Notes: Mixed metaphor intended. Thanks again to everyone who reviewed, especially Ellie (you made me blush).
Also, in my own fantasy-world the Hudson-Hummel clan is still a functioning family unit, and they have worked through the damage caused by Finn's outburst during Theatricality.
.
Slinking into the house undetected was not an option. The best Kurt could hope for was bolting from front door to basement and hoping nobody thought it was weird enough to come down and try to talk to him. Running, Kurt decided, was also not an option. He took a deep breath and opened the door, sending a silent prayer to the gods of blended families that Carole was the first person (and only - please, thank you, goodnight) who saw him.
He pushed open the front door and found that, yet again, the gods were not smiling on him. The very first person he came across was Finn, who blurted aloud; "What happened to your face!"
"I got run over by an ice-cream truck," Kurt snapped, consciously trying not to glare at the other boy (because glaring, just like smiling, would hurt his face right now). "Apparently pointing out the calorie count of chocolate soft-serve is not a good idea these days."
Kurt pushed past the taller boy and stalked resolutely towards the basement. He was still running on the hope that he could at least make it to changing his shirt before his father got a good look at him. He knew he couldn't avoid his father finding out about the beating, or who had done it, but he'd feel better if when it happened he wasn't still as dishevelled and bloody as he was now. Luck was, for just a moment, on his side. He breezed down the stairs and into the basement, Finn trailing after him like a large, concerned puppy-dog.
"Do we have any tiger balm?" he asked, remembering Puck's advice. Normally he wouldn't even consider taking advice from Noah Puckerman, but bruises and 'sports injuries' were something he might actually know about. It seemed likely, and it wasn't as if Kurt had much of a routine for bruises except an icepack and aloe.
"Deep heat cream?" Finn asked dumbly, part of him unable to reconcile the fact that Kurt Hummel - ice prince extraordinaire - was so thoroughly beaten that he needed any assistance at all. "Uh, sure. I think. Let me go check..."
Finn's side of the basement room had started taking on bits and pieces of his persona over the summer, which meant it was both messier and much less coordinated that the other side of the room. It took him just over a minute to find the battered tube of deep heat cream, which had been languishing in a sports bag that he kept meaning to take to school with him.
By the time he turned around to give it to Kurt the smaller boy was seated in front of his vanity, dressed in a plain grey t-shirt that was probably some designer label Finn had never heard of and worth more than it deserved to be. Of all things to be doing, the soprano was currently fixing his hair.
Finn's incredulity must have shown on his face, because for just a moment Kurt's reflection looked hurt, then his face smoothed over into that odd emotionless mask again. "I'm not obsessed," he said, not meeting Finn's eyes in the mirror. "I just don't want to look like such a mess when I tell dad. It's going to be bad enough as it is."
Finn still remembered the look on Burt Hummel's face when he had been the subject of the man's fatherly wrath, and that had only been over a few slurs. His almost-stepfather's reaction to Kurt's bruises was bound to be ten times worse. (Or better, he thought privately. It all depended on what your definition of a good reaction to your son being beat up happened to be.)
"Here," Finn said, placing the balm down on the vanity to Kurt's right. "I'm going to go get you some ice. Should I tell mom and your dad that you're not feeling well, so you don't have to come up for dinner?"
"No," Kurt replied, a stubborn set to his mouth. "It's ok, I'll come up."
"I'll get that ice."
Finn almost thought he hallucinated Kurt's prim thank you, but he knew the other boy better than that now. Kurt's pride was bound to be hurting, so he'd appreciate it more if Finn didn't make a big deal out of things. Finn might not be the brightest tool in the shed sometimes, but he knew people and he knew when not to make a fuss of things.
He took the stairs in twos, up to the kitchen in record time. A moment's thought and he took a detour past the linen cupboard for a hand towel to wrap the ice in, he couldn't remember ever seeing any gel packs in the freezer. Sure enough the only ice was the cubed kind, and Fin popped half a tray's worth into the middle of the hand towel before he wrapped the lot up into a makeshift ice pack.
He was putting the ice tray back where it belonged when his mother walked into the kitchen to start on dinner. "Finn?" Carole saw the ice and tsked. "Don't tell me you were hurt in practice this season already?"
"No, mom." Finn shook his head, hesitated, then decided it was best to give the truth. It would come out one way or another anyway. he gestured to the makeshift ice pack. "It's for Kurt. I think he got jumped after school..."
"Jumped?" Carole repeated, instantly switching to concerned mother mode. "What do you mean jumped?"
"You know... jumped." Finn shrugged helplessly. "I think... he might have a broken nose."
Carole looked alarmed. "Oh, honey." She took the ice pack and practically trotted to the basement, ignoring Finn's "I don't think he wants a big deal made out of it" except to tell him; "A broken nose is a big deal."
She barged into the basement room and paused only for a moment at the bottom of the stairs when she caught sight of Kurt's bruised face reflected in the vanity mirror. "Oh no, sweetheart!"
