The brand new parents gaze brokenly at their new-born son. Elizabeth lays exhausted on the sofa in her own living room, body weak and voice hoarse from screaming. She went through it with no drugs, no midwife and not a single doctor's appointment throughout the entire pregnancy. There was no way for her to see a doctor anyway, not without her being discovered.
She had prayed every night for her baby to be healthy but, above everything, she prayed he or she would be human, but as her eyes settle on her baby for the first time, her heart breaks at the sight of two furry ears and a tiny tail.
"It's a boy," her husband whispers, easing the pain only slightly. A boy! Just what they had hoped for. But a hybrid boy, a boy who will have to hide his entire life, a boy who can never truly live normally because of what he is. She begins to cry, her body convulsing as she holds the wailing child to her chest, promising to protect him. The pain she feels in her body is non-existent compared to the agony in her heart. She had hoped for a break in the clouds with the birth of her son, for maybe a brief intermission after everything she has been through but instead, her wretched Hybrid gene is alive in her son. She wants nothing more than to rip it out of him, to carve off his ears and sever his tail, make him normal, make him human. Violent thoughts cloud her mind and she doesn't realise how much she's shaking until she almost drops the boy. Burt takes him carefully as Elizabeth fully succumbs to her grief. Screaming and sobbing as loud as the baby.
A little boy in a navy blue baseball cap trails besides his mother, her hand wrapped tightly around his own as he stares longingly at the park in the distance. His tiny feet struggle to keep up as his mother's pace seems to quicken as they pass the park. The little boy attempts to tug a little at the hand dragging him along but his mother's pace won't lessen.
"Mommy…" he whines, wishing just for once he could play with the other children.
"What's wrong, Kurt?" his mother asks, though she is not oblivious to his wishes. She finally stops walking and crouches down beside the little boy, making sure his back is to the park so he isn't distracted by the children playing. "Aren't you excited to help mommy with the groceries today?" she tucks a stray piece of hair back up inside his cap, checking that it's still safely secured. "We can even get ice cream if you want."
"Please, Mommy," he begs. She knows what he wants, how many times have they done this? Elizabeth feels awful every time she has to deny her son the simple pleasure of playing outdoors but children can be boisterous and every moment Kurt is out of her sight is a moment spent in agonising worry. If her baby boy was ever taken by those monsters, she's sure she wouldn't survive the grief.
Kurt nods a little at the mention of ice cream before his mother takes his hand again and they walk away. Still watching the children in the distance as he walks by his mother's side, Kurt wonders if he'll ever be able to make friends.
Kurt loves to watch television. Cartoons are his favourite. He sees characters of all shapes and sizes – even breeds – play and have adventures together. Kangaroos are friends with bears, humans are friends with dogs. Ludacris to adults but to a child it's all very plausible. Kurt knows he's different. His parents constantly assure him that he's special but he doesn't feel special at all. He feels like his mommy's best china, the plates she keeps on the top shelf above the cooker. Kurt doesn't think the plates are all that special, in fact, they're exactly the same as all the other plates! The only difference he can see is that the special plates have a prettier pattern on them but what he can't understand is why they can't use them if his mother loves them so much. If they used them then his mommy could smile every day in the same way she does when she takes them down from the shelf at Christmas.
Kurt feels more like an outcast than anything else and, at the age of just six, all he wants is to be like the children on his TV and the kids he sees playing in the park when he passes. Like the children in his cartoons, he wants to go to school and talk about all the things he learns with his classmates. He wants to come home from school and impress his mother with how smart he's getting but he can't do that because she's the one who teaches him everything anyway. Most of all, he just wants to be normal.
Kurt has only ever known two people and only two people have ever known him; his mother and his father. When that number drops to one on the most devastating day of his life, Kurt is certain he will never feel the same again. He'll never be happy again because how could he? His mother, the only person who looks like him, is gone. Before, he'd felt so alone and isolated because of what he is but after his mother's death he feels like a cast away living on a desert island, far, far away from anyone and everyone.
