Armistice, Part 2
PART ONE
Blaine has known Kurt for a year. In that year, he's gone from having a mild mannered crush on this brave, beautiful, amazing boy, to simply cutting himself off from all other opportunities for romance. Single, but my heart is taken, he sees it as, although he doesn't really have any other options waiting for him. He doesn't even know how Kurt feels about him. It doesn't really matter. Kurt swings by every few weeks and they stay in contact over the phone otherwise. Kurt is Blaine's best friend, one of his few actually - his school has a zero tolerance policy, but that doesn't mean it’s impossible to be bullied there. Kids are more than happy to lay on the silent treatment, and Blaine, he just doesn't fit in.
He always feels like he fits in when he's with Kurt, though. It's a sweet feeling, warm and enjoyable.
He welcomes Kurt up to his room one Sunday afternoon, and they lay out on Blaine's bed, not even talking or looking at one another. Kurt falls asleep nestled into the pillows on the left side of the bed, the sun through the window bathing him in warm yellow light. Blaine lies on the other side of the bed and watches him.
Kurt's wearing a plain t-shirt, without a label, just soft, deep grey cotton. It's rare. It suits him, in an odd way. Blaine wonders if the plain clothes equates to Kurt letting his guard down around him, but then washes away the idea because it sounds stupid and egotistical.
Kurt has beautiful lines to his body; long legs, stretched out in black jeans and ending in pale, bare feet. His socks and shoes, along with his jacket and bag, are dumped by Blaine's door. Blaine admires the fine definition of Kurt's arms, draped across his chest in his sleep.
There's a hum and Kurt stirs awake, so Blaine rolls away quickly and stares at the ceiling instead. "Hey," Kurt says, voice sleep-thick.
Blaine turns his head, trying to stay casual but he breaks out in a smile. Kurt's hair is all messed up; it looks adorable. His smile drops when he observes the reddish bruise beneath his eye, and unthinkingly reaches out but halts when Kurt tenses up. "I - Can I?" he asks quietly, terrified of being told no.
Kurt nods his head hesitantly after a moment and leans his head forward towards the touch. Blaine presses the bruise gingerly, feeling it with his thumb. He's sure it must hurt a lot, but Kurt doesn't so much as blink in reaction.
Kurt has all this courage, all this stuff to deal with in his life: a mother who passed away, a father who drags him up and down the country, fights and battles and injuries to deal with. But he takes it all like it's nothing.
He admires it. He loves it. God, Blaine loves Kurt. "I really could kiss you right now," Blaine whispers without thinking, and Kurt reacts then, eyes flickering in surprise and lifting to meet Blaine's.
He shifts closer, and says, "Not if I kiss you first" and presses their lips together.
~***~
"The last time we spoke to Kurt, he said he was close to being finished here," Quinn explains as the three of them exit the motel room. Blaine nods, the papers all tucked up under his arm. "He implied there was nothing more he could do here. He didn't say where he was heading but for now, you might want to find demonic omens and follow them, and see if there have been any more groups of stabbings."
Blaine pulls out Kurt's keys and opens the Impala, placing the papers on the passenger seat. He questions Quinn, "If this wasn't the Xibalba demons, what was it? It broke the salt lines. What's powerful enough to do that?"
"Next to nothing," Quinn responds. "Unless the demon that came for him had Hellhounds."
Blaine pales. He’s never had the misfortune of meeting Hellhounds, but Kurt had worked a case a year ago with a man who’d made a deal with a devil - he had sold his soul in exchange for his brother to be cured of terminal cancer.
See, when a demon comes for your soul, they literally come for your soul, with huge, demonic black dogs straight from the pit, that only the unfortunate victim - and demons - can see.
"Right." He frowns and pats the roof of the car as he moves to his own and begins to transfer his belongings over. He can feel Quinn and Castiel watching him, and though they don't ask, he explains quietly, "Kurt is going to want his car. When I get him back. And when I get him back, I'm not leaving him again. So I don't care what happens to mine."
The angels glance at each other but stay silent.
"Do you think he's alive?" Blaine finally asks, once he's loaded all his things over to Kurt's car. He has an arsenal of weaponry and supplies now; the Impala is fully stocked, missing nothing. He glances up.
Quinn looks apprehensive. Castiel's expression is unreadable.
Blaine swallows thickly and says quietly, locking his car and getting into the Impala, "Fuck you guys. I'm going to find him alive and bring him home."
"He doesn't have a home," Castiel says, a slight frown creasing his brow. Quinn sighs audibly.
Without looking up, Blaine retorts, "I'm his home." He goes to shut the door but Castiel approaches and stops him. Blaine glares up at him.
"What kind of protection do you have from demons?" Castiel questions.
Blaine shrugs. "Salt. Paint for Devil's Traps. Holy water. The exorcism ritual..."
Castiel grumbles low in his throat and says, "Not enough" and without warning, shoves a hand against Blaine's chest, over his heart. Searing pain rips through him and he howls, grabbing at Cas's arm and trying to pull him off, screaming and swearing.
As suddenly as it started, it's gone, and Blaine collapses against the wheel, eyes weeping from the pain. He forces himself to look at Castiel, whose expression is entirely devoid of sympathy, and hisses, clutching his chest, "You son of a - what the hell?"
Castiel blinks and explains, "Warding symbols. To protect you from demonic possession. I put them on your heart."
Blaine stares up at him. Damned if he's ever going to understand these creatures. "Would it kill you to ask first? To give a little warning?"
Castiel tips his head to the side. "Would you have let me do that if you knew it was going to hurt that much?"
"I -” Blaine frowns and rubs his chest and admits, "No." He sighs and finally says, "I'm going to find a different motel and track omens and...things. I don't want to risk whatever came for Kurt coming back and finding me. What are you two going to do?"
"We're going to keep a weather eye on the horizon," Quinn quips, with something of a smile. Castiel frowns at her. Blaine does, too. Was that a pop culture reference from an angel? She shakes her head slightly and drops the expression. "Take care, Blaine."
He hesitates, then says, "You too."
"We'll be in touch," Castiel says, and with a stirring of wind, the angels vanish.
