I don't know if you guys are into listening to music while you read, but I'm just gonna leave this here, and if you wanna listen to it, I won't tell anyone: The Shrine/An Argument – Fleet Foxes
(Also, Please Don't Go – Barcelona for the second Klaine scene.)
You know, because mood music is awesome.
Anyway, what is this, an update sooner than a month? Madness, I say. Anarchy!
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To listen to the first message, press one now.
"Thanks for the pizza Mrs H."
"Thanks," Sam agreed through a mouthful, nodding shyly the second he realized he was forgetting his manors. Carole smiled at the two boys and shook her head.
"Not a problem. Wipe your chin, Noah."
Puck pulled a napkin out from the holder and did as he was told. Through middle school, he had heard that so many times from Carole during hang outs with Finn that by now, it was as common as "hello". Sitting beside the blond at the dining room table, he kicked his feet out, ignoring it when they bumped into Blaine's socked toes. The Warbler retracted them, sparing only a brief glance at the rough young man before turning back to his conversation with Kurt. The two had been muttering to each other all day.
"Thank you for having us," Sam insisted, this time with no food in his mouth and his hands in his lap. Finn shifted at the head of the table, recognizing the knowing look in his mother's eyes. For a moment, he was worried that she would spoil it and say something like "Well, we just appreciate you guys looking out for Kurt," but the comment never came.
"It's alright. We've been recording all the games, so you boys'll be awfully busy tonight."
Finn relaxed a bit. Thank Cheesus for football, he thought distantly, easing back into his chair. It was the perfect excuse, and Kurt took it at face value when Puck showed up with a liter of Coke and bag of Doritos. "Football, dude," he had said, silently observing Kurt's bruised cheek, the bandage on his forehead. The split lip was fading, but still obvious. "You and Dwain wanna watch?"
"Blaine," Kurt had corrected gently, still tired from all the hysteria that had been generated the night before. "And no, thank you."
"Your loss," Sam chirped from behind as he followed Puck into the house. He was much softer with his greeting to Kurt, asking how he was feeling. Carole had swept in seconds later asking who wanted what on the pizza she was about to order.
And here they were. Finn stole a glance at Puck, feeling a strange bit of pride hit him in the chest. His best friend, for all the shit they had gone through, all the drama. Puck had changed so much, even if he still coated it with an inch-thick shell of badass. Not long ago, he was throwing Kurt into dumpsters. Now he was recruiting Sam to spend the night just so they could make sure some psycho religious whack job didn't hurt him again.
"Finn, the salt please?" his mother was asking, her hand stretched across the table toward him. He jumped, jerking himself back to reality before fumbling for the salt. Blaine smiled and silently helped him pass it across to Carole, who grinned at the both of them before going back to her conversation with Sam.
Finn's eyes stuck to Blaine, even though the Warbler had looked back to Kurt. Everyone is here to protect him, he thought briefly. The fleeting realization eased whatever anxiety he still had crawling around in his stomach, drawing a content sigh out of his chest. At least for now, things were normal.
He set in on his pizza.
-x-x-x-
It was actually revolting, seeing Finn, Puck and Sam eat that much. Kurt understood that they were larger, and played sports and worked up their appetites. He was a teenage boy too, he could eat a large amount of food with no trouble. But it was the way they ate it, as if it were going out of business and having an eighty-percent-off sale. They ate it faster than Kurt could set a pile of acid washed denim on fire. Faster than he could identify the highlight of every Grey's Anatomy season, even. And that was fast.
Blaine had stolen the last slice from Puck, who, oddly enough, didn't seem to mind. He had been in mid-reach, and when Blaine stole it out from under his hand and Puck moved to grab it, his eyes flashed toward Kurt, and he eased back into his seat. It hadn't struck Kurt as strange, but it was what Blaine was talking about now.
"I'm sure he just didn't want to upset you after all that's happened."
"Noah isn't that thoughtful," Kurt said with a shake of his head, looking everywhere around his familiar bedroom but the window. The opaque plastic that had been spread over it and stuck up with blue tape was a looming reminder of why he hadn't slept in the room until tonight.
"Well then that just confirms my suspicion that they're here for more than just football."
"I think you're giving all of them far too much credit."
Blaine grinned and set down the wooden 'K' that he had found on the bookshelf. His eyes swept fondly toward the boy on the bed, and before he could give it conscious thought, he was moving forward.
"Deny it if you want," he said with a smile, "but they all care about you. That's been obvious since before you came to Dalton."
"Yeah, but-"
"And Sam is a nice guy."
"He is, but I-"
"I bet it was Finn's idea."
