Glee!fic, Big Moon Rising pt IV
Big Moon Rising part IV of oh god probably like VII I'm mostly pulling this out of my arse as I go along. Puppyverse <3 Because I have been writing like a madwoman, which seems to be what I do as I approach important deadlines.
Disclaimer: They don't actually have tails and paws in the series. Alas.
Rating: R! As in, not for children. I don't write for kids, sorry, I just don't, all warnings from previous parts still apply.
Summary: "You really don't utilise your full potential, Porcelain."
Note: I am beginning to approach not being so entirely far behind with comments! I'm not only about two weeks late as opposed to a month, anyway ^^; Bear with me, I'm on my way, thank you for your patience <3
Kurt makes it all the way to lunch without getting so much as tripped, which at first only makes him more wary - they are planning something, clearly, and the wolf in him ripples with wanting to growl out loud - before he overhears in the lunch queue that Karofsky's not at school today, he's sick or something.
Choirs of angels sing.
The immediate impulse is to text Blaine, Kurt feels happy and he just wants to share it with Blaine, oh god he wouldn't even understand, Some guy you've never met is sick, best day ever! :D. It really doesn't make Kurt the nicest person in the world, does it? He and his wolf roll their eyes, share a small private smile; so today he is happy and no-one knows why, and Kurt feels faintly guilty about how happy he is but mostly just happy. His phone buzzes in his hand, and it catches in his chest that it's Blaine.
Gym class smells like feeeeet.
His mouth twitches too much of a smile, he texts back, Which do you hate more: gym class or chemistry?
Mercedes says, "You wanna come over tonight? Tina wants help dyeing her hair."
Kurt says, "Mm?" as Blaine replies, Oh god, don't make me choose, classes of *death*, why do they *smell* so much :(
"Earth to Hummel?" Mercedes says. "You up for a date with me, Tina and a bottle of Blue Haired Freak tonight?"
"I, uh, can't, I-" His phone buzzes again. Biology! Blaine has texted. I made my mind up, biology is the worst.
Mercedes scowls. "Who're you texting?"
Kurt says, "Just Finn." and quickly texts back, Did they make you do the dissections? I had to leave the room. They still bring that up. "I can't, tonight, family stuff. I love those shoes with those pants, you were totally right about getting them in black -"
Mercedes narrows one eye. "What are you trying to distract me from?"
Kurt's phone buzzes. "Nothing," he says brightly. "Nothing at all. Ooh look, salad!"
Blaine's text reads, I had a selective migraine. I pretty much did from the smell of pickled cat corpse, oh my god.
Kurt swallows the laugh behind a hand, and Mercedes glances back at him, a slow look of weighing up what exactly to call him out on, but then she rolls her eyes and grabs a tray instead.
*
Can you come out tonight?
(Oh god every text makes his stomach gulp.)
I'm grounded, Blaine.
Can I come over tonight?
(You have no idea how dangerous you being in my room is. I feel like I might fall on you.)
Do you not have homework?
Homework date!
(God oh god don't write date.)
You are a bad influence on me.
I thought I was an animal influence on you.
(I wish I knew what you're doing to me, Blaine.)
Maybe both. Are you any good at math?
If I say yes then is the homework date more likely?
(Why do you want to see me so much . . . ?)
I'll tell my dad you'll pull me up a grade, shall I?
1 + 1 = ?
(Please be less adorable I think I'm going into organ failure.)
I won't show him that text.
See you soon!
(My lungs are counting the seconds down already. I can't breathe.)
See you :)
*
Kurt knows Ways of approaching his father. They've been such an enclosed unit for so long, so completely co-reliant for so long, they know each other more than well enough. His dad's reading the newspaper in his armchair in front of the TV when Kurt leans through the doorway, not quite into the room, and says, "So, exactly how grounded am I?"
"That depends on why you're asking," his dad says evenly into the newspaper.
"Because Blaine said he could help me with my math homework and I really need the help."
His dad says nothing into the newspaper.
Kurt says, "I really need the help, Dad, he's actually good at it."
His dad says nothing into the newspaper.
"I thought it'd be nice if we could do something that wasn't about being a wolf for once."
His dad says nothing into the newspaper.
Kurt says, "So I thought maybe we could meet at the library or something and-"
"You're not going out." His dad looks up from the paper, finally, and narrows his eyes at him. "He comes here."
Kurt smiles his brightest smile. "I'll text and tell him, thanks Dad!"
Wolves are very straightforward. Teenage boys are not necessarily so.
*
Blaine sits cross-legged on Kurt's bedroom floor, history textbook open in his lap, while Kurt lays next to him on his stomach with his crossed ankles in the air, flicking thoughtfully behind him. He has a habit of spinning his pen in his fingers like a baton while he thinks, cheek propped on the heel of his hand and eyes roaming his homework, elbow an elegant angle on the floor. History is proving quite difficult to concentrate on.
It's strange how little they need to talk to distract each other. Or not strange, really, little moments of eye-contact, moments of being aware of the other being aware of the particular tension of a muscle, little rise-and-falls of scent. The familiarity of Kurt nearby is ridiculous, all-consuming in the comfort it offers, Blaine wants to drop his book and lay down with his head resting on that inwards curve of his back, he wants to sigh there like a satisfied wolf, home now.
All day he's been thinking of this. He didn't want to let his phone out of his hand, his lifeline to Kurt. He doesn't understand his own need until he's a wolf and he does, but then he's a boy again and there's Kurt the boy and exactly how fair is it to expect Kurt to unquestioningly be there for Blaine when he hardly even knows him . . . ?
Kurt flicks his pen rapid and rhythmic. "I wish you actually were good at math."
"Can't be good at everything," Blaine says, and makes himself remove his eyes from boring a hole into Kurt's back. How can backs be so beautiful? He's never even really thought about people's backs before, is everyone's like that? The lovely taper of it downwards, the width of his shoulders to his waist, god, the geometry of his body is based on angel's equations . . .
He's staring at his back again. He makes himself not. "How are you with the French Revolution?"
Kurt tips his hand like a wave tilting. "Un petit peu. What are you studying?"
Your back. No, wait. "Um, Robespierre. Who was not an especially nice person."
"C'est vrai?" Kurt says, sweet curl of sarcasm in his tongue like chilli in chocolate, wickedly unexpected. He sits up, and Blaine makes himself not watch his sides flex under his shirt as he does. "Yours is still more interesting than mine. Swap with me?"
"I thought I was being the bad influence on you."
Kurt blinks angelic with innocence at him, and Blaine laughs out loud and god he can't stop staring at how it burns Kurt's grin brighter, he can't bear it, how the hell is he supposed to concentrate on dead Frenchmen when there's Kurt there and Blaine's wolf is keening for him on the inside - ?
. . . Kurt who flicks his eyes downwards, and tugs his cuff down a little, rubs his wrist. "How," he says to the carpet. "How was school?"
". . . it was okay. It was good. How was your day?" Blaine remembers some of how Kurt's described his days at McKinley, and his face tightens a little. "Did anyone bother you?"
"What? No. Oh, well, I got shoved a little between classes, that always happens. It doesn't mean anything."
"How can it not mean anything?"
"They only do it because they're supposed to do it most of the time. I can tell when they really hate me, it wasn't, today was okay." He looks to the side again, the way his head tips stretches his neck long and the lamplight runs over the revealed skin and Blaine tightens his hand around his pen until it hurts to make himself look away. "Today was fine, actually, um, but - my friends are beginning to notice that I haven't actually not been texting you for more than thirty seconds at a time, and I do need to - to mention you, to them, at some point."
Blaine leans back on his hands, grins. "Have you been keeping me a secret?"
"Shut up, Blaine," Kurt sings, pink-faced, to the ceiling. "I have to tell them about you, what am I supposed to tell them? Where did we meet?"
His eyebrows lower. "We met - oh. Oh. Um, how about a coffee shop?"
"Okay. I was behind you in the queue."
"I let you go ahead because you seemed to be in a hurry."
"You're such a gentleman like that."
"We got talking while we waited for our orders. I was charming."
"I was delightful."
"We swapped numbers."
"You came for dinner last night."
"And here we are."
They look at each other. They look away. Here they are.
Where are they?
Blaine tries to think if he had met Kurt in a coffee shop, if he had got talking to him in a queue. If he wasn't a wolf, if Kurt wasn't a wolf, if they didn't smell each other and know each other, if they were just two guys, where would they be now? Maybe still sitting on Kurt's bedroom floor but as - as -
He's never before felt like 'friend' isn't enough of a word, what could be better than a friend? What - what does Kurt want them to be? Kurt's now looking down at his math homework again, still a little warm with embarrassed blood in his cheeks but apparently intent on the quadratic equation. The control Kurt has over himself makes his scent less easy to read, Blaine is fairly certain that Kurt must have smelled Blaine's moments of sudden overwhelming interest but - but he's on Kurt's territory, and he follows Kurt's lead, and it's confusing when he doesn't know what Kurt's lead is. Kurt's lead is currently, apparently, to be a good boy, to sit and behave. So Blaine does. He looks away from Kurt's eyes cast down to his homework and thinks, Behave.
I can tell when they really hate me.
