The Gods That He Believes.
Title: The Gods That He Believes (never fail, to amaze me.)
Rating: M, to be safe.
Pairing: Klaine, besties Wes and David.
Warning: coked-up!Blaine, angsting....well, everyone else.
Summary: "He lifts his heavy hand and motions for Wes to lean in. When he does, all he notices is how roasting hot Blaine’s cheek is again his own. Blaine opens his mouth just enough to whisper, “Take me home.” and Wes always has, and he always will."
AN: title from Laura Marling's My Manic and I. also, this is sort of a draft. i think i'll come back and fix it later. still looking for a beta, if anyone's offering.written, as is everything, for a prompt at glee_angst_meme. but anyway, enjoy.
It all started with some faux-rockstar knocking Blaine’s medium drip down his school shirt.
“Shit! Sorry kid!” the guy says, glancing at the pool of coffee and crushed cups at their feet. Blaine smiles, dabbing at the wet spot on his chest with the end of his scarf, an action that would’ve made Kurt grimace.
“It’s okay, no real harm.” he says, smiling, and the other boy hangs his head forward, a flop of blonde hair flying over his face.
“Had kind of a long night, not really bounced back yet. Ugh, whoever invented liquor should be run over with whatever heavy-duty truck is battering around in my head.” Blaine laughs, and shoves his hand down into his pockets.
“Preaching to the choir, dude.” he chuckles, casting his mind back to his sophmore year, and a party in Rachel Berry’s basement that ended...less that well. “Well,” he bites at his lip. “Why don’t you let me get you another coffee?” And the boy smiles back.
*
“I’m going to hit him with the gavel. Like right in the mouth, I swear. If he’d stop moving around so much, I bet I could get a clear shot and....” David slaps his hand on Wes’ back, laughing.
“Yes, we all know you had the mandatory Asian Kid karate training and could probably kill him 7 different ways without him noticing. Leave him be, it’s cute. I remember when you were all ‘Jen says, Jen wants, Jen thinks.’” Wes’ counters, even if the whole young love this was getting slightly old. But Blaine was pretty adorable, bouncing around the senior common’s talking about the ‘blonde haired Adonis!” he’d met in CoffeeHut that weekend and was disappearing to a house party with later.
“If we can break from Blaine delightful love life, could we actually rehearse something?” Blaine laughs and bursts into the opening bars of ‘Love The Way You Lie.’
Four hours later, Blaine is lay, face down, on David’s fluffy black carpet.
“I am hideously deformed.” he says, his words muffled by the flooring. Wes and Blaine, who are playing some computer game involving unicorns with lasers and not really paying attention.
“You are not hideously deformed.” Wes saying, pausing and leaning over the back of his chair. “You are, however, melodramatic and highly ridiculous.”
“Hmm.”
“Now go and put some real pants on before he gets here.”
With a grumble and a sigh as he heaved himself off the floor, shuffling back to his room in his blue froggy pajama bottoms.
Kurt sticks his head around the door right as Blaine is about to leave. Hoping deeply he would get a chance to stretch his now seldom used fashion muscle, he gets a little glum when Blaine has managed to get himself out of the “amphibian pj’s. come and sort your boy out hummel- Wes”, and into a pair of black jeans, and a concert t-shirt, and- oh good lord- a leather jacket that hugged him perfectly.
“You look good.” he says from the doorway, smiling into the room.
“Really? It’s not like I’m trying really hard? Because it sort of feels like I’m really trying. Did I tell you Mikey’s in a band?” Kurt smiles, but his heart constricts, because Blaine is completely enamoured, and every word that coming out of his mouths makes his stoumach drop another inch. He’s still smiling.
“Yes, you told me.” Blaine turns around, looking disdainful.
“I’m sorry. That was pretty insensitive. I suck at this.” Kurt shakes his head, and pats his hands on Blaine’s shoulders.
“You are going to be fine, I promise.” Then there’s a voice at the door.
“Hey cutie.”
Blaine spins around, taking Kurt with him, and Kurt sees that he is exactly the type of guy Blaine would fall for.
Mikey is all long legs, skinny jeans and a mop of blonde fringe. He’s thin, terribly thin, and lights up at the Dalton Gates as soon as the gates slide shut behind them.
Kurt does not like Mikey.
*
Wes hits his head at 2:15 that morning. He hits his head against his headboard because his phone starts blaring Katy Perry immediately to the left of his ear, and blessed though she is, he had accidentally left his phone on loud. Frustrated, he slung a hand out of his warm, warm bed and fumbled with the green button until someone started talking to him.
“What?” he gasps, flopping back into his comfy pillows and hoping to God whoever responded was in flames or trapped under something heavy.
“Wes?” He could only just make out the sound of his name with all the background noise of people screaming and laughing and swearing.
“Yes. You rang. You know it’s Wes. Who is this?” he says, tempted to end the call and roll back over.
