Fifteen days before Halloween
Blaine nodded his head toward a table near a sunny window, and I followed him, my eyes downcast and my face blushing furiously. He reached the table before me, of course, setting the two coffees carefully down and pulling out a chair before pausing to look expectantly at me as I approached. I fought a smile as I sat down in the proffered seat and let my gaze follow him shamelessly as he moved to the chair across from me and sat down with a strange and buoyant kind of grace.
"This one is yours," he said cheerfully, gesturing to one of the cups. "Medium drip." I stared at him, not sure whether to be charmed or completely creeped out. I settled for being inquisitive.
"How on earth," I said, leaning forward to take the sanity-saving beverage and quirking what I hoped was a sardonically amused smile in his direction, "do you know my coffee order?"
"Because I'm magic," he shot right back, good-naturedly, taking a sip of his own drink before letting a grin stretch his red lips just a bit, like he had to fight to keep from finding everything far too amusing. "And also because I was in line behind you last week when you ordered. You seemed like a one-coffee-order kind of guy."
I rolled my eyes at him and decided to be charmed. It wasn't really stalker behavior, but I made a mental note to, at some point, establish some kind of boundaries with this boy. And…when did I decide there would be a 'some point'? What the—
"What are you thinking about so intensely?" Blaine said, his voice warm and playful. For reasons I cannot explain to this day, I decided to be honest.
"You, and whether you're a practical joke, a creepy stalker, or a stroke of truly incredible luck."
"Couldn't I be all three?" was his retort. I grinned again in spite of myself. Gorgeous and quick on the draw…oh dear.
"I suppose that's not entirely outside the realm of possibility," I said, trying to keep my tone blasé and noncommittal. I was enjoying bantering with him far too much already, and I felt a dangerous shift somewhere beneath my breastbone when I realized abruptly that I was actually enjoying his company. Granted, it had only been a few minutes yet, and he could still do something to entirely ruin the moment. I'll just have to hold out hope for that, I suppose.
"So let me get to know you, Kurt," Blaine said abruptly. "I want to know everything!"
And…there it is. Awkward weirdness is back. "Why? You already know everything you need to stalk me," I said, trying to make it sound like a joke. "My schedule, my coffee order. Do you drive by my house at night?"
"What would be the point in that?" he asked, genuinely confused. "Aren't you usually asleep at night?" I stared at him for a long moment. He dipped a biscotti in his coffee and took a bite from it, chewing absently and not looking at me. I cleared my throat to get his attention back from the baked goods.
"What?" He said blankly.
"For future reference, the correct answer to any question implying you might really and truly be a sociopath is, 'of course not, Kurt, don't be silly.'"
"Of course not, Kurt, don't be silly," he said obediently, grinning goofily at me over the remaining half of his biscotti. I wanted to glare, but something about that grin was so…well, it was darn cute. I settled for a headshake and returning my attention to my drink. It was silent for a moment, and—belatedly—the wheels in my head started to turn a little. I started to wonder.
"Blaine," I said finally, without taking my eyes from my coffee cup. "Why do you want to get to know me so badly?"
"Because you are the most beautiful thing I have ever seen anywhere."
Again the answer came too quickly. Shouldn't he have to think more about this, or be reluctant to admit so much so soon? It didn't feel wrong from beginning to end—although perhaps it should have—but it didn't feel right either. I was suddenly really uncomfortable again. I pushed back from the table, fully intending to make some excuse to leave, but he put a hand on my arm and looked anxiously up into my face.
"Kurt, where are you going?"
"Blaine, I need to get home, and I think you need to stay away from me. This is crazy."
"What's so crazy about wanting to get to know you?"
"You have no reason to want to know me," I said, getting impatient. "You have no reason to get in my personal space and say you're in love with me. You have no reason to show up suddenly, out of nowhere, and start messing with my head like this! It was amusing at first, but now it quite honestly frightens me."
He dropped his hand from my arm, and looked down at his feet, brow furrowed.
"I'm doing this all wrong, aren't I?" He sounded so…small. I shouldn't have answered. I should have taken my opportunity and walked out.
"You just need to tell me the truth," I said gently. "Why do you want to get to know me so badly?" He looked up at me with big, unfathomable eyes.
