Blaine closed the door behind them very quietly. He reminded himself yet again that he had told Kurt that he wasn't going to hurt him. He had to fight down his urge to grab Kurt and obliterate any sense of possible dispossession by engulfing his senses in the other's body, in a warm mouth, smooth skin, the gasps and soft cries of response he could elicit. As much as he wanted to, he feared that if did unleash himself, he wouldn't be able to keep his word. He might not have told Kurt that it was a promise, but it was. He sat at the desk, aware of Kurt watching him warily then turning to look out the dorm window.
He'd better concentrate on something else. His half-term paper for English wasn't due for another three days but since he'd already finished the reading and selected his topic, he pulled out his Kindle and pulled up Othello. He returned to the passages that he'd marked about Othello as a black foreigner and his limited acceptance in Venetian society. As he did so, he scrolled past the passages about jealousy and his notes from class about how Othello became pathologically observant of everything that Desdemona and Cassio did but never perceived what was really happening. After he'd started outlining his paper, he remembered Mr. Carpenter's dry voice, so precise with each syllable that he seemed to be tapping them out. "Othello observed everything but understood nothing. That, gentlemen, was how Iago directed the jealousy that entrapped him to the point that his destruction was inevitable. Evidence can support the most false hypothesis as well as the most true one."
Blaine shook his head back and forth, closing his eyes in embarrassment. He didn't even realize he was talking out loud until he opened his eyes and saw Kurt watching him. "I can't believe what a jerk I was out there. I knew that he's Lebanese, that he always stands that close to people, I knew that he's friendly and funny with everybody." By now, he talking directly to Kurt. He needed Kurt to understand what had been going on in his mind. "I even know that I've got jealousy issues. I had no excuse to be that rude to him." He really didn't like the idea but knew he had to swallow his pride and do it. "I'd better go apologize to him."
The instant Blaine was gone, Kurt opened his suitcase and changed into sweats. He didn't want even the feeling of Blaine's clothing on him. He had actually started hoping that things would be okay, that despite everything, the freedom from bullying and violence and homophobia would ease his being there involuntarily, at least part of the time, and then this had to happen. He'd actually expected Blaine to hit him. Of course, Blaine had gone to apologize to Hamza, but forgotten somebody who deserved an apology a hell of a lot more and was right there to apologize to.
He went into the bathroom and washed his face in cold water to help himself calm down. Even if he wasn't going to say a word about what had just happened, he had to talk to somebody who cared about him. He opened his phone to call Mr. Schue, since he was the one who had called him the most recently. Nobody answered and so Kurt nearly called Finn, but wasn't sure that he could talk to him without breaking down. Instead, he called Brittany. Aside from all of the text messages she had sent him, talking to her usually cheered him up, or at least distracted him.
"Kurtie! Is that you?"
"Hi, sweetie."
"Are you all right? When can we come see you? I miss you!"
"I miss you too."
"We all miss you and we're making a video about it in Glee. Well, it's not really Glee any more now that it's not at school and Coach Sylvester is helping but-"
"Wait, Coach Sylvester is helping? I don't think that's even possible, Brit."
"She is, and even Mr. Schue says that she is. She still made him do pushups, though. But we still miss you. I'd never want to make out with her. Oh, that feels good! Do that again, Santana!"
"Brittany..." Do you really want to know? "Brittany, are you having sex with Santana now?"
She giggled happily. Eww, bad mental image, horrifying mental image.
"I'll call you later, sweetie. I love you, Brittany!" He waited for her to say, "I love you, too, Kurtie," heard something that sounded like Santana calling out, "Kick ass, Kurt," and hung up quickly. At least if he called Artie now, he wouldn't be interrupting them. Brittany would have mentioned if Artie had been there, too. Probably. Wouldn't she?
The door opened and he froze as Blaine came in. Fortunately, Blaine was looking rueful but calm, and when he went to Kurt to kiss him, his mouth was more gentle than insistent. Blaine pulled back for an instant to look at Kurt, studying his face as if he hoped to read some secret there, then buried his face in Kurt's shoulder, running his lips and tongue along the bone. He tugged lightly at Kurt's sweatshirt to start to pull it off and Kurt silently raised his arms, letting him. But when Blaine put his arms around Kurt to embrace him, his hands against Kurt's shoulder blades felt like they were freezing and he jerked back. Blaine swiftly exclaimed, "Sorry, I didn't realize my hands were cold, sorry," and rubbed them rapidly against his own shirt to warm them. He gingerly placed them on Kurt's forearm, "Warm now?" Kurt nodded and Blaine continued, seeming to be aware of nothing else but Kurt.
Instead of last night's seemingly uncomplicated and wholehearted enjoyment, this time, Blaine was deliberately and meticulously exploring his body, as if he were mapping out not just every inch of skin but every nerve, examining where a touch or a caress drew his physical reactions, a shiver or a murmur. Blaine seemed mesmerized by each response and even when Blaine finally indulged his own arousal, it was both passionate and scrutinizing, like a devotee finally uncovering the heart of the venerated secret. If Kurt had heard Blaine's breathless groans from elsewhere, he'd have thought the other was in pain.