“I...I need a ride.” Wes sits up.
“Blaine?” He sits up and squints at the clock. “Why aren’t you back yet? Curfew was hours ago!”
“Mikey was going to take me back, but then he gave me some shots instead ‘n they tasted of lemons and now ‘m dizzy.”
Wes rolls his eyes, slinging his feet out of the welcoming warmth under his duvet.
“Fine, just stop talking. Where are you?”
“Personally, I don’t get why I’m necessary.” David says, scratching at his stoumach and yawning and making very little effort to read Wes’ hastily made map. Wes in concentrating very intensely on not mounting the pavement in David’s stupidly big SUV.
“Well, was I supposed to piggy back him home?” David gives a sarcastic laugh.
“Next time, take the keys.”
When they pull up outside the small, fairly grungy house, Blaine is sat against a tree in the garden and Mikey is nowhere to be seen. David rolls his eyes.
“C’mon Superstar, let’s get home.” he says, offering out a hand to haul Blaine up. When Blaine makes no effort to move (“m’ sleepy now.”), Wes nods his head and David hoists Blaine up and over his shoulder. He smelt of sugary citrus and cigarette smoke.
*
Blaine wanders into Warblers rehearsal twenty minutes late, bearing his pink sunglasses, and moving slowly and against walls. Kurt takes the opportunity to bounce up to him, and yank the glasses off his face. Placing them on this own nose, he pouts into the nearest Old Masters’ portrait.
“Do they suit me? Am I pulling off the aloof and collected look?” he laughs, whilst Blaine squints at him and does not look impressed. David appears behind Kurt in the portrait.
“Him? Aloof and collected? I’d go more ‘drunk and asleep.’ if you’re using last night as a marker.”
Blaine’s cheeks fire up red.
“Yeah, sorry about that.”
The Warblers are buzzing around them, everyone in their thick Fall jumpers to combat the chill. Wes walks over to the desk and bangs his gavel, and more to mess with Blaine than anything, decides to disregard the formal setlist meaning in favour of a full energy rehearsal.
Kurt speaks into his ear as they get into their places for an 80’s love ballad.
“That’s mean.”
“He should learn his lesson.”
They laugh as Blaine glares from across the room and lumbers through the number.
Somewhere between Autumn and Winter, parties with Mikey become a regular thing. Sure, they spend weekends at Blaine’s parents country house or Mikey’s apartment, but mostly, Mikey takes Blaine out, and Blaine follows with a childlike disregard. And every time, Wes and David are there to pick up the pieces when they get into some wine-soaked argument or Blaine can’t find his dorm key. It was one of the stingingly bright, white mornings in December, a Thursday, as Kurt’s first New Year at Dalton approaches. Blaine wandered into Warbler rehearsal a full hour and a half late, the crucific necklace his boyfriend had gotten him for Christmas doubled over tightly on his wrist and everyone but Wes, David, the Senior Council and Kurt are left milling around the commons, the Council in a heated debate over pop vs. classics, and Kurt is bent over Pavarotti’s cage, humming to the bird. Blaine tries to say ‘Hi,’ but it comes out hoarse.
He taps Kurt on the shoulder, and Kurt gives him a half-hearted smile.
“How are you?” he ask, but his brain is actually going ‘I know exactly how you are, because Wes and David passed me on their way out to come and find you.’
Blaine runs a hand through his gel-free hair. “I’ve been better,” Kurt just carries on smiling as Wes’ wanders over.
“Thought you’d take this one off?” he says, and his voice is sharper than normal. There’s a silence in the room until Blaine speaks.
“Sorry. I didn’t feel great.”
“I wonder why.” he snaps, walking past Blaine and motioning for David to follow him out of the door. “And you owe David money to get his car cleaned.”
Blaine blushes. They are stood in the commons alone, for a while, neither of them talking, before Kurt’s points to Blaine’s collar. Blaine raises a hand and looks confused.
“Blood.” The blush does not fade. Blaine attempts to rub it off the white school shirt he’d lifted from the floor as he dashed out of his room a few minutes previously, and presses his fingers so hard into the cross around his wrist that it leaves dents in his fingertips.
“Yeah, I get nosebleeds when the seasons change.”
“Right.” Kurt says, before leaving. He doesn’t say bye.
Blaine is at the next days’ Warblers rehearsal ten minutes early, and full of energy that makes him twitch as he walks. He enters that common’s to that unforgiving feeling that people have been talking about you.
“Blaine.” He is met with the sudden urge to back out of the room. Kurt is sat cross-legged on the floor and Wes and David are on one of the red leather sofa, all three with their heads bowed in like they’re praying.
“Hey guys,” he says, awkwardly. “Where is everyone?” Wes looks up.
“Called off rehearsal. Can we talk to you?” David says, trying desperately hard to make this sound less contrived than it’s coming off. Blaine pulls on the sleeves of his blazer and makes to turn around.
