Songbird
Summary: Blaine's a young songwriter who's stuck in a rut. Kurt's an independent cyborg with music software installed. Blaine knows that Kurt could totally be his meal ticket if he'd just freaking cooperate for once. Kurt just wants Blaine to understand that he's not just a machine, even if that means sitting back and letting him flounder. AU, Klaine.
Disclaimer: Not a chance. If I owned, I would be much richer than I am.
AN: I love you guys! Thank you for all of your comments and favorites.
Just a note: this is a Kurt without Dalton. This is a Kurt who's made it through high school on thick skin and sheer force of will. He's had to fight for what he has and he's used to having to keep secrets and he's used to relying on himself because he's always waiting for the other shoe to drop. This is a Blaine who went through school on an escalator program, who never bothered coming out. This is a Blaine who's kind, gregarious, and generally good-hearted, but regardless is pretty used to getting what he wants without having to work too hard.
The point of this story is not to focus on the views of society aside from what's directly relevant to the plot, whether revolving around the fact that either of these boys are gay or that Kurt's not entirely organic, but the evolution of their own relationship and the way they each change from meeting one another and how they see one another.
It's about growth and understanding and empathy as people.
Tl;dr: no one is getting beaten/raped/left in an alley/seriously hatecrime'd. Not the point of this story.
Thank you.
Chapter Four: Fortissimo
"I was wondering if you could show me how to use it. I need some serious help."
If that wasn't the last thing that Kurt was expecting him to ask, he wasn't sure what was.
For several seconds, the only thing Kurt could do was blink in surprise, eyeing Blaine. He certainly did look like he needed help; his eyes were ringed with dark circles and he had the frazzled look of someone who had reached the end of the line. Without stopping to think too hard, Kurt nodded, stepping forward.
"Yeah, I can. What is it that you don't understand?" he asked, and Blaine cringed.
"…all of it," he said finally, looking more than a little embarrassed, and Kurt couldn't figure out whether it was a matter of pride or a matter of asking him specifically. He had few doubts that he could help somehow, he knew the program inside and out –literally- but the more he thought about it, the more concerned and, strangely, anxious he got. "If you're busy right now, I totally understand. But any help you can give me…" Blaine trailed off, embarrassment gone.
Now he just looked anxious, and Kurt tilted his head, lacing his hands behind his back.
"I was just about to finish up with a job," he said, words and tone matter of fact, "Let me put the last bits on it, and I can help you. It'll only take a few minutes more if you want to come inside and wait. Then I can show you on your laptop so you know how to use it yourself."
Blaine looked as if Kurt had just told him that he was the songwriting god come to answer his prayers.
"Oh my god. Thank you so much."
"Don't thank me yet," Kurt quipped, running a hand through his bangs and beckoning Blaine inside with the other, "You'll be cursing my existence by the end of the night."
Blaine followed him inside, once again struck by the bright colors on the walls and the fact that it looked much more like a functional home than it should have, being occupied by a lone teenage boy. Hell, Blaine's apartment wasn't that nicely put together, and he had three years on Kurt and a pretty decent penchant for decorating, considering that Wes considered decorating buying a framed painting of an (ugly) heron and hanging it up.
Kurt had his laptop set up on the coffee table and without preamble he sat down, focusing almost immediately on the screen. Blaine looked around the room blankly, finally settling himself on the couch, before giving into his curiosity and peering over Kurt's shoulder to examine what he was doing.
…it was like Greek to him.
Kurt was typing coding into an open window without pause, seeming to know already what he needed to do and Blaine gaped at him. For nearly a minute, Kurt paid him no attention until he couldn't keep his focus on coding, sensing Blaine's eyes on him. The taller boy turned around and leveled a curious (and rather vexed) look of his own right back, furrowing his brows.
"What?"
"What are you doing?"
"I was hired to design and code a layout for someone," he answered shortly, "They went to my dad first but he doesn't handle the little stuff like that so he passes it all on to me. I get all the payment for it, so it's a pretty good deal for both of us."
"And that's going to look like something? Not just like… brackets and greater-than symbols?" Blaine wasn't going to lie, his experience with computers was surfing the internet and writing papers and the occasional inventory spreadsheet for work. He had friends who knew more of what they were doing but he'd never paid much attention to it. He never thought he'd need to. Kurt shot him a look that said quite plainly, please stop saying stupid things.
"Of course it is. See?" With a few clicks and opening of another window, he pasted his coding into a different box and opened it up, revealing a web layout that was nearly complete, "That's what it will look like when it's done. Well, mostly. HTML is easy, you just have to speak the same language."
