AN: Hello! So this would be my first Glee fanfiction I guess. The story begins during "Never Been Kissed," and sort of veers off course a bit. I ship Klaine and love angst and fluff, and those things will probably really shine through. I have a bit of a Klaine story to follow this, so this shouldn't be the end. Reviews are love and motivation!
COURAGE - - - BLAINE
He'd slipped his phone out of his pocket for what seemed like the hundredth time since he'd received the message during Glee club rehearsal. He couldn't help it, the corners of his mouth turned up into a rare silly grin, one that he so sparsely sported in these familiar hallways that he seemed hardly recognizable, too-deep dimples his elderly relatives found pleasure in poking and coo-ing over visiting the tender skin at the edge of his lips as he read and reread the slightly fingerprinted screen of his iPhone. And then the words disappeared.
Smack
His shoulder blades came quickly in contact with the chilled metal of the locker he'd hit, his eyes still trained on his phone which, after being swatted out of his hand, spun across the hallway and narrowly avoided being crushed by the stomping teenage feet which trampled around it, it's message still brightly glowing as it thumped against the opposite wall. His mind registered pain and a shudder ran from his now aching shoulders down to his neatly filed toenails, bruises along his back from past encounters with his current tormentor springing to life on contact with locker 7046. Unfazed, Karofsky spun to face him one last time, his face a hard, glossed-over mask, before stalking away.
Kurt couldn't tell you whether or not things would have been different had it not been for his trip to spy on the Warblers, for Blaine's counseling, or for the word, three hyphens, and six-lettered name currently clouded by a "Low Battery" warning throbbing on the screen of his phone across the hall, but suddenly he was tossing himself after the burly football player, calling out as if it wasn't the most terrifying thing he'd ever done. On his way he passed so many faces hosting empty glances, each familiar considering how consistently he watched as they refused to turn his way or pick him up from the filthy floor, which had always left him brushing off his designer jeans after collecting himself.
"I am talking to you!" he screeched, approximately two octaves higher than he would have wished to squeak out in the presence of the overgrown child who consistently mocked him for those damned countertenor vocals. He wasn't sure who he was talking to, however, when he demanded "What is your problem?" in response to a predictable "you're a girl" quip from David. Because whose problem was this anyway? Was it the ignorant, vicious boy before him, or the tiny, meek victim in his mind who screamed at him to take those few steps out and escape the confines of the empty locker room before the larger boy got any good swings in?
"Excuse me?" And now Karofsky was turning to face him and Kurt was once again taken aback by just how large the right guard was and beginning to wonder just how many inches and especially pounds the jock's frame must have had on his own petite silhouette. "What are you so scared of?"
"Besides you sneaking in here to peek at my junk?" suggested David, tossing aside the cleats he'd just pulled from his locker, giving Kurt just a moment to wonder what exactly he intended to do with his now free hands before he retaliated. "Oh, yeah, every straight guy's nightmare, that all gays are secretly out to molest and convert you, well guess what, Hamhock? You're not my type." He took a breath and realized that his brain must have needed the oxygen, considering that it was suddenly switched on and noticing that what the hell was he doing? Did he want to sleep in the dumpster outside the school tonight?
"That right?" Now Karofsky was inching his way forward, towering over him and just daring Kurt's shining blue eyes to glance upward and meet his own sharp glare. "Yeah…" The proximity was horrifying. So many biting remarks would have usually scared the dim-witted jerk off with a perplexed, grunt and superior jerk of the head. Why was he so close? "I don't dig on chubby boys who sweat too much and are going to be bald by the time they're thirty."
His fist in the air, swinging briefly at nothing in warning, Karofsky managed "Do not push me, Hummel" through a set of gritted teeth, temporary stunning the younger boy. He's struggling, Kurt thought. Maybe he could get him to leave, to back away and give him space to breathe again. Maybe he could frighten him off, confuse him, challenge him until Kurt could take a step or two forward himself without smacking into the football player.
"You gonna hit me? Do it." The locker between them slammed shut.
He was sick of this.
"Don't push me."
Why the hell not?
"Because it's not gonna change who I am. You can't punch the gay out of me any more than I can punch the ignoramus out of you!"
"Get out of my face!" The scream echoed for a moment and seemed to scare them both before Kurt, who was the one to close the gap between them this time, mustered up one last ounce of courage – thank you, Blaine – and shook a single finger just like a mother would have done shouting the final thing he knew to be true "You are nothing but a scared little boy who can't handle how extraordinarily ordinary he is!"