Blaine takes a second to collect himself, then shuts the car door, and pulls away from the motel. He lets himself drift away in music and radio whilst he drives, speeding along a little aimlessly; he's tired, and he knows he won't be able to do anything until he's rested, so for now, he's just...taking a moment. When he finds a new place to stay, all he's going to do is catch a few hours and then get back on Kurt's trail.
He finds another motel about an hour away; the woman behind the counter here is another blonde, but much younger, not far off Blaine's age. "Room for the night, please."
She blinks, smiling at him, and asks, "Just one of you?" with her ponytail bobbing behind her head enthusiastically.
Blaine stares and glances behind him, confused before he says, "I. Uh. Yeah?"
"Name?" She has such a big, innocent face that Blaine can't help but smile through all the fear, the pain, and confusion coursing through him.
"Everett Hummel. With two T's," he adds helpfully.
She snorts and says, "I know. I'm not stupid." She scribbles then looks at him, tongue peeking out of her mouth, "How many ‘m's’ are there in Hummel? Is it three, or - ?"
Blaine swallows and takes a moment before he politely spells out the last name. She beams and hands over a room key and says, "Room six." Blaine nods a thank you and heads out there, walking faster once he's sighted his room.
He lets himself in, and it's like the weight of how tired he is, of how much driving he's done the past few days, hits him in one. Blaine manages to stumble in a haze to the bed, and collapses face-down on the pillow.
He drifts away almost instantly, the exhausting load of everything sending him to sleep.
~***~
Three months after he turns twenty-one, Kurt’s got a bruise on the line of his jaw and a split lip, but it's the first night in a few months that they've not had a case, not had serious wounds to stitch up, not been aching from a previous hunt (aside from the wounds to Kurt’s face, their last meeting with the unnatural was relatively easy to deal with) - so they're in a bar. It's a tiny place, wood panels and dim lighting, but a good atmosphere. It's the sort of thing where the owner is the only person behind the counter at all times and the music is personal selection from their collection. A glass of wine for each, red for Kurt and white for Blaine, and they're just nestled comfortably against each other in a booth.
Kurt seems off, though. Weary in a way that is odd for him. Blaine wonders, as the songs shuffle continuously through tunes that he doesn't know, if it's because they haven't had fun in a long time now. Real fun, not a take-out and a hot night in a semi-decent motel.
The next song has a sweet beat to it, so Blaine slides out of the booth and says, "Come here." He holds his hand out to Kurt. His eyebrows go up. He knows that face, the are you fucking kidding me? face. He's seen it way too often as of late, actually. He ignores it and grabs Kurt's hand and pulls him out of the booth. Blaine grabs him close, hand on Kurt's lower back.
"Dance with me, okay?" Blaine insists, and he pulls Kurt around ridiculously, just twirling and spinning and shuffling his feet in time to the music because he can't actually dance, not really. They're the only people up, and Blaine's sure that if he cared to look, he'd find they're being stared at.
He's not sure the song is entirely positive, but it's enough to dance to, with a good beat, and he pulls Kurt in close at the last minute to sing along (badly, a second out of time because he's never heard this song before), "Me, I'm gonna live forever - "
"Idiot," Kurt murmurs, but he clasps Blaine's hand that little bit tighter, holds their bodies a little bit closer, and Blaine kisses Kurt firmly on the cheek.
"And for the first time," he sings down Kurt's ear, "in a long time, I feel alive - I feel alive."
Kurt smiles, laughs and buries his head in Blaine's neck.
~***~
Blaine takes his time when he wakes up, moving with a quiet reluctance through the morning routine. The faster he showers, he shaves, the faster he brushes his teeth and changes into clean clothes, the faster he has to get back to reality, to this search for Kurt.
He wants to find Kurt. He wouldn't have set out on this if he didn't. He has every intention of finding Kurt no matter what it takes, but it's just...so much, and it scares him to death. He's barely scraped the surface of this hunt and he feels in deep.
Still, when he's clean and fresh and considerably more awake, he gets right down to business, setting up his laptop. It takes ten minutes for him to find a place in his motel room that actually has a good reception for the motel's shitty Wi-Fi, but eventually Blaine pulls it off and starts Google-ing for stabbings first.
It takes an hour - and a lot of narrowing down and various, odd Google searches - before he finds the first cluster of stabbings outside of Salem. There were two deaths, same MO, in Carson City, Nevada. The first was ten days ago, the second was only two days ago.
A fresh trail, Blaine considers, and licks then bites his lip as he makes a note of it. He begins to search for demonic omens next: cattle mutilations, clusters of lightning storms, extreme temperature fluctuations -
Blaine nearly hits something when he finds groupings of those omens.
Cheyenne, Wyoming. In a completely different direction to the deaths. Blaine's not sure why it shocks him so much; the Angels did say that the things doing the stabbings were not what took Kurt. Still, it hits him like a punch in the stomach, and he slams the laptop lid shut and has to stop and just, just breathe.
Blaine braces his arms and elbows on the table and the emotions just crash over him, and he breaks, sobbing heavily and slumping, crying into the crook of his elbow, hunched over the table. He tries to steady his breathing, sucking in sharp, shallow breaths between blubbering cries, but soon gives in and presses harder into his arm.
When he can lift his head, he's still crying, eyes red and his forehead pounding, and he chokes when the thought he's been trying to avoid all along runs through his mind: I never should have left you.
"I'm so sorry, Kurt," Blaine whispers, and he presses the heels of his palms against his eyes and screams from the frustration.
When his own yell stops ringing in his ears, Blaine breathes in and out to the count of four, slowly, calmly, until he can take his hands from his eyes and think clearly again.
So now he has a choice: Cheyenne or Carson City. The demon that could have taken Kurt, or the demons that Kurt was hunting. Kurt could be in either place. It's a risk and a chance Blaine has to take - he hasn't got anyone else who can help him. Kurt was the one with all the hunting connections. Blaine was just along for the ride because he loved Kurt.
Blaine closes his eyes, slumps back in the seat and, eventually, he makes his choice: Wyoming. If Kurt was taken, reason says he should follow the demonic omens and hope that demon is the one who took him.