"You're not even double-checking to make sure it's doing what you want, though. How do you know what it's going to do?"
"I don't need to, but like I said… you've got to speak the language," Having a little more circuitry than most people helped with that. Slightly exasperated at this point, Kurt flapped a hand in an obvious plea for silence. The harder Blaine stared and the more he talked, the less he was able to concentrate, and it didn't just apply to bringing up a program in his head or checking his mail.
Thankfully, Blaine hushed up and he finished quickly, checking just once to make sure he hadn't messed up anywhere, before bringing out his phone and standing, walking into the kitchen. His voice was quiet, but Blaine could just barely make out the words as he made the call.
"Hello, Bruce Rank? Yes, I'm representing Burt Hummel of Carbon Corp. I just wanted to let you know that the layout you requested is finished and ready to go. I just sent the coding over in an e-mail a little bit ago. Yes, yes, oh no, it was no trouble at all. Thank you very much. Oh, you can write me a check or send it through , it's about the same amount of trouble either way. Yes, thank you. I appreciate your business. Have a good day."
Kurt hung up and walked back into the room and Blaine tried to look nonchalant, as if he hadn't been listening. It didn't work.
"Your dad works for Carbon?" he asked, unable to hold back, and Kurt rolled his eyes, gathering his keys and slipping them into his shoulder bag.
"Yeah," the answer came reluctantly, "He's head of the cybernetics and bioengineering department. Now, you ready to go?"
Topic cut, burned, and shut down in one fell swoop. Blaine gave up the interrogation too and stood, shouldering his own bag.
Blaine's apartment was pretty much what could be expected from a twenty-one year old guy who lived by himself. He'd cleaned up…well, tried to clean up in the hopes that Kurt might consent to help him out but he hadn't vacuumed or anything and a tower of clutter covered what had been the kitchen table. He flinched. The contrast was way too obvious, and if he had been Kurt, he'd have probably turned around and walked out…
Except that Kurt wasn't.
He was standing in the middle of the living room, taking it all in with the curiosity of someone in an unfamiliar place, wondering what this home of Blaine's said about him. Walls aside (god, white walls were the worst), there were some rather nice paintings put up, mostly of landscapes, and a DVD rack next to the television was overflowing with boxes. If Kurt didn't know, he could swear that he saw a copy of Pretty in Pink and couldn't help smiling at it. Check one, good taste in movies. He looked out of place among the mess in his charcoal grey skinnies and knee-high riding style boots, scarf tied delicately about his neck but it didn't seem to matter.
Blaine probably would have run.
Suddenly, he looked down at himself and suppressed a sputter of shock. Oh, his top half looked pretty normal, just a simple button-up that he'd remembered to change into before leaving but…his bottom half. Oh god, his bottom half. He'd forgotten about that part, and ended up knocking on Kurt's door in the pair of pajama pants covered in pineapples.
He sat on Kurt's couch, in pineapple pants. He asked Kurt for help in pineapple pants. He could have died.
He looked up just in time to see Kurt smirking knowingly at him.
"What, you couldn't have said anything when you first noticed?" Blaine protested, cheeks coloring, and the younger boy waggled his finger at him, eyes crinkling up in the corners.
"I just figured you knew," he countered loftily, catching a scowl from Blaine.
"Lies."
"You betcha. But aren't you happy that I'm at least trying to make it less embarrassing for you?"
There was absolutely nothing that Blaine could say in response to that. Kurt shifted on his feet, still looking around, trying to peer inconspicuously into the kitchen. The very, very unused kitchen. Saying that he'd help was one thing, he was beginning to realize, but it was sinking in that he'd never actually shown anyone how to use the technology that came naturally to him. He'd never needed to show his father anything, and he knew better than to even let Finn breathe near his computer. He hadn't been kidding when he said that Blaine would probably hate him by the end of this.
Suddenly more self-conscious than he'd started (Blaine Anderson, self conscious. Wouldn't Wes and David laugh at him for that one?), Blaine bit his lip.
"I've, uh, got my system set up in my bedroom. We can do it out here if you want though…"
Kurt flushed.
"No, you don't need to move it all. We can just work in there, if there's enough space and it's…you know. Decent."
Blaine's bedroom matched the rest of the apartment: cluttered. In here, though, clutter didn't come from papers and books and newsprint, but crumpled up sheet music and pencils that looked like they'd been thrown so hard they'd broken. Kurt watched over it all with a sympathetic eye, taking his cue to sit in front of the laptop sitting on the bed.
