Glee!fic, Tip/Tilt
Tip/Tilt part I, Glee!fic (haven't forgotten fantasy AU, writing about five things at once, sorry ^^;)
Disclaimer: Yeah, no.
Rating: R
Necessary note: So, a while back I dipped into the badboy!Blaine thing mostly because I thought lol the crack oh hang on wait that could be quite interesting. And then people were like, do badboy!Kurt! And I was like, no, because Kurt would never act out like that, because Kurt always has his dad to think about. But then I remembered season two, and, well. And I still put off writing this stupid thing because I just didn't want to, the thought made me feel really not good. This is not Kurt behaving *badly* as such. This is Kurt appallingly, devastatingly *sad*. Happy Christmas? ^^; But it is written as a *mirror* to Fix. You don't need to have read that one or anything, but it will explain some of the narrative decisions here, I guess.
Warnings and spoilers: THIS WILL BE QUITE LONG A LIST OH MY GOD. I'm not so sure about even letting this one out, it's been eating my *life* when I haven't been philosophising and dying on my arse over Ancient Greek participles recently. Right. So: we're going AU after Grilled Cheesus, so season two spoilers and character death, don't go there if you don't want to. Angst, in the kind of bucketloads I haven't explored probably since (if anyone has followed me from my other fandom) that first mpregtwnmtb!verse piece. For anyone who doesn't know the other characters I torture sometimes, we're talking pretty fucking epic in terms of angst. Lots of potentially triggery material around depression, grief, discussions of suicide, borderline eating disorders, the weird shit people do to cope when the world goes entirely to hell. And you know what? Things get worse before they get better. My warning appears to be 'don't read this'? ^^; I am trusting in my happy ending reflex to know how to get us out of this because this is a really dark tunnel to be down oh my god.
Summary: Blaine doesn't always think very far ahead; it's an acknowledged personality flaw.
Now available as podfic by nielrian =)
Blaine doesn't always think very far ahead; it's an acknowledged personality flaw. He sees an immediate opportunity and takes it, and is then usually incredibly surprised by the outcome of it. At first he assumed it was a fact of life - chaos theory - quantum physics - general ineffability - you just never know - but then Thad said slowly, "No, Blaine, you just need to stop and think." and that at least did make Blaine stop and think. Huh.
His life is an endless succession of moments of 'huh'.
Which is the reason he ends up sitting opposite a boy he's only ever seen once before, on a rival show choir at Sectionals, in the Lima Bean on a Thursday after school. Actually, it's only part of the reason. Quite a large part of the reason was a significant number of Warblers physically pushing Blaine across the stage at him after their clubs drew, because maybe Blaine was a little obvious in the one more glance he kept stealing at him.
The rest of the reason. That this boy performed with his glee club like his mind was elsewhere, technically flawless and as actually involved in what he was doing as the average jock in chemistry class, as graceful and as alone in that group as the only swan on the river. Once their performance finished (a show-stopping Valerie, even if their first number was so traditional as to be clichéd Blaine can easily see why they came to a draw over that performance) he just wrapped his arms around himself and looked into the distance while his team mates celebrated; when the draw was announced one of the girls threw their arms around him and hugged him, and he patted her back absently, then straightened his jacket.
So, yes, Blaine was staring at him when he should have been celebrating his own club's victory (half-victory; not a loss, and Blaine likes to view the cup as half-full), so maybe he is too obvious. But he's just a bit of an enigma, the boy who flicked a disinterested gaze at him and scanned him in one half second shoes to hair and then twitched the corners of his mouth into the shape of a smile and said, sweetly low, "Kurt." and let Blaine babble at him for a bit, before smoothly getting Blaine's telephone number and a date and time out of him. He's not like anyone else Blaine's ever seen in Lima. Obviously he's attractive, and yes, Blaine is fairly certain he's gay, but mostly Blaine just likes collecting friends, people he can feel normal with. He doesn't meet many guys like Kurt.
Sitting opposite him over coffee, Kurt incredibly pale and incredibly well dressed (it can't be a real Vivienne Westwood; can it?) and as poised on his seat as a cat observing a bird, Blaine does know that really he doesn't meet any guys like Kurt. The way Kurt has of looking at him isn't like just being looked at, it makes Blaine incredibly aware of being looked at, incredibly aware that he's still in his Dalton uniform and yet not in Dalton anymore. Oh, the real world: he never has got used to living here.
Blaine puts a smile on, cupping his coffee in both hands. "So, have you guys been enjoying your victory?"
The look Kurt gives him manages to be both faintly curious and entirely disinterested all at once. "Yes, it's been super." he murmurs. "They lime-slushied Sam every day this week, his hair looks chlorinated. He's still strangely adverse to advice on colour-care."
". . . ah?"
Kurt blinks but is otherwise perfectly, crisply still, leaning back in his chair with one arm folded out long on the table to hold his cup. "And how have you been enjoying your 'victory', Blaine?"
There's a particular way Kurt says his name; Blaine can't tell if it's mocking or something else, but it makes strange muscles tighten low in his back. "Well - it's nice to win. The guys all work really hard and I know they, they have a lot of faith in me, so I always want to . . . I mean, not 'win', I know we didn't beat you, but it's good to not lose. And there's always Regionals." He grins at him, but Kurt just observes the grin like it's an anthropological phenomenon he's not entirely sure of the purpose of. "Um. That was a joke, I didn't actually mean . . . you guys are really good."
"Mm. I'm hardly offended. I might not even be there for Regionals."
Blaine swallows a mouthful of coffee. "You're - are you quitting? Or moving?"
Kurt shrugs, closes his eyes. "Who knows. No. I'm thinking of quitting. It used to be - I don't know. Fun."
"Isn't it fun now?"
"Define 'fun'," Kurt says softly, and runs a fingertip around the rim of his cup. "So, Blaine," he says, and again, his name, Blaine doesn't know what it does to him hearing his name in that strange soft voice. "What do you do for 'fun'?"
"Well, I do really enjoy glee club. And, uh, video games? And I like watching football. And-"
Kurt tilts his head, like Blaine really is a very curious specimen. "How utterly thrilling," he murmurs.
". . . what things do you enjoy doing?"
"I don't enjoy doing things. This conversation in particular isn't exactly rocking my world right now. So, were you planning on your car or mine?"
"Excuse me?"
Kurt gives him a long look. "I just need to clarify if you're trying to be cute or if you're actually that clueless, in which case, oh my goodness, this is going to be an interesting afternoon. Did you actually ask me out for coffee?"
"I." Blaine stares at him. "Did you want to do something else? There's the bowling alley or-"
"I had assumed," Kurt says, leaning forward on one folded arm against the table, eyes narrowing slightly, "that you wanted a blowjob at the very least. And you . . ."
Something low in Blaine's body tightens horribly and his hands start around the cup, and the appalled babble kicks in before he can realise that silence (stop and think) might be the more dignified option. "No! No, no I thought - I wanted to - talk? I've only met you once, I honestly-"
"Well aren't you just adorable," Kurt says, sort of amazed. "Which decade exactly do you live in?"
"I just thought-" The blush must show, which is the most embarrassing part, and he doesn't quite know where to look, all over the coffee shop just trying to avoid Kurt's quizzical eyes, blue as Arctic seas and very surprised by the complete and cretinous naïvity of Blaine Anderson right now. "I just thought we probably had a lot in common with show choir and - everything and we could -"
"'And everything'," Kurt says, and blinks, and lifts his coffee to his mouth. "Well," he says. "Are you sure you wouldn't rather have the blowjob now that it's, as it were, on the table?"
He has to cough into a napkin for a second. "I. No. Thank you."
Kurt takes a little sip of coffee, puts the cup back down pressing his lips together. "Alright," he says. "Talking. I'm sure it's a delightful way to spend an afternoon. Talk to me, Blaine." He says it like he's reciting a line, eyes on the ceiling, turning his cup on the table. Blaine swallows, takes a breath to be certain that he's not going to start choking again out of sheer embarrassment, and finally trusts himself to put the napkin down.
"Um. What do you want to talk about?"
"I don't 'want' to talk about anything, particularly, but apparently this is your idea of foreplay."
"Look, I - I'm really, really sorry if I gave the wrong impression, I know I can behave in a kind of clueless way sometimes and I might have given a weird vibe, I'm sorry, I really, really didn't mean to make it sound like this was - um, anything, just, coffee. I." Blaine swallows again, he seems to have far more saliva than he can possibly need during this conversation. "I'm sorry. Obviously it's not that you're not incredibly attractive and everything, it's just, I don't know you and - I'm sorry."
Kurt just looks sort of tired, sort of distant at him, and says, "You can stop apologising. I'm sure I'm sorry for causing you such terrible confusion and distress, but I do understand. I'm not your type."
"You're - what?"
"I attract a particular kind of man." Kurt smiles, something close to an actual smile, something maybe real behind that sadly self-mocking angle to it. "And you are clearly far too sweet to be one of them. I'm sorry I assumed you were."
"I -"
"And I'm a little out of practise at normal human interaction. 'Normal' has become a - a slightly nebulous concept. So if you would like to talk, I'm happy to listen. I genuinely have nothing better to do anyway."
Blaine swallows some coffee, and closes his eyes for a second, and gives an agonised inner squirm at how stupid and how childish and how ridiculous he must look, and tries to think of what possible conversation they can try to have now to repair the train wreck this coffee date has turned into. "I. Um." He clears his throat a little. "Why aren't you enjoying glee club anymore?"
Kurt's eyes slip from his face and track the tabletop, and his fingertips skim a little pattern on there like they're ice skating. "I thought you were going to talk."
"I'm just curious. I just think it's - it's fun, you know? And you're good, so I would've thought you would enjoy it."
"I used to. I used to want to . . . I don't sing so much anymore. And I never get solos anyway so it doesn't really matter if I'm there or not. I got offered one, for Sectionals. I just . . . didn't feel like it."
