Glee Fic: The Bruise of a Rough Start, Kurt/Blaine & Sam/Mercedes, R, Chapter 2/8 (+epilogue)
After having endured bullying almost every day since he’d started McKinley, Kurt had noticed that the first day being back his senior year had been bully-free. An optimistic part of him was hoping that the first day had been an indicator of things to come, but three years of constant abuse should have taught him better.
Yesterday, the bullies had obviously been scoping out the freshmen in search for new targets, but they had obviously not found anyone they liked to torment as much as they liked to torment Kurt. He hadn’t been at school for more than a couple of minutes when the first locker slam of the day happened. His shoulder crashed hard against the locker and Kurt couldn’t help but let out a soft cry, more in surprise than pain. The brute this time around was Rick The Stick who, despite being an absolute jackass, normally didn’t pay much attention to Kurt.
“I love the sound of a homo banging into a locker in the morning.”
Like he was Robert fucking Duvall.
Mostly it got Kurt really angry; he’d honestly hoped his schoolmates had grown a little sense over the summer. They were becoming adults, after all, and adults normally didn’t push people they didn’t like into lockers. Well, except for maybe Sue Sylvester and yeah, homophobic morons who participated in gay bashing. But Kurt had to believe that things would get better. Next year, he’d be in New York, and this would a thing of the past.
Thankfully, there were other things occupying Kurt’s mind these days. After first period, he kept his eye out for Blaine; his dad had arrived at the worst possible moment yesterday. The corners of Kurt’s mouth tugged upwards at the thought of Blaine. He had most certainly not been opposed to what Kurt hoped came across as flirting. Kurt’s gaydar might not be the best functioning instrument in the world but he was pretty certain that Blaine was gay. The boy did pass to the untrained eye, but Blaine’s admission of reading Vogue had been what cemented Kurt’s hunch, not that he wanted to apply stereotypes to anyone but sometimes there was a certain common thread.
After finishing second period Physics, Kurt stopped on his way to third period AP History to say hi to Tina who was stuffing things in her locker.
BANG!
He was slammed so hard into a locker that he actually fell to the floor. He gasped and this time it was with pain.
“Whoa, are you okay? Hey, let me give you a hand.” It wasn’t Tina, it was Blaine who reached for him and pulled him up.
“Yeah, yeah,” Kurt said, dazed, bending down to collect his things that had fallen to the floor. Blaine went to pick up the scattered things as well.
“Shit, who were those guys?” Blaine asked as he handed Kurt his notebook.
“I didn’t really see who they were,” Kurt said. He hadn’t been paying attention to the students passing by.
“I saw them. Azimio and Karofsky,” Tina said and Kurt wanted to groan. Those two really felt their homophobia was a universal excuse for treating people like human bowling pins. Last year, he’d even tried to go to the principal and the school board but that had been futile. All it did was paint an even bigger target on him. Finn and the other guys in Glee club had tried their best to help him but sometimes all Finn did was putting his foot in his mouth. Kurt had stopped speaking to him for a week when he’d implied that Kurt repeating his John Mellencamp look would be a great idea.
Finn did apologize eventually and after letting him stew for a bit, Kurt had accepted the apology and then made him watch A Single Man with him. As Finn sobbed over it Kurt finally forgave him.
“Does this kind of thing happen often?” Blaine asked, and Kurt realized he had been standing there for a few moments, still holding Blaine’s hand. With a tiny bit of regret, he let go.
“It did. I’d hoped this year they would tone it down but yeah…”
“God, I hate bigots like that,” Blaine muttered.
The bell rang and Kurt realized he had to hurry off to class. He turned to thank Blaine but Blaine pulled at his arm.
“AP World History, right? I’m going there as well.”
Blaine slid his hand down Kurt’s forearm, circling his wrist before gripping his hand and holding it while they made their way through the throngs of students who were scurrying off to class. Kurt, his heart pounding a little harder than usual, looked around to see if anyone was noticing him and Blaine holding hands but no one was watching.
