Chapter 28
Santana was positively cackling as she approached. Blaine could hear her from his office, and it worded him. Many times when she laughed, it was calculated, but this was purely gleeful and venomous.
There was a bang on his office door that sounded like her kicking it rather than knocking.
"Yes?" Blaine called loudly enough to be heard.
Santana opened the door and leaned on the frame. "You're not going to believe who just showed up at the gates."
"Who?" Blaine said, his mind quickly filing through a list of people who could possibly elicit this reaction in her. He came to no conclusion answer.
She tossed her bangs back before answering, "Lover boy."
Blaine's heavy eyebrows dipped down. "Kurt?"
"He's waiting in the living room," she said. God, was she pleased. She sank further into her lean in the doorway, arms crossed, watching him. Blaine swallowed, then strode past her out of the room. She followed his exit with a sneer.
He could see Kurt from the top of the steps, the back of him, where he stood on the carpet. As Blaine started trotting down the stairs at a quick, staccato pace, Kurt turned to face him. His arms were crossed tightly over his chest and he didn't look pleased.
"Kurt," Blaine said as he reached the main floor, quickly closing the space between the two of them. "What're you doing here? Are you alright?" He pulled Kurt into a hug, but Kurt didn't unwind his arms from around his torso.
"I'm fine," Kurt said in a clipped tone, stepping back from Blaine's embrace as soon as the man released him.
"How did you get here?" Blaine asked.
"A taxi, a plan, and then another taxi," Kurt said. "Good thing I'm still living off your money."
"By yourself? Do you have any idea how dangerous that was?" Blaine's voice was high and urgent and genuinely worried. At the sound of it, something twitched in the façade of Kurt's, but it went back to stony fairly quick.
"I wouldn't have had to if you didn't send me away and refuse to talk to me," Kurt said, and it was a fairly decisive blow.
"I was trying to protect you."
Kurt dropped his arms roughly to his sides. "Well, you don't get to make that call all the time, Blaine!"
Blaine ducked his head from the fire of Kurt's gaze. He couldn't remember the last time he lost a staring match. It was probably to his father, the previous Anderson patriarch.
"I was trying to protect you," Blaine repeated, softer, slower.
Kurt heaved a sigh, half exasperated and half resigned. "You sent me away, and you wouldn't even say goodbye yourself."
"It would've hurt too much," Blaine whispered, and Kurt barely heard it. Blaine looked up again. His eyes looked sad, and sad in a way that Kurt had never seen them. For he had seen Blaine sad before; he thought Blaine was mostly sad, amongst the anger and other things, for most of the time Kurt had known him, but this was different. This was on the surface, and this was weak, as opposed to something steeled away deep in him, churned into metal and pounded away to steal his bones.
Kurt took a step forward. "What about me? What about the way it hurt me?"
"You're so talented and wonderful, Kurt. There's a hundred different great lives you could have without me. I wouldn't have you give them up for me. I wouldn't have you give up your actual life for me either."
"But can't I have both. Can't I have my life and you," Kurt said, almost pleading. He wanted Blaine to understand; he wanted himself to understand too.
"It doesn't work that way," Blaine said, his voice fuller and more firm.
"Why not?" Kurt demanded.
"Because," Blaine snapped, turning away from Kurt, taking a few paces and digging his thumb and forefinger into the bridge of his nose.
Kurt followed him. "Because?" he said, louder still, voice on the edge of a yell.
Blaine snapped back around, and yelled, "Because I don't get to keep the things I love, Kurt!"
The room was still except for both of their heavy breathing.
Blaine's legs went like jelly under him. Stumbling, he took a seat in an armchair. He sat there for a while and Kurt came to kneel next to the armrest, wrists resting on it.
"Jeremiah left," Blaine said in a hoarse whisper. "Mom died. Cooper was murder… there's not exactly a good track record for the people I love."
"And you want to continue that, by forcing me away?"
Blaine lifted and fell one shoulder. "It's not like it's not going to happen anyway."
"What's that supposed to mean?" Kurt asked, sharp.
"…nothing."
Kurt grabbed his coat sleeve inside his elbow. "What's that supposed to mean?"
Blaine exhaled a long breathe. "You're either going to get killed because of your relationship with me. Or you're going to realize how you actually feel and leave."
The first explanation was expected, and at least somewhat valid. The second, however, Kurt had a confused and offended head jerk for. "What I actually feel?" Kurt had planned, at least somewhat, to be telling Blaine off right now, but it had ended up something more of an interview. He needed to know, though, these curious motives of Blaine.