That is until he is to start school. After spending his whole life wishing to go to school, Kurt finds himself dreading his first day. He just wants to make friends but the only people he's ever known are his parents, until today only two people in the world knew his name and now he's expected to have an entire school full of children know him, maybe speak to him, perhaps play with him. What if they don't like him? Or worse what if they find out about him and he and his daddy have to move again? They've already had to leave town once simply because the tip of Kurt's tail had been poking out of his clothes one day while they were out, they don't even know if anyone noticed but the risk was enough for Kurt's parents to pack their bags that night. Kurt doesn't want to leave Lima, he can't leave the last place his mommy lived in, he can't move to a new house without her.
As Kurt walks through the hallways, he struggles to keep his breathing even. Never did he imagine there would be this many kids there. His father had given him strict instructions to not take his hat off for one second and not to get too near the other children. Kurt understands the orders, at nine years old, he has been told enough to know that very bad things would happen to him if people found out about his abnormalities. He knows that those bad things had happened to his mother before she escaped and he knows that he needs to keep himself secret.
In class, Kurt is introduced to a room full of blank faces. Not one is introduced back to him and not one of them even speaks to him. The class is entirely disinterested in him and Kurt can't tell if this for the best or not. If no one speaks to him then it will be far easier to keep his secret but…all this time he had secretly hoped that maybe, for the first time in his life he might make a friend.
Kurt has survived school for the last eight years. Not one person has even come close to finding out about him, even with all the bullying he'd endured, thankfully he'd made it this far alive.
He'd briefly entertained the idea of being in glee club at the start of his sophomore year and for a while he thought that he had found a place he might be able to call home but, like every other attempt he'd made to fit in, the whole thing fell to pieces when the glee club director expected him to compete without a hat on to fit in with everyone else's costumes. Kurt quit before he could come to any sort of compromise with Mr Schuester.
It was a foolish idea really.
In the last eight years that he has been at school, he hasn't been able to fit in anywhere. He's different, he's a freak and piled on top of everything else that's wrong with him, he's gay too. Why would anyone want to know him?
This is exactly what he asks himself in the locker room one afternoon, hands clasped desperately around his ears as he begs the new kid – Blaine Anderson Kurt thinks his name is – to leave.
But this boy is looking at him so earnestly and unlike anyone has ever looked at him before. He has an endearing curiosity and the fact that he thinks Kurt is merely concealing a bad haircut would make him laugh if he wasn't in such a dire situation. Instead he sneers to cover up his fear and as an attempt to make Blaine leave.
Blaine is begging for Kurt to let him help and the way he says Kurt's name, like it's an honour to even be talking to him, leaves Kurt feeling breathless.
"I want to be your friend," Blaine admits after Kurt tries to assure him he's fine just the way he is. Not once has anyone ever uttered such words to him, Kurt is sure he's about to burst into tears if he doesn't leave soon. Maybe he could be Blaine's friend if he isn't what he is but even if that's true hypothetically, it does nothing to change his current situation. He's gay and very much aware of the fact that he's attracted to this boy but he knows he can't, that he can never, because that would mean telling someone his biggest secret. The secret that he's been keeping his entire life, exhausting himself with the burden of it until he feels like he's about to burst unless he shouts it from the rooftop and tells the whole world that he's not like them.
Kurt doesn't want to think about what his mother would say if she knew what he had shown Blaine that day in the locker room.
"I'm sorry, what?" Rachel exclaims, rising from her seat after Mr Schuester delivers the bad news while Kurt and Blaine simultaneously shrink back into their own chairs. In the teacher's hand is a letter, The New Directions official resignation upon it. "Who would do this?" The rest of the club looks equally as shocked and defeated. Finn mostly looks confused, Puck angry and Tina is crying quietly besides a shocked Mike. Blaine knew he was going to feel indescribably guilty but never did he suspect it would be this bad. It feels as though his stomach is trying to claw its way out of him while he wishes more than anything that he could be swallowed up by a black hole. He and Kurt had decided it would be next to impossible to get the New Directions to willingly withdraw without explaining the whole story – something that was undeniably not an option – and instead wrote to the show choir officials themselves, forging Mr Schuester's signature and thus pulling The New Directions out of the competition. The whole thing felt horrifically traitorous and Blaine could barely look his friends in the eyes since.
