Fic: Beauty (8/10)
Title: Beauty (8/10)
Rating: PG-13
Summary: Blaine Anderson was blessed with the perks of being beautiful in a world where people are literally separated into classes based on being "beautiful" or "ugly". Kurt Hummel was not. This is their journey together in throwing off the world's labels, of finding true beauty among a constellation of charades. This is their love story.
Word Count: this chapter, 2,166
A/N: Here's the new update! My family is travelling to visit my cousins tomorrow, so my update schedule is going to be off again. I get back Monday night though, so I should be able to post the next update next thing Tuesday! Thank you for all my lovely readers, again. I'm sure you get tired of me lavishing thanks on you, but I really appreciate your interest! <3
Chapter 8
According to Kurt, Blaine wasn’t in a position to judge hair styles. Not until he threw away his hair gel and never looked at it again. Ever. But Blaine couldn’t help but pass judgment on this particular woman who passed by, struggling holding her shopping bags, her flashy sparkling purse, and her order from Subway. Neon pink streaks that popped out of her dirty blond hair framed her old and exhausted face. He understood the entire concept of wanting to stay youthful, wanting to rebel, and using a visual image and presentation to achieve this, but honestly, this was too much. And if the hair wasn’t enough, her clothes were entirely too tight, and she looked sadly tired underneath the loud and overstated makeup she wore. She had to be at least 40; the youthful rebel look merely sagged on her.
He turned to look at Quinn beside him, picking at her order of Chinese food. “Do you see that lady? The one with the horrible pink streaks? I know I shouldn’t judge, but I can’t help it, they’re horrendous.”
“Oh, I don’t know,” she laughed, “I might go pink sometime, who knows?”
“Please don’t, oh, please spare me.”
“Who knows, I might have hit a stroke of aesthetic genius, right here in the mall of Lima Ohio! But the din here is so loud, I probably wouldn’t have the sanity to think up such a thing.”
“You mean you don’t enjoy the musical stylings of Lil’ Wayne?” he teased, referring to the music echoing in the background.
“Rap,” Quinn groaned, stuffing a piece of Mandarin Chicken into her mouth. “I think I’ve endured enough of Schuester to exclude me from ever having to listen to it again.”
“Do you ever people watch?” Blaine asked her suddenly as he watched a young boy walk by, clinging onto his father’s hand tightly and looking up to ask him a question. He didn’t realize there was an ache in his chest until he looked back to Quinn and a pitying look met him. “You know, just how there’s so many different types of people? And we’re usually closed off because we can afford to be other places, but being here and watching people…”
“For a while when I was younger I didn’t want to look around me, because I felt like I wanted to melt into the crowd,” she said, twisting a line of lo mein noodles around her fork, “but as I got older and held my head up higher it was easier to look people in the eye.” Blaine could almost hear the shrug in her voice as she talked; how was she so nonchalant about it?
He asked her so.
“The world hasn’t been so nice to me in the past, and I’ve kind of learned how to deal with it without wasting so many tears.”
The silence was weighted, and then Quinn asked, “How have you guys been treated since the news of you and Kurt got out?”
“Nobody’s really been harassing us,” Blaine answered, a smile sneaking onto his face. “Maybe this could go smoothly, Quinn! Maybe this won’t be as hard as we thought!”
Quinn smiled at him hesitantly. “Just remember, Blaine, you know how special the thing you and Kurt have is, don’t let it go.”
Blaine grinned in response. “Why is this version of Quinn I’m seeing so down today? You should remember, for yourself, that there’s good things in your future too!”
“Ah, the young in love,” she sighed, going back to eating her food. “So naïve.”
“Love? Love? Quinn Fabray, what is this talk of love?”
“Adorable.”
~~
Kurt looked shaken when Blaine drove over to their house later in the day.
He began to make his way to Kurt’s front door, but Kurt came out before he could make it there and told him to drive.
“Where to?”
