(Fic) Glee: The Tale of the ice-cold demon
Title: The tale of the ice cold demon
Rating (art/fic if different): PG-13 for boykissing
Word Count: ~7200
Warnings (if any): mentions of suicide and one spoilery warning (highlight to see); non-permanent major character death
Fic Summary: There is a tale. A tale about a demon without blood or tears.A demon encased in a prison as icy as his heart.
"I always thought,” he waves a hand, only just stopping himself from hitting the produce hanging from the stall, “that it was an old wives tale. Meant to scare children.” “No, “ her eyes widen, “it is very, very real."
Author's note: This is a fusion with/retelling of the beginning of the manga “Koori no Mamono no Monogatari” so for those five of you who have read that manga the turns this story takes will not be surprising :)
This was written for the Kurt-Blaine Reversebang 2013 and as such an extra-super-duper special thanks goes out to maskedpencil, who provided two stunning art pieces to this, without ever having read the story, because I'm horrid and slow and took too long. You are my hero darling, I hope next time you do this, you'll get someone a bit less prone to deadline skating^^
Art Thumbnail:
There is a tale.
“Eh? What was that?” Blaine asks.
“Oh, haven't you heard the tale about the ice-cold demon?” the old woman looks up with a small frown.
A tale about a demon without blood or tears.
“Well, of course I have, but I always thought,” he waves a hand, only just stopping himself from hitting the produce hanging from the stall, “that it was an old wives tale. Meant to scare children.”
“No, “ her eyes widen, “it is very, very real. Have you never noticed that travelers that go that way never come back.”
A demon encased in a prison as icy as his heart.
“But maybe they just got to where they wanted to go. It's not like there is a big reason to come back to our village.” he looks down, away from the pitying smile on her face. The one everyone is wearing around him, since - . Since.
“Oh dear, some of them may have. But enough of them were out to prove their bravery or whatever silly notion drives those adventurer types and gone to the demon's cave.” she says, taking his money, “if you want proof, there is even still the stone with the engraving the priests made to keep people from entering the forest at the edge of the forest.”
Cold claws and a beautiful face that led thousands into ruin.
Blaine takes his vegetables and turns away from her awful smile. He wishes they didn't try to make him feel better, because it doesn't help, it never does. It just makes everything worse. He has been buying his vegetables from her stall for years and she was never anything but confrontational and short-tempered with him. And suddenly, she wants to engage him in conversation.
Of course he knows about the huge stone at the edge of the village proclaiming that a demon sleeps in the caves beyond the forest, warning everyone of the danger, of the death that surely awaits anyone who comes too close. About how they had captured him and sealed him into ice for all eternity
Trapped until the eternal ice around him finally melts.
He just never cared one way or the other if the story was true. What was it to him, after all? But now, he...wonders.
“Maybe I'll check out that stone after all.” It's better than just staying in his lonely house, dreading the sounds of footsteps of people just “happening to pass by”.
He finds himself still thinking about it weeks later, agonizing about that little road into the woods. He wastes whole afternoons just sitting at the lake and staring at the mountains. And he wonders.
The curiosity eats him alive. He asks everyone who holds still long enough, if they had ever seen this demon, if anyone ever had. The townspeople give him very strange looks, because word gets around fast in these parts.
At least it makes the pity disappear, at least people start being uncomfortable around him, because he wants to know if they thought the demon ever got lonely or just plain bored and not because they just couldn't stand being around him longer than they have to be.
“Blaine you have to stop this.” Trent says to him one evening, after he'd just come back from the lake. “People are starting to really worry.”
He is in a strange mood, because he spent the afternoon really contemplating what it would mean to be alone, completely alone for as long as the demon had been. Centuries, with only his own thoughts as company. He shudders. He wouldn't be surprised if the demon had gone insane just from loneliness alone.
It hit too close to home, making him reluctant to go home to his house. So he gets caught up in the rainstorm that had been threatening for a week now.
“Why would they worry?” he asks, toweling his hair and frowning at the curls he can just see at the edge of his vision.
“Asking all those questions about the demon?” Trent answers incredulously, “That isn't exactly normal behavior especially for you. And-” he hesitates- “staying out so long in the cold, even getting caught up in the rain. It's not good for you. In your condition -” Blaine slams his hand on table.
“Enough. I got rained on a bit, it has happened before. It has nothing to do with anything. And” he takes a deep breath, looking away from Trent and the awful, awful sadness in his eyes, “it's not like it changes anything, and you know it.”
Trent leaves soon after, driving away by the stark reality Blaine's hacking coughs represent. It is that night, thunder outside that Blaine makes the decision to just leave. He'd spent his whole life being mindful of others, careful and it was time to do something for himself, something reckless and stupid. If not now, then when.
He packs his bags, unpacks them, packs them again. Then he thinks of the way Tracy from the farm told him about that adventurer, the one who gave her flowers, just never came back with an awful look in her eyes and in the end just takes a light satchel with a few necessities.
