Glee!fic: Close Your Eyes, fantasy AU

[rainjoyswriting]

Close Your Eyes part I of probably and predictably III, a sequel to In The Dark, a fantasy Glee!fic.
Rating: R - some little smut, fair bit of cursing, just generally not written for kids.
Disclaimer: Despite how heavily AU we are, I don't own any of them. Woe =(

Summary: The coven, with a not-quite-knight in tow, are making their way North - but Blaine's not the only baggage Kurt's bringing with him.


Note: I know I have comments to reply to, I'm sorry, I am so tired. Partly because I read difficult books all day, partly because I didn't get to bed until three last night (not my fault! I totally wanted to go to bed at two?). I will get back to you, promise <3 Also, this is likely to take a fucklong time to update, sorry, it turns out postgrads have to work *really hard*, what is up with that?

Santana says, "Worst. Seer. Ever."

"Shut up!" Rachel snaps back, eyes frantic on the pendulum that just won't move, quivering only because her hand's shaking a little. "Like you would know anything about it, you don't do any difficult magic, you just set fire to things!"

"Yeah I do," Santana says, arms folded, tapping her own elbow with two irritable fingertips. "I set fire to all kinds of things. You might wanna think about that and hurry the hell up, dwarf."

Sitting on their packs at the side of the clearing they're apparently not leaving anytime soon, Kurt glances across at Blaine, who looks back and smiles. Kurt's mouth twitches and he looks away again, because it's been weeks but Blaine's smile still gets in at him like too much magic, tight and quick in his chest. Blaine's hand creeps along the top of his pack and nudges the edge of Kurt's; Kurt flexes his fingers a little, leans his hand towards Blaine's.

Rachel huffs, flicks the pendulum out, tosses her hair back. "Seering doesn't take you where you want to be, it takes you where you're meant to be. So clearly we are meant to be here, or it would take us somewhere else!"

"That's such a convincing excuse for your magic crapping out," Kurt murmurs, while Blaine's hand slides in over his, his fingers fitting neatly between Kurt's, and it's ridiculous the way the excitement runs up Kurt's arm. It's a hand. It's only a hand. But it's Blaine's hand, and he can't breathe right.

"Obviously my magic is too deep and complicated for you people to understand, but I think that it is very important that we set up camp here right now which the magic clearly wants us to do!"

"'The magic wants it' or you can't seer to save your butt?" Santana snaps back, before she gets distracted by Brittany, following a butterfly with her hands upraised, saying, "Why are you flying away? You should totally be my familiar, you're all pretty, like me."

Finn says, "Okay, look, maybe we should just camp here."

"Way to take your girlfriend's side, it's the middle of the day, we should keep going!"

"Uck, this argument is gonna be the rest of the day," Mercedes says, and flumps onto a log, waves a hand at them. "Y'all just fight, I'll wait here 'til it gets dark an' we pitch camp anyway."

"Alright, gods," Santana is massaging her forehead, and then stabs a finger at Kurt and Blaine. "Look, would you two just go bone somewhere? Magic's never gonna lead us anywhere anyway when you're drawing it all in like a cat in heat."

"Oh my god, we're hardly even touching! -stop looking!" Kurt snaps, as everyone glances over, checking the magic around him. "We're not doing anything! Stop looking! Blaine!"

"What?" Blaine's trying to pull the goggles up from around his neck. "It's not fair, I always get left out, I don't even know what you guys are arguing about half the time."

"Stop looking you perverts!" Kurt wails, too high, and half the coven do look away but a significant half of it are still squinting at the magic all around him, floundering now with his embarrassment, squeezing in around him like a school of fish flashing tighter.

"Hard not to look, it takes up half the damn forest," Santana mutters. "Magic's never gonna lead us anywhere if you don't control that mess you drag around after yourself."

"It's not my fault it's -"

"- reacting to your uncontrollable lust for your little knight?"

"Storming away from you now!" Kurt snarls, leaping off his bag.

"Good!" Santana yells after him. "Now maybe Rachel's stupid pendulum will get pulled by something other than your needy dick!"

Magic spits at the edges of Kurt's aura, he hears a leaf pop as it cooks overhead, feels the flicker of shields being put up by the mages behind him. Blaine, oblivious, scrambles off his bag and follows him, as Kurt strides off into the forest, up a bank and slithering down it again, seething the magic ahead of himself. Screw them all. Like he wants to be lit up like a signal fire, like he asked for all the magic to crowd in around him until he's nervous even to click his fingers in case it explodes -

"Hey," Blaine calls, and Kurt hears his boots skid on an exposed root. "Hey! Slow up! Kurt-!"

His hand catches Kurt's arm as it swings, and Kurt tries to yank forward but just gets pulled back into him, bumping into his chest. "Hey," Blaine says. "Don't walk off."

"It's not like they can lose me, I'm like a damned lighthouse to them." Kurt snaps, and pulls at Blaine's wrist. "Let go. Audiences ruin a sulk."

"Okay, they might be able to find you again, but do you understand why I'm a little bit leery of letting you walk off alone in a forest? Again?"

"Because a faery is just going to leap on me out here."

"Because I just get nervous. Okay?" Blaine wraps his arms around his stomach, digs his chin in over Kurt's shoulder. "If anything happened to you I'd get stuck with them, and they're seriously crazy, Kurt, don't leave me alone with them."

"You're so romantic and clearly care about me so much."

"I love you." Blaine hugs him closer. "Don't leave me. I love you."

". . . I love you too," Kurt mumbles, dropping his head so his forehead's in Blaine's hair. He lets himself just slump back into Blaine's chest, which is nice and sturdy, and Blaine's arms settle comfortably against his hipbones. "I just . . . I hate my coven sometimes."

"You love them really."

"Sometimes. You don't choose your coven, it just - happens. Sometimes we all hate each other."

