurt can hardly dare look at him. "Deadly. So, what did your meathead look like?"
Kurt licks his lips. "Big guy, white, letterman jacket, woeful haircut. Kind of chubby."
"I only ask because, there's a little pack of meets-the-description hanging out down there. Not all of them are white but they are all very big and letterman jacket-wearing and really, really badly groomed. And I didn't think it would be your friends waiting for you."
Kurt's eyes close, and he's glad he's sitting down so his legs can't go. "No," he whispers, very dry. Some nights his friends do wait for him. Some nights someone will remember to stop by after football practise or homework in the library to walk Kurt out, but they don't always. They have busy lives, and Kurt doesn't like to ask them to, and everyone sort of assumes that everyone else is doing it. So quite often it's just Kurt, walking alone through his unwelcoming committee to get to his car. It's better when they shout abuse after him. Some nights they're silent. Just silent. A big group of big silent football players spread into two across the exit, so Kurt has to walk through them, heart running so fast it feels like it might split, hands tight around the strap of his bag, walking as fast as he dares with his eyes straight forward and Karofsky there to his right looking right at him . . .
Blaine watches him for some time, then nods at the teacher and says, "He's gonna need some time to sleep it off. You want to get out of here?"
No. Not anymore. It's safe in here. They won't come in here. Kurt tightens his arms around himself, and lowers his head.
Blaine waits a little, then looks out of the window again. "I'll be your bodyguard for a minimal fee."
"My bodyguard." Kurt lifts his head. "I'm very sorry, but - how old are you?"
"Sixteen. Clearly I didn't drink enough milk as a child. But I actually wasn't joking about impulse control issues and making a shiv."
Same age as Kurt; Kurt's never met a guy shorter than he is before. Blaine just shrugs. "They never expect the little guy's capable of it. I hold my own."
Kurt says doubtfully, "What fee?"
And Blaine grins. Kurt's mouth twitches in automatic response; his grin is electric, it lights up like a Christmas tree coming on. "I want very badly to put my hands down your pants, Kurt."
Kurt's face goes numb; whatever expression he's wearing, he couldn't change it if he had the brainpower to want to. Blaine's grin tilts wicked. "I'd settle for some light groping. I get it, you need wooing. I'll bring you the heads of football players. I can be romantic."
Kurt closes his French book, packs his things away. "I'm fine." He feels physically sick. "I can take care of myself."
". . . hey." Blaine watches him pull his jacket on and pick up his satchel. "Sorry. Look, seriously, impulse control issues, I just - think things and say them in pretty much exactly the same second. I am not trying to be a tool, I just . . . you are really, really hot. I'm sorry if you don't swing that way. I didn't mean to sound - I don't know."
Kurt's satchel bangs into the desk as he turns back to him. "Of course I - of course I swing that way, why do you think they're waiting out there - I just -"
"I'm not your type?"
For fuck's sake the boy is gorgeous, he might as well have 'Kurt's type' tattooed around his ankle. "We have just had all of a third of a conversation and you're already - you're suggesting -"
Blaine looks up at him, curious and open with wondering eyes, and then his eyebrows lower a little; he has a lot of eyebrow to emote with. "You're not even taken, are you? You've just never - done anything. I just propositioned a virgin with something really filthy. Well, now I'm going to hell."
Kurt's chest heaves with humiliation. "Welcome to William McKinley, Blaine, the out and proud population of which just increased by a hundred percent. No, I've never done anything. Who the hell you think I'd find to-"
But he remembers Karofsky, and puts a hand over his mouth, flumps to sit on the edge of a desk. "Hey," Blaine says softly, and both their heads jerk to the snort at the front of the room, where the teacher's head tips to the side and he begins to snore. Kurt chokes out the anger and stands up with a scrape, strides for the door. Halfway down the corridor, walking as quick and hard as he can and blinking hard all the way, he hears another, "Hey!" and Blaine's footsteps catch him up, bag bouncing noisily over his shoulder. "Okay. How about this for a fee? You stop hating me, and I keep my hands to myself. How does that sound?"
"You'll make it worse." Kurt's throat is lumping with it all, with this boy who so doesn't get it. "If I just keep my head down and keep going they let me go. It's only when I - or someone else - draws attention to it -"
"I'm sorry, I thought you said you were out. Out and still holding that closet door up as a shield?"
Kurt stops himself stiffly and Blaine skids a little in stopping ahead of him. "It's fine for you. You can fight back, go ahead, go nuts, fight. What am I going to do? They'll break my arms and all I can do is scream at a pitch I hope hurts their ears, just - just leave me alone. I survived this far. I'll be fine."
". . . hey." Blaine touches his arm. Kurt starts back like he's been shocked. Blaine holds his hands up, weaponless and soothing. "I have impulse control issues and I'm very self-centred, and I think you're too pretty for a black eye. So I'm coming with you. You might as well start enjoying my glittering company already, because it's not going anywhere."
Kurt kneads his eyes with his knuckles. "Why are you doing this?"
"I'm still sort of hoping the rescue complex will kick in soon and you will want to make out with me, actually. But I'd settle for a smile."
Kurt obliges, against his own will, with a little choke of disbelieving breath.
*
They lock the rest of the exits on a night, so the janitors only have this one to take care of when the school closes proper. So it's not like Kurt has a choice about which door he's coming out of, which they all know full well - Karofsky and the rest of them, Karofsky's friends, who don't know half of the truth or the real reason Kurt broke a guitar over his terrifying, hateful head. No-one knows. And no-one ever can know, or -
Kurt breathes evenly, as Blaine pushes the door open and steps out, and holds it calmly open for him. Kurt follows him, pale and straight-backed, and Blaine glances around at the gathering waiting for them, nods. "Evening, guys. Is this your pre-dogging gathering or are you out of other venues for the orgy?"
"Jesus," Kurt whispers, and he's too scared to move, he's planted to that top step like an oak tree. But Blaine puts an arm around his back, settling around his waist gentle and possessive in a way that pulls the blood immediately back to Kurt's face, and he murmurs, "Come on. Where's your ride?"
"My car - over -"
"You found a boyfriend, Hummel? Where'd you find someone blind enough to fuck you?"
"An' deaf," someone else sniggers, and Kurt rolls his eyes to the sky - god he wishes he had someone to pray to sometimes - and lets Blaine pull him down step by step to the tarmac, the strap of his satchel biting into his palm and closed fingers.
"An' short, they'll put you away for fucking twelve year olds, Hummel-"
"He'd like that, being someone's prison bitch, he dreams about it."
That was Karofsky's voice. But before Kurt can actually throw up with fear, Blaine says, "Hey, you're the guy who tried to empty his drink on my head! How're your balls, did your voice rebreak yet?"
He's not talking to Karofsky but to some other kid, blond and face purpling as he looks as Blaine, hands closing into fists at his sides. Kurt thinks, Impulse control issues. I knew he'd get me killed too.
Blaine's hands push gently at his back. "Hey. Run."
And then he shoves. Kurt stumbles a few steps forward, nearly scuffs a layer of leather off his boots, windmilling his arms to stay upright, and turns just in time to see Blaine spin to the guy coming up at his back, and trimly headbutt him in the nose.
There's blood, and a screech, and a curse, and the crowd of footballers dissolves onto Blaine who knees someone else in the nuts and elbows someone else in the cheek before Karofsky's grabbing hand gets his shoulder. Kurt doesn't think. Kurt clearly doesn't think. He skids on his heel and runs back, swinging his satchel off his shoulder, and it's a lovely little illustration of centrifugal force - unless it's centripetal force, Kurt's still catching up on physics - as it smashes Karofsky right in the eyes. He falls right over and takes two of his friends down with him, as Blaine kicks someone else hard in the knee. Kurt feels, mostly, disbelief.