Blaine packs his things and is out of the motel in record time; he stops for breakfast at a cafe but then he's on his way, driving north towards Portland, then east to head out of the state.
He doesn't slow down until he reaches the Idaho border - where he then pulls over to stop entirely just as he's crossed it, just as he's realised where he is.
It was here, in Idaho, that everything changed for them, that everything fell into place. Blaine breathes to try and get by with the funny feeling in his stomach, and pulls back onto the road. He drives the roads he's gone before in this same car, turns on the radio and tunes it to the station that he and Kurt always used to listen to. He drives towards Lake Lowell.
~***~
They've been on the road together almost a year. Not quite, but almost. They're bruise-free, for once. They're still aching because they always do ache. Kurt sits on the bank of the lake, rolling up the legs of his favourite Armani jeans, his shoes off and socks tucked neatly inside them. He’s sitting on Blaine's old hoodie, something Kurt's had forever at this point, that's stained with so much blood and dirt and grime that Kurt doesn't care to keep it clean anymore but he still wears it at night, still keeps it close.
Blaine watches from a few feet behind with a smile and his hands in his pockets. "Are you coming into the water with me?" Kurt asks, and he looks back over his shoulder. A blast of wind messes up his hair, and Kurt frowns and runs his fingers through it, pushing it back.
"Do I have to?" Blaine asks, and he eyes the water warily. Truth is, this is one of the maddest things he thinks Kurt has ever done. It's freezing. Kurt is going to get so cold in that water and Blaine doesn't really want to listen to him bitch, and he lets Kurt know this.
Kurt snorts. "I'm not going to bitch, Blaine. We take beatings daily without so much as a complaint. And yes, you have to. I want you to." He stands up, picking up Blaine's hoodie as he goes, shaking it out and folding it before placing it back down on top of his shoes.
Blaine observes as Kurt walks his way down the bank and toes into the water. He laughs roughly, covering his mouth as Kurt's shoulders stiffen in reaction. He looks over his shoulder and glares at Blaine, who holds his hands up and does his best to hold in the laughter.
Kurt strides in until it's just below his knees, not touching his jeans, and turns and faces Blaine and says, "Come on then. What are you waiting for? Are you afraid of a bit of cold water?" Blaine raises an eyebrow. Kurt's teeth are chattering already; he has no room to say anything.
He's coming up with a wonderfully witty and cocky response when a particularly hard lap of water combined with a gust of wind hits the back of Kurt's knees. Not expecting it, the young man yelps and topples over backwards into the water.
Blaine doesn't think twice. He runs for the water and dives in fully clothed, shoes and all, and grabs at Kurt and pulls him sat upright, holding him. "Jesus! Are you okay?"
Kurt's drenched and spluttering and shivering, but he just slaps Blaine lightly across the face and says, "It's knee-depth water, I wasn't going to drown! The shit we survive every day and you try and save me from this? Get off me!"
Blaine starts laughing despite himself, but he refuses to let Kurt go no matter how hard he squirms. He splashes Kurt and pushes him down on the silt of slightly shallower water and kisses him hard, tangling his fingers in Kurt's hair.
"Jesus, I love you," he whispers, and it's the first time he's said it aloud. A tiny fear sparks through him that this is going to go terribly wrong, but Kurt doesn't even skip a beat when he responds.
"Now you know I don't believe in Jesus," he says, looking faux offended, but then he smiles. "I love you too, Blaine." He rolls them over, straddling Blaine's hips. Blaine stares up at him, the silt and water dripping off him, his shirt clinging to his chest. Kurt bends and kisses Blaine possessively, needy, grabbing at his neck and shoulders and arms and anything in reach, curling his fingertips so his nails leave crescent-shaped indents.
"I don't know where I'd be without you," Kurt admits.
Blaine doesn't know how to respond to that. He covers Kurt's hand with his own, and says, "Let's go back to the car. Yeah?" Kurt nods.
They clamber up, collecting Kurt's things from the bank, and they walk back to the car, fingers intertwined, unable to stop themselves from stealing kisses. They throw their things in the front seat and get a blanket from the trunk. They make love in the back seat of the car, hot and heavy and slow.
Kurt looks beautiful when they're doing this. His cheeks flushed, eyes fluctuating between squeezed shut and blown wide open. He digs his nails into Blaine's back and throws his head back, neck exposed so Blaine kisses it.
They come together, and Blaine knows how it's every cliché in the book but he swears he sees stars when he calls out Kurt's name. When they've come down, they wrap themselves in the blanket and giggle at how dirty they are, covered in debris from the water and stinking from the sweat and mess between them, but neither of them care, and Blaine knows this is the most complete he's ever felt.
~***~
Blaine can't find the exact part of the shore that he and Kurt were on that day, but it doesn't matter. It's more the feel of it than anything, the emotion of being back here. He sits himself down on the banks and he looks out over the water. It's too dark to see anything except the reflections and the moon, hung up high and shining full in the deep sky.
If he closes his eyes, he can remember the feel of rolling around in the water with Kurt. If he squeezes them tighter he can see Kurt's smile, the silt and water clinging to his hair, the late afternoon sun glowing distantly behind them.
But it's not real; just a memory, a far too distant memory. Blaine hates it when memories are so far away like this, like an old photo fallen down the back of a cabinet. You remember the photo was great, but it's out of reach now. You can't get to it. The newer photos - fresher memories, they're still at the fore front. Touchable.
Blaine purses his lips and tucks his knees up to his chest. Touchable, but not changeable. He can taste the blood in his mouth and the bitter tears but he can't change them.
Blaine pulls his phone from his pocket and he calls Kurt. As he expects, it goes to voicemail. He talks away. He has to talk.
"Hey. I'm in Idaho right now. I'm looking for you, I promise, but I just stopped here for a little bit. I'm at Lake Lowell. I remember how everything was so perfect and then the next day you were pissed because your jeans were ruined, and we argued a little bit, and then ignored each other for an hour whilst driving, but then you pulled over and you said sorry for getting so bitchy, that it didn't matter because we'd had such a nice day. And you were sorry for tainting that when they were so few and far between.
