Above All Things 6/9+Epilogue)
Music in this chapter (with YouTube link): “Slow Dancing in a Burning Room”
Chapter 6: Just Don’t Deceive Me
He writes it into the show - the lovers’ secret song, the emotional pinnacle of the second act. Every time Blaine sings the opening line (Never knew I could feel like this, like I’ve never seen the sky before), he looks at Kurt, and it’s chills up and down and his heart full to bursting. It makes Kurt feel invincible.
It’s an act of defiance that they both need, hiding in plain sight rather than behind closed doors.
Sebastian starts showing up to rehearsal more and more frequently as opening night draws closer. He’s content, now, to sit in silence and stalk Blaine with his eagle eyes. He doesn’t touch him or talk to him, or even try. He just watches.
Kurt doesn’t let it bother him. How could he? Sebastian is nothing, he means nothing in the face of their love. The only power he has is the power that they give him, and Kurt will never give him this.
Come what may…
The world feels so bright with hope during these final few weeks. The show is coming together, blooming with life under the hot stage lights of the freshly-renovated Moulin Rouge. The press has started buzzing around them with interest over the novelty of it all - a strip club turned off-Broadway theater, a rag-tag bunch of artists working together to shake off their dubious pasts and create something beautiful. It’s the kind of thing Kurt knows he himself would eat up, if he saw it on the news. He knows, too, that none of it will matter once the curtain opens, because what they’ve built is enough to make the audience forget the sensationalism that brought them to their seats.
Blaine is enough to make them forget.
The two of them spend every minute together that they can - Bushwick may as well have been vaporized by alien death ray for all that Kurt sees of it. They’re too desperate for time to make any kind of concession, now. Kurt finds he likes waking up every morning to the breadth of Blaine’s back, lit golden by the filtered sunlight, or his face relaxed in sleep on the pillow next to him. He likes watching him wake up, the flutter of his eyelashes and the slow, sleepy smile that fills his whole face and exposes the quirked line of his top teeth. He likes the way Blaine presses close enough to touch the tips of their noses before he murmurs his “Good morning.”
He even likes the taste of morning breath, when it’s Blaine’s.
They don’t talk about the future. Kurt tries not to even think about it, because it doesn’t matter what happens next. They’ll face it as it comes, together. And, for now, in this suspended moment, everything is entirely right.
&&&&&
Tonight marks ten days until opening. It’s been a long day, fraught with the stress of last-minute choreography changes and increasingly scathing performance notes from Sue. Tensions are at a high and spirits dipping lower. It’s a good night for a long bath, Kurt decides, with bubbles and candles and Blaine there to lean against. He always makes an excellent pillow.
Rehearsal is long over, and everyone has left. Even Sue has retreated back to her lair, leaving Kurt and Blaine alone with the freshly-painted sets.
Blaine is on stage, practicing a sequence that’s been giving him trouble all week. Kurt is watching, unseen, from the wings. The theater is quiet but for the echo of Blaine’s shoes against the floor and the gust of his breath through the stillness.
There’s an intensity approaching obsession in the way Blaine scrunches up his face in distaste and moves back into position, over and over. He huffs out a frustrated sigh.
Enough is enough.
Kurt clears his throat and steps out into the half-light of the stage.
“May I have this dance?”
Blaine starts, almost trips, then drops his chin and grins.
“You startled me.”
“You were pretty deep in it. I figured it was time to call it a night.”
“Just a little while longer? I feel like I’ve almost got it.”
Kurt smiles. He holds out his hand in invitation.
“Dance with me first.”
Blaine laughs, and takes it.
There’s no music, but it doesn’t matter. Their bodies fit easily - hand in hand, Blaine’s cheek bent to rest against Kurt’s neck - and find their rhythm together.
“You’re going to be perfect, you know,” he murmurs into Blaine’s ear.
He can feel Blaine smile against his skin.
“I’d better be.”
He presses a kiss just behind Blaine’s jaw, where the skin is coarse from evening stubble, and nuzzles affectionately into his hair.
Blaine starts to hum after a while, a tune that Kurt doesn’t recognize. It’s well-fitted to the sway of their bodies, hypnotic and bittersweet, like a slow dance on a summer night. He sings, softly, just for Kurt, “Baby, you’re the only light I ever saw…”
They settle closer and closer, until it’s more of a caress than a dance, and they abandon all pretense. They hold each other, and breathe, and let the day melt away.
Finally, Blaine sighs and pulls back with one final squeeze.
“I’ll just go get my things from the dressing room. I think I’m ready to go home.”
Kurt smiles, soft and sweet, for him.
“I’ll be here.”
It’s only moments after Blaine’s left the stage, when Kurt is still drifting in his lovestruck daze, that he hears it.
Click, click, click. The unmistakable sound of high heels sauntering over hardwood.
His stomach lurches.
“Well, well, well. Isn’t this interesting?”
Smug and smirking, emerging from the shadows.
“Santana. I thought you’d gone back to your crypt.”
“Nope. Thought I’d stick around for a while. You never do know what you might find in your co-stars’ dressing rooms. Though it seems the real dirt is on the stage, right under my nose.”
“What do you want, Santana?”
“Want? I don’t want anything. At least not from you. It just seems to me there’s someone who would be really curious to see what’s going down behind his back. Or, who’s going down.”
The way she’s smiling can’t be called cruel, in the same way that a cat can’t be called cruel for toying with its prey. It’s part of her nature. That doesn’t make it any more comforting.
“Even you can’t be sadistic enough to tell him. He would ruin everything.”
She snorts.
“For who? There’s no way I’m getting discovered playing Rachel Berry’s magical freaking sitar.”
“What about Brittany?”
Her expression flickers into something genuine.
“Brit doesn’t need this. She doesn’t need Sue and she never has, but she’s never believed it. She’s talented enough to make it on her own.”
She tilts her chin up, a clear challenge. Kurt knows better than to try and meet it.
“You can’t screw the rest of us over just because you’ve got a bone to pick with Sue.”
Her eyes flash dangerously, for a brief splinter of a moment, and then go cool.
“Don’t worry, lover boy. I’m not planning to tell him. The guy’s a psychopath, and even I’m not that much of a bitch. Just - tone down the mooning or he’ll figure it out on his own.”
Kurt smiles tightly.
“Thanks for the advice.”
“Any time.”
With that, she slinks away, and Kurt is left alone to wait with his pounding heart.
Blaine reappears soon enough, and Kurt tells him about the encounter in a babbling panic. Blaine listens patiently and doesn’t interrupt.
“Santana is all bark and no bite,” he says confidently, once Kurt has run out of steam. “She would never admit to it, but she cares about us, you know? She wouldn’t do anything to hurt us.”
Kurt is still wary. Santana is a bombshell in every sense of the word, with a short fuse just begging to be lit. He knows that a spark is all it would take - no matter what she’s promised and no matter how much faith Blaine has in her heart, the explosion would take all of them out.
A day goes by, and a second, and most of a third before he really starts to relax. She doesn’t so much as look at them during rehearsal, too busy being surly at Rachel and rolling her eyes behind Sue’s back. Eventually, he stops watching her so closely and shifts his focus back to scribbling script notes and reveling in the way Blaine shines on the stage.
