Welcome back, reader! I hope you all are ready for a new chapter!
Disclaimer: I do not own anythng or anyone from Glee. All rights belong to FOX.
A few days later, Kurt and Blaine were sitting at the adoption agency, waiting in a small office for a woman from the agency, Miss Shepard, to come in and speak to them.
"Do she think she can find him?" Kurt asked.
"I'm sure she can," Blaine replied, "Every kid in the system probably has a file on them. I'm sure she will find our boy."
"Our boy." Kurt replied, "What a nice ring it has to it."
Both men smiled at each other as the door behind them opened up. The both rose to their feet, shaking hands with the bright eyed woman named Miss Shepard.
"So," Miss Shepard began as she sat down at her desk in front of the two men, "What brings you two gentlemen here today?"
"We are looking to adopt," Kurt informed the young lady.
"Oh!" The woman let out a happy gasp. Right away, she began to open drawers to her desk, pulling out several files, "Well we have plenty of children who need homes. Any age, gender, all these children need a home, and I have several suggestions of who I think would be just perfect for you!"
"Actually," Blaine interrupted the woman's scattering, "We have a child already."
"Oh," The woman repeated, just in a softer tone, "Are you looking to adopt again?"
Blaine smiled softly.
"We know who we want to adopt. He is a boy, a teenager. My husband and I have the issue of we do not know this boy's name. We want to know who he is so we may adopt him."
She opened her mouth to speak, and then closed it to collect her thoughts.
"I'm sorry, but you do know how many children are in this system? And in New York City alone? You're asking me to find a needle in a stack of needles for you."
"This boy shouldn't be that hard for you to narrow to down," Kurt said, "Please, just let us give you a description of you."
"Okay, tell me about him."
"He has light brown hair," Blaine informed, "And blue eyes. He's average height for his age, which is probably around 15. He was fair skinned, like he was Irish. Oh yes! He also had an Irish accent. It wasn't fake, I could tell. It was a thick accent…"
"I know just who you're talking about!" Miss Shepard exclaimed, her fingers quickly brushing over the keys of her keyboard as she began to type away.
"His name is Rory Flanagan. He's fourteen now, fifteen at the end of the August. He's been in our system since he was eight years old. Nobody really knows how he ended up here in America. He grew up in Ireland, and then when he was eight, he was found alone in a hotel room. Ever since then he has bounced around from foster home to foster home since then."
"Can we arrange some kind of meeting or something?" Blaine asked, "We want to meet him and get straight to adopting as soon as possible."
"I will see if we can arrange a meeting this afternoon, but I need to warn you that Rory isn't the friendliest person out there. Being bounced around so much has caused him to form a rather protective shell."
Picking up the office phone, Miss Shepard placed it against her ear as she began to dial a number. As she began to speak into the phone, Kurt and Blaine linked hands, holding their breaths as they waited for the young lady to get off the phone.
One hand gripping the strap of his backpack and the other in his pocket, Rory made his way down the empty neighborhood street. His summer school classes had been let out early for the day due to the unbearable heat and a broken air conditioning system.
"Hey, where you heading?" A voice shouted after him.
Rory nearly froze. The voice belonged to none over the leader of his tormenters at school, John.
"Hey lassie, I asked you a question!" John yelled, "Where you heading Irish?"
Snickers from John's crew broke out from behind Rory, but the young blue eyed boy kept walking. John continued to call out to him, and some of his friends piped in front time to time.
"Come on Rory, we just want to talk to you about an extra credit assignment for gym!" John called out, "We need a punching bag to practice on for boxing, and let's face it, and you're perfect!"
Rory could feel his face drain of all color. He couldn't come home all beaten up again. He would send poor Mrs. Cross into a panic, and the foster system would surely relocate him if they believed if he was danger.
Breaking out into a sprint, Rory moved his feet as fast as he could. John began to shout at him and each other, commanding him to stop and the others to speed up.
"Run, Rory," The boy chanted in his head, "Don't stop till you get home."
His chant was interrupted by a tackle to the concrete ground. His head slammed against the hard ground, causing a piercing pain to shoot through it. Suddenly a hand was on his shoulder, and he was flipped over so he was staring at the blue sky.
Then, the six foot, menacing figure of John came into his vision.
"Do you understand what the word 'stop' means Flanagan?" John asked.
"Yes," Rory choked out.
"Oh, so you speak and understand English?" Leaning down, John grabbed Rory by the collar of his shirt, yanking the boy upwards and off the ground. "If you understand English, then why didn't you answer me before, Irish?"
Rory didn't answer. He merely blinked his blue eyes.
Throwing Rory back onto the ground, John let out a frustrated sigh. Rory hit the ground with hard impact, and right away, his back began to ache.
"Just, please go away," Rory pleaded.
"All I wanted to do was just having someone to screw around with," John said, "We all could have been great friends Rory. But you don't understand what a joke is, and you tattled on me and my buddies to the teachers. Punishment has to be in order for you, just like it was for us."
"I didn't know!" Rory shouted as he began to crawl away from the six looming boys, "I am sorry! Please!"
"Don't be a wussy," John's right hand man, Adrian, piped as he cracked his knuckles, "Take your beating like a man."
A hard kick to the rib cage caused Rory to grunt.
"Leave me alone!" Rory yelled as he scrambled to get onto his feet, only to be pushed back down to the ground by John.
"Shut up!" The older boy roared.
Standing up onto his wobbly feet, Rory staggered forward and swung at John, missing by a mile. The older boy laughed and swung his fist, hitting Rory right in the lip, splitting open the boy's lip.