Fortissimo was already open but blank, as if Blaine really did have no idea where to even start.
"Come over here," Kurt said, pulling up a floor cushion and setting the computer on his lap. Blaine complied, scooting next to him and peering closely at the screen.
"Teach me, sensei."
"So eager. I'll remember this later," Kurt snickered with an almost sadistic glee and Blaine felt a tendril of foreboding. He'd thought that with a computer master, it'd be all smooth sailing from there on out. Apparently not. "You've got to start at the very, very beginning. The very first thing you need to do is pick your range. See this area on the side, with the piano keys?" He gesture, and Blaine nodded, "You can choose to show the entire thing, or you can shorten it to a single octave or a custom range. If you click on any of them, it'll tell you the note." To demonstrate, he clicked on the high F, and the note rang out clearly through Blaine's bedroom. "Got me so far?"
"Yeah,"
"Good. Let's do something super, super basic. Like Mary Had A Little Lamb. You can also change your instrument. The keys on the side will stay the same, but they'll sound differently like whatever you pick. We can do that later. Obviously. Up here it shows the length of your measures, and you can input your time signature right here in this box. You…are familiar with music theory, yes?"
The ominous feeling got worse.
"Yes, thank god." And he was. "I'd have given up forever ago if I wasn't."
Kurt smiled again, the playful one that didn't show teeth.
"Very good. Let's go practical, shall we? Ma-ry had a Li-ttle lamb~" he sang casually, shifting the computer over to Blaine, too quickly for him to realize that even singing a nursery rhyme, Kurt's voice was bright, pure, and clear as crystal. "First, find your first pitch—that's right, very good. Select it on the measure. Just click. You'll get a box asking what you want the note itself to be. Half note works. You can do keystrokes too to make it go faster, but let's stick simple. Now, type in the word the note corresponds to, right above it."
Blaine obliged.
"Press play, right here."
He did, and the note played, simple and clear and oh my god it sounded like it was supposed to. Maybe this wasn't going to be impossible.
"Very good. Now, the next note. Find your 'ry'…"
Kurt had been right.
It had taken three hours, three hours for Blaine to input Mary Had a Little Lamb into the program, then he'd spent another hour figuring out how to work with the violin setting and realizing that vibrato couldn't be set where there wasn't a note, and he felt so stupid for that. Four hours it took to be walked through a nursery rhyme.
Kurt had lost the battle with frustration once or twice and had resorted to snarling out his demands, which led to Blaine inputing swear words instead of lyrics into the measures for a good long while in retaliation. Once, Kurt flopped backwards and slapped his hands over his face, half rolling around in agony. Twice, Blaine walked out of the room and came back with microwave popcorn and melted butter.
Both of their tempers had sweetened after that.
Blaine pressed play and the melody of Mary Had a Little Lamb had never sounded sweeter. A bright smile slowly began to curl at his lips and he turned his head to look at Kurt, who was beginning to beam at him. Tiredly, Blaine let himself fall back onto his carpeting, sighing. Kurt shifted slightly to lean over him just the slightest bit, raising a single eyebrow at him.
"Good job, grasshopper."
Tentative and slow, so slowly, the chestnut-haired boy reached out a hand and patted Blaine right on the top of his tight, black curls. His heart pounded loudly in his head, and he gulped when Blaine opened his eyes at the touch, blinking in surprise before smiling again.
"What had you done before now?" Kurt asked lightly, and Blaine rolled his eyes skyward, still not moving from his position on his back.
"Oh, you know. I got frustrated and started grunting like an ape, threw a few rolls of toilet paper around the room, may or may not have gotten married to David on Facebook then divorced him five minutes later. The usual."
That was not what Kurt did when he got frustrated. He tended to roll around on the floor and marry Mercedes and Santana on Facebook and go over his budget on clothes and try and make Finn dress like he had eyes and knew the color wheel.
"First stop, nursery rhymes. You'll have your own songs playing out of this baby before you know it."
"If I ever write anything that doesn't suck."
Kurt glared.
"Oh, put up or shut up. You're only allowed to complain if you man up and show me what you've written. Which, I might add, you've slithered out of so far."
Somehow, Blaine didn't think that Loneliness and Ramen was going to endear himself to his younger neighbor.
"….nrgh," was his only response. Kurt shot him a half-smile.
