Fic: Mosaic Broken Hearts
Title: Mosaic Broken Hearts
Rating: PG-13
Summary: Blaine liked the agency because it was an escape from himself. Except, being a secret agent couldn't forever entail saving people and ignoring yourself. Eventually someone came into your life that made you realize that you existed, fully and completely, and in the best way possible. For Blaine, that person was Agent Hummel.
Word Count: 15, 233
A/N: This was alternatively titled the Secret Agent Klaine AU on my computer for the longest time. So, I’m not sure how accurate this necessarily is, as I took inspiration from what Kurt and Blaine do as secret agents in this fic from White Collar (the undercover mission Blaine and Rachel go on in the beginning) and The Avengers (particularly Black Widow). The scene where they go on the mission in the beginning is sort of long and you may wonder when Kurt comes back in, but I promise you he will and that the rest will focus on Kurt and Blaine, and that that scene is important to what happens in the rest of the fic. Anyways, I hope you give it a chance! Thanks to anyone who reads this!
Blaine liked the agency because it was an escape from himself.
It was an easy and glitzy way to let go of his past, to take the future head on. Here he was working for the greater good, instead of letting his emotions manipulate him and damage him as he had done before. He was taking the attention away from himself but putting it on himself at the same time, and he loved the way that worked out.
Except, being a secret agent couldn’t forever entail saving people and ignoring yourself.
Eventually someone came into your life that made you realize that you existed, fully and completely, and in the best way possible.
For Blaine, that person was Agent Hummel.
~~
Blaine walked up to Rachel, who was currently getting prepped by a team to go undercover at a large gala where their target was thought to be attending. Makeup artists surrounded her like locusts, gaudy brushes in their hands, colors on their fingers, and smearing them across Rachel’s face. She pouted in the mirror, which prompted one of the makeup artists, a woman in a sad gray dress with a sad face, to scold her.
“Sorry,” Rachel said after they had finished applying the dark red lipstick, “but I hate sitting here to be fancified. I just can’t sit still. I feel like I need to be doing something.”
“Oh, shut your impudent mouth Rachel Berry,” Blaine teased, pinching her cheek, which was tinted with blush.
The woman in the sad gray dress only stared blankly at Blaine, and then continued to play with Rachel’s face.
“Shut yourself up Anderson, you’re all dressed up too!”
“Mmm, yes, my suit and bowtie, as if I don’t already dress like this half the time anyways.”
“They should…” Rachel faltered, trying to find a suitable comeback. “They should… they should make you take off your beloved bowtie! Hah!” She reached up hastily, fighting off a couple of offended make up artists, and pulled at it gently, loosening it. Blaine laughed, kissing her lightly on her other cheek.
“Now come on Rach,” he said as he readjusted his bowtie, looking into the mirror and smiling at the happy face that met him. “We’ve got a criminal to bust, and then a lovely 8 o’ clock dinner to catch afterwards.”
“Ha, see you later suckers!” Rachel said as she wriggled from underneath their grasp, blowing them a kiss and running off, arm and arm with Blaine. But halfway across the room, Rachel’s blue painted eyes closed briefly, and she ran back to give them all a quick hug, and give her apologies. Then she caught back up with Blaine, running a hand through his loose curls and slipping her hand into his.
“What are our new names again?” she asked.
“Mr. and Mrs. Patterson,” Blaine replied, “got married when we were just young teenagers in love, straight out of high school. I attended the University of Mississippi, but you had bigger dreams, and applied to NYU. You got in, but the distance eventually took a toll on our relationship, and you sent me a letter a warm April evening requesting a divorce. And I didn’t refuse because I was too heartbroken to say anything more. After a year at the university, however, I decided it wasn’t for me, and I applied to NYU too. I met you again in New York City as you were going to see Phantom of the Opera. I stopped you right before you entered the building, and got down on my knee, and held an imaginary ring in the air, asking you not to marry me, but to give me one more chance. You said yes, and a year and a half later, we went to see Phantom of the Opera together again, and I had requested that at the end of the show, I be allowed to get up and stage and make a special announcement. And so I borrowed the Phantom’s mask from the actor and dragged you up on stage with me, and I proposed. And you said yes and yanked off my mask and kissed me, and we’ve been married ever since.”
“Charming,” Rachel drawled, flicking a look over to the side of the crowded room they were in. Suddenly she tightened her grip on Blaine’s arm. “Blaine,” she whispered into his ear, taking extra care to get as close as possible to him. “It’s Kurt over there. I wonder how jealous I could make him.”
Blaine’s eyes shifted across the room, and he saw Agent Hummel standing next to Agent Chang. Agent Chang left not a second after Blaine turned to look at Kurt, and Kurt studiously trained his eyes on the wall beside him. He was decked out in his all black agent’s suit, the shirt curling nicely around his torso and showing off his defined arms. Blaine felt his cheeks darken, crimson not unlike the color on Rachel’s cheeks. Tiny buds of guilt flowered across his mind. Don’t look too long. Don’t look too long. Don’t look.
“Rachel,” he whispered back, controlled. “I don’t think that’s such a good idea. I mean, he’s been pretty bummed lately about not being able to go undercover with us, anyways, and I don’t want to make him feel worse.”
“I was trying to do you a favor, idiot.” She laughed. “Oh, I love you. You and Kurt better get together soon, though, because this pretending each other doesn’t exist only to have to visibly restrain yourselves from jumping at one another once you’re forced to talk is not going to last for long. The tension will burst or you will both give up before it does.”
Blaine frowned.
“And for the record,” Rachel said, fiddling with Blaine’s bowtie, “The latter is not an option you can choose.”
“Rachel,” he whined. “I feel bad.”
“Okay, okay, but Hummel looked anyways,” Rachel said conspiratorially. “You’re welcome.”
“Rachel,” he said again. “I do not like him.”
“Whatever you say,” she answered, but she smiled when Blaine quickly looked back at Kurt, and was shocked to see him looking back for the briefest second. Then his blue eyes became like ice again, and Blaine snapped his mind back into the mission.
Find the killer at the gala. Take him down. Have dinner.
Piece of cake.
~~
They arrived at the gala, and they were surprised to see that it was taking place on the topmost floor of an old abandoned building.
Blaine and Rachel walked hand in hand to the door, which looked like it would fall down at any second, and Rachel pressed the shiny doorbell that had obviously been installed there before the party. It was the only functioning thing within miles of this place.
“I feel out of place dressed like this,” Rachel said as they waited for someone to answer the door. “Like I’m about to walk into a haunted house dressed in my Sunday best for the ghost’s courtesy.”
“Me too, and I feel like this location doesn’t bode well for our mission. He could be on any one of the floors of this building, or in the mass of the party!” Blaine sighed, and squeezed Rachel’s hand. “Are you ready for this?”
Rachel removed her hand and softly touched the gun on the strap around her thigh. “Ready as I’ll ever be.”
“I hear footsteps, so I suppose I’m as ready as I’ll ever be too.”
A bald man opened the door, with a smear of lipstick across the right side of his lips. “Hello, guests. Names please?”
“Richard and Naomi Patterson,” Blaine responded, shooting a loving look at Rachel.
Rachel responded by bringing up their intertwined hands, and saying, “Aren’t I the luckiest?”
“Most definitely,” the man responded.
“Looks like you got lucky yourself,” Rachel said slyly, and Blaine nudged her for going out of character.
“Ah yes, well, you’ll have to excuse me,” he said, stuttering but clearly proud. “There are many floors in this building that are unoccupied, if you know what I mean.”
Blaine and Rachel both laughed uncomfortably, and the man led them in to an also newly renovated elevator.
“You may be wondering why we chose to have a gala here and not at a more suitable location,” the man started saying, filling up the silence as they went up twenty floors. The walls were painted a pastel blue, Blaine noticed, and scolded himself when he caught himself mentally shifting their colors to match another shade of more shocking blue he had become very familiar with…
“It is because,” the man said, interrupting Blaine’s thoughts, “well… I can’t offer you much of an explanation. Our show runner is quite the oddball.” He said, laughing.
Blaine nodded politely, and turned to create inane couple chatter with Rachel until they had reached the twentieth floor.
When the elevator doors opened, they were inundated with the suddenness of the voices around them. This gala was not a polite evening affair, Blaine thought dejectedly. Things were going to be a lot harder than expected.
