In The Dark pt II
It's NOT EVEN THAT LONG LJ you post length fascist.
As far as plans go it's not exactly elegant, and not exactly without a lot of room for it to go wrong. "I need my magic back," Kurt says, walking through the forest, tense and increasingly grim. "It might not even see you, it doesn't even have a real body, it's made of magic, it might not even notice normal humans. So you have to stay hidden, and I'll try to draw it towards you, and then you have to get my magic free. You'll be able to see it. It's holding it in his hand like a - like a bauble."
"How do I-?"
"Break it. Just break it. I don't know if iron will, we can only hope. Just give me one particle of magic," he whispers, "I'll stab it into its soul like a needle, I will fight it-"
He's terrified. He's angry, mulishly, spitefully angry, but Blaine can tell how scared he is; Blaine is scared, and Blaine didn't see it kill someone and put their corpse on like a suit of armour already. He says, "I'll have your back." and Kurt's body gives a little swaying shiver, his hands tighten and loosen at his sides, but he doesn't tell Blaine that it's a pointless offering against a monster that could kill them with its fingertips. He just gives him a quick tight smile, and goes back to walking, fast and hard through the undergrowth.
Then he stops, his robes swinging and shivering still again, and he pulls his breath in quick. "Hide."
"It-"
His face has gone waxy and very, very white. "I can feel my magic. Oh gods, how do you people walk around like this? It's so dark, it's like being blind-"
"I'll be right here," Blaine says, and reaches across, squeezes his hand. Kurt's hand is stiff in his before it gives a quick squeeze back, and the touch runs up all the muscles in Blaine's arm. He slips his visor down, and backs into the undergrowth, against a tree, watching.
Kurt stands still for a moment, very alone and very pale in the dark. His face is fixed forward, his mouth twitching hard before he steadies it, steadies his whole body, lifts his head and straightens his back. "I know you're there," he calls, his voice wavering just a little in the dark, as clear and as sturdy as anyone could ask for against this. "I'm sick of your games. Hurry up."
Blaine hears -
It's not laughter. It's like a hundred tiny voices all giving the same breathy hah all at once, a hundred voices near and distant all whispering at the same time, and the sweat is instantly cold on him, though Kurt stands steady. "Impatient for your death, little thing?" the hundred whispering voices say, he can't tell from where, they're everywhere. "Do you think this thing is easy to walk? I think I broke its - what do you call them. Its thing. Stick. Appendage. Leg."
Something is shuffling towards them, through the dark. Something big, broader than Kurt, heavy hanging mage robes skimming the leaves, a drag-then-lurch of a walk. As it comes closer Blaine can see that its - his - head is hanging like his neck is broken, it should stand taller than Kurt but the faery hasn't troubled itself to lift his head; his arms are dangling like they're forgotten, apart from in one fist a fizzing golden light gripped tight, compressed down so small, flickering and buzzing like it's in pain, if light can be in pain. Kurt puts a hand over his chest, sucks in a breath that shakes.
One of the body's legs is - wrong. It swings like a crutch, the lower leg flopping from the knee socket, back and forth in wrong, wrong ways before it catches at a sick angle on the ground and takes the body's weight all the same. "This is why you are all so weak and stupid, little thing." the voices buzz, and Kurt's hands are shaking where they grip his robes over his heart, where his magic isn't. "You must be so busy all the time - remembering how to walk -"
"Let him go," Kurt whispers. "Let him go let him go just let him rest-"
"He's dead and gone, little thing, I'm only borrowing his meat."
"It's not right it's not let him go-"
"Shall I borrow yours, instead?"
Kurt clasps his hands into tight fists at his sides, draws his head up, draws his breath in hard. "I can see why you hate us. Everything we have-"
"'Hate' is a strong word to apply to food."
"-and you're all alone, and you always will be-"
"I'm not alone," it buzzes like laughter. "I have my food. I'll have you as well, soon. You'll be one of my voices, little thing, and your magic will kill other mages, and your meat will feed the insects. And you will taste goooood." Blaine sees Kurt sway, a hand raising to his mouth but it can't seem to complete the journey, his entire face slack with terror. "When I tasted you coming - and bringing my appetiser with you, generous little thing you are-"
Kurt takes a breath and takes a step backwards. "You're a coward," he whispers. "You took my magic from me - you wouldn't let me fight you-"
"Little thing." The broken leg lifts, swings like a pendulum - god Blaine can hear the gristle still holding the bones together inside - and plants itself clumsily one step forward. "How long do you think I would have lived if I went around leaving mages like you the magic to hurt me?"
Kurt's eyes are uncertain, but he takes another step back. He's trying to draw it forward, to give Blaine the right angle to rush out - and he was right, that faery hasn't even noticed him. Maybe it senses through magic, and Blaine has none, so it's blind to him. It'll notice if he sticks a sword into it though, and he'll still only get one chance. He tightens his grip on the sword, and fear is bitter in the roof of his mouth.
"I'm not - I'm not strong, I'm not special," Kurt says softly. "I'm not even good. I couldn't have hurt you if I wanted to. I'm just-"
The arm holding his magic, that madly humming ball of light, lifts at a clumsy sideways angle, the wrist flops back and forth, and after a second's confusion it holds itself up and out towards Kurt. Tempting him with it, mocking him with it. "You held this like you were afraid of it," the voices croon. "You crippled yourself, stupid little thing, if you had only let it relax-"
Kurt angles himself towards the ball of light like it's magnetic to him, but then hauls himself back another shaky step, whispers, "I'm not special."
The clumsy body of the dead mage takes another swinging step towards him. Blaine shifts his grip, one last step and it'll be time, he can't think about it, if he thinks he'll freeze, all he can do is run, to save Kurt, run at it, don't think -
"You were holding it so tight," the voices sneer. "The things you could do and you spent all your strength binding it down. You killed yourself, stupid little thing. You could have slit me open barely thinking about it but you spent your strength suffocating your own magic. Don't blame me for being hungry. Your death is your own doing."
"I think," Kurt says, his voice quivering but imperious all the same as he takes another step back, "I'll keep on blaming you for it, you disgusting empty thing. You don't even have your own magic, you just keep using mages' magic, what kind of faery are you? You're nothing but a leech. They're supposed to be beautiful and terrible like gods and you're nothing, you're a-"
"I can hurt the meat of you before I eat you," the voices hiss and growl all around them. "It's so easy to hurt meat, little-"
"You're a parasite, you're an insect. A lonely nothing insect, did you kill your first mage while they were asleep? Because you're nothing, you just wear other people's strength-"
The voices have gone deeper, they shake under Blaine's ribcage. "I will pull pieces off you and make you eat them. You will gag on your own blood."
"You won't do a thing," Kurt sneers back at him. "Other people's strength will, all you can do is whisper in the dark, you're a mosquito, you're an irritating little whine, on your own the most you can do is annoy people, gods I'm glad we're alone for this, why would I want anyone to know I got killed by something so pathetic as you-"
The voices bellow as the body lunges forward, and Blaine doesn't think. He runs, sword swinging, aiming for that hand holding a ball of light so bright his sight fractures with tears as he looks directly at it. The sword swings down, sharp and heavy and straight through the hand, dead fingers fall and the magic bursts like a firework going off. It's the last part of it that Blaine's really aware of, because something he can't see hits him like a tidal wave, like the hand of god, invisible and huge and hard.
Kurt can see that faeries' magic is different. Blaine can't see it at all.
He hits the same tree he'd hidden behind. He's heard that oak trees grow for three hundred years, live for three hundred years, then take three hundred years to die - this one he'd guess is in the middle 'living' section, many times broader than he is, sturdy and solid enough to crack his bones when he hits, the armour is as useless as paper. He hits the ground with no breath left to knock out of him, lies on his side with his visor knocked askew, everything distant and dim, but he can hear Kurt's voice in a cry, and everything is lit up golden, rather beautiful, really. Like the stars have fallen down and hang all around them, constellations lighting up the forest.