"You don't hate me," Blaine says hopefully, and Kurt turns in his arms, hugs Blaine in around the neck.

"Of course I don't hate you. I don't ever hate you."

"Not even when I drool on you in my sleep?"

"I'm a very forgiving person," Kurt says, kissing his forehead.

Blaine rubs at his waist, murmurs, "And I give really good 'I'm sorry' blowjobs."

Kurt tries to stifle it but he gives up, and grins into his hair. "Yes you do. So I suppose it's a good thing you do so many things that you need to apologise for."

Blaine's fingers are beginning to draw up the fabric of his robes, hitching the material up around his waist. "I could be sorry now," he says, and Kurt tries to clamp the fabric in his knees but it slithers past them; he catches the underrobes, but the silver-grey outerrobes are now riding up around his thighs.

"They are - only on the other side of that - that bank and-"

"And it's about as much privacy as we've got in the last week anyway. You smell really good," Blaine says into his breastbone, breath huffing there hot. "I can't help wanting you, I'm sorry, I'm really not some sex-addicted caveman-"

"Yes you are," Kurt hisses, as Blaine squeezes his handfuls of robe, pulling Kurt's hips closer to his with them. Bones bump, body presses body, there's that heat and that pressure there Kurt knows and it's all it ever takes, really, to turn him on beyond turning back. All the magic in the world, and Blaine's simple existence makes Kurt helpless; how is it fair?

"-you're just there, all the time, and you're gorgeous, and - you smell really good." His teeth close gently in the skin above the bone, and Kurt would like to have a comeback but all he actually does is put his head back and try to contain the groan with his teeth. Blaine's tongue laps out and Kurt gulps a breath in, says, "Don't you dare leave a mark-"

"Can they really see when we're - you know, horny for each other?"

Kurt closes a hand in Blaine's hair as he tugs the neck of Kurt's robes down with his teeth, begins mouthing lower at the skin of his chest. "They - well. Yes." Kurt swallows. "I mean, you can see it over - over Santana and Brittany when they're all - can't you?"

"I don't know how to read it like you guys do." Blaine lets go of Kurt's robes so they fall in a rush around him again, kisses his skin one last time and then drops unceremoniously to his own knees. "I guess so, though." He gets his hands in under Kurt's robes, both sets this time, and flumps them up and over himself like a tent. "Robes are great. Easy access!"

"You-" Kurt clenches his hands, eyes shooting open as Blaine's hand has unlaced his underwear and is around him, and his breath is warm and damp on him, and his body tries to hunch in on itself while he strains his back to stay upright. Blaine begins peeling his underwear down to his knees. "It's more subtle than - than - I can control it to some - oh, gods."

Blaine can't currently talk, so Kurt closes his eyes and drops his head and lets his breath shudder out, and tries not to think about his coven a few hundred yards away, probably well aware of the crazed pillar of magic over Kurt getting all sparky and urgent with pleasure. He can see Blaine's head under his robes, shifting - finding a rhythm while Kurt puts a hand over his mouth to try to keep the noises in, until the bump that is Blaine raises and his mouth slips right off Kurt, and he says - a little muffled - "Do you want me to finger you?"

Kurt just makes a noise into his hand. Blaine's head bobs a little under his strange canopy and then his mouth is back, warm and wet and too good, and one wet finger announces that he took that noise for a 'yes'. Kurt pulls his hand down, gasps, "Blaine-"

"Mmf?"

"Blaine - I need to - to - lean on something or - I'm going to - " He swallows. "Fall over."

The magic crackles around him, burning hot and too bright, too excited. The finger presses so his knees jolt before it slips loose and Blaine's hands grip his thighs, his thumbs dig in the creases between leg and belly. "Lie down," Blaine murmurs, and licks up the side of his dick, making Kurt's hips jerk. "Lie down, then."

Kurt's cloak will be all leafy, they'll know. Blaine's knees will already be stained, so yes, they will know.

The magic heaves above him, sinks, circles him, skims his skin overeager and over-stimulated and over-aroused and crackling with sex; of course they know.

*

"You have an oral fixation," Kurt murmurs, when Blaine nuzzles his face into the crook of his neck, laying half on top of him and heavy with satisfaction. Blaine just sighs. It's true, though, Blaine uses his mouth to grip and carry when both hands are busy, like a dog. It makes Kurt feel oddly aroused. All kinds of things Blaine does make Kurt feel oddly aroused. The expression on his face when he shaves in a morning; these things shouldn't be so sexy. The other side of the oral fixation, of course, is that he's very generous with oral sex. Kurt does not mind the oral fixation.

He runs his fingers into Blaine's hair, partly out of affection and partly out of habit, because for the last two weeks there have been leaves stuck in there after sex. "I know I've been ratty," he says, stroking his fingers through and back, gently combing the hair behind his ears. "I'm sorry. I want a bath and some clean robes and access to an iron. I hate travelling."

"S'okay," Blaine says, sleepy after orgasm, nuzzling his cheek comfortable on Kurt's chest. "Sore feet and not enough sleep . . ."

They both stiffen slightly. "I mean, in tents." Blaine says. "On the ground. No-one sleeps well in tents."

Kurt lays his head back in the leaves, swallows, strokes Blaine's hair. No, no-one's sleeping well. Mostly because of Kurt.

The first time he had the dream, he woke up nearly crying with terror but the only person he woke was Blaine, because Blaine sleeps more or less on top of him and hugging him like a pillow, Blaine is clingy in bed. Blaine hushed and kissed and soothed him and he went back to sleep again, and in the morning it was just a bad memory. The second time Blaine wasn't the only person he woke and he knows it. The third time, half the tent woke up.

The fourth time he came up screaming and both tents woke up.

The fourth time was a while ago now, and he's lost count.

