Looking for a Happy Ending - Part 1B
Title: Looking for a Happy Ending
Author: firefly_ca
Pairing,Character(s): Kurt/Blaine, with eventual appearances from pretty much everyone
Rating: NC-17 for disturbing themes, scenes, etc.
Word Count: TBD, for now let's just say LONG
Spoilers: All of S2
Summary: AU. Blaine Anderson hasn't been Blaine Anderson for 8 years. He doesn't remember much about his old family and his life before he moved in with the man he calls his father. Together they move from town to town, always drifting before Blaine can get too familiar with his surroundings. Then one day they end up in Lima, Ohio, and Blaine finds himself questioning everything he thought he knew.
VERY IMPORTANT DISCLAIMER: Things start to get heavy in this part, so I tried to end on a lighter note, but I have a confession to make: I watch The Guild, and I love Jonathan Coulton - especially this song - and I really feel that if I was a gamer GLaDOS would be my very favourite character in the history of gaming. But the last video game I played was on an N64. The last consol I owned was a Classic Nintendo. I am NOT a gamer even a little bit and I have a sneaking suspicion that when you get to the end of this part you will all be able to tell. Apologies in advance!
He's been at the school for a day and a half when a big hulking kid in a letterman jacket catches sight of him talking to Kurt by their lockers when he starts laughing uproariously, smacking his equally hulking friend in the side and loudly shouting,
"Check it out, Karofsky: Hummel's got himself a girlfriend!"
He makes a frankly horrifying attempt at skipping as he moves his way towards them, slamming a meaty paw on each of their shoulders before continuing,
"So spill, Kurtsie. Where did you find a kid hard up enough to get a hardon for your ugly gay mug?"
"Oh my God," Kurt mutters, trying very hard not to look like he wants to die. He doesn't quite pull it off. He flashes an apologetic smile in Blaine's direction before saying in that same imperious voice Blaine heard him use on the cheerleader the first day, "Wow, that was really clever word play, Azimio. No really, I don't know why everyone says jocks are stupid. You get a bad rap."
"Are you implying that because I'm of colour I have criminal tendencies, Hummel?" Azimio asks, drawing himself up to even greater height. Blaine really wishes he was somewhere else, but the other guy - Karofsky - stops his friend before he beats them up to defend the honour of African Americans by getting him back to the task at hand: beating them up for no discernable reason at all.
"Why are you hanging around the fairy, new kid? Hasn't anyone ever told you that once you're doused with Sparkle Magic it doesn't come off? You can't cure that shit, no matter what your straight camp says."
"Maybe he's already infected," Azimio suggests, sounding a little like he thinks he's in an action movie, possibly in the Samuel L. Jackson role. Blaine gets a disconcerting mental image of a headshot that results in an eruption of rainbow sparkles, which just isn't right.
"Drop it, Karofsky." Kurt says loudly, before turning to Blaine and saying in a quieter, more irritated tone. "Just ignore them Blaine."
He grabs his books and slams his locker shut, making a move like he's going to make a break for it and head to his next class, but Azimio and Karofsky crowd in on him before he can get too far, forcing him back against the lockers.
"I don't think so, Hummel," Azimio says. "You see, David and me, we're like scholars. We want to learn all about this great world around us. I think it would be educational to see the mating habits of the Ohio Gay, one of nature's most endangered species."
"Endangered?" Blaine echoes.
"Well, they don't last very long here," Karofsky says, and somehow he sounds scarier than Azimio when he says it. Like, they're both threatening the exact same things, but something about the way Karofsky glowers at Kurt makes Blaine feel like he thinks about beating gay people up a lot in his spare time. Azimio just wants to push around a few losers, but Karofsky wants to attack Kurt because he can't even stomach the idea of him.
Kurt seems to have picked up on this too, because he's looking straight at Karofsky and Blaine realizes that he's going an unsettling shade of white. The air is thick with tension, and everyone has noticed except for the big idiot who started it in the first place.
"Don't let us interrupt," Azimio is saying. "Work your sparkle magic on him, Hummel. How does it start? Do you sing him a girl song? Because I've noticed you like doing that anyhow."
"That's a good point," Dave says. "Hey new kid, if you're going to be gay with Hummel, could you do us a favour and join their stupid little singing club right off the bat? Making the slushie rounds is always easier when we can find all the queers in one room with limited escape routes."
"Oh hey, there you are Kurt," A new voice suddenly is elbowing its way into the conversation, and Blaine looks over to see a tall guy with blonde surfer hair and an easy-going expression ambling his way over. "Did you get me those notes for Spanish class yet? No hurry or anything, but um...I think I failed the test today, so if you could hurry that would pretty much be awesome."
He slows to a stop in front of the group, looking back and forth between Kurt and the two jocks.