He assessed his surroundings. The walls here seemed to be wallpapered over with the same pastel blue that was in the elevator. Paintings hung in various positions across the walls, as if they were droplets emerging from the walls at odd angles. The edges of the frames were just sharp enough, that, jabbed into someone’s gut, they could do some serious damage. Across the floating colors of women in sleek dresses and stiletto heels and men in dark suits, serious ties, and quirky bowties alike, to the right of the room, was a massive bar, with a large amount of glass bottles behind a black marble counter. In the middle of the room stood a man that towered above everyone else, with dark eyes, and a lean body in a white suit. Blaine’s eyes automatically locked on him, but he only shot a quick glance at Rachel to indicate the man’s presence, and then continued to sweep the room. In the far left corner of the room a short man laid slumped against the wall, an empty glass in his hand and a girl in a red dress crouching over him, trying to slap him awake. A man with a habit of leaning more on his right foot than his left foot when he walked stole up to her, glancing down at her ass in the tight red dress and then looking at his friends suggestively. Juvenilely, he crouched down and pinched it, and then stood up and started walking to the bar as if nothing had happened. The woman stood up, and looked at the man now walking away casually, with a fire raging in her eyes. She walked after him, and Blaine shifted his gaze to an Irish woman in a sea blue dress whispering into her date’s ear. Her date laughed; she must have been telling a joke.
“Any suspects?” he asked Rachel quietly.
“There is a medium height, blond haired, crooked tooth man in the middle of the pack that looks pretty shifty to me. He keeps fidgeting with something in his left back pocket, and then he brings his finger to his eyelid and presses it gently before attempting to normalize his behavior. Of course, then he just plunges that hand right back into his pocket five minutes later. Should I go check it out, boo?”
“Boo, Rachel? Really?”
“Honey, cutie, sweetie,” Rachel continued, smiling up at him.
“Oh, just get your butt over there, Rachel Berry.”
“Love you Blainers!” she said, running off at an agile pace for the high black stilettos she was wearing and the tight dark blue dress she wore that hugged her curves.
“Blainers,” Blaine muttered. “Hmph.”
Suddenly the man that was slouched against the wall opened his eyes just the slightest amount, peering at the woman in red, and then, slowly, inched his fingers towards his pocket until they were inside it and curling around some unidentified object. It was something heavy, and suddenly he was drawing out a gun and training it directly at the woman.
“Everybody down!” Blaine yelled, smoothly pulling the gun out of his own pocket and training it directly on the man. People all around him jumped down into a crouch in a blinding flash of color, except for Rachel, who, in a flash of navy blue, ran to his side, keeping her gun on the man also.
Now that Blaine got a better look at the man, Blaine saw that he had a slightly Italian descent, although he also looked Spanish, and it was hard to decide which influence edged out on his face more. His hair, even in his old age, was shockingly dark, although calculated streaks of gray ran through it. He had thick eyebrows, and a long-ish nose, and a more rounded chin than most. His skin was tan, and his hands shook on the gun uncontrollably.
“Stand back,” he said, trying to project intimidation into his voice, “I have a gun!”
“You have a gun you’re afraid to use,” Blaine pointed out steadily. “And we fortunately don’t have that problem.”
The man slumped even further into the wall. “Fine then, arrest me, if that’s your ultimate end goal here. But let me just tell you, it’s not mine.”
The woman in the red dress, who was kneeling on the ground, slowly stood up. Rachel ran to her side. “Honey, I don’t think you want to do this,” she whispered into her ear, calmingly. “It’s not safe.”
A strangled Italian accent came out as she spoke. “It’s not the only thing he wants to do here,” she said. “Not the only thing.”
“Whatever he’s offering you is not worth it,” Rachel continued steadily. “Please don’t neglect your instincts. You’re safe here with us.”
“But he has something of mine, and he’s willing to give it back to me,” the woman continued. “He just said so.”
Rachel only shook her head resolutely. “Please, I’m begging you. Stay here with us. Stay safe.”
“I…” the woman began, but she slowly kneeled back down to the floor, and Rachel began to make her way back to Blaine. “I… can’t.” She suddenly stood up and withdrew a gun from underneath her dress, and pointed it towards the man.
“You promised me!” she yelled, advancing towards him quickly. People quickly scooted out of her way on the floor, clearing a path for her. Blaine understood, but he still wanted to smack them upside the head.
“Isn’t that your motto, that you always keep your promises? Didn’t you tell me that once? Well, I’m holding you to it.”
She crouched down to his level, and he surprisingly stared directly at her without fear. Almost like a challenge.
She pressed the gun to his temple. “If you won’t give me back what’s rightfully mine, then I’ll take it back myself. And you’re the only thing standing in my way.”
He still gave no reaction. She flexed her finger on the trigger.
“Sure you’re not reconsidering?” she asked, dragging a finger down his right cheek. “Was deluding me into thinking you loved me and wanted to fuck me for me alone enough reason to make this happen?”
The man still did not answer, his lips only curving into a gentle smile.
“My dear, I hated every minute of it.”
The woman yelled, and her finger was about to pull the trigger, when a shot rang into the air. Blaine shot the edge of a painting above the woman, and she fell unconscious to the floor, the gun clattering out of her gasp. The half Italian-half Spanish man, who had seemed so confident before, collapsed violently against the wall, taking shallow gasps and throwing the gun as far away from himself as possible.
Rachel rushed to the woman, scanning the room’s occupants for someone with a long thin necklace. Once she found one, she kindly asked to lend it, and she obliged. She drew the woman’s arms behind her back and deftly binded her hands together, and then propped her up against her own small frame and turned to Blaine.
“Want me to deal with the man too or do you want to take this one?”
“Interrogate the woman,” Blaine said, “I’ll deal with him.”
Blaine slowly approached the man, picking up the man’s discarded gun on the way and tucking it in his pocket.
“You’re going to have a lot of explaining to do,” he said to the man, taking up his arm and letting him lean against him as he led him, shaking again, into the pastel blue elevator. As he walked away with the man, he heard Rachel behind me giving instructions to the rest of the attendants of the gala.
The elevator doors closed, and the man laughed once, a sputtering thing.
“My name’s Bernardo,” he said, holding out his hand and straightening up. “Do you work for the government?”
“I don’t think you’re classified to receive that information,” Blaine answered coolly. “I don’t think you’re allowed to ask that question either. But, you are allowed to answer my questions, one of them being this: What were your motivations?”
Blaine pressed the button for the fifth floor, and the man noticed. “We’re going to an abandoned floor for my interrogation? I must admit, I was expecting more, Agent Anderson.”
“Wha-“ Blaine was caught temporarily off guard. “How did you-“
“I know more than you think. Now look, this is why I did it. There is someone who’s controlling me; someone who wants to play with science. He wants to test out the cloning of humans, and for that he needs DNA. He’s done it successfully before, but he’s found that his clones don’t have the personalities of the people he’s used. Just the physical aspects. This particular woman he chose to get DNA from was overly cautious, so I couldn’t get DNA the normal way. I had to resort to other tactics…”
Blaine coughed uncomfortably.
“Either way, I had to learn all about her, about her personality and everything, so he could make this clone work. But she found out, and I was sent here to kill her before she spread the word. And I suspect you were sent here to find me and kill me too.”
“We don’t work like that,” Blaine answered, regaining his composure, “we don’t kill in cold blood.”
“Yet you call your crusading under the secrecy of the government a virtuous feat? I think not, dear Blaine. I don’t think any of you are as virtuous as you think.”
“Why that particular woman?” Blaine asked. “Why not anyone a lot less high profile?”
“Because that woman holds a powerful position in government, and since my boss couldn’t force her to do what he wanted, he had to force someone else just like her to do it.”
“What a sick ethics experiment,” Blaine commented, staring the man down. “Don’t you think?”
“Why yes, I personally think so.”
“So why are you involved in it?” he asked, nonchalantly. “Doesn’t make sense to me.”
“Doesn’t make sense to myself,” the man answered.
The elevator doors suddenly opened, and they found themselves looking out onto a dark floor, where it looked like darkness claimed home. The only light that filled it was concentrated in a corner, flurries of dust dancing in it. There was not much else on the floor, except for a large couch that was obviously once grand but now looked sad and old, and a broken lamp near the corner of the room. Underneath their feet was a carpet of letters, and as they walked onto the floor, they crunched beneath them. Blaine bent to pick up one of the letters, the edges of the vintage paper crumbling in his hands. He only saw the beginnings of a letter starting “Dear Genevieve,” before a loud thump resounded on the floor, and there was a tangle of sounds of struggling and then silence.