They're still being sympathetic. None of them have ever even seen a faery, let alone survived a faery's attempt to kill them, let alone killed it first. They use gentle voices and he feels the comforting nudge of their magic against the terror-crazed edges of his while Blaine is holding him and whispering I'm here I'm here I'm here and all of the tent can hear him trying not to cry. They're his coven, and though they didn't know they'd stumble into a faery because of it, they feel guilty for letting Dave shrink him so much before that night, they feel guilty for what they didn't support him through. So they support him now, when he wakes up choking on his breath with his face already wet and the scream sounds like it's coming from someone else, and they don't know what he just dreamed.

It's not the faery. He's whispered it, wet face pressed into Blaine's shoulder. It's not the faery. The faery was not the worst part of it.

And Blaine rubbed his back and kissed his hair and whispered, "I know, love, I know." and hummed against him until he stopped shaking, and laid him down again to sleep.

It's not the faery.

And the worst part of the dream is -

Every night now he's closer.

*

Blaine wakes up in the dark, lifting his head with a little snorted breath. He can hear the slow sleeping breathing of the mages all around him - he and Kurt are sharing a tent with Quinn, Mercedes, Finn and Rachel - and everything is peaceful and normal, except that the body underneath his has gone stiff.

He always goes to sleep next to Kurt and wakes up on top of Kurt, it's some kind of instinctive reaction of his body, to try to enclose him as much as possible. Now he slithers off him a little and squints, touches Kurt's arm - the muscles are tight and twitching - and thinks, Shit.

"Kurt." He tries to whisper, he doesn't want everyone to wake up again. "Kurt."

He touches his cheek, feels the tight jerking of his muscles; his mouth is open. If he could be screaming he would be. He slides his fingers into Kurt's hair and tries to stifle his own panic, hisses close to his face, "Kurt I'm here I'm here I'm here-"

Kurt jolts up kicking, his breath sucking in sharp and piercing before Blaine clamps a hand over his mouth. Finn snorts awake - Kurt just kicked him - and Kurt pulls at his wrists and the shriek is muffled and Blaine feels -

He can't see it, so he doesn't understand what it is, the air just feels odd for a second. It's all the magic sucking in around Kurt, drawing in so he can shove it out as hard as he can. If he'd completed the move it would have sent Blaine through the tent and across the clearing and possibly through a couple of trees, but Blaine slides his hand from his mouth and whispers, "Hey hey hey it's me-" and Kurt stiffens before relaxing, suddenly, every muscle at once. He slumps against Blaine and pants.

Rachel groans, and rolls over. Quinn's sitting up now, and Blaine looks across as a little magic begins to glow, a slow wend of small golden lights through the tent; Blaine's emotions don't show up well in the magic, so she needs to be able to see his face. "Better?" she says, not entirely ironic. Kurt swallows, squeezes his hands together, nods at his own knees. Blaine runs his hand back through Kurt's hair, kisses the closest part of his face - somewhere between his left eye and his hairline - and murmurs against him, "Lay down. Lay down."

The magic fades in the air. He hears the shifting of Quinn laying down again, and Mercedes rolls over, mumbles something, he's not sure if she's awake or still asleep. Kurt shuffles back into their sleeping bag, under both their cloaks against the cold, and Blaine wriggles down with him. Their knees bump, slip over and under, they already know the comfortable ways they can tangle themselves, how to lay without numbing each other's limbs in the night. Kurt touches Blaine's cheek and Blaine sees a little glow above them, a tiny halo of magic illuminated for his sake, so he can see Kurt's face in the dark. Kurt whispers, "Sorry."

"It's okay. Are you okay?"

Kurt presses his lips together, swallows. Blaine catches his hand, squeezes it a little. "Do you want to talk about it? Or-"

Kurt shakes his head very quickly. Blaine closes his eyes, opens them and smiles. "Okay. Maybe in the daylight."

Kurt blinks, slow and very sleepy, and whispers again, "Sorry."

"It's okay." Blaine kisses him, and shifts closer again, curling an arm around his waist. "It's always okay."

*

Kurt's more relaxed over breakfast, which is porridge, again. Dinner last night was vegetable stew, again, though flavoured with wild garlic for a change. Tina and Mike 'found' it, Mike's cloak still completely reeks of it; no guesses needed for how they found it. They might tease about it but the mages generally are very open and easy about sex, very relaxed about admitting what they want and where they've been, which makes Blaine feel more relaxed after the hyper-judgmental atmosphere of the knights. Kurt's still a little uptight about it, but then Kurt's emotions announce themselves like signal fires to the other mages, he can't control the sheer amount of magic attracted to him, he might as well carry flags to announce his levels of want and satisfaction. It sort of makes up for the fact that as a human, Blaine hardly attracts any magic, only his extremities of emotion move it. Which is one of the reasons, he learns, why mages distrust ordinary humans quite a lot; the magic either isn't very interested in them or is actively avoiding them, it makes them hard to read, besides just being slightly emotionally blank it makes them essentially invisible, to mages. They tell Blaine that he's alright though, while Kurt squeezes his hand tight, and glares at them.

There are lots of ways that Blaine finds the mages odd and they clearly find him odd. Their social norms are all off. They have no concept of hierarchy, covens don't have leaders, and they all say exactly what they think and expect to hear exactly what another person is thinking back. Mages can't lie to each other, not unless they're lying pretty hard to themselves as well to confuse the magic. They can't trick each other and don't even try to. They argue furiously for people who have to travel together, sleep in the same tents, probably spend the rest of their lives together - but it just doesn't seem to matter. And when they fight they actively fight, they can't control it, the magic spits around them, hisses and sparks like fireworks got loose, even without the goggles on Blaine can see it. The other mages put shields up against accidental sparks and watch, wearily. Blaine sees an odd sticky sheen to the air around himself, reaches out and touches it; Kurt puts a shield around him as well when it starts up. Raw magic can burn unprotected skin easily, and Blaine wouldn't even see it until too late.