It’s a Friday when it happens.
One week left, and they’re reaching the end of their first semi-dress run-through. Kurt is distracted, trying to puzzle through the dialogue in an earlier scene and streamline the flow of one beat to the next, so he doesn’t realize what’s started until it’s already in the middle.
The action has stopped, and so have the actors, all of them crowded in the wings and turned front and center to watch the spectacle unfolding before them.
“…because this scene is ridiculous,” Santana is saying, sardonic and bored. She’s facing off with Rachel, who’s got her hands planted on her hips and her mouth gaping in indignation.
“Maybe it wouldn’t seem that way if you actually did your job and took this seriously! If you put half as much effort into your performance as you put into whining about it, you might not be relegated to playing furniture.”
It’s clear that Rachel thinks this is a winning shot. She crosses her arms over her chest and smiles smugly. Santana smiles, too, an ugly twist of her lips.
“The only thing wrong with my performance is the load of Hallmark crap I’m being forced to spew. I mean, come on - ‘The greatest thing you’ll ever learn is just to love and be loved in return’? That’s such bullshit.”
“While I understand why it might seem that way to someone like you, Santana, some of us find it to be a beautiful sentiment.”
“Someone like me?” Her smile has gone dangerous. Rachel falters, briefly, then draws herself up even taller, spine ramrod straight and nose in the air.
“Yes. Someone who values sex over love.”
Santana pauses, taken aback. Something almost hurt flashes in her eyes, before it turns to anger. She steps in closer, right into Rachel’s personal space, until Rachel has to tilt her head back to look her in the eye.
“Let’s get a couple of things straight, Berry. You don’t know the first thing about me. And you don’t know the first thing about love, if you think this glittery schoolboy fantasy has anything to do with it.”
Kurt realizes he should probably be offended, but he’s frozen, with the rest of them, trying to figure out whether or not physical blows are imminent.
“That’s enough, ladies,” calls out Sue, finally, leaning forward in her seat. “You can pull each other’s hair on your own time. Get yourselves together and take it from the top.”
Rachel nods stiffly and huffs out a sigh before returning to her mark.
Santana doesn’t move.
“Did they damage your hearing when they attached those inflatable beach balls to your chest, or was it just your short-term memory? Your mark, Sandbags.”
And there it is. The spark.
“You know what? No. I’m done putting up with this crap. I can’t be the only one who sees that this play is fucking delusional. The ending? It completely sucks. There is no way in hell the courtesan chooses the penniless playwright.”
Kurt goes cold. Someone in the wings gives a muffled gasp. Kurt chances a glance at Sebastian, just two seats down, gone still and blank-eyed as he stares Santana down. She smiles, cold and cruel.
“Oops. I mean sitar player.”
She rolls her eyes and stalks off stage. Nobody moves, or even breathes. They’re watching Sebastian instead.
“She’s right,” he says, finally. His voice is just as carefully controlled and unreadable as his face, and Kurt is sure it means nothing good. “The ending doesn’t make any sense. Why would the courtesan choose the penniless sitar player - ” He spits it out, like it leaves a bitter taste in his mouth. He pauses to compose himself. “ - when the maharani is offering him a lifetime of security?”
The theater is dead silent. Rachel is the first to find her voice.
“With all due respect, Mr. Smythe, this play is about love, not…security.”
“The sitar player has nothing to offer him but empty promises. The maharani can give him everything he’s ever wanted - that’s real love.”
“No, it isn’t. It’s got nothing - ”
“Last time I checked, you were getting paid to sing, Barbra. If your opinion meant anything to me at all, I would ask for it.”
“But you can’t - ”
“Actually, I think you’ll find that I can. Whose money do you think is funding this little project?” He pauses, waits for the implication of his words to sink in. “If I want the courtesan to choose the maharani, he goddamn will.”
“But that would be - it would be Broadway blasphemy!”
Sebastian laughs, and he isn’t the only one. A wave of nervous titters runs through the company at her earnest display.
“And why, exactly, is that?”
“Because he doesn’t love you!”
Utter silence. It’s like the air has been sucked out of the room.
Kurt has to fight the urge to clap a hand over his own mouth. It was nothing he meant to say, and nothing he can take back. It doesn’t stop him from trying.
“Her,” he corrects, lamely. “He doesn’t - he doesn’t love her.”
Everyone is staring at him, now, gaping in silent shock. He can almost feel the white-hot cold of Sebastian’s rage. He can’t look at him, can’t look at anyone, and especially not at Blaine, because he knows in this moment that he’s ruined everything, and he can’t bear to see it there in Blaine’s face. All he can do, all he’s capable of doing, is sit there and hope with every particle that Sebastian will just ignore his slip of the tongue.
“I see,” says Sebastian, tight and trembling. “Sue. I want the ending re-written, with the courtesan choosing the maharani and without the lovers’ secret song.”
Sue is momentarily speechless.
“Mr. Smythe,” she manages, “Let’s talk about this in private. I don’t think - ”
“Sue, please.”
Every gaze in the room swings back to the stage, to Blaine, who’s stepping forward. Kurt wishes he would melt back into the shadows and knows without a doubt that he won’t. Blaine moves downstage and center until he’s at the very edge, as close to the audience as he can get without stepping down. He’s standing tall, striking in the deep reds of his costume, with the harshness of the lights playing up the strength of his bone structure. The tilt of his head is coquettish, the glint of his eyes magnetic. Kurt doesn’t want to see it, but he can’t look away.
“Personally, I think Sebastian is being treated appallingly. These silly romantics let their imaginations run away with them.”
He flicks his gaze to Kurt, mouth tweaked mockingly in the corner, then back to Sebastian. He has that look in his eyes that drives Kurt crazy, like the two of them are sharing a secret. He lowers himself gracefully off the stage and moves down the aisle toward Sebastian.
“Now,” Blaine continues, voice gone warm and intimate, “why don’t we go to dinner? And afterwards, we can let them know how we would prefer the story to end.” He touches Sebastian’s shoulder, light and teasing. Sebastian shivers. He stares up at Blaine, rapt.
He smirks.
“I have a room at The Tower. We can order room service and…talk.”
“The Tower, huh?”
“I’ve been hoping you’d come around.”
Blaine smiles, like it’s sweet, but it’s not, it’s so not. This whole thing is giving Kurt the creeps. It’s wrong, wrong, wrong, and it’s entirely his fault.
“I’ll be there at 8,” murmurs Blaine. He turns around and makes his way backstage, and Sebastian watches him go like he’s won the lottery. He turns to Kurt, and the look on his face could be described as murderous if it weren’t so pitying.
Kurt waits until the others have gotten the message and started heading for the dressing rooms before he makes any kind of move to follow. He runs, once he’s out of Sebastian’s line of sight, dodging dancers and waving off Rachel’s concern. He doesn’t bother checking for witnesses as he ducks into Blaine’s dressing room. They all know - hiding won’t do him any bit of good, now.
Blaine is just tugging on his shirt when Kurt shuts the door. It’s a plain t-shirt, meant to get him from his apartment to the theater and back, and it looks a little ridiculous with his costume pants. Neither of them speaks for a moment.