Something is in his throat and his broken chest heaves, he retches, and there's something shiny and black on the leaves, until a flare of light scours the whole world so bright and it gleams crimson. His mouth tastes wrong. He can't really register the pain, there's too much of it, the pain contains him. Something has broken, too many things have broken, his ribs in his lungs like shards of glass. He thinks, Kurt.
Because someone is stumbling to him, Kurt is stumbling to him, his robes flumping around him as he drops to his knees at Blaine's side and sobs, "Blaine - oh gods - Blaine - I can fix it." His hands scrabble and find the catches of Blaine's helmet, lift it off him so gently, his hands on Blaine's cheeks, holding his head, they are as soft and cool as they look. And glowing. Kurt is surrounded by that escaped magic like he's being orbited by a hundred thousand fireflies, he's illuminated, he looks so lovely and his voice is choking in his throat. "I can fix it, please, please, please let me be able to fix it -"
It doesn't even hurt anymore, not with Kurt's hand on his face. Kurt leans down and hisses against his cheek, "Don't you dare die." and Blaine, somewhere where everything is dark and distant and can't really hurt him anymore with Kurt's hands on his face and his magic all around them like stars, thinks, I won't.
He understands what his life was for now, Kurt's hands on his face, trusting him as everything goes black.
*
He wakes up to the sound of birdsong.
He opens his eyes, a slow and painful process, and blinks at the blue flickering green flickering white, blinks some more, brings into focus the leaves against the sky, the casting beams of sunlight breaking through. There's something heavy on his chest. He looks down and it's Kurt, laying face-down on top of him and still. He takes a moment to just lay there, then draws his breath in to push himself up.
Drawing his breath in hard hurts like fuck. The breath catches and wheezes, he coughs, coughs harder, shaking the boy on top of him who doesn't move. Blaine manages to drag himself backwards so he can sit, one hand over his chest which hurts like someone took a hammer to him, panting hard and hurting, reaching down to touch Kurt's hair. "Kurt-?"
He grits his teeth around the pain, takes Kurt's shoulders, rolls him onto his back in the leaves. But he gives a little moan as he rolls, and Blaine sees tension run through the muscles of his body and run out again as he slumps there. He's alive, he's alive, taking a long moment to open his eyes, to squint up at Blaine, close them tight again and struggle and open them and suck his breath in, and wince.
His eyes are -
Blue and green and the light, he thinks dazedly, as Kurt stares up at him, beginning to pant in the same loose, aching way that Blaine still is. "You're alright," Kurt whispers low and rough, and lifts a hand for Blaine's face but it fails halfway and hits the ground again. "Oh," he says, like he's taking his own situation in for the first time, lying on his back and in pain and too weak to lift his own arm.
"Oh," Blaine confirms, trying to straighten his back out, sitting hurts. "I - hurt quite a lot."
Kurt shakes his head a little, watching him from his back on the floor. "We don't learn much healing unless we're going to take it up." He swallows, licks his lips. "I can't imagine why anyone would want to do it. It's horrible."
"You healed me?"
"Not very well," Kurt says, and tries to sit and grips his own chest, chokes his breath out. "Ow. Not very well at all. Ow."
"That faery-"
"Dead. I burned it right out."
"It hurt you?"
"No." Kurt sits, propped on one arm, eyes closed as he pants with a hand clutching at his chest. "You can't - heal someone else's body. You can only heal your own. That's how it - how it works. You take the injury out of someone and then heal yourself."
"You - oh god. Oh god, you didn't have to do that."
"Of course I did, you were dying." Kurt swallows again, opens his eyes, looks up at Blaine still breathing too hard. "I - screwed it up more than a bit, I think you can tell."
Blaine squints his eyes up against the pain, shakes his head. "No, it's fine. It's better than being, you know, dead. I just feel - stiff, and achy."
"I feel like a horse kicked me in the chest."
"Yes. Like that. You - I'm sorry. That's my pain, and you've got it."
Kurt shrugs and visibly regrets it, hissing, hunching around himself. "I would have died without you," he says, looking down awkwardly now. "I owed you . . . I still owe you my life."
Blaine looks at Kurt's hand, pale against the leaves, then looks to the side. "I owe you my life too. I think we're fairly even."
Kurt's eyes slink across the leaves to him, and Blaine lifts his head nervously to meet them, and they both look quickly away again. In the sunlight they don't know each other. Blaine had known Kurt last night, Kurt with his magic around him like a storm of stars, he'd trusted Kurt on some blood-deep level like he'd known him. But now he's a mage, an unknowable and inaccessible mage, a mage sitting too tightly, pressing his knees together in his kneel, prim and awkward in torn robes his hands squeeze over his lap. "Dave," he says softly, and Blaine blinks, lifts his head. There's a body lying a little way off, a hump in the leaves.
"We can't carry him back like this."
Kurt swallows. "We can bury him. I'll tell them what happened." He closes his eyes, bows his head. Blaine doesn't know what to say, or how to touch him, or whether he's allowed to touch him. He wants it too much. "It feels so unreal," Kurt says softly. "That he would be dead and I'd survive. I'm - I didn't think I had any strength to speak of, I . . ."
"You killed that faery."
Kurt lifts a hand, looks at it, swallows. "I didn't realise. I'd spent so long being afraid, of - of everything. I carried the fear around with me and knotted my magic up with it. And it was all there to reach for, any second, if I'd ever tried, but - but I didn't, I was just afraid."
"You're really strong."
Kurt's smile twitches into a smirk. "I suppose I am." He lifts his head, looks at Blaine. "Thank you. For getting my magic back for me. It's - it's a relief - I can see again, it was like being lost in the dark without it -"
"Can you see it? Now?"
"Yes. Of course I can, all the world's full of magic."
"I saw . . . I saw your magic, last night. It was beautiful. Like stars."
Kurt looks across at him, chews his bottom lip - swollen, still with blood caught in the corner from where Blaine hit him - and says, "Here." And he lifts his hands to Blaine's face.
Blaine goes stiff as cool palms settle over his eyes, which close automatically. "Open them," Kurt says. "See what I see."
Blaine hesitates - and blinks. And oh.
He can't even tell what he's looking at at first. Mages describe magic to normal humans, when they trouble themselves to, as gold dust in the air. It's nothing like it. It's light, a million million tumbling particles of light, white in their heart and glowing soft gold around their edges, everywhere, a blizzard of light. Caught by the wind the particles weave and turn, eddied by leaves they spring and dance. And -
That's him. He's looking through Kurt's eyes, he can see himself, can see little flurries of magic catch above his head like they're riding his own surprise, spiralling as they catch his sudden joy, he laughs out loud. His hair is sort of mad, stuck down at the back by blood and corkscrewing messily around his face, there's blood run down one side of his forehead and one cheek, he looks like he hasn't slept in a week and he's been dragged face-down through a forest but he looks so happy through the spin and dance of the magic, before he blinks and sees -
He's looking through his own eyes now. He loses his breath. He can hardly see Kurt through the magic, that little storm of it around him was nothing, a dust-devil to Kurt's tornado. He has to squint through the chaotic burn of the light to see Kurt's eyes, hopeful that Blaine likes what he sees, delighted when Blaine smiles, and that magic all around him catches Kurt's own happiness and blooms in great rolling shapes, like he's the centre of a firework storm, like he's the centre of a rolling sea of tumbling pluming magic. And then Blaine blinks and Kurt's hands have gone from his face, and he's just Kurt again, with a bruised jaw and shadowed eyes and a little blood in his hair, grubby and scratched and battered by the night, but smiling so sweetly Blaine almost breaks his heart it falls so hard. He will swear for the rest of his life, that was the moment it just dropped into Kurt's lap like it didn't want to be anywhere else, because Kurt looked so happy to make Blaine happy, and Blaine had never seen him smile like that. He'd never seen anyone smile like that.
Blaine drags together the breath to say, "Wow."
Kurt's grin turns a little wicked. "I know."
"Is that what you see all the time?"
"Only when I want to. It's as easy as - focusing. I don't even think about it anymore."
"It's - it's incredible."
