for decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse 5/6
Title: for decisions and revisions (which a minute will reverse)
Media: fanfic
Author: geordie_lover
Pairing: Kurt/Blaine
Rating: T (this chapter)
Disclaimer: Glee, Kurt, and Blaine all belong to FOX. The version of "Sherlock" I refer to belongs to the BBC, Steven Moffat, and Mark Gatiss
Summary: Five ways that Kurt and Blaine didn't meet, and the one way they did.
Spoilers: Eventually through 2x16, "Original Song," but not until Ch. 6
Notes: Based on the TV series "Sherlock." If you haven't watched it, do. It's amazing. It's the first Sherlock Holmes anything that's actually made me ship John/Sherlock.
Slayer | Exchange | Hogwarts | Crowd
He had a fucking bomb strapped to his chest.
Blaine could feel the weight of the explosives against him, pulling down on the vest to which they were wired. He carefully pushed his hands into the pockets of the heavy winter coat, and tried to control his breathing when he heard Kurt make his way into the auditorium. He listened to the younger man’s voice as it bounced around vaulted ceilings and scuffed stage floors, and winced when he heard the hushed tone come through the piece in his ear.
”Time for the show, Anderson.”
A red light flickered against his chest, briefly and in warning. He braced himself by squeezing his eyes shut tight, and moved.
The dense fabric of the curtains brushed against him, rustling in his wake as he stepped out. Blaine’s shoes creaked quietly against the floor, and he opened his eyes and trained a steady gaze onto Kurt.
The tall, lithe man stood there, arm halfway extended into the air and a small USB drive clasped in his hand. The look on his face…Blaine swallowed. He forgot sometimes just how childlike Kurt could look in his expressions, and the plain shock and hurt that tightened the detective’s lips and sent his Adam’s apple bobbing struck Blaine like a physical blow.
“Blaine?” Kurt said, voice low and disbelieving. His arm began to lower slowly. “What the hell-”
“Come, now,” he said, voice dull as Jeremiah forced words into his mouth. “You can’t be this surprised.”
Kurt’s eyes flickered in hurt before they shuttered off completely, and it made Blaine feel suddenly and utterly determined. He might have had enough explosives to bring this building down strapped to his chest, but he wasn’t about to let Kurt die with him.
And, before Jeremiah’s disgustingly smooth voice reverberated in his ears again, he thought to himself, despairingly: How did I get here?
OOOOO
If he never heard the words ‘psychosomatic’ again, it would only be too soon. Blaine’s therapist tossed the word around like it was a damn football. Yes, okay, so a majority of his leg injury was in his head. It didn’t mean he hadn’t gotten shot, a fact the idiotic man seemed to forget constantly. Will’s words bounced around inside his head, soft and cloying and condescending and the man hadn’t ever been to Afghanistan or Iraq and Blaine had been to both countries and been shot twice in one and what the fuck did Will even know about the war anyway?
Blaine always considered himself to be a man that could keep his temper under control - he’d always operated under the firm belief that acting on your impulses only led to trouble. But now, his hand was shaking and his leg was about to give out and his shoulder was killing him, and his knuckles were just aching to come into contact with Will’s cheekbone.
His cane clacked firmly against the ground, his anger making his movements erratic. People in Central Park stared as him as he walked by, a ball of poorly concealed irritation. A small red blur passed by him.
“Blaine?”
He almost didn’t hear her. Almost. He did, though, and kept moving despite it.
“Blaine! Blaine Anderson!”
He paused and rolled his shoulders back, bracing himself. Encountering people who knew the Blaine he used to be before the war is always awkward - they either expect him to be the same cheerful, dapper guy, or they walk on eggshells and treat him like he’s a ticking timebomb.
A small woman walks up to him, brown hair swirling around her face and smile wide. “It’s me, Rachel Berry! From Johns Hopkins?”