"Why don't you feel like singing anymore?"
"Why do you keep asking me questions? Shouldn't it be my turn?"
Blaine shrugs, he can hardly argue with the fairness of that. "If you like."
Kurt's eyes are back on his, hard cold blue. "Are you a virgin?"
Okay. Should have expected that. The blush burns his ears, and his hand tries to cover his eyes before he makes it not. "Yes." It's not something to be embarrassed by, he reminds himself, he tells himself. Teenagers do these things at their own pace, and there are simple statistical reasons why it's less easy for gay kids to find a potential partner they want to be with like that, and he would rather sex mean something than just be something to get out of the way. Though, confounding statistics, Kurt seems to have managed to find someone already, which puts that argument at least to shame. He swallows. "Why aren't you singing so much anymore?"
Kurt looks into his eyes for a long time, like he's looking for something, though Blaine doesn't know what. Then he blinks a few times, and looks down, and one shoulder gives a loose twitch of a shrug. "My dad died three months ago. I guess I just don't feel like it anymore."
Blaine says, feeling the words low in his stomach, "I'm so sorry."
Kurt gives that one shouldered shrug again, and he takes a little breath, squeezes his hands around his mug, looks up to Blaine's eyes again. His face is still and tense around the jaw, and Blaine can see his throat move as he swallows. "My mom died when I was eight, and it turns out that no-one else in my family is actually willing to take me, which I really should have seen coming. So I'm living with my dad's - well his girlfriend, I was going to say 'ex-girlfriend' because . . . his girlfriend and her son, who I have a 'history' with," he lets go of his cup to do the air-quotes, "which makes the situation pretty incredibly horrible, actually. And it turns out that my friends don't know how to be my friends when it gets difficult so they just quit trying. And, you know, suddenly it turns out that show tunes don't actually fix anything. Who knew." He touches his face for a second, eyes closed, then says quietly, "Why am I telling you this?" and picks up his cup again. "You don't care and I really don't expect you to understand. You can just -" He flicks a hand towards the exit - "go. Clearly you are in over your head and I advise you to back away now."
Looking into his eyes, brittle-bright blue, Blaine knows that he's in over his head; the level of pain there is beyond his comprehension. The pain Blaine feels, the fall of horrible sympathy in his guts, is nothing compared to what Kurt clearly moves through every minute of every day, and all Blaine can do is stare at him and feel sick with as much as empathy can do. He's very aware of Kurt's hand around his coffee cup, the elegant white angle of it. The urge is to touch it, but he doesn't know what that would mean. "Kurt, I'm so sorry. I can't imagine what - what that's like. I can't."
"No," Kurt says quietly. "People seem not to be able to. They resent my existence for making them face the attempt, though."
"I . . . I'm not saying I've ever lived through anything like that, because I haven't, I really, really haven't, but - when things were bad for me once, I really found that music helped. That I could - feel and be with music, that it was a really safe place for me -"
"I used to feel like that too, when the worst that happened to me was basic high school bullying. But not this. I just don't feel the point of it anymore. It's just noise."
"Kurt-" He touches the back of Kurt's hand, just two fingertips of the beginning of contact before Kurt pulls his hand back like Blaine's touch scalds, and then puts his other hand over the skin like it stings. Kurt says brusquely, "Isn't it my turn to ask you a question now?"
Blaine just stares at him, and doesn't know what to do or say. The idiot urge to help is making him feel dizzy but he hasn't got a clue how he can. "Do you want to - talk or -"
"It genuinely would help if you would just fuck me but apparently you need wooing for that and I really don't have the energy, Blaine. So, unless you actually have something to say, we really might as well just part ways now before it gets even more awkward than it already is."
". . . can't I just be there for you? Kurt, it sounds like you really need friends right now."
"I don't need anything. No-one needs anything. This delusion people have, like anything matters - it's just a lot of white noise and then you die and it is so irritating that people keep trying to convince me otherwise like that would stop it being true for them too." He stands up, leaving his cup, plucking his jacket off the back of his chair on a fingertip. "You're a nice person, Blaine, honestly, and I will only damage that, so it's best for both of us if I just leave you alone now."
"How is that best for both of us? How is it best for you?"
"Nothing's best for me." He slips his jacket on, gives Blaine such a tired look, says, "If you do change your mind about the blowjob, you have my number." and he turns to leave, all graceful long limbs and pristine clothing and some horrible bone-deep pain Blaine can't even -
He catches up with him in the parking lot, skidding in the snow, where Kurt's turning the alarm off on his car. As Blaine pants to a halt next to him Kurt closes his arms around himself, holding himself in by the elbows, and gives Blaine that too-tired-to-really-be-curious look. Blaine swallows, holds his arms out, says, "I want to help. I just don't know how."
"What 'help' exactly do you think I need and you can supply?"
"Just, Kurt, anything. I could be a friend if you'd let me."
Kurt's silent for a moment, then says, "Why do you need me? Why do you need a charity case right now?"
"That's not-"
"Clearly your life isn't intact either, or else you wouldn't feel the need to pick up the pieces of other people's lives. So just to make this very, very clear because it's quite obvious that we keep communicating somewhere past each other - you can't fix me, Blaine. You can't bring my dad back from the dead and make my life at school less like a living hell, you can't repair anything in my life that's broken, you can't put that cheerful song back in my heart again. It's a waste of your time and I'm not here to be your pity project. Deal with your own life, because I am not going to fill any of the empty spaces in it. And good luck with your glee club, since I doubt I'll be there to see you perform at Regionals."
This boy -
Blaine is really good at façades. He has to be. Being himself gets him in trouble, it's only if he keeps the parts of him that are actually him internal only that they can't get so bruised. His parents don't want anything deeper than the perfect but unfortunately gay son façade; the Warblers don't need to see him doubt and hesitate and be anything less than absolutely confident in himself and all of them; no-one wants him to be obviously and threateningly gay, he's only acceptably gay if he likes football and doesn't bring up musical theatre too much. And then there's this boy, who hits such a small number of precise little hammer blows on Blaine's glassy façade and brings it all down around his head, and he's standing in the parking lot of the Lima Bean feeling like he's been kicked in the face, because his life isn't whole and people aren't supposed to notice that.
He makes himself keep his jaw steady, though his hands squeeze into fists at his sides. He draws a breath in, slow through his nose, while Kurt watches him with his eyes a little more intent now, like he wants to see what damage he's inflicted. Blaine manages a slightly pained sort of smile.
He says, "So maybe I could use a friend too."
Kurt's eyebrows nip low and tight, and his mouth presses confused and a little angry about it; clearly this isn't how Blaine was supposed to react. "I'm really not looking for more people to leech from me when they're miserable and then drop me like last season's maxi dress when I'm miserable."
"I wouldn't do that. I just wouldn't. Kurt, I know your life - really, really isn't good right now. But it can't get better if you don't believe it can."
Kurt's breath snorts out of him. "Believe in that like I should believe that god loves me and everything's going to be okay and the fairies at the bottom of the yard want me to be happy-"
"It doesn't make you stupid to believe in something you can't know yet," Blaine snaps back. "It just makes you brave. Because - Kurt, what are you even still doing here if you don't believe it's going to get any better?"
Kurt's face fades back into blandness again, just a little puzzled tension around the eyebrows. "Why am I still here," he murmurs. He shakes his head. "I don't know. I honestly haven't got a clue, Blaine. You tell me. Why am I still here?"
Blaine takes his hand - grabs it - because it feels like a step towards vanishing, Kurt's asking that, it feels like Blaine's question backfired and all he's done is make Kurt face not knowing the answer to it. "Because it can get better," he insists, he has to, his voice sounds too urgent even to him. "It has to. I'll help. You think life's just over and you can't ever move past something but then - then things happen, things always just happen, life just happens and you meet new people and find new places and - and things just get better. They do."
Kurt's silent for a moment, staring at Blaine but not trying to take his hand back. Blaine grips it tight, cool and soft-skinned in his grip, held a little tense but not straining to pull away. Then Kurt blinks a few times, his face softening, and he says quietly, "Maybe things could get better. But even if that were true I just don't know if I want to live through it. Do you have any idea how exhausting I find the idea of the rest of my life?"
Blaine's smile twitches. "I can try to help you kill some of the time."
Too late he curses himself for 'kill', a word he really didn't need to insert into this conversation. Kurt just smiles, and relaxes his hand in Blaine's grip. "I've already found a way to kill the time. I'm just evidently not your type."
"It's not - it's not that I don't think you're attractive or that if we knew each other better I wouldn't maybe . . . I - I just don't think it's a good idea right now given-"
"Given what?" Kurt says softly, shifting his body in a little closer to Blaine's, tilting his head so he can look up at Blaine in a way that makes sudden heat gnaw up his abdomen. "Given that you're extremely cute, Blaine Warbler, and have a rather endearing lack of a filter between your brain and your mouth, and you have -" His hand flexes like a stretching cat in Blaine's. "- very nice hands, attached to what I'm sure are very lovely arms . . ."
Blaine stares at his too-close face and doesn't know how to let his last in breath out again. Kurt's eyes flick between his, amused, and even in the casual platonic tumble the Warblers make, Blaine doesn't remember having a boy this close to him, to his mouth, before. His heart seems to be beating inside each eardrum, and hard in his chest, and lower, slower, deep with heat between his legs.
"And given that you have teenage needs," Kurt says, drawing Blaine's hand back with his - Blaine tries to let go but now Kurt's gripping him, slipping his own arm behind his back, setting Blaine's arm around his waist, pressing him in closer so Blaine feels his nose graze Kurt's smooth cheek and he can smell him clean and cool and he nearly whimpers out loud, "and apparently something of a prince charming complex, and here I am so willing and lonely and needy for you, Blaine-"
"Stop it."