Yeah. Blaine had been able to tell too. His eyes find themselves drawn to Kurt again, Kurt rubbing an eye while he scribbles at his math homework, Kurt who doesn't have the cocoon Blaine's been living in for a while now. He wonders if that's where strength comes from, if you have to forge it in fire. Which . . . would explain . . . so, so much. Too much. Far too much.
He tries not to remember, he looks away, he doesn't want to remember. He isn't that anymore. He isn't capable of being that anymore. Not with Kurt there, not with Kurt there, Kurt wouldn't let him be, he's not that -
Kurt tosses his pen down and announces, "Study break."
Blaine doesn't argue, drops his book to the side and stands up to get a really good stretch. "God I could go for being a wolf right now. Get all the knots out." He twists his shoulders left and right and Kurt sits there on the floor, looking up at him. Blaine grins an apologetic grin. "I know your dad would totally mind."
Kurt looks away, shrugs. "I've never - I've never wanted to change just for fun."
"Seriously?"
Kurt's thumb runs over the pads of his own fingers like really he's thinking about paws. "It worries my dad. It worries me. What people think about - it, us." He looks up at Blaine again, his eyes all seachange blue-touched-turquoise, curious and bright and so slightly concerned. "Sometimes I think what worries him most is how much the wolf actually is me, how much I actually am the wolf. Do you ever feel that? I know you've - had it for less time, it's been half my life now, I just -" He closes his eyes for a second, finding the right words. "- it's hard to tell what is me and what is the wolf. So when, if people saw the wolf, if people were scared of the wolf and hated it and tried to hurt it, it's me, really. It's only me. And I don't think he can bear thinking about how much they would hate me."
Blaine murmurs, "Fairy tales."
Something in Kurt's face drops, a fraction of a second of horrible, gut-twisted openness. "What?"
"I - sorry. Just, you know, prince in a tower." He waves a hand at the room, grins apologetically, and Kurt's throat pulses before he narrows his eyebrows in, voice coming raspy at first.
"And what does that make you? Dragon or knight?" He begins to smile slyly. "Or are you calling my dad a dragon?"
Blaine gives a rolling grinning shrug, rubs his nose, walks over to look at Kurt's photographs on the bookshelves; his friends, his family. No sign of the wolf, of course. "That's what you think about when you think about fairy tales?" Kurt says. "Not -"
He stops. Blaine leans down to a picture of a woman holding a little boy in a bow tie, not a woman's face he knows. "Not what?"
"Not little old grannies getting eaten and woodcutters chopping open stomachs?"
"I have never in my life wanted to eat an old lady, so, no." He folds his arms, focuses on a glee club photograph, a big group of smiling teenagers with Kurt looking oddly isolated in the back row - not quite tall enough to be there, but not quite short enough for the front row either. "I know what you mean. What people would - think."
Kurt's silent on the floor behind him. Blaine swallows.
"But I know what you mean about the wolf, too. It - it's still there even when you're a person. Its decisions, your decisions, they're all . . . it changes everything. It's part of who you are. The only thing is . . . humans can't be animals, can we? We can't do what the wolf wants, the wolf makes it too simple, we have all these - these rules to follow and -"
"They would hate us. If they knew how simple the wolf makes it." Kurt picks himself off the floor and stretches, and Blaine keeps his back to him so he can't watch as Kurt goes over to skim his laptop awake by its mouse pad. "I."
He stops, and Blaine turns to him, sees something in his face as he looks away, something horrible and small and raw before he controls it. He says, each word soft and somehow like it's scraping his throat, "I really don't want to be hated even more."
And Blaine should walk to him, put a hand on his shoulder, put his arms around him, breathe in at his throat and sigh out happy the way a wolf would, to let him know that he likes him, it's fine.
But he's a human with books and books of human rules to follow, so he looks to the side again and says roughly, "Yeah. Do you want to catch a movie this weekend?"
*
Back in his bedroom, Blaine closes the door behind himself, drops his schoolbag, then stops kidding himself and just locks the door. He loses clothes as he walks to the window, opening it for the air, and it smells like February night and rain tomorrow as he unknots his tie.
Wolf-muscles are a relief, he bounds onto his bed and sticks his head under his pillow, comes out with a scrap of white material in his teeth, which he drapes just so over the covers before he lays his head on it, and sighs, and closes his eyes.
I know this scent. Why?
Night breezes run through his fur like cool fingers. For once he doesn't want to run, he just wants to be, to be with this scent, trying to think through thinking this through. Something so troubling about Kurt's presence, so easing to him that he's distressed by not understanding why they have to part, why they have to have these boundaries, why there's skin between them. The urge around Kurt, the too-much around Kurt, the want around Kurt -
Kurt's the alpha, Kurt's in charge. Blaine will follow Kurt's lead.
He yawns, and rests his chin over the scrap of torn cloth, and settles to sleep.
*
It rains that morning, and someone's written FAG across his locker in permanent marker again, which irritates Kurt for the sheer irrationality of it; are they writing it there because they think he doesn't know?
Kurt Hummel's household and beyond cleaning tips: nail polish remover will get most of everything off the shiny metal surface of a locker door. He's got most of the F off when someone stops at his back and watches him for a little while, then says, "You okay there, Porcelain?"
"I'm perfect, Coach." he says, stepping back a little to scowl at his progress, F mostly gone and the rest of it smudged and blurry, then he tears off some more cotton wool and soaks it, and goes back to scrubbing.
Coach Sylvester says, "You know who did it?"
Kurt says to his locker door, "Does it make a difference?"
"Well, you'd hate for your revenge to misfire, you want to strike hard and nasty and accurate when it comes to it."
"My revenge will be living fabulously, but thank you, Coach."
Coach Sylvester gives a little sigh and says, "You really don't utilise your full potential, Porcelain." and walks off. Kurt just keeps scrubbing, F gone now. Nail polish remover smells far too intense, they're still not so many days from the moon, the chemicals burn the inside of his nose. He sniffs speculatively but it's too hard to place who must have hung around his locker to do it, the corridor is full of the smell of students, all those teenage bodies boiling with petty hormones and cheap body sprays, and the locker room's not so far away and Kurt really wishes that he couldn't smell that quite so much.
He gets a text from Blaine just as he's finishing up, the last streaky smudges cleaned off; How long do you think until your dad lets you out alone with me?
Kurt texts back, All alone with the big bad wolf? I don't know.
I'm not so bad ;) Blaine texts back, and Kurt's trying not too grin too much as he closes his locker door again, texting, You're not so *big*, Blaine. and Mercedes bangs his shoulder. "What up." She glances at his phone, says wryly, "Finn?"
"Um," Kurt pockets it. "No. I met this - guy."
Something in her eyes is so surprised before it lights. She grabs his arm so he can't get away and marches him down the corridor saying, "Tell me everything."
Kurt's phone buzzes Blaine's reply (:(). He lets what's immediate rush over him, lets it cover the memory of another locker defacement, but when he takes his cell out to check the text, his fingers still smell of nail polish remover.
*
It's a weird week.
Karofsky's off school for three days, three days in which Kurt's life is easier if not perfect. The football team still like to knock him aside in corridors and Azimio slushies him on Wednesday just to remind him that he can, but he wasn't lying to Blaine, he can tell when it's hate and when it's just morons going through the motions. He understands the pack mentalities within high school, and they intend to dump him at the very bottom like it makes their position at the top any safer, and Kurt's under no obligation to accept that. They're not his pack. Their opinion is irrelevant.
And every night, Blaine. They can't meet on Wednesday, glee practise runs too late for both of them and Kurt's dad is still being all huffy, so they Skype instead. They talk about sort of everything. Wolves, yes, and what the world is like to them, the ten thousand things they never have been able to say out loud, things they've always had to bottle inside, things that are real to them and matter to them but they've had to silence them, had to be silent about them, and now they don't. Everything: scents, sounds, the feelings so simple of a wolf, the knowing and the trust and distrust, and how they can't begin to understand how humans can make such a simple world so complicated.
That howl they heard. They speculate on it but neither of them has so much as scented another wolf around since, so they don't know what it means. Kurt's concerned for Blaine - doesn't like the possibility of another wolf wandering around near Blaine, some sheepdog instinct in him wants to corral Blaine somewhere safe away from it - and concerned for the people he loves, because he can't be there to keep them safe if he doesn't even know where the other wolf is. It's sort of hard to worry, though, while he talks to Blaine. So there's another wolf out there, somewhere; it's not like that ever hasn't been true, and Blaine is very distracting, so.
More than the wolves, though, they talk about everything. They tease each other over their favourite movies and their iTunes libraries, discuss the news (someone who actually cares about the ever-present undercurrent of impoverished gay rights in this country almost makes Kurt's throat close with suddenly not feeling alone), they dip into reality TV and Broadway shows and Kurt just gets lost in him, Blaine the quickest current in the world, sweeping him under and he's gone (why would he fight the drowning when he knows that he wants to submerge?).
He thinks that he knows what he wants, even though he tells Mercedes they're just friends. Maybe unless you're sure you know. The excitement like a panicking bird in him, the catastrophe of need he feels, he doesn't know how he's supposed to contain it if he can't let it run over into Blaine as well, there's just too much of it all. It panics him it's so much. And Blaine -
Maybe unless you're sure you know.
If Blaine was sure, wouldn't he have done something?
