Glee!fic, Big Moon Rising pt III
Big Moon Rising part III, hey up puppyverse.
Disclaimer: The stuff that would be different if I actually owned the series, my gods.
Rating: This part R?
Summary: Not the only wolf in the world.
Note: Put the radio on this morning, straight onto William Bell. Might just be a good day <3
Edit: Now with Burt and cub!Kurt fanart by ileliberte, thank you honey!! <3
Of course Burt remembers the first time Kurt turned. Who the hell ever forgets something like that? Running downstairs at the sharp animal noises coming from his son's bedroom, keening like a dog crying, and heart like a pinprick in his chest Burt thought his son was dying. He slammed the light on and there on the bed -
- next to the bed, fallen out of the bed -
- was a skinny white half-grown wolf cub, trussed in his son's pyjamas, whine-whine-whining in panic and confusion.
And Burt just stood there next to the lightswitch, dumb of all words, all thought, while the wolf cried on the floor, tried to get up to walk to him and stood on a flopping pyjama leg and tripped again, barking sharply for him, shivering in fear. And Burt stared at him and thought nothing, couldn't think anything, how could it make sense?
Elizabeth was dead. Nothing made sense anymore.
He'd read articles well-meaning family had sent, he'd been warned of all that could go wrong when a kid loses its mother too young (when are you ever not too young?). They'd said Kurt could get clingy, attention-needy, could act out, could go out of his way to make Burt make up for the parent he didn't have anymore, but when he called Burt into the back yard a week ago Burt couldn't understand but knew he couldn't be making up the 'big white dog' who'd ran off because how could an eight year old fake deep-bitten tooth marks in his arm? And now -
The pup on the floor cried and shivered and couldn't crawl to him, tangled in Kurt's pyjamas.
Nothing made sense anymore, and that cub cried pitifully, breaking into a high broken puppy howl for him.
So Burt crouched, and calmed the little thing in his big hands, and got the pyjamas untangled off him. He picked him up, skinny shivering thing, long legs and dazed blue eyes no more understanding what was happening than Burt did. He hugged his wolf cub son, and stroked a hand down his shaking back while his nose snuffled wet at his cheek and his tail wagged weakly at Burt's side, and he murmured to him, "Okay, it's okay Kurt, everything's okay, I'm right here, I got you."
At the time he didn't think about horror stories. What he thought about, pacing around the bedroom holding him while the whimpering wore down and finally, shakily, out, was fairy tales.
That night he slept with a wolf cub in Elizabeth's empty place in the bed. And in the morning there was his little boy again, sleepy and confused and frightened.
It wasn't a good time. They got by, struggle as it was, but Burt was waiting for it to sink in for Kurt that the 'being helpful' he clung to then like a game, the cooking and the working the washing machine and the washing the dishes and dusting the shelves, it wasn't a game, and there were years to come of it not being a game. He tried to make it so Kurt didn't have to but hell in no time at all Kurt was better at it than he was, and happy in an apron, Burt wished he wasn't so goddamn happy in that apron, he knew what it meant and all he was was scared of what was to come. And now this, this, Kurt helpless that first full moon, a full week of sneezing himself between shapes, his body couldn't work it out, he didn't understand.
Neither of them understood.
They made rules. They had a structure. He had to keep Kurt safe.
On the internet he never knew when he'd found something real and when it was fiction, just the games people play. Sometimes he thought it was both at once, a message board half full of parents trying to deal with children who change and half full of people roleplaying for the fun of it, not even realising how real it was to the others online. How do you know what's a story and what's real? It was all new to him anyway, he didn't understand the internet, fucking nutcases on there, while Kurt smuggled books on werewolves home from the library and then cried under the covers because he didn't want to be that.
Burt started ordering books on wolf behaviour. They had to learn, and fast.
Kurt became quickly, stiffly, grown up. He had to tell his dad if he thought he had to turn. He had to try not to turn if he could. If they were outside the house he couldn't turn, Burt had to run him home from the supermarket more than once, Kurt twisting his seatbelt in panicky fingers, mouth all tight and eyes all wet, trying so hard not to. School was a nightmare. When Kurt got scared the wolf got bigger than his control, and one night he came home inconsolable; two boys had been bullying him, and one had upended a yoghurt on him in the lunch hall, and he'd had to flee with the whole room laughing at him to stumble into a janitor's closet and collapse into a wolf. He didn't know how long he'd been in there for. He'd had to make himself calm enough to change back again, to get dressed again, and when his homeroom teacher found him she'd been so scared and so angry, and sometimes -
Sometimes being bereaved of a mother is a handy excuse for your kid being nothing like normal, and it hurt Burt more than he could stand.
But it got better. Burt got better at understanding what the wolf needed (it was years before he got better at understanding what Kurt needed), Kurt got better at controlling it, and by the time he was eleven he only turned when the moon was actually full, unless it was a really bad day. There were still things to iron out, puberty and werewolfism are a lot to deal with, there was the howling phase but he grew out of that while Burt turned the TV up loud and soundproofed the basement, there was a lot of anger and loneliness, Burt knew how lonely Kurt got with two bodies and no-one knowing or understanding either of them.
Then there was glee club, and friends, for the daytime at least. There was the slow picking up of Kurt's confidence in Kurt, like his life was for something more than just waiting to turn into a wolf again, waiting to turn into a human again. There were arguments and fallings-out and teenage attempts at self-definition, football of all goddamn things, while the wolf went through its leggy adolescent phase (the size of his paws warned what size the grown wolf would be) and Kurt said I'm gay and Burt said I know.
He only realised how little it actually meant after Kurt had said it.
There was Carole. There was Finn. There were long conversations made up mostly of silence while they weighed up what might happen if someone other than them knew.
Carole was an angel. Of course she was, she always would have been, she always has been, she always will be. Finn stared with dinner plate eyes and mouth and nodded and swore shakily that no, yeah, of course, he'd never tell, no, of course it had to stay secret, of course, he promised. It still took a couple of attempts to turn them into a family. Complications. The werewolf thing was the least of them.
But now they are a family, and they have their routine, and they look after each other. Kurt carefully stakes out his territory and minds his pack and is a hell of a lot more obedient as a wolf than he is as a boy. Finn looks out for him, mostly. Carole cares for all of them, and tells them all off when they need it. Burt doesn't forget that his primary role in this life is that of a father, everything else comes second to being a father. Everything else comes second to Kurt.
Kurt's a good kid, a smart kid - that he's too smart is part of the problem - and Burt's proud of him every single damn day, as Kurt navigates his complicated life, what he can have and what he can't, because of the wolf always inside him. He's mature enough to mostly swallow down what he knows he can't have. There was that wolf attack at that school so close a year ago and it shocked and scared them too too much, and Kurt never complained about staying in the nights either side of the full moon after that. He wants to be a teenager, he wants to have a life, but he knows what the world is like, and he never blames his father for the hand he's been dealt.
And Burt trusted him all along, until another wolf followed him home.
Seeing Kurt with another wolf seemed to change the focus, like he blinked and suddenly things weren't blurred anymore, and hell his son is really a wolf. Not a boy and not a big dog, a wolf. Really a wolf, next to another wolf, not Kurt who he knows but a wolf in his house, and not that cute little cub anymore either, this huge broad thick-furred wolf all but grown and suddenly of interest to other wolves as well. Because Burt isn't stupid and he knows it's not all about the wolf, when they look at each other. He doesn't know if that kid's gay or not; he doesn't care, actually, way that kid looks at Kurt whatever sexuality he thinks he has is irrelevant. Burt puts his foot down. Kurt, sullen with wolf at this time of the cycle, submits.
Then he says, "Can Blaine come for dinner tomorrow night?"
He says, "You wanted us to get to know each other as humans, so we need to have time to talk, don't we?"
He says, "You want to know who I'm hanging out with anyway, you're incredibly controlling and overprotective like that."
He says, "I'm making risotto, come home on time, bring some of that deli bread home with you."
Yeah. The too smart thing is still way more of a problem than the werewolf thing.
*
That day at school David Karofsky bangs him so hard into a locker that his mouth fills with the taste of blood, so clearly he has written the wolf off as a stray dog and apparently as a stray dog that Kurt's responsible for and needs punishing for. He picks himself up, hand over his mouth, and hears Karofsky high-five Azimio, the sharp punch of their laughter in the air. The smell makes him want to retch, the smell of aggressive, triumphant, belligerent boy, sweat and testosterone and pumped-up arrogance, while the wolf wants to pin him down by his shoulders and pull out his throat's hot-spraying artery.
Tina holds his shoulder, says, "Are you okay?"
Kurt swallows and licks his lips, carefully, and keeps his hand over his mouth. "I'm fine."
In the bathroom he rinses his mouth out, checks the cut inside his lip, glares at his own weary eyes in the mirror. He remembers Blaine, hunched small next to him. Kurt's very dominant. The director of Kurt's life relies far too much on irony and needs more nuanced scriptwriters already, Kurt is sick of it all.
Blaine. He puts a hand to his mouth again, carefully, tastes the blood as he swallows and the scent makes him a little giddy. Blaine tonight, Blaine who walks like a wolf, Blaine's happy eyes and his scent, Kurt wants to run his nose up his bare arm to inhale the skin, god. God. No. Don't think like that, don't. Do you really want to go through that again?
Remember Finn and take a cudgel to your heart until it's senseless, because the scent of someone else's disgust for you is the last thing you ever want to breathe through again.