"Oh," he says, so innocently Blaine almost believes it when he says. "I didn't mean to interrupt anything. I can just, you know, wait here until you guys are done saying whatever it is you were saying. I have time."
No matter how broad the mysterious new shoulders are, Blaine doesn't think that the guy would be a match for the two small elephants who are preparing to step on Kurt and possibly himself as well. However, his presence seems to ruin whatever momentum Karofsky and Azimio had going, especially when he mutters something about being on his way to meet the Spanish teacher right now, and hoping he's not too late because he'd hate for "Mr. Schue" to have to come out and look for him. It's one of the more elegant passive-aggressive threats Blaine has ever heard, from a teenager anyhow.
"Whatever," Karofsky mutters, looking at the blonde guy like he'd like to rip off his head and mount it on a pike.
"This isn't over, fish face," he mutters as he roughly checks the blonde in the shoulder, stalking off as Azimio follows suit.
"Wow, grumpy," the guy says, trying to look offended but not quite able to hide a little self satisfied smirk.
Kurt is smiling too, although he looks more dazed then anything as he says, "Sam, you didn't have to do that," and Blaine can hear the smile come through in his voice.
Sam smiles back at him for real as he shrugs and says, "Actually, I sort of do need those notes if you have them. My mom told me this morning if I don't start investing as much energy into learning a real language as I do with the fake ones, she was going to throw out all my specialty dictionaries and disown me."
Kurt laughs a little louder than strictly necessary as he turns back to his locker and Blaine stares at the dirty marks on his shoes, noting how much nicer Kurt's look by comparison and wondering if maybe he should throw his in a washing machine or something.
He doesn't look up until Sam Whoever has gone and he hears Kurt sigh in a way that can only be described as wistful.
"I'm not going to lie," he says. "Sometimes it really sucks being the only gay kid at school. Especially when you've sworn off trying to convert the straight ones."
"You like him?" Blaine asks, trying to picture Kurt walking down the hall, looking up into Sam's eyes and leaning into his side as they hold hands, but not quite able to manage it.
"Story of my life," Kurt says. "Meet a cute boy and watch him immediately start throwing himself at Cheerios because apparently I have a type and that type? It's straight as an arrow and too cool to be desperate enough to experiment sexually."
"Well it's good to see you haven't let your unfortunate taste in straight boys get you down," Blaine says. "Keep on trucking, Kurt. With that can-do attitude, I'm sure you'll find someone eventually."
He doesn't stop to wonder about why a part of him hopes he's left by the time it happens.
***
Later that day, Blaine is rounding a corner when he hears a loud shout followed by peals of laughter. He sees Kurt standing in front of Karofsky, Azimio, and a few other jocks, dripping wet with bright green ice water, that is seeping into his clothes and presumably staining what Blaine is sure is a very expensive trench coat.
"That's for calling in your faggy jock buddy to save you earlier today," Karofsky says, smirking at him. "I don't care how popular any of your friends are, Hummel. Don't ever think you're better because of them."
Kurt just looks at Karofsky, sniffs a little, and stalks past the laughing crowd with his head held high. Karofsky's smirk quickly turns into a scowl. Blaine checks his watch as the students melt away into their classrooms. He watches Kurt disappear into a bathroom and hears a tap turning on a few seconds later.
Blaine is going to be late for his class if he doesn't leave now. He can't afford getting on anyone's radar by coming late to classes, or letting himself become a target for a school's resident meatheads. His dad has finally convinced himself that Blaine isn't going to take off any time soon, and he's been a lot nicer and easier to live with as a result, but he still doesn't like it when Blaine gets too friendly with anyone. More than once it's been the reason they leave a town ahead of schedule.
Blaine sighs a little. There is no way he can afford to be Kurt Hummel's friend. It's impractical, it's dangerous, and all it will get Blaine is a truckload of problems that he's too emotionally exhausted to handle at the moment. It's just not going to happen, even if sometimes Kurt looks like he's as lonely as Blaine feels, and is funny and interesting and maybe the most amazing person Blaine's ever met.
The sound of the tap can still be heard in the bathroom when the late bell rings. The hallway is completely empty.
"Fuck," Blaine says under his breath, as he pushes open the bathroom door to see if there is anything he can do to help.
***
Whenever Blaine's dad leaves a lot of bruises, he eases off for a while. Sometimes in his more cynical moments, Blaine assumes it's to keep people from getting too suspicious when he changes in the locker room, but most of the time Blaine is pretty sure it's just guilt. His dad isn't a terrible person, really. He just has a lot of demons, he always has.
One of the clearest memories Blaine has from his first days with Tom is right after the first time they slept together when Blaine really didn't want to. He doesn't remember why anymore, but it was very early on, so early that it may have only been the second time they had sex, so maybe only problem was that this time he knew how much it would hurt from experience.