All those times Kurt's smelled his interest peak and shift, the couple of times he's sensed actual arousal in him (something hot-cold scared-aroused in his own stomach to spark that in another boy), but Blaine keeps his distance and is respectful and friendly and puppyish-innocent, and he trusts Kurt, and he (Kurt's very dominant) follows Kurt's lead. So Kurt doesn't push for anything Blaine doesn't want. He smiles until it hurts at all Blaine's stupid jokes, smiles and stares at him and aches with want, smiles until it hurts.
Then on Friday Karofsky's back at school.
Kurt's checking through his folder of English notes at his locker when something tickles too hard in his nose and he wrinkles it and - lifts his head, face gone numb white, not understanding the scent while his inner wolf's fur lifts and shivers. He smells -
Not Blaine, something so confused in him says, completely incomprehending, it's not Blaine -
His eyes search the corridor, face to face, breathing quick and tight trying to draw the scent of it sensibly in, he doesn't understand.
Then he sees Karofsky walking towards him and his nostrils flare, and Kurt's mouth opens but nothing comes out. He just stands there stupid as a manikin while Karofsky's mouth curls with contempt and he spits, "What you looking at, fag?" and shoves him so hard back into his locker that his folder hits the floor and his bones rattle.
And still all he can do is stare, while his inner wolf is rigid-muscled and growling in absolute horror of the fact of his scent: David Karofsky smells of wolf.
Karofsky's walking off, into the locker room ahead, while Kurt stands there heart pounding and whole body quivering a little in confusion, so, so far from understanding. He's off school for three days and he comes back smelling like wolf and oh god that howl they heard on Monday night and Kurt's breath comes out of him shaking, what does he do? Does Karofsky - does he knows, does he understand, oh god if he doesn't know he could turn at school he could do anything if Kurt hadn't had his dad how the hell would he have coped with his first moon - ?
And the smell of him makes Kurt shrink, but he remembers, he remembers and he swallows, Kurt's very dominant.
He has to do it. There's no-one else to do it. He just has to. He just has to.
He leaves his folder on the corridor floor and his locker door wide open, he's not thinking, he can't think. He follows Karofsky into the empty locker room where he's taken his jacket off and he's got a bandage taped to his right forearm, and he shoots Kurt a look (Kurt knows when they really hate him) and says, "Girls' locker room's next door, Hummel."
". . . Karofsky," Kurt says, his voice coming cracked, he has to clear his throat. "Did - you get - bitten?"
He - hesitates, leaning into a locker, then mutters, "- any of your business. What the hell're you doin' in here while I'm changing anyway, I don't want you looking at my junk-"
The scent of him is too much, Kurt hardly dares to move, and his voice comes too breathy. "Was it a wolf?"
Karofsky stares at him. Kurt can see in his eyes even if he couldn't smell it, the spike of confusion and then furious distrustful hate. "How many wolves you see in Lima? Who told you - just get out of my face, Hummel."
"Karofsky," Kurt snaps back, angry himself now, that scent is driving him so fear-crazy the wolf's anger is picking up to cover it. "It was a wolf, a wolf bit you, that was no big dog, can't you - has it kicked in yet, can't you smell it?"
"Smell the hell what you creepy little fairy, you perving on me while I'm changing? Get the hell out of my-"
Kurt takes two strides towards him, inner wolf snarling, inner boy angry as well now because god this is serious and Karofsky doesn't remotely understand. "That wasn't a dog and it wasn't an ordinary wolf and oh my god in which universe would I be interested in looking at you anyway you chubby sweaty remarkably unremarkable primate, you must know, this is serious, this is really, really serious, you need to understand - you can't always control it, you can't let it happen here, if anyone sees -"
Something red hot in Karofsky's face as he slams the locker door closed and storms into Kurt's space. "If anyone sees what? What the hell do you think you're saying to me?"
Karofsky this close he has to tilt his head to look up at him. He can smell Karofsky's rage and fear and the meaty smell of his healing arm and the wolf in him, the rising furious wolf in him, he senses the sheer size the wolf will be and his own fear, his own rage, are stoking themselves high to face he doesn't even know what. "You have to understand, something has changed you, you can't pretend it's not -"
"Get out of my face, Hummel!"
"You're not the same, can't you feel it? You know you're not-"
"Hell are you saying?" Karofsky yells into his face and Kurt snarls right back, "You will never be the same again and you need to understand how to-"
His sentence gets swallowed, then, nowhere for it to go, because there's a hot wet mouth over his and a sweaty hand digging into the side of his face and the fear is everything, in that moment. He can't breathe through the smell of him, Kurt feels obliterated by his scent, too much of it too close and his body and brain just shut down, even the wolf is dumb. What is happening to him is beyond any understanding. All he can do is be happened to.
Karofsky pulls his mouth back, and looks at Kurt's eyes - Kurt just stares at him, overpowered by the scent of him, understanding the size of the wolf of him, all but hanging from his hand, blank with terror. Then Karofsky's eyes lower and he moves his mouth in again, and Kurt smells -
He shoves him back with a sharp high yelp, twisting into a snarl as he staggers a step back - he propelled himself backwards more than he shoved Karofsky away, their weight difference becomes all he can see as Karofsky stares at him, his wolf will be enormous. His wolf will be -
The rage that twists Karofsky's face would have been terrifying were Kurt just a human, to see the purity of the hatred there. But it's his scent, hot with excitement and hate and rage and an underlying still-rising arousal that pulls the fear through him until he can't even see around it, everything in the world is that scent and what might happen and what is happening. Karofsky stands over him and Kurt in that second recoils, mouth wet with someone else's spit and too afraid to do anything, everything he is is wiped out by fear.
But then wolf, boy, he doesn't know which, knows that if all he does is cringe then Karofsky's new and unknown and uncontrolled wolf could do anything. Karofsky doesn't understand what's happened to him but his wolf understands power, his wolf understands dominance, and his wolf could - the wolf could -
Kurt's back hardens, his teeth clench, his hands tighten to fists, his chest raises, if Karofsky even twitches like he might turn then Kurt will have to turn first. All he can hope is that experience will give him enough of an edge to survive to run. The size of him. He draws in everything he is and puts it all into his body and his scent, his muscles tremble in their tightness, Kurt's very dominant, he throws every part of himself into projecting all the alpha he can be and he sees the flicker in Karofsky's eyes as he understands that without understanding it. His wolf understands it, and the human, confused, blinks, and takes in a shaky breath suddenly faced with someone it can't crumple - and then he turns and all but runs out of the room. He's gone so quickly that Kurt's muscles don't even relax for a second, too much too soon, he can't.
But then he sags, then he wants to whimper, he tries to touch his mouth and can't, he can feel the tackiness of Karofsky's drying spit there and nausea swings up, he stumbles to sit and shake on a bench, his wolf only now beginning to back away, whimpering. He puts his arms around himself, he feels the need to whine out loud, he needs -
Oh god oh god oh god. Oh god this isn't happening, this hasn't happened. Oh god, oh god, oh god.
It's so hard to keep the tears in, as he understands what will never have not happened again.
*
Blaine gets a text from Kurt just before lunchtime; Are you free to talk?
He finds a quiet windowseat near the Warblers' practice room and hits call, sits down waiting for Kurt to pick up which takes longer than Blaine had expected, since Kurt was the one who requested the call. "Hey," he says, leaning back, head tipping to look out of the window at the windswept grounds below. "What's up?"
"Blaine," Kurt says, and his voice is trembling. "I don't - know."
Blaine sits up straight, eyebrows coming together with worry. "Are you okay? What's wrong, what happened?"
Kurt pulls in a quick damp gasp, and Blaine listens hard, the wolf in him straining to scent someone on the other side of a telephone when even werewolves can't smell that. "That - do you remember we heard that wolf, that night, we heard a howl -"
Blaine says, "Yes." and stares at his shoe tips, silently urging the conversation faster, he needs to know what's happened.
"I - there's this guy, the guy I chased off as a wolf, he wasn't at school for a few days, I thought he was sick. But he came back and - and -" Kurt's voice has got too high, and he stops for a second, breathes tight and fast, controls it again. "He came back and he's been bitten. He smells like a wolf. He's - he's like us now."
"Oh god," Blaine says quietly, and looks up as a couple of Warblers walk past, gives them a tight smile of greeting and turns away from them, pressing his cell closer to his ear. "Have you - has he -" He tightens his teeth in frustration, waiting until they're away up the corridor while Kurt gives little shaky breaths like he's trying not to cry. Blaine says, very low, "Could he smell it on you too?"
"No. I don't know. He just acted like he always does, shoved me into a locker and - I'm so stupid, I'm sorry, I'm so, so stupid -"
"No you're not, hey, no you're not, you're way smarter than me so don't go around making me feel bad by saying that. What happened?"
Kurt swallows. "I followed him into the locker room to talk to him. He's so angry, all the time he's angry, I worried - he might turn, he won't be able to control it, I knew someone had to help him -"
"What did he say?"
The silence lasts for a long, long time, before Kurt says, very low, "Blaine, he kissed me."
The silence following it lasts longer.
Kurt swallows again. "I didn't even know what was happening until - it was just happening and he was all I could smell and I just - and he stormed off and god Blaine I can't tell my dad I can't he'll go insane and his heart, he was sick last year, he's not supposed to get stressed and he'll never let me out of the house if there's a wolf at my school like this and Karofsky won't know what's happening and he might hurt someone or hurt himself and I don't know what to do, I just, I don't know what to do, I'm so stupid, I should never have just run after him like that, I wasn't thinking, the wolf just -"
Blaine says quietly, "Where are you?"