“I don’t want you to go,” says Kurt. It’s perhaps not the first thing he should say, but it’s the truest thing he feels.
Blaine averts his gaze and sits down, leaning over to unlace his shoes.
“I have to.”
“No, you don’t.”
Blaine sighs and looks up to meet his eyes. He looks exhausted.
“Are we going to have this conversation again? Really? You know I have to. You promised me you wouldn’t be jealous.”
“I’m not. I wish you would stop making it about that.”
“Alright, fine, what is it about this time?”
Kurt’s instinct is to bite back, fight back, ratchet this up into a screaming match that will send him back to Bushwick and Blaine straight to The Tower. He stops himself. He goes to Blaine, kneels beside him.
“This has gone so far beyond a contract, Blaine. He just - he keeps trying to take pieces of you, and if you let him… I’m worried that there won’t be any of you left, when he’s done.”
“Kurt, he doesn’t have any of me. I swear. He never could. You told me, remember? You told me we have to trust each other. You have to trust me, now.”
Kurt swallows.
“I do.”
“Then prove it.”
Kurt just looks at him, pleading, his words having run dry. Blaine softens and ducks his head so that he can sing into Kurt’s ear, “Come what may…”
He leaves it unfinished, but the message is entirely clear.
Kurt closes his eyes, rests his temple briefly against Blaine’s, then pulls back.
“Come what may.”
Blaine smiles, soft and sad.
“I’ll come home to you after, alright?”
“You promise?”
“Promise.”
Kurt makes his best attempt at a smile. Blaine leans forward to press a kiss to his lips.
“I’m sorry,” Kurt whispers, while they’re still so close that Blaine’s beautiful eyes are the only thing he can see. Blaine nods, gently, but enough to knock their foreheads together.
“I should go,” he says.
Kurt stops himself from responding, Don’t.
A moment later, he’s out the door and Kurt is alone.
&&&&&
He stays in Blaine’s dressing room for a long while after that. He can’t face the others, not right now, not when he knows they’ll be looking at him with pity.
When finally he gathers the will to leave, he finds a group of them huddled and waiting for him just down the hall. Rachel breaks away and comes to him, heartbreak all over her face. She throws her arms around him, dragging him down with the weight of her arms around his neck.
“Oh, Kurt, I’m so sorry! This wouldn’t have happened if I could have just kept my big mouth shut.”
Kurt snorts, bitter.
“Yeah, you and me both.”
She pulls back and smiles at him hopefully, her eyes big and shiny with unshed tears.
“We thought we’d stay and keep you company. Maybe order a few pizzas and play theater games?”
“I’m leaving unless there’s alcohol.”
“Sam’s already on it, don’t worry.”
Kurt sighs. It’s either get drunk here or do it at Blaine’s apartment, alone, with all of Blaine’s things around him.
“Lead the way.”
They start toward the group, Rachel’s arm linked tightly through his, but a throat clearing from behind makes them stop and turn.
Santana. In her street clothes, the closest thing she ever comes to sheepish.
“I thought you quit,” bites Kurt. “Couldn’t handle my - what did you call it? ‘Glittery schoolboy fantasy’?”
“It’s a week until opening. You’ll have a hell of a time replacing me, and I figured I owed you a break.”
“Like you care!” scoffs Rachel.
“I do,” she says quietly, glancing quickly at the group down the hall. Brittany is watching them openly, while the others pretend to be deep in conversation.
“Obviously not enough, or you wouldn’t have sold us out less than two hours ago.”
“Look, I didn’t mean to do that. I was backed into a corner, and I was pissed, and - I have rage, okay?”
Kurt snorts. Understatement.
She ignores him and continues, “But it turned out fine, so I don’t see why you can’t just take my peace offering and move on.”
She crosses her arms, a protection and a challenge, and Kurt can only stare.
“What do you mean, fine? Blaine is with him right now.”
She blinks.
“Yes, and our friend Andrew McCarthy is horny enough to believe any goddamn thing Blaine tells him. We’re golden.”
“You really are a heinous bitch.”
Her eyes flash, and she leans closer.
“I’m just keeping it real for you, Dopey. This is nothing your boytoy hasn’t done a thousand times over. It’s business. It’s a deal. You get your ending and Sebastian gets his…end…in.”
Kurt isn’t a violent person, but right now, as she snickers at her own joke, he could slap her right across the cheek. He could, it would be so easy, and it would feel so good to release some of this anger that’s twisted bitterly up in his gut.
“Fuck you,” he spits, instead.
She recoils just the same.
She stares at him for a long moment, sizing him up.
“You idiot,” she says, finally, voice soft and pitying. “You never fall in love with someone who’s up for sale.” Her eyes flicker behind him. “It always ends badly.”
With that, she turns on her heel and struts toward the exit.
“Santana, where are you going?” calls Brittany. She rushes past Kurt and grabs Santana by the wrist. “Come on, I thought you said you were going to wait with us.” She slides her hand down until their pinkies are linked between them.
“I don’t stay where I’m not wanted.”
“I want you.”
Santana smiles, real and sad.
“I know.”
She leans in and kisses Brittany on the cheek before continuing on her way.
Brittany watches her for a few moments, wistful, then turns back to the rest of them with a sigh. She approaches Kurt and looks him straight in the eye.
“I’m sorry Blaine had to sell his soul to that guy with the plastic hair. It was a really nice one. It smelled like raspberries.”
She smiles her sunshine smile, dimmed with concern but still bright. He can’t muster one up in return. She pats his shoulder in sympathy and retreats to the group behind them without another word.
Kurt feels suddenly hollowed out, void, like a black hole has taken up residence inside his chest. The ugly emotions have been sucked right out, along with his lingering hope.
He knows, now, that no amount of alcohol will be enough to make him feel remotely okay about Blaine acting out his own human sacrifice ritual. Nothing could make him laugh tonight, or forget, and being around these well-meaning people who feel that, somehow, they’re being saved…
It’s too much.
“I’m going,” he mutters, in Rachel’s general direction.
“No, wait, I’ll come with you! You shouldn’t be alone, Kurt. Not tonight.”
But he’s already walking away.
He doesn’t know where he’s going when he hits the cool night air. He just walks.
Block after block, under stars he can’t even see, breathing in the stifling city air. He doesn’t think, won’t let himself.
He doesn’t think about Sebastian’s eyes and the reverent way they settle on Blaine’s face, or about his hands running down the length of Blaine’s bare skin. He definitely doesn’t think about his lips, because he knows how hungry Sebastian has been, and to think of him sucking his desperate, sloppy kisses into the curve of Blaine’s neck is enough to make Kurt clench his teeth so hard he’s in danger of cracking his molars.
He counts cracks in the pavement instead.
He can’t seem to stop moving.
It’s an hour, at least, before he realizes where his feet have taken him.
The Tower looms large in front of him, just four blocks from where he started. He must have gone in a circle. He stops in his tracks, irrationally angry at his brain for pulling him here when it’s the last place he even wants to think about. He looks up, can’t help himself, cranes his neck and thinks what if… Blaine is inside, somewhere, could be just beyond that lit-up window, or the one above it. And yet, he might as well be on one of those invisible stars, for all that Kurt can reach him now.