“I don’t know what’s happening here, but can you guys just leave it? I’m fine.” Kurt stands up, smiling weakly.
“That’s the point. You’re always fine, always completely put together. And lately you’ve just been...” and suddenly he is fuming.
“Just...what, Kurt?” he says, advancing on Kurt, anger in his eyes.
“Just...I don’t know, different and we’re worried.” There’s rain beating on the window ledge, but Blaine is yelling louder and Kurt is backing away, because Blaine does not, ever, yell, at anyone.
“Well, y’know what? It’s none of your business because in case you haven’t noticed, you aren’t actually my boyfriend! You don’t get an opinion! So can you” he points at the sofa, “and you two, just stop getting involved?!”
He doesn’t notice the blood on his top lip until Kurt reaches up and shows him his dark red fingertips.
*
They wait up all night for Blaine, who disappeared immediately after 'rehearsal'. They don’t get the call until almost three AM, when they are all sat around in David’s room, waiting. Kurt gets up, when Blaine’s number flashes on Wes’s cell phone, but Wes tells him, sharply, to go back to his room, and he does.
“‘msorry.”
“Don’t be. Where are you?”
“I didn’t mean t’yell, m’sorry.”
“Okay, where are you?”
“Am at Mikey’s. Thought it’d be us but now there’s people ev’rywhere and said it’d calm me down but I don’t feel right.”
“It’s fine. We’re going to come and find you, okay?”
“‘kay,”
When Wes finds him, he’s leaning against the hallway wall, sat with his knee’s scrunched to his chest. He’s sweating like he’s breaking a fever, and he looks terrified, and everyone else is just fucking dancing around him. Wes kneels next to him, one hand cupping his face.
“Where’s Mikey?” he’s yelling over the repetitive beat of the music being wired all over the house, but Blaine eyes widen, scared, and he just shakes his head hurriedly. He lifts his heavy hand and motions for Wes to lean in. When he does, all he notices is how roasting hot Blaine’s cheek is again his own. Blaine opens his mouth just enough to whisper, “Take me home.” and Wes always has, and he always will.
David is leaning again the Range Rover doors when they appear from the house, and shakes his head as Wes leads Blaine over the obstacle course of empty cups and couples going at it. He swings the door opens and bows in some archaic joke, but he stands up and his face drops when Wes and Blaine get close enough for him to see clearly.
“Looks like a late night then.” Wes agree’s under his breath as David jumps up into the drivers seat. Once they’re in the stupidly large car, Blaine lies with his head in Wes’ lap, and David concentrates on getting them back to Dalton before the back of his seat is reupholstered in second-hand Bacardi (again). Wes slaps his hands against Blaine’s face.
“He’s taken something,” he announces as David merges onto the freeway. David’s head snaps back and he nearly hits a Golf.
“What?”
“This isn’t just booze.” Wes says matter of factly. “This is something worse than booze. I’m worried.” He looks down. Blaine’s eyes are clouding over, sleepy. “Blaine?”
“Hmm?” Blaine mutters, thick, as if his tongue is swollen. Wes struggles to keep his voice chirpy and even, as if he’s talking to a lost kid at the mall.
“What’ve you taken?” Blaine bucks and shakes his head.
“Nothin’, nothing.” he swears. David hits the palm of his hand against the wheel as the traffic trails to a stop and ‘ACCIDENT AHEAD; SLOW.’ flashes garish orange in the dark night sky. “Fucking snow.” Wes shakes his head; David twists around in his seat, his tone sharp.
“Don’t lie now Blaine, it’s obvious. Tell us.” Blaine does not say anything.
And then his eyes rolls back and all Wes can see is white.
*
At first, Wes tries not to panic, rationalizing that Blaine is just really, really drunk, and in a few hours he’d be fine when they got some water into him, and that the shaking is just the harsh winter cold hitting him in his thin black t-shirt. Then the tremors get more violent, and Wes can hear himself screaming “David! Dave?!” and begging him to hurry. As Blaine wrist flies out, twisting and writhing with the rest of his body, the bottom of the cross snaps away and skims across the car floor like rocks the three of them used to skim across Dalton’s lake in their middle school years, and the white powder hits the floor of the car thicker than the snow outside.
It only lasts for about thirty seconds, but for each one of those seconds, Wes’ heart is in his throat, and his brain can’t form anything more coherant than “He’s going to die, he’s going to die, he’s going to die.”. But then the shaking stops, and even though they’re both drenched in sweat and panting, he is not dead. Although he is about 80% sure that it said in one of his Pre-Med books to “not restrict people in the midst of grand-mal seizures.”, Wes realises that he has instinctively wrapped his arms tight around Blaine’s chest to stop him falling and even though Blaine has stopped jerking, Wes can’t bring himself to let go.