It seemed as though hours had gone by before Blaine was satiated, but even then, his arm and leg remained splayed over Kurt's body until Kurt silently slipped from under their touch and covered himself with the blanket.
Will should have expected that Sue was closer to the "kick 'em out" type rather than the "cuddle until dawn" type, but he hadn't really expected to wake up alone at 5:30 to find her writing at her desk, finish writing with a flourish, come back to the bed to drop two pieces of paper on his chest, tell him to go home and change, and then pull on her running shoes, saying that she'd see him at school. Well, at least she hadn't actively kicked him out.
He put the papers in his bag, gathered his things, and drove back to his apartment. At the first stoplight, he fished for the papers, mostly out of morbid curiosity.
The first was headed "Grades," with the first entry "Sue Sylvester: Flawless artistry and execution, as always. A+." Right below that, was "William Schuester. Room for improvement. B." Several cars behind him had to honk before he could start driving again. She had graded him. On his performance. In the sack. She had graded him sexually and only given him a B. And written several notes for improvement. With diagrams.
By the time he got back to his apartment, he wasn't sure if he should burn the second sheet without reading it, but took a look at the heading, hoping that he wouldn't wish that he hadn't. "Ways to Recover Porcelain."
He ignored the entries that began with "Achieve nuclear capability" or ended with "Dispose of the bodies," but paused to consider the others as he shaved.
After Burt's death, both he and Carole had discussed adoption with Kurt, and Carole had gone far enough to talk to a lawyer as well. Kurt had turned them down, saying that he wasn't ready for a family without his dad. Will didn't think that adoption would have changed things legally, but he underlined the entry on Sue's list.
Another entry had caught his eye, "Background investigation for blackmail possibilities." Events had taught him that half of what he thought was his moral code was nothing more than fastidiousness or fear. He didn't want to make a decision with dirty consequences and he wouldn't have slept with a woman that he couldn't, at least in the back of his mind, at least be able to picture settling down with, at least for a while. Maybe that would matter again, once out of this crisis. Maybe it wouldn't. But now, he wasn't going to confuse convenience, habit, or unease with either strength or goodness. Not any more.
Puck had never been sensitive to atmosphere. After all, he was the one who created whatever atmosphere he wanted. If he wanted flirtatious, he'd turn on the charm and let it keep growing in intensity until he had his chosen cougar or Cheerio unable to keep her hands off him. If he wanted fear, he'd loom over the chosen victim, letting his face grow darker by the instant. While he always did, sometimes he didn't even need to hit anybody after that. No matter what he wanted to score, chicks, money, drugs, he set up the scene and got what he wanted.
Or at least that was how it went until he realized that Quinn was going to give up the baby. He'd tried, but only half-heartedly, to get her to change her mind, but he knew that it really wouldn't work. But even after that, while sometimes the sight of a father and a daughter could catch him unexpectedly in a part he kept being reminded was still tender, he was able to go back to being the same old Puck.
But even he could tell that something about the atmosphere at McKinley wasn't exactly the same. The Glee kids were walking around with drawn faces and set mouths, but for once, looking like they might erupt into something other than song. He'd felt like he was the only one there who had the least badass in him, like somehow God had taken all the possible badass out of a dozen people and packed it all inside him, Noah Puckerman. Maybe God put aside some pink badass for Kurt since it did take guts to be openly gay when shooting gays going into a registry to get married was the new target practice for some, and some definitely-not-pink badass for Santana and Mercedes, but the rest of them were free of badass. But now, whether or not they had really achieved badass status, they were ready to let anybody who got in their way have it and were just as ready to have a really open definition of what getting in their way meant.
Figgins, Artie had told him last night, had called Tina into his office to yell at her for getting into a fight and she had actually yelled back at him for turning a blind eye to everything in the school that would make him look bad if he were to acknowledge it enough to address it. If he didn't want students finally standing up to the bullies, he shouldn't act like bullying is just one of those things that happens.
Somebody, and maybe it wasn't even somebody from Glee, maybe it was some of the science nerds, had caulked up all of Karofsky's locker except the top vent holes and poured gasoline over everything, leaving a single match taped to the front of the locker with the note "Maybe you're next."
There was still fear in the school, the fear that was just as much part of the atmosphere as the smell of sweat in the locker rooms or the smell of frying near the cafeteria. But unlike those, it wasn't in only the same places any more.
AN: Thanks again for the reviews and advice for this chapter!
I hope the prose for the Kurt/Blaine sex didn't get too purple—I was aiming for reflecting the intensity without letting it seem too normal.
Would more about the changes at McKinley be interesting, maybe from the perspective of different Glee kids? Or is it better to keep the emphasis on Will, Kurt, and Blaine?
I also hope that the mix from comedy to drama with both Brittany/Santana and Will/Sue reflected the crazy way that comedy can ricochet into just about any situation.
Hamza was purely a plot device at first. I just wanted somebody from the Middle East since for most Arab and Persian cultures, friendly conversation personal space can be as small as 25-30 centimeters, a much more intimate space for Americans, as a trigger for Blaine's possessiveness to go on full throttle. But then Hamza dropped his whole back story into my lap, so who knows, he might drop a bigger role for himself right along with it.