"And you could make me feel so much better, you could rescue me-"
"Stop it!" Blaine wrenches his hand loose, steps back with his chest straining under the thunder of his heartbeat, face glowing with blood and oh god his groin too, he can feel it, Kurt's breath against his face and his low knowing voice and Blaine's body, like the crude teenager it is, whines.
Kurt folds his arms around himself, shrugs. He says, "It was worth trying." and opens his car door, climbs in. "You're better off without me. If you do realise how pointless your conscience and your chastity are, you can always call me and ditch them both. Though I doubt I'll hear from you again, actually."
He closes his car door. Blaine stands there stupidly, while Kurt puts his seatbelt on and turns on the engine, glances into the rear view mirror and then gives one last little ironic look to Blaine before he pulls out. Blaine swallows again, because it still feels like about the only thing he can capably do, and stands there at the edge of a coffee shop parking lot as the dusk slinks in, feeling like he's just been dismantled for cleaning and abandoned before reassembly.
The ghost of Kurt's skin still touches his nose tip. He'd never really even noticed having a nose tip before, and now it's almost the most vividly alive patch of skin his has. Almost.
Dismantled for cleaning: Kurt just unpicked all of Blaine's bullshit, cracked open his well-polished armour, but didn't actually go in for the kill. Which . . . if Kurt feels like he has so little left to lose, why wouldn't he?
Blaine sits in his car because it's at least out of the wind, dropping his scarf tied too hastily in his exit from the coffee shop on the seat beside him, plucking his hat off and quickly dragging his hand over his head to smooth his hair. Then he holds his cell for some time, nodding his head to the beat of a song in the back of his mind, trying to think what the hell to say. Because he doesn't care what Kurt says, he doesn't think Kurt has given up hope. He doesn't think that anyone who's given up hope completely would still keep getting up in a morning, or dressing so immaculately, or sounding like he meant it when he called Blaine 'cute'.
'Extremely' cute.
He just lost his dad, he's alone and hurt and the last thing he needs is Blaine wanting anything from him. Blaine remembers feeling alone and badly hurt and like ever trying to act normal again was literally petrifying, froze him right through like a statue. He tries to think what he needed, back then.
He texts, Courage.
Then he turns the engine on, turns Katy Perry down just a little because every sense feels oversensitive, a little raw with too much Kurt too quickly (his soft low voice like a string instrument played so so so perfect), and heads for home.
*
He sends the texts just now and then, just to keep that tentative thread thrown out between them tethered. Just to let Kurt know he's still around, his friendship is still an option. Okay, maybe he's being obnoxious and intrusive and Kurt receives each text with nothing but irritation, but so long as his cell goes off now and then, at least Kurt can't feel alone.
Blaine slips into a strange tilted existence, like the tectonic plates of his mind have shifted sideways, like Kurt caused an earthquake and Blaine's now got to rebuild out of all the dust and rubble. Kurt definitely awoke something in him, a constant low buzz of need, he reminded Blaine's body that there's all this sex out there in the world that Blaine isn't having and, however much he tries to think about something else, he just aches to get off most of the time. He doesn't want to. He tries slipping a hand underneath his pyjamas and his eyes are full of Kurt's white face, he blinks and blinks like he's been dazzled by a flash, he can't clear them. He tries not to touch himself. He throbs.
He doesn't want to use the imagined body of an already obviously damaged boy he's met all of twice that way in his head. He tries not to, he tries so hard not to, but he always feels sick of himself after the orgasm runs down, left with a mind full of Kurt and Kurt's disdain and all Kurt's pain. He feels like some disgusting caveman, grunting away over Kurt's perfect imagined skin, while Kurt's probably forgotten he exists except for his regular, predictable texts.
Blaine doesn't predict the text he gets back. On Saturday morning he sends Courage out again and lays on his side on his bed, David Bowie on the speakers and his room just looks so gloomy to him, so small, it's become this claustrophobic cell in which he thinks about Kurt not thinking about him and when he does think about Kurt thinking about him the things Kurt thinks about him are so awful -
When his phone announces a text, and it's not from a Warbler.
If I meet you again will you stop wasting your credit like this?
His thumb moves so quickly he has to go back over his reply once it's written and translate it into English before he can send it.
*
Kurt's waiting for him at the top of the escalators at the mall, exactly where he said he would be, wearing insanely tight jeans and a long loose sweater, standing relaxed and dreamy with his cell in one hand like - Blaine's stomach stirs - like he wants to send a text as soon as possible if Blaine is late. But when Blaine catches his eye and smiles so bright all Kurt really looks is tired, and all Blaine's hope cringes a little, and then he doesn't know what the hope was really for anyway.
Blaine stops in front of him, puts his hands a little awkwardly into his pockets - he'd like to touch Kurt's arm, hug him even, but the tight way Kurt holds himself suggests that invasion of his personal space is taken as a serious offence. Blaine really should have noticed that the first time they met, and now he runs over all of the insane signals he probably did send Kurt in his thoughtless, handsy way: stop and think, Blaine, for once in your life, please.
"Hey. How've you been?"
Kurt shrugs. "How are you, Blaine?"
One cup of coffee with you has rewired my brain in some strange and unhealthy way, I'm sleeping less and thinking too much and getting through far too many tissues. "I'm great. What did you want to do?"
"I don't know." Kurt looks around the mall vaguely, bright lights and so many people, and he folds his arms around himself, tilts his head. "I haven't been here in a while. My wardrobe is months out of date."
"You look amazing," Blaine says, honestly, because he does.
"The fact that one can pull last season's clothes off so well doesn't mean that one should." He stares at one of the stores directly opposite them, and sighs, slowly, through his nose. "I thought maybe I would want to shop once I got here. It just feels so tiring. You look at clothes. You try on clothes. You buy clothes. And then you get bored of them and you repeat the cycle again, ad infinitum."
"Like a really stylish Sisyphus."
"No longer quite so stylish," Kurt muses, looking down at his own sleeved arm, then up at Blaine again. "Would you like to look anywhere? Because you don't appear to have been clothes shopping since about nineteen fifty-six, so clearly you need it more than I do."
Blaine had dressed with some care before he headed out, but now he looks down at himself and sees boring written all over him; he learned a while back that preppy clothes basically slip under everyone's radar and they suit his image, so. "I mostly just wanted to see you. Talk to you. Do you want to get a drink?"
Kurt shrugs again. It seems to be one of his most common gestures, a whatever aimed at any situation, like any outcome doesn't mean anything to him anyway. Blaine says, "There's a coffee place up this way. How was your week?"
"I got a lot of pointless texts."
"You look tired."
"And now you're insulting both me and my skincare regime. I'm not sleeping well, thank you very much."
"Are you okay?"
"I'm not even going to dignify that with an answer."
". . . I like your boots."
"Oh you are gay. I had been beginning to wonder."
"You seriously make conversation like pulling teeth, do you know that?"
"You were the one who kept in touch with me."
"Yes. And I still want to. Do you know that, too?"
Kurt glances at him, cool and tired and Blaine thinks he can see now how sad he is, underneath it all, if he could bear to let himself feel it. Blaine says, "They're really good boots." and smiles, and some little smile cracks the corner of Kurt's mouth, it's like seeing sunlight slant down through the cloud, Blaine's stomach jumps.
They join the queue for coffee. Kurt plays with his own cuff a bit, running it between his fingertips. He says, to his sleeve, "I go for walks. On a night. I can't sleep so I just go walking. The ridiculous thing is that on a morning I don't want to wake up, I haven't been fully conscious in morning classes for a months. My body clock has decided that it hates me."
Blaine logs symptoms. It makes sense that Kurt would be depressed, but he doesn't know if Kurt really knows that he is. "Where do you walk?"
"Anywhere. I just follow the streetlights until . . . until I know I have to turn around again." He drops his sleeve, lifts his head. "The town's so quiet on a night. Everything vulgar and ugly and nasty gets hidden. I could almost like it here, then."
". . . is it safe walking around in the dark like that?"
"I don't have anything worth stealing with me. And I've become strangely less afraid of random hate crimes."
Blaine looks away, and is glad to have the opportunity to order and distract himself at that moment. He looks at Kurt for his order and Kurt shrugs, murmurs, "The same." so they end up with two medium drips, and Blaine pays, and says as they walk out, "It makes sense that you do a lot of walking, you have really nice legs."
Kurt sips his coffee, says, "Is this you changing your mind about fucking me or is it just the brain-mouth filter malfunctioning again?"
"Ah, oh, that one. Um. Sorry. People always tell me I . . ."
"Say things you actually mean? Mm, people hate when you do that, I've noticed."
Blaine shuffles his shoulders, grins an awkward grin at Kurt, who looks at him like he doesn't know what expression to wear before he looks up at where they're going again. "How was your week, Blaine?"
"It was good. Glee club, school. The semester's nearly over now, and I love Christmas, and-"
He stops, realising with a guilty sinking of his guts that Kurt's got his first Christmas without his dad looming. Kurt takes a sip of coffee, murmurs, "It's fine. Other people still have things to look forward to, I do know that."
"What . . . are you doing about Christmas?"
Kurt keeps his eyes forward, and something pulses his throat for one second. "I don't know," he says, his voice kept carefully flat. "I can't think that far ahead. I don't want to be there imposing on Carole and Finn for it, but I can't . . . I don't know what I'm supposed to do."
"You could, I mean, if -"
Kurt glances at him, face settled cool and bland again. "If you're going to suggest what I think you are, what exactly do you think your parents would make of the idea?"
". . . I don't know. Actually I do. But I could, I don't know, maybe escape after dinner sometime, hang out with you for a bit?"
"You seem really quite committed to this pity project. What exactly are you getting out of it?"
Blaine isn't sure himself, but that fine thread he threw out between them as a lifeline for Kurt seems to have wound itself tight around something important in Blaine, biting in, drawing blood as it tightens. There's no way he can fit his fingers underneath to unhook it now. "I just . . . I know it's got to be really hard for you right now. If something like that happened to me I'd hope someone else would . . . it's not pity, Kurt, it's not, I just want to help."