There was a ghostly look in Kurt’s eye that Blaine couldn’t shake as he watched Kurt. “Anywhere.”
“Are you okay?”
“Just drive, and all will be revealed, I promise.” There was a weak attempt at a smile; Blaine wasn’t convinced.
“I… alright.” He slid back into the driver’s seat and buckled himself in, glancing through his peripheral vision at Kurt as he drove. Kurt kept looking at him like he was something he couldn’t bear to lose, like he was planning to lose him soon. It was the most terrifying thing he had seen in a while.
The ride was eerily silent, Blaine fiddling with the radio every now and then, adjusting volume or switching to stations that he knew were Kurt’s favorites in a fruitless attempt to breathe some state of cheer back into the car, but Kurt refused to acknowledge it. Kurt didn’t do anything more than look out the window until they pulled up.
“Blaine!” he suddenly exclaimed. “What are you thinking?”
It was like passion was pumped back into Kurt; what had Blaine done?
“What?”
“Is this your house?”
Oh. So that was what he’d done. “Yeah?”
“God. Blaine, I can’t be here! Don’t make things harder than they should be! I’m not allowed here, remember? How could you forget? No, oh please, drive anywhere else! Why are we here?”
Why had he driven back to his house? He knew Kurt wasn’t allowed here, how could he have forgotten? It was just an instinctive thing, to drive here. He hated being here, he hated being inside those doors, between those walls, stifled so. Yet this is where he had chosen to go when Kurt said ‘drive anywhere’. What was the wrong component here?
“…I don’t know why, Kurt. I really don’t know why we’re here right now.”
“Are your parents here right now?”
“Um, I’m not sure.”
“Is this a very indirect way of saying that you want to have sex with me, because if so, this is horrible timing. Horrible.”
Even in his very clouded, swirled mind, it immediately registered that Kurt hadn’t said he didn’t want to have sex with him.
Fuck.
“I… “he struggled to unblock his words. “Wait a second,” a pause, looking directly at Kurt. “Why is this horrible timing?”
“No reason,” Kurt immediately responded, tapping his hand on his jeans. “No reason.”
“Kurt,” Blaine tried again, softening his eyes, “please tell me.”
“I… can’t. God, I can’t do this.”
“Do what? Kurt?”
“I… I…”
“Do you want to go inside to discuss this?” he asked, reaching for Kurt’s hand. Kurt cautiously let him take it, focusing his gaze on their intertwined fingers.
“Your parents would kill me,” he mumbled to their unioned flesh. “Or they would kill you. This relationship is still relatively new; I wouldn’t want it to end with such a bad fate.”
“Screw my parents, Kurt, you’re distressed and my car is not the place to discuss why.”
“Are you sure?” he asked cautiously, still carefully training his gaze everywhere but Blaine.
“I’m proud of you, and I don’t care if my parents aren’t! I don’t want to put up with it anymore!”
“I still want my boyfriend alive for future days to come,” Kurt repeated quietly. “Don’t do this for me.”
“Why not?” Blaine asked angrily. “I want to do lots of things for you; I’m pretty sure that’s why they call it a relationship!”
“I don’t know…”
“I don’t know? Kurt, talk to me! I’m willing to face my parents for you, and I don’t want to argue that! You’re not going to persuade me out of it!”
“But others could…”
Others could? Did he understand how that sounded? Kurt wasn’t ‘others’, and that was exactly why Blaine liked him! He was so different and strong and beautiful, how could he not see that? “Do you not understand that I really like you? ‘Others’ have no bearing on that!”
“Not now, because they aren’t doing anything yet. People here are homophobic, Blaine, they’re not going to like us together. They’re gonna try to pull us apart.”
“I don’t care about that!” With a lesser voice, he added, “And I thought you didn’t either.”
“Trust me, if there has been anything, other than my father, that I have held dear, it’s been you.” He was cautious as he tacked on, “And I’m not about to let you go that easily.”
