Loser!
Get out of here!
No one likes you!
Are you spying on us, fag?
Lookin' at my junk, are ya?
You need to learn a lesson!
Get him!
Even though the attack had been hours, if not longer, ago they still stung like they'd been branded on his usually tough skin. One or two slurs a day he could deal with. . . but not this. Slushie mush streamed uncomfortably down his white shirt, soaking him to the bone in the process. The colourful rainbow stains stung at his eyes, mixing with the mush as it pooled at his feet which were curled into a fetal position. Trying to keep body warmth, he clung tighter onto his own flesh until his knuckles turned white and the ground was pooled with dusky light from the late afternoon. They'd be shutting the gates soon. And not a single freaking teacher had decided it was worth to help him? To find him? Even just for registration?
What a -a Hom. . . Homop. . . urgh, he couldn't pronounce it. But they didn't like him. His dad had warned him – ordered, really – not to wear his expensive clothes to school. He'd thought that his dad just didn't like the clothes either. That, or he didn't want him to get sand from the playpen on them. But perhaps his dad knew something he didn't. He didn't want to find out what it was though.
Stupid!
Get out of the way!
Are you fucking kiddin' me?
This fag's just a fucking prick!
Get that stick out yo ass!
Sniffling as the insults tumbled back like a wave, Kurt tipped his head back onto the wall behind him. He'd done it so he could breath easier, but he also found out he could see the beginning of nights blanket starting to settle in. He wished he was at home. He wished his mom and dad would wrap him up and keep him warm. He wished he was worth something, that he was treated normally like the rest of the kids. He wished, he wished, he wished. . .
He wished till the blanket was pulled right over his head and moonlight covered the ground with it's eerie light. He wished till his eyes shut down and he was swept into a cold welcoming sleep.
Xx
Uh oh. This is bad. Kurt awoke with a start, his limbs jolting slightly and his throat dry and parched. What had woken him again? Ah yes. That clicking noise. Stiff limbs powered him to his feet and he crawled to his knees. Nervously, he peered round the brick wall corner and – yes. They'd shut the gates. Headache already forming, he pressed back against the wall and rubbed his moist nose. God, they'd shut the school! Did he fall asleep or something? What could he do now?
Well – he began to run through his options – he could call, no no, those idiots had taken his phone. Wait until tommorow? No, it was the weekend. A six week holiday even – another bang of his head against the wall with a grunt of frustration.
Suddenly a whirring noise behind him noted the passing of a train and Kurt turned his head to watch the shiny lights pass him by. He watched as the train sped past in the distance trough the forest trees, which looked strangely comforting with their gnarled and twisted branches reaching up to brush the dark sky. They looked. . . dare he say it, warm. Kurt could already feel his fingers numbing up, and he knew he needed to be inside or as good as that soon. Rising from his curled up position, he stretched experimently and winced. Yup, still sore. Good to know.
Despite being quite slim, the wire that stretched up above his head looked far to unstable to hoist him up. Perhaps. . . ah yes! Kurt's tired eyes managed to find an opening near the side of the fence, connected corner of the schools playground. Prying away a few looser pieces of metal and bending them back, Kurt drew in a deep breath to make himself slimmer and shimmied through the gap.
Gasping on the other side, it had taken longer than he'd expected, Kurt checked himself in the faint light from above. Cuts laced his hands and he could feel the wind nip as a few on his exposed neck and cheeks. Shuddering, he moved in closer to the woods, his aim to find a rabbit hole or something to curl up in. Or perhaps one of those big trees. Hopefully he wouldn't find the scary one like in Pochahun – all thoughts suddenly stopped and the small pale cut boy fell to the ground like a doll let loose from it's owners grip.
But soon that doll would be found.
Xx
When Kurt woke up early in the morning, he was more than surprised to feel a dark heavy leather jacket wrapped around him, with a few leaves presenting berries from a near by bush. Eyes wide and limbs suddenly all over the place, Kurt scrambled back against the tree when he heard foot steps approaching him.
