FIC: Harry Potter and the Boy From Lima 2c/2
Part 1a | 1b | 2a | 2b | 2c | Epilogue
It's not that Kurt doesn't want to be anywhere near Lima on prom night. It's the fact that he's been meaning to get back down to the massive outlet mall in Jefferson for months, and there won't be any full-family obligations this weekend to prevent him. Plus they'll pass half a dozen department stores and shopping complexes on their way down, and Dayton may be a pit but it has multiple malls that put Lima's to shame.
A full day of shopping his way down what may sadly qualify as the best of what western Ohio has to offer, versus waking up to make breakfast for Finn's likely-hungover face on Sunday, listening to him ramble on about Quinn all morning? Kurt and Blaine will load up the car.
Blaine, as always, is a perfect house guest. He chops carrots and bell peppers without complaint, and sets up his pillow and blankets on the downstairs couch with every evidence of being perfectly happy to have to sleep on a sofa tonight. Kurt wonders, not for the first time, just how many winter breaks and summer vacations Harry spent away from school at a friend's house, just to avoid being home.
After dinner they watch Pretty In Pink because somehow Finn's managed to escape seeing it for this long, and it was Carole's favorite when she was in high school. Kurt curls into Blaine's side. He's not missing anything. Staying away from McKinley is nothing compared to what Blaine's lost. Kurt has everything he needs right here.
The tension that Kurt refuses to admit has settled like an iron band over his shoulders fades slowly over the course of the day. They skip the sketchy anti-abortion thrift store in Sidney and detour twenty minutes out of their way to a tiny vintage shop in Versailles, where Kurt finds two gorgeous hats and tries to sell Blaine on the old-fashioned charm of bow ties.
Driving south along the Ohio highway, if Kurt ignores the rolling terrain and just watches the names on the road signs, he can almost pretend he's going somewhere better-than-here. Out of Versailles they drive through Russia on the way to Troy, past signs on the turnoffs for Verona and London. Blaine takes over the iPod playlist somewhere around the signs for St. Paris, and they sing the 'Les Miserables' soundtrack from one end to the other, before switching it over to 'The Scarlet Pimpernel'.
They trade off driving when they stop in Dayton, after a frustrating search through four different shoe stores fails to turn up anything to match the much-too-expensive pair of designer black-heeled red boots Kurt spotted last week online. It's past two by the time they finally make it to Jeffersonville, tired and, at least in Blaine's case, obviously ready for a break.
“Food court?” Kurt says, a small peace offering for the way they strode out of the Greene Town Center only just in time to prevent Kurt from unleashing the sharpest edge of his tongue on a pair of seriously incompetent salesladies. Blaine smiles sideways and holds his hand out.
“Come on,” he says, while Kurt watches his hand like it might possibly turn out to be a live snake. “I'll buy you a veggie sub.”
“We're in public,” Kurt blurts out, and Blaine's brow furrows before the corners of his mouth droop in understanding. And that's just what Kurt needs, he's been in an off mood all day, he shouldn't be taking it out on his boyfriend. He has a boyfriend, that should be enough, and that boyfriend has seen much scarier things than an outlet mall in the middle of Ohio, and now Kurt's snapping at him for daring to actually try to show affection in a way Kurt has always wanted. Kurt doesn't even have time to think about it; he grabs for Blaine's hand before Blaine can pull it all the way back, and holds on tight.
“It's fine,” Kurt says, meeting Blaine's eyes and trying to relax them both with nothing but force of will. “Let's go get lunch.”
There are eyes on them in the food court, Kurt can feel them, as he and Blaine bend over a mall map to plan out their attack route, and Kurt carefully picks the canned black olives off of his veggie sub, and Blaine eats them, one by one, off of the paper of Kurt's sandwich wrapper. It doesn't matter. It's just eyes, just like every other day at McKinley. A pair of eyes never hurt anybody.
“So are we going to see Tilda at all tonight, or is she off tracking evildoers in the wilds of Alaska?” Kurt asks, toying with the straw of his diet soda.
“I honestly still don't know,” Blaine admits, and steals another olive. “I haven't talked to her since Monday. Why?”
“I'm still a little afraid she's going to...I don't know. Turn me into a newt,” Kurt says. Blaine grins down at the table.
“She likes you,” he promises. “I'll protect you if I have to.”
“My knight in shining armor,” Kurt says, with more affection than sarcasm.
“Will you settle for a sweater and a bow-tie?” Blaine asks, and Kurt laughs, and let people stare. This is theirs, and no one can touch that.
“So,” says Kurt, turning back to their game plan. “Shall we get to it?”
“Banana Republic, Calvin Klein, Bath and Body Works?” Blaine lists with a smile. Kurt adds his empty sandwich wrapper to their garbage tray, and folds the map up neatly to fit in his satchel.
“That's the plan,” he agrees cheerfully, until Blaine carries their tray to the garbage and then keeps right on going, towards the rest of the mall. “Blaine. I didn't think I needed to clarify, it's wash our hands, Banana Republic, Calvin Klein, Bath and Body Works.” Blaine has the good grace to look abashed, at least, and he changes course immediately back towards Kurt. “I never thought I'd say this, but you're almost as bad as Finn sometimes,” Kurt says. “Greasy fingerprints and unpaid merchandise never mix.”
“Wow, as bad as Finn, huh?” Blaine asks, but luckily he seems more amused than insulted by the comparison. “Guess I'll have to step up my game, then.” And he offers Kurt his elbow like an old-fashioned gentleman, completely ridiculous given that they're just crossing a noisy mall food court, not making a grand entrance at, say, prom. Greasy fingertips or not, Kurt takes it.
The bathroom is big, and empty when they walk in, down a short hallway between an empty food court stall and behind the Sunglasses Hut. Apparently now that Kurt's reminded him, Blaine needs to take advantage of their little pit stop, so Kurt washes his hands and then examines the effectiveness of his moisturizer routine in the mirror while he waits. He very deliberately keeps his eyes focused on his own complexion, and not the reflection of Blaine's back, over behind Kurt and to the left. They're the only people in the bathroom, but...still.
The door swings open, and then halfway closed until it gets caught and pushed open again, then a third time. Kurt ignores them. He's got better things to do today than worry about a trio of Neanderthal frat boy college jocks who only came to the mall to hit on girls. Besides, Kurt learned a long time ago not to glance at anybody else in the men's bathroom. It can end (locker checks dumpster tosses elbows and trips and bright blue slushies) badly.
This isn't McKinley. Even McKinley wasn't as dangerous as all that. Nobody ever (pee balloons lawn furniture shoves slams bruises bumps swirlies the flagpole the--) really actually hurt him at McKinley. Even Karofsky. All he did was loom, and shove, and say a few things, but he never would have done anything, never would have gone through with-
The sound of Blaine doing his zipper up is weirdly loud in the quiet of the men's room. It's echoed a second later by the lock on the door clicking shut.
Kurt is suddenly having an extremely hard time convincing himself that he shouldn't be getting very, very scared right now. Kurt hates 'scared'. It's not productive. There's nothing he can do with it. He's not in control, and that's not acceptable, and.
And he's locked in a bathroom in Jeffersonville, Ohio with his boyfriend and three guys who look like they must have just missed getting recruited for football at Ohio State and spent the past four or five years drowning their sorrows over that fact in cheap beer and cheaper women. And Kurt is very, very scared.
“Is there a problem here?” Blaine asks, Dalton-pleasantly, and Kurt wants to strangle him except that strangle isn't his favorite word right now.
“Yeah. We've got ourselves a problem,” says one of them, and oh. Kurt had forgotten.
He hears the words, distant noises that convey some meaning or another, but he'd forgotten just how this sort of thing works. Of course the words don't matter. Words don't mean anything, in a situation like this. The frat boy could go spouting off the Declaration of Independence and it wouldn't matter, not when he's standing like that, looming, threatening to overwhelm Kurt just with his sheer presence.
Kurt thinks they could do everything that comes next in total silence and it wouldn't make a difference. He shrinks back against the counter and can't think of anything to say that would change one thing, except perhaps to tell Blaine to shut up before he makes it worse.
“You're in our town,” says the frat boy, although if he's actually from Jeffersonville then he and his friends must be wash-out townie nobodies, not that that helps Kurt any. “You're in our mall, perverting our public spaces, and you're in our bathroom, trying to catch a sight of decent guys' dicks when they piss.”