Blaine's hand grabs his painfully hard. "Come on."
"My car-"
"Which?"
"Big black-"
They run, scrambling and stumbling, but only one guy - Azimio - is actually giving any real chase, the others are either still on the steps cradling various injuries or lurching after them with wrecked knees or huffing blood through a hand. "Fucking dead, Hummel-!" Azimio yells, and Kurt could be crying with fear but he isn't. He's just running, fumbling the car keys out of his jacket pocket, Blaine's hand letting go of his so they can skid to opposite doors.
Azimio aims for Blaine. He probably knows how easy it'll be to bring Kurt down without him. He body-slams him into the side of the car and Kurt hears the breath punch out of his lungs, can't possibly get around the side of the car fast enough to help as Azimio kneels to punch and comes back screaming, with a pen sticking out of his arm.
Kurt doesn't breathe for the next six seconds, as Blaine heaves himself up and into the car, bent in half over the dashboard coughing. "-up," he pants out, banging the dash. Kurt climbs, every limb numb and only half responsive, into the driver's seat, and turns the ignition on, and growls his engine a warning at the footballers skidding to halts in front of them. He only gives them one warning, pulling out in a tight turning his dad would never approve of, seatbelt not even fastened, scattering footballers as they go. Someone bangs on the side of the car with the flat of their fist but they're out, and free, and skid-bumping onto the street and away.
And none of that, none of that, can be undone.
Blaine slumps back in his seat, one arm around his sore stomach, and starts laughing, and Kurt can't take any of this back.
*
He kills the engine at the edge of the park, which is quiet and dark with trees at this time of night in the fall, and folds his arms over the steering wheel so he can lean into them and hide. His strange and beautiful and unpredictable passenger just sits there for some time with his hand over his chest, then leans down and picks his bag up. Kurt hears busy movement, blinks and lifts his head, and Blaine decants the clear contents of that teacher's 'water' bottle into half a bottle of Coke. He swirls it a bit, then offers it to Kurt.
Kurt waves it away with a hand, one arm still bent over the wheel. "They're going to murder me tomorrow."
"All the more reason for a drink," Blaine says, and takes a little gulp, wrinkles his face up. "God, it's not even good stuff. He's an irresponsible educator and a cheapskate. No, they might not, fifty-fifty, they might never touch you again after that. I always think that's a fair risk to play for."
"How dull your life would be without people to get into fights with, though." Kurt says sourly, and Blaine takes another pull of half-Coke half-vodka, says, "There's always the next school."
"We're halfway through the semester, why did you just start?"
Blaine shrugs. "Got kicked out. Again. Really nice school that time, my parents were so pissed. Fucking awful uniform," he muses. "You don't act like someone who makes a habit of braining boys but that's twice already, hm? There's a deviant in you, I'll get it out."
"Don't. I told you not to. I told you not to, they're going to - he'll -"
He puts a hand over his nose, because if he does start crying then he doesn't need Blaine to see him dripping with undignified snot. Blaine looks across at him, then screws the lid back onto the bottle and puts it in the cupholder. "What did he do to you?"
Kurt closes his eyes, buries his face further into his hand. Blaine says, "It takes a lot to make you break. What did he do?"
Kurt mumbles, "You don't know me."
"You just took on half a dozen football players armed with nothing but a very stylish satchel. There's more to you than meets the eye. Not that what meets the eye isn't entirely welcome, of course." Kurt breathes through his hand, slowly. "What did he do to you?"
Kurt shakes a little, and then it passes. He's trying to work out what he still has to lose. It turns out not much.
"He kissed me."
He's never said it out loud. It tastes bitter, and not quite real, and his shoulders hunch a little closer around him. He draws a quick shaky breath in, takes his hand away to speak. "In the locker room. He just - knocked me too far one day and I went in after him to yell at him and he kissed me. And I shoved him off and freaked out and - and ever since -"
"Fuck," Blaine says quietly, looking out the front windscreen. Kurt swallows.
"He told me he'd kill me if I told anyone. Since he'll kill me now anyway it doesn't seem to matter much." He closes his eyes, folds his arms around himself. "He follows me around the school. Everywhere I go I never know if he'll be there and - and in the choir room, I was so scared -"
"You think he'd assault you?"
Hearing the words said out loud makes something heavy sink through Kurt's stomach. He shakes his head away, looks out of the window, stares through the trees and remembers how he doesn't have any safe places anymore.
"I don't know. I don't know what he wanted. I was just scared. That time - I thought I would die I was so scared - I didn't even know I was doing it, I just needed him to stop. He was looking at me - he looked - I don't know what he looked like. I was terrified. He went for me, and I was terrified, and we knocked over a bunch of instruments when we went down, and I got my hand on the guitar, and."
"You did the right thing. Should've smashed his face in."
Kurt squeezes his arms more tightly around himself. "Mild concussion. And it doesn't matter that I was - crying so hard and so scared because when I got the door open that was what they saw. Him on the floor and the broken guitar and . . ."
"You told them what he did? Anyone?"
Kurt closes his eyes, and shakes his head just a little. He hears Blaine unscrewing the bottle again, and in a little pause before he takes a drink, "Why?"
"Because he'll kill me. I think he means it. And because it'll destroy both our lives. That's why he's so . . . he knows what it'll do to him if everyone finds out. So he has to make sure I don't tell, whatever the cost. And I won't tell, I won't but he can't trust me, he won't believe me, he just . . ."
He blinks his head up, and Blaine's offering him the bottle again. "I'm driving," he points out, but Blaine jigs it insistently, eyebrows raised. Kurt rolls his eyes, takes the bottle, takes a careful little sip. It hits the back of his throat like turpentine. "God-"
Blaine laughs, bright and barking, takes the bottle back and a gulp and puts it back in the cupholder. "First blood. You're stronger than you think."
Kurt puts a hand over his mouth and tries not to hack his lungs up into an undignified, messy pile on the steering wheel. "You don't know how close I am to coming to pieces, Blaine."
"But you won't. Not you. You're not the kind who breaks. And you have me now."
"And what are you going to do for me?" Kurt looks across at him, at the glitter in his eyes in the shadows. He makes something in Kurt come unsettled in ways he never lets himself come unsettled; it's not safe to come unsettled. "Encourage even more guys three times my size to want me dead?"
"Bodyguard," Blaine offers with a casual little shrug. "Friend." His eyes are so dark but for those little caught stars, like light off distant water. "There's more if you want it."
For a second, Kurt's so dazed that he thinks Blaine means that bottle of vile room temperature sugar and unfiltered alcohol, and he understands too quickly with a sharp startled breath. Blaine watches his face, dangerous, dangerous creature in too many ways.
"I've - never." Kurt says, very quietly, and his hands don't know what to do with each other on his lap. "I don't. Know. Anything."
"I don't want to sound like a complete whore or anything, but I can help you out there, you know." Blaine - leans, just enough to put a hand on Kurt's knee, which stiffens, and all the nerves ripple up alive. "You really want your only kiss in high school to be some dickwad closeted jock?"
He's leaning closer, now, slow and graceful as a hunting cat. Kurt can feel something shaking and it must be him, it can't be the entire world. He whispers, very dry, "I dated a cheerleader once."