Is it them? Oh my god, is it them? Are they going to hurt me again? Who helped me? What's going on?
" Oh good!" Called a chiper voice, that certainly wasn't his own. "You're awake."
Kurt suddenly saw his – attacker? Founder? - step through the bushes and almost laughed but couldn't force it past the dry ache in his throat. It was a boy. A boy with rich dark curls and dark lashes fanning his eyes with a colour he couldn't place. The soft on his cheeks made it obvious that they were the same age, or near it anyway.
Kurt simple stared. What else could he do? This was very surreal to him. First of, to be in the woods at all was incredibly odd. But to be in the woods alone, with bruises all along his arms and purple dye staining his shirt and a stranger offering him his coat and berries? That was surreal.
Seemingly not to notice, or not to care at any rate, the dark haired boy hummed cheerfully and collapsed with his legs crossed in front of Kurt on a tree stump. It shouldn't, but the impish grin and pure adorableness of the curls made Kurt relax slightly. He shouldn't talk to strangers, he knew that his mommy told him so, but the boy didn't seem strange so he didn't count right? If anything, Kurt was a stranger. He was in the woods after all.
"Kurt."
"Excuse me?" Echoed the boy, he stopped his humming to frown at the speaker.
"Kurt." He repeated, straightening up a little and kneeling slightly to loosen the stiffness in his muscles. "That's my name."
"Blaine." Grinned the b – Blaine. Reaching forwards a chubby hand, he waited for Kurt to do the same. When he didn't, a pout appeared on his face and he wiggled his fingers slightly. "It's not going to shake itself y'know."
Then Kurt couldn't help it. He laughed. Only lightly and hoarsely, but it was still a laugh. Something he hadn't even heard for over three months. Smiling, he shook the boys hand with his own and winced when Blaine pulled up his sleeve in a fast motions before making a ' hmmm ' noise.
Drawing back, Kurt looked on in slight fear before realising what Blaine had produced from his pocket. He raised a sculpted eyebrow and snorted lightly. "A dino-plaster? What year are you in?"
"Hey! No dino-bashing!" Blaine huffed, unwrapping the plaster to put it on one of the deeper cuts on Kurts arm. "Anyway, I'm probably in the same year as you. We had the same marking system at our school." He nodded towards the yellow pin that had been trapped to Kurts jacket. Kurt hummed non-comminicatedly as he admired the plaster.
"And," Blaine was grinning, "We both like that plaster."
"What? I-I don't!" Huffed Kurt, pouting slightly. " It was shiny! I was distracted by it's shiny-ness!"
Laugh bellowing through the trees, Blaine pushed to his feet and grinned again. "Aww! It's not that shiny! You like the dinosaur, admit it."
" Do not."
" Do too!"
" Not."
"Too!"
Rolling his eyes in the usual Hummel way, Kurt couldn't help the flicker of a grin that threatened to turn into a smile. "We can keep playing this game, or you can tell me if you have any food." Blaine frowned and pointed down to the berries.
" I got you some food though."
" Edible food, Blaine." Kurt snorted, rolling one of the berries in his fingers. " Pretty sure these are posinous." Looking up, he saw Blaine pouting in thought. After a moment, another grin split across his face, curls bouncing adorably as he did so.
" Oh! Oh! Look in the right pocket of the jacket! I had a Kit-Kat that I was going to share with Cooper before he got so mean and I stole it from him." Blaine stuck his tongue out as he shared the news, as if it were a lemon and he didn't like the sour taste.
" Cooper?" Kurt asked, curious to know who's Kit-Kat he was stealing as he rumbled through the pockets. When he found it, he split the four bars into two each, and handed two to Blaine who took them greedily.
" Yea! He's a big meanine! He keeps stealing everything!" Blaine rolled his eyes to communicate his point. "Like, this morning I woke up and my socks were all gone! His feet don't even fit into my socks!"