"I know." Kurt says. "I know. It's not like I'm offended either way."
They walk for a moment in silence, Blaine taking a slow mouthful of coffee, trying to think what to say. Then Kurt takes a little breath.
"After my dad died - after I moved in with Carole - I couldn't sleep on a night. I'd just lay there in the dark for hours, and hours, just waiting for the sky to get light so I could get out of bed at least, I just felt like I was suffocating in that room. So I started waiting for everyone else to go to bed and slipping outside, to try to walk myself tired enough to want to sleep. It didn't really work but at least I wasn't in that damn room anymore."
He takes another sip of coffee, narrowing his eyes, and Blaine watches his face and doesn't dare to say anything, doesn't want to break the spell of Kurt actually talking to him.
Kurt swallows his mouthful, and closes his eyes for a second. "One night a car slowed down next to me. I should have thought it was dangerous, I was sort of aware it could be dangerous, it was mostly just something out of the ordinary so I wanted to know what would happen next. The driver wound down his window and said he saw me walking most nights, and he asked if I wanted a lift anywhere." He takes another sip of coffee. "We had sex on his back seat. I mostly just let him do what he wanted, I didn't have a clue. But it felt really - real. Really immediate and there. Afterwards I remember thinking that I used to think sex meant something, and now it didn't anymore, and I thought about what my dad would think, but it's not like that matters anymore either because he'll never think anything about anything again, so."
Blaine doesn't know what to say, doesn't dare to say anything anyway, feels about three years old and helpless as they pass the GAP and all these busy mindless shoppers. Kurt sighs.
"I saw him a couple more times when I was walking, then one night he just stopped coming, I don't know why. He got bored, or he found someone else, or -" The breath comes sharp and bitter through his nose - "or his wife found out or whatever. It didn't really matter anymore. I was upset for a while." He frowns, like he doesn't understand that. "I don't even know his name. He never asked for mine. He probably wouldn't have been stupid enough to tell me his real one anyway."
He looks across at Blaine, something tense in his face now, though still mostly all he looks is tired. "You're a nice person, Blaine, I mean that sincerely, I do. But I think I'm a bit too fucked up for you to know how to handle right now, and I don't want to - to only end up hurting you. So maybe you should just . . ."
Blaine swallows, says, "Abandon you?"
"It seems to be the accepted protocol."
"Don't your friends notice?"
"I don't know what they notice. I think they think that my dad died and I'm a mess and they don't know what to say so they don't say anything. They don't know the rest of it. Why would I tell them the rest of it? I've never told anyone."
"You told me."
"I'm trying to be as gently cruel as possible to be kind." He looks to the side. "I don't know why I'm telling you. I don't even tell my counsellor anything actually true."
"You're seeing a counsellor?"
"You must know the suicide rates for gay teenagers," Kurt says, swirling his coffee in his cup as he walks. "I'm a gay teenage orphan, I'm practically a suicide certainty. They at least have to be able to say that they tried."
Blaine says, and he doesn't know what he feels but it's like his face has gone numb, "Do you mean that?"
Kurt looks at him, and in this lighting his eyes are greenish blue, like warmer seas, wide and intent on him, before he blinks and looks away again. "I don't know," he says. "I am being honest. I don't know. I don't know why I don't, but I don't know why I would either. It's so much effort. And if it went wrong things would only get worse, god, they'd put me in a hospital, they'd put me on more pills-"
"You're on antidepressants."
"I can't particularly say that they work."
"Does anything work?"
"Sex," Kurt says, without hesitation. "Briefly. At least it tends to - absorb my full attention at the time. Everything else just feels like filling time."
Blaine says, because he does need to know as sickening as having to ask is, "Does talking to me help?"
Kurt looks at him, steady and tired, and he says, "I don't know." His eyes track the ceiling for a moment. "Sometimes. It's been a while since I . . . I literally don't even speak for most of the day anymore. I have to be polite to Carole and say the bare minimum to teachers. It's why I'm going to quit glee. They keep expecting me to talk to them, and I haven't got anything left to say."
Blaine's throat hurts. "You seem to have plenty to say now."
Kurt looks down at his coffee, and one corner of his mouth twitches a smile. "Like I said. Sometimes, yes, talking to you seems to 'help'. So I just need to wait for you to get bored of me."
"That's not going to happen. It's not. I would never just quit on someone, that's . . . don't your friends notice if you don't say anything? At lunch, or-"
"I don't eat lunch."
Blaine rubs his face with one hand, warm from his coffee cup, and his throat is agony but he can't start crying in front of Kurt when it's Kurt's pain he's crying for, it's just too weird. "So you don't eat and you don't talk to people and so, what, are you trying to just quietly disappear from the face of the planet?"
"I'm not trying to do anything. Things just happen."
"I don't want you to disappear."
"Why?" Kurt looks at him over the lid of his coffee. "People do. All the time. I still don't understand what you're getting out of this. I don't know where you get the energy to care about someone besides yourself. I can't even drag together enough energy to care about me."
"I don't know." Stop and think, god, there's no time for it. "You're special."
Kurt just looks at him, like he's waiting for Blaine to qualify that. Blaine pulls at the air with a hand, tries to drag some coherent words together.
"I just - I've actually never met anyone like you, you know? Like, I know your life is pretty much just crap right now but you - you are clearly wearing exactly what you feel like and no-one's going to stop you. You say exactly what you think. You don't hide anything. You're just - you're brave. I think you have to be, just to still be here, being, you know." He waves his coffee cup at him. "Fabulous, on your own."
There is, so straining almost, a smile on Kurt's mouth. "Well. I can't fault you on your taste, Blaine."
Blaine swallows, because he has been thinking about this, a lot, since that disaster of a coffee date. "You said things were hard at school."
"Oh," Kurt says vaguely, looking forward again. "Well if you're going to be out and not act ashamed of it, of course you're going to have to face the Neanderthals on a daily basis. They don't bother me so much anymore. It's either pity or they just don't want too much close contact in case the misery rubs off on them too."
Blaine doesn't know what to say, though he thinks he should say something. If Kurt acted upset then Blaine would know to act strong, but Kurt acting like nothing much even matters just leaves Blaine trying in a confused way to insist that things do matter, when it seems like all he's really arguing is that all the shit Kurt goes through matters, which Kurt is clearly already aware of. Stop and think: he tries, he really does. He says, "Hey, you want to get pretzels?" and Kurt says, "No." and Blaine takes his wrist and drags him off to the cart anyway, because if Kurt's getting away with skipping at least one meal a day, Blaine can at least get some salty carbs in him before he lets him go.
They hang out. The atmosphere alters, subtly, the tempo shifting down a notch, less of that high dangerous feel to the air. Kurt's a little vague and hard to pin into conversation, and very quick with his so sweetly sharp tongue (it's like being insulted by an angel, and slaps Blaine between the eyes with shock every single time), but Blaine tells himself not to mind such little lacerations, and he is good at just keeping smiling. And it's nice to hang out with Kurt. Kurt might not supply much to the conversation but when Blaine talks about Patti LuPone Kurt's indistinct smile at least gives a little twitch like he knows who Blaine's talking about. They sit next to each other on a bench and Blaine knocks his ankle into Kurt's now and then. Once, Kurt knocks his back.
Blaine leaves Kurt by the food court to use the restroom, checks his face as he washes his hands and - there's an odd colour in his cheeks, an odd brightness to his eyes, he has to quickly repair his slightly scuffed hair (he gets too excited, talking to Kurt, he loses track of himself too much). He swallows, watching his eyes. He doesn't know what he wants, really, what that pleasant warm buzz is inside. That he's never really hung out with one person like this, like they're best friends or something, like they're just happy to make their day into time spent with each other -
Or that he's never hung out with one guy like this, with one absurdly pretty guy with his vivid blue eyes like bits of the summer sky and his oddly attractive wide mouth gradually more given to smiling and his throat, when he swallows, so long and white like it goes on forever -
Out in the food court again Blaine can't see him, Kurt's not where he left him, he scans the plastic seating and the fast food places and it's the movement that finally snaps his eye onto him, the perfect exact movement of Kurt's ankle turning left-right-left-right, while Kurt leans on the counter with one arm, drawing little curving patterns on its plastic surface, tilting his head to smile up at the guy standing behind it and staring at Kurt's mouth as he speaks.
And the smile falters a little on Blaine's face, because he knows exactly what Kurt's doing. He knows exactly what Kurt is initiating with some guy he spotted working the cash register at Burger King while Blaine was in the bathroom. He knows what this means.
He just doesn't know what it means to him.
He feels too hot, like he really needs to be outside. He feels like he can't watch this but he can't look away. He feels pissed - really suddenly truly angry that Kurt would slip off to do this when he's supposed to be hanging out with Blaine. He feels -
Like Kurt could have been doing all of that for him, if Blaine hadn't already said no.
He just feels sick, and he needs to get out of here. He pulls his phone out, texts, Got a call from my mom, got to go, see you soon? He hits send and sees Kurt look down, at the other side of the food court, and take his cell from his pocket. He checks it while the guy (he's somewhere in his twenties, he has a stupid little goatee, it's not even a proper beard or anything it just looks stupid) talks and then just puts his phone back in his pocket and smiles at the guy again, and Blaine really needs to be anywhere else already. He turns away, begins hurrying for the exit, any exit, he'll walk the long way around outside to find his car, he just needs to be out of here.
He keeps remembering the knowing twist of Kurt's ankle, the particular angled tilt of his hips.
Outside it's cold, and the sky's all low and heavy with the promise of more snow. He rubs his eyes, and feels really, really stupid and confused and embarrassed and humiliated, and he doesn't know why. He knows what Kurt's going to do with that guy. Why would Kurt do that with some nobody instead of - instead of what, hanging out with Blaine like they're twelve or something?
He's an idiot. He's a naïve stupid idiot kid who's never been through anything real, never known the real world, never been real the way Kurt is really real. He's just an idiot.
