The following two weeks consist of basically the same schedule: Kurt wakes up, steals some breakfast for Blaine and heads to school, leaving Blaine on his own to catch up on the news, wander the apartment, and—if he feels brave enough—even explore the rest of the building and surrounding street. But most of the time Blaine is not brave enough, so he settles with lounging on the couch and enjoying the luxury of having endless amounts of food at his fingertips as well as warm showers and plumbing.
When Kurt returns in the afternoon, they spend the remainder of the day simply talking. The two of them take to sharing interests, telling jokes, reminiscing about the past, expressing hopes for the future. Later, when the hour hand on the clock slowly creeps closer to six, Blaine retreats to the safe haven of Kurt's closet and takes a short nap on his blow up mattress while Kurt has dinner with his family. After a while, he's woken up to the soft jostling of his shoulder and the sight of Kurt's warm, kind smile, the smell of fresh food wafting through the air to his nose as Kurt hands him a plate full of leftovers of whatever the family had just dined upon—absent of the blood, of course.
And for a while, everything is alright.
While Blaine settles into this pattern of life, this life relatively free of stress and hunger and pain, he finds his mind beginning to wander to freer, brighter pastures. He starts to focus on things his former self would find inconsequential and even ridiculous. He thinks about Kurt. Quite a bit, actually.
When Kurt brings him breakfast, he spends the short amount of time during the exchange re-memorizing the curves of the boy's jaw line, the silky smooth planes of his cheeks and the glisten in his eyes. When Kurt leaves, Blaine finds his attention being drawn back to the boy's face again, trying to reconstruct the image as best he can on the invisible canvas in his brain.
Blaine no longer flinches when Kurt touches him. In fact, he welcomes the contact. Kurt's hugged him exactly four times since he came to the apartment, each time proving no different than the first with explosions of brightness and warmth and happiness that Blaine is beginning to crave like a drug. He finds himself looking for opportunities to touch Kurt, to brush a hand on his skin or bump shoulders or secure a stray lock of hair. Anything to get his fix. And every time he finds himself grinning stupidly afterwards, sometimes having to fabricate an answer if Kurt asks him about the sudden change in temperament.
But one afternoon, something happens that makes every confusing emotion in his body so much clearer.
Kurt and Blaine are both in the kitchen, experimenting with a recipe from one of Carol's cookbooks that was brought from Kurt's old home in Ohio when Blaine accidentally knocks the salt shaker off the counter. It hits the floor with a loud clang and rolls under the bottom ridge of the cabinet drawers, leaving a small trail of crystals in its wake.
"Oh, sorry," Blaine exclaims at the same time Kurt says, "Don't worry about it."
Kurt smirks at Blaine's faint blush and bends down to retrieve the shaker, ignoring the boy's meek protest.
"Wait, I'll get it—" Blaine begins, unconsciously leaning over Kurt's crouched form and reaching a hand out to nothing in particular, but by this time Kurt's already got the shaker in his grip and is straightening back up again.
"Really, it's fine, it was an accide—mmf!"
And then their faces crash together.
There is a faint smacking sound, but not of the kind one would attribute to two heads colliding in a moment of clumsiness, though in reality that's precisely what happened. It is soft, and somewhat gentle, a sound reminiscent of something tender and intimate and natural.
A kiss.
And then Kurt leans back quickly, laughing nervously, his face scrunched up in pain as he rubs the bridge of his nose. Blaine stands frozen in his spot, temporarily immobilized by what just accidentally transpired. His right cheekbone aches dully but he hasn't the presence of mind to focus on it because Kurt's lips had been pressed against his, Kurt's breath had ricocheted warmly off his own, Kurt's eyelashes had fluttered on his temple with a bizarre feeling of closeness he's never experienced before. A bolt of lightning may well have struck him on the crown of his head. He feels utterly weightless.
And somewhere in the depths of his euphoria, Blaine knows that it had been an act of chance rather than a conscious decision. The angle at which their skulls collided forced their lips to join for the small fraction of a second, a mere blip in time.
But it had been enough to completely alter his vision of the world.
Blaine doesn't notice Kurt's worried voice until the boy's hands lightly form to sides of his face.
"Blaine? Hello? Blaine, are you okay?"
"What…?"
Every sound comes back into focus as though he'd just emerged from a pool of water.
"Are you alright? Sorry about that, I must've clonked you pretty hard."