“We're not doing anything to you,” Blaine says slowly and calmly, raising his hands palms-out, and what happened to the Blaine from last month, the one who would take on a guy twice his size with nothing but his own hands and sheer rage? This Blaine is going to get them both killed, if that isn't inevitable by now anyway.
“We're sorry,” Kurt says, before Blaine can get them into any more trouble. He's pressed as far back into the counter as he can go; there's splashed water from around the sink soaking through the back of his shirt. It's cold. “We'll go.”
“And you'll never come back,” says another of the guys agreeably, the short, stocky one with the buzz cut. They've spread out between Blaine and Kurt, meandering casually across the bathroom while Kurt's been keeping very, very still, and the big redhead with the facial hair is half behind Blaine now, out of his line of sight. The first one is too close to Kurt, much too close. Kurt presses backwards harder.
“You've got to learn,” says the first one, and suddenly he has Kurt by the side of the collar, yanking him away from the sinks roughly enough to make Kurt's teeth clack in his skull. “Not to-” The rest of it is cut off by Blaine's lunge.
There's the Blaine from the other week, throwing himself forward with such force that he makes it halfway across the room before the big redhead grabs him from behind. Oh god, Kurt takes it back, he takes it back, one guy's got Blaine up around the shoulders wrestling to pin back his arms and the short one throws a punch right into his unprotected kidneys, Dalton Blaine would be just fine, why did nobody ever teach Blaine how much they hate it when you fight back?
Blaine groans and doubles over, then throws his weight forward a second later, trying to yank out of the other guy's grip, gets another fist in his gut for his troubles and Kurt is just standing there. The guy has Kurt by his collar but even if he didn't, Kurt doesn't think he could move a single muscle, not even to breathe. The world's starting to get a little fuzzy around the edges. Oh god, what happens if he passes out?
They're hurting his boyfriend why is Kurt just standing here, why isn't he doing something about it, why is he just letting the hand on his collar yank him up and shake him back and forth, hard like whiplash. “You god damned queers,” says the one that's got him, jabbing a finger into Kurt's chest, right where Karofsky had touched him, right over the heart. “You don't belong around here.”
“You think anyone would notice if they just never crawled out of the bathroom?” asks the one that's got Blaine. Blaine's got blood on his face now, Kurt missed that happening, blood on his face and murder in his eyes but it won't matter if these guys decide to do the actual murdering.
“Probably give us a medal,” says the other one.
“Please,” says Kurt, in the shaky, wavery little voice he hasn't heard come out of his own throat since his father got married.
“Please what?” asks the one holding him, giving Kurt another shake for good measure. “What, you're jealous? You want us to pay attention to you instead?” Then he slams his left fist into Kurt's gut, and oh. Kurt hasn't been hit like that in a while. Now he really can't breathe.
“Leave him alone,” growls Blaine. Kurt gasps for air and looks up just in time to see the air shimmer.
Something slams into the guy pinning Blaine's arms hard enough to throw him back, and Blaine shoves aside the guy who's been hitting him like the guy is made of cloth and stuffed with cotton. He barrels into the guy holding Kurt, but the thing is, Kurt thinks, through the haziness and fear, the guy lets go and finds himself shoved backwards before Blaine even reaches them.
“Come on,” Blaine says urgently, grabbing Kurt's hand, and the door bursts open when he yanks at it even though Kurt knows it was locked earlier. It's magic, and isn't it nice to have a wizard for a boyfriend, one that's done so many things, one who Kurt got beat up and almost killed just for existing next to him in a mall in Ohio while being so damn stupid.
Blaine pulls Kurt across the food court and towards the mall exit, but by then Kurt is running on his own power, anywhere that's away. The keys are still in Blaine's pocket; he's fumbling them out one-handed, and they shouldn't still be holding on, it's not safe, but Kurt can't even think about working his fingers and his feet at the same time right now and he doesn't dare let go.
(They're not even being chased.)
There's the Navigator. There, striding towards them like the wrath of god, is the most beautiful thing Kurt's ever seen.
“What the hell just happened?” Tilda's got a gun strapped to her belt next to a shiny silver badge and a smear of soot across her cheek, and Kurt doesn't see a wand but he knows it's there.
“I'm sorry,” pants Blaine as they pull to a stop. “I didn't mean to, it just came out. They caught us in the bathroom.”
Tilda looks back and forth between them, glancing over everything, from the blood streaking down from Blaine's nose to Kurt's shiny silver shopping-day vest, to their still-clasped hands. “God, you stupid kids,” she says, and clasps a hand on Blaine's shoulder.
“Okay,” says Tilda. “Get in the car, lock the doors, wait for me while I take care of this. I don't want either of you driving right now.”
She stalks off, an avenging angel in Target-brand jeans. Kurt crawls into the back seat-if Tilda's driving them wherever they're going, one of them will need to move back here anyway-and concentrates on breathing. Blaine knows enough not to try to touch him right now.
After a little while, Blaine extends a hand back between the seats, and Kurt takes it. Otherwise, they sit in silence.
It should take another hour and a half to get back to Blaine and Tilda's apartment from here, but Tilda does something, Kurt thinks, to cut out a good half of that. He starts seeing signs for Lebanon and Mason and the Cincinnati airport a lot sooner than they should, anyway.
It's too quiet, nobody singing along to Moulin Rouge turned down low, dragging on for too long. Eventually, Kurt clears his throat.
“How did you know where to find us?” he asks diffidently. Tilda glances at him in the rear view mirror, then back to the road.
“Tracking spell,” she says shortly.
“Then why did you Apparate into the parking lot, instead of-”
“Tracking spell on the car,” Tilda cuts Blaine off, making Kurt start. “You were already on the move, and wherever you'd parked it, it was probably farther away from prying eyes in case it was a false alarm.”
“Oh,” says Kurt, and then everybody's quiet again, while Kurt thinks over the implications of Blaine's fake sister guardian having tracking spells on his car as well as just Blaine himself.
Her cell phone is on vibrate, but it's quiet enough for everybody to hear it go off. Tilda pulls it out of her belt holster left-handed and glances down at the display, then swears and flips it open.
“I'm sorry I left you there,” she says. “I told Julius I'm taking the rest of the day off.” A pause; Kurt can hear angry noises coming from the other end. “I don't give a fuck if a flock of Dementors show up dragging Rasputin's reanimated corpse and you have to get St. Georges in accounting to give you a hand. Can you hear by the sound of my voice what kind of day I'm having? Julius authorized it, ask him.” More angry noises. “Goodbye, Murgatroyd,” says Tilda, and snaps the phone shut mid-squawk.
“I'm sorry you had to leave work,” Blaine says. Kurt's sitting behind Tilda, and he can see Blaine through the gap between the seats, looking down at his knees.
“And yet,” starts Tilda in a voice of carefully-controlled anger, and then stops herself.
“And yet what?” asks Kurt. Maybe it's morbid curiosity. Maybe he just wants to get all the anger and terror out into the open, right now, just pile it all on while he can.
“There are two things that have me scared right now,” says Tilda. “And together, they have me very, very scared.”
Kurt doesn't really want to think of Blaine's apparent only guardian being scared.
“You left them locked in the bathroom, by the way,” she says. “It made things easier, so good job with that. I modified their memories, you're welcome.”
“I didn't realize I had,” says Blaine, but Kurt's got a sort of a funny feeling in his stomach.
“So, they don't remember?” he asks. He isn't sure why that doesn't make him happier.
“They remember cornering a couple of scrawny little high school you-know-whats who got fucking lucky and surprised them all by knowing how to throw a good punch,” Tilda says. “They're going to spend months eying their next potential victims in terror that one of them might be hiding a secret proficiency in martial arts.” She pauses to signal and change lanes to get out from behind a particularly slow Volvo; nobody interrupts. “They don't remember your faces.”
“Oh,” says Kurt. “Good.” Tilda cuts back into their original lane in front of the Volvo sharply.
“They do remember,” she says, “that a couple of boys thought it would be a good idea to wander through a mall holding hands and flirting over their lunches like a newlywed couple on the morning after their wedding night, in front of god and country and every homophobe western Ohio might choose to throw their way.”
“We were just having lunch,” says Blaine.
“You are a stupid, stupid boy,” Tilda bites out. “I've always known you didn't have a single ounce of basic survival instinct, but I had hoped that one of you might have had the basic common sense to not light up a giant, glowing sign over your heads, helpfully reading 'Gaybash Here!'” She punctuates it with a sharp stab at the accelerator that narrowly avoids getting them sideswiped by some soccer mom in a Jeep. Kurt wonders if Tilda's wand can fix paint scratches.