Kurt sniffs. "The choir room. I didn't know where else to go. I can't - I'm scared to go into the corridors, I'm scared I'll meet him, what if I set him off, what if he - he's always hated me and oh god is that why? Because - I'm scared he'll turn and he won't know what's happening and Blaine I can't fight him and he could -" His voice shakes. "He could kill me. He could kill anyone. I don't know what to do."
Blaine thinks fast, wildly fast, but he keeps running down the same corridors and banging his nose off the same unopening door: he keeps thinking that Kurt should tell his dad, but Kurt won't tell his dad, and he can't think what else is feasible, he can't even understand that. Kurt's dad is his alpha, Kurt should go to him, Kurt should -
The realisation is dropped-pin small, considering that it starts such a landslide in his brain.
Kurt's dad is Kurt's alpha, yes, and he knows that Kurt knows that and responds to that. But Kurt's response is not so simple as obedience, as submission, as following his father in all things and never thinking for himself; Kurt understands the duties he owes in return. Pack is not, Blaine realises, blindly following the wolf ahead. Pack is a web of responsibilities, owed all the way through the structure, no-one gets to switch their brain off and let life run over them, everyone has to work for each other, for the pack.
And Kurt is trying to protect his father, trying to protect his pack, trying to protect his schoolmates, trying to protect this Karofsky guy even, and how the hell is he supposed to be able to protect himself in all this?
It's slow and sinkingly horrible, the realisation of how selfish he's been. To see Kurt's strength and think, Oh, you can carry both of us then, and to not offer his own strength in return. To expect Kurt to set the agenda, to expect Kurt to supply a lead for both of them to follow, to rely on Kurt without offering anything to be relied on in return. He thinks about Kurt's control, begins to understand the ways it's his strength but also a weakness, the part of him that can't relax, the part of him more unsure than he can afford to let people see. And Blaine's let himself believe that Kurt doesn't need him while Kurt backed into this corner hasn't been able to say that he does, he does . . .
Blaine says, "I'm getting in my car. Can you just try to keep away from him until I get there?"
Kurt's breath comes shaky. "Is that - is that the best idea? I don't want him to hurt you."
"It's fine. It'll be better if there's two of us. We make each other stronger, don't we?"
Silence, for another shaking second, before Kurt whispers, "Thank you." and Blaine swallows, standing up before he's even said, "I'll be as quick as I can. I'll see you soon. Be careful."
"Okay," Kurt whispers back, and Blaine hangs up, texts Trent that he's not feeling great and can he give his excuses to their chemistry teacher?, and makes his way out of Dalton with his heart running quick with fear.
A wolf let loose in school, a wolf not knowing what he's capable of. God, oh god, doesn't Blaine know better than anyone what Kurt could be dealing with?
*
Kurt meets him in the parking lot, Kurt wearing this incredible tight-fitting blue coat that makes his eyes burn brilliant blue, and bloodshot. Blaine doesn't know if he's been crying or just trying so hard not to cry, but the first thing he does is touch Kurt's arm, he doesn't even think about it, then he smells the other boy, the other wolf still all over him and he hugs him in immediately. He presses Kurt to his own scent and Kurt clutches at him and gives shaky tight breaths against the side of his neck, chest jumping with what he clearly refuses to allow to become sobs.
He's not okay. He is so obviously and so entirely not okay, and Blaine can't even care how strange they must look, the two boys hugging next to a car, the private school uniform on public school territory, the two mismatched boys holding each other like the world might be ending. Blaine runs a hand down Kurt's shivery back and thinks that for Kurt, today, it sort of already has; nothing can be the same again at this school after this.
"Okay," he says softly to his hair, and Kurt nods, and stands up again. He blinks at Blaine, draws his breath in and back straight, makes himself smile, says, "Okay."
"We need to - we need to talk to him."
"I know. He can't be on his own. He's so volatile anyway, he needs . . . it's not safe."
Blaine screws his nose up at the scent of the other wolf, the other boy, still on Kurt. It was only on the drive over that the fury began to wake in him, the fury of the snarling wolf at the thought - he kissed him. Some other wolf laid a claim on Kurt, did something to him without either Kurt's permission or Blaine's and what the hell does it say about Blaine that he thinks like that? But the wolf does, the wolf does think like that, like someone took one of his toys from him, like they took something of his. And Kurt stands there subtly leaning into Blaine's presence and Blaine wonders if Kurt sees it like that too, as he meets Blaine's eyes and then looks across the parking lot for the school, and his nose twitches. "It shouldn't be too hard to find him."
A wolf in a building full of ordinary teenagers, no, it won't be hard to find him. Like finding a fire in the night, to them.
They've barely skirted a quarter of the building when coming up a staircase - nothing like Dalton, this, no warm wooden curves, this is like being in a harsh-edged concrete and metal cage - Blaine catches that scent, that scent on Kurt, and Kurt says quietly, "That's him." Blaine looks up at the guy turning the corner above them. Some big jock in a letterman jacket and Blaine's wolf bares its teeth at the boy who kissed Kurt, hurt Kurt, but Blaine makes his face steady because every muscle in Kurt has gone tight.
He says, "I've got your back," and walks straight for the big jock, as Kurt's mouth opens and after a second's hesitation he says, "Karofsky -"
Karofsky glances at them and Blaine sees some curl of contempt cover the fear on his face, and his own fists tighten a little. The jock says dismissively, "Hey ladyboys. This your boyfriend, Kurt?" and moves to walk past them both, and Blaine says coolly, "Kurt told me what happened to you and what you did to him."
He's past Blaine already but he stops, turns just a little, line of his shoulder a threat. "Yeah?" He shrugs. "What happened?"
Kurt says breathlessly, despair more than an accusation, "You kissed me."
Karofsky's eyes immediately flit the staircase, checking there's no-one to hear, no-one to know, his lip twitching over his teeth like a nervous wolf. "Don't know what you're talkin' about."
Blaine says, keeping his voice level, "Something happened to you that might have made your impulses harder for you to control. It's very normal and natural. There's nothing wrong with you, you just need to -"
"Don't know what the hell you're talkin' about," Karofsky snaps back, and turns to walk down the stairs again. Blaine follows him to the top step to say down at him, "It's not a bad thing, it's hard to come to terms with and it's perfectly natural to be confused -"
Karofsky turns to face him like a lunging wolf. Blaine's entire body goes rigid, the impulse is just to turn. To meet this aggression with his own aggression, attack as defence, because Karofsky isn't a human but a wolf like Blaine and when he bangs him back into the metal cage surrounding the staircase, what Blaine is aware of are Karofsky's teeth and his own throat. The impulse is to turn, to kill before he can be killed, to tear this thick-skulled jock's neck open before he can do it to Blaine. But he holds his hands up, fighting every instinct with all he's got, because there's Kurt there to protect, Kurt to not let this turn into a wolf-fight for, as Karofsky barks at him, "Hell do you think-"
He didn't even see Kurt move to be there, but Kurt shoves Karofsky back snarling at him, "You have to stop this!" and then stands there between Blaine and Karofsky, hands in fists and quivering with wolf, a second from turning himself, Blaine can smell how hot and high his wolf-scent has gone. "Can't you tell what's happened? You got bitten by a wolf and now you feel all crazy and things must smell more and you know that something's different -"
Karofsky backs off, slashing a hand at them. "-cking crazy-" he chokes.
Blaine watches Karofsky from over Kurt's shoulder, Kurt's shoulder quivering to protect Blaine now, while Kurt snaps at him, "It's not crazy and you know it's not because it's happening to you and if you don't control it -"
Karofsky stares into Kurt's eyes for one more wild second and then he turns and runs away head down, around the corner of the staircase and gone, and Blaine finally begins to relax a little. It's the first properly submissive, the first obedient to any intelligence wolf or human, the first sensible behaviour Karofsky's displayed so far: he came up against a stronger wolf and he backed off. It's not good. But it really could have been a lot, lot worse.
He says to lighten the mood, because Kurt's still standing there staring after him, stricken and all but panting from containing the wolf, "Well, he's not coming out anytime soon."
Kurt lowers his head a little, draws a long breath in, touches his forehead. He looks dazedly around and then sits on one of the steps, dropping his satchel so he can cradle his head in both hands now, eyes closed. "Hey," Blaine says, walking to his shoulder, sitting next to him. "Hey, what's wrong? Why're you so upset . . . ?"
Kurt swallows, and wets his lips. He lifts his head, eyes closed to the sky for a moment, then says, "Because until this morning, I had never been kissed." He gives a little attempt of an amused shrug. "Or at least, one that counted. And he - if I hadn't been a wolf." He closes his eyes again. "I don't know if I would still be alive. Or - I don't know." He picks at his fingers. "He could have done anything to me. That's what I'm worried about. He could do anything to anyone. He's too strong and he doesn't understand it, and I don't know what to do."
Blaine watches his face, turned in profile because Kurt seems to be avoiding looking directly at him, and Blaine says, "I don't think he'll attack anyone else. He's scared more than anything, and I doubt a guy like him's getting the sort of hassle you feel like you need to fight back against."
"Apart from me," Kurt says wearily. "Apparently I really am so very threatening."