Giggling, Kurt bit into his Kit-Kat as he listened to Blaine rant about Cooper. When he seemed out of steam and their chocolate was all gone, Kurt scrunched up the wrapper and put it back into the warm pockets. He watched an ant make it's lazy journey across the floor and sighed. Looking back up, he was greeted with silence. Shock echoed through him and he gulped.
"Blaine?"
"Here!" Called the voice from really close by, and suddenly there the block of curls were hanging upside down from the tree. Holding his heart in fright, Kurt snorted and had to tilt his head sideways to see the boy. His knees were folded over a branch so he was hanging like a monkey, smile suiting the act perfectly.
"Why are you upside down?"
"Standing still makes me crazy, and anyway this is good practise for being a fireman!" Giggled the boy, attempting a sit up but reclining back with an over-exaggerated sigh. It made Kurt think. Was that what Blaines dream was? To be a fireman? He couldn't exactly imagine the boy running into the flames like he'd seen in the class presentation on them.
"What do you want to be when you grow up Blaine?" He questioned, after watching the curly mop attempt and failing yet again at a sit up. He was surprised to hear a laugh quickly followed by a squeal as the branch bowed under the boys weight and he slid sideways onto the ground. Still laughing, he prowled back towards Kurt with a grin before putting his head in his hands to look up at his wide blue eyes.
"Not gunna."
" I'm sorry?"
"I'm not going to grow up." Replied Blaine stubbornly, jutting his chin out defiantly. " But, if I HAD too, I'd be one of those bandit people."
"Bandit?"
"Y'know! Stealing from the rich? Giving to the poor? That kind of thing? Well, that's more like Robin Hood. So I'd be stealing from the rich, to give to the me." Smiling at his words, Blaine licked the crumbs of his fingers. Smiling at his choice of words, Kurt sat for a moment.
"What would it be like? Being a bandit?" He wondered aloud, still looking in the boys general direction. He was surprised to suddenly find the boy so near and was pleased to discover the greeny-hazel of his eyes meeting his own clear blue.
"Freeing." Replied the boy, without a trace of doubt in his voice. " You could get away with anything, do anything and you'd still be home in time for tea. You could steal from people you don't know and not feel bad about it. It'd be like a job, but you get to choose when, where and how."
" It sounds. . ." Kurt tried to sum up a word to insult it. He couldn't find one. Well, not one that a boy his age could say anyway. " Fun." He finally shrugged, looking back through the trees canopy again.
" It would be!" Enthused Blaine, clapping his hands excitedly, scooting back so he could talk and not deafen Kurt. "It would be like Batman and Robin! Only they do good stuff, and bandits probably do bad stuff. But it would be bad stuff for other people, and good stuff for you? So it's sort of half and half. It's really sneaky as well, so we'd be like. . . like ninja's or -"
" ' We? ' " Kurt repeated, a little confused. Being a bandit didn't suit him and the bright lights of New York was were his home was anyway. Not here in Ohio.
"Yea! You'd help me out, right? I mean, if you hadn't been here I'd probably have eaten those berries and be dead by now!" What could it have been, Kurt would wonder later, that could have possessed him to reply as he had, when Blaine had asked him the next question, " Well? What do you say? Be the Batman to my Robin? The Sherlock to my Homes? The Kit to my Kat? The peanut butter to my jelly? My accomplice? My right-hand man? Or left-hand. If you're left handed."
Perhaps it was the kind smile in Blaines eyes and on his face, or maybe the way the curls bounced slightly off his face in excitement. Perhaps it had been the way his whole face lit up when his joke was laughed at and not off. Or. . . perhaps it was because this was the kind of thing that Kurt had always wanted. Someone who understood him, brought out the laughter in him and tried to help him if they could.
Or, y'know, it could have been that ridiculous pout on Blaines face when he didn't answer quick enough.
"Fine. But no quoting song lyrics at me!"
"Yes sire!"