Tom had held him down and forced his way inside, slapping Blaine across the face when he tried to squirm away, putting his hands around Blaine's neck and squeezing tight as he shouted in Blaine's ear that he was going to kill him. Blaine doesn't remember too clearly about everything his dad did that night, he's not even sure he was conscious for all of it. There are flashes of sensation - the ache in his throat from screaming for his mom and dad; the phantom memory of white-hot spikes of pain flaring up his lower back, but mostly he remembers early the next morning when Tom had carefully crawled into the bed behind him and hugged him gently, crying his apologies into Blaine's hair.
"I've done everything for you," he'd said in a rough voice. "I've given up so much for you to be safe and for us to be together. You can't make me angry like that. I never want to hurt you, but you can't say no. I can't stop myself from being like this when you throw everything I've done for us back in my face."
He remembers the words perfectly because he's heard them so many times over the years. "I can't control myself when you say no, Blaine." "Don't throw all my sacrifices back in my face." "I've done everything for you. If you can't love me like you're supposed to, we might as well be dead." "I'm scared I'll kill us both if you ever try to leave me, Blaine."
He's waited longer and longer over the years before he lets himself slink back to Blaine and gently hold him as he whispers his apologies, and since he's started to wait almost weeks at a time now before he touches Blaine again, it rarely stops at just holding as he carefully strokes up and down Blaine's sides and cries over the discoloured patches of skin.
After they move to Lima, and Tom whips him with what he claims had once been his grandfather's bible for a solid 40 minutes, Blaine knows he won't be seeing this wildly violent side of his dad again for a while. It's especially bad this time because he makes Blaine stand away from him with his hands against the wall, and before long Blaine can't stand it anymore as he holds up his arms to block the blows as they come. Dad holds his hand flat against the wall and hits it over and over until Blaine can't even take off his jeans that night when he goes to bed. Dad has to undress him and ice his hand, his expression tight, unable to look Blaine in the eye.
Blaine should be grateful. He knows that his dad always tries his best to be a better person after one of his episodes, but over the years Blaine begins to think he hates this softer, kinder, more apologetic version of his father more.
He doesn't know why it's worse, but when he feels the bed dip behind him one night an hour or so after he's turned out his light, and feels rough but feather-light hands slide into the front of his sweat pants, Blaine finds himself wishing for fists and shouting and pain that blossoms out from the contact points to stun him into non-action.
"I love you, Blaine," His dad whispers.
"I love you, too," Blaine says, his voice thickening with the tears building up behind his eyes.
Tom carefully works his pants down to his thighs as he murmurs,
"You're beautiful when you cry, Blaine. I hate myself for thinking it, but you are so damn gorgeous when you get this way."
"I'm sorry," Blaine says, wincing when he feels a wet finger brush against his hole. Sometimes he gets in trouble when he pulls away but it can be so hard not to. The touch is so soft it almost caresses him, and the worst part of it all is how Blaine can't keep the breathy moans from falling from his mouth. The tears that had been building up just moments ago run dry and Blaine tries to block out the whirlwind of emotions stirring up inside of him, wondering if it's wrong to hope that one day Tom really does go through with it: killing them both and ending this.
***
Blaine is a bit of a video game junkie. He's never gotten too into MMORPGs but he's been a fan of the first-person shooter games for almost longer than he can remember. He owns all the Halos and Call of Duty instalments he can get his hands on, since his dad will get him anything he asks for. All he has to do is mention there's a new game out, and suddenly there's a credit card waving in his face, as his dad tells him to have fun, but not do anything stupid, because he's not an idiot and he actually does read the statements at the end of each month.
"If you buy any plane tickets, I'll know." he always says, smiling, or sometimes "Don't run off and make me call the cops to haul your ass back here."
Blaine always smiles back and says thanks before heading out, but they both know neither of them think it's funny. It's just ritual.
Currently Blaine's favourite game is Portal. He's sort of forgotten about it until the release for Portal 2 keeps getting pushed back, and then he decides to replay the original from start to finish to kill a little time. Now it's almost the only thing he lets himself think about. Almost.
"I need to find a new dealer," Blaine mutters as he looks at his rapidly diminishing pot supply. "Do you know anyone?"
"Seriously?" Kurt asks, looking intensely unimpressed. "Do I look like a pothead to you?"
"I don't know," Blaine says a little defensively as he stuffs the baggie into his pocket and closes the door to his locker. "What do potheads look like?"
"I'd hoped not like you," Kurt snips.
"I wear poor-fitting jeans and hoodies, Kurt," Blaine says. "I've known you for two weeks now and you've already forbidden me from speaking the word Halo in your presence. According to you my hair looks like it hasn't been brushed in weeks so I won't disturb the family of mice you are convinced live there. I think I look like a stoner."