*
When Kurt appears and the clock is blinking 4:50, David is sure that he is having some kind of sleep deprived hallucinations. He appears at the door to Wes’ room, and the only noise to leave him is a short “Oh.”. David stands up, walking over, and can’t help but take Kurt’s wrist, just to check that he is in fact real (yes, every fibre of his silk, silver, Marc Jacob PJ’s is most definitely, really there.), and tries to shut the door, but Kurt darts inside too quickly. David mover in front of him, blocking him.
“I’m really not in the mood to play Tag right now, Dave.” David just about manages to crack a smile.
“I just don’t think Blaine’d want you to see him like this.” And he’s right, because at the particular moment, Wes was kneeling next to Blaine of the double bed (benefit of being Chair of Senior Council), sitting him up and feeding him water out of a Gatorade bottle, and there’s a streak of vomit dribbling off the side of bed and pooling on the floor.
“Oh, my god. Is he okay?” Kurt says, and he is caught completely off guard when David drops his gaze and stares fixedly on the floor. “Look, I’ve had my fair share of embarrasing alcohol-fuelled moments, you don’t even know.” he smiles to himself, “Whatever he’s done, I can take it.” David bites the inside of his lips, and Kurt has to crane in to hear him say, “He OD’d.”. Kurt’s eyebrows jump up under his hair line.
“I thought I did the dramatics here.”
“I’m not kidding.”
For a while, the only sounds are Wes’ ‘tolerant mother,’ voice and snow beating on the window from outside.
“Wait, overdosed? On what?!” David doesn’t speak, he just points his hand at his desk, where the cross, hastily pulled off when they laid him on the bed, was lying on top of a CD case.
“Fucking Mikey.” Kurt swears under his breath, and it catches David off guard because it the first time he’s ever heard him swear, but he agrees. “What are we going to do in the morning?” Kurt asks, looking sadly over at Blaine, on the bed, looking exhausted and sick. David shakes his head.
“I don’t know.”
At 7, David and Wes depart to David’s room, leaving Kurt to babysit. Luckily for him, the worst was behind them, and now pretty much everyone was just tired. Blaine is curled into Kurt, spooning on the bed (freshly sheeted courteously of Kurt’s obsessive cleanliness.)
“Kurt?”
“Yes Blaine?”
“Don’t think I’m gunna make it to Latin t’morrow morning.”
“No, I don’t think so Blaine.” Kurt answers, given the that school starts in an hour and a half.
And with that, Blaine wriggles lower into Kurt’s lap and he’s sleeping.
*
They sleep through Latin. In fact, it is halfway through David’s after lunch free when Blaine appears, in his pajama bottoms and the same rumpled t-shirt, at his door.
“Hey.” he says, crossing his legs and blinking hard. David does not look up.
“Hey.” There is a painfully awkward silence before Blaine steps into the room and approaches the desk the David is bent towards, poring over some graph. Leaning, the small of his back against the desk, he run a hand over his face.
“I feel....rough. Must’ve been some night.” he says, offering a half-smile. David still refuses to look up.
“What’s that? Biology? Chem? Need a hand?” David snaps, standing up and pressing the pen in his hand onto the desk, hard.
“Can you leave, please?”
“Whoah, what’ve I done to you?”
“Oh, let me see. You woke me up at 4 this morning, so I fell asleep in my calc exam, that was just fantastic. Or how about the fact that my back seat is covered in piss and coke? No, y’know what? The very worst part is that you terrified us, Blaine and you aren’t the same guy that we picked to lead the Warblers anymore.” Blaine’s eye brows furrow.
“Okay, so I take it I was a little out of it last night. I’m sorry. You guys weren’t supposed to find out about that.” Blaine says as if that’s going to make it alright.
“You overdosed.” Blaine rolls his eyes.
“I didn’t. It probably all just got a bit much.”
“Blaine, we care about you, but are you ever going to realise that Mikey isn’t good for you!”
“Mikey looks out for me. He’s like my dream guy, he cares about me.”
And that makes David really, really fucking angry.
“You know what Blaine? Where the hell does he disappear to when you ring us in tears at four in the morning, huh? Where is he then? Where is he when we have to carry you the car and stay up with you and force bottles of water down your neck? Where does your ‘dream’ go when it all goes to shit? We care about you. Us. Not them.”
And for once in his life, Blaine is silent.
*
Kurt appears to find Blaine with his knee’s under his chest, staring at the wall across from him. Without saying anything, he sits down behind Blaine, and wraps his legs and arms around him. Placing his chin on Blaine’s shoulder, he can hear the vibrations in his chest as he talks.
“Mikey’s not good for me.”
“No, he’s not.”
“I’m really sorry, Kurt.”
“Don’t be. You’re so...perfect, Blaine. I think everyone knew you’d break eventually. You’re human, it happens.” This is the first time, Kurt realises, that he has given advice to Blaine. The curly haired boy in his arms turns and kisses Kurt on the cheek.
The snow still beats down on the windows outsides, Kurt notices, but it’s slowing now, hopefully for good.