"I…I can't really tell you that," he said, and it was the first thing I'd heard him sound unsure about. "I saw you, and…I just…I just knew, okay? But you don't believe me, and…look, I just want to spend some more time with you, okay? Can we please…can I please just show you I'm not a total creep? Go on one date with me, and if you don't have fun I swear I'll never bother you again."
I considered him for a moment. He looked so hopeful. He was looking at me as if his entire existence depended on me agreeing to go on one date. I hate to admit it, but quite aside from the expression being heartbreaking, it touched a nerve. I'd only been waiting all my life for someone to look at me like that, after all.
I said yes. The smile he gave me was so bright it made me wish for my Dolce and Gabbana sunglasses.
"Okay, enough already, Blaine. Where on earth are we going?"
Blaine looked across the car at me with that smile again, the one he'd given me in the coffee shop the day before. I felt my heart stutter in my chest. Blaine's smile…there's no appropriate metaphor. It isn't just his face that lights up. It's like the sun actually comes out from behind a cloud, and you didn't realize just how grey and dismal the day was until suddenly everything is bathed in this golden light and the colors are so bright they hurt your eyes a little bit, but in a way that makes you want to smile, too. You can't look at it without smiling, actually. Believe me, I've tried. See? There's just no metaphor, only sad clichés that fail utterly to do any justice to the real thing. I give up.
"You'll see when we get there," he said, still beaming away. "You'll like it. I promise."
"I'm going to trust you…although I have no idea why I should," I muttered. He just kept grinning. Damn him.
We had been driving for what seemed like an interminably long time, and we had left Lima behind quite a while ago. I was starting to get a little nervous, actually. I'd jumped in a car with a random guy that I knew literally nothing about, and where he was driving me was anybody's guess. I had my cell phone with me, and I'd told my dad I was going to be hanging out with a friend, but still. My brain picked a really awful moment to point out to me that I didn't even know Blaine's last name.
"Wow," I said. He glanced at me briefly before turning his attention back to the road. I studied him for a moment before deciding to go ahead and ask.
"Blaine…I just realized I don't even know what your last name is." He chuckled, and the sound was a little…dark. I glared at him.
"Seriously? You think now is the appropriate time to bring out the Disney villain laughter?"
"Why not?" He shrugged. "You're thinking you don't know my last name, or where we're going, and you're wondering if I'm really a sociopathic serial killer, am I right?" The grin he tossed carelessly in my direction was nothing short of pure evil, and it did things to my heart rate. I didn't know whether to be scared or…well…incredibly turned on. Wow. He really ought to be careful where he tosses those things.
"R-right," I stammered, mostly because of that smile but also because his nonchalance—probably meant to make me laugh—just made me kind of nervous. Nervousness seemed to be my dominant emotion when it came to Blaine, and I wondered if removing some of the mystery of him would help with that.
"Anderson," he said, breaking into my thoughts.
"What?"
"My last name," he said patiently. "It's Anderson. You know, if you were just a little more calculating, you could have just asked your dad. I've been consulting him about parts for a car my dad and I are rebuilding, and I know you've seen me talking to him at least once."
"Oh." I said stupidly. Then, "Well excuse me, I skipped Stalker 101."
"So did I," he said lightly. "Or rather, I tested out." For the first time in my life, I actually facepalmed.
"Blaine," I said into my hand. "What did we talk about in the coffee shop yesterday?"
"How creepy I am?" he asked, grinning. God, does he ever stop grinning?
"Precisely."
"I swear I'm not," he said, still keeping his tone light. "I'm just your average teenage boy. Maybe I'm a little more…enthusiastic…than most people. It's a flaw." He shrugged. "You also might say I'm not very good at romance." Here, his voice grew suddenly small and vulnerable again, like it had for that short moment in the Lima Bean. "I'm trying, though."
He stared resolutely at the road, shoulders tight as if expecting a rebuff. I reached out without really thinking and put a hand on his arm.
"Hey," I said playfully. "At this point I don't expect romance. I'll settle for a modicum of normalcy, if you have it."
He studied me for a second before the grin was back in full force.