Something about Blaine's eyes, too bright, his scent too warm, the muscles held in his body too eager, something about him so innocently animal and Kurt feels too human, gawky and graceless and too full of thought, he can't just settle and be. He's not the wolf. He's a naked ugly human being, all elbows and blanched skin. Naked pathetic human getting shoved into lockers by huge shaved-ape jocks. He's not Blaine with Blaine's easy wolf-angles, Blaine so effortlessly, easily handsome as human and wolf, Blaine moving in his skin like it feels lovely to wear. He's only Kurt, Kurt who copes, Kurt who endures.
He retouches his hair, and resettles his bag on his shoulder, and meets his own eyes for one last long straight-necked second before he heads out again.
*
He'd been so terrified last night, Karofsky. Kurt had smelled it, delighted in it, furied and soared with it, Karofsky scared of him. How he managed to convince himself that it was a dog and definitely not Kurt, definitely not a wolf, he has no idea; but then, he does. Attacked by a werewolf, by Hummel the werewolf? Hummel? Wouldn't he be more of a were-Pomeranian?
It's not like Kurt can be pissed about it, he has to be grateful in that sickening so-not-funny way, god knows the last thing he needs is this outing.
But still, that Monday, Mercedes asks him why he keeps smiling and he tells her he's waiting on an ASOS package when he gets in tonight. It's not like he can explain Blaine to her, not just Blaine, what could he say? He doesn't even know his last name, hasn't got a clue what he likes or dislikes (apart from the top forty, he guessed from his car's CD collection) and oh where did they meet? In the woods in the middle of nowhere in the middle of the night, Blaine had four paws and a tail at the time and smelled like feral heaven and Kurt had a tail too, that's why he never wants to catch a movie on the full moon, hasn't she noticed?
No-one notices. It's strange how invisible Kurt feels, and how little achievement he feels in it, because it's exactly what he needs and aims for and he knows it. But before last period the slushie-locker check combo (Azimio throws it, Karofsky bulls him into the locker putting his whole body and all his weight into the shove) knocks him shocked and breathless to his knees and while he's there with a hand on the lockers and they're barking laughter as they walk away, he flicks the crushed ice off his eyes and some striding girl gives a little skip to step over it there on the floor, and no-one so much as hesitates in walking to class. The strangest thing about Kurt really isn't the werewolf thing. His real superpower, whether he wants it or not, is invisibility.
His inner wolf could tear their arms out of their sockets. But he's not a wolf. He's a human. Whatever it costs him, he's human.
He picks himself up, and spits some more slushie out, and Puck's coming out of the bathroom as he reaches the door. Puck gives him a tired look like there's no point in getting overexcited about Kurt covered in red food colouring again, but at least he holds the door open for him. Kurt runs the water warm and pulls out some paper towels and Puck says, "You ever plannin' on fighting back?"
Kurt scoops up a double-handful of water, shakes his head out again, looks up at himself grim in the mirror. He could have torn their faces off. He doesn't mean that metaphorically. He means blood and eyeballs.
He says, "Are you ever planning on washing your hands after you use the bathroom?"
Puck says, "How did - ? Whatever, man." and lets the door swing closed again behind him.
*
Blaine can hardly concentrate the whole day. He's so highly strung he wishes he'd brought that scrap of Kurt's clothing to calm himself down with, he smells Kurt and something in him settles, but he really can't walk into Kurt's house with something of Kurt's on him at this time in the cycle, Kurt will smell it instantly. And it is immensely creepy. And Blaine really needs to get rid of it. He does. He will. Soon.
He practises with the Warblers with his mind really off somewhere else, but they're used to him being easily distracted - lucky they've never yet linked it with the phases of the moon - and they give him playful shoves and one more chance, over and over again. There is no way in hell that the way he ended up here was worth it, but he really does love being here. It's a world away from what he had and he wouldn't go back to that for anything, god knows he has at least enough self-respect to not want to be so casually treated like crap every day of his life . . .
And tonight he'll see Kurt (Kurt, the wolf whines, tail wagging hard) and Kurt's terrifying father again. At this time of the cycle it's especially acute but god it is strange being in a house with Kurt and Kurt's father, Blaine hardly dares to lift his head from its hunch, the amount of alpha in the room makes him want to traverse it by crawling. The strangest thing is how entirely not terrifying that is, nothing frightening about it at all, entirely - bafflingly - the opposite. Faced by two more dominant presences Blaine feels safe. He knows exactly what to do and exactly how to be. He feels relaxed, secure, contained, he feels the very, very opposite of alone.
Two years he's been a lone wolf. He understands how strong Kurt's presence is, if Kurt's had pack to rely on all along, Blaine never knew how safe pack feels. Kurt must know because he can smell and sense it that his father would murder for him, and so Kurt never has to feel unprotected, never has to feel vulnerable. Kurt has someone to depend on. That must be really . . . really . . .
After school Blaine makes his goodbyes to the other Warblers and heads to his car. He remembers coming out to his parents and he remembers the silence that followed it, the silence swallowing his last hopes of help, did they think he wasn't scared? He's on his own and he has been for years (he smells Kurt and no he isn't). And Kurt's had his dad, and Blaine thinks how much of his life could have been easier, how much of it could have been different, if he'd been able to trust that he could tell his parents this as well.
He sings along with Katy Perry on the drive, trying to keep his human in focus, push the wolf back a little, the moon's still a ripple in his blood. You make me feel. The wolf knows what Kurt is to it. The human?
Don't ever look back, don't ever look back.
It's so much easier to be a wolf, their wolves slot so simply together, no questioning and no uncertainty, just wolves. Kurt's pale eyes and black nose and pink tongue, and the way his muscles move under a flood of white fur, Blaine could lose a hand in it all. An Arctic wolf stuck in Ohio, god he must hate the summer. He's beautiful as a wolf. Breathtaking. Solid and strong and sure.
He's beautiful as a boy, there's no escaping that one either, every expression on his face is almost unbearably lovely, every flit of his eyes stops Blaine's breath. And Blaine thinks (Let's go all the way tonight) that he needs to slam the brakes on this, because he's already overstepped and overstepped and he is bad at these things, clumsy and greedy and Kurt's father will mount his head on the wall. So, no. They'll be friends. Blaine will be a friend and not ask for too much in return, because Kurt so casually alpha doesn't need Blaine anyway. And his dad was right, they don't know each other. It's only when he's standing outside his front door that Blaine realises how true that is, because he doesn't even know Kurt's last name.
'Good evening Mr I'm Sorry I Know I've Already Slept Naked In Your Son's Bed But I Don't Actually Know Your Name, how are you?'
Oh god.
It's Kurt who answers the door, Kurt whose eyes flick alight at his face, and something in Blaine's chest jumps and he can see Kurt's body tighten with want -
The wolves silently howl to each other.
The humans, after a second's hesitation, hug.
Blaine doesn't know who initiated it, but nose in Kurt's shoulder and oh god the smell of him, fresh-showered and clean and his muscles shudder out and loose like he just fell into bed. I know this smell, he thinks, helplessly, inhaling. I know I know him. I just don't know how . . .
He whispers, "I don't know your last name."
Kurt lifts his head a little, blinks, says, "Hummel." and then there are footsteps (still close to the moon, wolf-ears had already caught the sofa's springs letting someone up) and they slip apart, stand tight side by side in the doorway trying not to look like they just wrapped themselves up in each other, and Blaine puts a smile on, says, "Good evening, Mr Hummel, how're you?"
The blazer and tie probably help, Blaine knows he looks very different hair gelled down and in his Dalton uniform, he might as well have 'good boy' tattooed on his forehead. Kurt's father gives him a still-distrustful look but Kurt pushes Blaine into a dining room singing at him to just sit down, dinner's ready, does he want a drink? and there's Kurt's stepbrother there looking guiltily up at them over the bread he's already eaten, and Blaine takes a little breath and puts his best manners on display. He needs to prove that he's not just a wolf. He needs to actually get to know Kurt more than just Kurt's smell which makes him want to lie his head on his shoulder and sigh for joy. He needs to make Mr Hummel stop looking at him like he's thinking of wolfskin rugs.
Blaine compliments Kurt's stepmother on dinner and it turns out that Kurt made it. It turns out, over the course of the next hour, that Kurt is amazing.
He likes cooking, and music - Broadway and everything else - fashion and pop culture, they take a fifteen minute detour into politics and skip a little sideways into sport which it turns out Kurt is patient about, mostly that gets Finn's attention and (Blaine can smell it, sense it) Mr Hummel's too; Kurt can make clothes from scratch and organise entire weddings and speak fluent French and make Blaine laugh so hard, almost as joyful as his making Kurt laugh, the sudden bloom of delight on his face like he didn't expect it at all and he loves it, he loves Blaine making him laugh, it makes something in Blaine's chest shake.
And he can sort of tell, by the pressure Mr Hummel uses on his fork (too close to the moon; he can hear it), that this wasn't exactly how he saw this evening going.
Blaine tries to reel back a little, tries to be harmless, but Kurt is intoxicating and interested and chases him when he gets quiet, draws him back again, they're as giddy together as puppies. They eventually come out the other side of a giggling fit and manage to make themselves quiet, while Kurt takes a little sip of water and presses his lips hard closed, trying to make the smile smaller, and Blaine looks at the ceiling and thinks that Kurt was no distance at all from him for years and they have so much lost time to catch up on, he can't wait.