"You're terrifying," Blaine confirms, and rubs his back. "C'mon. Let me buy you lunch."
Part 2 of part IV
Disclaimer: They don't actually have tails and paws in the series. Alas.
Rating: R! As in, not for children. I don't write for kids, sorry, I just don't, all warnings from previous parts still apply.
Summary: "You really don't utilise your full potential, Porcelain."
Note: I am beginning to approach not being so entirely far behind with comments! I'm not only about two weeks late as opposed to a month, anyway ^^; Bear with me, I'm on my way, thank you for your patience <3
Kurt makes it all the way to lunch without getting so much as tripped, which at first only makes him more wary - they are planning something, clearly, and the wolf in him ripples with wanting to growl out loud - before he overhears in the lunch queue that Karofsky's not at school today, he's sick or something.
Choirs of angels sing.
The immediate impulse is to text Blaine, Kurt feels happy and he just wants to share it with Blaine, oh god he wouldn't even understand, Some guy you've never met is sick, best day ever! :D. It really doesn't make Kurt the nicest person in the world, does it? He and his wolf roll their eyes, share a small private smile; so today he is happy and no-one knows why, and Kurt feels faintly guilty about how happy he is but mostly just happy. His phone buzzes in his hand, and it catches in his chest that it's Blaine.
Gym class smells like feeeeet.
His mouth twitches too much of a smile, he texts back, Which do you hate more: gym class or chemistry?
Mercedes says, "You wanna come over tonight? Tina wants help dyeing her hair."
Kurt says, "Mm?" as Blaine replies, Oh god, don't make me choose, classes of *death*, why do they *smell* so much :(
"Earth to Hummel?" Mercedes says. "You up for a date with me, Tina and a bottle of Blue Haired Freak tonight?"
"I, uh, can't, I-" His phone buzzes again. Biology! Blaine has texted. I made my mind up, biology is the worst.
Mercedes scowls. "Who're you texting?"
Kurt says, "Just Finn." and quickly texts back, Did they make you do the dissections? I had to leave the room. They still bring that up. "I can't, tonight, family stuff. I love those shoes with those pants, you were totally right about getting them in black -"
Mercedes narrows one eye. "What are you trying to distract me from?"
Kurt's phone buzzes. "Nothing," he says brightly. "Nothing at all. Ooh look, salad!"
Blaine's text reads, I had a selective migraine. I pretty much did from the smell of pickled cat corpse, oh my god.
Kurt swallows the laugh behind a hand, and Mercedes glances back at him, a slow look of weighing up what exactly to call him out on, but then she rolls her eyes and grabs a tray instead.
*
Can you come out tonight?
(Oh god every text makes his stomach gulp.)
I'm grounded, Blaine.
Can I come over tonight?
(You have no idea how dangerous you being in my room is. I feel like I might fall on you.)
Do you not have homework?
Homework date!
(God oh god don't write date.)
You are a bad influence on me.
I thought I was an animal influence on you.
(I wish I knew what you're doing to me, Blaine.)
Maybe both. Are you any good at math?
If I say yes then is the homework date more likely?
(Why do you want to see me so much . . . ?)
I'll tell my dad you'll pull me up a grade, shall I?
1 + 1 = ?
(Please be less adorable I think I'm going into organ failure.)
I won't show him that text.
See you soon!
(My lungs are counting the seconds down already. I can't breathe.)
See you :)
*
Kurt knows Ways of approaching his father. They've been such an enclosed unit for so long, so completely co-reliant for so long, they know each other more than well enough. His dad's reading the newspaper in his armchair in front of the TV when Kurt leans through the doorway, not quite into the room, and says, "So, exactly how grounded am I?"
"That depends on why you're asking," his dad says evenly into the newspaper.
"Because Blaine said he could help me with my math homework and I really need the help."
His dad says nothing into the newspaper.
Kurt says, "I really need the help, Dad, he's actually good at it."
His dad says nothing into the newspaper.
"I thought it'd be nice if we could do something that wasn't about being a wolf for once."
His dad says nothing into the newspaper.
Kurt says, "So I thought maybe we could meet at the library or something and-"
"You're not going out." His dad looks up from the paper, finally, and narrows his eyes at him. "He comes here."
Kurt smiles his brightest smile. "I'll text and tell him, thanks Dad!"
Wolves are very straightforward. Teenage boys are not necessarily so.
*
Blaine sits cross-legged on Kurt's bedroom floor, history textbook open in his lap, while Kurt lays next to him on his stomach with his crossed ankles in the air, flicking thoughtfully behind him. He has a habit of spinning his pen in his fingers like a baton while he thinks, cheek propped on the heel of his hand and eyes roaming his homework, elbow an elegant angle on the floor. History is proving quite difficult to concentrate on.
It's strange how little they need to talk to distract each other. Or not strange, really, little moments of eye-contact, moments of being aware of the other being aware of the particular tension of a muscle, little rise-and-falls of scent. The familiarity of Kurt nearby is ridiculous, all-consuming in the comfort it offers, Blaine wants to drop his book and lay down with his head resting on that inwards curve of his back, he wants to sigh there like a satisfied wolf, home now.
All day he's been thinking of this. He didn't want to let his phone out of his hand, his lifeline to Kurt. He doesn't understand his own need until he's a wolf and he does, but then he's a boy again and there's Kurt the boy and exactly how fair is it to expect Kurt to unquestioningly be there for Blaine when he hardly even knows him . . . ?
Kurt flicks his pen rapid and rhythmic. "I wish you actually were good at math."
"Can't be good at everything," Blaine says, and makes himself remove his eyes from boring a hole into Kurt's back. How can backs be so beautiful? He's never even really thought about people's backs before, is everyone's like that? The lovely taper of it downwards, the width of his shoulders to his waist, god, the geometry of his body is based on angel's equations . . .
He's staring at his back again. He makes himself not. "How are you with the French Revolution?"
Kurt tips his hand like a wave tilting. "Un petit peu. What are you studying?"
Your back. No, wait. "Um, Robespierre. Who was not an especially nice person."
"C'est vrai?" Kurt says, sweet curl of sarcasm in his tongue like chilli in chocolate, wickedly unexpected. He sits up, and Blaine makes himself not watch his sides flex under his shirt as he does. "Yours is still more interesting than mine. Swap with me?"
"I thought I was being the bad influence on you."
Kurt blinks angelic with innocence at him, and Blaine laughs out loud and god he can't stop staring at how it burns Kurt's grin brighter, he can't bear it, how the hell is he supposed to concentrate on dead Frenchmen when there's Kurt there and Blaine's wolf is keening for him on the inside - ?
. . . Kurt who flicks his eyes downwards, and tugs his cuff down a little, rubs his wrist. "How," he says to the carpet. "How was school?"
". . . it was okay. It was good. How was your day?" Blaine remembers some of how Kurt's described his days at McKinley, and his face tightens a little. "Did anyone bother you?"
"What? No. Oh, well, I got shoved a little between classes, that always happens. It doesn't mean anything."
"How can it not mean anything?"
"They only do it because they're supposed to do it most of the time. I can tell when they really hate me, it wasn't, today was okay." He looks to the side again, the way his head tips stretches his neck long and the lamplight runs over the revealed skin and Blaine tightens his hand around his pen until it hurts to make himself look away. "Today was fine, actually, um, but - my friends are beginning to notice that I haven't actually not been texting you for more than thirty seconds at a time, and I do need to - to mention you, to them, at some point."
Blaine leans back on his hands, grins. "Have you been keeping me a secret?"
"Shut up, Blaine," Kurt sings, pink-faced, to the ceiling. "I have to tell them about you, what am I supposed to tell them? Where did we meet?"
His eyebrows lower. "We met - oh. Oh. Um, how about a coffee shop?"
"Okay. I was behind you in the queue."
"I let you go ahead because you seemed to be in a hurry."
"You're such a gentleman like that."
"We got talking while we waited for our orders. I was charming."
"I was delightful."
"We swapped numbers."
"You came for dinner last night."
"And here we are."
They look at each other. They look away. Here they are.
Where are they?
Blaine tries to think if he had met Kurt in a coffee shop, if he had got talking to him in a queue. If he wasn't a wolf, if Kurt wasn't a wolf, if they didn't smell each other and know each other, if they were just two guys, where would they be now? Maybe still sitting on Kurt's bedroom floor but as - as -
He's never before felt like 'friend' isn't enough of a word, what could be better than a friend? What - what does Kurt want them to be? Kurt's now looking down at his math homework again, still a little warm with embarrassed blood in his cheeks but apparently intent on the quadratic equation. The control Kurt has over himself makes his scent less easy to read, Blaine is fairly certain that Kurt must have smelled Blaine's moments of sudden overwhelming interest but - but he's on Kurt's territory, and he follows Kurt's lead, and it's confusing when he doesn't know what Kurt's lead is. Kurt's lead is currently, apparently, to be a good boy, to sit and behave. So Blaine does. He looks away from Kurt's eyes cast down to his homework and thinks, Behave.
I can tell when they really hate me.
Yeah. Blaine had been able to tell too. His eyes find themselves drawn to Kurt again, Kurt rubbing an eye while he scribbles at his math homework, Kurt who doesn't have the cocoon Blaine's been living in for a while now. He wonders if that's where strength comes from, if you have to forge it in fire. Which . . . would explain . . . so, so much. Too much. Far too much.
