Songbird

Summary: Blaine's a young songwriter who's stuck in a rut. Kurt's an independent cyborg with music software installed. Blaine knows that Kurt could totally be his meal ticket if he'd just freaking cooperate for once. Kurt just wants Blaine to understand that he's not just a machine, even if that means sitting back and letting him flounder. AU, Klaine.

Disclaimer: Not a chance. If I owned, I would be much richer than I am.

AN: You guys are amazing and wonderful and beautiful people.

I'm going to be honest, when I first started writing this, I had no idea if anyone but me was actually going to be remotely interested in it. Thank you so much for your encouragement and support and praise. They really do help motivate me to not only write, but write better.

Thank you so much, and I hope you enjoy this chapter!

Chapter Five: Battery

Kurt jolted awake, his heart pounding wildly, and he stared around his bedroom in slight disorientation. His vision swam from sleep despite the intensity of his dream and he forced himself to lay back down, nestling himself into his pillows and throwing his blanket over his head.

He remembered.

Kurt remembered vividly the feeling of being held and understood and loved.

He remembered black curls and warm hazel eyes and callused hands, finger pads slightly roughened.

He remembered feeling safe and like he had nothing to hide, like he could trust that boy enough to wrap him around him like he did his blanket.

Drawing in a breath, Kurt rolled over and buried his face in his pillow, stifling a groan.

…shit.

Contrary to popular (Read: Wes and his own, treacherous little sister Natalie) belief, Blaine actually did go to his day job. He may have spent the vast majority of the day with a daydreaming, kind of vacant expression -because who didn't get a little hazy whiling their hours away in a record store?- or listening to the new stock and wondering when it became more popular to sing into a vocorder than it was to just make sure that you didn't suck, but he did go.

He ran the cash register and chatted up girls to get them to buy more. He slipped his headphones on when he was sure that no one would know or care. He occasionally traded elitist stares with hipsters whose skinny jeans had nothing on Kurt's.

What Blaine liked doing most at his job though, was people-watching. People were interesting. Not to the level that his friends were interesting, but interesting enough, and Blaine might admit under extreme duress that he occasionally made up stories in his head about customers; where they came from, where they were going, who was getting that teeny bopper CD because there really was nothing good in the world anymore.

A relatively absent boss with a broken give-a-damn made for low impact work, but the hours were long and Blaine thought that he really might be just a little bit crazy at this point.

What a waste of a degree.

Blaine ran a hand through his hair and leaned on the counter. The store was empty except for a middle-aged woman floundering helplessly amongst minidisc upon minidisc of white rap. Until she asked for assistance, she could just suffer.

The door swung open and Blaine peered over to see who had entered.

Two young guys entered, one of whom was, to Blaine's intense surprise, Kurt's stepbrother Finn. He was accompanied by a bulky guy with a mohawk and a t-shirt stretched tightly across his chest and… holy shit, those guns. They didn't appear to notice him and Blaine almost called attention to himself, instead remaining silent when he picked up the topic of their conversation.

"Hey, how's Kurt been doing, lately?" Mohawk-boy asked, nudging Finn with his elbow as they browsed through the racks of minidiscs and vintage CDs. "I haven't really seen much of him since we graduated. I knew he was kind of….you know, about not getting into any schools."

"The word you're looking for is enraged," Finn muttered dryly, "Actually, I'm still not sure whether he's more angry or hurt about it. You know he couldn't speak to me for weeks without crying after I got into college and he didn't?"

Blaine blinked. The topic of schooling had never come up between them in the months since Kurt had moved in; Kurt never asked about Blaine and Blaine never asked about Kurt's post-high school plans. He'd assumed that he was either A) going to school and didn't care enough to talk about it or B) was just taking a year off. The idea that the younger boy hadn't gotten in anywhere honestly hadn't occurred to him, especially after he'd seen Kurt's proficiency with a computer and the general impression of intelligence that he gave off. Mohawk obviously agreed with Blaine's thoughts, as he glared and cracked his knuckles threateningly.

"And no one on the boards told him why he got rejected? Kurt had a higher GPA than fucking Berry—"

"Hey!"

"There was no reason not to let him in. Especially since he was going into music and it's not every day you find a voice like that."