"I never said I thought mice lived in your hair Blaine," Kurt says. "I just told you that if you didn't try to control it a little better that they could."
Kurt is smiling a little, but mostly he just looks anxious. Blaine feels bad. He wouldn't have said anything if he thought Kurt was going to start worrying about imagined crippling drug dependencies, so he says,
"Don't worry, I don't do it a lot. Just when I haven't been sleeping well. It puts me out like a light. I'm done classes for the day so I figured I might as well."
"You haven't been sleeping?" Kurt asks, concern in his voice.
"It was a bad night last night," Blaine mutters before quickly adding, "I'll be careful, Kurt. I promise I won't get caught."
"No, you probably won't," Kurt concedes. "But that's got nothing to do with how careful you're being. The faculty at this school don't know substance abuse until it has personally vomited on their shoes. Trust me, I know."
Blaine senses a story there and he's about to ask about it when Kurt says,
"Could you at least try to find something else? When you can't sleep or whatever? I know it's not my place but...you're the best locker neighbour I've ever had. And you agreed to meet my friend Mercedes and join us for our Top Model marathons. Not even Sam would sit through that for us. I know. Mercedes invited him once when she ran into him at her church. I don't want to see you get expelled or turn into one of those guys who brings their bong to class."
"I'll try," Blaine says, and he's pretty sure he's lying but maybe not. He plans on going home and lighting up immediately, falling asleep and hopefully staying that way until the next morning, but instead he finds himself wandering around the bleachers watching the cheerleading practise, even though it's really getting too cold to sit outside and stare blankly into space.
He doesn't start doing it on purpose, but before too long his mind is drifting away from impressing Kurt to trying to remember how he got past that one puzzle the last time he played Portal, and since he really is sort of tired soon he stops doing even that in favour of watching the Cheerios cartwheel as he wonders to himself what GLaDOS would tell them as they died like lab rats stuck in a never-ending maze.
Blaine shakes himself when he realizes that at some point he stopped looking at the hot girls and started looking at their coach screaming at them through her bullhorn, which is right about when he hears someone say,
"That's a really pretty song. I love cake."
He jumps about a foot in the air and spins around to see a blonde girl in uniform sitting next to him, nodding her head along to the song he hadn't even been aware he was singing.
"Holy shit," he wheezes, putting a hand to his heart. "I didn't even hear you walk up. You must move like a cat."
"If I moved like a cat you would have heard me," she says. "My cat broke through a wall once just leaning against it. When he gets up to eat you can hear him in every room in the house. He loves cake, too."
"Oh," Blaine doesn't exactly know what to say to her, or even why she's sitting beside him chatting instead of practising with the other girls. He goes for the easy route and offers,
"I'm Blaine."
"I know who you are," the girl says. "Kurt talks about you a lot. Your hair is awful."
Blaine raises a hand to his head as he wonders what it is about this place and their obsession with his hair.
"Is that song about sex?" The girl asks abruptly.
"I'm sorry, what?"
"The song," she repeats, as though she's talking to a complete moron and hell, maybe she is, because Blaine is lost. "Santana says most songs are about sex, especially if there's cake in them. My boyfriend just dumped me because he thinks I had sex with him for his voice and now I need to sing a solo for our duet competition all about how much he wishes he could be tapping my ass but he'll never be able to ever again because jerks can't get with this."
She waves a indicative hand aimlessly up and down her body.
"Um...I-I don't actually think this cake song has much to with sex at all, uh...I'm sorry, I think I missed your name?"
"You didn't," She says. "I didn't tell you. If the song isn't about sex, what is it about?"
"Video games and an evil killer robot, mostly," Blaine says.
The girl nods as though she's thinking this over carefully before she breaks out in a smile and says,
"That's good, too! My ex-boyfriend is part robot anyhow, so it will totally work. Thanks Blaine."
"You're welcome," Blaine says, giving up on learning her name as he makes a mental note just to ask Kurt about her later. "Why are you singing a solo for a duet competition?"
"Because I was using my boyfriend for his voice," She says before hopping up and down in her seat a little and asking, "Do you want to sing with me? You have to audition before you sing with us, but maybe you can do both at once. I bet Mr. Schue would love a kid on glee club who can sing two songs at the same time!"
Blaine is in the middle of trying to politely decline the offer, not to mention convince her that he's not actually able to split his voice in two when they hear someone shouting for a Brittany. Blaine looks over to see a pretty Latina girl glowering at them with her hands on her hips.
"Gotta go!" Brittany says brightly hopping up like they aren't mid-conversation. She leans over and kisses Blaine on the cheek before scurrying off. Blaine stares after her for a good 20 minutes, trying to figure out what exactly happened, and whether it was something akin to a good trip, or a bad one.