He heads off for his car, alone.
Part II
Disclaimer: Yeah, no.
Rating: R
Necessary note: So, a while back I dipped into the badboy!Blaine thing mostly because I thought lol the crack oh hang on wait that could be quite interesting. And then people were like, do badboy!Kurt! And I was like, no, because Kurt would never act out like that, because Kurt always has his dad to think about. But then I remembered season two, and, well. And I still put off writing this stupid thing because I just didn't want to, the thought made me feel really not good. This is not Kurt behaving *badly* as such. This is Kurt appallingly, devastatingly *sad*. Happy Christmas? ^^; But it is written as a *mirror* to Fix. You don't need to have read that one or anything, but it will explain some of the narrative decisions here, I guess.
Warnings and spoilers: THIS WILL BE QUITE LONG A LIST OH MY GOD. I'm not so sure about even letting this one out, it's been eating my *life* when I haven't been philosophising and dying on my arse over Ancient Greek participles recently. Right. So: we're going AU after Grilled Cheesus, so season two spoilers and character death, don't go there if you don't want to. Angst, in the kind of bucketloads I haven't explored probably since (if anyone has followed me from my other fandom) that first mpregtwnmtb!verse piece. For anyone who doesn't know the other characters I torture sometimes, we're talking pretty fucking epic in terms of angst. Lots of potentially triggery material around depression, grief, discussions of suicide, borderline eating disorders, the weird shit people do to cope when the world goes entirely to hell. And you know what? Things get worse before they get better. My warning appears to be 'don't read this'? ^^; I am trusting in my happy ending reflex to know how to get us out of this because this is a really dark tunnel to be down oh my god.
Summary: Blaine doesn't always think very far ahead; it's an acknowledged personality flaw.
Now available as podfic by nielrian =)
Blaine doesn't always think very far ahead; it's an acknowledged personality flaw. He sees an immediate opportunity and takes it, and is then usually incredibly surprised by the outcome of it. At first he assumed it was a fact of life - chaos theory - quantum physics - general ineffability - you just never know - but then Thad said slowly, "No, Blaine, you just need to stop and think." and that at least did make Blaine stop and think. Huh.
His life is an endless succession of moments of 'huh'.
Which is the reason he ends up sitting opposite a boy he's only ever seen once before, on a rival show choir at Sectionals, in the Lima Bean on a Thursday after school. Actually, it's only part of the reason. Quite a large part of the reason was a significant number of Warblers physically pushing Blaine across the stage at him after their clubs drew, because maybe Blaine was a little obvious in the one more glance he kept stealing at him.
The rest of the reason. That this boy performed with his glee club like his mind was elsewhere, technically flawless and as actually involved in what he was doing as the average jock in chemistry class, as graceful and as alone in that group as the only swan on the river. Once their performance finished (a show-stopping Valerie, even if their first number was so traditional as to be clichéd Blaine can easily see why they came to a draw over that performance) he just wrapped his arms around himself and looked into the distance while his team mates celebrated; when the draw was announced one of the girls threw their arms around him and hugged him, and he patted her back absently, then straightened his jacket.
So, yes, Blaine was staring at him when he should have been celebrating his own club's victory (half-victory; not a loss, and Blaine likes to view the cup as half-full), so maybe he is too obvious. But he's just a bit of an enigma, the boy who flicked a disinterested gaze at him and scanned him in one half second shoes to hair and then twitched the corners of his mouth into the shape of a smile and said, sweetly low, "Kurt." and let Blaine babble at him for a bit, before smoothly getting Blaine's telephone number and a date and time out of him. He's not like anyone else Blaine's ever seen in Lima. Obviously he's attractive, and yes, Blaine is fairly certain he's gay, but mostly Blaine just likes collecting friends, people he can feel normal with. He doesn't meet many guys like Kurt.
Sitting opposite him over coffee, Kurt incredibly pale and incredibly well dressed (it can't be a real Vivienne Westwood; can it?) and as poised on his seat as a cat observing a bird, Blaine does know that really he doesn't meet any guys like Kurt. The way Kurt has of looking at him isn't like just being looked at, it makes Blaine incredibly aware of being looked at, incredibly aware that he's still in his Dalton uniform and yet not in Dalton anymore. Oh, the real world: he never has got used to living here.
Blaine puts a smile on, cupping his coffee in both hands. "So, have you guys been enjoying your victory?"
The look Kurt gives him manages to be both faintly curious and entirely disinterested all at once. "Yes, it's been super." he murmurs. "They lime-slushied Sam every day this week, his hair looks chlorinated. He's still strangely adverse to advice on colour-care."
". . . ah?"
Kurt blinks but is otherwise perfectly, crisply still, leaning back in his chair with one arm folded out long on the table to hold his cup. "And how have you been enjoying your 'victory', Blaine?"
There's a particular way Kurt says his name; Blaine can't tell if it's mocking or something else, but it makes strange muscles tighten low in his back. "Well - it's nice to win. The guys all work really hard and I know they, they have a lot of faith in me, so I always want to . . . I mean, not 'win', I know we didn't beat you, but it's good to not lose. And there's always Regionals." He grins at him, but Kurt just observes the grin like it's an anthropological phenomenon he's not entirely sure of the purpose of. "Um. That was a joke, I didn't actually mean . . . you guys are really good."
"Mm. I'm hardly offended. I might not even be there for Regionals."
Blaine swallows a mouthful of coffee. "You're - are you quitting? Or moving?"
Kurt shrugs, closes his eyes. "Who knows. No. I'm thinking of quitting. It used to be - I don't know. Fun."
"Isn't it fun now?"
"Define 'fun'," Kurt says softly, and runs a fingertip around the rim of his cup. "So, Blaine," he says, and again, his name, Blaine doesn't know what it does to him hearing his name in that strange soft voice. "What do you do for 'fun'?"
"Well, I do really enjoy glee club. And, uh, video games? And I like watching football. And-"
Kurt tilts his head, like Blaine really is a very curious specimen. "How utterly thrilling," he murmurs.
". . . what things do you enjoy doing?"
"I don't enjoy doing things. This conversation in particular isn't exactly rocking my world right now. So, were you planning on your car or mine?"
"Excuse me?"
Kurt gives him a long look. "I just need to clarify if you're trying to be cute or if you're actually that clueless, in which case, oh my goodness, this is going to be an interesting afternoon. Did you actually ask me out for coffee?"
"I." Blaine stares at him. "Did you want to do something else? There's the bowling alley or-"
"I had assumed," Kurt says, leaning forward on one folded arm against the table, eyes narrowing slightly, "that you wanted a blowjob at the very least. And you . . ."
Something low in Blaine's body tightens horribly and his hands start around the cup, and the appalled babble kicks in before he can realise that silence (stop and think) might be the more dignified option. "No! No, no I thought - I wanted to - talk? I've only met you once, I honestly-"
"Well aren't you just adorable," Kurt says, sort of amazed. "Which decade exactly do you live in?"
"I just thought-" The blush must show, which is the most embarrassing part, and he doesn't quite know where to look, all over the coffee shop just trying to avoid Kurt's quizzical eyes, blue as Arctic seas and very surprised by the complete and cretinous naïvity of Blaine Anderson right now. "I just thought we probably had a lot in common with show choir and - everything and we could -"
"'And everything'," Kurt says, and blinks, and lifts his coffee to his mouth. "Well," he says. "Are you sure you wouldn't rather have the blowjob now that it's, as it were, on the table?"
He has to cough into a napkin for a second. "I. No. Thank you."
Kurt takes a little sip of coffee, puts the cup back down pressing his lips together. "Alright," he says. "Talking. I'm sure it's a delightful way to spend an afternoon. Talk to me, Blaine." He says it like he's reciting a line, eyes on the ceiling, turning his cup on the table. Blaine swallows, takes a breath to be certain that he's not going to start choking again out of sheer embarrassment, and finally trusts himself to put the napkin down.
"Um. What do you want to talk about?"
"I don't 'want' to talk about anything, particularly, but apparently this is your idea of foreplay."
"Look, I - I'm really, really sorry if I gave the wrong impression, I know I can behave in a kind of clueless way sometimes and I might have given a weird vibe, I'm sorry, I really, really didn't mean to make it sound like this was - um, anything, just, coffee. I." Blaine swallows again, he seems to have far more saliva than he can possibly need during this conversation. "I'm sorry. Obviously it's not that you're not incredibly attractive and everything, it's just, I don't know you and - I'm sorry."
Kurt just looks sort of tired, sort of distant at him, and says, "You can stop apologising. I'm sure I'm sorry for causing you such terrible confusion and distress, but I do understand. I'm not your type."
"You're - what?"
"I attract a particular kind of man." Kurt smiles, something close to an actual smile, something maybe real behind that sadly self-mocking angle to it. "And you are clearly far too sweet to be one of them. I'm sorry I assumed you were."
"I -"
"And I'm a little out of practise at normal human interaction. 'Normal' has become a - a slightly nebulous concept. So if you would like to talk, I'm happy to listen. I genuinely have nothing better to do anyway."
Blaine swallows some coffee, and closes his eyes for a second, and gives an agonised inner squirm at how stupid and how childish and how ridiculous he must look, and tries to think of what possible conversation they can try to have now to repair the train wreck this coffee date has turned into. "I. Um." He clears his throat a little. "Why aren't you enjoying glee club anymore?"
Kurt's eyes slip from his face and track the tabletop, and his fingertips skim a little pattern on there like they're ice skating. "I thought you were going to talk."
"I'm just curious. I just think it's - it's fun, you know? And you're good, so I would've thought you would enjoy it."
"I used to. I used to want to . . . I don't sing so much anymore. And I never get solos anyway so it doesn't really matter if I'm there or not. I got offered one, for Sectionals. I just . . . didn't feel like it."
"Why don't you feel like singing anymore?"
"Why do you keep asking me questions? Shouldn't it be my turn?"