And Mr Hummel's shoulders still say If you lay one finger on him I will turn you into a winter coat.
He catches a scent of something metal-sour towards the end of dinner, glances at Kurt and Kurt looks back at him uncomprehending. Blaine stares for a second, then looks back to his plate; it's not a word he thinks anyone wants to hear one of the werewolves say out loud at the dinner table.
They wash up afterwards, companionable together in the kitchen, though Blaine can still smell that faint faint tang - any further from the full moon and he would have lost it - and he says, while he dries a plate, "Are - you okay?"
Kurt glances at him, rinses a bowl. "Of course I am. Why?"
Blaine pauses for a fraction of a second to locate everyone else in the house (Finn upstairs, Carole and Mr Hummel in the lounge with the TV on) before he says quietly, "I can smell blood."
Kurt stares at him, then swallows, and presses his tongue to the inside of his bottom lip. "It's nothing," he says. "The, the guy I turned in front of, he - I guess he has no idea what happened so he's getting what revenge he can."
The muscles in Blaine's arms have gone so tight they don't work anymore. "He -?"
"He just shoved me into a locker, he does it all the time. I'm just clumsier than usual when my body still half thinks it has four legs." Kurt tugs his rubber gloves a little, keeps his eyes on the bubbles. "I'm fine. Honestly. I'd rather have the bruises than the dumpster tosses, it's easier on my nose."
Blaine stares at Kurt, Kurt whose wolf is so strong Blaine longs to bare his throat to it, and he doesn't understand. "Why do you let them . . ."
"What am I supposed to do?" Kurt says, curtly. "Bite his throat open? I'm not an animal, I'm a human, and I'm a better human than he is because I would never do that to someone, whether he ever realises that or not. I can't make him a better person. The only person's behaviour I can actually control is my own."
Blaine watches how tight his shoulders have gone. "Control means a lot to you."
"I turn into a wolf once a month." Kurt snaps. "Yes, it does. Doesn't it to you? You want to feel like you stay you whatever shape you are . . ."
Blaine opens his mouth, then closes it again. "I . . . I. Guess."
What is he doing in this house full of a happy, normal, loving family? He turns into a wolf once a month. And does he even know that that wolf is him, after -
Kurt turns to look at him, and Blaine realises that yes, they are still too close to the full moon, and yes, Kurt can sense all of his unease. Kurt's face is troubled, and his voice is unsure. "Blaine?"
Blue-green eyes like the twilight. Blaine takes a little breath. "I'm fine. I normally try not to think about this stuff, that's all."
Kurt gives him a slow, pouted look, not remotely convinced, then goes back to the dishes. Blaine stacks the plate, picks up the next one.
What he's doing in this house is learning. He understands now why Kurt can be a dominant wolf and yet not attack some idiot bullies at his school, he understands what Kurt's strength actually means, and god, if Blaine could learn that. If Blaine could get the pack-grounding Kurt has, the self-definition Kurt has, to know that they can't hurt who he is and he doesn't need to hurt them back, to not need to have violence in the corner of his eye, to not need to run from it -
He says, "I don't think your dad likes me very much."
"I think he's still recovering from a number of shocks," Kurt says diplomatically. "I don't think he dislikes you."
"Because my head is still attached to my body?"
"Well," Kurt says, tilt of his hip, tilt of his head as he scrubs at a saucepan, tilt of his smile and smiling eyes. "Yes."
*
Kurt's room smells of Kurt. Kurt's room smells deliciously of Kurt. Blaine wants to stick his face in the bed and paddle his limbs until he's submerged in it all, instead he sits cross-legged on it like a good boy and watches Kurt move around the room putting his homework away, his iTunes library playing in the background as they talk.
There's a way Kurt's hips move, and Blaine is maybe just too young to know the words for the very particular innocent attraction of it. "Dalton? Wait, Dalton like the Dalton Academy Warblers we're singing against at Regionals?"
"- wait, you're the William McKinley High show choir?"
"You did come to my school, Blaine."
"You came to my school first."
"Oddly enough I was slightly distracted at the time."
Blaine opens his mouth to say something about Kurt being slightly distracting and snaps it shut at the last second, every hair on the back of his neck aware of Mr Hummel through that open doorway down those stairs on that sitting room sofa gloweringly aware of Blaine in return. He rubs the back of his neck. "Imagine if we'd met at Regionals."
Kurt turns to look at him, book hugged in his arms, then leans up to slot it onto a shelf. "We would have known," he says quietly.
"Can you imagine performing after smelling each other?"
"No. I literally cannot."
"I don't even know what I would have done. Panicked."
"Frozen."
"Run offstage to find you."
"Run offstage away from you," Kurt points out. "I didn't know before I met you what werewolves were really like, the only one I knew was me."
Blaine shrugs, smiling. "It's nice not being alone."
Kurt looks back at him, smiles a little shy and looks away again. Warmth blooms through Blaine. He wants to reach up, get up, walk to Kurt and -
And what? He doesn't have a clue. Neither the wolf nor the boy really knows, they both just want Kurt but they don't know the specifics, and there's what Burt Hummel wants too to always be wary of. He rubs his nose, says, "Do you . . . only turn at the full moon?"
Kurt pauses, then turns so he's leaning back a little on his desk, hands curled nervously at its edge. "Yes." he says. "It's not safe, Blaine."
"But don't you sometimes just want to be the wolf? Some times are just - some things are just better for the wolf to understand, don't you smell rain or when the spring comes -"
"It's not safe." Kurt says, firmer. "Blaine there's my dad to think about, if anything ever happened to me - I don't know what he'd do. I don't. The fact that I don't terrifies me." He wets his lips, fraction of a second, and Blaine smells blood again faint and tinny. "Don't you worry - have you never gotten in trouble for it -?"
Blaine keeps his eyes away from Kurt's. "Not for a long time."
"I want to get out of here," Kurt says. "I want to escape. All I have to do here is survive until I can get out and go somewhere else, somewhere better, somewhere amazing. I used to think . . ." His fingers play together a little, and he shrugs. "I used to think I wanted to go to Broadway, but, you can't." He smiles a little at his hands, at his own childishness. "You can't have a largely nocturnal career when you have paws for at least one night of the month. So I thought - I don't know. Maybe fashion. Maybe journalism. Maybe both." He looks out of the window, though it's so dark by now all that's there is their reflection, and the bright high shape of the moon. "One day."
All Blaine's own dreams circle him and mock him, softly, at Kurt's quiet acceptance of a fact Blaine's spent so long trying to ignore. "Where do you want to go?"
"I think New York." Kurt folds his arms around himself. "When we beat you at Sectionals and go on to win Nationals there, I'll get a taste and find out if it's good enough."
He grins back at Kurt. "That's if we don't beat you. I promise I'd send you a postcard from New York, though."
"It really will be a horrible shock to you when we dance up and down all over you at Sectionals."
Then they hear the howl.
Blaine's on his feet without being aware of standing, rigid next to Kurt, both of them shock still and staring straight out of the window as Mr Hummel's footsteps pound up the staircase and the howl runs through their bones. The howl sings right into Blaine's nervous system and grabs him by the wolf and he feels his body turning itself inwards-outwards-
Kurt grabs his hand, and Blaine's breath hits his lungs like a punch.
Hand. Hand: fingers skin thumbs. Hand, human hand. Their fingers bite tight through each other's and Blaine hears Kurt's human breath shudder out, and they stand there human and immobile while the wolf-song slits along their skin, peels all their hairs upright. Mr Hummel is hanging on the doorframe panting but they don't look back, fixated by the howl, awakened by it, summoned by it and standing stiff, still, and human only through sheer force of will.
Somewhere out there, a wolf.
Mr Hummel barks, "What the hell is that?"
Kurt breathes, slowly, and his hand shifts a little in Blaine's as the howl wavers and begins to die. "A wolf," he says quietly.
"What wolf, how come -"
Kurt whispers, "Ssh." but the howl is gone, and its echoes pulsate in Blaine's ears like his heartbeat, and Kurt's not letting go of his hand.
"How come," Kurt's father says, hard from the doorway, "we don't see a wolf for nearly nine years an' then as soon as he comes along -"
"It's not mine," Blaine murmurs, then blinks, mind drawn out moon-long by the howl, and stops thinking like a wolf. "I don't know who it is, sir. I didn't know there were any other wolves around here either."
The echoes of the howl giggle and whisper around his brain, Come, come. He shakes his head, looks at Kurt who's looking at him, and still holding his hand. Blaine is so glad for Kurt's human hand holding his. Kurt says, "I am not going out there to find them." Slower, head a little lowered, "I can't stop you if you want to."
"No," Blaine says, immediately. "No."
They're not his pack.
It's not like it's a chosen allegiance, though the fact that Kurt respects that Blaine might want to head off to find another pack makes something in him tighten, he would choose Kurt, given any other option. He doesn't need any other option. That howl sings of opportunity, dangerous open opportunity, but it's no opportunity Blaine would choose and it's no opportunity his wolf even recognises: the room is full of Kurt's presence, Kurt's scent, Kurt's safety, and Blaine wants to be here.
The howl commands, Come! and Kurt, standing in his bedroom scowling out of the window, says, No.
Blaine says, Not if he's not going.
"What does that mean?" Mr Hummel says, Blaine can hear his heart running quick with panic. "What, another wolf passin' through? Or -"
"I don't know Dad," Kurt says, still staring out of the window. "It's not like a phone call. It just - advertised its presence." He swallows, and Blaine realises too late how intently he's staring at the flex of his white throat. "And told us to come to it."