"What…oh…" Blaine replies dumbly, his fingers brushing over the small welt already forming on his cheek. He can't remember ever lifting his arm up to do so. "Yeah…sorry about that…I shouldn't have been stooping over you."
"It wasn't your fault; I stood up too fast," Kurt dismisses and leans back, giving one last massage to his nose for good measure before turning on his heel and stalking over to the freezer.
"I'll get you some ice for that. It's already swelling."
Blaine follows him across the kitchen like a lost puppy.
Soon he's sitting opposite Kurt at the kitchen table, a cold pack pressed delicately against the now bluish mark on his face. Kurt is continuing a conversation that has been going for at least ten minutes, none of which Blaine is fully processing, though he gives a valiant effort in trying.
It'd only been a moment.
A split second.
Had Kurt even noticed?
Blaine finds his swirling thoughts continuously circling back to this specific rut. Though it had been so significant to him, though his life seems to now be revolving around this one tiny event, he can't simply assume that Kurt feels the same way. He can't say Kurt even realized it'd happened. It had been so short…
A part of Blaine clings to the hope that Kurt had not even registered the contact because then it would mean things would not change between them, and Blaine's life would be a whole lot simpler. Because thanks to the kiss, every scrambled emotion and thought is now perfectly organized under one main, inner declaration.
He wants Kurt. He wants Kurt more than anything he's ever wanted in his life.
Not just physically—though he's come to that realization already—but on a much deeper level. He wants to know Kurt. He wants to know what makes Kurt smile, what causes the happiness to bubble to his lips and wrinkle the skin around his eyes, what causes that same brightness to wilt like a dying flower so he can protect against it.
He wants it so badly, his chest aches.
But he can't voice his desires until he knows the feeling is reciprocated. The small fragment of his own happiness is hanging by a thread, fragile and weak and so susceptible to hurt it's almost a wonder nothing has destroyed it yet. He can't risk anything yet for his own mental wellbeing.
Which is why, as Blaine's conscience orbits around his body in a completely different universe than that of Kurt's conversation, he silently wishes that normal life will not stop for this, that it will move ahead and come back to this place when he is ready and whole enough to take it on.
"So then I said to her…" Kurt's voice swims back into his mind just as the boy trails off and finally notices Blaine's detached expression. "Hey, Blaine, is everything okay? You look a little spacey."
Everything's just peachy, Blaine's foggy mind retorts, except for the fact that whenever you grin, I grin and whenever you cry, I cry, and whenever you make the face you're making now, I just want to pull you into my arms and kiss you and whisper sweet nothings in your ear and laugh because it's childish and stupid but romantic all the same, but I can't because I know that if you reject me, if you turn away with a sweet, pitying smile like so many do, I might just take the nearest bridge…
"'M fine," Blaine replies simply.
Kurt doesn't immediately respond. Instead, he rests his chin in his hands and stares at Blaine with a furrowed brow.
"…Okay," he finally murmurs. A long moment passes before Kurt breaks eye contact and rises from his seat at the table, returning to the bowl of mixed ingredients the two had left on the kitchen island.
Blaine sighs heavily.
"Hey…hey…wake up… Blaine, wake up."
The soft hiss of Kurt's whisper barely penetrates through the dense fog of sleep that hangs like a curtain over his vision.
"Nng…w…what?" Blaine groans, opening his eyes only to find them blinded by the light of Kurt's phone. "Can you turn that off?" he asks, crabby from lack of sleep. The way Kurt is holding the phone in the dark brings back less than pleasant memories of his days in the alley, and Blaine deems it too early in the morning—or night, or whatever—to deal with images like those.
"Oh, sorry," Kurt replies quietly, flicking the flash of his camera to the off position and casting the closet into darkness black as pitch. "It's just that I've dug up some information about your sister and I think you might want to know about it as soon as possible."
Blaine sits up immediately on his mattress and squints in Kurt's direction. "You have?"
"Yes. I pulled up a website on my laptop that has records of captured humans and blood farm specimen transfers. I'm not one-hundred percent sure it's what we're looking for, but it's definitely a start."
Blaine takes a second to process the information before standing up in the mattress, hearing Kurt follow suit after him.
"Show me."
Kurt leads Blaine out of the closet and into his room, his laptop open and glowing on his bed. Blaine glances around the room at the deep shadows lit up by the glow of the computer screen, catching the gleam of the light off the steel shutters securely bolted to the window frames, obscuring any light seeping in from outside. He figures it may be the adrenaline in his bloodstream, but for some reason the darkness of the room seems more menacing than before and he sticks closer to Kurt's side.