Blaine shrugs, he can hardly argue with the fairness of that. "If you like."
Kurt's eyes are back on his, hard cold blue. "Are you a virgin?"
Okay. Should have expected that. The blush burns his ears, and his hand tries to cover his eyes before he makes it not. "Yes." It's not something to be embarrassed by, he reminds himself, he tells himself. Teenagers do these things at their own pace, and there are simple statistical reasons why it's less easy for gay kids to find a potential partner they want to be with like that, and he would rather sex mean something than just be something to get out of the way. Though, confounding statistics, Kurt seems to have managed to find someone already, which puts that argument at least to shame. He swallows. "Why aren't you singing so much anymore?"
Kurt looks into his eyes for a long time, like he's looking for something, though Blaine doesn't know what. Then he blinks a few times, and looks down, and one shoulder gives a loose twitch of a shrug. "My dad died three months ago. I guess I just don't feel like it anymore."
Blaine says, feeling the words low in his stomach, "I'm so sorry."
Kurt gives that one shouldered shrug again, and he takes a little breath, squeezes his hands around his mug, looks up to Blaine's eyes again. His face is still and tense around the jaw, and Blaine can see his throat move as he swallows. "My mom died when I was eight, and it turns out that no-one else in my family is actually willing to take me, which I really should have seen coming. So I'm living with my dad's - well his girlfriend, I was going to say 'ex-girlfriend' because . . . his girlfriend and her son, who I have a 'history' with," he lets go of his cup to do the air-quotes, "which makes the situation pretty incredibly horrible, actually. And it turns out that my friends don't know how to be my friends when it gets difficult so they just quit trying. And, you know, suddenly it turns out that show tunes don't actually fix anything. Who knew." He touches his face for a second, eyes closed, then says quietly, "Why am I telling you this?" and picks up his cup again. "You don't care and I really don't expect you to understand. You can just -" He flicks a hand towards the exit - "go. Clearly you are in over your head and I advise you to back away now."
Looking into his eyes, brittle-bright blue, Blaine knows that he's in over his head; the level of pain there is beyond his comprehension. The pain Blaine feels, the fall of horrible sympathy in his guts, is nothing compared to what Kurt clearly moves through every minute of every day, and all Blaine can do is stare at him and feel sick with as much as empathy can do. He's very aware of Kurt's hand around his coffee cup, the elegant white angle of it. The urge is to touch it, but he doesn't know what that would mean. "Kurt, I'm so sorry. I can't imagine what - what that's like. I can't."
"No," Kurt says quietly. "People seem not to be able to. They resent my existence for making them face the attempt, though."
"I . . . I'm not saying I've ever lived through anything like that, because I haven't, I really, really haven't, but - when things were bad for me once, I really found that music helped. That I could - feel and be with music, that it was a really safe place for me -"
"I used to feel like that too, when the worst that happened to me was basic high school bullying. But not this. I just don't feel the point of it anymore. It's just noise."
"Kurt-" He touches the back of Kurt's hand, just two fingertips of the beginning of contact before Kurt pulls his hand back like Blaine's touch scalds, and then puts his other hand over the skin like it stings. Kurt says brusquely, "Isn't it my turn to ask you a question now?"
Blaine just stares at him, and doesn't know what to do or say. The idiot urge to help is making him feel dizzy but he hasn't got a clue how he can. "Do you want to - talk or -"
"It genuinely would help if you would just fuck me but apparently you need wooing for that and I really don't have the energy, Blaine. So, unless you actually have something to say, we really might as well just part ways now before it gets even more awkward than it already is."
". . . can't I just be there for you? Kurt, it sounds like you really need friends right now."
"I don't need anything. No-one needs anything. This delusion people have, like anything matters - it's just a lot of white noise and then you die and it is so irritating that people keep trying to convince me otherwise like that would stop it being true for them too." He stands up, leaving his cup, plucking his jacket off the back of his chair on a fingertip. "You're a nice person, Blaine, honestly, and I will only damage that, so it's best for both of us if I just leave you alone now."
"How is that best for both of us? How is it best for you?"
"Nothing's best for me." He slips his jacket on, gives Blaine such a tired look, says, "If you do change your mind about the blowjob, you have my number." and he turns to leave, all graceful long limbs and pristine clothing and some horrible bone-deep pain Blaine can't even -
He catches up with him in the parking lot, skidding in the snow, where Kurt's turning the alarm off on his car. As Blaine pants to a halt next to him Kurt closes his arms around himself, holding himself in by the elbows, and gives Blaine that too-tired-to-really-be-curious look. Blaine swallows, holds his arms out, says, "I want to help. I just don't know how."
"What 'help' exactly do you think I need and you can supply?"
"Just, Kurt, anything. I could be a friend if you'd let me."
Kurt's silent for a moment, then says, "Why do you need me? Why do you need a charity case right now?"
"That's not-"
"Clearly your life isn't intact either, or else you wouldn't feel the need to pick up the pieces of other people's lives. So just to make this very, very clear because it's quite obvious that we keep communicating somewhere past each other - you can't fix me, Blaine. You can't bring my dad back from the dead and make my life at school less like a living hell, you can't repair anything in my life that's broken, you can't put that cheerful song back in my heart again. It's a waste of your time and I'm not here to be your pity project. Deal with your own life, because I am not going to fill any of the empty spaces in it. And good luck with your glee club, since I doubt I'll be there to see you perform at Regionals."
This boy -
Blaine is really good at façades. He has to be. Being himself gets him in trouble, it's only if he keeps the parts of him that are actually him internal only that they can't get so bruised. His parents don't want anything deeper than the perfect but unfortunately gay son façade; the Warblers don't need to see him doubt and hesitate and be anything less than absolutely confident in himself and all of them; no-one wants him to be obviously and threateningly gay, he's only acceptably gay if he likes football and doesn't bring up musical theatre too much. And then there's this boy, who hits such a small number of precise little hammer blows on Blaine's glassy façade and brings it all down around his head, and he's standing in the parking lot of the Lima Bean feeling like he's been kicked in the face, because his life isn't whole and people aren't supposed to notice that.
He makes himself keep his jaw steady, though his hands squeeze into fists at his sides. He draws a breath in, slow through his nose, while Kurt watches him with his eyes a little more intent now, like he wants to see what damage he's inflicted. Blaine manages a slightly pained sort of smile.
He says, "So maybe I could use a friend too."
Kurt's eyebrows nip low and tight, and his mouth presses confused and a little angry about it; clearly this isn't how Blaine was supposed to react. "I'm really not looking for more people to leech from me when they're miserable and then drop me like last season's maxi dress when I'm miserable."
"I wouldn't do that. I just wouldn't. Kurt, I know your life - really, really isn't good right now. But it can't get better if you don't believe it can."
Kurt's breath snorts out of him. "Believe in that like I should believe that god loves me and everything's going to be okay and the fairies at the bottom of the yard want me to be happy-"
"It doesn't make you stupid to believe in something you can't know yet," Blaine snaps back. "It just makes you brave. Because - Kurt, what are you even still doing here if you don't believe it's going to get any better?"
Kurt's face fades back into blandness again, just a little puzzled tension around the eyebrows. "Why am I still here," he murmurs. He shakes his head. "I don't know. I honestly haven't got a clue, Blaine. You tell me. Why am I still here?"
Blaine takes his hand - grabs it - because it feels like a step towards vanishing, Kurt's asking that, it feels like Blaine's question backfired and all he's done is make Kurt face not knowing the answer to it. "Because it can get better," he insists, he has to, his voice sounds too urgent even to him. "It has to. I'll help. You think life's just over and you can't ever move past something but then - then things happen, things always just happen, life just happens and you meet new people and find new places and - and things just get better. They do."
Kurt's silent for a moment, staring at Blaine but not trying to take his hand back. Blaine grips it tight, cool and soft-skinned in his grip, held a little tense but not straining to pull away. Then Kurt blinks a few times, his face softening, and he says quietly, "Maybe things could get better. But even if that were true I just don't know if I want to live through it. Do you have any idea how exhausting I find the idea of the rest of my life?"
Blaine's smile twitches. "I can try to help you kill some of the time."
Too late he curses himself for 'kill', a word he really didn't need to insert into this conversation. Kurt just smiles, and relaxes his hand in Blaine's grip. "I've already found a way to kill the time. I'm just evidently not your type."
"It's not - it's not that I don't think you're attractive or that if we knew each other better I wouldn't maybe . . . I - I just don't think it's a good idea right now given-"
"Given what?" Kurt says softly, shifting his body in a little closer to Blaine's, tilting his head so he can look up at Blaine in a way that makes sudden heat gnaw up his abdomen. "Given that you're extremely cute, Blaine Warbler, and have a rather endearing lack of a filter between your brain and your mouth, and you have -" His hand flexes like a stretching cat in Blaine's. "- very nice hands, attached to what I'm sure are very lovely arms . . ."
Blaine stares at his too-close face and doesn't know how to let his last in breath out again. Kurt's eyes flick between his, amused, and even in the casual platonic tumble the Warblers make, Blaine doesn't remember having a boy this close to him, to his mouth, before. His heart seems to be beating inside each eardrum, and hard in his chest, and lower, slower, deep with heat between his legs.
"And given that you have teenage needs," Kurt says, drawing Blaine's hand back with his - Blaine tries to let go but now Kurt's gripping him, slipping his own arm behind his back, setting Blaine's arm around his waist, pressing him in closer so Blaine feels his nose graze Kurt's smooth cheek and he can smell him clean and cool and he nearly whimpers out loud, "and apparently something of a prince charming complex, and here I am so willing and lonely and needy for you, Blaine-"
"Stop it."
"And you could make me feel so much better, you could rescue me-"
"Stop it!" Blaine wrenches his hand loose, steps back with his chest straining under the thunder of his heartbeat, face glowing with blood and oh god his groin too, he can feel it, Kurt's breath against his face and his low knowing voice and Blaine's body, like the crude teenager it is, whines.