He had written several long letters, weeks before now and he leaves his keys with a note on the kitchen table, steps out of his house and sets out onto that road before the sun even rises in the sky.
It brings him here, to the entrance of the cave. He has heard enough stories to be sure it's this one, with its rune carvings and ice clinging to its ceiling even with the fall sun shining on it. He thinks briefly about turning back, returning to the life he knows, when suddenly he hears a voice.
He doesn't even take the time to think about the tales that told of a voice as warm and loving as a lover's embrace and how the demon had used it time and time again. Because surely, surely something with a voice like this was a sight worth dying for.
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He wakes up to the sound of crashing. He breathes in the air around him and wonders how long he slept. Time has no meaning for him anymore, at least not in the traditional sense. He's been in this damnable ice for so long he tends to just sleep as long as nobody is there to entertain him. The first hundred years he'd be raging against those priests, trying to free himself, to break the ice.
But it was useless. That stupid ice wouldn't budge and so he was stuck just waiting around until the next stupid human would be drawn to him.
I didn't sleep too long I don't think, judging by the decay of the bodies littering the bottom of the cave and the smell in the air it was fall now. The last time he remembers being awake it had been in spring.
Well, here goes nothing, He can hear the slight shuffling at the entrance to his prison cell, the tentative footsteps. He is awake now and he wont let that fool turn back and ruin his fun now.
“Who goes there?” he asks, with his voice modulated to carry, to sound like a song, like your mother and your father and your lover at the same time. He had hated his voice, once upon a time, always too soft, too high for the demon he wanted to be seen as. It had been Santana, who had scoffed and told him to stop moping and use the beautiful voice he had been giving to do his dirty work for him.
And he did, seducing, manipulating, getting people to listen and walk off a cliff if he needed them to.
“Um, “ Aha, his prey walking into view, “Hi?” The stranger stares at him with a dumb look of awe on his face. Great he got one of the slow ones.
“Um, wow.” the stranger lets that out on a breath of air and if he hadn't forgotten how to, he'd be blushing at the blatant appreciation in that sound, that face. He has the irrational urge to turn his head away, so he stares at the stranger straight on, out of spite. Also, there is just so far he can move his head to the side, completely encased in ice as he is.
The stranger is a bit on the short side, at least judging by the humans that normally come to his cave. But maybe this is average height, because he also knows that nobody ever came to his cave with those types of clothes. Normally they come with swords and armor or clothing stained by long travel. Not that armor or weapons ever helped them.
“Hum,” looks like he got his bearing, “Hello, my name is Blaine. How about you.” he says with a huge, blinding grin on his admittedly very attractive face.
“What?” he asks with a flat voice because this boy, this Blaine could not be serious. There was slow and then there was suicidally oblivious.
“Your name? I mean-” Blaine bites his lip and it may have been hundreds of years, but he is still not as desperate as to notice the looks of a human and his body better listen to him “do you have names? I don't want to be insensitive.”
And he looks at him with such an entreating, open face that clearly says that he didn't mean to cause offense and he's oh so sorry if he did. And that is just so beyond anything he had expected that he finds himself answering.
“Of course we have names, don't be stupid.” he scoffs and then is appalled at himself, because what is he doing, responding to this clearly unhinged human.
Blaine looks as if he gave him a gift, grinning even wider. “So then, if I may ask, what is it? I don't want to keep calling you “demon” in my head, that seems so disrespectful.”
This is just beyond ridiculous and he can still not stop himself from looking away first, “Those damnable priests called me Blood, so I suppose that is my name.”
“Huh,” and Blaine sounds disappointed, what the hell. “But don't you have a name that is more personal? What did your friends, your family call you? Before you were here, I mean.”
His...his friends. His family. Nobody, at least nobody human, had ever asked, they all assume that clearly the ice-cold demon doesn't have anything resembling a family. But he can still remember and it still hurts, time hadn't dulled the pain of memory at all, the throbbing empty place where he just missed them.
“Kurt” he hears himself say, looking at those wounds that never stopped bleeding, not really, just stayed ignored in the five hundred years he's been stuck here, not knowing if they were alright, if the priests had gotten to them after all, ever after he had given himself up, after they had promised. But it wasn't like you could ever trust humans to keep their words. “They called me Kurt.”
“Kurt?” and the sound of his name in a different voice than his own throws him out of the past into the present. In any voice since he had stopped thinking of it as his name, because there was nobody here to call him that, nobody he would have cared to know it. And he curses himself, what is he thinking just giving out his name to a human. Names are power to demons, you can do so much with a demon's real name and he just gave it away.
“That's a beautiful name.” he looks up, into that sun kissed face, that man who doesn't belong here with his soft clothes and warm voice that reminds him of the sky outside, of before. “It suits you.”
Maybe he'd hold off on killing this one after all, if only to investigate the apparent and inexplicably reemergence of the blush that he'd thought banished a thousand years ago.
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This was an excellent idea. Blaine looks around and then stops because those bones are clearly human bones and he'd just rather not think about that too much. Instead he looks again at the demon, at Kurt. Because those stories were really underselling him. Though to be fair, anyone would be hard pressed to put the sheer radiance and beauty into words if they tried.