To Masterpost
Author: firefly_ca
Pairing,Character(s): Kurt/Blaine, with eventual appearances from pretty much everyone
Rating: NC-17 for disturbing themes, scenes, etc.
Word Count: TBD, for now let's just say LONG
Spoilers: All of S2
Summary: AU. Blaine Anderson hasn't been Blaine Anderson for 8 years. He doesn't remember much about his old family and his life before he moved in with the man he calls his father. Together they move from town to town, always drifting before Blaine can get too familiar with his surroundings. Then one day they end up in Lima, Ohio, and Blaine finds himself questioning everything he thought he knew.
VERY IMPORTANT DISCLAIMER: Things start to get heavy in this part, so I tried to end on a lighter note, but I have a confession to make: I watch The Guild, and I love Jonathan Coulton - especially this song - and I really feel that if I was a gamer GLaDOS would be my very favourite character in the history of gaming. But the last video game I played was on an N64. The last consol I owned was a Classic Nintendo. I am NOT a gamer even a little bit and I have a sneaking suspicion that when you get to the end of this part you will all be able to tell. Apologies in advance!
He's been at the school for a day and a half when a big hulking kid in a letterman jacket catches sight of him talking to Kurt by their lockers when he starts laughing uproariously, smacking his equally hulking friend in the side and loudly shouting,
"Check it out, Karofsky: Hummel's got himself a girlfriend!"
He makes a frankly horrifying attempt at skipping as he moves his way towards them, slamming a meaty paw on each of their shoulders before continuing,
"So spill, Kurtsie. Where did you find a kid hard up enough to get a hardon for your ugly gay mug?"
"Oh my God," Kurt mutters, trying very hard not to look like he wants to die. He doesn't quite pull it off. He flashes an apologetic smile in Blaine's direction before saying in that same imperious voice Blaine heard him use on the cheerleader the first day, "Wow, that was really clever word play, Azimio. No really, I don't know why everyone says jocks are stupid. You get a bad rap."
"Are you implying that because I'm of colour I have criminal tendencies, Hummel?" Azimio asks, drawing himself up to even greater height. Blaine really wishes he was somewhere else, but the other guy - Karofsky - stops his friend before he beats them up to defend the honour of African Americans by getting him back to the task at hand: beating them up for no discernable reason at all.
"Why are you hanging around the fairy, new kid? Hasn't anyone ever told you that once you're doused with Sparkle Magic it doesn't come off? You can't cure that shit, no matter what your straight camp says."
"Maybe he's already infected," Azimio suggests, sounding a little like he thinks he's in an action movie, possibly in the Samuel L. Jackson role. Blaine gets a disconcerting mental image of a headshot that results in an eruption of rainbow sparkles, which just isn't right.
"Drop it, Karofsky." Kurt says loudly, before turning to Blaine and saying in a quieter, more irritated tone. "Just ignore them Blaine."
He grabs his books and slams his locker shut, making a move like he's going to make a break for it and head to his next class, but Azimio and Karofsky crowd in on him before he can get too far, forcing him back against the lockers.
"I don't think so, Hummel," Azimio says. "You see, David and me, we're like scholars. We want to learn all about this great world around us. I think it would be educational to see the mating habits of the Ohio Gay, one of nature's most endangered species."
"Endangered?" Blaine echoes.
"Well, they don't last very long here," Karofsky says, and somehow he sounds scarier than Azimio when he says it. Like, they're both threatening the exact same things, but something about the way Karofsky glowers at Kurt makes Blaine feel like he thinks about beating gay people up a lot in his spare time. Azimio just wants to push around a few losers, but Karofsky wants to attack Kurt because he can't even stomach the idea of him.
Kurt seems to have picked up on this too, because he's looking straight at Karofsky and Blaine realizes that he's going an unsettling shade of white. The air is thick with tension, and everyone has noticed except for the big idiot who started it in the first place.
"Don't let us interrupt," Azimio is saying. "Work your sparkle magic on him, Hummel. How does it start? Do you sing him a girl song? Because I've noticed you like doing that anyhow."
"That's a good point," Dave says. "Hey new kid, if you're going to be gay with Hummel, could you do us a favour and join their stupid little singing club right off the bat? Making the slushie rounds is always easier when we can find all the queers in one room with limited escape routes."
"Oh hey, there you are Kurt," A new voice suddenly is elbowing its way into the conversation, and Blaine looks over to see a tall guy with blonde surfer hair and an easy-going expression ambling his way over. "Did you get me those notes for Spanish class yet? No hurry or anything, but um...I think I failed the test today, so if you could hurry that would pretty much be awesome."
He slows to a stop in front of the group, looking back and forth between Kurt and the two jocks.