Remembering the way that Kurt's voice had made a children's song sound halfway holy, Blaine was inclined to agree. Wasn't that the truth.

Finn scowled and looked slightly uncomfortable.

"Man, I don't know. He showed up the other night freaking out over something; Mom had to sit him down and force hot chocolate on him. I seriously think she slipped some Kahlua into it and told him it was leftover coffee from that morning. All she could really get out of him was that it had to do with a guy."

"Holy shit, is he getting some? Way to go, Princess." Mohawk sounded impressed and oddly pleased with this.

Blaine nearly choked, sinking down lower in his seat until he just barely peered over the edge despite the fact that both boys were now invisible behind a rack. At least this proved that his gaydar still worked.

"Dude, Puck, shut up! That's my little brother you're talking about. You don't need to scream it out to the whole store. I don't want to talk about him getting anything. I don't want to gossip about Kurt getting anything from anyone with anyone, but especially not with you. Why are you so happy and excited about it anyway?" Finn sounded scandalized but not in the way that would imply that Kurt's –fairly obvious, if Blaine had to be honest- homosexuality freaked him out. If anything, he sounded quite normal for someone whose conversation topic had apparently just turned to his brother's guy troubles.

"Hey man, Puckzilla approves of anyone getting down and dirty. Who cares if it's with another dude? Props to Princess."

"Shut up Puck, he is my brother and I have to talk to him tonight and if I can't look him in the eyes, he'll know. He always knows."

'Puck' sputtered with laughter, and Blaine kind of wished that there was a way for him to quit unwillingly eavesdropping. He was a watcher, not a snoop. But could it really be considered eavesdropping when they were talking openly in public and hadn't even noticed his existence? Not to mention that it was, despite being none of his business, a rather fascinating insight into Kurt Hummel: personal information lockbox extraordinaire.

"I could kill Karofsky for fucking with him." Puck's voice had gone low and suddenly murderous, "I really could."

The absently amused smile that had begun to show on Blaine's face abruptly slipped off.

He now knew several new things about Kurt, none of which could be used as conversation starters.

1) He'd gotten rejected from all the schools he'd applied to for what appeared to be no reason. 2) He had Finn completely whipped and at his mercy. 3) Someone named Karofsky had 'fucked' with him badly enough to get someone built essentially like a tank to sound like he could easily rip his head off with no moral qualms.

This was not an upgrade.

The conversation quieted and Blaine tried to quit thinking about it to little avail. Whoever coined the phrase 'out of sight, out of mind' was a horrible, sadistic liar. The two boys left soon after, not even sparing a passing glance to Blaine –thank god, because wouldn't that just be awkward?- and the curly-haired man spent the rest of his shift trying to consciously pay attention to his work place.

If only to stop thinking about what could make a college board turn down someone like Kurt Hummel.

"I don't know what to do," Kurt bemoaned into his headset, "I really don't. This is a terrible situation."

The girl on the other end clucked sympathetically at him.

"I wish I could help you," Quinn told him, "But we all know my romantic history. Puck, Finn, and Sam: pregnant, dumped for a hobbit, and dumped for a lesbian. I am not qualified for this. You're sure he's gay at least, right?"

"Oh, most definitely," Kurt said firmly, "We haven't talked about it, but I'm almost positive. Bisexual at the least. I don't know whether he's out to his family or friends if I'm right, but until he tells me or shows me, it's a null deal. I refuse to get myself into another Finn situation, thank you. Sexuality is really only half the issue anyway."

"Do you think he would care? About, you know." Quinn asked delicately, and Kurt groaned. He could almost see her, laying on her stomach on the bedspread she'd had for years, twirling the vintage cord of her phone around a finger. Most people favored a headset these days, but Quinn was an old-fashioned sort from her head to her toes. He appreciated her sensitivity on the matter; it was more than he could have asked for from any of his other girlfriends. Mercedes was known for tough love and while nowhere near above cuddling and sympathy, no one did commiseration quite like Miss Quinn Fabray.

Kurt and Quinn had both been Cheerios. They knew commiseration.

"I don't know, Q. How could he not? Everyone else who ever knew did—sorry, minus you guys. And Coach, though god only knows why," Kurt sighed deeply, rolling over to stare at his ceiling. "It's not like… I just don't understand. It's not like there's never been anyone else like me in the world; using cybernetics to save someone's life isn't unheard of."