Kurt just looks perfect, with a perfectly shaped face, long hair like spun gold and those eyes. They seem to shift in color, depending on his moods. Blaine doesn't understand how anyone could have seen them and want to describe them as cold, because to him they sparkled, like water, like life.
He finally looks around, trying to find a place to sit. He finally settles for a ledge a bit higher up, slightly under where Kurt is stuck to the wall. Everything aside from his face, upper body and one arm is fully embedded in the ice that looks more like a tree than anything else. Only the chill it gives off betrays its true nature. Even from 10 feet away he can feel the cold it radiates. He gets the blanket he brought with him and settles in.
“You have got to be kidding me.” Kurt says. “Are you settling in?!”
“Well, I came all the way here, clearly I'm not going to just leave.” he replies. It's pretty obvious to him. “You can't tell me you mind the company, I mean if nothing else you must be bored here.”
“I can't believe this,” Kurt mutters, “Do I really need to explain this to you?”
“Explain what?” If his life taught him anything it was that often enough playing dumb was the easier choice.
“I'm a demon, you are a human. I kill your kind.” Kurt looks as if he'd like to rub his forehead in consternation, if he only had a free hand to do so. “You should be running away ,afraid I'm going to eat you, not getting comfortable.”
“Are you going to eat me?” It's mostly curiosity that makes him ask, he doesn't really care after all.
Something about that must have shown on his face, because Kurt looks disturbed for a second before his features smooth out again into unconcern.
“No,” he snorts delicately, “I don't actually eat people, I don't know who came up with that one. It would be so messy for one.” Kurt says that with such a look of utter distaste, Blaine can't help but laugh.
“See, everything's fine then.” he settles back on his hands.
“Everything is not fine.” Kurt hisses, “I can't believe you! What was your plan, come here, hope that on some off-chance I wont eat you and all for what? To ask my name?!”
“I also wanted to know a lot of other things, like what do you do when you get bored?” Blaine says mildly, “And if you ever get cold and how long you've been here. Those types of things.”
Kurt looks as if he wants dearly to strangle him and suddenly the long hair framing his face starts moving, shaping into hand shapes.
“Whoa!, “Blaine springs up, snatching one of the hair ropes out of the air before it can reach his neck- “Are you doing that? That is so cool!” Because seriously. The hair proceeded to curl cautiously around his hand and arm, while the second section hovers indecisively in the air next to his head.
“I - yes,” Kurt seems sort of dumbfounded, staring at him with his mouth open. He looks at Blaine as if he has never seen anything like him before. Which obviously couldn't be farther from the truth, because as humans went, Blaine is nothing special, probably so ordinary it was hard for Kurt to separate him from all the other humans he has seen in his life.
He inspects the hair winding around his forearm a bit closer and stops short. Because that shimmer. Surely it isn't what he thinks it is.
“Why are the ends red?” he asks with trepidation.
“It's blood” Well, there go his doubts, apparently. He tries to release the hair from his grasp, but the rope just coils tighter around him.
“Huh.” he strokes the strands, because they are so soft and by the hair clearly liked it, judging by their behaviour
“That's all the reaction you are going to have?” Kurt exclaims.
“What do you want me to say?” he answers raising his eyes back to Kurt's face.
“How about asking me why I killed those people with my hair, “ he sounds oddly distressed, “and then gibber away from me in terror.”
“Why should I? You forget that I expected you to kill me where I stand the moment I entered the cave so this is already going miles better than I anticipated.” he answers truthfully. For one he is still standing. Also hair as soft as silk is now seemingly petting him, so yes, clearly this is a win for him.
“You expected me to - “ Kurt's hair suddenly vanish from around his limbs, seemingly sinking into the ice around him. “Great. Another suicidal one. Sorry, but I'm not going to be the one to kill you. Find a cliff, if you are that eager to die. Now go aw-”
“I'm not suicidal” Blaine interrupts. It's very important to him to make that clear, because he really isn't. He just has a special relationship with his mortality.
“Right?” Kurt says in a skeptical tone, “And the fact that you went into a cave expecting a monster to murder you on the spot speaks of your clear mind and will to live. Spare me. I know your type,”weirdly he sounds almost disappointed,” they show up every decade or so, thinking a demon killing them will in some way be a better form of suicide than just running into a knife.”
“I don't want to die, believe me” Blaine says quietly.
“And why should I? Because if that's the case, why are you here?” he sounds so sad that Blaine can do nothing than respond with the truth. Maybe he owes him this.
“I don't want to die,” he repeats, “but it's not really my choice anymore.”
“What does that mean?” Kurt asks.
He swallows around the lump in his throat, summoning up a smile. “I'm sick. Really sick. There is something wrong with my heart. Nothing anyone can do anymore. I could die at any moment without warning.” he looks into Kurt's piercing, beautiful eyes “So I may not want to die, but I still will.”