"I think I have an idea who," Mr Schuester says in reply to Rachel's question, causing Blaine's heart to sink despite the fact that there's no reason for Mr Schuester to suspect him.
"Can't you contact the board and tell them that this is a mistake?" Finn begs sounding unsure and a little worried by Rachel's extreme outrage while eyeing her nervously.
Mr Schuester shrugs with a sad shake of his head.
"I tried, but there was nothing I could do. Once a club has resigned, that's it." Rachel slumps back into her seat, looking vacant and like someone has finally found her off-switch. The rest of the club sits in a stunned silence, entirely unprepared for the day's disaster while Blaine feels like he's about to be sick.
"Well, well, well, William," Coach Sylvester gloats as she strides into the room followed by two of her Cheerios. "Looks like I've finally destroyed the glee club once and for all! Principle Figgins just gave me the wonderful news and my Cheerios budget has been rightfully restored. I'll admit, I'm not entirely sure which of my evil plans managed to do the trick but a victory is a victory and your optimistic stench and woefully misguided students need to leave my newSue du Soleil practise room within the next ten seconds before I yank you away by your fingernails."
"So this is it then?" Tina asks quietly, "No more glee club?" The rest of the club look around helplessly as they are forced to their feet by Sue's Cheerios, stacking up the chairs from under them and piling everything of theirs haphazardly into boxed.
"You can't do this!" Puck yells furiously though no one takes notice.
"I'll figure something out," Mr Schuester promises before they are ushered out of the room aside from Santana and Brittany who reluctantly stay at Coach Sylvester's will. For a while everyone just stands there in shock. Finn comforts a distraught Rachel and nobody quite knows how exactly this happened nor what they are supposed to do now.
Blaine looks over to Kurt to see him looking a shade of white he's never seen on a human being before. As he reaches out to take his hand, Kurt pulls away, striding down the hall with his arms wrapped tightly around himself. Just as Blaine is about to follow, a buzzing in his pocket redirects his attention to his phone.
Pleasure doing business with you.
So it's done. The New Directions are no longer competing and, by default, The Warblers will advance to regionals.
Blaine can't find Kurt since he left the group. After looking everywhere and trying his cell, Blaine decides he probably walked home, eventually driving himself home alone.
Blaine picks up him up for school the next day as usual, hoping he might be feeling a little better but Kurt barely says anything and the few chances Blaine gets to talk to him while at school he is met with a nothing but a guilty expression and one word answers.
He doesn't get much further with the glee club, a lot of them have already joined other extra-curricular activities and the rapidness of everything makes his head spin. While Finn, Mike and Puck still have football and Britt and Santana are on the Cheerios, a lot of them have very little outside of the club, so it makes sense that they rush to belong somewhere. Blaine supposes he'd be the same if he didn't have Kurt, though he shudders at the thought of what he would look like in a Cheerio's outfit like Tina and Mercedes.
He does feel a little lost without the club and the fact that his friends are paying Sebastian's price continues to bother him until he feels like he can't take it anymore.
At lunch, nobody says a word about glee club. In fact, nobody says a word at all. Everyone sits at their usual table, in their assortment of different uniforms while they wordlessly eat.
"What's up with Hummel?" Puck wonders, nodding towards the table at the far end of the cafeteria where Kurt sits alone. The sight sends Blaine back to the start of the year, when he'd watch Kurt from afar, before he'd plucked up the courage to talk to him, before Blaine knew a thing about why the other boy was always so solitary. So much has changed since then, he's seen Kurt laugh and smile and joke and not just with him. He'd come out of himself enough to be comfortable around the entire glee club, it was barely a stretch to say that they were friends.