"Yeah, but Kurt…" She paused as if trying to find the right words, "Most of the time, that's like an arm or a leg. Even then, most people are going to go their whole lives without meeting someone who's been in that kind of situation. It's not your fault and you can't help it, but you can't escape the fact that it's unusual. Your entire skeletal system, Kurt, and a part of your brain, that's intense and a lot of people are going to misunderstand."

Kurt flinched.

"Quinn… a team of reviewers from eight colleges thought that I wasn't worth having. Or a liability. Eight colleges think that I'm going to cheat my way through because my father couldn't let me die," the chestnut-haired boy snapped, rolling off the bed and beginning to pace up and down the length of his bedroom. Just thinking about it was making him angry again, giving him that too-sharp thinking and something sick-feeling to curl up in the pit of his stomach. "It's like they're saying that I don't deserve to be alive. I'm not whining, but I've never seen a normal doctor in my life, it's always been someone from my dad's team at Carbon. It's like being born with black hair and being told that that's wrong. Or that curly hair is the prettiest and if I have curly hair, I'm going to have an advantage. I can't help it but there's nothing I can do, so I just keep dyeing and straightening over and over again to keep it a secret."

Quinn was silent for a long while and Kurt stilled.

"So…what are you going to do about Blaine? And what do you want to do?"

Good old Quinn. That girl had a good brain; she knew full well that what one wanted and what one would do were often different.

"I don't know. And I don't know. There are two ways it could go if I man up and tell him: he can either totally reject me and everything I am and I can handle that; or… he'll find out and start treating me like a computer. Finn's gotten better but he still does sometimes, and he's practically family now."

"Kurt… you do realize that neither of the scenarios you mentioned end up with you being happy in the slightest?"

"I'm aware. That's because there's no option that ends with me being happy. Not in this," Kurt's voice was low and over the line, the blonde girl made a choked, strangled noise that could have been a gasp or the threatening of a sob. "I could lie to him, but that's not even on my radar. If I'm going to be honest, I'm going to be honest. No two ways."

"So you'll just… leave it?"

"Yes," the boy replied, "I'm fully capable of being friends with a boy I'm attracted to; I'm not fifteen anymore. Having a friend is better than having a boyfriend anyway."

That was definitely a sob that came through the line, and Kurt changed the subject.

"I heard you emailed the girls you're going to be dorming with in the fall. Did you get a response?" He could see her now, eyes rimmed with red and color high in her cheeks because he'd seen Quinn Fabray cry more times than he'd liked and knew exactly how she looked when she did. Unlike him, she was lucky enough to be a pretty crier.

A sniff.

"Y-yeah, I did. They seem like they're going to be nice…"

This had to be the stupidest idea that Blaine had ever had in his life. Really. Stupider than majoring in musical theatre, stupider than his spontaneous performances in the middle of the common rooms at Dalton years ago. Hell, it was even stupider than letting Natalie puppy dog eye him into discussing boys with her.

In one hand, Blaine held a grocery bag filled with the ingredients to make the one thing he trusted himself to make without screwing up. In the other, he clutched a short stack of wrinkled sheet music, crumpled and smoothed and recrumpled so many times that there was really no hope for them at all at this point. His guitar was slung around his shoulder, resting behind him to sit solidly on his hip.

Oh god.

Blaine knocked and waited nervously. A few moments later, the door flew open and Kurt was staring wide-eyed at him. His hair was left unstyled –good lord it was cute like that- and he was dressed more casually than Blaine was used to.

"Hi, Blaine. What's…what's up?" he asked curiously, staring first at Blaine's grocery bag then the paper in his hand. Blaine smiled sheepishly.

"I thought I might pay you back for that dinner from forever ago," he began, confidence belying the strange mix of nerves and anticipation he was feeling at the moment, "It's not fancy, but it always seems to get good reviews. And I thought…I might show you some of the songs I've written. They suck of course, but I thought—" He cut off as Kurt reached forward, taking him by the wrist and tugging him inside.

"I'd love to hear them," the younger boy said softly, "Even if they suck."