Rachel ladles from the cauldron, passes bowls out to the circle around the campfire. They're also all vegetarians, because mages can communicate with animals as easily as humans - it's unusual enough that no-one in the coven currently has a familiar, lots of mages do - and they're stiffly, politely in front of Blaine, appalled by the ways humans treat, kill and eat animals. So, there's lots of vegetable stew, lots of beans. Blaine compliments the chef every time, and keeps quiet. He doesn't like being made to feel guilty, but he also doesn't know how he'd feel about eating a chicken he could also have a conversation with, so he tries not to think about it at all.

They don't realise how ordinary humans view them. For one thing it's a bit weird to be referred to as a 'human' as if they somehow aren't, as if mages are so different that 'humans' are a separate order of life. They also just don't seem to realise how dangerous they are. When Kurt puts that shield up around Blaine just because Puck and Quinn are casually sniping at each other and the magic's spitting between them, they don't realise how alarming it is for him, how alarming it is for anyone who can't offhandedly shield themselves against these things. The weakest mage could still blind an ordinary human almost without effort, scar them, burn them, kill them with a gesture. They don't seem to understand why people act like they're monsters. They just look bewildered, and hurt.

It is sort of hard to view them as monsters when Brittany looks into her bowl and says, "Do you think I should eat plants when I do plant magic? Does that make me a cannibal?"

Santana says, "Eat your breakfast, Britt."

"You have to eat plants or you couldn't eat anything, Brittany." Rachel says soothingly.

Brittany says slowly, "I have some of my best conversations with plants," and stares into her bowl, then spoons out and eats a piece of dried fruit looking contemplative.

Blaine says, "What do you talk to plants about?" and Kurt gives him a Don't start her off look.

Brittany tilts her head. "Mostly sunlight. Sunlight is awesome. Sometimes water. They like water. And insects, but not all insects, only the nice ones." She narrows her eyes. "Poison ivy tells lies."

"It would be like me not drinking water because I'm a hydromage, you just have to eat plants." Tina says.

Brittany turns her spoon. "I mean, Kurt doesn't eat sick people."

Kurt's face tightens like his mouthful just turned sour before he swallows it. "No. Because that wouldn't help the healing process at all."

"And Rachel doesn't eat - like, crystal balls and stuff."

"Um, Britt-"

"Stop talking," Santana says, rubbing her shoulder. "Okay baby? Your logic is beyond their tiny minds. Eat your breakfast."

They pack their tents, a long line of mages-and-Blaine brush their teeth and then spit into the undergrowth, and while Rachel stands watching the pendulum Blaine sidles up to Finn, who's currently got the Artie-owl perched on his shoulder. "Hey, can I borrow Artie for a moment?"

"Sure, dude. His claws dig in anyway."

The little clockwork owl's eyes roll, and its wings open and close irritably. Blaine holds an arm up for Finn to pass it down to; it's lighter than it looks, thin beaten copper carved with feathers over turning cogs and the magic holding it together. "Morning Artie," Blaine says to it, falling back as the mages begin to move, Kurt and Mercedes walking together, talking, Kurt suddenly laughing and Mercedes bumping him with her hip.

Its wings open and close, its beak mechanically snaps open and shut. "Hey, Blaine. How's things?"

"Pretty good." It's a nice day, autumn-blue cloudless sky, the leaves beginning to turn. They picked a bad season to head North maybe, but at least they'll know the full extent of what they're in for by the time they get there, and it is beautiful how the world goes all amber. Plus the cloak Kurt made him is unnaturally warm. Goggles on - he pulls them up now, stretches them out, settles them over his eyes - he can see the heady glow of magic over it; his boyfriend is the best. "Can I ask you something?"

"Yeah, anything. I've been doing research, you know. No record of a human travelling with mages before, like, ever. I mean, you guys are pretty hard to live with and all. And mage/human romances are seriously rare-"

"Um."

"-and usually end like, soooo bad, I read this record of-"

"Artie?"

"Yes."

Blaine tries to think how to word this, quickly, before Artie can start talking again and make Blaine's stomach drop further. "You know Kurt's been having - nightmares, since the, the . . . since the faery."

". . . yeah. You would not believe how piercing a scream gets through one of these things. Woke me up like it was the end of the world or something. Hit my head on the headboard. Not a good night."

"I just - I just wanted to ask if -" The mages walk ahead of him and Blaine follows, watching them through the goggles, the comforting blaze around Kurt that keeps him safe, Finn and Rachel talking with their magic companionably batting against each other, Mercedes' bursting up in a sudden shock of laughter to something Kurt says; he smiles. "If they're definitely just dreams. Um. They get pretty - pretty nasty."

". . . well it was kind of traumatic, you know? Most mages never even see a faery, and we're kind of glad of it."

"I know it was 'traumatic'. I was there." That thing whispering to Kurt all the ways it would hurt and maim him before it killed him, Kurt standing there alone and upright and terrified and so determined, Blaine had never seen anyone do anything braver. Still hasn't. Kurt's his hero.

Artie's silent for a moment, and the owl shifts its little copper legs on Blaine's arm. They clink and grip again in the chain mail. "You think it's more than bad dreams?"

". . . I don't know. Maybe I'm paranoid. But he has them every night, and he's fine in the day - I mean, he's just Kurt all the time and it just - he's a pretty optimistic guy, you know? It's not like he lingers on it. I think I think about it more than he does, but then in the dark-"

"I can take a look through some books. Some faeries can get in your dreams, dreams are like, their playgrounds. Normally it's a weird sex thing, though, and then you die."

"That. Doesn't make me feel better."