"Get him again!"
"Kick his ass!"
"Come on John!"
His friends' words of encouragement fueled John. Throwing another punch, John nailed Rory right in the stomach, causing the boy to lose his breath. Not giving the boy to even recover, John threw another punch at Rory's face. The impact caused Rory to lose his balance and go spiraling down into the wall next to him, his body slamming hard against the bricks. Falling into a helpless heap on the ground, Rory shut his eyes and remained still.
"John," A boy named Nathan whispered after a few minutes, "Is he alive."
"Yeah, Irish is fine." Rory could hear panic in John's voice.
It clicked with him. They thought they had knocked him out.
"Dude, you killed him!" Adrian shouted.
"He's fine!" John shouted back, "Irish, get up!"
John nudged Rory with his foot, but the Irish boy did not move.
"Irish, stop screwing with us and get up!"
Again, Rory stayed still.
"Oh god, what do we do?" Adrian shouted. "The kid is going to sue us! I can't go back to Juvie! Not again!"
"Let's just get out of here!" John screamed. Right away, the pounding of running footsteps sounded Rory waited till he couldn't hear them anymore.
Opening his eyes, Rory pushed his sore body off the ground. Leaning against the wall for support, he waited till his sudden dizzy spell passed before gathering his fallen backpack up the ground.
With a pained face, he began to walk home again.
"I am so happy that you two are interested adopting in Rory!" Mrs. Cross gushed as she set two cups of tea in front of the men sitting at her table, "I get other couples who are interested in the other children here, but not once in the two years since Rory arrived here have I had anyone asked about him."
"Well, Blaine and I aren't like most couples," Kurt joked as he took a sip from his tea cup.
"When should Rory be arriving home?" Blaine asked.
Glancing at the wall clock behind her, Mrs. Cross burrowed with worry.
"He's probably just running a little late, that's all," The aging woman answered, "He should be home any minute. His summer school teachers tend to keep him after a lot."
"Summer school?" Blaine repeated.
"I'm afraid so," Mrs. Cross replied, "Rory had a hard year in school with bullies, and they just kept picking on the poor soul…" Mrs. Cross trailed off from a moment as she took a sip of her tea. "He didn't want them to break him down, so he fought back against them. Well, the bullies were able to turn the tables on him and make it seem like the sweet boy was the one starting the fights, and the school took away his credits for classes, so he was placed in summer school to make them up."
"That's so awful," Kurt gasped.
"It was hard on Rory," Mrs. Cross sighed, "And I do fear that his bullies may still be picking on him, but the boy won't speak a word on if things are repeating themselves."
"Poor kid," Blaine muttered.
The three in the room lasped into silence for a moment. The front door of the apartment began to click and jiggle slightly, signaling somebody was at that door.
"That must be Rory!" Mrs. Cross exclaimed. The woman stood from her chair, disappearing into the main hallway to greet her foster son at the door. Kurt and Blaine remained in the kitchen, sitting anxiously in their chairs as they waited for Mrs. Cross to reappear in the room with Rory.
"Oh god Rory," Kurt and Blaine heard Mrs. Cross softly gasp from the main hallway.
"I'm sorry," An Irish voice whispered back, "I didn't know they were following me. I tried to defend myself but they just had the upper hand."
"Stay right here," Mrs. Cross intruscted to the boy, "We are going to the hospital."
Kurt and Blaine casted worried looks at each other as Mrs. Cross emerged back into the kitchen.
"I'm so sorry, but perhaps we can rearrange this meeting for another day."
"Is everything alright?" Blaine asked.
"I will have Miss Shepard set up a meeting for Friday perhaps. It was very nice meeting you."
Mrs. Cross grabbed her purse and car keys from the counter and rushed back out into the main hallway. Kurt and Blaine rose to their feet themselves, following the woman into the hallway.
And what they saw caused Kurt to cover his mouth from letting out a gasp, and Blaine to bite the insides of his cheeks.
It was Rory. Blaine recognized him clearly being the same boy from the subway, and the husbands knew it was him from the picture of the boy Miss Shepard had showed them. However, the smiling face that had seen in the picture was far gone.
There was a gash on his forehead, and blood had been coming out of it, but had dried and caked to the side of his face. There was a large bruise forming near his right eye, and his lip was split open. The boy was currently sitting in a chair, his head resting against the wall behind him.
Mrs. Cross was helping the boy onto his feet. But as soon as he was on his feet, he was falling right back down into the chair. Blaine and Kurt both rushed forward.
"Let us help you," Kurt told the woman. "You're too emotional right now. Blaine and I will help you take Rory to the hospital, okay?"
Nodding her head, Mrs. Cross agreed.
Bending down, Blaine picked up Rory into his arms. Mrs. Cross opened the front door and Kurt followed her out, and Blaine scooted his way out the door with Rory in his arms.
Rory opened his eyes to find himself staring at moving lights above him. Then his blue eyes shifted slightly, and he was staring at the face of someone.
"Mr. Cross?" He whispered, even though he knew it wasn't his foster father.
"It's alright kid," The man looked down at him, "I'm helping your foster mom get you to the hospital, okay? You got roughed up a bit."
"Yer' from the subway a few days ago," Rory realized, "Yer' wanted to make sure that I was 'right."
"Yeah, I am. My name is Blaine."
"I'm Rory."
"Well Rory," Blaine smiled, "We are going to get you to the hospital. Just relax, alright?"
It was then Rory realized he had tensed his aching body up. Slowly relaxing, he shut his eyes as the Blaine step into the elevator.
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-Halfmyheart2