“Kurt didn't do anything wrong!” Blaine argues hotly, and Kurt glances back up at the front seat at the sound of his name in mild surprise. There's been so much noise, and anger, and he can tell in a distant sort of way that he's not even really processing things any more. He wants a hot cup of tea. He wants his dad. “And neither did I. There is no reason we shouldn't be able to go out in public and get some lunch together without-”
“And when have I ever given a crap about should?” Tilda demands. Even the squeak of Blaine's shoe fidgeting against the underside of the dashboard falls quiet.
“If you hadn't somehow managed to blast them across the room with wandless magic, they would've had you,” she says. “And if you hadn't used magic, I wouldn't have known to come and save you until they were breaking your bones. Do you think that any amount of whining and wailing and gay rights legislation would have protected you then?”
No, Kurt knows. Knowing better only works in retrospect because you realize just how much you fucked yourself over on your own terms, how much you had in your own power to change if only you hadn't talked yourself out of doing anything about it. It's no good to only start being scared when the lock clicks shut.
“I'm sorry,” says Blaine. “It wasn't Kurt's fault. I was the one that pushed, and I won't do it again. I'm sorry.”
Tilda sighs, indicates, and changes lanes more smoothly this time; they've got to be coming up on their exit. “We need to do something about your magic,” she says. “You're too untrained. A wizard your age should never have been able to do that without a wand, not without so much practice it would make your head spin. We need to rein you in before you get caught by somebody I can't shut up with a few Obliviates and a lot of fudged paperwork.”
“What are you going to do?” Blaine asks, and Tilda swings down the ramp onto the I-75 into Cincinnati.
“I don't know,” she says. “I'll figure it out.”
There's a stuffiness to the apartment, like nobody's been there in a while, and Kurt wonders blankly where Tilda goes when she's not here. She throws open the balcony doors to let some air in, and Kurt sinks down on the couch.
“I'll make some tea,” says Blaine, and heads for the kitchen; Tilda snorts.
“You're still such a Brit,” she teases. “It's eighty degrees out.”
“Tea fixes everything that can't be fixed by chocolate,” Blaine's voice floats out of the kitchen, and Kurt smiles just a little. He hasn't said much since the car.
It was always easy to keep his feet going and his tongue moving, at school, if he just never stopped. McKinley had no avenging angels, just Kurt trying to get himself through the day. It's too easy to shut down, now, with Tilda striding around like she can take care of everything for him and Kurt almost believing it. The corner of the couch is safe, comfortable, and Blaine's back out in just a couple of minutes balancing two mugs of tea and a slightly dusty bar of Lindt. It's only milk chocolate, not dark, but it looks incredibly appealing anyway.
“Chocolate is also a known cure for the aftereffects of several kinds of dark magic,” Blaine says, laying his prizes out on the coffee table.
“Did you raid my stash?” Tilda demands. She comes out of the bathroom damp-faced, minus the soot from earlier. Kurt's hair must be a mess. Automatically, he reaches into his satchel for his compact mirror to start teasing it back into order.
“I left all your Hershey bars,” says Blaine. “I'll buy you a box of Dairy Milk.”
“Hershey's was good enough for my forefathers,” says Tilda. Blaine sits down on the couch, very close to Kurt.
“You never get used to American chocolate,” he says.
“That's because it's inferior,” Kurt says automatically, nudging a single strand of hair back into place.
“Hey,” says Blaine, nudging him in the side. “How're you holding up?”
Kurt glances away from his mirror. “I'm fine,” he says, and Blaine can stop worrying for nothing. It's not quite a lie, and Kurt will defend it if he has to.
“Good,” says Blaine, and lays one palm on Kurt's closest knee. Tilda healed his bleeding nose in the car, but he's still got drying streaks of red on his face. It's kind of awful to look at.
“You might want to go wash your face,” Kurt suggests, and Blaine's hand flies up to his nose, like he'd completely forgotten. Kurt can't help but smile at his dear, idiot boyfriend.
“All right, Katherine, Audrey, or something actually made in the past sixty years?” Tilda asks, fingers hovering over one shelf on her truly massive DVD rack.
“Whatever Kurt wants,” says Blaine on his way to the bathroom, leaving Kurt to blink at Tilda in some surprise.
“Do you have Philadelphia Story?” he says. “Or My Fair Lady.”
“We can run a marathon,” she says, and pops a disc out of its plastic case. “If you two squish up, because that is my couch, and I'm not sitting on the floor for any couple of teenagers.”
“Thank you, Tilda,” Blaine calls through the open door of the bathroom.
“Thanks,” Kurt echoes. “You really shouldn't let us take you away from your work, Blaine and I will be fine by ourselves.”
“Kurt?” Tilda says, sticking the disc into the player and grabbing the remote as she stands up. “Shut up and watch the movie.”
Blaine ends up curling into Kurt's side when he sits back down on the couch. Kurt tenses up at first, and Blaine edges back by the few centimeters of space they have on the not-terribly-long sofa, but bit by bit Kurt relaxes into Blaine's warmth, and Blaine sags back towards Kurt in return. By the time Tracy Lord is slipping off to the family pool with Macaulay Connor, Kurt's let Blaine tuck an arm around his back, and rested his head on Blaine's shoulder in return. He's tired, that's all. He's just so tired.
Kurt can't sleep.
The crux of any good 'accidentally doze off inches from each other while in bed talking' plan is that, when your boyfriend's eyes (green, without the contacts-Kurt's never seen them that way before, not even when Blaine's spent the night in Lima) flutter shut, you follow him into sleep. According to the glowing clock-radio on Blaine's bedside table, it's 1:24 in the morning. This plan is having serious issues in execution.
It's a little too warm in the room, even with the fan running, tucked this close to Blaine's warm body under the comforter. Kurt sighs and rolls over onto his left side, back towards the wall of towering record stacks. Maybe he should just get up and move to the couch, like he'd told his dad he would anyway.
“Hey,” Blaine says, sounding sleepy and surprised. “You still awake?”
“Sorry,” says Kurt, and rests his face against the pillow for a moment. “I didn't mean to wake you up.”
“No, hey, it's fine.” Blaine lays a hand on Kurt's shoulder and shifts in closer; Kurt can feel him along his back, not close enough to press together, but close enough for Kurt's pyjamas to shift against his skin. “Are you okay?”
“I'm fine,” Kurt insists instantly.
“You were just really quiet tonight. I'd have thought a wizard-produced bootleg of Katharine Hepburn's only stage musical would've had you saying more.”
Normally it would have, if not over the quality of the recording than simply because, wow, Katharine Hepburn really couldn't sing, could she, but Kurt hasn't had much to say. It's been a trying day, and Kurt doesn't have his full set of moisturizers here, and of course Tilda would offer to drive a few blocks away from the apartment and then teleport into his bedroom to get them if he really needed, but it isn't the point.
“Not all of us are so used to being the heroes of our own life-and-death situations that we can just shrug them off half an hour later,” Kurt snaps into the pillow. “I'm sorry that I've never been in a situation where I genuinely thought somebody might kill me before, but not all of us spent our preadolescence as boy wizards with whole civic monuments already erected in our name.”
“Woah.” Blaine pulls back. “Kurt...”
“I'm sorry,” Kurt says immediately. He still can't risk a look over his shoulder. He doesn't want to see what kind of facial expression Blaine has on right now. He throws back the covers and slides his legs over the side of the bed, searching for his slippers with his toes. “I'm tired, and it's making me cranky. I'll go out to the couch like I'm supposed to and stop keeping you up.”
“Wait, no, Kurt, stop!” Kurt half expects to feel Blaine's hand close around his wrist, but instead the bedside light snaps on. “Please look at me.”
Kurt still can't resist a plea like that, no matter how much he wants to be alone right now, far away from his picture-perfect, storybook prince, fairytale hero of a boyfriend. He glances over to see Blaine pushing himself upright against the headboard, hair a tornado site of air-dried and bed-rumpled curls, blinking blearily-that's right, Kurt must just be a colorful smear to him right now.
“Okay, I can't actually tell if you're looking at me, but you stopped moving, so I'm going to take that as a good sign,” says Blaine. “Can we talk about this, please?”