"You die happy," Artie says, and Blaine sighs, and then trips over something.

The problem with the goggles: he can see what the mages see, which is incredible, all the world full of floating specks of magic like constant fireflies. But he hasn't learned to read it the way mages can, and it's just so new to him and so dazzling, and he doesn't always notice normal things through it. Like trees. And people. And on one memorable occasion, a wall.

He lays face-down on the path and says, "Ow." and hears the scuff of boots through the leaves, and Kurt is kneeling next to him. "I'm fine," Blaine says, picking himself up, clawing the goggles down off his eyes with one hand. "I - just - distracted."

The magic is gone, the world is so empty, and Kurt looks at him somewhere between concerned and amused, then looks down and gently picks a thorny dead twig out of the side of Blaine's hand. Blaine sees the tiny red pinpricks in his skin fade, feels the prickle of it healing, says quietly, "I wish you wouldn't do that."

"And I wish you'd look where you're going. Relationships are about compromise." Kurt runs a hand through Blaine's hair and kisses him, then stands up and rubs the side of his own hand, where the thorns didn't break the skin but they did, all the same. "Can't take risks in these circumstances. Infection isn't pleasant, Blaine."

He offers a hand, helps Blaine up. The Artie-owl says, "I'll go take a look through some books."

"Thanks, Artie."

"Later." The owl's eyes spin and go dead, and its wings hang. Kurt frowns at the owl, says, "What's Artie looking up for you?"

"Just . . ." Kurt is likely to react very, very badly to this intrusion, since he won't even tell Blaine what the damn dreams are about. "Just stuff. You know it's all new to me. He said - humans and mages don't normally get together."

Kurt has the most incredibly expressive face, tiny twitches of the eyebrows, of the mouth, quick eyes very blue in this light - now it turns troubled, then just relaxed and open again looking at Blaine. "No," he says, and doesn't let go of Blaine's hand now he's standing. "We're special."

"We are," Blaine says happily, squeezing his hand, and Kurt laughs.

"You're special."

"Don't say it in that tone of voice."

"What tone of voice?" Kurt says innocently, and Blaine rolls his eyes, throws an arm around his shoulders, makes them both stagger for a moment as they walk on.

*

Another day of walking. They're approaching the end of the woodland though, they can see light ahead through the trees, and Rachel's pendulum swings straight for it. Blaine walks with Finn for a while, talking, he even lets Finn have a go with his sword until he almost decapitates Mike and he has to take it back in a hurry. Kurt is walking with Rachel and Mercedes and Tina, they keep crumpling up with laughter, arms around each other and howling. Tina keeps . . . measuring little spaces with her hands, and Kurt keeps putting his hands over his face. Blaine will never, never ask them what was so funny.

When Kurt drops back to his side Blaine takes his hand, murmurs, "Do you want to talk about it?" and Kurt looks at him innocently confused for a second before he blanches, looks ahead again. He shakes his head, says loudly, "It's our turn to cook tonight, I thought I could make croutons out of that last stale bread-" and Blaine sighs. He can't make Kurt tell him anything Kurt doesn't want to, and god knows it was traumatic, that night in the forest, Kurt facing the dead and used body of someone who meant something at best very conflicting to him. Blaine dreams about it sometimes too. And if it is anything strange, Artie will be able to find out for him . . .

Out of the forest, there's a road ahead, they can see a coach travelling along it hedgehog-small in the distance, and a few hours' walk further up through the roll of the fields - an inn. Beds, baths, they can restock on food, they can get some proper sleep -

Well, almost. They arrive at dusk, footsore and overeager, and Blaine's the only one who really understands what they look like to the innkeeper, a pack of grubby mages he doesn't dare to turn away but desperately doesn't want under his roof. He claims he has no free rooms and they shrug, they're easy, they'll take the stables so long as they can borrow a bath. He really can't turn down too much, Blaine knows they wouldn't set fire to the thatch or breathe plague into the building but the innkeeper doesn't, so they get the stables and the use of a tin bath. When you have two pyromages and two hydromages - both Mike and Tina do water magic - hot water is not a problem, and Kurt is as loose and happy as a kitten after a bath, warm and clean and still glowing a little with heat, drying Blaine's hair for him behind the screen hung up at one end of the stable block. A brown horse stands beside them in its stall, drowsy-eyed and not much concerned with them, while Kurt shrugs his last clean set of underrobes over his head and wraps his arms around Blaine again, purring with comfort and warmth. "Don't you mind-" Blaine doesn't know what to make of the horse right now. "Him watching?"

"Her," Kurt says, kissing the back of Blaine's neck, nosing at his damp hair. "She's mundane. No magic in her. Animals are just like people, not all of them have any magic."

"Couldn't you just eat the 'mundane' ones then?"

"It doesn't make it right just because they don't have magic. We don't eat humans either, you know."

". . . is that what you call us?" Blaine glances back over his shoulder and Kurt pauses in kissing his way towards the back of Blaine's ear. "'Mundane'?"

Kurt's arms over his shoulders tighten in his shirt. "No. Just - human. But yes. It means the same." He presses his cheek against the back of Blaine's neck, says, "I know what we must sound like. But it's - it's not easy for us either, you know."

Blaine thinks about that innkeeper, nervous of a bunch of really the most harmless people Blaine's ever met, just because of their potential. He says, "I guess. It's - it's really not easy, is it?"

Kurt leans against his back, his arms hanging over his shoulders, his breathing a gentle press to Blaine's shoulder blades. "You will tell me. If I ever just - if I'm ever - if I sound - if I forget. Tell me. It wouldn't ever be about you, you know I know you and I would never think anything like that about you, I love you. But if I ever just sound like a complete idiot about humans - people -"

"People," Blaine says with a little laugh.