"You are not -"
"I know I'm not." Kurt snaps back. "No wolf I've never so much as smelled before commands me anything. God it's infuriating though, it must know, it must be able to smell me, it's in my territory, it's in my town -"
"Kurt."
"Two days from the moon, Dad!" Kurt barks, and finally lets go of Blaine's hand to throw himself on the bed, to sit there with his hands digging at the sides of his head. Blaine can smell his frustrated rage, knowing there's another wolf out there and unable to do anything about it without doing it on the other wolf's terms.
Blaine says, "It might just be passing through. We don't know. It might just - just be howling to see if there's anyone else out there."
Kurt stares at nothing for a second, then blinks and looks up at Blaine, and Blaine knows that he's thinking, Or howling to tell us it's there.
Howling to warn us it's there.
Mr Hummel is silent for a moment, then says, "You gonna be safe getting home?"
Blaine looks, surprised, back at him, then nods. "I'll be in my car. There's no way they'd smell me in time to stop me even if they wanted to. And - we don't know they would want to, anyway."
He's pretty certain that this is Mr Hummel's way of saying I don't actually want you dead, you know and simultaneously It's a school night and when I walked in here you were holding my son's hand unsupervised and you should go now. So he smiles at Kurt and says, "I should probably head back anyway."
Kurt says, "I'd really feel more comfortable if I drove you back."
"I wouldn't," Mr Hummel mutters, and Blaine can't not smile.
*
Burt watches from the front door as Kurt and Blaine say goodbye through the window of Blaine's car, Kurt leaning down to murmur at him, Blaine watching his face very openly and very intently. Something about the way their eyes meet; does his son think he's an idiot?
Kurt steps back as the car pulls out, then stands there with his arms folded around himself watching Blaine head down the street. It's dark already, and all of Burt's skin still feels too aware of that wolf-howl from earlier. He says, "Come back inside. Losin' all the heat."
Kurt stares after Blaine's car a moment longer, then turns and walks back to the front door, ducking his head and passing Burt, heading straight for the stairs again as Burt closes the door. "Hold up," he says after him. "Kitchen. We need to talk."
Kurt rolls his eyes as he turns again, walking still with his arms folded through to the kitchen. This time of the month he talks back less, weird to watch your son go through his cyclical temperaments, but he never stops being Kurt any time of the month. Kurt restraining himself, Kurt letting himself a little wild, which part of him is wolf and which is boy is sometimes not as straightforward as people might think.
Burt sits at the table, while Kurt stands against the counter with his arms folded. "Sit," Burt says, gesturing another chair, and Kurt rolls his eyes, pulls it out and says to the ceiling, "Woof woof."
"I didn't mean - hell, Kurt. Is he gonna be okay gettin' home?"
Kurt draws little patterns on the tabletop with a fingertip, and focuses on those. "Presumably every wolf is just a person, really, like us. There's no reason to think they'd want to hurt us any more than we'd want to hurt them."
"Wolf hurt you once."
"What?" Kurt looks up at him, eyebrows frowning together. "It didn't hurt me."
"It bit you! Eight years old-"
"I think it thought it was helping."
"Helping-"
Kurt shrugs, and scratches at whatever he's just doodled on the tabletop like he can erase something already invisible. "It just is," he says to it. "It's not good or bad. It's just something that is. Isn't it?"
Burt watches his face, and thinks about years of the two of them alone, Burt watching football with a beer propped on his belly and his feet propped up on a curled-up white wolf, breathing slow in sleep. He thinks about Kurt's eerie ability to locate lost keys and cell phones when the moon's big enough. He thinks about Kurt's physical shyness, always trying to contain himself, like maybe if someone got too close they'd smell the wolf on him. He thinks about an eight year old kid with a secret he knows he can't tell anybody, scared every day of his life.
He thinks about finding all of Kurt's books of fairy tales in the bottom of the trash one day, he didn't understand why the bag was so heavy until he opened it up. They could've given them away, he didn't understand why Kurt had wrapped them in magazines and thrown them - it was wasteful as much as weird - until he checked them all, and realised that every last one had Little Red Riding Hood in it.
He says, "What are you and this Blaine kid doing?"
Kurt mutters to the table, "We told you we don't know."
"I think you know more than you're telling me. Is he gay?"
Kurt looks right at him. "Yes. Why?"
"'cause every time I leave you two alone I find you-"
"Dad!"
"I have to keep you safe!"
"Safe, Dad, I have fangs the size of stilettos, when am I ever not safe - ?"
"How the hell safe you think you are, a werewolf in Ohio? You think if anyone found out they wouldn't think you attacked those kids at that school? You think they'd even ask? We don't know who this kid is an' I don't even care, my priority is you -"
"Dad." Kurt digs his face into his palm, elbow propped off the table.
Burt says again, harder, "My priority is you. I don't dislike this kid, Kurt, okay, he's a little bit -"
"Overenthusiastic?"
"Overconfident. Spoiled, I'd say."
"Spoiled -? When I'm the one who has to sit through this conversation you think his parents -"
"I think he's used enough to getting his own way, however that ends up happening, that he expects his way just is what happens. That would be fine if what he wants is what everyone else wants." Burt watches Kurt's face, all angry and confused and tight with wanting to snap to the defence of a boy he met two days ago and Burt never expected this, what parent can expect this? He says, every word firm because it's the only way to get them out of his own mouth, "What do you want from him? Tell me the truth."
Kurt glares back at him, quivering a little with contained fury, mouth all tight and eyes all flickering-dark, too much only just contained. And then he says, teeth clipping the words, "I don't know."
And he means it. Burt looks at him and knows that he means it. Maybe Blaine's had too easy a ride in some ways but Kurt's been overprotected in others and Burt knows it, and has only himself to blame for it. How's he supposed to let his kid go out unprotected into a world that's always going to think he's some kind of monster? They don't know him, they don't know Kurt, most harmless kid on the planet, they don't know - they don't care - how gentle and how loving and how warm-vulnerable-hearted for the whole damn world Kurt is -
Only Burt knows, and he can't trust anyone else to, not really. And now there's Blaine, and Kurt glaring at his father with his mouth held flat, his eyes anxious behind the anger, because he really doesn't know, but Burt does. Burt remembers being a teenager. Not a teenage wolf, no, but a teenage boy with confusion and want and confused want.
"Then maybe unless you're sure you know," he says, watching Kurt's eyes, "be careful."
Kurt just looks back at him, and his face goes slowly pink but his expression doesn't change.
*
Blaine's bag is back against the wall of his room and the scent makes his lungs squeeze. He closes his eyes, folds his arms around himself, inhales it long and slow; the moon is slipping slimmer and he'll lose this, soon, the vividness of it all, by the new moon his nose will be almost as dumb to the world of scent as anyone's. But right now Blaine's scent is almost visible in the air to him, clean like new-shaved cinnamon, he can almost feel it on his skin.
Maybe unless you're sure you know . . .
He opens his eyes, walks to the window with a hand dropping to the pocket his cell sits in. He stands there still with one arm folded around himself, looking out at the dark, but apart from the bright-punched hole of the moon in the black, it's almost easier to look at his reflection than the street outside right now. Almost.
Another wolf. How many other wolves? He was so alone and now he feels overwhelmed, the whole world full of wolves, he never thought . . . he just never thought there would be others, he understood his aloneness, he understood how to manage it, how to only mind it when he was alone and no-one else could see how alone he really was. But now he's not alone and it's something like terror, looking at someone else and seeing himself. The possibility of being known is shocking, he backs away from it automatically, Blaine must smell him and know him and Kurt . . .
He texts, Text and let me know you got home safe?
Does he really want someone else to know him? Does he really want Blaine to see in him, smell in him, whatever he's worth? He smells Blaine's . . . curiosity, but wouldn't anyone be curious, isn't Kurt curious? Blaine so bold and warm and joyous and Kurt folded in on himself, trying to keep himself as cool and untouchable as the moon, so good at being invisible by now that his friends don't even seem to see him anymore. And is this the choice he's got no choice in facing, now, invisibility or the whole damn world? What narrow horizons he has, aloneness, or Blaine and the open world and who knows what other wolves are out there?
. . . or trying for Blaine and sensing Blaine's recoil, even the barest suggestion in his eyes or his scent of Blaine's disgust, and Kurt can't do it twice. He can't. He can't risk it. However much it hurt to know Finn felt that about him, Finn isn't like him, and to look into Blaine as a mirror of himself and see Blaine's revulsion -
He can't do it twice. He can't.
The suggestion of the scent of Blaine in the air and he almost sways with it, he understands what Blaine means, he would so much rather be a wolf right now, a wolf who could smell Blaine as vivid as see him, a wolf who wouldn't feel alone with Blaine's scent there. He paces the room, his throat pulses with wanting to whimper, he won't. He won't. He's being stupid and insane. It's all too much, it's the wolf in him, the moon in him, he wants things too much, it's only the moon howling in his heart -
It's so hard to settle on anything, the wolf in him whining that his pack is broken, one of his pack is in unknown danger, one of his pack needs him, where is his pack? If the pack's broken he's alone -
His phone buzzes too much later, Kurt grabs it off his nightstand still with moisturiser on his fingers and reads, Home! Ok, top five Bowie tracks, *go*.
The smile feels like it illuminates something on the inside, Christmas lights strung around his heart and brain, too late to kill the electricity now.