“Blaine, I could use a little help here,” a high voice called out.
Not just any high voice. One he had been obsessed with for the past few months at the agency.
It was Kurt.
“Kurt, what are you doing here?” he called out into the darkness.
“Catching your criminal before he gets away on your watch,” he spit out bitterly. “Now get over here before he just strolls out on you!”
Blaine switched on a small flashlight he had kept hidden in the folds of his suit, and he shone it around the room until he found Kurt holding the man by his throat. He was struggling, sweat shining on his brow, and Blaine resisted the urge to hug him (a stupid urge) and ran up to Kurt.
“I don’t understand why you’re here,” Blaine began as he took the man with his arms behind his back and forced him into the corner of the room, shining a light directly between his eyes. “You weren’t assigned to this mission!”
“Yes because obviously you were handling it so well yourself,” Kurt answered, leaning against the wall and staring casually at Blaine.
“How did you get here?”
“I…” Kurt looked at the floor. “I sort of followed you here? But it wasn’t like you didn’t need it,” he spat out at the end, to harshen his soft comment.
Blaine decided to let that one go. “Thanks, Kurt,” he said softly.
“No problem.”
“I guess I already got most of the information I need from this guy already,” Blaine said disappointedly. “We should get back to Rachel and bring him back to the agency.”
“Sounds good to me,” Kurt answered, struggling to keep his voice nonchalant. “As if I wanted to spend more time on this abandoned floor with you anyways.”
“Yeah,” Blaine answered distractedly.
They both escorted the man into the elevator, avoiding eye contact the entire time.
~~
The days after that were tense. They were paired together in a few training exercises, mostly stealth exercises in which they weren’t required to talk to each other. Kurt kept his lips drawn tight the entire time, the whiteness of them making Blaine absently clutch and release his fingers. He wanted to loosen them so badly; he wanted to paint them pink with color. But then Kurt’s slender profile would turn away, his calculating eye seeking out an artificial enemy in the distance, and Blaine would be forced to turn his head as well, and the electric moment in his head would be gone. Kurt didn’t think anything of him; he never thought anything of him. Blaine wasn’t anything more than a warm body crouching next to him behind an artificial building. And that was all.
Except sometimes Blaine would notice Kurt’s hands twitching longingly in the same manner as his, and sometimes he’d have hope. Sometimes.
~~
In the agency, nights off were few and far between, especially for someone as high ranked as Blaine was. Yet, when he did find himself with a day off, he still found himself with agency companionship, mostly in the form of Rachel Berry.
“You know, Rachel,” Blaine said as he was pouring her and himself a glass of wine. “You’re so distinctly ungraceful when you’re not on the job that I wouldn’t think you were the same person if I didn’t know you so well.”
Rachel had been stretched out across the couch, her grey sweater riding up to reveal a small bit of her stomach as she laid there. She pushed herself up by her elbows and sprung off the couch.
“What, are you afraid of a little skin, Anderson?” she asked mockingly, her legs almost bare in a semi-short pair of burgundy shorts. “Am I laying out too un-lady like for you?”
“Oh, Rachel,” he responded, walking to her with the two glasses of wine in his hands. “Naïve Rachel. That does nothing for me.” He winked, stopping by her and handing her a glass of wine.
“Oh well, at least I’m getting a drink out of this,” she said, laughing, and collapsed back onto the couch.
“We probably shouldn’t be drinking wine while we’re sitting on a leather couch,” Blaine commented. “Getting the stains out of this couch is not something I want to do.” He picked up the TV remote and flipped through channels. “Anything in particular you want to watch? Bad cop shows? Robert Downey Jr. as Sherlock Holmes?”
“Mmm, as much as RDJ appeals to me,” Rachel began, “I actually want to talk.”
“Okay,” Blaine sat down besides Rachel. “I’m all ears.”
“I want to know how you feel about Kurt, Blaine.”
“I already told you,” he answered, somewhat irritated. “There isn’t much to say.”
“Come on, Blaine, please. I’m one of your best friends, please tell me.”
He sighed. “It’s not so much that I don’t want to say it, it’s just that I don’t want to realize them for myself.” He took a sip of wine. “Do you understand what I mean?”
“Crystal clear,” she answered, setting her glass down on the table next to them, untouched. Gently, she touched Blaine’s shoulder. “But I want you to realize it.”
Blaine looked at her for a long while, watching the sincerity in her eyes. He exhaled. “It’s so hard.”
“How about I try then?” she said, with a twinkle in her eye.
“What do you mean?”
Rachel repositioned herself to look at the tv, and began. “I think that you guys are secretly in love with each other,” she began dramatically, turning to look to Blaine with a mischievous look in her eye.
Blaine only side eyed her, and she laughed, loud and garish.
“I think that you guys are definitely harboring feelings for each other,” she began again. “And I think you’d do anything to kiss him, that you want to really badly. I know the feeling myself; I felt that way about Finn all the way all those years ago…”
“Finn?” Blaine asked curiously.
“An old high school lover that went off to the military,” she answered, waving her hand. “But I used to think about how it would be like to have my hands all over him. I think you have that type of desperation somewhere in you right now, and that you’re really good at hiding it.”
“Go on, oh prophetic angel sent from above,” Blaine said, nudging her in the shoulder. She shot him a look of mock disapproval but continued.
“But I think you’re also scared,” she continued. “I don’t know how many boys you’ve dated before you came here, but I don’t imagine you were a player back then.”
“That is a sore misjudgment,” Blaine joked, nudging her in the shoulder. “I resent my apparent lack of sex appeal.”
“My point is,” she barged on, laughing. “I think you really like him. But also that you’re really afraid.”
Blaine didn’t answer, only set his glass down.
“How do I get rid of it?”
It was quiet for a moment.
“The thing is,” Rachel responded, “I don’t think you do. Ever get rid of fear, that is. But you can conquer it.”
“Isn’t that what we do, though, for a living? Face the fears other people don’t dare to face?”
“All physical fears,” she replied. “All easy to get rid of with the right training. You aren’t trained to stop being afraid of love, Blaine. It’s not possible; it’s something you have to get rid of yourself.”
“And how did you do it?” he asked, watching the way sadness seemed to settle in her eyes like a cloak. “How’d you stop being afraid of love?”
“Never said I stopped.” she answered. “I’ve just stopped being afraid of falling.”
Rachel searched his eyes, and Blaine didn’t know what she found there, only that it was something to cause her to lean back a little into the couch with a small smile on her face.
Blaine leaned back too, staring at the ceiling. Kurt’s name seemed to loop itself around his throat tighter and tighter every second. It was suffocating him; it was releasing him. It was feeling, and he was thrilled by it.
“Now how about we get some RDJ on this television screen,” Rachel said. “Because we have a day off, and I am wasting potential ogling time.”
Blaine laughed. “He’s 40, but he’s still so hot,” he said wistfully.
“You’re telling me!”
They both laughed in unison, and after a short moment, Blaine got up to try to find his Sherlock Holmes DVD, swiping his glass of wine from the table and taking a long drink.
Soon Blaine and Rachel found themselves sitting side by side on his worn leather couch, objectifying every handsome man in that movie from the tinges of drunkenness, and the cursive edges of Kurt’s name around his throat began loosening at the seams.
~~
He woke up the next day with the loose ends of Kurt hanging from his mind. Quickly blinking them away, he began to get dressed, pulling on his training suit and looking at himself in the mirror.
Is this what Kurt saw? A handsome face? A winning smile?
Could Kurt see anything underneath it?
He stashed those thoughts away, and headed off to work.
When he got there, Rachel came striding by him, whispering “The director is coming to see you” in a sing-song voice before he saw him coming over for himself.
The director was a big bulky man, who was missing his left arm but carried himself with so much presence that you hardly even noticed. You only stayed transfixed on his cold green eyes as he talked to you, and you hoped to all heavenly beings you didn’t disappoint him.
He beckoned for Blaine to come over with the brief flex of two fingers; Blaine almost tripped in his haste.
“Combat training, here, tonight at 7,” he said shortly.
“Yes sir,” Blaine answered, and then he was gone.
Rachel came striding by again, winking at Blaine conspicuously.
“What do you know that I don’t?” he asked her silently with his eyes, but Rachel only continued walking past. She was barely hiding a smile too.
~~
Blaine walked into the agency at 7 o’ clock sharp, and all the lights were out.
He walked around tentatively for a little bit, taking his emergency flashlight out of his training suit and shining it around, finding only stillness and crisp floors.