"- my dad's human, and I grew up human. I don't want to be some arrogant - mage about them. Tell me if I sound like it." His nose tip touches the back of Blaine's neck. "Be my conscience for me."

Blaine wraps his hands around Kurt's wrists. "You too. If I ever really tragically just do not get it . . ."

Kurt presses his face to Blaine's shoulder, warm against the skin where his shirt collar falls loosely down. "We're both learning."

"We're okay though. We're okay, aren't we?"

"Of course we are, we always are-"

"I love you. Too, I mean."

"So much I don't even know - how to be, sometimes, like it'll take me over -"

Blaine closes his eyes, and knows what he means. Sometimes it overwhelms him almost like fear, how utterly everything Kurt is to him. "I know."

Kurt hugs him from behind, and Blaine holds his wrists, and tries to breathe like breathing is easy.

Then he draws a breath in and says, "So, now we're all clean . . ." He wriggles his shoulder blades. "Do you want to get dirty again?"

Kurt laughs, slips his arms back over Blaine's shoulders. "You have such a one track mind."

"How often do we get the chance?"

"We used to, in the college. I used to wash when I knew you were coming. I could always feel you coming, I would make sure I was . . . and now you've seen me with leaves in my hair and dirt all over me, so it was sort of pointless after all."

"First time I ever saw you you had leaves in your hair and dirt all over you. You know you're always gorgeous." Blaine turns to him, takes his hands, kisses him. Kurt kisses back, but he's smiling too broadly to put much into it. "Sorry. I used to come to you straight from practice, I know I reeked."

"No. I didn't mind. I liked it," Kurt plays with a button on his shirt, eyes low. "You were in such a hurry to get to me . . ."

"I really was."

". . . and you would try to do small talk but I knew what you were thinking about really . . . I liked it." Kurt fondles that little button and presses his lips tight for a second. "You being. Eager for me."

"I could be eager now. Eager and fresh-scented for once."

Kurt keeps his eyes on that button on Blaine's shirt and mumbles, "You always smell good." and Blaine blinks, is just beginning to smile when the heavy sheet acting as a screen slaps hard and shakes under someone's hand. "Boys! Five of us would still like to get a bath before sunrise, please!"

Kurt huffs, and Blaine laughs, kisses him, murmurs, "Come on." They pick up their clothes and pull their boots back on, brush the sheet aside, pad hand in hand back through the stables over the straw. Quinn waits with her hands on her hips, then ducks under the sheet. Brittany and Santana follow her, whispering, laughing. Blaine almost asks but doesn't, because he has no idea how Brittany and Santana's relationship works and if Quinn might be involved as well, or if they're just friends who don't mind sharing a bath. He knows Santana sleeps with Puck now and then, knows that Artie had a thing with Brittany apparently parallel to her being with Santana, is just very unsure where the boundaries of their relationship lie. The mages don't question it, so it's probably impolite to, and Blaine would hate to be impolite.

There are a surprising number of empty stalls given that the inn is so 'full'. Finn is already asleep and snoring in one of them, Rachel sitting at his feet with an arm around her knees reading a little green book. Everything smells of warm straw and the friendly, slightly farty smell of horse. Blaine strokes the nose of a particularly beautiful black horse and Kurt, dropping their worn clothes into the water butt Mike and Tina will wash and wring them through, says, "He's magical."

Blaine looks at him, looks back into the dark eyes of the horse. "Really?"

Kurt performs the little bow of greeting all mages use; if a mage ever curtseys to you then they're insulting you, though a human would have to be brave to call them on it. "Kurt, healer. - he says his name's Samson."

"Hi Samson! I'm Blaine. Can he understand me?"

"Of course he can understand you. Um, he says he likes the nose rub."

Blaine beams, rubs the horse's snout faster, feels its breath huff damp down his wrist. "Can I ask you some questions? I have never had a conversation with a horse before."

The horse looks at Kurt, flicks an ear, and Kurt says, "I know, but I love him. He says yes, Blaine, you can ask him some questions. Though I would like some sleep, so make them quick ones."

"It's kind of like having a kid in tow," Puck says, legs stretched out, leaning back against a hay bale and twitching a straw out of the corner of his mouth.

"Shut up," Kurt says evenly, and a lantern overhead begins to swing with pressurised magic Blaine couldn't see even if he wasn't intent on Samson, saying, "What's being shod like, does that not hurt?"

*

Asleep against Kurt, and later half on top of Kurt, Blaine dreams about his family home. He dreams that his father's home from a campaign, everyone is rushing to the entrance hall to meet him and Blaine must be young for how small he is, it's a struggle to reach every door handle, to push every heavy wooden door open, he'll be the last one there, he'll be forgotten, his father will greet everyone and forget he even exists, but then walking through the kitchens he sees Kurt at the big porcelain sink peeling potatoes, and he looks up and says Help me only when Blaine walks to him he's not peeling them at all but fixing, with clever quick fingers, the skin back onto them, and placing them whole again in a basket and Blaine says Kurt I can't do that and Kurt says Of course you can, you can do anything and drops too many potatoes into his arms, Blaine drops them, leans down to pick them up and there's his sword under the sink, dusty and forgotten, and Blaine picks it up feeling guilty for having left it there like that and Puck says Like having a kid in tow and Kurt says I know but I love him and Blaine touches his back, he's only in his underrobes, white cotton thin over his skin and Kurt turns to him and says Are you eager for me now? and Blaine reaches for him but the magic's in the way, there's a shield in the air over Kurt Blaine's hands bang at helplessly and Kurt says You're so mundane and they're in the knights' practice ground, everyone can see that Blaine can't do anything, and

He's in a corridor in the mages' college, one of the many corridors with dormitories or classrooms along either side, and he feels someone jolt beside him. He turns and it's Kurt, white-faced and on the edge of tears, staring at him and choking, "What are you -?"