Abruptly, he well and truly recognized her and her bright eyes and the way she always made him feel so tall. His smile became genuine instead of strained and he couldn’t stop but think about the way he and Rachel used to stay up late, studying medical books and testing each other before their exams. It was Rachel, who’d always been so understanding of everyone she’d ever met and who wouldn’t blame him for being Not Quite Blaine the way she remembered him.
Which is the only reason he limped forward a step or two and gave her a brief hug. Rachel clutched at him, happily, and when they pulled away her hands were wrapped around his forearms. “We must catch up!” she said, loudly, and started tugging him towards an empty bench. He followed with a wince, leg protesting as he staggered forward.
When they’d finally settled down on the bench, Rachel turned her body towards him with interest. “What happened?”
Blaine had missed having people speak to him so bluntly. Rachel was a bit of a relief that way. The facts slipped from his lips easily. “Bullet to the shoulder, through and through. Nerve damage, extensive scarring. A bullet graze to the upper thigh from a ricochet, damage minor. Experienced blood loss and brief cardiac arrest, but received CPR and was revived.” He gave her a wry smile. “Obviously.”
Rachel gave him a small smile in response, her eyes flickering over his face and down towards his shoulder briefly. She looked sympathetic, but only because of his injuries. He now knew the difference between the look someone got on their face when they thought he was traumatized, and the look they got when they were imagining his injuries.
Rachel seemed simply curious, so he would let her lingering eyes go without a second thought. “So,” she said, brightly, flicking her eyes back up towards his face and brushing her hair over her shoulder. “Are you staying in New York for long?”
Blaine shook his head ruefully, glancing out over the sprawling park in front of him. “No, I can’t afford New York on the GI pay,” he told her, and knew that the tinge of regret he felt was infused into his voice. “I’ve been staying in a hotel for the past week.”
“Well, what about a roommate?” she pressed, and he felt her inch a little bit closer.
He glanced at her out of the corner of his eyes, then back down towards his ugly metal cane. “I don’t think anyone would want me for a roommate,” he told her, scoffing.
She didn’t say anything right away, and when he looked at her again he felt himself grow wary at the mischievous smile on her face. “Oh, God,” he muttered, leaning away from her. “What’s going through your brain?”
“You’re the second person to say that to me today,” she announced, and stood abruptly. “Come on.”
Blaine looked at her extended hand and ignored it, choosing to use his cane for leverage as he pushed himself out of the bench. “Where are we going?”
Rachel grinned up at him, and he could see the plotting whirring gears behind her eyes. “You’ll see.”
OOOOO
Rachel led him to the hospital where she worked, walking slowly so as not to aggravate his leg any further, and even hailed down a cab when Blaine visibly started to wince. Now, the sound of his cane against tile was reverberating through the halls of the hospital. It only served to remind him, with every click of metal, that he was now defunct. Rachel eventually stopped in front of a large gray door with a small glass window, and he peered through, curious.
“You brought me…to a lab?” He raised his eyebrows at her, feeling utterly unimpressed. “Why?”
She rolled her eyes and pushed the door open, gesturing for him to walk inside. Blaine did as he was told, still looking at her warily, and turned his attention to his surroundings.
He whistled, low. “It’s different than Johns Hopkins, I’ll give you that,” he told her.
“Most everything was just updated within the past month,” Rachel told him, voice quiet. She waved her hand, and Blaine followed her gaze to a young man he hadn’t even noticed.
Thick brown hair was all he could see, bent over a microscope. He could only glimpse the other man’s profile, but Blaine tilted his head in interest at the sight of a straight and slightly upturned nose, a strong jawline, and the way the other man’s neck seemed so strong.
The stranger suddenly moved his head, looking at Blaine out of the corner of his eyes. Blue suddenly pierced through him, and Blaine blinked stupidly.
“Rachel,” he said, and moved his gaze back to the microscope. Pale hands carefully twisted different knobs. “Can I borrow your phone? I think I left mine in the morgue.”