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Kurt looks at the weird human who stumbled into his cave. He doesn't know what to say. Death isn't totally unknown to him, but it was always priests or an angry mob who overwhelmed one of them. To just have your body failing you that way - it's inconceivable.
“Please, I promise I wont be a bother, but please can I just stay here for a while?” Blaine asks, still with that quiet smile on his face
There should be desperation on that face or anger or at least relentless cheer. Not this blank accepting facade. He suddenly wants to do something. Reach out, shake him anything to just make feel Blaine better in some way, to get him out of this unnatural state of just not caring.
Which doesn't make sense at all. He hasn't cared about the feelings or conditions of a human for centuries. They are all the same to him: lying, untrustworthy creatures, nothing to do with him.
“If that's what you want.” he says absently. He can't do anything else. Blaine clearly doesn't expect sympathy, certainly not pity, judging by the bland way he had given the news.
In answer Blaine's face splits in a grin so wide and happy, Kurt finds himself unconsciously twitching his fingers in an aborted attempt to reach out, to brush against it and find out if it would feels as warm to the touch as it looks. It's such a difference to his blank face and it somehow seems right. As if this is the way Blaine should always, always look like.
“Thank you so much! You wont regret it, I promise, I'll be excellent company, you'll see.” Just as he's glaring his hair back, because they had in that brief moment of his madness tried to pull Blaine closer and had gotten as far as curling around his waist, Blaine lets out a jaw cracking yawn.
“Sorry,” he says a blush staining his cheeks, and it's really unfair how fetching that looks on him. “And just after I said I'd be good company. I guess the hike up here took more energy than I thought.”
“You can take a nap, if you want to.” Clearly his mouth is working absolutely independently of his brain today. He misses the use of his hands every moment he's awake but it has been a while since he wants to have them so he can bury his face. “It's not like I'm going anywhere.” he adds to save face.
“Well, if you're sure..?” Blaine asks again.
“I'm sure, but it's not going to be comfortable, you certain you wouldn't rather go back to your village?”
“No, here will be fine, I'm prepared“ Blaine says, ruffling through his bag, pulling out another blanket and taking both of them to a corner near him.
“Good night; Kurt.” And just like that he curls up and is asleep within minutes.
Fast asleep, in plain sight of him and in clear reach of his hair. Even after he knows what he is capable of, what he can expect from him.
“Now you've done it, Kurt.” he says to himself. Blaine doesn't seem to notice.
Here he is with a human in his cave, and he doesn't have even one clue what to do about him. To make matters worse, every time he tries to think of a solution, of something to make him leave he and he happens to look at Blaine - the way his lashes are so long they cast shadows on his face or his lips that are ever so slightly parted, glistening with a slightly wet sheen -
Kurt shakes his head. This is getting ridiculous.
He's a mature demon and it had been a thousand years since he'd last let himself get distracted like this by a pretty face. But even getting his mind away from Blaine's attractiveness, he can't forget the way he had looked ever so slightly desperate under the blank facade, when he asked him to stay. As if Kurt was his last hope and if he made him leave he may just be driven to that cliff after all.
Which doesn't make any sense either. Blaine is clearly a likeable, good looking young man. And even if he is … sick - and Kurt doesn't even want to think about that.
Still, why Blaine wouldn't choose to spend his last days with his friends, his family, why he would instead choose to come here. There must be a reason.
And I'll find it out. Because surely this is nothing but curiosity on his end, nothing but a slightly interesting development in the endless monotony that his life has become. After he solves the mystery, he'll be fine scaring Blaine away from him and he can go back to waiting for the one, who will finally finally, provide him with the opportunity to escape this prison.
Until then, Kurt supposes, this is as good a way as any to pass the time. And if he can ignore the quite frankly adorable sounds Blaine makes in his sleep, he could even convince himself of that.
Blaine wakes up to the sounds of singing. He is normally a fast riser, but something about the voice, makes him want to stay asleep a little while longer. It's clear and gentle and it makes Blaine want to smile and burrow deeper into his bed.
Which is now that he thinks about it a whole lot harder than he's used to. With a start Blaine remembers where he is, that he has made the trek to the mountain cave and who must be the one singing. He carefully cracks one eye open, so he doesn't disturb Kurt and make him stop singing. He has his head turned slightly away from Blaine and his eyes seem to peer far away, beyond the walls of the cave. His hair moving slightly to the melody and the ice shining with a light that comes from within, because the sun doesn't reach here and - Blaine realizes - because it's already night.
He can't make out the words, as it's in a language he has never heard, but the melody is haunting and wistful. It makes Blaine's throat tighten, makes him want to move, to run, just to make sure he can, that he's still here. But even though his eyes tear up, it's beautiful. Kurt is beautiful. Even if he has to die here, even if Kurt decides he is a bother and kills him after all, it will have been worth it, just for this moment alone. For the opportunity to meet such an exceptional creature like Kurt, to hear his voice and have him look at him.
The only thing he'd regret, would be to never see him smile, but maybe he can accomplish that before the end comes. Right now he'll just enjoy the music sounding all around him, so pure it seems to actually reach inside him and warm him from there.