"You never tainted that day for me. We made plenty of tainted memories later on, real ones that still really hurt, honestly, and - I never apologised for the things I said. We sort of made up, made that pact about phoning, but we never said sorry. I'm so, so sorry, Kurt. I messed everything up. But when I find you, I want to fix it. If you'd like to."
He hesitates and then swallows firmly and says, "I love you." The phone blips warning him he's running out of time on the voicemail and Blaine adds, "I've got to wrap this up. I'll see you soon, Kurt, as soon as I can."
Blaine hangs up and puts his phone away again, resting his arms on his knees and gazing out over the water a while longer. He has to sleep soon. It's dark and he's been driving all day.
When he can feel his eyelids slipping, Blaine pushes himself up and wanders back to the car. He pulls out the blanket from the trunk of the car and curls up on the back seat. It's not the same without Kurt wrapped around him.
Blaine says his goodbyes to Lake Lowell at six-thirty the next morning. He tells the waters, I'm gonna come back here with him, you know. He hopes he will, anyway. Blaine wants to believe he's going to find Kurt, he does, but there's that doubt, always. That fear.
He slides behind the wheel of the car and drives five hours before he makes a pit stop; he visits the toilet, washes his face, and stocks up on food to have in the seat next to him (complete with energy drinks, although he starts off by having a hot coffee from a machine). Then it's onwards again, and he's getting sore from all the driving but what's he to do?
I can rest when Kurt is safe, he reminds himself. He probably shouldn't have driven out to Lake Lowell - it took time off driving. He could've kept driving if he'd just kept going, could've driven into the night then stopped and rested, but hindsight is twenty-twenty for a reason, he supposes. Besides, he doesn't think he could have really resisted the pull of a place that had once been the source of so much happiness.
The next four hours are easy enough. The final two hours of the drive to Cheyenne are a push; Blaine drifts off at the wheel and has to jerk himself awake a couple of times, pulling over once to re-orientate himself so that he doesn't veer off the road and crash.
He doesn't even get a motel once he hits the city limits. He finds the first available car park and just curls up on the front seat and drifts away.
Blaine doesn't sleep easy. He's slept in hundreds of dodgy places easier than this. Nightmares come to him for the first time in a long time, possibly ever; he might have had nightmares when he was a small child, but if he did, he doesn't really remember.
They plague him now, though. At first they start out nicely. They start out with Blaine finding Kurt. That's when the visions turn - to Kurt's eyes twisting, flooding black, to him surging on Blaine, attacking until Blaine has to fight back and kill him.
Blaine startles awake after that one, and breathes deeply before he lies back again. Kurt finds him in the next nightmare. The nightmare after that, Kurt's dead before Blaine can reach him.
Blaine's exhausted when he wakes for good. Exhausted and terrified. His dreams have taken him through a thousand ways this whole journey could end - none of them good. He decides to take the morning to orientate himself in the city; he drives a little further in and stops off at a cafe.
It's a small, well lit sort of place by the name of Harlington's. The smell of bacon hits his nose as soon as he walks in. It brings a much-needed smile to his face, and when a curvy, dark-skinned young woman (with a smile that could lower the defences of anyone, Blaine's sure) tells him that the full, all-day breakfast is on special offer today, he can't resist ordering exactly what she suggests.
Her nametag says Mercedes, and when she tells him to go take a seat and that she'll bring his breakfast and coffee over to him, Blaine makes sure to thank her by name. He takes the seat by
the window and gazes out through the blinds, squinting in the face of the afternoon light but finding himself unable to do anything else.
The day feels like it's looking up already, although this day is slipping away already. He feels a little guilty that since the drive from Salem he's lost so much time, but equally he knows he can't entirely run himself into the ground. That would be counter productiveness at its finest.
Mercedes brings the coffee within five minutes; she tucks a newspaper onto the table next to him and tells him, "Your food is gonna be a good twenty minutes, and I don't think anybody can just stare out of the window for quite that long." From most people it would be a backwards comment that could be a little irritating - from this girl, with her pearly white smile and beautiful nature, it's Blaine's favourite thing he's seen in oh, twenty-one days, since Kurt's name last flashed up on his cell.
He settles back and opens the paper before he sips his coffee; it's sharp and strong and bitter, and he has the option to put milk and sweetener in it, but somehow he can't be bothered to. He doesn't really pay attention when the bell on the door rings and he hears it open and shut - it's a public cafe after all, and in the later hours of the day there are plenty of patrons flitting in and out.
He does, however, pay attention when he hears a quiet clatter followed by a string of curses. Blaine flickers his glance in the direction of the noise. A dark haired, slightly heavy-set man is standing with a lean, bleach-blond companion, and the dark haired man looks bothered as all hell and is wiping something off the side whilst the man beside him glowers.
"Don't fucking spill salt near me," the blond spits, and that catches Blaine's attention.
Who gets angry about a bit of salt?
"You're a useless dick, Karofsky."
The man - Karofsky - bristles and points a finger sharply at the blond. "Don't fucking embarrass me in public, Sam. It's just a bit of salt. Something far worse could've happened." None the less, Blaine observes as Karofsky uprights a salt cellar he'd knocked over, sweeping aside the offending spilt material.
They're talking in relatively hushed voices, for all the anger and venom between them, so Blaine feels a little bad for listening in, but...his gut is telling him something is weird.
Sam snorts, huffing out and smoothing his hair down before just smacking Karofsky's arm and saying, "Order something."
"Don't touch me out here," Karofsky mutters back, and he hails Mercedes over, who serves the snappy men with a little less of a smile than she offered Blaine.
He can't keep his eyes off Sam. Really, who does get that angry over some salt? It's just salt, after all. But if you were a demon, salt would be a problem indeed. He keeps watching, and as the two men settle onto stools at the counter, Sam's shirt sleeve rides up a little and Blaine sees it: a symbol of some sort, simple enough, a circle with a line through it. It looks like it's been scarred into his flesh.
It looks familiar for a reason he can't place. Blaine frowns. He commits it to memory, though, and as his breakfast arrives, he makes a mental note to call the Angels and ask.
