Title: Waif
Author: neitherxnory
Rating: T
Characters: Kurt, Blaine, Burt.
Disclaimer: I don't own anything pertaining to Glee or the boys.
Warnings: a little mild violence, a little language, some offensive terminology.
Summary: Tales of a Sixth-Grade Double Agent. Kurt really just wants to play an orphan and find someone who will notice when Bradley kicks the life out of his shins under the lunch table.
When the first shadow passed over the open copy of To Kill a Mockingbird, lending a gloomy air to Atticus Finch's opening statement, Kurt rolled his eyes and preemptively closed the book. Even if it was the school's copy and had—judging by the tell-tale orange processed-cheese-fingerprint stains running down the sides of the pages—seen its fair share of stressful lunch periods, Kurt thought it better to stow the novel before it somehow became ammunition used against his person.
Apparently there was nothing that an under stimulated seventh grader could not MacGyver into a weapon, and school property seemed to earn bonus points in the cosmic game of Torture-the-Sixth-Grader in which Kurt was a star player. Not to mention that lack of respect for John Tyler Middle School property had recently resulted in the fish-scented demise of an entire load of dark laundry after one of Miss Jenkins' class guppies, dropped lovingly into the pocket of Kurt's fleece jacket, managed to make its way unnoticed through a school day and into the wash.
To Kill a Mockingbird made it into Kurt's aqua Jansport backpack with moments to spare; when the boy straightened up, the shadow behind him had coalesced into two older boys who wasted no time in swinging into the picnic-style lunch table on either side of the small youth. Tom and Bradley, meanwhile, appeared across the table, making themselves at home in Kurt's direct line of sight.
The big blonde seventh grader popped both his bookbag and a pair of elbows onto the table in front of him, while Bradley lobbed a crumpled Mountain Dew can onto Kurt's mostly-full cafeteria tray. Because the universe had apparently decided that Kurt needed to be punished for the sins of a past life, the can was still partially full and rapidly leaked fluorescent green sludge onto his lukewarm spaghetti and marinara.
"Lookin' lonely, Hummel," Bradley cackled, kicking at Kurt's shins under the table. "We didn't scare your friends away, did we?" Kurt flushed involuntarily. Halfway through sixth grade he no longer had the excuse of a new school or 'finding his feet,' as his homeroom teacher had suggested. It was almost February and Kurt still ate lunch alone at the table closest to the noisy lunch line and half-attentive teachers' table. That moved him out of the realm of 'shy' and labeled him a capital-L Loser. To Tom's gang of mildly-popular seventh graders, the tiny, gangly boy doing his homework during lunch had become Public Enemy Number One by the middle of September, and the overtly-friendly lunchtime hazing became a daily ritual shortly thereafter.
"I didn't get any dessert today," Kurt mumbled to the table, eyes glued to his half-eaten 'garlic bread,' which he suspected may have actually been improved by the addition of Mountain Dew.
"I dunno if I believe you, baby-face," said Benny in a sing-song voice, scooting closer to Kurt's right side and slinging an arm over his shoulders in a display of faux friendship. Kurt's shoulders hunched even as his eyes darted over to the neighboring table where the four teachers unlucky enough to be saddled with lunch monitor duty chatted amongst themselves. Although none of the adults spared a glance at Kurt's previously peaceful table, Benny seemed to enjoy hamming it up anyways.
"I think you already gobbled up your dessert, didn't you, Chipmunk Cheeks? Stuffed your fat face before we even got through the line?" Mike taunted from Kurt's left, pinching the younger boy's cheek like an affectionate aunt might in a movie—maybe a comedy about a family reunion or My Big Fat Greek Wedding, which Kurt secretly loved—or in the life of someone who wasn't Kurt and had an affectionate aunt who wasn't a boozy alcoholic. Bradley's voice dragged the younger boy back to the present.
"Aww, is that what happened, Hummel? Did widdle Kurt eat up all his sweets like a bad widdle boy?" The bigger boy scrunched up his nose and baby-talked his way through the taunts. Kurt declines to answer, instead shrugging his shoulders in a futile attempt to dislodge Benny's arm. Benny retaliated by shaking Kurt's body from side to side, snapping the small boy's head back and forth on his shoulders as Mike and Tom laughed.
"I bet that's exactly what happened," Tom cackled, shoving his backback off the table and onto the floor behind him.
"Bad boy!" Bradley scolded, voice still pitched high as if berating a toddler or misbehaving animal. Kurt, still staring at his tray, had no warning when Bradley's foot made solid contact with his shin. The maneuver was, no doubt, an act coordinated by the group of seventh graders at some point. Even as Kurt jumped and scrabbled his feet back under his own bench seat, Mike and Benny scooted closer to the sixth grader, trapping him in place against the bench as Tom's foot connected with Kurt's right knee. When his legs reflexively popped back under the table, Bradley again nailed him in the shin.
The under-the-table battering continued even as the older boys started making obnoxiously loud comments about some NBA game from the night before, occasionally shooting blatant glances over to the still-oblivious teachers. Kurt squeezed his eyes shut and suffered in silence, occasionally kicking out but tapering off his attempts at retaliation after Mike gave him a hard swat to a kidney. After a few minutes, however, Bradley swung one leg back over the bench, grinned at Kurt and clambered out from the table.
"Save us some brownie tomorrow, buddy," he drawled, shoving Tom's shoulder as the other seventh-graders also made to exit.
"Yeah, do yourself a favor and leave some for the starving kids in India!" Mike chimed in. Kurt did himself a favor and did not point out how little sense that taunt made.