"He's been really quiet since yesterday, I never knew glee club meant that much to him." Rachel supplies.
"I don't get it," Santana comments unkindly, "why would he care? He never competed with us anyway."
"Glee club isn't all about competing, Santana," Rachel bites back.
"Says the girl who gets every solo ever," Santana snarls. Blaine ignores the two bickering as he rises to his feet. He can't let Kurt eat alone.
"Hey," Blaine says as he approaches the table. Another wave of de-ja-vu hits him as he remembers the last time he did this. "Can I sit here?" Kurt looks up, smiling gently as he notices the resemblance too. He breathes a brief laugh before nodding, the sullen expression soon taking its place once more. "You okay?"
Kurt shakes his head, eyes trained on his barely touched food. "What's up?"
"I feel so guilty," he admits, his voice so quiet Blaine can barely hear him. "And I just can't be around them knowing that it's because of me that there's no more glee club."
"Well, glee club isn't over yet, Mr Schue is looking for a new place for us to rehearse," Blaine attempts but Kurt's mood refuses to shift. His shoulder drop as he gives Blaine a look that says you know what I mean and Blaine lets it go.
"Kurt, we had no other choice,"
"I know, I know, I just can't stand feeling this way," Kurt admits, poking absently at his food, pushing it across the plate with no intentions of eating any of it.
"I know how you feel – "
"Blaine, no offense but I don't think you do. It was my secret that we were protecting and none of this would have even happened at all if I wasn't so stupid at Scandals and don't forget that the whole Scandals idea was mine, too. This is all my fault. I've never had so many people trust me like that before and I pay them back by betraying them." Blaine's eyes scan Kurt's face rapidly as he begins to break down, eyes welling up with tears and his breathing becoming erratic.
"Kurt – "
"I have to go," Kurt says abruptly, rising to his feet and abandoning his lunch and Blaine.
"Kurt!" Blaine calls, sighing when he doesn't look back.
After school, Blaine spots Kurt heading for the door. Slamming his locker shut, Blaine breaks out into a run after him.
"Where are you going?" he asks, having a feeling Kurt is going to walk home again which he's not about to let happen. It's at least an hour and a half walk.
Kurt says nothing as he steps outside, ignoring Blaine who is becoming more and more worried, Kurt has never been this unresponsive, even before they started talking, he'd at least acknowledge those around him.
"Kurt, please let me drive you home!" When Kurt says nothing, Blaine resorts to grabbing his arm in an attempt to get him to stop. "What's wrong with you?" Blaine asks, immediately regretting it the moment the words leave his mouth because shit, he didn't mean for it to sound like that. Kurt's eyes are hollow as he finally turns to face Blaine.
"There are a lot of things wrong with me, Blaine, in case you hadn't noticed," he hisses.
"I'm sorry, just…why are you so upset? Is it because of glee club? This was for the best, remember…" Blaine attempts, trailing off when he notices Kurt is crying and the abrupt change in his mood catches Blaine off guard,
"I'm just…they were…and then I…but I can't…" Kurt babbles through his tears, breaking apart right before Blaine's eyes.
"Come on," Blaine urges softly, taking Kurt's hand and pulling him towards his car.
Kurt says nothing as Blaine drives and his heart pounds. He thought they were over this whole Sebastian situation but Kurt is still somehow deeply bothered by something. Blaine knows that he feels guilty for what happened to the glee club but Kurt has only really known them for a few weeks, how could he be thisaffected?
Once back at Kurt's, Blaine rushes to Kurt as he gets out of the car. He's still crying softly and Blaine leads him to the front door. He can't leave him, not like this so, shutting the front door behind him, Blaine leads him downstairs to his bedroom. He's shaking in his arms and Blaine feels his chest tighten with anxiety.
"Do you want to tell me what's going on?" Blaine asks patiently once Kurt is seated on the bed, cringing inwardly when he realises how much like a parent he sounds. He doesn't mean to patronise Kurt, he just wishes he would tell him what's going on in his head. Kurt shrugs, remaining silent. Blaine takes a seat next to Kurt on the bed, arm wrapping protectively around Kurt's waist and ignoring the way he stiffens slightly at the touch.