Kurt looked alarmed, then glared at Finn as best he could without actually changing his expression.
"You'd have to tell her anyway," Finn explained awkwardly, watching as his mother bustled over to gently press the ice pack against the bridge of Kurt's nose.
"Are you ok?" Carole asked over the top of him. She scrutinised Kurt's visible injuries with the eye of an experienced mother. "Honey, those bruises look awful. What happened to you?"
Kurt glared at Finn some more over the fluffy improvised icepack, though the blue hand towel obscuring half his face made it look silly instead of intimidating. (He would never admit aloud that he ever found Kurt's glares intimidating. Ever.) Then he sighed and took the ice pack from his almost-stepmother, continuing to hold it gingerly against his face. "I was practicing in the auditorium," he explained tiredly, "when some jerk footballers thought it would be fun to slap me around. It looks worse than it is, really Carole."
"Let me see," Carole said, gently pulling the icepack away from Kurt's face to look at the bruising again. She shook her head, then let Kurt press the icepack back against his face. "I'm going to call your father. I hope you know the names of those boys, honey. Your father and I will not be letting them get away with this."
"Me either," Finn added, though he really wasn't sure what he'd be able to do about it. If this had been last year he might have worried that doing something about it would be social suicide... but he'd already experienced that. Finn was still on the bottom rung and he knew it. Oddly enough he was starting to realise that being one of the 'uncool kids' gave him a lot more freedom than being popular.
"Puck said pretty much the same thing," Kurt admitted. He blinked rapidly, trying to keep his eyes from welling with tears. As much as he tried to keep it all under wraps the afternoon was really starting to catch up on him.
"Puck was there?" Finn asked, shocked. And perhaps not quite on the ball. "That asshole!"
"No. No," Kurt shook his head. "I bumped into him in the hallway afterwards. He gave me a ride home. He was... oddly supportive." Kurt quickly wiped underneath his eyes. Odd that the idea of having friends who'd stand up for him was more upsetting than the physical beating.
Carole's motherly instincts told her what was coming next. "Finn," she said, "why don't you go upstairs and call Burt at the shop? Tell him to come home, and to bring dinner with him."
"But I thought you were going to call him?"
"Just go, honey." Carole smiled at her son and made shooing motions with her hands. Finn started up the stairs towards the kitchen again and Carole turned her smile towards Kurt. She placed her hand on the boy's shoulder and squeezed lightly. "It's ok, sweetie. You don't have to hold it in."
The sympathetic and entirely motherly look on Carole's face did him in. Kurt's vision blurred and his eyes stung, then he hiccupped and the tears came. The next thing he knew he was being held gently in a warm, fluffy hug - the kind that only mothers know how to give - and Carole was making soothing 'shh' noises. It reminded him so much of what he remembered of his own mother that it was almost unbearable.
Kurt wasn't sure just how long he remained like that, face buried in both the fluffy makeshift icepack and Carole's shoulder but by the time Finn stuck his head through the door to tell them that he heard Burt's car, Kurt had stopped crying.
His face looked even worse than it had before, now that it was pink and blotchy as well as various shades of purple, but he felt just a little better.
The next thing he knew his father was thundering down the stairs and gathering him into a hug. Finn must have told him what happened, or Burt must have guessed, because he didn't ask any questions for a long time. Instead, even though his face practically turned purple upon seeing Kurt's bruises, he hardly said so much as a word. Kurt privately suspected it was because he needed the time to reign in his temper.
"We're going to the police," Burt announced finally, in a tone that said clearly that he wouldn't be argued with. "We're going right this second, and if those shits think they're getting away with hurting my son they've got another thing coming. Kurt, are you ok to walk? Can you move by yourself?"
Kurt blanched at the sudden vision he had of his father literally carrying him into the police station. He stood, stiff but steady on his own feet. "I'm fine, dad. I mean," he corrected, at the trifecta of dubious looks he received, "I can walk on my own."
"I won't stand for this," Burt continued as he hovered anxiously a step behind his son while Kurt climbed the stairs. "This is pure hate crime. Bullying - heck, bullying you can expect. I don't like it, but it's a part and parcel fact of life. When it's just words you can say it's normal. This is not normal."
"Dad..."
"Don't think I won't be talking to your principal too. I won't tolerate this town's lack of tolerance any longer!"
Alarmed, Kurt turned wide eyes to his father. Burt sighed.
"No, we're not moving. I'm just not going to stand by and let the assholes who did this to you think they got away with it. By the time I'm done nobody in this town will think it's even close to ok to beat on people just 'cause they don't like something about them."
Kurt tried for a tiny bit of humour. He cracked a small smile, secretly very, very thankful that Burt was his dad; "So I'm going to be the poster child for tolerance now?"
He used his wit again for a different reason when the police officer taking his statement had them bring in a camera to photograph his injuries for evidence. "Alright, Mr. DeMille, I'm ready for my close-up," Kurt joked quietly, raising his shirt to let the officer photograph the misshapen bruises on his torso.
He felt nothing like Norma Desmond.