He tries not to remember, he looks away, he doesn't want to remember. He isn't that anymore. He isn't capable of being that anymore. Not with Kurt there, not with Kurt there, Kurt wouldn't let him be, he's not that -
Kurt tosses his pen down and announces, "Study break."
Blaine doesn't argue, drops his book to the side and stands up to get a really good stretch. "God I could go for being a wolf right now. Get all the knots out." He twists his shoulders left and right and Kurt sits there on the floor, looking up at him. Blaine grins an apologetic grin. "I know your dad would totally mind."
Kurt looks away, shrugs. "I've never - I've never wanted to change just for fun."
"Seriously?"
Kurt's thumb runs over the pads of his own fingers like really he's thinking about paws. "It worries my dad. It worries me. What people think about - it, us." He looks up at Blaine again, his eyes all seachange blue-touched-turquoise, curious and bright and so slightly concerned. "Sometimes I think what worries him most is how much the wolf actually is me, how much I actually am the wolf. Do you ever feel that? I know you've - had it for less time, it's been half my life now, I just -" He closes his eyes for a second, finding the right words. "- it's hard to tell what is me and what is the wolf. So when, if people saw the wolf, if people were scared of the wolf and hated it and tried to hurt it, it's me, really. It's only me. And I don't think he can bear thinking about how much they would hate me."
Blaine murmurs, "Fairy tales."
Something in Kurt's face drops, a fraction of a second of horrible, gut-twisted openness. "What?"
"I - sorry. Just, you know, prince in a tower." He waves a hand at the room, grins apologetically, and Kurt's throat pulses before he narrows his eyebrows in, voice coming raspy at first.
"And what does that make you? Dragon or knight?" He begins to smile slyly. "Or are you calling my dad a dragon?"
Blaine gives a rolling grinning shrug, rubs his nose, walks over to look at Kurt's photographs on the bookshelves; his friends, his family. No sign of the wolf, of course. "That's what you think about when you think about fairy tales?" Kurt says. "Not -"
He stops. Blaine leans down to a picture of a woman holding a little boy in a bow tie, not a woman's face he knows. "Not what?"
"Not little old grannies getting eaten and woodcutters chopping open stomachs?"
"I have never in my life wanted to eat an old lady, so, no." He folds his arms, focuses on a glee club photograph, a big group of smiling teenagers with Kurt looking oddly isolated in the back row - not quite tall enough to be there, but not quite short enough for the front row either. "I know what you mean. What people would - think."
Kurt's silent on the floor behind him. Blaine swallows.
"But I know what you mean about the wolf, too. It - it's still there even when you're a person. Its decisions, your decisions, they're all . . . it changes everything. It's part of who you are. The only thing is . . . humans can't be animals, can we? We can't do what the wolf wants, the wolf makes it too simple, we have all these - these rules to follow and -"
"They would hate us. If they knew how simple the wolf makes it." Kurt picks himself off the floor and stretches, and Blaine keeps his back to him so he can't watch as Kurt goes over to skim his laptop awake by its mouse pad. "I."
He stops, and Blaine turns to him, sees something in his face as he looks away, something horrible and small and raw before he controls it. He says, each word soft and somehow like it's scraping his throat, "I really don't want to be hated even more."
And Blaine should walk to him, put a hand on his shoulder, put his arms around him, breathe in at his throat and sigh out happy the way a wolf would, to let him know that he likes him, it's fine.
But he's a human with books and books of human rules to follow, so he looks to the side again and says roughly, "Yeah. Do you want to catch a movie this weekend?"
*
Back in his bedroom, Blaine closes the door behind himself, drops his schoolbag, then stops kidding himself and just locks the door. He loses clothes as he walks to the window, opening it for the air, and it smells like February night and rain tomorrow as he unknots his tie.
Wolf-muscles are a relief, he bounds onto his bed and sticks his head under his pillow, comes out with a scrap of white material in his teeth, which he drapes just so over the covers before he lays his head on it, and sighs, and closes his eyes.
I know this scent. Why?
Night breezes run through his fur like cool fingers. For once he doesn't want to run, he just wants to be, to be with this scent, trying to think through thinking this through. Something so troubling about Kurt's presence, so easing to him that he's distressed by not understanding why they have to part, why they have to have these boundaries, why there's skin between them. The urge around Kurt, the too-much around Kurt, the want around Kurt -
Kurt's the alpha, Kurt's in charge. Blaine will follow Kurt's lead.
He yawns, and rests his chin over the scrap of torn cloth, and settles to sleep.
*
It rains that morning, and someone's written FAG across his locker in permanent marker again, which irritates Kurt for the sheer irrationality of it; are they writing it there because they think he doesn't know?
Kurt Hummel's household and beyond cleaning tips: nail polish remover will get most of everything off the shiny metal surface of a locker door. He's got most of the F off when someone stops at his back and watches him for a little while, then says, "You okay there, Porcelain?"
"I'm perfect, Coach." he says, stepping back a little to scowl at his progress, F mostly gone and the rest of it smudged and blurry, then he tears off some more cotton wool and soaks it, and goes back to scrubbing.
Coach Sylvester says, "You know who did it?"
Kurt says to his locker door, "Does it make a difference?"
"Well, you'd hate for your revenge to misfire, you want to strike hard and nasty and accurate when it comes to it."
"My revenge will be living fabulously, but thank you, Coach."
Coach Sylvester gives a little sigh and says, "You really don't utilise your full potential, Porcelain." and walks off. Kurt just keeps scrubbing, F gone now. Nail polish remover smells far too intense, they're still not so many days from the moon, the chemicals burn the inside of his nose. He sniffs speculatively but it's too hard to place who must have hung around his locker to do it, the corridor is full of the smell of students, all those teenage bodies boiling with petty hormones and cheap body sprays, and the locker room's not so far away and Kurt really wishes that he couldn't smell that quite so much.
He gets a text from Blaine just as he's finishing up, the last streaky smudges cleaned off; How long do you think until your dad lets you out alone with me?
Kurt texts back, All alone with the big bad wolf? I don't know.
I'm not so bad ;) Blaine texts back, and Kurt's trying not too grin too much as he closes his locker door again, texting, You're not so *big*, Blaine. and Mercedes bangs his shoulder. "What up." She glances at his phone, says wryly, "Finn?"
"Um," Kurt pockets it. "No. I met this - guy."
Something in her eyes is so surprised before it lights. She grabs his arm so he can't get away and marches him down the corridor saying, "Tell me everything."
Kurt's phone buzzes Blaine's reply (:(). He lets what's immediate rush over him, lets it cover the memory of another locker defacement, but when he takes his cell out to check the text, his fingers still smell of nail polish remover.
*
It's a weird week.
Karofsky's off school for three days, three days in which Kurt's life is easier if not perfect. The football team still like to knock him aside in corridors and Azimio slushies him on Wednesday just to remind him that he can, but he wasn't lying to Blaine, he can tell when it's hate and when it's just morons going through the motions. He understands the pack mentalities within high school, and they intend to dump him at the very bottom like it makes their position at the top any safer, and Kurt's under no obligation to accept that. They're not his pack. Their opinion is irrelevant.
And every night, Blaine. They can't meet on Wednesday, glee practise runs too late for both of them and Kurt's dad is still being all huffy, so they Skype instead. They talk about sort of everything. Wolves, yes, and what the world is like to them, the ten thousand things they never have been able to say out loud, things they've always had to bottle inside, things that are real to them and matter to them but they've had to silence them, had to be silent about them, and now they don't. Everything: scents, sounds, the feelings so simple of a wolf, the knowing and the trust and distrust, and how they can't begin to understand how humans can make such a simple world so complicated.
That howl they heard. They speculate on it but neither of them has so much as scented another wolf around since, so they don't know what it means. Kurt's concerned for Blaine - doesn't like the possibility of another wolf wandering around near Blaine, some sheepdog instinct in him wants to corral Blaine somewhere safe away from it - and concerned for the people he loves, because he can't be there to keep them safe if he doesn't even know where the other wolf is. It's sort of hard to worry, though, while he talks to Blaine. So there's another wolf out there, somewhere; it's not like that ever hasn't been true, and Blaine is very distracting, so.
More than the wolves, though, they talk about everything. They tease each other over their favourite movies and their iTunes libraries, discuss the news (someone who actually cares about the ever-present undercurrent of impoverished gay rights in this country almost makes Kurt's throat close with suddenly not feeling alone), they dip into reality TV and Broadway shows and Kurt just gets lost in him, Blaine the quickest current in the world, sweeping him under and he's gone (why would he fight the drowning when he knows that he wants to submerge?).
He thinks that he knows what he wants, even though he tells Mercedes they're just friends. Maybe unless you're sure you know. The excitement like a panicking bird in him, the catastrophe of need he feels, he doesn't know how he's supposed to contain it if he can't let it run over into Blaine as well, there's just too much of it all. It panics him it's so much. And Blaine -
Maybe unless you're sure you know.
If Blaine was sure, wouldn't he have done something?
All those times Kurt's smelled his interest peak and shift, the couple of times he's sensed actual arousal in him (something hot-cold scared-aroused in his own stomach to spark that in another boy), but Blaine keeps his distance and is respectful and friendly and puppyish-innocent, and he trusts Kurt, and he (Kurt's very dominant) follows Kurt's lead. So Kurt doesn't push for anything Blaine doesn't want. He smiles until it hurts at all Blaine's stupid jokes, smiles and stares at him and aches with want, smiles until it hurts.