Movement catches his eye from the penthouse balcony, a figure in shadow that’s gone before he’s had a chance to really look. It snaps him out of his reverie.
He shakes himself and starts walking again. This time, he knows where he’s going.
Blaine said he would come home to him, after all.
&&&&&
Kurt lets himself in to Blaine’s apartment and pours himself a glass of wine that he doesn’t drink. Het sets it on the coffee table, careful not to let his trembling fingers spill. He sits on the couch and lets his mind stay blank. He turns on some music to drown out the quiet. It’s jarring. He turns it off. He picks up a magazine and tries to flip through, but the words mean nothing and the colors blur together.
Time passes. It feels like forever, like he lives a lifetime in the space between each breath and the next. He checks his watch. It’s only been 15 minutes.
Blaine’s cuckoo clock chimes the hour - 10:00 - and the plump little canary pops cheerfully out to warble his tune. If Blaine were here, he’d be singing along. An Ode to Pavarotti, he calls it.
The bird retreats behind the door, trapped in the dark until he’s needed once again.
It somehow seems cruel.
You were only waiting for this moment to be free…
The song pops, unbidden, into his head. He blinks away his hot, sudden tears.
Blackbird, fly…
His own little bird is no closer to flying away than he ever was, pinned down by the wings whenever he tries. He’s no freer than that canary in his wooden box.
Kurt moves to take the clock off the wall, take out the batteries, because he can’t stand to look at it anymore, and he definitely can’t stand to hear it ticking the seconds away.
He doesn’t get far.
The door crashes open. Kurt whips around, heart zooming with adrenaline, and -
Blaine, it’s Blaine, and he’s rushing to Kurt before Kurt has the chance to process what he’s seeing.
He throws his arms around Kurt’s neck and gasps into the base of it, “I couldn’t do it.”
“What?”
Blaine loosens his grip and raises his head, and Kurt can see now how disheveled his hair is, almost in curls, and the tear tracks drying on his cheeks. His shirt is hanging open, thread dangling where buttons used to be, and his pants only manage to resist gravity by virtue of how tightly they grip his legs. A vaguely thumb-shaped bruise is smudged over his windpipe, just starting to turn dark. His eyelashes are clumped together from the damp he’s trying so furiously to blink away.
“I saw you there, on the sidewalk, and I - I felt differently, and I didn’t want to pretend anymore. I didn’t - you were right Kurt, you were right, and I didn’t want to give him any parts of me at all, and I couldn’t do it.” He’s breathing hard and gasping on the intake, and Kurt suddenly remembers it turned into a panic attack. He has one hand at Blaine’s face and one soothing down his back. He breathes as slowly and steadily as he can, hoping Blaine will match him. He can feel Blaine’s heartbeat, jackhammer fast. “And - and he saw, Kurt, Sebastian saw, and he - he - ” His breath shudders.
“He had him pinned down when I got there,” says a new voice, and Kurt starts. He tears his gaze away from Blaine and sees Sam, leaning against the front door. His eyes are weary, and cold with disgust. “He was, uh - he - I pulled him off and punched him out and we got out of there before he came to.”
Kurt has never felt as capable of murder as he does right now, thinking of Blaine, overpowered by the length of Sebastian’s limbs, struggling as Sebastian’s hands creep where they have no right to go and rip through his clothes like they’re nothing, just obstacles in the way of taking what isn’t freely given. Kurt’s fingers dig unconsciously into Blaine’s flesh. Blaine doesn’t seem to notice. He’s still trying to catch his breath.
“He knows, Kurt. He saw, and he knows, and - ”
“It’s alright. Blaine, it’s alright, you don’t have to pretend anymore. Okay? It’s your choice.”
Blaine swallows and looks at him, trusting and so very frightened.
“But - how - ?”
Two seconds ago, and Kurt wouldn’t have had a clue, but things are suddenly so clear.
“We’ll leave. We can leave tomorrow - we - we’ll go to LA, if you want, or anywhere in the world, and we’ll wait this out as long as we need.”
Blaine gapes at him for a moment, and searches his eyes.
“What about the show?”
“Screw the show.”
“The others, I can’t just - ”
“Yes, you can. Of course you can. You’re worth so much more than a play, Blaine, and the others - if they care about you, if they’re your family, they’ll see that. And if they don’t? Well then, screw them, too. You matter.”
Blaine stares at him, breath finally even and strong. He nods.
“Okay. Yeah, okay. Let’s - let’s go to LA.”
His smile starts slow and ends up bright as starlight. Kurt feels something shiver inside with the relief of it. He smiles, too.
Sam clears his throat.
“I’m going to go report back to Sue and tell her what happened.”
Blaine whips around.
“Don’t tell her about our plans, Sam. I mean it. She’ll only try to get me to change my mind.”
Sam swallows, and nods.
“Alright. But I’m going to tell her about the rest of it, ‘cause I can’t handle that dude on my own.”
“Okay.”
They look at each other, Sam poised at the door and Blaine tangled up in Kurt’s arms, and in two seconds flat they’re wrapped up in a hug, clinging to each other like it’ll be the last time.
It might very well be.
They whisper their goodbyes, and Sam is out the door.
Blaine stares after him, like he’s lost. Kurt approaches him, wraps his arms around him from behind.
“Are you okay?”
Blaine breathes in sharply, wet enough to be a sniffle.
“No,” he chokes out.
“What can I do?”
Blaine turns in his arms and wraps his own around Kurt’s torso.
“Can you just - ?”
He closes the distance between their lips, kissing hard and desperate before he pulls back enough to speak.
“I just - he was touching me, and I - can you please - ?”
His voice is going tight and thready, and it’s not right at all. Kurt doesn’t think, just gives him what he needs. This next kiss is lush and slow, and Kurt can feel Blaine’s heartbeat sync almost immediately to his.
They kiss until they start to go weak at the knees, and then they kiss some more. Gravity is pulling them down, and everything is a blur, but they manage somehow to navigate the hallway and fumble open the bedroom door without falling to the floor. Clothes come off at some point, and then it’s skin, glorious skin sliding hot and slick, and Blaine’s fingers clutching into his hair, and their bodies squirming together in desperation for that extra bit of friction. There’s a moment of clarity - Blaine, hovering over him with fever in his eyes, murmuring Ready? - and then the plunge, when the only thing he can process is the feel of it all, the tangled-up, you-me, higher-and-higher build, his hands holding Blaine’s head to his, their breath the same humid air, the push and pull so natural to their bodies that there’s no need to think.
It’s over quickly, perhaps too quickly, but the idea of slowing down is completely foreign tonight. Blaine snuggles into Kurt’s arms after they’ve both come down, nose burrowed into his favorite spot at the juncture of Kurt’s neck and shoulder. Kurt pulls him tight as he can and dearly hopes that he’s thinking of no one’s touch but his.
“I love you,” murmurs Blaine. “I really do. I’ll go anywhere with you.”
“Come what may…” sings Kurt, softly. Blaine sighs, bittersweet, and closes his eyes as he settles himself deeper into the give of Kurt’s body.