PART THREE
Blaine has known Kurt for a year. In that year, he's gone from having a mild mannered crush on this brave, beautiful, amazing boy, to simply cutting himself off from all other opportunities for romance. Single, but my heart is taken, he sees it as, although he doesn't really have any other options waiting for him. He doesn't even know how Kurt feels about him. It doesn't really matter. Kurt swings by every few weeks and they stay in contact over the phone otherwise. Kurt is Blaine's best friend, one of his few actually - his school has a zero tolerance policy, but that doesn't mean it’s impossible to be bullied there. Kids are more than happy to lay on the silent treatment, and Blaine, he just doesn't fit in.
He always feels like he fits in when he's with Kurt, though. It's a sweet feeling, warm and enjoyable.
He welcomes Kurt up to his room one Sunday afternoon, and they lay out on Blaine's bed, not even talking or looking at one another. Kurt falls asleep nestled into the pillows on the left side of the bed, the sun through the window bathing him in warm yellow light. Blaine lies on the other side of the bed and watches him.
Kurt's wearing a plain t-shirt, without a label, just soft, deep grey cotton. It's rare. It suits him, in an odd way. Blaine wonders if the plain clothes equates to Kurt letting his guard down around him, but then washes away the idea because it sounds stupid and egotistical.
Kurt has beautiful lines to his body; long legs, stretched out in black jeans and ending in pale, bare feet. His socks and shoes, along with his jacket and bag, are dumped by Blaine's door. Blaine admires the fine definition of Kurt's arms, draped across his chest in his sleep.
There's a hum and Kurt stirs awake, so Blaine rolls away quickly and stares at the ceiling instead. "Hey," Kurt says, voice sleep-thick.
Blaine turns his head, trying to stay casual but he breaks out in a smile. Kurt's hair is all messed up; it looks adorable. His smile drops when he observes the reddish bruise beneath his eye, and unthinkingly reaches out but halts when Kurt tenses up. "I - Can I?" he asks quietly, terrified of being told no.
Kurt nods his head hesitantly after a moment and leans his head forward towards the touch. Blaine presses the bruise gingerly, feeling it with his thumb. He's sure it must hurt a lot, but Kurt doesn't so much as blink in reaction.
Kurt has all this courage, all this stuff to deal with in his life: a mother who passed away, a father who drags him up and down the country, fights and battles and injuries to deal with. But he takes it all like it's nothing.
He admires it. He loves it. God, Blaine loves Kurt. "I really could kiss you right now," Blaine whispers without thinking, and Kurt reacts then, eyes flickering in surprise and lifting to meet Blaine's.
He shifts closer, and says, "Not if I kiss you first" and presses their lips together.
~***~
"The last time we spoke to Kurt, he said he was close to being finished here," Quinn explains as the three of them exit the motel room. Blaine nods, the papers all tucked up under his arm. "He implied there was nothing more he could do here. He didn't say where he was heading but for now, you might want to find demonic omens and follow them, and see if there have been any more groups of stabbings."
Blaine pulls out Kurt's keys and opens the Impala, placing the papers on the passenger seat. He questions Quinn, "If this wasn't the Xibalba demons, what was it? It broke the salt lines. What's powerful enough to do that?"
"Next to nothing," Quinn responds. "Unless the demon that came for him had Hellhounds."
Blaine pales. He’s never had the misfortune of meeting Hellhounds, but Kurt had worked a case a year ago with a man who’d made a deal with a devil - he had sold his soul in exchange for his brother to be cured of terminal cancer.
See, when a demon comes for your soul, they literally come for your soul, with huge, demonic black dogs straight from the pit, that only the unfortunate victim - and demons - can see.
"Right." He frowns and pats the roof of the car as he moves to his own and begins to transfer his belongings over. He can feel Quinn and Castiel watching him, and though they don't ask, he explains quietly, "Kurt is going to want his car. When I get him back. And when I get him back, I'm not leaving him again. So I don't care what happens to mine."
The angels glance at each other but stay silent.
"Do you think he's alive?" Blaine finally asks, once he's loaded all his things over to Kurt's car. He has an arsenal of weaponry and supplies now; the Impala is fully stocked, missing nothing. He glances up.
Quinn looks apprehensive. Castiel's expression is unreadable.
Blaine swallows thickly and says quietly, locking his car and getting into the Impala, "Fuck you guys. I'm going to find him alive and bring him home."
"He doesn't have a home," Castiel says, a slight frown creasing his brow. Quinn sighs audibly.
Without looking up, Blaine retorts, "I'm his home." He goes to shut the door but Castiel approaches and stops him. Blaine glares up at him.
"What kind of protection do you have from demons?" Castiel questions.
Blaine shrugs. "Salt. Paint for Devil's Traps. Holy water. The exorcism ritual..."
Castiel grumbles low in his throat and says, "Not enough" and without warning, shoves a hand against Blaine's chest, over his heart. Searing pain rips through him and he howls, grabbing at Cas's arm and trying to pull him off, screaming and swearing.
As suddenly as it started, it's gone, and Blaine collapses against the wheel, eyes weeping from the pain. He forces himself to look at Castiel, whose expression is entirely devoid of sympathy, and hisses, clutching his chest, "You son of a - what the hell?"
Castiel blinks and explains, "Warding symbols. To protect you from demonic possession. I put them on your heart."
Blaine stares up at him. Damned if he's ever going to understand these creatures. "Would it kill you to ask first? To give a little warning?"
Castiel tips his head to the side. "Would you have let me do that if you knew it was going to hurt that much?"
"I -” Blaine frowns and rubs his chest and admits, "No." He sighs and finally says, "I'm going to find a different motel and track omens and...things. I don't want to risk whatever came for Kurt coming back and finding me. What are you two going to do?"
"We're going to keep a weather eye on the horizon," Quinn quips, with something of a smile. Castiel frowns at her. Blaine does, too. Was that a pop culture reference from an angel? She shakes her head slightly and drops the expression. "Take care, Blaine."
He hesitates, then says, "You too."
"We'll be in touch," Castiel says, and with a stirring of wind, the angels vanish.