"I know." He closes his eyes for a second. "I missed it. I didn't want to die half blind. Thank you."
Blaine - doesn't always think things through. The words are out of his mouth before he can really think about the consequences of them. "You know - when a knight rescues a lady, she usually gives him some sort of favour. Something to remember her by. If she doesn't have anything to hand it's sometimes a kiss." He licks his lips before he thinks not to, because Kurt has frozen sitting opposite him. "You sort of did save my life. I mean, you did save my life. Um. I'd like to - thank you."
Kurt's eyes on his look sick for a second before they flit - upwards. Blaine realises he's checking the way the magic moves around him, and he remembers how it seemed to catch and flutter on Blaine's sudden joy, he realises that Kurt is checking the magic to see if Blaine means this. And he feels bolder, suddenly, so much surer, because Kurt can see his sincerity, Kurt knows he means it. Kurt's eyes drop back to his, his mouth a little open now, just sort of stunned. Blaine says, "If you don't . . . ?"
Kurt just stares at him, though he's now beginning to blush a particularly vibrant shade of pink. The smile just hurts Blaine on the inside, and he leans forward, ribs complaining like an ancient accordion, discordant notes of pain, before he closes his eyes and puts his mouth over Kurt's.
He's never kissed anyone before. He understands the mechanics of it. He didn't realise it would feel like all that magic he can't see would get in through his mouth and set his whole body alight, before he pulls back with a little startled breath, and Kurt's eyes blink open, he stares back at him. Kurt's breath drops loose with a gulp, and he folds his bottom lip in, licks it, swallows. "- you -"
Blaine quickly licks his lips again, ducks back. "Thank you," he says quietly, shifting a shoulder, uncertain now. But there's only a second of silence until Kurt's hand touches his glove.
"You saved my life too," he says, a little teasingly, and Blaine's eyes flick to his smiling green-blue gaze before Kurt whispers, "Thank you," and kisses him. Blaine gets a hand up to the back of his head, lets his breath out into it; they shift their mouths more comfortable, Kurt's lips taste bitter with dirt but then his tongue is sudden and wet and sweet, and Blaine slips inside, he tastes of pink. Warm, living, slick wet pink, as Kurt's hands pull at his gloves and Blaine fumbles to get them off, to get his hand to Kurt's face, god, run his thumb over his cheek and dig his fingers into his hair and Kurt moans softly into his mouth, and it's only when he leans too far and the pain in his ribs stretches that he has to pull back with a gasp. Kurt stares back at him, dumb, then laughs, sudden and shocked, and puts a hand over his mouth.
"Oh," he says again, like he's really taken this situation in for the first time.
"Oh," Blaine says softly, and puts his naked hand over his, pulling it down so he can kiss him again.
*
It's two days before they make it back to the city, dirty and exhausted and starving. They have to bury David, and walking hurts with half-healed ribs, and they sleep that night over Blaine's cloak and under Kurt's, huddled together for warmth, Blaine's armour piled up neatly next to them. Kurt had to help him out of it, a knight can't unlatch his own armour. Kurt had been shy, tentative, helping him from his metal suit, but huddled body to body against the cold he just nuzzled his face into Blaine's throat and held him close. It's not the best night's sleep Blaine ever had; it's still possibly the best night he's ever had, though, running his hands over Kurt's back, pressing his arms tight around him.
He's less certain the closer they get to the city gates. They'd been walking hand in hand but now he looks at his hand in Kurt's and thinks of what will happen next. He doesn't know what will happen next. He can't be a knight in love with a male mage. Mages can get away with what they like, they have their magic, the kingdom needs them too badly to force them to follow any laws they don't like to, it can't risk a war with them. But Blaine's constricted by so, so, so many laws, and he knows the words they use, and he knows what they'll think, and he can't be a knight in love with a male mage . . .
Kurt puts his other hand around Blaine's, making Blaine look up to his eyes. "I'll keep you safe," he says, and Blaine knows he understands. Kurt wasn't always a mage, Kurt's been out in the rest of the world, Kurt knows the danger of it. Blaine draws his breath in and he'll just have to be brave. He can't be open about it, he knows Kurt understands that as Kurt unlaces their fingers, lets their hands fall apart. Just feeling this is a risk, but it's a risk he is long past the point of being able to choose not to take.
He brushes the edge of his hand against Kurt's as he walks, feels the brush back. And then his stomach makes another panged noise of complaint and Kurt laughs, they've each had a couple of crab apples in two days, and nudges him with his hip as he walks.
There are mages waiting for them at the gate. "They felt me coming," Kurt says simply, and lifts a stiff arm to wave. One really tall mage breaks from the group to run at them, throws his arms out but Kurt snaps, "I have at least two broken ribs don't you dare," and he stops, looking dumbly wounded, then says, "We didn't know what David - we couldn't feel you and we thought -"
He looks at Blaine, no idea who he is, and Kurt draws a little breath in, touches the tall mage's arm. "There was a faery. Dave's dead."
He looks back at Kurt, looks stunned now. One of the other mages, a short dark-haired girl, puts a hand over her mouth. "How did - you -"
But then their eyes flick up, and Blaine knows that they can see what Blaine saw, the hurricane of magic around Kurt. Kurt shrugs, then winces, then folds his arms into his robe sleeves and squirms his shoulders awkwardly. "I guess fear makes you either strong or dead."
The tall mage says, "Wow."
"I know." Kurt looks modestly down, but his smile is twitching smug in one corner.
Another mage is walking through the gates, leading Wes, who gives Blaine a long, weary look, and sighs slowly, like really he never expected anything different. Blaine gives a guilty little wave back.
*
It's six weeks later when he's called to Wes's tent off the training ground. He hasn't done anything particularly wrong, though he knows he's been distracted, but he's done his chores - phasing out and thinking about Kurt he's polished Wes's armour to mirrors - and he's practised, and he's kept mostly to himself. He visits Kurt, every other night. Kurt doesn't come here, Kurt knows how obvious a mage walking into the knight's training ground is, and Kurt is obvious in his own ways, isn't ashamed of it, is just aware of it. So Blaine goes to him, goes to the college, walks through the gate and someone will say, "Hey, Blaine, he's in the library." Or, "He went to his room to change, god forbid you see him in old robes." Or if it's Santana, "Please fuck him, the magic's got so sex-addled around him it's hard to think around here."
They are having sex. Chastity is a virtue, sex is for marriage, sex is for men and women, but Blaine touches Kurt and can't stop. It doesn't feel wrong. It doesn't feel like it's wrong, it can't be wrong, Kurt enveloping him and whispering against his hair and drawing his hands down his back and arching for him, Blaine making Kurt feel good, warm and loved and wanted and good, it can't be wrong, can it? How can it be? It doesn't hurt anybody, it's only them, it's only Blaine trying to love Kurt enough, there isn't enough love in the world for what he wants to give to Kurt. It doesn't feel wrong, in the college. None of the other mages question it. Some of the youngest mages might think it's strange but they'll get used to it, once they realise the breadth of love they're now allowed, the lack of rules that mages live by. They don't marry. They love, if they do, and don't when they don't, and no-one expects anything else of them.
Kurt and Blaine love a lot.
But knights have still noticed. There are enough who don't care, who glare back with him when some big ape in armour says, "Off to visit your fairy mage, Anderson?" and hold Blaine's wrist to stop him stamping up to them. That particular insult he feels as viciously as Kurt must, for a mage to be called that. Practise bouts can get pretty nasty nowadays. Wes starts pairing them off personally, while knights-in-training mutter, and cast sidelong looks at stony, furious Blaine, who's getting other people dragged into these difficulties and knows it and can't fight the whole world to make people not be arseholes, he just can't.
It's not that he's thinking about when he walks to Wes's tent, though. He thinks he must have forgotten some chore and he's going to be chewed out, or Wes has noticed that he paid no attention at all in the drills this morning, or - he doesn't expect Kurt to be there, talking quietly to Wes and then turning as Blaine drops the door flap behind himself, stares at him. The smile comes automatically, Kurt walks to him automatically, lifts his hands to take Blaine's and then stops himself, the smile hesitating. He forgets where they might not be safe. He's safe, anywhere, in his storm of magic, in his mage's robes he's untouchable. But if he touches Blaine, people can take it out on Blaine. Kurt can't always be there, Kurt can't keep him safe and Blaine stares at him, a lump in his throat, and knows that he can't keep himself safe either.