Part IV
Disclaimer: The stuff that would be different if I actually owned the series, my gods.
Rating: This part R?
Summary: Not the only wolf in the world.
Note: Put the radio on this morning, straight onto William Bell. Might just be a good day <3
Edit: Now with Burt and cub!Kurt fanart by ileliberte, thank you honey!! <3
Of course Burt remembers the first time Kurt turned. Who the hell ever forgets something like that? Running downstairs at the sharp animal noises coming from his son's bedroom, keening like a dog crying, and heart like a pinprick in his chest Burt thought his son was dying. He slammed the light on and there on the bed -
- next to the bed, fallen out of the bed -
- was a skinny white half-grown wolf cub, trussed in his son's pyjamas, whine-whine-whining in panic and confusion.
And Burt just stood there next to the lightswitch, dumb of all words, all thought, while the wolf cried on the floor, tried to get up to walk to him and stood on a flopping pyjama leg and tripped again, barking sharply for him, shivering in fear. And Burt stared at him and thought nothing, couldn't think anything, how could it make sense?
Elizabeth was dead. Nothing made sense anymore.
He'd read articles well-meaning family had sent, he'd been warned of all that could go wrong when a kid loses its mother too young (when are you ever not too young?). They'd said Kurt could get clingy, attention-needy, could act out, could go out of his way to make Burt make up for the parent he didn't have anymore, but when he called Burt into the back yard a week ago Burt couldn't understand but knew he couldn't be making up the 'big white dog' who'd ran off because how could an eight year old fake deep-bitten tooth marks in his arm? And now -
The pup on the floor cried and shivered and couldn't crawl to him, tangled in Kurt's pyjamas.
Nothing made sense anymore, and that cub cried pitifully, breaking into a high broken puppy howl for him.
So Burt crouched, and calmed the little thing in his big hands, and got the pyjamas untangled off him. He picked him up, skinny shivering thing, long legs and dazed blue eyes no more understanding what was happening than Burt did. He hugged his wolf cub son, and stroked a hand down his shaking back while his nose snuffled wet at his cheek and his tail wagged weakly at Burt's side, and he murmured to him, "Okay, it's okay Kurt, everything's okay, I'm right here, I got you."
At the time he didn't think about horror stories. What he thought about, pacing around the bedroom holding him while the whimpering wore down and finally, shakily, out, was fairy tales.
That night he slept with a wolf cub in Elizabeth's empty place in the bed. And in the morning there was his little boy again, sleepy and confused and frightened.
It wasn't a good time. They got by, struggle as it was, but Burt was waiting for it to sink in for Kurt that the 'being helpful' he clung to then like a game, the cooking and the working the washing machine and the washing the dishes and dusting the shelves, it wasn't a game, and there were years to come of it not being a game. He tried to make it so Kurt didn't have to but hell in no time at all Kurt was better at it than he was, and happy in an apron, Burt wished he wasn't so goddamn happy in that apron, he knew what it meant and all he was was scared of what was to come. And now this, this, Kurt helpless that first full moon, a full week of sneezing himself between shapes, his body couldn't work it out, he didn't understand.
Neither of them understood.
They made rules. They had a structure. He had to keep Kurt safe.
On the internet he never knew when he'd found something real and when it was fiction, just the games people play. Sometimes he thought it was both at once, a message board half full of parents trying to deal with children who change and half full of people roleplaying for the fun of it, not even realising how real it was to the others online. How do you know what's a story and what's real? It was all new to him anyway, he didn't understand the internet, fucking nutcases on there, while Kurt smuggled books on werewolves home from the library and then cried under the covers because he didn't want to be that.
Burt started ordering books on wolf behaviour. They had to learn, and fast.
Kurt became quickly, stiffly, grown up. He had to tell his dad if he thought he had to turn. He had to try not to turn if he could. If they were outside the house he couldn't turn, Burt had to run him home from the supermarket more than once, Kurt twisting his seatbelt in panicky fingers, mouth all tight and eyes all wet, trying so hard not to. School was a nightmare. When Kurt got scared the wolf got bigger than his control, and one night he came home inconsolable; two boys had been bullying him, and one had upended a yoghurt on him in the lunch hall, and he'd had to flee with the whole room laughing at him to stumble into a janitor's closet and collapse into a wolf. He didn't know how long he'd been in there for. He'd had to make himself calm enough to change back again, to get dressed again, and when his homeroom teacher found him she'd been so scared and so angry, and sometimes -
Sometimes being bereaved of a mother is a handy excuse for your kid being nothing like normal, and it hurt Burt more than he could stand.
But it got better. Burt got better at understanding what the wolf needed (it was years before he got better at understanding what Kurt needed), Kurt got better at controlling it, and by the time he was eleven he only turned when the moon was actually full, unless it was a really bad day. There were still things to iron out, puberty and werewolfism are a lot to deal with, there was the howling phase but he grew out of that while Burt turned the TV up loud and soundproofed the basement, there was a lot of anger and loneliness, Burt knew how lonely Kurt got with two bodies and no-one knowing or understanding either of them.
Then there was glee club, and friends, for the daytime at least. There was the slow picking up of Kurt's confidence in Kurt, like his life was for something more than just waiting to turn into a wolf again, waiting to turn into a human again. There were arguments and fallings-out and teenage attempts at self-definition, football of all goddamn things, while the wolf went through its leggy adolescent phase (the size of his paws warned what size the grown wolf would be) and Kurt said I'm gay and Burt said I know.
He only realised how little it actually meant after Kurt had said it.
There was Carole. There was Finn. There were long conversations made up mostly of silence while they weighed up what might happen if someone other than them knew.
Carole was an angel. Of course she was, she always would have been, she always has been, she always will be. Finn stared with dinner plate eyes and mouth and nodded and swore shakily that no, yeah, of course, he'd never tell, no, of course it had to stay secret, of course, he promised. It still took a couple of attempts to turn them into a family. Complications. The werewolf thing was the least of them.
But now they are a family, and they have their routine, and they look after each other. Kurt carefully stakes out his territory and minds his pack and is a hell of a lot more obedient as a wolf than he is as a boy. Finn looks out for him, mostly. Carole cares for all of them, and tells them all off when they need it. Burt doesn't forget that his primary role in this life is that of a father, everything else comes second to being a father. Everything else comes second to Kurt.
Kurt's a good kid, a smart kid - that he's too smart is part of the problem - and Burt's proud of him every single damn day, as Kurt navigates his complicated life, what he can have and what he can't, because of the wolf always inside him. He's mature enough to mostly swallow down what he knows he can't have. There was that wolf attack at that school so close a year ago and it shocked and scared them too too much, and Kurt never complained about staying in the nights either side of the full moon after that. He wants to be a teenager, he wants to have a life, but he knows what the world is like, and he never blames his father for the hand he's been dealt.
And Burt trusted him all along, until another wolf followed him home.
Seeing Kurt with another wolf seemed to change the focus, like he blinked and suddenly things weren't blurred anymore, and hell his son is really a wolf. Not a boy and not a big dog, a wolf. Really a wolf, next to another wolf, not Kurt who he knows but a wolf in his house, and not that cute little cub anymore either, this huge broad thick-furred wolf all but grown and suddenly of interest to other wolves as well. Because Burt isn't stupid and he knows it's not all about the wolf, when they look at each other. He doesn't know if that kid's gay or not; he doesn't care, actually, way that kid looks at Kurt whatever sexuality he thinks he has is irrelevant. Burt puts his foot down. Kurt, sullen with wolf at this time of the cycle, submits.
Then he says, "Can Blaine come for dinner tomorrow night?"
He says, "You wanted us to get to know each other as humans, so we need to have time to talk, don't we?"
He says, "You want to know who I'm hanging out with anyway, you're incredibly controlling and overprotective like that."
He says, "I'm making risotto, come home on time, bring some of that deli bread home with you."
Yeah. The too smart thing is still way more of a problem than the werewolf thing.
*
That day at school David Karofsky bangs him so hard into a locker that his mouth fills with the taste of blood, so clearly he has written the wolf off as a stray dog and apparently as a stray dog that Kurt's responsible for and needs punishing for. He picks himself up, hand over his mouth, and hears Karofsky high-five Azimio, the sharp punch of their laughter in the air. The smell makes him want to retch, the smell of aggressive, triumphant, belligerent boy, sweat and testosterone and pumped-up arrogance, while the wolf wants to pin him down by his shoulders and pull out his throat's hot-spraying artery.
Tina holds his shoulder, says, "Are you okay?"
Kurt swallows and licks his lips, carefully, and keeps his hand over his mouth. "I'm fine."
In the bathroom he rinses his mouth out, checks the cut inside his lip, glares at his own weary eyes in the mirror. He remembers Blaine, hunched small next to him. Kurt's very dominant. The director of Kurt's life relies far too much on irony and needs more nuanced scriptwriters already, Kurt is sick of it all.
Blaine. He puts a hand to his mouth again, carefully, tastes the blood as he swallows and the scent makes him a little giddy. Blaine tonight, Blaine who walks like a wolf, Blaine's happy eyes and his scent, Kurt wants to run his nose up his bare arm to inhale the skin, god. God. No. Don't think like that, don't. Do you really want to go through that again?
Remember Finn and take a cudgel to your heart until it's senseless, because the scent of someone else's disgust for you is the last thing you ever want to breathe through again.