Blaine takes a second to collect himself, then shuts the car door, and pulls away from the motel. He lets himself drift away in music and radio whilst he drives, speeding along a little aimlessly; he's tired, and he knows he won't be able to do anything until he's rested, so for now, he's just...taking a moment. When he finds a new place to stay, all he's going to do is catch a few hours and then get back on Kurt's trail.
He finds another motel about an hour away; the woman behind the counter here is another blonde, but much younger, not far off Blaine's age. "Room for the night, please."
She blinks, smiling at him, and asks, "Just one of you?" with her ponytail bobbing behind her head enthusiastically.
Blaine stares and glances behind him, confused before he says, "I. Uh. Yeah?"
"Name?" She has such a big, innocent face that Blaine can't help but smile through all the fear, the pain, and confusion coursing through him.
"Everett Hummel. With two T's," he adds helpfully.
She snorts and says, "I know. I'm not stupid." She scribbles then looks at him, tongue peeking out of her mouth, "How many ‘m's’ are there in Hummel? Is it three, or - ?"
Blaine swallows and takes a moment before he politely spells out the last name. She beams and hands over a room key and says, "Room six." Blaine nods a thank you and heads out there, walking faster once he's sighted his room.
He lets himself in, and it's like the weight of how tired he is, of how much driving he's done the past few days, hits him in one. Blaine manages to stumble in a haze to the bed, and collapses face-down on the pillow.
He drifts away almost instantly, the exhausting load of everything sending him to sleep.
~***~
Three months after he turns twenty-one, Kurt’s got a bruise on the line of his jaw and a split lip, but it's the first night in a few months that they've not had a case, not had serious wounds to stitch up, not been aching from a previous hunt (aside from the wounds to Kurt’s face, their last meeting with the unnatural was relatively easy to deal with) - so they're in a bar. It's a tiny place, wood panels and dim lighting, but a good atmosphere. It's the sort of thing where the owner is the only person behind the counter at all times and the music is personal selection from their collection. A glass of wine for each, red for Kurt and white for Blaine, and they're just nestled comfortably against each other in a booth.
Kurt seems off, though. Weary in a way that is odd for him. Blaine wonders, as the songs shuffle continuously through tunes that he doesn't know, if it's because they haven't had fun in a long time now. Real fun, not a take-out and a hot night in a semi-decent motel.
The next song has a sweet beat to it, so Blaine slides out of the booth and says, "Come here." He holds his hand out to Kurt. His eyebrows go up. He knows that face, the are you fucking kidding me? face. He's seen it way too often as of late, actually. He ignores it and grabs Kurt's hand and pulls him out of the booth. Blaine grabs him close, hand on Kurt's lower back.
"Dance with me, okay?" Blaine insists, and he pulls Kurt around ridiculously, just twirling and spinning and shuffling his feet in time to the music because he can't actually dance, not really. They're the only people up, and Blaine's sure that if he cared to look, he'd find they're being stared at.
He's not sure the song is entirely positive, but it's enough to dance to, with a good beat, and he pulls Kurt in close at the last minute to sing along (badly, a second out of time because he's never heard this song before), "Me, I'm gonna live forever - "
"Idiot," Kurt murmurs, but he clasps Blaine's hand that little bit tighter, holds their bodies a little bit closer, and Blaine kisses Kurt firmly on the cheek.
"And for the first time," he sings down Kurt's ear, "in a long time, I feel alive - I feel alive."
Kurt smiles, laughs and buries his head in Blaine's neck.
~***~
Blaine takes his time when he wakes up, moving with a quiet reluctance through the morning routine. The faster he showers, he shaves, the faster he brushes his teeth and changes into clean clothes, the faster he has to get back to reality, to this search for Kurt.
He wants to find Kurt. He wouldn't have set out on this if he didn't. He has every intention of finding Kurt no matter what it takes, but it's just...so much, and it scares him to death. He's barely scraped the surface of this hunt and he feels in deep.
Still, when he's clean and fresh and considerably more awake, he gets right down to business, setting up his laptop. It takes ten minutes for him to find a place in his motel room that actually has a good reception for the motel's shitty Wi-Fi, but eventually Blaine pulls it off and starts Google-ing for stabbings first.
It takes an hour - and a lot of narrowing down and various, odd Google searches - before he finds the first cluster of stabbings outside of Salem. There were two deaths, same MO, in Carson City, Nevada. The first was ten days ago, the second was only two days ago.
A fresh trail, Blaine considers, and licks then bites his lip as he makes a note of it. He begins to search for demonic omens next: cattle mutilations, clusters of lightning storms, extreme temperature fluctuations -
Blaine nearly hits something when he finds groupings of those omens.
Cheyenne, Wyoming. In a completely different direction to the deaths. Blaine's not sure why it shocks him so much; the Angels did say that the things doing the stabbings were not what took Kurt. Still, it hits him like a punch in the stomach, and he slams the laptop lid shut and has to stop and just, just breathe.
Blaine braces his arms and elbows on the table and the emotions just crash over him, and he breaks, sobbing heavily and slumping, crying into the crook of his elbow, hunched over the table. He tries to steady his breathing, sucking in sharp, shallow breaths between blubbering cries, but soon gives in and presses harder into his arm.
When he can lift his head, he's still crying, eyes red and his forehead pounding, and he chokes when the thought he's been trying to avoid all along runs through his mind: I never should have left you.
"I'm so sorry, Kurt," Blaine whispers, and he presses the heels of his palms against his eyes and screams from the frustration.
When his own yell stops ringing in his ears, Blaine breathes in and out to the count of four, slowly, calmly, until he can take his hands from his eyes and think clearly again.
So now he has a choice: Cheyenne or Carson City. The demon that could have taken Kurt, or the demons that Kurt was hunting. Kurt could be in either place. It's a risk and a chance Blaine has to take - he hasn't got anyone else who can help him. Kurt was the one with all the hunting connections. Blaine was just along for the ride because he loved Kurt.
Blaine closes his eyes, slumps back in the seat and, eventually, he makes his choice: Wyoming. If Kurt was taken, reason says he should follow the demonic omens and hope that demon is the one who took him.