Oh god. He looks at Wes, sitting behind a desk covered in paperwork, all the messy organisation necessary for training the next generation of knights, and knows what this is about. Kurt takes Blaine's hand.
"Kurt has a proposition for you," Wes says, sitting there with his hands neatly steepled, keeping his voice calm.
Kurt squeezes Blaine's hand. "We're going to the North. Rachel felt something waking up up there, something in the ice, something magical and big and dangerous. They might need help."
"You're -" It crashes in his stomach, the distance, the loneliness, the time until he'll see him again - if he does. He tries to keep his voice steady. "How far North?"
Kurt licks his lips. "Far. We've all chosen our affinities, we make a good coven, they can't stop us going. So we're leaving the college. I-"
"You chose your affinity?"
"You knew I was thinking about it."
"I didn't know you'd chosen, you didn't tell me - what did you choose?"
Kurt holds his hands, lowers his head a little but doesn't look away from his eyes. "Healing. Blaine." at how his hand jerks. "Blaine, I didn't choose it, it chose me-"
"It's - it's dangerous, you told me, it could kill you-"
"Blaine for gods' sakes it's magic any of it could kill me, Puck and Santana both picked pyromagic, think how much fun that's going to be, two fiery maniacs in one coven. Blaine, don't argue, you know it won't help. I can't choose something that isn't right for me, and this is. I'm a healer now. I can help people."
"By slowly killing yourself."
"Blaine," Kurt lifts his hand, touches Blaine's forehead. "I'm strong. I can help people. I'll be fine."
He doesn't know what to say, he feels sick, this is all too much at once. "So you chose a deadly affinity and now you're leaving me. You came here to tell me that."
Kurt looks at Wes, and Wes says, "Kurt's asked for you to go with them."
There's silence after that. Blaine just doesn't know what to say. Kurt swallows, lifts his head, says, "Please. It feels - right, you being there. I have to go with my coven, Blaine, they're my coven. But I don't want to go without you. They understand. They want you there."
"I haven't finished my training." He looks at Wes. "I'm meant to be a knight."
Wes says, sounding so quietly sorry about it, "Blaine, you're never going to be a knight."
His face feels white with the suddenness of the fury. "I am the best archer we have and I can take down guys twice my size on the tourney field and-"
"Blaine," Kurt says softly, but Blaine pulls his hand from his.
"- just because of this? It doesn't change what I can do, it doesn't change me, I'm good, damn it-"
"No-one's denying that and you know they're not. Blaine, you can't be a knight. I'm sorry. But you know you can't be." Wes doesn't look away, while Blaine can hardly breathe through the fury and Kurt stands at his side, folding his arms into his robe sleeves, lowering his head. "There are too many men who won't follow you. There are those who will, and you know it, good men don't care. But there are too many who won't. It wouldn't work. You could never lead a division into battle. They simply wouldn't follow."
His throat is going. The unfairness of it, the fact that he knows Wes is right, clutches inside and stops his breathing up. "My whole life," he says roughly, and Wes does look away, now.
"You would never make a knight, Blaine. You couldn't sit armoured on a horse and cut down poorly armed peasants on foot. You couldn't be what a knight needs to be on a battlefield. You're good with a sword but you need the right reason to wield it, and I don't think the orders we get would soothe your conscience about it." He looks back at Blaine, who breathes more slowly now, understanding the blunt truth of this, because he never has drawn blood, the only body he's ever cut into was already dead and animated by an evil faery, he's thought it himself lying in bed on a night, could he do that? Could he really lift a sword against another human being and bring it down, could he face the afterwards of that? Wes says, "You're a good man. Knights are just; it doesn't make us good. This is a gift, Blaine, this opportunity. It's a gift."
Kurt walks to his satchel by the stiff tent wall, crouches to open it. "I made you this," he says, standing up, unrolling with a shake a drop of green material - a mossy green hood and cloak, hemmed with Kurt's tiny neat stitching, held nervous in his hands. "They still have rangers in the North. They don't have any political allegiance, they don't go to war, they just try to help people. The magic's more raw up there, things come through, faeries and - and things. People need them. They help people."
Blaine stares at the green cloak, and then looks at Wes. "My father."
"If you want to write a letter I'll make sure it's delivered. I'll write my own if you like. Stating that the North needs you and it's a noble sacrifice on your part." He smiles a little tightly. "I won't mention that you're mostly going because you'd go diving for the moon in the sea if a certain mage told you to."
Blaine looks at Kurt, who smiles so uncertainly, still holding that cloak. "Whatever woke up in that ice, rangers alone can't defeat it. They need mages, Blaine." He swallows. "And I need you. And you know that."
Blaine reaches out, touches the fabric; it's heavy, lined thick and warm for the bitter Northern winds. He thinks about Kurt sitting in his room sewing this for him, thinking of the cold and sewing Blaine this. He runs his thumb over a seam and almost feels the magic in the stitching.
He'll never be a knight. It's a strange sort of relief to think it: he will never be a knight, neither he nor anyone else could stand it. His allegiance to the kingdom is broken, because the kingdom wouldn't want him anyway. The only person his sword belongs to anymore is Kurt.
He says, very quietly, "Okay."
Kurt throws his arms around his neck and Blaine laughs, pats his back, looks down at the armful of green he's been given. "You have to pack," Kurt says, squeezing the hug and then letting go. "We have to go tonight."
"What? Now?"
Kurt rolls his eyes to the ceiling, flicking a hand. "They can't officially stop us but some of the older mages might be a little bit opposed to the idea of us just heading off like this to face we-don't-even-know-what. So, we're not telling them. We left a note!"
Wes says, "It's your decision, Blaine."
It's not. Kurt's still holding his arm, Blaine doesn't have a choice. "I'll get my things."
*
They leave the city that night, packs on their backs and bickering, laughing, singing as they go. Mages form covens without even trying to, the bonds just form, and while mages are famous for chaos Kurt's coven is possibly even more argumentative and unruly and fractious than any other coven, they seem to put effort into their madness.
Finn walks in the front, tall beside Rachel holding a brass pendulum, watching its swing, finding their route; Santana's walking just behind them holding a ball of fire in one hand to light the way and Brittany's hand with the other, Brittany talking to Tina and Mike, Mercedes hurrying to catch Tina's arm. Puck's holding another ball of fire while the little clockwork owl avatar Artie's using - even Kurt can't heal legs that don't work, and it's handy to have someone in the college with access to all those books and all that knowledge while they're far, far away and probably in over their heads - perches on his shoulder. Quinn walks beside him, looking cool and distant and thoughtful, like she actually does understand what they might be walking into and she's thinking through how they'll manage it.
Blaine and Kurt walk at the back, hand in hand. There are guards on either side of the gate but they barely even look at them; mages come and go as they please. Blaine's the only one not wearing robes, wearing instead chain mail and a heavy green cloak, soft and warm around his shoulders, holding another man's hand, but mages can do what they like. If someone wants to say something, they have to say it to the whole coven, and who would be stupid enough to do that?
He lifts the goggles hanging around his neck, a gift from Artie, who's a pretty talented technomage. He presses them up over his eyes and the smoky glass reveals the magic in the air all around the mages, spiralling above Tina's laughter, sparking like static electricity between an argument Quinn and Puck are starting, moving in a slow, coiling way between Santana and Brittany, as their hands play with each other. Blaine looks across at Kurt and he can barely see him, he's lit up like a supernova. Blaine drops the goggles again and there's Kurt's smile, pleased, excited, all for Blaine as he holds his hand and nudges his shoulder with his, and walks on.
They have literally no idea what they're walking into. But they know the direction, and holding Kurt's hand, Blaine's not afraid.