Blaine - laughs, and Kurt feels it gust against his own mouth, and his eyes close. "I bet you did. Lucky bitch didn't deserve you."
Lips touching around his bottom lip make Kurt's entire body jerk but Blaine's twisted himself in, got an arm around Kurt's side, low around his waist to hold him there. "Fucking gorgeous." Blaine growls, and the kiss starts with a bite.
Clearly none of Kurt's kisses are ever going to be what he actually wants.
But after the teeth there's unexpected softness, two long kisses that maybe are what Kurt wants and the breath leaves him with a little noise as Blaine's tongue presses, slides sideways in. Kurt has no real idea what to do, the logistics of kissing had seemed so complicated with Brittany, but then he can taste Blaine wet and hot and he forgets all about logistics, his mouth just wants. His hands clutch and pull at Blaine's jacket and Blaine arches himself onto Kurt's seat, kneeling over him, tilting his head back with a hand at his throat; little bastard has managed to arrange them so he's taller. Kurt could laugh but then Blaine's other hand runs up his spine underneath his jacket like he's strumming a guitar and Kurt's body curves into his and his breath jolts in through his nose, Blaine's all warm and solid and hard and real and Kurt has a really painfully beautiful boy's tongue in his mouth and how the fuck did today turn into this?
Blaine's wide-kneed kneel slips lower. Kurt pulls at his jacket, making little noises with each breath now, he just wants to be inhaling him, he wants Blaine in under his skin tangled in with his veins. He wants, wants, slip of wet lips and teasing turn of Blaine's tongue to draw his out he wants, and Blaine's wide-kneeled sit slides itself fully down now, pressing an unmistakable bulge into Kurt's stomach.
He shoves back snorting the breath out of himself, heart hammering inside his ears, throat suddenly closed. Blaine whispers, "Hey," and draws his face up, kisses his mouth again but Kurt shoves him hard this time.
"Get - no. Get off me."
Blaine hangs back on his knees for a second, then climbs back onto his seat. "Sorry. I told you, impulse control issues. I want things, I do them." He lolls his head across, grinning. "I want you, I do you. It's really simple, in my head."
Kurt opens the car door, stumbles out onto the sidewalk, his legs heavy and only half responsive and sending him staggering into the railings. He leans against them, shakes a little, puts his hand over his mouth. God -
He can hear Blaine's door opening, but he doesn't look at him. "Women are right," he says, roughly. "Men are pigs."
Blaine's silent for a moment, then says, "I'm sorry. You're actually . . . I'm sorry. I didn't know you really weren't comfortable with it. I'm sorry. I know I'm a dick, but I swear I'm - I'm not that sort of dick. I'm not."
Kurt swallows. "You're not a dick. You just do dickish things. Hey! Here's a thought! Don't!"
After a pause Kurt breathes in hard, and does look across at him. Blaine's standing there awkwardly, hands in his pockets, scuffing a sneaker at the edge of a drain set in the sidewalk. Something in Kurt softens, folds. He looks like a little boy, and Kurt's always been sort of a pushover for cute kids.
"I know I do dickish things." Blaine says to the sidewalk. "I just, I end up in detention, first day, great start, and then you're there. And incredibly gorgeous. And setting my gaydar like, clanging. And it just felt like my birthday. I . . . sorry. I know you don't owe me anything just because I want it."
Kurt folds his arms around himself and breathes, slowly, checking that he actually is calm. "You're really not a dick," he says, softly. "How do you end up in so much trouble?"
"Because I lack impulse control. And foresight. And focus. And a lot of things, actually." Blaine kicks at the drain a few more times and then lifts his head. "If we're sharing, do you want to know why I really got kicked out of my last school?"
Kurt shrugs jaggedly. "You don't owe me anything either."
". . . I kind of feel like I do, now." Blaine runs a hand back through his hair, searches the darkening sky, all pleated grey clouds, for inspiration, for a starting point. "It was an alright school, actually. Because normally I'm pretty much on the defensive from day one, because someone will think they can bring it because of my height or my sexuality, and then things get out of hand. But they had this, this no harassment policy. Everything was eerily calm. I got into no fights. Kids actually seemed concerned about making friends with me, like - none of it mattered. Even wanted me to join in their goddamn glee club," with a snort, and Kurt looks down again, tightening his arms around himself. "Only there was this teacher, for literature, he totally got off on the naughty schoolboy thing, you could see him looking, it was just - well, hilarious, actually. Only getting in trouble is sort of what I do. And he 'escorted' me to the principal's office one time. And his hand got a little too low on my back. And I sort of punched him."
Kurt closes his eyes and doesn't unwrap his arms from around himself. He hears Blaine swallow, and shuffle.
"Apparently assaulting a staff member is a 'one strike and you're out' kind of thing. So, no more uniform, and no more no harassment policy either. Could've made that work, too, maybe."
Kurt looks at the sidewalk; flattened gum and fallen leaves. How come other people cope with these things? How come someone touches Blaine the wrong way and he hits them and shrugs about it, and Kurt - Kurt just feels dirtied and shrunken and like if he doesn't tell anyone he'll suffocate but thinking about saying it out loud makes him feel sick -
"So are we even? Can you at least try to trust me?" Blaine's hand touches his arm and Kurt starts, shudders back blinking at him. "Are you scared of me?"
"What? No." Kurt's surprised himself with how easily that comes out. "You haven't hurt me. Just - just them."
"I try to make a point of only hurting people who deserve it. I'll be nice to you. I like you."
Kurt rubs his arms a little, hunches himself smaller. "I need to get home. My dad'll notice I'm late."
"Okay. Here." Blaine lifts his arm, shakes his sleeve back, unlaces that braided band of leather. "Wrist." He takes Kurt's arm before he can move, trapping it against himself with an elbow while he ties the bracelet back on Kurt's wrist. Kurt does tug at first, but Blaine is freakishly strong for someone of his height and Kurt does not need visible bruises on his arm to try to explain away.
"What are you doing?"
"Marking you." Blaine's intent on his knot. "This is the civilised version of a wolf pissing up your leg. Mine now."
"I very much beg to differ with that." Arm released, Kurt slips a finger in underneath that leather band and tugs a little but it's tied tight, it's not coming off. "This is so not me. Why?"
Blaine shrugs. "It warns other males off. Collared, right?" He grins, and leans up, catches the back of Kurt's neck and pulls him down and off-balance into the kiss, a sudden searching too-much of a kiss and Kurt staggers when he's released. "Thanks for the fun evening. See you tomorrow, Kurt."
"What-" Blaine leans into the car, retrieves his bag. "What are you -" Kurt's mouth feels raw and oddly buzzing, like his lips have been stung. He can't even think what to say, and eventually comes out with a pathetic, "Don't you want a lift home?"
"I'll walk. See you in the morning!"
"Blaine-"
Kurt stares after his disappearing back as the streetlights flicker on, then lifts his hand, looks at the leather band tied tight around his wrist, tugs at it a little. It won't come off.
He will go home, get a knife, and rid himself of this ridiculous evening.
It smells of leather, and deeper, of still-warm sweat, of Blaine.
*
It's only when he's in his room, dropping his bag, automatically searching out his phone to check his texts that he realises that it's gone. He opens the satchel wider, stirs the contents, upends them on his bed; no phone. He clunks his head into a hand, groans. He dropped it, either before detention or while clobbering Karofsky with his bag, but either way the odds of it being handed in as lost property are slim: it'll be wiped and sold, or laughed over and smashed up, or very probably it's being used at this very moment to make prank calls to China.