Blaine packs his things and is out of the motel in record time; he stops for breakfast at a cafe but then he's on his way, driving north towards Portland, then east to head out of the state.
He doesn't slow down until he reaches the Idaho border - where he then pulls over to stop entirely just as he's crossed it, just as he's realised where he is.
It was here, in Idaho, that everything changed for them, that everything fell into place. Blaine breathes to try and get by with the funny feeling in his stomach, and pulls back onto the road. He drives the roads he's gone before in this same car, turns on the radio and tunes it to the station that he and Kurt always used to listen to. He drives towards Lake Lowell.
~***~
They've been on the road together almost a year. Not quite, but almost. They're bruise-free, for once. They're still aching because they always do ache. Kurt sits on the bank of the lake, rolling up the legs of his favourite Armani jeans, his shoes off and socks tucked neatly inside them. He’s sitting on Blaine's old hoodie, something Kurt's had forever at this point, that's stained with so much blood and dirt and grime that Kurt doesn't care to keep it clean anymore but he still wears it at night, still keeps it close.
Blaine watches from a few feet behind with a smile and his hands in his pockets. "Are you coming into the water with me?" Kurt asks, and he looks back over his shoulder. A blast of wind messes up his hair, and Kurt frowns and runs his fingers through it, pushing it back.
"Do I have to?" Blaine asks, and he eyes the water warily. Truth is, this is one of the maddest things he thinks Kurt has ever done. It's freezing. Kurt is going to get so cold in that water and Blaine doesn't really want to listen to him bitch, and he lets Kurt know this.
Kurt snorts. "I'm not going to bitch, Blaine. We take beatings daily without so much as a complaint. And yes, you have to. I want you to." He stands up, picking up Blaine's hoodie as he goes, shaking it out and folding it before placing it back down on top of his shoes.
Blaine observes as Kurt walks his way down the bank and toes into the water. He laughs roughly, covering his mouth as Kurt's shoulders stiffen in reaction. He looks over his shoulder and glares at Blaine, who holds his hands up and does his best to hold in the laughter.
Kurt strides in until it's just below his knees, not touching his jeans, and turns and faces Blaine and says, "Come on then. What are you waiting for? Are you afraid of a bit of cold water?" Blaine raises an eyebrow. Kurt's teeth are chattering already; he has no room to say anything.
He's coming up with a wonderfully witty and cocky response when a particularly hard lap of water combined with a gust of wind hits the back of Kurt's knees. Not expecting it, the young man yelps and topples over backwards into the water.
Blaine doesn't think twice. He runs for the water and dives in fully clothed, shoes and all, and grabs at Kurt and pulls him sat upright, holding him. "Jesus! Are you okay?"
Kurt's drenched and spluttering and shivering, but he just slaps Blaine lightly across the face and says, "It's knee-depth water, I wasn't going to drown! The shit we survive every day and you try and save me from this? Get off me!"
Blaine starts laughing despite himself, but he refuses to let Kurt go no matter how hard he squirms. He splashes Kurt and pushes him down on the silt of slightly shallower water and kisses him hard, tangling his fingers in Kurt's hair.
"Jesus, I love you," he whispers, and it's the first time he's said it aloud. A tiny fear sparks through him that this is going to go terribly wrong, but Kurt doesn't even skip a beat when he responds.
"Now you know I don't believe in Jesus," he says, looking faux offended, but then he smiles. "I love you too, Blaine." He rolls them over, straddling Blaine's hips. Blaine stares up at him, the silt and water dripping off him, his shirt clinging to his chest. Kurt bends and kisses Blaine possessively, needy, grabbing at his neck and shoulders and arms and anything in reach, curling his fingertips so his nails leave crescent-shaped indents.
"I don't know where I'd be without you," Kurt admits.
Blaine doesn't know how to respond to that. He covers Kurt's hand with his own, and says, "Let's go back to the car. Yeah?" Kurt nods.
They clamber up, collecting Kurt's things from the bank, and they walk back to the car, fingers intertwined, unable to stop themselves from stealing kisses. They throw their things in the front seat and get a blanket from the trunk. They make love in the back seat of the car, hot and heavy and slow.
Kurt looks beautiful when they're doing this. His cheeks flushed, eyes fluctuating between squeezed shut and blown wide open. He digs his nails into Blaine's back and throws his head back, neck exposed so Blaine kisses it.
They come together, and Blaine knows how it's every cliché in the book but he swears he sees stars when he calls out Kurt's name. When they've come down, they wrap themselves in the blanket and giggle at how dirty they are, covered in debris from the water and stinking from the sweat and mess between them, but neither of them care, and Blaine knows this is the most complete he's ever felt.
~***~
Blaine can't find the exact part of the shore that he and Kurt were on that day, but it doesn't matter. It's more the feel of it than anything, the emotion of being back here. He sits himself down on the banks and he looks out over the water. It's too dark to see anything except the reflections and the moon, hung up high and shining full in the deep sky.
If he closes his eyes, he can remember the feel of rolling around in the water with Kurt. If he squeezes them tighter he can see Kurt's smile, the silt and water clinging to his hair, the late afternoon sun glowing distantly behind them.
But it's not real; just a memory, a far too distant memory. Blaine hates it when memories are so far away like this, like an old photo fallen down the back of a cabinet. You remember the photo was great, but it's out of reach now. You can't get to it. The newer photos - fresher memories, they're still at the fore front. Touchable.
Blaine purses his lips and tucks his knees up to his chest. Touchable, but not changeable. He can taste the blood in his mouth and the bitter tears but he can't change them.
Blaine pulls his phone from his pocket and he calls Kurt. As he expects, it goes to voicemail. He talks away. He has to talk.
"Hey. I'm in Idaho right now. I'm looking for you, I promise, but I just stopped here for a little bit. I'm at Lake Lowell. I remember how everything was so perfect and then the next day you were pissed because your jeans were ruined, and we argued a little bit, and then ignored each other for an hour whilst driving, but then you pulled over and you said sorry for getting so bitchy, that it didn't matter because we'd had such a nice day. And you were sorry for tainting that when they were so few and far between.
