AUTHOR'S NOTE
Okay, so I got tumblr, and it's nothingmoreimportant/tumblr/com (replace the / with .), so if you want to ask me any questions, or drop me a line, head over there. I'll be grateful to hear from you; if you have tumblr, it'll be nice to follow some people.
Anyway, a short installment. Day One should also be in order now, all in one place.
I am forever in your debt.
Thanks and enjoy,
Steph
Day Two
As the sun rises over the campus, it breaks over the dust-bowl plain and empty stretch of dry, dry wasteland, over the fence and wall, over to the sliding glass panels of admin. It turns the field in the morning glow a strange orange color, like a pastel in a child's crayon box, and the roof tiles glint and glimmer in the weak rays of the day. It cracks over the courtyard and taps on the window panes of the boarding house, then flees and moves on, barely waiting to be noticed.
As the sun rises, it touches everyone as they wake from their sleep.
It's gold over Evan Taylor's face as he stares out over the grounds from his bedroom window. He ignores the snuffling from the sleepers on the floor, not caring whether they were clad in leather jackets or small and weedy and covered in bruises and nightmares. In the end, they're all irrelevant and just there. What Sam said yesterday was a lie. He can do this. He has bigger, much bigger plans that involve everyone and care about no one else.
He stares at the sun and smiles to himself.
It's unwelcome to Damian as he races through the corridors of the building and back to his basement where he can hide and plot in safety and relative quiet. It's a reminder of the little time they have left to beat Evan at his own game and win back the school as soon as they can. Damian thinks of the fool proof ways they're going to gain power, and how he can do it all with everyone dangling from his fingertips, puppets of his own makings. Everyone is, including Evan, no matter how much he tried to fight it. His strings are just a little more tangled than most, that's all.
Still, he only has so much time left before it'll be too late.
But not impossible. No, it can be done.
It's the clarification Ace needs to move on with his plan, a distraction in the waiting game he plays as he sits at his desk patiently. There's only so much he can do with the eyes and ears watching him everywhere, but he's confident that his move to gather the little bird's interest in him has worked, or will work eventually when the bird comes looking for him. Ace has no interest in saving him; rather, he feels it necessary for the bird to know what he's getting himself into.
So, he waits. He knows he'll be rewarded eventually. Besides, what else is there to do?
It's warm across Blaine's face, stretching like a cat against his features and nuzzling his face sweetly into consciousness. He blinks blearily into his pillow, eyes watering slightly against the golden light, fingers spasming against the sheets, toes curling into the blanket. His spitfire was asleep when he crawled into bed last night, he remembers, all peaceful napping and soft and precious, far too precious to be caught up in this… whatever it is. He remembers the half-awake promise he made to his spitfire's sleeping form, to protect him in whatever way he could, while he still could. In the heat of daylight, it seems more difficult than he intended it to be, but Blaine never breaks his promises.
And Kurt's worth the effort. He doesn't belong here, in a jail cell with motley cats at the bottom jostling for his flesh. No, spitfire birds are supposed to soar free.
It's helpful for Kurt, standing in the corridor two floors above his room and his sleeping roommate, curled up in his bed sheets looking every bit a sleepy Labrador puppy. He ignores the threads of heat curling through him as he remembers the way the sheets were bunched around his waist and Kurt was able to see the strip of skin between those sheets and his shirt. He looked completely carefree as he slept, no furrows on his forehead, his curls stark against the white. The only thing that was missing, he muses wistfully, was his eyes.
No, he scolds.
He glances down at the paper in his hands, the slip of writing and the number underneath. Kurt hopes it's a room number, because it certainly looks like one, and he can't think of what else it can possibly be. He kind of hopes that he's got it all wrong, that when he knocks on the door, it won't open or the boy opening it will tell him that Ace Williams is a figment of Kurt's rather desperate imagination and that he needs to see a psychiatrist immediately in order to sort out these hallucinations and his addiction to designer clothes.
Well, maybe not the clothes.
He sighs, gathers his wits, and knocks on the door twice.
He's stood there for a few precious seconds where he's convinced nothing's happened, and he's so close to turning on his fashionable heel and stalking back to his room to concede defeat, but-
-the door swings open, and Kurt blinks at the boy standing there.