Rachel’s hand disappeared into her pocket and she pulled out a pink and bedazzled Blackberry. She ran her thumb over the keys and winced. “Sorry, my battery’s dead.”
The stranger made a rather put-upon sound, huffing in exasperation.
Blaine fished around in his jacket pocket and pulled out his iPhone. “You can use mine,” he offered, trying to be friendly.
The blue eyed man straightened his posture and looked at Blaine, giving him a searing once over. He stood, long legs encased in black denim stretching out towards Blaine, and when he finally drew to his full height, Blaine found himself looking up a couple of inches. Their fingers brushed against each other, briefly, as the phone was passed between them.
“How long were you deployed?”
Blaine started. “What?” he asked, and his tone was clipped.
“How long,” drawled the stranger again, fingers flying over the touch screen of Blaine’s phone. “Were you deployed?” Blaine didn’t answer, and instead shot Rachel a hard look. She looked between Blaine and the other man, and nodded her head as if to tell him to give this a chance.
The man looked back up at the two of them and narrowed his eyes. “I don’t sleep or talk for days, sometimes. I like to play French music very loudly, and I have a detailed skincare regime that cannot be interrupted once it’s begun. Do you have a problem with that?”
Blaine gaped at him for a short minute, and the ground his teeth together. He looked at Rachel again, eyebrows cocked upwards. “So, you told him about me?”
She shook her head, giving him that secretive smile again. “Nope!”
Blaine’s phone was pressed back into the palm of his hand, warm to the touch. “Thank you,” he said dumbly. The stranger gave him a nod in return as he pulled on a long black jacket and buttoned it up. He perched sunglasses onto coiffed hair and turned to face Blaine head on. His impossibly blue eyes stared at him, hard, and Blaine felt as though they were looking straight into his brain, picking at his every thought and dissecting them with ease. Long, pale fingers pulled a pen and notepad out of a jacket pocket and he began writing, scribbling quickly on the small lined paper.
“Meet me here,” he instructed, ripping the page out of his pad. “At noon tomorrow. I did a favor for the landlady a few years ago, and she’s promised to lower the rent. I think you and I could afford it together.” He swept past Blaine and pushed the paper against the veteran’s chest, and Blaine grasped at it quickly before it fell to the ground.
“Wait,” he said, sharply, and the other man stopped in his tracks. “I don’t know who you are. I’m not moving in with a total stranger.”
A slow, smug smirk pulled at the man’s full lips. “I know you, though. I know you’re an army doctor, deployed in Afghanistan or Iraq, but you were sent home because of an injury. Nothing to do with your leg, though, and your therapist is right in saying it’s all in your head. Sorry, but it’s true. I’m sure you’ll get over it eventually. I know you have problems with your parents, maybe they didn’t approve of your decision to go into the army, or maybe your relationship with your father is beyond repair.”
Blaine’s head spun.
“Kurt Hummel,” the man finally said, extending a hand to Blaine. They shook their palms together firmly, and Blaine couldn’t ignore the crackle of electricity that raced up his forearm. Those bright, blue green eyes that were pinning him so intently suddenly narrowed a bit, and his brows drew together in a small frown as he looked quickly down towards their joined hands.
Kurt withdrew his hand, fast. His fingers flexed, and he stared down at them with arched eyebrows. “Fascinating,” he muttered to himself, and swept out of the room.
Blaine looked at Rachel, feeling utterly stunned at the way the day had turned out. She grinned at him and shrugged, happiness exuded from her every pore. “Is…he always like that?” he said, gesturing towards the still swinging door.
“Every single day,” she breathed.
Twenty four hours later, Blaine killed a man for Kurt.
He remembered, in that split second before his finger had tightened around the trigger, that he knew he would do anything for this man, including kill those who threatened his life.
He had become fascinated with Kurt ever since their first meeting, when his life had been laid bare just in the bat of an eyelash, and in a hurried conversation as they strode down the street together towards a taped off area, surrounded by police cars.