Blaine looked at him directly and said plainly, "That you don't love me."
Kurt stood instantly from his spot, scoffing in offense. "Excuse me, I tried to tell you I loved you, and you told me not to."
Blaine scooted forward on his chair. "Because I know that you don't."
Kurt felt winded now. How could be respond to that? How could hear it? And he was crying now, unbidden. He paced to the other side of the room, trying to get enough composure back to confront him without breaking into a sobbing mess.
When Kurt spun back around, Blaine was standing now, closer, with eyes that were soft, regretful, but honest.
"How could you say – that?" It the best sentence Kurt could construct with the tight bands wrapping around his chest and the buzzing that was running through his limbs.
"You can't," Blaine said. "Not given the circumstances."
"The circumstances of you rescuing me?" Kurt still had some bit left in him.
"From a problem that I got you into," Blaine corrected.
"Or saving my father's life."
"At the price of you having sex with me."
"Or comforting me as I cried."
"So would have Mrs. Hudson if she had the opportunity, but I don't see you falling in love with her! Treating you like a decent human being after keeping you captive here does not make me worthy of your love. It's Stockholm Syndrome 101."
Kurt crossed the room and took Blaine by his lapels. Blaine made no move to remove him. Kurt spoke then, quietly, precisely, and pissed off. "Blaine Anderson, you do not get to decide what I feel or why I feel it. I've had a lot of time around this house to think. I had a lot of time in Baltimore. Do you really think I didn't consider Stockholm Syndrome? Everyone knows what that is. You've let me go twice now, and I decided this is where I'd rather be. I love you, and I'm not going anywhere. Now kiss me, you stupid son of a bitch."
There they were, the two of them, inches apart. He wanted Kurt, Blaine really wanted Kurt, in all the ways you could want someone. That included what was best for him, and he thought he knew. That's way he had sent him away. But here Kurt was, refusing to let Blaine decide for him who he felt and who he wanted to be in a relationship with.
Santana made sense now. Kurt's not a child. He doesn't need to have decisions made for him for his greater good.
And he was right there: beautiful and passionate, hands shaking with intensity as he held onto Blaine's jacket.
Blaine grabbed the front of Kurt's shirt. How many seconds had passed in silence? Only, really, a few.
"Yes, dear," he said, and their mouths clashed together.
…
"Are you watching me sleep?" A whisper— Kurt's— through barely moved lips, eyes slotted open in the darkness.
"You're not asleep."
"Were you?"
A finger trailed down Kurt's cheek. "Yes."
Eyes opened wider, observing. Blaine's resting on his elbow next to where Kurt laid flat. He reached a hand out and pressed it to the center of Blaine's bare chest.
"What's wrong?" Kurt asked.
"How could you ever manage to forgive me, after what I did to you?" Blaine said.
"Why can't you just fall to sleep after sex like a normal person," Kurt said, a joke to lighten the mood. Then, "I don't know. Is that a cop out?"
"I was horrible. I am horrible."
"No, you're not… You never were for a moment what I expected…" He moved the hand from Blaine's chest to brush the underside of his jaw.
"That doesn't make me forgivable." Blaine was looking Kurt in the eye, never faltering from the contact, from the pressured honestly of it.
"Maybe the fact that you think you're unforgivable does… for me, at least. It might not work for other people, even in the exact same situation. I'm sure there are a lot of people who think this is wrong. That I'm crazy to come back to you, maybe I am…"
Blaine quirked a small grin, not much, but enough. "Maybe we both are."
"That's an acute possibility," Kurt said. He arched up from the bed and pressed his lips to Blaine's cheek. "Now go to sleep."
Aki- Epilogue will be coming out in the next few days.
This is a problematic story, in the consent issues and Kurt falling in love with the person who coerced into sex. Yes, Blaine changes and is sorry, but it doesn't change the fact. I tried to address this throughout the story, and you can see that even in this last chapter. I wasn't originally planning on such a happy ending (Kurt and Blaine were going to stay separate after this recent care accident after Blaine sent him away, with perhaps a hint that somewhere in the future they might get back together), but reviewers really wanted them together, and when I got to this point (perhaps it was The Break Ups fault), so did I. So, this is a fantasy and probably not how you should form healthy relationships with people in real life. And when I say probably, I mean definitely. Don't ever say I didn't tell you.