Kurt was smiling again, which fuelled Blaine again. “Then let’s go in there and face my parents, okay?”
“No,” Kurt said with an ever growing smile, “we’re not doing that yet. But we will, Blaine, I promise we will!” Voice rising in pitch, he kept up an excited stream of words. “No, we’re not gonna do that yet, but we can still do lots of other things! Blaine, we can still do this! I won’t have to lose you! I’m not gonna lose you!”
“Why were you going to lose me in the first place? You were never going to lose me!”
“I was never going to lose you?” Kurt asked him, fevered light glinting in his eye, smile almost manic in its happiness. “Never?”
“This all may be a bit rash, and we’re only teenagers on the brink of something amazing, but it’s true,” he murmured. “Never. I consider you mine now, Kurt Hummel, whether you like it or not.”
“Oh, I like it, trust me,” he hummed, leaning in closer. Kurt’s body heat etched through Blaine’s skin, and he could feel the urge to pull him back, push him down on the back seat, let hands wander all over, mouths sloppily learn each other, and cocoon himself into Kurt’s cool and scorching skin, both fire and ice splintering into his flesh as they combined.
But it was too soon for that, and they were too special for such a commonplace thing.
“Look, there was something I was supposed to tell you tonight,” he whispered into Blaine’s ear, dragging his hand along Blaine’s arm. Did he know the effect he was having? Was he doing this on purpose? “But I nearly ruined us tonight, and we’re in a good place again. I don’t want to ruin it again. I’d rather celebrate…”
“Sure,” Blaine whispered, but that was all he could get out before Kurt had leaned over and captured his lips, rendering him punch drunk and speechless.
~~
But I nearly ruined us tonight.
Those words had run through Blaine’s head all night. At two in the morning, Blaine had texted Kurt, asking him when he wanted to talk. Kurt texted him back immediately, saying at first to call him, that he would explain it now, but later changed his mind, stating that they were both due to be overemotional and over reactive at two in the morning and he wanted to avoid the trouble. He said he’d tell him at the Lima Bean tomorrow morning. With a yawn, Blaine had called him anyways, Kurt picking up on the second ring.
“See you tomorrow,” he breathed, cradling the phone to his ear . “Sweet dreams.”
“Goodnight honey,” Kurt whispered back. His voice got a little closer. “I hope I’ll dream of you.”
“I hope you will too.” Kurt laughed; it sounded like the soft tinkering of a cymbal.
They mutually agreed to hang up on the count of three, and when three came Blaine sleepily pressed the red ‘end call’ symbol, and fell asleep to indeed dream of Kurt.
~~
He woke up the next morning refreshed. Hearing Kurt’s voice before he fell asleep had been calming, and he held onto the way his voice had curled around the edges as he spoke, his lips undoubtedly nearly pressing against his phone, almost like giving him a drowsy but meaningful goodnight kiss.
He didn’t know if his parents had actually seen him and Kurt outside their house last night, but they didn’t mention it, so he chose, naively but satisfyingly, to believe they hadn’t.
He headed to the Lima Bean, preparing for the worst, but the cheery mood he was in setting him in expectation for the best. What he saw, however, was worse than anything he had been expecting.
Kurt was sitting at their table, staring at another guy Blaine didn’t recognize in happy disbelief. The guy had emerald green eyes, high and styled chestnut hair, and a slender figure. He was smiling smugly at Kurt, then getting up to bring Kurt into a hug. Kurt obliged, and seemed to whisper “thank you” into his Warbler blazer as they hugged. Kurt jumped, the guy having had pinched him on his thigh as they pulled apart.
Blaine’s rationale was telling him to confront Kurt about this. He was right there, it was only a few more steps, and then they could clear this and get back to working their way through a relationship. But Blaine was tired of listening to rationale, the pain in his chest was building, and he didn’t have the courage to make those extra steps.
He hated running, but it seemed like, nowadays, that was all he ever did.