“I’ll love you ‘til my dying day,” he finishes on a whisper.
Chapter 7
Chapter 6: Just Don’t Deceive Me
He writes it into the show - the lovers’ secret song, the emotional pinnacle of the second act. Every time Blaine sings the opening line (Never knew I could feel like this, like I’ve never seen the sky before), he looks at Kurt, and it’s chills up and down and his heart full to bursting. It makes Kurt feel invincible.
It’s an act of defiance that they both need, hiding in plain sight rather than behind closed doors.
Sebastian starts showing up to rehearsal more and more frequently as opening night draws closer. He’s content, now, to sit in silence and stalk Blaine with his eagle eyes. He doesn’t touch him or talk to him, or even try. He just watches.
Kurt doesn’t let it bother him. How could he? Sebastian is nothing, he means nothing in the face of their love. The only power he has is the power that they give him, and Kurt will never give him this.
Come what may…
The world feels so bright with hope during these final few weeks. The show is coming together, blooming with life under the hot stage lights of the freshly-renovated Moulin Rouge. The press has started buzzing around them with interest over the novelty of it all - a strip club turned off-Broadway theater, a rag-tag bunch of artists working together to shake off their dubious pasts and create something beautiful. It’s the kind of thing Kurt knows he himself would eat up, if he saw it on the news. He knows, too, that none of it will matter once the curtain opens, because what they’ve built is enough to make the audience forget the sensationalism that brought them to their seats.
Blaine is enough to make them forget.
The two of them spend every minute together that they can - Bushwick may as well have been vaporized by alien death ray for all that Kurt sees of it. They’re too desperate for time to make any kind of concession, now. Kurt finds he likes waking up every morning to the breadth of Blaine’s back, lit golden by the filtered sunlight, or his face relaxed in sleep on the pillow next to him. He likes watching him wake up, the flutter of his eyelashes and the slow, sleepy smile that fills his whole face and exposes the quirked line of his top teeth. He likes the way Blaine presses close enough to touch the tips of their noses before he murmurs his “Good morning.”
He even likes the taste of morning breath, when it’s Blaine’s.
They don’t talk about the future. Kurt tries not to even think about it, because it doesn’t matter what happens next. They’ll face it as it comes, together. And, for now, in this suspended moment, everything is entirely right.
&&&&&
Tonight marks ten days until opening. It’s been a long day, fraught with the stress of last-minute choreography changes and increasingly scathing performance notes from Sue. Tensions are at a high and spirits dipping lower. It’s a good night for a long bath, Kurt decides, with bubbles and candles and Blaine there to lean against. He always makes an excellent pillow.
Rehearsal is long over, and everyone has left. Even Sue has retreated back to her lair, leaving Kurt and Blaine alone with the freshly-painted sets.
Blaine is on stage, practicing a sequence that’s been giving him trouble all week. Kurt is watching, unseen, from the wings. The theater is quiet but for the echo of Blaine’s shoes against the floor and the gust of his breath through the stillness.
There’s an intensity approaching obsession in the way Blaine scrunches up his face in distaste and moves back into position, over and over. He huffs out a frustrated sigh.
Enough is enough.
Kurt clears his throat and steps out into the half-light of the stage.
“May I have this dance?”
Blaine starts, almost trips, then drops his chin and grins.
“You startled me.”
“You were pretty deep in it. I figured it was time to call it a night.”
“Just a little while longer? I feel like I’ve almost got it.”
Kurt smiles. He holds out his hand in invitation.
“Dance with me first.”
Blaine laughs, and takes it.
There’s no music, but it doesn’t matter. Their bodies fit easily - hand in hand, Blaine’s cheek bent to rest against Kurt’s neck - and find their rhythm together.
“You’re going to be perfect, you know,” he murmurs into Blaine’s ear.
He can feel Blaine smile against his skin.
“I’d better be.”
He presses a kiss just behind Blaine’s jaw, where the skin is coarse from evening stubble, and nuzzles affectionately into his hair.
Blaine starts to hum after a while, a tune that Kurt doesn’t recognize. It’s well-fitted to the sway of their bodies, hypnotic and bittersweet, like a slow dance on a summer night. He sings, softly, just for Kurt, “Baby, you’re the only light I ever saw…”
They settle closer and closer, until it’s more of a caress than a dance, and they abandon all pretense. They hold each other, and breathe, and let the day melt away.
Finally, Blaine sighs and pulls back with one final squeeze.
“I’ll just go get my things from the dressing room. I think I’m ready to go home.”
Kurt smiles, soft and sweet, for him.
“I’ll be here.”
It’s only moments after Blaine’s left the stage, when Kurt is still drifting in his lovestruck daze, that he hears it.
Click, click, click. The unmistakable sound of high heels sauntering over hardwood.
His stomach lurches.
“Well, well, well. Isn’t this interesting?”
Smug and smirking, emerging from the shadows.
“Santana. I thought you’d gone back to your crypt.”
“Nope. Thought I’d stick around for a while. You never do know what you might find in your co-stars’ dressing rooms. Though it seems the real dirt is on the stage, right under my nose.”
“What do you want, Santana?”
“Want? I don’t want anything. At least not from you. It just seems to me there’s someone who would be really curious to see what’s going down behind his back. Or, who’s going down.”
The way she’s smiling can’t be called cruel, in the same way that a cat can’t be called cruel for toying with its prey. It’s part of her nature. That doesn’t make it any more comforting.
“Even you can’t be sadistic enough to tell him. He would ruin everything.”
She snorts.
“For who? There’s no way I’m getting discovered playing Rachel Berry’s magical freaking sitar.”
“What about Brittany?”
Her expression flickers into something genuine.
“Brit doesn’t need this. She doesn’t need Sue and she never has, but she’s never believed it. She’s talented enough to make it on her own.”
She tilts her chin up, a clear challenge. Kurt knows better than to try and meet it.
“You can’t screw the rest of us over just because you’ve got a bone to pick with Sue.”
Her eyes flash dangerously, for a brief splinter of a moment, and then go cool.
“Don’t worry, lover boy. I’m not planning to tell him. The guy’s a psychopath, and even I’m not that much of a bitch. Just - tone down the mooning or he’ll figure it out on his own.”
Kurt smiles tightly.
“Thanks for the advice.”
“Any time.”
With that, she slinks away, and Kurt is left alone to wait with his pounding heart.
Blaine reappears soon enough, and Kurt tells him about the encounter in a babbling panic. Blaine listens patiently and doesn’t interrupt.
“Santana is all bark and no bite,” he says confidently, once Kurt has run out of steam. “She would never admit to it, but she cares about us, you know? She wouldn’t do anything to hurt us.”
Kurt is still wary. Santana is a bombshell in every sense of the word, with a short fuse just begging to be lit. He knows that a spark is all it would take - no matter what she’s promised and no matter how much faith Blaine has in her heart, the explosion would take all of them out.
A day goes by, and a second, and most of a third before he really starts to relax. She doesn’t so much as look at them during rehearsal, too busy being surly at Rachel and rolling her eyes behind Sue’s back. Eventually, he stops watching her so closely and shifts his focus back to scribbling script notes and reveling in the way Blaine shines on the stage.