Blaine turns properly to face the same way as Kurt, and his breath thumps in his chest. There's a big lurching body in mage robes coming down the corridor towards them. Every step is slow because one leg swings in odd little circles, broken from the knee down, before it hits the floor and takes its swinging weight, only a little bowed by it. It's walking towards them with its head flopping against its chest and its arms swinging limp with each step, and Kurt begins to moan beside him. Blaine fumbles for his hand and it snaps around Blaine's like a trap, squeezing so tight. Blaine says, and his voice is shaking, "It's - that's - David -"

Kurt has his other hand over his mouth, and Blaine can see the madness of the fear in his eyes as the tears break, Kurt can't even drag enough of his mind together to scream. Blaine can't let go of his hand, fumbles with the wrong hand for his sword thinking shit shit shit as the lurching dead mage, bigger than both of them, slumps its slowly, horribly relentless way towards them -

And comes up from sleep with a cry out loud, fear and shock combined, and under him Kurt explodes into sobbing, curling in around himself, clawing his hands over his face to try to make it stop, his breath heaving irrhythmically in his chest. Finn and Rachel at the other side of the stall they're sharing sit up, and Blaine can hear Santana swearing further into the stables as he fumbles for a lantern, a light, it's too dark and Kurt is squirming underneath him trying to get up. "Hey - Kurt, please-"

But Kurt's up, scrambling past him, Blaine catches robes and hears the clean rip of the cotton hem. He stands up, tries to follow Kurt and trips over Finn's unexpectedly long legs, whacks his head off the stable partition, lays there clumsily across Finn's body and thinks, Ow.

Rachel has finally thought to light some magic for him. It's not that mages can see in the dark like cats, it's just that they can always see magic, and can navigate by magic as easily as sight, and they forget that Blaine can't. He picks himself up and blinks at Finn, mumbles, "Sorry," and gets to his feet, his head ringing, gripping the partition to swing out and follow Kurt to the doorway. He hit his head too hard, everything lunges at him in sickly ways, as he climbs shakily out of the little door cut for people in the wide stable door proper, to where Kurt's standing barefoot on the cobbles, wiping his cheeks off, shivering in the dark.

"Kurt," he says, and his tongue is clumsy in his mouth. "What-?"

Kurt spins to him, arms wrapping tight around himself. "What were you doing? What the hell were you doing in my head?"

"-like I did that? Like I can do that?"

"What, like I was doing it?" Kurt shrieks at him. "Why would I want you in my head? Why would I want anyone-"

"Kurt-" Blaine grabs for his arm and misses quite badly, and probably would have fallen over if Kurt hadn't suddenly grabbed at him. He touches Blaine's forehead, and Blaine feels the sick pressure in his head slip loose, roll away, and Kurt draws his breath in too quickly, his hands tighten on Blaine's arm. "Don't do that!" Blaine snaps at him. "Don't fix every bruise like I'm a child and I can't-"

"Concussion. Mild. Unpleasant." Kurt screws his face up, relaxes it. "Gone now. Sorry, it's just - instinct. And don't get mad at me when you just invaded my head."

"I didn't do any invading! I was just there!"

"Guys," Finn's standing in the open doorway to the stables. "What the hell?"

Kurt and Blaine look at each other, look away. Kurt rubs his arms in his tight hunch, shivers, and Blaine scratches the back of his head, feeling how it doesn't hurt. He closes his eyes, takes a steadying breath, says, "That's what you dream?"

Kurt swallows, and stares to the side.

"Seriously," Finn says. "It's like, the middle of the night. What the hell just happened? Kurt?"

Kurt whispers, "Finn this doesn't concern you go back to sleep."

"I was in his dream," Blaine says, turning to Finn for help because how can he understand this? "How did that happen, can you do that?"

"What? Like - no." Finn stares at Kurt, and Kurt bristles, stares back like he's under attack from them both. "We -"

And his gaze flits around Kurt, and Blaine knows when a mage is checking another mage's magic by now, and feels the little press of Kurt's magic at his back as Kurt hisses, "Don't act like I'm some freak who can make that happen, I didn't do anything, I was asleep."

Rachel is climbing through the door, small at Finn's side. She takes everyone's posture in - Finn confused with his hands in loose fists at his sides, Blaine wary and tense beside Kurt, rigid with distrust - and says quietly, "What happened?"

Finn says, "Blaine . . . was in Kurt's dream."

"His nightmare." Blaine says, and Rachel looks at Kurt again, who draws his head up, draws himself tall, says, "Whatever just happened does not concern any of you."

"Of course it does." she says. "Kurt, we're your coven."

"Don't give me that-" Blaine actually staggers as something he can't see hits his back, Kurt's magic pushing out from him like a storm front. "Some coven, when he was suffocating me where were you-?"

And Finn says, "When - who was -"

And then he and Rachel tense a little, and Kurt swallows and doesn't know where to look, and Blaine finally thinks that he can touch him and some magic he can't see won't incinerate his hands, because they all know what they're talking about now, and they all know it's not a faery Kurt dreams about every night.

*

Kurt sits against Blaine, with a shared blanket around their shoulders, and tries not to feel so humiliated, so bitter, so furious. It is not Blaine's fault that he found himself inside Kurt's head where things are clearly not alright. It's not his coven's fault that Kurt kept Dave's secret for him and strangled his own magic with it. And if Kurt's magic is freakish enough to drag his innocent lover into his own dangerous dreams, there's really no-one he can blame except himself.

Puck sets a lantern down in the centre of the clumsy circle of mages, huddled together in the straw, sharing blankets and confusion. Blaine describes the dream, holding Kurt's hand, his thumb stroking over-over quick-soothing across Kurt's knuckles. And Kurt closes his eyes, and feels tired enough to sleep like this, sitting at Blaine's side with his coven all around him. Except that sleep isn't safe, not anymore.