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part 2
Rating (art/fic if different): PG-13 for boykissing
Word Count: ~7200
Warnings (if any): mentions of suicide and one spoilery warning (highlight to see); non-permanent major character death
Fic Summary: There is a tale. A tale about a demon without blood or tears.A demon encased in a prison as icy as his heart.
"I always thought,” he waves a hand, only just stopping himself from hitting the produce hanging from the stall, “that it was an old wives tale. Meant to scare children.” “No, “ her eyes widen, “it is very, very real."
Author's note: This is a fusion with/retelling of the beginning of the manga “Koori no Mamono no Monogatari” so for those five of you who have read that manga the turns this story takes will not be surprising :)
This was written for the Kurt-Blaine Reversebang 2013 and as such an extra-super-duper special thanks goes out to maskedpencil, who provided two stunning art pieces to this, without ever having read the story, because I'm horrid and slow and took too long. You are my hero darling, I hope next time you do this, you'll get someone a bit less prone to deadline skating^^
Art Thumbnail:
There is a tale.
“Eh? What was that?” Blaine asks.
“Oh, haven't you heard the tale about the ice-cold demon?” the old woman looks up with a small frown.
A tale about a demon without blood or tears.
“Well, of course I have, but I always thought,” he waves a hand, only just stopping himself from hitting the produce hanging from the stall, “that it was an old wives tale. Meant to scare children.”
“No, “ her eyes widen, “it is very, very real. Have you never noticed that travelers that go that way never come back.”
A demon encased in a prison as icy as his heart.
“But maybe they just got to where they wanted to go. It's not like there is a big reason to come back to our village.” he looks down, away from the pitying smile on her face. The one everyone is wearing around him, since - . Since.
“Oh dear, some of them may have. But enough of them were out to prove their bravery or whatever silly notion drives those adventurer types and gone to the demon's cave.” she says, taking his money, “if you want proof, there is even still the stone with the engraving the priests made to keep people from entering the forest at the edge of the forest.”
Cold claws and a beautiful face that led thousands into ruin.
Blaine takes his vegetables and turns away from her awful smile. He wishes they didn't try to make him feel better, because it doesn't help, it never does. It just makes everything worse. He has been buying his vegetables from her stall for years and she was never anything but confrontational and short-tempered with him. And suddenly, she wants to engage him in conversation.
Of course he knows about the huge stone at the edge of the village proclaiming that a demon sleeps in the caves beyond the forest, warning everyone of the danger, of the death that surely awaits anyone who comes too close. About how they had captured him and sealed him into ice for all eternity
Trapped until the eternal ice around him finally melts.
He just never cared one way or the other if the story was true. What was it to him, after all? But now, he...wonders.
“Maybe I'll check out that stone after all.” It's better than just staying in his lonely house, dreading the sounds of footsteps of people just “happening to pass by”.
He finds himself still thinking about it weeks later, agonizing about that little road into the woods. He wastes whole afternoons just sitting at the lake and staring at the mountains. And he wonders.
The curiosity eats him alive. He asks everyone who holds still long enough, if they had ever seen this demon, if anyone ever had. The townspeople give him very strange looks, because word gets around fast in these parts.
At least it makes the pity disappear, at least people start being uncomfortable around him, because he wants to know if they thought the demon ever got lonely or just plain bored and not because they just couldn't stand being around him longer than they have to be.
“Blaine you have to stop this.” Trent says to him one evening, after he'd just come back from the lake. “People are starting to really worry.”
He is in a strange mood, because he spent the afternoon really contemplating what it would mean to be alone, completely alone for as long as the demon had been. Centuries, with only his own thoughts as company. He shudders. He wouldn't be surprised if the demon had gone insane just from loneliness alone.
It hit too close to home, making him reluctant to go home to his house. So he gets caught up in the rainstorm that had been threatening for a week now.
“Why would they worry?” he asks, toweling his hair and frowning at the curls he can just see at the edge of his vision.
“Asking all those questions about the demon?” Trent answers incredulously, “That isn't exactly normal behavior especially for you. And-” he hesitates- “staying out so long in the cold, even getting caught up in the rain. It's not good for you. In your condition -” Blaine slams his hand on table.
“Enough. I got rained on a bit, it has happened before. It has nothing to do with anything. And” he takes a deep breath, looking away from Trent and the awful, awful sadness in his eyes, “it's not like it changes anything, and you know it.”
Trent leaves soon after, driving away by the stark reality Blaine's hacking coughs represent. It is that night, thunder outside that Blaine makes the decision to just leave. He'd spent his whole life being mindful of others, careful and it was time to do something for himself, something reckless and stupid. If not now, then when.
He packs his bags, unpacks them, packs them again. Then he thinks of the way Tracy from the farm told him about that adventurer, the one who gave her flowers, just never came back with an awful look in her eyes and in the end just takes a light satchel with a few necessities.
He had written several long letters, weeks before now and he leaves his keys with a note on the kitchen table, steps out of his house and sets out onto that road before the sun even rises in the sky.