It’s a Friday when it happens.
One week left, and they’re reaching the end of their first semi-dress run-through. Kurt is distracted, trying to puzzle through the dialogue in an earlier scene and streamline the flow of one beat to the next, so he doesn’t realize what’s started until it’s already in the middle.
The action has stopped, and so have the actors, all of them crowded in the wings and turned front and center to watch the spectacle unfolding before them.
“…because this scene is ridiculous,” Santana is saying, sardonic and bored. She’s facing off with Rachel, who’s got her hands planted on her hips and her mouth gaping in indignation.
“Maybe it wouldn’t seem that way if you actually did your job and took this seriously! If you put half as much effort into your performance as you put into whining about it, you might not be relegated to playing furniture.”
It’s clear that Rachel thinks this is a winning shot. She crosses her arms over her chest and smiles smugly. Santana smiles, too, an ugly twist of her lips.
“The only thing wrong with my performance is the load of Hallmark crap I’m being forced to spew. I mean, come on - ‘The greatest thing you’ll ever learn is just to love and be loved in return’? That’s such bullshit.”
“While I understand why it might seem that way to someone like you, Santana, some of us find it to be a beautiful sentiment.”
“Someone like me?” Her smile has gone dangerous. Rachel falters, briefly, then draws herself up even taller, spine ramrod straight and nose in the air.
“Yes. Someone who values sex over love.”
Santana pauses, taken aback. Something almost hurt flashes in her eyes, before it turns to anger. She steps in closer, right into Rachel’s personal space, until Rachel has to tilt her head back to look her in the eye.
“Let’s get a couple of things straight, Berry. You don’t know the first thing about me. And you don’t know the first thing about love, if you think this glittery schoolboy fantasy has anything to do with it.”
Kurt realizes he should probably be offended, but he’s frozen, with the rest of them, trying to figure out whether or not physical blows are imminent.
“That’s enough, ladies,” calls out Sue, finally, leaning forward in her seat. “You can pull each other’s hair on your own time. Get yourselves together and take it from the top.”
Rachel nods stiffly and huffs out a sigh before returning to her mark.
Santana doesn’t move.
“Did they damage your hearing when they attached those inflatable beach balls to your chest, or was it just your short-term memory? Your mark, Sandbags.”
And there it is. The spark.
“You know what? No. I’m done putting up with this crap. I can’t be the only one who sees that this play is fucking delusional. The ending? It completely sucks. There is no way in hell the courtesan chooses the penniless playwright.”
Kurt goes cold. Someone in the wings gives a muffled gasp. Kurt chances a glance at Sebastian, just two seats down, gone still and blank-eyed as he stares Santana down. She smiles, cold and cruel.
“Oops. I mean sitar player.”
She rolls her eyes and stalks off stage. Nobody moves, or even breathes. They’re watching Sebastian instead.
“She’s right,” he says, finally. His voice is just as carefully controlled and unreadable as his face, and Kurt is sure it means nothing good. “The ending doesn’t make any sense. Why would the courtesan choose the penniless sitar player - ” He spits it out, like it leaves a bitter taste in his mouth. He pauses to compose himself. “ - when the maharani is offering him a lifetime of security?”
The theater is dead silent. Rachel is the first to find her voice.
“With all due respect, Mr. Smythe, this play is about love, not…security.”
“The sitar player has nothing to offer him but empty promises. The maharani can give him everything he’s ever wanted - that’s real love.”
“No, it isn’t. It’s got nothing - ”
“Last time I checked, you were getting paid to sing, Barbra. If your opinion meant anything to me at all, I would ask for it.”
“But you can’t - ”
“Actually, I think you’ll find that I can. Whose money do you think is funding this little project?” He pauses, waits for the implication of his words to sink in. “If I want the courtesan to choose the maharani, he goddamn will.”
“But that would be - it would be Broadway blasphemy!”
Sebastian laughs, and he isn’t the only one. A wave of nervous titters runs through the company at her earnest display.
“And why, exactly, is that?”
“Because he doesn’t love you!”
Utter silence. It’s like the air has been sucked out of the room.
Kurt has to fight the urge to clap a hand over his own mouth. It was nothing he meant to say, and nothing he can take back. It doesn’t stop him from trying.
“Her,” he corrects, lamely. “He doesn’t - he doesn’t love her.”
Everyone is staring at him, now, gaping in silent shock. He can almost feel the white-hot cold of Sebastian’s rage. He can’t look at him, can’t look at anyone, and especially not at Blaine, because he knows in this moment that he’s ruined everything, and he can’t bear to see it there in Blaine’s face. All he can do, all he’s capable of doing, is sit there and hope with every particle that Sebastian will just ignore his slip of the tongue.
“I see,” says Sebastian, tight and trembling. “Sue. I want the ending re-written, with the courtesan choosing the maharani and without the lovers’ secret song.”
Sue is momentarily speechless.
“Mr. Smythe,” she manages, “Let’s talk about this in private. I don’t think - ”
“Sue, please.”
Every gaze in the room swings back to the stage, to Blaine, who’s stepping forward. Kurt wishes he would melt back into the shadows and knows without a doubt that he won’t. Blaine moves downstage and center until he’s at the very edge, as close to the audience as he can get without stepping down. He’s standing tall, striking in the deep reds of his costume, with the harshness of the lights playing up the strength of his bone structure. The tilt of his head is coquettish, the glint of his eyes magnetic. Kurt doesn’t want to see it, but he can’t look away.
“Personally, I think Sebastian is being treated appallingly. These silly romantics let their imaginations run away with them.”
He flicks his gaze to Kurt, mouth tweaked mockingly in the corner, then back to Sebastian. He has that look in his eyes that drives Kurt crazy, like the two of them are sharing a secret. He lowers himself gracefully off the stage and moves down the aisle toward Sebastian.
“Now,” Blaine continues, voice gone warm and intimate, “why don’t we go to dinner? And afterwards, we can let them know how we would prefer the story to end.” He touches Sebastian’s shoulder, light and teasing. Sebastian shivers. He stares up at Blaine, rapt.
He smirks.
“I have a room at The Tower. We can order room service and…talk.”
“The Tower, huh?”
“I’ve been hoping you’d come around.”
Blaine smiles, like it’s sweet, but it’s not, it’s so not. This whole thing is giving Kurt the creeps. It’s wrong, wrong, wrong, and it’s entirely his fault.
“I’ll be there at 8,” murmurs Blaine. He turns around and makes his way backstage, and Sebastian watches him go like he’s won the lottery. He turns to Kurt, and the look on his face could be described as murderous if it weren’t so pitying.
Kurt waits until the others have gotten the message and started heading for the dressing rooms before he makes any kind of move to follow. He runs, once he’s out of Sebastian’s line of sight, dodging dancers and waving off Rachel’s concern. He doesn’t bother checking for witnesses as he ducks into Blaine’s dressing room. They all know - hiding won’t do him any bit of good, now.
Blaine is just tugging on his shirt when Kurt shuts the door. It’s a plain t-shirt, meant to get him from his apartment to the theater and back, and it looks a little ridiculous with his costume pants. Neither of them speaks for a moment.