They scoot to the center of Kurt's bed and rest the laptop between them. The website that is open looks to be that of an overzealous blogger, intent on revealing so-called government conspiracies in a poorly executed attempt at anarchy. Blaine glances uneasily at Kurt upon reading the title of one of the latest article, "Everything You Know is a Lie".
"I know…" Kurt says with a grimace. "It may not be the most reliable source. But keep scrolling down and you might change your mind."
The long article drones on continuously, paragraph after paragraph of mostly blind accusations accentuated with underlines and many exclamation points, until finally the columns of text are interrupted by two scanned photos of charts, each box filled in with compulsively neat, handwritten script.
The title of the first set of charts reads "Interdepartmental Transfers: Classified".
"What're these for?" Blaine wonders aloud, his eyes flickering down the rows and rows of data. There is so much information packed into such a small space, each column labeled with title such as 'last name' 'age', 'hair', 'eye color', and 'unique physical characteristics'.
"I read his article too," Kurt says. "It's clear that this guy's a little crazy, but some of the things he was writing about seemed pretty feasible. Like right here, for instance."
Kurt reaches over and replaces Blaine's hand on the touch pad with his own. A tingle races down Blaine's arm at the soft contact and he finds himself forcefully refocusing on the task at hand, a bit guilty for being so easily distracted, especially when trying to figure out how to save his sister.
Kurt scrolls up to a previous paragraph and highlights a section of text that looks similar, if not identical to the over-enthusiastic drawl of the rest of the article. But Blaine reads it nonetheless.
"So, now that we're in a blood recession of sorts, I've gotten to wondering about our beloved government's methods of conservation. After countless hours of research, I came across a couple artifacts that fell into the wrong hands and are now available to anyone—anyone who knows where to find it, that is. These records wouldn't have been so important to me if they hadn't have had the one KEY word. CLASSIFIED. Yes, that's right my dear friends. The government doesn't want any of the 'common folk' in on this little bad boy. BIG SURPRISE!
Anyway, for those of you readers who are actually competent and are familiar with the intricate workings of the Familial Ties Act of 2013, I'd like to point out that my concern with these documents pertains solely with sections 2 and 3.
Blaine pauses on this line and turns to Kurt confusedly.
"What's the Familial Ties Act?" he asks.
"It's…really complicated," Kurt replies, furrowing his brow as he considers the best way to explain it. "I can't say that I know every section of the Act—that doesn't mean I'm and imbecile, mind you; mister high-and-mighty-blogger here is just being a bit presumptuous—but I can tell you that, in summary, the Act protects families whose members are not yet all turned. For example, let's say that I have an uncle that's still human but has every intention to turn and assimilate into society, but is just not ready yet. The Act prevents the government from taking my uncle by force and farming him as if he were a rogue."
"Well if they're so eager to be one of you, what's the hold up?" Blaine asks a bit sourly. "Why wait?"
"It's not usually older people who take advantage of the Act; maybe my example was a bit off. Usually families use it to protect their children." Kurt notices Blaine's stare become even more puzzled than before.
"Children? Why them specifically?"
"Because turning is a very, very big deal. Essentially, you're picking the age you're going to stay for the rest of forever. I'm never growing any older, Blaine. I've turned seventeen ten times already since the beginning of all this and I'll turn seventeen over and over again until either the world ends or I end myself. I had no qualms about turning when my father introduced the idea to me because I was at an age that allowed me all the freedoms in the world. But now think of it with a six year old child. Would you want to stay six for the rest of time? For starters, you could be as wise and mature as a full grown adult, but even with your knowledge nobody would take you seriously because of your physical appearance. You'd never experience the joy of growing up. Your parents would be your sole providers forever and you'd basically be a burden to them." Kurt speaks matter-of-factly, though his face betrays pity and sadness. "There are just so many negatives of turning as a child. But back before 2013, people were forced into it or else they had their own children taken away from them, stolen right out of their arms. Now, because of this Act, they have the option of allowing them time to grow up enough before they turn. Most children choose to turn around my age or a little older, but some choose to wait longer. I heard of one who waited until he turned thirty before stopping the clock."
Blaine takes a minute to absorb all of it, turning around the idea in his head cogitatively and trying not to allow bias to taint his slowly forming opinion. In retrospect, the idea is not all that bad, as it allows the individual more freedom to choose their own fate.