His head is being cradled by the branded wrist, the collared wrist. He smells leather without even trying to, lifts his head and licks his lips, tries to think about other things. But when he thinks about other things he remembers that he whacked Karofsky in the head for the second time today, and at school tomorrow he'll be killed, literally, not figuratively, and fear folds his knees. He sits on the edge of his bed, grips the covers tight, and tries to focus on being here, in his last safe place, the only safe place in the entire world now is under his father's roof. Everywhere else -
He lifts his wrist and runs his fingertips around the plaiting of leather, and chews all the skin off his bottom lip.
He pushes it up his arm, tugs his cuff out over it during dinner. One-handed he can't open it, and he means to take a knife to it but somehow can't bring himself to. He showers with it on, and he can smell it all the way through his skincare routine, feel it brush his cheek when he combs his hair. In the mirror he looks himself over curiously, because he considers whether he looks bad or good all the time but he has never even thought about whether or not he looks 'hot', sexiness is for other people, Kurt basically thinks of himself as a walking clothes prop. Now he tries to work out what that other boy saw. He looks too young, still, he'll probably be carded until he's thirty for buying booze. His dad says he looks like his mom, which Kurt usually takes to mean he basically does look like a girl. He tilts his head, frowns up at himself. He sees a target. He sees someone who looks weak, someone the strong will keep on doing whatever they like to.
He raises his head, holds his eye, lets his breath out slowly. He sees someone still growing. He sees someone who doesn't fit in but wouldn't want to fit in here anyway. He sees someone with a future. He'll get out of this horseshit town and go somewhere else, somewhere amazing, and things will be better, different, better. If he survives school tomorrow.
He turns the lights off, and everything's easier in the dark. In bed he lays on his side, for some time trying to think about something frivolous, but what he keeps thinking about are amused brown eyes and just ridiculous eyebrows and his sudden grins, quick and dangerous as lightning, and how for some stupid reason he just trusted a stranger with almost every secret he has. He turns his cheek into his wrist, and leather brushes his skin.
He got his first kiss today, his real one, one he actually on some level wanted. He'd never really understood want before, never really wanted this before, but Blaine's mouth and his hard warm body -
Kurt closes his eyes, breathes slowly.
And his teeth on Kurt's lip and the hot shiver of his breath and his hand running up Kurt's back, thin fabric between skin and skin -
He turns his head, closes his teeth around the leather. His heart is running faster, he feels too hot under the covers; ashamed before he's even done it, he bites down, and his free hand slides underneath his pyjamas, his skin prickling like it's a stranger's touch. He doesn't do this much.
Leather tastes bitter. He thinks about Blaine's mouth, and tries not to moan out loud.
Part II
Fix, Glee!fic, part 1 of probably *4* which has made my OCD three-fixated narrative brain collapse screaming in on itself.
Disclaimer: I own none of the characters and not even the concept. Created out of love for god knows no money.
Rating: This part R, may go up, may not.
Warnings and spoilers: A sort of jumbled up rerun of season two, so expect spoilers sprinkled liberally throughout, though canon timelines have been bounced around a lot. Warnings-wise, oh hi it's a rerun of season two, so if anything *mildly* squicked you about season two, expect that but harsher. Not written for kids, not expecting kids to read it.
Necessary note: The whole reform school!Dalton/bad boy!Blaine meme at first made me all lol the crack but actually, some of the fic is really good, and actually, given Blaine's character and situation, you don't need so many tweaks to get him there; a few different decisions, and some more bad luck. So I ended up writing this. It is an *enormous* structural mess, I am so not David Mitchell. Wish me luck for hauling the last two parts vaguely readable ^^;
Summary: He has - god, his grin is wolfish and wicked and somehow, in the bright darkness of his eyes, sweet
Now comes with fanmix for your listening pleasure by the awesome meggie87, and fanart by the very talented mystical_mayhem: basically, people are *awesome* and I appreciate it a lot lot lot <3
Kurt is finally used to detention. At first he hadn't had any clue what he was supposed to do - just sit for an hour and a half? - or where it even was, and the hot furious shame of it had made his face dark and throat thick, sitting in a classroom after school hunched over his books while whatever cretins who'd got themselves stuck in there with him for the evening flicked spitballs and jerked his chair suddenly out from underneath him. The fact that he's now resigned doesn't mean that he actually enjoys it or anything. How does Puck put up with so much of this? By not turning up, clearly. It's not an option for Kurt. So, detention, in a thankfully empty classroom tonight, just him and a geography teacher pushing his glasses up his nose and taking another pull from his water bottle, blinking at his grading.
At least six weeks of detention are doing wonders for Kurt's grades. He's even acing math now. Nothing to do in here but pay attention . . .
The door to the classroom knocks open and Kurt looks up, a glance to check and then a second glance because it's a face he doesn't know. The teacher scowls, says, "You're late, Mr-" He checks the list on the desk. "-Anderson."
"First day. Got lost." He's a short, dark-haired guy, who looks right at Kurt - Kurt looks immediately down at his French homework again - and then scuffs into the room and thumps into the desk next to Kurt's, his bag dumped closer to Kurt's chair than his own. An entire empty classroom and he picks that seat. This cannot be good.
"Just take your books out and, and get on with your work, Mr Anderson."
"Relax. I know the drill."
"I'm sure you do," the teacher mumbles, and lifts his water bottle again, rubbing his eye underneath his glasses.
The new kid's foot thumpathumpathumpathumpas against his table leg and Kurt glances across, making sure to keep his eyes on that foot because eye contact is an invitation to aggression and he knows it. It is really seriously really irritating, though. He can start an argument, but people spending their evenings in detention are not people Kurt needs to join the massed ranks of his enemies; he puts his eyes firmly back on his book, and manages another sentence.
It is a really fucking irritating noise.
He chews his lip inwards, lets his breath out slowly through his nose, chants verb forms in his head. What is the verb for 'to disembowel irritating midget freshmen ADD-sufferers'? He writes slowly, speaking the words loudly in his head, concentrating on his handwriting.
Thumpathumpathumpathumpathumpa-
Oh fuck everything.
Kurt flicks his glance icily across the desk at the boy - who's sitting back in his seat, one outstretched leg beating that rhythm out against the table leg, jaw propped on a hand, staring right at Kurt. His smile flicks alight as Kurt's eyes hit him, and Kurt's face freezes, he can feel the blood rising, he looks quickly back at his books again and hears soft laughter from the next desk. Great. Wonderful. Superbe.
He writes on the corner of the page, tears it out, folds it neatly and flicks it across the desks. The teacher doesn't look up, clears his throat, wipes his nose with a pull of two fingers, and Kurt carries on writing as the new boy opens his note and reads, I hope you get an RSI.
He gives a little amused snort. Kurt feels his ears burn, keeps his eyes on his book, but the rhythm has if anything speeded up. Kurt puts his pen down with an audible click, sits up and glares at him. And the new boy grins back. He has - god, his grin is wolfish and wicked and somehow, in the bright darkness of his eyes, sweet. And Kurt feels something catch in his throat, gulp and clog. He takes him in properly; the small perfect line of a scar on one cheek, plaited leather band around one tanned wrist, just enough product in his hair, just enough co-ordination between jacket and t-shirt and sneakers, black jeans that actually fit which most teenage boys seem to find impossible to source. Smiling at Kurt. Smiling, dangerous and amused, right at Kurt.