“I don’t want you to go,” says Kurt. It’s perhaps not the first thing he should say, but it’s the truest thing he feels.
Blaine averts his gaze and sits down, leaning over to unlace his shoes.
“I have to.”
“No, you don’t.”
Blaine sighs and looks up to meet his eyes. He looks exhausted.
“Are we going to have this conversation again? Really? You know I have to. You promised me you wouldn’t be jealous.”
“I’m not. I wish you would stop making it about that.”
“Alright, fine, what is it about this time?”
Kurt’s instinct is to bite back, fight back, ratchet this up into a screaming match that will send him back to Bushwick and Blaine straight to The Tower. He stops himself. He goes to Blaine, kneels beside him.
“This has gone so far beyond a contract, Blaine. He just - he keeps trying to take pieces of you, and if you let him… I’m worried that there won’t be any of you left, when he’s done.”
“Kurt, he doesn’t have any of me. I swear. He never could. You told me, remember? You told me we have to trust each other. You have to trust me, now.”
Kurt swallows.
“I do.”
“Then prove it.”
Kurt just looks at him, pleading, his words having run dry. Blaine softens and ducks his head so that he can sing into Kurt’s ear, “Come what may…”
He leaves it unfinished, but the message is entirely clear.
Kurt closes his eyes, rests his temple briefly against Blaine’s, then pulls back.
“Come what may.”
Blaine smiles, soft and sad.
“I’ll come home to you after, alright?”
“You promise?”
“Promise.”
Kurt makes his best attempt at a smile. Blaine leans forward to press a kiss to his lips.
“I’m sorry,” Kurt whispers, while they’re still so close that Blaine’s beautiful eyes are the only thing he can see. Blaine nods, gently, but enough to knock their foreheads together.
“I should go,” he says.
Kurt stops himself from responding, Don’t.
A moment later, he’s out the door and Kurt is alone.
&&&&&
He stays in Blaine’s dressing room for a long while after that. He can’t face the others, not right now, not when he knows they’ll be looking at him with pity.
When finally he gathers the will to leave, he finds a group of them huddled and waiting for him just down the hall. Rachel breaks away and comes to him, heartbreak all over her face. She throws her arms around him, dragging him down with the weight of her arms around his neck.
“Oh, Kurt, I’m so sorry! This wouldn’t have happened if I could have just kept my big mouth shut.”
Kurt snorts, bitter.
“Yeah, you and me both.”
She pulls back and smiles at him hopefully, her eyes big and shiny with unshed tears.
“We thought we’d stay and keep you company. Maybe order a few pizzas and play theater games?”
“I’m leaving unless there’s alcohol.”
“Sam’s already on it, don’t worry.”
Kurt sighs. It’s either get drunk here or do it at Blaine’s apartment, alone, with all of Blaine’s things around him.
“Lead the way.”
They start toward the group, Rachel’s arm linked tightly through his, but a throat clearing from behind makes them stop and turn.
Santana. In her street clothes, the closest thing she ever comes to sheepish.
“I thought you quit,” bites Kurt. “Couldn’t handle my - what did you call it? ‘Glittery schoolboy fantasy’?”
“It’s a week until opening. You’ll have a hell of a time replacing me, and I figured I owed you a break.”
“Like you care!” scoffs Rachel.
“I do,” she says quietly, glancing quickly at the group down the hall. Brittany is watching them openly, while the others pretend to be deep in conversation.
“Obviously not enough, or you wouldn’t have sold us out less than two hours ago.”
“Look, I didn’t mean to do that. I was backed into a corner, and I was pissed, and - I have rage, okay?”
Kurt snorts. Understatement.
She ignores him and continues, “But it turned out fine, so I don’t see why you can’t just take my peace offering and move on.”
She crosses her arms, a protection and a challenge, and Kurt can only stare.
“What do you mean, fine? Blaine is with him right now.”
She blinks.
“Yes, and our friend Andrew McCarthy is horny enough to believe any goddamn thing Blaine tells him. We’re golden.”
“You really are a heinous bitch.”
Her eyes flash, and she leans closer.
“I’m just keeping it real for you, Dopey. This is nothing your boytoy hasn’t done a thousand times over. It’s business. It’s a deal. You get your ending and Sebastian gets his…end…in.”
Kurt isn’t a violent person, but right now, as she snickers at her own joke, he could slap her right across the cheek. He could, it would be so easy, and it would feel so good to release some of this anger that’s twisted bitterly up in his gut.
“Fuck you,” he spits, instead.
She recoils just the same.
She stares at him for a long moment, sizing him up.
“You idiot,” she says, finally, voice soft and pitying. “You never fall in love with someone who’s up for sale.” Her eyes flicker behind him. “It always ends badly.”
With that, she turns on her heel and struts toward the exit.
“Santana, where are you going?” calls Brittany. She rushes past Kurt and grabs Santana by the wrist. “Come on, I thought you said you were going to wait with us.” She slides her hand down until their pinkies are linked between them.
“I don’t stay where I’m not wanted.”
“I want you.”
Santana smiles, real and sad.
“I know.”
She leans in and kisses Brittany on the cheek before continuing on her way.
Brittany watches her for a few moments, wistful, then turns back to the rest of them with a sigh. She approaches Kurt and looks him straight in the eye.
“I’m sorry Blaine had to sell his soul to that guy with the plastic hair. It was a really nice one. It smelled like raspberries.”
She smiles her sunshine smile, dimmed with concern but still bright. He can’t muster one up in return. She pats his shoulder in sympathy and retreats to the group behind them without another word.
Kurt feels suddenly hollowed out, void, like a black hole has taken up residence inside his chest. The ugly emotions have been sucked right out, along with his lingering hope.
He knows, now, that no amount of alcohol will be enough to make him feel remotely okay about Blaine acting out his own human sacrifice ritual. Nothing could make him laugh tonight, or forget, and being around these well-meaning people who feel that, somehow, they’re being saved…
It’s too much.
“I’m going,” he mutters, in Rachel’s general direction.
“No, wait, I’ll come with you! You shouldn’t be alone, Kurt. Not tonight.”
But he’s already walking away.
He doesn’t know where he’s going when he hits the cool night air. He just walks.
Block after block, under stars he can’t even see, breathing in the stifling city air. He doesn’t think, won’t let himself.
He doesn’t think about Sebastian’s eyes and the reverent way they settle on Blaine’s face, or about his hands running down the length of Blaine’s bare skin. He definitely doesn’t think about his lips, because he knows how hungry Sebastian has been, and to think of him sucking his desperate, sloppy kisses into the curve of Blaine’s neck is enough to make Kurt clench his teeth so hard he’s in danger of cracking his molars.
He counts cracks in the pavement instead.
He can’t seem to stop moving.
It’s an hour, at least, before he realizes where his feet have taken him.
The Tower looms large in front of him, just four blocks from where he started. He must have gone in a circle. He stops in his tracks, irrationally angry at his brain for pulling him here when it’s the last place he even wants to think about. He looks up, can’t help himself, cranes his neck and thinks what if… Blaine is inside, somewhere, could be just beyond that lit-up window, or the one above it. And yet, he might as well be on one of those invisible stars, for all that Kurt can reach him now.