Kurt folds his arms around himself, shrugs. He says, "It was worth trying." and opens his car door, climbs in. "You're better off without me. If you do realise how pointless your conscience and your chastity are, you can always call me and ditch them both. Though I doubt I'll hear from you again, actually."
He closes his car door. Blaine stands there stupidly, while Kurt puts his seatbelt on and turns on the engine, glances into the rear view mirror and then gives one last little ironic look to Blaine before he pulls out. Blaine swallows again, because it still feels like about the only thing he can capably do, and stands there at the edge of a coffee shop parking lot as the dusk slinks in, feeling like he's just been dismantled for cleaning and abandoned before reassembly.
The ghost of Kurt's skin still touches his nose tip. He'd never really even noticed having a nose tip before, and now it's almost the most vividly alive patch of skin his has. Almost.
Dismantled for cleaning: Kurt just unpicked all of Blaine's bullshit, cracked open his well-polished armour, but didn't actually go in for the kill. Which . . . if Kurt feels like he has so little left to lose, why wouldn't he?
Blaine sits in his car because it's at least out of the wind, dropping his scarf tied too hastily in his exit from the coffee shop on the seat beside him, plucking his hat off and quickly dragging his hand over his head to smooth his hair. Then he holds his cell for some time, nodding his head to the beat of a song in the back of his mind, trying to think what the hell to say. Because he doesn't care what Kurt says, he doesn't think Kurt has given up hope. He doesn't think that anyone who's given up hope completely would still keep getting up in a morning, or dressing so immaculately, or sounding like he meant it when he called Blaine 'cute'.
'Extremely' cute.
He just lost his dad, he's alone and hurt and the last thing he needs is Blaine wanting anything from him. Blaine remembers feeling alone and badly hurt and like ever trying to act normal again was literally petrifying, froze him right through like a statue. He tries to think what he needed, back then.
He texts, Courage.
Then he turns the engine on, turns Katy Perry down just a little because every sense feels oversensitive, a little raw with too much Kurt too quickly (his soft low voice like a string instrument played so so so perfect), and heads for home.
*
He sends the texts just now and then, just to keep that tentative thread thrown out between them tethered. Just to let Kurt know he's still around, his friendship is still an option. Okay, maybe he's being obnoxious and intrusive and Kurt receives each text with nothing but irritation, but so long as his cell goes off now and then, at least Kurt can't feel alone.
Blaine slips into a strange tilted existence, like the tectonic plates of his mind have shifted sideways, like Kurt caused an earthquake and Blaine's now got to rebuild out of all the dust and rubble. Kurt definitely awoke something in him, a constant low buzz of need, he reminded Blaine's body that there's all this sex out there in the world that Blaine isn't having and, however much he tries to think about something else, he just aches to get off most of the time. He doesn't want to. He tries slipping a hand underneath his pyjamas and his eyes are full of Kurt's white face, he blinks and blinks like he's been dazzled by a flash, he can't clear them. He tries not to touch himself. He throbs.
He doesn't want to use the imagined body of an already obviously damaged boy he's met all of twice that way in his head. He tries not to, he tries so hard not to, but he always feels sick of himself after the orgasm runs down, left with a mind full of Kurt and Kurt's disdain and all Kurt's pain. He feels like some disgusting caveman, grunting away over Kurt's perfect imagined skin, while Kurt's probably forgotten he exists except for his regular, predictable texts.
Blaine doesn't predict the text he gets back. On Saturday morning he sends Courage out again and lays on his side on his bed, David Bowie on the speakers and his room just looks so gloomy to him, so small, it's become this claustrophobic cell in which he thinks about Kurt not thinking about him and when he does think about Kurt thinking about him the things Kurt thinks about him are so awful -
When his phone announces a text, and it's not from a Warbler.
If I meet you again will you stop wasting your credit like this?
His thumb moves so quickly he has to go back over his reply once it's written and translate it into English before he can send it.
*
Kurt's waiting for him at the top of the escalators at the mall, exactly where he said he would be, wearing insanely tight jeans and a long loose sweater, standing relaxed and dreamy with his cell in one hand like - Blaine's stomach stirs - like he wants to send a text as soon as possible if Blaine is late. But when Blaine catches his eye and smiles so bright all Kurt really looks is tired, and all Blaine's hope cringes a little, and then he doesn't know what the hope was really for anyway.
Blaine stops in front of him, puts his hands a little awkwardly into his pockets - he'd like to touch Kurt's arm, hug him even, but the tight way Kurt holds himself suggests that invasion of his personal space is taken as a serious offence. Blaine really should have noticed that the first time they met, and now he runs over all of the insane signals he probably did send Kurt in his thoughtless, handsy way: stop and think, Blaine, for once in your life, please.
"Hey. How've you been?"
Kurt shrugs. "How are you, Blaine?"
One cup of coffee with you has rewired my brain in some strange and unhealthy way, I'm sleeping less and thinking too much and getting through far too many tissues. "I'm great. What did you want to do?"
"I don't know." Kurt looks around the mall vaguely, bright lights and so many people, and he folds his arms around himself, tilts his head. "I haven't been here in a while. My wardrobe is months out of date."
"You look amazing," Blaine says, honestly, because he does.
"The fact that one can pull last season's clothes off so well doesn't mean that one should." He stares at one of the stores directly opposite them, and sighs, slowly, through his nose. "I thought maybe I would want to shop once I got here. It just feels so tiring. You look at clothes. You try on clothes. You buy clothes. And then you get bored of them and you repeat the cycle again, ad infinitum."
"Like a really stylish Sisyphus."
"No longer quite so stylish," Kurt muses, looking down at his own sleeved arm, then up at Blaine again. "Would you like to look anywhere? Because you don't appear to have been clothes shopping since about nineteen fifty-six, so clearly you need it more than I do."
Blaine had dressed with some care before he headed out, but now he looks down at himself and sees boring written all over him; he learned a while back that preppy clothes basically slip under everyone's radar and they suit his image, so. "I mostly just wanted to see you. Talk to you. Do you want to get a drink?"
Kurt shrugs again. It seems to be one of his most common gestures, a whatever aimed at any situation, like any outcome doesn't mean anything to him anyway. Blaine says, "There's a coffee place up this way. How was your week?"
"I got a lot of pointless texts."
"You look tired."
"And now you're insulting both me and my skincare regime. I'm not sleeping well, thank you very much."
"Are you okay?"
"I'm not even going to dignify that with an answer."
". . . I like your boots."
"Oh you are gay. I had been beginning to wonder."
"You seriously make conversation like pulling teeth, do you know that?"
"You were the one who kept in touch with me."
"Yes. And I still want to. Do you know that, too?"
Kurt glances at him, cool and tired and Blaine thinks he can see now how sad he is, underneath it all, if he could bear to let himself feel it. Blaine says, "They're really good boots." and smiles, and some little smile cracks the corner of Kurt's mouth, it's like seeing sunlight slant down through the cloud, Blaine's stomach jumps.
They join the queue for coffee. Kurt plays with his own cuff a bit, running it between his fingertips. He says, to his sleeve, "I go for walks. On a night. I can't sleep so I just go walking. The ridiculous thing is that on a morning I don't want to wake up, I haven't been fully conscious in morning classes for a months. My body clock has decided that it hates me."
Blaine logs symptoms. It makes sense that Kurt would be depressed, but he doesn't know if Kurt really knows that he is. "Where do you walk?"
"Anywhere. I just follow the streetlights until . . . until I know I have to turn around again." He drops his sleeve, lifts his head. "The town's so quiet on a night. Everything vulgar and ugly and nasty gets hidden. I could almost like it here, then."
". . . is it safe walking around in the dark like that?"
"I don't have anything worth stealing with me. And I've become strangely less afraid of random hate crimes."
Blaine looks away, and is glad to have the opportunity to order and distract himself at that moment. He looks at Kurt for his order and Kurt shrugs, murmurs, "The same." so they end up with two medium drips, and Blaine pays, and says as they walk out, "It makes sense that you do a lot of walking, you have really nice legs."
Kurt sips his coffee, says, "Is this you changing your mind about fucking me or is it just the brain-mouth filter malfunctioning again?"
"Ah, oh, that one. Um. Sorry. People always tell me I . . ."
"Say things you actually mean? Mm, people hate when you do that, I've noticed."
Blaine shuffles his shoulders, grins an awkward grin at Kurt, who looks at him like he doesn't know what expression to wear before he looks up at where they're going again. "How was your week, Blaine?"
"It was good. Glee club, school. The semester's nearly over now, and I love Christmas, and-"
He stops, realising with a guilty sinking of his guts that Kurt's got his first Christmas without his dad looming. Kurt takes a sip of coffee, murmurs, "It's fine. Other people still have things to look forward to, I do know that."
"What . . . are you doing about Christmas?"
Kurt keeps his eyes forward, and something pulses his throat for one second. "I don't know," he says, his voice kept carefully flat. "I can't think that far ahead. I don't want to be there imposing on Carole and Finn for it, but I can't . . . I don't know what I'm supposed to do."
"You could, I mean, if -"
Kurt glances at him, face settled cool and bland again. "If you're going to suggest what I think you are, what exactly do you think your parents would make of the idea?"
". . . I don't know. Actually I do. But I could, I don't know, maybe escape after dinner sometime, hang out with you for a bit?"
"You seem really quite committed to this pity project. What exactly are you getting out of it?"
Blaine isn't sure himself, but that fine thread he threw out between them as a lifeline for Kurt seems to have wound itself tight around something important in Blaine, biting in, drawing blood as it tightens. There's no way he can fit his fingers underneath to unhook it now. "I just . . . I know it's got to be really hard for you right now. If something like that happened to me I'd hope someone else would . . . it's not pity, Kurt, it's not, I just want to help."
"I know." Kurt says. "I know. It's not like I'm offended either way."