Kurt turns his head to look out of the window, very aware by now that he's crimson and breathing in quick fluttery useless breaths that don't get nearly deep enough in his lungs. What the hell, what the hell, what the hell. He's - is he? Kurt swallows. Is he . . . ?
Kurt's gaydar is underpractised, since the only person he can test it on is himself and yes he comes up glowingly gay every time, but obviously Sam was a red herring, and now there's short dark and gorgeous sitting there making Kurt's nerves ring. Probably, he thinks, and it sits bitter in his chest, probably he's just fucking with Kurt. He knows, of course he knows, everyone knows. Even on his first day all he had to do was spot Kurt walking down a corridor. So he knows, and he's fucking with Kurt, and Kurt really cannot cope with this on top of everything else. Detention on his own is a blessing, just some silence before he has to face the afterwards, it's not fair to intrude this on him here. Where the hell can he count as a safe space anymore?
There is a soft thump from the front of the classroom. They both look up; even the rhythm stops. The geography teacher is face-down on the desk, one hand still loosely curled around his water bottle.
Kurt's eyes widen. The rules of detention do not cover what you do if the teacher supervising drops dead before your time's done. But the boy sitting next to him - 'Mr Anderson' - scrapes his chair back and walks to the desk at the front, leans down to check his face, then sniffs the neck of the bottle in his hand. He laughs, slips it loose of his grip, picks up the lid and screws it back on as he strolls back to his desk, dropping the bottle into his bag. "Someone up there really likes me."
"Is he okay?"
"He's wasted. You want-?" He lifts the bottle again, its contents sloshing the sides, but Kurt raises a no thank you hand. The new boy shrugs, drops it back into his bag. "So, we are without supervision. What shall we do."
"I have homework."
"Everyone has homework," he says philosophically, and shrugs. "You aren't exactly the type I normally share this situation with." He leans against his desk, gripping it with relaxed hands, tilting his head to look at Kurt as Kurt looks away, and pretends not to mind, pretends not to be paying attention to every nuance of his quite lovely voice. "What're you in for? We can share crime stories and bond. I'll teach you how to make a shiv."
The laugh balls, sudden and huge, and only just remains buried in Kurt's chest. "How did you get detention on your first day?"
The new boy shrugs, a curious motion leaning back against the desk, letting the corner of Kurt's eye really appreciate the way his shoulders flex. "Apparently 'slushie' is a verb in this school."
"You-?"
"Not to me it isn't. Apparently I used excessive force in my self-defence." He lifts his hands, leaning back on his - well, on his ass against the desk now, and flicks quotation marks in the air. "'Impulse control issues'. I'm Blaine."
". . . Kurt." Clearly he doesn't know of Kurt, not yet, not to speak to him like this. Kurt might as well enjoy the one decent conversation he's likely to get with him. "Who tried to slushie you?"
Blaine shrugs. "Big guy? White? Letterman jacket? Tragic haircut?"
God, he is gay. Is he gay? Please be gay. "That doesn't narrow it down very much."
"He now walks hunched over if that narrows it down any more."
Kurt wants so badly to laugh, puts a hand over his mouth and coughs, delicately. Blaine's openly smirking now, pleased to be of amusement, stands up and strolls around Kurt's desk running a finger around the rim. "So, Kurt. What are you in for? Arson? Drug dealing? Excessive charm?"
Kurt's mouth freezes on open before he manages to re-engage his brain. Is he being flirted with? In detention, with a guy who got himself put here on his first day in a new school, with the teacher passed out drunk at the front of the classroom? He doesn't know anything about flirting, doesn't know if this is flirting or if he's being presumptuous or if he's being messed with or if he's even hearing Blaine right over all the blood filling his head up. "Um. I . . ."
Blaine's fingertips draw little swooping patterns on the desktop, and he leans a little lower to murmur, "Distracting the other boys?"
Kurt kicks his chair back, scraping some distance between the two of them, and Blaine lifts his head, a little surprised, mostly amused. "I," Kurt says, and swallows. "I - there was this - guy who'd been - harassing me. For a while. For. Well. Years. And." He shuffles his shoulders a little higher, and Blaine glances to the window, walks there to look out, hands clasped loosely behind his back as he listens. "And -"
He can't say why. That's why he's here, because he can't say why, can't risk actually saving himself. All he can do is cope.
"And it all got more intense and creepy and he - scared me, and, one day I was alone in the choir room and he came in and - and locked the door."
Kurt looks at the door now, and folds his arms around himself, as Blaine turns his back to the window and watches him.
"And I didn't know what he was going to do to me, so."
"So . . ."
"So. I broke a guitar over his head."
Blaine's laugh is - sudden and startled and makes something swoop in Kurt's stomach. "Not so much the little white mouse, then. They put you in detention for that?"
"Six weeks. On probation. Counselling. I am unpredictable and dangerous."
"Oh you look it." His mouth is twitching, and Kurt can hardly dare look at him. "Deadly. So, what did your meathead look like?"
Kurt licks his lips. "Big guy, white, letterman jacket, woeful haircut. Kind of chubby."
"I only ask because, there's a little pack of meets-the-description hanging out down there. Not all of them are white but they are all very big and letterman jacket-wearing and really, really badly groomed. And I didn't think it would be your friends waiting for you."
Kurt's eyes close, and he's glad he's sitting down so his legs can't go. "No," he whispers, very dry. Some nights his friends do wait for him. Some nights someone will remember to stop by after football practise or homework in the library to walk Kurt out, but they don't always. They have busy lives, and Kurt doesn't like to ask them to, and everyone sort of assumes that everyone else is doing it. So quite often it's just Kurt, walking alone through his unwelcoming committee to get to his car. It's better when they shout abuse after him. Some nights they're silent. Just silent. A big group of big silent football players spread into two across the exit, so Kurt has to walk through them, heart running so fast it feels like it might split, hands tight around the strap of his bag, walking as fast as he dares with his eyes straight forward and Karofsky there to his right looking right at him . . .
Blaine watches him for some time, then nods at the teacher and says, "He's gonna need some time to sleep it off. You want to get out of here?"
No. Not anymore. It's safe in here. They won't come in here. Kurt tightens his arms around himself, and lowers his head.
Blaine waits a little, then looks out of the window again. "I'll be your bodyguard for a minimal fee."
"My bodyguard." Kurt lifts his head. "I'm very sorry, but - how old are you?"
"Sixteen. Clearly I didn't drink enough milk as a child. But I actually wasn't joking about impulse control issues and making a shiv."
Same age as Kurt; Kurt's never met a guy shorter than he is before. Blaine just shrugs. "They never expect the little guy's capable of it. I hold my own."
Kurt says doubtfully, "What fee?"
And Blaine grins. Kurt's mouth twitches in automatic response; his grin is electric, it lights up like a Christmas tree coming on. "I want very badly to put my hands down your pants, Kurt."
Kurt's face goes numb; whatever expression he's wearing, he couldn't change it if he had the brainpower to want to. Blaine's grin tilts wicked. "I'd settle for some light groping. I get it, you need wooing. I'll bring you the heads of football players. I can be romantic."
Kurt closes his French book, packs his things away. "I'm fine." He feels physically sick. "I can take care of myself."
". . . hey." Blaine watches him pull his jacket on and pick up his satchel. "Sorry. Look, seriously, impulse control issues, I just - think things and say them in pretty much exactly the same second. I am not trying to be a tool, I just . . . you are really, really hot. I'm sorry if you don't swing that way. I didn't mean to sound - I don't know."