“There's nothing to talk about,” Kurt says tightly, and is glad Blaine can't see him wringing his hands. “I've never been so scared in my life, and you saved us. I'm just having a little trouble sleeping over it.”
“Are you mad at me?” Blaine asks. “Please don't be mad at me.”
“Why would I be mad at you?” Kurt demands. “You saved us from them.”
“Because I wasn't fast enough?” Blaine guesses, sounding as out of his depth as Finn in any conversation Kurt's ever heard him have with Rachel. “I'm sorry you were scared, Kurt.”
“Well, like I said, not all of us can be heroes.” Kurt would really like to wrap his bathrobe around himself and flounce off right now, but all he has are his pyjamas, and they're not really made for flouncing in.
“Kurt,” says Blaine. “I was scared, too.”
It's enough to make Kurt stop, look down at his twisting hands again. “Why would you be scared?” he scoffs. “It's not like they were a flock of life-sucking monsters bent on destroying your very soul, or a giant killer snake, or-”
“I know what somebody looks like when they wouldn't mind killing me,” says Blaine.
Kurt freezes. He should say something here, something witty and light and dismissing, but all he can remember is the choking, paralyzing fear of that bathroom. Kurt doesn't want to die.
“I don't know if they really would've done it, or if they would've gotten scared of getting caught, or what,” Blaine continues, oblivious to Kurt's reaction, “but I never thought I'd see anybody look at me that way in Ohio.”
“I did,” says Kurt. “I knew.”
He'd forgotten. He'd made himself forget, because that's the problem with fear. It chokes you up and makes you freeze like a rabbit caught out by a cat, turns you into a statue while two thugs with the collective IQ of a mountain troll beat up your boyfriend. It takes away all of your control. Fear turns Kurt into someone tiny, and weak, and alone, someone he hates, someone he hasn't had to be since his first day at Dalton.
“Kurt...” says Blaine, and then stops, lost. Kurt turns away. He needs to be pacing right now.
It's hard. Living well may be the best revenge, but that only works if you're not walking around in fear for your life. It doesn't work if Kurt lets himself curl up in fear. It's not the epic life of Harry Potter, but it's hard, and some days, the pretense of control is all Kurt's got.
“I know it's not the same as going up against dragons, or vampires, or possessed diaries with nothing but a glowing wooden stick.”
“I've never actually met a vampire,” Blaine points out unhelpfully.
“Some of us have been getting by for years with nothing but a smile and a fabulous wardrobe and the knowledge that someday I'm going to get myself out of this state and never come back,” Kurt continues, ignoring him.
“I know, Kurt,” Blaine says softly. “I told you. You're the bravest person I've ever met.”
“You've never called me that,” Kurt says, and he has to stop pacing and look at Blaine for this, has to check. Blaine's said he has courage before, but not like this. But the only thing Blaine's looking at him with is total sincerity.
“Really?” Blaine looks surprised. “I mean it. Kurt...” He sighs and pats the pillow next to him. “Can you come up here?” he asks. “Otherwise I'm going to have to go put in my contacts, because I haven't owned a pair of glasses in three years and I'd kind of like to have this conversation with your face.”
“It's not a big deal,” Kurt says, but he gives in and crawls his way up to the head of the bed anyway. It's not as stiflingly hot if he leans half-upright against the headboard, on top of the covers and a few inches away from Blaine's blinking green eyes, trying to focus on Kurt up close.
“Hi,” Blaine says. His right hand comes up to cup Kurt's cheek, and Kurt closes his eyes, allows the touch. It's too gentle. It's the way you touch something that's both precious and delicate, and Kurt isn't as much of either as Blaine seems to think.
“Blaine...” Kurt says, but now it's his turn to run out of words and trail off into a sigh. Blaine lets his hand fall from Kurt's cheek, but grabs for Kurt's right hand. Kurt squeezes back.
“Courage is kind of the Gryffindor specialty,” Blaine says, quirking a little smile, “but I never really understood it until I came to Ohio. It's not about throwing yourself into a fight you can actually do something about. It's about facing up to a situation that scares you to death even if you don't think you can do anything about the outcome.”
“Like what?” Kurt asks. Admitting that there are people in Ohio who probably want to kill him doesn't make him feel brave. Mostly it just makes him feel sick to his stomach.
“Like, admitting that I'm never going home again,” says Blaine. “Or showing up at school every single day just being you, instead of crawling into some incredibly fabulous closet and never coming out.”
“It would take a pretty fabulous closet,” Kurt admits.
“I was so scared today,” says Blaine. “I'm not brave enough to think about what I'd do if I lost you.”
Kurt closes his eyes; there it is, again. “Scared for me,” he says. “Not for yourself.” At least Blaine had tried to act. Kurt hadn't even managed to kick the guy holding him in the shins.
“Only because of what happened last time,” Blaine says, and Kurt's eyes blink open. “Have I told you about Cedric Diggory?”
“No,” Kurt says. The name sounds familiar, but Blaine's stories have so many gaps. “He was from England?”
“He was my first big crush,” Blaine admits. “I didn't really get it at the time, but everything he did was just so...honorable, and good at stuff, and I spent all year convincing myself I had a thing for this girl he'd started dating, but...” He makes a little, inarticulate gesture.
“What happened?” Kurt asks curiously. Blaine gazes out into the fuzzy dimness of the room; Kurt squeezes his hand again, just to keep the connection.
“He died,” says Blaine. “He was seventeen, and they killed him just for being near me. He didn't even get a chance to react, or to fight back or try to run, they just showed up and he was dead. For standing next to me.”
“Oh.” The palm against Kurt's is solid, warm; Blaine moves his fingers slightly. A reminder that neither of them are dead yet. And if Kurt concentrates on that, he doesn't have to think about dead crushes and why the world has to screw Blaine over at every turn, and why it has to be so dangerous just to be a teenager and be alive.
“I couldn't do anything,” Blaine says. “I couldn't even move. I just watched it happen. And I was scared for myself today, but Kurt, if anything like that ever happened to you...”
“I'm right here,” Kurt says, and when Blaine turns his head back, Kurt's the one to cup one side of his face with a palm. “I'm not going anywhere.”
“I know, Kurt. I just...” Kurt leans in the last two inches, and Blaine leans up to meet him, lips warm against lips and tongue stroking tongue, saying all the things words can't, at this hour of the night.
“Ohio's not enough to break us,” Kurt says fiercely when they pull apart. “Not us. Not what we have.” He's not sure how this turned into him reassuring Blaine, but maybe that's how this works. They reassure each other. Maybe it's time to admit that the Great Harry Potter doesn't have any more control than he does after all.
Blaine just smiles. He's giving Kurt that look again, the one that seems so full of something suspiciously like wonder, adoration, all those feelings you have for that precious, delicate thing that Kurt is not.
“You're amazing,” Blaine says.
Blaine looks at him like he hung the moon and stars while Kurt's really only just got a handle on surviving Ohio. If Kurt were really amazing, he'd never have needed to transfer to Dalton in to begin with; they wouldn't be here tonight at all, because they'd only just be getting home from some New Directions blowout of a prom afterparty. But Blaine thinks that Kurt is brave.
Ohio is all around them, right outside those doors, closing in on every side, but Blaine thinks Kurt is brave. Kurt thinks that, even at two in the morning, Blaine reminds him how to be.
“Can we turn off the light and go to sleep?” he asks. It's been a long day. He's been tired since three o'clock this afternoon.
“Sure,” Blaine says, and Kurt wiggles himself back under the covers while he turns over to flick off the lamp. It's still too hot for body heat and comforter both, so Kurt shoves back the duvet until they're only covered by the sheet, and wraps one arm around Blaine's waist from behind.
“Is this okay?” he asks tentatively. There's nothing sexual about the cuddling; Blaine settles his back against Kurt's chest, but their hips are well apart, and Kurt thinks they're probably both too tired to do anything more than this anyway.
“It's perfect,” Blaine says. Kurt's right arm is tucked up a little awkwardly between Blaine's side and the mattress, but they shift a little and everything sort of falls into place. Blaine covers Kurt's left hand against his chest with his right. Falling asleep, just like this, Blaine moving just a little with every breath, might be the most intimate thing Kurt's ever done.
“If Tilda wakes up first, is she going to be angry?” It doesn't sound at all like the Tilda Kurt knows, but then, she watched six hours of Katharine Hepburn movies this afternoon without prompting, so maybe he doesn't know her very well at all.
“No,” says Blaine, and Kurt lets himself settle against the pillows, allows himself, muscle by muscle, to really begin to relax. “We're safe.”