It brings him here, to the entrance of the cave. He has heard enough stories to be sure it's this one, with its rune carvings and ice clinging to its ceiling even with the fall sun shining on it. He thinks briefly about turning back, returning to the life he knows, when suddenly he hears a voice.
He doesn't even take the time to think about the tales that told of a voice as warm and loving as a lover's embrace and how the demon had used it time and time again. Because surely, surely something with a voice like this was a sight worth dying for.
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He wakes up to the sound of crashing. He breathes in the air around him and wonders how long he slept. Time has no meaning for him anymore, at least not in the traditional sense. He's been in this damnable ice for so long he tends to just sleep as long as nobody is there to entertain him. The first hundred years he'd be raging against those priests, trying to free himself, to break the ice.
But it was useless. That stupid ice wouldn't budge and so he was stuck just waiting around until the next stupid human would be drawn to him.
I didn't sleep too long I don't think, judging by the decay of the bodies littering the bottom of the cave and the smell in the air it was fall now. The last time he remembers being awake it had been in spring.
Well, here goes nothing, He can hear the slight shuffling at the entrance to his prison cell, the tentative footsteps. He is awake now and he wont let that fool turn back and ruin his fun now.
“Who goes there?” he asks, with his voice modulated to carry, to sound like a song, like your mother and your father and your lover at the same time. He had hated his voice, once upon a time, always too soft, too high for the demon he wanted to be seen as. It had been Santana, who had scoffed and told him to stop moping and use the beautiful voice he had been giving to do his dirty work for him.
And he did, seducing, manipulating, getting people to listen and walk off a cliff if he needed them to.
“Um, “ Aha, his prey walking into view, “Hi?” The stranger stares at him with a dumb look of awe on his face. Great he got one of the slow ones.
“Um, wow.” the stranger lets that out on a breath of air and if he hadn't forgotten how to, he'd be blushing at the blatant appreciation in that sound, that face. He has the irrational urge to turn his head away, so he stares at the stranger straight on, out of spite. Also, there is just so far he can move his head to the side, completely encased in ice as he is.
The stranger is a bit on the short side, at least judging by the humans that normally come to his cave. But maybe this is average height, because he also knows that nobody ever came to his cave with those types of clothes. Normally they come with swords and armor or clothing stained by long travel. Not that armor or weapons ever helped them.
“Hum,” looks like he got his bearing, “Hello, my name is Blaine. How about you.” he says with a huge, blinding grin on his admittedly very attractive face.
“What?” he asks with a flat voice because this boy, this Blaine could not be serious. There was slow and then there was suicidally oblivious.
“Your name? I mean-” Blaine bites his lip and it may have been hundreds of years, but he is still not as desperate as to notice the looks of a human and his body better listen to him “do you have names? I don't want to be insensitive.”
And he looks at him with such an entreating, open face that clearly says that he didn't mean to cause offense and he's oh so sorry if he did. And that is just so beyond anything he had expected that he finds himself answering.
“Of course we have names, don't be stupid.” he scoffs and then is appalled at himself, because what is he doing, responding to this clearly unhinged human.
Blaine looks as if he gave him a gift, grinning even wider. “So then, if I may ask, what is it? I don't want to keep calling you “demon” in my head, that seems so disrespectful.”
This is just beyond ridiculous and he can still not stop himself from looking away first, “Those damnable priests called me Blood, so I suppose that is my name.”
“Huh,” and Blaine sounds disappointed, what the hell. “But don't you have a name that is more personal? What did your friends, your family call you? Before you were here, I mean.”
His...his friends. His family. Nobody, at least nobody human, had ever asked, they all assume that clearly the ice-cold demon doesn't have anything resembling a family. But he can still remember and it still hurts, time hadn't dulled the pain of memory at all, the throbbing empty place where he just missed them.
“Kurt” he hears himself say, looking at those wounds that never stopped bleeding, not really, just stayed ignored in the five hundred years he's been stuck here, not knowing if they were alright, if the priests had gotten to them after all, ever after he had given himself up, after they had promised. But it wasn't like you could ever trust humans to keep their words. “They called me Kurt.”
“Kurt?” and the sound of his name in a different voice than his own throws him out of the past into the present. In any voice since he had stopped thinking of it as his name, because there was nobody here to call him that, nobody he would have cared to know it. And he curses himself, what is he thinking just giving out his name to a human. Names are power to demons, you can do so much with a demon's real name and he just gave it away.
“That's a beautiful name.” he looks up, into that sun kissed face, that man who doesn't belong here with his soft clothes and warm voice that reminds him of the sky outside, of before. “It suits you.”
Maybe he'd hold off on killing this one after all, if only to investigate the apparent and inexplicably reemergence of the blush that he'd thought banished a thousand years ago.
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This was an excellent idea. Blaine looks around and then stops because those bones are clearly human bones and he'd just rather not think about that too much. Instead he looks again at the demon, at Kurt. Because those stories were really underselling him. Though to be fair, anyone would be hard pressed to put the sheer radiance and beauty into words if they tried.