"You never tainted that day for me. We made plenty of tainted memories later on, real ones that still really hurt, honestly, and - I never apologised for the things I said. We sort of made up, made that pact about phoning, but we never said sorry. I'm so, so sorry, Kurt. I messed everything up. But when I find you, I want to fix it. If you'd like to."
He hesitates and then swallows firmly and says, "I love you." The phone blips warning him he's running out of time on the voicemail and Blaine adds, "I've got to wrap this up. I'll see you soon, Kurt, as soon as I can."
Blaine hangs up and puts his phone away again, resting his arms on his knees and gazing out over the water a while longer. He has to sleep soon. It's dark and he's been driving all day.
When he can feel his eyelids slipping, Blaine pushes himself up and wanders back to the car. He pulls out the blanket from the trunk of the car and curls up on the back seat. It's not the same without Kurt wrapped around him.
Blaine says his goodbyes to Lake Lowell at six-thirty the next morning. He tells the waters, I'm gonna come back here with him, you know. He hopes he will, anyway. Blaine wants to believe he's going to find Kurt, he does, but there's that doubt, always. That fear.
He slides behind the wheel of the car and drives five hours before he makes a pit stop; he visits the toilet, washes his face, and stocks up on food to have in the seat next to him (complete with energy drinks, although he starts off by having a hot coffee from a machine). Then it's onwards again, and he's getting sore from all the driving but what's he to do?
I can rest when Kurt is safe, he reminds himself. He probably shouldn't have driven out to Lake Lowell - it took time off driving. He could've kept driving if he'd just kept going, could've driven into the night then stopped and rested, but hindsight is twenty-twenty for a reason, he supposes. Besides, he doesn't think he could have really resisted the pull of a place that had once been the source of so much happiness.
The next four hours are easy enough. The final two hours of the drive to Cheyenne are a push; Blaine drifts off at the wheel and has to jerk himself awake a couple of times, pulling over once to re-orientate himself so that he doesn't veer off the road and crash.
He doesn't even get a motel once he hits the city limits. He finds the first available car park and just curls up on the front seat and drifts away.
Blaine doesn't sleep easy. He's slept in hundreds of dodgy places easier than this. Nightmares come to him for the first time in a long time, possibly ever; he might have had nightmares when he was a small child, but if he did, he doesn't really remember.
They plague him now, though. At first they start out nicely. They start out with Blaine finding Kurt. That's when the visions turn - to Kurt's eyes twisting, flooding black, to him surging on Blaine, attacking until Blaine has to fight back and kill him.
Blaine startles awake after that one, and breathes deeply before he lies back again. Kurt finds him in the next nightmare. The nightmare after that, Kurt's dead before Blaine can reach him.
Blaine's exhausted when he wakes for good. Exhausted and terrified. His dreams have taken him through a thousand ways this whole journey could end - none of them good. He decides to take the morning to orientate himself in the city; he drives a little further in and stops off at a cafe.
It's a small, well lit sort of place by the name of Harlington's. The smell of bacon hits his nose as soon as he walks in. It brings a much-needed smile to his face, and when a curvy, dark-skinned young woman (with a smile that could lower the defences of anyone, Blaine's sure) tells him that the full, all-day breakfast is on special offer today, he can't resist ordering exactly what she suggests.
Her nametag says Mercedes, and when she tells him to go take a seat and that she'll bring his breakfast and coffee over to him, Blaine makes sure to thank her by name. He takes the seat by
the window and gazes out through the blinds, squinting in the face of the afternoon light but finding himself unable to do anything else.
The day feels like it's looking up already, although this day is slipping away already. He feels a little guilty that since the drive from Salem he's lost so much time, but equally he knows he can't entirely run himself into the ground. That would be counter productiveness at its finest.
Mercedes brings the coffee within five minutes; she tucks a newspaper onto the table next to him and tells him, "Your food is gonna be a good twenty minutes, and I don't think anybody can just stare out of the window for quite that long." From most people it would be a backwards comment that could be a little irritating - from this girl, with her pearly white smile and beautiful nature, it's Blaine's favourite thing he's seen in oh, twenty-one days, since Kurt's name last flashed up on his cell.
He settles back and opens the paper before he sips his coffee; it's sharp and strong and bitter, and he has the option to put milk and sweetener in it, but somehow he can't be bothered to. He doesn't really pay attention when the bell on the door rings and he hears it open and shut - it's a public cafe after all, and in the later hours of the day there are plenty of patrons flitting in and out.
He does, however, pay attention when he hears a quiet clatter followed by a string of curses. Blaine flickers his glance in the direction of the noise. A dark haired, slightly heavy-set man is standing with a lean, bleach-blond companion, and the dark haired man looks bothered as all hell and is wiping something off the side whilst the man beside him glowers.
"Don't fucking spill salt near me," the blond spits, and that catches Blaine's attention.
Who gets angry about a bit of salt?
"You're a useless dick, Karofsky."
The man - Karofsky - bristles and points a finger sharply at the blond. "Don't fucking embarrass me in public, Sam. It's just a bit of salt. Something far worse could've happened." None the less, Blaine observes as Karofsky uprights a salt cellar he'd knocked over, sweeping aside the offending spilt material.
They're talking in relatively hushed voices, for all the anger and venom between them, so Blaine feels a little bad for listening in, but...his gut is telling him something is weird.
Sam snorts, huffing out and smoothing his hair down before just smacking Karofsky's arm and saying, "Order something."
"Don't touch me out here," Karofsky mutters back, and he hails Mercedes over, who serves the snappy men with a little less of a smile than she offered Blaine.
He can't keep his eyes off Sam. Really, who does get that angry over some salt? It's just salt, after all. But if you were a demon, salt would be a problem indeed. He keeps watching, and as the two men settle onto stools at the counter, Sam's shirt sleeve rides up a little and Blaine sees it: a symbol of some sort, simple enough, a circle with a line through it. It looks like it's been scarred into his flesh.
It looks familiar for a reason he can't place. Blaine frowns. He commits it to memory, though, and as his breakfast arrives, he makes a mental note to call the Angels and ask.
PART THREE