Then on Friday Karofsky's back at school.
Kurt's checking through his folder of English notes at his locker when something tickles too hard in his nose and he wrinkles it and - lifts his head, face gone numb white, not understanding the scent while his inner wolf's fur lifts and shivers. He smells -
Not Blaine, something so confused in him says, completely incomprehending, it's not Blaine -
His eyes search the corridor, face to face, breathing quick and tight trying to draw the scent of it sensibly in, he doesn't understand.
Then he sees Karofsky walking towards him and his nostrils flare, and Kurt's mouth opens but nothing comes out. He just stands there stupid as a manikin while Karofsky's mouth curls with contempt and he spits, "What you looking at, fag?" and shoves him so hard back into his locker that his folder hits the floor and his bones rattle.
And still all he can do is stare, while his inner wolf is rigid-muscled and growling in absolute horror of the fact of his scent: David Karofsky smells of wolf.
Karofsky's walking off, into the locker room ahead, while Kurt stands there heart pounding and whole body quivering a little in confusion, so, so far from understanding. He's off school for three days and he comes back smelling like wolf and oh god that howl they heard on Monday night and Kurt's breath comes out of him shaking, what does he do? Does Karofsky - does he knows, does he understand, oh god if he doesn't know he could turn at school he could do anything if Kurt hadn't had his dad how the hell would he have coped with his first moon - ?
And the smell of him makes Kurt shrink, but he remembers, he remembers and he swallows, Kurt's very dominant.
He has to do it. There's no-one else to do it. He just has to. He just has to.
He leaves his folder on the corridor floor and his locker door wide open, he's not thinking, he can't think. He follows Karofsky into the empty locker room where he's taken his jacket off and he's got a bandage taped to his right forearm, and he shoots Kurt a look (Kurt knows when they really hate him) and says, "Girls' locker room's next door, Hummel."
". . . Karofsky," Kurt says, his voice coming cracked, he has to clear his throat. "Did - you get - bitten?"
He - hesitates, leaning into a locker, then mutters, "- any of your business. What the hell're you doin' in here while I'm changing anyway, I don't want you looking at my junk-"
The scent of him is too much, Kurt hardly dares to move, and his voice comes too breathy. "Was it a wolf?"
Karofsky stares at him. Kurt can see in his eyes even if he couldn't smell it, the spike of confusion and then furious distrustful hate. "How many wolves you see in Lima? Who told you - just get out of my face, Hummel."
"Karofsky," Kurt snaps back, angry himself now, that scent is driving him so fear-crazy the wolf's anger is picking up to cover it. "It was a wolf, a wolf bit you, that was no big dog, can't you - has it kicked in yet, can't you smell it?"
"Smell the hell what you creepy little fairy, you perving on me while I'm changing? Get the hell out of my-"
Kurt takes two strides towards him, inner wolf snarling, inner boy angry as well now because god this is serious and Karofsky doesn't remotely understand. "That wasn't a dog and it wasn't an ordinary wolf and oh my god in which universe would I be interested in looking at you anyway you chubby sweaty remarkably unremarkable primate, you must know, this is serious, this is really, really serious, you need to understand - you can't always control it, you can't let it happen here, if anyone sees -"
Something red hot in Karofsky's face as he slams the locker door closed and storms into Kurt's space. "If anyone sees what? What the hell do you think you're saying to me?"
Karofsky this close he has to tilt his head to look up at him. He can smell Karofsky's rage and fear and the meaty smell of his healing arm and the wolf in him, the rising furious wolf in him, he senses the sheer size the wolf will be and his own fear, his own rage, are stoking themselves high to face he doesn't even know what. "You have to understand, something has changed you, you can't pretend it's not -"
"Get out of my face, Hummel!"
"You're not the same, can't you feel it? You know you're not-"
"Hell are you saying?" Karofsky yells into his face and Kurt snarls right back, "You will never be the same again and you need to understand how to-"
His sentence gets swallowed, then, nowhere for it to go, because there's a hot wet mouth over his and a sweaty hand digging into the side of his face and the fear is everything, in that moment. He can't breathe through the smell of him, Kurt feels obliterated by his scent, too much of it too close and his body and brain just shut down, even the wolf is dumb. What is happening to him is beyond any understanding. All he can do is be happened to.
Karofsky pulls his mouth back, and looks at Kurt's eyes - Kurt just stares at him, overpowered by the scent of him, understanding the size of the wolf of him, all but hanging from his hand, blank with terror. Then Karofsky's eyes lower and he moves his mouth in again, and Kurt smells -
He shoves him back with a sharp high yelp, twisting into a snarl as he staggers a step back - he propelled himself backwards more than he shoved Karofsky away, their weight difference becomes all he can see as Karofsky stares at him, his wolf will be enormous. His wolf will be -
The rage that twists Karofsky's face would have been terrifying were Kurt just a human, to see the purity of the hatred there. But it's his scent, hot with excitement and hate and rage and an underlying still-rising arousal that pulls the fear through him until he can't even see around it, everything in the world is that scent and what might happen and what is happening. Karofsky stands over him and Kurt in that second recoils, mouth wet with someone else's spit and too afraid to do anything, everything he is is wiped out by fear.
But then wolf, boy, he doesn't know which, knows that if all he does is cringe then Karofsky's new and unknown and uncontrolled wolf could do anything. Karofsky doesn't understand what's happened to him but his wolf understands power, his wolf understands dominance, and his wolf could - the wolf could -
Kurt's back hardens, his teeth clench, his hands tighten to fists, his chest raises, if Karofsky even twitches like he might turn then Kurt will have to turn first. All he can hope is that experience will give him enough of an edge to survive to run. The size of him. He draws in everything he is and puts it all into his body and his scent, his muscles tremble in their tightness, Kurt's very dominant, he throws every part of himself into projecting all the alpha he can be and he sees the flicker in Karofsky's eyes as he understands that without understanding it. His wolf understands it, and the human, confused, blinks, and takes in a shaky breath suddenly faced with someone it can't crumple - and then he turns and all but runs out of the room. He's gone so quickly that Kurt's muscles don't even relax for a second, too much too soon, he can't.
But then he sags, then he wants to whimper, he tries to touch his mouth and can't, he can feel the tackiness of Karofsky's drying spit there and nausea swings up, he stumbles to sit and shake on a bench, his wolf only now beginning to back away, whimpering. He puts his arms around himself, he feels the need to whine out loud, he needs -
Oh god oh god oh god. Oh god this isn't happening, this hasn't happened. Oh god, oh god, oh god.
It's so hard to keep the tears in, as he understands what will never have not happened again.
*
Blaine gets a text from Kurt just before lunchtime; Are you free to talk?
He finds a quiet windowseat near the Warblers' practice room and hits call, sits down waiting for Kurt to pick up which takes longer than Blaine had expected, since Kurt was the one who requested the call. "Hey," he says, leaning back, head tipping to look out of the window at the windswept grounds below. "What's up?"
"Blaine," Kurt says, and his voice is trembling. "I don't - know."
Blaine sits up straight, eyebrows coming together with worry. "Are you okay? What's wrong, what happened?"
Kurt pulls in a quick damp gasp, and Blaine listens hard, the wolf in him straining to scent someone on the other side of a telephone when even werewolves can't smell that. "That - do you remember we heard that wolf, that night, we heard a howl -"
Blaine says, "Yes." and stares at his shoe tips, silently urging the conversation faster, he needs to know what's happened.
"I - there's this guy, the guy I chased off as a wolf, he wasn't at school for a few days, I thought he was sick. But he came back and - and -" Kurt's voice has got too high, and he stops for a second, breathes tight and fast, controls it again. "He came back and he's been bitten. He smells like a wolf. He's - he's like us now."
"Oh god," Blaine says quietly, and looks up as a couple of Warblers walk past, gives them a tight smile of greeting and turns away from them, pressing his cell closer to his ear. "Have you - has he -" He tightens his teeth in frustration, waiting until they're away up the corridor while Kurt gives little shaky breaths like he's trying not to cry. Blaine says, very low, "Could he smell it on you too?"
"No. I don't know. He just acted like he always does, shoved me into a locker and - I'm so stupid, I'm sorry, I'm so, so stupid -"
"No you're not, hey, no you're not, you're way smarter than me so don't go around making me feel bad by saying that. What happened?"
Kurt swallows. "I followed him into the locker room to talk to him. He's so angry, all the time he's angry, I worried - he might turn, he won't be able to control it, I knew someone had to help him -"
"What did he say?"
The silence lasts for a long, long time, before Kurt says, very low, "Blaine, he kissed me."
The silence following it lasts longer.
Kurt swallows again. "I didn't even know what was happening until - it was just happening and he was all I could smell and I just - and he stormed off and god Blaine I can't tell my dad I can't he'll go insane and his heart, he was sick last year, he's not supposed to get stressed and he'll never let me out of the house if there's a wolf at my school like this and Karofsky won't know what's happening and he might hurt someone or hurt himself and I don't know what to do, I just, I don't know what to do, I'm so stupid, I should never have just run after him like that, I wasn't thinking, the wolf just -"
Blaine says quietly, "Where are you?"