"Why don't you sing something with me, then? Something you already know," he offered, almost shyly. "I'm sure you can, your voice is suited for it." Against his will, he flushed again and tried to force it down, looking Blaine in the eye. He'd gotten through public high school with goddamned sexual predator Karofsky making beep-beep-boop computer noises at him mixed in with his usual homophobic insults the entire last semester, he could ask a guy who was setting his gaydar on fire to sing with him. Be a man, Kurt, he thought. You've beaten everyone else. You can beat this too.
Blaine, unaware of Kurt's mental pep talk, merely blinked curiously and sat up, scratching the back of his head with a hand.
"R-really? I mean, I was the lead soloist at my high school," he couldn't help preening just a little bit at the amused admiration that flashed in Kurt's eyes, "So I don't suck."
"So you will?" Kurt prodded. Blaine tilted his head down and grinned sheepishly.
"Yeah, okay. You pick."
Kurt thought for a bit, before a teasing light lit up his eyes.
"Little bird, little bird, fly through my window," he sang quietly, voice soaring easily, and Blaine suppressed the laugh that almost burst free of his throat. Blaine knew that song intimately from his nursery school days and he wondered if Kurt had chosen it to be ironic. Nevertheless, he grabbed his guitar and began to song along with Kurt, fitting his voice in with the other boy's to make an easy harmony that reminded him of when he was still in high school, singing just because he could. "Little bird, little bird, fly through my window, fine molasses candy..."
"Chickadee, chickadee, fly through my window," Blaine crooned, still trying not to laugh when Kurt paused long enough to make little 'chick chick chick' noises under his breath, "Chickadee, chickadee, fly through my window, fine molasses candy…"
Kurt had just opened his mouth to start to say 'jaybird' when there was a knock on the door and they both froze.
The knock came again and Blaine reluctantly got up to answer it.
"I guess I should go get that…"
"I suppose I'd better go anyway," Kurt said reluctantly, disappointed that the song got cut short, "We got plenty done tonight, though. If you need help again…" he trailed off, hoping that Blaine would understand what he meant, and he was rewarded by a nod.
"Oh, I have no doubt that I'll need your help again. One nursery rhyme does not an expert make."
Another knock, much more insistent this time, and Blaine huffed, striding over to the door and flinging it open, coming face to face with Wes and David.
"Hey, what are you guys doing here? You should have called—"
"We did. Twice."
Sure enough, Blaine's phone was sitting on the counter right where he'd left it, ignored and untouched for the last four hours. The screen was lit up and flashing, showing a missed call. Blaine winced and clapped his hands together apologetically.
"God, I'm sorry."
David was the one to roll his eyes this time.
"You've been such a flake lately, man—" he trailed off, catching sight of Kurt for the first time. The younger boy had followed Blaine out of his room to make his way out but had begun to hug the wall when the conversation had begun, as if he'd hoped to remain unnoticed. He addressed him suddenly, voice kind, "Oh, hey. You're Kurt, aren't you?" A look of surprise and wariness flashed over Kurt's face as he glanced to Blaine, then back to David.
"That would be me, yes," he said in a sudden rush, twisting his hands over the strap of his messenger bag. "Very nice to meet you. I've got to go. I'll see you later, Blaine."
And then he was gone like a very small, computer-savvy whirlwind with great hair.
The three men in the room blinked, Wes and David in curiosity, Blaine in outright confusion.
"That was a little…um, odd," Wes said delicately, apparently trying to be tactful for the first time in his life, "He normally that shy?"
"Nooooo, not usually. He's usually pretty sociable. Real witty. With me, anyway."
Not that meant much, he knew.
"Huh."
Kurt closed the door and locked it, leaning up against it to slide down to the floor, relieved to be back and surrounded by the colors of home.
He hadn't meant to react the way he had but it'd been his first instinct. He wasn't used to people seeing him without him having to scream most of the time, much less having someone he'd never met recognize him and know his name, and it had thrown him for a loop. Enough of a loop apparently that in retrospect he'd probably come off as some sort of utter weirdo.
Suddenly annoyed with himself, Kurt fought the urge to stick his head out and shout an apology in the direction of next door. That'd probably make him look like even more of a weirdo.
He sighed and leaned his head back against the solid weight of his door, closing his eyes.
Kurt wondered what Blaine had told them about him.
The prospect scared him a little more than he wanted it to.
AN2: Enjoy chapter four! As always, if you enjoyed it, please comment and let me know! If you didn't, well, tell me that too. Trust me, I'm graceful with criticism.