The Artie-owl sits on Tina's shoulder. "No sign of the faery."

Santana says, "It's just a stupid dream." but her head's ducked close to her chest, and she's holding Brittany's hand.

Kurt lowers his head, closes his eyes, shakes his head. He has to clear his throat to speak. "At the beginning - I thought that. But every night he gets closer, and I can't move. And I know one night - he'll be too close. And I don't know what happens, then."

Tina says uncertainly, "Do you think Dave would - would blame you, for him dying?"

"How would I know? He's dead. Oh gods." Kurt stares at her. "You think he's haunting me?"

Blaine says, "Wait, are ghosts real? Are you guys telling me that ghosts are real?"

Kurt rolls his eyes. "Don't be stupid."

"There are echoes," Tina says. "You know it happens! When something awful happens it leaves echoes in the magic-"

"It would leave echoes in the magic in that forest, not in my head. You can't haunt someone's dreams, my gods, Tina, you read too many stupid books-"

"I need to read up on this," Artie murmurs, and the owl's eyes go dead. Kurt rubs his forehead, hates them all.

"Look. Whatever it - whatever it is. I don't know what it is. All I'm worried about is how Blaine got in there. Because if - if it's some horrible thing coming for me, I don't want it getting other people too." He looks at Blaine, at Blaine's eyes in the lantern light, upraised to Kurt and just so innocent of all these things, Blaine's confused closed mouth, and the trust when he looks at Kurt. His throat is thick. "Not him."

"Why would he get in anyway?" Santana says. "He doesn't have any magic, you'd have to drag damn hard to get him in. Wouldn't it make more sense to take another mage? No offence or anything but you're kind of just walking chain mail, you're like, half vegetable."

Kurt's magic pops overhead even before Kurt's eyes narrow, and everyone - apart from Blaine - looks up, looks back at him as Kurt's jaw tightens. "Someone have the spine to say it," he says, and tightens his hold on Blaine's hand. "Because I know every last one of you is thinking it."

Blaine looks at Kurt, looks at the circle, has the sense to stay quiet. There's a pause before Puck says, "Look, we don't mean it like . . ."

"Yeah we do, call a shitty situation a shitty situation." Santana folds her arms, shrugs tightly. "Your magic is insane now and maybe you are sucking people into your dreams without even noticing. What, like it's a good thing?" Santana snaps at the coven, who aren't looking at her. "Every mage for two hundred miles can feel him walking around! Every faery for a thousand miles must be able to smell him, demons an' weird crap we don't even know can probably tell where we are, all 'cause he doesn't know how to tie down that cloud of crap he carries around like-"

"Like it's my fault, like I asked for this? Do you think I like this?"

Santana flicks her eyes to the ceiling. "You just had to go an' be special, didn't you, Hummel?"

Mages put aside their last names when they join the college, so it's a strange sort of insult, because Kurt isn't ashamed of his father's name, his name, the name he lost, but to hear it used like this makes his magic spit along its edges. "This is the hand I got dealt. I am dealing with it. I am doing my best." His mouth twitches, he doesn't want to ask this, he doesn't want to know, what even is a mage without their coven? "Do you want me - gone? Do you want me-"

He could go with Blaine, alone, just them, he could go but -

"No, dude, no, no-one wants that." Finn's looking at Santana. "No-one wants that."

Santana shrugs again, sharply. "We don't want you gone," she mutters. "You're ours, we're a we. We just - this is crazy shit, you know that?"

The laugh surprises even Kurt, he puts a hand over it, shocked at himself, but then just lets his hand drop and grins. "Yes. I know. I know."

He wishes Blaine could always see what he sees, wishes Blaine knew. But it takes years to understand the subtleties of magic even if so much of it is instinctive to mages, Blaine can't even understand half the magic Kurt can see, Kurt wants to whisper to him always, This is the world, this is how it works, this is what we can do, there is so much and I want to share all of it with you -

He thinks, for half a second, of being blind and being with Blaine. Of having no magic, just being a boy, with Blaine, how easy it would be to be weak and just rely on him. But they wouldn't last six months. He knows the world, he knows it too well. The only reason either of them are still alive by now is Kurt's magic, there are no laws protecting them from anyone else's brutal disgust, Blaine's sword can't keep them safe the same way that Kurt's robes can. And he thinks of losing his magic and he knows what it's like and it's like a cage around his heart, he can't, he can't . . .

He puts his hands over his eyes. "We won't understand it tonight. And I - we just need to sleep."

Blaine puts his free hand on his knee. "If you dream that. I would rather be in there with you. I would rather be able to help."

Kurt says quietly, "Don't say that. I want you safe."

"All of that stopped when I fell in love with you and you know it. I chose this. Stop trying to baby me."

"You want to sleep?" Mercedes says. "Even if you might dream that?"

"I really don't get a choice. And I'm tired. Aren't you?"

"Yeah, since we ain't got to sleep through a night in like two weeks," Santana mutters, and stretches, and hooks an arm around Brittany's shoulders. Brittany says, "Sometimes I dream I'm in the dirt and I don't know which way up is."

Blaine's hand presses his knee, his thumb rubbing through his underrobes. Kurt looks at him - oh he is lovely, especially in this shadowed golden light, he is the most beautiful creature Kurt's ever seen, all the bloody history of humanity has been worth it just so this boy could be born - and he thinks of the shields he can put up, the ways he can mind his magic. It'll be a strain, but he can't put Blaine in that danger, Blaine has no magic at all and what can a sword do against a dream?

He drops his forehead onto Blaine's shoulder, mumbles, "Try not to drool on me tonight." and Blaine laughs very softly, and strokes his hair back behind his ear, and kisses the top of his head.

On to part II.