It's not that Kurt doesn't want to be anywhere near Lima on prom night. It's the fact that he's been meaning to get back down to the massive outlet mall in Jefferson for months, and there won't be any full-family obligations this weekend to prevent him. Plus they'll pass half a dozen department stores and shopping complexes on their way down, and Dayton may be a pit but it has multiple malls that put Lima's to shame.
A full day of shopping his way down what may sadly qualify as the best of what western Ohio has to offer, versus waking up to make breakfast for Finn's likely-hungover face on Sunday, listening to him ramble on about Quinn all morning? Kurt and Blaine will load up the car.
Blaine, as always, is a perfect house guest. He chops carrots and bell peppers without complaint, and sets up his pillow and blankets on the downstairs couch with every evidence of being perfectly happy to have to sleep on a sofa tonight. Kurt wonders, not for the first time, just how many winter breaks and summer vacations Harry spent away from school at a friend's house, just to avoid being home.
After dinner they watch Pretty In Pink because somehow Finn's managed to escape seeing it for this long, and it was Carole's favorite when she was in high school. Kurt curls into Blaine's side. He's not missing anything. Staying away from McKinley is nothing compared to what Blaine's lost. Kurt has everything he needs right here.
The tension that Kurt refuses to admit has settled like an iron band over his shoulders fades slowly over the course of the day. They skip the sketchy anti-abortion thrift store in Sidney and detour twenty minutes out of their way to a tiny vintage shop in Versailles, where Kurt finds two gorgeous hats and tries to sell Blaine on the old-fashioned charm of bow ties.
Driving south along the Ohio highway, if Kurt ignores the rolling terrain and just watches the names on the road signs, he can almost pretend he's going somewhere better-than-here. Out of Versailles they drive through Russia on the way to Troy, past signs on the turnoffs for Verona and London. Blaine takes over the iPod playlist somewhere around the signs for St. Paris, and they sing the 'Les Miserables' soundtrack from one end to the other, before switching it over to 'The Scarlet Pimpernel'.
They trade off driving when they stop in Dayton, after a frustrating search through four different shoe stores fails to turn up anything to match the much-too-expensive pair of designer black-heeled red boots Kurt spotted last week online. It's past two by the time they finally make it to Jeffersonville, tired and, at least in Blaine's case, obviously ready for a break.
“Food court?” Kurt says, a small peace offering for the way they strode out of the Greene Town Center only just in time to prevent Kurt from unleashing the sharpest edge of his tongue on a pair of seriously incompetent salesladies. Blaine smiles sideways and holds his hand out.
“Come on,” he says, while Kurt watches his hand like it might possibly turn out to be a live snake. “I'll buy you a veggie sub.”
“We're in public,” Kurt blurts out, and Blaine's brow furrows before the corners of his mouth droop in understanding. And that's just what Kurt needs, he's been in an off mood all day, he shouldn't be taking it out on his boyfriend. He has a boyfriend, that should be enough, and that boyfriend has seen much scarier things than an outlet mall in the middle of Ohio, and now Kurt's snapping at him for daring to actually try to show affection in a way Kurt has always wanted. Kurt doesn't even have time to think about it; he grabs for Blaine's hand before Blaine can pull it all the way back, and holds on tight.
“It's fine,” Kurt says, meeting Blaine's eyes and trying to relax them both with nothing but force of will. “Let's go get lunch.”
There are eyes on them in the food court, Kurt can feel them, as he and Blaine bend over a mall map to plan out their attack route, and Kurt carefully picks the canned black olives off of his veggie sub, and Blaine eats them, one by one, off of the paper of Kurt's sandwich wrapper. It doesn't matter. It's just eyes, just like every other day at McKinley. A pair of eyes never hurt anybody.
“So are we going to see Tilda at all tonight, or is she off tracking evildoers in the wilds of Alaska?” Kurt asks, toying with the straw of his diet soda.
“I honestly still don't know,” Blaine admits, and steals another olive. “I haven't talked to her since Monday. Why?”
“I'm still a little afraid she's going to...I don't know. Turn me into a newt,” Kurt says. Blaine grins down at the table.
“She likes you,” he promises. “I'll protect you if I have to.”
“My knight in shining armor,” Kurt says, with more affection than sarcasm.
“Will you settle for a sweater and a bow-tie?” Blaine asks, and Kurt laughs, and let people stare. This is theirs, and no one can touch that.
“So,” says Kurt, turning back to their game plan. “Shall we get to it?”
“Banana Republic, Calvin Klein, Bath and Body Works?” Blaine lists with a smile. Kurt adds his empty sandwich wrapper to their garbage tray, and folds the map up neatly to fit in his satchel.
“That's the plan,” he agrees cheerfully, until Blaine carries their tray to the garbage and then keeps right on going, towards the rest of the mall. “Blaine. I didn't think I needed to clarify, it's wash our hands, Banana Republic, Calvin Klein, Bath and Body Works.” Blaine has the good grace to look abashed, at least, and he changes course immediately back towards Kurt. “I never thought I'd say this, but you're almost as bad as Finn sometimes,” Kurt says. “Greasy fingerprints and unpaid merchandise never mix.”
“Wow, as bad as Finn, huh?” Blaine asks, but luckily he seems more amused than insulted by the comparison. “Guess I'll have to step up my game, then.” And he offers Kurt his elbow like an old-fashioned gentleman, completely ridiculous given that they're just crossing a noisy mall food court, not making a grand entrance at, say, prom. Greasy fingertips or not, Kurt takes it.
The bathroom is big, and empty when they walk in, down a short hallway between an empty food court stall and behind the Sunglasses Hut. Apparently now that Kurt's reminded him, Blaine needs to take advantage of their little pit stop, so Kurt washes his hands and then examines the effectiveness of his moisturizer routine in the mirror while he waits. He very deliberately keeps his eyes focused on his own complexion, and not the reflection of Blaine's back, over behind Kurt and to the left. They're the only people in the bathroom, but...still.
The door swings open, and then halfway closed until it gets caught and pushed open again, then a third time. Kurt ignores them. He's got better things to do today than worry about a trio of Neanderthal frat boy college jocks who only came to the mall to hit on girls. Besides, Kurt learned a long time ago not to glance at anybody else in the men's bathroom. It can end (locker checks dumpster tosses elbows and trips and bright blue slushies) badly.
This isn't McKinley. Even McKinley wasn't as dangerous as all that. Nobody ever (pee balloons lawn furniture shoves slams bruises bumps swirlies the flagpole the--) really actually hurt him at McKinley. Even Karofsky. All he did was loom, and shove, and say a few things, but he never would have done anything, never would have gone through with-
The sound of Blaine doing his zipper up is weirdly loud in the quiet of the men's room. It's echoed a second later by the lock on the door clicking shut.
Kurt is suddenly having an extremely hard time convincing himself that he shouldn't be getting very, very scared right now. Kurt hates 'scared'. It's not productive. There's nothing he can do with it. He's not in control, and that's not acceptable, and.
And he's locked in a bathroom in Jeffersonville, Ohio with his boyfriend and three guys who look like they must have just missed getting recruited for football at Ohio State and spent the past four or five years drowning their sorrows over that fact in cheap beer and cheaper women. And Kurt is very, very scared.
“Is there a problem here?” Blaine asks, Dalton-pleasantly, and Kurt wants to strangle him except that strangle isn't his favorite word right now.
“Yeah. We've got ourselves a problem,” says one of them, and oh. Kurt had forgotten.
He hears the words, distant noises that convey some meaning or another, but he'd forgotten just how this sort of thing works. Of course the words don't matter. Words don't mean anything, in a situation like this. The frat boy could go spouting off the Declaration of Independence and it wouldn't matter, not when he's standing like that, looming, threatening to overwhelm Kurt just with his sheer presence.
Kurt thinks they could do everything that comes next in total silence and it wouldn't make a difference. He shrinks back against the counter and can't think of anything to say that would change one thing, except perhaps to tell Blaine to shut up before he makes it worse.
“You're in our town,” says the frat boy, although if he's actually from Jeffersonville then he and his friends must be wash-out townie nobodies, not that that helps Kurt any. “You're in our mall, perverting our public spaces, and you're in our bathroom, trying to catch a sight of decent guys' dicks when they piss.”