"Save me a seat tomorrow, Hummel!" Benny tossed over his shoulder as the group migrated over to the seventh grade's unofficial section of the cafeteria. When he was relatively sure that they would stay gone for the remainder of the lunch period, Kurt gingerly stretched his legs under the table and reached a few feet to his left for his shoved-aside blue backpack. As he retrieved To Kill a Mockingbird and found his abandoned place in the trial scene, Kurt absently wondered how normal kids had spent the last seven minutes of their lives while he was being beaten under a grimy plastic cafeteria table.
"You must play soccer," postulated a smiling voice from somewhere over Kurt's head. Kurt snapped straight from where he had been doubled over on a lover room bench to untie one of his bright white sneakers.
"Pardon?" he stammered, looking up—though not particularly far up—to the boy who had erroneously assumed that Kurt Hummel would ever voluntarily sweat in his free time. Said boy was small, sported a fluffy-looking mop of black curls and had paired the John Tyler gym uniform with knee-high socks. Kurt classified him 'non-threatening' and responded with only minimal fear of retaliation.
"I think your glasses are fogged up: no one has ever mistaken me for an athlete." The other boy's glasses were fogged up: he had obviously just traipsed in from outside with the other P.E. section, which had the bad luck of being on a kickball unit in January in Ohio. Kurt's class fared slightly better with a 'cardio unit, which in public school terminology translated to Mr. Acres rolling out a TV to play a VHS copy of Sweating to the Oldies. Kurt surmised that the actual purpose of the video was to achieve weight loss through the violent nausea induced by Richard Simmons' exercise costume, but the lack fo physical contact required by this unit was a refreshing change from the previous unit, which had been handball.
"They are kinda fogged up," the standing boy admitted, still smiling. "But not so much that I can't see you totally got cleated!" Kurt supposed that this probably required a verbal response of some sort, but was momentarily distracted by the other sixth-grader removing his glasses, presumably to defog them, and—ok, wow—that was a nice smile. Then the glasses were back on and Kurt was left to stare awkwardly at the nose region of some kid in knee socks.
"I don't play soccer," Kurt asserted, blushing a bit and staring instead at his own, untied, Reeboks. On the way down, however, his eyes caught on the perfect outline of an athletic shoe stamped on his shin, filled in with the reddish-purple beginnings of a splendid bruise. His eyes flicked back up to the other kid, whose face was working towards the beginnings of a confused pout. Almost involuntarily, Kurt found his mouth opening to blurt out the first thing he could think of.
"...well! I don't play soccer well! I'm actually really horrible at it and I'm always getting stepped on because I'm practically a midget and it kind of sucks but..." Kurt's voice petered out even as he inwardly slapped himself about the head. Damn that smile; he was going to regret this almost immediately. Instead of laughing at Kurt's ineptitude, however, Short-and-Curly merely giggled—giggled!—and toed out of his shoes.
Kurt sat frozen; no one ever changed in this row of lockers. Everyone knew that Kurt 'lived' back here, as if he were a troll or some kind of leper who might poison the other sixth-graders with his unpopularity. Yet here was another boy, plopping down within five feet of Kurt to peel off his patently ridiculous and, frankly, cliché knee socks.
"It's ok, it's not like I'm some kind of giant either!" the dark-haired boy laughed, apparently completely oblivious. "But, hey! You're trying out for the team, right? We could practice together sometime. Us little guys have to stick together. Plus we've only got two weeks to get in shape and I bet running drills would be much more effective with two people..." The other boy rambled on happily, hands suddenly yanking at the hem of his grey gym shirt.
Kurt, faced with the prospect of someone voluntarily changing in his vicinity for the first time in his life, did the only logical thing and bolted, grabbing his clothes from the bench and running for the stalls like they would protect him if this strange creature should decide to go completely crazy and start dancing on the benches or something.
Kurt winced as he gingerly stepped into his basic grey jeans, both at the pressure on his rising bruises and the realization that he had left his backpack sitting unattended in the locker room. He always brought it in with him when he changed in the stalls now, afraid that the other kids would do something more inventive than merely flushing his things in a –full—toilet the next time he left them unattended.
He slammed out of the toilet stall in a panic, not even bothering to fix his hair in the mirror as he rushed back to where he had left Knee Socks—obviously a clever stripping decoy—with his wallet and cell phone. When he swung around the corner, however, his back was mostly unmolested. His Earth Sciences textbook had been pulled most of the way out of the bright blue bag, but a quick rummage through the rest of the contents revealed everything left untouched.
The only sign of foul play was one corner of his paper-bag-wrapped science textbook, which had been graffitied with a quickly-drawn Sharpie soccer ball, a question mark and a smiley face. Below, the boy had written 'Blaine' and followed it with a phone number that, at first glance, did not appear to be the Rejection Hotline.
Kurt blinked, confused by what appeared to be a genuine attempt to make genuine, human contact with him, Kurt Hummel, the least popular kid in the sixth grade and possibly in the state of Ohio. Maybe soccer wouldn't be the worst thing in the world. Then Kurt remembered the flyer on the bulletin board outside the art room.
Kurt remembered The Plan, which started with auditions for the spring musical, Oliver! Kurt desperately wanted his chance at middle school stardom. Barring that, he wanted to have someone to sit with at lunch; someone who might notice Bradley and his goons kicking the life out of his shins under the table or spilling three cartons of milk down the back of his pants or putting dead classroom pets in his pockets. Having castmates might be the solution to this problem. Coincidentally, the title role may as well have been written for Kurt Hummel, the tiny kid whose boy-soprano voice hadn't dropped and whose body hadn't shot up.
So, yes, Oliver! was Kurt's ticket up. Sorry, Blaine. Sorry, soccer.
AN: Forgive me while I mess around with your characters! Let's be honest; I just want to see awkward!Klaine being awkward middle-schoolers together before they've really discovered themselves or settled into the personas we see on the show. Let me know what you think!
Next chapter: Papa Hummel. Get excited.