Kurt's satchel bangs into the desk as he turns back to him. "Of course I - of course I swing that way, why do you think they're waiting out there - I just -"
"I'm not your type?"
For fuck's sake the boy is gorgeous, he might as well have 'Kurt's type' tattooed around his ankle. "We have just had all of a third of a conversation and you're already - you're suggesting -"
Blaine looks up at him, curious and open with wondering eyes, and then his eyebrows lower a little; he has a lot of eyebrow to emote with. "You're not even taken, are you? You've just never - done anything. I just propositioned a virgin with something really filthy. Well, now I'm going to hell."
Kurt's chest heaves with humiliation. "Welcome to William McKinley, Blaine, the out and proud population of which just increased by a hundred percent. No, I've never done anything. Who the hell you think I'd find to-"
But he remembers Karofsky, and puts a hand over his mouth, flumps to sit on the edge of a desk. "Hey," Blaine says softly, and both their heads jerk to the snort at the front of the room, where the teacher's head tips to the side and he begins to snore. Kurt chokes out the anger and stands up with a scrape, strides for the door. Halfway down the corridor, walking as quick and hard as he can and blinking hard all the way, he hears another, "Hey!" and Blaine's footsteps catch him up, bag bouncing noisily over his shoulder. "Okay. How about this for a fee? You stop hating me, and I keep my hands to myself. How does that sound?"
"You'll make it worse." Kurt's throat is lumping with it all, with this boy who so doesn't get it. "If I just keep my head down and keep going they let me go. It's only when I - or someone else - draws attention to it -"
"I'm sorry, I thought you said you were out. Out and still holding that closet door up as a shield?"
Kurt stops himself stiffly and Blaine skids a little in stopping ahead of him. "It's fine for you. You can fight back, go ahead, go nuts, fight. What am I going to do? They'll break my arms and all I can do is scream at a pitch I hope hurts their ears, just - just leave me alone. I survived this far. I'll be fine."
". . . hey." Blaine touches his arm. Kurt starts back like he's been shocked. Blaine holds his hands up, weaponless and soothing. "I have impulse control issues and I'm very self-centred, and I think you're too pretty for a black eye. So I'm coming with you. You might as well start enjoying my glittering company already, because it's not going anywhere."
Kurt kneads his eyes with his knuckles. "Why are you doing this?"
"I'm still sort of hoping the rescue complex will kick in soon and you will want to make out with me, actually. But I'd settle for a smile."
Kurt obliges, against his own will, with a little choke of disbelieving breath.
*
They lock the rest of the exits on a night, so the janitors only have this one to take care of when the school closes proper. So it's not like Kurt has a choice about which door he's coming out of, which they all know full well - Karofsky and the rest of them, Karofsky's friends, who don't know half of the truth or the real reason Kurt broke a guitar over his terrifying, hateful head. No-one knows. And no-one ever can know, or -
Kurt breathes evenly, as Blaine pushes the door open and steps out, and holds it calmly open for him. Kurt follows him, pale and straight-backed, and Blaine glances around at the gathering waiting for them, nods. "Evening, guys. Is this your pre-dogging gathering or are you out of other venues for the orgy?"
"Jesus," Kurt whispers, and he's too scared to move, he's planted to that top step like an oak tree. But Blaine puts an arm around his back, settling around his waist gentle and possessive in a way that pulls the blood immediately back to Kurt's face, and he murmurs, "Come on. Where's your ride?"
"My car - over -"
"You found a boyfriend, Hummel? Where'd you find someone blind enough to fuck you?"
"An' deaf," someone else sniggers, and Kurt rolls his eyes to the sky - god he wishes he had someone to pray to sometimes - and lets Blaine pull him down step by step to the tarmac, the strap of his satchel biting into his palm and closed fingers.
"An' short, they'll put you away for fucking twelve year olds, Hummel-"
"He'd like that, being someone's prison bitch, he dreams about it."
That was Karofsky's voice. But before Kurt can actually throw up with fear, Blaine says, "Hey, you're the guy who tried to empty his drink on my head! How're your balls, did your voice rebreak yet?"
He's not talking to Karofsky but to some other kid, blond and face purpling as he looks as Blaine, hands closing into fists at his sides. Kurt thinks, Impulse control issues. I knew he'd get me killed too.
Blaine's hands push gently at his back. "Hey. Run."
And then he shoves. Kurt stumbles a few steps forward, nearly scuffs a layer of leather off his boots, windmilling his arms to stay upright, and turns just in time to see Blaine spin to the guy coming up at his back, and trimly headbutt him in the nose.
There's blood, and a screech, and a curse, and the crowd of footballers dissolves onto Blaine who knees someone else in the nuts and elbows someone else in the cheek before Karofsky's grabbing hand gets his shoulder. Kurt doesn't think. Kurt clearly doesn't think. He skids on his heel and runs back, swinging his satchel off his shoulder, and it's a lovely little illustration of centrifugal force - unless it's centripetal force, Kurt's still catching up on physics - as it smashes Karofsky right in the eyes. He falls right over and takes two of his friends down with him, as Blaine kicks someone else hard in the knee. Kurt feels, mostly, disbelief.
Blaine's hand grabs his painfully hard. "Come on."
"My car-"
"Which?"
"Big black-"
They run, scrambling and stumbling, but only one guy - Azimio - is actually giving any real chase, the others are either still on the steps cradling various injuries or lurching after them with wrecked knees or huffing blood through a hand. "Fucking dead, Hummel-!" Azimio yells, and Kurt could be crying with fear but he isn't. He's just running, fumbling the car keys out of his jacket pocket, Blaine's hand letting go of his so they can skid to opposite doors.
Azimio aims for Blaine. He probably knows how easy it'll be to bring Kurt down without him. He body-slams him into the side of the car and Kurt hears the breath punch out of his lungs, can't possibly get around the side of the car fast enough to help as Azimio kneels to punch and comes back screaming, with a pen sticking out of his arm.
Kurt doesn't breathe for the next six seconds, as Blaine heaves himself up and into the car, bent in half over the dashboard coughing. "-up," he pants out, banging the dash. Kurt climbs, every limb numb and only half responsive, into the driver's seat, and turns the ignition on, and growls his engine a warning at the footballers skidding to halts in front of them. He only gives them one warning, pulling out in a tight turning his dad would never approve of, seatbelt not even fastened, scattering footballers as they go. Someone bangs on the side of the car with the flat of their fist but they're out, and free, and skid-bumping onto the street and away.
And none of that, none of that, can be undone.
Blaine slumps back in his seat, one arm around his sore stomach, and starts laughing, and Kurt can't take any of this back.
*
He kills the engine at the edge of the park, which is quiet and dark with trees at this time of night in the fall, and folds his arms over the steering wheel so he can lean into them and hide. His strange and beautiful and unpredictable passenger just sits there for some time with his hand over his chest, then leans down and picks his bag up. Kurt hears busy movement, blinks and lifts his head, and Blaine decants the clear contents of that teacher's 'water' bottle into half a bottle of Coke. He swirls it a bit, then offers it to Kurt.
Kurt waves it away with a hand, one arm still bent over the wheel. "They're going to murder me tomorrow."
"All the more reason for a drink," Blaine says, and takes a little gulp, wrinkles his face up. "God, it's not even good stuff. He's an irresponsible educator and a cheapskate. No, they might not, fifty-fifty, they might never touch you again after that. I always think that's a fair risk to play for."
"How dull your life would be without people to get into fights with, though." Kurt says sourly, and Blaine takes another pull of half-Coke half-vodka, says, "There's always the next school."