Something about Blaine's eyes, too bright, his scent too warm, the muscles held in his body too eager, something about him so innocently animal and Kurt feels too human, gawky and graceless and too full of thought, he can't just settle and be. He's not the wolf. He's a naked ugly human being, all elbows and blanched skin. Naked pathetic human getting shoved into lockers by huge shaved-ape jocks. He's not Blaine with Blaine's easy wolf-angles, Blaine so effortlessly, easily handsome as human and wolf, Blaine moving in his skin like it feels lovely to wear. He's only Kurt, Kurt who copes, Kurt who endures.
He retouches his hair, and resettles his bag on his shoulder, and meets his own eyes for one last long straight-necked second before he heads out again.
*
He'd been so terrified last night, Karofsky. Kurt had smelled it, delighted in it, furied and soared with it, Karofsky scared of him. How he managed to convince himself that it was a dog and definitely not Kurt, definitely not a wolf, he has no idea; but then, he does. Attacked by a werewolf, by Hummel the werewolf? Hummel? Wouldn't he be more of a were-Pomeranian?
It's not like Kurt can be pissed about it, he has to be grateful in that sickening so-not-funny way, god knows the last thing he needs is this outing.
But still, that Monday, Mercedes asks him why he keeps smiling and he tells her he's waiting on an ASOS package when he gets in tonight. It's not like he can explain Blaine to her, not just Blaine, what could he say? He doesn't even know his last name, hasn't got a clue what he likes or dislikes (apart from the top forty, he guessed from his car's CD collection) and oh where did they meet? In the woods in the middle of nowhere in the middle of the night, Blaine had four paws and a tail at the time and smelled like feral heaven and Kurt had a tail too, that's why he never wants to catch a movie on the full moon, hasn't she noticed?
No-one notices. It's strange how invisible Kurt feels, and how little achievement he feels in it, because it's exactly what he needs and aims for and he knows it. But before last period the slushie-locker check combo (Azimio throws it, Karofsky bulls him into the locker putting his whole body and all his weight into the shove) knocks him shocked and breathless to his knees and while he's there with a hand on the lockers and they're barking laughter as they walk away, he flicks the crushed ice off his eyes and some striding girl gives a little skip to step over it there on the floor, and no-one so much as hesitates in walking to class. The strangest thing about Kurt really isn't the werewolf thing. His real superpower, whether he wants it or not, is invisibility.
His inner wolf could tear their arms out of their sockets. But he's not a wolf. He's a human. Whatever it costs him, he's human.
He picks himself up, and spits some more slushie out, and Puck's coming out of the bathroom as he reaches the door. Puck gives him a tired look like there's no point in getting overexcited about Kurt covered in red food colouring again, but at least he holds the door open for him. Kurt runs the water warm and pulls out some paper towels and Puck says, "You ever plannin' on fighting back?"
Kurt scoops up a double-handful of water, shakes his head out again, looks up at himself grim in the mirror. He could have torn their faces off. He doesn't mean that metaphorically. He means blood and eyeballs.
He says, "Are you ever planning on washing your hands after you use the bathroom?"
Puck says, "How did - ? Whatever, man." and lets the door swing closed again behind him.
*
Blaine can hardly concentrate the whole day. He's so highly strung he wishes he'd brought that scrap of Kurt's clothing to calm himself down with, he smells Kurt and something in him settles, but he really can't walk into Kurt's house with something of Kurt's on him at this time in the cycle, Kurt will smell it instantly. And it is immensely creepy. And Blaine really needs to get rid of it. He does. He will. Soon.
He practises with the Warblers with his mind really off somewhere else, but they're used to him being easily distracted - lucky they've never yet linked it with the phases of the moon - and they give him playful shoves and one more chance, over and over again. There is no way in hell that the way he ended up here was worth it, but he really does love being here. It's a world away from what he had and he wouldn't go back to that for anything, god knows he has at least enough self-respect to not want to be so casually treated like crap every day of his life . . .
And tonight he'll see Kurt (Kurt, the wolf whines, tail wagging hard) and Kurt's terrifying father again. At this time of the cycle it's especially acute but god it is strange being in a house with Kurt and Kurt's father, Blaine hardly dares to lift his head from its hunch, the amount of alpha in the room makes him want to traverse it by crawling. The strangest thing is how entirely not terrifying that is, nothing frightening about it at all, entirely - bafflingly - the opposite. Faced by two more dominant presences Blaine feels safe. He knows exactly what to do and exactly how to be. He feels relaxed, secure, contained, he feels the very, very opposite of alone.
Two years he's been a lone wolf. He understands how strong Kurt's presence is, if Kurt's had pack to rely on all along, Blaine never knew how safe pack feels. Kurt must know because he can smell and sense it that his father would murder for him, and so Kurt never has to feel unprotected, never has to feel vulnerable. Kurt has someone to depend on. That must be really . . . really . . .
After school Blaine makes his goodbyes to the other Warblers and heads to his car. He remembers coming out to his parents and he remembers the silence that followed it, the silence swallowing his last hopes of help, did they think he wasn't scared? He's on his own and he has been for years (he smells Kurt and no he isn't). And Kurt's had his dad, and Blaine thinks how much of his life could have been easier, how much of it could have been different, if he'd been able to trust that he could tell his parents this as well.
He sings along with Katy Perry on the drive, trying to keep his human in focus, push the wolf back a little, the moon's still a ripple in his blood. You make me feel. The wolf knows what Kurt is to it. The human?
Don't ever look back, don't ever look back.
It's so much easier to be a wolf, their wolves slot so simply together, no questioning and no uncertainty, just wolves. Kurt's pale eyes and black nose and pink tongue, and the way his muscles move under a flood of white fur, Blaine could lose a hand in it all. An Arctic wolf stuck in Ohio, god he must hate the summer. He's beautiful as a wolf. Breathtaking. Solid and strong and sure.
He's beautiful as a boy, there's no escaping that one either, every expression on his face is almost unbearably lovely, every flit of his eyes stops Blaine's breath. And Blaine thinks (Let's go all the way tonight) that he needs to slam the brakes on this, because he's already overstepped and overstepped and he is bad at these things, clumsy and greedy and Kurt's father will mount his head on the wall. So, no. They'll be friends. Blaine will be a friend and not ask for too much in return, because Kurt so casually alpha doesn't need Blaine anyway. And his dad was right, they don't know each other. It's only when he's standing outside his front door that Blaine realises how true that is, because he doesn't even know Kurt's last name.
'Good evening Mr I'm Sorry I Know I've Already Slept Naked In Your Son's Bed But I Don't Actually Know Your Name, how are you?'
Oh god.
It's Kurt who answers the door, Kurt whose eyes flick alight at his face, and something in Blaine's chest jumps and he can see Kurt's body tighten with want -
The wolves silently howl to each other.
The humans, after a second's hesitation, hug.
Blaine doesn't know who initiated it, but nose in Kurt's shoulder and oh god the smell of him, fresh-showered and clean and his muscles shudder out and loose like he just fell into bed. I know this smell, he thinks, helplessly, inhaling. I know I know him. I just don't know how . . .
He whispers, "I don't know your last name."
Kurt lifts his head a little, blinks, says, "Hummel." and then there are footsteps (still close to the moon, wolf-ears had already caught the sofa's springs letting someone up) and they slip apart, stand tight side by side in the doorway trying not to look like they just wrapped themselves up in each other, and Blaine puts a smile on, says, "Good evening, Mr Hummel, how're you?"
The blazer and tie probably help, Blaine knows he looks very different hair gelled down and in his Dalton uniform, he might as well have 'good boy' tattooed on his forehead. Kurt's father gives him a still-distrustful look but Kurt pushes Blaine into a dining room singing at him to just sit down, dinner's ready, does he want a drink? and there's Kurt's stepbrother there looking guiltily up at them over the bread he's already eaten, and Blaine takes a little breath and puts his best manners on display. He needs to prove that he's not just a wolf. He needs to actually get to know Kurt more than just Kurt's smell which makes him want to lie his head on his shoulder and sigh for joy. He needs to make Mr Hummel stop looking at him like he's thinking of wolfskin rugs.
Blaine compliments Kurt's stepmother on dinner and it turns out that Kurt made it. It turns out, over the course of the next hour, that Kurt is amazing.
He likes cooking, and music - Broadway and everything else - fashion and pop culture, they take a fifteen minute detour into politics and skip a little sideways into sport which it turns out Kurt is patient about, mostly that gets Finn's attention and (Blaine can smell it, sense it) Mr Hummel's too; Kurt can make clothes from scratch and organise entire weddings and speak fluent French and make Blaine laugh so hard, almost as joyful as his making Kurt laugh, the sudden bloom of delight on his face like he didn't expect it at all and he loves it, he loves Blaine making him laugh, it makes something in Blaine's chest shake.
And he can sort of tell, by the pressure Mr Hummel uses on his fork (too close to the moon; he can hear it), that this wasn't exactly how he saw this evening going.
Blaine tries to reel back a little, tries to be harmless, but Kurt is intoxicating and interested and chases him when he gets quiet, draws him back again, they're as giddy together as puppies. They eventually come out the other side of a giggling fit and manage to make themselves quiet, while Kurt takes a little sip of water and presses his lips hard closed, trying to make the smile smaller, and Blaine looks at the ceiling and thinks that Kurt was no distance at all from him for years and they have so much lost time to catch up on, he can't wait.
And Mr Hummel's shoulders still say If you lay one finger on him I will turn you into a winter coat.