"Oh," he says, so innocently Blaine almost believes it when he says. "I didn't mean to interrupt anything. I can just, you know, wait here until you guys are done saying whatever it is you were saying. I have time."
No matter how broad the mysterious new shoulders are, Blaine doesn't think that the guy would be a match for the two small elephants who are preparing to step on Kurt and possibly himself as well. However, his presence seems to ruin whatever momentum Karofsky and Azimio had going, especially when he mutters something about being on his way to meet the Spanish teacher right now, and hoping he's not too late because he'd hate for "Mr. Schue" to have to come out and look for him. It's one of the more elegant passive-aggressive threats Blaine has ever heard, from a teenager anyhow.
"Whatever," Karofsky mutters, looking at the blonde guy like he'd like to rip off his head and mount it on a pike.
"This isn't over, fish face," he mutters as he roughly checks the blonde in the shoulder, stalking off as Azimio follows suit.
"Wow, grumpy," the guy says, trying to look offended but not quite able to hide a little self satisfied smirk.
Kurt is smiling too, although he looks more dazed then anything as he says, "Sam, you didn't have to do that," and Blaine can hear the smile come through in his voice.
Sam smiles back at him for real as he shrugs and says, "Actually, I sort of do need those notes if you have them. My mom told me this morning if I don't start investing as much energy into learning a real language as I do with the fake ones, she was going to throw out all my specialty dictionaries and disown me."
Kurt laughs a little louder than strictly necessary as he turns back to his locker and Blaine stares at the dirty marks on his shoes, noting how much nicer Kurt's look by comparison and wondering if maybe he should throw his in a washing machine or something.
He doesn't look up until Sam Whoever has gone and he hears Kurt sigh in a way that can only be described as wistful.
"I'm not going to lie," he says. "Sometimes it really sucks being the only gay kid at school. Especially when you've sworn off trying to convert the straight ones."
"You like him?" Blaine asks, trying to picture Kurt walking down the hall, looking up into Sam's eyes and leaning into his side as they hold hands, but not quite able to manage it.
"Story of my life," Kurt says. "Meet a cute boy and watch him immediately start throwing himself at Cheerios because apparently I have a type and that type? It's straight as an arrow and too cool to be desperate enough to experiment sexually."
"Well it's good to see you haven't let your unfortunate taste in straight boys get you down," Blaine says. "Keep on trucking, Kurt. With that can-do attitude, I'm sure you'll find someone eventually."
He doesn't stop to wonder about why a part of him hopes he's left by the time it happens.
***
Later that day, Blaine is rounding a corner when he hears a loud shout followed by peals of laughter. He sees Kurt standing in front of Karofsky, Azimio, and a few other jocks, dripping wet with bright green ice water, that is seeping into his clothes and presumably staining what Blaine is sure is a very expensive trench coat.
"That's for calling in your faggy jock buddy to save you earlier today," Karofsky says, smirking at him. "I don't care how popular any of your friends are, Hummel. Don't ever think you're better because of them."
Kurt just looks at Karofsky, sniffs a little, and stalks past the laughing crowd with his head held high. Karofsky's smirk quickly turns into a scowl. Blaine checks his watch as the students melt away into their classrooms. He watches Kurt disappear into a bathroom and hears a tap turning on a few seconds later.
Blaine is going to be late for his class if he doesn't leave now. He can't afford getting on anyone's radar by coming late to classes, or letting himself become a target for a school's resident meatheads. His dad has finally convinced himself that Blaine isn't going to take off any time soon, and he's been a lot nicer and easier to live with as a result, but he still doesn't like it when Blaine gets too friendly with anyone. More than once it's been the reason they leave a town ahead of schedule.
Blaine sighs a little. There is no way he can afford to be Kurt Hummel's friend. It's impractical, it's dangerous, and all it will get Blaine is a truckload of problems that he's too emotionally exhausted to handle at the moment. It's just not going to happen, even if sometimes Kurt looks like he's as lonely as Blaine feels, and is funny and interesting and maybe the most amazing person Blaine's ever met.
The sound of the tap can still be heard in the bathroom when the late bell rings. The hallway is completely empty.
"Fuck," Blaine says under his breath, as he pushes open the bathroom door to see if there is anything he can do to help.
***
Whenever Blaine's dad leaves a lot of bruises, he eases off for a while. Sometimes in his more cynical moments, Blaine assumes it's to keep people from getting too suspicious when he changes in the locker room, but most of the time Blaine is pretty sure it's just guilt. His dad isn't a terrible person, really. He just has a lot of demons, he always has.
One of the clearest memories Blaine has from his first days with Tom is right after the first time they slept together when Blaine really didn't want to. He doesn't remember why anymore, but it was very early on, so early that it may have only been the second time they had sex, so maybe only problem was that this time he knew how much it would hurt from experience.