Everything happened very quickly, then.
Kurt didn't know much about romance. He'd read an array of books with serious-looking men with flowing hair and unbuttoned tops and sweet, busty, flawless women gracing their covers. He'd watched eighties movies and had maybe too many petty duets from albums, soundtracks, and cast recordings alike on his iPod, but he knew nothing of what it meant to be intimate. He had gathered though, that a kiss was meant to be soft, and warm. You were supposed to want more, and want it badly. You were supposed to feel that spark – those fireworks, like it was the fourth of July and you were looking up above you from a picnic blanket at the blooming fireworks and munching happily on a twizzler or some other snack food. You were supposed to be in love, and the introduction of your lips to one another was supposed to be a release, a way to say "I love you" while rendering your lips unavailable to voice it themselves.
You weren't supposed to feel like this. Kurt wasn't supposed to feel like this.
They were warm, sure, the lips so desperately pressed against his, as was the steamy breath spilling from Karofsky's nostrils, heating his face uncomfortably. There was no softness however, not in the way the kiss had landed or was continuing despite him, not in the way ten thick, calloused fingers dug at his skull and stretched the skin of his face in all directions, not how the same fingers curled in his hair, and certainly not in the way he was being pulled forward, more so than he would have thought possible in the short distance between the two boys.
And the rush of adrenaline through his veins, the surge of terror and anxiety was different from that of finally giving into instinct and planting your own lips against those of the gorgeous boy you first met on a staircase, who fixed your lapel and held your and practically serenaded you with the latest and greatest Katy Perry song. This was different because the terror was real. There were no butterflies fluttering about his stomach,
because God only knows how trapped and tangled they'd be in the knots. Kurt wasn't one to be afraid. But here he was, under fire and holding on to his own sanity for dear life only seconds into the excruciating one-sided madness that was this pathetic excuse for a first kiss.
The lips were moving against his. Were his own lips supposed to move as well? In the movies, they did, right? In those too-pretty movies in bright colors where the girls would wear simple dresses in tacky cuts and the boys had hair caked in product, the camera would always zoom in to show the crushing of their lips and both sides would falter and finally collapse into it and they'd sway against one another and move and maybe even open their mouths a little bit.
But this wasn't one of those classic slumber party-esque chick flicks, and Kurt couldn't tell whether his heart was beating wildly or had stopped completely. It hurt the way David held him too tightly and fought so strongly against him, because, oh, Kurt was struggling now, wasn't he? Squirming aimlessly against the grasps of the hands he hadn't known were capable of this, of anything more than comparatively harmless shoves and tosses.
He didn't want this. He wanted to pull away, to shout, to scream, but most of all, to somehow fix an obvious mistake he had made. If he'd just fallen to the floor like the broken boy he would never admit to having become, just held his knees to his chest and waited out the pain and humiliation before joining the oblivious crowds, things would be different. Why had he followed the jock here? Why had he come after him thinking he could possibly get away with it, considering the other boys pure strength and size?
Oh, that was right, Blaine.
Perhaps he shouldn't have been thought of the way that Blaine had accidentally sent him here with his vaguely inspiring text message. And he certainly shouldn't have been thinking about how much less he would have been struggling if it had been Blaine's warm lips on his, and Blaine's cool breathe swirling across his face. But he was, and suddenly, as if it hadn't been so earlier, he wished to be anywhere else, having this, his first real kiss, with anybody else.
They parted after what felt like ages, not, of course, because of Kurt's futile attempts at forcing the older boy away, but simply to allow David to suck in a steady breath, his eyes gleaming as he stared heartlessly back at Kurt with so much longing and need that Kurt's ordinarily porcelain skin flushed before he shakily dragged in a gulp of oxygen, still polluted with the larger boy's breath.
Karofsky had stolen something from Kurt, something that he had meant to preserve and only give away to the man he loved when the time was right. There he was, his terror-stricken, confused mind wandering quickly, because what would he tell his father, and Blaine, and lord, oh, lord, what would he tell his grandchildren when he and his husband sat next to each other on a loveseat and he was forced to answer just how long he had loved the man who was holding him and whether they had met in high school and who, then, had he had his oh-so-important first kiss with? when he noticed David lunging forward to rob him once again, this time of his second kiss.