”How did you know all that stuff about me?” Blaine demanded, struggling to keep up with Kurt.
The taller man shot him an annoyed look, before turning his gaze forward and talking to the air in front of him. “When you walked into the medical lab, you made a comment about Johns Hopkins being different. Obviously, you’re in the medical profession. You walk with a limp but when you stand, it’s as if you’re awaiting orders and your leg seems perfectly fine. Hence, it’s all in your head. You have some truly atrocious tan lines around your neck and wrists, so you weren’t anywhere on vacation. I know you have problems with your parents because of your phone. If you’re trying to live in New York with a roommate, I don’t think you’d buy an iPhone. You don’t strike me as the type to buy an iPhone, anyway. Your mother engraved a message on the back, which says it’s only from your mother, not your father, but she says that we love you. Obviously both parents are alive, but you don’t speak to your father or he doesn’t talk to you.”
Blaine stopped in his tracks. Kurt paused and looked over his shoulder, arching a brow at the doctor. “I also know,” he murmured, turning fully and taking two long strides towards Blaine. “That you’re gay. But that was from the way you kept subconsciously looking at my lips yesterday. And,” he added, gripping Blaine’s elbow in one large hand and pulling him along towards the crime scene. “My gaydar is impeccable.”
“Yeah?” Blaine muttered, mind still reeling in awe.
“Of course,” Kurt says, pulling up the yellow ‘CAUTION’ tape and ushering Blaine beneath it. “It takes one to know one, after all. Now, come on, there’s a body in there and I need to make sure that forensic idiot Karofsky doesn’t screw everything up.”
Here he stood, a few weeks after that fateful first day, with a bomb strapped to his chest. All because he chose to take a chance on a tall and slender stranger; because he was fascinated by Kurt’s sheer brilliance and lack of tact; because no matter how infuriating Kurt can be, or how callous, Blaine would take one look into those piercing eyes and couldn’t possible fathom leaving.
He knew that Kurt thought he only stuck around because he missed the danger - craved it, as it were. That was true. But there was something about the consulting detective, how he was so cold and distant but childlike in so many ways…how he’s even met Kurt’s father, a boisterous and friendly man, and Blaine doesn’t understand how they were cut from the same cloth. There’s something in the way Kurt looks at him, sometimes, like he’s a mystery.
Kurt loves mysteries. That’s how Blaine wound up in this whole mess, running around the city after a psychopath who insisted on only being referred to as “Jeremiah.” That’s how Blaine found himself covered in explosives, staring Kurt down as he moved through the aisles of an old, abandoned theater.
“Come, now,” he said, voice dull as Jeremiah forced words into his mouth. “You can’t be this surprised.”
Kurt’s eyes flickered in hurt before they shuttered off completely, and it made Blaine feel suddenly and utterly determined. He might have had enough explosives to bring this building down strapped to his chest, but he wasn’t about to let Kurt die with him.
Open up your jacket.
With a barely suppressed sigh, Blaine unzipped the winter coat and parted it, revealing the danger he was in. Kurt stopped, four aisles from the stage, and looked as though he’d been punched in the gut. Watery eyes alternated between the bomb and Blaine’s face.
“And the truth comes out,” Blaine repeated, staring at a spot just above Kurt’s left shoulder. “You should have known I’d use your little friend against you, Kurtie. He was only in our way.” He clenched his jaw and turned his head a little, not wanting to continue with this farce.
Say it, Anderson, or my sniper will kill Hummel where he stands.
Blaine grit his teeth even harder. “I’ll take care of him, don’t worry,” he said. “It won’t be too hard to…to get rid of....”
“Shut up.”
“Just…” his voice broke. “Just a few handy snipers and you…you won’t …”
”Shut up!