"We're halfway through the semester, why did you just start?"
Blaine shrugs. "Got kicked out. Again. Really nice school that time, my parents were so pissed. Fucking awful uniform," he muses. "You don't act like someone who makes a habit of braining boys but that's twice already, hm? There's a deviant in you, I'll get it out."
"Don't. I told you not to. I told you not to, they're going to - he'll -"
He puts a hand over his nose, because if he does start crying then he doesn't need Blaine to see him dripping with undignified snot. Blaine looks across at him, then screws the lid back onto the bottle and puts it in the cupholder. "What did he do to you?"
Kurt closes his eyes, buries his face further into his hand. Blaine says, "It takes a lot to make you break. What did he do?"
Kurt mumbles, "You don't know me."
"You just took on half a dozen football players armed with nothing but a very stylish satchel. There's more to you than meets the eye. Not that what meets the eye isn't entirely welcome, of course." Kurt breathes through his hand, slowly. "What did he do to you?"
Kurt shakes a little, and then it passes. He's trying to work out what he still has to lose. It turns out not much.
"He kissed me."
He's never said it out loud. It tastes bitter, and not quite real, and his shoulders hunch a little closer around him. He draws a quick shaky breath in, takes his hand away to speak. "In the locker room. He just - knocked me too far one day and I went in after him to yell at him and he kissed me. And I shoved him off and freaked out and - and ever since -"
"Fuck," Blaine says quietly, looking out the front windscreen. Kurt swallows.
"He told me he'd kill me if I told anyone. Since he'll kill me now anyway it doesn't seem to matter much." He closes his eyes, folds his arms around himself. "He follows me around the school. Everywhere I go I never know if he'll be there and - and in the choir room, I was so scared -"
"You think he'd assault you?"
Hearing the words said out loud makes something heavy sink through Kurt's stomach. He shakes his head away, looks out of the window, stares through the trees and remembers how he doesn't have any safe places anymore.
"I don't know. I don't know what he wanted. I was just scared. That time - I thought I would die I was so scared - I didn't even know I was doing it, I just needed him to stop. He was looking at me - he looked - I don't know what he looked like. I was terrified. He went for me, and I was terrified, and we knocked over a bunch of instruments when we went down, and I got my hand on the guitar, and."
"You did the right thing. Should've smashed his face in."
Kurt squeezes his arms more tightly around himself. "Mild concussion. And it doesn't matter that I was - crying so hard and so scared because when I got the door open that was what they saw. Him on the floor and the broken guitar and . . ."
"You told them what he did? Anyone?"
Kurt closes his eyes, and shakes his head just a little. He hears Blaine unscrewing the bottle again, and in a little pause before he takes a drink, "Why?"
"Because he'll kill me. I think he means it. And because it'll destroy both our lives. That's why he's so . . . he knows what it'll do to him if everyone finds out. So he has to make sure I don't tell, whatever the cost. And I won't tell, I won't but he can't trust me, he won't believe me, he just . . ."
He blinks his head up, and Blaine's offering him the bottle again. "I'm driving," he points out, but Blaine jigs it insistently, eyebrows raised. Kurt rolls his eyes, takes the bottle, takes a careful little sip. It hits the back of his throat like turpentine. "God-"
Blaine laughs, bright and barking, takes the bottle back and a gulp and puts it back in the cupholder. "First blood. You're stronger than you think."
Kurt puts a hand over his mouth and tries not to hack his lungs up into an undignified, messy pile on the steering wheel. "You don't know how close I am to coming to pieces, Blaine."
"But you won't. Not you. You're not the kind who breaks. And you have me now."
"And what are you going to do for me?" Kurt looks across at him, at the glitter in his eyes in the shadows. He makes something in Kurt come unsettled in ways he never lets himself come unsettled; it's not safe to come unsettled. "Encourage even more guys three times my size to want me dead?"
"Bodyguard," Blaine offers with a casual little shrug. "Friend." His eyes are so dark but for those little caught stars, like light off distant water. "There's more if you want it."
For a second, Kurt's so dazed that he thinks Blaine means that bottle of vile room temperature sugar and unfiltered alcohol, and he understands too quickly with a sharp startled breath. Blaine watches his face, dangerous, dangerous creature in too many ways.
"I've - never." Kurt says, very quietly, and his hands don't know what to do with each other on his lap. "I don't. Know. Anything."
"I don't want to sound like a complete whore or anything, but I can help you out there, you know." Blaine - leans, just enough to put a hand on Kurt's knee, which stiffens, and all the nerves ripple up alive. "You really want your only kiss in high school to be some dickwad closeted jock?"
He's leaning closer, now, slow and graceful as a hunting cat. Kurt can feel something shaking and it must be him, it can't be the entire world. He whispers, very dry, "I dated a cheerleader once."
Blaine - laughs, and Kurt feels it gust against his own mouth, and his eyes close. "I bet you did. Lucky bitch didn't deserve you."
Lips touching around his bottom lip make Kurt's entire body jerk but Blaine's twisted himself in, got an arm around Kurt's side, low around his waist to hold him there. "Fucking gorgeous." Blaine growls, and the kiss starts with a bite.
Clearly none of Kurt's kisses are ever going to be what he actually wants.
But after the teeth there's unexpected softness, two long kisses that maybe are what Kurt wants and the breath leaves him with a little noise as Blaine's tongue presses, slides sideways in. Kurt has no real idea what to do, the logistics of kissing had seemed so complicated with Brittany, but then he can taste Blaine wet and hot and he forgets all about logistics, his mouth just wants. His hands clutch and pull at Blaine's jacket and Blaine arches himself onto Kurt's seat, kneeling over him, tilting his head back with a hand at his throat; little bastard has managed to arrange them so he's taller. Kurt could laugh but then Blaine's other hand runs up his spine underneath his jacket like he's strumming a guitar and Kurt's body curves into his and his breath jolts in through his nose, Blaine's all warm and solid and hard and real and Kurt has a really painfully beautiful boy's tongue in his mouth and how the fuck did today turn into this?
Blaine's wide-kneed kneel slips lower. Kurt pulls at his jacket, making little noises with each breath now, he just wants to be inhaling him, he wants Blaine in under his skin tangled in with his veins. He wants, wants, slip of wet lips and teasing turn of Blaine's tongue to draw his out he wants, and Blaine's wide-kneeled sit slides itself fully down now, pressing an unmistakable bulge into Kurt's stomach.
He shoves back snorting the breath out of himself, heart hammering inside his ears, throat suddenly closed. Blaine whispers, "Hey," and draws his face up, kisses his mouth again but Kurt shoves him hard this time.
"Get - no. Get off me."
Blaine hangs back on his knees for a second, then climbs back onto his seat. "Sorry. I told you, impulse control issues. I want things, I do them." He lolls his head across, grinning. "I want you, I do you. It's really simple, in my head."
Kurt opens the car door, stumbles out onto the sidewalk, his legs heavy and only half responsive and sending him staggering into the railings. He leans against them, shakes a little, puts his hand over his mouth. God -
He can hear Blaine's door opening, but he doesn't look at him. "Women are right," he says, roughly. "Men are pigs."
Blaine's silent for a moment, then says, "I'm sorry. You're actually . . . I'm sorry. I didn't know you really weren't comfortable with it. I'm sorry. I know I'm a dick, but I swear I'm - I'm not that sort of dick. I'm not."
Kurt swallows. "You're not a dick. You just do dickish things. Hey! Here's a thought! Don't!"