Then the door behind him opened, and a light skinned, icy eyed boy walked in.
Kurt.
And they were alone.
Alone.
Again.
“Looks like the newbie was late,” Blaine teased him, but his voice weakly died out as Kurt turned his cold stare onto him.
“Are you training me?” he asked shortly. “Did the director even tell you?”
“Unfortunately, no, he didn’t tell me,” Blaine answered carefully. “But I assume that was what I was sent here to do. Here, let me find a light.” He started sweeping his light across the room to try to find the light switch.
“No need,” Kurt said, somewhere in the middle of the darkness. A small halo of light flickered on, and the few feet around them were bathed in a vintage haze. Kurt stood by a single light bulb resting on top of a metal stand.
“So yeah, training,” Blaine said, approaching Kurt. “Hand to hand combat.”
“No need to teach me, Blaine,” Kurt said, circling the light bulb slowly. “I think I’ve got all the basics down.”
“Do you really?” Blaine asked, trailing behind Kurt. The warmth settled on his skin, but on Kurt’s it seemed to burrow into it.
“Oh yes, yes,” Kurt replied, his lips curving upwards. Blaine didn’t know if he realized what he was doing, but it was sexy.
“We’ll see about that.” Blaine moved quickly, dropping down and rolling outside the ring of light. He crept closer to Kurt, but Kurt seemed to know what he was doing. He leaped out into the darkness too, the brief outline of him that Blaine could see standing vigilantly, waiting.
After a moment’s deliberation, Blaine sprung and up and went to bring a kick to Kurt’s stomach. Kurt quickly dived out of the way, leaving Blaine in the filmy light and Kurt sneaking through the unknown. Blaine dove back into the darkness as well, but didn’t stay still as Kurt did. He crouched low to the ground, his hands and knees making little noise noise as he crawled closer to the sound of Kurt’s faint footsteps, echoing somewhere across the room. He neared his target, and he launched up and tackled Kurt to the ground. They both landed back in the warmth, Kurt looking frazzled, but a firm determination pitting in his eyes. Blaine stayed a little too long leaning over him, looking at that grit resting so easily on him. It was a few moments before he remembered where he was.
“Hand to hand combat, Kurt,” he whispered to him, “not running away.”
He offered him a hand and helped him up, but once he was up, he didn’t let go of his wrists.
“Do you know how to escape from a wrist grab?” Blaine asked him, kindly yet firmly.
Kurt brought his free hand up to slap him in the face, and Blaine released his grip to redirect Kurt’s attack towards the ground.
“Well, that works,” Blaine said, circling Kurt. “But it’s not exactly foolproof.”
He walked in front of Kurt, looking him in the eyes. Calculatedly, he threw a punch. He never meant to connect it, only to keep Kurt on his guard.
Kurt’s eyes widened, but he quickly opened his hand and thrust it forward to push his fist off its line of attack.
“Good,” Blaine said, “But get into fighting stance.”
Kurt stepped his right foot behind him and brought his left arm with a fist in front of his face, and brought his right arm up, slightly lower.
“Block my punches and try to throw some of your own.”
Blaine threw a right hook again, and this time Kurt brought his left arm up to block it, and then went to jab his right arm at Blaine. But Blaine was already anticipating his counter attack, and he jumped back into the darkness. Kurt was left waiting in fighting stance, bouncing slightly on his heels.
“Hey!” he called out to Blaine. “That isn’t fair!”
“Oh, but it is,” Blaine said to himself. Smiling, he crept up behind Kurt, whose back was still turned towards the dark.
“Boo!” he yelled, causing Kurt to yell briefly and whip around to see him.
“Don’t ever do that again!” Kurt yelled exasperatedly, slapping him repeatedly across his shoulder. “I can’t fight my enemy when I can’t see him!”
“Hmm,” Blaine said, looking at Kurt closely. “You can’t fight your enemy when you can’t see him.”
“What?” Kurt asked. His tone was curious. “Where are you going with this?”
“The person who always wins in a battle has to realize that his foremost enemy is always himself.”
“That just seems counterintuitive,” Kurt replied.
“It seems like that at first,” Blaine responded, pacing the length of the halo. “But you always have control over what you do. Whether it’s physical or anything else, even when you don’t have control, you have control.”
“Blaine…” Kurt trailed off.
“You have control, Kurt,” Blaine said, taking a hold of Kurt’s shoulders. At first Kurt tensed up, expecting another attack, but he very quickly relaxed into the touch once it was proven to be gentle. “You have control, I have control.”
The warmth of the light beat down on both of them.
Blaine removed his hands from Kurt’s shoulders, rubbing them absentmindedly. “I like you, Kurt.”
Kurt started edging outside of the circle. “Blaine…”
“No, listen. At least let me say it, okay?”
Kurt stopped on the border.
“I like you a lot, and am I wrong to think that you like me too?”
Kurt stood stock still. “I…I…”
Blaine looked on hopefully.
“I… yes. I do.”
Blaine advanced quickly, and soon he was within kissing distance of Kurt. He stared unabashedly at his lips, deliberately moving his eyes up slowly to meet Kurt’s.
Kurt seemed to visibly be trying to steady himself under Blaine’s gaze.
“But this can’t happen right now, Blaine,” he said warningly. “This can’t happen right now.”
“Why not?” Blaine asked. “Why?”
“Because it just can’t, I’m not ready,” Kurt said, looking like he was trying to shrink into himself.
Blaine wanted badly, for just a moment, to release his inhibitions, to prove Kurt wrong. To grab him in his arms and kiss him. But the animal desire was gone within a second, and Kurt’s cautious stance in front of him was brought back to his mind again. Reluctantly, he kept his desires wounded tight within himself. Looking up brightly at Kurt, he asked, “Can I kiss your hand then?”
Kurt laughed but nodded assent, and Blaine took up his hand and lightly impressed his lips upon them.
“I still very much like you, Kurt Hummel.”
Kurt smiled warmly at him, and Blaine saw it as an affirmation. That it was okay to continue doing this. That Kurt wasn’t going to be afraid of him. He moved back, closer to the lone light bulb, and he beckoned for Kurt to come closer.
“Arms up, back to fighting stance,” he told him reluctantly. Kurt looked reluctant to do it too, fidgeting with his hands at his side. He took half a moment to study Blaine, and Blaine made sure to really look back, focusing his entire being on standing tall and sincere in front of his eyes. Kurt kept his stare on him for a few moments, and then looked away. He raised his arms, he set back his feet. They were back to familiar, emotionally clean territory.
But this time, Kurt was the first to throw a punch.
~~
By 11 o clock, Blaine had gotten home and was ready to go to bed. He had just slipped into his pajamas, and he was about to go to brush his teeth when the doorbell rang.
Rubbing his fists in his eyes, he went to open his apartment door.
He was met by none other than Rachel.
“I’m sleeping here tonight,” she said quickly, loudly, unfolding the blanket she was carrying tucked underneath her arm. “Don’t worry, I’ve already gone through all the hygiene procedures, and as you can see, I’m already changed into my pjs.”
“Wha-“ Blaine began, but Rachel wasted no time in cutting him off.
“-I’ve come here to inquire about your ‘training’ with Kurt.” Her eyes looked wild with the amount of excitement they held. “How’d it go, huh?” She poked him in the arm, practically bouncing on her feet. “How’d it go?”
“It went fine, Rachel, where are you planning to-“
“The couch, Blaine. Don’t worry, I’ve already thought this out.”
“So you came to sleep over here just because you wanted to hear about what happened at this training with Kurt when I didn’t even know Kurt was supposed to be coming?”
Rachel looked as if she were trying to bite back a smile, but Blaine knew her well enough to know that it was just for theatrical effect.
“Did you have some type of influence in this, Rachel?” he asked, already half knowing the answer.
“I may or may not have connections in the agency,” Rachel replied. Blaine wasn’t even surprised; he just nodded.
Blaine was silent for a few moments, hoping Rachel would deem it a lost cause and go home. But Rachel only looked at him eagerly, putting down her things and making herself at home on the couch.
“Fine,” Blaine surrendered, “You want to know the whole story?”
She nodded, just as eager as she looked.
“Fine then,” Blaine sighed, flopping down on the couch. “Join me for story time, then.”
Rachel squeed and cozied up next to him.
“You know, you’re also extraordinarily immature for being a secret agent, you know that?”
“It’s a gift,” Rachel responded. “Now tell me about you and Hummel!”