Kurt just looks perfect, with a perfectly shaped face, long hair like spun gold and those eyes. They seem to shift in color, depending on his moods. Blaine doesn't understand how anyone could have seen them and want to describe them as cold, because to him they sparkled, like water, like life.
He finally looks around, trying to find a place to sit. He finally settles for a ledge a bit higher up, slightly under where Kurt is stuck to the wall. Everything aside from his face, upper body and one arm is fully embedded in the ice that looks more like a tree than anything else. Only the chill it gives off betrays its true nature. Even from 10 feet away he can feel the cold it radiates. He gets the blanket he brought with him and settles in.
“You have got to be kidding me.” Kurt says. “Are you settling in?!”
“Well, I came all the way here, clearly I'm not going to just leave.” he replies. It's pretty obvious to him. “You can't tell me you mind the company, I mean if nothing else you must be bored here.”
“I can't believe this,” Kurt mutters, “Do I really need to explain this to you?”
“Explain what?” If his life taught him anything it was that often enough playing dumb was the easier choice.
“I'm a demon, you are a human. I kill your kind.” Kurt looks as if he'd like to rub his forehead in consternation, if he only had a free hand to do so. “You should be running away ,afraid I'm going to eat you, not getting comfortable.”
“Are you going to eat me?” It's mostly curiosity that makes him ask, he doesn't really care after all.
Something about that must have shown on his face, because Kurt looks disturbed for a second before his features smooth out again into unconcern.
“No,” he snorts delicately, “I don't actually eat people, I don't know who came up with that one. It would be so messy for one.” Kurt says that with such a look of utter distaste, Blaine can't help but laugh.
“See, everything's fine then.” he settles back on his hands.
“Everything is not fine.” Kurt hisses, “I can't believe you! What was your plan, come here, hope that on some off-chance I wont eat you and all for what? To ask my name?!”
“I also wanted to know a lot of other things, like what do you do when you get bored?” Blaine says mildly, “And if you ever get cold and how long you've been here. Those types of things.”
Kurt looks as if he wants dearly to strangle him and suddenly the long hair framing his face starts moving, shaping into hand shapes.
“Whoa!, “Blaine springs up, snatching one of the hair ropes out of the air before it can reach his neck- “Are you doing that? That is so cool!” Because seriously. The hair proceeded to curl cautiously around his hand and arm, while the second section hovers indecisively in the air next to his head.
“I - yes,” Kurt seems sort of dumbfounded, staring at him with his mouth open. He looks at Blaine as if he has never seen anything like him before. Which obviously couldn't be farther from the truth, because as humans went, Blaine is nothing special, probably so ordinary it was hard for Kurt to separate him from all the other humans he has seen in his life.
He inspects the hair winding around his forearm a bit closer and stops short. Because that shimmer. Surely it isn't what he thinks it is.
“Why are the ends red?” he asks with trepidation.
“It's blood” Well, there go his doubts, apparently. He tries to release the hair from his grasp, but the rope just coils tighter around him.
“Huh.” he strokes the strands, because they are so soft and by the hair clearly liked it, judging by their behaviour
“That's all the reaction you are going to have?” Kurt exclaims.
“What do you want me to say?” he answers raising his eyes back to Kurt's face.
“How about asking me why I killed those people with my hair, “ he sounds oddly distressed, “and then gibber away from me in terror.”
“Why should I? You forget that I expected you to kill me where I stand the moment I entered the cave so this is already going miles better than I anticipated.” he answers truthfully. For one he is still standing. Also hair as soft as silk is now seemingly petting him, so yes, clearly this is a win for him.
“You expected me to - “ Kurt's hair suddenly vanish from around his limbs, seemingly sinking into the ice around him. “Great. Another suicidal one. Sorry, but I'm not going to be the one to kill you. Find a cliff, if you are that eager to die. Now go aw-”
“I'm not suicidal” Blaine interrupts. It's very important to him to make that clear, because he really isn't. He just has a special relationship with his mortality.
“Right?” Kurt says in a skeptical tone, “And the fact that you went into a cave expecting a monster to murder you on the spot speaks of your clear mind and will to live. Spare me. I know your type,”weirdly he sounds almost disappointed,” they show up every decade or so, thinking a demon killing them will in some way be a better form of suicide than just running into a knife.”
“I don't want to die, believe me” Blaine says quietly.
“And why should I? Because if that's the case, why are you here?” he sounds so sad that Blaine can do nothing than respond with the truth. Maybe he owes him this.
“I don't want to die,” he repeats, “but it's not really my choice anymore.”
“What does that mean?” Kurt asks.
He swallows around the lump in his throat, summoning up a smile. “I'm sick. Really sick. There is something wrong with my heart. Nothing anyone can do anymore. I could die at any moment without warning.” he looks into Kurt's piercing, beautiful eyes “So I may not want to die, but I still will.”
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Kurt looks at the weird human who stumbled into his cave. He doesn't know what to say. Death isn't totally unknown to him, but it was always priests or an angry mob who overwhelmed one of them. To just have your body failing you that way - it's inconceivable.