They walk for a moment in silence, Blaine taking a slow mouthful of coffee, trying to think what to say. Then Kurt takes a little breath.
"After my dad died - after I moved in with Carole - I couldn't sleep on a night. I'd just lay there in the dark for hours, and hours, just waiting for the sky to get light so I could get out of bed at least, I just felt like I was suffocating in that room. So I started waiting for everyone else to go to bed and slipping outside, to try to walk myself tired enough to want to sleep. It didn't really work but at least I wasn't in that damn room anymore."
He takes another sip of coffee, narrowing his eyes, and Blaine watches his face and doesn't dare to say anything, doesn't want to break the spell of Kurt actually talking to him.
Kurt swallows his mouthful, and closes his eyes for a second. "One night a car slowed down next to me. I should have thought it was dangerous, I was sort of aware it could be dangerous, it was mostly just something out of the ordinary so I wanted to know what would happen next. The driver wound down his window and said he saw me walking most nights, and he asked if I wanted a lift anywhere." He takes another sip of coffee. "We had sex on his back seat. I mostly just let him do what he wanted, I didn't have a clue. But it felt really - real. Really immediate and there. Afterwards I remember thinking that I used to think sex meant something, and now it didn't anymore, and I thought about what my dad would think, but it's not like that matters anymore either because he'll never think anything about anything again, so."
Blaine doesn't know what to say, doesn't dare to say anything anyway, feels about three years old and helpless as they pass the GAP and all these busy mindless shoppers. Kurt sighs.
"I saw him a couple more times when I was walking, then one night he just stopped coming, I don't know why. He got bored, or he found someone else, or -" The breath comes sharp and bitter through his nose - "or his wife found out or whatever. It didn't really matter anymore. I was upset for a while." He frowns, like he doesn't understand that. "I don't even know his name. He never asked for mine. He probably wouldn't have been stupid enough to tell me his real one anyway."
He looks across at Blaine, something tense in his face now, though still mostly all he looks is tired. "You're a nice person, Blaine, I mean that sincerely, I do. But I think I'm a bit too fucked up for you to know how to handle right now, and I don't want to - to only end up hurting you. So maybe you should just . . ."
Blaine swallows, says, "Abandon you?"
"It seems to be the accepted protocol."
"Don't your friends notice?"
"I don't know what they notice. I think they think that my dad died and I'm a mess and they don't know what to say so they don't say anything. They don't know the rest of it. Why would I tell them the rest of it? I've never told anyone."
"You told me."
"I'm trying to be as gently cruel as possible to be kind." He looks to the side. "I don't know why I'm telling you. I don't even tell my counsellor anything actually true."
"You're seeing a counsellor?"
"You must know the suicide rates for gay teenagers," Kurt says, swirling his coffee in his cup as he walks. "I'm a gay teenage orphan, I'm practically a suicide certainty. They at least have to be able to say that they tried."
Blaine says, and he doesn't know what he feels but it's like his face has gone numb, "Do you mean that?"
Kurt looks at him, and in this lighting his eyes are greenish blue, like warmer seas, wide and intent on him, before he blinks and looks away again. "I don't know," he says. "I am being honest. I don't know. I don't know why I don't, but I don't know why I would either. It's so much effort. And if it went wrong things would only get worse, god, they'd put me in a hospital, they'd put me on more pills-"
"You're on antidepressants."
"I can't particularly say that they work."
"Does anything work?"
"Sex," Kurt says, without hesitation. "Briefly. At least it tends to - absorb my full attention at the time. Everything else just feels like filling time."
Blaine says, because he does need to know as sickening as having to ask is, "Does talking to me help?"
Kurt looks at him, steady and tired, and he says, "I don't know." His eyes track the ceiling for a moment. "Sometimes. It's been a while since I . . . I literally don't even speak for most of the day anymore. I have to be polite to Carole and say the bare minimum to teachers. It's why I'm going to quit glee. They keep expecting me to talk to them, and I haven't got anything left to say."
Blaine's throat hurts. "You seem to have plenty to say now."
Kurt looks down at his coffee, and one corner of his mouth twitches a smile. "Like I said. Sometimes, yes, talking to you seems to 'help'. So I just need to wait for you to get bored of me."
"That's not going to happen. It's not. I would never just quit on someone, that's . . . don't your friends notice if you don't say anything? At lunch, or-"
"I don't eat lunch."
Blaine rubs his face with one hand, warm from his coffee cup, and his throat is agony but he can't start crying in front of Kurt when it's Kurt's pain he's crying for, it's just too weird. "So you don't eat and you don't talk to people and so, what, are you trying to just quietly disappear from the face of the planet?"
"I'm not trying to do anything. Things just happen."
"I don't want you to disappear."
"Why?" Kurt looks at him over the lid of his coffee. "People do. All the time. I still don't understand what you're getting out of this. I don't know where you get the energy to care about someone besides yourself. I can't even drag together enough energy to care about me."
"I don't know." Stop and think, god, there's no time for it. "You're special."
Kurt just looks at him, like he's waiting for Blaine to qualify that. Blaine pulls at the air with a hand, tries to drag some coherent words together.
"I just - I've actually never met anyone like you, you know? Like, I know your life is pretty much just crap right now but you - you are clearly wearing exactly what you feel like and no-one's going to stop you. You say exactly what you think. You don't hide anything. You're just - you're brave. I think you have to be, just to still be here, being, you know." He waves his coffee cup at him. "Fabulous, on your own."
There is, so straining almost, a smile on Kurt's mouth. "Well. I can't fault you on your taste, Blaine."
Blaine swallows, because he has been thinking about this, a lot, since that disaster of a coffee date. "You said things were hard at school."
"Oh," Kurt says vaguely, looking forward again. "Well if you're going to be out and not act ashamed of it, of course you're going to have to face the Neanderthals on a daily basis. They don't bother me so much anymore. It's either pity or they just don't want too much close contact in case the misery rubs off on them too."
Blaine doesn't know what to say, though he thinks he should say something. If Kurt acted upset then Blaine would know to act strong, but Kurt acting like nothing much even matters just leaves Blaine trying in a confused way to insist that things do matter, when it seems like all he's really arguing is that all the shit Kurt goes through matters, which Kurt is clearly already aware of. Stop and think: he tries, he really does. He says, "Hey, you want to get pretzels?" and Kurt says, "No." and Blaine takes his wrist and drags him off to the cart anyway, because if Kurt's getting away with skipping at least one meal a day, Blaine can at least get some salty carbs in him before he lets him go.
They hang out. The atmosphere alters, subtly, the tempo shifting down a notch, less of that high dangerous feel to the air. Kurt's a little vague and hard to pin into conversation, and very quick with his so sweetly sharp tongue (it's like being insulted by an angel, and slaps Blaine between the eyes with shock every single time), but Blaine tells himself not to mind such little lacerations, and he is good at just keeping smiling. And it's nice to hang out with Kurt. Kurt might not supply much to the conversation but when Blaine talks about Patti LuPone Kurt's indistinct smile at least gives a little twitch like he knows who Blaine's talking about. They sit next to each other on a bench and Blaine knocks his ankle into Kurt's now and then. Once, Kurt knocks his back.
Blaine leaves Kurt by the food court to use the restroom, checks his face as he washes his hands and - there's an odd colour in his cheeks, an odd brightness to his eyes, he has to quickly repair his slightly scuffed hair (he gets too excited, talking to Kurt, he loses track of himself too much). He swallows, watching his eyes. He doesn't know what he wants, really, what that pleasant warm buzz is inside. That he's never really hung out with one person like this, like they're best friends or something, like they're just happy to make their day into time spent with each other -
Or that he's never hung out with one guy like this, with one absurdly pretty guy with his vivid blue eyes like bits of the summer sky and his oddly attractive wide mouth gradually more given to smiling and his throat, when he swallows, so long and white like it goes on forever -
Out in the food court again Blaine can't see him, Kurt's not where he left him, he scans the plastic seating and the fast food places and it's the movement that finally snaps his eye onto him, the perfect exact movement of Kurt's ankle turning left-right-left-right, while Kurt leans on the counter with one arm, drawing little curving patterns on its plastic surface, tilting his head to smile up at the guy standing behind it and staring at Kurt's mouth as he speaks.
And the smile falters a little on Blaine's face, because he knows exactly what Kurt's doing. He knows exactly what Kurt is initiating with some guy he spotted working the cash register at Burger King while Blaine was in the bathroom. He knows what this means.
He just doesn't know what it means to him.
He feels too hot, like he really needs to be outside. He feels like he can't watch this but he can't look away. He feels pissed - really suddenly truly angry that Kurt would slip off to do this when he's supposed to be hanging out with Blaine. He feels -
Like Kurt could have been doing all of that for him, if Blaine hadn't already said no.
He just feels sick, and he needs to get out of here. He pulls his phone out, texts, Got a call from my mom, got to go, see you soon? He hits send and sees Kurt look down, at the other side of the food court, and take his cell from his pocket. He checks it while the guy (he's somewhere in his twenties, he has a stupid little goatee, it's not even a proper beard or anything it just looks stupid) talks and then just puts his phone back in his pocket and smiles at the guy again, and Blaine really needs to be anywhere else already. He turns away, begins hurrying for the exit, any exit, he'll walk the long way around outside to find his car, he just needs to be out of here.
He keeps remembering the knowing twist of Kurt's ankle, the particular angled tilt of his hips.
Outside it's cold, and the sky's all low and heavy with the promise of more snow. He rubs his eyes, and feels really, really stupid and confused and embarrassed and humiliated, and he doesn't know why. He knows what Kurt's going to do with that guy. Why would Kurt do that with some nobody instead of - instead of what, hanging out with Blaine like they're twelve or something?
He's an idiot. He's a naïve stupid idiot kid who's never been through anything real, never known the real world, never been real the way Kurt is really real. He's just an idiot.
He heads off for his car, alone.
Part II