"Aren't you full of confidence and encouragement," Blaine muttered good-naturedly, "Do I have permission to use the royal kitchen, Your Highness?"

Smiling in surprise, Kurt sunk down in a bow reminiscent of a ruler directing his peons.

"You may," he replied loftily, following Blaine into the kitchen.

Twenty minutes later, the two of them were clustered around Kurt's coffee table, munching on stir fried chicken and vegetables.

"And you said you couldn't cook," Kurt accused, glaring mildly. Blaine shrugged and held up his hands in surrender.

"Yeah, if you consider being able to make one thing being able to cook," Blaine retorted, and Kurt flicked a snow pea at him.

"Still, false advertising."

Blaine flicked the pea back at him and for a few brief seconds, Kurt stared at it as if it held the secrets to the universe. Then, he shrugged mildly and picked it up, popping it into his mouth.

"Whatever, table's clean," he muttered, setting his empty plate to the side. "Soooo…these songs of yours."

Blaine squirmed and fidgeted, biting at his lip. Finally, he handed over the sheets.

"They really, really do suck. And uh, none of them are new or anything, so they're even crappier and uh…"

He trailed off as Kurt stilled, the quip on the tip of his tongue freezing and sliding right back where it came from. He stared silently at the title of the first song.

I'm Gay and Won't Tell My Father.

"B-Blaine…?" he asked lowly, unsure as to what exactly he meant by the question. The older boy wouldn't look at him, staring so intently at his plate that Kurt thought he might break it with his eyes. He looked terrified and Kurt wanted to say something, anything to take the fear away. If there was anything he could say or do to make it go away, Kurt wanted those words. "Me too!" He said in a rush, "I mean, not about the father part. But… me too. It's okay, Blaine. It's okay."

Kurt had never seen such potent relief in anyone in his entire life. The second the words were out of his mouth, Blaine relaxed and let out a breath so deep that it could probably be felt across town, sagging forward to bury his face in his hands. Kurt fought the urge to lean over and hug him.

"Oh my god," Blaine was murmuring under his breath, "Oh my god."

Abruptly, Kurt lost his battle with that urge and within seconds had wrapped his arms around the other boy, tugging him close. Blaine dug his hands into the fabric at Kurt's hips, burying his face in his shoulder. His entire frame was shuddering, and Kurt thought that if he let him go, he'd literally fall apart right there.

"It's alright, it's alright. I've got you. Had you never told anyone?" Kurt asked quietly, tone low and soft and soothing. One arm looped around Blaine's shoulders but the other was stroking his head.

"Everyone w-w-who ever knew guessed. Wes, David, my sisters. I've never…never actually told anyone before. Never told."

"You're very brave," Kurt murmured, "It's so hard to do. Thank you for telling me."

Blaine didn't reply but his grip on Kurt tightened, and the side of the younger boy's mouth tilted up in a tiny smile.

"I knew when I was thirteen," he began to sing, staring intently at the sheet of paper that he'd dropped on the table. His voice stumbled and flubbed the inexpert melody but he read on, "But I could never tell you. I'm gay, I'm gay, but I could never tell you. I'm gay but I won't tell my father."

Blaine stiffened.

"I'd tell the pope before you. I'd tell the mailman before you. I'd tell the King and Queen and all the birds in the world before you. I'm gay but I won't tell my father."

"….god, that song sucks," Blaine finally muttered from somewhere around Kurt's torso, startling a surprised laugh out of him.

"Maybe a little."

"Little, nothing."

"Okay, maybe a lot," Kurt amended, still idly petting those black curls, "But everyone's got to start somewhere. I think you've already gotten somewhere important."

"What's that? Realizing how much you blow?"

"No, not at all. I was thinking of the fact that even though your lyrics are kind of bad and your melodies need…um, intense work, you've already gotten what a lot of people never do. You've written something honest that hits you right where it hurts."

Blaine wanted to laugh. He really, really wanted to laugh, because it was funny and the words made something warm curl up inside him and purr.

Instead, he clutched Kurt tighter and cried.

AN: And here's chapter five! I hope you enjoyed! As usual, please review if you liked this, or even if you hated it. Though if you hated it, I'd be extremely surprised that you made it all the way to chapter five.