“Alright, alright,” Blaine acquiesced. “I got there at 7, and all the lights were out…”
~~
Next
Rating: PG-13
Summary: Blaine liked the agency because it was an escape from himself. Except, being a secret agent couldn't forever entail saving people and ignoring yourself. Eventually someone came into your life that made you realize that you existed, fully and completely, and in the best way possible. For Blaine, that person was Agent Hummel.
Word Count: 15, 233
A/N: This was alternatively titled the Secret Agent Klaine AU on my computer for the longest time. So, I’m not sure how accurate this necessarily is, as I took inspiration from what Kurt and Blaine do as secret agents in this fic from White Collar (the undercover mission Blaine and Rachel go on in the beginning) and The Avengers (particularly Black Widow). The scene where they go on the mission in the beginning is sort of long and you may wonder when Kurt comes back in, but I promise you he will and that the rest will focus on Kurt and Blaine, and that that scene is important to what happens in the rest of the fic. Anyways, I hope you give it a chance! Thanks to anyone who reads this!
Blaine liked the agency because it was an escape from himself.
It was an easy and glitzy way to let go of his past, to take the future head on. Here he was working for the greater good, instead of letting his emotions manipulate him and damage him as he had done before. He was taking the attention away from himself but putting it on himself at the same time, and he loved the way that worked out.
Except, being a secret agent couldn’t forever entail saving people and ignoring yourself.
Eventually someone came into your life that made you realize that you existed, fully and completely, and in the best way possible.
For Blaine, that person was Agent Hummel.
~~
Blaine walked up to Rachel, who was currently getting prepped by a team to go undercover at a large gala where their target was thought to be attending. Makeup artists surrounded her like locusts, gaudy brushes in their hands, colors on their fingers, and smearing them across Rachel’s face. She pouted in the mirror, which prompted one of the makeup artists, a woman in a sad gray dress with a sad face, to scold her.
“Sorry,” Rachel said after they had finished applying the dark red lipstick, “but I hate sitting here to be fancified. I just can’t sit still. I feel like I need to be doing something.”
“Oh, shut your impudent mouth Rachel Berry,” Blaine teased, pinching her cheek, which was tinted with blush.
The woman in the sad gray dress only stared blankly at Blaine, and then continued to play with Rachel’s face.
“Shut yourself up Anderson, you’re all dressed up too!”
“Mmm, yes, my suit and bowtie, as if I don’t already dress like this half the time anyways.”
“They should…” Rachel faltered, trying to find a suitable comeback. “They should… they should make you take off your beloved bowtie! Hah!” She reached up hastily, fighting off a couple of offended make up artists, and pulled at it gently, loosening it. Blaine laughed, kissing her lightly on her other cheek.
“Now come on Rach,” he said as he readjusted his bowtie, looking into the mirror and smiling at the happy face that met him. “We’ve got a criminal to bust, and then a lovely 8 o’ clock dinner to catch afterwards.”
“Ha, see you later suckers!” Rachel said as she wriggled from underneath their grasp, blowing them a kiss and running off, arm and arm with Blaine. But halfway across the room, Rachel’s blue painted eyes closed briefly, and she ran back to give them all a quick hug, and give her apologies. Then she caught back up with Blaine, running a hand through his loose curls and slipping her hand into his.
“What are our new names again?” she asked.
“Mr. and Mrs. Patterson,” Blaine replied, “got married when we were just young teenagers in love, straight out of high school. I attended the University of Mississippi, but you had bigger dreams, and applied to NYU. You got in, but the distance eventually took a toll on our relationship, and you sent me a letter a warm April evening requesting a divorce. And I didn’t refuse because I was too heartbroken to say anything more. After a year at the university, however, I decided it wasn’t for me, and I applied to NYU too. I met you again in New York City as you were going to see Phantom of the Opera. I stopped you right before you entered the building, and got down on my knee, and held an imaginary ring in the air, asking you not to marry me, but to give me one more chance. You said yes, and a year and a half later, we went to see Phantom of the Opera together again, and I had requested that at the end of the show, I be allowed to get up and stage and make a special announcement. And so I borrowed the Phantom’s mask from the actor and dragged you up on stage with me, and I proposed. And you said yes and yanked off my mask and kissed me, and we’ve been married ever since.”
“Charming,” Rachel drawled, flicking a look over to the side of the crowded room they were in. Suddenly she tightened her grip on Blaine’s arm. “Blaine,” she whispered into his ear, taking extra care to get as close as possible to him. “It’s Kurt over there. I wonder how jealous I could make him.”
Blaine’s eyes shifted across the room, and he saw Agent Hummel standing next to Agent Chang. Agent Chang left not a second after Blaine turned to look at Kurt, and Kurt studiously trained his eyes on the wall beside him. He was decked out in his all black agent’s suit, the shirt curling nicely around his torso and showing off his defined arms. Blaine felt his cheeks darken, crimson not unlike the color on Rachel’s cheeks. Tiny buds of guilt flowered across his mind. Don’t look too long. Don’t look too long. Don’t look.
“Rachel,” he whispered back, controlled. “I don’t think that’s such a good idea. I mean, he’s been pretty bummed lately about not being able to go undercover with us, anyways, and I don’t want to make him feel worse.”
“I was trying to do you a favor, idiot.” She laughed. “Oh, I love you. You and Kurt better get together soon, though, because this pretending each other doesn’t exist only to have to visibly restrain yourselves from jumping at one another once you’re forced to talk is not going to last for long. The tension will burst or you will both give up before it does.”
Blaine frowned.
“And for the record,” Rachel said, fiddling with Blaine’s bowtie, “The latter is not an option you can choose.”
“Rachel,” he whined. “I feel bad.”
“Okay, okay, but Hummel looked anyways,” Rachel said conspiratorially. “You’re welcome.”
“Rachel,” he said again. “I do not like him.”
“Whatever you say,” she answered, but she smiled when Blaine quickly looked back at Kurt, and was shocked to see him looking back for the briefest second. Then his blue eyes became like ice again, and Blaine snapped his mind back into the mission.
Find the killer at the gala. Take him down. Have dinner.
Piece of cake.
~~
They arrived at the gala, and they were surprised to see that it was taking place on the topmost floor of an old abandoned building.
Blaine and Rachel walked hand in hand to the door, which looked like it would fall down at any second, and Rachel pressed the shiny doorbell that had obviously been installed there before the party. It was the only functioning thing within miles of this place.
“I feel out of place dressed like this,” Rachel said as they waited for someone to answer the door. “Like I’m about to walk into a haunted house dressed in my Sunday best for the ghost’s courtesy.”
“Me too, and I feel like this location doesn’t bode well for our mission. He could be on any one of the floors of this building, or in the mass of the party!” Blaine sighed, and squeezed Rachel’s hand. “Are you ready for this?”
Rachel removed her hand and softly touched the gun on the strap around her thigh. “Ready as I’ll ever be.”
“I hear footsteps, so I suppose I’m as ready as I’ll ever be too.”
A bald man opened the door, with a smear of lipstick across the right side of his lips. “Hello, guests. Names please?”
“Richard and Naomi Patterson,” Blaine responded, shooting a loving look at Rachel.
Rachel responded by bringing up their intertwined hands, and saying, “Aren’t I the luckiest?”
“Most definitely,” the man responded.
“Looks like you got lucky yourself,” Rachel said slyly, and Blaine nudged her for going out of character.
“Ah yes, well, you’ll have to excuse me,” he said, stuttering but clearly proud. “There are many floors in this building that are unoccupied, if you know what I mean.”
Blaine and Rachel both laughed uncomfortably, and the man led them in to an also newly renovated elevator.
“You may be wondering why we chose to have a gala here and not at a more suitable location,” the man started saying, filling up the silence as they went up twenty floors. The walls were painted a pastel blue, Blaine noticed, and scolded himself when he caught himself mentally shifting their colors to match another shade of more shocking blue he had become very familiar with…
“It is because,” the man said, interrupting Blaine’s thoughts, “well… I can’t offer you much of an explanation. Our show runner is quite the oddball.” He said, laughing.
Blaine nodded politely, and turned to create inane couple chatter with Rachel until they had reached the twentieth floor.
When the elevator doors opened, they were inundated with the suddenness of the voices around them. This gala was not a polite evening affair, Blaine thought dejectedly. Things were going to be a lot harder than expected.