There are stars overhead, as bright and clear in the dark as magic.
As far as plans go it's not exactly elegant, and not exactly without a lot of room for it to go wrong. "I need my magic back," Kurt says, walking through the forest, tense and increasingly grim. "It might not even see you, it doesn't even have a real body, it's made of magic, it might not even notice normal humans. So you have to stay hidden, and I'll try to draw it towards you, and then you have to get my magic free. You'll be able to see it. It's holding it in his hand like a - like a bauble."
"How do I-?"
"Break it. Just break it. I don't know if iron will, we can only hope. Just give me one particle of magic," he whispers, "I'll stab it into its soul like a needle, I will fight it-"
He's terrified. He's angry, mulishly, spitefully angry, but Blaine can tell how scared he is; Blaine is scared, and Blaine didn't see it kill someone and put their corpse on like a suit of armour already. He says, "I'll have your back." and Kurt's body gives a little swaying shiver, his hands tighten and loosen at his sides, but he doesn't tell Blaine that it's a pointless offering against a monster that could kill them with its fingertips. He just gives him a quick tight smile, and goes back to walking, fast and hard through the undergrowth.
Then he stops, his robes swinging and shivering still again, and he pulls his breath in quick. "Hide."
"It-"
His face has gone waxy and very, very white. "I can feel my magic. Oh gods, how do you people walk around like this? It's so dark, it's like being blind-"
"I'll be right here," Blaine says, and reaches across, squeezes his hand. Kurt's hand is stiff in his before it gives a quick squeeze back, and the touch runs up all the muscles in Blaine's arm. He slips his visor down, and backs into the undergrowth, against a tree, watching.
Kurt stands still for a moment, very alone and very pale in the dark. His face is fixed forward, his mouth twitching hard before he steadies it, steadies his whole body, lifts his head and straightens his back. "I know you're there," he calls, his voice wavering just a little in the dark, as clear and as sturdy as anyone could ask for against this. "I'm sick of your games. Hurry up."
Blaine hears -
It's not laughter. It's like a hundred tiny voices all giving the same breathy hah all at once, a hundred voices near and distant all whispering at the same time, and the sweat is instantly cold on him, though Kurt stands steady. "Impatient for your death, little thing?" the hundred whispering voices say, he can't tell from where, they're everywhere. "Do you think this thing is easy to walk? I think I broke its - what do you call them. Its thing. Stick. Appendage. Leg."
Something is shuffling towards them, through the dark. Something big, broader than Kurt, heavy hanging mage robes skimming the leaves, a drag-then-lurch of a walk. As it comes closer Blaine can see that its - his - head is hanging like his neck is broken, it should stand taller than Kurt but the faery hasn't troubled itself to lift his head; his arms are dangling like they're forgotten, apart from in one fist a fizzing golden light gripped tight, compressed down so small, flickering and buzzing like it's in pain, if light can be in pain. Kurt puts a hand over his chest, sucks in a breath that shakes.
One of the body's legs is - wrong. It swings like a crutch, the lower leg flopping from the knee socket, back and forth in wrong, wrong ways before it catches at a sick angle on the ground and takes the body's weight all the same. "This is why you are all so weak and stupid, little thing." the voices buzz, and Kurt's hands are shaking where they grip his robes over his heart, where his magic isn't. "You must be so busy all the time - remembering how to walk -"
"Let him go," Kurt whispers. "Let him go let him go just let him rest-"
"He's dead and gone, little thing, I'm only borrowing his meat."
"It's not right it's not let him go-"
"Shall I borrow yours, instead?"
Kurt clasps his hands into tight fists at his sides, draws his head up, draws his breath in hard. "I can see why you hate us. Everything we have-"
"'Hate' is a strong word to apply to food."
"-and you're all alone, and you always will be-"
"I'm not alone," it buzzes like laughter. "I have my food. I'll have you as well, soon. You'll be one of my voices, little thing, and your magic will kill other mages, and your meat will feed the insects. And you will taste goooood." Blaine sees Kurt sway, a hand raising to his mouth but it can't seem to complete the journey, his entire face slack with terror. "When I tasted you coming - and bringing my appetiser with you, generous little thing you are-"
Kurt takes a breath and takes a step backwards. "You're a coward," he whispers. "You took my magic from me - you wouldn't let me fight you-"
"Little thing." The broken leg lifts, swings like a pendulum - god Blaine can hear the gristle still holding the bones together inside - and plants itself clumsily one step forward. "How long do you think I would have lived if I went around leaving mages like you the magic to hurt me?"
Kurt's eyes are uncertain, but he takes another step back. He's trying to draw it forward, to give Blaine the right angle to rush out - and he was right, that faery hasn't even noticed him. Maybe it senses through magic, and Blaine has none, so it's blind to him. It'll notice if he sticks a sword into it though, and he'll still only get one chance. He tightens his grip on the sword, and fear is bitter in the roof of his mouth.
"I'm not - I'm not strong, I'm not special," Kurt says softly. "I'm not even good. I couldn't have hurt you if I wanted to. I'm just-"
The arm holding his magic, that madly humming ball of light, lifts at a clumsy sideways angle, the wrist flops back and forth, and after a second's confusion it holds itself up and out towards Kurt. Tempting him with it, mocking him with it. "You held this like you were afraid of it," the voices croon. "You crippled yourself, stupid little thing, if you had only let it relax-"
Kurt angles himself towards the ball of light like it's magnetic to him, but then hauls himself back another shaky step, whispers, "I'm not special."
The clumsy body of the dead mage takes another swinging step towards him. Blaine shifts his grip, one last step and it'll be time, he can't think about it, if he thinks he'll freeze, all he can do is run, to save Kurt, run at it, don't think -
"You were holding it so tight," the voices sneer. "The things you could do and you spent all your strength binding it down. You killed yourself, stupid little thing. You could have slit me open barely thinking about it but you spent your strength suffocating your own magic. Don't blame me for being hungry. Your death is your own doing."
"I think," Kurt says, his voice quivering but imperious all the same as he takes another step back, "I'll keep on blaming you for it, you disgusting empty thing. You don't even have your own magic, you just keep using mages' magic, what kind of faery are you? You're nothing but a leech. They're supposed to be beautiful and terrible like gods and you're nothing, you're a-"
"I can hurt the meat of you before I eat you," the voices hiss and growl all around them. "It's so easy to hurt meat, little-"
"You're a parasite, you're an insect. A lonely nothing insect, did you kill your first mage while they were asleep? Because you're nothing, you just wear other people's strength-"
The voices have gone deeper, they shake under Blaine's ribcage. "I will pull pieces off you and make you eat them. You will gag on your own blood."
"You won't do a thing," Kurt sneers back at him. "Other people's strength will, all you can do is whisper in the dark, you're a mosquito, you're an irritating little whine, on your own the most you can do is annoy people, gods I'm glad we're alone for this, why would I want anyone to know I got killed by something so pathetic as you-"
The voices bellow as the body lunges forward, and Blaine doesn't think. He runs, sword swinging, aiming for that hand holding a ball of light so bright his sight fractures with tears as he looks directly at it. The sword swings down, sharp and heavy and straight through the hand, dead fingers fall and the magic bursts like a firework going off. It's the last part of it that Blaine's really aware of, because something he can't see hits him like a tidal wave, like the hand of god, invisible and huge and hard.
Kurt can see that faeries' magic is different. Blaine can't see it at all.
He hits the same tree he'd hidden behind. He's heard that oak trees grow for three hundred years, live for three hundred years, then take three hundred years to die - this one he'd guess is in the middle 'living' section, many times broader than he is, sturdy and solid enough to crack his bones when he hits, the armour is as useless as paper. He hits the ground with no breath left to knock out of him, lies on his side with his visor knocked askew, everything distant and dim, but he can hear Kurt's voice in a cry, and everything is lit up golden, rather beautiful, really. Like the stars have fallen down and hang all around them, constellations lighting up the forest.