After a pause Kurt breathes in hard, and does look across at him. Blaine's standing there awkwardly, hands in his pockets, scuffing a sneaker at the edge of a drain set in the sidewalk. Something in Kurt softens, folds. He looks like a little boy, and Kurt's always been sort of a pushover for cute kids.
"I know I do dickish things." Blaine says to the sidewalk. "I just, I end up in detention, first day, great start, and then you're there. And incredibly gorgeous. And setting my gaydar like, clanging. And it just felt like my birthday. I . . . sorry. I know you don't owe me anything just because I want it."
Kurt folds his arms around himself and breathes, slowly, checking that he actually is calm. "You're really not a dick," he says, softly. "How do you end up in so much trouble?"
"Because I lack impulse control. And foresight. And focus. And a lot of things, actually." Blaine kicks at the drain a few more times and then lifts his head. "If we're sharing, do you want to know why I really got kicked out of my last school?"
Kurt shrugs jaggedly. "You don't owe me anything either."
". . . I kind of feel like I do, now." Blaine runs a hand back through his hair, searches the darkening sky, all pleated grey clouds, for inspiration, for a starting point. "It was an alright school, actually. Because normally I'm pretty much on the defensive from day one, because someone will think they can bring it because of my height or my sexuality, and then things get out of hand. But they had this, this no harassment policy. Everything was eerily calm. I got into no fights. Kids actually seemed concerned about making friends with me, like - none of it mattered. Even wanted me to join in their goddamn glee club," with a snort, and Kurt looks down again, tightening his arms around himself. "Only there was this teacher, for literature, he totally got off on the naughty schoolboy thing, you could see him looking, it was just - well, hilarious, actually. Only getting in trouble is sort of what I do. And he 'escorted' me to the principal's office one time. And his hand got a little too low on my back. And I sort of punched him."
Kurt closes his eyes and doesn't unwrap his arms from around himself. He hears Blaine swallow, and shuffle.
"Apparently assaulting a staff member is a 'one strike and you're out' kind of thing. So, no more uniform, and no more no harassment policy either. Could've made that work, too, maybe."
Kurt looks at the sidewalk; flattened gum and fallen leaves. How come other people cope with these things? How come someone touches Blaine the wrong way and he hits them and shrugs about it, and Kurt - Kurt just feels dirtied and shrunken and like if he doesn't tell anyone he'll suffocate but thinking about saying it out loud makes him feel sick -
"So are we even? Can you at least try to trust me?" Blaine's hand touches his arm and Kurt starts, shudders back blinking at him. "Are you scared of me?"
"What? No." Kurt's surprised himself with how easily that comes out. "You haven't hurt me. Just - just them."
"I try to make a point of only hurting people who deserve it. I'll be nice to you. I like you."
Kurt rubs his arms a little, hunches himself smaller. "I need to get home. My dad'll notice I'm late."
"Okay. Here." Blaine lifts his arm, shakes his sleeve back, unlaces that braided band of leather. "Wrist." He takes Kurt's arm before he can move, trapping it against himself with an elbow while he ties the bracelet back on Kurt's wrist. Kurt does tug at first, but Blaine is freakishly strong for someone of his height and Kurt does not need visible bruises on his arm to try to explain away.
"What are you doing?"
"Marking you." Blaine's intent on his knot. "This is the civilised version of a wolf pissing up your leg. Mine now."
"I very much beg to differ with that." Arm released, Kurt slips a finger in underneath that leather band and tugs a little but it's tied tight, it's not coming off. "This is so not me. Why?"
Blaine shrugs. "It warns other males off. Collared, right?" He grins, and leans up, catches the back of Kurt's neck and pulls him down and off-balance into the kiss, a sudden searching too-much of a kiss and Kurt staggers when he's released. "Thanks for the fun evening. See you tomorrow, Kurt."
"What-" Blaine leans into the car, retrieves his bag. "What are you -" Kurt's mouth feels raw and oddly buzzing, like his lips have been stung. He can't even think what to say, and eventually comes out with a pathetic, "Don't you want a lift home?"
"I'll walk. See you in the morning!"
"Blaine-"
Kurt stares after his disappearing back as the streetlights flicker on, then lifts his hand, looks at the leather band tied tight around his wrist, tugs at it a little. It won't come off.
He will go home, get a knife, and rid himself of this ridiculous evening.
It smells of leather, and deeper, of still-warm sweat, of Blaine.
*
It's only when he's in his room, dropping his bag, automatically searching out his phone to check his texts that he realises that it's gone. He opens the satchel wider, stirs the contents, upends them on his bed; no phone. He clunks his head into a hand, groans. He dropped it, either before detention or while clobbering Karofsky with his bag, but either way the odds of it being handed in as lost property are slim: it'll be wiped and sold, or laughed over and smashed up, or very probably it's being used at this very moment to make prank calls to China.
His head is being cradled by the branded wrist, the collared wrist. He smells leather without even trying to, lifts his head and licks his lips, tries to think about other things. But when he thinks about other things he remembers that he whacked Karofsky in the head for the second time today, and at school tomorrow he'll be killed, literally, not figuratively, and fear folds his knees. He sits on the edge of his bed, grips the covers tight, and tries to focus on being here, in his last safe place, the only safe place in the entire world now is under his father's roof. Everywhere else -
He lifts his wrist and runs his fingertips around the plaiting of leather, and chews all the skin off his bottom lip.
He pushes it up his arm, tugs his cuff out over it during dinner. One-handed he can't open it, and he means to take a knife to it but somehow can't bring himself to. He showers with it on, and he can smell it all the way through his skincare routine, feel it brush his cheek when he combs his hair. In the mirror he looks himself over curiously, because he considers whether he looks bad or good all the time but he has never even thought about whether or not he looks 'hot', sexiness is for other people, Kurt basically thinks of himself as a walking clothes prop. Now he tries to work out what that other boy saw. He looks too young, still, he'll probably be carded until he's thirty for buying booze. His dad says he looks like his mom, which Kurt usually takes to mean he basically does look like a girl. He tilts his head, frowns up at himself. He sees a target. He sees someone who looks weak, someone the strong will keep on doing whatever they like to.
He raises his head, holds his eye, lets his breath out slowly. He sees someone still growing. He sees someone who doesn't fit in but wouldn't want to fit in here anyway. He sees someone with a future. He'll get out of this horseshit town and go somewhere else, somewhere amazing, and things will be better, different, better. If he survives school tomorrow.
He turns the lights off, and everything's easier in the dark. In bed he lays on his side, for some time trying to think about something frivolous, but what he keeps thinking about are amused brown eyes and just ridiculous eyebrows and his sudden grins, quick and dangerous as lightning, and how for some stupid reason he just trusted a stranger with almost every secret he has. He turns his cheek into his wrist, and leather brushes his skin.
He got his first kiss today, his real one, one he actually on some level wanted. He'd never really understood want before, never really wanted this before, but Blaine's mouth and his hard warm body -
Kurt closes his eyes, breathes slowly.
And his teeth on Kurt's lip and the hot shiver of his breath and his hand running up Kurt's back, thin fabric between skin and skin -
He turns his head, closes his teeth around the leather. His heart is running faster, he feels too hot under the covers; ashamed before he's even done it, he bites down, and his free hand slides underneath his pyjamas, his skin prickling like it's a stranger's touch. He doesn't do this much.
Leather tastes bitter. He thinks about Blaine's mouth, and tries not to moan out loud.
Part II