He assessed his surroundings. The walls here seemed to be wallpapered over with the same pastel blue that was in the elevator. Paintings hung in various positions across the walls, as if they were droplets emerging from the walls at odd angles. The edges of the frames were just sharp enough, that, jabbed into someone’s gut, they could do some serious damage. Across the floating colors of women in sleek dresses and stiletto heels and men in dark suits, serious ties, and quirky bowties alike, to the right of the room, was a massive bar, with a large amount of glass bottles behind a black marble counter. In the middle of the room stood a man that towered above everyone else, with dark eyes, and a lean body in a white suit. Blaine’s eyes automatically locked on him, but he only shot a quick glance at Rachel to indicate the man’s presence, and then continued to sweep the room. In the far left corner of the room a short man laid slumped against the wall, an empty glass in his hand and a girl in a red dress crouching over him, trying to slap him awake. A man with a habit of leaning more on his right foot than his left foot when he walked stole up to her, glancing down at her ass in the tight red dress and then looking at his friends suggestively. Juvenilely, he crouched down and pinched it, and then stood up and started walking to the bar as if nothing had happened. The woman stood up, and looked at the man now walking away casually, with a fire raging in her eyes. She walked after him, and Blaine shifted his gaze to an Irish woman in a sea blue dress whispering into her date’s ear. Her date laughed; she must have been telling a joke.
“Any suspects?” he asked Rachel quietly.
“There is a medium height, blond haired, crooked tooth man in the middle of the pack that looks pretty shifty to me. He keeps fidgeting with something in his left back pocket, and then he brings his finger to his eyelid and presses it gently before attempting to normalize his behavior. Of course, then he just plunges that hand right back into his pocket five minutes later. Should I go check it out, boo?”
“Boo, Rachel? Really?”
“Honey, cutie, sweetie,” Rachel continued, smiling up at him.
“Oh, just get your butt over there, Rachel Berry.”
“Love you Blainers!” she said, running off at an agile pace for the high black stilettos she was wearing and the tight dark blue dress she wore that hugged her curves.
“Blainers,” Blaine muttered. “Hmph.”
Suddenly the man that was slouched against the wall opened his eyes just the slightest amount, peering at the woman in red, and then, slowly, inched his fingers towards his pocket until they were inside it and curling around some unidentified object. It was something heavy, and suddenly he was drawing out a gun and training it directly at the woman.
“Everybody down!” Blaine yelled, smoothly pulling the gun out of his own pocket and training it directly on the man. People all around him jumped down into a crouch in a blinding flash of color, except for Rachel, who, in a flash of navy blue, ran to his side, keeping her gun on the man also.
Now that Blaine got a better look at the man, Blaine saw that he had a slightly Italian descent, although he also looked Spanish, and it was hard to decide which influence edged out on his face more. His hair, even in his old age, was shockingly dark, although calculated streaks of gray ran through it. He had thick eyebrows, and a long-ish nose, and a more rounded chin than most. His skin was tan, and his hands shook on the gun uncontrollably.
“Stand back,” he said, trying to project intimidation into his voice, “I have a gun!”
“You have a gun you’re afraid to use,” Blaine pointed out steadily. “And we fortunately don’t have that problem.”
The man slumped even further into the wall. “Fine then, arrest me, if that’s your ultimate end goal here. But let me just tell you, it’s not mine.”
The woman in the red dress, who was kneeling on the ground, slowly stood up. Rachel ran to her side. “Honey, I don’t think you want to do this,” she whispered into her ear, calmingly. “It’s not safe.”
A strangled Italian accent came out as she spoke. “It’s not the only thing he wants to do here,” she said. “Not the only thing.”
“Whatever he’s offering you is not worth it,” Rachel continued steadily. “Please don’t neglect your instincts. You’re safe here with us.”
“But he has something of mine, and he’s willing to give it back to me,” the woman continued. “He just said so.”
Rachel only shook her head resolutely. “Please, I’m begging you. Stay here with us. Stay safe.”
“I…” the woman began, but she slowly kneeled back down to the floor, and Rachel began to make her way back to Blaine. “I… can’t.” She suddenly stood up and withdrew a gun from underneath her dress, and pointed it towards the man.
“You promised me!” she yelled, advancing towards him quickly. People quickly scooted out of her way on the floor, clearing a path for her. Blaine understood, but he still wanted to smack them upside the head.
“Isn’t that your motto, that you always keep your promises? Didn’t you tell me that once? Well, I’m holding you to it.”
She crouched down to his level, and he surprisingly stared directly at her without fear. Almost like a challenge.
She pressed the gun to his temple. “If you won’t give me back what’s rightfully mine, then I’ll take it back myself. And you’re the only thing standing in my way.”
He still gave no reaction. She flexed her finger on the trigger.
“Sure you’re not reconsidering?” she asked, dragging a finger down his right cheek. “Was deluding me into thinking you loved me and wanted to fuck me for me alone enough reason to make this happen?”
The man still did not answer, his lips only curving into a gentle smile.
“My dear, I hated every minute of it.”
The woman yelled, and her finger was about to pull the trigger, when a shot rang into the air. Blaine shot the edge of a painting above the woman, and she fell unconscious to the floor, the gun clattering out of her gasp. The half Italian-half Spanish man, who had seemed so confident before, collapsed violently against the wall, taking shallow gasps and throwing the gun as far away from himself as possible.
Rachel rushed to the woman, scanning the room’s occupants for someone with a long thin necklace. Once she found one, she kindly asked to lend it, and she obliged. She drew the woman’s arms behind her back and deftly binded her hands together, and then propped her up against her own small frame and turned to Blaine.
“Want me to deal with the man too or do you want to take this one?”
“Interrogate the woman,” Blaine said, “I’ll deal with him.”
Blaine slowly approached the man, picking up the man’s discarded gun on the way and tucking it in his pocket.
“You’re going to have a lot of explaining to do,” he said to the man, taking up his arm and letting him lean against him as he led him, shaking again, into the pastel blue elevator. As he walked away with the man, he heard Rachel behind me giving instructions to the rest of the attendants of the gala.
The elevator doors closed, and the man laughed once, a sputtering thing.
“My name’s Bernardo,” he said, holding out his hand and straightening up. “Do you work for the government?”
“I don’t think you’re classified to receive that information,” Blaine answered coolly. “I don’t think you’re allowed to ask that question either. But, you are allowed to answer my questions, one of them being this: What were your motivations?”
Blaine pressed the button for the fifth floor, and the man noticed. “We’re going to an abandoned floor for my interrogation? I must admit, I was expecting more, Agent Anderson.”
“Wha-“ Blaine was caught temporarily off guard. “How did you-“
“I know more than you think. Now look, this is why I did it. There is someone who’s controlling me; someone who wants to play with science. He wants to test out the cloning of humans, and for that he needs DNA. He’s done it successfully before, but he’s found that his clones don’t have the personalities of the people he’s used. Just the physical aspects. This particular woman he chose to get DNA from was overly cautious, so I couldn’t get DNA the normal way. I had to resort to other tactics…”
Blaine coughed uncomfortably.
“Either way, I had to learn all about her, about her personality and everything, so he could make this clone work. But she found out, and I was sent here to kill her before she spread the word. And I suspect you were sent here to find me and kill me too.”
“We don’t work like that,” Blaine answered, regaining his composure, “we don’t kill in cold blood.”
“Yet you call your crusading under the secrecy of the government a virtuous feat? I think not, dear Blaine. I don’t think any of you are as virtuous as you think.”
“Why that particular woman?” Blaine asked. “Why not anyone a lot less high profile?”
“Because that woman holds a powerful position in government, and since my boss couldn’t force her to do what he wanted, he had to force someone else just like her to do it.”
“What a sick ethics experiment,” Blaine commented, staring the man down. “Don’t you think?”
“Why yes, I personally think so.”
“So why are you involved in it?” he asked, nonchalantly. “Doesn’t make sense to me.”
“Doesn’t make sense to myself,” the man answered.
The elevator doors suddenly opened, and they found themselves looking out onto a dark floor, where it looked like darkness claimed home. The only light that filled it was concentrated in a corner, flurries of dust dancing in it. There was not much else on the floor, except for a large couch that was obviously once grand but now looked sad and old, and a broken lamp near the corner of the room. Underneath their feet was a carpet of letters, and as they walked onto the floor, they crunched beneath them. Blaine bent to pick up one of the letters, the edges of the vintage paper crumbling in his hands. He only saw the beginnings of a letter starting “Dear Genevieve,” before a loud thump resounded on the floor, and there was a tangle of sounds of struggling and then silence.
“Blaine, I could use a little help here,” a high voice called out.