Movement catches his eye from the penthouse balcony, a figure in shadow that’s gone before he’s had a chance to really look. It snaps him out of his reverie.
He shakes himself and starts walking again. This time, he knows where he’s going.
Blaine said he would come home to him, after all.
&&&&&
Kurt lets himself in to Blaine’s apartment and pours himself a glass of wine that he doesn’t drink. Het sets it on the coffee table, careful not to let his trembling fingers spill. He sits on the couch and lets his mind stay blank. He turns on some music to drown out the quiet. It’s jarring. He turns it off. He picks up a magazine and tries to flip through, but the words mean nothing and the colors blur together.
Time passes. It feels like forever, like he lives a lifetime in the space between each breath and the next. He checks his watch. It’s only been 15 minutes.
Blaine’s cuckoo clock chimes the hour - 10:00 - and the plump little canary pops cheerfully out to warble his tune. If Blaine were here, he’d be singing along. An Ode to Pavarotti, he calls it.
The bird retreats behind the door, trapped in the dark until he’s needed once again.
It somehow seems cruel.
You were only waiting for this moment to be free…
The song pops, unbidden, into his head. He blinks away his hot, sudden tears.
Blackbird, fly…
His own little bird is no closer to flying away than he ever was, pinned down by the wings whenever he tries. He’s no freer than that canary in his wooden box.
Kurt moves to take the clock off the wall, take out the batteries, because he can’t stand to look at it anymore, and he definitely can’t stand to hear it ticking the seconds away.
He doesn’t get far.
The door crashes open. Kurt whips around, heart zooming with adrenaline, and -
Blaine, it’s Blaine, and he’s rushing to Kurt before Kurt has the chance to process what he’s seeing.
He throws his arms around Kurt’s neck and gasps into the base of it, “I couldn’t do it.”
“What?”
Blaine loosens his grip and raises his head, and Kurt can see now how disheveled his hair is, almost in curls, and the tear tracks drying on his cheeks. His shirt is hanging open, thread dangling where buttons used to be, and his pants only manage to resist gravity by virtue of how tightly they grip his legs. A vaguely thumb-shaped bruise is smudged over his windpipe, just starting to turn dark. His eyelashes are clumped together from the damp he’s trying so furiously to blink away.
“I saw you there, on the sidewalk, and I - I felt differently, and I didn’t want to pretend anymore. I didn’t - you were right Kurt, you were right, and I didn’t want to give him any parts of me at all, and I couldn’t do it.” He’s breathing hard and gasping on the intake, and Kurt suddenly remembers it turned into a panic attack. He has one hand at Blaine’s face and one soothing down his back. He breathes as slowly and steadily as he can, hoping Blaine will match him. He can feel Blaine’s heartbeat, jackhammer fast. “And - and he saw, Kurt, Sebastian saw, and he - he - ” His breath shudders.
“He had him pinned down when I got there,” says a new voice, and Kurt starts. He tears his gaze away from Blaine and sees Sam, leaning against the front door. His eyes are weary, and cold with disgust. “He was, uh - he - I pulled him off and punched him out and we got out of there before he came to.”
Kurt has never felt as capable of murder as he does right now, thinking of Blaine, overpowered by the length of Sebastian’s limbs, struggling as Sebastian’s hands creep where they have no right to go and rip through his clothes like they’re nothing, just obstacles in the way of taking what isn’t freely given. Kurt’s fingers dig unconsciously into Blaine’s flesh. Blaine doesn’t seem to notice. He’s still trying to catch his breath.
“He knows, Kurt. He saw, and he knows, and - ”
“It’s alright. Blaine, it’s alright, you don’t have to pretend anymore. Okay? It’s your choice.”
Blaine swallows and looks at him, trusting and so very frightened.
“But - how - ?”
Two seconds ago, and Kurt wouldn’t have had a clue, but things are suddenly so clear.
“We’ll leave. We can leave tomorrow - we - we’ll go to LA, if you want, or anywhere in the world, and we’ll wait this out as long as we need.”
Blaine gapes at him for a moment, and searches his eyes.
“What about the show?”
“Screw the show.”
“The others, I can’t just - ”
“Yes, you can. Of course you can. You’re worth so much more than a play, Blaine, and the others - if they care about you, if they’re your family, they’ll see that. And if they don’t? Well then, screw them, too. You matter.”
Blaine stares at him, breath finally even and strong. He nods.
“Okay. Yeah, okay. Let’s - let’s go to LA.”
His smile starts slow and ends up bright as starlight. Kurt feels something shiver inside with the relief of it. He smiles, too.
Sam clears his throat.
“I’m going to go report back to Sue and tell her what happened.”
Blaine whips around.
“Don’t tell her about our plans, Sam. I mean it. She’ll only try to get me to change my mind.”
Sam swallows, and nods.
“Alright. But I’m going to tell her about the rest of it, ‘cause I can’t handle that dude on my own.”
“Okay.”
They look at each other, Sam poised at the door and Blaine tangled up in Kurt’s arms, and in two seconds flat they’re wrapped up in a hug, clinging to each other like it’ll be the last time.
It might very well be.
They whisper their goodbyes, and Sam is out the door.
Blaine stares after him, like he’s lost. Kurt approaches him, wraps his arms around him from behind.
“Are you okay?”
Blaine breathes in sharply, wet enough to be a sniffle.
“No,” he chokes out.
“What can I do?”
Blaine turns in his arms and wraps his own around Kurt’s torso.
“Can you just - ?”
He closes the distance between their lips, kissing hard and desperate before he pulls back enough to speak.
“I just - he was touching me, and I - can you please - ?”
His voice is going tight and thready, and it’s not right at all. Kurt doesn’t think, just gives him what he needs. This next kiss is lush and slow, and Kurt can feel Blaine’s heartbeat sync almost immediately to his.
They kiss until they start to go weak at the knees, and then they kiss some more. Gravity is pulling them down, and everything is a blur, but they manage somehow to navigate the hallway and fumble open the bedroom door without falling to the floor. Clothes come off at some point, and then it’s skin, glorious skin sliding hot and slick, and Blaine’s fingers clutching into his hair, and their bodies squirming together in desperation for that extra bit of friction. There’s a moment of clarity - Blaine, hovering over him with fever in his eyes, murmuring Ready? - and then the plunge, when the only thing he can process is the feel of it all, the tangled-up, you-me, higher-and-higher build, his hands holding Blaine’s head to his, their breath the same humid air, the push and pull so natural to their bodies that there’s no need to think.
It’s over quickly, perhaps too quickly, but the idea of slowing down is completely foreign tonight. Blaine snuggles into Kurt’s arms after they’ve both come down, nose burrowed into his favorite spot at the juncture of Kurt’s neck and shoulder. Kurt pulls him tight as he can and dearly hopes that he’s thinking of no one’s touch but his.
“I love you,” murmurs Blaine. “I really do. I’ll go anywhere with you.”
“Come what may…” sings Kurt, softly. Blaine sighs, bittersweet, and closes his eyes as he settles himself deeper into the give of Kurt’s body.
“I’ll love you ‘til my dying day,” he finishes on a whisper.
Chapter 7