Rating: M, to be safe.
Pairing: Klaine, besties Wes and David.
Warning: coked-up!Blaine, angsting....well, everyone else.
Summary: "He lifts his heavy hand and motions for Wes to lean in. When he does, all he notices is how roasting hot Blaine’s cheek is again his own. Blaine opens his mouth just enough to whisper, “Take me home.” and Wes always has, and he always will."
AN: title from Laura Marling's My Manic and I. also, this is sort of a draft. i think i'll come back and fix it later. still looking for a beta, if anyone's offering.written, as is everything, for a prompt at glee_angst_meme. but anyway, enjoy.
It all started with some faux-rockstar knocking Blaine’s medium drip down his school shirt.
“Shit! Sorry kid!” the guy says, glancing at the pool of coffee and crushed cups at their feet. Blaine smiles, dabbing at the wet spot on his chest with the end of his scarf, an action that would’ve made Kurt grimace.
“It’s okay, no real harm.” he says, smiling, and the other boy hangs his head forward, a flop of blonde hair flying over his face.
“Had kind of a long night, not really bounced back yet. Ugh, whoever invented liquor should be run over with whatever heavy-duty truck is battering around in my head.” Blaine laughs, and shoves his hand down into his pockets.
“Preaching to the choir, dude.” he chuckles, casting his mind back to his sophmore year, and a party in Rachel Berry’s basement that ended...less that well. “Well,” he bites at his lip. “Why don’t you let me get you another coffee?” And the boy smiles back.
*
“I’m going to hit him with the gavel. Like right in the mouth, I swear. If he’d stop moving around so much, I bet I could get a clear shot and....” David slaps his hand on Wes’ back, laughing.
“Yes, we all know you had the mandatory Asian Kid karate training and could probably kill him 7 different ways without him noticing. Leave him be, it’s cute. I remember when you were all ‘Jen says, Jen wants, Jen thinks.’” Wes’ counters, even if the whole young love this was getting slightly old. But Blaine was pretty adorable, bouncing around the senior common’s talking about the ‘blonde haired Adonis!” he’d met in CoffeeHut that weekend and was disappearing to a house party with later.
“If we can break from Blaine delightful love life, could we actually rehearse something?” Blaine laughs and bursts into the opening bars of ‘Love The Way You Lie.’
Four hours later, Blaine is lay, face down, on David’s fluffy black carpet.
“I am hideously deformed.” he says, his words muffled by the flooring. Wes and Blaine, who are playing some computer game involving unicorns with lasers and not really paying attention.
“You are not hideously deformed.” Wes saying, pausing and leaning over the back of his chair. “You are, however, melodramatic and highly ridiculous.”
“Hmm.”
“Now go and put some real pants on before he gets here.”
With a grumble and a sigh as he heaved himself off the floor, shuffling back to his room in his blue froggy pajama bottoms.
Kurt sticks his head around the door right as Blaine is about to leave. Hoping deeply he would get a chance to stretch his now seldom used fashion muscle, he gets a little glum when Blaine has managed to get himself out of the “amphibian pj’s. come and sort your boy out hummel- Wes”, and into a pair of black jeans, and a concert t-shirt, and- oh good lord- a leather jacket that hugged him perfectly.
“You look good.” he says from the doorway, smiling into the room.
“Really? It’s not like I’m trying really hard? Because it sort of feels like I’m really trying. Did I tell you Mikey’s in a band?” Kurt smiles, but his heart constricts, because Blaine is completely enamoured, and every word that coming out of his mouths makes his stoumach drop another inch. He’s still smiling.
“Yes, you told me.” Blaine turns around, looking disdainful.
“I’m sorry. That was pretty insensitive. I suck at this.” Kurt shakes his head, and pats his hands on Blaine’s shoulders.
“You are going to be fine, I promise.” Then there’s a voice at the door.
“Hey cutie.”
Blaine spins around, taking Kurt with him, and Kurt sees that he is exactly the type of guy Blaine would fall for.
Mikey is all long legs, skinny jeans and a mop of blonde fringe. He’s thin, terribly thin, and lights up at the Dalton Gates as soon as the gates slide shut behind them.
Kurt does not like Mikey.
*
Wes hits his head at 2:15 that morning. He hits his head against his headboard because his phone starts blaring Katy Perry immediately to the left of his ear, and blessed though she is, he had accidentally left his phone on loud. Frustrated, he slung a hand out of his warm, warm bed and fumbled with the green button until someone started talking to him.
“What?” he gasps, flopping back into his comfy pillows and hoping to God whoever responded was in flames or trapped under something heavy.
“Wes?” He could only just make out the sound of his name with all the background noise of people screaming and laughing and swearing.
“Yes. You rang. You know it’s Wes. Who is this?” he says, tempted to end the call and roll back over.
“I...I need a ride.” Wes sits up.