Not just any high voice. One he had been obsessed with for the past few months at the agency.
It was Kurt.
“Kurt, what are you doing here?” he called out into the darkness.
“Catching your criminal before he gets away on your watch,” he spit out bitterly. “Now get over here before he just strolls out on you!”
Blaine switched on a small flashlight he had kept hidden in the folds of his suit, and he shone it around the room until he found Kurt holding the man by his throat. He was struggling, sweat shining on his brow, and Blaine resisted the urge to hug him (a stupid urge) and ran up to Kurt.
“I don’t understand why you’re here,” Blaine began as he took the man with his arms behind his back and forced him into the corner of the room, shining a light directly between his eyes. “You weren’t assigned to this mission!”
“Yes because obviously you were handling it so well yourself,” Kurt answered, leaning against the wall and staring casually at Blaine.
“How did you get here?”
“I…” Kurt looked at the floor. “I sort of followed you here? But it wasn’t like you didn’t need it,” he spat out at the end, to harshen his soft comment.
Blaine decided to let that one go. “Thanks, Kurt,” he said softly.
“No problem.”
“I guess I already got most of the information I need from this guy already,” Blaine said disappointedly. “We should get back to Rachel and bring him back to the agency.”
“Sounds good to me,” Kurt answered, struggling to keep his voice nonchalant. “As if I wanted to spend more time on this abandoned floor with you anyways.”
“Yeah,” Blaine answered distractedly.
They both escorted the man into the elevator, avoiding eye contact the entire time.
~~
The days after that were tense. They were paired together in a few training exercises, mostly stealth exercises in which they weren’t required to talk to each other. Kurt kept his lips drawn tight the entire time, the whiteness of them making Blaine absently clutch and release his fingers. He wanted to loosen them so badly; he wanted to paint them pink with color. But then Kurt’s slender profile would turn away, his calculating eye seeking out an artificial enemy in the distance, and Blaine would be forced to turn his head as well, and the electric moment in his head would be gone. Kurt didn’t think anything of him; he never thought anything of him. Blaine wasn’t anything more than a warm body crouching next to him behind an artificial building. And that was all.
Except sometimes Blaine would notice Kurt’s hands twitching longingly in the same manner as his, and sometimes he’d have hope. Sometimes.
~~
In the agency, nights off were few and far between, especially for someone as high ranked as Blaine was. Yet, when he did find himself with a day off, he still found himself with agency companionship, mostly in the form of Rachel Berry.
“You know, Rachel,” Blaine said as he was pouring her and himself a glass of wine. “You’re so distinctly ungraceful when you’re not on the job that I wouldn’t think you were the same person if I didn’t know you so well.”
Rachel had been stretched out across the couch, her grey sweater riding up to reveal a small bit of her stomach as she laid there. She pushed herself up by her elbows and sprung off the couch.
“What, are you afraid of a little skin, Anderson?” she asked mockingly, her legs almost bare in a semi-short pair of burgundy shorts. “Am I laying out too un-lady like for you?”
“Oh, Rachel,” he responded, walking to her with the two glasses of wine in his hands. “Naïve Rachel. That does nothing for me.” He winked, stopping by her and handing her a glass of wine.
“Oh well, at least I’m getting a drink out of this,” she said, laughing, and collapsed back onto the couch.
“We probably shouldn’t be drinking wine while we’re sitting on a leather couch,” Blaine commented. “Getting the stains out of this couch is not something I want to do.” He picked up the TV remote and flipped through channels. “Anything in particular you want to watch? Bad cop shows? Robert Downey Jr. as Sherlock Holmes?”
“Mmm, as much as RDJ appeals to me,” Rachel began, “I actually want to talk.”
“Okay,” Blaine sat down besides Rachel. “I’m all ears.”
“I want to know how you feel about Kurt, Blaine.”
“I already told you,” he answered, somewhat irritated. “There isn’t much to say.”
“Come on, Blaine, please. I’m one of your best friends, please tell me.”
He sighed. “It’s not so much that I don’t want to say it, it’s just that I don’t want to realize them for myself.” He took a sip of wine. “Do you understand what I mean?”
“Crystal clear,” she answered, setting her glass down on the table next to them, untouched. Gently, she touched Blaine’s shoulder. “But I want you to realize it.”
Blaine looked at her for a long while, watching the sincerity in her eyes. He exhaled. “It’s so hard.”
“How about I try then?” she said, with a twinkle in her eye.
“What do you mean?”
Rachel repositioned herself to look at the tv, and began. “I think that you guys are secretly in love with each other,” she began dramatically, turning to look to Blaine with a mischievous look in her eye.
Blaine only side eyed her, and she laughed, loud and garish.
“I think that you guys are definitely harboring feelings for each other,” she began again. “And I think you’d do anything to kiss him, that you want to really badly. I know the feeling myself; I felt that way about Finn all the way all those years ago…”
“Finn?” Blaine asked curiously.
“An old high school lover that went off to the military,” she answered, waving her hand. “But I used to think about how it would be like to have my hands all over him. I think you have that type of desperation somewhere in you right now, and that you’re really good at hiding it.”
“Go on, oh prophetic angel sent from above,” Blaine said, nudging her in the shoulder. She shot him a look of mock disapproval but continued.
“But I think you’re also scared,” she continued. “I don’t know how many boys you’ve dated before you came here, but I don’t imagine you were a player back then.”
“That is a sore misjudgment,” Blaine joked, nudging her in the shoulder. “I resent my apparent lack of sex appeal.”
“My point is,” she barged on, laughing. “I think you really like him. But also that you’re really afraid.”
Blaine didn’t answer, only set his glass down.
“How do I get rid of it?”
It was quiet for a moment.
“The thing is,” Rachel responded, “I don’t think you do. Ever get rid of fear, that is. But you can conquer it.”
“Isn’t that what we do, though, for a living? Face the fears other people don’t dare to face?”
“All physical fears,” she replied. “All easy to get rid of with the right training. You aren’t trained to stop being afraid of love, Blaine. It’s not possible; it’s something you have to get rid of yourself.”
“And how did you do it?” he asked, watching the way sadness seemed to settle in her eyes like a cloak. “How’d you stop being afraid of love?”
“Never said I stopped.” she answered. “I’ve just stopped being afraid of falling.”
Rachel searched his eyes, and Blaine didn’t know what she found there, only that it was something to cause her to lean back a little into the couch with a small smile on her face.
Blaine leaned back too, staring at the ceiling. Kurt’s name seemed to loop itself around his throat tighter and tighter every second. It was suffocating him; it was releasing him. It was feeling, and he was thrilled by it.
“Now how about we get some RDJ on this television screen,” Rachel said. “Because we have a day off, and I am wasting potential ogling time.”
Blaine laughed. “He’s 40, but he’s still so hot,” he said wistfully.
“You’re telling me!”
They both laughed in unison, and after a short moment, Blaine got up to try to find his Sherlock Holmes DVD, swiping his glass of wine from the table and taking a long drink.
Soon Blaine and Rachel found themselves sitting side by side on his worn leather couch, objectifying every handsome man in that movie from the tinges of drunkenness, and the cursive edges of Kurt’s name around his throat began loosening at the seams.
~~
He woke up the next day with the loose ends of Kurt hanging from his mind. Quickly blinking them away, he began to get dressed, pulling on his training suit and looking at himself in the mirror.
Is this what Kurt saw? A handsome face? A winning smile?
Could Kurt see anything underneath it?
He stashed those thoughts away, and headed off to work.
When he got there, Rachel came striding by him, whispering “The director is coming to see you” in a sing-song voice before he saw him coming over for himself.
The director was a big bulky man, who was missing his left arm but carried himself with so much presence that you hardly even noticed. You only stayed transfixed on his cold green eyes as he talked to you, and you hoped to all heavenly beings you didn’t disappoint him.
He beckoned for Blaine to come over with the brief flex of two fingers; Blaine almost tripped in his haste.
“Combat training, here, tonight at 7,” he said shortly.
“Yes sir,” Blaine answered, and then he was gone.
Rachel came striding by again, winking at Blaine conspicuously.
“What do you know that I don’t?” he asked her silently with his eyes, but Rachel only continued walking past. She was barely hiding a smile too.
~~
Blaine walked into the agency at 7 o’ clock sharp, and all the lights were out.
He walked around tentatively for a little bit, taking his emergency flashlight out of his training suit and shining it around, finding only stillness and crisp floors.
Then the door behind him opened, and a light skinned, icy eyed boy walked in.