He catches a scent of something metal-sour towards the end of dinner, glances at Kurt and Kurt looks back at him uncomprehending. Blaine stares for a second, then looks back to his plate; it's not a word he thinks anyone wants to hear one of the werewolves say out loud at the dinner table.
They wash up afterwards, companionable together in the kitchen, though Blaine can still smell that faint faint tang - any further from the full moon and he would have lost it - and he says, while he dries a plate, "Are - you okay?"
Kurt glances at him, rinses a bowl. "Of course I am. Why?"
Blaine pauses for a fraction of a second to locate everyone else in the house (Finn upstairs, Carole and Mr Hummel in the lounge with the TV on) before he says quietly, "I can smell blood."
Kurt stares at him, then swallows, and presses his tongue to the inside of his bottom lip. "It's nothing," he says. "The, the guy I turned in front of, he - I guess he has no idea what happened so he's getting what revenge he can."
The muscles in Blaine's arms have gone so tight they don't work anymore. "He -?"
"He just shoved me into a locker, he does it all the time. I'm just clumsier than usual when my body still half thinks it has four legs." Kurt tugs his rubber gloves a little, keeps his eyes on the bubbles. "I'm fine. Honestly. I'd rather have the bruises than the dumpster tosses, it's easier on my nose."
Blaine stares at Kurt, Kurt whose wolf is so strong Blaine longs to bare his throat to it, and he doesn't understand. "Why do you let them . . ."
"What am I supposed to do?" Kurt says, curtly. "Bite his throat open? I'm not an animal, I'm a human, and I'm a better human than he is because I would never do that to someone, whether he ever realises that or not. I can't make him a better person. The only person's behaviour I can actually control is my own."
Blaine watches how tight his shoulders have gone. "Control means a lot to you."
"I turn into a wolf once a month." Kurt snaps. "Yes, it does. Doesn't it to you? You want to feel like you stay you whatever shape you are . . ."
Blaine opens his mouth, then closes it again. "I . . . I. Guess."
What is he doing in this house full of a happy, normal, loving family? He turns into a wolf once a month. And does he even know that that wolf is him, after -
Kurt turns to look at him, and Blaine realises that yes, they are still too close to the full moon, and yes, Kurt can sense all of his unease. Kurt's face is troubled, and his voice is unsure. "Blaine?"
Blue-green eyes like the twilight. Blaine takes a little breath. "I'm fine. I normally try not to think about this stuff, that's all."
Kurt gives him a slow, pouted look, not remotely convinced, then goes back to the dishes. Blaine stacks the plate, picks up the next one.
What he's doing in this house is learning. He understands now why Kurt can be a dominant wolf and yet not attack some idiot bullies at his school, he understands what Kurt's strength actually means, and god, if Blaine could learn that. If Blaine could get the pack-grounding Kurt has, the self-definition Kurt has, to know that they can't hurt who he is and he doesn't need to hurt them back, to not need to have violence in the corner of his eye, to not need to run from it -
He says, "I don't think your dad likes me very much."
"I think he's still recovering from a number of shocks," Kurt says diplomatically. "I don't think he dislikes you."
"Because my head is still attached to my body?"
"Well," Kurt says, tilt of his hip, tilt of his head as he scrubs at a saucepan, tilt of his smile and smiling eyes. "Yes."
*
Kurt's room smells of Kurt. Kurt's room smells deliciously of Kurt. Blaine wants to stick his face in the bed and paddle his limbs until he's submerged in it all, instead he sits cross-legged on it like a good boy and watches Kurt move around the room putting his homework away, his iTunes library playing in the background as they talk.
There's a way Kurt's hips move, and Blaine is maybe just too young to know the words for the very particular innocent attraction of it. "Dalton? Wait, Dalton like the Dalton Academy Warblers we're singing against at Regionals?"
"- wait, you're the William McKinley High show choir?"
"You did come to my school, Blaine."
"You came to my school first."
"Oddly enough I was slightly distracted at the time."
Blaine opens his mouth to say something about Kurt being slightly distracting and snaps it shut at the last second, every hair on the back of his neck aware of Mr Hummel through that open doorway down those stairs on that sitting room sofa gloweringly aware of Blaine in return. He rubs the back of his neck. "Imagine if we'd met at Regionals."
Kurt turns to look at him, book hugged in his arms, then leans up to slot it onto a shelf. "We would have known," he says quietly.
"Can you imagine performing after smelling each other?"
"No. I literally cannot."
"I don't even know what I would have done. Panicked."
"Frozen."
"Run offstage to find you."
"Run offstage away from you," Kurt points out. "I didn't know before I met you what werewolves were really like, the only one I knew was me."
Blaine shrugs, smiling. "It's nice not being alone."
Kurt looks back at him, smiles a little shy and looks away again. Warmth blooms through Blaine. He wants to reach up, get up, walk to Kurt and -
And what? He doesn't have a clue. Neither the wolf nor the boy really knows, they both just want Kurt but they don't know the specifics, and there's what Burt Hummel wants too to always be wary of. He rubs his nose, says, "Do you . . . only turn at the full moon?"
Kurt pauses, then turns so he's leaning back a little on his desk, hands curled nervously at its edge. "Yes." he says. "It's not safe, Blaine."
"But don't you sometimes just want to be the wolf? Some times are just - some things are just better for the wolf to understand, don't you smell rain or when the spring comes -"
"It's not safe." Kurt says, firmer. "Blaine there's my dad to think about, if anything ever happened to me - I don't know what he'd do. I don't. The fact that I don't terrifies me." He wets his lips, fraction of a second, and Blaine smells blood again faint and tinny. "Don't you worry - have you never gotten in trouble for it -?"
Blaine keeps his eyes away from Kurt's. "Not for a long time."
"I want to get out of here," Kurt says. "I want to escape. All I have to do here is survive until I can get out and go somewhere else, somewhere better, somewhere amazing. I used to think . . ." His fingers play together a little, and he shrugs. "I used to think I wanted to go to Broadway, but, you can't." He smiles a little at his hands, at his own childishness. "You can't have a largely nocturnal career when you have paws for at least one night of the month. So I thought - I don't know. Maybe fashion. Maybe journalism. Maybe both." He looks out of the window, though it's so dark by now all that's there is their reflection, and the bright high shape of the moon. "One day."
All Blaine's own dreams circle him and mock him, softly, at Kurt's quiet acceptance of a fact Blaine's spent so long trying to ignore. "Where do you want to go?"
"I think New York." Kurt folds his arms around himself. "When we beat you at Sectionals and go on to win Nationals there, I'll get a taste and find out if it's good enough."
He grins back at Kurt. "That's if we don't beat you. I promise I'd send you a postcard from New York, though."
"It really will be a horrible shock to you when we dance up and down all over you at Sectionals."
Then they hear the howl.
Blaine's on his feet without being aware of standing, rigid next to Kurt, both of them shock still and staring straight out of the window as Mr Hummel's footsteps pound up the staircase and the howl runs through their bones. The howl sings right into Blaine's nervous system and grabs him by the wolf and he feels his body turning itself inwards-outwards-
Kurt grabs his hand, and Blaine's breath hits his lungs like a punch.
Hand. Hand: fingers skin thumbs. Hand, human hand. Their fingers bite tight through each other's and Blaine hears Kurt's human breath shudder out, and they stand there human and immobile while the wolf-song slits along their skin, peels all their hairs upright. Mr Hummel is hanging on the doorframe panting but they don't look back, fixated by the howl, awakened by it, summoned by it and standing stiff, still, and human only through sheer force of will.
Somewhere out there, a wolf.
Mr Hummel barks, "What the hell is that?"
Kurt breathes, slowly, and his hand shifts a little in Blaine's as the howl wavers and begins to die. "A wolf," he says quietly.
"What wolf, how come -"
Kurt whispers, "Ssh." but the howl is gone, and its echoes pulsate in Blaine's ears like his heartbeat, and Kurt's not letting go of his hand.
"How come," Kurt's father says, hard from the doorway, "we don't see a wolf for nearly nine years an' then as soon as he comes along -"
"It's not mine," Blaine murmurs, then blinks, mind drawn out moon-long by the howl, and stops thinking like a wolf. "I don't know who it is, sir. I didn't know there were any other wolves around here either."
The echoes of the howl giggle and whisper around his brain, Come, come. He shakes his head, looks at Kurt who's looking at him, and still holding his hand. Blaine is so glad for Kurt's human hand holding his. Kurt says, "I am not going out there to find them." Slower, head a little lowered, "I can't stop you if you want to."
"No," Blaine says, immediately. "No."
They're not his pack.
It's not like it's a chosen allegiance, though the fact that Kurt respects that Blaine might want to head off to find another pack makes something in him tighten, he would choose Kurt, given any other option. He doesn't need any other option. That howl sings of opportunity, dangerous open opportunity, but it's no opportunity Blaine would choose and it's no opportunity his wolf even recognises: the room is full of Kurt's presence, Kurt's scent, Kurt's safety, and Blaine wants to be here.
The howl commands, Come! and Kurt, standing in his bedroom scowling out of the window, says, No.
Blaine says, Not if he's not going.
"What does that mean?" Mr Hummel says, Blaine can hear his heart running quick with panic. "What, another wolf passin' through? Or -"
"I don't know Dad," Kurt says, still staring out of the window. "It's not like a phone call. It just - advertised its presence." He swallows, and Blaine realises too late how intently he's staring at the flex of his white throat. "And told us to come to it."