“Please, I promise I wont be a bother, but please can I just stay here for a while?” Blaine asks, still with that quiet smile on his face
There should be desperation on that face or anger or at least relentless cheer. Not this blank accepting facade. He suddenly wants to do something. Reach out, shake him anything to just make feel Blaine better in some way, to get him out of this unnatural state of just not caring.
Which doesn't make sense at all. He hasn't cared about the feelings or conditions of a human for centuries. They are all the same to him: lying, untrustworthy creatures, nothing to do with him.
“If that's what you want.” he says absently. He can't do anything else. Blaine clearly doesn't expect sympathy, certainly not pity, judging by the bland way he had given the news.
In answer Blaine's face splits in a grin so wide and happy, Kurt finds himself unconsciously twitching his fingers in an aborted attempt to reach out, to brush against it and find out if it would feels as warm to the touch as it looks. It's such a difference to his blank face and it somehow seems right. As if this is the way Blaine should always, always look like.
“Thank you so much! You wont regret it, I promise, I'll be excellent company, you'll see.” Just as he's glaring his hair back, because they had in that brief moment of his madness tried to pull Blaine closer and had gotten as far as curling around his waist, Blaine lets out a jaw cracking yawn.
“Sorry,” he says a blush staining his cheeks, and it's really unfair how fetching that looks on him. “And just after I said I'd be good company. I guess the hike up here took more energy than I thought.”
“You can take a nap, if you want to.” Clearly his mouth is working absolutely independently of his brain today. He misses the use of his hands every moment he's awake but it has been a while since he wants to have them so he can bury his face. “It's not like I'm going anywhere.” he adds to save face.
“Well, if you're sure..?” Blaine asks again.
“I'm sure, but it's not going to be comfortable, you certain you wouldn't rather go back to your village?”
“No, here will be fine, I'm prepared“ Blaine says, ruffling through his bag, pulling out another blanket and taking both of them to a corner near him.
“Good night; Kurt.” And just like that he curls up and is asleep within minutes.
Fast asleep, in plain sight of him and in clear reach of his hair. Even after he knows what he is capable of, what he can expect from him.
“Now you've done it, Kurt.” he says to himself. Blaine doesn't seem to notice.
Here he is with a human in his cave, and he doesn't have even one clue what to do about him. To make matters worse, every time he tries to think of a solution, of something to make him leave he and he happens to look at Blaine - the way his lashes are so long they cast shadows on his face or his lips that are ever so slightly parted, glistening with a slightly wet sheen -
Kurt shakes his head. This is getting ridiculous.
He's a mature demon and it had been a thousand years since he'd last let himself get distracted like this by a pretty face. But even getting his mind away from Blaine's attractiveness, he can't forget the way he had looked ever so slightly desperate under the blank facade, when he asked him to stay. As if Kurt was his last hope and if he made him leave he may just be driven to that cliff after all.
Which doesn't make any sense either. Blaine is clearly a likeable, good looking young man. And even if he is … sick - and Kurt doesn't even want to think about that.
Still, why Blaine wouldn't choose to spend his last days with his friends, his family, why he would instead choose to come here. There must be a reason.
And I'll find it out. Because surely this is nothing but curiosity on his end, nothing but a slightly interesting development in the endless monotony that his life has become. After he solves the mystery, he'll be fine scaring Blaine away from him and he can go back to waiting for the one, who will finally finally, provide him with the opportunity to escape this prison.
Until then, Kurt supposes, this is as good a way as any to pass the time. And if he can ignore the quite frankly adorable sounds Blaine makes in his sleep, he could even convince himself of that.
Blaine wakes up to the sounds of singing. He is normally a fast riser, but something about the voice, makes him want to stay asleep a little while longer. It's clear and gentle and it makes Blaine want to smile and burrow deeper into his bed.
Which is now that he thinks about it a whole lot harder than he's used to. With a start Blaine remembers where he is, that he has made the trek to the mountain cave and who must be the one singing. He carefully cracks one eye open, so he doesn't disturb Kurt and make him stop singing. He has his head turned slightly away from Blaine and his eyes seem to peer far away, beyond the walls of the cave. His hair moving slightly to the melody and the ice shining with a light that comes from within, because the sun doesn't reach here and - Blaine realizes - because it's already night.
He can't make out the words, as it's in a language he has never heard, but the melody is haunting and wistful. It makes Blaine's throat tighten, makes him want to move, to run, just to make sure he can, that he's still here. But even though his eyes tear up, it's beautiful. Kurt is beautiful. Even if he has to die here, even if Kurt decides he is a bother and kills him after all, it will have been worth it, just for this moment alone. For the opportunity to meet such an exceptional creature like Kurt, to hear his voice and have him look at him.
The only thing he'd regret, would be to never see him smile, but maybe he can accomplish that before the end comes. Right now he'll just enjoy the music sounding all around him, so pure it seems to actually reach inside him and warm him from there.
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part 2