"Blaine," Kurt sighed, narrowing his eyes. The addressed boy slid onto the large mattress and nestled himself beside Kurt, farther up on the bed so that his boyfriend's head could rest against his chest. Sighing through a smile, Blaine reached up and delicately ghosted his fingers over Kurt's hair.
"Okay, I'll stop. But don't tell me you're not just a little bit flattered."
Kurt tenderly pressed his lips together, the familiar soreness of his bottom lip going unnoticed. Resting his forehead against shoulder, he pressed his fingertips against the dark blue cardigan before him and closed his eyes.
"It's a little patronizing, don't you think? To have to be protected like this?"
"It wasn't patronizing when I came into the picture."
Kurt grinned despite himself, feeling the bruise on his cheek ache. "Well no, but you're you. I like you. You're not Puckerman."
"Puckerman I am not," Blaine agreed, shifting and grabbing up a pillow, sliding it underneath his head. Kurt reached down absentmindedly and yanked his comforter up, covering himself up to his shoulders and, inadvertently, Blaine up to his middle. They lapsed into silence, appreciating each other's warmth and company, before Blaine grinned to himself.
"You left the light on," he said quietly.
"Carole will get it eventually," came the returning whisper. Kurt sounded as though he were already circling toward sleep. Blaine's eyes momentarily spotted the orange bottle of pills on the bedside table, and considered how exhausted they made the thinner boy.
"We haven't fallen asleep like this before."
"Mhm."
"'Mhm'?"
"Shh."
Blaine's smile grew, and he closed his eyes.
-x-x-x-
It was a terrible, awful idea. No good could or would come of it, regardless of Puck's promises and Sam's reasoning. His shoulder hurt, he was tired, he didn't want to go outside, and his mother would get upset if she found out. Finn wasn't against breaking rules, but the circumstances were particularly sour.
"Stop being such a pussy," Puck whispered, leading the way through the dark kitchen toward the back door. "It's just a little surveillance."
"There's a cop car circling the block every ten minutes," Finn insisted, looking over his good shoulder at Sam, who shrugged.
Puck reached the door and grabbed the brass handle. "The cops won't do anything. They're probably talking about donuts and not paying attention at all. Besides, I haven't been over here since you guys moved. I wanna see the place."
"We had too much caffeine to sleep, anyway," Sam muttered, stepping around Finn as Puck pulled the back door open. Cool night air swept in around them as the back yard was revealed, shifting colors of navy and dark green. The huge oak tree rustled it's broad leaves in the wind, calling them out into the darkness. For whatever reason, Finn followed the other two as they slipped quietly out of the house.
The grass was damp and cool beneath his toes. He hadn't really spent much time outside recently, since it had been too cold for months, and now that the weather was warming up, he had the whole Hate Crime Drama to keep him occupied. Plus, his pain medication made him sleepy.
"Sweet yard," Sam commented. It was the only thing spoken until they moved into the towering rhododendron plants at the back end of the yard, hiding themselves from view of the house. An old mossy fence ran the length of the property under the bush, and they huddled against it, Puck hopping up to see over it.
"Dude, there's an alley back here."
"Yeah, it's just gravel. We keep the garbage and recycling stuff back there."
"Sketchy," Puck muttered, as if he hadn't heard Finn at all. Dropping back down, he turned toward the two of them and stretched his arms out, taking a deep breath.
"I say we set some kind of trip wire. Like we did in the seventh grade with those walkie talkies."
"That didn't work," Finn countered, glancing toward the house as if he expected Burt to be standing by the back door, tapping his foot. There was nothing.
"Yeah, because there weren't any bandits sneaking into your house. Is that a gate over there?"
Puck motioned toward a section of the fence that was shorter than the rest, and rounded at the top. He took a few steps toward it, ducking a few tangling branches on his way. Sam pushed his hands into the pockets of his hoodie and grinned a bit.
"We used to have these kinds of bushes at my old house, before we moved here. They get huge."
"They're really sticky though," Finn commented, staring after Puck with concern on his face. For a moment, he wondered what he was looking at: Puck was entirely still in his tracks, except for one hand waving back at them. Both of the other boys fell stock still and silent, listening.
Crunching footsteps moved quietly on the other side of the fence, growing closer to the gate. Puck eased his extended foot onto the ground and squinted through the dark, trying to make out the figure through the cracks in the wood. Sam eased his way through the dirt toward him, careful not to make a sound. Finn stayed still.
There was a moment of silence right after the footsteps reached the gate. Finn stared at it, willing it to open and reveal the stranger to them. All of his muscles strained, tense with anticipation. His lungs began to call for air, but he could hardly allow himself to breathe. His palms felt sweaty.