"Fresh out, I'm afraid," he said. "No normalcy here at all, you'll have to settle for slightly creepy romance." I groaned and shook my head at him. He just laughed. We spent most of the car ride like that, bantering casually back and forth, until Blaine turned the radio on during a lull in the conversation.
"I love this song!" He exclaimed, positively glowing with delight. I smiled, endlessly amused by his antics, and sat back to watch as he launched into a rather animated and ridiculously flirty rendition of Katy Perry's "Teenage Dream." His voice was beautiful, and soothing, and did lovely things to the bouncy pop number, turning it into a lullaby. I felt my eyes grow heavy; after all, I'd gotten up awfully early for a Saturday.
"Kurt," he said, what seemed like only moments later. "Wake up. We're here."
I opened my eyes, squinting against the mid-afternoon sunlight, to see Blaine standing over me, smiling indulgently. For just a split second his expression was unguarded, and his eyes looked completely black, like they had that first night. I blinked, and they were back to normal: still dark, but not completely, not inhumanly. My spine must have decided that a running chill was too cliché; at this point I felt like I had a cold knot of uncertainty and fear sitting somewhere in my midsection, keeping perfectly still until it decided to do a round-off and bounce around my ribcage whenever something about Blaine set off a warning bell. What in the world are you? I thought.
"Where are we?" I asked. He chuckled and held out a hand to me. I took it and clambered, graceless with sleep, out of the car.
I kept trying—and failing—to take in the sights around me. It was too much at once and I was getting dizzy from all of the turning, turning, turning and trying to see everything. I had never in my life seen so many butterflies.
"Blaine," I breathed, "this place is beautiful." His only answer was a soft smile and an offered hand. I took it without hesitating for once, allowing him to pull me along the sandy path lined in multicolored stones, gazing about in awe at the colorful, fluttering wings catching the sunlight everywhere I looked. It was wonderfully disorienting; I knew it was cold outside, but in here it was summertime. I saw green everywhere I looked and felt warm right down to my fingers and toes, especially the fingers of my right hand, clasped securely in Blaine's. His palms were slightly rough and not just warm, but almost hot. I blushed a little to think how we must look, wandering hand-in-hand through a butterfly garden together.
"Blaine," I said softly. "This is wonderful. Thank you."
Blaine squeezed my hand gently.
"I hoped you would like it," he said, his voice soft and his eyes dark and glittering. "Would you like me to tell you about them?"
"Please do," I said, still a bit breathless but too blown away by the beauty of the gesture to care. Another squeeze of my hand, and then Blaine pulled me forward to look at a small cluster of butterflies perched on a low-hanging tree limb. They were a bright, electric blue.
"These are blue Morpho butterflies," he said, leaning in close. He released my hand only to rest his palms light on my shoulders. His breath tickled my ear and sent goosebumps shivering across my skin, a completely different sensation from the knot of cold fear in my stomach…a knot that was loosening as we stood there, surrounded by light and beauty, warm hands on my shoulders and warm breath in my ear, eyes fluttering closed like the wings of butterflies and heart racing, mind drifting wondering what it would feel like if he pressed those lips to the skin just below my ear, the spot I felt his breath drift across with every word he was speaking to me in that quiet, beautiful voice full of dark intentions and terrifying, elating promises.
He was still talking about the butterflies, but my mind had gone off into left field and had no hope of making its way back. The words just washed over me as I tried to control my breathing.
"The little darker ones, the ones with the blue and black streaks, there? Those are the Karner blues. They're an endangered species, associated with wild lupines. They drink nectar. Those orange ones are tricky; some are the Viceroy and some are the Monarch. The way you tell is the dark line across the wingspan; the ones with that are the Viceroys. The Monarch is poisonous and its wings are different on their underside. That big yellow one is a Tiger Swallowtail…little black and white is a Zebra Swallowtail…tiny, pale blue ones are…"
I drifted in and out as he talked, feeling a strange, creeping heat under the collar of my shirt and in the palms of my hands. He slid his hands down my arms and slipped them around my waist, and I leaned back into his embrace, eyes falling shut and breath coming too quick, too shallow. I felt light-headed, and ridiculous, and I was fully aware that a stupid smile was spreading its way across my face as I stood enveloped in the warmth and clean-gorgeous-smoky smell of Blaine, letting his breath drift over my neck and listening to him tell me everything I could ever want to know and would never be able to recall about the butterflies.