Tom had held him down and forced his way inside, slapping Blaine across the face when he tried to squirm away, putting his hands around Blaine's neck and squeezing tight as he shouted in Blaine's ear that he was going to kill him. Blaine doesn't remember too clearly about everything his dad did that night, he's not even sure he was conscious for all of it. There are flashes of sensation - the ache in his throat from screaming for his mom and dad; the phantom memory of white-hot spikes of pain flaring up his lower back, but mostly he remembers early the next morning when Tom had carefully crawled into the bed behind him and hugged him gently, crying his apologies into Blaine's hair.
"I've done everything for you," he'd said in a rough voice. "I've given up so much for you to be safe and for us to be together. You can't make me angry like that. I never want to hurt you, but you can't say no. I can't stop myself from being like this when you throw everything I've done for us back in my face."
He remembers the words perfectly because he's heard them so many times over the years. "I can't control myself when you say no, Blaine." "Don't throw all my sacrifices back in my face." "I've done everything for you. If you can't love me like you're supposed to, we might as well be dead." "I'm scared I'll kill us both if you ever try to leave me, Blaine."
He's waited longer and longer over the years before he lets himself slink back to Blaine and gently hold him as he whispers his apologies, and since he's started to wait almost weeks at a time now before he touches Blaine again, it rarely stops at just holding as he carefully strokes up and down Blaine's sides and cries over the discoloured patches of skin.
After they move to Lima, and Tom whips him with what he claims had once been his grandfather's bible for a solid 40 minutes, Blaine knows he won't be seeing this wildly violent side of his dad again for a while. It's especially bad this time because he makes Blaine stand away from him with his hands against the wall, and before long Blaine can't stand it anymore as he holds up his arms to block the blows as they come. Dad holds his hand flat against the wall and hits it over and over until Blaine can't even take off his jeans that night when he goes to bed. Dad has to undress him and ice his hand, his expression tight, unable to look Blaine in the eye.
Blaine should be grateful. He knows that his dad always tries his best to be a better person after one of his episodes, but over the years Blaine begins to think he hates this softer, kinder, more apologetic version of his father more.
He doesn't know why it's worse, but when he feels the bed dip behind him one night an hour or so after he's turned out his light, and feels rough but feather-light hands slide into the front of his sweat pants, Blaine finds himself wishing for fists and shouting and pain that blossoms out from the contact points to stun him into non-action.
"I love you, Blaine," His dad whispers.
"I love you, too," Blaine says, his voice thickening with the tears building up behind his eyes.
Tom carefully works his pants down to his thighs as he murmurs,
"You're beautiful when you cry, Blaine. I hate myself for thinking it, but you are so damn gorgeous when you get this way."
"I'm sorry," Blaine says, wincing when he feels a wet finger brush against his hole. Sometimes he gets in trouble when he pulls away but it can be so hard not to. The touch is so soft it almost caresses him, and the worst part of it all is how Blaine can't keep the breathy moans from falling from his mouth. The tears that had been building up just moments ago run dry and Blaine tries to block out the whirlwind of emotions stirring up inside of him, wondering if it's wrong to hope that one day Tom really does go through with it: killing them both and ending this.
***
Blaine is a bit of a video game junkie. He's never gotten too into MMORPGs but he's been a fan of the first-person shooter games for almost longer than he can remember. He owns all the Halos and Call of Duty instalments he can get his hands on, since his dad will get him anything he asks for. All he has to do is mention there's a new game out, and suddenly there's a credit card waving in his face, as his dad tells him to have fun, but not do anything stupid, because he's not an idiot and he actually does read the statements at the end of each month.
"If you buy any plane tickets, I'll know." he always says, smiling, or sometimes "Don't run off and make me call the cops to haul your ass back here."
Blaine always smiles back and says thanks before heading out, but they both know neither of them think it's funny. It's just ritual.
Currently Blaine's favourite game is Portal. He's sort of forgotten about it until the release for Portal 2 keeps getting pushed back, and then he decides to replay the original from start to finish to kill a little time. Now it's almost the only thing he lets himself think about. Almost.
"I need to find a new dealer," Blaine mutters as he looks at his rapidly diminishing pot supply. "Do you know anyone?"
"Seriously?" Kurt asks, looking intensely unimpressed. "Do I look like a pothead to you?"
"I don't know," Blaine says a little defensively as he stuffs the baggie into his pocket and closes the door to his locker. "What do potheads look like?"
"I'd hoped not like you," Kurt snips.
"I wear poor-fitting jeans and hoodies, Kurt," Blaine says. "I've known you for two weeks now and you've already forbidden me from speaking the word Halo in your presence. According to you my hair looks like it hasn't been brushed in weeks so I won't disturb the family of mice you are convinced live there. I think I look like a stoner."