“Blaine?” He sits up and squints at the clock. “Why aren’t you back yet? Curfew was hours ago!”
“Mikey was going to take me back, but then he gave me some shots instead ‘n they tasted of lemons and now ‘m dizzy.”
Wes rolls his eyes, slinging his feet out of the welcoming warmth under his duvet.
“Fine, just stop talking. Where are you?”
“Personally, I don’t get why I’m necessary.” David says, scratching at his stoumach and yawning and making very little effort to read Wes’ hastily made map. Wes in concentrating very intensely on not mounting the pavement in David’s stupidly big SUV.
“Well, was I supposed to piggy back him home?” David gives a sarcastic laugh.
“Next time, take the keys.”
When they pull up outside the small, fairly grungy house, Blaine is sat against a tree in the garden and Mikey is nowhere to be seen. David rolls his eyes.
“C’mon Superstar, let’s get home.” he says, offering out a hand to haul Blaine up. When Blaine makes no effort to move (“m’ sleepy now.”), Wes nods his head and David hoists Blaine up and over his shoulder. He smelt of sugary citrus and cigarette smoke.
*
Blaine wanders into Warblers rehearsal twenty minutes late, bearing his pink sunglasses, and moving slowly and against walls. Kurt takes the opportunity to bounce up to him, and yank the glasses off his face. Placing them on this own nose, he pouts into the nearest Old Masters’ portrait.
“Do they suit me? Am I pulling off the aloof and collected look?” he laughs, whilst Blaine squints at him and does not look impressed. David appears behind Kurt in the portrait.
“Him? Aloof and collected? I’d go more ‘drunk and asleep.’ if you’re using last night as a marker.”
Blaine’s cheeks fire up red.
“Yeah, sorry about that.”
The Warblers are buzzing around them, everyone in their thick Fall jumpers to combat the chill. Wes walks over to the desk and bangs his gavel, and more to mess with Blaine than anything, decides to disregard the formal setlist meaning in favour of a full energy rehearsal.
Kurt speaks into his ear as they get into their places for an 80’s love ballad.
“That’s mean.”
“He should learn his lesson.”
They laugh as Blaine glares from across the room and lumbers through the number.
Somewhere between Autumn and Winter, parties with Mikey become a regular thing. Sure, they spend weekends at Blaine’s parents country house or Mikey’s apartment, but mostly, Mikey takes Blaine out, and Blaine follows with a childlike disregard. And every time, Wes and David are there to pick up the pieces when they get into some wine-soaked argument or Blaine can’t find his dorm key. It was one of the stingingly bright, white mornings in December, a Thursday, as Kurt’s first New Year at Dalton approaches. Blaine wandered into Warbler rehearsal a full hour and a half late, the crucific necklace his boyfriend had gotten him for Christmas doubled over tightly on his wrist and everyone but Wes, David, the Senior Council and Kurt are left milling around the commons, the Council in a heated debate over pop vs. classics, and Kurt is bent over Pavarotti’s cage, humming to the bird. Blaine tries to say ‘Hi,’ but it comes out hoarse.
He taps Kurt on the shoulder, and Kurt gives him a half-hearted smile.
“How are you?” he ask, but his brain is actually going ‘I know exactly how you are, because Wes and David passed me on their way out to come and find you.’
Blaine runs a hand through his gel-free hair. “I’ve been better,” Kurt just carries on smiling as Wes’ wanders over.
“Thought you’d take this one off?” he says, and his voice is sharper than normal. There’s a silence in the room until Blaine speaks.
“Sorry. I didn’t feel great.”
“I wonder why.” he snaps, walking past Blaine and motioning for David to follow him out of the door. “And you owe David money to get his car cleaned.”
Blaine blushes. They are stood in the commons alone, for a while, neither of them talking, before Kurt’s points to Blaine’s collar. Blaine raises a hand and looks confused.
“Blood.” The blush does not fade. Blaine attempts to rub it off the white school shirt he’d lifted from the floor as he dashed out of his room a few minutes previously, and presses his fingers so hard into the cross around his wrist that it leaves dents in his fingertips.
“Yeah, I get nosebleeds when the seasons change.”
“Right.” Kurt says, before leaving. He doesn’t say bye.
Blaine is at the next days’ Warblers rehearsal ten minutes early, and full of energy that makes him twitch as he walks. He enters that common’s to that unforgiving feeling that people have been talking about you.
“Blaine.” He is met with the sudden urge to back out of the room. Kurt is sat cross-legged on the floor and Wes and David are on one of the red leather sofa, all three with their heads bowed in like they’re praying.
“Hey guys,” he says, awkwardly. “Where is everyone?” Wes looks up.
“Called off rehearsal. Can we talk to you?” David says, trying desperately hard to make this sound less contrived than it’s coming off. Blaine pulls on the sleeves of his blazer and makes to turn around.