If Blaine was going to be truthful, albeit mostly just to himself, he had to admit that being back in school was terrifying. Not because he was afraid of taunting and bullying; he had carefully developed an amour of sorts to deal with that. That much he’d learned from his first stint in high school, but he’d forgotten how crowded it was and how it felt when a teacher asked you a question in front of the class (and what was it with teachers picking on the new kid?).
Still the terror had been pushed to the back of his mind. Because there was Kurt.
Blaine had fallen for people before and he’d thought h’d fallen hard back then, but those were just fleeting crushes compared to this. This was that rush that people wrote sonnets and disco songs about. And it was also terrifying on its own.
All Blaine knew when it came to sins of the flesh and matters of the heart was to have a good time: checking out a cute guy and if they checked him out back, well, good times would be had.
He was pretty certain that Kurt was interested in him. It was obvious from how his eyes would widen slightly before he dropped his gaze in order to give him a flirty look, but Blaine didn’t really know how to proceed because he knew Kurt’s interest wasn’t of the same kind as the interest guys usually showed him. This was ‘I want to hold hands and kiss and be boyfriends’ interest, not ‘let’s have a quickie in the bathroom’ interest. The thought warmed his belly but it was terrifying because he didn’t know what to do with it. He knew how to get another guy off but he had no idea how to be someone’s boyfriend.
The first step had to be asking Kurt out. Yet another thing that scared him. A small part of him wanted to go the 5th grade route and write a note but he had to have more courage than that.
He was on his way to the AP World History class that he shared with Kurt, hoping to catch him somewhere along the way, when he spotted him.
But Kurt wasn’t alone. Far from it. Two burly guys, clad in letterman jackets, were crowding him against some lockers and from the look on Kurt’s face, they weren’t exchanging pleasantries.
Once upon a time, he’d wanted someone to come to his aid when faced with bullies. He could be that someone for Kurt. Pulling his leather jacket tighter to him, he strode over to where Kurt and the thugs were.
“Hey, Kurt,” he said, keeping eye contact with him as he came to a halt. Then he looked up at the bullies. They were both big and burly, at least compared to him and Kurt, but that didn’t scare Blaine much. One gave off this affronted vibe, like he enjoyed taking offence in general. Why couldn’t he take that to the comment section of news websites instead of being a bully? Then Blaine took a better look at the other one and he looked really familiar. A faint memory of men in cowboy hats line-dancing flashed through Blaine’s mind.
“Country Bear Night!” Blaine exclaimed, remembering seeing the guy in a cowboy hat and boots doing the Electric Slide.
The boy’s eyes flew open, wide with fear.
Of course he wasn’t out, otherwise he wouldn’t be bullying Kurt.
Blaine looked at him, hoping the boy would understand what he was conveying.
“Let’s go, Azimo.”
The other boy looked confused but followed his friend as they walked away.
Kurt looked almost dumbstruck, his eyes following the boys as they rounded a corner.
“What was that?” he asked.
“Well, I could ask the same,” Blaine said and shrugged. “Let’s talk about this later. Let’s get to History and maybe we’ll talk about this… well, we could go for a coffee or something after school.”
Kurt nodded his head eagerly and Blaine couldn’t help but smile. He’d just asked him out on a date without really giving it a thought. No 5th grade-style notes needed.
If Kurt was going to be perfectly honest, which he usually was, he couldn’t say that he was all that surprised by Blaine’s coffee order. Medium drip was all about getting the caffeine needed without the jolt of espresso and the frou-frou of the more milk-based orders like his non-fat mocha.
There was something refreshingly no nonsense about Blaine, or maybe Kurt was just imagining it because he wanted this crush to be straightforward and uncomplicated. Of course it would be ironic if Blaine would turn out to be straight. Maybe he just needed to get things sorted.
“This is a date, right?” Kurt asked, lifting his eyebrows a little.
“If you want this to be a date, then yeah,” Blaine said, smiling as he took a sip of his coffee.
“Uhm, okay, so you’re gay then, or you know, at least into dating me?”
“Very gay and into dating you, yes.”
Kurt hadn’t known it was possible to blush hard while sighing in relief but somehow he managed to do that.
“Uhm, okay, good.”
“But we came here with a purpose, right? Other than you know, first date business,” Blaine said.