“We're not doing anything to you,” Blaine says slowly and calmly, raising his hands palms-out, and what happened to the Blaine from last month, the one who would take on a guy twice his size with nothing but his own hands and sheer rage? This Blaine is going to get them both killed, if that isn't inevitable by now anyway.
“We're sorry,” Kurt says, before Blaine can get them into any more trouble. He's pressed as far back into the counter as he can go; there's splashed water from around the sink soaking through the back of his shirt. It's cold. “We'll go.”
“And you'll never come back,” says another of the guys agreeably, the short, stocky one with the buzz cut. They've spread out between Blaine and Kurt, meandering casually across the bathroom while Kurt's been keeping very, very still, and the big redhead with the facial hair is half behind Blaine now, out of his line of sight. The first one is too close to Kurt, much too close. Kurt presses backwards harder.
“You've got to learn,” says the first one, and suddenly he has Kurt by the side of the collar, yanking him away from the sinks roughly enough to make Kurt's teeth clack in his skull. “Not to-” The rest of it is cut off by Blaine's lunge.
There's the Blaine from the other week, throwing himself forward with such force that he makes it halfway across the room before the big redhead grabs him from behind. Oh god, Kurt takes it back, he takes it back, one guy's got Blaine up around the shoulders wrestling to pin back his arms and the short one throws a punch right into his unprotected kidneys, Dalton Blaine would be just fine, why did nobody ever teach Blaine how much they hate it when you fight back?
Blaine groans and doubles over, then throws his weight forward a second later, trying to yank out of the other guy's grip, gets another fist in his gut for his troubles and Kurt is just standing there. The guy has Kurt by his collar but even if he didn't, Kurt doesn't think he could move a single muscle, not even to breathe. The world's starting to get a little fuzzy around the edges. Oh god, what happens if he passes out?
They're hurting his boyfriend why is Kurt just standing here, why isn't he doing something about it, why is he just letting the hand on his collar yank him up and shake him back and forth, hard like whiplash. “You god damned queers,” says the one that's got him, jabbing a finger into Kurt's chest, right where Karofsky had touched him, right over the heart. “You don't belong around here.”
“You think anyone would notice if they just never crawled out of the bathroom?” asks the one that's got Blaine. Blaine's got blood on his face now, Kurt missed that happening, blood on his face and murder in his eyes but it won't matter if these guys decide to do the actual murdering.
“Probably give us a medal,” says the other one.
“Please,” says Kurt, in the shaky, wavery little voice he hasn't heard come out of his own throat since his father got married.
“Please what?” asks the one holding him, giving Kurt another shake for good measure. “What, you're jealous? You want us to pay attention to you instead?” Then he slams his left fist into Kurt's gut, and oh. Kurt hasn't been hit like that in a while. Now he really can't breathe.
“Leave him alone,” growls Blaine. Kurt gasps for air and looks up just in time to see the air shimmer.
Something slams into the guy pinning Blaine's arms hard enough to throw him back, and Blaine shoves aside the guy who's been hitting him like the guy is made of cloth and stuffed with cotton. He barrels into the guy holding Kurt, but the thing is, Kurt thinks, through the haziness and fear, the guy lets go and finds himself shoved backwards before Blaine even reaches them.
“Come on,” Blaine says urgently, grabbing Kurt's hand, and the door bursts open when he yanks at it even though Kurt knows it was locked earlier. It's magic, and isn't it nice to have a wizard for a boyfriend, one that's done so many things, one who Kurt got beat up and almost killed just for existing next to him in a mall in Ohio while being so damn stupid.
Blaine pulls Kurt across the food court and towards the mall exit, but by then Kurt is running on his own power, anywhere that's away. The keys are still in Blaine's pocket; he's fumbling them out one-handed, and they shouldn't still be holding on, it's not safe, but Kurt can't even think about working his fingers and his feet at the same time right now and he doesn't dare let go.
(They're not even being chased.)
There's the Navigator. There, striding towards them like the wrath of god, is the most beautiful thing Kurt's ever seen.
“What the hell just happened?” Tilda's got a gun strapped to her belt next to a shiny silver badge and a smear of soot across her cheek, and Kurt doesn't see a wand but he knows it's there.
“I'm sorry,” pants Blaine as they pull to a stop. “I didn't mean to, it just came out. They caught us in the bathroom.”
Tilda looks back and forth between them, glancing over everything, from the blood streaking down from Blaine's nose to Kurt's shiny silver shopping-day vest, to their still-clasped hands. “God, you stupid kids,” she says, and clasps a hand on Blaine's shoulder.
“Okay,” says Tilda. “Get in the car, lock the doors, wait for me while I take care of this. I don't want either of you driving right now.”
She stalks off, an avenging angel in Target-brand jeans. Kurt crawls into the back seat-if Tilda's driving them wherever they're going, one of them will need to move back here anyway-and concentrates on breathing. Blaine knows enough not to try to touch him right now.
After a little while, Blaine extends a hand back between the seats, and Kurt takes it. Otherwise, they sit in silence.
It should take another hour and a half to get back to Blaine and Tilda's apartment from here, but Tilda does something, Kurt thinks, to cut out a good half of that. He starts seeing signs for Lebanon and Mason and the Cincinnati airport a lot sooner than they should, anyway.
It's too quiet, nobody singing along to Moulin Rouge turned down low, dragging on for too long. Eventually, Kurt clears his throat.
“How did you know where to find us?” he asks diffidently. Tilda glances at him in the rear view mirror, then back to the road.
“Tracking spell,” she says shortly.
“Then why did you Apparate into the parking lot, instead of-”
“Tracking spell on the car,” Tilda cuts Blaine off, making Kurt start. “You were already on the move, and wherever you'd parked it, it was probably farther away from prying eyes in case it was a false alarm.”
“Oh,” says Kurt, and then everybody's quiet again, while Kurt thinks over the implications of Blaine's fake sister guardian having tracking spells on his car as well as just Blaine himself.
Her cell phone is on vibrate, but it's quiet enough for everybody to hear it go off. Tilda pulls it out of her belt holster left-handed and glances down at the display, then swears and flips it open.
“I'm sorry I left you there,” she says. “I told Julius I'm taking the rest of the day off.” A pause; Kurt can hear angry noises coming from the other end. “I don't give a fuck if a flock of Dementors show up dragging Rasputin's reanimated corpse and you have to get St. Georges in accounting to give you a hand. Can you hear by the sound of my voice what kind of day I'm having? Julius authorized it, ask him.” More angry noises. “Goodbye, Murgatroyd,” says Tilda, and snaps the phone shut mid-squawk.
“I'm sorry you had to leave work,” Blaine says. Kurt's sitting behind Tilda, and he can see Blaine through the gap between the seats, looking down at his knees.
“And yet,” starts Tilda in a voice of carefully-controlled anger, and then stops herself.
“And yet what?” asks Kurt. Maybe it's morbid curiosity. Maybe he just wants to get all the anger and terror out into the open, right now, just pile it all on while he can.
“There are two things that have me scared right now,” says Tilda. “And together, they have me very, very scared.”
Kurt doesn't really want to think of Blaine's apparent only guardian being scared.
“You left them locked in the bathroom, by the way,” she says. “It made things easier, so good job with that. I modified their memories, you're welcome.”
“I didn't realize I had,” says Blaine, but Kurt's got a sort of a funny feeling in his stomach.
“So, they don't remember?” he asks. He isn't sure why that doesn't make him happier.
“They remember cornering a couple of scrawny little high school you-know-whats who got fucking lucky and surprised them all by knowing how to throw a good punch,” Tilda says. “They're going to spend months eying their next potential victims in terror that one of them might be hiding a secret proficiency in martial arts.” She pauses to signal and change lanes to get out from behind a particularly slow Volvo; nobody interrupts. “They don't remember your faces.”
“Oh,” says Kurt. “Good.” Tilda cuts back into their original lane in front of the Volvo sharply.
“They do remember,” she says, “that a couple of boys thought it would be a good idea to wander through a mall holding hands and flirting over their lunches like a newlywed couple on the morning after their wedding night, in front of god and country and every homophobe western Ohio might choose to throw their way.”
“We were just having lunch,” says Blaine.
“You are a stupid, stupid boy,” Tilda bites out. “I've always known you didn't have a single ounce of basic survival instinct, but I had hoped that one of you might have had the basic common sense to not light up a giant, glowing sign over your heads, helpfully reading 'Gaybash Here!'” She punctuates it with a sharp stab at the accelerator that narrowly avoids getting them sideswiped by some soccer mom in a Jeep. Kurt wonders if Tilda's wand can fix paint scratches.