“I don’t know what’s happening here, but can you guys just leave it? I’m fine.” Kurt stands up, smiling weakly.
“That’s the point. You’re always fine, always completely put together. And lately you’ve just been...” and suddenly he is fuming.
“Just...what, Kurt?” he says, advancing on Kurt, anger in his eyes.
“Just...I don’t know, different and we’re worried.” There’s rain beating on the window ledge, but Blaine is yelling louder and Kurt is backing away, because Blaine does not, ever, yell, at anyone.
“Well, y’know what? It’s none of your business because in case you haven’t noticed, you aren’t actually my boyfriend! You don’t get an opinion! So can you” he points at the sofa, “and you two, just stop getting involved?!”
He doesn’t notice the blood on his top lip until Kurt reaches up and shows him his dark red fingertips.
*
They wait up all night for Blaine, who disappeared immediately after 'rehearsal'. They don’t get the call until almost three AM, when they are all sat around in David’s room, waiting. Kurt gets up, when Blaine’s number flashes on Wes’s cell phone, but Wes tells him, sharply, to go back to his room, and he does.
“‘msorry.”
“Don’t be. Where are you?”
“I didn’t mean t’yell, m’sorry.”
“Okay, where are you?”
“Am at Mikey’s. Thought it’d be us but now there’s people ev’rywhere and said it’d calm me down but I don’t feel right.”
“It’s fine. We’re going to come and find you, okay?”
“‘kay,”
When Wes finds him, he’s leaning against the hallway wall, sat with his knee’s scrunched to his chest. He’s sweating like he’s breaking a fever, and he looks terrified, and everyone else is just fucking dancing around him. Wes kneels next to him, one hand cupping his face.
“Where’s Mikey?” he’s yelling over the repetitive beat of the music being wired all over the house, but Blaine eyes widen, scared, and he just shakes his head hurriedly. He lifts his heavy hand and motions for Wes to lean in. When he does, all he notices is how roasting hot Blaine’s cheek is again his own. Blaine opens his mouth just enough to whisper, “Take me home.” and Wes always has, and he always will.
David is leaning again the Range Rover doors when they appear from the house, and shakes his head as Wes leads Blaine over the obstacle course of empty cups and couples going at it. He swings the door opens and bows in some archaic joke, but he stands up and his face drops when Wes and Blaine get close enough for him to see clearly.
“Looks like a late night then.” Wes agree’s under his breath as David jumps up into the drivers seat. Once they’re in the stupidly large car, Blaine lies with his head in Wes’ lap, and David concentrates on getting them back to Dalton before the back of his seat is reupholstered in second-hand Bacardi (again). Wes slaps his hands against Blaine’s face.
“He’s taken something,” he announces as David merges onto the freeway. David’s head snaps back and he nearly hits a Golf.
“What?”
“This isn’t just booze.” Wes says matter of factly. “This is something worse than booze. I’m worried.” He looks down. Blaine’s eyes are clouding over, sleepy. “Blaine?”
“Hmm?” Blaine mutters, thick, as if his tongue is swollen. Wes struggles to keep his voice chirpy and even, as if he’s talking to a lost kid at the mall.
“What’ve you taken?” Blaine bucks and shakes his head.
“Nothin’, nothing.” he swears. David hits the palm of his hand against the wheel as the traffic trails to a stop and ‘ACCIDENT AHEAD; SLOW.’ flashes garish orange in the dark night sky. “Fucking snow.” Wes shakes his head; David twists around in his seat, his tone sharp.
“Don’t lie now Blaine, it’s obvious. Tell us.” Blaine does not say anything.
And then his eyes rolls back and all Wes can see is white.
*
At first, Wes tries not to panic, rationalizing that Blaine is just really, really drunk, and in a few hours he’d be fine when they got some water into him, and that the shaking is just the harsh winter cold hitting him in his thin black t-shirt. Then the tremors get more violent, and Wes can hear himself screaming “David! Dave?!” and begging him to hurry. As Blaine wrist flies out, twisting and writhing with the rest of his body, the bottom of the cross snaps away and skims across the car floor like rocks the three of them used to skim across Dalton’s lake in their middle school years, and the white powder hits the floor of the car thicker than the snow outside.
It only lasts for about thirty seconds, but for each one of those seconds, Wes’ heart is in his throat, and his brain can’t form anything more coherant than “He’s going to die, he’s going to die, he’s going to die.”. But then the shaking stops, and even though they’re both drenched in sweat and panting, he is not dead. Although he is about 80% sure that it said in one of his Pre-Med books to “not restrict people in the midst of grand-mal seizures.”, Wes realises that he has instinctively wrapped his arms tight around Blaine’s chest to stop him falling and even though Blaine has stopped jerking, Wes can’t bring himself to let go.