Kurt’s voice was shrill and brittle, and he ascended the stairs to the stage slowly, glancing around the whole auditorium wildly. He seemed to be breathing heavily, and Blaine watched with a tightening feeling in his chest as bright blue eyes locked with his, and then drifted back to the explosives wrapped around Blaine.
The hands gripping Blaine’s handgun trembled ever so slightly, and somehow that scared him even more than the bomb.
“Stop being such a coward,” Kurt cried out, looking wildly between Blaine and any spot Jeremiah might be hiding. “Show yourself!”
One of the back curtains raised dramatically, slowly revealing a pair of expensive shoes and the bottom half of an Armani suit. Jeremiah smiled, looking utterly unassuming as he regarded Kurt with a pleased and sparkling gaze. “Oh,” he crooned, taking a casual step forward. He scuffed his heel along the ground as if he were bashful. “This is such a big moment for me. I’m a huge fan, Kurt.”
“You’re a psychopath,” Kurt gritted out between clenched teeth.
Jeremiah’s grin turned feral, and the look in his eyes became quietly dangerous. Blaine’s muscles tensed, and he quickly looked between Kurt and his kidnapper, ready to spring into action should he be needed.
“Consulting criminal, consulting detective,” he said, shrugging. Jeremiah took a step closer to Kurt, and pulled his hands out of his pockets only to fold his arms across his chest. “We’re both twisted in our own ways. I bet you’ve imagined murders every which way, Kurtsie.”
“Don’t call me that.”
“I bet you’ve even though about how old Blaine here would kick the bucket.”
The safety clicked off on the gun, the metallic sound echoing in the auditorium. “I could kill you right now.”
Kurt’s voice was cold, detatched, and still Blaine could hear the trace amounts of fear lacing his every word.
“You could try,” Jeremiah agreed, and moved over towards Blaine. Kurt’s hands followed his every movement, the gun in his palms warm and heavy. He narrowed his eyes the smallest amount when Jeremiah slung an arm around Blaine’s shoulders, and the doctor flinched. “But, you shoot me and I guarantee you my guys will blow a hole through Blaine’s skull, here.” He rapped two knuckles against Blaine’s temple. Blaine turned his head away and clenched his jaw.
“Get away from him!” Kurt hissed, dropping one hand from the gun and taking two strides towards the pair of them.
“Whoa there, Hummel,” Jeremiah said, and his grip around Blaine went from casually friendly, to suffocating. His forearm pressed against the shorter man’s larynx, making air hard to come by.
Kurt froze almost immediately, chest heaving with his terrified breaths and his eyes focused on Blaine completely.
“Ohh,” Jeremiah purred into Blaine’s ear, eyes still firmly on Kurt. “I think we’ve found his weakness.” He released his captive and stepped away, smoothing his hands down the lapels of his designer suit. “That’s always a useful tip for the future.” He flicked an imaginary piece of lint off of his shoulder. “One that I will definitely use in the future if you don’t. Back. Off.”
He gave them one last bizarre smile before every single light in the auditorium went dark, plunging them into utter blackness.
Blaine sank to his knees in the safety of the dark, relief vibrating through his bones almost painfully. He only heard the sound of his and Kurt’s harsh breathing, and the slight swish of feet moving quickly in another direction. When the lights raised again, he shielded his eyes against the glare.
Kurt was on his knees next to Blaine almost immediately. Shaking, pale fingers gripped and pulled at the bindings of the bomb-vest, until he could pull it off of Blaine and throw it as far away from them as he could manage.
“I don’t remember this being in the lease agreement,” Blaine said, stupidly, blinking up at his friend.
“What?” Kurt asked. His bright eyes were glossed over with tears and his cheeks were red and blotchy. His hands shook even as they cupped Blaine’s jaw.
“Getting kidnapped,” Blaine clarified, rubbing a thumb underneath Kurt’s eye to brush away a stray tear. “I feel like it happens every week. I don’t seem to be a very good assistant. Maybe you should find somebody else.”
“You idiot,” Kurt breathed, and pushed their lips together.