Ten: Gargoyle
A/N: I... was totally going to go for an approach like the tv show Gargoyles, but I couldn't help but end it as is... Another loose interpretation. P:
Kurt honestly wondered how his taste in men had gone so far downhill. Actually, scratch that, he'd always had bad taste in men. First Finn, who ended up insulting him, then Blaine, who had been fantastic for the first few months before cheating on him. Even Dave, who he thought had gotten over his internalized homophobia, had ended up flying into a rage when the subject of sex had been breached for the for time. After them it had been a string of losers who either ended up trying to change him in some form or another ("You're too stereotypical." "Can't you just shut up and eat the damn burger?") or turned to physical acts (a bruise on his collarbone from his heaviest textbook, a gash on his lower back from the corner of a coffee table), or both (getting called a cheating slut, arms straining behind his back).
Frankly, he was getting sick of it.
Garret, his newest boyfriend, lasted all of three months before hitting him, and Kurt might fall fast and hard but the men he dated only got one chance before Kurt got out of there. He learned his lesson with the first one. All the excuses and promises in the world wouldn't change them.
Shivering in the cold New York air Kurt climbed to the top of his apartment building. He'd been at Garret's apartment when the older man went off and threw a brass lamp at him for smiling at the waiter earlier in the evening. He probably should have seen it coming when Garret went quiet during dinner, but he wanted to think better of him. He'd seemed so nice when they first met at the University...
Shaking off those thoughts Kurt unlocked and pushed open the door leading to the roof. His landlady had given his a copy after she heard a fight about a year ago. He'd been in the early stages of a relationship with a cute mechanic (they say you dated in the image of your father...) who had gotten a little too handsy a week after they started seeing each other and wouldn't let up when Kurt said no. Rosy practically broke the door down before running Chad off with a cleaver stolen from the kitchen. It was his shortest relationship to date. She said the gargoyles made fantastic companions on bad days when she passed over the newly cut key the next day.
He found she was right.
They were ugly, true, and Kurt may be shallow when it came to clothing, but he would never judge someone for the way that they were born. It had happened to him enough that the instinct to choose anything based on beauty or interests were ground out of him at a very early age. Besides, gargoyles were constructed to act as protectors of their buildings and Kurt liked to think that the stone creature hanging over his apartment was his own personal guardian.
Kurt smiled and slid onto the ledge to sit beside his favourite (what? He never said he liked them equally...), brushing the snow off of the square head and wings. The permanent snarl on its face had become a comfort over the past few months. Leaning his cheek against the freezing stone he sighed.
"You know Noah, you're the best man in my life," he said softly, unconsciously stroking the curled claws, "right up there with my dad."
If he closed his eyes, Kurt could imagine the the heat he was feeling in his cheek was from a warm body beside him.