Something is in his throat and his broken chest heaves, he retches, and there's something shiny and black on the leaves, until a flare of light scours the whole world so bright and it gleams crimson. His mouth tastes wrong. He can't really register the pain, there's too much of it, the pain contains him. Something has broken, too many things have broken, his ribs in his lungs like shards of glass. He thinks, Kurt.
Because someone is stumbling to him, Kurt is stumbling to him, his robes flumping around him as he drops to his knees at Blaine's side and sobs, "Blaine - oh gods - Blaine - I can fix it." His hands scrabble and find the catches of Blaine's helmet, lift it off him so gently, his hands on Blaine's cheeks, holding his head, they are as soft and cool as they look. And glowing. Kurt is surrounded by that escaped magic like he's being orbited by a hundred thousand fireflies, he's illuminated, he looks so lovely and his voice is choking in his throat. "I can fix it, please, please, please let me be able to fix it -"
It doesn't even hurt anymore, not with Kurt's hand on his face. Kurt leans down and hisses against his cheek, "Don't you dare die." and Blaine, somewhere where everything is dark and distant and can't really hurt him anymore with Kurt's hands on his face and his magic all around them like stars, thinks, I won't.
He understands what his life was for now, Kurt's hands on his face, trusting him as everything goes black.
*
He wakes up to the sound of birdsong.
He opens his eyes, a slow and painful process, and blinks at the blue flickering green flickering white, blinks some more, brings into focus the leaves against the sky, the casting beams of sunlight breaking through. There's something heavy on his chest. He looks down and it's Kurt, laying face-down on top of him and still. He takes a moment to just lay there, then draws his breath in to push himself up.
Drawing his breath in hard hurts like fuck. The breath catches and wheezes, he coughs, coughs harder, shaking the boy on top of him who doesn't move. Blaine manages to drag himself backwards so he can sit, one hand over his chest which hurts like someone took a hammer to him, panting hard and hurting, reaching down to touch Kurt's hair. "Kurt-?"
He grits his teeth around the pain, takes Kurt's shoulders, rolls him onto his back in the leaves. But he gives a little moan as he rolls, and Blaine sees tension run through the muscles of his body and run out again as he slumps there. He's alive, he's alive, taking a long moment to open his eyes, to squint up at Blaine, close them tight again and struggle and open them and suck his breath in, and wince.
His eyes are -
Blue and green and the light, he thinks dazedly, as Kurt stares up at him, beginning to pant in the same loose, aching way that Blaine still is. "You're alright," Kurt whispers low and rough, and lifts a hand for Blaine's face but it fails halfway and hits the ground again. "Oh," he says, like he's taking his own situation in for the first time, lying on his back and in pain and too weak to lift his own arm.
"Oh," Blaine confirms, trying to straighten his back out, sitting hurts. "I - hurt quite a lot."
Kurt shakes his head a little, watching him from his back on the floor. "We don't learn much healing unless we're going to take it up." He swallows, licks his lips. "I can't imagine why anyone would want to do it. It's horrible."
"You healed me?"
"Not very well," Kurt says, and tries to sit and grips his own chest, chokes his breath out. "Ow. Not very well at all. Ow."
"That faery-"
"Dead. I burned it right out."
"It hurt you?"
"No." Kurt sits, propped on one arm, eyes closed as he pants with a hand clutching at his chest. "You can't - heal someone else's body. You can only heal your own. That's how it - how it works. You take the injury out of someone and then heal yourself."
"You - oh god. Oh god, you didn't have to do that."
"Of course I did, you were dying." Kurt swallows again, opens his eyes, looks up at Blaine still breathing too hard. "I - screwed it up more than a bit, I think you can tell."
Blaine squints his eyes up against the pain, shakes his head. "No, it's fine. It's better than being, you know, dead. I just feel - stiff, and achy."
"I feel like a horse kicked me in the chest."
"Yes. Like that. You - I'm sorry. That's my pain, and you've got it."
Kurt shrugs and visibly regrets it, hissing, hunching around himself. "I would have died without you," he says, looking down awkwardly now. "I owed you . . . I still owe you my life."
Blaine looks at Kurt's hand, pale against the leaves, then looks to the side. "I owe you my life too. I think we're fairly even."
Kurt's eyes slink across the leaves to him, and Blaine lifts his head nervously to meet them, and they both look quickly away again. In the sunlight they don't know each other. Blaine had known Kurt last night, Kurt with his magic around him like a storm of stars, he'd trusted Kurt on some blood-deep level like he'd known him. But now he's a mage, an unknowable and inaccessible mage, a mage sitting too tightly, pressing his knees together in his kneel, prim and awkward in torn robes his hands squeeze over his lap. "Dave," he says softly, and Blaine blinks, lifts his head. There's a body lying a little way off, a hump in the leaves.
"We can't carry him back like this."
Kurt swallows. "We can bury him. I'll tell them what happened." He closes his eyes, bows his head. Blaine doesn't know what to say, or how to touch him, or whether he's allowed to touch him. He wants it too much. "It feels so unreal," Kurt says softly. "That he would be dead and I'd survive. I'm - I didn't think I had any strength to speak of, I . . ."
"You killed that faery."
Kurt lifts a hand, looks at it, swallows. "I didn't realise. I'd spent so long being afraid, of - of everything. I carried the fear around with me and knotted my magic up with it. And it was all there to reach for, any second, if I'd ever tried, but - but I didn't, I was just afraid."
"You're really strong."
Kurt's smile twitches into a smirk. "I suppose I am." He lifts his head, looks at Blaine. "Thank you. For getting my magic back for me. It's - it's a relief - I can see again, it was like being lost in the dark without it -"
"Can you see it? Now?"
"Yes. Of course I can, all the world's full of magic."
"I saw . . . I saw your magic, last night. It was beautiful. Like stars."
Kurt looks across at him, chews his bottom lip - swollen, still with blood caught in the corner from where Blaine hit him - and says, "Here." And he lifts his hands to Blaine's face.
Blaine goes stiff as cool palms settle over his eyes, which close automatically. "Open them," Kurt says. "See what I see."
Blaine hesitates - and blinks. And oh.
He can't even tell what he's looking at at first. Mages describe magic to normal humans, when they trouble themselves to, as gold dust in the air. It's nothing like it. It's light, a million million tumbling particles of light, white in their heart and glowing soft gold around their edges, everywhere, a blizzard of light. Caught by the wind the particles weave and turn, eddied by leaves they spring and dance. And -
That's him. He's looking through Kurt's eyes, he can see himself, can see little flurries of magic catch above his head like they're riding his own surprise, spiralling as they catch his sudden joy, he laughs out loud. His hair is sort of mad, stuck down at the back by blood and corkscrewing messily around his face, there's blood run down one side of his forehead and one cheek, he looks like he hasn't slept in a week and he's been dragged face-down through a forest but he looks so happy through the spin and dance of the magic, before he blinks and sees -
He's looking through his own eyes now. He loses his breath. He can hardly see Kurt through the magic, that little storm of it around him was nothing, a dust-devil to Kurt's tornado. He has to squint through the chaotic burn of the light to see Kurt's eyes, hopeful that Blaine likes what he sees, delighted when Blaine smiles, and that magic all around him catches Kurt's own happiness and blooms in great rolling shapes, like he's the centre of a firework storm, like he's the centre of a rolling sea of tumbling pluming magic. And then Blaine blinks and Kurt's hands have gone from his face, and he's just Kurt again, with a bruised jaw and shadowed eyes and a little blood in his hair, grubby and scratched and battered by the night, but smiling so sweetly Blaine almost breaks his heart it falls so hard. He will swear for the rest of his life, that was the moment it just dropped into Kurt's lap like it didn't want to be anywhere else, because Kurt looked so happy to make Blaine happy, and Blaine had never seen him smile like that. He'd never seen anyone smile like that.
Blaine drags together the breath to say, "Wow."
Kurt's grin turns a little wicked. "I know."
"Is that what you see all the time?"
"Only when I want to. It's as easy as - focusing. I don't even think about it anymore."
"It's - it's incredible."
"I know." He closes his eyes for a second. "I missed it. I didn't want to die half blind. Thank you."