Kurt sniffs. "The choir room. I didn't know where else to go. I can't - I'm scared to go into the corridors, I'm scared I'll meet him, what if I set him off, what if he - he's always hated me and oh god is that why? Because - I'm scared he'll turn and he won't know what's happening and Blaine I can't fight him and he could -" His voice shakes. "He could kill me. He could kill anyone. I don't know what to do."
Blaine thinks fast, wildly fast, but he keeps running down the same corridors and banging his nose off the same unopening door: he keeps thinking that Kurt should tell his dad, but Kurt won't tell his dad, and he can't think what else is feasible, he can't even understand that. Kurt's dad is his alpha, Kurt should go to him, Kurt should -
The realisation is dropped-pin small, considering that it starts such a landslide in his brain.
Kurt's dad is Kurt's alpha, yes, and he knows that Kurt knows that and responds to that. But Kurt's response is not so simple as obedience, as submission, as following his father in all things and never thinking for himself; Kurt understands the duties he owes in return. Pack is not, Blaine realises, blindly following the wolf ahead. Pack is a web of responsibilities, owed all the way through the structure, no-one gets to switch their brain off and let life run over them, everyone has to work for each other, for the pack.
And Kurt is trying to protect his father, trying to protect his pack, trying to protect his schoolmates, trying to protect this Karofsky guy even, and how the hell is he supposed to be able to protect himself in all this?
It's slow and sinkingly horrible, the realisation of how selfish he's been. To see Kurt's strength and think, Oh, you can carry both of us then, and to not offer his own strength in return. To expect Kurt to set the agenda, to expect Kurt to supply a lead for both of them to follow, to rely on Kurt without offering anything to be relied on in return. He thinks about Kurt's control, begins to understand the ways it's his strength but also a weakness, the part of him that can't relax, the part of him more unsure than he can afford to let people see. And Blaine's let himself believe that Kurt doesn't need him while Kurt backed into this corner hasn't been able to say that he does, he does . . .
Blaine says, "I'm getting in my car. Can you just try to keep away from him until I get there?"
Kurt's breath comes shaky. "Is that - is that the best idea? I don't want him to hurt you."
"It's fine. It'll be better if there's two of us. We make each other stronger, don't we?"
Silence, for another shaking second, before Kurt whispers, "Thank you." and Blaine swallows, standing up before he's even said, "I'll be as quick as I can. I'll see you soon. Be careful."
"Okay," Kurt whispers back, and Blaine hangs up, texts Trent that he's not feeling great and can he give his excuses to their chemistry teacher?, and makes his way out of Dalton with his heart running quick with fear.
A wolf let loose in school, a wolf not knowing what he's capable of. God, oh god, doesn't Blaine know better than anyone what Kurt could be dealing with?
*
Kurt meets him in the parking lot, Kurt wearing this incredible tight-fitting blue coat that makes his eyes burn brilliant blue, and bloodshot. Blaine doesn't know if he's been crying or just trying so hard not to cry, but the first thing he does is touch Kurt's arm, he doesn't even think about it, then he smells the other boy, the other wolf still all over him and he hugs him in immediately. He presses Kurt to his own scent and Kurt clutches at him and gives shaky tight breaths against the side of his neck, chest jumping with what he clearly refuses to allow to become sobs.
He's not okay. He is so obviously and so entirely not okay, and Blaine can't even care how strange they must look, the two boys hugging next to a car, the private school uniform on public school territory, the two mismatched boys holding each other like the world might be ending. Blaine runs a hand down Kurt's shivery back and thinks that for Kurt, today, it sort of already has; nothing can be the same again at this school after this.
"Okay," he says softly to his hair, and Kurt nods, and stands up again. He blinks at Blaine, draws his breath in and back straight, makes himself smile, says, "Okay."
"We need to - we need to talk to him."
"I know. He can't be on his own. He's so volatile anyway, he needs . . . it's not safe."
Blaine screws his nose up at the scent of the other wolf, the other boy, still on Kurt. It was only on the drive over that the fury began to wake in him, the fury of the snarling wolf at the thought - he kissed him. Some other wolf laid a claim on Kurt, did something to him without either Kurt's permission or Blaine's and what the hell does it say about Blaine that he thinks like that? But the wolf does, the wolf does think like that, like someone took one of his toys from him, like they took something of his. And Kurt stands there subtly leaning into Blaine's presence and Blaine wonders if Kurt sees it like that too, as he meets Blaine's eyes and then looks across the parking lot for the school, and his nose twitches. "It shouldn't be too hard to find him."
A wolf in a building full of ordinary teenagers, no, it won't be hard to find him. Like finding a fire in the night, to them.
They've barely skirted a quarter of the building when coming up a staircase - nothing like Dalton, this, no warm wooden curves, this is like being in a harsh-edged concrete and metal cage - Blaine catches that scent, that scent on Kurt, and Kurt says quietly, "That's him." Blaine looks up at the guy turning the corner above them. Some big jock in a letterman jacket and Blaine's wolf bares its teeth at the boy who kissed Kurt, hurt Kurt, but Blaine makes his face steady because every muscle in Kurt has gone tight.
He says, "I've got your back," and walks straight for the big jock, as Kurt's mouth opens and after a second's hesitation he says, "Karofsky -"
Karofsky glances at them and Blaine sees some curl of contempt cover the fear on his face, and his own fists tighten a little. The jock says dismissively, "Hey ladyboys. This your boyfriend, Kurt?" and moves to walk past them both, and Blaine says coolly, "Kurt told me what happened to you and what you did to him."
He's past Blaine already but he stops, turns just a little, line of his shoulder a threat. "Yeah?" He shrugs. "What happened?"
Kurt says breathlessly, despair more than an accusation, "You kissed me."
Karofsky's eyes immediately flit the staircase, checking there's no-one to hear, no-one to know, his lip twitching over his teeth like a nervous wolf. "Don't know what you're talkin' about."
Blaine says, keeping his voice level, "Something happened to you that might have made your impulses harder for you to control. It's very normal and natural. There's nothing wrong with you, you just need to -"
"Don't know what the hell you're talkin' about," Karofsky snaps back, and turns to walk down the stairs again. Blaine follows him to the top step to say down at him, "It's not a bad thing, it's hard to come to terms with and it's perfectly natural to be confused -"
Karofsky turns to face him like a lunging wolf. Blaine's entire body goes rigid, the impulse is just to turn. To meet this aggression with his own aggression, attack as defence, because Karofsky isn't a human but a wolf like Blaine and when he bangs him back into the metal cage surrounding the staircase, what Blaine is aware of are Karofsky's teeth and his own throat. The impulse is to turn, to kill before he can be killed, to tear this thick-skulled jock's neck open before he can do it to Blaine. But he holds his hands up, fighting every instinct with all he's got, because there's Kurt there to protect, Kurt to not let this turn into a wolf-fight for, as Karofsky barks at him, "Hell do you think-"
He didn't even see Kurt move to be there, but Kurt shoves Karofsky back snarling at him, "You have to stop this!" and then stands there between Blaine and Karofsky, hands in fists and quivering with wolf, a second from turning himself, Blaine can smell how hot and high his wolf-scent has gone. "Can't you tell what's happened? You got bitten by a wolf and now you feel all crazy and things must smell more and you know that something's different -"
Karofsky backs off, slashing a hand at them. "-cking crazy-" he chokes.
Blaine watches Karofsky from over Kurt's shoulder, Kurt's shoulder quivering to protect Blaine now, while Kurt snaps at him, "It's not crazy and you know it's not because it's happening to you and if you don't control it -"
Karofsky stares into Kurt's eyes for one more wild second and then he turns and runs away head down, around the corner of the staircase and gone, and Blaine finally begins to relax a little. It's the first properly submissive, the first obedient to any intelligence wolf or human, the first sensible behaviour Karofsky's displayed so far: he came up against a stronger wolf and he backed off. It's not good. But it really could have been a lot, lot worse.
He says to lighten the mood, because Kurt's still standing there staring after him, stricken and all but panting from containing the wolf, "Well, he's not coming out anytime soon."
Kurt lowers his head a little, draws a long breath in, touches his forehead. He looks dazedly around and then sits on one of the steps, dropping his satchel so he can cradle his head in both hands now, eyes closed. "Hey," Blaine says, walking to his shoulder, sitting next to him. "Hey, what's wrong? Why're you so upset . . . ?"
Kurt swallows, and wets his lips. He lifts his head, eyes closed to the sky for a moment, then says, "Because until this morning, I had never been kissed." He gives a little attempt of an amused shrug. "Or at least, one that counted. And he - if I hadn't been a wolf." He closes his eyes again. "I don't know if I would still be alive. Or - I don't know." He picks at his fingers. "He could have done anything to me. That's what I'm worried about. He could do anything to anyone. He's too strong and he doesn't understand it, and I don't know what to do."
Blaine watches his face, turned in profile because Kurt seems to be avoiding looking directly at him, and Blaine says, "I don't think he'll attack anyone else. He's scared more than anything, and I doubt a guy like him's getting the sort of hassle you feel like you need to fight back against."
"Apart from me," Kurt says wearily. "Apparently I really am so very threatening."
"You're terrifying," Blaine confirms, and rubs his back. "C'mon. Let me buy you lunch."
Part 2 of part IV