“Kurt didn't do anything wrong!” Blaine argues hotly, and Kurt glances back up at the front seat at the sound of his name in mild surprise. There's been so much noise, and anger, and he can tell in a distant sort of way that he's not even really processing things any more. He wants a hot cup of tea. He wants his dad. “And neither did I. There is no reason we shouldn't be able to go out in public and get some lunch together without-”
“And when have I ever given a crap about should?” Tilda demands. Even the squeak of Blaine's shoe fidgeting against the underside of the dashboard falls quiet.
“If you hadn't somehow managed to blast them across the room with wandless magic, they would've had you,” she says. “And if you hadn't used magic, I wouldn't have known to come and save you until they were breaking your bones. Do you think that any amount of whining and wailing and gay rights legislation would have protected you then?”
No, Kurt knows. Knowing better only works in retrospect because you realize just how much you fucked yourself over on your own terms, how much you had in your own power to change if only you hadn't talked yourself out of doing anything about it. It's no good to only start being scared when the lock clicks shut.
“I'm sorry,” says Blaine. “It wasn't Kurt's fault. I was the one that pushed, and I won't do it again. I'm sorry.”
Tilda sighs, indicates, and changes lanes more smoothly this time; they've got to be coming up on their exit. “We need to do something about your magic,” she says. “You're too untrained. A wizard your age should never have been able to do that without a wand, not without so much practice it would make your head spin. We need to rein you in before you get caught by somebody I can't shut up with a few Obliviates and a lot of fudged paperwork.”
“What are you going to do?” Blaine asks, and Tilda swings down the ramp onto the I-75 into Cincinnati.
“I don't know,” she says. “I'll figure it out.”
There's a stuffiness to the apartment, like nobody's been there in a while, and Kurt wonders blankly where Tilda goes when she's not here. She throws open the balcony doors to let some air in, and Kurt sinks down on the couch.
“I'll make some tea,” says Blaine, and heads for the kitchen; Tilda snorts.
“You're still such a Brit,” she teases. “It's eighty degrees out.”
“Tea fixes everything that can't be fixed by chocolate,” Blaine's voice floats out of the kitchen, and Kurt smiles just a little. He hasn't said much since the car.
It was always easy to keep his feet going and his tongue moving, at school, if he just never stopped. McKinley had no avenging angels, just Kurt trying to get himself through the day. It's too easy to shut down, now, with Tilda striding around like she can take care of everything for him and Kurt almost believing it. The corner of the couch is safe, comfortable, and Blaine's back out in just a couple of minutes balancing two mugs of tea and a slightly dusty bar of Lindt. It's only milk chocolate, not dark, but it looks incredibly appealing anyway.
“Chocolate is also a known cure for the aftereffects of several kinds of dark magic,” Blaine says, laying his prizes out on the coffee table.
“Did you raid my stash?” Tilda demands. She comes out of the bathroom damp-faced, minus the soot from earlier. Kurt's hair must be a mess. Automatically, he reaches into his satchel for his compact mirror to start teasing it back into order.
“I left all your Hershey bars,” says Blaine. “I'll buy you a box of Dairy Milk.”
“Hershey's was good enough for my forefathers,” says Tilda. Blaine sits down on the couch, very close to Kurt.
“You never get used to American chocolate,” he says.
“That's because it's inferior,” Kurt says automatically, nudging a single strand of hair back into place.
“Hey,” says Blaine, nudging him in the side. “How're you holding up?”
Kurt glances away from his mirror. “I'm fine,” he says, and Blaine can stop worrying for nothing. It's not quite a lie, and Kurt will defend it if he has to.
“Good,” says Blaine, and lays one palm on Kurt's closest knee. Tilda healed his bleeding nose in the car, but he's still got drying streaks of red on his face. It's kind of awful to look at.
“You might want to go wash your face,” Kurt suggests, and Blaine's hand flies up to his nose, like he'd completely forgotten. Kurt can't help but smile at his dear, idiot boyfriend.
“All right, Katherine, Audrey, or something actually made in the past sixty years?” Tilda asks, fingers hovering over one shelf on her truly massive DVD rack.
“Whatever Kurt wants,” says Blaine on his way to the bathroom, leaving Kurt to blink at Tilda in some surprise.
“Do you have Philadelphia Story?” he says. “Or My Fair Lady.”
“We can run a marathon,” she says, and pops a disc out of its plastic case. “If you two squish up, because that is my couch, and I'm not sitting on the floor for any couple of teenagers.”
“Thank you, Tilda,” Blaine calls through the open door of the bathroom.
“Thanks,” Kurt echoes. “You really shouldn't let us take you away from your work, Blaine and I will be fine by ourselves.”
“Kurt?” Tilda says, sticking the disc into the player and grabbing the remote as she stands up. “Shut up and watch the movie.”
Blaine ends up curling into Kurt's side when he sits back down on the couch. Kurt tenses up at first, and Blaine edges back by the few centimeters of space they have on the not-terribly-long sofa, but bit by bit Kurt relaxes into Blaine's warmth, and Blaine sags back towards Kurt in return. By the time Tracy Lord is slipping off to the family pool with Macaulay Connor, Kurt's let Blaine tuck an arm around his back, and rested his head on Blaine's shoulder in return. He's tired, that's all. He's just so tired.
Kurt can't sleep.
The crux of any good 'accidentally doze off inches from each other while in bed talking' plan is that, when your boyfriend's eyes (green, without the contacts-Kurt's never seen them that way before, not even when Blaine's spent the night in Lima) flutter shut, you follow him into sleep. According to the glowing clock-radio on Blaine's bedside table, it's 1:24 in the morning. This plan is having serious issues in execution.
It's a little too warm in the room, even with the fan running, tucked this close to Blaine's warm body under the comforter. Kurt sighs and rolls over onto his left side, back towards the wall of towering record stacks. Maybe he should just get up and move to the couch, like he'd told his dad he would anyway.
“Hey,” Blaine says, sounding sleepy and surprised. “You still awake?”
“Sorry,” says Kurt, and rests his face against the pillow for a moment. “I didn't mean to wake you up.”
“No, hey, it's fine.” Blaine lays a hand on Kurt's shoulder and shifts in closer; Kurt can feel him along his back, not close enough to press together, but close enough for Kurt's pyjamas to shift against his skin. “Are you okay?”
“I'm fine,” Kurt insists instantly.
“You were just really quiet tonight. I'd have thought a wizard-produced bootleg of Katharine Hepburn's only stage musical would've had you saying more.”
Normally it would have, if not over the quality of the recording than simply because, wow, Katharine Hepburn really couldn't sing, could she, but Kurt hasn't had much to say. It's been a trying day, and Kurt doesn't have his full set of moisturizers here, and of course Tilda would offer to drive a few blocks away from the apartment and then teleport into his bedroom to get them if he really needed, but it isn't the point.
“Not all of us are so used to being the heroes of our own life-and-death situations that we can just shrug them off half an hour later,” Kurt snaps into the pillow. “I'm sorry that I've never been in a situation where I genuinely thought somebody might kill me before, but not all of us spent our preadolescence as boy wizards with whole civic monuments already erected in our name.”
“Woah.” Blaine pulls back. “Kurt...”
“I'm sorry,” Kurt says immediately. He still can't risk a look over his shoulder. He doesn't want to see what kind of facial expression Blaine has on right now. He throws back the covers and slides his legs over the side of the bed, searching for his slippers with his toes. “I'm tired, and it's making me cranky. I'll go out to the couch like I'm supposed to and stop keeping you up.”
“Wait, no, Kurt, stop!” Kurt half expects to feel Blaine's hand close around his wrist, but instead the bedside light snaps on. “Please look at me.”
Kurt still can't resist a plea like that, no matter how much he wants to be alone right now, far away from his picture-perfect, storybook prince, fairytale hero of a boyfriend. He glances over to see Blaine pushing himself upright against the headboard, hair a tornado site of air-dried and bed-rumpled curls, blinking blearily-that's right, Kurt must just be a colorful smear to him right now.
“Okay, I can't actually tell if you're looking at me, but you stopped moving, so I'm going to take that as a good sign,” says Blaine. “Can we talk about this, please?”
“There's nothing to talk about,” Kurt says tightly, and is glad Blaine can't see him wringing his hands. “I've never been so scared in my life, and you saved us. I'm just having a little trouble sleeping over it.”