A groan almost escaped Kurt’s mouth. The last thing he wanted to talk about was Karofsky.
“Yeah, we did. Maybe we should get through that before, you know, first date business, whatever that is.”
“So why don’t you go first? For how long have they been bullying you and have you talked to someone in authority about it?”
Kurt’s laughter was hollow.
“Oh, I’ve been bullied for as long as I’ve been in school, thank you very much. Those guys have been bullying me pretty much since I started high school, though they became more forceful after I started Glee club. But Glee club meant Finn and Puck eased up on their treatment of me. They were beastly in middle school and during our freshman year.”
Blaine looked unhappy with that information but gestured for Kurt to continue.
“Last year I went to the principal and made several complaints and there was even talk about suspending the bullies but it never happened. But yeah, some days they locker-slam me multiple times. They’ve eased up on the slushie-ing, thankfully, and …”
“The what?”
“The slushie-ing. Where they throw a slushie at you. It’s like getting bitch-slapped by an iceberg and it can ruin your clothes. You’ll witness it, and to come to think of it, you might end up being slushie-ed. No one who has been in Glee club has escaped them so far.”
“Oh my god, this school is absolutely insane. Still hasn’t beat out my old school but still.”
Kurt wanted to ask how Blaine’s old school could possibly be worse than McKinley but he was more interested in what Blaine had said to Karofsky and why he’d reacted like he had.
“So you and Dave Karofsky? You know him?”
“Ah, yeah, burly dude with the trimmed eyebrows?”
Kurt nodded.
“So, I might have a fake ID which I’ve used a bit and yeah, like last June or so, just after the summer break started, I suppose, I was at Scandals, you know Scandals?”
Though he’d never been there himself, Kurt knew it was a seedy bar on the outskirts of Lima, catering to the small gay population from Lima and the surrounding area.
“So, I don’t go there a lot, I prefer going to the bars and the clubs in Columbus because the men who frequent Scandals normally aren’t my type. But yeah, I came there and it was Country Bear Night and I stayed just for laughs. I don’t go for bears or anything but yeah, they were line-dancing and it was kind of cute. And burly eyebrows was there, happy as pie, doing the electric slide.”
Kurt felt his jaw drop and he felt like someone had thrown a ball hard at him, knocking the wind out of him.
“Karofsky is gay? Oh my god.”
“Well, I can’t say Scandals is full of heterosexual men, at least not guys who dress up in their best cowboy gear for a bit of line dancing.”
“Wow. I just… I think my world just got turned upside down.”
Blaine tilted his head a little, looking at him almost sideways.
“So, I’m to understand that he’s one of your main bullies?”
“Yeah, him and Azimio, the guy who was with him today. I mean, Azimio never does anything when you meet him alone except call you names but I hardly ever meet Karofsky in the hallways without him managing to push me against a locker. It’s just… so exhausting.” Kurt sighed, thinking of last year when he’d gone to the principal with his dad but nothing could be done without proof. His dad had mentioned the option of changing schools but Kurt couldn’t imagine another high school in this area would be any better. Plus, he had some kind of a support system in his friends, as far as that helped.
“Well, now you have information about him, not that I want to encourage you to blackmail him.”
The mere notion horrified Kurt. As much as Karofsky had gone out of his way to target him, blackmail or forced outing wasn’t something he would ever contemplating doing to another person, no matter how horrible and hateful they might be.
“Even though he’s a neanderthal who has gone out of his way to make my life miserable, I don’t want to out him or anything like that.”
“Hmm, how about we let him know that we know and offer to help him to come out or whatever. Not making it sound like a blackmail or anything. Just you know.... but it’s up to you of course. Somehow this guy has to do something with his self-hatred other than to take it out on you.”
That didn’t sound like a good idea to Kurt but it was still a better idea than threatening Karofsky.
“I’ll think about it, but uhm… can we please talk about something else? Like, how come you have that beautiful bike of yours?”
Blaine smiled and told Kurt all about how he’d come to own his Lucy, named after the Narnia character of the same name, which endeared Blaine even more to Kurt.
Chapter 3