*
When Kurt appears and the clock is blinking 4:50, David is sure that he is having some kind of sleep deprived hallucinations. He appears at the door to Wes’ room, and the only noise to leave him is a short “Oh.”. David stands up, walking over, and can’t help but take Kurt’s wrist, just to check that he is in fact real (yes, every fibre of his silk, silver, Marc Jacob PJ’s is most definitely, really there.), and tries to shut the door, but Kurt darts inside too quickly. David mover in front of him, blocking him.
“I’m really not in the mood to play Tag right now, Dave.” David just about manages to crack a smile.
“I just don’t think Blaine’d want you to see him like this.” And he’s right, because at the particular moment, Wes was kneeling next to Blaine of the double bed (benefit of being Chair of Senior Council), sitting him up and feeding him water out of a Gatorade bottle, and there’s a streak of vomit dribbling off the side of bed and pooling on the floor.
“Oh, my god. Is he okay?” Kurt says, and he is caught completely off guard when David drops his gaze and stares fixedly on the floor. “Look, I’ve had my fair share of embarrasing alcohol-fuelled moments, you don’t even know.” he smiles to himself, “Whatever he’s done, I can take it.” David bites the inside of his lips, and Kurt has to crane in to hear him say, “He OD’d.”. Kurt’s eyebrows jump up under his hair line.
“I thought I did the dramatics here.”
“I’m not kidding.”
For a while, the only sounds are Wes’ ‘tolerant mother,’ voice and snow beating on the window from outside.
“Wait, overdosed? On what?!” David doesn’t speak, he just points his hand at his desk, where the cross, hastily pulled off when they laid him on the bed, was lying on top of a CD case.
“Fucking Mikey.” Kurt swears under his breath, and it catches David off guard because it the first time he’s ever heard him swear, but he agrees. “What are we going to do in the morning?” Kurt asks, looking sadly over at Blaine, on the bed, looking exhausted and sick. David shakes his head.
“I don’t know.”
At 7, David and Wes depart to David’s room, leaving Kurt to babysit. Luckily for him, the worst was behind them, and now pretty much everyone was just tired. Blaine is curled into Kurt, spooning on the bed (freshly sheeted courteously of Kurt’s obsessive cleanliness.)
“Kurt?”
“Yes Blaine?”
“Don’t think I’m gunna make it to Latin t’morrow morning.”
“No, I don’t think so Blaine.” Kurt answers, given the that school starts in an hour and a half.
And with that, Blaine wriggles lower into Kurt’s lap and he’s sleeping.
*
They sleep through Latin. In fact, it is halfway through David’s after lunch free when Blaine appears, in his pajama bottoms and the same rumpled t-shirt, at his door.
“Hey.” he says, crossing his legs and blinking hard. David does not look up.
“Hey.” There is a painfully awkward silence before Blaine steps into the room and approaches the desk the David is bent towards, poring over some graph. Leaning, the small of his back against the desk, he run a hand over his face.
“I feel....rough. Must’ve been some night.” he says, offering a half-smile. David still refuses to look up.
“What’s that? Biology? Chem? Need a hand?” David snaps, standing up and pressing the pen in his hand onto the desk, hard.
“Can you leave, please?”
“Whoah, what’ve I done to you?”
“Oh, let me see. You woke me up at 4 this morning, so I fell asleep in my calc exam, that was just fantastic. Or how about the fact that my back seat is covered in piss and coke? No, y’know what? The very worst part is that you terrified us, Blaine and you aren’t the same guy that we picked to lead the Warblers anymore.” Blaine’s eye brows furrow.
“Okay, so I take it I was a little out of it last night. I’m sorry. You guys weren’t supposed to find out about that.” Blaine says as if that’s going to make it alright.
“You overdosed.” Blaine rolls his eyes.
“I didn’t. It probably all just got a bit much.”
“Blaine, we care about you, but are you ever going to realise that Mikey isn’t good for you!”
“Mikey looks out for me. He’s like my dream guy, he cares about me.”
And that makes David really, really fucking angry.
“You know what Blaine? Where the hell does he disappear to when you ring us in tears at four in the morning, huh? Where is he then? Where is he when we have to carry you the car and stay up with you and force bottles of water down your neck? Where does your ‘dream’ go when it all goes to shit? We care about you. Us. Not them.”
And for once in his life, Blaine is silent.
*
Kurt appears to find Blaine with his knee’s under his chest, staring at the wall across from him. Without saying anything, he sits down behind Blaine, and wraps his legs and arms around him. Placing his chin on Blaine’s shoulder, he can hear the vibrations in his chest as he talks.
“Mikey’s not good for me.”
“No, he’s not.”
“I’m really sorry, Kurt.”
“Don’t be. You’re so...perfect, Blaine. I think everyone knew you’d break eventually. You’re human, it happens.” This is the first time, Kurt realises, that he has given advice to Blaine. The curly haired boy in his arms turns and kisses Kurt on the cheek.
The snow still beats down on the windows outsides, Kurt notices, but it’s slowing now, hopefully for good.