The car ride back was mostly silent, but it wasn't uncomfortable in the least. Blaine was humming softly to himself, a song I didn't know, and seemed perfectly content. My mind, on the other hand, was racing away at ninety miles a minute. This was my first date. Blaine, for all his mysterious features, had gone out of his way to make it perfect. I eyed him surreptitiously, taking in the peaceful, unconscious smile on his lips. I don't think I had seen him look so carefree since I'd met him: his eyes were on the road, but his mind was so clearly still strolling through a garden full of butterflies. Looking at him like that…it made parts of me ache that I didn't even know existed.
Before I knew it, we were pulling up in front of my house. Blaine parked and turned off the ignition, but I hesitated, not quite willing to leave the car just yet.
"I had a wonderful time," I said softly, looking down at my hands folded in my lap. I could feel him grinning in my peripheral vision. Like everything else about him, it gave off heat.
"I'm glad," he said simply. Silence slipped in and stretched out between us, replacing comfort with tension and making me squirm. I chance a look at his face, and then found that I couldn't look away.
He was staring back at me with undisguised longing. I didn't need experience to know what it was; I felt it. My blood simmered in my veins at the thought of someone—of Blaine—wanting me. No one had ever wanted me. No one had ever looked at me like that before.
My first kiss went to a closeted football player in a dim locker room during a moment of anger and passion…the wrong kind of passion. It was shocking and sudden, and most of all it was scary. Compared to this, though, it was easy. It just happened, and then it was over, and I didn't have to do anything in between or make any difficult choices. This…this was real terror. This felt like my heart was going to bounce right out of my chest, run away, and hide under a rock until the end of time. Unless you've ever sat there in the semi-dark and listened to your blood pound in your ears while you try to find the nerve to lean over and kiss the person you like, you won't understand. I can't describe it. There aren't words.
If Blaine sensed any of my internal vacillation, he didn't show it. Didn't say anything, or move, or fidget; he just looked at me. If he had done something else, I might have just gotten out and gone inside. Instead I just felt my nerves winding tighter and tighter with every passing second.
Then, from one second to the next, it changed. Blaine moved; he looked down at his hands, licked nervously at his lips. Licked those gorgeous, improbably red, soft-looking lips. I snapped.
I grabbed the lapels of the coat he was wearing and pulled him in, pressing our lips together in a desperate, messy approximation of a kiss that would have been mortifying if it hadn't been so…well, delicious. I thought something in my brain must have exploded, because I was blazing. From the moment his lips touched me I was just on fire, tendrils of heat rushing up my spine and settlings in those odd places again, just below the collar of my shirt and between my shoulder blades, in the palms of my hands as I released his coat and cupped his face to keep him close.
My face felt flushed and feverish. I was dizzy with want for something I couldn't even put a name to, unless it was simply Blaine. That seemed entirely plausible: I just wanted more and more of Blaine.
I think he must have felt it in my trembling, or tasted it in the tiny, frantic gasps of air that escaped into his mouth as our lips moved against each other. He pressed his hands against my face (heat-warmth-burning-needhim) and deepened the kiss, a little moan falling from his lips and vibrating against mine. I saw stars. Literally.
It was a painfully short eternity before we came up for air. I opened my eyes to find that I was hovering over Blaine, having pressed him back against the driver's side door at some point. His lips were red, slightly open as he quietly tried to catch his breath. I looked into his eyes.
His face was a perfect mask of surprise, and his eyes were solid black.
I should have skittered back across the car, put as much space between us as possible. I should have been terrified looking into eyes that were pitch black and glassy, no whites or irises at all, but…I could feel him, skin warm under my hands, and I could feel his heartbeat, hear his soft and labored breathing. His face was the face of the boy who had taken me to see a wonderland of butterflies on my first date. This boy—whatever else he was—had made me feel more than I ever had about anything. He made me want things I'd seldom even thought of before. And I could feel the trembling of my own body echoed in his.
I held perfectly still and watched as his eyes slowly faded into the familiar almost-black irises I was used to, and his breathing slowed to a normal, deeper rhythm. I felt the thrum of fear run through me when I saw that he was afraid.