He moves to take Kurt's hat off with his other hand, knowing how eager Kurt is to take it off at the end of the day but Kurt swats him away. Blaine sighs.
"I'm not going anywhere until you tell me what's going on, Kurt. I'm really worried about you. This isn't healthy."
"I was perfectly fine before…all of this," Kurt whispers, hanging his head and staring intently at the carpet as though it had offended him somehow.
"You mean…before Sebastian blackmailed us?" Blaine says, hoping he's right but knowing he isn't.
"No," Kurt says coldly, confirming Blaine's fears, "before everything, before…before you. I don't need friends, I don't need anyone because it just gets either me or them hurt. So what's the point?" Kurt's tone has lost all of its venom, now he just sounds defeated. "The glee club were the first people other than my parents to ever be nice to me. When I joined the first time, they actually wanted me around and for a short while I thought that maybe I could actually have friends! I could never play with the other kids when I was growing up and I didn't meet anyone my age until I started school when I was nine. But even then nobody wanted to know me, and my dad told me to be careful. I hate that I'm like this, I hate what I am. If I was just normal then maybe I could be friends with everyone in glee and be with you without any complications." In all honesty, Blaine had forgotten about Kurt being in glee club before. He assumed that Kurt only stayed for a few rehearsals before quitting, he never realised that he actually may have grown attached to them.
"But you already have all of that," Blaine tries, "the glee club are still your friends and…I'm yours for as long as you want me."
"No," Kurt sobs, "No, I betrayed the glee club. I'm not their friend."
"Kurt, it's just a stupid competition."
"But it's important to them!" Kurt cries. "It's the one thing that brings them all together and I ruined it and I feel so awful I can't even be around them anymore."
Blaine bites his lip to stop himself from crying as Kurt spills his heart. His arm is still placed around Kurt's waist but he doesn't dare move it in case Kurt pushes him away again.
"I just want to be normal," Kurt says through shaky breaths, "I just wish I could walk outside without fearing for my life." Blaine is at a loss for words. He can't tell Kurt that it'll be okay because he doesn't know that. It's not like Kurt's condition will go away some day and as much as he wishes otherwise, he can't keep Kurt from harm all the time. Some things are just out of his control. The only thing he can do is be there for him. To love him and show him that someone cares even if it feels like nobody does or ever will.
"I love you, you know that?" Blaine whispers, wishing Kurt would look at him. He doesn't like the direction this conversation is heading in. "Just the way you are, I love you, Kurt. I love that you're different but…I also love that you're kind and a little stubborn sometimes but so, so compassionate. You move me, honestly you do, with how brave you are and how you face the world even though it might be dangerous. I just…I…" Blaine trails off, unable accurately translate his feelings into words without having time to pre-think them
"Blaine," Kurt says, finally looking at him with eyes a little softer than before, "I'm not breaking up with you," he assures and Blaine lets his muscles relax, not realising they had been so tense before.
"Thank God," he whimpers.
"I guess what I'm trying to say is that things were so much easier before. I didn't have to worry about anyone else but my dad and I, and I didn't have quite so much to lose. I'm sorry I've been avoiding you. I'm not used to feeling like this and I don't really know how to deal with it." Blaine smiles shakily as Kurt wraps his arms around him, enveloping him in his warm, familiar scent. Blaine clings to Kurt as though his life depends on it.
"I have to tell them," Kurt murmurs against Blaine. "I can't be friends with them knowing I did this."
"Kurt, don't, it'll just stir up trouble, they're happy to believe it was Sue" Blaine tries to argue but Kurt is resolute.
"I have to. Don't worry, I won't bring you into it but I can't face another day of school feeling like this." Kurt is looking at him with such determination that Blaine knows nothing he can say will change his mind. Closing his eyes, he sighs.
"Okay," Blaine relents, nodding slightly but still certain that this is a bad idea.