“Are you mad at me?” Blaine asks. “Please don't be mad at me.”
“Why would I be mad at you?” Kurt demands. “You saved us from them.”
“Because I wasn't fast enough?” Blaine guesses, sounding as out of his depth as Finn in any conversation Kurt's ever heard him have with Rachel. “I'm sorry you were scared, Kurt.”
“Well, like I said, not all of us can be heroes.” Kurt would really like to wrap his bathrobe around himself and flounce off right now, but all he has are his pyjamas, and they're not really made for flouncing in.
“Kurt,” says Blaine. “I was scared, too.”
It's enough to make Kurt stop, look down at his twisting hands again. “Why would you be scared?” he scoffs. “It's not like they were a flock of life-sucking monsters bent on destroying your very soul, or a giant killer snake, or-”
“I know what somebody looks like when they wouldn't mind killing me,” says Blaine.
Kurt freezes. He should say something here, something witty and light and dismissing, but all he can remember is the choking, paralyzing fear of that bathroom. Kurt doesn't want to die.
“I don't know if they really would've done it, or if they would've gotten scared of getting caught, or what,” Blaine continues, oblivious to Kurt's reaction, “but I never thought I'd see anybody look at me that way in Ohio.”
“I did,” says Kurt. “I knew.”
He'd forgotten. He'd made himself forget, because that's the problem with fear. It chokes you up and makes you freeze like a rabbit caught out by a cat, turns you into a statue while two thugs with the collective IQ of a mountain troll beat up your boyfriend. It takes away all of your control. Fear turns Kurt into someone tiny, and weak, and alone, someone he hates, someone he hasn't had to be since his first day at Dalton.
“Kurt...” says Blaine, and then stops, lost. Kurt turns away. He needs to be pacing right now.
It's hard. Living well may be the best revenge, but that only works if you're not walking around in fear for your life. It doesn't work if Kurt lets himself curl up in fear. It's not the epic life of Harry Potter, but it's hard, and some days, the pretense of control is all Kurt's got.
“I know it's not the same as going up against dragons, or vampires, or possessed diaries with nothing but a glowing wooden stick.”
“I've never actually met a vampire,” Blaine points out unhelpfully.
“Some of us have been getting by for years with nothing but a smile and a fabulous wardrobe and the knowledge that someday I'm going to get myself out of this state and never come back,” Kurt continues, ignoring him.
“I know, Kurt,” Blaine says softly. “I told you. You're the bravest person I've ever met.”
“You've never called me that,” Kurt says, and he has to stop pacing and look at Blaine for this, has to check. Blaine's said he has courage before, but not like this. But the only thing Blaine's looking at him with is total sincerity.
“Really?” Blaine looks surprised. “I mean it. Kurt...” He sighs and pats the pillow next to him. “Can you come up here?” he asks. “Otherwise I'm going to have to go put in my contacts, because I haven't owned a pair of glasses in three years and I'd kind of like to have this conversation with your face.”
“It's not a big deal,” Kurt says, but he gives in and crawls his way up to the head of the bed anyway. It's not as stiflingly hot if he leans half-upright against the headboard, on top of the covers and a few inches away from Blaine's blinking green eyes, trying to focus on Kurt up close.
“Hi,” Blaine says. His right hand comes up to cup Kurt's cheek, and Kurt closes his eyes, allows the touch. It's too gentle. It's the way you touch something that's both precious and delicate, and Kurt isn't as much of either as Blaine seems to think.
“Blaine...” Kurt says, but now it's his turn to run out of words and trail off into a sigh. Blaine lets his hand fall from Kurt's cheek, but grabs for Kurt's right hand. Kurt squeezes back.
“Courage is kind of the Gryffindor specialty,” Blaine says, quirking a little smile, “but I never really understood it until I came to Ohio. It's not about throwing yourself into a fight you can actually do something about. It's about facing up to a situation that scares you to death even if you don't think you can do anything about the outcome.”
“Like what?” Kurt asks. Admitting that there are people in Ohio who probably want to kill him doesn't make him feel brave. Mostly it just makes him feel sick to his stomach.
“Like, admitting that I'm never going home again,” says Blaine. “Or showing up at school every single day just being you, instead of crawling into some incredibly fabulous closet and never coming out.”
“It would take a pretty fabulous closet,” Kurt admits.
“I was so scared today,” says Blaine. “I'm not brave enough to think about what I'd do if I lost you.”
Kurt closes his eyes; there it is, again. “Scared for me,” he says. “Not for yourself.” At least Blaine had tried to act. Kurt hadn't even managed to kick the guy holding him in the shins.
“Only because of what happened last time,” Blaine says, and Kurt's eyes blink open. “Have I told you about Cedric Diggory?”
“No,” Kurt says. The name sounds familiar, but Blaine's stories have so many gaps. “He was from England?”
“He was my first big crush,” Blaine admits. “I didn't really get it at the time, but everything he did was just so...honorable, and good at stuff, and I spent all year convincing myself I had a thing for this girl he'd started dating, but...” He makes a little, inarticulate gesture.
“What happened?” Kurt asks curiously. Blaine gazes out into the fuzzy dimness of the room; Kurt squeezes his hand again, just to keep the connection.
“He died,” says Blaine. “He was seventeen, and they killed him just for being near me. He didn't even get a chance to react, or to fight back or try to run, they just showed up and he was dead. For standing next to me.”
“Oh.” The palm against Kurt's is solid, warm; Blaine moves his fingers slightly. A reminder that neither of them are dead yet. And if Kurt concentrates on that, he doesn't have to think about dead crushes and why the world has to screw Blaine over at every turn, and why it has to be so dangerous just to be a teenager and be alive.
“I couldn't do anything,” Blaine says. “I couldn't even move. I just watched it happen. And I was scared for myself today, but Kurt, if anything like that ever happened to you...”
“I'm right here,” Kurt says, and when Blaine turns his head back, Kurt's the one to cup one side of his face with a palm. “I'm not going anywhere.”
“I know, Kurt. I just...” Kurt leans in the last two inches, and Blaine leans up to meet him, lips warm against lips and tongue stroking tongue, saying all the things words can't, at this hour of the night.
“Ohio's not enough to break us,” Kurt says fiercely when they pull apart. “Not us. Not what we have.” He's not sure how this turned into him reassuring Blaine, but maybe that's how this works. They reassure each other. Maybe it's time to admit that the Great Harry Potter doesn't have any more control than he does after all.
Blaine just smiles. He's giving Kurt that look again, the one that seems so full of something suspiciously like wonder, adoration, all those feelings you have for that precious, delicate thing that Kurt is not.
“You're amazing,” Blaine says.
Blaine looks at him like he hung the moon and stars while Kurt's really only just got a handle on surviving Ohio. If Kurt were really amazing, he'd never have needed to transfer to Dalton in to begin with; they wouldn't be here tonight at all, because they'd only just be getting home from some New Directions blowout of a prom afterparty. But Blaine thinks that Kurt is brave.
Ohio is all around them, right outside those doors, closing in on every side, but Blaine thinks Kurt is brave. Kurt thinks that, even at two in the morning, Blaine reminds him how to be.
“Can we turn off the light and go to sleep?” he asks. It's been a long day. He's been tired since three o'clock this afternoon.
“Sure,” Blaine says, and Kurt wiggles himself back under the covers while he turns over to flick off the lamp. It's still too hot for body heat and comforter both, so Kurt shoves back the duvet until they're only covered by the sheet, and wraps one arm around Blaine's waist from behind.
“Is this okay?” he asks tentatively. There's nothing sexual about the cuddling; Blaine settles his back against Kurt's chest, but their hips are well apart, and Kurt thinks they're probably both too tired to do anything more than this anyway.
“It's perfect,” Blaine says. Kurt's right arm is tucked up a little awkwardly between Blaine's side and the mattress, but they shift a little and everything sort of falls into place. Blaine covers Kurt's left hand against his chest with his right. Falling asleep, just like this, Blaine moving just a little with every breath, might be the most intimate thing Kurt's ever done.
“If Tilda wakes up first, is she going to be angry?” It doesn't sound at all like the Tilda Kurt knows, but then, she watched six hours of Katharine Hepburn movies this afternoon without prompting, so maybe he doesn't know her very well at all.
“No,” says Blaine, and Kurt lets himself settle against the pillows, allows himself, muscle by muscle, to really begin to relax. “We're safe.”