"What are you?" I asked him. He closed his hands over mine and made to push me away, but I held on. My chest seized with panic at the thought of Blaine even wanting to push me away. Hadn't he spent every waking second since meeting me trying to eliminate the distance between us? I pressed my lips to his again, too hard and too hot and even messier than before. Maybe he felt something of my desperation, because the hands trying to push me away slipped up my arms and around my shoulders, rubbing soothing circles into my back as he returned the kiss. I felt my chest unclench even as my stomach curled into delicious knots of heat and…and lust again, my need to know all but blotted out for a few blissful minutes by my need for more of him as I tasted this inside of his mouth. It burned in the back of my throat, but it tasted sweet.
Finally, my need for oxygen forced me to pull away, and I stared down at him again. His eyes were closed.
"Hey," I said, voice hoarse and shaky. "Look at me." I touched his face. He shook his head once, jerkily. No.
"Why not?"
"Because," he said reluctantly, "If I open my eyes right now you'll know for sure that it wasn't just a trick of the light. You'll run away and never speak to me again, or you'll stay…and I'll have to lie to you. I…I don't want to lie to you." He sounded small, bewildered, and so very lost.
"So…don't," I said. "I'm not going anywhere, Blaine. Just open your eyes."
He did. I stared into the solid black orbs: no familiar variations in color, no glimmers of light. He stared solemnly at me for a long, silent moment. When I broke that silence, I thanked my years of singing that my voice was quiet, but perfectly steady.
"Blaine…what are you?" I asked again.
At first I thought he wasn't going to answer. Then—
"I'm," he took a deep breath, then let it out in a nervous chuckle. "I don't know how to tell you what I am." The look he turned on me was sad, pleading…and desperate. It stung my heart to see him look at me that way, but it frightened me, too. Whatever his secret was, it was clearly something terrible, something he was trying to keep from me. I knew I needed to know.
"You have to tell me."
"I can't," he said. It was almost a wail. I pulled away from him, and he reached out to pull me back, looking frantic at the loss of contact. Looking the way I felt.
"Please, Kurt," he said. "Does it matter? Can't I just be Blaine and let that be enough for now?"
I looked into his eyes, the eyes I was used to. It felt wrong, so very wrong. But I couldn't say no to him. I don't know exactly when it would have been my cue to walk away from Blaine—from whatever he was and whatever it was about him that set of warning bells in my head, and frightened me—but by that point it was pretty clear that I'd missed it. Missed it by miles.
"Okay," I said slowly. He looked relieved almost immediately, but I fixed him with a determined glare. "You don't have to tell me now. But Blaine…if I'm going to…be around you, eventually I'm going to have to know things about you. I'm going to have to know what I'm getting into here." His face fell, but he didn't look angry or sad anymore. Just…contemplative.
"Okay," he said slowly. "I'll tell you everything you want to know. But can it wait just a few days? I…it's not an easy thing to do, to trust someone."
"I know," I said, looking at him hard. "Believe me. I know it's not. But I can wait a few days, I suppose."
"Great!" And he was back to his buoyant self so fast it was like a switch had been thrown somewhere. I just couldn't keep up with it. That knot of fear was back, stronger than ever, and this time when he leaned in for a kiss it didn't melt away immediately. But I kissed him back, because his breath was sweet and he was Blaine, a giant magnet to me, a tiny pin. It was an imperative of nature; I didn't now how not to kiss him back. I closed my eyes and tried to silence the ache of fear with the certainty that sooner or later, Blaine would explain everything. Call me a sucker, but I really believed he would.
Author's Note: The plan was to finish this before Halloween. That didn't happen, obviously. Now I can't decide if I want to draw it out or wrap it up in the original ten chapters that I'd planned. It's not really going the way I had planned, either. It's difficult, because obviously Blaine has an affect on Kurt that isn't necessarily normal or natural, but I just can't see Kurt doing what I need for him to do for this story to be concluded in the time frame I set up for it. Ugh. Hooray for characters refusing to be just a TINY bit slutty for the sake of the plot. :P Still dedicating this to darrenlivesinmyhead for all her enthusiasm for new chapters.
- The Raisin Girl