Blaine - doesn't always think things through. The words are out of his mouth before he can really think about the consequences of them. "You know - when a knight rescues a lady, she usually gives him some sort of favour. Something to remember her by. If she doesn't have anything to hand it's sometimes a kiss." He licks his lips before he thinks not to, because Kurt has frozen sitting opposite him. "You sort of did save my life. I mean, you did save my life. Um. I'd like to - thank you."
Kurt's eyes on his look sick for a second before they flit - upwards. Blaine realises he's checking the way the magic moves around him, and he remembers how it seemed to catch and flutter on Blaine's sudden joy, he realises that Kurt is checking the magic to see if Blaine means this. And he feels bolder, suddenly, so much surer, because Kurt can see his sincerity, Kurt knows he means it. Kurt's eyes drop back to his, his mouth a little open now, just sort of stunned. Blaine says, "If you don't . . . ?"
Kurt just stares at him, though he's now beginning to blush a particularly vibrant shade of pink. The smile just hurts Blaine on the inside, and he leans forward, ribs complaining like an ancient accordion, discordant notes of pain, before he closes his eyes and puts his mouth over Kurt's.
He's never kissed anyone before. He understands the mechanics of it. He didn't realise it would feel like all that magic he can't see would get in through his mouth and set his whole body alight, before he pulls back with a little startled breath, and Kurt's eyes blink open, he stares back at him. Kurt's breath drops loose with a gulp, and he folds his bottom lip in, licks it, swallows. "- you -"
Blaine quickly licks his lips again, ducks back. "Thank you," he says quietly, shifting a shoulder, uncertain now. But there's only a second of silence until Kurt's hand touches his glove.
"You saved my life too," he says, a little teasingly, and Blaine's eyes flick to his smiling green-blue gaze before Kurt whispers, "Thank you," and kisses him. Blaine gets a hand up to the back of his head, lets his breath out into it; they shift their mouths more comfortable, Kurt's lips taste bitter with dirt but then his tongue is sudden and wet and sweet, and Blaine slips inside, he tastes of pink. Warm, living, slick wet pink, as Kurt's hands pull at his gloves and Blaine fumbles to get them off, to get his hand to Kurt's face, god, run his thumb over his cheek and dig his fingers into his hair and Kurt moans softly into his mouth, and it's only when he leans too far and the pain in his ribs stretches that he has to pull back with a gasp. Kurt stares back at him, dumb, then laughs, sudden and shocked, and puts a hand over his mouth.
"Oh," he says again, like he's really taken this situation in for the first time.
"Oh," Blaine says softly, and puts his naked hand over his, pulling it down so he can kiss him again.
*
It's two days before they make it back to the city, dirty and exhausted and starving. They have to bury David, and walking hurts with half-healed ribs, and they sleep that night over Blaine's cloak and under Kurt's, huddled together for warmth, Blaine's armour piled up neatly next to them. Kurt had to help him out of it, a knight can't unlatch his own armour. Kurt had been shy, tentative, helping him from his metal suit, but huddled body to body against the cold he just nuzzled his face into Blaine's throat and held him close. It's not the best night's sleep Blaine ever had; it's still possibly the best night he's ever had, though, running his hands over Kurt's back, pressing his arms tight around him.
He's less certain the closer they get to the city gates. They'd been walking hand in hand but now he looks at his hand in Kurt's and thinks of what will happen next. He doesn't know what will happen next. He can't be a knight in love with a male mage. Mages can get away with what they like, they have their magic, the kingdom needs them too badly to force them to follow any laws they don't like to, it can't risk a war with them. But Blaine's constricted by so, so, so many laws, and he knows the words they use, and he knows what they'll think, and he can't be a knight in love with a male mage . . .
Kurt puts his other hand around Blaine's, making Blaine look up to his eyes. "I'll keep you safe," he says, and Blaine knows he understands. Kurt wasn't always a mage, Kurt's been out in the rest of the world, Kurt knows the danger of it. Blaine draws his breath in and he'll just have to be brave. He can't be open about it, he knows Kurt understands that as Kurt unlaces their fingers, lets their hands fall apart. Just feeling this is a risk, but it's a risk he is long past the point of being able to choose not to take.
He brushes the edge of his hand against Kurt's as he walks, feels the brush back. And then his stomach makes another panged noise of complaint and Kurt laughs, they've each had a couple of crab apples in two days, and nudges him with his hip as he walks.
There are mages waiting for them at the gate. "They felt me coming," Kurt says simply, and lifts a stiff arm to wave. One really tall mage breaks from the group to run at them, throws his arms out but Kurt snaps, "I have at least two broken ribs don't you dare," and he stops, looking dumbly wounded, then says, "We didn't know what David - we couldn't feel you and we thought -"
He looks at Blaine, no idea who he is, and Kurt draws a little breath in, touches the tall mage's arm. "There was a faery. Dave's dead."
He looks back at Kurt, looks stunned now. One of the other mages, a short dark-haired girl, puts a hand over her mouth. "How did - you -"
But then their eyes flick up, and Blaine knows that they can see what Blaine saw, the hurricane of magic around Kurt. Kurt shrugs, then winces, then folds his arms into his robe sleeves and squirms his shoulders awkwardly. "I guess fear makes you either strong or dead."
The tall mage says, "Wow."
"I know." Kurt looks modestly down, but his smile is twitching smug in one corner.
Another mage is walking through the gates, leading Wes, who gives Blaine a long, weary look, and sighs slowly, like really he never expected anything different. Blaine gives a guilty little wave back.
*
It's six weeks later when he's called to Wes's tent off the training ground. He hasn't done anything particularly wrong, though he knows he's been distracted, but he's done his chores - phasing out and thinking about Kurt he's polished Wes's armour to mirrors - and he's practised, and he's kept mostly to himself. He visits Kurt, every other night. Kurt doesn't come here, Kurt knows how obvious a mage walking into the knight's training ground is, and Kurt is obvious in his own ways, isn't ashamed of it, is just aware of it. So Blaine goes to him, goes to the college, walks through the gate and someone will say, "Hey, Blaine, he's in the library." Or, "He went to his room to change, god forbid you see him in old robes." Or if it's Santana, "Please fuck him, the magic's got so sex-addled around him it's hard to think around here."
They are having sex. Chastity is a virtue, sex is for marriage, sex is for men and women, but Blaine touches Kurt and can't stop. It doesn't feel wrong. It doesn't feel like it's wrong, it can't be wrong, Kurt enveloping him and whispering against his hair and drawing his hands down his back and arching for him, Blaine making Kurt feel good, warm and loved and wanted and good, it can't be wrong, can it? How can it be? It doesn't hurt anybody, it's only them, it's only Blaine trying to love Kurt enough, there isn't enough love in the world for what he wants to give to Kurt. It doesn't feel wrong, in the college. None of the other mages question it. Some of the youngest mages might think it's strange but they'll get used to it, once they realise the breadth of love they're now allowed, the lack of rules that mages live by. They don't marry. They love, if they do, and don't when they don't, and no-one expects anything else of them.
Kurt and Blaine love a lot.
But knights have still noticed. There are enough who don't care, who glare back with him when some big ape in armour says, "Off to visit your fairy mage, Anderson?" and hold Blaine's wrist to stop him stamping up to them. That particular insult he feels as viciously as Kurt must, for a mage to be called that. Practise bouts can get pretty nasty nowadays. Wes starts pairing them off personally, while knights-in-training mutter, and cast sidelong looks at stony, furious Blaine, who's getting other people dragged into these difficulties and knows it and can't fight the whole world to make people not be arseholes, he just can't.
It's not that he's thinking about when he walks to Wes's tent, though. He thinks he must have forgotten some chore and he's going to be chewed out, or Wes has noticed that he paid no attention at all in the drills this morning, or - he doesn't expect Kurt to be there, talking quietly to Wes and then turning as Blaine drops the door flap behind himself, stares at him. The smile comes automatically, Kurt walks to him automatically, lifts his hands to take Blaine's and then stops himself, the smile hesitating. He forgets where they might not be safe. He's safe, anywhere, in his storm of magic, in his mage's robes he's untouchable. But if he touches Blaine, people can take it out on Blaine. Kurt can't always be there, Kurt can't keep him safe and Blaine stares at him, a lump in his throat, and knows that he can't keep himself safe either.