"You are not -"
"I know I'm not." Kurt snaps back. "No wolf I've never so much as smelled before commands me anything. God it's infuriating though, it must know, it must be able to smell me, it's in my territory, it's in my town -"
"Kurt."
"Two days from the moon, Dad!" Kurt barks, and finally lets go of Blaine's hand to throw himself on the bed, to sit there with his hands digging at the sides of his head. Blaine can smell his frustrated rage, knowing there's another wolf out there and unable to do anything about it without doing it on the other wolf's terms.
Blaine says, "It might just be passing through. We don't know. It might just - just be howling to see if there's anyone else out there."
Kurt stares at nothing for a second, then blinks and looks up at Blaine, and Blaine knows that he's thinking, Or howling to tell us it's there.
Howling to warn us it's there.
Mr Hummel is silent for a moment, then says, "You gonna be safe getting home?"
Blaine looks, surprised, back at him, then nods. "I'll be in my car. There's no way they'd smell me in time to stop me even if they wanted to. And - we don't know they would want to, anyway."
He's pretty certain that this is Mr Hummel's way of saying I don't actually want you dead, you know and simultaneously It's a school night and when I walked in here you were holding my son's hand unsupervised and you should go now. So he smiles at Kurt and says, "I should probably head back anyway."
Kurt says, "I'd really feel more comfortable if I drove you back."
"I wouldn't," Mr Hummel mutters, and Blaine can't not smile.
*
Burt watches from the front door as Kurt and Blaine say goodbye through the window of Blaine's car, Kurt leaning down to murmur at him, Blaine watching his face very openly and very intently. Something about the way their eyes meet; does his son think he's an idiot?
Kurt steps back as the car pulls out, then stands there with his arms folded around himself watching Blaine head down the street. It's dark already, and all of Burt's skin still feels too aware of that wolf-howl from earlier. He says, "Come back inside. Losin' all the heat."
Kurt stares after Blaine's car a moment longer, then turns and walks back to the front door, ducking his head and passing Burt, heading straight for the stairs again as Burt closes the door. "Hold up," he says after him. "Kitchen. We need to talk."
Kurt rolls his eyes as he turns again, walking still with his arms folded through to the kitchen. This time of the month he talks back less, weird to watch your son go through his cyclical temperaments, but he never stops being Kurt any time of the month. Kurt restraining himself, Kurt letting himself a little wild, which part of him is wolf and which is boy is sometimes not as straightforward as people might think.
Burt sits at the table, while Kurt stands against the counter with his arms folded. "Sit," Burt says, gesturing another chair, and Kurt rolls his eyes, pulls it out and says to the ceiling, "Woof woof."
"I didn't mean - hell, Kurt. Is he gonna be okay gettin' home?"
Kurt draws little patterns on the tabletop with a fingertip, and focuses on those. "Presumably every wolf is just a person, really, like us. There's no reason to think they'd want to hurt us any more than we'd want to hurt them."
"Wolf hurt you once."
"What?" Kurt looks up at him, eyebrows frowning together. "It didn't hurt me."
"It bit you! Eight years old-"
"I think it thought it was helping."
"Helping-"
Kurt shrugs, and scratches at whatever he's just doodled on the tabletop like he can erase something already invisible. "It just is," he says to it. "It's not good or bad. It's just something that is. Isn't it?"
Burt watches his face, and thinks about years of the two of them alone, Burt watching football with a beer propped on his belly and his feet propped up on a curled-up white wolf, breathing slow in sleep. He thinks about Kurt's eerie ability to locate lost keys and cell phones when the moon's big enough. He thinks about Kurt's physical shyness, always trying to contain himself, like maybe if someone got too close they'd smell the wolf on him. He thinks about an eight year old kid with a secret he knows he can't tell anybody, scared every day of his life.
He thinks about finding all of Kurt's books of fairy tales in the bottom of the trash one day, he didn't understand why the bag was so heavy until he opened it up. They could've given them away, he didn't understand why Kurt had wrapped them in magazines and thrown them - it was wasteful as much as weird - until he checked them all, and realised that every last one had Little Red Riding Hood in it.
He says, "What are you and this Blaine kid doing?"
Kurt mutters to the table, "We told you we don't know."
"I think you know more than you're telling me. Is he gay?"
Kurt looks right at him. "Yes. Why?"
"'cause every time I leave you two alone I find you-"
"Dad!"
"I have to keep you safe!"
"Safe, Dad, I have fangs the size of stilettos, when am I ever not safe - ?"
"How the hell safe you think you are, a werewolf in Ohio? You think if anyone found out they wouldn't think you attacked those kids at that school? You think they'd even ask? We don't know who this kid is an' I don't even care, my priority is you -"
"Dad." Kurt digs his face into his palm, elbow propped off the table.
Burt says again, harder, "My priority is you. I don't dislike this kid, Kurt, okay, he's a little bit -"
"Overenthusiastic?"
"Overconfident. Spoiled, I'd say."
"Spoiled -? When I'm the one who has to sit through this conversation you think his parents -"
"I think he's used enough to getting his own way, however that ends up happening, that he expects his way just is what happens. That would be fine if what he wants is what everyone else wants." Burt watches Kurt's face, all angry and confused and tight with wanting to snap to the defence of a boy he met two days ago and Burt never expected this, what parent can expect this? He says, every word firm because it's the only way to get them out of his own mouth, "What do you want from him? Tell me the truth."
Kurt glares back at him, quivering a little with contained fury, mouth all tight and eyes all flickering-dark, too much only just contained. And then he says, teeth clipping the words, "I don't know."
And he means it. Burt looks at him and knows that he means it. Maybe Blaine's had too easy a ride in some ways but Kurt's been overprotected in others and Burt knows it, and has only himself to blame for it. How's he supposed to let his kid go out unprotected into a world that's always going to think he's some kind of monster? They don't know him, they don't know Kurt, most harmless kid on the planet, they don't know - they don't care - how gentle and how loving and how warm-vulnerable-hearted for the whole damn world Kurt is -
Only Burt knows, and he can't trust anyone else to, not really. And now there's Blaine, and Kurt glaring at his father with his mouth held flat, his eyes anxious behind the anger, because he really doesn't know, but Burt does. Burt remembers being a teenager. Not a teenage wolf, no, but a teenage boy with confusion and want and confused want.
"Then maybe unless you're sure you know," he says, watching Kurt's eyes, "be careful."
Kurt just looks back at him, and his face goes slowly pink but his expression doesn't change.
*
Blaine's bag is back against the wall of his room and the scent makes his lungs squeeze. He closes his eyes, folds his arms around himself, inhales it long and slow; the moon is slipping slimmer and he'll lose this, soon, the vividness of it all, by the new moon his nose will be almost as dumb to the world of scent as anyone's. But right now Blaine's scent is almost visible in the air to him, clean like new-shaved cinnamon, he can almost feel it on his skin.
Maybe unless you're sure you know . . .
He opens his eyes, walks to the window with a hand dropping to the pocket his cell sits in. He stands there still with one arm folded around himself, looking out at the dark, but apart from the bright-punched hole of the moon in the black, it's almost easier to look at his reflection than the street outside right now. Almost.
Another wolf. How many other wolves? He was so alone and now he feels overwhelmed, the whole world full of wolves, he never thought . . . he just never thought there would be others, he understood his aloneness, he understood how to manage it, how to only mind it when he was alone and no-one else could see how alone he really was. But now he's not alone and it's something like terror, looking at someone else and seeing himself. The possibility of being known is shocking, he backs away from it automatically, Blaine must smell him and know him and Kurt . . .
He texts, Text and let me know you got home safe?
Does he really want someone else to know him? Does he really want Blaine to see in him, smell in him, whatever he's worth? He smells Blaine's . . . curiosity, but wouldn't anyone be curious, isn't Kurt curious? Blaine so bold and warm and joyous and Kurt folded in on himself, trying to keep himself as cool and untouchable as the moon, so good at being invisible by now that his friends don't even seem to see him anymore. And is this the choice he's got no choice in facing, now, invisibility or the whole damn world? What narrow horizons he has, aloneness, or Blaine and the open world and who knows what other wolves are out there?
. . . or trying for Blaine and sensing Blaine's recoil, even the barest suggestion in his eyes or his scent of Blaine's disgust, and Kurt can't do it twice. He can't. He can't risk it. However much it hurt to know Finn felt that about him, Finn isn't like him, and to look into Blaine as a mirror of himself and see Blaine's revulsion -
He can't do it twice. He can't.
The suggestion of the scent of Blaine in the air and he almost sways with it, he understands what Blaine means, he would so much rather be a wolf right now, a wolf who could smell Blaine as vivid as see him, a wolf who wouldn't feel alone with Blaine's scent there. He paces the room, his throat pulses with wanting to whimper, he won't. He won't. He's being stupid and insane. It's all too much, it's the wolf in him, the moon in him, he wants things too much, it's only the moon howling in his heart -
It's so hard to settle on anything, the wolf in him whining that his pack is broken, one of his pack is in unknown danger, one of his pack needs him, where is his pack? If the pack's broken he's alone -
His phone buzzes too much later, Kurt grabs it off his nightstand still with moisturiser on his fingers and reads, Home! Ok, top five Bowie tracks, *go*.
The smile feels like it illuminates something on the inside, Christmas lights strung around his heart and brain, too late to kill the electricity now.
Part IV