Then, there was a small sound, like someone was exerting effort. Finn's eyes snapped upward as something thin and long shot up over the fence, into the air toward the oak tree. It sailed for a silent moment before hooking around a tall, thick branch of the oak tree above. Whatever it was swung loosely in the night air, a black line against the deep blue of space.
Puck recognized what it was first. A bitter swear shot out of his mouth, and he dove at the fence, leaping onto it. There was a startled cry on the other side, before crunches of gravel raced away. Puck was gone, over the fence in pursuit. Sam called after him, bolting up over the boards only seconds later.
And Finn just stood there, staring at it. He was breathing hard, but he couldn't feel any oxygen flow into his lungs. The thing up in the tree swung back and forth, heavy with dread and entirely visible to every window of the house. Specifically Kurt's.
A noose.
-x-x-x-
Blaine's hand found Kurt's knee and gave it a gentle squeeze, prompting his boyfriend to lean against him and rest his head on his shoulder. The countertenor was hugging his stomach delicately as they sat on the side of his bed, listening to his father rant away in the kitchen.
Neither had spoken after they heard about what had happened. Carole had woken them up to make sure they were alright, and when Burt began to yell downstairs, she left them with the instruction to stay put. So stay put they did.
He could feel the soft fabric of Kurt's pajama bottoms against his fingers, could smell his moisturizer and his expensive shampoo. Blaine thought about the scar on the side of Kurt's neck, about the way he could bend his thumb farther than anyone else on the Warblers, or how he would hiccup if he laughed too hard for too long. They were little things, that perhaps other people had noticed them before him, but Blaine liked to think that they had never really been appreciated. Not until Blaine had noticed them, and though he never mentioned it, he loved every little oddity Kurt had. Every little mispronunciation and silly face.
And he loved being able to hold hands with him. He loved him, and he loved that Kurt loved him. But Kurt wasn't thinking about any of these things; he was decidedly distracted with the events that were going on downstairs, and not with thoughts of Blaine's triangular eyebrows or argyle socks.
"Kurt?"
In response, the younger boy just rolled his head against Blaine's shoulder and sighed shakily.
"... You know I love you, right?"
Blaine continued to stare at his hand on Kurt's knee, suddenly struck by how his hand felt so big against it.
"I love you too," Kurt whispered after a brief silence.
"And you know that no matter what, I'm here for you."
Kurt wilted a bit, closing his eyes and shifting stiffly. Blaine looked up toward his face and spotted the tears sitting on his eyelashes, threatening to fall. He reached up and brushed his thumb gently against Kurt's cheeks, clearing the tears away as they slipped free.
"I mean it," he insisted, his voice hardly more than a whisper. "No matter what."
"Why won't they stop?" The sob slipped out, breaking the facade Kurt had been struggling to hold up. It took two unsteady breaths for him to regain his composure. Blaine just shook his head, unsure what to say in response.
"They're ignorant. They don't know how beautiful you are."
"But they-" Kurt pushed, his voice cracking with another sob, betraying his quickly-crumbling exterior, "-they won't stop! How am I supposed to feel safe like this?"
Blaine looked at him, feeling himself edge toward a similar state of emotional turmoil. But no, he had to stay calm. He had to be the brave one; if he couldn't be strong for Kurt now, how could he promise it in the future? Taking a deep breath, he pivoted his body around and took up both of Kurt's hands, squeezing them.
"Look at me."
Kurt kept his eyes closed tight, tears racing down his cheeks as he struggled to close himself back up.
"Kurt."
With a little effort, the rich chestnut of Kurt's hair lifted, revealing his watery blue eyes. Blaine bit his tongue for the briefest second, feeling unease settle in his stomach like it had just before he kissed Kurt the first time, back in that familiar room in Dalton.
"Listen to me," he began softly, gripping Kurt's hands tightly as if letting go would rip them apart forever. "No matter what happens, promise me you'll always hold my hand when you need to."
Kurt held it together for four seconds. The first flicked by easily, the second came with a small gag of emotion, the third was him trying to fix it, and the forth was his face suddenly wilting like a flower. He leaned forward, despite the pain in his torso, and collapsed against Blaine's chest, finally allowing himself the right to cry. Blaine's arms wrapped around his upper back, his teeth clenched tight to hold back his own emotions. Kurt shook in his grip, his shoulders jolting with each sob. Somewhere amongst all the crying, Blaine made out an "Okay".
They stayed like that for a long time.
-x-x-x-
Oh so hey, it's June now. Just letting you know.
Thank you for the reviews! You guys are so awesome~