Oh god. He looks at Wes, sitting behind a desk covered in paperwork, all the messy organisation necessary for training the next generation of knights, and knows what this is about. Kurt takes Blaine's hand.
"Kurt has a proposition for you," Wes says, sitting there with his hands neatly steepled, keeping his voice calm.
Kurt squeezes Blaine's hand. "We're going to the North. Rachel felt something waking up up there, something in the ice, something magical and big and dangerous. They might need help."
"You're -" It crashes in his stomach, the distance, the loneliness, the time until he'll see him again - if he does. He tries to keep his voice steady. "How far North?"
Kurt licks his lips. "Far. We've all chosen our affinities, we make a good coven, they can't stop us going. So we're leaving the college. I-"
"You chose your affinity?"
"You knew I was thinking about it."
"I didn't know you'd chosen, you didn't tell me - what did you choose?"
Kurt holds his hands, lowers his head a little but doesn't look away from his eyes. "Healing. Blaine." at how his hand jerks. "Blaine, I didn't choose it, it chose me-"
"It's - it's dangerous, you told me, it could kill you-"
"Blaine for gods' sakes it's magic any of it could kill me, Puck and Santana both picked pyromagic, think how much fun that's going to be, two fiery maniacs in one coven. Blaine, don't argue, you know it won't help. I can't choose something that isn't right for me, and this is. I'm a healer now. I can help people."
"By slowly killing yourself."
"Blaine," Kurt lifts his hand, touches Blaine's forehead. "I'm strong. I can help people. I'll be fine."
He doesn't know what to say, he feels sick, this is all too much at once. "So you chose a deadly affinity and now you're leaving me. You came here to tell me that."
Kurt looks at Wes, and Wes says, "Kurt's asked for you to go with them."
There's silence after that. Blaine just doesn't know what to say. Kurt swallows, lifts his head, says, "Please. It feels - right, you being there. I have to go with my coven, Blaine, they're my coven. But I don't want to go without you. They understand. They want you there."
"I haven't finished my training." He looks at Wes. "I'm meant to be a knight."
Wes says, sounding so quietly sorry about it, "Blaine, you're never going to be a knight."
His face feels white with the suddenness of the fury. "I am the best archer we have and I can take down guys twice my size on the tourney field and-"
"Blaine," Kurt says softly, but Blaine pulls his hand from his.
"- just because of this? It doesn't change what I can do, it doesn't change me, I'm good, damn it-"
"No-one's denying that and you know they're not. Blaine, you can't be a knight. I'm sorry. But you know you can't be." Wes doesn't look away, while Blaine can hardly breathe through the fury and Kurt stands at his side, folding his arms into his robe sleeves, lowering his head. "There are too many men who won't follow you. There are those who will, and you know it, good men don't care. But there are too many who won't. It wouldn't work. You could never lead a division into battle. They simply wouldn't follow."
His throat is going. The unfairness of it, the fact that he knows Wes is right, clutches inside and stops his breathing up. "My whole life," he says roughly, and Wes does look away, now.
"You would never make a knight, Blaine. You couldn't sit armoured on a horse and cut down poorly armed peasants on foot. You couldn't be what a knight needs to be on a battlefield. You're good with a sword but you need the right reason to wield it, and I don't think the orders we get would soothe your conscience about it." He looks back at Blaine, who breathes more slowly now, understanding the blunt truth of this, because he never has drawn blood, the only body he's ever cut into was already dead and animated by an evil faery, he's thought it himself lying in bed on a night, could he do that? Could he really lift a sword against another human being and bring it down, could he face the afterwards of that? Wes says, "You're a good man. Knights are just; it doesn't make us good. This is a gift, Blaine, this opportunity. It's a gift."
Kurt walks to his satchel by the stiff tent wall, crouches to open it. "I made you this," he says, standing up, unrolling with a shake a drop of green material - a mossy green hood and cloak, hemmed with Kurt's tiny neat stitching, held nervous in his hands. "They still have rangers in the North. They don't have any political allegiance, they don't go to war, they just try to help people. The magic's more raw up there, things come through, faeries and - and things. People need them. They help people."
Blaine stares at the green cloak, and then looks at Wes. "My father."
"If you want to write a letter I'll make sure it's delivered. I'll write my own if you like. Stating that the North needs you and it's a noble sacrifice on your part." He smiles a little tightly. "I won't mention that you're mostly going because you'd go diving for the moon in the sea if a certain mage told you to."
Blaine looks at Kurt, who smiles so uncertainly, still holding that cloak. "Whatever woke up in that ice, rangers alone can't defeat it. They need mages, Blaine." He swallows. "And I need you. And you know that."
Blaine reaches out, touches the fabric; it's heavy, lined thick and warm for the bitter Northern winds. He thinks about Kurt sitting in his room sewing this for him, thinking of the cold and sewing Blaine this. He runs his thumb over a seam and almost feels the magic in the stitching.
He'll never be a knight. It's a strange sort of relief to think it: he will never be a knight, neither he nor anyone else could stand it. His allegiance to the kingdom is broken, because the kingdom wouldn't want him anyway. The only person his sword belongs to anymore is Kurt.
He says, very quietly, "Okay."
Kurt throws his arms around his neck and Blaine laughs, pats his back, looks down at the armful of green he's been given. "You have to pack," Kurt says, squeezing the hug and then letting go. "We have to go tonight."
"What? Now?"
Kurt rolls his eyes to the ceiling, flicking a hand. "They can't officially stop us but some of the older mages might be a little bit opposed to the idea of us just heading off like this to face we-don't-even-know-what. So, we're not telling them. We left a note!"
Wes says, "It's your decision, Blaine."
It's not. Kurt's still holding his arm, Blaine doesn't have a choice. "I'll get my things."
*
They leave the city that night, packs on their backs and bickering, laughing, singing as they go. Mages form covens without even trying to, the bonds just form, and while mages are famous for chaos Kurt's coven is possibly even more argumentative and unruly and fractious than any other coven, they seem to put effort into their madness.
Finn walks in the front, tall beside Rachel holding a brass pendulum, watching its swing, finding their route; Santana's walking just behind them holding a ball of fire in one hand to light the way and Brittany's hand with the other, Brittany talking to Tina and Mike, Mercedes hurrying to catch Tina's arm. Puck's holding another ball of fire while the little clockwork owl avatar Artie's using - even Kurt can't heal legs that don't work, and it's handy to have someone in the college with access to all those books and all that knowledge while they're far, far away and probably in over their heads - perches on his shoulder. Quinn walks beside him, looking cool and distant and thoughtful, like she actually does understand what they might be walking into and she's thinking through how they'll manage it.
Blaine and Kurt walk at the back, hand in hand. There are guards on either side of the gate but they barely even look at them; mages come and go as they please. Blaine's the only one not wearing robes, wearing instead chain mail and a heavy green cloak, soft and warm around his shoulders, holding another man's hand, but mages can do what they like. If someone wants to say something, they have to say it to the whole coven, and who would be stupid enough to do that?
He lifts the goggles hanging around his neck, a gift from Artie, who's a pretty talented technomage. He presses them up over his eyes and the smoky glass reveals the magic in the air all around the mages, spiralling above Tina's laughter, sparking like static electricity between an argument Quinn and Puck are starting, moving in a slow, coiling way between Santana and Brittany, as their hands play with each other. Blaine looks across at Kurt and he can barely see him, he's lit up like a supernova. Blaine drops the goggles again and there's Kurt's smile, pleased, excited, all for Blaine as he holds his hand and nudges his shoulder with his, and walks on.
They have literally no idea what they're walking into. But they know the direction, and holding Kurt's hand, Blaine's not afraid.
There are stars overhead, as bright and clear in the dark as magic.