Kurt.
And they were alone.
Alone.
Again.
“Looks like the newbie was late,” Blaine teased him, but his voice weakly died out as Kurt turned his cold stare onto him.
“Are you training me?” he asked shortly. “Did the director even tell you?”
“Unfortunately, no, he didn’t tell me,” Blaine answered carefully. “But I assume that was what I was sent here to do. Here, let me find a light.” He started sweeping his light across the room to try to find the light switch.
“No need,” Kurt said, somewhere in the middle of the darkness. A small halo of light flickered on, and the few feet around them were bathed in a vintage haze. Kurt stood by a single light bulb resting on top of a metal stand.
“So yeah, training,” Blaine said, approaching Kurt. “Hand to hand combat.”
“No need to teach me, Blaine,” Kurt said, circling the light bulb slowly. “I think I’ve got all the basics down.”
“Do you really?” Blaine asked, trailing behind Kurt. The warmth settled on his skin, but on Kurt’s it seemed to burrow into it.
“Oh yes, yes,” Kurt replied, his lips curving upwards. Blaine didn’t know if he realized what he was doing, but it was sexy.
“We’ll see about that.” Blaine moved quickly, dropping down and rolling outside the ring of light. He crept closer to Kurt, but Kurt seemed to know what he was doing. He leaped out into the darkness too, the brief outline of him that Blaine could see standing vigilantly, waiting.
After a moment’s deliberation, Blaine sprung and up and went to bring a kick to Kurt’s stomach. Kurt quickly dived out of the way, leaving Blaine in the filmy light and Kurt sneaking through the unknown. Blaine dove back into the darkness as well, but didn’t stay still as Kurt did. He crouched low to the ground, his hands and knees making little noise noise as he crawled closer to the sound of Kurt’s faint footsteps, echoing somewhere across the room. He neared his target, and he launched up and tackled Kurt to the ground. They both landed back in the warmth, Kurt looking frazzled, but a firm determination pitting in his eyes. Blaine stayed a little too long leaning over him, looking at that grit resting so easily on him. It was a few moments before he remembered where he was.
“Hand to hand combat, Kurt,” he whispered to him, “not running away.”
He offered him a hand and helped him up, but once he was up, he didn’t let go of his wrists.
“Do you know how to escape from a wrist grab?” Blaine asked him, kindly yet firmly.
Kurt brought his free hand up to slap him in the face, and Blaine released his grip to redirect Kurt’s attack towards the ground.
“Well, that works,” Blaine said, circling Kurt. “But it’s not exactly foolproof.”
He walked in front of Kurt, looking him in the eyes. Calculatedly, he threw a punch. He never meant to connect it, only to keep Kurt on his guard.
Kurt’s eyes widened, but he quickly opened his hand and thrust it forward to push his fist off its line of attack.
“Good,” Blaine said, “But get into fighting stance.”
Kurt stepped his right foot behind him and brought his left arm with a fist in front of his face, and brought his right arm up, slightly lower.
“Block my punches and try to throw some of your own.”
Blaine threw a right hook again, and this time Kurt brought his left arm up to block it, and then went to jab his right arm at Blaine. But Blaine was already anticipating his counter attack, and he jumped back into the darkness. Kurt was left waiting in fighting stance, bouncing slightly on his heels.
“Hey!” he called out to Blaine. “That isn’t fair!”
“Oh, but it is,” Blaine said to himself. Smiling, he crept up behind Kurt, whose back was still turned towards the dark.
“Boo!” he yelled, causing Kurt to yell briefly and whip around to see him.
“Don’t ever do that again!” Kurt yelled exasperatedly, slapping him repeatedly across his shoulder. “I can’t fight my enemy when I can’t see him!”
“Hmm,” Blaine said, looking at Kurt closely. “You can’t fight your enemy when you can’t see him.”
“What?” Kurt asked. His tone was curious. “Where are you going with this?”
“The person who always wins in a battle has to realize that his foremost enemy is always himself.”
“That just seems counterintuitive,” Kurt replied.
“It seems like that at first,” Blaine responded, pacing the length of the halo. “But you always have control over what you do. Whether it’s physical or anything else, even when you don’t have control, you have control.”
“Blaine…” Kurt trailed off.
“You have control, Kurt,” Blaine said, taking a hold of Kurt’s shoulders. At first Kurt tensed up, expecting another attack, but he very quickly relaxed into the touch once it was proven to be gentle. “You have control, I have control.”
The warmth of the light beat down on both of them.
Blaine removed his hands from Kurt’s shoulders, rubbing them absentmindedly. “I like you, Kurt.”
Kurt started edging outside of the circle. “Blaine…”
“No, listen. At least let me say it, okay?”
Kurt stopped on the border.
“I like you a lot, and am I wrong to think that you like me too?”
Kurt stood stock still. “I…I…”
Blaine looked on hopefully.
“I… yes. I do.”
Blaine advanced quickly, and soon he was within kissing distance of Kurt. He stared unabashedly at his lips, deliberately moving his eyes up slowly to meet Kurt’s.
Kurt seemed to visibly be trying to steady himself under Blaine’s gaze.
“But this can’t happen right now, Blaine,” he said warningly. “This can’t happen right now.”
“Why not?” Blaine asked. “Why?”
“Because it just can’t, I’m not ready,” Kurt said, looking like he was trying to shrink into himself.
Blaine wanted badly, for just a moment, to release his inhibitions, to prove Kurt wrong. To grab him in his arms and kiss him. But the animal desire was gone within a second, and Kurt’s cautious stance in front of him was brought back to his mind again. Reluctantly, he kept his desires wounded tight within himself. Looking up brightly at Kurt, he asked, “Can I kiss your hand then?”
Kurt laughed but nodded assent, and Blaine took up his hand and lightly impressed his lips upon them.
“I still very much like you, Kurt Hummel.”
Kurt smiled warmly at him, and Blaine saw it as an affirmation. That it was okay to continue doing this. That Kurt wasn’t going to be afraid of him. He moved back, closer to the lone light bulb, and he beckoned for Kurt to come closer.
“Arms up, back to fighting stance,” he told him reluctantly. Kurt looked reluctant to do it too, fidgeting with his hands at his side. He took half a moment to study Blaine, and Blaine made sure to really look back, focusing his entire being on standing tall and sincere in front of his eyes. Kurt kept his stare on him for a few moments, and then looked away. He raised his arms, he set back his feet. They were back to familiar, emotionally clean territory.
But this time, Kurt was the first to throw a punch.
~~
By 11 o clock, Blaine had gotten home and was ready to go to bed. He had just slipped into his pajamas, and he was about to go to brush his teeth when the doorbell rang.
Rubbing his fists in his eyes, he went to open his apartment door.
He was met by none other than Rachel.
“I’m sleeping here tonight,” she said quickly, loudly, unfolding the blanket she was carrying tucked underneath her arm. “Don’t worry, I’ve already gone through all the hygiene procedures, and as you can see, I’m already changed into my pjs.”
“Wha-“ Blaine began, but Rachel wasted no time in cutting him off.
“-I’ve come here to inquire about your ‘training’ with Kurt.” Her eyes looked wild with the amount of excitement they held. “How’d it go, huh?” She poked him in the arm, practically bouncing on her feet. “How’d it go?”
“It went fine, Rachel, where are you planning to-“
“The couch, Blaine. Don’t worry, I’ve already thought this out.”
“So you came to sleep over here just because you wanted to hear about what happened at this training with Kurt when I didn’t even know Kurt was supposed to be coming?”
Rachel looked as if she were trying to bite back a smile, but Blaine knew her well enough to know that it was just for theatrical effect.
“Did you have some type of influence in this, Rachel?” he asked, already half knowing the answer.
“I may or may not have connections in the agency,” Rachel replied. Blaine wasn’t even surprised; he just nodded.
Blaine was silent for a few moments, hoping Rachel would deem it a lost cause and go home. But Rachel only looked at him eagerly, putting down her things and making herself at home on the couch.
“Fine,” Blaine surrendered, “You want to know the whole story?”
She nodded, just as eager as she looked.
“Fine then,” Blaine sighed, flopping down on the couch. “Join me for story time, then.”
Rachel squeed and cozied up next to him.
“You know, you’re also extraordinarily immature for being a secret agent, you know that?”
“It’s a gift,” Rachel responded. “Now tell me about you and Hummel!”
“Alright, alright,” Blaine acquiesced. “I got there at 7, and all the lights were out…”
~~
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