"I never said I thought mice lived in your hair Blaine," Kurt says. "I just told you that if you didn't try to control it a little better that they could."
Kurt is smiling a little, but mostly he just looks anxious. Blaine feels bad. He wouldn't have said anything if he thought Kurt was going to start worrying about imagined crippling drug dependencies, so he says,
"Don't worry, I don't do it a lot. Just when I haven't been sleeping well. It puts me out like a light. I'm done classes for the day so I figured I might as well."
"You haven't been sleeping?" Kurt asks, concern in his voice.
"It was a bad night last night," Blaine mutters before quickly adding, "I'll be careful, Kurt. I promise I won't get caught."
"No, you probably won't," Kurt concedes. "But that's got nothing to do with how careful you're being. The faculty at this school don't know substance abuse until it has personally vomited on their shoes. Trust me, I know."
Blaine senses a story there and he's about to ask about it when Kurt says,
"Could you at least try to find something else? When you can't sleep or whatever? I know it's not my place but...you're the best locker neighbour I've ever had. And you agreed to meet my friend Mercedes and join us for our Top Model marathons. Not even Sam would sit through that for us. I know. Mercedes invited him once when she ran into him at her church. I don't want to see you get expelled or turn into one of those guys who brings their bong to class."
"I'll try," Blaine says, and he's pretty sure he's lying but maybe not. He plans on going home and lighting up immediately, falling asleep and hopefully staying that way until the next morning, but instead he finds himself wandering around the bleachers watching the cheerleading practise, even though it's really getting too cold to sit outside and stare blankly into space.
He doesn't start doing it on purpose, but before too long his mind is drifting away from impressing Kurt to trying to remember how he got past that one puzzle the last time he played Portal, and since he really is sort of tired soon he stops doing even that in favour of watching the Cheerios cartwheel as he wonders to himself what GLaDOS would tell them as they died like lab rats stuck in a never-ending maze.
Blaine shakes himself when he realizes that at some point he stopped looking at the hot girls and started looking at their coach screaming at them through her bullhorn, which is right about when he hears someone say,
"That's a really pretty song. I love cake."
He jumps about a foot in the air and spins around to see a blonde girl in uniform sitting next to him, nodding her head along to the song he hadn't even been aware he was singing.
"Holy shit," he wheezes, putting a hand to his heart. "I didn't even hear you walk up. You must move like a cat."
"If I moved like a cat you would have heard me," she says. "My cat broke through a wall once just leaning against it. When he gets up to eat you can hear him in every room in the house. He loves cake, too."
"Oh," Blaine doesn't exactly know what to say to her, or even why she's sitting beside him chatting instead of practising with the other girls. He goes for the easy route and offers,
"I'm Blaine."
"I know who you are," the girl says. "Kurt talks about you a lot. Your hair is awful."
Blaine raises a hand to his head as he wonders what it is about this place and their obsession with his hair.
"Is that song about sex?" The girl asks abruptly.
"I'm sorry, what?"
"The song," she repeats, as though she's talking to a complete moron and hell, maybe she is, because Blaine is lost. "Santana says most songs are about sex, especially if there's cake in them. My boyfriend just dumped me because he thinks I had sex with him for his voice and now I need to sing a solo for our duet competition all about how much he wishes he could be tapping my ass but he'll never be able to ever again because jerks can't get with this."
She waves a indicative hand aimlessly up and down her body.
"Um...I-I don't actually think this cake song has much to with sex at all, uh...I'm sorry, I think I missed your name?"
"You didn't," She says. "I didn't tell you. If the song isn't about sex, what is it about?"
"Video games and an evil killer robot, mostly," Blaine says.
The girl nods as though she's thinking this over carefully before she breaks out in a smile and says,
"That's good, too! My ex-boyfriend is part robot anyhow, so it will totally work. Thanks Blaine."
"You're welcome," Blaine says, giving up on learning her name as he makes a mental note just to ask Kurt about her later. "Why are you singing a solo for a duet competition?"
"Because I was using my boyfriend for his voice," She says before hopping up and down in her seat a little and asking, "Do you want to sing with me? You have to audition before you sing with us, but maybe you can do both at once. I bet Mr. Schue would love a kid on glee club who can sing two songs at the same time!"
Blaine is in the middle of trying to politely decline the offer, not to mention convince her that he's not actually able to split his voice in two when they hear someone shouting for a Brittany. Blaine looks over to see a pretty Latina girl glowering at them with her hands on her hips.
"Gotta go!" Brittany says brightly hopping up like they aren't mid-conversation. She leans over and kisses Blaine on the cheek before scurrying off. Blaine stares after her for a good 20 minutes, trying to figure out what exactly happened, and whether it was something akin to a good trip, or a bad one.
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