He's short and wiry, so short Kurt automatically thinks he's too young to be in reform. It's the short, dark hair and the pale skin that give him his youthful qualities, in a different way to Kurt; he's not nearly as though, and it reminds Kurt of a young, angular but handsome soccer player from England. The only thing that gives him away is his eyes. They're dark, almost a blue-black colour but full to the brim with intelligence. Kurt can almost hear this boy's brain whirring, cogs clicking beneath his skull, and it puts him on his guard automatically.
The boy leans against the frame and smirks faintly.
Kurt wants to bash his head against a wall. Why does everyone in this Godforsaken place look at him as though they want to devour him?
He ignores the impulse.
"Ace Williams?" he asks a tad uncertainly, tapping his shoe against the floor.
The boy's smirk gets more pronounced, and he nods, almost to himself as a congratulations. He backs away, and turns into the room. "Come on in, birdie," he calls over his shoulder.
Birdie? Kurt steels himself, and with another sigh, walks into the room and shuts the door behind him.
His first reaction is to walk the other way again.
The room is small, smaller than his own, but it's clear Ace shares with no one. There's two single beds, one on either side of the window, but only one looks slept in. The other is covered in sheets and sheet of paper, mainly in one short of looped, eloquent handwriting, but Kurt notes a variation. The walls, wardrobe and bathroom door – he gets an ensuite? Kurt hates having to use the communal one in the hall on his floor, mainly because it smells like boys and sweat and sometimes that heady stench of sex, but thank God none of them on his floor seem to be overly hygienic – are all completely wallpapered in photos, notes, scraps of paper. It looks like the place belongs to an extremely disorganised investigative journalist. There's a desk, too, with a laptop on it and a printer, and Kurt wonders if the boy gets internet or not.
Ace is stood by the window, casually leaning against the sill and staring at Kurt.
Kurt's back straightens out of instinct and habit, but forces himself to direct his eyes elsewhere while they talk.
"Can I help?" Ace asks smoothly, and Kurt can see he'd be very good at questioning suspects. It's that sort of unassuming, friendly voice that people tend to trust instinctively.
Kurt stares at a picture of the campus covered in little red arrows. Next to it, there's a bird's eye map with arrows in the same place. One of them, the one next to the mess hall, is circled. "I want answers."
A low chuckle. "Direct and to the point, no beating about the bush. Very good, Kurt. I thought you'd play hard to get."
Next to the map, there's some notes, and Kurt spots the words the third night. When he looks closer, he also spots deception. "How do you know my name?"
"Birdie, everyone knows your name. Besides, I like to make a point of knowing everything that happens inside these fences."
"Like what?"
"Be more specific, you were doing so well."
"What things could possibly happen inside a reform school?"
Another chuckle, and the shifting of feet against the floor. "You, of all people, should know about the unseen, bitch."
The word is spat with so much venom-
-bitch, that's a good doggy, come on-
-Kurt slips inside himself-
-blood against the walls, sharp piercing pain-
-that he has to haul himself out-
-please, no, don't-
-with his teeth.
He clenches his jaw and stares at a sketch of a gun under the third night. "How do you know about that?"
"I told you. I know everything."
"Fine," Kurt bites out, "okay."
"I know, for example, how you came to find me here. It wasn't too hard to time your distrust of your roommates and friends and use it to my advantage."
"You planted that note?"
"I thought you'd like some questions answered."
"Yes."
"I'm rarely wrong."
Kurt's eyes pause at different handwriting, strange words on paper, like power and escape and pin its wings down. "Was it planned?"
"The standoff in the mess hall last night? I'm afraid so."
Kurt closes his eyes, screws them up against the impending headache. "Why?"
"A plan, little bird, in action. A plan that involves both parties hiding their true intentions, but a plan that involves you believing them both anyway."
"Why me?"
"Leverage."
It makes no sense, but he can come back to that. "Why did I come to you so early, then?"
Another one of those damn infuriating laughs. "So that a certain Warbler couldn't stop you." More movement, a creak from the bed, and Kurt watches Ace sit down on it from the corner of his eye, placing his hands on his lap and staring at the opposite wall. "That's the other thing."
"What?"
"The information you request. You have questions concerning Blaine Anderson, but I must warn you, he has managed to keep an extraordinary amount from me."
Kurt pauses for a moment, then launches into it anyway. "How long has he been here?"
"Longer than anyone else, about four years."
"Why?"