His hands mechanically rose to meet a muscular chest and give it a shove away, his eyes wet and cloudy, his moth agape and unprotected, throwing the other boy slightly off balance, as if he wasn't expecting the resistance, as if he hadn't even noticed that Kurt had been fucking resisting him the entire time. The tears swarming Kurt's eyes threatened to spill over at that thought. Karofsky hadn't noticed. He hadn't even noticed. And as Karofsky dove forward, taking him roughly by the shoulders this time, Kurt knew he'd lost, because his struggling, his silent pleas, his obvious terror, hadn't even registered in the thick skull of the boy who held him so tightly and kissed him so desperately.
This isn't what I want, he screamed internally as Karofsky's hungry lips met his again, and one of the unfamiliar hands skillfully snaked its way down his free arm, grasping at his wrist and pulling it to his own thick waist. The other cupped his chin, sickeningly gentle as it handled the lightly stubbled chin, holding it in place. Kurt's arm was given a yank, nearly causing him to cry out into the hot mouth pressed against his as his shoulder threatened to free itself from its socket, and forced to settle at David's hipbone.
He wants me to want this. He wants me to want it as badly as he does.
And David Karofsky did want this. Granted, he wasn't exactly the most flamboyant guy in school, as a member of the McKinley High football team, and the first to shout out homophobic slurs at Kurt in the halls without a second thought or a guilty conscious. Yet here he was, gripping the shoulder and chin of the one out kid in school, wanting him so badly that he didn't think that he could ever get close enough to, ever taste enough of this beautiful, innocent boy.
Kurt felt hopeless. One armed pinned between his own and his attacker's chests, the other beneath David's hand at the base of his letterman's jacket, his feet necessarily planted to the floor to avoid toppling over as he was tilted backwards, Karofsky consistently leaning forward, into him, coming closer and closer even as they touched, there was little, nothing, he could do.
Karofsky opened his mouth against Kurt's. His tongue licked sloppily at the other boy's lips and when denied entrance, retreated momentarily, before Kurt felt a nibble at his lower lip, causing him to gasp, and allowing David's tongue the space it craved to invade. He tasted like soap and dirt and spit and all sorts of other nasty things. Evidently, David was far more pleased with the taste of Kurt, his tongue swimming around, exploring Kurt's mouth, sliding across each and every one of his teeth and performing some sort of dance with Kurt's reluctant tongue, which, to David's disappointment, refused to reciprocate. He needed the boy to want him. He needed to feel fucking wanted even if he was a filthy fag and so was the single boy who could even understand him, the same boy he was leaning down to force into a kiss producing sparks only he could truly feel.
Kurt's lips were swollen and wet with their combined saliva and his salty tears, finally steaming down his face and pooling just above where the two boys seemingly became one. His neatly trimmed nails clawed at Karofsky's chubby waist, but did little damage. Suddenly he noticed that his chin had been freed. Shaking his head to face the lockers, he opened his mouth as wide as it would allow and let out a scream that was strangled by his sobs and swollen throat before it had a chance to reach the open.
And - holy hell, was that a hand on his ass? It was and shit shit shit it was grabbing at him and his muscles were clenching beneath the fingers, which were beginning to roam and squeeze and pat and rub as if they thought they fucking belonged there and could do whatever the hell they wanted. He let out a short whimper as the hand delightedly tightened its grasp, which was quickly cut off by Karofsky's mouth once again once he'd begun craving the taste after so many seconds parted.
With David's tongue down his throat and David's chapped hands on his ass it was all Kurt could do not to lose consciousness right then and there. He stiffened, entirely numb to the sensory overload that was taking him at the moment, as the larger boy turned the two of them, allowing Kurt's back to slam, hard, into a closed locker.
Karofky's hand released Kurt's wrist to find the smaller boys throat, pinning it against the cold red metal. Kurt should have been shrieking, shouldn't he? And teachers and students should have been running to find him at the sound, should have been rescuing him. But only silence erupted from either boy as his eyes, dripping even as he futilely attempted to blink the tears away and clear his vision, locked with Karofky's, the larger boy having pulled his swollen mouth away for only a moment, pressing his hand just a bit further against Kurt's throat so that a final half-breath left the smaller boy's mouth and no others were permitted entrance.
"Fucking faggot."
Fucking faggot.
AN: So… what do you think? Klaine is coming, I promise you that much. Also, in future chapters, you'll get a chance to see what went down in the locker room. Oh, and if you care, I do have a Tumblr. My url is noplaceforabasketcase, so feel free to follow! Review, review, review!