Not enough freedom, Blaine's conscience interjects, and he frowns at the laptop screen, at the names listed column by column like inventory in a meat packaging plant.
"So what are these charts for?" he asks.
"Keep reading, you'll see."
Blaine's eyes flicker back up to the highlighted paragraph and he picks up where he left off.
If I recall, sections 2 and 3 both discuss the government's promise to protect your family over long distances within the continental United States. It seems like a comforting notion, doesn't it? Well, guess what people? It's all a LIE.
How many of you have lost touch with some of your human relatives since the Subsider Riots of 2017? I'm guessing quite a few.
Blaine doesn't bother to ask; Kurt simply fills in the blanks for him.
"There was a huge uprising of subsiders after the first blood rationing laws were passed. It allowed local governments the ability to control how much blood you buy from markets and farms in an attempt to distribute nutrition more evenly among the population. But, even with these laws, shelves were cleared out minutes after businesses opened their doors. People were borderline ravenous, and those who weren't aggressive enough went hungry and eventually morphed into subsiders. After almost a year of this pattern, the streets were almost too dangerous to walk alone, there were so many of them. One day, they just swarmed the streets and killed off everyone in sight. There were a lot of families after that who couldn't find their human relatives. They all assumed they'd been killed in the riots, I guess. That was when the police force started cracking down on subsider detainment."
Blaine nodded and continued the article.
It wasn't the subsiders who took away your family. Your sons and daughters weren't struck down by hideous, conscienceless creatures. No, the ones who robbed you of your happiness were of perfectly stable mind.
To be blunt, everyone you thought you lost is most likely dying slowly right now by the hand of an IV tube. The blood farming executives have always proved to be greedy tyrants, haven't they?
The government was tricky, you see. They foresaw the blood crisis and the fact that they had no plan for how to combat it. The only reason they passed The Family Ties Act was to protect against mutiny, but they all knew that it took away potential stock in the blood market. The Subsider Riots, for them at least, was a bout of luck. They used it as a cover up for when they captured and began farming every last human in the city illegally. The subsiders were just scapegoats.
Moral of the story? DON"T TRUST THE SYSTEM!
Blaine read the last section of highlighted text, veering away when it began to stray farther from an informative tone and closer to that of a rant.
"So, he thinks the government is illegally farming citizens protected under the Familial Ties Act? But what does that have to do with my sister?" he asks Kurt with a lost expression.
Kurt rubs his forearm self-consciously as he begins to doubt himself. Maybe his original thinking was a bit farfetched.
"Well, I thought there might be a chance that one of these was your sister…" he says, gesturing to the charts.
"But my sister is a…what did you call it? A rouge?"
Kurt nods and Blaine continues with his reasoning.
"So if she's a rogue, she wouldn't be protected under the Act, would she?"
Kurt holds up his hand as a signal to quiet. "Technically, no. But your sister is not a rogue, and neither are you."
Blaine blanches.
"Wait…what?"
"Your mother and father may have refused to turn, but that doesn't mean everybody in your family opted for the same fate. When's the last time you talked to your uncle Xavier?"
Blaine sits in stunned silence, his mind flashing back to the dim memories had with his father's brother. They are mostly unpleasant, filled with the image of the disheveled, drunkard of a man which, since Blaine's childhood, he had little contact with other than an occasional phone call, speaker emanating the man's slurred, expletive ridden voice. Blaine never thought much of his uncle, and his parents both discouraged interaction with him, saying he was a bad influence and could corrupt Blaine in his primary years.
Xavier hasn't crossed Blaine's mind in years.
"How do you know about him?" Blaine asks curiously, though he sports the same puzzled inflection as before.
Kurt smirks in the light of the laptop screen. "It's really not that hard. Ancestry-dot-com. But thanks to the new widespread censoring of the internet, the makers of the website included a little icon next to the names of the people who to this day remain human. I noticed that your uncle's name was absent of one, so it could've meant only one thing."
"My uncle is like you."
"Precisely. Which brings us back to your sister. If these charts only pertain to specimens that were already protected under the Familial Ties Act as the author of the blog insinuates, then one of these could be your sister. There's a link at the bottom of the page leading to more charts just like these, and so far, I've found about a hundred 'Anderson's and fifty that are underage and girls. And since these charts are only about a week old," Kurt pauses and takes a breath.
"Blaine, there's a chance your sister may still be living."