"Unfortunately – and it pains me greatly to say this, little bird - but I don't know."
Kurt turns to him, eyebrow raised. "You don't?"
Ace shakes his head ruefully, sighing. "It's always been one of my great disappointments, not being able to find his file. I have a sneaking suspicion that he took it himself to hide, but I never confirmed it. For all I know, he might've burnt it. If he has it, it's well hidden."
Kurt nods to himself, mind racing. Anderson has something he wants to hide from prying eyes. Something he's ashamed of? Potentially.
"How did the Warblers start?"
This time, Ace laughs properly, and looks at Kurt with dancing eyes. "With Blaine surrounding himself with protectors. Evan's is his second because he's so intelligent, and the fact that they used to fuck every night."
Kurt blinks, ignoring the warring jealousy and joy rushing through him like wildfire and hurricanes. It doesn't matter. Anderson's still an asshole.
"What happened?"
"Evan's is a twin, but his twin disappeared. No one knows what happened to him, only that when he left, Evan went insane. He's the one that started the deals. That was the last straw for Blaine."
Whoever this Evan Taylor is, he's not all there and possibly dangerous. Kurt shivers involuntarily. Great.
"How did he get in here?" Kurt asks as calmly as he can, trying to ignore the thundering pulse in his ears slowly getting louder. Shit, he thinks, shit, no politics.
Fuck it, something else says wryly, this is too good.
Ace smirks and gazes out the window wistfully. "The Warblers," he says, "have a system, where the worse a crime is, the higher up you climb. So, your average thug with social issues stay as bodyguards, the hackers as information sources, and so on. The twins got in, their file says, because they have a long history of deal-making. It makes a certain amount of sense with the Taylors I know – or knew, in Isaac's case. Mainly blackmail and manipulation, but they're very good with twisting words, not afraid to get their hands dirty. The last straw was when their father caught them filming and occasionally partaking in porn. Apparently, the file says they set up a very profitable pornography business, but a lot of the actors, if you will, were underage. They were threatened with prison, but being under eighteen themselves, their father sent them there."
Kurt's breath whooshes out in a long gust, ribs heaving. He stares at the picture, the gap missing beside it, the awful knowing glint in the black-and-white image, hands sweating, fingers clenching eyes glued onto the manic ones-
-ohGodohGodohGod-
-"But," Ace says, sliding off the bed and walking to the wardrobe, "what the scary thing is, Anderson is still on top."
Kurt's eyes snap up-
-curly, innocent, wide, wide eyes-
-world's exile is death; then banished-
-shit.
"Fuck," Kurt blurts unintentionally, then whirls to see Ace holding out a note. His fists clench and his stomach turns. "What's that?"
Ace's smirk curls up cruelly, and he extends his arm. "Leverage, little bird."
Kurt doesn't move to take the paper; if he does, his fingers might tremble, and Ace scents fear, Kurt can feel it, he's one of those, like them who treated him like-
"What has any of this got to do with Anderson?"
Ace laughs, truly laughs, like he hasn't been humouring Kurt the entire time and answering his queries while it just makes his stomach feels more ill and sick and tumbling over itself in an empty twist-
"Trust me, bitch," he bites, "the best way to understand what's going on is to offer yourself."
"Like as a-"
"A sacrifice, if you will, although I don't think the Warblers are as crude as the-"
"You're talking about me making a-"
"With Anderson, understandably, not anyone else. I've never seen him take a-"
"I am not doing that again!"
Ace blinks at the outburst; Kurt feels like he's run a marathon, images racing through his head-
-c'mon, bitch, bend over-
-he's going to throw up-
-let's see if the little doggy likes being fucked-
-Ace's face swims before his eyes and the mouth moves, distorted, and says, "You're in a mess, little bird, and the shame is, it's not even your fault."
Kurt heaves, leaning against the wall, one hand thrown out, palm down against the sneer of Evan Taylor the manipulator, Blaine Anderson the dapper evil-
-"He's going to get tricked, little bird, and there's not a thing you can do to stop it."
Kurt staggers over to the door, ears ringing, mind racing, he tried staying calm, he really did, but when someone gets under your skin, like that, who knows every little thing about your defence, who manages to rip you apart and make you remember what you have to be scared of-
-promise me, Kurt.
Kurt wrenches it open and takes off down the hall.
